TLI3A: A Very Special Relationship

CONSENSUS AND ITS DISCONTENTS

In the historiography of post-liberation British politics, much has been written about the three main parties – National Democratic, Labour, and Liberal – and the prevailing narrative has been one focused around intraparty factionalism and interparty co-operation. However, outside of the three parties of the post-war consensus, there was a wealth of political (or, more aptly, anti-political) activity that manifested itself in a variety of different forms. The growth of the state’s economic role, the lingering suspicion of authority engendered by years of Nazi domination, and the sudden loss of empire were three major reasons for why the consensus, as it was constituted in political and partisan terms, was not universally thought of as a social positive. Dislocation from traditional parties and traditional modes of political engagement were commonplace, prompting new and exciting organisations to attempt to reconcile political involvement with a distaste for politics as practiced at the highest levels. Two parties are of particular importance to this exploration of non-mainstream politics: the United Empire Party and the Anti-Politics Party.

The United Empire Party (UEP) was founded in 1945, not long before Lord Woolton formed his first ministry, from a group of Conservative imperialists who – having been unhappy with the pro-Germanism of the Moore-Brabazon government but accommodated to its reactionary vision of empire – found themselves unable to fit in with the rapidly arising factions and parties of the new, post-liberation world. The UEP was primarily the brainchild of Leopold Amery, who had actually been a major figure in the high politics section of the British Resistance, and was shaped by his insistence on returning to a politics based around British exceptionalism (a curious ideology in the wake of American liberation), minor social reform, and the old Edwardian crusade of imperial preference. The new Britain being born as 1945 turned to 1946 was not a vision with which these men, among them Alan Lennox-Boyd and Julian Amery (Leo’s son), could be reconciled. That is not to say that they clamoured for the recent past and the secondary role that Britain had taken under the wing of Hitler’s Germany during European-Soviet War, for they resented those elements of the political establishment that had put Germany first above the needs and aspirations of the British Empire in the early 1940s. Playing second fiddle to a younger nation of upstart world conquerors was something, Amery believed, the British people could not abide – whether that nation was wrapped up in the swastika or the Stars and Stripes. Thus, the UEP campaigned in 1946 on a platform of anti-Americanism and pro-imperialism. ‘A UNITED EMPIRE FOR A UNITED BRITAIN’ read one of the many UEP posters of the campaign, depicting people of all the races and nations of the British Empire shouldering the burden of the British landmass as the sun beamed down on them. It was sentimental in tone and old-fashioned in imagery, promising peace and prosperity for the mother country on the backs of “willing” natives from all corners of the globe. The broader party campaign was based around the main points of the party’s manifesto (an effort almost single-handedly authored by Amery himself), The Imperial Way Forward: the immediate removal of American troops from British soil, dominion status for any colony that wants it (subject to at least one conference with British ministers and referendums to decide popular support in said colonies), installation of the European governments-in-exile in former colonies (e.g. the French in Algeria and the Belgians in the Congo), and the introduction of tariffs on an ‘imperial preference’ basis. It is difficult to imagine just what would have happened had Amery been the victor at the ’46 election, as Britain had neither the military power nor diplomatic clout to eject the Americans and rally its erstwhile colonial possessions. More than likely, Amery would have been humiliated and forced to reverse the bulk of his policy programme to regain the confidence of the Americans and the other free European nations.

