Britain in the 20th Century: The Great War and its Consequences - Professor Vernon Bogdanor

ladies and gentlemen in the last lecture we left the British government desperately trying to resolve the Irish question and they had a conference at Buckingham Palace in July 1914 and then in Winston Churchill's words after one of the sessions of the conference a note was brought in which said that Austria had sent an ultimatum to Serbia and Churchill wrote it was an ultimatum such as had never been penned in modern times as the reading proceeded it seemed absolutely impossible that any state in the world could accept it or that any acceptance however abject would satisfy the aggressor and then he said the parishes of Manor and Tyrone faded back into the mists and schools of Ireland and a strange light began to fall upon a map of Europe now at the end of the war Churchill wrote this then came the Great War every institution almost in the world was strained great empires have been overturned the whole map of Europe has been changed the position of countries has been violently altered the modes of thought of men the whole outlook on affairs the grouping of parties all of encountered violent and tremendous changes in the deluge of the world but at the deluge subsides and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and tyrone emerging once again the integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm that has swept the world and in those comments Churchill was saying two things first the war changed everything secondly it hadn't changed anything in Ireland though that is not quite true war had changed something in Ireland language the Irish nationalist party was Morris wiped out and the shin Thane party took its place one winning almost all the seats in Republican Ireland and SH in vain unlike the nationalists refused to take their seats at Westminster and they set up their own Parliament to Doyle in Dublin and declared Irish independence the British government refused to recognize that there was a rather futile guerrilla war many shocking reprisals in the end the government settled with shin fain in 1921 and Ireland outside Ulster became in effect independent so it wasn't quite true that nothing had changed in Ireland some things had changed but Churchill was quite right to speak of the Cataclysm which affected Britain and I think affected Britain more than the Second World War in many ways in the First World War one in ten men under 45 were killed and the killing was particularly marked among those who volunteered for war in 1914 and a later Prime Minister Harold Macmillan said that when he looked at a photograph of his fellow undergraduates at Balliol College Oxford there are only two other scholars in his year who survived and he said Oxford at the end of the war one city of ghosts and he said the the rest of his year he said and Ben as he put it sent down by the Kaiser 300,000 of those killed were in unknown graves and 3 million families lost a family member a husband or son or father and it's understandable that people called the war the war to end war and the slogan in 1918 was never again and at the end of the war there was a fairly violent reaction against Germany and people said that Germany had to pay for the cost of the war in reparations and that German war criminals should be tried that mood gradually disappeared and by the beginning of the 1930s there came to be a general feeling that perhaps the war had been a mistake and caused by accidental and contingent factors particularly the building up of armaments on each side the great alliances and so on but the war had risen from misunderstandings it could have been avoided that atmosphere in the 1930s contributed very heavily to the policy of appeasement followed by the government towards dictators Mussolini and Hitler in the 1930s but the main emphasis I think of the appeasement policy and this is the theme for the next lecture but it stems I think from the first world war the idea of never again that no sensible rational person would ever wish to start another war and therefore British governments should do all they could to remove causes of grievance and try and achieve settlements so that we didn't have to fight ever again and certainly the we should never have a large army such as had been slaughtered in Flanders again and therefore even when we began to rearm in the 1930s the rearm which was conferred on the Air Force to deter an aggressor and in some extent on the navy and not on the army in when in 1939 the British government sought an alliance with the Soviet Union to try and secure collective action against Nazi Germany started off Brittenham the divisions Britain would be able to put into the field against Nazi Germany and the British government said four and Stalin said will the Soviet Union has 500 divisions so that makes 504 and so it's understandable this Stalin didn't take the British government's protestations of collective security very seriously but but the reason for that it all stems back to the first worldwide can't exaggerate the effect on that in international affairs and that's what I'm going to talk about next time but today I'm going to talk primarily about domestic affairs and their to the war changed I think everything if you look at politics in 1914 the outbreak of war you can see you have a Liberal government and the opposition is conservative and you have an Irish party which as I said was to disappear entirely from Parliament and that's very important because the Irish returned at every election between 80 and 86 MPs and that meant that unless you've got a very large majority you'd be dependent on the Irish for your majority if you play back history since 1918 and assume that 80 80 odd irish MP were there i mean the character of governments had been very different for example in 1979 Margaret Thatcher won an overall majority of 43 but you wouldn't have had an overall majority if they'd been a tea old Irish named Peter it's clear so that made an important difference and you all had a very small Labor Party of 42 MPs and most of those had won their seats through the aid of liberals they'd won in seats where liberals had withdrawn candidates very few one against the other two major parties and in every by-election between 1910 and 1940 in every three-cornered by election the Labour candidate came third now if you look at 1922 you can see a quite different picture firstly you have a Conservative government in power after the overthrow of the