My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleydetermined not to un-learn what he had learnt with such pains, and was consequentlya model of orthodoxy. The middle layers of the great universities are as wellconditioned as Pavlov's dogs. They are submerged in their information, while thefirst-rate dons move buoyantly on top of it as they survey the world's fresh facts andcreate new thought. Unhappily, few of this type have so far been attracted toparliamentary life.Dalton went to the Foreign Office in 1929 as Under-Secretary when Henderson wasForeign Secretary, after MacDonald's effort to make me Foreign Secretary had failedbecause Henderson so strongly objected. Kingsley Martin in his life of Laski wrotethat 'MacDonald had sent for Laski and talked about the Government—they hadargued about the Foreign Office, which MacDonald had first thought of giving to J. H.Thomas and then would have given to Sir Oswald Mosley had not Arthur Hendersonstood out to bursting-point'. Henderson always appeared to me genuinely to believe inthe Labour Party policy, though in a very woolly fashion. Certainly he held awatching brief for himself as next Prime Minister, if my forward drive were tosucceed, and his personal relations with me (except in the Foreign Office dispute, ofwhich I was unaware) were consequently good, because, being too young myself tobecome Prime Minister, probably in his view I had a chance to reverse the establishedapplecart for his benefit. To give him his due, his main objective was to keep the partytogether and for this he really worked himself to death. A lay preacher, he was easilymoved to moral indignation, and he often had good cause. Soon after joining the partyI found him in his office in a state of near apoplexy. 'Look at this,' he groaned, as hehanded me some local Tory leaflet which stated that the return of a Labourgovernment would involve the nationalisation of all the women in the country, as theyalleged had already happened in Russia. I gathered that this programme was not forthe pleasure of Mr. Henderson.The third main power in the party after MacDonald and Henderson was Snowden, butthis was not immediately apparent, as the first impression of power in that quarter wasMrs. Snowden. A tremendous snob, she made a straight line for us when we joined,and soon exposed herself to Maxton's pointed jibe that her sole ambition in life was tooccupy the position in society which Lady Cynthia Mosley had recently vacated. Shewas gradually disappointed in us, but she got on quickly in the outer circles of Londonsociety, where no sense of humour is required; some wit is necessary to penetratefurther. An official fete was arranged for the Commonwealth at Hampton Court, theRoyal Palace I have always most admired. Mrs. Snowden was there as a livingadvertisement for Commonwealth products in a plenitude of feathered finery. 'Mrs.Snowden,' I said, 'isn't this a lovely house?—after the revolution we must live heretogether.' She drew herself up coyly, but with loyal determination: 'Oh, Sir Oswald,this palace belongs to the King and Queen'.It did not take us long to discover that not Mrs. but Mr. Snowden was the real trouble.A truly gritty Yorkshireman, he lived completely in the economics of the previouscentury, not of Marx or even Owen, but of Adam Smith and Marshall. He said to mequite simply when we were struggling with the haunting problem of unemployment:'One day Chinamen will wear their shirts an inch or two longer, and then there will beno unemployment in Lancashire'. Events moved faster than changes of fashion inChina, and our government is still finding difficulty in persuading Chairman Mao towear his shirt longer for the benefit of Lancashire.184 of 424