Arthur Kenneth Chesterton (1 May 1899 – 16 August 1973) was a British journalist and political activist. From 1933 to 1938, he was a member of the
British Union of Fascists (BUF). Disillusioned with
Oswald Mosley, he left the BUF in 1938. Chesterton established the
League of Empire Loyalists in 1954, which merged with a short-lived
British National Party
The British National Party (BNP) is a Far-right politics, far-right, British fascism, fascist list of political parties in the United Kingdom, political party in the United Kingdom. It is headquartered in Wigton, Cumbria, and is led by Adam ...
in 1967 to become the
National Front. He founded and edited the magazine ''
Candour'' in 1954 as the successor of ''
Truth
Truth or verity is the Property (philosophy), property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth, 2005 In everyday language, it is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise cor ...
'', of which he had been co-editor.
Biography
Early life and education
Arthur Kenneth Chesterton was born on 1 May 1899 in
Krugersdorp,
South African Republic, the son of Arthur George Chesterton (1871–1900), a secretary at the local gold mine, and Harriet Ethel Chesterton (née Down). He was the first cousin once removed of the author and poet
G. K. Chesterton and the journalist
Cecil Chesterton, his paternal grandfather being an older brother of G. K. and Cecil's father Edward. The young A. K. held his two cousins in high regard, seeing Cecil as his "exemplar".
Just after the outbreak of the
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War (, , 11 October 189931 May 1902), also known as the Boer War, Transvaal War, Anglo–Boer War, or South African War, was a conflict fought between the British Empire and the two Boer republics (the South African Republic and ...
in October 1899, Chesterton and his mother were sent to England. His father later died of pneumonia at 28 on his journey to join the family. In May 1902, after the end of the conflict, Chesterton returned to Krugersdorp with his paternal uncle and his mother. His mother soon married a Scottish mine administrator named George Horne, and the reconstituted family settled in
Witwatersrand, near
Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alon ...
. In 1911, aged 12, Chesterton was sent again to England to live with his paternal grandfather in
Herne Hill. He attended
Dulwich College
Dulwich College is a 2-18 private, day and boarding school for boys in Dulwich, London, England. As a public school, it began as the College of God's Gift, founded in 1619 by Elizabethan actor Edward Alleyn, with the original purpose of ...
and
Berkhamsted School,
Hertfordshire, where he was a schoolmate of
Ben Greene and
Rex Tremlett.
World War I
In October 1915, Chesterton's mother and step-father visited him in England, and he persuaded them to bring him back to South Africa. Shortly after disembarking, Chesterton decided to join the army, but too young to enlist at 16, he falsified his age to enroll in the 5th South African Light Infantry to fight in
German East Africa. In his memoirs, Chesterton alluded to two battles against the Germans at
Salaita Hill on 12 February 1916, and at
Latema Nek on 11–12 March 1916. During a march in 1916, Chesterton collapsed from fever and was left on the roadside to die. He was eventually rescued by two African porters and sent home to his family in Johannesburg.
After a period of convalescence, then aged 17, Chesterton decided to join the army again and went to Ireland to train as an officer with a cadet battalion. In August 1918, he received his commission as
second lieutenant and was transferred to the 2/2 Battalion,
City of London Regiment,
Royal Fusiliers. Chesterton served over two years on the
Western Front. At the end of the war, he was awarded the
Military Cross
The Military Cross (MC) is the third-level (second-level until 1993) military decoration awarded to officers and (since 1993) Other ranks (UK), other ranks of the British Armed Forces, and formerly awarded to officers of other Commonwealth of ...
for his actions during the
battle of Épehy on 18–19 September 1918. Chesterton was at the head of a platoon reinforcing an assault against a German position near the village of
Pezières in northern France. The full citation for the award appeared in ''
The London Gazette'' in July 1919, by which time the war had been over for eight months, and reads as follows:
After the end of the war, Chesterton suffered from chronic symptoms of
malaria
Malaria is a Mosquito-borne disease, mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects vertebrates and ''Anopheles'' mosquitoes. Human malaria causes Signs and symptoms, symptoms that typically include fever, Fatigue (medical), fatigue, vomitin ...
and
dysentery
Dysentery ( , ), historically known as the bloody flux, is a type of gastroenteritis that results in bloody diarrhea. Other symptoms may include fever, abdominal pain, and a feeling of incomplete defecation. Complications may include dehyd ...
lingered from the East African campaign, and from permanent respiratory issues caused by a gas attack in Europe. Like many veterans, he developed an
addiction to alcohol, punctuated by "nervous breakdowns" and episodes of "
neurasthenia". Traumatised by trench warfare, Chesterton wrote that he had recurring nightmares of dead bodies and wrote that he began to experience the world as "one vast necropolis".
