was going to make a timeline out of this but decided to rework it as a list instead
The British Labour Party is and has forever been a most cruel institution. Take Stafford Cripps as an example. I still have the portrait of him from my childhood years, looking over us as a guardian angel during the bombing raids. The greatest Briton and the man who established our modern socialist democracy never served as a Labour PM (unless you count the 1950-1952 period where Harold Laski was propping up Cripps’ decaying body). They kicked him out back in ‘39, and for what? Standing up to fascism, daring to put together a popular front. Every leader of this country since then has tried to put up a popular front, but few understand just how big-tent the Crippsites were. Thus was the magic of that 1942-1956 period we all long for; bookended by the two disastrous resigns of our supreme war commander Gloucester. When Singapore fell, one by one, the aristocratic Tories, the press barons, and the military staff all called for the coronation of Our Man in Moscow. I may have only been in primary school, but I most certainly wanted to fight. My eyes never ceased to gaze at the men in Home Guard uniforms marching as I imagined grabbing a stone and throwing it at any Nazi who dared to enter Albion.
I got my chance to fight in 1956 and 1957; years most men from my generation try to forget. We had nearly caused a nuclear war and could only walk away with the end of an empire. Those Egyptian kids had the same mindset as I did in the 1940s; except we were the ones actually in their country. I stood for parliament in the first election in my lifetime where I was old enough to actually know what a prime minister was. I campaigned in my uniform, with the outcome of my constituency a stab in the dark. Arriving in Westminster, I waited for that next Cripps to come, my patience being tested by the mediocre tenures of three men from the Victorian Era. After we saw Labour get dragged around by Andrew Fountaine for a year, even the old guard was sick of power-sharing.
I’ve gotten into arguments with many of the young Marxists of today over whether Alfred Robens ever was the socialist champion that he initially appeared. If they had read the entry about my career in Who’s Who, they would have been very confused about my defense of Uncle Alf. Maybe it’s a sense of insecurity over those restless hours of lobbying my party comrades to pick him for Number Ten. Maybe staying on team Robens filled the void of my lost friendships in Radical Democracy after they were kicked out of government. Perhaps I just fell for the man’s charm; though those younglings could have never seen it through the television.
By the beginning of this decade, I was a politician that could be predicted to become prime minister on account of more than my youth. Labour was riding high, consolidating its power. Something must have panicked me when the Keep Left ministers were shuffled out in 1970, or when Robens declared that he’d run the government “as a corporation” in his Queen’s Speech that year. When Clause IV was repealed, I resigned from the cabinet; my teenage pride in holding a Labour membership card meant I couldn’t accept the words on the back of it being changed as an adult. After the secret ballot over Roy Jenkins’ leadership challenge turned out to be not-so-secret, my constituency party deselected me. Seeing how most MPs who ran as independents were lucky to keep their deposit, I stood down, hoping that one day the Labour Party would be in the mood to take me back.
Robens and I shared a tendency for erratic resignations. After ten years as prime minister, Robens faced his first real scandal over the Hartlepool meltdown. He could have just fired Anthony Benn for pushing his Atoms for Peace program, but Robens’ strange concept of loyalty meant that the man at the top had to go. In his absence, few men have been able to walk in his shoes, the now-former prime minister included. Under this strange new system, name recognition is key. Perhaps the only man with more of it than a prime minister is someone whose name is on every portable telephone in the British Isles. Perhaps the logic goes that if he can make a deal for the Soviet Union's technology, he can make a deal for our empire back.
1940 - 1941: Winston Churchill (Conservative leading War Coalition)
1941 - 1942: Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester (Supreme War Commander leading War Coalition)
1942 - 1945: Stafford Cripps (Independent leading War Coalition)
1945 - 1952: Stafford Cripps (Independent leading Christian Democratic Alliance)
1945 Continuity of Government Referendum: Yes: 71% def. No: 29%
1949 Continuity of Government Referendum: Yes: 57% def. No: 43%
1952 - 1953: Aneurin Bevan (Labour leading Christian Democratic Alliance)
1953 Continuity of Government Referendum: No: 54% def. Yes: 46% [disputed]
1953 - 1956: Max Aitken (Imperial People's Party leading Christian Democratic Alliance)
1956 - 1957: Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester (Supreme War Commander leading War Coalition)
1957 - 1961: Herbert Morrison (Labour)
1957 (Coalition) def. George Strauss (Popular Front Labour), Henry Channon (Imperial People's Party), Harold Macmillan (New Democratic), J.B. Priestley (1941 Committee), John Wardlaw-Milne (United Patriots)
1961 - 1962: Harold Nicolson (Labour)
1961 (Minority with non-no-confidence) def. Andrew Fountaine (United Patriots), Daniel Johnson (Radical Democracy), Gwilym Lloyd George (Imperial People's Party)
1962 - 1962: Lord Boothby (Independent Christian Democrat leading War Coalition with Labour, IPP & United Patriots)
1962 - 1965: Lord Boothby (Independent Christian Democrat leading Peace Coalition)
1965 - 1975: Alfred Robens (Labour)
1965 (Popular Front with Radical Democracy & CPGB) def. Lord Boothby (Christian Democratic Alliance with United Patriots & IPP)
1969 (Majority) def. Hugh Jenkins (Radical Democracy), Andrew Fountaine (United Patriots)
1973 WM Election (Majority) def. Eric Lubbock (Radical Democracy), Andrew Fountaine (United Patriots)
1973 PM Election def. Roy Jenkins
1975 - 1977: Woodrow Wyatt (Labour majority)
1977 - 0000: Robert Maxwell (Labour)
1977 WM Election (Majority) def. Tariq Ali (International Marxist), James Goldsmith (Democratic Alliance), John Bird (Radical Democracy), Jimmy Reid (Scottish Syndicalist Party)
1977 PM Election def. Edmund Dell, Alfred Robens, Richard Marsh, Woodrow Wyatt