Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- List of Tables and Graphs
- List of Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 ‘If this is to be a jingo, then I am a jingo’ – Labour Patriotism before 1914
- 2 ‘I'd sooner blackleg my union than blackleg my country’ – Labour Patriotism, 1914–18
- 3 ‘Middle-class peace men?’– Labour and the Anti-War Agitation
- 4 ‘Our Platform is Broad Enough and our Movement Big Enough’ – The War and Recruits to Labour
- 5 ‘The experiments are not found wanting’ – Labour and the Wartime State
- 6 ‘The greatest democratic force British politics have known’ – Labour Cohesion and the War
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - ‘The experiments are not found wanting’ – Labour and the Wartime State
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- List of Tables and Graphs
- List of Illustrations
- Abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 ‘If this is to be a jingo, then I am a jingo’ – Labour Patriotism before 1914
- 2 ‘I'd sooner blackleg my union than blackleg my country’ – Labour Patriotism, 1914–18
- 3 ‘Middle-class peace men?’– Labour and the Anti-War Agitation
- 4 ‘Our Platform is Broad Enough and our Movement Big Enough’ – The War and Recruits to Labour
- 5 ‘The experiments are not found wanting’ – Labour and the Wartime State
- 6 ‘The greatest democratic force British politics have known’ – Labour Cohesion and the War
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
‘Thus in the hour of its supreme need does the nation turn to the collectivist experiments urged for so many years by the Labour movement. And the experiments are not found wanting.’
—Daily Citizen, 5 August 1914‘[The war] cast its shadow over every domestic hearth. It thrust into the melting pot all our social institutions. It recast all our political parties and associations. It searched every heart and tried every man's mind. It was the parting of our ways, the supreme test of all our ideals and aspirations, and it remains so to this hour.’
—George Wardle, Labour Party Conference, 1917‘Methods of state control which would once have been regarded as intolerable infringements of the rights and liberties both of employers and workmen have been accepted without effective protest even from those bred in the individualist tradition of the last century.’
—Arthur Henderson, January 1919This chapter is concerned with the growth of the British state during the war, the relationship of the labour movement vis-à-vis the state, and the ramifications for the ideology and practice of the Left after the conflict. The expansion and – at least temporary – transformation of the British state during the war has received a great deal of scholarly attention over the past seventy years, yet it is still worth attempting to gauge the true extent of the expansion in the remit, responsibilities, and power of the government. Also worth examination are the debates surrounding the motivations for this expansion (did military necessity march in step with social reform, or was combat efficiency the only concern, and any improvements in welfare incidental?), and the extent to which the enhanced state apparatus was dismantled after 1918. Surprisingly, the co-ordination and operation of the British Left throughout the war is an area which has been largely neglected by historians. This is a significant oversight for, principally through the operations of the War Emergency Workers’ National Committee (WNC), the labour and trade union movement fought against the most malign pressures and deprivations of the war upon the civilian population, successfully represented thousands of otherwise powerless people, sought redress of grievance for the voiceless, and helped to ensure that the Britain which emerged from the war was at least a slight improvement on the pre-1914 nation.
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- For Class and CountryThe Patriotic Left and the First World War, pp. 127 - 170Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2017