1952 starting with you, most likely only you. (I can't do the fake accent within type, really annoying)
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1952 starting with you, most likely only you. (I can't do the fake accent within type, really annoying)
Indeed. Mr. Enewald probably fiddled as the Reichstag burned.
Oh snap; I'm both a murderous baby eating cannibal vegetarian that butchered the Anarchist leadership and the guy that burned down the Reichstag. Next thing you know it was me who sunk the Titanic and shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand!
I'm so naughty.
and shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand!
I knew it was you. Even when it was Gavrillo Princip I knew it was really you.
Fake accent? Ye caa thes fake? Is aw ay scootlund fake? Dae ye spit oan th' coopon ay th' lain ay scots? Damn ye communist, damn ye tae heel
(Fake accent? You call this fake? Is all of Scotland fake? Do you spit on the face of the Land of Scots? Damn you communist, damn you to hell!)
Oh snap; I'm both a murderous baby eating cannibal vegetarian that butchered the Anarchist leadership and the guy that burned down the Reichstag. Next thing you know it was me who sunk the Titanic and shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand!
I'm so naughty.
The conspiracy is revealed!
Well then, next time, vote for the CPGB. We can provide 'Bolshevism', 100% guaranteed, and we'll see about that 'national' thing down the line.
Oh, he intends to. Whether or not you want the Communist Party to be fifth-columnists in Comrade Mosley's new pseudo-fascist revolution however, is quite another matter.
Och aye, an anti-Scottish conspiracy ay th' highest order.
(Yes, an anti-Scottish conspiracy of the highest order)
Oh snap; I'm both a murderous baby eating cannibal vegetarian that butchered the Anarchist leadership and the guy that burned down the Reichstag. Next thing you know it was me who sunk the Titanic and shot Archduke Franz Ferdinand!
I'm so naughty.
I bet you rigged the '22 elections, too, didn't you?
I bet you rigged the '22 elections, too, didn't you?
Everything we have hitherto blamed the Stonecutters for is actually the doing of Mr. Enewald.
So he's the one keeping the metric system down...
The Metric System is obviously a International Communist Organization.
I second this
The Metric System was devised to make a Union of many States possible
Not to mention keeping Atlantis off the maps.So he's the one keeping the metric system down...
I was under the assumption that the lurkers were the true source.
Hellfire and Jerusalem
1945-1949
1945-1949
‘’I am become death, the destroyer of worlds’’
It is easy to forget than when the Popular Front rose to power in Britain, the Second World War was not yet over and knowledge of America’s new super weapon, a force so destructive that it would captivate the world’s psyche for more than a generation, was possessed only by a few. The war would come to a decisive end shortly after the United States enveloped the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in nuclear hellfire in August 1945 in an action that stunned the world. Although the war was over, the awesome power of atomic warfare had made it clear that any future conflict on a similar scale would have the potential to bring human civilisation to the brink of oblivion.
The first years of the Attlee administration were noted for the popular adulation enjoyed by the government and the unity of purpose with which the ruling coalition acted. Despite the diversity of opinion within the Popular Front the parties of the alliances with united behind the aims of rebuilding the country, supporting public ownership over, at least parts, of the economy and abolishing extremes of wealth and poverty. Between the election in 1945 and the end of 1947 fulfilled a large part of the Labour, Communist and Liberal Party manifesto: a system of social welfare was set up, workers’ rights were noticeably extended, a large part of the economy was nationalised (with the Bank of England, civil aviation, coal mining, the railroads, road haulage, canals, cable and wireless and gas and electricity all being under public ownership by the beginning of 1948), and most importantly of all the National Health Service was founded providing universal healthcare. Beyond this, large programmes of public works (mostly focussed on economic reconstruction) and continuous state support for the economy ensured that there persisted only a marginal level of unemployment throughout the Attlee administration. The large scale spending of the government had been facilitated by a series of generous loans, and later direct economic aid, from the United States – assistance that was provided to a number of Western European states in the years after the war. The government was further aided by its close alliance with the labour movement – Communist slogans like ‘’Produce! Produce! Produce!’’ and ‘’No hooliganism! Support the government!’’ typifying an open alliance between the government and the country’s powerful trade unions – the wartime no-strike pledges being extended into the latter 1940s, as a Stakhanovite ideal spread through increasingly Communist influenced union leaders.
