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Not done Kelebek in a while...must redo at some point
Spoken like Kelebek himself…
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Turning up just in time to take “Disembowel Powell” horrifyingly literally
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Is Enoch Powell really this stupid? Probably not. Will the state make an example of him anyway? Probably.
Then again, if I was in charge of this state and had to keep the general socialist philosophy going, I wouldn't matyr the man but utterly humiliate him for years, crucify him in the press, make his life absolute hell and then arrange an accident.
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My personal take is that Enoch wouldn’t have ever done anything really insurrectionary because he was too attached to a romantic idea of constitutionalism. Which was a big factor in him eg joining the UUP instead of the NF/BNP etc. I think he also said somewhere that he’d fight for Britain regardless of who was in charge. Might have to dig that quote out and check it exists…
Basically he’s not that stupid, but he’s a notorious logical absolutist – and that may yet lead him to some odd places. We’ll see. The full plot isn’t fixed, although I more or less know where this is ending
Depends ofc on whether the hippies can get their hands on the organs of state in time. But broadly yeah, I think martyring him at this stage would be incredibly counterproductive.
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I've resolved my little bit of plot trouble, I think with an acceptable amount of retconning. Briefly, I've played about with the results of the 1955 and 1959 elections to better reflect the total collapse of the Left Opposition. The consequence is that 1959 gives a much more indecisive result, which lets Mosley stay in power by exercising a bit of constitutional trickery (the sort to make DLG proud…)
I'll cover it in more detail in the Lewis history chapter, but for now anyone interested can see the headline changes at the election results post.
I'll cover it in more detail in the Lewis history chapter, but for now anyone interested can see the headline changes at the election results post.
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A quick progress check-in. Enjoyed this one!
I’m therefore expecting a Bennite solution at some point! <as Sir Humphrey flabbers his gast whilst watching>
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Thanks Bullfilter! I remember that one being a fun one to writeA quick progress check-in. Enjoyed this one!
I hope you’re suitably excited for the thrilling conclusion in part 2
I’m therefore expecting a Bennite solution at some point! <as Sir Humphrey flabbers his gast whilst watching>
One wonders just what exactly life in the Commonwealth has in store for old Sir Humphrey…
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Was about to post something boring about scheduling when I noticed that today is actually the second anniversary of Echoes of A New Tomorrow. 'Outright festivity' seems like a slight misreading of the general mood today, even as a Wales fan exiled amid the English, so I'll settle instead for understated satisfaction. My continuing thanks and sincere gratitude to all of you who have joined me for the ride so far. Who knows if we'll get another two years out of this world (I suspect perhaps yes…) but if we do, I hope they'll be just as entertaining as the last two have been.
Also, there'll be an update later.
Also, there'll be an update later.
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The Power and The Glory: The invisible rise of David Lewis
THE POWER AND THE GLORY
The Invisible Rise of David Lewis
Roy Jenkins, 1983
David Lewis’s rise in British politics during the middle of the century was nothing short of remarkable. Born in Byelorussia in 1909, he spent his childhood in Montreal before taking up a scholarship to come to Britain to study Law at Lincoln College, Oxford in 1928. Quite by accident, he found himself in a country in the throes of Revolution, and despite his strong aversion to Soviet-style communism he embraced the British form of socialism with open arms. A Bundist by extraction, he was confident in the prospect of a mass politics of Labour, and brought this enthusiasm to the University Labour Club (OULC), then moribund after the disappointment of the MacDonald government, soon rejuvenated by a forceful mix of Lewis’s strong personality and his deep faith in democratic socialism.
After the Revolution, when Oxford became the focus of a number of reforms by the CPGB, wishing to displace the lingering conservative hierarchy, Lewis was well-positioned to benefit. Having made a name for himself via the OULC, when his studies ended in 1931 he decided against returning to Canada and embarked upon a postgraduate degree in economics at the now renamed Wesley College. In 1934, a month before Mosley took office as Chairman of the Executive Committee, Lewis was made a fellow of Wesley and began a career as an academic while continuing his work at the OULC, reformed after the decline of the Labour Party – largely at Lewis’s instigation – into the Oxford University Group for Socialism (OUGS), The new group aligned itself with the Popular Front, then under the iron direction of Stafford Cripps whose socialist creed was marked by an internationalism that gave a cosmopolitan flavour to the austere commandism of the Mosleyite way, which Cripps enthusiastically supported. Lewis was joined in his work reforming the OUGS by politics student Barbara Betts, a formidable left-winger in the Yorkshire Methodist tradition who had served previously as Treasurer of the OULC – the highest position open to a woman prior to the Revolution. Known together as ‘the Power and the Glory’, Betts and Lewis ruled the OUGS as Chair and Vice-Chair from 1932, developing a personal relationship alongside their political one. In 1935, Betts was appointed a fellow at Davison College (previously St Hugh’s), and soon after the two were married.
David and Barbara Lewis.
