Ich Dien

The Life and Thought of Viscount Lymington

In the early 20^th century, England boasted a number of interesting rightist thinkers. An earlier post on the British Conservative Revolution used the term “Neo-Tories” to refer to a great many of them. Today we will cover the life and thought of an important representative figure from this group: Gerard Vernon Wallop, Viscount Lymington.

Although he came from a long line of English aristocrats, Wallop was born in Chicago in 1898. His father, Oliver Henry Wallop, was the third son in his family, and did not expect to inherit the Earldom of Portsmouth for some time, so he moved in the United States in the early 1880s to make his own way there. He operated a ranch, bred horses, and met and married Marguerite Walker, with whom he had two sons, Gerard and Oliver. Gerard passed some of his early life in Wyoming, but then was sent to England for his education, eventually going to Oxford. After this he turned to farming in Farleigh Wallop, Hampshire, and married his first wife, Mary Lawrence Post, in 1920. Farming, nutrition, and a concern for the soil would remain important elements of his thinking for the rest of his life.

Lymington was interested in politics and watched with horror the decline in power of the aristocracy and the effects of free trade during the early 20th century. He sought active involvement in politics to help to resist these trends. In 1929, Lymington was elected as the Conservative MP for Basingstoke, Hampshire. He soon made the acquaintance of Michael Beaumont, Rab Butler, and Harold Balfour. They were the youngest Conservative MPs at that time, and were given the name The Boys’ Brigade. Some among them had doubts about the leadership of Stanley Baldwin, then leader of the Conservative opposition. This aversion to Baldwin turned out to be pivotal for Lymington’s future development. In 1930 he delivered a speech in which he strongly criticised Baldwin for his weak leadership, calling him “a scheming old bladder of stale wind”. This did not go unnoticed by those who were similarly disillusioned with the direction the Conservative Party was taking. He was contacted (through his friend Michael Beaumont) by a member of a group called the English Mistery who invited him to a meeting at New Square in Lincoln’s Inn, which at that time served as the organisation’s headquarters. He became the 21st member of the Mistery,¹ and was eventually persuaded to accept the post of executive leader.²

The English Mistery was a fascinating group that drew the interest of many prominent figures in the 1930s, including the Conservative MP Reginald Dorman-Smith (who later became Minister of Agriculture) and the poet Edmund Blunden. It was founded in 1930 by William Sanderson, a disillusioned freemason who intended to use a structure similar to that of freemasonry to advance a Neo-Tory agenda.³ Sanderson had published a book called Statecraft in 1927, which he would later promote as a definitive source for the worldview of the movement. The book is by turns bizarre and brilliant. Its central purpose was to communicate the supposed “lost secrets” of English statecraft to an English elite who would, through proper organisation and preservation of their breed, become part of a new aristocracy that would replace the parliamentary democracy of Sanderson’s time with an absolute monarchy. We will not dwell too long on the contents of this book here, but suffice it to say that it was a clear influence on Lymington’s thought: its critiques of individualism, liberalism, socialism, and democracy, as well as its positive proposals for the future, are all echoed in Lymington’s subsequent writings.

The name of the organisation may appear strange to the reader. Lymington explained in his memoirs:

The name of the society came from the phrase Crafts and Misteries. The latter implied a derivation from the word Mister in turn derived from Master or the Latin Magister, such as a master worker not an apprentice in the old medieval craft guilds.⁴

Sanderson explained it in greater depth in the second edition of his book, Statecraft:

The word “Mistery” signifies a service. It is an abbreviation of the Latin ministerium, and akin to the French word mestier. In indentures of apprenticeship the expression “Craft or Mistery” frequently occurs; and this is an error in spelling, confusing the mediaeval “misterium” with “mysterium.” It is from the correctly spelled misterium that the word “Mister” is derived (e.g. “Mister Smith,” etc.). The word “master” is sometimes an alternative to “Mister,” meaning a servant—as in the expression “Good Master So-and-so”—and sometimes is the exact opposite: being an abbreviation of magister, as in the contrast between master and servant (“Worshipful Master,” etc.).⁵

This immediately sets the tone for the Mistery’s theory and praxis. Its central value was the idea of service, and its central purpose was to gather and cultivate men who could and would render service. Service to what? Ultimately, service to what Sanderson called “the Real Thing”, an archaic term which he claimed is equivalent to “body politic”. As will be made clear soon, this notion of service, although very simple, was tremendously influential on Lymington.

