My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleydisintegration, economic, political and psychological, was extreme, and broughtMussolini and the fascists to power in Italy almost as rapidly as the collapse of warbrought Lenin and the communists to power in Russia. Can anyone think that any ofthese events would have occurred without collapse in war or economic catastrophe inpeace?Political fortune in terms of economics can be measured more exactly in theprotracted German struggle. Unemployment in Germany was 1,355,000 in 1928, andthe proportional representation of the Continent then gave the National Socialist Party12 M.P.s, on a national average vote of 27 per cent. In 1930 unemployment hadincreased to 3,076,000 and the National Socialists then increased their M.P.s to 108,with a vote of 18 per cent. Less than three years later, in January 1933, the NationalSocialist Party came to power; unemployment had then risen to 6,014,000, and theyhad 196 M.P.s. There is not the slightest doubt that the rise in unemployment broughtthem to power. After years of intensive propaganda by Hitler, Goebbels and all therest of them on the subject of the Versailles Treaty, the occupation, maltreatment andhumiliation of their country, as well as their allegations against the Jews, and a skilfuluse of every social conflict, the net result in 1928 was 12 M.P.s and a vote of 2-7 percent. Five years of rapidly increasing unemployment then brought them to power withan avalanche of electoral successes. When I look at that German economic situation inthe light of my own experience, I sometimes wonder why they took as long as thirteenyears to win power.The circumstances we encountered in our British movement varied as widely from theexperience of the German party as our policies differed from theirs. A comparabletable of unemployment figures proves the point. From the foundation of our party in1932 to the outbreak of war in 1939, unemployment in Britain was reduced by nearly50 per cent. From 1927 until the Nazi movement gained power in January 1933,unemployment in Germany increased four and a half times. The German party wascarried upwards on unemployment figures rising to a peak of catastrophe, whichdemanded a great change in government, while with an illusion of increasingprosperity, the rulers of Britain were saved from facing the results of their economicerrors by external events, which ended in world war.Can Britain, then, only return to greatness through catastrophe? Is what the Frenchcall la politique du pire valid? Can men who want to get things done be accused ofwanting the worst because it is a prerequisite of action? If a doctor diagnoses atumour and prescribes an operation, it does not mean that he desires the illness of thepatient, but that he tells the truth as he sees it. He is then liable to be very unpopular ifall the other physicians are prescribing a slight dose of salts and a little gentlemassage for a passing malaise. Yet naturally a nation will not turn to the surgery ofdecisive action until all other remedies have been exhausted. This is very human, andit is what happened in 1931; after a long interval of many sweet and bitter drugs, weare now returning to reality, and truth, for better or for worse, will eventually emerge.Action is possible in crisis because men of intelligence and realism are prepared to setdogma aside and to face facts as they exist. Noteworthy in 1930 was the acceptanceby many good democrats and parliamentarians of the necessity for sweeping reformsin the structure of government and in parliamentary procedure. In a later period, whenprejudice and passion inhibit action by clouding every issue, such measures might be232 of 424