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Archibald Maule Ramsay | |
|---|---|
 Ramsay in 1937 | |
| Member of Parliament forPeebles and Southern Midlothian | |
| In office 27 October 1931 – 15 June 1945 | |
| Preceded by | Joseph Westwood |
| Succeeded by | David Pryde |
| Majority | 8,250 (31.0%) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1894-05-04)4 May 1894 |
| Died | 11 March 1955(1955-03-11) (aged 60) |
| Political party | Scottish Unionist |
| Spouse | Lady Ismay Crichton-Stuart |
| Military service | |
| Allegiance | United Kingdom |
| Branch/service | British Army |
| Years of service | 1913–1920 |
| Rank | Captain |
| Battles/wars | World War I |
Archibald Henry Maule Ramsay (4 May 1894 – 11 March 1955) was aBritish Army officer who later went into politics as aScottish UnionistMember of Parliament (MP). From the late 1930s, he developed increasingly stridentantisemitic views. In 1940, after his involvement with a suspected spy at theUnited Statesembassy, he became the only British MP to beinterned underDefence Regulation 18B.
In 1939, Ramsay formed the explicitly pro-NaziRight Club, intending to unify far-right extremists across Britain. According to reports byMI5, he was plotting a fascist coup, intended to take place if and when German troops landed on British soil. In furtherance of this plan, he placed informants within the police, the Ministry of Economic Warfare, Air Ministry censorship branch, and Churchill's War Cabinet.[1]
Ramsay was from a Scottish aristocratic family; his grandfather was Sir Henry Ramsay, a younger brother ofGeorge Ramsay, 12th Earl of Dalhousie. He was educated atEton College and theRoyal Military College, Sandhurst, then in September 1913 was commissioned into theColdstream Guards.[2] After the outbreak of the First World War, Ramsey served in France for two years, then received a severe head injury and transferred to theWar Office in London. Here he met and on 30 April 1917 married Lady Ismay Crichton-Stuart, the only daughter ofJenico Preston, 14th Viscount Gormanston[3] and widow ofLord Ninian Crichton-Stuart MP, who had been killed on active service in 1915. His wife was the mother of three surviving children. The couple later had four sons together; the eldest died on active service in 1943.[citation needed]
As the war was coming to an end, Ramsay served at the British War Mission inParis. He was placed on thehalf-pay list "on account of ill-health, caused by wounds" in 1920[4] and retired from the Army in 1922 with the rank ofcaptain.[5] He spent the 1920s as acompany director, nearArbroath,Angus, and became active in theUnionist Party. In the1931 general election, Ramsay was elected as MP forPeebles and Southern Midlothian. He was not considered a potential candidate for high office; the most senior appointment he obtained was as a Government member of thePotato Marketing Board. Ramsay was regarded as a "gentleman politician" that was common in rural Scotland at the time, a scion of the Scottish aristocracy, a graduate of Eton and Sandhurst who had served in the British Army, and lived in a castle.[6] Ramsay represented a rural constituency in the House of Commons, and almost all of his questions in the House of Commons prior to 1937 related to agricultural questions, especially Scottish agriculture.[6] Ramsay was generally known as "Jock" instead of Archibald or "Archie", and was popular in his seat.[6]
After theSpanish Civil War broke out, Ramsay became a strong supporter of theNationalists underFrancisco Franco, largely arising out of his opposition to the violentanti-clericalism of theSpanish Republicans and their attacks on theRoman Catholic Church. Ramsay was a Protestant, but his religious zeal led him to side against the "godless" Spanish Republic.[6] In the early months of the war, he objected inParliament to what he saw as bias inBBC news reports on Spain; he pointed to links between Spanish Republicans and theSoviet Union. The British historian Richard Griffiths noted that Ramsay's career up to 1937 had been "fairly uneventful" with him playing the part of a Conservative backbencher holding the standard views associated with a Tory MP, but the Spanish Civil War radicalised him.[7] The news that the Soviet Union had intervened in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Spanish Republic was taken by him as a sort of declaration of war upon himself, and he committed himself to the victory of the Spanish Nationalists over the "godless" Spanish Republicans.[7] In 1937, the German "pocket battleship"Deutschland which had been operating off the coast of Spain in support of the Nationalists was damaged in a Soviet air attack.[7] In a speech in the House of Commons on 4 June 1937, Ramsay called the air attack on theDeutschland as having been "organised by international Communist agencies with the object of embroiling as many countries as possible in an European war".[7] In July 1937, he denounced France for signing a military alliance with the Soviet Union in 1935, and called the Franco-Soviet alliance an opportunity for "Soviet subversive propaganda", which was "a more formidable weapon than the Soviet Army" to threaten Great Britain.[8]
Late in 1937, Ramsay formed the 'United Christian Front' to combat attacks on Christianity "which emanate fromMoscow". Many distinguished peers and churchmen joined, but the organisation was criticised in a letter toThe Times by senior religious figures, includingWilliam Temple (Archbishop of York) andDonald Soper. The objectors said that while they supported Christian unity, they could not support the United Christian Front, as it was mainly concerned with theSpanish Civil War and "adopts a view of it which seems to us ill-founded".
