NETFLIX UK DARK TOURIST ATTRACTION. THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION, LITTLEDEAN JAIL, FOREST OF DEAN, GLOUCESTERSHIRE : PEAKY BLINDERS FEATURED HERE AT THE JAIL . A GANGSTER INSPIRED FAMILY DRAMA TV SERIES ORIGINALLY SET IN 1919 & BEYOND IN BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND. IT IS CENTRED ON A VIOLENT CRIMINAL GANG WHO SEW RAZOR BLADES INTO THE PEAKS OF THEIR CAPS….

HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION, LITTLEDEAN JAIL WE FEATURE A VERY BRIEF, THOUGH INTRIGUING, INSIGHT INTO THE BACKGROUND OF THE REAL PEAKY BLINDERS ALONG WITH A BRIEF  EXHIBITION FEATURING   THE NOW ICONIC WORLDWIDE PHENOMENAL TV SERIES . 

WE HAVE A BIT OF PEAKY BLINDERS MEMORABILIA AND PERSONALLY HAND SIGNED PHOTOGRAPHS, ALONG WITH WEAPONS AND OTHER ASSOCIATED TOOLS OF THE TRADE HERE ON DISPLAY.

THIS  HAS NOW BEEN INTRODUCED AS A BIT OF A FURTHER VISUAL FEATURE , MIXED IN AND AMONGST OUR TRUE CRIME , GANGLAND AND MAFIA DISPLAYS…. BEING EN ROUTE THROUGH TO OUR KRAY TWINS EXHIBITION.

ANDY JONES OF THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION WITH AN ORIGINAL MACHINE GUN HERE ON DISPLAY AT THE JAIL ,AS WAS USED IN THE VIOLENT SHOOTOUT BETWEEN TOMMY SHELBY AND LUCA CHANGRETTA IN THE PEAKY BLINDERS SERIES 4

Britain is a mixture of despair and hedonism in 1919 in the aftermath of the Great War. Returning soldiers, newly minted revolutions and criminal gangs are fighting for survival in a nation rocked by economic upheaval. One of the most powerful gangs of the time is the Peaky Blinders, run by returning war hero Thomas Shelby and his family. But Thomas has bigger ambitions than just running the streets. When a crate of guns goes missing, he recognizes an opportunity to advance in the world because crime may pay but legitimate business pays better. Trying to rid Britain of its crime is Inspector Chester Campbell, who arrives from Belfast to try to achieve that goal.

ABOVE: TOMMY SHELBY USING HIS MUCH FAVOURED PERSONAL WEBLEY 455 MK VI REVOLVER IN PEAKY BLINDERS .

BELOW: AN ORIGINAL WEBLEY 455 MK VI REVOLVER AS USED IN  PEAKY BLINDERS, HERE ON DISPLAY AT THE JAIL ….

BELOW:  An original Mauser C96 Broomhandle pistol. This being carried and used by Cillian Murphy starring as Thomas Selby (see below) and also Billy Kimber’s bodyguards in the Peaky Blinders TV Series….

BELOW :  Thomas Selby with  a Mauser C96 Broomhandle pistol carried and used in the TV series Peaky Blinders ….

BELOW: Original Luger pistol as featured in the Peaky Blinders TV Series …

BELOW: AN ORIGINAL BRASS AND CAST STEEL BLADE KNUCKLE DUSTER AS USED BY THE ORIGINAL PEAKY BLINDERS AND BILLY KIMBER’S BIRMINGHAM BOYS GANG .

BELOW:  Original ” no holds barred ” WW1 US 1918 stamped knuckle duster ” trench knife ” issued to the British troops during the brutally violent WW1. These  would also more than likely have been  carried and used by the original Peaky Blinders, Charles Sabini, Billy Kimber and other violent street gangs at the time as a much favoured and tool .

Most likely these weapons are still used today throughout the world as a violent weapon by debt collectors, street gangs and others ????

ABOVE: Peaky Blinders have arrived here at The Crime Through Time Collection and now form an integral feature in and amongst our True Crime , Murderabilia, Gangland and Mafia exhibition areas here at Littledean Jail, Forest of Dean , Gloucestershire, UK. 

