Philip Coupland

Blackshirts as seen by Left Review

The black shirt of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) is the foremost icon of fascism in the 1930s, a palimpsest densely written and over-written with contending meanings constructing fascism as a movement, as an ideology, and the fascist as an individual. However, despite the importance of what Walter Benjamin described as the ‘aestheticisation of politics’[1] to fascism as a modern movement, comment on this topic has tended towards bare description.[2] Hence, in what follows, this chapter is concerned primarily with the meanings and functions of uniform in the discourse of the BUF and among its opponents.

Indicating the visibility of BUF uniform, one critic commented on how ‘the germs of political violence in contemporary England do not take much detecting. Their blackshirts are plain enough even when there is not a “monster demonstration” to attract them.’[3] At the simplest level the shirt, as a ‘vestimentary’ sign, signified a political allegiance.[4] However, in addition to simply making the BUF visible, the shirt was seized on by fascist and anti-fascist discourses to denote, and rhetorically connote, meaning. In BUF discourse and the dramaturgy of its marches and meetings, uniformed bodies articulated fascist ideology, whilst donning the shirt recast the wearer in the mould of the new fascist man (sic). At the same time, antifascists appropriated the simple sign of the shirt as a point of reference in a negative representation of blackshirts and the BUF.

The Birth of the Shirt

Geoffrey Gorer described it as ‘a practical-looking garment … somewhat like a fencing jacket.’[5] Although the dress of fascists varied and evolved, the original black ‘shirt’ cut in the form of Mosley’s fencing jacket was used from the first BUF meeting until the Public Order Act banned uniforms at the end of 1936.[6] Buttoning at the neck and shoulder, it was robust in service as well as permitting the easy identification of friend and foe. Unlike the conventionally cut ‘undress’ shirt worn with a black tie by both uniformed activists and—beneath a lounge suit or sports jacket—inactive members, and the ‘Action Press’ uniform of breeches, military tunic and peaked cap introduced in 1936, the original uniform shirt remained the designated wear for stewarding meetings.[7]

The need for a ‘trained and disciplined force’ at meetings lay behind the initial move towards adopting a uniform by the proto-fascist New Party.[8] However, the decision to create a uniformed fascist movement entailed more than this defensive function and was not taken lightly; as W.E.D. Allen indicates, Mosley took this step against the ‘advice of some of his closest adherents, who were obsessed with the idea that the Englishman does not like uniform.’[9] Another reason was to ‘put a big new case over in a hurry’ which demanded ‘a new means of propaganda and of attracting public attention.’[10]

Political uniform was novel; ‘something entirely new to this country.’[11] For a sympathetic observer blackshirts ‘[i]n their simple, close-fitting modern uniform, … were themselves a visible expression of the businesslike but straightforward spirit which marks this up-to-date movement.’[12] More ambiguously Winifred Holtby included ‘Black Shirts’ with ’sport’, ‘artificial light’, ‘quick transport’, ‘Red flags’, ‘the Great Wheel at Blackpool and Broadcasting House’ as symbols of modern change.[13] Looking backwards from 1933, Beverley Nichols suggested the shock of this intervention: ‘Fascism, in those days, was mercifully confined to Italy. The youth of England had not yet begun to prance about the street in blackshirts, like perverted Morris dancers, pushing the palms of their hands in the faces of the startled bourgeoisie … No – the Black Shirt… was still a distant menace. It flashed across the screens when Mussolini was in evidence.’[14] An antenna ever sensitive to unwelcome novelty quivered in the form of a Punch cartoon (see above) imagining the consequences should this practice spread.[15]

Dressing for ‘Action’

Robert Bernays believed ‘[e]very young man swaggering round the purlieus of Westminster or Chelsea was a walking recruiting poster for Fascism.’[16] However, the black shirt was also a way to set the BUF apart from democratic politics, as an agency of radical intervention and revolutionary transformation. Mosley claimed the shirt as the ‘outward symbol’ of a ‘moral force … which aims at nothing less than the creation of a new civilisation.’[17] For A.K. Chesterton the shirt reflected an unequivocal mission: ‘Fascists … are no less enlisted on behalf of their country's service than soldiers fighting for its security in times of war, and are, therefore, proud to wear no less un­equivocal a uniform.’[18]

This desire to present fascism as a radical alternative is indicated by the choice of black. Grey shirts had been suggested for the New Party in 1931 and were issued—albeit with significant ‘black trimmings’—the following summer,[19] and a ‘Greyshirt Anthem’ was penned for the emerging fascist movement.[20] In rejecting grey for uncompromising black, Mosley made a deliberate choice as to how the new movement was to present itself. As John Harvey shows, black has almost always been implicated in ‘power dressing’, as the dress of the powerful, evocative of strong emotions and weighty qualities. Black was the colour of the cleric, the prince, the assassin, and the devil. Black connoted asceticism, restraint, gravity, seriousness, industry but was also associated with plague and decay, death and mourning, sin and evil.[21] Lewis Broad and Leonard Russell asked whether Mosley’s black indicated ‘[m]ourning for his lost consistency, or… despair?’[22] More probably the choice of black reflected a belief that national politics were on the brink of revolutionary change; indeed Mosley’s gamble in renouncing democratic politics was premised on the assumption that the ‘crisis will deepen sufficiently to break the present party system’ or ‘new forces will have no opportunity whatsoever.’[23] Underlining both the gamble entailed in this choice and its radical quality, he explained: ‘In symbolism as in our creed we are more full-blooded people and literally as well as metaphorically we have put our shirt on Fascism.’[24]

