Cultures of Post-War British Fascism

Nigel Copsey, John E. Richardson, Nigel Copsey, John E. Richardson

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138846838
• eBook ISBN: 9781317539360
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In Post-War Britain cultural interventions were a feature of fascist parties and movements, just as they were in Europe. This book makes a new major contribution to existing scholarship which begins to discuss British fascism as a cultural phenomenon. A collection of essays from leading academics, this book uncovers how a cultural struggle lay at the heart of the hegemonic projects of all varieties of British fascism. Such a cultural struggle is enacted and reflected in the text and talk, music and literature of British fascism.

Where other published works have examined the cultural visions of British fascism during the inter-war period, this book is the first to dedicate itself to detailed critical analysis of the post-war cultural landscapes of British fascism. Through discussions of cultural phenomena such as folk music, fashion and neo-nazi fiction, among others, Cultures of Post-War British Fascism builds a picture of Post-War Britain which emphasises the importance of understanding these politics with reference to their corresponding cultural output.

This book is essential reading for undergraduates and postgraduates studying far right politics and British history.

1 Cultural Regeneration Mosley and the Union Movement

Janet Dack

DOI: 10.4324/9781315727257-1

Introduction

Cultural regeneration was a highly significant concern for British fascism between the wars. In their quest for cultural rebirth, Mosley and the British Union of Fascists (BUF) took inspiration from Friedrich Nietzsche’s concepts of the will to power and Übermensch, or Superman. Reference was also made to other anti-rationalist and anti-positive thinkers, including Henri Bergson who argued for the existence of a creative force, élan vital, and claimed that intuition was stronger than intellect; Gustave Le Bon who developed a theory of crowd psychology; and Georges Sorel, particularly his thinking on the power of myth. Yet without doubt, in relation to the cultural understanding of Mosley and the BUF, the most influential of these thinkers was Oswald Spengler.

Spengler’s organic conception of the nation and his theory that each civilisation or culture had a natural and inevitable life-cycle consisting of formation, growth, decadence, decline and death informed much of the writing in the inter-war BUF press (Linehan 2000). Within these pages, the meaning and function of culture in a fascist society was hotly debated and the overwhelming message was that Britain was a nation in terminal cultural decline, descending into the abyss. Representations of a nation drowning in a rising tide of decadence, compounded by a failure of masculine vitality, and a lack of respect for traditional values were regular features of papers such as Action and Blackshirt. Recently published work has examined these inter-war cultural obsessions (Linehan 2000; Gottlieb and Linehan 2004); regrettably, far less attention has been paid to the cultural attitudes and policies of post-war Mosleyites and British fascists more generally.

Steven Woodbridge (2004) is one of the few scholars to engage with the post-war cultural concerns of British fascists. According to Woodbridge, the post-war far-right merely reproduced the responses of inter-war fascists in their struggle to revive the nation’s cultural identity and reverse the process of decline. How accurate is this view? By focusing on Mosley and the Union Movement (UM), and in particular on the UM papers Action and Union and the more intellectual journal The European edited by Mosley’s wife, Diana, this chapter examines the continuities and changes in post-war attitudes, including perceptions of the state of the nation and what it was to be part of the nation; attitudes to masculinity; the challenge to youth; the role of women; anti-urbanism; and the function of the arts. Particular attention will be paid to the extent to which the Spenglerian vision was adapted to accommodate a radically changing world, Mosley’s increasing focus on ‘Europe a Nation’, and the economic exploitation of Africa. The tensions created by attempts to develop a new European identity alongside that of the existing British/English tradition will be explored and their impact on the direction taken by British fascism considered. As we shall see, as far as the UM was concerned, it was mostly a case of reproducing inter-war policies. Even so, there was some adaptation, albeit limited in scope.

