The Spirit of England - 'Dr Who' - A Curiously English Phenomena

© Copyright Peter Crawford 2013
'DR WHO'
A CURIOUSLY ENGLISH PHENOMENA

'Doctor Who' first appeared on BBC television at 17:16:20 GMT on 23 November 1963, when the author of this blog was a teenager - and he clearly remembers viewing the very first episode - and many, many others.
The Head of Drama, Canadian Sydney Newman, was mainly responsible for developing the programme, with the first format document for the series being written by Newman along with the Head of the Script Department (later Head of Serials) Donald Wilson and staff writer C. E. Webber.
Writer Anthony Coburn, David Whitaker, a story editor, and initial producer Verity Lambert also heavily contributed to the development of the series.
The programme was intended to appeal to a family audience, as an 'educational' programm, using time travel as a means to explore scientific ideas and famous moments in history.
On 31 July 1963 Whitaker commissioned Terry Nation to write a story under the title 'The Mutants'.
As originally written, the Daleks and Thals were the victims of an alien neutron bomb attack but Nation later dropped the aliens and made the Daleks the aggressors.
When the script was presented to Newman and Wilson it was immediately rejected as the programme was not permitted to contain any "bug-eyed monsters".
The first serial had been completed, and the BBC believed it was crucial that the next one be a success, however, 'The Mutants' was the only script ready to go so the show had little choice but to use it.
According to producer Verity Lambert; "We didn't have a lot of choice - we only had the Dalek serial to go ... We had a bit of a crisis of confidence because Donald [Wilson] was so adamant that we shouldn't make it. Had we had anything else ready we would have made that."
Nation's script became the second Doctor Who serial – "The Daleks" (aka "The Mutants").
The serial introduced the eponymous aliens that would become the series' most popular monsters, and was responsible for the BBC's first merchandising boom.

The First Episode

It has been suggested that the transmission of the first episode was delayed by ten minutes due to extended news coverage of the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy the previous day; whereas in fact, it went out just eighty seconds late.
Because it was believed that the coverage of the events of the assassination, as well as a series of power blackouts across the country, may have caused too many viewers to miss this introduction to a new series, the BBC broadcast it again on 30 November 1963, just before the broadcast of episode two.
The programme soon became a national institution in the United Kingdom, with a large following among the general viewing audience.
Many renowned actors asked for, or were offered and accepted, guest-starring roles in various stories.
With popularity came controversy over the show's suitability for children.
Morality campaigner Mary Whitehouse repeatedly complained to the BBC in the 1970s over what she saw as the show's frightening or gory content - but then she complained about almost everything on television. Regardless, however, the programme became even more popular - especially with children.
John Nathan-Turner, who produced the series during the 1980s, was heard to say that he looked forward to Whitehouse's comments, as the show's ratings would increase soon after she had made them.
During Jon Pertwee's second series as the Doctor, in the serial Terror of the Autons (1971), images of murderous plastic dolls, daffodils killing unsuspecting victims, and blank-featured policemen marked the apex of the show's ability to frighten children.
Other notable moments in that decade included a disembodied brain falling to the floor in 'The Brain of Morbiu' and the Doctor apparently being drowned by Chancellor Goth inThe Deadly Assassi (both 1976).


The TARDIS

The Original TARDIS - interior
The image of the TARDIS has become firmly linked to the show in the public's consciousness.
BBC scriptwriter Anthony Coburn, who lived in the resort of Herne Bay, Kent, was one of the people who conceived the idea of a police box as a time machine.
In 1996, the BBC applied for a trade mark to use the TARDIS's blue police box design in merchandising associated with Doctor Who.
In 1998, the Metropolitan Police Authority filed an objection to the trade mark claim; but in 2002, the Patent Office ruled in favour of the BBC.
The TARDIS is a product of the advanced technology of the Time Lords, an extraterrestrial civilisation to which the programme's central character, the Doctor, belongs.
A properly maintained and piloted TARDIS can transport its occupants to any point in time, and any place in the universe.
The interior of a TARDIS is much larger than its exterior ("It's bigger on the inside"), which can blend in with its surroundings using the ship's "chameleon circuit".
TARDISes also possess a degree of sentience (which has been expressed in a variety of ways ranging from implied machine personality and free will through to the use of a conversant avatar) and provide their users with additional tools and abilities including a telepathically based universal translation system.
In the series, the Doctor pilots an apparently unreliable, obsolete TT Type 40, Mark 1 TARDIS.
Its chameleon circuit is broken, leaving it stuck in the shape of a 1960s-style London police box after a visit to London in 1963.

When Doctor Who was being developed in 1963, the production staff discussed what the Doctor's time machine would look like. To keep the design within budget, it was decided to make it resemble a police box. This was explained in the context of the series as a disguise created by the ship's "chameleon circuit", a mechanism which is responsible for changing the outside appearance of the ship in order to fit in with its environment. The Ninth Doctor explains that if, for example, a TARDIS (with a working chameleon circuit) were to materialise in ancient Rome it might disguise itself as a statue on a plinth. The First Doctor explained that if it were to land in the middle of the Indian Mutiny, it might take on the appearance of a howdah (the carrier on the back of an elephant). A further premise was that the circuit was broken, explaining why it was "stuck" in that form.

The Doctor's TARDIS was for most of the series' history said to have been stolen from the Time Lords' home planet, Gallifrey, where it was old, decommissioned and derelict (and, in fact, in a museum), however, during the events of 'The Doctor's Wife' (2011), the ship's consciousness briefly inhabits a human body named Idris, and she reveals that far from being stolen, she left of her own free will.
During this episode, she flirtatiously implies that she "stole" the Doctor rather than the other way around, although she does also refer to him as her "thief" in the same episode.
The unpredictability of the TARDIS's short-range guidance (relative to the size of the Universe) has often been a convenient plot point in the Doctor's travels.
Also in 'The Doctor's Wife', the TARDIS reveals that much of this "unpredictability" was actually intentional on its part in order to get the Doctor "where he needed to go" as opposed to where he "wanted to go".
Although "TARDIS" is a type of craft rather than a specific one, the Doctor's TARDIS is usually referred to as "the" TARDIS or, in some of the earlier serials, just as "the ship".
The eleventh incarnation of the Doctor is also known to have referred to her as "Sexy", a name she actually adopts as her preferred address in 'The Doctor's Wife', much to the Doctor's embarrassment.

Dr Who - the Early Days

The BBC drama department's 'Serials division' produced the programme for 26 seasons, broadcast on BBC 1.
Falling viewing numbers, a decline in the public perception of the show and a less-prominent transmission slot saw production suspended in 1989 by Jonathan Powell, Controller of BBC 1.
Although (as series co-star Sophie Aldred reported in the documentary 'Doctor Who: More Than 30 Years in the TARDIS') it was effectively, if not formally, cancelled with the decision not to commission a planned 27th series of the show for transmission in 1990, the BBC repeatedly affirmed that the series would return.
While in-house production had ceased, the BBC hoped to find an independent production company to relaunch the show.
Philip Segal, a British expatriate who worked for Columbia Pictures' television arm in the United States, had approached the BBC about such a venture as early as July 1989, while the 26th series was still in production.
Segal's negotiations eventually led to a Doctor Who television film, broadcast on the Fox Network in 1996 as a co-production between Fox, Universal Pictures, the BBC and BBC Worldwide. Although the film was successful in the UK (with 9.1 million viewers), it was less so in the United States and did not lead to a series.
Licensed media such as novels and audio plays provided new stories, but as a television programme Doctor Who remained dormant until 2003.

Dr Who in the 21st Century

The 21st century revival of the programme has become the centrepiece of BBC One's Saturday schedule, and has "defined the channel."
Since its return, 'Doctor Who' has consistently received high ratings, both in number of viewers and as measured by the Appreciation Index.
In September of that year, BBC Television announced the in-house production of a new series.
The executive producers of the new incarnation of the series were writer Russell T Davies and BBC Cymru Wales Head of Drama Julie Gardner.
Doctor Who finally returned with the episode "Rose" on BBC One on 26 March 2005.
There have since been six further series in 2006–2008 and 2010–2012, and Christmas Day specials every year since 2005.
No full series was filmed in 2009, although four additional specials starring Tennant were made.
In 2010, Steven Moffat replaced Davies as head writer and executive producer.
The 2005 version of 'Doctor Who' is a direct continuation of the 1963–1989 series, as is the 1996 telefilm. This differs from other series relaunches that have either been reimaginings or reboots (for example, Battlestar Galactica and Bionic Woman) or series taking place in the same universe as the original but in a different period and with different characters (for example, Star Trek: The Next Generation and spin-offs).

