Why Oswald Mosley turned to Fascism

0:00 This video is a history video.  I’m NOT a Fascist or anything  

0:03 else. The purpose is to learn from  history so we don’t repeat it. So,  

0:08 with that in mind, let’s find out  why Oswald Mosley turned to fascism.

0:16 [Intro]

0:17 In order to understand Oswald Mosley  and his conversion to Fascism,  

0:21 we need to start our story a  little bit before his time.

0:26 Prior to the industrial revolution. The  people worked on farms from dawn til dusk,  

0:31 receiving low pay for back-breaking labour.  The life-expectancy of a British person was 35.  

0:40 In London between the years 1730 and 1749,  74.5% of children died before they reached  

0:49 the age of five. That’s three quarters of all  children. Imagine a world where that happened,  

0:56 because that world was the reality for  the vast majority of human history.

1:02 “Centuries before the miracles of modern medicine,  

1:05 England was awash in parentless,  sick, and dying children.”

1:10 Farmers in places like France and Russia  hibernated for six months of the year due to  

1:16 a lack of food. I don’t have evidence of that  happening in Britain, but I do have evidence  

1:21 that one in 10 families in England were below  the ‘breadline’ during the Georgian era. And  

1:28 people did starve to death in Britain during  this pre-industrial and early industrial era.

1:34 But in the late 1700s, people started to move  from the farms to the cities as a result of  

1:41 industrialisation. Now, this is not to say  there wasn’t poverty in the cities - of course,  

1:45 there was. But the industrial jobs weren’t  as long-houred as the agricultural jobs,  

1:52 and they were better paid as well.  

1:54 If they weren’t, then why would people have left  the idyllic farms to go to the squalor cities?

2:02 It doesn’t make sense for them to choose the  worst option. And the reason why they chose the  

2:08 terrible city jobs was because the farm jobs were  even worse. You were basically impoverished by  

2:15 working on the farms, whereas you had a better  chance of survival working in the factories.

2:20 As a result, poverty decreased. From a child  mortality rate of 74.5% in the 1730s and 40s,  

2:28 it was down to 31.8% in the 1810 to  1829 period - a staggering decrease in  

2:37 child deaths for the first time in human history.

2:40 And just to note, Charles Dickens was  writing during this era. Oliver Twist  

2:46 was published in the late 1830s. So, at a time  when industrialisation had barely gotten going,  

2:52 and as urbanisation was happening, Dickens was  seeing all this poverty and was writing about  

2:58 it. And that’s fair enough - 31.8% of children  are still dying as late as 1829. But what is  

3:05 not said is that this was a vast improvement  compared to what had happened earlier. In the  

3:11 mid-1700s it was 74.5%. So industrialisation  was making life better, not worse. But Charles  

3:19 Dickens, like so many other early anti-poverty  activists, doesn’t know this. So he and others  

3:25 conclude that the poverty they saw was caused by  industrialisation and the so-called free market,  

3:31 when in reality, poverty was decreasing because  of industrialisation and the free market. I know  

3:38 he’s a fictional character, but Oliver Twist  would have died had he been born in the 1700s,  

3:43 whereas he had a much better chance of  survival because he was in the early 1800s.

3:48 “Despite the great success of classical  liberalism in boosting wealth,  

3:53 living standards, life spans, liberty, peace,  education, and technology - faster than ever  

3:58 recorded in human history - its achievements were  continuously scorned by wealthy adversaries with  

4:06 ulterior motives, and ideologues  with political ends to serve.”

4:10 I have to, at this point, give a shout-out to  the book “Killing History: The False Left-Right  

4:15 Political Spectrum” by L. K. Samuels. It’s  a fantastic book, highly recommended for  

4:21 various reasons. And this is NOT a sponsored  video. I’m not getting commission - I only  

4:27 recommend books I genuinely think are good and  would be of interest to you on a given topic. 

4:32 Now, I’ve been reluctant to do this, but I  hereby declare my aversion to the Left and  

4:38 Right political spectrum, and all spectrums. I’ve  given up with the whole thing. Calling something  

4:44 “Left” and “Right” or whatever just muddies the  water, because the terms have been shackled with  

4:50 deliberate distortions that cause confusion.  Therefore, it’s better to abandon political  

4:56 spectrums altogether in favour of looking at the  individual policies of a given faction and then  

5:01 judging them accordingly. You might disagree with  this approach, but these terms aren’t helping. 

5:08 So with that in mind, we have all this  industrialisation and urbanisation going on,  

5:14 and standards of living for the poor slowly  getting better. But there was an Establishment  

5:21 backlash against this. In the 1840s, the  Conservative Party was the pro-Statist party.  

5:27 They stood for authority, monarchy, nationalism,  high-taxes and heavy intervention in the economy.

5:35 “The Conservative Party exists to conserve;  it is the party of the status quo.”

5:41 And what was the status quo back in the 1840s?  Monarchy, authority, high-taxation and heavy  

5:48 intervention in the economy to prevent the poor  from improving their standards of living. They  

5:52 wanted things to go back to as they had been  before the Industrial Revolution. They wanted  

5:59 to be the Lords on the Manor, with the poor and  starving peasants working their fields. That’s  

6:05 why they were against ‘change’, because of what  happened in the French and Industrial Revolutions.  

6:12 Now yes, technically they were opponents of other  utopian political visions, but that doesn’t mean  

6:19 that they were against all utopian visions. They  wanted to protect the Church and the aristocracy,  

6:24 who they believed were central to British  society at the time. And again, they  

6:30 wanted a feudal-style Britain - that was their  utopia, because they were the landowners. Thus,  

6:37 they were pro-taxation, and pro-protectionism,  because taxation benefited the government (who  

6:43 were the aristocrats), and protectionism would  benefit them because they owned all the farms.

