Labour and Hitler's Rise to Power, 1933-34 - Page: 2

In my previous article on the Labour party and the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, I concluded by arguing that it would take "events significantly closer to home" [i.e. in Europe] "to effect greater change in Labour's foreign policy" which at that time was one of staunch pacifism and support for the League of Nations. It did not take long for such an event to happen for just as the Manchurian question started to fade away, the problem of Adolf Hitler and how to deal with his regime took its place.

On January 30th, 1933, Hitler came to power. In the next two years, he left the League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference, rearmed on a large scale, and set up a totalitarian regime. He had done this with the tacit acquiescence of the British Government and the other Great Powers which were, according to deputy party leader Clement Attlee, "yielding to Hitler and force what was denied to [Gustav] Stresemann [1] and reason...." [2]

Labour was in favor of yielding to Stresemann and reason during the 1920s. Before Hitler came to power, Labour had a pro-German reputation. [3] In 1919, it opposed the Versailles Treaty, and it consistently opposed the reparations on Germany throughout the Weimar period. In 1931 and 1932, it supported Germany's demands for equality of status at the Disarmament Conference. [4] Sir Stafford Cripps, a prominent member on the party's left-wing remarked in March 1933, only two months after Hitler came to power, that "if you are ever going to remove the unrest from Europe you will do it only upon the basis of justice, and in order to do that, you must remove first of all some of the iniquitous provisions of the post-war Treaties." [5 This outlook was also shared by George Lansbury, leader of the party, who said in November 1932 that:

The nations of Europe have performed a great disservice to the German nation by not following their pledged word and disarming themselves when they had disarmed Germany.... They believed that we [Britain and the other Allies] were going to take the lead in bringing about disarmament. We have not done so, and the German people have been forced to come right out into the open and say: "you are not carrying out your word. Your Disarmament Conference goes on month after month and nothing is done. Nowe we are going to take the matter into our own hands, and re-arm.... [6]

It is eerie how right Lansbury was. Only two months after he said that, Hitler came to power committed to rearming Germany, and only a year after he spoke in the House of Commons, Nazi Germany left the Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations. It is also striking to note that as soon as Hitler came to power, the Labour Party and its leaders changed their outlook on Germany. John F. Naylor wrote in his Labour's International Policy: The Labour Party in the 1930s, quoting from A.J.P. Taylor, that "What was at issue was not the justice of the German claims, but rather Hitler's right to press them." [7] In Labour's opinion, no longer was poor, defenseless Germany being picked on; now the distasteful aspects of the Third Reich took center stage.

Ernest Bevin, a prominent member on the party's right-wing and a powerful union chief, was one of the first to realize the danger of Nazi Germany. [8] The German trade-union-movement, the largest and most powerful in all of Europe, was suddenly destroyed when Hitler came to power. Bevin, a powerful union boss himself, was scared of this happening in England. While in hindsight this seems a little pessimistic, in late 1933 and 1934, Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists seemed to be a powerful force in British politics. The unthinkable just occurred in Germany, could not it also happen in Britain? Bevin wrote to his membership [he was the head of the Transport and General Worker's Union] that no one "could ask for a clearer illustration of what dictatorship meant" and how it could affect them. [9] Years later he remarked:

From the day Hitler came to power, I have felt that the democratic countries would have to face war. I believe he was taken too cheap. We have been handicapped by the very sincere pacifists in our Party [i.e. Lansbury] who believe that the danger can be met by resolutions and prayers and by turning the other cheek. While I appreciate their sincerity, I cannot understand anybody who refuses to face the facts in relation to the happenings in China, in Abyssinia, in Spain, all virtually disarmed countries. I cannot see any way of stopping Hitler and the other dictators except by force. [10]

Most of his Party, however, did not feel this way yet. Though Cripps, Attlee, and Lansbury shared Bevin's hatred of Nazi Germany, all continued to insist on disarmament, but for different reasons. Lansbury insisted, and continued to insist on it for ethical reasons as he said in a debate over the 1933 Air Estimates:

I feel that violence and war and all the accomplishments of those evils have brought upon disaster on previous civilisations, and that it is not only morally true, but historically true, that individuals and nations that take to the sword perish by the sword.... [11]

Cripps took a somewhat different view, which was published in a newspaper article in 1935:

Leaving aside the purely pacifist view, which I respect and adire [he wrote], as ncessitating unilateral disarmament, to what consent could not yet be obtained in this country, we are left with the question: What is worth fighting for? [emphasis mine].... I have yet to meet the man or woman who justifies the tragedy of those four years [World War I] by the results that were obtained at the price of the incalculable slaughter and suffering of the workers of the world. Clearly, whatever the specious arguments and plausible excuses put forward then, the realities of history have demonstrated how futile and useless were the sacrifices.... We believe Imperialism with its competition, exploitation and aggression to be an unjust and evil basis for a society of nations. We cannot, therefore, support wars - whatever excuses may be made for them - the objective of which is to perpetuate the system we not only dislike but which we believe to be the fundamental cause of war. [emphasis mine] [12]

This last statement is an important differentiation between Lansbury and Cripps. While Lansbury found that no war was worth fighting for, Cripps argued that a war to overthrow the present system, or that a war against fascism was acceptable provided tht it was not fought for imperialist or capitalist motives.

