The Rest Is History - 374. The Battle of Cable Street: Fascism Defeated

Episode Date: October 1, 2023

“You will never catch Sir Oswald admitting to anti-semitism - all he does is embody it!” Following the violent scenes at Kensington Olympia, the British fascist movement is in decline. Britain is swirling with unemployment, having just come out of a decade of general strikes, and as the country suffers, changes and becomes more urbanised, the fascists seek a scapegoat to pin Britain’s downfall on. On the 6th of October 1936, Mosley gathers with 3000 of his blackshirts to march through Cable Street, in London’s East End, an area with a large Jewish population; they are met by 100,000 anti-fascist demonstrators blocking the streets… Join Tom and Dominic in the third episode of our series on British fascism, as they look at the Battle of Cable Street, fascism in the pre-war years, Oswald’s role in the anti-war movement, his eventual arrest and detainment, and much more. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Producer: Theo Young-Smith Executive Producers: Jack Davenport + Tony Pastor Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. The Battle of Cable Street has a deep personal significance to me as I learned all about this historic event on the 4th of October 1936 from my mother who was there herself. 84 years ago she stood alongside many others and later recalled how tens of thousands of people from an incredibly diverse range of community organisations,

faith groups, trade unions, the Labour Party, left-wing groups and others had come together against the planned march by Oswald Mosley's Union of British Fascists and those police guarding it through a heavily Jewish neighbourhood. Communities joined together to support each other with one simple aim, to stop the fascists from marching through the East End and determinedly say they wouldn't let them pass. Those who stood there in Cable Street all those years ago did so as an act of defiance and an act of principle. And we walk in their shadow. That, Dominic, was Jeremy Corbyn, the late leader of the Labour Party, writing in the Morning Star on the 1st of October 2020 about one of the mythic episodes in the

history of the Labour Party, in the history of anti-fascism, what's come to be called the Battle of Cable Street, when, as Jeremy Corbyn put it, left-wing groups and others came together against the planned march by Oswald Moses' Union of British Fascists through the East End. I'm sure you're going to tell me that this is a hugely mythologized event. Well, who am I to argue? It's Jeremy Corbyn. Because it wouldn't really be an episode of the rest of history if a famous episode

doesn't turn out to be mythologized. But this is the third episode of our series on British fascism, history of British fascism in the 20s and 30s. And we left Oswald Mosley at the end of episode two pretty down on his luck. I mean, he'd had a kind of spectacular start. He'd been filling out Olympia Stadium in Kensington, but lots of violence there and people start to withdraw their support. And it looks as though the British Union of Fascists is going into a decline. It's no sooner arrived than it seems to be departing. So what happens next? Between that, what happens next? How do we get to Cable Street? What's going on? Fill us in. Well, first of all, hello, everybody. And I will say, Tom, I wondered whether you would

get a good impression out of that Jeremy Corbyn quotation, because Jeremy Corbyn is a hard man to do. What do you think of it? But I thought it was very good. And what you captured, there is a slight nasal quality to Jeremy Corbyn's voice, but also what you captured is an unusual trick of shouting at random words in the middle of a sentence. Yes, yes. It's kind of a kind of dreary expanse of lists. Then he'll suddenly shout. That's very much what I wanted to convey. So I'm glad you picked up on that. I thought it was beautifully done. And if he is listening, I don't know if he is a member of the Restors History Club.

Somehow I'd be quite surprised. But if he he is listening he should get in touch and let us know how much he's enjoyed it so yes we ended last time with the olympia meeting the violence of the imperial kensington at the great corner hall there thousands of people including more than 100 mps who watched many of them in horror as black shirt stewards beat up hecklers and demonstrators of course more onto demonstrators when we get to Cable Street and the events in the East End. But as you say, Tom, the fascist movement, it's very moribund in 1934 and 1935. They've lost a lot of support. Why? Partly because of the violence and partly because the press have withdrawn their backing. But also, I think there's something bigger, which is that Moseley had set up the British Union of Fascists because he thought that British

capitalism, British democracy was heading for a great smash, as he would have said at the time, and the people will want an alternative. And actually, he is quite wrong. We get the story, I think, of the 20s and 30s. And this is one reason why British fascism is a really great window into this. I think we get the story of the 20s and 30s wrong in Britain, because frankly, we're a bit too Americanized. So we think of the 20s as kind of cocktail glasses and fast cars, and the 30s as men in cloth caps, very miserable. In some ways, it's actually the other way around.

