Brave Boys of the BUF

Abstract

In the early years of the twentieth century one antidote to the Communist menace and the spectre of a ‘red’ London was fascism. Many of the groups that coalesced to form the core of London’s fascist parties had their origin in the covert war fought over wages between industrialists and workers. The crisis in Liberal politics during the period around the First World War was defined by a growing and apparently unstoppable challenge from socialism on the one hand, and on the other a determined and intransigent rejection of compromise in industry, and over empire or Ireland by the ultra-Conservatives known as the Diehards. In Liverpool and elsewhere, industrialists such as the Cunard family were paying spies to inform on Communist or anarchist troublemakers, and the Cunards’ man, J. McGuirk Hughes, was only one of a number of infiltrators and agents provocateurs used by the right to disrupt left-wing opposition. Some union leaders also subscribed to having Communists watched or sacked.