A healthier, longer-lived Stafford Cripps

During the 1930's, Stafford Cripps was considered to be on the extreme left wing of the Labour Party. (Incidentally, he illustrated one of the great dilemmas of the Left in those years: the tension between anti-war and anti-fascist sentiments. In 1935 he had to resign from the national executive of the Labour Party because he objected to its support for League of Nations sanctions against Italy; yet later he became an opponent of appeasement and was actually expelled from the Labour Party in 1939 for advocating an anti-fascist Popular Front that would include the Communist Party as well as anti-appeasement Liberals and Conservatives. He was not readmitted until 1945.) However, under Attlee, Cripps--who was Chancellor of the Exchequer after 1947--became known as a stern advocate of austerity to boost exports and stabilize the pound, even though some of this austerity had to be at the expense of the working class.

Anyway, ill health compelled Cripps to resign from office and retire from public life in October 1950, and he was to die in Switzerland in 1952. His successor as Chancellor of the Exchequer was Hugh Gaitskell. My what-if is: Suppose Cripps had been somewhat healthier in 1950 (his health had not really been good for a long time) and was able to stay in office? In OTL, the Korean War and the necessity of additional defense spending required Gaitskell in early 1951 to introduce a budget demanding additional sacrifices--including having National Health Service patients pay half the cost of eyeglasses and false teeth (hitherto supplied without charge). This led to the Bevanite revolt that split the Labour Party--Bevan had declared that he would never be a member of a Government that would impose any charge on those who used the NHS. He followed through on this threat in April 1951, resigning and taking with him two other Cabinet ministers--John Freeman and future Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

Harold Macmillan in *Tides of Fortune 1945-1955*, p. 339, argues that if Cripps had still been Chancellor, Labour might have remained much more united:

"Yet he [Attlee] must have felt deeply the loss of Cripps. Gaitskell certainly followed Cripps's strict theories, and invited the same sense of duty and sacrifice amongst all classes to which Cripps had appealed. It was evident that Cripps would have introduced these or similar limitations in social expenditure. Even in the Health Service, then and now the Sacred Cow of Socialism, his authority with the Left of the party was so great that Bevan's revolt would have carried little weight or might never have taken place. Bevan was a genial, impulsive and not wholly unworldly revolutionary. But Cripps, with his odour of sanctity and his fine record of violent agitation, was the 'sea-green incorruptible'--the Robespierre, not the Danton. To this pre-eminence in his party Gaitskell could not yet aspire, although his courage and determination never failed..."

A few questions:

(1) Is Macmillan right that Cripps could have prevented the Bevanite revolt or at least minimized its importance? Maybe Bevan himself feels obligated to resign rather than to approve the imposition of costs for any NHS services. But he might not take Wilson or any other influential Labour figure with him.

(2) If so, would that have enabled Labour to win in 1951 (remember that it was a closely-contested general election, and that Labour actually got more votes--though fewer constituencies--than the victorious Tories)?

(3) Suppose Labour still loses in 1951. When it is time for Attlee to retire as Leader of the Labour Party, will Gaitskell (who in this ATL will never have been Chancellor of the Exchequer or presumably Shadow Chancellor either, assuming Cripps is healthy enough to fill this job after 1951) still be elected to succeed him? And if not, who is chosen? (I assume that in December 1955 Cripps himself is not a plausible candidate for health and other reasons--but who will he support?) Maybe Bevan's chances would be greater than in OTL, precisely because his revolt will have been more isolated; it will be seen as an individual's conscientious decision, not a splitting of Labour's ranks.
 
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