Oswald Mosley - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

Mosley's rising influence before the Second World War provoked alarm and reaction against would-be populist dictators by major cultural figures of the time: Aldous Huxley's Point Counter Point features Everard Webley, a character similar to Mosley (though published before Mosley left the Labour Party), while "Sir Roderick Spode" in P.G. Wodehouse's novels parodies Mosley.

Mosley's attempts to promote his views after the war resulted in continued critical reaction:

• In 2006 he was selected by the BBC History Magazine as the 20th century's worst Briton.

• In 1997 Channel 4 produced a mini-series about him called Mosley, starring Jonathan Cake.

• The indulgent tone of Mosley's newspaper obituaries was lampooned by the satirical television programme Not The Nine O'Clock News in the song "Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley" by Peter Brewis, which featured Mel Smith, Pamela Stephenson and Griff Rhys Jones all dressed as Nazi Skinheads, singing his eulogy and reading some of the more positive remarks of newspapers from all sides of the political spectrum, including The Times and The Guardian.

• A semi-fictionalized depiction of Mosley, the BUF, and Battle of Cable Street appears in the 2010 BBC Wales revival of Upstairs, Downstairs, which is set in 1936.

• The original version of the Elvis Costello song "Less Than Zero" is an attack on Mosley and his politics, but US listeners assumed that the "Mr Oswald" referred to was Lee Harvey Oswald and Costello obligingly wrote an alternative lyric in which it was.

Mosley appears in alternative history stories:

• In Harry Turtledove's Southern Victory Series of alternative history novels, Mosley and Winston Churchill lead a fascist Britain after the Allies lose the First World War. Mosley is also referred to in Turtledove's Colonization trilogy, where MP Mosley introduces legislation to revoke the citizenship of the country's Jews; and in Turtledove's novel, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, where he was given control of Britain after the Nazis won World War II.

• In the 1966 film It Happened Here, which depicts a Nazi-occupied Britain in the mid-1940s, Mosley is never mentioned by name, but a British fascist leader strongly resembling Mosley is shown in faux documentary footage from the 1930s, and Mosley's portrait can be seen alongside Hitler's in government offices. The fictional "Immediate Action Organisation" in the film also seems to be inspired by Mosley's British Union of Fascists, with members referred to as "blackshirts" and the symbol of the BUF appearing on their uniforms.

• In Guy Walters's alternative history novel The Leader, Mosley has taken power as "The Leader" of Great Britain in 1937. King Edward VIII is still on the throne, Winston Churchill is a prisoner on the Isle of Man, and Prime Minister Mosley is conspiring with Adolf Hitler about the fate of Britain's Jewish population.

• In Philip Roth's alternative history novel The Plot Against America, a secret pact between President Charles Lindbergh and Hitler is said to include an agreement to impose Mosley as the ruler of a German-occupied Britain with America's blessing after a sham attempt by Lindbergh to convince Churchill to negotiate peace with Hitler would fail.

• In Kim Newman's alternative history novel The Bloody Red Baron, Mosley is shot down and killed in 1918 by Erich von Stalhein (from the Biggles series by W. E. Johns), with a character later commenting that "a career has been ended before it was begun."

• Mosley becomes Prime Minister after the Martian invasion of 1938 is defeated in Superman: War of the Worlds.

• In the alternate history novel Dominion by C. J. Sansom, World War II ended in June 1940 when the British government, under the leadership of the Prime Minister Lord Halifax, signed a peace treaty with Nazi Germany in Berlin. In November 1952, Mosley was serving as Home Secretary in the cabinet of Lord Beaverbrook, who led a coalition government which consisted of the pro-Treaty factions of the Conservatives and Labour as well as the BUF.