Lloyd George coalition but the opposition is in the Labor Party and the Liberal Party is divided and not a party of government anymore and indeed was not to be in government in peacetime again except in coalition in 1931 the wartime coalition and of course today but has never been than having a Liberal prime minister since 1922 that was a great change and that change came about in three stages there were three coos if you like by which that position was achieved the first came in 1915 about seven or eight months at the outbreak of war in May 1915 when the last liberal purely Liberal government disappeared and asked with the Liberal prime minister formed an all-party coalition government to prosecute the war more effectively and that was the first government that saw the entry of the Labour Party into government Arthur Henderson the leader of the Labour Party became a minister in that government in the cabinet Henderson became leader of the Labour Party I should say after the outbreak of war because he supported the war whereas the previous leader of the Labour Party Ramsay MacDonald who came prime minister between the wars and branding dollars opposed to the war and Ramsay MacDonald spoken part against war in 1914 but was repudiated by the MPs and the National Executive and the trade unions of the Labour Party and MacDonald derful resigned and a deep split in the Labor Party people talk a lot about the spittin liberals but they forget the Labour Party was split on a very fundamental issue whether we should go to war at all but the bulk of the Labor Party and the trade unions in particular the kind of ballast of the Labour Party supported the war and I think they represented the organized working class in that sense who was from what we know there weren't opinion polls in those days but from what we know were even more determined on war more patriotic if you like than than other social groups very rate than all party government in 1915 the Irish party supported it they supported the war and did they were offered place in the government but declined to take them up there on all party government and the aspect government was displaced in December 1916 by a new coalition government led by Lloyd George well this was not an all-party government because one wing of the Liberal Party led by Asquith did not support it it had the support of the Conservatives and of the Labour Party and labour continued to be represented in it until 1918 when there was an election and the coalition - the Labour Party that is the lloyd-george Liberals and the Conservatives stood together as a coalition and won the election landslide and labour moved into opposition and the Asquith Liberals moved into opposition so you had two wings the liberal parties and in 1918 lloyd George's position seemed impregnable he was as it was said colloquy the man who won the war and the leader of the conservative part at the time number two in the coalition Andrew Bono law said Lloyd George can be Prime Minister for life if he likes but in 1922 the Coalition was destroyed and this was a third coup the coalition was destroyed to be replaced by a purely conservative government led by Andrew Bonner who in 1818 and said Lloyd George can be Prime Minister for life if he likes and when Lloyd George went to resign for the king george v put in his diary he said he will be back i am sure but he never held office again and he lived in our 23 years a member of Parliament's but but was never again in office after 922 so far from being Prime Minister for life he was only Prime Minister for another four years now um this coalition was set up to meet a new mood of which it was said the war had engendered and this was this mood I think had two components the first being of positive mood and the second a negative one but the positive mood round understandably was that you were dealing going to be dealing with a new world after the war that life can be very different and the old issues on which the parties at fought like free trade and protection this establishment of the Church of England the Irish Home Rule these were somehow moving into the background and that there will be new socio-economic issues which required transcending of the old political lines and people confronting these issues without the old dogmas with perhaps a fresh mind and again Winston Churchill summed up this very well in an election speech in 1918 if the strong support of the coalition with a lloyd-george liberal not an Asquith liberal he's an why is it if men and women of all classes all parties are able to work together for five years like a mighty machine to produce destruction why cannot work together for another five years to produce abundance and the cabinet in 1920 in the minutes of the cabinet the cabinet conclusions said the only justification for the existence of the present form of government was that it attempted to hold the balance evenly and fairly between all classes of the community that's all this has some relevance or rebel relevance resonance for the present coalition government as well that it would hold the balance fairly and one historian has said some truth in this the coalition did transform Britain from being what you might call an unreconstructed capitalist society into a more regulated one and this is a more important change socially than anything that's occurred in the twentieth century more important than that achieved by the Atlee government which built on those foundations that what had began an unregulated capitalism became more regulated as a result of the Lord George government now in international affairs - it was hoped you'd be in a new world in the post-war era with the League of Nations and that instead of national conflicts you'd have international arbitration and one support of the coalition government of Lloyd George went so far as to suggest that the Coalition was a natural corollary to the League of Nations and therefore the Coalition it was argued would give a vision and social harmony over and above class conflict and international conciliation so to appeal to ideals and create a kind of middle way in politics if you like but there was also a negative element which rather contradict you the positive and that negative element and I think you can't overemphasize it difficult to imagine today was characterized by fear people very frightened and they were frightened of the left they were frightened of the trade unions they were frightened of a general strike and they were frightened of what