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The Labour Minority Governments Vic04 10/15/03 2:10 PM Page 80 Chapter 4 The Labour minority governments The Labour Party saw an improvement in its electoral fortunes in the immediate post-war period. At the 1918 election Labour gained 22 per cent of the vote, a tremendous increase from 7 per cent at the last elec- tion held in 1910.1 During the war both the trade union and the Labour Party membership had doubled, and working-class militancy had increased in the first few years of peace.2 With the concomitant increase in class-consciousness, the working class now identified far more strongly with the Labour Party than the Liberals and the Liberal Party was split between the followers of Lloyd George and Asquith. The Labour Party became the official opposition in 1922, out-strip- ping the Liberals in the election of that year. They formed minority governments in 1924 and 1929–31, but were unable to gain a major- ity of seats. Rather surprisingly, it is in the area of foreign policy that Labour is seen as having had the most success in these two early expe- riences in government, even though foreign policy is subject to more external restraints than other policy areas.3 The Labour Party and minority Labour governments had considerable impact on Britain’s stance on open diplomacy, internationalism, the arms trade, and the League of Nations. From the early 1920s to the late 1930s, the inter- nationalist, anti-war section of the party, strongly influenced by the UDC, dominated Labour Party thinking on international affairs. While this wing of the party had initially been highly critical of the League of Nations, they came to see it as the avenue through which peace could be maintained. Despite, or possibly because of, the trauma of the First World War, the post-war years saw a period of remarkable optimism about the ability to banish war and conflict through the rational application of international law and the operation of the League of Nations. The Rhiannon Vickers - 9781526137807 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/28/2021 11:38:14PM via free access Vic04 10/15/03 2:10 PM Page 81 THE LABOUR MINORITY GOVERNMENTS 81 ideas of the UDC, developed through their publications during the war, coincided with liberal internationalist views propounded by President Woodrow Wilson. In particular, they were similar to, and preceded, the Fourteen Points of the peace programme Wilson outlined in his address to Congress on 8 January 1918, and took with him to the Versailles Conference in December. These included ‘Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at’, with no secret agreements; freedom of the seas; the removal of economic barriers to trade; the reduction of national armaments to the lowest level consistent with domestic safety; a free hearing of all colonial claims to self-determina- tion; the restoration of occupied territories; and the formation of a general association of nations ‘for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.’4 In terms of national self-determination, the Labour Party’s 1918 general election manifesto said that Labour would ‘extend to all subject peoples the right of self-determination within the British Commonwealth of Free Nations’ and called for ‘freedom’ for Ireland and India.5 This was repeated in its 1922 general election manifesto, which also advocated support for the new consti- tution of the Irish Free State.6 In terms of open covenants, the Labour Party’s perspective was that public opinion would ensure that open agreements conformed to the highest morality and public opinion would prevent the outbreak of war, for a League of Nations could rely on public opinion rather than the use of force or economic sanctions to ensure compliance within itself. For those on the political left, having found a way of resolving conflict between states, it was also necessary to deal with the domestic causes of state aggression. Central to this was dealing with and regulating the arms industry, with foreign policy radicals believing that ‘if there were no armaments, there would be no war’.7 The obvious conclusion was to cut down and abolish armaments. At this time there seemed no reason not to, as there was no obvious aggressor in the world. As Ben Pimlott explains: ‘The lack of an identifiable foreign danger focussed attention on the danger within: the threat presented by the capitalist system, by arms dealers and manufacturers, by imperialist competition, above all by the inertia or hypocrisy of governments in their relations with neighbours.’8 What developed within the Labour Party was the closest they had had to date to a comprehensive and widely accepted viewpoint on foreign policy. Windrich has argued that Labour followed a ‘socialist’ foreign policy