British Interwar Fascism and Anti-fascism

Abstract

In the context of the Holocaust, British fascism can appear rather inconsequential. Among the web of groups that formed Britain’s interwar radical right, only one, Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF), attracted significant support; most others struggled to reach a membership in the hundreds. Even the BUF failed to win a single seat at local elections, let alone to challenge for national power. It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that, in the wealth of work on fascist studies, the British case has received little attention.

In the context of the Holocaust, British fascism can appear rather inconsequential. Among the web of groups that formed Britain’s interwar radical right, only one, Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF), attracted significant support; most others struggled to reach a membership in the hundreds. Even the BUF failed to win a single seat at local elections, let alone to challenge for national power. It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that, in the wealth of work on fascist studies, the British case has received little attention.

Stanley Payne, in his History of Fascism, devotes just a page and a half to this ‘political oxymoron’, noting that the relatively large amount of research devoted to native fascism in Britain itself is ‘inversely proportionate’ to the subject’s actual significance.¹ One of the leading scholars of British fascism, Richard Thurlow, admits that, even at the brief peak of its popularity, the BUF was ‘of only marginal significance to British politics’, and for the rest of the time was little more than a ‘nuisance’. Other British fascist groups were ‘quixotic and eccentric…minute elements on the political fringe’.²

Yet there are important reasons to take account of British fascism, both in a domestic and international context. To begin with, political success should not be regarded as the sole, or even primary, determinant of a fascist movement’s significance; indeed, in some ways the opposite is true. Although popular and academic attention has been drawn to Italy and Germany, these two cases were, as Roger Griffin points out, actually ‘freak examples’ of fascism, given that they were the only places it managed to form regimes before the war. In every other country, fascism was, to varying degrees, a failure—making British fascism not an anomaly but paradigmatic.³ Moreover, the British case was, as Robert Paxton notes, ‘one of the most interesting failures’. Britain produced a number of noteworthy fascist thinkers, not least Mosley himself, whom Paxton believes ‘probably had the greatest intellectual gifts…of all the fascist chiefs’.⁴ Thurlow, likewise, sees the BUF’s programme as ‘the most coherent and rational of all the fascist parties in Europe’, and ‘of a far higher quality than the ideas of Mussolini and Hitler’.⁵

Given the growing emphasis in the scholarship over recent decades on fascist ideology—taking seriously what the fascists said and thought, not just what they did—the sophisticated philosophy and programme of the BUF makes British fascism an interesting, important and instructive case study. Here, again, we see the advantage of focusing on smaller, failed groups: whereas fascist parties that came to power were forced to trade off between ideological purity and the pragmatism required to run a country, movements that remained on the fringes of political life could offer a ‘pure…unmuddied’ version of fascism, argues Zeev Sternhell.⁶

This general pattern of failure is, moreover, significant in its own right, and abortive fascist movements like Britain’s help ascertain what factors might explain it. Much was down to the internal deficiencies of the parties themselves, in terms of leadership, personnel and tactics. Mosley, for all his talents as an ideologue and orator, was aloof, egocentric and a poor organiser. His lieutenants held divergent ideological and strategic visions and were in constant conflict, resulting in the BUF’s tactics and focus regularly shifting depending on which faction was in the Leader’s favour. Beyond the BUF, other fascist groups were generally led by obscure eccentrics, often with little by way of any coherent structure or programme.

External factors, however, played an even greater part. Some were circumstantial: for example, the fact that the BUF was not founded until late 1932, meaning that, by the time it had properly established itself, the worst of the Great Depression was over, rendering much of Mosley’s economic programme obsolete and reducing the tensions that he could have exploited. Britain’s only viable fascist party thus missed its narrow window of opportunity. Other impediments were more deeply ingrained. Britain, with an electoral system that inhibits the emergence of new parties, a political culture favouring slow, consensual change, and widespread, deeply ingrained acceptance of liberal democracy, provided barren ground for fascism. Again, in this regard we find Britain prototypical: fascism was hindered by ‘structural feature[s] of all but the most defective liberal democracies anywhere in the world’, notes Griffin, who cautious against the ‘Whiggish belief’ that Britain is uniquely resistant to extremism.⁷

As well as these in-built defences, a key role was also played by fascism’s opponents. Indeed, while it is easy with the benefit of hindsight to see British fascism as destined for failure, the BUF actually initially gained a relatively large membership in a short space of time and received a sympathetic hearing from some in the political mainstream. It was in large part thanks to the activity of anti-fascists, as well as the BUF’s own response to them, that the Blackshirts’ true nature was exposed and their support rapidly evaporated. Subsequently, a diverse range of anti-fascist forces—from the state itself down to local Communist Party branches—employed a variety of different forms of action to successfully restrict the political space available to the fascists and ensure they remained on the margins. Britain therefore offers an instructive case study in the effectiveness of anti-fascist activity, a fact that is not just of historical interest but has also taken on renewed relevance in recent times.

