In
We have tragic proof that economic life has outgrown our political
institutions.
Setting aside any complaint of the conduct or capacity of individual
Governments, I believe that, under the existing system, Government cannot be
efficiently conducted.
The object of this book is to prove, by analysis of the present
situation and by constructive policy, that the
necessity for a fundamental change exists. Our political system dates
substantially from 1832. The intervening century has seen the invention and
development of telegraph, telephone and wireless. At the beginning of the
period, railways were a novelty, and a journey of a dozen miles was a serious
undertaking.
Since then, railway transport has risen and prospered, only to yield
place to the still greater revolution of motor transport on modern roads. The
whole question of power production is less than a century old, and electricity
is a recent development. The modern processes of mass production and rationalisation date only from the War period [editor's
note: i.e. 1914-1918]. Within the last century science has multiplied by many
times the power of man to produce. Banking, as we know it today, did not exist
in 1832; even the Charter of the Bank of England and the modern Gold Standard
are less than a century old. Social opinion has developed almost as rapidly as
economic possibilities. Well within the last century children worked twelve
hours daily in mines and workshops. Men were transported for picking pockets,
and hanged for stealing sheep. Leisure and education have enormously widened
the public interest in matters of Government concern. The huge expansion of
commerce has made us depend more and more on one another; the building-up of
popular newspapers has organised and formulated
popular opinion.
From the standpoint of a century ago, all these changes are
revolutionary. The sphere of government has widened and the complications of
government have increased. It is hardly surprising that the political system of
1832 is wholly out of date today. "The worst danger of the modern
world," writes Sir Arthur Salter [editor's note: a well-known judge and
public servant in the 1920s] in his brilliant book Recovery, "is
that the specialised activities of man will outrun
his capacity for regulative wisdom." Our problem is to reconcile the
revolutionary changes of science with our own system of government, and to harmonise individual initiative with the wider interests of
the nation. Most men desire to work for themselves; laws are oppressive if
they prevent people from doing so. But there is no room for interests which are
not the State's interests; laws are futile if they allow such things to be. Wise
laws, and wise institutions, are those which harness without restricting; which
allow human activity full play, but guide it into channels which serve the
nation's ends.
Hence the need for a New Movement, not only in
politics, but in the whole of our national life. The
movement is Fascist,
(i) because it is based on a high conception of
citizenship - ideals as lofty as those which inspired the reformers of a
hundred years ago;
(ii) because it recognises the necessity for an
authoritative state, above party and sectional interests.
Some may be prejudiced by the use of the word Fascist, because
that word has so far been completely misunderstood in this country. It would be
easy for us to avoid that prejudice by using another word, but it would not be
honest to do so. We seek to organise the Modern
Movement in this country by British methods in a form which is suitable to and
characteristic of
Fascism does not differ from the older political movements in being a
worldwide creed. Each of the great political faiths in its turn has been a
universal movement: Conservatism, Liberalism and Socialism are common to nearly
every country. An Englishman who calls himself a Conservative or a Liberal is
not thereby adopting a foreign creed merely because foreign political parties
bear the same name. He is seeking to advance, by English method and in English
forms, a political philosophy which can be found in an organised
form in all nations.
In this respect the Fascist occupies precisely the same position: his
creed is also a worldwide faith. However, by very reason of the national nature
of his policy, he must seek in the method and form of his organisation
a character which is more distinctively British than the older political
movements. Quite independently, we originally devised a policy for British
needs of a very national character. In the development of that policy, and of a
permanent political philosophy, we have reached conclusions which can only be
properly described as Fascism.
All new movements are misunderstood. Our British Union of Fascists will
without a doubt be misrepresented by politicians of the older schools. The
Movement did not begin with the wiseacres and the theorists. It was born from a
surging discontent with a regime where nothing can be achieved. The Old Gang hold the stage; and, to them, misrepresentation is the path
of their own salvation.
Such tactics may delay, but they cannot prevent, the advance of the
Movement. Nevertheless, every incident in every brutal struggle, in countries
of completely different temperament and character, will be used against us. We
are also faced by the fact that a few people have misused the name Fascism in
this country, and from ignorance or in perversion have represented it as the
"White Guard of reaction."
This is indeed a strange perversion of a creed of dynamic change and
progress. In all countries, Fascism has been led by men who came from the Left,
and the rank and file has combined the Conservative and patriotic elements of
the nation with ex-Socialists, ex-Communists and revolutionaries who have
forsaken their various illusions of progress for the new and orderly reality
of progress. In our new organisation we now combine
within our ranks all those elements in this country who
have long studied and understood the great constructive mission of Fascism; but
we have no place for those who have sought to make Fascism the lackey of
reaction, and have thereby misrepresented its policy and dissipated its
strength. In fact Fascism is the greatest constructive and revolutionary creed
in the world. It seeks to achieve its aim legally and constitutionally, by
methods of law and order; but in objective it is revolutionary or it is
nothing. It challenges the existing order and advances the constructive
alternative of the
This conception we have sought through many vicissitudes of parties and
of men; we have found it in the Movement which we now strive to introduce to
The essence of Fascism is the power of adaptation to fresh facts. Above
all, it is a realist creed. It has no use for immortal principles in relation
to the facts of bread-and-butter; and it despises the windy rhetoric which
ascribes importance to mere formula. The steel creed of an iron age, it cuts
through the verbiage of illusion to the achievement of a new reality.