Ramsay became aware of a plan to hold a conference offreethinkers in London in 1938, which was being organised by the International Federation of Freethinkers. Together with his supporters in Parliament, he denounced this as a "Godless Conference", organised by a Moscow-based organisation. On 28 June 1938, he asked for permission to introduce as aPrivate Member's Bill the "Aliens Restriction (Blasphemy) Bill" to prohibit conference attendees from entering Britain; he won the vote by 165 to 134, but the bill went no further.[9] Ramsay's opposition tocommunism led him to look to other countries for examples. On 13 January 1938, he had given a speech to the Arbroath Business Club in which he observed thatAdolf Hitler's antipathy to Jews arose from his knowledge "that the real power behind theThird International is a group of revolutionary Jews".
Some time later in 1938, he readThe Rulers of Russia by a reactionary Roman Catholic priest from Ireland, FatherDenis Fahey, which contended that of 59 members of theCentral Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1935, 56 were Jews, and the remaining three were married to Jews. Ramsay became a believer in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and credited the Jews with being the guiding force behind the English Civil War with Oliver Cromwell acting as their agent against King Charles I.[9] Ramsay also blamed the Jews for the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War.[9] He become convinced as he put it that "Bolshevism is Jewish" and that Nazi Germany was the world's only hope as Hitler was the only world leader "who grasped to the full the significance of these happenings and perceived behind the mobs of native hooligans the organisation and driving power of World Jewry".[9] At the same time, Ramsay was becoming ever more sympathetic to Germany; in September, he wrote toThe Times to defend the right of theSudetenland toself-determination.
On 15 November 1938, Ramsay was invited to a luncheon party at the German Embassy in London, where he met British sympathisers withNazi Germany, includingBarry Domvile. In December he introduced another Private Member's Bill called the "Companies Act (1929) Amendment Bill", which would require shares in news agencies and newspapers to be held openly and not through nominees. In his speech promoting the Bill, Ramsay claimed the press was being manipulated and controlled by "international financiers" based inNew York City who wanted to "thrust this country into a war". Ramsay was given permission to introduce his Bill by 151 to 104; again it went no further.[citation needed]
On 10 January 1939 Ismay Ramsay gave another speech to the Arbroath Business Club, at which she claimed the national press was "largely under Jewish control", that "an international group of Jews ... were behind world revolution in every single country" and that Hitler "must ... have had his reasons for what he did". The speech was reported in the local newspaper and attracted the attention of the rabbi of theEdinburgh Hebrew Congregation,Salis Daiches, who wrote toThe Scotsman challenging Mrs Ramsay to produce evidence. Ramsay wrote on her behalf citing Father Fahey's booklet, and the resulting correspondence lasted for nearly a month—including a letter from elevenministers of theChurch of Scotland in theCounty of Peebles repudiating the views of their MP.
Some members of Ramsay's local Unionist Association inPeebles were not pleased by what they considered negative publicity. However, Ramsay reassured them that he would continue to be a supporter ofNeville Chamberlain and theNational Government. Ramsay made attempts to make controversial speeches to private meetings rather than in public. On 27 April he spoke to a branch of the (antisemitic)Nordic League inKilburn, London, attacking Neville Chamberlain for introducingconscription "at the instigation of the Jews" and claiming that the Conservative Party "relies on ... Jew money".
