Douglas Francis Jerrold (Scarborough 3 August 1893 – 21 July 1964) was a British journalist and publisher. As editor of The English Review from 1931 to 1935, he was a vocal supporter of fascism in Italy and of Francoist Spain. He was personally involved in the events of July 1936 when two British intelligence agents piloted an aircraft from the Canary Islands to Spanish Morocco, taking General Francisco Franco with them and thereby helped to spark the military coup that ignited the Spanish Civil War.Alpert, Michael, A New international history of the Spanish Civil War Retrieved 6 March 2010
Early life Jerrold was born in Scarborough in 1893, the son of Sidney Douglas Jerrold and Maud Francis Goodrich.Genealogy of Douglas Francis Jerrold Retrieved 10 July 2012 He was a descendant of the Victorian dramatist and writer Douglas William Jerrold, one of the founders of Punch. He served as an officer in the Hawke Battalion of the Royal Naval Division during the First World War, seeing action at Gallipoli and on the Western Front. One of his fellow officers in the Hawke Battalion was the writer and humourist A P Herbert. In the early postwar period, Jerrold wrote histories of both the Battalion and the Division.
Jerrold was admitted to the Middle Temple on 20 November 1918, but was not called to the Bar.Sturgess, H.A.C. (1949). Register of Admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple. Butterworth & Co. (Publishers) Ltd. Vol. 3. p.830.
Career
Publishing Jerrold became a director of Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1929, chairman in 1945 and retired in 1958. Between 1944 and 1948, Graham Greene was his director, in charge of the fiction list.
Politics Jerrold was at his core a Tory and was hopeful of a career in politics, but he was critical of the alliance between the Conservative Party and big business; he felt that the party had become too nakedly capitalist. His views were not popular with the party leadership, and in 1931, Jerrold's hopes of a parliamentary seat were dashed by Central Office.Pugh, Martin, p.205 Retrieved July 2012. Pugh, Martin. Hurrah for the Blackshirts!: Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars (Pimlico, 2006) .
In 1930 Jerrold published a pamphlet, The Lie about the War. This publication attacked the depiction of the First World War in contemporary literature. Jerrold argued in the pamphlet that the First World War had been both a necessary war and a just war, despite the terrible suffering that it had entailed.Bergonzi, Bernard. Heroes' Twilight: A Study of the Literature of the Great War. New York, Coward-McCann, 1966, (pgs. 195-197) Jerrold's pamphlet singled out the work of Ernest Hemingway, Richard Aldington, Robert Graves and Henri Barbusse for censure, claiming such works gave a misleading picture of military life.Frayn, Alexander. Writing Disenchantment: British First World War prose, 1914–30. Manchester University Press, 2015 (pgs 240-2) By contrast, Jerrold praised Undertones of War by Edmund Blunden as a realistic and admirable account of the conflict.
The English Review and the New English Review Sidelined in mainstream politics, Jerrold became editor of The English Review, which he ran from 1931 to 1935. He advocated "real Toryism as opposed to the plutocratic Conservatism represented by the official party", under the relatively liberal leadership of Stanley Baldwin. He was a romantic anticapitalist and a devout Roman Catholic who was strongly attracted to the fascism of Mussolini's Italy, the Catholic nationalism of Franco,Griffiths, Richard, p.65 Retrieved 10 July 2012 Griffiths, Richard. Fascism (A & C Black, 2005) and the rule of Antonio Salazar in Portugal as well as to that of Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria. In addition, Jerrold, unlike his English Review colleague, the historian Sir Charles Petrie, was an imperialist who was opposed to Britain's policy in India, which had recognised the inevitability of self-rule. Moreover, Jerrold favoured a greatly-strengthened executive government at home, if not an outright dictatorship.Baldoli, Claudia, p.102, Exporting Fascism: Italian Fascists and Britain's Italians in the 1930s Retrieved 11 July 2012 If not a fascist, Jerrold was undeniably sympathetic to fascism.Lunn, Kenneth, p.34, British Fascism: Essays on the Radical Right in Inter-War Britain Retrieved 11 July 2012
On 21 November 1933, Jerrold's English Review hosted a dinner, presided over by Lord Carson, which was intended to be the climax of Jerrold's campaign for a new corporatist approach to government. However, the dinner was not as successful as Jerrold hoped. The 350 guests were united in their opposition to the National Government but otherwise held divergent views. Soon afterwards, Jerrold gave his views on parliamentary democracy: There is no folly more fashionable than the saying that the English will never tolerate a dictatorship. Under constitutional forms of a very flimsy character the English have invariably insisted on being governed either by a close oligarchy or a virtual dictatorship.... It is because the party machines have notably failed to govern that they are losing the public confidence, and unless Parliament under universal franchise can fulfil the indispensable task of leadership, a dictatorship is not only inevitable but necessary. – Douglas Jerrold, Current comments, English Review, December 1933Griffiths, p.66 Retrieved 10 July 2012
In 1945, he launched and ran a successor, the New English Review, later known as the English Review Magazine, with Charles Petrie and support from the Conservative Party. In 1950, it merged with the National Review.
