Rotha Lintorn-Orman

Lintorn-Orman was born at 36 Cornwall Gardens in Kensington, London, to Charles Edward Orman, a major from the Essex Regiment, and his wife, Blanche (née Simmons). Her maternal grandfather was Field Marshal Sir Lintorn Simmons.^[2] Upon her grandfather's death in February 1903, Lintorn-Orman's mother inherited the family's immense wealth, since she was likely the only surviving child at the time.^[3] Raised in Bournemouth,^[4] before moving to Liphook at the age of nine, Lintorn-Orman was among the few girls seeking entry into scouting organizations; along with her friend Nesta Maude, in 1908, Lintorn-Orman had registered as a Scout troop, using initials rather than forenames.^[5] By 1909, she had led both the first and second Bournemouth Girl Guides^[4] and in 1911, she was awarded one of the first of the Girl Guides' Silver Fish Awards.^[3] The Orman family adopted the surname of Lintorn-Orman by deed poll in 1912.^[6]

When World War I broke out, Lintorn-Orman joined the war effort as an ambulance driver.^[7] Initially serving with the Women's Volunteer Reserve, she was assigned to the Scottish Women's Hospital Corps^[8][9] and sent to the Serbian front in 1916.^[4][10] During her time in the war, she was twice decorated with the Croix de Charité [fr], awarded for gallantry in action, for "heroic rescues in Salonica".^[11][a] In 1917, she contracted malaria and returned to London, joining the Red Cross. In 1918, she became Commandant of the British Red Cross Motor School at Devonshire House, which put her in charge of training all ambulance drivers for the Red Cross.^[12]

Following Lintorn-Orman's war service, she placed an advertisement in the right-wing journal The Patriot seeking anti-communists.^[13] This led to the foundation of the British Fascisti (later the British Fascists) in 1923 as a response to the growing strength of the Labour Party, a source of great anxiety for the virulently anti-Communist Lintorn-Orman.^[14] She felt Labour was too prone to advocating class conflict and internationalism, two of her pet hates.^[15]

Financed by her mother Blanche, Lintorn-Orman's party nonetheless struggled due to her preference for remaining within the law and her continuing ties to the fringes of the Conservative Party.^[16] Lintorn-Orman was essentially a Tory by inclination but was driven by a strong anti-communism and attached herself to fascism largely because of her admiration for Benito Mussolini and what she saw as his action-based style of politics.^[17] The party was subject to a number of schisms, such as when the moderates led by R. B. D. Blakeney defected to the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies during the 1926 General Strike or when the more radical members resigned to form the National Fascisti, and ultimately lost members to the Imperial Fascist League and the British Union of Fascists when these groups emerged. Lintorn-Orman wanted nothing to do with the BUF as she considered its leader, Oswald Mosley, to be a near-communist^[18] and was particularly appalled by his former membership in the Labour Party.^[19] The feelings were reciprocated; Mosley referred to the British Fascists as "three old ladies and a couple of office boys", despite the fact that Lintorn-Orman was only 37-years-old,^[20] and Mosley's son claimed that she got the idea to save Britain from communism one day while she was weeding her kitchen garden.^[21] Nonetheless, the BF lost much of its membership to Mosley's party after Neil Francis Hawkins left in favour of the BUF in 1932 after a formal merger was narrowly rejected.^[22][23]

Lintorn-Orman was dependent on alcohol and drugs, which the Home Office used to disparage the British Fascists as a fringe movement supported by a mere drug addict,^[24] and rumours about her sexual orientation began to damage her reputation.^{[citation needed]} Eventually^[when?] her mother stopped funding her after hearing lurid tales of drink, drugs and orgies.^[25] Lintorn-Orman was taken ill in 1933 and was sidelined from the British Fascists, as effective control passed to Mrs D. G. Harnett, who sought to breathe new life into the group by seeking to ally it with Ulster loyalism.^[20]

Lintorn-Orman died of an alcohol-related illness at the age of 40 on 10 March 1935 at Santa Brígida, Las Palmas, in the Canary Islands. By then her organisation was all but defunct. She was buried at the English Cemetery in Las Palmas.

• "Liphook District Guides". Liphook Guides. 7 July 2013. Archived from the original on 7 July 2013. Retrieved 14 June 2024.
• Benewick, Robert (1969). Political Violence & Public Order: A Study Of British Fascism. London: Penguin Press.
• Cole, J. A. (1964). Lord Haw-Haw: The Fully Story of William Joyce. Bungay, United Kingdom: Richard Clay Ltd. (published 1987).
• Dorril, Stephen (2006). Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism. London: Viking Adult. ISBN 0-670-86999-6.
• Durham, Martin (2003). "13. Britain". In Passmore, Kevin (ed.). Women, Gender, and Fascism in Europe, 1919–45. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-6083-4.
• Gottlieb, Julie V. (28 January 2021). Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain's Fascist Movement. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 0-7556-2732-6.
• Gottlieb, Julie V. (2008) [2005]. "Orman, Rotha Beryl Lintorn Lintorn". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/93720. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Griffiths, Richard (17 April 1983). Fellow Travellers of the Right: British Enthusiasts for Nazi Germany 1933–1939. London: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192851161.
• Mosley, Nicholas (1982). Rules of the Game. London: Fontana Press. ISBN 0-00-636644-9.
• Pugh, Martin (2005). "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!": Fascists and Fascism in Britain Between the Wars. London: Vintage. ISBN 0-224-06439-8. OCLC 60319338.
• Thurlow, Richard (1987). Fascism in Britain. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-13618-5.

• National Portrait Gallery pictures