Certainly to one outsider the message of the form of fascist politics overrode the BUF’s claimed adherence to constitutional practice. Ivor Brown wrote of how ‘these devotees of democracy insist on wearing the uniform … of the Italian Fascists who have, as they boast, “trampled on the stinking corpse of liberty”.’[25] In 1932-1934 in particular, the BUF’s democratic protestations stood alongside statements that it was ready to fight in the streets if necessary.[26] Reporting the 1933 Maxton-Mosley debate during which the latter promised ‘Fascist machine-guns’ to meet the Red threat, The New Clarion wrote of Mosley as ‘dressed for the slaughter… in his black shirt and tie.’[27] In this context, as was remarked at the time, ‘a uniform in politics symbolises force either to be used now or in the future.’[28] Fascist ‘pacifist’ proclamations might be better understood as a precaution against prosecution for sedition whilst the uniform articulated the BUF’s true nature; ‘[t]he outward sign … proved in keeping with the inward “grace”’, as G.K.’s Weekly wrote.[29]

Black Shirt and Tail Coat

The black shirt expressed Mosley’s hope for a time when grey ambiguities would be swept aside in the polarisation of left and right; red against black.  The shirt also articulated fascism’s claim to be a ‘revolutionary’ ‘modern movement’ by its rejection of the ruling sartorial code: the silk hat and morning coat that Mosley had worn as a junior minister and the archaic court dress of the minister of state. It was better to risk ‘defeat, disaster, better by far the end of that trivial thing called a political career than stifling in the uniform of blue and gold, strutting and posturing on the stage of little England.’[30] Just as black expressed a steely dedication foreign to the ‘old-gang’ parties—it could not ‘fade to pale pink or a light primrose hue’ or ‘become pale black’[31]—the novelty of the shirt distinguished fascism from the politics of the democratic party man garbed in bourgeois respectability: ‘the detestable top-hat and frock coat that symbolises a Victorian mugwumpery offensive to any decent thinking Englishmen.’[32]

In rebutting criticism from Duff Cooper, Gordon-Canning declared that ‘“fancy dress”… would probably be more applicable to the court dress of a Cabinet minister than to a Fascist shirt.’[33] In fascist rhetoric references to the ruling sartorial code were also used to articulate a critique of the ‘old gang’ parties. In BUF discourse the silk hat and frock, or morning coat were the ‘uniform of the Democratic party’[34] to which all of the ‘old gang’—Labour, Liberal or Conservative—belonged.

Commenting on proposals for state planning as ‘fake Fascism’ Fascist Week linked such policies to their reactionary origins, adding that Lord Lloyd, ‘the best-dressed man in the Carlton Club[,] addressed a big rally of Starched Shirts … the other night.’[35] Looking to the left, the BUF pointed out that whereas the socialist activist before the Great War ‘wore a red tie’ Labour’s descent to respectable impotence had seen them adopt the ‘black coats and striped trousers’ of the ‘old gang.’[36] Mentioning that John McGovern, ‘Labour supporter of the Means Test’, ‘once wore a silk hat’ signified hypocrisy and betrayal.[37] Turning to Labour’s radical wing, when Stafford Cripps advocated ‘dictatorial’ powers for a future socialist government, Blackshirt applied the old rule of ‘judging a man by his shoes’, describing Cripps as a bourgeois intellectual ‘who had risen in spats to heights to which the ordinary hobnailed Trade Unionists has never ventured to aspire.’ Cripps with his comic spats—P.G. Wodehouse’s Young Men in Spats was published in 1936—thereby joined the lumpen ‘old men of the TUC’ in Labour’s force for inertia. Next to Cripps, with his ‘town-bred physique’ and archaic ‘great big powdered wig’ of the barrister, was juxtaposed the image of ‘Mosley—Fascist Leader’ as the quintessence of the new fascist man.[38] It was the ‘Black shirt which annoys the Black Coats and Fat Bellies’ which was ‘more symbolic than a million red ties’ because there was ‘an intense patriotism, purpose, discipline, determination, fearlessness behind it.’[39] 

Mosley à la Mode

E.D. Randall juxtaposed ‘Youth, clamouring at the Gateway of Life. Youth in black shirted legions’ with ‘the old men of yesterday, who are still immersed in the squalor of Victorianism.’[40] The black shirt articulated the modernity of fascism. In a cartoon captioned ‘Father Christmas is Up-To-Date!’ Father Christmas dons ‘something modern’ - a black shirt, to deliver The Fascist Week to Ramsay MacDonald.[41] Appropriating one of the hoariest symbols of patriotism for fascism, another image (see below) portrayed John Bull admiring his black shirt, with the book of ‘New Ideas’ at his side, old thinking discarded along with his top hat and frock coat as ‘relics of an old system.’[42]