they called Bolshevism which they equated it may seem odd stir they equated with the New Labour Party now one has to get back that is there you've seen a Russian a Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 which frightened many people and then the spread of revolutions at the end of the war in Central and Eastern Europe and people said a great danger but we may have communism or something similar here and therefore we need a strong government which can deal with that and of course there wasn't very much as much contact I think between social classes there was today and very few people in government knew much about the trade union movement or the history of the labor party or they wouldn't have been so frightened but they actually were and the very interesting example of this that in february 1920 the deputy cabinet secretary a man called tom jones he kept a diary which i think is illegal he can't do it now but he kept a diary and he recorded a meeting of lloyd-george with his advisers and the home sector that meeting said that he outlined his proposals to raise a special temporary force of 10,000 soldiers for the national emergency that strikes the existing police force being inadequate and the food controller said there are large groups preparing for soviet government the First Lord of the Admiralty said the peaceable manpower the country is without arms I have not a pistol less than 200 years old Bonnell or the conservative leaders summed up the discussion by saying that all weapons ought to be available for distribution to the friends of the government the president the Board of Trade pointed to the University as full of trained men who would cooperate with clerks and stockbrokers different things and today I suppose he said the universal full of trained men who could cooperate with Clark's and stockbrokers and the deputy cabinet sector said during the discussion Bonnell also often referred to the stockbrokers as a loyal and fighting class until and until one felt that potential battalions of stockbrokers were to be found in every town now Lord George was very skillful in defusing what amounted I think not to revolutionary feeling but to trade union militancy and a key moment in that defusing of militancy occurred in 1921 in an episode that has gone down in trade union history as Black Friday and I think Black Friday is more important for the defusing of militancy than the general strike of 1926 what happened in Black Friday was this three of the main unions and got together in a grouping called a Triple Alliance and they said if any one of them went on strike the other two would join together in a sympathetic strike the legions were the miners of the transport workers and the rail women and you can see it they all got together at a sympathetic strike it would have a much greater effect than one of them go on strike you have an effect of general strike a great pressure against the government now in 1921 the lloyd-george government decided to decontrol orgy nationalize the mines which had been nationalized during the war for temporary wartime reasons and they were going to bring them back to private ownership now 1921 saw the beginning of the post-war slump and the owners said they would not employ the miners at the same wages that they'd had under nationalization but would have to lower the wages and the miners not unnaturally said they would resist that and the owners said very well in that case when the mines rd nationalized we won't admit anyone work except at the lower rate of wages the - that where this is this we will not accept and they said we we demand two things first we demand a better wage settlement and secondly we demand the national wage settlements because the wages of mine is different in different parts of the country according to profitability of the mines so if you worked in an area where the mines weren't very profitable the mine that the wages were lower than where they were so that we demand a settlement at national level and also a decent level of wages and all appeared ready for a general strike on an issue when on the Friday that is Black Friday the Secretary of the miners Union who was a moderate who Frank Hodges name was blackened in trade in history by the left he addressed a meeting of coalition supporters MPs in the House of Commons and he was asked if if we can get a decent settlement for the wages that we want would you be prepared to put the issue of national wage settlement on the back burner for the time being would you be prepared to leave that aside to be settled later and Hodges who had no notes of that question said yes I think my executive would consider that I also immediately conveyed to law and George who acted rapidly and called Hodges in and said we'll settle with you on the wages if you forget about the national pool we'll pull a national settlement when Hodges went back to his executive he was repudiated by one vote and the executives said we're still going on strike now the other unions hearing all this said well why are we going on strike if the miners can't make up their mind and it's important to note that going on strike in those days was very different from two because if you went on strike you would not necessarily only very likely on the railways be reinstated at your old wages that given that there was a depression and much unemployment the railway owners would say that in 1956 we only going to take you back since you've gone on strike at low wages so you actually taking great risks more than you are today if you went on strike it was understandable the other union said well the miners can't make up their mind why should we ask our people to risk themselves for that and so the other unions led by the railway men's equally 2jh Thomas Ginni Thomas who was going to be administering Ramsey McDonald's government and known by the left after this is traitor Thomas they said we're not going to join you in the strike at all and you'll have to go on your own and they said people said Thomas you've sold us out and Thomas replied perhaps and kinda I tried to send you but I couldn't find a buyer but the the miners the miners then were locked out it wasn't a strike they were locked out for some months and rather futile struggle and their wages were duly reduced and that became a warning in trade union history it leads the general strike because of the the unions have said we're not going to be betrayed in that way again but it diffused trade union militancy at what I think a more