A History of England

It was a terrible time for Labour, down to just 52 MPs and having to choose a new leadership from a narrow pool from which most of the brightest lights, in the view of many but above all their own, were excluded. The Tories were on top of the world, with a clear majority. MacDonald still led the the National government, but in complete dependence on the Conservatives for his survival in office.

A sharp change in direction of economic policy ended the linkage to the gold standard and introduced tariffs on imports. Both initiatives started to improve things, with growth back and with some strength. But the poor remained desperately poor.

Illustration: composite of the Labour Party leader, George Lansbury, and deputy leader, Clement Attlee, chosen by default because the obvious candidates weren’t available. Both photos from the National Portrait Gallery: Attlee by Walter Stoneman, 1930, NPG x163783; Lansbury by Howard Coster, 1930s, NPG Ax136093

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This episode looks at the impact in Britain of continuing trouble in India. There Gandhi had launched his salt march, walking to the sea to make salt, in breach of the British monopoly and the heavy tax on salt inflicted by the colonial authorities. That had led to his being gaoled.

In Britain, the report of the Simon Commission recommended limited reform in India, but not the granting of Dominion Status. That was in spite of the view of one of the Commission’s co-chairs, Labour’s Clement Attlee, who had been convinced of the need for that status following his travels with the Commission around India.

The Prime Minister called a Round Table conference in London which had representation from many Indian groups, unlike the Simon Commission which had had none. Unfortunately, the gaoled Gandhi’s organisation, the Indian National naturally didn’t attend, and it was the most significant in the sub-Continent. That rather underlines how silly it is to label an opponent as criminal and then proclaim that you don’t talk to criminals – it makes negotiations meaningless.

Fortunately, the Viceroy of India Lord Irwin (later Lord Halifax) released Gandhi and agreed the Gandhi-Irwin pact with him, which included his attendance at a second Round Table.

Winston Churchill was furious that any moves were being made towards Indian self-rule at all, and that his party leader Stanley Baldwin backed them. Baldwin was also under pressure from a campaign by press barons to make him adopt a policy backing tariffs on imports. Baldwin saw off that pressure, denouncing the newspaper proprietors for pursing power without responsibility, ‘the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages’.

Even so, he began to soften his own opposition to tariffs, further adding to Churchill’s disquiet. By January 1931, he’d had enough and resigned from Baldwin’s leadership team. That, for him, was the start of what he would later call his ‘wilderness years’.

Illustration: Gandhi, for Churchill a seditious, half-naked fakir, visiting millworkers in Lancashire while in England for the Second Round Table conference. Photo by Keystone Press Agency Ltd. National Portrait Gallery x137614.

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The ‘flapper election’ took place on 30 May 1929. The reference was top ‘flappers’, fashionable and slightly shocking young women of the 1920s, who could vote in it because, at last, universal suffrage had been introduced for all adults of 21 or over irrespective of sex or property.

The Tories, who’d made some moves, perhaps rather more modest than many might have hoped, towards alleviating property and had been responsible for the reform that gave the flappers the vote, might have hoped to be returned to office in gratitude. They weren’t. Instead, Labour, the biggest single party but again short of a majority, formed a second government under Ramsay MacDonald.

As before, and like the Baldwin government that preceded it, it tried to cut public spending. The economy remained stuck in the doldrums and then, after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, it tanked. Workless numbers soared. In 1931, MacDonald decided that the only way to keep reducing spending was to cut unemployment benefit. That was unacceptable to the majority of Labour. The party split over the issue, a split confirmed when MacDonald accepted the king’s plea to stay on as Prime Minister but at the head of a ‘National Government’ including ministers from all three the main parties, Conservative, Labour and Liberal.

It in turn went to the country, as the National Government, seeking a ‘doctor’s mandate’ to cure the nation’s ills, on 27 October 1931. The results were spectacular: the National Government was returned to power with a colossal majority, 554 seats out of the total of 615 in the House of Commons. They were disastrous for official Labour, to a rump of just 52 seats.

But the picture wasn’t particularly encouraging for MacDonald either. He headed a group with an unassailable majority. However, among the government’s MPs, 470 – a majority of the Commons on its own – were Conservative. His own so-called National Labour group only had 13.

