Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (
November 16,
1896 –
December 3,
1980), was a
British politician principally known as the founder of the
British Union of Fascists. He was also the sixth baronet of a title established in
1720.
Mosley's family were
Anglo-Irish but his branch were prosperous landowners in
Staffordshire. When his parents separated, he was brought up by his mother and his paternal grandfather, Sir Oswald Mosley, 4th Baronet. Within the family and among intimate friends, he was always called 'Tom'. He lived at Apedale Mannor for numerous years, near to
Newcastle-under-Lyme.
He was educated at
Winchester College and the
Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. During
World War I, he was commissioned in the
16th Lancers and fought on the
Western Front. He transferred to the
Royal Flying Corps as an observer but a crash left him with a permanent limp. He returned to the
trenches before the injury was fully healed and, at the
Battle of Loos, he passed out at his post from the pain. He was assigned to desk jobs for the rest of the war.
At the end of the war, Mosley decided to go into politics as a
Conservative MP, although he was only 21 years old and had not fully developed his politics. Nonetheless his was driven by a passionate conviction to avoid any future war and this motivated his career. Largely because of his family background, he was considered by several constituencies; a vacancy near the family estates seemed to be the best prospect. Unexpectedly, he was selected for
Harrow first. In the
general election of 1918 he faced no serious opposition and was elected easily. He was the youngest member of the
House of Commons to take his seat (there was an
abstentionist Sinn Féin MP who was younger). He soon distinguished himself as an orator and political player, one marked by extreme self-confidence. He made a point of speaking in the House of Commons without notes.
In 1920, he married Lady
Cynthia Curzon (known as 'Cimmie'), second daughter of
George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Earl Curzon of Kedleston,
Viceroy of India, and Lord Curzon's first wife, the American mercantile heiress, the former Mary Victoria Leiter. Lord Curzon had to be persuaded that Mosley was a suitable husband, as he suspected Mosley was largely motivated by social advancement and his new wife's inheritance. It turned out that Curzon was right to be suspicious. Nevertheless, the wedding was the social event of the year, attended by many branches of European royalty.
Mosley was at this time falling out with the Conservatives over the issue of
Irish policy, and the use of the
Black and Tans to suppress the Irish population. Eventually he '
crossed the floor' and sat as an Independent MP 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 general elections of
1922 and
1923. By
1924 he was growing increasingly attracted to the
Labour Party, which had just formed a government, and in March he joined. 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 Harrow would not re-elect him as a Labour candidate. He therefore decided to oppose
Neville Chamberlain in his constituency of
Birmingham Ladywood. An energetic campaign led to a knife-edge result but Mosley was defeated by 77 votes. 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, a Labour seat in
Smethwick fell vacant and Mosley returned to Parliament.
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 only appointed to the post of
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (a defacto
Minister without Portfolio), 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. Mosley was always impatient and eventually put forward a whole scheme in the 'Mosley Memorandum' to find it rejected by the Cabinet; he then resigned in May
1930. He attempted to persuade the
Labour Party Conference in October, but was defeated again. The memorandum called for high
tariffs to protect British industries from international finance, for state rationalisation of industry and a programme of
public works to solve unemployment.
New Party
Determined that the Labour Party was no longer suitable, Mosley quickly founded the
New Party. Its early parliamentary contests, in
by-elections, were successful only in splitting the vote and allowing the Conservative candidate to win. Despite this, the organization gained support among many Labour and Conservative MPs, who agreed with his
corporatist economic policy. Among those who agreed with Mosley's economic ideas were
Aneurin Bevan and
Harold Macmillan. It also gained the endorsement of the
Daily Mail, a British newspaper. The New Party increasingly inclined to
fascist policies, but Mosley was denied the opportunity to get his party established when the
1931 election was suddenly called. All of its candidates, including Mosley himself, lost their seats. As the New Party gradually became more radical and right-wing, many previous supporters defected from the party.
After failure in
1931 Mosley went on a study tour of the 'new movements' of
Mussolini and other
Fascists, and returned convinced that it was the way forward for him and for Britain. He determined to unite the existing fascist movements and created the
British Union of Fascists (BUF) in
1932. The BUF was anti-Communist and
protectionist. It claimed membership as high as 50,000, and had the
Daily Mail and
Daily Mirror among its earliest supporters. Among his followers were the novelist
Henry Williamson and military theorist
J.F.C. Fuller.
Mosley had found problems with disruption of New Party meetings and instituted a corps of black uniformed paramilitary stewards who were nicknamed
blackshirts. The party was frequently involved in violent confrontations, particularly with Communist and Jewish groups and especially in London. At a large Mosley rally at Olympia on
7 June 1934, mass brawling broke out when hecklers were removed by blackshirts, resulting in bad publicity. This and the
Night of the Long Knives in Germany led to the loss of most of the BUF's mass support. The party was unable to fight the
1935 general election.
