Oswald Mosley

Oswald Mosley (1896-1980), controversial British parliamentary politician, who was a Member of Parliament (1918-1923, 1926-1931) and leader of the British Union of Fascists (1932-1940). He was born on November 16, 1896, in London. From the landed gentry, Mosley was educated at Winchester and Sandhurst Military Academy. His experiences in World War I, both in the trenches and in the Royal Flying Corps (1914-1916) left a searing impression on him. His determination to play an active part in moulding a post-war world that gave some value to the sacrifice of the 'lost generation' took him into politics.

He was elected to parliament in 1918 as a Conservative Party member for Harrow, but he crossed the floor in 1920 in protest against the reprisals of the Black and Tans in Ireland. As an Independent he supported Lord Robert Cecil’s League of Nations Union. He joined the Labour Party, and was elected as MP for Smethwick in 1926. He was appointed Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster in the second government of Ramsay MacDonald, where he was the driving force behind the Mosley Memorandum (1930), an impressive radical programme to cure unemployment. Rejected by the Labour Cabinet, Mosley resigned, and after failing to have his policy backed at the Labour Party Conference he left the Party. He subsequently formed the New Party, which failed disastrously at the 1931 General Election, when all its candidates were defeated in the National Government landslide.

After visits to Italy, where he met Benito Mussolini, whose Fascists had taken power, and to Germany, where the National Socialists led by Adolf Hitler were soon to do so, Mosley cut his ties with parliamentary politics and formed the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in October 1932, also known as the “Blackshirts”. The BUF saw itself as a radical revolt of youth against the “united muttons” of the “old gangs” of British politics; an alternative revolution that would sweep away the decadence of inter-war society. What was needed was strong executive action under dynamic leadership, unencumbered by parliamentary and bureaucratic constraints. The BUF and its programme of “The Greater Britain” was supported by Lord Rothermere’s “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” campaign in the Daily Mail in 1934. But the organization almost collapsed as a result of bad publicity, and the loss of Rothermere’s support following violent scenes at Olympia in June 1934, a BUF rally during which many anti-fascists were beaten up, and the Night of the Long Knives in Germany. Mosley failed to criticize any of the actions of the European fascist dictators in the 1930s, and was persuaded to allow the BUF to become anti-Semitic once it was no longer trying to impress respectable opinion. The BUF was blamed for provoking further confrontation with Jews and radicals at the Battle of Cable Street in October 1936, where anti-fascists organized to prevent a BUF march through the East End of London, and following the difficulties the police experienced in maintaining order the National Government introduced the Public Order Act (1936). The “Mosley and Peace” and “Mind Britain’s Business” campaigns nevertheless increased suspicion of Mosley as relations with the fascist powers deteriorated in the late 1930s.

When the phoney war turned into the crisis of 1940, 747 British fascists, including Mosley and the leadership of the BUF, were interned. The BUF was proscribed on July 10, 1940, never to be resurrected. Mosley was released from detention in October 1943, following a recurrence of phlebitis which was thought to be life threatening.

Mosley’s attempted political resurrection ended as a fiasco. Regarded as probably the most unpopular politician at any stage of British politics in 1945, his attempt to revive his fortunes in Union Movement met little response. Although he was one of the pioneers of a “United Europe”, his immediate past associations and beliefs meant British politics ignored his activities except when political violence erupted, and his early use of anti-immigration as a political weapon was regarded as a disreputable form of politics. Some belated recognition was given to his undoubted abilities when he wrote his memoirs, My Life, in 1968, but many refused to forgive his descent into fascism and low politics.

Sir Oswald (Tom) Mosley was a man of contradictions. Regarded by some as one of the most brilliant parliamentary orators of the 20th century, his descent into fascism and use of political anti-Semitism turned him into a political pariah. Arrogant, vain, argumentative, he also held strong political beliefs that he was not prepared to compromise on and put principle above party; as a result, he ignored the “rules of the game” and went “beyond the pale”. His private life also increased suspicion of his reliability; his string of mistresses and cavalier lifestyle offended the puritanism of British political culture in the inter-war years. Stanley Baldwin summed up establishment disapproval of him in the 1920s when he told Tom Jones that “Tom Mosley is a cad and a wrong ‘un”. His impact on the post-1945 extreme right was mixed; his Europeanism and inability to accept views other than his own meant that a new generation of British “nationalists” derided his failure, while borrowing, without acknowledgement, much of his BUF programme.