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The Conscience of His Generation: George Lansbury, Pacifism, and the 1930s

© Joseph Sramek

There seldom has been a more committed idealist in British politics than George Lansbury. He once wrote that he sympathized with "...those who stand for principle." [1] He was one of the first feminists, and actually resigned from his Parliamentary seat in 1912 in order to fight a by-election [which he lost] on the issue of female suffrage. [2] But one principle stood even higher than that, and that was his total opposition to war. He was an absolute pacifist, and his Christian moralism deeply influenced British politics during the 1930s.

George Lansbury was born in 1859, into a lower middle-class family. In his youth, he opposed British imperialism, and shared William Gladstone's support for "...subject peoples struggling to be free." [3] Thus, he opposed the Boer War, and ran for Parliament in the Bow and Broomley constituency against it. Running against a tide of pro-war sentiment, he received only 2,558 votes against 4,403 for his opponent. [4]

Although opposed to this war, he was not yet a pacifist, as he could still believe in a "just war." [5] Yet he was moving in the direction of absolute pacifism. In 1910, he co-authored, along with Keir Hardie [the founder of the Labour Party] and others, the famous "War Against War" resolution. Nevertheless, war came in August 1914, and Lansbury spent the period between 1914 and 1918 as a conscientious objector.

After the war, Lansbury rose to the leadership of the Labour Party and in 1929, became a Cabinet member of the Second Labour Government. Then in 1931, financial disaster struck. Amid a monetary crisis, the Second Labour Government resigned, and a new "National" Government was formed. This Government "solved" the crisis, and then dissolved Parliament and fought a new General Election. The Labour Party suffered a landslide defeat, going from 289 MPs in 1929 to only 46 in 1931. All the former Cabinet members, except Lansbury, were defeated. Thus by default, he became Party leader.

While this was occurring, several external events started to occur which would end up breaking up the Versailles order and lead to World War II. The first was the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, immediately as the General Election was occurring. Lansbury spoke up against the Government's dither, saying in November 1931 in the House of Commons that there was:

a very strong feeling in the country that it would be rather grotesque that members of the Council of the League of Nations who are pledged against war should assist in carrying on war...[6]

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