Attlee's Labour Governments 1945-51

Robert Pearce

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134962396
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The Labour governments of 1945-51 are among the most important and controversial in modern British history, and have been the focus of extensive research over the last fifteen years. In this study, Robert Pearce makes the results of this research available in a concise and accessible form, whilst encouraging students to formulate their own interpretations. He looks at the main political personalities of the period, sets their work in the context of Labour history since 1900, and examines their domestic, foreign and imperial achievements.

1
Introduction

‘All our enemies having surrendered unconditionally, or being about to do so,' wrote former wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, ‘I was instantly dismissed by the British electorate.' He was not the only one to be shocked by the results of the 1945 general election. Political commentators were equally amazed. Almost everyone, including Labour's leaders, had predicted a comfortable Conservative victory. Yet, in retrospect, it is hard to understand such views. Labour's victory now seems ‘over-explanations to account for it. determined', in that there are more than enough plausible

Periods of warfare—that is to say of violence, brutality and general mayhem—are often followed by outbreaks of tender idealism whose most common symptom is the vision of a fairer society. As in 1918, with ‘a fit country for heroes to live in', so in 1945, when the Labour party was closely associated with hopes for better housing and a welfare state. In consequence the election result no longer seems even mildly surprising. Indeed it has been said that, by the time of the campaign, Labour did not have to win the election but merely avoid losing it. Perhaps the only puzzle, given recent historical accounts, is that Attlee's Labour party, while admittedly achieving a great victory with 61 per cent of seats and an overall majority of 146, won only 47.8 per cent of total votes cast.

However, if one area of controversy has subsided, at least temporarily, others show no signs of generating other than heated disagreement. First, there is the issue of personnel. In particular, what are we to make of the Prime Minister, Clement Attlee? Was he, as Churchill joked, merely a ‘sheep in sheep's clothing', ‘a modest man with plenty to be modest about'? Historians have described him as smaller, not larger, than life, ‘underwhelming' rather than overwhelming. But how could such an extraordinarily ordinary man have led the Labour party for twenty years and stayed at the top of the greasy pole for six? Or was he in fact a highly efficient executive and superb chairman of committee, with an excellent understanding of his party and grasp of the government machine, one of the very best prime ministers in modern history? Both Attlees have found their places in recent historiography. Into the impenetrable silences of this essentially shy man—dubbed by George VI ‘Clam', rather than Clem, Attlee, a man so self-effacing that he sometimes disappeared altogether—have been read both inadequacy and delphic understanding. Attlee's ability to parry reporters' queries and avoid self-revelation has seemed to some historians to betray a determination to preserve some personal mystery. Was Attlee the proverbial sphinx, guarding its secret, or (as Bismarck said of Louis Napoleon) a ‘sphinx without a riddle'?

More fundamentally, what place should be assigned to Attlee's governments in British history? Were the years 1945–51 a period of bold legislative achievement which changed Britain permanently—though whether for good or ill is another area of contention—and established a consensus in British politics that lasted until the Thatcher years, in the 1980s? Or, on the contrary, was this period one of wretched anticlimax, a dénouement after the truly revolutionary years of the ‘people's war'? According to this latter view, the consensus between the major parties had been forged before the 1945 election, so that all Labour had to do afterwards was follow the instructions on wartime blueprints. It has been argued that the Conservatives would have done no less, especially given the conversion of sections of the Whitehall establishment to the new gospel, stressing welfare and a managed economy, according to Keynes and Beveridge.

