Horatio Bottomley and the Far Right Before Fascism (Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right)

Product Information

Death of Horatio Bottomley". The Straits Times. 27 May 1933. p.13. Archived from the original on 14 July 2014 . Retrieved 5 July 2014. Noel Pemberton Billing would stand for the same seat in the 1940s – one of several parallels between him and Horatio Bottomley.

On the outbreak of the First World War, Bottomley told his personal assistant, Henry J. Houston: "Houston, this war is my opportunity. Whatever I have been in the past, and whatever my faults, I am going to draw a line at August 4th, 1914, and start afresh. I shall play the game, cut all my old associates, and wipe out everything pre-1914" Houston later recalled: "At the time I thought he meant it, but but now I know that the flesh, habituated to luxury and self-indulgence, was too weak to give effect to the resolution. For a while he did try to shake off his old associates, but the claws of the past had him grappled in steel, and the effort did not last more than a few weeks." The battles H.B, fought were battles of wits, and if there was frequently an armistice it was never a protracted one ; but every time he stole away from the battlefield it was to seek feminine society. Occasionally, as I shall show, he had to go no farther than his tent on the battlefield! Johnson's Court EC4", in A Guide to the alleys, courts, passages and yards of central London by Ivor Hoole. On the death of his mother, in 1865, H.B. and his sister passed under the care of their uncle, William Holyoake, the artist. Holyoake's brother, George Jacob, the author of " Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life," helped to support the young Bottomleys by paying a small sum each week to a widow lady at Battersea, a Mrs. Wormley. It was a case of the poor helping the poor. Mr. Holyoake had eight or nine children of his own, and he was finding that agitation, however sincere in its inspiration and beneficial to humanity in its results, produced a very precarious livelihood for the father of a large family... (2) Horatio Bottomley, John Bull Magazine (4th September, 1915) Bottomley was, at least for a year or so, a diligent parliamentarian who spoke on a range of issues, and from time to time teased the government as when, during the Irish Troubles, he asked whether, "in view of the breakdown of British rule in Ireland, the government will approach America with a view to her accepting the mandate for the government of that country". [110] On other occasions he helped the government, as when in January 1919, he was called upon in his role of "Soldier's Friend" to help pacify troops in Folkestone and Calais who were in a state of mutiny over delays in their demobilisation. [111] [112] Downfall [ edit ] John Bull advertises Bottomley's "Victory Bonds" scheme, 12 July 1919.Messinger, Gary S. (1992). British Propaganda and the State in the First World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-3014-5. I intend] to give the government an independent and, I hope, an intelligent support, so long as it proceeds on the lines of robust and healthy democracy, but I am also here to oppose all fads and 'isms and namby-pamby interference with the liberty and freedom of our common citizenship. His energy was unbounded, and for days he was desperately restless because a short time had to elapse before all the arrangements could be completed. According to A. J. A. Morris: "His (Bottomley) patriotic appeals were barely disguised music-hall turns. The praise he received served to feed his latent megalomania. His political ambitions had always tended towards fantasy so that when, in December 1916, Lloyd George became prime minister Bottomley declared that he was ready to serve his country in some official capacity or other. He did not seem to realize that he was indelibly associated with dishonesty. Just as the blatant vulgarity of his writing in John Bull shamed journalism, so his speeches, with their ignominious appeals for sacrifice, degraded public life."

Now officially bankrupt, Horatio still managed to arrange things so that his extravagant lifestyle continued unabated. His main source of income was from lotteries and sweepstakes run through John Bull. These were operated from outside the UK to circumvent gambling laws, and were rarely honestly run. Horatio faced legal charges on multiple occasions when it was suspected that winners were actually his employees or relatives. He managed to dodge these charges though. John Bull itself swiftly rose in popularity, with Horatio claiming a circulation of two million. (The actual figure was probably a still impressive three quarters of a million.) He even tried creating a spinoff aimed at women, Mrs Bull, though this was less successful. Then in 1914 the first World War broke out. And where many saw tragedy, Horatio saw opportunity. Horatio Bottomley on stage.

