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The Independent Labour Party and Planning, 1920–26

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

Adrian Oldfield
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The failure of the ILP to convince a Labour opposition, and then a Labour government after 1929, to abandon its view that banking and politics were quite separate fields of activity is well-known. Politicians were not bankers: it was as simple as that. Ramsay MacDonald, though not averse to political programmes as such, was certainly suspicious of “unauthorised” programmes. In a veiled but unmistakable reference to ILP policy statements, he told the 1927 Labour Party conference that

“authorised programmes might have a certain number of inconveniences, but unauthorised programmes had many more inconveniences, and he was not at all sure that during the last twelve months or two years the Labour Party had not suffered more from unauthorised programmes and statements than it had suffered from the issue of well-considered and well-thought-out documents and pronouncements.”

Philip Snowden was much more explicit. Unlike Sir Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England, Snowden did recognise a causal relationship between changes in the availability of credit and changes in the levels of production and employment, but thought that this was a relationship which politicians should not interfere with. Control of credit held within it the possibility of inflation. “It might be highly dangerous”, Snowden warned the 1928 Labour Party conference, “in the hands of a Government that wanted to use this means in order to serve some purpose, or to gain popular support.” One might achieve temporary benefits, such as the reduction of unemployment from one and a quarter million to a quarter of a million in nine months, but there would be a terrible price to pay later – all the more terrible because unspecified.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , April 1976 , pp. 1 - 29
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1976

References

page 1 note 1 Labour Party, Conference Report 1927, p. 182.Google Scholar

page 1 note 2 For Norman's views see Pollard, S., The Development of the British Economy, 1914–1950 (London, 1967), p. 220Google Scholar; Skidelsky, R., Politicians and the Slump (London, 1967), pp. 13–14Google Scholar; and Winch, D., Economics and Policy (London, 1969), pp. 89–90Google Scholar.

page 2 note 1 Labour Party, Conference Report 1928, p. 231; Winch, op. cit., p. 93, incorrectly attributes this speech to the 1929 Labour Party conference.

page 2 note 2 ILP, Conference Report 1918, p. 32.Google Scholar

page 2 note 3 See Oldfield, A., “The Labour Party and Planning – 1934 or 1918?”, in: Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History, No 25 (1972)Google Scholar.

page 3 note 1 See Dowse, R. E., Left in the Centre (London, 1966), ch. 2Google Scholar; and Swartz, Marvin, The Union of Democratic Control in British Politics during the First World War (Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar.

page 3 note 2 Dowse, op. cit., p. 27.

page 3 note 3 See Marwick, A., Clifford Allen (Edinburgh, 1964), p. 30Google Scholar.

page 3 note 4 Dowse, ibid.

page 3 note 5 Cole, Margaret, The Life of G. D. H. Cole (London, 1971), p. 74Google Scholar.

page 3 note 6 Marwick, op. cit., pp. 46–48.

page 4 note 1 Diary, 29 January 1918, Allen Papers, quoted in Marwick, op. cit., p. 48.

page 4 note 2 Marwick, op. cit., p. 52; Cole, op. cit., p. 124.

page 4 note 3 Letter in Labour Leader, 12 February 1920, quoted in Dowse, op. cit., p. 66.

page 4 note 4 ILP, Conference Report 1920, p. 61.Google Scholar

page 4 note 5 ILP, Conference Report 1921, p. 13.Google Scholar The committee's membership was: Ramsay MacDonald, Clifford Allen, Norman Angell, Margaret Bondfield, H. N. Brailsford, Fred Bramley, G. D. H. Cole, Mary Agnes Hamilton, Frank Hodges, Fred Jowett, B. N. Langdon-Davies, Neil Maclean, J. S. Middleton, Tom Myers, C. H. Norman, Philip Snowden, R. C. Wallhead, Leonard Woolf, E. Shin well, and David Kirkwood, with Emile Burns as secretary. Of these, Allen was prevented by illness from taking any part in the work of the committee, and Margaret Bondfield, Brailsford, Hodges, and Myers for various reasons also took no part. MacDonald, though chairman, felt unable to sign any of the subsequent reports of the committee. Ibid., p. 66.

page 5 note 1 Ibid., p. 71.

page 5 note 2 Ibid., p. 67.

page 5 note 3 Ibid., p. 69.

page 5 note 4 Ibid., p. 73.

page 6 note 1 Ibid., p. 74.

page 6 note 2 Dowse, op. cit., p. 67.

page 6 note 3 Ibid., pp. 677ndash;68.

page 7 note 1 ILP, Conference Report 1921, p. 73.Google Scholar

page 7 note 2 Ibid., p. 74.

page 8 note 1 Ibid., p. 138.