Finally, there is an important but neglected chapter within this broader story of resistance, which is the prominent role played by Jews at all levels of the anti-fascist movement. The aforementioned focus on Italy and, especially, Germany has not only shaped perceptions of fascism, it has also left an image of Jews solely as victims of, refugees from or heroic but ultimately doomed rebels against fascism. In much of the scholarship they have been presented as facing a stark choice between being ‘sheep to the slaughter’ or undertaking ‘glorious resistance…that never stood a chance of succeeding’, as Robert Rozett puts it. Where other options have been acknowledged, they involved merely mitigating, surviving, escaping or taking a moral stand against their oppression, rather than overcoming it.⁸ This is of course entirely understandable, given the horrors Jews faced under the rule of the Nazis and their allies, and the overwhelming imbalance of power against them.⁹ But it obscures the much broader range of interactions Jews had with fascism as an opposition movement rather than a regime. In Britain, the Jewish community, which outnumbered the fascists and held positions of greater influence, was able to play an active and effective role in opposing them.

This has contemporary resonance, too. Nowhere does today’s radical right function as a regime; rather it operates as a movement, often with little or no formal political representation, that makes its impact by influencing debate on issues like immigration and the treatment of minorities, and through street activism, the dissemination of propaganda, and verbal and physical violence. This is precisely how Britain’s interwar fascists functioned, again making them an equally or even more relevant historical case study than Italy or Germany. The experience and actions of Britain’s Jews, meanwhile, offers an example of how ethnic, religious or other minority groups can respond to a radical right that is targeting them, by both coordinating action within their communities and collaborating with external allies.

Finally, the history of British fascism also helps to reflect on the Holocaust. Just as the complacent view that Britain is inherently immune to political extremism should be dismissed, so too the idea that it has been relatively free of exclusionary prejudice towards Jews is one that must be challenged. Scholars have traced long-standing, widespread and deeply rooted native traditions of antisemitism.¹⁰ Likewise, whereas the British fascists’ antisemitism was long regarded as imitative, inspired by its continental counterparts, particularly the Nazis, in fact it drew upon this rich indigenous tradition of anti-Jewish thought. Their programme explicitly envisioned the exclusion and eventual expulsion of Jews from Britain (with one fascist leader, as we shall see, going as far as advocating the use of gas chambers, years before the Nazis implemented the idea). This goal was placed at the heart of a typically fascist drive to cleanse the nation of its impure elements and bring about national rebirth.

When it comes to remembering the Holocaust, Britain tends to see itself as distanced from its horrors, or even as having played a positive role, with attention focused on the (pre-war) reception of Kindertransport children or (post-war) arrival of Holocaust survivors, as well as on Britain’s part in liberating the German Nazi camps at the end of the war. Meanwhile, as Tony Kushner notes, the uncomfortable realities of Britain’s relationship to the Holocaust are ‘deliberately ignored in order to provide a palatable narrative’.¹¹ There is little reflection on the fact that, despite detailed knowledge of the unfolding Holocaust, Britain remained reluctant, sometimes outright hostile, towards taking action to mitigate it or to help those seeking to flee, despite opportunities to do so. This reticence was often motivated by the prevalent antisemitic attitudes outlined above, both among the public and political establishment.¹² As the example of the German-occupied Channel Islands suggests, Britain’s response to Nazi rule may have been little different to other parts of Europe.¹³ And certainly, in its domestic fascist movement, the country had a ready-made potential puppet government, which would have had little compunction in implementing anti-Jewish edicts.

Proto-fascists and Parafascists

The first group in Britain to describe itself as fascist appeared in 1923. But the seeds of fascist thought had been planted earlier, in response to social, political and economic upheaval around the turn of the century, and nourished by the sense of dislocation and disillusionment engendered by the First World War. This early radical right coalesced around ‘Die-hard’ Conservatives, publications like Eye Witness and National Review, and individuals such as Leo Maxse, Hilaire Belloc, Arnold White, the Chesterton brothers, Nesta Webster and Joseph Bannister. Although it did not hold a single, coherent ideology, let alone a formal structure, programme or leadership, it did provide a ‘distinct and discernible continuity of ideas’, as well as personnel, that interwar fascists could draw upon.¹⁴

