Chapter 48, Transport House, London, 7 September 1936
By common consent (involving no less than four bouts of negotiation) the meeting, given that it was a Monday, was to take place later than usual, to allow for those delegates travelling from the London suburbs (this cadre including Labour’s leader) to have an extra night at home. For most of the delegates, this was fruitless, as they had already ‘weekended’ in London before this important gathering.
Three other figures ambled towards Smith Square, the two outliers confessing their nerves, at least to themselves, at returning to the inner sanctum of the Labour Party. The central figure, a curious mix of Heathcliff and Haggai with a glowering, gloomy figure, lank hair, stooping walk and an intense stare, merely looked at the Georgian splendour around him and grimaced.
“I wonder why we’re here,” the figure on the right, Archibald Fenner Brockway, muttered, as much to manage his apprehension as anything else.
“Attlee wants the movement together on this,” the central figure muttered caustically as he ambled towards the entrance. A porter in a suitably utilitarian suit took their hats and coats. The central figure took the man’s hand and offered his thanks.
“Is it Attlee,” the other figure said. “The invitation came from Cripps.” He appeared to have a point, as it was Sir Stafford Cripps, the Member for Bristol South East, who greeted them.
“My Dear James,” the tall, angular man greeted them, with, as ever, a thin smile. “I am so pleased that you could join us. The Leader of the Opposition,” this was done with the usual reedy, pompous embellishment tone, and was doubtless deliberately done to overawe the guests (if that was the intent, it was not working) “will shortly…”
“I’ve known Clement Attlee for bloody decades,” the central figure, James Maxton MP, said sourly. He shook Cripps’ hand with the lightest, most fleeting of touches and followed the other man in. His colleagues trailed behind their leader.
As they walked Cripps turned to them and awkwardly attempted conversation. “James, it is vital that you, the Socialist League and the Communist Party join with us; we must,” he spoke with a zealous passion, “ally with one another.”
“Almost like a speech,” Maxton said dourly. He followed Cripps into a room and was waved to a seat. Opposite him he saw the rosy-cheeked, confused looking Arthur Greenwood, the flame red Ellen Wilkinson, and the zealous looking Rajani Palme Dutt, all glumly nodded their greeting.
Another figure came in, short, almost elfin, and, ignoring the greetings, sat down. Peering, as he usually did, above his spectacles, he looked pointedly at Cripps.
“So then,” Cripps said, not unlike a reformist priest, “you know that I have often tried to be the interlocutor between us all, forming, shall we say, an alliance of the left, involving the Socialist League, the Independent Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain, designed to forge electoral unity against the right.”
Attlee rolled his eyes while Wilkinson nodded; Maxton stared dolefully ahead. Cripps paused with a raised eyebrow. “Shall I continue?” He looked to Attlee.
Attlee wasn’t embarrassed by Cripps’ act of bringing the thinly veiled irritation out into the open. “Is there much more?” He asked this curtly. Maxton looked exasperated, Wilkinson was visibly amused.
“Only this. It is clear that the Prime Minister will be forced to capitulate, to His Majesty or…”
“The establishment,” Dutt said heavily. Wilkinson looked, shrewdly, from the Communist to the more mainstream Attlee.
But it was Maxton that took up the point. “The man’s running out of moves,” he said sharply. “He’s played out. The dammed Tories will form a makeshift minority Government that’ll be out by the end of the month. It’ll be a bloody shambles.”
“Just so, James,” Cripps said with a thin smile, “just so. But the point is that the aftermath of that ‘bloody shambles’,” he said this awkwardly, as if he was unused to colourful language like that muttered caustically by Maxton, “will almost certainly result in a dissolution of Parliament and a new General Election.” Despite the pomposity some, Wilkinson and Greenwood among them, nodded their agreement. “The only way in which we, those of us with a ‘like’ countenance, can hope to prevail is through a united approach. A common front, if you will,” Cripps said, perched on his chair and placing his hands carefully on his desk like a schoolboy delivering a prize-winning essay. Attlee maintained a fixed expression, almost a grimace, while Maxton shook his head with rueful restraint.