serious time of trouble from the government than 1926 but all this time the coalition government understandably was losing this auto it had at the beginning of holding the balance fairly between all classes being a new start and all the rest of it and appeared nothing more than an anti socialists front a party of the right but if that was so why did you need a coalition at all because surely the Conservative Party be just as good at representing an anti-social as fun - that was what we want as the coalition and all this time conservatives in the country were reacting against coalition and the revolt which destroyed the lloyd-george coalition came not from a leadership or the NPS but from the grassroots of the Conservative Party now conservative constituency associations were beginning to adopt candidates who were opposed to the continuation of the coalition they said we want a conservative government led by a conservative prime minister now that wasn't the policy of the conservative part at the top the policy of the conservative party at the top was with supporting a coalition government with a non conservative lloyd-george as Prime Minister I mean Lloyd George was called many things in his career not always complimentary but never a conservative I think they were never thought he Polly confirmative now although these conservative candidates supported a policy directly opposite for that of that of the leadership they couldn't be repudiated by the leadership because they've been adopted by constituency associations in a perfectly normal constitutional way they've chosen their candidates as they're perfectly entitled to do they were autonomous bodies and by 1922 over a hundred eighty conservatives opposed the coalition had been chosen as candidates by their constituency associations in this grassroots revolt ensured the downfall of the coalition because of the leadership ignored it it would be the leadership that went and not the grassroots now as the bad luck for the coalition in 1921 of Bonnell law the conservative leader retired through ill health and was succeeded by Austin Chamberlain the son of Joe Chamberlain and the half-brother of Neville Chamberlain and often Chamberlain I think emits much competition wins the prize for the most foolish conservative leader of the twentieth century because he said he was going to face down the rebels and show them what's what and who a leader walls now the rebels there was going to be a Conservative Party conference in November 1922 at which the constituency associations been actually strong and powerful and the fear of Chamberlain often Chamberlain was that that would mount a demonstration against the coalition so he thought of a plan to defeat this and he said we're going to call a party meeting and a party meeting would be an MP's and not of candidates and we'll tell them bluntly they must either follow our advice or do without us in which case they must find their own chief and former government at once they would be in a damned fix in other words he took the view that so many leaders have taken they were indispensable and that wasn't the case now if the Chamberlain then called a meeting of MPs at the Carlton Club Conservative MPs and if the Conservative MP had voted to continue the coalition there would have been a split in the party as occurred under Sir Robert Peel in 1846 and the party might have been in opposition for a long time so the rejection of the coalition was inevitable but the crucial issue was could you find a leader who would take up the cause of the constituency associations and the candidates who said we want a Conservative government with the conservative prime minister and the cause was taken up by bond and law who came out of retirement to lead the revolt and by someone hitherto unknown be a dominant figure in the interwar period Stanley Baldwin who the junior cabinet minister and the coalition whom no one took much notice of and seemingly of no great weight now one of Baldwin's allies was asked as they went into the Carlton Club what is going to happen at this meeting and he replied a slice off the top and what he meant was the local constituency parties had already decided against the coalition and therefore any leaders who didn't support that would be sliced off the top they would be repudiated which was what happened and at the Carlton Club meeting the coalition was rejected by 187 votes to 87 and every major figure in the Conservative Party organization the chief whip the Chairman departed all vote against the continuation of the coalition and it's a very interesting case study which I hope would present Prime Minister and leader and Liberal Democrats are studying that coalition's collapse not from the top but from the bottom when when the followers are no longer follow the leaders now interesting constitutionally as a result of that collapsed because Lloyd George when he heard of the vote immediately resigned he didn't wait for any vote in the House of Commons you may say the party meeting has no constitutional significance he immediately resigned and the King thereupon called bomber law he couldn't call Austen Chamberlain could he'd been reputed but Bonner law said look I'm not going to agree to be Prime Minister till I've actually got the votes of conservative MPs have chosen me as party leader and that didn't happen for four days was a very interesting constitutional innovation we were without a prime minister for four days and lucky there wasn't a terrorist attack that during that period but we were without Prime Minister now Obama law survives only for six months he was already a very sick man and after six months he resigned he was suffering from cancer of stroke and died soon afterwards and was exceeded by this hitherto unknown person very rapid rise Stanley Baldwin and Bolden a remarkable figure because until his mid-50s he was almost completely unknown he fought as a Conservative candidate at the age of 40 in nineteen six but got nowhere in the liberal landslide and he got in in nineteen eight and violently out of 42 in his 38 years in Parliament he spoke five times and thought of leaving the House of Commons he was thought of as a candidate for the speakership but but not that wasn't pursued but at one time a bomber law who was a widower was looking for someone who would act as a parliamentary private sector a bit of entertaining and he he land on Baldwin who was very agreeable and Aldrin became a strong Donald or supporter and rose from there but really on