For the next decade, the Lewises enjoyed good careers in the academy, although they were helped by the national prominence of Stafford Cripps, who had a habit, left over from before the Revolution, of ‘scouting’ for young talent in the universities (that is to say, Oxford, Cambridge and London). Although unable to touch the well-established control Mosley and his allies held over the economy, Cripps’s unquestioned pre-eminence in foreign affairs provided him with some latitude in providing considerable support and encouragement to favoured acolytes. After the conclusion of the Spanish War in 1940, Cripps became heavily invested in maintaining and expanding the international united front that had developed against European fascism. In 1943, he took over from Philip Noel-Baker as Britain’s secretary to the Anti-Fascist Pact just at the moment that it was transformed into the Syndicalist International. Although this marked the beginning of Cripps’s gradual and premature retirement from front-line politics, the new position allowed him to widen his network of contacts, moving beyond Britain across Western Europe into France and Spain. His position also gave him entry into the circles of the Italian Partisan Movement, then preparing to oust the Fascist regime once and for all. In the Lewises, Cripps had two young and ambitious protégés eager to prove themselves on a national (and international) level. During the 1940s, the couple made several trips to the fraternal syndicates on Cripps’s behalf, spreading the gospel of international solidarity in which they sincerely believed.
When Cripps retired in time for the 1947 Assembly election, it was with the hope that the Lewises would go on to build upon his work. At the encouragement of the veteran statesman, David and Barbara left their active teaching posts at Oxford to contest that election on the Popular Front list. Cripps saw to it before he handed control over the party to Harold Laski that the pair were well-placed on the list, and as the PF surged to collect what was at that point the highest vote share in its history, the Power and the Glory made their entry into Westminster politics.
Stafford Cripps.
In the Assembly, the Lewises soon discovered how privileged their introduction to the workings of political life in Mosley’s Commonwealth had been. Smoothed significantly by the efforts of Stafford Cripps, the Lewises’ journey from Oxford to Westminster (via Paris, Madrid and Rome) had assumed a markedly old-fashioned character, almost pre-revolutionary – a throwback to an era where men progressed from Winchester to New College and thence to the Commons. This, after all, had been Cripps’s own course – barring the fact that he had not attended Oxford, and with a spell at the Middle Temple thrown into the bargain for good measure. In his formation of a coterie of supporters, Cripps thus upheld the same ‘benevolent’ sense of elitism that had produced the leadership of the Labour movement prior to 1929. More broadly, this elitist attitude might be characterised as the bedrock of ‘Crippsian’ socialism, which was happy to profess its affinity for the working classes and for constitutional democracy, but which always remained quick to turn to the darker arts in order to secure itself against external threats. Not yet having acquired the taste for parliamentarianism that would revive its fortunes considerably in the late 1950s, the Popular Front of the 1930s and ‘40s had gladly played along with Mosley as he sought to bring more and more of the British state under central control, and after 1947 it continued to stand by Mosley’s side as he made moves against opponents on the Left. (One might say that the fair weather had yet to turn.) This was the context in which David and Barbara Lewis made their entry into national politics, having benefited from establishment patronage – and with the establishment now wanting its payment in return.
Of course, this is only to deal with the past. As much as 1947 represented a pinnacle in the Lewises’ careers so far, it also marked a turning point in the course of Mosley-era national politics. This was a turning point whose impact was evident in a number of different ways, expressed generally as the beginnings of a move towards central control by the Mosley regime. The catalyst for this change was the minor disaster suffered by the Party of Action at the polls that May, when Mosley’s party picked up its lowest share of the vote (41 per-cent) since 1933. The immediate cause was less dissatisfaction with Mosley’s regime (although that is not to say that this was not a factor) bur rather apathy towards it; turnout at the 1947 election was a pitiful 37.6 per-cent, the lowest ever recorded in the Commonwealth’s history. Mosley could hardly claim to be surprised by this: over the previous thirteen years, he had sought to cement the Party of Action as an ‘apolitical’ natural party of government, purposefully allowing Britain’s democratic tradition to erode in a bid to kill off what he saw as the ‘inefficiencies’ of the British system. This, of course, meant letting the Party of Action govern untroubled. As Mosley soon found out, however, ‘apoliticisation’ was just as liable to harm his position as it was to strengthen it. Increasingly, and in particular as Mosley’s personal appeal diminished with the conclusion of the Anti-Fascist Wars retreating ever further into the past, voters found little reason to endorse a regime which seemed more and more to regret the fact that it was reliant upon democratic institutions for support. Rather than seek to revive his standing in the eyes of the people, as he had proven himself capable of doing in 1929 and 1934, Mosley’s response was instead to prosecute a campaign of suppression against those whom he viewed as his rivals. As the 1940s came to an end, the premier shed all pretences hiding his disdain for British democracy, setting the stage for the ‘directorship’ of the 1950s.
Harold Laski.
