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Indeed, the US has gone through some fairly big divergences, and there are a few more to come yet. The result I hope will be quite interesting.
Not the GOP's most inspired choice, though probably a safe enough counterweight to Deadly Doug.
_________________________________
Thanks to everyone who has commented and reacted. If anyone missed the last US chapter, it's buried at the end of the previous page. You can check it out here.
The next Commonwealth chapter returns to domestic politics with a look at some of the changes going on within the Popular Front under the leadership of Harold Laski. We're creeping ever closer to Mosley's final exit from power, and from here on out the constituent parts of his downfall will slowly but surely be falling into place. I'll aim to post the next chapter probably midweek.
Also, a reminder that voting in the ACA's remains open! If you have been thinking of getting in a ballot but haven't done so yet, do! You can find the thread here. Votes for this AAR are, of course, highly appreciated, though by no means essential. (Although I have little doubt that @mad orc's superlative Jihad on the Savannah will walk home with the Vicky crown, as it will very fully deserve.) Big big thanks to @Tommy4ever, @mad orc, @Cromwell, @stnylan and @BigBadBob for having already been generous enough to send one of their votes my way.
The ACA's are special among the various awAARds of AARland, and having run them in the past also close to my heart. It's always something of a measure of the health of our community more broadly – and in particular an excellent way of getting a sense of what I really should've been reading over the last few months, but haven't yet. To see them well supported is, I think, one of the best signs that AARland is doing okay.
(TL;DR – Get your ACA's votes in here. Update likely to arrive midweek.)
As ever compelling and I am enjoying the American interludes - a Stassen administration would be, I predict it now, a prolonged sinking.
And this is going to be fascinating - will it be an even vaguely orderly transition, or will it be utter chaos. Compelling stuff!
I oddly find myself voting for more Vic 2 AARs (despite my phobia for the game) than HOI4 or CKII, which is where most of my gaming is done. It says something for the quality of writing. And while it would be vulgar to offer a run down of where my votes will fall, this AAR is guaranteed. It is just unfailingly well written.
And this is going to be fascinating - will it be an even vaguely orderly transition, or will it be utter chaos. Compelling stuff!
I oddly find myself voting for more Vic 2 AARs (despite my phobia for the game) than HOI4 or CKII, which is where most of my gaming is done. It says something for the quality of writing. And while it would be vulgar to offer a run down of where my votes will fall, this AAR is guaranteed. It is just unfailingly well written.
- 1
The United States have not had the greatest of luck with their choice of presidents for some time. There will, inevitably, be a turning point – though whether it will come in 56, you will have to wait and see.
The full, nitty-gritty details are as yet unknown even to me, but step by step we're making out way towards finding out. I am incredibly excited to be getting there soon.
Evidently I've long had a preference for writing around the Vicky period (my last "major" project, abandoned c.2014 due to GSCE's of all things, was a British V2 AAR) and I think it definitely attracts a certain kind of project. Something about the period, I'd guess: long enough ago that there's still plenty of room for divergence, but close enough to our own time that any differences tend to be appreciable, in that they can sort of be understood relative to our own world. (Of course, this particular project is a century on even from the start of Vicky, so it's something of an outlier.) I'm also hopelessly bad at HOI4, so I enjoy the fact that Vicky has less of an immediate focus on warfare – even if it is a big part of the process.
I'd also imagine that the general emergence of parliamentary systems probably helps. Governmental bickering always provides plenty of fuel for good drama, as your work well attests.
You are, as ever, far too kind.
