New Party | |
|---|---|
| Abbreviation | NUPA |
| Leader | Sir Oswald Mosley |
| Founded | 1 March 1931; 94 years ago (1 March 1931) |
| Dissolved | 1932; 93 years ago (1932) |
| Split from | Labour |
| Merged into | British Union of Fascists[a] |
| Succeeded by | Scottish Democratic Fascist Party[b] |
| Newspaper | New Times, Action |
| Youth wing | NUPA Youth Movement |
| Armed wing | Biff Boys |
| Ideology | |
| Political position | Syncretic[2] |
TheNew Party was a political party briefly active in the United Kingdom in the early 1930s. It was formed bySir Oswald Mosley, anMP who had belonged to both theConservative andLabour parties, quitting Labour after its 1930 conference narrowly rejected his "Mosley Memorandum", a document he had written outlining how he would deal with the problem of unemployment.
On 6 December 1930, Mosley published an expanded version of the "Mosley Memorandum", which was signed by Mosley, his wife and fellow Labour MPLady Cynthia and 15 other Labour MPs:Oliver Baldwin,Joseph Batey,Aneurin Bevan,W. J. Brown,William Cove,Robert Forgan,J. F. Horrabin,James Lovat-Fraser,John McGovern,John James McShane,Frank Markham,H. T. Muggeridge,Morgan Philips Price,Charles Simmons, andJohn Strachey. It was also signed byA. J. Cook,general secretary of theMiners' Federation of Great Britain.[3]
On 28 February 1931 Mosley resigned from the Labour Party, launching the New Party the following day. The party was formed from six of the Labour MPs who signed the Mosley Manifesto (Mosley and his wife, Baldwin, Brown, Forgan and Strachey), although two (Baldwin and Brown) resigned membership after a day and sat in theHouse of Commons as independent MPs; Strachey resigned in June. The party received £50,000 funding fromLord Nuffield and launched a magazine calledAction, edited byHarold Nicolson.[4] In addition, Nicolson produced a New Party propaganda film titledCrisis and aimed to get it shown in the cinemas but the censors banned the film as it was considered it would "bring Parliament into disrepute" due to its depiction of MPs asleep on the benches. In the event the film was only shown at New Party meetings.Mosley also set up a party militia, the "Biff Boys" led by theEngland rugby captainPeter Howard.[1]
The New Party's first electoral contest was at theAshton-under-Lyne by-election in April 1931. The candidate was Allan Young, and hiselection agent wasWilfred Risdon. With a threadbare organisation they polled some 16% of the vote, splitting the Labour vote and allowing aConservative to be returned to the Commons. Two more MPs joined the New Party later in 1931:W. E. D. Allen from theUnionists andCecil Dudgeon from theLiberals. At the1931 general election the New Party contested 25 seats, but only Mosley himself, and a candidate inMerthyr Tydfil (Sellick Davies stood against only oneIndependent Labour Party (ILP) candidate in Merthyr, while Mosley stood against both Conservative and Labour candidates in Stoke) polled a decent number of votes, and three candidateslost their deposits. Mosley's New Party general election campaign received prominent press coverage in various national newspapers during 1931 withThe Manchester Guardian reporting that "The stewards were wearing rosettes of black and amber – the Mosley colours. Busy bees, hiving the honey of prosperity? That may be the symbolism of it."[5]
The New Party programme was built on the "Mosley Memorandum", advocating a national policy to meet the economic crisis that theGreat Depression had brought. His desire for complete control of policy making decisions in the New Party led many members to resign membership. He favoured granting wide powers to the government, with only general control byParliament, and creating a five-memberCabinet without specific portfolio, similar to theWar Cabinet adopted during theFirst World War. His economic strategy broadly followedKeynesian thinking and suggested widespread investment into housing to provide work and improve housing standards overall and also supportingprotectionism with proposals for hightariff walls.[1]
After the election, Mosley toured Europe and became convinced of the virtues offascism. Gradually, the New Party became more authoritarian, with parts of it, notably its youth movement NUPA, adopting overtly fascist thinking and the wearing of "Greyshirt" uniforms.[6] The New Party's sharp turn to fascism led previous supporters such asJohn Strachey andHarold Nicolson to leave it. In 1932, Mosley united most of the various British fascist organisations to form theBritish Union of Fascists into which the New Party subsumed itself. Out of the Scottish section was formed theScottish Democratic Fascist Party, headed byWilliam Weir Gilmour.
An unrelatedNew Party was launched in Britain in 2003.
| By-election | Candidate | Votes | % share | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1931 Ashton-under-Lyne by-election | Allan Young | 4,472 | 16.0 | 3 |
| Constituency | Candidate | Votes | % share | Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ashton-under-Lyne | Charles B. Hobhouse | 424 | 1.4 | 4 |
| Battersea South | Leslie James Cuming | 909 | 2.3 | 3 |
| Birmingham Duddeston | Jessie Williams | 284 | 1.06 | 4 |
| Birmingham Yardley | E. J. Bartleet | 479 | 1.0 | 3 |
| Chatham | Martin F. Woodroffe | 1,135 | 3.6 | 3 |
| Coatbridge | William Weir Gilmour | 674 | 2.13 | 3 |
| Combined English Universities | Harold Nicolson | 461 | 3.4 | 5 |
| Galloway | Cecil Randolph Dudgeon | 986 | 3.0 | 4 |
| Gateshead | John Stuart Barr | 1,077 | 1.9 | 3 |
| Glasgow Cathcart | J. Mellick | 529 | 1.5 | 3 |
| Glasgow Shettleston | W. E. Stevenson | 402 | 1.2 | 4 |
| Hammersmith North | Ronald Eric Noel Braden | 431 | 1.4 | 4 |
| Limehouse | Herbert L. Hodge | 307 | 1.4 | 3 |
| Manchester Hulme | John Pratt | 1,565 | 4.6 | 3 |
| Merthyr | Sellick Davies | 10,834 | 30.6 | 2 |
| North East Derbyshire | Albert Vincent Williams | 689 | 1.7 | 3 |
| Pontypridd | William Lowell | 466 | 1.3 | 4 |
| Reading | E. R. Troward | 861 | 1.6 | 3 |
| Sheffield Brightside | E. C. Snelgrove | 847 | 2.2 | 4 |
| Stoke | Oswald Mosley | 10,534 | 24.1 | 3 |
| Shipley | W. J. Leaper | 601 | 1.4 | 3 |
| Wandsworth Central | A. M. Diston | 424 | 1.6 | 3 |
| West Renfrewshire | Robert Forgan | 1,304 | 4.0 | 4 |
| Whitechapel and St Georges | Ted Lewis | 154 | 0.7 | 4 |