The 20s is a really conflicted, difficult, it's the decade of the general strike in Britain, very high unemployment. In the 30s, Britain, of course, it's affected by the Great Depression, but it's not as affected as almost any other comparable Western country. I think it's because of the Jarrow March, isn't it? I mean, it looms so vividly. So that's the March of the Unemployed from the North all the way down to London. Yes. And also Edward VIII as he becomes going to Wales and meeting the coal miners there and saying something must be done. And so the sense we have from those two famous episodes that the whole of Britain is admired in unemployment, because that's to forget

the massive housing boom, all those kind of industrial developments, kind of ribbon developments along the roads that are starting to be built. Britain is actually kind of booming in the late 30s, I mean, in the kind of the prosperous heartlands, even as you're getting mass unemployment in the industrial regions. It is. This is like the lecture that I used to give at the University of Sheffield in the 2000s.

This is music to my ears, because J.B. Priestley, the playwright, author of In a Spectre Calls, but a great kind of social commentator in 1930s, 1940s Britain. He wrote a book called English Journey, I think about 1936, 37 or so. And he said there are three Englands. There is the England of the kind of tea towel, you know, the National Trust House, fudge, Cotswold Villages.

Downton Abbey. Yeah, there's that England. He said there is the England of the industrial cities of the North. So people wearing clogs, cobbled streets, coal smoke everywhere, miners. That England is obviously really suffering in the depression. But he said there's a third England, which is the England of people going swimming in newly built art deco swimming pools, people buying radios, people living in, as you said, in Stanley Baldwin's Britain, in all these ribbon developments along main roads, red brick, semi-detached buildings. Because to this day, the built-up environment of vast swathes of British cities dates from the 30s.

It does exactly. It does exactly right. And for those people, I mean, often those people are better off than they've ever been. So those are the people who are voting for the national government in the 1931 colossal landslide. And again, in 1935, they are the people who listen to Stanley Baldwin on the wireless and they say, oh, Mr. Baldwin's a very solid chap, all this sort of thing. There was a resilience there to British capitalism and British democracy in the 1930s that is so often missed by all the stuff about the German Marxists. And meanwhile, in Germany, all kinds of terrible things are happening. It's not just that there's a difference in the political and economic arc of Germany

and Britain, but that there is some sense of a kind of fundamental cultural difference. Yeah. That fascism is alien, un-British, and Britain, but that there is some sense of a kind of fundamental cultural difference. Yeah. That fascism is alien, un-British, not the kind of thing that could put down root in a country governed by Stanley Baldwin. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. I think people are looking at what's happening in Germany. We mentioned the Knights of the Long Knives in the last episode, which takes place, what is it, three weeks after the violence at Olympia.

And people say, gosh, that's the last thing we want in Britain, which obviously is a real problem for Oswald Mosley. What does he do? First of all, he moves in interesting ways. He's always been a Keynesian. Anti-lese fair. Yeah, anti-lese fair. Now he becomes much more aggressively anti-capitalist. In 1935 or so, the BUF, the British Union of Fascists, his party are much more aggressively denouncing capitalism and industry, industrial magnates, big business, and so on, playing up their kind of more socialist elements. People saying this is basically our

party is patriotic socialism, all this kind of thing, making a very strong argument for protectionism, for sealing Britain off from the world economy, tariff walls, actually some of these elements that will be taken up by the Labour left in the 1970s and 1980s. Right. So Tony Benn is, I mean, that's pretty much what he's arguing for in the 80s, isn't it? Tony Benn, yeah. There's a bit of Tony Benn, although Tony Benn's not a fascist, for the avoidance of doubt. But there is that protectionist element. I mean, that you go back to Joseph Chamberlain in the 19th century and forward to Tony Benn. And then later on,

I mean, there are elements of the Labour Party on the very left of the Labour Party now who would say, we should rebuild our manufacturing behind a tariff wall and all this sort of stuff. But there's another element to this. One of the things that Mosley attacks, and some of our American listeners will know that there was a similar movement in the United States, is chain stores. So he hates department store chains, Marks and Spencers, Unilever, Woolworths, the Burtons tailoring group. Some of these, by the way, are Jewish owned. So I was going to ask you about that. So presumably that is the other aspect.

So there are two elements to this. One is, I mean, these are new things. They've emerged in recent decades. And there are a lot of people who feel threatened by this. If you're a news agent, if you're a small shopkeeper with a little tailor's somewhere in, I don't know. Salisbury. Yeah, in Salisbury, actually. Salisbury is a good example because that's the kind of place where a chain store might set up and actually put you out of business. You will be burning with resentment. So there's that element to it.

