{"id":105390,"date":"2016-12-02T12:11:18","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T17:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=105390"},"modified":"2016-12-02T13:22:14","modified_gmt":"2016-12-02T18:22:14","slug":"conservatism-with-knobs-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Conservatism with Knobs On"},"content":{"rendered":"

How Rotha\u202fLintorn-Orman became the unlikely founder of the British\u00a0Fascisti.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>

Rotha Lintorn-Orman.<\/p><\/div>\n

Edward White\u2019s The Lives of Others<\/a>\u00a0is\u00a0a monthly series\u00a0about unusual, largely forgotten figures from history.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When Britain had its brush with fascism in the 1930s, it came not in the form of some ugly, uncouth gate-crasher, as has been the case in many Western nations, but a suave establishment tyro: Sir Oswald Mosley, once a Labour MP tipped for Number 10 Downing Street before becoming the leader of the British Union of Fascists\u2014colloquially known as the Blackshirts\u2014in 1932. When\u202fthe Blackshirts suddenly, and thankfully briefly, emerged as a political\u00a0force,\u00a0it was widely accepted that Mosley\u2019s good looks and sexual charisma was at least partially responsible.\u00a0\u201cHe has what is known as \u2018magnetism\u2019 \u2026 sex-appeal of a sort,\u201d wrote Lionel Birch in\u202fhis 1936 study\u202fWhy They Join the Fascists<\/em>.\u202f\u201cFor some people, his appearance resembles that of a traditional cavalry officer, for others that of a traditional gigolo.\u201d\u202fMosley\u2019s contemporary, the former\u202fLabour\u202fcabinet minister Ellen Wilkinson,\u202fthought of him\u202fas one of the cads played by Rudolph Valentino,\u202fnot \u201cthe nice kind of hero who rescues the girl at the point of torture, but the one who hisses, \u2018At last \u2026 we meet.\u2019 \u201d\u202fAs the historian\u202fRobert\u202fSkidelsky explains, Mosley deliberately cultivated a public image of a \u201cdark, passionate, Byronic gentleman-villain of the melodrama,\u201d\u202ftwirling his waxed mustache as he vanquished\u202fhis\u202fenemies and ravished their daughters.<\/p>\n

Mosley considered his womanizing one of his great strengths, and in private took the business of treating women like dirt extremely seriously; he repeatedly cheated on his first wife, including with her sister and, so he once claimed, her stepmother. Publicly, he was\u202f\u201cpledged to complete sex equality.\u201d He maintained that nobody had more respect for women than he did, and that\u00a0\u201cmy movement has been largely built by women.\u201d\u202fThe notion that the Blackshirts were seriously committed to furthering the collective and individual rights of women is as spurious and dishonest as most of what\u202fcame out of Mosley\u2019s mouth. Like his hero Mussolini, he considered\u202ffascism a bulwark of masculinity against women\u2019s suffrage, consumerism, mass media, and the other emasculating assaults of the modern age.\u202fYet,\u202fhe was\u202fright that women played a\u202fmore\u202fprominent role in building fascism\u202fin Britain than had been the case on mainland Europe.\u202fIn fact,\u202fthe first Briton\u202fto lead an avowedly fascist organization was\u202fa woman named\u202fRotha\u202fLintorn-Orman, the founder of the British\u00a0Fascisti.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n

Lintorn-Orman\u202fwas born into upper-middle-class comfort in the coastal town of Bournemouth,\u202fEngland, in\u202f1895.\u202fHer mother was\u202fBlanche\u202fLintorn-Orman, a billowing force of nature\u202fwho\u202fwas among the first women to start the\u202fGirl\u202fScout movement, of which\u202fRotha\u202fbecame a\u202fproud\u202fleader aged fourteen.\u202fThe regimentation and\u202fdiscipline of the\u202fScouts\u202fappealed to her, as did\u00a0its\u202femphasis\u202fon\u202fa vigorous kind of life that respectable Edwardian ladies were generally not encouraged to pursue.\u202fSlightly too young to have experienced the heat of the suffragettes\u2019 battles, Rotha\u202fcame of age\u2014in more ways than one\u2014as an ambulance driver in World War I. According to\u202fher own testimony she won\u202fnumerous\u202fmedals for her bravery and diligence before being invalided home with malaria in 1917.\u00a0She found another means of serving her country, taking on an important role at the Red Cross headquarters in Piccadilly.<\/p>\n

