My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyMy speech on the Birmingham proposals in August 1925 concluded with an analysisof Mr. Churchill's policy of returning to the gold standard, which added something toKeynesian theory. Foreseeing the disastrous effect that the policy would have on themining industry, which led nine months later to the General Strike, the speechincluded a stringent attack on Mr. Churchill's effort 'to base this gold standard uponpre-war parity with the dollar. This effort has involved the policy of drastic deflationwhich since the war has immensely increased the burden of the National Debt, andhas proportionately benefited every idle rentier at the expense of the worker by handor brain in productive industry.. .. Faced with the alternative of saying good-bye to thegold standard and therefore to his own employment, or good-bye to other people'semployment, Mr. Churchill characteristically selected the latter course.' This was areference to Mr. Churchill's recent return to the bosom of the Conservative Party asChancellor of the Exchequer, which put him in a weak position to challenge the Cityof London, the Treasury view, or the Party in general by refusing to return to the goldstandard.I continued: 'A further dose of deflation followed, and the result is faithfully reflectedin the unemployment figures, precisely as we foretold'—and then quoted Keynessaying that he estimated on this occasion the Conservative 'manipulation of the valueof sterling is calculated to benefit the rentier class to the tune of £1,000,000,000 andto increase the real wealth of the owners of War Bonds by £750,000,000, which sumexactly wipes out our laborious efforts at debt redemption since the war'. I then addedmy own analysis of Mr. Churchill's 'defence of this policy, which he says has no moreto do with wages and unemployment than the Gulf Stream'. This now historicpronouncement must surely rank with his father's question—'What are these damneddots?' when confronted for the first time with the mysteries of the decimal system—asthe two most remarkable observations ever to issue from the Treasury through twoChancellors of the Exchequer. Across the gulf of years father and son were at one intheir monumental ignorance.However, my speech ignored the self-evident fact that these were the days of theamateur and went on to deal in detail with the effect of the Birmingham proposals onthe export trade. The argument showed an acute awareness of the detrimental effecton exports produced by an artificial appreciation of the exchange, and of thestimulating effect of a depreciation accompanied by planning and executive action toprevent a corresponding rise in the internal price-level; points which were notgenerally grasped until a much later period. National planning based on a combinationof monetary manipulation and executive action on a great scale was proposed, leavingthe whole industrial field open to a stimulated private enterprise while it served thenational interest in responding to a larger home market and to export opportunity.This policy challenged fundamentally the old socialist concept of the dead hand ofbureaucracy taking over a few selected industries in step-by-step nationalisation.In the same speech I suggested a floating exchange-rate combined with some of theexecutive measures already described, arguing its benefits in a passage which hasconsiderable relevance to the modern situation of Britain.1 'If we still failed to findforeign markets for our exports and we continued to receive more imports, theexchange would tend to depreciate. If then our measures were successful inpreventing a rise in domestic prices, imports would be automatically checked andexports would be stimulated in the manner already described. The correct trade154 of 424