Oswald Mosley Reconsidered
Keith Stimely
In the five years and twenty issues of its existence, this journal of
contemporary history, devoted to the unusual and the unsung -- to histories
untold or told generally from only one point of view, to people and ideas,
movements and events and interpretations not often given (so we from our
perspective suppose) a fair hearing -- has never touched on the subject of
Oswald Mosley and the tumultuous, though unsuccessful, political movements he
led in Britain during the middle third of this century. All historical study
entails not only the consideration of events transpired, but of alternatives
untried; for "revisionary" history, the kind whose students and
practitioners for one reason or another carry a predisposition to look and
think twice, the draw to the latter, to imagination and reconstruction, must be
especially powerful. And for history considered as politics, creator through
sheer power-wield of what we like or don't like about the world around us. all
the more compelling must be that draw -- particularly if it transcends
"what if" speculation and involves consciously the desire to glean
useful lessons from the past, quite as much from failures as from successes,
what didn't as from what did happen.
Oswald Mosley's strange, spectacular, and absolutely unique career
within the broad polity of an entrenched liberal-democratic society of our time
touched, in its long course, on virtually every great public issue and theme
that faced and still faces such a society in this age of continuing turmoil and
change. Peace and war, the division of the world, European union, colonialism,
government, empire, democracy, communism, socialism, fascism, corporatism,
syndicalism, trade unionism, protectionism, capitalism, Keynesianism, public
works, militarism, technocracy, managerialism, violence, race, treason, free
speech, coercion, philosophy, culture -- all these met their treatment in
earnest study and debate, and impassioned advocacy, at the hands of Mosley and
his various followers and opponents, at various times. And while it would be
wrong to suggest that, excepting the two fiery decades of his meteoric
political ascendancy after World War I, Mosley and "Mosleyism" were
at or even very near the center of all these discussions in Britain,
nevertheless his approaches to the problems of the twentieth century have left
their mark on events and ideas. With passions of former years subsiding, old
combatants mellowing (or just dying), and inevitable curiosity piquing at what
is, after all, a most interesting and instructive political story, recent years
have seen the emergence in his own country of a profound reawakening of
interest in just who Mosley was, what he stood for, what led him to stand for
it -- and how all or some of it might have made a difference. For decades he
was kept quite out of "serious" discussion, though never really out
of the public eye. The revival of interest in him is serious, and it is hardly
unnatural that much of it takes the form, mild yet, of a reaction against the
long-standing former "consensus" interpretation of the man as the
very epitome of political evil. Mosley is being revised -- and the revisionist
process truly to be such need only amount to a gradual reconsideration of his
ideas and proposals simply on their merits. The persistence into the present of
the problems Mosley addressed, often in studious detail and with an eloquence
conceded even by his worst enemies and since unmatched, makes for his relevance
to the contemporary political discussion. As in
To the end of introducing Oswald Mosley to American readers we present
as our lead article this issue Robert Row's "Sir Oswald Mosley: Briton,
Fascist, European," followed by an extensive, though not exhaustive,
bibliography for those who might care to pursue their interest. Nothing like
either has ever appeared in an American publication. About Mr. Row's
contribution two points should be made. First, it is not an objective
historical study, but an appreciation by a longtime political associate and
partisan; it introduces Mosley from the frank Mosleyite perspective of the
present day, and as such -- a "political" treatment -- tends to give
his post-1945 ideas and proposals as much attention as those of the prewar
Fascist period -- a rare, and valuable, thing. (Those seeking other
perspectives are referred to the bibliography, where will be found
anti-Mosleyana in magnificent abundance.) Second, it speaks in some degree -- with
several rather interesting quotations, considering from whom they come -- to
the current phenomenon of a "new objectivity" in approaching Mosley.
Though already mentioned here, it is to this point that some further few words
might yet with profit be addressed.
