Oswald Mosley: Britain’s Fuhrer

Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet Ancoats, was born on 16 November, 1896, at Rolleston Hall near Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire. One of the privileged class he was born to rule. He was to fight for Britain on the Western Front in the First World War and then serve for ten years as a Member of Parliament, but he was always a man for whom self-aggrandisement and personal advancement outweighed any human sympathy or political conviction. In 1940, he was to be arrested as someone who could not be trusted not to betray his country. 

Following a fairly standard upper-class upbringing, nannies and public school, he enrolled at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in January, 1914. Always a confrontational man he had disciplinary problems whilst at the Academy but by July, 1914, Britain was at war and all this was forgotten. He served in the Queen’s Lancers and fought on the Western Front. Later that year he volunteered to serve in the recently formed Royal Flying Corps. He injured himself when he crashed his plane showing off to his family. The crash left him in great pain and with a permanent limp. Despite returning to the trenches and fighting at the Battle of Loos in April, 1915, he was invalided out of front line service and provided with a desk job.

A man of great ambition and no little ego, following his discharge from the army he was desperate to get involved in politics. With his social connections he had little problem in securing the position of Conservative candidate for the Constituency of Harrow. He was elected as the Member of Parliament in the 1918 General Election at the age of just 21. Four years later he left the Party in a dispute over the brutal suppression of the rebellion in Ireland. He successfully retained his seat standing as an Independent.

In May, 1920, he married Lady Cynthia Curzon, known as Cimmie. She was the daughter of Lord Curzon and in terms of his social standing it was a marriage made in heaven. Others to were aware of this and some doubted his sincerity none more so than his new father-in-law. The marriage elevated Mosley into the upper-echelons of high society and provided him with a considerable inheritance. Though they were to have three children and portray themselves in public as the perfect family, Lord Curzon’s fears were borne out. Mosley was often found playing away. He had affairs with both his wife’s sister and mother-in-law.