Mosley: the Fascist Baronet

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ALAN CLINTON looks at the aristocrat Tory turned Labourite perspective had the support of through plate glass windows in capilalst cuss aner 1yso ls cindren nau over been wrown significant sections of the capit- the East End of London and alist class. that houses had been fireintis nitis the other "pure? by the very attitudes taken by fascists, but a demogogic popul- Mosley in later years-his advoist movement owing something cacy of surrender to Hitler in to its origins in the labour move- 1940; his new campaign in ment and more to the pattern Jewish areas of London in the It was not only the Daily exploit racial hatred of black Mosley's supporters confronted by workers in Battle of Cable Street, 1936.

The late and unlamented Oswald Mosley was a most unusual sort of fascist.

He was not just an empty demagogic tubthumper fike Mussolini, an adventurer and a refugee form the socialist movement.

Not was he, except for a short time, an enthusiastic racist like Hitler or Goebbels.

It is true that Mosley was an ex-socialist like Mussolini, an errant member of the aristocratic caste like d'Annunzio.

He also had a particular notion of his own personal superiority and various other forms of psychological motivation not without significance.

However, we can leave such matters to gossip columnists and capitalist newspapers. For us there are other interesting things to be said..

'Landed gentry?

Mosley after all was the fifth baronet. (This means that he became Sir Oswald as a result of the great achievement of being the eldest son of a great great grandfather who had bought a title from George III in 1781). .. He also inherited a large tract of land plundered and exploited by his family in the area of what is now Greater Manchester.

He was thus a representatine of the most portant and persistent groups in British society and politics.

The social layer which spawned Mosley did not suddenly disappear from the English political scene after the bourgeois revolution of 1640.

Nor did they get wiped away by the extension of the parliamentary franchise in 1832, 1867 and 1884.

1 hey remainea as ine main social base of the Tory Party and the chief provider of MPs UnIL WOL twotctl century.

Mosley thus came from a very long tradition when he became Tory MP for Harrow in 1918.

He then had the added asset of a war record and a limp, acquired from an injury sustained falling out of an aeroplane when trying to learn how to fly it.

He was not simply a representative of his class, but a conspicuous one.

He married Cynthia Curzon, daughter of one of the most aristocratic, vicious exploiters of the colonial peoples both as Viceroy of India and leading lory polltician The King and Queen were both present at this wedding in 1920.

It was the 'social event' of the same year which through the 'Jolly George' boycott and the Council of Action, British workers expressed their opposition to the imperialist war against the Soviet Union.

Disorientation

It is important to realise that these were days of great political disorientation for Britain's ruling class..

The Russian Revolution had swept away some of their blood brothers.

The Labour Party in Britain seemed capable of winning a majority in Parliament.

The traditional structure of British ruling class politics was under threat. No longer could, Liberals alternate with Tories as ruling class parties directly devoted to balancing the interests of the various factions of the bourgeoisie.

This situation presented a dilemma for many of Britain's ruling groups.

For Lloyd George, former who died in Paris last week.

proponent of social reform and imperialist war, this meant forming a tiny party mostly from his own family.

He tried with no success to employ methods of l "social engineering' to capitalist slump.

For the likes of Asquith, it meant trying to hold onto the "traditional' values of Liberalism in a world where the pacifism of John table Bopht nd oh ie Cadstone were long since dead.

For most rank and file Liberals it simply meant going over to the Tories, especially after 1931.

However, for others the way out was different. They became the 'middle class recruits to Morel and the semi-pacifists came over as supporters of nineteenth century bourgeois solutions for the great problems of modern capitalism and imperialism.

They helped to create the foreign policies of the Labour Party. which persist to the present day.

Grand plan

For Mosley there was another variant. He came over to Labour as someone who knew a grand plan for the capitalist crisis without socialism.

He became an early advocate of Keynsian-type solutions to unemployment and depression, advocating policies of public works, deficit financing and much else.

There was particular attirecord of the turned fascist tude in the Labour left of the late 20s and 30s of which Mosley became a proponent.

Some of the same set of policies for state-induced capitalist expansion won support from such as George Lansbury who soon afterwards was Labour leader, and from Ernest Bevin, of the TGWU, most important union leader of the time.

Notions abounded on such lines as a 'House of Industry', representative of capitalists and unions, to replace the House of Lords.

Left credentials

They were close to concepts of the 'corporate state' , out they were led by many who died with impeccable left credentials-like Alf Purçell, member of the TUC General Council during the 1920s and Secretary of the Manchester TradesCouncilin the early 30s.

This combination of semicorporatism and incipient Keynsianism-a sort of evolutionary socialism without class struggle-was the political trajectory of Mosley.

It is vital to remember that the only other socialist alternative available in 1929-30 was the ultra-left lunacy of the Communist Party, reflecting Stalin's "Third Period" policy, which said that social democracy and fascism were "twins"

There is some congruence between Keynsianism and fascism, but there is no necessary relationship.

As a matter of fact Keynsian policies have been carried through not by the fascists, but by the reformists who remain the strongest proponents of these ideas right up to the present day.