In October
1936 Mosley and the BUF attempted to organise a march through an area with a high proportion of Jewish residents, and violence resulted between local and nationally organised protestors trying to block the march and police trying to force it through, since called the
Battle of Cable Street. 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 organizations and came into effect on
1 January 1937.
Cimmie Mosley died of
peritonitis in
1933 which left Mosley free to marry his mistress
Diana Guinness, née Mitford, (one of the celebrated
Mitford sisters). They married in secret in
1936, in the home of
Nazi chief
Joseph Goebbels;
Adolf Hitler was one of the guests. Mosley, who had been spending large amounts of his private fortune on the BUF, wished to establish it on a firm financial footing and was negotiating, through Diana, with Hitler for permission to broadcast commercial radio to Britain from Germany.
In the
London County Council elections in
1937 the BUF stood in three of its East London strongholds, polling up to a quarter of the vote. Mosley then made most of the employees redundant, some of whom then defected from the party with
William Joyce. As the European situation moved towards war the BUF began nominating Parliamentary candidates and launched campaigns on the theme of 'Mind Britain's Business'. After the outbreak of war, he led the campaign for a negotiated peace. He was at first received well but after the invasion of
Norway this gave way to hostility and Mosley was nearly assaulted.
On
23 May 1940 Mosley, along with most active fascists in Britain, was interned under
Defence Regulation 18B, and the BUF was later proscribed. Diana Mosley was also interned, shortly after the birth of their son Max, and they lived together for most of the war in a house in the grounds of
Holloway prison. Mosley used the time to read extensively on classical civilizations. The couple were released in
1943 when Mosley was suffering with
phlebitis and spent the rest of the war under house arrest.
After the war Mosley was contacted by his former supporters and persuaded (initially against his will) to rejoin active politics. He formed the
Union Movement, calling for a single nation state covering the continent of Europe. The Union Movement's meetings were often physically disrupted as had Mosley's meetings before the war, and largely by the same opponents. This led to Mosley's decision, in
1951, to leave England and live in
Ireland. He later moved to
Paris. Of his decision to leave he said "You don't clear up a dungheap from underneath it."
Mosley briefly returned to Britain in order to fight the
1959 general election at North
Kensington, shortly after the 1958 Notting Hill race riots. Concerns over immigration were beginning to come into the spotlight for the first time and Mosley led his campaign on this issue. When Mosley's final share of the vote was less than he expected, he launched a legal challenge to the election on the assumption that the result had been rigged (the election was upheld). He returned for the last time to contest the
1966 general election, before he wrote his autobiography,
My Life (
1968) and retired. In
1977 he was nominated for the post of
Lord Rector of Glasgow University. He polled over 100 votes but finished bottom of the poll.
He had three children by Cimmie, including
Nicholas Mosley who wrote a biography of his father. By Diana Mitford he had two sons, including
Max Mosley who is president of the
FIA. Mosley was a noted philanderer and had numerous affairs including, during his first marriage, with his wife's sister
Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, as well as her stepmother,
Grace Curzon, Marchioness Curzon of Kedleston, the American-born widow of
Lord Curzon of Kedleston.
The Papers of Oswald Moseley are housed at the
University of Birmingham Special Collections.
* He was viciously attacked by the satirical television program
Not The Nine O'Clock News in the sarcastic song "Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley", which featured
Mel Smith,
Pamela Stephenson and
Griff Rhys-Jones all dressed as Nazi Skinheads, singing his eulogy and reading various positive obituaries from newspapers such as
The Times.
* The
P. G. Wodehouse character
Roderick Spode is patterned after Mosley.
* The
Elvis Costello song "Less Than Zero" is an attack on Mosley and his politics.
* In 1997
HBO Home Video produced a movie about him called
Mosley (movie).
* In
2006 he was selected by the
BBC History Magazine as the
20th century's
worst Briton.
(BBC)* Mosley is the fascist leader of Great Britain in
Guy Walters' alternative-history novel "
The Leader."
Oswald Mosley,
Robert SkidelskyFascism in Britain, Richard Thurlow
Blackshirt, Stephen Dorril, Viking Publishing, ISBN 0670869996
*
Battle of Cable Street*
Portraits at the National Portrait Gallery*
Beating Back Mosley - an account from 1958 on libcom.org*
Oswald Mosley – Briton, Fascist, European (This website includes sound recordings of Mosley addressing BUF rallies in the
1930s, and BUF members singing the
Horst-Wessel-Lied in English.)
*
BBC report on MI5 surveillance of Mosley*
Academic essay examining the failure of Mosley and the BUF
