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Fay Taylour: a dangerous woman in sport and politics

2012; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 21; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/09612025.2012.657887

1747-583X

Stephen Michael Cullen,

Sport and Mega-Event Impacts

Abstract Frances Helen ‘Fay’ Taylour was the most successful woman motor cycle and car racing competitor ever. She excelled in a variety of motor cycle sports—hill climbing, scrambling and, most notably, in speedway, or ‘dirt’ racing. Her successes led her to be repeatedly banned from racing against men. In her political life too, she was banned, being interned without trial for three years during the Second World War as a danger to British national security. This is the first academic article to examine the sporting and political life of this very ‘dangerous woman’. Notes ‘Dirt Track Riders’ cigarette cards, published by J. A. Pattreiquex Ltd, Manchester. Ross McKibbin (1998) Classes and Cultures: England, 1918–1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 384. Mike Huggins & Jack Williams (2006) Sport and the English 1918–1939 (Abingdon: Routledge), p. 63. Brian Belton (2006) Fay Taylour: Queen of Speedway (High Wycombe: Panther Publishing). Jean-François Bouzanquet (2009) Fast Ladies; female racing drivers, 1888–1970 (Dorchester: Veloce Publishing), p. 79. Ibid., pp. 78–79, 174. Julie V. Gottlieb (2003) Feminine Fascism: women in Britain's fascist movement (London: I. B. Tauris), p. 342. The ‘Right Club ledger’ Julie Gottlieb refers to was made available to Brian Simpson by Richard Griffiths. The ledger appears not to be complete, includes names of people who may not have been members, and, in Taylour's case, the problem is that for most of 1939 she was out of Britain. Taylour maintained to the authorities that until she joined the BU in October 1939, she ‘had not been a member of any club or anything’ (TNA, KV2 12143 386216—Taylour, in an appeal against detention, 28 August 1940). This appears to have been accepted by the security services. Taylour was interned from 1 June 1940 until 5 October 1943, when she was released on condition that she live in Eire, where she continued to be monitored by MI5. This is the date that Belton gives in Fay Taylour: Queen of Speedway, pp. 10, 204 and 208, referencing the General Register Office. However, at one point, the police believed that she was born on 12 December 1902—see the report from the Chief Constable of Reigate to Major Ryde of MI5, dated 17 January 1941, TNA, KV 21 2143 386216. Belton also notes that ‘some have claimed that she first saw light in 1908’, p. 10. Belton, ibid., gives an account of Fay Taylour's background and childhood, pp. 10–22. Ibid., p. 26. There is some disagreement about the first speedway race in Britain, but Jack Williams notes that the first notable race took place in February 1928 at High Beech in Epping Forest before at least 15,000 spectators. The origin of speedway is ‘usually regarded as having started at West Maitland in New South Wales in 1923’; Jack Williams (1999) ‘A Wild Orgy of Speed’: responses to speedway in Britain before the Second World War, Sport in History, 19(1), p. 2. Belton, Fay Taylour: Queen of Speedway, pp. 71–78, on Eva Askquith. Williams, ‘“A Wild Orgy of Speed”’, p. 5. Belton, Fay Taylour: Queen of Speedway, p. 124. Belton's comment about women followers of speedway in Australia is of interest, in that Williams has argued that speedway in Britain had a noticeably large following among women; Williams, ‘“A Wild Orgy of Speed”, p. 8. There appears to have been a family aspect to this as well, with children often in attendance; Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, p. 365. The woman rider leading the procession prior to the race, Jessie Hole, gave an account of the incident to the online Vintage Speedway site. She