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British Union of Fascists
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The British Union of Fascists (BUF) was a political party in the United Kingdom formed in 1932 by a former Labour government minister and former MP of the Conservative Party, Sir Oswald Mosley.
ld Mosley had been a junior minister of Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government advising on rising unemployment. In 1930 he issued his 'Mosley Memorandum': a proto-Keynesian programme of policies designed to tackle the unemployment problem.
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The British Union of Fascists (BUF) was a political party in the United Kingdom formed in 1932 by a former Labour government minister and former MP of the Conservative Party, Sir Oswald Mosley.
Background
Oswald Mosley had been a junior minister of Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government advising on rising unemployment. In 1930 he issued his 'Mosley Memorandum': a proto-Keynesian programme of policies designed to tackle the unemployment problem. He resigned in early 1931 when these were rejected and formed the New Party, with policies based on his memorandum. Despite winning 16% of the vote at a by-election in Ashton-under-Lyne in early 1931, the party failed to achieve electoral success.
During 1931 New Party policies became increasingly influenced by Fascism. In January 1932, Mosley's conversion to Fascism was confirmed when he visited Benito Mussolini in Italy. He wound up the New Party in April 1932 but kept the youth movement as the basis for a Fascist fighting force. He spent summer that year writing a Fascist programme; The Greater Britain. The BUF was launched in October 1932.
Character
Imagery
Mosley modelled himself on Benito Mussolini and the BUF on Mussolini's National Fascist Party in Italy. Mussolini and, later, Mosley instituted black uniforms for members, earning them the nickname "Blackshirts." The BUF was anti-communist and protectionist, and proposed replacing parliamentary democracy with elected executives having jurisdiction over specific industries – a system similar to the corporatism of the Italian fascists. Unlike the Italian system, British fascist corporatism planned a democracy that would replace the House of Lords with elected executives drawn from major industries, the clergy, and colonies. The House of Commons was to be reduced to allow for a faster, "less factionist" democracy.
The BUF's programme and ideology were outlined in Mosley's Tomorrow We Live (Abbey Supplies, Ltd., 1938), and A. Raven Thompson's The Coming Corporate State (1938).
Most BUF policies were built on isolationism, prohibiting trade by British nationals outside the British Empire. Mosley proposed this would protect the British economy from the flux of the world market, especially during the Great Depression, and prevent "cheap slave competition from abroad."
Anti-semitism
Many members were from aristocratic and military families and included military scientist J.F.C. Fuller. The policy throughout the 1930s was not officially anti-Semitic but many members were openly so. The BUF's propaganda director, American-born William Joyce, was outspoken in his hatred of Jews, whom he denounced as "a perpetual nuisance," and, in his last public message as reported by the BBC, announced, "In death as in life, I defy the Jews who caused this last war, and I defy the powers of darkness they represent." Mosley, in his autobiography, My Life, admitted: "As we shall see I had a quarrel years later with certain Jews for political reasons, but have not at any time been an anti-semite."
Of anti-Semitism in the BUF, The Times wrote, in 1934:
"The listeners heard Sir O. Mosley refer to his would-be interrupters as 'sweeping of the Continental ghettoes, hired by Jewish financiers...an alien gang imported from all quarters of Britain by Jewish money to prevent Englishmen putting their case [forward]....'"
Responding, in 1935, to a question from The Times about BUF policy regarding Jewish Britons, Mosley said: "We will not tolerate within the State a minority organized against the interests of the State. Jews must either put the interests of Britain before the interests of Jewry or they will be deported from Britain."
Prominence
The BUF claimed 50,000 members at one point and the Daily Mail was an early supporter, running the headline "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!".
Opinion was divided on the BUF's black-shirted followers; in some quarters, their unified appearance, and the vision of militant Britishness, won supporters. Others found them absurd. P.G. Wodehouse based the "amateur dictator" Roderick Spode and his Black Shorts, in Jeeves and Wooster, on Mosley and the BUF.
