BUF Activism
In 1934 Moran was sent by Oswald Mosley to south Wales due in large part to his mining background, following advice from J.F.C. Fuller that the BUF should target areas by sending organisers that the local population could identify with. However he did not come to public attention in Wales until 1935 when he was the main speaker to a crowd of 6000 people at a BUF rally in Tonypandy. Moran did not get the opportunity to say much, however, as a sizeable group in the crowd had come to oppose the rally and he and his fellow speakers were stoned off the stage. It marked the end of the BUF as a force in Wales. By 1937 Moran was moved away from the area and instead sent to Northampton.
Moran took part in the Battle of Cable Street the following year and had to have his head treated for cuts after the event. Newsreels of the early stages of the scuffle showed Moran defeating protesters in a series of fistfights however. He then became one of the last BUF election candidates when he stood in a 1940 by-election in the Silvertown division of West Ham. In what was a safe Labour seat, Moran campaigned on a platform calling for an immediate peace with Nazi Germany, a policy which saw him win only 115 votes.
Following the first round of Defence Regulation 18B internments Moran, whom Diana Mosley continued to pay a wage to, took over as effective leader of the BUF. Eventually he was detained under the regulation himself. Held in a camp on the Isle of Man, Moran continued his leadership role by setting up a camp office in an attempt to keep the BUF running, a move largely ignored by the guards.
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