Meanwhile, in contrast to the ailing fortunes of the Party of Action, the Popular Front’s base of support had remained steady. As Mosley’s resentment of the democratic process was becoming more evident, concerned voters looked to the Popular Front as a means of registering their displeasure – or, at the very least, backing a horse who was not Mosley. Unfortunately, while ‘the hour’ arrived for the Popular Front to assume a more dominant role in British politics, ‘the man’ was found wanting. Although he had done well to cultivate a young crop of supporters before his retirement, 1947 had proven too early for any of this group to succeed Cripps, and thus the leadership of the party passed over, with little fanfare, to the quixotic intellectual Harold Laski. Michael Foot in his 1968 history of the Popular Front Fellow Travellers describes the ‘generation gap’ between the leadership and the party’s younger rank and file. Foot gives the impression of Laski as a useful idiot for the Mosley regime, albeit an exceptionally intelligent one, whose deepest disagreements with the chairman concerned the somewhat abstruse issue of relations with the Soviet Union. As far as concerned the general state of Britain, Laski had little quarrel with his coalition partners.
In this sense, Cripps’s retirement proved a blessing for Mosley, who was able to rely on the support of the Popular Front without having to worry about Cripps’s forceful personality. Laski eagerly busied himself with work as Secretary for Education, delighting in solving arcane questions of academic administration while failing (or perhaps choosing not) to notice the mounting brazenness of his premier’s assault on British democracy. The Lewises and their allies were not so accepting of the situation, and for the remainder of Mosley’s fifth term as chairman they set about articulating and consolidating their position in the Assembly. Of chief concern was the need to decide upon a ‘new programme’ for the Popular Front, designed to bring it out from under the shadow of the Party of Action – where it had willingly sat for thirteen years – and into the open as its own entity. Whether this would constitute direct opposition to the Party of Action was not yet a question spoken aloud, although it would perhaps go without saying that an assertive Popular Front would have to suspend its uncritical support for Mosley as a matter of course.
Michael Foot, editor of the dissident Popular Front magazine Tribune, and Aneurin Bevan, chairman of the People's Assembly, 1947.
If Mosley was concerned by the threat of opposition from within his coalition, he showed no signs of acknowledging it. At the end of the 1940s, his main target remained the Left opposition, whose formidable organisational capacities he envied. Mosley sought to neutralise opposition from the Socialist Front (CSF) not by cutting off the head, which he reasoned would be a step too far even in his position, but by going for the roots. The Chairman was greatly aided, infamously, by the terminal illness of socialist leader George Orwell, whose battle with tuberculosis finally ended with his death in November 1950. Orwell inadvertently supplied Domestic Bureau agents with the names of 150 organisers for the CSF’s youth wing, Socialist Youth. Mosley could not move fast enough to destroy the SY before the 1951 election (although that contest saw the Party of Action gain 4.5 per-cent of the vote nevertheless, mostly from those put off by Laski’s Popular Front) but by 1952 the organisation had been forced to fold, its leaders either interned on flimsy charges or else in pre-emptive self-exile. Counterintuitively, the CSF made small gains in 1951, profiting alongside the Party of Action, in ironic fashion, from Laski’s limited appeal. But by this point the writing was on the wall, and four years later the socialists scored just over a quarter of the vote while Mosley made off with just under half.
As is so often the case, the numbers obscured the truth of the situation in these years. Mirroring the silent war unfolding within the ranks of the Popular Front, Mosley’s autocratic control over the Party of Action was not proceeding without consequence. Sensing that Aneurin Bevan represented the greatest threat to his dominance over the government, Mosley dispatched him to the Assembly as its chairman in 1949, replacing the technocratic Mosley loyalist John Strachey who returned to occupy the key Domestic Bureau brief. Bevan’s tenure in the Assembly is well known as the period in which parliamentary opposition to Mosley’s rule first crystallised. Removed from Mosley’s kitchen cabinet, Bevan was given a new lease of life by his new role, which far from neutralising him as a threat reawakened his passion for oppositional politics. He was abetted by the young faction of Popular Front reformists, by now grouped around the magazine Tribune, edited by Michael Foot, which served as a clearing house for internal debates on strategy and policy. While this was far from the basis of any national organisation such as would be needed for the reformists to take power on their own, it was a powerful asset within Parliament. The Tribunites soon emerged as a ‘party within a party’, and before long they began to talk openly of taking the Popular Front out of its perpetual coalition with the Party of Action. What’s more, their appeal was growing; out of the 79 Popular Front AMs elected in 1951, about one quarter were aligned to the Tribunites. This was in spite of the fact that, as a by product of the party list system, a number of younger reformists had been defeated at the last election (Michael Foot himself a notable casualty). Clearly, change was on the horizon.
George Strauss (right) on a ministerial visit, 1954.
In March 1954, Harold Laski suffered a fatal heart attack while touring the Institute for Science and Technology at the University of Manchester. He was succeeded as leader of the Popular Front, pending an election to choose a permanent successor, by George Strauss, an old associate of Stafford Cripps who had some reason to feel aggrieved that the leadership had not fallen his way seven years earlier. Strauss fit perfectly the mould of the ‘Mosley man’, this being a figure eminently skilled in business or industry who cared more for the smooth operation of the British state than they did for ‘philosophical’ questions of ideology or constitutionalism. This is not to say that he showed any signs of embracing the full extent of Mosley’s disdain for the democratic process, but in the absence of any attempt to oppose the regime his endorsement seems apparent on some level. He accepted with little fuss the customary position in Mosley’s executive, as Director of the Bureau of Transport and Infrastructure, and remained there happily until 1959.
