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English Mistery
The English Mistery ("Mistery" being an old word for a guild) was a political and esoteric group active in the United Kingdom of the 1930s. A "Conservative fringe group" in favour of bringing back the feudal system, its views have been characterised as "reactionary, ultra-royalist, and anti-democratic". The organisation was opposed to social welfare, the London School of Economics, and the United States.
The London barrister William John Sanderson (1883–1941) was the son of W. J. Sanderson of Gosforth, educated at Marlborough College, and graduating LL.B. at Jesus College, Cambridge; he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1906. He was, before World War I, at the centre of a group of "Royalist and Loyalist" young men. Some of those were associated with the chambers of F. E. Smith; and very many of them died in the war in France. In 1917, he founded the Order of the Red Rose, an anti-Semitic group opposed to finance capitalism, with the zoologist George Percival Mudge, and the academic Arthur Gray.
Sanderson had notions that if the mystical "lost secrets" of the English could be discovered, then the sort of society he envisioned could be created or as he saw it recreated. The "lost secrets" of the English that Sanderson sought were the "Secret of Memory" as opposed to the "paraphernalia of learning"; the "Secret of Race" as only Englishmen with good genes would have sex with Englishwomen of equally good genes; the "Secret of Government"; the "Secret of Power" which had been destroyed by "industrial ideals"; the "Secret of Organisation"; the "Secret of Property" (i.e. feudalism as a social system); and the "Secret of Economics" which had lost due to "moneyed interests". He knew of Italian Fascism through the work of Harold Goad. In a letter of 1937, he wrote of his personal contacts with Camillo Pellizzi (it:Camillo Pellizzi), Luigi Villari and Dino Grandi. He joined the Imperial Fascist League. In his pamphlet, An Introduction to the English Mistery, Sanderson wrote that there were two types of "aliens", namely "the Dutch, Danes and other peoples of north-west Europe" vs. "some races on the other hand differ very widely from us both in character and tradition". Sanderson was described by all who knew him as a deeply unpleasant man with repulsive views such as his statement that people who became seriously ill did not deserve sympathy and that God only cared about the lives of rich people. The fact that Sanderson was a very small man whose own illness left him unable to walk did not stop him from preaching the doctrine that only the lives of healthy, attractive, and well off people mattered as he had no compassion for the poor and/or the sick.
Dan Stone has stated that the importance of the English Mistery lay "in the fact that it had links, both personal and ideological, with much wider strands of thought in interwar Britain." Sanderson founded the group in 1930, to promote his view of leadership. It took its title from his book of that year, That Which Was Lost: A Treatise on Freemasonry and the English Mistery.
Close colleagues of Sanderson in the founding group of English Mistery were Bryant Godman Irvine, Ben Shaw and Norman Swan. Conservative MPs Michael Beaumont and Reginald Dorman-Smith joined. Later Beaumont left: both he and Dorman-Smith found the Mistery inactive in practical terms.[full citation needed] Beaumont in 1930 introduced Gerard Wallop (courtesy title Viscount Lymington to 1943) to Sanderson; Wallop found him to be "a very short physically myopic Northumbrian". Wallop accepted Sanderson's offer to become the "executive leader" of the Mistery. By 1933, it was said that Wallop had "attracted around him a band of devoted young men, known collectively as the English Mistery, who seek the ideal of aristocratic rule" in a "semi-masonic order". Wallop eventually split the group in 1936, forming his successor organisation, the English Array.
John Platts-Mills belonged to the group; he was recruited in 1931 via the Apollo University Lodge in Oxford and Godman Irvine, being driven to Lincoln's Inn to meet Sanderson. His autobiography records that at this time Sanderson held weekly soirées, largely social, and more intense Thursday meetings at which short papers were read. He gained a pupillage in 1932, at 5 Essex Court Chambers, and almost simultaneously had an offer to stand for parliament from the Duke of Devonshire, to replace Edward Marjoribanks. He left the Mistery over its anti-Semitism, with the rise of Hitler. His flat at 2, Paper Buildings, Inner Temple, was reportedly used for meetings of the Mistery for a time. He mentions as members John de Rutzen, John Davenport, and John Dennis Fowler Green (1909–2000) who became a BBC radio producer.
The Mistery's members included the British Nietzschean Anthony Ludovici,[full citation needed] a prolific writer for the movement and former of its ideology, and the journalist Collin Brooks, member of both the Grosvenor Kin and St James Kin in London. Others were Rolf Gardiner, Peter Kemp, and Graham Seton Hutchison, founder in 1933 of the pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic National Workers' Movement, and the retired army officer Cecil de Sausmarez. Hutchison worked in the pay of Alfred Rosenberg, the "official philosopher" of the NSDAP who also headed the Außenpolitisches Amt (Foreign Policy Office) of the NSDAP.
As for the British Union of Fascists, many of the group's members were "aristocratic revivalists and Diehard peers of the Edwardian period". Henry William John Edwards wrote in 1938 (referring though to 1935) of "a Nietzschean Tory of the kind which finds a way into membership of the English Mistery". A private dinner for the English Mistery took place on 29 April 1939, in the Grand Hotel, Hanley, Staffordshire. The 40 to 50 men who attended wore red roses. The officers of the Mistery were Thomas Scott-Ellis, 8th Baron Howard de Walden (High Steward), with William Sanderson, Roger Gresham Cooke, John Green and Henry Snell.
