REAL HISTORY. Britain’s first Fascist organization wasn’t founded by Oswald Mosley.

A woman who drove ambulances through the horrors of the First World War, helped pioneer the Girl Guides, and received a medal for bravery founded it.

Her name was Rotha Lintorn-Orman, and in 1923, almost a decade before Mosley established the British Union of Fascists, she founded the British Fascisti, later known as the British Fascists.

Unconventional upbringing

Born in Kensington, London, in 1895, Lintorn-Orman had an unconventional upbringing. She became involved in the early Girl Guide movement and served as an ambulance driver during the First World War, receiving the Médaille de la Reine Élisabeth from Belgium in recognition of her wartime service.

The Red Menace

Following the war, she became increasingly concerned about communism and the possibility of revolutionary unrest spreading to Britain.

Benito Mussolini

Inspired by Benito Mussolini’s rise to power in Italy, she established an organization intended to oppose socialism and communism and defend the existing British political and social order.

The British Fascists attracted thousands of supporters at its height, including women, former servicemen and members of the middle and upper classes.

British Union of Fascists

Unlike Mosley’s later movement, it initially placed greater emphasis on anti-communism, patriotism and support for the monarchy than on developing a comprehensive fascist political programme.

Personal circumstances deteriorated

Her mother, who had financially supported the organization, eventually withdrew her backing amid concerns about her daughter’s lifestyle and drinking. Internal divisions and the emergence of rival fascist movements further weakened her influence.

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Passed to the other side

On 10 March 1935, Rotha Lintorn-Orman passed to the other side on Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands, aged just 40.

By then, the movement she had founded was collapsing, while Mosley’s British Union of Fascists had become the better-known face of British fascism.

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