Oswald Ernald Mosley

Part One.

The Rise of Oswald Mosley

Introduction. Oswald (Ernald) Mosley is now mainly remembered for founding and leading the British Union of Fascists. Few people now know that he was once a Labour government minister. In this two part article I look at his life. In a sequel I will look at Orwell’s references to him.

Family Background and Early Life. Oswald (Ernald) Mosley was born in Mayfair in London on 16 November 1896. He was the oldest of the three sons of Oswald Mosley and Katherine Maud Mosley née Edwards-Heathcote. The baby’s grandfather was Sir Oswald Mosley the fourth baronet, i.e. a hereditary knight, of Rolleston on Dove in Staffordshire. Until 1846 the Mosleys were Lords of the Manor of Manchester.

The Mosley family baronetcy was created in 1781 for John Mosley. There had been two previous Mosley baronetcies and the family reliably traced its ancestry back to Sir Nicholas Mosley of Hough End Hall near Manchester, who bought the Manor of Manchester in 1596 and was Lord Mayor of London in 1599.

The Mosleys claim descent from Ernald de Mosley a Norman who acquired the Manor of Moseley in Staffordshire under King John in the Twelfth Century. This claim may be true but should be taken with a pinch of salt. Many fake genealogies were invented for Nouveaux Riche families in Tudor and Stuart times. This family tradition explains Oswald Ernald Mosley’s second forename.

When Oswald Ernald Mosley was five his mother judicially separated from her husband who was a womaniser and a bully. The boy was bought up and spoilt by his mother at her home near her Shropshire family seat; and by his paternal grandfather at Rolleston Hall.

Oswald Ernald Mosley left home aged eight in 1905 and studied at West Downs, a Winchester prep school; and at Winchester College. He triumphed not in his studies or in sports, but in the gym where two ex-army NCO’s taught him to box and fence. Aged fifteen he won the public schools foil and sabre fencing championship. Being a top notch fencer is something he had in common with Himmler’s number two Reinhard Heydrich. They probably met.

In January 1913 seventeen and more than six feet tall Mosley entered Sandhurst as a cadet. He and his friends would break out at night, get drunk and provoke fights with music hall bouncers. A dispute over stolen polo ponies led to him hitting a fellow cadet with a riding crop. In the ensuing fight Mosley suffered a broken right ankle. He and fifteen other cadets were expelled.

The First World War broke out in August 1914. Mosley and the other expelled cadets re-joined the army. He was commissioned into the 16^th Lancers and then volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps. By Christmas 1914 he was flying as an observer over German lines. He got a pilot’s certificate but in May 1915 crashed his aeroplane and broke his right ankle again while showing off to his mother at Shoreham Aerodrome in Sussex

Mosley re-joined the 16^th Lancers which needed officers in October 1915 before his ankle had healed. After a few months in rain soaked trenches he was invalided home. Further operations saved his leg but left him with a permanent limp. In hospital he read extensively, especially political biographies.

In October 1916 Mosley was classified as fit only for desk work which probably saved his life. He worked at the Ministry of Munitions and the Foreign Office; and mixed in high society with fashionable hostesses and politicians in their salons and country houses. He was nicknamed ‘Tom’ and was allegedly a notorious womaniser.

Harrow Conservative MP and first Marriage. The December 1918 General Election was the first for more than eight years. Mosley was the Harrow Conservative candidate. He got 13,959 votes and became the baby of the House of Commons. His Independent opponent, Arthur Robert Chamberlayne (sic), a solicitor, got 3,007 votes.

In the Commons Mosley spoke up for the rights of First World War veterans, especially disabled ones. He strongly supported the newly formed League of Nations and supported Lord Robert Cecil (i.e. Edgar Algernon Robert Gascoyne Cecil, Viscount Cecil of Chelwood) in his unsuccessful attempts to create a Centre Party out of Moral Conservatives, Patriotic Labour and traditional Liberal supporters.

On Wednesday 11 May 1920 Oswald Mosley MP, twenty three, married Lady Cynthia Blanche Curzon, twenty one, at the Chapel Royal at St James Palace in London. The wedding guests included King George V of Great Britain and his wife Queen Mary; King Albert I of Belgium and his wife Queen Elisabeth; the American ambassador and his wife; and many other eminent personages.

Cynthia Blanche Curzon’s parents were George Nathaniel Curzon the 1^st Marquis Curzon of Kedleston, a former Viceroy of India who at the time of Cynthia’s marriage was Foreign Secretary; and his first wife Mary Victoria Curzon née Leiter whose father was Levi Ziegler Leiter an American chain store millionaire. Mary Victoria Curzon had died in 1906 aged thirty five and George Nathaniel Curzon had remarried.

Cynthia Curzon had taken LSE social work courses and done social work in the East End. In the First World War she was a War Office Clerk and a Land Army Girl. She gave her husband three sons – Vivien born in 1921, Nicholas born in 1923, and Michael born in 1932. In between she may have had miscarriages. There were tensions because of her husband’s infidelities.

Oswald Mosley MP strongly criticised the Coalition Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s use of the Black and Tans to combat the Irish Republican insurgency. On 3 November 1920 Mosley crossed the floor of the Commons and became an Independent MP.

At the 1922 General Election Mosley stood as an Independent at Harrow and got 14,290 votes. His Conservative opponent Major Charles Lionel Atkins Ward-Jackson, a Boer War and First World War veteran, got 7,868 votes.

