FOR MOSLEY’S CHILDREN and his sisters-in-law, learning of his marriage through the newspapers was devastating.
Baba Metcalfe was in the train on the way to Paris when, idly opening her paper, she saw that her lover of the past five years had for two of them been deceiving her on an epic scale. She was of course well aware of Diana’s existence but believed, as Mosley had told her, that his relationship with Diana had become one of obligation and convenience rather than of passion. Baba had always been the sister closest to Cimmie, sharing her thoughts and emotions, her passion for Mosley, identifying herself with Cimmie’s anguish over Diana. When she followed Cimmie into Mosley’s bed it had seemed in some sense right and a victory over the hated ‘Guinness’. The discovery of this double betrayal was a body blow. She never forgave either of them and for the rest of her life would refuse to speak of Diana.
It was almost as bad for Mosley’s two older children. Like their aunt, they learned of their father’s marriage through newspaper headlines.fn1 Vivien, aged seventeen and being ‘finished’ in Paris before her first season, saw her father’s name in Paris Soir. She read the story with incredulity, saying to her friends, ‘I don’t believe this paper – they’ve got it wrong.’ But when she received a telephone call from her father, saying he was coming to Paris to see her next day, she realised it must be true – and that Diana must actually have been his wife during the Mediterranean holidays they had all spent together for the last two summers. She felt foolish, angry and bitterly hurt.
By the time Mosley arrived the next day, she had gained sufficient control of her emotions not to reproach him; acceptance of his behaviour, she had learned, was vital if they were all to have any kind of family life. He took her out to dinner and they had a stilted conversation, Vivien choking down her pain and resentment. Her former friendly feelings for Diana turned to hatred, and it was months before she came to terms with the situation and once more enjoyed Diana’s company.
Nicholas was equally taken by surprise. He was on his way to the seven-thirty a.m. ‘early school’ during the last fortnight of the Eton winter half when he too caught sight of a newspaper headline. When he got back and went in to breakfast his friends asked him if it was true that his father and Mrs Guinness were married. ‘No, no,’ said Nicholas. ‘My father would have told me. You know how the press make things up.’ But after breakfast a telephone call from Irene confirmed that it was so and that his father was writing to tell him. Confusedly Nicholas sought to save his face with his friends by telling them that of course he had known all along but had promised not to say anything until his father had tipped him the wink. To his father he wrote that he was upset at not being told and could not think why he had been kept in the dark.
‘Sweet Nick had noticed Mrs Guinness’s huge size at Wootton in August but had gallantly not breathed a word tho’ agonised at the situation. Oh why did Tom not tell us all at Lake Vyrnwy?’ runs Irene’s diary, adding, ‘Poor Ma looks a liar to all the B.U. who will never believe she did not know.’ Irene herself behaved with great dignity. ‘I told Tom I did not want to go over the tale of his marriage. I only wanted to say the loyalty of his children after those cruel blows was amazing and he must never betray it. I was thankful Baba was out of the country.’
The ménage at Denham, already resentful of Diana as an interloper, were confirmed in their opinion. Nanny Hyslop, while conceding that Mosley’s behaviour had been ‘very naughty’, regarded Diana as the incarnation of evil and believed that she was totally to blame for seducing Mosley into an adulterous passion that had killed Cimmie. Only Micky, who for years had hardly seen his father, regarding him as an amiable stranger, had no trouble in accepting another amiable stranger as his father’s wife. But when the little boy referred to Diana as ‘Mummy’ he was surprised to hear his sweet-tempered nanny hiss furiously, ‘Never call THAT WOMAN Mummy!’
Diana was unaware of this depth of feeling. Andrée, now the housekeeper at Savehay, was discreet enough to keep her opinion to herself.
Those of Diana’s own family she cared for most had known of her marriage from the beginning and she was now completely reconciled with her parents, who liked and admired her husband and who both then shared his political views.
Altogether the first months of 1939 seemed to promise happiness. Perhaps the Munich Agreement really had removed the threat of war and with it the terror that Diana felt over Unity.
Diana, who saw things so clearly – albeit from one political point of view only – was convinced that ‘reason would prevail’ and that her husband’s stance would be vindicated. The contract for the new radio station had been signed, the station itself was under construction and due to open on 1 October. With a large and regular flow of funds for the BU, its influence would increase and the prospect of power become more likely. When she and Mosley took their baby son from Grosvenor Road to Wootton, there to hand him over to the delighted Nanny Higgs, as she later wrote, ‘My happiness was complete.’