6:48 “During the 1870s the large-scale imports  of cheap grain from North America triggered  

6:55 a long-term decline in agriculture,  marked by falling rents and land values,  

7:01 which left a generation of country gentlemen  and aristocratic landowners disillusioned with  

7:07 conventional Conservatism and was eventually to  make them susceptible to extremist politics…”

7:14 So the Conservative aristocrats were  pro-State - they were statists, mercantilists,  

7:19 nationalists. It was the Conservatives who  implemented the Income Tax in the 1840s,  

7:25 because up to this point taxes had been largely  indirect, and they wanted direct taxation on the  

7:31 industrialists who were benefiting the poor. They  didn’t want to get rid of the Corn Laws, which had  

7:37 previously been implemented to protect British  agriculture by guaranteeing high food prices  

7:43 that had to be paid by the poor. If you want to  know why people were going hungry in the 1800s,  

7:50 it wasn’t because of evil capitalists,  it was because of Statist price setting,  

7:56 high regulation and taxation. In other words, it  was a lack of a free market. And the Conservatives  

8:03 weren’t the industrialists - they were against  the free market and the industrialists.  

8:08 That was who they were implementing  regulations and taxation against.

8:12 And, by the way, the source I’m using  for this is a standard history book,  

8:17 not someone from the Mises Institute or  something. The historians are largely in  

8:22 agreement with what I’ve just said, so this  shouldn’t be controversial, but I know that  

8:28 people’s perceptions of what the Conservatives  are is different to what they actually are.

8:32 They’ve just implemented higher taxes on  the poor and businesses, and lower taxes  

8:38 on the Establishment aristocracy. And  last year, when Comrade Sunak got in,  

8:43 he raised taxes. That’s why they’re  known as the “low-tax” party,  

8:48 because they always implement low taxes  on the Establishment, and higher-taxes  

8:54 on the rest of us. They’ve been consistent  throughout their entire political history.

8:58 Now yes, there have been times where they  lowered taxes or got rid of regulations.  

9:04 The political situation had changed in the  1850s, because the British people were all  

9:10 in favour of a free market. The people  understood that free markets resulted  

9:15 in better living standards. So Conservative  leader Disraeli realised in October 1849 that  

9:23 the Conservative policy of protectionism was  costing them votes, and thus political power,  

9:27 since most of society was in favour of  Free Trade. So they turned in favour of  

9:33 Free Trade to get elected, but that was  a political ploy. They still remained the  

9:38 party of the Establishment - the State - and  remained a high-tax and protectionist party.

9:43 “Disraeli’s greatest legacy to the Conservatives  was to make them the ‘national’ party. From the  

9:50 late 1870s the Conservatives were able to wrap  themselves in the Union Jack, and, when all other  

9:56 tactics failed, they were able to identify  themselves with a strong foreign and defence  

10:01 policy: whatever else changed between Disraeli  and Thatcher, that, at least, remained the same…”

10:08 Thatcher implemented the Poll Tax, almost doubled  VAT, and it was increased again during John  

10:14 Major’s term, and again under Cameron’s term  in 2010. Yet, despite this, people vote for  

10:22 them hoping for lower taxes. No, they hate the  free market, and they’re for higher taxation,  

10:27 regulation and protectionism, and they always  have been. On occasion they might lower taxes  

10:32 to win votes, or for stability reasons, but  usually they raise them again, or lower them  

10:37 against one part of the economy and higher  them on another. They’ve never been low-tax. 

10:42 Now why am I bringing this up? Well, where  did Mosley start his political career?  

10:49 The Conservative Party! Forget “Left and  Right”, “Up and Down” or any of that nonsense,  

10:55 look at the facts. Mosley was an aristocrat  - he was Lord Mosley. He was pro-monarchy.  

11:01 Pro-taxation. Pro-regulation. Pro-autarky  (protectionism). He was against the free market.  

11:07 He was against industrialists, the businessmen,  and the self-employed. He thought they all  

11:13 should be forced into a giant hierarchical  structure led by an aristocratic-type elite. 

11:18 That’s why he started in the Conservative Party,  because that’s what the Conservatives have always  

11:23 been about. Now, he did disagree with certain  policies of the Conservatives, even when he was  

11:28 first elected in 1918. He disagreed with the  “hereditary principle” of the House of Lords,  

11:33 and he was in favour of modern reforms of  the British state. But he was also against  

11:39 “Aliens” - in this case the Germans living in  Britain, because he thought they were reducing  

11:45 wages, underselling goods, ruining English social  life, and spreading disease. However, even at this  

11:54 point, he believed that the British state should  provide welfare and ‘education’ for the British  

11:59 people - a typical Conservative position. Why is  that? Well, it’s because, as we just saw before,  

12:06 Conservatives are the aristocratic elite.  They want higher taxes for themselves. So  

12:12 by promising limited welfare and an ‘education’,  they can impose high taxes and pocket the rest. 

12:19 However, Mosley wasn’t your typical Conservative.  He seems to have genuinely believed that the  

12:25 British State should be looking after the British  people. And he disagreed with the Conservative  

12:30 government’s policies in Ireland at the time. He  questioned the use of British troops, and compared  

12:37 their tactics to that of the Germans in Belgium  during the First World War. He was branded a  

12:43 renegade by his fellow Conservatives. Therefore,  in November 1920, after two years in the  

12:48 Conservative Party, Mosley crossed the floor and  became an Independent. As one historian has said:

12:55 “The Irish controversy signalled the  start of Mosley’s liberal moment.”

13:01 Now, Mosley stays independent for a couple  years, before siding with the Liberal Party.  

13:06 He doesn’t become a Liberal member, but  he’s basically with them for a short time,  

13:11 so it’s worth talking about the Liberals. The  Liberal Party has its origins in the Whig Party,  

13:17 which had its origins in the 1600s… but we’ll  start off in the early 1800s. The Whigs were  

13:22 against the Conservatives, they were for free  trade and property rights - they were basically  

13:28 the Adam Smith Party. They weren’t AnCaps by  any stretch of the imagination - afterall,  

13:34 they were an aristocratic faction - but were  classic liberal in outlook. Individual liberty  

13:40 was seen as something to as something to aim for.  However, there was a flaw in their reasoning. Some  

13:46 argued that liberty could only come about if  the State intervened in the life of the people.

13:53 “Liberals had no scruples about interfering with  the poor, even without their consent through  

13:59 the vote, in the interests of improved  social morality as they understood it.”

