‘The most original and significant effort of political invention of Modern Times’. The reception of fascist corporatism in Britain in the 1930s

Abstract

A contribution to recent historiographical debates concerning the transnational circulation of corporatist projects and ideas, the article aims to determine to what extent, and with what theoretical outlooks, the principles of the fascist corporatist State circulated in Great Britain during the 1930s. The reception of fascist corporatism will be analysed by examining the influences that the model of the corporatist State, developed in Italy in the interwar period by the fascist regime, exerted on those British political groups that showed an interest in the Italian corporatist experiment. The article will focus on three British political groups: catholic, conservative, and fascist. Observing how advocates of these three political groups incorporated and re-interpreted the fascist corporatist model will help to highlight those key elements that led to the adoption of fascist corporatism as a reference model by different political figures such as the Catholic thinkers Gilbert K. Chesterton and Douglas F. Jerrold; the Conservatives Harold Macmillan, Eustace Percy and Leopold Amery; and finally, the most important representatives of the British Union of Fascists, Oswald Mosley and Alexander R. Thomson.