“A land of marmalade and spam” The turbulent and triumphant first 50 years of the British Commonwealth
Chairman of the House of Worker’s Deputies and President of the Cabinet
1919-1923: John Maclean* (Revolutionary Committee of the TUC)
1919 (Elected unanimously) def. No opposition
1921 Vote: 79% Approval, 20% Dissent, 1% Abstention
1923-1924: Ramsay MacDonald (Fabian)
1923 (Minority) def. Ramsay MacDonald (Fabian), Albert Inkpin (Communist), J.R. Clynes/James Maxton (United Labour), Tom Mann (Syndicalist), Niclas y Glais (Home Nations), Emmeline Pankhurst (Suffragettes), David Lloyd George (Radicals), Henry Page Croft (National)
1924 Vote: 35% Approval, 45% Dissent, 20% Abstention
1924-1935: J.R. Clynes (United Labour)
1924 (Coalition) def. J.R. Clynes/James Maxton (United Labour), Tom Mann (Syndicalist), Albert Inkpin (Communist), Ramsay MacDonald (Fabian), David Lloyd George (Radicals), Emmeline Pankhurst (Suffragettes), Henry Page Croft (National), Niclas y Glais (Home Nations)
1926 Vote: 77% Approval, 20% Dissent, 3% Abstention
1928 Vote: 80% Approval, 10% Dissent, 10% Abstention
1930 (Coalition) def. Tom Mann (Syndicalist), J.R. Clynes/James Maxton (United Labour), Arthur Cook (Vanguard), Sidney Webb (Fabian), William Gallacher (Communist – Trotskyist), David Lloyd George (Radicals), Emmeline Pankhurst (Suffragettes), Rajani Palme Dutt (Communist – Stalinist), Niclas y Glais (Home Nations)
1932 Vote: 65% Approval, 30% Dissent, 5% Abstention
1934 Vote: 52% Approval, 37% Dissent, 11% Abstention
1935-1940: Oswald Mosely (Vanguard, leading Popular Front)
1935 (Coalition) def. Oswald Mosely (Vanguard), Tom Mann (Syndicalist), J.R. Clynes (United Labour), William Wedgewood Benn (Radical), Sylvia Pankhurst (Suffragettes), Rajani Palme Dutt (Communist – Stalinist), Sidney Webb (Fabian), James Maxton (Independent Labour), William Gallacher (Communist – Trotskyist), Niclas y Glais (Home Nations)
1937 Vote: 80% Approval, 20% Dissent
1939 Vote: 53% Approval, 40% Dissent, 7% Abstention
1940-1948: Eric Blair (Vangaurd, leading Popular Front)
1940 (Wartime Coalition) def. Ernest Bevin (Syndicalist), Clem Attlee (United Labour), Eric Blair (Anti-Mosely Vangaurd), Richard Acland (Radical), William Gallacher (Communist – Trotskyist), G.D.H. Cole (Fabian), Oswald Mosley (Pro-Mosely Vanguard), James Maxton (Independent Labour), Rajani Palme Dutt (Communist – Stalinist)
1940 (Further Votes suspended in Wartime) Vote: 91% Approval, 9% Dissent
1945 (Coalition) def. Eric Blair/Ernest Bevin (Syndicalist Vanguard), Clem Attlee (United Labour), G.D.H. Cole/Richard Acland (Fabian-Radicals), Rajani Palme Dutt (Communist – Stalinist), C.L.R. James (Communist – Trotskyist), Oswald Mosely/James Maxton (Action)
1947 Vote: 88% Approval, 7% Dissent, 5% Abstention
1948-1959: G.D.H. Cole* (Fabian, leading Popular Front)
1948 (Coalition) def. Ernest Bevin (SynVan), Clem Attlee (Popular Labour), G.D.H. Cole/Richard Acland (Fabian-Radical), William Gallacher (Communist – Trotskyist), Rajani Palme Dutt (Communist – Stalinist), Oswald Mosely (Action)
1950 Vote: 79% Approval, 6% Dissent, 15% Abstention
1953 (Coalition) def. Clem Attlee (Popular Labour), Jack Jones (SynVan), Christopher Hill (Communist), G.D.H. Cole/Richard Acland (Fabian-Radical), Hugh MacDiarmid (Home Nations), Oswald Mosely (Action)
1955 Vote: 71% Approval, 20% Dissent, 9% Abstention
1957 Vote: 60% Approval, 36% Dissent, 4% Abstention
1958 (Coalition) def. Harold Macmillan (Popular Labour), Jack Jones (SynVan), Christopher Hill (Communist), G.D.H Cole/Richard Acland (Fabian-Radical), Hugh MacDiarmid (Home Nations), Oswald Mosely (Action)
1959-1963: Harold Macmillan (Popular Labour, leading Popular Front)
1959 (Coalition) def. Harold Macmillan (Popular Labour), Christopher Hill (Communist), Jack Jones (SynVan), Anthony Crosland (Fabian-Radical), Hugh MacDiarmid (Home Nations)
1961 Vote: 53% Approval, 22% Dissent, 25% Abstention
1963 Vote: 40% Approval, 23% Dissent, 37% Abstention
1963-1964: Bob Boothby (Civilian Head of Military Administration, Temporary)
1964-19??: Jennie Lee (New Left)
1964 (Coalition) def. Jennie Lee (New Labour), C.L.R. James (New International), Anthony Crosland (Fabian), Kieth Joseph (Social Democracy), E.P. Thompson (Communist – Revisionist), Mona Douglas (Home Nations), John Cairncross (Communist – Absolutist)
1966 Vote: 65% Approval, 35% Dissent
1968 Vote: 68% Approval, 30% Dissent, 2% Abstention