In the event, the United Empire Party came away with 10 seats. Twenty-three seats below the Communist Party was not a good place for a party claiming to speak for every God-fearing British patriot, but Amery was not dismayed: the fight for the empire began as soon as the results were announced and Woolton was returned to be Prime Minister of a coalition government. The Indian Independence Act 1946 passed only after some very serious attempts by NDP right-wingers and UEP MPs to wreck the process of Indian decolonisation, including definitely not inciting UEP members to stage a highly disruptive protest outside the Woolton-Nehru talks at Lancaster House. Attempts to derail the process of formally handing over Northern Ireland to the Republic were far more effective and the NDP in the province were gutted by UEP defections in the summer of 1947 (not that many on the mainland noticed). The immediate aftermath of the liberation, however, was a relatively quiet time for the party as its constituency associations benefited from some of the more unpopular anti-imperialist endeavours of the Woolton government and the consensus that governed the three main parties held firm. After 1948 and the Scarborough Crisis, however, there was a massive spike in enthusiasm for the UEP as some NDP members (from both the Commons and the Lords) attempted to reach out and get them to join their coalition with the Liberals. To ally with two pro-decolonisation parties was not Amery’s intention and thus, as leader, he took the executive decision to rebuff the NDP right-wingers and to deny them their chance at a broad anti-socialist coalition. Fearing the party would be subsumed, Amery and his MPs steered clear of the NDP and found themselves isolated in the Commons (their members in the Lords were already bolting for the NDP after the UEP leader in the Lords, the 10th Duke of Devonshire, defected in 1947). The permanence of the consensus and the lack of an alternative in international relations, even as Amery campaigned vigorously for Britain to leave the Atlantic Defence Organisation, dulled the spirits of the party’s activists to the point that many stopped renewing their membership by the turn of the Fifties.

It was quite apparent that the party was dead by 1950, as Alan Lennox-Boyd and Fitzroy Maclean defected to the NDP that summer and the remaining MPs were looking to retire come the next election. Vacancies for UEP candidates were created but very few were willing to fill them, especially as Leopold Amery and his son Julian were the only original ’46 MPs willing to stand again on their ticket. The leadership hoped and strove for a second wind in the lead-up to 1951, but the structures, funding, and membership had disappeared into the all-encompassing morass of consensus. The clear-cut exceptionalism that the United Empire Party had promised was never going to come to fruition. Thus, when there was not a single United Empire MP left standing, the elder Amery announced his intention to step down as party leader and to wrap up its activities indefinitely. The younger Amery, only 32 at the time, believed his father had done so to spare him any embarrassment should he seek out a career in the National Democratic Party (which did turn out to be the case as he became the Member of Parliament for Kensington South in 1956). Many former UEP members would take on significant roles in the National Democratic Party, leaving a mark far larger than the one achieved during the party’s actual lifetime.

The story of the United Empire Party is not the only anti-consensus political narrative, however, as the Anti-Politics Party well shows. Started in 1947 by the founder of the Woodcraft Folk, Leslie Paul, the Anti-Politics Party was an organisation that defied strict definition and easy categorisation. Whilst Paul was a co-operative socialist and romantic pastoralist, there were thousands of members who ranged from Trotskyites on the left to blood-and-soil agrarians on the right. A collection of eccentrics of varying political opinions, it is fair to say that the official name of the party was a misnomer: more specifically anti-consensus than anti-politics in general. What bound them together was a shared feeling of exhaustion with war and hope for the future, which naturally put them at odds with a political class obsessed with arguing about nuclear deterrents and collective security agreements. Typically drawing on urban working-class support, the party also made inroads in middle-class areas in the suburbs and countryside (especially in places where radical liberalism had been prevalent prior to the Moore-Brabazon government).

Structurally speaking, it was a decentralised party of autonomous associations who decided local policies and local platforms without the need for a top-down commanding central office. The freedom afforded by the party structure caused it some trouble when it received a wave of former BUF supporters in East London and southwest Essex in 1949 and the Barking branch of the party briefly started a campaign against black GIs in London, but the overall effect of this structural fluidity was deemed positive at the time and in retrospect. It scored very few successes at local elections, with some autonomous associations preferring to disengage from local democracy altogether, but the real prize for the party was a seat at Westminster. Leslie Paul had four years, thankfully, to work out a compromise manifesto between the widest sections of the party – often using write-in policy suggestions to cover topics he was not so knowledgeable about – and the party’s ideological integrity would escape being tested until 1951. The first true challenge for the party came in the 1949 Hammersmith South by-election, where the sitting Labour MP had died unexpectedly. Paul put himself forward and was accepted by the local APP association, who campaigned for his election with antics that saw two activists sent to hospital after a punch-up with a troupe of clowns hired by the NDP candidate, William Astor. The ultimate result, which saw Labour secure the seat with a majority of almost 3,000 votes, put Leslie Paul just 2,000 votes shy of William Astor’s total. It was a kick up the party’s collective backside and it showed them that their brand of common-sense community politics could win, given the right circumstances. The best thing for the party was that they didn’t have to wait long until there was intriguing another by-election south of the river.

