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Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Peaking Yona Show.
Thomas is back part two of the life and the
thought of was he sir, did he ever becomes Sir
Oswald Mosley.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we'll get into Yeah, this his his because
claiming nobility was complicated. We got into some of that
in the first episode. I'll get into that and the conclusion, which,
among other things, all Hyplu sends relating to his biographical data.
Speaker 1: So where are we gonna uh, where are we jumping
off today?
Speaker 2: The key to understanding Mosey's political trajectory is World War One.
His experience was more like that of Adolph Hitler than
people will acknowledge. His time under fire was a lot
more brief and unsurprisingly, there's this really insipid tendency of
English historians to try and throw shade on Moseley's war record,
which ridiculous, you know, But I'll get into. Moseley witnessed
from the air as an aerial observer with the Royal
Flying Corps the first chemical weapons assault of the war
at Eprah in nineteen fifteen, and about ten kilometers from
where Moseley was on that day was Adolf Hitler on
the ground, you know, with the opposing element. It's fascinating.
But you know, we talked about in the first episode
Moses Mosley's lineage the people that they captured as allies
over generations tended to be military officers in Church of England,
clergy people and adjacent elements, you know, which, like I
made the point that the consummately middle class resume in
the in the UK sense, not in the American sense.
And Mosley himself, Mosey was mostly self educated, you know,
and for an aristocrat, even one who had kind of
an unusual pedigree like he did, that was pretty unusual.
And he essentially educated himself in politics when he was convalescing,
you know, he didn't he didn't have a discretely identifiable
political psychology prior to really the conclusion of the of
the Warriors, and why he was this young prodigy of
parliamentarian and how he got who encouraged in that direction
is is interesting because it was it was one of
Churchill's cronies. Not because Churchill and the organization around him
like looked favorably upon Moseley. It was it very much
showed the machiavellian politicking and they wanted they wanted him
to run on the Liberal ticket, hoping that the Lib
Dems could split what was it burgaining consensus among labor,
you know, and and the Labor Party had a lot
of momentum then the immediate aftermath of the Great War. But
that's about upset the scope. But we're gonna get into
Moses early his adolescens in early adulthood here because that's
essential and I think more he's an important person it
and should be for anybody. It's philosophically oriented towards the right,
you know, and people should become competent in the biographies
of these people and what sorts of ideological tendencies they
represent and what they're the standard bearers of. So I
spend more time in that kind of thing than some historians.
But uh, you know, Moseley grew up without a father.
Really his father was not a good man, and Moseley
unfortunately emulated a lot of his vices. Mosey really liked
violence as a young guy, and he was narrinated his
military education that was very much encouraged, you know, like militarism.
It's like the scare word, you know, like militarism, and
that if people talk about the culture of the Kaiser
right like, oh, it was steeped in this kind of
like toxic militarism. That's the way it was everywhere on
the continent as well as the UK, you know, and
part of this really, you know, from after Disraeli's tenure onward,
a lot of this was kind of cultivated, like we've
talked about another series, owing it parts to the rudderlessness
of the of the empire and the need for kind
of a coherent polestar around which the orient policy. But
it's also it's just kind of like violence at scale
and martial impulses were just in the zeitgeist, you know,
and Moles weren't swept up in that. But I think
it was probably uniquely susceptible. And I'm not trying to
play you know, dollar store psychologists, but you know, Mosley's
the marriage many his parents had essentially been breaking down
from the time Mosley came out of the shoot. You know,
his father was literally absent when he was born. He
sent out a bunch of telegrams, you know, like a
feusive we uh, you know, gushing over the fact that
his wife had given birth to an air But he
he didn't really have any interest in in the actual
you know, an investment required to be a parent, you know,
psychically or emotionally. He was he was a degenerative woman,
eizer like gambler, brawler, you know. And by and Moseley's mom, Maud,
she was this really stately looking woman. She was about
five ten, I mean it was just still like very
tall for a lady. But in those days, you know,
that was highly unusual. She was a very pious believer,
you know. Uh she she took ther her faith seriously,
you know, she she very much held the family together.
