Union Movement

The Union Movement (UM) was a far-right political party founded in the United Kingdom by Oswald Mosley. Before the Second World War, Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF) had wanted to concentrate trade within the British Empire, but the Union Movement attempted to stress the importance of developing a European nationalism, rather than a narrower country-based nationalism. That has caused the UM to be characterised as an attempt by Mosley to start again in his political life by embracing more democratic and international policies than those with which he had previously been associated. The UM has been described as post-fascist by former members such as Robert Edwards, the founder of the pro-Mosley European Action, a British pressure group. Having been the leader of the BUF in the 1930s, Mosley was expected to return to lead the far right. However, he remained out of the immediate postwar political arena, instead turned to writing and published his first work, My Answer (1946) in which he argued that he had been a patriot who had been unjustly punished by his internment under Defence Regulation 18B. In it and his 1947 sequel, The Alternative, Mosley began to argue for a much-closer integration between the nations of Europe, the beginning of his 'Europe a Nation' campaign, which sought a strong united Europe as a counterbalance to the growing power of the United States and the Soviet Union. Mosley perceived a linear growth within British history and saw Europe a Nation as the culmination of that destiny. Therefore, he argued it to be "part of an organic process of British history" since Britain had united into one nation and that it was Britain's national destiny to unite the whole continent. He further envisaged a three-tiered system of government, headed by an elected European government, to organise defence and the corporatist economy. The continuation of national governments and a collection of local governments were still seen as necessary for the sake of independent identities.