ABOVE AND BELOW : Here’s a brief look at some of the many original hand signed memorabilia photographs of the leading cast members to include Cillian Murphy starring as Thomas Shelby and other Shelby family members, Tom Hardy starring as Alfie Solomons along with all other main characters (both  Ladies and Gentlemen… )

BELOW: Signed and inscribed photograph  “By order of the Peaky Blinders ” by Paul Anderson, in the lead role of Arthur Shelby . 

This is one of a great many personally signed photos of the various cast members of the hit television series “Peaky Blinders” here on display at the jail 

ABOVE: AUTHENTIC SIGNED PROMOTIONAL PIECE BY CHARLOTTE RILEY IN THE ROLE OF MAY CARLETON ( MARRIED TO TOM HARDY IN REAL LIFE ) HERE ON DISPLAY .

ABOVE: An original oil painting here on display at the jail, depicting Cillian Murphy as Thomas Shelby from the TV series Peaky Blinders . Painted by Gloucestershire artist Paul Bridgman .

ABOVE: An original oil painting here on display at the jail, depicting some of the infamous  Shelby family featured in the TV series Peaky Blinders . Painted by Gloucestershire artist Paul Bridgman .

ABOVE AND BELOW: Just a brief insight into some of the exhibit items here on display

BELOW :  Original oil painting of Peaky Blinders Jeremiah Jesus portrayed by Benjamin Zephaniah here on display .

ABOVE AND BELOW : Benjamin Zephaniah in the role as Jeremiah Jesus in the hit TV Series Peaky Blinders .

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NETFLIX UK DARK TOURIST ATTRACTION. LITTLEDEAN JAIL, FOREST OF DEAN , GLOUCESTERSHIRE . FASCISM IN BRITAIN DURING THE 1930’S-THROUGH TO THE 1960’S WITH SIR OSWALD MOSLEY’S BLACKSHIRTS BUF MOVEMENT & UNION MOVEMENT. FEATURED HERE ON DISPLAY IN & AMONGST THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION.

DARK TOURIST VISITOR ATTRACTION LIKE NO OTHER. 

A HOPEFULLY HISTORICALLY AND EDUCATIONAL INSIGHT INTO FASCISM HERE IN THE UK, ON DISPLAY HERE AT THE JAIL .

British Fascist and Leader of the BUF Movement ( British Union of Fascist Movement ) , Oswald Mosley in his prime during the 1930’s

Below: Original oil painting of Oswald Mosley by Gloucestershire artist Paul Bridgman on display at The Crime Through Time Collection, Littledean jail , UK .

PLEASE DO BE AWARE THAT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION HERE AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL HAS NO AFFILIATION , CONNECTION OR INVOLVEMENT WITH ANY EXTREMIST , POLITICALLY MOTIVATED OR OTHERWISE MOVEMENTS WHATSOEVER …… WE SIMPLY EXHIBIT AND TOUCH UPON A GREAT MANY POLITICALLY INCORRECT AND TABOO SUBJECT MATTERS THAT NO OTHER VISITOR ATTRACTIONS DARE COVER IN THE WAY WE CHOOSE TO DO HERE. …. “IT’S ALL HISTORY FOR GOODNESS SAKE”

POLITICALLY INCORRECT IT MAY BE… SO WHAT…… IT HAPPENED HERE IN BRITAIN

BELOW: A BRIEF INSIGHT INTO A FEW OF OUR RARE PRIVATE COLLECTION OF BRITISH FASCIST MOVEMENT MEMORABILIA, HERE ON DISPLAY AT THE JAIL

BELOW IS A VERY BRIEF PICTORIAL SLIDESHOW INSIGHT INTO JUST A FEW OF THE EXHIBIT ITEMS HERE ON DISPLAY IN OUR FASCISM IN BRITAIN EXHIBITION.TOUCHING UPON A TABOO SUBJECT MATTER THAT OUR UK GOVERNMENTS HAVE LONG SINCE WISHED TO BRUSH UNDER THE CARPETS AS NOT BEING WORTH REFLECTING UPON IN OUR BRITISH HISTORY SCHOOL AND COLLEGE CURRICULUM’S 

Above and below: Rare images of Oswald Mosley’s BUF Movement parading with the original  BUF Standards/Banners…. one of which is here on display  at Littledean Jail in and amongst the Fascism in Britain Exhibition .

