Mosley was highly influenced by Benito Mussolini, so much so that
members of the BUF were given the nickname of ‘Blackshirts’ as their
uniform was modelled on that worn by those belonging to the National
Fascist Party in Italy.Mosley’s Blackshirts dressed up like Mussolini’s thugs and saluted like
Hitler’s, but theirs was a distinctly English program. The first of
Mosley’s “10 Points of Fascism” announced that the BUF was “loyal to
King and Country” and its “watch-word… is ‘Britain First.’”
Mosley himself was commissioned in the 16th Lancers but joined the Royal
Flying Corps at the outbreak of the First World War. Injured in a crash
in 1915, he rejoined the Lancers and fought in the trenches between
October 1915 and October 1916. He joined the Conservatives after
military service to become an MP at 22. From the first, he challenged
the old guard even within his own party, and was re-elected as an
Independent before crossing the House to join Labour where he campaigned
on unemployment. With his matinee idol looks and dramatic oratory,
Mosley cut a darkly glamorous, radical figure.After the 1931 general election, Mosley toured Europe and it was that
particular expedition which drew his attention to fascism. Following his
travels, at 34 he founded the New
Party, which – influenced by Mussolini – morphed into the quasi-military
British Union of Fascists 19 months later in October 1932, with Mosley
himself as the leader.
Lord Rothermere, had launched the Daily Mail in 1896 with his elder brother,
Alfred Harmsworth, who was later named Lord Northcliffe. By 1930, they
owned 14 daily and Sunday newspapers, and a substantial share in three
more.Shortly after Mussolini came to power, Rothermere laid his cards on
the table. In an article in the Mail entitled “What Europe Owes to
Mussolini,” he expressed his “profound admiration” for Italy’s new
leader.
“In saving Italy he stopped the inroads of Bolshevism which would
have left Europe in ruins… in my judgment he saved the whole Western
world,” Rothermere declared.
His frequent visits to Italy seemed only to further stoke Rothermere’s enthusiasm for the Duce.
“He is the greatest figure of the age,” Rothermere proclaimed in
1928. “Mussolini will probably dominate the history of the 20th century
as Napoleon dominated that of the early 19th.” He praised Mosley and the Blackshirts seeing them as
the correct party to “take over responsibility for [British] national
affairs”.
Rothermere initially believed that Britain was “not suited” to fascism,
but a general strike in 1926 and a fear that Baldwin was displaying “the
feebleness which tries to placate opposition by being more socialist
than the Socialists,” led him to reappraise this view as a new decade
dawned.
The Mail’s enthusiasm for the Nazis would grow as their support in Germany surged.By the 1930 election, when the Nazis’ seats in the Reichstag jumped from 12 to 107, Rothermere was a convert.
“[The Nazis] represent the rebirth of Germany as a nation,”
Rothermere wrote in the Mail. The election, he correctly prophesied,
would come to be seen as “a landmark of this time.”
It wasn’t hard to see why the Mail’s fawning coverage of the Nazis so
delighted the Fuhrer — the paper uncritically reported the butchery of
the Night of the Long Knives.
“Herr Adolf Hitler, the German Chancellor, has saved his country,”
began its story on the frenzy of extrajudicial killings, and cheered the
Nazis on as they trampled the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles.
When German troops marched into the Rhineland in March 1936, the Mail
suggested Hitler had “cleared the air” and warned against “Bolshevik
troublemakers.” It offered a glowing report of the Anschluss two years
later — penned by Price, who had hitched a ride in Hitler’s convoy as it
sped towards Vienna.
Grateful for this unusual support from the foreign press,gained the Mail exclusive access to
publish interviews with Hitler, it also earned Lord Rothermere and his
son a place at the dinner table as honoured guests of Hitler himself.Following his meetings, Rothermere believed Hitler — a “simple and
unaffected man” and a “perfect gentleman” — to be “obviously sincere” in
his desire for peace. “There is no man living whose promise given in
regard to something of real moment I would sooner take,” he later
argued. A vicious reactionary anti-semite, Rothermere saw
the Nazi dictator as an ally against the spread of (Jewish) communism
and backed Hitler's actions to remove Jews from public life in Germany. During the Munich crisis of 1938 his papers urged
capitulation to Hitler's demands for the German-speaking regions of
Czechoslovakia (though they did advocate rearmament, just in case). The Mail objected
time and again to the admission to Britain of Jewish refugees from
Germany and Austria.
Under the headline Hurrah for the Blackshirts Rothermore praised Mosley and the Blackshirts seeing them as
the correct party to “take over responsibility for [British] national
affairs”;auding Mosley’s aim of bringing Britain “up to date” by following in
the footsteps of Europe’s “best governed” nations, Italy and Nazi
Germany. The article urged a similar “revival of national strength and
spirit.” Following their proprietor’s cue, staff at the paper began
showing up for work wearing black shirts.
Rothermere’s other newspapers also threw their support behind the
effort. The Mirror urged its readers to “Give the Blackshirts a helping
hand,” and printed the addresses of Mosley’s local recruiting offices. A
visit to Germany or Italy, Rothermere assured readers, showed that “the
mood of the vast majority of the inhabitants was not cowed submission,
but confident enthusiasm.”
