Oswald Mosley

Sir Oswald Mosley was a British politician in the 1920s and 1930s who held fascist beliefs.

Biography

Mosley was the founder of the British Union of Fascists. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)

As a young man, Thomas Edward Hawthorne had once walked a hundred miles to hear Oswald Mosley give a speech in which he denounced the ethnic minorities who were weakening the country. (PROSE: Nightshade)

In December 1936, King Edward VIII planned to dissolve Parliament and replace it with one more loyal to him, with the help of fellow Nazi sympathiser Mosley. The plan was thwarted by the Sixth Doctor, Peri Brown and Winston Churchill. (PROSE: Players)

In 1940, Mosley was imprisoned for advocating the belief that the United Kingdom should ally itself with Germany in World War II. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)

Legacy

Meena Cartwright called the racist Major Philip Kirby "Mosley" because of his views. (AUDIO: The Longest Night)

Alternate timelines

In an alternative timeline in which Germany won the Second World War and proceeded to conquer the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe by 1941, Mosley was released from prison and became Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, replacing the executed Churchill. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus)

In a parallel universe, Mosley was assassinated in 1936, becoming a martyr for the fascist cause. One of his comrades, later to become known as "the Leader", seized the Party leadership and took Britain into a revolution. The Royal Family were among those accused of conspiring in Mosley's assassination and were executed in 1943. By the 1960s the Party was only ever referred to as "the Party", there being no others to confuse it with. Opponents of the regime claimed the Party had no ideology at all, only the desire to take and retain control. (PROSE: I, Alastair).

Behind the scenes

• The Party in I, Alastair may be a more successful version of the New Party, the more ideologically generic political Mosley founded before the BUF. Although the Party in the novel was stated to have been founded in 1932, the same year the BUF was founded, implying the characters believed elaboration was unnecessary as there were no other parties by the time of the novel's setting in 1968.