My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleybecause it goes to the very root of a great people's freedom. The international systemof trade places a nation completely at the mercy of international finance, on whichthat trade rests. My analysis was soon proved correct: MacDonald's government wasbroken by the financiers in 1931, Leon Blum's government fell in the same way in1937, and in 1966 Labour with this experience behind it did not wait to be broken; itquietly took over the policy of its opponents at the behest of the financiers incomplete reversal of all Labour's principles. After being the creatures of Wall Streetin 1931, and the creatures of Zurich in 1966, it began at length to occur to the Labourleaders that European partnership is better than financial servitude. The interval isthirty-five years, but the servitude is the same; it happened for precisely the reasons Igave then and have given ever since.The last voices raised in the Labour Party against entry into Europe come from thosewho prefer the Empire now they have lost it; characteristically, they detested the livereality but now love the nostalgic memory. All creative opportunities like thedevelopment of Empire in the twenties and thirties were rejected until the real chancewas gone; yet now the ghost of the departed is used for the usual purpose of negationand obstruction. In this negative policy they are joined again by those Conservativeswho boldly stand for an Empire they have thrown away without noticing the loss.They remind me of a House of Commons debate long ago in which the monolithicfigure of Ronald McNeill stood for a traditional Conservative policy in the twentieswhen all around him had deserted, and I pointed out that if a man stood alone on thebattlefield when the whole army had fled, it could either mean that he was the bravestman in the army or just the only one who had not the wit to run with the rest.I must resist at this point the temptation to be drawn into more modern, controversialsubjects, such as my argument in the 19505 that Labour was then behaving inprecisely the fashion which Marx had predicted for a failing capitalism. Their onlypolicy was to discard into world markets the production which their internationalsystem did not permit their own people to consume, and their only hope—piouslyexpressed by Labour leaders —was that America in the twentieth century would takethe place of Britain in the nineteenth century as the international moneylender of thefinanciers' system to which they were completely subject. Now at last certain facts arerecognised; so let as many Englishmen as possible go together into an Europeaneconomy which is insulated but not isolated.Apart from the issues before the House of Commons and the party which weredescribed in my resignation speech, I should give some account of the methods I andmy friends employed to use all the machinery of the Labour Party to secure a changeof policy. It was clearly our duty before making any further move to exhaust allpossible means of action as loyal members of the party. Therefore, before making myspeech in the House of Commons on May 28, I put the issue to the party in the samecommittee-room where Parnell fought for his political life. It is said that I made anerror of judgment in forcing the issue to the vote. On the contrary, I had decided afterdeep reflection, coldly and deliberately in advance of the meeting, to bring the partyto a decision or eventually to leave.I was not ready to abandon millions of fellow-countrymen to unemployment and nearstarvation, to further years of suffering, while these comfortable people sat atWestminster in complacent betrayal of the pledges we had given. It was easy enough216 of 424