Typed Letter Signed ('Oliver Locker Lampson') to Dr E. E. Lewis.

Author: 
Oliver Stillingfleet Locker-Lampson (1880-1954), British Conservative Member of Parliament for North Huntingdonshire, Commander of an Armoured Car Unit in the First World War
Publication details: 
23 July 1913; on embossed House of Commons letterhead.
£100.00
SKU: 5324

One page, folio. Very good on lightly creased paper. Headed 'FIGHTING FUND' and listing the members of the 'PROVISIONAL COMMITTEE' (including Lampson as Honorary Secretary, and the Duke of Westminster and Earl of Malmesbury). Communication of twenty-seven lines, with decided proto-fascistic overtones. Deplores the 'effect on public morality' of nine years of 'Liberalism', during which 'wealth has been blackmailed, poverty has been bribed, and religion has been robbed.' The present government is characterised as 'a set of Ministers who stand now, solid for their salaries, Marconied up to their middles, and who prefer office to honour.' 'Not only cannot this continue - it must not. Unfortunately present party organisations have proved powerless to stem this tide of plunder and blunder. What is needed is a resolute regiment of men, free from official restraint, who will yield to no sham sentiment when a country's reputation is in danger, and to little mercy where a priceless heritage is in trust.' The proposed 'Fighting Fund [...] will undertake just that work of investigation, agitation and propaganda which a party machine has neither the opportunity nor the independence to transact. It will relentlessly lay bare realities, however damaging to the reigning caucus; it will combat wrong-doing in all departments of public life; [...] and thus promote that clean sense of duty and that healthy patriotism which were once the glory and shall again become the custom of our race.' Asks for financial contribution. A manuscript postscript announces that a 'set of leaflets is being issued at once'.