Victor Burgess

Victor Cecil Burgess was a British fascist who was one of the principal figures in the British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women (BLESMAW).

Career

After the outbreak of the Second World War, Burgess was briefly detained by the British government under the newly introduced Defence Regulation 18B.[1]

In 1942, Burgess set up a distribution centre for anti-Semitic literature for the BUF in Edgware, Middlesex. According to Graham Macklin, Burgess was lucky to escape prosecution for seditious libel.[2]

By 1944, Burgess, along with Jeffrey Hamm had taken control of BLESMAW. The organisation had been founded as an alternative to the Royal British Legion in 1937. The League held its first meeting in Hyde Park on 4 November 1944, where it promoted itself as a fascist organisation that endorsed racial purity and "Britain for the British", inspiring a hostile reaction from the crowd.[3] Under Hamm and Burgess the group became active in East London, where it was involved in street violence.[4] Burgess was ousted from the group by 1946, however, as Hamm viewed him as a rival for the leadership. Following this he linked up with Alexander Raven Thomson in his group the Union of British Freemen, a network designed to co-ordinate the activities of several small, regional discussion groups that were sympathetic to Mosley.[5]

Burgess was well regarded by other Mosleyites in the immediate post-war period for his habit of delivering anti-Semitic speeches on Friday nights at Hampstead Heath, despite the fact that many of those in attendance were Jewish. During one such speech was allegedly attacked with a razor by members of the 43 Group.[6] However his olive skin also led to rumours that he was of a Romani descent.[6] Other rumours that his wife Olive had been a communist were true as she had served as a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain's Hendon branch.[7] As a sideline Burgess imported pornographic magazines from the United States, a source of mirth amongst some of his fellow members, although ultimately this was ended when one of his political colleagues reported Burgess to the police for what he considered an immoral practice.[8]

Joining the Union Movement (UM) upon its formation, he became head of the influential Kensington branch and was initially required to work alongside Hamm at the party's headquarters. However tensions between the two men were such that Mosley was eventually forced to end the arrangement and send Hamm to Manchester to take charge of the northern section of the party.[9] In 1949, Burgess stood as a local councillor in Kensington South, London. He received 2.5% of the vote and was not elected.

The UM went into decline following Mosley's decision to move to Ireland in 1951. In an attempt to arrest this trend Burgess and his associate Derek Lesley-Jones set up the Special Propaganda Service, a group of eighteen activists whose twin roles were to travel the country supplying local branches with propaganda material as well as to infiltrate Communist Party events and cause disturbances. However internal divisions within the UM at the time saw this initiative abandoned, leading to Burgess resigning from the UM in February 1953.[10]

References

  1. ↑ Warburton, John & Jeffrey Wallder. (2008) The Defence Regulation 18B British Union Detainees List. Revised edition. Friends of Oswald Mosley. p. 7.
  2. ↑ Graham Macklin, Very Deeply Dyed in Black: Sir Oswald Mosley and the Resurrection of British Fascism After 1945, London: IB Tauris, 2007, p. 31
  3. ↑ Stephen Dorril, Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley & British Fascism, Penguin Books, 2007, p. 542
  4. ↑ Barberis et al, Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations, p. 177
  5. ↑ Macklin, p. 39
  6. 1 2 Trevor Grundy, Memoirs of a Fascist Childhood: A Boy in Mosley's Britain, London: Heinemann, 1998, p. 40
  7. ↑ Macklin, p. 153
  8. ↑ Macklin, p. 160
  9. ↑ Macklin, p. 58
  10. ↑ Macklin, p. 61

Further reading

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