True, there was a rift or two in the lute. Mosley and Bill Allen had quarrelled violently. Allen believed Mosley had swindled him over the money he had put into the Nordyke station. He withdrew from Air Time, telling Mosley that he was in danger of losing ‘your one surviving friend’. Alienating Allen was a foolish move. Mosley was aware that Allen had links with MI5, but believed that anything Allen could report would show that British fascism was not a seditious force.
Without Allen, Air Time’s subsidiary Radio Variety stood little chance of success. It was, as James Herd put it, ‘a flop’. Nevertheless, details were posted to von Kaufmann at Kochstrasse 33, Berlin, while the construction of the station went ahead.
In March 1939 – the month that Hitler tore up the Munich Agreement and occupied Prague – Mosley’s daughter Vivien made her debut. She was presented at court by her Aunt Baba – the rule was that only married women could effect a presentation, so Irene, who had been effectively her mother for the past six years, was unable to do so herself – though Irene gave her niece’s coming-out ball at the actress Maud Allen’s house in Regent’s Park. Mosley had nothing to do with his daughter’s coming out, neither escorting her to parties nor even enquiring how she was getting on, so furious was he still over the Official Solicitor’s refusal to allow Leiter money to be used on Wootton. Only when a page of gossip about Vivien appeared on 4 June in the Sunday Express did he react. The paragraphs concerned, appeared under the headline ‘The Perfect Debutante of 1939’:
Miss Mosley has the heritage of the perfect debutante: brains, beauty, elegance, riches, glamour and political fame.
She inherits beauty from her grandmother, Mary Leiter, one of the loveliest women of her time, wealth from Levi Leiter, the American wheat king who left more than £6 million, elegance and brains from her grandfather, the late Marquess Curzon, the famous Foreign Secretary.
By the end of this season, directly and indirectly, thousands of pounds will have been spent by family and friends, hostesses and guests in launching Miss Mosley into society. Florists, caterers, beauty parlours and dress houses, all will have benefited.
Every precaution has been taken to prevent her becoming involved in politics and she has been protected from the publicity which normally surrounds a debutante of her standing.
There followed a resumé of Vivien’s accomplishments and a mention of her mother’s jewels, which she had inherited. The only reference to Mosley by name came at the end.
Twenty years ago, when Lady Astor was winning her seat in Parliament, two of her most ardent supporters, 20-year-old Lady Cynthia Curzon and young Oswald Mosley used to meet by arrangement early each morning on Plymouth Hoe. They were married in May 1920.
Mosley chose to regard the article, with its flattering comments on his daughter, as an attack upon himself. He put out a statement in Action.
As Miss Mosley is a Ward in Chancery whose every arrangement is in the charge of her aunt, Lady Ravensdale, her father has nothing to do with her present activities. Therefore the Beaverbrook malice shoots very wide of the mark, as an attack on a man who has neither the time nor the inclination for any social life at all. On the other hand, it should be stated in fairness to this pleasant but ordinary girl, whose appearance in the world would have attracted no extraordinary attention if the Press had not detested the person and politics of her father, that not one word written about her in the national Press should be believed without verification.
His statement was not only deeply wounding to his young daughter but breathtakingly inaccurate: he was still her legal guardian.
Diana continued her regular visits to Unity in Munich. Her two small Guinness boys were deeply envious of these trips and longed to be taken with her to meet this man whose photograph they saw in every newspaper; like schoolboys everywhere, they ached for autographs to add to their collections. But Diana was adamant.
The second time Diana went to Munich in 1939 Unity had a flat of her own, found with Hitler’s help – it had belonged to a Jewish couple who had ‘decided to leave’. Not that it would have made any difference to Unity if she had known of the previous owners’ forced eviction: for her, whatever Hitler did was supremely right. ‘She believes Hitler to be more than a genius; those who know him well consider him as a God,’ wrote Joseph Kennedy Jnr to his father, the American Ambassador in London. ‘He can make no mistake and has made none. She has been afraid to go to England lately for fear there would be a war and she would be caught there.’
Diana came home in time for the biggest meeting Mosley had ever held, a ‘demonstration for peace’ in the Earls Court Exhibition Hall on 16 July. The backcloth to the platform was, as usual, a huge Union Jack; as Mosley marched up to the platform many of the 20,000-strong crowd gave the fascist salute. Among these was Tom Mitford, who had already joined a territorial regiment, the Queen’s Westminsters. Later, he was reported for this action but his commanding officer took the view that, as he was there in a private capacity, there was no cause for complaint. Like many people, Tom believed war was inevitable but still hoped for peace.
