interwar year politics

Question 1

Ball + Holliday on the reason for Tory success

Answer 1

“for the mass of the population it seemed obvious that the facts of life are Tory”. they were the “natural party of government

Question 2

Conservative organisation in Scotland

Answer 2

1874- Scotsman commented that “conservative clubs and working men’s Conservative Associations have sprung up like mushrooms”. 500 attended meetings of Glasgow Conservative Association and the Glasgow association’s membership grew to 6.8k in 1884

Question 3

Middleton Machine

Answer 3

started in 1892
reconstructed the Conservative headquarters- introduced a network of full time agents to collect info on constituencies and candidates and full term organising secretaries. by 1900, they worked in 7 Glasgow constituencies and 12 of them covered Edinburgh’s 17 constituencies and the St Andrew’s uni seat

Question 4

Social events organised by the Conservatives

Answer 4

founded draughts and cards clubs from 1886 and ball states that this presented Conservative propaganda ‘disguised with a coating of popular entertainment’

Question 5

Women’s Liberal unionist association for the west of Scotland

Answer 5

formed 1888

by 1894 had 15 organisers, canvassers and clerks and in 1900 August, had £7.3k promised to the special election fund

Question 6

Glasgow Conservatives and registration activities

Answer 6

between 1896-99, canvassing returns number of 1,037 in Kilmarnock and 850 in Coatbridge

Question 7

Shropshire’s significance as an electoral region

Answer 7

2nd in importance for the main farmworker’s union

Question 8

the NFU

Answer 8

rural institution post WW1 which reinforced “Shropshire paternalism and Conservative domination of the country”
1918 election, ran candidates in Worcestershire, Leominster focusing on the difficulties facing tenant farmers

Question 9

Brighter villages campaign

Answer 9

aided by the NFU
1922
revived ploughing matches and introduced sheepdog trials and hedging competitions. this maintained a “loyalist consensus” and fostered engagement

Question 10

Women’s rural institutions

Answer 10

est. from 1917
engaged in fruit bottling, folk dancing, and spread Empire day celebrations - tea parties given by local womens institutions on the day and hold sporting competitions and sing the national Anthem in front of the union jack

Question 11

‘the comrades of the Great war’

Answer 11

est by Conservatives- successfully destabilised a similar radical organisation links to the Labour party- National federation of discharged and demobilised soldiers and sailors through propaganda which emphasised the pacifism of the ILP

Question 12

British legion

Answer 12

1920- merged the comrades of the great war and the national federation of discharged and demobilised soldiers. carried out village war memorials which supposedly united the village under shared grief

Question 13

Conservative press in Shropshire

Answer 13

Shrewsbury chronicle the main weekly farmer’s journal was owned by Tory Mp Beville Stanier

Question 14

Labour events in Shropshire

Answer 14

the largest one, based in Ludlow, amassed a crowd of 100

Question 15

Conservative meetings in Shropshire

Answer 15

Junior Imperial league had 600 attendees at its 1924 dinner and in 1926 it claimed to have 1.5k members

Question 16

housing under the Baldwin Government

Answer 16

1924-9 2/3 of all housing and half of that privately built was state subsidised following an estimated shortfall of 800k houses in 1920s despite promise of homes fit for heroes

Question 17

Ideal Homes exhibition

Answer 17

organised by the Daily Mail

first held 1908, by 1930s it was attracting 700k visitors

Question 18

Mortgages in Birmingham

Answer 18

1935- Birmingham’s municipal bank awarded 13k mortgages- reflected belief I Tory slogan “every man is his own landlord”

Question 19

council housing in Conservative regions

Answer 19

5/7 counties building more municipal than private housing 1921-1931 were within the Conservative’s midlands union and 3 fell in Chamberlain’s heartlands- Warwickshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire where council houses contributed to more than 10% if the housing stock

Question 20

Chamberlain on housing

Answer 20

1933 on a council estate in the outskirts of Birmingham- made a speech promising houses as the burden was good if it meant that “fellow citizens were living lives of human beings, not of wild beasts”

