SIR&emdash;Sir Frederick Lawton
(obituary, Feb. 5) was earlier a founder of Cambridge
University Fascist Association.It was not in 1936 that he "almost stood as a
Mosleyite candidate in the Hammersmith by-election", but
in the general election scheduled for 1940 but postponed
by the declaration of war. He had been chosen as
candidate for Hammersmith South and in the late 1930s was
to be seen speaking for his beliefs at that borough's
street corner meetings.
Called to the Bar in 1935, he afterwards defended
individual Blackshirts accused of alleged offences under
the new Public Order Act, an exercise that no doubt
helped him to become known as a no-nonsense judge, firm
against violence, tempered by a sympathetic streak for
lesser offenders.
John Warburton
London SW11
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