Keeping the British Liberal Party Flag Flying High! (Revised Edition) (Beta)

[Van555]

Hello Everyone!

I know what you're thinking if you know me.

"Another Van555 project that lasts all of month!:

While an understandable reaction this time it's different because I'm not the creator as much as a collaborator and an editor.

This is a beta for the (authorized) revised version of pipisme's flagship timeline Keeping the British Liberal flag flying high"

The end goal of this endeavor is to have a project that is truly complete enough to hold it's head high in the Finished Timelines section of the forum. But while I was doing the work for this in a test thread I realized something. Reposting the refined timeline here might spark the interest of new and old readers and allow me to get feedback on the revisions. It would also serve as place where the scope of the timeline's world could be expanded thus justifying calling it beta because it's possible whole sections of the final timeline haven't been imagined yet.

Hopefully now that I explained myself we can get started!

My revision to the timeline won't change the fact that a pipisme timelines tend to lean towards being lighter and softer then our world was instead of being darker and harder so don't expect nuclear armageddon to break out!

 

[Van555]

Prologue: The Strange Survival of the Liberal Party

The POD (Point of Departure) for this TL is the British general election of 6 December 1923, which was called by Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin in order to win a majority for imposing tariffs on imported goods. The Liberal and Labour Parties fought on a policy of maintaining free trade. In OTL the result was Conservative 258 seats (38.1% of the vote), Labour 191 seats (30.5%), Liberal 159 seats (29.6%), others 7 seats (1.8%). * Baldwin didn't resign but when Parliament met in January 1924, his government was defeated in the House of Commons in a vote of no confidence and Ramsay McDonald, the leader of the Labour Party, became Prime Minister of a minority Labour government on 22 January 1924.

It is likely that if the Liberals rather than Labour had come second to the Tories in 1923, the Liberal leader Herbert Asquith would have become Prime Minister. In this TL the Liberal vote is up by 3%, the Labour vote is down by 2% and the Conservative is down by 1%.

The book British parliamentary election results 1918-1949, lists the results in all constituencies. For the December 1923 general election I made the following changes compared to the actual results in each constituency contested by at least two of the three major parties: Three party contests Liberal + 3%, Conservative -1%, Labour -2%; Liberal/Conservative straight fights Liberal + 2%, Conservative -2%; Liberal/Labour straight fights Liberal + 2.5%, Labour -2.5%; Conservative/Labour straight fights Conservative +0.5%, Labour -0.5%.

*Some sources give the result as Liberal 158 seats and others 8 seats. That is because they count the Independent Liberal elected for Cardiganshire as an Independent. I have counted him as a Liberal.

This produces the following result:

United Kingdom general election, 6th December 1923
[Differences from the result of the 15th November 1922 GE (General Election) in brackets.]

Conservative: 229 seats [-115]
Liberal: 207 seats [+145]
Labour: 172 seats [+30]
Nationalist: 3 seats [No Change]
Independent: 3 seats [No Change]
Scottish Prohibition: 1 seat [No Change]
National Liberal: 0 seats [-53, reunited with the Liberals.*]

Total Seats: 615

Total Vote and Vote Percentage, 1923
[Difference from the 15th November 1922 GE total vote and vote percentage in brackets.]

Conservative: 5,397,501 or 37.1%. [-1.4%]
Liberal: 4,742,818 or 32.6%. [+13.7%]
Labour: 4,146,328 or 28.5%. [-1.2%]
Others: 261,874 or 1.8%. [-1.2%]
National Liberal: 0 or 0% [-9.9%*]

Total Vote: 14,548,521

Voter Turnout was at 71.1%, a 1.9% decrease by from the 73% that were recorded as voting in general election on 15th November 1922.

*The political landscape was changed once more when the new Prime Minister and Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin decided to call a general election to seek a mandate to abandon free trade and introduce tariffs. Despite the deep hostility between the leaders of the Liberal and National Liberal parties, the call for a defense of Free Trade once more enabled all of them to unite around their most distinctive policy.

The Liberals did well against the Conservatives in agricultural seats in England. A major reason for this was the large decline in agricultural prices from 1920. The price of wheat per hundredweight in 1923 was down by 59%, while that of barley was 58% less.

To the relief of many Liberals, Winston Churchill standing as a Liberal was defeated in the Labour held seat of Leicester West.

Because the Conservatives were the largest party in the House of Commons Baldwin did not resign, but decided to wait until the new session of Parliament met on 8 January 1924 to see if the Liberal and Labour Parties would unite to defeat him in a vote of no confidence. He hoped that rivalry between those two parties would mean that one of them would abstain on such a vote. As planned, the 33rd Parliament of the United Kingdom met on 8th January and the debate in the House of Commons on the King's Speech began on 15th January. However before the vote on the Kings' Speech on 19th January the two parties had agreed that if Baldwin's government were to be defeated, Asquith would become Prime Minister of a Liberal only minority government, but that a Liberal-Labour Parliamentary Liaison Committee (usually called the Liaison Committee) of five leading Liberal parliamentarians and four prominent Labour members, with a Liberal chairman would be established. It would be consulted on all matters of major legislation and policy.

The government was defeated on the vote of no confidence on 19th January 1924 and Baldwin and his government resigned. The next day Herbert Asquith became Prime Minister of a Liberal government. Here is a partial list of his cabinet:

Prime Minister and Leader of the House of Commons: Herbert Asquith

Chancellor of the Exchequer: David Lloyd George

Foreign Secretary: Sir Francis Acland

Home Secretary: Sir John Simon

President of the Board of Trade: Thomas MacNamara

Colonial and Dominions Secretary: Charles Frederick George Masterman

War Secretary: James Ian MacPherson

India Secretary: Lord Sinha

Minister of Agriculture: George Lambert

Minister of Health: Sir Alfred Mond

President of the Board of Education: William Wedgwood Benn.

Lloyd George was unofficially Deputy Prime Minister, though he did not have that actual title. Lord Sinha was Indian and the first non-white person to be a member of a British cabinet.

The only woman in the government was Margaret Wintringham as Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Agriculture.

You guys may need a glossary for some terms that are thrown around a lot in this timeline.

OTL means Our Timeline. It's a term which is used in the Alternate Historical community to describe how events went in the world we (presumably) all inhabit right now.

