The charismatic, but controversial politician Sir Oswald Mosley was born in Mayfair in 1896. He came from a wealthy aristocratic family in Staffordshire who until 1846 were lords of the manor of Manchester.
Following the rise of Fascism in Germany and Italy, and after meeting Mussolini, Mosley set up the British Union of Fascists (BUF) on 1 October 1932 at 12 Great George Street. That year he began an affair with Diana Mitford who was married to Bryan Guinness. After the death of Cimmie in April 1933, Mosley married Diana in Berlin on 6 October 1936 at the home of Josef Goebbels, with Hitler as the guest of honour. However, Mosley looked more towards fascism in Italy than Germany as his model.
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The first national BUF headquarters was at 12 Lower Grosvenor Place, and it then moved to 16 Great Smith Street Westminster.
In August 1933, the Party purchased the Whitelands Teacher Training College in Kings Road Chelsea, a large building that was renamed ‘The Black House’. It accommodated about 200 Blackshirts who were trained with military discipline. A special detachment was formed called the ‘I’ Squad (Defence Force), to prevent political opponents breaking up Blackshirt meetings. It was led by Eric Hamilton Piercy.
It was estimated that at its peak in 1934 the BUF had between 35,000 and 40,000 members, with about 10,000 active members.
At first MI5 was reluctant to believe that Mosley and the BUF were a serious security problem, but Special Branch monitored and reported on their meetings. Maxwell Knight, the MI5 controller of a small group of agents, placed them in Fascist organisations such as the BUF and in Communist associations such as the Communist Party of Great Britain.
In 1934 MI5 obtained information that the BUF was receiving regular funding from the Italian Government, and increased surveillance. A later Special Branch report of the BUF bank account at the Westminster Bank in Charing Cross showed that in 1933 when the account was opened, approximately £9,500 was paid in. In 1934 the total stood at £77,800; 1935 - £86,000; 1936 - £43,300; but by 1937 it fallen to £7,630. MI5 reported: ‘The allowance (from Italy) previously paid to Sir Oswald Mosley (and the BUF) has ceased for the time being’.
While most BUF activities took place in Central and East London, they set up local offices across the country. The focus of our story looks at northwest London, and this is the first time an account of BUF activities in this area has appeared. It is noticeable that many of the newspaper reports describe disturbances at meetings, with both supporters and opponents being arrested and fined.
The Hampstead News of 16 January 1934 reported that since the first BUF meeting in Kilburn six months earlier, they had just opened their local branch at 46 Priory Road in West Hampstead. This is near the junction with Abbey Road and St Mary’s Church. The BUF seems to have rented the whole of the large house. There were two club rooms (one for lady members), a canteen, a gymnasium, billiard room, dormitories and offices. The following week the paper described Lady Diana Mosley’s visit to the centre where 150 Kilburn Blackshirts were present to greet her. Lady Mosley was surprised at the size of the premises and impressed by the social and political amenities provided. She stressed the importance of street processions and urged local women to realise their importance to the movement. It has been estimated that about a quarter of BUF members were women and eventually many meetings were addressed by lady speakers. After discussions on policy Diana Mosley left to cheers from the Blackshirts who gave her the Fascist salute.
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At the end of January 1934 there is a report that BUF member Joan Evans was taken to hospital when black pepper was thrown in her eyes at an open-air meeting in Kilburn. After treatment she was allowed home. Assault has always been a hazard faced by public speakers and those attending a political meeting. The following year, a Hampstead member of the BUF had his jaw fractured at an open-air meeting near Euston. A knuckleduster was used to inflict the painful damage. The BUF started ju-jitsu training classes, deeming this form of self-defense particularly useful when women members were attacked. They trained their public speakers by having them challenged by an audience of BUF members acting as hecklers.
On 19 February 1934 about a dozen BUF members held a meeting in Church Street, Edgware Road. A large crowd of 500 people assembled and began to heckle the speakers. Missiles were thrown, fights broke out and an attempt was made to charge the platform. The Fascists were compelled to retreat by motor car, taking the injured BUF member John Sutcliffe for treatment at Priory Road.
We have been unable to establish how long the West Hampstead premises were used.
