by Simon Heffer
It was considered that the more extreme Labour MPs had lost their seats at the election, but it worried the man who had become Leader of the Opposition in Asquith’s absence, Sir Donald Maclean, that dissent would find a new home outside Parliament – as seemed to have happened in Glasgow. ‘Anyone who reads the newspapers’, he told the Commons on 17 February, ‘knows what is going on outside, the dangerous spirit that is abroad—and the deliberate campaign against the authority of this House.’87
The King’s Speech opening Parliament included pledges to raise the money for reconstruction and to pay down the debt resulting from the war. Then there came this key passage:
The aspirations for a better social order which have been quickened in the hearts of My people by the experience of the War must be encouraged by prompt and comprehensive action. Before the War, poverty, unemployment, inadequate housing, and many remediable ills existed in our land, and these ills were aggravated by disunion. But since the outbreak of War every party and every class have worked and fought together for a great ideal. In the pursuit of this common aim they have shown a spirit of unity and self-sacrifice which has exalted the nation and has enabled it to play its full part in the winning of victory. The ravages of War and the wastage of War have not yet, however, been repaired. If we are to repair these losses and to build a better Britain, we must continue to manifest the same spirit. We must stop at no sacrifice of interest or prejudice to stamp out unmerited poverty, to diminish unemployment and mitigate its sufferings, to provide decent homes, to improve the nation’s health, and to raise the standard of well-being throughout the community. We shall not achieve this end by undue tenderness towards acknowledged abuses, and it must necessarily be retarded by violence or even by disturbance. We shall succeed only by patient and untiring resolution in carrying through the legislation and the administrative action which are required. It is that resolute action which I now ask you to support.88
It was no wonder the government was pleading not just to stop violence, but to avoid even ‘disturbance’. No sooner did the unrest in Glasgow end than a strike of gas and electricity workers paralysed Belfast, and the London Underground strike started. The War Cabinet’s meetings became longer than in wartime, as it attempted to face the numerous threats to Britain’s economy. It was not unrelated to this sense of crisis that, on 12 February, it decided it would be ‘premature’ to abolish censorship.89 That month the railwaymen, miners and transport workers reaffirmed the Triple Alliance that between 1910 and 1913 had several times almost paralysed the country: it was a natural response to the poor parliamentary representation the working-class movement had secured at the election. The miners saw the post-war settlement, and the new mandate for the government, as an opportunity to establish themselves on a new footing; and they hoped to threaten a strike of the Triple Alliance to secure their aims.
J. H. Thomas, secretary of the National Union of Railwaymen, who was not keen on such action (though his union would strike in September 1919), told Lloyd George that ‘the trouble is they are trying to get the grievances of a century righted in five minutes, and they won’t give you five an a ’arf.’90 Before the war the wage bill for the railways had been £50 million a year; it had already risen to £110 million and if the new demands were met would be £151 million.91 The railwaymen were determined to convert the extraordinary gains of the war years into a permanent wage, and the government was having none of it. Aware of the need to placate the miners, the government established a commission to discuss nationalising the collieries; it would take another war to achieve that, however.
In March, before the commission could report, a strike of miners and railwaymen broke out. As well as shorter hours, the miners also wanted highly preferential unemployment pay for demobilised colleagues struggling to find a job, and for men displaced by the return of former soldiers. The railwaymen wanted higher pay. Churchill told Wilson on 9 February that Lloyd George had expected this, and that it would lead to a ‘trial of strength between the GOV & the Bolshevists.’92 When the challenge came, Lloyd George told the War Cabinet that because wartime nationalisation was still in force, ‘both miners and railwaymen are the servants not of employers, of the State … a strike would be against the State … the State must win and use all its power for that purpose, otherwise it would be the end of Government in this country.’93 He remained prepared to use DORA against strike leaders if necessary. Despite all this rhetoric, and having had its fingers burned, the government strove to stay out of the arguments.
On 12 February the War Cabinet discussed a plan to distribute food in case of a general strike, sending the Army in to keep the ports open. This came against a background of discussing whether to reinforce the 14,000 British and Empire soldiers in northern Russia, sent by Milner the previous year, and wage an assault upon the Bolsheviks: something highly provocative to the British working-class movement. Churchill wanted all-out war; Lloyd George and the War Cabinet did not – not for logistical or manpower reasons, but through fear of inflaming organised labour.
With such considerations borne very much in mind, Lloyd George said in his remarks on the King’s Speech that economic conditions in Britain in the preceding years had been better than anyone could remember: real wages had risen, there was no unemployment, no poverty on a pre-war scale and no distress. This was deeply disingenuous to say the least, and typical of his ability to bend the truth, something he did even more ruthlessly than usual in the immediate aftermath of his election landslide. He understood, however, that ‘genuine fear’ of unemployment now prevailed, and that ‘the better educated the working classes become the deeper and stronger is their resentment at these social conditions’ – by which he meant the notion of inequality, manifested in the overcrowded conditions in which many working people lived, that had fuelled unrest in defeated European countries, might not be impossible in one that had achieved victory.94 Official figures on 16 January showed 537,000 men and 430,000 women drawing unemployed pay.95 The jobless were sometimes offered work at less than their unemployed pay: if they refused it their benefit was cut off.
