The Liberal Party and Patriotism in Early Twentieth Century Britain

Many historians have highlighted the role played by ‘languagesof patriotism’ in the political appeal of the BritishConservative Party in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.The present article engages with this debate by pointing tothe fact that the Liberals, in the Edwardian period at least,could also articulate patriotic languages That this was thecase is demonstrated by an examination of Liberal attitudesto the Education Act of 1902, the tariff reform controversy,and the issue of the ‘land question’. The widelyheld view that the Conservatives enjoyed a complete monopolyon patriotism is called into doubt. Furthermore, this articlecontends that the Liberal Party's use of patriotic rhetoricprovides a new means of making sense of their policies in thisperiod. These policies, it is suggested, cannot simply be understoodas expressive of a ‘new Liberal’ system of thoughtincreasingly influenced by collectivist ideas ^*I would like to thank Jon Parry for his very many helpful commentsand suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. The researchpresented here was assisted by the financial support of Christ'sCollege, Cambridge, and the Arts and Humanities Research Board.     

Writing and Publishing the Cold War: John Berger and Seeker & Warburg

Following Christopher Lasch's early study, accounts of the ‘culturalcold war’ have become largely synonymous with the activitiesof the Congress for Cultural Freedom. The major accounts ofthe Congress have drawn on a comparatively narrow range of archivesources, personal papers, memoirs, and interviews Recent studiesof cold war broadcasting have broadened the scope of the ‘cultural’and made extensive use of previously inaccessible archive materialin Europe, North America, and the former Soviet Union This articlecontinues the process of broadening our understanding of thecultural dimensions of the cold war by focusing on the publishersSeeker & Warburg and highlighting, more generally, the opportunitiesthat publishers' archives afford for opening up new areas ofinvestigation and research on the cold war ^*I would like to thank John Berger, Mary Eagleton, Simon Gunn,Louise Jackson, and an anonymous referee for comments on anearlier version of this article I would also like to thank RandomHouse and Independent Labour Publications for permission toquote from material in the Seeker & Warburg Archive andthe ILP Archive Material from the Blair, E correspondence ispublished courtesy of the Lilly Library, Indiana University,Bloomington, IN Finally, I would like to thank Michael Bottand his colleagues at the University of Reading for their assistancein identifying relevant material in the Seeker & WarburgArchive     

'Christ's Kingdom in Scotland': Scottish Presbyterianism, Social Reform, and the Edwardian Crisis

This article examines the response of Scottish Presbyterianreformers to the socioeconomic and political dimensions of the‘Edwardian Crisis’. For such individuals the circumstancesof the early twentieth century, despite the undoubted difficultiesthey posed, offered the opportunity to bring about a modernversion of the ‘godly commonwealth’, with the principalmeans of realizing this being Christianized social reform. Thearticle focuses on how the ‘social problem’ wasanalysed; the challenge of socialism; the solutions offered;and the ultimate fate of the ‘social gospel’ ¹I am grateful to the British Academy for a Research and TravelExpenses Grant which enabled me to visit Scottish archives andlibraries; and to my colleagues David Nash and Paul O'Flinnand this journal's editors and anonymous referees for theirconstructive comments on earlier drafts. The quote is from JohnW. Gulland MP, Christ's Kingdom in Scotland or the Social Missionof the United Free Church (Edinburgh, 1906).     

MacDonald's Parties: The Labour Party and the 'Aristocratic Embrace', 1922-31

The article tests the claim that certain Labour MPs and ministersin the 1920s succumbed to an ‘aristocratic embrace’.It begins with a short account of debates in the early LabourParty over social mixing, which culminated in the 1924 disputeover the wearing of Court Dress by some Labour ministers. Theextent of ‘embrace’ is assessed through the examinationof who wore Court Dress (and why), who was offered and acceptedhonours, and of patterns of residence, income and wealth, andparticipation in London Society, measured by club membershipsand appearances in the Court & Social columns of The Times.The article concludes by examining the usefulness of the ideaof ‘aristocratic embrace’ in explaining the defectionof J.R. MacDonald and others from the Labour Party in 1931.     

