THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, MARCH 5, 1934. FASCISM IN BRITAIN

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22203, 5 March 1934, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, MARCH 5, 1934. FASCISM IN BRITAIN

The British are a tolerant people. They accept equally as a matter of course the rantings of an orator on a Hyde Park soap-box and the deliverances of a Chancellor of the Exchequer on the Budgetary position. Beyond smiling at the one, or grumbling at the other, the British taxpayer ,betrays little emotion. He likes to know that government is in the hands of those" capable of controlling it, of men who are competent' and sincere, and • he cherishes his democratic privilege at N the ballot-box. But he seems to present poor material for the suasions of the, demagogue, the incitements to political experimentation and the appeal to revolution which sometimes move other races into riotous action. It might have been thought, considering the reasonable calmness with which the Briton takes his politics, that Sir Oswald Mosley's Blackshirt organisation would be stillborn. In recent months, however, the London press—, including that section which holds no brief for Fascism-—has. admitted that the' movement has vigour. It is hot as strong as .the Blackshirts' claim,: but it has a considerable following. Whatever Sir Oswald Mosley's indecisions as a party politician, he possesses .a decisive "and eloquent gift of language and organising ability. The Black-' shirts apparently have plenty of money and a sufficiency of zeal. They, have recently gained, also, a potent champion in the proprietor of the Daily Mail,. Lord Rothermere, : himself a political experimentalist but, first and foremost, it may be assumed, the voice behind a popular newspaper. Sir Oswald Mosley must have been deeply gratified to have Lord Rothermere's " Hurrah for the Blackshirts "clamorously raised in his support, but if he is wise he will suspect the duration of that ringing cheer. Blackshirt movement will require more solid support than it is likely to guarantee, and it is when that essential, aspect of British Fascism comes to be considered that doubts arise. The Daily' Mail, describing the impressive displayat Birmingham, when the Bingley Hall was " crowded with 8000 people ?'-r it incidentally, is supposed to \ accord-, modate 15,000—declared that- the supporters of the Blackshirts are " that middle class which has always; been the backbone and mamspring; of patriotic, political development throughout this country's The political correspondent of , the Observer, however, is ; ; : of > opinion that the Blackshirts are. .enlisted from two extreme groups-r:" there, is a reactionary wihg> composed of violent anti-Socialists, ; and a . revolutionary wing, recruited 'from the I.L.P. and the Communists." The Left wing is stated to tte- ; j Sir Oswald Mosley wh§n ! ha founded the movement took over with him many discontented r members of the; Labour Party, and; his greatest successes have' been made in the Northern industrial; centres, where many of the unemployed; are disillusioned both with Labour and Communism. - With these hotheads :o£ the Right and Left it might be thought that the ordinary'middle class—whiph admittedly deserves the encomiums in mixed metaphor of the Daily Mail as the most important support of the; State—will have difficulty :in fraternis-; ing. There is no evidence, in any case, that a black shift makes the least appeal to the average class Englishman as the perfect attire. Italian Fascists wear black shirts, and the Englishman, whilst admiring the cold .efficiency of Signor Mussolini from a distance, have little hankering for a duplicate system of dictatorial government. The Nazis prefer 'brown shirts, but their methods of establishing themselves scarcely strike a sympathetic chord in the breasts of; Britons. Even Viscount Rothermere admits the possibility that isolated out r rages performed upon the person of dissident Germans, "may have oc r curred." .The Englishman is presumably too sensible to judge a party by the colour of its shirt, and may accept Sir Oswald Mosley's assurance that he has no ambition to secure power by revolution and oppression. Yet the prejudice must remain. There is probably more of a general truth expressed in the criticism of a writer in the Observer than is .suggested- in /the question ' of shirts per se :• " The weakness of Fascism in Britain is; that although it has avoided the Communist error of referring everything to a committee in Moscow—a committee which knows nothing about conditions outside Russia—it remains a pale imitation of its original.. There is still nothing English about the movement. Why the Italian black shirt instead of the English pullover? " It is not foolish prejudice that makes the Englishman secure in the belief of the soundness of English institutions, and proud of the distinctive nationalism of his country. The British Empire was not created by dullards and incompetents; nor yet by any-text book of foreign origin. To-day the British peoples are feeling the economic pinch, but it has to be proved that this is because their shoes are of a different build from those of other nations. There is some reason for believing that Soviet Russia, Italy, and Germany have also experienced a certain decline from the heights of economic prosperity. The growth of British Fascism up to the present has been interesting, but its continuation seems unassured. Sir Oswald Mosley claims half a million adherents—a figure which is generally rated as over-optimistic. He must secure many times that number of Blackshirts if his aspirations are to be fulfilled. And if the present membership of i the organisation consists largely of ardent revolutionaries of the Left and disgruntled members of the Right, he is faced with two immediate difficulties, the first, to reconcile these

elements; the second, to convince the ordinary English taxpayer, with no fanatical political convictions, that there is a place for him in.a movement marked by such zealous partisanship.