Cynthia Mosley

Lady Cynthia Blanche Mosley (née Curzon; 23 August 1898 – 16 May 1933) was a British aristocrat, politician and the first wife of the British Fascist politician Sir Oswald Mosley.

Early life Born Cynthia Blanche Curzon at Kedleston Hall, she was the second daughter of Hon. George Curzon (later Marquess Curzon of Kedleston) and his first wife, Mary Victoria Leiter, an American department-store heiress. As the daughter of an Earl (and later a Marquess), she was styled Lady Cynthia from 1911. She was nicknamed "Cimmie".

Marriage and family

On 11 May 1920, Cynthia married the then-Conservative politician, Oswald Mosley. He was her first and only lover.

They had three children: Vivien Elizabeth Mosley (25 February 1921 – 26 August 2002),#tag:ref|b. 25 February 1921, d. 25 August 2002, aged 81. m. St Martin-in-the-Fields, London, January 1949, Desmond Francis Forbes Adam, the son of Colin Forbes Adam, of Skipwith Hall, Selby, Chairman of Yorkshire Post Newspapers, by his wife, the former Hon. Irene Constance Lawley, daughter of the 3rd Lord Wenlock. Vivien's father, Sir Oswald, gave her in marriage at the ceremony. The couple had a son, Rupert, born in 1957, and two daughters, Cynthia, born in 1950, and Arabella, born in 1952. The marriage ended, 3 January 1958, when her husband was killed instantly in a road accident at Newark. He was 31, travelling from London to a family christening in Yorkshire, when a car, in which he was a passenger, collided with a lorry. Nicholas Mosley, 3rd Baron Ravensdale (25 June 1923 – 28 February 2017), a successful novelist who wrote a biography of his father and edited his memoirs for publication; Michael Mosley (25 April 1932 – 13 March 2012), died unmarried and without issue.

Political life

Both Cynthia and Oswald Mosley joined the Labour Party in 1924. She was elected Labour Member of Parliament (MP) for Stoke-on-Trent in the 1929 general election, her husband having been elected MP for Smethwick in 1926. Frustrated with the ruling Labour Party's complacent and conservative response to high levels of unemployment, Oswald Mosley formed the New Party on 1 March 1931 which his wife also joined. The party failed to win any seats at the 1931 general election. After that Mosley started his move towards Fascism, losing many of those who had joined the New Party as a result.

In September 1930, Lady Cynthia, after flying to Istanbul, sent a letter to the exiled Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, whom she admired. As Labour MP for Stoke, Lady Cynthia had failed to get the British Labour government to offer Trotsky political asylum in Britain. Lady Cynthia's letter read:

Trotsky agreed to meet Lady Cynthia, but became suspicious when Lady Cynthia said that her husband also admired him. While Oswald Mosley was still Labour MP for Smethwick and attacking Ramsay MacDonald from the left at the time, along with being seemingly the finest left-wing mind on the Labour government front bench, Trotsky was already suspicious of Oswald's impatience and ambition, labelling him as the "aristocratic coxcomb". Trotsky was also critical of Lady Cynthia for the female companion she brought with her to the meeting. In 1935, Trotsky recalled his meeting with Lady Cynthia, expressing no surprise in her husband Oswald's subsequent journey to the far-right and becoming the British leader of fascism, with Trotsky also questioning what became of Lady Cynthia personally and politically before "her sudden death" in 1933.

Electoral defeat and death All the New Party's candidates in the 1931 election lost their seats or failed to win in constituencies, instead seeing a National Government which involved the Conservatives, Liberals and a breakaway from the main Labour Party amid the Great Depression. Cynthia Mosley did not stand in the election; Oswald contested her old seat of Stoke. She drifted away from her husband politically, having no sympathy for his move towards fascism. She died in London in 1933 at 34 after an operation for peritonitis following acute appendicitis.

Styles 23 August – 20 October 1898: Miss Cynthia Blanche Curzon 20 October 1898 – 2 November 1911: The Hon. Cynthia Blanche Curzon 2 November 1911 – 11 May 1920: Lady Cynthia Blanche Curzon 1920 – 30 May 1929: Lady Cynthia Blanche Mosley 30 May 1929 – 27 October 1931: Lady Cynthia Blanche Mosley MP 27 October 1931 – 16 May 1933: Lady Cynthia Blanche Mosley