And uh, Mosley's grandfather, his maternal grandfather, was kind of
like his surrogate dad. And while the uh moses own
father like his his well his own father, uh like
like thought very poorly of him and the way he
treated his family. So Mosey's grandfather kind of stepped in,
uh as much as he could to be his father figure,
you know. And by nineteen oh one, when Moseley himself
was five and Maud was very pregnant with Mosley's younger brother, Edward,
I know Edward was already born nineteen oh one, Yeah,
I think he was about two years old. So like Toddler,
Edward was born in eighteen ninety nine. But uh Mad
finally left, you know, like enough was enough, and the
the you know, the gossip in those days around a
philandering husband, especially for somebody who's you know, admittedly the
Mosleys were we're not conventional aristocrat, but they had a
enough of a public profile that this was a gross embarrassment,
you know, so it uh, you know, Maud separated when
when Mosey was a very small boy, you know, in
this uh, even with you know, a maternal influence in
his life, like especially that generation and especially considering their station,
this had had a profound effect on Moseley and that
I've found in my own life. I mean, this is anecdotal,
but I mean all the life is anecdotal. Like men
who developed under similar conditions with an absentee father like that,
they tend to be very uncompromising. I've noticed, okay, but uh,
you know, mostly was very devoted to his mom, but
not in like a not not in a contentable way,
but you know, in a way that was probably somewhat
unusual for Anglophone people like we Anglo Protestant people, you know,
Germanic s specifically, you know Anglos, we're a very patriarchal culture.
And that's something that I think a lot of people
don't really understand from without and that's one of the
reasons for the tenor of discourse, like cultural discourse of
a punitive nature in America. That's so, I mean mostly
was something of an outlier like I. And why do
I emphasize this not just because it's I enjoyed speculating
on people's psychology, you're just because it's it's trivia. But
Moseley's detractors and even some people should know better, they
cast him as kind of like, oh, he was this
lesser aristocrat who, owing to declining fortunes when he reached
the agent majority, became a fascist. And that's like lazy
thing for all all kinds of reasons. And I don't
really think it tracks even with more traditional personages, but
or more conventional personages, but in Mosey's case, he was
very much an outlier, you know, and the uh owing
to Moses' grandfather being his substitute parent, though especially during
his trials and formative years, he was a very uncompromising guy.
Morals tradition kind of Marshall ethos. You know, you're you're
a nobleman, you know what, however alienated we might be
from London and from the house to lords, you're a
nobleman where the vanguard. We're the ones who you know,
quashed the the worrying class traders in eighteen forty eight.
You know, we're the ones who are like the guardians
of the race and the faith of the empire, you know.
And that's something mostly internalized very much, you know, and
being raised by grandparents always, especially in the twentieth and
twenty first centuries, when there's you know, generational divisions or
a real thing that that'll put you. I think in
some ways that puts men like in better stead to
understand their historical situated in this, you know, if they
are people who are thoughtful in that regard. But it
also it's it's it's very much indicates a different formative
experience between a child and their and their parent figure,
particularly their father figure. They're like, their their values are
going to be out of step with most of their peers. Okay,
and uh that was very much the case with mostly
you know, it wasn't he was a natural leader and
people were attracted to him, but he didn't he didn't
fit in with boys his own age, even of his
own even if who had class and station in common
with him, you know, And I think all these things
kind of conspired for that, you know, in the this
kind of atmosphere of uh, this kind of atmosphere of
strife within the family, within the paternal lineage, that had
to have that had to have brought an intolerance for
certain kinds of behaviors and dispositions. And most even I
know what did how could it not? And despite mostly
his own problems with like sexuality and like womanizing and
stuff he had, he had very very little tolerance for
what he perceived his weakness in the ranks of his
own men. Okay, and and in a way that was
above and beyond what a political soldier should you know,
adopt as as a as a standing doctrine. Mostly he uh.
He attended what was considered then about the best English
prep school, West Downs. It was run by a guy
named Lionel Helbert. I mean, that's that's not like a
schoolmaster name, like I don't know, I don't know what
it is. But he he was at West Downs with
the son the scions of a bunch of military families.
One of his classmates was John Sinclair, who went on
to be the chief at M. I six. Mosy was
remembered by people his classmates, including Sinclair as being incredibly bright,
but you know, had basically knowing for some schoolwork, you know.
He uh, he was interested in his own kind of
fascinations again, like very much that get off Hitler, you know,
who also had an incredibly contentious relationship with his father,
who is a real bully, you know, in the pure sense.