In the ranks of Conservatism there are many who are attracted there by
the Party's tradition of loyalty, order and stability - but who are, none the
less, repelled by its lethargy and stagnation. In the ranks of Labour there are many who follow the Party's humane ideals,
and are attracted by its vital urge to remedy social and economic evils - but
who are, none the less, repelled by its endless and inconclusive debates, its
cowardice, its lack of leadership and decision.
These elements comprise the best of both Parties: and to both Fascism
appeals. The two essentials of government are stability and progress; and the
tragedy of politics is that the two, essentially coincident, are organised as contradictions. Stability implies order and
authority, without which nothing can be done. It is regarded as belonging to
the Right. Progress implies the urge to reform without which society
cannot survive. It is regarded as belonging to the Left. Stability is
confused with reaction and a stand-pat resistance to change: progress with
ill-considered changes, or with the futile and paralytic discussions so
characteristic of a timorous democracy. As a result, neither of theseessentials is achieved. This is a dynamic age. Stability
cannot exist without progress, for it implies the recognition of changes in the
world which no political system can alter. Nor can progress exist without
stability, for it implies a balanced and orderly view of the changes which have
taken place. The Right seeks stability, but denies the power of
adaptation whichmakes stability an active force. The Left
seeks progress, but rejects al effective instruments and robs authority of the
power to make decisions. The result of both systems of the two great organised Parties of the State is in the end the same. Stability
confused with reaction and a resistance to change, together with progress
confused with obstructive debate and committee irresponsibility, end alike in
chaos. Both are instruments for preventing things being done, and the first
requisite of the modern age is that things should be done.
The final caricature of our present system may be found in the events of
1931. The country, wearied by five years of parliamentary stagnation, had
rebelled from the Conservative slogan of Safety First, and installed a Labour Government in office. For eighteen months, progress,
such as it was, came under the ęgis of dissentient
committees and the dictation of discordant interests. As time passed, the
Government fell under the spell of trade depression which it had done little to
create, but which it was powerless to remedy. In the absence of any
constructive policy, the Government came to the conclusion that it was
necessary to reduce unemployment benefit, but was too weak to do this without
elaborate publicity. The country - most of all, the Unemployed - had to be
frightened: and the May committee soon produced a report fit to alarm the
nation. The economies called for were duly realised,
even though the achievement demanded a regrouping of political complexions. The
Labour Government might have successfully purchased a
little respite at the expense of its supporters, had it not been that foreign
financiers had read the May report and taken it in deadly earnest. The report
had been circulated to secure public approval for action which was
"necessary to save the pound." But it exposed our weakness, and thus
started the stream of foreign withdrawals from our banks which, in spite of
£130 millions of money borrowed in support, forced us off the Gold Standard in
September. A Government with a constructive policy would have averted the whole
situation; a Government with authority would have reformed without apology: had
even this been done, it is more than possible that the crisis might have been
avoided.
We are faced today with the results of government by indecision,
compromise and blether. Both political Parties, and
the remnants of Liberalism as well, stand bound by the great vested interests
of Right and Left which created them. In Opposition, there is the same
profusion of promise; in office the same apathy and inertia. In post-War
Fascism, as we understand it, is not a creed of personal Dictatorship in
the continental manner. The dictatorship of Mussolini in
In a practical system of government our political philosophy comes to
these conclusions. Whatever movement or party be
entrusted with government must be given absolute power to act. Let the people
preserve, through an elected Parliament, the power to dismiss and to change the
Government of the day. While such power is retained, the charge of Dictatorship
has no reality. On the other hand, the power of obstruction, the interminable
debate of small points which today frustrate the nation's will to action, must
be abolished. The present Parliamentary system is not the expression, but the
negation, of the people's will. Government must have power to legislate by
Order, subject to the power of Parliament to dismiss it by vote of censure.
We must eliminate the solemn humbug of six hundred men and women indulging in
detailed debate of every technical measure handled by a non-technical assembly
in a vastly technical age. Thus only shall we clear the way to the real fulfilment of the nation's desire, which is to get things
done in modern conditions.
When we propose an effective system of Government we are, of course,
charged with the negation of liberty by those who have erected liberty into the
negation of action.
We hear so much glib talk of liberty, and so little understanding of its
meaning. Surely nobody can imagine that the British, as a race, are free. The
essence of liberty if freedom to enjoy some of the fruits of life, a reasonable
standard of life, a decent house, good wages, reasonable hours of leisure after
hours of work short enough not to leave a man exhausted, unmolested private
happiness with wife, children and friends and, finally, the hope of material
success to set the seal on private ambition: these are the realities of liberty
to the ordinary man. How many possess this liberty today? How can the mass
possess such freedom in a period of economic chaos? Many unemployed, the
remainder living in the shadow of unemployment, low wages, long hours of
exhausting labour, bad houses, shrinking social
amenities, the uncertainty of industrial collapse and universal confusion:
these are the lot of the average man today. What humbug, then, to talk of
liberty! The beginning of liberty is the end of economic chaos. Yet how
can economic chaos be overcome without the power to
act?
