IMPERIALISM AND THE BRITISH LABOUR MOVEMENT, 1914-1964 CAMBRIDGE COMMONWEALTH SERIES Published in association with the Managers of the Cambridge University Smuts Memorial Fund for the Advancement of Commonwealth Studies

General Editor: E. T. STOKES, Smuts Professor of the History of the British Commonwealth, University of Cambridge

TITLES PUBLISHED BY THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS fohn S. Galbraith: Mackinnon and East Africa, 1878-1895 G. Andrew Maguire: Toward 'Uhuru' in Tanzania Ged Marlin : The Durham Report and British Policy Ronald Robinson (editor): Developing the Third World

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Roger Anstey: The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1760-1810 Partha Sarathi Gupta : Imperialism and the British Labour Movement, 1914-1964 IMPERIALISM AND THE BRITISH LABOUR MOVEMENT, 1914-1964

Partha Sarathi Gupta

M ISBN 978-1-349-02441-4 ISBN 978-1-349-02439-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-02439-1 © Partha Sarathi Gupta 1975 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1975 978-0-333-17646-7 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission

First published 1975 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Associated companies in New Y ark Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras

SBN 333 17646 4 TO MY PARENTS Contents

Preface Xl

Acknowledgements XV List of abbreviations xvn

1 Introduction 1 (i) The Problem 1 (ii) The Socialist Tradition and Colonialism 8 (iii) The 'New Imperialism' and Tariff Reform 14

2 Reaction to the War and the Peace, 1914-22 18 (i) Imperial Autarky 18 (ii) Post-War Party Policy: Economic 26 (iii) War Aims and National Self-Determination 35 (iv) India 38 (v) Imperial Standard: Race Relations 51 (vi) Conclusion 56

3 Imperial Economic Relations, 1922-29 58 (i) Imperial Trade 60 (ii) Colonial Development 71 (iii) Migration 86 (iv) Conclusion 90

4 Imperial Political Issues, 1922-29 93 (i) Imperial Strategy and Foreign Policy 93 (ii) Colonial Self-Government: India 102 (iii) Imperial Standard : Race Relations 118 (iv) Colonial Self-Government: Africa 126 (v) Conclusion 132 (viii) 5 The Second Labour Government : Imperial Economic Relations, 1929-31 134 (i) Colonial Development 135 (ii) Colonial Labour 142 (iii) Debate on Imperial Trade 145 (iv) Trade Policy : The Balance of Forces : Summer, 1930 151 (v) The Conference and After 156 (vi) Conclusion 161

6 The Second Labour Government : Imperial Political Issues, 1929-31 162 (i) Imperial Foreign Policy 162 (ii) Imperial Defence 166 (iii) Imperial Standard : Race Relations 172 (iv) The Memorandum in Action: 1930-31 (v) The Colonial Service and the Colour Bar (vi) Conclusion

7 The Second Labour Government : The Indian Crisis, 1929-31 201 (i) Till Civil Disobedience 201 (ii) Civil Disobedience 205 (iii) The Round Table Conference and After 209 (iv) Cotton and Sterling 216 (v) Conclusion 223

8 From a Radical Opposition to Coalition, 1931-45 225 (i) Policy-making: Personnel and Agencies 225 (ii) Perspectives on the International Economy 231 (iii) Trusteeship or Appeasement 237 (iv) Colonial Development 243 (v) Colonial Labour 248 (vi) India 254 (vii) Political Goals : Self-Determination? 260 (viii) Coalition Labour and India 266 (ix) Conclusion 273 (ix) 9 Labour in Power, 1945-51 275 (i) Dilemmas of a Global Role 275 (ii) Imperial Foreign and Defence Policy 284 (iii) Independence in South Asia 292 (iv) Commonwealth or 'Little England'? 299

10 Colonial Reforms : Blueprints and Realities, 1945-51 303 (i) Commonwealth Economic Relations, 1945-50 304 (ii) Colonial Development, 1945-50 309 (iii) Ripeness for Self-Government 325 (iv) Crisis and Cold War, February 1950-0ctober 1951 336 (v) Conclusion 346

11 Labour between Commonwealth and Europe, 1951-64 349 (i) The Old Guard in Power, 1951-55 350 (ii) New Leadership and Rethinking 368 (iii) Conclusion 385

