We the Young Strong: Exploring British Fascism Through Archives and the Arts

Historians are rightly critical of drawing lessons from history, especially since these lessons often justify various political projects. Indeed, history is entirely contingent, unfolding within unique contexts- political, social, cultural, and even technological, to name a few. However, sometimes historical parallels feel so relevant to the present that I am reminded of Twain’s maxim, ‘History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes’. [1] As a reader of modern British history, I reflect on the parallels between the economic hardships of the 1930s and today alongside the rise of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF). Marching through British towns and cities, Mosley’s Blackshirts were notorious for their violence, intimidation, and demagoguery until they were interned without trial under Defence Regulation 18B as potential fifth columnists at the outbreak of the Second World War.

I recently interviewed playwright Nicola Baldwin, the creator of the upcoming BBC Radio 4 drama We the Young Strong, a fictional narrative based on historical events from 1930s Britain. The central character, a young woman from an economically depressed northern town, moves to London for work and a better future, becomes drawn to Mosley’s message and joins the BUF. Baldwin’s commitment to the historical authenticity of the play led her to the University of Sheffield and its unique Special Collection on British fascism. In the following excerpts from our interview, we discuss the impact of Sheffield scholarship on her research and the inspiration provided by the distinctive voice within this archive, along with the play's resonance with our current era of permacrisis and resurgence of the far-right. [2]

Can you tell me about the project's inspiration?

There are various bits of inspiration, but the thing that triggered it was the banking crash. The work I thought I would get from 2008 to 2009 froze and completely disappeared. I had an attachment at the National Theatre Studio and was thinking about the times. As a playwright, you're quite porous about what's happening. I remembered things that started coming through my mind about banking crashes, and I wondered if it was strange that we didn't have fascism here in the 1930s after the banking crash. Of course, it was just that I didn't know about fascism here after the 1930s banking crash...

I was a camera assistant on Stuart Marshall's 1989 Channel 4 documentary Desire. It focused on the experiences of lesbian and gay people in Germany from 1910- 1940s. One woman I vividly remember had been going to clubs as an out lesbian and recalled how the mood changed within weeks. When the Nazis came to power, she and other lesbians joined the Post Office because the Post Office wouldn't employ married women… They were out delivering the post pretending to be good fascists.

What stuck with me was the massive cultural shift from a world they thought had moved in one direction and would not return. That was playing on my mind… a potential for things to happen the other way. Another trigger point was that the person who used to book the punk bands at Huddersfield Polytechnic when I was a teenager was Stephen Dorril, whom I noticed had written a book about Oswald Mosley. The radio project portrayed in my play came from the archive of Dorill’s work in progress held in the Special Collections at the University of Sheffield. [3] That's why I initially went there.

The play’s central character highlights women's agency and possibilities within the BUF, which were not always available within other political parties. Did scholarship impact or guide your interpretation?

I read a chapter by Professor Julie Gottlieb when I had many strands around the women characters. The way that she focused was incredibly clear. Having read Dorril’s book, I knew there was a different route for women through the fascist movement. Julie writes very interestingly about that. [4]

While working on this at the National Theatre, I wrote on a little card taped to the wall, ‘What is fascism?’ and ‘Would I have joined if I'd been a teenager in the 1930s?’ I truly tried to maintain an open mind about these topics. The first drafts of the play featured [W.E.D.] Bill Allen as a character along with Peter Eckersley and Mosley, who were involved in the [BUF] radio project. While I didn't include William Joyce, I created a character like him and included various unnamed women. Again, the Sheffield Archive influenced this by discovering Miss C.L. Fisher, Blanche Greaves, and Fay Taylour. It contained numerous pieces from The Woman Fascist magazine; reading ordinary fascist women's accounts of themselves and their perspectives during detention was fascinating. Having approached it from the perspective of reading about the [male] leaders, the women’s understanding of their role was captivating, including the suffragette element.