Wilkinson looked distracted. “But there’s more,” she said with passion, her coloured cheeks matching her hair. “What about our plans for the Autumn?”
Greenwood looked at her like a kindly uncle. “Come come, Ellen,” he said with levity, “part of this profession is the ability to react to changes in the political wind.”
Attlee seemed utterly unimpressed with his lieutenant’s interjection. “Did you have anything in particular in mind?”
“She means the march,” Maxton said dourly from his corner.
“Still going on?” Attlee fired the words like bullets.
“Yes, Clem, I am,” Wilkinson said defiantly.
“Perhaps,” Greenwood said slowly, warily, clearly about to deliver bad news, “we should see whether in light of the likely collapse of the Government…”
“…precisely why it should go ahead,” Dutt snapped. Maxton nodded. Wilkinson flashed a smile at both for their support.
Attlee looked to Cripps for management of the meeting. Cripps saw the prompt and coughed. “Perhaps, before we look at specifics, we an agree on the need to meet the challenges of the next few months with unanimity.”
Dutt shook his head. “No,
Sir Stafford,” he placed contempt on Cripps’ knighthood, “we cannot. There is so much on which the left cannot agree. Spain, Europe, rearmament,” he began, throwing up an exasperated hand, “the future of the King himself.”
Maxton looked from Cripps to Dutt. “Yes, you’ve a point,” he said dolefully. “We cannot agree on what we would do with him and that poisonous consort of his.”
There was a ripple of discussion, voices calling for everything from the abolition of the Lords and most of the Monarch’s powers to a genial, softer accommodation. Maxton, who knew the game being played, looked Attlee in the eye. “You’re very quiet,” he said with a wry smile.
Attlee wasn’t ready to commit, though. “What is the Liberals’ position,” he asked without much evident interest.
“They’re all in,” Wilkinson interjected, “all lined up to support the King,” she said in amazement.
“Good,” Greenwood said gently, “it differentiates us from them.” Cripps was scribbling scratchily on some loose leaf sheets of paper.
“But only,” Attlee said, now committing himself to the conversation, “if the left can defeat the Conservatives.”
“But we disagree on so much,” Maxton countered, with an authority; all were aware that no one really led the left, so precarious was Attlee’s position. “Papering over the cracks is one thing, but ditching deeply held principles is another.”
Wilkinson hadn’t quite given up on her broader view of the discussion. “This is where,” she began, “the other activities could help us.”
“Jarrow?” That was Cripps, like all southerners pronouncing it ‘Jar-roh’. Wilkinson, taking her new constituency to heart, had recently taken to pronouncing it like they did, ‘jarra’.
“We all agree that’s it’s a good cause,” Wilkinson said, a pleading note to her voice.
“Do we?” That was Greenwood, beating Cripps and Attlee to it. “Not everyone does. What did Ramsay call it?”
“He said ‘Ellen, why don’t you go and preach socialism, which is the only remedy for this,’ that’s what he said,” she snapped angrily.
“The words of Judas,” Maxton muttered.
“Actually,” Attlee said with a very faint hint of cheekiness, “that raises a point. What do we do if National Labour members want to rejoin?”
“Return to the fold?” Greenwood was clearly intrigued by the concept.
“That’s a matter for you,” Dutt said, dismissively to Attlee and Greenwood.
“Not if Cripps here gets his way,” Maxton jutted a finger in Cripps’ direction. “If I’m to align with you, I want a say.”
Attlee nodded, glad that he and Maxton had forced the issue out. “Fair,” he replied briskly. “But a say, not a vote.”
Maxton thought about it, and nodded.
“Does that mean,” Cripps said slowly, “that we might be able, perhaps, to cooperate?”
Attlee sat back, removing himself from the conversation.
“Not yet,” Dutt said quickly, “we are divided as we are united.”