Below: A rare original Oswald Mosley British Union Standard/Rally Banner being one of the so say 60 number of them that were carried and used by the movement during the 1930’s, along with other BUF related memorabilia

Above and below: Oswald Mosley seen at various British Union rallies during the 1930’s …

SURELY IT IS A PART OF HISTORY THAT WE SHOULD ALL REFLECT UPON IN EDUCATIONAL TERMS AS TO OUR PAST CONFLICTS ?

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PLEASE DO TAKE THE TIME IF INTERESTED IN OUR FASCISM IN  BRITAIN  HISTORY DURING THE 1930’S-1940’S  TO LOOK AT THE INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARY FOOTAGE BELOW 

Above : An exceptionally rare Arnold Leese (1878-1956) “Imperial Fascist League” banner which controversially depicted the Nazi Swastika emblem within the centre of the Untider Kingdom’s Union Jack  Flag.

Oswald Mosley
Sir Oswald Mosley, Bt.
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
In office 7 June 1929 – 19 May 1930
Prime Minister	Ramsay MacDonald
Preceded by	Ronald John McNeill
Succeeded by	Clement Attlee
Member of Parliament for Harrow
In office 1918 – 1924
Preceded by	Harry Mallaby-Deeley
Succeeded by	Sir Isidore Salmon
Member of Parliament for Smethwick
In office 1926 – 1931
Preceded by	John Davison
Succeeded by	Roy Wise
Personal details
Born	Oswald Ernald Mosley 16 November 1896 Burton upon Trent, England
Died	3 December 1980 (aged 84) Orsay, France
Nationality	British
Political party	Conservative (1918–1922) Independent (1922–1924) Labour / I.L.P (1924–1931) New Party (1931–1932) British Union (1932–1940) Union Movement (1948–1973) National Party of Europe(1962–1980)
Spouse(s)	Lady Cynthia Mosley (1920–1933) Diana Mitford (1936–1980)
Children	Vivien Mosley (deceased) Nicholas Mosley Michael Mosley (Oswald) Alexander Mosley Max Mosley
Alma mater	• Winchester • Sandhurst
Military service
Allegiance	British Empire
Service/branch	British Army • 16th The Queen’s Lancers • Royal Flying Corps
Years of service	1914–1918
Rank	Lieutenant
Battles/wars	World War I • Second Battle of Ypres • Battle of Loos
Awards	Victory Medal  British War Medal  1914–15 Star

Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet, of Ancoats, (16 November 1896 – 3 December 1980) was an English politician, known principally as the founder of the British Union of Fascists. He was a Member of Parliament for Harrow from 1918 to 1924 and for Smethwick from 1926 to 1931, as well as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Labour Government of 1929–1931.

[edit]Family and early life[edit]Biography

Mosley was the eldest of three sons of Sir Oswald Mosley, 5th Baronet, of Ancoats (29 December 1873 – 21 September 1928), and wife Katharine Maud Edwards-Heathcote (1874–1950), the second child of Captain Justinian Edwards-Heathcote of Market Drayton, Shropshire. Mosley’s family were Anglo-Irish. His branch were prosperous landowners in Staffordshire. Through the intermarriage common among the British upper classes, the 5th Baronet was the third cousin of the Earl of Strathmore, which would eventually make Oswald Mosley, the 6th baronet, fourth cousin to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother, who was the Earl of Strathmore’s daughter, and fourth cousin once removed to Queen Elizabeth II.

Mosley was born at Rolleston Hall, near Burton-on-Trent on November 16, 1896. When his parents separated he was brought up by his mother, who initially went to live at Betton Hall near Market Drayton, and his paternal grandfather, Sir Oswald Mosley, 4th Baronet. Within the family and among intimate friends, he was always called “Tom”. He lived for many years at Apedale Hall near Newcastle-under-Lyme.