In this way the shirt played its part in the reified engagement with modernity integral to fascist ideological syncretism. Whilst fascists condemned materialism, they simultaneously drew on machine aesthetics, gloried in power and speed. Supporting Susan Sontag’s observation that ‘fascist style at its best is Art Deco’[43] the blackshirt who appeared in the BUF press and elsewhere was the man-machine, a close cousin of Jacob Epstein’s vorticist Rock Drill (1913-14). This new man was drawn with the square edges of machine-manufacture, the dense, unrelieved black of the shirt thrusting towards the viewer in an expression of fascist will-to-power. The force of dark space was also apparent in practice, one report of the BUF’s Albert Hall rally indicating the effectiveness of ‘the black bulwarks’ of fascists en masse.[44]

Mickey Mouse versus the Black Plague

Debating with James Maxton, Mosley used the imagery of colour to articulate a critique of the party he had left, speaking of the ‘pink terms of the ILP.’[45] In fascist discourse ‘the colour Black’ denoted ‘the iron determination of Fascism in the conquest of red anarchy’ in a situation when unequivocal hues would saturate the scene and the ‘modest primrose’ of the Tories and the ‘red ties … faded pink’ of Labour were blotted-out or washed-away.[46] In oppositional discourse the colour and form of fascist uniform were also important points of reference, albeit used in widely different ways indicative of the divergence of antifascist tactics. Hannan Swaffer wrote that ‘if, whenever they saw a Fascist dressed like Walt Disney’s world-famous character… readers called out “Mickey Mouse” that would be an end of it.’[47] From the confrontational tradition of antifascism The Daily Worker ridiculed the idea of ‘chirping “Mickey Mouse”’; black shirts made the BUF the ‘Hitlerite Black Guard, the SS to the very life,’ a foe to be ‘fought and smashed’.[48]

Democratic socialists, liberals and conservatives preferred to try to drown fascism in a wave of ridicule, in the ‘English way.’[49] Explaining this strategy, J.B. Priestley wrote of how violence ‘turns comic storm troops into real storm troops. It transforms the wearing of uniforms from a mere week-end hobby into what seems a stern and noble affair.’ He advised: ‘If you see a black shirt, smile and pass on.’[50] In parliament it was ‘fancy dress’[51] and Vyvyan Adams frivolously suggested ‘taxing the wearing of this exotic haberdashery’ to determine ‘the precise number of uncertified lunatics in the country.’[52] P.G. Wodehouse’s ‘Roderick Spode’, led the ‘Black Shorts’, clad in ‘footer bags’ as there were no shirts left.[53] The spirit of the schoolyard responded with the cat-call: ‘dirty shirt’.[54]

Even an otherwise positive article wondered at Mosley’s ‘black theatrical garb.’[55] For the unsympathetic the black shirt was a costume in a superficial charade. Time and Tide described Mosley as ‘a stage figure, a sort of cardboard hero who calls in the limelight, the costumier.’[56] Whereas fascist discourse made the shirt a symbol of its ideology, antifascism reduced fascism to a shirt clothing a vacuum. Fascism with its ‘romantic if theatrical leader’, the ‘Blackshirt Harlequin’, was all display ‘without the policy to justify it.’[57] Alan Herbert, MP made the same point, noting that a party once ‘took its name from its ideas and ideals. Now we have leaders who name themselves after their lingerie—black shirts or blue braces, pink pants or dirty drawers.’[58] In a more considered piece G.K.’s Weekly asked whether the absence of the ‘soil’ which had made fascism flourish abroad made the shirt the BUF’s ‘sole symbol and … big idea.’[59]

Reflecting on events at Olympia, E.M. Forster was critical of the dangerous conceit of the ‘English sense of humour’ which represented Mosley as ‘a figure of fun. He is the Wicked Baronet of melodrama … He even wears black, and as a final absurdity, he is opposed by a second Wicked Baronet in red.’[60] For those who did not take fascism so lightly the shirt was a rhetorical gift. The BUF became a pathogen, a ‘black plague’ threatening to ‘infect the blood-stream of our national life.’[61] The shirt was ‘the symbol of death’ presaging ‘the end of all freedom and the reign of poverty and tyranny.’[62] The ‘Blackshirt’ promised ‘blackguardism.’[63] In the ILP’s New Leader the shirt clothed the working class hate figure, the blackleg: ‘What are those funny little men/In Shirts as black as ink? …“Why do they put in [sic] fancy dress/ In dress that no one likes?”/“Oh, that’s because of dirty work, they’re kept for breaking strikes.”’[64]