The death of Ernest Bevin, Labour’s leading spokesman on foreign affairs, meant a by-election in Woolwich, which had an APP association with membership numbering in the hundreds. It was the perfect place to test the party’s electability, especially as – in contrast to the Hammersmith South contest – Labour would be fighting against a Communist Party candidate. Chosen to represent the Anti-Politics Party was one Terence Milligan, a jazz singer and trumpeter who had once been a member of the Young Communist League. Raised in South London and possessed of a charm that would serve him well on the doorstep, Milligan looked like the coming thing in the Anti-Politics Party: young, witty, and devoted to making people feel at ease rather than constrained and oppressed by the same old slogans and same old policies. Everyone could rest easy that when Terry Milligan made a promise, he intended to keep it (aside from when he promised his election agent to stop playing the trumpet in his presence, which he continued to do until the last day of campaigning).

The campaign shaped up to be quite the spectacle, with the NDP, Labour, and CPGB all taking turns to pour scorn on each other while the Anti-Politics candidate serenaded old ladies on the doorstep and reminded people of the colour and joy of life. The mudslinging trio of the right, left, and far left were too busy… well… slinging mud to make any connection with the voters in the way that Milligan did, which pleased the APP leadership no end. When it came to polling day, everyone outside of the Anti-Politics crowd was certain of a Labour victory. In fact, Milligan snuck through the middle of the Labour-Communist divide to claim a majority of just 560. The NDP were left trailing in fourth place.

Routing the larger parties was a great success for the APP and, in 1951, the party was able to retain its seat in Woolwich and increase the majority there by over 1,200. Paul’s manifesto was vague and positive-sounding, which turned out to enthuse and discourage in near-equal measure. The only downside to this great leap forward was the inevitable publicity that it drew, which attracted more and more fringe causes to the APP. Libertarians like George Kennedy Young joined in the wake of Woolwich East, which spurred on more right-wingers to invest their time and energy into taking over the APP autonomous association by autonomous association. First came the Bennites with their fundamentalist individualism, and then came the rural neo-fascists like Jorian Jenks, who were thus followed by right-wing cranks of every brand and affiliation. The party, having no restrictions on membership, was always vulnerable: the success of 1950-51 just opened the door to being exploited by activists who were organising for a return to the Moore-Brabazon years. It was a terrifying thought for Leslie Paul, who had failed to be elected in 1951 and was struggling to fund the party and his personal efforts to investigate possible fascist infiltration at the same time. Then, in 1954, a serious blow to the party came and disrupted its entire dynamic. Milligan, who had campaigned in favour of freedom of speech and freedom of association previously, was threatened with deselection by his local APP association after denouncing government measures against the Communist Party of Great Britain. The right wing of the Anti-Politics Party was furious and, having bolstered the numbers in associations both rural and urban, could count on a wide base of support when they denounced Milligan as a Soviet sympathiser who ought to be replaced as soon as humanly possible. Paul was, like Milligan, against the outlawing of the Communist Party and appealed to the common sense of his fellow party members to drop the issue and not to allow a cross-constituency alliance to build up against the policy: that, with its implications of formalised factions and the need for a solid national policy, was anathema to the very core of Paul’s Anti-Politics vision. Still, rather than waiting for the thing to blow over, Paul agreed to tackle the right head-on with an emergency policy conference held in Birmingham in January 1955. Delegates from all the autonomous associations were invited to come and cast their vote to decide the party’s policy on the CPGB. Expecting that common sense would prevail, Paul prepared his victory speech like a rally cry to all those who felt that things had been undemocratic simply by the mere absence of a proper democratic structure reaching upwards to the leadership. He offered a helping hand and an ear willing to listen; he would end up needing some tissues to wipe away his tears.