TTL means This Timeline. It's a term used to describe how events have diverged from what happened in our world.

If you're wondering why I'm using the Lib Dem color for the Liberal party it's mainly because the actual UK Liberal color is a major strain on the eyes. The fact that it would also serve as likely direction for an influential Liberal in terms of symbology and colors doesn't hurt.

P.S. If one was a butterfly effect purist, the presence of fictional characters who must have been born before the PoD playing important roles later on in the timeline may raise some eyebrows. If it helps your sense of immersion I would place the technical point of departure for this timeline in the late 1890's. The change must have been rather minor as events only really start to diverge from how things played out in our world in late 1923 when the voting habits of the British electorate change.

 

[Van555]

Section 1: 1924-1928 - Economy, Retrenchment, and Reform!

Chapter 1: The Armenian Detour

There was no urgent foreign policy crisis facing the new Liberal government when it took office. Its foreign policy was based on wholehearted support for the League of Nations in the tradition of Liberal internationalism. It wanted a prompt settlement of the German reparations question.

The Liberal Party had been anti-Turkish since the 1870s. In its manifesto for the 1923 general election (1) it declared:

It was not enough that we should abandon all for which we fought against Turkey in the war. By the shameless Treaty of Lausanne we have also surrendered all the securities for British commerce in Turkey which we enjoyed before the war.

I assume that the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire is what is meant by "all for which we fought against Turkey in the war".

There was much support and sympathy among Liberals for the restoration of an independent Armenia in Anatolia, to which Turkey had agreed by the Treaty of Sevres in 1920. The Treaty of Lausanne annulled this treaty in 1923, and established the present day borders of Turkey in OTL.

In March 1924, Foreign Secretary Acland proposed to the League of Nations Council that a plebiscite be held in the area designated as independent Armenia by the Treaty of Sevres. He was not supported by any major power. France might have been the most sympathetic and anti-Turkish, but that country was a signatory of the Treaty of Lausanne and Raymond Poincare who was Prime Minister of France then was still PM in February 1924.

The United States was not a member of the League of Nations and was not a signatory to the Treaty of Lausanne, though the United States had participated as an observer. The Wilson administration had backed the cause of Armenian independence, though Admiral Mark Bristol, the US High Commissioner in Constantinople from 1919 -1927, did everything in his power to combat the pro-Armenians in that administration. Charles Evans Hughes, Secretary of State from March 1921, had been a leading member of the American Committee for the Independence of Armenia (ACIA) but had resigned from that body in February 1921. His policy now was that America would strive to maintain a pragmatic accommodation with Turkey.

The British government could not take military action to restore Armenian independence, but it did establish diplomatic relations with the Democratic Republic of Armenia in exile. Meanwhile C. F. G. Masterman, the Colonial and Dominions Secretary embarked on a tour of Canada, Australia and New Zealand where his speeches in support of Armenian independence were met with rapturous applause. In World War I he had played a crucial role in publicising reports of the Armenian genocide. The government's Armenian policy had the fervent support of the Friends of Armenia, a relief organisation founded in 1897.

The British government's Armenian policy was also strongly supported by the British Armenia Committee.

On April 24, 1924 in a speech to the British Armenia Committee, the Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, said that the British people will never forget the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians by the Turks between 1915 and 1916, and their attempted destruction of Armenian culture and the Armenian nation, truly a crime against humanity. (2) He affirmed that the British government will do all that is practicable to ensure justice and freedom for the Armenian people. Aurora Mardiganian, an Armenian woman survivor of the massacres, and author of the book Ravished Armenia published in 1918, and a star of the film of the same name made in 1919, also spoke at the meeting.

Asquith's speech was vehemently denounced by the Turkish government of Mustafa Kemal, which denied that the government of the Ottoman Empire had authorised any massacres of Armenians or the destruction of Armenian culture. Turkey broke off diplomatic relations with Britain.

Because of the hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the British Empire - in India, Egypt, Mesopotamia and other countries, the British government stressed that its Armenian policy was not anti-Muslim. It also rejected any idea that it supported Greek claims to Turkish territory. However a House of Commons motion advocating that Constantinople be made into a free city under the protection of the League of Nations was signed by 71 Liberal MPs.

While the government's Armenian policy was supported by Liberals, Labour and some Conservatives, most Conservatives opposed it. They accused the government of being unnecessarily antagonistic towards Turkey, which was a bulwark against Communist Russia. Also Britain needed to maintain good relations with Turkey for the sake of its oil reserves.

Footnotes

(1) The text of the manifesto is here: http://www.libdemmanifesto.com/1923/1923-liberal-manifesto.shtml .

(2) The term genocide had not yet been coined.

Poor Armenians!

 

[Van555]

Section 1: 1924-1928 - Economy, Retrenchment, and Reform!

Chapter 2: Getting down to business, Winston Churchill's defection and the "Flapper Vote".

On February 3, 1924, Prime Minister Asquith appointed Frederick Edward Guest, generally known as Freddie (1), as British ambassador to the United States. Freddie Guest was Liberal MP for Stroud in Gloucestershire and Secretary for Air from 1921 to 1922 in the Lloyd George coalition government. In 1905, he married Amy Phipps (1873-1959), daughter of American industrialist Henry Phipps. Amy was prominent as a women's suffragist and owed valuable property on Long Island.

Some people said that Asquith appointed Freddie Guest to the Ambassadorship only because his wife was a rich American. Of course that was one important reason, but he was qualified for the job.

In accordance with precedent the new ambassador was knighted as Sir Frederick Edward Guest, though he was still widely known as Freddie. His wife became Lady Amy Guest, though she never used the title. He was a great success as British ambassador to the US. He and Amy were luminaries on the Washington D.C. and New York/Long Island social circuits. Amy's American informality was a much welcome breath of fresh air in the previously stuffy British embassy. They forged strong contacts with all the political, literary and financial movers and shakers in the US. In fact Amy became close friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the former Assistant Secretary of the Navy and Democratic Vice Presidential candidate in 1920.

In March 1924 the Asquith government established full diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, as promised in the Liberal manifesto for the 1923 general election. There was opposition from much of the Conservative Party, though those Tories who had experience in foreign policy accepted that such a recognition was inevitable sooner or later.

