Eleonora Tennant
| Eleonora Tennant | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Eleonora Elisa Fiaschi December 19, 1893 Sydney, Australia |
| Died | September 11, 1963 (aged 69) |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Notable work | Spanish Journey: Personal Experiences of the Civil War |
| Political party |
Conservative Party Democratic Labor Party |
| Movement | Friends of National Spain Never Again Association Face the Facts Association |
| Spouse(s) | Ernest Tennant |
| Children | Vanessa Fiaschi Dalrymple Tennant June Tennant Julian William Fiaschi Tennant Camilla Tennant |
| Parents |
|
Eleonora Elisa Fiaschi Tennant (19 December 1893 – 11 September 1963) was an Australian political activist, best known for her campaigns in the United Kingdom. A society figure, she was mainly associated with groups on the right-wing fringes of the Conservative Party.
Born in Sydney as Eleonora Fiaschi, the daughter of Brigadier-General Thomas Fiaschi, 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 Tennant 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.
At the 1931 UK 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 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 UK 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. At home she was a leading figure in Friends of National Spain, a group formed by Lord Phillimore in 1937 to win the support of leading members of the political elite and nobility for Francisco Franco, and in this group was close to the far-right academic Charles Saroléa who, like Tennant, was based in Scotland at the time.
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