Patrick Boyle, 8th Earl of Glasgow

Patrick James Boyle, 8th Earl of Glasgow, DSO (18 June 1874 – 14 December 1963) was a Scottish nobleman and a far right political activist.

Boyle was trained for a naval career at the cadet ship HMS Britannia and graduated as a Royal Navy Lieutenant on 22 June 1897. He was Flag Lieutenant to Rear Admiral Edmund Jeffreys, Senior Naval Officer, Coast of Ireland Station, serving on his flagship HMS Howe which was port guard ship at Queenstown. They transferred to HMS Empress of India in October 1901, when that vessel relieved the Howe. He was promoted to Commander on 31 December 1908 and eventually obtained the rank of Captain before retiring in 1919. He saw action during the First World War, commanding HMS Pyramus, and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order in 1915. Following his retirement from active duty he was admitted to the ceremonial role of Lieutenant of the Royal Company of Archers.

Boyle was also noted for his extremist views and took an active role in a number of rightist groups in the inter-war period. An anti-communist by inclination, his views were informed by a landing he made as a Naval Commander in Vladivostok in 1917 where he claimed to witness examples of Bolshevik terror that helped to solidify his rightist opinions. He was one of a number of large landowners who joined the British Fascists in the early 1920s, largely inspired by slump in agriculture and the simultaneous rise in taxation that they blamed on democracy and the rise of the left. Boyle served as leader of the British fascists units in Scotland. Close to General R.B.D. Blakeney, Boyle joined Blakeney's splinter group the Loyalists in 1926 in order to support the work of the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies. This group had agreed to disavow fascism in order to co-operate with the government. Boyle disappeared from the political scene soon afterwards when, virtually bankrupted by the burden of his large estates, emigrated to France, remaining there until 1930.

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