The anti-communist side won the policy vote, coming out with almost 400 votes more than Paul’s preferred liberal-minded approach. This spelled the end of the party, as Milligan ended his membership of the party and carried on as an independent MP until 1956 whilst the newer members began to push for Paul to step down and be replaced by, at various times and with varying degrees of seriousness, General Edmund Ironside, the former Director-General of the BBC Lord Reith, or a collective leadership of all the Mitford sisters barring Jessica. The pressure mounted, Paul refused to give in, and the more ambitious among his detractors took to bringing in a new organisation to affiliate with in the shape of the National Union of Small Shopkeepers. The small shopkeeper played a massive role in shaping the down-to-earth character of the party in its urban and suburban branches, which meant the NUSS was a perfect fit when a group of associations clubbed together and put forward a motion at the 1956 policy conference to formally combine the party organisation and the trade association into some hybrid political party-pressure group. What it promised, more than any electoral benefit, was money and that was where Leslie Paul’s vison fell apart. In October 1956, he resigned and ceded leadership to the right, who attempted a purge of the co-operative socialists and Trotskyites that went down rather violently at the Bournemouth party conference in the November of that year.

By 1958, the Anti-Politics Party was formally wound up and almost all its assets were taken over by the National Union of Small Shopkeepers, who stood two candidates – one in South London and one in Lincolnshire – at the 1960 general election. Both candidates lost their deposits.​
 
I'm probably talking out of my ass here but the UEP and the APP seem to be quite similar to two forces in post-war French politics. For the UEP its the Republican Party of Liberty - the political home of conservatives & pre-war establishment politicians who had been discredited with their at the very least private support for the Vichy regime, yet now magically found their love for republicanism and liberty which had been lacking in the years prior. The party was hampered by being unable to gain a foothold in national politics outside their small niche and eventually would fizzle away into a larger conservative-liberal party, CNIP, a bit like some in the UEP here. For the APP it appears to me to have at least a whiff of Poujadism about it, from its short flash in the pan lifespan to its leaders being nominally of the left, yet leading a disparate anti-politics coalition behind them. In addition to this there's the links to small business (I presume) and artisans, as seen by the NUSS (which I guess is a bit similar to Poujade's Union de défense des commerçants et artisans?). Both the Poujadists and the PRL would fit very well into the anti-consensus mould that the two parties above fit into. Apologies if this is all nonsense BTW.
 
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I'm probably talking out of my ass here but the UEP and the APP seem to be quite similar to two forces in post-war French politics. For the UEP its the Republican Party of Liberty - the political home of conservatives & pre-war establishment politicians who had been discredited with their at the very least private support for the Vichy regime, yet now magically found their love for republicanism and liberty which had been lacking in the years prior. The party was hampered by being unable to gain a foothold in national politics outside their small niche and eventually would fizzle away into a larger conservative-liberal party, CNIP, a bit like some in the UEP here. For the APP it appears to me to have at least a whiff of Poujadism about it, from its short flash in the pan lifespan to its leaders being nominally of the left, yet leading a disparate anti-politics coalition behind them. In addition to this there's the links to small business (I presume) and artisans, as seen by the NUSS (which I guess is a bit similar to Poujade's Union de défense des commerçants et artisans?). Both the Poujadists and the PRL would fit very well into the anti-consensus mould that the two parties above fit into. Apologies if this is all nonsense BTW.
The APP is supposed to be a mixture of Poujadism and Qualunquismo, but erring to the left in general for its early life. The “feel” of the party leadership, which is all about living in peace and breaking down authoritarian structures, is very much Leslie Paul’s vision and it doesn’t sit well with the generally very right-wing membership who are attracted by the vague notions of protest and having no oversight. Its lateen life is, as shown, more beholden to the right-wing membership and goes down the path of petit bourgeois sectionalism.

The NUSS is an OTL organisation, funnily enough, that was the centre of some very fringe talk in the ‘60s of forming a socially conservative populist group aimed at defending resale price maintenance. Never got off the ground, but the leader (whose name totally escapes me) fancied himself a British Poujade.

