My Life

My Life - Oswald MosleyLiberal meetings when I was nine years old, and as when I was seventeen, I had oftenbeen thrown out myself with a merry band of my Sandhurst companions, whenmaking ourselves a nuisance at such a time-honoured English institution as theEmpire music hall.Why then did we not leave it there? We always succeeded in holding our ground, butin the course of the fight the meeting would be smashed to pieces and the alarmedaudience would vanish, as at Birmingham. We never lost the day, but it was always aPyrrhic victory. We were facing what amounted to a military organisation with anamateur improvisation. We were fighting professionals, the communists who werepast masters of organised violence, and we must ourselves become professionals. Wehad at that time a good scratch lot, some formidable fighters among them, but theywere there, if necessary, to fight with their fists as individuals, and the reds were therefor the express purpose of fighting as organised guerrillas with weapons. Our menwere always forbidden to use weapons, but they were later trained to fight inorganised units under clear command, and were practised in judo and boxing.At first, we just had good amateurs like Peter Howard and Kid Lewis, an amateur inpolitics but not in the ring. Peter Howard was the Oxford University captain of theEnglish rugger team. He was a friend of Harold Nicolson, who enjoyed his companyin private, but not his companionship on these occasions. After the failure of the NewParty, he became one of the leading figures of Dr. Buchman's moral rearmamentmovement, which had the money more fully to exercise his idealism. Ted Kid Lewiswas ex-welter-weight boxing champion of the world, a Jew from Whitechapel, wherehe was New Party candidate in the 1931 election; my last appearance in that boroughwas in his support. I much appreciated Kid Lewis after seeing his fight withCarpentier, in which he conceded a lot of weight and gave one of the gamest displaysI have ever seen in the ring. Like all the great professionals, he would never hit anyman in private life for fear of killing him, but would go through a hostile crowd withhis hands in his pockets, just barging with his shoulders. He was at the time keenlyattracted to politics, but was bitterly disappointed by the result of his Whitechapelelection and retired altogether. There were a number of colourful personalities amongthe New Party stewards, but they were essentially an amateur gathering.After the defeat of the New Party, we began seriously to organise in the light of oursharp experience of organised violence. If we had to fight, we were determined to win.The first essential was the means to recognise each other quickly in a fight. It hadbecome a military matter and we were up against the problem, which all armies havefaced from the beginning of time. The first need is to recognise each other; the second,if possible, to recognise the enemy. This enemy in his long experience employedmany artifices to prevent recognition, even going so far on some occasions as to useour dress. The communists after many years of fighting together had no need ofuniforms, because they could recognise each other. After several years' experience wewere in the same position, and our stewarding of indoor meetings was unimpairedwhen the uniform was finally removed, but in the early days it was a first essential forus in order to avoid fighting each other in the general melee.I made one considerable mistake in the matter of uniform. We began well —I stillthink that at the time and in the conditions we faced it was right, and certainlynecessary—with the simple black shirt, which anyone could buy or have made at252 of 424