The Black Shirts in London: A Study of the popularity of Fascism in Britain

The inept and unimaginative
Sir Oswald Mosley

            During interwar period, Europe became exposed to new political ideologies: Communism and Fascism.  Fascism was able to gain notice on the world stage and had established a strong presence in Germany and Italy.  It also found some popularity in Britain during the 1930s, most notably under the leadership of Sir Oswald Mosley and his party the British Union of Fascists (BUF).  Through looking at the case of Sir Oswald Mosley, this blog post will show that Fascism gained a foothold in Britain due to a variety of issues in the 1930s.

            It is first important to understand the reasoning behind Mosley’s turn to Fascism.  His motivation was partially rooted in the crash of the United States stock market in October 1929.[1]  The crash was only a part of other events that helped to bring about the Great Depression.  High grain prices during the First World War allowed for farmers to “put more land into production,”[2] but the end of the war caused both prices and demand to drop during the interwar period.[3]  The first to be affected by this were the smaller Eastern European states, who pressured their governments to introduce tariff barriers on imported agricultural goods.[4]  Britain faced a similar situation with the coal industry; a staple of its economy since the industrial revolution, though it was also facing displacement from oil by this time.[5]

            In addition, the move to return to the gold standard played into the economic issues.  The move to do so was based on the idea that currencies would be secured and be protected from “wild fluctuations in exchange rates that would result in inflation and social disorder.”[6]  The British government chose to reinstitute the gold standard in 1925 in order to respond to the balance-of-payments deficits.[7]  This was hazardous to the economy due to the fact that previously Britain had been importing too many goods and were paying for these goods with their gold supplies.[8]

James Ramsay Macdonald

            By 1931, unemployment in Britain grew from ten percent to sixteen percent while exports had declined by half.[9]  To combat these issues, the British Labour government under James Ramsay Macdonald, in an attempt to keep Liberal support, chose to face the economic crisis through classic economic solutions by implementing austerity measures such as “sharp increases in taxation and drastic spending cuts.” [10]  Mosley did not support these measures.  To Mosley, the 1929 crash had proven to him that Britain’s structural and ideological basis were now lost and the future of the British economy was now “bound up within a competing global market place.”[11]  While critics were looking to the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, who proposed “increased governmental spending and lower interest rates to stimulate the economy,”[12] or Stalin’s fine-year-plans, Mosley looked to Mussolini’s corporate state for a solution.

Benito Mussolini (left) and Sir Oswald Mosley(right)

            Mosley lacked faith in the democratic system.  Mosley had originally been a member of the Conservative Party when he first ran for the riding of Harrow in 1918.[13]  In 1920, Mosley crossed the floor of the House of Commons over conflictions with the Conservative Party to join the Labour Party in 1924, only to leave the party sometime after.[14]  According to Matthew Worley’s article “Why Fascism? Sir Oswald Mosley and the Conception of the British Union of Fascists,” the basis for Mosley’s departure from the Labour Party derived from his experience as a government minister, which “undermined his belief in the efficiency of a of a democratically elected parliamentary government.”[15]

This conclusion came from the fact that all of Mosley’s proposals to combat unemployment were simply knocked down by senior colleagues in both the cabinet and the treasury.[16]  For this reason Mosley believed that the “archaic traditions of parliamentary procedure” were “ill-suited to tackling the severe economic problems” that were effecting Britain.[17]  The British parliamentary system, according to Mosley, was prone to being tedious and easily caught up in party politics.[18]  In the case of the Macdonald government, Mosley thought the Labour party’s approach to the economic crisis as similar to “the Salvation Army taking to its heels and running away from the Day of Judgment.”[19]

For Mosley, the alternative was simple: replace Parliament with a five minister cabinet that would be given the power to carry through the necessary emergency policies.[20]  This platform was adapted by Mosley’s newly formed New Party, along with plans to streamline parliament to the point where government issued orders would only be subjected to “limited parliamentary discussion and accepted or rejected within a specific time frame.”[21]

