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.
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.