In particular, the early radical right fostered a sense that the existing political system was incapable of arresting Britain’s declining global power and prestige, and that more radical solutions were urgently required. The root of these problems was seen to lie in a creeping degeneracy within British society, with early radicals cultivating many of the fears regarding corruption and decadence that inspired fascists of later years. Such concerns were heightened by the disastrous wars in South Africa at the turn of the century, which led many to question the virility, even racial fitness, of the British people; by the emergence of organised labour and feminist movements; and by a wave of, mainly Jewish, immigration. Economically, Edwardian social imperialism, which sought to protect domestic markets from cheap imports, had a strong influence on the later thought of interwar fascists, as did early corporatist ideas. The upheaval of WWI and its aftermath added more socialist concepts, like national planning, to the mix. It also, notes Martin Pugh, ‘severely weaken[ed] liberalism both as an idea and as an organised political force[,]…ma[king] many of the pre-war concerns about race, decadence, anti-Semitism and internal subversion appear more acute’. As this suggests, a constant underlying theme was hostility towards Jews, who were seen to embody many of the ills afflicting British society and the threats it faced from outside, fears that were further stoked by the Bolshevik Revolution.¹⁵

In terms of their activism, fascists were also able to draw upon the legacy of the British Brothers League, an anti-alien movement that sprung up in response to the large-scale immigration of poor, east-European Jews in the late nineteenth century. It gained support in particular among the working class of London’s East End, where the majority of Jewish immigrants settled. This would be precisely the same area where the BUF focused its energies in the mid-1930s. The BBL also forged links with Conservative MPs, such as William Evans-Gordon, whose 1903 book The Alien Immigrant provided a template for many of the anti-Jewish concerns expressed by later fascist groups. The pressure exerted by the movement, which had thousands of followers and held mass public meetings, played a key role in the passing of the 1905 Aliens Act, the first peacetime legislation restricting immigration to Britain.¹⁶ As David Feldman notes, the BBL showed how, through an ‘attempt to construct a national community…influenced by the growing threat to Britain’s imperial predominance…[and] inevitably based upon a series of inclusions and exclusions’, it was possible ‘to mobilise a coalition of diverse interests into a significant political movement…[with] values and practices crossing class boundaries’.¹⁷ The precedent this set for later fascist movements is clear.

The above is important to acknowledge because it emphasises that the fascist movements which did emerge in the 1920s and 1930s were not ‘simply a pale imitation of continent fascist movements’, as they have sometimes been perceived, but instead ‘drew from…both native and continental European sources’. These home-grown influences were long neglected by scholars, with British fascism overshadowed by its more prominent continental counterparts.¹⁸ British fascists themselves often faced a difficult balancing act, wanting to draw inspiration from, and bask in the reflected glory of, their counterparts in Italy and Germany, but at the same time asserting—as befitted an ultranationalist movement—that they represented a uniquely British form of this political phenomenon, rooted in native tradition.

Britain’s first nominally fascist group (and the largest of the 1920s) epitomised this struggle even in its name, initially calling itself the British Fascisti before settling on the anglicised British Fascists. However, it ‘borrowed the name and very little else from Italy’, argues Thurlow.¹⁹ Rather than marking a truly radical break from existing politics, the BF, motivated more by anti-communism than any positive ideological goals, effectively represented an extreme wing of the Tories, with whom it ‘occupied overlapping positions on a broad spectrum rather than two wholly distinct positions’.²⁰ Membership, which came disproportionately from the middle and upper classes, including a number of titled aristocrats and military officers,²¹ peaked very briefly in the thousands around 1925–6 but was far lower for the rest of the BF’s existence.²² By 1934 it had wound up completely under the weight of mass defections, financial difficulties, and the erratic behaviour and personal troubles of its founder and leader, Rotha Lintorn-Orman.²³

It did, though, offer a more active and confrontational form of politics, with blue-shirted uniforms and regular clashes with opponents. The BF was involved in strike-breaking activities during the General Strike of 1926, and its members stewarded Tory meetings.²⁴ Many Conservatives saw the fascists as a potential tool to fight communism, ‘as allies who…might, in some future crisis, fulfil an even more vital function for the state’.²⁵ As the 1920s progressed, the BF also took an increasingly antisemitic stance, with early references to opposing ‘alien immigration’ and the need for ‘purification of the British race’ fleshed out into more explicit accusations against Jews.²⁶

A number of even smaller fascist groups also emerged in the 1920s, many of them growing out of factions that, frustrated by the BF’s conservatism, splintered away from it, fragmenting an already marginal fringe. The only such organisation of any note was the Imperial Fascist league, formed in 1929 by Arnold Leese, who left the BF after deeming it nothing more than ‘conservatism with knobs on’. The IFL was essentially a personal vehicle for the fanatical ‘anti-Jewish camel-doctor’, as Leese described himself in the title of his autobiography.²⁷ Though it remained active until the Second World War, it never accumulated any significant formal following. But Leese’s prolific writings, through The Fascist newspaper and other self-published works, were noteworthy for their obsessive, racial-biological antisemitism, which extended to advocating the use of gas chambers in the 1930s, long before the idea was put in practice by the Nazis.²⁸ Along with the Britons, a publishing house established in 1919 dedicated to producing antisemitic tracts that promoted a ‘crude pseudo-scientific racial ideology’,²⁹ the IFL’s impact was felt chiefly through its propagation of anti-Jewish ideas among others on the radical-right fringe.