the whole quite insignificant until the meeting at the Carlton Club which rather made him and he said well the Conservative Party mustn't be this said such a strong anti socialist front as before and we really should be a more conciliatory sort of government he was very much like John Major I think in many respects but as I said the immediate post-war years were dominated under the Conservative government as much as a coalition government by the theme of labour militancy and the seeming challenge from the trade unions and the left and I've already mentioned the threat of a general strike in 1921 but there was an even earlier one which came to nothing spearheaded again by the miners in 1919 and at that meeting Lloyd George summoned the miners leaders number ten and he said this he said I feel bound to tell you that in our opinion we are at your mercy if you carry out your threat and strike you will defeat us but if you do so have you weighed the consequence of the strike will be in defiance of the government of the country and by its very success will precipitate a constitutional crisis of the first important for if a force arises in the state which is stronger than the state itself that it must be ready to take on the function to the state or withdraw and accept the authority of the state he said gentlemen having considered and if you have are you ready then he got up from the Prime Minister's chair and offered it to the miners leader who of course didn't take it but Lloyd George was making an interesting point because he said this the implications is that the miners no doubt had a claim against the employer at that time were the government and they had a dispute if you like the employers but what was being threatened a general strike or other groups like Transport Workers and rail women and others now these other groups had no dispute with their employers what they were doing was disputing against the government in others what they were doing was going on strike so the government should change what it deemed it's correct policy a government which had been after all elected what Lloyd George was saying is if the trade union movement can determine the policy of the government against its wishes then that is the government of the day as a force stronger than the government in other words the strike wasn't against the employers in the transport air or the railway area it was actually a strike against government policy and that was issue raised in the general strike so you weren't just extending collective bargaining you were moving it beyond a trade dispute into a dispute with the government and that was the issue that Lloyd George was raising in which was finally settled by the general strike but one sense in which Lloyd George was speaking in a misleading way because firstly no Prime Minister was willing to accept defeat from organized labor the country wouldn't let them do that but secondly and perhaps the most important of all anyone who'd studied the history of the trade union movement or the labor party knew they weren't going to make that kind of challenge that Lloyd George suggested they weren't interested in overthrowing the state that wasn't their role and the trade unions had a very different function now it's certainly true that the trade unions were the key element in the labour party in the interwar years and for example in 1930 if you look at the lane parties income it's 45 million pounds but of that 35 million pounds came from the trade unions if you look at the nationally executive the trade unions were dominant on that and the trade unions had a block vote at the party conference which meant they could outnumber easily the constituency party delegates this was strongly supported by the Fabian theorist Sidney Webb who in 1930 said this the constituency parties were freely were sorry the constituency parties were frequently unrepresentative groups of non entities dominated by fanatics and cranks and extremists and if the bloc vote of the trade unions were eliminated it would be impracticable to continue to vest the control of policies in labour party conferences in other words unrealistic people in the constituency part of trading would keep them down to earth and that was a much truer picture of the unions and the law in George one of a group of revolutionaries threatening to take over the government for trade unions were very slow-moving very defensive very cautious thoroughly committed to democratic procedures in their action which made them extremely cautious and they were fighting in the 20s as a matter of defensive and conservative with a small seed bath and as a radical battle other words what they were trying to do you've seen the examples I've given they weren't trying to get increases in wages they were trying to stop wages falling we were trying to hold on to what they had far from making revolutionary or radical demands they were making a demand that their position not be worsened and the trade union negotiators were very conservative in that sense now they were attacked throughout oddly in light of what Lloyd Georgia they were attacked throughout by the left wing of the Labour Party who said that the reactionary leadership of the unions was selling out a radical working-class but those are the closest to the working-class in the 1920s saw them as even more conservative and cautious and their leaders and they said that the members stood not to the left of the leadership but to the right of the leadership the leaders declared themselves to be socialists but how many of the members of the unions were actually socialists and Ernest Bevin the leader of the largest union the transport and general workers union he said the most conservative man in the world is a British trade unionist when you want to change him he said you can make a great speech on unity but when you are finished he will say what about the funeral benefits and he wrote to a left-wing trade union leader in 1928 he said it is all very well for people to talk as if the working class of Great Britain are cracking their shins for a fight and a revolution and we are holding them back are they there are not many as fast as we are ourselves now the Labour Party if you leave out the unions had around a million members through most of the interwar period the main left-wing attack on the Labour Party from the Communist Party in 1921 had ten thousand members the height of the stump in 1929 its membership had fallen to three thousand five hundred members so there's