On the side of the reformists, no such complacency was to be found. The Tribunites knew that the leadership election was their best chance of securing power for themselves within the near future. At a meeting on March 17, 23 reformist AMs appointed David Lewis as their candidate to challenge Strauss. The ballot was to take place in two months’ time, on May 13. To win, Lewis and his allies would need the support of 40 out of 79 of the Popular Front AMs. This meant convincing at least 17 members to come over to the side of reform. In this undertaking, the Tribunites had the advantage of an active infrastructure within parliament, which soon showed its utility in energising Lewis’s supporters while Strauss struggled to forge an identity for his own campaign. Whether it was complacency, a genuine underestimation of the task at hand, or even a lack of desire for the leadership job, Strauss offered little to ‘his’ AMs besides ‘more of the same’, meaning the benefit of coalition without a distinct identity. Unsurprisingly, this pitch failed to galvanise the masses, and as May 13 crept closer the Tribunites could count upon ever greater numbers in support of their bid for the leadership. The final ballot gave them a slim majority of seven; Lewis beat Strauss by 43 votes to 36.
David Lewis (second from right) celebrates victory in the Popular Front leadership election, 1954.
Wasting no time after his victory, Lewis turned immediately to the upcoming election. The nature of his victory meant that his new party was a party divided, and many who had not come over to the Tribunite side remained wedded to the idea of coalition. In some ways, the question was moot; Mosley’s majority was strong enough in 1954 that he could have withstood the withdrawal of supply from every single Tribunite AM. But a good enough performance at the polls in 1955 had the potential to derail Mosley’s unchallenged leadership, and this was the firm aim of the new reformist Popular Front. Lewis’s programme required the utmost discipline, and his own uncompromising style – which at Oxford had served him so well in reviving the fortunes of the OUGS – would now be put to the test. Initially, Lewis wanted simply to divorce the Popular Front from Mosley’s government by decree, but his allies convinced him that any resulting split in the party (a split, they decided, would be inevitable) would prove counterproductive in the long run, robbing the reformists of resources and drawing Mosley’s ire at a delicate moment. Thus the Tribunites moved to cement their control of the party by stealth, stacking the party lists in their favour without explicitly challenging the rump pro-government tendency within the ranks. At the same time, Tribune threw money and energy into increasing its circulation beyond Westminster, the new Popular Front leadership seeking to use it as a trojan horse to spread the gospel of democratic opposition. All of this was done without directly challenging Mosley preferring instead to err on the side of caution by preaching the good word of ‘Popular Frontism’ rather than the ills of Mosleyism, and more generally encouraging a revival of the democratic traditions that Mosley had suppressed by neglect.
A woman casts her ballot, 1955.
Lewis was rewarded in May 1955 with an unprecedented gain in seats, jumping from 79 to 140. This sea change can be explained by the almost equal collapse of the Socialist Front vote, which could not withstand the targeted destruction of the Socialist Front over the previous four years. Lewis picked up as many votes as he lost to the Party of Action from left-wing dissenters, also attracting new voters as evidenced by the increased turnout (49.2 per-cent, up 6.9 per-cent on 1951). The ‘Lewis project’ could therefore claim a successful first test, although its success was somewhat ambivalent; while Lewis’s programme had been rewarded, and his control over the party was more secure (judicious curation of the party lists gave him the support of about six-tenths of the parliamentary party), Mosley remained equally secure in his own position. Even when Lewis announced that the PF would leave the coalition in favour of an arrangement of ‘confidence and supply’ with the government, the remaining 60-odd pro-Mosley Popular Front AMs ensured that the regime retained a legislative majority of 52. Moreover, Lewis was deprived of a key ally in the form of Nye Bevan, whom Mosley recalled to the cabinet to serve as Domestic Secretary in 1954, bargaining perhaps that he would be less of a threat from inside the tent after all. Bevan’s tenure at the Domestic Bureau came with a silver lining in the fact that it promised a less autocratic attitude from the regime towards the opposition, but without Bevan in the Assembly Lewis was deprived of the chance to execute any twin-pronged assault he may have been planning against the government.
Ahead of the 1959 contest, Lewis therefore decided to leave nothing to chance. Resolving that nothing would come of his dreams of overthrowing Mosley without some positive action, Lewis adopted a tough line against those who continued to support the government even after the PF’s withdrawal from coalition, hoping to win over any waverers with threats of demotion on the party lists. Many of those with faltering fortitude were brought over to the reformist cause after the fire at Windscale in October 1957. A number of those who previously had been happy to provide the government with their confidence grew squeamish when Mosley turned to open suppression of protestors, whose ranks swelled in the aftermath of the autumn crisis. (The most notable of these repentant figures was perhaps George Strauss himself.) A larger number remained unmoved, having been fully assimilated into the Mosleyite bloc and seeing no use in abandoning ship at its moment of greatest peril, but the result was a weakening of the divide in the party, which ultimately played to Lewis’s advantage. His support was now more firmly entrenched, and his opposition was on the whole weaker in its resolve.