As spring approached there were no signs of improvement in the industrial situation. In mid-March around 50,000 miners went on strike in South Wales and Nottinghamshire, and the Triple Alliance was activated. Happily, the threat of a quasi-general strike receded without a confrontation. At so volatile a time it is hard to predict what its consequences might have been, not least because the police were also threatening to strike again: unrest was especially bad in Scotland, where officers had seen militant munitions workers bought off by the government, and expected something similar. That same month the War Cabinet refused to recognise a Metropolitan Police union, because the commissioner told them he could not administer a unionised force.96 To make matters even more incendiary, the return of professional criminals from the forces precipitated a rise in crime, as did the presence in society of men with military training who had endured dangers and hardships for several years and saw little to lose by stealing to improve their lives. To cheer people up the War Cabinet sanctioned higher beer production, without either lowering its strength – indeed there was such discontent at beer quality that it proposed it should be stronger – or increasing its price; and directed additional supplies to areas where the population had increased because of returning soldiers.
Stepping up the brewing of beer was hardly an adequate answer to the problems facing the country because of workers’ disquiet. Lloyd George knew that fears about industrial relations would hamper the commercial restart necessary to prevent unemployment, and that the building of confidence was essential. But he was aware that a rise in the costs of production – such as caused by excessive wage demands – would wreck competitiveness and put men out of work. Across the labour movement there were specific grievances that men felt were simply not being addressed. For example, the miners wanted a six-hour shift and not an eight-hour one, for humanitarian reasons; and they wanted the Minimum Wage Act,
introduced in the teeth of his anti-interventionist beliefs by Asquith during the Great Unrest, amended to take more into account the average wages of each class of miner. The Labour Party’s line was that stoppages were caused by a refusal of management to negotiate properly: and, speaking with the voice of the trades unions, it threatened that the ‘down tools’ policy would continue until reasonable demands were conceded.97
Labour also felt antagonised when the government set about doing what it could to rebuild private enterprise, selling shipyards and factories it had built or taken into ownership during the war. In the face of this capitalist gesture, Labour kept the causes of unrest before the government and the public. Announcements of increases in dividends inflamed workers’ feelings; these caused labour unrest and class antagonism immediately after the Armistice. The Lancashire cotton trade was paying historically low real wages because of two years on short time, yet the return on capital to investors had risen by 45 per cent.98 There were instances of profiteering that even the excess profits tax could not temper. Those that came to light were believed to be the tip of an iceberg, and the rumour took hold that the whole of the capitalist class was making excessive amounts while the workers struggled.
Labour sought the nationalisation of land, mines and railways ‘not as any kind of Socialistic idea, but as a plain business proposition to business people’, according to one of its longest-serving MPs, William Brace, who said such a policy would turn speculative industries into sound investments.99 Brace conceded that the Bolshevik was an enemy of the state, but believed the profiteer was as dangerous. At a time of such volatility, he hardly exaggerated. ‘I would say to employers,’ he concluded, ‘recognise the changed circumstances; recognise that the working classes are no longer going to be treated as “hewers of wood and drawers of water”.’100
The readiness with which some rank-and-file trades unionists ignored their more moderate leaders, and embraced Bolshevik doctrine, caused great disquiet. Apparently fearing a revolution, Crewe, in the Lords on 4 March, sought to find common ground with the labouring classes: ‘Do the workers seriously desire that all the elements of adventure and of good fortune should be eliminated from the prospect of the capitalist? Perhaps, to some extent, they may, and if they do one cannot be altogether surprised, because those elements, as industry is carried on in this country, are the exclusive property of the capitalists.’ His idea that the fruits of capitalism should be shared more widely with the workers, instead of ending capitalism, was not far ahead of its time; profit-sharing firms had existed from the nineteenth century and started to proliferate before the war. Other such initiatives would grow up in the years of industrial strife that lay ahead, to the General Strike and beyond. Socialist policies lacked ministerial advocates, though Churchill, speaking in his constituency, Dundee, just before the election, had hinted that railway nationalisation would become government policy. This apparently throwaway remark caused great consternation to railway companies, and to the unions, none of whom realised such a thought had entered ministers’ heads – and Churchill’s own colleagues were appalled at the suggestion.
