raharris1973
Well-known member
Based on @Comisario 's Comrade Cripps timeline which ran 13 chapters through 2014 and was starting to get good:
Where we were in the story, was the end of July 1936, and the new Left Labour government of Stafford Cripps had been in power since July 13th, after several years of premature rule by Neville Chamberlain since 1931.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Laski had presented and the Commons had passed the Emergency Budget on July 29th, involving welfare increases, banking nationalizations and industrial nationalizations. Additionally the banning of the public display of Fascist militia symbols [which had been a bigger thing in this TL since some subtle differences going back to the 1926 General Strike].
PM Cripps gave his first speech in power on July 13th.
Labour had also campaigned on aid to the Spanish Republic, under attack in its own civil war since the reactionary coup attempt of June 1936.
One thing that is unclear about this alternate Labour government economic policy 1936 is that while it is very Left Labour in all measurable respects [having benefitted from the events sidelining Labour's right-wing over the years], is whether it favors continuing Chamberlain's protectionist policy of Imperial Preference or opening to Free Trade. And that relates to the whole question we never got to see of what the new government's emergence means for inter-Dominion relations.
Imperial Preference may be important for keeping good metropolitan - Dominion relations. But if the Dominions are preemptively hostile to Labour in metro Britain that would make Imperial Preference unworkable/undesirable.
I suspect that if any Dominions react with hostility to Left-Labour's rise in Britain it would be Canada, Australia, or South Africa - with New Zealand loyally following the home winds, especially if they blow left.
Cripps' initial speech invokes a commitment to dismantle the empire, not a concrete plan, but a commitment.
Now the very title of the original timeline, and discussion from when it was originally posted, hints darkly at a dictatorial turn to the Cripps regime in Britain. How is that likely to unfold and at what pace will it affect the civil liberties and press?
Also Edward is the recent King in this timeline, and the abdication crisis has not broken out as yet. With no reason to assume Edward is doing anything differently with Wallis Simpson, would it break out over this issue? On the one hand, the scandalizing insistence on marrying a divorcee, that won't do for the head of the Church of England, is still there. On the other hand, supporters of the Labourite government are probably some of the people less inclined to care, while more traditionalist British people have bigger things to worry about like protecting their fortunes and social status than punishing the King for not conforming to their traditional personal behavioral expectations.
What interests me most about where the unfinished scenario left off is foreign policy questions. The Cripps government is committed to aid Spain, so it won't be leading an anti-intervention committee and certainly not one that tolerates a de facto situation benefitting the Nationalist rebels.
A summary of the foreign policy developments of 1936, known, and estimated, so far, is as follows:
Abyssinian War – went faster than OTL, with more blatant western appeasement under Chamberlain's alt-govt. No spillover into 1936. GB resisting League action, sanctions attempts. [item in TL divergent from OTL]
Spanish Popular Front elected in January 1936 -
As far as we know, Rhineland militarized on schedule, March 1936. [never specified]
As far as we know, French Popular Front was still elected like OTL in May 1936 under Leon Blum [never specified]
Spanish Civil War – started with 7 June, 1936 coup [divergent from OTL, starting about 5 to 6 weeks early]
So by August 1936, we have Italy and Germany in ideological alignment in support of the Spanish Nationalist rebels, and in Britain and France we have Left-leaning governments both sympathetic to the Spanish Republic but whose domestic and foreign preferences are questioned by significant constituencies at home.
The outlook should look good for Britain and the USSR aiding the Spanish Republic. With Britain being left-leaning and pro-Republic, Blum and more of the French administrative state may feel they have the cover to openly support the Spanish Republic as well. On the other hand, conservative and rightist Frenchmen will still be panicked about changes at home, in Spain and Britain and lean toward appeasement of Fascism...better Hitler than Blum.
Cripps can feel he has a mandate for aiding Spain and the idea of the League, Collective Security and positive relations with the Soviet Union. In turn in the Soviet Union's Litvinov policy, support of Collective Security and support of Popular Fronts would seem to be vindicated. Blum may feel somewhat similarly to Cripps, but feel more concerned with a stronger and bolder opposition and Fascist wolves closer to the door.
However, a mandate for great ideas like peace and international organization and ideological anti-fascism isn't a resounding mandate for either war or rearmament. Least of all is there mandate in the now left-leaning western democracies a mandate for requiring extra work hours on armaments programs.
It would be interesting to see how Britain operates in the next couple years with an opposition to appeasement but uncertainty about rearmament, and a Labour Party where the instincts anti-Fascist Popular Front-ism and Lansbury-ite Christian Pacifism may compete.
Additionally, there's questions of how things will go in the colonies and empire. Unless it has changed, the Arab General Strike in Palestine got started in April 1936 and is due to continue through October, to be followed by a revolt from 1937-1939. Here again, Labour's instincts will be divided between colonial conciliationism and the pro-Zionism of many of the Party's leaders (including at the top, like Harold Laski) and rank and file in Britain.
Also, while attachment to white or Imperial supremacy will not be major motive forces in the face of the rise of Japan (or won't be articulated as such), the British Labour government as we go from 1936 to 1937 is going to openly sympathize with the Chinese United Front against Japanese aggression.
What kind of geopolitical differences will this Labour government make with its sympathy and aid for the Spanish Republic and at least ideological non-appeasement stance?
What speed bumps lie ahead for the Cripps-Laski economic program and domestic and foreign capital? And what could this do to economic relations with the USA under FDR and France under Blum or a potential post-Popular Front government? Would there be any basis for practical, mutually beneficial increases in economic relations with the USSR?
How much trouble will King Edward be, one way, or the other?