Career as a journalist
Shortly before his 21st birthday in 1919, Chesterton moved back to South Africa, where he worked as a journalist for ''
The Johannesburg Star''. In 1924 he returned to England and, under the tutelage of
G. Wilson Knight, Chesterton developed a reputation as a
Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...
an critic. He secured a job as a journalist and festival critic at the ''Stratford-upon-Avon Herald'', then as a public relation officer at the
Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. In 1928, he edited the short-lived monthly ''Shakespearean Review'', where he developed his ideas about cultural decay.
In 1929 Chesterton met his future wife, Doris Terry, a schoolteacher from
Torquay. The couple married in 1933 and moved to
Kingston upon Thames. Doris was a
Fabian socialist and did not share her husband's later political views.
Between 1929 and 1931, he worked as a journalist for the ''Torquay Times'', and served as the chairman of the
South Devon branch of the
National Union of Journalists. In November 1933 Chesterton joined the
British Union of Fascists (BUF) while still employed by the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, after being recruited by
Rex Tremlett, his former schoolmate at Berkhamsted and then the editor of BUF's newspapers ''Fascist Week'' and ''
The Blackshirt''.
British Union of Fascists
Six months after joining the BUF, Chesterton was appointed officer-in-charge of
Warwickshire
Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Staffordshire and Leicestershire to the north, Northamptonshire to the east, Ox ...
and
Staffordshire, and in April 1934 officer-in-charge of the "
Midlands Area" for the party.
Oswald Mosley, the leader of the BUF, later appointed him Director of Press Propaganda, a subsection of the BUF Propaganda Department, and in March 1935 to the BUF "Research Directory", the "inner circle" of the party's strategists. During the spring of 1935, Chesterton started to drink again. He was said to frequently arrive at BUF headquarters "in a drunken state", and some members began to call for his expulsion. In July, ''Blackshirt'' euphemistically reported that Chesterston was "having a well-deserved rest, on the strict orders of his doctor." Mosley eventually paid for Chesterton to be treated by a neurologist in Germany.
Following his return to Britain in April 1937, Chesterton was appointed in June "Director of Publicity and Propaganda", and in August the editor of ''The'' ''Blackshirt''. This position provided a pulpit for his increasingly "vituperative"
anti-Semitic rhetoric, the magazine promoting ''
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' is a fabricated text purporting to detail a Jewish plot for global domination. Largely plagiarized from several earlier sources, it was first published in Imperial Russia in 1903, translated into multip ...
'' as "the most astounding book ever published". Chesterton also wrote the officially sanctioned biography of Mosley entitled ''Oswald Mosley: Portrait of a Leader'' (1937), in fact a
hagiography
A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a preacher, priest, founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian ...
of Mosley in which Chesterton claims that the BUF leader had an "unconquerable spirit, with its grandeur of courage and resolve", closing the book with the salutation "Hail, Mosley, patriot, revolutionary and leader of men!"
World War II
In the late 1930s Chesterton became gradually disillusioned with the myth of "The Leader" and came to lose confidence in Mosley after 1937. On 18 March 1938, he resigned from the BUF; Mosley soon had his memory erased from the history of the party. The same year, Chesterton attended a meeting of the
National Socialist League (NSL). The NSL published his pamphlet ''Why I left Mosley'' in 1938, although Chesterton never joined the organisation. He became involved with the short-lived British Council against European Commitments (BCAE), an anti-Bolshevik movement which had emerged during the
Munich crisis to resist war with Germany, and he contributed to
Lord Lymington's journal ''New Pioneer''.
In June 1939, Chesterton established his own group, British Vigil. He regularly spoke at meetings of the
Nordic League, and became involved with the
Right Club, a secretive organization founded in May 1939 to consolidate existing right-wing British organizations into a unified body.
Archibald Ramsay, founder of the Right Club, explained its ideology and purpose:
[http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk , article on Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster, retrieved 30 August 2012,]
: "The main object of the Right Club was to oppose and expose the activities of Organized Jewry, in the light of the evidence which came into my possession in 1938. Our first objective was to clear the Conservative Party of Jewish influence, and the character of our membership and meetings were strictly in keeping with this objective."
In 1939, at the outbreak of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, Chesterton re-enlisted in the British Army and served in
Kenya
Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...
and
Somaliland. He relapsed into alcoholism and relinquished his commission on grounds of ill health in the spring of 1943. Upon his return to Britain, he set up the short-lived National Front after Victory (NF after V) and was involved with the relaunched
British Peoples Party.
