• Hi Guest!

    The costs of running this forum are covered by Sea Lion Press. If you'd like to help support the company and the forum, visit patreon.com/sealionpress

What would a Common-Wealth Party Government Be Like?

Time Enough

"Enthusiastic Cis Male Partner"
Published by SLP
Pronouns
He/Him
Not saying this is realistic but during the Second World War the Commonwealth Party was a Left Wing/Syndicalist Party in Britian which didn't join in the Wartime Coalition and contested a number of seats and won a few during the war.

The party would be decimated by the 1945 General Election but what if instead they became the majority Government, as I said not realistic but what would the effects be?
 
Not saying this is realistic but during the Second World War the Commonwealth Party was a Left Wing/Syndicalist Party in Britian which didn't join in the Wartime Coalition and contested a number of seats and won a few during the war.

The party would be decimated by the 1945 General Election but what if instead they became the majority Government, as I said not realistic but what would the effects be?
I'm not sure, but I have a vague recollection they stood on a home rule platform amongst other things (of course I think Labour did too...).
 
Their manifesto, A New Social Order, pledged common, co-operative ownership of the means of production - a key point of difference with Labour, which was decried for only aspiring to the nationalisation of key industries. The Common Wealth policy would, it would argued, usher in a utopia in which workers no longer amused themselves at dog tracks but achieved their potential according to a bourgeois/Christian/ethical-socialist checklist of what that potential actually was. Juvenile delinquency would simply wither away. Obviously the predictions made by the Party may not have proved to be exactly how things would have shaken out.

Common Wealth was a very bourgeois-intellectual party, its members being very proud of the fact that they didn't give "snap answers". Now - this tendency may have lessened in a TL where they get the support of half the electorate, but a Common Wealth which gets the support of half the electorate is no longer recognisable as the Common Wealth Party. So I'd predict a lot of working class disaffection fairly quickly, when it emerged that the Extremely Sensible FBPE types who wrote the manifesto had decided that 'co-operative ownership' didn't actually mean letting workers run their own factories or even allowing them to elect their managers. No, workers lacked the skills and training necessary to administer businesses. What they actually needed were intelligent, sexy, popular people such as the writers of the Common Wealth manifesto to be appointed to such positions by the Ministry of Production. Oh, and "the basic function of trade unions [in this scheme] becomes co-operation with management in maximising production". Oh, and don't even think about paying the workers equally - how else would we encourage enterprise?

Also, just as a general rule, minor movements which come to majority government and have to appoint people to Cabinet on their first day in Parliament are famously not very stable. Defections, splits, and completely unsuitable Ministers would be the general rule. And Tom Wintringham absolutely detested Acland, so that's another opening for Drama.
 
Back
Top