Everything about Oswald Mosley totally explained
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (
16 November 1896 –
3 December 1980) was a
British politician known principally as the founder of the
British Union of Fascists.
Family and early life
Mosley was the eldest of three sons of Sir Oswald Mosley, 5th Baronet, of
Ancoats (1874–1928), and his wife, Katharine Maud Edwards-Heathcote (1874–1950), the second child of
Captain Justinian Edwards-Heathcote, of
Market Drayton,
Shropshire. Mosley's family were
Anglo-Irish but his branch were prosperous landowners in
Staffordshire. He was born in Rolleston Hall, near
Burton-on-Trent. When his parents separated, he was brought up by his mother, who initially went to live in Betton Hall near Market Drayton, and his paternal grandfather, Sir Oswald Mosley, 4th Baronet, of Ancoats. Within the family and among intimate friends, he was always called 'Tom'. He lived for many years at
Apedale Hall near
Newcastle-under-Lyme. His grandfather was a son of Sir Tonman Mosley, 3rd Baronet, and his wife Catherine Wood, whose son Tonman Mosley was the 1st Lord Anslow, and grandson of Sir Oswald Mosley, 2nd Baronet, son of Sir John Parker Mosley, 1st Baronet, and his wife Elizabeth Bayley, and grandson of Nicholas Mosley and his wife Elizabeth Parker. The first Baronet also had a daughter, Frances Mary Mosley, who married George Smith, being the parents of Oswald Smith, married to Henrietta Hodgson and father to
Frances Dora Smith, wife of
Claude Bowes-Lyon, 13th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, the grandparents of
Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon.
He was educated at
West Downs in Winchester,
Winchester College and the
Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. During
World War I, he was commissioned in the
16th The Queen's Lancers and fought on the
Western Front. He transferred to the
Royal Flying Corps as an observer but while showing off in front of his mother and sister he crashed, which 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.
Elected Member of Parliament
At the end of the war, Mosley decided to go into politics as a
Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), although he was only 21 years old and hadn't fully developed his politics. Nonetheless he 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.
Crossing the floor
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
1922 and
1923 general elections. 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 he believed that Harrow wouldn't 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, the Labour-held seat of
Smethwick fell vacant and Mosley returned to Parliament after winning the
resulting by-election on
21 December.
Mosley and his wife
Cynthia were ardent
Fabian Socialists in the 1920s and 1930s. Mosley appears in a list of names of Fabians from Fabian News and Fabian Society Annual Report 1929-31. He was Kingsway Hall lecturer in 1924 and Livingstone Hall lecturer in 1931.
Office
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 nationalisation 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 the
Ashton-under-Lyne by-election, 1931 and subsequent
by-elections, were successful only in splitting the vote and allowing the Conservative candidate to win. Despite this, the organisation 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 authoritarian, many previous supporters defected from it.
Fascism
After 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 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, 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, 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 organisations and came into effect on
1 January 1937.
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.
He was a friend of
Edward VIII, who approved of the BUF campaign for Edward to keep his throne.
Internment
On
23 May 1940 Mosley, who had continued his peace campaign, was interned under
Defence Regulation 18B, along with most active fascists in Britain, and the BUF was later proscribed. His second wife
Diana Mitford, whom he'd married in 1936 in the presence of
Adolf Hitler and
Joseph Goebbels, was also interned, shortly after the birth of their son
Max; 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 civilisations. The couple were released in November 1943, when Mosley was suffering with
phlebitis, and spent the rest of the war under house arrest. On his release from prison he stayed at the Shaven Crown Hotel in
Shipton-under-Wychwood and was the subject of much media attention. However, the war ended what remained of his political reputation.
Post-war politics
After the war Mosley was contacted by his former supporters and persuaded to rejoin active politics. He formed the
Union Movement, calling for a single nation-state covering 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 Mosley's decision, in 1951, to leave Britain 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." SOURCE NEEDED
Mosley briefly returned to Britain in order to fight the
1959 general election at
Kensington North, 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). In 1961 he took part in a debate at
University College London about Commonwealth immigration, seconded by a young
David Irving. He contested the
1966 general election at
Shoreditch and Finsbury where he fared even worse than he'd in 1959. He wrote his autobiography,
My Life (1968), and made a number of television appearances before retiring. In 1977, by which time he was suffering from
Parkinson's disease, he was nominated for the post of
Rector of the University of Glasgow. In the
subsequent election he polled over 100 votes but still finished bottom of the poll.
