A League of Nations, For Nations? Part I
country, when it is faced with a crisis, it has got to give confidence it is capable of coming to a decision." [14]
Thus the stage was set for the Annual Party Conference, which was held from September 30 to October 6, 1935, at Brighton.
Footnotes:
[1] Charles Loch Mowat, Britain Between the Wars, 1918-1940, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1955), p. 542.
Adowa was the 1896 battle in which Italy was defeated by Ethiopia, and her imperialist aims somewhat thwarted.
[2] The Party went from 287 seats that were won in 1929, to 46!! All former Cabinet members, save Lansbury, were defeated.
[3] In 1921, Lansbury and fellow Poplar [a East-End borough of London] government leaders went to jail for six weeks to protest the unfair taxation of poorer areas of London, while richer areas were not taxed as much. He won every one of his demands, and instantly became a hero, and remained one for the remainder of his life, because of this.
[4] The Daily Herald was the party newspaper, edited by Lansbury from 1912-22.
Lansbury's Weekly was the center of "Left" opposition to MacDonald during the 1920s. See James Jupp, The Radical left in Britain, 1931-41, (London: Frank Case, 1982), p. 6.
[5] The Party's anthem, a socialist song.
[6] Kenneth Harris, Attlee, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982), p. 13.
This last sentence refers to James Ramsay MacDonald, the former leader of the Labour Party, who was commonly known to have desired to be a part of London high society. In fact, some have put forward the idea that he betrayed the Labour Party [in 1931, during the Financial Crisis] to accomplish this!!
[7] In 1931, Japan invaded Manchuria. Despite League of Nations sanctions, it remained, and just resigned from the League. It was the first nation to openly defy the League.
[8] House of Commons Debates, Fifth Series, vol. 304, 1 August 1935, col. 2894.
[9] Ibid., col. 2898.
[10] John F. Naylor, Labour's International Policy: The Labour Party in the 1930s, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), p. 98.
[11] Maurice Cowding, The Impact of Hitler, (NY: Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 83.
[12] Ibid., quoting Lansbury, statement of September 8, 1935, The Manchester Guardian, September 9, 1935.
[13] Peter Weiler, Lives on the Left: Ernest Bevin, (NY: St. Martin's Press, 1993), p. 91.
[14] Ibid., quoting Bevin, Labour Party Annual Conference Report, 1935,, pp. 153-56.
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