The St Pancras branch of the BUF was opened by Maud Lady Mosley, Sir Oswald’s mother, on 14 May 1934 at 122 Arlington Road. She was welcomed by 300 uniformed male and female members. Lady Mosley said it hardly seemed credible that less than two years ago she helped to hang the curtains in the tiny headquarters when the total membership was only 12. She unveiled a full-length portrait of Sir Oswald.
Mosley lost considerable support and BUF members after the disastrous mishandling of a giant rally at Olympia on 7 June 1934, when 1,000 Blackshirt stewards from an enlarged Defence Force brutally ejected Communist and Jewish hecklers in front of an audience of 12,000 people. Two hundred young BUF so called ‘wolves’ were stationed in the corridors to beat and kick protesters ejected from the main hall. The police were so appalled at the level of violence being used that they drew their truncheons and forced the wolves back into the hall.
As a result of the horrific scenes at Olympia, Harold Harmsworth, Lord Rothermere stopped promoting the BUF through his paper, the Daily Mail.
On 1 September 1934 the Hendon and Finchley branch held their weekly Saturday meeting in Golders Green. The speakers were Mr Harding the district officer, and Mr A.D. Burton who outlined the BUF policy on housing and slum clearance. Pandemonium caused by Communist hecklers made it difficult for the speakers to be heard. The local headquarters were in King Edward Buildings Finchley (this was probably today’s King Edward Hall in Hendon Lane). Speaking there the following year in May 1935, John Beckett, one of the leading members of the party, said that in less than two years the BUF now had 637 branches throughout the country. However that year, it was estimated that BUF numbers had dropped to about 5,000 active members.
In October 1934 the BUF held a street meeting in Brondesbury Villas Kilburn. Inspector Donald Burton was injured by Philip Myers aged 18, of 2 Lydford Road Willesden. Myers was running round the crowd shouting ‘Down with Fascism’ and he hit Inspector Burton on the leg with a small wooden platform which he wanted to set up. Myers was fined 40s and £2 12s 6d costs.
That month the BUF newspaper ‘Blackshirt’, which was an important source of income, reported on their competition to find out who had sold the most copies. Six members had each sold over 100 copies, the largest number was 161 by R.W. Darracott, a member of the Hampstead branch.
In November the BUF held a procession in Willesden Lane near Kilburn High Road and again fighting broke out. In court anti-fascist John Stevens 19, a machinist of 39 Strode Road Willesden Green, was accused of fighting with Edward Llewellyn Ashton 21, a woodcarver of 36 Gloucester Crescent, Regents Park. Stevens, who had a previous conviction for defacing walls, was fined £1, and Ashton was fined 10s.
On 30 November, Lady Margaret Dalton, the elderly widow of a barrister, put her Hampstead home, 57 Belsize Avenue, at the disposal of the BUF. The meeting was opened by Lady Mosley, who introduced a talk by the Director of BUF Policy, Raven Thomson.
In January 1935 the BUF opened their Hampstead office at 102 Heath Street, on the corner with New End. The space was rented from a BUF supporter and included a hall with a stage and seating for around 120 people. A concert and dance were held there the following Saturday and in February, a film was shown, including images that Blackshirt described as, ‘scenes of enthusiasm and excitement at Olympia’.
Other venues hired on several occasions by the BUF for indoor meetings and events in Kilburn and Hampstead, were the Foresters’ Hall on Kilburn High Road (it later became the Tricycle Theatre, now The Kiln), and Hampstead Town Hall on Haverstock Hill. On 15 March 1935 William Joyce the BUF Director of Propaganda, who was later known as Lord Haw-Haw when he broadcast from Germany during WWII, spoke at a Kilburn Foresters’ Hall meeting. Blackshirt reported, ‘The mass of the audience repeatedly showed itself in sympathy with the speaker, whilst a few noisy dissidents were persuaded to leave before they could cause much inconvenience to the Kilburn people who had come to listen to the speech’.
In July 1935 the East Willesden branch opened an office at 295 Kilburn Lane W9, (near Queens Park Station), where the district officer was named as Stanley Taylor. This was still in operation in 1936.
At the beginning of 1936 the BUF adopted a Nazi-style uniform, replacing the simple black shirt with a black tunic, breeches, peaked cap and jackboots. In the same year Mosley, seeking closer alignment with the German Nazis, extended the name of the movement to the ‘British Union of Fascists and National Socialists’.
