Attlee's War

World War II and the Making of a Labour Leader

Robert Crowcroft

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780857730022
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del siglo XX

As deputy prime minister of Britain's coalition government during World War II, Clement Attlee became one of the most powerful figures in British politics and subsequently played a crucial role in the reshaping of the post-war party-political landscape. The architect of Labour's entry into the wartime coalition, Attlee came to straddle the workings of government to a unique degree. Unmatched in his range of influence, he dominated party politics; directed a doctrinal struggle within the coalition; and even sought to create the conditions for a cross-party alliance to be maintained after the war. His goal was to carve out a position of greater strength than Labour had ever occupied before and he succeeded when he led his party to power in July 1945. Robert Crowcroft here examines the political leadership of the unsung architect behind the development of wartime politics and the rise of the Labour party. Traditionally seen as a period of unprecedented cooperation between the Labour and Conservative parties, Crowcroft argues that in fact Attlee's influence facilitated a significant shift towards Labour which sowed the seeds for his party's post-war victory.
Attlee's War mounts a challenge to the popular image of Attlee as a reticent collegiate, and unravels his elusive path to power. Shedding new light on an often misunderstood figure, this book will appeal to all those interested in modern British history and the leadership of major political figures.

Chapter 1

Capturing the Language of Patriotism

As the heavy rain of an unusually wet summer swept across large parts of the British Isles in July 1939, the downpour found an eerie reflection in the mood of the nation’s political leaders. Dispersed around the country for summer holidays, a haunting sense of foreboding united these men across hundreds of miles and in spite of their geographical isolation. War with Adolf Hitler’s Germany was generally thought to be imminent, and Britain was soon to face its sternest military test for more than a century. National survival itself would be at stake, but some had other pressing concerns as well. At a house in North Wales, the leader of His Majesty’s Opposition, Clement Attlee, was recuperating from surgery for a serious prostate complaint that kept him away from the political front lines from May to late September. As a result, when the Labour movement gathered for its annual 1939 conference at Southport, it was, to all intents and purposes, leaderless. Of course, considering the dissatisfaction Attlee’s performance in the preceding four years generated, this may not have been such a new state of affairs in the eyes of many. Still, the weakness of Labour’s political position at this time would be difficult to overstate. The party held seats only in its industrial heartlands and had little prospect of winning the next general election. Yet, despite this, the months from the summer of 1939 to the spring of 1940 were to represent the beginnings of one of the most comprehensive political turnarounds in modern British history. Out of its weakness, Labour crafted a position of great strength.

Ironically, although Attlee was to be central to this – and to his party’s fortunes throughout the entire war – for the first few months, at least, he was absent. He certainly offered guidance and his hand can be discerned, if only fitfully and in outline. But it was other senior figures who took the lead in orchestrating a tactically complex balancing act in this initial period. Most significantly, Labour’s deputy leader Arthur Greenwood, a veteran Wakefield MP who achieved little in his career and has consequently been neglected by historians, plugged the gap left by Attlee and was briefly a major actor on the political stage.

What follows in this chapter is an analysis that documents the elaborate tactical arrangements required by Attlee and Labour’s strategy prior to the formation of the Churchill government. Certainly, the politics of the ‘phoney war’ have been told and retold. Fresh analysis requires justification. The case rests on Labour’s capture of the political centre. This is a story that has been badly overlooked in the previous literature and is in need of attention. Historians have tended to concentrate on the Conservatives, seen Labour as purely reactive to the worsening crisis and the outbreak of war, charged its leaders with drift and uncertainty, and viewed the party as only rescued from impotence by the political good fortune of the rise of Churchill in May.¹ ‘For the Labour leaders, the first eight months of war were a non-event’ is a typical view.² This chapter will show how, in fact, the Labour Party and its leader played a critical role in realigning British party politics, and established a secure position atop the commanding heights of Westminster. Attlee, along with Morrison, Dalton and Greenwood, was the principal architect of an effort to shore up the party’s negotiating position for the creation of a cross-party coalition ministry, which, given the international crisis and the internal problems of the Conservative-dominated National government, looked an increasingly likely possibility. This generates a quite different image of the dynamics at work here. In contrast to the attitude of the earlier literature, the approach plotted for Labour in these months can only be properly understood as a concerted effort to bide time and prepare the ground for coalition. This paid dividends in May 1940.

Moreover, the events analysed here offer crucial early insights into Attlee’s leadership style, particularly his blend of strategy and tactics, his party management techniques and his wider approach to politics during the war. The difficulties Attlee and his colleagues faced in 1939 and 1940 were monumental: recognition that office, achieved at the opportune moment, was the priority was balanced by Labour’s strong personal antipathy for the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. This, in turn, was matched by the necessity of avoiding any charge of a lack of ‘patriotism’ and sticking to stridently ‘responsible’ conduct – while still being perceived as sufficiently anti-Conservative within the Labour Party itself to retain the backing of their followers. And all this from a base of just 150-odd seats in the House of Commons. After previous cross-party alliances, during the First World War and in 1931, had torn Labour apart, coalition was an option that could only be entered into under highly restrictive conditions. With the spectre of earlier coalitions seared into the party’s folk memory, and the parliamentary arithmetic of being heavily outnumbered, the only option was a strategy prosecuted through careful manoeuvre, an effort to forge a workable anti-Chamberlain bloc that would also deliver the Labour Party a powerful role in office and delicately chosen language in attempting to find purchase for Labour’s ideas. The chapter also lays out the broader political context with which Attlee’s subsequent decisions interacted. Though it often went unappreciated by his contemporaries, this analysis of events will indicate the real significance of Attlee’s role as leader.

