Parties, voluntary associations, and democratic politics in interwar Britain

Historical Journal

Volumn 50, Issue 4, 2007, Pages 891-912

  McCarthy, Helen ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION; ELECTORAL GEOGRAPHY; PARTY POLITICS; POLITICAL CONFLICT; POLITICAL DISCOURSE; POLITICAL PARTICIPATION; POST-WAR;

EURASIA; EUROPE; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 36148949011     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X07006425     Document Type: Article

References (177)

1. The number of parliamentary electors rose from 7.7 m in 1910 to 213 in 1918, which included 8.5 women aged thirty or over (see David Butler and Gareth Butler, British political facts (Basingstoke, 2000), p. 234,
2. Martin Pugh, Women and the women's movement in Britain (2nd edn, Basingstoke, 2000), pp. 34, 56.
3. The 1928 Act added another 7.2 m voters, including 3.3 m women aged between twenty-one and twenty-nine, but also 2 m women over thirty and 1.9 m men who did not meet the residency requirements of the 1918 Act. See Pugh, Women, pp. 150-1.
4. For Conservatives see David Jarvis, 'Mrs Maggs and Betty: The Conservative appeal to women voters in the 1920s', Twentieth Century British History, 5 (1994), pp. 129-52
5. Stuart Ball, 'Local Conservatism and the evolution of the party organisation', in A. Seldon and S. Ball, Conservative century (Oxford, 1994), pp. 261-311
6. Neal McCrillis, The British Conservative party in the age of universal suffrage: Popular Conservatism, 1918-1929 (Columbus, OH, 1998).
7. For Labour, see C. Howard, 'Expectations born to death: Local Labour party expansion in the 1920S', in J. M. Winter, ed., The working class in modern British history (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 65-81
8. Matthew Worley, ed., Labour's grass roots: Essays on the activities of local Labour parties and members, 1918-1945 (Aldershot, 2005).
9. J. W. B. Bates, 'The Conservative party in the consmuencies, 1918-1939' (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 1994), p. 65
10. Duncan Tanner, 'Labour and its membership', in Duncan Tanner, Pat Thane, and Nick Tiratsoo, eds., Labour's first century (Cambridge, 2000), p. 252.
11. For Britain see Abigail Beach, 'Forging a "nation of participants": political and economic planning in Labour's Britain', in Richard Weight and Abigail Beach, eds., The right to belong: Citizenship and national identity in Britain, 1930-1960 (London, 1998), pp. 89-115
12. Jose Harris, ed., Civil society in British history: Ideas, identities, institutions (Oxford, 2003)
13. Brian Harrison, Peaceable kingdom: Stability and change in modern Britain (Oxford, 1982)
14. M.J.D. Roberts, Making English morals: Voluntary association and moral reform in England, 1787-1886 (Cambridge, 2004).
15. For North America see Mary Ryan, Civic wars: Democracy and public life in the American city during the nineteenth century (London, 1997), and for comparative approaches see special issues of Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 29, 3 and 4 (1999),
16. 'Patterns of social capital: Stability and change in comparative perspective', part I, pp. 339-782, and part II, pp. 511-782.
17. For political science literature, see, for example, Robert Putnam, Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community (New York, NY, 2000)
18. William A. Maloney, Graham Smith, and Gerry Stoker, 'Social capital and associational life', in Stephen Baron, John Field, and Tom Schuller, eds., Social capital: Critical perspectives (Oxford, 2000), pp. 212-25.
