My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyAs the Observer wrote later: 'Men and women went to Mosley because something hadto be invented to save society' (October 8,1961). The centre and even the right lookedtowards me, as well as all the more realistic and ardent spirits of the Labour Party.The strength of the support in the Labour Party was soon afterwards openly expressedin the document which came to be known as the Mosley Manifesto; it supported theentire policy and was published in the following July. This manifesto was signed notonly by Labour M.P.s like John Strachey and W. J. Brown, who afterwards helped inthe formation of the New Party, but also by the miners' leader, Arthur Cook, and byAneurin Bevan and other influential Labour M.P.s, such as Philips Price.The general attitude of the Press toward my resignation speech was summarised bythe correspondent of the Daily Herald in his description of the debate: 'An insistentsense of national emergency breaking down party barriers seemed to sweep overmembers. . . . Sir Oswald Mosley entered a brilliant defence of his attitude followedby a vigorous and detailed offensive . . . when he sat down there was long andcontinued cheering from every section in the House. . . . Tory members discussing itwith me afterwards seemed almost awed, such was the impression it made on them.'The national Press appeared to my astonished and gratified breakfast regard to bevirtually unanimous.The making of a short-term programme to meet the emergency of unemployment wasessentially an administrative matter, and could only be achieved by a Minister incontact with all departments, who could get the facts and put them together into awhole of practical executive action. Theory was only touched at one point, the thennovel concept of deficit financing; the rest was the synthesis of all available plans andthe drive to execute them in a workable form with the maximum speed and minimumcost. To get the facts is the first test of administrative capacity. My method is to askcontinual questions, probing and searching until the necessary data is available. Whenthe evidence is conflicting, let the experts confront each other and argue it out, withthe administrator stimulating the debate continually with fresh questions until truthemerges. The first requisites of effective executive action are clarity and precision;clarity in the ascertainment of facts, precision in the recording of the resultingdecision.As a young man and a junior Minister facing the emergency of unemployment, withaccess to all information but without the authority of the Prime Minister or even of thesenior Minister in charge, I had to rely entirely on persuasion and the capacity to geton well with all the people concerned. I was far from being in a position to employmy favourite method of recording to a secretary at an executive conference thedecisions taken, requesting anyone present to suggest corrections or raise objections,and then further recording clear responsibility for executive action on each point. Thismethod always seems to me an elementary executive necessity. Very different werethe methods necessary in my position as a Minister in the Labour Government; I hadto walk warily through a labyrinth of time-consecrated departments, and to dealamiably with many agreeable gentlemen at not much more than the pace they wereaccustomed to travel, before I could collect my facts and piece them together in theplan of action which I recommended first to the Cabinet and then to the House ofCommons.208 of 424