The Independent Labour Party, 1914-1939: The Political and Cultural History of a Socialist Party (Routledge Studies in Modern British History)

Historians of political history are fascinated by the rise and fall of political parties and, for twentieth-century Britain, most obviously the rise of the Labour Party and the decline of the Liberal Party. What is often overlooked in this political development is the work of the Independent Labour Party (ILP), which was a formative influence in the growth of the political Labour movement and its leaders in the late nineteenth century and the early to mid-twentieth century. The ILP supplied the Labour Party with some of its leading political figures, such as Ramsay MacDonald, and moved the Labour Party along the road of parliamentary socialism. However, divided over the First World War and challenged by the Labour Party becoming socialist in 1918, it had to face the fact that it was no longer the major parliamentary socialist party in Britain. Although it recovered after the First World War, rising to between 37,000 and 55,000 members, it came into conflict with the Labour Party and two Labour governments over their gradualist approach to socialism. This eventually led to its disaffiliation from the Labour Party in 1932 and its subsequent fragmentation into pro-Labour, pro-communist and independent groups. Its new revolutionary policy divided its members, as did the Abyssinian crisis, the Spanish Civil War and the Moscow Show Trials. By the end of the 1930s, seeking to re-affiliate to the Labour Party, it had been reduced to 2,000 to 3,000 members, was a sect rather than a party and had earned Hugh Dalton’s description that it was the ‘ILP flea’. In the following monograph, Keith Laybourn analyses the dynamic shifts in this history across 25 years. This scholarship will prove foundational for scholars and researchers of modern British history and socialist thought in the twentieth century. Cover 1 Half Title 2 Series Page 3 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Dedication Page 6 Contents 8 List of tables 10 Acknowledgements 11 List of abbreviations 13 Introduction 16 1 The Independent Labour Party and the Great War, 1914–1918 32 2 Should we stay or should we go? The Independent Labour Party and its new role, 1918–1922 65 3 Clifford Allen, the ‘Red Clydesiders’ and ‘Socialism in Our Time’, 1922–1928 85 4 Conflict with the Labour Party and Labour government, and disaffiliation c. 1928–1932: reasoned debate or emotional suicide? 113 5 ‘The ILP flea’: the rapid demise and factionalism of the Independent Labour Party in the early and mid-1930s 141 6 A mass of contradictions: internationals, communism, the Labour Party and war 163 7 Voices from the ranks making the most of moment and form: a distillation of the essence of the cultural and political life of ILP branches, federations, divisions and their members, 1914–1939 191 Conclusion 219 Epilogue 223 Appendices 226 Appendix 1 The constitution of the Independent Labour Party, 1922 228 Appendix 2 Socialism in our time, 1926 230 Appendix 3 The 1934 survey of the ILP branch attitudes towards campaigning with communists 233 Bibliography 236 Index 247 The,Independent,Labour,Party,and,the,Great,War;,Conflict,with,the,Labour,Party,and,Labour,government;,The,ILP,flea;,A,mass,of,contradictions The Independent Labour Party and the Great War,Conflict with the Labour Party and Labour government,The ILP flea,A mass of contradictions