In Britain, the union leaders continued to keep the Labour Party firmly under control. At the 1936 Labour conference in October, the leadership once again defeated an application submitted by the Communist Party for affiliation by 1,728,000 votes to 592,000. At the following conference the executive committee pushed through a motion banning the left-wing Socialist League, after it proposed a popular front alliance with the CP. Further measures were taken against the left within the party. The Labour League of Youth, which was always to the left of the adult party, had also energetically campaigned for the popular front. This led the right-wing NEC in 1939 to disband the League’s National Advisory Committee and cancel its annual conference.
In 1937, the Transport and General Workers’ Union overtook the Miners’ Federation in terms of numbers, with a membership of 654,510, to become not only the biggest union in Britain, but also the largest in the world. Under the tight control of Ernest Bevin, who had moved steadily to the right since taking office, the TGWU was in the forefront of attacks on the left. The largest trade group within the TGWU was the Road Transport Group, which contained an influential rank-and-file organisation led by CP members, called the London Busman’s Rank and File Movement. This rank-and-file body had consistently opposed Bevin’s right-wing leadership of the union. The group had managed to win control of the union’s Central London Bus Committee and began a militant policy of strike action to reduce hours. However, the failure of a London bus strike at this time gave Bevin the opportunity to move against the unofficial body. Bill Jones, one of the leaders of the rank-and-file movement, later wrote that Bevin
“knew that we were going to be beaten and he worked that way… he wasn’t averse to the timing of the strike because he thought that the popular feeling against us – being on strike while the Coronation was on – plus the fact that sewing up all the other sections would sink us.”[6]
Scandalously, their leaders were expelled from the union, and the left group disbanded. This was followed by similar actions by the GMWU bureaucracy, which changed its rules to ban Communists from standing for union office.
On the international arena, the 1930s was a time of intensified rivalry between the capitalist powers. Throughout this period, the power of British imperialism had been overshadowed and surpassed by the United States. The crisis of European capitalism forced the ruling classes to seek a totalitarian solution to their problems through the destruction of the workers’ organisations as in Germany and Italy. It was the failure of the workers’ organisations to offer a revolutionary way out of the crisis, which eventually drove the frenzied ranks of ruined middle class into the hands of the fascists in Germany, Italy, Austria and Spain. The inter-war period was a classic epoch of revolution and counter-revolution. The failure of socialist revolution and the rise of fascism – “the distilled essence of imperialism” – prepared the way for the Second World War.
In “democratic” Britain, the ruling class also contemplated a more authoritarian solution to its problems. The British Royal Family had established warm relations with the fascist powers, and the German Nazi regime in particular – especially through King Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor. At a meeting in Leipzig in the autumn of 1937, he told his audience:
I have travelled the world and my upbringing has made me familiar with the great achievements of mankind, but that which I have seen in Germany, I had hitherto believed to be impossible. It cannot be grasped, and is a miracle; one can only begin to understand it when one realises that behind it all is one man and one will, Adolf Hitler.[7]
Hitler actually expressed his personal gratitude for the Daily Mail’s “great assistance”, which was read by almost two million people in Britain.
The Labour and trade union leaders’ misguided support for rearmament “in the interests of self-defence”, simply played into the hands of the capitalist Establishment. These measures were in reality not only preparations for world war, but also civil war in Britain. The growth in the number of small strikes was symptomatic of a new revival in the working class. A wave of apprentices’ strikes spread to engineering factories in Lancashire, Yorkshire, the West Midlands and London. The Times editorials thundered against the trade union leaders to deal with their members otherwise a serious “solution” would be found. However, war clouds over Europe soon cut across this scenario. In the spring of 1937, Baldwin retired and handed over the premiership to Neville Chamberlain. In endorsing Chamberlain, Churchill stated: “We have to combat socialism, and we can do it more effectively as a pack of hounds than as a flock of sheep.”[8] The dogs of war were soon to be unleashed and the workers’ movement needed to be brought to heel in the process.
In times of grave difficulty, Sir Walter Citrine had already recognised the importance of a tame trade union movement to the ruling class. “I do not believe any government could wage war of any kind without the backing of the Labour movement”, he said. “Rearmament cannot await the advent of a Labour government.” By the time of the German invasion of Poland and the outbreak of war, the TUC, with only two votes against, had lined up squarely behind the war aims of the Chamberlain government. Ernest Bevin declared that the TUC had “now virtually become an integral part of the state.” During the World War, this role was to become a way of life for the British trade union leaders. As in 1914-18, they had hitched their fate to the war chariot of British imperialism.