Under these conditions, the attention of the working class turned towards the political front. In the general election of November 1922, the Labour Party received 4,236,733 votes and won 142 seats, an impressive increase of 85 seats since the previous election. Two Communist members were also elected to the Commons on a Labour ticket. This sudden advance by the Labour Party precipitated a crisis within both Liberal and Tory parties. Unemployment was rising. It was clear there would be no lasting stability and the scene was set for a further general election within the following 12 months. Under these circumstances, speculation was rife about a possible Labour victory and what it would mean for the working class. Philip Snowden, described by Lenin as “one of the most outstanding opportunists”, was quick to dampen down these expectations. He fell over himself to reassure the capitalist Establishment that in the event of a Labour victory, the government would be in safe hands and would not do anything rash. On the contrary, he stressed a Labour government would be very responsible and statesman-like indeed.
“No Labour government would ever be the government merely of the manual labour class”, stated Snowden. “The present constitution of the Parliamentary Labour Party is the answer to that fear. A considerable proportion of the party members belong to the middle classes. It contains lawyers, doctors, university professors, teachers, ministers of religion, consulting engineers, manufacturers, journalists, and even landed proprietors. A Labour government would certainly contain many men of this type.
A Labour government would undoubtedly disappoint its critics in one very important and vital respect. It would not be a class government. I know there will be strong pressure from certain quarters to use a Labour government to serve the interests and meet the claims of certain sections of Labour. That, and not even the opposition of capitalist and financial interests, will be its greatest difficulty…[6]
In December 1923, faced with nearly one-and-a-half million unemployed, Stanley Baldwin went to the country seeking a mandate for protectionism. Following the election, Labour increased its representation to 191 seats, but still fell far short of an overall majority. The Tories had however lost seats, leaving the Liberal leader Asquith holding the balance of power. In the end, they graciously stepped aside and handed Labour the opportunity, like some poisoned chalice, to form an administration.
“There could be no safer conditions under which to make the experiment,” Asquith said, while the Tory, Neville Chamberlain, observed that a Labour government dependent entirely upon Liberal support “would be too weak to do much harm, but not too weak to get discredited.”[7]
Consequently, in early 1924, the first ever minority Labour government took office under Ramsay MacDonald. “We have taken over a bankrupt machine and we have got to try and make that rickety machine work”, Cabinet Minister Margaret Bondfield stated, in complete contrast to the 1918 Manifesto commitment. “I want to gain the confidence of the country and shall suit my policy accordingly”, confirmed the Labour Prime Minister. The Labour leaders used the excuse “in office but not in power” as their biggest alibi for carrying through orthodox capitalist policies. But despite their best efforts to cool expectations, the election of this first Labour government gave rise to great hopes amongst the working class. After all, it was their government in office! Yet hope, which springs eternal in the human breast, soon turned to disappointment as MacDonald carried on as before. The government, in the view of one historian, “had been anything but revolutionary.” In the words of Asquith, it was a government “with its claws cut”, adding reassuringly that “we still sleep more or less comfortably in our beds.”
Instead of championing the cause of the working class, the MacDonald government bent the knee to big business and the City of London. It publicly deplored strikes, which had risen markedly in recent months, as Lloyd George had done. At the end of March, the Labour government went so far as to invoke the hated Emergency Powers Act to deal with the London traffic dispute, declaring in MacDonald’s words that, “the major services must be maintained!” Despite the timidity of this first Labour government, the combined Opposition wasted no effort when the time came to ignominiously cast it aside, like some soiled dishcloth.
The pretext for the Labour government’s removal was MacDonald’s handling of the Campbell Case. This legal case was brought by the Attorney General against the acting editor of the Communist Workers’ Weekly, J. R. Campbell, for publishing a “don’t shoot” appeal to British troops. Under pressure from the labour movement and the fact that Campbell was a decorated ex-serviceman, the case collapsed. Four days before polling day, the newspapers published the so-called Zinoviev Letter, allegedly a letter containing subversive instructions from the president of the Communist International to the British Communist Party. The forgery was passed to Conservative Central Office by an MI5 officer named Joseph Ball, and then leaked to the Daily Mail. Ball later became director of the Conservative research department, where he used his former talents to the full. As intended, the forgery sparked off a “red scare” campaign aimed at panicking the electorate. Under conditions of hysteria and alarm amongst the middle classes, the Tory Party led by Baldwin, won a massive majority in the general election. On the other hand, although defeated, Labour support had actually increased by more than a million votes, demonstrating the deep-seated loyalty of the working class towards the Labour Party. The Liberal Party was annihilated in the process, losing 119 out of its 158 seats. It would never again recover, doomed by the class polarisation of society and the relentless rise of the Labour Party. As a personal consolation to the unsuccessful Labour leader, King George V told Ramsay MacDonald, “he would always regard him as a friend.” While MacDonald’s eyes turned to leading the Labour Opposition, those of the working class turned once more to the industrial front.
Despite the demoralising effects of “Black Friday” and the engineering lockout, there had been a certain recovery in the working class movement. The advanced sections of the trade unions, increasingly under the influence of the CP, began to look for a way to fight back. By August 1924, a new left-wing rank-and-file organisation called the National Minority Movement had come into being. This initiative flowed from the success of the Miners’ Minority Movement, which had secured the election of the left-winger AJ Cook as national secretary of the MFGB. A new mood was beginning to develop in the British trade unions. Despite a temporary fillip to the coal industry by the French occupation of the Ruhr, the economic situation became so serious that it was described as “heading for irretrievable disaster.” The scene was being set for the biggest showdown in British history: the General Strike of 1926.