FASCISM IN ENGLAND

Greymouth Evening Star, 13 September 1934, Page 2

FASCISM IN ENGLAND

A PUZZLE TO THE FRENCH. There are certain things which the Frenchman believes to be “impossible in England.” For instance corpses in cloakrooms or Fascism. When it was suggested that the corpse found in the cloak room at Brighton station was that of a foreigner the Frenchman was not in the least surprised, for “the English do not do such things,” writes the Paris correspondent of the ‘‘Manchester Guardian.” In the same way it took the French public a long time to believe in the existence of 9. Fascist movement in England. Not until recently, especially since the Olympia fight, have they become mildly interested. “What is this Mosley?” lam asked almost every day. The Frenchman who have watched the Mosley movement more closely—and such Frenchmen are not numerous, for Mosley is still a purely domestic ailment of no international significance —are contemptuous rather than alarmed. That Hitler and Mussolini should produce a little froth even in France and England, where one can always find a few cranky individuals, does not surprise them; what they think incredible is that any Press lord or any financial or industrial interests should support a movement which —and of this the French are deeply convinced —is contrary to all England’s traditions of individual liberty and parliamentary government. Even the man in France ’who criticises his own Parliament -criticises it not because he is hostile to the principle of parliamentary government, but because the French Chamber does not, in his opinion, function as well as the House of Commons. Practically all the French proposals for parliamentary reform are based on the British example. All the vices of the French parliamentary system—the instability of Governments, the fluidity of tire Government majority, the parochialism of the individual deputy, the automatic four years’ duration of the Chamber, and the difficulty of dissolving it when necessary—all these ills (so French reformers say) could be cured by British methods. The House of Commons is held in such high esteem that the French even overlook certain drawbacks of the English as compared with the French system —the less “democratic” nature of the House of Commons, the limited scope of parliamentary control, the absence of an adequate committee system, the Government’s excessive right not to answer questions, the comparative “sheepishness” of the backbencher. But even those Frenchmen who recognise the limitations of parliamentary government both in England and in France cannot understand how a Fascist movement in England is possible. The traditions of individual freedom are believed to be so profound in England that any change of regime there is more inconceivable even than in France.

“REALLY FRENCH.” i It is pointed out that, with the exception ot the insignifiicant group of Francistes, none of the more or less anti-parliamentary organisations in France has the courage to declare itself openly Fascist. They all talk of reform and a “cleaner France,” but all of them indignantly deny any connection with or any sympathy with Hitler or Mussolini. All of them claim to be “really French”; all of them} claim to represent a French tradition,) whatever it may be. Mosley, the French imagine, must have a jarring effect on the overwhelming majority of Englishmen; his movement is so obviously contrary to Britain’s tradition of freedom, which is : even older and is believed to be even more fundamental, though in some ways more “regulated,” than the 1

French tradition of freedom, which, in some matters, such as the Press laws, almost borders on license. If Mosley were to be judged on his own merits he could, it is felt, be treated only as a bad joke. That the Fascist movement in England can ever become a great popular movement is regarded as impossible; but good French observers none the less agree that it must not be under-estimated, for the powers behind it are not negligible. Under the guise of Fascism —no doubt an ill-chosen guise—these powers are encouraging Mosley because of his anti-Socialism. That Frenchmen believe to be the real secret of the Mosley movement; it is from the financiers and the, English Comites des Forges that Mosley is assumed to get his impetus. “The men most qualified for fighting against the movement,” a French student of politics who recently returned from England told me, “are not Liberals and Socialists, but the Tories, who, while respecting the old traditions of English personal freedom, have also the means of influencing the powers behind the Mosley throne.”