OSWALD MOSLEY- BRITON, FASCIST, EUROPEAN. By Robert Row. Source : Institute Of Historical Review. The turbulent year 1950 advanced Mosleys thinking again. The communist threat to Europe had lessened as the Marshall Plan put industry on its feet, Stalins blockade of Berlin had failed and, in 1949, the NATO alliance had been formed. Yet if communism had been checked in the West it was sweeping everything before it in the East. China fell to Mao Tse-tung in 1949; events in Vietnam were moving towards the fateful battle of Dien Bien Phu; by 1950 the Korean war had erupted. And the military struggle in Korea had two momentous economic effects. Japan, forbidden at the Potsdam conference ever to become a military power again, now experienced a huge industrial boom by supplying the United Nations forces fighting the communists in Korea. The war gave the Japanese the beginning of their post-war revival and a take-off for their export miracle. From that point they did not look back. However, the other effect was a crisis for Britains Labour government, still trying hard to build socialism in this island while completely at the mercy of the capitalist world outside. The war sent a shock wave of rising commodity prices through that world, to which a social democratic government had tied Britain for doctrinaire reasons, and thus right into the island economy. They had learned nothing from the fall of MacDonald in 1931. Britain, weakened by the war, now suffered a serious payments crisis and an upward spin in the spiral of inflation. Lord Attlee blamed certain external factors for his governments problems. He was right -- but they served to show that all such governments remain at the mercy of international forces they cannot control. None of this surprised Mosley. He had shown where Labours Achilles heel lay twenty years before in his speech of resignation from the MacDonald government. His reaction to such events was always to give a constructive solution, and this time the solution was so far-reaching that all contemporary figures have utterly rejected it; in any case it challenged the whole structure of their international system of trade and finance established five years before at Bretton Woods under such glittering edifices as GATT, the IMF, and the World Bank. (They are not quite so splendid today, as their international system groans beneath world-wide recession and immense debts.) What Mosley proposed, at another great East London meeting in December 1950, was the division of the world into several separate systems, each with a very large part of the world. Each of these economic blocs, he explained in later speeches and writing, would have a big population as its market, adequate raw materials for its industry, and sufficient food. By insulating itself against the shocks of sudden movements in prices (what he called the world cost system) its internal economy would be impervious to such shocks. Each economic bloc should concentrate on solving its own problems; it would be freed from the need to export, or import, since it would have all it needed within its own borders. Within those borders a high standard of life could be built for its own people. Mosley proposed that one such area, or bloc, should be formed from a fully united Europe, including Britain and the former Dominions; America should form another; a third should be formed in Asia around Japan. Had this idea of several continental systems been acted upon thirty years or so ago, todays problem of Japanese laser beam import drives into our markets would not exist: Japans market would be in Asia. Nor would America be talking of a trade war with Europe. Europe, America, and Japan would be living at peace with each other in separate systems with economic areas big enough for all their needs. One might call this autarkic, not interdependent, trilateralism. The danger today is indeed trade war and for the obvious reason: nothing effectively had been done to avert it. Mosleys proposal would have ruled out trade wars; since governments failed to adopt it we can expect the consequences of this failure to act. More importantly, however, the same proposal of creating several large blocs in the world would make more unlikely a shooting war with either of the two communist powers, Russia and China, for Mosley emphasized from the start that no such bloc should interfere with any other, non-communist or communist. What, though, of the men in the Kremlin who are still possessed by the messianic dream of communizing Europe as a step towards their world utopia? True to its character as the restored empire of Ghenghiz Khan, the USSR always looks to further expansion, and a still badly-divided Western Europe is prone to a gradual take-over by the splitting tactics in which the Kremlin excels. Again, anything which weakens NATO or splits America and Europe only strengthens their hand. Further east, their occupation of Afghanistan is undoubtedly a stage for future inroads into Pakistan and India, when the time becomes ripe, or into Iran and the oil-rich Gulf -- always, however, under the guise of peaceful intentions. Churchill, in his days of barnstorming against early Bolshevism, used to speak of containing it by a cordon sanitaire garnished with German bayonets, but matters have gone beyond those simplicities. What is needed to contain the relentless Soviet expansion are Mosleys continental blocs, adequately armed to prevent Red Army incursions, with truly reinvigorated economies and social systems in which the appeal of communism withers, and above all imbued with a political idea far superior to communism. The existence of just three such strong blocs in the world -- Europe, America, and Japan -- would bring the men in the Kremlin hard up against a new reality, sharply reducing the danger of new adventures, even in the stormy Middle East. And then real discussions could be held at the highest level between the leaders of the communist and non-communist powers, to secure an effective peace....Part ten to follow.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 11:21:27 +0000
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