Oswald Mosley

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By the end of the First World War, Mosley had decided to go into politics as a Conservative Member of Parliament, as he had no university education or practical experience because of the war. He was 21 years old. He was driven by, and in Parliament spoke of, a passionate conviction to avoid any future war, and this seemingly motivated his career. Largely because of his family background and war service, local Conservative and Labour Associations preferred Mosley in several constituencies – a vacancy near the family estates seemed to be the best prospect. He was unexpectedly selected for Harrow first. In the general election of 1918 he faced no serious opposition and was elected easily.[14] He was the youngest member of the House of Commons to take his seat, though Joseph Sweeney, an abstentionist Sinn Féin member, was younger. He soon distinguished himself as an orator and political player, one marked by extreme self-confidence, and made a point of speaking in the House of Commons without notes.[10]^:166

Mosley was at this time falling out with the Conservatives over Irish policy, and condemned the operations of the Black and Tans in Ireland against civilians.[15] Eventually, he crossed the floor to sit as an Independent Member on the opposition side of the House of Commons. Having built up a following in his constituency, he retained it against a Conservative challenge in the 1922 and 1923 general elections.

The Liberal Westminster Gazette wrote that Mosley was:

the most polished literary speaker in the Commons, words flow from him in graceful epigrammatic phrases that have a sting in them for the government and the Conservatives. To listen to him is an education in the English language, also in the art of delicate but deadly repartee. He has human sympathies, courage and brains."[16]

By 1924, he was growing increasingly attracted to the Labour Party, which had just formed a government, and in March he joined it. He immediately joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) as well and allied himself with the left.

When the government fell in October, Mosley had to choose a new seat, as he believed that Harrow would not re-elect him as a Labour candidate. He therefore decided to oppose Neville Chamberlain in Birmingham Ladywood. Mosley campaigned aggressively in Ladywood, and accused Chamberlain of being a "landlords' hireling".[17] The outraged Chamberlain demanded that Mosley retract the claim "as a gentleman".[17] Mosley, whom Stanley Baldwin described as "a cad and a wrong 'un", refused to retract the allegation.[17] It took several re-counts before Chamberlain was declared the winner by 77 votes and Mosley blamed poor weather for the result.[18] His period outside Parliament was used to develop a new economic policy for the ILP, which eventually became known as the Birmingham Proposals; they continued to form the basis of Mosley's economics until the end of his political career.

In 1926, the Labour-held seat of Smethwick fell vacant, and Mosley returned to Parliament after winning the resulting by-election on 21 December. Mosley felt the campaign was dominated by Conservative attacks on him for being too rich, including claims that he was covering up his wealth.[10]^:190

Mosley and Cynthia were committed Fabians in the 1920s and at the start of the 1930s. Mosley appears in a list of names of Fabians from Fabian News and the Fabian Society Annual Report 1929–31. He was Kingsway Hall lecturer in 1924 and Livingstone Hall lecturer in 1931.

Mosley then made a bold bid for political advancement within the Labour Party. He was close to Ramsay MacDonald and hoped for one of the great offices of state, but when Labour won the 1929 general election he was appointed only to the post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, a position without Portfolio and outside the Cabinet. He was given responsibility for solving the unemployment problem, but found that his radical proposals were blocked either by his superior James Henry Thomas or by the Cabinet.

Realising the economic uncertainty that was facing the nation because of the death of its domestic industry, Mosley put forward a scheme in the "Mosley Memorandum" that called for high tariffs to protect British industries from international finance, for state nationalisation of main industries, and for a programme of public works to solve unemployment. Furthermore, the memorandum laid out the foundations of the corporate state which intended to combine businesses, workers and the government into one body as a way to "Obliterate class conflict and make the British economy healthy again".[19] Mosley published this memorandum because of his dissatisfaction with the laissez-faire attitudes held by both Labour and the Conservative party, and their passivity towards the ever-increasing globalisation of the world, and thus looked to a modern solution to fix a modern problem. But it was rejected by the Cabinet, and in May 1930 Mosley resigned from his ministerial position. At the time, the weekly Liberal-leaning paper The Nation described his move: "The resignation of Sir Oswald Mosley is an event of capital importance in domestic politics... We feel that Sir Oswald has acted rightly – as he has certainly acted courageously – in declining to share any longer in the responsibility for inertia."[16] In October he attempted to persuade the Labour Party Conference to accept the Memorandum, but was defeated again. Thirty years later, in 1961, Richard Crossman wrote, "this brilliant memorandum was a whole generation ahead of Labour thinking."[16] As his book The Greater Britain focused on the issues of free trade, the criticisms against globalisation that he formulated can be found in critiques of contemporary globalisation. He warns nations that buying cheaper goods from other nations may seem appealing but ultimately ravage domestic industry and lead to large unemployment, as seen in the 1930s. He argues that trying to "challenge the 50-year-old system of free trade ... exposes industry in the home market to the chaos of world conditions, such as price fluctuation, dumping, and the competition of sweated labour, which result in the lowering of wages and industrial decay."[20]

