Philip Coupland

Stephen Dorril, Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism (London: Penguin Books, 2007); ISBN 978-0-140-25821-9

A reviewer elsewhere has intimated that this biography is the final word on Oswald Mosley: ‘We shall not need another’, he comments.[i] Blackshirt is heavy with the fruits of a thorough trawl of the secondary literature and also makes use of a number of archival sources that have yielded much that is new. In particular, there is considerable new information about contacts between Mosley and his British Union of Fascists (BUF) and Nazi Germany. The important financial dimension of British fascism is also exposed in detail, not only in relation to subsidies from Mussolini and Hitler, but also in terms of its domestic backers. Mosley’s own pecuniary situation is also detailed and the extent of his personal investment should – as with much else in this book – dispel any lingering impression of him as a dilettante fascist. There are also further revelations of Mosley’s libidinous private life, a striking feature of the account written by his son Nicholas (1982-83).[ii] However, despite this wealth of material, there are reasons to question whether this should be the definitive work on Mosley. These doubts arise in relation to both its function as a biography and in regard to its approach, methods and scholarly apparatus as a history.

Turning to the second of these first, many readers will be dismayed to find that Blackshirt has no footnotes and for a ‘full set of detailed notes’ they must visit the author’s website. This is unsatisfactory even within its own terms, and on the first few occasions when this reader tried to download the notes, it was not possible. It is reasonable to suggest that - sooner or later - this may become a permanent situation. When, some days later, the notes were obtained they were difficult to use. 

In history writing footnotes are very much the structural steel supporting the narrative but there are particular reasons for a careful examination of them here. An especial scrutiny of sources is particularly necessary here inasmuch that Blackshirt rarely pauses to discuss the reliability of sources. For instance, Dr. Arthur Tester and his claim to be Mosley’s ‘aide-de-camp’ receives mention here. Undoubtedly this man – a German agent – did have some dealings with Mosley, but the main support for him having such a close and important position are his own words, yet neither the British nor Germans trusted this crook and swindler. There is little that is neutral or disinterested written on this subject and any efforts at the truth can only succeed to the extent that they consider the motivation of actors and the context of their utterances. There are also points where errors creep in or are recycled from other writers. To give just a couple of examples, the BUF intervention against the levying of tithes by the Church of England is misleadingly described as an ‘anti-Protestant’ campaign (326) and, once again, it is suggested that Aldous Huxley’s character ‘Everard Webley’, leader of the ‘Brotherhood of British Freemen’ was based on Mosley (112). Given that Point Counter Point was published in 1928, when Mosley was still firmly with Labour this seems unlikely. Blackshirt may itself encourage the circulation of similar ‘facts’. For example, the author posits the existence of conflicts related to ‘homosexuals in key positions’ in the BUF leadership (277, 246, 322). However, possible as this may be, it rests on slender evidence - a single line from Colin Cross that ‘there were rumours of favouritism and promotions based on homosexual friendships’.[iii]

In what the publisher’s blurb on the hardback edition describes as a ‘controversial’ treatment, the author sets out to counter ‘revisionist’ approaches to this subject, most especially the biography by Robert Skidelsky (1975),[iv] and this naturally also calls for a close and critical reading. It may come as surprise to historians of British political history that there has been something of a minor "Historikerstreit" on this topic. There is not space to discuss this here, except to note that it originated when the historian’s work of scrutinising long held assumptions seemed to some commentators to clash with the current political imperatives. The issues of antisemitism and political violence have been particularly at issue here and Dorril devotes considerable attention to them.

In contrast to its centrality for fascism in Germany, the origins, motivations and functions of antisemitism for Mosley and his followers are more ambiguous and open to interpretation. At its outset the BUF did not espouse antisemitism as a policy, Mosley did not refer to the topic in his first major fascist work, The Greater Britain (1932), and a significant number of Jews were among the movement’s rank-and-file. However, within two years Jews were barred from the membership and antisemitism became policy. There have been various interpretations of the cause of this change, which have variously apportioned agency between the BUF and Jewish anti-fascists. Dorril’s argument here is that there was no change at all, that Mosley intended to wage war on the Jews from the start and that it was only expediency which caused him to initially rein in.

It was certainly the case that the seeds of antisemitism were planted in the BUF at the beginning. During the transition from the New Party to the BUF Mosley sought to create a ‘union’ between other British fascist groups and his ‘New Movement’ and consequently drew from among the ‘Jew-wise’. Although antisemitism had not previously played any part of Mosley’s politics there are indications that it was creeping into his thinking and language after 1932. To support the argument that the turn to antisemitism was ‘planned’ Dorril quotes comments reportedly made by Mosley at a meeting hosted by Israel Sieff in September that year that: ‘A new movement must find somebody to hate. In this case it should be the Jews’(212). However, not only were these comments only published decades afterwards, but a contemporary source also quoted indicates that Sieff did not withdraw his support from Mosley until a month later, following his description of a heckler as having ‘come from Jerusalem’. The inconsistency here is not discussed. Later, Mosley attributed his earlier ‘restraint’ to a need to wait until the BUF was strong enough to attack the Jews, but given that this claim was often made when trying to convince the Nazis to support the BUF, which they had earlier dismissed as a ‘Jewish catch-up’ organisation, it is not especially convincing.

