
Arnold Spencer Leese (16 November 1878 – 18 January 1956) was a British fascist politician. Leese was initially prominent as a veterinary expert on camels.
Biography[]
Leese was born on 16 November 1878 in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, England. Leese was educated at Giggleswick School. An only child, his childhood was characterised by loneliness. The death of his father in 1894 left the family in financial difficulties, forcing Leese to leave boarding school. After graduating in 1903, Leese first worked as an equine clinician in London, then accepted a post at the Civil Veterinary Department in India in 1907, where he became an expert on the camel. He worked in India for six years, largely along the North-West Frontier, then was transferred to Italian Somaliland to work for the East Africa Government's veterinary department, where he was posted at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. During the First World War, Leese was commissioned in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, then served as a Camel Purchase Officer to the Somaliland Remount Commission with the Camel Corps, and in France on the Western Front as a Veterinary Officer for the Advanced Horse Transport Depot. During the war, he married May Winifred King, the daughter of his former landlord. Leese returned to England and settled in Stamford, Lincolnshire, practising as a vet until retirement in June 1928. In the early 1920s, Leese became interested in Italian Fascism and he developed a fascination with the Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. In April 1923, he wrote a short pamphlet, Fascism for Old England, praising the Duce and highlighting the "significance of fascism for Britain". In 1929, Leese established his own organization, the Imperial Fascist League (IFL). The movement was initially modelled more along the lines of Italian fascism but, under the influence of Henry Hamilton Beamish, it began to focus on anti-semitism. The IFL and its extensive publishing interests were funded out of Leese's own pocket. In 1932, Oswald Mosley approached Leese with the aim of absorbing the IFL into his own British Union of Fascists. Although relations between the two men were initially cordial (Leese had addressed a New Party meeting on 27 April 1932 on the theme of "The Blindness of British Politics under the Jew Money-Power" that was chaired by Mosley), Leese soon attacked Mosley for his failure to deal with the "Jewish question", and he eventually labelled Mosley's group "kosher fascists". Leese was one of the last leaders of the fascist movement to be interned in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the Second World War under the Defence Regulation 18B. Leese, who claimed that his primary loyalty was to Britain, had been somewhat critical of Adolf Hitler since the start of the war and he reacted with bitter anger when an internment order was issued for him in June 1940. Soon after the end of the Second World War, Leese set up his own "Jewish Information Bureau" and began publishing his own journal, Gothic Ripples, which was largely concerned with attacking the Jews. Leese died 18 January 1956, aged 77.