She returned from the continent with a burnished sense of patriotism, but afflicted by hidden wounds. The shell-shocked male soldier has become the emblem of that conflict, but less attention is given to the young women who\u00a0endured similar trauma. Precisely what\u00a0Lintorn-Orman\u00a0experienced is unclear, but it stained the rest of her short, fractious life.\u00a0The end of the war signaled the end of her military service; men filtered back from the trenches and snatched away the brief glimpse she\u2019d had of a prominent public position. She\u00a0drifted without much direction, began drinking heavily, and began to abuse drugs. Eventually, she moved to a dairy farm in Somerset, but she missed\u00a0active duty with a physical pain and\u202fkept her connection to those years by cropping her hair\u202fdaringly\u202fshort, wearing shirts and ties, and displaying her medals proudly on the\u202fpeaked lapels of her jackets. Contemporaries found her androgyny highly odd; the phrase mannish woman<\/em>\u00a0was used frequently.\u00a0Not that Lintorn-Orman much cared about the judgments of the mainstream. To her, civilian life seemed agonizingly dull,\u00a0both predictable and aimless; a continuous,\u00a0stretchless\u00a0yawn.\u202f\u00a0For five years she waited for\u202fa beginning or an end.\u202f<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Sir Oswald Mosley.<\/p><\/div>\n

*\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was Mussolini who offered the chance for reinvention.\u202fIn October 1922, he was invited to form a government by King Victor Emmanuel III, effectively\u202fending\u202fItaly\u2019s\u202fexperiment with democracy. Seven months later\u202fLintorn-Orman\u202fformed her own fascist movement,\u202finspired\u202fnot just by Il\u202fDuce\u2019s\u00a0audacity but an unusual epiphany. As she always told it,\u00a0she was digging her garden in the\u00a0spring\u00a0of 1923 when the realization hit her that Britain was being ruined by foreigners and communists who could only be stopped by the decisive actions of brave patriots prepared to descry the shibboleths of liberal democracy. On the spot,\u00a0she began the British\u00a0Fascisti, an ultraconservative paramilitary organization that saw itself as a sort of middle-England minutemen.<\/p>\n

As far-right origin myths go, this was tame stuff, and the image of her suddenly sensing the leftist threat while pottering around in\u202fher\u00a0sleepy Somerset village\u2014not a fantastically fertile breeding ground for Bolshevism\u2014doesn\u2019t quite ring true. There\u2019s no reason to doubt the sincerity of her\u00a0anticommunist\u00a0views, but perhaps what terrified her more than the thought of the Soviet flag fluttering above Buckingham Palace was the prospect of watching her life seep into the herbaceous borders, tending to nature but never mastering it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The British\u00a0Fascisti\u00a0afforded\u00a0Lintorn-Orman\u00a0some control over a world in which she felt a powerless misfit, punished by the fact of her sex and her unconventionality. Indeed, she was one of a number of British women who came to this early incarnation of fascism in part because of a sense of self that\u202fcould be neither expunged nor accepted by polite society.\u202fValerie\u202fArkell-Smith, born in the same year as Lintorn-Orman, also served in the war, signing up for the Voluntary Aid Detachment in 1914. In 1926, she\u202fjoined the National Fascisti, a splinter group of Lintorn-Orman\u2019s organization, but did so as a man. <\/em>Arkell-Smith, as she was, had been a mother of two young children until 1923,\u202fthe year she left the man she was living with and married Elfrida Haward under the new identity of Colonel Victor Barker. In its\u00a0invective against complacent elites, and its\u00a0veneration of the unthinkable and the unspeakable,\u00a0this radical new creed\u2014yet to accrete the horrors of the thirties and forties\u2014offered\u00a0the hope of\u00a0refuge to at least some of those on the fringes.<\/p>\n

