The Labour Party in Britain and Norway: Elections and the Pursuit of Power between the World Wars 9780755692682, 9781848855403

Citation preview

To my mother and sister and in memory of my father

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Coupon for Labour’s Bid for Power Fund One of Labour’s posters The class dimension of the 1931 election ‘Town and Land Hand in Hand’. ‘All the People in Work’ ‘80, 000 unemployed demand a majority for the DNA’ Johan Nygaardsvold End of campaign rally, Young’s Square, Oslo, 1936

20 26 60 64 103 105 121

LIST OF MAPS

1 2 3

Map of British towns Map of British counties Map of Norway

xix xx xxi

LIST OF TABLES

1.1 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 5.7 5.8

Charles Tilly’s categories: a different schema Labour’s membership in 1929 DNA membership in 1930 Labour and Socialist newspapers in 1928 and 1930 Labour’s Bid for Power Fund 1929 The British general election 1929 The Norwegian parliamentary election 1930 Labour membership in 1929 and 1931 The DNA’s membership in 1930 and 1933 DNA central expenditure 1933 Farm sizes in England and Wales 1925 Farm sizes in Norway 1929 The British general election 1931 The Norwegian parliamentary election 1933 The Labour Party in 1931 and 1935 Membership of Norwegian labour organizations in 1933 and 1936 Labour central expenditure in 1935 The British general election 1935 British general elections Norwegian parliamentary elections Labour 1928-39 The DNA 1928-39 Labour and Co-operative newspapers DNA newspapers Labour election expenditure DNA election expenditure

3 21 21 23 31 46 47 54 55 67 78 78 84 85 91 91 102 120 128 129 134-5 135 138 138 139 139

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AFL AIF AOF AUF CPGB DNA ILP LCC NEC NUAW SAP SPD TUC

Arbeidernes Faglige Landsorganisasjon (Trade Union Confederation) Arbeidernes Idrettsforbund (Workers’ sports association) Arbeidernes Oplysningsforbund (Workers’ educational association) Arbeidernes Ungdomsfylking (DNA youth organization) Communist Party of Great Britain Det norske Arbeiderparti (The Norwegian Labour Party) Independent Labour Party London County Council National Executive Committee National Union of Agricultural Workers Sveriges Socialdemokratiska Arbetarepartiet (Swedish Social Democratic Party) Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (German Social Democratic Party) Trades Union Congress

NOTE ON TRANSLATION

All translations are mine. I call the Norwegian Labour Party the DNA because it sounds better in English, even though the ‘D’ in the name stands for the Norwegian definite article.

Aberdeen

Glasgow

Durham

Seaham

Whitehaven Scarborough Keighley Burnley Liverpool

York Hull

Bradford Huddersfield

Manchester Clay Cross Nottingham Grantham Loughborough

Leicester

Lowestoft Peterborough

Birmingham Rugby

Saffron Walden Gloucester

Cheltenham Stroud

Aylesbury

Oxford London

Winchester

Camborne

0

miles 0

kms

100 100

CAITHNESS SUTHERLAND SHETLAND ROSS AND CROMARTY

3

2

1

ABERDEENSHIRE INVERNESS-SHIRE

SCOTLAND

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

NAIRNSHIRE MORAYSHIRE BANFFSHIRE DUNBARTONSHIRE RENFREWSHIRE STIRLINGSHIRE CLACKMANNANSHIRE KINROSS-SHIRE WEST LOTHIAN LANARKSHIRE MIDLOTHIAN EAST LOTHIAN BERWICKSHIRE PEEBLESSHIRE SELKIRKSHIRE ROXBURGHSHIRE DUMFRIESSHIRE KIRKCUDBRIGHTSHIRE

KINCARDINESHIRE ORKNEY

ANGUS PERTHSHIRE ARGYLL

7 4

FIFESHIRE

8

6

9

12

11

5 10

13

14

BUTE

15

16

AYRSHIRE

NORTHUMBERLAND

17

ENGLAND 18

WIGTOWN SHIRE

CUMBERLAND

1 2 3 4

DURHAM

WESTMORLAND

LEICESTERSHIRE RUTLAND HUNTINGDONSHIRE BEDFORDSHIRE

L AN

NORTH RIDING

CA

YORKSHIRE

SH

EAST RIDING

IR

WEST RIDING

E LINDSEY

ANGLESEY NO TTS. RT HA NO

.

TS

ESSEX

R

LONDON SURREY

KENT

H

IR

GL OU C

HE

H I RE

E

KS

SUFFOLK

.

R

.

KS

DS

BE

R

OR

DEVON

ME

T SE

BU C

SO

8

3 4

OX F

7

GLA MO RG AN

LL WA RN O C

S. RC

PEMBROKESHIRE

R. TE ES

NORFOLK CA

S. NT

. BS M

O

HEREFORDS.

6

HOLLAND

2

1 W

5

CARDIGANSHIRE

LINCOLNSHIRE

STAFFS.

WILT SH IR E

4

E

VEN

3

IR

KESTE

CAERNARVONSHIRE

SH

KS IC W AR W

FLINTSHIRE DENBIGHSHIRE MERIONETHSHIRE MONTGOMERYSHIRE RADNORSHIRE BRECKNOCKSHIRE CARMARTHENSHIRE MONMOUTHSHIRE

E CH

E HIR PS RO SH

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

1

2

E HIR YS RB DE

WALES

H

AM

PS

WEST SUSSEX

EAST SUSSEX

DORSET

0

miles 0

kms

100 100

Vadsù

FI

K AR M NN

Tromsù S OM TR

NORDLAND

NORD-TRéNDELAG

Trondheim MéRE OG ROMSDAL

Bergen Stavanger ROGALAND VEST-AGDER

BUS KE RU D

MARK HED

HORDALAND

D AN PL OP

SOGN OG FJORDANE

SéR-TRéNDELAG

OSLO AKERSHUS

TELEMARK

Skien

éSTFOLD VESTFOLD

AUST-AGDER

0

miles 0

kms

200 200

PREFACE

I hope this book will be of interest to students of history and politics as well as the general public. Transnational history has a role to play as a commentary on history which deals with a single country. Much can be learned by comparing Labour parties from the same or similar cultures. It is therefore very encouraging that a growing number of such studies exist, covering Britain, the Scandinavian countries and Germany. In my contribution to the literature I wanted to focus more on historical and empirical factors and less on structural ones. Societal and economic differences are integrated in the analysis. After several years of thinking about it, I believe I know why the Norwegian Labour Party was somewhat more successful than its British counterpart between the wars. This explanation does not require a contextual model, which is why there is no chapter comparing the British and Norwegian societies. It is a truism, but in democracies elections help to decide which policies are pursued and some elections matter more than others. The six elections I have chosen are the right ones to investigate success in the interwar period as a whole, given that earlier events had determined that both Britain and Norway would have strong Labour parties. My warmest thanks are to Mary Hilson and Stefan Berger, who through their comments and support have vastly improved the quality of this work. I am also grateful to Kathleen Burk, Knut Einar Eriksen, Knut Kjeldstadli and John Madeley for reading the manuscript or earlier versions of it and providing me with constructive feedback. Any remaining errors are my own. Tony Insall sent me the manuscript of what was then his forthcoming book. Bahram Mirzai did some vital research for me when I was unable to visit the British Library. Lars Leer very kindly gave me one of the books on the bibliography of which I have made frequent use. It was Katja Richters’s idea that I should approach I.B.Tauris with my proposal. It has been a pleasure co-operating with my publishers, and I thank Maria Marsh

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and Joanna Godfrey for their work on my behalf. The People’s History Museum, Manchester and Arbeiderbevegelsens Arkiv og Bibliotek, Oslo provided me with the illustrations and gave me permission to use them in the book. I am very grateful to them for sending through picture files in high resolution. David Redvaldsen

1 COMPARATIVE HISTORY AND THE TWO PARTIES

This book is a study of the British Labour Party’s participation in the elections of 1929, 1931 and 1935 and the Norwegian Labour Party’s involvement in the elections of 1930, 1933 and 1936. More than that, however, it attempts to contribute to the discussion about what factors made for success for a Socialist party in the period. It is for this reason that a comparative approach was chosen. Studying two parties side by side is likely to bring out differences, and these differences have continuously been considered through the prism of success. The chapters deal with electioneering, the relevant factors being the strength of each labour movement, the level of funding, how the planning was conducted and how each party presented itself before the public. It is also asked to whom each party addressed itself, and the subtext is whether they focused on the same groups. Chapter 5 brings out the differences uncovered in the other chapters, considers which were the important ones and covers the trajectories of the two Labour parties in the 1920s and 1930s. For simplicity the British Labour party is called ‘Labour’ throughout and the Norwegian party ‘the DNA’, an abbreviation of Det norske Arbeiderparti. An argument is made for why the last three elections in the interwar period were crucial. The comparative method has the advantage of throwing new light upon an historical situation previously studied in isolation. It has a tendency to emphasize aspects that may not have been thought particularly important before, the classic example of which is Marc Bloch’s study of French agrarian history using the paradigm of the English enclosure movement. This is a function of its more rigorous scheme of establishing causality. John Stuart Mill’s ‘method of agreement’ entails looking at several cases having in common the phenomenon to be explained and the proposed causal factors.1 If closer investigation reveals

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vital similarities, the chances that the causes are true have been strengthened. It is also possible to contrast instances where a phenomenon is absent as are the proposed causes for the positive case. This is the ‘method of difference’. The latter method was recommended by Max Weber to examine a single factor as a cause: take as many cases as possible which differ in this one respect and see what the outcomes are.2 Depending on the results of the analysis, the proposed cause may either be ruled out or accorded ‘facilitating’ or ‘necessary’ status for the phenomenon to occur. These are some of the building blocks of comparative social theory. More than two national contexts are needed to ‘explain’ Socialism, but my study interacts with what other scholars have discovered through comparison. In particular, it uses these two parties as case studies to comment upon an existing debate about what made Socialist parties successful in the interwar period. The concern about relative success among Socialist parties has by its nature to be a comparative issue. Weber noted that the Socialists were actually one party extended to different polities.3 The French Socialist Party stressed this view in the interwar period by calling itself Section Française de l’ International Ouvrière. It follows that Labour parties are perhaps especially suited for an international comparison. They promoted Socialism, an international movement of thought, which may be fruitfully studied in its national variants.4 Since success is the primary question, studying elections is a good way of approaching this. Heuristic questions treated here include the degree of central control exercised by party headquarters, the support received from the wider labour movement when campaigning, funding, details about electioneering in the capital and social coalition building. These are compared, where relevant, in chapter 5. While not all the details about the parties have a direct bearing on the conclusion, it is a strength that they are there. This is because much comparative history is based on secondary sources, thus being interpretations of interpretations.5 Symmetry has been aimed for throughout. This is to ensure that ‘the historian is equally interested in both cases.’6 It also goes some way towards avoiding the pitfall of comparing historiographies rather than empirical details.7 When writing comparative history the researcher should be careful not to reify particular schemes or typologies. While these concepts are abstracted from historical practice, a great many comparisons fit only approximately into these boxes or are a combination of two or more.8 Charles Tilly’s classification of works according to the two dimensions of multiplicity of forms and share of all instances has been highly influential, but there are other ways.9 His ideal types of individualizing, universalizing, encompassing and variation-finding comparisons could for instance be

COMPARATIVE HISTORY AND THE TWO PARTIES

3

regrouped as shown in Table 1.1. This is because whether the scholar is primarily interested in differences or similarities seems more vital than share of all instances. A different threecase typology is provided by Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers: comparative history as macrocausal analysis, parallel demonstration of theory or the contrast of contexts.10 These have the virtue of being complementary, studies of one kind suggesting the need for further investigations along the lines of the other types.11 How do these categories relate to this work? In the three-case typology mine is a study closest to the contrast of contexts.12 It does not try to show that a given theory is valid for both cases. Instead it does largely the opposite, endeavouring to show the limitations of a given social science explanation (to be described later) in two cases where such an explanation seems to be highly relevant. There is also the question of why historians compare, and the reasons may perhaps be subsumed under four main headings: (1) to ask questions, (2) to identify historical problems, (3) in designing research and (4) in reaching and testing conclusions.13 The fourth of these was the motivation when embarking upon the present study. Table 1.1 Charles Tilly’s categories: a different schema Differences Similarities

Few Cases Individualizing Universalizing

Many Cases Variation-finding Encompassing

So why conduct this particular Anglo-Norwegian comparison? Although there is a great disparity in size between Britain and Norway – the population of the former was 16 times that of the latter in the 1930s – on a global scale the countries are similar enough to be relevant to one another. They are both kingdoms in North Western Europe with long histories of constitutionalism. Since the purpose of comparison is to discover causes rather than just differences and similarities, these societies are not so alien to one another as to immediately call the results into question. While the author does not operate with a success against failure paradigm, as arguably Sheri Berman does in her interwar history by lauding the Swedish and damning the German Social Democrats, the advent of New Labour in the 1990s highlighted the limited electoral success that the party had traditionally enjoyed.14 A sideways glance at a party like the DNA, which was hegemonic and lost no election between 1933 and 1965, is surely thus of interest. This study should provide a novel framework for British historians working on Labour. Few writings about the DNA in the interwar period exist in English.15 A valid aspect of the comparison is the contingency of the timing of each party to

