Oswald Mosley & the British Union of Fascists — HANNAH BYRON

Though Mosley’s Fascist Party doesn’t really play an important part in my new Resistance book, The Highland Raven, I think this is a part of pre-war British history that isn’t as well-known. Moreover, this man and his wife, hung on to their preposterous belief systems all their lives.

Introduction

Since he launched his British Union of Fascists, Sir Oswald Mosley has been considered Britain’s most well-known fascist. He was staunchly anti-Semitic and friends with the likes of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. What’s more, he remained a fascist until he died near Paris on 3 December 1980.

Childhood

Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley was the eldest son of a baronet, born in a London aristocratic family in Mayfair, London, on 16 November 1896. He enjoyed a privileged upbringing, educated at Winchester College and then at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He was an excellent fencer and boxer.

Considered odd by many of his peers at school, Mosley had few friends and was expelled from Sandhurst after just six months, following a fight with another student. Reportedly, this was related to the defeat on the polo field by the rival military academy Aldershot.

Mosley’s Political Rise to Power

Oswald Mosley was the House of Commons’ youngest member when he took his seat in 1918 at the age of just 22 as the Conservative MP for Harrow. He had served in the World War I in the Royal Flying Corps and the 16th Lancers, before working in the Ministry of Munitions and the Foreign Office.

Not long after being elected, Mosley became disillusioned with the Conservative party. In 1922 and 1923 he was re-elected in Harrow as an Independent, but then joined the Labour party in 1924, thus seeing both sides of the House of Commons.

In the early 1930s, Mosley’s star was rising under the Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald. As Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (a minister without a portfolio), his job was to deal with the unemployment crisis caused by the 1929 Wall Street Crash. Almost three million people eventually became unemployed in the UK.

Averse to adopting what he considered ‘an orthodox deflationary response’ to the economic crisis, Mosley instead proposed public work schemes and the nationalization of primary industries. However, the Cabinet found this “very dynamic and interventionist approach” rather too radical and rejected it. Mosley, furious and disappointed, saw no other route than to resign from the cabinet, which he did in May 1930.

The New Party

Soon after, he established the New Party, which became the predecessor of the British Union of Fascists. Combining an odd mix of radical left and conservative right members, it flopped. New Party meetings were often disrupted by Communists who ferreted out the party’s “incipient fascism”, but also by Labour party members who felt betrayed by Mosley. The violence and thuggery of the so called ‘Biff Boys’, Mosley’s bodyguards, set the tone for the New Party. In the BUF, these bodyguards would become known as Mosley’s Blackshirts.