1969 (Coalition) def. Jennie Lee (New Labour), C.L.R. James (New International), Keith Joseph (Social Democracy), Enoch Powell (One Nation Socialists), Anthony Crosland (Fabian), E.P. Thompson (Communist – Revisionist), Mona Douglas (Home Nations), John Cairncross (Communist – Absolutist)
General Secretary of the Commonwealth of Great Britain
1919-1925: Office not yet established
1925-1930: Walter Citrine (Independent)
1930-1935: H.G. Wells (United Labour)
1935-1941: David Lloyd George (Radical, Popular Front)
1942-1945: Unoccupied (Responsibilities handed to the Chairman)
1945-1950: Harold Laski (United Labour, Popular Front)
1950-1963: Clement Attlee (Popular Labour, Popular Front)
1963-1965: William Slim (Military Administration)
1965-1970: Tony Benn (New International)
No one could have believed, when a Serb nationalist shot the heir to the Hapsburg throne, that his actions would be the catalyst of change in the world that made it unrecognisable within five bloody, torturous years. World War One was devastating, and the grave of five European Empires.
On the surface, Britain appeared not to have suffered as much as the others (it was not subject to starving blockade, like Germany; enemy shells didn’t reduce London to rubble, as happened to Istanbul; and the brutal repression by incompetent imperial authority did not lead to butchery off and on the battlefield, like Austria and Russia). While British soldiers marched to victory at Gallipoli, Amiens and Salonika, the working class suffered greatly as a result; this, twinned with a new self-awareness within the labour movement that the country couldn’t be run without them, meant that Britain was destined a showdown with its doggedly Anti-Socialist, bourgeois government.
The final straw came when returning soldiers were told they would not return to peace, but instead sent to Ireland or Russia to help destroy what many were thinking of as the new hope for Socialism and Peace. Revolution in and outside Britain resulted: riots, strikes and street battles between Pro and Anti-Government consumed Glasgow, then Tyneside, South Wales, Leeds and finally London, before on May Day 1919 members the TUC and leading figures of the Left declared the Commonwealth of Great Britain in Birmingham. While the Windsor Government fled to Canada, John Maclean would rise to the leadership of the new Republic and try to impose government on the anarchic situation.
Early Commonwealth was a difficult nation, forged out of war, under threat from Loyalist elements that did not bow to the new government. Intellectuals of the Fabian society were dominant at this time, though well-meaning and talented with socialist theory, they were out of their depths trying to impose order on the new nation: it would be years before the Commonwealth’s founding documents like the People’s Charter or H.G. Wells’ Rights of British Workers could be said to apply to all the Home Nations.
Eventually, stability would return as J.R. Clynes managed to form the first coalition to govern the Commonwealth quietly for the next 11 years. Clynes, with Tom Mann and James Maxton, would establish the Commonwealth as a more humane face of socialism more benevolent than both the Soviet Union and the British Empire that preceded it. New bridges were built with the Turkish and Weimar Republics, while old ones would be mended with the French and USA which insulated Britain from reprisal by revanchist Canada.
However, the onset of the 1930s quickly began to rock the boat again.
The Wall Street Crash brought the post-war capitalist states to their knees. While Britain went largely unaffected, globally few seemed interested in its alternative compared to Fascism or Bolshevism. Fascism had roots in the British Counter-Revolutionary movements of the early and mid-20s, though when it presented an international threat to peace it was largely exported from Britain, making Clynes’ government were inclined to ignore it.
Unfortunately, the rise of Vanguard would put pay to those hopes.
Vanguard: a loosely associated faction that began in the late 20s, under the leadership of Oswald Mosely would campaign for a mix of Revolutionary exportation, anti-fascism, re-armament, British nationalism, Pankhurst Feminism and Trotsky-ish Opposition. By 1935, Vanguard was the largest opposition to Clynes, successfully supplanting Labour as the largest faction, leading to the formation of the Popular Front, combing other opposition factions in the House.
