Initially part of the left-wing anti-fascist movement, it gained political significance when allied to Winston Churchill, though at the time its influence was largely covert.
[5] The Anti-Nazi Council generally supported the approach to international affairs of the League of Nations Union (LNU), at the time when Churchill launched his "Arms and the Covenant" movement.
[6] In the period before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Churchill was prepared to accept the League's view on collective security, and tone down his hostility to the Soviet Union.
[11] The first Focus luncheon attended by Churchill had other guests including Norman Angell, Margaret Bondfield, Hugh Dalton, Philip Guedalla, Julian Huxley, Oliver Locker-Lampson, Duncan Sandys and Wickham Steed.
[12] The group drew much support from the ranks of the liberal internationalists, such as Angell: others were Robert Cecil, David Davies of the New Commonwealth Society, Gilbert Murray, and the politicians Austen Chamberlain, Philip Noel-Baker, Eleanor Rathbone and Arthur Salter.
[20] Invited to a group lunch in March 1938, Harold Nicolson described it as "one of Winston's things", comprising Angell, Cecil and Steed with Walter Layton of the News Chronicle et al.[21] On 29 September 1938, the day before the Munich Agreement was signed, Churchill convened the Focus Group for lunch at the Savoy Hotel, and again at 7pm to have a minatory telegram signed to go to Neville Chamberlain; Clement Attlee declined to have his name added, on the telephone.
[23] In October 1939, after the outbreak of World War II, Eugen Spier was one of some hundreds of aliens rounded up and detained in Olympia London.
[27] Liddell's entry for 30 September shows that Wickham Steed supplied evidence that meant Spier was kept in internment for a longer period.