Character in "Point Counterpoint"

Reading various references on this book, I find some people associate
the character of Everard Webley with Oswald Moseley.

There seems to be a problem of historical timing. The book was
published in 1928, at which time Moseley was still in the Labour party.
Not sure if anything like the Brotherhood of British Freemen was in
existence at that time - the British Union of Fascists dates from 1932.


Can anybody provide insight into the characters and movement described
in the book. Or was Huxley prescient about something that didn't
happen until the 1930s?

"Widmerpool" <rbgordon.TakeThisOut@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:1128147698.422186.289240@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

> Reading various references on this book, I find some people associate
> the character of Everard Webley with Oswald Moseley. . . .
> Can anybody provide insight into the characters and movement described
> in the book. Or was Huxley prescient about something that didn't
> happen until the 1930s?

Several biographies catalogue Mosleley's progress:
-- born into the lower aristocracy, ipso facto Conservative;
-- combat hero in the First Word War;
-- minister in the postwar Labour government;
-- dissenter from party orthodoxy and tradition, appealing
to energy and initiative to effect revolutionary change (as
Mussolini seemed to be doing in Italy in the 1920s.)
-- founder of his own New Party (not particularly fascist);
-- founder of the British Union of Fascists, strongly
nationalistic, thus ipso facto anti-foreign: in detail,
adapted from Mussolini's organization and not from
Hitler's.

Because of his personality, Moseley was by 1925
expected by the people (including newspapermen) who
knew him to become a significant person in national
politics -- as he obviously was by 1935, if not exactly
as expected in 1925.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)