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ABSTRACT
Macklin's article documents the two lives of noted architectural historian John Hooper Harvey, focusing on the inextricable link between his fêted academic career and his involvement during the 1930s with the most extreme antisemitic and pro-Nazi group in Britain, the Imperial Fascist League, led by Arnold Leese. Macklin argues that Harvey's virulent antisemitism and his academic writing were part of an interconnected totality with one informing the other throughout his career. In examining the link between his gutter antisemitism and his vast erudition and learning Macklin also highlights the importance of neo-mediaevalism to fascist and Nazi ideology. His article stands slightly apart from the other articles in this special issue in that it deals with a tradition of historicized ‘folk’ history and cultural aspects of race rather than explicitly ‘scientific’ or anthropological racism. Given the recent resurgence of ‘heritage’ and ‘cultural traditions’ studies in the academy Macklin's article on these neglected aspects of thinking on race and nation is particularly timely.
Notes
1John Harvey, English Mediaeval Architects: A Biographical Dictionary down to 1550 (Stroud: Alan Sutton 1984), xvii.
2‘Obituaries: John Harvey’, Daily Telegraph, 4 December 1997.
3For a brief biography addressing the essential duality of Harvey's life, see Tony Kushner, The Persistence of Prejudice: Anti-Semitism in British Society during the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press 1989), 44–5.
4‘Obituaries: John Harvey’.
5Matthew Saunders, ‘Obituary: John Harvey’, Independent, 25 November 1997.
6‘Obituaries: John Harvey’.
7Richard Thurlow, Fascism in Britain: From Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts to the National Front (London: I. B. Tauris 1998), 47.
8Arnold Leese, ‘A great anti-Jewish pioneer condemns Mosley’, The Fascist, no. 78, November 1935, and Arnold Leese, ‘The Jewishness of Levi Leiter’, The Fascist, no. 86, July 1936.
9Robert Skidelsky, Oswald Mosley (London: Papermac 1990), 85.
10In Philip, Viscount Snowdon, An Autobiography (London: Ivor Nicolson and Watson 1934), 876–7, the author comments on Mosley's ‘striking resemblance’ to Ferdinand Lassalle, the forefather of German social democracy. For Leese this was ample proof that Mosley was Jewish because, as he reminded readers of The Fascist, ‘lassalle was a jew’. Ironically, Lord Curzon, former Viceroy of India, made a similar observation when his future son-in-law asked for his daughter's hand in marriage in March 1920. Mosley was ‘very young, tall, little black moustache, rather Jewish appearance’; Curzon quoted in Nigel Jones, Mosley (London: Haus 2004), 21.
11Arnold Leese, Our Jewish Aristocracy—A Tale of Contamination (London: IFL 1936).
12Untitled manuscript: Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, Trades Union Congress Papers, MSS 292/743/12. For Leese's account of the attack, see ‘Stop press’, The Fascist, no. 55, December 1933. Leese's fellow speakers, veteran fascists John F. Rushbrook and General R. B. D. Blakeney, were ‘seriously injured’ during the attack, and Blakeney, a former general manager of the Egyptian railways and president of British Fascists Ltd, was beaten ‘so brutally’ that he did not recover until February 1934; see ‘General Blakeney’, The Fascist, no. 57, February 1934.
13Letter from John Hooper Harvey to A. Frederickson, 3 January 1936: Imperial War Museum, London, Myra Story Papers (hereafter Myra Story Papers).
15‘The Nordics’, The Fascist, no. 44, January 1933.
14G. E. G. Caitlin, ‘Fascist stirrings in Britain’, Current History, vol. 39, 1934, 542.
16‘The Nordics’, The Fascist, no. 44, January 1933.
17See The Fascist, nos 45–50, February–July 1933, and nos 53–5, October–December 1933.
18Letters from L. A. Waddell to Myra Story, 23 October 1936 and 31 March 1937: Myra Story Papers.