Windscale nuclear power station, 1957.
Come 1959, the stage was therefore set for a showdown between the regime and the opposition of the like that had not been seen, arguably, since 1929. It was unmistakable that a vote for the Popular Front meant a vote against the government, even if a pro-government faction did persist within the party ranks. Lewis’s strategy was more or less unchanged from four years prior, relying firstly upon the broad left opposition vote to hold for the Popular Front in the absence of an organised Left Bloc in the Assembly, and secondly on another increase in turnout to dilute the Party of Action vote. The opposition leadership gambled that the pro-Mosley vote was unlikely to go up even with an enlarged electorate, judging (not unreasonably) that most of those who stayed away from the polls would not favour the government. All of these things considered, the election campaign itself was eerily subdued; the initial post-windscade unrest had died down somewhat since the previous year, and the final wave of anti-Mosley protests were still bubbling under the surface. Most of the groundwork was done by organisers for the Partisan movement, whose activities centred around ‘getting out the vote’, prioritising support for the anti-Mosley coalition over the construction of an independent political party. The Popular Front was not directly involved with the Partisans at the leadership level, but locally the two groups saw more cooperation, with volunteers sometimes ‘dual carding’ by canvassing in favour of PF candidates within the broad opposition. In this respect, 1959 marked the high-water mark of the Popular Front being truly ‘popular’ – certainly since the end of the Anti-Fascist Wars 15 years earlier.
Pro-Mosley election posters, 1959.
The result of this popular effort was significant, but – as four years before – ultimately ambivalent. Once all ballots had been counted and seats in the Assembly allotted, it was clear that the opposition’s gamble had been founded on good instincts: Mosley’s vote share had held steady, while the opposition vote had increased. But had it increased enough to force a change in government? The answer, with some controversy, was no. On a turnout of nearly 55 per-cent – six points higher than 1955, but lower than hoped for by the opposition – the Party of Action had taken 46.1 per-cent of the vote, equating to a more-or-less steady vote share of about 11.8 millions (up 0.7 million on 1951). The Popular Front, by contrast, had increased its share of the vote by 1.6 million to 7.1 millions overall, with the remainder of the opposition vote (4.3 millions) going to independent socialist candidates endorsed by the Partisan movement. But this great effort attracting an additional 2.5 million voters to the polls compared with 1955, was sufficient only to force a deadlock in the Assembly. The Party of Action were returned with 208 seats, a loss of nine, while the Popular Front gained 15 seats to take their highest ever tally of 155. The socialists counted 76 Assembly members, up 4 from their 1955 nadir, and the hardline CPGB completed the tapestry with their 11 members – an all-time low, representative of the crisis of legitimacy that had followed the January War and the ‘Secret Speech’ revelations in 1956.
This muddled picture of Britain’s political loyalties was complicated further by the fact that both of the Commonwealth’s major parties were divided internally. Within the Party of Action, just under 50 of the Assembly members were loyal to rebel leader Nye Bevan, while David Lewis could count on the backing of only 100 or so of his colleagues. The implications of this complex situation were two-fold. First, parliamentary arithmetic could not produce a majority for the Mosleyite coalition. Mosley could count on the confidence of about 215 Assembly members all told, ten short of the 225 majority mark. At the same time, however, the opposition could not scrape together a majority of their own. While the Bevanites and the Tribunites, allied with the socialists, could form ranks 224 strong, this was tantalisingly short of a coalition large enough to topple Mosley. The strict obstructionism of the CPGB was fatal here, the hardliners refusing to vote in favour of candidates for the premiership put forward by either the regime or the dissidents, hence things remained at an impasse. The deadlock was broken with great controversy by the sitting Chairman of the Assembly, Mosley loyalist Alf Robens, who declared that in the absence of a majority for an alternative candidate, Mosley could continue to lead the government by default until defeated in a subsequent constructive vote of no confidence.
Alf Robens, 1960.
Lewis and Bevan, both inveterate political fighters, were personally undeterred by Mosley’s backhanded dealing, although their apparent confidence that a vote of no confidence could be easily achieved overlooked the fact that a constructive vote would remain difficult so long as the CPGB held fast to their obstructionist principles. Further complications were soon to put paid to any hopes of organising Mosley’s swift demise, however, as the government compounded their already-brazen exploitation of constitutional principle with other, even murkier tricks. For the rest of 1959, Alf Robens dextrously marshalled Assembly business such that timetabling a vote of no confidence became impossible, the government by now reliant on maintaining its position via the outright subversion of Commonwealth democracy. Beyond parliament, the reaction to the government’s blatant disregard for the democratic principle was violently negative. The announcement of Mosley’s minority government was met by rioting across Britain throughout the month of May, and between May 8 and June 1 upwards of 700 people were arrested. Perhaps an equal number were injured in confrontations with the BDI, and violence from state police and protestors alike continued well into the summer.
