By Joe Langabeer
A BBC4 programme, broadcast last Monday, examined political history beginning with the end of World War Two. It is part of a TV series that is worth watching, although with a critical eye. This episode was narrated by Andrew Marr, who explained that the landslide Labour victory in 1945was unexpected by Churchill, the press and the Labour leaders.
The election result for Churchill, Marr explained, was like a ‘sharp stab of physical pain’. The Tories fought the election with the slogan of Advance Britannia. The programme showed an election rally where Churchill was met with chants of “Labour!” from the audience.
On the verge of economic collapse
Labour stood on a programme of “fair shares for all” ( it reminds you of ‘For the Many, not the Few’) and the slogans of Attlee, Labour’s leader, were for a ‘New Jerusalem’ and ‘No return to the Britain of the 30s’. Britain, although victorious, was on the verge of economic collapse. Marr described Britain as a nation that had gone from being the world’s banker to the world’s leading debtor. During the war, Britain relied on American arms, food and loans.
Industry was clapped-out and over 250,000 homes had been destroyed. Labour sent John Maynard Keynes to Uncle Sam for a £8bn gift, but Truman, the US president, declined. Instead, the US gave a loan of £4bn, on condition that Britain lifted exchange controls after a year. Marr commented that the loan was only eventually paid off in 2006.
The immediate period after the war was one of austerity. Rationing was stricter even than during the war years. For the first time, bread was rationed. ‘Mend and make do’ was the motto. In fact, meat rationing remained until 1954.The programme had a clip with Labour minister Harold Wilson (later Prime Minister) urging women to have shorter garments as this would mean using less material and leaving more for other clothes. My parents had what was described as ‘utility’ furniture and they had this until their dying day.
Workers occupying empty houses
Although under Labour there was a mood of optimism within society, particularly among working class people, there was an illustration of what was likely to happen if Labour failed to live up to its promises. Marr reported that in Kensington, around a thousand people gathered, mainly families, and began occupying empty houses. This direct action was organised by the Communist Party. Despite being illegal, the authorities were reluctant to act. Labour began the task of creating the new Jerusalem.
Labour began by implementing the Beveridge Report. Beveridge was a Liberal peer, who famously described the five great ills of society as ‘want, idleness, ignorance, squalor and disease’. The creation of what we describe as the welfare state was due to the Labour government of that period: a system of support “From the cradle to the grave”, as one newspaper headline described it.
Labour introduced a state National Insurance scheme that provided income during sickness and unemployment. The government nationalised the coal, steel and rail industries. As Marr says, “Coal was power”, because 90% of Britain’s energy supply came from it.
Largest empire in history
At this time, a number of European states set-up the Coal and Steel Community, which was the forerunner to the later Common Market and then the EU. The French government asked Britain to join, but Herbert Morrison, Labour’s deputy declined, he claimed, because “the Durham miners would never wear it”.
Immediately after the war, Britain still had the largest empire in history. It covered around a quarter of the world’s land mass. This is what was always uppermost in Churchill’s mind, but ironically, Britain’s inability to retain its grip on its empire was the price it had to pay for ‘victory’ in the war. The jewel in the crown, India, was granted Independence in 1947, because at that point Britain was unable militarily, politically or diplomatically to hold it any longer. Two hundred years of Britain control of India was ended.
Britain’s military prowess was reduced to a shadow of its former grandeur; 840 warships were either mothballed or sold off to other nations to get some much-needed foreign exchange.
The late 40s saw the beginnings of the cold war and the rise of what was purported to be ‘communism’ in Eastern Europe and China. Churchill, of course, described this as the new tyranny; in a famous speech he described an “iron curtain” having fallen over Eastern Europe. Unfortunately, this was more or less the foreign policy of Labour too, and Attlee’s government adopted a foreign policy and a policy of rearmament indistinguishable in principle to what the Tories would have done. While it might have been conducting a radical and reforming policy at home, Labour’s foreign policy was not based on any socialist principles whatsoever, but on what was in the best interests of British capitalism.
Britain befriended Greek Nazi collaborators
At this time, during a Labour government, British armed forces were fighting against Greek Communists, the partisans who had fought the Nazis to a standstill. We had the situation where those who freed Greece from the Nazis were fighting the British, who were allied with all those political elements who had collaborated with the Nazis. Ernest Bevin, the Foreign Secretary, threatened to withdraw military forces from Greece, unless they received financial aid from the US.
Marr also described how it was the view of the USA that France and Italy would go ‘red’ without aid, so Washington gave financial aid to Western European states, through so-called Marshall Aid. It became the main means for the capitalist recovery of western Europe.
‘stuffing their mouths with gold’
Domestically, the most important reform of Labour, and the most long-lasting, was the creation of the NHS. The principle was that medical care should free at the point of use. Aneurin Bevan, the Heath Secretary, described its founding as ‘giving moral leadership to all the world’. He had to battle against the vested interests of doctors who wanted to retain some private practice and he was only able to secure agreement, he said, by ‘stuffing their mouths with gold’. Later Bevan and Wilson resigned from the Labour cabinet because of the introduction of charges for dentistry and glasses, which were against the principles of the NHS foundation. By then, the policy of ‘guns not butter’ – as Britain was rearming despite the austerity and hardships – was causing a rift within Labour and there was a revival of what was described as the ‘Bevanite Left’ in the party.
Contingency plans for famine
Attlee’s Government had other crises to contend with. Ending exchange controls led to a fall in the value of Stirling and a rise in the cost of imports. At that time, you were allowed to take no more than £5 out of the country. The end of controls allowed a rush to buy dollars. The winter of 1947 was the coldest for the whole of the century’ but power stations were shutting down and around two million workers were laid off. The government even had contingency plans for the possibility of famine.
Marr described the Labour government of 1945 to 51 as “truly transformative”, along with Thatcher’s, although for entirely different reasons. The 1950 and 1951 general elections had turnouts of 80%. Only the Scottish referendum of 2014 exceeded this level and in fact more people voted Labour than they did in 1945. Unfortunately, Labour lost narrowly in 1951.
Radical policies are possible
For reasons beyond the scope of this article, the Labour government of 1945 was unlike the earlier crisis-ridden Labour governments of the interwar period. Essentially, they were able to deliver on their domestic manifesto pledges. There is a message here. Bold and radical policies are possible, especially at a time of crisis. Echoes of this was seen in the 2017 election. Even Marr made the point that much of the class-ridden system inherited from the war still remained after the 1945 Labour government. The Labour Party today still need to finish off the job that was started after the Second World War.
Programmes should be used for discussions
BBC4 is also running a programme, on May 28, on the economic lessons of 1945. The blurb on the BBC website says:
“Businesses mothballed or trying to get back on their feet. The government paying the wages of more than seven million employees. Working from home as the new norm. could we have predicted the impact that Covid-19 would have? Not necessarily.
“But perhaps there are lessons to be taken from another era that experienced a huge shock – 1945, at the end of World War Two. Getting back to a peacetime economy from a war footing was a big leap for British businesses. Evan Davis and his guests discuss whether that era highlights the dos and don’ts of how to kick-start our present-day economy”.
In the run-up to the 75th anniversary of the Labour victory of 1945, it is important that Labour Party members study the period before, during and after that general election itself and the lessons it has for us today in a pandemic crisis. It would be a useful subject for Zoom discussions among Labour Party members. Looking and listening to broadcasts such as these – especially with a critical eye – can be a very useful aid to such discussions.
May 17, 2020