However, Arthur Wragg (see above)  linked both black and red to death, picturing a skeleton in the form of a gents’ outfitters assistant offering a choice between two shirts: on the left, ‘cheerful tone (rather faded)’ and on the right, ‘very dressy (rather soiled).’[65] Amongst the defenders of liberalism, condemnation of the black shirt was subsumed within a wider critique of anti-democratic movements. The Conservative Truth mentioned ‘the coloured shirt menace’,[66] and condemning both ‘Blackshirts and the Redshirts’, Alan Herbert declared ‘[a] plague on both your blouses!’[67] In actuality, whilst Communists, ILPers, and other anti-fascist groups were seen in party shirts, their use was relatively insignificant.[68] Despite this, not only was the notion of a visual indicator of a shared anti-democratic tendency common to ‘left’ and ‘right’ rhetorically convenient, but the suggestion that the country was threatened by a wholesale militarisation of politics was also an important justification for the Public Order Act.[69] 

‘Union Jack Shirts’

Whereas Nancy Mitford satirised the ultra-nationalism of the BUF with her ‘Union Jackshirts’[70] the black shirt was an obvious resource for those wishing to refute fascist patriotism. For Broad and Russell success for Mosley would see him ‘running up the Black Shirt in place of the Union Jack.’[71] References to BUF uniform provided effective means of denying fascism’s claim to the foundational myths of British identity, of a nation bound and protected by an ancient constitution, of a peaceful and polite people. 

In a culture in which national identity reflexively took the foreign Other as its point of reference, the BUF was easily criticised for what J.R. Clynes called its ‘alien practices.’[72] Speaking of what ‘Shirts… signify and what they are intended to denote’, Clynes believed that uniform ‘brings into our political activities alien elements making for conflict and disorder.’ He continued: ‘[t]hey have acquired foreign symbols, foreign salutes, foreign names and foreign dress.’[73] For Herbert Morrison too the black shirt and fascist dramaturgy were ‘contrary to all that is best in the British political traditions.’[74] Everyman suggested that form mirrored substance: ‘Mosley... is more like a Continental politician than an English one; even his appearance suggests the Europe of the sixteenth century.’[75] Promoting a bill to prohibit uniforms, Oliver Locker-Lampson cited the shirt as indicating a ‘wish to drop the old English weapon of persuasion for something else.’ Underlining this representation of uniform as inimical to Englishness, he associated it with ‘the new spirit of foreign force.’[76]

One of the components of this model of Englishness was an abhorrence of a costly standing army, licentious soldiery and the abridgement of the rights of the freeborn Englishman through conscription. Hence Percy Harris, MP for Bethnal Green South-West, suggested that ‘[t]here is something in our free traditions … that dislikes military organisation. The very fact that the members of this body wear uniform and march in military formation is provocative in itself to the public at large.’[77] In the same vein, the day before the ‘Battle of Cable Street’ the Daily Worker depicted the BUF as an ‘army’ invading the East End and Mosley as ‘the general’ of that ‘militaristic’ force.[78] The cartoonist ‘Vicky’ (see below) preferred to criticise this ‘breach of the peace’ whilst mocking the Leader’s breeches.[79] The Action Press uniform introduced that year undoubtedly amplified the identification of the BUF as a ‘foreign’ and ‘military’ force. Aside from the chromium highlights of belt-buckle, buttons and badges, the blackness of the uniform was relieved only by a scarlet armband and, although cut in the style of the Brigade of Guards, for many observers it shouted ‘Nazi.’ Malcolm Muggeridge wrote of Mosley’s uniform having acquired ‘a strong Storm-Trooper admixture.’[80] Calling fascism ‘the most un-British weed that has ever pushed itself above British soil,’ Vyvyan Adams saw it as appealing to ‘adolescents by means of uniforms borrowed half from the German Nazis and half from the Italian Fascists.’[81]

For a movement which claimed to put ‘Britain First’ such constructions on the shirt were a significant threat. In response, one fascist commented ‘Britain … must be FIRST in so far as its own Nationality is concerned, and so we don’t need BLACK shirts.’ As ‘our own distinctive colour for British Fascism’, he suggested ‘a WHITESHIRT with the Union Jack boldly displayed on the left breast.’[82] This suggestion may have intended to refer to the white surcote of the crusader or to draw on the patriotic and masculine connotations of the sports field – James Arbuthnot chose ‘cricket shirts with a Union Jack on the breast pocket’ for the ‘Cricketshirts’ of his antifascist satire.[83] In the light of what he saw as the ‘similarity between the spirit of the Cromwellian revival … and the Fascist Movement’ another blackshirt suggested wearing olive-green shirts.[84] Ironically, according to Unity Mitford, Adolf Hitler also questioned importing the black shirt, preferring a reference to the Ironsides.[85]

However, the black shirt remained and fascism claimed patriotic credentials for it regardless. For Robert Gordon Canning it was ‘certainly patriotic’, ‘a symbol which stands for the regeneration of England for the benefit of every man, woman and child.’[86] Mosley sought to reinvent the shirt as a ‘universal symbol’ and then inscribe patriotism onto this neutral space: ‘we wear on every Blackshirt the Union Jack, and our Fascism is British through and through.’[87] Indicating the salience of the flag in this bid to nationalise fascism, behind the speaker at all ‘Mosley meetings’ hung what was reputed to be the largest union flag in the country. The size of this flag claimed a similarly emphatic patriotism; as a sign it linked the BUF, whose symbols flanked it, to patriotism; its spatial relationship to the blackshirt in front of it connoted that he spoke for it, and thus for the nation for which it was the metonymic symbol. Fascist rhetoric also pointed to the medal ribbons sometimes sewn onto the shirt. In a short story about Armistice day, the unconverted ‘Jack’ notices with irritation ‘another of those Blackshirts’ and asks himself: ‘What right had that fellow, this Blackshirt to appear in that mockery of a uniform to-day of all days?’ However, as ‘he looked at the black-shirted figure … his eye was caught by the row of medal ribbons on his shirt.’[88] The contradiction between the patriotism connoted by war medals and Jack’s antifascist reading of the black shirt forces him to question his assumptions. 

