The Embryonic Beginnings of English Socialism
The first point of divergence is that Oswald Mosley does not become a fascist. He stays in the Labour Party beyond 1931, and this affords him a future position in Churchill's wartime National Government cabinet. Mosley proved to be a dynamic force. His aristocratic upbringing and dashing good looks made him popular among Britain's upper classes but his radical political idealism and willingness to advocate on behalf of organized labour made him a darling of the working class.
Mosley's wartime tenure was mostly confined to that of a cheerleader, but doing so raised his profile. With the war won he made a bid to usurp Labour Party leadership from Clement Attlee. His attempts to outflank Attlee saw him talk in increasingly grandiose terms. Attlee merely promised the welfare state and cradle to grave government assistance. But Mosley spoke of "Victory Mansions" for veterans and workers who had defeated Hitler and a grand Oceanic alliance of Britain and its allies. His campaign recieved a lot of press but he was ultimately unsuccessful. He took the loss hard and Attlee's huge success in the 1945 general election further embittered him. Attlee confined Mosley to the backbenches for his attempted coup.
Meanwhile in the United States the Socialist Party of America was in transition. The party had supported Robert La Follette's bid for the Presidency on the Progressive ticket in 1924, but La Follette was only able to carry his home state of Wisconsin. Longtime leader Eugene V. Debs would pass away two years later. With a failed push behind La Follette and their leader passing the party entered into a state of wilderness. Enter Emanuel Goldstein. Goldstein was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants from the Pale of Settlement and an up and coming labour rights activist. Goldstein found the Socialist Party in disarray. The 1924 election loss, Debs' death, and the popularity of FDR's New Deal had zapped the party of its strength. Goldstein found himself partnering with Norman Thomas, a socialist Presbyterian minister from Ohio, to rebuild the party's leadership. They saw some early success, with Goldstein as the philosopher of the party with Norman Thomas' down to Earth American oratory doing a lot to broaden the appeal of the movement.
The two had a following out over WWII though. Goldstein was obviously affected by the plight of the Jews of Europe under Hitler and urged the party to adopt a pro-war stance. Not in support of Hitler but because there was a moral duty to oppose Hitler, Nazism, and Fascism. Thomas, a dedicated pacifist, objected. Goldstein won the resulting power struggle as the America First movement came to be associated more and more with Nazi sympathizers.
Unlike Mosley, Goldstein had no role in his nation's wartime government. Though he was a regular fixture of the political scene, making the case for what he called "moral socialism in the tradition of the English speaking world," arguing that only this blend of western morality and socialist theory could lead the west out of the War and into an era of peace.
Maybe it was Mosley's bitterness at being sidelined by Attlee and his need to strike out on his own. Maybe Goldstein's quixotic blend of Anglosphere morality and socialism resonated with Mosley's own migration between the right and left, the upper and lower classes of Britain. Either way shortly after the War in Europe over the Nazis was won the two met in London.
The Rise of Oceania
Joseph Stalin faced a conundrum as the USSR celebrated its victory over Nazi Germany. He knew that conflict with the West was unavoidable. And his own speeches, which for most of the war had dropped overtly anti-capitalist rhetoric in favour of attacking Nazism and Germany, had begun to once again preach about the inevitable conflict between East and West, communism and capitalism. So in 1946 he took a gamble, acting on advise that if he didn't attack the Western Allies now then they'd become too entrenched in western Europe to dislodge.
The surprise Soviet attack shocked the West, and before long the Soviets had swept across the Rhine, into France, Italy, and Iberia, and into Scandinavia. World War III had begun. Whether or not it ever ended would be up for debate, if such debates (or an accurate study of history) were permitted.
America's reaction was swift. Iceland and Greenland were formally annexed into the United States and American soldiers, tanks, and planes reinforced Britain against a Soviet invasion. The Soviets, hoping to accomplish what the Germans couldn't, launched an air campaign against Britain hoping to subdue the population through terror bombing, destroy the RAF and USAF on the Isles, and establish air supremacy as a prelude to invasion. American and British pilots, however, held firm. The Soviets, in their frustration, nuked Colchester. This begun a brief limited exchange of nuclear weapons. Minsk and Stalingrad were nuked, as were Pittsburgh and Chicago. The bombings stopped, however, as Western and Soviet leaders both realized that a wider nuclear exchange would leave the world utterly destroyed. This realization, paired with RAF and USAF resistance and uprisings in Western Europe, lead to the Soviets calling off any planned invasion of the British Isles. In this we see the beginnings of two unspoken rules that would define the War since- nuclear weapons are not to be used, and the core territory of combatants is never to be threatened. Instead the war shifted to the Equatorial Zone, as both sides made attempts to grab as much cheap labour and resources as possible.
The Oceanic Alliance was formed against the backdrop of all of this. Preliminary plans for a mutual defence pact against Soviet aggression had been drawn up in the United States, with the Americans planning on building an alliance led by themselves, the Brits, and French. This plan was adjusted in the wake of the Soviet conquest of mainland Europe. The British Commonwealth and the United States entered into a military pact against the Soviet threat, with the United States strong-arming Central and South America into the Oceanic Alliance. Britain, nominally the second most powerful member of the Alliance, became over-flooded with American soldiers as the island was further turned into a fortress. It's around this time we see the dollar begin to supplant the pound as Britain's currency.
