EXPERTS DEBATE HISTORY’S BIGGEST ISSUES
ILLUSTRATION BY HUGH COWLING
By the 1950s, Sir Oswald Mosley’s political career seemed in irreparable tatters. Fronting the antisemitic British Union of Fascists (BUF), and backed by quasi-paramilitary Blackshirt thugs, during the 1930s he had enjoyed a degree of public support. After the outbreak of the Second World War, however, that support turned to widespread hostility. Interned in 1940, for fear he and his followers would form a ‘fifth column’ should Hitler invade Britain, in 1951 he emigrated and left national politics.