19. Ross McKibbin, Classes and cultures: England, 1918-1951 (Oxford, 1998).
20. Pat Thane, 'What difference did the vote make?', in Amanda Vickery, ed., Women, privilege and power: British politics, 1750 to the present (Stanford, CA, 2001) pp. 253-88
21. Caitriona Beaumont, 'Citizens not feminists: The boundary negotiated between citizenship and feminism by mainstream women's organisations in England, 1928-1939', Women's History Review, 9 (2000), pp. 411-29, and 'The women's movement, politics and citizenship 1918-1950s', in Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, ed., Women in twentieth-century Britain (Harlow, 2001), pp. 262-77
22. Cheryl Law, Suffrage and power: The women's movement, 1918-1928 (London, 1997).
23. James Hinton, Women, social leadership, and the Second World War: continuities of class (Oxford, 2002), pp. 2, 33.
24. For the history of the NFWI, see Maggie Andrews, The acceptable face of feminism: The Women's Institute as a social movement (London, 1997).
25. Beaumont, 'Citizens not feminists', p. 418.
26. Home and Country, the NFWI's monthly journal, regularly carried local government news and published information on how to stand for election, see, for example, 'Voters awake!', 16 (1934), p. 22.
27. J. W. Robertson Scott, The story of the Women's Institute movement in England and Wales and Scotland (Idbury, Oxon., 1925), p. v.
28. Graham Wootton, The official history of the British Legion (London, 1956).
29. Brian Harrison and Josephine Webb, 'Volunteers and voluntarism', in A. H. Halsey and Josephine Webb, eds., Twentieth-century British social trends (Basingstoke, 2000), p. 603
30. Niall Barr, The lion and the poppy: British veterans, politics, and society, 1921-1939 (London, 2005).
31. T. F. Lister, 'The Legion means a brighter Britain', British Legion Journal, 2 (1922), p. 245.
32. See also Lt-Col Graham Seton Hutchison, 'Service', ibid., 14 (1935), p. 345.
33. David Shelley Nicholl, The golden wheel: The stog of Rotary 1995 to the present (Plymouth, 1984).
34. Robert Levy, Rotary International in Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1978).
35. One estimate puts the number of masons in England at approximately 20 per cent of all males of the middle and upper middle classes (see McKibbin, Classes, p. 89).
36. The number of Masonic Lodges grew rapidly after the First World War, from 4,000 in 1919 to 5,000 in 1926, 6,000 in 1944, and 7,000 by 1950 (see Stephen Knight, The brotherhood: The secret world of the Freemasons (London, 1984), p. 36).
37. 'Rotary and Freemasonry', Rotary Wheel, 9 (1923), p. 38.
38. See Helen McCarthy, 'Service clubs, citizenship and equality: Gender relations and middle-class associations in Britain between the wars', Historical Research (OnlineEarly Articles), doi:10.1111/ j.1468-2281.2007.00433.x.
39. Round Table had approximately 5,000 members in 1939. See Hugh Barty-King, Round Table: The search for fellowship, 1927-1977 (London, 1977).
40. John Springhall, Youth, empire and society: British youth movements, 1883-1940 (London, 1977)
41. Tammy Proctor, 'On my honour: Guides and scouts in interwar Britain' (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promomting Useful Knowledge, 92, 2, 2002).
42. There were 200 Tor H groups in the UK in 1926 (The Lamp of Toc H (London, 1926), p. 10).
43. John Kent, William Temple: Church, state and society in Britain, 1880-1950 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 117-34.
44. Donald S. Birn, The League of Nations Union 1918-1945 (Oxford, 1981).
45. For an exemplary statement of these beliefs, see Headway, 12 (1930), p. i.
46. See LNU, Yearbook for 1933 (LNU, 1933)
47. Home and Country, 6 (1924), p. 650.
48. Graham Wootton, The politics of influence: British ex-servicemen, cabinet decisions and cultural change, 1917-1957 (London, 1963), pp. 107-13
49. Beckenham and Penge Advertiser, 15 Apr. 1937, p. 8.
50. Henry Brinton, 'Unity and the Union', Quarterly News (Summer, 1938), p. 6.
51. Ada Nield Chew, 'Should the special interests of women come before party considerations with women voters?', Woman's Leader, 12 (1920) p. 199.