And of course Hitler, the parish priest and one of
his history teachers at his elementary school kind of took
him under their wing, as you know, his kind of
stand in eternal figures. But you know what an early
indicator of Mosley's trajectory was he the estab's reputation as
being about the best debater in the school, you know,
and he could basically wrongfoot anybody in these kinds of
discursive exercises and make them look stupid, you know. And
in the UK, the reason why question time remains a thing,
even as deteriorated as the culture is across the pond,
is being competent in in in letters and be incompetent
in that kind of you know, combative verbal advocacy. I mean,
that's that's something like every every Englishman of of any
station is supposed to excel at you know, and uh
mostly was second to none. I've told people that they
should watch. There's a lot of film a Mosely, and
a lot of it's been restored and it's pretty easy
to find, Unlike unlike some uh, unlike some footage from
the era and unlike you know, a lot of footage
that's you know, owing to the kind of hegemony of
the cloud of proverbially speaking, you know, a lot of
this stuff is kind of being censored and just by
being like redacted. But there's there remains this day a
lot of Mosley's stuff. And you know, Mosley was uh.
I think he was about out of the entire coterie
of of kind of a radicals, you know, both on
the right and the left. I think he was about
the best public speaker that includes that OFLF Hitler. I
mean Hitler's uh, Hitler's energy and his like messianic uh
sort of mystique gave Hitler a kind of gravitas that
mostly didn't have what you're talking about in terms of
like pure command of the language and a man who's
kind of like a pure politician and kind of like
the Greaco Roman sense. You know, I don't I don't
mean in the majorative sense, you know, that that's mostly
you know, and there's a there's a profundity and an
exciting energy to mostly speeches that don't resort to like
idiotic soaring language and a lot of these things that
everything else. I mean, it's not of the fact that
stuff comes off as stupid and puerile. It's just it's
just not suited to the English languages. Doesn't suit that,
you know. And mostly some mostly speeches are better than others,
but none are are subpar, you know, So I strongly
suggest people taking as much of that as they can. Helbert,
the headmaster, he was very much, uh he very much
sought to inundate the the student body with a kind
of strong communitarian tradition, and he like bordered on like
blood and soil kind of stuff, you know. Ralph Gardiner,
who uh later became an like an English National Socialist,
he recalled that Helbert was like a hero to him
and a lot of the boys at the school, you know,
and he he without directly saying it, it was clear
he was kind of suggesting that Helbert very much kind
of inundated the boys with the values that later, you know,
made himself a national socialist, he said, Helbert wanted every
He felt that every man and woman, you know, had
to abide what was their own peculiar destiny according to
the laws of you know, not just character and spirit,
you know, about according to their you know, kind of
like racial destinyan things and historical situated in this, you know.
And he he tried to, He tried to inundate the
boys with a kind of like patriotic fervor, you know,
but not in some superficial way. You know. It was
bound up with being an Englishman, being of a certain
class and station, having certain responsibilities, you know, viewing yourself
and like your race as as you know, the best,
but also that containing certain moral obligations to other people,
you know, within you know, the folk community, but also
just in generally, you know, a kind of noblest oblige
for a population providing over an empire, you know. And uh,
most later in life he most it was like a
huge prankster, like he do mean spirited stuff to his ops,
but like to his friends and comrades, the men under
his command, you know. He one of the reasons people
liked him is because like he'd break up sober moments
by doing like funny shit, and apparently that was like
Headmaster Helbert, Apparently that was like something that according to
a garden air like that that was something that mostly
had gotten from him, you know, which I find that
gonything interesting that just because it's humanizing, but that that
tells you something about the person, like stuff about like
a great man's sense of humor, like what kind of
women he liked. Like that's it's it's not just trivia,
you know. I mean I realized I probably got a
a stronger fascination with this than people who are engaged
in you know, kind of like an obsessive, obsessive study
of history. But I maintain it's important. Mosley's Secondary School,
uh was a Winchester They had been founded uh initially
as a monastic institution in the fourteenth century. It uh
by the twentieth century particularly, you know, this was kind
of the this kind of the peak of the progressive era,
like a tail end in the UK like public secondary school,
and it kind of becomes this like revered ideal, you know.
And it was part of that was despite uh, you know,
from the Disraeli from Disraeli's tenure on or Disraeli himself
wasn't particularly Germanophobic, but from that period onward, there was
this tendency to talk about, you know, the kaiser Reich
like it was lacking in every way compared to the
UK in cultural terms. You know, there was a suggestion
it was actually culturally impoverished. Well I mean that that
that that came from a basic from a place of
basic anxiety, okay, and the Bismarckian like public education system
in some ways the British were trying to emulate that,
you know, but with but while insinuating their own kind
of like characteristics into it, and obviously like very much
including stuff suggestive of of you know, what they viewed
as their you know, kind of imperial mandate, which of course,
uh you know, had a had a had a had
a providential origin according to the whole kind of pastiche
of influences that made up the late British umpires mythologies.