Flag of the British Union of Fascists

In September 1931, Mosley had the New Party renamed the British Union of Fascists.[22]    It was not the only Fascist party to appear in Britain, nor was it the first.  The earliest party to form in Britain was the British Fascisti in 1923 by Rotha Lintorn-Orman.[23]  Seen as a more conservative form of fascism, the party was well known for volunteering “personal services for patriotic purposes” and for having a role in the 1926 General Strike.[24]  Another fascist party that appeared before the BUF was the Imperial Fascist League, co-founded by Arnold Leese in 1928.[25]  Unlike the other fascist parties who were eventually incorporated into the BUF, Leese refused to allow his party to be absorbed, though he did collaborate with Mosley’s party in “joint ventures.”[26]  Leese did not approve of the British Union of Fascists, dubbing Mosley to be only a “Jew fascist” running a group of “kosher fascists” and called the BUF “The British Jewnion of Fascists.”[27]

It can be noted that among the BUF’s supporters were members of the Anglican Church.  In late February 1934, a group of BUF members were openly welcomed at a special service by the minister if Saint John’s Church, Sutton-on-Plym.[28]  That same week, an entire BUF attended christening was held at Holy Trinity Church in Sloane Square, London.[29]  According to Thomas Linehan, the Anglican Church’s support for fascism was based from their dislike toward Bolshevik communism.[30]  Communist treatment of the Orthodox Church in Russia and the Roman Catholic Church in Spain had pushed Anglican clerics into emotional fits of hatred.[31]  In one case, the Reverend M. Yate Allen described Christian priests and nuns being “cruelly tortured and slain” by these communist groups as if it were “by a tribe of most cruel savages.”[32]  In the same piece of anti-communist rhetoric, Allen presented that there were only two sides to choose: the side of fascism where there was God, “health, purity, industry, faith, hope, [and] charity;”[33] or communism, the cradle of “cruelty, murder, filth, immorality,” and the Devil and Antichrist.[34] 

Officially, the BUF supported the role of Christian church.  It saw churches as having a significant part in developing social law and wanted to develop a fascist society based upon Christian principles.[35]  The BUF also promised to protect the “principle of religious belief and worship” from the threat of “secular liberalism and communism.”[36]  Though this was the case, Mosley himself could not care for the Christian faith, finding its methods “puritanical and ‘dull’” for being used to recruit the youth.[37]  In siding with the Church of England, the BUF was able to show itself to the British public, mainly those of the middle class, that they were a morally just party.

Another form of appeal to the public came in the use of Anti-Semitism, the “crassest of blunt instruments” used by the BUF.[38]  In Jewish households in Britain, Mosley became a monstrous figure who would go after Jewish children if they did not behave.[39]  Though Mosley used anti-Semitic values since he ran for the Conservative Party in 1918 under his anti-immigration platform, it, like the conception of a fascist political party, it was not an original idea.[40]  Between 1901 and 1905, the British Brothers League stood against Jewish immigration and a strong position toward eugenics.[41]  This anti-Semitic sentiment was also popular among pro-fascist Anglican clerics, who feverously spread such rhetoric in the BUF press.  One cleric, who went under the pseudonym “Vicar”, accused Jews of hiding in Britain, “cloaking their identities under ‘assumed’ English names.”[42]  The Vicar of Saint Bede Church in Bristol, George Henry Dymock, argued that Jews in Britain were plotting to flood the world in a “bath of blood” through “supposed war-talk in the press,”[43] feelings that find their way in the speeches of Enoch Powel in the 1970s.

The equally inept and
unimaginative Enoch Powell

Despite Mosley’s use of anti-Semitism to gain public support, it was limited in gaining a mass following with such a discourse.  Robert Benewick’s article, “Interpretations of British Fascism” points out that the BUF were only successful in gaining public support through such a platform in East London.[44]  The reason, according to Benewick, was because of locations such as Birmingham.[45]  These towns were not attracted as much to the BUF due to its “relative prosperity and the low density of Jewish population.”[46]