Generation Gap: Harold Laski's Popular Front, 1948–54
GENERATION GAP
HAROLD LASKI’S POPULAR FRONT, 1948–54
MICHAEL FOOT
1968
In 1948, following the political retirement of Stafford Cripps, the leadership of the Popular Front passed over to the veteran left-wing intellectual Harold Laski. Professor Laski, as he was known – sometimes affectionately, sometimes with a degree of exasperation – had been involved with Labour politics since before the Revolution. His accession to the leadership of the Popular Front marked two decades of service to the labour movement, but there was no shortage of feeling that it was an accession that had come, for Laski, years too late. His politics had been crystallised in the years after the Great War, and his view of the world remained coloured by his academic background. During the six years for which he led the Popular Front, the party underwent a transition from willing ally of the Mosleyite regime, to wary accomplice impatient for reform. This was accompanied by an internal battle of ideas, between two generations of party figures caught at cross purposes. What follows is an account of this turbulent time in the party’s history.
Since the end of the Anti-Fascist Wars, it became a widely held opinion amongst the British political class that the need for ‘popular front’ politics had outlived its immediate purpose. With fascism defeated successively in Germany, Spain and Italy during the late Thirties and Forties, the post-war world was marked by a new tension between the various capitalist and non-capitalist states, each organising into blocs and trying to assert the fundament supremacy of their position. In the Commonwealth, this quest for supremacy led the government towards a fiercely directorial economic policy, under which near total control of the British economy was entrusted to Bob Boothby, Director of the Office for Economic Planning between 1945–57. This new consensus, more or less wholly manufactured by Mosley and his allies between the years 1945–50, emphasises a large degree of government intervention into the everyday life of the British people. In the post-war world, the British economy was harnessed in the service of propelling the Commonwealth to the top table of international politics, gifting a prestige born of a high standard of living combined with a renowned manufacturing and engineering base.
Harold Laski's academic, slightly dated style of leadership was in many ways a continuation of that seen under Stafford Cripps. Laski (right) is seen here with Jim Callaghan in 1946. Callaghan began his political career as an ally of Laski and was considered by some to be his protégé, though by 1950 he had split with the Popular Front leader over support for the Soviet Union.[1]
As Popular Front leader, Laski did not challenge this emergent consensus. Having come around to what he saw as the necessity of state control over the economy during the Thirties, during which time Oswald Mosley had laid the foundations for British economic orthodoxy in the middle portion of the Twentieth century, Laski found no quarrel with the basic supposition, held by Mosley and implemented by Boothby, that central planning represented the most efficient means of running a national economy. Indeed, after the disappearance of diplomatic anti-fascism as a key issue within the British political imagination after about 1945, it seemed as if there was little meaningful reason for the Popular Front to remain separate from the Party of Action. On most matters, the two coalition partners were in accord, and any divergences were of the trivial sort. Laski’s most pressing issue with the programme of the Party of Action in the second half of the 1940s was the growing rivalry between the Commonwealth and the Soviet Union, which, singularly amongst the British political elite at the time (by 1948 I discount the Stalinist CPGB from this group), the Popular Front considered as Britain’s most natural ally. Almost as an evolution of the original popular front doctrine, which stressed collaboration between democratic and leftist states against European fascism in the 1930s, Laski held on to a increasingly unfashionable internationalism at a time when bloc politics and regional alliances were fast becoming the norm.
This idealistic internationalist outlook only contributed to the idea of the Popular Front as a movement bereft of a real purpose as Britain moved into the second half of the Twentieth century. Unable to effect any shift in the government’s diplomatic policies, with Laski the sole PF representative in the Executive Committee and out of harm’s way at the Secretariat of Education, the party wrestled with calls to disband and merge with various other, more principled groups on either side. Chairman Mosley regretted the fact that he owed the Popular Front his majority in the legislature, which – in spite of numerous reforms aimed at reducing its urgency throughout the Thirties – still remained an issue for the government. Infamously, at this point the Party of Action held its lowest number of Assembly seats since Mosley came to power, having secured only 41 per-cent of the vote at the 1947 legislative elections. The main beneficiaries of this decline in ruling party support, unusually considering the general trend of coalition politics historically, had been the Popular Front, who took 101 seats – the highest total achieved by the party up until that point. With three years until the next election by the time of Laski’s accession to the leadership of the Popular Front, Mosley did not have the luxury of an advantage in dealing with his junior partners in government. Thus, like a bouquet of flowers kept on the mantelpiece long after their prime, the Popular Front remained in power.