But the uh Eton, Harrow and Winchester, they were considered
it be like the top like public schools. Okay. The
curriculum was loyalty, honor, chivalry, uh, faith in Christ, patriotism,
sportsmanship and competence and physical pursuits and above all, you know,
like leadership, particularly owing to the era with an eye
for military command, you know, because again, not only was
this not the exclusive domain of continental and specifically Teutonic people,
but this was truly a global phenomenon. Okay, there was
there was war and rumors of war on the minds
and lips of men from east to west and quite
literally in the air. Okay. Mosley also in the fifties,
especially when he was staging his comeback, and he obviously
this was like the nascent era of television and one
of the favorite ways to try and rook then, uh,
you know, elderly Moldy was to these like left wing journals,
you know, to say like, well, obviously you know at
these at these institutions that you know, we now know
we're inundating people with the wrong ideas. This is where
you learned anti Semitism, you know, and something mostly would
be kind of flippant about it, you know, and he
said one time, well, there's a whimsical brutality in the
English character, you know, ha ha ha, And uh, it's
probably not so different from the way I answer questions
later to the same topic, because it's a stupid question,
and it's something that no self respecting man like lets
himself be chickmated by. But there wasn't a counterpart of
Julius Striker, the Sturmmer type anti Jewish media or kind
of subcultural sentiment in the UK. But there is this,
there's a basic understanding in before you know, Churchill's tru
ascendency that you know, Disraeli was an outlier, like no
Jew is truly an Englishman, you know, and that should
be that should be obvious to anybody who knows the culture.
But uh, this idea that Moseley somehow developed this like
unique hostility to Jews and Jewelry doesn't really track. And uh,
in fact, Moseley he was laying ambassed by a lot
of people on the right as being you know, soft
on the question you know lately. When I say lately,
I mean past like thirty years, okay, of coming an
historical time, you know how the English maybe you don't know.
I didn't know that until I went there like years
and years back. Speaking of ancient history, there's these like
little circular plaques they almost look like plates or something.
They're like these like un obtrusive like markers, and in
the UK they put him on historical sites, you know,
like I'll be like, oh this was you know, Benjamin
Disraeli's like childhood school or on this spot, you know,
like this happened. They've got one that I think went
up in the late nineties commemorating the quote Battle of
Cable Street. That was the b UF March where they
brawled with a constellation of of enemies including uh, you know,
a mob of I think we were under the banner
of the Jewish war veterans or something, because those a
traditionally Jewish section of London. And so this is I
held out as you know, all these Nazi brutes went
to like Pogram, you know, the Jews of London. But
you know, they got they got fucked. They were they
were beaten back by this got a rainbow coalition of
people who realized that's not an international character, Like that's
a weird way to come at the BUF, because they
really weren't like, don't get me wrong, the b UF
absolutely was, uh was, you know, favorable to the German
Reich and and they certainly viewed they certainly viewed Jews
as the enemies of the Empire. In political terms, like
mostly he didn't have some like racial lives view of Jews,
but like holding Mosey in the buf out is kind
of like the mortal enemy of English jewelry is kind
of strange. But I think it owes more to the
illiteracy of you know, the body politic as well as
the you know, I mean, the the academ has been
nakedly politicized in the UK, just like hear, you know,
since since the New Deal slash Churchill era. But I
I think it's also mean it's like a basic ignorance.
But you know that uh that forget that was too
t intidential. But uh, the uh mostly was very much
a Christian uh during this period. And this is significant
and I'm gonna get into what I mean by this
in a minute. Mostly uh he became very interested in
spiritualism and theosophy and even some aerosofty when he was convalescing.
He uh he he read a lot of the stuff
that came to like inform people like Savitri Debbie later on,
and things mostly openly acknowledged that he felt caught between
like a pious belief and you know, uh, the kind
of Anglophone interpretation of the faith and legitimate paganism, and
this kind of like liminal phenomenon in the Carl Jasper's
and Youngie incidents of being caught between historical imperatives and
the ancient past informing the present in critical ways, and
this kind of weakening of the barrier of reason between
what is actual historical memory, what is myth? What is
a matter of faith? What is a historical you know occurrence.
Nowhere is this greater felt than in England. And C. S.
Lewis wrote about this, okay, mostly embodied the tendency to
a t. And if you want to understand true English fashion,
it comes from a different place than German national socialism
or like Spanish cynicalism or you know, Italian fascism, you know,
I mean in the case of the German Reich. Yes,
it very much. It very much came from what Nody
called fear of practical transcendence, and that has a liminal implication.
But it's not it's not really the same thing, okay.