The unions wanted conciliation and negotiation; the government floated the idea of compulsory arbitration. However, it lacked confidence in the idea sufficient to include proposals for it in the King’s Speech. Instead, Lloyd George appealed vaguely ‘to the commonsense of all sections of the community, so that the victory won so largely by the heroism and the tenacity of this great nation in five years of sacrifice shall not be wantonly dissipated in a few weeks of frenzied strife.’101
It fell to the surviving Asquithian Liberals to apportion the real blame for the unrest: with Lloyd George, who, as Acland claimed in the same debate, had run an election campaign ‘on stunts’; had, through the exercise of the coupon, done all he could to prevent the election of Labour MPs to give the working man and woman a voice in Parliament; and who on the eve of the election had made a ‘tremendous onslaught’ on Labour and its leaders.102 Acland also attacked Lloyd George for operating a policy whereby there was restricted availability of shipping, which reduced imports and imposed a form of protectionism that kept prices – especially those of food – up at home; given that the prime minister had, in the debate on the King’s Speech, demanded an export drive, this was grave hypocrisy. Another reason for the protectionist stance, Acland contended, was that the government had made huge advance purchases of commodities in expectation of war, and did not wish to make a loss – something it could prevent only by suffocating free trade. Despite the government’s mismanagement of economic and industrial affairs, and the high levels of agitation, Bolshevism would not take hold in Britain.
By the time of the Versailles Treaty 80 per cent of soldiers were demobilised: and many went into work quickly, not least as women returned to the home. The Discharged Soldiers’ Association asked the government to initiate a 5 per cent quota in its workforce of men who had been disabled, and to start a national scheme requiring private sector employers to do the same.103 The DSA said it felt its ‘extremist’ members were prepared to resort to violent protest unless something was done, which worried Horne, the minister of labour. They also wanted women to be replaced by ex-servicemen wherever practical, and for labour exchanges to give ex-servicemen, especially those with a disability, preference over others when offering jobs. The government, recognising the new order, realised such a policy required union support, and was unlikely to get it: the unions would not tolerate the dismissal of a fit man and his replacement by a disabled one. The DSA demanded to see the King; the King was embarrassed, and intimated to Horne that he was minded to grant Royal Warrants only to firms employing a 5 per cent quota of disabled ex-servicemen.
The War Cabinet had few qualms about removing women from their jobs: ‘There were many women holding Government posts who did not require this form of income at all and many of the women were married and could be supported by their husbands,’ Horne said. He was true to his word. By 1921 there were fewer working women than in 1914. An attempt was made, however, to allow women to obtain professional qualifications and to serve in civil and judicial capacities, such as in the civil service and the magistracy, on the same basis as men through a Women’s Emancipation Bill, introduced in the Commons in April. It would also allow women to sit in the Lords as they now could in the Commons – there were a handful of hereditary peeresses, and others could be created. However, it would also enfranchise women at the age of twenty-one, as it would men. The Bill was defeated, but most of its provisions were brought in within a few years – although it took until 1958 for women to sit in the Lords. William Adamson, the Tory MP who introduced it, said that ‘during the great period of reconstruction in the process of rebuilding the world, men and women must face the future together under more equal conditions than ever have obtained up to the present time. It is, therefore, in my opinion, the duty of this House to take the steps which are necessary for removing the barriers which still stand in the way of the womenfolk of the country.’104 There was also a demand for the Commons to debate the need for the legal profession to admit women, as the medical profession had done in the late nineteenth century. The mood of the times was clear.
V
Just as one set of hostilities ceased, another reignited. On 19 December 1918 the Irish Republican Army had tried to assassinate French, the Viceroy; on 21 January the Sinn Féin MPs elected the previous month and who were at liberty – thirty-six were in prison – having refused to take their seats at Westminster as they abjured the authority of the Imperial Parliament over Ireland, convened the first Dáil Éireann at the Mansion House in Dublin. The building had just been used for a lunch to welcome home 400 repatriated prisoners of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers; the surrounding buildings were festooned with Union flags. With the weight of the vote behind them the MPs declared an Irish republic, and announced that a state of war existed between Ireland and England. Proving the point, that day Volunteers of the Tipperary Third Brigade killed t
wo Royal Irish Constabulary officers guarding a consignment of gelignite at Soloheadbeg in Tipperary, an action unauthorised by the leadership of Sinn Féin, and initiating a spasm of worsening violence, destruction and bloodshed that would last more than three years.
Haldane had been in Ireland, being consulted by French about a way forward: Haldane’s idea was to offer Dominion status to Ireland and with it a generous financial settlement. However, he had barely reached home when the Soloheadbeg murders happened, prompting French to write to him to say that ‘it has been necessary to declare the whole county a military area … the Sinn Féin leaders cannot control their own people … circumstances have prevented any further progress being made in the direction we wished.’105 Haldane thought French’s response ‘folly’. In the months ahead several Sinn Féin MPs would be arrested for sedition or unlawful assembly, either court-martialled or brought before resident magistrates, and sent to prison, usually for two or three years. The establishment of a coherent Irish policy seemed impossible; locking up republicans was about all the government could fathom to do, and each time opinion hardened further against Britain.
The response in Britain to the declaration of the republic was amazement and ridicule; but the republicans were not acting lightly. The Times’s reporter noted that the crowd that packed the Mansion House to watch the event included ‘a considerable sprinkling of priests’; the Catholic Church was now strongly, if unofficially, behind Sinn Féin.106 In the election campaign Sinn Féin’s programme had not specified how Britain would be expelled from Ireland; the public response to these killings suggested they would not support violence. The two dead RIC men were both from local families and both popular, and the murders caused great dismay among the Irish.