‘Organising Talent and Disciplined Steadiness’: the German SPD as a Model for the British Labour Party in the 1920s?

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-190
Author(s):  
Stefan Berger
Keyword(s):  
Labour Party ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
East Europe ◽  
South East Europe ◽  
The First World War ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
British Labour ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Electoral Representation ◽  
First World

In comparative Labour history there is a long tradition of adhering to a typology of labour movements which distinguishes south-western European, ‘Latin’ labour movements (France, Spain, Italy) from north-eastern European labour movements (Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, east and south-east Europe) and invokes a third category: Anglo-American labour movements. The British Labour Party is usually subsumed under this latter category, whereas the German SPD is regarded as the spiritual leader of the second. Insofar as these comparisons explicitly deal with the time before the First World War, their argument is indeed a strong one. After all, the SPD was the largest socialist party in the world before 1914, at a time when the Labour Party did not even allow individual membership. At least in its organisational strongholds, the SPD resembled a social movement providing for its members almost ‘from cradle to grave’. The Labour Party, by contrast, is often portrayed as a trade union interest group in parliament with no other purpose than electoral representation. Where the Labour Party avoided any ideological commitment before 1914, the SPD had at least theoretically adopted Marxism as its ideological bedrock after 1890.

The Industrial Meaning of “Gradualism”: The Labour Party and Industry, 1918–1931

1996 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Thorpe
Keyword(s):  
Labour Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Minority Government ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Electoral Defeat ◽  
British Labour ◽  
First World ◽  
Detailed Work

In the period from 1918 until 1931, the British Labour party adhered to the precepts of “gradualism”: incrementally and by degrees, the party would gain support and pass legislation in an inexorable progress toward the socialist millennium. For a while, it seemed that this strategy would carry all before it. Emerging from the First World War with a “socialist” commitment, it became the largest opposition party at the 1918 general election. In 1922 it became the clear opposition to the Conservatives, and Ramsay MacDonald was reelected leader after an eight-year break. A short-lived minority Labour government in 1924 was followed by heavy electoral defeat, but the party was able to form its second minority government in 1929. However, its credibility was destroyed by soaring unemployment, and the ministry collapsed in the summer of 1931 after failing to agree on public expenditure cuts. MacDonald and the chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Snowden, led a small Labour cohort into a “National” government, which went on to crush Labour at the polls that October. Detailed work on this complex period of Labour's history is hard to find, however. Little work has been done on policy: in particular, it is surprising that, given the party's symbiotic link with trade unionism and the central role of industry in Labour leaders' conception of the transformation to socialism, so little attention has been paid to the party's industrial policy in this period.Gradualism implied that socialism would emerge from the success of capitalism.

The Commonwealth Labour Party in Northern Ireland, 1942–7

1984 ◽  
Vol 24 (93) ◽  
pp. 69-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. S. Walker
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
World War ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
The North ◽  
Party Organisation ◽  
The First World War ◽  
British Labour ◽  
The City ◽  
First World

The Commonwealth Labour Party (Northern Ireland), hereafter referred to as the C.L.P., came into existence on 19 December 1942. Its birth was the result of a split in the ranks of the Northern Ireland Labour Party (N.I.L.P.). This split centred on the personality and the political outlook of the man who had led the N.I.L.P since 1932, and who was to be leader of the C.L.P during its five-year lifespan: Harry Midgley.Midgley (1892-1957) was, by the time of the formation of the C.L.P., one of the best-known and most controversial politicians in Northern Ireland. Born into a working-class protestant home in north Belfast, he acquired an early political education as a youth through the medium of the Independent Labour Party organisation in the city. He was close, at least initially, to William Walker, the most outstanding labour leader produced by the north of Ireland during the early troubled years of the labour movement. In addition, he met and listened to some of the most eminent spokesmen of British labour, most notably Keir Hardie. Midgley served his time as a joiner in the Workman Clark shipyard (where his father was a labourer) before spending a brief period in America in 1913 and 1914. After serving in the Ulster division in the First World War, he returned to Belfast in 1919 and quickly got himself a job as a trade-union organiser with the Linenlappers’ Union.

scholarly journals VII. Arthur Henderson, the Russian Revolution, and the Reconstruction of the Labour Party

1972 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 753-773 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. M. Winter
Keyword(s):  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Russian Revolution ◽  
International Affairs ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
The First World War ◽  
British Labour ◽  
The Impact ◽  
First World

