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From National Crisis to “National Crisis”: British Politics, 1914–1931 - National Crisis and National Government: British Politics, the Economy and Empire, 1926–1932. By Philip Williamson. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. xvii + 569. $89.95. - The British General Election of 1931. By Andrew Thorpe. New York: Clarendon Press, 1991. Pp. xiii + 323. $72.00. - British Politics and the Great War: Coalition and Conflict, 1915–1918. By John Turner. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992. Pp. xi + 511. $40.00.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Susan Pedersen
Susan Pedersen*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 3 , July 1994 , pp. 322 - 335
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Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1994

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References

1 For this view, see Tawney's, R. H. classic article, “The Abolition of Economic Controls,” Economic History Review 13 (1943): 1–30Google Scholar; also Johnson, Paul, Land Fit for Heroes: The Planning of British Reconstruction, 1916–1919 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Addison, Paul, The Road to 1945 (London: Cape, 1975)Google Scholar.

2 Most extremely—and controversially—in Middlemas, Keith, Politics in Industrial Society: The Experience of the British System since 1911 (London: André Deutsch, 1979)Google Scholar.

3 Cowling, Maurice, The Impact of Labour, 1920–1924: The Beginning of Modern British Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

4 Williamson, , National Crisis, p. 13Google Scholar.

5 Skidelsky, Robert, Politicians and the Slump: The Labour Government of 1929–1931 (London: Macmillan, 1967)Google Scholar.

6 McKibbin, Ross, “The Economic Policy of the Second Labour Government, 1929–31,” Past and Present, no. 68 (1975), pp. 95–123Google Scholar; Clarke, Peter, The Keynesian Revolution in the Making, 1924–1936 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988)Google Scholar. W. R. Garside, in summarizing this debate, offers the cautious conclusion that “Keynesian” measures could have produced results in the thirties, if not necessarily on the scale that Lloyd George would have wanted: “It is still not too late to urge caution in accepting unreservedly the view that Keynesian pump priming would have been of very limited value” (Garside, , British Unemployment, 1919–1939 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990], p. 378)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Many economic historians would dispute this view.

7 Williamson, , National Crisis, p. 526Google Scholar.

8 Ball, Stuart, Baldwin and the Conservative Party: The Crisis of 1929–1931 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 Williamson, , National Crisis, p. 274Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., p. 292; also Williamson, Philip, “A ‘Bankers’ Ramp? Financiers and the British Political Crisis of August 1931,” English Historical Review 99 (1984): 770–806CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Williamson, , National Crisis, p. 335Google Scholar. His arguments for the overriding importance of the politicians' responses are summarized succinctly in his response to Vernon Bogdanor's article on 1931: Williamson, Philip, “1931 Revisited: The Political Realities,” Twentieth Century British History 2, no. 3 (1991): 328–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 He points out, for example, that Chamberlain and Baldwin pressed for a quick election even though such a course of action would worsen pressure on the pound—“an outstanding instance of ‘politics’ prevailing against ‘policy’” (Williamson, , National Crisis, p. 412Google Scholar).

13 Cowling, p. 414

14 Stuart Ball makes this critique of the application of a “high political” approach to the twentieth century in Baldwin and the Conservative Party, p. xiv.

15 For the Conservatives' appeal to women in the twenties, see Pugh, Martin, The Tories and the People, 1880–1935 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), pp. 177–83Google Scholar; Ramsden, John, The Age of Balfour and Baldwin, 1902–1940 (London: Longman, 1978), esp. chap. 11Google Scholar.

16 Thorpe, pp. 210–11.

17 Ibid., p. 263.

18 Williamson, “1931 Revisited,” pp. 329 ff.

19 “Certainly the Bank had contributed over many years to a political culture which, by prescribing certain conceptions of ‘sound finance’, imposed constraints upon what governments thought they could do. But then so had civil servants, businessmen and many politicians, Labour as well as Conservative and Liberal” (Williamson, , National Crisis, p. 292Google Scholar).

20 Williamson does argue for the unity of his period in terms of financial and trade policy and of Indian constitutional reform as well, but admits that the Liberal Party provides “in some senses the crucial” source of coherence (National Crisis, pp. 14–15).

21 This literature is vast, and Turner is well up on it; indeed, his chapter on “Capital and Labour” provides a good summary of the current state of research. See also the valuable collection of essays edited by Burk, Kathleen, War and the State: The Transformation of British Government, 1914–1919 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982)Google Scholar.

22 Turner, John, “Cabinets, Committees and Secretariats: the Higher Direction of War,” in Burk, , ed., p. 78Google Scholar.

23 Turner, , British Politics, p. 442Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., p. 191.

25 Ibid., p. 304.

26 Ibid., p. 434.

27 For an excellent study of how such “incorporation” worked in practice, see Rubin, Gerry R., War, Law and Labour: The Munitions Acts, State Regulation and the Unions, 1915–1921 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987)Google Scholar.

