BLUE SHIRTS VERSUS BLACK

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVII, Issue 4473, 21 November 1933, Page 6

BLUE SHIRTS VERSUS BLACK

BRITISH FASCISTS GETTING “SHIRTY.” The two Fascist groups in Britain, the Blue Shirts and the Black Shirts are waging a dramatic struggle for power. The battle grounds are the street corners and weapons propaganda, and, where necessary, fists. The state of these two armies of patriotic young men and women is at the moment as follows: — Blue Shirts. —The British Fascists, Ltd., founded by Miss Lintorn-Orman in 1923. Has a membership of 416,000, and has for it£ ideals the formation of a corporate State, the government to be in the hands of an executive committee, and the principle that Jews are to be regarded as aliens. Black Shirts. —The British Union of Fascists, under the leadership of Sir Oswald Mosley. Strength unknown and differing in their ideals only in that they want their leader as Dictator of England and are favourably disposed toward the Jews. At public meetings members of the two organisations mingle together in the crowd and indulge in lighthearted joking. A Sunday Chronicle representative who called at the headquarters of the British Fascists in Stanhope Gardens, S.W., recently, was given this opinion of the rival organisation by an official: — “The Mosleyites know how to salute and click their heels; it 'may look good but it means nothing. We have an organisation that stretches throughout the British Isles and an intelligence service that is worldwide.”

Sir Oswald Mosley’s headquarters in King’s Road, Chelsea, preserve an enigmatic silence when questioned about their rivals. At the mention of the British Fascists they smiled contemptuously: '“We prefer to say nothing about them,” they said.