19See, for instance, letters from L. A. Waddell to Arnold Leese, 24 April 1935 (MS Gen 1691/3/80), Arnold Leese to L. A. Waddell, 5 September 1935 (MS Gen 1691/3/78), Arnold Leese to L. A. Waddell, 14 April 1937 (MS Gen 1691/3/79) and ‘Fact versus fiction on the Aryan race’, an incomplete typescript enclosed with previous letter (MS Gen 1691/3/79a): Glasgow University Library, Special Collections, Laurence Augustine Waddell Papers.
20‘A testimonial we value’, The Fascist, no. 78, November 1935.
21‘Obituary’, The Fascist, no. 114, November 1938. See also ‘The Nordics: our historic past’, The Fascist, no. 49, 1933, which pays testimony to the influence of Waddell's work as having constituted a ‘vast revolution in historical knowledge’.
22‘The old forgotten guide: the British Edda’, The Fascist, no. 98, July 1937.
23‘The Nordics: our historic past’.
24Letter from John Hooper Harvey to A. Frederickson, 3 January 1936: Myra Story Papers. Long forgotten by mainstream society, the ‘hidden truth’ represented by Waddell's ideas continues to circulate among racial nationalists through the Internet; see, for example, www.jrbooksonline.com/waddell.htm (viewed 31 January 2008).
25Letter from John Hooper Harvey to Delly, 17 March 1933: Myra Story Papers.
26Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, The Occult Roots of Nazism: Secret Aryan Cults and Their Influence on Nazi Ideology (London: Tauris Parke 2003). For a study of this phenomenon post-1945, see Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity (New York: New York University Press 2002) and Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, Hitler's Priestess: Savitri Devi, the Hindu-Aryan Myth, and Neo-Nazism (New York: New York University Press 1998).
27‘Literature’, The Fascist, no. 43, December 1932; see also The Fascist, no. 17, October 1930; no. 27, August 1931; and no. 53, October 1933. The Fascist kept its readership apprised of Günther's upward career trajectory under the Nazi regime, trumpeting his appointment as professor of ‘anti-Semitic race research’ at Jena University as ‘touching the spot’ (‘Touching the spot’, The Fascist, no. 17, October 1930). Hans F. K. Günther, The Racial Elements of European History, trans. from the German by G. C. Wheeler (London: Methuen 1927).
28Letter from Hans F. K. Günther to John Hooper Harvey, 26 October 1933: Myra Story Papers.
31Letter from Hans-Rolf Hoffman to John Hooper Harvey, 10 May 1933: Myra Story Papers.
29‘The Nordics’, The Fascist, no. 44, January 1933. The Nordics also elicited interest from the Nazi Institut für Grenz- und Auslandstudien which wrote to Harvey in May 1937 requesting details of the group's programme. In return for a copy of The Fascist forwarded by Harvey, he was sent a copy of the first book on a series on eugenics by the Reich's commissioner for national health.
30‘Case Summary,’ 10 March 1943: The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA), HO 45/25571/84. In July 1937 MI5 received a report from the British Consul-General in Munich that Hoffman was acting as Mosley's ‘unofficial agent’ in that city; see TNA, KV/2/18b.
32‘The Nordics’, The Fascist, no. 57, February 1934.
33‘Memorandum on the Nordic League and allied organisations’: London Metropolitan Archives, London, Board of Deputies of British Jews Papers, C6/2/1/5.
34Guy Liddell diaries, vol. 3, entries for 14 and 19 January 1941: TNA, KV 4/187.
35Special Branch report, ‘Nordic League’, 23 May 1939: TNA, HO 144/22454.
36‘Case Summary,’ 10 March 1943: TNA, HO 45/25571/84.
37 The Fascist, nos 79–83, December 1935–April 1936.
38J[ohn] H[ooper] H[arvey], ‘The Distortion of History’, The Fascist, no. 83, April 1936.
39Letters from John Hooper Harvey to Arnold Leese, 23 July 1935 and 17 August 1935: Arnold Leese Papers, private collection.
40John Hooper Harvey, ‘Race and truth’, The Fascist, no. 87, August 1936.
41Letter from John Hooper Harvey to Harold Lockwood, 23 August 1936: Arnold Leese Papers, private collection.