As to the UEP: I hadn’t thought about the Republican Party of Liberty, but it seems to match up quite well. My first and foremost influences there were Amery himself and then an assortment of right-wing organisations from right across Europe that wanted out of OTL’s NATO and out of the Cold War binary. I could see, in a world where Robert Taft or John Bricker is POTUS, a scenario where the isolationist USA keeps its nose out of the British Empire and Amery comes to power in ‘46 or something. That would be an interesting ATL of an ATL, but not something I’d put my hand to without having done a ‘Shuffling the Deck’ version first.
 
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HENRY BROOKE
NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC
(1954-1956)


When Henry Brooke took over as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on that fateful day in November 1954, the country was gripped by an anti-communist fever. Brooke, as one of those who had spoken up most often in cabinet about the threat of Soviet agents on British soil, had been awaiting this moment – where popular fears of communism, a surge in authoritarianism, and the diminishing influence of the NDP left would all converge – for a very long time. He had been linked to the ABC Group since its inception and had, as an aspiring municipal leader in London, earned himself a reputation as a right-wing stalwart that would shield him from accusations that his close relationship with Rab Butler (Heathcoat-Amory’s Chancellor) was a sign of craven consensus-building. He stood outside of the main troika of Assheton, Birch, and Clarke, allowing him to carve out an independent position within the party whilst also being one of the young dynamists of the party of the burgeoning right wing. With the public appearing to travel along the same contours of political logic as the ABCers in 1954, Brooke held the promise of a light out of the darkness and a new model of authority out of the Cold War paranoia that had enveloped Britain’s public discourse.

His first acts were simple ones: purge the left-wing party leadership, outright ban the Communist Party, and establish a House of Commons Select Committee to investigate this newly illegal behaviour. The cabinet was reformed, pushing many of the stalwarts of the NDP left out into the cold and replacing them with members of the ABC Group. Nigel Birch took over as Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Salisbury became Foreign Secretary, and Ralph Assheton took to the Home Department portfolio with unbridled enthusiasm: it was a team of reactionaries, yes, but energetic reactionaries willing to inject some controversy and life into the British body politic. That the Prime Minister himself was a rather staid character at the best of times did little to shake the popular feeling that Britain was about to experience a political sea-change. Curiously, however, Rab Butler did manage to remain in the cabinet at Housing and Local Government before resigning in the build-up to the Commons vote to ban the Communist Party. The NDP majority, alongside a Labour Party desperate not to be identified with Britain’s Malenkovites, passed the legislation to ban the CPGB and have their assets seized (with only a token number of NDP progressives, Liberals, and Labour left-wingers abstaining or voting against). The remaining fifteen Communist MPs in the House lost their seats automatically and were barred from standing in the resulting by-elections, which were largely won by Labour candidates. Whilst the government got much of the credit for the crackdown on the ‘reds’, it was the Labour Party that gained in electoral and media exposure terms during the spring of rolling by-elections across Britain’s industrial heartlands. Equally, the purge of the unions of Communist Party influence garnered a lot of media attention and those leaders who vigorously pursued the expulsion of communists and their sympathisers, such as Vincent Tewson, were rewarded with honours from the state and new positions of influence within the Labour Party.

