Eleonora Tennant

Eleonora Elisa Fiaschi Tennant (19 December 1893 – 11 September 1963) was an Australian political activist best known for her involvement with far-right politics in England. She and her husband Ernest Tennant had links with Nazi Germany and she was an outspoken anti-Semite. She stood for the House of Commons on two occasions, as a Conservative in 1931 and as an Independent Conservative in 1945. She returned to Australia in 1952 and was a Democratic Labor candidate for the Senate in 1961. Early life Tennant was born in Sydney to Italian-Australian military surgeon Thomas Fiaschi and his first wife Catherine Ann, who was born in Ireland and was a former nun. she was sent to school in England. In 1911, while in Australia, she met Ernest Tennant, a British merchant banker who did a lot of business with Germany. They married soon afterwards, while she was still seventeen, and settled in the UK, living at the Tennant family home of Orford House. They had four children together The two came to know Joachim von Ribbentrop and were supportive of Nazism. Ernest Tennant was a leading figure in the Anglo-German Fellowship, an organisation he helped to establish in 1935 which advocated closer relations between the UK and Nazi Germany. Right-wing politics At the 1931 general election, Tennant stood as the Conservative Party candidate for Silvertown, a safe Labour Party seat in the East End of London. Her candidacy was sponsored by Lucy, Lady Houston, and came despite the opposition of Ernest. In a year which generally saw a landslide victory for the Conservatives, Tennant took 22.2% of the vote. Undeterred, she set up an office in the constituency with the aim of encouraging local employers to take on more staff, and forcing the local council to deal with some housing issues. She stood again at the 1935 general election, her vote share falling to 19.0%. During the Spanish Civil War, Tennant visited areas under Nationalist control, near the Portuguese border. She was driven around by a Falangist activist, and came to the conclusion that what she described as the "Glorious Uprising" was an unqualified success, the war being entirely the fault of communists, and that a dictatorship was necessary to save the country. Although she was only in the country for ten days, on her return to the UK, she published Spanish Journey: Personal Experiences of the Civil War.