So the BUF are really targeting people like news agents and small shopkeepers and taxi drivers in 1934, 35. But the other element to this, of course, is anti-Semitism because a company like Marks and Spencer, the great British high street retailer, or a company like Montague Burton, founded in Leeds, high street tailors or indeed slasinger the sports quite slasinger i hadn't thought of slasinger so slasinger slasinger jewish owned well it was it was founded by two jewish immigrants from germany well there you go perfect i'd never thought of that but that's a perfect example so this allows mosley to open up a new flank which has always been there in fascism, but not in his repertoire specifically, and that is anti-Semitism.

And at this point, we should probably step back a bit and talk about anti-Semitism in Britain. Now, you mentioned in a previous episode last week that there had been distrust of foreigners, hatred of the Jews in Britain in the Edwardian period, which they had. Because in the 1890s and 1900s, you'd had the influx of, let's say, about 160,000 people from Eastern Europe, from Poland, from what was called the Pale of Settlement in Belarus and Western Russia, where Jewish villages and towns and communities have been the victim of hideous pogroms. And those Jewish refugees had settled in the East End and in Leeds and Manchester in particular. And there had been populist kind of campaigns against them. And the Tory government in 1905 had passed the Aliens Act to try and restrict immigration,

not very successfully, to sort of appease some of this kind of grassroots populist anxiety. Jewish people in Britain were pretty well integrated by and large. And in fact, some Jewish Britons were very well integrated to the extent that they were part of the circle of King Edward VII before the First World War. So we've mentioned the Rothschilds a few times. The Sassoons, another good example. Ernest Castle, Baron de Hirsch. These are people who they've been given peerages. They're very successful. They're very well-connected. And of course, that encourages resentment in itself. So there's always this kind of reservoir there. We talked about the John Buchan stuff. I mean, it's an amazing quote, actually, from the 39 Steps. This guy called Scudder, he's a person who basically tells

Hannay the plot, who unveils the plot to Hannay. He says at one point, these words, capital had no conscience and no fatherland. The Jew was behind it. Yes,ne. He says at one point, these words, capital had no conscience and no fatherland. The Jew was behind it. Yes, sir. He is the man ruling the world just now. And you would find sentiments like that in all kinds of British fiction and British newspapers in the 1910s, 1920s, and early 1930s. But politically, it's not really a massive issue because of course, there aren't loads of Jewish people coming into Britain in the 1920s. And anti-Semitism, it's kind of there. It's in the conversation, but it's obviously never an election issue.

It's nothing like it is in Germany, partly because the British population, Jewish population is small and very concentrated, a lot of it in the east end of London. But I think what happens is that in about 1933, 1934, Mosley takes it up for opportunistic reasons. He's obviously influenced by Hitler. He's obviously looking for an angle, but does he have a burning, fervent, personal antisemitism as Hitler did? Do you know what Clive James said about him? No, go on. I've mentioned this extraordinary interview that appeared with Mosley. And I do watch it on YouTube. It's, I think, very chilling.

And Clive James, who is a TV Australian poet, critic, autobiographist, wrote a review of it where he said, you will never catch Sir Oswald admitting to antisemitism. All he does is embody it. Oh, very good. Yeah. Do you think that's fair? I think Mosley, he turns himself into an antis-Semite almost deliberately, I would say, in the early 1930s. But up to that point, he would have been anti-Semitic in the sense that

lots of British people in the upper classes were anti-Semitic. That is to say, after dinner, over the port and cigars, he would have happily joined in conversations about Jews. But I don't think it was a ruling principle for him as it was for so many Nazis in the 1920s. You know, Hitler and Himmler and the people, I don't think he mostly barely mentions it. Is he being influenced by the influx of anti-Semites into the fascist movement? So in other words, is he being influenced by the sense that he has to give these people what they want? And the second question is, is anti-Semitism being stirred up by emigration of Jews from Nazi Germany to Britain?

The two answers are yes and yes. So he's definitely being influenced. He's often being criticized at the beginning by people like Arnold Leese, the camel botherer that we talked about in episode one, who say Mosley is soft on this issue. And there are people around him, let's sayiam joyce the future lord horhor we've talked about a few times who's this kind of bruiser he has this huge scar across his face like a kind of what do they call it a glasgow smile from from being stabbed being someone tried to rip his mouth with a with a knife joyce is fanatically anti-semitic so there are Joyce is fanatically anti-Semitic.

So there are lots of fanatically anti-Semitic people around Mosley who are pushing him in that direction. And it becomes an issue from 1933 because, of course, as German Jews begin to get out of Hitler's Germany, most go to the United States but not all. So at first, in 1933-34, you're talking about hundreds of people, not thousands. I mean, it will become thousands later in the decade. But even that provokes press commentary. People talk about German Jews pouring into Britain.

