Ramsay, the only serving MP detained under this law, was released in 1944. In April 1940, he took the Red Book to Tyler Kent for safekeeping because, as a cypher clerk at the US Embassy, he had diplomatic immunity A month later, the police raided Kent’s flat. He and Wolkoff were accused of supplying the Germans with secret cables between Churchill and the US President.The other members of the inner circle, including Ramsay, were rounded up and detained under Defence Regulation 18B, an anti-fifth-column clause. While there is evidence that many Right Club members dropped from view, others shared his enthusiasm. Lord Sempill, a famous aviator of the inter-war years, was suspected of spying from his post at the Admiralty and was secretly retired by Churchill to prevent a scandal.Ramsay nominally dissolved the Right Club when war began but continued work with a 10-strong inner circle including his assistant, Anna Wolkoff. It forged connections with other pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic groups, such as the 4,000-member Link, founded by Admiral Sir Barry Domville, a former Director of Naval Intelligence.When war broke out, Ramsay was undeterred If anything, his zeal grew. The club held meetings, several of them chaired by Lord Wellesley.
“Our first objective,” he later wrote, “was to clear the Conservative Party of Jewish influence.” The list of some 235 members seems to have been drawn up that summer. His questions and statements in the House of Commons were mainly about parochial issues.Then, during the Spanish Civil War, he was swept up by the tide of fascism and emerged as a virulent anti-Semite and enemy of international Communism. A powerful orator, he toured the nation fulminating on the “Judaeo-Bolshevik Plot”. He became closely associated with pro-Nazi circles in Britain and, by 1938, was a leading figure in the Nordic League.Unlike some of his fellows, he was undeterred by the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom, when the Nazis first showed the violence they could unleash on their fellow citizens if they were Jewish. As the clouds of war closed over Europe, Ramsay became further convinced that Jews were orchestrating a confrontation – which he much opposed – between Britain and Germany.So he set up the Right Club. Known to his friends as “Jock” he was, apparently, a charming man, closely connected to the aristocracy in Scotland. He was elected as the Conservative MP for Peebles and South Midlothian in 1931.
Born in India, educated at Eton and Sandhurst, he was an officer with the Coldstream Guards in France during the First World War and was invalided out in 1919. Commander E H Cole was the Chancellor of the White Knights, a British version of the Ku Klux Klan. MPs included Sir James Edmondson, Colonel Charles I Kerr and John M’Kie.Many of those of those who appear in the Right Club list were also members of other extreme right-wing groups. Fifty four were in the Nordic League, which, like the Nazis, believed in an Aryan master race.Who was this man who founded the Right Club? Until the mid-1930s, Ramsay was a run-of-the-mill constituency MP. Sir Alexander Walker, then the head of the Johnnie Walker whisky dynasty, is shown to have donated the princely sum of £100.Another well known, anti-Semite member was A K Chesterton, a First World War military hero.
A “hymn” to the tune of “Land of Hope and Glory”, entered in the book in Ramsay’s handwriting and in a printed version for public distribution, reads:Hymn 1939Land of dope and Jewry,land that once was free,All the Jew boys praise theeWhile they plunder thee.Poorer still and poorerGrow the trueborn sons,Faster still and fasterThey’re sent to feed the guns.Land of Jewish finance,Fooled by Jewish lies,In press and books and moviesWhile our birthright dies.Longer still and longerIs the rope they getBut, by the God of battlesT’will serve to hang them yet.Running my finger down the list, written with a fountain pen in Ramsay’s hand, the names still resonate: Arthur Wellesley the 5th Duke of Wellington, the Second Baron Redesdale, The Earl of Galloway, Lord Ronald Graham, Princess Blucher, Sir Ernest Bennett, Prince Turka Galitzine and Britain’s most notorious Second World War traitor, William Joyce, later known as Lord Haw-Haw as he broadcast propaganda from Germany The book also lists donations. The reality is somewhat different.The book is divided into male and female membership lists with notes as to whether they have paid their dues, made donations or received their club badge – which featured an eagle killing a snake.But if the badge seems mildly comic now, the vehemence with which these establishment figures hated Jews was chilling. For 40 years, the ledger was believed to have been lost and its whereabouts was much speculated upon. Some believed it was held by a secret clique of the extreme right awaiting a fascist revival. And the racist right did treat it with a respect akin to ancestor worship.Among anti-fascist conspiracy theorists, it was believed to have been suppressed by the government to prevent the embarrassing exposure of establishment figures.
