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Adolf met Oswald on several occasions but was
never fully convinced of him, doubting his commitment,
sensing his lack of whole-hearted zealotry.
Goebbels was even less impressed, dismissing him as
“an outsider of small political significance.” Hitler was
however genuinely taken with Mosley’s wife Diana.
He was even more taken by her sister Unity, and the
feeling was mutual. Mosley married Diana at a secret
ceremony in Goebbels’ house, having already carried
out a long affair with her. The contrast of kind-hearted
if naive Cimmie with the coldly ruthless Diana was
seen by some as emblematic of Mosley’s journey to the
dark side. While her portrayal as a Lady Macbeth figure
even more malignant than her husband may have a
toe in misogynist myth, he had certainly met his match
with her in amoral callousness. The Mitfords were the
epitome of high society elan, and Hitler himself, for
all his railing against “British decadence” was far from
immune to the charms of this glamorous set. Diana and
Unity, regular and welcome visitors to Hitler, acted as a
conduit between Mosley and his new benefactor, while
the intelligence services were more concerned with the
Mitford pair than Mosley himself as a threat to the state.
The BUF was to change its name to the BU at the end
of 1934. Short for the British Union, though its full new
title was the rather less innocuous British Union of Fascists
and National Socialists, reflecting the increasing
influence of the Fuhrer. The thuggishness was thrown
BUY Stephen Dorril books online from and
into sharp relief at an infamous public gathering at
Olympia in June 1934. The mass meeting was held in a
theatrical, explicitly Nuremburg style, the movement’s
new Lightning-in-a-Circle symbol (wittily dubbed “the
flash in the pan” by opponents) dominating the hall just
as the swastika did to the Nazi faithful in Germany. The
Blackshirts deliberately attracted as many opponents
as possible to this meeting, and then, with a variety of
home-made weapons, pulped into bloody submission
anyone who heckled The Leader. Many serious injuries
resulted. Mosley was attempting to prove his control of
“the street” once and for all, yet this one meeting probably
did more than any other act to convince potential
followers of his ruthless, sadistic nature. His unpredictable
nature too – probably a greater anathema to the
British business class.
The BU suffered a severe propaganda blow with the
Battle of Cable Street in 1936, when a massive crowd
of local working-class youths, Jews, Communist and
Labour activists violently prevented Mosley (resplendent
in a new uniform explicitly modelled on that of the
Nazi SS), from provocatively marching down the street
in the heart of the Jewish East End. As the Blackshirts
were protected by police, (many sympathetic to Mosley,
or at least distinctly hostile to his leftist opponents),
the fight was between demonstrators and police rather
than the barricaded Blackshirts themselves. But the
victory was real, They Did Not Pass. As Dorril shows,
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