VI. Raj
Odd One Out: Clement Attlee
With the election won and another parliamentary term secure, the Government felt able to continue with “business as usual”. Labour’s increased majority was seen by Mosley as less a victory against the Conservatives than as an internal one. The new intake, of primarily young technocrats in battleground seats [1], removed the ILP’s theoretical veto over the Government. This freedom from the demands of the left would be a luxury the Prime Minister made increasing use of as time went on. The first sign of Mosley’s new confidence came subtly during the post-election reshuffle. A muted affair, only one choice truly caught the attention of the press. Clement Attlee, the Foreign Secretary, it was announced, would be stepping down to take up the Viceroyalty of India. Governor-Generalships in the 1930s were, broadly speaking, the preserve of aristocrats and retired senior military officers, with command of the Raj deemed possibly the most prestigious of all Imperial offices. Attlee, though a respected minister, lacked both the social standing and colonial experience normally expected. The Government line was clear; a fresh start, bringing meritocracy to the regime in New Delhi. Discontents on the backbenches quickly spread the theory Attlee had been sent into exile. A quiet man, the Foreign Secretary nonetheless made his dislike of Mussolini and Hitler known in Cabinet, which combined with his soberly distant relationship to the Prime Minister, caused disquiet amongst the Mosleyites, their captain no doubt included [2]. Regardless, during his time as a member of the multi-party Simon Commission, set up to judge the possibility of Indian self-rule in the late 1920s, Attlee had made the acquaintance of numerous Indian businessmen and politicians. Amongst them were Motilal Nehru and his son, Jawaharlal, both leaders in the Indian National Congress.
At the same time as the newly raised Lord Stepney [3] arrived in New Dehli in late May, back home Mosley had begun pushing the gargantuan Government of India Act through Parliament. It became clear the appointment had been at least partially to ensure a speedy march towards Dominion status, something unimaginable under Attlee’s predecessor, the reactionary Lord Willingdon [4]. The Act was the result of years of intensive negotiations and had been the subject of endless debates in the Commons, where hard-line Conservative Members deplored its provisions and claimed that it would lead to the break-up of the Empire. With the resignation of Anthony Eden as Tory leader however, Labour had found the perfect time to get the bill through Parliament with the minimum of controversy, the Conservatives being distracted by choosing a new leader and unable to do much more then rage impotently from the Opposition benches. Immediately after he arrived in India, Stepney made an investigation of the state of the federal negotiations. By June, he reported that “Federation has few enthusiastic friends but few implacable foes”; the Princes “regard it as an unpleasant inevitability but do not welcome it” while Congress “find it a distasteful necessity”. The new Viceroy found himself deluged by Princely demands as concessions for their involvement in federating. Some, like Mysore, wanted abolition of their annual tributes, others wanted tax concessions, boundary changes or even more guns on their salutes. While the Government advised caution so as to avoid “a rising market for the states’ accessions”, it also conceded that federation should be consummated as soon as possible.
(L) The Imperial Airship Scheme. (R) The R102 docked at Bedford. August 1933
Lord Stepney also made history in May 1936 by being the first Viceroy to arrive in India via airship, touching down at the Karachi Aerodrome aboard the gigantic R102 [5]. The event had been covered in depth by the BBC following heavy suggestion from the Air Ministry. Airship production in Britain had suffered a painful development following the Great War. In 1922, Vickers had proposed the Burney Scheme, to provide six commercial airships for passenger service across the Empire. However domestic technology at the time made such a proposal impractical and Ramsay MacDonald’s 1924 Labour government had refused to part-finance the initiative. Instead they had established the Imperial Airship Scheme, a suspiciously similar project but state controlled and bringing in the concerns of diplomatic and military application. As the Government swung between Labour and Conservative control during the 1920s, the issue had become a political football, eventually leading to the construction of not one but two prototype airships. The R100, dubbed the ‘capitalist ship’ produced by Vickers and the R101, the ‘socialist ship’ built by the Royal Airship Works. The official plan called for both ships to provide information and experience for a new class of airship, dubbed Project H [6]. The Scheme had floundered during the political chaos following the Wall Street Crash and with the R101’s aborted maiden flight in late 1930, Baldwin had ordered an indefinite halt to the project [7]. Mosley’s entry into Number 10, and the return of Lord Thomson to the Air Ministry, saw this decision reversed [8].
Thomson had been the Scheme’s prime architect in government since 1924 and was keen to restart it. The Prime Minister was inclined to agree, seeing it as a showcase for British technology and on ideological grounds was interested in Project H’s public-private cooperation. At first little was seen to change. Originally it had been hoped the two prototype ships would begin regular service across the Empire until such time as successors could take over. However the R101’s innovative but unstable design made it of little more than academic value, while the R100’s gasoline engines limited it to Atlantic runs [9]. As such it wasn’t until the unveiling of the R102 in August 1933 and the R103 in June 1934 that a regular Imperial Airship Service to India and Australia could begin. Built in partnership between Vickers and the Royal Airship Works, the new class were the largest craft ever flown. Capable of transporting 150 passengers in luxury and at roughly 9,000,000 cubic feet both dwarfed even Germany’s vaunted Hindenburg [10]. Soon they were joined by the even larger R104 and R105, which extended the Service to Cape Town and Wellington. Combined with refuelling stations in West Africa, Egypt, Kenya and Ceylon, by 1936 the IAS connected almost the entire British Empire. Despite this impressive network, the IAS lacked connections to popular destinations in Latin America and the United States, markets effectively monopolised by their rivals at Goodyear Zeppelin. The IAS ships were also criticised for their cramped quarters and old-fashioned, nautical architecture compared to the Hindenburg’s spacious art-deco styling, and ticket sales struggled. Although trumpeted as a monument to British ingenuity, already the IAS was becoming something of a white elephant.