A major focus of the government's foreign policy was a settlement of German reparations and for the withdrawal of French and Belgian troops from the Ruhr valley in Germany. The Allied Reparations Commission asked Charles G. Dawes, an American banker and politician to find a solution to which all parties could agree. The committee under Dawes as chairman produced what was called the Dawes Plan. (2) This provided for the withdrawal of occupation troops from the Ruhr and a plan for the payment of German reparations.

Winston Churchill resigned from the Liberal Party on January 18, 1924, the day after Asquith became Prime Minister because his Liberal government had the support of the Labour Party. He called it a base surrender to socialism. He said that he would be an anti-socialist independent, and that he would try to return to the House of Commons when a suitable seat becomes vacant in a by-election.

The second reading of the Representation of the People Bill took place in the House of Commons on February 8, 1924. The Representation of the People Act 1918 had given the vote to women aged 30 or over, who were eligible to vote in local government elections because they were ratepayers (local taxpayers) or the wives of local ratepayers. The new bill gave the vote to all women aged 21 or over on the same terms as men at the next general election.

It was supported by Liberals and Labour. The Conservative leadership was officially neutral. They were in favour of equal suffrage at age 21 in principle, but they argued that the change was too soon after the last one in 1918 and that it should be after agreement among all parties.

However a sizable number of Conservative MPs argued that women in their twenties were too young to be given the franchise. One called them flighty young ladies. Sir William Bull (Hammersmith South), who was a member of the Speakers Conference in 1917 which accepted the principle of female franchise, thirty was the compromise age which was agreed to by women's suffrage organisations. Although they denied this version of the Conference, it was supported by other Conservative MPs.

The Second Reading was passed by a substantial majority. But while 67 Conservatives voted against, 51 voted in favour including Nancy Astor (Plymouth: Sutton) who gave what was generally regarded as the most brilliant speech in favour of the bill. Of course, the Liberals stressed the fact that only a minority of Conservative MPs had voted for giving women the vote at age 21 or over.

In the Committee Stage two Conservatives tabled an amendment to equalise the voting age at 25 for both men and women. But they received little support even from their own party.

Meanwhile, the Daily Mail was mounting a campaign against the bill and what it called the "flapper vote". It condemned the lack of principles of the Tory leaders.

After the bill had received its Third Reading in the House of Commons it went to the Conservative dominated House of Lords. It received its Second Reading there in early May 1924. Enough Conservative Lords abstained to give it a majority. By the middle of the month it had received the royal assent and had become law.

Footnotes

(1) Here is the wikipedia entry for Freddie Guest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Guest.

(2) The Dawes Plan is the same in this TL as it was in OTL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawes_Plan.

The Daily Mail seems to be on the wrong side of everything.

 

[Van555]

Section 1: 1924-1928 - Economy, Retrenchment, and Reform!

Chapter 3: Henderson's quest for a seat and the fate of the "Children of the Empire"

The prominent Labour politician Arthur Henderson had been defeated in the constituency of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne East by the Liberals in the December 1923 general election, and was waiting for a suitable by-election to return to the House of Commons.

Such an opportunity arose with the death of Dan Irving, the Labour MP for the Lancashire town of Burnley. However Burnley was a three-way marginal with only 5% separating the winning Labour candidate and the third-placed Conservative. The Labour Party put pressure on the Liberals not to contest the by-election and to allow Henderson a straight fight against the Conservatives. The Liberals refused as they did not want to be sucked into an electoral alliance with Labour and because Labour candidates had stood against Liberals in general elections and by-elections.

A safe Labour seat was found for Henderson, when the Labour MP for Leeds South-East agreed to stand down in exchange for being given a hereditary peerage and thus becoming a member of the House of Lords. Henderson easily won the by-election on February 28, 1924. On the same day, the Liberals won the Burnley by-election with he the Conservatives in third place (1).

The appointment of Freddie Guest as British Ambassador to the United States meant a by-election in the Liberal held constituency of Stroud. This took place on March 12, 1924. The successful Liberal candidate was Sir John Tudor Walters. He had been a Liberal MP from 1906-1922 and had unsuccessfully contested the Conservative held seat of Pudley and Otley in Yorkshire in the 1923 general election. He was an expert on housing and chairman of a government-appointed committee on housing which published its report in November 1918. He was Paymaster-General from 1920 to 1922. It was widely expected that he would be appointed to the cabinet at the next cabinet reshuffle.

At the by-election on March 19, 1924 in the gold-plated Conservative constituency of Westminster Abbey caused by the death of the Conservative MP, Winston Churchill stood as an Independent Anti-Socialist candidate. He lost to the Conservative candidate by only 861 votes with Liberal third and Labour fourth. In the general election the Conservative had been returned unopposed.

In the early 1920s in OTL, British children from orphanages, Poor Law institutions and from poor homes where their parents were deemed unable to look after them, were shipped to Australia, Canada or South Africa. Most of the children were not orphans.

At best these "Children of the Empire", as they were called, were used as cheap labour on farms, the girls became unpaid domestic servants. At worst they were treated with cruelty and sexually abused. In the winter of 1923 there were suicides by three boys in Canada and five in Australia. The Social Services Council of Canada was adamantly opposed to child migration.

In March 1924, Asquith appointed a committee under the chairmanship of Eglantyne Jebb, the founder of Save the Children Fund, to investigate the situation of these children in Canada. The committee spent eight weeks in Canada.

The Jebb Report published in November 1925, advocated the ending of emigration of children under the age of 16, unless with their parents or guardians, and of orphans under the age of 16. Emigration of children of 16 or over must be entirely voluntary. This report was accepted by the British government and legislation was enacted implementing its recommendations.

Footnotes

(1) In OTL Henderson was elected for Burnley in the by-election on February 28 in a straight fight with the Conservatives. The Liberals did not contest the by-election though they had contested the constituency in the previous general election.

It's at this point you can tell Labour is starting to lose the momentum it had in OTL.

 

[Van555]

Section 1: 1924-1928 - Economy, Retrenchment, and Reform!

