Frank Ridley

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Francis "Frank" Ambrose Ridley (born February 22, 1897 , † March 27, 1994 in London ) was a British journalist.

Life and activity

After attending Sedbergh School and Salisbury Theological College, Ridley decided against a career in the church, but gained a theological license from Durham University.

Politically oriented Ridley soon turned far to the left: In 1930 he took part in the founding of the Marxian League, which at times approached Trotskyism, but in 1931 turned sharply away from it. Instead, Ridley joined the Independent Labor Party, for whose newspaper he then wrote regularly. In addition to the journalistic level, Ridley also appeared as a public speaker as an advocate of Marxist-socialist ideas: From 1925 to 1964 he gave weekly promotional speeches in favor of his ideology at the Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, London.

Due to his exposed activities in the camp of the British political left, Ridley came into the sights of the National Socialist police forces in the late 1930s, who classified him as an important target: According to Al Richardson, the book Next Year's War from 1936 in particular brought him the hatred of the rulers of the Hitler dictatorship a. In the spring of 1940, the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a list of people who were classified as particularly important or dangerous by the Nazi surveillance apparatus, who would be followed by special commands from the occupying forces in the event of a successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht The SS should be located and arrested with special priority.

From 1951 to 1953 Ridley served as President of the National Secular Society, the association of atheists of Great Britain, whose organ The Freethinker he also published from 1951 to 1954.

Fonts

  • The Assassins , London, 1935.
  • Mussolini over Africa , London 1935.
  • At the Cross Roads of History (On the present social and economic crisis) , London 1935.
  • Next Year's War , 1936.
  • Julian the Apostate and the Rise of Christianity , London 1937.
  • The Papacy and Fascism: The Crisis of the Twentieth Century , London 1937.
  • The Jesuits: A Study in Counter Revolution , London 1938.
  • Fascism - What Is It? , London 1941.
  • Socialism and Religion , p. a. [1940]
  • Revolutionary Tradition in England, London: National Labor Press , 1947.
  • The Evolution of the Papacy , London 1949.
  • Pope John and the Cold War , Kenardington 1961.
  • Spartacus , Kenardington 1961.
  • Reminiscences of Hyde Park, Hyde Park Pamphlet no.7 , London 1985
  • Fascism Down The Ages: from Caesar to Hitler , London 1988.

literature

  • Robert Morrell: The Gentle Revolutionary: The Life and Work of Frank Ridley, Socialist and Secularist , 2003.
  • Al Richardson, "FA Ridley (1897-1994): An Appreciation," in: Revolutionary History , Vol. 5, No. 2 (Spring 1994), pp. 107-29.

Web links

proof

  1. ^ Entry on Ridley on the special wanted list GB (reproduced on the website of the Imperial War Museum).
personal data
SURNAME Ridley, Frank
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ridley, Francis Ambrose (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British journalist
DATE OF BIRTH February 22, 1897
DATE OF DEATH March 27, 1994
Place of death London