Silver Shirts

The Silver Shirts are a far-right party of revanchist nationalists in Britain, headed by Oswald Mosley. They grew quickly in Britain by taking advantage of bitterness and frustration in the wake of Britain's defeat in the Great War, paralleling the rise of the Freedom Party in the Confederate States and the Action Francaise in France.

The Silver Shirts seemed likely to become the largest party in Britain in the 1920s. The Conservative Party prevented this by moving to the right under the leadership of Winston Churchill. However, the Silver Shirts entered into a government coalition with the Conservatives, supporting Churchill as Prime Minister and Mosley as Chancellor of the Exchequer. While the Silver Shirts were the junior partner in the coalition, they exerted considerable influence on the Government agenda, and the Conservative Party came to resemble the Silver Shirts much more than vice versa.