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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.

That does sound about right. No doubt he thought he'd be called upon once MI5 had finally put Mountbatten in charge…

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

Thanks mad orc! I'm very glad KH agreed to come on board for the US updates. It's opened up a whole new dimension to the timeline.

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.

Thank you very much. I've enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) writing it, so always happy to hear when people get something out of it. I am also a sucker for pop culture rewrites, so always happy when I can pull those off.
 
Right then lads. Aston Villa have escaped from the jaws of certain relegation and I’ve just taken my first breath in about three hours. Once the adrenaline’s worn off how’s about a celebratory look at the sorry plight of the Left Opposition?
 
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A Shadow Over the Future: Socialist Youth after Orwell (1950–52)
ECHOES%20HEADER.jpg



A SHADOW OVER THE FUTURE
SOCIALIST YOUTH AFTER ORWELL

BERTHA SOKOLOFF
SEARCHLIGHT, 1977


The events surrounding the drafting of George Orwell’s infamous “list” have remained notorious among a certain section of the Left in this country over the past two decades. We cannot be sure what, exactly, took place on that dark November evening, when the dying Orwell was visited in hospital by a man and woman claiming to be national organisers for Socialist Youth, sent by Fenner Brockway. What we are sure of is that the meeting, whatever occurred and whoever it may have been between, was a disaster for the extra-parliamentary Left. In a state of tuberculosis-induced delirium, Orwell divulged the names of something like 150 Socialist Youth organisers from all across the country, apparently believing that he was assisting in the work of ensuring the continuity of national organisation after his imminent death. Those named ranged from veteran CSF members to a fairly random collection of volunteers Orwell remembered from encounters over the years. Within months after his death, the vast majority of these people were apparently under investigation by the Bureau of Domestic Intelligence, and a significant number would at one point or another find themselves apprehended or otherwise detained by agents of the state security service. In the face of this persistent hostility, Socialist Youth found it almost impossible to maintain a functioning organisational structure, and the movement folded before the end of 1952.

It was an ignoble end for an organisation that had flowered in the first years of the Commonwealth, and come of age during the heroic struggle of the war in Spain. What had made the demise of SY necessary in the eyes of the Mosleyite regime? Predictably, the answers are entirely political. Since he captured the chairmanship of the Executive Committee in 1934, and with it established the political dominance of the Party of Action, Oswald Mosley had endeavoured to refashion the Commonwealth from a socialist workers’ republic into a non-political state oriented around labour. Perhaps recognising the precariousness of his position in the years after the Troubles of 1933–34, in the late Thirties and Forties Mosley adopted a strategy that aimed to position the Party of Action as a non-partisan ‘natural party of government’, in sharp contrast to the ‘chaotic’ operation of the previously dominant Communist Party of Great Britain. Astonishingly, this strategy was at first a great success, and the British people generally took to Mosley and his party as defenders of the national order. Mosley was helped, as he surely had predicted, by the support of numerous groups within the non-emigrant middle classes who had been alienated from participation in public life during the Communist years. A champion of bourgeois class collaborationism, Mosley was hugely popular in Middle England, who appreciated his stance against the Communists just as much as his stance against the Fascisti.



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Chairman Mosley in 1950, his reputation as a revolutionary hero significantly dulled after twenty years in power.


Nevertheless, by the late Forties, Mosley’s aspirations at ‘natural government’ began to backfire. His support stagnated and crystallised around a strange coalition of bourgeois Middle Englanders and dynamic technocrats, often surviving allies from the heady days of the Revolution who more often than not were traitors to an upper-class background. Meanwhile, the mainstream opposition – subdued into compliance after the Troubles – re-emerged and consolidated itself against Mosley’s increasingly directorial approach to government. By the time of the 1947 legislative election, voter turnout was at its lowest ebb since the June election in 1929 (for context, the second in the space of five months that year). Unfortunately for the Chairman, this did not signal a trickling away of the opposition; it was Mosley’s support that was diminishing, neutralised by a growing complacency as it became clear that the government’s position was not under threat. After 1947, this apathy among the electorate was compounded by the government’s poor performance in dealing with a harsh winter and the worst period of industrial unrest since the Revolution. From Mosley’s perspective, it was clear that something had to change – and fast.