Debate continues over whether the BF, let alone even smaller organisations, merit serious attention—and indeed over whether some can even be described as ‘fascist’ at all. Martin Blinkhorn contends that none, with perhaps the exception of the IFL, ‘possessed much more than curiosity value’.³⁰ Thurlow, as we saw at the outset, is similarly dismissive. The BF, in his view, was ‘a cross between a glorified boy scout movement and a paramilitary group’, which had ‘little relevance for the development of native fascist ideological tradition’. He does acknowledge, though, that it left a legacy of political violence which other groups, particularly the BUF, could draw upon.³¹

Others, however, see the BF as more influential than its low membership figures or visibility would suggest. Pugh points to a clear ‘traffic of ideas’ from the BF into mainstream Conservativism, including many ‘distinctly fascist’ ones.³² Some have also offered the important reminder that, while it is easy with hindsight to argue that the views of these early groups do not fit our current understanding of fascism, this ignores the fact that for much of the 1920s this completely new political phenomenon was in a state of flux. Its Italian archetype contained various factions—radical and conservative, left-wing and right—pulling it in different directions, leaving an ideology and praxis that were variegated and evolving, even once it was in power. As Salvatore Garau notes, ‘instead of looking primarily at the static “finished product”’, one should take account of the ‘remarkably fluid process of fascism’s ideological formation’, especially its ‘capacity to bring together elements from all political traditions, including nationalism, socialism, conservatism and liberalism’.³³ With regard to the BF specifically, Paul Stocker stresses that it operated at a time ‘when fascism was new[,]…with little ideological coherence’, and one should therefore avoid viewing it through the lens of a simplistic dichotomy of ‘fascist’ or ‘conservative’. Building on the idea of ‘parafascism’ put forward by Griffin and others, Stocker sees the BF as a ‘middle-road’ formed from a ‘hybrid of continental fascist, British conservative and authoritarian features’.³⁴

Nevertheless, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the BF’s ideological variegation resulted less from design than from confusion and amateurism. As Stocker himself admits, its ideas could be ‘obviously contradictory’, ‘implausible’, sometimes ‘almost unintelligible’. BF propaganda promised to uphold ‘the fundamental principles of free speech’ but also demanded ‘no discussion, only obedience’; it declared that fascism would ‘respect the sovereignty of the individual’, but at the same time that its creed was ‘Country first; Self second’.³⁵ It is hard to see the BF—let alone smaller 1920s groups—as particularly important in their own right. Their significance lies in the fact that they provided a breeding ground for some of the ideas, activity and personnel that would go on to contribute to the far more significant BUF.

The Emergence of the British Union of Fascists

The formation of the BUF represented the culmination of a political journey for its leader, Oswald Mosley. Born into an aristocratic family, he had, following military service in WW1, been a rising star in first the Conservative then Labour Party, serving the latter as a government minister from 1929. However, the impatience that had led him to cross the aisle soon pushed him to seek a new form of politics altogether. Egged on by the press magnate Lord Rothermere,³⁶ Mosley formed the proto-fascist New Party in 1931. Following a failed General Election campaign later that year, and after meeting Mussolini in Roma and Nazi officials in Munich,³⁷ Mosley took the final step in 1932 and founded the British Union of Fascists.

The presence of Mosley, one of twentieth-century Britain’s greatest political orators and an accomplished thinker, as well ample financing from his own deep pockets and secret funding from Mussolini,³⁸ guaranteed that the BUF would be a more serious proposition than earlier fascist groups. These advantages were reinforced by a more disciplined approach, professional organisation, and coherent and consistent message than those who came before. Indeed, the BUF was unusual in that, unlike many other fascist organisations at home and abroad, it was founded with a fully formed programme and ideology, one that, although the emphasis shifted over time, remained remarkably consistent. These ideas were embodied in Mosley’s founding treatise, The Greater Britain, which combined technocratic descriptions of the corporate state he wished to create through ‘scientific measures’ with typically fascist rallying calls for an ‘organised revolt of young manhood’ that would ‘invad[e] every phase of national life’ and replace the ‘decadence and disillusion…[of] old values’ with a ‘new flame [that] purifies and inspires to loftier ambitions’.³⁹