The Doctor

The character of the Doctor was initially shrouded in mystery.
All that was known about him in the programme's early days was that he was an eccentric alien traveller of great intelligence, who battled injustice while exploring time and space in an unreliable time machine, the "TARDIS" (an acronym for Time And Relative Dimension(s) In Space), which notably appears much larger on the inside than on the outside (a quality referred to as "dimensionally transcendental").
The initially irascible and slightly sinister Doctor quickly mellowed into a more compassionate figure.
It was eventually revealed that he had been on the run from his own people, the Time Lords of the planet Gallifrey.

William Hartnell - Dr Who
As a Time Lord, the Doctor has the ability to regenerate his body when near death.
Introduced into the storyline as a way of continuing the series when the writers were faced with the departure of lead actor William Hartnell in 1966, it has continued to be a major element of the series, allowing for the recasting of the lead actor when the need arises
The serials 'The Deadly Assassin' and 'Mawdryn Undead', and the 1996 TV film have established that a Time Lord can regenerate 12 times, for a total of 13 incarnations.
The BBC Series 4 FAQ suggests that now the Time Lord social order has been destroyed, the Doctor may be able to regenerate indefinitely: (Useful for the BBC).
"Now that his people are gone, who knows? Time Lords used to have 13 lives."

'The Sarah Jane Adventures'
'Death of the Doctor', a 2010 story of the spin-off series 'The Sarah Jane Adventures', has the Doctor claiming that he can regenerate 507 times, but episode writer Russell T Davies later indicated that this was intended as a joke (?), not to be taken seriously.
The Doctor has fully gone through this process and its resulting after-effects on ten occasions, with each of his incarnations having their own quirks and abilities but otherwise sharing the consciousness, memories, experience and basic personality of the previous incarnations.
To date, eleven actors have played the lead role in the television series, with continuity maintained by the ability of the character's species to 'regenerate' - a very handy ability in the circumstances.
The character's enduring popularity led to the Doctor being described as "Britain's favourite alien".
The Doctor in his eleventh incarnation is played by Matt Smith, who took on the role in January 2010 and became the first Doctor to be nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role in 2011.
On 1 June 2013, it was announced that Matt Smith would leave the series during the 2013 Christmas special.
On 4 August 2013, it was announced that Peter Capaldi would play the Doctor's twelfth incarnation.
The character of the Doctor was created by the BBC's Head of Drama Sydney Newman.
The first format document for the series that was to become 'Doctor Who' – then provisionally titled 'The Troubleshooters' – was written up in March 1963 by C. E. Webber, a BBC staff writer who had been brought in to help develop the project.
Webber's document contained a main character described as 'The maturer man, 35–40, with some 'character twist', however, Newman was not keen on this idea and – along with several other changes to Webber's initial format – created an alternative lead character named Dr Who, a crotchety older man piloting a stolen time machine, on the run from his own far future world.
No written record of Newman's conveyance of these ideas – believed to have taken place in April 1963 – exists, and the character of Dr Who first begins appearing in existing documentation from May of that year.
The character was first portrayed by William Hartnell in 1963.
At the programme's beginning, nothing at all is known of the Doctor: not even his name, the actual form of which remains a mystery.
In the first serial, 'An Unearthly Child', two teachers from Coal Hill School in London, Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, become intrigued by one of their pupils, Susan Foreman, who exhibits high intelligence and unusually advanced knowledge.
Trailing her to a junk yard at 76 Totter's Lane, they encounter a strange old man, and hear Susan's voice coming from inside what appears to be a police box.
Pushing their way inside, the two find that the exterior is actually camouflage for the dimensionally transcendental interior of the TARDIS.
The old man, whom Susan calls "Grandfather", subsequently kidnaps Barbara and Ian to prevent them from telling anyone about the existence of the ship, taking them on an adventure in time and space.
The first Doctor explicitly positioned the Doctor as grandfather to his companion Susan, and he wore a long white wig, and Edwardian costume, reflecting a "definite sense of Englishness".
When, after three years, Hartnell left the series due to ill health, the role was handed over to character actor Patrick Troughton.
To date, official television productions have depicted eleven distinct incarnations of the Doctor (following Hartnell's death in 1975, actor Richard Hurndall substituted in his role as the First Doctor in 1983's The Five Doctors).
Of those, the longest-lasting on-screen incarnation is the Fourth Doctor, as played by Tom Baker.]
Currently, the Eleventh Doctor is portrayed by Matt Smith, who is to be replaced by the Twelfth Doctor, portrayed by Peter Capaldi in the Christmas Special.

Transitions

Except for the off-screen transition between the Eighth and Ninth Doctors, to date each regeneration has been worked into the continuing story, and also, most regenerations (minus the Second-to-Third and Eighth-to-Ninth transitions) have been portrayed on-screen, in a handing over of the role.
The following list details the manner of each regeneration:
First Doctor (William Hartnell): Frail and steadily growing weaker throughout 'The Tenth Planet', the doctor collapses at the serial's end.
Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton): a forced "change in appearance", and exile to Earth by the Time Lords in the closing moments of 'The War Games'.
Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee): radiation poisoning from the Great One's cave of crystals on the planet Metabilis 3 at the end of 'Planet of the Spiders'.
Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker): fell from the Pharos Project radio telescope in Logopolis and was assisted in the regeneration by a mysterious "in-between" incarnation identified as "The Watcher".
Fifth Doctor (Peter Davison): spectrox poisoning, contracted near the start of 'The Caves of Androzani'.
Sixth Doctor (Colin Baker): suffered great injuries when the Rani attacked the TARDIS, and caused it to crash land at the start of 'Time and the Rani'.
Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy): died in San Francisco during exploratory heart surgery by a doctor unfamiliar with Time Lord physiology, after being hospitalised for non-life threatening gunshot wounds in the 1996 television movie.
Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann): died aboard a crashing shuttle after failing to convince its pilot to accompany him to safety in the TARDIS in "The Night of the Doctor".
The ship crashed on the planet Karn, where the Sisterhood of Karn revived the Doctor and offered him an elixir that allowed him to choose the characteristics of his next regeneration.
Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston): cellular degeneration caused by absorbing the energies of the time vortex from Rose Tyler, which she in turn had absorbed through the heart of the TARDIS in "The Parting of the Ways".
Tenth Doctor (David Tennant): radiation poisoning incurred while saving the life of Wilfred Mott in 'The End of Time'.
Only the Doctor's first regeneration (Hartnell to Troughton) occurs due to natural causes – the Doctor is showing increasing signs of age, and comments that his body is "wearing a bit thin," though this is apparently exacerbated by the energy drain from Mondas.
All of the other regenerations have been caused by some external factor, such as radiation poisoning, infection or fatal injuries.
In the original series, with the exception of the change from Troughton to Pertwee, regeneration usually occurred when the previous Doctor was near "death".
The changeover from McCoy to McGann was handled differently, with the Doctor actually dying and being dead for quite some time before regeneration occurred.
The Eighth Doctor comments at one point in the television movie that the anaesthesia interfered with the regenerative process, and that he had been "dead too long", accounting for his initial amnesia.
Kate Orman's novel 'The Room with No Doors', set just before the regeneration, also notes that this is one of the few regenerations in which the Doctor was not conscious and aware that he was dying.
The Second Doctor (Troughton), was the only Doctor whose regeneration was due to nothing more than a need to change his appearance.
He was not aged, in ill health, or mortally wounded at the end of 'The War Games'.
Prior to his exile, the Time Lords deemed that his current appearance was too well known on Earth and therefore forced a "change of appearance" on him.
This method of changing appearance was a source of early speculation that the Second and Third Doctor were actually the same incarnation, since the second was never seen to truly "die" onscreen.
Continuity has since established that one of his allotted regenerations was indeed used up for this transition.
The 2005 series began with the Ninth Doctor already regenerated and fully stabilised, with no explanation given.
In his first appearance in "Rose", the Doctor looked in a mirror and commented on the size of his ears, suggesting to some viewers that the regeneration may have happened shortly prior to the episode, or that he has not examined himself in the mirror recently.
Some draw the conclusion that the Ninth Doctor's appearances in old photographs, without being accompanied by Rose, may also suggest that he had been regenerated for some time, but these appearances could have also occurred afterwards.
In the 2013 mini-episode 'The Night of the Doctor', a prequel to the 50th anniversary special, it was revealed that the Eighth Doctor had been revived by the Sisterhood of Karn after dying in a spacecraft crash.
The Sisterhood offered him an elixir that enabled him to choose the characteristics of his next regeneration, and he opted for 'a warrior'; the final scene of the mini episode shows him regenerating not into the Ninth Doctor, as had been widely assumed, but into the War Doctor, played in the final scene of 'The Name of the Doctor' by John Hurt.