Thus the Chairman set about on a campaign to try and hamstring his opposition. While extra-parliamentary opposition remained almost unseen by the late Forties, Mosley continued to be plagued very visibly by the Continuing Socialist Front – previously the United Socialist Front – who had been the largest opposition party in every meeting of the Assembly since 1935. Before Mosley’s rise to power, the USF had emerged out of the workers’ alliance that had delivered the Revolution, comprising the significant constituency of revolutionaries won over neither by Mosley nor, via his British mouthpiece, Stalin. After Mosley’s centralising reforms in the wake of the Troubles, the USF had reformulated itself as the Continuing Socialist Front, the name an explicit evocation of the Front’s revolutionary heritage. Hence the party presented a very direct challenge not only to Mosley’s conception of himself as the natural leader of the Commonwealth, but also his image as a heroic leader of the Revolution. The existence of the CSF was a reminder that the revolutionary constituency did not belong to Mosley, and that he was in many ways a usurper.



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Young socialists marching against nuclear weapons in Berkshire, 1952. The detonation of atomic weaponry by US forces in Korea in 1950 cast a long shadow over the rest of the decade, and coloured the character of the young leftist movement in the Commonwealth.


Since 1929, non-socialist political parties had been proscribed by law according to the constitution of the Commonwealth. The Mosley Reforms did not alter this proscription, and so there was no legal recourse for Mosley to ban the CSF outright, which perhaps would have been the simplest method of achieving his goal of unchallenged supremacy – if likely to spark a renewed period of civil unrest. Fortunately from Mosley’s point of view, the CSF operated as an organisation of multiple branches. After 1934, the CSF had taken over the running of most Socialist Youth branches around the country, newly independent in the absence of support from the state-Communist apparatus. During the Spanish War, the party also established the group United Socialists Against Fascism, led by George Orwell, which coordinated the majority of Britain’s grassroots support for Republican Spain. USAF had dissolved of its own accord in 1945, its role increasingly unclear as Commonwealth involvement in the global war against fascism slipped further and further into the realm of geopolitical expediency. Socialist Youth, however, continued to go from strength to strength during the 1940s. By 1950, a whole generation had grown up attending SY social events, playing sports with SY teams and learning skills in community organising from SY volunteers. Faced with the prospect of his own support dwindling, Mosley looked on in envy as the CSF reaped the rewards of a formidable grassroots operation. He soon came to the conclusion that the Party of Action needed to move in and colonise this rich territory for itself.

To do this, the government first needed to displace Socialist Youth – no easy task. But on this occasion Mosley had fate on his side. George Orwell, who continued to lead the extra-parliamentary wing of the CSF, was gravely ill at the end of the 1940s, and it was clear that he would not be around to oversee the work of SY going into the next decade. Between them, Orwell and parliamentary leader Fenner Brockway foresaw this eventuality; the pair drew up a plan that would see the parliamentary party consolidated under Brockway’s leadership, with grassroots activity devolved to regional organisers. Sensing Mosley’s intentions, this was an explicit attempt to make it harder for the government to co-opt the SY in one fell swoop. What Orwell and Brockway had not anticipated were the lengths to which Mosley and his government would go to secure the demise of the youth movement. The CSF leaders had been subject to the attention of the Bureau of Domestic Intelligence ever since the Spanish War, and the government soon became aware of the plans. Thus, exploiting Orwell’s deteriorating condition, the state was able to extract the information its desired and thus gain the advantage.



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Orwell at work in 1945.


