Chapter XLIV: The Fate of a Party.
In a normal year the Labour Party spring conference would be a quiet affair, the fireworks and turbulence saved for the annual gathering in the autumn conference season. 1936 was not a normal year and the spring conference would be anything but quiet. While many of the issues that exploded so dramatically on the conference floor had been coming to a head for years, the catalyst was undoubtedly the crushing General Election defeat of the previous year. The sudden swing from an expected victory over a discredited government to a crushing defeat barely better than that suffered in 1931 had been a shock to the party, one which the various factions were all too keen to blame on each other. This infighting was heightened by the ongoing leadership election, George Lansbury having resigned in the aftermath of the general election defeat and agreeing to stay as temporary leader until the conference could elect his replacement.
Broadly the party was divided between the trade union wing and the parliamentary party of MPs and hangers on, although there were significant divides even within those broad groupings. The most recent issue between the group was leadership; the union's firmly believing Lansbury had been kept in the job to prevent a 'TUC' man taking his place before the election, a charge with a considerable amount of truth to it. That was however only a symptom of the deeper divide was between the two groups, particularly over the issues of communism and pacifism, the latter increasingly being seen as an acid test of which side you were on. To the mostly pacifist MPs re-armament was unnecessary, internationally provocative and a waste of money that should be spent on domestic matters, conversely the unions tended to see it as a vital precaution in dangerous times and, more importantly, a massive boost for the economy and thus their member's interests.
Sir Stafford Cripps, leader of the Socialist League and voice of the Labour hard left. The archetype of the 1930s upper class socialist he was most vocal proponent of a British 'Popular Front' to combat fascism, an idea that the virulently anti-communist trade union movement found abhorrent. However as one of only three surviving ministers from the pre-1931 Labour Government he was party grandee who still commanded significant support, not just from the left of the party.
It was against this backdrop that the leadership election was held, the candidates being Clement Attlee, standing for the mainstream parliamentarians, Arthur Greenwood as the TUC candidate, Stafford Cripps for the socialist wing of the party and the wildly ambitious Herbert Morrison for the 'new blood' of MPs. Of these Morrison's campaign soon fizzled out, his lack of contacts outside of the London party and disinterest from the union delegates killing his campaign before it really started, leaving only three candidate with a chance of winning. The next to fall was Cripps, his leadership of the 'Socialist League' alienating a trade union movement that had spent the early 1930s issuing 'Black Circulars', banning communists from any union position on threat of de-affiliating the offending organisation from the TUC. With the union block vote against him Cripps managed to lose his remaining support through a series of ill advised speeches, culminating in his address to the conference where he expounded his view that an Italian victory 'would not have been a bad thing for the British working class', a phrase that saw his leadership bid end in boos and jeers and a hurried resolution from the National Executive to disassociate itself entirely from his speech.
This left a contest between Attlee and Morrison, a proxy for the fight between the party machine and the unions. While Attlee initially held the lead his campaign was unwittingly undermined by those who sought to help him, as the party hierarchy closed ranks around him to fend of the unions he became more and more associated with the old guard who had been so soundly thrashed in back to back elections. As a leading member of Lansbury's shadow cabinet Attlee had few grounds to defend himself, he had not dissented against the pacifist and anti-rearmament policies of Lansbury or the election manifesto, so could not claim a major change of heart over the issues without appearing grossly opportunistic. Thus he had little choice but to accept the endorsement of men such as Baron Ponsonby, the avowed pacifist who lead the Labour peers in the House of Lords and Arthur Henderson, the former Foreign Secretary awarded the Nobel Peace prize for chairing a failed global disarmament conference. With post-war patriotic feeling still running high, and the very real benefit re-armament was having on the industrial areas that were Labour's heartlands, the prestige such men brought to a candidate was matched by the very real damage their association also brought.
Walter Citrine, chairman of the Trades Union Congress. The election was the culmination of years of hard work by Citrine and his colleagues in the trade union movement.
At the final count the union block vote combined with the pro-rearmament groups, and the many activists who feared another crushing electoral defeat, to propel Arthur Greenwood into the leadership at Attlee's expense. This victory was the culmination of the work of Ernest Bevin, chairman of the Transport & General Workers Union, and Walter Citrine, holder of the same post at the TUC, completing the trade union take over of the Labour Party. The following months would see a radical shake up of the party's National Executive Committee, increasing trade union influence at the cost of the parliamentary party, and an extension of the role of union block voting in deciding party policy and manifesto. In many ways the election of Greenwood was a return to the party's roots when the TUC had first started funding parliamentary candidates, it certainly had a moderating effect on the party; the upper-middle class socialists that made up the hard left radical wing of the party were forced out by the pragmatic TUC. Yet it was not all good news for the party, the city bosses from outside the Labour heartland, men such as the ambitious London MP Herbert Morrison, saw their path to the top suddenly blocked. Such men did not just give up when faced with obstacles, as the new Labour leadership would discover to its cost.
