On July 5th 1946, following relevations in the House of Commons on the extent of Italian Fascist funding for Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists - world famous SciFi writer HG Wells wrote and extraordinary article in a little known left wing magazine
"Socialist Leader" which accused the British Royal Family of involvement with pre-war Fascism. The attack came weeks before his
untimely death on August 13th of unspecified causes aged 79. The British Press refused to discuss the allegations, but the rumours it created led to Press Comment where the imprisoned Fascist Leader actually defended George VI against the charge of fascist involvement.
The Socialist Wells asked "The Genuine democratic communities throughout the world need to know what is going on in this hushed up business of the huge Mosley funds and how far our own Royal Family is involved in this affair." Wells went on to say that if the royal family were involved then there is every reason why the house of hannover should follow the house of savoy into the shadows of exile and leave england free to return to it's old and persistent republican tradition."
Those who read the article were shocked and many attributed this to the ramblings of senility of a once great man, yet did Wells hear rumours about George VI's involvement in fascism?
George Orwell in his 1948 book "1984" uses the song from the George VI's Boys Camp in his sinister Chestnut Tree Cafe in his totalitarian distopia. Winston Smith hears
“Under the spreading chestnut
tree
I sold you and you sold me
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree.”
In George Orwell's (Eric Blair's) earlier 1936 Road to Wigan Pier he writes
“Fascism is coming, probably a slimy anglicised
form of fascism, with cultured policemen instead of Nazi gorillas, and the Lion
and the Unicorn instead of the Swastika… It sounds rather like the Duke of York’s Summer Camp and that
dismal talk about class cooperation and putting our shoulders to the wheel ,
which is eyewash, or fascism or both”
The funding of the British Fascists by Benito Mussolini was on a colossal scale which when it emerged in 1946 in Chuter Ede's statements shocked HG Wells, yet even more disturbing evidence of British establishment links with Mussolini continue to come out, including in 2009 Historian Peter Martland discovered archive files showing that
Benito Mussolini was employed by British Security Services to beat up Italians peace campaigners to keep Italy in the First World War under his British liason
MI6 Officer Samuel Hoare (who as Sir Samuel Hoare and later Lord Templewood was heavily implicated in appeasement of both Italy and Germany)
George VI when Duke of York was on good terms with Samuel Hoare, as well as Pro-fascist and Pro-Mussolini Maundy Gregory (from whom he had accepted gifts and money in the 1920's) and his very good friend Sir Louis Greig who was his Comptroller, Tennis Partner, Medical Advisor, Mentor and Stockbroker. Louis Greig was a member of the Anglo-German Fellowship and the British Fascist Dining Club - the January Club and his wife Phyllis had a relation Alex Scrimgeour who worked with Louis Greig as a Stockbroker who not
only funded the British Union of Fascists in 1935 but also William Joyce's (aka traitor Lord Haw Haw)
British National Socialist League in 1937.
Mussolini provided funds to a secret bank account which was accessed by Ian Hope Dundas(who father had been ADC to George V), George Tabor and Bill Allen (and his wife Paula Gellibrand) who was a friend of the Duke of Kent (George VI's younger brother).
Coming back to HG Wells his requested epitaph was "I told you so. You
damned fools." Couldn't put it better myself.
