The Foundations of the British Labour Party

Identities, Cultures and Perspectives, 1900-39

Matthew Worley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780754667315
• eBook ISBN: 9781351889483
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Interest in the Labour Party remains high, particularly following the unprecedented election of a third successive Labour government and amidst the on-going controversies that surround the New Labour project. Increasingly, the ideological basis of the Labour Party has come under scrutiny, with some commentators and party members emphasizing progressive traditions within the party, whilst others refer back to the trade union foundation of Labour. This volume brings together a group of scholars working within the field of labour history to consider the various elements that influenced the early Labour Party from its formation into the 1930s. The party's association with the trade union movement is explored through the railwaymen and mineworkers' unions, while further contributions assess the different ways in which the Independent Labour Party, the co-operative movement, liberalism, Christianity and the local party branches helped lay the foundations for Labour's growth from a parliamentary pressure group to a party of government.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Matthew Worley

To describe the British Labour Party as a ‘broad church’ is to descend almost into cliché. Yet, like most clichés, it contains a kernel of truth. This, after all, was a party built on the back of a number of affiliated organizations: trade unions, socialist societies, trades councils, women’s associations, professional groups and, from 1918, constituency parties and, on occasion, co-operative societies. Each of these brought with them a range of opinions, customs and expectations, uniting in different ways in different places to form an array of local Labour organizations boasting varied compositions, experiences and priorities. Labour’s doctrine, meanwhile, non-determined to 1918 but recognizable as a form of socialism thereafter, combined a moral sense drawn from diverse religious and radical influences with a smart dose of working-class pragmatism instilled by those trade unions that formed the bedrock of the party.¹ During the Great War (1914−18), pacifists and internationalists continued to pay their dues into the same pot as committed pro-war patriots; throughout the party’s history, the nature and extent of Labour’s socialism has proven a matter of fierce political (and intellectual) debate.

Given this, Labour has sought from its formation in 1900, through its reconstitution in 1918, and onto the ‘New’ Labour Party of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, to hold within its ranks an alliance of diverse ‘labour’, ‘socialist’ and ‘progressive’ outlooks. This has not always been easy. Throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century, Labour members have disagreed about policy, strategy and even the aims of their party; clashes between the political left and right have been a constant theme of Labour’s history, occasionally leading to secession but more usually remaining a site of competing tradition and conception within the party’s composite structure. Concurrently, of course, Labour has – from at least the early 1920s – proven more than capable of seeing off any challenge from either socialist or Liberal competitor, suggesting there remained a strong ideological, organizational, ethical and aspirational cement holding the party together. Across its diverse currents, Labour has successfully maintained its position as the principal alternative to Conservatism in Britain for nearly a hundred years.

Historiographically, Labour’s general development and electoral progress (or lack of it) has received extensive attention, as has its record in and out of government.² Arguably, however, beyond a sustained fascination with points of division inside the party, there has been somewhat less interest shown towards the more subtle intricacies of Labour’s politics and organization.³ The varied origins of the Labour Party have been neatly categorized, and institutional histories of its main affiliates have long been available.⁴ But while political scientists search for a ‘model’ to understand Labour’s place within the wider polity, and while historians argue over what exactly determined Labour’s political trajectory, the ramifications of such diverse Labour experience – in terms of organization, geography and ideology – have perhaps been neglected.⁵ Competing or distinct, rather than intertwining, narratives have become the norm, especially with regard to local studies.⁶ And yet, it is only through recognition of Labour’s variegated character that the party can really be understood. Labour’s ‘broad church’ cannot simply be reduced to mean ‘trade unionists’ and ‘socialists’, ‘men’ and ‘women’; nor can it always be divided neatly into a politics of left versus right. This, then, is a collection of essays designed to tease out certain strands within the Labour Party. It is in no way comprehensive. But by focusing on specific organizations, on certain ideological and cultural influences, and on particular identities within the party, it is hoped to give expression to the multiple character of Labour while also providing a means by which to recognize certain commonalities cutting across the party. As practically, it is intended to be of service to students confronted with the basic questions as to ‘what was the Labour Party?’, and ‘what are the wider implications of its organizational, intellectual and political origins and development’?⁷ First, however, let us sketch the essential details of Labour’s history from 1900 to 1939, before positing certain questions that arise from such an approach.