And I make this point not to say respect Mosley,
and in a lot of ways I modeled myself on him,
but because this is key and it mosty did not
gravitate to fascism along to some like fattishness, like nor
did he view it as some sort of skin one
takes on metaphorically speaking, you know, for pragmatic reasons or
to combat you know, the opposing tendency of communism or
anything like that. This is very like this is the
very like autoa thighs like mode of fascism that Mosley developed,
you know, And that's why that's something that owes to
his staying power in the public mind. Because guys who
like third or eight, guys who tried to bandwagon on
the right, you know and model themselves on Eadolf Hitler
or something, those guys were a diamond doesn't and like
nobody followed them, and nobody thought that they were serious people,
and nobody even remembers them. You know. Like what sets
Mosley apart, you know, it's that Mosley wasn't prime minister.
I mean Moseley didn't you know it for a man
who I mean, yeah, he was a significant political figure,
but like so is Ramsey McDonald, Okay, And like there's
not like volumes written on Ramsey McDonald, who was prime
I think the point stands, you know, but Mosley during
this time you know, Moseley's mom and a single mother.
Moseley's father, who was still quite wealthy, but was basically
you know, he absent in every sense, including in terms
of you know, any any inclination of vibe material assistance.
Moses's mom was struggling to meet the tuition demands, you know,
just like the expenses of you know, Mosey's education. His
grandfather set up a trust fund for the boys, Moseley
and his brother, Edward Moseley. Something that helped him was
h he took up boxing, and he became a very
good boxer. You know, at fifteen, he was fraordible enough
that he was beating guys you know, two and three
years older than him. You know, he had a he
had a he had a strong mentor and uh influence
and his commitment to training in his UH boxing coach,
a man named Sergeant Ryan, like sergeant was his first name,
it's not a rank. Mostly won the lightweight championship during
this time as an amateur boxer, and this helped UH.
He owing to his prowess obviously, you know, like he
was given a parcel his family was given a parcel
break on on his tuition and things you know, he
later trained transition to fencing, and uh it's believed a
combination of his grandfather as well as uh the influences
some of these some of these aristocratic types that became
into contact with were like the fathers and uncles and
brothers of his schoolmates, who said basically like, look like
you know trouble as your family. Maybe you are a nobleman,
and that's great. You know how to fight, because everybody
needs know how to fight. But no, women aren't champion boxers,
the fencers. So Mosey took up fencing, and he became
a fencing prodigy, you know, which is pretty remarkable because yeah,
I mean the kind of Kinnis thesis that lends himself
to boxing and the kind of mental toughness that translates
somewhat to fencing but not. But they're very, very very
different pursuits. But Mosey basically excelled and everything he took on.
You know it. Uh, the headmaster at Westminster, doctor Rendell,
he uh he'd gone as far as to try and
forbid h Mosley entering the public schools boxing championship, you know,
saying that this is this is just like distasteful for
like a man of your station. Like that's how extreme
it was, you know, And there was kind of there
was like a disconnect too because the military training at
the time, even for officers, and if you wanted to
be an officer then unless you were unless in time
of war, you were like a mud stang and CEO
who got promoted owing to the fact that you basically
pulled some Audie Murphy shit, Like you want to be
an officer in the British Army, you know, you had
to have the right pedigree and military training and the
entire culture just before World War One, the British Army
it was very very savage, like almost lawish, you know
it the way Mosley described it, and the way other
guys have like in their like war diaries and things.
You know, it's, uh, it's almost like clockwork orange or something,
you know, like going out, you know, these these these
officer candidates who are like the sons of a nobleman,
you know, going into London on the weekend on leave
and like getting it, getting into like razor blade brawls
with with like working class yobs or like sailors, like
just just for the hell of it, you know what
I mean, like that's not really what you associate with
the with the British Army, you know, the Officer Corps,
you know. I mean, this isn't the US Marines, like
it's the British Army, you know, but that it was, uh,
you know, it owed like I said, like the kind
of zeitgeist of violence, but just the same. I mean,
the kind of that that kind of pretentious overlay that's
obsessed with kind of certain modalities of the quorum remained
and it's say, well, you know, gentlemen, gentlemen know how
to fight, no, how to defend themselves. Gentlemen like violence,
but they don't box, you know, that's for that's something
that poor men do. But just before we move ahead,
just bring it back what I meant by liminal figures.
Let me clarify that, because I think this is important
that I don't I don't think it's just a silly tangent.