also noted that Fay Taylour ‘always used to be at all the parties—she was a favourite at all the tracks’. The ‘parties’ were, apparently, those attended by ‘the bigwigs, the owners of the stadiums, and people like that … they were the people with the money’. http://www.motorcycle-uk.com/vsm/jessie.html (accessed 28 February 2010). The ban on women racing in speedway was maintained for fifty years. Williams, ‘“A Wild Orgy of Speed”’, p. 10; and Huggins & Williams, Sport and the English. Williams, ‘“A Wild Orgy of Speed”’, p. 5. The Irish Times ran a series of articles covering the build-up to the race which included details of Fay Taylour's entrance, car and victory—dated, 19 July, 23 July, and 3 October. The race itself was held on 4 August, but a two-month-long Dublin newspaper strike delayed the final report. Action, number 1912, 26 October 1939. The brief article was accompanied by a photograph of Taylour. All of this was duly recorded by MI5, and added to the file on Taylour begun with a Special Branch interview of her on 18 October 1939. See TNA, KV 2/2143 386216. Julie Gottlieb (2004) Women and British Fascism Revisited, Journal of Women's History, 16(3), p. 109. Gottlieb, Feminine Fascism, pp. 276–348. Robert Benewick (1972) The Fascist Movement in Britain (London: Allen Lane) contains just two pages, pp. 126–127, on women in the BUF, for example, mentioning well-known figures Anne Brock Griggs, Olive Hawks, Norah Elam, Lady Pearson and Dorothy Viscountess Downe. Martin Durham (1998) Women and Fascism (London: Routledge), pp. 26–73. Stephen Cullen (1996) Four Women for Mosley: women in the British Union of Fascists, 1932–1940, Oral History, 24(1), pp. 49–59. Martin Durham (2003) Britain, in Kevin Passmore (Ed.) Women, Gender and Fascism in Europe, 1919–45 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press). Stephen Cullen (2008) The Fasces and the Saltire: the failure of the British Union of Fascists in Scotland, 1932–1940, Scottish Historical Review, 87(2), pp. 306–331; see, in particular, pp. 314–317. Julie Gottlieb (2005) A Mosleyite Life Stranger than Fiction: the making and remaking of Olive Hawks, in Julie Gottlieb & Richard Toye (Eds) (2005) Making Reputations: power, persuasion and the individual in modern British politics: the impact of the individual on British politics since 1867 (London: I. B. Tauris); Julie Gottlieb (2002) Female Fanatics: women's sphere in the British Union of Fascists, in M. Powers & P. Bacchetta (Eds) Right Wing Women: from conservatives to extremists around the world (New York: Routledge); Julie Gottlieb (2002) Motherly Hate: gendering anti-Semitism in the British Union of Fascists, Gender and History, 14(2), pp. 294–320. Louise Irvine (1986) The Birmingham Schoolteacher, in Mosley's Blackshirts: the inside story of the British Union of Fascists, 1932–1940 (London: Sanctuary Press), pp. 46–40; Cullen, ‘Four Women’, where Louise Irvine appears as ‘Lorna’; Pamela Fisher & Roy Fisher (2009) Tomorrow We Live: fascist visions of education in 1930s Britain, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 30(1), pp. 71–82. Hilda Kean (1998) Some Problems of Constructing and Reconstructing a Suffragette's Life: Mary Richardson, suffragette, socialist and fascist, Women's History Review, 7, pp. 475–493. Ibid., p. 478. Mary Richardson (1953) Laugh a Defiance (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson). Jo Stanley (1996) Including the Feelings: personal political testimony and self-disclosure, Oral History, 24, pp. 60–67. Ibid., p. 62. Ibid., p. 61. Martha F. Lee (2005) Nesta Webster: the voice of conspiracy, Journal of Women's History, 17(3), pp. 81–104. Ibid., p. 83. TNA, KV 2/2144 386216. Despite the number of files that have been released, a substantial number of files have been destroyed, notably those concerned with Taylour's detention in Holloway Prison, and copies of intercepted