The pursuit of authentic native providence for the fasces symbol which appeared on BUF banners, flags, insignia, and propaganda also prompted a flood of writing pointing to examples of the Lictor’s rods on neo-classical public buildings and elsewhere.[89] Seeking a grand historical and ancestral pedigree suitable for an ultra-nationalist movement Mosley described the fasces as:

a symbol used in Britain for the last 2,000 years and are to be found on most of our great monuments. The symbol was brought to Britain by our Roman ancestors who were here for four centuries and their stock remained for ever. The Fasces were the symbol of the Roman Empire. What more fitting that they should be used by the Empire which succeeded and surpassed the Roman Empire?[90]

The BUF also intervened in the symbolic language of the movement to present the fasces against the background of the national flag in order to produce insignia of ‘an unmistakably British Appearance’ and thereby ‘emphasise’ the ‘patriotism of the movement.’[91] However, in the end the fasces was more or less displaced by the ‘Circle and Flash’ symbol which first appeared daubed on walls all over Britain during the BUF ‘Mind Britain’s Business’ campaign in 1935 and then became a plated metal badge.[92] The chromium finish on the pin was not only practical but also evoked modernity, and the circle and flash also appeared on armbands, tie pins, rings, brooches, cufflinks and belt buckles in patriotic red, white and blue.[93] Stressing its qualities and explaining its meaning Mosley wrote: ‘This is our modern symbol which belongs exclusively to British Fascism. It portrays the flash of action in the circle of unity. National action can only come for national unity, which in turn can only come from Fascism that ends the strife of Parties.’[94] Opponents preferred to impute a showy transience to Mosleyite fascism by calling it the ‘flash-in-the-pan’.

The Black Shirt Brotherhood

Fascists promised that their corporate state would replace the divisive frictions of class with a harmonious organic unity and held up the BUF as a ‘microcosm of the national manhood reborn.’[95] Indicating the role of the shirt in this process, Mosley wrote that ‘the Blackshirt has achieved within our ranks that classless unity which we will ultimately secure within the nation as whole.’[96] The shirt was a ‘visible symbol’ promising fascists an ‘unfettered chance according to their abilities; [that] class prejudice, which has kept sections of the community apart in watertight compartments for so long, will be obliterated.’[97] It eliminated ‘distinctions of dress as between the well-­to-do and the poor.’[98] In relation to the prevailing sartorial class code, uniform cancelled ‘the distinctions that wealth normally procures. Men who in private life wear Yorkshire worsted can start on a level footing within the organisation as those who can afford to buy suiting of Scottish tweed.’[99] The BUF was ‘one great brotherhood’ which had ‘broken down class barriers by wearing a common uniform.’[100] In this way, the uniform(ity) of individual bodies repaired the fractured social body, albeit only at a symbolic level.

Whilst the Daily Mail wrote of how Mosley ‘dressed exactly like the humblest of his followers,’[101] as with other sartorial sub-cultures where subtleties of cut, label and fabric compose a rich symbolic language, fascist uniform and insignia varied widely according to the status and function of the wearer. Insignia distinguished official speakers and members of the Fascist Union of British Workers (FUBW), and coloured armbands indicated particular functions at Black House.[102] Established on a military model, the BUF had a complex hierarchy of ranks. Except for the Chief of Staff and the commanding officer of the Defence Forces who wore crossed fasces, rank was indicated by horizontal bars for ‘other ranks’, and bars with a lightening flash for officers. Initially the colour of the insignia indicated the wearer’s role in the organisation.[103] Mosley asserted his supremacy as unquestionable ‘Leader’, transcending hierarchy, with an unadorned shirt.

Whilst the black tie and epaulettes of the BUF’s youth organisation and the FUBW linked them chromatically to the movement, their grey and brown ‘undress’ style shirts differentiated them from blackshirts.[104] To reserve the ‘privilege’ of the black shirt to full members, ‘probationers’ also originally wore grey and later new members were only permitted initially to wear the undress shirt.[105] Even for full adult members, uniform increasingly became a special privilege. In 1935 it was announced that the BUF would be divided into a ‘Political Organisation’ and a ‘Blackshirt Organisation’, with uniform ‘a privilege reserved for those who perform conspicuous service’ in the latter.[106] To wear the black shirt, a minimum of two evening’s service a week was required but there was also a further elite who, by giving five nights, could wear the uniform previously restricted to 1 Division fascists at Black House. The ‘political’ wing of the movement would wear plain clothes although it was allowed that they might wear the undress shirt.[107] Similarly, the privilege of wearing the Action Press uniform was earned by selling a set number of the fascist paper.[108] Indicating the degree to which uniform became a repository of status, deprivation of the right to wear the black shirt was among the punishments meted out to members.[109] 

