Robert Gordon-Canning

Robert Cecil Gordon-Canning (born June 23, 1888 in Hartpury , Gloucestershire , † January 4, 1967 ) was a British political activist .

Life and activity

Gordon-Canning was a son of William James Gordon-Canning and his wife Clara, nee. Bailey. According to some sources, the poet George Gordon Byron was Gordon-Canning's great-grandfather.

After attending the Eton School, Gordon-Canning embarked on a military career: in 1906 he joined the British Army, in which he was assigned to the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars on November 15, 1906. On March 14, 1912 he reached the rank of lieutenant in the 10th British Hussar Regiment (Prince of Walrs's Own Royal Hussars).

From 1914 to 1918 Gordon-Canning took part in the First World War. During the war he was awarded the Military Cross (June 1917) and promoted to captain (provisionally on November 14, 1914, finally on May 5, 1915). In March 1919 he was assigned to the General Reserve of Officers. On August 19, 1925, he finally resigned from the army.

In the 1920s, Gordon-Canning became a staunch supporter of Arab nationalism. So he spoke out in favor of the release of Morocco to independence and traveled the country several times, whereby his travels inspired him to write several fiction books. Later he visited the then United Kingdom on behalf of the League of Nations administered Palestine .

In the 1930s, Gordon-Canning became one of the leading public advocates of fascist ideology in Britain. In 1934 he officially joined the British Union of Fascists (BUF) led by Oswald Mosley , in which he soon assumed a prominent role. This suggested u. a. that he visited the German Reich ruled by the National Socialists several times and was received by high-ranking representatives of the regime during his visits. In Great Britain he played golf regularly with the German ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop . In October 1936 he also took part in the wedding of Oswald Mosley with Diana Mitford in the house of the German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels , where he acted as best man. Ideologically, Gordon-Canning met the German National Socialists particularly in his resolute anti-Semitism, which was a product of his pro-Arab sympathies with regard to the conflict of property claims for the territory of Palestine.

As the BUF's expert on foreign policy - and his party's official "director" in this area - Gordon-Canning wrote numerous articles for fascist publications such as Fascist Weekly and Blackshirt from 1935 to 1939 , in which he propagated his party's foreign policy program. He also coined the BUF's foreign policy slogan: "Mind Britain's Business" (meaning: "Let's take care of our own business."). With this, the party attempted its position that Great Britain should not oppose the aggressive expansion course of the fascist regimes on the European continent - and should not support the small and medium powers threatened by these regimes - but rather grant them unhindered as (benevolent) neutral observers to take care of the continued existence of the British overseas empire, to make it popular with the population.

Gordon-Canning was instrumental in the financing of the BUF newspaper Action and was chairman of its board of directors.

In 1939, after a disagreement with Mosley, Gordon-Canning withdrew from the BUF and instead joined other similarly oriented groups such as the British People's Party.

Around a year after the start of the Second World War , Gordon-Canning was interned by the British authorities as a potential threat to public order and security in July 1940 - when the war situation for Great Britain was particularly threatening and critical - according to the provisions of Defense Regulation 18B from which he was released in 1943. The reason for his internment was his well-known sympathy for National Socialist Germany as Great Britain's most important war opponent.

After the start of the war, Gordon-Canning was classified as an important target by the National Socialist police forces: In the spring of 1940 the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin put him on the special wanted list GB , a directory of people whom the Nazi surveillance apparatus considered particularly dangerous or important, which is why they should be in the case A successful invasion and occupation of the British Isles by the Wehrmacht should be located and arrested by the occupying troops following special SS commandos with special priority.

After the war, Gordon-Canning lived alternately at his Sandilands country estate in Sandwich and an apartment in London. As he continued to be a staunch anti-Semite and a sympathizer of Arab nationalism, he made his apartment available for meetings of representatives of this tendency who were in London.

Gordon-Canning caused a public sensation in 1945 when he bought a 500-pound representative Hitler bust from the holdings of the dissolved German embassy in London (adjusted for inflation, this corresponds to a value in today's purchasing power of around 20,000 pounds or 30,000 euros), with hints regarding his continued devotion to the dead dictator.

family

From 1939 to 1944 Gordon-Canning was married to the Australian actress Mary Maguire. The marriage resulted in a son, Michael (* 1941), who died as an infant. In 1952 Gordon-Canning married for the second time.

Fonts

• Flashlights from Afar , 1920.
• A Pagan Shrine , 1922.
• The Death of Akbar and other Poems , 1923.
• Some Aims and Principles of British Fascism in the Conduct of Imperial and Foreign Affairs , London 1936.
• Arab or Jew? 1938.

literature

• Dirk Sasse: "Robert Gordon-Canning and the Riff Committee", in: Ders .: " French, British and Germans in the Rif War 1921-1926: Speculators and sympathizers, deserters and gamblers in the service of Abdelkarim , Munich 2006, p. 316– 345.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Entry on Robert Gordon-Canning on the special wanted list GB .