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.

High dignity and low salaries

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark O'Brien
Keyword(s):  
Social Status ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Physical Force ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Employment Conditions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

This chapter examines how, in the early 1900s, Irish journalists organised themselves into an association that examined contentious issues such as salaries, employment conditions, the social status of journalists, the place of women in journalism, and whether trade unionism was appropriate for journalists. Against the backdrop of the Great Lockout, the First World War, and the 1916 Rising this nascent organisation (the Irish Journalists’ Association) allowed journalists to discuss contentious issues amongst themselves. However, the development of the association was hampered by divisive debates about the role of journalists in society and the bid for national independence by physical force.

The role of nitrogen in transforming British agricultural productivity production prior to and during the First World War

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 583-609
Author(s):  
John Martin
Keyword(s):  
Agricultural Production ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Coal Gas ◽  
Major Threat ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Food Shortages ◽  
War Effort ◽  
First World

This paper explores the reasons why artificial or mineral sources of nitrogen, which were more readily available in Britain than in other European countries, were only slowly adopted by farmers in the decades prior to and during the First World War. It considers why nitrogen in the form of sulphate of ammonia, a by-product of coal-gas (town-gas) manufacture, was increasingly exported from Britain for use by German farmers. At the same time Britain was attempting to monopolise foreign supplies of Chilean nitrate, which was not only a valuable source of fertiliser for agriculture but also an essential ingredient of munitions production. The article also investigates the reasons why sulphate of ammonia was not more widely used to raise agricultural production during the First World War, at a time when food shortages posed a major threat to public morale and commitment to the war effort.

ENGLISH LABOUR AND TRADE UNIONISM OF THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY IN THE COVERAGE OF THE BRITISH HISTORIAN G. D. H. COLE

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 22-33
Author(s):  
T.N. GELLA ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Socialist Movement ◽  
First World

The main purpose of the article is to analyze the views of a famous British historian G.D.G. Cole on the history of the British workers' and UK socialist movement in the early twentieth century. The arti-cle focuses on the historian's assessment and the reasons for the workers' strike movement intensi-fication on the eve of the First World War, the specifics of such trends as labourism, trade unionism and syndicalism.

scholarly journals The Local versus the Global in the history of relativity: The case of Belgium

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-250
Author(s):  
Sjang L. ten Hagen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Diversity ◽  
First World War ◽  
Global History ◽  
World War ◽  
Global Pattern ◽  
The First World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
First World

ArgumentThis article contributes to a global history of relativity, by exploring how Einstein’s theory was appropriated in Belgium. This may sound like a contradiction in terms, yet the early-twentieth-century Belgian context, because of its cultural diversity and reflectiveness of global conditions (the principal example being the First World War), proves well-suited to expose transnational flows and patterns in the global history of relativity. The attempts of Belgian physicist Théophile de Donder to contribute to relativity physics during the 1910s and 1920s illustrate the role of the war in shaping the transnational networks through which relativity circulated. The local attitudes of conservative Belgian Catholic scientists and philosophers, who denied that relativity was philosophically significant, exemplify a global pattern: while critics of relativity feared to become marginalized by the scientific, political, and cultural revolutions that Einstein and his theory were taken to represent, supporters sympathized with these revolutions.

scholarly journals Religion and Reform in the City: The Re-Thinking Chicago Movement of the 1930s

1986 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-337
Author(s):  
Jacob H. Dorn
Keyword(s):  
Progressive Era ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Machines ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The City ◽  
Urban Leaders ◽  
First World ◽  
Urban Civilization

Historians have produced a rich and sophisticated literature on urban reform in the progressive era before the First World War. It includes numerous studies of individual cities, biographies of urban leaders, and analyses of particular movements and organizations. This literature illuminates important variations among reformers and their achievements, the relationships between urban growth and reform, and the functional role of the old-style political machines against which progressives battled. Similarly, there are many examinations of progressive-era reformers' ideas about and attitudes toward the burgeoning industrial cities that had come into being with disquieting rapidity during their own lifetimes. Some of these works go well beyond the controversial conclusions of Morton and Lucia White in The Intellectual Versus the City (1964) to find more complex—and sometimes more positive—assessments of the new urban civilization.

THE ROLE OF ENGLAND IN THE FORMATION OF THE PROTO-STATEHOOD OF THE IRAQI KURDS AFTER THE FIRST WORLD WAR (1918–1920) IN THE MANDATE TERRITORIES FORM

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-191
Author(s):  
Kirill V. Vertyaev ◽  
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Iraqi Kurdistan ◽  
Political Relations ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
First World

The article develops the stadial formation thesis of the proto-statehood among the Iraqi Kurds. The concept of national identity of the Iraqi Kurds remains the subject of a complex and long-lasting discussion. The main obstacle for the emergence of the Kurdish integral nationalism is still the fact that the Kurds speak different dialects of Kurdish language, and still maintain political and inter-clan conflicts over the distribution of power (not to mention the futility of any attempts to define political boundaries of Iraqi Kurdistan). Ironically, Great Britain faced practically the same contradictions during its occupation of Mesopotamia at the end of the WWI (following the Mudros armistice in October 1918), when British attempts to create an independent Kurdish state failed for a number of reasons, which are discussed in the article. In our opinion, this period was responsible for the formation of proto-statehood in Kurdish area (Kingdom of Kurdistan, for example, obtained classic characteristics of a chiefdom, but at the same time had a vivid anti-colonial, anti-imperialist orientation). The phenomenology of the British government’s political relations with such ‘quasi-states’ presents the subject for this article’s analysis.

scholarly journals Specifics of the International Political Position of the Commonwealth of Australia in the first half of the ХХ-th century

2021 ◽  
pp. 133-149
Author(s):  
I. Vietrynskyi
Keyword(s):  
British Empire ◽  
First World War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Situation ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

The paper focuses on the initial stage of the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia, and the process of its establishing as an independent State. The international political context for the development of the country, from the period of creation of the Federation to the beginning of the Second World War, is primarily viewed. The Commonwealth’s international position, its place and role in the regional and global geopolitical processes of the early XX century, in particular in the context of its relations with Great Britain, are analyzed. The features of the transformation of British colonial policies on the eve of the First World War are examined. The specifics of the UK system of relations with Australia, as well as other dominions, are being examined. The features of status of the dominions in the British Empire system are shown. The role of the dominions and, in particular, the Commonwealth of Australia in the preparatory process for the First World War, as well as the peculiarities of its participation in hostilities, is analyzed. The significance of the actions of the First World War on the domestic political situation in Australia, as well as its impact on dominions relations with the British Empire, is revealed. The history of the foundation of the Australian-New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) and its participation in imperial forces on the frontline of the First World War is analyzed. The success and failure of its fighters, as well as the role of ANZAC, in the process of formation an Australian political nation are analyzed. The economic, humanitarian and international political consequences of the First World War for the Commonwealth of Australia are examined, as well as the influence of these consequences on the structure of relations between the dominions and the British Empire. The socio-economic situation of the Commonwealth of Australia on the eve of World War II, in particular the impact of the Great depression on the development of the country as a whole and its internal political situation in particular, is analyzed. The ideological, military-strategic and international political prerequisites for Australia’s entry into the Second World War are being considered.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document