page 8 note 2 ILP, Conference Report 1922, p. 92.Google Scholar

page 8 note 3 Ibid., pp. 68–69; for Attlee's guild socialism see Golant, W., “The Early Political Thought of C. R. Attlee”, in: Political Quarterly, XL (1969).Google Scholar

page 8 note 4 ILP, Conference Report 1922, p. 92.Google Scholar

page 9 note 1 Ibid., p. 68.

page 9 note 2 Ibid., p. 93.

page 9 note 3 Dowse, op. cit., p. 69.

page 9 note 4 See Cross, Colin, Philip Snowden (London, 1966), pp. 174–75.Google Scholar

page 10 note 1 Trades Union Congress and The Labour Party, Report of British Labour Delegation to Russia, 1920 (London, 1920), p. 5.Google Scholar

page 11 note 1 Ibid., pp. 14–15.

page 11 note 2 Allen Papers, quoted in Marwick, op. cit., pp. 62–64.

page 11 note 3 There is no clue, for instance, in Gilbert, Martin, Plough My Own Furrow (London, 1965), p. 166Google Scholar, where part of Brockway's account is reproduced.

page 11 note 4 Brockway, Fenner, Inside the Left (London, 1947), pp. 143–44.Google Scholar

page 12note 1 Allen, Clifford et al. , The Socialist Programme (London, 1923), p. 9.Google Scholar

page 12 note 2 The ILP was to make much use of J. A. Hobson's underconsumptionist argument, and Hobson indeed was one of the signatories of The Living Wage, much to Beatrice Webb's offended surprise (Diaries 1924–1932, ed. by Margaret Cole (London, 1956), p. 89, entry of 16 April 1926). The emphasis of Keynes and Lloyd on the stabilisation of internal prices, at the expense, if necessary of the external exchange rate, is also to be found. Whereas Keynes argued for government management of economic aggregates to achieve this end, Lloyd pointed to the necessity of taking social purposes into account, for which a more interventionist role on the part of government was required, especially in the allocation of funds for investment. Lloyd also emphasised the importance, for the object of internal price stabilisation, of international control of the supply and prices of foods and raw materials entering into foreign trade. See Hobson, J. A., The Economics of Unemployment (London, 1922)Google Scholar; Keynes, J. M., A Tract on Monetary Reform (London, 1971; first ed. 1923)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lloyd, E. M. H., Stabilisation (London, 1923).Google Scholar Though Keynes's Tract was not published until December 1923, a month after The Socialist Programme, the articles on which it was based had appeared in the Manchester Guardian the year before. For a fuller consideration of the relevance of Hobson, Keynes and Lloyd to the development of the economic policy in the ILP and the Labour Party, see Oldfield, A., “The growth of the concept of economic planning in the doctrine of the British Labour Party, 1914–1935” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Sheffield, 1973), pp. 132–52.Google Scholar

page 12 note 3 The Socialist Programme, p. 10.

page 13 note 1 Ibid., pp. 10–11.

page 13 note 2 The Socialist Programme appeared at the time when Baldwin had called a general election over tariff reform.

page 14 note 1 The Socialist Programme, pp. 26–28.

page 14 note 2 Ibid., pp. 22–23.

page 14 note 3 Reproduced in The Times, 20 November 1923.

page 14 note 4 Allen, Clifford, Putting Socialism into Practice (London, 1924), pp. 23, 26–27.Google Scholar

page 15 note 1 The Socialist Programme, p. 24.

page 15 note 2 Ibid., p. 22.

page 15 note 3 Ibid., p. 24.

page 15 note 4 Ibid., pp. 22–23.

page 16 note 1 For an elaboration of Allen's views see Marwick, op. cit., ch. X; and Dowse, op. cit., ch. 9.

page 16 note 2 For a consideration of Ramsay MacDonald's approach see Panitch, Leo V., “Ideology and Integration: The Case of the British Labour Party”, in: Political Studies, XIX (1971), p. 190Google Scholar; and Mowat, C. L., “Ramsay MacDonald and the Labour Party”, in: Essays in Labour History 1886–1923, ed. by Briggs, Asa and Saville, John (London, 1971), pp. 148–49.Google Scholar

page 16 note 3 MacDonald, J. R., Why Socialism Must Come (London, 1924), p. 10.Google Scholar

page 16 note 4 ILP, Conference Report 1926, p. 9.Google Scholar

page 17 note 1 See Brockway, Fenner, Socialism Over Sixty Years (London, 1946), pp. 176–82.Google Scholar

page 17 note 2 Bradford Pioneer, 31 December 1920, quoted in Brockway, op. cit., p. 180.

