Arthur Kenneth Chesterton MC (1896 – 16 August 1973) was a far right-wing politician and journalist who helped found right-wing organisations in Britain, primarily in opposition to the break-up of the British Empire, and later adopting a broader anti-immigration stance. He is not to be confused with his cousin, the author G. K. Chesterton, who was anti-imperialist and a critic of what he called "the "solemn fools of Teutonism" - his term for those who claimed the 'Germanic' races were superior to all others (Illustrated London News, 11 January 1919).
Early life
Born in England, A. K. Chesterton was taken with his family to South Africa as a boy and did not return to England until the late 1920s. In 1915, he joined the British colonial army and was sent to East Africa, where he almost died of malaria and dysentery. After officer training, he was on the Western Front in 1917 with the Durban Light Infantry. He was awarded the Military Cross. His war experience was crucial to his repudiation of democracy. The war also left Chesterton broken in health and an alcoholic.
After the war, he was a journalist for the Johannesburg Star. He then traveled to England and secured a job with the Stratford-on-Avon Herald, where, as theatre critic from 1925 to 1929, he cultivated his aesthetic sense of societal decadence and cultural decline.
For the next four years, according to Chesterton's biographer, David Baker,[1]he tilted at windmills and sharpened his skills as a controversialist while the Great Depression deepened and the bankruptcy of liberal and capitalist democracy became apparent. The corporate state, he came to believe, would rule in the interests of the whole nation, whereas democracy was the plaything of special interests and privilege.
Fascism
Moving to London and marrying a Fabian socialist and pacifist, Chesterton lived near the headquarters of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. He took to dropping by for conversation and argument, and by late 1933 he had joined the movement. He became the director of publicity and propaganda and chief organiser for the Midlands.
In 1936, alcoholism and overwork led to a nervous breakdown. He consulted a German neurologist and in 1936-7 lived in Germany. After returning to Britain he was appointed editor of the Blackshirt, the official BUF newspaper. This position provided a pulpit for his increasingly anti-Semitic rhetoric.
Initially a strong admirer of Oswald Mosley he left the BUF in 1938, disillusioned, but continued far-right politics by joining the Nordic League and serving as editor of Lord Lymington's right-wing journal, the New Pioneer.
In 1939, Chesterton re-enlisted in the British Army after the outbreak of war. He served in East Africa but returned to Britain in 1944 due to poor health, and launched the short-lived National Front after Victory Group, a coalition that included the British Peoples Party. He became deputy editor of the right-wing publication Truth.
He then returned to Africa for a short time, after which he again returned to Britain where he established the League of Empire Loyalists in 1954. The league was a pressure group against the increasing dissolution of the British Empire, and was known at the time for stunts at Conservative Party meetings and conferences. These included hiding underneath the platform overnight to emerge during the conference to put across points. The league had support from a number of Conservative Party members, although they were disliked by the leadership.
About this time, he was appointed by Lord Beaverbrook as a literary adviser, contributing to the Daily Mail and the Sunday Express. He also wrote the Beaverbrook's autobiography, Don't Trust to Luck.
Chesterton founded and edited the right-wing magazine Candour, which he issued for the rest of his life.
Chesterton went on to co-found the National Front in 1967, still operating in 2008. Chesterton was leader for a short time, although he tried to keep the party free from national socialist extremists. Upon stepping down the first of several long, inter-factional disputes took place within the NF which frequently coloured its policies in ways of which Chesterton did not approve. Today, the NF describes itself as a "white nationalist organisation founded in 1967 in opposition to multi-racialism and immigration", although the term "multi-racialism" was not in common usa in 1967.
Writings
Amongst Chesterton's works are Portrait of a Leader (1937), a hagiography of Mosley; Why I left Mosley (1938), which broke from his earlier work; The Tragedy of Anti-Semitism (1948) in which he distanced himself from this form of prejudice; and The New Unhappy Lords, a diatribe against international finance.
Later life and death
The last 30 years of Chesterton's life were spent in a modest apartment in South Croydon with his wife, Doris. He died on 16 August 1973.
See also
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