Towards ‘Mother Earth’: Jorian Jenks,Organicism,the Right and the British Union of Fascists

This article is concerned with aspects of the career of Jorian E.F. Jenks, a senior figure in the British Union of Fascists, close associate of Oswald Mosley, and author of his party’s agricultural and rural policy. The fundamental keystone of this policy would be the creation of a vibrant, secure community of peasant owner-occupiers whom the fascists believed would represent the seedbed of civilization — the well-spring of creativity and culture. Linked to the notion of regenerating the countryside and rural life, fascist policy embraced a rural-nostalgic, anti-modernist organicist theme wherein a farming community supporting a native craft tradition would represent an eternal and enduring order. After the second world war Jorian Jenks threw in his lot with the burgeoning organicist cause, becoming a leading player in the Soil Association and editor of its journal Mother Earth until his death in 1963. His postwar books and journalistic efforts indicate that he never entirely cast off his earlier fascist leanings despite a period of stressful wartime internment. The article suggests that whereas those engaged with the post-1960s organicist renaissance approached the issue from a rather different social, political and cultural perspective, many elements of pre-war right-wing thinking remain entrenched in the present-day organicist ethos.