Opposition to the New Party: An Incipient Anti-Fascism or a Defence Against ‘Mosleyitis’?

Within histories of British fascism and anti-fascism, opposition to the New Party has attracted scant attention. The preamble to more serious episodes of conflict between Mosley's Blackshirts and their anti-fascist opponents, typically invites only the most cursory of accounts. However, as this article demonstrates, labour movement opposition to the New Party should not be dealt with simply as a form of embryonic anti-fascism. The author argues that it was a dual-faceted phenomenon, and whilst it did share obvious similarities with later campaigns against the British Union of Fascists, it was also dissimilar in other respects.