Despite the Front’s purpose as a global opposition to fascism, it suffered from a fatal flaw: Mosely’s misdiagnosis of Hitler. To the new Chairman, National Socialism was a troubled but well-meaning ideology like Vanguard, anti-Bolshevik, anti-Capitalist and anti-Imperialist, rather than an extension of fascism at its worst and war hungry. Continuously, Mosely thought he was playing off Hitler against his other opponents – Mussolini in Spain, East Africa and Austria; Flandin in Southern Europe and the Levant; and Stalin everywhere – in reality, he was validating Hitler, making enemies of allies, all for little which Hitler did not care about, least of all friendship of ‘British pseudo-Bolshevism’.
When the monster reviled his face in 1939, announcing friendship with Mussolini, Edward VIII, and Stalin by invading Poland in concert, Mosely was left high and dry. As France began a meltdown into Civil War Europe looked ready to fall to Totalitarianism. Movement of token British forces to guarantee Scandinavia and the Low Countries were too little too late. No sooner was war declared than the House rose against Mosely to face the consequences of his actions.
Leadership of Britain fell to The Red Lion: Eric Blair, the best of Vanguard. Briefly, Blair was leader of Vanguard’s internal opposition, leading a rebellion by their Deputies at the 1939 Deputies’ Conference that came close to bringing down the Popular Front. He was the natural choice to lead the Commonwealth in its Darkest Hour. The Battle for France was brief, and Blair soon welcomed French Exiles, but Britain’s small, unorthodox army managed to halt the grind of the Wehrmacht in the Pyrenees and the Norwegian fjords, while the Republic’s Airforce and Navy attritted the Germans wherever they could.
After six gruelling years, a devil’s pact with Comrade Stalin and President Roosevelt, the Reich fell. The Commonwealth went through fire, and survived, the work of Maclean, Clynes and Blair succeeding where Churchill, Asquith and the Windsors had failed. Though not to say that the country was not the same as it had been going in. A quieter Revolution had gone on underneath the fires of war, and the British were as motivated to carve a decent place in the world as they had been going in to the Peace as they had to War – not wanting another Clynes-esque era of stagnation to compromise the fruits of victory.
Without a war, the Popular Front continued, despite expectations its time had come to the end. The main reason for this came when the respected Fabian G.D.H. Cole rose to the Chairmanship against the odds. Under Cole, the Commonwealth changed dramatically, as power had been centralised in the Office of Chairman in the War, the new government began changing Britain to its leader’s vision of socialism: the economy was liberalised from the state and TUC, handed over to the co-operatives and guilds associated with local government. Despite this new liberation of Britain’s economy, socially the country remained as conservative minded as ever, with the values on sexuality, gender, and ‘Christian’ (at least, as much as it could be in the absence of the legal head of the Anglican Church and separation of religion and the state). Lack of development of the Commonwealth socially from its Pre-Revolution state has since become a sore point the immediate post-war era, though would not manifest until after Cole’s death.
With the onset of the Sixties, the patience with the Popular Front was running out with many questioning by now whether or not the Commonwealth could claim to be truly Democratic and representative with an immortal coalition consistently holding on to power. Though much of the blame has since fallen on Chairman Macmillan, events that led to this and the unstable position of the Commonwealth were beyond his control – industrial production under threat from Europe, the scandals around Harold Wilson and the Cambridge Five, and crises apart of the Cold War in South Asia and Africa. All this contribute to the mass sense of apathy that grip the country, infecting even many Worker’s Deputies with turnout in the House often barely scraping 50%.
The situation finally came to ahead at the ’63 Deputies’ Conference caused a constitutional crisis were the Abstention vote almost outnumbered the Approval vote. Government would be paralysed for weeks, with the Chiefs of Staffs ultimately stepping in with the Civil Service to take control while the courts and House debated what to do next. In reality, the situation could not have come at a worse time as the nuclear clock came its closest to midnight, as America, China and the Soviets clashed over Taiwan, the Exiled British Empire took its chance to flex its muscles why the Commonwealth was in crisis. For seven days, the island of Jamaica became the centre of the world as two nuclear armed fleets stared each other down. The Interim government was proud due to its military nature, but vastly out of its depths given the situation. Only when the USA threatened both sides with intervention did they back down, and the world breathed a sigh.
In the Commonwealth, the People were galvanized and the political landscape changed utterly as the old factions of the House convulsed and even outright collapsed. When the new elections were called in 1964, a new order inherited the Commonwealth – the Popular Front was long gone: a new Labour faction was empowered, determined to put the social element back into socialism. Jennie Lee’s government was determined for the government to be transparent with the people, actually documenting and publishing its agreements with its coalition partners. The Britain of the 60s then fell in zeitgeist that swept the West and East, though in Britain it was uniquely encouraged from the top.
When the Commonwealth celebrated its fiftieth anniversary, it was left as one of the most stable powers on the global stage, climbing out of its infancy to a mature, powerful nation – stable and capable of projecting its image and will beyond its islands, out of the shadow of the Wars and Revolution that had defined it till that point.