THE BU WAS desperately short of money. For the first time, Diana began working actively for the fascist cause; first, by attempting to raise funds from the Nazis and, later, by negotiating a contract with the German government. In both cases, her leverage was her friendship with Hitler.
Even then, three years away from war, her actions bordered on the unpatriotic. Diana, though, saw her conduct in a different light. When she first fell in love with Mosley, absorbing his beliefs until her whole being was saturated with them, he had told her that she could help him. Now, at last, here was a chance to do so – and in a way that no one else could.
At first, her fund-raising took the form of simple pleas for money to sustain the British fascist ideal. If the journals of Dr Goebbels are to be believed, these requests occurred frequently.
24 April 1936. Lady Mitford’s [Unity’s] sister sent on behalf of Mosley. Wants Germany to give £50,000–£100,000 credit to the Morgan Bank. That would be wonderful, a great blow against falling into financial collapse . . . and with that Mosley would be saved. The führer will investigate this.
25 April 1936 . . . at Schwanenwarder we have a discussion with Mrs Giness. She repeated again the request from Mosley and his henchmen.
20 September 1936. Again to the führer. Mrs Genest there. Three short films of the Mosley Party. Everything is still very much at the beginning but it will probably work out. We, also, began that way.
5 December 1936. The führer has now released the money arranged for Mrs Guinness. As a result there will be peace. But they need so much.
7 February 1937. Mrs Ginnest wants more money. They use up a fortune and accomplish nothing. I am having nothing more to do with this thing. Refer her to Hanke and Wiedemann.
These constant visits to Germany could not escape the attention of the press. Unity’s links with Nazis were already well known; now numerous photographs of Diana, with or without her sister but with Hitler, began to appear. Later these would link Mosley with the highest echelons of Nazi Germany in the public perception.
The reason for the BU’s sudden and calamitous lack of funds was not difficult to discover. The disappearance of the Italian subsidies had been followed by the unsavoury publicity engendered by the Cable Street affair. Few rich men, or their businesses, wanted to be seen to contribute to such an extreme and disruptive organisation, and many who had given donations on a clandestine basis were also frightened off.
The Public Order Act, passed on 18 December 1936 in the wake of the disturbance, had dealt the BU a further severe blow. By giving the police the right to call off marches and demonstrations and by forbidding the wearing of uniforms, it neutralised at a stroke two of the key elements of the BU’s appeal: its militaristic approach and the chance of constant, provocative action. By the end of 1936 the BU was nearly bankrupt and Mosley’s own finances were in a parlous state.
Mosley’s first action was to cut expenses by sacking most of the BU’s paid staff, including William Joyce and John Beckett. He then mortgaged his estate for £80,000, and put a total of £100,000 into BU funds.
Next he turned to Savehay. He could no longer, he said, afford to pay anything towards its upkeep; he was going to let it – and his children could come to Wootton.
The Curzon sisters were appalled. They did not want their family home to be broken up, and they were horrified by the thought of Cimmie’s children being in the same house as the woman they held responsible for her death. It also seemed a blatant flouting of the proprieties since – thanks to Mosley’s secrecy over his marriage – they believed Diana was his mistress. ‘Baba is writing to him he has no right to put growing-up Vivien in such a position. Oh dear! God help us, help us,’ wrote Irene in her diary that June.
Two days later, through his long-suffering mother, Mosley put forward a plan he had no doubt held in reserve. Irene wrote: ‘Ma said her proposal from Tom was distasteful and she felt very badly about it. It was this: if I wanted to keep Denham for the children I should take over Tom’s £1500 annually and get the children to repay me on coming of age as he could no longer afford to spend any money on them.’
The blackmail worked. To the outrage of her solicitor, Irene complied, agreeing to pay her brother-in-law’s share out of her own pocket.
But these were only stopgap measures. What was needed for the BU was a source of regular income. The answer, which could have made Mosley a millionaire, was commercial radio.
Mosley’s espousal of this new concept was based on another man’s idea – this time, that of his old friend Bill Allen. Allen, a Belfast MP from 1929 to 1931, pointed out that the Conservative MP Captain Leonard Plugge, who had secured a licence from France to found the very successful English-language commercial station Radio Normandy, had become extremely rich. By 1935, British advertisers were spending about £400,000 a year on commercials, a figure which would go up to £1,700,000 in 1938, mainly with Plugge’s Radio Normandy and the other major commercial station, Radio Luxemburg.
Mosley saw the possibilities immediately. Commercial radio stations had of necessity to be based outside the United Kingdom, since the BBC held the broadcasting licence for the whole of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and strenuously opposed any attempt to chip away at its monopoly. With a network of stations, ideally to the east, west and south, the whole of the UK could be covered. Bill Allen’s radio contacts were excellent: he already employed as a consultant a man who was arguably Britain’s top radio expert. This was Peter Eckersley, for many years the BBC’s chief engineer, who combined unrivalled technical knowledge with a grudge against the corporation and strong fascist sympathies.
