The 1930s must have been a terrifying time to be alive.

In Italy, Mussolini’s Fascist regime held power while after 1933, Germany succumbed to the horrors of the Third Reich. In Britain too, Sir Oswald Mosley marched his own Blackshirt legions through the streets as the head of the British Union of Fascists, also known as the BUF. At a time when former Prime Minister Lloyd George and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor all spoke approvingly of Hitler, the BUF had the support of William Joyce who would later become the notorious wartime propagandist known as ‘Lord Haw Haw’ and who would be hanged after the war for treason. Tarka the Otter author, Henry Williamson also threw his support behind the BUF. In the Daily Mail, a notorious headline appeared over the editorial, ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!’ In 1936 a deliberately provocative BUF march through an area of London with a high Jewish population escalated into a violent confrontation between fascists, anti-fascist protesters and police at the Battle of Cable Street.

There was a difference, however. Unlike both Italy and Germany, the Fascists never came to power in Britain. The BUF never attracted significant popular support. Britain indeed played a vital role in defeating fascism in the Second World War. Mosley’s movement which he had dug into the family fortune to finance was thus largely a failure. Mosley himself was now widely hated and completely isolated from the political mainstream. In 1940, with the threat of a Nazi invasion deemed very real, Mosley and his second wife, Diana were both deemed a security threat and were placed under house arrest. They remained interred throughout much of the war. This marked the end for both the BUF and a shameful chapter in British history.

20 years before, Mosley (1896-1980) had been a charismatic and glamorous figure. A veteran of the Great War, it is often said that he is the only man who could have been Prime Minister for both the Conservative and Labour parties. He became the youngest Tory MP to take his seat after the post-war 1918 General Election and in 1920 married Cynthia, the daughter of leading Tory Lord Curzon, in a high society wedding attended by King George V and Queen Mary. An aristocrat himself, Mosley was also a compulsive womaniser and was soon having affairs with his wife’s sister and stepmother. By 1924, Mosley had switched sides to the Labour Party, by then enjoying their first spell in government. “Vote Labour, sleep Tory” was Mosley’s private motto.

By 1931, however, Mosley had fallen out with Labour too, frustrated by their reluctance to endorse his radical plans to combat rising unemployment. He left to form his own new party (unimaginatively entitled ‘The New Party’) which soon evolved into the British Union of Fascists. His first wife now dead, Mosley married his mistress, Diana Guinness, a society beauty and a member of the famous Mitford family. This time Hitler himself was guest of honour at the wedding. Diana was herself an unrepentant supporter of Hitler until the end of her long life (she died in 2003, aged 93). Her sister Unity Mitford took things further, shooting herself on the day Britain declared war on Germany in 1939 when she was 25. She was seriously injured, eventually dying nine years later.

Today, when we think of fascism we tend to think almost immediately of the horrific consequences of Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ and nightmarish images of survivors of the Nazi death camps at Auschwitz and Belsen in 1945. But back in the early days, this terrible outcome would have been hard to foresee. Despite this, fascism was characterised by violence, racism, antisemitism and a rejection of freedom, democracy and civil liberties from the outset. Even in those early days its supporters really should have known better.