Chesterton applied for work at the BBC, but
MI5 intervened to ensure that he could not be employed. He found work in sub-editing at the ''Sheffield Evening Telegraph'', but was forced to resign due to a bout of malaria. Afterwards, he worked for the ''Southport Guardian'' and the
''Liverpool'' ''Evening Express'', and partly as a freelance journalist to supplement his living, including for ''
The Weekly Review''. In August 1943, the ''Daily Worker'' published an attack on Chesterton accusing him of treachery for his past association with
William Joyce. Chesterton sued the ''Daily Worker'' and ''
The Jewish Chronicle'', which had repeated the accusation, for libel. The case was dropped for lack of funds, but Chesterton did manage to elicit an apology. In September 1944, he was appointed deputy editor of
''Truth''.
Post-war activism
In February 1945 Chesterton helped establish the National Front, a coalition of underground minor fascist groups with policies including the safeguarding of a strong "national and Empire economy", preserving Christian traditions and finding "an honourable, just and lasting solution" to the "real Jewish problem". The movement was headed first by
Collin Brooks then by Chesterton.
From 1950 to 1958, Chesterton authored a reoccurring article titled "The International Situation" for every issue of
''The Journal of the Royal United Services Institution'', nowadays often known as the ''RUSI Journal''.
Chesterton became literary advisor to
Lord Beaverbrook, who offered him jobs at ''
The Daily Express'' and the ''
Evening Standard
The ''London Standard'', formerly the ''Evening Standard'' (1904–2024) and originally ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), is a long-established regional newspaper published weekly and distributed free newspaper, free of charge in London, Engl ...
''. Chesterton ghostwrote his autobiography ''Don't Trust To Luck'' (1954). In October 1953, whilst still in Beaverbrook's employ, Chesterton founded the magazine ''
Candour'', which is still published today, though increasingly erratically as of 2012. He has claimed that Beaverbrook sacked him upon learning of ''Candours existence; in fact, his contract expired in January 1954 and was not renewed.
Following the collapse of the National Front due to infighting, Chesterton founded in 1954 the
League of Empire Loyalists (LEL), a political pressure group which gathered many future far-right leaders the likes of
Colin Jordan
John Colin Campbell Jordan (19 June 1923 – 9 April 2009) was a British politician and a leading figure in post-war neo-Nazism in the UK. In the far-right circles of the 1960s, Jordan represented the most explicitly Nazi inclination in his ope ...
,
John Bean,
John Tyndall, or
Martin Webster. The movement was publicly known in the 1950s for its political stunts, especially in interrupting
Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...
conferences while chanting "Save the Empire" and "Tory Traitors".
1960s
In July 1965, Chesterton published ''The New Unhappy Lords'', a self-described study of the "power elites" which takes the form, in the words of scholar Graham Macklin, of an "elegantly written antisemitic tirade on the subversive and occult conspiracy against the British Empire, and Western civilisation in general, that he believed was striving behind the scenes to create a 'One-World' Jewish super-state." Following the demise of Nazi Germany for its "revolt against the Money Power", Chesterton argued that the British Empire and Commonwealth were then the decisive impediment to the global money-power conspiracy, mainly thanks to their system of
Imperial preference.' The book received damning reviews in the mainstream media, but it had sold in excess of 17,000 copies by June 1969. Along with
Phyllis Schlafly's ''
A Choice Not an Echo,'' published one year earlier, the book was one of the first to highlight the
Bilderberg Group as a decisive actor in global conspiracy theories.'
After failing to make gains in the 1966 general election, Chesterton founded in February 1967 a second
National Front (NF); he was elected the party's first chairman and remained its Policy Director until 1970. The National Front brought together the LEL and
British National Party
The British National Party (BNP) is a Far-right politics, far-right, British fascism, fascist list of political parties in the United Kingdom, political party in the United Kingdom. It is headquartered in Wigton, Cumbria, and is led by Adam ...
. A faction of the
Racial Preservation Society decided to join them, but radicals and openly neo-Nazis figures like Jordan, Tyndall or Webster were excluded to avoid public backlash. In June 1967, however, Chesterton eventually welcomed Tyndall and members of the
Greater Britain Movement (GBM) into the party.
Later life and death
At the end of his life, Chesterton became increasingly ill from the
emphysema he had contracted in the gas attack during World War I, living part-time in his native South Africa. While Chesterton was holidaying in South Africa, a faction led by Gordon Brown—formerly of Tyndall's GBM—launched a leadership challenge against him. On realising that his support was weak, Chesterton resigned in 1970.
Chesterton spent the remainder of his days editing ''Candour'' until his death from emphysema on 16 August 1973, aged 74.
Views
According to historian
Richard Thurlow, Chesterton's "weird mixture of racism, ethnocentrism and conspiracy theory in its racial theory and its
paternalism, monarchism (particularly reverence for
Edward I who expelled the Jews), cultural pessimism,
Social Darwinism and dialectical mode of argument in its political theory are more akin to patterns of thought prevalent in
pre-Nazi German Conservatism than to any English equivalent."
