John Warburton Beckett (11 October 1894 – 28 December 1964) was a British politician who was a Labour Party MP from 1924 to 1931. During the 1930s, he joined the fascist movement, first in the British Union of Fascists and later as a founder of the National Socialist League. During World War II, he was interned in Britain.
Early life
Beckett was born in Hammersmith, London, the son of William Beckett, a draper, and his wife Dorothy (née Salmon), who had been born into Judaism but abandoned the faith to marry Beckett. According to his son Francis, he was christened Jack William Beckett but assumed the name John Warburton Beckett in 1918.
He was educated at Latymer Upper School until the age of 14 when his father lost all his money in a scheme run by notorious swindler Horatio Bottomley and could no longer afford the fees; as a result the young John was forced to work as an errand boy. On the outbreak of the First World War, he enlisted in the Middlesex Regiment before being transferred to the King's Shropshire Light Infantry soon afterwards. He was invalided out of the army in 1916 because of a heart defect.
Early career
Beckett founded the National Union of Ex-Servicemen in 1918 to look after the needs of the war veterans (although it was eventually absorbed into the later Royal British Legion having failed to gain Labour Party recognition). At this time, he also joined the Independent Labour Party, sitting on Hackney Council from 1919 to 1922.
Beckett first stood for Parliament at the 1923 general election but failed to be elected for Newcastle upon Tyne North. He became the Labour MP for Gateshead in 1924, moving to Peckham in 1929, after which he served as an ILP whip. In these early years, Beckett was considered a close ally of Clement Attlee, alongside whom he had worked as a Labour Party agent before his election to Parliament. He gained attention in 1930 when he lifted the Ceremonial mace during a Commons debate over the suspension of Fenner Brockway and it had to be wrested away from him at the door.
As a campaigner, Beckett was known for his fiery, passionate speeches. Beckett opposed Ramsay MacDonald's formation of the National Government and returned to the ILP fold in 1931, failing to hold his seat, with the vote split between three "Labour" candidates. Retiring from active politics, he visited Italy where he was impressed by the corporate state that had been set up.
Fascism
Beckett joined the British Union of Fascists in 1934 and before long had risen through the party to become Director of Publications and served as an editor of both BUF publications, Action and Blackshirt, for a time. He was arrested outside Buckingham Palace during the Edward VIII abdication crisis and was the only BUF activist to win a court case against its opponents by securing £1,000 in damages in a slander suit against an antifascist organisation although it disbanded before payment was collected. Beckett, however, struggled to reconnect with his former supporters on the left and in 1934 when he returned to Gateshead and Newcastle upon Tyne for speaking engagements he was met with large hostile crowds and shouts of "Traitor". He was forced to cancel one such speaking engagement near Newcastle on 13 May 1934 when a crowd of around 1,000 antifascists rushed the stage on which he was due to speak.
After initial successes, the BUF began to flounder and to devolve into two factions, a militarist one led by Neil Francis Hawkins and F.M. Box, and a more political one that hoped to convert the masses to fascism under Beckett and William Joyce. In 1937, Oswald Mosley sacked Beckett from his salaried position, in part because of a lack of funds but also because of Mosley's increasing support for the Hawkins wing. Beckett soon returned to politics by forming the National Socialist League along with William Joyce, but his membership did not last long as he left the League in 1938, disillusioned by Hitler and arguing that Joyce was being too extremist in his public anti-Semitic outbursts.