Reviewed by R.B. Sussex, England
Amanda has generously thanked me in the acknowledgements section at the back of the book for my research and the collection of press cuttings I gave her about her father, which helped her to trace her long lost sisters in New Zealand, the daughters of her father's relationship with an Irish woman called Vera Brennan, after his marriage to Amanda's mother Cynthia broke down after the Second World War, due to his radical political and religious views. Miss Hale also acknowledges the research of the late John Warburton who founded the Friends of Oswald Mosley group and Keith Thompson of the League of St. George publishing house Steven Books. Amanda and I are friends in spite of my allegiance to Mosley's ideas and her Left of centre feminist stance, although I certainly agree with her support on Twitter for the civil rights of oppressed Palestinian people in the Holy Land. Understandably she is also critical of detention without trial which left her father emotionally damaged and contributed to his early and tragic death in 1955. A London University student called William Maidment contacted us and wrote a dissertation about the Legion of Christian Reformers, for which he received a First Class degree and top marks in his class. He is also researching and writing a non-fiction book about the subject which will be of interest to academics and students of history, religion and politics. UK journalists have also been in contact with Amanda Hale and myself interested in the fascinating story of James Battersby and his movements.
James Larratt Battersby was a director of the well known Battersby Hats Company Ltd in Stockport, Lancashire, the same county where my father is from. My late grandfather once told me that he attended a Mosley Blackshirt public meeting in the Free Trade Hall in Manchester during 1933. Battersby was forced to resign from the family firm due to his involvement in fascist politics and before the War he was the leader of the Stockport branch of Mosley's British Union of Fascists and National Socialists (BUFNS), more commonly known as British Union (BU) for short. Battersby spoke at several indoor and outdoor Blackshirt meetings in Lancashire and wrote an article for the "BUF Quarterly" journal entitled "Can Private Enterprise Survive?". Jim Battersby's friends and comrades affectionately teased him with the nickname of "Mad Hatter" due to the old use of mercury in the hat making process, which was said to affect one's mind.
Amanda Hale's father was interned without charge or trial during 1940 under the notorious Defence Regulation 18B, along with more than a thousand members of British Union and other fascists and pacifists for campaigning in support of Peace with Germany. James Battersby suffered brutal and sadistic mistreatment, starvation and psychological torture at the infamous Latchmere House run by the British State's security service MI5. Jim Battersby wrote in his book "The Bishop Said Amen" that "everything possible was done to agitate, frustrate and torment us."
During his detention at Walton Gaol, Liverpool, Brixton Gaol, and the Ascot and Peveril, Isle of Man 18B concentration camps, James Battersby met and became a close comrade and friend of Captain Thomas Guillaume St. Barbe Baker, and together they began to hold weekly Christian religious meetings and professed their belief that "Adolf Hitler was sent by Almighty God as a divine instrument to judge the Mammon World system of Usury and International Jewish Finance". The Battersby-Baker Bible Prophecy Public Lecture meetings in the camps are recounted and fictionalised extremely well and convincingly in Amanda Hale's novel, and after some initial objections and hostile resistance to the somewhat controversial theology espoused, the group of 30 men in attendance on one such occasion end up by enthusiastically cheering and applauding James and Captain Baker in the camp hut. Jim Battersby was popular among fellow 18B detainees as a Camp Leader and proved to be an excellent and talented pianist.
After the Brothers' War in 1945, James Battersby and Captain Thomas St. Barbe Baker founded the Legion of Christian Reformers (LCR) and established a pro-Hitler Christian religious commune for men and women at Kingdom House in West Sussex.
After the Brothers' War in 1945, James Battersby and Captain Thomas St. Barbe Baker founded the Legion of Christian Reformers (LCR) and established a pro-Hitler Christian religious commune for men and women at Kingdom House in West Sussex.
Kingdom House - Headquarters of the League of Christian Reformers
(Photo credit: Amanda Hale 2013)
Captain Robert Gordon Canning, a former BUF officer and author of the pamphlet "The Holy Land: Arab or Jew?" purchased a large granite bust of Hitler for £500 at the Ribbentrop auction sale, and Battersby bought some German Nazi flags which were transported by hired lorry to Kingdom House. The activities of the Legion soon attracted nationwide and worldwide attention and sensationalist headlines from the daily press in Britain (and even in Soviet Russian newspapers), and questions were asked in parliament. Chuter Ede, the Home Secretary speaking in the House of Commons in reply to demands from MP's that the Kingdom House group be investigated and closed down, refused to ban the LCR and stated: "Under the guise of religion these people seek to make a cult of Hitler and the forces of evil which the United Nations recently overcame. I entirely share the feelings of revulsion against this movement, although I have no power to interfere merely because it is unpopular or ridiculous as long as its advocates commit no breach of the law."
The Hitlerian Christian religious community at Kingdom House and surrounding farm land reared animals and grew crops aiming for self-sufficiency. Religious services were held in the chapel of Kingdom House and prayers to Hitler were said morning and evening. One night a raid was carried out on Kingdom House by a group of masked anti-fascists and some members of the Legion were violently assaulted (sounds familiar?).
