Топик: Three-party politics

The Labor government were peculiarly helpless when faced with the problem of unemployment—the unemployed remained at well over a million. Labor theorists had no prepared answer and failed to evolve one. The traditional evil of capitalism had been poverty: this gave Labor its moral force just as it gave Marxists the confidence that, with increasing poverty, capitalism would 'burst asunder'. No socialist, Marxist or otherwise, had ever doubted that poverty could be ended by means of the rich resources which capitalism provided. Mass unemployment was a puzzling accident, perhaps even a mean trick which the capitalists were playing on the Labor government; it was not regarded as an inevitable outcome of the existing economic sys­tem, at any rate for some time. Vaguely, Labor held that socialism would get rid of unemployment as it would get rid of all other evils inherent in the capitalist system. There would be ample demand for goods, and therefore full employment, once this demand ceased to be a matter of 'pounds, shillings, and pence'. The socialist economic system would work of itself, as capitalism was doing. This automatic operation of capitalism was a view held by nearly all economists, and Labor accepted their teaching. Keynes was moving towards the idea that un­employment could be conquered, or at any rate alleviated, by means of public works. He was practically alone among pro­fessional economists in this. Hugh Dalton, himself a teacher of economics, and soon to be a Labor M.P.,¹ dismissed Keynes's idea as 'mere Lloyd George finance'—a damning verdict. Such a policy was worse than useless; it was immoral.

Economic difficulties arose for the Labor government in a more immediate way. Industrial disputes did not come to an end merely because Labor was in office. Ramsay MacDonald had hardly kissed hands before there was a strike of engine drivers—a strike fortunately settled by an intervention of the T.U.C. general council. Strikes first of dockers, then of London tramwaymen, were not dealt with so easily. The government planned to use against these strikes the Emergency Powers Act, which Labor had denounced so fiercely when introduced by Lloyd George. It was particularly ironical that the proposed dictator, or chief civil commissioner, was Wedgwood, chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, who was generally held to be more an anarchist than a socialist. Here was fine trouble in the making. The unions provided most of the money for the Labor party, yet Labor in office had to show that it was fit to govern. Both sides backed away. The government did not actually run armed lorries through the streets of London,² and Ernest Bevin, the men's leader, ended the strikes, though indignant at ‘having to listen to appeal of our own people. The dispute left an ugly memory. A joint committee of the T.U.C. general council and the Labor party executive condemned the government’s proposed action. MacDonald replied that ‘public doles, Poplarism, strikes for increased wages, limitations of output, not only are not Socialism, but may mislead the spirit and policy of the Socialist movement.