I really really like C. S. Lewis, and he kind
of speaks to me like I think racially owing to
my own heritage. I've seen US Lewis as a Catholic convert,
but he was very very English, and it's aid the
English character better than almost anybody game. My favorite bug
of his is that Hideous Strength. It's the final chapter.
It's the sequel to Out of the Silent Planet, you know,
and it's part of like his Space series, and it
follows some of the same characters, but it doesn't have
to do with with space, although someone like the some
of the deities and things that feature in the earlier
books of the Space trilogy feature in it. But like briefly,
it's about this young academic and like literally, as World
War two's ending, he's a senior fellow in sociology at
this fictional university. Okay, as the war is ending, this
this kind of mysterious administrative body emerges that starts kind
of absorbing everything of a political or police and military
or academic sociological character, like within its per number. It's
a it's called Nice like Nice, which obviously is a riff,
you know. It's it's supposed to represent this kind of
like superficially benign institution, but it's an acronym for the
National Institute for Coordinated Experiments. And it turns out that
this thing is staff by these like occultists. Okay, but
they've got this weird transhumanist view of things, and they
think that spiritual matters and like occult energy and like
the summoning of old gods and malevolent deities. They believe
it's like a scientific basis for this, or at least
like this can be reduced to things like analyzing disturbances
and atoms or like you know, the manipulation a temporal
phenomena around like these these entities when they emerge or
something and that and that'll like reveal through principles and
material science like what they are. But it turns out
that the reason why Nice has co opted this university
is because it's adjacent to this, uh, this land called
bragged And Woods, and this guy, this sociology fella discovers
that in Braggdon Woods that's the rest in place of Merlin,
who's a real guy. And this isn't like wide be
known in the story, but it's like people in the know,
like know that Merlin was real and that he's either
in repose or his body is here. But this is
like a Bragdon Woods is powerful and it's clear if
you like disturb Merlin's corpse or you know, person and
suspended animation, like something terrible will happen, you know, So
it basically as it develops like this guy Merlin's eventually revived.
It's not clear what the implications that are going to be,
but something apocalyptic is emergent, and as the story goes out,
it becomes clear like, well, this is something unique to England,
you know, like what history is and what mythology is.
So in certain institutions and certain partterns of thought, in
certain belief structures, these two things collapse into one another, okay.
And if you're not indoctrinated into that or initiated into
that in some way, like you don't really understand what
it is to be English and you're not really part
of that cultural malu, you know. And there's tremendous power
in being able to access this kind of liminal memory,
But there's also tremendous perils that are involved there too, okay.
And mostly not only was a believer in these kinds
of things, but he somehow like embodied the characteristics culturally
and psychologically that you have rise to that kind of paradigm, okay,
And that's the key to English fascism. You know, there's
a there's an aspect of historical memory that is, uh,
that's something different than the kind of phenomenological ass back
to national socialism. But that's what I meant. I wanted
to clarify that.
Speaker 1: The uh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'll let me see what kind of time ago. Yeah,
I'll pick up the pace a little bit. But by
h January nineteen fourteen, you know, young Moseley obviously was
coming to the end of his public school studies. He
saw it it mad. He had no idea what he
was going to do for a profession. But you know, again,
even though even though World War One hadn't broken out yet,
you know, something not quite but precedent to war fevers
seemed to be in the air, mostly under he took
the test for the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. He
was accepted. For the next nine months, he trained as
the cavalrymen and the dragoon, dragoons and lancers. For clarity,
lancers are basically force reconnaissance like they still exist. They're
still like designated uh lancer elements like in the British
Army today and on the twenty and the twenty percentry battlefield.
They do what like force reconnaissance would do, like in
an American military organization. Dragoons are mounted and dismounted into cavalry.
Heavy dragoon basically ride to the battle space or in
like the Napoleonic era, they'd like ride to the front,
dismount information and then unload heavy weapons that they'd like
manhandle as like infantry. But they were basically uh pre
mechanized mobile infantry. Because what you think of him in
like World War One context mostly been we'd been an
avid horseman his whole life. That's another thing that you know,
his grandfather had kind of insinuated into him, so uh
militarily like what he wanted to do, Like he wanted
you know, he wanted to do something with cavalry. You know.