So he sees an issue that he can exploit. Now, of course, if you're Jewish, the chances are you will go to an area that already has a Jewish population. So that's Manchester, Leeds, and the East End of London. And it's in the East End of London, in particular, that he and his fellow fascist organizers think, oh, we can profit from this. We can stir this up. So this will bring us back to Cable Street, Tom. Because in about the end of 1935, so they've had a year or so in the total doldrums after the Olympia in Brolio. And about that point, starting in Bethnal Green in the east end of London, they start to campaign on this issue and this issue specifically. So to say, you know, you've got Jewish neighbors who are taking all your jobs, who are doing all this.

The Jews are actually behind all the mess the economy is in. The Jews are controlling the world capitalist system, all of this sort of stuff. And for the next year or so, there's a lot of this kind of going on in the East End. So in Martin Pugh's book, Hurrah for the Black Shirts, he has a really good quotation from a report in the Evening Standard. So that's London's evening newspaper for those people who are not British, by a journalist called Dudley Barker. And he says, an evening journey east of Aldgate is an astonishing experience. And he says, you know, you go down the streets, there are always these street corner meetings of communists, of fascists, and so on.

And the meetings are generally orderly, but he says, leading down from the main streets to the deserted side streets where the much discussed terror by night is said to stalk and where stories are told of safety razor blades stuck in potatoes and apples or the peaks of caps or bits of piping lengths of railing torn from the house fronts and knuckle dusters knives and hobnail boots used as weapons against the partisans who wander into opposition territories so there's a sort of sense of, these are very poor areas of London where the communists and the British Union of fascists are competing among the same groups of people often. And there's that echo there of Berlin. Yeah. Pre-Nazi Berlin.

Exactly. So red Berlin, but the brown shirts are moving in. Exactly right. Yeah, that's exactly it, Tom. I think there is an echo. But it's so local. I mean, it's never on the same scale, obviously. And it's so local i mean it's never on the same scale obviously and it's so localized it's against the backdrop as you said of stanley baldwin's britain where basically in northampton this is not going on and this is the context for this much mythologized moment jeremy corbyn took us so beautifully in with in his article at the morning star which is the battle of cable streets in in October, the 4th of October. So Mosley decides he will bring this campaign to a peak by launching a march through the east end of London. You could not conceive of something more inflammatory, more likely to provoke violence. Of course, he wants it to be inflammatory. He wants to get the headlines. 77,000 people signed

a petition to the Home Secretary saying, ban the march. The Home Secretary says, no, we don't ban marches in Britain. We're a country of free speech, of liberty. Political parties are free to march. So people who are opposed to Mosley say, we will stop him, we will block him. And their slogan, which is borrowed from the Spanish Republicans, Spanish Republican slogan in the Civil War is, no pasaran. And they say, they shall not pass. So on the 4th of October, Mosley pitches up. He's got 3,000 black shirts. And as they approach the East End, there are, who knows, 100,000, 200,000, maybe even 300,000. I mean, generally, when people estimate crowds, they massively overestimate. Let's say 100,000 people blocking the streets. And who are they, apart from being Jeremy Corbyn's mum?

Jeremy Corbyn never talks about it, of course. They are communists in large part. So the British Communist Party has really... And Jews, presumably? Yes, of course, Jewish groups. So if you are a politically active Jewish Briton living in East London, this is your moment. This is your chance to make a stand. Left-wing groups of various kinds, anarchists, socialists of various hues, trade unionists. So all these sorts of groups, they form this kind of coalition, and they make a stand, and they block the road road and they make it impossible for the fascists to do their march. Now, if you go back to Jeremy Corbyn's description there,

we fought fascism. And this is the kind of thing, it's the Antifa movement, the anti-fascist movement in the United States. It's sometimes said it would take an inspiration from the Battle of Cable Street. Obviously, it's Britain, it's not America, but it's one of the dates in their kind of litany of victories. And they said, we fought fascism. There are all these descriptions, building barricades, using sticks, using rocks, throwing chair legs, all of this stuff. Rolling marbles under the hooves of the horses. But actually, that last thing tells you something.

