Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was a British politician and founder of several nationalist organizations, the most notable being British Union of Fascists and Union Movement. Educated at Winchester and Sandhurst, he fought with the 16th Lancers on the Western Front during the First World War. He later transferred to the Royal Flying Corps but was invalided out of the war after a plane crash in 1916.
Politics
Mosley became the youngest MP in the House of Commons after winning Harrow for the Conservative Party in the 1918 General Election. Disillusioned with the Conservatives, he won Harrow as an Independent in the 1922 General Election. Two years later Mosley joined the Labour Party. In October 1927 Mosley was elected to the party's National Executive Committee.
When Ramsay MacDonald formed his Labour Government after the 1929 General Election, he appointed Mosley as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. In 1930 Mosley proposed a programme that he believed would help deal with the growing unemployment in Britain. When MacDonald and his cabinet rejected these proposals, Mosley resigned from office.
The following year Mosley founded the New Party. In the 1931 General Election none of the New Party's candidates were elected. In January 1932 Mosley met Benito Mussolini in Italy. Mosley was impressed by Mussolini's achievements and when he returned to England he disbanded the New Party and replaced it with the British Union of Fascists. The BUF was strongly anti-communist and argued for a programme of economic revival based on government spending and protectionism.
Mosley was married to Cynthia Curzon, the daughter of the former Viceroy of India. However, he began an affair with Diana Mitford. Diana left her husband but Mosley refused to desert his wife. It was not until Cynthia died of peritonitis, that Mosley agreed to marry Diana.
In October 1936, Diana and Oswald Mosley were secretly married at the home of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in Berlin. Adolf Hitler was one of the guests at the ceremony. Diana was a friend of Joseph Goebbels wife Magda.
In July 1939, BUF hosted one of the largest indoor political rallies in the world with Mosley speaking at a peace rally attended by over 30,000 people at Earls Court in London.
Internment
On 22nd May 1940 the British government announced the imposition of Defence Regulation 18B. This legislation gave the Home Secretary the right to imprison without trial anybody he believed likely to "endanger the safety of the realm". The following day, Mosley was arrested. Over the next few days other prominent figures in the BUF were imprisoned.
On the 30th May the BUF was dissolved and its publications were banned. Mosley and his wife received privileged treatment while in prison. Winston Churchill granted permission for the couple to live in a small house inside Holloway Prison. They were given a small garden where they could sunbathe and grow their own vegetables.
On November 20, 1943, they were released from prison but had to be placed under house arrest until the war was over.
Post-WWII
In the postwar period, Mosley formed the Union Movement and was involved in the National Party of Europe. In 1951, he moved to Ireland and later Paris. Shortly after the 1958 Notting Hill race riots, he briefly returned to Britain to stand in the 1959 general election. Mosley led his campaign on an anti-mass immigration platform, calling for repatriation of Caribbean immigrants as well as a prohibition upon mixed marriages. In 1966, he was a candidate in the general election. Thereafter, he retired and moved back to France, where he wrote his autobiography, My Life (1968).
Books
- Revolution by Reason (1925)
- Greater Britain (1932)
- Fascism Explained: 10 Points of Fascist Policy (1933)
- Tomorrow We Live (1938)
- My Answer (1946)
- The Alternative (1947)
- European Socialism (1951)
- My Life (1968, autobiography)
See also
Further reading
- B.U.F. Oswald Mosley and British Fascism by James Drennan
External links
- Sir Oswald Mosley: Briton, Fascist, European
- Oswald Mosley Reconsidered
- Dunkirk Backstory: Jewish Traitors, Communist Spies, and the Internment of Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts
- Oswald Mosley: Europeans - IMDb