My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyessence of the Birmingham proposals. External market relations were to be preservedand protected by a floating exchange-rate coupled with bulk purchase of foodstuffsand basic raw materials based on wartime experience, which not only aimed at buyingadvantageously but also at putting a strong bargaining power behind our exports.Concentrated buying of the biggest customer in the world could demand every kind ofquid pro quo in other markets; this was a power which might lower barriers and opendoors to our export trade. In short the whole plan envisaged an island economybattling for world, as markets Britain still does today.In America the vast experience of my tour through the industrial regions opened myeyes to new processes, to tendencies and economic facts which were then in theirinfancy. I saw forces at work which years later would operate to the destruction of ourisland economy unless we were ready and willing to join in a larger economic unit.The immense productive power of American industry would eventually flood anyexisting home market unless measures were taken far beyond the thinking ofCongress or prevailing orthodoxy, and would wash over to world markets and drownour struggling export trade; the rationalisation of industry would enable backwardlabour to be used in the simplified processes of the conveyor belt, and this evoked aprospect of the backward areas of the world being exploited to the jeopardy of theadvanced; the further development of automation - already incipient - presented yetanother awesome vision of industrial revolution going further to restore the balance,this time in favour of advanced labour to the ruin of the backward areas whenautomation had finally superseded rationalisation; in America it seemed to me I waspresent at the birth of a new age. With such complete dependence on world markets afree island economy would no longer be possible, however ingenious were the handswhich manipulated its affairs. The idea arose of an economic unit large enough to beviable in relative independence of world markets, and in my new phrase capable of'insulation' from the 'external factors' which subsequent British governments admittedto be the cause of their downfall. It was not enough to be an island: we could only liveby being great. The answer was Empire or Europe, and I then said both. I journeyedbetween 1925 and 1929 from Birmingham toward a world idea. America had givenme a vision, and I shall never forget the debt.May I now define my personal position before citing the recognition my work ofthose days has since been accorded by authoritative opinion, and contrasting it withtreatment at that time. The reader may well think it is immodest, unbecoming and un-English for me to quote praise of myself at various points of this book, and in anynormal case I should be disposed to agree. Yet in my case I would ask considerationof the way I have been attacked before I am condemned for this method of reply; it isreally necessary in my circumstance to redress the balance. Also it indicates possiblysome lesson for the future when something subsequently acclaimed is assailed withsuch totally uninformed, merely foolish and destructive abuse at the time.Before presenting the verdict of others it may also be right for me to attempt someassessment of my work and to analyse the ingredients of whatever merit it possessed.Again I hope to be forgiven for being entirely frank without any false modesty in thenormal and I feel attractive tradition of England, also to be judged free ofexaggeration which could suggest the boastful character the Englishman so rightlydislikes. The mean between stultifying reticence and a suggestion of the vaingloriousis always difficult to hold.156 of 424