[edit]Military service

He was educated at West Downs School and Winchester College. In January 1914 he entered the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst but was expelled in June for a “riotous act of retaliation” against a fellow student.^[1] During World War I he was commissioned in the 16th The Queen’s Lancers and fought on the Western Front. He transferred to the Royal Flying Corps as an observer but while demonstrating in front of his mother and sister he crashed, which left him with a permanent limp. He returned to the trenches before the injury was fully healed and, at the Battle of Loos, he passed out at his post from the pain. He spent the remainder of the war at desk jobs in the Ministry of Munitions and in the Foreign Office.^[1]

[edit]Personal life

Oswald Mosley and Lady Cynthia Curzon on their wedding day, 11 May 1920

On 11 May 1920 he married Lady Cynthia Curzon (known as ‘Cimmie’), (1898 – 1933), second daughter ofGeorge Curzon, Lord Curzon of Kedleston, (1859 – 1925), Viceroy of India, 1899 – 1905, Foreign Secretary, 1919 – 1924, and Lord Curzon’s first wife, the American mercantile heiress, the former Mary Victoria Leiter.

Lord Curzon had to be persuaded that Mosley was a suitable husband, as he suspected Mosley was largely motivated by social advancement in Conservative Party politics and her inheritance. The 1920 wedding took place in the Chapel Royal in St James’s Palace in London. It was the social event of the year. The hundreds of guests included European royalty, including King George V and Queen Mary; and Leopold III and Astrid of Sweden, King and Queen of Belgium.^[2]

He had three children by Cynthia: Vivien Elizabeth Mosley (25 February 1921 – 26 August 2002), who married on 15 January 1949 Desmond Francis Forbes Adam (27 January 1926 – 3 January 1958), educated at Eton College,Eton, Berkshire, and at King’s College, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, by whom she had two daughters and one son; Nicholas Mosley, 3rd Baron Ravensdale (born 25 June 1923), a successful novelist who wrote a biography of his father and edited his memoirs for publication; and Michael Mosley (born 25 April 1932), unmarried and without issue.

During this marriage he had an extended affair with his wife’s younger sister Lady Alexandra Metcalfe, and with their stepmother, Grace Curzon, Marchioness Curzon of Kedleston, the American-born, also, second wife and widow of Lord Curzon of Kedleston.

Cynthia died of peritonitis in 1933, after which Mosley married his mistress Diana Guinness, née Diana Mitford(1910 – 2003, one of the Mitford sisters). They married in secret in Germany on 6 October 1936, in the Berlin home of Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels. Adolf Hitler was one of the guests.

By Diana Mitford, he had two sons: Oswald Alexander Mosley (born 26 November 1938), married on 10 May 1975 to Charlotte Diana Marten (born 1952) and father of Louis Mosley (born 1983); and Max Rufus Mosley (born 13 April 1940), who was president of theFédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) for 16 years.

Part of a series on
Fascism

Mosley spent large amounts of his private fortune on the British Union of Fascists (BUF) and tried to establish it on a firm financial footing by negotiating, through Diana, with Adolf Hitler for permission to broadcast commercial radio to Britain from Germany.

Mosley also reportedly struck a deal in 1937 with Francis William Lionel Collings Beaumont, the heir to the Seigneur of Sark, to set up a privately owned radio station on Sark.^[3][4]

[edit]Elected Member of Parliament

By the end of World War I Mosley decided to go into politics as a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), although he was only 21 years old and had not fully developed his politics. He was driven by a passionate conviction to avoid any future war and this motivated his career. Largely because of his family background, he was considered by several constituencies; a vacancy near the family estates seemed to be the best prospect.

Unexpectedly, he was selected for Harrow first. In the general election of 1918 he faced no serious opposition and was elected easily. He was the youngest member of the House of Commons to take his seat (Joseph Sweeney, an abstentionist Sinn Féin MP was younger). He soon distinguished himself as an orator and political player, one marked by extreme self-confidence. He made a point of speaking in the House of Commons without notes.^{[citation needed]}

[edit]Crossing the floor

Mosley was at this time falling out with the Conservatives over Irish policy, objecting to the use of the Black and Tans to suppress the Irish population. Eventually he ‘crossed the floor‘ and sat as an Independent MP on the opposition side of the House of Commons. Having built up a following in his constituency, he retained it against a Conservative challenge in the 1922 and 1923 general elections.

The liberal Westminster Gazette wrote that he was “the most polished literary speaker in the Commons, words flow from him in graceful epigrammatic phrases that have a sting in them for the government and the conservatives. To listen to him is an education in the English language, also in the art of delicate but deadly repartee. He has human sympathies, courage and brains.”^[5] By 1924 he was growing increasingly attracted to the Labour Party, which had just formed a government, and in March he joined. He immediately joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP) as well and allied himself with the left.