Personality

Throughout his regenerations, the Doctor's personality has retained a number of consistent traits.
Its most notable aspect is an unpredictable, affable, clownish exterior concealing a well of great age, wisdom, seriousness and even darkness.
At times he has been described as "fire and ice and rage, he's like the night and the storm in the heart of the sun, he's ancient and forever, he burns at the centre of time..." and "the man who can turn an army around at the mention of his name".
While the Doctor can appear childlike and jocular, when the stakes rise, as, for example, in 'Pyramids of Mars', he will often become cold, driven and callous.
Another aspect of the Doctor's persona, which, though always present, has been emphasised or downplayed from incarnation to incarnation, is compassion.
The Doctor is a fervent pacifist and is dedicated to the preservation of sentient life, human or otherwise, over violence and war, even going so far as to doubt the morality of destroying his worst enemies, the Daleks, when he has the chance to do so in Genesis of the Daleks, and again in Evolution of the Daleks.
He also, in 'The Time Monster', begs Kronos to spare the Master torment or death, unintentionally winning the evil Time Lord's freedom, which he tells Jo Grant was preferable anyway, and forgives the Master for his actions in 'The Sound of Drums' and 'Last of the Time Lords', vowing to take responsibility for his former friend.
Nonetheless, the Doctor will kill when given no other option and occasionally in self-defence; examples of this can be seen in 'The Tomb of the Cybermen', 'The Dominators', 'The Invasion', 'The Krotons', 'Spearhead from Space', 'The Sea Devils', 'The Three Doctors', 'The Brain of Morbius', 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang', 'The Invasion of Time', 'Earthshock', 'Arc of Infinity', 'Vengeance on Varos', 'The Two Doctors', 'Silver Nemesis', 'World War Three', 'The Christmas Invasion', 'Tooth and Claw', 'The Age of Steel', 'The Runaway Bride', 'Smith and Jones' and most notably in 'Remembrance of the Daleks', when he arranges for the planet Skaro to be destroyed; it has also been stated numerous times in the series, beginning in 2005, that he was responsible for destroying both the Dalek and Time Lord races in order to end the Time War.
Another example of the Doctor purposely taking a life is 'The Sontaran Experiment', where he tells his companion Harry Sullivan to remove a device from the Sontaran ship, which causes the death of the Sontaran, something the Doctor knew would happen but Harry did not. In the 2005 episode 'The End of the World', the Doctor teleports Cassandra back onto the ship and does nothing to prevent her death, even ignoring her cries for help and pity.
Similarly, in "'Dinosaurs on a Spaceship', he strands Solomon on a spacecraft with a homing device to which several missiles have locked on, effectively consigning him to death.
In situations where fixed points in history must be preserved, the Doctor is sometimes faced with hard choices resulting in the deaths of many.
In 'The Visitation' he started the Great Fire of London, and in 'The Fires of Pompeii' (2008) he caused the volcano above Pompeii to erupt, which killed everyone in the city (but saved the rest of the world).
On other occasions he is seen to be critical of others who use deadly force, such as his companions Leela in 'The Face of Evil' and 'Talons of Weng-Chiang', or Jack Harkness in 'Utopia' (2006).
In the episode 'The Lodger' (2011), a member of the Doctor's football team offhandedly mentions annihilating the team they will play next week.
The Doctor looks very angry and says "No violence, not while I'm around, not today, not ever. I'm the Doctor, the oncoming storm... and you basically meant beat them in a football match, didn't you ?"
In the revived series, the Doctor has displayed a ruthless streak at times.
When his companion or innocent people are harmed, his indignation drives him to seek the antagonist with a vengeance.
The Ninth Doctor intentionally electrocuted the Dalek he encountered in 'Dalek' despite its pleas for him to have pity, coldly stating "you never did".
The Tenth Doctor notably had a "one chance only" policy when dealing with aliens invading the Earth, leading to his companion Donna Noble commenting that he needs "someone" to keep his temperament in check.
In 'The Family of Blood', the alien the Doctor defeats noted retrospectively that "he never raised his voice – that was the worst thing, the fury of a Time Lord".
The Eleventh Doctor was the only Doctor to undergo three significant personality changes, becoming even more ruthless when alone in his travels, when Amy Pond and Rory Williams were absent, then fell into a depression beyond his other incarnations when the couple were lost to him, becoming the first Doctor to retire voluntarily, before finally being overjoyed at the prospect that Clara Oswin Oswald was still alive.
The Doctor has an extreme dislike for weapons such as firearms or rayguns, and will often decline to use them even when they are convenient.
The Tenth Doctor was especially put off by guns, going out of his way to make his feelings known.
In 'Doomsday' (2006) the Daleks declare the Doctor is unarmed, to which he replies "That's me. Always."
In 'The Doctor's Daughter' (2008) he is enraged at the death of Jenny, and points a gun at the head of the man who shot her before throwing it away and yelling "I never would !".
He has proven capable of using weapons effectively when necessary, as seen in 'Resurrection of the Daleks' and 'Revelation of the Daleks'.
In 'The End of Time', he hit a small diamond with a single shot to destroy a machine and prevent the destruction of time itself.
He will occasionally use a firearm as a convenient way to bluff his way through a situation, hoping that his foe will not suspect that he does not intend to shoot.
He will also occasionally present non-threatening items as weapons so as to fool his enemies and buy himself time.
In two concurrent episodes in 2012 however, the Eleventh Doctor resorts to real violence.
He directs missiles to kill a man in 'Dinosaurs on a Spaceship', and in 'A Town Called Mercy', he throws Kahler-Jex out of the town where he knows the Gunslinger will find and kill him, and aims a pistol at him to keep him out.
The Doctor has a deep sense of right and wrong, and a conviction that it is right to intervene when injustice occurs, which sets him apart from his own people, the Time Lords, and their strict ethic of non-intervention.
While the Doctor remains essentially the same person throughout his regenerations, each actor has purposely imbued his incarnation of the character with distinct quirks and characteristics, and the production teams dictate new personality traits for each actor to portray.

