• 1 The literature on the history of corporatism is huge. See, among others: A. C. Pinto ed., Latin Am (...)
• 2 M. Pasetti, L’Europa corporative. Una storia transnazionale tra le due guerre mondiali, Bologna, B (...)
• 3 For an analysis of the production and circulation of non-fascist versions of corporatism, see: V.  (...)

1In the last two decades, there has been a renewed interest in the history of corporatist ideas, explored both through the analysis of national cases – usually of authoritarian or semi-authoritarian nature, with a preference for the geographic areas of Europe and Latin America1; and through the examination of their transnational circulation2. Following these recent trends, the purpose of this contribution is to investigate the reception of fascist corporatism in Great Britain during the 1930s – in a country, therefore, where fascism was certainly a minority but where, as we shall see, the debate on the fascist Corporatist State was by no means absent3.

• 4 E. Percy, Government in Transition, London, Meuthuen and Company, 1934, p. 120.

2In order to investigate the nuances and modes of reception of fascist corporatism in Britain during the 1930s – ‘the most original and significant effort of political invention in modern times’, in the words of Eustace Percy4 – this article examines the political path of Oswald Mosley, with a specific focus on the years between 1929 and 1935. More than others, in fact, Mosley contributed to the promotion of a fascist movement in Britain clearly shaped – at least initially – on the model of Italian fascism. That, in turn, made his proposals regarding the evolution of the institutional and political machinery explicitly modelled on the Italian Corporatist State. The scope of this essay is to provide a synthesis of how the principles of corporatism, as they were being implemented by the fascist regime in Italy, were translated beyond the English Channel by Mosley after the great crises of 1929-1931, observing how his corporatist proposals progressively took on an authoritarian nature.

• 5 See O. Mosley, My Life, London, Nelson, 1968, p. 10.
• 6 See D. Howell, Mosley and British Politics 1918-32. Oswald’s Odyssey, London, Palgrave, 2015, p. 9 (...)
• 7 A series of crises in British and international politics – as the Irish crisis of 1919-1921, the e (...)
• 8 On Strachey, see H. Thomas, John Strachey, London, Eyre Methuen, 1973 and M. Newman, John Strachey(...)
• 9 J. Strachey, Revolution by Reason: An Account of the Financial Proposals Submitted to the Labour M (...)
• 10 For a biography of Mosley, see R. Skidelsky, op. cit.; D. Lewis, Illusions of Grandeur: Mosley, Fa (...)
• 11 Overall, on this crucial period of Mosley’s political activity, see D. Howell, op. cit.

3Oswald Mosley was born in London in 1896 to an aristocratic family of country landowners, with extensive properties located in southeast Staffordshire, in the West Midlands. In his autobiography, Mosley portrayed the family estate of Rolleston as a lost world resonating with ancient values and traditions, that was fundamental in shaping his idea of a classless society as a response to modernity5. In the same vein, as has been noted by Skidelsky and more recently by Howell, serving in World War I offered him another organic and hierarchical experience: a model that had deep affinities with his childhood aristocratic world6. After the end of the conflict, Mosley was elected with the Conservative Party in the general elections of 1918, aged just 22, in the Harrow constituency in northeast London, before crossing the floor and starting to gravitate towards Labour positions7. Mosley became a member of the Labour Party in 1924 – together with his close associate John Strachey8 – on an eclectic puzzle of proposals that ranged from J. A. Hobson’s liberal-socialist ideas of underconsumption, to Keynes’s monetary theories and vague principles of economic planning9. Two years later, in December 1926, Mosley was elected as a Member of Parliament in a by-election for the Smethwick constituency in Staffordshire10. After this moment, he rapidly climbed the Labour Party hierarchy, becoming very close to the party leader Ramsey Macdonald, who eventually appointed him Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Labour Government of 1929-193111.