not much sign of a great radical movement to the left of the Labour Party and the trade unions in the 20s were militant only when their interests were threatened when they were trying to preserve the status quo otherwise they tended to be very very defensive and cautious in their approach now the trade unions and the Labour Party although part of the same labour movement there wasn't much love lost between them because the Labour Party took review understandably perhaps that strikes were damaging their electoral prospects and that frightening middle-class people whose voters vote say neither one of working-class been preventing the rise of labour and the best way to deal with the problems of the working-class was not by strikes or trading an action by getting the majority for the Labour Party in Parliament and in 1924 Henderson one of the lead of the Labour Party said the epidemic of strikes reminds him of what was happening in Russia against the Kerensky government and damaging to a liberal-minded government Ramsay MacDonald called Bevin a swine for going on strike and damaging Labour's electoral chances now the trade unions themselves thought that that was where the strength of labour lay in the collective weight of the working class in the industrial sector and not in the political sector so there were battles between them and the big battle came as I'll describe later in 1931 when the labor cabinet wanted to reduce unemployment benefit but the unions wouldn't agree and that led to a great split in the labour party vist it was masked at the end of the war because for this brief if you like idealistic period the Labour Party took the view that the war had actually destroyed the capitalist system and that people could move on fairly quickly into a new socialist system and the Labour Party's program in 1918 which was called Labour and the new social order said that the individualist system of capitalist production may we hope indeed have received a deathblow with it must go to political system and ideas in which it naturally found expression we are the Labour Party whether in opposition or called upon in due time the formal administration will certainly lend no hand to its revival on the contrary we shall do our utmost to see that it is buried with the millions it has done to death now the interwar years which were bleak period for all concern perhaps bleeker's of all for the Labour Party because that diagnosis Prudhoe Lee 40 and instead of the ends of warriors seeing a steady march towards socialism you can see it as a great defeat for the left the general strike in 1926 a defeat for the trade union left the formation of the national government in 1931 with a vast majority a great defeat for the political left really historic defeats the general strike showed that the left couldn't force the government to meet the demands of unions the national government showed the labor party couldn't preserve working-class living standards unemployment benefits and so on in the middle of a sump and then the left was to suffer another blow in foreign policy in the 1930s because the let hopes that collected security to the League of Nations could prevent a war was also shown to be futile as bleak peer to the left only enough the Labour Party recovered at the worst time of the war in 1940 when they were brought into government into the government by their most bitter opponent in the into warrior as Winston Churchill and there's bitter a pound to the labor movement who brought them into power and helped perhaps to create a period of Labour government after the war when the age of the Conservatives gave way to the age of the labour party so the Left recovered in 1940 and the central theme I think of the interwar period is the defeat of the left partly because the labor movement and the union's I think exaggerated their strengths what they could achieve in the years of slump now firstly their first doctrine as I've said was that they could bring about socialism through industrial action and that was decided you couldn't in 1926 despite the labor militancy and we've already seen that in 1921 there was a threat of a general strike which came to nothing but that threat was renewed in 1925 when again the mines had been in private ownership for some time and the miners again said we will not accept wage reductions the owners were saying we can't keep the mines open at current rates we can't make enough profit can't stay in business I'm afraid we'll have to lower the wages and the miners said no we can't do that and we won't support that and they went to see Baldwin some dispute over what Baldwin said Baldwin denied he'd said it I think he did say it but it's open but he said all the workers of this country have got to take a reduction in wages to help put the country back on its feet again and that was a foolish thing to say because it United the other Union behind the miners so the miners could say it's not just our wages that are going to be reduced but we're in the forefront of the labor movement if our wages are reduced your wages will also be reduced and therefore it's in your interest even apart from working class solidarity to join us in a strike and in 1925 it looked again as if there'd be another general strike because the trade union of the whole the team see said if the miners are locked out because they won't accept lower wages we will all go on strike and then there will be a general strike and the miners went to see the government again and they said the government has to give a subsidy to the mind so that they can maintain the wages we're paying and Baldwin the concern said we're not going to do that why should we do that why should we pick up a mind rather than other other industries that aren't doing well why shouldn't we subsidize the mind we're not going to do that and they were opposed and Baldwin said to the miners you know what are you going to concede and the man said nothing we've got nothing to concede and they had the slogan not a minute off the day in other words no longer hours and not a penny off the pay so they weren't going to concede anything at all now at the last moment the government gave way on a date by contrast in Black Friday happens when other Friday was called red Friday that was a victory for the unions and they said they would give a subsidy to the mines of ten million pounds for nine months it turned into 23 million in the end and they said that they would set up a Royal Commission to consider what should be done