Action was a newspaper of Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists (BUF). The paper first appeared in 1936. The editor of the paper from 1939 was Alexander Raven Thomson, the BUF's chief ideologue.[1] It ceased publication in 1940 due to the outbreak of the Second World War and the internment of the BUF's leadership. In fact the British government banned the paper.[2] For most of its existence, Action ran parallel to the official mouthpiece of the BUF, The Blackshirt. After the launch of the less hard-line and more intellectual Action, The Blackshirt became more low-brow and finally ceased publication in 1939.[3]
Action took its name from an earlier 1931 newspaper of the same name published by Mosley's New Party.
A later newspaper of the same name was published by the Union Movement from 1966.[4]