The Mistery was not just another attempt at creating a political party or a debate group. It was intended as a “school of leadership”. Lymington later said of its organisation:

The Mistery was organised in separate Kin of anything from ten to thirty people, a sort of cell system designed ultimately to permeate and set the standards for districts, villages and crafts and trades. Each kin had its own head as administrator and with him a philosophic keeper of its assembled conscience and the conscience of its individuals. It was the relationship which Sanderson and I had at the centre. There was no voting and no one could cast his responsibility on to the will of the majority. Committees could be organised for special subjects or purposes, but the head of the Kin or the person to whom authority was delegated was completely responsible as to whether he took the advice of a committee or not. It was never an excuse to say “My committee advised this so I had to take their advice.”⁶

It is worth mentioning also that women were strictly prohibited from joining the Mistery. Sanderson had strong anti-feminist views and believed that women should not be involved in politics. This conviction was strengthened by the influence of Anthony Ludovici, a fervent anti-feminist who, aside from Sanderson, was the main theorist of the Mistery. His books The Defence of Aristocracy, A Defence of Conservatism, The False Assumptions of Democracy, and The Choice of a Mate, among others, were recommended reading for members. Despite the elitist orientation of the group, there were working class members, including a large group of Northumbrian miners. Lymington would later remember them fondly:

I loved our miners’ Kin and the evenings of harmony (pronounced Northumbrian fashion) in the pub which followed—beer by the gallon, but I was young and could take it by the gallon. They were good people truly living by our precept, all with scrubbed pit-marked faces and scarf-folded necks.⁷

He remained friends with one miner, Tom Nesbit, for many years afterwards. Although the working class members could seldom afford to travel to the Mistery’s soirées in London, it is clear that Lymington—despite his aristocratic background and outlook—was quite happy to socialise with them and held them in high esteem. In this respect, at least, he displayed the noblesse oblige that is proper to all good leaders.

The influence of the Mistery and on Lymington’s thought would become clear only a year after his joining. In 1931, he published a small book called Ich Dien: The Tory Path.

Ich Dien

This book was the first extended expression of Lymington’s views made available to the public. Its purpose is to set out a “Tory” worldview. Today, the words “Tory” and “Conservative” are often used interchangeably. For instance, one might hear a Labour supporter speak of how “the Tories” (the Conservative Party) have shown an utter disregard for the poor, etc. However, strictly speaking there is an enormous gulf separating a modern British conservative from an old-school Tory. The word “Tory” comes from the Irish “tóraidhe”, referring to Irish outlaws. It came into use in English as a pejorative, used to refer to supporters of the Duke of York (later to be crowned James II) during the so-called Exclusion Crisis of 1678 to 1681, and was taken up as a label for those of a particular traditionalist mindset. The worldview of Toryism is traditionalist, monarchist, patriotic, and anti-liberal. Lyminton’s conception of Toryism will become clear from a summary of the views expressed in the book.

