Why Fascism? by Edward Conze and Ellen Wilkinson 1935
Most of the discussions about Fascism in Great Britain centre round personalities. Will Sir Oswald Mosley become a danger? Are Lord Trenchard and/or Major Elliot a greater menace to British democracy? But, as we have tried to show, Fascism is not brought into being by this or that leader. It is the result of a condition of high instability of the social system. When economic breakdown becomes a terrifying reality, when to the hunger and despair of the workers is added the ruin of the middle classes, the old formulas hold good no longer. Something new happens – and in a large part of Europe that something has been Fascism. Whether Fascism will become a danger to the democratic liberties of Britain depends not on the eloquence of Sir Oswald Mosley, or the attraction of a new fashion in shirts, but on whether the stability of the British economic system is likely to be threatened seriously in the near future.
Germany and Italy were in the depths of crisis, on the verge of economic chaos, when the Fascists took power. Only such a crisis creates the despair and excitement without which the Fascist propaganda would be completely ineffective. England is not in such a condition – yet. Therefore the appeal of the Fascists is very limited.
Sir Oswald Mosley himself seems quite clear about this. He sees that the only chance the Fascists have of achieving their hopes is in a time of impending catastrophe. There is a certain strength in the way he coolly banks on this, and builds an organisation now, so that a channel will be ready into which he hopes that the despairing middle classes and unemployed can be steered. While all other parties, except the Communists, assume that calamity can be averted by simply not thinking about it, Sir Oswald Mosley makes its possibility the basis of his planning. Are his calculations correct, or is the British economic system so stable that no catastrophe can reasonably be feared in the near future?
The Crisis of British Capitalism: The prosperity of British industry was built on the fact that it developed earliest, and that for a long time it had therefore a natural monopoly in supplying the world with machinery and industrial goods. This natural and accidental monopoly has now gone. As was inevitable, the other nations have built up their own industry. The mining areas lose their export markets because Belgium, France, Russia and Turkey have begun to produce their own coal, or find satisfactory substitutes. The tin-plate trade of South Wales, the iron and steel industry, the machine industries, now meet competitors of equal or greater efficiency. Lancashire loses much of its Eastern market to Indian and Japanese producers. These facts, for a long time considered as accidental and temporary results of the war, are now seen to be permanent. Their implication is slowly penetrating even the minds of the most conservative British manufacturers and their operatives. The population of Britain increased from 11 million in 1800 to 44 million now on the basis of a monopoly trade which is losing ground day by day, and year by year. A quite considerable proportion of this population has now to be maintained out of reserves – and that cannot continue indefinitely.
The British public, which was growing used to the gradual decline of Britain’s world trade, has recently been startled by the sudden emergence of Japan as a serious competitor. Export offices have been opened by Japanese firms in the pet preserves of Britain, in the East Indies, in South America. There is the proposal to open another in Vienna. The Japanese wages are one-seventh of the English in the textile industry, one-seventh to one-third in chemicals, and one-fifth to two-sevenths in rubber manufacture. The working day is from 25 to 50 per cent longer. What matters even more is that the Japanese have shown themselves very efficient organisers and salesmen, and have not scrupled to imitate treasured trademarks with international reputations.
For the time being, the depreciation of the pound and the internal difficulties of her chief competitors have covered the difficulties of England, but there can be no doubt that Britain is being forced on to the defensive. The speed of this decline, and the point at which it will be felt in the form of serious reductions in the standard of life in Britain, can only be conjectured. In his book, The Coming Struggle for Power, John Strachey has given a survey of the factors which must be taken into consideration. They need not be repeated here because, brilliant as are his reflections, they amount only to showing that no one can know anything definite about the problem. The only thing which we feel able to say with certainty is that the pace at which these difficulties are felt by the population as a whole will determine the form in which Fascism is likely to come in this country.
If there is a catastrophic breakdown in the economic system, a sudden shrinkage of the resources of the middle classes, the more violent form of Fascism, the Mosley form in fact, will have its chance. But if the decline proceeds quietly, almost imperceptibly, so that the standard of living of the workers need only be reduced gradually, then the British ruling class will be able to introduce the Elliot – Macmillan form of Fascism, which can then do what is necessary with much less violence and suppression, and with the safeguarding of the forms of many of the traditional liberties of this country.
Elliot-Fascism would still have a place for the Blackshirts. They would be there in case of emergency, as a necessary reserve. Enthusiasm, fresh methods of propaganda and appeal to youth are particularly needed by a conservatism that, as its best minds recognise, has dropped too much into the hands of the old. All political parties are now feeling the loss of the war generation to bridge this gulf between the old and the new generations.
The BUF is doing this work very well for the Tory Party, even while they denounce Lord Stonehaven and his Conservative organisation. The Blackshirts are also extremely useful to the Elliots and Macmillans. They frighten the Labour Party into the acceptance of a ‘safe middle’. That gospel of the lesser evil which has been shown so often to lead to the ‘greater devil’ can be preached with much better effect when the ‘devil’ is incarnate, and marching through the streets. If war should come, and if there was threat of a general strike by the trade unions, a vigorous Blackshirt movement would be invaluable as drummers for the war party, and would be much more convenient for authority than Sir William Joynson-Hicks’ Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies was during the General Strike in 1926. Not having any official status it could be given a much freer hand to make itself objectionable to the strikers and could be safely repudiated if any regrettable excesses were committed in the process.