Though the BUF was unable to gain support via anti-sentiment, the party was able to gain support through the use of violence.  According to Jon Lawrence, violence was “the essence for Mosley’s ‘fascism’.”[47]  It is even believed that British fascism was formed from the “disorderly Ashton by-election in May 1931.”[48]  That same year, Mosley had his personal bodyguards known as “Biff Boys” reformatted into the Nuppa Youth Movement.[49]  Nuppa would serve as an “embryo” for the BUF’s Fascist Defence League, which acted on the party’s behalf in combating communist groups.[50]

Olympia Rally, 1934

The best example of fascist violence can be seen in the Mosley’s address at Olympia on June 7, 1934.[51]  Here Mosley was meant to publicize the BUF before an estimated audience of fifteen thousand people.[52]  The disorder caused at Olympia allowed for Labour and Liberal newspapers to make fascist violence an issue, running articles, such as the case of the News Chronicle, of “gang attacks on single victims.”[53]  The issue was even brought before Parliament, where it became the hope of the National Government to discredit both Mosley and the BUF.[54]  The Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, believed that fascism was as dangerous as communism, citing both group’s needs to “supress opposition” and their need for dictatorial methods.”[55]  The violence committed at Olympia eventually put the British Union of Fascists into decline.  The anti-fascist interpretations of what happened began to dominate and influence the public over the months that followed.[56]

As the summer of 1934 progressed, the BUF began to lose supporters and influence.[57]  The root of this decline was the fact that the British Union of Fascists only “threatened public order” and not the state.[58]  Britain’s system of “institutional legitimacy” of a “secure position [for] the ruling groups and the entrenched class basis of political loyalties” prevented the party from gaining any actual influence.[59]  In addition, Mosley caused confusion for party supporters by allying with Christian pacifists, communists, and fascists in campaigns in 1939 to keep Britain from going to war.[60]  This conflicted with the party message of “empire patriotism” for BUF members, who went on to join the British armed forces when war did eventually break out.[61]

In closing, the formation of fascism in Britain was a reaction to the events of the interwar period.  Ramsey Macdonald’s response to the economic crisis facing Britain caused many to look to other alternatives, such as Keynesian economics.  For Sir Oswald Mosley, the answer to Britain’s troubles was fascism.  The formation of the British Union of Fascists came as a result of Mosley trying to form a better alternative to the parties in power after feeling that the parliamentary system was too long-winded to address the economic issues.  The party gained support through its hatred of communism and use of anti-Semitism by providing the British public with something to blame for the issues facing the empire.  Though the party was gaining much support from influential institution, like the Church of England, the BUF eventually fell into decline by the mid-thirties because of its growing use of violence.  The established British system and its contradiction in philosophy, made party rhetoric difficult to follow for members.  For this reason the British Union of Fascists makes fascism to be nothing more than a passing movement in British history.

Bibliography

Benewick, Robert. “Interpretations of British Fascism.” Political Studies 24, no. 3 (September 1976): 320-324. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 15, 2014).

Di Scala, Spencer M. Europe’s Long History: Society Politics, and Culture, 1900-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Lawrence, Jon. “Fascist violence and the politics of public order in inter-war Britain: the Olympia debate revisited.” Historical Research 76, no. 192 (May 2003): 238-267. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 15, 2014).

------. “‘Why Olympia mattered’.” Historical Research 78, no. 200 (May 2005): 263-272. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 16, 2014).

Linehan, Thomas. “‘On the Side of Christ’: Fascist Clerics in 1930s Britain.” Totalitarian Movements & Political Religions 8, no. 2 (June 2007): 287-301. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 15, 2014).

Martin, Paul. “Contexualising Mosley.” History Today 48, no. 5 (May 1998): 62-63. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 16, 2014).

Worley, Matthew. “Why Fascism? Sir Oswald Mosley and the Conception of the British Union of Fascists.” History 96, no. 321 (January 2011): 68-83. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed February 15, 2014).

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[1] Spencer M. Di Scala, Europe’s Long History: Society Politics, and Culture, 1900-1945, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 239.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Di Scala, 241.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid., 243.

[10] Ibid., 242.

[11] Matthew Worley, “Why Fascism? Sir Oswald Mosley and the Conception of the British Union of Fascists,” History 96, no. 321 (January 2011): 72, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost.

