From Stone Ruck to the Lure of Fascism

A tumulus mapped as Stone Ruck with a view up to Brown Hill, the high point of Carlton Bank. A single boulder, pressed into service as a boundary marker, denotes the Feversham estate from that of the Marquess of Ailesbury. Curiously, the boundary is not drawn at the top of the tumulus but shy of it, as though the beater of the bounds had run out of breath. Upon the stone the initials “A” and “F” are carved with suitable permanence, horizontally for added gravitas.

The Marquess in question was likely Ernest Augustus Charles Brudenell-Bruce, the third to hold the title. The Whorlton estate was a mere crumb from his table, a fraction of his 55,000 acres. Land hunger was not his problem.

His grandson George William James Chandos Brudenell-Bruce, the sixth Marquess, did little to diminish the family reputation. He styled himself “Chandos,” and like so many pillars of the establishment proved to be granite on the outside and somewhat less refined within. A rigid Conservative, he busied himself with the British Fascists, the movement for aristocrats who found Conservatism too mild and Mussolini rather dashing.

This group, cobbled together in 1923 by Rotha Lintorn-Orman, was Britain’s first attempt at organised fascism. On paper, it was an anti-communist lobby with airs, but the intent was plain enough: to drag the Conservative Party further right while keeping the family silver polished. The original name “Fascisti” was quickly abandoned in favour of “Fascists,” foreigners being acceptable only when bombing other countries, not when lending their language. The fact that the party was led by a woman was indeed unusual, though less striking than the eagerness of the titled and the wealthy to dabble in authoritarian chic while remaining perfectly insulated from its consequences.

The movement collapsed in 1934, undone by its own vanity and the gravitational pull of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. There, the would-be squires and dukes could at last parade in black shirts, mistaking cosplay for conviction. That such people, with vast estates and inherited privilege, found sympathy in fascism is not surprising. The creed of the British upper class has always been simple enough: keep the land, keep the money, and if democracy interferes, there is always a uniform handy.