Abstract
In October, 1931, the National Government went to the country, seeking, in MacDonald’s words, a “doctor’s mandate.” Rapidly changing conditions made it impossible to offer a detailed program with specific pledges, and the Government had to be free to consider any proposal likely to help, the Prime Minister explained. The election campaign, described by the Manchester Guardian as “the shortest, strangest, and most fraudulent ... of our time,” was carried on in a highly emotional atmosphere, with Labour’s former leaders joining Conservatives and Liberals in blaming the late Government for almost all the calamities of the world economic collapse. “National” spokesmen appealed to British patriotism, using “The Nation versus a Soviet” as one of their slogans; and Snowden described Labour’s program, in whose past development he had had such a great share, as “Bolshevism run mad.” Disorganized and demoralized, the Labour Party tried vainly to win support from Liberal voters by making the tariff the principal issue.1
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References
One Labour poster warned: “Workers, beware. The Tories want to cut your wages by: ood taxes. Vote Labour and defend your wages.” Another spoke of Detroit, Michigan: “A;ity of death. What happens in tariff-ridden America... Prevent Birmingham from becoming a city of death by voting Labour.” Arthur W. MacMahon, “The British General Election of 1931,” The American Political Science Review, vol. XXXVI (1932), p. 336.
See, for example, Leonard Woolf, “A Constitutional Revolution,” pp. 475-477; Sir Stafford Cripps, “The Election,” Political Quarterly, vol. III, no. 1 (1932), pp. 37–42; P. J. Noel-Baker, “The Future of the Labour Party,” ibid., pp. 45-53.
Leonard Stein, “Liberal Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, vol. XI (May 1929), p. 123.
On, Henderson, see Hamilton, Arthur Henderson, p. 17; on Lansbury, Raymond Post-gate, The Life of George Lansbury (London, 1951), p. 20. For discussions of the relations of Fabian ideas and one strand of nineteenth century Radicalism, see William Irvine, “Shaw, the Fabians, and the Utilitarians,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. VIII, no. 2 (April 1947), pp. 218–231, and
Mary Peter Mack, “The Fabians and Utilitarianism,” ibid., vol. XVI, no. 1, (January 1955), pp. 76–88.
See Denis W. Healey, “The International Socialist Conference, 1946–1950,” International Affairs, vol. XXVI, no. 3 (July 1950), p. 372. w1 On this point, see Winslow, op. cit., especially chapters V, VI, and VII, and Daniel H. Kruger, “Hobson, Lenin, and Schumpeter on Imperialism,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. XVI, no. 2 (April 1953), PP. 252-259.
On this point, see Winslow, op. cit., especially chapters V, VI, and VII, and Daniel H. Kruger, “Hobson, Lenin, and Schumpeter on Imperialism,” Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. XVI, no. 2 (April 1953), PP. 252–259.
Quincy Wright, A Study of War (Chicago, 1942), vol. II, p. 1162. For other examples, see Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York, 1950), pp. 128-129, and Remhold Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems (New York, 1953), p. 48.
Jacob Viner, “International Finance and Balance of Power Diplomacy, 1880–1914,” The Southwestern Political and Social Science Quarterly, vol. IX, no. 4 (March 1929), p. 45. On the general subject of capitalism and war, see also Wright, op. cit., vol. II, pp. 1172-1185, and Robbins, op. cit., pp. 40-59.
Hobson, Confessions of an Economic Heretic, p. 63; H. N. Brailsford, The Life-Work of J. A. Hobson (London, 1948), pp. 26-27. See also Woolf’s review of a book by A. L. Rowse in The Political Quarterly, vol. III (1932), pp. 136–138.
J. Keir Hardie and J. Ramsay MacDonald, “The Independent Labour Party’s Programme,” The Nineteenth Century, vol. XLV, no. CCLXIII (January 1899), p. 27.
Sir Reginald Mitchell Banks, The Conservative Outlook (London, 1929), p. 155. See also A. Wyatt Tilby, “Conservative Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, vol. XI, no. 8 (May 1929), pp. 121–123.
Lord Strang, “Foreign Policy in. a Democracy,” The Listener, vol. LVII, no. 1450 (January 10, 1957), p. 47.
Edmund Burke, “Speech on a Motion for Leave to bring in a Bill to repeal and alter certain Acts respecting Religious Opinions, upon the Occasion of a Petition of the Unitarian Society, May 11, 1792,” in Works (Boston, 3rd ed., 1869), vol. VII, p. 39.
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© 1967 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Miller, K.E. (1967). Socialist Ideology and Labour’s Foreign Policy. In: Socialism and Foreign Policy. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-0856-8_7
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