Re-ordering the nation

During the inter-war period the BUF adopted an organic concept of culture that was heavily influenced by Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, which had first been published in Germany in 1918 and in England in 1926. Linehan (2000) points out, however, that they did not share Spengler’s pessimistic view that Western Civilisation could not be rejuvenated. The BUF, among other fascist groups at the time, based their interpretation of events on a cyclical rather than linear perception of time (Griffin 2004). As the sense of crisis deepened, so the time of renewal came closer.

While pouring scorn on Britain’s political leaders, whom they categorised as a bunch of old women (Action, 9 Jul. 1936; Blackshirt, 28 Nov. 1936), and those they considered to be effete, left-leaning intellectuals (Blackshirt, 22–8 Jul. 1933, 16 May 1936, 8 Jan. 1938), the BUF remained convinced that the overwhelming majority of British subjects had merely been misled by ‘old gang’ politicians or conniving trade union officials. Once the people were aware of the ‘facts’, the BUF was convinced that they would turn to Mosley, who had the policies and the will to rejuvenate the nation. The BUF press was full of confident assertions that the new corporate state would transcend social divisions and envisioned a future fascist Britain as a classless meritocracy. Those with talent who served the state would be rewarded without regard to class (Blackshirt, Feb. and 1 May 1933). Repeatedly the BUF emphasised the classless nature of the corporate state while stressing that national renewal could not be achieved without sacrifice and service (Blackshirt, 7 Feb. and 7 Dec. 1934, 1 Jun. 1937; Action 31 Oct. 1936, 13 Nov. 1937, 12 Feb. 1938).

After the Second World War, and despite victory over Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, Oswald Mosley and his Union Movement continued to regard Britain as a nation in decline, though the cries of decadence and impending doom were less shrill and were frequently subsumed within articles on economic policy. Still, the perception of imminent collapse continued to underpin Mosley’s thinking and UM policy. The major development was that Mosley’s vision now encompassed the whole of Western Europe. In The Alternative, published in 1947, Mosley evoked a strong sense of degeneration and disintegration. Obviously drawing upon the work of fin de siècle writers such as Maurice Barrès, Mosley referred to a rootedness in European culture and tradition; roots that had been torn up under the influence of an oriental infection. This infection combined the ‘sinister cohesion of Communism’ with the baleful effect of International Finance; Mosley associated both with Jews (Mosley 1947: 19–21).

Returning to the theme of imminent crisis, Mosley warned of an approaching economic crash and civil war made inevitable by the ‘ineptitude and decadence’ of Western capitalism (Mosley 1954a: 9–18). In 1958 he claimed that the disruption resulting from the final failure of the capitalist system in Europe would require a siege economy across Western Europe (Mosley 1947). Consistent with his pre-war thinking, Mosley regarded the dismantling of the British Empire as symptomatic of Britain’s degeneration and the result of a collective failure of will to keep the Empire intact. The war had hastened the demise of the Empire and lowered Britain’s status in the world. However, Mosley claimed that when Britain accepted her destiny to unite Europe her future could ‘transcend even the past’ (The European, Jun. 954).

Those who led the country into the Second World War were described by Mosley as a decadent elite suffering from ‘febrile vanity and nervous hysteria’ (The European, Apr. 1955: 12). The European frequently published articles critical of Britain’s decision to declare war on Germany and there was a strong sense that Britain had sown the wind and deserved to reap the whirlwind for her failure to recognise the innate rightness of Hitler’s intentions (Raven 1954; Mills 1955; Peel 1957). There was an outright refusal among the writers contributing to The European and the other UM papers to countenance the thought that any German action deserved retribution. An article by Bertram Peel argued: ‘If he [Hitler] persecuted it is easy to understand why he did so’ (Peel 1957: 144). He also complained that with regard to the Jews ‘what was done by both sides in the heat of battle … has yet to be considered impartially’ (Peel 1957: 145). Mosley had also argued that both sides had committed atrocities and were approximately equal; he was not inclined to argue about amount or degree, his concern was that only the Germans had been punished and they had acted in the heat of battle. ‘What we did was done in cold blood after the battle was won’ (The European, Mar. 1954). Consequently, the Nuremberg trials and the de-Nazification process were subjected to unreserved criticism (The European, Feb., Apr. and May 1954, Jan. 1955).