Speaking for two hours, as usual without notes, Mosley gave a virtuoso performance that played on this despairing longing. His peroration roused the crowd to a delirium of hope as he urged that Hitler should be allowed unrestrainedly to go east, ‘and then he would not want to fight Britain’.
Afterwards, Mosley took Diana, Sydney and Tom back to his mother Maud’s house for supper.
As the build-up to war continued, so did Mosley’s campaign for peace ‘with the British Empire intact’. Apart from the fascist beliefs and the anti-semitism which he shared with Hitler, he was convinced that the German military machine was unstoppable. Once Hitler had got hold of the Ukraine, the granary of Russia, and the rich minerals and oilfields of the Caucasus, Germany would be able to ignore any British blockade. The British army was small, the Royal Air Force weak. Hitler’s declared ambitions were to the east; he believed that the Slav peoples were born to be subject to the Reich; he often said that once he had regained the German colonies he would have no interest in a war with England.fn2 Better, thought Mosley, that the British should negotiate peace early and thus save the Empire. He claimed that he himself would be interested in power only after such a negotiated peace. But such was his reputation that few believed him.
In August, Diana flew out again to join Unity as Hitler’s guest at the Bayreuth Festival, in what was to be her last pre-war visit to Germany. One evening Hitler invited her to his box at the opera, where she found him in a state of extreme depression. He told her that he thought England and Germany were set on a collision course. England, he feared, would not change her attitude over Danzig, while he could not abandon Germans placed under Polish rule by the Treaty of Versailles. Later, when Diana and Unity lunched with him at the Wahnfried on 2 August, the last day of the Festival, he told them he wanted to speak to them privately. Once apart from the others, he said sombrely that as far as he could see, England was determined on war – and war was therefore inevitable.
Diana told him that Mosley would continue his campaign for peace as long as it was legally possible to do so; Hitler warned her that if he did he might be assassinated.
When the sisters were alone, Unity told Diana again that she would not be alive to see the tragedy of war between England and Germany. That night they went to see Götterdämmerung. ‘Never had the glorious music seemed to me so doomladen,’ wrote Diana later. ‘I knew well what Unity, sitting beside me, was thinking. Next day I left for England with death in my heart.’
On 21 August the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was signed, guaranteeing non-aggression between Germany and Russia; and the last faint hope of peace disappeared. The countdown to war had begun. The British knew of the strength and power of the Luftwaffe and believed that bombs would rain down upon all large British cities, in particular London. On 27 August Irene, Nick, Vivien, Micky and his nanny arrived at Wootton – Mosley had suggested they leave Denham, so close to London, for the comparative safety of Staffordshire. ‘A lonely block of a house,’ wrote Irene, who found Diana’s central heating ‘suffocating. Only one small window in each bay opens.’ Even worse, though, was to find a photograph of Goering with his baby in a silver frame on the mantelpiece. Once at Wootton, Irene, Nanny Hyslop and Nanny Higgs began to prepare for war, cutting out huge blackout curtains to cover the large and numerous windows. Diana and Mosley remained in their London flat.
With war – short of a miracle – inevitable, Mosley’s activities came under closer scrutiny. On 1 September he issued to the 22,500 members of the BU a statement which narrowly escaped prosecution – only the fact that it was published two days before war was declared saved him. It read:
The Government of Britain goes to war with the agreement of all Parliamentary parties. British Union stands for peace. Neither Britain nor her Empire is threatened, therefore the British government intervenes in an alien quarrel. In this situation, we of British Union will do our utmost to persuade our British people to make peace . . . the dope machine of Jewish finance deceived the people until Britain was involved in war in the interest of the money power which rules Britain through the Press and Parties . . .
Our members should do all that the law requires of them and, if they are members of any of the forces or Services of the Crown, they should obey their orders and, in every particular, obey the rules of their Service. But I ask all members who are free to carry on our work to take every opportunity within your power to awaken the people and to demand peace.
We have said a hundred times that if the life of Britain was threatened, we would fight. But I am not offering to fight in the quarrel of Jewish finance, in a war from which Britain could withdraw at any moment she likes, her Empire intact and her people safe. For the moment I am not concerned to argue about the incidents which preceded the outbreak of war. In time, we shall know the whole truth. I am now concerned with only two simple facts. This war is no quarrel of the British people. This war is a quarrel of Jewish finance. So to our people I give myself for the winning of peace.
