‘Middle-class peace men?’ – Labour and the Anti-War Agitation

This chapter examines opposition to the war from the Left. It will first discuss the conscription issue of 1915-1916, the periodic strikes that threatened to cripple industries during the war, and the soldiers’ strikes and mutinies after the Armistice, the anti-war movement and centres of supposed resistance to the patriotism of the war years, and finally the Leeds and Stockholm conferences of 1917, which seemed to herald a break from the government line and a demand for an early peace settlement.

‘I’d sooner blackleg my union than blackleg my country’ – Labour Patriotism, 1914–18

This chapter examines events in August 1914, including the Left’s acquiescence to the war, and how it managed to co-ordinate its response. It will discuss the principal characters in the ‘patriotic labour’ camp, and survey specific unions and ordinary workers who gave their support – and their lives – to the war effort. The progress of the war inevitably gave rise to anti-German hostility, and the motivations and implications of this will also be analysed. Finally, there will be a survey of ordinary trade unionists and labour activists who distinguished themselves during the conflict. In terms of both an elite and subaltern level, it will be argued that there was a decidedly united response from labour. Although enthusiasm for the war amongst the labour movement was rare, there was a general consensus that, once begun, it had to be seen through. Ultimately, this chapter argues that labour patriotism, rather than anti-war agitation, characterised the Left’s response to the war, and that the history of labour patriotism in this period has been unjustly neglected by historians.

Conclusion

The conclusion re-states the arguments made in the book, critiques other relevant literature, and makes broader arguments about the implications of this book, specifically in terms of left-wing patriotism and working-class culture.

‘If this is to be a jingo, then I am a jingo’ – Labour Patriotism before 1914

This chapter introduces some of the principle concepts and personalities that would dominate the Left during the years of the First World War, surveys the debate surrounding the Boer War, examines the history of ‘radical patriotism’ on the British Left, and notes the theoretical and actual commitments of the British Left to internationalism and pacifism. It aims to contribute to our understanding of the extent and nature of labour patriotism during the war by examining the continuity or otherwise between the decades immediately preceding 1914. The argument outlined here is two-fold. Firstly, across the labour movement as a whole there was an ambiguous attitude toward nationalism and patriotism. An uncertainty and contradiction resulted from abstract commitments to peace and camaraderie coupled with the realities of the European situation, popular nationalism and broader British culture, and this could sometimes be a problem for the Left. Nonetheless, for many across labour movement their commitments to internationalism and pacifism were superficial at best. Very often their left-wing views were based around an idea of community and nationhood that belied any internationalism. The fight for national survival against Imperial Germany allowed the façade of internationalism to slip, and confirmed the compatibility of left-wing and nationalist sentiment.

‘The greatest democratic force British politics have known’ – Labour Cohesion and the War

This final chapter is concerned with the continued cohesion of the labour movement during and after the war. It takes a broad view of all of the various organisations which could be said to compose the British Left at the time of the war: the Labour party itself; the roughly one thousand trade unions in different groups and associations; various women’s groups which, while not necessarily sympathetic with all of Labour’s policies, sometimes co-operated on franchise reform; the three-million strong Co-operative movement, consisting of the Co-operative Wholesale Society and the Co-operative Union; and the socialist societies such as the British Socialist party, the Fabian Society and the Independent Labour party. Finally, the war created a great impetus for an ultra-patriotic secession from the labour movement, or even of a nationalistic coup within labour; the failure of this movement is analysed within this chapter.

‘The experiments are not found wanting’ – Labour and the Wartime State

This chapter is concerned with the growth of the British state during the war, the relationship of the labour movement vis-à-vis the state, and the ramifications of this for the ideology and practice of the Left after the conflict. The first three decades of the twentieth century saw a variety of viewpoints as to how best theoretically and practically organise the economy and society, and the vision which was put into practice after 1945 was not necessarily destined to dominate. While the experience of the Depression and the Second World War - and the memory of broken promises and failed ambitions after the First – was certainly crucial to the coalescence of the ‘spirit of ‘45’ it is argued in this chapter that not enough significance has been attributed to the experience of 1914-1918 in this development.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the key themes and individuals of the book. It discusses the relationship between nationalism and socialism, and the historiography of the left and the First World War. It analyses the existing literature on this topic and sets out the focus of the following chapters, and the arguments contained within it.

‘Our Platform is Broad Enough and our Movement Big Enough’ – The War and Recruits to Labour

This chapter deals with the question of how the war impacted on Labour’s electoral fortunes after 1918. It considers the post-war influx of Liberals who felt that Labour was now the real home of the radical Liberal tradition, the experiences of soldiers and ex-servicemen specifically, and the extent to which the Left made ‘cultural’ appeals to voters: as Englishmen and women, as Britons, as patriots, as Anglicans, as Catholics, and as individual people. This chapter argues that support for the war was critical to the successes of Labour in the inter-war period. Not only did it prevent a Parliamentary annihilation in 1918, it secured patriotic credentials to counter-balance the influx of middle-class radicals; prevented a break with the trade unions; and facilitated Labour’s appeals to a working-class culture based on family, neighbourhood, pubs and patriotism. It will be argued here that this cultural appeal to the wider working class allowed Labour to win support from beyond both the heavily unionised skilled workers and the Nonconformist tradition which had hitherto provided most of its support, and that the experience of the war – and labour patriotism during that conflict – was essential to this cultural appeal.