As we all know, post first world war, a lot of Europe found itself in a world of shit. Germany experienced failed revolutions from the far left and the far right, Italy suffered the
biennio russo which opened the door for a fascist government (and proved that revolutions were not the reserved for the defeated), and Russia went the whole way. What I'm thinking about is how far Britain could have been pushed in one direction or the other. Certainly, there were flashpoints.
1919, for example, was a year of extreme tension. In Glasgow, troops were sent in with a view to quelling an abortive (but widespread - 90,000 workers packed George Square for the raising of the red flag) uprising. Significantly, Glaswegian troops were locked in their barracks, echoes of the Petrograd and Moscow revolutionary vanguards, spearheaded by local troops, still fresh in the minds of the Coalition Government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Clydeside
The same year, in Liverpool, a Police strike led to an unprecedented response by Lloyd George. Following widespread looting, DLG deployed HMS Valiant, a modern battleship with destroyer escort, to the Mersey. Thankfully, tensions were diffused before a shell was fired, but one must only look at photographs of Dublin after the Easter Rising of '16 to know how devestating these weapons could be.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c4/HMS_Valiant_(1914).jpg
Finally, in 1926, Britain faced its first and only General Strike, in support of miners looking for better working conditions. Here, armoured cars protected food convoys (a precaution suggested by Churchill), buses were overturned in Glasgow and police baton-charged crowds in Doncaster. One major flashpoint could have been, however, the derailment outside Newcastle of the
Flying Scotsman. Strikers had pulled up tracks in order to further the effectiveness of the strike (bizarelly, the driver was pulled over and warned of this by a couple of strikers, but decided to go on anyway). In OTL, no-one was seriously hurt, but it strikes me that a few deaths (not all too implausible given the nature of the accident) may have accentuated the tensions in what Walter Citrine (GenSec of the TUC) called 'the storm that never broke'.
What I suppose i'm suggesting here is there was enough underlying resentment present in Britain during this period (workers were genuinely unhappy with their working conditions, the Tories [or technically the
Coalition in 1919, but with DLG at the head, and with the Tory minority, it may as well have been] unwilling to appear weak in the face of percieved 'Bolshevism'), we have the powder, and with the deployment of armed force and disgruntled mobs respectively, we have the potential for a spark. It seems miraculous, in fact, that it never did come to that - this list is by no means exhaustive. Class differences post-war were less marked than pre, due to a coming together during the struggle (plus workers getting a voice with the 1918 Rep of People Act), but my belief is that a single shoot-out, however quickly contained, could have had vast consequences on the divide between left and right wing politics in this country.
I am not suggesting that, had troops fired upon strikers, or civilians been killed in rail disasters, that we would have had a United Socialist Soviet Britain or, at the other end of the spectrum, a Fascist one. In fact, given Britain's historical security and the safety of its institutions, this is highly unlikely. However, an event so emotive as armed violence on the streets would, in my opinion, at the very least, radicalise the major parties. Labour would certainly not resemble the moderates under Macdonald that governed in 1924, whilst the Tories would stiffen in response, cracking down harder on unions and any percieved sedition (the Libs are dead anyway by now -
or are they?) To look too far ahead induces too many butterflies for a mere throwing out of ideas, but a national government (especially one under a Labour PM) is obviously impossible. Basically, any of my PODs would, in my opinion, move Britain away from the centrist politics it has pursued since then. Perhaps a landscape more like Italy today, with more radical, though by no means extremist, parties, at the forefront.
These are just my assorted thoughts, but i'm really far more interested in yours...