British Fascist Party

The British Fascist Party is identified in the diary through its founder, Sir Oswald Mosley, rather than through an account of its structure or activities. Its brief appearance links the organization to a dinner-table exchange about family history, Palestine, and the imagined consequences of a Nazi victory.

Identification

At a dinner hosted by Bob for Baron Leon Lambert at Elaine's, Catherine Guinness wore a T-shirt asking, “Where is Palestine?” She told Lambert that her great-grandfather, Lord Moyne, had been assassinated in Palestine in 1944 by the Stern Gang. The diary identifies her step-grandfather as Sir Oswald Mosley and describes him as the founder of the British Fascist Party.

Reference in the Dinner Conversation

Catherine’s mention of Mosley came as she challenged Lambert, who was half-Jewish, with the counterfactual that if Hitler had won the war, her step-grandfather would have been dictator of England. The party enters the scene through that imagined political outcome, not through any account of its policies or operations. Despite the charged exchange, Bob observed that Catherine and Lambert seemed to hit it off.