WI: Conservative Victory in 1929

kernals12

Banned
IOTL Labour won the 1929 elections, gaining a plurality in parliament and allowing a coalition government with the Liberals. In 1931, with the Great Depression worsening, Labour leader Ramsey Macdonald went turncoat, created his own "national labour" party and formed a coalition dominated by the Tories.

So what if the Tories had won in 1929 instead? Presumably Labour would be thrust to a landslide in the next election, whenever it's held. And then Labour could press ahead with its agenda, similar to the one it passed IOTL in after 1945. And then there's the big thing: foreign policy. How would Labour handle Nazi Germany?
 
Labour was far more dominated by candidates from the noncomformist churches in the 1920s and 1930s, with distinctly pacifistic leanings, than it would be in 1945.

The UK Labour movement in 1945 also was working with a country that had implemented "war socialism" already, with rationing, corporatist planning, immense state commandeering of property, resources, and control over the economy.

So I would expect a Labour agenda coming to power in the 30s to be more pacifistic and less able to implement its agenda than it was able to in the 1940s. There would be much more middle class resistance.

Also, the focus of said agenda would be much more concerned with state control over the means of industrial production than on state distribution of services.

Labour's agenda in 1945 was a response to the situation in the UK during the war, with institutional disruption and a shortfall in living standards. Labour's agenda in the 30s would be less focused on living standards than on the idea of risk mitigation through state control (the UK actually did not suffer nearly as badly as contemporary nations did in the Depression).
 
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