Peter Pendleton Eckersley had been divorced by his first wife in 1930 and was promptly sacked by the BBC, then in the iron moral grip of Sir John Reith. Eckersley, understandably, was enraged. His resentment was fuelled by his second wife, Dorothy, whom he married in October of the same year.
In 1935 Dorothy, a member of the Independent Labour Party until then, suggested to her husband that they take their summer holiday in Germany, where, as she said later, ‘We saw something of the social benefits brought about by Nazi policy.’ For Dorothy, deeply impressed by the economic and social benefits brought about by the Nazis, it was a Pauline conversion. She became known as a strongly pro-German fascist and a fanatical admirer of Hitler, scattering photographs of him round the Eckersleys’ Swan Court flat. She became a friend of Unity’s and an intimate of William Joyce, whom she chose as a tutor for her son by her first marriage.
The Eckersleys continued to spend their summer holidays in Germany and in 1937 were taken by Unity, who had been lunching that day with Hitler, to observe the führer in his favourite Munich tearoom. ‘And there,’ in Dorothy’s words, ‘we gazed upon him.’ That December she became a daily announcer on German radio, although she soon realised that she was taking part in propaganda programmes directed against her own country as well as those beamed to it extolling Germany.fn1
Peter Eckersley, almost as enthusiastic about Hitler as his wife, earned £1,000 a year from the Allens. Mosley now paid him a further £2,500 a year (a payment that exposes the dishonesty of Mosley’s claim that he could not afford his £1,500 per annum share of the upkeep of Savehay for his children).
Mosley believed that secrecy as to his own part in the proposed radio network was essential. Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia had done much to complete the discrediting of fascism begun by Nazi thuggery and he was well aware that not only would many potential advertisers be alienated if they thought they were subsidising the BU, but potential listeners might also switch off. Apart from his talents in radio, Eckersley had one supreme virtue: he was immensely discreet.
As head of the Ulster advertising firm David Allen and Son, Bill Allen had a legitimate reason for an interest in commercial radio, but his two younger brothers were bitterly hostile to any kind of business involvement with Mosley. Bill, as the eldest and most forceful, overcame their opposition and pushed through the partnership with Mosley.
The associates founded a company called Air Time Ltd, which had no apparent connection with Mosley. It was run by a Scottish accountant, James Herd, whom Eckersley had recruited from his post as Deputy Principal of the LCC Commercial Institute in Catford. Like everyone connected with Air Time, Herd had to sign an undertaking that he would never disclose Mosley’s involvement. As time passed, this would be further shrouded behind a smokescreen of subsidiary companies – on none of which would Mosley’s name appear as a director.
The plan was to set up radio stations that transmitted entertainment, music, news and advertisements in the Republic of Ireland, Belgium, Heligoland and Sark. Since there was little light entertainment on the BBC, they felt sure there would be a ready market. Sir Oliver Hoare, brother of the Home Secretary, agreed to handle the Belgian negotiations. Colin Beaumont, son of Mrs Hathaway, the Dame of Sark, was a Mosley follower, and believed he could persuade his mother to agree to such a station.
The island of Sark had been granted legal autonomy by Elizabeth I which, Mosley believed, meant that the BBC would be unable to block a station there. Before going ahead, however, it was necessary to find out if this was the case. The task fell to Frederick Lawtonfn2, a young barrister in the chambers of C.T. Le Quesne, KC, a distinguished silk with roots in the Channel Islands.
Mosley had first met Lawton, the clever son of a prison governor, when he had debated at the Cambridge Union three years earlier and had made a great impression on the young man. Shortly after Lawton had been called to the Bar (in 1935) he heard that Mosley was suing for libel and conducting his own case. Lawton went along to listen. Mosley, who won the case, spotted him in court and went up to talk to him afterwards. Learning that Lawton was now a barrister, Mosley began to give him small but regular jobs of work through his solicitors. Lawton, who admired Mosley immensely, was grateful to him for his kindness.
Le Quesne advised that the legal situation vis-à-vis the Channel Islands would have to be investigated in depth. It was not a job for a silk, so he suggested Lawton, knowing he was a protégé of Mosley’s. After several visits to Sark and a fortnight at Caen University researching the medieval land law relating to Normandy to find out on what terms the Dame held the land, Lawton advised that the enterprise might, just, be possible. A company called Museum Investment Trust was set up, fronted by Mosley’s solicitor Gerald Keith, and in the spring of 1937 an agreement was concluded that, if setting up a station proved possible, there would be a thirty-year contract under the terms of which Colin Beaumont would receive 25 per cent of all profits.
Simultaneously, feelers were being put out about the establishment of a station in Germany, which could be far more important and lucrative than Sark. It could provide an invaluable bridgehead into continental Europe; German technical expertise was famous and, above all, Mosley had a direct line to the German authorities through Diana. He decided to pursue the German possibilities. As usual, the moment he had reached his decision, he acted, telephoning Frederick Lawton. It was a Sunday, very early in the morning and Lawton was newly married, but none of these considerations affected Mosley.
‘Could you possibly come up, now, to this house near Ashbourne that I’ve rented, to discuss this radio business?’ he said. ‘John will drive you up. He’ll be with you directly.’
