The Red Book: The membership list of Captain Ramsay's Right Club
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It is the membership list of Captain Ramsay's Right Club, a body founded in May 1939 'to oppose and expose the activities of Organised Jewry'. Most of the members of the club were enlisted between May and July 1939, i.e. before the outbreak of the Second World War, and the list therefore gives no evidence as to any activities undertaken after the declaration of war.
Though the name of the Right Club does not figure at the head of the volume, this is clearly the lost Right Club list for the following reasons:
The physical appearance of the ledger, including the broken lock (broken open with a steel tool in the presence of the American ambassador, 20 May 1940).
The fact that it is in Captain Ramsay's handwriting (as seen in other documents), and that Captain Ramsay is not known to have made any other lists of this kind.
The fact that the list contains a number of names of people who are known (through Ramsay's own statements, through the evidence of Home Office officials, through evidence at Ramsay's 1941 libel trial, and through evidence at the Tyler Kent and Anna Wolkoff trials), to have been members of the Right Club: eg the Duke of Wellington, J.C. Cross, William Joyce (who is the eighth name listed), Sir Ernest Bennett, an 'R. Stokes (who had wrongly been presumed by Home Office officials to be R. R. Stokes MP), Molly Stanford, Christabel Nicholson, Enid Riddell, Anne van Lennep, Anna Wolkoff, etc. The name of an MI5 agent who had infiltrated the Right Club, Marjorie Amor, is also present, as are those of close members of Ramsay's own family.
Enclosures, which have now been listed separately, consist of a number of documents relating to Ramsay and the Right Club. These include a manuscript of Ramsay's rhyme 'Land of Dope and Jewry', written in his writing on House of Commons writing paper 'the day after war was declared on Germany', the printed version of the same rhyme entitled 'Hymn 1939', and a letter from William Joyce enclosing his subscription to the Right Club. These documents were marked 'Ex. 40', 'Ex 42' etc, and it appears that they must have been used as exhibits either in Ramsay's appearance before the Advisory Committee in 1940, or (more likely) in the libel trial of 1941, when we know the 'Red Book' to have been 'in the possession of the court', at the judge's request. When the book was returned to Ramsay on his release, these documents must have remained within it.
The 'Red Book' is therefore an authentic document; but it must be approached with care. A bare list of names of this kind proves nothing in itself; and it is only when researches into the ideas and activities of those mentioned on it provide some insight (political views, affiliations and/ or activities, personal acquaintance with Ramsay etc.) into why they are here, or when the details of subscriptions, etc, point to a clear adherence, that it is legitimate to presume membership, and to attempt to ascribe motives to it.
Added to this, the fact that it is a pre-war list means that, unless evidence exists of war time activity by individuals, they should be given benefit of the doubt as to their war time attitudes, as many people who belonged to organisations such as this in the pre-war period behaved in an entirely patriotic manner once war was declared.