He was in office all right. But he was also trapped. He could do nothing without the support of the overwhelming Tory majority.

Illustration: Ramsay MacDonald, the Prime Minister, (right), in a detail from a 1931 photo of the National Government cabinet by Press Associations Photos, with Stanley Baldwin (left), the Tory leader whose clear Commons majority of his own made him the real power behind MacDonald’s throne. National Portrait Gallery, x184174.

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We pick up the story just after the defeat of the 1926 British General Strike.

It was a bad time for the unions, with strikes accounting for only just over a fifth as many working days lost in the whole of the next ten years as they had in the single year of 1926. Meanwhile, the Labour Party seemed to be cosying up to some strange people, specifically Lord Londonderry, Tory and coal mine owner, who became a close friend of the Labour leader Ramsay MacDonald.

It was also a bad time for the progressive movement, with the Baldwin government bringing in some fairly oppressive legislation, especially against unions and the Labour Party.

There were, however, exceptions, in particular the introduction of universal suffrage for all adults (21 years and over) irrespective of sex (oddly enough brought in by a particularly tough Home Secretary, ‘Jix’ (William-Joynson Hix).

Neville Chamberlain also brought in some new social legislation, reducing the retirement age for contributory pensions and extending benefits to widows and children of workers who died. The effect was small but welcome.

This was also the time when Churchill was riding high and increasingly in rivalry with that same Chamberlain, as they positioned themselves as potential successors to Baldwin for when he eventually retired. What Churchill didn’t seem to realise, however, was that though he’d won most Tories round to his return to their party, too few of them trusted him enough to accept him as leader . The heir apparent, he would discover, wasn’t him, it was Chamberlain.

Illustration: Jix (William-Joynson Hix) who brought in universal suffrage despite being a hardline Conservative Home Secretary, leading a dancing group of flappers (young fashionable women enfranchised by the measure), as seen by the cartoonist David Low in a detail of a 1927 cartoon.

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It's time for A History of England to take a short break, until 15 September. So this episode is a brief review of where we’ve got to, after the defeat of the General Strike.

That defeat showed the poor in Britain, and workers in particular, that there was little hope of improvement in their conditions through union action alone. Instead political action would be needed, by a government disposed to adopt measures to help them. Which meant progress wasn’t likely to happen soon.

That left the majority in Britain in a sorry state, with poor and falling wages combined with high unemployment. Paradoxically, its Empire was at its peak, rather underlining the truth that imperial power didn't necessarily mean prosperity. What's more, even that Empire was under pressure. Decline was already under way, but not everybody had yet recognised the fact.

Illustration: A sunset in Ireland (my own photo)

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It’s the general strike!

This time the unions couldn’t push Stanley Baldwin’s government into making concessions to the miners. That was because while, in his own words, in the previous year Baldwin had not been ready, this time he was.

When the miners came out and the TUC with them, they found the government ready to call up volunteers as strike breakers or special constables to support the police. The country had been divided into districts with Civil Commissioners in each of them, ready to ensure essential goods were distributed and order was maintained.

In any case, any suggestion that the movement was revolutionary was belied by the moderation the strikers and their leaders showed. That didn’t stop the hardliners in cabinet behaving as though they were facing a major threat to civilisation. Strangely, the leading hardliner was Winston Churchill, even though he was a former Liberal and always keen on alleviating the sufferings of the poor. He edited the government newspaper, the British Gazette, and turned it into a huge-circulation propaganda broadsheet pushing the government line. The BBC, too, broadcasting news for the first time, took a highly pro-government stance. And Churchill wasn't above making shows of military force to underline his propaganda points.

The unions weren’t ready for a long strike and their funds began quickly to run out. With legal action threatening against them, and their members suffering, the non-mining unions were looking for a compromise to end the strike. But the miners were at least as intransigent as the mine owners and the government. No compromise was possible.

After nine days, the TUC called off the strike. The British Gazette gloatingly proclaimed ‘Surrender!’ The unions had suffered a major defeat.

And, once more, the miners were left to fight on alone.

Illustration: Arthur Cook, the miners’ leader, addressing a mass meeting of strikers. Public Domain

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The Labour government was kicked out of office at the 1924 General Election, in a campaign marked by the Conservative-leaning Daily Mail engaging in some fake news. It published a forged letter claiming to be from the Soviet leader, Zinoviev, suggesting that re-electing Labour would prepare the ground for a Communist takeover.