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government, which had profound effects. This point is particularly well brought out by the Hornsrud episode in 1928 when the DNA was in government for two weeks, but was turned out because it refused to be captured by the ‘bourgeois’ parliamentary system or make compromises with its beliefs.16 This government led by Christopher Hornsrud lost a confidence vote on its Socialist accession statement. Just as different typologies exist for classifying comparative research, so there are a variety of methods for conducting such studies. Weber may be regarded as one of the founders of the discipline. Tilly describes his method as individualizing, and famous Weberian notions such as charisma, rationalization and bureaucratization were formulated with reference to world history.17 Weber contrasted various instances of a particular phenomenon in order to understand the peculiarities of each instance.18 He wrote history along analytical lines, and following in his footsteps makes for rigorous, thematic studies. The main problem for historians is his concept of ideal types. Weber believes reality to be infinitely complex and ideal types are simplifications designed to bring out particular features.19 They are not accurate descriptions of reality, like most historical writing aims to be, but yardsticks against which that reality may be measured.20 As such, they seem like ‘counterfactuals’ in the eyes of many historians, who deride this way of gaining insight. More firmly grounded in the discipline of history is Marc Bloch. Although Emile Durkheim explicitly made this point as early as 1895,21 a single idea underlies Bloch’s comparative studies namely the logic of hypothesis-testing.22 It is an adaptation of the experimental method to subjects where no experiments are possible, and a good test of the validity of explanations.23 Using comparison, Bloch was able to dispose of several ‘pseudo-causes’, which historians with insufficient evidence gleaned from just one case had made into explanations of phenomena. Even if all of Bloch’s comparisons were directed towards testing hypotheses, today’s scholars see more reasons for pursuing such studies. ‘Historians undertake comparisons because they want to question national explanations, build typologies, stress historical diversity, encourage scepticism vis-à-vis global explanatory models, or contextualize and enrich research traditions of one society by exploring and contrasting them with research traditions of historical identities,’ according to Stefan Berger.24 The rationale behind the present study is to encourage scepticism about the established social science explanation of social democracy by Gregory Luebbert and Gøsta Esping-Andersen. They see the role of peasants as crucial. But since much of the book deals with heuristic questions, how is the study of these aided by a comparative approach? With the heuristic questions of labour movement strength, central

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5

control, funding, etc., the goal is to isolate those factors which were significantly different between the two parties. Any such disparities will provide empirical causes answering to the main focus of differential success. If they largely point towards one of the parties as stronger, that is significant. If there are great similarities between Labour and the DNA on these, that emphasizes the trajectories and historical context more. But causal analysis has not been used to determine whether the empirical factors or the trajectories of the parties were more important. The reason is that it would have required ‘mental experiments’ of ‘thinking away’ certain elements in a factual chain of events.25 In this way, it would have become a work of historical sociology rather than history. In any case, Weber, who is a proponent of this approach, is clear that causality cannot be established with exact certitude. ‘It is not […] possible to prove a strictly inevitable causal relationship in [historical] cases, any more than it is possible in any other case of strictly individual events.’26 The heuristic questions are juxtaposed in the final chapter, which means that they are considered analytically there as well as being part of the narrative in the earlier chapters. Of course, what is really important in this comparison is success, while elections and other research questions are means of getting at that issue. Comparison is often used in transnational or international history, but it is not the only approach within these. Transfer history is especially associated with the names of Michel Espagne and Michael Werner, and looks at the interrelationship between two entities.27 It originated in the 1980s with a group of researchers studying nineteenth-century French and German intellectual history.28 It is suitable for breaking down assumptions about cultures being monolithic. Although the approach is in fact complementary to comparative history and arguably a different facet of the same project,29 it does offer a number of criticisms of the other discipline. According to transfer scholars, comparison supposes no links between the entities in order to fix them into abstract categories developed from the outside.30 While it is perfectly valid to compare Bordeaux with Hamburg and Bremen, there is a risk of losing sight of the fact that these cities form a network within a European territory enjoying economic growth in common and having an overlapping culture.31 This is a good example of where common developments affecting several entities may go unrecognized, but it has already been argued that comparative history is useful in finding such factors. It is what Bloch did when eliminating ‘pseudo-causes’ brought up by historians studying a single topic. Other criticisms of comparative history from this school relate to privileging the nation-state and differences between states.32 These

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differences are further compounded by such studies, which ignore the transfers that are going on between these so-called homogeneous entities.33 Furthermore, comparison is often used to promote a national point of view.34 However, in recent years some historians have begun advocating comparisons that do not put nations alongside each other.35 It is entirely possible to study a phenomenon in two or more nations without bringing in the state as such. Moreover, the history of a single nation can be comparative if the research questions are formulated using that method and explanations validated in the same way.36 Such comparisons may be between regions, institutions or other entities, and prove that the method does not necessarily promote a national point of view more than any other type of history. For their part, comparative historians point out that concentrating on transfers tends to be of limited use outside the histories of science, ideas or culture.37 There is insufficient focus on resistance to transfers, such as by social groups that are subjected to them. It may be added that the paradigm of transfer derives from studies of France and Germany, two neighbouring countries. The approach may be far less useful when dealing with countries geographically or culturally further apart. Theda Skocpol’s States and Social Revolutions (1979) deals with France, Russia and China; how much cultural transfer can be expected among these? Another weakness with transfers is that causality is at risk of disappearing. When studying networks of intermediaries between two nations or entities, tracing borrowings does not explain why change came about. A list of mutual borrowings does not give an answer to why these transfers were accepted. Despite these criticisms by practitioners of transfer history and the allied histoire croisée, which seeks to bring the macro-, meso- and microlevels of history together,38 comparative history remains a valid undertaking. In a small way this is exemplified by the present study, where it is shown that Labour and the DNA can be relevant to each other from an historical point of view, although there were few links between them in the interwar period. (This is because the Norwegians left the Socialist International in 1919,39 only rejoining in 1938.) Comparative history brings a fresh perspective to issues and possibly new explanations, and for these reasons it will not be supplanted by similar transnational schools. Transfer historians have reminded comparativists that cultures are not monolithic, which is not a bad thing. They also have a lot to offer historians of Socialism as an avowedly international movement. This book is a contribution to the comparative literature of Socialist parties. Despite some very interesting and worthwhile studies, the field is not a large one.40 Stefan Berger wrote The Labour Party and the German Social Democrats, 1900-1931, and his study found that the differences between

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these two parties were smaller than had hitherto been realized. In particular, Labour as well as the SPD had a culture built around it.41 A primary source such as The Labour Organiser bears his interpretation out. The question of how strong the labour movements were in Britain and Norway contributes to the success of each party, and social activities played a part in determining this. My findings are that the recreational side of the movement was more developed in Norway. It was for this reason that the DNA’s campaigning was more theatrical. The premise of a study encompassing Labour, the French Socialists and the German Social Democrats is that these parties successfully accommodated themselves to the governing order of their respective countries before the First World War.42 As a result, Carl Cavanagh Hodge explains in The Trammels of Tradition, they were unprepared for the Depression and did not know how to exploit this crisis of capitalism, which they had been predicting. Moderation and respectability were not appropriate to the turbulent 1920s and 1930s. Ultimately, the approach of these parties opened the door to others with more radical solutions to society’s ills. This argument is convincing and very interesting. It is strengthened by a comparison of Labour and the DNA in the interwar period. The DNA was very radical in the 1920s, and went on to produce counter-crisis policies at the appropriate time in the 1930s. Cavanagh Hodge’s view stresses the vital importance of the Depression, with which this book is in total agreement. At the same time, the Danish and Swedish Social Democrats were also moderate parties in the 1920s which nevertheless coped well with the Depression. For this reason, the present contribution tries to focus on timing rather than on ideology. A somewhat older comparison involving three countries, namely the Scandinavian ones, is Francis Castles’s The Social Democratic Image of Society.43 It asks first whether the three relevant parties have achieved more for the working class than other western societies. The answer is in the affirmative, and Castles explains social democratic success by the weakness of the right-wing. This in turn was caused by the lack of cooperation between farmers and the urban bourgeoisie. Castles’s work is therefore part of the ‘established’ explanation. The article by Leighton James and Raymond Markey relating to Labour and the Australian Labor Party is a valuable contribution to the comparative literature.44 Like the present book, this article aims to explain electoral success, and finds that the Australian party did somewhat better than its British counterpart during the twentieth century. Its approach is also similar. The factors examined are the timing of the political consolidation, the structure of the states, the political environment, class structure and the membership of the parties. The trajectories of the parties

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are then investigated. Another point of interest lies in the focus upon the countryside, and it is claimed that the Australian party was better able to appeal to the rural classes because farming there was on a smaller scale. This argument is highly relevant also to an Anglo-Norwegian comparison. To the best of my knowledge, this book is the only such comparison hitherto undertaken, although not the only study of Labour and the DNA. The recent Haakon Lie, Denis Healey and the Making of an Anglo-Norwegian Special Relationship 1945-1951 is by Tony Insall.45 In that work of diplomatic history, Insall demonstrates that relations between the two parties when both were in government just after the Second World War were close. They worked together on distributing anti-Communist propaganda issued by the Information Research Department of the British Foreign Office. There was further collaboration in the Socialist International. Informal networks helped forge the friendship, which even contributed to warmer bilateral relations between the states of Britain and Norway. Robert Geyer wrote The Uncertain Union,46 which is a study of both Labour’s and the DNA’s policies towards the European Union. The comparison is interesting because Geyer argues that the DNA was stronger and more influential within its polity than Labour, but also that its modernizing leadership had less clout in the party than Labour’s. In chapter 5 there is a direct comparison of the two parties in the postwar period, using recent figures from the 1980s. It notes some of the same findings as will be mentioned in this book: the DNA attracted a larger share of working-class votes, its organization was considerably stronger, it had much more of a movement built around it and enjoyed better funding. The last two were not unequivocally true for the interwar period covered herein. A study which treats Sweden in relation to Germany is Berman’s The Social Democratic Moment.47 Its emphasis is on the role of ideas in influencing political outcomes as far as the Swedish SAP and German SPD are concerned. Berman’s view is that both parties faced two major challenges in similar national contexts during the interwar years, which is the period concerned in her study. These were democratization at the conclusion of the First World War and then the Depression after 1929. The SAP’s flexible, practical-minded Socialism put it in a good position to solve these problems, while the SPD’s dogmatic and theoretical Marxism scuppered its chances of playing the leading role at these junctions. Furthermore, the SAP was open to pursuing counter-cyclical policies and sought to attract peasants. Both policies were regarded with a great deal of scepticism in the SPD. Her notion of crucial moments in history when political outcomes are decided has been useful for the present study. The Depression as one such moment seems to tally with the experience of

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nearly all democratic societies, as will be noted in chapter 5. On the other hand, it can be argued that for all the SPD’s failings, it was not so rigid and unbendable in choosing permanent co-operation with the Catholic Centre Party and the liberal German Democratic Party throughout the Weimar years. In the established explanation, discussed in the next paragraph, it was co-operation with other parties (albeit Agrarians) which allowed Socialist parties to gain power. In the comparative literature there are two studies which have played major roles in this study. They are Esping-Andersen’s Politics against Markets and Luebbert’s Liberalism, Fascism or Social Democracy.48 Berman mentions the role of peasants, but the two scholars noted here focus on them and are responsible for the established social science explanation, whereby the political role played by the classes of the countryside is crucial. Both Esping-Andersen and Luebbert argue that a crisis agreement with agrarian interests cemented or created a new Social Democratic order. Both of these points of view are based on a Scandinavian paradigm, though Luebbert’s study encompasses not just Denmark, Norway and Sweden but most countries in Western Europe and even Czechoslovakia. As a response to their findings, the politics of the period is covered in chapter 5, including the opportunities that existed for a deal with farmers, and the earlier chapters deal with the social coalitions each party hoped to mobilize. It is a particularly important finding that Labour earnestly tried to gain the support of farmers and agricultural workers. If major differences between the parties had been found on this issue, it would have confirmed the conclusions of Esping-Andersen and Luebbert: in Britain Labour failed to gain ascendancy due to not seeking the support of rural inhabitants like its Scandinavian counterparts. Even though it is becoming increasingly well known that Labour sought rural support,49 it does not invalidate what these two social scientists discovered. There still remains the question of how much support the British party actually received in the countryside, which is not answered here. The established explanation is really directed towards the question of why social democracy came about, and why the system took root in the Scandinavian countries. The often illustrious records of the Socialist parties of Denmark, Norway and Sweden are followed back to the 1930s, when it is found that each of the three secured their grip on power by coming to an agreement with one or more rural parties. Thus it is concluded that an alliance between urban workers and the family peasantry, based upon guaranteeing the existing distribution of wealth in the countryside, was the key to a political breakthrough.50 Where no such compromise with farming interests came about for whatever reason, the Socialist party failed to gain a predominant role in government.51 It was

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‘stifled’. By extension, the hegemonic parties must have been more successful in the 1930s than those which failed to establish pre-eminence, such as Labour or the SPD. The method of going back to the origins of a phenomenon to explain it is by no means a bad one, but the established explanation in reality presupposes that there was only one path to democratic Socialism. Though especially Luebbert’s version of the theory argues that there was no need to organize the rural masses in the Socialist party (in fact it might be inimical to do so52), the absence of a separate Agrarian party in Britain meant that for any urban-rural alliance to take place, Labour must itself gain the support of farmers. A less strident version of the theory recognizes that there might not have been enough industrial workers in the population to secure a parliamentary majority, and it was therefore necessary to branch out to the people of humble means in the countryside. This is precisely what was found for the DNA, and the justification for seeking support from smallholders and fishermen was either that they belonged to the working class too, or that industrial workers alone could not provide a majority.53 Labour was not in the same position, because Britain was much more industrialized than Norway, or indeed any country, at the time. Only 6.2 per cent of the population made its living from agriculture in 1931, and in the same year 78 per cent of English people belonged to the working class, according to Ross McKibbin.54 Thus Labour could easily gain the increment it needed in terms of votes from the urban workers. Nevertheless, it took pains to attract both farmers and agricultural labourers in all of the three elections studied. Luebbert’s thesis works for Norway only in broad terms. It was no hindrance to its deal with the Agrarian Party in 1935 that the DNA successfully mobilized many people of humble means in the countryside. It had no option but to do so as the Norwegian constitution allocated two thirds of the seats in Parliament to the rural areas. An urban-rural alliance was thus a necessary cause behind the DNA’s accession to government, but it does not follow that it was the same in Britain where conditions were different. Witness the 1945 election which Labour won with a majority of 97, but left the Conservatives in control of rural England.55 The electoral systems also differed, and it may be thought that the DNA derived some advantage from proportional representation, and consequently that Labour suffered to a degree from the British system of single or double-member constituencies. In 1931, for instance, Labour was left with 46 endorsed MPs, whereas by its national result of 30.6 per cent of the vote, it might have had 180 MPs under proportional representation.56And Norway had fixed-term parliaments of three years, which meant that the DNA knew when elections were to be held, unlike