They actually don't fight fascists at all. This is one thing that people get wrong about the Battle of Cable Street. They actually fight the police. The fascists and the anti-fascists never actually come to blows because the police are in between them so the fighting is actually between the police and elements of the kind of anti-fascist group presumably though the communists would say that the police are merely the paramilitary apparatus of the capitalist state and that the fascists are another expression of capitalists. And it's all much of a muchness. Yeah, they would. I suppose you would say that if you were a card-carrying communist. I mean, if you're a trade unionist, you might not necessarily think that. Or if you're a sort

of left-wing fellow traveller, or indeed, if you're a Jewish activist who just wants to stand up for his community. I mean, don't forget, most people aren't doing this fighting. But the fighting that does happen doesn't really actually involve the fascists as much as people think it does. Because they just turn up and the police send them back. Yeah. And the police say you can't do it. And they kind of give up. You've got to give up and go home. Now, the one thing that Jeremy Corbyn, I mean, I'm not knocking Jeremy Corbyn. God knows I've done enough of that in my professional career, but for once, I'm not knocking Jeremy Corbyn specifically because what he's saying is

absolutely typical of the mythology of Cable Street. We stopped them. This was the moment, you know, all that kind of thing. And of course, people want to believe it, but it is completely wrong, because it wasn't the moment and it didn't stop them in the long term. So you are knocking Jeremy Corbyn? I'm not talking specifically. I mean, he's just saying what everybody else says. But actually, two things happen. One, there are lots more very, very enthusiastically attended British Union of Fascist meetings in the East End in the aftermath of the Battle of Cable Street. It's actually, in some ways, good publicity for the fascists. They have loads of meetings, very well attended. The other thing, Special Branch, who are monitoring

them for those people who are not British, that's a sort of specialist element of Scotland Yard, they estimated that actually the London membership of the British Union of Fascists went up after the Battle of Cable Street. It actually attracted people to join them. And there was actually the worst anti-Semitic violence in London happened the weekend after the Battle of Cable Street in Stepney. 200 black shirts, kind of young men, teenagers, they run amok, smashing Jewish businesses. So in other words, this isn't a moment that makes the fascists pack up and go home at all. In some ways, it

emboldens them. But I mean, I can understand that. You can play the free speech card, for instance, even though presumably the fascists want to get rid of free speech in the long run. In the long run, yeah. You know, they can say, oh, our free speech has been denied, all that kind of thing. They can play the victim card. And I can understand that people kind of rallying to that. But in the long run, is the air not going out of the fascist balloon? In that sense, short-term spike, but long-term decline. Yeah, I think that's a good point.

I think the thing about the anti-Semitism, it's true of a lot of Mosley's kind of wheezes, his stratagems, is that it will get you a certain amount of support and an amount of attention, but that is necessarily limited. Kind of sugar rush. A sugar rush, exactly. So it gets the sugar rush of an extra few thousand members who love the thought of a punch up. They're very excited by the violence. They want someone to blame. Frankly, there are not enough people who are in Britain who are

motivated primarily by political antisemitism. There are lots of people with antisemitic prejudices. They've read all these books, but they don't care enough to join the BUF and to work for it. But presumably also, this is happening in? Yes. In the years that follow in Germany, the Nazi harassment and persecution of the Jews is becoming more and more obvious. Yes. And isn't there a sense in Britain that... I mean, I know obviously Britain doesn't go to war to defend the Jews. I mean, that's clearly not the case. But there is a sense, isn't there, that people are increasingly, if not horrified, then unsettled by what's

happening in Germany. Yes, I agree. I think anti-Semitism, which had been perfectly, this will sound shocking, anti-Semitism had been respectable in the early 1920s. You could go to a dinner party of the most eminent people in the land and say things about Jews and people wouldn't bat an eyelid. I think by the late 1930s, by association with Nazism and what's been happening in Germany, there is a sense that it is much more toxic.

Yeah. Spoiler for the next episode, but Unity Mitford, she's very overt about her antisemitism and this causes her family huge embarrassment and it is seen as being unacceptable. And if you were, if you were being, if you wanted to make another point about cable street, Tom, you could say that it's actually demonstrations like that, that help to toxify it.

Yeah. You know, that actually it requires people to stand up and to say, this is not acceptable. I think so. So I think in that sense, Jeremy Corbyn isn't wrong to say that it, you know,

they took a stand. I mean, this podcast has really been crafted, Tom, as a way of Corbyn washing ourselves. So on that note, let's take a break. Very unexpected on the rest of history. And when we come back, let's look at the buildup to the war and what happens to the fascists in Britain during the Phony War and then after. Splendid. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman.