Opponents of the Mosley regime take to the streets, 1959.
The cross-section of the population now in open revolt against the regime had grown beyond the initial core of socialist youth, encompassing wider sections of the working classes and even elements of the ‘professional’ and ‘managerial’ classes that Mosley had so studiously cultivated since the end of the wars. Lewis, an arch-parliamentarian, was by no means naturally at home with this sort of popular agitation, but he proceeded always according to the Bundist principle that one should move with the people, even if the people are slightly wrong. In this sense, Lewis differed from ally Bevan, who if anything was most at home with the agitators and the dissidents, always appearing to chafe somewhat when not in opposition. The two figures complemented each other well while working together to ensure the advent of a reformist government after Mosley, Bevan the popular national figurehead while Lewis worked behind the scenes to instil total discipline in the parliamentary ranks. Lewis also continued to work to build the coalition, converting those who looked with increasing queasiness at Mosley’s violent tactics. The first suggestion of the existence of a coalition big enough to challenge Mosley came in September 1960, when Lewis led the Assembly in an informal vote of censure against the government on the matter of the conviction of the Heatherden Twelve, which had taken place during the parliamentary summer recess. The motion of censure passed with a majority of 42, including the eleven CPGB AMs in a rare productive gesture. Robens knew that it would now be almost impossible to deny the fact of the government’s minority, and by Mosley’s 64th birthday in the middle of November the Chairman’s closest advisors were counselling him to jump before he was pushed.
Aneurin Bevan, 1961.
Mosley announced his retirement on January 6 1961. He was succeeded by veteran lieutenant John Strachey, who as Domestic Secretary had overseen the escalation of violence in suppressing the growing opposition. In the circumstances, it is hard to imagine any alternative world in which Strachey’s was not a doomed task. He assumed the chairmanship without a vote of confidence, abetted once more by some nimble manoeuvring by Alf Robens, but nevertheless he remain on borrowed time. Any suggestion of the Strachey government making it to the 1963 election was absurd, and it seemed increasingly uncertain that ‘his’ party, as the Party of Action now was, would back him at conference in September. For Lewis and Bevan, a clear path to the premiership had now opened up; if Bevan could take the leadership of the Party of Action from Strachey, there would be nothing to prevent the formation of a reformist ministry.
Bevan duly challenged Strachey for the leadership in August, and was duly confirmed as the victor at conference the following month. On September 19 1961 – two-and-a-half years after the first time of asking – David Lewis led the People’s Assembly in a constructive vote of no confidence against the Strachey government, electing Bevan in his stead. The same day, Bevan appointed Lewis as his Domestic Secretary, entrusting him with responsibility for the work of reforming the Commonwealth’s grossly anti-democratic political and judicial institutions. A decade of parliamentary manoeuvring had culminated, after protracted and bitter struggle, in the overthrow of the old regime and the formation of a new, liberal coalition. The urgent question that remained to be answered was how to put a lifetime of theory into practice.
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Thank you all who read and gave thumbs up to the last update. Next up I'm going to whiz through Lewis's caretaker ministry with a review of the headlines, just to keep things moving, then I've got a bumper two-parter for election night for you all to sink your teeth into. After that I think we might pause to check back in with the States.
More importantly, the ACAs are back up and running! A few have already voted, and turnout looks like it will be quite healthy, but always helpful to add to the calls to pokemon go to the polls, right @Nikolai ? All AARs updated over the last quarter, which is to say between April 1 and June 30 (inclusive) are eligible. Voting is open until August 22, and you can fill out a ballot here.
(Many thanks to @Wraith11B, @Golden Dragon and @filcat for having kindly thrown votes my way already. It means great deal. To you latter two, good to hear you're following along to some degree! Do feel free to say hi if you're to there )
More importantly, the ACAs are back up and running! A few have already voted, and turnout looks like it will be quite healthy, but always helpful to add to the calls to pokemon go to the polls, right @Nikolai ? All AARs updated over the last quarter, which is to say between April 1 and June 30 (inclusive) are eligible. Voting is open until August 22, and you can fill out a ballot here.
(Many thanks to @Wraith11B, @Golden Dragon and @filcat for having kindly thrown votes my way already. It means great deal. To you latter two, good to hear you're following along to some degree! Do feel free to say hi if you're to there
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Very true, we need all pokemons to vote. And humans. And orcs.More importantly, the ACAs are back up and running! A few have already voted, and turnout looks like it will be quite healthy, but always helpful to add to the calls to pokemon go to the polls, right @Nikolai ? All AARs updated over the last quarter, which is to say between April 1 and June 30 (inclusive) are eligible. Voting is open until August 22, and you can fill out a ballot here.
....what?
Anyways, go vote people!
