The swastika incident
Denis Sligo
Soon after the last war, Sir Oswald L./Mosley bought what had once been the Bishop's Palace at Tuam, County Galway, and went to live there.
At that time a number of English people thought Southern Ireland a good place to go to. Country houses and hunting were still quite cheap, a pre-war lifestyle seemed possible, and a Labour government in England was viewed with apprehension. For a few of these emigrants, and for a few from Germany, it was a convenient bolthole from what had become embarrass- ing political associations. Among them must be numbered Oswald Mosley.
He was about as interested in Irish domestic affairs as Mr Enoch Powell. His personal and political ambitions had been set on higher sights than Ireland. But on one occasion his past career and events in his adopted country came together as com- edy — Anglo-Irish at its best, with a total non-comprehension of each other's priorities.
For if Mosley himself lived in a remote world of his own, with his children it was a different matter. Being children, they were keenly interested in what went on, and what `Things have been a bit quieter since they stopped keeping the peace.' was going on was Galway in the final of the All-Ireland hurling. This unprecedented event was on a par with, say, Brighton reaching the English Cup Final. In every Galway home it was a topic of conversa- tion, school-friends were discussing it, bets on the result were being laid in the pubs. Thousands would be travelling to Dublin for the match.
For the story itself, told me at the time, I am indebted to a cattle dealer (my home in Mayo adjoins County Galway). He had cat- tle business with Sir Oswald and on a visit came across his children. He supposed they were going to the match, and when they replied they were not, 'I took pity on them, Lord Sligo, they seemed so out of it'. If father gave his permission, he would pick them up on the great day, they would motor to Dublin, and all cheer for Galway. The children were waiting for him, carrying between them a huge brown paper parcel. It was, they said, their flag and they were going to wave it. Arrived at the ground, the parcel was undone and an enormous swastika produced. When asked where they had got it they replied they had 'found it in father's study at the top of the house'. They were told they could not wave it there, and indeed to have done so on that day at Croke Park in Dublin would have been as irrele- vant and out of place as to wave a Union Jack.
I always thought it just a good story; but since the release of some of the Mosley papers and a biography by his son, I have wondered about this very odd man. Why did he take the flag to Ireland in the first place? At what point in his career had he thought it might come in handy? Was it a memento of a misspent middle age, and did he take it with him when he went to live in France? Perhaps one of those children, now grown up, can finish the story for me.
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