COMPARATIVE HISTORY AND THE TWO PARTIES

11

Labour. In both countries the Communists were a minor grouping, so it stands to reason that proportional representation fragmented the unity of the capitalist parties, while leaving the Socialist party intact. Stefano Bartolini calculates that Labour was on average underrepresented by 5 per cent in the interwar period, but also that it was overrepresented in 1929.57 The DNA began to benefit from proportional representation after it had been reunited with the breakaway Norwegian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1927. In the Parliament elected in 1933 from which the DNA’s first serious government emerged, there were five capitalist parties represented but no Socialist party other than the DNA. But it is not unambiguous that proportional representation worked to the advantage of the DNA. It received 40.1 per cent of the votes in 1933, which is usually enough to form a government in a majoritarian system unless matched by another party. If Labour had reached the same percentage, there is no reason why it should not have enjoyed equal parliamentary clout. In the British context two books and two theses have proved very useful in preparing this study.58 For Labour, and certainly in comparison with the DNA, the election of 1931 was pivotal. Andrew Thorpe, who wrote a monograph on this election, argues that by the summer of 1931 the Conservatives were cruising to a great victory. Labour lost its chance of being a serious contender for power in the 1930s on account of this election. At the time of writing, Thorpe believed his was an unusual position to take. The rejoinder to his determinism is that MacDonald’s government achieved slightly better by-election results than the previous Baldwin government and, in any case, Labour was not planning on a 1931 election.59 Much of Thorpe’s work deals with Labour in office, as it does with the state of the Liberal and Conservative parties. The present study does not go into details about the 1929-31 Labour government, except for a few facts having a bearing upon the party’s subsequent electoral difficulties. As such the government’s failure to solve the unemployment problem has been discussed extensively by historians. As for the formation of the National Government, Thorpe claims that Sir Herbert Samuel, the acting Liberal leader, wanted to avoid a Conservative government because it might interfere with free trade.60 This indicates the damage that those who became National Labour did to their former party. By agreeing to serve, the Labour renegades influenced the free-trade Liberals, who might otherwise not have entered what would have been a Conservative government. If politics had remained on a party basis, Labour would have done better for the rest of the 1930s. Like Thorpe, Tom Stannage in his book on the 1935 election considers media coverage, including the radio which was coming into its own in those years. He includes a statistical breakdown of the topics covered in

12

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

the candidates’ election statements.61 This is besides plenty of material about how Labour campaigned. After Arthur Henderson’s return to Parliament at the Clay Cross by-election in September 1933 on a peace and disarmament platform, in six more contests in October and November 1933 the party candidates followed suit.62 The general success of these appeals ensured that the peace card was played at the subsequent general election. In 1935 Labour combined a principled foreign policy of disarmament and support for the League of Nations with an attack on the Government relating to the means test for unemployment benefit. Stannage also deals with the effects of the party apparatus coordinating the appeal of Labour in the run-up to the election, such as the membership campaigns in the aftermath of 1931, followed by ‘propaganda weeks’ and then the ‘call to action.’63 In short, Stannage’s monograph is very useful – as is Thorpe’s – because they contain masses of information in a single place with a central overview. For the 1929 election the equivalent is the thesis by E. A. Rowe,64 and all three have proved helpful in writing the present work. In particular, the charts which each author provides with the topics of the election addresses go to the heart of the question about electoral appeal. This has been an under-researched topic within the historiography of elections. To whom Labour appealed probably seems self-evident because the party was associated with the proletariat, but as William Miller points out, it frequently stressed it was for the ‘workers by hand and by brain.’65 In 1929, until 1945 its best-ever result, Labour explicitly sought to defend the ‘lower middle classes’. Broad electoral appeals mattered because it seems that in the context of the 1930s, the Popular Front tactic was what brought left-wing parties to power. In the Norwegian historiography there has hitherto been next to no focus on elections. The one exception, to my knowledge, is a thesis about the DNA and the election of 1936.66 There also exists a very long article about the DNA and the peasants in the 1930s, and this goes beyond its ostensible remit to deal with social coalition building. Its author, Knut Kjeldstadli, argues that in 1930 the DNA sought the support of seven or eight tenths of the Norwegian population, rising to nine tenths in 1936.67 The latter assertion is verified herein and there is a relevant new discovery as to who was constituted as the ninth decile, in that the situation of small employers is clarified. For a systematic overview of the period, possibly the greatest contribution has been made by the political scientist Stein Rokkan. Because he wrote from a comparative perspective, many of his results and observations are of particular use. Rokkan was a theorizer of the urbanrural cleavage in Norway, and pointed out that there was such a cleavage

COMPARATIVE HISTORY AND THE TWO PARTIES

13

also within the DNA. Basing his argument on a famous 1930 article by young party theoreticians Dag Bryn and Halvard Lange, he pictured the incipient conflict as one about the nature of the party. Should it cater primarily for the industrial working class or be a people’s party?68 Bryn and Lange had pointed out that whereas the DNA received many more rural than urban votes in 1927, the members were still concentrated in the cities, particularly Oslo. The ratio of members to voters was 1:2.4 in Oslo, 1:5.1 in other cities but 1:8.5 in the countryside. They claimed that if fishermen, clerks and smallholders were added to the industrial proletariat of wage earners, then this ‘genuine’ working class was about twice as prevalent in sheer numbers in rural than in urban areas.69 This claim by Bryn and Lange must have serious consequences for how (and where) the party campaigned. Rokkan thought the DNA had little choice in the matter of trying to appeal beyond its core constituency of unionized industrial workers. Making a comparison with Britain, he noted that the Conservatives of that country were able to stay in power for very long periods ‘due to their hold on the working class.’70 In Norway there was not enough industry and too few urban dwellers for the DNA to obtain a majority solely from the proletariat of the cities. That the industrial segment of the population was in relative decline was noted by contemporaries. There were no more factory workers in 1930 than in 1920, whereas the population of working age had increased by 212,000.71 That was laid at the door of the crisis in the economy, a curable condition, but also put down to rationalization, which could not really be stopped. Even so, there were voices calling for the DNA to continue expanding among its old-time supporters.72 It is in this context that Ole Colbjørnsen’s articles of September/October in Arbeiderbladet, the party’s main newspaper, calling for a ‘national campaign to build factories’ must be seen.73 At that stage Colbjørnsen believed that only industrial workers could be relied upon by the labour movement. The issue that has concerned historians the most relating to the DNA has been ideology; that is the 1918 radicalization of the party, subsequent Comintern membership (1919-23) and the timing of the shift back to reformism.74 The very first explanation was provided by Edvard Bull in a seminal article comparing Norway with the other Nordic countries. Rapid industrialization led to an uprooted proletariat, receptive to revolutionary ideas.75 The working class in the neighbouring countries was more stable and moderate. Later research agrees the DNA had probably ‘the most extreme position,’ among European Socialist parties in the early 1920s, but it was short-lived.76 Effectively, it was over in 1927 when the party reunited with the Social Democrats. In the case of the DNA’s renewed leftward shift in 1930, this had a greater effect on how rather than to whom it

14

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

appealed. Similarly, Labour took on more of a Socialist guise in 1935, which made its appeals more about principles than in seeking support from particular groups. But the context and political circumstances of each election mattered more than ideology as for the broadening or contraction of electoral appeals to various groups. The Labour Party’s evolution in Britain did not diverge significantly from other Socialist parties on the Continent, but in the pre-1914 Socialist International it was ‘understood to be unique in Europe.’77 It was founded as the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 and became a regular party six years later after 30 of its candidates were returned to Westminster. Unlike the other parties it did not combine revolutionary goals with reformist practice, but was wholly reformist.78 Its component parts were unionists affiliated through the Trades Union Congress and members of Socialist societies like the Independent Labour Party and the Fabian Society. In 1910 the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain affiliated to the party. This provided the bedrock of support in the coalfields, which later became its most secure constituencies and perhaps ultimately helped Labour replace the Liberals as the party of the left. That year saw two elections, caused by the issue of House of Lords reform, and in the second of these Labour won 42 seats and 6.4 per cent of the vote. War, revolution and working-class insurgency across Europe affected Labour too. In its new constitution of 1918 Clause 4 proclaimed the party’s goal of national ownership of the means of production. It now allowed individual membership, making it a more regular political party and encouraging more women and middle-class people to join. Electoral reform meant that all men over 21 and most women over 30 henceforth could vote. This was to Labour’s advantage, but a more direct reason for its great progress in that year was its much higher tally of candidates – 361 in 1918 compared to 56 in 1910.79 Whatever the reason, Labour advanced to 22.2 per cent of the vote and got 63 seats in the Commons.80 Lloyd George remained premier of the Coalition of Conservatives and his wing of the Liberal Party. The forward march of Labour continued. In the 1922 election the party increased its representation to 142 seats in the lower chamber on a level of support of 29.7 per cent.81 The background to 1922’s general election was the Conservatives withdrawing from the Coalition, and Tory leader Bonar Law formed his own government. But clearly ill, he decided to hand over power to Stanley Baldwin the following year, and the new Conservative Prime Minister chose to go to the country to receive a mandate for tariffs. Instead, he lost his majority and the free-trade parties, Labour with 191 seats and the Liberals with 158, combined to turn him out. Thus the stage was set for a minority Labour government. Ramsay MacDonald, who had

COMPARATIVE HISTORY AND THE TWO PARTIES

15

been leader since 1922, became Prime Minister. The 1924 Labour government lasted less than a year, but in 1929 the party won the election, still without a majority, and Ramsay MacDonald again entered number 10. An important point in the debate about the politics of the 1920s is the fact that there was competition between the parties not just to form a government, but also to be the official opposition. That accounts for Labour’s unwillingness to co-operate with the Liberals, as made clear by the resolution at the 1922 party conference against electoral pacts or alliances of any kind. Interestingly, in 1921 Labour spurned those left-wing Liberals who wished to combine forces against Lloyd George, though the terms were such that the mines, railways, canals and electricity would be nationalized.82 The leadership of Labour found common ground with the Conservatives over the issue of which the main parties should be. Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin said priority number one was ‘the disappearance of the Liberal Party […] The next step must be the elimination of the Communists by Labour. Then we shall have two parties, the Party of the Right and the Party of the Left.’83 The 1929-31 Labour government was a disappointment. Unemployment represented by far its greatest challenge, but beyond nationalization and some tentative plans for public works, Labour had no solution. Within a year of taking office the crisis of the international economy pushed unemployment to its highest level since 1922.84 By December 1930 it stood at an unprecedented 2.5 million. In August 1931 a financial crisis occurred and a National government was set up to deal with it, still led by MacDonald. Labour went into opposition, apart from just over a dozen parliamentarians who supported the National Government. Later in the autumn an election was held in which the Conservative-dominated National Government trounced Labour. The last phase of Labour’s development between the wars thus occurred from 1931, and was a matter of rebuilding the party. It launched campaigns like ‘A Million New Members and Power’ in 1932 and ‘Victory for Socialism’ in 1934. Clement Attlee became leader in 1935, and in the election of that year it won back almost all the support it had had in 1929 and more than half its parliamentary representation. As with Labour, the interwar years marked the coming of age of the DNA, and hence was an exceptionally turbulent period. Founded in 1887, the party benefited from extensions of the franchise in 1898, when nearuniversal male suffrage was introduced, and 1913 when women got the vote on the same terms as men.85 Its original programme was copied directly from the SPD.86 In the first parliamentary election after independence from Sweden had been attained, in 1906, the DNA achieved 16 per cent of the vote. Then followed an upward trend until

16

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

1918, when the party dropped by just over a percentage point to 30.9 per cent, while getting more votes than in 1915. The DNA had established itself as one of the major parties in Norway. It was of comparable size in terms of votes to the Liberals (32.7 per cent) and the Conservatives (30.0 per cent), although the electoral system worked to the advantage of the non-Socialist parties. A candidate needed more than half the votes in a constituency to win it outright, failing that there would be a second round, in which the other parties generally combined to keep the Socialists out.87 As a result of this system, the Liberals had three times more parliamentarians than the DNA in 1918.88 The perceived unfairness relating to parliamentary representation was undoubtedly a factor in the sharp leftward swing of the DNA at its conference in the spring of 1918. Another important consideration was the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, of which the DNA was an enthusiastic supporter. It brought out certain radical strands in the party which had hitherto remained below the surface, unable to alter the dominant policy of steady reformism. One such group was the ‘Trade Union Opposition of 1911’. They were Syndicalists, centred around the city of Trondheim and with Martin Tranmæl as their acknowledged leader. Other revolutionaries were based in the DNA’s youth organization. They wanted soviets and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The new leadership took the DNA into the Comintern in 1919, and the party overwhelmingly accepted the Twenty-One Conditions in 1921.89 At this stage, its moderate wing broke away and formed the Social Democratic Party. Two years later, however, Comintern control proved too cumbersome for all but dedicated Communists, who formed their own party, while the DNA left the International.90 In 1927 the DNA and the Social Democrats were reunited. In the parliamentary election later in the year, the DNA achieved its best-ever result: 36.8 per cent. In 1920 a new system of proportional representation had become law, so that in the 1920s the DNA received its fair share of MPs. After the election it therefore took pride of place as Parliament’s largest party for the first time. The next year a constitutional crisis occurred when the Conservative government resigned and attempts to mobilize a coalition of the non-Socialist parties failed. Would the king turn to the DNA as the largest party and would it accept the commission? It did not have a majority behind it and scepticism of ‘ministerialism’ was widespread.91 The DNA nevertheless accepted governmental responsibility with Christopher Hornsrud as Prime Minister. His accession statement was jarring in an extreme sense to the non-Socialist parties. It stated that the government’s task was to implement Socialism, though it accepted that it was not a realistic prospect at the present time, and

COMPARATIVE HISTORY AND THE TWO PARTIES

17

promised to be led by the interests of the working class in all its actions.92 The government lasted only 18 days. Its principles proved unpalatable to the majority in Parliament. In addition, the director of the Bank of Norway influenced the Liberals behind the scenes to vote against Hornsrud. This is what the DNA later meant by extra-parliamentary pressure being responsible for the defeat of its first government. Possibly as a result of the near-acceptance of ‘ministerialism’ in 1928, the party’s programme was radicalized somewhat in 1930. The non-Socialist parties had been given a fright by the emergence of the DNA as the largest party, and concentrated on defeating it in the election of that year. The DNA duly lost the contest, although it continued to advance in terms of votes. In 1933 the DNA presented itself as the party willing and able to deal with the Depression. It had formulated counter-crisis economic policies in opposition, and after winning the election it tried to form a minority government to implement these. Only in 1935 did it succeed in taking office under Johan Nygaardsvold. An agreement with the Agrarians, who stayed in opposition, allowed this to go ahead. The government remained in office for the rest of the interwar period, although it never had a majority.