Wives, affairs, and children
Mosley was a noted philanderer and had numerous affairs, including, before his first marriage, a short romance with his first wife's older sister
Mary Irene Curzon.
In May 1920, he married
Lady Cynthia Curzon (known as 'Cimmie'), second daughter of
George Curzon, Lord Curzon of Kedleston 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 her inheritance. Nevertheless, the wedding was the social event of the year, attended by many branches of European royalty, including
King George V and
Queen Mary.
He had three children by Cynthia: Vivien (b. 1921),
Nicholas Mosley (b. 1923), who wrote a biography of his father, and Michael (1932).
During this marriage he'd an extended affair with his wife's younger sister
Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, as well as their stepmother,
Grace Curzon, Marchioness Curzon of Kedleston, the American-born second wife and widow of Lord Curzon of Kedleston.
Cynthia died of
peritonitis in 1933, after which Mosley married his then current mistress
Diana Guinness,
née Mitford, (one of the celebrated
Mitford sisters). They married in secret in 1936, in the
Berlin home of
Nazi propaganda chief
Joseph Goebbels. Adolf Hitler was one of the guests. By Diana Mitford, he'd two sons: (Oswald) Alexander (b. 1938) and
Max Mosley (b. 1940), who is president of the
Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA).
Mosley spent large amounts of his private fortune on the BUF and tried to establish it on a firm financial footing by negotiating, through Diana, with
Adolf Hitler for permission to broadcast commercial radio to Britain from Germany.
Oswald Mosley died on
3 December 1980 in his
Orsay home, aged 84 years. He was cremated in
Paris and his ashes were scattered on the pond at his Orsay home. His papers are housed at the
University of Birmingham Special Collections.
Cultural reactions to Mosley
Mosley's rising influence before the Second World War provoked alarm and reaction against would-be populist dictators by major cultural figures of the time:
- Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point features Everard Webley, a character that's modelled after Oswald Mosley.
- A character in the novel The Holy Terror (1939) by H. G. Wells is a bombastic British fascist with an aristocratic background, strikingly similar to Mosley.
- The character "Sir Roderick Spode," who appears in four of P.G. Wodehouse's novels, parodies Mosley. Spode, a blustering bully who is described as an "amateur dictator," heads a British fascist "Black Shorts" organization.
Mosley's attempts to promote his views after the war resulted in continued critical reaction:
- In 2006 he was selected by the BBC History Magazine as the 20th century's worst Briton.
- In 1997 Channel Four Television produced a mini-series about him called Mosley, starring Jonathan Cake.
- In the 1986 film version of Colin Macinnes's book Absolute Beginners Steven Berkoff appears as a Mosley-esque character billed as "The Fanatic", who delivers a (rhyming) hate-speech at a fascist election rally; it's generally assumed this is meant to be Mosley during his brief resurgence in 1958.
In popular culture
In Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory Series of alternate history novels, Mosley and Winston Churchill lead a fascist Britain after the Allies lose the First World War.
In Kim Newman's alternate history novel The Bloody Red Baron, Mosley is shot down in 1918 by Erich von Stalhein (from the Biggles series by W. E. Johns), with a character later commenting that "a career has been ended before it was begun."
Mosley was lampooned posthumously by the satirical television programme Not The Nine O'Clock News in the 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 of both sides of the political spectrum, including The Times and The Guardian.
The original version of the Elvis Costello song "Less Than Zero" is an attack on Mosley and his politics, but US listeners assumed that the "Mr Oswald" referred to was Lee Harvey Oswald and Costello obligingly wrote an alternative lyric in which it did.
Bibliography
My Life, the autobiography of Oswald Mosley.
Oswald Mosley, Robert Skidelsky
Fascism in Britain, Richard Thurlow
Blackshirt, Stephen Dorril, Viking Publishing, ISBN 0-670-86999-6
Hurrah for the Blackshirts!, Martin Pugh, ISBN 0-224-06439-8
Rules of the Game, Beyond the Pale, Nicholas Mosley, ISBN 0-7126-6536-6
Haw-Haw: the tragedy of William and Margaret Joyce by Nigel Farndale (Macmillan, London, 2005)
Further Information
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