My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyof discord and dismay. No party in that condition could be trusted by the country forany serious purpose. I felt that in crisis Labour would always crack.Time may show in the quite near future whether the estimate I then formed of thecharacter of the Labour Party will prove permanently true. It was not that I had a pooropinion of the rank and file of the party; on the contrary, I thought them the salt of theearth. Yet any body of men and women with such leadership and with the long habitof discordant chatter instead of collective action will break into futility in such a test.For many of the trade union leaders and some of my parliamentary colleagues I alsohad high regard. I simply thought that the leadership had built a party with a structure,character and psychology which was inadequate to great events. The individualcharacter of the leadership over a long term has an enormous effect on the collectivecharacter of the party, and in the case of the Labour Party it seemed to me thisinfluence had been fatal. I was deeply convinced that sooner or later a situation wouldarise in Britain which would require not only new policies but a different order ofcharacter and resolution.The conduct of the Labour Parry in the crisis of 1931 was one of the mostextraordinary paradoxes known to history, as well as an almost unique record ofpersonal incompetence and political cowardice. I gave my summary of the situationduring a speech in Trafalgar Square on September 14,1931: 'There was an element offarce in the tragedy. Spokesmen of the late Labour Government saw in the crisis thatcollapse of capitalism which they had prophesied with religious fervour. The crisiscame in a lucky moment for them. Labour was in office, and had every resource of theState at its command. What happened? The great day dawned, and Labour resigned;cleared out just when they had the realisation of their greatest wish. What must wethink of a Salvation Army which takes to its heels on the Day of Judgment?'219 of 424