Stanley Baldwin's Successful Political Gamble: A TL from 1923

pipisme

Sam R. said:
I’m thinking of the butterflies of a moderately competent 1930s without significant intraparty schism ideologically (Graves and Hodge (1940) _The Long Week End. A Social History of Great Britain, 1918-1939_) or a moderately competent war which doesn’t max out the grocers tik while doing so. Both of these mean a less angry working class and a lessened push towards a fast radical programme.
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In this TL some of the differences from OTL were that there was not a National Government, so there were not National Labour and Liberal National parties; nor did the Independent Labour Party (ILP) disaffiliate from the Labour Party; and Bevan, Cripps and George Strauss were not temporally expelled from the Labour Party.

Also there was no Beveridge Report. Instead in March 1940 the Minister of Health, David Grenfell, appointed Richard Henry Tawney as chairman of a Royal Commission on 'The Development of the Welfare State'. (1) The Commission reported in April 1942.

(1) Here is an article about Tawney: http://infed.org/mobi/richard-henry-tawney-fellowship-and-adult-education. His wife Jeanette,, was the sister of William Beveridge.
 
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pipisme

The Labour government promised that it would implement in full the Tawney Report, as it was called, which was much the same as the Beveridge Report .

Michael Foot and Jennie Lee both lost their seats to the Conservatives in the general election - Foot in Monmouth and Lee in Renfrewshire East. She was the Minister of Pensions.

Because neither Conservative nor Labour had an overall majority in the House of Commons, the Liberal Party held the balance of power. On Saturday 27 May the Labour cabinet met and decided to offer the Liberals confidence and supply. Meanwhile the Conservative leader, Anthony Eden, offered the Liberals a coalition in which they would have a third of the cabinet ministers and other ministers. The Liberal Party leader, Hugh Seely, told the Prime Minister. Thomas Johnston, and Eden, that Liberal MPs and the Executive Committee of the National Liberal Federation (NLF) would be meeting on Tuesday 30 May, and would vote on which party's offer to accept. Monday 29 May was the Whit Monday Bank Holiday.

Libe ral MPs met on 30 May and decided by 98 votes to 14 votes, with five absent or abstaining, to accept Eden's coalition with the Conservative. The Executive Committee of the NLF and 92% voted in favour of coalition with the Conservatives.

The next day, Johnstone resigned and Eden became Prime Minister at the head of a Conservative/ Liberal coalition government.
 
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pipisme

The decision by the Liberal Party to enter into coalition with the Tories was controversial at the time, and is still a subject of historical debate. In his memoirs, Hugh Seely wrote that it was because the Liberal Party did not want to be regarded as a junior partner of the Labour Party, but show their indepence by going into coalition with the Tories. Also that party had gained seats in the general election, unlike Labour which had lost seats.
Anthony Eden had agreed that the proposed coalition would continue with the policy of the Labour government of using public expenditure to keep unemployment low, and would keep to the basic policies of the Welfare State.

Eden appointed his cabinet on 31 May and I June 1944. The cabinet ministers were as follows (party allegiance):
Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury: Anthony Eden (Con)
Lord Chancellor: Lord Somervell, formerly Sir Donald Somervell (Con)
Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons: Oliver Stanley (Con)
Lord Privy Seal: Viscount Cranborne (Con)
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Charles Waterhouse (Con)
Foreign Secretary: Hugh Seely (Lib)
Home Secretary: Osbert Peake (Con)
Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food: William Morrison (Con)
Colonial Secretary: Leo Amery (Con)
Minister of Defence: George Garro-Jones (Lib
Commonwealth Relations Secretary: Winston Churchill (Con)
Minister of Education: Isaac Foot (Lib)
Minister of Fuel and Power: Richard Law (Con)
Minister of Health: Walter Elliot (Con)
Ministerof Labour and National Service: Mrs Margery Corbett Ashby (Lib)
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Brendan Bracken (Con)
Secretary of State for Scotland: William Wedgwood Benn (Lib)
President of the Board of Trade: Harcourt Johnstone (Lib)
Minister of Transport: Harold Macmillan (Con)
Minister of Works: Geoffrey Mander (Lib).
There were 13 Conservative and 7 Liberal cabinet ministers.
 