14:05 They weren’t entirely free market - through no  fault of their own. Everyone’s understanding of  

14:09 economics back then was primitive. They were still  operating under the Labour Theory of Value - since  

14:18 the Subjective Theory of Value was only discovered  in 1871. Back then they didn’t really understand  

14:23 what was going on. So while they freed the  slaves in 1832, they implemented legislation  

14:29 that banned football and animal fighting,  and said that it was okay to dissect the  

14:35 bodies of people who died in the workhouses.  They also weren’t a zero tax party, and they  

14:41 implemented interventionist legislation, but they  certainly were more hands-off than the others.

14:47 Skipping over a whole complex history of various  factions and in-fighting, the Liberal Party  

14:52 emerges from the Whigs (sort-of) by the 1860s.  But, there’s a problem. Poverty still existed,  

15:00 and people started to falsely assume that  laissez-faire economics was causing this  

15:06 poverty. Dickens’ socialist propaganda (because it  was socialist propaganda) falsely blamed poverty  

15:12 on laissez-faire economics. But he wasn’t the  only one. A Hegelian called Thomas Hill Green  

15:18 started the ball rolling in the 1870s, followed by  one of his students, a guy called Arnold Toynbee,  

15:25 who questioned the idea of laissez-faire economics  being good for society. Toynbee especially  

15:32 believed that the poor were being trampled by  it. Of course, he had the perfect solution.

15:39 “[Toynbee viewed] the state as something  more than a mechanical contrivance for  

15:44 material ends, as a union of men for  the highest purposes of human nature…”

15:49 I would like to point out that Green and Toynbee  were Hegelians - and I think it’s extremely  

15:57 interesting that they went to the Liberal Party  to demand reform. The Conservatives were the party  

16:03 for the strong-state, yet Green and Toynbee went  to the Liberals - the laissez faire market party.  

16:11 That’s very strange… But anyway, because  

16:13 of the Hegelian attack, John Stewart  Mill, who had been a classic liberal,  

16:17 had a crisis of confidence and basically  turned into a socialist as a result.  

16:22 He wasn’t a Marxist - he became a classic utopian  socialist - believing that private property and  

16:27 money should still exist, but that society should  help the less fortunate, because he now believed  

16:33 that freedom for the individual could only  occur under the guiding hand of the state.

16:38 So the old classic liberalism of laissez  faire economics was under attack,  

16:43 and the Liberals began to think that they should  intervene in the more extreme cases of poverty,  

16:49 or when it was deemed that the free market had  failed. In the 1880s and 90s, Rowntree and Booth  

16:56 published studies on poverty, and basically  confirmed to everyone that laissez-faire was  

17:01 anything but fair. Now, I want to make it  clear that the free market wasn’t causing  

17:06 this poverty - the free market was pulling  people out of poverty during this period.  

17:10 Between 1870 and 1914, the amount of food  consumed by the British people skyrocketed.

17:17 “All departments of life showed improvements.  People ate and dressed better… Many items,  

17:24 once considered luxuries, now were being massed  produced. Furniture, books, pictures, carpets,  

17:29 cigarets, pianos, watches, neckties, and roller  skates entered general circulation. Similarly,  

17:36 entertainment became more universally accessible…  Annual consumption of goods increased markedly:  

17:41 Consumption of sugar rose from 12 pounds  per person in 1870 to 34 pounds in 1907;  

17:49 that of beer from 78 litres in 1872 to 123 litres  in 1900. In 1873, average annual consumption  

18:00 of meat was about 59 pounds per person.  That had gone up to 105 pounds in 1912.”

18:08 The guys back in the 1800s should have known this.  Yes, they didn’t have the statistics that we do,  

18:14 but one of Karl Marx and Engels’ disciples,  Eduard Bernstein (who was one of the people  

18:19 who buried Engels at sea), could tell with his own  eyes that the poor were getting richer as a result  

18:26 of laissez-faire. He began to deviate from Marx in  the early 1890s, and started publishing literature  

18:34 against Marx’s ideology. So if he could see  it, why couldn’t any of the laissez-faire guys? 

18:40 But regardless, as a result of the crisis  of confidence (brought on by the Hegelians),  

18:45 a “Radical” faction emerged and eventually  took over the Liberal Party. By 1890,  

18:51 Old Liberalism had died, and New Liberalism  was cast to the side (although it wouldn't die  

18:57 completely until about 1911). New Liberalism  effectively abandoned laissez-faire and free  

19:03 market economics, and was decisively  more interventionist - almost socialist.

19:08 “In order to differentiate the two, the liberalism  of the 17th and 19th centuries has been dubbed  

19:14 “classic liberalism” (also called “laissez-faire  liberalism”), while the more contemporary version  

19:19 has been labelled “modern liberalism”, “social  liberalism”, or “nanny-state liberalism”.”

19:25 The so-called “New Liberals” then went on  to implement policies like state pensions,  

19:30 school reform and so on. Nothing  dramatic compared to what came later,  

19:35 but enough for historians to note the  significance, and also the change in tactics.

19:41 “By 1890 the socialists seemed to pose a serious  threat in the possible creation of an independent  

19:47 working class party. Progressive Liberals  responded to these socialist threats by advocating  

19:52 Lib-Lab cooperation, and by supporting working  class and industrial reform. In one sense, then,  

19:59 the change from the old to the new radicalism lay  in the new orientation toward “socialist” reforms.  

20:06 And indeed, the border between the left wing of  Liberalism and the right wing of the socialist  

20:12 groups was so indistinct that it depends mainly  on point of view whether some individuals are  

20:17 classed as radicals or socialists; they  favoured the same practical reforms.”

20:23 The Fabien Society is also involved here, but the  fact that the Hegelians are there too… I don’t  

20:30 know, my Spidey-senses are tingling. The fact that  they went for the classic liberals and not the  

20:37 Conservatives, really strikes me as suspicious.  And the fact that the liberals folded so easily  

20:44 just doesn’t make sense, especially  since the vast majority of the British  

20:47 public were still laissez-faire advocates. Up until the late 1880s, the workers and their  

20:54 bosses (the so-called “capitalists”) were on the  same team. Yes, there was a union movement, but it  

21:00 wasn’t until 1889 that the two sides started to  clash - again, really suspicious in my opinion.

