My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyStories about what happened at Olympia are repeated over and over again and losenothing as time goes on. For example, Mr. Philip Toynbee, well known to readers ofthe Sunday Press for his book reviews, broadcasting for the BBC on November 10,1965, gave his memories of the Olympia meeting more than thirty years before,forgetting that he had already described them in Friends Apart: an excusable lapse insuch a prolific writer. For in describing his impulsive and chivalrous interventionagainst the blackshirt stewards, he had clearly forgotten his previous visit to the'ironmonger' and his 'seething' through the streets with the 'anti-fascist crowd'. Thoseevents are vividly described in Friends Apart: 'Sir Oswald Mosley held a monstermeeting at Olympia. In the afternoon we bought knuckle-dusters at a Drury Laneironmonger, and I well remember the exaltation of trying them on. We flexed ourfingers. "A bit too loose here. Not very comfortable on the thumb." We were expertknuckle-duster buyers. We seethed with the anti-fascist crowd down the cul-de-sacbeside Addison Road station. . . . Later, we had somehow contrived to penetrate intothe great auditorium itself. Olympia was nearly full—tier upon tier of the curious andthe enthusiastic, and the enthusiastic in the great majority. . . .'Then an account of interrupters and 'A moment later the stewards had closed in onthem.... We ran up the stairs and threw ourselves on the stewards' backs.... Tearful,bruised and broken, I was at last thrown out into the street.' Buy knuckle-dustersbefore a meeting —go there to have a row—jump on the stewards' backs—get thrownout roughly—have a good cry. Mr. Toynbee may well plead in mitigation that he wasvery young at the time; he may exclaim with Euripides, in words which will befamiliar to a descendant of his grandfather: 'Ah, youth and the days that were!'Olympia was a decisive battle. I regret having to write in such terms of a legitimatepolitical meeting in our own country, but this was a fact. The most massive andseriously organised attempt ever made in Britain to smash a meeting by violence washeavily defeated. When the attackers had been ejected, the meeting continued to anormal conclusion in perfect order. I was able to deliver to the overwhelming majorityof the audience the speech they had come to hear. Without the blackshirts, themeeting would have been a shambles. Why then, in concise repetition of LloydGeorge's question, should the defenders rather than the assailants of free speech beblamed? At the time we received from some opponents in all the parties the reply of avicious political prejudice, and I leave the final answer to history and to the fairerjudgment of a new generation.The meeting was decisive, not only by reason of the defeat suffered by the strongestattack which the opposition could mount, after open organisation for three weekswithout hindrance of any kind from authority, whose plain duty it was to use theresources of the law against a publicly prepared breach of the peace. Sad though itwas that these things should happen in England, the final effect was comic becausethe mind and character of the Left were so clearly revealed. Our opponents succeededin frightening themselves out of their scanty wits with their own propaganda. In faceof all evidence, which produced savage injuries to our people and only clean punchesto the face on the other side, they launched an atrocity propaganda against us with theconnivance of some members of the old parties who would use any means to discredita new movement, whose rapid growth they feared. The allegation of our brutalbehaviour certainly did us considerable harm, but it also helped to bring to a speedyend the attacks on our meetings. The 'reptiles' of Mr. Churchill's description saw now250 of 424