By Barbara Humphries, Ealing Southall Labour Party
The 1945 General Election, at which the Labour Party won a landslide victory for a programme of radical social reform, is being looked at again as we face a grave national crisis in the form of the coronavirus outbreak. Will life ever be the same again, or will this be a moment when, as in 1945, everything changes?
In 1945, the overwhelming mood was ‘never again’ – no going back to the 1930s, the decade of unemployment, hunger and the rise of fascism. There have not been serious questions raised yet over whether the current crisis is grounds for the formation of a ‘national’ government or a government of ‘national unity’, barring some minor speculation in the press. But the case for it might be argued more widely in the capitalist media as the incompetence of Johnson and his entourage becomes more apparent.
When Churchill became war-time Prime Minister in 1940, he was not popular with the British trade union movement, having a record as Home Secretary, of sending troops into industrial disputes. However, there was mistrust of Conservative leader Neville Chamberlain. He was one of the British ‘appeasers’ who would have been happy to make peace with Hitler. As a condition for joining a coalition government Chamberlain had to go. There should have been a general election scheduled for 1940, but because of the War, it did not take place, and Labour leaders agreed, instead, to participate in a coalition which lasted until May 1945.
Labour ministers in the coalition with Churchill
Key positions in the coalition were taken by Labour politicians – leader Clement Attlee was Deputy Prime Minister; Herbert Morrison was Home Secretary and Ernest Bevin was Minister for Labour. Even left-wing Stafford Cripps had a role. These were important positions, the purpose of which was to draw the support of the population behind the necessary privations and sacrifices of the war. A delegate to a later Labour Party conference claimed that Labour members of the government had been given “the most sticky jobs”. “Bevin and Morrison”, he explained to conference, “were doing jobs that the Prime Minister knew he could not have got a Tory to carry through successfully”.
Labour’s joining a coalition had been approved by the 1940 Labour Party conference, but it was always conditional, and it was to survive only for the conduct of the war. In the Spring of 1944, Aneurin Bevan, (not to be confused with Bevin) later the Minister for Health who oversaw the foundation of the NHS – was even threatened with expulsion from the party for his criticism of the coalition.
There was a generalised feeling that the country was not “all in it together”, and much that happened during and after World War I should not be repeated. There was a feeling that profiteering had to be stamped out. Rationing was introduced to ensure that everyone was fed. Protection from air-raids was implemented and London Underground stations were opened as night-shelters. The trade union leaders were invited into government and were given ‘powers’ in the workplace but this was sometimes to be a cover for ‘policing’ the workforce and making sure there were no strikes or stoppages.
Labour employment minister
Full employment in engineering and the mines meant that the unions gained powers that they had lost in the 1920s and 1930s depression, especially following the defeat of the General Strike of 1926. It was a myth, though, that industrial peace prevailed. New legislation was passed to enact compulsory arbitration in industrial disputes (Order 1305), but Employment Minister, Labour’s Ernest Bevin, favoured use of the Trades Dispute Act, passed by the Conservative government in 1927, to prosecute trades unionists who called for strike action. This happened to members of the Trotskyist Revolutionary Communist Party, who had been organising apprentices protesting against being conscripted to work in coalmines.
Throughout the period of the coalition there was a formal electoral truce. By-elections were held if an MP died, but the main political parties did not contest them, allowing the incumbent party to hold the seat. But increasingly, especially after 1942, and as the end of the war came in sight, smaller parties on the left, such as the Common Wealth Party and the Independent Labour Party (ILP) fought by-elections and increasingly did well.
Tories lost two ‘safe’ seats
In April 1942, there were four by-elections in Rugby, Wallasey, Cathcart and Cardiff East, places that presented a broad cross-section of the mood among the people, not only workers but the middle class, as well. All these constituencies were previously represented by Tories and they lost two of them. For the first time since the outbreak of the war the government suffered defeats.
Later in the year, Tom Driberg, who was later to become a Labour MP and peer, was elected in Maldon (Essex) as an independent left MP, with over 61 per cent of the vote.
In February in 1943, a by-election in Belfast West saw the United Ulster Unionist party lose its seat to the Northern Ireland Labour Party, by a majority of over 5,500.