page 18 note 1 Allen, Clifford, Putting Socialism into Practice, pp. 20–21.Google Scholar

page 18 note 2 ILP, Conference Report 1925, pp. 92–93.Google Scholar

page 19 note 1 New Leader, 16 December 1923, quoted in Marwick, op. cit., p. 85.

page 19 note 2 Brailsford, H. N., Socialism for To-Day (London, 1925), pp. 68–69.Google Scholar

page 19 note 3 Ibid., p. 69

page 19 note 4 Ibid., pp. 5, 120–21.

page 19 note 5 Ibid., p. 38.

page 20 note 1 Ibid., pp. 34–36.

page 20 note 2 Ibid., p. 14.

page 20 note 3 Ibid., p. 95.

page 20 note 4 Ibid., p. 119.

page 20 note 5 Ibid., emphasis added.

page 21 note 1 Ibid., pp. 96–98.

page 21 note 2 Ibid., p. 98; see Keynes, op. cit., pp. 32–34.

page 21 note 3 Brailsford, op. cit., p. 99.

page 21 note 4 Ibid., p. 97.

page 22 note 1 Ibid., pp. 103–04.

page 22 note 2 Ibid., pp. 100–01.

page 22 note 3 Ibid., pp. 124–25.

page 23 note 1 ILP, Socialism in Our Time (London, 1926)Google Scholar, reproduced in ILP, Conference Report 1926, p. 76.Google Scholar

page 23 note 2 Ibid., pp. 78–79.

page 23 note 3 Ibid., p. 76.

page 23 note 4 Ibid., pp. 76–77.

page 23 note 5 Ibid., p. 80.

page 24 note 1 Ibid.

page 24 note 2 Ibid.

page 24 note 3 In Brailsford, H. N. et al. . The living Wage (London, 1926), p. 54Google Scholar, there is an acknowledgement to Hugh Dalton for his help on family allowances.

page 24 note 4 ILP, Conference Report 1926, p. 82.Google Scholar

page 24 note 5 Ibid., p. 83.

page 24 note 6 Ibid., pp. 80, 83–84.

page 24 note 7 Ibid., p. 81.

page 24 note 8 Ibid., p. 83.

page 24 note 9 Ibid., p. 81.

page 25 note 1 In Revolution by Reason (Birmingham, 1925)Google Scholar, Mosley used the language of planning, by which he meant an effort on the part of the state to ensure that sufficient goods and services were produced to cope with the increased demand which an expansion of credit would have stimulated. There is a case for arguing that the term “planning” owes its presence in The Living Wage to the publicity given it by Mosley. If so, it is unlikely that it was due to Mosley's active influence, as during the winter of 1925–26 he was in the United States (Mosley, O., My Life (London, 1970), p. 185).Google Scholar Retrospectively, Mosley is contemptuously dismissive of the Living Wage policy (ibid., p. 220). See Oldfield, op. cit., pp. 228–38.

page 25 note 2 ILP, Conference Report 1926, p. 86.Google Scholar

page 25 note 3 Ibid., p. 76.

page 25 note 4 Ibid., p. 78.

page 26 note 1 Mosley has received too much credit in recent years for adding “to the II P's preoccupation with redistribution an interest in monetary policy as a means of expanding demand” (Skidelsky, R., Politicians and the Slump, p. 168Google Scholar). Though the preoccupation of the ILP was with redistribution of income, on the Hobsonian argument that this itself would expand demand, Clifford Allen had argued in The Socialist Programme for “an expansion of purchasing power brought about by an increase of bank advances” as a remedy for unemployment (p. 26).

page 26 note 2 Brailsford, , Socialism for To-Day, p. 99Google Scholar; Labour Party, Conference Report 1924, pp. 161–66; see also Dowse, op. cit., p. 98.

page 26 note 3 Though Dowse, op. cit., has frankly and avowedly studied the ILP's decline as “a consequence of structural factors which left little room for manoeuvre” (p. ix), it is strange that he entirely ignores The Living Wage, and treats Socialism in Our Time as the final report of the Living Wage Commission.

page 26 note 4 Brailsford, et al. , The Living Wage, pp. 20–34.Google Scholar

page 27 note 1 Ibid., p. 34.

page 27 note 2 Ibid., pp. 17–18.

page 27 note 3 Ibid., pp. 42–43.

page 27 note 4 Ibid., p. 13.

page 27 note 5 Ibid., p. 37.

page 27 note 6 Ibid., pp. 38–40.

page 28 note 1 Ibid., p. 19.

page 28 note 2 Ibid., p. 46.

page 29 note 1 Ibid., pp. 52–53.

page 29 note 2 See Oldfield, “The Labour Party and Planning”, loc. cit., pp. 52–53.

page 29 note 3 ILP, Conference Report 1926, pp. 58–59.Google Scholar