Monument to Mosley (review of Oswald Mosley, by Robert Skidelsky)

Of all the might-have-beens of contemporary British history, the auto-abortion of the political career of Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists, is unquestionably the most singular if not exactly the most heart-rending.

In a remarkably indulgent and relentlessly detailed biography, Robert Skidelsky, a young British historian, attempts to establish Mosley as the classic tragic hero. But for one fatal flaw, Skidelsky seems to be arguing, Mosley might have led Britain out of the economic and social rubble of World War I. His vision was of a sunny upland of political neutrality where a new society that, in Mosley’s words, “went beyond both fascism and democracy,” could be constructed. The weakness in Skidelsky’s conception of Mosley as a tragic hero is that he is never able to identify precisely what the single flaw may be, unless one is to believe that it is Mosley’s character as a whole. And the more “evidence” he adduces for the lost-leader theory, the less plausible the whole proposition becomes.

RB

About the Author

Rene Kuhn Bryant

Of all the might-have-beens of contemporary British history, the auto-abortion of the political career of Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, founder of the British Union of Fascists, is unquestionably the most singular if not exactly the most heart-rending.

In a remarkably indulgent and relentlessly detailed biography, Robert Skidelsky, a young British historian, attempts to establish Mosley as the classic tragic hero. But for one fatal flaw, Skidelsky seems to be arguing, Mosley might have led Britain out of the economic and social rubble of World War I. His vision was of a sunny upland of political neutrality where a new society that, in Mosley’s words, “went beyond both fascism and democracy,” could be constructed. The weakness in Skidelsky’s conception of Mosley as a tragic hero is that he is never able to identify precisely what the single flaw may be, unless one is to believe that it is Mosley’s character as a whole. And the more “evidence” he adduces for the lost-leader theory, the less plausible the whole proposition becomes.