Fenner Brockway learnt of Orwell’s infamous letter two days later, when he went to visit his friend in hospital for himself. Brockway recounted in his diary how Orwell had been in a generally poor state, but was eager to assure Brockway that the SY organisers had visited and that he had given them the information they needed. Brockway was confused, and initially attempted to explain that he hadn’t sent anyone to collect any information – though he soon realised what had happened and kept quiet, apparently to spare the dying Orwell the truth. After he left the hospital that afternoon, Brockway made a number of phone calls to several prominent organisers urging them to be vigilant. A small handful fled the country, either to Ireland or to France. Most were harassed over the next few months and arrested at the slightest excuse. Nearly one hundred people ended up in prison, usually on dubious or inflated charges.

By 1952, Socialist Youth had all but disappeared from public view. Most branches were quickly subsumed by Mosley’s new group, Youth Action, which had been formed in 1950 as a state-sponsored group for the coordination of youth clubs across the Commonwealth. Aimed at children aged 8 to 17, Youth Action was less focused on social activity within a local community and more focused on facilitating outdoor pursuits and instilling a respect for the institutions of the Commonwealth. Members wore a uniform in the colours of the Party of Action, black and gold, and branches were organised according to a distinct hierarchy. Writing about the usurpation of their local group by Youth Action, one former Socialist Youth volunteer described their feeling that “the youth of the Commonwealth have been robbed of their joy, and offered instead entry into a joyless cult that casts a dark shadow over the future.”

Yet while Socialist Youth was displaced, it did not disappear entirely. Underground associations continued to exist after 1952, with former volunteers and members alike coming together to hold lectures and social events out of the view of the authorities. Most notorious were the illegal dance parties held up and down the country from the mid-Fifties onwards, where crowds would gather in houses, shop basements and even empty farm buildings to listen to jazz and folk music. Attendees wore loose clothes and sported informal hair styles – a direct challenge to the strict standards of dress and grooming encouraged by Youth Action. It was out of this countercultural underground jazz scene that the Partisan Coffee House would emerge in 1958, and it is entirely possible (as has been shown by Stuart Hall and others) to trace the development of the Partisan movement of the late Fifties and Sixties back to the suppression of Socialist Youth at the start of the decade. It is particularly telling that Fenner Brockway himself, disillusioned by legislative politics after 1952, was drawn increasingly towards anti-authoritarian and anti-imperialist movements as the Fifties progressed. He emerged at the end of the decade as one of the Partisan movement’s strongest supporters, and was a key figure in the formation of New Left.



1950s%20SOHO%20JAZZ.gif

A jazz dance party in Soho in the early Fifties, of the type frequented by young socialists.


Driven underground, Socialist Youth did not simply turn into an excuse for dancing, however. Evidence of the SY organisational structure can be found in the minor resurgence of informal mutual aid groups, as seen for example during the Revolution a generation before, against the backdrop of an overheated economy towards the end of the 1950s. With formal worker power weakened after a decade of managerialism and Mosley’s ongoing battles with the unions, the SY generation continued to practice community aid and volunteering as they had a decade before. These efforts were sometimes subject to disruption by members of Youth Action, who were taught above all that the government was responsible for the welfare of the people of the Commonwealth. Infamously, the end of the 1950s saw a handful of street battles between Youth Action and countercultural youth groups. (A fuller examination of these incidents of unrest falls outside of my immediate scope, but is necessary to understand the role of youth organisation in the end of the Mosleyite regime.)

The story of Socialist Youth after 1950 is therefore representative of the wider story of Mosley’s Britain during the Fifties. Threatened by an increasingly complex coalition of opposed interests, Mosley led a heightened effort to suppress internal dissent and establish the supremacy of the Party of Action over all aspects of political life in the Commonwealth. As politics bled out of the Assembly and the Executive Committee and into the streets, the factories and the dancehalls, this necessitated an equivalent expansion of the remit of the Party of Action. Having failed – or perhaps succeeded too well – in its ambition to become a non-partisan ‘natural party of government’, the Party of Action was required to transform itself into a totalising political machine in order to retain control over the majority opinion in Britain. Using a combination of political tricks, internal espionage and outright violent tactics, Mosley secured his position at the expense of his former popularity – and certainly at the expense of the original spirit of the Revolution.