44J[ohn] H[ooper] H[arvey], ‘Danzig and the peace of Europe’, The Fascist, no. 123, August 1939.
42‘Case Summary,’ 10 March 1943: TNA, HO 45/25571/84.
43‘IFL notes’, The Fascist, no. 88, September 1936.
45‘Case Summary,’ 10 March 1943: TNA, HO 45/25571/84.
46 Weekly Angles, no. 110, 2 March 1940.
47Letter from John Hooper Harvey to Arnold Leese, 19 April 1940: TNA, HO 45/25571.
48‘John H. Harvey, 10 April 1941’: TNA, HO 45/25569.
49‘History Sheet and Identity Form’: TNA, HO 45/25569/20.
51E. Finney, remarks, 10 April 1941: TNA, HO 25569.
50‘Case Summary,’ 10 March 1943: TNA, HO 45/25571/84.
52David Brock, ‘Harvey, John Hooper (1911–1997)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2004).
53‘Obituaries: John Harvey’.
54‘Case Summary,’ 10 March 1943: TNA, HO 45/25571/84.
55In contrast to Harvey, Leese hated Potocki, describing him as ‘that greasy scaly-necked Pole’; letter from Arnold Leese to Myra Story, 16 June 1942: Myra Story Papers.
56V. S. Pritchett, At Home and Abroad (London: Chatto and Windus 1990), 264. Potocki whiled away the hours heckling anarchist meetings, suggesting that they should accept his sovereignty because ‘the rule of but one, ought not be so abhorrent to Anarchists, as the rule of many’. One anarchist ended this nonsense by proclaiming His Majesty ‘a bore’ and pouring a pint of beer over him; Albert Meltzer, I Couldn't Paint Golden Angels (Edinburgh: AK Press 1996), 30. Potocki also claimed to be related to the composer Johann Sebastian Bach; see Geoffrey W. V. Potocki, Count de Montalk, Were Bach's Ancestors Polish? (Draguignan: Mélissa Press 1969).
57D. A. Callard, ‘The trial of John Penis’, London Journal, vol. 39, August/September 1999, 34–41. For Potocki's own account, see Count Potocki of Montalk, Whited Sepulchres: Being an Account of My Trial and Imprisonment for a Parody of Verlaine and Some Other Verses (London: Right Review 1936).
58Charles Maurras, Music with Me … Translated by Count Potocki (Poems Selected from ‘La Musique intérieure’) (London: Right Review 1946) and Charles Maurras, Dear Garment: Six Poems by Charles Maurras and One by Charles d'Orleans. Translated by Count Potocki of Montalk (Dorchester: Mélissa Press 1965).
62Quoted in Stephanie de Montalk, Unquiet World: The Life of Count Geoffrey Potocki de Montalk (Wellington: Victoria University Press 2001), 224.
59 Right Review, May 1937.
60‘Interview with Polish Count’, 8 November 1942: Sussex University, Mass Observation Archive, Box 10, TC 25/20/H, which records: ‘Man who lent him cottage has just finished 6 months for being a conshie and refusing medical examination. Lost his good job in Civil Service for his ideals.’
61Harvey immediately compiled a local history of the area entitled Bookham Common (1943), which was followed in 1950 by An Experiment in Local History, his tentative proposal for an archaeological survey of the village.
63 Right Review, Summer 1973.
64 Right Review, Spring 1943.
67 Daily Express, 29 March 1943. See also Reverend F. H. Amphlett Micklewright, ‘Sun-worship in modern London’, Occult Review, vol. 73, no. 1, January 1946, 6–10.
65Kushner, The Persistence of Prejudice, 45.
66The Home Secretary had refused to release Bowman from internment in order to visit his dying mother. He was informed of her death four days afterwards. See Hansard (HC), vol. 371, col. 988, 8 May 1941.
68Letter from Douglas Peroni to Ken Dutfield, 2 November 1943: TNA, KV 2/905.
69George Orwell, ‘Pamphlet literature’, New Statesman and Nation, 9 January 1943.
70Letter from Theodora Gayre Scutt to the author, 5 October 2002.