in the post-war years;9 Winkler that the party developed a ‘League of Nations’ policy.10 Certainly these years were marked by a fair degree of Rhiannon Vickers - 9781526137807 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/28/2021 11:38:14PM via free access Vic04 10/15/03 2:10 PM Page 82 82 THE LABOUR PARTY AND THE WORLD agreement within the different wings of the party on the basis of a British foreign policy, despite the widespread and enduring differences between the various groups and factions of the party and the mutual suspicion between the trade unionists and the intellectuals. Both paci- fists and non-pacifists could agree on the need to remove aggression and conflict from the international system through the League of Nations. While those who had fought most to get such a body as the League established were the most critical of it once it was created, there was a general belief in its ability to maintain peace. This agree- ment continued until the mid-1930s, when the horrors of the Spanish Civil War broke down the consensus on the ability to maintain peace through non-intervention and the ability of the League of Nations system to regulate and control conflict. Labour in government, 1924 The election of November 1922 saw a marked improvement in the standing of the Labour Party, with 142 MPs elected. The Liberals were still divided, with the Independent Liberals gaining fifty-four seats and the National Liberals sixty-two.11 This meant that for the first time Labour was the second most powerful party in Britain and could sit on the opposition front bench. Ramsay MacDonald, who had lost his seat at the 1918 election as a result of his anti-war record, was returned to Parliament, as were Philip Snowden and George Lansbury. E. D. Morel of the UDC was elected to Parliament for the first time, as were Sidney Webb, Clement Attlee, Herbert Morrison and Emanuel Shinwell. A number of former Liberal MPs were returned as Labour Party ones, including Arthur Ponsonby and Charles Trevelyan, found- ing members of the UDC. Arthur Henderson, the most senior Labour MP at the time, lost his seat. Ramsay MacDonald was elected chairman of the PLP, making him leader of the party. This was somewhat remarkable given his rift with the party over the First World War, and while he had been busy in the international labour movement since the end of the war, the loss of his parliamentary seat in 1918 had meant that he had continued to have a low profile within the party during the intervening years. Bonar Law led the Conservative government until May 1923 when, due to his ill health, Stanley Baldwin replaced him as Prime Minister. Foreign affairs took up much parliamentary time, with the crisis over Germany’s reparation payments and France’s occupation of the Ruhr. Marquand notes how ‘Foreign crises usually strengthen Rhiannon Vickers - 9781526137807 Downloaded from manchesterhive.com at 09/28/2021 11:38:14PM via free access Vic04 10/15/03 2:10 PM Page 83 THE LABOUR MINORITY GOVERNMENTS 83 the Government of the day. This one brought greater benefits to the Opposition. MacDonald knew more about foreign affairs than Bonar Law or Baldwin, and spoke on them with greater authority.’12 MacDonald linked the economic conditions at home with the crisis abroad, arguing that ‘the unemployment problem at home could not be resolved until Europe had been pacified and the reparations issue resolved.’13 The 1922 Labour Party manifesto had called for revisions of the Peace Treaties, with German reparations being brought within Germany’s capacity to pay, an all-inclusive League of Nations ‘with power to deal with international disputes by methods of judicial arbi- tration and conciliation’, and arms limitations. Labour’s 1923 mani- festo expressed similar sentiments, calling for ‘a policy of International Co-operation through a strengthened and enlarged League of Nations; the settlement of disputes by conciliation and judicial arbitration’ and the revision of the Versailles Treaty, especially regarding German repa- rations.14 Sidney Webb argued in his speech to the 1923 annual confer- ence that the peace treaties had failed because they ignored both economics and morality, and called for a foreign policy based ‘not on what we presume to think our rights, but on what we can discern to be in the common interests of the world’ and on how ‘we can best serve humanity as a whole’.15 The general election of 6 December 1923 resulted in the Conservatives winning 258 seats, with Labour on 191 and the Liberals 159.16 The Conservatives under Baldwin tried to establish a govern- ment, but the Liberals, united again under Asquith, made it clear that they would support a minority Labour government rather than a minority Conservative one.
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