A Note on Mosley, the ‘Jewish War’ and Conscientious Objection

Abstract

Of the many myths which Sir Oswald Mosley later fostered about his activities before and during the second world war, none is more widespread than the belief that he ‘urged his members to fight once war was declared’. Two key quotations from his own publications were used by him, and by later apologists, for this purpose: one, from September 1939, to prove his patriotic credentials at the outbreak of war, and another, from May 1940, to prove that, at that stage, he was calling his followers to arms in face of the threat in France and the Low Countries. Close examination of both these quotations shows that, by a process of truncation, distortion and (in the latter case) misdating, a completely different message has been produced from the one to be found in the originals. Moreover, an examination of his movement’s actual activities and of its advice to young men who were about to be called up, show a determination not to ‘offer to fight in the quarrel of Jewish finance’, but to impede the war effort in various ways, above all by British Union members registering as conscientious objectors. The cause for such ‘political’ conscientious objection was to be clearly indicated to the authorities, not as an objection to war, but as an objection to this war against Nazi Germany. A great many young British Union members did register in this way and the examination of one such case shows how closely it followed the instructions from the leaders of the movement. Finally, Mosley’s insistence that, despite his opposition to the war, he would call on his followers to fight ‘if the life of Britain were threatened’, is shown to have been a hollow promise; throughout the period of the German invasion of the Low Countries and France he still failed to produce any call to arms (in fact, his much-quoted May statement did the opposite). Such a call was only finally produced on 1 July, the day before his appearance before the Advisory Committee, on the advice of his solicitors and at a time when his rereading of his original statements, and his consequent rewriting of history, was already taking place.