HOW CLOSE WAS CIVIL WAR?

Extracts from "Blackshirt : Sir Oswald Mosely & British Fascism" by Stephen Dorril, pps 404 - 405:

"With the crisis front-page news [on Thursday 3rd December 1936], Mosley was in Liverpool, where he was joined at the Adelphi Hotel by [William] Joyce [BUF Director of Propaganda] and [John] Beckett [BUF Director of Publications], who found him 'in a state of great excitement'. He claimed 'to be in direct communication with the Court. The King was strengthened by the knowledge of the support of his movement, and for this reason would accept Baldwin's resignation and call upon Mosley to form a government. Mosley later admitted that he had been in secret correspondence with Edward. He denied seeing Edward but he had a number of close contacts with the King, such a 'Fruity' Metcalfe [close friend of and equerry to Edward]. There was a feeling within the BUF that 'something was going on and that they were going to achieve power.'

Mosley detailed plans to Joyce and Beckett 'for governing without Parliament.' He 'strode about the room in excitement as he explained that millions of pounds would be available to fight an election in such a cause, and that as Prime Minister he could broadcast as often as he wished. This, he was certain, could not fail to turn the electorate in his favour.' There was then a telephone call and Beckett recalled that when Mosley replaced the receiver 'he turned to us and explained that he had received most important news from the Court. He apologised for speaking in cipher, but said he always used it because his calls were intercepted by the CID'. Beckett thought Mosley's secretiveness schoolboyish but was sure he 'really believed he was on the threshold of great power'.....

and:

"[On 5th December 1936] General Sir Ian Hamilton, former Commander-in-Chief at Gallipoli, who had seen Hitler secretly under cover of British Legion trips to Europe, told Baldwin 'there would be an ex-serviceman's revolution if the King abdicated'. Detective author Anthony Cox ('Francis Iles') heard from military friends of 'a conspiracy of young hotheads, junior captains in the Household Brigade, to take up arms against the Government and for the King and putting the Prime Minister under arrest.' Ceremonial guards outside Buckingham Palace were said to have been issued with live ammunition."

and:

"The King had 'a night of soul searching' [the night of 5th/6th December] about supporting a King's Party. 'In the end, I put out of my mind the thought of challenging the Prime Minister. By making a stand I should have left the scars of civil war'....The King [then] sent messages to Mosley of 'polite thanks for his offers of support' of which he had 'felt unable to take advantage."

and finally:

"The telephone call between Mosley and his royal contact proved to Beckett that the Leader was 'dangerously near the borderline between genius and insanity'. He knew the man [at Court] as 'a dilettante society friend of Mosley's, who lived in as fictitious a world of grandeur as Mosley himself.' Beckett had left Mosley 'convinced that he already believed himself in charge of the nation's affairs'. His 'powers of self-delusion had finally conquered his sanity. He could not realise that nobody except himself and the comical little group of ex-peddlers and humourless ex-officers with whom he was surrounded took him at all seriously'"

Notes:

(1). John Beckett (b.1894 -d.1964), together with William Joyce, left the BUF in 1937 after a falling out with Mosley. They then formed the National Socialist League together, but Beckett subsequently left the NSL in 1938, "disillusioned by Hitler and arguing that Joyce was being too extremist in his public anti-Semitic outbursts."

(2). althought not positively identified, the "man at Court...a dilettante society friend of Mosley's..." is very likely to have been "Fruity" Metcalfe, married to Alexandra Curzon (known in the 1930s as "Baba Blackshirt") but without great wealth, brains or family distinction himself.

(3). standard disclaimer : those reading this Blog for news of the "Very British Civil War" may well be entirely disorientated by this post. Never fear : it clearly refers to an alternative universe, where Edward VIII did not fight for his throne (particularly via his loyal lieutenants in Herefordshire) but instead cravenly abdicated and fled abroad.

1920s advertising poster for the Adelphi Hotel

The dining room of the Adelphi in the early 1940s

1941. Five years after Mosley's machinations at the Adelphi, and Liverpool is under sustained attack
from the Luftwaffe. The Adelphi (in background) has had a near miss.

December 1936. The nightmare of aerial bombardment is  - as yet - only a contingent future,
as Mosley plots an unconstitutional coup in an upstairs suite...