Description
John Beckett was a rising political star. Elected as Labour's youngest M.P. in 1924, he was constantly in the news and tipped for greatness.
But ten years later he was propaganda chief for Mosley窶冱 fascists, and one of Britain窶冱 three best known anti-Semites.
Yet his mother, whom he loved, was a Jew. Her ancestors were Solomons, Isaacs and Jacobsons, originally from Prussia.
He successfully hid his Jewish ancestry all his life 窶� he said his mother窶冱 family were "fisher folk from the east coast." His son, the author of this book, acclaimed political biographer and journalist Francis Beckett, did not discover the truth until John Beckett had been dead for years.
He left Mosley and founded the National Socialist League with William Joyce, later Lord Haw Haw, and spent the war years in prison, considered a danger to the war effort.
For the rest of his life, and all of Francis Beckett窶冱 childhood, John Beckett and his family were closely watched by the security services. Their devious machinations, traced in records only recently released, damaged chiefly his young family.
This is a fascinating and brutally honest account of a troubled man in turbulent times.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Eva Solomon and the Yeomen of Cheshire
2. The Legacy of War
3. Major Attlee and Corporal Beckett
4. The Theatre and the General Election
5. Labour's Youngest MP
6. The 1926 General Strike
7. A Complicated Life
8. The Death of Hope
9. Playing to the Gallery
10. 1931
11. Dying on Stage
12. A Life in Ruins
13. Anne
14. The Streetfighter
15. Following the Bleeder
16. Jew-Baiting and Standing by the King
17. The National Socialist League
18. The Anti-War Faction
19. Prison
20. Mr Morrison窶冱 Prisoner
21. A Birth and A Hanging
22. Indian Summer
23. The Catholic Church and the Soul of the Far Right
24. A Family in Freefall
25. Struts and Frets His Hour Upon The Stage, and then is Heard No More
26. Legacy of a Jewish Anti Semite