12 Conclusion 387

Biographical Index 397

Bibliography 413

General Index 439 Preface

This book examines the attitudes and policies of the British Labour Movement towards the British Empire and Common• wealth in the twentieth century. Its focus is not the British work• ing class as such but rather the decision-making and policy• framing institutions of the Labour Movement, such as the Labour Party, the Trades Union Congress, and their various affiliated organisations. The research on the unpublished sources on which the work is based was done almost entirely in Britain during a fifteen-month sabbatical in 1970-1 when I was the recipient of a Nuffield Foundation Commonwealth Fellowship in the Social Sciences. I am grateful to the University of Delhi for granting me study leave, and to the Nuffield Foundation for the means to put it to good use. I am indebted to Mr T. M. Farmiloe, of Macmillans, for the interest he has taken in the work from its inception. Because British government records for the period after 1945 are still closed, the three chapters dealing with the years from 1945 to 1964 have more speculative hypotheses in them than the earlier chapters. However, unless I postponed publication till 1994 (the year when all British records till1964 will be open) I would not be able to make these chapters as fully documented as the seven preceding them. In any case, it seems to me worth while to take the story down to 1964, because by a careful collation of private papers and public documents it is possible to suggest reasonably plausible hypotheses which might hold the field till fresh evidence comes to light. I owe a tremendous debt to librarians and archivists, both in Britain and India. I have made a formal acknowledgement else• where but I would like to thank the following in particular : Mrs I. Wagner and her colleagues in the research department of the Labour Party; the library staff of the British Library of Political xii Preface and Economic Science at the London School of Economics; the library staff of the British Museum and Rhodes House, Oxford; the archivists of the Public Record Office and the India Office Library in London and the National Archives of India in New Delhi; Dr V. C. Joshi and the staff of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi; Mr Girja Kumar, Librarian of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, and his former colleagues at the Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi; the library staff of the Historical Research division of the Ministry of Ex• ternal Affairs, Government of India; the staff of the National Library, Calcutta; and finally, all members of the staff of the Delhi University Library system, especially Mr A. L. Kapoor, Mr Narinder Datta, Mr H. C. Jain, Mr G. A. Sastri, Mr M. L. Saini, Mrs Bimla N anda, and Mr Sher Singh. Others who have gone out of their way to help in checking references or sending copies of material are Mr David Bell, Mr Ramu Damodaran, Dr A. G. Hopkins, Mr E. 0. Mirzoeff, Mrs Shaila Nijhowme, Dr Tapan Raychaudhuri, Mr M. H. S. Vasu• devan, and my father. Mrs Agnes Avery and Professor Colin Leys obliged by giving information about the life of Dr Norman Leys. Dr Cameron Hazelhurst helped by mentioning the location of some unpublished sources. I have benefited from discussions with a number of people in India and abroad. Parts of the work were discussed at seminars at Cambridge, Oxford, Sussex, and the Institute of Historical Research in London in 1970-1. Among friends and colleagues who helped to clarify technical points of economics and anthro• pology I would like to mention Professor Amiya Bagchi, Professor Pranab Bardhan, Professor Andre Beteille, Mr Arun Bose, and Professor Sukhomoy Chakravarty. Mr Arun Bose very kindly let me read parts of his forthcoming book Marxian and post-Marxian Political Economy before publication. Parts of the manuscript were read by and many helpful comments received from Mr Michael Barratt Brown, Dr Charles Feinstein, Professor Eric Hobsbawm, and Dr Henry Pelling. Professor Eric Stokes read the penultimate draft and made useful suggestions for improve• ment. None of these persons is in any way responsible for the interpretation the book puts forward. I have mentioned in the bibliography persons from whom I received oral testimony about their part in the story here put Preface xiii forward, and who agreed to have a written record of it. Among them Mr Leonard Barnes and Professor Julius Lewin deserve particular thanks for the continued interest they have taken in the work. I have also benefited from informal conversations with Dame Margaret Cole, Mr Thomas Hodgkin, and Mr B. Sh. Saklatvala. For hospitality while I was working on private papers in their possession I would like to thank Mr John Grigg, Lord Ponsonby and Mr Edward Thompson. Others who were most generous with their hospitality when I worked on archives outside London were Mr Michael Barratt Brown, Dr Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, and Professor Victor Kiernan. Mr Pawan Kumar and Mr N. L. Sharma typed successive drafts of the manuscript with patience and good humour. Finally I must thank little Himadri for refraining from trying out his first four teeth on the final draft of the typescript. My greatest debt is to his mother.