52. Home and Country, 6 (1924), p. 770.
53. Thane, 'What difference'.
54. Home and Country, 6 (1924), p. 770.
55. Rotary Wheel, 8 (1922), p. 357.
56. Cited in Wootton, Official history, appendix 14, p. 318.
57. Draft letter attached to Executive Committee Minutes, 30 Nov. 1933, British Library of Political and Economic Science (BLPES), LNU/2/12, fo. 167.
58. One official reminded branches in 1920 that the Union 'comprises persons of all classes and many schools of thought; it would be fatal to our unity if our propaganda were to be made a vehicle for the views of any particular group' (Lieut-Col H. H. Wade, 'The appeal to reason', The League, 2 (1920), pp. 129).
59. Oswald Mosley, The greater Britain (London, 1932)
60. Stephen Spender, Forward from liberalism (London, 1937).
61. Constance Braithwaite, The voluntary citizen: An enquiry into the place of philanthropy in the community (London, 1938), p. 62.
62. R.J. Morris, Class, sect and party: The making of the British middle class, Leeds, 1820-1850 (Manchester, 1990)
63. T. Koditschek, Class formation and urban industrial society: Bradford, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, 1990).
64. For a useful review article, see Martin Daunton, 'Middle-class voluntarism and the city in Britain and America', Journal of Urban History, 22 (1996), pp. 253-63.
65. For gender divisions see Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family fortunes: Men and women of the English middle class, 1780-1850 (rev. edn, London, 2002).
66. R.J. Morris 'Middle-class culture, 1700-1914', in Derek Fraser, ed., A history of modern Leeds (Manchester, 1980), pp. 200-22
67. Henry Solly, Working men's social clubs and educational institutes (London, 1980, repr. of the 1904 edn, first published 1867), chs- 5-6
68. Jon Lawrence, ' Popular politics and the limitations of party: Wolverhampton, 1867-1900', in Eugenio Biagini and Alastair Reid, eds., Currents of radicalism: Popular radicalism, organised labour and pary politics in Britain, 1850-1914 (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 65-85.
69. John Vincent, The formation of the Liberal party, 1857-1868 (London, 1966)
70. D. A. Hamer, The politics of electoral pressure: A study in the history of Victorian reform agitations (Hassocks, 1977)
71. Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians: The temperance question in England, 1815-1872 (London, 1971), ch. 13
72. Martin Pugh, The tories and the people, 1880-1935 (Oxford, 1985).
73. Jon Lawrence, Speaking for the people: Party, language and popular politics in England, 1867-1914 (Cambridge, 1998), and 'Class and gender in the making of urban toryism, 1880-1914', English Historical Review, 108 (1993), pp. 629-52.
74. McKibbin, Classes, and see also 'Class and conventional wisdom: the Conservative party and the "public" in inter-war Britain', in Ross McKibbin, The ideologies of class: Social relations in Britain, 1880-1950 (Oxford, 1990), pp. 259-93.
75. McKibbin, Classes, p. 96.
76. McKibbin, 'Class', p. 279.
77. McKibbin, Classes, p. 98.
78. For analysis of Baldwin's public language, see Philip Williamson, Stanley Baldwin: Conservative leadership and national values (Cambridge, 1999), and David Cannadine, 'Emollience', in In Churchill's shadow: Confronting the past in modern Britain (Oxford, 2003), and Class in Britain (London, 2000), pp. 137-40.
79. McKibbin, Classes, p. 96.
80. This phenomenon is also commented upon in Sam Davies and Bob Morley, County borough elections in England and Wales, 1919-1938: A comparative analysis, II (Aldershot, 2000), conclusion.
81. Labour opponents frequently referred to the 'so-called National' government, suggesting that the administrations were, in reality, Conservative.
82. 'Labour women in conference', Woman's Leader, 12 (1920), p. 290.
83. See also the coverage given to Marion Phillips' speech at Abertillery in 1923 by Woman's Leader regarding non-party organizing, Phillips's response, and finally the letter written by a member of the NFWI Executive Committee. Woman's Leader, 15 (1923), pp. 33-4, 46, 55.