Dissatisfied with the Labour Party, Mosley founded the New Party. Its early parliamentary contests, in the 1931 Ashton-under-Lyne by-election and subsequent by-elections, arguably had a spoiler effect in splitting the left-wing vote and allowing Conservative candidates to win. Despite this, the organisation gained support among many Labour and Conservative politicians who agreed with his corporatist economic policy, and among these were Aneurin Bevan and Harold Macmillan. It also gained the endorsement of the Daily Mail newspaper, headed at the time by Harold Harmsworth (later created 1st Viscount Rothermere).[21]

The New Party increasingly inclined to fascist policies, but Mosley was denied the opportunity to get his party established when during the Great Depression the 1931 General Election was suddenly called – the party's candidates, including Mosley himself running in Stoke which had been held by his wife, lost the seats they held and won none. As the New Party gradually became more radical and authoritarian, and as critics of the fascists in the Spanish Civil War emerged in the press, art and literature, many previous supporters defected from it. Shortly after the 1931 election, Mosley was described by The Manchester Guardian:

When Sir Oswald Mosley sat down after his Free Trade Hall speech in Manchester and the audience, stirred as an audience rarely is, rose and swept a storm of applause towards the platform – who could doubt that here was one of those root-and-branch men who have been thrown up from time to time in the religious, political and business story of England. First that gripping audience is arrested,[n 1] then stirred and finally, as we have said, swept off its feet by a tornado of peroration yelled at the defiant high pitch of a tremendous voice.[16]

Flag of the British Union of Fascists

Italy's Duce Benito Mussolini (left) with Oswald Mosley (right) during Mosley's visit to Italy in 1936.

After his election failure in 1931, Mosley went on a study tour of the "new movements" of Italy's Benito Mussolini and other fascists, and returned convinced that it was the way forward for Britain. He was determined to unite the existing fascist movements and created the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932. The BUF was protectionist, strongly anti-communist and nationalistic to the point of advocating authoritarianism.[22] It claimed membership as high as 50,000, and had the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror among its earliest supporters.[21][23][24] The Mirror piece was a guest article by Daily Mail owner Viscount Rothermere and an apparent one-off; despite these briefly warm words for the BUF, the paper was so vitriolic in its condemnation of European fascism that Nazi Germany added the paper's directors to a hit list in the event of a successful Operation Sea Lion.[25] The Mail continued to support the BUF until the Olympia rally in June 1934.[26]

John Gunther described Mosley in 1940 as "strikingly handsome. He is probably the best orator in England. His personal magnetism is very great". Among Mosley's supporters at this time included John Strachey,[27] the novelist Henry Williamson, military theorist J. F. C. Fuller, and the future "Lord Haw Haw", William Joyce.

Mosley had found problems with disruption of New Party meetings, and instituted a corps of black-uniformed paramilitary stewards, the Fascist Defence Force, nicknamed Blackshirts. The party was frequently involved in violent confrontations and riots, particularly with Communist and Jewish groups and especially in London.[28] At a large Mosley rally at Olympia on 7 June 1934, his bodyguards' violence caused bad publicity.[27] This and the Night of the Long Knives in Germany led to the loss of most of the BUF's mass support. Nevertheless, Mosley continued espousing anti-Semitism.[29] At one of his New Party meetings in Leicester in April 1935, he stated, "For the first time I openly and publicly challenge the Jewish interests of this country, commanding commerce, commanding the Press, commanding the cinema, dominating the City of London, killing industry with their sweat-shops. These great interests are not intimidating, and will not intimidate, the Fascist movement of the modern age."[30] The party was unable to fight the 1935 general election.