• 12 M. Worley, “Why fascism? Sir Oswald Mosley and the conception of the British Union of Fascists”, H (...)
• 13 Mosley’s resignation came after his political program – the so-called Mosley Memorandum – was reje (...)
• 14 As harshly noted by Beatrice Webb in her diaries, Mosley never actually belonged to the Labour Par (...)

4As noted by Worley, after 1929-1930 Mosley’s rising political star in the Labour Party started to be eclipsed, mainly because of three overlapping reasons: first, the impact of the economic crises and its consequences on the British economic and social structure; second, Mosley’s experience as a government minister, which made clear to him its cumbersome bureaucratic functioning; finally and consequentially, his disillusionment with the Labour Party’s response to the rise of unemployment and with the political party system12. Eventually, the combination of these elements increased his frustration for the situation and triggered his resignation from the Government and the party in May 193013. Moreover, as we shall see, the aforementioned reasons constituted crucial factors of both the New Party and the British Union of Fascists (BUF) political experiences. Strong elements of continuity, therefore, can be spotted between the three Mosley’s political moments of disillusionment with old politics; the New Party’s short and grim experience; and the 1932 fascist landing. On this matter, one of the major points of this article is arguing that this continuity can be seen especially if one looks at the institutional structure proposed after mid-to-late 1930, which contained a core corporatist matrix which progressively acquired a fascist and authoritarian tone, but which also underpinned the New Party’s period. In this sense, the disappointment caused in Mosley by both major British political parties set off, from the second half of 1930 onwards, a political journey that ultimately led him to embrace fascist corporatist theories as the only path to domestic political stability, social order and economic growth. Over the course of the following months, these theories became increasingly explicitly modelled on the example of fascist corporatism, culminating in the establishment of the BUF in October 193214.

• 15 One of the co-founders of the New Party, Harold Nicolson, notes in his diaries on 15 February 1931 (...)
• 16 As it is well known, Italian fascists also considered the experience of the Great War and the tren (...)
• 17 O. Mosley, “What I am fighting for”, Sunday Express, 25 May 1930, quoted in R. Skidelksy, op. cit.(...)
• 18 R. Boothby, quoted in R. Skidelsky, op. cit., p. 225.

6In this section I will outline a biographical account of Mosley between 1930 and 1932 that highlights how a corporatist ideology influenced his thinking, even prior to the formal creation of the BUF. After leaving the Labour Party, in the second half of 1930 Mosley began associating with a group of young Conservatives led by Harold Macmillan, who had already been exploring corporatist theoretical solutions in previous years, although maintaining a clear distance from Italian fascism15. In this initial phase, Mosley emphasised the obsolescence of the traditional divisions between political parties that no longer reflected the new reality brought about by World War I. It was the experience of the trenches, Mosley argued, that had shaped the ideas of the new generation, creating a rift between those who had grown up in a pre-war era and those tasked with managing the post-war period16. The difference in approach between these two groups was so profound that the two worlds were “so different” – as Mosley wrote in May 1930 – “that they can scarcely understand each other’s language”17. Building on these foundations, Mosley launched his interparty generational challenge, receiving at least initial appreciation from Macmillan and his group. In this regard, Robert Boothby, another young Conservative MPs, stated that Mosley was “the first of my generation to strike a blow against the old men who have for so long battened themselves and their obsolete laissez-faire on the body politic”18.

• 19 On the New Party, see M. Worley, Sir Oswald Mosley and the New Party, London, Palgrave Macmillan, (...)
• 20 None of the twenty-five candidates presented were elected, and the party only received 0.2% of the (...)