James Larratt Battersby was a prolific writer of books, pamphlets, articles, letters and the editor of monthly newspapers and magazines such as "The Kingdom Herald" "Christian Digest and Witness" and "Practical Christian", and is the author of "Put Not Your Trust In Riches" (Poynton, Cheshire 1946), "Calling 100,000 Christians" (Poynton, Cheshire 1946), "The Bishop Said Amen" (Poynton, Cheshire 1947), "Heirs of the Kingdom" (Poynton, Cheshire 1948), "Another Letter From Sydney" (Manchester 1950), "The Aryan Testament of Adolf Hitler" (Manchester 1951) and his best known work "The Holy Book of Adolf Hitler" (Southport, Lancashire 1952). As an article in "History Today" magazine published in 2018 entitled "The British Church That Worshipped Hitler" noted "The members of the short-lived church would surely be pleased to know that in 2018, "The Holy Book of Adolf Hitler" can be downloaded online, while busts of the Nazi leader are readily available from Amazon".
During his detention in the 18B camps, Battersby wrote many letters to leading politicians such as Winston Churchill and Herbert Morrison, and religious leaders like the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. William Temple, and the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, Dr. J.H. Hertz urging them to make Peace with Germany and accept Hitler as God's Christ and chosen to lead mankind. Surprisingly, the Archbishop's office replied with a polite acknowledgement and even more surprisingly so did the Chief Rabbi personally. (This remarkable correspondence is reproduced in "The Bishop Said Amen"). At the time, Battersby and Baker were appealing to Jews to accept Christianity and supported the founding of a Jewish homeland somewhere in the world alternative to British Mandate Palestine, as a constructive solution to the "Jewish Problem".
Like Hitler and the German National Socialists and the "German Christian" movement, James Battersby believed that Jesus Christ was an Aryan Galilean fighter who drove the "satanic Jew" money changers from the Temple of God. (John 2:13-22, John 7:1, 1 Thessalonians 2:14-20). He also opposed the fratricidal war between England and Germany due to Christ's Sermon on the Mount in the New Testament - "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the Children of God" (Matthew 5:9). I explore similar themes in my booklet "Fascism and Religion" (Steven Books, London 2012) and recall an incident some years ago when I attended a Bible Study meeting at my local Church of England vicarage, when the vicar Revd. Christopher Loveless made the following statement: "Hitler, Mussolini and Mosley are all in Hell with the Devil" and I spoke up and said: "What about Churchill who bombed German men, women and children in Dresden, Hamburg and Berlin during the War? Sir Oswald Mosley was a man of Peace who tried to stop another bloody War in Europe." Revd. Loveless later tragically took his own life as reported in the "Daily Mail" at the time. Despite our theological differences I was genuinely sorry when I heard of his death as he kindly came to see me personally when I was in hospital at one time in the past.
James Battersby believed that Hitler was the Messiah and the Second Coming of Christ as foretold in the "Book of Revelation" who ascended to be at the right hand of God the Father after his death in 1945, which led to his critics and opponents accusing him of "blasphemy". Battersby also wrote in "The Holy Book of Adolf Hitler" that unmarried Aryan mothers would be honoured, and healthy and strong Aryan children born out of wedlock would be cherished as vital to the race and nation in the new reformed "Christian National Socialist State of the North Sea Isles" in England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland as part of a new Christian National Socialist European Union and a World Federation of National Socialist States, rather like the Lebensborn programme of the Third Reich, which replaced the judgemental "morality" against "illegitimate children" propounded by the hypocritical established churches who blessed warfare against the Germans contrary to the teachings of Christ. One Evangelical Christian Pastor Victor Walker came to protest against the Legion of Christian Reformers outside Kingdom House and played hymns on a gramophone record player in the garden. However, Arthur Schneider an Anglo-Austrian member of the Legion brought Pastor Walker a cup of tea and they had a friendly and civilised discussion about religion. In addition, Battersby founded the World Aryan Union, the Union of Aryan Motherhood and the Aryan Youth Movement as the political arms of the Legion of Christian Reformers.
During 1949, James Battersby travelled to South Africa and attempted to build a memorial to Hitler but was banned from further visits to the country as an "undesirable immigrant". In 1951, Battersby was arrested and fined £10 for interrupting the two minutes silence at the Cenotaph in London by declaring according to police evidence,"This is the day of English judgement. I speak the truth. English children must be saved. Trust God and the eternal Christ. Heil Hitler."Battersby claimed to have spoken out of "the deepest sense of responsibility to God and to my fellow countrymen." He claimed that for 25 years he had been a student of theology, divinity and eschatology and the judgement of which he spoke was nothing to do with one country or another but of the whole world. He claimed his actual words were, "This is the day of judgement. Take the children out of London. Praise God and the eternal Christ. Heil Hitler", and to have been planning his actions for 12 months. When Jim Battersby was arrested he had in his possession affidavits from three Harley Street doctors who had testified to his sanity.
In 1955, James Larratt Battersby disappeared from his lodgings in Southport and was alleged to have taken his own life by jumping into the paddles of the Mersey ferry. However, the coroner's report stated that the cause of death was "unascertainable" and his tragic end remains a mystery to this day. Intriguingly, one of the characters in Amanda Hale's new book is of the opinion that he was in fact murdered.
It is a fitting epitaph to conclude this review with the words of James Battersby's friend John Charnley, the former Hull District Leader of the British Union who lived in Southport with Jim after the War.
Reference: Blackshirts and Roses" by John Charnley (Brockingday Publications, London 1990)"The stress and strain of detention and marital problems, coupled with unrealistic and mentally unbalanced views, eventually became more than he could bear. I felt guilty in that I had not tried to influence his thinking into more rational channels. I was more concerned in making my own life more bearable in frustrating times. I had a high regard not only for his musical skills but also for his intelligence."
Jim Battersby
"Patriot, Christian, Brave Blackshirt and British Political Prisoner"
Further reading:
"Jim Battersby: British Political Prisoner" by Keith Thompson (Steven Books, London 2007)
