My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleycountries but slowly converted to socialism every dark corner of the earth? As I put ita little later, the most grotesque assumption in the political world was the basic beliefof the old socialism that mankind's awkward squad would suddenly andsimultaneously fall into line, and march off together in quick step to the millennium atthe command of Blum and MacDonald.It was an illusion which inhibited all effective action, because it meant that theadvanced must always wait for the backward. The step of the fastest wasautomatically reduced to the pace of the slowest, and this psychology was deeplyrooted in the Labour Party. If I am thought to be exaggerating to the point of thereductio ad absurdum—and it is true this method is sometimes the best to illuminateerror—in what other terms can a wide range of phenomena be explained, stretchingfrom the speeches of the quite shrewd and sensible J. H. Thomas, saying that our onlysalvation lay in our export trade, to the fervent singing of the Internationale at partyconferences, whose idle dreams were the only reality of international socialism. It ispossible at this point not only to understand the deep differences between nationalismand internationalism in all socialist and progressive movements throughout Europe inthe immediately ensuing period, but to discern as well the reasons which are todaydriving all British parties to abandon their international positions— whether socialist,or capitalist and financial—and to seek entry into a larger and considerably insulatedeconomic unit, whether European or Atlantic. They may choose the Europeansolution and reject the Atlantic as I do, or vice versa, but the one thing on which theyall agree is that they cannot remain entirely at the mercy of international forces onworld markets.The reasons for this complete change of opinion are precisely those which I gave overthirty years ago. We are slowly learning not to blame each other but to condemn thesystem; hence the escape toward Europe by many who were far from loving Europe.We are not only faced with the competition of cheap, sweated labour which developedmore slowly than I anticipated— though it was strong enough to ruin the traditionaltrades of Lancashire and Yorkshire—but far more mobile factors which can be usedruthlessly against us either for political or economic reasons. America, for example,with a margin of 7 per cent of its total production going in export trade, can alwaysafford to undercut us below production costs in foreign markets if its home tradebecomes inadequate; a process impossible for us when 32 per cent of our total trade isinvolved. Russia, with a self-contained communist economy, can always at a certainpoint decide for political reasons to put a proportion of its output on world marketswell below any production costs. All the other factors which I visualised so long agoare still present, such as the collapse of primary producers and of world prices throughover-production, and the failure of great combines, with consequent price collapse,which can be even more disastrous now than then. Finally, the cheap labourcompetition which developed gradually before the war is now accelerating with theentry of lower-wage countries into our traditional markets. The exploitation of the farcheaper African labour for competition on an open world market is now a livepossibility when political corruption coincides with a complete absence of any tradeunion protection for the illiterate and helpless worker.Stronger than all economic reasons in the conversion of so many internationalists tothe insulated continental economy is a psychological factor, which was one of themain themes of my speeches in the thirties; it is more than a psychological question215 of 424