It is not without significance that Mosley found a sympathetic biographer in Robert Skidelsky, a Jew and an extreme right wing social democrat.

But this is not to say that all such people move in that same direction.

So Mosley got a following within the Labour Party for his "radical" solutions to capitalist crisis.

It was this conjuncture that created Mosley's abortive 'New Party' of 1931 and then went on to the British Union of Fascists thereafter.

Very quickly this became a movement that aimed not for the parliamentary majorities it could not achieve, but for the brutality, racism and street fighting by which it tried to show its power.

At the time of advanced Annitalint reminin 1071 elin It was not the old dogmatic bombed. anti-semitism of the likes of set by Mussolini:

Mosley Mail that shouted Hurrah for the Blackshirts' Mosley's lack of real support was because the ruling class had no need of him.

They got the 'strong government' they wanted through lies and bribery in the 1931 General Election. Mosley could be spewed out and left all by himself to l his fancy dress parades.

As Mosley increasingly went onto the streets for his support, built up the anti-semitic campaigns and the organised thuggery of the 1934 Olympia meeting, he became a useful tool for some of the purposes of Britain's rulers.

The Public Order Act of 1936 which they passed allegedly to stop the disorders he was fomenting, was really aimed at limiting the activities of democrats, socialists and trade unionists, and has almost always been used to this purpose to the present day.

Mosley himself tried in later years to deny, in definace of all the evidence, that the movement had been anti-semitic.

He really did say that some of his best friends were Jews.

He even tried to deny that These statements are belied late 40s and his efforts to TEAMIDER of terror In his hayday in the 1930s only Mosley embodied these measures which capitalism needs to have in reserve.

He alone, if anybody, would have brought a restoration of "strong government", , based on a racialist reign of terror, and slave camps for trade unionists and socialists.

This was an option which the ruling class had not found it necessary to use in order to defend their privileges and their system - yet!

Mosley's roots in the landed aristocracy were in a social group which has still by no means disappeared from the British political scene.

In days gone by the same mobs of lumpen proletarians and depressed petty. bourgeois were bribed to scream for King and Country.

These are the ancestors of the patriots' who scream against the 'enemies within', like racial minorities, trade unionists, communists and homosexuals.

They may yet need another Mosley, after the one that is dead.

Racist hatred

We can be certain that if they do it will not be an egregious ignoramus of the Tyndal or Webster variety, but another well-bred individual who will show the racist hatred that is just under the skin of our most cultured rulers.

They will show the same bruised self confidence that will try to lead a 'mission' based on everything that is inhuman in order to preserve the last vestiges of their. putrifying system.

Such characters are there still inside that same rotting woodwork from which Mosley.! emerged-the same aristocracy, the same officer corps, the same errant labour bureaucrats.

Only the destruction of the system that sustains them will ensure that none of them will ever crawl out again.

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against women It is impossible to ascertain the exact number of women who endure regular violence-battering-in the home.

Unlike births, deaths and marriages the figures are not kept. Unlike many other forms of crime the police are notified in only a small proportion of cases-and in many of these violence is brushed aside as a domestic "tiff"

Individuals-both the violent men and the intimidated, degraded woman victim-are generally anxious to conceal father than reveal the facts.

And this is the more so because the violence takes place within the home. The number of battered women, like the tens of thousands of unemployed married women who do not sign on, are an "invisible" statistic.

Social stigma

Being a battered woman carries a social stigma similar to that of being a victim of rape. In each case society tends to penalise the victim rather than the attacker. To seek outside help is seen as violating the supposed sanctity and "privacy"

of the family unit.

Indeed, who should you report it to? The police, guardians of the capitalist state and defenders of its established institutions, are committed to upholding the family unit.

Their prejudices-examined in last week's article in the context of rape-also emerge in their attitudes towards battered women.

For the police, the explanation to violent attacks on women is most often that "she asked for it" or that "they enjoy a bit of rough handling now. and then."

In the majority of cases battered women are wives. They are seen as the property of the husband-subordinate to his requirements both economically and physically.

Thus the law says that a man cannot be charged for raping his wife. It is assumed that in marriage a woman surrenders her body to her husband.

If a wife is battered, a sense af blame, of failure is attached to her. She is regarded as not having made a good wife. She and her children are viewed as part of a "problem family"

Suspect

In the National Women's Aid Federation pamphlet "The Myths About Battered Women" they tackle the question of the "problem family":

*The concept of the problem family is itself a suspect one. The definition of a problem family hangs on the existence of a majority of 'normal' families where all is peace and harmony.

"It defines the 'problem' in terms of the dynamics and often the inadequacies of the particular family; without any appreciation of the economic and social circumstances and consequent mental stress that many families and particularly women find themselves in.

"So powerful is the idea of the stable family that it masks the reality of just how many people do not live in such arrangements, and of those who do live in nuclear families all of those do not experience them as ing and bawling and then he just ing my face all the time, it was wouldn't let me go to bed and I was screaming and he just kept punching my face.

me, it you ever divorce me and I mean, I'm really terrified of him, i I've got now than l've ever had, I mean, still terrified of him. If l'd see really run a mile."

Quoted in Spare Rib June 1980 being happy and stable.

•The idea that the family is a haven in which women can bring up their children is made nonsense of by the fact that as much as 25% of reported violent crime is "wife" assault and that women are safer on the street than they are in their homes"

Contained within this statement is a very real cause of battering. It is in families under stress where the greatest threat of battering occurs.

Working class families are, under the present capitalist crisis, being put under enormous and growing stress as jobs, housing, wages and social services are cut.

The psychological blow of being made redundant, a feeling of worthlessness and degradation, make many men take out their frustrations and despair on their "nearest and dearest» Women having to cope on a reduced income, with their own jobs gone and having to exist with their husbands in the house all day challenge perhaps for the first time the fact that they get no help with the housework or the children or that he spends too much on drink.

The tensions grow and violence is inflicted-with women as the victim.

So why don't more women simply pack their bags and leave?

To answer this question it is necessary to look not only at the enormous social pressures on women to remain within the family unit-it is also necessary to understand the huge material problems faced particularly by working class women in seeking a home and safety elsewhere.

Of course every government - Labour or Tory-agrees that it is awful that women are attacked in the home.

But there is no state institution that wil come out openly and urge women who are subjected to abuse to leave home. This would undermine the family as a basic unit of capitalist society.

This is why every post wat report on social policy-on divorce, on homosexuality, on social services-stresses the need for policies to protect and reinforce the bonds of the family unit.

The more support women seek from the state, therefore, the more they are headed back into the home where the violence takes place.

Privileged layers

It is only certain privileged layers of middle class women who can with any ease contemplate simply moving out and setting up a new home.

The current housing shortage, the high price of accommodation, the lack of council housing (now at a complete standstill) means that only women with substantial incomes of their own or property in their own name can hope simply to move into a new home.

Similarly few women can avoid or feel able to face up to the inevitable confrontations, delays, , interrogations, and queues involved in obtaining social security after walking out on their husbands.

And for working class women who feel they might find a job there is the problem of finding childcare-with nurseries closing down and other facilities axed by the Tory cuts.

In addition there is the fear of further violence at the hands of the deserted husband-who all too often will come searching with renewed fury for a wife who moves out.

A real contribution towards understanding and resolving some of these problems has been made by sections of the feminist movement.

They-often with little or no help from the organised labour movement-have concentrated on the fight on behalf of battered women.

They have established over 100 refuges and a support system in various centres across the country.

Yet the problem is beyond the scope of such resources. The refuges are themselves often in a precarious position in regard to tunds, premises and legal restrictions.

They are almost invariably overcrowded. And there remains the problem of adequately defending them against vengeful husbands seeking to vent their anger on their absconded "property"

"Property"

These problems must be resolved through a fight within the labour movement. In the first instance it is important to raise discussion throughout the workers' movement on the concept of the woman or wife as the "property" of a man.

In many cases the most backward views are perpetuated by trade union and Labour bureaucrats while of course they find a receptive echo among broad layers of male workers who have already been conditioned by centuries of male sexual domination, by. their education, by daily media propaganda, and by their own family upbringing.

Challenge myths

The fight must be taken up to challenge the central myths that justify sexual oppression. And at the same time steps must be taken to provide the material basis to tackle the problem of battered women.

This requires the extension of the system of women's refuges to a state-funded system under workers' management, with adequate staff and counselling facilities to help the often desperate women who turn to them.

It requires a fight to defend and extend nursery facilities and to secure full employment for women as well as male workers, in order to provide economic independence for all women.

It requires the expansion of council housing programmes to make special accommodation available for women who wish to escape from violence in the home-protected by • alarm systems against violent attack.

Such policies are achievable only through the defeat of the Tory government which is committed to policies that further intensify precisely the Last week's centre page article looked at the problem of rape and the necessity for the workers movement to take steps to eradiThis week MARY ANNE TODD looks at the problem of battered women-the victims of so-called "domestic violence" material pressures that are now driving more and more desper ate men to resort to domestic But steps that can be taken immediately include the involvement of local trades councils in the support and physical defence of women's refuges, and the mobilisation of civil service unions, in discussion with local women's organisations, to seek means of ending the harassment of battered women seeking social security and ensuring adequate staffing to deal with battered women.

Violence against women has continued for centuries, based on the inequality of the, sexes. It pre-dates capitalism, and will not be immediately eradicated by the nationalisation of banks and industries.

This century however has seen huge advances in birth control and abortion techniques that for the first time offer women control of their fertility -and the chance to determine their own lives in a way previously impossible.

But only through the measures made possible by a socialist planned economy can the material conditions be created for women to achieve full social equality.

Only in a socialist society will violence and abuse to women be seriously tackled as a social problem and not brushed aside as the individual failings of "abnormal' or 'maladjusted' men.

It is in offering this perspective that Trotskyists can help advance the struggle against sexual oppression.

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IDUSERI'L NEMS Followi the Leyland lead, Ford nanagement are continuing to tighten the screw on the shopfloor workforce.

They are sticking to their wage-cutting 9.5% pay offer, which was thrown out last week by mass meetings at all the

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cate this aspect of women's oppression.