found not guilty both of murder and manslaughter. Oswald Mosley Hastings appeared for Sir Oswald Mosley in several cases during the 1930s, having become friends with him while in Parliament. The first was a libel case against The Star, who had written a comment on one of Mosley's speeches implying that he advocated an armed revolution to overthrow the British government. The case opened at the Royal Courts of Justice on 5 November 1934 in front of Lord Hewart, with Hastings representing Mosley, and Norman Birkett The Star. Birkett argued that The Star article was nothing more than a summary of Mosley's speech, and that any comments implying the overthrow of the British government were found in the speech itself. Hastings countered that The Star was effectively accusing Mosley of high treason, and said that "there is really no defence to this action...I do ask for such damages as will mark [the jury's] sense of the injustice which has been done to Sir Oswald". The jury eventually decided that The Star had libelled Mosley, and awarded him £5,000 in damages (approximately £ in 2015). Several weeks later, Hastings represented Mosley and three other members of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) in a criminal case after they were indicted for "causing a riotous assembly" on 9 October 1934 at a BUF meeting. The trial opened at the Sussex Assizes on 18 December 1934 in front of Mr Justice Branson, with Hastings for the defence and John Flowers KC prosecuting. According to Mosley, Hastings told him that Flowers, a former cricketer, had a poor reputation at the bar, and that Mosley should not show him up too much. The prosecution claimed that after a BUF meeting, Mosley and the other defendants had marched around Worthing, threatening and assaulting civilians. Hastings argued that the defendants had been deliberately provoked by a crowd of civilians, and several witnesses testified that the crowd had been throwing tomatoes and threatening Mosley. The judge eventually directed the jury to return a verdict of "not guilty". Hastings and Mosley were less successful in another libel action, against the Secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen who had accused him of instructing his blackshirts to arm themselves. The defence, led by D. N. Pritt KC, called several witnesses to a fight in Manchester between blackshirts and their opponents. Hastings, taking the view that the incident was too long