21:08 “...the major basis of Liberal support came from  an alliance between the middle class and the  

21:15 working class. This alliance was made possible  because working class voters generally shared  

21:21 middle class goals and middle class assumptions  about the nature of the economy and of politics.  

21:25 The great bulk of the working class in the 1860’s  and ‘70’s was still pre-industrial in the modern  

21:31 sense; the typical workman was a craftsman or a  small-scale capitalist. In the economic world of  

21:37 these small-scale producers, it was still  possible to rise by thrift and self-help.  

21:43 These working class voters, therefore, shared  the middle class ideal of individualism;  

21:49 and as small-scale producers, they did not see the  capitalist as their class enemy. Until the end of  

21:55 the 1880’s, then, the leaders of organised labour  had no desire to use politics for economic ends.”

22:02 So wait, there’s no antagonism between the  workers at their employers throughout most  

22:08 of the industrial revolution, until the  late 1880s, which just so happens to be  

22:13 when the laissez-faire Liberal Party  abandoned their free market economics? 

22:19 Let me just read that first line again.

22:22 “...the major basis of Liberal support came from  

22:25 an alliance between the middle  class and the working class.”

22:30 So you’re saying that in the middle of a century  where the aristocratic elite are losing power to  

22:36 a free population that was pulling itself out  of poverty for the first time in human history  

22:41 off the back of free market economics, there  just so happened to be a gnostic cult attack  

22:48 upon the very principles that was enriching  the entire population at the expense of the  

22:55 power of the elite? And then after a century  of progress, an artificial split was created  

23:03 between the employers and employees, dividing  the very alliance that had weakened the elite  

23:10 and strengthened the poor and middle-income  earners. And as a result of that split,  

23:16 it turned the entire political landscape into a  pro-authoritarian, pro-taxation, pro-regulation,  

23:25 pro-reform and pro-inflation cesspool - all  policies designed to hurt both employer and  

23:33 employee, and keep them divided, as the  aristocratic elite get richer and richer,  

23:38 and we all end up back in feudal  times, eating bugs and being happy? 

23:44 I’m sure this is just a coincidence. Right? [Pause] 

23:48 No, we’ve been played. This is all a trick. If you get rid of the “Left”  

23:54 and “Right” nonsense, and forget Party politics  for a minute - they’re all the same. Pick a party,  

24:01 they’re all pro-state. They’re all  pro-establishment. They’re all pro-tax.  

24:06 They’re all on the same side. When they get in,  nothing ever changes. Yeah, we’ve been played. 

24:14 Employers and employees have been divided.  Why? ‘Patriarchy.’ ‘Fat vs thin.’ ‘A million  

24:20 genders and races.’ ‘Class warfare.’ We’ve  been played. They’re keeping us divided  

24:26 and they’re keeping us against the free market and  liberty. Socialists are just puppets of the elite. 

24:33 You know, let’s start at the top,  go round - that’s one Revolution.  

24:40 Nothing ever changes, the elite stay in  power. It just goes round in circles.  

24:46 It’s the gnostic snake eating its own tail.  It’s a con-game, and we’ve been conned. The  

24:52 establishment always wins. The Revolution  benefits them. It keeps them in power. 

24:59 But, going back to Mosley, we can see now why  he sided with the Liberals. He was hoping to  

25:05 tackle the economic and social issues of the  time. He was described as a de facto Liberal,  

25:12 and Asquith - the leader of the Liberals -  regarded him as a member of his party. There’s  

25:18 also evidence that he was anti-war throughout  this period, not just later. He was against the  

25:25 Ruhr crisis, against involvement in Mesopotamia,  and said that war in Europe shouldn’t be repeated.

25:31 “The follies of Europe have been cleansed  sufficiently in the blood of our people, and never  

25:37 again will they contemplate or will they tolerate  military intervention from this country in the  

25:42 internal affairs of the Continent… It is better to  be in isolation than in sheer desolation. If the  

25:48 worst comes to the worst, this country may once  again have to turn away from Europe towards the  

25:54 new world, and ultimately call in the new  world to redress the balance of the old.”

25:59 On economics, Mosley was, even at  this time, presenting a very Keynesian  

26:05 approach to the problem of unemployment.  He called for the “stabilisation” of the  

26:10 international exchange as a way to tackle  unemployment. This isn’t a coincidence,  

26:15 because he had started to study economic  theory via the writings of Lord Baron  

26:21 Keynes. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence  that the aristocratic Keynes was criticising  

26:27 the free market “capitalist” system, which  he called a “double bluff or deception”,  

26:33 and advocating for inflation and the  destruction of free market money.

26:38 Since unemployment was the major issue at this  point, he got re-elected as an independent in  

26:44 1923, but he was moving closer to the Labour  Party, who were now taking an interest in him. For  

26:52 the first time, the Labour Party became the second  largest party, after the decline of the Liberals  

26:57 to third place, and in January 1924, a minority  Labour Government - the first every - took office  

27:04 under Ramsay MacDonald. Mosley realised that the  tide had turned, and that his polices weren’t  

27:10 much different that the Labour policies. So  he joined the Labour Party in March 1924.

27:17 He ran against Neville Chamberlain in the 1924  election, and with an 80.5% turnout, Neville won  

27:27 with 49.1% of the vote. Mosley came second with  48.9%, with the Liberal candidate receiving 2%.  

27:36 This was a loss, but a huge blow to Chamberlain,  and Mosley’s campaign had caused the second  

27:43 highest turnout in the country. Labour ended up  losing the election anyway, but the Liberal Party  

27:50 was all-but destroyed, losing 118 seats, and  leaving them with 40. So Mosley moving over to  

27:58 Labour was the correct choice, even though  he lost against Chamberlain by 77 votes.