There were also five by-elections in February 1944. These were held in Bury St Edmunds, a safe Tory seat, where the Conservative was only able to scrape in by 2,500 votes. In Brighton, another safe Tory seat, the personal intervention of Churchill failed to secure the election of the government nominee. In Skipton, an agricultural area, the Common Wealth candidate, standing on a platform of nationalisation of land, won the support not only of the agricultural workers, but a large section of small farmers as well.
Working class stronghold
In West Derbyshire, the victory of another ex-Labour member, who had resigned from the Labour Party to contest the seat, was an even greater blow to the Tories and the government. His vote exceeded that of his opponent by over 4,500 votes. In Kirkcaldy, a working-class stronghold for Labour, the official Labour candidate received only 8,000 votes, only 1,600 more than a candidate of the Scottish National Party, while a candidate for “Christian socialism” received 1,100 votes. All these blows against the government were also blows against the Labour party’s policy of coalition with the Tories.
Among the armed forces, a similarly left-wing mood was developing. At a mock election in the Cairo Parliament an armed forces debating club, there were only 17 votes for the Tories, 38 to the liberals, 55 to Common Wealth, and 119 to the Labour Party. What all of these figures indicate is that the majority of workers were moving away from support for Labour’s participation in the coalition government
Repeatedly bombed out
The War, according to popular mythology, was said to have brought about “solidarity” but it also revealed deep inequalities in British society. Aerial bombing during the Blitz of 1941 affected London’s working-class communities near the docks. In Bermondsey and Poplar, residents were repeatedly bombed out. Centres of the aircraft engineering industry, such as Coventry also took a hit, as civilians were targeted.
Increasingly people looked ahead to post-war reconstruction and they wanted no return to the 1930s, or the broken promises of “homes for heroes” made in 1918 – which ended with government cuts to spending on housing. They did not want an end to wartime controls. If planning and public ownership and control could win the war, then, surely, they could win the peace.
The notable swing to the left in Britain from 1942 onwards had its roots in earlier developments, such as the dislike of the policies of the 1930s National Government, particularly the Means Test, by which working class families were humiliated and made to sell household possessions, like a piano, before they had any welfare relief. There had been continuous high unemployment levels, 80% in northern towns like Jarrow which had been dependent upon shipbuilding yards now closed and South Wales where there had been a slump in coal mining.
Labour had moved left in the 1930s
After the expulsion of MacDonald from the Labour Party (following his 1931 defection), the party had moved to the left under the leadership of George Lansbury and its membership rose to half a million. This had led to Labour’s recovery at the polls and there were some spectacular by-election swings, in London in particular, of 17% or more.
Many of the policies included in the 1945 manifesto, entitled Let us Face the Future had been adopted in the 1930s, including the nationalisation of industries such as mining, and public utilities. There was a move away from the discredited policies that had brought down the 1929-1931 minority Labour-led Government, when MacDonald and Snowdon, as Chancellor of the Exchequer had been the pro-austerity politicians of their day. This was accompanied by campaigns on the left, including the Jarrow March of the unemployed, anti-fascist struggles as at Cable Street and Aid for Spain committees. The Left Book Club became popular. However, despite this growing mood, there was not to be a general election for ten years, from1935 to 1945.
As the War in Europe came to an end, with VE Day on May 8th, Churchill favoured the continuation of the coalition until the war against Japan was ended – an expectation, without any knowledge of the atom-bomb being developed, of another eighteen months’ war, at least. Attlee and other Labour leaders had agreed this in a secret memorandum to Churchill, but to the surprise of the Labour leaders, at the Labour NEC meeting in May, the idea of continued coalition got only three votes including trade union leaders, like Bevin. The special May conference of the party following the NEC opposed the idea of continuing the coalition government almost unanimously, supporting an immediate general election.
Ian Mikardo at Labour conference
It was described as an ‘electrifying conference’. A young delegate from Reading CLP, later MP and NEC member, Ian Mikardo, successfully moved a resolution calling for Labour’s manifesto to include “the transfer to public ownership of the land, large scale buildings, heavy industry and all forms of banking, transport, fuel and power.” He was criticised by Herbert Morrison, who said to him afterwards, “that has cost us the election.”