As Lymington points out in the preface, “service before rights is the ancient Tory creed”. The book’s title, “Ich Dien” (I Serve) is the motto of the Prince of Wales, first adopted by Edward, the Black Prince, in the 14^th century. Lymington was attempting to outline what he saw to be a true depiction of Toryism. The need for this can only be understood against the background of a degenerate “conservatism” that was ruining the Conservative Party. Lymington says of the modern Conservative that he “too often ceases to regard history after it has disappeared from living memory”. Accordingly, the subversive changes made to English political and social life by the opponents of Toryism are then accepted by a new generation of “conservatives” as part of England’s heritage: “We have, as a Conservative Party, a tendency to inherit the Whig accomplishments of the last hundred years.” Laissez-faire, individualism, liberalism, and myriad other modernist developments threatened to destroy the culture and way of life of the English, and eventually the English themselves. Because of their shallow conservatism, mainstream conservatives were of no use as a defence against these degenerate trends.

In keeping with the neo-Medievalist tendency of the English Mistery, Lymington looks to feudalism for inspiration. It is from this Medieval heritage that the values of Toryism derive. To put it briefly, we can say that according to him the Tory ethos consists in recognising service (duty) before rights, in thinking historically, and orienting ourselves always towards our own people or nation; that the logical extension of this is the abolition of liberalism, capitalism, and democracy, and their replacement with a corporate, protectionist system centred on the Crown and the House of Lords, in which all classes and strata of the nation work together for the common good. Lymington was, then, a reactionary, but he was also perfectly willing to take on board elements of modernism, such as race science, when it could be assimilated to his Toryism.

The scheme set out in the book may seem impractical and even ludicrous to many people today, but the world of 1931 differed greatly from our own. Well within living memory, there had been strong monarchies all over Europe. Many of the other central ideas of Ich Dien were in the air: corporatism, eugenics, protectionism, return to the land, and rule by a strong man were all widely discussed and supported by leading intellectuals. Fascist Italy was a subject of fascination for many in the British right, and this fascination was not just limited to members of the Mistery. The Great Depression was in full swing, and democracy, capitalism, and liberalism, seemed to be in decline everywhere. England still retained its Empire. In the light of all of this, the emergence of an alternative system in England, based on rightist principles, didn’t seem that implausible.

The Split Within the Mistery, and the English Array

During the early 1930s, Lymington came to be a leading figure in the English Mistery. Sanderson even wrote to him, in a letter in 1933:

If you can succeed in leading this body, you will find it comparatively easy to be Lord Protector of the whole country.⁸

But this relationship was not destined to last. Although there were elements of the English Mistery that he greatly admired, in particular the ability of the group to turn men into leaders, Lymington had an uneasy relationship with Sanderson. Sanderson could be an unpleasant figure to deal with. Michael Beaumont, whom we have mentioned earlier, left the Mistery because of his disagreeable nature. Some of Lymington’s misgivings about him were summed when speaking of the failure of the Mistery in his autobiography:

It failed not because of Sanderson’s powers of thought or his lack of dedication, but because his smallness of stature and his short-sightedness made him produce storms in teacups or fire in words offensive thoughts at those he deemed his enemies long before he could see the whites of their eyes, and because at intervals the small piece of charlatan in him got the upper hand and made mischief between us.⁹

Eventually, it became impossible for the two to work together. The Mistery split in 1936, with Lymington taking most of the membership with him into a new organisation, The English Array.¹⁰ He was followed in this move by one of the group’s main theorists, Anthony Ludovici. The split was partly the result of Sanderson’s moral objections to Lymington’s apparent infidelity to (and subsequent divorce of) his wife of 16 years, Mary Lawrence Post, which Sanderson saw as unbecoming of a prospective leader of the English, but also because of the general tension between the two, to which the above passage alluded. The split was more or less the end of any prominence that Sanderson had once had, and Sanderson’s was left as the leader of what remained of the Mistery. The group withered into insignificance, and Sanderson died in 1941, having suffered for some years from a serious illness. The Array had the same worldview, the same goals and praxis, and retained much of the membership of, the English Mistery. As an article in the Array’s main organ, The Quarterly Gazette of the English Array, stated, the “purpose of the Array does not differ in any way from that contemplated by the founders of our organisation seven years ago”.¹¹ Notably, this same article fixes the date of the founding of the Array as 1930, not 1936. In later years, Lymington would sometimes refer to the Array as the Mistery. All of this suggests that he did not consider the rump group led by Sanderson after the split to to be the true Mistery, and believed that the Array was simply the Mistery in another form. The decision to use a new name was likely made because of threatened legal action if the group referred to itself as the Mistery.