Transport of a more grounded variety proved a large part of Labour’s economic ‘Push’. Ever since the 1930 Memorandum, Mosley, inspired by Mussolini’s work programmes of the 1920’s, had advocated the construction of motorways across Britain [11]. Construction began on the M1 in 1933, following the passage of the Special Roads Act. The issue proved a surprisingly partisan affair, with the vested interests of the motor and rail industries intervening heavily. William Morris, head of Morris Motors, was an early advocate and had provided Labour with £25,000 in funds for the 1931 General Election [12]. The ‘Big Four’, the corporations which dominated the railways were aghast at the new government’s priorities, which only deepened their pro-Conservative line, embedded since the 1926 General Strike. Morris’ appointment to the National Council in 1934 had been met with grumbles of disapproval from both the Opposition benches and the ILP, and his ennoblement as Lord Nuffield in 1936 led to claims of ministers mixing too closely with business. The Government fobbed off such attacks with the Ministry of Transport confidently predicting the first 1,000 miles of motorway would be completed by 1943. Not long after the beginning of the new parliament however, the Government suffered its first major scandal. J.H. Thomas, the Dominion Secretary, was accused in October 1936 of selling secrets to stock brokers and land speculators regarding taxes and the location of future motorways. The Chief Whip, Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, quickly rounded on Thomas who tearfully admitted to indiscretion.
Highly thought of on both sides of the Commons, the Thomas Affair shocked as much as angered Parliament. Reporters in the gallery witnessed Thomas’ good friend Winston Churchill openly weeping as he made his resignation [13]. While some felt sympathy for Thomas, the discontents in the ILP, led by Fenner Brockway, pointed to the scandal as proof of Labour’s growing subservience to capital. At a meeting of ILP MPs in December, Brockway broached yet again the possibility of disaffiliation with the Labour Party. Maxton, continuously criticised by the Left for his loyalty to Mosley, shouted down the rebels and refused to even consider a vote, to the approval of a thin majority [14]. By the turn of 1937, the Thomas Affair had given way to happier news for the Government as by far the largest of its public works programmes reached completion. The Severn River Barrage, a 2.5 mile dam crossing the mouth of the Bristol Channel was unveiled in March. The barrage had originally reached the Committee stage under the Baldwin Government, and put on hold by the Coalition’s collapse in 1932. The Mosley Government had quickly jumped on the project with vigour, and work had begun by early 1933. Construction was chaotic as money and over 12,000 labourers were thrown at problems to ensure speedy construction, beating the Committee’s 1940 prediction by three years. Although over budget by £10,000,000 and having caused over 100 deaths by its completion (leading Mosley to deem it the “the deadliest barrage I’ve seen since France”), once the up to full power in June 1937, the structure was providing 10% of Britain’s electrical demand, saving 1,000,000 tons of coal annually.
Diagram of the Severn River Barrage in Popular Mechanics. Spring 1937
[1] Amongst them the new member for Chatham, Hugh Gaitskell
[2] I imagine the conservative Attlee would have left the bombastic Mosley unsure how to deal with him. He’s a team player but there’d be no doubt he isn’t sucked in by the PM’s charisma.
[3] A peerage would be a necessary concession to traditionalists, and given his connection to Limehouse, it seems a suitable choice.
[4] Willingdon was disliked by the Indian populace to put it mildly, and was quite at ease reciprocating the feeling.
[5] This is alternate history, as such airships are mandatory.
[6] All OTL
[7] Due to even more parliamentary chaos than OTL, the R101 is not forced out early leading to its destruction in northern France. However it is still the experimental mess it was in real life and as such never manages the projected Karachi run. This does however save the Imperial Airship Scheme from complete abandonment.
[8] No R101 disaster saves alongside 47 other lives, that of the Labour Air Minister, Lord Thomson. A military officer and moderniser with a rebellious streak, Thomson is Mosley’s kind of man and so has his ear.
[9] Vickers feared using the R100 in tropical climes would lead to explosions and so insisted on only flying to Montreal and Ottawa. A fear they no doubt kept from passengers!
[10] This was Project H’s plan IOTL. There seemed an element of one-upmanship against Zeppelin at the Air Ministry. No doubt this has continued under Lord Thomson and Mosley probably sees it as friendly competition. For those interested Hindenburg came in at just over 7,000,000 cubic feet.
[11] Despite popular assumption otherwise, the first major motorway network in the world was the Italian
autostrada, begun in 1924.
[12] When Mosley founded the New Party IOTL, Morris gave him £50,000 based on his pro-motorway stance. ITTL I imagine Mosley’s apparent socialism makes him offer a smaller endorsement.
[13] This is all basically OTL, not including the motorways. Thomas went with MacDonald to form the National Government, but here in a very similar situation I imagine he would still fall prey to temptation. He was also well liked, and despite being a gruff trade unionist was an apparently good friend of George V amongst countless others.
[14] The ILP in reality disaffiliated from Labour in 1931. Here however, the group is far more diverse, and Mosley is himself technically a member, meaning there is a strong core of loyalists keeping the ILP pinned to the Party. This might not last however…
