| Biography | John Warburton Beckett was a British politician who was a Labour Party MP from 1924 to 1931. During the 1930s, he joined the fascist movement, first in the British Union of Fascists and later as a founder of the National Socialist League. During World War II, he was interned in Britain.
Beckett founded the National Union of Ex-Servicemen in 1918 to look after the needs of the war veterans. At this time, he also joined the Independent Labour Party, sitting on Hackney Council from 1919 to 1922.
Beckett joined the British Union of Fascists in 1934 and before long had risen through the party to become Director of Publications and served as an editor of both BUF publications, Action and Blackshirt, for a time.
Beckett was one of the leading fascists and rightists to be interned under Defence Regulation 18b during the Second World War. He spent his internment in HM Prison Brixton, an internment camp on the Isle of Man and then back in Brixton and was moved each time after he had clashed with BUF members with whom he was imprisoned. While imprisoned, Beckett received instruction from a Catholic chaplain and subsequently converted to Catholicism. |