Speak for Britain!: A New History of the Labour Party by Martin Pugh

Author:Martin Pugh [Pugh, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781407051550
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2010-03-19T23:00:00+00:00

10

‘Speak for England’: Labour and the Second World War

The Second World War proved to be a crucial watershed in British politics; it dissolved the mood of apathy that had sustained the National government for so long, it accelerated trends in the Labour Party that had been developing since 1931, it enabled Labour to resurrect the national voice it had briefly found in 1918, and it generated a progressive consensus that lasted for several decades.

Yet when Neville Chamberlain reluctantly took Britain to war in September 1939 expectations among Labour’s leaders were low despite their public expressions of confidence. Although the credibility of Chamberlain’s government had dwindled since Munich and began to collapse when Hitler marched into Czechoslovakia in March 1939, contemporaries assumed that he would be difficult to dislodge in a normal election. They discounted the new Gallup polls published by the News Chronicle since 1937 because they could not accept that a small sample accurately reflected public opinion. Throughout the war politicians preferred to rely on their instincts and on precedent which indicated that, as in 1900 and 1918, war generated emotions advantageous to the Conservatives. As a result, the Labour leaders spent the war cocooned in ministerial office and out of touch with trends in the country, unwilling, right to the end, to recognise the electoral earthquake that was moving beneath their feet.

Despite these shortcomings they played a skilful game, though they were helped by the ineptitude of Chamberlain. When German troops crossed into Poland on 1 September, activating the British guarantee, politicians and the public expected to hear a prompt declaration of war. But for two days none came. When Chamberlain notoriously failed to make the announcement in the House of Commons on 2 September he was received in ominous silence by his own members, and L. S. Amery shouted ‘Speak for England!’ across the chamber to Arthur Greenwood who was to reply for Labour. The episode crystallised the entire experience of the Second World War. In contrast to the reaction in August 1914 the Labour Movement showed little hesitation about British entry into war and Attlee and Dalton had been irritated on a recent visit to Paris to find the French socialists ‘either pacifist or defeatist’.1 ‘Thank God,’ Dalton told Lord Halifax on hearing that Britain was at last to declare war on Germany. Labour promptly announced its backing for British entry subject only to insistence on maintaining its right to criticise and its refusal to join any coalition led by Chamberlain. The only fear was that some colleagues might be tempted by offers of jobs by the prime minister. However, Dalton stamped on this idea at a shadow Cabinet meeting, citing the experience of Henderson in the First World War: ‘it is not as though our present leaders were supermen capable of exercising vast influence though in a tiny minority’.2 Reinforced by the PLP, this closed the door to any deal designed to bolster Chamberlain’s failing premiership during the nine months of the ‘Phoney War’. Meanwhile

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