My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyMarx had some reason to stress his proletarian revolution when society collapsesbecause the ruling class is riddled with the disease of error and indecision; in short,when it becomes decadent. A healthy people can then produce new leadership toreplace a clique which fails because it has surrendered to overwhelming opportunityfor self-indulgence, though in practice much of the leadership towards a new societyhas always come from individuals with the character to resist the temptation of the old.This is particularly true of England, where an aristocracy with roots in the soil hashitherto provided at least sufficient leadership toward necessary reform to avert thebloody upheavals of lands which lacked such quality in crisis. This aspect of theoriginal Whig tradition is never well appreciated by the bourgeois Tory mind with itscrude class divisions of the cities. When the tattered remnants of the Whig traditiontaunted me from the tawdry ranks of Toryism with being a class traitor, because I hadtaken the side of the people in the Labour Party, my reply was simple: it is you, not Iwho betray our very English heritage, when you take the part of reaction against thepeople. Toryism then seemed to me as bereft of the British spirit as it was ignorant ofEnglish history. My view perhaps was coloured by the fact that the Conservativesnever relaxed in their diverting inventions about our double lives. The brilliantcartoonist of the Birmingham Mail made the most of it. After one election victory, hedepicted me handing in my working-man's clothes and drawing out my top-hat andfull dress from the cloakroom of a fancy-dress party under the headline, 'After thebawl'.By that time, the position of the party had been much fortified in the Birmingham areaby the General Strike. I was convinced for reasons which have been explained that thedeflationary policy of the Conservative Government was entirely responsible for thestrike, and I was passionately on the side of the workers, whose standard of life in myview was being directly attacked by an incompetent government in support of anobsolete and ultimately doomed system. We had already shown in unansweredarguments that the deflation and the consequent attack on wages was quite simply agigantic transfer of wealth from those who lived by earning to those who lived byowning; no student of Keynesian economics would now venture to deny this. So I didmy utmost to support the strike in every way, and this involved making about twentyspeeches a day. The men did not lack spirit, but became deeply bored when they hadnothing to do. The organised amusements of today were not the habit of the workersin that poorer period, and even now not many of rich or poor are happy if thrown ontheir own resources. Books, the wonderful boon of present civilisation which bringsthe best music to the home, quick transport to walks in the lovely countryside ofEngland, not much of these things was available to the workers of Birmingham in1926. The General Strike was in danger of collapsing through sheer boredom, and forthat reason—strange only to those who did not understand how the people lived—Ihad to make twenty speeches a day.The General Strike was called off by the General Council of the trade unions afternine days. Both sides were wrong: the Government in a policy of brutal stupidity andthe trade unions in getting themselves into a position where they were in danger ofchallenging the Constitution and the power of the State. They were right to call it offand to rely instead on political action, and it was not their fault that they were later letdown by the political leaders. During this period I formed more close friendships anda high regard for some of the trade union leaders, which I have always retained.161 of 424