My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosley'The Conference decided as soon as possible to constitute a Bureau de Liaisonbetween the national parties of Europe who have accepted a united policy,Fourth of March, 1962. The Conference further resolved that therepresentatives of the parties should henceforth meet every two months tomaintain liaison. The Conference recommended the parties represented, andall other parties which may adhere to the declaration, to change their partynames to The National Party of Europe. The British, Belgian and Germanrepresentatives expressed their intention at once to ask their parties to makethis change of name.'The Conference further expressed the hope that the parties represented wouldas soon as possible go beyond the already accepted principle of commonpolicy and regular liaison, to accept the principle of central direction. Thismeans that equal representatives of the parties will meet regularly at a roundtable and will direct in principle common action of the parties which will becarried out in detail by the parties in their respective countries.'This was certainly more than I expected to get, the success of the Conference from mypoint of view was complete. The prospect was open for a National Party of Europe towhich men of all opinions could adhere, provided they were agreed on the onedecisive point of making Europe a Nation. Differences of opinion on other subjectscould be left until this overriding purpose was achieved. Afterwards debate could beresumed on other subjects and, if necessary, new party alignments could be formed.It is normal after a success which exceeds expectation to encounter a period ofreaction and frustration. We did not at this stage get beyond a series of meetings toestablish the liaison decided by the Conference. They were good meetings andconsolidated agreement, but they did not take the matter further to establish apermanent organisation in the Bureau de Liaison on which depended the subsequentcentral direction and eventual constitution of a National Party of Europe. The basicdifficulty was that we had not the means to follow it up; finance was lacking. There isnever much money in the affluent society still prevailing throughout Europe for largedesigns of change. Money without vision is quite content with things as they are.Before extreme crisis there is always more money available for something mediocre,limited and obsolete like a return to the old nationalism, and the pull of money isstrong because nothing effective can be done without it.Lack of resources prevented the immediate achievement of the next stage, and in theconsequent period of delay many things happened. Hopes of an early making ofEurope receded for several reasons. The British Government not only missed everyopportunity to take the initiative in Europe after the war, but still maintained anattitude which impeded any early hope of effective union. All existing Europeangovernments were certainly opposed to any union so complete as we advocated.Meantime, German hopes in particular of any redress of their grievances through theunion of Europe became more and more bitterly frustrated. The most ardentEuropeans were to be found among the Germans in the early post-war period, but thedestruction of many hopes and the continually increasing sense of insult, humiliationand repression among many of them awakened again in some degree a sense of theold nationalism. The Conference of Venice was for the time being the last hope ofmerging the old patriotisms in a wider patriotism of Europe.367 of 424