Chapter 4: Electoral Reform Fails and Churchill Wins

The second reading of the Electoral Reform Bill was debated towards the end of April 1924 in the House of Commons. This provided for the replacement of the first past the post (FPTP) system for elections to the House of Commons by the single transferable vote (STV), except in the eleven largest rural constituencies in Scotland and Wales where the alternative vote (AV) would be used (1). Introducing the bill, Sir John Simon, the Home Secretary, said that if it were given a second reading, members would have the opportunity to vote on an amendment substituting AV for STV.

In the debate most Conservative and Labour members opposed the bill, though Leo Amery speaking from the Conservative Front Bench in a personal capacity supported it. He said that PR would prevent permanent domination by one party.

The bill was defeated by 245 votes to 216 votes.

The votes for were:

Liberal: 163
Labour: 37
Conservative: 12
Others: 4

Total: 216

The votes against were:

Conservative: 154
Labour: 89
Liberal: 2

Total: 245

After the vote against the Electoral Reform Bill, the Home Secretary announced that the government would not introduce legislation to change the voting system during the current parliament.

The Liberals were not too disappointed by the defeat of the Electoral Reform Bill by 29 votes. The fact that about 60 Conservative and 45 Labour members had not voted meant that some of them could change their mind and vote for PR in a new parliament.

The unseating of Frank Gray, the Liberal MP for Oxford because his agent had falsified the account for his expenses in the 1923 general election, necessitated a by-election in that constituency. The Liberals chose as their candidate Charles McCurdy who was Minister of Food Control from March 1920 to March 1921. When that department was abolished; he was Liberal Chief Whip until October 1922. He lost his seat of Northampton to Labour in 1923. Sir Robert Sanders a former Conservative MP and cabinet minister wrote in his diary that McCurdy was "a particularly bad-tempered fellow".

The Conservatives feared that if, as was widely expected, Winston Churchill contested the by-election as an Independent Anti-Socialist candidate, he would split the Conservative vote and allow McCurdy to win. They had high hopes of winning the seat because of the circumstances of the by-election which they attributed to Liberal corruption, and McCurdy's lack of popular appeal. So they asked the rather colourless prospective candidate to step aside for the sake of the party and told Churchill that if he were to contest the election as an Independent Anti-Socialist he would have their support. Winston Churchill agreed.

The by-election was held on June 5, 1924. Churchill won by a majority of 86 votes over McCurdy. The percentage of the votes by each candidate was as follows:

Oxford by-election, 1924 (2)

Winston Churchill (Independent Anti-Socialist): 44.8%
Charles McCurdy (Liberal): 44.5%
Kenneth Lindsay (Labour): 10.7%

The result in TTL's 1923 general election was:

Frank Grey (Liberal): 58.1%
Robert Croft Bourne (Conservative): 41.9%

In his victory speech Churchill said that it was an immense honour to be given the inestimable privilege of representing the people of the historic city of Oxford. In the House of Commons he would fight to his utmost against the socialist backed Liberal government. He warned his audience not to be deceived by the Labour Party's impression of reasonableness and moderation. That was a flimsy covering of the socialism of most of the party, and behind the socialists, like puppet-masters, were the Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union. He said that he would sit on the Opposition side of the House of Commons.

Footnotes

(1) The alternative vote is also known as Instant Runoff Voting (IRV).

(2) In OTL, the Oxford by-election on June 5, 1924 happened for the same reasons as they did in this TL. However the Liberal candidate was C.B. Fry, who in this TL was elected as MP for Banbury in 1923. In OTL the Oxford result was Conservative 47.8%, Liberal 39.1%, Labour 13.1%.

Liberals winning but not managing to get major electoral reform through is kind of rare occurrence in British political timelines. I can't help but wonder if the Liberals will actually implement STV if they've won a full majority. Only pipsime knows for sure I suppose.

 

[Van555]

Section 1: 1924-1928 - Economy, Retrenchment, and Reform!

Chapter 5: The Gold Standard, the Welsh Wizard starts listening to Keynes before it was cool, and the Campbell Case.

A major decision in respect to economic policy that the Asquith government had to make was whether Britain should return to the Gold Standard. The Report of the Cunliffe Committee on Currency and Foreign Exchanges, published in August 1917, recommended eventual return to an effective gold standard at prewar par value ($4.86 =£1).

On taking office in January 1924, Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, appointed John Maynard Keynes an economic advisor to the Treasury. Keynes had argued strongly against Britain returning to the gold standard.

In his budget in April 1924, Lloyd George announced that government policy was that Britain would not be returning to the gold standard.

The essay Does Unemployment Need a Remedy by Keynes was published in the issue of the British liberal weekly The Nation dated 24 May 1924. In it Keynes proposed government capital spending of £100 million per annum to stimulate the economy, specifically spending on housing, roads and electrical power distribution. He further proposed that National Savings should be spent on works in Britain rather than invested overseas. (1).

Lloyd George said that the government would look favourably on Keynes's proposals.

John Ross Campbell, the acting editor of the Communist Workers Weekly, published an article in the 25 July 1924 issue of that newspaper in which he called on soldiers to "let it be known that, neither in the class war nor in a military war, will you turn your guns on your fellow workers." (2)

On 6 August 1924, the Attorney General, Sir Norman Birkett, announced in the House of Commons that he had decided not to prosecute Campbell under the Incitement to Mutiny Act 1797. He said that to do so would be a denial of freedom of speech, and besides it would be like using the sledgehammer of the law to crack the nut of mildly subversive opinions in a newspaper which few people read. Campbell had been maimed for life in the Great War and decorated for bravery, and that he (Birkitt) had no doubts as to his patriotism.

In reply to questions from Sir Quintin Hogg, the Attorney General in the Bonar Law and Baldwin governments, he said that this decision was his alone and he not been influenced by likely reactions from Liberal and Labour backbenchers if he had decided to prosecute.

However the Conservatives tabled a motion of censure on the government. This stated that the Attorney General was in dereliction of his legal duty in not prosecuting Campbell, and that the government was complicit in that decision.

In the debate on 13 August Birkitt gave the same defence of his decision as he gave in his statement a week previously. Asquith said that Birkitt had his full support and that no members of the government or Liberal or Labour MPs had influenced or persuaded Birkitt in any way in his decision. Churchill denounced the Attorney General's decision as an abject surrender to Bolshevism.

In the vote at the end of the debate, the Liberals won comfortably with Labour support.

