Imperialism and the British Labour Movement, 1914-1964

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 TITLES PUBLISHED BY MACMILLAN 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

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