Comrade Cripps: A Very British Dictator
*** "It is fundamental to socialism that we should liquidate the British Empire as soon as we can"- Stafford Cripps *** Stafford Cripps is remembered, on those rare occasions when he is remembered, as the stoic face of Britain's post-war austerity. As Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1947...
www.alternatehistory.com
Where we were in the story, was the end of July 1936, and the new Left Labour government of Stafford Cripps had been in power since July 13th, after several years of premature rule by Neville Chamberlain since 1931.
Chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Laski had presented and the Commons had passed the Emergency Budget on July 29th, involving welfare increases, banking nationalizations and industrial nationalizations. Additionally the banning of the public display of Fascist militia symbols [which had been a bigger thing in this TL since some subtle differences going back to the 1926 General Strike].
PM Cripps gave his first speech in power on July 13th.
Labour had also campaigned on aid to the Spanish Republic, under attack in its own civil war since the reactionary coup attempt of June 1936.
One thing that is unclear about this alternate Labour government economic policy 1936 is that while it is very Left Labour in all measurable respects [having benefitted from the events sidelining Labour's right-wing over the years], is whether it favors continuing Chamberlain's protectionist policy of Imperial Preference or opening to Free Trade. And that relates to the whole question we never got to see of what the new government's emergence means for inter-Dominion relations.
Imperial Preference may be important for keeping good metropolitan - Dominion relations. But if the Dominions are preemptively hostile to Labour in metro Britain that would make Imperial Preference unworkable/undesirable.
I suspect that if any Dominions react with hostility to Left-Labour's rise in Britain it would be Canada, Australia, or South Africa - with New Zealand loyally following the home winds, especially if they blow left.
Cripps' initial speech invokes a commitment to dismantle the empire, not a concrete plan, but a commitment.
Now the very title of the original timeline, and discussion from when it was originally posted, hints darkly at a dictatorial turn to the Cripps regime in Britain. How is that likely to unfold and at what pace will it affect the civil liberties and press?
Also Edward is the recent King in this timeline, and the abdication crisis has not broken out as yet. With no reason to assume Edward is doing anything differently with Wallis Simpson, would it break out over this issue? On the one hand, the scandalizing insistence on marrying a divorcee, that won't do for the head of the Church of England, is still there. On the other hand, supporters of the Labourite government are probably some of the people less inclined to care, while more traditionalist British people have bigger things to worry about like protecting their fortunes and social status than punishing the King for not conforming to their traditional personal behavioral expectations.
What interests me most about where the unfinished scenario left off is foreign policy questions. The Cripps government is committed to aid Spain, so it won't be leading an anti-intervention committee and certainly not one that tolerates a de facto situation benefitting the Nationalist rebels.
A summary of the foreign policy developments of 1936, known, and estimated, so far, is as follows:
Abyssinian War – went faster than OTL, with more blatant western appeasement under Chamberlain's alt-govt. No spillover into 1936. GB resisting League action, sanctions attempts. [item in TL divergent from OTL]
Spanish Popular Front elected in January 1936 -
As far as we know, Rhineland militarized on schedule, March 1936. [never specified]
As far as we know, French Popular Front was still elected like OTL in May 1936 under Leon Blum [never specified]
Spanish Civil War – started with 7 June, 1936 coup [divergent from OTL, starting about 5 to 6 weeks early]
So by August 1936, we have Italy and Germany in ideological alignment in support of the Spanish Nationalist rebels, and in Britain and France we have Left-leaning governments both sympathetic to the Spanish Republic but whose domestic and foreign preferences are questioned by significant constituencies at home.
The outlook should look good for Britain and the USSR aiding the Spanish Republic. With Britain being left-leaning and pro-Republic, Blum and more of the French administrative state may feel they have the cover to openly support the Spanish Republic as well. On the other hand, conservative and rightist Frenchmen will still be panicked about changes at home, in Spain and Britain and lean toward appeasement of Fascism...better Hitler than Blum.
Cripps can feel he has a mandate for aiding Spain and the idea of the League, Collective Security and positive relations with the Soviet Union. In turn in the Soviet Union's Litvinov policy, support of Collective Security and support of Popular Fronts would seem to be vindicated. Blum may feel somewhat similarly to Cripps, but feel more concerned with a stronger and bolder opposition and Fascist wolves closer to the door.
However, a mandate for great ideas like peace and international organization and ideological anti-fascism isn't a resounding mandate for either war or rearmament. Least of all is there mandate in the now left-leaning western democracies a mandate for requiring extra work hours on armaments programs.
It would be interesting to see how Britain operates in the next couple years with an opposition to appeasement but uncertainty about rearmament, and a Labour Party where the instincts anti-Fascist Popular Front-ism and Lansbury-ite Christian Pacifism may compete.
Additionally, there's questions of how things will go in the colonies and empire. Unless it has changed, the Arab General Strike in Palestine got started in April 1936 and is due to continue through October, to be followed by a revolt from 1937-1939. Here again, Labour's instincts will be divided between colonial conciliationism and the pro-Zionism of many of the Party's leaders (including at the top, like Harold Laski) and rank and file in Britain.
Also, while attachment to white or Imperial supremacy will not be major motive forces in the face of the rise of Japan (or won't be articulated as such), the British Labour government as we go from 1936 to 1937 is going to openly sympathize with the Chinese United Front against Japanese aggression.
What kind of geopolitical differences will this Labour government make with its sympathy and aid for the Spanish Republic and at least ideological non-appeasement stance?
What speed bumps lie ahead for the Cripps-Laski economic program and domestic and foreign capital? And what could this do to economic relations with the USA under FDR and France under Blum or a potential post-Popular Front government? Would there be any basis for practical, mutually beneficial increases in economic relations with the USSR?
How much trouble will King Edward be, one way, or the other?