Question 21

radio licences

Answer 21

1922-1939. radio licences increased from 36k to 8.9 million

Question 22

How many of the electorate listened to electoral broadcasts in 1935

Answer 22

1/3 to 1/2

Question 23

Conservative party film department

Answer 23

Conservative central office had its own film unit and was taken over by Sir Henry Clavering

Question 24

Daylight cinema

Answer 24

first deployed in 1925
Cinema van tour April-November 1926. 31 weeks long costing £40 a week for the part to maintain
special 4 pm viewing for school children and Ball states that in a village of 600, 400 would attend
by 1935, the party had 10 vans

Question 25

1926 General strike

Answer 25

Conservatives asked ‘loyal citizens’ to join a defence force and 75k did within 10 days
the TUC and Labour failed to ever demonstrate that the strike was constitutional
“roly-poly revolution’ play depicted strikes as damaging for the home physically and financially” and as a tool of community leaders

Question 26

when was the Tory- Liberal coalition

Answer 26

1918

Question 27

why was the Tory-Liberal coalition formed according to Kenneth Morgan

Answer 27

anti-socialist

broad economic strategy that appealed to working, middle and upper classes

Question 28

Class divides due to government debt post WW1

Answer 28

Masterman wrote of middle-class attitudes to the holders of government debt- in 2 half-yearly slums the government pays out on interest on over 6 thousand million pounds, owned by men who stay at home while the war was won

Question 29

Coalition tax policy

Answer 29

Excess profits duty which at its peak was levied at 60% of profits deemed above normal. survived until 1921

Question 30

Anti-waste movement

Answer 30

led by the press condemning wasteful public expenditure- Coalition gov only served the interests of Shirkers. Anti-spending independents won Wrekin by-election 1920 and Dover in 1921 and in 1921 2 official anti-waste candidates won Hertford and St George’’s Westminster form MPs in the coalition government

Question 31

Labour post-war Tax policy

Answer 31

capital levy- tax on wealth. a levy on equities and fixed interest stock designed to pay off a substantial part of the national debt
abandoned and so hard to view it as a producers party

Question 32

Baldwin’s support of Tariffs

Answer 32

declared in 1922 that he supported tariff protection for domestic industries
led to contest: Beaverbrook and Rotherham wanted imperial preference
Salisbury and Lord Cecil wanted free trade

Question 33

Labour-Liberal coalition

Answer 33

Asquith neglected to form a coalition with Labour, yet did place them in power in 1923. McKibbin said that MacDonald made coalition difficult because “he spent much of his time complaining of the parliamentary behaviour of the liberals and of their general impossibility”

Question 34

Conservatives and the constitution

Answer 34

McKibbin- Conservatives of the 1920s can best be understood as the party of the constitution- directly presenting themselves as the anti-socialist party
Churchill epitomised Baldwin’s constitutionalism- stood in in 1924 general election, stood in Epping as a constitutionalist and joined Baldwin’s second government

Question 35

Pugh on working class Conservative support

Answer 35

monarchical enthusiasm, state hostility, Empire, militant protestantism to name a few and this was reflected in the Tory gambling societies, music halls, horse racing and the primrose league

Question 36

Labour and conscription bill

Answer 36

no clear policy- 8 voted for it, 13 against

Question 37

1918 Labour seats in London

Answer 37

4

Question 38

1918 how many labour seats, and how many of these were mining towns

Answer 38

33 of 57 seats

Question 39

Home and politics

Answer 39

1923-30 magazine offprint from the general party magazine

by 1929 it was circulating to 200k, outselling its male version- ‘man on the street’

Question 40

One-off election Conservative publication for women

Answer 40

1929 women of today and tomorrow

Question 41

Mrs Maggs quote to Betty

Answer 41

“hanging out clothes during changeable weather is as risky as voting liberal”
“free trade means allowing people to steal flowers from your garden”
acted our by constituency women’s societies in full dress

Question 42

First female Conservative MP complaints

Answer 42

in 1923 “i have tried for 5 years to get the Conservative party right on the position of women. I have never been to a conference where I have not been treated more like a poor relation”

