Horatio Bottomley and the Far Right Before Fascism (Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right)

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Following the 2019 general election, Bottomley was the longest-serving MP and therefore Father of the House.

He was, too, naturally an indolent man, though he could be induced to work in terrific spurts when it was necessary for the achievement of something upon which he had set his heart. But the prolonged steady application of his energies was foreign to his nature. When he arrived in prison, he was so fat that could not remove his own shoes or trousers. (On a morale-boosting visit to the front during the war—Bottomley and his John Bull were immensely popular with the troops—the general with whom Bottomley was touring told him, when some firing began, to get down on his stomach, but Bottomley refused on the grounds that to do so would make him a bigger target than he was when erect.) When Bottomley was first given his prison bread and cocoa in late afternoon, he turned it down, saying that he would rather wait for dinner, not realizing that the bread and cocoa was dinner. Norman’s pamphlet sold very widely, and the problem for Bottomley was that all its allegations were true. But he was a resourceful and inventive man, admirably so in a way: he persuaded a printer in Birmingham, for a fee, to print six copies of the pamphlet, and then to offer no defense in a suit against him for libel. The judge and jury in the case were completely taken in, and Bottomley was awarded substantial damages that he never claimed, instead paying the printer the sum agreed beforehand. Fearing a suit against them, the publishers of Norman’s original pamphlet issued an apology to Bottomley; thus was the pamphlet discredited, though it contained nothing but the truth.At the age of 26, Bottomley became the company's chairman. [27] His advance in the business world was attracting wider notice, and in 1887 he was invited by the Liberal Party in Hornsey to be their candidate in a parliamentary by-election. He accepted, and although defeated by Henry Stephens, the ink magnate, fought a strong campaign which won him a congratulatory letter from William Gladstone. [21] His business affairs were proceeding less serenely; he quarrelled with his partner Douglas MacRae, and the two decided to separate. Bottomley described the "Quixotic impulse" that led him to let MacRae divide the assets: "He was a printer, and I was a journalist—but he took the papers and left me the printing works". [28] Hansard Publishing Union [ edit ] Sir Henry Hawkins, the judge before whom Bottomley appeared, and was acquitted, on fraud charges in 1893 Bottomley’s origins were not altogether auspicious. He was born in Bethnal Green in the East End of London in 1860. His father was a tailor’s cutter who drank heavily, had once been admitted to a lunatic asylum probably with delirium tremens, and died of a recurrence when Horatio was three. His mother died not long after, and by the age of four Horatio was an orphan. Girls of tender age … have been ravished. Husbands have been hurled out of homes at the point of a bayonet, that wives might become the prey of uniformed ghouls. Vestals have been shamed in front of older relatives, women in the presence of their children … It is hard to believe that a British member of Parliament would lower himself to whitewash criminals in uniform, and I hope that Ramsay MacDonald can step forward and vindicate himself against the charge to which I have referred.” If [Bottomley] had a humbug of his own, he made mincemeat of the humbug of others, excoriating the more extreme claims made on behalf of the League of Nations, dismissing most forces in international politics except those based on power and ridiculing the naivest sorts of Labour claim to have discovered an inexhaustible supply of wealth and wages.

Harrison, Barbara (1996). Not Only the "dangerous trades": Women's Work and Health in Britain, 1880–1914. Exeter: SRP Ltd. ISBN 0-7484-0145-8. Eliza Norton was a dressmaker’s assistant and the daughter of a debt collector. Not exactly a socially ambitious marriage for Horatio, but she was pretty and proved a supportive wife to Horatio. She gave him a daughter, and more importantly she tolerated his many, many infidelities over the next fifty years. His marriage also made him respectable enough to be given a partnership in the shorthand company, where his immense natural charm and apparent business acumen had clearly impressed the owners. But Horatio had bigger ambitions than just running a shorthand firm. And he saw two routes to achieve them – publishing, and politics. Charles Bradlaugh As this suggests, the history of independents in British politics is more jumbled and far less effective than the romanticised image of the independent as a principled loner against the system implies. Very occasionally, independent MPs have come to glory. Winston Churchill and Harold Macmillan had periods as independents (a brief one in Churchill’s case, much longer in Macmillan’s, from 1936 to 1937) , but became prime ministers in the end. Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot survived similar spells to found the NHS and lead the Labour party respectively. Noel Pemberton Billing would stand for the same seat in the 1940s – one of several parallels between him and Horatio Bottomley.Porter, Dilwyn (January 2011). "Marks, Harry Hananel". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/47898. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015 . Retrieved 17 June 2014. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) In 1914 David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was given the task of setting up a British War Propaganda Bureau (WPB). Lloyd George, appointed the successful writer and fellow Liberal MP, Charles Masterman as head of the organization. The WPB arranged for journalists like Bottomley to visit the Western Front. In 1874, when Horatio was 14 and due to leave the orphanage, he ran away without waiting for the formalities. His aunt Caroline Praill—his mother's sister—who lived in nearby Edgbaston, gave him a home, while he worked as an errand boy in a Birmingham building firm. This arrangement lasted only a few months before Horatio, impatient to be reunited with his sister from whom he had been separated for six years, went to London where he began an apprenticeship with a wood engraver. [11] Early career [ edit ] First steps [ edit ] Hooley's and Bottomley's paths would cross several times in future years; they were inmates together in Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1922. [50]

Every German prisoner I spoke to said the same thing. I can’t tell what it was but THE WAR IS WON … I will write more when my head is clearer. I must go now and have my photo taken in a gas-bag and tin hat.”gpi: General Paralysis of the Insane, the last stage of neurosyphilis. Bottomley’s description exactly fits one of the only two cases I ever saw as a doctor, and her dreadful screams ring in my mind’s ear still; I can conjure them up mentally forty-five years later. Bottomley also had a luxury apartment in Pall Mall and owned several racehorses. He twice won the Cesarewitch and several other races, but never achieved the successes in the Derby or the Grand National, even though he spent a great deal of money trying to achieve this ambition. He also lost a great deal of money on failed betting coups. Why can't we get to work at once, Houston?" he exclaimed impatiently. "We are losing money and wasting time." You are in for fraud, I see,” said I. The deduction was not at all remarkable. Burglars do not read Wittgenstein. Sir Peter James Bottomley (born 30 July 1944) is a British Conservative Party politician who has served as a Member of Parliament (MP) since 1975, and who currently represents Worthing West. First elected at a by-election in the former constituency of Woolwich West, he served as its MP until its abolition at the 1983 general election, and then for the Eltham constituency which replaced it, until 1997. He moved to his current constituency at the 1997 general election.