Oswald Mosley

Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980), was a British politician who rose to fame during the 1920s and 1930s when, disillusioned with mainstream politics, he turned to fascism. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Harrow from 1918 to 1924 and for Smethwick from 1926 to 1931. He founded the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932 and led it until its forced disbandment in 1940.

After military service during the First World War, Mosley became the youngest sitting member of Parliament, representing Harrow from 1918, first as a member of the Conservative Party, then an independent, and finally joining the Labour Party. At the 1924 general election he stood in Birmingham Ladywood against the future Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, coming within 100 votes of defeating him. Mosley returned to Parliament as the Labour MP for Smethwick at a by-election in 1926 and served as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Labour government of 1929–1931. In 1928 he succeeded his father as the sixth Mosley baronet, a title in his family for over a century. Some considered Mosley a rising star and a possible future prime minister. He resigned in 1930 over discord with the government's unemployment policies. He chose not to defend his Smethwick constituency at the 1931 general election, instead unsuccessfully standing in Stoke-on-Trent.

Mosley's New Party became the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932. As its leader he publicly espoused antisemitism and sought alliances with Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Fascist violence under Mosley's leadership culminated in the Battle of Cable Street in 1936, during which anti-fascist demonstrators including trade unionists, liberals, socialists, communists, anarchists and British Jews prevented the BUF from marching through the East End of London. Mosley subsequently held a series of rallies around London, and the BUF increased its membership there.

In 1939 Mosley was implicated in a fascist conspiracy organised by the Right Club against the British government by Archibald Maule Ramsay, albeit all evidence indicates that he soon distanced himself from them, viewing the group and its aims as too extreme.

In May 1940, after the outbreak of the Second World War, Mosley was imprisoned and the BUF was made illegal. He was released in 1943 and, politically disgraced by his association with fascism, moved abroad in 1951, spending most of the remainder of his life in France and Ireland. He stood for Parliament during the post-war era but received relatively little support. During this period he was an advocate of pan-European nationalism, developing the Europe a Nation ideology, and was an early proponent of conspiracy theories concerning Holocaust-denial.

Mosley was born on 16 November 1896 at 47 Hill Street, Mayfair, London. He was the eldest of the three sons of Sir Oswald Mosley, 5th Baronet (1873–1928), and Katharine Maud Edwards-Heathcote (1873–1948),^{[page needed]} daughter of Captain Justinian Edwards-Heathcote, of Apedale Hall, Staffordshire; they had been married the year before. He had two younger brothers: Edward Heathcote Mosley (1899–1980) and John Arthur Noel Mosley (1901–1973). His father was a third cousin to Claude Bowes-Lyon, 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, making Mosley a fourth cousin to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.

The progenitor, and earliest-attested ancestor, of the Mosley family was Ernald de Mosley (fl. 12th century), Lord of the Manor of Moseley, Staffordshire, during the reign of King John. Nicholas Mosley was a wealthy salesman in the 16th century, and was important in the development of Manchester, before eventually becoming Mayor of London; the family took a violent part in the Peterloo Massacre. Two branches of the Mosley family existed – a significant cotton trading family who lived in Lancashire, and a farming family who lived in Rolleston; Oswald was descended from the former. The family were prominent landholders in Staffordshire and seated at Rolleston Hall, near Burton upon Trent. Three baronetcies were created, two of which are now extinct (see Mosley baronets for further history of the family); a barony was created for Tonman Mosley, brother of the 4th Baronet, but also became extinct. By the 19th century, reformers had taken control of the Manchester Court leet, which formerly belonged to the family, and the Mosleys had little influence by the latter half of the century. Oswald's grandfather Sir Oswald Mosley, 4th Baronet, was a campaigner against Jewish emancipation. Oswald noted in his autobiography My Life that he was glad to have come from an 'old English family'.

His mother wrote in her diary that his birth took 18 hours after he began to arrive at 6:00am, her own mother staying by her side for the whole duration. The family doctor, Sir John Williams, gave her chloroform and the baby was delivered at 11:40pm. Her husband, who was addicted to both gambling and alcohol, wrote a large number of letters to relatives about the event, and celebrated at the Epsom Derby; he was mostly an absent husband.