84. Daily Herald, 7 Dec. 1922, p. 4.
85. Ibid., 13 Dec. 1922, p. 4.
86. Ibid., Jan. and Feb. 1923.
87. Ibid., 5 Jan. 1923, p. 2.
88. Ibid., 9 Jan. 1923, p. 2.
89. Labour Organiser (Jan. 1935), p. 12.
90. Stuart MacIntyre, 'British Labour, Marxism and working-class apathy in the nineteen twenties', Historical Journal, 20 (1977), pp. 479-96.
91. Chris Waters, British socialists and the politics of popular culture, 1884-1918 (Stanford, CA, 1990).
92. Gareth Stedman Jones, Languages of class: Studies in English working class history, 1832-1982 (Cambridge, 1983)
93. Hugh Cunningham, 'Class and leisure in mid-Victorian England', in Bernard Waites, Tony Bennett, and Graham Martin, eds., Popular culture: Past and present (London, 1982), pp. 66-91
94. McKibbin, Classes, pp. 202, 204 5.
95. For critique see Neville Kirk, '"Traditional" working-class culture and "the rise of Labour": Some preliminary questions and observations', Social History, 16 (1991), pp. 203-16.
96. A. A. Jackson, Semi-detached London: Suburban development, life and transport, 1900-1939 (London, 1973), p. 269.
97. Rotary Wheel, 21 (1935), p. 13.
98. Ibid., 17 (1931), pp. 115, 142-3.
99. See, for example, E. Walls, 'Co-partnership', Rotary Wheel, 4 (1918), pp. 201-3
100. H. Dixon, 'The welfare department of a business house', Ibid., 5 (1919), pp. 236-8
101. A. Watson, 'Industrial reconciliation', ibid., 9 (1923), pp. 103-6
102. Ernest Ablett, 'The Rotarian and his employees', ibid., 20 (1934), p. 12.
103. For historical analysis, see Robert Fitzgerald, British labour management and industrial welfare, 1846-1939 (Beckenham, 1988).
104. James Hinton, 'Conservative women and voluntary social service, 1938-1951', in Stuart Ball and Ian Holliday, eds., Mass Conservatism: the Conservatives and the public since the 1880s (London, 2002), pp. 100-19.
105. David Jarvis, 'The shaping of the Conservative electoral hegemony, 1918-1939', in Jon Lawrence and Miles Taylor, eds., Party, state and society: Electoral behaviour in Britain since 1820 (Aldershot, 1997), p. 145.
106. Cited by Jarvis, 'Shaping', p. 145.
107. Home and Country, 6 (1924), p. 436.
108. Thane, 'What difference', p. 270.
109. Scott, Story of the Women's Institute movement, p. 167.
110. These were Rose Hotham's words in 1924, her evidence being the journal's descriptions of Michael Collins as a 'brave and fearless soldier' and of Lenin as a 'great man'. Home and Country, 6 (1924), p. 178.
111. See also Alice Bowman's complaint that that Home and Country's favourable remarks on the Labour government's budget served as priceless party propaganda, in Home and Country, 6 (1924), p. 757.
112. Andrews, Acceptable face, p. 83
113. Thane, 'What difference';
114. Gillian Scott, Feminism and the politics of working women: The Women's Co-operative Guild, 1880s to the Second World War (London, 1998)
115. Pugh, Women;
116. Susan Pedersen, Family, dependence, and the origins of the welfare state: Britain and France, 1914-1945 (Cambridge, 1993)
117. Pamela Graves, Labour women: Women in British working-class politics, 1918-1939 (Cambridge, 1994).
118. Daily Herald, 13 Apr. 1934, p. 14.
119. Ibid., 9 Nov. 1937, p. 8.
120. Ibid., 6 Jan. 1923, p. 2.
121. Ibid., 10 Jan. 1923, p. 2.
122. Bury Times, 17 Nov. 1934, p. 4.
123. Geoffrey Walker, The Leicester branch of the League of Nations Union and the United Nations Association, 1917-1987, Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester, and Rutland, DE3191/6 (unpublished type-script). Hancock also appears in the minutes ofthe Rotary Club of Leicester, 21D69/2.
