Daniel Lazzari: Why Britain Was Too Boring For Fascism

I asked my international friends what they thought of the UK. They paused … and then replied that they like queuing; one bluntly just said “Tea”, another said the rain, and a third said predictable, orderly and overtly bland.

This got me thinking: with so much of Europe under the tyranny of fascism in the 20s and 30s, why did it fail so spectacularly in the UK?

I concluded that we must be too boring.

Fascism thrives on a spectacle, large rallies like the ones Arsenal fans have when they come 2nd, uniforms, choreography and a promise of national rebirth. Britain, on the other hand, sadly for Oswald Mosley, was a society that modestly believed it was more civilised than the continental systems of Europe. Mosley initially understood this, bearing the hallmarks of a traditional politician: tall, handsome and a war veteran. He had every quality to transform Britain, except Britain was the best thing since “sliced bread”, so it did not need transforming. His continental adoption of fascism, the choreographed spectacle with innate violence baked in, would be a costly mistake, the movement dying in its tracks. There was wide opposition to a foreign ideology. Still, more importantly, there was an opposition to the adoption of violence, which became a trademark of Mosley’s Fascism and was seen as un-British. The BUF’s increasing militarism provoked retaliation and tension. The sight of Fascist swastikas “trampling on democracy” at Olympia in 1934 did not represent a glorious future but a wake-up call.

British politics has always operated on a combination of delaying the inevitable, such as introducing conscription only partially in 1916 or building the HS2 without completion so as not to offend. Insulting one another in the House of Commons, but had a repulsion to violence. The Battle of Cable Street in 1936 sealed it. What followed was the Public Order Act, which effectively strangled the movement into a bureaucratic cradle. Only Britain can defeat fascism through copious amounts of paperwork. The broader conditions that fed fascism elsewhere were simultaneously not sufficient. Economic anxieties post depression were almost as bad as after Covid. The reassurance of a strong monarchical figure, as well as the empire, which was at its height until 1939, and the coalition government under Ramsey Macdonald, where for once British parties worked together (a surprise, I know), would bring an efficient (another surprise) economic recovery and a sense of stability.

Which brings us back to boredom. Fascism operated around theatrical performances encapsulated by Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922, one day after he had already given power. Britain was just too set in traditional ways during the 1930s to embrace this sense of national renewal which swept over countries like Italy, Germany and Spain. Extremism struggled to breathe in this environment. The country that produced parliamentary satire and heckling of our Prime Minister every Wednesday at 12:00 was unlikely to surrender itself to choreographed salutes.

In the end, fascism failed here not solely because of absent conditions, but because its style jarred with the national identity which the UK had built up of an esteemed society looking down on everyone else, a country built of morality and well-groomed individualism. The 1930s, for all the turmoil they provided, did not see Britain bend the knee to fascism. Fascism requires believers willing to trade awkward freedom for discipline and unity. Britain, with all its problems, prevailed with this awkwardness. Which proved fatal for Mosley.

In that sense, Britain was too bland for fascism.