Robert Row

Robert Row (1915–1999) was an English fascist from Lancaster, a member of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) who was detained by the British government under Defence Regulation 18B during the Second World War. After the war, he wrote and edited British fascist publications and remained a believer in Mosley until his death.

Early life Robert Row was born in 1915. His father worked for Waring & Gillow and was sent to Cuba to decorate the House of Assembly.

Fascist career In Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, Row saw policies that would put Britain first and "banish the slump". He spent time at Walton prison and was also held for a time at a prison camp near Huyton, where the most prominent inmate was John Beckett. Both associated freely during their incarceration, although they argued regularly. Beckett had left the BUF in 1938. He was released late during the war, joined the British Army and served in Palestine.

Row was assaulted or intimidated several times during his fascist activities. In 1963, six young men of the antifascist Yellow Star Movement broke into the Union Movement headquarters at 302 Vauxhall Bridge Road and assaulted Row and Keith Gibson, the Union Movement's political secretary. All six were arrested and later fined (one aged 16 was bound over) at the Old Bailey after pleading guilty to assault and causing damage to property. According to testimony, Row was made to kneel on the floor and rip up copies of Action. Both Row and Gibson required hospital treatment. Soon afterward, according to Comrade, he was attacked again by the same group on his way home from work. Later, with Jeffrey Hamm, he was a key figure in Action. Increasingly, in the postwar decades, Row through his writings became a unifying force for the dwindling and aging band of former BUF members, as the movement engaged less in political action and more in rhetoric and nostalgia for the BUF.

Death Row remained a committed fascist until his death and continued to contribute to publications of the offshoots of the BUF until the end, such as Comrade, newsletter of the Friends of Oswald Mosley. He died in 1999 after a minor operation at 83. His ashes were scattered by his niece in Lancashire at a site on which he and his brothers cycled in his youth. He never married.

Selected publications Union Movement – The answer to the slump. Union, London, c. 1948. Sir Oswald Mosley: British patriot and national European. European Action, n.d. The coloured question in Britain: Cause and solution. Sanctuary Press, n.d.