When the government fell in October, Mosley had to choose a new seat as he believed that Harrow would not re-elect him as a Labour candidate. He therefore decided to oppose Neville Chamberlain in Birmingham Ladywood. An energetic campaign led to a knife-edge result but Mosley was defeated by 77 votes. His period outside Parliament was used to develop a new economic policy for the ILP, which eventually became known as the Birmingham Proposals; they continued to form the basis of Mosley’s economics until the end of his political career.

In 1926, the Labour-held seat of Smethwick fell vacant and Mosley returned to Parliament after winning the resulting by-election on 21 December. Mosley felt the campaign was dominated by Conservative attacks on him for being too rich and claims he was covering up his wealth.^[6]

Mosley and his wife Cynthia were ardent Fabians in the 1920s and 1930s. Mosley appears in a list of names of Fabians from Fabian News and Fabian Society Annual Report 1929–31. He wasKingsway Hall lecturer in 1924 and Livingstone Hall lecturer in 1931.

[edit]Office

Mosley then made a bold bid for political advancement within the Labour Party. He was close to Ramsay MacDonald and hoped for one of the great offices of state, but when Labour won the 1929 general election he was appointed only to the post of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, de facto Minister without Portfolio, outside the Cabinet. He was given responsibility for solving the unemployment problem, but found that his radical proposals were blocked either by his superior James Henry Thomas or by the Cabinet.^{[citation needed]}

Mosley was always impatient and eventually put forward a whole scheme in the ‘Mosley Memorandum’ to find it rejected by the Cabinet; he then resigned in May 1930. At the time, the weekly liberal paper The Nation described his move: “The resignation of Sir Oswald Mosley is an event of capital importance in domestic politics… We feel that Sir Oswald has acted rightly—as he has certainly acted courageously—in declining to share any longer in the responsibility for inertia.”^[5] He attempted to persuade the Labour Party Conference in October, but was defeated again.

The memorandum called for high tariffs to protect British industries from international finance, for state nationalisation of industry and a programme of public works to solve unemployment. Thirty years later, in 1961, R. H. S. Crossman described the memorandum: “… this brilliant memorandum was a whole generation ahead of Labour thinking.”^[5]

[edit]New Party

Determined that the Labour Party was no longer suitable, Mosley quickly founded the New Party. Its early parliamentary contests, in the 1931 Ashton-under-Lyne by-election and subsequent by-elections, were successful only in splitting the vote and allowing the Conservative candidate to win. Despite this, the organisation gained support among many Labour and Conservative MPs, who agreed with his corporatist economic policy—among those who agreed were Aneurin Bevan and Harold Macmillan. It also gained the endorsement of the Daily Mail newspaper, headed at the time byAlfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe.^{[citation needed]}

The New Party increasingly inclined to fascist policies, but Mosley was denied the opportunity to get his party established when the 1931 election was suddenly called. All its candidates, including Mosley, lost their seats. As the New Party gradually became more radical and authoritarian, many previous supporters defected from it. Shortly after the election, he was described by the Manchester Guardian:

When Sir Oswald Mosley sat down after his Free Trade Hall speech in Manchester and the audience, stirred as an audience rarely is, rose and swept a storm of applause towards the platform—who could doubt that here was one of those root-and-branch men who have been thrown up from time to time in the religious, political and business story of England. First that gripping audience is arrested, then stirred and finally, as we have said, swept off its feet by a tornado of peroration yelled at the defiant high pitch of a tremendous voice.^[5]

Flag of the British Union of Fascists

[edit]Fascism

After his failure in 1931 Mosley went on a study tour of the ‘new movements’ of Italy’s Benito Mussolini and other fascists, and returned convinced that it was the way forward for him and for Britain. He determined to unite the existing fascist movements and created the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in 1932. The BUF was anti-communist and protectionist. It claimed membership as high as 50,000, and had the Daily Mail^[7] and Daily Mirror^[8] among its earliest (if, in the case of theMail, short-lived) supporters.^[9]

Among his followers were the novelist Henry Williamson, military theorist J. F. C. Fuller and the future “Lord Haw Haw“, William Joyce.