Plaque commemorating the Battle of Cable Street

In October 1936, Mosley and the BUF attempted to march through an area with a high proportion of Jewish residents. Violence, since called the Battle of Cable Street, resulted between protesters trying to block the march and police trying to force it through. At length Sir Philip Game, the Police Commissioner, disallowed the march from going ahead and the BUF abandoned it.

Mosley continued to organise marches policed by the Blackshirts, and the government was sufficiently concerned to pass the Public Order Act 1936, which, amongst other things, banned political uniforms and quasi-military style organisations and came into effect on 1 January 1937. In the London County Council elections in 1937, the BUF stood in three wards in East London (some former New Party seats), its strongest areas, polling up to a quarter of the vote. Mosley made most of the Blackshirt employees redundant, some of whom then defected from the party with William Joyce. As the European situation moved towards war, the BUF began to nominate Parliamentary by-election candidates and launched campaigns on the theme of Mind Britain's Business. Mosley remained popular as late as summer 1939. His Britain First rally at the Earls Court Exhibition Hall on 16 July 1939 was the biggest indoor political rally in British history, with a reported 30,000 attendees.

After the outbreak of war, Mosley led the campaign for a negotiated peace, but after the Fall of France and the commencement of aerial bombardment (see the Blitz) overall public opinion of him became hostile. In mid-May 1940, Mosley was nearly wounded by an assault.[31]

Unbeknown to Mosley, the British Security Service and Special Branch had deeply penetrated the BUF and were also monitoring him through listening devices. Beginning in 1934, they were increasingly worried that Mosley's noted oratory skills would convince the public to provide financial support to the BUF, enabling it to challenge the political establishment.[32] His agitation was officially tolerated until the events of the Battle of France in May 1940 made the government consider him too dangerous. Mosley, who at that time was focused on pleading for the British to accept Hitler's peace offer of March, was detained on 23 May 1940, less than a fortnight after Winston Churchill became Prime Minister.[1] Mosley was interrogated for 16 hours by Lord Birkett[32] but never formally charged with a crime, and was instead interned under Defence Regulation 18B. The same fate met the other most active fascists in Britain, resulting in the BUF's practical removal at an organized level from the United Kingdom's political stage.[1] Mosley's wife, Diana, was also interned in June,[33] shortly after the birth of their son (Max Mosley); the Mosleys lived together for most of the war in a house in the grounds of Holloway prison. The BUF was proscribed by the British Government later that year.

Mosley used the time in confinement to read extensively in Classics, particularly regarding politics and war, with a focus upon key historical figures. He refused visits from most BUF members, but on 18 March 1943, Dudley and Norah Elam (who had been released by then) accompanied Unity Mitford to see her sister Diana. Mosley agreed to be present because he mistakenly believed that it was Lady Redesdale, Diana and Unity's mother, who was accompanying Unity.[34] The internment, particularly that of Lady Mosley, resulted in significant public debate in the press, although most of the public supported the Government's actions. Others demanded a trial, either in the hope it would end the detention or in the hope of a conviction.[1]

In November 1943, Home Secretary Herbert Morrison ordered the release of the Mosleys. After a fierce debate in the House of Commons, Morrison's action was upheld by a vote of 327–26.[1] Mosley, who was suffering with phlebitis, spent the rest of the war confined under house arrest and police supervision. On his release from prison, he first stayed with his sister-in-law Pamela Mitford, followed shortly by a stay at the Shaven Crown Hotel in Shipton-under-Wychwood. He then purchased Crux Easton House, near Newbury, with Diana.[35] He and his wife remained the subject of much press attention.[36] The war ended what remained of Mosley's political reputation.

After the war, Mosley was contacted by his former supporters and persuaded to return to participation in politics. He formed the Union Movement, which called for a single nation-state to cover the continent of Europe (known as Europe a Nation) and later attempted to launch a National Party of Europe to this end. The Union Movement's meetings were often physically disrupted, as Mosley's meetings had been before the war, and largely by the same opponents. This led to his decision, in 1951, to leave Britain and live in Ireland.[37] He later moved to Paris. Of his decision to leave, he said, "You don't clear up a dungheap from underneath it."[38]

Shortly after the 1958 Notting Hill race riots, Mosley briefly returned to Britain to stand in the 1959 general election at Kensington North. He led his campaign stridently on an anti-immigration platform, calling for forced repatriation of Caribbean immigrants as well as a prohibition upon mixed marriages. Mosley's final share of the vote was 7.6%.[39]

In 1961, he took part in a debate at University College London about Commonwealth immigration, seconded by a young David Irving.[40] He returned to politics one last time, contesting the 1966 general election at Shoreditch and Finsbury, and received 4.6% of the vote.[39] After this, he retired and moved back to France,[39] where he wrote his autobiography, My Life (1968).

