My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyYet the other similarities remained; our movement was an explosion againstintolerable conditions, an effort at renaissance, met by organised violence. Not only inItaly and Germany, but in almost every country in Europe, parties were springing upwhich had long since come to be known by the world in general as fascist. Was iteither honest or practical to deny that we were a fascist movement? The honesty ofdenying we were fascist could be long debated, but the impractability was quite clear.When the bystanders see an elephant coming down the street, it is idle to tell them it isa pleasant Sunday afternoon outing organised by the Young Men's ChristianAssociation. We were a distinctive British movement of intense national patriotism,but in the age of fascism it was clearly jejune and possibly dishonest to deny that wewere fascists.There is always of course a disadvantage in bearing a resemblance to foreign parties,however superficial, particularly if in essence you are a movement of ardentpatriotism. It is easier for the parties of the Left, which were seldom notable for theirpatriotism until they had discarded the Empire, and then discovered the patriotism oflittle England as a handy instrument for use against the patriotism of great Europe.The parties of the Left have always been international in sentiment, and have beenopenly organised in this sense. Socialists belonged to the Second International, ofwhich the Labour Party was an official member throughout this period; communistsgo further in being not merely members of the Third International, but in acceptingthe leadership of a foreign party and a foreign State.Liberalism also had international derivations. The creed of the nineteenth centurybegan effectively with the French Revolution, and the Liberal Party in Britain hasenjoyed, indeed boasted of its European affiliations. Charles James Fox was far fromapproving the excesses of the French Revolution, but he admired its initial spirit andstood resolutely against its suppression by external force. No one on that accountsuspected for one moment that this English patriot would become a danger to hiscountry when it was menaced by French Revolutionary armies under Napoleon, butthat was before the introduction to Britain of dago values of mutual suspicion moresuitable to the transatlantic climate of a banana republic.No one in that period was so morally dishonest or so intellectually feeble as to imputeto Fox, or to Grey and the Reform Bill leaders, all the crimes of the FrenchRevolution, or to burden the Liberalism of the nineteenth century with the localexcesses which were the responsibility of individual leaders such as Robespierre.Liberalism survived the mess in the bedroom when it was born, as many a fine manhas done, and finally grew to adult form in Britain. It was our Reform Bill, not theinitial explosion in France, which finally gave beneficent shape to the nineteenthcentury. My hope and confident conviction was that in Britain fascism would alsofind expression in its highest form, and would be destined to cast the mould of-thetwentieth century.Members of fascist and national socialist movements in other countries no doubt feltthe same, for it was both the strength and the weakness of fascism that it was anintensely national creed. This impulse gave it the strength of patriotism, but also theweakness of division. We were divided by our nationalism. This brought the dangerthat Europe would perish in the same tragic manner as the city states of classic Greece;united by the genius of their kind, by their philosophy, architecture and art born of242 of 424