Labour Party and political change in Scotland, 1918-1929: the politics of five elections
Abstract
In examining these various approaches to the development of modern
politics the concentrbation of our attention is on the years 1918 to
1929. This is not to argue that the political achievement of the
Labour Party can be encapsulated into an eleven year period which
begins twenty five years after the founding of the Independent
Labour Party and nearly twenty years after the forging of the
Labour Party between socialists and trade unionists. As EP
Thompson argues in his essay, 'Homage to Tom Maguire' , there could
have been no Labour Party without the decision of socialists in the
eighteen eighties to break with the traditional two party*system of
the day, and our examination of the post-war period does not
diminish -the importance to later years of the resurgence of
socialism in the eighteen eighties and the socialist agitation of
the I. L. P. in particular from the eighteen nineties onwards. Nor
does our examination of the post-war period deny the importance of
the changes - brought about by the First World War's impact on
society. Winter has argued:
"The war-time compression of the class pyramid is
reflected both in the merger of the Conservative and
Liberal Parties and also in the reorganisation of the
Labour Party as the voice of more than the manual working
class, or, as Webb liked to call them, the workers by
hand and by brain".
Winter suggests that not only the advance of the Labour Party but
the nature of its socialism is determined by the experience of war:
"Clause Four is incomprehensive outside the context of a
war in which (1) Class collaboration and not ouvrierism
determined the political and industrial response of the
party leadership and the vast majority of its working
class supporters; (2) In which there was an improvement
in the standards of the working class which change both
heightened expectations of the working class of social
reform and kept those hopes channeled within the
traditional party structure; (3) In which the Russian
Revolution made the formation of a left alternative to
Bolshevism both necessary and inevitable; and (4) in
which political alliances between middle . class
intellectual and trade unionists in defence of working
class interests were established as permanent fixtures in
the labour movement."
Most commentators have suggested, in spite of their diverse
approaches, and theoretical stances, that either the growth. of
class consciousness or the effect of war had in 1918 made Labour's
political advance inevitable. But even if that were so, it would,
in 1918, have been impossible to predict the nature of the Labour
Party or the political system over the next ten years, in
particular how the cross currents between socialist rhetoric,
industrial militancy, economic depression and social reform would
conspire to produce a new order, stability and equilibrium in
Britain.
What the historian gains in breadth he also loses in depth.
Although this study extends its range to a period of eleven years,
it is primarily a study of the politics of electoral competition in
Scotland. While some attempt is made to relate the events in
Scotland to the ideological and political changes that characterise
the period in the whole of Britian, and also to place these changes
in their local context, much moi: e study is undoubtedly required of
particular events and issues such as the impact of the Irish
question on Scottish politics and of the experience of
individual communities and constituencies. There are however, now
excellent studies both of some of the events of the period, such as
the General Strike in Scotland, and of industrial and political
developments in certain areas, in particular Aberdeen, Dundee, Ayrshire,
Glasgow, and communities in Fife, Dunbartonshire, and Kincardineshire. Despite the
mushrooming of local history, we need fuller-studies of other areas
of Scotland, in particular the development of politics in rural
areas, despite James Hunter's seminal work,
The Making of the Crofting community
The study which follows is thus p)! imarily a study of electoral
politics in the five 'elections from 1918 to 1929, with all
limitations that such an examination entails. As John Vincent has
observed, electoral data show 'only the outward and visible signs
of an invisible political situation which has to be intuitively
appreciated in the light of many variablest. He writes of election
results:
"They speak of the relation of the many to the few for.
that is by definition what they are. They show how the
many react to the few, how the few are constrained to
respond to the many, while at the same time making them
enter a situation which the many alone bad not
created".