Footnotes

(1) See http://www.maynardkeynes.org/john-maynard-keynes-reparations-probability-gold.html

(2) Information about the Campbell case is here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell_Case

In OTL the Campbell Case caused the fall of the first Labour Government.

 

[Van555]

Sorry about the lack of updates yesterday and no truly new revision being posted today.

But my internet access was shoddy and set my posting schedule back significantly. I know this basically a rehash but anyone have any comments or questions?

 

[Archangel]

Subscribed, Van!

 

[Van555]

Shoot, I got to distracted working on France's future in the timeline to actually work on the revisions.

 

[Van555]

Section 1: 1924-1928 - Economy, Retrenchment, and Reform!

Chapter 6: The Liberal Govenrment addressed the issues of education and farming while Churchill returns to the Tory fold.

In OTL a consultative committee on education was established by the British government in 1906. It was suspended during the First World War but re-established in July 1920 under the chairmanship of Sir William Hadow, Vice Chancellor of the University of Sheffield. It produced six reports from 1923 to 1933. These are called the Hadow Reports. (1) As these reports were published under Conservative, Labour and National governments in OTL, the same reports will be published in this TL.

William Wedgwood Benn, the President of the Board of Education, announced in the House of Commons in February 1924 that he had asked the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education, under the chairmanship of Sir William Hadow, to inquire into secondary education. Its primary task was: "To consider and report upon the organization, objective and curriculum of courses of study suitable for children who will remain in full-time attendance at schools, other than Secondary Schools, up to the age of 15". (2)

Benn said that he would wait upon the report of the Committee before making any decision, but he was in favour of raising the school leaving age to 15. Speaking for the Conservatives, Edward Wood (son of the 2nd Viscount Halifax), the former President of the Board of Education, said that he hoped the government would not anticipate the report of the Committee. He supported the raising the school leaving age to 15 as a long-term objective, when financial resources allow. For Labour, Sir Charles Trevelyan said that he hoped the inquiry would not be used by the government as an excuse for foot-dragging on the need to raise the school leaving age.

The Liberal government was also aware of the need to expand technical education, but gave priority to reducing large classes in elementary schools and improving conditions in rural schools.

In OTL Lloyd George established and chaired a rural land committee, whose first meeting of which took place on 19 June 1923. It authorized the formulation of a policy to be drawn up by a group comprising agricultural experts and Liberal politicians.

In this TL when Lloyd George became Chancellor of the Exchequer in January 1924, George Lambert, the Minister of Agriculture, who was a farmer, became chairman of the committee.

Although Winston Churchill was elected as an Independent Anti-Socialist for Oxford, with Conservative support, on 5 June 1924, there were Liberals who hoped that he had not entirely burned his boats to their party. He was still on friendly terms with Lloyd George, and the two men met socially and dined together. Sir Archibald Sinclair, Liberal MP for Caithness and Sutherland since 1922 and now Undersecretary of State for Scotland acted as the chief link between Churchill and the Liberal Party. Sinclair was a personal friend of Churchill. He had been his second in command on the Western Front in 1915, his Personal Military Secretary when Churchill was Secretary of State for War from 1919 to 1921, and his Private Secretary when he was Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1921 to 1922. (3)

However Churchill had been moving rightwards politically for some years. Except for free trade there was little that separated him from the Conservative Party. When Baldwin announced in late November 1924, that if a Conservative government were to be elected at the next general election, it would not introduce tariffs, Churchill joined the Conservative Party. He applied for and received the Conservative Party whip in the House of Commons.

Footnotes

(1) Here are the Hadow Reports: http://www.dg.dial.pipex.com/documents/index.shtml.

(2) Quotation taken from Educational Documents England and Wales 1816 to the present day, by J. Stuart Maclure, London: Methuen & Co., fifth edition 1986, page 179.

(3) Here is the wikipedia entry for Sinclair: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Sinclair,_1st_Viscount_Thurso.

I've decided against putting purely OTL descriptions outside of the main text of the timeline for now. I've found thats their separation really doesn't help the timeline in any real way. As being able to compare something to how it played out in OTL requires the reader to understand what happened IOTL.

P.S: If the Grammar and Writing composition/format is off please let me know. I've been leaving the original format unchanged because I don't know any better, so it's not a purposeful stylistic choice on my part!

 

[Van555]

Section 1: 1924-1928 - Economy, Retrenchment, and Reform!

Chapter 7: The fulfillment of the People's Budget and the high tide of the British temperance movement.

"Ground-rents are a still more proper subject of taxation than the rent of houses. A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall altogether upon the owner of the ground-rent, who acts always as a monopolist, and exacts the greatest rent which can be got for the use of his ground." in The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Chapter 2, Article I: Taxes upon the Rent of Houses.

The United Committee for the Taxation of Land Values, and its regional committees, were active in Liberal circles and lobbied hard with the Asquith government for a tax on the rental value of land. Herbert Harvey Spencer, Liberal MP for Bradford South and Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Board of Trade, was a strong proponent of land value taxation.

What is a Land Value Tax you might ask?

"A land value tax (or site valuation tax) is a levy on the unimproved value of land only. It is an ad valorem tax on land that disregards the value of buildings, personal property and other improvements. A land value tax (LVT) is different from other property taxes, which are taxes on the whole value of real estate: the combination of land, buildings, and improvements to the site."

-Wikipedia but corroborated by other sources. (1)

Lloyd George imposed such a tax in his budget of April 1925. He said it would be levied at the rate of 15 percent. (2) The new tax was received with enthusiasm on the Liberal benches. The Labour Party had no option but to support it. The Conservatives condemned it as a socialistic tax on wealth which would require a large bureaucracy to administer.

In the debate on the budget, Lloyd George referred to Canadian cities and provinces which had levied taxes on land values. (3) He declared his surprise that the Conservative Party which wanted closer links with the Dominions such as Canada, was opposed to taxes which had been introduced in that country.

The budget also reduced income tax by 2 pence in the pound. The reduction in income tax was designed to show the advantage of the land value tax to income tax payers. The Tories said they would have reduced income tax further. When asked by Liberal ministers and MPs how they would have raised the revenue lost by such a reduction in income tax, Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister, the Shadow Chancellor, said they would reduce government expenditure, though he was vague about specifics. He fell back on that old opposition stand by of cutting waste.