The consensus on domestic policy was supported by an agreement over Britain’s Asiatic possessions that came together from late 1946. After the War, it became clear that European colonial holdings in South and East Asia could only be maintained by the use of force. In Indochina the French restored their power through the use of proxy, nominally independent, regimes – fighting a vicious war against Communist led nationalist insurgents. To the South, in Indonesia, the Dutch entered into a brutal conflict with nationalists as they attempted to restore their authority over their colony – with more Dutchmen involved in fighting in Indonesia through the 1940s and into the 1950s than had fought in any capacity during the War, fighting would continue in the East Indies long after the self-proclaimed Indonesian government fell in 1947.
With Indian, and to a lesser extent Malaysian, nationalists looking to the examples of armed resistance in neighbouring states the British government decided to begin a phased withdrawal from Asia entirely. The independence of Malaysia in April 1947 was followed by the withdrawal from the jewel of the Empire, India, in November that same year. When British forces first left the now divided country it appeared that complete withdrawal from Empire was the only way to avoid the sort of bloodshed seen in the French and Dutch colonies. Elsewhere, however, the British proved more than willing to maintain their Empire – a rebellion on the Caribbean island of Dominica being ruthlessly put down in early 1946 before Britain forcefully supported the Iranian government in crushing the Soviet supported Kurdish regime in the North-West of the country before strong-arming the Soviets from withdrawing from the British client state’s Northern territories.
The independence of India in late 1947 was to be the last great achievement of the Popular Front before it began to unravel. The beginnings of the Cold War were to play a major role in the weakening of the Popular Front through these years. The first cracks were to appear in 1946, aside from disagreements over the crisis in North-Western Iran, the Greek Civil War began. A Communist led guerrilla movement, a continuation of the wartime resistance, faced off against the British backed conservative regime in Athens that had been established at the end of the War. Although Stalin called for neutrality and refused the Communists support, a policy rejected by the Yugoslavians, the events in Greece inevitably caused tensions between the Communists, and their sympathisers in the Labour Party, and the moderate wing of the Popular Front as the Left called for an end to support for the Greek government and neutrality in the conflict. Elsewhere, in early 1947 the Chinese Civil War resumed as attempts to form a lasting peace between the Communists and Nationalists finally came to an end – with Mao Zedong’s Communist forces making strident advances from the first days of the conflict. In Germany, the growing integration between the British, American and even French zones of occupation caused no end of tensions with the Soviets as a division between Eastern and Western Germany began to emerge ever clearer.
Far more concerning that tensions in occupied Germany, or civil wars, was the conduct of Communists in the Red Army occupied states of Central and Eastern Europe. One by one the Popular Fronts of Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Poland gave way to the total domination of the local Communist Party and dictatorship – through participation in government the Communists had gradually increased their influence until they could strike out against their enemies and emerge as undisputed masters. In Czechoslovakia the trend was most alarming of all. Here, like in France, Italy and Britain, the Communist Party enjoyed mass appeal in a country with a democratic heritage and a not dissimilar level of development to Western Europe. Here the Communist seizure of power appeared most similar to a model to be adopted by the parties of the West – having established firm roots through all levels of government and society an attempt to eject the Party from the government in 1948 resulted in the mobilisation of the Communists’ mass working class base and the establishment of a new government totally under their dominion. Fears that what happened in Czechoslovakia might happen in the West were extremely potent indeed, the Iron Curtain that Winston Churchill had spoken of as early as 1946 was starting to become ever more solid.
The events in Eastern Europe were not the only factor that would contribute towards the Communists’ ejection from government in early 1948. Domestically, the experimentation in Soviet imported Stakhanovism quickly proved itself unpopular with the party’s working class constituency. With Moscow relaxing its insistence on unquestioning allegiance to Popular Front alliances, the CPGB began to rattle its radical sabre – demanding an acceleration of the nationalisation programme, better wages and working conditions, a changed foreign policy and greater emphasis on the sluggish government housing projects. The Communists’ renewed radicalism made the Labour Party leadership far more amendable to heavy pressure from the Americans, whose money the government relied upon to continue its reforms, to ditch the Communists.