Despite considerable and sometimes violent resistance from Jewish people, the Labour Party, democrats and the Communist Party of Great Britain, the BUF found a following in the East End of London, where in the London County Council elections of 1937 it obtained good results in Bethnal Green, Shoreditch and Limehouse. However, the BUF never faced a General Election, having lost the funding of newspaper magnate, Lord Rothermere, that it previously enjoyed. The party urged voters to abstain, offering "Fascism Next Time". There never was a "next time", as the next General Election was not held until July 1945, by which time World War II in Europe had ended and fascism had been discredited.
Towards the middle of the 1930s, the BUF's violent activities, and discomfort at perceived alignment with the German Nazi party, began to alienate some middle-class supporters. Membership decreased. At the Olympia rally in London, in 1934, BUF stewards were in a violent confrontation with militant communists, and this caused the Daily Mail to withdraw support.
Final years and legacy
With lack of electoral success, the party drew away from mainstream politics and towards extreme anti-Semitism during 1934-1935, which saw the resignation of members such as Dr. Robert Forgan. It organised anti-Semitic marches and protests in London, recalling tactics of predecessors such as the British Brothers League, like the one which resulted in the Battle of Cable Street in October 1936.
Membership fell to below 8,000 by the end of 1935. The government was sufficiently concerned, however, to pass the Public Order Act of 1936, which banned political uniforms and required police consent for political marches. This act virtually destroyed the BUF. In May of 1940, the BUF was outright banned by the government, and Mosley, along with 740 other fascists, were interned for much of World War II. After the war, Mosley made several unsuccessful attempts of reviving the BUF, notably in the Union Movement.
The BUF in popular culture
In the film It Happened Here, the BUF appears to be the ruling party of German-occupied Britain. A Mosley speech is heard on the radio in the scene before everyone goes to the movies.
Harry Turtledove's alternate history novel, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, is set in 2010 in a world where the Nazis were triumphant, the BUF governs Britain — and the first stirrings of the reform movement come from there. The BUF and Mosley also appear as background influences in Turtledove's Colonization trilogy which follows the Worldwar tetralogy and is set in the 1960s.
The BUF is also in Guy Walters book The Leader (2003), where Mosely is the dictator of Britain leading up to WWII.
British humorous writer P.G. Wodehouse satirized the BUF in books and short stories. The BUF was satirized as "The Black Shorts" (shorts being worn as all the best shirt colors were already taken) and their leader was Roderick Spode, owner of a ladies' underwear shop.
The BUF and Oswald Mosley are also alluded to in Kazuo Ishiguro's novel The Remains of the Day.
BUF Anthem
The BUF Anthem resembles the German Horst-Wessel-Lied, the anthem of the NSDAP or Nazi Party, which is now banned in Germany, and was set to the same tune.
The lyrics are as follows:
- Comrades, the voices of the dead battalions,
- Of those who fell that Britain might be great,
- Join in our song, for they still march in spirit with us,
- And urge us on to gain the fascist state!
- (Repeat Last Two Lines)
- We're of their blood, and spirit of their spirit,
- Sprung from that soil for whose dear sake they bled,
- Against vested powers, Red Front, and massed ranks of reaction,
- We lead the fight for freedom and for bread!
- (Repeat Last Two Lines)
- The streets are still, the final struggle's ended;
- Flushed with the fight we proudly hail the dawn!
- See, over all the streets the fascist banners waving,
- Triumphant standards of our race reborn!
- (Repeat Last Two Lines)
Prominent members
Despite the short period of operation the BUF attracted prominent members and supporters. These included:
See also
Further reading
- Blackshirt: Sir Oswald Mosley and British Fascism by Stephen Dorril
- Hurrah for the Blackshirts!': Fascists and Fascism in Britain between the Wars, Martin Pugh (Random House, 2005)
External links
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