7The attempt to give life to a political formation as an expression of this fragmented world achieved its first tangible result on 28th of February 1931 with the foundation of the New Party19. From a purely electoral perspective, the weight of the New Party was virtually insignificant. The only electoral test in which Mosley’s party participated was the general elections in October 1931. After a budget crisis in August 1931, the Labour government came to a deadlock and then resigned. The following elections witnessed an alliance between the Labourites loyal to MacDonald, the Conservatives, and the Liberal Party, against which the New Party had no impact20. From a political and theoretical standpoint, however, the experience of the New Party constituted an important moment in Mosley’s trajectory towards fascist corporatism. Despite the presence of some elements of ambiguity and inconsistency, an analysis of the texts from this period reveals a reflection that was becoming increasingly familiar with the fascist and authoritarian dimension of the proposed corporatist order. In this sense, the examination of Mosley’s positions and those of the New Party during the period between the publication of the Mosley Memorandum in January 1930 and the end of 1931 clearly demonstrates the path that led Mosley to embrace fascism wholeheartedly, simultaneously dismissing the New Party.

• 21 See C. F. Melville, The Truth About the New Party, and much else besides concerning Sir Oswald Mos (...)
• 22 See C. E. M. Joad, “Prolegomena to Fascism”, The Political Quarterly, vol. II, no. 1, January 1931 (...)

8Precisely because of the way it had emerged, the new political entity harboured strong elements of ambiguity that soon became evident. In this sense, although it was its only period of activity, 1931 was a transitional year, during which the various factions within the New Party coexisted without reaching a shared solution on how to concretely define the concept of the third way and how to articulate their political program. This situation persisted during the summer and until the autumn, as the approaching elections, which were not anticipated at the beginning of the year, compelled them to confront the issue21. The first – and only – congress of the New Party, held on the 6th and 7th of June 1931, at Mosley’s residence in Denham, Buckinghamshire, was a pivotal moment in making the party’s internal differences explicit. In this context, the latent conflict between Mosley and his old associate John Strachey began to emerge, as Strachey increasingly leaned towards adopting the Soviet five-year plan as his main political reference. In this case, the rapid evolution of the national political and economic context forced the hand of the fledgling party, dictating the timing of a swift transformation. The intensifying summer crisis of the Labour government necessitated a clearer positioning by the New Party on the political chessboard in order to participate in the general elections scheduled for October of that year. It was, therefore, between August and December of 1931 that Mosley firmly took control of the party, imposing a decisive shift towards a corporatist and authoritarian direction in the political-economic platform. While this stance contributed to giving the party a clearer identity, it also led to the distancing of Mosley from some important elements within the party and to its eventual dismissal. Among those who left the New Party in the summer of 1931 were John Strachey, Allan Young, and Cyril E. M. Joad. The latter, a scholar of syndicalist theories and previously sympathetic to the ideas of guild socialism advocated by G. D. H. Cole, expressed his disappointment with Mosley’s theoretical outcome in a sharp article on the presence of fascist tendencies within the generation of politicians who had personally experienced the First World War22.

• 23 Action was the official weekly paper of the New Party launched in the days immediately prior to th (...)
• 24 The biography of Trouton is extremely interesting in understanding how the New Party was becoming (...)
• 25 R. Trouton, “Common misconceptions of economic facts”, Action, no. 8, 25 November 1931, p. 4. Trou (...)
• 26 O. Mosley, “Class Struggle Must End”, Action, no. 8, 26 November 1931, p. 1.
• 27 Ibid.
• 28 O. Mosley, “Have we a policy? – Yes!”, Action, no. 12, 24 December 1931, p. 1.

