John Warburton: Blackshirt and Founding Editor of ‘Comrade’.

The Friends of Mosley (FOM) was formed in 1982 to provide comradeship for veteran members of British Union and Union Movement. This included an annual dinner and buffet each year in central London regularly attended by up to 200 friends and comrades.

In 1986 FOM began to publish ‘Comrade’, a journal that used original research to counter misinformation about the character of Mosley and his followers that was in danger of passing as accepted ‘fact’.

Examples include articles that proved without question that the first two official British casualties of the Second World War, RAF aircraftsmen George Brocking and Ken Day, were both card-carrying Mosley Blackshirts.

Another article recorded how the very first of the little ships to reach the beaches of Dunkirk in 1940 to rescue British troops was sailed over by Eric Piercy and Colin Dick – also Mosley Blackshirts.

Whilst yet another article exposed the fact that the only member of British Union ever to be charged with treachery in wartime, William Swift of Portsmouth, was convicted solely on the false witness of two men who in released Government documents are shown to have been secret agents of Special Branch.

Never again would the charge that Mosley led a gang of anti-British Fifth Columnists go unchallenged.

The first 60 issues of ‘Comrade’ are reproduced on this website (see link on the left) as a tribute to John Warburton (1919-2004), the Founding Editor and driving force behind FOM’s journal.

John was Assistant District Leader (Sales) for the pre-War Clapham branch of British Union and after the war served on several Union Movement Committees. He later became the Senior Council Member for the FOM.

The pages of ‘Comrade’ record the stories of British men and women who gave all and dared all for Britain’s sake – though they were never to see their dreams grow to fruition.

More than ever in this age of moral cowardice, political corruption and betrayal are such men and women needed.