[2] He was educated at Latymer Upper School until the age of 14 when his father lost all his money in a scheme run by notorious swindler Horatio Bottomley and could no longer afford the fees; as a result the young John was forced to work as an errand boy.

[4] Beckett founded the National Union of Ex-Servicemen in 1918 to look after the needs of the war veterans (although it was eventually absorbed into the later Royal British Legion having failed to gain Labour Party recognition).

[5] In these early years, Beckett was considered a close ally of Clement Attlee, alongside whom he had worked as a Labour Party agent before his election to Parliament.

[6] Beckett opposed Ramsay MacDonald's formation of the National Government and returned to the ILP fold in 1931, failing to hold his seat, with the vote split between three "Labour" candidates.

[5] He was arrested outside Buckingham Palace during the Edward VIII abdication crisis[7] and was the only BUF activist to win a court case against its opponents by securing £1,000 in damages in a slander suit against an antifascist organisation although it disbanded before payment was collected.

[8] Beckett, however, struggled to reconnect with his former supporters on the left and in 1934 when he returned to Gateshead and Newcastle upon Tyne for speaking engagements he was met with large hostile crowds and shouts of "Traitor".

[10] After initial successes, the BUF began to founder and to devolve into two factions, a militarist one led by Neil Francis Hawkins and F. M. Box, and a more political one that hoped to convert the masses to fascism under Beckett and William Joyce.

[13] While a leading figure in the League, he was also prominent in the British Council Against European Commitments, an attempt by Viscount Lymington to establish an umbrella movement of right-wingers opposed to war with Germany.

[14] He continued his close association with Lymington after his departure from the League, and the pair launched a journal, The New Pioneer, which tended to reflect a strong anti-Semitic and pro-German worldview.

[22] Beckett's first postwar role was in leading a campaign for clemency for his erstwhile colleague William Joyce, also known as Lord Haw-Haw, who was facing a death sentence for treason.

[27] Beckett started a stock exchange tip magazine called Advice and Information[28] and eventually bought Thurlwood House, where he had been living, from the estate trustees in 1958.