Like those that came before it, the BUF had to find a balance between its native roots and foreign influences. Mosley recognised that much of fascism’s allure came from its achievements in Italy and Germany, which BUF publications regularly reported on. But, at the same time, he was at pains to emphasise that his fascism would be ‘very different from Continental forms, with characteristics which are peculiarly British and…avoid the excesses and the horrors of Continental struggle’.⁴⁰ The BUF was particularly keen, in its early days, to distance itself from the violence and antisemitism that were associated with German and Italian fascism but were regarded, in such extreme and explicit form at least, as alien to British political culture. BUF newspapers, where they did acknowledge such things, attempted to downplay or justify them, or simply reassure that they would not happen in a British fascist state. In 1933, the BUF’s newspaper, Blackshirt, excused Hitler’s ‘relatively mild persecution of a few thousand Jews’ but at the same time promised that this would ‘not be repeated in Fascist Britain’.⁴¹ The reason, Mosley explained, was that countries each faced a unique Jewish problem and possessed ‘vast difference[s] in our national character’. Indiscriminate racial or religious persecution, while perhaps appropriate in Germany, was ‘altogether foreign to the English mind’. ‘Our attitude towards [Jews] must be different from the Italian or the German, just as in every part of our policy our attitude is peculiarly British and is not foreign’.⁴²

When it came to violence, Mosley readily admitted that his followers would always be prepared to use it—indeed his uniformed, military-style ‘defence force’ was specifically trained to do so, and the prospect of confrontational activity was a major attraction for many members.⁴³ However, he emphasised that he wanted political change to ‘be achieved by legal and by peaceful means’ (and did indeed set about establishing the electoral machinery to do so). Violence, Mosley claimed, would only be employed defensively, if the BUF was attacked by its opponents or if the British state itself was threatened by a revolutionary left-wing takeover.⁴⁴

This careful balance—between domestic and international influences, between radicalism and maintaining a respectable façade—was initially successful. The BUF attracted positive interest from significant sections of the public and press; its membership rose to an estimated 50,000 in under two years,⁴⁵ with a far wider circle of sympathisers. The latter included members of the political, economic and social establishment, many cultivated through the BUF’s January Club, a private dining group designed to woo politicians, businessmen and military types.⁴⁶ In 1934, Rothermere, who had since the start of the decade openly expressed his admiration for fascism in general and the Nazis in particular,⁴⁷ also began using his newspapers to promote the BUF.⁴⁸

The BUF and Antisemitism: Challenging a Consensus

During their early rise, the Blackshirts had not faced systematic opposition. Heckling took place at meetings, but this was a common feature of British political life. Attempts to physically disrupt events were sporadic and organised spontaneously and locally, rather than as part a more coherent strategy. Given concurrent events in Germany, there was particular concern among Jews about the development of a native fascist movement, one that did not hide its admiration for Hitler. However, while few placed any credence in Mosley’s denials of antisemitism, almost all heeded the calls of the Jewish communal leadership to avoid action that could make Jews appear the aggressors. Indeed, at this stage the most serious violence involving the BUF came in clashes with other fascist groups, particularly the BF and IFL, who resented being eclipsed by a powerful new arrival and regarded Mosley as an opportunist rather than a genuine fascist.⁴⁹

A turning point came in June 1934, when the BUF arranged its largest meeting to date, at London’s Olympia hall. A lax ticketing policy and a more coordinated anti-fascist effort meant that Mosley’s speech was delayed by mass protests outside, then interrupted every few minutes by choreographed heckling inside the hall. The violent manner in which the BUF’s defence-force stewards removed the protesters from the building, in front of onlooking members of the press and many non-fascists who had attended the meeting out of interest, caused great negative publicity. Further outbreaks of violence at other Blackshirt events that month, as well as the Night of the Long Knives in Germany, further tarnished fascism’s image.⁵⁰

There is disagreement about the precise nature of the immediate response to Olympia from the political establishment.⁵¹ However, what is clear is that the BUF soon began losing more respectable members at a rapid rate, including Rothermere, who publicly abandoned Mosley the following month.⁵² In response to this declining popularity, and following further organised opposition at BUF events in the autumn, Mosley announced that antisemitism had been adopted as official party policy. This was presented as a reluctant decision, one forced upon the BUF as a defensive measure in response to Jewish involvement in physical violence against Blackshirts. Jews had ‘mobilised against Fascism’, claimed Mosley, so the BUF had no choice but to ‘take up the challenge thrown down by Jewry’.⁵³