2 BEFORE THE DEPRESSION The Parliamentary Elections of 1929 and 1930

Labour and the DNA went into these elections with different attitudes and probably different goals. Labour assuredly wanted to win the election of 1929, but faced hindrances that the other parties had put in its way. This was the Trade Union and Trade Disputes Act of 1927, which substituted contracting-out for contracting-in. It meant that unionists actively needed to join the Labour Party through their union branch, and the party’s membership and finances suffered as a result. Ramsay MacDonald had stated at the end of 1928 that the Act existed to impoverish his party,1 which of course made it harder to fight elections and exacerbated Labour’s financial disadvantage vis-à-vis the other parties. Apart from serious obstacles emanating from civil society and sometimes the state, a hindrance to the DNA’s electioneering was psychological. Did it really want to win the 1930 election? The party’s deputy leader, Professor Edvard Bull, thought victory might be possible and he meant an outright victory, not merely remaining the largest party. Such a victory would be hollow, though, for as he famously said, ‘so-called democracy is no more than an old superstition from the nineteenth century.’2 What was of value was building a coherent and united organization of people belonging to the movement, whichever way the electoral tide flowed. In line with this, conference approved a resolution by the National Executive that the DNA had no interest in forming a government so weak that it must rely on certain non-Socialist sections to implement reformist policies.3 The 1930 programme of principles, unlike that of 1927, did not state that the DNA wished for support from the majority of the population, which the Norwegian historiography sees as significant.4 Surprisingly, whether the DNA wanted to win the election or not is actually not that important. In any case, it wanted to bolster its organization and elections were a good means of achieving this.

20

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

1. Coupon for Labour’s Bid for Power Fund. By permission of the People’s History Museum

Labour’s response to the 1927 Act was also to try to increase the number of individual members.5 And it set up a Bid for Power Fund in lieu of expected trade union financial support, hoping it would amount to £100,000 by the next election. If the Trade Union and Trade Disputes Act sought to splinter the labour movement, events elsewhere made it come together. Labour had long wanted some sort of alliance with the cooperative movement.6 It was in 1927 that the Cheltenham Agreement between Labour and the Co-operative Party came about. It provided for Co-operative candidates fighting the election under the Labour flag. This required coordinated measures such as Labour propaganda being sent to those candidates and the party centrally. And the Co-operative manifesto had to be sent to Labour before it could be published.7 The Independent Labour Party sponsored 55 Labour candidates in this election, and of course threw its energies into campaigning everywhere.8 The DNA was a unitary party, not a federal one. In 1927 it had reunited with the breakaway Social Democrats, who dissolved completely within it. The closest it came to encompassing independent-minded organizations was its youth movement, Arbeidernes Ungdomsfylking. The Norwegian co-operative movement remained politically neutral. The vital facts in Table 2.1 overleaf describe Labour in 1929. It had

BEFORE THE DEPRESSION

21

progressed by all these indicators since the year before. In terms of the number of constituency Labour parties, there had been a healthy increase from 1928 when it had 535. The movement had been progressing in leaps and bounds. Arguably, it was at the height of its potential in 1920 when it had 492 constituency parties and 4,317,537 affiliated trade unionists. It had not been possible to sustain such good figures for long. But while membership of the Trades Union Congress declined between 1924 and 1929, Labour support in elections rose.9 Between 1927 and 1928 the party lost 1.2 million trade unionists due to the Trade Union Act. Table 2.1. Labour’s membership in 1929 Constituency parties

Individual membership

Affiliated trade unionists

Affiliated Socialists and Co-ops 578 227,897 2,044,279 58,669 (Source: Labour Party, Reports of Annual Conferences. Thirty-sixth Report (London, 1936), p. 59)

The DNA had also had a chequered history in the 1920s. The Social Democrats left and set up their own party in 1921, and the Communists did the same in 1923. Even so, reunification in 1927 had made the party immeasurably stronger, and that was the year when it went on to become the largest party in the parliamentary election. Its best year for affiliated trade unionists was 1919, when there were 143,926 of them.10 The state of the entire party in 1930 is given below: Table 2.2. DNA membership in 1930 Branches

Individual membership

Affiliated trade unionists

Members of the youth organization 1,713 80,177 139,591 14,000 (Source: Det norske Arbeiderparti, Beretning 1930 (Oslo, 1931), p. 11 and p. 44. Arbeidernes Faglige Landsorganisasjon, Beretning 1930. For sekretariatet ved Halvard Olsen og Alfred Madsen (Oslo, 1932), pp. 104-5.)

The number of branches means little by comparative standards since Norway was not divided into constituencies. The DNA’s membership, at more than a third of Labour’s, compares very favourably. As does the youth organization AUF, which clearly was an asset. It had a life of its own, often acting as a left-wing pressure group inside the main party. It very clearly supported the side that regarded parliamentary democracy with suspicion at the 1930 conference.11 Labour also had a youth

22

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

movement of course. Called the League of Youth, its membership is not known for 1929, although it had 233 branches.12 The next year the number had risen to 335,13 enabling a comparison with the AUF, which had 275 branches at that point. If the most generous figure available is used, the League of Youth may have had 20,000 members in 1929.14 One would have expected a greater superiority in favour of the British organization, given the disparity in population. This may be laid at the door of the negligence with which Labour treated its youth movement until 1933.15 It is true that the National Executive Committee had begun to show some interest in organizing youth in 1923, but it was also fearful that an independent youth league would become a target for Communist infiltration.16 The Norwegian example shows that it was right to be concerned. When the DNA was split in 1923, about 135 of 200 youth branches joined the Communists.17 In spite of being much less radical in the 1920s than the DNA, Labour had been treated more roughly by wider society. The Trade Union Act meant that a mere 55 per cent of TUC members were affiliated to Labour. It had 3,673,144 members in 1929, of which 2,044,279 were affiliated to Labour.18 In Norway the situation was entirely different: all members of the Trade Union Confederation AFL were affiliated to the party. In 1930 the AFL had 139,591 members, which shows that trade union density was below what obtained in Britain.19 Norway had roughly 6 per cent of Britain’s population in 1930, but less than 4 per cent of the number of trade unionists in the main organization. In terms of trade unionists affiliated to the party, Norway had just under 7 per cent of Britain’s figure, putting the DNA on a rough parity with Labour. An issue which Labour saw as important was having a press network. Stefan Berger has described the Labour press as including a remarkable number of provincial papers, and there was the Daily Herald, which would later achieve rare prominence.20 Collected figures for the number of Labour newspapers do not exist for 1929, as the Labour Year Book was not published in that year. Table 2.3 overleaf therefore reproduces the figures for 1928 and 1930. The first fact which may be noted is that between 1928 and 1930 the number of publications sank. One such casualty was the Aberdeen Citizen, which had been the only daily newspaper apart from the Herald. Not included in the above table are two Co-operative weeklies in 1928 and three in 1930. These may mentally be added to the tally. Since a direct comparison with the DNA is desirable, the 1930 figures are usable in this regard. The DNA had 45 newspapers in 1930, but the remarkable fact is that 20 were dailies.21 All the others were published between two and four times a week. Because the Daily Herald had not yet attained the exceptional

BEFORE THE DEPRESSION

23

circulation it was to achieve after 1931, it seems clear that the advantage lies with the DNA. If we consider all its non-dailies as weeklies (though all but two appeared more often that that), the DNA had 25 weeklies in 1930 compared to Labour’s 19 including the Co-operative papers. Table 2.3. Labour and Socialist newspapers in 1928 and 1930 Year Dailies Weeklies Monthlies Quarterlies Irregulars 1928 2 25 74 5 1 1930 1 16 71 1 (Sources: The Labour Year Book 1928 (Incorporating 1929 Year Book) (London, n.d.), pp. 540-2), The Labour Year Book 1930 (London, n.d.), pp. 557-9.)

Of course the DNA’s printed media network did not run itself. It required significant support from the party and the AFL. During 1929 the former transferred 236,000 kroner (£12,967) to its press outside Oslo.22 More than half of this amount went to the workers’ press in the large cities of Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger and Skien. Leader of the DNA Oscar Torp was of the opinion that financial support for the regional press was the best way to apply resources in the electoral campaign.23 This could explain the focus on large cities because the DNA, like Labour, originally saw itself as an urban party and considered the countryside as difficult territory. The central party left the district organizations of the DNA to operate rather freely within broad parameters, but support for the newspapers was intended to make sure that the DNA continued to grow.24 Do the facts above tend towards the conclusion that the Norwegian labour movement was stronger than its British counterpart? So far the indications are instead that the Norwegian labour movement was more united than the British. The TUC was proportionately larger than the AFL, yet Labour’s share of it was only roughly on parity with the DNA. This was because the AFL did not need to worry about contracting-in. It did not face censure from wider society in this regard, despite Norway, like Britain, experiencing a very turbulent time in industrial relations. Norway had the highest rate of strike activity in Europe 1919-38. Britain was in third place.25 Since Britain did not have fixed-term parliaments, Labour did not know the exact election date until relatively late in the process. In February 1928 Arthur Henderson circulated a letter to the constituency and local parties, telling them to begin preparing for a possible autumn poll. He first wanted some information about who the candidates and election agents would be; these would have to be chosen soon if not already in place. If the candidate was sponsored by the divisional Labour party, it must report to

24

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

him on how it was raising the money. The other tasks were: (1) making sure potential supporters were on the electoral register, (2) distributing propaganda across the relevant territory, (3) building up the electoral organization, including women’s sections and (4) recruiting members, especially women between 21 and 30 who were to be enfranchised in 1928. No election took place in 1928, but the tasks defined were important and not necessarily repeated in 1929. In the circular of December 1928 it was coordination that was stressed.26 Divisional Labour parties fielding a candidate must set aside £25- 50 for the final stages of the election. There would be area conferences of local agents in January 1929, where it was hoped regional co-operation would be planned. Henderson wanted constituency Labour parties to send him a list of MPs who were going to speak in their division, and there should be a letter to every MP asking them where they would be speaking. It was thereby hoped that the most qualified speakers would be shared between the local parties. Ten weeks before the election, Labour learned the exact date. It discovered that the Conservatives were booking halls for 29 May, and correctly deduced that polling day would be 30 May.27 How much of a disadvantage was it to Labour that it did not know the date in advance, compared to the DNA which benefited from knowing the Norwegian electoral cycle? The tasks urged upon the local parties in 1928 would have had to be done anyway. When 1929 dawned Labour knew there would have to be an election. The comparison is more relevant for 1931, when the effects were far more obvious. It was of course no impediment to the DNA that it knew when the election would be held. Therefore it was enough to agree to the plans in May and have them presented before the National Executive on 21 July, in preparation for the election on 20 October.28 These included tours of the country by party members from mid-August onwards, lasting from one to five weeks. A total of 840 speeches were made during these, 550 speeches were given in the last two weekends before the poll and another 3,000 during the rest of the campaign. In the course of the year a total of 4,455 speeches were given, compared to 4,176 in the election year of 1927.29 This indicates that preparations for the 1930 election were at least as good as in 1927, and canvassing was extended a lot in Oslo over what had taken place in 1927.30 More than half the speeches made during the tours took place in difficult areas for the party, that is to say the South and West Country, counter-cultural regions where evangelical or pietistic Christianity was strong, and Nordland. There is no obvious reason why the DNA was weak in Nordland, just as there is no single reason why Labour did poorly in Liverpool.31

BEFORE THE DEPRESSION

25

The DNA’s propaganda arsenal consisted primarily of brochures, of which there were seven. One was the programme, separate from the ‘manifesto’ which was a flyer, as was the statement to women. The other six bore the titles: ‘The Countryside and the Election’, ‘Forward to Disarmament’, ‘The Conservatives and the Fatherland’, ‘The Soil and the Peasants’, ‘Unemployment and Rationalization’ and ‘The Fishermen and the Election.’32 The titles imply great attention was paid to the people who lived in the countryside. This was in fact the case. Other issues of importance to the DNA were thus disarmament, industrial questions and the need to show that its Conservative rivals were not the last word in patriotism, whatever they themselves claimed. Among the other electoral materials four films were used during the campaign. Two were made by the DNA: the silent ‘Forward to Victory’ and one relating to a conference of agricultural workers in Trondheim. It is interesting that the topic of the second film should be what it was, as the DNA had not seriously begun concentrating on farm labourers as opposed to smallholders and fishermen. There was also a film about ‘Red Vienna’, and lastly the German anti-war film ‘Poison Gas’. The latter was shown to a specially invited audience on 24 September.33 It was a polemic against war which linked with the DNA’s pacifism. In Britain electoral materials started reaching the local Labour branches from April 1929. Unlike the DNA, Labour used a lot more flyers than pamphlets, and the total number available were 66 leaflets and 20 pamphlets.34 The number of pamphlets had been reduced to satisfy a suggestion from area conferences held before 1929 that Labour should concentrate on producing leaflets with quick policies, rather than expatiate at length in pamphlets.35 The pamphlets, however, were not solely for electoral purposes and not all of them were new. All the leaflets were new or in revised form. Like the DNA, Labour gave the people of the countryside their due, and most of the leaflets, pamphlets and posters relating to agriculture were available in Welsh.36 Labour had begun concentrating on the countryside a few years prior to this election. In Chris Cook’s view it is essential to realize how little success the party met with in rural constituencies before that.37 14 out of the 66 leaflets were aimed directly at rural voters. Labour used about 30 posters, two of which are reproduced in this book or on its cover.38 The TUC helped in the production of Speaker’s Notes, and there were three special issues of The Citizen newspaper. Labour had in advance discussed the use of gramophone records containing speeches by its leaders and a panoramic film about the party.39 In actual fact, gramophone records with speeches by MacDonald, Philip Snowden, Henderson, Jimmy Thomas and Margaret Bondfield were available. Each record contained six minutes of