From the start, the British\u202fFascisti was\u202fa piebald beast: it attempted to fuse provincial British decorum with political violence and authoritarianism. The\u202finherent contradiction in\u00a0aping\u00a0an Italian political movement\u202fin order\u00a0to\u202fprotect Britain from non-British influences does not\u202fappear\u202fto have occurred\u202fto\u202fLintorn-Orman, at least not until 1924, when\u202fshe changed the group\u2019s name to British Fascists,\u202fwhich was marginally\u202fmore fitting.\u202fOnly marginally, though.\u00a0As far as fellow travelers of the far-right were concerned,\u00a0Lintorn-Orman\u2019s\u00a0group was\u00a0fascism\u00a0of the fourth-pressing.\u00a0That view is supported\u00a0by the BF\u2019s activism, which comprised mainly strikebreaking and the stewarding of public appearances of far-right speakers and agitators\u2014but not the intimidation of journalists, or disruption of democratic elections\u00a0that had been the signature moves of Mussolini\u2019s\u00a0squadistri<\/em>.\u00a0The fascism-lite approach meant that within a couple of years of its founding, the\u202fBritish Fascists\u202fbegan to be outflanked by other fascist organizations, especially the one run by Arthur\u202fLeese, an ideological anti-Semite\u202fwho lambasted just about every other British extremist\u202ffor not being adequately\u00a0exercised about the international Jewish conspiracy.\u202fEven Oswald Mosley\u2019s Blackshirts were derided as limp-wristed \u201ckosher fascists.\u201d Trenchantly xenophobic though she may have been,\u202fLintorn-Orman\u202fcould never\u00a0out-fascist\u00a0a thoroughbred crackpot like\u202fLeese,\u202fwho explicitly advocated using poison gas to\u00a0murder every Jew on the planet\u00a0several years before the Nazis attempted it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Leese\u00a0had\u00a0been\u00a0an early member of the BF,\u00a0but\u00a0quickly\u00a0became disillusioned with its tepidness;\u00a0\u201cconservatism with knobs on,\u201d\u00a0to use his words.\u00a0He was\u00a0also\u00a0one of its many members\u00a0who criticized\u00a0Lintorn-Orman\u00a0for being chaotic,\u00a0vacillating,\u00a0and\u00a0divisive. From the testimony of other members, it does seem that she had a rare ability to rub people the wrong way, and was the sort of impassioned politico who could start a stand-up row alone in the confession booth.\u00a0But the same could easily be said of Leese, and in a man they may well have been qualities he admired. What probably underpinned his\u00a0dislike of\u00a0Lintorn-Orman was her commitment to protecting female participation in the leadership of the organization she created and bankrolled. The BF had female-only paramilitary units, and to encourage the involvement of mothers it created the Fascist Children\u2019s Club. At one of the club\u2019s Christmas parties,\u00a0Lintorn-Orman\u00a0dressed up as Father Christmas,\u00a0dispensed presents, and bounced toddlers on her knee.\u00a0The BF also had several women on its executive committee\u00a0who ensured their voices were heard. Around the time of the General Strike in 1926, a proposal was tabled to integrate the BF with another far-right group in order to combine resources and\u00a0to more effectively act against\u00a0the trade unions. But\u00a0Lintorn-Orman\u00a0and the other women at the top of the\u00a0BF voted it down. They were determined not to lose the BF\u2019s independence and with it a place of prominence for women\u00a0in the nation\u2019s burgeoning fascist movement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

None of which is to say that\u00a0she should be raised up as a feminist pathbreaker. As the historian Julie Gottlieb has argued, her cause was to\u202fearn women the right to serve the state, rather than to\u00a0secure\u00a0full civil and voting rights.\u202fIt may be that\u00a0Lintorn-Orman, a woman frequently referred to as\u00a0a\u00a0\u201cfascist feminist,\u201d\u00a0falls short\u00a0of either designation, although several other women of her generation could lay claim to both.\u202fMary Richardson, a suffragette best remembered for defacing Velasquez\u2019s\u00a0Rokeby Venus<\/em>\u00a0during a \u201cVotes for Women\u201d protest in 1914, became one of\u00a0Mosley\u2019s Blackshirts in the thirties, as did\u00a0her friend,\u00a0the\u00a0Hitlerian fanatic\u00a0Mary Allen, who\u00a0traveled Europe investigating the workings of fascist regimes.\u00a0Twenty years earlier,\u00a0Allen\u00a0and\u00a0her lesbian partner had\u202foverseen\u202fBritain\u2019s first division of female police officers,\u00a0and\u202fbefore that\u202fhad been active members\u00a0of Emmeline Pankhurst\u2019s Women\u2019s Social and Political Union.\u00a0\u201cI was first attracted to the\u202fBlackshirts,\u201d she explained,\u202f\u201cbecause I saw in them the courage, the action, the loyalty, the gift of service, the ability to serve which I had known in the suffragette movement.\u201d\u00a0She also\u00a0admired the fascists\u2019 use of political violence, something the suffragettes\u00a0had employed to protect themselves against assaults from\u202fmen. Seeing that \u201cthe\u202fBlackshirts\u202fwere attacked for no visible cause or reason,\u201d\u00a0Allen\u00a0wrote of her decision to join the party, \u201cI admired them the more when they hit back, and hit hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Lintorn-Orman in 1916.<\/p><\/div>\n