Mosley had found problems with disruption of New Party meetings, and instituted a corps of black-uniformed paramilitary stewards, nicknamed blackshirts. The party was frequently involved in violent confrontations, particularly with Communist and Jewish groups and especially in London.^[10] At a large Mosley rally at Olympia on 7 June 1934 mass brawling broke out when hecklers were removed by blackshirts, resulting in bad publicity. This and the Night of the Long Knives in Germany led to the loss of most of the BUF’s mass support. The party was unable to fight the 1935 general election.

Plaque commemorating the Battle of Cable Street

In October 1936 Mosley and the BUF attempted to march through an area with a high proportion of Jewish residents, and violence resulted between local and nationally organised protesters trying to block the march and police trying to force it through, since called the Battle of Cable Street. At length Sir Philip Gamethe Police Commissioner disallowed the march from going ahead and the BUF abandoned it.

Mosley continued to organise marches policed by the blackshirts, and the government was sufficiently concerned to pass the Public Order Act 1936, which, amongst other things, banned political uniforms and quasi-military style organisations and came into effect on 1 January 1937.

In the London County Council elections in 1937 the BUF stood in three of its East London strongholds, polling up to a quarter of the vote. Mosley then made most of the employees redundant, some of whom then defected from the party with William Joyce. As the European situation moved towards war, the BUF began nominating Parliamentary candidates and launched campaigns on the theme of Mind Britain’s Business. After the outbreak of war he led the campaign for a negotiated peace. He was at first received well but, after the invasion of Norway, public opinion of him gave way to hostility and Mosley was nearly assaulted. ^[11]

[edit]Internment

On 23 May 1940 Mosley, who had continued his peace campaign, was interned under Defence Regulation 18B, along with most active fascists in Britain, and the BUF was later proscribed. His wife Diana Mitford was also interned,^[12] shortly after the birth of their son Max; they lived together for most of the war in a house in the grounds of Holloway prison.

Mosley used the time to read extensively on classical civilisations. Mosley refused visits from most BUF members, but on 18 March 1943 Dudley and Norah Elam (who had been released by then) accompanied Unity Mitford to see her sister Diana. Mosley agreed to be present because he mistakenly believed Diana and Unity’s mother Lady Redesdale was accompanying Unity.^[13]

The Mosleys were released in November 1943, when Mosley was suffering with phlebitis, and spent the rest of the war under house arrest. On his release from prison he stayed with his sister-in-lawPamela Mitford, followed shortly by a stay at the Shaven Crown Hotel in Shipton-under-Wychwood. He then purchased Crux Easton, near Newbury, with Diana. He and his wife were the subject of much media attention.^[14] The war ended what remained of his political reputation.

[edit]Post-war politics

After the war Mosley was contacted by his former supporters and persuaded to rejoin active politics. He formed the Union Movement, calling for a single nation-state covering the continent of Europe (known as Europe a Nation), and later attempted to launch a National Party of Europe to this end. The Union Movement’s meetings were often physically disrupted, as Mosley’s meetings had been before the war, and largely by the same opponents.

This led to Mosley’s decision, in 1951, to leave Britain and live in Ireland. He later moved to Paris. Of his decision to leave, he said, “You don’t clear up a dungheap from underneath it.”^{[citation needed]}

Mosley briefly returned to Britain in order to fight the 1959 general election at Kensington North, shortly after the 1958 Notting Hill race riots. Concerns over immigration were beginning to come into the spotlight for the first time and Mosley led his campaign on this issue. When Mosley’s final share of the vote was less than he expected, he launched a legal challenge to the election on the basis that the result had been rigged. The result was upheld.

In 1961 he took part in a debate at University College London about Commonwealth immigration, seconded by a young David Irving.^[15] He contested the 1966 general election at Shoreditch and Finsbury, where he fared even worse than he had in 1959. He wrote his autobiography, My Life (1968), and made a number of television appearances before retiring. In 1977, by which time he was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he was nominated for the post of Rector of the University of Glasgow. In the subsequent election he polled over 100 votes but finished bottom of the poll.

[edit]Death

Mosley died of natural causes on 3 December 1980 in his Orsay home, aged 84. He was cremated in Paris and his ashes were scattered on the pond at Orsay. His papers are housed at the University of Birmingham Special Collections.

