My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyrefused to entertain even a suggestion of racial or religious persecution. And today wedo not attack Jews on racial or religious grounds. We take up the challenge that theyhave thrown down, because they fight against fascism, and against Britain.'After dealing in some detail with complaints of our members on account of physicalassault and victimisation, but emphasising that despite these events we were not antisemiticand by reason of our whole policy could never be so, I came to the gravamenof my charge in the quarrel which had arisen on a specific subject: 'The organisedpower of Jewry, in a racial interest, has consistently striven for the last eighteenmonths and more to foster the policy of war. . .. From every platform and paper whichthey control, directly or indirectly, they have striven for the past eighteen months toarouse in this country the feelings and the passions of war with a nation with whomwe made peace in 1918. ... We fought Germany once in our British quarrel. We shallnot fight Germany again in a Jewish quarrel.'According to the report, the meeting was held up at this point for several minutes bythe cheering. This statement and the whole speech had nothing whatever to do withanti-semitism: I was concerned solely with the main passion of my life, the preventionof war. I would have attacked any man, whoever he was, if I thought he was trying toinvolve the British people in any war which did not threaten the life or touch the vitalinterests of Britain. I believed strongly in the principle summarised in our slogan—Britons fight for Britain only— and I believe in it today, with the addition that mypatriotism now extends to the whole of Europe. I was ready then to attack any man,Gentile, Jew, Englishman, Eskimo or Hottentot, who injured the interests of Britain,and I felt the greatest injury of all was to drag us into unnecessary war. I would todaywith equal vigour attack any man who injured the interests of Europe, and I stillbelieve the worst injury is to involve Europe in an unnecessary war. Every principleof my policy in this respect, before, during and since the war has been the same, andhas been sustained throughout with consistency and determination.The point may be made that my attitude and policy were narrow and selfishlynationalistic, that it was our duty to interfere everywhere and fight anywhere whereanyone was getting a bad time; this is now the fashionable viewpoint and it isarguable, but it raises an altogether different principle to anti-semitism. Is it wrong torefuse to fight except where the vital interests of our own people are at stake? Shouldwe always fight to save anyone who is being persecuted? This principle in the presentworld would involve us in perpetual war, if universally applied and not merelyconfined to cases where political prejudice is involved.My opponents should not confuse this question with anti-semitism, or they will findthemselves in deep water. Disraeli was the original protagonist of the view that weshould not run around the world looking for any quarrel we could get into on behalf ofa persecuted minority. He opposed Gladstone's attempt to drag us into war withTurkey on behalf of the Bulgarians on precisely the grounds of principle which I amnow stating. In fact, until very recently this was classic Conservative doctrine; one ofthe principles I borrowed from the Right at the same time as borrowing socialprogress from the Left, before adding much more I believed to be necessary in thefinal synthesis of our policy. Conservatism in its weary pilgrimage a couple of pacesbehind Left-wing thought or emotion has now forgotten the principles it acquiredfrom Disraeli. Tories flap into any quarrel going, whether or not they have the arms to283 of 424