Gerard Vernon Wallop, 9th Earl of Portsmouth (16 May 1898 – 28 September 1984), styled Viscount Lymington from 1925 until 1943, was a British landowner, writer on agricultural topics, and pro-Axis fascist politician.
Early life Gerard was born in Chicago, the eldest son of Oliver Henry Wallop and Marguerite Walker. His father moved to Wyoming, where he was a rancher and served in the Wyoming State Legislature. After the deaths of his two older brothers without sons, Oliver succeeded as Earl of Portsmouth, and renounced his United States citizenship to serve in the House of Lords. Gerard was brought up near Sheridan, Wyoming in the United States, where his parents farmed.
He was educated in England, at Farnborough, at Winchester College and at Balliol College, Oxford. He then farmed at Farleigh Wallop in Hampshire.
Wallop was commissioned a temporary second lieutenant (probationary) in the Reserve Regiment, 2nd Life Guards on 19 January 1917, was transferred to the Guards Machine Gun Regiment on 10 May 1918, and commissioned a temporary lieutenant on 19 July 1918.
Conservative Party politics Lord Lymington was Conservative Member of Parliament for the Basingstoke constituency from 1929 to 1934. He stepped down and caused a by-election in March 1934 (Henry Maxence Cavendish Drummond Wolff was elected).
In 1930, Lymington attracted media attention with a speech attacking the Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin as "a scheming old bladder of stale wind", saying the Conservatives needed a new leader immediately. As a result, Lymington was contacted by William Sanderson to ask him to join the English Mistery. Lymington described Sanderson as someone "utterly" dedicated to the English Mistery while being something of a "charlatan" with his talk of the mystical "lost secrets" of the English that only he knew. However, Sanderson sought to flatter Lymington, describing himself as a "Genghis Khan" who would sweep away all opposition and saying that if Lymington joined the English Mistery his name would be remembered in England 10,000 years into the future. In September 1930 Lymington joined the English Mistery, a mystical "back-to-the-land" movement, that sought to find the "lost secrets" of the English. They favoured a return to the Middle Ages, supporting deindustrialisation, the revival of the guild system, organic farming, and rule by the aristocracy. Alongside the return of feudalism and absolute monarchy, the English Mistery's ideology contained virulent racism, wanting to protect the English "race" from "inferior races". In 1933, William Sanderson, the leader of the English Mistery proposed Lymington as the future "Lord Protector" of Britain.
Like much of the British aristocracy at the time, Lymington wanted to recreate a version of the feudal system, which led him to own a lavish estate in the "White Highlands" of Kenya. In Kenya, Lymington treated his black African workers very much like serfs while he behaved like a feudal lord. Lymington was not unique in seeking to live a modern version of feudalism in Africa as it was common for members of the aristocracy in the interwar period to settle in either Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe) or Kenya to live out their fantasies of being feudal lords. Nor was Lymington unique in rejecting democracy. The establishment of universal suffrage which was achieved in stages over the 19th and 20th centuries along the curtailment of the power of the House of Lords led many aristocrats to complain about their loss of political power, which led for successive governments in Westminster to be more concerned about the interests of ordinary farmers instead of the land-owning nobility. The policy of free trade which kept food prices low was opposed by the land-owning aristocracy who had trouble competing with foreign farmers, and much of the nobility wanted a return to high agricultural tariffs. However, the policy of cheap food via free trade was popular with urban voters who had made up 90% of the electorate by the 1920s, and successive governments were not prepared to risk defeat in the next general election solely for the sake of keeping the landed estates of the aristocracy profitable. The British historian Martin Pugh noted it was no accident that every single aristocrat who owned an estate in Rhodesia or Kenya in the interwar period was active in far right-wing groups that sought to end democracy in the United Kingdom as all of the aristocrats who lived out their feudal fantasies in Africa all wanted to return to the political system where the aristocracy held political power again.
