I was born in the aftermath of the Second World War, when families had lost lives, limbs and homes to the Nazis, yet Oswald Mosley and Colin Jordan were still allowed to hold their vile meetings. I grew up in the Cold War, but there was still a Communist Party in this country, it was lawful to stand for Parliament as a communist and lawful to sell communist literature on the streets.
I have no doubt that offence taken against both Mosley and the communists was real and rife, but we regarded individual liberty as an absolute virtue, defending any man’s right to speak his mind, while forcing someone to affirm that which they did not believe was rightly recognised as the hallmark of totalitarianism itself.
