Arthur Kenneth Chesterton (1 May 1899 – 16 August 1973) was a British journalist and political activist. From 1933 to 1938, he was a member of the British Union of Fascists (BUF). Disillusioned with Oswald Mosley, he left the BUF in 1938. Chesterton established the League of Empire Loyalists in 1954, which merged with a short-lived British National Party in 1967 to become the National Front. He founded and edited the magazine Candour in 1954 as the successor of Truth, of which he had been co-editor.
Biography[]
Arthur Kenneth Chesterton was born on 1 May 1899 in Krugersdorp, South African Republic. In October 1915, Chesterton's mother and step-father visited him in England, and he persuaded them to bring him back to South Africa. Shortly after disembarking, Chesterton decided to join the army, but too young to enlist at 16, he falsified his age to enroll in the 5th South African Light Infantry to fight in German East Africa. After a period of convalescence, then aged 17, Chesterton decided to join the army again and went to Ireland to train as an officer with a cadet battalion. In August 1918, he received his commission as second lieutenant and was transferred to the 2/2 Battalion, City of London Regiment, Royal Fusiliers. Chesterton served over two years on the Western Front. At the end of the war, he was awarded the Military Cross for his actions during the battle of Épehy on 18–19 September 1918. Between 1929 and 1931, he worked as a journalist for the Torquay Times, and served as the chairman of the South Devon branch of the National Union of Journalists. In November 1933 Chesterton joined the British Union of Fascists (BUF) while still employed by the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, after being recruited by Rex Tremlett, his former schoolmate at Berkhamsted and then the editor of BUF's newspapers Fascist Week and The Blackshirt. In the late 1930s Chesterton became gradually disillusioned with the myth of "The Leader" and came to lose confidence in Mosley after 1937. On 18 March 1938, he resigned from the BUF; Mosley soon had his memory erased from the history of the party. The same year, Chesterton attended a meeting of the National Socialist League (NSL). The NSL published his pamphlet Why I left Mosley in 1938, although Chesterton never joined the organisation. He became involved with the short-lived British Council against European Commitments (BCAE), an anti-Bolshevik movement which had emerged during the Munich crisis to resist war with Germany, and he contributed to Lord Lymington's journal New Pioneer. In 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, Chesterton re-enlisted in the British Army and served in Kenya and Somaliland. He relapsed into alcoholism and relinquished his commission on grounds of ill health in the spring of 1943. Upon his return to Britain, he set up the short-lived National Front after Victory (NF after V) and was involved with the relaunched British Peoples Party. In August 1943, the Daily Worker published an attack on Chesterton accusing him of treachery for his past association with William Joyce. Chesterton sued the Daily Worker and The Jewish Chronicle, which had repeated the accusation, for libel. The case was dropped for lack of funds, but Chesterton did manage to elicit an apology. In September 1944, he was appointed deputy editor of Truth. In February 1945 Chesterton helped establish the National Front, a coalition of underground minor fascist groups with policies including the safeguarding of a strong "national and Empire economy", preserving Christian traditions and finding "an honourable, just and lasting solution" to the "real Jewish problem". Following the collapse of the National Front due to infighting, Chesterton founded in 1954 the League of Empire Loyalists (LEL), a political pressure group which gathered many future far-right leaders the likes of Colin Jordan, John Bean, John Tyndall, or Martin Webster. The movement was publicly known in the 1950s for its political stunts, especially in interrupting Conservative conferences while chanting "Save the Empire" and "Tory Traitors". At the end of his life, Chesterton became increasingly ill from the emphysema he had contracted in the gas attack during World War I, living part-time in his native South Africa. Chesterton spent the remainder of his days editing Candour until his death from emphysema on 16 August 1973, aged 74.