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Henry Winkler - British Labour Seeks a Foreign Policy, 1900-1940

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British Labour Seeks a Foreign Policy, 1900-1940
Author:
Henry Winkler
Publisher:
Routledge
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Books / History
Year:
2018
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Since World War II, the British Labour Party has played a central role in dealing with complex international issues. Achieving real power in parliament for the first time, Labour governments have acted responsibly, and are usually in accord with the views of a substantial majority of the British people. Such was not always the case. In British Labour Seeks a Foreign Policy, 1900-1940, Henry R. Winkler synthesizes twenty years study of the subject to offer the first full-scale treatment of the Labour Partys evolution in foreign affairs.

The Labour Party came into existence at the beginning of the twentieth century to deal with the domestic problems of the working class, and it showed relatively little interest in foreign policy issues. In the aftermath of World War I, however, small groups of moderates made the case against the bitter rejection of the Versailles Treaty by many in the Labour Party and the trade union movement. Most of these argued that the League of Nations could be used to remedy some of the deficiencies of the settlement and that such a League must have the sanction of force if it was to be effective.

During the 1930s, the failures of the League--in the Far East, Abyssinia, Spain, and Central Europe--compelled some of its advocates to conclude that, League or no League, the threat from Nazi Germany mandated support for a program of preparedness and rearmament even under the aegis of a hated National Government. The result, by 1937, was the final formal abandonment of many of the radical illusions of the twenties and thirties, as Labour reluctantly but formally assumed a posture that enabled it to share in the governance of wartime Britain and to take a key role in dealing with the international issues that emerged in the aftermath of the Second World War.

This volume contains valuable lessons on the responsibilities of political parties as well as the pros and cons of specific policies. It is essential reading for understanding Britains later stands as its leaders tried to adjust to Britains diminished power in the post-World War II world.

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British Labour Seeks a Foreign Policy,

1900-1940

British Labour Seeks a Foreign Policy,

1900-1940

Henry R. Winkler

First published 2005 by Transaction Publishers

Published 2017 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:

Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2004058858

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Winkler, Henry R. (Henry Ralph), 1916-

British labour seeks a foreign policy, 1900-1940 / Henry R. Winkler.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-7658-0264-3 (alk. paper)

1. Labour Party (Great Britain)PlatformsHistory. 2. Great BritainForeign relations1901-1936. 3. Great BritainForeign relations1936-1945. 4. Great BritainPolitics and government1901-1936. 5. Great BritainPolitics and government1936-1945. I. Title.

JN1129.L32W565 2004

327.41'009'041dc22

2004058858

ISBN 13: 978-0-7658-0264-4 (hbk)

Once again, for Bea

Contents

As always, I owe a large debt of gratitude to the librarians and archivists of the repositories noted in the bibliography of this essay. In particular, I have been helped generously by my friends and colleagues, Sally Moffitt, Associate Librarian of the Langsam Library of the University of Cincinnati and Stephen Bird, Archivist of the Labour Party Archives, now housed in Manchester. My son, Allan M. Winkler, Distinguished Professor of American History at Miami Univertsity of Ohio, and my daughter, Karen J. Moulton, long-time staff member of the Chronicle of Higher Education, have consistently been my severest and thus my most useful critics. They went over the manuscript word for word, not only helping my avoid the inevitable verbal infelicities that inevitably seem to creep into a work in progress, but more importantly to sharpen my argument and give it the clarity I hope to have achieved. My wife BeatriceBea to everyoneworked along with me every step of the way. It is her book as much as it is mine.

In the past half century, the British Labour Party has played a significant role in dealing with the complex issues of a troubled world. As one of the two major parties in the British system of government, Labour was central to the organization of the recovery of Europe after World War II. It shared leadership with the United States in shoring up the defenses of the Western world and in creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to protect it during a difficult Cold War. Throughout this period, Labour governments acted responsibly and in accord with the views of a substantial majority of the British people. It was not always so.

The adoption of such a mainstream position marked just how far the Labour Party had moved from the attitudes and assumptions of the labour movement that gave it rise in the early twentieth century. Organized primarily to pursue a domestic political agenda, it focused first on industrial issueswages, hours of work, safety in the workplace, and conditions of work in general. For the most part, its founders had little interest in foreign policy. Yet, over the years, gradually and haltingly, Labour came to confront the world as it existed and eventually to take its place as one of the shaping forces in modern international life.

Various aspects of Labours approach to foreign policy have been well studied over the years. We have a series of exceptionally perceptive biographies, although there has, perhaps, been a tendency to emphasize dramatic figures like Ramsay MacDonald while not giving full consideration to other, less prominent, contributors to the foreign policy debate. We also have a number of investigations of particular parts of the story, ranging from studies of foreign policy positions during the First World War or in the 1920s and 1930s to evaluations of the first and second minority Labour governments. In addition, there are several useful accounts dealing with foreign policy issues. These, however, are either substantially theoretical in their thrust or offer little more than a compendium of Labour Party and Trades Union Congress resolutions, with little attention to the internal arguments that were at the heart of policy formation. There is still a need to explore how Labours foreign policy, so important in the world today, gradually emerged.

Labours foreign policy in these formative years has been given relatively little attention primarily because the party had almost no experience in office during the period. When it did form a government, in 1924 and in the period from 1929 to 1931, it was a minority government and was in office only long enough to make a modest contribution in international affairs. Day-to-day domestic concerns, dealing with bread-and-butter issues important to working people, were inevitably more important to party leadersand to subsequent scholars as well. During the Second World War and after, however, Labours leaders served first as key members of the coalition prosecuting the war and then as a government with a huge majority responsible for the conduct of British foreign policy in the immediate aftermath of the conflict. Not surprisingly, therefore, far more attention has been paid to the Labour Partys international policy in the postwar period, than to the formative years in which many of the principles of that policy were gradually fashioned.

The key to understanding the development of Labours approach to international affairs in the first half of the twentieth century is to observe that it was characterized by a struggle between principles and practice, an attempt to relate socialist theory to the changing realities of the international scene. The controversy over policy that took place within the party was complex, including, at different times and in different places, arguments against capitalism and imperialism, commitments to religious and secular pacifism, and efforts to promote broad-based rather than limited international organizationall within the context of changing relations with Europe, the United States, and then the Soviet Union.

Until the First World War, Labour demanded the rejection of militarism in the hands of capitalist and imperialist governments and argued that war itself could only be avoided by the cooperation of the working classes, that is, by socialist governments in much of the advanced world. Only a few working-class leaders gave much attention to foreign affairs beyond the reiteration of slogans and formulas that had little chance of being translated into reality.

Despite this rhetoric, the war itself came as a surprise to Labour. Far from acting as a unifying force, the conflict revealed the fissures that were to continue, in varying degrees, for years to come. Although pacifists and conscientious objectors, critics of prewar diplomacy, and advocates of a negotiated settlement with the enemy formed only a small minority within the labour movement when compared to those who supported the war more or less unquestioningly, the group of dissidents grew more substantial as the years of war dragged on. Despite the tensions, however, the war also fostered consideration of the kind of world Labour looked forward to at the end of the conflict. Although a number of important Liberals were prominent in developing plans for an international organization, the various Labour contributions to the idea of a League of Nations became by far the most far-reaching.

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