Hastings William Sackville Russell, 12th Duke of Bedford (21 December 1888 – 9 October 1953), known from 1893 to 1940 as the Marquess of Tavistock, was a British peer. He was born at Cairnsmore House, Minnigaff, Kirkcudbrightshire, the son of Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford, and his wife Mary Du Caurroy Tribe, the aviator and ornithologist.Obituary:Duchess Of Bedford The Times (London, England), Monday, 29 March 1937; pg. 12; Issue 47644 He was known for both his career as a naturalist and for his involvement in British far-right politics including his involvement as the co-founder of the British People's Party.

Bedford died after accidentally shooting himself in 1953.

Early life Educated at Eton College, Tavistock graduated from Balliol College, Oxford with a BA degree later promoted by seniority to an Oxford MA. He was commissioned into the 10th Battalion, the Middlesex Regiment, but did not see active service in the First World War, owing to ill health."Hastings Russell (Marquess of Tavistock) (1888–1953)" in Gerald Gliddon, The Aristocracy and the Great War (2002), p. 7

Naturalism A keen naturalist, Tavistock arranged a 1906 expedition to Shaanxi, China to collect zoological specimens for the British Museum, during which Arthur de Carle Sowerby discovered a new species of jerboa. He was also closely involved in his father's ultimately successful efforts to preserve the Père David's deer, a Chinese species that was close to extinction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

He was also an ornithologist, specialising in parrots and budgerigars, to whom he would feed chocolates, although his eldest son was often reduced to eating them; his other pets included a spider to whom, according to Nancy Mitford's The English Aristocracy, he would regularly feed roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

While known as the Marquess of Tavistock, he wrote "Parrots and Parrot-like Birds". He was a founder member and first President of the Foreign Bird League. He was successful in breeding many species, including the Tahiti Blue Lorikeet and Ultramarine Lorikeet. Both of these are recognised as the world's first breedings in captivity. The Marquess disposed of his birds upon succeeding to the Dukedom in 1939.

Politics

Pre-war activity Tavistock was active in politics for much of his life. In his youth he flirted with socialism and even communism but soon abandoned these in favour of Social Credit, establishing his own National Credit Association to promote the ideology.Dorril, p. 205 He addressed the membership of the New Party about Social Credit but the scheme was not taken up by Sir Oswald Mosley's group. Tavistock was also a leading figure in the Economic Reform Club.Griffiths, p.351 Tavistock also frequently visited the Canadian province of Alberta where the Social Credit party led by a fundamentalist Protestant William "Bible Bill" Aberhart had won the 1935 election. However, Aberhart was unable to execute the Social Credit platform as the Dominion government used its disallowance power under the British North America Act to block Aberhart's proposed radical changes. The way that the Social Credit government of Alberta failed to carry out its program was understood by Tavistock not as due to the BNA act, but rather to a supposed conspiracy to impoverish the masses. He admired the growing fascist movements in Europe and wrote in the New English Weekly in support of the Anschluss in 1938.Griffiths, p. 295 In a series of letters to the editor of New English Weekly, he wrote that he was considering cancelling his subscription because of its criticism of the Nazi regime.Griffiths, p.352 In one letter dated 7 April 1938 he wrote: "Hitler is supported with enthusiasm by large sections of the population because he gave German youth faith and hope in the future, restored their self-respect, and did much to reduce unemployment". He wrote that there was "little evidence that he [Hitler] would engage in an aggressive war with a non-German nation", and criticised the Chamberlain government for its rearmament program.

Tavistock was a founder of the British People's Party (BPP) in 1939 and used his money to bankroll the group from then on.Thurlow, p. 172Beckett, p. 157 The driving force behind the BPP was John Beckett, a former Labour Member of Parliament who had also been a member of the British Union of Fascists and the National Socialist League. According to his son, Francis Beckett, John Beckett did not have much real devotion to the unassuming and uncharismatic Tavistock but was attracted to the BPP as much by the Marquess' money as any real conviction, Beckett himself being virtually penniless at the time.Beckett, pp. 158–159 Lord Tavistock was the president of the BPP, but most of those associated with the party came from the left. Of the members of the BPP executive council, Beckett had once been an MP for the Independent Labour Party, John Scanlon had been a left-wing journalist, and Ben Greene had once belonged to the Labour Party. The party's platform seemed mostly concerned with economic issues, but in practice the party was opposed to the prospect of a war with Germany.Griffiths, p.352-353 The platform of the BPP called for "the right to security and social justice", the "abolition of a financial system based upon usury which perpetuates social and economic injustice", the "security of labour in its industrial organisation", the "abolition of all class differences", the "safeguarding the employment and integrity of the British people against alien influence and infiltration", and the "abolition of all military alliances and political and economic commitments which may involve this country in wars which in no way affect the security and national independence of our peoples". The BPP's ideology seems to have based upon the Parti Populaire Français led by Jacques Doriot, a French communist turned fascist. Despite the vaguely left-wing platform of the BPP, the party primarily campaigned on a peace platform during the Danzig crisis of 1939 as it argued that another war with Germany would be a mistake. Tavistock, along with the Duke of Westminster, Lord Mount Temple, Lord Brocket, the Duke of Buccleuch, Lord Mottistone, Lord Arnold, and Lord Sempill, lobbied the Chamberlain government to settle the Danzig crisis peacefully, preferably by Britain abandoning the commitment to defend Poland. Tavistock recruited the famous explorer of Arabia, St. John Philby, to run as the BPP candidate in a by-election in Hythe solely on an anti-war platform.Griffiths, p.353 Philby in his 1948 memoir Arabian Days wrote "...I was approached by Lord Tavistock, John Beckett and Ben Greene of a new and small organisation called the British People's Party, with those general outlook I had no sympathy, though I fully and cordially agreed with the anti-war attitude. Eventually I agreed to fight the Hythe by-election". Reflecting the way that various extreme right movements in Britain often co-operated, Lady Domville, the wife of Admiral Barry Domvile, the leader of The Link, campaigned hard for Philby in the Hythe by-election.

