Blackshirts in Geordieland

<p>No region of Great Britain suffered more in the 'Hungry Thirties' than Tyneside and the North-East. When the Labour and Coalition Governments failed to stem the tide of unemployment Geordies began to look elsewhere - to the Communist Party Independent Labour Party and not least the British Union of Fascists led by Sir Oswald Mosley.</p><p>For the next eight years these contenders for political power fought a bitter ideological battle on the streets of Newcastle Sunderland Gateshead Durham Stockton and elsewhere. The full story of this period of the North-East's past has remained untold - something that local historian Gordon Stridiron has now remedied following a study of primary sources never before undertaken on the same scale.</p><p>Mosley's 'Blackshirts in Geordieland' emerge not as the political thugs and would-be Quislings of stereotypical image. Instead the reader discovers a group of patriotic idealists - against communism against capitalism and against war - who whether right or wrong had the courage to face hostility and physical attack to make their message heard: 'The War on Want is the War we Want!"</p>