Robert Row (1915–1999) was an English fascist fromLancaster, a member ofOswald Mosley'sBritish Union of Fascists (BUF) who was detained by the British government underDefence Regulation 18B during theSecond World War. After the war, he wrote and edited British fascist publications and remained a believer in Mosley until his death.
Robert Row was born in 1915.[1] His father worked forWaring & Gillow and was sent to Cuba to decorate the House of Assembly.[2] He left school in 1931, by his own account during theSterling crisis of that year, when Britain left theGold Standard. In 1998, he recalled a succession of low-paid jobs and an environment of boarded-up shops in his local high street during his youth: "The times were desperate and after more of the same I joined the Blackshirts in 1934" (the BUF).[3]
InOswald Mosley'sBritish Union of Fascists, Row saw policies that would put Britain first and "banish the slump".[3] He became highly active in the movement, but with the outbreak of theSecond World War, he was detained by the British government under the newly introducedDefence Regulation 18B.[4] He spent time at Walton prison and was also held for a time at a prison camp nearHuyton, where the most prominent inmate wasJohn Beckett. Both associated freely during their incarceration, although they argued regularly. Beckett had left the BUF in 1938.[5] He was released late during the war, joined the British Army and served in Palestine.[2]
After the war, Row worked as an agricultural labourer in Surrey and began to send articles toUnion, the organ of theUnion Movement, the successor to the BUF. The editor,Alexander Raven Thomson, appointed Row as deputy editor ofUnion in the 1950s; Row became the editor after Thomson's death in 1955. The paper becameThe National European in 1964 andAction in 1966 before the Union Movement also changed its party name to Action in 1973. He was editor of all of those titles until the closure ofSanctuary Press in 1992.[2] He also editedLodestar withJeffrey Hamm from 1985 to 1992.[6]
Row was assaulted or intimidated several times during his fascist activities. In 1963, six young men of the antifascistYellow Star Movement broke into the Union Movement headquarters at 302Vauxhall Bridge Road and assaulted Row and Keith Gibson, the Union Movement's political secretary.[7] All six were arrested and later fined (one aged 16 was bound over) at theOld Bailey after pleading guilty to assault and causing damage to property.[8] According to testimony, Row was made to kneel on the floor and rip up copies ofAction.[9] Both Row and Gibson required hospital treatment.[10] Soon afterward, according toComrade, he was attacked again by the same group on his way home from work.[2]
Row was close to Raven Thomson politically and in the early 1950s supported his view that theUnion Movement should move closer toneo-Nazism, which was gaining some support in Germany, rather than Mosley's unpopular "Europe a Nation" policy.[11] Later, withJeffrey Hamm, he was a key figure in Action.[12] Increasingly, in the postwar decades, Row through his writings became a unifying force for the dwindling and aging band of former BUF members, as the movement engaged less in political action and more in rhetoric and nostalgia for the BUF.
Row remained a committed fascist until his death and continued to contribute to publications of the offshoots of the BUF until the end, such asComrade, newsletter of theFriends of Oswald Mosley. He died in 1999 after a minor operation at 83. His ashes were scattered by his niece inLancashire at a site on which he and his brothers cycled in his youth.[2] He never married.