Oswald Mosley: Britain’s Fuhrer

The Battle of Cable Street which had seen 84 people arrested and hundreds more injured, at last forced the Government to act. Before the end of the year it had passed the Public Order Act which banned the wearing of political uniforms and required police assent for the holding of political rallies, demonstrations and marches.

The fiasco of Cable Street saw a sharp decline in the membership of the B.U.F and by the end of 1936 it had fallen to below 8,000. Mosley was forced to axe hundreds of jobs simply to save money. One of those to go was William Joyce. He had been Mosley’s right-hand man, tougher, more spiteful, more vicious, a street-fighter, he was seen by many within the party as the genuine article, not an aristocrat simply playing dress up, and and as a rival for its leadership. Mosley certainly thought so, that’s why he sacked him. 

In the local London elections of 1937, the B.U.F still polled around 25% of the vote in its East End strongholds but financially it was a busted flush, and Mosley was reduced to spending his own personal fortune just to keep it afloat.

As World War with Germany loomed ever larger, Mosley embarked on a national tour to warn against the dangers and to campaign for a peaceful negotiated settlement. With the devastation of the previous war still fresh in the public memory for a time people were willing to listen; but when the phoney war became a shooting one, Mosley’s political career was finished.

Despite ordering that all B.U.F members should do their patriotic duty and take up arms in defence of their country on 23 May, 1940, Oswald Mosley and his wife Diana, endured the public humiliation of being arrested and imprisoned as potential traitors and fifth columnists. After a brief period in the cells they were permitted to live together in a house in the grounds of Holloway Prison. It was less imprisonment and more a form of splendid isolation. In November, 1943, they were released and placed under house arrest. They went to live with their slightly embarrassed relatives.

Would Sir Oswald Mosley have betrayed his country at a time of war and great national peril? Evidence from the behaviour of the leaders of similar fascist parties on the Continent suggest he would have. After all, if he truly believed that he was the right man to lead the country then not to do so when provided with the opportunity would have been a betrayal in and of itself.

Mosley could not, however, stay entirely clear of politics. Following the end of the war he formed the Union Movement to campaign for a single European State. But by now he was more mocked and ridiculed than hated. Few people any longer took him seriously. His meetings were almost always disrupted and would end in chaos with Mosley being dragged from his soapbox and unceremoniously ushered away for his own safety. In 1951, he left England for France with the words, ” You cannot clear up a dungheap from underneath it.”

In exile he blamed the Jews for both the war and the ruination of his own political career. He was to spend the rest of his life campaigning against immigration, and every time it became a hot political issue, like the proverbial bad penny, up would pop Mosley. In the wake of the Notting Hill race riots of 1958, he stood for Parliament in the General Election of the following year, and lost his deposit. Again, in 1966, he returned to stand for the seat of Shoreditch, and fared even worse. Britain’s nascent Fuhrer had become a marginalised and pathetic figure. A maverick politician without a cause worth fighting for.

Sir Oswald Mosley, died, suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, at Orsay near Paris on 3 December, 1980. How tragic it is that you have to die to receive an obituary. The British national press universally eulogised Mosley as being one of the most outstanding political figures of his time. How Sir Oswald would have enjoyed that.