26

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

2. One of Labour’s posters. By permission of the People’s History Museum

recording and was sold for 3s.40 The party projected two films during the campaign in portable holders (‘lanterns’), one about the mining industry and one about nursery schools. One of the most interesting aspects of the campaigns in 1929 and 1930 was the enmity to which Labour and the DNA were subjected by representatives and supporters of the non-Socialist parties. While 1929 was quiet for Labour compared to the excessive mud slinging of 1931, the party still had to counter absurd claims. One was that it represented a menace to family life and another that it was hostile to Christianity.41 In his last radio speech MacDonald had to deny that Labour was unconstitutional.42 Henderson had earlier countered the misrepresentation that his party was against war pensions.43 In that last speech MacDonald explained that Labour had voted against widows’ pensions and other social ameliorations because they were inadequate, not because it was against in principle. The arguments used against Labour had an apparently logical slant to them, because if Labour was an anti-war party perhaps it did not value servicemen much? Another crafty argument used against the party was what the Conservative Sir Laming Worthington-Evans said in his broadcast about it being risky to vote Labour. Probably, he said, your local Labour candidate is a harmless fellow, but why take the risk when

BEFORE THE DEPRESSION

27

the Independent Labour Party has been known to propound absurd and extremist ideas (such as discontinuing service pensions)?44 This way of arguing had the merit of not being particularly nasty, while at the same time sowing doubts in the minds of the voters. Maybe it was for this reason that the Oxford Mail judged the broadcast to be ‘insufferably dull’.45 The DNA faced an unprecedented barrage of hostile coverage and scare stories. This was owing to its success in the 1927 election, when it had become the largest party. In the aftermath of that contest, the reactionary bourgeois pressure group the Fatherland Association (Fedrelandslaget) declared a 1,000 day campaign against the DNA, as a reaction to its topping the poll.46 The Association existed to promote capitalist unity against Socialism, and wanted a strong government independent of Parliament. In his party’s press the Liberal Prime Minister, Johan Ludwig Mowinckel, had announced that the struggle against the ‘revolutionary Arbeiderpartiet’ would be the prime concern in the coming election.47 During the campaign on 3 October, right-wing newspapers brought reports that a General Gulbrandson had declared that Socialists and Communists in major towns had formed secret companies armed to the teeth with flamethrowers and machine guns.48 The DNA tried to parry the blow by showing that the state authorities had no such information. Nearly two weeks later, the chief customs official in the town of Vadsø in Finnmark stated that there was widespread smuggling of shotguns, revolvers, machine guns and ammunition to the Socialists in Trøndelag, presumably from nearby Communist Russia.49 These allegations were potentially devastating because they seemed to come from respected people ‘in the know.’ The most persistent argument used against the DNA by its opponents was that it would abolish Christianity, to which the DNA replied that it was unfortunate both Mowinckel and Conservative leader Carl Joachim Hambro were confirmed freethinkers.50 While there was no truth in these allegations, it is somehow understandable that the DNA’s democratic credentials should be doubted. It had in principle believed in the dictatorship of the proletariat until reunification with the Social Democrats just three years previously.51 Ironically, given the allegations against Labour in 1924 (the Zinoviev letter) and also in 1929, as well as what was said about the Swedish Social Democrats in ‘kosackvalet’ (the election in 1928), Hambro contrasted the DNA in a speech with Labour and the other Scandinavian Social Democrats. Those parties had the country’s welfare at heart, he said, while the DNA continued to be guided by principles learnt in Moscow.52 The Oslo DNA had a very important role in the party. In the elections of 1933 and 1936 it was the only geographical contingent represented in the extended finance committee, which led the campaigns. The sources do

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not say if this was true also for the 1930 election, but it is likely. The DNA’s leading daily Arbeiderbladet was an Oslo paper, which later had to be edited for greater national coverage when it was distributed nationally in the 1933 election. As stated by party theoreticians Dag Bryn and Halvard Lange, the membership was disproportionately based in Oslo.53 The wide influence of the Oslo DNA was also a result of sharing office space with the central party in buildings near Young’s Square, the focal point of the labour movement. Oslo had an almost ‘British’ political geography with the Conservatives and the DNA far ahead of the other parties, and the Liberals in a very poor third place. The Oslo DNA seems to have spent almost half as much money as the DNA in the election, though some of this was channelled from central funds. In 1930 the local party prioritized canvassing, going further than what had taken place in 1927. This was a relatively new method of seeking support. It started on 6 October and lasted until polling day on 20 October 1930.54 There were eleven electoral offices run by the Oslo DNA from which the canvassing was done. Distributing Arbeiderbladet was among the most pressing tasks of the canvassers, and a total of 269,000 copies were in fact given away. This was more than one newspaper for every inhabitant of Oslo, although of course many households received several issues and others none at all. London did not hold the same importance for Labour as Oslo did for the DNA. Its official campaign began there with a rally at the Albert Hall on 27 April 1929, during which Ramsay MacDonald spoke for 65 minutes.55 MacDonald did not, however, visit the city again after speaking there in early May. He wrote an article for the London Labour Party stressing the importance of the city.56 One argument was that it had ‘63 Members of Parliament including the University’, and could thus make a sizeable contribution to Labour’s hopes for a majority. The area conferences held in January 1929 had specified the need for co-operation across ‘regions’, of which London would be an example. But the London Labour Party did not in itself do much. This was owing to the British system of constituencies whereby each campaign is local. It could and did make grants to divisional Labour parties, it published a special 16-page issue of The London News (this monthly newspaper usually had eight pages) and it put up a poster on polling day.57 It would have had a more prominent role if the 29 borough parties had amalgamated in one giant organization, as the Executive Committee of the London Labour Party had undertaken to study after its December 1928 conference.58 The reasoning behind this possible change was precisely to make electioneering more efficient. Both the Oslo DNA and the London Labour Party were the vanguard in some of the electoral appeals they made to the middle

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classes. In the British context this can be put down to the views of Herbert Morrison, who led the London Labour Party. So strong was this interest that an historian has said the London Labour Party alluded to the middle classes ‘at every opportunity’ in the 1920s.59 The Oslo DNA made similar appeals of about the same prominence, so they can be seen as a city-phenomenon. Electoral appeals are a field in which the two parties resembled each other greatly. The British labour movement, however, may have been far more interested in winning elections than the Norwegian in 1929 and 1930. This can be seen from the amount of money spent in each campaign by Labour and the DNA. While Labour’s Bid for Power Fund got less than halfway to its target of £100,000, £40,000 was spent from this source in the 1929 election. According to available figures, each of the 569 Labour candidates spent £452.60 Deducting the electoral grants of £15,000 from the £40,000 spent centrally and adding all constituency expenditure, gives a total figure of £282,188 for the 1929 election. The DNA spent proportionately much less than that in 1930. The figures point towards a downgrading of the election, which is interesting since it has been noted that the party was reluctant to engage with parliamentary democracy. The AFL agreed to provide the DNA with the sum of 75,000 kroner (£4,128), but the letter announcing this good news for the party specifically stated that this must not be publicized.61 This was out of concern for non-aligned workers and Communists who resented paying for DNA propaganda. According to Per Maurseth the DNA centrally spent 68,000 kroner (£3,743) during the election of 1930, meaning that the donation was not too small, as might have been expected, but somewhat too large.62 Looking at Maurseth’s figures for the preceding election of 1927, it appears that the DNA spent less than half its budget for electoral campaigning.63 In 1930 it might be thought that the DNA would want to spend everything that was available, given that the non-Socialist parties were throwing resources of a completely different magnitude into the campaign. The Norwegian Conservatives seem to have spent about 600,000 kroner (£33,024).64 The only other evidence of spending by the DNA was 36,380 kroner (£2,002) by the Oslo DNA, which overlaps with the sum above since it included a grant from the central party. This disparity in spending between the parties in Norway in 1930 is even greater than what obtained in Britain the year before. The writer who first looked at the 1929 election put Conservative spending at £524,607 against Labour’s £256,601.65 The Labour figure differs from what was quoted above, but the rough indication is that Conservative spending was double that of Labour’s. If it is assumed that the DNA centrally spent 68,000 kroner, adding the Oslo DNA’s 28,380 kroner

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(because it received 8,000 kroner out of central funds) totals just 96,380 kroner (£5,305).66 The Oslo DNA was entwined with the central party and highly dominant within it, therefore it is certain that it spent a lot more than other local parties. The Norwegian Conservatives’ expenditure of about £33,000 was more than six times as much as what the DNA spent. The comparative method allows a consideration of whether the DNA’s choice in not spending the entire amount donated to it by the AFL amounted to neglect of the election. Seen in conjunction with its hesitant attitude to parliamentary democracy, it is suggestive. Arbeiderbladet wrote the following ten days after the 1930 election in an editorial. ‘We are passionately interested in ascertaining how many there are who support the policies of the party. It is in itself a strength that as many as possible vote for the party […] providing it with greater representation […]’67 Above it added, ‘that is why we so forcefully contest the elections.’ The message here is that the DNA is seriously interested in doing well in elections, indeed contest them forcefully. But note that gaining greater representation in Parliament is a side effect of more people voting for the party. The support from the populace is what is most important. The DNA seldom valued parliamentary work in itself, seeing it as a means to gain new adherents among ordinary people.68 It also needed to be stated that more representatives in Parliament is a good thing, and that the DNA is serious about elections. The fact that it may not have spent its entire donation in 1930, however, is not in itself an argument in favour of the DNA’s extra-parliamentarianism. It cannot be doubted that Labour was wholeheartedly engaged in the democratic process and wanted to win the 1929 election. One active veteran who had been there from the start claimed that his life’s work was completed after Labour came top in the 1929 election, though it had neither a majority nor did it receive the most votes.69 Members of the party were asked to starve themselves during ‘self-denial weeks’ to raise money for the campaign.70 Despite this, Labour did not spend the entire proceeds of the Bid for Power Fund either. The most up-to-date figures for what became of the Fund are listed in Table 2.4 overleaf. This agrees with Labour spending £40,000, since the £14,500 for central party administration reportedly went on election preparations before the start of campaigning.71 The conclusion is therefore that Labour decided not to spend £9,200. Because there is no doubt that Labour was committed to the democratic process, the DNA’s failure to spend all of its proceeds in 1930 cannot be identified as downplaying the importance of the election on its own. It may simply have meant that the party needed the money for its daily tasks. Spending a little more would not have helped

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it plug the gap vis-à-vis its Conservative opponents, who had far greater resources. It is, however, startling that the DNA spent less than half its budget for electioneering in 1927. That either means serious financial problems or a lack of interest in the results of the election, although it ended up as the largest party. It may have concluded with Labour at a later date that ‘work can beat money’.72 As a party of integration its members were some of its most important assets. Table 2.4. Labour’s Bid for Power Fund 1929 To Central Party for administration £14,500 Election grants to constituencies £15,000 Printing of pamphlets and leaflets £10,500 To General Fund £9,200 Total £49,200 (Source: Labour Party, Reports of Annual Conferences. Twenty-ninth Report (London, 1929), p. 221.)

In 1929 Labour concentrated on both rural and urban groups, and so did the DNA in 1930. Both parties believed they could play a role as defenders of farmers. Labour also targeted rural workers, but apart from a film foreshadowing greater focus on them in the future, the DNA did not. There are a few reasons for this surprising fact. The first is that Norwegian farmers, smallholders and fishermen were usually people of humble means. Although all farmers and smallholders were nominal owners and most fishermen owned their boats and equipments,73 their take-home pay was below industrial workers’. In 1929 investigations showed that the average industrial worker earned 2,813 kroner a year (£155) against fishermen on 1,351 kroner (£74) and farmers on 1,754 kroner (£96) a year.74 Of course the rural classes’ disposable incomes might have been higher, as they produced their own food. It was very much in the DNA’s understanding of itself that it should represent these people. A smallholder might also be an occasional fisherman and regular wage earner on larger farms. Property owners in the English and Swedish countryside were better off, and therefore it seemed more natural for Labour and the SAP to try to appeal to farm workers.75 The second reason is that the DNA could be more certain of getting the support of agricultural workers provided they voted. When Labour appealed to them it had to try hard to counteract deference, stressing that the ballot was secret, that the worker was under no obligation to the farmer, etc. Deference existed in Norway too of course, but not to the extent that workers voted in large numbers for the party of the traditional elite.76 For what the figure is worth, 31 per cent of British workers are estimated to have voted Conservative in

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1929.77 These two reasons, plus the realization that many rural workers were also smallholders, are not completely satisfactory. What makes the fact of DNA neglect all the more perplexing is that a union of forestry and agricultural workers had been founded in 1927 and quickly became one of the largest AFL federations.78 This should have been a welcome surprise. Ten years earlier, the DNA’s éminence grise Martin Tranmæl had thought such a union would be too weak to join the AFL.79 The impetus of recent unionization should have made this group particularly attractive as supporters. According to the DNA’s own figures from the countryside in 1929, forestry and agricultural workers made up 38.56 per cent of rural people, the largest single group.80 The DNA bypassed them and also the top 5 per cent of farmers, concentrating on the small farmers and smallholders in the middle. Labour produced a Speaker’s Handbook for the 1929 election with the help of the TUC. It consisted of facts and arguments to be used during campaigning, and is therefore a good way to check to whom the party appealed. It did not systematically deal with potential voters, but there is a lot of coverage of the working class in its various roles, which establishes whom Labour thought would support the party in 1929. The unemployed were dealt with firstly by the claim that their numbers had decreased by 185,626 during Labour’s first government in 1924, taking insurance changes into account, and secondly by listing the improvements Labour had made when in power to the scheme of unemployment insurance itself.81 Of course any appeal directed at the unemployed on the basis of these claims would also be an appeal to those who thought they might lose their jobs. The strategy with regard to agricultural workers was to show that Labour could raise their wages. The 1924 Labour government had restored Wages Boards in the countryside with the task of setting minimum rates, as it was realized trade unions were too weak in this sector to make a difference.82 Next it was pointed out that 150,000 houses were needed in rural areas, but that the only significant construction of these had taken place as a result of the 1924 Wheatley Act, whereas the Conservative Rural Housing Act of 1926 had only succeeded in reconditioning 343 houses.83 The wretchedness of country life for the poor was brought out by a citation of government statistics showing that 19.9 per cent of children there suffered from impaired physique.84 The appeal to pensioners did not just mean the elderly, but included widows and orphans, who should be secured a better livelihood.85 For the trade unionists Labour promised to ratify the Washington Hours Convention of 1919, reducing working hours.86 There would be trade boards in unorganized industries with powers over hours