9Following these internal developments, and with increasing momentum as the October election approached, references to the Corporatist State exponentially increased, filling the pages of the party’s newspaper, Action, to which Harold Nicolson was appointed as its editor23. Furthermore, alongside Mosley, the economist Rupert Trouton began to gain importance within the party24. Perfectly aligned with Mosley’s positions Trouton, while commenting on the ongoing economic crisis in the early 1930s, postulated that its causes were due to key flaws in the economic policies of the 1920s. He referred to these flaws as “fundamental misconceptions of the very objects of the existence, and of the real nature of the chief economic ends”25. In this context, the Corporatist State made its appearance as an institutional model that promised to be capable of controlling and directing the centrifugal economic forces within society, with the aim of making them functional to the supreme interest of the nation: “every interest and every individual” – Mosley argued in November 1931 – “is subordinate to the overriding purpose of the nation”26. The social and economic absence of the old Liberal State was thus meant to be overcome through the strengthening of executive power by constructing the Corporatist State, which, using a rather common organic metaphor, would operate “with the precision and the harmony of a human body”27. In this phase, what was emphasized was the potential of the socio-economic organisms – such as the trade unions, industrial federations, agricultural leagues, banking associations, and so on and so forth – that the State would have to capture in its corporatist metamorphosis in order to achieve the harmonious unity of interests and social classes. In this way, the ideology developed by the New Party in the autumn of 1931 opted for a clear interclass anti-socialism. Therefore, corporatism became the antidote to eliminate class struggle at its root, removing the distorted parliamentary mechanism that had initially generated it: “through the machinery of the Corporate State” – we can read in Action in December 1931 – “we overcome class war by constituting a continually-functioning machinery which reconciles the conflict of interests and arbitrates and harmonises the difference of class”28.

• 29 H. Nicolson, op. cit., p. 92.
• 30 O. Mosley, “Have we a policy? – Yes!”, art. cit., p. 1.

10The recognition of the plurality of interests within the nation became the necessary premise for their harmonious composition under the guidance of a strong central government. This central government thus became the political core of the entire system, representing not only the means of organising the new political architecture, but also and mainly the primary source of power. It was precisely this tendency, increasingly similar to Italian fascist corporatism, which caused Mosley to lose many of the alliances he had built in previous years. As Nicolson noted in his diaries already in the Summer of 1931: “I think that [Mosley] at the bottom of his heart really wants a Fascist movement”29. We cannot know for certain whether this corresponded to reality and whether the arrival at fascism was already an objective before the autumn of 1931. What is clear, however, is that the electoral failure of the New Party further radicalised Mosley’s ideas, pushing him with increasing conviction towards fascism. In December 1931, to the question “are we fascist?”, the answer was: “frankly, yes”30.

• 31 M. Worley, Sir Oswald Mosley and the New Party, op. cit., p. 10.
• 32 It is worth noting that the BUF was not the first fascist political formation in Britain. A galaxy (...)
• 33 R. Thurlow, Fascism in Britain. From Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts to the National Front, London, Ta (...)
• 34 The merging operation was successful, though no without difficulties for Mosley. For a contemporar (...)
• 35 See M. Kenny, Germany Calling: A Personal Biography of William Joyce, Lord Haw-Haw, Dublin, New Is (...)
• 36 D. Baker, Ideology of Obsession: A.K. Chesterton and the British Union of Fascists, London, Tauris (...)
• 37 See A. R. Thomson, The Economics of British Fascism, London, Bonner, 1935; Id., The Coming Corpora (...)

11In this paragraph, I will describe the authoritarian turn of Mosley’s corporatist ideas as developed within the BUF after 1932. In January 1932, Mosley embarked on a trip to Italy with Nicolson. During his stay in Rome, Mosley was able to observe the fascist regime more closely and have private conversations with Mussolini31. Upon his return to London in April, the decision to disband the New Party had been made, and the explicitly fascist turn was now ready: the British Union of Fascists was officially founded on the 1st of October 193232. With the foundation of the BUF – “the mature form of the fascist phenomenon in British society”, as noted by Thurlow33 – a new era of English fascism and Mosley’s political career began. All the most important right-wing intellectuals joined the ranks of the new organisation34. This included individuals such as William Joyce, who had previously been associated with the British Fascists and became the BUF director of propaganda in 193435; Arthur K. Chesterton, cousin of the Catholic thinkers Gilbert K. Chesterton, who was appointed as the director of The Blackshirt, the party’s new official newspaper that began publication in February 193336; and notably, Alexander R. Thomson, who joined Mosley’s movement in 1933 and quickly became one of the most important British corporatist theorists of the 1930s, authoring two volumes on the topic between 1935 and 193837.

