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Rethinking a Socialist Foreign Policy: The British Labour Party and International Relations Experts, 1918 to 1931

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 April 2009

Lucian M. Ashworth
Lucian M. Ashworth
Affiliation:
University of Limerick
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Abstract

Between 1918 and 1929 the British Labour Party, working in conjunction with many of the top names in International Relations (IR), developed a coherent foreign policy centered around reforming the international system. This was a major policy change for a political party that, up until then, had concentrated on domestic social and political issues. The construction of Labour's interwar foreign policy was part of a wider intellectual revolution that produced the separate discipline of IR after the First World War, and the splits in Labour over foreign policy mirrored similar splits in the wider IR literature. Particularly important here were the differences of opinion over the relationship between arbitration, sanctions, and disarmament in a system of League of Nations pooled security. Labour's close association with IR experts and intellectuals resulted in the construction of an international policy that, while addressing socialist themes, drew on an older liberal tradition. The ultimate goal of this policy was to create pacific international conditions favorable to the development of democratic socialism. While events after 1931 forced a major rethinking in the Party, Labour's IR experts continued to provide policy-relevant advice that shaped the Party's responses to the rise of fascism.

Type
Rethinking the Left in Victory and Defeat
Information
International Labor and Working-Class History , Volume 75 , Issue 1 , Spring 2009 , pp. 30 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. 2009

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References

NOTES

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44. Arnold-Forster, “Sanctions,” 3.

45. Arnold-Forster, “Sanctions,” 4; Mitrany, “Labour Policy on Sanctions,” 2; Mitrany, Problem of International Sanctions, 2.

46. Dalton, Peace of Nations, 235.

47. Mitrany, Problem of International Sanctions, 27.

48. Arnold-Forster, “Sanctions,” 8.

49. Mitrany, “Labour Policy on Sanctions,” 2, 7. See also Mitrany, Problem of International Sanctions, 12–13.

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58. Swanwick, H. M. and Arnold-Forster, W., Sanctions of the League of Nations Covenant (London: London Council For Prevention of War, 1928), 20–21Google Scholar; Swanwick, H. M., Collective Insecurity (London: Cape, 1937), 19–20Google Scholar.

59. Labour and the Nation, first edition, 41.

60. Dalton, Peace of Nations, 90.

61. Peace of Nations, 294, 297.