*The crucial aspect of our foreign policy should be to protect, assist, encourage and aid in every revolution wherever classes every selfish, depraved, decadent. The upper classes look to the Army and British people to protect them against the just wrath of the people.
not happen.' y calls suffered depression deprivation; it was determined that henceforth things would be different. The Labour Party election slogan, "And now expressed the common feeling exactly. did Labour's landslide victory.
Statesman first time the popular vote demands socialism'.
Yet, four years Smith was to complain: drive or vision of the end we want to achieve, or how to reach it.' Roy Jenkins, speaking on the inequality in 1950, despaired: 'We have hardly yet scratched the problem.' From the other side, the right wing Daily Express commented the major act Socialist Ch that it appears. The country are dissolute and We must see that this does treeze was and — win the peace' So too As the New put it on 4 August 1945: For the ain: We naveno socialist Labour MP Ellis member A vounger. more radical production. problemaiof 1945-51- cent.
Wage 8 wages from 1947 to 1951? One reason is all too Stafford Cripps, explained "e puration we canner afford to deserte personal income until we get more production and until we pay our own way without gifts and loans from abroad . It is most unfair for those workers who think they can bring some demand increases which can only be met at the unfair, but if such demands were generally indulged in, it would wreck all hope of our imposing a wage freeze in March 1948; the 'voluntary' but it was effectively policed by the TUC.
Obsession The drive for productivity became the Government Herbert Morrison could tell Labour Party conference of 1947: 'In Britain today the battle for socialism is the battle for But the figures suggest that if this was the battle, then it was already largely won. 1946 to 1948, production increased by 23 per cent, and the following year by a further 8 per But for the working class rewards were
go several steps further.
more than any other single influence, was at the root of the failures of 1945-51. The putting down of the Communist revolution in Greece, the waging of a savage colonial war in Malaya, and the supplying of British troops for Korea, Atlantic world for imperialism.
In 1952, when recalling his 'iron curtain' speech of 1946, Winston Churchull observed: The policy which I outlined at Fulton five years ago (sic) was effectively adopted by th and the Socialist Party. years later, by the Brussels Pact and the North Treaty, the whole substance station Two Docks in 1945, 1948 and 1949, to break a lorry drivers' strike in 1947, and a London powel strike 1950. records: 'By 1948 strike-breaking had become second nature to the Cabinet.
What the Labour Government of 1945-51 did was to keep Britain safe for capitalism. Perhaps there is no better example of the
Prior's
The 1945-51 that Tory In July relating achieve readers that: government, several steps further. professor of leaders. 1946:
government/TUC even communist dockers.
unions, trade union historian by all trade unionists.
First, there was the very limited nature of that programme. So much so that when the predecessors Labour Government repealed the 1927 Tory law outlawin general strikes. "But, at the same time, i tried to stop the sort of political strikes Employment Secretary Jim Prior is trying to ban today.
1949 Attorney General declared: "A strike which is not confined to industrial objects, which is to berline trade dispute but which is designed to subvert the Government and overthrow it to political results... would unquestionably be illegal and those who proved to have participated in it would to a charge of seditious A year later, the Government proved as good as its word, when ten striking gas workers were taken to court under a piece of war-time legislation that had limited the right to strike. The workers were sentenced to prison, but an appeal court reduced this to a fine.
Government's plans were first announced, the Economist of November 1945 reassured its 'An avowedly socialist clear parliamentary majority might well have been expected to go Second, there was the way in which the government implemented what nationalisation there was. The National Coal Board provides a good illustration. First established in 1947, it was chaired by Lord Hyndley, a managing director of a number of private firms. The rest of the board was made up of two high level civil servants, two trade union leaders, two former bosses of the private coal industry, one physics and hish-leve accountant from the City of London.
The idea of the workers actually controlling such industries was an anathema to the Labour As Stafford Cripps said in October "There's not a very large number of workers in Britain capable of taking over large The witch-hunt Playing its full part in the Cold War, the Labour Government launched an anticommunist witch-hunt at home. March 1948 saw the launching of a purge of communists in the civil service.
backed up by against communists in the unions. The governdiscussed deporting For. its part, the 1948 urged the executives of all affiliated unions to:
'Counteract every manifestation of influence within their and to open the eyes of all workpeople to the dangerous subversive activities which are being engineered in Keep one world der ted, police is ed impoverished and in constant dread of a third world war must be condemned and repudiated