By our very insistence on liberty, and the jealous rules with which we
guard it, we have reached a point at which it has ceased to be liberty at all. We
must preserve the nation's right to decide how, and by whom, it shall be
governed; we must provide safeguards to ensure that the powers of government
are not abused. But that is far from necessitating that every act of government
must be subjected to detailed and obstructive debate, and that in an assembly
with little experience or knowledge of administrative problems. This fantastic
system, begun in good faith as the origin of freedom, has ended by blinding the
citizen in a host of petty restrictions, and tying the hands of each successive
government. Even in debate, the orators of Parliament no longer hope to convert
one another, as they did in the days of
It is quite obvious that this system creates bad government and hampers
the individual citizen. Constitutional freedom must be preserved; but that
freedom is expressed in the people's power, through an elected Parliament, to
choose the form and leadership of its government. Beyond this it cannot go. In
complicated affairs of this kind, somebody must be trusted, or nothing will
ever be done. The Government, once in power, must have power to legislate
by order; and Parliament must have power to dismiss the Government by vote of
censure.
This is the kernel of our Parliamentary proposals. To some it may seem
to imply the suppression of liberty, but we prefer to believe that it will
mean the suppression of chaos.
The same principles which are essential to Government apply, with even
greater force, to a political movement of modern and Fascist structure. Here we
are dealing, not with the mass, but with the men who believe in the cause, and
are devoting their energy to its aims.
We have seen the political parties of the old democracy collapse into
futility through the sterility of committee government and the cowardice and
irresponsibility of their leadership. Voluntary discipline is the essence of
the Modern Movement. Its leadership may be an individual, or preferably, in the
case of the British character, a team with clearly allocated functions and
responsibility. In either case, the only effective instrument of revolutionary
change is absolute authority. We are organised,
therefore, as a disciplined army, not as a bewildered mob with every member
bellowing orders. Fascist leadership must lead, and its discipline must be
respected. By these priniciples, both in the
structure of our own movement and in the suggested structure of Government, we
preserve the essentials of true democracy and combine them with the power of
rapid decision without which all semblance of democracy will ultimately be lost
in chaos.
The immediate task is the firm establishment of the Modern Movement in
the life of the British nation. Ultimately, nations are saved from chaos, not
by Parliaments, however elected; not by civil servants, however instructed: but
by the steady will of an organised movement to
victory.
A whole people may be raised for a time to the enthusiasm of a great and
decisive effort, as they were in the election of the National Government. That
enthusiasm and effort may be sustained for a long period, as it was in the War,
by the external pressure of a foreign threat to our existence. History,
however, provides few cases in which the enthusiasm and unity of a whole people
have been so sustained through a long struggle to emerge from disintegration
and collapse.
For such purpose is needed the grip of an organised
and disciplined movement, grasping and permeating every aspect of national
life. In every town and village, in every institution of daily life, the will
of the organised and determined minority must be struggling
for sustained effort. In moments of difficulty, dissolution and despair it must
be the hard core round which the weak and the dismayed may rally. The Modern
Movement, in struggle and in victory, must be ineradicably interwoven with the
life of the nation. No ordinary party of the past, resting on organisations of old women, tea fights and committees, can
survive in such a struggle. Our hope is centred in
vital and determined youth, dedicated to the resurrection of a nation's
greatness and shrinking from no effort and from no sacrifice to secure that
mighty end. We need the sublime enthusiasm of a nation, and the devoted
energies of its servants.
The main object of a modern and Fascist movement is to establish the
Sir Arthur Salter has said that "private society has developed no
machinery which enables industry as a whole to contribute to the formation of a
general economic policy, and secure its application when adopted." It is
this machinery of central direction which the
This does not mean control from
But so soon as anybody, whether an individual
or an organised interest, steps outside those limits,
so that his activity becomes sectional and anti-social, the mechanism of the
Corporate system descends upon him. This implies that every interest, whether Right
or Left, industrial, financial, trade union or banking system, is
subordinated to the welfare of the community as a whole, and to the over-riding
authority of the organised State. No State within the
State can be admitted. All within the State; none
outside the State; none against the State.
The producer, whether by hand or brain or capital, will be the basis of
the nation. The forces which assist him in his work of rebuilding the nation
will be encouraged; the forces which thwart and destroy productive enterprise
will be met with the force of national authority. The incalculable powers of
finance will be harnessed in the service of national production. They will not
be fettered; but they will be guided into the channels - which are now the
channels of opportunity rather than of habit - which serve the nation's ends. This
is the true function of finance, intended, as Sir Basil Blackett
has insisted, to be "the handmaid of industry." There will be no
room, in our financial organisation, for the unorganised operations which have led to such enormous
complexities, and have rocked the structure of British industry to its
foundations. In our labour organisation
there will be no place for the trade union leader who, from sectional or
political motives, impedes the development of a vital service. But there will
be an honoured place for the financial organisation which joins in the work of British
reconstruction, and for trade unions which co-operate with such reconstruction
in the interests of members who are also members of the international
community.
Class war will be eliminated by permanent machinery of government for
reconciling the clash of class interests in an equitable distribution of the
proceeds of industry. Wage questions will not be left to the dog-fight of class
war, but will be settled by the impartial arbitration of State machinery;
existing organisations such as trade unions and
employers' federations will be woven into the fabric of the Corporate State,
and will there find with official standing not a lesser but a greater sphere of
activity. Instead of being the general staff of opposing armies, they will be
joint directors of national enterprises under the general guidance of
corporative government.
The task of such industrial organisations will
certainly not be confined merely to the settlement of questions of wages and of
hours. They will be called upon to assist, by regular consultation, in the
general economic policy of the nation. The syndicates of employers' and of
workers' organisations in particular industries will
be dovetailed into the corporations covering larger and interlocking spheres of
industry. These corporations in their turn will be represented in a national
corporation or council of industry, which will be a permanent feature in
co-operating with the Government for the direction of economic policy.
