BRITISH FASCISM SINCE THE 1930S: A GENEALOGY OF FAILURE

British fascism is approached in this paper in its continuity and dispersal, its tradition and contingencies, its power and the resistance to it. Its genealogy is traced from present day culture and politics to the 1930s and back, paying particular attention to the presence of fascist or anti-fascist discourse even in texts and contexts which were not purportedly dealing with the subject, as in the case of some nationalist writers of the Scottish Literary Renaissance. Far right ideology is thus discussed in terms of its potential and cultural influence, which sheds new light on the conventional notion of the failure of British fascism. The overall aim, therefore, is to open new paths into an area of research which still has much to offer, since relatively little is known about the deep impact of fascist imagery and crypto-fascism after historians decreed it dead and buried in Britain at the outbreak of World War II, and at present far-right activists tend to deny their connections with fascism.