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and wages.87 The DNA also had a handbook for its campaigners. It was called ‘The DNA and the Election 1930’, and contained the party’s somewhat characteristic programme. It was important to the Marxist DNA to justify why peasants and fishermen were in fact proletarians. They too were under the thumb of capital since they had mortgages, and were therefore not the real owners of their land. When the banks demanded interest on the mortgages, it was similar to the profit employers took from other workers. Peasants and fisherman must therefore unite with employees.88 The Norwegian Labour Party existed to promote the working class, and its ultimate goal was to win the struggle for ‘the working people’ so it gained control over the factors of production, ending capitalist exploitation.89 ‘The working people’ was a term the DNA used in the 1920s and 1930s as an alternative to ‘the working class’. It consisted of workers by hand and by brain (hånden og åndens arbeidere) who were not capitalists or professionals. The term encompassed urban and rural toilers, whether they were self-employed or not. Status was also a factor, and it is therefore not certain that it included white-collar workers in 1930. In chapter 4 it will be discussed whether the term began encompassing other groups in the course of later elections. A further example of the DNA’s projected unification of these varying groups came through its use of the term ‘the little people’ (småkårsfolket). This was indicated in its description of the votes in Parliament in 1929 relating to the crisis of debt in the countryside. It demanded that all forced auctions of the homes of these people of humble means be stopped, and that councils as well as ‘the little people’ be allowed to obtain relief through the law.90 These passages were underlined in the original. It went on to claim that there was no way of debt relief but reduction, and that the debtor must be allowed to remain in control of his property.91 Fishermen were also in need of debt relief and support to improve production and distribution, and thus the term took on its full meaning as the workers of the country.92 Using the term ‘little people’ aided these groups in recognizing themselves, as they may not have considered themselves ‘workers’. The description of the handbooks for activists does not imply that Labour in 1929 was a party solely for the working class, whereas the DNA was beginning to form an urban-rural alliance. Instead, it shows that the DNA set greater store on theoretical justification for why it was appealing beyond urban workers. Unlike the DNA, Labour appealed to (mediumsized) farmers in its propaganda. It is nevertheless true that Labour directed more of its propaganda at workers than did the DNA. The DNA

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produced much less varied material, and seems to have taken both urban and rural workers largely for granted. It is likely that the DNA was more appreciated by rural voters, but Labour enjoyed its successes in the countryside in 1929 and might have gone on to achieve more but for the disaster of 1931. In 1929 and 1930 respectively, Labour and the DNA believed in nationalization of the land. This later changed as far as the DNA was concerned. The fact that the DNA changed its policy and Labour did not, may be put down to either the growing radicalization of Labour after the defeat in 1931 or that the DNA received crucial support from the rural classes and wanted to receive more. Nationalization was regarded with great scepticism in the countryside. There is good reason to be principled on any issue if little support is forthcoming. Labour’s message to agricultural workers was a simple one, and of the hundreds of appeals the formulation of W. H. Marwick, the candidate for Dumfriesshire, went straight to the point: ‘The land, as the basis of national life, must be brought under National ownership. […] Socialism has a real message for the rural worker: it offers him an equality of opportunity which he has never yet enjoyed, in wages, housing, and land settlement.’93 In one leaflet the party simply enumerated what it thought were the demands of agricultural workers.94 The common-sense needs of good wages and a safe job were important, because they were paid much less than industrial workers, and did not have strong unions to protect them against unfair dismissal. The ‘free cottages’ which Labour promised, meant that rural workers would not have to move out of their homes if they were dismissed from their jobs. Presently ‘tied cottages’ were let to whomever worked for the farmer. Labour promised to end the system of entailed accommodation, and the leaflet took credit for (re)introducing Wages Boards when the party was in government in 1924. Because of these, the threshold of wages had been raised from 25s. to 30s. a week, which was only a start. A very similar leaflet repeated these assurances in a slightly different form. This offered more extensive benefits. It again listed the main demands of farm workers as higher wages and freedom from the ‘tyranny’ of the tied cottage, but this time went on to mention payment for overtime, a guaranteed week’s work, a comfortable dwelling, a plot of land of one’s own and the chance of educating one’s children through scholarships and better local schools.95 So Labour’s message to this group was a threefold one: it promised higher wages, better security and the chance of social mobility. An example of the third motif can be found in a flyer about agricultural education and research. Here the purpose was to tempt rural workers with a good education for their children, and the party explained that necessary

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motor transport and scholarships were part and parcel of that. It also held out the possibility of personal advancement and a more stimulating job. ‘Farm workers, farm managers, and agriculturalists in every capacity now require to know far more about their calling than was customary even twenty-five years ago, and the need for training becomes more apparent every year.’96 This implied that agricultural workers would have their job enhanced and be given more responsibility. The flyer went on to claim that there were several instances, especially in Scotland, where former farm workers had become leaders, advisors or authorities in agriculture. In those leaflets which were written for farmers, Labour said it would nationalize the land and control the rural economy more. These were advantages because the state could act as a better landlord than private individuals,97 just as Labour was the party that best understood the problems of farmers.98 It promised the farmer up-to-date equipment, modern barns and cowsheds and other buildings in good repair. In his 1927 Labour pamphlet The Land for the People, Thomas Conwell-Evans had argued that the landlords had previously maintained these well, but standards had now slipped.99 The 1929 leaflet went on to mention a welldrained soil and a fair price for the farmer’s produce, which would be secured by the state. It would stabilize the price of meat and wheat through import boards, thus giving farmers a more predictable income.100 This pledge arguably violated Labour’s policy of free trade. Labour would eliminate middlemen, who took part of the farmer’s earnings, a sellingpoint also in a different flyer. That flyer was mostly for the farmer, but claimed that the farm worker would receive a share of the farmer’s higher income instead of the ‘useless’ middleman.101 Labour tried to write combined appeals to the countryside, but realized labourers were its most likely supporters. This balancing act was not easy as one of the National Farmers’ Union’s demands was repeal of the Agricultural Wages Act. However, the Conservatives were not going to comply with this either, and seemed to refuse safeguarding, and all but temporary and restricted subsidies.102 One group engaged in the primary sector of the economy was all but neglected. Just one leaflet was addressed to fishermen, and the party’s only promise was to set up an inquiry into the industry.103 Labour had not thought out any policies relevant to them, which was a consequence of the smallness of the occupation and its geographically restricted range. It did make clear that the object was to develop fisheries and improve life for fishermen, but the need for an inquiry and the lack of concrete policies must have given the impression that Labour did not prioritize this group highly. How did these policies and statements compare with those of the

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DNA in the 1930 election? As was argued above, Labour put the greatest stress on gaining the support of farm workers, while the DNA was primarily interested in securing support from smallholders and small farmers. Because fishermen were a significant occupational group in Norway, the DNA had developed extensive policies concerning them. These included the benefits of unionization, and the DNA wanted to convince the rural classes of the rightness of Socialism. Smallholders and fishermen were part of ‘the working people’, and were given an equal place with the urban working class in the DNA’s propaganda as in 1927. It has been claimed that in the West Country and parts of the South, the DNA presented itself as a party for industrial workers only. The brochures described in this chapter, which were used across the nation, belie this.104 Since there was a separate term for them, peasants may not have been considered as entirely ‘working class’, but their role went far beyond the passive one of voting for the party. Inger Bjørnhaug believes that the DNA had no plans to improve the daily lives of its supporters other than workers.105 In 1930 the DNA was still an opposition party with little influence, but it considered bringing education to the countryside a vital task. Its handbook for activists explained that its government of 1928 had wanted to spend 300,000 kroner (£16,455) on free school materials in the country, which was more than three times its proposed spending on this in the towns.106 It will later be seen that it was adamant fishermen must form unions. What could be more transformative than education and unionization? The emphasis on winning the peasantry and fishermen for the DNA is clear since three out of six official brochures (i.e. disregarding the handbook for activists) made for the 1930 election were written exclusively for them, in addition to many references to the classes of the countryside in the remaining materials. ‘The Land and the Peasants’ was one of three, and it admitted that the peasantry had hitherto shown little interest in Socialism.107 So the DNA, which promoted Socialism, had not been the natural choice for the ordinary farmer. The second pamphlet, however, argued strongly that the Agrarian Party had betrayed the countryside.108 In 1927 the DNA had made real progress there, and it believed it could detach support from the Agrarians. 77,395 new votes in the countryside had been gained in 1927, compared to 25,483 in the towns. This was an increase of 52 per cent and 22 per cent respectively.109 What arguments did the DNA use to make peasants support it? There were three main ones. Socialization was in the interest of at least the poorer farmers. These people were burdened with huge debts, which meant that land ownership was working against them. It should have protected them against hunger and destitution, but instead made them

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virtual slaves of the banks.110 The farmers’ produce had become the property of their creditors. Therefore nationalization of the land would be an improvement. Only 6 per cent of farmers owned 25 acres or more. Most farmers were smallholders who toiled for themselves. ‘In other words, the peasants are workers and belong to the rest of the working class.’111 ‘Peasants, support the Norwegian Labour Party,’ was the underlined message. The third argument was that peasants were exploited as much as other workers. Only Socialism could put an end to this, despite what was done to make production more profitable and an endless number of speeches in Parliament.112 The DNA did not just try to make peasants feel like workers and therefore support it out of class solidarity. It was able to provide a long list of proposals for improving the conditions of the less privileged country dwellers, with the appended remark that the Agrarians had voted against every single one of these in Parliament. One characteristic idea in 1930 was to cut 10 million kroner (£550,388) from the defence budget (‘the useless military’), and spend it on land settlement and cultivation.113 It wanted the Smallholding and Housing Bank to be strengthened so as to provide interest-free mortgages for land settlement and cheap loans.114 Furthermore, there would be land for homeless families and building materials at reduced cost. And, confirming that the DNA had no interest in the support of larger farmers, great swathes of property in land and forests would be nationalized if they were not suited for the management of a single farmer. As mentioned, the classes of the countryside were prevalent in all the materials. In the brochure about rationalization it was argued that fishing had been subject to an industrial revolution.115 Ten years before the election about three fourths of fishermen owned their own means of production, making them petit bourgeois rather than workers.116 But this industrial revolution had made them proletarians. While production had increased, more fishermen were suffering from despondency. So the DNA argued that the target group were also workers and attempted to make them class conscious. As one author noted, by coming under capitalism they were forced to reflect not just on their own woes, but on the economic conflict of the entire people.117 Socialism was the remedy for the fisheries. Fishing companies would be socialized.118 Fishermen collectively would take over bait and oil distribution, set up cold storage plants, buy equipment and regulate the fishing stations and the granting of credit. The DNA would regulate the distribution of fish including to the export markets, of which it would try to gain more. The pamphlet written especially for fishermen was ideological and somewhat didactic. It said they were badly exploited and suffered from

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appalling living conditions, which was a risky choice of words. The main reason was the lack of trade and political organizations for fishermen.119 This could be remedied by organizing within the AFL. Not only would fishermen benefit from this, so would other workers when the fishermen joined them. It was surprising for electoral propaganda that the DNA gently chided the fishermen for hitherto not having shown an interest in organizing themselves. The fishermen had actually founded an association in 1926, but it was only in the 1930s that it gained enough members to have any clout.120 Some fishermen still did not believe they had common interests with industrial workers, but who except employees would be the consumers of the products of smallholders and fishermen? This was an adumbration of the insight that led to the counter-crisis proposals in 1933. It has long been accepted that the DNA was to some extent a rural party. A lot of its voters came from the countryside. In the 1930 election it gained more votes there, more than enough to make up for its slightly declining support in urban areas.121 The DNA had little choice in addressing country issues because the Norwegian constitution stipulated that two thirds of all parliamentarians must be drawn from rural areas.122 One reason behind the serious focus on the countryside was that the DNA had many supporters but few members there, necessitating that the arguments be put in writing. What is less well known is that Labour was also a party with ambitions in the countryside and some success to match it. At the conference in 1923 many delegates argued that Labour’s majority would only be a reality when the rural areas had been won. MacDonald stated this as an unquestioned fact.123 It became the orthodox view afterwards, and was repeated after the 1929 election.124 Even someone like Herbert Drinkwater, who thought Labour’s focus on the countryside had been excessive in the past, eventually agreed that such areas were becoming more promising.125 He was the editor of The Labour Organiser. As for the success which Labour had there, Michael Kinnear argued that it was negligible. It won only five agricultural seats in 1929, its best election thus far, and two of these were also mining seats according to him.126 However, ‘agricultural’ and ‘rural’ seats are not synonymous terms. Many rural seats contained people commuting into the big cities.127 Clare Griffiths has put the number of rural seats won by Labour at 40 in the 1929 election.128 The disparity with Kinnear comes from the redefinition of what constitutes a rural seat, and because she classifies seats with 20 per cent agriculturalists as ‘agricultural’, whereas Kinnear only used this term in describing seats with 30 per cent agriculturalists. In order to win seats where one in five of the adult population was engaged in farming, Labour would have had to pay attention to this sector of the population. The appeals above taken from electoral propaganda prove that it did.