During World War II Tavistock was friendly with Barry Domvile, the founder of the Link,Thurlow, p. 180 and had been close to that semi-clandestine group since its establishment in 1937.Dorril, p. 424 In the early months of the Second World War, he attended several meetings of leading figures on the far-right that Domvile had organised, although he was largely unenthusiastic about this initiative.Thurlow, p. 181

Tavistock chaired the British Council for Christian Settlement in Europe, established immediately after the declaration of war and featuring an eclectic melange of fascists, fascist sympathisers and committed pacifists.Beckett, p. 160-161 He was a committed pacifist across the board, rejecting war entirely, in contrast to Beckett and several other leading members of the group who were explicitly opposed to war with Nazi Germany rather than to war as a concept.Beckett, p. 170 During the early days of the war, Tavistock was also courted by the British Union of Fascists (BUF), who had changed their name to the British Union, and held meetings with Neil Francis Hawkins, the group's Director-General.Thurlow, p. 185 He had earlier been a sometime member of the January Club, a BUF-linked discussion group.Pugh, p. 146 He had grown close to BUF member Robert Gordon-Canning, and under his influence even came to write for the BUF's newspaper Action.Dorril, p. 482 Nonetheless, in private BUF leader Sir Oswald Mosley dismissed Russell as "woolly-headed."Dorril, p. 484 Tavistock engaged in a lengthy correspondence with the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax over the justice of the war, starting on 18 January 1940.Griffiths, p.371-372 He blamed the war on Poland, writing that he could not understand why during the Danzig crisis, Halifax had not pressured the Poles into accepting "Herr Hitler's extremely reasonable March proposals."Griffiths, p.372 Tavistock portrayed Hitler as a victim as he continued: "We should not forget that even in our our boyhood the German Jew was a by-word for all that was objectionable; that there is good evidence of unfair treatment by the Czechs of German minorities and ample evidence of unjust and even brutal treatment of the Germans by the Poles". He portrayed the war as an unjust struggle, accused France of seeking to maintain what he called the unjust Treaty of Versailles and argued that Hitler was a man of peace whose efforts to save the peace had been rejected by the British and the French. Later in the summer of 1940, Tavistock published all of his correspondence with Halifax under the title The Fate of A Peace Effort.

At the start of 1940, he corresponded with the Home Secretary Sir John Anderson after obtaining a document from the German legation in Dublin that Russell claimed contained Adolf Hitler's draft proposals for peace. Following the obtaining of this document by Tavistock, on 13 March 1940 Domvile organised a meeting for both men, Mosley and Imperial Fascist League (IFL) veteran Bertie Mills to discuss their next course of action. At this meeting, Mosley proposed the creation of a "Peace Government" to be led by David Lloyd George, although nothing more came of this initiative as the government soon launched a crackdown on far-right activity.Thurlow, p. 182 One of the leading members of the British Union was Edward Godfrey whose political views the Special Branch of Scotland Yard described being less with the British Union and "more with the Duke of Bedford". The Special Branch described Godfrey in May 1940 as "an embittered and class-conscious proprietor of a chain of fish and chips shops...who is bitterly opposed to the war and violently anti-Jewish". On 20 May 1940, a meeting was called at the Dover Castle pub in Bethnal Green to discuss forming the British National Party to be led by Godfrey and which was to be funded entirely by Bedford's wealth. At the meeting, Ben Stokes of the BUF who was acting as Godfrey's agent stated that a "monster meeting" would be held in London sometime later that spring under which the new British National Party would be unveiled. Stokes stated that the executive council of the new party would consist of Tavistock, the military historian General J. F. C. Fuller, Captain Bernard Acworth, Lord Sempill, the writer John Middleton Murry and Lord Lymington. A MI5 report noted that every name on the list belonged to the F3 category, which MI5 defined as "terrorism, excluding Irish terrorism". The plan came to naught when Mosley insisted on being the leader of the new party as a condition of having the BUF join the British National Party while Godfrey continued to insist on his claim to be the leader and that Mosely should step aside.