Sir Oswald Mosley with his wife and son on the eve of his arrest, May 1940 (Neg HU 36671)

During the 15th and 16th centuries, the Mosleys were a family of merchants in the cloth trade, and they amassed fortunes in Manchester and London. Mosley Street, in Manchester, was named after them. Sir Oswald Mosley, the 6th Baronet, was born in Staffordshire in 1896 and brought up in Shropshire.

On Saturday, October 1, 1932, Mosley founded the British Union of Fascists which, in effect, became the British version of the German Nazi party. It held extreme right-wing and anti-semitic views and, like the Nazi party, flourished in the unstable and economically-depressed 1930s.

Mosley’s early meetings were held at Hyndman Hall, in Liverpool Street, Salford. A meeting at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on March 12, 1933, ended in violence. Although most support for the BUF was south of Birmingham, there were some branches in the north west, including Manchester, Southport, Blackburn, Lancaster and Liverpool. The BUF ran so-called “cotton campaigns” to attract unemployed cotton workers in Lancashire, but with limited success. For a while, there was a northern command headquarters, based in Preston, which employed a staff of five full-time political workers. Due to financial constraints, though, this office was closed in 1937.

Oswald Mosley was arrested on May 23, 1940, and interned as a threat to the security of Britain, first in Brixton Prison and then with his wife in Holloway. They were released for health reasons in November 1943. Oswald Mosley died in France in 1980.

If you are interested in reading more about Oswald Mosley or fascism in the UK, click here for details of how to visit the Department of Printed Books.

Sources:

Oswald Mosley, by Robert Skidelsky (pub. Macmillan, London, 1975) ISBN 0-333-02986-0

British Fascism: Essays on the Radical Right in Inter-War Britain, edited by Kenneth Lunn and Richard C. Thurlow (pub. Croom Helm, London, 1980)