In BUF discourse, the hierarchy of rank and status expressed in these differences was one which reflected only service to the cause.[110] Nellie Driver wrote of how ‘rank and file members came from all ranks of life, from dockers to doctors; miners to office workers; and factory workers to big business men. When on active duty they all wore the same uniform, so that there were no class distinctions, and all had the chance of gaining rank.’[111] In contrast, Labour Alderman Joseph Toole noted how Mosley was ‘in a black shirt—but in a silk black shirt’, suggesting the wearer’s upper class background and perhaps imputing an effete quality to those origins.[112] In actuality fascist shirts were not equal either. ‘1^st’ and ‘2^nd’ quality shirts were available at 7/6d and 5/6d, as were velvet shirts and a costly ‘buttonless type’ garment ‘only made to measure’ at 30/-.[113] Least it be imagined that these differences were merely nominal, former BUF photographer Kay Fredericks, writing of the class-consciousness belying the ‘brotherhood of fascism’, claimed that ‘[s]ome of the members who could afford it had their shirts tailored of a better material than those obtainable in the Quarter Masters stores. These shirts immediately became known as boss-class shirts. Mosley was one of the first to wear one of these boss-class shirts.’[114]

Black Blouses

In fascist discourse at least the black shirt symbolised a classless brotherhood of British ‘youth’, covered healthy and muscular male bodies, articulated the courage and fortitude of the soldier, the loyalty of the patriot and the self-sacrifice of the true disciple. Inasmuch that the blackshirt was such an emphatically male figure, this asks a question of the meaning of female bodies in fascist uniform. In her antifascist dystopia Storm Jameson imagines the misogynistic reaction of Hillier, the fascist Prime Minister, to the ‘National Service Women’. He ‘was struck by the extraordinary appearance of a line of women in uniform, their female hips swelling out behind and their breasts pouting in front,’ achieving ‘the comical effect of a parade of penguins in clothes.’[115]

In reality, too, a cult of youth and masculinity naturally denigrated its Other: the fascist revolution would see Britain ‘served by young men in black shirts instead of being ruled by old women in trousers.’[116] However, as has been discussed elsewhere, whilst men remained firmly on top in the BUF, attitudes to the feminine and women’s role were not without ambiguity.[117] On one hand, an alternative hierarchy of ranks marked with distinctive insignia indicated the separateness of the Women’s Section.[118] Women’s fascist uniform also faithfully obeyed, rather than challenged, the ruling codes of respectability. Ironically, the form of the men’s uniform shirt encouraged one parliamentary wag to enquire whether it might not ‘be more decent to limit the wearing of blouses to the female sex.’[119] Women wore a decent calf-length grey skirt and, unlike the men, who except from an optional and seldom seen forage cap and the peaked cap of the Action Press uniform ignored polite convention and went bareheaded, female fascists wore a black beret.[120] The movement’s symbol was also available ‘for the ladies’ as jewellery in the form of scarf pins in gold or platinum studded with rose diamonds and brooches with paste diamonds or marcasites.[121] On the other hand, unlike BUF cadets and others denied the black shirt, women could wear both the undress garment and the uniform shirt.[122] Perhaps as a concession to feminine ‘delicacy’, a pullover in wool or cashmere could be substituted during the winter.[123]

Whilst the austerity of women’s uniform contrasted with mainstream female fashion, one observer noted that BUF women did not embrace Nazism’s rejection of cosmetics.[124] Concerning women’s attitude to the shirt, a male fascist suggested that it was ‘a sacrifice, when she reluctantly lays aside her latest creation in favour of the Black shirt.’[125] However, for Nellie Driver emblems and uniforms were part of the ‘romance’ of the movement which had a ‘strong appeal’.[126] Another indication of female attitudes came at the time of the movement’s reorganisation which sought to include all women in the ‘plain clothes’ political wing of the movement.[127] Suggesting a significant degree of protest, Mosley had to write rebutting the ‘mistaken idea … that women were to have their Black shirts taken away.’ Nonetheless whilst allowing that women could form uniformed units, Mosley made clear that his wish was that they devote themselves to plain-clothes electoral work.[128]

Clothes Maketh (New) Man

In fascist discourse dress also signified the malign influence of Hollywood: ‘outside the local “super” cinema’ young men wore ‘plum coloured “pork-pie” hats, long tight fitting coats, patent shoes and silk mufflers.’ Each one was ‘pale and undersized’. the ‘typical product’ of a ‘decadent democracy’.[129] The ideal blackshirt was a Spartan and self-disciplined figure: another author envisaged ‘the bright young things’ of the Jazz age discarding ‘tinted metal finger nails for the more practical black shirts.’[130] The shirt not only signified  radicalism, patriotism and classlessness but was also implicated in fascism’s transcendence of both the bankruptcy symbolised by ‘the tail coat of financial democracy’[131] and the decadence of ‘C3’ youth.

