Editorial Introduction: Contextualising British fascist community building since 1945

In Britain, the history of fascist groups and organisations shows us that these have been of marginal relevance to the nation’s politics. So why study them? While fascists in Britain have never broken ‘broken through’ to the political mainstream, and have rarely even held anything other than low-level elected positions, their politicised cultures are nevertheless important to document and analyse. The history of British fascism should not be dismissed by historians as an ‘oxymoron’, as once was the case in the work of Stanley Payne. Regards the study of interwar forms of British fascism, historians from Julie Gottlieb to Thomas Linehan have already had a lot to say about the organisations such as the British Fascists and the British Union of Fascists, alongside other groups. Yet historians have failed to fully capture the equally fascinating and important history of fascism after 1945.