The Lure of Violence

This book offers a novel interpretation of conservative and right-wing responses to the Edwardian crisis in Britain (1901-1914). It stresses how the upsurge of right-wing extremism within and outside the Conservative party materialized into the formation of a myriad of organisations which conceived violence as a legitimate instrument of politics. The book examines how the British Right responded to the challenges of democratisation and, more generally, to the national crisis of confidence that permeated the Edwardian years (1901–1914). It explores the mobilization of a variety of different nationalist organisations, citizen policing groups, private military associations and paramilitary formations, which conferred on themselves the right to protect Britain from its internal and external enemies. Academic historians have examined this surge of right-wing extremism within and outside the Tory Party in the prewar years. However, they often overlooked how this ‘rebellion on the right’ produced a culture of violence in the most reactionary and intransigent sectors of British conservatism. Drawing on a vast array of documentary sources, the book explores the distinctive kind of belief system and the practices of those right-wing actors, which variously pursued the goals of military preparedness, ‘racial regeneration’ and imperial unity. While differing in their primary aims, they were all guided by the principle that all citizens owed a duty of service to the country and had the right to endorse any movement believed to be beneficial to the nation and its interests. The book reveals their proclivity for violent means to suppress any type of political, social or cultural deviance that might imperil the organic nature and vigour of the national community. The book is of special interest to historians and other scholarly researchers in that it brings back into focus a largely forgotten network of organisations bound together by deep fears of national decadence and social disintegration. At the same time, it helps shed light on those powerful tensions and authoritarian reflexes which traversed conservative imaginaries in the volatile Edwardian days. This book provides a comprehensive examination of conservative and right-wing responses to the Edwardian crisis in Britain (1901-1914). It stresses how the upsurge of right-wing extremism within and outside the Conservative party was accompanied by the crystallization of a culture of violence. The preparation, instigation or threatening of violent acts against all those who appeared to threaten the organic nature and vigour of the national community found expression in a myriad of ultra-nationalist organisations, citizen policing groups, private military associations, and paramilitary formations. The book innovatively reconstructs the belief system and the practices of those right-wing actors, which pursued the goals of military preparedness, “racial regeneration” and imperial unity, while defending the amorphous goals of authority, order and ‘national efficiency’ against the forces of radicalism and socialism. The book helps to cast light on the bellicose and authoritarian reflexes that traversed British conservatism in the turbulent prewar years.

Pages: 336, Hardcover, Manchester University Press