Much of the historiography of British fascism has taken Mosley at his word, portraying him as an unwilling antisemite who was only forced in this direction by external circumstances, especially Jewish aggression. The most prominent exponent of this idea, known as ‘interactionism’, has been Robert Skidelsky, whose early, sympathetic biography of Mosley argued that the BUF was not ‘inherently violent and anti-semitic’ but instead was ‘pushed in these ways by the opposition it aroused’. In particular, the ‘origins of the “quarrel with the Jews” [lay] in a process of interaction…[with] Jewish anti-fascism’, which caused Mosley a ‘genuine’ problem that required a ‘solution’.⁵⁴ While later research has revised Skidelsky’s account, every major scholar of British fascism continues to cite interaction as a factor in explaining the BUF’s move to antisemitism. It was, says Thurlow, Mosley’s ‘concept of personal honour and his rational analysis of the activities of some Jews against the BUF, and their role in British society, [which] convinced him that assaults by enemies on the movement should be resisted by defensive force’.⁵⁵

Even when this is supplemented by additional explanations, scholars still tend to point to circumstances beyond Mosley’s control rather than his own volition. Many cite the ‘pressure…at every level in the BUF’ to adopt antisemitism, in the words of Colin Cross, which Mosley ‘found…difficult to resist’. Such demands were bolstered by the growing success of the Nazis and their radical form of antisemitism (in contrast to the previously dominant Italian example, which at this stage had not adopted anti-Jewish laws). Mosley was ‘buffeted by forces beyond his control’, says Pugh; he was ‘the victim of influential hard-line anti-Semites within the party’, argues D.S. Lewis. Others note Britain’s recovery from the Great Depression, which rendered much of Mosley’s sophisticated economic programme less relevant and appealing. This, along with the fallout from Olympia, left the BUF searching for new impetus, and it settled upon antisemitism.⁵⁶

The impression left by such accounts is that antisemitism was a belated and artificial, or at least opportunistic, addition to Mosley’s programme. For the BUF, antisemitism ‘never became a total ideological explanation of all the imagined ills of British society’, as it was for the likes of the IFL. It always remained ‘something entirely different’ from ‘the real inner core’, designed to attract certain types of followers, who were then indoctrinated into the true ‘beliefs of inner fascism’. Moreover, while others on the fascist fringe saw Jews as an indistinguishable and undesirable whole, an outlook often rooted in a biological perception of race, Mosleyite antisemitism, which defined Jews in cultural terms, was able to differentiate between the few ‘good’ ones (who were always theoretically welcome in a future fascist state) and the ‘bad’ majority (who had to be removed or otherwise excluded).⁵⁷

Yet there are important correctives to this general consensus. The first concerns the decision to ‘adopt’ antisemitism as policy, and in particular Mosley’s role in it. Even at first blush, it appears odd that the undisputed leader of a party advocating an authoritarian model of government, who was its main ideologue, orator and funder, exerting supreme control over its programme, could be pressured into suddenly adding a major new component of policy, one that he had previously denounced. In actual fact, as a handful of scholars have noted, one can see that ‘the consistent elements of anti-Semitism were all there’ by the end of 1933, ‘suggest[ing] that an as yet undecided variety of anti-Semitism had become official BUF policy’. Mosley’s announcements the next autumn were therefore ‘not an aberration but rather a further stage in the development of an anti-Semitic process which had begun considerably earlier’.⁵⁸

The present author’s own work takes this even further, arguing that ‘not only was Mosley’s direct influence evident, both publicly and behind the scenes, at every major juncture in the development of the BUF’s anti-Jewish policy, but that antisemitism had been an integral element of his thought from the very start’.⁵⁹ Immediately upon founding the BUF, Mosley made public statements that not only singled out Jews for criticism, but also associated them with precisely the kinds of ‘subversive’ and ‘anti-British’ activities, such as ‘the direction of the Communist Party’ and ‘international financial transactions’, that would form the basis of his party’s antisemitism.⁶⁰ By autumn 1933, a year before the official ‘adoption’ of antisemitism, he had published a front-page article in Blackshirt accusing Jews of ‘organis[ing] as a racial minority within the State’, using their ‘great money power’ to exert ‘domination’ over all political parties and establish a ‘corrupt monopoly’ over the media. This was, moreover, linked into a global conspiracy, with Jews ‘all over the world…organis[ing] against the Fascist revolution’. Regarding the BUF’s stance towards Britain’s Jews, Mosley made clear: ‘We oppose them’.⁶¹

At this stage these were brief outbursts rather than sustained anti-Jewish rhetoric. But this in itself was part of Mosley’s plan: to make such statements rare enough to maintain plausible deniability, but obvious enough to provoke Jews into a violent response, which would then be used to justify the official adoption of antisemitism. This calculation is confirmed in a handwritten note by Mosley himself, who, after being advised that antisemitism would not be popular among the British public, responded that this was an ‘arg[ume]nt in favour of the strategy of […ing] the onus of aggression onto the Jews’.⁶² A former BUF propagandist revealed that Mosley’s early denials of antisemitism had always been ‘for political reasons only’.⁶³