It was an awkward fact of life more generally, as far as Mosley was concerned, that by the end of the Forties the People’s Assembly retained such a considerable hold over the integrity of his government. After coming to power in 1934, Mosley had led the charge to reform the Assembly in the wake of the trauma of the Troubles of 1933–34, during which time the Commonwealth was ravaged by fascist terrorism and the ruling Communist government was permanently ejected from power. Using the instability of the Troubles as a convenient wedge with which to drive open the issue of constitutional reform, which had lain reasonably settled since 1929, the Mosley reforms were thinly veiled attempts to curtails the influence of the Assembly upon the government of the Commonwealth, and thus shield the government from the vicissitudes of public opinion as expressed at the ballot box. The yearly elections introduced by the CPGB were done away with, replaced by a quadrennial system, and the frequency with which the Assembly itself sat was also limited. Much of the business of government was claimed by the Executive Committee, with the role of the Assembly reduced to one of oversight and ratification. So long as Mosley retained a majority of sympathetic Assembly members, he could remain in power.
This majority had seldom been in doubt after 1934, and was further shored up after the minor crisis of 1947 when the government instigated a campaign to suppress the influence of the Continuing Socialist Front, who were the Party of Action’s most consistent and influential opposition in the Assembly. In addition to this underhand campaign, Mosley saw an opportunity in 1949 to solve two problems in one stroke and appointed Aneurin Bevan to the Chairmanship of the Assembly to replace the technocratic loyalist John Strachey. Bevan, far more than Strachey, was a charismatic and energetic figure whose commitment was to socialism first and Mosley second. His appointment served Mosley well at a critical time, ensuring good relations with the majority of the Assembly against a backdrop of industrial unrest and still sluggish economic recovery after the devastating winter of 1946–47. At the same time, removing Bevan to the Assembly exiled arguably Mosley’s main rival at one of the Chairman’s most vulnerable moments in power.
Aneurin Bevan (centre-right), originally one of Mosley's firmest allies, found himself increasingly at odds with the Mosleyite leadership going into the 1950s. Centre-left in this photograph is Michael Foot, the editor of Popular Front journal Tribune between 1948–60.
Unfortunately for Mosley, an eagerness to palm off his rival did not allow for a full anticipation of the consequences of placing Bevan in the Assembly. The first half of the 1950s was a transitional period for the legislative opposition, and Bevan was to play a key part in it. A number of younger members of the Popular Front had been elected for the first time in 1947, largely coalescing around the party’s magazine Tribune, which had continued to champion a vigilant diplomatic stance against the conservative nations of Europe in the aftermath of the Anti-Fascist Wars, and which offered initially mild dissent from the Popular Front leadership’s acceptance of the Mosleyite economic consensus. I edited Tribune from 1948 until 1960, and found myself right in the thick of the emerging battle between the party’s two generations. This was led on the ground by David and Barbara Lewis, the rising star couple of the Popular Front movement known to detractors as ‘the power and the glory’. David Lewis was a fascinating figure, whose life had taken him from a shtetl in Byelorussia to Oxford University Labour club via a childhood in Canada, where he had been taught English by a Welshman and picked up the accent. Barbara was no less remarkable, having grown up in the north of England within the tradition of the Independent Labour Party before going to study at Oxford, where she met David, in the years after the Revolution. The three of us became close colleagues in the late Thirties and Forties, periodically writing for Tribune and doing sundry organising work for the Popular Front during the war years. We entered the Assembly together in 1947, and after 1949, increasingly dissatisfied with Laski’s overly academic approach to politics, came under the sway of Bevan.