letters—see serials destroyed in TNA, KV 2 1 2144 386216. Central to Brian Belton's writing about Taylour's speedway career was the discovery by Belton's close friend, and speedway rider, Reg Fearman, that many of Taylour's papers survived her and were held by Ninette Gray. See Reg Fearman's foreword to Belton, Fay Taylour: Queen of Speedway. The precise details of the death of Anna Wolkoff have, until now, been unclear. Gottlieb, for example, gives her death as 1969 in Feminine Fascism, p. 348, as does Simpson in A.W.B. Simpson (1992) In the Highest Degree Odious: detention without trial in wartime Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press), where he states that Wolkoff's (and Taylour's) friend, Edith Riddell, was also killed, p. 433. Similarly, Brian Clough (2005) State Secrets; the Kent–Wolkoff affair (Hove: Hideaway Publications) also states, incorrectly, that Riddell died with Wolkoff, though tentatively gives the date of the deaths as 1973, p. 262. Richard Thurlow (2000) Fascism in Modern Britain (Stroud: Sutton Publishing), p. 104. TNA, KV 2 1 2144 386216. Fay Taylour to Dick Bellamy, letter of 1 February 1974. All of Fay Taylour's letters to Bellamy are in the possession of the author. Ibid. Graham Macklin (2007) Very Deeply Dyed in Black: Sir Oswald Mosley and the resurrection of British fascism after 1945 (London: I. B. Tauris). Taylour to Bellamy, letter of 7 February 1974. Ibid. Belton, Fay Taylour: Queen of Speedway, p. 5. Ibid., p. 176. Taylour to Bellamy, letter of 13 February 1974. Fay Taylour (n.d.) Your Attention is Arrested under Defence Regulation 18-B (privately published), p. 14. I am indebted to Dr Philip Coupland for a copy of this account. Ibid., p. 14. Taylour to Bellamy, letter of 13 February 1974 Huggins & Williams, Sport and the English, p. 154. Taylour to Bellamy, letter of 7 February 1974. Bellamy attached a copy of his reply to Fay Taylour's initial letter. Bellamy's letter was dated 5 February 1974, and asked Taylour, ‘if you could tell me anything further [about Wolkoff's death] for my friend to relay to T[yler] K[ent] I would be most grateful’. Unfortunately, this was the only copy of his letters to Taylour that Bellamy kept. From a Defence Regulations 18B report on Fay Taylour, dated 28 September 1940; TNA, KV 2 1 2143 386216. Gerry Webber (1984) Patterns of Membership and Support for the British Union of Fascists, Journal of Contemporary History, 19, p. 599. Stephen M. Cullen (1987) The Development of the Ideas and Policy of the British Union of Fascists, 1932–40, Journal of Contemporary History, 22, pp. 128–130. Written appeal dated 16 July 1940; TNA, KV 2 1 2143 386216. See note 7 above. There is a possibility, given MI5's use of agent provocateur tactics during this period, that the ledger may not be genuine. Thurlow, Fascism in Modern Britain, p. 55. Ibid., pp. 59–60. Christopher Andrew (2009) The Defence of the Realm: the authorized history of MI5 (London: Allen Lane), p. 224. Brian Simpson has strongly criticised Andrew's work, and raised issues concerning the academic worth of an authorised history of the security services. Simpson has made particularly harsh comments concerning Andrew's handling of MI5's contribution to the interning of 30,000 ‘enemy aliens’ and 1700 British citizens during the war. A. W. Brian Simpson (2009) Snooping, London Review of Books, 3 December. Clough, State Secrets, has demolished Joan Miller's various accounts of her role in MI5's use of the Right Club, and its handling of the Kent–Wolkoff affair; see, in particular, pp. 23–36. TNA, KV 2 1 2143 386216, note dated 11 January 1940. This matter was discussed in Fay Taylour's unsuccessful appeal against detention of 28 August 1940. The appeal committee had access to intercepted letters, including at least one letter from Joyce Pope that Taylour had not received. TNA, KV 2 1 2143 386216. Taylour, Your Attention is