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Gerard Wallop, 9th Earl of Portsmouth
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Gerard Wallop, 9th Earl of Portsmouth
Gerard Vernon Wallop, 9th Earl of Portsmouth (16 May 1898 – 28 September 1984), styled Viscount Lymington from 1925 until 1943, was a British landowner, writer on agricultural topics, and pro-Axis fascist politician.
Gerard was born in Chicago, the eldest son of Oliver Henry Wallop and Marguerite Walker. His father moved to Wyoming, where he was a rancher and served in the Wyoming State Legislature. After the deaths of his two older brothers without sons, Oliver succeeded as Earl of Portsmouth, and renounced his United States citizenship to serve in the House of Lords. Gerard was brought up near Sheridan, Wyoming in the United States, where his parents farmed.
He was educated in England, at Farnborough, at Winchester College and at Balliol College, Oxford. He then farmed at Farleigh Wallop in Hampshire.
Wallop was commissioned a temporary second lieutenant (probationary) in the Reserve Regiment, 2nd Life Guards on 19 January 1917, was transferred to the Guards Machine Gun Regiment on 10 May 1918, and commissioned a temporary lieutenant on 19 July 1918.
Lord Lymington was Conservative Member of Parliament for the Basingstoke constituency from 1929 to 1934. He stepped down and caused a by-election in March 1934 (Henry Maxence Cavendish Drummond Wolff was elected).
In 1930, Lymington attracted media attention with a speech attacking the Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin as "a scheming old bladder of stale wind", saying the Conservatives needed a new leader immediately. As a result, Lymington was contacted by William Sanderson to ask him to join the English Mistery. Lymington described Sanderson as someone "utterly" dedicated to the English Mistery while being something of a "charlatan" with his talk of the mystical "lost secrets" of the English that only he knew. However, Sanderson sought to flatter Lymington, describing himself as a "Genghis Khan" who would sweep away all opposition and saying that if Lymington joined the English Mistery his name would be remembered in England 10,000 years into the future. In September 1930 Lymington joined the English Mistery, a mystical "back-to-the-land" movement, that sought to find the "lost secrets" of the English. They favoured a return to the Middle Ages, supporting deindustrialisation, the revival of the guild system, organic farming, and rule by the aristocracy. Alongside the return of feudalism and absolute monarchy, the English Mistery's ideology contained virulent racism, wanting to protect the English "race" from "inferior races". In 1933, William Sanderson, the leader of the English Mistery proposed Lymington as the future "Lord Protector" of Britain.
Like much of the British aristocracy at the time, Lymington wanted to recreate a version of the feudal system, which led him to own a lavish estate in the "White Highlands" of Kenya. In Kenya, Lymington treated his black African workers very much like serfs while he behaved like a feudal lord. Lymington was not unique in seeking to live a modern version of feudalism in Africa as it was common for members of the aristocracy in the interwar period to settle in either Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) or Kenya to live out their fantasies of being feudal lords. Nor was Lymington unique in rejecting democracy. The establishment of universal suffrage which was achieved in stages over the 19th and 20th centuries along the curtailment of the power of the House of Lords led many aristocrats to complain about their loss of political power, which led for successive governments in Westminster to be more concerned about the interests of ordinary farmers instead of the land-owning nobility. The policy of free trade which kept food prices low was opposed by the land-owning aristocracy who had trouble competing with foreign farmers, and much of the nobility wanted a return to high agricultural tariffs. However, the policy of cheap food via free trade was popular with urban voters who had made up 90% of the electorate by the 1920s, and successive governments were not prepared to risk defeat in the next general election solely for the sake of keeping the landed estates of the aristocracy profitable. The British historian Martin Pugh noted it was no accident that every single aristocrat who owned an estate in Rhodesia or Kenya in the interwar period was active in far right-wing groups that sought to end democracy in the United Kingdom as all of the aristocrats who lived out their feudal fantasies in Africa all wanted to return to the political system where the aristocracy held political power again.
A key moment in the radicalisation of the aristocracy occurred in 1923 when Andrew Bonar Law resigned as prime minister. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, who had been widely expected to succeed Bonar Law lost out to the middle-class Chancellor of the Exchequer Stanley Baldwin under the grounds that the prime minister should sit in the House of Commons instead of the House of Lords and that Baldwin had the greater public appeal. Baldwin's upset victory over Curzon was considered especially shocking at the time as Curzon was widely felt to be better qualified to be prime minister. Baldwin's victory was widely seen as the symbolic moment when the Conservative Party became the party of the middle class. Afterwards, there had been a sustained campaign by various peers to restore the power to veto bills passed by the House of Commons that the House of Lords had lost in 1911, which Baldwin resisted under the grounds that it would energise the Labour Party which was not well represented in the House of Lords and cost the Conservatives votes in the next general election. By the late 1920s, much of the aristocracy was in a resentful and angry mood with the feeling being that democracy did not allow them what they saw as their rightful place as the political and economic elite. Lymington was attracted to the English Mistery precisely because it promised to restore the feudal society that was his ideal. Lymington stated in 1965 about his role in the English Mistery: "We did not regard ourselves as Herrenvolk but we wanted our revival to be Anglo-Saxon in the sense that Alfred the Great was Anglo-Saxon". Lymington wrote often for The English Review, a Conservative journal intended in the words of its editor from 1931 onward, Douglas Jerrold, to be "a platform for real Toryism as opposed to the plutocratic Conservatism represented by the official party under Mr. Baldwin's uninspiring leadership".