The whole ethos of the UM rested on the premise that Mosley was always right, therefore, the BUF’s pre-war support for Nazi Germany could not have been wrong and so it must be that the victors were persecuting the losers to obscure their own mistakes. Along similar lines, Diana Mosley was highly critical of the ITV documentary Tyranny: the Years of Adolf Hitler. She claimed that the programme distorted the facts and argued that Austria had welcomed Hitler and the Anschluss, with the ‘whole country going wild with joy’ (Action, 14 Mar. 1959). She also pointed out that the programme had failed to mention National Socialist achievements or the allied bombing of Dresden. However, in 1967, in a television interview with David Frost, Mosley did concede that Hitler had been wrong to kill the Jews in the extermination camps. He admitted that for a number of years he had not believed that this had happened and, though he doubted the number said to have been killed, it was wrong to kill any innocent civilians and had Hitler lived he should have been tried for war crimes. Despite Mosley’s belated acknowledgement of the Holocaust, Graham Macklin (2007), who regards Mosley as one of the earliest proponents of Holocaust denial in Britain, notes that he continued to blame the Jews for bringing about the war and therefore their own destruction. Similarly, he continued to maintain that the Nuremberg trials were unfair and that the Allies should have also been tried (The Frost Programme, Nov. 1967).

Concern at the impending economic crash was coupled with fear of Soviet political domination of the continent. A 1973 editorial in Action accused Europe’s leaders of lacking nerve and direction. Their ‘tittering decadence’ was said to be reminiscent of ‘the decadence that rotted Rome before the final assault of the barbarian hordes’ (Action, 15 Apr. 1973). Nevertheless, the years passed and the terminal crisis failed to arrive. In December 1980 Action’s front-page headline was ‘NEXT YEAR – CRISIS, PARTY COL-LAPSE AND BRITAIN AWAKE IN NEW UNION!’ (Action, Dec. 1980). The coming crisis was said to prove that Mosley had been right in 1953 when he had first predicted it and he was praised for giving twenty-eight years of warning. Regular readers of the BUF press might argue that Mosley had been predicting the crisis for closer to fifty years!

Mosley argued that what was needed to bring about Europe’s second renaissance was a new way of life that united ‘the underlying tradition of Europe with the profound revolution of modern science’ (Union, undated pamphlet). In order to gain the consent and ‘spiritual enthusiasm of the people’ it was necessary to demonstrate strong leadership, the will to act and to have ready a cadre of men imbued with the ‘Prussian Spirit’ who were willing to live lives of service (Bardey 1956; Mosley 1968, 1974b). The constitution of the Union Movement retained the Spenglerian concept of society as an organic whole, along with the BUF’s model of leadership and its slogan of ‘opportunity for all and privilege to none’. The object of the movement was to achieve ‘Europe a Nation’ and to develop higher forms of human life by harnessing the ‘persistent energy of the creative manhood of Europe’ (Constitution of the Union Movement, undated).

