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WI:1930s Cripps Cabinet?

Time Enough

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So recently I wrote an alternate history novella and as part of the world of the story I had Stafford Cripps become Prime Minister.

It's got me thinking what would the main aims and jobs of a Cripps Cabinet would be, certainly the beginnings of a withdraw from the colonies, attempts at disarmament, attempts to implement a more Democratic Socilaist style government, organise a popular front with the other left wing parties against Fascism and maybe a welfare state.

What other stuff would you think would happen?

Also who do you think would be in it, I can guess Attlee and Bevan since they had similar opinions as Cripps at several points and were also his friends.
 
So recently I wrote an alternate history novella and as part of the world of the story I had Stafford Cripps become Prime Minister.

It's got me thinking what would the main aims and jobs of a Cripps Cabinet would be, certainly the beginnings of a withdraw from the colonies, attempts at disarmament, attempts to implement a more Democratic Socilaist style government, organise a popular front with the other left wing parties against Fascism and maybe a welfare state.

What other stuff would you think would happen?

Also who do you think would be in it, I can guess Attlee and Bevan since they had similar opinions as Cripps at several points and were also his friends.
Have you read my Comrade Cripps TL on the old AH.com site? I dealt with a lot of these issues there, but - to speak to what @David Flin brought up - the issue of having him be PM at any point before the end of the 1930s (I think there are cases where a Popular Front government can arise before ‘39, so maybe ‘37 is really the earliest) was circumvented when I wrote the TL by having Lansbury serve a brief time as Labour leader from the early- to mid-1920s. That’s the issue: you’d need a PoD that shifts the party to the left during the period that Cripps was undergoing his own ideological turns to the left, thus bringing persona and party in harmony. It gives him an early run-up to a late ‘20s GE and, from then on, to become leader of the party within half a decade if the corresponding events, both global and local, go accordingly.
 
For Cripps PM in the 1930s, you'd likely need him as an MP earlier than 1931 and Labour to be doing better before he becomes leader, so he's got the ability to win. (Labour doing better could also be part of how you get him in earlier!)

I think there's going to be a major problem is he's running a policy of disarmament in the 30s though!
 
Have you read my Comrade Cripps TL on the old AH.com site? I dealt with a lot of these issues there, but - to speak to what @David Flin brought up - the issue of having him be PM at any point before the end of the 1930s (I think there are cases where a Popular Front government can arise before ‘39, so maybe ‘37 is really the earliest) was circumvented when I wrote the TL by having Lansbury serve a brief time as Labour leader from the early- to mid-1920s. That’s the issue: you’d need a PoD that shifts the party to the left during the period that Cripps was undergoing his own ideological turns to the left, thus bringing persona and party in harmony. It gives him an early run-up to a late ‘20s GE and, from then on, to become leader of the party within half a decade if the corresponding events, both global and local, go accordingly.
Just finished it, good stuff. So would you say from about 37 onwards is a fair time. A George Lansbury leadership would certainly shake things up. Quick question but how was that timeline going to end? It kind of stops at 1936 just after Cripps victory.

I could see him helping out Spain and I could see the Cripps Cabinet fighting Hitler and Mussolini and having a warm relationship with the Soviets.
@Time Enough is the novella published?!?
No it isn't, you can read it on here, it's Qingdao Blues.

I only mention because in the story I mention Stafford Cripps being Prime Minister by 1939 with the next year being an election year so I'm going with he won an election in 35/36. Of course he the backstory of timeline I bunch of other stuff happens so there's that too.
 
Just finished it, good stuff. So would you say from about 37 onwards is a fair time. A George Lansbury leadership would certainly shake things up. Quick question but how was that timeline going to end? It kind of stops at 1936 just after Cripps victory.

I could see him helping out Spain and I could see the Cripps Cabinet fighting Hitler and Mussolini and having a warm relationship with the Soviets.
It stopped due to a whole variety of changing circumstances in my life, but plans were to take it that way you mention: aid to the Spanish Republic, collective security agreements with Russia, and a war with Germany at some point by the start of the 1940s. I had an idea to include the German economy (geared, as it was back then, toward the pursuit of military conflict) overheating due to a lack of willpower to see through a war against a united Britain/USSR/France in the period and thus Hitler’s Germany collapses. That idea never got far and I think a more conventional but likely a lot shorter *WW2 would be presided over by Cripps and Stalin.

Oh, and earlier Indian independence as part of Cripps’s “imperial strategy” of deconstructing the British Empire while keeping *Commonwealth bonds between them all.
 
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