For the next two years, until the 1951 election, we so-called ‘Tribunites’, occasionally aided and abetted by Bevanite members within the Party of Action, sought to develop an alternative programme to that offered by Laski and the party leadership. The main rift came over the Commonwealth’s Soviet policy, with which we saw no problem but which Laski continued to dissent from owing to his sympathies for Moscow. In our conception, the best course for peace in Europe was not a reawakening of old ties of supposed affinity between non-capitalist states in the East and West – for we contended that Soviet communism was as flawed in its own way as German capitalism – but rather the expansion of democracy within the syndicalist bloc as a means of building an independent, socialist Europe. We believed that Britain’s place in the world would be sustained working in accord with our partners in Europe, rather than by hewing close to the Soviets as they made inroads into Asia (as Laski wished) or by pursuing a doctrine of British exceptionalism (as was Mosley’s position). Meanwhile at home, we resolved that there was an immediate need for the democratisation of the Commonwealth’s governmental institutions. We were firmly against Mosley’s directorial approach, and favoured an enlarged role for the legislature in the process of government.
The 1951 election was a bump on the road to dominance within the party. In its worst result since 1935, the Popular Front captured less than 20 per-cent of the vote, losing ground mostly to the Party of Action, which had recovered from its nadir four years earlier. The majority of those to lose their seats were younger members of the party more sympathetic to the Tribunite cause. I was one such member, and four the next four years I devoted myself to the work of editing Tribune as a means of keeping up the energy of the debate for renewal in the party even with many reformists out of the Assembly. The Lewises held their seats, and further entrenched their position of influence among the reformist wing of the Assembly – both in the Popular Front and in the Party of Action, which was beginning to enter the earliest stages of what would later become the Mosleyite–Bevanite split. David Lewis in particular continued to establish himself as the de facto leader of the reformist group outside of government, and benefitted in this position from the gradual retirement of CSF leader Fenner Brockway, who had grown disillusioned with legislative politics after the death of George Orwell and the anti-CSF campaigns of the turn of the decade. The CSF held 140 seats after 1951, which, added to the number of dissenting votes from the Popular Front, put the membership of the reformist group at about 165. This was not enough to prevent Mosley’s reconfirmation vote from being anything other than a formality, as usual, but signalled that unease with the government’s programme had not been fully arrested by the authoritarian measures of the previous years.
David Lewis, leader of the 'Tribunite' reformist faction within the Popular Front.
In the winter of 1952, Harold Laski contracted influenza and came close to death. He was by this point still only 59 years old, but years of overwork were beginning to catch up with him. Laski recovered from the bout of influenza, but two years later, in March 1954, he suffered a fatal heart attack while on a tour of the new Institute of Science and Technology at the University of Manchester. Longtime Laski ally George Strauss was hurriedly installed as interim party leader while the Popular Front Assembly members convened to elect Laski’s permanent successor. 40 members were needed to secure the majority; by 1954, the Tribunites perhaps numbered 20. Nevertheless, while Mosley rushed to offer Strauss a seat on the Executive Council (Director of the Bureau of Transport and Infrastructure) as a means of securing some Popular Front support for his government, the Tribunites moved to secure the election of David Lewis as the next leader of the party. Strauss either underestimated, or perhaps was never fully aware of, the threat to his position, and did not canvass the membership with the vigour of the younger cohort, which was backed by Tribune and had the benefit of a distinct programme. Starting from an advantaged position, he was swept away by the Tribunite momentum and lost the contest by 43 votes to 36. This result exposed the scale of the division that wracked by Popular Front by 1954, and in the lead up to the 1955 election there was open talk of a split between the Tribunites and the newly-christened Governmentalists. Lewis worked to quell this growing insurrection, and moved to cement the Tribunite position by securing nominations for sympathetic candidates on the party list at the 1955 election. This strategy worked, and boosted by an upswing in popular support after 1955 the Popular Front held 94 seats, split roughly 60–34 in favour of the Tribunite position.