The boots caused an unforeseen problem in May 1936 when the BUF held a fund-raising Empire Day Ball at Hampstead Town Hall. They told their members; ‘We must cherish the floor. Uniformed Blackshirts should wear light footwear. Boots or bare feet will not be admitted’.
Open air meetings were held almost every day at multiple locations, from Regents Park to Parliament Hill Fields, Kilburn High Road (both sides) over to the Jubilee Clock in Harlesden. The Hampstead premises were conveniently close to Whitestone Pond, one of the BUF’s popular places to hold meetings. On 25 September 1935 the police estimated around 400 people attended a meeting at the Pond. There was constant heckling and disruption from a group apparently led by Frederick Williams, a labourer living in Great College Street in Camden Town. He was arrested and later appeared in court, where he was fined £1 by the Hampstead magistrate.
Following the notorious ‘Battle of Cable Street’ when the BUF attempted to march through Jewish areas in the East End of London on 4 October 1936, the Government introduced the 1936 Public Order Act which banned political uniforms and processions.
On 13 November 1936 the BUF held one of their regular meetings outside the Rifle Volunteer pub at the junction of Brondesbury Villas and Kilburn High Road. There were about 350 people present. Clifford Marsden Wyndham, 21, an instrument maker of 46 Buckley Road Kilburn was charged with obstructing Police Sergeant John Beattie, who was one of the police officers on duty. Beattie said that Wyndham was part of a group constantly shouting at the speaker and calling him ‘a black rat’. Beattie told Wyndham to leave. He argued and said ‘Is this British justice. If we were Fascists we could get protection’. When Wyndham tried to force his way back into the crowd, and Beattie thought there was going to be serious trouble he arrested him. The magistrates dismissed the case.
In November 1936 there was an amusing item in Reynolds Newspaper about a bailiff who kept watch on a wooden hall in Harlesden Gardens, Willesden. The local BUF had their headquarters there. (This was probably the Park Social Club at No.2). The bailiff was waiting for a Fascist to enter the building so he could serve notice to pay the £6 10s owing for rent. But by law he could not enter the building after dusk and meetings were held at 8.00pm. He decided he had to come back in the summer!
The Fascists held a rally at the Hampstead Town Hall on Haverstock Hill on 22 October 1936. Mosley stood in the centre of the platform flanked by two bodyguards, while young male and female Blackshirt stewards lined the walls of the hall. William Joyce talked about the ‘lying press’, Communists and the Jews who were all against the BUF, and the plans to ban the BUF uniform. He spoke for over two and a half hours and ended by saying, ‘I look forward to the day when Mosley is the Dictator of England’.
Described as scenes of wild disorder, fights broke out inside and outside the Town Hall, where a huge crowd had gathered. The Hampstead News said that after a man had been bundled out of the packed hall: ‘Men shouted and struck out with their fists and women screamed hysterically, while other women joined in the fighting. One young woman heckler who violently resisted the attempts of four women Blackshirt stewards to drag her outside, knocking one of them down, was finally ejected while still smoking her cigarette’. There were two hundred mounted and foot police on duty, and the crowd outside was estimated at a thousand people. Bernard Townroe, the Mayor of Hampstead had been warned there would be trouble, but he said he was powerless to stop the meeting as the Council had agreed to let the hall to the BUF in August. After the disturbances the BUF were never allowed to hire the hall again.
On 21 May 1937 the BUF held a procession in Harlesden along Tavistock Road and Manor Park Road to Park Parade. Eighty policemen were on duty and mounted police formed a cordon when Sir Oswald Mosley spoke to the large crowd of several thousand people. The meeting was rowdy and there was constant booing and catcalling when Mosley spoke. A Communist meeting was being held at the same time in nearby Wendover Road, and clashes occurred between party supporters. Four men were arrested, including Ernest Keller of 24 Dewsbury Road Dollis Park, who was the BUF district leader of West Willesden.
On 25 July 1937 a BUF meeting was held in The Grove by Whitestone Pond, Hampstead. The speaker, Reginald Alexander Dawson of Carlingford Road Hampstead, was arrested for wearing a political unform in contravention of the 1936 Act, in this case a black polo neck jersey with the Fascist badge. Dawson said he had previously spoken in Kilburn and Camden Town wearing the same clothing and had not been arrested. He was fined £5 with two guineas costs.