The Labour Party and the League of Nations: The Socialist League's Role in the Sanctions Crisis of 1935

When the Labour Party—influenced by the NEC and the TUCGeneral Council—decided to support League of Nations sanctionsagainst Italy in 1935 this signalled its recognition that itwas necessary to challenge the fascist dictators with collectiveforce. The way in which this decision marked the discreditingof pacifism within the Labour Party has been fully examined.The Socialist League—the organ of the Labour left—alsounsuccessfully opposed the sanctions policy. Nevertheless, existingaccounts have focused on its chairman, Cripps, and his refusalto trust the ‘capitalist’ and ‘imperialist’National Government to impose sanctions. Instead, this articleconsiders the Socialist League as a whole and highlights divisionsthat emerged within it over sanctions. The official SocialistLeague line demanded ‘mass resistance’ against theNational Government. However, a sizeable minority—particularlythose with overtly pro-Soviet affinities—decided to supportcollective security now that the Soviet Union had joined theLeague of Nations. These internal divisions seriously weakenedthe Socialist League case. They explain how the NEC–TUCwas able so conclusively to defeat its radical anti-capitalistarguments, thereby gaining a fuller mandate with which to developits policy of armed collective security before the Second WorldWar.     

Richard Crossman, Harold Wilson and devolution, 1966-70: the making of government policy

This article expands our understanding of devolution, the Britishconstitution, the Wilson government of 1966–70 and thecareers and attitudes of Richard Crossman and Harold Wilson.It shows that devolution was debated not as a simply ‘Celtic’affair, but as part of a long-standing Labour concern with reformingthe ‘machinery of government’. This interest—expressedby Crossman amongst others—became submerged by other eventsand pressures. Perceived nationalist successes and the conflictingaims of (divided) Labour parties in Scotland and Wales pushedout Crossman's little-studied desire to replace ‘nationaldevolution’ with regional devolution across the UK. Wilsonadopted the delaying tactic of a Royal Commission on the Constitution.Using a wide range of private, governmental and Labour sourcesfrom across the UK, the article shows the interchange of policydebate between London and the ‘Celtic fringe’. Inthe process, the article reveals both national tensions anda commitment to Britishness, stemming from shared policy interestsand also from wider cultural influences.     

Playing Both Sides Against the Middle: The Labour Party and the Wholesaling Industry 1919 1951

This article examines the Labour party's attitude towards thewholesaling industry. During the inter-war period wholesalers,‘middlemen’ as they were commonly called, occupiedthe position of bogeyman in much Labour party thinking and literature.As a result the Labour governments of the 1920s took actionsdesigned to achieve two ends: to improve the efficiency of fooddistribution, and to limit the power of middlemen to exploitboth ends of the food production chain, farmers and consumersalike. This ideological positioning of the middleman by Labour,and the reforms introduced under the MacDonald governments,stressed the need to establish farmers’ co-operativesand consumers’ protection agencies, and also emphasizedthe importance of other measures designed to boost efficiency.However, by the time of the Attlee governments the cornerstoneof the inter-war policy, the producer co-operative, had beenabandoned and the focus of debate shifted to various forms ofnationalization. This change of policy is examined in this article.Though post-war Labour manifestos pledged to nationalize sectionsof the wholesaling industry, and despite the fact that the partyunder Attlee discussed the nationalization of wholesaling atlength, the industry remained in private hands. An attempt tounderstand how and why the nationalization of wholesaling wasopposed within the party and shelved by the Attlee governmentsis central to this study.     

Queuing up in Post-War Britain

This article traces a history of the queue in post-war Britain,both in relation to its changing social organization and itsshifting symbolism. In the immediate post-war period, with thecontinuation of rationing and shortages, the queue was exploitedfor its political capital by Conservative politicians like WinstonChurchill, who equated queuing with meddling socialism. As queuingceased to be an explicitly political issue in the 1950s and1960s, it began to be linked implicitly with the issue of national‘decline’, which dominated political discussionand social commentary from the late 1950s onwards. The queuesin banks and post offices, in particular, were seen as a symptomof the ‘British disease’ of badly trained, poorlymotivated employees and mediocre management. In the 1970s and1980s, the ‘dole queue’ also became part of a politicizedmythology of decline, although much of its imagery was borrowedfrom the 1930s. In the Thatcher era, queuing was increasinglytransformed by queue management theories and technologies. Beingprimarily market-led, this queuing revolution was an unevenphenomenon. In low-status public spaces, such as bus stops,people were still left to improvise their own queue discipline;and organizations like banks used queueless services to focuson valued clientele. The changing nature of the queue thus revealsmuch about the relationship between quotidian routine, politics,and the market in the post-war era. ^* J.Moran{at}livjm.ac.uk     

