In a 1935 speech, the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) had called for a closer understanding of Germany in order to safeguard peace in Europe, and in response Sir Thomas Moore, a Conservative Member of Parliament, suggested setting up a study group of pro-German MPs.
[6] Several Members of Parliament, mostly from the Conservative Party, joined the group: they included Sir Peter Agnew, Lawrence Dundas, 2nd Marquess of Zetland, Ernest Bennett, Sir Robert Bird, Robert Tatton Bower, Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, Marquess of Clydesdale,[1] Robert Vaughan Gower, Thomas "Loel" Guinness, Norman Hulbert, Archibald James, Alfred Knox, John Macnamara, Sir Thomas Moore, Assheton Pownall, Frank Sanderson, Duncan Sandys, Admiral Murray Sueter, Charles Taylor and Ronald Tree.
[1] The spies Guy Burgess and Kim Philby, seeking to disguise their Communist affiliations, joined the AGF in the knowledge that it was widely perceived as allied to the far right.
[citation needed] Lord Mount Temple resigned in November 1938 as chairman of the AGF because of the treatment of the German Jews by the Nazis.
The Council will, however, steadily prosecute its efforts to maintain contact with Germany as being the best means of supporting the Prime Minister in his policy of appeasement, and as being the most useful way of encouraging those friendly relations upon which peace depends...At the time of the Munich Crisis in 1938 Ernest Tennant recorded that the feeling in the organisation was that it should be closed down.
He responded that he queried the claim with the intermediary between the Fellowship and the Foreign Office, Conwell Evans, who reported that he had met with Lord Halifax on the matter.
[13] In the House of Commons on 7 September 1939, four days after the United Kingdom and France had declared war on Germany, Vyvyan Adams MP asked the Home Secretary what the Government is doing to "deal with" organisations such as the Fellowship.