The Labour Party: 1900-39

The Labour Party was founded as the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) in February 1900. The immediate impetus for this was a resolution passed at the 1899 Trades Union Congress (TUC); its objective, as stated in 1900, was to establish ‘a distinct Labour group in parliament, who shall have their own whips, and agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to co-operate with any party which may for the time being be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interests of labour’.⁸ More generally, a combination of legal and economic pressures, related social-political factors (including a socialist ‘revival’), and grassroots Liberal equivocation towards ‘labour’ candidates ensured that by 1900 a growing body of opinion within the labour movement had come to recognize the need for independent political representation on the part of the working class. And although the early LRC received but minor support across a trade union movement that boasted some 2,022,000 members at the turn of century, it soon grew in response to the legal proceedings brought by the Taff Vale Railway Company against the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants in 1901. A secret electoral pact with the Liberal Party was then secured in 1903, leading to the election of 29 LRC MPs at the 1906 general election and the formal establishment of the Labour Party. By December 1910, Labour registered 42 MPs, a steadily growing number of representatives on local government bodies, and an expanding party apparatus. Come the outbreak of the Great War, the party’s official membership stood at 1,612,147, with support concentrated mainly in Britain’s industrial and trade union heartlands.⁹ Thus, Yorkshire, South Wales, Lancashire and the North East contained the principal bases of Labour support.

The importance of the Great War in Labour’s history is difficult to underestimate. Although the conflict caused consternation among many socialists, not least Keir Hardie, the party rallied behind the war effort whilst simultaneously presenting itself as defender and representative of the British people’s social-economic interests at home.¹⁰ As well as gaining experience in office as part of a coalition government, Labour’s ranks and coffers were swelled by the increase in trade union membership engendered by the war economy, and its political standing rose in contrast to a divided and demoralized Liberal Party. By 1918, the party’s official membership numbered 3,013,129, peaking at 4,359,807 in 1920. In the process, Labour reconstituted itself in 1918, developing a more coherent national organization and, for the first time, presenting a comprehensive party programme (Labour and the New Social Order). From here on, Labour was officially committed to ‘secure for the producers by hand and by brain the full fruits of their industry, and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible, upon the common ownership of the means of production and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry and service’. At the war’s end, Labour was a party transformed politically and organizationally (see below, pp. 5–10).

The benefits of all this were not immediately apparent. Having withdrawn from the coalition and severed all ties with the Liberals, Labour stood a record number of candidates at the 1918 general election – 361 compared to 56 in December 1910 – but won just 57 seats. Nevertheless, the following year saw impressive gains at a local electoral level and, come the 1923 general election, Labour’s progress was such that its 191 seats enabled it to form a minority government in January 1924. This lasted but nine months; in 1929 however, Labour returned to office, again as a minority government, but with 287 seats compared to the Conservatives’ 260. Crucially, too, Labour’s influence had spread nationwide. In addition to London, industrial Scotland and the heartlands noted above, 1929 saw the party break through in places previously resistant to Labour’s appeal, not just in urban-industrial centres such as Liverpool and Birmingham, but in constituencies such as Loughborough, South West Norfolk and Enfield.

Neither Labour government proved particularly effective. The first demonstrated itself ‘fit to govern’ though its achievements were few; the second was quickly engulfed by a worldwide economic depression. Unemployment, which Labour had pledged to alleviate, rose to over two million and the government drifted without apparent solution to the events unfolding around it. After just two years in office, and as economic crisis transformed into political crisis, the Labour prime minister – James Ramsay Macdonald – tendered his government’s resignation only to depart Labour’s ranks and head a National coalition dominated by the Conservative Party.

Not surprisingly, the debacle of 1931 led to Labour’s being devastated at the polls in the ensuing general election. By the end of October 1931, the party boasted just 46 MPs. As importantly, the experience of 1929−31 led the party to reassess both its policy and its approach. Rather than relying on what Sidney Webb famously referred to as ‘the inevitability of gradualness’, by which socialism would evolve out of a prosperous capitalism, Labour reasserted its links with the TUC and committed itself to devising a detailed and applicable programme of nationalization and economic planning. The aspirational vagaries of the 1920s were replaced by the drier but more precise programme of For Socialism and Peace (1934); the charismatic leadership of Macdonald gave way – after brief sojourns by Arthur Henderson and George Lansbury – to the quiet determination of Clement Attlee.

Although the 1935 general election saw Labour remain some way behind the National coalition, the party at least boosted its parliamentary presence to 154 and continued to spread its vote more evenly around the country. The tumultuous events of the 1930s, including unemployed demonstrations at home and the rise of fascism abroad, created a heightened political climate in which Labour slowly but surely forged an effective opposition to the government. Internally, the party resisted calls to form a united front with the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) whilst reconciling its propensity for peace with the realization that fascism could only be stopped by force. As the decade came to a close, therefore, Labour once more prepared to enter a war that would, in time, transform its fortunes. The party joined the wartime coalition in 1940; in 1945, the British people elected the first ever majority Labour government.