And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets,

head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestis rest is entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com hello welcome back to the rest is history we're continuing our series on british fascism and the battle of cable street has been fought and won by the anti-fascists. Dominic, the storm clouds of war are darkening over Europe. So we are coming to appeasement and the build-up to war and then the outbreak of war. What is the role of the fascists in this in Britain? So the fascinating thing about this is, whereas of course we associate fascism with militarism and with aggressive nationalism, and we basically want it to invade and conquer, British fascism is the

peace party in the late 1930s. It's the party of ultra-appeasement. It is the party that says we shouldn't go to war over Poland. But actually, one thing we've quickly skipped over that we should just make a nod to is there is one crisis that the fascists could conceivably have hoped to profit from, and that is the abdication crisis of 1936. So the most prominent person that people have sometimes pointed a finger at and said, could this person have been a fascist is the King, Edward VIII, who reigns from January 1936 to December 1936. He knew Mosley. He had met Mosley in 1935, so when Mosley was leader of the British Union of Fascists, and had talked to him about fascism and said, what are you up to? What are you interested in? Edward VIII, he is of that generation.

He is one of those people who chafes at the old men, who says, I mean, you mentioned him earlier, Tom, saying something must be done. He's impatient. He's mercurial. He has a taste for married women. He's actually quite Mosley-like, isn't he? I mean, he's not a Nazi. Sometimes it's sort of said, he wasn't a Nazi, but he is sympathetic to German aristocrats and people like that, ambassadors and dignitaries and things who say to him, oh, we've been very hard done by. We just want to regain our pride and all that sort of thing. And actually, that's one of the things that makes Stanley Baldwin distrust Edward VIII and think he's going to be very unreliable as king. We're going to have to watch him. Then when the Wallace Simpson thing blows up, the abdication, I'm sure one day we'll do an episode about the abdication crisis because

it's perennially fascinating to people. So this is the Megan of the 1930s. The Megan moment when he decides he wants to get it on with an American divorcee, Wallace Simpson. And Baldwin says to him, the prime minister says, you're going to have to choose between the crown and the American divorcee. Mosley campaigns for the King. So there are stories about- As Winston Churchill does, of course. Yes.

Actually, so it's an interesting, this is an interesting moment of alignment between the British Union of Fascists and Winston Churchill. They're both of the King's party, as it was kind of called. So the BUF actually pay for a loudspeaker van to go up and down Whitehall broadcasting, stand by the king. That is the message of Moseley in this time of crisis. And there's a story that will appeal to our Rest Is History guest, Dan Jackson, a man who loves a bit of Newcastle history. So Newcastle upon time, black shirts jog around the city, giving out leaflets and chanting two, four, six, eight, the king must not abdicate.

But he does abdicate. And so off he goes. And actually, he's then not part of the equation. And actually, this doesn't really win mostly much extra support, which is a much better issue for him. And it's a really good issue for him. This is the shocking and surprising thing for many listeners, I imagine, is the thing about peace with Germany and no to war.

So as the storm clouds gather, Tom, the more they gather, the more he hammers home the war issue. Well, it's an anti-war coalition, isn't it? Yeah, stop the war. It's a stop-the-war coalition. This is a very Jeremy Corbyn-themed episode. So they say, you know, absolutely no war for Eastern Europe. In two years, their support goes from 6,000 members to about 30,000 members.

So a fivefold increase by 1939 on this issue. They say the Tories and Labour are warmongers. We will revise the Treaty of Versailles. Appeasement has not gone far enough. All of this kind of thing. They, again, as they've done so often, they make women very prominent in the campaigns. So there will be poster parades of fascist women. The posters carry the slogan, our children were young in 1914. Have we brought them up for war?

And you can absolutely see if they downplay the fascist logo, bury that in the small print, a lot of people, you're on the streets of up for war. And you can absolutely see if they've downplayed the fascist logo, buried that in the small print, a lot of people, you're on the streets of Aberystwyth or whatever, and you're walking along and you see these characters and you think- Are you in favor of war? Yeah. Who's going to say? No, I'm not. Well, join the fascists. So I'll tell you what I found so interesting reading up about this. So as you

get into 1939 they're still making excuses they make excuses for hitler they are saying well he's dismembered czechoslovakia but that was never a real country you know it was a contrived and as it gets to poland they say poland is corrupt it's being used as a puppet for the West. So why should Britain shed blood for the sake of this rotting confederacy of cash and corruption? Why do we have to be allied to every little country in the East of Europe? This strangulation policy, they're saying we're trying to strangle Germany. We're making Germany feel embattled. This will throw Europe into war. It's impossible to read this without thinking of all those people who say,

why are we throwing this money into the sink of Ukraine? We have actually provoked Russia by expanding. The rhetoric is, by the way, for the avoidance of doubt, I'm not saying these people are fascists in the 21st century necessarily, but I'm saying there's a remarkable similarity in the rhetoric. No, but I think what you're saying is that because we know what the Nazis do, because we have the association of the word fascist with death camps, with the Holocaust, with unspeakable crimes and horrors, we may close our eyes to aspects of fascism that before the war would appeal to all kinds of different constituencies. So if you are anti-war, they would appeal to you. If you're an environmentalist, they might appeal to you. If you're on the left, might appeal to you.

