After all, Mosley was a toff with a refined voice who openly admired Adolf Hitler. So what made him such an attractive figure to working-class voters in Longton and Stoke?

People have been asking these intriguing questions for years, not least because the Far Right extremist regularly created scenes of violence and disorder with his fiery speeches.

Indeed, he and his heavy-handed Blackshirt supporters were sometimes pelted with bottles and stones when they marched through the streets.

This turbulent episode in Potteries history has been chronicled by Longton author Roy Whitfield, whose next book includes a section on Mosley's appeal to the working class.

"In the early 1930s, I was the youngest child of 12 in a poor family, so we were typical of those Mosley targeted," he says. "Jobs were scarce and many families were at the end of their tether.

"At that time suicides were common in Longton. People lived in fear of the Poor Board man. He told couples to sell their bed for half-a-crown, or 12½p, to raise money for food.

"Mosley promised us a better life, a kind of workers' paradise without the dole queues. It was the sort of thing people wanted to hear during the Depression and it won him a lot of votes.

"My father must have been impressed because when Mosley addressed a meeting outside the Cheshire Cheese pub in Edensor Road, he stood on a beer crate which my father took out for him.

"We knew most of the local people who marched with Mosley. One or two were well-known business people, but the rest were men out of work. Mosley gave them money or bought them clothes."

The charismatic Mosley, who had family roots in Staffordshire, first appeared in the Potteries in the late 1920s when his aristocratic first wife, Lady Cynthia, daughter of a marquis, served as Longton's Labour MP from 1929 to 1931.

She won the seat in spite of opposition from the Newcastle Communist Fanny Deakin, who told a miners' meeting: "Lady Cynthia pays more for her knickers than you men get in your wage packets."

By then, Mosley had been a minister in both Conservative and Labour governments and was tipped for high office before deciding to form his own New Party.

In 1931, he fought the Longton seat under this banner and polled 10,534 votes, but still finished in third place. Two years later, he became leader of the Far Right British Union of Fascists.

In a book written in 2002, Mosley's son Nicholas described the 400-strong Stoke-on-Trent branch of the British Union of Fascists as "part thieves' kitchen, part bawdy house".

Around that time, Mosley's regular drinking companions in the Potteries included William Joyce, later known as Lord Haw-Haw when he made wartime propaganda broadcasts from Germany.

Memories of Joyce are scarce, although some years ago Frank Emery recalled that Joyce and Mosley arrived together at Cooke Street School in Longton, where his parents were caretakers.

"Both were wearing long black overcoats and they scared my mother to death," he says. "Mosley picked me up and carried me into a classroom and Joyce followed carrying my pushchair."

Trent Vale pensioner Eveline Shore remembers going to outdoor meetings as a schoolgirl, accompanying her father, who was strongly influenced by Mosley's passionate oratory.

"He was going to be the people's champion and find them jobs," she says. "He was regarded by many as a hero, but he went the wrong way.

"He was an admirer of the Italian Fascist leader Mussolini and his second wife Diana was fond of Hitler. I remember Mosley as being very smart and having a good physique.

"I went with Dad to meetings in the square at Penkhull and at Kingsway in Stoke. It was quite frightening on cold winter nights with all the men crowding around. A lot of shouting and heckling went on."

Eveline, now 89, recalls a night when both her parents went to listen to Mosley at the Victoria Hall in Hanley. Afterwards they walked with him down to Stoke Station, where he gave her father his autograph.

Newcastle pensioner Angela Mellor believes Mosley and his supporters would do almost anything to get votes.

"Mosley made ridiculous promises like saying every household would have a maid under his government," she says. "Lady Cynthia took a similar line at election time, sending wreaths to funerals to get the family's vote."

Angela, aged 93, remembers seeing Mosley leading a group of about 30 men in black as they marched past her family home in Shelton.

In Hanley Market, a second-hand bookshop had a volume on display with the sign: "This book is not for sale. It was written by Oswald Mosley, who ought to be shot for misleading good men."

What's It All About? is a book of stories from the life and times of Roy Whitfield. It will be published next month and will be available from leading bookshops, priced £10.95