[12] Di Scala, 242.

[13] Paul Martin, “Contexualising Mosley.” History Today 48, no. 5 (May 1998): 62. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost.

[14] Worley, 72.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Ibid., 72-73.

[19] Ibid. 73.

[20] Ibid.

[21] Worley, 73.

[22] Ibid. 81-82.

[23] Martin, 62.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid., 63.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Thomas Linehan, “‘On the Side of Christ’: Fascist Clerics in 1930s Britain,” Totalitarian Movements & Political Religions 8, no. 2 (June 2007): 287, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost.

[29] Linehan, 287.

[30] Linehan, 289.

[31] Ibid.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Ibid.

[35] Ibid., 297.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Martin, 62.

[39] Ibid.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Ibid.

[42] Linehan, 295.

[43] Ibid., 296.

[44] Robert Benewick, “Interpretations of British Fascism,” Political Studies 24, no. 3 (September 1976): 322, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost.

[45] Benewick, 321.

[46] Ibid.

[47] Jon Lawrence, “Fascist violence and the politics of public order in inter-war Britain: the Olympia debate revisited,” Historical Research 76, no. 192 (May 2003): 245, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost.

[48] Ibid., 244.

[49] Ibid., 245.

[50] Ibid.

[51] Ibid., 238.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Ibid., 246.

[54] Jon Lawrence, “‘Why Olympia mattered’,” Historical Research 78, no. 200 (May 2005): 268, Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost.

[55] Jon Lawrence, “‘Why Olympia mattered’,” 268.

[56] Ibid.

[57] Ibid.

[58] Benewick, 322.

[59] Ibid.

[60] Martin, 63.

[61] Ibid.

Into the Faerie Lands: Chapter 13

Into the Faerie Lands

By J. R Bennett

<Chapter XII~*~Christmas in the Farielands Part I>

Chapter XIII

Making Things Done

~*~

            “You lot are amazing,” Bloom said confidently, in the hospital room. “We wouldn’t have won if it wasn’t for you lot.”

            It had been several days since the Pedigree had brought everyone back to the island. They were delivered to Bathill where Bloom arranged for everyone to be taken to a nearby hospital to be looked over. Ed was rushed off to surgery for the gash on his face while Zach was easily bandaged. Zach seemed to have no problems with being fussed over by the nurses, especially when he found himself attracted to one of the younger lady nurses who needed to draw blood for a sample. Now, the party sat in a private room waiting to be updated on Ed’s condition. Bug-a-Boo had vanished again and was nowhere to be seen, leaving Sir Guthrie Bloom to entertain them.

            “When you are all better, I think you should stay with my wife and me at our apartments in the city,” Bloom insisted. "Her Majesty would like to have an audience with you as thanks for your efforts.”

            Zach let out a snort, he had no time for monarchs and the like.

            “Both Her Majesty and the Lord Chancellor agree that you have all earned an Order of the Deltic Empire,” Bloom went on, “for services in the protection of the Empire.”

            There came a knock at the door and a nurse entered the room.

            “Mr. Worsley is ready to accept visitors,” the nurse said, curtly.

            Bloom stepped forward.

            “He asked specifically for you lot,” the nurse added, gesturing toward Zach, Alice and Travis.

            The nurse led the trio down the whitewashed hall to a corridor, and then up a flight of stairs to another corridor and another whitewashed hall. The nurse stopped at a door and entered alone; after a few seconds her head appeared from a crack. “He is ready for you now,” was the announcement.

            Everyone found Ed in a hospital bed looking haggard. Half his face was covered in a white bandage with a pad of cotton on his left eye.

            “Well,” announced Zach, “we’ll have to call you Cotton-Eye Joe­­­­­­­­ from now on.”

            Ed didn’t seem to crack a smile.

            “This is all my fault,” Ed croaked, looking evermore in pain from his wounds.

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Zach replied. “No one died…Well, besides Manoo, those who fought outside—”

            Zach was cut off by a powerful elbow to the stomach by Alice.