28:05 The Labour Party, which had been founded in  1900, was, and still is, the socialist party  

28:12 of the UK. And so, at the by-election of December  1926, when Mosley ran again, he was attacked by  

28:20 the Conservatives for being rich. You know, he  can’t be for the poor workers when he’s a rich  

28:25 aristocrat - it shows the hypocrisy (even though  every Labour Party politician is rich, we’ll just  

28:32 ignore that). However, being in the middle of  a severe winter where there was a coal crisis  

28:37 brought on by a miner’s strike, the people voted  for the Labour candidate anyway. (It makes no  

28:44 sense why they would vote for a so-called ‘worker  party’ that was designed to convince the workers  

28:50 not to work and make them cold, but that’s besides  the point.) Mosley won, although his performance  

28:56 wasn’t anything a-typical for Labour at the time. However, what is important is that, because Mosley  

29:03 entered the Labour Party, he also ended up  becoming a committed member of the Fabian  

29:09 Society in the 1920s and 30s. (You won’t find  that fact on Wikipedia - Samuels delivers the  

29:16 goods once again.) And Mosley ended up having  to deal with the trade unions, who were allied  

29:22 to the Labour Party. Mosley had never dealt with  them before 1924, and was now getting stuck-in to  

29:28 their debates and strikes, bearing in mind that  the Labour Party was also full of Communists.

29:34 “A handful proclaimed their admiration of  the Soviet Union; three banners included  

29:40 images of Lenin, in one case accompanied by  Marx and, rather incongruously, MacDonald.”

29:47 The workers were so poor that  they had money for these banners.  

29:53 And what’s interesting about this is that  when the miners went on strike in 1926 they  

29:59 were demanding better pay, better working  conditions, and less working hours. However,  

30:05 the mines they were demanding these things from  were unprofitable. So how could the employers  

30:12 give them better pay and allow them to work less  hours, if they didn’t have the money to do that?  

30:19 Mosley’s response was to publish an essay titled  “Revolution by Reason”, saying that the banking  

30:25 sector should be socialised, allowing it  to expand consumer credit to the poor…  

30:32 because obviously the solution to low-pay  and poverty is to get the poor in debt.  

30:39 Mosley also talked about the “international  financiers” in his “Revolution by Reason”,  

30:44 and used racist terminology, which the historian  Howell (in his really in-depth book on Mosley’s  

30:50 early years) says was commonplace at the time.  This is true, but once again, it shows that  

30:56 racism is fine when it’s in the Labour Party,  and not fine when it’s outside the Labour Party.  

31:02 Mosley later went on to say that the  socialisation of the banks would be  

31:07 used to create a minimum wage for the workers,  perhaps unaware that minimum wage creates mass,  

31:13 long term unemployment. So not only would  the state and the poor be massively in debt,  

31:19 they’d be split in two, with some  benefiting from the system, and most not.

31:25 “Low-skilled workers who would be employable  at a low wage become unemployable at an  

31:32 artificially higher wage. And that explains  the perverse cruelty of minimum wage laws:  

31:37 it inflicts the greatest harm on the very  workers it is allegedly designed to help.”

31:42 Nonetheless, the Labour Party in Birmingham  adopted Mosley’s proposals, and later he was given  

31:48 the task of addressing the problem of unemployment  when he entered the cabinet of the Labour  

31:52 Government in 1929. For context, unemployment rose  from 1.1 million in 1929 to 2.5 million in 1930,  

32:01 which was 16 percent of the British labour force.  So something had to be done. Well, Mosley ended  

32:07 up at loggerheads with the Lord Privy Seal, Jimmy  Thomas, who was a Labour trade unionist, also in  

32:14 charge of solving the unemployment problem. Mosley  proposed several measures: from early old age  

32:20 pensions designed to free up jobs for the young,  and a public works programme designed to revive  

32:26 the economy and get people back to work. These  were rejected due to expense, with Thomas and the  

32:34 government favouring cost-cutting measures and an  unemployment insurance bill. Many Labour and trade  

32:40 unionists were disappointed, with Mosley accusing  the Labour Party of just taking a Conservative  

32:46 stance on the issue. He therefore wrote what  is now known as the ‘Mosley Memorandum’,  

32:52 trying to solve the issue of unemployment  through bank loans to fund job creation,  

32:57 plus other measures. He sent a copy to Keynes, who  responded in favour of what Mosley had proposed…  

33:05 which is interesting considering that historians  like Pugh and AJP Taylor do their utmost to  

33:10 ignore the Keynes and Mosley connection by not  mentioning Keynes at all. Taylor even says this:

33:17 “[Mosley’s] proposals were more creative than  those of Lloyd George and offered a blueprint  

33:23 for most of the constructive advances  in economic policy to the present day.  

33:27 It is impossible to say where Mosley got his  ideas from. Perhaps he devised them himself.”

33:34 No, he got them from Lord Baron Keynes. You just  don’t want to associate Keynes with Fascism.

33:40 “If so, they were an astonishing achievement,  

33:44 evidence of a superlative talent  which was later to be wasted.”

33:48 Oh, just get a room, will you! But  here’s why I’ve brought this quote up:  

33:54 Mosley was offering a radical  economic policy - more radical  

33:58 than the Labour or Liberal Parties  could offer. And they rejected it.

34:04 The Labour government considered Mosley’s  policies, and then dismissed him with a vote  

34:09 of 202 against to 29 for Mosley. They said that  unrestricted debt spending would be unpopular  

34:16 with a public wanting security, not insecurity,  and would hand the Conservatives a win in the  

34:23 next election. Despite MacDonald suggesting  that he should stay on, Mosley resigned on  

34:29 the 20th of May 1930 - the first minister  ever to resign from a Labour government.

34:34 “The crisis demanded ‘a war footing… a  revolution in administrative procedure’.  

34:40 His conception of ‘a machine for a  vast programme’ contrasted with the  

34:45 more restrained criticisms of  [other Labour Party members].”

34:49 Yes, Mosley wanted a revolutionary war  economy, which he described as “a machine”.  

34:55 And what he had proposed was typical of a Labour  supporter. ‘The government is the one that creates  

35:01 jobs’, right? But for whatever reason, the  Labour government did not want to deliver on  

35:07 its promises. It didn’t want to attempt to solve  the economic issues by implementing socialism.

35:13 “The Labour Party possessed a utopian ethic of  socialism but it failed to develop the pragmatic  

35:20 programme either to alter the capitalist state  which it inherited or to reform it from within.”