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Norfolk is known as an area of agricultural radicalism. There was a clearer link between trade unionism and Labour support here than for the rest of the country.129 Neither Labour nor the DNA focused greatly on unionization of the farming classes, although the DNA insisted that fishermen join unions. Instead, Labour concentrated on the improvements that could be made through legislation and a system of inspections. In terms of electoral propaganda, the DNA ignored that a union for forestry and agricultural workers founded in 1927 was very strong, as it would do when the Association of Commercial Clerks (Norges handels- og kontorfunksjonærers forbund) joined the AFL in 1931. These developments did not lead to increased electoral attention, proving that there was little coordination with the industrial side of the labour movement in seeking support. * In 1913 Norwegian women had been enfranchised on the same term as men, and by 1930 they had thus been fully part of the electorate for 17 years. In Britain, on the other hand, there was an impetus to focus on women to a greater extent in the 1929 election because women below the age of 30 had been given the suffrage the year before. Paying attention to all women was therefore essential to Labour and, according to one scholar, it was especially important to focus on young women because they had not voted before. If this had been more successful, Labour might have become the winning party earlier than in 1945.130 It produced an appeal to them that was an enlightened one for the time, seeing women as individuals rather than chattels of husbands and children.131 Labour’s main idea, which the DNA shared, was that women deplored war and were in favour of social ameliorations. Most Labour candidates stressed how long their party had been in favour of votes for women. A few, exemplified by William H. Martin, candidate for South Aberdeen, argued that the struggle for women’s emancipation went on. He said Labour could secure equal pay for men and women in industry, and mentioned the prevention of maternal mortality as another issue of great importance to the party. It was certainly very keen to attract female support, devoting nine of the 66 leaflets especially to this group. One such leaflet was simply entitled ‘Why Women should Vote Labour.’132 Here it based its claim to be the women’s party on being the children’s party and the peace party. The only aspect of Labour’s appeal to women that was universal to the gender was the peace issue. In the second issue of The 1929 Elector, a campaign magazine published for two issues, Margaret Bondfield MP had an article entitled ‘Women won’t

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have a War Government.’133 The main role in life for women who did not have jobs was traditionally to bring up children, but their sons (and their husbands) were at serious risk of dying on the battlefield. So it was assumed women were mostly pacifists. Labour’s anti-war stance was the kind of principled issue which made the party attractive beyond its ordinary adherents. Wealthier women might join as an act of philanthropy.134 The other near-universal part of women’s lives Labour could use in its appeal was respect for maternity and the rights of children. Probably all women, regardless of their personal circumstances, would agree that ‘every mother should without fear have the chance of bringing healthy children into the world.’135 That was what Ishbel MacDonald said in the same issue. And these children should be granted at least a good primary and secondary education. Would not all men also agree with MacDonald’s statement? They would, but were probably less likely to attach importance to it. Therefore the statement should be seen as an appeal to women in particular. The appeal to women could be further subdivided into categories based on their practical interests. The 1929 Elector included a section called ‘The Housewives’ Corner’ in its first issue. It tried to show how ‘profiteering’ capitalists and the Conservative Government had raised the prices of household items through greed and taxes.136 The second issue of 22 May gave more reasons why housewives should vote Labour: it would abolish food taxes, improve maternity benefits, nursing, schools and medical services, give widows higher pensions, provide houses for rent and work instead of the dole.137 Labour produced a leaflet for working women stating that unemployment was a waste, that young men without incomes could not marry, and how 3,000 mothers (most below 35) died in childbirth every year.138 There was also a leaflet for domestic servants, a female-dominated occupation. It asked maids not to pay attention to how their employers would like them to vote, but instead to remember their proletarian origins. These women should think of their own families and the homes they hoped to have some day.139 Through this leaflet and its pacifism, Labour distinguished itself from the Conservatives, who also promised women social ameliorations, lower food prices and education for their children.140 Through the breadth of the arguments and the number of leaflets devoted to them, it is clear that women were a highly important target group for Labour. Could the same also be said for the DNA? It did not produce as much propaganda, but proportionately there was almost as much about women. Its leaflet to women listed many arguments why they should support the DNA, some general and some specific to the target group.141 Its pacifism was the first reason given. It also said women and

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children suffered the most when farms were forcibly sold. Unemployment was another destroyer of homes. The DNA wanted to take action against eviction, but had been hindered by the non-Socialist parties who voted down the proposals. On polling day the editorial in Arbeiderbladet was addressed to women, the party clearly fearing that many would abstain.142 That had been the case in 1927, when just 61.6 per cent of women voted. The party was right to pay attention specifically to this group, because in 1930 that figure rose to 74 per cent. The overall turnout increased by 9.5 percentage points to 77.6 per cent from 1927 to 1930.143 Hans Fredrik Dahl has linked the increase in women voting to the scare stories propounded by the nonSocialist parties in the campaign, claiming that the DNA were atheistic revolutionaries who would abolish Christianity.144 Hence Christian women took umbrage and cast their votes against the DNA. It should be noted that this view is based on a hunch rather than careful statistical analysis. The DNA was almost as interested in women as Labour in these elections. Labour clearly was not, or did not intend to be seen as, a party solely for male trade unionists in 1929. It wanted to appeal to rural workers (mostly unorganized) and women. The DNA had a much greater focus on producers than consumers, but also wished to attract women and wrote a lengthy leaflet to do so. It also went beyond male trade unionists through its sustained attention to peasants and fishermen. However, to reach beyond self-identified workers and toilers, these parties needed to show that people of higher social status were welcome to vote for them. Beyond the slight appeals to middle-class people in the capitals, this was not really forthcoming. In 1929 Labour printed criticism in the manifesto about the Government putting extra indirect taxation on ‘wage earners, shopkeepers and lower middle classes.’145 Considering the last two as one, to what extent was the appeal borne out in the rest of the electoral materials? The Labour Speaker’s Handbook had a section about de-rating among coverage of the ‘Tory budget, 1929-1930.’146 De-rating meant decreasing the rates on agricultural land and large business premises. Since the rates for shops and family businesses were not cut, it opened up possible avenues of appeal for Labour. Thus it made a leaflet, ‘Tories Hand out Gifts’, which showed Baldwin giving away a cheque for £4 million to a caricatured capitalist from British Chemicals, much to the envy of an apron-clad greengrocer.147 This spoke to householders and shopkeepers, who were told that ‘their [own] rates are likely to increase eventually because of the Tory scheme.’ In other words, Labour sought to exploit differential treatment of capitalists and small property owners by the Conservatives. It also produced a second leaflet on de-rating.148 For

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reasons of status, though, it is unlikely that large sections of the lower middle class would be attracted to Labour. And the party did not try very hard as MacDonald told his audience on May Day that changing the DeRating Act would not be among his top priorities.149 It was reported that shopkeepers were in attendance, so it was not a case of preaching to the converted. It would not be correct to say that Labour tried to gain the support of lower middle-class people in the 1929 election. It had had leaflets for teachers and white-collar workers in the 1923 election several years earlier,150 but had evidently not continued wooing them. It is not far from the truth to say that Labour in this election simply made a class appeal to the workers to vote against the party of the capitalists.151 It was shown above how the DNA theorized about fishermen and peasants to prove they were proletarians. Proving the same for whitecollar workers would have been much easier, as they did not own their means of production even in name. Nor were they much better paid than blue-collar workers.152 The DNA had briefly formed a government in 1928, and it had proclaimed in its accession statement that it wanted to put conditions right for civil servants by implementing the eight-hour day and negotiate about their other demands.153 This statement was included in the handbook for activists two years later as an electoral appeal. It was not impossible to gain civil servant support because the group had been at loggerheads with its employers, i.e. the non-Socialist parties.154 The programme of the DNA stated that white-collar workers were subject to poverty and unemployment like blue-collar workers, and were also dependent on the capitalists.155 This suggested that clerks were part of ‘the working people’, but their higher status made this uncertain in 1930.156 In Oslo there was a pamphlet about rent control, in which white-collar workers as well as labourers featured.157 In urban constituencies they were probably the two most likely DNA-supporting groups. In Oslo meetings were convened for commercial clerks, civil servants and local government employees.158 Speaking to commercial clerks at a DNA meeting in Agrarian House, the trade unionist Alfred Madsen outlined proposals in relation to a law on apprenticeship.159 The apprenticeship law would limit entry to the occupation, which was an advantage for clerks who were already established. The Norwegian Conservatives were against such a law, which highlighted a difference and contributed to the meeting deciding by 350 to four votes that office workers should vote DNA.160 The resolution said white-collar workers were wage earners, whose interests were represented by the DNA. The voting at this meeting was not indicative of how clerks actually voted at the election. Clerks were attracted to the Conservatives,161 the Liberals (especially outside Oslo) as well as the DNA.

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Did what has been mentioned above add up to a coherent appeal to white-collar workers by the DNA? In practice as with Labour, the appeal was a tepid one. An anecdotal case could be brought that Labour was very interested in lower middle-class people by quoting from the electoral statements of the many candidates who repeated the formulations of the manifesto. Taxation of land values, in other words de-rating, was brought up by 31 per cent of Labour candidates.162 It is not clear whether Labour or the DNA focused more on lower middle-class people. Labour produced two leaflets for them, but the DNA convened many meetings particularly for this group in Oslo. Both had arguments ready for why they deserved support from this class. Labour said it would revise taxation values on land more in favour of small property owners. The DNA said it would pass an apprenticeship law protecting the rights of clerks who were already established in the occupation. Because the case for either party was so seldom made, it formed only the beginnings of an appeal rather than an actual one. The interpretation favoured here is that clerks and small businessmen only became a target group for Labour and the DNA at a later date. Although both Labour and the DNA were victims of unfounded allegations, they did not stoop from negative campaigning themselves. Often this was directed at the Liberals as potential rivals for the votes of progressive people or those of humble means. In the 1929 election in Britain, the Liberals had arguably the most forward-looking policy on unemployment. They unveiled a counter-cyclical economic plan in March called We Can Conquer Unemployment, written under the influence of John Maynard Keynes. Labour responded by a pamphlet called How to Conquer Unemployment, penned by G. D. H. Cole. Solving unemployment was an issue close to Labour’s heart, but short of Socialism it did not have a coherent policy. The Liberal plan was therefore dangerous to Labour’s hopes of winning the election. When Labour ‘kicked off’ its campaign on 27 April at the Albert Hall, MacDonald rounded on the other parties in his speech and particularly laid into Lloyd George for his record on unemployment during Coalition days. The election issue of The London News published by the London Labour Party carried the headline ‘We Shall Conquer the Liberals’ on page 5. MacDonald had been clear that he wanted to eliminate the Liberals as competitors. It was for this reason that he argued on the National Executive Committee that Labour should field a many candidates as possible, against Oswald Mosley who wanted to limit the number of candidates to 520.163 Additional candidates were more likely to take votes from the Liberals than the Conservatives. The disadvantage with standing in constituencies where there was little chance of success was the expense involved. Money had to come from the central

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party coffers, as the local party naturally was not able to raise a lot in such difficult areas.164 While the emphasis on converting Liberals was stronger in 1931 than in 1929, similar arguments were in place during the 1929 election. H. B. Lees-Smith was the Labour candidate for Keighley and himself a former Liberal. He simply pointed out that Labour was the only alternative government as the Liberals had too few MPs in the outgoing Parliament – 46 out of 615.165 The other argument used against the Liberals was that they were hopelessly divided. Labour claimed that only a proportion of Liberal MPs agreed with Lloyd George on the countercyclical economic proposals. It was certainly a radical plan as it involved deficit financing, and MacDonald may also have thought Labour could gain Liberal voters who disagreed with this.166 And the most negative of the tactics involved questioning the sincerity of Lloyd George in wanting to cure unemployment. He was a ‘trickster’ who had settled on this particular issue as a way of returning to prominence, but had had little concern for the unemployed when he had been Prime Minister from 1916 to 1922. This was a very unfair argument as the advice of Keynes had not been available to the Coalition government, since it represented the latest research findings in economics. The Speaker’s Handbook pointed out that the Liberals did nothing about proportional representation before the war, when it might not have been to their advantage. Herbert Asquith had opposed this electoral system in 1918.167 This was more to the point and not as negative because it was merely stating a fact rather than impugning an opponent’s motives. As for the DNA, it felt it had a bone to pick with the Norwegian Liberals. The reason was that its short-lived government in 1928 had been brought down by a Liberal motion of no confidence. There was a fair amount of coverage of the Liberals in the DNA’s brochure about fishermen, as they were often supporters of that party. Since the DNA had ambitions to represent this group itself, it must do whatever it could to loosen that occupation’s ties with the Liberals. So the DNA claimed that they had shown their true colours when they voted to displace Christopher Hornsrud’s DNA government. They were simply a party of capitalist power.168 This was not the way Liberals liked to think of their party at all. They had long been careful to dissociate themselves from attempts to forge middle-class unity against the labour movement, seeing themselves as a ‘third way’. The Liberals declined to join a coalition of the non-Socialist parties in 1928. They did not think many of their policies would be implemented in this way, and if they refused there was a good chance they could form a minority government alone.169 Country Liberals were far from being privileged, and had little to gain from being part of a

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non-Socialist bloc. The DNA went on to claim that the incumbent Liberal Government of Mowinckel were caretakers in the Conservative interest. It used inverted commas when it described the Prime Minister as a Liberal in one of its two leaflets.170 Such allegations were potentially lethal to the Liberals because they were traditionally the party of ‘the little people’. While the legendary Liberal leader Johan Sverdrup (1816-92), father of parliamentary sovereignty, had wanted all power to be vested in Parliament, the DNA believed it was beginning to dawn on some of their partisans that this was a mere fiction.171 The DNA thought that democracy was today a caricature and had said so in a debate in Parliament. It was bluff that power resided there. Tens of thousands of Liberal voters ought to realize this. Furthermore, Liberal parliamentarian Lorents Hansen had said there would be a good deal of sympathy for disarmament in his party, but whether it was practicable needed greater consideration.172 Since disarmament was one of the DNA’s most emphasized policies, this lukewarm endorsement was yet another proof of Liberal vacillation. The party was not to be trusted. It was hoped Liberal voters would see that there was a great chasm between what their party claimed to stand for and what it actually did. The prospects of that happening were potentially good. It seems that in the 1927 election many hitherto staunch Liberals in the countryside voted for the DNA.173 They sought relief from the crisis that had engulfed them, and may have seen the DNA as the heir to the Liberals, a one-time radical party which had spearheaded the struggle of peasants and teachers against the traditional elite. Both Labour and the DNA had good reason to focus on capturing Liberal voters. Labour wanted to cement its position as one of the two parties of government. It shared a progressive heritage with the Liberals, and therefore saw itself as their heir. The DNA was devoting a lot of attention to smallholders and fishermen, and was a rival to the Liberals for these votes. It was also motivated by spite over its premature exit from government, which is why it did not focus on Liberals again in 1933 and 1936, despite continuing to try to attract rural people. * Towards the end of the campaign, Labour wanted its most active campaigners to take a day off from work and help the party in their constituencies.174 The morning should be spent on persuading the elderly, tradesmen, housewives and those working locally to vote.175 Incoming trains carrying employees returning from work should be met. Near the end of the day, canvassers should try to persuade those living near the

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polling stations to vote. MacDonald gave Herald readers special updates on how things were going, the last telephoned from Seaham two days before the election. ‘Go forward and spare no pains to make our cause triumph!’ he said.176 That night he also spoke on the wireless, apologizing for his hoarse voice caused by addressing 250,000 people at election meetings. The result was a real boon to Labour. For the first time it became the largest party in the House of Commons. The share of the votes and seats was as follows: Table 2.5. The British general election 1929 Party

Votes (change from Seats (change from 1924) 1924) Conservatives 38.2% (-10.1%) 260 (-159) Liberals 23.4% (+5.8%) 59 (+19) Labour 37.1% (+4.1%) 287 (+137) (Source: modified from Arthur Marwick, A History of the Modern British Isles, 19141999. Circumstances, Events and Outcomes (Oxford, 2000), p. 102.)

