The January Club was a discussion group founded in 1934 by
Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980), was a British aristocrat and politician who rose to fame during the 1920s and 1930s when he, having become disillusioned with mainstream politics, turned to fascism. ...
to attract
Establishment support for the movement known as the
British Union of Fascists
The British Union of Fascists (BUF) was a British fascist political party formed in 1932 by Oswald Mosley. Mosley changed its name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists in 1936 and, in 1937, to the British Union. In 1939, f ...
.
The Club was under the effective control of
Robert Forgan, working on behalf of the BUF. The founders as identified by
MI5
MI5 ( Military Intelligence, Section 5), officially the Security Service, is the United Kingdom's domestic counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Gov ...
[Stephen Dorril, ''Blackshirt'' (2006), p.258.] were Forgan,
Donald Makrill,
Francis Yeats-Brown and Henry William 'Billy' Luttman-Johnson. Members of the January Club included military historian
B. H. Liddell Hart, Wing-Commander
Sir Louis Greig,
Lord Erskine
The Lordship of Parliament of Erskine (Lord Erskine) was created around 1426 for Sir Robert Erskine. The sixth lord was created Earl of Mar in 1565, with which title (and the earldom of Kellie) the lordship then merged.
Lords Erskine (c. 1426)
* ...
, a
Conservative and Unionist
The Conservative and Unionist Party, commonly the Conservative Party and colloquially known as the Tories, is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Labour Party. The party sits on the centre-right to right- ...
MP and assistant Government whip,
Lord William Montagu-Douglas-Scott, brother of the
8th Duke of Buccleuch and Conservative and Unionist MP, and (according to
Nigel H. Jones' biography of Mosley)
Lord and Lady Russell of Liverpool.
Sir
Charles Petrie, who participated in the club's early stages, discusses the club at some length (and offers criticisms of Mosley's methods) in his 1972 memoir, ''A Historian Looks at his World''. The poet and editor
John Collings Squire was another author initially involved with the club but "found the atmosphere uncongenial before long". Petrie's memoir also mentions Yeats-Brown as soon complaining: "The January Club will probably collapse; anyway I'm not going to the next meeting. Mosley is not human enough."
References
Sources
Barberis, Peter (et al), ''Encyclopedia of British and Irish Political Organizations''Retrieved July 2012
Jones, Nigel, ''Mosley''Retrieved July 2012
External links
{{fascism-stub
Fascist organizations in the United Kingdom
Oswald Mosley