Labour's Conscience

The Labour Left, 1945-51

Jonathan Schneer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429823664
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

First published in 1988. The years 1945-51 were crucial to the Labour Party and the Left in Britain. This elegantly written book traces the gradual and painful disillusionment of the Labour Left with the Attlee governments and analyses the alternative, more militant, programme which the Labour Left devised. Never an organised bloc, the author argues that they are best understood as Labour's conscience – a militant tendency is the true sense of the words. This title will be of interest to scholars and students of political history.

1

The Labour Left in the General Election of 1945

THE GENERAL ELECTION campaign of 1945 was among the most important of the century. It was the prelude to one of the great upsets in British political history. It registered the impact of the world’s most destructive war upon a politically sophisticated electorate. It gave real power to the Labour Party for the first time. And it was a formative experience for the postwar Labour Left.¹

Unsurprisingly, the campaign has been subjected to much expert scrutiny. In its immediate aftermath, two psephologists, R. B. McCallum and Alison Readman, recapitulated the main issues of the contest and summarized the points of view of the political parties which participated in it. Since then historians have delved more deeply into the underlying causes of Labour’s unexpected victory. Naturally they have emphasized different factors in accounting for it, for example the “swing of the political pendulum,” the importance of the service vote, even the ignorance of electors who thought they could vote Labour and yet retain Churchill as Prime Minister. Over the years, however, a general consensus has emerged. It owes much to Paul Addison’s brilliant study of British politics during World War II, The Road to 1945. In his concluding chapter Addison argues that Labour’s general election victory affirmed a new “Butskellite” consensus based upon Keynesian economic policies at home and collective security (mainly with the Americans) abroad. The new consensus had been forged during the war, experience of which converted a majority of the intelligentsia to belief in the virtues of “planning,” and a majority of the working class to insistence upon government guarantees of vastly improved economic and social conditions, while convincing both sectors of the population of the need for collective security against dictatorships and the threat of war. To an extent all the main parties shared these ideals and aspirations in 1945, but because Labour espoused them most forthrightly it reaped its reward in the general election of that summer. In so doing it set the seal upon British politics for more than a generation.²

Helpful as previous work on the general election has been, we may push our knowledge further by focusing upon the Labour Left during the campaign. On the most basic level this helps fill a gap in the literature; since, despite its significant role during the contest, historians never have considered the Labour Left’s impact. Moreover, the lessons and conclusions which many left-wing Labourites derived from the general election were to influence significantly their later behavior. In fact, when one views it in the refracted light of subsequent Labour Left disillusionment with Attlee’s governments, the 1945 election takes on new meaning. That light endows the campaign with a poignancy and irony missing from other accounts. It makes a more nuanced interpretation of this crucial event possible. The paradox of 1945, as I hope to demonstrate, is that it set the stage for Labour’s great achievements under Attlee’s Prime Ministership—but also for Bevan’s climactic Labour Left rebellion of 1951.³

II

The background to the general election is uncontroversial, but there is one point of significance which often has been forgotten. The flat-out contest for supremacy between Labour and Conservatives which took place during the campaign might not have occurred, had it not been for the Labour Left.

When Churchill announced the general election neither he nor a majority of his Cabinet wanted an end to the political truce that had been more or less in effect in Britain since the beginning of the war. Most of the Labour ministers continued to hope that the coalition government would remain in power at least until victory over Japan had been won; not knowing of the atomic bomb, they thought this victory might take several years to achieve. That Labour fought the general election not to improve its position against the Conservatives in the coalition, but in hopes of achieving outright victory, was largely a result of pressure emanating from the party rank and file, most forcefully articulated by Harold Laski, Aneurin Bevan and Emanuel Shinwell, representatives of the Left on Labour’s National Executive Committee. They convinced Herbert Morrison and William Whitely, Labour’s chief whip in the House of Commons, that the party would not accept continued coalition government. Attlee, Bevin and Dalton, who argued to the contrary, were outvoted at a meeting of Labour’s National Executive Committee. Thus the most successful general election in Labour Party history was due in part to a victory of the rank and file, and of the Labour Left, over the party leaders.⁴

There is general agreement about the course of the campaign. Labour was quickest off the mark, having been meeting in annual conference while the decision was being made to terminate the coalition. Labour candidates fanned out into the constituencies with the exhortation of retiring party chairman Ellen Wilkinson ringing in their ears, “Fight clean, fight hard, and come back with a solid majority for a Labour government.” Once the campaign was on, the leadership, though it doubted victory, showed no signs of its previous indecision. The Conservative leadership, which, if anything was suffering from over-confidence, appeared at least equally determined. Churchill made a notable, if rash, intervention in a radio broadcast of 5 June, predicting that a Labour victory would lead to Britain being governed by a socialist Gestapo. This and other charges he leveled during the campaign—for example, that the Post Office savings of the poor would be jeopardized if Labour won—generally are held to have been counter-productive. On the other hand, many observers believed that his cross-country auto tour was a triumphal progress. If Churchill the party leader was not universally admired, it seemed that Churchill the national symbol and great wartime statesman was.⁵