Attlee took a different approach. While he felt early on that the Nazis were a menace, largely from an experience in 1933 where he had met "some very tough-looking Nazis," [13] he did not share Ernest Bevin's solution yet. Nor did he agree totally with Lansbury's or Cripps' either. He did not possess a moral outlook on disarmament, and he was not a pacifist. He supported disarmament because he believed that war was futile, a belief that he developed through fighting in the First World War. His was a mdidle-of-the-road approach, one that was often "inconsistent, sometimes tentative, [and] sometimes overemphasizing parliamentary procedures or Party unity..." [14] He criticized Nazi Germany as the rest did, and insisted that it "come with clean hands..." [15] if it wanted any Treaty revision. He also criticized the National Government for "supporting the rule of force as against the rule of law..." [16] Yet, he still refused to accept rearmament as the solution, saying "We [Labour MPs] do not think that you can deal with national armaments by piling up national armaments in other countries. We do not think you can cast out Satan by Beelzebub...." [17] It was a muddled approach, but representative of the deep divisions lying just below the surface in the Labour Party, and the struggles Attlee faced in trying "to combine his own experiences and views, his Party's leftist and dispirited mood, and the world's complexities in the 1930s." [18]

It also represented the domestic political situation fairly well. In 1933, "the British preferred to muddle along." [19] In February, the Oxford University Union, its debating society, passed a resolution by the vote of 275 to 153 vowing not "to fight for King and Country." [20] While the significance of this has been largely inflated over the years, it did shock and dismay many in Britain at the time. [21] At the time, it was seen as an act of "pacifism." This outlook is wrong. Rather, the resolution represented the students' commitment to collective security as opposed to national security. Thus, the resolution showed the level of enthusiasm for the League of Nations and collective security was strong. [22]

This sentiment was also represented in the numerous by-election [23] victories won by the Labour Party in 1933. The most famous of all was the by-election at East Fulham in October 1933. There, John Wilmot, the Labour candidate, running on a disarmament platform, overcame a 1931 Conservative majority of 14,521 votes to win by 4,840, a swing of 26 percent. [25]

Many historians have since disputed the notion that pro-disarmament and pacifist sentiments had such a great influence on the election as it might at first seem. One of them, A.J.P. Taylor, asserted that the National Government's means test and budget cuts [from 1931] had more to do with the result than anything else, and cites Neville Chamberlain, then the Chancellor of the Exchequer as proof. [26] Taylor remarked that "Electors, as distinct from politicians, were interested in housing and unemployment, not in foreign affairs." [27]

Nevertheless, many in 1933, especially the Labour Party, interpreted the East Fulham result as a result of "pacifist" sentiments among the voters. Wilmot said in Parliament that his victory stemmed from "a passionate and insistent desire for peace, not merely a purely nebulous desire for peace, but a demand that that desire should be translated into some practical disarmament accomplishment." [28] Public support for disarmament sustained Labour policy for the time being.

The rise of Hitler, or the "menace of fascism," as John F. Naylor has named one of the chapters in his Labour's International Policy, [29] led to the Labour Party taking further steps on the tortuous path from "pacifism" and support of war, yet it was not enough. The attitude was changed, but the policy was not. It would take an open breach of collective security close to home to change that, and in 1935, Benito Mussolini's invasion of Abyssinia provided that breach.

Footnotes:

[1] The Chancellor of Germany from 1924 to 1929, who brought Germany into the League of Nations and who signed Locarno in 1925. His early death in 1929 was seen by many as a blow to further Franco-German attempts at peace.

[2] House of Commons Debates, Fifth Series, vol. 276, col. 2742, 13 April 1933, Major (Clement) Attlee. [Hereafter cited as H.C. Debs., by volume.]

[3] John F. Naylor, Labour's International Policy: The Labour Party in the 1930s, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969) p. 5.

[4] Ibid., p. 36.

The Disarmament Conference was a League of Nations' attempt led by Arthur Henderson, from 1931-34 to reduce world armaments. It was an abysmal failure because of the irreconcilable conflict between Germany and France - Germany wanted equality of status in armament levels, the French wanted a military advantage over Germany in case she attacked again. The talks got nowhere, and when Adolf Hitler pulled Germany out of the Conference in October 1933, it effectively ended.

[5] 276 H.C. Debs., 23 March 1933, cols. 609-10.

[6] 270 H.C. Debs., 10 November 1932, col. 626.

[7] Naylor, p. 49, quoting Taylor, Origins of the Second World War, (NY: 1961), p. 136.

[8] Alan Bullock, The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin, vol. 1, (London: Heinemann, 1960), p. 526.

[9] Ibid., p. 527.

[10] Ibid., p. 592.

[11] 275 H.C. Debs., 14 March 1933, col. 1926.

[12] Colin Cooke, The Life of Richard Stafford Cripps, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1957), p. 175, quoting Sir Stafford Cripps, "Where I Stand," in the Sunday Referee, September 15th, 1935.

[13] Kenneth Harris, Attlee, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), p. 115.

[14] Jerry H. Brookshire, Clement Attlee, (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1995), p. 158.

[15] 276 H.C. Debs., 13 April 1933, col. 2745.

[16] 285 H.C. Debs., 6 February 1934, col. 1000.

[17] 299 H.C. Debs., 11 March 1935, col. 40.

[18] Brookshire, p. 158.

[19] Trevor Burridge, Clement Attlee: A Political Biography, (London: Jonathan Cape, 1985), p. 101.

[20] A.J.P. Taylor, English History, (NY: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 362.

[21] Naylor, p. 61.

[22] Ibid., p. 62, quoting R.B. McCallum, Public Opinion, pp. 177-80.

[23] An election held between General Elections in order to fill a vacancy. These elections often serve as barometers of the Government's performance and popularity.

[24] Naylor, p. 61.

[25] William Manchester, The Last Lion: Alone, 1932-40, (NY: Dell Publishing, 1988), p. 46.

[26] Taylor, p. 367, quoting Ian MacLeod, Neville Chamberlain, (1961), p. 179.

[27] Ibid.

[28] 281 H.C. Debs., 13 April 1933, col. 613.

[29] Naylor, pp. 46-83.