After the war, Chesterton repudiated fascism and resolutely denied accusations to the effect that he was pursuing a "
neo-fascist" agenda. He toned down the antisemitic imagery of his pre-war writings, although the Jews remained at the centre of his conspiracy theories. Described as "far more parasitic and corrupt than any baby could conceive" in ''Blackshirt'' (1935), they were still "the principal promoters of the idea of integrating peoples of disparate racial stocks" in his 1965 book ''The New Unhappy Lords''.
Although he conceded in 1973 that "any competent Jewish writer can make a nonsense of attempts to prove their authenticity", Chesterton regarded ''
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' is a fabricated text purporting to detail a Jewish plot for global domination. Largely plagiarized from several earlier sources, it was first published in Imperial Russia in 1903, translated into multip ...
'', a Tsarist antisemitic forgery, as a "masterly analysis of the weaknesses of Gentile society" in ''The New Happy Lord'' (1965). In his later life, he came to consider the use of crude antisemitism a "liability and a menace" to the nationalist movement. Chesterton launched in September 1970 a public attack on anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist
Eustace Mullins in ''Candour'', under the title "This man is dangerous".
Influence
John Tyndall, who established the
British National Party
The British National Party (BNP) is a Far-right politics, far-right, British fascism, fascist list of political parties in the United Kingdom, political party in the United Kingdom. It is headquartered in Wigton, Cumbria, and is led by Adam ...
(BNP) in 1982, has declared in 1971, "Without hesitation, what understanding I have of political affairs I have I owe much more to A.K. than any other person"; Tyndall kept on recommending Chesterton's writings until his death in July 2005.
Martin Webster, the National Front national activities organiser from 1969 to 1983, stressed in 2009 the "tremendous impact" of the intellectual framework provided by Chesterton book ''The New Happy Lord'' "because it tied together the threads of what is happening, why and who's doing it". Chesterton was also a long-time friend of
Revilo P. Oliver; they regularly wrote to each other until Chesterton's death in 1973.
Works
Chesterton's works (including some previously only published within ''Candour'' magazine) have been re-edited by the A. K. Chesterton Trust from 2013 onward. In 1945, Chesterton penned an anti-Labour satire under the
pseudonym
A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...
Caius Marcius Coriolanus, the name of
Shakespeare's Roman tragedy, published by writer and British Housewives League member
Dorothy Crisp.
Books
* ''Adventures in Dramatic Appreciation'' (1931)
* ''Brave Enterprise: A History of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon'' (1934)
*
''Creed of a Fascist Revolutionary'' (1935)
''Oswald Mosley: Portrait of a Leader''(1937)
''Why I Left Mosley''(1938)
* ''No Shelter for Morrison''
play London:
Dorothy Crisp & Co., Ltd. (1945)
:: Published under the
pseudonym
A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...
Caius Marcius Coriolanus.
*
''The Menace of the Money Power: An Analysis of World Government by Finance'' (1946)
* ''Alternative for Britain'' (1946)
''Juma the Great''(1947)
* ''The Importance of Being Oswald'' (1947)
* ''The Tragedy of Anti-Semitism'', with
Joseph Leftwich (1948)
''Sound the Alarm! A Warning to the British Nations''(1954)
''Stand By The Empire''(1954)
''The Menace of World Government & Britain's Graveyard''(1957)
''Tomorrow. A Plan for the British Future''(1961)
*
''The New Unhappy Lords: An Exposure of Power Politics'' (1965)
''Common Market Suicide''(1971)
''B.B.C.: A National Menace''(1972)
''Facing the Abyss''(posthumous; 1976)
* ''Fascism and the Press'' (posthumous; 2013)
Articles
* ''British Union Quarterly'', Vol. 1, No. 2, April/June 1937, pp. 45–54.
Pamphlets
* ''Not Guilty: An Account of the Historic Race Relations Trial at Lewes Assizes in March 1968'' (1968)
Plays
''Leopard Valley: A Play in Three Acts''(1943)
See also
*
''Candour'' – British far-right-wing magazine
References
Bibliography
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External links
Works by A. K. Chestertonat
HathiTrust
HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries. Its holdings include content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digit ...
''Candour'' & A.K. Chesterton Trust official websiteCatalogue of the Papers and Correspondence of Arthur Kenneth Chesterton (1899-1973)at
University of Bath
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chesterton, Arthur Keneth
1899 births
1973 deaths
British Army personnel of World War I
British Army personnel of World War II
London Regiment officers
Royal Fusiliers officers
Military personnel from Gauteng
Antisemitism in England
English British Union of Fascist politicians
English members of the Right Club
Leaders of the National Front (UK)
People educated at Berkhamsted School
Recipients of the Military Cross
South African Army officers
British magazine founders
South African military personnel of World War I
Territorial Force officers