In view of this controversy, it is not surprising that almost every possible political label has been assigned to the Labour governments, from revolutionary to reactionary. Attlee is said by some to have brought about a socialist revolution, or at any rate to have taken Britain a good way along the road to socialism; but others insist that he merely reinvigorated the old capitalist system by limited doses of welfare and public ownership. Much of course depends on how ‘socialism' is defined, an issue not helped by the fact that no one knows how to define it. Many writers, like Peter Clarke, insist that ‘socialism' has no meaning except as the antithesis of ‘capitalism', that is to say as the common rather than the private ownership of the means of production. The only problem with such clarity is that many self-styled socialists, concerned more with moral ends than economic means, define it very differently. To them it means a more equal and more caring society. Herbert Morrison, perhaps affecting cynicism, once remarked that socialism ‘is what Labour governments do'; but the real cynics aver that socialism is merely what Labour spokesmen or Tory scaremongers say they will do. Recent writers like Kenneth Morgan and Peter Hennessy have cut through the Gordian knot by interpreting 1945–51 not in ideological terms at all but in less problematic terms of efficiency and effectiveness. Although pointing to Labour's failings and shortcomings, they nevertheless praise Attlee's administrations highly. But while they highlight Labour's successes, other historians point to the governments' failures, insisting that they were dominated by circumstances and did not leave a genuine impress on British history.

This uncertainty is not a consequence of any shortage of information. We know a vast amount about 1945–51: official papers were released some years ago, and they have been supplemented by the diaries of several cabinet ministers. Biographers have also been constructively at work, producing one-, two- and even three-volume works on such key figures as Attlee, Bevin, Morrison, Bevan, Dalton and Gaitskell. Important economic histories have also been written. We are in fact unlikely to learn much more about what happened in this period. But highly contrasting judgements and interpretations continue to be provided.

No doubt such variety stems in part from the nature of historical study: there is, and can be, no finality in history. And yet it is hard to avoid the conclusion that other forces are important as well. One is political bias. The postwar world is generally seen as ‘contemporary history' and still arouses political passions and prejudices. The period 1945–51 has been used by Labour supporters to vaunt what a Labour government can do and by Tory supporters to warn against what a Labour government would do if the electorate were unwise enough to return another.Furthermore, our perspective on the immediate postwar period depends very much on present and future events, including issues like East-West relations, the nationalisation or privatisation of industry and the funding of the National Health Service. Indeed, only the future will decide whether the initiatives of the Labour governments constituted fruitful growths or dead ends.

Students must be on their guard against the mythology that has grown up about 1945– 51 and against political bias, including their own. One way of minimising bias is by an awareness of the criteria by which judgements are made. Everyone makes judgements; it is impossible not to do so. But conflicting verdicts can be better understood if we are conscious of the yardsticks used by those who formulate them. Some critics, especially on the left of the political spectrum, measure the achievements of the governments against theoretical socialist models: most often they condemn Attlee and the other ministers for not doing what they should have done. Sometimes they even blame them for engaging in bourgeois parliamentary democracy at all! Even right-wing critics reproach the governments for having the wrong aims and, inevitably, the wrong means for achieving them. Others compare the achievements of the governments with their aims, especially those set before the electorate in their 1945 manifesto; with what they suppose a Tory government in the same situation would have done (inevitably a fairly speculative business); or with what various other British governments have achieved. Many historians try to see these years from the perspectives of the politicians themselves, viewing their work along with the day-to-day circumstances and problems which limited political freedom of action. What from one perspective may seem a ‘failure'—like the governments' housing record—may from another be judged a ‘success', after due recognition of intractable conditions. Some historians give prominence to one area of political activity, for instance seeing foreign policy as the touchstone of their work, others to vastly different ones.

How much importance should historians assign to the imple-mentation of family allowances as against the independence of India, or the raising of the school-leaving age against the formation of NATO? How can we weigh in the balance the nationalisation of coal and the provision of false teeth? The governments' work was indeed multifarious, and we should be careful not to allow our particular concern with one area to colour our overall verdict unduly. Perhaps no single general verdict will be possible. The instinct to ‘label' à la 1066 and All That is sometimes hard to resist—but it is not always ‘a good thing'! Indeed, quite often such labels can be a substitute for genuine understanding. The aim of this short study is not to provide a set of ready-made views: it aims to introduce a fascinating and important period in British history, to stimulate further reading and, above all, to encourage students to think critically how best to formulate judgements for themselves.

