Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary of initials
- 1 Introduction
- PART ONE LABOUR AND THE CRISIS
- PART TWO UNITED FRONT
- PART THREE RANK AND FILE
- PART FOUR ALLIANCE
- 15 Popular Front
- 16 Labour and the Left Book Club
- 17 Parliamentary Alliance?
- 18 Cripps and the Petition Campaign
- 19 Labour and the War 1939–40
- 20 Conclusion
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
18 - Cripps and the Petition Campaign
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary of initials
- 1 Introduction
- PART ONE LABOUR AND THE CRISIS
- PART TWO UNITED FRONT
- PART THREE RANK AND FILE
- PART FOUR ALLIANCE
- 15 Popular Front
- 16 Labour and the Left Book Club
- 17 Parliamentary Alliance?
- 18 Cripps and the Petition Campaign
- 19 Labour and the War 1939–40
- 20 Conclusion
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
THE CRIPPS MEMORANDUM
On 9 January 1939 Cripps wrote to Middleton, the Party Secretary, demanding a special meeting of the NEC to consider a number of proposals which he wished to put to it. These proposals, which became known as the ‘Cripps Memorandum’, set out familiar arguments for a Popular Front: Labour standing on its own was unlikely to win a majority in any election held within the next eighteen months; it was therefore necessary to join forces with other opposition groups on the basis of a programme of limited reforms, with constituency arrangement wherever possible. The situation was urgent ‘in terms of days and not weeks’. ‘I certainly should not desire to encourage the Party to any combination with other non-socialist elements in normal political times. I have in the past always strenuously opposed such an idea. But the present times are not normal, indeed they are absolutely unprecedented in their seriousness for democratic and working-class institutions of every kind.’
This combination was to include Liberals, Communists, and the ILP – but not the Churchill group of Tory dissidents:
Winston Churchill has made an attempt through Sandys and the 100,000 movement to capture the Youth for reactionary imperialism and was much closer to success than many people imagine. That movement is certainly checked and is, I hope, defeated. But the danger remains that some other such political group will make an attempt to take command of this very considerable force of young opinion to fashion it into the nucleus for a rapidly expanding centre party or democratic front. […]
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- Chapter
- Information
- Labour and the Left in the 1930s , pp. 170 - 182Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1977