Before 1935, the "fascist menace" - that is, the threat represented by Italy and Germany, was not a threatening one. Both were right-wing militaristic dictatorships, both virulently anti-labor and anti-socialist. Both had done many unpleasant things inside their borders. Yet neither upset the European balance of power in any significant way. After 1935, this was to change.
In 1935, Benito Mussolini launched an invasion of Ethiopia - ostensibly to avenge Adowa. [1] As this was occurring, the Labour Party's hidden tensions suddenly emerged and exploded. After the dust settled, the party had a new parliamentary leader, and one of its branches was dealt a fatal blow.
In 1931, in the midst of its greatest electoral defeat ever, [2] the Labour Party had picked George Lansbury, then 72 years old, as its Leader. At the time, Lansbury was, in many ways, the ideal choice. He was, as historian Kenneth Harris has written:
- in many ways ideal... He was the only one of the veteran Labour leaders who had survived the carnage of 1931. He had been the wartime pacifist idol of the I.L.P. [Independent Labour Party, or precursor to Labour Party]. He had been the prophet of "Poplarism." [3] He had built up The Daily Herald and had founded Lansbury's Weekly. [4] In the 1931 crisis, nobody had more strenuously resisted the cuts in unemployment pay than he had. More than any living Labour leader, Lansbury represented socialist idealism - under no other leader could the little band of forty-six have marched into the voting lobby [of the Commons] singing "The Red Flag." [5] His followers loved him, and trusted him. They knew that in no circumstances would any duchess want to kiss him. [6]
Yet as Hitler rose to power, and agressors such as Japan [7] began proving the need for sanctions and perhaps rearmament, Lansbury began to look more and more quaint. He was a relic, no doubt revered, but still a relic. As some party leaders, most noticeably Ernest Bevin [a powerful trade union boss, who controlled much of the right-wing of the Labour Party], began to reassess the world situation, they found Lansbury to be out of touch.
This thought was reinforced when Lansbury clung to his beliefs throughout 1935, despite Italy's increasingly threatening posture towards Ethiopia. In a debate on August 1, 1935, he insisted that the Labour Party stand by the League of Nations in the dispute over Abyssinia, but also said that he would not, if he was Prime Minister, send the British Fleet to intervene. [8] In effect, this admission made the policy of collective security [The prominent foreign policy of Labour during the 1920s and '30s that promoted national disarmament of weapons, and collective, i.e., League of Nations security instead.] rather a farce. Instead of advocating his Party's policy, he mused:
