RC: Let's summarise this — universally, the political establishment thought he had made a great mistake in abandoning normal parliamentary parties. But parliamentary power was not what he wanted. So there we are.

NM: I think there is no other explanation of this extraordinary behaviour, as you say. He was beaten at the party conference by a tiny majority. Everyone went up to him and shook his hand, and said, "You virtually won, just don't do anything for two or three weeks." He just said no. I think he said no because he wanted to go to the south of France for his holiday. He was that sort of man. 

RC: He wanted both the south of France and political power.

NM: He wanted the south of France and to be able to come back and thrill the crowds.  

RC: Although he did work hard later as a speaker, 200 meetings a year.

NM: He did. He went round and round the country. He also put a lot of work into his little book. In the summer of '31, he took time off. My sister and I were told we mustn't make any noise because Daddy was writing a book down in his study downstairs, so we all had to creep about the house. This was his fascist manifesto, a little book called The Greater Britain.

RC: What did that advocate?

NM: It advocated the corporate state, Keynesian economics, huge public spending, roads, motorways, slum clearance. Then he was asked the question, "How can you guarantee the money goes to the right people? Why won't it just be gathered in by con people, bankers and crooks?" He said, "I'll be running such a disciplined party that that will not occur. I'll tell them where the money will go and that's where the money will go." Then in another year or so his party, the British Union, was completely out of control, without any discipline. I remember speaking to some of them. One said to me, "We all adored your father but he was hopeless, he never gave us any orders really."  

DJ: Raymond, as an historian — why did non-parliamentary politics, street politics, not become more powerful in Britain, as in much of Europe? Is it because the parliamentary system in the end corrected itself, having, for example, supported appeasement? Eventually, we recognised that had been a mistake and Churchill then came to power. In other words, the parliamentary system is self-correcting even though it sometimes gets things wrong, gets out of touch.

RC: It was strange. Mosley simply refused to recognise that the old parliamentary system did work, did give the answers. It was a colossal mistake. He didn't recognise the strength of the British constitution, quite simply.

DJ: Once people became frightened of Hitler, in a sense he was finished because he was associated with a foreign enemy power. But, when he was talking, as you were saying Nick, about "peace at any price" that was a very popular message wasn't it, up to 1940?

NM: I've thought a lot about this, it's terribly interesting because I can well remember, people were anti-war right up to and including the Munich agreement when Chamberlain came home waving a bit of paper. I remember going to the cinema and people cheering and saying, "Thank God." And then suddenly by spring '39 everything had changed. I was at school and I remember suddenly we were all digging air raid shelters because Hitler had very quickly broken his word and marched into Czechoslovakia. Suddenly, people stopped thinking of Hitler in terms of the politics. "Why shouldn't Hitler have the German-speaking bits of Czechoslovakia? Why shouldn't he even perhaps get the Polish Corridor or join up the two bits of Germany — poor old Germany?" It suddenly became immoral, he became someone who broke his word, who was wicked. He became a baddie. And then suddenly, everyone was ready for war. Do you remember that time?