124. Bury Times, 13 Oct. 1934, p. 9.
125. See Home and Country, 12 (1930), p. 122. In 1932 the National Federation invited Gilbert Murray to address the movement's Annual General Meeting.
126. See discussion on co-operation with British Legion in Branches Committee minutes, 23 Apr. 1931, BLPES, LNU/5/3, fo. 40, and discussion on Ex-Servicemen and the Union in Branches Committee minutes, 13 Feb. 1936, BLPES, LNU/5/5, fo. 116. It was stated that thirty-five branches of the British Legion were corporate members of the Union.
127. J. A. Thompson, 'The "Peace Ballot" and the "Rainbow" controversy', Journal of British Studies, 20 (1981), pp. 150-70.
128. Geoffrey Searle notes that 'almost every Conservative Leader from Disraeli onwards has occasionally attached the label "national" to his party - much to the exasperation of the Conservatives' opponents'. See Country before party: Coalition and the idea of 'national govemment' in modern Britain, 1885-1987 (Harlow, 1995), pp. 10-11.
129. See also Philip Williamson, 'The doctrinal politics of Stanley Baldwin', in Michael Bentley, ed., Public and private doctrine: Essays in British history presented to Maurice Cowling (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 181-208.
130. Eastbourne Gazette, 14 Nov. 1935, p. 15. The Peace Ballot was overseen at national level by a National Declaration Committee based at LNU headquarters and chaired by Cecil. It was composed of representatives of thirty-eight national organizations, whose local branches helped to organize the Ballot on the ground.
131. See Birn, League of Nations Union, p. 144.
132. Times, 28 Nov. 1934, p. 10.
133. Brian Harrison, The transformation of British politics, 1860-1995 (Oxford, 1996), ch. 6.
134. For contemporary views on unattached voters see editorial 'Government and people', in Times, 16 Nov. 1934, p. 15, which refers to 'a mass of voters attached to no particular party', and similar views expressed by Lord Allen of Hurtwood, Britain's political future: A plea for liberty and leadership (London, 1934), p. xii.
135. For decline of political nonconformity see E. K. H. Jordan, Free church unity: History of the Free Church Council movement, 1896-1941 (London, 1956)
136. Stephen Koss, Nonconformity in modern British politics (London, 1975)
137. D. W. Bebbington, The nonconformist conscience: Chapel and politics, 1870-1914 (London, 1982)
138. Keith Robbins, History, religion and identity in modern Britain (London, 1993), pp. 114-15.
139. For instability in party identities see Philip Williamson, National crisis and national government: British politics, the economy and empire, 1926-1932 (Cambridge, 1992)
140. Searle, Country before party;
141. Arthur Marwick, Clifford Allen: The open conspirator (London, 1964).
142. John Campbell, 'The renewal of liberalism: Liberalism without liberals', in Gillian Peele and Chris Cook, eds., The politics of reappraisal, 1918-1939 (London, 1975), pp. 88-113
143. Susan Pedersen and Peter Mandler, eds., After the Victorians: Private conscience and public duty in modern Britain (London, 1994).
144. Arthur Marwick, 'Middle opinion in the thirties: Planning, progress and political "agreement"', English Historical Review, 79 (1964), pp. 285-98
145. Keith Middlemas, Politics in industrial society: The experience of the British system since 1911 (London, 1979)
146. John Stevenson, British society, 1914-1945 (London, 1984), pp. 325-9.
147. C. Delisle Burns, The challenge to democracy (London, 1934), pp. 256-7.
148. C. Delisle Burns, Democracy: Its defects and advantages (London, 1929), p. 259.
149. 'Peace Ballot is succeeding', Headway, 16 (1934), p. 224.
