MOSLEY'S FASCISTS

Evening Star, Issue 25812, 7 June 1946, Page 5

MOSLEY'S FASCISTS

SUBSIDISED BY ITALY £121,000 IN TWO YEARS (Rec. 12.10 p.m.) LONDON, June 6. Italy spent at the rate of 3,500,000 lire (then £60,400) a year in 1934 and 1935 to subsidise Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, according to a letter read by the Home Secretary,

Mr Chuter Ede, in the House of Commons. Signor Grandi wrote to Mussolini: "All the money, believe me, Duce, simply goes down the drain." Mr Chuter Ede said the evidence of these, transactions was found among Mussolini's papers. A letter from Grandi dated January 30,'1934, said: " Mosley has asked me to express his gratitude to you (for sending to him a considerable sum which I arranged to hand over to him to-day." Another letter dated March 1, 1935, said: " You are giving Mosley 3,500,000 lire a year in monthly instalments of about 30,000 lire. At present we should concentrate our efforts in a different direction. With a tenth of what you give Mosley I feel I could produce a result tenfold better."

Mr Chuter Ede, after he read the extracts, which were punctuated by members' laughter, added: " Unfortunately it was not illegal for Mosley to receive these sums. I only hope this will be an instructive foreword to the book he proposes to publish." Mosley told the _ Press Association that the union received no money from Italy, and added: "I do not doubt the evidence on the subject now available in alleged Ttalian archives at Id a packet."