A critical moment in the campaign came on 15 June when Churchill invited Attlee to accompany him to Potsdam for the pending Three-Power talks. Harold Laski, who had replaced Ellen Wilkinson as chairman of Labour’s NEC, intervened. If Mr Attlee attended the conference, Laski warned, he should do so only as an observer: “The Labour Party and Mr Attlee can hardly … accept responsibility for agreements which … will have been concluded by Mr Churchill as Prime Minister.” This was the first Labour Left intervention in the campaign to receive national publicity.⁶

Laski’s statement provided the Conservatives with two openings which they were quick to exploit. First they pointed out that the professor, although a member of Labour’s executive, was not responsible to the general electorate. Thus his presumed directive to Attlee, the party leader, was evidence that an undemocratic caucus controlled the Labour Party. If Labour should win the election, it would control Britain too. Secondly, they held that Churchill’s position at Potsdam would be weakened if it became known that Britain was divided over foreign policy. Therefore, Laski’s comments had been unpatriotic.

When they have written about this episode and its immediate aftermath, historians have agreed unanimously that Attlee used it to show that Labour would not abandon the principle of “continuity in foreign policy” and to demonstrate the dismissive manner with which he would confront pressure from Labour’s left wing. At the same time Attlee chided Tories for their ignorance of his party’s constitution. In a series of public letters to Churchill, he argued that the NEC had no power over the party leader in such matters. He accepted the Prime Minister’s invitation: “There seems to me to be great public advantage in preserving and presenting to the world at this time that unity on foreign policy which we maintained throughout the last five years.” The discrediting of Laski, it generally is held, could not have been more complete.⁷

The basis for the common understanding of this incident seems to be, first, the Labour government’s traditional approach to foreign policy after the general election and, second, the famous last line of a private letter which the new Prime Minister sent to Laski on 20 August: “a period of silence on your part would be welcome.” It is tempting to read back into June 1945 tensions within the Labour Party which became explicit only later. No doubt they were implicit at the time. But people interpret politics mainly on the basis of some kind of public record. On that basis a reasonable person (especially of the Labour Left) could have concluded that neither Attlee nor the party leadership had repudiated Laski’s doubts about Conservative foreign policy. In fact, it would have been reasonable to think that they had been endorsed.

Laski opposed “continuity in foreign policy,” on the grounds that the approach of a socialist party to international affairs must be different from that of the Conservative Party. Later the Labour Left fiercely criticized Attlee’s Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, for following the main lines of Churchill’s traditional foreign policy, rather than embarking upon a new “socialist” one. Like any other phrase, however, “continuity in foreign policy” was subject to more than one interpretation, perhaps especially during that politically charged summer. A close reading of Labour campaign speeches suggests that in June and July 1945 the phrase could have held connotations quite the opposite of what eventually became its generally accepted meaning.

The three most publicized elements of the coalition’s foreign policy had been total defeat of the Axis powers, alliance with America and the Soviet Union and support of a new and powerful United Nations Organization to keep peace after the war. During the summer of 1945 Labourites often maintained that a purely Conservative government would be unlikely to continue striving for a strong UNO or close relations with Russia. They even suggested that total victory could not be assured if the “men of Munich” were returned to power. In this context the meaning of “continuity in foreign policy” is far from clear.

Its ambiguity seems most obvious with regard to Anglo-Soviet relations. As Tom Braddock, Labour candidate for Mitcham and a future critic of the government’s anti-Soviet alliance with America, put it in his election address, “It is impossible not to see that Russia is unpopular with big business cartels and monopolies, and with the Tory Government. It is only natural that it should be so. Russia is not run for the profit makers.” Under Labour, Braddock predicted, Great Britain would not be run for profit either. Labour, then, was better qualified than the Conservative Party to maintain the coalition’s policy of friendship with the Soviets. The party leadership agreed, explicitly and on numerous occasions. Here is one instance taken from many—Stafford Cripps, who recently had rejoined the party and immediately catapulted to the top, speaking at Oxford on 26 June:

We must have a progressive, forward looking Government if we are to enter into the reconstruction of Europe hand in hand with the Soviet Union. Mr Churchill’s and Mr Eden’s policy has been good, but it has been the outcome of a Government of all parties. It would be a completely different proposition were we to have a Tory Government in power.

Which party, then, was opposed to “continuity in foreign policy”? Already on 23 June the New Statesman had concluded that “if there is a breach in the continuity of the policy of good relations with Russia, it is far more likely to come from a Tory administration” than from Labour.⁸

It was not only with regard to Russia, however, that such conclusions about continuity could be drawn. For example Attlee argued vigorously for...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The Labour Left in the General Election of 1945
• 2 The Labour Left on Russia and America
• 3 The Labour Left and the Third Force Movement
• 4 The Alternative Economic Program of the Labour Left
• 5 The “Hard” Labour Left
• 6 The Labour Left and the Trade Unions
• 7 The Labour Left in the Constituencies
• 8 The Climax of the Labour Left
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: The Labour Left in Parliament
• Appendix 2: CLPs Demanding an Emergency Conference
• Select Bibliography
• Index