Tom, you were going to mention Scotland. Yeah. So there are people, there are nationalists in Scotland who are pretty sympathetic. I think by and large, I mean, the figures in the SNP who are sympathetic to Germany in this period are doing it because they are anti-English rather than because they're pro-fascist. But there are aspects of a fascist program that people can identify with in ways that perhaps would be inexplicable to people today. If you're anti-war, if you're pro-environment, there are aspects of the fascist policies that might appeal to you. You know, if you think sometimes parliament isn't working, we're really let down by our leaders.

I mean, who wouldn't think that? They're all the same. They're all the same, or they're just self-aggrandizing shits. Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. I do think they're all the same, absolutely useless, get rid of a lot of them, is a stepping stone of a kind to fascism. However, against that, I mean, we mustn't become too revisionist because, of course, it's absolutely evident by this point that Hitler is going to be capable of unspeakable crimes. And so the fascists in Britain must be tarred with association. Yes, I think they are.

Although, this is why their support doesn't go higher. Although they're probably more respectable in 1939 than they were in 1936 or so, because they've basically really gone in hard on this issue of peace and opposition to war. But I agree with you, obviously, for most people, for most sane people in 1939, the British Union of Fascists is a poisonous party. The black shirts, the violence, the antisemitism. So war is declared and Moseley is allowed to campaign for peace against the government for nine months. I find that amazing. I mean, it's a tribute either to the British

traditions of free speech or of complacency or of the sense that, because as we will find out in the next episode, Churchill actually has family links to Moseley by marriage. Well, it's Churchill who locks him up. I know. That Churchill's not going soft on him. But there is a sense, I think, in which perhaps the British government is not going after Mosley because he is still seen as being one of us. There may be a slight element of that, but I think it's actually more that for the first

nine months or so during the so-called phony war, the Chamberlain government just thinks, if you haven't committed treason, we're not going to lock you up. And the truth of the matter is, and this was a slightly odd thing to think because we're so used to thinking the fascist is inherently treasonous, that most of them haven't committed treason. I mean, Mosley has not committed treason. He's not giving secrets to the Germans or anything like that. Well, again, Dominic, and this is why the Mitfords will be so interesting.

This is just a third of a three-part prologue. Lord and Lady Riesdale, the mother and father of the Mitford sisters, and indeed their one son, their reaction to the outbreak of war is fascinating because it exemplifies the way in which very far-right figures react to the declaration of war. I will say no more than that. Oh, it's so exciting, Tom. It's an intriguing example of the tensions there. So a few fascists go abroad william joyce is the most famous he's a man who's cropped up again and again in this

podcast so he's the guy with the the slash across his face the joker yeah he looks like the joker he has been always on the the more violent the more extreme wing of moses movement he goes off he says i'm going to go and become a german and he spends the war broadcasting propaganda into britain which is listened to by colossal quantities of people berlin calling berlin calling it's like we've got him on the podcast i'm chilling a chilling resemblance but a chilling but instructive resemblance i would say tom he's broadcasting to britain he's sort of saying oh you're all the tools of jewish finance and all this kind of stuff and loads and loads of people listen because they're fascinated, not because they believe him. But Mosley doesn't go. Mosley says, I'm not going to fight in defense of Poland,

but if my members want to defend their country, they're very free to do so. So he's trying to tread a fine line. He thinks there's going to be a great coup or a collapse and that he can walk in. He has this delusion that the RAF will support him one day to seize power. But then we get to May 1940, Churchill wants to take a harder line. Churchill's cabinet amends the Emergency Powers Act, Regulation 18B it's called, and they say we can detain people whose movements have or have had in the past an association with foreign belligerents. So Mosley's arrested. In total, I think almost 750 fascists are arrested. But interestingly, the aristocrats aren't. So all the kind of the Duke of this, the Marquess of Tavistock,

the Lord Brockett, all these kinds of characters, they're all let off scot-free. You can't arrest an aristocrat. Now, the funny thing is that people who've written about this generally say, Mosley is actually, I mean, this is a weird thing to say, given that basically he's the great villain. He's actually a bit hard done by because he wasn't actually a traitor. He'd been to Germany. He was always more drawn to Italy and to Mussolini than he was to Hitler.