Amidst the Labour surge in the polls in January 1955, Brooke formally created the House of Commons Select Committee on Anti-British Activities to claw back some momentum from the opposition. Chaired by Reginald Manningham-Buller MP, the committee hauled before it a long succession of broadcasters, journalists, educationalists, Members of Parliament, and even some very reluctant civil servants. Manningham-Buller was, perhaps, not the best choice if one was looking for incisive interrogation to rattle the so-called ‘reds under the bed’ and reveal the nuances of a vast Soviet conspiracy to undermine Britain. In fact, Manningham-Buller’s only tactic was to shout and bluster his way into intimidating those who attended sittings of the select committee and hope that some information might be offered by the poor subjects of his blind rudeness. The press, gagged by the Home Secretary, were unable to comment on Manningham-Buller’s conduct and the rather meagre results he obtained: their freedom was curtailed in the name of ‘national security’, which allowed the Daventry MP’s near-useless witch-hunt to go unchecked until the rise of Brooke’s successor. The Prime Minister himself was suitably pleased with the results of Manningham-Buller’s conduct, which was more – according to recently released cabinet documents – because the results of the select committee’s work were being overblown and overestimated in reports to Henry Brooke. Beyond a few dozen sackings or demotions at the BBC and a tedious list of names that MI5 soon cleared, the Commons Select Committee on Anti-British Activities was more a circus than a serious instrument of British constitutional power against the supposed ‘red menace’. Historians’ accounts of the paranoia that gripped Britain in the mid-Fifties have not been kind to those who created or sat on the committee and, given the fact that there were some very serious security breaches that went totally unnoticed by the committee, it is fair to say that the performative farce of their proceedings did more harm than good to the cause of the security obsessives of the NDP.

Rather arrogantly, the Prime Minister reckoned himself to be practically untouchable at the end of the summer of ’55. The national security crackdown had reaffirmed the NDP poll lead over the Labour Party and brought the nation to rally behind its anti-communist crusade, leading Brooke to believe that an early election – perhaps in October or November of 1955 – could prove beneficial to the party as it stormed ahead of Isaac Hayward’s beleaguered Labour Party by an average of twelve points. The Liberals, still sitting uncomfortably beside the NDP and being increasingly drowned out in cabinet, looked to the polls and saw a crash awaiting them at the next election. Having won 31 seats in the 1946 election and made a small increase to 40 at the 1951 election, the Liberals had benefited under Lord Woolton’s wing in terms of popular support and in seats at the cabinet table. By contrast, the Heathcoat-Amory government shuffled the Liberals into more junior positions and the arrival of Henry Brooke shattered the justification that the Liberal Party was integral to propping up a progressive government. The Liberals could no longer claim to deliver for their core bases of support, as their inability to convince Brooke to create a special ‘Welsh Department’ and their underwhelming defence of communists’ civil liberties exposed, and the polls predicted that their 45 seats could fall to a figure as low as 10. It would have constituted a wipe-out for Britain’s third party: a fate that Donald Wade (Archibald Sinclair’s successor) was determined to avoid. So, on the 22nd September 1955, the Liberal Party – fearing cabinet talk of an early election just around the corner – announced it would leave the coalition it had maintained with the NDP for the past decade. The National Democrats were thus all alone in government with their majority, just as Lord Woolton had feared. At the NDP conference that October, the old man himself did not even deign to make an appearance. It was a slight to the new leadership, their ideological forthrightness having opened the door for the Liberals’ exit and threatened to void the public goodwill the government had won with its anti-communist crusade. Persuaded not to call for Parliament’s dissolution that autumn, Brooke resolved to see out the winter of 1955 and go to the country in the following spring. In electioneering mode, Nigel Birch announced the end of petrol rationing in the New Year and liberalised restrictions on hire-purchase agreements to stoke up interest in the government’s new economic strategy (which was, paradoxically, to reduce the power of government strategies in the economy). ‘Birchonomics’ had, up until that point, been a project concerned with shrinking the welfare budget to pay for increased defence measures as part of Britain’s role in the Washington Alliance. Cuts were the order of the day and the prudent Henry Brooke was, despite the fiefdom carved out by Birch at the Treasury, able to exert some influence in keeping rationing on petrol, meat, sugar, and so on going beyond the estimates put forward by Macmillan prior to the 1951 election. As the need for a positive economic vision grew more pressing in the build-up to the 1956 election, the more Nigel Birch committed himself to a “retreat from the stomachs of the nation” and pledged to phasing out all food rationing by the end of the decade. This was an opening, some hoped, for the market economics of the pre-war years to reassert itself against the stolid Wooltonite corporatism that had seen the country through the crises of the immediate post-war period. Searching for new projects and new meaning as the National Democrats edged toward the next general election led some, specifically Lord Salisbury and Duncan Sandys (who had swiftly returned to his post at the Ministry of Defence once Brooke was Prime Minister), to countenance a radical approach that rather neglected domestic concerns altogether.