*\u00a0<\/p>\n

After a failed attempt to merge the BF with a rival in 1926, Lintorn-Orman strengthened her hold on the group, but continued to be an ineffective leader. With no clear objective other than to oppose and disrupt the left, the BF floundered. Like its leader, it represented little more than a cloudy vision of national pride and antiforeign prejudice. When Lintorn-Orman boasted in 1932 that the BF had nearly a million people on its books, it might have been an expression of her self-delusion, but more likely a sign of desperation: Mosley had just announced the formation of his own fascist party with the blessing of Mussolini. Under the weight of Mosley\u2019s glamorous celebrity, the BF was bound to be crushed. Immediately, there were discussions about folding the BF into the new organization, but Lintorn-Orman resisted, in part because she knew that Mosley\u2019s Blackshirts would never allow women the same prominence and freedom they\u2019d enjoyed in the BF. The conflict, inevitably, became violent, culminating in several dozen of Mosleyite thugs storming into the BF headquarters, smashing the place up, and injuring four people with blows to the head. For the second time in her life, Lintorn-Orman\u2019s sense of purpose was being undermined and removed from her.<\/p>\n

The stress of these events very likely contributed to a dramatic decline in her health. In the summer of 1932 the BF\u2019s own newspaper reported that she had sustained serious injuries after having a heart attack. The next year, the Metropolitan Police recorded that her mother feared that Lintorn-Orman was being led astray by manipulative members of the BF, who were corrupting her with drugs, \u201cdrunken orgies and undesirable practices,\u201d and stealing her money. Certain of her friends made similar claims to the police, and the picture of Lintorn-Orman that emerges from the mid-1930s is one of a desperately ill woman who had lost control of her life. By 1934, the intelligence services believed her to be receiving treatment for a serious alcohol-related illness. A few months later, in March 1935, she died at the Santa Brigida Hotel on the Canary Islands, at\u00a0just thirty-nine.<\/p>\n

For ninety years the story of Rotha Lintorn-Orman and the BF has puzzled, shocked, and amused. It seems perverse that well-to-do young women should have assumed roles at the vanguard of a priapic antidemocratic movement just as women across the Western world began to win their long struggle for suffrage. But perhaps the strangeness of the notion also says something about the way we expect women to behave in the political arena: women with astringent views at the poles of the political spectrum still seem to have the power to wrong-foot, despite the fact that the last century is replete with female support for causes that were meant to have been toxic to women. Donald Trump\u2019s run for the presidency is a piquant recent example, though the American far right has always had powerful women at the fore. Even at the peak of his malevolent powers, Stephen Bannon would struggle to outstrip Elizabeth Dilling, whose anti-Semitic, white-supremacist screeds sold in disturbingly huge numbers in the United States during the 1930s and forties. It\u2019s a reminder that whether we\u2019re talking about \u201cnasty women\u201d or Nazi women, female engagement in politics has never been conducted solely on the plane of gender issues as we are sometimes encouraged to believe, but in the baffling three-dimensional universe that is the real world.<\/p>\n