Arrested, p. 11. Ibid. From a Metropolitan Police Special Branch report, dated 27 May 1940; TNA, KV 2 1 2143 386216. TNA, KV 2 1 2143 386216, a report submitted after Fay Taylour's first unsuccessful appeal against internment. The report is two and half pages of closely typed foolscap. Ibid. If this was Fr. Denis Fahey, then he was, indeed, anti-Semitic, anti-communist, and a supporter of General Franco. He had been an important figure in the Irish mass movement, the Irish Christian Front. He was ‘a key figure … a prominent theologian, whose anti-Communist and anti-Semitic tract, The Rulers of Russia, was made use of by the BUF in Britain’. John Newsinger (2001) Blackshirts, Blueshirts, and the Spanish Civil War, The Historical Journal, 44, p. 842. TNA, KV 2 1 2143 386216. Concern over broadcasting into Britain was intense, and greatly heightened by the various ‘black’ radio programmes broadcast by Germany into Britain, some of which purported to be underground radio stations broadcast from within the UK. See W. J. West (1987) Truth Betrayed (London: Duckworth), especially pp. 201–214. TNA, KV 2 1 2143 386216. Stephen M. Cullen (2003) The British Union of Fascists: the international dimension, The Historian, 80, p. 36. TNA, KV 2 1 2143 386216. Gottlieb, Feminine Fascism, p. 232. Gottlieb outlines the pattern of women's detention under 18B on pp. 232–235. Clough, State Secrets, p. 7. Taylour to Bellamy, letter of 4 March 1974. Ibid. MI5 minute signed by R. K. D. Renton, dated 13 February 1941. TNA, KV 2 1 2143 386216. See, for example, Clough, State Secrets; Thurlow, Fascism in Britain, pp. 104–106; Simpson, In the Highest Degree Odious, pp. 146–171; and, for an entirely positive interpretation of the security services' activities, Andrew, The Defence of the Realm, pp. 220–227. Taylour to Bellamy, letter of 7 February 1974. Taylour to Bellamy, letter of 18 March 1974. TNA, KV 2 1 2143 386216, and KV 2 1 2144 386216. Fay Taylour in her appeal hearing of 28 August 1940; TNA, KV 2 1 2143 386216. Ibid. Ibid. Taylour to Bellamy, letter of 28 March 1974. TNA, KV 2 1 2143 386216. Taylour to Bellamy, letter of 4 March 1974. Taylour's allegations concerning absurdly large numbers of Jews being involved in the Bolshevik Revolution was staple fare for anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists. In fact, Polish Catholics and Russian Jews had been disproportionately involved in the first attempt to found a revolutionary party, ‘Proletariat’, in Warsaw in 1882, which was not surprising given Tsarist national policy and anti-Semitism, and ‘the success of … Jewish organizations in defending the interests of the workers gave considerable impetus to the development of the Russian [revolutionary] movement’; Leonard Schapiro (1960) The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1964 University Paperback edition), p. 23. In this horrible historical irony, anti-Semitism begat more, and worse, anti-Semitism. See also pp. 66, 96, 171, 475, 537 and 542–544 of Schapiro. Taylour to Bellamy, letter of 4 March 1974. Ibid. Taylour to Bellamy, letter of 8 March 1974. Ibid. Taylour to Bellamy, letter of 18 March 1974. Taylour to Bellamy, letter of 22 March 1974. Stanley, ‘Including the Feelings’, p. 61. Additional informationNotes on contributorsStephen M. Cullen Stephen M. Cullen is a Senior Research Fellow at CEDAR, University of Warwick. He is the author of In Search of the Real Dad's Army; the Home Guard and the defence of the United Kingdom, 1940–1944 (Pen & Sword, 2011). Recent articles include: ‘Supporting Fathers to Engage with Schools and Education: an under-developed aspect of the Parent Support Adviser pilot’, British Educational Research Journal, 37 (3) (2011), pp. 485–500; and ‘“The Land of My Dreams”: the gendered utopian dreams and disenchantment of British literary ex-servicemen’, Cultural and Social History, 8 (2) (2011), pp.195–211.