The Sunday Dispatch offered free tickets to Mosley’s rallies, prizes
for readers who submitted letters on why they liked the Blackshirts, and
regular features on attractive female fascists, under headlines such as
“Beauty joins the Blackshirts.”
By 1936 anti-semitic assaults by
fascists were growing and windows of Jewish-owned businesses were
routinely smashed. Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ The Daily Mail
headline is just one chilling indication of the very real threat Oswald
Mosley’s British Union of Fascists posed in the mid 1930s which concluded with a direct call for young men to join Oswald’s party.and certainly helped boost the BUF membership considerably, perhaps to as many as 50,000 active members..
When, on 7 June 1934, Oswald Mosley addressed a tumultuous rally at
London's Olympia, his British Union of Fascists seemed on the verge of
political acceptability. Yet with its chaos, violence and subsequent
condemnation in the press, Olympia marked the beginning of the end for
the Blackshirts.
Mosley’s blackshirts had been harassing the sizeable Jewish population
in the East End all through the 1930s and a primary focus of its anti-immigrant and antisemitic sentiment was Stepney, an East End
neighborhood then home to 60,000 Jews descended from families who fled
pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as Irish and other
immigrant workers. and on 4th October 1936, Mosley planned the BUF’s biggest and boldest
initiative yet. His uniformed Blackshirts would march through London’s
East End, home to one of the country’s largest Jewish communities. The
intention was quite clear: to cause fear and stir up hate. On the day,
more than a hundred thousand east enders, of any faith or none, turned
out to protect their community. The fascists were forced to retreat in what became known as the Battle of Cable Street https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2021/10/remember-battle-of-cable-street-no.html.
in which tens of thousands of anti-fascists
battled 6,000 police and 3,000 BUF Blackshirts to refuse the fascists
passage through Stepney. Taking their example from Spanish Communists
during the siege of Madrid months earlier, they used as their slogan
“¡No pasarán” and erected three sets of barricades on Cable Street.
Irish dockworkers tore up paving stones and filled the street with
broken glass and marbles to defeat mounted police. They did, not pass.
Mosley lost thousands of supporters as people began to make links between what was happening at home and events in Nazi Germany.s the Second World War loomed,.and during the Second World War, the British authorities viewed Mosley as an enemy sympathiser – if the Nazis successfully invaded the UK, it was believed he would head up the regime on home soil – and had him interned, along with his wife. The pair lived together in the grounds of Holloway prison for the majority of the war, before being released in 1943.After the war, Mosley formed the Union Movement in 1948, but his influence had waned.and The Union Movement was eventually dissolved in 1973 after failing to gain significant ground.
The Daily Mail began to change its
editorial line and moved away from explicitly supporting fascists and
their regimes. But, the racism and xenophobia remained a key part of
their so called ‘journalism’ and has continued through to this day. Rothermere died in 1940 a broken man, desperately
disappointed that the great dictator in Berlin had not forged an
alliance with London to vanquish Stalin. He was an utterly disgusting
human being..
The forces of Fascism are on the rise again, in Europe and around the world.we must continue to resist wherever they are promote and try to come together. Those who daub synagogues with anti-semitic graffiti or defile mosques
with anti-Islamic hate or any other communities that suffer abuse or
racism, we must forever be on the side of those communities, and they will
never be given any welcome, and be outnumbered and humiliated by
antifascists. Whilst they continue to intimidate and stoke up division
with their racist ideology and their hatred against difference and people
marked as socially undesirable. they will always be met with resistance,
their routes blocked by those that seek to defend their communities from
fascist violence.
Sill a high-circulation right-wing tabloid much beloved by “Middle
England” The Daily Mail still weathers the occasional barbs about its disreputable
past whilst creating hate-filled media stories that create a violent culture of hostility towards migrants and refugees. Remember
Rothermere was pro-Nazi. The Daily Mail was pro-Nazi. The Daily Mail is the traitors' paper. Never forget, never forgive. Lower than vermin, as Aneurin Bevan once said.
Daily Mail Poem
I pour scorn on its petty margins
Its distortion of realities silhouette,
The daily shame, should be its new name
Cross out all its lies, we'd be left with empty pages,
Drinking toasts to underbellies of nastiness
It sharpens its pen on bile,
With agenda of spreading hatred
Is enough to scramble your brain,.
A bully that's scared of everything
Its dark heart distorts reality,
With script of venom and division
In truth, worth nothing at all,
Its pinning sense of intolerance
Is a message I don't want to hear,
A tabloid rag not fit for the gutter
Full of twisted opinion and bad news
Designed to leave us disheartened,
Don't know how anyone can call it a friend.
I pour scorn on its petty margins
Its distortion of realities silhouette,
The daily shame, should be its new name
Cross out all its lies, we'd be left with empty pages,
Drinking toasts to underbellies of nastiness
It sharpens its pen on bile,
With agenda of spreading hatred
Is enough to scramble your brain,.
A bully that's scared of everything
Its dark heart distorts reality,
With script of venom and division
In truth, worth nothing at all,
Its pinning sense of intolerance
Is a message I don't want to hear,
A tabloid rag not fit for the gutter
Full of twisted opinion and bad news
Designed to leave us disheartened,
Don't know how anyone can call it a friend.