[edit]In popular culture

This “In popular culture” section may contain minor or trivial references. Please reorganize this content to explain the subject’s impact on popular culture rather than simply listing appearances, and remove trivial references. (October 2011)

Mosley’s rising influence before the Second World War provoked alarm and reaction against would-be populist dictators by major cultural figures of the time:

• Aldous Huxley‘s Point Counter Point features Everard Webley, a character modelled on Mosley.

• A character in the novel The Holy Terror (1939) by H. G. Wells is a bombastic British fascist with an aristocratic background, strikingly similar to Mosley.

• “Sir Roderick Spode” in P.G. Wodehouse‘s novels parodies Mosley. Spode, a blustering bully who is described as an “amateur dictator”, heads a British fascist “Black Shorts” organization.

Mosley’s attempts to promote his views after the war resulted in continued critical reaction:

• In 2006 he was selected by the BBC History Magazine as the 20th century’s worst Briton.^[16]

• In 1997 Channel Four Television produced a mini-series about him called Mosley, starring Jonathan Cake.

• In the 1986 film version of Colin MacInnes‘s book Absolute Beginners, Steven Berkoff appears as a Mosley-esque character billed as “The Fanatic”, who delivers a (rhyming) hate speech at a fascist election rally; it is generally assumed this is meant to be Mosley during his brief resurgence in 1958.

• The indulgent tone of Mosley’s newspaper obituaries was lampooned by the satirical television programme Not The Nine O’Clock News in the song “Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley” by Peter Brewis, which featured Mel Smith, Pamela Stephenson and Griff Rhys Jones all dressed as Nazi Skinheads, singing his eulogy and reading some of the more positive remarks of newspapers from all sides of the political spectrum, including The Times and The Guardian.^[17]

• A semi-fictionalized depiction of Mosley, the BUF, and Battle of Cable Street appears in the 2010 BBC Wales revival of Upstairs, Downstairs, which is set in 1936.

• The original version of the Elvis Costello song “Less Than Zero” is an attack on Mosley and his politics, but US listeners assumed that the “Mr Oswald” referred to was Lee Harvey Oswald and Costello obligingly wrote an alternative lyric in which it was.^[18]:74,84

• In Kazuo Ishiguro‘s The Remains of the Day and James Ivory‘s film adaptation Mosley is portrayed as the fictional “Sir Geoffrey Wren”.

• In the popular BBC science fiction sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart, 1990s time traveller Gary Sparrow attempts to educate 1940s East End barmaid Phoebe Bamford on the subject of racism, only to have Phoebe rebut him by saying: “You can be a right twit sometimes Gary. Me and dad were down Cable Street in ’36 standing up to Mosley and his Blackshirts. I know all about Fascists, thank you very much!” (Series 3, Episode 25, “The Yanks are Coming“).

• Mosley and the black shirts are referenced in the song “The Ghosts of Cable Street” by folk punk band The Men They Couldn’t Hang.

Mosley appears in alternative history stories:

• In Harry Turtledove‘s Southern Victory Series of alternative history novels, Mosley and Winston Churchill lead a fascist Britain after the Allies lose the First World War. Mosley is also referred to in Turtledove’s Colonization trilogy, where MP Mosley introduces legislation to revoke the citizenship of the country’s Jews; and in Turtledove’s novel, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, where he was given control of Britain after the Nazis won World War II.

• In the film It Happened Here, Mosley is implied to be the puppet leader of German-occupied Britain.

• In Guy Walters‘s alternative history novel The Leader, Mosley has taken power as “The Leader” of Great Britain in 1937. King Edward VIII is still on the throne, Winston Churchill is a prisoner on theIsle of Man, and Prime Minister Mosley is conspiring with Adolf Hitler about the fate of Britain’s Jewish population.

• In Philip Roth‘s alternative history novel The Plot Against America, a secret pact between President Charles Lindbergh and Hitler is said to include an agreement to impose Mosley as the ruler of a German-occupied Britain with America’s blessing after a sham attempt by Lindbergh to convince Churchill to negotiate peace with Hitler would fail.

• In Kim Newman‘s alternative history novel The Bloody Red Baron, Mosley is shot down and killed in 1918 by Erich von Stalhein (from the Biggles series by W. E. Johns), with a character later commenting that “a career has been ended before it was begun.”

• Mosley becomes Leader of Britain after the alien invasion is defeated in Superman: War of the Worlds.