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pipisme

Here are the ministers outside the cabinet and important junior ministers in the coalition government:
First Lord of the Admiralty: Harold Balfour (Con)
Secretary of State for Air: Leslie Hore-Belisha (Lib)
Minister of Civil Aviation: Duke of Devonshire (Con)
Minister of National Insurance: Mrs Lucy Masterman (Lib)
Paymaster-General: Viscount Swinton (Con)
Minister of Pensions: Richard Austen Butler (Con)
Postmaster-General: Alfred Ernest Brown (Lib)
Minister of Town and Country Planning : Robert Hudson (Con)
Secretary of State for War: Sir Victor Warrender (Con)
Law Officers:
Attorney-General: Sir David Maxwell Fyfe KC (Con)
Solicitor-General: Sir William Norman Birkett KC (Lib)
Financial Secretary to the Treasury: Leslie Burgin (Lib)
Joint Parliamentary Secretaries to the Treasury (Government Chief Whips): David Margesson (Con) and Sir Archibald Sinclair (Lib)
Minister of State at the Foreign Office: Ronald Cartland (Con)
Secretary Board of Overseas Trade: Harry Crookshank (Con).

The Liberals were mostly satisfied with the distribution of government posts. Where a department was headed by a Conservative minister, a junior minister attached was a Liberal. The Liberal ministers comprised the whole spectrum of Liberal opinion from people who in OTL had crossed over to Labour, had remained in the Liberal Party, to those who were Liberal Nationals.
 

pipisme

At the opening of the new session of parliament, Thomas Johnston was re-elected unopposed as Leaderof the Labour Party. Clement Attlee was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party in place of John Clynes who had resigned as an MP at the general election. The election for the 12 members of the Executive Committee of the Parliamentary Labour Party (the shadow cabinet) elected by Labour MPs, was held on 15 June 1964. The result in order from the candidate with the highest vote to the one with the lowest was as follows:
1. Albert Victor Alexander
2. Emmanuel Shinwell
3. Frederck Dollan
4. Ellen Wilkinson
5. Aneurin Bevan
6. Arthur Greenwood
7. John Strachey
8. Hugh Dalton
9. John James Lawson
10. Hugh Gaitskell
11. Herbert Morrison
12. George Hall
 

pipisme

When Ernest Bevin was elected Labour MP for Gateshead, he continued in office as General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU). When he became Minister of Labour in June 1939, he resigned as General Secretary of the TGWU. In the May 1944 general election he was elected for the new constituency of Gateshead East. He resigned from the House of Commons in September 1944 on his appointment as a member of the London Transport Executive. In the Gateshead East by-election on 19 October 1944, Jennie Lee was elected Labour MP for the safe Labour seat.

Harcourt Johnstone, the President of the Board of Trade and Liberal MP for North Angus and Mearns, died on 1 March 1945. In the subsequent cabinet reshuffle, Geoffrey Mander was moved from Minister of Works to President of the Board of Trade;
Leslie Burgin from Financial Secretary to Minister of Works and promoted to the cabinet; Elliott Dodds became Financial Secretary to the Treasury. These men were all Liberals.
 

pipisme

Harcourt Johnstone lost his Combined English Universities seat in the 1930 general election. He was elected Liberal MP for Montrose Burghs in a by-election in June 1932. That constituency was abolished for the 1944 general election and became part of the new North Angus and Mearns consituency. The by-election to elect a new MP for the constituency took place on Thursday 19 April 1945. The percentage votes for each party were as follows (May 1944 general election):
Philip Fothergill (Liberal): 39.5 (44.8)
Conservative: 34.2 (35.1)
Labour: 26.3 (20.1)
--------------------------------
Liberal majority: 5.3 (9,7)
--------------------------------
There was a swing of 2,2% from Liberal to Conservative.

