Second Chances:
George V (Windsor, 1910-36)
Edward VIII (Windsor, 1936-8)
Henry IX (Windsor, 1938-19XX)
Bonar Law (1922-3)
Conservative majority, 1922-3
1922 def. John Robert Clynes (Labour), Herbert Asquith (Liberal), David Lloyd George (National Liberal);
Stanley Baldwin (1923-4)
Conservative majority, 1923-4
Conservative minority, 1924
1923 def. Ramsay MacDonald (Labour), Herbert Asquith (Liberal);
Ramsay MacDonald (1924)
Labour minority with Liberal confidence and supply, 1924
Stanley Baldwin (1924-9)
Conservative majority, 1924-9
1924 def. Ramsay MacDonald (Labour), Herbert Asquith (Liberal - defeated);
Ramsay MacDonald (1929-31)
Labour minority with Liberal confidence and supply, 1929-31
1929 def. Stanley Baldwin (Conservative), David Lloyd George (Liberal);
Neville Chamberlain (1931-6)
Conservative, leading minority coalition with Liberal Nationals, 1931
Conservative, leading majority coalition with Liberal Nationals, 1931-6
1931 def. George Lansbury (Labour), David Lloyd George (Liberal), John Simon (Liberal National);
John Robert Clynes (1936-42)
Labour, leading majority coalition with Liberals and Independent Labour, 1936-8
Labour, leading War Government with Conservatives, Liberals, and Liberal Nationals, 1938-42
Labour, leading Caretaker Government, 1942
1936 def. Neville Chamberlain (Conservative), Herbert Samuel (Liberal), John Simon (Liberal National), James Maxton (Independent Labour);
A.V. Alexander (1942-)
Labour, leading Caretaker Government, 1942
Labour majority, 1942-
1942 def. Kingsley Wood (Conservative), Archibald Sinclair (Liberal), Richard Acland/James Maxton (Radical/Independent Labour);
History is not kind to those who do not write. That is, until, they receive another chance.
John Robert Clynes had lead the Labour Party to its breakthrough in the 1922 election when it formed the official Opposition for the first time. The honour of being the first Labour Prime Minister would not be his, however, when former Party Parliamentary Chairman Ramsay MacDonald successfully challenged him for the leadership. MacDonald would go on to form two minority administrations in 1924 and from 1929-31, Clynes faithfully serving as Deputy Leader. Unassuming and modest, and a witty and engaging speaker, Clynes often served as a peacemaker between a leadership increasingly disconnected from the party's radicalised membership.
The Great Depression exploded the optimistic promises of Labour and when MacDonald's Cabinet, Clynes included, refused to back cutting employment benefits, he relinquished both the Premiership and the Leadership. In the ensuing contest Clynes came second out of fourth to the similarly unprepossessing William Graham and the swashbuckling and self-confident Oswald Mosley, losing out to the elderly radical George Lansbury, in whose person the party demanded greater clarity and purity of purpose. Disappointed to lose out once more, Clynes was mollified when Lansbury request he remain as Deputy Leader as a safe pair of hands.
Meanwhile the Conservatives re-entered government, taking with them the Gladstonian wing of the Liberals. Neville Chamberlain at last secured the job his father and half-brother had coveted. Indeed, Austen Chamberlain largely controlled foreign affairs, his younger brother's ambitious domestic agenda subordinated to his belief in balancing Britain's books. For most this meant harsh austerity, although one of the more notable features of his tenure was a vast slum clearance and housebuilding program that hearkened back to Neville's formative days as Lord Mayor of Birmingham. The "ChamberLair" style remains an iconic house type from Depression-era Britain.
Clynes and Lansbury complimented each other well; Lansbury's Christian pacifist ideals, honourable to some, impractical to others, were allied with Clynes' strong grasp of electioneering and administrative abilities. As Philip Snowden described Clynes, "he was often put up to calm the storm". As Europe slid into authoritarianism, and the restored Kaiserreich of Oskar I and Mussolini's Italy came to blows over Austria, Lansbury's strident pacifism would come under increasing criticism. Nonetheless he and Clynes provided robust if somewhat inconsistent opposition to the government, the Labour leader's tenderness contrasting sharply with the Prime Minister's managerial severity.
It would be foreign affairs that overtook both Lansbury and the Chamberlains. When Italy made moves against Abyssinia in 1936 to settle a decades-long grudge, the French and British governments negotiated a settlement favourable to them. A realpolitik gesture designed to keep Italy on side as a potential anti-German ally, it effectively truncated the ancient African state into an Italian satellite. The leak proved highly damaging to the government, and the only hope of a response was to impose sanctions that came too late to save Abyssinia.
At the 1936 Labour Party Conference the prevailing mood was to condemn the government for the Chamberlain-Laval Pact and supports its sanctions; Lansbury, ever the believer in nonviolent resolutions, passionately articulated the case for Christian pacifism, his speech well-received until the trade union titan Ernest Bevin spectacularly demolished his response, saying that Lansbury "hawked his conscience around the party to be told what to do with it". With the support of the powerful union block vote the Conference backed the sanctions. Lansbury, cut to the bone, resigned. Clynes took to the platform to praise both Lansbury's principle and Bevin's boisterous patriotism, redirecting the party's stance as an attack on the government. He would stand as the unity candidate in the leadership contest, safely beating Herbert Morrison, William Graham, and Stafford Cripps.