Hastily Lawton shaved and dressed and within half an hour the doorbell of his flat was rung. Outside was a large Bentley, its driver Mosley’s youngest brother John.
The two men talked generalities until John Mosley said to his passenger, ‘I have something to tell you. You are going to meet my brother’s wife – you didn’t know he was married, did you?’
‘I thought his wife had died,’ replied Lawton.
‘She did,’ said John Mosley. ‘He has married again. But it is secret and no one else must know.’
Lawton was staggered. Only recently he had been summoned by Mosley to the hotel on Lake Vyrnwy to discuss the legal implications of the Sark situation. Lake Vyrnwy was famous for its fishing and Mosley had joined Irene and his children at this Montgomeryshire beauty spot, he to fish, they to walk, picnic and swim, and Lawton had been struck by how close Mosley and his sister-in-law seemed.
They arrived at Wootton in time for lunch. Lawton already knew Diana’s brother Tom through the Bar – they were both members of the Inner Temple and usually sat at the same table for lunch – but it was his first social contact of any kind with what he thought of as ‘the aristocracy’ and he was dazzled. Mosley, at home, was expansive and charming; Diana’s appearance overwhelmed him. ‘She was so strikingly beautiful,’ he said later. ‘And so nice.’ He quickly felt at ease, and his two or three visits there – including one in the autumn, when he went ferreting with Mosley – sealed his admiration for both Mosley and Diana, and when Mosley asked him if he would, if necessary, go to Germany with Diana to assist in negotiations, he was happy to agree.
As had become their custom, Diana and Unity went to the Nuremberg Rally at the beginning of September. This time, their brother Tom went with them. By now smart and comfortable hotels had sprung up to welcome the foreigners whom Hitler was anxious to impress – and who brought with them valuable foreign currency. The cheerful, bustling friendliness, the optimism and enthusiasm of the people, and the ritualistic, compelling drama of the rally itself, affected Tom deeply. Shortly afterwards he joined the BU.
After this annual high point of the fascist year – although Diana did not then know it, this was to be her last Parteitag – Diana turned her attention to the question of a radio station in Heligoland. Her first approach was through the official channels of the Ministry of Propaganda. It was unavailing. Then, on one of her trips to visit Unity, she brought the matter up with Hitler.
At first he was dismissive. On 9 October 1937 she received a letter from his adjutant, Captain Wiedemann. ‘I have today reported to the führer the whole matter concerning the advertising transmissions,’ he wrote. ‘The chief objection was raised by the appropriate military authorities. The führer regrets that in these circumstances he is not able to agree to your proposal.’
But Diana did not take this as final. She knew how suspicious the top Nazi officials were, but she knew also that she was a favourite of Hitler’s. She had faith in her power to persuade and charm and, for Mosley’s sake, she was utterly determined. She continued with her visits, making contact with Hitler whenever she arrived in Berlin and bringing up the subject of the radio station whenever there was an opening. Usually this would be when Hitler was in a mellow mood – there was no company he liked better than that of beautiful, sophisticated and safely married women. As they chatted late into the night in his private rooms, one by one his officials would slip away gratefully, leaving ‘Mrs Guinness’ with a clear field.
Diana’s persistence was the more important because Mosley was suffering an enforced convalescence. At a meeting in Liverpool in October, where the usual high feelings had erupted, he had been hit by a brick. He spent the two months it took him to recover from concussion and cuts to the head at Wootton. Since no one knew that he and Diana were now married, this apparent open flouting of the conventions added to the scandal.
His convalescence also increased the frustration Mosley was suffering because of the delays in getting his radio project off the ground; it was taking far longer than anyone had anticipated. He confided many of his worries about money to Lawton though, as Lawton later discovered, he was not telling the truth: on numerous occasions Mosley reiterated that despite the rumours he had ‘never had a penny’ from Mussolini. When the truth about the BU’s Italian financing eventually emerged years later Lawton was shocked to learn that the man he had admired so much had deliberately lied to him.
Despite this secretiveness, Mosley was now relying to a considerable extent on the young lawyer for business advice. Lawton saved him from at least one potential disaster. So desperate was Mosley for a scheme which would produce a fortune quickly that he became enthusiastic about the claims of a young chemist to have invented a formula for a new ‘rejuvenating’ pill.
It was just the kind of idea to appeal to a man for whom virility was as important in politics as in personal life. The chemist was a persuasive talker and Mosley foresaw a golden harvest. But Lawton doggedly insisted that before any money was sunk into production of this pill it should be sent to the public analyst for a report. When Mosley finally agreed that this was a necessary first step, the chemist and his pill melted away.
fn1 In July 1939 Dorothy Eckersley left England for Germany, remaining there on the outbreak of war and continuing her job until October 1941.On 10 December 1945, at the Central Criminal Court, she was found guilty of assisting the enemy by broadcasting and sentenced to 12 months imprisonment.
fn2 Later the Rt. Hon. Sir Frederick Lawton, a Lord Justice of Appeal.