Department of History PARTHA SARATHI GuPTA University of Delhi Acknowledgements

Unpublished Crown copyright material in the Public Record Office, the India Office Records and the India Office Library reproduced in this book appears by permission of the Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office. The publishers and I are most grateful to the General Secretary of the Labour Party for permission to consult and quote from material in the Labour Party archives; Lady Beatrix Evison and the librarian, Churchill College, Cambridge, for access to and quotations from the papers of Viscount Alexander of Hillsborough, Earl Attlee (including draft notes for the autobiography, As It Happened), and Ernest Bevin; the librarian, University College, Oxford, for some other Attlee papers in their custody; Miss Eglantyne Buxton and Pro• fessor Keith Robbins for the papers of Charles Roden Buxton; the librarian of the British Museum for the Balfour papers and the Cecil of Chelwood papers; the librarian, Binningham U niver• sity Library, for the Austen Chamberlain papers (MSAC51j42); Mrs Violet Creech-Jones, the librarian of Rhodes House, and the Oxford Colonial Records Project for the papers of the Anti• slavery and Aborigines Protection Society, the late Rt. Hon. Arthur Creech-Jones, the Fabian Colonial Bureau, Sir Sidney Henn, and Major Orde Browne; the librarian, British Library of Political and Economic Science (London School of Economics) for the papers of Lord Dalton, George Lansbury, E. D. Morel, and Lord Passfield; the Passfield Trustees for quotations from the Passfield papers; the general secretary of the Fabian Society and the librarian, Nuffield College, Oxford, for the records of the Fabian Society, and for quotations from works published by the Fabian Society; Mr John Grigg for the papers of Edward Grigg, first Baron Altrincham; the librarian, Sheffield University Library, for the papers of W.A.S. Hewins; the librarian, Hull City Library for those of Winifred Holtby; the librarian, National Library of Scot- xvi Acknowledgements land, for the papers of Viscount Haldane of Cloan; the Marquess of Lothian, the keeper of the Scottish Records Office, and the Lothian Trustees for those of the eleventh Marquess of Lothian; the Right Honourable Malcolm MacDonald and Mr David Mar• quand for the papers of James Ramsay MacDonald; the Warden and the Fellows of New College, Oxford, for the Milner papers deposited at the Bodleian Library; Lord Ponsonby for the papers of the first Lord Ponsonby; Mr Edward P. Thompson for the papers of his father Edward J. Thompson; Mrs Pauline Dower and the librarian, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, for the papers of Sir Charles Trevelyan; the librarian, Hull University Library, for the records of the Union of Democratic Control. For permission to use private collections in India I would like to thank Mrs Indira Gandhi and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library for the papers of Motilal Nehru and Jawaharlal Nehru; the Nehru Memorial Library for the records of the All• India Congress Committee, the papers of Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru and of N. M. Joshi; the Director, National Archives of India, for the papers of Srinivasa Sastri and the historical records of the Government of India. The publishers have made every effort to trace any other copy• right holders but if they have inadvertently overlooked any, they will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity. List of Abbreviations used in the text or the footnotes

A.C.J. Arthur Creech Jones Papers A.E.U. Amalgamated Engineering Union B.C.E.W. British Citizen and Empire Worker B.C.L.C. British Commonwealth Labour Conference BISAKTA British Iron, Steel and Kindred Trades Association B.W.N.L. British Workers' National League C.F.T. Cotton Factory Times D.B.F.P. Documents on British Foreign Policy E.H.R. English Historical Reuiew F.C.B. Fabian Colonial Bureau H.P. Halifax Papers I.L.P. Independent Labour Party I.O.L. India Office Library J.L.N.P. Jawaharlal Nehru Papers L.L.W. Lansbury's Labour Weekly LPACimpQ. Labour Party Advisory Committee on Imperial Questions LPACintQ. Labour Party Advisory Committee on International Questions L.S.E. London School of Economics MacD. P. MacDonald Papers M.C.F. Movement for Colonial Freedom M.F.G.B. Miners' Federation of Great Britain M.L.N.P. Motilal Nehru Papers N.A.I. National Archives of India N.C.L. National Council of Labour N.E.C. National Executive Committee (of the Labour Party) N.F.R.B. New Fabian Research Bureau N.M.J.P. N. M. Joshi Papers N.S.N. New Statesman and Nation N.U.G.M.W. National Union of General and Municipal Workers N.U.R. National Union of Railwaymen Parl. Pap. Parliamentary Papers P.L.P. Parliamentary Labour Party XVlll List of Abbreviations P.R.O. Public Record Office, London R.A.C. Report of the Annual Conference (of the Labour Party or the Independent Labour Party) R.R. Railway Review S.D.F. Social Democratic Federation T.G.W.U. Transport and General Workers' Union T.U.C. Trades Union Congress U.D.C. Union of Democratic Control USDAW Union of Shop, Distributive, and Allied Workers W.W.L. Workers' Welfare League