At the start of the 1950s, Mosley had seen off two of his biggest rivals: the unions, and the mainstream socialist opposition. By the end of the decade, his position had become unsustainable and his departure from public life was imminent. For those not in the government’s favour, the years in between were some of the darkest in the history of modern Britain. But outside of the view of the state, those who found themselves victims of Mosley’s persecution established new networks of solidarity and resistance. These would become key not only in securing Mosley’s demise in 1961, but eight years later in winning an even greater victory for the liberty of all people in the Commonwealth of Britain.
 
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Congratulation on survival yesterday ;).

Have we been told what happens in 1969 or have I just forgotten? :p

Love the idea of Youth Action and Socialist Youth creating two alternate youth subcultures going into the 50s. We were all either a YA or SY youth - I know which one I was :p.
 
Congratulation on survival yesterday ;).

Thanks. :p It's done wonders for my blood pressure.

Have we been told what happens in 1969 or have I just forgotten? :p

No, that one is being kept firmly under wraps for now. Your memory is quite alright.

Love the idea of Youth Action and Socialist Youth creating two alternate youth subcultures going into the 50s. We were all either a YA or SY youth - I know which one I was :p.

Yes, having spent the past year sitting in libraries with Stuart Hall CCCS books I could hardly resist turning that into useful knowledge and putting some hint of it into the timeline. :p The youth stuff will get more of a treatment going into the Sixties.
 
Gently sliding into authoritarian regime. Hopefully when mksely gets gently kicked out, this will get better. So long as the underground youth movement surives however, they can emerge at the end of the sixties, go nuts for a bit then carry on the revolution themselves.
 
The story of Socialist Youth after 1950 is therefore representative of the wider story of Mosley’s Britain during the Fifties. Threatened by an increasingly complex coalition of opposed interests, Mosley led a heightened effort to suppress internal dissent and establish the supremacy of the Party of Action over all aspects of political life in the Commonwealth. As politics bled out of the Assembly and the Executive Committee and into the streets, the factories and the dancehalls, this necessitated an equivalent expansion of the remit of the Party of Action. Having failed – or perhaps succeeded too well – in its ambition to become a non-partisan ‘natural party of government’, the Party of Action was required to transform itself into a totalising political machine in order to retain control over the majority opinion in Britain. Using a combination of political tricks, internal espionage and outright violent tactics, Mosley secured his position at the expense of his former popularity – and certainly at the expense of the original spirit of the Revolution.


At the start of the 1950s, Mosley had seen off two of his biggest rivals: the unions, and the mainstream socialist opposition. By the end of the decade, his position had become unsustainable and his departure from public life was imminent. For those not in the government’s favour, the years in between were some of the darkest in the history of modern Britain. But outside of the view of the state, those who found themselves victims of Mosley’s persecution established new networks of solidarity and resistance. These would become key not only in securing Mosley’s demise in 1961, but eight years later in winning an even greater victory for the liberty of all people in the Commonwealth of Britain.

I don't know, I am struck with two distinct (and actually contrasting) thoughts reading all this; a sort of parallel with the real 1950s, of fading old men and a restless youth, a sort of post-Suez and pre-Profumo 'land of lost content' vibe, brilliantly done.

My second point (which doesn't necessarily match my first) is that the whole thing is a powder keg and a blunder by the Government will cause uproar.

Yes, having spent the past year sitting in libraries with Stuart Hall CCCS books I could hardly resist turning that into useful knowledge and putting some hint of it into the timeline. :p The youth stuff will get more of a treatment going into the Sixties.

Time now for 'using random stuff from my uni days' style comments...
 
My second point (which doesn't necessarily match my first) is that the whole thing is a powder keg and a blunder by the Government will cause uproar.

