Monday 4 January 2010

Mother was a fascist

Not mine. Adam tipped me off about a fascinating Radio 4 documentary about the women who supported Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (the Blackshirts), the biggest (c. 50,000 members) British nazi group of the 1930s and early 40s. I know a fair amount about the many members of the aristocracy who were fascists, and plenty about the working- and middle-class men, but the women's stories have been overlooked.

Turns out that the BUF's forerunners, such as the Fascisti, were founded by women, often politicised by the suffrage movement, which split between socialists, liberals and conservatives fairly early on.

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