John Baker White (British politician)

John Baker White (12 August 1902 – 10 December 1988) started his career as a Conservative political activist and became a very early member of the British Fascists. He undertook undercover operations for Sir George Makgill's Industrial Intelligence Bureau on behalf of MI5. By 1926, he worked for the Economic League, an industry-sponsored organization committed to undermine left wing militancy. By 1931, he became director of the League.Unattributed, John Baker White, Daily Telegraph 13 December 1988. He joined a territorial regiment as an officer immediately before World War II, from where he was recruited to Military Intelligence as a propaganda specialist. In 1945, he was elected a Conservative politician. He was also a journalist and author and his work reveals a colourful, possibly, eccentric personality. His autobiographical writing makes him an important, though never completely reliable, witness to UK parapolitical circles in which he was involved for seventy years.

Early life and education Baker White was born in 1902. in Malling, Kent the only son of John Wilfred Baker White and his wife Katherine Blythe. They had married in 1899, when Katherine was just 20, and White 22. White's father had died when he was sixteen, and he had inherited the family fortune, which meant he did not need to work, and he did not. Soon after John's birth, his father deserted his mother, and in 1905 ceased living with her completely, spending his time big game hunting in Rhodesia and Canada.Canterbury Journal, Kentish Times and Farmers' Gazette 19 January 1907 In January 1907, Katherine sued for restoration of conjugal rights, ensuring the proceedings attracted substantial newspaper interest. But White refused to meet the 14–day deadline set by the judge. Katherine was consequently granted a divorce. This had been a way of engineering a legal separation at a time when divorce was hard to achieve. Within a couple of years, his father had returned to the UK and settled as a gentleman farmer near Canterbury. Young John Baker White saw and stayed with his father regularly, and his mother and father jointly made decisions about his future."True Blue", John Baker White, Frederick Muller, London, 1970, pps 1-40

In 1909, Katherine remarried to Gerald Hartley Atkinson, whom John Baker White knew as "Uncle Tim" — a name he continued to use. Atkinson was forty-two and on the 1911 census describes himself as a Met Police Pensioner.1911 Census for England

He grew up with his mother and step-father and a half sister on their nursery garden specialising in gladioli, "The Flagstaff", in Southampton.1921 Census for England His own early ambition to join the navy led to his mother and father sending Baker White to a preparatory school, Stubbington House, with reputation for preparing pupils for a naval education. By the time he had finished his preparatory education, his hunger to join the Navy had cooled. In the Autumn 1916, rather pursuing a conventional naval education he went to Malvern College; leaving there in the summer of 1920.Spies at Work, Chapter 3, "Section D" Retrieved 11 January 2010 During his time in Malvern College in the final stages of the War, he had become accustomed to the idea of a military career but by the time he left in 1920 this was not a promising option. Discussing options with his father, he alighted on the idea of becoming a farmer. Rather than being an unpaid "farmers son" on his father's farm, he arranged a paid position as a boarder and "Farm Pupil" on a farm in Arlington near Eastbourne.

Farming was not a career he seriously followed after his pupillage. His future career would be shaped by the interests and activities and acquaintances of his mother and stepfather during his time as a farm pupil.

After the First World War had started Atkinson, who had worked as a voluntary personal assistant to the Commissioner, Edward Henry, in the early years of the century, returned to work in the Metropolitan police. This time he was assisting the barrister Henry Curtis-Bennett who was responsible for counter espionage interrogations in Special Branch. John Baker White later described how his stepfather and Curtis-Benett gave him a one-off experience as a courier for Special Branch which was to be his first experience working undercover. Baker White tells the story in "True Blue":

"One day in 1920, when "the Troubles" in Ireland were at their height—I had left Malvern and recovered from my appendix operation—Tim said to me, "Would you like a trip to Dublin?" I said yes and in due course went up to the Yard to see him and Curtis-Bennett. He handed me my ticket, a packet of money and a sealed envelope. What I had to do was very simple—cross from Fishguard, and stay at the Shelbourne Hotel. There a Mr. Jacobs would call on me, ostensibly to measure me for a suit, a good enough excuse to be shown up to my bedroom. He would produce, as identification, a set of cloth patterns, and I was to hand him the envelope. It all went according to plan and I returned to England the next day. Two years later Tim told me what was in the envelope and why I had been chosen as courier. It was a letter from the Prime Minister to Michael Collins, the I.R.A. leader, putting forward proposals for a truce. Jacobs, an orthodox Jew, was in the I.R.A. intelligence: both he and Collins had insisted, knowing that they had contacts in the police and other places in Whitehall, that the courier should be someone not remotely connected with any official department.""True Blue", John Baker White, Frederick Muller, London, 1970, p122

Shortly after this internship opportunity, Baker White took up his Farm Pupillage. By now his mother, Katherine, was becoming well known in anti-socialist and ultra-conservative social and campaigning circles. The massive extension of the franchise, the Labour Party's relaunch as a democratic socialist party with a mass membership, and by 1920 the appearance of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) had galvanised the opposition from existing anti-socialist organisations, and triggered the creation of new ones. These different organisations might have different focuses, but few if any ideological differences. They were Conservative Party supporting, anti-communist and anti-socialist platforms. There was within these circles a cohort of diehard and radical young Conservatives attracted to the aggressive anti-communism and anti socialism of Mussolini's Fascisti in Italy After the success of Mussolini's March on Rome they would go on to create the British Fascists.