Fashion

The Doctor's clothing has been equally distinctive, from the distinguished Edwardian suits of the First Doctor, to the Second Doctor's rumpled, clownlike Chaplinesque attire, to the dandy-esque frills and velvet of the Third Doctor's era.
The Fourth Doctor's long frock coat, loose fitting trousers, occasionally worn wide-brimmed hat and trailing, multi-striped scarf added to his somewhat shambolic and bohemian image; the Fifth's Edwardian cricketeer's outfit suited his youthful, aristocratic air, as well as his love of the sport (with a stick of celery on the lapel for an eccentric touch though in 'The Caves of Androzani' - it is revealed to turn purple when exposed to gases the Doctor is allergic to); and the Sixth's multicoloured jacket, with its cat-shaped lapel pins, reflected the excesses of 1980s fashion.
The Seventh Doctor's outfit – a straw hat, a coat with two scarves, a tie, checked trousers and brogues/wingtips – was more subdued, and suggestive of a showman, reflecting his whimsical approach to life.
In later seasons, as his personality grew more mysterious, his jacket, tie, and hat-band all grew darker.
Throughout the 1980s, question marks formed a constant motif, usually on the shirt collars or, in the case of the Seventh Doctor, on his sleeveless jumper and the handle to his umbrella.
The idea was grounded in branding considerations, as was the movement starting in Tom Baker's final season toward an unchanging costume for each Doctor, rather than the variants on a theme employed over the first seventeen years of the programme.
When the Eighth Doctor regenerated, he clad himself in a 19th-century frock coat and shirt based around a Wild Bill Hickok costume, reminiscent of the out-of-time quality of earlier Doctors and emphasising the Eighth Doctor's more Romantic persona.
In contrast to the more flamboyant outfits of his predecessors, the Ninth Doctor wore a nondescript, worn black leather jacket, V-neck jumper and dark trousers.
Eccleston stated that he felt that such definitive "costumes" were passé and that the character's trademark eccentricities should show through their actions and clever dialogue, not through gimmicky costumes.
Despite this, there is a running joke about his character that the only piece of clothing he changes is his jumper, even when trying to "blend into" a historical era.
The one exception, a photograph of him taken in 1912, wearing period gentleman's clothing, resembles the style of the Eighth Doctor.
The Tenth Doctor sports either a brown or a blue pinstripe suit – usually worn with ties – a tan ankle-length coat and Converse trainers, the latter recalling the plimsolls worn by his fifth incarnation.
Also, like that incarnation (and his first one), he occasionally wears spectacles: a pair with black, thick-rimmed frames.
In the 2007 'Children in Need Special' he states that he doesn't actually need glasses to see, but rather wears them to "look a bit clever."
On some occasions he wears a black tuxedo with matching black trainers.
In interviews, Tennant has referred to his Doctor's attire as 'geek chic'.
According to Tennant he had always wanted to wear the trainers.
The Tenth Doctor says in 'The Runaway Bride' that, like the TARDIS, his pockets are bigger on the inside. The Second, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh and Eleventh Doctors routinely carried numerous items in their coats without this being conspicuous.
The Eleventh Doctor's appearance has been described as appearing like "an Oxford professor", with a tweed jacket, red or blue striped shirt, red or blue bow tie, black or grey trousers with red or blue braces, and black boots.
He maintains "Bow ties are cool" even when his companions do not agree, and is delighted to meet Dr Black, the first man who agrees with him, in the episode 'Vincent and the Doctor'.
As a running gag, he exhibits attraction to unusual hats, like a fez, a pirate hat, and a Stetson, often only to have them destroyed by River Song shortly afterwards.
Starting in the second half of Series 7, the Eleventh Doctor has reverted to wearing a frock coat, like the ones his early predecessors wore, along with a waistcoat and black trousers, black braces, an off-white shirt, with brown boots.
The bow tie is still present.
He has also added round-rimmed glasses that belonged to former companion Amy Pond.


The Spirit of England - The English Left

© Copyright Peter Crawford 2013
THE  ENGLISH  LEFT

The 'Cambridge Five' were a ring of spies, recruited in part by Russian scout Arnold Deutsch in the United Kingdom, who passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II, and at least into the early 1950s.
Four members of the ring have been identified: Kim Philby (cryptonym: Stanley), Donald Duart Maclean (cryptonym: Homer), Guy Burgess, (cryptonym: Hicks) and Anthony Blunt (cryptonym: Johnson); jointly they are known as the Cambridge Four.

Kings' College Cambridge
The term "Cambridge" in the name Cambridge Five refers to the recruitment of the group during their education at Cambridge University in the 1930s.
The four known members all attended the university, as did the alleged fifth man.
Debate surrounds the exact timing of their recruitment by Soviet intelligence; Anthony Blunt claimed that they were not recruited as agents until they had graduated.
Blunt, a Fellow of Trinity College, was several years older than Burgess, Maclean, and Philby; he acted as a talent-spotter and recruiter for most of the group save Burgess.
Several people have been suspected of being the "fifth man" of the group; John Cairncross (cryptonym: Liszt) was identified as such by Oleg Gordievsky, though many others have also been accused of membership in the Cambridge ring.
Both Blunt and Burgess were members of the 'Apostles', an exclusive and prestigious society based at Trinity and King's Colleges.
Cairncross was also an 'Apostle'.
Other 'Apostles' accused of having been the "fifth man" or otherwise spied for the Soviets include Michael Whitney Straight, Victor Rothschild and Guy Liddell.

Known Members

All four were active during World War II, to various degrees of success.
Philby, when he was posted in the British embassy in Washington, D.C., after the war, learned the U.S. and the British were searching for a British Embassy mole (cryptonym Homer) who was passing information to the Soviet Union, relying on material uncovered by VENONA.
Philby learned one of the suspects was Maclean.
Realizing he had to act fast, he ordered Burgess, who was also on the embassy staff and living with Philby, to warn Maclean in England, where he was serving in the Foreign Office headquarters.
Burgess was recalled from the United States due to "bad behaviour" and upon reaching London, warned Maclean.
In early summer 1951, Burgess and Maclean made international headlines by disappearing.
Their whereabouts were unclear for some time.
Strong suspicion that they had defected to the Soviet Union turned out to be correct, but was not made public until 1956 when the two appeared at a press conference in Moscow.
It was obvious they had been tipped off and Philby quickly became the prime suspect, due to his close relations with Burgess.
Though Burgess was not supposed to defect at the same time as Maclean, he went along.
It has been claimed that the KGB ordered Burgess to go to Moscow.
This move damaged Philby's reputation, with many speculating that had it not occurred, Philby could have climbed even higher in MI6.
Investigation of Philby found several suspicious matters but nothing for which he could be prosecuted.
Nevertheless he was forced to resign from MI6.
In 1955 he was named in the press, with questions also raised in the House of Commons, as chief suspect for "the Third Man" and he called a press conference to deny the allegation.
Philby was officially cleared by then Foreign Secretary Harold MacMillan; this later turned out to be an error based on incomplete information and bureaucratic inefficiency in the British intelligence organisations.
In the later 1950s, Philby left the secret service and began working as a journalist in the Middle East; 'The Economist' magazine provided his employment there.
MI6 then re-employed him at around the same time, to provide reports from that region.
In 1961, defector Anatoliy Golitsyn provided information which pointed to Philby.
An MI5 officer and friend of Philby from his earlier MI6 days, John Nicholas Rede Elliott was sent in 1963 to interview him in Beirut and reported that Philby seemed to know he was coming (indicating the presence of yet another mole), nonetheless, Philby confessed to Elliott.
Shortly afterward, apparently fearing he might be abducted in Lebanon, Philby defected to the Soviet Union under cover of night aboard a Soviet freighter.
MI5 received information from American Michael Straight in 1964 which pointed to Blunt's espionage; the two had known each other at Cambridge some thirty years before and Blunt had tried to recruit Straight as a spy.
Straight, who initially agreed, changed his mind afterwards.
Blunt was interrogated by MI5 and confessed in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
By 1979 Blunt was publicly accused of being a Soviet agent by investigative journalist Andrew Boyle, in his book Climate of Treason.
In November 1979, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher admitted to the House of Commons that Blunt had confessed to being a Soviet spy fifteen years previously.
As he was by 1964 without access to classified information, he had secretly been granted immunity by the Attorney General in exchange for revealing everything he knew.
He provided a considerable amount of information, and preventing the Soviets from discovering his confession increased the value of his information, however, Peter Wright in his book 'Spycatcher' gives a contradictory account.
Wright was one of Blunt's interrogators, and claimed he was evasive and only made admissions grudgingly when confronted with the undeniable.
The term "Five" began to be used in 1961, when KGB defector Anatoliy Golitsyn named Maclean and Burgess as part of a "Ring of Five", with Philby a 'probable' third, alongside two other agents whom he did not know.
Of all the information provided by Golitsyn, the only item that was ever independently confirmed was the Soviet affiliation of John Vassall.
Vassall was a relatively low ranking spy who may have been sacrificed to protect a more senior one.
At the time of Golitsyn's defection, Philby had already been accused in the press and was living in a country with no extradition agreement with Britain.
Select members of MI5 and MI6 already knew Philby to be a spy from VENONA decryptions.
Golitsyn also provided other information that is widely regarded as highly improbable, such as the claim that Harold Wilson (then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom) was a KGB agent.
Golitsyn's reliability remains a controversial subject and as such there is little certainty of the number of agents he assigned to the Cambridge spy ring.
To add to the confusion, when Blunt finally confessed, he named several other people as having been recruited by him.

