My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleylarge devaluation without all the competitors threatening to do the same. But thesewere early days in this financial game of leger de main, and I was quite precocious tospot its possibilities.My stand against the Conservative policy of that time may seem a considerableinconsistency with my later advocacy of an Empire insulated from the fluctuations ofworld markets, and later still of a European economic system organised on the samebasic principle, and it is true that this appears to be the main deviation from the usualstraight line of my continually developing thinking. Yet protection in a small islandwhich contains a few of the necessary foodstuffs and hardly any of its industrial rawmaterials is a very different thing from an empire containing nearly all of theserequisites, or a united Europe which, together with its related overseas lands, can be inthe same position. A certain degree of insulation from the world can be an advantageto an organism large enough to be capable of effective self-containment, but it is verydifficult for a small economy bound to compete on world markets in order to buywhat it lacks. However, the main influence which turned me from the classiceconomics to a more autarchic concept for the organisation of the British Empire—until that possibility was lost at the time of the Second World War— andsubsequently to my later thinking on similar lines in relation to a united Europe, wasundoubtedly my visit to America in 1925. This experience combined with the ruin ofLancashire and Yorkshire to inspire the concept of an economic system big enough tobe viable, largely insulated from disruptive world competition, and by reason of thatimmunity permitting within its ample borders the undisturbed application of moderneconomics and monetary techniques. In a general form, this idea was perhapsanticipated in the phrase 'imperial socialism' during my first election of 1918.These wider and deeper considerations were remote from Mr. Baldwin's plunge at the1923 election into the old, crude Conservative protection of industrial inefficiency,which was accompanied as usual by still cruder forms of electioneering. My retorts toConservative hecklers at the big meetings of those days still make lively reading, but Ialso attempted a fairly reasoned argument. Once again, however, the Conservativesbrought up their big guns, and in the barrage and counter-fire the pale ghost of reasonsoon fled. The Conservative howitzer was Lord Birkenhead, and the shooting bothways soon became heavy. In the course of a somewhat intemperate oration in a localschoolroom, the former Lord Chancellor described me as the 'perfumed popinjay ofscented boudoirs', who was consequently an unsuitable representative in Parliamentfor the matrons of Harrow and their respectable spouses. They might well havethought that Lord Birkenhead ought to know—although they did not accept hisadvice—for it was only a little later that the merry tale was running through thelobbies about someone approaching Mr. Baldwin with the suggestion that LordBirkenhead should join his administration, only to be met with the sardonic rejoinder:'F.E. says we are a ministry of faithful husbands, and I think we will remain one.I need not have been so surprised at this assault on me, because F.E. was previouslyreported—when visiting the constituency of Winston Churchill during their period ofmost intimate friendship—to have opened his speech with the remark: 'I learn fromthe Dundee Advertiser—the journal, not the politician . . .'. Yet in a surge of youthfulindignation I took umbrage at this reference to me from a man much my senior, butwhom I regarded as a friend. The 'scented boudoirs' was a supportable reflection, asfor a period on my return from the war I had felt that such an ambiance was a141 of 424