Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet of Rolleston, was born on this day in 1896. He was a British politician most notable as leader of the British Fascist Union during the Great Depression and the run up to the Second World War.
A figure of only marginal interest to me, except for two reasons that I share here.
First, in 1980, when he died after living many years in self-imposed exile the television program Not the Nine O’Clock News lampooned the many favorable remarks made about him in the mainstream media producing a mock Punk band whose lyrics are derived from many of those statements.
And, as a total bonus, it turns out that Elvis Costello’s 1977 song Less than Zero was a straight on assault on Mosley as well as his politics. Although when American audiences heard the song they thought it referenced the presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, and accommodating the market Costello later added in a JFK reference. Here’s the earlier version.
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