Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley (November 16, 1896 - December 3, 1980) was a British politician, founder of the British Union of Fascists. He was also the sixth baronet of a title established in 1720.He had a privileged upbringing but his parents separated and he was brought up by his mother and his paternal grandfather, the fourth Baronet Mosley. He was always called 'Tom' by family and friends.
He was educated at Winchester College and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. During World War I, he was commissioned in the 16th Lancers and fought on the Western Front. He transferred to the Royal Flying Corps as an observer but a crash left him with a permanent limp. He returned to the trenches before the injury was fully healed and, at the Battle of Loos, he passed out at his post from the pain. He was assigned to desk jobs for the rest of the war.
Mosley became a Conservative MP for Harrow in 1918, at the time the youngest member of the Commons. He soon distinguished himself as an orator and political player, albeit marked with extreme self-confidence.
In 1920 he married Lady Cynthia Curzon, second daughter of George Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston, Viceroy of India, and his first wife, American mercantile heiress Mary Victoria Leiter.
He resigned from the Conservatives in 1922 as a consequence of his disagreement with the government over its Irish policy and their use of the Black and Tans to suppress the Irish population.
He retained his Harrow seat as an Independent between 1922 and 1924. He then switched to Labour (1924 and 1926-1931), and was rewarded with the post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in 1929. He resigned in 1930, following the rejection of his radical economic policy ideas. He quickly founded the radical New Party but, when that failed electorally, and after meetings with Mussolini and other Fascists, he created the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932.
The British Union of Fascists was a union of numerous smaller extreme nationalist parties, Mosley instituted a black uniform, gaining the party the nickname blackshirts. The BUF was anti-Communist and protectionist. It claimed membership as high as 50,000, and had the Daily Mail among its earliest supporters. Among his followers were the novelist Henry Williamson and military theorist J.F.C. Fuller.
The party was frequently involved in violent confrontations, particularly with Communist and Jewish groups and especially in London. The government was sufficiently concerned to pass the Public Order Act of 1936 – legislation intended to destroy the movement, but which ultimately failed.
He married his mistress Diana Guinness née Mitford (one of the celebrated Mitford sisters) in 1936, in the home of Nazi chief Joseph Goebbels; Adolf Hitler was one of the guests.
In the London County Council elections in 1937 the Movement scored high votes in its East London strongholds. The BUF was completely banned in May 1940 and Mosley and 740 other senior Fascists were interned for much of WW II under Defence Regulation 18B. Mosley was released in 1943 due to ill health and spent the rest of the war under house arrest.
After the war he made a number of attempts to return to politics as leader of the Union Movement (1947, 1959, 1966), but was never successful. He became noted for his advocacy of Britain's entry into the European Economic Community. In 1951 Mosley and his wife left England to live in France. Of his decision to leave he said "You don't clear up a dungheap from underneath it."
He had three children with his first wife. With the second Lady Mosley he had two sons. A noted philanderer, Mosley had numerous affairs including, during his first marriage, with his wife's sister Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, nee Curzon as well as her stepmother, Grace Duggan, nee Hinds, the American-born widow of Lord Curzon.
His memoirs My Life were published in 1968.
| Preceded by: The Lord Cushendun | Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 1929-1930 | Followed by: Clement Attlee |