35:25 Not that socialism would have worked - it  never does. But if you’re the socialists,  

35:30 you should at least attempt to do  what you claim to do. But they didn’t. 

35:34 Well, Mosley adapted the principles  of the Mosley Memorandum, which was  

35:38 rewritten and became known as the Mosley  Manifesto. Keynes was highly in favour of it,  

35:44 but he didn’t have any influence on the Labour  Party at this moment. Nonetheless, Mosley and six  

35:50 other Labour Party MPs left the Labour Party  to form a new party, called the New Party.  

35:57 One Ulster Unionist, William Edward David  Allen, also joined them, but historians are  

36:03 split on whether to call Allen a Conservative or  not. Regardless, they were mostly socialists who  

36:09 were sick of the current party system, and  didn’t see the Labour Party as good enough.  

36:14 In contrast to the other parties, they now  campaigned on ‘action’, because they thought  

36:20 the other parties were just talking and weren’t  actually doing anything. In fact, the New Party’s  

36:27 journal was called Action. Unfortunately, Mosley  was ill, so the campaign didn’t go so well,  

36:33 but what’s interesting is that the socialists  violently attacked Mosley’s New Party during  

36:39 the by-election at Ashton-under-Lyne  in 1931, which the New Party won.

36:45 “...the by-election provoked a bitter display of  

36:48 tribalism on the Labour side. Instead of  blaming the defeat on its own leaders,  

36:54 the movement turned its anger against  Mosley. Damned as a traitor and a Judas,  

37:00 he was subjected to physical attack throughout the  campaign. On the steps of Ashton Town Hall where  

37:07 he was buffeted by Labour supporters after the  declaration, Mosley remarked bitterly to Strachey:  

37:13 ‘That is the crowd that has prevented anyone  from doing anything in England since the war.’ ”

37:20 Mosley’s not a fascist at this point. But  Mosley learnt what I learnt, and what so  

37:25 many others have learnt too. You’re not allowed  to abandon Socialism or “the Left”. You’re not  

37:31 allowed to have an independent thought, or  offer criticism to them. As soon as you do,  

37:36 you’ll come under attack. Mosley didn’t provoke  the Left, the Left attacked him first before he  

37:42 was even a fascist. He didn’t have his  body-guards yet or anything like that.  

37:46 In fact, it was Labour violence that  caused him to employ security forces.

37:52 “The violent attacks to which the New  Party was subjected by left-wing groups  

37:57 accelerated the evolution of Mosley’s  political strategy. Well aware that  

38:03 the Conservatives employed fascist  stewards to police their meetings,  

38:07 he quickly concluded that the New  Party would have to provide its own…”

38:11 So all stewards are fascist now, apparently…  

38:15 But the point is that Mosley reacted to political  violence with political violence. However,  

38:20 the historians only paint Mosley as  violent, not his political opponents.  

38:26 Bias much? You know, and I’m not trying  to defend any ‘side’ here, because they’re  

38:32 all pro-establishment anyway. But my concern is  with the double-standards which historians have  

38:36 employed. When the fascists do something, it’s  VIOLENCE! But when the pro-establishment forces  

38:42 do something it’s “mostly peaceful protests”.  Seriously, they need to start being consistent.

38:48 Under threat of political violence,  Mosley decided to recruit a trained body  

38:53 of ‘stewards’ to keep his party protected.  These were trained by Edward ‘Kid’ Lewis,  

38:59 a Jewish boxer (a fact that Pugh fails to point  out). When Mosley spoke at Glasgow, 500 Communists  

39:07 attacked him and this new bodyguard with stones  and razors. So again, there’s no justification for  

39:14 this. Mosley wasn’t a fascist at this point, the  boxer who trained the bodyguards was Jewish, and  

39:19 Mosley’s policies were entirely in alignment with  Keynes and the “Left” (for want of a better word).  

39:25 You know, who was being more violent?

39:28 Violence aside, the New Party were crushed in  the 1931 general election. Not a single member  

39:36 got elected. And to be fair, the Labour Party  was crushed as well - they lost 78% of their  

39:42 seats because everyone had lost confidence in  them. The Conservatives won 470 seats - a huge  

39:49 majority - and formed a National Government with  others, creating a 554 seat-strong government.

39:57 So let’s just think about this. The Labour  Party was in power during the beginning years  

40:02 of the Great Depression. It failed to solve  the crisis, and was subsequently destroyed  

40:07 in the General Election. Mosley then turns  to fascism (which we’ll get to in a second).  

40:12 But what would you conclude from this? Would you  conclude something like, the Labour Party was  

40:18 insufficient or inactive? Would you conclude  that the Labour Party’s inactivity meant  

40:23 that Mosley had to seek an alternative route? Because that’s not what the historians think.

40:29 “British fascism was born of the  failure of economic conservatism  

40:34 to check the rapid decline of  Britain in the inter-war years.”

40:38 Okay, there are several things wrong with  this statement. ‘Economic conservatism’ wasn’t  

40:44 laissez-faire free markets, even though people  think it is, and this author doesn’t clarify that,  

40:49 giving a false impression of what was happening  here. Secondly, it wasn’t conservatism that was  

40:56 in power. The Labour Party was the one that  failed, so the British public turned to the  

41:01 Conservatives in the hope that they would  free up the market, which they didn’t do,  

41:04 because again, the Conservatives were never  laissez-faire, even though people think they are. 

41:11 It was the Labour Party’s economics that  failed. The Labour Party had implemented  

41:16 things like the Coal Mines Act of 1930, where  they introduced quotas for production. They  

41:23 guaranteed a minimum price for coal (not maximum,  minimum, meaning they made it more expensive),  

41:31 and then reduced the work day from 8  hours to 7.5. What did that all do?  

41:37 It increased the price of coal  during the Great Depression.

41:41 “The Coal Mines Act of 1930 was their  most important domestic achievement and  

41:47 a landmark in British History. ...the  act protected the inefficient [coal  

41:51 mines]. It operated restriction and  stable prices at the expense of the  

41:56 consumer. Here was the pattern for  British capitalism in the thirties.”

