The death in Paris of Lady Diana Mosley the wife of the leader of the British Union of Fascists and supporter of the European Union, helps to illuminate the true nature of European politics not just in the 1930s and 1940s but in the modern age.
Lady Diana Mosley was a committed fascist, not a nationalist. Like all fascists she condemned the nation state, regardless of its form of government. Like her fellow Parisian Francois Mitterand (a hero of the fascist Vichy regime during the second world war), she believed in “Europe” and condemned the continued existence of her native Britain. Then as now she “would like to see the German system of Government in England because it had achieved so much in Germany”. Like the European Union, Mosley thought 10% unemployment and economic stagnation were a small price to pay for political hegemony!
Captivated by the Nazis, married to the leader of the British Union of Fascists which she helped to finance, a friend of Hitler, a committed fascist, someone who married in Goebbels house with Hitler as a guest, she was overjoyed at the destruction of Czechoslovakia (not just under the Nazis but today!). She was described by the British Intelligence Services before the Second World War as a “public danger” and remained of course a committed supporter of the European Union!
This unrepentant Fascist was of course lauded by the BBC, that other great appeaser of 1930s fascism and supporter of the European Union – and its destruction of 15 (soon to be 25) democratic nations. Indeed so much was Lady Mosley regarded by the BBC as “good copy” that (unlike Conservatives and Socialists who seek to preserve the democratic nation) Lady Mosley, who sought to destroy it, was granted repeated interviews. The latest was a year before she died. She was also regarded so highly by the BBC that she featured in the high profile Desert Island Discs in which guests select records to accompany a detailed discussion of their lives.
The BBC, like the European Union, plays the regional/ethnic/nationalism game, condemning the non ethnic nation states like the UK and Yugoslavia but promoting the extremism of ethnic nationalism in Wales and Scotland (see Cornish Movement joins Welsh Nationalists in Nazi based group 30/4/2003 on this website). The Mosleys did the same because that was and is today the method recognised by European fascists to destroy democratic nation states.
To understand the essential differences between fascism and nationalism Lady Diana Mosley is a good starting point, as are those like Hitler, Napoleon and Mitterand whom she admired. She condemned Le Pen who fought in the Resistance for France and yet lauded Hitler who fought for a fascist Europe! In her home in Paris she was particularly proud of furniture from the Napoleonic age.
Like several aristocratic families and like so many more politicians of all parties during the 1930s Lady Mosley was “charmed” by fascism. Like Lloyd George she admired Hitler. Like the Liberal Lord Lothian or the socialist Arnold Toynbee she would certainly have joined a Nazi based Government of Britain. Like Labour’s Lord Allen of Hurtwood she would have argued for more African colonies for the German Reich and like the Conservative Sir Samuel Hoare she would have tried to get rid of Churchill in order to prevent war.
Her husband Sir Oswald Mosley founded a fascist newspaper called The European and Lady Diana Mosley’s total support of the European Union up to her death demonstrates the true nature of that organisation and shows the grave crisis into which spineless “leaders” of the Tory, Liberal and Labour Parties have led the British people.