The Fifth Man

On the basis of the information provided by Golitsyn, speculation raged for many years as to the identity of the "Fifth Man".
The journalistic popularity of this phrase owes something to the unrelated novels 'The Third Man' and 'The Tenth Man', both written by Graham Greene - who, coincidentally, knew and worked alongside Philby during the Second World War.
It is now widely accepted that the spy ring had more than five members, possibly many more, since three other persons are known to have confessed, several more were nominated in confessions, and circumstantial cases have been made against others.
The following were certainly Soviet spies.
John Cairncross (1913–1995), confessed to spying in 1951 and was publicly accused of being the "fifth man" in 1990.
He was also accused by Anthony Blunt during Blunt's confession in 1964.
Cairncross is not always considered to have belonged to the 'Ring of five'.
He was a fellow student at Cambridge and a member of the Apostles with Blunt, therefore present at the recruitment of the others.
Leo Long (later an intelligence officer), similarly accused by Blunt in 1964.
Also accused:
Ludwig Wittgenstein is alleged by Kimberley Cornish, in his 1998 book 'The Jew of Linz', to have been a Soviet recruiter at Cambridge; but Cornish's theories about Wittgenstein, and his influence on Hitler have found little acceptance.
Guy Liddell was an MI5 officer, and nearly rose to become Director of the service, but was passed over because of rumours that he was a double agent; he took early retirement from MI5 in 1953 after being investigated for his personal links to Kim Philby.
He was accused of having been the "fifth man" by Goronwy Rees as part of Rees' confession in 1979.
The academic consensus is that he was naïve in his friendships rather than a spy.
Andrew Gow: in his memoirs published in 2012, Brian Sewell, suggested that Gow was the 'fifth man' and spy master of the group.

Secret Intelligence Service

Secret Intelligence Service (SIS)
© Copyright Peter Crawford 2013
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 (Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the British agency which supplies the British Government with foreign intelligence.
It is frequently referred to by the name MI6 (Military Intelligence, Section 6), a name used as a flag of convenience during the First World War when it was known by many names.
The service is derived from the Secret Service Bureau, which was founded in 1909.
The Bureau was a joint initiative of the Admiralty and the War Office to control secret intelligence operations in the UK and overseas, particularly concentrating on the activities of the Imperial German Government.
The bureau was split into naval and army sections which, over time, specialised in foreign espionage and internal counter-espionage activities respectively.
Its first director was Captain Sir George Mansfield Smith-Cumming, who often dropped the Smith in routine communication.
He typically signed correspondence with his initial 'C' in green ink.
This usage evolved as a code name, and has been adhered to by all subsequent directors of SIS when signing documents to retain anonymity.

Second World War

During the Second World War the human intelligence work of the service was overshadowed by several other initiatives:
The cryptanalytic effort undertaken by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), the bureau responsible for interception and decryption of foreign communications at Bletchley Park.
The extensive "double-cross" system run by MI5 to feed misleading intelligence to the Germans
GC&CS was the source of Ultra intelligence, which was very useful.
In 1940, journalist and Soviet agent Kim Philby applied for a vacancy in Section D of SIS, and was vetted by his friend and fellow Soviet agent Guy Burgess.
When Section D was absorbed by Special Operations Executive (SOE) in summer of 1940, Philby was appointed as an instructor in the arts of "black propaganda" at the SOE's training establishment in Beaulieu, Hampshire.
In early 1944 MI6 re-established Section IX, its prewar anti-Soviet section, and Kim Philby took a position there.
He was able to alert the NKVD about all British intelligence on the Soviets—including what the American OSS had shared with the British about the Soviets.
Despite these difficulties the service nevertheless conducted substantial and successful operations in both occupied Europe and in the Middle East and Far East where it operated under the cover name Interservice Liaison Department (ISLD).

The Cold War

In August 1945 Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Volkov tried to defect to Britain, offering the names of all Soviet agents working inside British intelligence.
Philby received the memo on Volkov's offer, and alerted the Soviets so they could arrest him.
SIS operations against the USSR were extensively compromised by the fact that the post-war Counter-Espionage Section, R5, was headed for two years by an agent working for the Soviet Union, Harold Adrian Russell "Kim" Philby.
Although Philby's damage was mitigated for several years by his transfer as Head of Station in Turkey, he later returned and was the SIS intelligence liaison officer at the Embassy in Washington D.C.
In this capacity he compromised a programme of joint US-UK paramilitary operations (Albanian Subversion, Valuable Project) in Enver Hoxha's Albania (although it has been shown that these operations were further compromised "on the ground" by poor security discipline among the Albanian émigrés recruited to undertake the operations).
Philby was eased out of office and quietly retired in 1953 after the defection of his friends and fellow members of the "Cambridge spy ring" Donald Duart Maclean and Guy Burgess.
SIS suffered further embarrassment when it turned out that an officer involved in both the Vienna and Berlin tunnel operations had been turned as a Soviet agent during internment by the Chinese during the Korean War.
The real scale and impact of SIS activities during the second half of the Cold War remains unknown, however, because the bulk of their most successful targeting operations against Soviet officials were the result of "Third Country" operations recruiting Soviet sources travelling abroad in Asia and Africa.


The Spirit of England - English Fascism

© Copyright Peter Crawford 2013
ENGLISH  FASCISM


English Fascism refers to the form of fascism promoted by political parties and movements in England (and Britain).
English Fascism is based upon English nationalism
The major Fascist movements in England included the British Fascists, the British Union of Fascists, the National Socialist League and the Imperial Fascist League.

The British Fascists

The British Fascists
© Copyright Peter Crawford 2013
The British Fascists were the first political organisation in the United Kingdom to claim the label of fascist.
While the group had more in common with conservatism for much of its existence it nonetheless was the first to self-describe as fascist in Britain.
William Joyce, Neil Francis Hawkins, Maxwell Knight and Arnold Leese (see below) were amongst those to have passed through the movement as members and activists.


Rotha Lintorn-Orman
The British Fascists were formed in 1923 by Rotha Lintorn-Orman in the aftermath of Benito Mussolini's March on Rome, and originally operated under the Italian-sounding name British Fascisti.
Despite their name the group had a poorly defined ideological basis at their beginning, being brought into being more by a fear of left-wing politics than a devotion to fascism.
The ideals of the Boy Scout movement, with which many early members had also been involved in their younger days, also played an important role as the British Fascisti wished, to "uphold the same lofty ideas of brotherhood, service and duty".
At its formation at least the British Fascisti was positioned in the same right-wing conservative camp as the likes of the British Empire Union and the Middle Class Union and shared some members with these groups.
The group had a complex structure, being presided over by both an Executive Council and Fascist Grand Council of nine men, with County and Area Commanders controlling districts below this.
Districts contained a number of companies, which in turn were divided into troops with each troop made of three units and unit containing seven members under a Leader.
A separate structure existed along similar lines for the group's sizeable female membership.
Early membership largely came from high society, and included a number of women amongst its ranks, such as Dorothy Viscountess Downe, Lady Sydenham of Combe, Baroness Zouche and Nesta Webster.
Men from the nobility also joined, such as Lord Glasgow, the Marquess of Ailesbury, Lord Ernest Hamilton, Baron de Clifford, Earl Temple of Stowe, Arthur Henry Hardinge and Lord Garvagh, who served as first President of the movement.
High-ranking members of the armed forces also occupied leading roles in the group, with General Blakeney joined by the likes of General Ormonde Winter, Brigadier-General T. Erskine Tulloch, Admiral John Armstrong and Colonel Sir Charles Rosdew Burn, who combined a role on the Grand Council of the British Fascisti with that of Conservative Party MP for Torquay.
Serving military personnel were eventually banned from joining the group by the Army Council however.
At a more rank and file level the group attracted a membership of middle and working class young men.
This domination by disgruntled members of the peerage and high-ranking officers meant that certain concerns not normally associated with the demands of fascism, such as anger at the decline of the large landowning agricultural sector, the high levels of estate taxation and death duties and the dearth of high-ranking civilian occupations suitable for the status of officers, were a central feature of the political concerns advanced by the British Fascisti.