That's why I'm thinking second wave of revolution, probably mirrored on the continent and leading to a wave of more international socialism abroad (in Europe especially between the sydicalist powers, but also in former colonies that the youth views as equals and allies rather than former possessions to be vassalised) and more powerful worker unions at home.
 
Gently sliding into authoritarian regime. Hopefully when mksely gets gently kicked out, this will get better. So long as the underground youth movement surives however, they can emerge at the end of the sixties, go nuts for a bit then carry on the revolution themselves.

Yes that's it. Let Mosley shuffle off into whatever constitutes 'retirement' for an ageing corporatist dictator, then hope his successors don't bungle things too much so as to upend the whole project.

I don't know, I am struck with two distinct (and actually contrasting) thoughts reading all this; a sort of parallel with the real 1950s, of fading old men and a restless youth, a sort of post-Suez and pre-Profumo 'land of lost content' vibe, brilliantly done.

I think this is true, and I should say that my general ethos for this timeline is that is is basically a warped mirror to our own c20 Britain. @99KingHigh and I have spent more than a few evenings discussing just how vital it is that Europe essentially retains its self-confidence in this case, not having 'suffered' the ignominy of American (and, more's to the point, Soviet) rescue from the clutches of Naziism. This of course implies a whole different response to the sort of faded glory that rolls around with the 1950s – and a whole different character to the 'fading' itself. Without Suez, other crises will come to assume a far greater importance in terms of destroying the national psyche. (More on those soon.)

I suppose it's also pertinent to note that the 'lost content' will be quite different depending on who is imagining it. For the fading old men, it was probably last found some time around 1945. For the younger lot, it arguably never existed at all.

My second point (which doesn't necessarily match my first) is that the whole thing is a powder keg and a blunder by the Government will cause uproar.

This is a very astute observation.

Time now for 'using random stuff from my uni days' style comments...

Nothing says getting your thirty-grand's worth like putting all that precious knowledge to work in a 200,000 word geopolitical fan fiction you share for free with semi-strangers on the internet.

That's why I'm thinking second wave of revolution, probably mirrored on the continent and leading to a wave of more international socialism abroad (in Europe especially between the sydicalist powers, but also in former colonies that the youth views as equals and allies rather than former possessions to be vassalised) and more powerful worker unions at home.

There are only so many times I can coyly say no spoilers before coming to the conclusion that you have actually read my notes. Hopefully this is the result of decent world-building rather than cliched plotting.
 
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There are only so many times I can coyly say no spoilers before coming to the conclusion that you have actually read my notes. Hopefully this is the result of decent world-building rather than cliched plotting.

Now you know the reason why I usually screw around in the comments rather than serious analysing.
 
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Now you know the reason why I usually screw around in the comments rather than serious analysing.

Eh, I’ve pinned my colours pretty firmly to the “tell you where we’re heading and hope the journey is interesting” school of storytelling anyway, so I actually can’t talk really. I do appreciate the analysis.

The other saving grace is that I have barely plotted beyond the Sixties, so until I get to work on laying out the sequel that remains a mystery even to me.
 
Eh, I’ve pinned my colours pretty firmly to the “tell you where we’re heading and hope the journey is interesting” school of storytelling anyway, so I actually can’t talk really. I do appreciate the analysis.

The other saving grace is that I have barely plotted beyond the Sixties, so until I get to work on laying out the sequel that remains a mystery even to me.

I wouldn't worry too much about spoilers. It doesn’t have to happen but it's a natural progression of syndicated states to then form an international union of at least some binding economic agreement. After all, the whole point is making sure Labour is fair, equitable and worthwhile, which cannot happen in a global market unless everyone is protected. Aside from logic and economic/poltical reality, after a certain point peoplr are going to push for the rest of the capitalist world to join them, since it is rather hard to enjoy living in a wokrer owned state when most of humanity is enslaved by capitalists. It'll start with Europe and the liberated colonies but soon people will start to recall the dominions who left and fell under monarchist control and dominated by the old elite. After that, its only a matter of time before they pressure for something to be done.
 