The idea of a National Council was, I believe, first advanced in my
speech on resignation from the Labour Government in
May 1930. The idea has since been developed by Sir Arthur Salter and other
writers. A body of this kind stands or falls by the effectiveness of the
underlying organisation. It must not consist of
casual delegates from unconnected bodies, meeting occasionally for ad hoc
consultation. The machinery must be permanently functioning and interwoven with
the whole industrial and commercial fabric of the nation. The machinery must
not be haphazard, but systematic, and continually applied. Sir Arthur Salter
envisages such machinery in the following passage:
"In industry and trade, banking and finance, in
the professions, there are institutions which are capable of representing more
than merely sectional interests. They may have been formed primarily for defence of a common interest against an opposing organisation or against competitors or the public; but they
have, or may have, another aspect: that of preserving and raising the standard
of competence and the development of traditions which are in the general public
interest."
This latter is precisely the aspect which the Corporate
system develops into a smoothly working structure of industrial government. To
this end, no other concrete policy has yet been developed.
The first principle is to absorb, and use, the elements which are useful
and beneficial. In this respect Fascism differs profoundly from its opponent,
Communism, which pursues class warfare to the destruction of all science, skill
and managerial ability; until, when it begins to find its feet, it has to buy
these same qualities at enormous cost from foreign nations. This precisely
describes the course of events in
Such is not the method of Fascism. Its achievement is revolution, but
not destruction. Its aim is to accept and use the useful elements within the
State, and so to weave them into the intricate mechanism of the Corporate system.
Whatever is good in the past we both respect and venerate.
This is why, throughout the policy of the movement, we respect and venerate the
Crown. Here, at least, is an institution, worn smooth with the frictions of
long ago; which in difficult experience has been proven effective and has
averted from this Empire many a calamity. We believe that, under the same
impartial dispensation, the greatest constitutional change in British history
may yet be peacefully achieved.
The same, however, cannot be said of the House of Lords, which is one of
the unworkable anachronisms of the present system. In days gone by the Members
of the Upper Chamber were in some ways exceptionally endowed with the qualities
of Government. Their position had secured them education and their wealth had
enabled them to travel - in these, and a mutltitude
of other, ways they had the advantage of their contemporaries. They were
hereditary landowners on a large scale, in days when the ownership of land was
the only serious industrial responsibility which economic circumstance had
created. Thus they spoke with authority in many matters with which others were
less fitted to deal; and, so long as this went on, they were a fitting and
indispensable branch of the law-giving body.
Their position was derived from the social inequalities of the period;
and there is no social factor which time has more radically changed. As
individuals, the Members of the House of Lords are neither
better nor worse, richer nor poorer, wiser nor more foolish, than their
colleagues in the Commons. Their only function is interference without
responsibility. They have become hereditary automata, whose powers successive
governments have found it necessary to truncate.
In the
Further, in the main body of Parliament industrial elements would
receive a more direct and systematic recognition by the adoption of an
occupational franchise. As things stand at present, there is nothing to prevent
the electorate, supposedly all-wise, from electing a Parliament composed
entirely of sugar brokers. Each might be an excellent candidate for whatever
Party he chose to represent. He might well be affluent, genial and docile; a firm
supporter of charity bazaars, a pillar of local football elevens, a regular
contributor to the Party funds of his constituency. If, with all this, he
kisses babies with a pretty grace, and promises reforms enough to impress the
electors, he may well find himself in Parliament. If enough sugar brokers did
it, there is no reason at all why the whole of Parliament should not be sugar
brokers: but this would scarcely fit them for the task of discussing a Bill
dealing with the complexities of unemployment administration in a northern
industrial town. In fact, the unemployed might expect to fare rather badly.
This is an exaggeration; but the like of it, in miniature, happens at
every election. Electors vote on general considerations of policy, which they
cannot understand, since the facts are not fully before them. This is no fault
in the newspapers, and it implies no secrecy in the government of the day. The
truth is, simply, that the issues behind every political decision are far too
complicated to set before the public. The result is that elections are fought
in a welter of journalistic catchwords - Three Acres and a Cow, Tax
Fortunes, not Food, Safety First, and even Hang the Kaiser.
This is a travesty of democratic law-giving. The first essential is a
well-informed electorate; and a man is better informed in his own job than he
is in the complicated issues of politics. For this reason, the majority of
Members of Parliament will be elected on an occupational, rather than a
residential, basis. An engineer shall vote as an engineer; and thus bring into
play, not an amateur knowledge of foreign and domestic politics, but a
life-long experience of the trade in which he is engaged. He will vote in
common with others of similar experience, and will give the reasoned decision
of a technician in his particular trade in a choice between members of that
trade.
It would always be necessary to elect a proportion of Members of
Parliament on general grounds of national policy by the exercise of a general
franchise; but the relative smallness of their number, and the greater size of
their constituencies, would lift such national membership from the parochial to
the national sphere. In such conditions, candidates could only expect to be
elected by reason of conspicuous gifts, and not on the grounds of mere
parochial appeal. The number of nationally elected MPs would be reduced, but
their quality would be raised. Such electoral principles are designed, not to
limit the powers of electors, but rather to increase their real power by
enabling them to give a well-informed vote.