During the period of the Array’s existence, Lymington continued to publish books and articles, the latter often written for the magazines Quarterly Gazette of the English Array, founded in 1937, and the New Pioneer, which he edited from 1938 to 1940. His most notable work of this period is Famine in England, published in 1938.¹² The book focuses mainly on agriculture, its terrible state in England at the time, and how to revive it. Agriculture, within Lymington’s mind, was obviously of paramount importance. There are three primary reasons for this. The first is that the maintenance of agriculture ensures the continued survival of an agricultural class—one that has an inherent connection to the land, to the rhythm of the seasons, to cycles of life and death, and that maintains local customs and traditions. Such a class plays an important role in conserving all that is valuable in the nation, both culturally and biologically. The second is that in the context of a protectionist and particularist system such as he envisioned, it was necessary that the nation be able to feed itself from its own agricultural produce. Thus, it was very important that a proper balance be struck between productivity and sustainability in the agricultural sector. Measures had to be taken to prevent soil erosion and other ills that Lymington saw as inevitable consequences of modern mechanised farming, to avoid, literally, famine in England. The third reason is that the quality of the produce consumed by the population has a direct correlation with the health and vitality of that population. Any nationalist or patriot who is concerned with the health of the nation must therefore attend to the quality of agricultural produce to ensure that it is as wholesome as possible. In the face of potential war in Europe, which seemed likely at the time, Lymington stresses how crucial this regeneration of agriculture would be. In retrospect, he was quite sensible to do so.

The Array, like the original Mistery, also short-lived. The group was dissolved in 1940 because Lymington believed that members may be suspected of sympathy for the enemy due to earlier statements against going to war with Germany (as well as expressions of sympathy with National Socialism), and interned accordingly. It proved to be a sensible move because numerous leading figures on the radical right were interned that year under Defence Regulation 18B, including Oswald Mosley and Sir Barry Domville.

Life After the Array

The dissolution of the Array did not signal the end of Lymington’s activities. His most notable activity for the remainder of the war centred around his involvement with Kinship in Husbandry, a small group founded in 1941 which focused on how to revive and improve agriculture. Rolf Gardiner suggested the idea to Lymington, and together they became founding members. The group boasted other prominent members, including the historian Arthur Bryant, Lord Northbourne, known mainly today for his perennialist writings,¹³ and the ruralist writer H. J. Massingham. Thanks to the extensive contacts of many of the group’s members, it was more than a mere discussion group, and had some influence with the Ministry for Agriculture.¹⁴ This is buttressed by the fact that Lymington contributed a chapter to the 1941 book, Programme for Agriculture, the foreword to which was written by R. S. Hudson, then Minister for Agriculture.¹⁵ As will be clear from some of the names listed above, the agricultural ideas of the Kinship were bound up with nationalism, eugenics, and racialism, and thus, despite the organisation’s importance in the history of the organic movement in Britain, it differed greatly from most contemporary groups.

During this later period Lymington wrote another book, Alternative to Death, which was published in 1943. Although much of the book reiterates ideas expressed in earlier books, the first chapter on “Nature, the Family, and the Nation”, deserves some coverage. The chapter comes remarkably close to the “blood and soil” doctrines that one could find in Germany at the time, albeit expressed somewhat less virulently. The soil, we are told, “constitutes our environment in the truest sense; it courses through our blood, moulds our muscle and builds our bones”.¹⁶ Yet Lymington was not an environmental determinist by any means. He notes further that the farmer recognises the importance of environment, “but he knows that without sound stock and type he will not flourish”.¹⁷ He simply recognised that good breeding has to be combined with a good environment in order to promote the most vigorous possible human being. The picture we get, then, is of people of a certain type or lineage living on the land, and the two influences shaping the culture and way of life of the people. Lymington’s main concern is with what he calls the “Anglo-Saxon-Celtic” type that is to be found in England, embodied in the English nation, which he conceived of as “a family made up of families”.¹⁸ Both the English land and the English type were, in his view, under threat: the former from the consequences of overpopulation, mechanised agriculture, and artificial fertilisers; the latter from, firstly, living in, and drawing their nourishment from a deteriorating environment, and secondly, the importing of people of foreign and incompatible breeds. On the point concerning incompatible breeds, we should quote the following:

