"Beyond the pale": Oswald Pirow, Sir Oswald Mosley, the 'Enemies of the Soviet Union' and apartheid

Abstract

In 1948, Oswald Pirow, trapped in the political wilderness after his once glittering political career had self-destructed with the founding of the national-socialistic New Order, was desperate for a political comeback. In search of an international platform to portray himself as a leading anti-communist campaigner, and as a political sage with a solution to the challenge of securing white supremacy in Africa, he visited Sir Oswald Mosley, former British fascist leader, in London. The result was a short-lived alliance of opportunism, the ‘Enemies of the Soviet Union’, by two discredited politicians who were beyond the pale in public life. By 1959, this alliance would come to haunt Pirow, who had done his utmost to shed his fascist past. It also caused the apartheid state, which had appointed Pirow as the chief prosecutor in the Treason Trail, considerable embarrassment.