Labour's Everyman, –

ch1-2.008 7/8/02 2:44 PM Page 1 Labour’s Everyman, – On April a group of figures appeared on the Northumberland horizon walk- ing slowly in the brilliant sunlight along Hadrian’s Wall. Included in the party were officials of local antiquarian societies, civil servants, businessmen, and newspaper reporters. In the midst was the Cabinet minister from Whitehall: a large-framed seventy-year-old man, with white hair and ruddy face adorned by mutton-chop whiskers, attired in an old alpaca suit and bowler hat. Instantly recognized wherever he went, he possessed an unmistakable ringing voice, in which he greeted everyone as his friend. At Housesteads, the official retinue stopped to concentrate on the silent stones. Characteristically, the minister conversed warmly with the eighty-one-year-old keeper of the fortification, Thomas Thompson, before pondering the moral and political dilemma revealed by the threat of extensive quarrying to the Roman Wall. As the Cabinet minister in the second Labour government responsible for national monuments and historic sites, George Lansbury was steeped in British history. However, he recognized that , tons of quarried stone provided the possibility of permanent employment in a region blighted by the inter-war Depression, but only at the expense of one of the most striking and beautiful stretches of the ancient monument.1 In Britain today, George Lansbury is probably remembered best, not as the First Commissioner of Works, but as the humanitarian and Christian pacifist leader of the Labour Party, apparently out of touch with the realpolitik of European affairs in the s. Lansbury’s unilateralist conscience was increasingly in conflict with his role as party leader as Labour faced up to rearmament in the face of the threat of international Fascism. In an encounter memorable in British politics at the Labour party conference at the Dome in Brighton, the pugnacious trade union boss, Ernest Bevin, drove the pacifist George Lansbury from the leadership in a brutal speech, sharpened by accusation and betrayal of party loyalty. In an active life, which extended from Victorian Britain to the Second World War, George Lansbury was a passionate supporter of more minority causes and organizations than any other contemporary politician. In his crusades for social justice and the underprivileged, he twice suffered imprisonment for his political 1 ‘Ancient Monuments and Historic Buildings’ file, PRO, WORK / . George Lansbury was known affectionately during his life-time as ‘G. L.’ (or, simply, ‘George’ to those who were close to him). In this book he is mostly referred to as ‘Lansbury’. ch1-2.008 7/8/02 2:44 PM Page 2 Labour’s Everyman beliefs and also surrendered his parliamentary seat in the women’s cause. After a rapturous reception for Lansbury at a mass rally of the unemployed in Hyde Park, Clem Attlee, his successor as party leader and future Labour Prime Minister, wrote to his pacifist brother, Tom: ‘[W]e tell him he is almost a Gandhi’.2 Yet, in some quarters, Lansbury’s actions provoked criticisms of sentimentality and lack of real- ism, captured in the famous phrase attributed to the Liberal MP, Augustine Birrell: ‘the trouble with Lansbury is that he will let his bleeding heart run away with his bloody head.’3 By contrast, Fabian historian, Margaret Cole, remembered George Lansbury as ‘the friendliest person she had ever met’. She recalled his tireless endeavours for ordinary people and included a random list of twelve organizations associated with the socialist pioneer: ‘all struggling bodies, all chronically hard-up for cash, all working for the ‘underdog’. However, Dame Margaret chose Lansbury among her fifteen ‘makers of the labour movement’ only eight years after his death, as she felt his memory was already fading.4 Today it is difficult to comprehend the unparalleled affection ordinary people felt in this country and beyond for the Labour pioneer. Lansbury fully merited A. J. P. Taylor’s description as ‘the most lovable figure in modern politics’, a view common among his contemporaries across the political spectrum.5 He enjoyed a friendship of nearly thirty years with Edward Aubrey Hastings Jay, the Municipal Reform candidate who defeated him at Woolwich in the London County Council (LCC) election.6 Lansbury achieved all the elective offices in political life from poor law guardian to Cabinet minister and party leader and was most nat- urally at home among ‘the common people’, as could be observed at Hadrian’s Wall in . In the words of his son, Edgar: ‘For him “the common people” are coal- men, dustmen, porters, postmen, navvies, bricklayers, clerks, sailors, soldiers, shopkeepers, grocers, engineers, carmen, chauffeurs, the unemployed and their wives. Company directors, stockbrokers, statesmen, archbishops, and experts in 2 Clement Attlee to Tom Attlee, Feb. , Attlee Papers, fo. 3 P. Snowden, An Autobiography, i, – (), p. 4 M. Cole, Makers of the Labour Movement (), pp. –. To Sophie Brown, from a politically active Stepney family, Lansbury was her favourite speaker at the annual Hyde Park Rally. ‘I knew he was the MP for Bow, but with his white hair and pink cheeks he was my idea of God, Father Christmas, a favourite uncle and a hero all rolled up into one.’ P. Preston, Tired and Emotional: The Life of Lord George-Brown (), p. I owe this reference to Chris Wrigley. 5 A. J. P. Taylor, English History, – (Oxford, ), p. n.. Lansbury was a close friend of Taylor’s father, Percy, and like others on the political left, such as Arthur Henderson, a regular visitor to the Taylor family household in Southport. A. J. P. Taylor, A Personal History (), pp. –, ; A. Sisman, A. J. P. Taylor: A Biography (), p. A. J. P. Taylor might never have become a famous historian. He could have joined the law firm of his uncle Harry—W. H. Thompson, leading left-wing solici- tor to the Poplar councillors during the Rates Rebellion. Later, Taylor considered the possibility of a post as an inspector in the Office of Works when Lansbury was First Commissioner of Works. K. Burke, Troublemaker: The Life and History of A. J. P. Taylor (New Haven, ), pp. , –, –. 6 The late Douglas Jay recalled that he and his father, Edward, visited George Lansbury in Manor House Hospital in Hampstead after the Labour leader’s serious accident in . I am grateful for an interview with Lord Jay at Minster Lovell, Sept. See also D. Jay, Change and Fortune: A Political Record (), p. ch1-2.008 7/8/02 2:44 PM Page 3 George Lansbury general may be common, but they are not the common people.’7 Unlike some socialist leaders, Lansbury avoided the infamous ‘aristocratic embrace’ throughout his political career. He did not seek personal wealth or social status. Above all, he practised in his public and private life the Christian principles which inspired his socialism, pacifism, internationalism, and support for women’s rights. An un- bridled passion for social justice and unshakable belief in democracy sustained Lansbury’s lifetime of public service in local government and on the national stage. Many of his contemporaries testified that George Lansbury was also a pragmatic politician of considerable skill and experience. In a memorable phrase Harold Laski, one of the leading British intellectuals of the twentieth century, recalled that George Lansbury ‘was not a clear thinker, but had a heart which reached beyond the stars’. He added: ‘Contact with Lansbury was a great education. He was absolutely straightforward, absolutely democratic, and entirely fearless. He always meant every word he said, and it never occurred to him to say less than he meant.’8 Laski dismissed the charge that Lansbury had ‘no taut intellectual doctrine to preach’. Instead, the English philosopher proclaimed that only by meeting Lansbury was it possible to know the meaning of a ‘passionate conviction for a great ideal’. ‘Send him to a meeting, and you find the audience feeling that, with just one more effort, they may be on the high road to the promised land,’ Laski declared.9 Though most of his political life was spent in the British Labour party, Lansbury first joined the Gladstonian Liberals, as did most of the early socialist leaders. As a party agent, he masterminded three election victories before his conversion to socialist propagandist in the s. In the Labour party he was first its popular but stormy petrel, often in opposition to the Labour leadership of Ramsay MacDonald. Lansbury led the famous, or infamous, ‘Poplar Rates Rebellion’ of . Thirty Labour councillors went to gaol and ‘Poplarism’ entered the political vocabulary as the symbol of local defiance of central government.10 Then, after the catastrophic general election defeat, at the nadir of Labour’s political fortunes, Lansbury became party leader, almost by default. In Parliament, the people’s politician from East London proved indefatigable in rallying the forty-six opposition Labour MPs against the National Government and in raising the morale of the labour movement throughout the country. During his lifetime, George Lansbury published an autobiography of sorts in , followed by a second book of recollections seven years later.11 In his article ‘What I Should Like to Read about Myself ’, in The Listener ‘auto-obituary’ series that asked contemporary figures to attempt a self-assessment for posterity, Lans- bury suggested that ‘He was proud to belong to the common people, had no class 7 E. Lansbury, George Lansbury, My Father (), p. ; Taylor, A Personal History, pp. , . 8 H. J. Laski, ‘Why I Am a Marxist’, Nation, Jan. , p. 9 For this portrait of Lansbury, see Harold Laski’s ‘Introduction’ to G. Lansbury, My Life ( edn), pp. ix–xv. 10 For the Poplar Rates Rebellion, see N.

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