Whatever the kind of Fascism Britain may eventually have, the decision between Sir Oswald Mosley and Mr Elliot, between the vigorous, brutal offensive Fascism and the accommodating, fitting-into-the-national-tradition kind, will not be decided in England. That will be decided in the areas of British exploitation. If the resources of the Empire should no longer be available on the scale to which Britain has become accustomed, and which have formed the basis of the higher standard of life of her workers as well as of her upper classes, the middle-classes would be badly hit. The trade unions also would lose the basis of their reformist policy which has been built on the veiled acceptance of the exploitation of less industrially developed races.
The middle-class demand for a ‘strong hand’ for organisation which they hope will give them the advantages of a planned state without affecting their better position in it would become vocal. The influence of the trade-union leaders will be weakened, and the workers, as in Germany and Italy, will tend to favour the Communist alternative. Both these conditions – a badly frightened middle class, and a serious Communist danger – are indispensable to the victory of the Mosley type of Fascism. A ‘Communist danger’ – the bogy of the middle class – does not depend on the actual numerical strength of the Communist Party.
The Middle Classes: What are the prospects for such a ruin of the middle classes in Britain as is contemplated in such a view of possible catastrophe? The depreciation of the pound sterling was compensated for by the fall in prices all over the world, owing to the continuance of the depression. But when, or if, the depression lifts, even though temporarily, the process [1] on the world market will rise. This must affect prices in England, with its consequent pressure on those who have stationary incomes or salaries.
On the other hand, the custom of having £1 shares in Britain, as compared with a minimum share of 1000 marks in Germany – a lot for a small man to risk – has distributed investments very widely among the British middle classes of even modest resources. Only partly do these go down with the depreciation of gold. In fact many of such shares have practically gold value and rise with it, which eases the effects of depreciation.
The clerical and administrative salariat has already suffered severely. Salaries have been cut by 20 to 30 per cent. Unemployment through mechanisation and the further introduction of female labour has been very great. Rationalisation and amalgamation, as well as bankruptcies owing to the depression, have created very serious unemployment among the administrative grades and technicians, even those who had been in enjoyment of high salaries. The decay in British shipping has added to the distress. India and other parts of the Empire no longer hold out the hope of honourable and well-paid careers to the sons of the upper middle class. Unemployment among university students finishing their courses is already approaching a calamitous figure – and its effect is seen in the growth of the Communist organisations among undergraduates.
This ‘black-coated unemployment’ has already been the subject of a good deal of public and private discussion in government circles. That it has not yet reached a point where it becomes dangerous is of course due to the superior resources of middle-class families. Some relation or friend comes to the rescue in a way that is not possible in the working class, where all are so near the limit of subsistence. But these resources are not limitless – in some sections they are already near the point of exhaustion. And consequently the discontent of the middle classes is beginning to make itself felt. They crowd to Olympia, dress in black shirts, and find in Sir Oswald Mosley’s aristocratic bearing and eloquence the expression of well-bred discontent. A few thousands at most just now, while the country is in a period that, like 1929, may soon be looked back upon as one of the last periods of comparative prosperity. The British people is learning to be modest as to what it considers ‘prosperity’. But a new crisis, a sudden and violent change in middle-class conditions, and who can doubt that those few thousands would soon be tens of thousands. Mosley’s chance would then have come.
Discontent With the Socialists: In each country where Fascism has succeeded, it has grown because of the failure of what in this country is called the Labour Party, and what on the Continent is meant by Social-Democracy. The Socialists have to be given their chance, if not the chance to do something, at least the chance to prove disappointing to their followers. In Italy they had the chance to get the power, and lost it. In Germany the power dropped into their arms almost unasked. But this power was apparently not sufficient to warrant their taking steps towards social reorganisation – though they issued placards to assure the population that ‘Socialism Has Come’.
It cannot be entirely chance that Mussolini was originally a leading Socialist, that Pilsudski also was one, that Sir Oswald Mosley still claims to be one, and has played a not inconsiderable part in at least one Socialist government. Hitler, as he states in his book, was in his youth a follower of Social-Democratic and trade-unionist ideas, though never actually a member of either.
In England, the Labour Party has been twice in office. Both times they have been unfortunate. The Socialist and Labour governments in all countries have shown a remarkable talent for being burdened with awkward situations. The German Social-Democrats allowed themselves to be burdened with the responsibility of the Treaty of Versailles, which the generals allowed them to sign. A Social-Democrat, Dr Hilferding, was by the same coincidence the Minister of Finance – only for a short time, but that short time gave him the responsibility of the inflation policy which ruined the middle class and piled up their hatred against the Socialists.