Here is the Wikipedia entry for Fothergill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Fothergill.
 

pipisme

Twelve Liberal MPs who were opposed to the coalition with the Conservatives, formed the Radical Action Group in November 1944. Richard Acland, Liberal MP for Barnstaple since 1934 was its unofficial leader. Megan Lloyd George (Anglesey - Liberal) was another prominent member. It was thought that the Scottish Secretary, William Wedgwood Benn was sympathetic to the Group.

Forty-five Liberal Party candidates joined Radical Action. Its aim was the revival of radicalism within the Liberal Party. It declared the Conservative Party 'its natural enemy', and demanded equality of opportunity.

On the right-wing of the Liberal Party a dozen or so Liberal MPs would have opposed coalition with Labour. In fact they were to the right of most Tories on economic matters.
 

pipisme

Liberal MPs and ministers in the coalition government pushed for the adoption of the proposals in the report of the 1938 Ownership for All Committee of the Liberal Party, as government policy. The Report "called for the restoration of free trade, reforms of the rating system and of inheritance taxation, and encouraged the development of co-ownership schemes in industry. While recognising a central economic role for the state to create the conditions of liberty, direct intervention in the economy was ruled out in all but the most extreme circumstances." (1)

(1) See http://liberalhistory.org.uk/history/dodds-elliot, the fifth paragraph.
 

pipisme

In order to keep good relations with their Liberal partners in the coalition government, Conservative ministers in the coalition government allowed the Liberals to enact into law policies which were in their manifesto for the 1944 general election. The Industrial Democracy Act 1945 established Works Councils in all companies with more than fifty employees, and encouraged profit sharing in industry by tax relief. These provisions applied to both private and nationalised industries.
 

pipisme

Admiral Miklos Horthy continued in office as Regent of Hungary as the head of an authoritarian regime, after the end of the Twelve Months War in September 1939, although Hungary had to give all the territory taken from Czechoslovakia and Romania in that war.
 

pipisme

A general election was held in Czechoslovakia on Sunday 10 March 1940 for the Chamber of Deputies. The number of seats won by each party were as follows (general election May 1935):
Czech Social Democratic Party (CSSD): 49 (38)
The Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants (RZML): 42 (45)
Czech National Social Party (CSNS): 39 (28)
Czech People's Party (CSC): 36 (22)
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSC): 35 (30)
German Social Democratic Workers Party in the Czech Republic (DSAP) : 21 (11)
National Unification (NS): 20 (17)
Slovak People's Party (SL'S): 20 (22)
Czechoslovak Traders Party ( CZOS): 14 (17)
German Christian Social People 's Party (DCVP): 11 (6)
Farmers' League (BdL): 6 (5)
(Sudeten German Party (SdP): 44)
(National Fascist Community: 6)
----------------------------
Total: 300 (300)
----------------------------
The SdP and National Fascist Community had been banned.

.After the election a coalition government was formed comprising the CSSD, CSNS, CS C, and DSAP with 145 seats, and supported by the KSC in the Chamber of Deputies. Antonin Hampl, the leader of the CSSD became Prime Minister.

Elections were also held on 10 March for the 150 members of the Senate.
 

pipisme

A government of national unity was formed in Poland when Germany invaded that country in April 1939. Its headquarters were in Warsaw until that city was captured by the invaders, then in Lwiw in Free Poland in the south-east of the country until that city was captured, and then in Tarnopol. When Poland regained its independence in September 1939, the government of national unity returned to Warsaw. It remained in office until a new government was formed after the election to the Sejm, the lower house of the parliament of Poland, on Sunday 22 September 1940. But the parties in the gpvernment fought the election separately.

