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

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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) During John Bull's run it incorporated other magazines, such as Illustrated (1958), Passing Show, and Everybody's Weekly (1959). Ruth Dudley Edwards (2013). Newspapermen: Hugh Cudlipp, Cecil Harmsworth King and the Glory Days of Fleet Street. Random House. pp.131–2. ISBN 978-1-4464-8563-7.

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.) 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." Monger, David (2012). Patriotism and Propaganda in First World War Britain. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1-84631-830-6. 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. Bottomley was born in Newport, Shropshire, the son of Sir James Bottomley, a wartime army officer who later joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and of Barbara, née Vardon, a social worker. He wa

The early John Bull

He had, in fact, a temperament more common to journalists than business men, and like most journalists he was more successful in making money when the business side of the concern was in other hands. Bottomley’s origins were not altogether auspicious. He was born in Bethnal Green in the East End of London in 1860. His father was a tailor’s cutter who drank heavily, had once been admitted to a lunatic asylum probably with delirium tremens, and died of a recurrence when Horatio was three. His mother died not long after, and by the age of four Horatio was an orphan. 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 Bottomley regarded himself as a valuable recruiter for the British army and asked the prime minister at the time, H. H. Asquith, for a government position, to which Asquith replied, with a feline kind of double entendre, that he thought Bottomley would be of greater value outside the government.

Among Holyoake's close associates was Charles Bradlaugh, who founded the National Republican League and became a controversial Member of Parliament. [5] A longstanding friendship between Bradlaugh and Elizabeth Holyoake led to rumours that he, not William Bottomley, was Horatio's biological father—a suggestion that Bottomley, in later life, was prone to encourage. [6] The evidence is circumstantial, mainly based on the marked facial resemblance between Bradlaugh and Bottomley. [7] [8] In one respect at least, Horatio Bottomley resembled many of the most notable - and some of the most notorious - men in history. After every big physical and mental effort, whether in finance, the law, public oratory, journalism, or politics, he turned with unfailing regularity to the fair sex for solace, oblivion, and refreshment. I have not had your advantages, gentlemen. What poor education I have received has been gained in the University of Life. 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:

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Mr Bottomley Expelled the House". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). Hansard online. 1 August 1922. pp.col. 1285–88. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016 . Retrieved 2 July 2016. Bottomley spent five years in an orphanage before beginning his career, aged 14, as an errand boy. Subsequent experience as a solicitor's clerk gave him a useful knowledge of English law, which he later put to effective use in his court appearances. After working as a shorthand writer and court reporter, at 24 he founded his own publishing company, which launched numerous magazines and papers, including, in 1888, the Financial Times. [1] He overreached with an ambitious public flotation of his company, which led to his first arraignment on fraud charges in 1893. Despite evidence of malpractice, Bottomley, who defended himself, was acquitted. He subsequently amassed a fortune as a promoter of shares in gold-mining companies.

Hyman, Alan (1972). The Rise and Fall of Horatio Bottomley. Littlehampton, West Sussex: Cassell & Co. ISBN 0-304-29023-8.He tried to enter parliament at the age of thirty-one, in 1891, doing well in the poll but nevertheless failing. He did win a seat in 1906, however; during the election he paraded his racehorses through the streets of his constituency bearing slogans in his favor, and in those days such signs of worldly success did not evoke envy or resentment but were admired and rather spoke in his favor. Once elected, he was so good a speaker that none of his fellow members of the House of Commons wanted to miss his speeches, and as sophisticated a lawyer and politician as F. E. Smith (later Lord Birkenhead) believed that Bottomley was the finest parliamentary orator of the latter’s time, which was not long, however. In 1912, after a trial the year before for the recovery of monies that Bottomley had, in effect, embezzled, he was bankrupted, and since no undischarged bankrupt was allowed to sit in parliament, he was compelled to resign. Royle, Edward (January 2011). "Bradlaugh, Charles". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/3183 . Retrieved 16 June 2014. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) Halsbury, Earl of (1911). "Courts of Summary Jurisdiction etc.". The Laws of England Vol. XIX. London: Butterworth & Co. OCLC 162532487. 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. 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.

John Bull is the name of a succession of different periodicals published in the United Kingdom during the period 1820–1964. [1] In its original form, a Sunday newspaper published from 1820 to 1892, John Bull was a champion of traditionalist conservatism. From 1906 to 1920, under Member of Parliament Horatio Bottomley, John Bull became a platform for his trenchant populist views. A 1946 relaunch by Odhams Press transformed John Bull magazine into something similar in style to the American magazine The Saturday Evening Post.

Early in 1918, Bottomley was invited to Downing Street for an interview with Prime Minister Lloyd George, Sir Edward Carson and Lord Rhondda. Their conversation appears to have been almost entirely restricted to the question of food distribution. Yet at some point, Bottomley managed to drop into the conversation his suggestion that a Director of War Propaganda was needed. Lloyd George, well aware of Bottomley’s ambition, replied that Bottomley was playing the part already. According to A. J. A. Morris: "His (Bottomley) patriotic appeals were barely disguised music-hall turns. The praise he received served to feed his latent megalomania. His political ambitions had always tended towards fantasy so that when, in December 1916, Lloyd George became prime minister Bottomley declared that he was ready to serve his country in some official capacity or other. He did not seem to realize that he was indelibly associated with dishonesty. Just as the blatant vulgarity of his writing in John Bull shamed journalism, so his speeches, with their ignominious appeals for sacrifice, degraded public life."