As ah as the war uh broke out, Mosey intended,
as I said it, joined the seventeenth Lancers. Their commander
was a man named Vivianne Lockett. Vivianne Lockett was a
cousin of Mosley's, okay, and he was also like a
leading like polo player, so he was like he was
a stud. But Moseley, Moseley had more personal social capital
than he did money or or business connections. And this
is something throughout his life that kind of helped him
get ahead, you know. But he was persuaded to make
the switch to the sixteenth Light Dragoons by a friend
of his mom's family. So lovely stammer, but it was
basically the same element. At seventeen he was building into
the sixteenth Lancers. In October one, nineteen fourteen, he's commissioned
as the second lieutenant. He reported the Kerrab Barracks and
County Killed are twenty miles south of Dublin. That was
like the home base for sixteenth Lancers who were attached
to the third Cavalry Brigade which had been reinforced and
anticipation a trouble because Prime Minister Asketh Home Rule Act,
and there was great concern that there was a gonna
be some sort of coup stage in Northern Ireland by
like Ulster boarding officers or you know, an event of
a breakout of general hostilities in uh in Ireland that uh,
like the Ulsterman among the officers would simply desert and
like go to defend Ulster, you know. And this this
obviously this is outside the Scobar discussion on on on
Oswald Mosley, but one of the reasons why the Irish
situation like developed the way it did after the Easter
Rising is obviously because you know, the British were engaged
in essentially like you know, total war on the continent.
But this was ah Mosley was the youngest man. Uh,
he was the youngest officer in the regiment, you know,
and this must have been uh, this constellation of fact.
There was like knowing you're going to deploy to the
continent and it was turning into a meat grinder. You're
in Ulster. There's this fear of a you know, like
a thirty year officer is who are like native son
is deserting, you know. You there's also a concern of
a you know, there's some sort of general war with
H you know, with with the the UH, with with
some Irish Republican elements. I mean, this this deamily wasn't
this Demily wasn't a posting for guys who didn't didn't
have you didn't have balls. You know. That's why it
does that resent people trying to brocheade on Mosey's service record.
I mean, that's ridiculous anyway. But the H just before Christmas,
Mosey's regiment UH had embarked for France, Mosey was expected
to be sent right into action. It quickly became clear
there was no need for given cavalry, so he realized
he was going to find himself like leading an anthrty platoon,
which he was you know, he's fine with, but he
there was an appeal sent out because there's a desperate
need for aerial observers in the Royal Flying Corps and
at that time this was a very dangerous job for
all kinds of reasons. And the Germans one of the
reasons why rich Taffen and Ernst Oudette and Young Gearing
and the rest of the you know, the Rick to
Hoff and flying circus, as well as a bunch of
these other Kaiser right air aces. They they were ahead
of the game. The Germans were in tactical versatility of
aircraft and they were really chewing the UK and the
French to pieces in the air for about the first
twelve to eighteen months of hostilities. So this is not
like light duty. Also, there was no theres no ejection
and no parachutes in these World War One aircraft, so
when the when the aircraft went down, you you just
embraced yourself and you crashed with it. You know. I mean,
it was definitely a man's job, but mostly volunteered for
the Royal Flying Corps and no small measure because that's
where aristocrats went, you know, especially when you know the
absence of a true roll for the cavalry element, you
know it. So that's where he made his home, and
you know, in his deployment to France, it was also
something of anna lead fraternity the Royal Flying Corps. As
of nineteen four team it had fewer than one thousand men.
It was made up of two wings and sixty four aircraft.
The number one wing, it was literally wing number one.
Wing number two is commanded by Hugh Trenchard. Mosey was
posted to Wing two, you know, again as an observer.
He hadn't qualified to fly yet as a solo flyer,
which is was and when he did that, ironically, is
one of the things that conspired to take him out
of action. Prominent elite in a comment rule. I mean,
but two weeks subsequent he joined UH number two Wing
number six Squadron, which I've been established on the coast
at Dunkirk. I was deployed to protect with deployed to
assists in the relief of Antwerp and observers played in
a key role because they'd spot for indirect fire, you know,
just for context, the uh, these these these spotting flights
usually took three hours. Obviously they were behind enemy lines
because they were essentially sighting in you know, counterforce artillery,
you know, so they have to spot for you know,
where German guns were situated, and the heavy artillery element
you know was sometimes you know, seventy eighty miles behind
the lines. So you're basically surveying German fences in a
slow flying prop plane that with the maximum stealing of
six thousand feet or so. You know, you're you're sitting
duck for ground fire as well as uh, you know,
for for enemy fighters, which again were a lot more
versatile at this time then than World Flying Corps aircraft.
You know. And then top speed is you know, seventy
to eighty miles an hour in a strong wind, if
you're carrying ordinance, if it's a bombing run and there's
no a recon run, your speed might slow to thirty
to forty million miles per hour, you know. I mean again,
this the the arey casualties from just like ground fire,
small arms was it's it's absurd by you know, contemporary metrics.