That Mosley would go to such elaborate lengths to incorporate and justify an aspect of policy he knew could damage his party’s political prospects points to the fact that antisemitism was not an artificial, opportunistic addition, one that he had been forced into. Rather, it was a fundamental aspect of his fascism. It tied together what was otherwise a disparate set of concerns by identifying a single group allegedly responsible for the various social, culture and economic ills fascism diagnosed in British society. This is, again, something that has begun to be acknowledged in the literature. Whereas the standard view has been that Mosley was ‘not an ideological anti-semite’,⁶⁴ Thomas Linehan’s more recent work suggests that his antisemitism had a ‘genuinely held…ideological underpinning’: the ‘mythic palingenetic ultra-nationalist core at the heart of BUF ideology’ and its ‘gloomy preoccupation with decadence…decay and decline…underlay much of Mosley’s ethnocentric anti-semitism’, with Jews made to represent ‘a welter of apparently “decadent” modern culture forms and developments’ and their removal seen as a prerequisite to ‘bring[ing] about a glorious national rebirth’.⁶⁵

This was, moreover, not an attempt to emulate the Nazis or import their brand of antisemitism, as it has often been portrayed, but rather drew upon a rich heritage of native anti-Jewish thought that had already associated Britain’s largest ‘alien’ presence with the very forces that fascism had set itself against, such as communism, high finance and middleman professions, migration and ethnic mixing, and modern forms of culture.⁶⁶ These existing anti-Jewish traditions, which had already been cultivated by the early radical right, were ‘fascistised’ by the BUF, ‘fus[ing] the[m]…into a singular narrative that was more comprehensive and coherent than anything produced’ before and ‘employing them in pursuit of its purgatory and palingenetic goals’.⁶⁷

While the BUF’s antisemitism was not imitative, and deserves to be understood in its own right, it did also fit a wider a pattern evident across Europe. In the scholarship on fascism as a generic phenomenon, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the place of antisemitism. This perhaps reflects agreement that fascism is inherently predisposed to exclusionary tendencies as part of its aim to purge society of what is perceives as alien or anti-national elements.⁶⁸ Jews, as the most prominent out-group in most European countries, were the natural target. But this did not have to be the case: fascism’s archetype in Italy was not antisemitic, and indeed had Jewish members, for most of its existence; its exclusionary tendencies were initially directed towards other groups.⁶⁹ Fascist antisemitism itself took on a different form in each national environment, shaped by indigenous anti-Jewish traditions and the context in which a particular group operated.

At the same time, however, there was a conspicuous trend towards more widespread and radical antisemitism among fascist movements as the 1930s progressed, notes Aristotle Kallis. This reflected the growing status of German Nazism as a figurehead in what fascists across the continent saw as a looming final confrontation between themselves and the forces of liberal democracy, communism and capitalism—behind all of which stood the figure of the Jew.⁷⁰ The BUF was no exception, with antisemitism becoming a more prominent part of the party’s discourse as the 1930s progressed and the party more closely aligning itself with its German counterpart (not least by renaming itself the ‘British Union of Fascists and National Socialists’ in 1936).⁷¹ This change was also reflected behind the scenes, with Mussolini’s funds drying up but partially replaced by secret subsidies from Berlin.⁷²

The East End Campaign and Anti-fascism

The aspect of the BUF’s antisemitism that has attracted the most academic and public attention was the vicious campaign of ‘Jew-baiting’ that it mounted in east London from 1935 to 1937. Following the formal adoption of antisemitism in 1934, Mosley soon discovered that, while his movement was in collapse nationally (losing 90% of its membership within 12 months), it was attracting positive interest in the political sub-culture of the East End, with its history of tension between the large, recently arrived Jewish population and other communities. The area soon became the primary focus of the BUF’s activity, which centred around street-corner meetings, uniformed processions and a crude antisemitism.⁷³

This prompted a much more organised anti-fascist movement to emerge. A coalition of forces developed around Communist and Jewish organisations—although in both cases it was grassroots activists who were responsible for driving activity, with the official Communist and Jewish leaderships wary of becoming embroiled in street violence, both for the damage it could do their reputation and because they recognised it was the fascists’ aim to stir up precisely such conflict. This ‘Communist-Jewish anti-fascist bloc’ pursued a ‘strategy based on the active disruption of fascist meetings and shows of numerical strength’.⁷⁴

The culmination of these developments came on 4 October 1936, at what became known as the Battle of Cable Street, when a crowd of over 100,000 gathered to block a procession of 3000 Blackshirts through the East End. The protest had been organised locally, after the Jewish Board of Deputies and the Communist Party refused to lend their support (the latter relenting at the last minute). The police sought to clear a path through the crowd for the BUF’s legally organised march, but were prevented from doing so by violent resistance from the protesters, forcing Mosley to abandon his plans.