Austen Chamberlain was the Shadow Foreign Secretary, and had acquired a well-deserved reputation as an expert on foreign policy issues.

After extensive debate, the 1925 Finance Bill, which gave legislative embodiment to the budget, passed through all its stages in the House of Commons. The House of Lords did not have the power to reject or amend it, and it became law in June 1925.

Temperance reform, or the giving of local communities the right to abolish or restrict the number of public houses selling alcoholic drinks in their area, had been on the Liberal Party wish list for decades. Though those Liberals who enjoyed their drink regarded the pro temperance advocates as being puritanical fanatics on that issue.

The Liberal Party manifesto for the 1923 general election declared that: "The excessive consumption of alcoholic drink is one of the main causes of unemployment, disease, and poverty, and the right of the citizens of a locality to decide for themselves the drink facilities in their own area should no longer be withheld."

The second reading of the Local Option Bill took place in the House of Commons at the beginning of December 1924. It gave the people in local authority areas the right to request a ballot on whether public houses should have the right to sell alcoholic liquor. If the people in that area voted against, then all the public houses in that area would lose their license to sell alcoholic drink.

The bill was presented by its supporters as an extension of local democracy in an area of vital national importance. It was a moral crusade against the evils of drunkenness. Its opponents said that puritanical killjoys who wanted to deprive the workingman of his beer had devised it, and that it would throw thousands of publicans and workers in the drink trade out of work.

Both supporters and opponents of the bill used the experience of prohibition in the United States, though neither side was able to use it as a convincing argument.

While the overwhelming majority of Conservative MPs were against the bill, Nancy Astor gave a passionate speech in favour. People said that she held these views on this issue were because she was American, though she was a long time temperance advocate.

The Labour Party was divided, but with a large majority of Labour MPs opposed to the bill, as a distraction from the real causes of poverty, disease and unemployment.

The bill was defeated on second reading by 331 votes to 192 votes. Though Nancy Astor was the only Conservative to vote in favour, 27 Labour MPs supported it. But 30 to 40 Liberal MPs abstained.

Footnotes

(1) LVT is a very interesting subject as had been advocated for by classical figures like Adam Smith and Thomas Paine and modern economists like Krugman and Stiglitz. The idea has always been around but it gained its most fierce and successful advocate in a American by the name of Henry George. In fact the British Liberal Parties to include a Land Value Tax of 20% in the 1909 people's budget set off a constitutional crisis that led to Parliament act of 1911 entrenching the supremacy in of the Commons over the Lords.

(2) OOC: I have assumed that 15 percent would be a reasonable rate.

(3) See http://www.cooperativeindividualism.org/libertarian-333.pdf.

The Liberals are clearly on a roll here as LVT has been one of the ket planks of their platform for over a century in OTL but hasn't gotten anywhere because of their weakness. The Temperance Movement has in all likelihood had its last hurray with the failure of the Local option bill.

 

[Van555]

Section 1: 1924-1928 - Economy, Retrenchment, and Reform!

Chapter 8: Yet more Liberal reform, specifically of the types electoral, financial and agricultural.

The business premises vote gave owners of business premises an extra vote in the constituency in which their business or businesses was/were situated. If they had businesses in more than one constituency, they had to choose one constituency in which to exercise that vote.

As one would expect this franchise largely benefitted the Conservative Party. It has been estimated that 70 percent of the business vote went to that party. The double-member constituency of the City of London, which always returned two Conservative members, only existed because of that vote. So it was greatly resented by the Liberal and Labour Parties. This vote also benefitted the Conservatives in a few other city centre constituencies, though to a much lesser extent than in the City of London.

The second reading debate on the Abolition of Business Premises Vote Bill took place in late November 1924. It also abolished the parliamentary constituency of the City of London and combined it with Holborn to form the constituency of the City of London and Holborn.

The bill was denounced by the Conservatives as a spiteful piece of political opportunism. They said that if a man pays rates [local taxes] on his business he should have an extra vote for that business. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

In the debate, Sir John Simon, the Home Secretary, said that to compensate the Tories from losing their two MPs from the City of London, the two Conservative held constituencies with the largest electorates would each be subdivided into two constituencies.

The bill received its second reading by a large majority, with Liberal and Labour voting against the Tories. In the committee stage, a Labour MP proposed an amendment to abolish the University constituencies. The government opposed this on the grounds that these constituencies provided a means whereby independent men and women of high achievement outside politics could be elected to Parliament. The amendment was easily defeated with Conservatives and most Liberal voting against, but 35 Liberals voted for it.

In early February 1925, after the bill had passed through all its stages in the House of Commons it went to the House of Lords. There an overwhelming majority rejected it on second reading. After the vote, Earl Beauchamp, the Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Lords, said that the government would reintroduce the bill and have it passed under the terms of the Parliament Act 1911.

While Liberal MPs strongly supported the proposed land value tax (LVT), some of them, especially on the libertarian wing of the party, wanted to see a lower rate than the proposed 15%.

In the committee stage of the 1925 Finance Bill, Richard Durning Holt (Liberal - Cumberland North) proposed an amendment to reduce the rate to 5%. He had the declared support of 51 other Liberal MPs. It was rumoured that Alfred Mond, the Minister of Health, was sympathetic to the amendment and that he threatened to resign if the government did not accept it.

A cynical argument for keeping the rate at 15% is that in a future budget before a general election the government could make a great show of generosity and reduce the rate. But that would be too much like political opportunism. Also it would be more financially responsible to have a stable rate at a reasonable level.

However in late May 1925, Lloyd George said that after carefully listening to the opinions of MPs and financial experts, the government would accept Holt's amendment and LVT would be levied at a rate of 5%. The amendment was passed with Conservative abstentions (because they opposed LVT), but with Labour voting against. Of course, Lloyd George was accused of intending to levy LVT at a substantially lower rate than the originally proposed 15%, and knew that it was very likely that a Liberal MP would propose an amendment to substantially reduce the proposed rate.

The Majority and Minority Reports of the Rural Land Committee of Liberal politicians and agricultural experts were published in September 1925.

The Majority Report advocated ending the private ownership of agricultural land by converting farmers into 'cultivating tenants' under the supervision of county committees. In effect the nationalization of agricultural land. It argued that owner occupation was not the answer because tenant farmers would over commit themselves in taking out mortgages to buy their farms.