Creating political space

In a way that few historians have fully accepted, the Labour Party – like Churchill, Anthony Eden and other enemies of Chamberlain within the Conservatives – utilized foreign policy as a domestic political tool in the late 1930s. During the 12 months before the outbreak of war, the party had established ‘anti-appeasement’ as its principal political weapon. That was a wise choice, given that since 1923 Labour had been repeatedly defeated in its battle with Baldwinite Conservatism. Foreign affairs thus represented a vehicle through which to try to escape domestic failure. It was a way of showing worthiness and advertising virtue through exhortation. But that did not mean that the Labour leaders were able to articulate a coherent, alternative grand strategy of their own; the same was true of the anti-Chamberlain Conservatives. When it boiled down to it, the approach advocated by Labour, Churchill, Eden and the rest did not differ in any meaningful sense from the policies of the Prime Minister. Gesture can only obscure the cold realities of strategy so far. This problem, and the fact that dissidents within the governing party also tended to be men scalped by Chamberlain and Baldwin in the years before, has not appeared to call into question – in the eyes of historians, certainly – the legitimacy of their howls of protest.³ A brief analysis of the essentials of the international policy the competing factions advocated is instructive. Chamberlain hoped to avoid war, restrain Hitler with alliances – the League of Nations, France and eastern European nations were all toyed with – and protect the empire while maintaining European stability in order to keep out the USSR. Churchill and other Conservative dissidents, who perceived the USSR as big an enemy as Hitler, wanted to contain Germany through alliances and defend the empire. Labour similarly sought to restrain Berlin with an alliance system and avoid war, while its leaders accepted the empire and were as suspicious of Moscow as any Conservative. These rival groups all agreed on the importance of ‘collective security’. There was unanimity that many German demands were reasonable; and, in 1938, virtually everyone thought that Czechoslovakia would have to be sacrificed in the cause of peace. As Owen Hartley pointedly puts it, even for Churchill, ‘quite what he wanted to do’ about Hitler ‘was much less clear’ in the 1930s than he subsequently let on.⁴ At moments of crisis, howls of protest in public or around the Cabinet table were rarely accompanied by detailed alternatives to Chamberlain’s policy.

If there were differences on grand strategy here, they were in the margins. Precisely what, therefore, was at issue? The answer – naturally enough – was credibility. Fiery speeches were used to gain it and deprive others of it. And it worked, too; domestic considerations certainly compelled an isolated Chamberlain to take a harder line with Germany after Munich. While denouncing ‘appeasement’ as a way to recover credibility created opportunities for Labour, it also posed problems for the party once war actually came. How they navigated it was Attlee’s first triumph. Before that, however, he had to contend with not one, but two, emerging threats.

A new challenge to Attlee’s status as leader of the Labour Party arose in his absence in the summer of 1939; and, for once, the rival in question was not the London County Council leader and senior parliamentarian Morrison. It was – rather surprisingly – the deputy leader Greenwood, a grey man blighted by a taste for drink, but who under the leaderless circumstances of these crucial months emerged as a major figure. In the summer and autumn, this former economics lecturer at Leeds University began to lay out the trajectory that Labour would follow for the next six years. Even though Attlee provided guidance from North Wales, Greenwood became the public face of the party at this time. In addition, he performed admirably behind the scenes as well, in delicate positioning vis-à-vis the government and equally delicate management of the Labour movement. The most obvious man to step into the breach, Morrison, was himself taken up with his LCC duties in preparing the capital for probable attack by the Luftwaffe. Thus, the unlikely figure of Arthur Greenwood became the effective leader of the Labour Party for three of the most important months in national history. It was on his watch that the first glimpses of Labour’s elaborate wartime strategizing to capture large tracts of political space were to appear.

Things started slowly. Greenwood began to articulate Labour’s stance at the annual Labour conference at Southport in June 1939. Bringing to a close an event that had signified the general unity of the Labour movement after years of factional strife, Greenwood commented on the possibility of coalition in the event of war. In a long and aggressive speech, he told the delegates that ‘I will never ... if I were called upon to do so, take office in any government that was not prepared to implement [the] Immediate Programme [Labour’s 1937 flagship policy document]’.⁵ He publicly poured further cold water on the idea by stating that ‘those people who would sell our principles to buy the uncertain support of Liberals and Conservatives are doing this great party no good.’⁶ Though this was certainly an electioneering speech – the National government had a maximum of just over a year before it had to call a general election – it must also be seen in the context of the menacing international environment. The speech had two audiences. Greenwood was signalling that Labour would demand a high price for its cooperation, something that Chamberlain would need to pursue should war erupt. In declaring this at the outset, he had given notice that the party would expect significant political concessions in return for protecting the Conservatives’ flank.

