Socialist Standard June, 2006 Vol No.102: No.1222 website www.worldsocialism.org/spgb
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British Fascism’s New Look 1932
saw the birth of the “British Union of Fascists,” with their
black shirts and uniforms, armoured cars, their provocative marches
through the East End of London, and their Mass rallies. To-day, over
20 years later, the movement is still with us. They still hold
out-door meetings, and recently Sir Oswald Mosley, held a number of
indoor meetings in Birmingham, Kensington, Brixton, and elsewhere.
True, it does not have the membership it had in the ‘thirties. No
longer are members allowed to wear uniforms. Since
the war, when over 800 of its members spent a number of years in
prison, the movement has been re-organised and renamed. The B.U.F. is
now “Union Movement.” The word “Fascism” has – for
the time being? – been
dropped; no doubt because of its unpopularity. But the British
Fascists continue to call themselves “Blackshirt.” At the London
County Council Elections 1955, their candidates in Shoreditch and
Finsbury urged electors to “Vote Blackshirt.” And “Wake ’Em
Up at County Hall.” “Union
Movement” retains its pre-war “Flash” sign on its literature,
banners, flags and badges. To-day
we no longer see “British for the British,” or “Britain First,”
chalked or whitewashed on walls; although such slogans as “Slump or
Mosley,” or the letter “K.B.W.” (Keep Britain White) can
sometimes be seen in Kensington, Hackney, Brixton, and elsewhere. “National Socialism,” the phrase under which the German Nazis operated, has given way to Mosley’s latest: European Socialism”—yet another contradiction! British Fascism wears a New Look!
(From an article by “PEN”, Socialist Standard, June 1956) |
The
Mosley Movement TodayOur
Object and Declaration of Principles (click
on link for explanation with each one)
This declaration is the basis of our organisation and, because it is also an important historical document dating from the formation of the party in 1904, its original language has been retained.
Object
The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.
The Socialist Party of Great Britain holds
1. That society as at present constituted is
based upon the ownership of the means of living (i.e., land, factories,
railways, etc.) by the capitalist or master class,and the consequent
enslavement
of the working class,
by whose labour alone wealth is produced.
2. That in society, therefore, there is an antagonism of
interests, manifesting itself as a class struggle between those who
possess but do not produce and those who produce but do not possess.
3. That this antagonism can be abolished only by the emancipation
of the working class from the domination of the master class, by the
conversion into the common property of society of the means of
production and distribution, and their democratic control by the whole
people.
4. That as in the order of social evolution the
working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the
emancipation of the workingclass will involve the
emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex.
5.That this emancipation must
be the
work of the working class itself.
6. That as the machinery of government, including the armed
forces of the nation,
exists only to conserve the monopoly by the
capitalist class
of the wealth taken from the workers, the working
class
must organize consciously and politically for the conquest of the
powers of government, national
and local, in order that this machinery,
including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of
oppression into
the agent of emancipation and
the overthrow of
privilege,
aristocratic and plutocratic.
7. That as all political parties are but the
expression of class interests, and as the interest of the working class
is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of all
sections of the the master class, the party seeking working class
emancipation must be hostile to every other party.
8. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, therefore, enters
the field of political action determined to wage war against all other
political parties, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, and
calls upon the members of the working class of this country to muster
under its banner to the end that a speedy termination may be wrought to
the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour, and that
poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery
to freedom.
To
contents
next page
Socialist Standard June 2006 Page 18