BRITISH FASCTISIS

Hokitika Guardian, 9 July 1934, Page 8

BRITISH FASCTISIS

POLITICAL UNIFORMS NO RAN ON BLACK SHIRTS LONDON, July ,4. The House of Copimqns lust week refused to allow Commander O'. LockerLanipson, si Conservative member, to introduce a bill to prohibit the wealing of uniforms for political purposes. He said he had no wish to prevent the followers of any party from wearing distinctive emblems or to prevent nonpartisan bodies like the Salvation Army , r the Ray Scots doing their admirable work in recognisable dress. He op. posed, however, changes or adaptations or dress which converted, it from some:thine civilian to something military in character. Lovers of democracy, Commander I.ocker-Lampson said, must resent the appearance in the streets and elsewhere of politicians who put,on uniforms as part and parcel of their everyday life, and for that very reason, seemed to wish to drop the old English weapon', of persuasion. The appearance of .uniforms in British public life must mean the gradual extinction of government by consent and the substitution o. government by coercion, and it was this new spirit of foreign force in our affairs that the bill was meant to ■counter. He cared not whether this .spirit was indicated in the international bleatings of that would-be Soviet ; dictator, Sir Stafford Cripps-or in the jspurious nationalism of Sir Oswald Mos- ; i e y. Roth challenged the sanctity of isociety as constituted by Parliament, iand the success of either would mean 'death to free discussion, free institujtions and free life. The most serious ool- ; lision recently between the authorities .and the people had been due to the iOrCjSencß of dusky figures in garish regiments. ; In ail interview in July, 1933, the ispeaker continued, Sir Oswald Mosley ■said his organisation would use force >to confer on a Fascist Government absolute nower of action, would a'bolisti ■Parliament as it existed to-day and !would replace the House of Lords by a national corporation of industries. Sir Oswald Mosley could never become the castor oil king of England, but.violence bred violence, “and if you want to .turn England into a Communist camp, then encourage Mosley to arm and dress and break the law.”

“Mosley,” Commander Locker-Lamp-son continued, “breeds Bolshevism, at every step, and he does it on. purpose. Let hi 8 opportunity be limited by a bill like mine., ' Sir Oswald, he said, selected a dead ■ statesman for abuse, and taunted the Conservative Party for going abroad for Lbrd'B’eaconsfield. If England bad to make a choice between, these two men she would choose the Hebrew dreamer, who might have had a foreign ancestry, but who was British to the core. -*•'* After further discussion the House refused to grant leave to introduce the bill. ’ '