The danger of our present system is the fact that it brings itself too
easily into contempt. Nobody, nowadays, expects election promises to be
fulfilled. Governments are elected on the strength of their appeal to passion
or to sentiment. Once in office they promptly resign their effective power in favour of the great interests within the State, but yet
superior to the State, who exercise their power in secret. The increasingly
technical nature of all problems in an economic age has made it difficult or
impossible to explain the real issues to the electorate as a whole. The
division between daily politics and the reality of Government has become ever
greater. The technician has become ever more enchained by the passion, the
prejudice and the folly of uninstructed politics.
By such a system as we advocate, the technician, who is the architect of
our industrial future, is freed for his task. He is given the mandate for that
task by the informed franchise of his colleagues in his own industry. A vote so
cast will be the result of experience and information. Is not this in fact rationalised democracy? Is not this system preferable
to the solemn humbug of present elections, which assumes that the most
technical problems of modern government, ranging from currency management to
the evolution of a scientific protective system, can be settled by a few days'
loose discussion in the turmoil of a General Election?
The ordinary man would greatly resent such treatment of the facts of his
daily industry and life. If someone strolled into an engineering shop and,
after five minutes' cursory examination of an intricate process which the
engineer had studied all his life, proceeded to tell him how to do it, the
engineer would quickly tell the intruder he was a presumptuous ass. Yet these
are the methods which our present electoral system applies to that most
intricate and technical of processes, the government of a civilised
State.
Rationalised democracy,
as well as rationalised industry, has become an
imperative necessity. The
The moral and social law and convention of
We live on public anarchy and private repression: we should have public organisation and private liberty.
We are taught that it is an outrage to interfere with the individual in his
public capacity as producer, financier or distributor - though, if he uses his
powers badly, his anti-social conduct may damage tens of thousands of his
fellow-citizens. But we are taught to interfere with every detail of his
private life, in which sphere he can damage no one but himself, or at most his
immediate surroundings. A man may be sent to prison for having a shilling bet
on a horse race. But he can have a tremendous bet on the stock market, and live
honoured and respected as a pillar of industrial
finance. He may damage the whole life of the nation in the capacity of
capitalist or trade union leader, but he may not even risk the slightest damage
to himself by obtaining a drink after the appointed hour!
We are treated as a nation of children; every item of social legislation
is designed, not to enable the normal person to live a normal life, but to
prevent the decadent from hurting himself. At every point the private liberty
of the individual is invaded by busybody politicians who have grossly
mismanaged their real business - which is the public life of an organised nation.
It is, of course, a simpler task for limited intelligences to keep
public houses closed than to keep factories open. The politician, conscious
perhaps of his own limitations, turns naturally to a sphere with which he is
more familiar. The result is the creation of a political system which is
precisely the reverse of what a political system should be. In the public
affairs of national life we have disorder and anarchy: in the private affairs
of individual life we have interference and repression.
It is scarcely even anarchy; it is a laughable form of organised humbug, which has made us the mock of every civilised country. The whole system is the child of that
same mentality which has transformed Parliament into a bleating of ineffective
sheep; which blundered into the War, the Peace, the Debt-Settlement, and the
Financial Crisis. It is the by-product of age, struggling with a problem for
which it feels itself unequal; and, as such, it is a supreme challenge to youth
and realism.
The Fascist principle is
But there is one condition. The State has no room for the drone and the
decadent, who use their leisure to destroy their capacity for public
usefulness. In our morality it is necessary to "live like athletes"
to fit ourselves for the career of service which is the Fascist idea of
citizenship. To all moral questions the acid test is first social and secondly
scientific. If an action does not harm the State, or other citizens of the State,
and is it leaves the doer sound in mind and body, it cannot then be morally
wrong. This test over-rides all considerations of religion, prejudice and
inherited doctrines which, at present, obscure the mind of man.
We detest the decadence of excess as much as we despise the decadence of
repression. An ordered athleticism of mind and body is the furthest aim of
justly enforceable morality. And even for the enforcement of this we would rely
on the new social sense, born of a modern renaissance, rather than upon
legislation. The law arrests the occasional drunkard; but it does not touch the
tippler, the weakling and the degenerate.
In our ordered athleticism of life we seek, in fact, a morality of the
Spartan pattern. But this must be more than tempered with the Elizabethan
atmosphere of Merrie
We know that happiness, no less than fitness, is a social and political
asset. The more gaiety and happiness in the ranks of those who grapple with the
tasks of today, the better is it for the achievement of their mission. But all
our gaiety of life and happiness in private things must contribute to, and not
diminish, our power to serve the State. In practice we are glad to see a man on
race course, on football stand, in theatre or in cinema during well-earned
hours of leisure; and we do not mind in the least seeing him in a public house
or club, provided that he is not there to excess, and does not there squander
his health or his resources. In many things the distinction is between
relaxation and indulgence. The latter becomes decadence, but the former
contributes to healthy enjoyment, which in its turn contributes to efficiency
and to service.
Therefore in asking our members to "live like athletes" we do
not advocate the sterility of Puritanism and repression. We want men, not
eunuchs, in our ranks, but men with a singleness of purpose which they order
their lives to serve. Such morality is already accepted within our Movement,
and its implications find an organised form. We
expect our members to keep fit, not only in mind, but also in body, and for
that reason have often been attacked as organising
for physical violence. We shall certainly meet force with force; but this is
not the motive of these activities. No man can be far sunk in degeneration so
long as he excels, or even performs competently, in some branch of athletics. It
is a part of the dedicated life of a new movement to maintain that constant
training in mind and body which is readiness to serve when the time comes. In
our own movement, in fact, we seek to create in advance a microcosm of a
national manhood reborn.