The Problem of the Epoch? Labour and Housing, 1918-51

As one of the salient political issues in twentieth-centuryBritain, housing helped define the differences between the mainpolitical parties but also gave rise to tensions and conflictingapproaches within them. This article traces some of these tensionsand anomalies as they manifested themselves in Labour's housingpolicies between the first and second world wars. While withinthe Labour movement there was a common acceptance of the needfor expanded public housing provision, the ways in which thisneed was to be met were the subject of considerable dissension.In the early inter-war period, Labour's housing policies werestrongly influenced by the building unions' notions of industrialself-government, ranging from guild socialism and the BuildingGuild to the corporatist inflexions of the Wheatley HousingAct of 1924. In the short term, there was little evidence ofthe marriage of industrial innovation, modernist aesthetics,and socialist politics that characterized responses to the housingproblem in other parts of Europe. However, by the time of theSecond World War the ascendancy of a professional modernizingdiscourse within the Labour Party, along with the emergenceof a younger generation of left-wing architects and planners,led to the marginalization of the building unions within Labour'spolicy-making apparatus. Increasingly restive at the developmentof Labour’s housing policy, union leaders continued toarticulate notions of economic citizenship rooted in guild socialism.These were largely disregarded, and have remained so in theliteratures both on housing policy and the Labour Party itself. ^* Kevin.morgan{at}manchester.ac.uk. Interviews cited in this articlewere recorded as part of a research project funded by the ESRC,award no R000237924.     

The Reception of Sir Edward Elgar 1918-c.1934: A Reassessment

It is generally believed that the reputation of Sir Edward Elgarexperienced a disastrous reversal of fortune after the GreatWar. This has conventionally been explained by the changingmusical tastes of the public and by a postwar reaction againstthe unappealingly ‘Edwardian’ character of Elgar'smusic. Both claims, I argue, have been exaggerated. Examiningevidence from concert programmes, gramophone record sales, andBBC broadcasts, this article demonstrates that Elgar continuedto enjoy estimable popularity after 1918. The article also considersthe way in which Elgar came to be seen as an archetype of ‘Englishness’and ‘Edwardianism’ in music. With a legacy of virulentattacks on the composer's ‘complacency’ and ‘jingoism’,critical attention by the 1930s had been refocused onto a perceivedrural nostalgia within Elgar's music. This atavism complementedinterwar visions of the Edwardian period as a prelapsarian ‘goldenage’. The implications of these changing perspectiveson Elgar are twofold. They can be seen to have laid the foundationsfor our ‘mature’ understanding of Elgar's life andwork; and they suggest that our views of the interwar reactionagainst the past might require profound and wide-ranging revision. ^*I am grateful to Professor Hugh Cunningham, Dr Peter Martland,and Dr David Turley for their comments on an earlier versionof this article.     

DDR Museum Berlin

In the summer of 2006 a new permanent exhibition on East Germanhistory opened its doors on the banks of the river Spree, justa frog's jump away from the Berliner Dom and the slowly disappearingPalast der Republik. The DDR Museum¹ sets out to show all facetsof life and growing up in the German Democratic Republic inbasement premises measuring just 400m². The exhibition is composed of seventeen thematic areas, rangingfrom earnest topics such as ‘border’, ‘statesecurity’ and ‘construction’ to the more diverting‘fashion’, ‘consumer goods’ and ‘holidays’.The whole space is designed as a miniature pre-fabricated housingdevelopment, the facades of which incorporate display cabinetsand drawers inviting visitors to explore their contents. Eachthematic area is given roughly the same space, and consequentlythe GDR's dozen or so popular bands get about as much room asthe Stasi.     

