My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyBains. In Paris, our somnambulist was hypnotised afresh, and an astonished worldlearned, through a disgraceful communique, that where ... a difference . . . betweenright and wrong had existed, now, his view of the changed situation, no divergence ofview existed; and from that moment we have drifted on, helpless, impotent, andderided of the nations . . . while the Prime Minister assuaged our fears and those ofmankind with little sanctimonious sermons about his duty, his admirable intentions,the policy that was always about to be initiated, which, in fact, was a policy of driftbuoyed up by drivel.'That is the record of this Government—a record which by insensate foreign policyand administrative blundering has added to our miseries of unemployment, a policywhich leaves us a ghastly heritage of slums, starvation, and suffering in our midst.The handiwork of this Government is written all over the map of our country in thecharacters of human anguish. For my part, if I gave one vote to keep in power for onenight such a Government, I should feel that I deserved to be drummed out withignominy from the great army of progress. . . .'Let us substitute another policy which does not wait in sycophantic adulation,punctuated by snarls, upon any individual or upon any country, but which defines apolicy of our own, pro-British, pro-European, and pro-humanity. Let us be theenemies of no country, but the friends of all peoples, the unflinching opponents of anypolicy that is the enemy of mankind. . . . In all lands there is a revival of theprogressive spirit today. In every country the forces of progress are looking to ourland to give a lead. We shall achieve this not by quarrelling with any country, but byrallying those forces ... in all the lands to the banner of progress, and that banner mustbe raised by some country and some people. There is the opportunity lying in thehands of this Parliament, in the overwhelming majority of this Parliament, of one ofthe greatest missions which historic destiny has ever imposed on the people of thiscountry ... of placing itself at the head of the peoples of Europe and leading them onthe great march back from those dark lands of suffering and sorrow in which we havesojourned so long... to lead the peoples of the world in re-establishing a system ofjustice, of reconciliation, of peace upon earth'.A fine Conservative character, Francis Curzon, the racing motorist, afterwards LordHowe, followed me in the debate and observed that he was not surprised to find memaking this speech from the bench next to two revolutionary members from the Clyde.He was right, for it was the Clydeside group under Maxton and Wheatley who almostalone among leading members of the Labour Party at that time were sincere in theirdetermination to carry out the programme for which the rank and file of the party hadworked so hard. He might well have expressed surprise at my ingenuousness inbelieving there was even a shadow of hope that these things could be done by a partyunder the leadership of Messrs. MacDonald, Snowden and Thomas.My path now led inevitably to the Labour Party. 'Through and beyond the failure ofmen and of parties, we of the war generation are marching on,' and the only hope ofimplementing any of the pledges now lay in the party which had been thrown up bythe mass of the people to right their wrongs. It is true that Lloyd George was myoriginal leader on the Left, until he fell in 1922 and formed his own Liberal Party, buthe was then in isolation and in no position to do anything creative. At that time I didnot know him personally and it seemed more practical to ally myself with the party144 of 424