2
Labour's apprenticeship

When Victory in Europe was achieved in May 1945 the prestige of Winston Churchill stood toweringly high. Not only had he stood out in the late 1930s against the ‘guilty men' who appeased Hitler, but he had led Britain through ‘blood, toil, tears and sweat' to final victory. And yet, when in his first election broadcast this great orator warned that a Labour government would ultimately introduce some form of Gestapo, few took him seriously. Such scare tactics had in the past produced tangible effects, but in July 1945 Labour was elected to power for the first time. The party's success probably owed very little to the election campaign itself. It was the culmination of almost half a century of history.

The party had been formed in February 1900, though the name Labour party was not officially adopted until six years later. Labour was to provide independent working-class representation at Westminster. Despite the fact that large numbers of working men, and all women, were unable to vote—so that there were at most 100 seats in the whole country where wage-earners formed a majority of the electorate—the new party made immediate progress. At the election of 1906 it won 29 seats, and in 1910 its total increased to about 40. But there seemed no chance of Labour's challenging for power within the foreseeable future, especially since, from 1909, the Liberal government adopted ambitious social reforms which seemed likely to gain working-class support.

In 1914 Labour was planning to contest 150 seats at the next election, twice as many as ever before but still less than a quarter of all constituencies. By this stage the party was certainly a long way from forming a proper opposition, let alone a government. It did not have the support of all trade unionists, while only a minority of workers were in a trade union, and on issues that were of no concern to industry many of its MPs failed to take an interest or register a vote. Future progress, as Gordon Phillips has recently written, was likely to be ‘slow and piecemeal, rather than sudden and spectacular'. Indeed, in the summer of 1914 regression seemed more likely, for at the start of the First World War, as British men flocked to enlist, several prominent Labour leaders opposed the call to arms and favoured a general strike to bring the capitalists to their senses.

A fatal split in the party was avoided and, paradoxically, the war of 1914–18 provided favourable conditions for the growth of Labour. In return for a no-strike agreement Labour men were taken into government, Arthur Henderson even serving as a member of the war cabinet in 1916–17. The established parties paid the price for the support of the working classes—without which the war could not be won—by taking Labour into government. The number of trade unionists also grew substantially. In addition, at the end of the war the franchise was extended to all men over 21 and all women over 30, virtually trebling the electorate. Of equal significance was the fact that the Liberal party was divided by the war. In December 1916 Lloyd George had replaced Asquith as Prime Minister, and this change produced a fatal schism. But, regardless of personalities, Liberalism was falling apart; the nature of the war, lasting for years and demanding the regimentation of society, was proving fatal to Liberal ideology. Labour, however, found state direction and control much more in keeping with its outlook. In addition, party organisers managed to hammer out an effective party constitution in 1918.

This new programme, Labour and the New Social Order, not only improved organisational structure—so that individual membership was allowed—but enumerated a set of objectives that gave the party a new and distinctive identity. Hitherto Labour had been doctrinally virginal, having as its central purpose simply the return of MPs to Westminster. Now it became an avowedly ‘socialist' party, pledging itself to produce a society based not on conflict and inequality but on ‘deliberately planned co-operation in production and distribution'. In the words of Clause IV, the aim of the party was

to secure for the producers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible, upon the basis of the Common Ownership of the Means of Production and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry and service.

Socialism, according to this definition, meant not private ownership and free market capitalism, which bred inequality and exploitation, but public ownership and state direction of the economy. But in fact this statement of principles did not adequately define the outlook of even the intellectual wing of the Labour party. If for some socialism was essentially an economic doctrine necessitating nationalisation, for others it was primarily ethical, with the stress on liberty, the brotherhood of man and the moral regeneration of the individual. For the first group what mattered was collectivism, state control and bureaucratic efficiency; but the second group, while anti-capitalist, was equally against state collectivism. This was an important difference of aim, but there were divisions too over method. Some believed that the socialist goal could only come about swiftly, and perhaps violently, as a result of a revolution; but far more Labour supporters, including the Fabians, thought it would occur slowly, almost imperceptibly, with ‘the inevitability of gradualness'.