Genuine immigrants, the home-builders and producers, for the most part sought the wider opportunities of the New World. So we received a type which was too often conditioned to the mental slum and the bazaar; ready to exploit, but seldom to repay, the hosts who gave them shelter. We did not receive the Scandinavian peasant, or the Breton fisherman, but rather types many of which were not only fundamentally undesirable in character, but possessed alien values, customs, and traditions. The were types which by blood were likely to be disastrous in their children when crossed with ourselves.¹⁹

He therefore clearly appears to be a nationalist, and declares himself to be such, saying that such evils as nationalism represented in his day could be attributed to the influence of “modern usury and mass production”. But nationalism expressing the unity of “common blood, language and customs” is a “priceless thing”. This is a nationalism based not on a conviction of the superiority of one’s nation over all others, but on a particularistic devotion to one’s own, to the broader family of families of which one is a part.

It is remarkable, despite Lymington’s attempts to distance himself from Fascism and National Socialism, that a book of this kind was published by a major publishing house (Faber and Faber) as late in the war as 1943. The author himself even noted that the “catch-cries of Fascism and Nazism” were being raised in response to doctrines such as his own, cries which until recently in our own time were often sufficient to shut down one’s career if there was even the slightest plausibility to them.²⁰ Yet in the early years of the Soil Association,²¹ founded in 1946, it was an influential text, even if the more rightist elements in the organisation were pushed to the side over time.

Life After WW2

We shall not cover Lymington’s life and thought in any detail after 1945, as it was his activities during the 1930s that are of the greatest interest. He moved to a 10,000-acre estate in Kenya in 1948, and focused mainly on managing the estate, improving Kenyan agriculture generally, and writing his memoirs. He was quite prominent in Kenyan agriculture, and even served in the Ministry of Agriculture in the 1950s. However, in 1965 his state was nationalised by the new government of Kenya and he was given a pittance in return. Strangely, rather than leave Kenya, he then agreed to be a special advisor to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. He retained the position until a serious stroke in 1976 put him out of action. After this he returned to Britain to recuperate and died in 1984, survived by several children.

Evaluation of Lymington’s Thought

Lymington’s views have been described as “Fascist” by numerous sources that I read in preparation for writing this essay. Although he took an interest in Fascism (as many people did at the time), and attended the second Convegno Volta in Rome in 1932, I don’t see this as justified. The word “Fascist” has been used with such frequency and applied to so many individuals of disparate beliefs that it usually can’t be taken as a serious claim about a person’s political beliefs, but rather an insult, or an attempt to associate them with the acts of a regime even when they had no hand in those acts. Lymington, for his part, always denied that his views or his organisation were Fascist, claiming that what he wanted was government by “sane consent”.²²

Naturally, a man can’t always be taken at his word, but we shall look at the basic elements of Lymington’s worldview and see what it resembles. His overriding concerns were the conservation of the blood of the English people, the soil of England, and the restoration of the customs and institutions proper to the English. The latter included the monarchy and a strong House of Lords. He believed that the English were a distinct breed that was in danger of deterioration due to the proliferation of degenerate elements in the lower classes, as well as the flow of racial outsiders into England. The increasing mechanisation and industrialisation in contemporary society was worrying to him because in it he saw a threat to tradition, to liberty, to the human spirit, and the integrity of the environment upon which everyone depends. This concern about mechanisation reflects his broader suspicion of modernity. He had a distaste for mass movements, and neither the Mistery nor the Array aspired to become one. On several occasions he expressed his opposition to totalitarianism being introduced in Britain, and advocated for more localised authority wherever possible. Part of the reason for his support for monarchy was that he thought that it would be less despotic and disruptive of traditional life than other forms of government.