The form of ‘Europe a Nation’ differed over the years. Mosley initially envisaged Britain taking its white colonies into the European economic system but was adamant that the black colonies should be given their independence immediately as they would not fit in to Europe because they were a different people with different standards and a different way of life. Because of this perceived cultural difference, in a plan devised in cooperation with the South African Oswald Pirow, Africa would be divided into two separate nations. The larger part would be reserved for black Africans and the smaller part, which Mosley considered to be more suitable for white development, would provide resources for Europe and a guaranteed market for its manufactured goods. According to Mosley, both nations would be equal in opportunity and status but independent and entirely separate. However, there would need to be an interim period during which the workers of black Africa would need to be employed in white Africa until sufficient white labour had been recruited. How long this interim period would last was unclear, but Mosley envisaged it as being a considerably shorter period than that required for white technicians to train their replacements in black Africa (Policy of the Union Movement n.d.; Mosley 1954b). Mosley’s later, alternative plan was to increase the size of white controlled Africa and ensure a permanent majority of white settlers. Black Africans would be given equality of citizenship and some local control of their own areas. Mosley favoured ‘a measure of apartheid within Euro-Africa; the dignity of equal status within a great community would then be enjoyed by blacks without the friction of close daily contact’ (1954b: 12–13). His plans for Europe a Nation and the ‘equal but separate’ concept appear to be a precursor of the thinking of Alain de Benoist and the French New Right (Bar-On 2012). As Mosley admitted that it was probable that some form of apartheid would have to be introduced before Euro-Africa was fully realised and ‘the dignity of equal status’ could be conferred on its black citizens – and then went on to claim that the Belgian Congo treated its black population better than British controlled Northern Rhodesia did – it is not hard to imagine the conditions that black Africans would have had to endure if Mosley had had his way (Mosley 1954b: 13–14).

Claims that ‘we have no prejudice whatever against negroes’ were undermined by cartoons in Britain Awake, Social Justice and in East London Blackshirt (Mosley 1954b: 12). The policy of Mosley and the UM was unequivocal: ‘coloured’ immigration should be stopped immediately and all ‘coloured’ immigrants should be repatriated (Action, 15 Apr. 1970, May 1973, 15 Sep. 1976). This policy was based on cultural rather than biological considerations and was consistently maintained over three decades (Union, Dec. 1951; East London Blackshirt, Dec. 1955; Action, 30 Jan. 1959, 1 Jul. 1961, 15 Apr. 1973, 15 Sep. 1976). There was, however, a fear of miscegenation that some historians have linked to biological racism (Macklin 2007). Nonetheless, Mosley’s hostility to the new immigrants was overwhelmingly expressed in cultural terms. While Mosley claimed that he ‘stood for a constructive and humane policy’ and always maintained that ‘when coloured immigrants are here they should be treated with utmost courtesy and kindness’, the UM press was often less than kind (Skidelsky 1990: 513). The arrival of these immigrants was compared to a flood or an invasion and they were alleged to be violent, abusing white women, and taking jobs, houses and other resources needed by British people (Action, 16 Jan. and 27 Jun. 1959, Nov. 1960, 1 May 1961, 15 Apr. and 1 Jun. 1973; Social Justice, May 1967). Such clai...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Introduction—NIGEL COPSEY AND JOHN E. RICHARDSON
• 1 Cultural regeneration: Mosley and the Union Movement—JANET DACK
• 2 History and cultural heritage: the far right and the ‘Battle for Britain’—STEVEN WOODBRIDGE
• 3 Cultures of space: spatialising the National Front—THOMAS LINEHAN
• 4 Securing the future of our race: women in the culture of the modern-day BNP—MARTIN DURHAM
• 5 British neo-Nazi fiction: Colin Jordan’s Merrie England – 2000 and The Uprising—PAUL JACKSON
• 6 When popular culture met the far right: cultural encounters with post-war British fascism—NIGEL COPSEY
• 7 Subcultural style: fashion and Britain’s extreme right—EMILY TURNER-GRAHAM
• 8 British, European and white: cultural constructions of identity in post-war British fascist music—RYAN SHAFFER
• 9 Nazi punks folk off: leisure, nationalism, cultural identity and the consumption of metal and folk music—KARL SPRACKLEN
• 10 The ‘cultic milieu’ of Britain’s ‘New Right’: meta-political ‘fascism’ in contemporary Britain—GRAHAM MACKLIN
• 11 ‘Cultural Marxism’ and the British National Party: a transnational discourse—JOHN E. RICHARDSON
• Index