In the last session of our IHR seminar, Parliaments, Politics and People, we enjoyed a paper from Professor Emeritus of Politics from the University of York, David Howell. Below he summarises his paper on patriotic Labour in the wake of the Great War…
Lloyd George rapidly called an election following the signing of an armistice on 11 November 1918. Three days later an already scheduled Labour Party Conference debated the Party’s response. The Coalition Government included eight Labour Ministers. Should the party fight the pending election as an independent force or remain within the Coalition until a formal peace treaty was signed? The vote to fight the election was carried decisively by 2,117,000 to 810,000. The decision has been typically viewed as a critical moment in the party’s emergence as an independent force. The pre-war Progressive alliance between Liberals and Labour seemed shattered; the Irish Nationalists, crucial to a Progressive majority since 1910 were about to be conclusively replaced by Sinn Fein. Labour’s electoral ambitions in the context of a massively expanded franchise and an effective and self-confident trade unionism were much stronger than pre-war.
The reality in the confused politics of late 1918 was complex. An analysis of Labour’s divisions and ambiguities is central to the emerging and contested pattern of post-1918 politics. None of the eight Labour ministers supported the decision to leave the Coalition; four stayed with Lloyd George and stood in the election as Coalition Labour. Their four former colleagues all stood as official Labour candidates, each making clear their unhappiness at the decision. Two were returned unopposed; none had an official Coalition opponent. The four who quit all had strong relationships with their trade unions, a factor which might well have shaped their decisions and which distinguished them from those who stayed.
The centrality of the trade union connection was also evident in the deteriorating relationship between the Labour Party and the British Workers’ League. The League had been formed in March 1916 as a platform for Patriotic Labour. Their adversary was the minority on the left within the Independent Labour Party and the Union of Democratic Control. The BWL enjoyed support from Lord Milner who envisaged it as the basis for a realignment of Labour around an agenda of collectivism and imperialism. The League had the vigorous backing of several Labour MPs but difficulties began late in 1917. The BWL’s desire to run candidates in a future election ran foul of trade union ambitions for a greater parliamentary presence. The Yorkshire Miners’ Association reported the League to the Miners’ Federation. This issue was subsequently debated at the January 1918 Labour Party Conference and membership of the League was declared incompatible with membership of the party. The decision ended hope of a realignment of Labour and the BWL became the National Democratic Party in May 1918. In the December election it ran 25 candidates; 18 had formal Coalition support; nine were elected.
This episode underlines the centrality of trade union priorities. These did not involve in most instances any difference of opinion with either the Labour Ministers or the BWL over the war. The unions, not least in mining, were optimistic that a post-war election would increase their contingent of sponsored MPs. This would be achieved through the Labour Party and the agenda should be located within the reconstruction of the Labour Party led by Arthur Henderson following his departure from the War Cabinet in August 1917. The subsequent painstaking negotiations were directed towards the achievement of an ecumenical party in which patriotic trade unionists, members of the ILP and disenchanted former Liberals could combine.
The 1918 election did not produce such a broadly based parliamentary party but the number of candidates rose dramatically compared with pre-war although, the number that was successful remained small. Many had not faced a Coalition opponent and almost all had held firmly patriotic views on the war. The overwhelming Coalition victory rendered the NDP contingent irrelevant. They were typically bracketed with the four ex-ministers and ceased to count. After the 1922 election all but one had retired or been defeated. In contrast Labour had moved towards the ecumenical party envisaged by the reformers of 1917-18. The 1922 election widened the social base of the Parliamentary Party, but the same could not be said of the party’s electoral base which remained largely within some unionised sections of the working class. The industrial experiences of 1919-22 had strengthened support especially in the coalfields. The controversy over the findings of the Sankey Commission followed by the 1921 lockout were harsh ripostes to the optimism of 1918. Coalfield MPs remained patriots but this was tempered with a renewed sense of the inequalities of class. One Durham Miners’ Member in the last agonies of the 1926 dispute would express this aspiration. “We are citizens of this country and entitled to be treated as citizens.”
DH
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If you are interested in proposing a paper to our seminar conveners please contact the History of Parliament Trust at the following address: website@histparl.ac.uk