Edward White is the author of\u00a0<\/em>The Tastemaker: Carl Van\u00a0Vechten\u00a0and the Birth of Modern America<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The British Fascisti boasted female-only paramilitary units and a Fascist Children\u2019s Club. Lintorn-Orman insisted that women serve in leadership roles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":695,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22423],"tags":[26022,21962,4846,26019,20682,26023,26020,22998,2736,2962,26017,1102,2861,26016,26018,25980,26021,7740],"class_list":["post-105390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-lives-of-others","tag-arthur-leese","tag-benito-mussolini","tag-britain","tag-british-fascisti","tag-conservatism","tag-elizabeth-dilling","tag-ellen-wilkinson","tag-emmeline-pankhurst","tag-europe","tag-fascism","tag-fascists","tag-feminism","tag-history","tag-rotha-lintorn-orman","tag-sir-oswald-mosley","tag-the-uk","tag-valerie-arkell-smith","tag-world-war-i"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow Rotha\u202fLintorn-Orman Founded British Fascism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The British Fascisti boasted female-only paramilitary units and a Fascist Children\u2019s Club. Lintorn-Orman insisted that women serve in leadership roles.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Conservatism with Knobs On by Edward White\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"December 2, 2016 \u2013 The British Fascisti boasted female-only paramilitary units and a Fascist Children\u2019s Club. Lintorn-Orman insisted that women serve in leadership roles.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-12-02T17:11:18+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-12-02T18:22:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/rothamain.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"745\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"623\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Edward White\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Edward White\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"13 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Edward White\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/55542c8c993339f2274d4fecb214aa5c\"},\"headline\":\"Conservatism with Knobs On\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-12-02T17:11:18+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-12-02T18:22:14+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/\"},\"wordCount\":2509,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/rothamain.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Arthur Leese\",\"Benito Mussolini\",\"Britain\",\"British Fascisti\",\"conservatism\",\"Elizabeth Dilling\",\"Ellen Wilkinson\",\"Emmeline Pankhurst\",\"Europe\",\"Fascism\",\"fascists\",\"feminism\",\"history\",\"Rotha Lintorn-Orman\",\"Sir Oswald Mosley\",\"the UK\",\"Valerie Arkell-Smith\",\"World War I\"],\"articleSection\":[\"The Lives of Others\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/\",\"name\":\"How Rotha\u202fLintorn-Orman Founded British Fascism\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/rothamain.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-12-02T17:11:18+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-12-02T18:22:14+00:00\",\"description\":\"The British Fascisti boasted female-only paramilitary units and a Fascist Children\u2019s Club. Lintorn-Orman insisted that women serve in leadership roles.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/rothamain.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/rothamain.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Conservatism with Knobs On\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/55542c8c993339f2274d4fecb214aa5c\",\"name\":\"Edward White\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/dfe23588f1009f27586eb571dc20163aae5f0783eb24962f2c030324d6b4fb85?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/dfe23588f1009f27586eb571dc20163aae5f0783eb24962f2c030324d6b4fb85?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Edward White\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/ewhite\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How Rotha\u202fLintorn-Orman Founded British Fascism","description":"The British Fascisti boasted female-only paramilitary units and a Fascist Children\u2019s Club. Lintorn-Orman insisted that women serve in leadership roles.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Conservatism with Knobs On by Edward White","og_description":"December 2, 2016 \u2013 The British Fascisti boasted female-only paramilitary units and a Fascist Children\u2019s Club. Lintorn-Orman insisted that women serve in leadership roles.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2016-12-02T17:11:18+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-12-02T18:22:14+00:00","og_image":[{"width":745,"height":623,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/rothamain.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Edward White","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Edward White","Est. reading time":"13 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/"},"author":{"name":"Edward White","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/55542c8c993339f2274d4fecb214aa5c"},"headline":"Conservatism with Knobs On","datePublished":"2016-12-02T17:11:18+00:00","dateModified":"2016-12-02T18:22:14+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/"},"wordCount":2509,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/rothamain.jpg","keywords":["Arthur Leese","Benito Mussolini","Britain","British Fascisti","conservatism","Elizabeth Dilling","Ellen Wilkinson","Emmeline Pankhurst","Europe","Fascism","fascists","feminism","history","Rotha Lintorn-Orman","Sir Oswald Mosley","the UK","Valerie Arkell-Smith","World War I"],"articleSection":["The Lives of Others"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/","name":"How Rotha\u202fLintorn-Orman Founded British Fascism","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/rothamain.jpg","datePublished":"2016-12-02T17:11:18+00:00","dateModified":"2016-12-02T18:22:14+00:00","description":"The British Fascisti boasted female-only paramilitary units and a Fascist Children\u2019s Club. Lintorn-Orman insisted that women serve in leadership roles.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/rothamain.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/rothamain.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/02\/conservatism-with-knobs-on\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Conservatism with Knobs On"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/55542c8c993339f2274d4fecb214aa5c","name":"Edward White","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/dfe23588f1009f27586eb571dc20163aae5f0783eb24962f2c030324d6b4fb85?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/dfe23588f1009f27586eb571dc20163aae5f0783eb24962f2c030324d6b4fb85?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Edward White"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/ewhite\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/695"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105390"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105410,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105390\/revisions\/105410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}