Morrison’s comment reflected the fear of the Labour leadership, who were deeply pessimistic about the possibilities of winning a general election and who thought that the conference had made a serious error. It is clear, therefore, that the roots of the 1945 victory lay not with the leaders, but with opinion amongst the majority of working class people and this was reflected through the Labour conference.
The election was held on July 5th but it was staggered and results were not announced for three weeks to allow for armed service personnel to have votes counted. The services votes, and those of younger people, turned out to be predominantly Labour. Labour and the Liberals agreed not to stand against Churchill in his own Woodford seat in Essex, but an unknown candidate stood against him and managed to win over 10,000 votes, reducing his majority compared to 1935 when he had fought both Labour and Liberals.
‘The trend to the left is ours’
The Labour leadership had underestimated the appetite for political change, but this mood had been understood by the Labour membership. The journal Labour Organiser encouraged local Labour parties to continue to organise with a recruitment campaign in 1942. It produced pamphlets on freedom for India and post-war reconstruction. It claimed that the ‘trend to the left is ours.’ It said that the Tories talk terribly ‘left’, but that ‘the rich man will do anything for the poor man except get off his back’.
Sacrifices had been made by workers during the war and rewards were needed. On issues such as housing, the welfare state and nationalisation Labour’s rank and file captured the political mood, even if the leaders had not.
The election campaign itself was in many areas a stormy affair. In working class areas Conservative candidates were shouted down. Churchill was given a rough ride in Uxbridge and Walthamstow. “In Chelsea, as he drove down the Royal Avenue, giving his trademark ‘V’ sign, nobody cheered and the silence was ‘dire’…in Camberwell he was booed, and in Southwark he even had to be rescued by police from a crowd turning ugly…” (Austerity Britain, by David Kynaston).
He hit back at Labour, saying that it would need a ‘Gestapo’ to implement its programme, a jibe that spectacularly backfired. The extent of the Labour victory, however, was not predicted.
Hopelessly out of touch
Opinion polls were regarded as unreliable, and due to lack of newsprint the mass media did not have the sway that it has in recent years. Most of the press, like the Labour leaders, were hopelessly out of touch.
On the day of the election, the Manchester Guardian (now the Guardian) announced, “This is not the election that is going to shake Tory England.” Three days after polling day, but three weeks before the count, the News of the World proclaimed, “Mr Churchill has secured his Working Majority.”
The party had sprung back to life in the spring of 1945, holding mass rallies across the country but much electoral support came from trades unions. In Hayes (West London), branches of the Amalgamated Engineering Union held election meetings in local factories and organised canvassing on the day of the election. Their members were encouraged to take the afternoon off to campaign. Constituencies which elected Labour MPs for the first time included centres of the aircraft engineering industry such as West London and the West Midlands, where the longstanding Tory election machine was demolished by grassroots politics.
60% of first timers voted Labour
In the event, when the results were announced on July 25th, Labour had won a thumping 146-seat majority and Clement Attlee’s wife had to drive him to Buckingham Palace in their little Hillman Minx.
It has often been said that it was the forces vote that won the election for Labour. The Army Bureau of Current Affairs had a left-wing agenda and encouraged discussions around the Beveridge Report and the case for a welfare state. However, many young servicemen and women were not old enough to vote, because then they had to be 21 years old. Some had not got on to the register. However, in many cases they were able to persuade older relatives to vote on their behalf. It was the youth vote as a whole that made an impact, as 21% of the electorate were first-time voters and, of these, over 60% voted Labour.
Austerity a ‘political choice’
Political change did not occur overnight. In 1945 it was the war that was the catalyst for change because it had highlighted all that was rotten in the old regime and there could be no going back. Today, we have seen ten years of austerity which has decimated public services, in the words of John McDonnell, “a political choice not an economic necessity”.
There have been over 40 years when neo-liberalism and the free market have ruled and now, at a time of new crisis, all the failings of the system have been exposed. Political change, however, is not inevitable. When this crisis comes to an end, there are plenty of people who want their ‘normality’ to return; they are already using the build-up of public debt to call for more austerity.
Over the last five years we have seen significant changes in the political direction of the Labour Party membership, and it is important that this is maintained, especially after the election of the new leader. Now is not the time for activists to walk away.
May 18, 2020