This message was exhibited in the windows of the BU headquarters, distributed to various local officers and would have been published in the 9 September issue of Action had Scotland Yard not intervened. Special Branch, when considering whether to pass it to the DPP for prosecution, appended the note: ‘When the Polish question assumed importance British Union took up the attitude that Poland was actually a Jewish-controlled state, a harsh dictatorship under which millions were oppressed, and did all in its power to influence public opinion against any pact between Poland and this country.’
Taken with Mosley’s reaction to the invasion of Czechoslovakia in March (‘Britons fight for Britain only’) and his view that Russia had only entered into the non-aggression pact in order to incite war between Britain and Germany, Special Branch concluded that ‘in effect, his followers are urged to do all they can short of breaking the law to propagate the need for a quick termination of the war without regard to the Government’s commitments to Poland or France’. But they did not yet consider him dangerous.
When war was declared on 3 September Diana and Mosley listened miserably to the Prime Minister. Bryan Guinness, waiting for the announcement at eleven-fifteen, scribbled an affectionate and understanding note to his former wife. ‘I am afraid this must be a time of more than ordinary difficulty and anxiety for you than for most people, with Bobo I imagine in Germany and your sympathy with the German régime conflicting with the great love I know you bear for your own country.’
Up at Wootton, Irene was shattered when, just after listening to Chamberlain, she went into Diana’s bedroom to put up blackout curtains and there found a signed photograph of Hitler by the bed. ‘I loathe it & long to smash it to atoms.’
War provoked an immediate reaction against the BU and Mosley’s former office in the King’s Road was wrecked. His response was a statement in Action:
Our country is involved in war. Therefore I ask you to do nothing to injure our country, or to help the other power. Our members should do what the law requires of them; and, if they are members of any of the Forces or Services of the Crown, they should obey their orders and, in every particular, obey the rules of the Service.
At the end, he repeated his earlier message:
But I ask all members who are free to carry on our work to take every opportunity within your power to awaken the people and to demand peace.
To anyone familiar with Mosley’s campaign for a negotiated peace there was little unusual about these two apparently contradictory instructions. Mosley was a man who believed that in many ways what you said was more important than what you did. Words, to Mosley, often negated deeds: witness his marches through the East End when he would proclaim his respect for law and order and follow every directive of the police – yet ignore the fact that he himself had provoked the violence by marching through areas where a fascist presence invited confrontation.
In Germany, Unity kept her promise. She had ignored the frantic telegrams sent by her father in the last few days of peace, preferring to remain in her Munich flat, writing letters that were implicit farewells. ‘This is my goodbye . . . I hope you will see the führer often when it is over,’ she wrote to her parents.
She wrote to Diana, she wrote to several friends and telephoned one of them, leaving the receiver off the hook. She took the small Walther pistol Hitler had given her from its drawer in her writing table and drove to see the Munich Gauleiter, Adolf Wagner, to ask him if she would be interned. Reassured that she would not be, she requested him ‘if anything happened’ to see that she was buried in Munich with her photograph of Hitler and her party badge, both of which she handed to him for safe keeping. After a few last errands, she walked to the Englischer Garten, a small park near the River Iser, sat down on a bench, took her pistol out of her handbag, fired a trial shot at the ground and then put the muzzle to her right temple and pulled the trigger. She fell unconscious, but she had not succeeded in killing herself.
She was picked up, her face so swollen that it was unrecognisable, almost at once: Gauleiter Wagner, already worried about her, had instructed two of his men to watch her. She was put in a private room in the Chirurgische Universitats-Klinik, paid for by Hitler. The bullet, it was discovered by the doctor who examined her the next day, had lodged in the back of her skull and was impossible to extract. When she regained consciousness she was unable to respond, simply staring vacantly in front of her even when her beloved führer visited her.
Few people outside Hitler’s inner circle knew what had happened. Her family heard wild rumours, most to the effect that she was ill. Only Diana suspected the truth. ‘In my heart of hearts I knew what had happened,’ she said long afterwards. ‘She had always said that if there was war between England and Germany she would shoot herself, and she was very much a woman of her word. But at the time I didn’t want to worry my mother by saying all this to her.’
