My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleywords which answer the sheer silliness of so many cretinous suggestions—whatfor?—cui bono?A dishonest line of controversy in these circumstances, is that no one should mind alittle heckling. Who does? Interruptions, heckling, can be the making of a speech, andany speaker of any experience can always score. What fun they were, all the old gagsof the English platform, equally enjoyed by speaker and audience. When a persistentMarxian holds up question time 'I see, sir, that you are an authority on Marx, and haveno doubt read him carefully'. 'Yes, I have.' 'You have read all six volumes, I take it?''Yes, I have.' 'Then, sir, may I congratulate you both on your learning and on yourindustry, for he only wrote two.' The authority bobs away red-faced on a sea oflaughter, until the audience can return to matters of more immediate interest to ourpragmatic people. It is all good, old-time English fun. Rough but genial exchanges arealways appreciated in the traditional strongholds of the British worker. A stentorianbellow from a burly but obviously bogus claimant: 'I would have this audience knowthat my jaw was broken in six places at one of your meetings'. 'We are all delighted tohear it working so well tonight.' Slightly subtler rejoinders would dissolve in laughter;undergraduate heckling at university meetings: 'Are you in favour of birth control?''Well, I was, but I am beginning to think it is about twenty years too late.'When so much was said and written about my ability to deal with hecklers in my earlydays, why was I supposed to lose that capacity I so much enjoyed? Of course, whatwe were up against was nothing like ordinary heckling; it was organised shouting bydozens, or sometimes hundreds of men, accompanied by violence often prepared insemi-military fashion. I have probably now a larger experience of mass meetings thanany man alive, and I can assure the reader that serious disorder never occurs at ameeting in Britain unless it is organised. The British people may love you or hate you(I have experienced a bit of both) but they will always give you a fair hearing. If theydo not want to hear you, they will stay away; a simple and silent remedy.When organised force is used against you, only two courses are open, if authority hasalready proved either unable or unwilling to keep order: to surrender, or to meet forcewith force and to win. After the New Party experience it was perfectly clear to me thatI could blow the red roughs a kiss, pack up and go home, or, after due appeal andwarning, eject them from my meetings. It should be remembered that I had noresource except the spoken word: no Press, no radio, and little money. Publicmeetings were our only way of putting over our case, and if our audiences were tohear it we must be prepared to fight for free speech.We were faced at first with heavy odds, and to lose would mean the end of ourmovement. It soon became clear that to win we had to wear some distinctive dress, auniform in order to recognise each other. That is why people obliged to fight haveworn uniform of some kind or other from the earliest days of human history. We worecoloured shirts for the same reason, and black was chosen not only because it was theopposite to red but because at that time it was worn by no one else in this country. Ashirt is the easiest and cheapest garment for the purpose of recognition, and the shirtshad to be paid for by the men themselves, most of whom were poor, some even beingon the dole. Others had already worn coloured shirts for the same reason, but this nomore made our movement Italian, or German, than wearing uniform turns an Englisharmy into a German army. This particular jibe was easily answered.241 of 424