71 Right Review, May 1946. On 6 January 1944 Bowman too—‘For lese majesté and for gross breach of his oath of fealty’—was deprived of the Orders of St Wladislas and St Stanlislas.
73Hansard (HC), vol. 389, col. 1248–9, 20 May 1943.
72‘Count Potocki’, 16 April 1944: TNA, HO 45/25569/39 and FO 371/34611.
74 The Times, 12 February 1940.
75 Right Review, Spring 1943.
76 Daily Worker, 17 December 1945.
77Theodora Gay Potocka, Potocki, a Dorset Worthy? (Francestown, NH: Typographeum 1983), 37–40.
78 Right Review, Summer 1973.
79 Daily Worker, 19 October 1946 and 20 October 1946.
80 The Times, 20 October 1946.
81Letter from John Hooper Harvey to Winifred Leese, 21 January 1956: Arnold Leese Papers, private collection.
82E-mail from Suzanne Foster (Winchester College) to the author, 5 November 2004.
83Brock, ‘Harvey, John Hooper’.
84Thurlow, Fascism in Britain, 120–1.
85Andrew Roberts, Eminent Churchillians (London: Phoenix 1995), 287–323.
86See Elisa Lawson, ‘“Scientific monstrosity” yet “occasionally convenient”: Cecil Roth and the idea of “race”’, published elsewhere in this special issue.
87Letter from John Hooper Harvey to Arnold Leese, 21 May 1931: Arnold Leese Papers, private collection. Harvey also conducted a large amount of research for Leese on the subject of King Canute's supposed expulsion of the Jews from England in 1020 ce; see letter from John Hooper Harvey to Arnold Leese, 18 January 1935: Arnold Leese Papers, private collection.
88‘England's champion’, The Fascist, no. 74, July 1935.
89‘The British Jewnion of Fascists’, The Fascist, no. 54, November 1933.
90John Harvey, The Heritage of Britain (London: Right Review 1941), 6, 56.
91 Weekly Review, 11 March 1943.
92 Right Review, Summer 1973.
93John Harvey, Henry Yevele c1320 to 1400: The Life of an English Architect (London: Batsford 1944).
94John Harvey, Gothic England: A Survey of National Culture, 1300–1550 (London: Batsford 1947), 13–15, 24, 40. The title Gothic England is itself instructive of the semiotics of British fascism in which the word ‘Gothic’ is synonymous with ‘Aryan’, a proposition borne out by the title of Arnold Leese's post-1945 publication Gothic Ripples, which has also been used since the 1980s by Colin Jordan for his own antisemitic fulminations.
95John Harvey, The Plantagenets [1948] (London: Fontana 1967), 119–20.
96Colin Holmes, ‘The ritual murder accusation in Britain’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 4, no. 3, July 1981, 266–7. The British National Party recently republished the folk song ‘Hugh of Lincoln’ on their ‘cultural’ website as part of their own project to construct a British ‘folk’ identity; see www.project-iona.co.uk/article.php?iona_id=238 (viewed 31 January 2008).
97Harvey, The Plantagenets, 119–20.
98Arnold Leese, Out of Step: Events in the Two Lives of an Anti-Jewish Camel-Doctor (Guildford, Surrey: The Author 1947), 53–4.
99Lesley Friedman, ‘Author in talks on “blood libel”’, Jewish Chronicle, 30 November 1984, and Lesley Friedman, ‘“Blood libel” history text is withdrawn’, Jewish Chronicle, 14 December 1984.
100John Harvey, The Black Prince and His Age (London: Batsford 1976), 89.
101John Harvey, The Cathedrals of Spain (London: Batsford 1957), 24, 143, 179, 205, and John Harvey, The Mediaeval Architect (London: Wayland 1972), 55.
102John Harvey, Cathedrals of England and Wales (London: Batsford 1974).
103Richard Thurlow, ‘The developing British fascist interpretation of race, culture and evolution’, in Julie Gottlieb and Thomas P. Linehan (eds), The Culture of Fascism: Visions of the Far Right in Britain (London: I. B. Tauris 2004), 69–70.
104‘Obituaries: John Harvey’.