It indeed became fashionable toward the end of, and after, Mosley's life
for even the British intellectual Establishment, whose members by-and-large had
waged alternately hot and cold wars against him for decades, to praise Mosley
-- or at least to raise him up somewhat frrom the "out of sight, out of
mind" political and moral dustbin to which he had been consigned. Mosley
himself contributed in great measure to his (partial) rehabilitation with the
publication by a major house in 1968 of his autobiography, My Life. (The final
chapter of this book, incidentally, should be read intently by anyone seeking
to understand the fundamental difference in outlook on life between a Fascist
and a Marxist.) The trend of looking at Mosley in a new, less jaundiced way was
heralded by Colin Cross's rancor-bereft historical study The Fascists in
But a slightly specious note may be discovered in many of the good words
of recent years that have been said about Mosley. (Said especially since his
death; if it is bad to criticize a dead man on the grounds that he can't reply,
is it any better to reserve the full flowering of relative kindliness and
fairness for the time when he can't benefit?) This note sounds in the one basic
qualification generally attached to those words, lending a resounding
"Yes, but..." effect. The line goes something like this: "Ah,
Mosley... tsk, what a tragedy. He could have accomplished great things with all
that talent and some of those modern ideas of his. If it just weren't for that
fall into extremism and Fascism; must have been a character flaw there. Well,
the major parties lost a great one, for sure. Could have used him. Yes, too bad
about that Fascist thing, too bad..." Thus the "tragedy of
Mosley" -- that a man of such high station, so full of early influence and
exalted promise, could "succumb" (to something or other) and take
himself down "the wrong path" (or "the twisted path"),
leading only to the pale and beyond. Here we have Mosley considered not really on
his own terms but, as usual, on the terms, from the singular perspective, of
the Establishment. For a long time criticized and condemned on those terms,
lately praised and lamented on those terms: the tragedy of how Mosley was lost
to the use of the old ways -- not of how possible new, radically new, ways were
lost to the use of
Surely this lament for "the lost Mosley" does not amount
finally to the lament that, oh, what a shame, Labour in the '40s could have had
a much more dynamic and photogenic leader than Clement Atlee! Mosley would
laugh in his grave. He could not but have left Labour eventually (at least any
Labour Party likely ever to have been constituted), precisely as he did leave
it in 1931. He was made for more than that, and his cause -- which came to him
gradually -- was far greater than that; he finally knew it, he tried for more,
and he failed. He failed right at the vigorous prime, not at all toward the
enfeebling end, of his life, still a young man with much ahead of him. The
times, the situation, had determined when he would make his gamble for
"The Greater Britain." (They determined also -- and this is very
importan -- that and how he would make the gamble.) He never regretted his
course, though he had decades in the political wilderness to help persuade him
to do so. Rather he kept on, with a new movement suited. he said, to the
post-1945 world realities. New vehicle notwithstanding, the guiding cause was
really the same, with the difference now that it was a greater one, not just
Just who had taken "the wrong path" -- Mosley in turning to
Fascism, or those who rejected and condemned him and it? That can only be
answered after it has been asked. and the Establishment, for all its "new
objectivity" in treating Mosley, has not yet got around to asking that.
When it does, as it will one day, we will see finally considered with all due
seriousness (and that is no little seriousness) the ideas and program of, yes,
Mosley the Fascist and European unionist. Nevermore just Mosley the "lost
leader" of Labour (or, for that matter, of the Tories), not just the
Mosley who "could have been another Lloyd George if he'd played his cards
right," but as well the Mosley who could utterly renounce the old parties
and the old philosophies to provide his countrymen with the great and
revolutionary alternative of a new philosophy and synthesis. The Mosley of the
British Union Peace Programme of 1939, of the Declaration of Venice of 1962,
not just of the rejected Labour "Memorandum" of 1930. Only when this
Mosley is considered in wide and serious measure will objectivity have run its
course, to do which it must pass through the pale itself, using as a guide
precisely that "wrong" path Mosley was alleged to have taken. To
where that path, in time, leads will also be found the answer to the question
of just whose real and great tragedy the Mosley story, the brilliant Mosley
failure, described. For those who have already ventured in their hearts down
that path, reaching the precipice that is also a lookout, the answer stands
clear: more than a man's; more than a nation's;