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Scenes from the Lewis caretaker ministry
Scenes from the Lewis caretaker ministry
Daily Herald, March 9 – May 4 1967
Tuesday, March 21 1967:
Friday, March 24 1967:
Thursday, March 30 1967:
Mr Geohagan’s intervention came two days after a meeting between David Lewis and TUC leader Jack Jones, at which Chairman Lewis is reported to have expressed reservations about pushing ahead with reform. …
Thursday, April 6 1967:
Saturday, April 8 1967:
Anti-immigration protestors sparked violence in Wolverhampton yesterday following an inflammatory demonstration by members of the group 'Powell for Premier' through an area home to Indo-Guyanese migrants. Over 100 people turned out to hear speeches arguing in favour of an end to coloured immigration to the Commonwealth, as advocated by Enoch Powell. Protestors are alleged to have assaulted Indian residents and caused damage to property in the Blakenhall area of the city following a series of anti-Indian speeches made earlier in the day. Two speakers, Miss Bee Carthew and Mr John O'Brien, the leader of the 'Powell for Premier' group, were among 23 anti-immigrant protestors arrested during the day. Two anti-racialist counter-protestors also arrested were later released without charge.
… Indian and Guyanese community groups were quick to denounce the violence, strongly denying Mr O'Brien's allegation that the violence was caused by 'Indian troublemakers'. High-profile Black and Indian figures in the Commonwealth, including Jocelyn Barrow, Stuart Hall, C.L.R. James and Dipak Nandy, have called for 'sustained public rebuttal' of racialist violence in a statement issued by the Campaign Against Racial Discrimination.
Friday, April 14 1967:
A court in Wellington, Shropshire has acquitted pro-Powell campaigner John O'Brien on charges of incitement to riot, finding that Mr O'Brien did not directly advocate violence during a speech against coloured immigration given in Wolverhampton on April 7. Mr O'Brien, who leads the group 'Powell for Premier' and was one of 25 protestors and counter-protestors arrested following violent scenes in Wolverhampton last week, was found guilty of a lesser public order offence and ordered to pay a fine of £50. 22 other anti-immigration protestors were also convicted of offences including assault and various public order charges.
Mr O'Brien's acquittal has provoked a negative reaction among anti-racialism campaigners, who have called for stronger laws protecting racial minorities from hate speech and racialist violence. Enoch Powell, whose views on immigration Mr O'Brien supports, hailed the 'not guilty' verdict as "a victory for free expression", and praised the British judiciary for "working as it should".
Sunday, April 16 1967:
Wednesday, April 19 1967:
Friday, April 21 1967:
Leaders of the three main parties standing in the general election have endorsed calls for legislation to criminalise racially-motivated violence and racialist hate-speech. Popular Front leader Chairman Lewis, Labour Unionist Party leader Richard Crossman and Ernest Millington, chairman of the New Left Coalition, each announced their support for legal protection for racial minorities while campaigning yesterday. John Freeman, leader of the Mosleyite Group for Action, declined to give comment when asked for his view on proposals to tackle racialism made by Dr Cheddi Jagan of the New Socialist Front on Monday afternoon. A request by the Herald for comment from the anti-revisionist Communist Party of Great Britain remains unanswered as of going to print.
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Tuesday, April 25 1967:
POWELL: … I do not say this lightly, but I fear that it is now evidently true: the government has not overcome its taste for the dark arts when seeking to deal with opposition groups telling uncomfortable truths. In fact, I would go so far as to say, in no uncertain terms, that legislating to prevent British people from expressing their opposition to coloured immigration – something that the government has freely encouraged – would be an action lifted straight from the playbook of Oswald Mosley. …
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Friday, April 28 1967:
Chairman Lewis will today announce plans for sweeping changes to the Commonwealth's energy sector. The Chairman will outline the new programme at an address to members of the the Central Electricity Board this afternoon. Popular Front energy spokesman James Callaghan will also speak.
In an advance copy of the speech text seen by the Herald, Chairman Lewis commits his party to a 'full re-evaluation' of the make-up of the British energy sector, promising to move the Commonwealth away from a reliance on coal by increasing the production of electricity from nuclear power stations. Chairman Lewis will tell members of the C.E.B. that Britain has 'learned the lessons of Windscale', and that nuclear power must play a 'significant role' in the generation of British power. …
Chairman Lewis has faced persistent criticism from coal workers for his handling of a series of crises in the coal industry, including the decision to sanction 'collection raids' by British Coal convoys against the occupied collieries of Merthyr Vale last winter. This afternoon's speech to the C.E.B. will mark an attempt by Lewis to gain the initiative for the Popular Front in the debate over energy.
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The National Federation of Mining Unions has warned that any 'major alteration' to the position of coal in Commonwealth energy production without the approval of coal industry workers will be met by 'firm action' in defence of workers' rights. Responding to proposals put forward by the Popular Front to increase the proportion of British electricity generated by nuclear power stations, N.F.M.U. general secretary Donald Price cautioned that any large-scale change to the British energy sector must take workers' voices into account. Relations between the government and the mining unions remain strained following disputes with the South Wales Miners' Federation over the winter.
