New Party (UK)

New Party
Leader	Oswald Mosley
Founder	Oswald Mosley
Founded	1 March 1931
Dissolved	1932
Split from	Labour Party
Merged into	British Union of Fascists
Newspaper	New Times, Action
Youth wing	NUPA Youth Movement
Political orientation	Corporatism

The New Party was a British political party formed by Oswald Mosley that briefly existed in the early 1930s. The party split from Labour due to the party rejecting Mosley's proposals to end the unemployment crisis plaguing the Labour government. The party did not last long due to Mosley's turn to fascism less than a year after its founding.

History

Founding

Since Mosley's failed memorandum momentum had been building towards the possibility of him creating his own party, however, he held out hope for later becoming Labour leader but as he grew disillusioned with bourgeois democracy the prospect of his own party became more attractive. On 15 February 1931, Mosley and his wife were joined by Nicolson, Stanley, Macmillan and other MPs to create his New Party, 15 Labour MPs were expected to join though only 9 defected in the end and most of these were temporary recruits.

On 23 February Forgan and Strachey resigned, and on 24 February the New Party's 'National Policy' was published by Macmillan, having been written by Strachey, Young, Brown and Bevan. Planning, self-sufficiency, imperial preference and developing the home market were its main features. Protection was seen as the answer to the problems of newer industries such as electrical goods and aircraft. The policies encouraged imperialism, using the British Empire as an alternative to trade with other countries mixing it with 'socialist' sounding rhetoric to give the illusion it was progressive. Absent from the policy crafting was Mosley, who was uninterested in the details since he would discard aspects with which he disagreed.