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Arnold Leese
Arnold Spencer Leese (16 November 1878 – 18 January 1956) was a British fascist politician. Leese was initially prominent as a veterinary expert on camels. A virulent anti-Semite, he led his own fascist movement, the Imperial Fascist League, and was a prolific author and publisher of polemics both before and after the Second World War.
Leese was born on 16 November 1878 in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, England, the son of Spencer Leese, a manufacturer and artist. He was a nephew of Sir Joseph Francis Leese, 1st Baronet (1845–1914), and a second cousin of Sir Oliver Leese, 3rd Baronet (1894–1978). He had five sisters and one brother.
Leese was educated at Giggleswick School. The death of his father in 1894 left the family in financial difficulties, forcing Leese to leave boarding school. He nonetheless attended the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons thanks to the financial help of his grandfather.
After graduating in 1903, Leese first worked as an equine clinician in London, then accepted a post at the Civil Veterinary Department in India in 1907, where he became an expert on the camel. He worked in India for six years, largely along the North-West Frontier, then was transferred to Italian Somaliland to work for the East Africa Government's veterinary department, where he was posted at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.
Leese was recognised as a leading authority on the camel and published several articles on this animal and its maladies, the first appearing in The Journal of Tropical Veterinary Science in 1909. A camel parasite, Thelazia leesei was named after him by Louis-Joseph Alcide Railliet in 1910. In 1927, he published A Treatise on the One-Humped Camel in Health and in Disease, which would remain a standard work in India for fifty years.
During the First World War, Leese was commissioned in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, then served as a Camel Purchase Officer to the Somaliland Remount Commission with the Camel Corps, and in France on the Western Front as a Veterinary Officer for the Advanced Horse Transport Depot. During the war, he married May Winifred King, the daughter of his former landlord. Leese returned to England and settled in Stamford, Lincolnshire, practising as a vet until retirement in June 1928.
In the early 1920s, Leese became interested in Italian Fascism and he developed a fascination with the Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. In April 1923, he wrote a short pamphlet, Fascism for Old England, praising the Duce and highlighting the "significance of fascism for Britain". He joined the British Fascists (BF) soon after its creation in May 1923, establishing his own branch in Stamford in March 1924, which soon gained 80 members. Leese despised however the BF policy of allowing former socialists and Jews in the party, contending that it was "honeycombed" with communist infiltrators. He further wrote that the BF "did not understand Fascism at all", the true nature of which was to Leese a "revolt against democracy and a return to statesmanship". An animal lover, he also claimed that the style of slaughter practised in Judaism influenced his anti-semitism.
Leese joined the Centre International d'Études sur le Fascisme (CINEF), an international 'think tank' based in Switzerland whose aim was the promotion of fascism, and served as its British correspondent. He also became close to one of his neighbours, the economist Arthur Kitson, a member of The Britons. Their friendship lasted until Kitson's death in 1937. The latter persuaded Leese that control of money was the key to power and that money was ultimately controlled by the Jews. Kitson supplied him with a copy of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, on which Leese wrote, "Everything in this little book rang true, I simply could not put it down until I had finished it." Leese also revered The Britons' founder Henry Hamilton Beamish as an anti-Jewish "pioneer". In 1924, he was elected a councillor to Stamford Borough Council along with fellow fascist Harry Simpson, becoming the first elected fascist councillors in Britain. The British Fascists had generally chosen not to intervene in "the despised democratic system", and Leese's own contempt for democracy seems to have been paradoxically reinforced by the election. He wrote, "Many people I knew voted for me because I had cured their pigs or pets and without the slightest idea what I stood for".
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Arnold Leese
Arnold Spencer Leese (16 November 1878 – 18 January 1956) was a British fascist politician. Leese was initially prominent as a veterinary expert on camels. A virulent anti-Semite, he led his own fascist movement, the Imperial Fascist League, and was a prolific author and publisher of polemics both before and after the Second World War.
Leese was born on 16 November 1878 in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, England, the son of Spencer Leese, a manufacturer and artist. He was a nephew of Sir Joseph Francis Leese, 1st Baronet (1845–1914), and a second cousin of Sir Oliver Leese, 3rd Baronet (1894–1978). He had five sisters and one brother.
Leese was educated at Giggleswick School. The death of his father in 1894 left the family in financial difficulties, forcing Leese to leave boarding school. He nonetheless attended the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons thanks to the financial help of his grandfather.
After graduating in 1903, Leese first worked as an equine clinician in London, then accepted a post at the Civil Veterinary Department in India in 1907, where he became an expert on the camel. He worked in India for six years, largely along the North-West Frontier, then was transferred to Italian Somaliland to work for the East Africa Government's veterinary department, where he was posted at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.
Leese was recognised as a leading authority on the camel and published several articles on this animal and its maladies, the first appearing in The Journal of Tropical Veterinary Science in 1909. A camel parasite, Thelazia leesei was named after him by Louis-Joseph Alcide Railliet in 1910. In 1927, he published A Treatise on the One-Humped Camel in Health and in Disease, which would remain a standard work in India for fifty years.
During the First World War, Leese was commissioned in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, then served as a Camel Purchase Officer to the Somaliland Remount Commission with the Camel Corps, and in France on the Western Front as a Veterinary Officer for the Advanced Horse Transport Depot. During the war, he married May Winifred King, the daughter of his former landlord. Leese returned to England and settled in Stamford, Lincolnshire, practising as a vet until retirement in June 1928.
In the early 1920s, Leese became interested in Italian Fascism and he developed a fascination with the Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. In April 1923, he wrote a short pamphlet, Fascism for Old England, praising the Duce and highlighting the "significance of fascism for Britain". He joined the British Fascists (BF) soon after its creation in May 1923, establishing his own branch in Stamford in March 1924, which soon gained 80 members. Leese despised however the BF policy of allowing former socialists and Jews in the party, contending that it was "honeycombed" with communist infiltrators. He further wrote that the BF "did not understand Fascism at all", the true nature of which was to Leese a "revolt against democracy and a return to statesmanship". An animal lover, he also claimed that the style of slaughter practised in Judaism influenced his anti-semitism.
Leese joined the Centre International d'Études sur le Fascisme (CINEF), an international 'think tank' based in Switzerland whose aim was the promotion of fascism, and served as its British correspondent. He also became close to one of his neighbours, the economist Arthur Kitson, a member of The Britons. Their friendship lasted until Kitson's death in 1937. The latter persuaded Leese that control of money was the key to power and that money was ultimately controlled by the Jews. Kitson supplied him with a copy of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, on which Leese wrote, "Everything in this little book rang true, I simply could not put it down until I had finished it." Leese also revered The Britons' founder Henry Hamilton Beamish as an anti-Jewish "pioneer". In 1924, he was elected a councillor to Stamford Borough Council along with fellow fascist Harry Simpson, becoming the first elected fascist councillors in Britain. The British Fascists had generally chosen not to intervene in "the despised democratic system", and Leese's own contempt for democracy seems to have been paradoxically reinforced by the election. He wrote, "Many people I knew voted for me because I had cured their pigs or pets and without the slightest idea what I stood for".