I wouldn't worry too much about spoilers. It doesn’t have to happen but it's a natural progression of syndicated states to then form an international union of at least some binding economic agreement. After all, the whole point is making sure Labour is fair, equitable and worthwhile, which cannot happen in a global market unless everyone is protected. Aside from logic and economic/poltical reality, after a certain point peoplr are going to push for the rest of the capitalist world to join them, since it is rather hard to enjoy living in a wokrer owned state when most of humanity is enslaved by capitalists. It'll start with Europe and the liberated colonies but soon people will start to recall the dominions who left and fell under monarchist control and dominated by the old elite. After that, its only a matter of time before they pressure for something to be done.

Yes I certainly think so. And once the US finally cashes in on the good luck it’s owed after a string of terrible presidents, we can have ourselves some nice bilateral talks between the capitalist world and the syndicalist world and get more or less nicely set on the road to a decent internationalism. Until Washington decides it needs more oil, at least.
 
Yes I certainly think so. And once the US finally cashes in on the good luck it’s owed after a string of terrible presidents, we can have ourselves some nice bilateral talks between the capitalist world and the syndicalist world and get more or less nicely set on the road to a decent internationalism. Until Washington decides it needs more oil, at least.

The value of oil is debatable in the new world here. Fewer personal vehicles. Lots of trains. No haulage on roads at all (in europe anyway)...but much bigger navies in the world and longer wars.

Shouldn't be a problem for the UK when they find the north sea beds but can see oil becoming a problem in other areas. Indeed, the middle east is going to be a huge problem since the point of doom for that area was Versailles 1918 which already happened before POD. Unless the communists supporred a ton of work and coups around the place...
 
The value of oil is debatable in the new world here. Fewer personal vehicles. Lots of trains. No haulage on roads at all (in europe anyway)...but much bigger navies in the world and longer wars.

Not a bad situation on balance.

Shouldn't be a problem for the UK when they find the north sea beds but can see oil becoming a problem in other areas. Indeed, the middle east is going to be a huge problem since the point of doom for that area was Versailles 1918 which already happened before POD. Unless the communists supporred a ton of work and coups around the place...

The Middle East is going to be the sticking point. Syndicalist influence is lingering from the Thirties but murkily defined by this stage. If (when) the US decides to make itself a player in the region, things are probably going to break down sharpish.
 
Is the CBC still the biggest network in the world? Wonder how everyone feels about that institution in ttl. Great national resource though.
 
Is the CBC still the biggest network in the world? Wonder how everyone feels about that institution in ttl. Great national resource though.

The CBC is still going strong and is probably of comparable size to the otl BBC. Its reputation outside of Western Europe and the former colonies is probably marred by its overt links with the Mosley regime, but it’s still a formidable producer of journalistic and entertainment media.
 
The CBC is still going strong and is probably of comparable size to the otl BBC. Its reputation outside of Western Europe and the former colonies is probably marred by its overt links with the Mosley regime, but it’s still a formidable producer of journalistic and entertainment media.

That'll be a big pusher of internationalism just by existing, never mind the content from everywhere on earth. Wonder how and when tv became big however, since there's no coronation to boost sales so everyone has to have one. Maybe space race stuff?
 
That'll be a big pusher of internationalism just by existing, never mind the content from everywhere on earth. Wonder how and when tv became big however, since there's no coronation to boost sales so everyone has to have one. Maybe space race stuff?

I think Commonwealth economic policy will probably ensure every house does it’s bit to support the British electronics industry, but aside from that I would say the World Cups probably help before we get to spacey stuff. Nothing like a football final to get everyone around the box.
 
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Amercia isn't going to like this. The world's sport ran by a group of communist associations, as are the Olympics, the worlds largest media network and so on. With the Pacific heating up, the last straw may well be the austrlaians moving further left as well.