But the UH Mosley's UH Moseses pilot that he was
assigned to. He and Mosey were both shot I mean
they they're they're playing was shot down during a low
flying run where at lowest altitude they were only five
hundred feet above ground for UH. For the mission, UH
Moses pilot received the Distinguished Service Order. Mostly UH injured
his knee and UH suffered a concussion. This is the
first and many injuries he got, you know, directly on
a hostile action, you know, like I said, he was
in He was in comic for seventy five days, all
told before UH he was injured catastrophically and taken out
of action. Ironically, he was injured UH when he was
qualifying as a solo pilot, which he probably had no
business being in the air, like going to these previous
injuries he sustained. But you know that UH for those
seventy five days, he was basically in constant, constant action,
you know, the UH mostly UH, he said. UH. He
wrote a letter to his mother when he was flying
these reconsorties. He said she should not grieve if he's
killed in action because he was sure he would find
death quote a most interesting experience. He said that. Uh.
He said being under fire was terrifying, but it was
also exhilarating and very exciting. He said it was a
quote peculiar ecstasy would sooner roll off, after which time
one had to resist a uh, a profound depression. But
he uh. He wrote a lot, both to his mom
and some of his friends and a lady he was
trying to court about this weird dichotomy, because he said,
compared to the infantry, he's like, you know, we live well,
you know. He's like, uh, we live in nice quarters.
You know. He's like a lot of the guys are gormands,
so we eat a lot of good food, you know.
But then he's like, every day, like more of us die,
you know, so it's like there's less and less of
us at dinner, you know. And he's like he's like
he's like when you're on the ground, he's like he's like,
I'm sure to the infantry, death seems very much organic
because it's all around you. You know. He's like, we're
kind of like a gentleman's like flying society. But then
like every day some of us like get blown to hell.
You know, it's there's something like there's something very funny
about that, and I get it was way but uh yeah,
let's see what the okay, well we're up to step
on a second, but the uh yeah, so the Mosley's
a squadron in April ninety fifteen become a bombing squadron.
And this involved literally dropping hammer and age from one
thousand feet or like strapping like one hundred pounds bomb
to the fuselage of the play and then cutting it loose,
you know, like dropping it, uh approximately over the target
on uh on the eighteenth of April mostly and his
pilot we're dropping bombs on his zeppelin shed at the Connolly.
This is what turned uh. This is a mission that
that earned mostly uh uh this thing with service order
of his own. But and there's an interesting dynamic too
between the soldiers kind of in this first early phase
of World War One, like Lloyd George became like a
really hero to the men at the front, including Mosely,
and this was his uh inspiration to become a parliamentarian,
which we'll have to get into in the next episode.
This quo does my get straight out of the four episode.
I hope that's not a problem or humbersome. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I'll arrogate it because I don't want to screw up
the schedule. But Mosley's uh reverence for Lloyd George, which
seems but I'm sure it seems ironic or peculiar to
people who you know, think of the b u F
as it ultimately was constituted as being the kind of
the ultimate like anti establishment element, and in some ways
it was. But I'll get into why Lloyd George became
this like iconic figure too, like of the British combat
element at the front, in the next episode. But yeah,
and we'll we'll get into the meat of the b
UF in the next episode, I promise. I just I
think this stuff's finally important. And I figure if it
wasn't holding Egle's attention, they'd complain. But the feedback thus
far it seems to be effusive. Then it's praise, and
that's great. I'm ring honored by it. Yeah, we we
can wrap up, man, and I'll i'll uh, I'll cover
more ground in less time next episode.
Speaker 1: I promise, no problem, very good, very good. Two plugs please.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, I'm retooling my website. Really, my dear friend.
He's doing all that work because I don't I don't
really know how to do that stuff. But the uh
you can find me at at Thomas seven seven seven
dot com like number seven h O MA seven seven
dot com. On social media at kapital ri e e
A L underscore number seven h O A S seven
seven seven best place to go with substack. That's where
long form stuff is in my podcast. I'm watching season
three of the pod by Fevery twenty eighth, but I
don't have an exact date yet. It's real Thomas seven
seven seven. That's substack dot com. You should search for
me just under my aldor under my government name, which
is Thomas Sear, and you'll find my stuff.
Speaker 1: Man, Thank you, thank you. I appreciate it now. Yeah,
all the feedback we've gotten on the first episode is great,
and I'm sure this is gonna be no different that.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. Yeah, you're welcome man, thanks for hosting me.