My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyobscurity for nearly half a century without any increase in the handful of memberswith which they began, and despite a change of name to the National SocialistMovement after the war, it received some continental publicity which suggested thatthe leader of the group at that time, a Mr. Colin Jordan, had something to do with me.In the course of some interlocutory proceedings in the appeal court on October 9,1962, Lord Denning made it quite clear that on the evidence presented this was notthe case. The quite unfounded suggestion that this group had something to do with me,however, continued until I proceeded in the German courts against the StuttgarterNachrichten, which, on learning the facts, apologised, paid costs and thus madehonourable amends.It has often been the habit of my opponents to give obscure people publicity and thento fasten them on to me. The method was even more marked before the war, whenlittle societies of all kinds used to abound and odd people I had never heard of werealleged to be in some way my associates. Directly you are in unorthodox politicsevery freak—and there is always a plentiful supply in my native land—is ascribed toyou, sometimes in innocence but more often in malice propense. Caricature is after allone of the oldest and most effective weapons in English politics. It may take the formof a clever, denigratory drawing, or even more effectively of a man made up to looklike you in some respects walking down the street and behaving in a ridiculousfashion. There was quite a bit of that kind of thing before the war, but since then theusual supply of crackpots has seemed to me to have no motive except their own folly.Law actions on the Continent were necessary not only in my own defence but toenable my ideas to be freely discussed throughout Europe by serious people in amanner worthy of real politics. They certainly have been so discussed, analysed, andoften I gratefully acknowledge acclaimed by people whose opinion I deeply value. Itmay be asked why I tried to advance European policy in this way instead of seeking tosupport Mr. Churchill in the efforts of his Fulton and Zurich speeches to promoteEuropean union. The answer is two-fold; firstly, the policy then suggested wasroughly the policy I had proposed in 1937 in The World Alternative, which I felt wasoutdated and surpassed, and someone must point the way to a far more complete andadvanced policy for Europe; secondly, while I thought Mr. Churchill was sincere inthis new impulse, I did not believe these utterances represented the view of the ToryParty, and my view was soon proved correct, for the future conservative PrimeMinister, Mr. Eden, said of Britain's entry into Europe: 'This is something which weknow in our bones we cannot do' (January 19, 1952), and the Conservative Party wasthrown into precipitate retreat from the policy Mr. Churchill had proposed to them.Labour, of course, was always a non-starter for the union of Europe until thethreatened collapse of their nineteenth-century system and the fatigue of Americawith the purposeless orbit of its neo-socialist satellite impelled them toward the outerdarkness of Europe which they had so long feared and so consistently rejected.My idea was Europe a Nation, first stated in East London in 1948, for years advocatedby me in my own country and subsequently discussed and widely supported in Europe.All I have ever asked is the freedom to advocate this idea openly and publicly and toinvite men of all parties and past opinions to support it. I believe that nothing but aclear, great and decisive idea can surmount the past and make Europe. For thisfreedom to discuss ideas I was prepared to fight to the end. I wrote long ago: firstcomes the idea, the rest will follow. My ideas were conceived in the service of Europe,373 of 424