150. A similar sentiment was expressed by Robert Cecil at the declaration of the Peace Ballot results in June 1935: 'The people are bored with the ordinary clap-trap of party controversy. But they know well enough what peace means, and they care for it with every fibre of their being' reported in 'What shall we make of it? Viscount Cecil's speech at the Albert Hall', Headway, 17 (1935), p. 130.
151. Searle, Country before party.
152. Jon Lawrence, 'The transformation of British public politics after the First World War', Past and Present, 190 (2006), p. 185.
153. Jon Lawrence, 'Forging a peaceable kingdom: War, violence, and fear of brutalisation in post-first world war Britain', Journal of Modern History, 75 (2003), pp. 557-89, and 'Fascist violence and the politics of public order in interwar Britain: The Olympia debate revisited', Historical Research, 76 (2003), pp. 238-67
154. Peter Mandler, The English national character: The history of an idea from Edmund Burke to Tony Blair (London, 2006), ch. 5
155. Alison Light, Forever England: Feminity, literature and conservatism between the wars (London, 1991).
156. Martin Pugh, Hurrah for the Blackshirts! Fascists and Fascism in Britain between the wars (London, 2005)
157. Julie V. Gottlieb, Feminine fascism: Women in Britain's Fascist movement (London, 2003)
158. Stuart Macintyre, Little Moscows: Communism and working class military in interwar Britain (London, 1980).
159. Andrew Thorpe, ed., The failure of political extremism in inter-war Britain (Exeter, 1988), see Thorpe's 'Introduction', pp. 1-10.
160. Martin Pugh, The making of modern British politics, 1867-1939 (2nd edn, Oxford)
161. Williamson, 'Doctrinal politics'; Cannadine, Class.
162. For a discussion of 'centrism' as a theme in British politics, see Harrison, Peaceable kingdom, especially introduction and ch. 7. For role of public intellectuals, see Pedersen and Mandler, eds., After the Victorians;
163. Julia Stapleton, Political intellectuals and public identities in Britain since 1850 (Manchester, 2001).
164. Abigail Beach, 'The Labour party and the idea of citizenship' (Ph.D. thesis, London, 1996), and 'Forging a "nation of participants"';
165. Edmund Neill, 'Conceptions of citizenship in twentieth century Britain', Twentieth Century British History, 17 (2006), pp. 424-38
166. Julia Stapleton, Englishness and the study of politics: The social and political thought of Ernest Barker (Cambridge, 1994).
167. For the continental experience of veterans, see Deborah Cohen, The war come home: Disabled veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914-1939 (London, 2001)
168. for Rotary see Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible empire: America's advance through twentieth-century Europe (Cambridge, MA, 2005)
169. for women's movements see Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: women, the family and Nazi politics (London, 1987)
170. Jill Stephenson, Women in Nazi Germany (Harlow, 2001)
171. Victoria de Grazia, How Fascism ruled women: Italy, 1922-1945 (Oxford, 1992).
172. See R. B. McCallum, Public opinion and the last peace (London, 1944)
173. Birn, League of Nations Union; Martin Ceadel, Semi-detached idealists: The British peace movement and international relations, 1854-1945 (Oxford, 2000). Niall Barr concludes that British Legion leaders were political innocents who allowed themselves to be neutralized by both Conservative and Labour governments, failed to understand why sympathetic MPs would not routinely vote against their parties at the Legion's bidding, and who subsequently won few concessions from government relating to their major policy demands ( Lion and the poppy).
174. Helen Jones suggests that the NFWI, along with other women's organizations during this period, failed to establish themselves as Whitehall insiders with the power to influence policy elites (Women in British public life, 1914-1950: Gender, power and social policy (Harlow, 2000)).
175. See also Susan Pedersen's verdict on feminist attempts to influence social policy in the 1920S, in Family, dependence, ch. 3.
176. British Legion representatives sitting on local pensions committees succeeded in getting a high number of cases reconsidered, see Wootton, Politics of influence.
177. See also Andrews, Acceptable face, and Thane, 'What difference'.