My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyCimmie and John Strachey got through the opening meeting, and then undertook themeetings in the country at which I was advertised to speak. They had a tough time,which foreshadowed to some extent the organised campaign of violence that brokeout when I was back in action again, and which was particularly disgraceful as themain speaker was then a woman putting over a reasoned case in a gentle andcharming style which not even the most embittered could describe as offensive. Ourteam of M.P.s had now been reduced to four. W. E. D. Allen was always a writerrather than a speaker, and Dr. Forgan was distinguished more for his agreeablemanners and pleasing personality than for platform performance; he was neither aspeaker nor an administrator, but excellent in public relations.Directly I was through illness and convalescence, we launched into a by-election atAshton-under-Lyne with Allan Young as candidate. It was a Labour seat, where theprevious figures, at the 1929 election, had been 13,170 and 9,763. We had only ascratch organisation and the campaign was chiefly based on three big meetings in alocal drill hall which held nearly four thousand. We polled just about the number whoattended these meetings, for the by-election figures were Conservative 12,420, Labour11,005 and New Party 4,472. Our intervention had split the Labour vote and put theTory in. The size and enthusiasm of our meetings had caused rumours to circulate inLondon that we were winning, and some portentous figures loomed in the shadows ofthese stimulating gatherings. But on the day of the vote, the party machines, as usual,defeated the overt symptoms of incipient mass enthusiasm.The vote was large enough to put us on the map and cause the New Party to be takenseriously. Our meetings had been orderly except for a lively heckling, which helpsrather than hinders a speaker. But the climate changed completely when the figurescame out after the election. It may be that the organisers of violence had decided tohold their hand because they did not want to excite sympathy for us. They had, in anycase, a ready field for their activity after the vote, because Labour Party workers hadcome in the evening hours from all over Lancashire to hear the result and werenaturally annoyed that our intervention had put their man out. Nevertheless, I base ontwo facts my view that the violence that night was led and to some extent organisedby the usual communist experts; the first, that the whole atmosphere and situation wasthen totally different to anything seen in the election; the second, that in my longexperience violence never occurs on a large scale in England unless it is deliberatelyorganised and led.The uproar outside reached us inside the hall. The senior agent of the Labour Party,representing their Headquarters, informed me with some gratification that I would belynched if I went outside; a menace, not a warning. John Strachey reported afterwardsthat surveying the howling mob outside I said, 'This is the crowd which has preventedanything being done in England since the war'. This is true, but it is clear that I did notmean they were averse to change. What I meant then and mean now is that the longexperiencedand entirely dedicated agents and warriors of communism always play onthe anarchy inherent in the Left of Labour to secure confusion, disillusion andultimately the violence which is essential to their long-term plan. In a crisis they willprevent any major reform or ordered progress through the medium of the LabourParty.I went through the crowd with a few companions and we suffered no serious injury.236 of 424