Agent Jack - Robert Hutton

I’m always fascinated by what British fascists got up to during the war. Mostly, of course, they did what everybody else did and either fought or supported the fighters. It’s that exceptional few that fascinate. Agent Jack is the story of Eric Roberts, the ultimate Mr Ordinary, who worked for MI5 before, during and after the war, initially as a fascist himself, spying on communists, then as agent provocateur, gathering together those who wished to help Hitler conquer Britain.

That’s the problem – he was an agent provocateur. Despite Hutton’s best efforts, there’s no way round the fact that the people Roberts recruited would almost certainly have got up to no real mischief had he not brought them together. Dutton’s problem is, they didn’t do any harm and were just a bunch of repellent but otherwise ordinary nutters. There’s no denying Roberts’ courage and care; equally we can’t pretend he prevented any outrages against the national interest.

His is a story worth telling, but only as a part of other stories. For example, MI5 were reluctant to push Roberts’ recruits too far because of the fiasco surrounding the failed attempt to intern the well-connected and very foolish Ben Greene. Greene had been set up by an agent provocateur and was promptly released. He did no harm whatever thereafter. The real damage was to Max Knight, who worked with Roberts for the wonderfully named British Fascisti and then brought him to MI5.

The best thing about the book for me was the vivid portrait of Victor Rothschild, whose role had never before been clear to me. It is now, and I owe that entirely to Robert Hutton and this book.

Hitler's British Traitors - Tim Tate

The Secret History of Spies, Saboteurs and Fifth Columnists - so says the sub-title, and that is exactly what we get, to an extent I have never come across in what is now forty years of sporadic research on the subject. Never before have I seen it spelled out just how dangerous the relevant Duke of Bedford was. Never before has it been made so absolutely clear that only ordinary people paid any meaningful price for their treachery. The rich, the landed, those with friends in high places, simply went through the motions of punishment.

In some ways I wish Tate had included a critique on the trial and hanging of William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw. But I understand entirely why he didn't. Joyce wasn't ever a British citizen. He could not be a traitor to a country he never owed allegiance too, and his trial was a legal nonsense with lethal outcomes.

Tate is very good on the case of Sir Barry Domvile, the former head of naval intelligence, who may well have been the greatest Nazi danger to the UK. I have read Domvile's account and that of Sir Archibald Maule-Ramsay, the MP who formed the Right Club to keep British Nazism going after other Fascist groups closed down on the declaration of war. Ramsay was mad - even by the aristocratic standards of his day, obviously deranged - whereas Domvile was evil. Both were interned under Section 18b of the Defence Regulations. Neither was stripped of rank or title. The Duke of Bedford, who was prepared to finance and Nazi coup in Britain, wasn't even interned.

A scorching read, thoroughly recommended.

Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism - Stephen Dorril

Dorril has given us an exhaustive, not to say exhausting, slab of a book about the Brit who would have been Hitler. The research is thorough and everything Dorril discovered is here. Two problems: (1) he doesn't like Sir Oz, which is by no means a sin but doesn't augur well for a biographer; and (2) he isn't really interested in fascism per se.


Regarding the not-at-all great man, Dorril has a thesis that he was a narcissist. No, really? A politician who considers himself the greatest thing since sliced bread? An aristo who is a wee bit arrogant? Surely not! Some numpty in the quotes on the back describes Mosley as a brilliant politician. No he wasn't. He bought himself a Labour seat and never won another election. He might have been a powerful orator but he was a hopeless politician.


Not discussing pre-BUF fascism undermines Dorril's story because it is important to realise how fashionable fascism was in the 1920s. The fascists were everywhere. When he left Labour and invested a job lot of black shirts, Mosley wasn't heading out into the political wilderness, he was jumping on the bandwagon of his day.


It's a decent book but there are better ones around. The best book about Mosley is written by his son, and as for British fascism, just look at Dorril's sources. My own favourite is Hurrah for the Blackshirts because we can't remind the great British public too often about the Daily Mail and Hitler. In fairness, Lord Rothermere wasn't anything like as keen on Mosley. He regarded him as jumped-up opportunist prat, which is a pretty good assessment. Mosley isn't the story of British fascism, he's the reason it didn't succeed.