about the mind and that Royal Commission would report before the nine months were up and hopefully that would achieve a settlement now they've been dispute about why the government gave way and some people say they were being very cunning that they were waiting to fight on bitter grounds that were when public opinion had been properly prepared I don't myself believe that I've take the view that Baldwin was genuine a genuine conciliator and hoped that a strike avert it might be a strike avoided and important remember that although you had conservative governments throughout and throughout most of the interwar period those governments could only win power with the support of a minority at least of organized labor the trade unions her words for the conservative win an election ended about a third of the trade unions trade unionists to vote for them in those days and so it wasn't in the interests of the Conservative Party to have a general strike and to had organized labor against them and he did after genuine strike in the 1926 Germans right in the next election in 1929 the Conservatives were defeated and you had a Labour government so it wasn't in the interests of the Conservatives to put the union's against them so I I don't think it was a cunning move I think Baldwin genuinely hoped to achieve a settlement now the this proved only a temporary truce the left-wing union leaders in the miners union said they had a government on the run and it showed their power and that next time they could push him even further and the cook the miners leaders on the left and we are already beaten not only the employees but the strongest government in modern times whereas the right wing of the Conservative Party said they did they did take the view we must fight later on when we better prepared so not only Baldwin took that view in the home sector he was to the right so william johnson hicks made a speech saying the danger is not over sooner or later this question has got to be fought out by the people of the land is england to be governed by parliament and by the cabinet or by a handful of trade union leaders our royal commission reported in the spring of 1926 and they said that the trouble with the mines was that there were too many units and some were very inefficient and there for wages tended to be dragged down a level of inefficient mines and the best thing to do would be to reorganize the mines so they became more efficient perhaps to have some degree of government control not nationalization but planning and get rid of the inefficient mines and and generally rationalized the industry and they said that was their long-term solution but they said there was no alternative in the short-term to cutting wages because the mines were an economic and they said nevertheless the mine the miners should be persuaded to accept all this on condition there would be reorganisation and that hopefully would raise the wages back again by making the mines more efficient so in a way it had something for both sides but the trouble was that wages were going to for whatever happened where the organisation depend on government action and on the action of the employers and reorganization was a bit one of those mad words which seemed to promise great improvements in efficiency but would they actually occur like the word government used to save money efficiency savings do they actually have a care now at this point I think the trade union in Congress was rather hopeful they want to avoid a strike and their line was we think we can bring the miners along with you with a formula if the Prime Minister can deliver the owners a lot along with him to agree to reorganization of the mines and they said in this way we can we not find some formula perhaps to paper over the cracks but we don't have to have a general strike for trade used on the whole want to think now the government said what was right I think that restructuring would take years and what was going to happen in the meantime there had to be wage cuts and the trade union said we'll trade you income said well we accept we accept this we accept that there may have to be wage cuts but they should be depending on reorganization they were searching for form of words that would get them off the hook of supporting the miners the miners position was there shouldn't be wage cuts full stop and the trade union said that was unrealistic let's have wage cuts or at that wage cut sadly but unconditionally reorganization try and pin the government down try and get a formal words that get gets out of all this and man said no no we don't agree to anything of that kind and you must support us in all this and the trading will say this is a bit unrealistic because if you're asking us to go on strike and risk our jobs and remember it was a risk of a job he said you must entrust negotiations to us and you must entrust us to find the right formula you can't say there's going to be unity on the strike but your gains is decide what the position is about negotiations and therefore you must hand over control of the strike to the general counsel of the trade union Congress and the miners said no that won't do we're not going to do that we decide one so there was that now the Prime Minister Baldwin I think like the trade union in Congress wanted to get out of the strike and try and find a formula and a draft he produced the following form of words he said the Prime Minister satisfied himself that if negotiations are continued it being understood that the notices cease to operate in other words that there wouldn't be a lockout the representatives of the TU C are confident that a settlement can be reached on the lines of the report within a fortnight now the lines of the report the Royal Commission report that meant a reduction in wages but it wasn't spelt out so the TU C could accept it without actually spelling things out too strongly but the cabinet rejected that they said you're going to be you're going to be taken for a ride by the trade unions they say they'll accept this but they weren't really and you'll have them strike against and we must tighten up the formula and they said this formula was tightened up we will urge the miners to authorize us to enter upon a discussion with the understanding that they and we accept the report as a basis of settlement and we approach it with the knowledge that it may involve some reduction in wages and those words reduction in wages spelt out what the trade union Congress didn't want spelt out because it good didn't