Abstract
The Labour Party’s leadership in the 1940s, in contrast to its successors in the 1980s and 1990s, never felt self-conscious or embarrassed about seeing the label ‘socialist’ applied to their policies. Indeed, the 1945 Labour manifesto, Let Us Face the Future, explicitly informed the electorate that the Party’s ultimate purpose was ‘the establishment of a Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain — free, democratic, efficient, progressive, public-spirited, its material resources organised in the service of the British people.’2 But did such statements reflect a wholehearted desire by the Labour government of 1945–51 to transform British society along fundamentally socialist lines? Or were they merely a rhetorical ornament, intended to hide the leadership’s essential opportunism from a much more radically inclined rank and file? Paul Smith once argued that Disraeli’s political ideas ‘were not the motive force of his performance, but rather the costume which he wore in deference to the susceptibilities of his audience’.3 Many authorities would conclude that a similar characterisation should be applied to the Attlee government which, they argue (especially after the crises of 1947) eagerly embraced a cross-party consensus constructed along lines dictated by Beveridge and Keynes.4
I would like to thank Paul Addison, Steven Fielding and Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska for useful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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Notes
F.W.S. Craig, ed., British General Election Manifestos, 1918–1966, 1970, Chichester, Political Reference Publications, p. 101.
P. Smith, Disraelian Conservatism and Social Reform, 1967, London, Routledge, p. 12.
See, for example, P. Addison, The Road to 1945, 1975, London, Jonathan Cape. Even those who have argued for a distinct lack of consensus during the war, have also claimed that there was a retreat from collectivism after 1947:
K. Jefferys, The Churchill Coalition and Wartime Politics, 1940–1945, 1991, Manchester, Manchester University Press, pp. 214–16;
S.J. Brooke, Labour’s War: the Labour Party During the Second World War, 1992, Oxford, Oxford University Press, especially pp. 329–35;
K.O. Morgan, Labour in Power, 1945–1951, 1984, Oxford, Oxford University Press, passim.
This phrase comes from P.F. Clarke, ‘The Progressive Movement in England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 24, 1974, p. 159.
For example, the contributions to N. Tiratsoo, ed., The Attlee Years, 1991, London, Frances Pinter.
For example, Labour Party, Cards on the Table, 1948, London, Labour Party.
Labour Party, Labour Believes in Britain, 1949, London, Labour Party, pp. 3–4. For further elaboration of this definition, see
M. Francis, ‘Economics and Ethics: The Nature of Labour’s Socialism, 1945–1951’, Twentieth Century British History, 6, 2, 1995. See also, S. Fielding, ‘Labourism in the 1940s’, Twentieth Century British History, 3, 2, 1992, pp. 138–53.
N. Rollings, ‘“The Reichstag Method of Governing”?: The Attlee Governments and Permanent Economic Controls’, in H. Mercer et al., eds., Labour Governments and Private Industry: The Experience of 1945–51, 1992, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, pp. 115–36.
I. Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ‘Rationing, Austerity and the Conservative Party Recovery after 1945’, Historical Journal, 37, 1, 1994, pp. 173–97.
K.O. Morgan, ‘The Rise and Fall of Public Ownership in Britain’, in J. Bean, ed., The Political Culture of Modern Britain, 1985, London, Hamish Hamilton, pp. 288–91.
H. Gaitskell, Socialism and Nationalisation, Fabian Tract no. 300, July 1956, London, Fabian Society, pp. 9–10, 18–23. For Durbin’s views, E. Durbin, ‘The Importance of Planning’ (1935), in his Problems of Economic Planning, 1949, London, Routledge, pp. 53–4.
Labour Believes in Britain, pp. 9–10; Labour Party, Labour and the New Society, 1950, London, Labour Party, pp. 18–25.
Conservative Research Department, The Campaign Guide: General Election 1950, 1949, London, Conservative and Unionist Central Office, pp. 93–119.
J. Strachey, The Just Society, 1951, London, Labour Party, pp. 6–9.
H. Dalton, ‘Our Financial Plan’, in Fabian Society, ed., Forward from Victory!, 1946, London, Victor Gollancz, pp. 48–9.
I.D. Little, ‘Fiscal Policy’, in G.D.N. Worswick and P.H. Ady, eds., The British Economy, 1945–50, 1952, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. 174.
A.A. Rogow and P. Shore, The Labour Government and British Industry, 1945–1951, 1955, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. 119. The average annual income of an adult male in 1951 was around £440.
C.P. Mayhew, Socialist Economic Planning, Fabian Discussion Series no. 1, December 1946, London, Fabian Society, p. 18. For Jenkins, see Nuffield College, Oxford, G.D.H. Cole Papers, B/3/5/E, ‘Problems Ahead’ Conference, Buscot Park, July 1949, Session II, p. 2. For Callaghan, see his ‘Approach to Social Equality’, in D. Munro, ed., Socialism: The British Way, 1948, London, Essential Books, pp. 147–8.
H. Dalton, Practical Socialism for Britain, 1935, London, Routledge, pp. 336–7.
P.M. Williams, Hugh Gaitskell, 1982 edn, Oxford, Oxford University Press, p. 165.
S.P. Chambers, ‘The Capital Levy’, Lloyds Bank Review, vol. 19, no. 1, January 1951, p. 1;
R. Jenkins, Fair Shares for the Rich, 1951, London, Tribune.
G. Foote, The Labour Party’s Political Thought: A History, 1985, London, Croom Helm, pp. 212–34.
C. Webster, ‘Labour and the Origins of the National Health Service’, in N.A. Rupke, ed., Science, Politics and the Public Good, 1988, Basingstoke, Macmillan, p. 199.
Hansard, 5th series, 30 April 1946, 422:49; C. Webster, Problems of Health Care: the National Health Service before 1957, 1988, London, HMSO, pp. 395–7.
F. Williams, The Triple Challenge, 1948, London, Heinemann, p. 131.
J. Burnett, A Social History of Housing, 1978, Newton Abbot, David and Charles, p. 284.
M. Foot, Aneurin Bevan, vol. 2, 1945–1960, 1973, London, Davis-Poynter, pp. 78–9.
D. Rubinstein, ‘Ellen Wilkinson Re-considered’, History Workshop Journal, 7, 1979, pp. 161–9;
C. Benn, ‘Comprehensive School Reform and the 1945 Labour Government’, History Workshop Journal, 10, 1980, pp. 197–204.
For example, the speech of George Thomas, Hansard, 5th series, 31 July 1947, 441:690–4.
C.A.R. Crosland, The Future of Socialism, 1956, London, Jonathan Cape, p. 237.
D. Butler and A. Sloman, eds., British Political Facts, 1900–1979, 1980, Basingstoke, Macmillan, p. 208.
C.R. Attlee, As It Happened, 1954, London, Heinemann, p. 163.
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Francis, M. (1996). ‘Not Reformed Capitalism, But… Democratic Socialism’: The Ideology of the Labour Leadership, 1945–1951. In: Jones, H., Kandiah, M. (eds) The Myth of Consensus. Contemporary History in Context Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24942-8_3
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