In 1977, by which time he was suffering from Parkinson's disease, Mosley was nominated as a candidate for Rector of the University of Glasgow in which election he polled over 100 votes but finished bottom of the poll.

Mosley had three children with his first wife Lady Cynthia Curzon.[6]

• Vivien Elisabeth Mosley (1921–2002); she married Desmond Francis Forbes Adam (1926–58) on 15 January 1949. Adam had been educated at Eton College and at King's College, Cambridge. The couple had two daughters, Cynthia and Arabella, and a son, Rupert.
• Nicholas Mosley (1923–2017) (later 3rd Baron Ravensdale a title inherited from his mother's family), and 7th Baronet of Ancoats; he was a successful novelist who wrote a biography of his father and edited his memoirs for publication.
• Michael Mosley (1932–2012), unmarried and without issue.

In 1924, Lady Cynthia Curzon joined the Labour Party, and was elected as the Labour MP for Stoke-on-Trent in 1929. She later joined Oswald's New Party and lost the 1931 election in Stoke.[41] She died in 1933 at 34 after an operation for peritonitis following acute appendicitis, in London.

Mosley had two children with his second wife, Diana Mitford (1910–2003):[6]

• (Oswald) Alexander Mosley (1938–2005); father of Louis Mosley (born 1983)
• Max Mosley (born 1940), who was president of the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) for 16 years

Oswald Mosley died on 3 December 1980 at Orsay outside Paris, France. His body was cremated in a ceremony held at the Père Lachaise Cemetery, and his ashes were scattered on the pond at Orsay. His son Alexander stated that they had received many messages of condolence but no abusive words. "All that was a very long time ago," he said.[42]

Mosley's personal papers are held at the University of Birmingham's Special Collections Archive.

• The European (1953 magazine)
• Houston Stewart Chamberlain

Informational notes

Citations

Bibliography

• Mosley, Nicholas (1982). Rules of the Game: Sir Oswald and Lady Cynthia Mosley, 1896–1933. Secker & Warburg. ISBN 978-0-436-28849-4.
• Mosley, Nicholas (1983). Beyond the Pale: Sir Oswald Mosley and Family, 1933–1980. Secker & Warburg. ISBN 978-0-436-28852-4.
• Mosley, Oswald (1968). My Life. Arlington House. ISBN 978-0-87000-160-4.

Further reading

• Dorril, Stephen (2006). Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism. Viking Publishing. ISBN 0-670-86999-6.
• Farndale, Nigel (2005). Haw-Haw: The Tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-98992-0.
• Macklin, Graham (2006). Chamberlain. Haus Books. ISBN 978-1-904950-62-2.
• Pugh, Martin (2005). Hurrah for the Blackshirts!: Fascists and Fascism in Britain between the Wars. Random House. ISBN 0-224-06439-8.
• Skidelsky, Robert (1975). Oswald Mosley. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. ISBN 978-0-03-086580-0.
• Skidelsky, Robert (1969). "The Problem of Mosley: Why a Fascist Failed". Encounter. 33 (192). pp. 77–88.
• Worley, Matthew (2010). Oswald Mosley and the New Party. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-20697-7.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Oswald Mosley.

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Oswald Mosley

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Oswald Mosley

• Friends of Oswald Mosley at oswaldmosley.com, containing archives of his speeches and books
• "Mosley and the BUF". Exploring 20th Century London. Archived from the original on 13 January 2017. Retrieved 15 July 2012.
• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Oswald Mosley
• "Hull Race Riot". Hull Daily Mail. 1936. (last accessible, 23/10/2017)
• "Metropolitan Police records of the BUF incident at Olympia, 1934". British National Archives.
• "MI5 surveillance of Mosley". BBC News.
• Oswald Mosley on the Frost Programme, 1967 on YouTube
• Sir Oswald Mosley Interview on Thames Television, 1975 on YouTube
• Oswald Mosley at IMDb
• Newspaper clippings about Oswald Mosley in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW