Alexander Ratcliffe

Alexander Ratcliffe (* 1888 in Bo'ness ; † 1947 ) was a Scottish evangelical politician and publicist. He founded the Scottish Protestant League in 1920 , which was briefly politically successful in Glasgow in the early 1930s . He represented a militant and fundamentalist Protestantism , radical anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism . He has questioned the Nazi murder of Jews since 1943 and is therefore one of the first Holocaust deniers .

Life

Little is known of Ratcliffe's youth. He was born into a religious family and developed militant Protestantism at the age of about 18 after attending an event by Pastor Jacob Primmer . At times he was a member of the Orange Order . He initially worked as an employee at the railroad, but found that he could also make a living with his religious activism as a speaker, publicist and politician. In 1920 he founded the Scottish Protestant League (SPL) in Edinburgh . From 1922 Ratcliffe worked as the leading author of his newspaper The Protestant Advocate and the successor papers Protestant Vanguard (from 1931 to 1933 and from 1944 to 1946) and Vanguard (from 1933 to 1944 and 1947). As a speaker, he filled the largest halls in Glasgow and the surrounding area at public appearances.

In 1929, as a Protestant and progressive candidate, Ratcliffe applied unsuccessfully for a political mandate in Stirling and Falkirk . After moving to Glasgow in 1930, he was elected to the city council for the SPL in 1931. Politically, he combined populist demands with religious propaganda and militant anti-Catholicism. But he has meanwhile also criticized the Orange Order. Ratcliffe wrote a play about mixed marriages , The Trial of Fr Diamond , which caused rioting in performances. In the city council he made a name for himself as an opponent of corruption and the waste of public funds. The SPL's political success was short-lived. After the SPL had achieved its largest share of the vote in the Glasgow local elections in 1933 with 23%, Ratcliffe lost not only his mandate, but also control over the SPL, which fell out within factions. Although he sympathized for a time with the Scottish fascism of the Scottish Democratic Fascist Party (1933). However, this soon canceled its anti-Catholic program points and sank into political insignificance.

As a result, Ratcliffe expressed himself more and more clearly in the sense of a conspiracy - theoretical anti-Semitism. He sympathized with the American Ku Klux Klan , especially with its anti-Catholicism and religious fundamentalism , and founded the Knights of Kaledonia Klan , which also provided his bodyguards. In his newspaper Vanguard he published anti-Semitic articles such as an article on the " Protocols of the Elders of Zion ". After visiting Germany in 1939 he became a public supporter of Adolf Hitler and remained decidedly pro-German even after the outbreak of World War II . At the same time, he broke away from specifically Scottish issues and converted his organization to the British Protestant League (BPL). Ratcliffe believed British public opinion was manipulated by Catholics and Jews and criticized the role the UK played in the 1919 Paris Peace Conference . Even after the end of National Socialism , he continued to support Hitler and radicalized his anti-Semitism. Ratcliffe himself did not consider himself an anti-Semite, but merely a "critic" of Judaism.

Ratcliffe's paranoid fear that British society was controlled by Jews was particularly evident in his anti-Semitic and conspiracy theoretic pamphlet The Truth about the Jews! from 1943, which contemporaries have compared to the striker Julius Streichers . The British authorities considered a ban, but refrained from doing so because Scottish law did not provide a handle against anti-Semitic publications and fear of another anti-Semitic campaign. Ratcliffe was in closer contact with British anti-Semites such as Arnold Leese . Ratcliffe's anti-Semitism was not racially but religiously motivated. In terms of his conspiracy theories and his hostility to Jews, he was one of the first to deny the Holocaust by dismissing the reports on the Nazi persecution of the Jews that had already been transmitted during the war as "atrocity propaganda". Even after the war, he denied the evidential value of the material that was presented at the Nuremberg trials because Jews were involved in the investigation.

Fonts

• An exposure of the Margaret Sinclair fiasco. Revealing how Rome traffics on the dead. Scottish Protestant League, Edinburgh 1928.
• Evolution. Hell with the lid off! Scottish Protestant League, Edinburgh [Scotland] 1928.
• "Wake Up Scotland Pamphlets." No. 1-13. Scottish Protestant League, Edinburgh 1928.
• with John C. Duffy: The great Duffy-Ratcliffe debate. On the Education (Scotland) Act, 1918: official verbatim report of Great St Andrew's Hall (Glasgow) Meeting, 2nd April 1928. Scottish Protestant League, Edinburgh 1928.
• Rome, marriage and divorce! A warning against mixed marriages and an exposure of Roman Catholic hypocrisy. Scottish Protestant League, Glasgow 1929.
• The horrible lives of the Popes of Rome. 2nd Edition. Scottish Protestant League, Edinburgh 1929.
• The abominable confessional. Scottish Protestant League, Glasgow 1930.
• What the Church of Rome the first church? A false claim refuted by Alexander Ratcliffe. Scottish Protestant League, Glasgow 1930.
• Liguori, the filthy! A daring exposure of Rome's most immoral of theologians. Scottish Protestant League, Glasgow 1931.
• My week in gaol. Scottish Protestant League, Glasgow 1933.
• with Archibald K. Campbell: A great debate. Should Mr Campbell be put out of the Episcopal church in Scotland? Scottish Protestant League, Glasgow 1934.
• The truth about section 18 of the Education (Scotland) Act, 1918. Scottish Protestant League, Glasgow 1936.
• The truth about religion in Germany! . Published by the Author, Edinburgh 1942.
• The truth about Jesus being a Jew! Bearsden 1943.
• The Truth about the Jews. o. V., o. O. 1943.
• Britain's Protestant Protagonist shows how Protestants are Traitors! etc. [With a portrait.]. British Protestant League, Glasgow 1944.
• The Priest's Immoral Questions to Women! ... third edition. Alexander Ratcliffe, Glasgow 1944.
• The truth about democracy! An exposure. Self-published, Bearsden, Dunbartonshire 1944.
• with BL Quinn: The Priest's substititution for marriage. Why priests don't wed? . Ratcliffe, [Glasgow] 1944.
• The Salvation Army! Its Jewish origin, methods and tyranny. Alexander Ratcliffe, Glasgow 1945.
• Twelve Falsehoods about the Jews! A vindication. Alexander Ratcliffe, Glasgow 1946.

literature

• Tom Gallagher: Glasgow - the uneasy peace. Religious tension in modern Scotland. Manchester University Press, Manchester 1987, ISBN 0719023963 .
• Colin Holmes: Alexander Ratcliffe, Militant Protestant and Antisemite . In: Tony Kushner and Kenneth Lunn (eds.): Traditions of intolerance. Historical Perspectives on Fascism and Race Discourse in Britain. Manchester University Press, Manchester 1989, ISBN 9780719028984 , pp. 196-217.

Web links

• Literature by and about Alexander Ratcliffe in the WorldCat bibliographic database