By the middle of the 1950s, the Popular Front had thus re-established itself as a party of purpose in the political landscape of the Commonwealth. No longer content to furnish Mosley’s government with uncritical support, it began to branch out into open opposition within the legislature. Nevertheless, the splits within the party did not vanish after David Lewis’s election, and between 1955–59 Lewis was forced to accept the fact that a significant minority of Popular Front Assembly members would continue to support the government. Moreover, he was deprived of a key ally after 1954 when, perhaps sensing the danger he posed exiled in the Assembly, Mosley recalled Bevan to the inner sanctum of the Executive Council, finally rewarding him with the job he had desired for over a decade: the Directorate of the Bureau of Domestic Affairs. Nevertheless, Mosley’s position was now looking increasingly less certain. Its majority sustained solely by the effective split in the Popular Front, between 1955–61 the Party of Action ruled as a minority – a fact which no constitutional chicanery could overcome. In light of this fact, the latter half of the 1950s would see a renewed focus on extra-parliamentary opposition as the major threat to the Mosley administration, leading to an increase in arrests for alleged political offences year on year between 1955–60.
Thus the story of the Popular Front under Harold Laski contains the seeds of the story of Oswald Mosley’s eventual exit from office, and his replacement as Chairman of the Executive Committee in 1961. It falls to the story of the Popular Front under David Lewis to describe this fall from power in more detail, but that story remains outside of the scope of this account.
--
((1: Unfortunately, I cannot find the identity of the woman on Callaghan's right.))
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What a grand, sweeping update, @DensleyBlair; at many stages one gets the impression of creaking political machinery as its operators fall apart (metaphorically and physically).
Chapeau on using David Lewis - I was only dimly familiar with him, but his life is indeed worthy of a film / novel / utterly filleted ITV4 drama.
Chapeau on using David Lewis - I was only dimly familiar with him, but his life is indeed worthy of a film / novel / utterly filleted ITV4 drama.
The Popular Front was giving off the impression of one of Putin’s ‘Loyal Opposition’ parties for a while there - good to see it starting to find some purpose of its own by the latter 1950s.
Do you have a record of the full election results during this period? I can’t remember if they’ve been posted previously.
Do you have a record of the full election results during this period? I can’t remember if they’ve been posted previously.
Thank you my friend! I am glad you got this particular impression; it was very much the object. Mosley of course was the ultimate beneficiary of the 'improvised' nature of the 1929 settlement, but his indifference towards actually fixing it at the time (why bother when you can juts tinker with it to suit your own ends?) is definitely coming back to bite him now.
Yes, a truly fascinating character. As soon as I came across him, and saw that he would have been in the UK around the time of the revolution, it seemed like a perfect fit. I'm not sure that the broadcasting authorities of the Commonwealth would allow something as privatised as 'Independent Television', but he'll no doubt have his CBC4 political thriller in decades to come.
The Popular Front under Cripps did at least have some purpose during the war, but this being their only real policy draw the organisation definitely faltered in peace time. This, unfortunately, was Laski's inheritance – and the professor was hardly the right man to make a go of fixing the situation. My own suspicion is that the Front continues to do relatively well at the ballot box because it is the closest thing Britain has to a social democratic party. Quite something with Marxists and Bundists in charge, of course, but for the most part its ranks are staffed by the people who OTL would become mainstream Labour figures. It's purpose by the Sixties will probably not look dissimilar to Croslandite social democracy, albeit with a residually greater scepticism of the Market.
I do, yes, though it's never been published in full. I will put a ledger up under this post.