After the controversy over Mrs Ramsay's January speech died down, Ramsay decided to influence others so that they would rid the Conservative and Unionist Party of its alleged Jewish control. To this end, he set up theRight Club in May 1939, noting down those who had joined in a red leather-bound and lockable ledger (the "Red Book"). There were 135 names on the men's list and 100 on a separate ladies' list; the members of the Right Club include a broad spectrum of those known to be antisemitic (includingWilliam Joyce and the Member of ParliamentJohn Hamilton Mackie), those who were in some respects "fellow travellers" with antisemitism, and some friends of Ramsay who may have joined without knowing the actual functions of the club. Ramsay wrote in 1952: "The main object of the Right Club was to oppose and expose the activities of Organised Jewry in the light of the evidence which came into my possession in 1938... Our hope was to avert war, which we considered to be mainly the work of Jewish intrigue centred in New York".[10] The founding of the Right Club in May 1939 was a direct response to theDanzig crisis, which had threatened war with Germany, and reflected Ramsay's unhappiness over the foreign policy of the Chamberlain government.[11] Ramsay kept the membership of the Right Club a secret, but known members of the Right Club includedWilliam Joyce, AdmiralWilmot Nicholson, Frances Eckersley andAnna Wolkoff.[12] At its early meetings, the5th Duke of Wellington took the chair.[13]
While Ramsay was attempting to launch the Right Club, he spoke at a meeting of the Nordic League at theWigmore Hall at which a reporter from theDaily Worker was present and reported Ramsay as saying that they needed to end Jewish control, "and if we don't do it constitutionally, we'll do it with steel" – a statement greeted with wild applause. The popular magazineJohn Bull picked up on the report and challenged Ramsay to contradict it or explain himself. Ramsay's local newspaper, thePeeblesshire Advertiser, made the same challenge and Ramsay responded by admitting he had made the speech, citing the fact that three halls had refused to host the meeting as evidence of Jewish control. During the Danzig crisis, Ramsay was one of the few MPs who continued to defend Nazi Germany on the floor of the House of Commons even as Britain moved closer and closer to war with Germany as the crisis intensified in the summer of 1939.[14] Griffiths noted that there had been other MPs who expressed pro-Nazi feelings before the crisis, but almost all of them chose to distance themselves from their past views in 1939 lest they lose their seats in the next general election, and Ramsay along withCyril Culverwell were 'eccentric' MPs who continued to express such views, regardless of the damage they were doing to their re-election chances.[14]
On the second day of the Second World War for Britain, 4 September 1939, Ramsay sat in the library of theHouse of Commons writing a parody ofLand of Hope and Glory, beginning: "Land of dope and Jewry". When theSecretary of State for WarLeslie Hore-Belisha (a frequent target of antisemitism) was forced out of office, Ramsay distributed in the House of Commons copies ofTruth (a magazine closely connected to Neville Chamberlain) which argued that Hore-Belisha was no loss to the government. He also put down a motion which cited the regretful reactions of many newspapers to Hore-Belisha's sacking as evidence of Jewish control of the press.
Privately, Ramsay had been invited to some of the "Secret Meetings" at which right-wing opponents of the war discussed tactics. However, after they came to be dominated by SirOswald Mosley and his supporters, Ramsay withdrew. The Right Club spent thePhoney War period distributing propaganda in the form of leaflets and 'sticky-backs' (adhesive labels containing slogans), with Ramsay later explaining that he wanted "to maintain the atmosphere in which the "Phoney War", as it was called, might be converted into an honourable negotiated peace." In addition to Ramsay's "Land of dope and Jewry"' rhyme, the slogans included "War destroys workers" and "This is a Jews' War". Some of the leaflets asserted "the stark truth is that this war was plotted and engineered by the Jews for world-power and vengeance".[15] In his speeches both inside and outside of the House of Commons throughout thePhoney War, he called for a negotiated peace with Germany and blamed the war on "our Jew-ridden Press".[16]
In Parliament, Ramsay attacked the internment procedure ofDefence Regulation 18B and opposed the arrest of antisemitic speaker Richard A. V. "Jock" Houston under thePublic Order Act 1936. On 20 March 1940, he asked a question about apropaganda radio station set up by Germany which gave its precise wavelength, which was suspected by both his allies and opponents as a subtle way of advertising it.[17] On 9 May he asked for an assurance from theHome Secretary "that he refuses to be stampeded ... by a ramp in our Jew-ridden press?" His increasingly open antisemitism was picked up byLabour members and others and referred to in debate. According to informants to British intelligence, Ramsay said he would welcome a fascist coup in the case of a German invasion: "Personally, I should welcome a civil war with shots fired in the streets."[18]
One of the last members to join the Right Club wasTyler Kent, a cypher clerk at theEmbassy of the United States in London. Ramsay gave Kent the ledger containing the list of Right Club members for safe-keeping. Kent was stealing top-secret documents from the embassy to pass on to the Italian embassy and had already fallen under suspicion. Right from the outset of the war, the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt had leaned in a pro-Allied neutrality, and Roosevelt had persuaded Congress to amend the Neutrality Act in November 1939 to allow the United States to sell Britain and France weapons. Kent through his work as a cypher clerk at the American embassy in London, was aware of at least the Anglo-American end of the secret talks about how the United States could aid the Allies without entering the war.[19] He become convinced that Roosevelt was plotting to bring the United States into the war because he was working for the Jews and contacted Ramsay about how best to stop the alleged plot, showing him excerpts from messages to and from Roosevelt and Churchill.[19] Anna Wolkoff of the Right Club had tried to contact Joyce who was now in Germany working as the 'Lord Haw-Haw' radio speaker about the information received from Kent.[19] Kent was observed by MI5 at the Cumberland Hotel handing over a mysterious package to Ludwig Matthias, a Swedish man suspected (correctly as it turned out) to be working for German intelligence.[20] Kent was considered to be a high-level security threat owing to his ability to access the most secret Anglo-American diplomatic talks and placed under surveillance by MI5 as a major security threat, which proved damaging to Ramsay who was observed to be in constant contact with Kent.[20]
On 20 May, after the US ambassadorJoseph Kennedy had agreed to waive Kent's diplomatic immunity, his flat was raided and he was arrested; the locked Red Book was forced open. Ramsay's involvement with Kent was worrying to the authorities, as Ramsay enjoyedparliamentary privilege; if Kent had given the stolen documents to Ramsay and he had spoken about them in Parliament, it would have been impossible to prevent their publication. The Cabinet decided to extendDefence Regulation 18B to give more power to detain people suspected of disloyalty.
