A very unsatisfying series of developments if you are Moseley.
And a fascinating update
Thank you. The screws are certainly beginning to tighten on our Oswald.
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Periodically, I like to bring up relevant events from British history in order to give a healthy reminder that, however grim Mosley may be in this timeline, in our world he was truly a monster. Yesterday (July 22) was the anniversary of Mosley and his Union Movement being prevented from holding a rally in Trafalgar Square by vigorous anti-fascist action. 300 of Mosley's lots were beaten back by 17 thousand anti-fascists.
The Union Movement was the successor to the British Union of Fascists, which had been proscribed during the Second World War. The UM continued much along the same lines, promoting British fascism and exploiting the rise in racial tension that had followed the British Nationality Act (1948). The BNA had legislated for a new 'Commonwealth citizenship' that was common throughout the Empire, and which allowed for significantly increased immigration to the UK from the colonies. In the context of mid-century Britain, the increase in immigration was highly controversial and frequently opposed by racist elements within the UK. Mosley and his allies were only too keen to exploit this endemic racism, and in 1958 race riots erupted in Notting Hill following a Mosley rally.
Alongside this fairly recognisable breed of fascism, the Union Movement had its idiosyncrasies. Primarily, this took the form of Mosley's 'Europe, A Nation' doctrine, which promoted a sort of perverse form of internationalism among like-minded fascist and neo-Nazi groups in Europe. The idea behind this pan-European focus is fairly simple, and I probably don't need to spell it out. (It survives today through the likes of Generation Identity, a movement born of the legacy of the French
Nouvelle Droite.) On 22 July 1962, Mosley was in Trafalgar to discuss exactly this sort of pan-Europeanism.
In the long term, the response to this idea even amongst the British far-right was one of bemusement. Far-right pan-Europeanism did not take off, and Mosley's attempts to reinvent himself for the postwar world were largely in vain. Of course, this is not to say that many of his ideas do not remain dangerous, and certainly there are still plenty of people championing them even today.
In the aftermath of the Trafalgar Square incident, members of the coalition that had emerged to oppose Mosley organised into the 62 Group. Spiritual, and in some cases organisational, heirs to the earlier 43 Group, the 62 Group were a militant anti-fascist movement led principally by Jewish activists opposed to the anti-semitism of the Union Movement, and (British) fascism more broadly. Their tactics drew upon a wide and ingenious range of direct actions, including intelligence and infiltration as well as physical confrontation. I invite you to read their testimony
here.
Questions surrounding all of these events will crop up as we head into the final decade. As we arrive at the Sixties, it will perhaps be of interest to know what Mosley was up to IRL. I hope the contrasts will, in time, prove entertaining.