Liberals in Schism by Dutton David

Author:Dutton, David [Dutton, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: I.B. Tauris

4

The War Years and Beyond, 1939–47

It is now widely recognised that the Second World War was a period of crucial importance in the evolution of the modern British political structure. To all parties it posed searching challenges. By its end the party political landscape was scarcely recognisable as that which had characterised the 1920s and 1930s. The maintenance of party organisation, threatened in wartime by the cessation of routine political activity, understandably changed priorities, shortage of funds and enforced absence for military and other reasons, was a particular problem, especially for smaller parties. For them, the difference in terms of critical mass between an infrastructure that could survive and one that could not was narrower than was the case with the larger organisations of the major parties. The Liberal Nationals, like their Liberal cousins, were likely to suffer in this respect. But the war also posed a series of problems more specific to the Liberal Nationals which threatened their very survival. The National Government, to which they owed their existence, came to an end in May 1940 and, although they maintained their place in government under Winston Churchill, their influence within the all-party coalition that was then formed was inevitably diluted by the presence also of Labour and the mainstream Liberal party. In addition, over the course of the war the idea of the ‘threat of socialism’, upon which the party had based much of its electoral propaganda, lost a good deal of its appeal. An increasing number of voters came to see ‘socialism’, however they defined it, as the way ahead, the best means of tackling the enormous problems of postwar reconstruction that would accompany the ending of hostilities. Furthermore, the war also saw the first tranche of Liberal National leaders begin to abandon the political stage. Their replacements were, on the whole, men of lesser stature and influence.

The first casualty was Viscount Runciman. With the outbreak of hostilities Runciman readily gave up his position as Lord President of the Council. In practice this made little difference. He had been ill for much of the year since his return to the cabinet and in February Chamberlain had agreed to three months leave of absence, which had enabled him to embark on a cruise to Australia in a vain attempt to restore his health. Runciman stayed on in the largely honorific post of President of the Liberal National Council until March 1945. But in the Prime Minister’s hastily constructed War Cabinet Liberal Nationals still occupied two out of nine positions, Simon at the Exchequer and Hore-Belisha at the all-important War Office. Beneath them Ernest Brown and Leslie Burgin retained their cabinet-rank posts at the ministries of Labour and Supply respectively.

But it was clear that discontent was brewing inside the parliamentary party. The Liberal Nationals’ contingent of MPs suffered its first defection in December when Clement Davies, the member for Montgomeryshire, resigned the government whip. He wrote to Chamberlain complaining of the government’s failure to take the necessary measures for the vigorous prosecution of the war.

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