As it happens, Labour’s popular vote went up by a million. But Tory votes were spread much more efficiently across constituencies, so they emerged with a solid majority in the Commons, while Labour lost seats. That result seemed to vindicate Baldwin’s decision to call the previous election in 1923: though the Tories lost, because it rejected the notion of tariff protection, it removed the issue from the agenda and the divisions it produced within the Tory party. They therefore went into the 1924 election united and the effect was just what they wanted – a landslide victory. Baldwin’s position was enormously reinforced.

The 1924 election was also when Churchill returned to parliament, but no longer as a Liberal. He was back among the Conservatives in all but name, and to the amazement of many, Baldwin gave him what many see as the second most important position in government, that of Chancellor of the Exchequer. In that position, he took Britain back to the gold standard, against his own initial judgement. It was also against the view of Maynard Keynes, who thought it would damage industry, which it indeed did.

The result was new unrest, particularly in the coal industry, with mine owners demanding longer hours and lower wages, which the miners were determined to resist. This time, they had solid support from other unions. The government bought a nine-month stay of execution by paying a subsidy to coal to protect wages and conditions but as the period for which the subsidy was paid drew to an end, tensions grew. Both the mine owners and the miners were adamant. It began to look as though a general strike was inevitable.

Did that put Britain on the brink of revolution?

Illustration: Baldwin, Tory leader and PM, with Churchill, Chancellor of the Exchequer, after re-ratting to the Tories. Public Domain

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In contrast to the last episode, where we saw how dire the state of the British economy was and how close to violent confrontation society was coming, this episode is the one where we find Britain reaching the peak of its imperial grandeur. It seems that power abroad doesn’t necessarily deliver either peace or prosperity at home.

Meanwhile, at home, political instability continued. There were two more elections, in 1923 and 1924, making it three in three years. The middle one was brought on by Stanley Baldwin decided he needed to go for tariff protection for British industry, and decided he needed a mandate for it from the electorate, much to the annoyance of many of his colleagues who felt there was no need to jeopardise their comfortable parliamentary majority just because the leader had decided his conscience needed a new election.

As it happened, he lost his bet, and ultimately the election resulted in the formation of the first ever Labour government. A minority government, vulnerable to any loss of support in the Commons, but a government all the same. Anyone, however, expecting radical change from it was in for a disappointment. Though, oddly enough, what brought it down was its supposed softness on communism.

Illustration: Ramsay MacDonald in court dress. Public Domain.

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The promise of building Britain into a ‘land fit for heroes’ never came close to being kept. Instead inflation undermined wages, unemployment rose, and living conditions, with widespread slum housing, remained dire.

When the government handed coal mining, an industry employing over a million men, back to the private sector after having taken direct control during the war, the drive for profitability led to mine owners demanding major wage cuts. The miners struck and called on the Triple Alliance of Dockers, Miners and Railwaymen, the unions in what were by then the main industries, to support them.

This episode looks at how that call failed on Black Friday in 1921, and why.

It also looks briefly at how a new Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, saw off an attempt by one of the more entitled Lordlings of England, Lord Curzon, to become Prime Minister in his place, and how he found what slum housing was really like.

Illustration: Striking coal miners in Neath, South Wales. Photo: Illustrated London News, 16 April 1921

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Before moving on from the times when Lloyd George held power, we take a look in this episode at one of the major moments of his time as an international statesman: the Paris Peace Conference and, above all, the specific agreement that emerged from it concerning Germany, the Treaty of Versailles. The episode draws heavily on the views of Maynard Keynes on the Treaty and its likely effects, in particular on its failure to react to the massive gap between the expectations of money from Germany by the victors and the real ability of Germany to pay.

At the end, we look at the fact that as well as leaving a deep resentment in Germany of the victorious powers, it also left two nations that were actually with them, Japan and Italy, bitter with the outcome of the Paris conference. Germany, Italy and Japan. Compare that list with the membership of the Axis that the Allies would have to fight in World War 2 twenty years after the end of World War 1.

An event which Keynes foresaw.

Illustration: Covert og John Maynard Keynes’s book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, of 1919.

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