List of elections to the People's Assembly of the British Commonwealth since 1947
—MAY 1947
Party of Action: 41.4% (186 seats) [-17]
Continuing Socialist Front: 29.9% (135 seats) [+3]
Popular Front: 22.4% (101 seats) [+8]
CPGB: 6.3% (28 seats) [+6]
Turnout: 37.6% (450 seats) [-2.5%]
PoA-PF coalition – majority of 124
—MAY 1951
PoA: 45.9% (207 seats) [+21]
CSF: 31.2% (140 seats) [+5]
PF: 17.6% (79 seats) [-22]
CPGB: 5.3% (24 seats) [-4]
Turnout: 42.3% (450 seats) [+4.7%]
PoA–PF coalition – majority of 122
—MAY 1955
PoA: 48.3% (217 seats) [+10]
PF: 30.9% (140 seats[1]) [+61]
CSF: 16.1% (72 seats) [-68]
CPGB: 4.7% (21 seats) [-3]
Turnout: 49.2% (450 seats) [+6.9%]
PoA minority; PF confidence and supply – nominal majority of 104
—MAY 1959
PoA: 46.1% (208 seats[2]) [-9]
PF: 34.4% (155 seats[3]) [+15]
Ind. Socialist: 17.0% (76 seats) [+4]
CPGB: 2.5% (11 seats) [-10]
Turnout: 54.6% (450 seats) [+5.4%]
Hung parliament; Mosleyite minority – minority of 20
—MAY 1963
LUPA[4]: 35.8% (161 seats) [-38]
PF: 30.6% (138 seats) [+3]
Ind. Socialist: 24.3% (109 seats) [+4]
GfA[5]: 7.1% (32 seats) [+32]
CPGB: 2.2% (10 seats) [-1]
Turnout: 65.6% (450 seats) [+11.0%]
LUPA–PF coalition – majority of 148
—MAY 1967
PF: 33.6% (202 seats) [+64]
LUPA: 30.0% (180 seats) [+18]
New Left Coalition: 26.9% (161 seats) [+52][6]
CPGB: 2.1% (13 seats) [+3]
Cymru Rydd[9]: 0.5% (3 seats) [New]
Turnout: 72.7% (600 seats) [+7.1%]
PF–LUPA coalition – majority of 164
NOTES
---------------
1: PF Assembly Members split roughly 80–60 between Tribunites and Governmentalists
2: PoA Assembly Members split roughly 160–48 between Mosleyites and Bevanites.
3: PF Assembly Members split roughly 100–55 between Tribunites and Governmentalists.
4: Labour–Unionist Party (Bevanite), continuing majority of the PoA.
5: Group for Action (Continuity Mosleyite), John Strachey and allies.
6: Left-opposition electoral alliance. Successor to the former Independent Socialist bloc.
7: Communist Party of the Commonwealth of Britain (Eurocommunist).
8: Communist Workers' Group (libertarian syndicalist).
9: 'Free Wales' (Welsh autonomist).
—MAY 1947
Party of Action: 41.4% (186 seats) [-17]
Continuing Socialist Front: 29.9% (135 seats) [+3]
Popular Front: 22.4% (101 seats) [+8]
CPGB: 6.3% (28 seats) [+6]
Turnout: 37.6% (450 seats) [-2.5%]
PoA-PF coalition – majority of 124
—MAY 1951
PoA: 45.9% (207 seats) [+21]
CSF: 31.2% (140 seats) [+5]
PF: 17.6% (79 seats) [-22]
CPGB: 5.3% (24 seats) [-4]
Turnout: 42.3% (450 seats) [+4.7%]
PoA–PF coalition – majority of 122
—MAY 1955
PoA: 48.3% (217 seats) [+10]
PF: 30.9% (140 seats[1]) [+61]
CSF: 16.1% (72 seats) [-68]
CPGB: 4.7% (21 seats) [-3]
Turnout: 49.2% (450 seats) [+6.9%]
PoA minority; PF confidence and supply – nominal majority of 104
—MAY 1959
PoA: 46.1% (208 seats[2]) [-9]
PF: 34.4% (155 seats[3]) [+15]
Ind. Socialist: 17.0% (76 seats) [+4]
CPGB: 2.5% (11 seats) [-10]
Turnout: 54.6% (450 seats) [+5.4%]
Hung parliament; Mosleyite minority – minority of 20
—MAY 1963
LUPA[4]: 35.8% (161 seats) [-38]
PF: 30.6% (138 seats) [+3]
Ind. Socialist: 24.3% (109 seats) [+4]
GfA[5]: 7.1% (32 seats) [+32]
CPGB: 2.2% (10 seats) [-1]
Turnout: 65.6% (450 seats) [+11.0%]
LUPA–PF coalition – majority of 148
—MAY 1967
PF: 33.6% (202 seats) [+64]
LUPA: 30.0% (180 seats) [+18]
New Left Coalition: 26.9% (161 seats) [+52][6]
– New Socialist Front: 17.2% (103 seats)
– CPCB[7]: 7.3% (44 seats)
– CWG[8]: 2.4% (14 seats)
GfA: 6.9% (41 seats) [+9]CPGB: 2.1% (13 seats) [+3]
Cymru Rydd[9]: 0.5% (3 seats) [New]
Turnout: 72.7% (600 seats) [+7.1%]
PF–LUPA coalition – majority of 164
NOTES
---------------
1: PF Assembly Members split roughly 80–60 between Tribunites and Governmentalists
2: PoA Assembly Members split roughly 160–48 between Mosleyites and Bevanites.