Unions hit out as human rights committee flags concerns about breaching international law

Robb, George (1992). White-Collar Crime in Modern England: Financial Fraud and Business Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-41234-X. He was, too, naturally an indolent man, though he could be induced to work in terrific spurts when it was necessary for the achievement of something upon which he had set his heart. But the prolonged steady application of his energies was foreign to his nature. The 1946 relaunch featured covers that encapsulated post-war Britain and employed some of Britain's finest illustrators. During this period, the magazine also included short stories by major British authors such as H. E. Bates, Agatha Christie, Nicholas Monsarrat, N. J. Crisp, Gerald Kersh, J. B. Priestley and C. S. Forester. Peter Baker, the Conservative MP for South Norfolk, was automatically expelled on 16 December 1954 when he was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment after forging signatures on letters purporting to guarantee debts when his companies ran into financial difficulties.

In 1902 Bottomley bought the evening newspaper, The Sun. He was unable to increase its circulation and he sold the newspaper in 1904. Two years later, with the support of the Odham's Press, he launched the John Bull Magazine in May 1906. The journal's masthead asserted that it was written "without fear or favour, rancour or rant" to uphold the interests of the common man. Member of Parliament He needed a great deal of care as a result, and I found it necessary to travel special blankets for him. The first thing I used to do when we arrived at a hotel was to place the special blankets on his bed. That was done mainly at the request of Mrs. Bottomley, but it was a necessary precaution... S. Theodore Felstead Horatio Bottomley: A Biography of an Outstanding Personality (London, 1936), ch. 1. H.B.'s father had, at some time prior to 1860, been confined in a well-known London asylum as a mental case. I am unable to give the details as the authorities inform me that only relatives can be permitted to inspect the records, but I have evidence of the fact that H.B.'s father died in a "fit of mania." H.B. always told me that his father died of consumption. In 1916 Bottomley helped Noel Pemberton Billing, get elected as the independent MP at the East Hertfordshire by-election. Billing was also the editor of The Imperialist. Both men used their newspapers to claim the existence of a secret society called the Unseen Hand. Bottomley even claimed that this group was responsible for the death of Lord Kitchener. Other supporters of this campaign included Lord Northcliffe (the owner of The Times and The Daily Mail), Leo Maxse (the editor of The National Review), the journalist, Arnold Henry White (the author of The Hidden Hand) and Ellis Powell (the editor of the Financial News). Bottomley claimed that members of the Unseen Hand were working behind the scenes to obtain a peace agreement with Germany.When he pleaded ignorance in the recent prosecution as to the procedure adopted in regard to important detail work of the Victory Bond Clubs, he told the simple truth. I never had anything to do with those Clubs - my work having been solely concerned with his parliamentary and political activities during the last few years - but I am quite certain that he not only did not know what procedure was adopted, but was incapable of understanding it. In 1869 Bottomley was placed in Sir Josiah Mason's Orphanage in Birmingham. According to his biographer, A. J. A. Morris: "To help alleviate his misery and humiliation Bottomley created a world of fantasy from which he never again entirely escaped. When at fourteen he ran away from the orphanage he was shunted between the homes of relatives and various lodging houses in Birmingham and London." Office Boy

Bottomley's obituaries dwelt on the common theme of wasted talent: a man of brilliant natural abilities, destroyed by greed and vanity. "He had personal magnetism, eloquence, and the power to convince", wrote his Daily Mail obituarist. "He might have been a leader at the Bar, a captain of industry, a great journalist. He might have been almost anything". [147] The Straits Times of Singapore thought that Bottomley could have rivalled Lloyd George as a national leader: "Though he deserved his fate, the news of his passing will awaken the many regrets for the good which he did when he was Bottomley the reformer and crusader and the champion of the bottom dog". [148] A later historian, Maurice Cowling, pays tribute to Bottomley's capacity and industry, and to his forceful campaigns in support of liberty. [108] In his sketch for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Morris delivers a different judgement: "[H]e claimed to serve the interests of others, but sought only his own gratification". [2]Engel, Matthew (30 November 1999). "Absolute bounders we have loved". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 21 September 2016 . Retrieved 2 July 2016. Bottomley also worked as a proof-reader to George Jacob Holyoake and Charles Bradlaugh, another leading figure in the secular movement. His biographer, A. J. A. Morris has argued that: "Bottomley bore a striking resemblance to Bradlaugh - not in stature, for he was short and stout, but in features. He countenanced, even encouraged, the rumour that he was the natural child of the great Victorian freethinker." Henry J. Houston, who researched his life, claimed: "It was always a foolish rumour, and never had any more basis than a rather striking facial resemblance between the two men. If Bradlaugh had been Bottomley's father he was the type of man who would have looked after his son, and not left him to struggle with the world as he did in the early days." It is possible that Bottomley was the source of the rumour as he did not like the idea of his father dying in Bethleham Hospital. Journalism