Fraudulent Fascism: The Attitude of Early British Fascists towards Mosley and the New Party

Despite the now considerable historiography on the life of Sir Oswald Mosley and the policies of the British Union of Fascists, there has been little discussion of how the already established fascist groups responded to Mosley's early career and the evolution of the New Party into a proto-fascist movement. This paper seeks to place the New Party into wider context by exploring how both the early and non-Mosleyite fascists responded to Mosley's political ambitions in the period leading up to, and including, 1932. The author argues that Radical Right reactions to the rise of Mosley and the nature of the New Party exhibited a complex mixture of outright opposition, strong scepticism and cautious ambivalence, but the article also reveals how some on the right eventually shifted their allegiance over to Mosley.