Question 43

A pretty kettle of fish

Answer 43

a play for patriots
Mrs Barker claims the dole for herself and pays for her unemployed husband who is left to look after the child. the child is consequently neglected. depicting women as successfully combing domestic duties and political activity however only when they put the former first

Question 44

A word to women

Answer 44

1931 leaflet claiming Labour were headed for bankruptcy and that if any woman were in the same position she would “cut down her expenses and live within her means”- this showed appreciation for female financial competence which justified Conservatives austerity

Question 45

MacDonald v Baldwin- radio

Answer 45

MacDonald unlike Baldwin did not change his speech for the radio and was a platform orator which he continued when on the radio. He also used abstract phrases- didn’t speak normally unlike Baldwin who spoke in normal and simple English without speaking down

Question 46

Labour party’s attempts to extend beyond the working class

Answer 46

party of the ‘productive classes’

or the national party- nation takes control of the economy

Question 47

1923 election

Answer 47

Baldwin called early as confident but lost as became the election of free trade so Liberals put the Labour party into power as the biggest free-trade party, however, didn’t form an official coalition. it cemented the tories as the anti-socialist party

Question 48

1924 general election

Answer 48

Tories had greater majority than they had in the Khaki election with Liberals favouring Tories 2:1 but Labour vote increased from 30 to 33%

Question 49

1929 election

Answer 49

Tories lost 2 million votes and Liberal vote increased by 6%- not clear that Labour’s success was the other party’s failure and Liberals unemployment centred election campaign failed with them winning larger support from the employed

Question 50

Trade unions and the Labour party

Answer 50

Labour party designed by Unions but rarely used by them. they according to McKibbin, prioritised industrial action over political action and wanted to retain their ability to have free collective bargaining and extra-legal privileges- act independently of parliament and since most Labour members were trad unionists, most of the party’s members had the “same ambivalence to the party as their leaders

Question 51

Trade union opposition to welfare

Answer 51

Ernest Bevin, general secretary of transport and general worker’s union- largest and fastest-growing union- was opposed to state intervention in the economy such as family allowances

Question 52

TUC and the Labour party on free trade

Answer 52

1930- Labour politician and trad unionist tried to get the TUC general council to adopt protectionism but it was defeated 17 to 5 and was reaffirmed in 1931

Question 53

discontent with Labour leaders

Answer 53

MacDonald, Snowden and Thomas defected to the national party taking few Labour politicians with them, the 2 of the big 5 remaining, Clynes and Henderson lost their seats

Question 54

1934 Tory economic policy

Answer 54

restored benefit cuts and cuts to salaries- prior to the general election so change in policy according to McKibbin, made those who had not yet benefitted from the national government believe that they were going to

Question 55

Growth in press

Answer 55

paper duty abolished in 1861 and stamp tax abolished on newspapers in 1853
1896- Daily mail created by Harmsworth brothers. by 1900 had 1 mill readers. 1903 Daily mirror created

Question 56

1895 electoral results for Tories

Answer 56

clearly not working-class party- out of the 95 predominantly working-class seats, Tories only won 30

Question 57

Divide on economic policy in Labour Party during GD

Answer 57

Llyod George, Keynes and Mosely wanted defecit spending to stimulate the economy, Snowden refused
Mosely also publically called for public control of imports and banking and increase to pensions in 1930

Question 58

Unemployment insurance Act 1930

Answer 58

Labour policy
increased expenditure on the insurance funds prevent more unemployed from having to turn to poor relief, bringing 170k into benefit

Question 59

Widows and Old age Pensions Act

Answer 59

Amended by Labour to extend to widows between 55-70 and furthered cover for hundreds of thousands

Question 60

unemployment Insurance Act (1929)

Answer 60

unemployed no longer had to prove that they were ‘genuinely seeking work’ to be eligible to unemployment benefits and it increased the allowances of dependents

Question 61

National Health Insurance Act

Answer 61

1930

extended healthcare insurance to those unemployed males whose insurance had run out

Question 62

reason for Labour resignation 1931

Answer 62

To receive loans from NY, they had to implement austerity measures such as the e10% reduction on the dole. 9 rejected it and 11 accepted as could not form a conclusive decison