Abstract
When the Labour Party became the official Opposition in the House of Commons after the election of 1922 it introduced a significant change regarding the party leadership. Ramsay MacDonald, who had been elected chairman of the parliamentary party in place of Clynes, was referred to as ‘Chairman and Leader’. This titular change represented an important shift of power in the Labour Party; as a potential government, the PLP now began to emphasise its greater independence of the extra-parliamentary party, and as potential prime minister the leader of the PLP was increasing his power both at the expense of the party outside Parliament and within the PLP itself. Since 1906 the party had changed its chairman no less than six times and the post had never won the power and status accredited to the leader in the Conservative and Liberal Parties. After 1922 the Labour Party more clearly conformed to the practices of British parliamentary government, and in spite of opposition to the leadership concept within the party inside and outside Parliament the period from 1922 to the establishment of the National government in 1931 was a period of the undoubted domination of MacDonald over all sections of the party.
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Notes to Chapter 5
D. Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (London: Jonathan Cape, 1977) p. 328.
R. T. McKenzie, British Political Parties, 2nd edn (London: Heinemann, 1963) p. 309.
Also W. L. Guttsman, The British Political Elite (London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1965) pp. 256–8.
See G. D. H. Cole, A History of the Labour Party from 1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1948) pp. 175–7; McKenzie, pp. 427–8.
See P. Snowden, An Autobiography, vol. 2 (London: Nicholson & Watson, 1934) pp. 757–61.
R. Skidelsky, Politicians and the Slump: The Labour Government of 1929–31 (London: Macmillan, 1967) p. 387.
For a discussion of the importance of party loyalty, see H. M. Drucker, Doctrine and Ethos in the Labour Party (London: Allen & Unwin, 1979) pp. 12–14.
See F. Williams, A Pattern of Rulers (London: Longman, 1965) p. 75.
R. A. Dowse, Left in Centre: The ILP 1893–1940 (London: Longman, 1966) p. 93.
Snowden, p. 876. For an account of Mosley’s proposals and his speech see R. Skidelsky, Oswald Mosley (London: Macmillan, 1975) pp. 199–200.
See L. Minkin, The Labour Party Conference rev. edn (Manchester University Press, 1980) p. 16.
B. Donoughue and G. W. Jones, Herbert Morrison (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973) p. 241.
See also, K. Harris, Atlee (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982) p. 120,
B. Pimlott, Hugh Dalton (London: Cape, 1985) pp. 231–2.
See H. Pelling, A Short History of the Labour Party, 4th edn (London: Macmillan, 1972) p. 77.
The description is Ralph Miliband’s. See Parliamentary Socialism, 2nd edn (London: Merlin Press, 1972) p. 192. See pp. 193–271 for a powerful indictment of the Labour Party in this period.
See also a criticism of attempts to present the 1930s in a less gloomy light: A. Howkins and J. Saville, ‘The Nineteen Thirties: A Revisionist History’, in The Socialist Register 1979, ed. R. Miliband and J. Saville (London: Merlin Press, 1979) pp. 89–100.
B. Pimlott, Labour and the Left in the 1930s (Cambridge University Press, 1977) p. 129, gives credit for this change to the activities of the Constituency Parties’ Association.
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© 1987 Alan R. Ball
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Ball, A.R. (1987). The Labour Party in Turmoil, 1922–40. In: British Political Parties. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18725-6_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18725-6_7
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