Such is our morality, which we claim is the natural morality of British
manhood; and from it follows hostility to the social repression and legislation
of today, and to every achievement of our hag-ridden politics which is summarised in D.O.R.A. We seek to create a nationwide
movement which will replace the legislation of old women by the social sense and
the will to serve of young men. Every man shall be a member of the State,
giving his public life to the State, but claiming in return his private life
and liberty from the State, and enjoying it within the Corporate
purpose of the State.
It has been suggested that hitherto, in our organisation,
too little attention has been paid to the position of women. It is true that in
our political organisation we have hitherto
concentrated on the organisation of men. This was not
because we under-rate the importance of women in the world; but because our
political experiences have led us to the conclusion that the early stages of
such organisation are a man's job. We have, in fact,
too much regard for women to expose them to the genialities of broken bottles
and of razor blades with which our Communist opponents have conducted the
argument. The part of women in our future organisation
will be important, but different from that of the men; we want men who are
men and women who are women.
In the political organisation of the
To many the idea may seem fantastic, but the logic of the situation
seems to demand some Corporate organisation
and representation of motherhood. It is a truism to say that motherhood is one
of the highest callings, and of the utmost importance to the State; why,
therefore, should women not be accorded representation and organisation
as mothers? Normal women have hitherto suffered greatly from the absence of
representative organisation. Their representation has
drifted into the hands of professional women politicians, irreverently
described as the "Members for No Man's Land". Such women are perhaps
adequately qualified to represent certain aspects of women's life, but few of
them have any claim to represent the mothers of the nation. Why should not the
representation of motherhood be an organised force in
the counsels of the State? The care of mother and of child is an integral part
of the
There are many questions which are of primary interest to women, and
which an organisation of this kind would go far to
solve. Questions of housing, health and education in their widest application,
come naturally within its sphere. And there remain matters of still wider
political and social significance - on which the counsels of normal womanhood
must be of the first importance.
The great majority of women do not seek, and
have no time for, a career of politics. Their interests are consequently neglected,
and their nominal representation is accorded to women whose one idea is to
escape from the normal sphere of women and to translate themselves into men. That
process in the end is never very effective, and the attempt makes such women
even less qualified than the average man to deal with the normal questions of
home and of children.
Consequently, the representation and organisation
for the first time of normal women, on whom the future of the race depends, are
a practical political necessity. Fascism, in fact, would treat the normal woman
and mother as one of the main pillars of the State, and would rely upon her for
the organisation and development of one of the most
important aspects of national life.
Our foreign policy should also be the subject of a book in itself, but the main principles may here be stated very
briefly.
The measures of national recosntruction
already described involve automatically a change in our foreign policy. We
should be less prone to anxious interference in everybody else's affairs, and
more concentrated on the resources of our own country and Empire. Wherever
opportunity arose for furthering the interests of British trade, we should
seize that chance, and to that end would reorganise
the diplomatic and consular service. Henceforth their activities would be more
directed to practical commercial questions, and less to the tangled skein of
European politics and animosities. The mere fact of our internal concentration
would tend to relieve us from some of our anxiety over, and participation in,
the troubles and turmoils of the Continent.
This does not by any means imply that we would withdraw from the world
scene and not exert ourselves in the cause of world peace. We would certainly
use all existing machinery to that end, including the machinery of the
It must never be forgotten that the
In matters of armaments, we should be prepared to take the lead in
disarmament proposals, provided they were universal, and not confined to this
country. We would not consent to a unilateral reduction which would render
On the other hand, with the best possible expert advice we would
radically overhaul our present system of defence. It
is a strange mind which meticulously contends for exact parity in every naval
category with a friendly power like
The arrival of the air factor has altered fundamentally the position of
these islands, and the consequences of that factor have never yet been realised by the older generation of politicians. In the
same realistic spirit we would examine the defence of
our trade routes. Is it, for instance, a fact that the
These are not questions which can be determined by the amateur: but they
are questions which we suspect are today being settled by tradtiion
rather than by scientifice inquiry into modern facts.
In such a study as this, covering much ground that is entirely novel,
and demanding space for that purpose, it is impossible to deal with foreign
policy in terms other than the general.
In general, we should seek peace and conciliation, and are prepared to
take the lead in these subjects. Too long has
Our main policy, quite frankly, is a policy of Britain First, but
our very preoccupation with internal reconstruction is some guarantee that at
least we shall never pursue the folly of an aggressive Imperialism. It will never
be necessary to stimulate the steady temper of
The case advanced in these pages covers, not only a new political
policy, but also a new conception of life. In our view, these purposes can only
be achieved by the creation of a modern movement invading every sphere of national
life. To succeed, such a movement must represent the organised
revolt of the young manhood of
At the end of the War, they found
It was temporarily overwhelmed in the General Election of October 1931
by the last great bluff of the Old Gangs in the formation of a National
Government. A blank cheque was given by the
electorate to a government of "united muttons", which openly
combined, for the first time, every failure of post-war politics. Every Old
Gang politician deserted his particular variety of sinking ship, and scrambled
aboard the new lifeboat. Only the rump of Labour
leadership was left behind - a collection of men whose intellectual calibre was deemed by their late colleagues unworthy of
inclusion in the new combination.
