My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleythe discords of a split personality. I have given some account of the action in myfascist period which won the right to express at public meetings economic policiesdevised while I was still a member of the Labour Party. Now I must give someaccount of ideas in a quite different sphere of thought, which added ideology to theeconomics of my Labour Party days. These ideas seem to me crude and unsatisfactoryin comparison with my thinking and writing since the Second World War and theenforced withdrawal into reading and reflection which it entailed for me. Nevertheless,it is difficult to contend in the light of my speech and writing in the thirties thatfascism had no ideological background, though our English approach had not much todo with the main stream of fascist thought abroad. The derivation of this thinking isEuropean, but it emphasises the English character of fascism in Britain because it isso remote from what fascist movements on the Continent were thinking or saying atthat time, and in certain vital respects directly contradicted the continental approach tothe same subjects.My first speech with this theme was delivered in March 1933, at a choice of venuewhich in retrospect may seem curious—the English-Speaking Union, which wasfounded to promote Anglo-American friendship.After a conventional opening I said: 'Our opponents allege that fascism has no historicbackground or philosophy, and it is my task this afternoon to suggest that fascism hasroots deep in history and has been sustained by some of the finest flights of thespeculative mind.... So far it is to some extent true that the fascist philosophy has notassumed a very concrete and definite form, but you must remember that the fascistfaith has only been in existence little more than ten years: it is a growth of the lastdecade. Already, however, its philosophic background is capable of some formulation,and that has happened in a far shorter space of time than a corresponding developmentin any other great political faith of history. Just as the fascist movement itself, inseveral great countries, has advanced towards power at a phenomenal speed, so thefascist faith and philosophy as a permanent conception, an attitude to life, hasadvanced far more quickly than did the philosophies of the older faiths. Takeliberalism: a very long interval elapsed between the writings of such men as Voltaireand Rousseau, and the final formation of the liberal creed in the hands of Englishstatesmen at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century.In fact, these great political movements and psychological upheavals only very slowlycrystallised into a definite system of thought, as well as a system of action; and in thefascist case it is probably rather soon to expect at the end of ten years that it shouldhave assumed a concrete, crystallised form.' This, of course, was true, and fascismthen had only six years left before the turmoil of the Second World War which cutshort its life.It is clearly too much to hope that any doctrine born as an explosion of action in atime of national crisis can develop a complete philosophy in so short a space of time.The speech continued: 'Nevertheless, I believe that fascist philosophy can beexpressed in intelligible terms, and while it makes an entirely novel contribution tothe thought of this age, it can yet be shown to derive both its origin and its historicsupport from the established thought of the past. In the first instance, I suggest thatmost philosophies of action are derived from a synthesis of cultural conflicts in aprevious period. Where, in an age of culture, of thought, of abstract speculation, you268 of 424