Popular memory of Cable Street as a great victory against fascism is somewhat misleading. While the Blackshirts were stopped on the day, they immediately turned this to their advantage, claiming that British patriots had been violently and illegally prevented from marching through their own streets and using this to substantiate a long-standing narrative of victimhood at Jewish hands. A couple of thousand new members joined the movement and the following months saw an intensification of antisemitic rhetoric and violence. The anti-fascists themselves came to see the effects of their actions and, from 1937, local Communist and Jewish groups began to adopt a more moderate approach, focused on undermining the fascists’ ideological appeal while starving them of the physical conflict they craved to gain publicity and attract sympathy.⁷⁵ A more significant hindrance for the BUF stemming from Cable Street was that the mass disorder, following months of growing conflict in the East End, prompted the government to hastily push through a new Public Order Act. This banned political uniforms, prohibited political meetings in the East End, and tightened restrictions on provocative, especially antisemitic, language. Historians remain divided, however, as to how much of an impact the POA had on the BUF, which found ways to at least partially circumvent the new measures.⁷⁶

The passing of legislation designed to restrict fascist activity points to the fact that, while confrontational forms of anti-fascism have drawn much of the attention, there was a far broader range of forces acting against the BUF, encompassing the apparatus of the state,⁷⁷ all mainstream political parties, local authorities, left-wing activists, religious bodies and an array of other groups and individuals. The Jewish community, which overcame initial internal disputes to form a united front against fascism, was disproportionately involved at every level. Its leadership, though often criticised by contemporaries and historians for passivity and complacency, actually worked energetically behind the scenes, often in tandem with the state, to neutralise the fascist threat.⁷⁸

In this light, Nigel Copsey emphasises the need to look beyond ‘hostile activism’ and take a more ‘pluralistic’ approach that also incorporates non-confrontational and even non-active forms of opposition.⁷⁹ These forces worked in tandem with one another to squeeze the political space available to the fascists. Particularly effective was an (uncoordinated) two-pronged attack: while confrontational, street-level anti-fascism tarnished the BUF’s image by associating it with violence and disrupted its means of ideological propagation, at the other end of the scale the state authorities and political establishment acted to restrict the fascists’ scope of activity and publicity.⁸⁰ Indeed it was the actions of the state that finally brought Britain’s interwar fascist movement to an end, with the government in 1940 ordering the internment of over a thousand British fascists and fellow travellers as potential Fifth Columnists.⁸¹ This included Mosley and leading BUF figures, but also a range of other individuals who had become associated in the late 1930s with an underground network of pro-Nazi groups.⁸²

New Directions

Despite its limited size and impact, interwar British fascism remains the subject of a lively field of study, constantly refreshed by the emergence of new sources, reinterpretations of existing ones, and novel angles of inquiry. A welcome recent trend has been a move away from exploring fascist organisations—many of which were indeed of limited significance, and all of which have been well covered in the existing scholarship—and instead focusing on fascist individuals, whose ideas, activities and interactions often tell a more interesting story. Many, as in the case of William Joyce and Ezra Pound, also embody the transnational links between fascism’s various European manifestations.⁸³

Another promising avenue lies in better integration and synthesis. The respective fields of British fascist, anti-fascist and Jewish history have often focused narrowly, making limited reference to one another other. At best, this has inhibited the understanding of their interlinked histories; at worst it has resulted in distortions. For example, the fact that the early scholarship ascribed the BUF’s ‘adoption’ of antisemitism to Jewish aggression resulted from an overreliance on the fascists’ own version of events. Likewise, perceptions of anti-fascism have long been long skewed by giving disproportionate weight to the accounts of those who participated in confrontational forms of activity. By examining a broader range of sources representing a wider range of actors, more nuanced, balanced and representative accounts will emerge.

Similarly, work in these fields would benefit from doing more to contextualise itself in the broader study of fascism, something that has begun in recent years to take place.⁸⁴ Likewise, Britain provides a useful but neglected case study for scholars looking at fascism—as well as its opponents and victims—as a generic or transnational phenomenon, and a useful corrective to the understandable, but not always helpful, focus on Germany and Italy. The British fascists’ marginality, and the success of their opponents, makes them not less relevant but more so. They are highly representative of a political movement that has, barring two prominent exceptions and the tragic consequences they wrought, been an almost universal failure throughout history.