“Agreed,” Maxton said heavily, “but we can stop the civil war for a while,” he said with a smile.
“And that,” Greenwood said, “might be enough.”
====
GAME NOTES
The apologies, first, for the hiccups in bringing the production back to the forum; if January saw recovery from illness, February saw a rebuilding of the life. Nothing too dramatic, but COVID necessitated a rethink on career (essentially from a terribly vulnerable private practice with diddly squat to protect the clan should I be laid low to employed work – the benefits package alone made it irresistible!) which was partnered to the wife reviewing her career, the result of which has been a real ‘flip board moment’. We’re hopefully moving from ‘the smoke’ to the countryside to allow my daughters a more enjoyable lifestyle. It has a guest room and is close to a mahoosive forest. I’m getting a new study. To misquote Ron Burgundy, this is kinda a big deal.
Anyhoo, and so we’re back, and I have reintroduced my ‘always have the next update already on the slipway’ approach which means I will be back at the end of the week with a view from the establishment. This update was frankly an ordeal to write as it was started during the first day of my illness, was in ‘development hell’ for a month, and stemmed from a half-forgotten offer for cameos made in that heady ‘we’ll be ok’ rush of last summer. Right. So blame
@DensleyBlair – for the good and ill of this update.
The characters are all, for their pastichey elements, real; I like writing Cripps, Greenwood and (of course) Attlee as I can ‘get a handle’ on them, using a trait, or something about their appearance, as a means to get into their nature. Cripps is, I’m afraid, an utterly loathsome character and I am surprised, in preparing this update and this AAR, how much I have come to despise him. The establishment figure who becomes indispensable to the left despite, as far I can see, being wrong on just about everything. Carried along on his own self-importance (his old news clips are hilariously bad!) the mealy mouthed attitudes, the patronising air, all I’m afraid, rather revolting. But he makes for fun writing. Greenwood is the avuncular half-drunk (sadly true) uncle figure, easily flustered but not above a good scheme. And then we have Attlee…
The chapter is, really, the tale of the big lefties, Maxton and Attlee. I tried, where possible, to convey the sense that it is they making the decisions in this meeting. Maxton is fiendishly difficult to get right; at once an almost prophet-like figure while also being a dry wit and a grumpy Scot. I hate writing about him, but I like him as a man, so far.
Attlee really is an odd one, and hear my hatred of
The Crown’
s portrayal of British Prime Ministers provides a fun (!) interlude…
So Attlee barely features in Netflix's lavish production, hell, why should he, he was only a major element of postwar Britain and was the PM when QEII married dodgy Phil the Greek (this sentence may get a major rewrite depending upon his latest stay in hospital). He gets a small role in the episode about the Great Smog, as a podgy, doddery whiney character (it doesn’t help that the actor playing him usually plays, lazily, outraged civil servant / Colonel types) and they miss the point on him. He was very, deeply, English, (unlike the very British Imperial Churchill), rather suburban, modest in his tastes and into cricket and crosswords and tea rather than champagne. He was physically diminutive (although not the midget as he is often portrayed) and was elfin. Where Churchill never forgot that his ever waking moment was a moment in history, with the speeches and drama associated with it, Attlee was short with his words. He was flawed, holding some bizarrely naïve views (invite El Pip to talk about Rolls Royce here) and was in a very precarious position in 1936 after the calamitous 1935 election. All of this colours his response to any royal crisis, trying to corral the left (or rather letting the dreamer Cripps try) in a unified response to the crisis.
If the Conservatives are publicly convulsed by the Royal antics then the left is no less at risk from the effects; it is perhaps spared slightly by being in opposition and not having, at least officially, to be seen to be acting. And so, as happened in reality (although in hugely different circumstances) there is talk of unity in the face of wider political threats. I’ve hopefully not overdone optimism and pessimism, although I think that some form of ‘gentleman’s agreement’ not to openly trade blows is the best that can be done as the left was in chaos in 1936. But first, the Government has to fold. And soon it will.