Nancy’s initial reaction was frivolous. ‘Well, the family,’ she wrote to Violet Hammersley on 15 September. ‘Muv has gone finally off her head. She seems to regard Adolf as her favourite son-in-law (the kind of which people say he has been like a son to me) . . . Bobo we hear on fairly good authority is in a concentration camp for Czech women which much as I deplore it has a sort of poetic justice.’
On 18 September one of Unity’s former lovers, Teddy Almasy, wrote from Budapest to tell the Redesdales that Unity was very ill in hospital in Munich but improving – during the last three days she had been a little better. His letter did not arrive until the beginning of October.
Sydney wrote immediately to give Diana the news. They had become closer than ever before. For Diana, worshipping at Mosley’s shrine, anyone who also believed that here was the political messiah was automatically ‘one of our wonderful people’. Sydney’s conviction of the rightness of fascism and increasing fondness for her son-in-law transformed Diana’s previously lukewarm feelings for her mother into devoted love.
Within the family, however, there was schism. Unity, Diana and Sydney were united in their fascist beliefs and admiration for Nazi Germany and Hitler. ‘Dined with Mama last night she is impossible,’ wrote Nancy to Violet Hammersley. ‘Hopes we shall lose the war & makes no bones about it.’ David no longer shared these views. With the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the perception that war was inevitable, his glowing admiration for Hitler had vanished and he had, as Nancy put it, ‘publicly recanted like Latimer, in the Daily Mirror, and said he was mistaken all along’. He and Sydney, who had always before presented a united front, were now bitterly divided.
When Hitler arrived in Munich on 8 November he went to see Unity and asked her whether she wanted to stay in Germany or go back to England. ‘England,’ she replied. Her belongings in Germany were put into storage at Hitler’s expensefn3 and she was despatched to a nursing home in Switzerland by train, in a reserved carriage paid for by Hitler. With her went a doctor, the nun who had been nursing her and Teddy Almasy. As soon as they arrived, Almasy telephoned the Redesdales, saying that she would be able to come home when well enough. It was Christmas Eve.
David, terrified that his daughter would be arrested on arrival, went to see Oliver Stanley, the Secretary of State for War, to explain that she was desperately ill and he would rather she stayed in Switzerland than suffer arrest. Stanley assured him that she could come home safely, and Sydney and Debo set off for Berne.
The sight of Unity shattered them. Gone was the handsome, vigorous young woman full of life, freshness and energy. In her place was someone, in Debo’s description, with ‘two huge dark blue eyes in a shrunken face, short matted hair and yellow teeth. Her sunken cheeks made the teeth seem bigger and more horrible and yellow and her skin too was dry and yellow. Her face was totally unrecognisable because it was totally different from her.’
The journey back was horrendous, a saga of missed trains, faulty ambulances and pursuit by a ravening press. They left Berne on 31 December. At Calais Unity was taken off by stretcher, but her special carriage had missed its connection with the boat train and the three women had to put up for two nights in an hotel. At Folkestone David, pacing the quayside as the boat drew in, found to his horror that his wife and daughters were not on it. When they arrived two days later by the next boat there was a reception of military and other police and what seemed like an army of reporters. Five miles outside Folkestone the ambulance broke down and they had to return for the night while awaiting a replacement. Debo left first in a car with some of Unity’s fourteen pieces of luggage; finally Unity emerged on the arm of her father – the hotel lift was too small for a stretcher – pale and hatless in a blue overcoat. They left with a comet-tail of the press behind them.
That winter saw the last Christmas at Wootton. After it there was an explosive family row. The Official Solicitor had already queried the use of Mosley’s Trust income to finance the entire cost of the Denham household at Savehay Farm. The object of the Trust was not, he said, to relieve Mosley of all responsibility for his family so that his own considerable income could be devoted to the BU and Irene had then stepped into the breach to rescue Savehay. Now, the Official Solicitor raised a similar objection about Wootton: he would not consent to a house that was not the children’s family home being partly maintained by their money.
Again, Mosley was reluctant to use his income to pay for his children’s wartime home. ‘Now that we’ve moved the nursery world [Mosley’s name for his children’s household] to Wootton,’ he said to Irene, ‘can you pay for it?’ This time, Irene declined to come to the rescue. Bursting into tears she rushed out of the room. She had in any case decided to leave Wootton. She was chilled by Diana’s indignant protests when in a broadcast Anthony Eden spoke of the iniquities of the Hitler regime. ‘I felt very strongly I could not be with her for long because of her pro-German attitude,’ her diary records.