Ramsay was arrested and lodged inBrixton Prison on an order under Regulation 18B on 23 May 1940. He engaged solicitors (Oswald Hickson, Collier & Co.) through whom he attempted to defend his reputation. WhenLord Marley said in theHouse of Lords that Ramsay was Hitler's chosenGauleiter for Scotland in the event of an invasion, Oswald Hickson, Collier immediately sent off a letter of complaint.
As an 18B detainee, Ramsay's only lawful method of challenging his detention was to appeal to the Advisory Committee underNorman Birkett, but that recommended his continued detention. However, some of Ramsay's colleagues argued that as he was a Member of Parliament his detention was a breach of parliamentary privilege. The detention was referred to theCommittee of Privileges, but on 9 October the committee reported that the detention was not a breach of privilege. Ramsay liked to proclaim himself a British super-patriot, but his wartime activities had made his "name synonymous with treason", and he become one of the most hated MPs during the war.[21]
The New York Times published an article on "Britain'sFifth Column" in July 1940 which claimed "informed American sources said that he had sent to the German legation in Dublin treasonable information given to him by Tyler Kent". Ramsay sued forlibel, resulting in a trial in July 1941. He asserted his loyalty to Britain. However, some of Ramsay's answers did him damage; for example when asked if he wanted Nazism to be defeated, he replied, substituting "Germany" for "Nazism"; "Not only Germany, but also the Judaic menace". In summing-up, the judge said he was convinced Hitler would call Ramsay "friend" and that Ramsay was disloyal in heart and soul to his King, his Government, and the people.
However,The New York Times could not defend its story, having found no evidence that Ramsay had communicated anything to the German legation, and it was found liable. The judge awarded afarthing (¼d) in damages, the customary award for a libel plaintiff who technically won a case, but was adjudged to have brought his trouble on himself. If the defendant in a libel case pays into court beforehand a sum not less than the damages ultimately awarded, he is not liable for costs; asThe New York Times had paid £75 into court, Ramsay became liable for both prosecution and defence costs. Another consequence of the trial was that Ramsay's local Unionist Association disowned him and asked another Member of Parliament,David Robertson, to undertake Ramsay's constituency work.
Ramsay continued occasionally to put down written parliamentary questions from jail, sometimes taking up the cases of fellow 18B internees. His eldest son Alec, serving in theScots Guards, died ofpneumonia on active service in South Africa in August 1943. Ramsay was released from detention on 26 September 1944, being one of the last few 18B detainees. He returned to Westminster to resume his seat in the Commons, causing at least one member to walk out of the chamber. His only significant action in the remainder of the parliament was a motion calling for the reinstatement of the 1275Statute of the Jewry passed underKing Edward I. He did not defend his seat in the1945 general election. Peebles and Southern Midlothian was won by theLabour Party candidateDavid Pryde.
In 1952, Ramsay wroteThe Nameless War as anautobiography and a plea to justify his actions. Much of the book consisted of an antisemiticconspiracy theory interpreting theEnglish,French,Russian andSpanish Revolutions as part of a Jewish campaign for world domination. It quoted extensively fromThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the authenticity of which Ramsay took for granted, and added assertions including thatCalvin had been a Jew whose real name was "Cohen", thatCromwell had been "a paid agent of the Jews" and that the entireEnglish Civil War and the execution ofCharles I were staged for the sole purpose of allowing Jews to return to England.
Ramsay attended some far-right political meetings but did not attract attention. He died in 1955.
{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help)| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
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| Preceded by | Member of Parliament for Peebles and South Midlothian 1931–1945 | Succeeded by |