Fascist man and decadent others represented by BUF cartoonist Alexander Bowie

The blackshirt was to be the prototype of a new type of man essential to achieving the fascist revolution.[132] Speaking on the ‘spirit of the “Blackshirts”’ Mosley made clear that whilst democratic politicians might propose similar reforms of the ‘machinery’ of state they lacked the essential ingredient of the fascist new man: ‘Any such machinery… would be useless without the spirit and driving purpose of a Fascist movement behind it’. Mosley stated:

it is the wearing of the Blackshirt, and the spirit of those who wear it, which have been by far the biggest factors in the early success of Fascism. The Blackshirt is to us the symbol of service to, and love of, country; it is the emblem of men and women who are not afraid to stand up before all the world and to proclaim their faith. Throughout modern Europe it has become the outward expression of manhood banded together in the iron resolve to save great nations from degeneration and decay.[133]

Even within the BUF Mosley distinguished between those ‘who have the purely political mind as distinct from the dedicated Blackshirt spirit.’[134]

Archibald Crawford, in his novel Tartan Shirts, satirised the symbolic power of the shirt with garments whose actual dye imbue the wearer with a political attitude. The ‘Pink and White Shirt’ of the ‘British Nazis or Fascists or Shirtists’ makes its wearer ‘literally scream with Political rage and dance around… like a Dervish.’[135] In actuality, too, the act of donning the blackshirt was represented as having transformative power. Anne Preston wrote of ‘Our Blackshirt Sons’: ‘They get into black shirts and at once they are in a fine new world. The transformation of a bored and aimless youth into an active Fascist is nothing short of a miracle. From a slouching, apathetic and selfish young cynic he is changed as if by magic into a keen confident lad with a will and mind of his own. His eyes grow steely and his flabby muscles seem to harden overnight.’[136]

In uniform, blackshirts were ordered to be of irreproachable appearance and conduct, to communicate publicly the traits of discipline and dignity.[137] However, wearing of the shirt was also represented as an act which assayed the mettle of the member, tested whether they possessed the ‘Fascist spirit of courage, comradeship and duty.’[138] Mosley noted that ‘it takes a little courage to wear it; … it picks out the fighters from the shirkers.’[139] The shirt made its wearer glaringly visible. A ‘Blackshirt Graduate’ wrote: ‘As I pass along the crowded pavements I hear uttered almost continually the word “Blackshirt”, and I become conscious of the attention I am attracting.’[140] Concerning the nature of this reaction, Robert Saunders mentioned ‘the abuse, the scorn and the ridicule and even violence with which we are faced when wearing the Black Shirt.’[141] Saunders recalled the part that the shirt played in him becoming a fascist: ‘I applied for membership of the BUF, was accepted. … It was then suggested that I should don a blackshirt and join … in selling our papers on the streets.’ To pass this test Saunders had to overcome an acutely debilitating shyness. He  continued: ‘That I should go out and sell papers on the streets … was unthinkable. But somehow I did so.’[142] This signified the ‘deep commitment’ of BUF members and Saunder’s advice to a fellow activist concerning a possible recruit suggests the shirt’s place in fascist political socialisation: ‘Let him fill in an enrolment form, put on a Black Shirt and join with us in determination to build a “Greater Britain.”’[143]

By this visible rejection of bourgeois norms and mores fascists demonstrated that they were worthy of the cause. Writing at a time when many fascists believed that the BUF was being turned into a glorified branch of the Conservative party by an influx of Daily Mail readers, W.J. Leaper proclaimed that:

Courage is the acid test of political worth. To put on a Black Shirt will test your courage. We hope you have the courage, but if you have not, then you are made of the stuff of the old gangs.

       If you should join us, we promise you this: When you have put on the Black Shirt, you will become a Knight of Fascism, of a political and spiritual Order. You will be born anew. The Black Shirt is the emblem of a new faith that has come to our land.

The BUF welcomed patriots and those convinced intellectually, ‘[b]ut the Black Shirt is the test’, Leaper concluded.[144]

Paralleling the religious convert’s act of ‘witness’ which separates them from their old life and seals their new allegiance, the shirt was ‘the emblem of men and women who are not afraid to stand up before all the world and to proclaim their faith.’[145] Uniforms were ‘not whimsical creations for the beaux amongst us. They are the hallmark of the idealists. They represent an active striving after the best and highest.’[146] In this way, fascist representations of the shirt could acquire a quasi–religious aura. John Hone described his as ‘a symbol of my political faith;’ Richard Bellamy’s comment that ‘[m]any [shirts] showed bloodstains, honourable marks’ of a ‘respect … hardly earned’, evokes the martyr’s relic.[147]

