The English Mistery was a political and esoteric group active in the United Kingdom of the 1930s. A "Conservative fringe group" in favour of bringing back the feudal system, its views have been characterised as "reactionary ultra-royalist, anti-democratic". It was against everything to do with welfare, the London School of Economics

London School of Economics

The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

 and the United States.

Founder

It was founded by William Sanderson, and took its title from his 1930 book That Which Was Lost: A Treatise on Freemasonry and the English Mistery. Sanderson was a Freemason but disaffected, a member of the Imperial Fascist League

Imperial Fascist League

The Imperial Fascist League was a British fascist political movement founded by Arnold Leese in 1929.-Origins:Leese had originally been a member of the British Fascists and indeed had been one of only two members ever to hold elected office for them...

 and author of a previous book Statecraft (1927), and founded the group in 1930 to promote his view of 'leadership'.

Historical context

Stone has stated that the importance of the English Mistery lay “in the fact that it had links, both personal and ideological, with much wider strands of thought in interwar Britain.” As with the British Union of Fascists

British Union of Fascists

The British Union was a political party in the United Kingdom formed in 1932 by Sir Oswald Mosley as the British Union of Fascists, in 1936 it changed its name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists and then in 1937 to simply the British Union...

, many of its members were “aristocratic revivalists and Diehard peers of the Edwardian period” . Their ideas, now regarded as extreme, spoke to acute and home-grown issues: Britain, one of the biggest imperial powers, was seeing rapid social and constitutional changes. English fascism had its roots in "diehards", who “made of illiberalism, extreme nationalism, militarism, and racism a base from which home-grown fascist ideas could develop in Britain”. The movement was racist and anti-semitic.

Ideology

The English Mistery was founded by William Sanderson in 1930 as a forum for discussion of issues and problems: politics, economics, religion, eugenics, women, Jews, etc. The movement was elitist, and attracted landowners, political figures (e.g. Reginald Dorman-Smith

Reginald Dorman-Smith

Colonel Sir Reginald Hugh Dorman-Smith GBE was a British diplomat, soldier and politician.-In politics:Dorman-Smith started his career with a strong interest in agriculture, becoming President of the National Farmers Union at the age of 32, and then later Minister of Agriculture...

, a minister of agriculture), some members of the aristocracy and intellectuals. Mistery meant the mastery of service: to serve and to be subordinate. The Mistery dreamt of an England with a hierarchy and a nation of racially pure Englishmen who were lead by a monarch and supported by strong leaders.

They wanted to return leadership to the English aristocracy; a small elite would rule over the English race. Submissive races could be the victim of brutalities and slaughter, but this was a good thing: “Surely, therefore, the time has come to recognise the inevitability of violence and sacrifice, and consciously to select the section or elements in the world or the nation that should be sacrificed”. This way of thinking was not unique, as Stone explains: “The slaughter of primitive peoples as a way of venting the Englishman's excess energy, has been long a mainstay of British imperial thinking.”

Membership

Its members included the British Nietzschean Anthony Ludovici

Anthony Ludovici

Anthony Mario Ludovici, was an English philosopher, Nietzschean sociologist and social critic. He is best known, perhaps, as a proponent of aristocracy, and in the early 20th century was a leading British conservative author...

, who was one of the most prolific writers of the movement and helped form its ideology, and the journalist Collin Brooks. Others were Rolf Gardiner

Rolf Gardiner

Henry Rolf Gardiner was an English rural revivalist and sympathizer with Nazism. He was founder of groups significant in the British history of organic farming, as well being a participant in inter-war far right politics.-Early life:...

 and Graham Seton Hutchison

Graham Seton Hutchison

Lieutenant-Colonel Graham Seton Hutchison was a British First World War army officer, military theorist, author of both adventure novels and non-fiction works and fascist activist.-Military career:...

, founder in 1933 of the pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic National Workers' Movement, and the diplomat Cecil de Sausmarez. Conservative MPs Gerard Wallop, Michael Beaumont

Michael Beaumont

Michael Wentworth Beaumont TD, DL, JP was a British soldier and Conservative Party politician.-Biography:...

 and Reginald Dorman-Smith

Reginald Dorman-Smith

Colonel Sir Reginald Hugh Dorman-Smith GBE was a British diplomat, soldier and politician.-In politics:Dorman-Smith started his career with a strong interest in agriculture, becoming President of the National Farmers Union at the age of 32, and then later Minister of Agriculture...

 joined. Beaumont left: both he and Dorman-Smith found the Mistery inactive in practical terms. The barrister John Platts-Mills

John Platts-Mills

John Faithful Fortescue Platts-Mills, QC was a British Labour Party politician born in Wellington, New Zealand. He graduated with a first-class honours degree in law from Victoria University of Wellington and in 1928 won a Rhodes Scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford...

 was on the margins of the group for a time.

Wallop eventually split the group in 1936, forming his successor organisation, the English Array. This schism left the Mistery in poor shape.