| Biography | Patrick Boyle was a Scottish nobleman and a far right political activist, involved with fascist parties and groups.
Boyle was trained for a naval career at the cadet ship HMS Britannia and graduated as a Royal Navy Lieutenant in 1897. He was later promoted to Commander in 1908, and eventually obtained the rank of Captain before retiring in 1919. He saw action during the First World War, commanding HMS Pyramus.
Boyle was also noted for his extremist views and took an active role in a number of rightist groups in the inter-war period. An anti-communist by inclination, his views were informed by a landing he made as a Naval Commander in Vladivostok in 1917 where he claimed to witness examples of Bolshevik terror that helped to solidify his rightist opinions. He was one of a number of large landowners who joined the British Fascists in the early 1920s, largely inspired by slump in agriculture and the simultaneous rise in taxation that they blamed on democracy and the rise of the left. Boyle served as leader of the British Fascists units in Scotland. |