Despite the Second World War and the Holocaust, postwar Britain was not immune to fascism. By 1948, a large and confident fascist movement had been established, with a strong network of local organisers and public speakers, and an audience of thousands. However, within two years the fascists had collapsed under the pressure of a successful anti-fascist campaign. This book explains how it was that fascism could grow so fast, and how it then went into decline.

DAVE RENTON is a lecturer at the Department of History at Edge Hill College of Higher Education. Educated at St John's College, Oxford, and with a doctorate from Sheffield University, he has previously taught in Tower Hamlets College, Nottingham Trent University and Rhodes University in South Africa. He has written widely on the subject of political ideology, and has published articles in Changing English, International Socialism, Lobster, and Race and Class. He is a former member of the editorial board of the magazine Socialist Review while his previous books include Red Shirts and Black, Fascists and Anti-Fascists in Oxford in the 1930s, and Fascism: Theory and Practice. He is a former member of the Socialist Workers Party.