Early Development

The party confined itself to stewarding Conservative Party meetings, and canvassing for the party.
In particular they campaigned vigorously on behalf of Oliver Locker-Lampson, whose "Keep Out the Reds" campaign slogan struck a chord with the group's strong anti-communism.
The group changed its name from British Fascisti to British Fascists in 1924 in an attempt to distance itself from the Italian associations, although this move helped to bring about a split in the group with a more ideologically fascist group, the National Fascisti, going its own way.
The group's patriotism had been questioned because of the Italian spelling of the name, while accusations were also made that they were in the pay of the Italian government.
Despite its close association with elements of the Conservative Party, the British Fascists did occasionally run candidates in local elections.
In 1924 two of its candidates in the municipal elections in Stamford, Lincolnshire, Arnold Leese and Henry Simpson, managed to secure election to the local council.
Simpson would retain his seat in 1927 although by that stage both he and Leese had broken from the British Fascists.

The 1926 strike

The British Fascists began to take on a more prominent role in the run-up to the General Strike of 1926, as it became clear that their propaganda predicting such an outcome was due to come true.
They were not however permitted to join the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies (OMS), a group established by the government and chaired by Lord Hardinge in order to mobilise a non-striking workforce in the event of general strike without first relinquishing any explicit attachment to fascism as the government insisted this group remain non-ideological.
The structure of the OMS was actually based on that of the British Fascists, although the government was unwilling to rely on the British Fascists, due both to what they saw as the group's unorthodox nature and their reliance on funding from Rotha Lintorn-Orman, and so excluded them as a group from the OMS.
As a result a further split occurred as a number of members, calling themselves the Loyalists and led by former BF President Brigadier-General Blakeney, did just that.
In the event the British Fascists formed their own Q Divisions which took on much of the same work as the OMS during the strike, albeit without having any official government recognition.
The strike severely damaged the party as it failed to precipitate the "Bolshevik Revolution" that Lintorn-Orman had set the party up to fight.
In fact the strike was largely peaceful and restrained, and fears of future outbreaks were quelled somewhat by the passing of the Trades Disputes Act.
Many of its most prominent members and supporters also drifted away from the group in the aftermath of the strike.
The party journal, initially called 'Fascist Bulletin' before changing its name to 'British Lion', went from a weekly to a monthly while the loss of a number of key leaders and the erratic leadership of Lintorn-Orman, brought about a decline of activity.
The group also became ravaged by factionalism, with one group following Lady Downe and the old ways of the British Fascists, and another centred around James Strachey Barnes and Sir Harold Elsdale Goad, advocating full commitment to a proper fascist ideology.

Decline

Having been hit hard by the split from the General Strike the British Fascists attempted to move gradually towards a more defined fascism, starting in 1927 by adopting a blue shirt and beret uniform in the style of similar movements in Europe.
The progress towards fascism did not however come quick enough for Arnold Leese who in 1928 split from the group to establish his own Imperial Fascist League (IFL) (see above), a much more hard-line group that emphasised anti-Semitism.
Before long however the British Fascists began to advocate a more authoritarian government in which the monarch would take a leading role in government, as well as advocating the establishment of a corporate state, policy changes made possible by the departure of Blakeney, who was committed to representative democracy and whose main economic opinion was opposition to the gold standard.
Even without Blakeney, they retained some of their earlier Conservative-linked views, such loyalty to the king, anti-trade union legislation, free trade within the British Empire and a general preference for the rural, although these were bolstered by fascist-influenced policies such as limiting the franchise, gradual purification of the "English race" and stringent restrictions on immigration and the activities of immigrants admitted to Britain, however the British Fascists actively encouraged comparisons with the Conservative Party, feeling that it would add a sense of legitimacy and Britishness to their activities, particularly as they faced harsh criticism from not only the left but also some Tories for their increasingly paramilitary structure.
Nonetheless some Tories were close to the group, with Charles Burn sitting on the Grand Council and support being lent by the likes of Patrick Hannon, Robert Tatton Bower, Robert Burton-Chadwick and Alan Lennox-Boyd.
Indeed in May 1925 Hannon even booked a chamber in the House of Commons to host an event for the British Fascists.
After 1931, they abandoned their attempts to form a distinctly British version of Fascism, and instead adopted the full programme of Mussolini and his National Fascist Party.
The already weakened group split further in 1932 over the issue of a merger with Oswald Mosley's New Party.
The proposal was accepted by Neil Francis Hawkins of the Headquarters Committee and his allies Lieutenant-Colonel H.W. Johnson and E.G. Mandeville Roe although the female leadership turned the proposal down due to objections over serving under Mosley.
Indeed the British Fascists had protested against public meetings being addressed by Mosley as early as 1927 when they denounced the then Labour MP as a dangerous socialist.
As a consequence Francis Hawkins broke away and took much of the male membership of the group with him with the New Party becoming the British Union of Fascists (BUF) soon afterwards.
Relations with the BUF were as a result frosty for the remainder of the group's life.
By this stage in their development the British Fascists' membership had plummeted with only a hardcore of members left.
Various schemes were floated in an attempt to reinvigorate the movement although none succeeded.
In a bid to reverse their decline the party adopted a strongly anti-semitic platform.
In 1933 Lord and Lady Downe, as representatives of the British Fascists, entertained Nazi German envoy Gunther Schmidt-Lorenzen at their country estate, and suggested to him that the National Socialists should avoid any links with Mosley, whom Lady Downe accused of being in the pay of Jewish figures such as Baron Rothschild and Sir Philip Sassoon.
Fellow member Madame Arnaud repreated similar allegations about Mosley to another German official, Dr Margarete Gartner of the Economic Policy Association, however by this stage Rotha Lintorn-Orman's mother had cut her off financially, and so the group fell into debt until being declared bankrupt in 1934 when a Colonel Wilson called in a £500 loan.
This effectively brought the British Fascists to a conclusion, with Rotha Lintorn-Orman dying the following year.

The Imperial Fascist League

Arnold Leese
The Imperial Fascist League
© Copyright Peter Crawford 2013
The Imperial Fascist League (IFL) was a British Fascist political movement founded by Arnold Leese in 1929.
Leese was born in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, England and educated at Giggleswick School.
An only child, his childhood was characterised by loneliness.
After qualifying as a veterinary surgeon, he accepted a post in India, where he became an expert on the camel.
He worked in India for six years before becoming Camel Specialist for the East Africa Protectorate of the British Empire.
He published articles on the camel and its maladies, the first appearing in 'The Journal of Tropical Veterinary Science' in 1909.
He was commissioned in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps in 1914, serving on the Western Front and in the Middle East.
Captain Leese returned to England where he continued his practice, publishing 'A Treatise on the One-Humped Camel in Health and in Disease' (1927), which would remain a standard work in India for fifty years.
He settled in Stamford, Lincolnshire, practising as a vet until retirement in 1927.
In Stamford Leese became close to one of his neighbours, the economist Arthur Kitson, who was also a member of The Britons.
Kitson persuaded Leese that control of money was the key to power, and further convinced him that money was controlled by the Jews, with Kitson also supplying Leese with a copy of the 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion'.
As an animal lover Leese also claimed that the Jewish practice of 'kashrut' slaughter influenced his anti-Semitism.
Around the same time Leese also became interested in Italian fascism and, after writing a pamphlet entitled 'Fascism for Old England', he joined the British Fascists in 1924.
He also joined the Centre International d’Études sur la Fascisme, an Italian-led group aimed at the promotion of fascism internationally, and served as its British Correspondent.
He was elected a councillor in Stamford that year, along with fellow fascist Henry Simpson.
Leese left the British Fascists in 1928 and, having retired to Guildford, established his own Imperial Fascist League (IFL) the following year.