It should also be remembered that for many more Labour party supporters, outside the realms of the intellectuals, ‘socialism' expressed simply an ill-defined desire to achieve better living conditions and greater equality of income and opportunity. They used the word in a rhetorical, vaguely emotive and imprecise sense. Most trade unionists were inclined to this usage. The unions were the dominant element in the party, providing the funds without which it could not survive, and they tended to be impatient of theorising. Although groups like the miners were calling for the nationalisation of their industries as the best means of securing better conditions, most unionists were predominantly interested in the preservation or extension of trade union rights in the law and the improvement of working conditions. Their aims revolved around the solution of immediate problems, so that the far vista of a wholly reformed society meant little to them. Their basic attitudes and programme were ‘labourism' rather than socialism.

Clearly Labour was a coalition—and in some ways a very uneasy alliance—between disparate groups. The party attracted a mass following and also small but growing numbers of intellectuals. Its supporters included libertarians and collectivists, pragmatists and theorists. They wanted everything from a classless society to piecemeal improvements in working conditions and preached everything from class-warfare to class-collaboration. The fact that Labour was a very ‘broad church', drawing inspiration from Christ as well as Marx, gave the party a great width of appeal, but it did not make for unity or cohesion. The 1918 programme certainly did not unite these disparate elements. To some Clause IV was an immediate aim, to others it might have relevance in the dim and distant future, while to many it was simply mythology to which lip-service might occasionally be paid. Some considered Labour to be a party of social reform— rather like the Liberals, many of whom were soon deserting a sinking party for one obviously on the rise—and aimed to achieve change within the existing framework of society. Others saw it as a socialist party, with the aim of producing a new form of society.

In the interwar years Labour experienced contrasting fortunes. Initially all went well. In 1918 the first election for almost ten years produced a breakthrough. (The next ten-year gap, 1935–45, was to produce even more seismic changes.) In 1918 Labour fielded more candidates and won more seats than ever before. In the 1920s its progress was remarkable, from 22 per cent of the popular vote in 1918 to 37 per cent in 1929. Labour took over as the Liberals declined in working-class constituencies. Small wonder that the party's supporters were buoyed up with the confident assumption that the future lay with them: capitalism would, at some time in the future, inevitably be replaced by socialism. Even so, there were still problems to overcome. Ramsay MacDonald, leader from 1922, saw two vital areas for improvement. First, Labour was identified too exclusively with the industrial working class and the trade unions. Seeing a vital difference between a party of protest and a potential governing party, he wished Labour to be a truly national grouping, drawing support from all progressives in the community. Second, he was aware that Labour was not widely trusted and that wild rumours were circulating to the effect that if it were ever to take office it would prove totally incompetent—or worse. Could such a party be expected to defend Britain adequately? Would it not prove to be the pawn of the unions? In addition, Labour was damned by association with the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, so that some doubted whether the party was truly democratic.

After the election of December 1923 Labour had the chance to form a minority government. Not even the largest single party, it would be in office but not in power. Yet MacDonald seized his opportunity to gain executive experience and to show the nation that Labour was fit to govern. In this way he hoped to give the lie to the exaggerated rumours and, as a result, to attract more voters to the cause in the future. This strategy worked succe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• IN THE SAME SERIES
• Foreword
• Chronology
• 1: Introduction
• 2: Labour's apprenticeship
• 3: Attlee and his ministers
• 4: Labour and the economy
• 5: Labour's achievements: domestic affairs
• 6: Labour's achievements: external affairs
• 7: Conclusion: the Labour governments in perspective
• Further reading