My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleymodern science. For my purpose this reinforced the view that the doom of ourcivilisation—a looming menace not only in economics but in national psychology, asit seemed to me —could be met and overcome by the will of a determined movementto national renaissance. Finally, Toynbee appeared to me, like Spengler, to drift fromhis challenging and indeed inspiring premises to another but almost equally lameconclusion; nevertheless, his contributions both to history and to the possible revivalof the human spirit were important.Six months after my speech to the English-Speaking Union, in the autumn of 1933, Imet a remarkable man who then joined the party and became one of my most valuablecolleagues. This was Raven Thomson, who in 1932 had published a book ofexceptional interest on Spengler which I read when we came together. His approachdiffered from mine because his conclusion was as pessimistic as Spengler's, and hisconcept of the immediate future seemed to me an almost ant-heap collectivism. I hadsaid in my E.S.U. speech that modern Caesarism would inevitably have a collectivecharacter, but his collective ideas seemed to go much too far in eliminating individualinfluence. The reason certainly was that at the time he wrote the book he was acommunist. When he joined our movement we had many discussions and hiscollectivism began to admit a considerable place for individual influence, while hispessimism gradually changed to the most determined optimism I have everencountered. Whether this metamorphosis was due to his contact with me, or to ablow he received on the head from a brick at one of his first appearances as a speakerfor the party was often the subject of genial enquiry when he first appeared in a blackshirt at the bar of the spacious 'barracks' which we acquired about that time in King'sRoad.This exceptional thinker emerged from the study at the age of nearly forty to becomea man of action and one of the finest fighters for our cause we ever knew.Intellectually Raven Thomson towered above the men I had known in the LabourCabinet of 1929, and in firmness of character he seemed in an altogether differentcategory to most of the contemporary politicians. Despite his academic background,he developed an exuberant enthusiasm for the work of the party and became one of itsmost effective speakers, as well as an outstanding writer. For years he edited the partypaper, and was more than a match in controversy for the few challengers heencountered from the other side. Yet this honest man and devoted patriot, togetherwith his companions of the blackshirt, was subjected to every insult in the catalogueof calumny which begins with the word 'thug'. This abuse, as vile as it was silly, camefrom every corner-boy of the intellect simply because he was associated with me in aneffort of national renaissance. His offence was that he dared to choose that hard pathin preference to his previous happy life, in the seclusion of his library and thecompany of his family. He died young, and we his friends will always feel that theprison years and the decline of his country combined to curtail a life which wouldhave been of brilliant service to the nation. His colleague, Neil Francis-Hawkins, ourchief organiser before the war, a man of outstanding character and ability, also diedyoung for similar reasons. I shall mention no other blackshirts by name because thiswould be invidious among so many splendid men and women ; these two may rest asthe monument of those who died and the inspiration of those who live.The Corporate State is scarcely an appropriate subject for inclusion in an ideologicalstudy of fascism because it is essentially a system for the economic organisation, but277 of 424