The Minority Report called for extension of owner occupation of farms by enabling tenant farmers to purchase their farms with financial support provided by the British government.

The Majority was rejected by George Lambert, the Minister of Agriculture. In reply to questions, Prime Minister Asquith said that his government had absolutely no intention of implementing the recommendations of the Majority Report.

The recommendations of the Majority Report were similar those in the report of Lloyd George's rural land committee, which was published in July 1925 in OTL, as described in this paper: http://tcbh.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/2/3/272.pdf . In this TL the Majority Report proposed that landlords should get compensation for their land, as did the report in OTL.

The Minority Report advocated a scheme similar to that enacted by the Irish Land Purchase Act 1903. Under that legislation, the British government paid the difference between the price offered by tenants and that demanded by landlords. It was enacted by a Conservative and Liberal Unionist government.

Most members of the cabinet, including the Foreign Secretary, Sir Francis Acland, rejected the Majority Report, as did Margaret Wintringham, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture. However Lloyd George let it be known that, while he loyally supported government policy on this issue, he believed that there were positive features in the Majority Report which deserve careful consideration. Questioned on whether the Majority Report would become government policy if Lloyd George became Prime Minister, Asquith said if he becomes Prime Minister (with a heavy stress on the word if). This produced a flurry of press speculation about what Asquith meant.

Asquith said that the government was very favourably inclined to the Minority Report. In fact the Liberal manifesto for the 1923 general election had proposed that: “Opportunity should be given for the cultivator to become the owner of his own land by a system of land purchase."

Nothing to report on this other then fact that the Liberals continue to keep their flag flying.

 

[Van555]

Section 1: 1924-1928 - Economy, Retrenchment, and Reform!

Chapter 9: A birth announcement, a resignation, some by-elections, Locarno and the Liberal leadership contest.

Going back several months, on 3rd April 1925 a son was born to Margaret Eadie Benn (nee Holmes) and William Wedgwood Benn (the President of the Board of Education). He was given the names Anthony Neil. Members of the cabinet, and other leading political figures from all parties attended his christening. In future years Anthony Wedgwood Benn would follow in his father's footsteps in carving out a career in politics.

Charles Masterman, the Secretary of State for the Colonies and Dominions, had for some months been suffering from a growing alcohol and drug addiction. In early August 1925 his condition had deteriorated to such an extent that he was dismissed from the government. He also resigned as MP for Manchester, Rusholme. Lord Parmoor, the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who as Charles Cripps was a Conservative MP before the Great War, took his cabinet position.

The Manchester, Rusholme by-election was held on September 17, 1925. It was won by Philip Guedalla, the Liberal candidate, by a majority of 859 over the Conservative. This was a swing of about 3 percent from Liberal to Conservative. On the same day, the Conservatives held the Stockport seat in the by-election caused by the death of the Conservative MP, with the Liberal second and Labour third.

The Locarno Pact was signed on October 16, 1925 as in OTL. It was the same as in OTL. It was widely regarded as a foreign policy triumph for the government and in particular for Sir Francis Acland, the Foreign Secretary.

On October 19, Asquith announced his resignation as leader of the Liberal Party and Prime Minister. He said he would stay in office until the Liberal Party chose a new leader, who would automatically become Prime Minister. He said that he resigned because he was now 73 years old and the time had come for a younger man to take over at the helm of government. Acland and Lloyd George announced that they were candidates for the Liberal Party leadership. It was widely thought that the circumstances of Asquith's resignation were timed to give maximum advantage to Acland as his successor.

There was some talk that Sir John Simon, the Home Secretary, would stand for the party leadership, but he got little support. So he decided not to contest the election. Though a brilliant lawyer he was regarded as being too aloof and lacking in the popular touch to be leader.

The party leader was elected by Liberal MPs, though of course they tried to ascertain the opinion of party members outside the House of Commons. In terms of support Acland tended to get the support of the following MPs: Those who were on the right wing of the party - those who in contemporary terms in OTL would be libertarian - also those were Asquithians from 1918 to 1923, those elected for constituencies in the South and West of England (outside the large cities) whose main opponents were Conservatives, and those MPs who couldn't stand Lloyd George and/or those who were disappointed that Lloyd George did not offer them a job in his 1916 to 1922 coalition government. The following MPs tended to support Lloyd George: Those who were Coalition Liberals and National Liberals from 1918 to 1923, those who were members of his Coalition government, Welsh members, those whose main opponents were Labour especially in the large cities. They regarded LG as an instrument of dynamic social reform.

Broadly speaking those with a collectivist outlook supported LG, those with an individualist viewpoint supported Acland. William Wedgwood Benn, who could well be described as a radical libertarian, or a libertarian radical, supported Acland. In the Liberal leadership contest the fact that Lloyd George had previously been Prime Minister was more to his disadvantage than his advantage. It is true that he was widely praised as the man who won the Great War, but his postwar government was not a great success. Also the Conservatives had dominated his coalition government and there was the sale of honours scandal. His political enemies regarded him as being opportunistic and unprincipled.

By contrast while Acland had been a member of parliament, with interruptions, since 1906, and had held junior ministerial posts at the War Office, the Treasury and the Foreign Office between 1908 and 1915, and had been Foreign Secretary from January 1924, he had not acquired political enemies, unlike LG.

Both candidates said that if elected leader and therefore Prime Minister they would offer his opponent a senior post in his cabinet.

The ballot for the Liberal Party leadership took place in the House of Commons on November 3, 1925. As was widely expected the result was a victory for Acland. The result was:

Acland: 136 votes
Lloyd George 65 votes
Did not vote: 6

In his acceptance speech on being elected party leader, Acland said that he would govern in accordance with the principles and values of progressive Liberalism, in the path laid down and followed by Asquith. His government would continue to implement the proposals set out in the party manifesto in the general election of 1923.

New appointments to his cabinet were as follows:

Chancellor of the Exchequer: Thomas MacNamara

Foreign Secretary: David Lloyd George

Home Secretary: Norman Birkett

Lord Chancellor: Viscount Simon (formerly Sir John Simon)

President of the Board of Trade: Alfred Mond

Minister of Health: Sir John Tudor Walters

Secretary of State for Scotland: Sir Archibald Sinclair.

