There are two prevailing views concerning Labour's response to the New Deal. Labour is said to have been either uninterested in the New Deal or else sharply divided, with sympathetic trade unions on the Right, and critical or even hostile socialists on the Left. This discussion will deal with each of these views, but it will focus on the second, which grew out of the attack on unions by the Left in the 1930s. Unions were attacked at that time not only for their defense of capitalist democracies and for their commitment to parliamentary procedures, but also for their willingness to consider short-term remedies in connection with the problem of unemployment; their interest in remedies proposed by such middle-of-the-road organizations as the Council of Action or the Next Five Years Group; and, not least, for their enthusiastic response to the New Deal. Repeatedly, unions were challenged to explain,
if the Trades Union Congress would have something further to say about the situation in America under Roosevelt's National Recovery Plan. At their Annual Congress at Brighton in September they gave their blessing to the scheme and urged the British Government to follow the American lead.
In doing this, they, perhaps not designedly, but none the less surely, propagated among Trade Unionists the idea that Capitalism could be restored to a prosperous and stable condition. It was … a great disservice to the cause of working-class freedom in this and other lands.