Attention was focused on events in Europe over the summer. Two months later, however, with Attlee still absent and Hitler again exhibiting his bookmaker’s instincts by menacing Poland in spite of the British guarantee of that country, it again fell to Greenwood to provide a lead, this time in Parliament and in negotiations with the government. Within days, the acting leader was to attain the highest stature of his entire career. Serving as the Labour liaison with Downing Street, Greenwood emerged as a key figure on the national stage and was in close touch with Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, as what turned out to be the final crisis gathered pace. Greenwood had a number of pressing concerns. Not only did Labour have to tread carefully, but the party – like anti-appeasement Conservatives – was desperate to strengthen Chamberlain’s growing resolve at last to resist Hitler. At a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) executive on 24 August, Greenwood therefore advocated a cautious strategy: in the event of war, Labour would simultaneously act ‘responsibly’ in the national interest while leaving Chamberlain isolated by refusing to join the government.⁷ This built on the position laid down at Southport two months earlier. A strategy of professing ‘responsibility’ offered a means of publicly protecting Labour’s flank from any charge of a lack of patriotism – the accusation that had so damaged Labour in the 1931 financial crisis – while weakening the Prime Minister. An additional benefit was that it also served to guard against any internal dissent by placing restraints on the Labour Party itself, affording its leaders a degree of freedom of action. To that end, it was decided that no MP or trade union official should enter into individual agreement with the government: any initiative must be a collective decision.⁸ Independence was vital if Labour was to exert a pressure disproportionate to its parliamentary strength.

The path the leaders chose was thus beginning, fitfully, to emerge. Chamberlain had only been secure from the machinations of his enemies so long as his German policy brought peace on tolerable terms. Now he was to be kept isolated while the Labour Party wrapped itself – rhetorically – in the Union Jack. That day, Greenwood entered a robust performance in Parliament, telling a packed House of Commons that ‘the war clouds are gathering. Europe and the world are in shadows. A terrible ... responsibility lies on the shoulders of him [Hitler] that lets loose the hounds of war.’⁹ In a measured but direct oration, the deputy leader lambasted Chamberlain’s appeasement policies while emphasizing that Labour would stand four-square behind a policy of resisting the dictators.¹⁰ What standing behind the government actually meant was left unclear, as was the foreign policy that Greenwood thought should have been pursued. Less ambiguously, the next day the National Council of Labour (NCL), linking the political wing of the Labour movement to the trade unions, backed the strategy of not cooperating with Chamberlain.¹¹ These were the wounds that Chamberlain’s enemies had been unable to inflict while he was Europe’s peacemaker. Now that had changed, they plunged the knife in with gusto. Tellingly, they decided not to publicize the decision lest it be misunderstood and Labour deemed to be acting unpatriotically.¹² Dalton, the union boss, Walter Citrine, and veteran MP, Herbert Lees-Smith, all argued that if it was announced the party would be seen as unreasonable.¹³ Political calculation plainly remained paramount despite the gravity of the crisis and the plausibility of a general European war.

Although he was still absent, Attlee, for his part, was not entirely uninvolved and the Labour leader had become firm on the matter of confronting Hitler. Of course, the cynic might point out that, given the use they had made of this as a soapbox, he and Labour could now do little else. From North Wales, Attlee ensured that he retained a guiding hand over events at this crucial juncture, staying in close touch with Greenwood via telephone. He urged his deputy to pressurize Chamberlain finally to declare war, resolved that ‘we’ve got to fight’.¹⁴ On 29 August, as Chamberlain once more wavered towards appeasing Berlin, Greenwood delivered another highly effective ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author biography
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Wartime politics and the impact of Labour
• The rise of Attlee
• Attlee: the literature
• Chapter 1. Capturing the Language of Patriotism
• Creating political space
• The return of Attlee
• Taking the lead against Chamberlain
• The finale
• Conclusion
• Chapter 2. Capturing the Home Front
• Revising the rules of political engagement
• Attlee and Labour in office
• A restless party
• Conclusion
• Chapter 3. Remoulding the State and Defending the Alliance
• Looking for traction
• Exploring the limits of political action
• Defending the alliance
• ‘I do not think we are entitled to go on with Mr Churchill’
• Conclusion
• Chapter 4. ‘Parliament is Given over to Intrigue’: The Political System under Siege
• Going beyond the ‘truce’ and searching for ‘witches’
• Storm warnings
• The storm breaks
• Planning for ‘the future’
• Conclusion
• Chapter 5. Future Uncertain
• Morrison’s Midlothian moment
• Retaking the initiative
• The isolation of Morrison
• The party system eclipsed
• Conclusion
• Chapter 6. Politics in the Shadow of Victory
• The dilemmas of coalition
• Morrison’s need for a platform
• Positions and places
• The breaking of the government
• The spoils of war
• Conclusion
• Conclusion
• Attlee: authority and reputation
• The new democratic politics
• Appendix: The Adventurers
• Notes
• Extended Bibliography