28 Turner, , British Politics, p. 369Google Scholar.

29 See, esp. Lowe, Rodney, “The Ministry of Labour, 1916–19: A Still, Small Voice?” in Burk, , ed., pp. 108–34Google Scholar; McKibbin, Ross, “Class and Conventional Wisdom: The Conservative Party and the ‘Public’ in Inter-war Britain,” in his The Ideologies of Class: Social Relations in Britain, 1880–1950 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), pp. 259–93Google Scholar.

30 Ross McKibbin emphasizes just how deeply constitutional Labour really was in 1918; see The Evolution of the Labour Party, 1910–1924 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), esp. p. 99Google Scholar.

31 Maurice Cowling implicitly recognized the extent of these fears when he took the precaution of dating his own “high political” study from 1920 (when Labour was clearly “constitutional”) rather than from 1918, since “what [the Labour leaders] would have done if economic collapse had occurred in 1918 instead of 1920 is difficult to know” (Cowling [n. 3 above], p. 40). Of course, this formulation makes the classic “high political” mistake of treating this economic context as given—ignoring the fact that the Coalition deliberately followed inflationary policies in the immediate postwar period in order to minimize unrest and keep Labour “constitutional.”

32 Morgan, Kenneth O., Consensus and Disunity: The Lloyd George Coalition, 1918–1922 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979)Google Scholar.

33 The actual magnitude of the post-war slump is hard to measure, given the inflated state of the economy in 1919–20, but Derek Aldcroft suggests that it was far more serious than the 1929–32 slump. His figures show manufacturing production falling over the course of 1920–21 by 22 percent, gross domestic product by 12 percent, and employment by over 14 percent—compared with 10 percent, 4.8 percent, and 4.7 percent, respectively, for the years 1929–32. Aldcroft, Derek, The Inter-war Economy: Britain, 1919–1939 (London: B. T. Batsford, 1970), p. 34Google Scholar.

34 On the Coalition's postponement of the return to “dear money,” see Howson, Susan, “The Origins of Dear Money, 1919–20,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., 27, no. 1 (1974): 88–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for a succinct summary of the government's hurried extension of the soldiers' out-of-work donation to civilians and their vast expansion of unemployment insurance, see Garside, , British Unemployment (n. 6 above), pp. 34–43Google Scholar. Note also ministers' continued efforts to conciliate trade union leaders, especially during 1919, when they believed, as Bonar Law put it in Cabinet, that “the Trade Union organisation was the only thing between us and anarchy” (Public Record Office, Cab. 23/9, War Cabinet 525 [February 4, 1919], p. 4).

35 Cowling points out that political stability after 1924 was based on Baldwin's understanding that MacDonald would promise “constitutionality” if allowed to supplant Asquith and Lloyd George as the main opposition leader. This realignment was built around “a tension of connivance between MacDonald, who was compelled by his situation to mean no harm, and Baldwin, whose situation compelled him to feel confident that no harm would be done” (Cowling, p. 429; see also pp. 380–81). Cowling also notes Baldwin's willingness to accommodate and win back Lloyd George's allies, but his absolute unwillingness to negotiate with the Liberal Party or Lloyd George himself (pp. 382–405, 411).

36 The phrase is P. J. Grigg's, private secretary to Snowden in 1929, quoted in National Crisis, p. 74. James Cronin's recent book makes clear the extent to which Labour's financial policies moved in a conservative direction in the twenties: while the Party continued to support progressive tax policies, they abandoned the capital levy and remained firmly committed to debt reduction and the defense of gold. Cronin, James, The Politics of State Expansion: War, State, and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain (London: Routledge, 1991), esp. chap. 7Google Scholar.

37 On unemployment policy in the twenties, see especially Deacon, Alan, “Concession and Coercion: The Politics of Unemployment Insurance in the Twenties,” in Essays in Labour History, 1918–1939, ed. Briggs, Asa and Saville, John (London: Croom Helm, 1977), pp. 9–35Google Scholar.

38 Here Lloyd George's unwillingness to see the general strike as a threat to “constitutional” government stands in sharp contrast to the views of Baldwin, John Simon, Jimmy Thomas, and Neville Chamberlain (all key National Government ministers), who saw the strike, in Chamberlain's words, as “constitutional Govt…. fighting for its life.” For Chamberlain's views, see Dilks, David, Neville Chamberlain, vol. 1, Pioneering and Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 470–1, 478Google Scholar.

39 Many of the key supporters of the National Government had reason to remember the wartime and postwar coalitions with hostility: Neville Chamberlain had been humiliated by his spell as wartime minister for National Service; Baldwin had fought Lloyd George over the Coalition's spendthrift ways; Herbert Samuel and John Simon had followed Asquith into opposition; the latter two—along with MacDonald and Snowden—had lost their seats in the Coupon election.

40 National Crisis, p. 155.

41 Ibid., p. 154.

42 David Dutton's recent biography of Sir John Simon and Bernard Wasserstein's exemplary life of Herbert Samuel stress that their subjects both found Lloyd George's unorthodox financial policies and maverick leadership incomprehensible and somewhat irresponsible. Dutton, David, Simon: A Political Biography of Sir John Simon (London: Aurum, 1992), esp. pp. 75–110Google Scholar; Wasserstein, Bernard, Herbert Samuel: A Political Life (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), esp. pp. 312–34Google Scholar.