As you'll know, Mary Richardson was an organiser [in the BUF] and influenced one of the secondary characters. Richardson was the first woman force-fed in Holloway prison as a suffragette. After women got the vote, she was disillusioned about progress towards equality and bowled over by this party that had a women's section where you could wear uniforms, have power and work autonomously. She believed that was the way forward and became a virulent fascist.

I became convinced that the central thing about fascism is that it's a cult of winning. It keeps offering the opportunity to win at life. But to keep stoking the possibility of winning, others must lose; you have to have wider and wider groups of society that are, therefore, losers. We're seeing that again emerging now in a contracting economy.

The Play is structured around flashbacks during the 18B interrogations. It captures something I have discussed in my research… the centrality of a culture of victimhood and failure of the Mosleyites formed through 18B detention. Was there a deliberate choice to use that structure?

The director for the radio play, Celia De Wolf, and I knew from the start that we wanted a present sense of ‘FLORA’ in real-time; beginning to realise what she has been involved in, it's about whether she can admit it. Will she make the right choice? I drew heavily on the research.

Regarding the victimhood, they hadn’t, as far as they were aware, done anything wrong other than they were members of this party. But they had enabled whatever the movement did. I think there was also an element that they felt that they had been weaponised. This is my sense: They had been weaponised by forces manoeuvring for power in which they were the means rather than the end. I think that always seems to be true of the right-wing, in my opinion, revving up the disenfranchised to fight battles for you but not caring what happens to them.

What are your thoughts on the arts'; use of history as source material and collaboration with scholars such as Julie Gottlieb?

It's interesting because we work in different ways. It's the historians who are broadening out. There's a sense of a branching journey to discover everything about a subject, and as dramatists, you tend to go the other way… It's finding that moment that tells the story. What is brilliant about a more extended collaboration with a historian, such as working with Julie, is that it is like weaving because I'm doing my natural tendency whilst she's bringing in all her research and questions, which brush up against what I'm doing. A good collaboration is doing something that neither of you would have been able to do otherwise. Our short film, ‘The Nervous State,’ is part of a project that could never have happened without collaboration. [5]

Finally, what do you think about the timeliness and relevance of this radio play and your research in relation to our current situation?

During the readings of the play, I used to joke that it was becoming a race between the play getting done and actual fascism happening; that is not a joke that feels funny now… I've thought a lot about those people that we interviewed in Germany saying, ‘You won't believe how quickly it happened and that everything began to change’. So yes, hardly a day goes by when I don’t see something I recognise or overhear bits of how things are being reported in the news. The big difference between the 1930s in this country was that the BBC no-platformed Mosley and political extremists at the time. The play touches on them trying to get this radio outlet so they can broadcast and generate revenue.

I heard that this play was commissioned by BBC radio the day after Trump's election. So, I believe that it does feel timely.

We are accommodating a far-right stance. As seen in the Sheffield Archive, women who were petty and did not like foreigners found a philosophy that justified their feelings and made them feel like ordinary people. These thoughts drip slowly and then come quickly. That's the lesson from what has happened previously.

Nicola Baldwin’s We the Young Strong will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 4 at 2:15 p.m. on 10 April 2025 and online here.

Kevin Harris has recently been accepted to complete a PhD at the School of History, Philosophy, and Digital Humanities. Recently graduating with an MA in Modern History from the University of Sheffield, he was the winner of the 2023-2024 Dorothy Philips Research Award and the Crewe MA Dissertation Prize in History.

References

[1] This is one of those often-quoted historical phrases that may or may not be true. It is commonly attributed to Mark Twain but there is no convincing evidence that he actually said it.

[2] Permacrisis, the 2022 Collins Dictionary word of the year, denotes an extended period of instability and insecurity.

[3] https://archives.shef.ac.uk/repositories/3/resources/353

[4] Julie V. Gottlieb. Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement, 1923-1945, (London, 2000).

[5] See here for more on the collaboration between Nicola Baldwin and Julie Gottlieb: ‘The Nervous State’: https://player.sheffield.ac.uk/series/nervous-state.

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