42:01 Oh yes, because Labour introduced capitalism to  Britain, because they’re not real socialists. 

42:07 Clearly AJP Taylor is incorrect in  his assessment of whether this was  

42:11 capitalism or not, but the point is that the  consumer was getting hurt by the higher prices  

42:16 that were forced upon them by the Labour  Party. They also introduced an Agricultural  

42:21 Marketing Act in 1931 which created boards for  government bureaucrats to fixed prices again,  

42:28 hurting the consumer once more. And what  did MacDonald do? What did he blame?

42:34 “We are not on trial; it is the  system under which we live… It  

42:39 has broken down everywhere, as  it was bound to break down.”

42:42 Oh I see, we’ve got to blame it on “capitalism”  and “economic conservatism” (which we’re going  

42:49 to assume is capitalism, even though it’s not),  despite the fact that the Labour Party was the  

42:54 one in power, and it was implementing socialist  policies. You know, the Labour Party guy said so,  

43:00 so we’ve got to just believe him, and all the  historians did just that. You know, is anyone else  

43:07 thinking that these historians are a little bit  Hegelian in their assessment? Or is it just me?

43:11 But yeah, Labour and Mosley’s New Party got  defeated, as the British people voted for the  

43:17 Conservatives. Mosley could have just stayed  within the system. He could have gone back,  

43:23 cap-in-hand to the Labour, Liberal or  Conservative Parties, but he wasn’t  

43:27 impressed by their lack of action. Labour weren’t  willing to do anything and had been crushed, plus  

43:34 they were violently hostile to him anyway. The  Liberals were basically dead at this point. Plus:

43:39 “Baldwin’s Conservative Party had emerged  apparently as the party for all anti-socialists…  

43:47 The Conservative Party was increasingly dismissed  by Mosley as unimaginative and reactionary.”

43:53 This is important because a lot of the historians  say that Mosley was a “reactionary conservative”.  

44:01 But even by their own standards, he wasn’t. He  could have rejoined the Conservative Party at this  

44:07 point, and a political opportunist would have done  just that, since the Conservatives had just won  

44:12 one of the greatest landslides in history. But he  didn’t because, to him, they were reactionaries. 

44:20 Despite this, historians like Thurlow, state  over and over again, that Mosley and Fascism  

44:27 was a “conservative” and “reactionary” movement.  Now, in the way that he’s using these words,  

44:34 he’s wrong. But he is correct… for the wrong  reasons. Fascism is a conservative movement,  

44:40 just like socialism is a conservative movement  as well. They’re all pro-state, pro-elite,  

44:45 pro-tax, pro-regulation and pro-inflation.  None of them are for actual progress. They’re  

44:51 all for locking down the economy ‘to save the  granny state’ rather than freeing the market.  

44:58 Who locked the entire world  down for two and a half years?  

45:02 They all did. Doesn’t matter who was elected, they  all marched in goose-step. So in that sense, yes,  

45:09 they are “ultra-conservative reactionary fascism”,  which is what Thurlow calls it at one point.  

45:16 But he’s using it in the wrong sense.  You know, “far left”, “far right”,  

45:21 Marxist, Fascist, Socialist, Conservative,  “ultra-this”, “radical that” - it’s all the same. 

45:28 So Mosley ends 1931 as a political outcast.  He has no party (it had dissolved) and he  

45:34 can’t bring himself to go back to the ‘old  gangs’, as he called them. So he starts to  

45:39 study the non-mainstream parties, which  leads him to go see Mussolini in 1932.  

45:46 But I want to make this clear: until this  moment, there is no way that you can call  

45:50 Mosley a fascist. He was beginning to  consider the fascist idea in late 1931,  

45:55 but he hadn’t yet converted. And  I’m not the only one to say that.

45:59 “Mosley’s political career until the  brief and troubled life of the New  

46:03 Party can be explored and analysed  without any significant reference to  

46:08 fascism or to any alleged burgeoning  sympathy for fascist doctrines.”

46:13 But in the aftermath of its defeat, he turned to  fascism. There’s several reasons why he does this,  

46:19 but the main reason why is because the other  parties had failed. They were not radical enough  

46:25 to implement the Revolutionary economic and social  policies that Mosley thought could ‘save Britain’  

46:31 and improve the welfare of the British people.  He only saw two factions that he could join.

46:37 “Communism will quickly supersede the  woolly-headed and woolly-hearted Social  

46:42 Democrats of Labour, and Communism’s  inevitable and historic opponent will  

46:47 arise to take the place of a flabby conservatism.”

46:50 Mosley went to Italy to see Mussolini in the  January of 1932, who warned him not to attempt  

46:56 a military coup in Britain. But had effectively  converted to Fascism. In the summer of 1932,  

47:02 he wrote a book called “The Greater Britain”,  which basically became the new manifesto of  

47:09 the fascist party he was about to create. That  party wouldn’t be created until the October,  

47:14 but nonetheless, The Greater Britain  spells out exactly what he was thinking.

47:19 “In the ranks of Conservatism there are many who  are attracted there by the Party’s tradition of  

47:25 loyalty, order and stability - but who are, none  the less, repelled by its lethargy and stagnation.  

47:32 In the ranks of Labour there are many who follow  the Party’s humane ideals, and are attracted by  

47:38 its vital urge to remedy social and economic  evils - but who are, none the less, repelled  

47:45 by its endless and inconclusive debates, its  cowardice, its lack of leadership and decision.”

47:51 “These elements comprise the best of both  Parties: and to both Fascism appeals. The  

47:58 two essentials of Government are stability and  progress; and the tragedy of politics is that  

48:04 the two, essentially coincident,  are organised as contradictions.  

48:09 Stability implies order and authority, without  which nothing can be done. It is regarded as  

48:16 belonging to the ‘Right’. Progress implies the  urge to reform without which society cannot  

48:22 survive. It is regarded as belonging to the  “Left”. Stability is confused with reaction  

48:29 and a stand-pat resistance to change:  progress with ill-considered changes,  

48:34 or with the futile and paralytic discussions so  characteristic of a timorous democracy. This is  

48:41 a dynamic age. Stability cannot exist without  progress, for it implies the recognition of  

48:48 changes in the world which no political system can  alter. Nor can progress exist without stability,  

48:54 for it implies a balanced and orderly view  of the changes which have taken place.”

