A. K. Chesterton
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Arthur Kenneth Chesterton, MC (1896 — August 16, 1973) was a far right-wing politician and journalist, instrumental in founding a number of right-wing organisations in Britain, primarily in opposition to the break-up of the British Empire, and later adopting a broader anti-immigration stance. As of 2005, one of these organizations, the right-wing National Front is still active.
He is not to be confused with his very different cousin, the author G. K. Chesterton, who was fiercely anti-Imperialist and a persistent critic of what he called "the "solemn fools of Teutonism"--his derisive term for those who claimed that the 'Germanic' races were superior to all others (Illustrated London News, January 11, 1919).
Born in England, Chesterton was taken with his family to South Africa as a boy and did not return to England until the late 1920s.
In 1915 he joined the British colonial army and was sent to East Africa, where he almost died of malaria and dysentery.
After officer training, he ended up on the Western Front in 1917, as a member of the Durban Light Infantry. He was subsequently decorated with the Military Cross. Like so many other future fascists, his war experience was crucial to his repudiation of democracy. The war also left Chesterton broken in health and an alcoholic.
After the war, he worked as a journalist for the Johannesburg Star. He then traveled to England and secured a job with the Stratford-on-Avon Herald, where, as the theatre critic from 1925 to 1929, he cultivated his aesthetic sense of societal decadence and cultural decline.
For the next four years, according to Chesterton's biographer, David Baker,[1]he tilted at windmills and sharpened his skills as a controversialist while the Great Depression deepened and the bankruptcy of liberal and capitalist democracy became apparent. The corporate state, he came to believe, would rule in the interests of the whole nation, whereas democracy was the plaything of special interests and privilege
Moving to London and marrying a Fabian socialist and pacifist, Chesterton found himself living near the headquarters of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. He took to dropping by for conversation and argument, and by late 1933 he had joined the movement.
He became the director of Publicity and Propaganda as well as the chief organiser for the Midlands.
In 1936, Chesterton's alcoholism, combined with overwork, led to a nervous breakdown. He consulted a German neurologist, and between 1936-7 lived in Germany. After returning to Britain he was appointed as editor of the Blackshirt - the official BUF newspaper. This position provided a pulpit for his increasingly anti-Semitic rhetoric.
Initially a strong admirer of Oswald Mosley he left the BUF in 1938, somewhat disillusioned, but continued his involvement in far-right politics by joining the Nordic League and serving as the editor of Lord Lymington's right-wing journal, the New Pioneer.
In 1939, Chesterton re-enlisted in the British Army shortly after the outbreak of war. He served in East Africa during Second World War but returned to Britain in 1944, due to poor health, and launched the short lived National Front after Victory Group, a coalition that included the British Peoples Party. He also became deputy editor of the right-wing publication Truth.
He then returned to Africa for a short time, after which point he again returned to Britain where he established the League of Empire Loyalists in 1954. The League was a pressure group campaigning against the increasing dissolution of the British Empire, and was well-known at the time for its various stunts at Conservative Party meetings and conferences (acting as a constant irritation to the party). These stunts included hiding underneath the speaker platform overnight to emerge during the conference in order to put across their points. The League found support from a number of Conservative Party members, although they were disliked very much by the leadership.
Also about this time, he was appointed by Lord Beaverbrook to be one of his "literary advisers,"- contributing to the Daily Mail and the Sunday Express. He also ghostwrote the Beaverbrook's autobiography, Don't Trust to Luck.
He also founded and edited the right-wing magazine Candour. which he continued issuing for the rest of his life.
Chesterton went on to co-found the National Front in 1967, an organization that continues to operate today (2005). Chesterton was leader for only a short time, although he made several attempts to keep the party free from national socialist extremists. Upon his stepping down the first of several long, inter-factional disputes took place within the NF which frequently coloured its policies in ways which Chesterton did not approve of. Today the NF describes itself as a "White nationalist organisation founded in 1967 in opposition to multi-racialism and immigration", although the term "multi-racialism" was not in common usage in 1967.
Amongst Chesterton's written works are Portrait of a Leader (1937), a hagiography of Mosley; Why I left Mosley (1938), which broke from his earlier work; The Tragedy of Anti-Semitism (1948) in which he distanced himself from this form of prejudice; and The New Unhappy Lords, a diatribe against international finance.
The last 30 years of Chesterton's life were spent in a modest apartment in South Croydon with his wife, Doris. He died on August 16, 1973.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Amok-Run of the SexologistChapter 6 of A. K. Chesterton's, Facing the Abyss.
[edit] References
- David Baker. Ideology of Obsession: A.K. Chesterton and British Fascism, London and New York, I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 1996, ISBN 1-86064-073-7
| Chairmen of the National Front |
|---|
| A. K. Chesterton (1967–1970) • John O'Brien (1970–1971) • John Tyndall (1971–1974) • John Kingsley Read (1974–1976) • John Tyndall (1976–1979) • Andrew Brons (1979–1984) • no overall leader (1984–1990) • Ian Anderson (1990–1995) • John McAuley (1995–c.1998) • Tom Holmes (1998–) |