Tuesday, May 2 1967:
Mr Foot, who holds the top position on the Popular Front’s list in Wales, is expected to retake his seat in the Assembly with little fuss—but many in the Valleys remain wary of the party who led the effort to break the occupations in Merthyr Vale. Ebbw Vale, a coal-mining town, historically favoured the Labour Unionists in the years of Aneurin Bevan's chairmanship. The area has seen rising support during the election campaign for the parties of the New Left Coalition, who strongly criticised the government's handling of disputes in the coal industry last winter.
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I mean...the Welsh coal miners are going to lose eventually. You can't have a millions strong coal mining industry forever. Indeed, the commonwealth would probably be better served trying to move away from coal as a power source ASAP. Problem is, that leaves a lot of unemployable workers, who are much more hooked into the political machine than OTL. Can't just ignore the issue.
Also, this mass unemployment happening at the same time as mass immigration? Not going to end well...not that there should be as much issue as there was OTL because syndicalist theory should mean that wages are fair for workers no matter what...
Also, this mass unemployment happening at the same time as mass immigration? Not going to end well...not that there should be as much issue as there was OTL because syndicalist theory should mean that wages are fair for workers no matter what...
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Yes, all of this is true. Lewis is really in the right here, obviously – but with his record on coal/the mining unions he's not going to get much of a fair hearing. Foot meanwhile will get a fair hearing – but advocating the left-Labour "full coal-powered steam ahead" approach is only marginally less foolish in 1967 than it was in 1983… It also doesn't entirely help that the two disputes (coal vs better fuel sources / managers vs self-management) are being rolled into one.
And yeah, unemployment/re-employment is going to be the kicker. What we don't have of course is a vast and growing service industry, so we can't eg turn South Wales into a barren land of call centres and business parks. On the other hand, the full employment shibboleth is much more deeply ingrained. If we're lucky then the debate will be about new industries and reskilling. (If we're really lucky then we might even get some 'let's just do less work' discourse…)
In the background of course is the ecological argument. That has the potential to disrupt things in a few years.
'Mass' is probably a stretch at this point on either count, but the potential for very bad things is obviously there. Syndicalist theory as you say should give us a decent base to defend against it – but then OTL the dockers fucking loved Powell. And big unions are often depressingly bad at dealing with racism in any useful way. Battles ahead…
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Both a curse and a blessing. No Gavin and Stacy, for one thing...
Hmm. Yes, possibly, especially if the universal basic income devste goes somewhere. And why shouldn't it, with nationalised everything else and no capitalists to complain about productivity...
Yes, the 70s are going to be interesting. Eurosyn is scientifically advanced, powerful and not in the pocket of Big oil. So climate change surely must find more people more quickly...unfortunately it may make the US dig in even more than otl...
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One imagines that Nessa would just become a miner…
Quite right.
Yes, I suppose it could. Maybe oil ends up being called “freedom juice” or something…
The question is no doubt what is happening in the Middle East / OPEC states. If we get some sort of oil crisis then maybe the US will end up instigating some sort of weird Cold War where there’s a race to make solar panels…
big if tho – not least because the map of the Middle East Is still under construction…
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I suppose it would still make quite a difference if Eurosyn went green as early as that. Then again, I have no idea what Germany and the US client states would do...especially if the government and citizens end up at odds over what is best.
The Soviet Union probably won't have a choice. Oil is just too important for their needs to just be gotten rid of, but more nuke plants might both make the planet greener and make nuke disasters more likely...
Actually, europe otl really rather liked nuke stations, and remains to this day. At least in some countries. I think we certainly should see a lot more natural gas and nuke power plants, and probably some more research into solar energy etc earlier.
The bigger thing that might change things significantly (if only on a local atmospheric level) is the catalytic convertor not becoming mainstream, or being replaced by something else in europe.
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Hmmm, you’re right… that’s one to work out. One of those occasions where having a Reich with all those Prussian values in the third quarter of the 20th century just boggles the mind. I can’t quite see them being vaguely green North Europeans… but then what else would they be?
That’s an interesting point. There’s some anti-car proto-ecological stuff in the French ‘new left’, so I suppose it’s not beyond the realm of probability that a general movement away from cars happens regardless… but then the Commonwealth isn’t a particularly car-heavy society TTL. No doubt something will force the issue at some stage
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To think a out it some more, the Germans have an even larger mining sector than the british do, especially as its unified right now. Which means they face bascially the same choice as the british will soon enough, and it'll be harder for them to toughen up and destroy mining (they didn't do this OTL).
That means no matter what, unless they go really green for some reason some other way, the germans will still be coal powered and producing for many decades to come. And also dependant on oil from the US. Especially when their car industry booms.
Now, the rest of europe not in Eurosyn doesn't have this exact problem. They'll be moving away from mining anyway because Germany is going to flood the market soon enough with stupid prices of coal to keep their own industry alive. So they have the choice of either buying from Germany, trying to become nuclear, or doing some mix of the two.
This by the way could be Eurosyn's in with them. No one else can offer a better alternative, unless they want to buy oil from the Soviets.
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