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

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

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

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Horatio Bottomley, the only son of William King Bottomley (1827–1863), a tailor's cutter, and his wife, Elizabeth Holyoake, was born at 16 St Peter's Street, Bethnal Green, on 23rd March 1860. His father, who suffered from mental problems, died in a "fit of mania" in Bethleham Hospital, three years later. His mother died of cancer when he was only four years old. One of Bigland’s pamphlets, however, contained detailed allegations (practically all true) that Bottomley felt had to be answered, and, like Oscar Wilde before him, he took the unwise step of suing for criminal libel. An acquittal of Bigland would almost certainly lead to the conviction of Bottomley, and so it transpired. Aged sixty-two, he was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment, of which, in the event, he served five. Horatio’s uncle George Holyoake was an outspoken secularist, and in 1842 he had been the last person in Britain to be convicted of blasphemy in a public lecture. [1] One of his allies was Charles Bradlaugh, who became a mentor to young Horatio. [2] Bradlaugh was an active pamphleteer (he was prosecuted in 1877 for publishing one promoting birth control) and this was Horatio’s first exposure to the world of publishing. It was a growth industry in the late 19th century, and in 1884, just after receiving his partnership, Horatio made his first break into it. Horatio William Bottomley ((1860–1933) was an English financier, journalist, newspaper proprietor, swindler, and Member of Parliament. His public career came to an abrupt end when in 1922 he was convicted of fraud and imprisoned. Brought up in an orphanage, Bottomley began as an errand boy; his industry enabled him, at 24, to found a publishing company through which he launched, among other titles, the Financial Times. As a financier his methods often brought him into conflict with the law, but by 1900 he had amassed a fortune as a promoter of shares in dubious gold-mining companies. Bottomley entered parliament as a Liberal Party MP in 1906, and founded John Bull magazine as a platform for his populist views. In 1912 he was declared bankrupt and forced to resign from parliament, but following the outbreak of war in 1914 he became a leading propagandist for the patriotic cause, and was tipped for government office. In 1918, having been discharged from bankruptcy, Bottomley re-entered parliament and launched his fraudulent "Victory Bonds" scheme which ultimately led to his conviction and imprisonment. Released in 1927, he eked a living by lectures and appearances in music halls, before his death in poverty. ( Full article...)

It will thus be seen that the war provided H.B. with an excellent source of revenue. The expenditure of nervous and physical energy involved in the lecture tour was enormous. Every night when I got him away from a meeting to the hotel I had to strip him and give him a thorough towelling. He was invariably saturated right through to his morning coat with perspiration. Houston argued in his book, The Real Horatio Bottomley (1923): "He began to accept what were practically music hall engagements disguised as recruiting meetings, and I was very definitely of the opinion that he was drifting in the wrong direction. Nevertheless for some time it went on... Bottomley insisted that a substantial contribution (from the income generated from the meetings) went to his War Charity Fund... Three years later I discovered that the fund did not receive a penny of the money." 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." The young Horatio went to live with his maternal uncle George Jacob Holyoake, a radical propagandist, the editor of a rationalist and socialist review, the coiner of the terms “secularism” and “jingoism,” one of the founders of the cooperative movement that is still in existence today, and the author of a two-volume memoir, Sixty Years of an Agitator’s Life (1892) . (Horatio’s other maternal uncle was the fairly successful painter William Holyoake, whose portrait of his brother shows him to have been a respectable Victorian bourgeois gentleman.) In 1916 Bottomley helped Noel Pemberton Billing, get elected as the independent MP at the East Hertfordshire by-election. Billing was also the editor of The Imperialist. Both men used their newspapers to claim the existence of a secret society called the Unseen Hand. Bottomley even claimed that this group was responsible for the death of Lord Kitchener. Other supporters of this campaign included Lord Northcliffe (the owner of The Times and The Daily Mail), Leo Maxse (the editor of The National Review), the journalist, Arnold Henry White (the author of The Hidden Hand) and Ellis Powell (the editor of the Financial News). Bottomley claimed that members of the Unseen Hand were working behind the scenes to obtain a peace agreement with Germany.Rather than the end of his career, Horatio Bottomley’s trial for fraud would prove to be the first of his finest hours. The evidence against him was overwhelming, and the case would seem to be over before it began. He was helped by the complacency of the prosecution, who didn’t bother presenting all of their evidence against him and who managed to annoy the judge with their blase manner. In contrast, Horatio’s charm and wit managed to get the judge fully on his side, as he argued that what he was being accused of was standard industry practice, that the prosecution was deliberately understating the amount he’d had to spend on expenses, and that the whole thing was an attempt on the part of the official receiver to gain prestige by bringing down his company. As a result the judge summed up in his favor and Horatio was, against all the odds, acquitted. Horatio’s best known mistress, Peggy Primrose. Source a b c d e f g h i Morris, A.J.A. (January 2011). "Bottomley, Horatio William". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/31981. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014 . Retrieved 16 June 2014. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) Porter, Dilwyn (January 2011). "Marks, Harry Hananel". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/47898. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015 . Retrieved 17 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. After the war had ended, Bottomley determined on returning to Parliament. He was still, as he had been throughout the War, an undischarged bankrupt, and he was determined to make a sufficient large fortune so as to clear his debts, and to live in the style which his wartime lectures had subsidised. The method he chose was to issue a private “Victory Bond”, linked in theory to the government’s Victory Loan.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) Rolph, David (2008). Reputation, Celebrity and Defamation Law. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. ISBN 978-0-7546-7124-4. Though blasphemy remained a criminal offence in Great Britain until 2008, and still is in Northern Ireland. (And possibly Scotland – the law is contradictory and has never needed to be clarified.) As this suggests, the history of independents in British politics is more jumbled and far less effective than the romanticised image of the independent as a principled loner against the system implies. Very occasionally, independent MPs have come to glory. Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan had periods as independents (a brief one in Churchill’s case, much longer in Macmillan’s, from 1936 to 1937) , but became prime ministers in the end. Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot survived similar spells to found the NHS and lead the Labour party respectively. When he arrived in prison, he was so fat that could not remove his own shoes or trousers. (On a morale-boosting visit to the front during the war—Bottomley and his John Bull were immensely popular with the troops—the general with whom Bottomley was touring told him, when some firing began, to get down on his stomach, but Bottomley refused on the grounds that to do so would make him a bigger target than he was when erect.) When Bottomley was first given his prison bread and cocoa in late afternoon, he turned it down, saying that he would rather wait for dinner, not realizing that the bread and cocoa was dinner.



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