Fascist sympathies In a July 1933 article in the English Review, Jerrold argued that because of the threat of communism to Britain, "the forcible overthrow of Herr Hitler's administration would be a disaster".Quoted in Richard Griffiths, Fellow‐Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany 1933–1939. London: Constable, 1980, (p.40) Jerrold also joined the January Club, founded by Oswald Mosley in January 1934, to generate sympathy and some element of respectability for fascism and particularly to court conservative opinion.Jones, Nigel, p.87, Mosley Retrieved July 2012 The January Club was not explicitly fascist but was "in sympathy with the fascist movement". Meetings were held over dinners at London hotels, where its leaders advanced a corporatist agenda and insisted that "the present democratic system of government must be changed".Pugh, Martin, p.146 Retrieved July 2012 However, Jerrold was no Nazi and supported the efforts of Benito Mussolini to avenge the 1934 murder of Engelbert Dollfuss, which had been carried out in Austria by pro-Hitler forces.
Spanish Civil War During the Spanish Civil War, Jerrold strongly supported the Nationalist cause of General Francisco FrancoBBC news, 27 September 2006 Retrieved 10 July 2012 and was among those who argued that the destruction of Guernica had been caused not by Nationalist bombers but by retreating Republican forces.Buchanan, Tom, p.35, The Impact of the Spanish Civil War on Britain: War, Loss And Memory Retrieved 10 July 2012
In his 1938 book The Future of Freedom: Notes on Christianity and Politics, Jerrold outlined his support for the pro-Catholic dictatorships of Franco and Mussolini. He wrote, "Christians not only can but must wish and pray for General Franco's success".Jerrold, Douglas, p.115, The Future of Freedom: Notes on Christianity and Politics Retrieved 10 July 2012
Jerrold, in fact, took an active and personal role in Franco's successful coup. He had been involved in the events of July 1936, when Captain Cecil Bebb and Major Hugh Pollard piloted a de Havilland Dragon Rapide aircraft from the Canary Islands to Spanish Morocco, taking Franco with them and thereby igniting the Spanish Civil War. The flight itself was planned over lunch at Simpson's-in-the-Strand, where Jerrold met with the journalist Luis Bolín, London correspondent of the ABC newspaper and later Franco's senior press advisor. Jerrold then recruited Pollard to join the enterprise, along with Pollard's daughter Diana and one of her friends as "cover".
Publications The Royal Naval Division, By Douglas Jerrold, With an Introduction by the Right Hon Winston S Churchill. Hutchinson and Co (1923). The Hawke Battalion Some Personal Records of Four Years, 1914-18. Ernest Benn Limited, London (1925). The War on Land, In the Main Theatres of War, 1914–1918, Comprising the Western Front, the Eastern Front, the Italian Front, the Balkans, and the Campaigns against Turkey . Ernest Benn Limited, London (1928) England. (1935). London: Arrowsmith. 240 pages Jerrold, Douglas, p.115, The Future of Freedom: Notes on Christianity and Politics Sheed and Ward, New York (1938) Retrieved 10 July 2012 Britain and Europe from 1900 to 1940 . Collins, London (1941) England: Past, Present and Future . Norton, New York (1950) An Introduction to the History of England, from the Earliest Times to 1204 . Houghton Mifflin, New York (1952) The Lie about the West: A Response to Professor Toynbee's Challenge. Sheed and Ward, New York (1954)
See also Charles Petrie (historian) Francis Yeats-Brown
References
External links Douglas Jerrold at the Dictionary of National Biography Retrieved 10 July 2012 Images of Jerrold at the National Portrait Gallery Retrieved 10 July 2012 Drawing of Douglas Francis Jerrold by Robert Lutyens, 1962 Retrieved 10 July 2012