But all of this did not mean unity and solidarity in the West. The nuclear attacks had a destabilizing effect on the American and British economies, which in turn affected the interconnected economies of the rest of the Alliance.
Food prices soared and availability dropped. Rationing far stricter than those of WWII was introduced. Workers were worked to the point of exhaustion for little compensation to feed the Alliance's material needs in the conflict with the Soviets.
That conflict with the Soviets, however, should have dissuaded the populace from socialist movements. Goldstein's blending of Anglopshere morality with socialist ideology, however, had created something of a new movement, a socialist movement that appealed to the hungry and overworked while also being distinctly non-Soviet and non-Russian.
Goldstein and Mosley had both begun using the term "English Socialism" shortly after their meeting in London in 1945, and it's this term that they both used as the revolutionary fever rose in the US and Britain. Mosley formally defected from the Labour Party and formed the English Socialist Party of Britain, attracting large crowds to a speech at Hyde Park in London where he decried the Labour Party and Attlee as lackeys of the capitalist class. Goldstein meanwhile began to champion "Comrade Mosley" to the Socialist Party faithful, and urged an "English Socialist" revolution in the United States, eventually adapting the name for his party too. The attempts by the US and British governments to crack down on the burgeoning English Socialist movement led to mass riots, and later armed civil war in both countries.
The Soviet Union perhaps could have used this temporary collapse of the Anglosphere to assert their position, but they were wrecked by internal divisions too. The death of Stalin had kicked off a power struggle and further fuelled uprisings against conquered Europe. By the time Lavrentiy Beria and his cadre had seized control of the USSR and directed its armies against the European uprisings there was a very different Anglosphere looking back at them across the sea.
Mosley and English Socialist Party supporters during the upheaval in London, 1953
Washington DC and London had each been seized by workers' armies, with Goldstein and Mosley ushering in "English Socialism," each promising that it was the only ideology that could unite the West, solve the issues faced by the working class, and defeat the Soviets. Both countries' revolutionary governments unified in the late 1950s, amidst revolutionary tribunals and executions that expropriated the mines, farms, factories, and heavy industry and executed the most prominent supporters of the capitalist classes. The Treaty on the Creation of the People's Republic of Oceania bound the former US and UK into one superstate. South Africa, Ireland, Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, and New Zealand, all of which had been dependent on the US and UK for protection and trade, fell in line as English Socialist Revolutionaries seized control in their governments. Central and South America would not be fully brought into the fold until the mid 60s, around the time Eastasia emerged as a world power. But for now, English Socialism had been born and Oceana had emerged.
Formally the English Socialist Party of Oceania was formed by the merger of the British English Socialist Party, the American English Socialist Party, the Canadian CCF, South African Labour Party, and the Labour Parties of Australia and New Zealand.
The emblem attempts to combine images unique to the socialist movement in the west without relying on the Soviet hammer and sickle and star. The shaking hands of the American Socialist Party were adopted, as was the V for Victory sign which the movement co-opted to assert its commitment to fighting the Soviets. The torch and shovel and pen, meant to symbolize the workers, intellectuals, and the flame of liberty, were adopted from the old British Labour Party which Mosley had forced into the fold at gunpoint. The initial flag of Oceania used a variation of this emblem, while the party flag used the full emblem.
The two were used side by side in early propaganda throughout the 1950s as Oceania as an English Socialist state asserted itself. The early regime also wanted to emphasize the Anglosphere identity, as Goldstein's blending of the English speaking world's moral code with socialism had been the backbone of its early support amongst the rank and file who were searching for an alternative to Soviet-style communism. Unlike the USSR, which had abolished all of the nationalist symbolism early on, Oceania's new revolutionary government saw value in keeping some form of old symbolism alive, at least at first.
While the promotion of local symbolism within a multi-national Oceania would be phased out as the regime consolidated its power, it had two positive effects. The first is that it planted the seed in the minds of the populace that it was a nation of co-equals. Indeed, while the treaty that formed Oceania was signed in London, it announced that there would be no national capital. This helped ease tensions, especially in South America, which had long been weary of American colonialism. In fact this was an effective ploy on the part of Mosley and Goldstein. Goldstein felt that no state founded on the tenants of English Socialism could morally justify lording over another. By allowing locals supreme authority in local administration Goldstein felt they were granting the people the keys to their true liberation.
Mosley publicly agreed to this fully, but already he was beginning to plot his own rise to unchallenged power. And understood that loyalty across Oceania would be easier to count on if he could guarantee local autonomy.
Oswald Mosley's early purges of the late 50s went unchallenged by Goldstein and his supporters. After all, they were revolutionaries. And they felt that examples had to be made to secure their new society. The bloody decapitation of the capitalist and aristocratic classes in the early 50s had brought land, housing, mines, and factories into the hands of the nascent Oceanic state. The old school socialists, of which Goldstein was one, championed this because they had been trained to watch out for what they deemed class privilege. And if these things had been appropriated from the capitalist and aristocratic classes then it held that they were no longer private. And if they weren't private, they must be public.
