Fascist Oswald Mosley gets knocked down.

 

Sir Oswald Mosley is perhaps Britain’s most notorious fascist. A member of the ruling classes by birth, Mosley lived a privileged life and used his charisma and oratory skills to court some of the biggest names in 1930s Europe and to develop a devoted following for his right-wing, authoritarian beliefs.

Aged just 21 and with little experience or higher education, Mosley decided to go into politics, running as the Conservative candidate for Harrow in the 1918 general election. He was elected with little opposition and became the youngest member of the House of Commons to take his seat.

Immense self-confidence and eloquence quickly established him as a force to be reckoned with in the Commons. He opposed Conservative policy in Ireland and successfully ran as an Independent MP in 1922 and 1923.

 In 1924, Mosley switched alliances once again, joining the Labour Party and campaigning hard against

Neville Chamberlain in the seat of Birmingham Ladywood, losing by only 77 votes. He was eventually returned to parliament by a by-election in 1926 as the MP for Smethwick. Following Labour’s win in 1929, Mosley was appointed as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster by Ramsay MacDonald. Disillusioned by Labour, who he viewed as too slow to adapt, Mosley founded his own political party: the New Party. Initially, it gained a good deal of support from cross-spectrum figures, but as the Depression took hold in 1931, it became increasingly radical and authoritarian, quickly losing the burgeoning support it had.

By the early Thirties, Oswald Mosley’s ruthless pursuit of personal power had incurred the distrust of his parliamentary colleagues, and so his chances of leading a British political party, any party, had gone. But this vain,man had no intention of being side-lined. He had been watching two men take different and successful routes to power: Hitler in Germany, and Mussolini in Italy. Mosley noticed too that, like Germany and Italy, Britain was suffering widespread discontent due to high unemployment, with its attendant hopelessness and starvation-level poverty. The situation therefore looked very exploitable, and Mosley decided to make the leap.

Mosley visited both Hitler and Mussolini, who received him well, and when he returned to England in 1933 he founded the British Union of Fascists (BUF). He modelled his movement on that of Nazi Germany and, like Hitler, selected the scapegoat upon whom the disenchanted and workless could vent their spleen. Thus, anti-Semitism became the main thrust of Mosley’s manifesto. Emulating Goebbels, the successful Nazi propaganda minister, Mosley threw in large visible doses of patriotism by holding mass rallies coloured by seas of Union Jacks and fascist flags.

Mosley built his movement into a sizeable, brutal force whose provocative parades and meetings in Jewish areas created constant disturbances and kept the police at full stretch. He also gathered support from certain wealthy industrialists and sections of the national press. The BUF also established provincial branches and, while they had no chance of achieving success by normal parliamentary process, they were Mosley’s last hope. 

On this day in 1937, he was due to speak on some vacant land by Queen's Drive, Walton, Liverpool .with the aim of  preaching his vile  fascist beliefs but instead of what he was expecting, was greeted by a crowd of more than 800, many of them hostile, and vehemently anti-fascist. Just moments after getting up on a van,and giving a fascist salute, before he could even utter a word. he was met by a volley of bricks and stones, with hundreds of missiles thrown. The streets of Liverpool clearly  did not want to give him  a warm  welcome and he was hit by a stone on the temple and knocked unconscious. His minions fleed and scarpered, and Mosley was to spend a week recovering from concussion at Walton hospital.

 

Liverpool  had an honoured tradition in the fight against fascism. Around 130 local men, among them the late  Trade Union leader Jack Jones, had joined the International Brigades in Spain, in their fight against the fascist  forces of  General Franco.

Liverpool was not the only place in the 1930's  where the local working class would not tolerate fascism, Moseley's fascists were  also attacked by workers anti-fascists, communists and others in Devon, Manchester, Newcastle, London, Stockton and elsewhere.

From 1937 onwards the appeal of the fascist blackshirts thankfully waned and Mosley''s British Union of Fascists (BUF) were disbanded and proscribed by the British Government snd the scumbag that was Mosely  was eventually detained in prison  in 1940, for the duration of the war.

After the war Mosely formed new fascist groups  but again they faced stiff opposition and were again chased of the streets by ant-fascists.

But we should always be on our guard, and when they try to gather, as they still do, trying to spread their filth on our streets. We will meet them with resistance and force, and continue to knock the fascists down.

They shall never pass.Nazi scum never given a welcome. No pasaron.

Anti-fascist mural from the 1930's