Henry Hamilton Beamish

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Henry Hamilton Beamish (June 2, 1873 – March 27, 1948) was a leading British antisemite and the founder of The Britons.

The son of an admiral who had served as an A.D.C. to Queen Victoria, Beamish served in the Second Boer War and settled in South Africa afterwards. It was here, he claimed in a 1919 interview with The Times, that he became convinced of antisemitism as he believed that all of the country's industries were Jewish-owned.[citation needed]

Returning to London in 1918 he set up the Britons as a specifically antisemitic propaganda organisation and also became involved with the Silver Badge Party. He ran as an independent in a by-election in Clapham, on an anti-immigrant platform, supported by the right-wing MP Noel Pemberton Billing, but lost despite attracting 43% of the votes.[1] Along with Lieutenant-Commander E.M. Frazer, Beamish produced a poster in 1919 denouncing Commissioner of Works Sir Alfred Mond (Alfred Mond, 1st Baron Melchett) as a traitor resulting in a libel suit. Mond was successful and was awarded £5000, although Beamish left Britain without paying.[2] Following his departure from Britain, Beamish travelled the world preaching antisemitism. He was one of the earliest developers of the Madagascar Plan for Jewish deportation and spoke in Germany where he claimed, rather dubiously, to have taught Adolf Hitler. In the early 1920s Beamish announced that "Bolshevism was Judaism."[3]

Eventually he settled in Southern Rhodesia, where he served as an independent MP and was interned in 1940 for his pro-Nazi sentiments.[4] He remained President of the Britons until his death in Southern Rhodesia in 1948.

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Times, 22 June 1918.
  2. ^ Philip Hoare, Oscar Wilde's Last Stand, Arcade Publishing (1998), page 212.
  3. ^ James Webb (1976): Occult Establishment: The Dawn of the New Age and The Occult Establishment, (Open Court Publishing), p.130. ISBN 0-87548-434-4
  4. ^ Herbert Arthur Strauss, Hostages of Modernization: Studies on Modern Antisemitism, 1870-1933/39, Walter de Gruyter (1993), page 303. ISBN 3110107767

[edit] Bibliography

  • Robert Benewick, Political Violence and Public Order, London, 1969