Source D is a statement from the fascist party and they are justifying reasons for not going ahead with the march. The only problem with this is despite it being a statement it will more than likely be slightly bias. It states how the fascists pulled out so how could they be the source of all the riot if they didn’t take part. What it comes down to though is they were going to have a march/demonstaration which obviously caused speculation as they were the main one involved. The group are going to stick up and defend themselves but obviously if they weren’t there then they weren’t the cause of all the violence – there must have been other factors also. It’s just people’s different ideas as to who they thought was to blame.
Source E is by a respectable member of the community so you would of thought a reliable source
To what extent can the failure of the fascist movement to challenge the existing political system be attributed to poor strategy and leadership?
It is obvious that British fascism failed, but there were many factors to this. The British Union of Fascists was the most significant group of fascists, led by Oswald Mosley. Mosley decided to engage in fascism during the first world war and it was all his war experiences that despise the prewar political system. This caused Mosley to enter politics in 1918, you could see from his early failures that fascism stood little chance. His involvement in mainstream politics between 1918-1931 isolated him from the parliamentary system, this could possibly show his nature of being unique. Mosley went through many different political parties such as a Coalition Unionist MP, sat as an Independent, joined the Labour Party and then founded the New Party in 1931. This party was the indication of Mosley’s interest in fascism, although the party did not succeed the October 1931 election and so diminished. Mosley then decided to turn to Mussolini and Nazi leaders and find his way through fascist politics.
The BUF then formed on 1 October 1932, it was a very controversial movement especially in 1934 where it became obvious the group became cruder and anti-semitic. The group had black shirt uniforms, marches and rallies and this was a big unfluence from continental fascism. Despite this the BUF said they would not get involved with overseas affairs. Mosley insisted though that it was an all authentic ‘British’ response. The group wanted to prepare for the expected economic collapse and had the idea that fascism would be the saviour of this event thus attracting more members.
There were many problems and areas of controversy that portrayed Mosley’s bad points – his leadership skills and his strategy skills. Mosley was a poor tactician and this effected a lot of the decisions made for the BUF and obviously this is going to have an effect on the workings on the movement, it would on any. Although it was not always the fault of Mosley, his officials would make up extremely good reports about the BUF, which were not completely accurate. These leadership issues continued through how he tackled his finances and these didn’t run too smoothly either. Financial control barely existed as it was in the 1930’s. Mosley didn’t want the main sources of financing to be found out and so provided a lot of the funding himself.
These weaknesses were divided though between the two areas of leadership, a military approach which involved discipline and order compared to a political sense devoted to dissemination of fascist propaganda. Mosley chose the military approach and this caused a lot of the political fascists to leave the movement. Many external factors effected the movement. Mosley’s construction of the party made it hard to collapse during its failure – another one of Mosley’s strategy skills not thought ahead well. Problems also occurred with other political parties, the Conservative based National Government was popular with propertied classes and so there was no space for the BUF to even compete. Mosley couldn’t even compete with Labour and so failed to attract even the unemployed.
Mosley also admitted the BUF wasn’t created early enough to take political advantage of the slump. The slump included things such as low interest rates, getting rid of the gold standard, limited reflation and empire preference, combined with an increase with real wages to help get the economy back on track. The BUF wanted to use these problems and turn them into fascist successes. The BUF was really controversial and isolated from Britain’s political culture, the use of uniform especially reminded the public of Hitler’s Nazi regime and over-the-top culture and provided room for speculation involving links with Hitler and Mussolini. The use of anti-semitism and violence was extremely popular for followers of the movement in the East End of London but else where was causing concern. There was a lot of opposition to British fascism though, there were anti-fascist activists and state management was also a problem. The fascists got the blame for public violence and disorder and the Blackshirts were also under surveillance from November 1933. Press coverage went down as newspapers and the BBC did not want to be associated at all with any pro-Mosley events.
