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A Campaign For Unity: Cripps' Unity Campaign, 1935-1939, Part I

© Joseph Sramek

Editor's Note:

During most of the 1930s, the Conservative Party, under the guise "National Government" was in power. Labour was at best an ineffectual Opposition, at worst, deeply divided. I have already written a few articles on one of the major leaders, George Lansbury, and the pacifist branch of the Party that he represented. While Lansbury may have been one of the few idealist in what was [and remains] a largely pragmatic Party, there were others as well. One, Sir Stafford Cripps, was one of the more prominent and controversial Labour Party members during the 1930s. Like Lansbury, Cripps advocated a foreign policy at odds with that of the majority of the Party. He also was at loggerheads with Ernest Bevin, and even risked being expelled from the Party [he was in February 1939] for his beliefs. Like Lansbury, he was an idealist; however, not a pacifist. He did not oppose war per se, only capitalist war. Like his fellow Party members, Cripps deeply abhorred Fascism. For most of the 1930s he advocated the creation of a United Front of Anti-Fascists to combat the seemingly ever-rising Fascism. His efforts failed. Yet, he caused the Labour Party, as well as Britain at large, to question their foreign policies, and in many ways, hastened Britain's move toward war.

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From 1931 until 1937, the Labour Party voted against the National Government's annual military budgets, not necessarily because they were against armaments [although their were still a number of pacifists within the Party] but rather because many did not trust the National Government with any at all. [1] Cripps was in the forefront of this opposition to giving arms to what was considered a capitalist and imperialist government.

This distrust was mainly due to the original means to which the National Government was formed in August 1931 [James Ramsay MacDonald, "the Great Betrayer," held public office until 1937]. Many in the Party thought that MacDonald and other leaders had betrayed their movement at a time of crisis. Instead of implementing a socialist program, MacDonald, Philip Snowden [the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Second Labour Government of 1929-31], and others formed a National Government that was mostly a front for the Conservatives and not really "national," and which implemented cuts [in the budget] that hurt the poor much more than the rich.

These events seemed so inexplicable to many members of the Party; a common question asked throughout the decade and afterwards was "Why?" Cripps' answer was that a socialist program [if there ever was any] was prohibited by the Socialist Labour Government's minority status: [in the 1929 General Election, it did not achieve a absolute majority of seats in Parliament, yet was the largest Party overall] it was dependent on a capitalist Party [the Liberals] in order to maintain power. Since the capitalist Parties [the Conservatives and the Liberals] managed to kick the Labour Party out of office in August 1931, Cripps mused what would happen when and if the Party would have an absolute majority. On January 6, 1934 he gave a speech at Nottingham University before the Labour Federation saying: