The Political Economy of Oswald Mosley (1896-1980) – William Shepherd

Political Economy of Oswald Mosley (1896-1980), The – William Shepherd

Colin Wilson met Oswald Mosley at the end of the 1950’s, when Mosley was in his sixties, and found him ‘far and away the most intelligent politician he had ever met’.

Fenner Brockway remarked that the ovation Mosley received at the 31st Labour Party Conference in October 1930 was the greatest he had heard at a party conference.

Mosley was the youngest MP in the Westminster Parliament when elected for Harrow in 1918 at the age of 22. Both the main candidates supported Lloyd George but Mosley did so as an Independent. It was a strange election and it kicked off a strange political career. At the next General Election on 29th October 1924, Mosley challenged the power of the Chamberlain Family in its home city of Birmingham as a Labour Party candidate in the constituency of Ladywood, losing to Neville Chamberlain by seventy-seven votes after being ahead by two on the first count. Three years later he was elected Member of Parliament for Smethwick and pulled half a dozen Labour Candidates into Parliament on his coat-tails, breaking the Chamberlain hold on the city…after almost a century. He then resigned from the 1929 Labour Government and headed for the political wilderness by founding his own party. Mosley’s speech in the Unemployment Debate in the House of Commons on 28th May 1930, four weeks after his resignation was widely regarded as a masterly Parliamentary performance.