A key moment in the radicalisation of the aristocracy occurred in 1923 when Andrew Bonar Law resigned as prime minister. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon, who had been widely expected to succeed Bonar Law, lost out to the middle-class Chancellor of the Exchequer Stanley Baldwin under the grounds that the prime minister should sit in the House of Commons instead of the House of Lords and that Baldwin had the greater public appeal. Baldwin's upset victory over Curzon was considered especially shocking at the time, as Curzon was widely felt to be better qualified to be Prime Minister, and was widely seen as the symbolic moment when the Conservative Party became the party of the middle class. Afterwards, there had been a sustained campaign by various peers to restore the power to veto bills passed by the House of Commons that the House of Lords had lost in 1911, which Baldwin resisted under the grounds that it would energise the Labour Party which was not well represented in the House of Lords and cost the Conservatives votes in the next general election. By the late 1920s, much of the aristocracy was in a resentful and angry mood, with the feeling being that democracy did not allow them what they saw as their rightful place as the political and economic elite. Lymington was attracted to the English Mistery precisely because it promised to restore the feudal society that was his ideal. Lymington stated in 1965 about his role in the English Mistery: "We did not regard ourselves as Herrenvolk but we wanted our revival to be Anglo-Saxon in the sense that Alfred the Great was Anglo-Saxon". Lymington wrote often for The English Review, a Conservative journal intended in the words of its editor from 1931 onward, Douglas Jerrold, to be "a platform for real Toryism as opposed to the plutocratic Conservatism represented by the official party under Mr. Baldwin's uninspiring leadership".
At this point he was in the India Defence League, an imperialist group of Conservatives around Winston Churchill, and undertook a research mission in India for them. Lymington became increasingly frustrated with the National Government founded in 1931, which he called "a morass of compromise" which was useless in the face of the Great Depression. Lymington visited several of the areas worse hit by the Great Depression, which he wrote left him "a sadder and more inwardly knowing man". He was especially concerned about the decline in British agriculture, which he called "the core of our existence". He often complained that British farmers were unable to compete with cheap food imported from abroad while he also spoke about soil erosion as he stated the soil of England itself was being "leeched of its fertility" because of reckless farming methods that put short-time yields ahead of the long-term preservation of the soil. He attended the second Convegno Volta in 1932, with Christopher Dawson, Lord Rennell of Rodd, Charles Petrie and Paul Einzig making up the British representatives. It was on the theme L'Europa.
In particular, Lymington was opposed to the Government of India Act that would have devolved much power to the Indians, which was understood as the first step towards ending the Raj, which Baldwin had supported. Under the Government of India Act, ultimate power would rest with the Viceroy appointed by London, but the rule of the Indian provinces by Governors appointed by the Viceroy would end with the people of the provinces electing their own chief ministers. In several speeches, Lymington condemned the Government of India Act as something close to treason, and warned that it was highly dangerous to allow the Indians to elect their own provincial governments. In one of his first anti-democratic speeches, Lymington argued that absolute monarchies of the princely states with ruled over by puppet maharajas and rajas in the case of Hindu princes or nawabs and nizams in the case of Muslim princes, were the natural form of government in India and that democracy would never work in India. Lymington took his praise for the princely states a step further than even Churchill had gone, and argued that absolute monarchies of the princely states was the best government not only for India, but also for the United Kingdom as well. In an article condemning the Government of India Act, Lymington wrote that the various maharajas and nawabs of the princely states were "not only the keystone of our Empire in India, but of the upmost importance for the recreation of English Kinship which remains a tradition in the heart of Englishmen, but which has been abandoned in practice by the English government".
His exit from party politics was apparently caused by a measure of disillusion, and frustrated ambition. In his resignation speech on 24 March 1934, he stated he was leaving the House of Commons because he was "unable any longer to breath the polluted atmosphere of the National Government". He stated he was appalled by the decline of agriculture and felt the "same frustration over rearmament". He stated he was leaving the House "to devote my energies and to play such a part as I am able in arousing our people to the necessities of national defence before it is too late and above all to help in trying to re-establish English character and tradition and in recreating local leadership". In a letter he wrote to The Saturday Review, Lymington wrote he had resigned because: "It has become clear that to be uncompromising on principles whether on India, defence or home politics is to be unable to adapt oneself to this party". In a practical sense, Lymington's attacks on Baldwin's leadership ensured he would never be allowed to enter the cabinet as long as Baldwin was the Conservative leader, and as the career as a backbencher was not appealing, Lymington decided to resign.