Mosley and his cadre of supporters, however, had managed to ensure that these things were actually owned by far fewer people then had ever been the case under capitalism. But they were able to do it with Goldstein and co. cheering them on, because they were unable to really conceive of class outside of the traditional socialist definition.
As the 1950s transitioned into the 1960s the Great Purges began. Goldstein and his supporters, who had championed Oswald Mosley's previous purges as "the Big Brother of the Revolution," found themselves in Mosley's crosshairs. In one night English Socialist Party members loyal to Goldstein among the government controlled press were arrested by Mosley's security services. He responded to critics within the party that the arrested had committed no crime in a speech where he stated "what crimes have been committed comrades? Thought crimes!"
It's said that when Emanuel Goldstein heard of the arrests he fled his home in New York and vanished. The new Mosley-controlled press stated that a plot to overthrow the government and hand it over to the Eurasians had been uncovered. That same press stated that Goldstein was last spotted in the Amazon, but had eluded the police and Army. It was from this point in the early 60s, following Emanuel Goldstein's alleged escape, that he became the focus of Oceanian propaganda as the regime's most hated enemy.
What this meant though, was that Mosley's faction now controlled all of Oceania. The purges of the 60s rooted out all of Goldstein's confidants and associates. Aiden Jones, Thomas Aaronson, and Michael Rutherford, three of Mosley's own confidants who championed the arrest, trial, and confession of Norman Thomas, Goldstein's old partner in the Socialist Party of America, later found themselves arrested in 1965 when Mosley feared their bid for influence at a Party congress in New York would threaten him.
With even Mosley's own inner circle purged of anyone who could challenge him and what old guard were left scared into submission, the bid for power reached its next phase. The press had shortened Mosley's nickname of "Big Brother of the Revolution" (ironically coined by Goldstein) into just "Big Brother." This was done both to elevate Mosley into position of supreme prominence, an eternal familial protector of the people. But it also spoke to a deep underlining aspect of Mosley's plans. Even the party's logo was stripped of anything that might hearken to a more egalitarian past and challenge Mosey's ascendancy.
The English Socialist movement had grown from the broader socialist movement and had inherited its phraseology. Despite the successful attempts at joining it with an Anglophone cultural backbone, it was still inherently socialist in its understanding of the world. Therefore it cast its enemies as class enemies, class traitors, fascists, betrayers of the revolution. The history of Oceania and the English speaking world that had proceeded it that was being taught to children demonized the upper classes from before the Revolution. And Oswald Mosley came from an aristocratic family.
Of course early on this was a boon, allowing him to appeal both to the elites of British society and the working class who made up its masses. But as he consolidated his grip on Oceania he grew paranoid. That anyone could leverage his origins as the son of an aristocrat against him. The great cause of controlling the past via the rewriting of history began from this point, and expanded outward. First Mosley's name was erased, as he began to be referred to as Big Brother and Big Brother only. Then Mosley as a person was erased. By 1968 people had memories of Big Brother having a name other than that, but not a single newspaper in the archives, not a single book, not a single leaflet or photograph, definitively stated what it was. Everyone knew who Big Brother was in 1968. Most people remembered his was named Oswald Mosley, even if they hadn't read or heard or said the name in years. By 1978 it was nearly forgotten entirely.
But this push for control in the 60s also saw the roll-out of Newspeak. Conceived by Party members loyal to Mosley, it was constructed as an artificial language that would remove ambiguity and make the conception, or at least the transmission, of rebellious thoughts impossible. At first it was introduced as an experiment, with high ranking party members using Newspeak to write political opinion pieces and the press urging the populace to learn the new language and read along. By 1971 it had been made the official language of Oceania, with standard English rendered as "Oldspeak." In 1975 even the movement's name had changed. The English Socialist Party was formally rendered as Ingsoc, or The Party.
The change was announced and celebrated in the press as a means to drum up interest and support for Newspeak, but by 1977 not a single piece of evidence existed that actually referenced the name "English Socialism," though it was still occasionally used in discourse as late as 1984.
What of Big Brother though? By 1969 the Great Purges were at least finished. Most of the old pre-revolutionary leadership of the movement had been discredited and exposed as traitors. Those that hadn't been were too terrified to speak out. Goldstein hadn't been heard or seen since the early 60s, but rumours of his Brotherhood terrorist cell remained ever-present. By 1973 Big Brother had left administration of Airstrip One to local Inner Party heads and left for what was once the United States. He held up with Oceania's military and political elite in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in what was once Colorado, where he continued to wield power until 1980 when he passed away. Party leadership, in a top level secret meeting, discussed what to do. And it was decided that the image of Big Brother would live on. After all he hadn't been seen in public for seven years by that point. They had total control of the press. Why not just... not announce his death?
And so Big Brother lived on.
Up next... EURASIA!