Labour Organization: 1900-39

As outlined above, Labour’s progress looks relatively dynamic up to 1929, before the economic and political crises that engulfed the second minority Labour government led to a further period of rebuilding up to the outbreak of the Second World War. There was, however, far more to the party’s development than a series of election results and spells in and out of office. Labour’s emergence, growth and progress were forged not by fate or chance, but by the construction, articulation and presentation of a politics that both reflected and inspired the concerns, beliefs and hopes of a significant number of people. This happened at a local as well as a national level, and saw Labour’s progress open to a series of alternate strategic, intellectual and political influences. Simultaneously, Labour’s progress was determined by the construction of an efficient party apparatus, a political machine by which Labour could adapt itself to and help shape a constantly changing political and social-economic world. Into this, the various strands of Labour organization and the disparate features of Labour ideology were supposed to coalesce into effective electoral practice and language.

The Labour Party’s apparatus was pieced together as a series of linked but distinct sections.¹¹ From 1900 through to the 1930s, the LRC and then the Labour Party mainly comprised affiliated trade unions and socialist societies, the aims and policies of which were devised through a system of delegates appointed to a national conference in relation to the size of their respective organization. within such an arrangement, the trade unions were always dominant. The LRC had been instigated on a trade union initiative, their mass memberships dwarfed that of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and other smaller party affiliates, and trade union values of loyalty and collective responsibility ensured that Labour was provided with a notable pool of support. Only in 1918 did the party constitution facilitate the formation of divisional parties at constituency level open to individual members, and these too affiliated to the national party and sent delegates to conference in accordance with their membership. Again, however, the number of individual members represented by the constituency parties could never compete with that of the trade unions.

From 1906, national Labour organization extended to the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), consisting of all Labour MPs inside the House of Commons. This elected its own executive committee and chairman (the position of party leader was not established until 1922), and retained a degree of autonomy from the bulk of the wider party. Such a premise had been established in 1907 by Keir Hardie, the first PLP chairman, and was reaffirmed in 1918. Labour MPs were initially sponsored mainly by a particular trade union or the ILP, before the reforms of 1918 led to an increasing number of Labour MPs being backed directly via their constituency organizations. In 1929−31, for the first and only time between the wars, the number of elected Labour MPs sponsored by their constituency party outnumbered those sponsored by the trade unions. Even so, the trade unions tended to have claimed Labour’s safest seats and retained a dominant presence in the PLP over the 1930s. In 1935, when 395 of Labour’s 552 candidates were financed by their constituency organization, 79 trade union MPs sat down next to 66 constituency party members and nine sponsored by the Co-op. The ILP’s presence within the PLP was always significant in the early years of the Labour Party, but became increasingly marginalized in the lead up to its disaffiliation from the larger party in 1932. We should note, too, that Labour candidates and MPs often held multiple party affiliations.

Overseeing Labour affairs between conferences and acting as a link between the PLP and the affiliated organizations was the National Executive Committee (NEC). This was elected by conference, although its more ‘hands on’ role in the day-today life of the party meant it soon developed what David Howell has described as a ‘tutelary’ relationship with the party, tabling resolutions at conference and coordinating the agenda.¹² Again, the trade unions appeared to ensure domination of the party executive. Thus, the early NEC comprised of 16 members, 11 of whom represented the trade unions, three the affiliated socialist societies, one the trades councils, women’s and local organizations, and a treasurer. After some debate, the NEC was expanded to 23 in 1918 to include 13 representatives from the affiliated extra-party sections, five local party members, four women and the treasurer. Not surprisingly, the affiliated positions were occupied predominantly by trade unionists, although Fred Jowett regularly represented the ILP and Sidney Webb the Fabian Society for much of the 1920s. While the unions could have taken all 13 positions, due recognition was given to the role played by the socialist societies within the party; a piecemeal but significant concession that followed the abolition of separate socialist representation. Later, in 1929 and 1937, the NEC was further reformed to include an extra woman representative and two further constituency members.

At a local level, the Labour Party developed primarily around already established trades councils, although Labour organizations existed simultaneously in the form of Labour representation committees, local Labour parties and similar. These, like the national party, were initially federations of trade unions and socialist societies, and they functioned mainly as election committees prior to 1918. More often than not, the respective un...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• General Editor's Preface
• Acknowledgements
• List of Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 John Robert Clynes and the Making of Labour Socialism, 1890-1918
• 3 Lines of Division: Railway Unions and Labour, 1900-39
• 4 Deadweight or Bedrock? The Mineworkers and Labour
• 5 The European Context: Aspects of British Labour and Continental Socialism Before 1920
• 6 Myth, History and the Independent Labour Party
• 7 Labour and the Intellectuals
• 8 The Distinctiveness of British Socialism? Religion and the Rise of Labour, c.1900-39
• 9 Labour's Lost Soul? Recovering the Labour Church
• 10 Women and Labour Politics
• 11 The Fruits on the Tree: Labour's Constituency Parties between the Wars
• 12 'A Union of Forces Marching in the Same Direction'? The Relationship between the Co-operative and Labour Parties, 1918-39
• 13 Counter-Toryism: Labour's Response to Anti-Socialist Propaganda, 1918-39
• Index