            “Ed,” Travis said, “you’ve done nothing wrong. You warned everyone when something was wrong and we all saved the day. If anything you made us heroes…or a couple of Mary Sues. I don’t think I could stand being called Mary…”

            Ed let out a weak smile. “Thanks,” Ed replied, and then lifted his left hand to gesture toward his bandaged eye. “They had to remove it.”

            There was a brief silence, no one wanted to say any more for that moment, they were just glad they were alive after that ordeal.

            Just then a plume of smoke from a chimney outside found its way into the room via an open window. From the smoke appeared Bug-a-Boo, looking glad to see everyone and carrying a large silk bag. “Good day,” Bug-a-Boo cried, with a fluent bow. “I’m happy to see you all well.”

            Zach sent a glare.

            “I apologize for disappearing right after arriving in Bathill, but I had to make a visit to some interested parties about this matter,” the wizard explained.

            “Kina knows we’re here,” Alice protested, dryly.

            “Not Kina. A certain man with a jolly demeanour who has been assisting me with a request I made shortly after you three were brought here.”

            Zach rolled his eyes. “You expect me to buy that Santa Claus has some interest in all this.”

            “I expect you to buy anything,” Bug-a-Boo fired back at Zach. “You’ve been though probably the most cliché of hero’s journey’s and have seen magic performed before your eyes. Goodness knows how many miracles Jesus did before the Israelites and look at how many still didn’t believe him. Whether to believe or not is none of my concern. You are a grown man who is perfectly capable of coming to his own conclusions.”

            Ed laughed, but stopped when he felt the side of his face flare up in pain.

            “Ah! Ed, my boy!” the wizard announced. “I come with a gift from the Master Smith of the North. When he heard about your eye he made you this.”

            Bug-a-Boo produced from the bag a black box and lifted the lid to reveal an ivory eyeball with a sapphire iris and an ebony pupil.

            “Now,” Bug-a-Boo went on, “I’ve placed a charm on it so you’ll be able to use it like a normal eye. We tried to find a stone that would match your eye colour, but sapphire was the closest. It shouldn’t be too noticeable once it’s inserted.”

            “Thank you,” Ed replied.

            “Now, as for you three,” Bug-a-Boo continued, “I don’t normally do this, but once Ed wanted you all to visit I set to work fashioning these for you.”

            The old wizard handed Zach, Travis and Alice each a black box. Inside each of them was a small press bell, just like the one Ed used the first night he appeared.

            “These bells,” Bug-a-Boo explained, “will allow you to travel between worlds, or call on me when needed.”

            “I thought giving a person the power to cross worlds was a dangerous thing,” Travis pointed out.

            “I felt it was a worthy duty for Ed to provide his closest friends the right,” The old wizard explained. “Plus, you all proved yourselves very worth of the right.”

            “You’re a regular Deus ex Machina, Bugs,” Zach put in.

            “I wouldn’t use that,” Bug-a-Boo replied, trying not to blush. “Now, whenever you to are ready to go, all you need to do is press the button on the bells and you will be bought back home. I recommend waiting a few minutes after you leave your world for this one, that way no one will be the wiser to the matter.”

            “And what about my nicks and scrapes?” Zach queried. “People are going to wonder about stuff like that.”

            “Ah! My little Zacchaeus, if you are as smart as Ed claims you should be able to come up with something. I don’t expect any of you keep secrets, though I do hope you will take a moment of sober thought before doing so.”

            With those last words, Bug-a-Boo gave a curt bow, walked to the window, and jumped into the smoke still billowing from the neighbouring building.

            “I guess this is goodbye,” Ed said at last, with a forlorn look.

            “Not really,” Travis said, assuring him. “We will always come back.”

            “It’s fine,” Ed went on. “I’ve been hung up on leaving you guys, but now I can see that you three are always going to be there at the end of line when needed.”

            It was a very teary goodbye. Ed hugged every single person despite the pain he was in, and thanked Zach, Alice and Travis for coming with him into the Fairy Lands. Once everyone had said their goodbyes, the trio pressed their bells and disappeared from the hospital room, leaving Ed alone. Ed wasn’t sad though. Far from it.