Clearly, despite some apparent affinities with Fascism and German National Socialism—including a belief in a Jewish conspiracy that was undermining Western civilisation—Lymington’s worldview was simply too anti-modernist to fit either of these labels. If Lymington’s views are to be compared to those of foreign movements, there are good reasons for considering him to be ideologically closer to the German folkish movement than Fascism—and specifically the more reactionary and ruralist elements of the folkish movement. These are essentially pre-Fascist, and it is worth pointing out that Lymington developed his views—as far as the author can tell—almost entirely from British sources. The scholar Bernhard Dietz, who has dubbed Lymington and his contemporaries “Neo-Tories”, classifies him as part of a distinctly English phenomenon.²³ If his worldview had to be summed up in one phrase, a good one might be “blood and soil Toryism”.

Conclusion

Viscount Lymington was one of the most interesting figures of his time, and has fallen into undeserved obscurity. Although some of his proposed remedies for the for the ills afflicting Britain are now impracticable (particularly his schemes for the now non-existent Empire), many of his fundamental ideas remain interesting and useful. He did not use the label himself, but he can be seen as one of the pioneers of folkishness in England. Contemporary British folkists and nationalists who are seeking inspiration in our past would do well to look into his work.

1. Dan Stone, The English Mistery, the BUF, and the Dilemmas of British Fascism, pg. 341.

2. It is notable that John Green’s book, Mr. Baldwin, contains a dedication to “Viscount Lymington, M.P., Leader of the English Mistery, with Affection and Hope”.

3. This emulation of freemasonry extended to the construction of elaborate rituals and the wearing, in some circumstances, of special clothing. During meetings, the senior members of the Mistery would sometimes sit next to a symbolic throne, representing the king, which was raised to a higher level than any of the attendees to symbolise his superiority to all those present. A glass would be raised to God and the King, a prayer would be said, and then the usual business of the Mistery would be attended to.

4. A Knot of Roots, London: Geoffrey Bles, 1965, pg. 127.

5. William Sanderson, Statecraft. London: Constable & Co., 1932, pg. 1.

6. A Knot of Roots, pp. 127-128.

7. A Knot of Roots, pg. 130.

8. Letter from William Sanderson to Viscount Lymington, 16th of August, 1933.

9. A Knot of Roots, pg. 128.

10. This name, incidentally, supposedly referred to a Medieval English troop formation.

11. Quarterly Gazette of the English Array, September 1938, p.3.

12. Viscount Lymington, Famine in England, London: H. F. & G. Witherby, 1938.

13. See his book, Religion in the Modern World (1963) and Of the Land and the Spirit (World Wisdom, 2008).

14. Dan Stone, Breeding Superman, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, pg. 53.

15. See Programme for Agriculture, London: Michael Joseph, pp. 103-115.

16. The Earl of Portsmouth, Alternative to Death, London: Faber and Faber, 1943, pg. 17.

17. Ibid, pg. 19.

18. Ibid, pg. 20.

19. Ibid, pg. 21.

20. Ibid, pg. 24.

21. R. J. Moore-Colyer (2001). Back To Basics: Rolf Gardiner, H. J. Massingham and ‘A Kinship in Husbandry’. In: Rural History, 12, pp. 92-93.

22. See Moore-Colyer, Back to Basics, pg. 93.

23. Bernhard Dietz, Neo-Tories: The Revolt of British Conservatives against Democracy and Political Modernity (1929-1939), pg. 2.