My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleythemselves that normal measures without undue personal risk could meet the situation.Harold Nicolson too behaved splendidly in giving up a highly paid job on theBeaverbrook press to edit the paper supporting the New Party. Action was lavishlysupported by Lord Nuffield, but suffered a fall in circulation from 160,000 to 16,000in ten weeks. Our electoral defeat gave the competent professional staff no time to getit going. Later, some of our amateurs in fascist days gradually built it up to become aself-supporting paper.Lloyd George remained acutely apprehensive and manoeuvred continually in privategatherings. He retained close and friendly relations with me, but he did not see thenecessity for the long-term policy, and was unwilling to start a new party. Yet thoseof us who launched the new movement were convinced that crisis would return in anaggravated form and that a policy of long-term reconstruction was vitally necessary.We had failed to secure a national consensus, a warm and ardent agreement on actionby the whole nation; it remained our duty to act by means of the second best, a long,arduous and bitter process to arouse the nation before disaster. This view of our dutyled us inevitably to the streets and the villages, to the homes of the people, wherealone we could awaken the will to action in a new movement. In a continuing crisis itmight be done with reasonable speed, for in such circumstances the British have aconsiderable capacity for improvisation. But I also stressed that it could mean a long,hard struggle over many years.The New Party was launched on March 1, 1931. Then came one of those incidentswhich warn us against hubris by reminding that we are the playthings of fate, amoment when we can indeed 'say ditto to Mr. Burke' in his poignant apostrophe:'What shadows we are, what shadows we pursue!' On the eve of the opening meeting Ifell ill with pleurisy and pneumonia, quite a serious matter before the discovery ofantibiotics. I could scarcely lift [my head from the pillow. It was too late to postponethe party's inauguration, for the placards were out all over the country. I wasadvertised to speak at the opening meeting and was to have been seconded by W. J.Brown, M.P., who was experienced and effective both in the House and on theplatform. It was decided that the meeting should continue with Brown as the mainspeaker, assisted by Cimmie and John Strachey. But a message came that Browncould not attend, and he was not available on the telephone.I ordered an ambulance to take me to his house in the suburbs, where I found him athome. After being carried into his living-room on a stretcher, I asked his reasons fornot attending the opening meeting. Then something occurred which I had only seenrarely before; his face seemed to be pulled down on one side like a man suffering astroke and he burst into tears. He said he would lose his trade union job and his familywould be ruined. His fears appeared to me exaggerated because he knew I had alreadyobtained a guarantee from Lord Nuffield to cover his salary for several years. He hadnever previously voiced these apprehensions, and had always posed as a man ofdecision, of iron will and resolution.The very few men in whom previously I had observed this phenomenon had likewiseusually rather emphasised their determination and courage before they foundthemselves averse to getting out of a trench when the time came. W. J. Brown wasevidently experiencing the same sensations. I had myself carried back to theambulance.235 of 424