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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
The 1931 General Election reduced the Parliamentary Labour Party to forty-six. Though a disappointing result, there was substantial evidence for confidence in the eventual revival of the Party; it had received over six and a half million votes and thirty per cent of the total vote cast, only seven percent less than the total vote it had received in 1929 when Labour formed a government. The departure of Ramsay MacDonald, Philip Snowden, and J. H. Thomas to join the National Government freed the Parliamentary Labour Party from the domination of an important section of its older generation. The 1931 election marked the slow transition of power from one generation to another, often an awkward moment for any political party. There was wide agreement in the party that the years after 1931 should be an interregnum period.
1 Thurtle, E., Time's Winged Chariot (1945), p. 125.Google Scholar
2 ‘History of Labour Party’, Cripps Papers, Nuffield College, Oxford.
3 Attlee wrote a pamphlet for the Socialist League called Local Government and the Socialist Plan (1933). In it he wrote, ‘I associate myself with his conclusion’ referring to Cripps' conclusion in Can Socialism Come by Constitutional Methods?, p. 1. In this essay Cripps put forward some tentative suggestions about the methods of the next socialist government; the proposals were soon to earn him the label of ‘the radical red’. Some of the conclusions Cripps drew and Attlee supported were: prolonging Parliament beyond the five-year term, passing an Emergency Powers Bill through all its stages on the first day of a socialist government to allow rule by ministerial decree. There was a vague mention about a temporary socialist dictatorship, and the abolition of the House of Lords as well as Private Members' Bills.
4 C. R. Attlee and Sir S. Cripps, ‘Joint Stock Banks’, A memorandum to the Labour Party Finance and Trade Committee, January 1933, para. 16 (Dalton Papers, LSE).
5 Ibid. para. 11.
6 Ibid. para. 5.
7 Attlee, C.R., Local Government and the Socialist Plan (1933),Google Scholar pp. 1 ff. Cf. Attlee's ideas on compensation in 1927. ‘Compensation should be paid in the form of bonds or annuities equal to the ascertained value of the capital nationalised. These would bear interest at a fixed rate…’ in Lees-Smith, H., Encyclopaedia of the Labour Movement, 1 (1927), 167.Google Scholar
8 The late Lord Attlee in conversation with the author.
9 Lord Attlee Papers used at his former home in Great Missenden are hereafter cited as CRA. The titles or dates of the documents are given if they are found in the original.
10 Estorick, E., Stafford Cripps (1949), p. 108.Google Scholar
11 Dalton Diaries, 19 January 1934 (Dalton Papers, LSE).
12 Attlee to T. Attlee, 18 August 1933. Thomas Attlee Papers, by courtesy of Mrs T. Attlee, Truro, Cornwall, are hereafter cited as (TA).
13 Attlee was indifferent to the departure of the I.L.P. from the Labour Party since he thought they had no real policies to contribute to the party. ‘I fancy that they will lose a very high proportion of their membership. The trouble is that they have no real ideas on which to work. They talk revolution, but Brockway has the phrases and Maxton the appearance of revolutionaries but nothing more.’ Attlee to T. Attlee, 8 August 1932 (TA).
14 Attlee to T. Attlee, 25 April 1932 (TA).
15 Attlee to T. Attlee, 7 February 1933 (TA).
16 Attlee, C.R., ‘Cabinet Reconstruction’. A memorandum for the Friday Club, 12 10 1932 (Cole Papers, Nuffield College, Oxford).Google Scholar
17 Labour Party Annual Conference Report (1933), p. 162.
18 Attlee, Local Government and the Socialist Plan, p. 2.
19 The Times, 6 March 1933.
20 Attlee and Cripps, ‘Joint Stock Banks’.
21 Attlee, , Social Worker (1920), p. 150.Google Scholar
22 Attlee to T. Attlee, 1 January 1933 (TA).
23 CRA,‘;Dictatorship’, undated.
24 279 H. of C. Debs., 5th Series 33 (13 June 1933).
25 276 H. of C. Debs., 5th Series 2742 (13 April 1933).
26 S. Cripps of Denis [D. N. Pritt], 4 July 1933 (Cripps Papers).
27 Attlee to T. Attlee, 3 April 1933 (TA).
28 Labour Party Annual Conference Report (1934), p. 174.
29 Attlee's international police force was more comprehensive than the existing U.N. force. In 1934 he wrote a pamphlet, An International Police Force, where he suggested that the international force should remove the need for all existing national armies, navies and air forces. The force would be managed by a supernational authority, patrolling designated non-combatant zones. No country would have arms and thus peace would be assured. He was no doubt seeking to duplicate the circumstances in which an English policeman works, not a very realistic parallel for the Europe of 1934.
30 Attlee, C.R., Socialist View of Peace (1935), p. 103.Google Scholar
31 Ibid. p. 120.
32 Labour Party Annual Conference Report (1935), p. 173.
33 Ibid. p. 174.
34 CRA, ‘Prophecies: 10 November 1933’.
35 Attlee to T. Attlee, 1 January 1933 (TA).
36 CRA, ‘Chapters on the Life of the Bullion Family’.
37 CRA,'International’.
38 C. R. Attlee, ‘Plan the International’, New Clarion, 6 August 1932, p. 194.
39 Daily Herald, 26 February 1934.
40 Attlee to T. Attlee, 6 November 1933 (TA).
41 Daily Herald, 12 February 1934.
42 Daily Herald, 27 May 1935.
43 Attlee to C. Clark, 18 January 1932. (By courtesy of Mr Colin Clark.)
44 Attlee to T. Attlee, 18 October 1934 (TA).
45 Ibid.
46 Estorick, op. cit. p. 107.
47 Strauss, P., Cripps—Advocate and Rebel (1943), p. 74.Google Scholar
48 Attlee to T. Attlee, 18 December 1931 (TA).
49 C. R. Attlee, ‘Our George’, Daily Herald, 6 March 1934.
50 Attlee to T. Attlee, 16 November 1931 (TA).
51 Attlee to T. Attlee, 25 April 1932 (TA).
52 Attlee to T. Attlee, 18 October 1934 (TA).
53 Labour Party Annual Conference Report (1933), p. 161.
54 Ibid. p. 162.
55 Labour Party Annual Conference Report (1935), p. 173.
56 Daily Herald, 13 March 1933.
57 Daily Herald, II June 1934.
58 ‘Conversation in the Train’, radio broadcast, 23 April 1932.
59 Dalton Diaries, 23 August 1931.
60 Bullock, A, Life and Times of Ernest Bevin, 1 (1960), 572.Google Scholar
61 A. L. Rowse in conversation with the author.
62 Mr John Parker in conversation with the author.
63 Dalton, H., Fateful Years (1957), p. 82.Google Scholar
64 Sunday Times, 6 October 1935.
65 G. Hicks to C. R. Attlee, 10 October 1935 (CRA).
66 Dalton Diaries, 8 October 1932.