They were even burdened with the responsibility for the last crisis before the smash, for a Social-Democrat, Hermann Müller, was Chancellor when it began. By some chance also the Labour Party was in office when the depression began. The Observer was moved soon after that election to bewail that the Tory leaders had almost worked hard to lose it. Even during this ‘economic blizzard’ the Labour Party clung to office, thus accepting responsibility for something over which they had no more control than over the weather, instead of going out on any of the various occasions that were offered to them, and leaving the capitalists to clear up the muddle which capitalism had created in the economic affairs of the world. Always they optimistically hoped that the tide would turn. It did. But by that time, they had been manoeuvred out of office by a crisis which not only put the whole blame for the situation on the Labour Party, but which used their own leaders to proclaim to the world that the Labour Party was responsible for what had occurred.
But what did the Labour Party do when it was in office in the way of Socialist reconstruction? A few things were attempted. There were excellent reasons why more could not be done. A party is not judged by its excuses, but by its actions. The German Social-Democrats had the most excellent collection of excuses why they did not introduce any Socialist reconstruction when they had the power. But that did not save them from annihilation.
If the Labour Party fails next time, then the events of 1931 will be repeated, but in a manner much more finally devastating to the Labour Party, for the middle classes will then have lost all fear of organised labour, and will take a hand in settling the question on their own lines. Germany and Italy have shown the general indication of what those lines are likely to be – nor will they then meet with the opposition from the workers that they would have had to face had there been no Labour governments.
Already we can see how much the disappointment with the official Labour leadership has contributed to the creation of a Fascist movement. It seems incredible that the Labour government could have found so little use for Mosley’s abilities when he was a loyal member of the party. Overweening ambition, or for that matter personal conceit, was not peculiar only to Mosley on the front bench. Many of his followers and a surprising number of headquarters’ staff of the Fascists were members of the Labour Party or the Independent Labour Party. The district organiser for South Wales was even a member of the Communist Party. It is, of course, possible to say that these people simply turn Fascist in order to get a job, but what of that, if their propaganda is effective, and if they can use the record of the Labour Party in office as their best way of getting a foothold among the discontented workers? In face of what they can represent as the inactivity of the Labour Party, they demand action – even Socialist action. The Labour Party is making a fetish of democracy – appealing to government and to the workers to preserve democratic forms at all costs. But it is not meeting the Fascists on their own ground and explaining to the workers what the Corporate State they are demanding really means, why it is the very antithesis of Socialism. Some of its organisations even discourage debates with Fascists.
Mere abuse of the Fascists as reactionaries is not enough. Labour Party and trade-union officials even have said to the writers: ‘When I listened to the Fascist speakers I found not much to object to, and a great deal with which I heartily agreed.’ This reminds us of similar conversations in Germany, the Nazi saying to the Communist: ‘I think your programme quite excellent, but your Russian Jews will not allow you to carry it through.’ The Communist saying to the Nazi: ‘I agree with your criticism of the “system” and with most of your demands, but your capitalists will not allow you to put through your programme.’
The Fascist movement produces a programme which, taken at its face value, is acceptable in its main points to Socialists. The Socialist workers remain suspicious for a long time, as they did in both Italy and Germany. Only after the workers have become disappointed with their own parties, only when these parties have shown by their actions, either that they do not want to achieve Socialism (as the Social-Democratic Party in Germany), or that they are unable to deliver it to the workers, and make no progress in securing any radical changes, only then do the workers tend to go Fascist, or at least tolerate them.
That ‘National Character’: In face of these facts, it is simply absurd to attempt to rest on the cushion of the English national character – the boarding-house comfort that ‘Englishmen don’t do such things’.
That national character could, to take the most famous illustrations, avoid imitating the French Revolution only because the French people had imitated what the English had done already 130 years ago. German Liberals and Socialists, from 1927 onwards, used to take comfort in face of the onward march of Fascism, in the fact that a dictatorship could only exist in countries which had a high ratio of illiterates – as in Russia, Poland, Italy, Spain, Greece, Hungary, Turkey, etc.
Italian Fascism was alien to the German national character. Fascism has been adapted. The Fascists in Britain are in the imitative stage. They copy salutes and shirts and songs. As soon as theirs is a mass movement, Fascism in Britain will be British Fascism – and all the pet prejudices of the national character will be suitably incorporated. The Black-and-Tans were British of the British, and rejoiced in their super-patriotism.
What we think of as the British character has developed under circumstances of considerable economic comfort. How long those qualities which we like to think of as essentially British would survive economic collapse, no one can know as yet. The nerves of no other nation have been able to stand that strain unperturbed. It is too early yet to say whether the British national character would come through the ordeal any differently.
The events of the period about 1640, when Cromwell and his Ironsides acted in a manner which was at times not so very different from that of Herr Hitler, but which are carefully glossed over in most of the history books, may give some clue to what might happen. John Lilburne and Robert Lockyer of the Levellers, so promptly suppressed by Cromwell, might be able to give Mr Harry Pollitt and Mr James Maxton some hints as to what they may expect when the middle classes of England are engaged in the settlement of political accounts.
1. The word ‘prices’ seems to be meant here – MIA.