Editorial Introduction: Contextualising British Fascist Community Building Since 1945

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Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For a dated yet still often relevant survey of this ‘failure’, see: Mike Cronin, The Failure of British Fascism: The Far Right and the Fight for Political Recognition (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996).

2 Stanley G. Payne, A History of Fascism, 1914–1945 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995), 304.

3 Key texts here include: Julie Gottlieb, Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement 1923–1945 (London: Bloomsbury, 2021); Julie Gottlieb Thomas Linehan, The Culture of Fascism: Visions of the Far Right in Britain (London: I. B. Tauris, 2004); Thomas Linehan, British Fascism, 1918–39: Parties, Ideology and Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); Tom Villis, British Catholics and Fascism Religious Identity and Political Extremism Between the Wars (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Dan Stone, Breeding Superman: Nietzsche, Race and Eugenics in Edwardian and Interwar Britain (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002); Kenneth Lunn and Richard Thurlow, eds., British Fascism: Essays on the Radical Right in Inter-War Britain (London: Routledge, 2016); Richard Griffiths, What Did You Do during the War?: The Last Throes of the British Pro-Nazi Right, 1940–45 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017); Paul Stocker, “‘The Imperial Spirit’: British Fascism and Empire, 1919–1940,” Religion Compass 9, no. 2 (2015): 45–54; Liam J. Liburd, “Beyond the Pale: Whiteness, Masculinity and Empire in the British Union of Fascists, 1932–1940,” Fascism 7, no. 2 (2018): 275–96.

4 For example, this perspective structured Robert Paxton’s influential study of fascism: Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (London: Penguin, 2005).

5 For an overview here see: Roger Griffin, Fascism: An Introduction to Comparative Fascist Studies (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018): ch. 5.

6 Griffin, Roger, “Decentering Comparative Fascist Studies,” Fascism (Leiden) 4, no. 2 (2015): 103–18.

7 Excellent texts that include or focus on the postwar history include: Graham Macklin, Failed Führers: A History of Britain’s Extreme Right (Abingdon: Routledge Group, 2020); Nigel Copsey, Contemporary British Fascism: The British National Party and the Quest for Legitimacy. 2nd ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); Nigel Copsey and Matthew Worley, eds., Tomorrow Belongs to Us: The British Far Right since 1967 (London: Routledge, 2018); John Richardson, British Fascism: A Discourse-Historical Analysis (Stuttgart, Germany: Ibidem-Verlag, 2017); Nigel Copsey and John E. Richardson, Cultures of Post-War British Fascism (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015); Martin Durham, Women and Fascism (London: Routledge, 1998); Paul Stocker, Lost Imperium: Far Right Visions of the British Empire, c.1920–1980 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021); Shaffer, Ryan, Music, Youth and International Links in Post-War British Fascism The Transformation of Extremism (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017); Joe Mulhall, British Fascism After the Holocaust: From the Birth of Denial to the Notting Hill Riots 1939–1958 (London: Routledge, 2021).

8 John Jupp, ‘From Spiral to Stasis? United Kingdom Counter-Terrorism Legislation and Extreme Right-Wing Terrorism,’ Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, (2022): 1–21.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Jackson

Paul Jackson is Professor in the History of Radicalism and Extremism at the University of Northampton. He specializes in the history and contemporary dynamics of fascism and the extreme right, and his most recent book is Pride in Prejudice: Understanding Britain’s Extreme Right (2022). E-mail: [email protected]