Months before the 1948 London Olympics, a nationalist celebration of the New Britain, the Communists were ejected from the government in an action mirrored in France and Italy – with Labour relying on a closer reliance with the Liberals to maintain their governing majority. As domestic and international tensions, that many had hoped would evaporate following the end of the War, continued to re-emerge Britain was heading into a new era of instability.
In the late 1940s the process of decolonisation started to become increasingly messy. In the years after the War, Jewish immigration into Palestine increased by several orders of magnitude as great swathes of Europe’s Jewish population abandoned the Old Continent after the horrors of the preceding years and looked to find a new homeland. The effect of this wave of immigration and settlement was the outbreak of civil war in Palestine as Jews and Arabs fought each other and the British authorities over the future of the territory. By 1948 the British found themselves no longer capable of administering Palestine and handed responsibility for the territory over to the UN who promptly partitioned the country been the Jewish state of Israel and the Arab state of Palestine. The partition proved unsatisfactory to either party as war broke out first between the two communities in Palestine itself before the neighbouring Arab states in Jordan, Syria, Egypt and Iraq became involved with the British giving the Arabs their tacit support and the Eastern Block rallying behind Israel. With the war coming to an end in December 1948 Israel was greatly expanded and the independent Palestinian state totally dissolved as those regions that remained in Arab control were occupied by the Jordanians and Egyptians.
The decision to divide India between a predominantly Muslim Pakistan and a predominantly Hindu India had been taken in order to avoid conflict between the two communities, within the first weeks and months of partition it would prove to be a disaster. Untold millions had found themselves on the ‘wrong side’ of the border after the hastily agreed partition line was decided – leading to intercommunal violence and mass migrations. Then, in February 1948 the Indians made a bid to annex largely Muslim Kashmir, following the wishes of its local ruler, leading to a Pakistani invasion of India. The Pakistanis were initially extremely successful – reaching within a few miles of Delhi in by April they would continue to shell the city throughout the Summer months although failing to capture it. Then, from the autumn, with the help of massive material and technical aid from the Soviet Union, the Indians counterattacked – sweeping the Pakistani army aside to retake Kashmir and even occupy the cities of Karachi and Dhaka, forcing the Pakistanis into an unfavourable peace.
Seeing the Communists advance in China and Eastern Europe – and the Indians draw towards an alliance with Moscow – the United States was extremely worried that all Asia might fall under Soviet influence with Europe still under threat of doing the same. With this in mind the Americans, forsaking their disdain for European colonialism, provided the French with the funds and material to launch a major offensive against the Communists in Indochina that allowed them to crush Ho Chi Minh’s Hanoi based regime in 1948 and reduce Indochina’s nationalists to guerrilla warfare in the mountains and jungles. At the same time, the British put plans for Sinhalese independence on the back burner – fearing that the growing power of the revolutionary Left in Ceylon might see the island fall under Soviet influence if it were granted independence.
Closer to home, the Lib-Lab coalition that followed the ejection of the CPGB from the government in early 1948 appeared markedly, although unsurprisingly, less radical than the Popular Front had been. Nonetheless, the Attlee administration continued on its reforming mission with the steel industry being nationalised in late 1948, a series of reforms to public education being reduced whilst the Electoral Reform Act of 1948 rationalised constituency sizes, abolished university constituencies and legislated against numerous corrupt electoral practises. Yet opposition was growing both within and outside the government. In foreign affairs, Attlee and his allies in the moderate wing of the Labour Party and the Liberal Party came out as strong supporters of alliance with the United States – seeing the Americans as invaluable to both the economic reconstruction of Britain (and Western Europe as a whole) and as the only force capable of defending Western Democracy from the ever expanding influence of the Totalitarian Soviet Union – a policy that offended Soviet sympathisers and pacifists alike. Domestically, despite all the triumphs of the governments reforms economic problems persisted – although housing construction was picking up it lagged a long way behind government targets as millions remained in very poor quality homes, quite embarrassingly whilst rationing was being phases out in the Soviet Union in 1949 (a country that had suffered far more than Britain during the War) many goods were harder to come by than they had been during the war in Britain whilst arguments over further nationalisations caused great discord within the Labour Party, the government and the British political system as a whole. Alarmingly, news of Britain’s hitherto secret nuclear programme began to leak out into the public – rousing significant concern from the Left.