Imperial Fascist League Leadership
The movement was initially more along the lines of Italian fascism but under the influence of Henry Hamilton Beamish it soon came to focus on anti-Semitism.
The IFL and its extensive publishing interests were funded out of Leese's own pocket.
The Fascists Legions, a black-shirted paramilitary arm, was soon added under the command of Leslie H. Sherrard.
The group initially advocated such policies as corporatism, monetary reform and the removal of citizenship from Jews.
The group was initially led by Brigadier-General Erskine Tulloch, although real power lay with Leese, who was ratified as Director-General in 1932.
Henry Hamilton Beamish, head of The Britons, served as vice-president of the IFL and was a regular speaker at the movement's events.
The IFL soon shifted away from Italian fascism (they originally used the fasces as their emblem) after Leese met Julius Streicher in Germany.
Soon anti-Semitism became the central theme of IFL policy and their new programme, the 'Racial Fascist Corporate State', stressed the supremacy of the 'Aryan race'.
The IFL altered its flag so that it featured the Union Flag superimposed with the swastika.
As a result of this conversion the IFL enjoyed a higher profile, in large part due to the funding it received from the NSDAP, paid through the English correspondent of the 'Völkischer Beobachter', Dr. Hans Wilhelm Thost.
Indeed by the mid 1930s the IFL had turned against the Italian model so much that they denounced Benito Mussolini as a "pro-Semite", claiming that the Second Italo-Ethiopian War had been organised by the Jews.
In 1932 Robert Forgan approached the IFL and suggested that they should merge into Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, but the offer was declined.
Leese rejected any overtures from Mosely due to the latter's initial reluctance to make anti-Semitism a central theme.
One of their biggest differences was that the IFL held a biological view of anti-Semitism - that the Jews were inherently inferior as a race - in contrast to the BUF, whose eventual adoption of anti-Semitism was framed in ideas about the Jews supposed undue influence at the top echelons of society.
Although rejecting a merger with the BUF the IFL was linked to the 'Nordic League' through Commander E. H. Cole, a staunch advocate of the 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', who served as chancellor of the League as well as being a leading IFL member.
Before long both Leese and P. J. Ridout also took out membership of this group, membership of which encompassed most shades of far right activity.
The outbreak of the Second World War caused the small group to fall apart as Leese declared loyalty to King and country and renamed the group the Angles Circle, but this stance was rejected by some pro-German members such as Tony Gittens, Harold Lockwood and Bertie Mills.
It proved to be academic however as in 1940 Leese was interned under Defence Regulation 18B and although he continued to be politically active after the war the IFL was not reformed.
His formation of the National Workers Movement in 1948 meant the final end for the IFL.

The British Union of Fascists

British Union of Fascists
© Copyright Peter Crawford 2013
The British Union of Fascists was a political party in the United Kingdom formed in 1932 by Oswald Mosley. In 1936, it changed its name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists and in 1937 to British Union which existed until 1940 when it was proscribed.

Sir Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Mosley

Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was an English politician.
He was a Member of Parliament for Harrow from 1918 to 1924, for Smethwick from 1926 to 1931 and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Labour Government of 1929–31, a position he resigned due to his disagreement with the Labour Government's unemployment policies.
Mosley was the eldest of the three sons of Sir Oswald Mosley (5th Baronet) (1873–1928) and Katharine Maud Edwards-Heathcote (1874–1950).
His branch of the Mosley family was the Anglo-Irish family at its most prosperous, landowners in Staffordshire seated at Rolleston Hall near Burton-upon-Trent.
In a senior aristocratic Georgian intermarriage, his father was a third cousin to the Earl of Strathmore, father of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon who served alongside the King-Emperor George VI as Queen-Empress Consort.
Mosley was born on 16 November 1896 at 47, Hill Street, Mayfair, Westminster.
After his parents separated he was brought up by his mother, who went to live at Betton Hall near Market Drayton, and his paternal grandfather, Sir Oswald Mosley, 4th Baronet.
Within the family and among intimate friends, he was always called "Tom".
He lived for many years at Apedale Hall in the post town of Newcastle-under-Lyme also in Staffordshire.

Lord Curzon of Kedleston
Viceroy of India,
Lady Cynthia Curzon
and Sir Oswald Mosley
On 11 May 1920 he married Lady Cynthia Curzon (known as 'Cimmie'), (1898–1933), second daughter of George Curzon, Lord Curzon of Kedleston, (1859–1925), Viceroy of India, 1899–1905, Foreign Secretary, 1919–1924, and Lord Curzon's first wife, the U.S. mercantile heiress, the former Mary Victoria Leiter.
Lord Curzon had to be persuaded that Mosley was a suitable husband, as he suspected Mosley was largely motivated by social advancement in Conservative Party politics and her inheritance.
The 1920 wedding took place in the Chapel Royal in St James's Palace in London - arguably the social event of the year.
The hundreds of guests included European royalty such as King George V and Queen Mary; and Leopold III and Astrid of Sweden, future King and Queen of Belgium.
Mosley had three children by Cynthia:
Vivien Mosley (1921–2002), who married on 15 January 1949 Desmond Francis Forbes Adam (1926–58), educated at Eton College and at King's College, University of Cambridge, by whom she had two daughters
Nicholas Mosley (later 7th Baronet of Ancoats; born 1923), a successful novelist who wrote a biography of his father and edited his memoirs for publication; and
Michael Mosley (born 1932), unmarried and without issue.
During this marriage he had an extended affair with his wife's younger sister Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, and with their stepmother, Grace Curzon, Marchioness Curzon of Kedleston, the U.S.-born second wife and widow of Lord Curzon of Kedleston.
He succeeded to the Baronetcy of Ancoats on his father's death in 1928, which entitles the current holder to the prefix style Sir.
Cynthia died of peritonitis in 1933, after which Mosley married his mistress Diana Guinness, née Mitford (1910–2003). They married in secret in Germany on 6 October 1936 in the Berlin home of Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda Joseph Goebbels. Adolf Hitler was one of the guests.
By Diana, he had two sons:
Oswald Alexander Mosley (born 1938), father of Louis Mosley (born 1983); and
Max Mosley (born 1940), who was president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) for 16 years.

Winchester College
West Downs School

Mosley was educated at West Downs School and Winchester College.








Royal Military College, Sandhurst
In January 1914 he entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.
During the First World War he was commissioned into the 16th The Queen's Lancers, and fought on the Western Front.
He transferred to the Royal Flying Corps as an observer, but while demonstrating in front of his mother and sister he crashed, which left him with a permanent limp.
He returned to the trenches before the injury was fully healed, and at the Battle of Loos he passed out at his post from pain.
He spent the remainder of the war at desk jobs in the Ministry of Munitions and in the Foreign Office.
By the end of the First World War, Mosley had decided to go into politics as a Conservative Member of Parliament, due to the War having had no university or practical experience.
He was 21 years of age and had not fully developed his own politics.
He was driven by, and in Parliament spoke of, a passionate conviction to avoid any future war, and this seemingly motivated his career.
Largely because of his family background and war service, local Conservative and Labour Associations preferred Mosley in several constituencies - a vacancy near the family estates seemed to be the best prospect, however, he was unexpectedly selected for Harrow first.
In the general election of 1918 he faced no serious opposition and was elected easily.
He was the youngest member of the House of Commons to take his seat, though Joseph Sweeney, an abstentionist Sinn Féin member, was younger.
He soon distinguished himself as an orator and political player, one marked by extreme self-confidence, and he made a point of speaking in the House of Commons without notes.

Crossing the Floor

Mosley was at this time falling out with the Conservatives over Irish policy, objecting to the use of the Black and Tans to suppress the Irish population.
Eventually he crossed the floor to sit as an Independent Member on the opposition side of the House of Commons.
Having built up a following in his constituency, he retained it against a Conservative challenge in the 1922 and 1923 general elections.
By 1924 he was growing increasingly attracted to the Labour Party, which had just formed a government, and in March he joined it.
He immediately joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) as well and allied himself with the left.
When the government fell in October, Mosley had to choose a new seat, as he believed that Harrow would not re-elect him as a Labour candidate.
He therefore decided to oppose Neville Chamberlain in Birmingham Ladywood.
Mosley campaigned aggressively in Ladywood; and accused Chamberlain of being a "landlords' hireling".
The outraged Chamberlain demanded that Mosley retract the claim "as a gentleman".
Mosley, whom Stanley Baldwin described as "a cad and a wrong 'un", refused to retract the allegation.
It took several recounts before Chamberlain was declared the winner by 77 votes and Mosley blamed poor weather for the result.
His period outside Parliament was used to develop a new economic policy for the ILP, which eventually became known as the Birmingham Proposals; they continued to form the basis of Mosley's economics until the end of his political career.
In 1926, the Labour-held seat of Smethwick fell vacant, and Mosley returned to Parliament after winning the resulting by-election on 21 December.
Mosley felt the campaign was dominated by Conservative attacks on him for being too rich, including claims that he was covering up his wealth.
Mosley and his wife Cynthia were committed Fabians in the 1920s, and at the start of the 1930s.