• 38 R. Moore-Colyer, “Towards ‘Mother Earth’. Jorian Jenks, organicism, the right and the British Unio (...)

12After the foundation of the BUF, Mosley continued to focus his political activity on criticising the functioning of the British Liberal State. In this sense, on a concrete basis, he attempted to capitalise on the discontent in areas that had been hit harder by the economic crisis, such as the depressed industrial regions of Lancashire and Yorkshire. At the same time, he sought to promote his ideas of an autarkic agricultural policy in the rural regions of the southwest, from Cornwall to Essex, as well as in the northern areas of Northumberland and Westmorland. Overall, Mosley aimed to penetrate these regions and gain support for his vision38. Starting from 1934, as Mosley saw that support for his fascist project was not gaining momentum, he began to change the tone of his actions, resorting to increasingly violent methods and rhetoric, as it occurred during the London clashes of 1934, which further alienated public opinion from the BUF. In 1935, it was finally decided not to field any candidates in the general elections of that year, stating that the party’s organisational machinery was not yet ready and that the next elections would provide the opportunity for the definitive rise of fascism in Britain. At that moment, Mosley could not have known that the 1935 election would be the last electoral event before 1945 due to the outbreak of World War II in 1939. The final political campaign of British fascism was centred on attempting to avoid a conflict with the fascist powers. This campaign was interrupted in 1939 with the approval of Defence Regulation 18B, which led to the imprisonment of a significant number of top BUF leaders due to their sympathies with the enemy.

• 39 See, for instance, the different approaches followed by R. Thurlow, Fascism in Britain, op. cit., (...)
• 40 See C. Baldoli, “Anglo-Italian Fascist Solidarity? The Shift from Italo-philia to Nazi-philia in t (...)
• 41 In 1933, the project of internationalising Italian fascism was inaugurated through the Action Comm (...)
• 42 See Italian Propaganda in the UK, in London, National Archives, Public Record Office, Home Office, (...)
• 43 See L’Italia Nostra, I, no. 6, 20 October 1928, p. 4; L’Italia Nostra, I, no. 9, 3 November 1928, (...)

13The political developments of the BUF, briefly mentioned here, also reflect the shifting emphasis on specific theoretical themes during the years from 1932 to 1939. In this regard, the period between 1932 and 1935 was marked by the most intense discussions on the Corporatist State – even if corporatism was rarely recognised by scholars as a central theme of British fascism39 – before an increasingly evident shift towards the model of Nazi Germany40. During this period, Mosley and the BUF were actively exploring and promoting the concept of a Corporatist State as a central pillar of their ideology and institutional projects. In this endeavour, they clearly drew inspiration from the Italian fascist model and emphasised the need for strong State control over economic and social spheres, with the aim of achieving a harmonious unity of interests. Precisely between 1932 and 1935, there was also a peak in the relations between the Italian regime and the fascist movement overseas, which were part of a broader attempt to promote Italian fascism culturally abroad41. According to a report by the British Secret Services on November 7, 1935, the most important channels of Italian propaganda in the country consisted of a section of the Ministry of Propaganda led by Luigi Villari; the Italian embassy in London, headed by Dino Grandi between 1932 and 1939; and finally, the London section of the Dante Alighieri Society, whose president was the founder of the Italian Fascio in London, Camillo Pellizzi42. Furthermore, as reported by the newspaper of the Italian Fascio of London, a series of conferences were hold by Italian intellectuals such as Gino Arias and Luigi Villari on the theme of the Corporatist State43.

• 44 O. Mosley, The Greater Britain, London, Greater Britain Publications, 1932.

