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Review [published December 2007]
Stephen Dorril: Sir Oswald Mosley: Blackshirt
Ben Granger
Stephen Dorril’s Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley And
British Fascism is an exhaustive re-examination of the
man who, far from being a Hitler admiring crank, was
inextricably bound up with British politics and upper
class attitudes.
Many may find the sheer weight of this tome
wrongly flattering of its subject, regardless of content.
Why should such a figure merit 700 pages? Surely this
was, at best, a nearly-man in British politics? He may
have risen to Cabinet level certainly, but then so did
hundreds of others. The grimy pack of thugs he came
to lead once his mainstream ambitions failed may have
caused a splash as they bashed enemy heads in, but
no-one voted for them. Surely, ultimately, they and he
were an irrelevance? Dorril’s expertly researched account
gives the lie to such a view and leaves no doubt
that the story of Mosley is inexorably entwined with
the story of 20th-century politics as a whole, mirroring
the highs and the lows, ricocheting from the machinations
of high society to the violent desperation of the
underclass, and taking in every major Parliamentary
player in between.
BUY Stephen Dorril books online from and
Sir Oswald “Tom” Mosley was a pure-grade scion
from a northern branch of the old land-owning aristocracy
(Mosley Street in Manchester takes its name from
the clan), of the type still rolling in money but comparatively
side-lined politically in the bourgeois 20th
century. With a boorishly uncaring, neglectful father,
and indulgent mother, his defining character traits were
shown early on at boarding school and elsewhere. A
narrow, directed charm, rampant ambition, intellectual
laziness, sexual incontinence, untrustworthiness, and a
tendency to brow-beat and bully. Above all, a narcissistic
sense of self-adoration, belief in entitlement and
complete lack of self-doubt, of the type so often found
in his caste. But taken just that one degree further.
After service in the air-force during the First World
War, where he performed with distinction and enthusiasm,
impetuous Tom managed to secure a position as
a Conservative MP by the age of 22, the natural home
for a man of his class and connections. He soon became
renowned as a powerful orator in the Commons for his
party. But this ‘man in a hurry’ was impatient with the
old guard still running both party and country, those who
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