Signed photograph of Victor Cazalet, 1935

Victor Cazalet was MP for Chippenham from 1924 to 1943. He regularly spoke out in parliament on a number of issues. He campaigned that married women should be able to keep their own nationality rather than take on that of their husband. He also proposed an import ban on important works of art to prevent them leaving the country, a system that is in place today. At the height of the Depression he shocked the Commons by suggesting MPs lead by example and take a pay cut. At a time when Britain remained largely antisemitic, Cazalet spoke out against the persecution faced by Jewish people and supported the creation of a Jewish homeland.

Although it is problematic applying contemporary terms to the past, Cazalet was gay and frequently found himself having to defend his status as an unmarried ‘Bachelor MP’. He was part of a wider queer circle that included Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward and Cole Porter. Like many gay men he made frequent visits to Berlin and its flourishing queer counter culture.

Like many, Cazalet was initially indifferent to events happening in Germany under Hitler and the Nazis. This would soon change. Cazalet was good friends with the famous German tennis star Gottfried von Cramm, who was in a relationship with the Jewish actor Manasse Herbst. As both Jewish and gay it became clear that Herbst was in danger and Cazalet helped facilitate his escape from Germany. Later on, he was unable to intervene when Cramm was imprisoned for ‘sex perversion’.

With first-hand experience of the atrocities being carried out by the Nazis, Cazalet was part of a group of MPs that began to speak out. Not all of the group were gay, but a significant number were, and they became labelled the ‘Glamour Boys’, an derogatory insinuation on their sexuality. The group spoke out against appeasement, voted against the government and called for rearmament. By being part of the group they drew attention to themselves, risking exposure and imprisonment at time when homosexuality was illegal. Author and Labour MP Chris Bryant, who has written on the subject, believes that without the intervention of the group, Britain ‘would never have gone to war with Hitler, Churchill would never have become prime minister and Nazism would never have been defeated’.