Ernest Bennett

Ernest Bennett was born in Rede, Suffolk, on 12th December, 1868. He was educated at Durham School and Hertford College, Oxford. He joined the Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry and served in the Boer War and the First World War.

A member of the Liberal Party he was elected to the House of Commons in 1906. Defeated in the 1910 General Election he joined the Labour Party and was elected for Cardiff Central in May 1929. A supporter of Ramsay MacDonald he won his seat in 1931 as a representative of National Labour.

He became involved in right-wing politics in the 1930s. He constantly argued that the real threat was the Soviet Union and that the Britain should form an alliance with Nazi Germany. He also criticised the media for its anti-German bias.

In May 1939 Archibald Ramsay founded a secret society called the Right Club. This was an attempt to unify all the different right-wing groups in Britain. Or in the leader's words of "co-ordinating the work of all the patriotic societies". In his autobiography, The Nameless War, Ramsay argued: "The main object of the Right Club was to oppose and expose the activities of Organized Jewry, in the light of the evidence which came into my possession in 1938. Our first objective was to clear the Conservative Party of Jewish influence, and the character of our membership and meetings were strictly in keeping with this objective."

Members of the Right Club included Chapman, William Joyce, Anna Wolkoff, Joan Miller, A. K. Chesterton, Francis Yeats-Brown, Lord Redesdale, 5th Duke of Wellington, Duke of Westminster, E. H. Cole, John Stourton, Thomas Hunter, Aubrey Lees, Samuel Chapman, Charles Kerr, John MacKie, James Edmondson, Mavis Tate, Marquess of Graham, Margaret Bothamley, Earl of Galloway, H. T. Mills, Richard Findlay and Serrocold Skeels.

Ernest Bennett, who retired from the House of Commons in June 1945, died on 2nd February, 1947.