48:59 “The “Right” seeks stability, but denies the power  of adaptation which makes stability an active  

49:06 force. The “Left” seeks progress, but rejects  all effective instruments and robs authority  

49:13 of the power to make decisions. The result of  both systems of the two great organised Parties  

49:19 of the State is in the end the same. Stability  confused with reaction and a resistance to change,  

49:26 together with progress confused with  obstructive debate and committee  

49:30 irresponsibility, end alike in chaos. Both are  instruments for preventing things being done,  

49:36 and the first requisite of the modern  age is that things should be done.”

49:40 “Both political Parties, and the remnants  of Liberalism as well, stand bound by  

49:46 the great vested interests of “Right” and  “Left” which created them. In Opposition,  

49:51 there is the same profusion of promise; in office,  the same apathy and inertia. In post-War England,  

49:59 their creeds have become platitudes; they  consistently fail to grapple with the  

50:04 problems of the time. Their rule has led,  with tragic inevitability, to the present  

50:10 chaos. Therefore our Fascist Movement seeks on  the one hand Stability, which envisages order  

50:17 and authority as a basis of all solid achievement;  we seek, on the other hand, Progress, which can be  

50:24 achieved only by the executive instrument that  order, authority and decision alone can give.”

50:29 “The main object of a modern and Fascist  movement is to establish the Corporate State.  

50:36 In our belief, it is the greatest constructive  conception yet devised by the mind of man…  

50:42 In psychology it is based on team-work; in  organisation it is the rationalised State.”

50:49 “It is this machinery of central direction which  the Corporate State is designed to supply…”

50:56 “This does not mean control from Whitehall, or  constant interference by Government with the  

51:02 business of industry. But it does mean that  Government, or rather the Corporate system,  

51:07 will lay down the limits within which  individuals and interests may operate.  

51:12 Those limits are the welfare of the nation - not,  which all is said, a very unreasonable criterion.  

51:20 Within these limits all activity is  encouraged; individual enterprise,  

51:25 and the making of profit, are not only  permitted, but encouraged so long as that  

51:31 enterprise enriches rather than damages  by its activity the nation as a whole.”

51:35 “But so soon as anybody, whether an individual or  an organised interest, steps outside those limits,  

51:43 so that his activity becomes sectional and  anti-social, the mechanism of the Corporate  

51:49 system descends upon him. This implies that every  interest, whether “Right” or “Left” industrial,  

51:55 financial, trade union or banking system, is  subordinated to the welfare of the community  

52:01 as a whole and to the overriding authority of  the organised State. No State within the State  

52:09 can be permitted. “All within the State; none  outside the State; none against the State”.”

52:15 And here he’s quoting Mussolini’s  speech in Milan, 28th of October 1925.

52:21 Mosley was fed up with the current  system. He wanted to get things done,  

52:25 and those things required a totalitarian state  that could centrally organise the society and  

52:31 economy to better the welfare of the people. Yes,  profit is mentioned, and he claims that there will  

52:39 be “individual enterprise”, but he’s not talking  about a free market. This isn’t laissez faire,  

52:44 and if you read the rest of the book, you’ll see  that. But he’s mentioning profit and enterprise  

52:50 because he’s aware of his audience - the British  people wanted laissez faire. They voted for  

52:56 the Conservatives for a reason. They mistakenly  believed that they were the low-tax and laissez  

53:02 faire party, much like the people still think this  today. So he’s addressing his audience and saying,  

53:07 ‘yeah don’t worry, you can still have profit’.  But in reality it’s nowhere near that. 

53:14 Now, we’ll come to look at Mosley’s  policies in more detail at a later  

53:18 date. But what can we conclude today? Well, it’s clear that Mosley was a radical  

53:23 who’s only criticism of the current system was  that it wasn’t doing enough. The Conservatives  

53:28 never wanted to help the people anyway, the  Liberals were destroyed by the Hegelians,  

53:34 and Labour were all bark and no bite. So Mosley  wanted to actually implement policies that he  

53:40 believed would help the British people. Now, they  wouldn’t help the British people, because they  

53:46 were typical statist policies that always result  in economic ruin, but he believed that they would,  

53:52 as many do to this day. However, his evolution  through the political system - trying out every  

53:58 party - wasn’t because he was a flip-flopper,  or an opportunist. It wasn’t because he had no  

54:05 principles, or was always a ‘secret fascist’.  It’s because he was fed up with the old system. 

54:11 He even says that the political  and economic system is old,  

54:15 and that there’s a need for a new movement. He  then presents Fascism as the “Modern Movement”,  

54:22 which is false because it’s anything but ‘modern’.  You know, what policies does it have? Pro-tax,  

54:27 pro-inflation, pro-authority, pro-protectionism -  all the traits that every other party advocated as  

54:34 well. Since the collapse of old-Liberalism in the  late 1800s, all the parties had the same policies.  

54:42 These were the exact policies the establishment  wanted. Yes, there are differences in the methods:  

54:47 Mosley wants syndicalism, which arguably  the Conservatives don’t want. And there’s  

54:52 an anti-Communism bias, which Labour doesn’t  want either. But otherwise their policies are  

54:57 all aiming in the same direction. The methods  were different, but the madness was the same. 

55:03 The only other major conclusion worth coming  to is that the historians have not approached  

55:08 this with a critical eye. In some cases they’ve  ignored the evidence and then attached a bunch  

55:14 of adjectives to the word “conservative” in the  hope that nobody would notice. My question is  

55:20 why can’t they come at this from anything  other than an Establishment perspective? 

55:26 There’s also a question about  the Fabians and the Hegelians.  

55:30 They did exist, and they were influential,  but again are ignored by the mainstream. 

55:35 So, there’s a lot still left to look into, and  I’m sure this video will cause some controversy,  

55:41 so I look forward to the debate. In the meantime,  

55:44 here’s a bunch of videos you might also find  interesting. Thanks for watching, bye for now.