The Treasury Resignations of 1958: a Reconsideration

This essay re-examines the resignation of the Conservative TreasuryMinisters in January 1958. It focuses on the political economyof both party and official discussion of inflation, and paysparticular attention to the issue of whether the debate In 1957-8witnessed a dispute between ‘monetarists’ and ‘Keynesians’.it shows that the Chancellor, Thorneycroft, and other Conservatives,including Macmillan, saw the contribution of the monetary systemto inflation in terms of inadequate government control overthe banking system and private credit as much as in terms ofthe level of public expenditure. It concludes that the theoreticaland policy assumptions underpinning the 1957–8 debatehave no direct link with, and did not anticipate, Thatcheriteideas, but that there was an indirect link in terms of sharedperceptions of the social politics of inflation. ^* I would like to express my thanks to the Minda de GunzbergCenter for European Studies. Harvard University for appointingme to a Visiting Scholarship during my sabbatical in the autumnof 1997, during which time this article was written.     

'Stop the Flapper Vote Folly': Lord Rothermere, the Daily Mail, and the Equalization of the Franchise 1927-28

This essay re-examines the Daily Mail's campaign in 1927–8against the Baldwin government's decision to equalize the franchiseby lowering the female voting age to 21. It argues that theMail's hostility to the ‘flapper vote’ was largelya product of the passionate anti-socialism of its proprietor,Lord Rothermere, and not, as has been suggested, the culminationof a decade of anti-feminism. Rothermere was convinced thatyoung women would vote overwhelmingly for the Labour Party andentrench it in government for a generation. But attacks on the‘flapper’ in 1927–8 were generally confinedto the paper's editorial and political columns, and contrastedwith the much more positive portrayal of young women that hadbeen typical of the Mail's output since 1918. The example ofthe Daily Express, which supported franchise equalization, isused to demonstrate that it was Rothermere's idiosyncratic politicalpinions, rather than the ‘typical’ anti-feminismof the Conservative press, that explained the Mail's stance.The article concludes that the gender discourse of interwarnewspapers has been unfairly stereotyped by historians, andthat media hostility to young, unmarried women in these yearshas been exaggerated.     

'A Matter of Regret': Britain, the 1983 Grendada Crisis, and the Special Relationship

When the USA launched a military intervention in Grenada inOctober 1983 it was against the wishes of its closest ally,Britain, who felt deliberately misled as to Washington's intentions.As a former British colony and member of the Commonwealth, withthe Queen as Head of State, Grenada remained of interest toBritain. This article will provide a detailed analysis of Anglo-Grenadianrelations and the events and contacts between the USA and Britainduring and after the 1983 crisis and assess the role of the‘special relationship’ in shaping Britain's reactionto the intervention. I conclude that the conventional wisdomthat Britain was ‘in the dark’ about what was happeningis not entirely accurate. ^*The views expressed in this article represent those of theauthor alone.     

Revisionism Reconsidered: 'Property-owning Democracy' and Egalitarian Strategy in Post-War Britain

Revisionist socialists of the 1950s and 1960s are typicallydepicted as advocates of the ‘Keynesian welfare state’route to economic equality. This article argues that this isan oversimplification: while the revisionists supported thewelfare state, they also aimed to promote equality by redistributingprivate property and expanding social ownership, endorsing anegalitarian version of a ‘property-owning democracy’.The article first discusses the political ideals and calculationsthat motivated the revisionists’ interest in this modelof egalitarian strategy and then examines in turn the threemutually reinforcing strands of policy that this goal generated:greater progressive taxation of wealth; measures to diffuseprivate property ownership and access to marketable skills;and the expansion of novel forms of social ownership.     