14It was through these channels that many publications reached Britain, mostly concerning the principles and functioning of the Corporatist State. At the same time, the first corporatist proposals began to emerge within the BUF, starting with the programmatic publication titled The Greater Britain which was released by Mosley in October 193244. This latter text appears to be, for more than one reason, as a decisive turning point in the history of fascism in Britain. In this volume, in fact, Mosley systematised many of the ideas he had already expressed in previous years, while simultaneously emphasising authoritarianism and presenting it explicitly as a fascist formula. As in the past, the proposed institutional system revolved around the principle of social rationalisation, with the Corporatist State seen as the solution to the current political and economic disorder. On the one hand, the overused image of the crisis of the existing model returned at the centre of the stage, but it was accompanied by the need to transform the old threats – economic interest organisations, particularly trade unions – into positive resources.

• 45 Ibid., p. 29.
• 46 Ibid., p. 41.
• 47 The number, composition, and functions of the corporations are outlined more precisely in Thomson’ (...)

15The central problem of the parliamentary system, according to Mosley, was the lack of sufficient technical expertise, which rendered Parliament a “non-technical assembly in a vastly technical age”45. There was, therefore, a gap to be bridged, the one that currently existed between the political and economic worlds, which could only be filled by transforming trade associations into bodies serving the common good – in other words, into parts of the State. Consequently, the proposed reform projects focused particularly on the House of Lords. The House of Lords, considered an anachronistic institution representing a class that was currently extinct, had to be replaced by a technical chamber – a parliament of experts deemed more suitable for governing the industrial society. As Mosley stated in 1932, “fascism would replace the present House of Lords by a Second Chamber of specialists and men of wide general knowledge”46. This second chamber would have constituted the institutional apex of a system based on corporations, where in each economic sector, workers and employers would be represented in a single organisation, thus achieving the unity of production interests47. In this way, the associations of economic interests, which had arisen outside the Liberal State, would be brought back in the heart of the new Corporatist State through their transformation into institutional bodies. As explained by Thomson in 1938:

• 49 O. Mosley, The Greater Britain, op. cit., p. 35.
• 50 A. R. Thomson, The Coming Corporate State, op. cit., p. 165.
• 51 Id., The Economics of British Fascism, op. cit., p. 36.
• 52 O. Mosley, The Greater Britain, op. cit., p. 35.

16The corporatist solution was proposed, therefore, both as a remedy for the decline of the industry through general production rationalisation and as a cure for the main ailment affecting modern society: class struggle. At its core was the figure of the producer, the very image of overcoming social division: “the producer – whether by hand or brain or capital – will be the basis of the nation”, as stated in Mosley’s volume49. Accordingly, the nation was conceived as a metaphysical and transcendental entity “with a purpose, a life, and means of action transcending those of the individuals of which it is composed”50. Moreover, the nation was compared, as often occurred in continental nationalist and fascist movements, to an organism of which the Corporatist State was intended to be the preeminent institutional expression: “the Corporate State” – these are the words of Thomson from his 1935 book – “is the organic form which the nation can find expression”51. Thus, in general, everything was reduced to a formula of an organic, corporatist, and authoritarian State, with an explicitly Mussolinian flavour: “all within the State; none outside the State; none against the State”52.

• 53 R. Thurlow, Fascism in Britain, op. cit., p. 63.

19However, as noted by Thurlow, the crisis of British society and politics which Mosley predicted and posed as a key element for the success of his movement failed to materialise53. That led the BUF and its leader to adopt an increasingly violent language, progressively leaning towards the Nazi Germany model, which proved to be a fatal political move as the increasing tensions between Britain and Nazi Germany and the outbreak of World War II in 1939. In 1936, Oswald Mosley married for the second time, following the passing of his first wife Cynthia in 1933. While the initial wedding was attended by King George V and Queen Mary, Mosley’s second marriage, to Diana Guinness, a British aristocratic writer, occurred privately in Berlin. The ceremony was granted special permission by the Reich and took place at the residence of Joseph and Magda Goebbels, with Adolf Hitler as a special guest.