In 1921, one of these groups, the Middle Class Union, which had initially been strike-breaking organisation, changed its name to the National Citizens Union (NCU). By 1923, newspapers were reporting that both Katherine Atkinson, who had her own campaign, the League of Service, and her 21–year–old son, John, were addressing meetings of the NCU. Katherine is reported as a keynote speaking against Bolshevism at a large meeting in Stratford on Avon alongside Lady Asquith."The National Citizens' Union. Lady Askwith's Call For Support", Stratford-upon-Avon Herald, 9 March 1923

In February of that year, John Baker White was reported addressing a meeting of the Canterbury NCU, also about "Bolshevism". He tackles head on the issue of the "temerity" of someone his age doing this by invoking the sprits of the Fascists."Mr Baker White quoted the example of the Fascisti, who had saved Italy from Communism, and pointed out that most of the Fascisti were young men under 30 years of age"

In his autobiography, Baker White explained that by 1923, with no sign of financial support from his father for the rental of a farm, he had decided to abandon his ambition to farm. Katherine Atkinson was by this time a friend of, and collaborator with, Nesta Webster, a prominent anti-socialist and antisemitic conspiracy theorist, and promoter of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion."True Blue", John Baker White, Frederick Muller, London, 1970, p 120 He describes how, inspired in discussions with them and incensed by the insults and criticisms of them by left wing opponents, he was developing a vocation to oppose communism.

His engagement in the NCU was part of his pursuit of that vocation. But at the same time, he was also attending public meeting of the CPGB in plain clothes, but passing himself off as a student. It was after one of these expeditions that he was identified as a possible recruit by one of the CPGB students, who was themselves working undercover for the anti communist cause.

Career

Industrial Intelligence Bureau / Section D The role of Sir George Makgill's private anti-socialist intelligence service in the 1920s first emerged in 1993"Spies at Work", Mike Hughes, 1993. https://libcom.org/library/spies-work and 1994."Surveillance or Collusion? Maxwell Knight, MI5 and the British Fascisti", published in Intelligence & National Security, Vol 9, No 4 (1994) — Link to full text on archive.org Official confirmation only came fifteen years later with the Publication of Christopher Andrew's "Defence of the Realm" the authorised history of MI5. The only evidence for such a service was to be found in Baker White's 1970 autobiography "True Blue" and he was, by the time he died in 1988, a fairly peripheral figure in the radical right. The Economic League, which he had run and written about, was still in existence, and shocking revelations were emerging of a massive blacklisting operation run by it for over fifty years.

The story of the undercover espionage in which Baker White had engaged in the 1920s and 1930s, while according to his own accounts he been "running" the League, caught the attention of a few historical researchers. In "True Blue" he attributed the operation to a figure called George McGill he also referred to as "G". There was no record of anyone called George McGill being active in the radical right at the time he was writing about, or earlier when the League was formed. However, a Scottish historian researching employers organisations, Arthur McIvor, had published a paper in 1988 specifically examining the early history of the Economic League and identifying close links with another other organisations of the radical right during and immediately after the Great War.Mclvor, A. (1988). "A Crusade for Capitalism": The Economic League, 1919-39. Journal of Contemporary History, 23(4), 631-655. https://doi.org/10.1177/002200948802300407 (Original work published 1988) The most significant was the British Commonwealth Union, which had previously been called The British Empire Union, whose main wartime spokesman was Sir George Makgill whose profile matched that in Baker White's lightly disguised profile.

When MI5 confirmed through Andrew the broad outline of Hughes' and Hope's revelations, they also added a sort of definitive name for the organisation, and expanded on the rates of the British Fascists. But they left unanswered questions about the scope of the organisation, and its relationship to the British Fascists it remains ambiguous.

The two people who have written with personal knowledge of "G's" organisation are Baker White in his autobiographical works, and Maxwell Knight in a note afterwards and left in the MI5 archive. Neither source is entirely reliable. Baker White renames individuals, including Makgill himself.

The purpose of Knight's written account was to explain how he came to be playing a leading role in the British fascisti while serving as a MI5 officer: In 1924 at the request of the late Sir George Makgill Bt who was then running agents on behalf of Sir Vernon Kell I joined the first of the Fascist Movements in this country – The British Fascisti.Andrew, Christopher. The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (p. 123). (Function). Kindle Edition.