The National Government had no programme when
they started, and they have no programme today. Their
leaders had not foreseen the crisis of 1931 until it overwhelmed them, and
indeed derided its possibility; but the public was assured that our troubles
would automatically be overcome by the mere fact of the new combination of the
old forces. The crisis, as well as the heart of the electorate, was to melt
before the sudden embraces of a few old gentlemen who had spent the previous
half-century in abusing each other.
Unfortunately, facts are sterner than the emotions of democracy. They
have soon proved that some further action was required than has emerged as yet
from the Old Gang honeymoon.
In such an atmosphere, every appeal to though, to reason, to effort and
to action was naturally defeated. Our constructive programme
was derided and dismissed, only later to be adopted in part by the National
Government - but in so small a degree, so tardily and in such muddled fashion
as to render it entirely ineffective.
For all this we make no complaint whatsoever; such experience is merely
the classic first phase of a Modern Movement. Actually we fared far better at
our first attempt than any of the modern movements which have been founded and
which have come to power in other countries since the War. The Italian Fascists
were more utterly defeated in the election of 1919, about three years before
they came into power. Their leader polled only 5,000 votes against the 100,000
of his Old Gang opponent - a result only some 20%, as good as that which I was
afforded by the people of
If we turn to the case of the German Nazis, we find that they were
routed again and again by national combinations of the Old Gang before they
approached power.
It is only natural that nations in crisis should seek the easy and the
normal way of escape. It is only natural that they should trust the well-known
and venerable figures in politics until these are found unworthy of trust and
unsuitable to a dynamic age. Only then, with the new determination born of
despair, great nations turn to new forces and to new men.
The first result of crisis in every nation has always been a national
combination of "the united muttons". Only after their failure, the
modern movement begins its inevitable advance. The aim of such a movement must
be revolutionary in the fundamental changes which it seeks to secure. But all
these changes can be achieved by legal and by peaceful means,
and it is our ardent desire so to secure them. Whether they will be thus
achieved depends, chiefly, upon the rapidity with which new ideas are accepted
in this country.
To drift much longer, to muddle through much further, is to run the risk
of collapse. In such a situation, new ideas will not come peacefully; they will
come violently, as they have come elsewhere. In the final economic crisis to
which neglect may lead, argument, reason, persuasion, vanish
- and organised force alone prevails. In such a
situation, the eternal protagonists in the history of all modern crises must
struggle for the mastery of the State. Either Fascism or Communism emerges
victorious; if it be the latter, the story of
Anyone who argues that in such a situation the normal instruments of
government, such as police and army, can be used effectively, has studied
neither the European history of his own time nor the realities of the present
situation. In the highly technical struggle for the modern State in crisis,
only the technical organisations of Fascism and of
Communism have ever prevailed, or, in the nature of the case, can ever prevail.
Governments and Parties which have relied on the normal instruments of
government (which are not constituted for such purposes) have fallen easy and
ignoble victims to the forces of anarchy. If, therefore, such a situation
arises in
Action, even now, might avert it; but can anyone, after an experience of
post-war politics, hope for such action from existing political parties, from
the men who lead them, or, indeed, from the existing political system? The
whole constitution, composition, tradition, psychology and outlook of the older
political parties inhibit them from facing the problems of the modern age. Nothing
has yet overcome the modern problem in other countries, or in our view can
overcome it in this country, except that phenomenon of the modern period, which
is the modern movement of organised Fascism.
It is often urged strongly upon me that I could find acceptance for many
of the ideas set out in this book within one of the existing parties, and that
it is folly to attempt the great labour of creating
new machinery for purposes which could be achieved by existing machinery.
Such an argument betrays a complete misunderstanding of the problem and
the history of this period. It would have been equally futile to tell an
Italian Fascist that he could achieve the renaissance of
In
It is true that within the old parties and even within the old
Parliament are many young men whose real place is with us, and who sympathise with our ideas. The real political division of
the past decade has not been a division of parties, but a division of
generations. At any time in the past few years it would have been possible to
form a government of broadly homogeneous ideas from the men over 50 years of
age, and a corresponding government from the men under 50 years of age. It was
left to the older generation to demonstrate the truth of this view in the
formation of the National Government.
In the case of the younger generation, the machinery of Party
Government, which is controlled by the old, has made any such development
impossible. The power of that party machine has crushed all attempts to secure
a natural alignment in British politics. Nevertheless, within all political
parties potential Fascists are to be found - among young men who are well known
in party politics, and still more among the rank and file.
Before we can draw such support, which would mean the collapse of the
old political system and the achievement of a new national unity, we have to
advance much further on the road to victory. We have to discover, as we have
already discovered, new men, and we have to create a new force from nothing
except the will of the mass of the people to victory.
It is thus that every Fascist movement has arrived at power - not by
combinations of men drawn from the old political system, but by the discovery
of new men who come from nowhere, and by the creation of a new force which is
free from the trammels of the past. Except for a few leading figures who broke
from the old political system and staked all on the creation of the new, the
makers of Fascism in all countries had never been heard of before the arrival
of that movement.
For our purposes, therefore, we cannot rely on well-known names and
figures. Few of them will take the risks of so great an adventure as the
creation of a modern movement, and we cannot expect them to take those risks. If
we are to be true to our faith, we must ourselves take risks which most men
will not take, and must stake our all on a mission which in its early stages
must be lonely.
