Horatio Bottomley and the Far Right Before Fascism (Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right)

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In politics, independents have more tangled roots. Not all of those who are described as political independents are virtuous free thinkers. Far from it. Paraphrasing Malvolio, you could say of independents that some are born independent, some become independent, and many have a form of independence thrust unwillingly upon them. Peter Baker, the Conservative MP for South Norfolk, was automatically expelled on 16 December 1954 when he was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment after forging signatures on letters purporting to guarantee debts when his companies ran into financial difficulties. Bottomley published a book of prison poems after his release, called Songs of the Cell, with a preface by Lord Alfred Douglas, who after all had a strong personal connection with prison poetry. Bottomley was in apostolic succession, as it were, to A. E. Housman and Oscar Wilde in their poetic accounts of execution by hanging:

O ne thing is certain. When Bottomley was penniless and ailing unto death, he was looked after by his favorite mistress, Peggy Primrose, the love of his life, a minor failed actress upon whose career he had spent a fortune trying to promote. She stayed with him until he died. She provided a wreath of red roses at his funeral (for which she paid) with the message “Rest, beloved. I am so glad you worked out the Karma.” She was overcome with grief as they led the coffin away. That Sir George Makgill was active within this complex network of inter-related organisations is however beyond doubt. In the London telephone directory for 1917 he is listed as the Honourary Secretary of the British Empire Union based at 346 Strand Walk (the office of the Diehard newspaper "The Morning Post"). In 1918 the "business secretary" of the British Empire Union was listed as Reginald Wilson, who was later associated with National Propaganda, and its successor the Economic League. Makgill was also, in the same years, the General Secretary of the British Empire Producers' Organisation, which had certainly been courted by the BCU as a potential sponsor, as early as 1917. A further link with this Diehard, anti-socialist network around National Propaganda, is suggested by an entry in The Times on December 17th 1920, in which it was announced the Makgill was standing as a candidate for Horatio Bottomley's People's League in a Parliamentary election in East Leyton. Bottomley was a jingoistic, right wing populist closely associated with the diehards. His group was one of the more successful "patriotic labour" movements which sprang up after the extension of the franchise to attract and encourage anti-socialist working class votes. (8) Henry J. Houston, The Real Horatio Bottomley (1923) I intend] to give the government an independent and, I hope, an intelligent support, so long as it proceeds on the lines of robust and healthy democracy, but I am also here to oppose all fads and 'isms and namby-pamby interference with the liberty and freedom of our common citizenship.

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You are in for fraud, I see,” said I. The deduction was not at all remarkable. Burglars do not read Wittgenstein. The 1946 relaunch featured covers that encapsulated post-war Britain and employed some of Britain's finest illustrators. During this period, the magazine also included short stories by major British authors such as H. E. Bates, Agatha Christie, Nicholas Monsarrat, N. J. Crisp, Gerald Kersh, J. B. Priestley and C. S. Forester.

If [Bottomley] had a humbug of his own, he made mincemeat of the humbug of others, excoriating the more extreme claims made on behalf of the League of Nations, dismissing most forces in international politics except those based on power and ridiculing the naivest sorts of Labour claim to have discovered an inexhaustible supply of wealth and wages. Horatio Bottomley was a sincere believer in all things English. And like all genuine patriots he chose the best way to act on his patriotism which was to enrich himself as fast as he could. If he did so more fabulously than others it was only because better opportunities provided themselves to him. For the next few years Horatio traveled around the south of England. He had a short-lived stint in Birmingham as an errand boy, and then apprenticed as a wood engraver in London. When that didn’t take with him then he moved to Brighton where he worked in a jeweller’s shop for a while. In 1877 he decided to return to London, where his sister and uncles lived. He found work as an office boy and at his uncle George’s suggestion enrolled in a course to learn shorthand, a skill which landed him a job at a company named Walpole’s which supplied shorthand writers to legal firms. And then in 1880, at the age of only 20 years old, he got married. When he pleaded ignorance in the recent prosecution as to the procedure adopted in regard to important detail work of the Victory Bond Clubs, he told the simple truth. I never had anything to do with those Clubs - my work having been solely concerned with his parliamentary and political activities during the last few years - but I am quite certain that he not only did not know what procedure was adopted, but was incapable of understanding it.