The dominant role of the secretary of the British Labour party, Arthur Henderson, in the reconstruction of the party in 1917–18 has never been disputed. It is surprising, therefore, that little attention has been paid in recent historical literature to the development of Henderson's political ideas during the First World War and, more particularly, to the impact of the Russian Revolution on his attitude towards the conduct of international affairs and domestic politics. The neglect of this aspect of an important chapter of labour history has obscured the fact that Henderson came to advocate the reconstruction of the Labour party only after and partly as a result of his visit to Russia in mid-1917

Modernism Under Review: Hugh Kenner's The Pound Era

2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-194
Author(s):  
Marjorie Perloff
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
First World

This essay offers a critical re-assessment of Hugh Kenner's The Pound Era. It argues that Kenner's magisterial survey remains important to our understanding of Modernism, despite its frankly partisan viewpoint. Kenner's is an insider's account of the Anglo-American Modernist writing that he takes to have been significant because it sought to invent a new language consonant with the ethos of the twentieth century. The essay suggests that Kenner's impeccable attention to the Modernist renovation of language goes beyond formalism, since, for him, its ‘patterned energies’ (a term derived from Buckminster Fuller's theory of knots) relate Modernism to the larger complex of artefacts within which it functions and, beyond these, to what he takes to be the great works of the past and to the scientific-technological inventions of the present. But the essay also points out that Kenner's is an eccentric canon, which makes no room for Forster, Frost, Lawrence, or Stevens. Furthermore, Kenner's emphasis on the First World War as a great cultural rupture, while plausible, works less well for Joyce and Williams than it does for Pound and Eliot.

The Allies Do Not Come; the Italians Withdraw 1943

2020 ◽  
pp. 151-214
Author(s):  
Stevan K. Pavlowitch
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
Independent State ◽  
East Europe ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
South East Europe ◽  
Economic Position ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Fortress Europe

This chapter reviews the outcomes of the Allied victories at Stalingrad and in North Africa at the end of 1942. It analyses the expected assault on 'Fortress Europe', interest in the Balkans, and the mood in the peninsula. The chapter also discusses Yugoslavia's partisans safe base — the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). Along with pro-Allied anti-communist armed groups, they became a concern for the Germans, who wanted to destroy all native enemies, real and potential, before an Anglo-American landing. The chapter then takes a look at Germany's preparations for the imminent Italian withdrawal and the fear of an Allied attack. It also claims that Italy's economic position in the NDH had been weak from the start and its zone was the poorest. Ultimately, the chapter assesses the Italian withdrawal and how the Germans had to take over responsibility for the whole of south-east Europe.

The Pyrrhic Victories of the 1920s

2020 ◽  
pp. 124-141
Author(s):  
Einar Lie
Keyword(s):  
Strong Support ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Parliamentary Election ◽  
World War ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Government ◽  
First World

This chapter describes Norges Bank in the 1920s. Following the chaotic years during and after the First World War, politics ceded the economic realm to institutional technocrats, represented especially by the governor of Norges Bank, Nicolai Rygg. Rygg started out with strong support from the political and intellectual milieus in his programme for restoring the pre-war value of the krone. Gradually, the support eroded. The growing labour movement and Labour Party came to represent the most important threat to Norges Bank’s policies in its final stage. Labour came out as the winner of the parliamentary election in 1927 and formed a new, short-lived government in early 1928. When the government was overthrown after a few weeks in office, the parity policy could be completed and ‘normalcy’ restored. However, Rygg and Norges Bank won a costly victory. In the aftermath, the parity policy was mainly seen as erroneous and misguided. Rygg’s active role in overthrowing the Labour government in 1928 became a formative element in the labour movement’s perceptions of Norges Bank’s and its governor’s past and future role in Norwegian society.

The Wilsonian Solution

2019 ◽  
pp. 111-139
Author(s):  
Charlie Laderman
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
British Empire ◽  
International System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Choice ◽  
World War ◽  
System P ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
First World

This chapter examines Woodrow Wilson’s pragmatic decision not to declare war on the Ottoman Empire after American entry into the First World War. It explains why this policy choice offers important insights into Wilson’s attitude toward the Allied powers, particularly the British Empire. It evaluates Wilson’s broader attitude to Britain and his attitude toward an Anglo-American alliance. The chapter emphasizes the clash between Wilson and Roosevelt over whether the United States should declare war on the Ottoman Empire, and what this reveals about their humanitarian visions and broader conceptions of international order. In doing so, it traces the emergence of Wilson’s own solution to the Armenian question as part of a reformed, American-led international system.

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