The number of seats won by each party in the election were as follows:
Polish Socialist Party: 161
National Party: 103
People's Party: 94
Camp of National Unity: 72
Ukranian National Democratic Alliance: 38
Labour Faction: 22
Jewish Group: 10
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Total: 500
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The result of the previous election on 6 November 1938 was as in OTL, as follows:
Camp of National Unity: 164
Ukranian Group: 18
Jewish Group: 5
Other parties: 21
---------------
Total: 208
---------------
The Sejm was increased to 500 seats for the September 1939 election. This was 444 seats in the 1930 election. plus 56 seats for the former Free City of Danzig which was ceded to Poland after the war. The population of Poland as recorded in the 1931 census was 31,915,779. (1) The population of Danzig in 1929 was 408,000, which was 12.7% of the population of Poland (2) 12.7% of 444 is 56, so the Sejm was inceased by 56 seats to 500.

(1) See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_Poland.

(2) For Danzig see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_City_of_Danzig.
.
 
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pipisme

After Austria was liberated from Nazi rule and its independence restored in September 1939, there was a huge campaign for a referendum on the restoration of the monarchy, with Otto von Habsburg as king. (1) Because of his strong and principled opposition to the Nazis and saving thousands of Jewish lives, he gained support accross the political spectrum, except for the extreme right, the Communists and the left wing of the Social Democrats. He helped 15,000 Austrians to flee the country, including thousands of Jews at the beginning of the one year war. (2) He had returned to Austria from exile in Paris.

A referendum in October 1940 voted by 82.6 % to 17.4% for Otto von Habsburg to become king of Austria as a constitutional monarch. He was crowned king in St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna.

(1) For his entry in Wikipedia see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_von_Habsburg.

(2) This was like in OTL. See the section World War II in his Wikipedia entry.
 
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pipisme

A general election for the National Coucil of Austria was held on Sunday 10 March 1940. The number of seats won by each party were as follows:
Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO): 89
Austrian People's Party (OVP): 72
Communist Party of Austria (KPO) : 4
--------------
Total: 165
--------------.
The leader of the SPO, Theodor Korner, became Chancellor at the head of a SPO government.
 
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pipisme

In August 1939, General Archibald Wavell was made responsible for encouragement of the rebellion in the western Ethiopian province of Gojjam against the Italian occupation, which the Italians had not been able to suppress. (1). It was led by Belay Zeleke. (2). The project was called Mission 101 and was run by Colonel Daniel Sandford. (3). The British base was in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.

In the following years, there was a low level guerrilla war in Ethiopia in which Italian forces were responsible for atrocities against civilians. On Friday 9 March 1945, Italian planes bombed the Sudanese town of Gallabat, just across the border with Ethiopia. (4) 66 people were killed and 124 injured. The Italian government said that the town was bombed because it was a base for Ethiopian rebels. In fact it was and they were among those killed and injured, together with civilians and British troops.

Mussolini refused the British government's request for a full apology. On Wednesday 14 March 1945, Britain declared war on Italy.

(1) For Gojjam see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gojjam.

(2) For Zeleke see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belay_Zeleke.

(3) This was as in OTL. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_African_campaign_(World_War_II).

(4) For Gallabat see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallabat.
 

pipisme

Prime Minister Anthony Eden refused Labour demands for an all party coaltion gpvernment. He argued that because the war against Italy was not being fought in Europe, and was on a smaller scale than the war against Nazi Germany, a coalition government was unnecessary.

In a three day debate in the House of Commons from 22 to 24 March 1945, Labour MPs asked government ministers about their objective in the war. Was it the liberation of Italy and the Italian Empire from Fascism, or to stop Italian aggression in east Africa? Eden said it was the latter and the liberation of Ethiopia and the restoration of Haile Selassie. Labour was strongly in favour of the first objective.

Italian planes bombed British military bases in Aden and Cyprus.
 

pipisme

Italian armed forces under the command of Marshal Italo Balbo from Somalia. After intense fighting they captured the Kenyan port of Mombasa on 30 April 1945.

Italian troops under the command of Gugliemo Nasi invaded Sudan from Ethiopia. They took the town of Kassala on 16 April 1945. (1)

(1) For Kassala see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kassala
 
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