His mother had been a close friend—just how close is not known—of Charles Bradlaugh, the militant secularist who, repeatedly elected to parliament but refusing to take any oath that mentioned God, would at his meetings stride on to the stage and challenge the deity to strike him dead in five minutes. Horatio strongly resembled Bradlaugh, and it was sometimes suspected that he was Bradlaugh’s offspring, though, if so, Bradlaugh never recognized him as such, as almost certainly he would have done had he known of his paternity. Bottomley argued in the John Bull Magazine that Ramsay MacDonald and James Keir Hardie, were the leaders of a "pro-German Campaign". On 19th June 1915 the magazine claimed that MacDonald was a traitor and that: "We demand his trial by Court Martial, his condemnation as an aider and abetter of the King's enemies, and that he be taken to the Tower and shot at dawn." It was Bottomley’s boast that John Bull was the first paper to call Germans “Huns”. Bottomley disdained to allow any distinction between the country that Britain was fighting and the people of Germany, increasing numbers of whom would of course come to demonstrate their very opposition to war. “If by chance”, Bottomley told his readers, “you should discover one day in a restaurant that you are being served by a German waiter, you will throw the soup in his foul face, if you find yourself sitting at the side of a German clerk, you will split the inkpot over his vile head.”

Bottomley also had a luxury apartment in Pall Mall and owned several racehorses. He twice won the Cesarewitch and several other races, but never achieved the successes in the Derby or the Grand National, even though he spent a great deal of money trying to achieve this ambition. He also lost a great deal of money on failed betting coups. Sewell, Rob (16 May 2013). "1919: Britain on the Brink of Revolution". International Marxist Tendency. Archived from the original on 17 June 2014 . Retrieved 30 June 2014. At the age of 26, Bottomley became the company's chairman. [27] His advance in the business world was attracting wider notice, and in 1887 he was invited by the Liberal Party in Hornsey to be their candidate in a parliamentary by-election. He accepted, and although defeated by Henry Stephens, the ink magnate, fought a strong campaign which won him a congratulatory letter from William Gladstone. [21] His business affairs were proceeding less serenely; he quarrelled with his partner Douglas MacRae, and the two decided to separate. Bottomley described the "Quixotic impulse" that led him to let MacRae divide the assets: "He was a printer, and I was a journalist—but he took the papers and left me the printing works". [28] Hansard Publishing Union [ edit ] Sir Henry Hawkins, the judge before whom Bottomley appeared, and was acquitted, on fraud charges in 1893 Government Policy". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Hansard online. 3 May 1920. pp.col. 1701. Archived from the original on 17 March 2016 . Retrieved 2 July 2016. Australian Press Association (19 February 1930). "Second marriage. Horatio Bottomley's daughter". The Brisbane Courier. p.10.

Bottomley's mother was greatly attached to Charles Bradlaugh, and it was her custom to go to all his lectures and meetings and sit on the platform with Baby Bottomley in long clothes.

Elkan Allan, later to become a television producer, worked as the magazine's picture editor in the 1940s. I have not had your advantages, gentlemen. What poor education I have received has been gained in the University of Life. Paris 1918: The War Diary of the British Ambassador, the 17th Earl of Derby, ed. David Dutton, Liverpool University Press, p. 12Royle, Edward (January 2011). "Holyoake, George Jacob". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/33964 . Retrieved 16 June 2014. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) What however of the elites in Britain; what did they think, and for what great cause were they fighting? The most celebrated propagandist of the British war effort was a magazine owner and former Liberal MP, Horatio Bottomley.