On the opposition benches, discordant Conservative Party and increasingly free-market orientated National Liberal Party managed to forge a powerful bond in October 1948. The two parties agreed to form a joint shadow cabinet in which cabinet ministries were divided equally and agree to an electoral pact in the next general election – the common goal of defeating Left wing government in Britain proving a unifying beacon of hope.
Although the alliance between the Conservatives and National Liberals was clearly a grave threat, the Prime Minister faced a more immediate danger from within his own party. After the ejection of the CPGB from the government an oppositional leftwing faction within the Labour Party began to emerge around the Minister of Health – Aneurin Bevan. Promoting a pacifist outlook, a rejection of alliances with either the Americans or the Soviets, demanding further nationalisation and serious reforms at home, an electoral alliance with the Communists (and potentially a unification of the two parties) and improved conditions for workers the Bevanites presented themselves as a genuine opposition to the government and party leadership. When Left Labourite and Communist trade unionists within the TUC withdrew the no-strike pledge in November 1948, the Prime Minister realised the danger he was in and moved towards a more confrontational attitude.
Through into the early months of 1949 the Labour leadership remained in a standoff with oppositionists within the party – conflict between the moderate and radical factions continuing to grow stronger as plans for the unification of the British, American and French occupation zones in Germany into a single independent state became an ideological sticking point with the Left demanding nothing less than the unification of all four occupation zones (including the Soviet zone). Hoping to score a knockout blow to the oppositionists, benefit from anti-Communist fears and renew their governmental mandate before the Right further organised themselves the government called for a new general election for May 1949.
I will be introducing two new concepts into the next election - both of which are detailed in the rules at the start of the thread.
The Electoral Pact between the Conservatives and National Liberals will see both their votes added together for the purposes of deciding the weighting they receive - so if the Tories get 24%, and the National Liberals 12% then both parties shall see their votes weighted as if they had passed the 35% threshold. So its a very potent tool indeed and greatly improves their chances of winning the coming election.
The other concept introduced will be factions - with a competing moderate and radical wings of the Labour Party being represented. In the coming election there will be two Labour programmes listed one for the 'moderates' and another for the 'radicals'. Voting for either counts as voting for the Labour Party - but whichever platform gets the larger share of the vote will have the upper hand in the internal factional struggle. The greater the portion of Labour the vote either faction gets the stronger it will be in this dispute (so an overwhelming victory would see the losing faction basically crushed whilst a narrower result would give one side the upper hand but leave things in the balance).
The Electoral Pact between the Conservatives and National Liberals will see both their votes added together for the purposes of deciding the weighting they receive - so if the Tories get 24%, and the National Liberals 12% then both parties shall see their votes weighted as if they had passed the 35% threshold. So its a very potent tool indeed and greatly improves their chances of winning the coming election.
The other concept introduced will be factions - with a competing moderate and radical wings of the Labour Party being represented. In the coming election there will be two Labour programmes listed one for the 'moderates' and another for the 'radicals'. Voting for either counts as voting for the Labour Party - but whichever platform gets the larger share of the vote will have the upper hand in the internal factional struggle. The greater the portion of Labour the vote either faction gets the stronger it will be in this dispute (so an overwhelming victory would see the losing faction basically crushed whilst a narrower result would give one side the upper hand but leave things in the balance).
Nye Bevan!
Good to see that, ultimately, we got what we wanted: a Lab-Lib coalition. Long may it continue!
To the hustings!
Good to see that, ultimately, we got what we wanted: a Lab-Lib coalition. Long may it continue!
To the hustings!
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