JEFFREY HAMM - EX-BLACKSHIRT, PATRIOT AND STREET ORATOR
By Bill Baillie

Jeffrey Hamm was born in Ebbw Vale in 1915 and grew up in the grinding poverty of South Wales during the Depression. He qualified as a schoolteacher and moved to London in 1936. He became an active member of the British Union of Fascists and attended many meetings and marches including the great Earls Court rally of 1939 where 30,000 people cheered Mosley’s call for peace. He was inspired by Mosley’s famous words, "We have lit a flame that will never be extinguished. Guard that flame until it illuminates Britain and lights again the path of mankind".
In 1940 Jeffrey Hamm was working as a schoolteacher in the Falkland Islands. He was arrested under 18B and shipped to South Africa where he was detained until 1941. On returning to the UK he joined the Royal Armoured Corps. Soon after leaving the army in 1944 he formed the British League of Ex-Servicemen and Women, a charitable and political movement. The Ex-Servicemen held meetings in East London and were regularly assaulted by the fanatical 43 Group but they defended themselves and kept alive the spirit of British nationalism. In 1947, at the historic meeting at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, more than 50 nationalist groups, including the Ex-Servicemen’s League, came together to form Union Movement and invited Sir Oswald Mosley to be their leader.
Jeffrey Hamm supported Mosley throughout the 1950s when Union Movement regularly filled Trafalgar Square with successful and orderly meetings. He helped to organize the 1959 North Kensington election campaign where Mosley got a disappointing 8 per cent in an election marred by allegations of missing ballot papers. He opened the Ridley Road meeting in 1962 that was wrecked by an organised mob of screaming communists. He stood himself in Handsworth, Birmingham, in 1966 and got 4 per cent despite being blatantly misreported by the "Birmingham Post". The newspaper fell foul of the Press Council but they were not prosecuted.
In 1969 Jeffrey Hamm took part in a BBC documentary about the Battle of Cable Street of 1936. He put the record straight that it was the Reds who had fought the Police and the BUF who had complied with the law, and got 23 per cent in Bethnal Green six months later.
In another BBC interview in 1976 he was asked if he had wasted his time in politics. He replied, "Friends often say that to me but what are they really asking me to do? To give up what I believe in because it is difficult and to take up something I know to be wrong because it is easier. That seems to be so absurd that I must reject it out of hand".
Jeffrey Hamm acted as Mosley’s ADC and following the leader’s death in 1980 he continued to publish the Union Movement newspaper "Action" and maintain Action Society. His autobiography "Action Replay" was published in 1983. He died in 1994.
Jeffrey Hamm was a brave and decent man who believed passionately in social justice and European solidarity. He was a true and loyal friend who will always be remembered by those who had the privilege of knowing him.