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

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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. Hanbury, H.G.; Mooney, Hugh (2004). "Salter, Sir Arthur Clavell". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/35918 . Retrieved 2 July 2014. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) He tried to enter parliament at the age of thirty-one, in 1891, doing well in the poll but nevertheless failing. He did win a seat in 1906, however; during the election he paraded his racehorses through the streets of his constituency bearing slogans in his favor, and in those days such signs of worldly success did not evoke envy or resentment but were admired and rather spoke in his favor. Once elected, he was so good a speaker that none of his fellow members of the House of Commons wanted to miss his speeches, and as sophisticated a lawyer and politician as F. E. Smith (later Lord Birkenhead) believed that Bottomley was the finest parliamentary orator of the latter’s time, which was not long, however. In 1912, after a trial the year before for the recovery of monies that Bottomley had, in effect, embezzled, he was bankrupted, and since no undischarged bankrupt was allowed to sit in parliament, he was compelled to resign. Cox, Howard and Simon Mowatt. "Horatio Bottomley and the Rise of John Bull Magazine: Mobilizing a mass audience in late Edwardian Britain," Media History volume 25, Issue 1 (6 Jul 2018), pp.100–125. Parris, Matthew (11 August 2001). "He was a shameless liar and thief. He went to Wormwood Scrubs. He was a lovable scallywag". The Spectator. p.31. Archived from the original on 17 December 2014 . Retrieved 2 July 2016.

Horatio William Bottomley ( 23 March 1860 – 26 May 1933) was an English journalist, newspaper proprietor, financier, Member of Parliament, and fraudster. His political career was ended by a five-year prison term. I have not had your advantages, gentlemen. What poor education I have received has been gained in the University of Life. In 1914 David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was given the task of setting up a British War Propaganda Bureau (WPB). Lloyd George, appointed the successful writer and fellow Liberal MP, Charles Masterman as head of the organization. The WPB arranged for journalists like Bottomley to visit the Western Front.Horatio’s uncle George Holyoake was an outspoken secularist, and in 1842 he had been the last person in Britain to be convicted of blasphemy in a public lecture. [1] One of his allies was Charles Bradlaugh, who became a mentor to young Horatio. [2] Bradlaugh was an active pamphleteer (he was prosecuted in 1877 for publishing one promoting birth control) and this was Horatio’s first exposure to the world of publishing. It was a growth industry in the late 19th century, and in 1884, just after receiving his partnership, Horatio made his first break into it. To think of Bottomley in his wartime pomp is to see one of the great figures of his age. His magazine John Bull claimed a circulation in excess of two million by 1914, making it by some distance the best-selling news weekly of its day. John Bull pushed itself as the most patriotic publication of a patriotic time. It called on its readers to hate the “Germhuns” and “Austrihuns” against whom Britain was fighting. It taught the British people to keep an equal hatred for those in power, the politicians and the civil servants, by whose insufficient patriotism the war might yet be lost. After the war had ended, Bottomley determined on returning to Parliament. He was still, as he had been throughout the War, an undischarged bankrupt, and he was determined to make a sufficient large fortune so as to clear his debts, and to live in the style which his wartime lectures had subsidised. The method he chose was to issue a private “Victory Bond”, linked in theory to the government’s Victory Loan. If [Bottomley] had a humbug of his own, he made mincemeat of the humbug of others, excoriating the more extreme claims made on behalf of the League of Nations, dismissing most forces in international politics except those based on power and ridiculing the naivest sorts of Labour claim to have discovered an inexhaustible supply of wealth and wages.

When that was rendered impossible by time or distance, almost any feminine society was acceptable as a substitute. His women friends ranged from the highest ladies in the land to the humblest waitress in the grill room of an hotel, and he was equally at home with both types. Bottomley arrived in Brighton in 1875 where he found work work at a jeweller's shop. He lived in a small garret bedroom over a chandler's shop at 3, Little East Street. During this period he was also a member of the local debating society. Bottomley eventually returned to London and in 1877 he found employment as an office boy in an ironworks in Euston Road and lodged with a widow in Battersea. He enrolled at Pitman's College and in 1879 joined a firm of legal shorthand writers, in Holywell Street. 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. The disciplined minds that go from [their university's] walls will be its jewels…It will worthily introduce them to the University of Life." ~ The New Englander and Yale Review (February 1853), p. 70.Cox, Howard. "Horatio Bottomley and the Making of John Bull Magazine". CPHC . Retrieved 6 July 2016. In politics, independents have more tangled roots. Not all of those who are described as political independents are virtuous free thinkers. Far from it. Paraphrasing Malvolio, you could say of independents that some are born independent, some become independent, and many have a form of independence thrust unwillingly upon them. This opens up a new source of income, Houston," he said to me, as we discussed the lectures in the train." It has surprised even you, hasn't it? You must set to work in earnest now and get me booked up three days a week all over the country." Australian Press Association (19 February 1930). "Second marriage. Horatio Bottomley's daughter". The Brisbane Courier. p.10.