When George V died in autumn 1936 his playboy son Edward VIII swiftly changed the monarch's relationship with the government. Throwing off his father's stoicism he made frequent visits to depressed areas and commented on how Britain ought to forge new ties with the autocracies of Europe against the Communist menace, much to the consternation of the public, even as he gained a large following in the country. Mussolini recalled years afterwards that Edward wrote endless letters to him and Oskar in the hope of co-opting them into a grand anti-Soviet triumvirate, to which the Duce replied the English would find their rain in Hell before he and Oskar ever spoke to each other. The new king too publicly dismissed the Chamberlain-Laval pact as "really quite a pitiful little mess", which did the government no good in the election of that year. Clynes was swept to power, even if it meant he had to rely on Herbert Samuel's Liberals.
Now only a few years younger than Lansbury, Clynes set about the task he had waited 14 years for, and that principally meant to get Britain working once more. Chamberlain's housing project was continued with a greater focus on cheap accommodation to rent and key industries were nationalised. Samuel's Liberals negotiated lower taxes than Clynes would have liked as part of the coalition agreement, but the two parties made substantial progress elsewhere. Plans to abolish the Lords stalled and a free vote on adopting the Alternative Vote for general elections was widely defeated, but Select Committees of the Commons would be greatly strengthened and key industries nationalised. Clynes found the King's interventions increasingly frustrating, but knew enough to redirect such actions elsewhere. The King's persistent "advice" often took the form of off-hand comments in the papers, embarrassing to his government, somewhat well-meaning, but naive. His father had not properly trained him for statecraft and had not believed him able.
But the most concerning attitude of King Edward was his growing friendship with Kaiser Oskar. The latter had made intrigues against Austria and had already re-occupied the Rhineland in 1936, forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles and although he did not make allies easily, Oskar was considered by many in Britain to be moving against the vindictive Versailles settlement and a lesser evil than Stalin, who had secured an alliance with the Republican regime in Spain. Italy's bridges with France and Britain were burned with the Chamberlain-Laval Affair, and so engineered an anti-German alliance with Poland and Hungary. When Clynes and his Cabinet discovered through the early morning edition of The Daily Telegraph Edward's intentions to marry Oskar's niece Frederica of Hanover - despite the 23 year age difference - along with Edward's hopes of a renewed Anglo-German settlement, with loose but suggestive indications of revising the Versailles settlement, they issued him with an ultimatum - either he would call off the engagement, or the government would resign. Clynes had similarly consulted with the new Leader of the Opposition, Kingsley Wood, similarly horrified. Both pledged to not serve if asked. The public reaction was one of muted sympathy to Germany, some admiration for the King for his desire for love and international peace against the Soviets, but others criticised the obvious age difference between and the connections with another Kaiser. The Conservative leadership allied with the press barons Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook organised a publicity campaign of concerned citizens campaigning against the marriage, in reality, endeavouring the King to withdraw completely from the political stage. Clynes knew the pressure on the monarch, young and already weary of his duties was greater than that on the government. But it would be the shock German-Soviet partition of Poland that drew the world into war.
The British and the French had tried to bring the Soviets on side but could not give firm guarantees, even as pacifism remained strongly embedded in public discourse (especially for George Lansbury, now Clynes' League of Nations Secretary devising Home Rule for Palestine). With the King swiftly abdicating in favour of his brother Prince Henry, a former solider of some service who was now regarded as a more reliable and (unironically, to the public) sober figurehead for wartime, the British and French opted to issue a declaration of war against Germany only, criticising the Soviet invasion of Poland but sending aid when Japan joined the war to seize Siberia. Throughout 1938 and into 1939 the Italians, Spanish, French, and British fought a war of movement against the Panzers of Heinz Guderian in the Low Countries, making painful process in the Alpine front. A bungled German flanking through Switzerland heralded repeated, but gradual pushbacks going into 1940, the Americans under President Wilkie standing aloof in Europe but pouring aid into China and the Soviet Union. Clynes proved an able and astute war manager, working with the equally unprepossessing Kingsley Wood, two quiet, studious men from provincial backgrounds who forged something of a friendship in the dark days of the War as in desperation chemical weapons were used by both sides as their heartlands came under attack. The Soviets, having bested the Japanese after a brief winter campaign in the spring of 1939, took the opportunistic chance to invade Germany from the east in 1941; caught in a vice, Germany surrendered, but not before armed clashes between Soviet and Allied forces threatened a new world war.
A rough peace settlement was drawn and a Second German Republic proclaimed, sufficiently strong to stand against the Soviet backed Polish and Czechoslovak satellites to the east, while a palace coup in Japan ousted the military junta, surrendering scapegoat officers to the Soviets as she made plans to seize the European colonies to the south. India had at last achieved independence, asserting itself independently of London, and the Americans and Soviets were both ploughing their energies into building a weapon to unlock the power of the atom. His age catching up with him, Clynes resigned the leadership, handing over to his loyal First Lord of the Admiralty, who now looked set to lead Britain into a hopeful, but uncertain future.
Truly, John Robert Clynes has made his mark upon the world.