In August 1937 Ronald George Dorward aged 24, of no fixed abode, appeared in court. On 26 July he had been found in Camden Road, Camden Town hiding in a disused cupboard at the top of a house used by the local Fascists. Mrs I. T. Boud who found him, said he wanted to sleep there because he was broke. In court, Harold G Burrows, the district Fascist leader, said that Dorward had been caught with a loaded gun - which proved to be an imitation. He had been a member of the Shoreditch branch and was wearing a Fascist uniform to gain entrance to the building. Dorward said he was employed by the Communist Party and had been sent to Camden Road to find a letter which Mosley had written to all Fascist branches, giving details of planned marches. At the Old Bailey he was found not guilty and discharged.
On a rainy Friday evening 15 July 1938, Mosley addressed a large crown from the roof of his van parked in Brondesbury Villas Kilburn. He said National Socialism had done in one year as much as the Labour Party had done in forty. It was a nationwide movement organised throughout Britain, but it was subjected to every kind of misrepresentation and abuse. The booing drowned the faint claps of his supporters. Large numbers of police were on duty, but no arrests were reported.
The following year on 3 May 1939, Mosley spoke at a meeting of the non-political Edinburgh House Club, 17 Shoot Up Hill Kilburn, about not going to war. He said, ‘The Labour Party, Churchill, the Red Duchess (The Duchess of Atholl), BBC crooners, the Popular Front, and sometimes the Conservative Party, have the view that wherever there is a quarrel in the world Britain shall intervene, for they say that if we go to the aid of another country that is in trouble today, we will get their aid when we are in trouble’. Sir Oswald thought it would be a positive advantage to this country if Germany gained complete control over Eastern Europe. Because they would form a complete barrier against Communism.
On 10 May Mosley arrived at 8.30 to address a crowd of several hundred people in Netherwood Street, Kilburn. Mosley was escorted by a group of BUF Defence Force men from his car to the loud-speaker van where he climbed onto the roof platform. A large number of mounted and foot police were on duty. After ten minutes the police stopped him saying he would be summoned if he continued using the loudspeaker, which was against local regulations. Mosley protested his right to speak to the crowd before stopping the meeting and leaving by car.
Police disperse rival groups of BUF and Communists
About 20 of the Fascists went round the corner to a Communist meeting being held at the same time in Palmerston Road. They disrupted the gathering, pulled the Communist speaker to the floor and fighting broke out. PC Johns thought the speaker, Clifford Marsden Wyndham of 7 Randolph Gardens Kilburn, was in danger and moved to help him up. But the crowd thought he was trying to arrest Wyndham. PC Johns was hit violently in the back. He saw Frederic Wolmark 25, a sign writer of Broadhurst Gardens West Hampstead, standing behind him and heard Helen Rose 26, a bookkeeper of Greencroft Gardens, shouting, ‘Come on boys, don’t let him take him’. Wolmark rushed towards the constable saying, ‘Let him go’ and hit him in the chest and face with his fist. The PC drew his truncheon and hit Wolmark on the forehead and arrested him.
A total of five people were arrested for insulting behaviour and obstructing the police. Wolmark was fined 40s for assault. He had previously been fined £3 for obstructing the police at the Hampstead Town Hall meeting. Jack Stanley Smith 21, an electrical engineer of 48 Samuel Lewis Flats, Hackney, was one of the Fascists who had disrupted the meeting. He was seen hitting people in the crowd and the police found a knuckleduster concealed in his sock. Smith was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment. The speaker at the meeting, Clifford Wyndham, had previously been arrested for disrupting a BUF meeting in November 1936.
Once the war had started the Government took a firmer grip on the BUF. On 23 May 1940 Mosley and 32 leading members of the BUF were arrested under Defence Regulation 18b as posing a wartime security risk. By July a total of 753 BUF members had been interned. A recent estimate indicates that about a thousand members were arrested, many being held on the Isle of Man. After being imprisoned in Brixton, Mosley was later interned in shared accommodation in Holloway Prison with Lady Diana. They were released in November 1943 by Herbert Morrison, the Home Secretary, because of Mosley’s poor health. The couple remained under restrictions at their 11,000-acre Crowood Farm in Wiltshire until the end of the War.
In a future story we will look at events post-War, particularly at the activities of the anti-fascist 43 Group which was formed in West Hampstead.
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