Charismatic Legitimation and Bureaucratic Rule: The NSDAP in the Third Reich, 1933-1945

This article deals with the history of the Nazi Party's officeof the Deputy Führer, Rudolf Heß, which after Heß'sflight on 10 May 1941 was renamed the Party Chancellery andled by Martin Bormann. It evaluates the structures and functionsof this important party office which had the exclusive rightto control government legislation. The Deputy Führer'sstaff was established before 1935/36. It consisted of severaloffices which influenced nearly all processes of legislationand tried to introduce Nazi ideology into all sectors of Germansociety. This was done by corresponding intensively with ministerialbureaucracy. Although the staff of the Deputy Führer andof the Party Chancellery acted in a very bureaucratic manner,the article argues that Max Weber's concept of ‘bureaucraticrule’ is not appropriate for analysing the radicalizationof the Nazi régime throughout the Second World War becausethis Weberian ideal type tends to neglect social practices.The same is true for Weber's concept of ‘charismatic rule’which only offers fruitful insights into the social relationsbetween Hitler and his followers.     

'A Suitable Person for Suitable Cases': The Gendering of Juvenile Courts in England, c. 1910-39

This article examines the relationship between the introductionof women Justices of the Peace (JPs) in 1919 and the gendereddevelopment of juvenile courts in England, c. 1910–39.It argues that the campaigns for the appointment of women asJPs and for new methods of dealing with delinquent childrenwere closely connected from 1910 onwards, when the proposalwas first made that ‘suitable’ persons should beappointed to hear ‘suitable’ cases in magistratescourts. Using evidence drawn from government records and othersources, the article examines the interaction of the two campaignsand of feminist and penal reform groups in securing the remodellingof London's juvenile justice system in the Juvenile Courts (Metropolis)Act of 1920. It argues that these arrangements, and similarones adopted elsewhere in England, consciously reflected presumedfamilial and gender roles. It concludes that the replicationof the ‘traditional’ family in the composition ofthe court may have limited the ability of the youth justicesystem to be innovative in its approach to juvenile delinquencyin the period up to 1939. ^* a.f.logan{at}kent.ac.uk     

A Taxing Task: Combating Britain's Relative Decline in the 1960s

The 1960s was a particularly rich period in the history of UKtax reform The decade also saw an ambitious attempt by the UKgovernment to reverse Britain's relative economic decline viathe adoption of a ‘Keynesian-plus’ package of enhanceddemand management, incomes policy, and indicative planning.This article argues that the two phenomena were closely related.It argues that the new Keynesian-plus policy framework transcendedparty ideology and led both the Conservative government andits Labour successor to use the tax system in a constructiveattempt to intervene in the economy to try and raise growth.Nevertheless,despite a high level of elite consensus on the need to makethe tax structure more growth oriented, and despite a good dealof policy continuity between the two governments, viewed asa whole the changes that were made lacked coherence. A combinationof Britain's adversarial party system, a tradition of secretivegovernment Policy-making, and the profound fragmentation ofBritish policy-making, institutions made it impossible to deviseand implement a strategic programme of reform.     

Three's a Crowd?: Government, Owners, and Workers during the Nationalization of the British Coalmining Industry 1945-47

The passing of the coalmining industry into public ownershipon 1 January 1947 should have been an occasion for rejoicingby the Labour Party and its supporters, yet celebrations weremuted by the looming shadow of critical coal shortages Despitethis concurrence of nationalization and coal crisis, littleattention has been focused on possible linkages between thetwo events. More generally, scant consideration has been givento the question of what happened to the industry when facedwith nationalization. This article's principal argument is thatthe fuel crisis was rooted not (as other historians have argued)in the atrocious weather, but in the very process of nationalization—or,rather in the combination of a lack of preparation for publicownership and (even more importantly) in the preoccupation withnationalization at the expense of the ‘stabilization’of the industry before entering the uncharted waters of publicownership. The chief conclusion is that during the run-up toVesting Day neither miners nor owners had any substantial incentiveto improve industrial productivity and output The period wasat best a standstill, and in many ways—as the crisis indicated—wastedmonths that a fuel-starved Britain could ill afford ^*This article is based on my MA thesis, ‘Fresh Start orFalse Dawn⁷ the coalmining Industry and Nationalisation, 1945–7'I would like to thank my supervisors, Ranald Midne and PhilipWilliamson for their continued support, and also David Howelland the referees of Twentieth Century British History for theirvaluable comments on earlier drafts of this work.