With no one willing to pay, it was clear Wootton had to be given up; by 31 December the three months’ notice required had been given. As the expected bombs were not falling on London, the children were brought back temporarily to 129 Grosvenor Road. There, while Mosley raged sarcastically at Irene, plans were made to return to Denham.
Mosley and Diana stayed briefly at Grosvenor Road. In the eerie calm of the phoney war they took steps to counter the disappearance of their servants. James had already joined the territorials and his wife had returned to Manchester; Dorothy had joined the WAAF. Diana and Mosley, joined by Debo, took cooking lessons. As their teacher was from the renowned Cordon Bleu cooking school, the dishes they learned were designed for grand dinner parties rather than as useful everyday standbys. The aim was to produce a three-course luncheon every day with each of them responsible for one course. Whenever a sauce curdled the two Mitfords would scream in unison. Mosley said, ‘I’m glad I haven’t got all six of you.’
As well as being the first time either Diana or Mosley had touched a cooking implement, it was also the first time the nineteen-year-old Debo had had more than a fleeting encounter with her brother-in-law, whom she now began to call ‘Cyril’ – short for a gabbled Sir Oswald.
Soon Grosvenor Road itself was given up – too big, with a cavernous interior which would produce huge heating bills. The Mosleys moved to Dolphin Square, London’s most modern block of flats, which had been completed only two years before. Here they took two adjacent flats on the seventh floor of Hood House – two flats, because to Diana and Mosley a bathroom each seemed essential. The flats, snug and warm and needing only an occasional visit by a ‘daily’, were furnished with their smaller pieces, while the rest of their furniture was stored in the large garage at Grosvenor Road, where it remained for the rest of the war.
Meanwhile, at Denham, Diana, who found Cimmie’s chintz-led decorative style intensely antipathetic, used the grey silk curtains from the enormous drawing room at Wootton to curtain as many Savehay windows as possible. Nanny Higgs (in charge of Alexander) and Nanny Hyslop (in charge of Mickey) were not on speaking terms, and passed the winter at opposite ends of the passage without exchanging a word. Nanny Hyslop addressed Diana as ‘Lady Mosley’ through tightly pursed lips whenever circumstances made some exchange unavoidable.
The investigation of the BU by the authorities rumbled on. They were aware that members were being urged to ‘spread the gospel’ by joining the special constabulary, Air Raid Defence volunteers, nursing reserve and other such bodies, and therein propagate the Mosley message. Scotland Yard reported:
The verbal propaganda concerning the war which is spread by the movement is definitely defeatist and pro-German. The German standpoint is advocated even on such matters as the sinking of the Athenia,fn4 air raids, francs tireurs in Poland. British efforts, as for example the raid on Kiel, are ridiculed and more than one senior official has gone so far as to state that this country would be better off under German rule than under the present system. In his talks with his headquarters and district officials, Mosley displays the usual optimism regarding his certainty that the BU will be within reach of power ‘in under two years’. He also believes he may be arrested at any moment as a very dangerous man.
By now Mosley’s involvement in the planned German radio station had become known to Special Branch. Herd, when interviewed, confirmed that Eckersley, front man for the station, was extremely pro-Nazi. ‘I have heard him say many times that Hitler’s ideas are his and that England wanted war to make money out of it. He agreed with Hitler’s invasion of Poland and disagreed with Chamberlain’s attitude . . . so pro-Nazi is he in sympathy that I would not put him in charge of anything that would bring him into contact with propaganda.’ This was not, of course, direct evidence against Mosley but it was a damning choice of associate.
The authorities’ view was darkened even further by a report of a closed meeting of London District BU officials on 30 January 1940. Mosley had told his audience: ‘Reward and victory are in sight . . . You must bring in new members – not necessarily a large number but a moderate number of reliable men and women who would take their place in the ranks when the time came for the sweep forward, which the movement would make, as their brother parties in other countries had made when their hour of destiny struck.’ After this, Special Branch reported to Sir Alexander Maxwell that the BU was ‘not merely a party advocating an anti-war and anti-Government policy, but a movement whose aim it is to assist the enemy in every way it can’.
fn1 The national press picked up Mosley’s announcement in the 1 December issue of Action that he had been married to Mrs Diana Guinness for just over two years.
fn2 The view of a number of revisionist historians today.
fn3 On Hitler’s death in 1945 they were charged to the Redesdales, who had them brought back to England in 1949.
fn4 The liner sunk, without warning and with massive loss of civilian life, by a U-boat eight hours after the declaration of war.