Richmal Crompton’s characters gazed on a fascist in boyish awe: ‘he looked very noble and magnificent, perched up aloft on his wooden box, in his black shirt, shouting and throwing his arms about.’[148] Other commentators were less willing to preserve the myth of the new fascist man. The short and rotund H.G. Wells described Mosley as ‘dressed up like a fencing instructor with a waist fondly exaggerated by a cummerbund and chest and buttocks thrust out.’[149] Wells later renewed this attack against ‘Horatio Bohun’ and his ‘Purple Shirts’.[150] George Lancing made a similar point, describing the leader of the ‘Purple Vests’ as ‘clothed to the lower limbs in the close-fitting black tights, worn by figure skaters and fencing masters. A regrettably rebellious tummy was preventatively detained in a gorgeous cummerbund of gold coloured silk.’[151] George Scott (see top) portrayed blackshirts whose seedy physiognomy and poor posture conspired with the ironic caption ‘In England’s green and pleasant land!’ to deflate claims for the blackshirt.[152] In choosing to make a home movie featuring ‘pinkshirts’ in 1934 the Marquess of Anglesey may have hoped to satirise the hyper-masculinity of fascism.[153]

Other opponents pointed to other less selfless psychological functions of the shirt. Exploring the ‘delights of wearing a uniform’, Aldous Huxley suggested that it was a salve for inferiority, making its wearer conspicuous and boosting ‘his sex appeal.’[154] No uniform is entirely bereft of an aura of power and violence linked to the intertwined drives of Eros and Thanatos. When the uniform is the black shirt of fascism this can only be more so. In a fascist cartoon the blackshirt is proudly erect under an admiring female gaze whilst the tail coated politician looks on jealously,[155] and ‘Hamadryad’ wrote of ‘A bounding Blackshirt in a buckled belt,/ My mien is ferocious but my form is svelte;/ The ladies blow me kisses as I go,/ But do the statesmen love me? Oh, dear, no!’[156] Even Viscountess Rhonda described Mosley as the ‘Beauteous Blackshirt’ whilst Clynes disapproved of ‘youths in black shirts and tight trousers.’[157] More generally, just like ‘fancy dress’, uniform allowed its wearer to evade the morally constrained persona constructed by their everyday attire to enjoy a ‘moral holiday.’[158] Huxley suggested: ‘we put on a different character and are able to do things which we should never have the nerve to do in grey flannel trousers and a tweed jacket. A coloured shirt and top boots can go a long way to transform the mildest and most timid of Jekylls into a strong and silent Hyde.’[159] 

Bye, Bye Black Shirt?

Dower and Riddell mockingly enquired in 1937 ‘“Baa, Baa, Blackshirt, have you lost your wool?”’[160] Following the Public Order Act the BUF were permitted to wear no more than a lapel badge.[161]

In this way fascists were denied the aura of power which uniforms endowed. Alderman Toole explained that an earlier decision to force fascists to march in Manchester in plain clothes was intended to reveal the BUF as a ‘motley crew’[162] and in 1937 an opponent relished the contrast between the ‘hefty British bobbies’ and fascists as ‘raw young recruits … their dignity much diminished by flannel trousers and tweed skirts.’ With uniform banned and its myths dissipated, Mosleyites ‘picked their C-3 way over the cobble stones of Kentish Town Road.’[163]

However, the assertion that the uniform ban finished the BUF off is not supportable:[164] some members left but others formerly put off by the uniform joined.[165] In fact the black shirt continued to haunt the fascist imagination and stand metonymically for the individual activist and the movement collectively. Fascists were instructed carefully to store their uniforms and Action (see above) depicted the fascist man putting his shirt away ‘till the day.’[166] Unable to supply a badge for a member’s shirt, Saunders referred to the same fascist future commenting: ‘No doubt you will receive one on THE DAY!’[167] In actuality too, whilst full uniform disappeared, Ronald Crisp recalled that ‘most people wore black shirts of some description.’[168] The most visible wearer of the shirt was Mosley himself who challenged the authorities to prosecute him[169] and as a synecdoche connected the BUF to its revered and excoriated symbol. Even in wartime, uniforms appeared at a secret ceremony on Mosley’s birthday.[170] As late as the 1960s members of Union Movement visited Franco’s Spain in uniform[171] and in 1999 Mosleyite Ian Souter Clarence was buried in a black shirt.[172] More widely, the shirt remains an eloquent symbol of a time, an ideology, and a movement.[173]

***

An unambiguous conclusion concerning the place of the black shirt in the history of British fascism or the political culture of the 1930s would be inappropriate. On one side, it played a central role in the construction of the BUF’s myths of classlessness and dynamism and was crucial to the creation of the blackshirt political identity and a functional militarised movement. For many men and women in the fascist movement the shirt transcended its material form and utilitarian functions to become an honoured and richly symbolic garment. By donning the shirt they truly changed not only their appearance but themselves. At the same time, Mosley’s fascists were all dressed up with nowhere to go; dressed for a struggle that never happened. Just as the old gang parties continued to dominate political space, stranding the BUF’s radical proposals on the periphery, so the bourgeois vestimentary code remained intact; crisis did not make respectable opinion forget its qualms about the novelty and militarism of the black shirt. Seen against a backdrop of business-as-usual, fascists were not only extravagantly overdressed for quotidian politics but perfectly attired to play the role of the alien menace in the antifascist discourse negating the Blackshirts’ most vociferous claim: “Britain First”.

Notes