Among the new ministers outside the cabinet were:

Attorney General: The Honourable Edward Augustine St. Aubyn Harney

Financial Secretary to the Treasury: John Durning Holt

Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health: Ernest Simon

Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education: Lady Vera Terrington. (She was a member of the House of Commons as at that time, in this TL and OTL, women were not allowed to be members of the House of Lords).

Hopefully that wasn't to long for you guys. Also Tony Benn makes his first appearance which is neat.

 

[Van555]

Section 1: 1924-1928 - Economy, Retrenchment, and Reform!

Chapter 10: Cabinet by-elections explained, the birth of the Beeb and the beginning of the end of the British Raj.

In accordance with prevailing legislation both in this TL and in OTL, MPs appointed to the cabinet had to resign their seats and contest them again in by-elections. (1) This meant that Birkett, Walters and Sinclair had to resign and contest their constituencies of Nottingham, East; Gloucestershire, Stroud; and Caithness and Sutherland respectively. Also because Sir John Simon was elevated to the peerage and Asquith was made a peer as Viscount Asquith and the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, this meant by-elections in their former seats of Yorkshire, Spen Valley and Paisley respectively.

These by-elections were held on December 12, 1925. Sinclair was returned unopposed in Caithness and Sutherland as he had been in the 1923 general election. Birkitt and Walters were re-elected in Nottingham, East and Stroud respectively. In Paisley, Sir Donald Maclean was elected Liberal MP, while Walter Runciman won Spen Valley for the Liberals.

MacLean was leader of the Liberal Parliamentary Party from 1918 to 1922. He lost his seat in the 1922 general election, and was unsuccessful in 1923. Runciman was a minister in the Asquith governments from 1908 to 1916. He lost his seat in the 1918 general election, and had been defeated in subsequent attempts to return to the House of Commons.

Because this TL started in 1923 the amendment in 1919 happened as in OTL. But because the Liberal and Labour parties opposed the abolition of the re-election requirement in 1926, Liberal governments in this TL do not abolish this law and the 1919 amendment remains in force unless it is abolished by a future Conservative government.

The Barran Commission on Broadcasting under the chairmanship of Sir John Barran, the Postmaster General, was appointed in February 1925. It published its report in late November 1925.

The Barran Report advocated that the British Broadcasting Company (a consortium of six companies) should become an independent trust to be called the British Broadcasting Trust (BBT). The BBT would be independent of government and be incorporated by a Royal Charter renewable every twenty years.

The Commission considered ways in which the Trust could be financed. It rejected advertising on the wireless because listeners should not have advertisements imposed on them. Also advertisements would mean the commercialisation of broadcasting. It recommended that owners of wireless sets should pay a subscription fee of 10 shillings a year (50 pence in decimal currency in OTL). In order to secure a stable income stream the subscription fee should be guaranteed at that level for five years. It considered how the BBT could raise additional money if required. It proposed that the BBT should have the right to issue interest bearing bonds to the public. However purchasers of these bonds would have no influence over BBT policy.

The Barran Report was well received across the political spectrum, although the Labour Party objected to the BBT being able to issue bonds. The Broadcasting Act 1926 implemented its recommendations and the BBT was incorporated under royal charter. John Reith was appointed its first Director General.

In April 1925 Viscount Willingdon, who had previously been Governor of Bombay and Governor of Madras, was appointed Governor General and Viceroy of India in succession to the Earl of Reading, Willingdon was a Liberal.

In January 1926 Prime Minister Richard Acland appointed a Royal Commission on Constitutional Reform in India under the chairmanship of Viscount Peel. Peel was a Conservative and Secretary of State for India in the Bonar Law and Baldwin governments from October 1922 to January 1924. The Peel Commission, as it was called, had eleven members including the chairman. Among its members were Mohandas Gandhi and Muhammed Ali Jinnah.

The appointment of the Peel Commission was generally welcomed by all parties, though the right-wing of the Conservative Party was suspicious and Churchill vehemently denounced the appointment of Gandhi as a member.

Footnotes

(1) Under the Succession to the Crown Act 1707, any MP who accepted an office of profit under the crown had to resign his seat, as he could no longer be an MP. If that rule had been followed strictly then no member of Parliament could have been a government minister. But someone who held an office of profit under the crown could still be elected to Parliament. So this allowed MPs appointed to the government to resign their seats and contest them again in a by-election. I don't know if that law applied only to cabinet posts, or also to junior ministerial posts outside the cabinet, however far down the pecking order. I would assume that it applied only to appointments to the cabinet. The law was amended in 1919 so that it did not apply within nine months of a general election. It was abolished entirely in 1926 by Baldwin's Conservative government. See here http://everything2.com/node/1947108.

The BBC is now the BBT, the Indian question gets looked into and one of Britain's unwritten constitutional oddity remains untouched. Churchill b the first of what will be many tantrums about loosing the grip the imperial office holds on the crown jewel of the British Empire.

 

[Van555]

So at least there has been some progress on this front.

I wasn't idle for the past few days I can promise you that! In fact I had been talking with pipisme about the direction France was going in and was researching how things could develop without WWII in Europe and throughout the world. I've also been trying to contact all of my meager connections to gain more insight into how things could develop.

How are you guys liking my little comments at the end of every update? I hope its not redundant or even distracting. I just feel like putting my personal touch on things.

Any comments? I'll admit while I know people are reading its hard to tell how it's being received which is a bit disconserting.

 

[Cylon_Number_14]

I'm certain I comment for many in saying that once you have gotten a bit more of this consolidated, lots of fans will thoroughly enjoy re-reading this whole story.

 

[Van555]

I'm certain I comment for many in saying that once you have gotten a bit more of this consolidated, lots of fans will thoroughly enjoy re-reading this whole story.

The boost I needed!

 

[pipisme]

In the original version of this TL the requirement for MPs to resign their seats and stand for re-election if appointed to the cabinet would be abolished by the Conservative government in May 1936.

 

[Van555]

In the original version of this TL the requirement for MPs to resign their seats and stand for re-election if appointed to the cabinet would be abolished by the Conservative government in May 1936.

Oh my, good to know then! I'll mention it when I get there then!