William Joyce. Nazi. Jew-hater. Traitor. Loathed, tried and hanged after the war for his services to Hitler.
Loved, remembered, and eulogised by the hard-core nazis of British Movement who this week laid flowers at his grave. And boasted of it.
But hold on, you say. How can you claim to be a patriot, to be ‘British’, whilst simultaneously promoting the memory and life’s work of a man who celebrated German bombing raids on our cities during WW2?
You might well ask…
After the war, two strands of fascism emerged in this country. One went back to Oswald Mosley. The other to a man called Arnold Leese, a crazy anti-Semitic camel doctor (yes, really), much more extreme than Mosley, whom he called a “kosher fascist.” After he split from Mosley he set up his own Imperial Fascist League.
Gas chambers
In the post-war era, it was the Leese tradition which prevailed; the likes of Colin Jordan, John Tyndall and their followers all stood on the shoulders of a man whose main claim to distinction is that he was the first to propose gas chambers for the industrial scale slaughter of the Jews.
One of Leese’s pre-war supporters was William Joyce who, like most fascists, was at something of a loose end in 1939. Travelling to Germany, Joyce happened across several British nazis, and he was encouraged to offer his services to the German broadcasting authorities.
His voice was heard by millions, each of his shows starting with the thrice repeated “Germany Calling!” His gloating, cackling voice earned him the derisive nickname, ‘Lord Haw Haw’
Soon he became the German voice of treason, hosting his own radio show transmitting to the UK, where he openly mocked British people under constant threat of bombing and death.
He joked about the Luftwaffe “playing skittles” with chimneys on industrial buildings destroyed in terrifying overnight raids. His voice was heard by millions, each of his shows starting with the thrice repeated “Germany Calling!” His gloating, cackling voice earned him the derisive nickname, ‘Lord Haw Haw’.
Detested
My dad heard Joyce’s broadcasts. He, like every other serviceman doing their best to stop Hitler’s genocidal war machine, detested Joyce. Even former Mosleyites, who had joined the war effort on the allied side, baulked at the material Joyce directed our way via the Rundfunkhaus, the broadcasting centre of Reich propaganda.
Joyce was tried and hanged in 1946. This was the fate of traitors and enemy agents.
Today, 80 years later, William Joyce is all but forgotten. But not by Britain’s neo nazis, and certainly not by British Movement, who this week laid flowers at his grave in Ireland in tribute.
BM was formed out of the Colin Jordan’s National Socialist Movement, whose openly nazi propaganda in the early 1960s was greeted with horror, and militant opposition, by Brits with painful memories of loss and war.
Not to mention Britain’s Jewish community, struggling to deal with the magnitude, evil, and loss of the Holocaust.
Nazi godfather
Millions dead – the only conclusion that fascism and nazism can ever bring. But British Movement lays flowers on William Joyce’s grave.
It is not surprising if you understand that these specimens are inspired by the Godfather of British nazism, Colin Jordan.
Jordan was a huge fan of Arnold Leese and William Joyce, arguing that Joyce was some kind of martyr, hero, or victim of the British. Jordan’s NSM headquarters in the 1960s was Leese’s old house in Notting Hill, given to them by his widow. They called it ‘Arnold Leese House’.
Prison sentence
Jordan, despite his verbose, long-winded defences of Hitler, his association and co-operation with neo-nazis like Lincoln Rockwell and Savitri Devi, and the vicious remnants of Hitler’s most fanatical supporters post war, realised in 1968 that the NSM’s image had to be moderated.
But only after he’d served a prison sentence for race hate and didn’t fancy repeating the experience.
That was when the National Socialist Movement became ‘British’ Movement.
It was fake then, and it’s fake now.
Brought to its knees
In 1963, BM had around 40 members. By 1980, it had 3000 and its thugs often marched through the same cities that were bombed by the nazis.
Searchlight takes huge satisfaction from the knowledge that in 1981-82 our man, Ray Hill, brought British Movement to its knees, albeit that Jordan was no longer leader at that point though still its ideological mentor.
Even earlier, another Searchlight informant, Peter Marriner in Birmingham, had helped get locked up a BM gang who were amassing a huge stockpile of guns and ammunition.
Today, led by veteran nazi Stephen Frost, BM is a shadow of its former self, with around 100 members at most, but its social media reach is much greater.
Its association with the most extreme, violent, and Holocaust denying neo-nazis is international in scope, from the UK to Ukraine, to America and Australia.
So what’s British about them? Absolutely nothing. Of Britain’s neo-nazi groups they are the most unashamedly pro-Hitler, their social media accounts dripping with portraits of the man, and tributes to him and his Third Reich co-criminals.
April 20th, Hitler’s birthday, has just passed, and BM excitedly pointed out that some lowlife had attached a “Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler” banner, complete with swastika, to a bridge in central London, a short distance from those very streets bombed by the nazis.
Others gathered to celebrate the event, again boasting of it.
You really couldn’t make it up. But in the best traditions of post war anti-fascism, of the 43 and 62 Groups, we’re watching them, and will continue to do so while we have breath.