The author’s claim that the antisemitic ‘campaign was pre-planned and worked to a timetable’(212) gives a simple answer when a much more complex one is indicated. Had, after 1932, the economic crisis deepened as Mosley had anticipated and political space opened up for fascism, circumstances might have been quite different, with the BUF perhaps staying closer to the Italian model with which it began. Instead, poor progress encouraged a desperate grasping at any potential means of generating publicity and support, whilst after 1933 Germany offered an example of a successful fascism centred on antisemitism. At the same time, the experiences of blackshirts on the streets encouraged a close identification of the Jewish community with anti-fascism. Communists were among the most active and ‘physical’ opponents of fascism and Jews were strongly represented in that party, especially in London.[v] When the BUF became a major player in the politics of the East End these factors became joined to a local politics whose factions and conflicts long-predated Mosley’s involvement. 

If there is a single dominating factor in the relationship between the BUF and antisemitism it is not planning but expediency. There is no indication that antisemitism ever dominated Mosley’s own political imagination, rather, as with the accelerator pedal on a car, the driver adjusted the mixture according to the conditions. The key point is that, despite superficial similarities, the ideological basis of the BUF differed from Nazism’s central emphases on its concept of ‘race’, social Darwinism and Jewish conspiracy. Instead, for Mosley and the BUF, the Jew as ‘other’ and enemy played a central symbolic role in their discourse, ideology and political imagination but as the seasoning rather than as the whole dish.

Mosley’s politics have also been conventionally associated with aggressive violence. Although this stereotype has been opened to question,[vi] it is one which Dorril backs with determination: blackshirts were responsible for the ‘bulk of the violence’(395) whilst ‘the tactics of organised antifascists was generally disruption and not violence’(264). There is insufficient space here to examine this in detail, although certain straightforward points can be made. The vast bulk of recorded violence occurred at fascist meetings and was, therefore, reactive. The BUF wished to get a hearing at its meetings and therefore sought to remove those trying to disrupt them. That the overwhelming majority of thousands of BUF gatherings were peaceful underlines the role of opponents in those that were not. Whether the force used on such occasions was proportional is a moot point but the majority of prosecutions for violence and disorder was against anti-fascists. It is untrue that anti-fascist opposition was generally non-violent, rather the reverse. Even when anti-fascists did not fight the BUF, as at ‘the Battle of Cable Street’, they fought the police. Undoubtedly there was fascist aggression away from the gaze of the authorities, but the same thing holds true for their opponents. Given that both fascist and communist believed themselves to be in a struggle for power, it is surprising that there was not more violence.

However, Dorril’s argument that ‘Blackshirt violence had a tactical purpose: it produced a visible spectacle of public disorder’(300) is much more interesting. In this respect he correctly points to the way in which Mosley launched a BUF as a force of national salvation from the threat of communism: he explicitly stated this in The Greater Britain and his movement was not originally organised for parliamentary politics. Mosley and the fascist press continually talked up the revolutionary threat whilst, in reality, the bulk of the labour movement remained within the bounds of constitutional politics. However, whether the violence at the notorious Olympia rally was deliberately encouraged for this reason – as was claimed by the disenchanted former blackshirt Alexander Miles[vii] – and so ‘delighted’ Mosley requires much more discussion here to be convincing.

In terms of the function of this book as a biography this is very much a life of Oswald Mosley, fascist. The treatment of his earlier life and political career very much anticipates what is to follow. In consequence, it is very easy to fall in with the idea that it was Mosley’s ‘destiny’ to don the black shirt. However, some of the contemporary evidence quoted by the author suggests that even at the beginning of his plunge into fascism, Mosley could have remained within or even returned to one of the mainstream parties. Whilst using hindsight to draw out what later becomes significant is at the core of the power of history as a discourse, it is perhaps a greater challenge to the historical imagination to present what was authentic to the time. Similarly, much of the history of British Fascism in the 1930s is written in the light of what was done by others, elsewhere and afterwards. This is not to say that Mosley’s historical reputation is not rightfully coloured by his ideological and other associations with Nazism in Germany, but at the same time this tends to occlude the authentic.

Dorril aims to get under his subject’s skin, even considering his Oedipal phase and graphology, but in a very definite sense Mosley remains elusive. This may partly reflect the loss of focus which occurs over the course of the book. Perhaps curiously, having been very much at the core of the narrative up to 1932, in the chapters afterwards Mosley sometimes becomes shadowy. This may be partly a product of the subject’s greater efforts at secrecy or the extensive destruction of records. However, given that biography is often written on much poorer sources, it is perhaps also a consequence of the author’s determination to include everything. Possibly a more exclusive approach and greater critical rigour with sources would have brought the reader closer to the subject. 

The Mosley who does appear here is a man with a sense of destiny, driven by his egotism and sometimes deluded by his narcissism - undoubtedly qualities shared by more than a few in politics. His private life showed him capable of personal cruelty, regrettably commonplace too. However, the picture is incomplete inasmuch that the qualities that together constitute what might be called ‘charisma’ are less clearly drawn out. So many of those whose words condemned him in Blackshirt were first drawn powerfully to Mosley and many chose to remain by him, sometimes despite  – as in the case of Diana Mosley, for example – knowing his failings. Should not the goal of biography be to capture the whole complex, contradictory, double-sided nature of a subject rather than paint them either black or white? 

Philip M. Coupland  (drpmc66@ntlworld.com)

This review originally appeared in Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, Vol. 9, No. 4. (December 2008).