In the coming struggle, we shall have the imposing things of the world
against us, and much of its material strength. The great names of politics, the
power of party machinery and Press, will oppose us with a concentrated barrage
of misrepresentation, or with a well-organised
boycott, as they have opposed us in the past and as they opposed all such
movements as this in every country. But we have on our side forces which have
carried such movements to victory throughout the world. We have in unison in
our cause the economic facts and the spiritual tendencies of our age. These are
the forces which in so many countries in recent history have smashed all the
pomp and panoply of the old political systems and have enthroned new creeds in
power.
Fascism today has become a worldwide movement, invading every country in
the hour of crisis as the only alternative to a destructive Communism. We must
remember that, in the long course of history, all great movements which swept
the Continent have come in the end to these shores. They have come, but in very
different form and character. We, too, seek to create the Modern Movement in
Whether these aims can be realised depends
upon whether
For our part, we appeal to our countrymen to take action while there is
time, and to carry the changes which are necessary by the legal and
constitutional methods which are available. If, on the other hand, every appeal
to reason is futile in the future, as it has been in the immediate past, and
this Empire is allowed to drift until collapse and anarchy supervene, we shall
not shrink from that final conclusion, and will organise
to stand between the State and ruin.
We are accused of organising to promote
violence. That accusation is untrue. It is true that we are organised
to protect our meetings as far as possible from violence; and very necessary
that organisation has proved in practice. Already in
this country we have a condition in which free speech is a thing of the past. The
leaders of the old political parties creep in by back doors, under police
protection, to well-ticketed meetings which would otherwise be broken up by the
organised violence of Socialist and Communist
extremists. We have thrown open our meetings to the public, and after the
meetings we have exercised the Englishman's right to walk through the streets
of our great cities. When we have been attacked, we have hit back, and as a
result I have been subject to the farce of being summoned to a police court for
assault by Reds who came to break up our meetings by force; and who ran
howling, when counter-force was employed, for the protection of the police and
the law which they had previously derided.
The great majority of our meetings, even in the early days, were
peaceful. In fact, although little else appeared in the Press, only two out of
some hundred meetings which I addressed at the Election ended in a fight; and
the return visit, even to
Emphatically, this does not mean that we seek violence. On the contrary,
we seek our aims by methods which are both legal and constitutional, and we
appeal to our country, by taking action in time, to avert the possibility of
violence. If the situation of violence is to be averted, the Old Gang
Government must be overthrown and effective measures must be adopted before the
situation has gone too far. The enemy today is the Old Gang of present
parliamentarianism. The enemy of tomorrow, if their rule persists much longer,
will be the Communist Party. The Old Gangs are the architects of disaster,
the Communists only its executors. Not until the Old Gangs have muddled us
to catastrophe can Communists really operate; so, in the first place, the enemy
is the Old Gang, and the objective is the overthrow of their power. To achieve
this by constitutional means will entail at a later stage a bid for
parliamentary power. In a superficial paradox, it will be necessary for a
modern movement which does not believe in Parliament, as at present
constituted, to seek to capture Parliament. To us, Parliament will never be an
end in itself, but only a means to an end; our object is not political
place-holding, but the achievement of national reconstruction.
However, the time for elections and for Parliament has not yet come. First
it is necessary to build a movement invading every phase of national life and
carrying everywhere the Corporate conception. In the
first instance, we probably made a mistake in contesting parliamentary
elections before we had created such a machine. It is a mistake which we have
made in common with all new movements which have come to power in
Whether our British Union of Fascist Parties will arrive at power
through our parliamentary system, or whether it will reach power in a situation
far beyond the control of Parliament, no one can tell. The solution of that
question will depend on two incalculable factors:
If the situation develops rapidly, and the public mind develops slowly,
something like collapse may occur before any new movement has captured
parliamentary power.
In that case, other and sterner measures must be adopted for the saving
of the State in a situation approaching anarchy. Such a situation will be none
of our seeking. In no case shall we resort to violence against the forces of
the Crown; but only against the forces of anarchy if, and when, the machinery
of state has been allowed to drift into powerlessness. Strangely enough, such
an eventuality is probably a lesser menace, when the character of the British
people is considered, than the possibility of a long, slow decline which is so
imperceptible that the national will to action is not aroused. In crisis the
British are at their best; when the necessity for action is not clear, they are
at their worst. It is possible that we may not come to any clearly marked
crisis: and here arises a still greater danger. The industrial machine is
running on two cylinders instead of six. A complete breakdown would be a
stronger incentive to action than the movement, however cumbrous, of a crippled
machine. So long as there is movement of any kind, however
inadequate, there is always a lazy hope of better things. The supreme
danger is that
In a situation of so many and such diverse contingencies nobody can dogmatise upon the future. We cannot say with certainty
when catastrophe will come, nor whether it will take
the form of a sharp crisis or of a steady decline to the status of a second
rate Power. All that we can say with certainty is that
We ask those who join us to march
with us in a great and hazardous adventure. We ask them to be prepared to
sacrifice all, but to do so for no small and unworthy ends. We ask them to
dedicate their lives to building in this country a movement of the modern age,
which by its British expression shall transcend, as often before in our
history, every precursor of the Continent in conception and in constructive
achievement.
We ask them to rewrite the greatest
pages of British history by finding for the spirit of their age its highest
mission in these islands. Neither to our friends nor to the country do we make
any promises; not without struggle and ordeal will the future be won. Those who
march with us will certainly face abuse, misunderstanding, bitter animosity,
and possibly the ferocity of struggle and of danger. In return, we can only
offer to them the deep belief that they are fighting that a great land may
live.