At the 1923 General Election Mosley stood as an Independent at Harrow again and got 14,879 votes. His Conservative opponent, Edward Hugh Frederick Morris, a First World War infantry veteran, got 9,433 votes.

The Labour Man. On 27 March 1924 Mosley applied to join the Labour Party. He was welcomed. He did not stand again at Harrow but stood at Ladywood, Birmingham, in the October 1924 General Election. The sitting Conservative MP, Neville Chamberlain, got 13,374 votes. Oswald Mosley got 13,297 votes. The Liberal candidate Alfred William Bowkett, a wire manufacturer, got 539 votes.

Birmingham was the Chamberlain stronghold. Neville Chamberlain’s majority had been reduced to seventy seven. In 1929 he moved to Edgbaston which remained a safe Conservative seat until 1997.

In 1925 Mosley and his friend Strachey (see my articles about Strachey) published a pamphlet Revolution by Reason. It called for creating additional demand by printing money to bring unused industrial capacity into play and so reduce unemployment.

After Mosley and his wife had toured the Liverpool slums he said that giving the poor decent housing would keep the unemployed at work for at least ten years. During the 1926 Miners’ Strike and the May 1926 General Strike he toured Britain and made generous donations to starving miners.

Oswald Mosley had been given an apparently hopeless task at Sparkbrook and had nearly succeeded. He and his wife had impressed the Labour Party and in December 1926 he was the Labour candidate at the Smethwick by election. Smethwick was in South Staffordshire and is an industrial town in what is known as the Black Country north of Birmingham. This nickname comes from the coal dust which smothered it.

At this Smethwick by election Mosley got 16,077 votes. The Conservative Marshall James Pike, a locomotive driver turned journalist, got 9,495 votes. The Liberal Edwin Bayliss got 2,600 votes. In 1927, 1928 and 1930 Mosley was elected to the Labour Party National Executive Committee. In 1928 hiss father died and Oswald Mosley inherited the baronetcy becoming Sir Oswald Mosley.

The Labour Minister. At the 1929 General Election Mosley got 19,559 votes at Smethwick. The Conservative Alfred Roy Wise got 12,210 votes. The Liberal Maude Egerton Marshall got 3,909 votes.

Lady Cynthia Mosley was the Labour candidate at Stoke on Trent i.e. the Potteries in North Staffordshire at the 1929 general election and got 26,548 votes. The Liberal sitting MP Lieutenant Colonel John Ward a former navvy (sic) and trade union leader, got 18,698 votes.

The Labour Prime Minister Ramsay Macdonald appointed Oswald Mosley Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, a non-cabinet appointment. Mosley in turn appointed John Strachey as his Private Parliamentary Secretary. They were to develop plans to reduce unemployment and to report to James Henry Thomas, the Lord Privy Seal.

In January 1930 Mosley and Strachey produced the Mosley Memorandum. It proposed a small economic war cabinet serviced by an economic general staff headed by John Maynard Keynes; protection of the home market against foreign competition; government help to modernise industry; and a massive public works programme. The Labour government rejected this programme believing it would bankrupt Britain. On 28 May 1930 Mosley resigned as minister, justifying his decision in an hour long speech in the Commons made without notes. He was widely tipped as a future Labour Prime Minister. By this time he was known as one of Britain’s best platform orators.

After his resignation twenty nine Labour MPs backed Mosley’s censure vote against Macdonald at a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting. At the October 1930 Labour Party Conference held in Llandudno Mosley put forward his proposals but was narrowly defeated. In December 1930 he issued the Mosley Manifesto calling for emergency protection of the home market and state trading. Seventeen Labour MPs backed it including Nye Bevan.

The New Party. On 1 March 1931 Mosley formed the New Party with the help of a £50,000 donation from William Richard Morris the car manufacturer who was later ennobled as the 1^st Lord Nuffield. Many other super rich businessmen gave the New Party their support. They included some Jews.

Mosley was expelled from the Labour Party. Five other Labour MPs joined the New Party – Lady Cynthia Mosley; Oliver Ridsdale Baldwin, a First World War veteran who was the Dudley Labour MP; William John Brown a Civil Service Trade Unionist who represented Wolverhampton West; Dr Robert Forgan, a medical doctor, who represented Renfrew West in Scotland; and John Strachey the Aston MP.

Oliver Baldwin and William Brown left the New Party after a day. Oliver Baldwin re-joined the Labour Party, probably strongly advised by his father, the Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin. William Brown was the Independent Rugby MP from a 1942 by-election to 1950. Two other MPs joined Mosley – Cecil Randolph Dudgeon the Liberal Galloway MP; and William Edward David Allen, the West Belfast Ulster Unionist MP.

Mosley faced intense hostility from the Labour Party and the Communists. The Labour Party saw him as a renegade and the Communists saw him as a fascist. The Communists were going through a very sectarian period but even a clock that is stopped is right twice a day. They also knew that Mussolini had started his political career as a socialist. Allegedly to protect his meetings Mosley set up a black-shirted militia led by Peter Dunsmore Howard, the England Rugby Union Captain; and recruited personal bodyguards or stewards led by the Jewish World Welterweight Boxing champion Ted ‘Kid’ Lewis. Hitler had yet to come to power in Germany but Mosley had created British equivalents of the SA and SS.

Thus ends part one of this article. Part Two will look at the later career of the man who if history had gone differently might have been the British Quisling.