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English Mistery
The English Mistery ("Mistery" being an old word for a guild) was a political and esoteric group active in the United Kingdom of the 1930s. A "Conservative fringe group" in favour of bringing back the feudal system, its views have been characterised as "reactionary, ultra-royalist, and anti-democratic". The organisation was opposed to social welfare, the London School of Economics, and the United States.
The London barrister William John Sanderson (1883–1941) was the son of W. J. Sanderson of Gosforth, educated at Marlborough College, and graduating LL.B. at Jesus College, Cambridge; he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1906. He was, before World War I, at the centre of a group of "Royalist and Loyalist" young men. Some of those were associated with the chambers of F. E. Smith; and very many of them died in the war in France. In 1917, he founded the Order of the Red Rose, an anti-Semitic group opposed to finance capitalism, with the zoologist George Percival Mudge, and the academic Arthur Gray.
Sanderson had notions that if the mystical "lost secrets" of the English could be discovered, then the sort of society he envisioned could be created or as he saw it recreated. The "lost secrets" of the English that Sanderson sought were the "Secret of Memory" as opposed to the "paraphernalia of learning"; the "Secret of Race" as only Englishmen with good genes would have sex with Englishwomen of equally good genes; the "Secret of Government"; the "Secret of Power" which had been destroyed by "industrial ideals"; the "Secret of Organisation"; the "Secret of Property" (i.e. feudalism as a social system); and the "Secret of Economics" which had lost due to "moneyed interests". He knew of Italian Fascism through the work of Harold Goad. In a letter of 1937, he wrote of his personal contacts with Camillo Pellizzi (it:Camillo Pellizzi), Luigi Villari and Dino Grandi. He joined the Imperial Fascist League. In his pamphlet, An Introduction to the English Mistery, Sanderson wrote that there were two types of "aliens", namely "the Dutch, Danes and other peoples of north-west Europe" vs. "some races on the other hand differ very widely from us both in character and tradition". Sanderson was described by all who knew him as a deeply unpleasant man with repulsive views such as his statement that people who became seriously ill did not deserve sympathy and that God only cared about the lives of rich people. The fact that Sanderson was a very small man whose own illness left him unable to walk did not stop him from preaching the doctrine that only the lives of healthy, attractive, and well off people mattered as he had no compassion for the poor and/or the sick.
Dan Stone has stated that the importance of the English Mistery lay "in the fact that it had links, both personal and ideological, with much wider strands of thought in interwar Britain." Sanderson founded the group in 1930, to promote his view of leadership. It took its title from his book of that year, That Which Was Lost: A Treatise on Freemasonry and the English Mistery.
Close colleagues of Sanderson in the founding group of English Mistery were Bryant Godman Irvine, Ben Shaw and Norman Swan. Conservative MPs Michael Beaumont and Reginald Dorman-Smith joined. Later Beaumont left: both he and Dorman-Smith found the Mistery inactive in practical terms.[full citation needed] Beaumont in 1930 introduced Gerard Wallop (courtesy title Viscount Lymington to 1943) to Sanderson; Wallop found him to be "a very short physically myopic Northumbrian". Wallop accepted Sanderson's offer to become the "executive leader" of the Mistery. By 1933, it was said that Wallop had "attracted around him a band of devoted young men, known collectively as the English Mistery, who seek the ideal of aristocratic rule" in a "semi-masonic order". Wallop eventually split the group in 1936, forming his successor organisation, the English Array.
John Platts-Mills belonged to the group; he was recruited in 1931 via the Apollo University Lodge in Oxford and Godman Irvine, being driven to Lincoln's Inn to meet Sanderson. His autobiography records that at this time Sanderson held weekly soirées, largely social, and more intense Thursday meetings at which short papers were read. He gained a pupillage in 1932, at 5 Essex Court Chambers, and almost simultaneously had an offer to stand for parliament from the Duke of Devonshire, to replace Edward Marjoribanks. He left the Mistery over its anti-Semitism, with the rise of Hitler. His flat at 2, Paper Buildings, Inner Temple, was reportedly used for meetings of the Mistery for a time. He mentions as members John de Rutzen, John Davenport, and John Dennis Fowler Green (1909–2000) who became a BBC radio producer.
The Mistery's members included the British Nietzschean Anthony Ludovici,[full citation needed] a prolific writer for the movement and former of its ideology, and the journalist Collin Brooks, member of both the Grosvenor Kin and St James Kin in London. Others were Rolf Gardiner, Peter Kemp, and Graham Seton Hutchison, founder in 1933 of the pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic National Workers' Movement, and the retired army officer Cecil de Sausmarez. Hutchison worked in the pay of Alfred Rosenberg, the "official philosopher" of the NSDAP who also headed the Außenpolitisches Amt (Foreign Policy Office) of the NSDAP.
As for the British Union of Fascists, many of the group's members were "aristocratic revivalists and Diehard peers of the Edwardian period". Henry William John Edwards wrote in 1938 (referring though to 1935) of "a Nietzschean Tory of the kind which finds a way into membership of the English Mistery". A private dinner for the English Mistery took place on 29 April 1939, in the Grand Hotel, Hanley, Staffordshire. The 40 to 50 men who attended wore red roses. The officers of the Mistery were Thomas Scott-Ellis, 8th Baron Howard de Walden (High Steward), with William Sanderson, Roger Gresham Cooke, John Green and Henry Snell.
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