But there's no evidence that he has been supporting Germany in the Second World War or giving them any information or giving them any help. Well, Dominic, unless his wife, his sister-in-law, perhaps. I mean, we'll touch on this in our next episode. But Tom, you're not imprisoned because of what your wife and your sister-in-law have done. Well, you might be in a national emergency. Well, exactly, in a national emergency. So there's some argument that Churchill does this to frighten the Americans. So that Churchill insists on this being done because he wants to promote, you know, there's a new start after Chamberlain has gone, more dynamic leadership. And then actually he wants to say, look,

we have this terrible fifth column in Britain. Well, yes, because he does say, doesn't he, that if the Germans occupy Britain, then probably they'll set up some Vichy type government run by Mosley. Yeah. Which is actually- That's probably not true. It would have been Lloyd George or someone like that. Exactly. So had the Germans arrived in Britain, I think there are a couple of possibilities. One is they pick a sort of a weedy, tweedy kind of tory lord halifax lord halifax the other is they go for a more martial pay town kind of scenario in which case lloyd george does seem like the obvious person lloyd

george who would you know who's certain sympathies with hitler well hitler's rise to power he had yeah lloyd george who, who had sometimes said suspicious things. Lloyd George, who, of course, had been perfectly happy to work with the conservatives in the First World War, had flogged all his peerages, had been very corrupt. It's possible to see a scenario in which Lloyd George thinks, I'm the saviour of my country. I will put us back together. I will do what has to be done, all that kind of thing. Anyway, I think it is unlikely that Mosley would have been, it's not impossible.

I mean, quizzling in Norway. Anyway. But the thing is that actually Hitler doesn't really respect Mosley. Yes. He sees him as a loser. However, Dominic, there are people in Mosley's immediate family circle on whom Hitler is considerably keener. Right. This is another trailer for your next episode. In our next episode, we will look at two of those in particular. One of them,

Diana, Lady Mosley, who had been Diana Mitford, is his wife. And the other, Unity Mitford, is his sister-in-law. And they get up very close to Hitler, unity perhaps exceptionally close to Hitler. And so in our final episode, Dominic, we will be looking at the Mitford specifically and seeing what kind of mirror they hold up. Tom, I find it absolutely bizarre that in all the episodes we've done in the rest of history, the one that you've put more effort into is the Mitford. I'm just teeing up. More than the Rubicon more than muhammad more than all your other enthusiasts more than dinosaurs tom who would have thought it and all you care about is the mitfords i'm just teeing it up because i think it is a brilliant way to look at what is going on

in the relationship of british fascists and the nazis and hitler specifically and then into the war what happens to not just mosley but to his wife and then what happens to the the fascists during the war after the war and how british fascism is remembered and commemorated right the way up to the present day tom i don't want to um upset you but theo our producer says that your episode on the mitford sounds way more fun he writes than all the other episodes you've done in the rest of his history well i'm not entirely going to disagree with that i think it is i mean it is an amazing story i know that lots and lots of people will be familiar with the story but if you're not it's an incredible way i think to finish off this this series on british fascism so we leave oswald mosley he and the um the male fascists where are they all put

they're all put in bri Brixton. In Brixton. The women are generally sent to Holloway. Some of them go on hunger strike. Most of them are actually released by 1942, but Mosley is still there. So we'll leave him there, Tom, in prison behind bars. British fascism has been dissipated. It's completely lost its momentum because, of course, Britain is now fighting a great crusade against international fascism. But we will return in a few minutes, for those of you who are members

of our own club. I don't know where I was going to go with that. I considered for a moment embarking on a very risky parallel. No, don't. And then I thought, no, I won't. If you're part of our great Cable Street anti-fascist movement, the Rest Is History Club, then you can listen to Tom

talking about the Mitfords. It's going to be such fun. He just wants, you're just doing it for that impersonation, aren't you? Tragic. But also I think you have

a long established tendresse for kind of... Very, very posh women. Yeah. Horsey women. They're not horsey. Are they not horsey? I bet they ride,

don't they? Yeah, of course they ride, but they're not, they're not... Well, we will discuss that. Okay. Well, so, if you're not a? Yeah, of course they ride, but they're not, well, we will discuss. Okay. Well, so if you're not a member of the Restless History Club, if you're not joining us on the barricades at Cable Street,

if you are off in your suburban semi-detached house listening to Stanley Bouldin on the wireless, we will be back for you on Thursday with the final, the crowning moment, not just in this series, but as far as Tom Holland is concerned, in his entire professional career as he talks us through the story of the Mitfords. The women who loved Hitler.

What are you going to call it? The girl who stalked Hitler. I mean, you know, the headlines write themselves. Okay, very good. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde and I'm Richard Osman

and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain

on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members club if you want ad free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to there therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com.