THE “JELLY FRONT”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXVI, 7 April 1934, Page 4

THE “JELLY FRONT”

BRITISH FASCIST ENEMIES

LONDON, 20th March. Recent powerful support of the British Fascists lias accelerated, recruitment, and “is provoking the oid gang of politicians to a frenzy of fear and fury,” declares tlie Black Shirt leader, Sir . Oswald Mosley, in an article in the “Daily Mail.” Mr Baldwin, lie says, Ted the attack from the safe shelter of tlie Broadcasting Corporation, which tame monopoly denies the Black Shirts opportunity to reply to the Socialist and Tory peers’ combined demand for action against them.

Sir Oswald charges these opponents with uttering gross untruths, at least one of which would not have been made with impunity outside the legal shelter of the House of Lords. “We have learned to call our opponents the jelly front, as if their allegations are true we arc liable to prosecution for raising and drilling a private army,” says Sir Oswald. “The truth is that we adopt the authoritarian principle because it is businesslike. We wear uniform to remove class harriers.

; “The black shirt is also a symbol of faith held with religious fervour, like the Salvation Army’s uniform, which is more military than ours. We hold 100 meetings a week in London, and 1000 throughout England. Disorder occurs at less than one per cent, of them, though we daily speak in areas where other parties will not venture. “We. only exercise the right to maintain order at our own meetings. We have re-established the right of free speech, and face razor and knife with a bludgeon.”