get them off the hook with the miners well the TU C nevertheless said they would take it to their members and report back to the government on the Sunday these negation week added over the weekend when notices were coming out on Monday so the miners and go on strike so they dispersed into the country and one of those sad accidents that sometimes occurred they did not ring back when they promised to ring back through pure breakdown with communications and this led the cabinet to think that they were being taken for a ride and they said the strike notices for general strike have already gone out the union's could reply these are merely provisional and after all the government had made its preparation we're making our preparation we want to get out on strike and then the cabinet new you've got to remember for all this time the cabinet were very distant from the trade union movement more distant and conservatives would be dead they didn't understand it very well and then news came in which really frightened them because the printers on a daily mail had said they would not set up a headline called for king and country calling on the country to stand firm against a general strike and they said this is an interference with freedom speech and they were frightened and they rang up the Kings private secretary to say the Daily Mail will not be printed tomorrow and the Kings private secretary replied with some institutions we don't take the Daily Mail here all the Daily Express that the the union leaders then came back late on the Sunday evening hoping to continue negotiations but Baldwin met them and said I've had this very serious news overtax have occurred such as a failure to print the Daily Mail which indicates strike 2 started it's outside your control we've done our best but gentlemen I have to tell you negotiations are now concluded and would not be resumed until you unconditionally withdraw all threats of promises of general strike good night and he went off and the union leaders were totally surprised intending about this action of the printers which was not officials and then went back to find out what's happening and then they were going to report back to Baldwin and say that was all a muddle but Baldwin had gone to bed finished and I think what happened the cabinet said to bald and you're being taken for a ride here and you must fit you must stand up to the Union it's about time you stand up to the unions and the General Council I think were genuinely astounded when negotiations broke down I think no one in my opinion some disagree with I think no one on the General Council want a general strike they wanted to use the threat of the general strike to get the government to give a fair deal to the miners I think some people in the cabinet in my opinion they're not Baldwin wanted a confrontation or always welcomed it baldon I think didn't but the general strike a national strike the union's called the national strike must if you're on the Union side you mustn't call the general strike oh that's got the Nash dragons call differently by different people the unit of the National strike and the clearest example of class warfare in the twentieth century you know in many countries be thought of as a revolution but fought by those who built their careers on abandoning the class war a break power of Baldwin leader of the Conservative Party so we must conciliate be more contingent we've been in the past right-wing union leaders Uyghur anis Bevan and centering the left a human being class traitors they were the leaders of the general strike a disaster for the union's five months after the strike two hundred thousand was still on a three-day week forty five thousand unemployed on the railways didn't get their jobs back the trade unions lost a third of their funds the miners weren't helped the strike lasted general strike lasted for nine days the miners strike ended in December 1926 after nine months the union's lost everything they fought for there were district settlement through other national settlements increase in hours and lower wages back to the levels of 1921 a complete defeat summed up and I'm going to finish with as I hope to finish the interwar period today and domestic Potter I won't so I'll continue next time talking about the 1931 crisis and another coalition government of conservatives and liberals like Lloyd George government all sorts of resonances with today and talk about that then but I'll conclude with a comment made by the Fabian Beatrice Webb in the strike she said there's very prescient she said for the British trade union movement I see a day of terrible disillusionment the failure of the general strike will be one of the most significant landmarks in the history of the British working class future historians will I think regarded as the death gasp of that pernicious structure and workers control public affairs through the trade unions and by the method of direct action and after the strike a Nietzsche said this the government has gained in minced and anis sums up the interwar years the government has gained immense prestige in the world and the British labor movement has made itself ridiculous a strike which opens when the football match between the police and the strikers and end in unconditional surrender after nine days with densely packed reconciliation services but all the chapels and churches of Great Britain attended by the strikers and their families will make the Continental socialists blaspheme let me add the failure of the general strike shows what a sane people the British are if only our revolutionaries would realize the hopelessness of their attempt to turn the British workmen into a Russian red and the British businessmen and Country Gentlemen into an Italian fascist the British are hopelessly good-natured and full of common sense to which the British workman adds pigheadedness jealousy and stupidity we are all of us just good-natured stupid folk the worst of it is the governing class are as good-natured and stupid as the labor movement you

Channel: Gresham College

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Keywords: Political History, British Politics, History, Politics, Government, British History, English Politics, Westminster, Vernon Bogdanor, Gresham College, Gresham, Gresham Professor, lecture, talk, politics talk, politics lecture, history lecture, history talk, education, free education

Id: E_Yo86Rlj_g

Length: 59min 9sec (3549 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 24 2011