Product Code Database
Edward Jeffrey Hamm (15 September 1915 – 4 May 1992) was a leading British fascist and supporter of Oswald Mosley. Although a minor figure in Mosley's prewar British Union of Fascists, Hamm became a leading figure after the Second World War and eventually succeeded as leader of the Union Movement after Mosley's retirement.
Around then, Hamm converted to the Roman Catholic Church under the influence of Father Clement Russell, a Nazi sympathiser and anti-Semite based in Wembley who kept a photograph of Mosley on display in his parochial house. Hamm and his wife were married by Russell, with the climax of the ceremony coming with the couple saluting a Nazi flag.
After his discharge, Hamm joined and then took over the British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women, which claimed to look after veterans' interests and converted it to a movement designed to keep Mosley's ideas current. Seeking to keep British fascism alive, Hamm organized a series of meetings in Hyde Park from November 1944 onwards and later moved them to the traditional BUF areas of East London. Hamm's League rallies eventually began to attract thousands, which convinced him that a proper political return was a distinct possibility. Hamm's rallies also attracted significant opposition, with clashes between his supporters and antifascists. However, the group's first public campaign actually took place in the Metropolitan Borough of Hampstead, where, with Hamm having become associated with Eleonora Tennant, it helped to organise a petition to keep immigrants out of new houses, ostensibly on the pretext that the housing should be kept for returning soldiers. As a result of his involvement, Hamm secured publicity for the League. It also gave him access to leading figures such as Ernest Benn and Waldron Smithers, who had been involved in the initial drawing up of the petition.
Hamm's increasing profile did not go unnoticed by both supporters and opponents, and in 1946, he and his ally Victor Burgess suffered a severe beating from antifascists. (A similar incident in Brighton in 1948 resulted in Hamm spending time in hospital.) Mosley was initially unsure of Hamm, but at a secret meeting in Bethnal Green on 22 December 1946, he endorsed Hamm's leadership and declared him his "East End representative", East London being traditionally the centre of Mosleyite activity. In 1947, however, Mosley censured Hamm for the violent and inflammatory nature of much of his propaganda, which forced him to tone down his rhetoric.
Hamm served as Mosley's personal secretary during the later years of the UM and succeeded to the post upon the death of Alexander Raven Thomson in 1955. Like Mosley, he was an ardent supporter of Irish unity and encouraged his leader to campaign on that issue. Hamm stood as a UM candidate at the 1966 general election in the Birmingham Handsworth constituency and polled 4% of the vote. Mosley effectively withdrew from public life afterward, and the UM came under the leadership of Hamm and Robert Row, the last two paid UM activists.
Mosley was officially UM leader until 1973, when he formally retired, and Hamm, who had become the effective leader, formally succeeded him. Under Hamm the party relaunched as the Action Party and under that name contested the 1973 Greater London Council elections without success. The party transformed itself into the Action Society in 1978 and gave up party politics to become a publishing house.
Hamm published his autobiography, Action Replay, in 1983, and in 1988 his second book, The Evil Good Men Do. After Mosley's death in December 1980, Hamm published and edited a quarterly pro-Mosley magazine, Lodestar, which included contributions by Diana Mitford, Colin Wilson and Brocard Sewell. He died from Parkinson's disease in 1992.
| 1.7 |
| 4.1 |
|
|