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Gerard Wallop, 9th Earl of Portsmouth
Gerard Vernon Wallop, 9th Earl of Portsmouth (16 May 1898 – 28 September 1984), styled Viscount Lymington from 1925 until 1943, was a British landowner, writer on agricultural topics, and pro-Axis fascist politician.
Gerard was born in Chicago, the eldest son of Oliver Henry Wallop and Marguerite Walker. His father moved to Wyoming, where he was a rancher and served in the Wyoming State Legislature. After the deaths of his two older brothers without sons, Oliver succeeded as Earl of Portsmouth, and renounced his United States citizenship to serve in the House of Lords. Gerard was brought up near Sheridan, Wyoming in the United States, where his parents farmed.
He was educated in England, at Farnborough, at Winchester College and at Balliol College, Oxford. He then farmed at Farleigh Wallop in Hampshire.
Wallop was commissioned a temporary second lieutenant (probationary) in the Reserve Regiment, 2nd Life Guards on 19 January 1917, was transferred to the Guards Machine Gun Regiment on 10 May 1918, and commissioned a temporary lieutenant on 19 July 1918.
Lord Lymington was Conservative Member of Parliament for the Basingstoke constituency from 1929 to 1934. He stepped down and caused a by-election in March 1934 (Henry Maxence Cavendish Drummond Wolff was elected).
In 1930, Lymington attracted media attention with a speech attacking the Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin as "a scheming old bladder of stale wind", saying the Conservatives needed a new leader immediately. As a result, Lymington was contacted by William Sanderson to ask him to join the English Mistery. Lymington described Sanderson as someone "utterly" dedicated to the English Mistery while being something of a "charlatan" with his talk of the mystical "lost secrets" of the English that only he knew. However, Sanderson sought to flatter Lymington, describing himself as a "Genghis Khan" who would sweep away all opposition and saying that if Lymington joined the English Mistery his name would be remembered in England 10,000 years into the future. In September 1930 Lymington joined the English Mistery, a mystical "back-to-the-land" movement, that sought to find the "lost secrets" of the English. They favoured a return to the Middle Ages, supporting deindustrialisation, the revival of the guild system, organic farming, and rule by the aristocracy. Alongside the return of feudalism and absolute monarchy, the English Mistery's ideology contained virulent racism, wanting to protect the English "race" from "inferior races". In 1933, William Sanderson, the leader of the English Mistery proposed Lymington as the future "Lord Protector" of Britain.
Like much of the British aristocracy at the time, Lymington wanted to recreate a version of the feudal system, which led him to own a lavish estate in the "White Highlands" of Kenya. In Kenya, Lymington treated his black African workers very much like serfs while he behaved like a feudal lord. Lymington was not unique in seeking to live a modern version of feudalism in Africa as it was common for members of the aristocracy in the interwar period to settle in either Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) or Kenya to live out their fantasies of being feudal lords. Nor was Lymington unique in rejecting democracy. The establishment of universal suffrage which was achieved in stages over the 19th and 20th centuries along the curtailment of the power of the House of Lords led many aristocrats to complain about their loss of political power, which led for successive governments in Westminster to be more concerned about the interests of ordinary farmers instead of the land-owning nobility. The policy of free trade which kept food prices low was opposed by the land-owning aristocracy who had trouble competing with foreign farmers, and much of the nobility wanted a return to high agricultural tariffs. However, the policy of cheap food via free trade was popular with urban voters who had made up 90% of the electorate by the 1920s, and successive governments were not prepared to risk defeat in the next general election solely for the sake of keeping the landed estates of the aristocracy profitable. The British historian Martin Pugh noted it was no accident that every single aristocrat who owned an estate in Rhodesia or Kenya in the interwar period was active in far right-wing groups that sought to end democracy in the United Kingdom as all of the aristocrats who lived out their feudal fantasies in Africa all wanted to return to the political system where the aristocracy held political power again.
A key moment in the radicalisation of the aristocracy occurred in 1923 when Andrew Bonar Law resigned as prime minister. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, who had been widely expected to succeed Bonar Law lost out to the middle-class Chancellor of the Exchequer Stanley Baldwin under the grounds that the prime minister should sit in the House of Commons instead of the House of Lords and that Baldwin had the greater public appeal. Baldwin's upset victory over Curzon was considered especially shocking at the time as Curzon was widely felt to be better qualified to be prime minister. Baldwin's victory was widely seen as the symbolic moment when the Conservative Party became the party of the middle class. Afterwards, there had been a sustained campaign by various peers to restore the power to veto bills passed by the House of Commons that the House of Lords had lost in 1911, which Baldwin resisted under the grounds that it would energise the Labour Party which was not well represented in the House of Lords and cost the Conservatives votes in the next general election. By the late 1920s, much of the aristocracy was in a resentful and angry mood with the feeling being that democracy did not allow them what they saw as their rightful place as the political and economic elite. Lymington was attracted to the English Mistery precisely because it promised to restore the feudal society that was his ideal. Lymington stated in 1965 about his role in the English Mistery: "We did not regard ourselves as Herrenvolk but we wanted our revival to be Anglo-Saxon in the sense that Alfred the Great was Anglo-Saxon". Lymington wrote often for The English Review, a Conservative journal intended in the words of its editor from 1931 onward, Douglas Jerrold, to be "a platform for real Toryism as opposed to the plutocratic Conservatism represented by the official party under Mr. Baldwin's uninspiring leadership".