It was this new approach that would soon cleave the ABC Group in two.

Lord Salisbury was as committed an anti-communist as one could find in the British House of Lords, his reactionary speeches attracting much controversy from British and international observers alike. This antagonism toward the Soviets was not his only international antipathy, however, as he was equally concerned by the reach of the Americans in the new world order. Having attempted in the late ‘40s to convince Lord Woolton to bring the United Empire Party into the governing coalition, Salisbury was a known sympathiser with the anti-American imperialists of the NDP right. His traditional views on Britain’s place in the world conflicted with the stark realities of the bipolar Cold War, which made him an unorthodox choice for Foreign Secretary. The intelligence and determination of his character, though, made him an obvious choice to represent the ABCers in foreign affairs. It was this intelligence and determination that led him to believe that Britain, once its finances were in order, could afford an independent nuclear deterrent. An independent deterrent would exclude the Americans, in his vision, and he made common cause with Duncan Sandys as they put together a policy paper to submit to the Prime Minister on this very issue. The rather unreliable Sandys, however, let it slip to a meeting of ABCers at his home that they were hoping to make the independent deterrent the “centrepiece of the coming campaign”. This was not the harmless boast of a man proud of his policy work, but rather the starting pistol on the NDP leadership race that would delay the next general election until mid-June of that year.

The news broke that high-ranking members of the cabinet were planning to diverge from Brooke’s ambivalent stance on the independent deterrent question. The spending implications were part of Brooke’s orthodox critique of creating a nuclear bomb completely independently of the United States, which also followed in the logic of many of the progressives in the National Democratic Party. On the 12th February, barely four days from the news breaking that it was indeed Sandys and Salisbury pushing the cause of the ‘nuclear nationalists’, Brooke sacked both and replaced them with Lord Home (Foreign Secretary) and Peter Thorneycroft (Minister of Defence). Home was a reliable pro-American who kept aristocratic continuity with his predecessor, whilst Thorneycroft was a man who straddled the progressive and economically liberal factions of the party with great finesse. They could be expected to keep in the Prime Minister’s good books on the nuclear issue, but their appointment created a split in the ABC Group ranks that set the independent-minded imperialists against those who embraced Britain’s role under America’s ‘nuclear umbrella’. A split in the ABCer faction of the Executive Committee emerged, President Dewey was supposedly het up over the possibility that the governing party of his main European ally might collapse, and Labour watched on with glee.

From the time of the Liberal departure from the coalition to the Salisbury-Sandys controversy, Brooke had held to the belief that his fortunes at the next election were not so dire as some claimed. He held on and persisted against the barrage of internal criticism, believing himself to be the one man to head off the Labour Party’s comeback in the polls, and it was very much a shock to him when a delegation from the Executive Committee of the NDP asked to speak with him on the 1st March 1956. They intimated that the majority view of the committee was that Brooke should stand down as leader of the party once the committee’s informal soundings among the NDP parliamentarians came to a shortlist of candidates. Within three days, the same delegation returned to Brooke and informed him that they had their shortlist and the Prime Minister ought to go to Buckingham Palace to resign. One of them, a dark and roguish Scotsman, stood at the back of the delegate group trying very hard to suppress a smile. Brooke would later recall the gleam in this man’s eye, its radiance betraying the rehearsed sternness of his lips, as one of the lasting images of his downfall.

Ironically, eight years into his successor’s premiership, Henry Brooke would add his name to a letter, published in The Times, calling for the Prime Minister to release funds for a nuclear weapons system that was entirely and exclusively British. The letter would pass by unnoticed, as it would soon be overshadowed by his successor’s third consecutive electoral victory.​
 
Yet another PM without an electoral mandate stands down - Woolton certainly did cast a long shadow for people to step out from and, apparently, a rather diverse and divisive party too.

Interesting to see that the next PM will be around for some time though.
 
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