The Eternal Imperialists: Empire, Race and Gender on the British Radical Right, 1918-1968

This thesis interrogates the imperial obsessions of the British Radical Right between 1918 and 1968. It surveys a series of groups from the inter-war period but also following the Second World War. From the Empire’s height following the First World War to decolonisation during the 1960s, Radical Right activists interpreted the political problems of their day, and formulated their proposed solutions, in imperial terms. They imagined a Jewish-directed conspiracy operating against the Empire, often envisioning this as an anti-colonial rebellion writ large. At the same time, the racist, authoritarian and masculine ‘ethos’ of Empire – derived from sources such as first-hand experience of colonial life, stories of imperial heroism, the poetry of Rudyard Kipling, and the ideas of Robert Baden-Powell – was to serve as the antidote to imperial and racial decline. Their plans did not only consist of a return to a more draconian form of colonial rule but also for the imperialisation of the metropole – that is, for British politicians at home to act with the same resolute ruthlessness as Britain’s mythologised ‘Empire Builders’.

In interrogating Radical Right activists’ obsession with the Empire, it joins a small but steadily growing group of studies. Where this thesis differs, both from the established historiography and these newer studies, is in its desire to reconnect the British Radical Right with the main course of British history. The British Radical Right’s imperialism has so often gone overlooked or ignored in the literature. Scholars have largely regarded its adherents as a politically extreme sideshow to be studied in isolation by specialists in a separate field. This thesis argues that in their imperial obsessions, in particular, the Radical Right belong to a broader utopian-imperialist British political tradition.