Office

Mosley then made a bold bid for political advancement within the Labour Party.
He was close to Ramsay MacDonald and hoped for one of the great offices of state, but when Labour won the 1929 general election he was appointed only to the post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (de facto Minister without Portfolio, outside the Cabinet).
He was given responsibility for solving the unemployment problem, but found that his radical proposals were blocked either by his superior James Henry Thomas or by the Cabinet.
Mosley was always impatient, and eventually put forward a whole scheme in the 'Mosley Memorandum', which called for high tariffs to protect British industries from international finance, for state nationalisation of main industries, and for a programme of public works to solve unemployment, however, it was rejected by the Cabinet, and in May 1930 Mosley resigned from his ministerial position.
At the time, the weekly Liberal-leaning paper 'The Nation' described his move: "The resignation of Sir Oswald Mosley is an event of capital importance in domestic politics... We feel that Sir Oswald has acted rightly—as he has certainly acted courageously—in declining to share any longer in the responsibility for inertia."
In October he attempted to persuade the Labour Party Conference to accept the Memorandum, but was defeated again.
Thirty years later, in 1961, R. H. S. Crossman described the memorandum: "... this brilliant memorandum was a whole generation ahead of Labour thinking."

The New Party

Dissatisfied with the Labour Party, Mosley quickly founded the New Party.
Its early parliamentary contests, in the 1931 Ashton-under-Lyne by-election and subsequent by-elections, arguably had a spoiler effect in splitting the left-wing vote and allowing Conservative candidates to win.
Despite this, the organisation gained support among many Labour and Conservative politicians who agreed with his corporatist economic policy, and among these were Aneurin Bevan and Harold Macmillan.
It also gained the endorsement of the Daily Mail newspaper, headed at the time by Harold Harmsworth (later created 1st Viscount Rothermere).
The New Party increasingly inclined to fascist policies, but Mosley was denied the opportunity to get his party established when during the Great Depression the 1931 Election was suddenly called - the party's candidates, including Mosley himself, lost the seats they held and won none.
As the New Party gradually became more radical and authoritarian, and as critics of the fascists in the Spanish Civil War emerged in the press, art and literature, many previous supporters defected from it.
After his failure in 1931 Mosley went on a study tour of the 'new movements' of Italy's Benito Mussolini and other fascists, and returned convinced that it was the way forward for Britain.

The British Union of Fascists

After a January 1932 visit to Benito Mussolini in Italy, Mosley's own conversion to fascism was confirmed.
He wound up the New Party in April, but preserved its youth movement, which would form the core of the BUF, intact.
He spent the summer that year writing a fascist programme, 'The Greater Britain', and this formed the basis of policy of the BUF, which was launched in October 1932.
Mosley was determined to unite the existing fascist movements, and created the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932.
The BUF was protectionist, strongly anti-communist, and nationalistic to the point of advocating authoritarianism.
It claimed membership as high as 50,000, and had the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror among its earliest supporters.
The Mail continued to support the BUF until the Olympia rally in June 1934.
Among Mosley's supporters at this time were the novelist Henry Williamson, military theorist J. F. C. Fuller and William Joyce.
Mosley had found problems with disruption of New Party meetings, and instituted a corps of black-uniformed paramilitary stewards, nicknamed 'blackshirts'.
The party was frequently involved in confrontations, particularly with Communist and Jewish groups and especially in London.
At a large Mosley rally at Olympia on 7 June 1934 hecklers were removed by Blackshirts, resulting in bad publicity.
This led to the loss of most of the BUF's mass support.
The party was unable to fight the 1935 general election.
In October 1936 Mosley and the BUF attempted to march through an area with a high proportion of Jewish residents, and violence resulted between local and nationally organised protesters trying to block the march and police trying to force it through.
At length Sir Philip Game the Police Commissioner disallowed the march from going ahead and the BUF abandoned it.
Mosley continued to organise marches policed by the Blackshirts, and the government was sufficiently concerned to pass the Public Order Act 1936, which, amongst other things, banned political uniforms and quasi-military style organisations and came into effect on 1 January 1937.
In the London County Council elections in 1937 the BUF stood in three wards in East London (some former New Party seats), its strongest areas, polling up to a quarter of the vote, and Mosley made most of the Blackshirt employees redundant, some of whom then defected from the party with William Joyce.
As the European situation moved towards war, the BUF began to nominate Parliamentary by-election candidates and launched campaigns on the theme of 'Mind Britain's Business'.
After the outbreak of war he led the campaign for a negotiated peace, a stance popularly acceptable but after the invasion of Norway and the commencement of aerial bombardment (The Blitz) overall public opinion of him turned to hostility.

Early Success

The BUF claimed 50,000 members at one point and the Daily Mail was an early supporter, running the headline "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!"
Despite strong resistance from anti-fascists, including the local Jewish community, the Labour Party, the Independent Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain, the BUF found a following in the East End of London, where in the London County Council elections of March 1937 it obtained reasonably successful results in Bethnal Green, Shoreditch and Limehouse, polling almost 8,000 votes, although none of its candidates was elected, however, the BUF never stood in a General Election. Having lost the funding of newspaper magnate Lord Rothermere that it previously enjoyed, at the 1935 General Election the party urged voters to abstain, calling for "Fascism Next Time".
There never was a "next time", as the next General Election was not held until July 1945, five years after the dissolution of the BUF.
Towards the middle of the 1930s, the BUF's violent clashes with opponents began to alienate some middle-class supporters, and membership decreased.
At the Olympia rally in London, in 1934, BUF stewards ejected anti-fascist disrupters, and this led the Daily Mail to withdraw its support for the movement. 
The level of disruption at the rally shocked many, with the effect of turning neutral parties against the BUF and contributing to anti-fascist support.
Mosley spent large amounts of his private fortune on the British Union of Fascists (BUF - see below))  and tried to establish it on a firm financial footing by means including an attempt to negotiate, through Diana, with Adolf Hitler for permission to broadcast commercial radio to Britain from Germany.
Mosley reportedly struck a deal in 1937 with Francis Beaumont, heir to the Seigneur of Sark, to set up a privately owned radio station on Sark.

Later Years and Legacy

The BUF briefly drew away from mainstream politics and towards anti-Semitism over 1934-1935 due to the growing influence of National Socialist sympathisers such as William Joyce and John Beckett within the party, which saw the resignation of members such as Dr. Robert Forgan.
This resulted in membership dropping to below 8,000 by the end of 1935 and, ultimately, Mosley shifted the party's focus back to mainstream politics.
The party continued to clash with anti-fascists, most famously at the Battle of Cable Street in October 1936, when organised anti-fascists prevented the BUF from marching through Cable Street, however, the party later staged other marches through the East End without incident.
BUF support for Edward VIII and the peace campaign to prevent a second World War saw membership and public support rise once more.
The government was sufficiently concerned by the party's growing prominence to pass the Public Order Act 1936, which banned political uniforms and required police consent for political marches.
In 1937, William Joyce and other National Socialist sympathisers split from the party to form the National Socialist League, which quickly folded, with most of its members interned.
Mosley later denounced Joyce, and condemned him for his extreme anti-semitism.
By 1939, total BUF membership was probably approaching 20,000.
In May 1940, the BUF was banned outright by the government, and Mosley, along with 740 other fascists, was interned for much of the Second World War.
After the war, Mosley made several unsuccessful attempts to return to politics, notably in the Union Movement.