Page 128 - They Also Served

with Labour, he founded the New Party, but was once more cast into the political wilderness when he lost his seat in the 1931 election. Using the time to travel Europe, he was particularly impressed by Benito Mussolini in Italy and returned to create the BUF in 1932.
The party initially appealed to the masses and was supported by the military theorist Major-General JFC Fuller and, for a while, by the Daily Mail. To counter disruption at his meetings, he formed a corps of uniformed stewards, the Blackshirts. Support for the party declined throughout the 1930s as the Blackshirts violently ejected protesters from meetings. Furthermore, the Night of The Long Knives in Germany raised public awareness of the dangers of fascism, and the far right’s obsession with ritual, uniforms and saluting went against the British character. In 1936, East Enders stopped the Blackshirts marching, in what became known as the Battle of Cable Street, and the government passed the Public Order Act which banned political uniforms. Mosley’s wife died in 1933 and, in 1936, he married his mistress Diana, one of the famous Mitford sisters, in a secret ceremony in Berlin at the home of Joseph Goebbels. Adolf Hitler was one of the guests. However, even as the situation in Europe deteriorated towards war, Mosley remained popular. In July 1939 at Earls Court, he organised the biggest indoor political rally ever held in Britain, before or since.
As the Nazis made rapid gains in Europe, public opinion turned against Mosley and, in May 1940, two weeks after becoming prime minister, Winston Churchill ordered the internment of the Mosleys and the BUF was proscribed. After spending most of the war in a house in the grounds of Holloway Prison, Mosely was released in early 1944, his reputation ruined. He attempted political comebacks in the 1959 and 1966 elections before retiring to France to write his memoirs. Sir Oswald Mosley died in Paris in 1980. Soon after his death, the satirical television show Not The Nine O’Clock News featured a punk rock song with the lyrics: ‘He could have been a great dictator, given half a chance – but they branded him a traitor, so he went to live in...France!’
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