3: PF Assembly Members split roughly 100–55 between Tribunites and Governmentalists.
4: Labour–Unionist Party (Bevanite), continuing majority of the PoA.
5: Group for Action (Continuity Mosleyite), John Strachey and allies.
6: Left-opposition electoral alliance. Successor to the former Independent Socialist bloc.
7: Communist Party of the Commonwealth of Britain (Eurocommunist).
8: Communist Workers' Group (libertarian syndicalist).
9: 'Free Wales' (Welsh autonomist).
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Turnout remains truly abysmal. Amazing that you’ve got roughly half the number of voters going to the polls as in OTL Britain in the same period.
Yeah, Mosley's got a fairly considerable legitimacy problem if anyone actually cares to look. Fortunately for him, there's not much to be done about it.
(Yet.)
A very unsatisfying series of developments if you are Moseley.
And a fascinating update
And a fascinating update
Thank you. The screws are certainly beginning to tighten on our Oswald.
_______________________________
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.
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An interesting side note. Can't say I really knew much about Moseley post-war, but cannot say I am surprised.
Thanks. The war all but destroyed the appeal of an out-and-out fascist party, so Mosley had to content himself with hitching his wagon to slightly odd causes on the far-right (like pan-European white nationalism), but nothing revived his fortunes and he spent the majority of his life after 1951 living abroad in disgrace. In 1968 he wrote My Life, which this time last year I had the joy of trying to wade through (the early bits at least). As one might expect, it is an incredibly self-serving book that attempts to airbrush out pretty much every association he ever had with paid-up fascists and anti-semites. All the more grim when you consider that by this point he was associating himself with people like David Irving.
Thank you, glad to have you on board. The Red Adder bit is very fun, if I do say so myself (it was a lot of fun to write, at least). There will be another episode in due course.
__________________________________
The next update revisits the fortunes of the left opposition as Mosley tightens his net. I'll probably try and get it out over the weekend. (Possibly contingent on whether or not Aston Villa get relegated. We'll see how I'm feeling.)
I remember seeing a couple of years back someone posting an interview with him from the 1970s. He was convinced that the Queen was considering calling upon him to become PM and form a Ministry of All-Talents that would break the parliamentary deadlock of the era and take Britain out of its period of crisis.
Wow
From conqueror to hero
MacArthur has achieved a lot of renown in Nippon. I also loved the whole description of Japan's ruined industry
Good Chapter
Also thank you very much for liking my AAR
From conqueror to hero
MacArthur has achieved a lot of renown in Nippon. I also loved the whole description of Japan's ruined industry
Good Chapter
Also thank you very much for liking my AAR
I'm enjoying this immensely. Robert Owen being referenced, on the ground communist revolt, ideological purity debate ruining things, secret fascists on both sides, shading on everyone's obsession with superpowered canada and several Red versions of middle class pop culture like the Archers and Blackadder. Very good.