Although Labour did not receive a majority, it had overturned the massive Conservative victory of 1924 and seen off a spirited Liberal revival. Once it had digested the results, Labour pronounced itself satisfied with winning so many industrial constituencies and those with a mixture of manual and black-coated workers, but it urged even greater attention on the countryside, where progress had been modest.177 Calculations by Christopher Howard show that Labour’s support had actually decreased in three out of five counties in rural East England.178 It was still thought the key to a majority lay in the rural seats.179 According to Duncan Tanner, Labour had consolidated its core support and made notable progress in constituencies with many lower middle-class people and new housing developments.180 In Norway Sunday 19 October represented a real climax with more meetings than ever before and several noteworthy features. One was a torchlit parade from Birkelunden Park to Young’s Square (the main assembly point for the labour movement), arranged in conjunction with the AUF. 181 The purpose of this was to act as a magnet on the workers who lived along the route. 3,000 ‘young workers’ took part in the parade to merge with large crowds in the Square and the adjoining streets. Arbeiderbladet estimated that 40,000 people took part in the subsequent rally. Finn Moe, the intellectual, the Oslo DNA’s secretary Einar Gerhardsen and parliamentarian Alfred Madsen gave short speeches. Madsen was wildly applauded for his ‘long live Oslo run by the workers, Socialism and the emancipation of the working class.’182 The Internationale was sung, followed by entertainment relayed by loudspeakers.

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The result of the election was a triumph for the non-Socialist parties, each of which got a larger share of the vote than in 1927. Table 2.6. The Norwegian parliamentary election 1930 Party

Share of the vote Parliamentary seats (change from 1927) (change from 1927) Liberals 21% (+2.3%) 34 (+3) Conservatives 30% (+4.5%) 44 (+13) Agrarians 15.9% (+1.0%) 25 (-1) DNA 31.4% (-5.4%) 47 (-12) Communists 1.7% (-2.3%) 0 (-3) (Source: Berge Furre, Norsk historie 1905-1940 (Oslo, 1982), p. 320.)

The first headline in Arbeiderbladet stated that the DNA had held on to its votes from last time.183 Nevertheless, 12 seats in Parliament were lost. What had happened was that the other parties had successfully mobilized their reserves against Socialism. As mentioned earlier, the turnout had risen by 4.5 percentage points to 77.6 per cent. The DNA’s initial reaction to the result was to affirm it was not really a defeat, though it conceded the non-Socialist parties had scored a victory.184 The party had advanced the most in those parts of the countryside where the class struggle was most pronounced. This led to a high level of politicization and was beneficial to it, but in the egalitarian and counter-cultural West political consciousness was low and support for the party weaker.185 In the towns the sway of the non-Socialist press was greater, and it had frightened those who were middle-of-the-road. It also sought to deprecate the capitalist triumph, noting that the election was fought in a panic-like state and that fear had prevailed. But it admitted it may have lost some votes on the back of the change in the programme. The historiography sees 1930 as a great defeat and explains it by the DNA’s renewed radicalization. For instance, Dahl claims that ‘workers turned their backs to a revolutionary programme formulated in the internal party dispute,’ but this ignores that the party gained votes.186 Eight days later Arbeiderbladet grappled with this question of whether it had been right to remove the reference to ‘the majority of the people’ in the programme of principles.187 It now argued that whether the words were there or not, implicitly the DNA sought to win all the people for its Socialist and revolutionary ideas. It repeated the thinking behind the elimination of the words: winning a parliamentary majority would be illusory if not based on real organs of power, i.e. the workers’ organizations. The development came in conceding and repeating that it had lost some votes on this occasion due to conference’s decision to remove the reference to the ‘majority of the people.’ Even more revealing

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was that it cared, the logic behind the change being that votes did not matter so much. The newspaper reintroduced the DNA’s new preferred version of ‘the working people’, which the party would seek to win. It added that in the recent election it had laid the groundwork for that task. * The purpose of what has gone before was to determine how the two parties fought the elections of 1929 and 1930. In Britain the central party kept an eye on the electioneering. It asked leading MPs about their speaking engagements and, conversely, divisional parties which speakers would be visiting them. This was to prevent undue concentration on certain areas. The central planning of the election campaign was conducted by Head Office. This began in February 1928 and gathered pace in December of that year. It also sold propaganda to the local parties. Its central planning included deciding on what the pamphlets and leaflets would be about, and making arrangements for campaign tools such as films, loudspeakers and gramophone records. Head Office ran the national campaign, i.e. the overarching themes that were of general interest. It and the London Labour Party, if relevant, awarded grants to constituency parties. The London Labour Party complemented the local campaigns by publishing a manifesto and an election edition of its newspaper The London News, as well as putting up posters on polling day. Labour’s central spending came out of the Bid for Power Fund, to which trade unions, local parties, women’s sections and individuals contributed. From 1930 onwards the DNA’s electoral campaigns became more extensive each time. The plan for how they were fought remained the same, however, as will be seen later. It was very similar to Labour’s arrangements. The country-wide effort was drawn up during the summer of 1930 by the National Executive. It included tours to all parts of the country by veteran speakers and a date for the start of campaigning (28 September). This was the equivalent of Labour’s central party coordination of speakers. The Norwegian documents are not extant, but one would expect that they will have included funding for county parties and possibly for newspapers from Head Office. County parties were otherwise left to their own devices, and could electioneer as they pleased within broad parameters laid down by the party’s bodies and conference. The county parties bought electoral materials from the DNA centrally and were also given some free of charge. The main events in Oslo such as the final rally were outlined or planned by the central party as showcases of the national campaign. The Oslo DNA was in any case very closely linked with the central party as their offices were in the same place. Because Oslo

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was just one ‘constituency’, the local party fought a single campaign. In Britain the London Labour Party and its constituency parties fought multiple, independent campaigns. Sectional organizations in the labour movement like the AUF and the Workers’ Sports Association AIF took part in electioneering according to their own resolutions. Labour’s local campaigning was boosted by trade union chapters, the ILP and especially co-operative societies, who were similarly involved. Norwegian trade unions put on events for their members with the purpose of making them vote for the DNA. The AFL acted as paymaster, channelling 75,000 kroner to the DNA centrally and more to the local parties. In Britain, as in Norway, central control of what was happening locally was not extensive. It involved no more than approving nomination of the chosen candidates, liaising with the election agents and communicating with the branches before the election. Head Office would only intervene if an unsuitable candidate was chosen, this generally meant a Communist.188 The divisional Labour parties could otherwise suit themselves, in consonance with the propaganda and general themes of the campaign. Labour organized area conferences where members of the NEC, the central party and election agents in particular regions could come together. Two-way communication about party issues became possible at these. Two important events from 1927 affected electioneering in 1929. The Trade Union and Trade Disputes Act reduced Labour’s affiliated membership by 1.2 million between 1927 and 1928. Many local associations were lost due to the political funds of unions dwindling.189 The response of the party was to set up the Bid for Power Fund, and in practice a lot of Labour’s funding came from the trade unions anyway. There was more money available than in 1931 and 1935, as will be seen later. Also taking place in 1927, the Cheltenham Agreement inaugurated a political alliance with the Co-operative Party. This was an advantage, ‘a source of great strength to Labour’ in the words of Andrew Thorpe, and in this election relations between groups within Labour were not an issue.190 1927, when it reunited with the Social Democrats, was more vital to the future of the DNA than 1930. Linked to the question of how radical the DNA actually was 1918-33, a debate has been raging about whether the moderation of the programme of 1927 or the renewed radicalism of 1930 was more typical of the DNA’s course in the interwar period.191 In both elections the DNA could appeal on the basis of class as well as ideology, since it no longer had a rival for the votes of social democratic workers. In 1930 the DNA spent significant resources in geographical areas where it had hitherto done poorly (Nordland, the South and West of Norway and, locally, the West End of Oslo). In all of these areas it sought the support

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of ordinary workers and peasants, not the groups who were ideologically opposed to Socialism.

3 THE TURNING POINT Britain in 1931 and Norway in 1933

The elections of 1931 in Britain and 1933 in Norway were somehow connected, although it is not obvious on the surface. They were the first elections to take place after the Depression had begun to make its effects apparent. Both Socialist parties considered each respective contest as crunch time, as extremely vital for the future. Labour was in a crisis mode caused by the defection of the MacDonaldites and the lack of preparations on its part for the 1931 election. The DNA had been horrified by the assumption of power by Hitler in Germany and thought, or pretended to think, that Norway might also go fascist. Both parties were actually or purportedly fighting for their existence. The threat against Labour was a lot more severe. The origins of the British general election of 1931, held on 27 October, go back to the financial crisis of August of that year. Most of the plans made for fighting the campaign were laid after that time. This was certainly true as far as propaganda materials were concerned. In the summer of 1931 the Press and Publicity Department was engaged in writing and publishing literature for an autumn campaign, and it was envisaged that those materials would form the basis of Labour’s election propaganda on a subsequent occasion.1 Owing to the realignment of forces caused by MacDonald’s, Snowden’s, Thomas’s and Lord Sankey’s defection to the National Government, most of this literature had to be pulped. The National Government was set up as a ‘temporary’ coalition of the Conservatives, Liberals and the men mentioned above plus a dozen Labour backbenchers. Its sole purpose was to counter the financial crisis, and it was stated that the next general election would be fought on party lines. MacDonald remained as Prime Minister in the new coalition. Straight after the formation of the National Government on 26 August 1931 an emergency meeting of the NEC was held at Labour headquarters

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in Smith Square. At the afternoon session, it was decided that no official reaction to the events be promulgated until the entire labour movement had met.2 At the evening session, the first steps were taken by way of preparing for an imminent election. The NEC, General Council of the TUC and Consultative Committee of the Parliamentary Labour Party having met at half past two, the NEC put out a statement calling for the establishment of a ‘Labour majority’ fund.3 It instructed local branches to put their organizations in readiness, and to help provide the means whereby Labour at a national level might gain a majority. The next day the three national committees met again, issuing a manifesto relating to the political crisis and an appeal for electoral funds over the signatures of the chairmen and secretaries of the three bodies.4 The manifesto and financial appeal were naturally printed in the Daily Herald the next day.5 Arthur Henderson was elected chairman at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party on 28 August, but it was not yet clear that the MacDonaldites’ break with the party was final.6 Sankey was cheered when he turned up at the meeting to explain his actions and to pledge that he would never leave the Labour Party. The DNA’s prospects for the 1933 election were a lot more promising. Although it issued dire warnings about there being a real chance of fascism triumphing, Quisling’s National Socialist party had only been founded earlier that year and contested an election for the first time. The DNA’s éminence grise Martin Tranmæl put it like this at the 1933 conference: ‘The reaction that is most dangerous is not the fascist monkeys. They are easily seen through. The reactionary capitalist parties are much more dangerous in their attempts to create a Norwegian form of fascism.’7 And he added that the coming election would be crucial because if the DNA did not advance significantly, it would be grist to the mill of its opponents and the result would be a reactionary or fascist period.8 Only if the party seriously sought power and made its demands understandable, could that be avoided. Those demands were summed up in the slogan ‘all the people in work’, and the AFL naturally agreed and could play a full role in the mobilization for victory. What had changed was not really the intentions of the non-Socialist parties, but rather the attitude of the DNA. In chapter 2 it was discussed whether it really wanted to win the election of 1930. In 1933 all such doubts had been put out of the way. For the 1933 election the AFL agreed to levy dues on the union federations equivalent to a daily wage for every employed member.9 There was no subterfuge this time. The justification for the AFL directly taking part in the election was the number of anti-union measures introduced by the governments of the non-Socialist parties. A memorandum,

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unfortunately neither dated nor signed, in the AFL files for 1933 shows the thinking behind trade union intervention. There had been a meeting composed of the Secretariat of the AFL, the Central Committee of the DNA, the executives of the youth organization AUF and the workers’ sports association AIF, the DNA’s parliamentary group and the executives of the regional joint trade organization for Oslo and the Oslo DNA to discuss how to combat the new employment law relating to boycotts.10 The law forbade the blockade of enterprises with fewer than ten employees which refused to grant wage agreements, or where only a minority of the workers demanded an agreement.11 Originally the Agrarian government had wanted to outlaw all blockades, but the law was moderated by a new Liberal government in 1933. There were also serious plans for state adjudication of union ballots, greater trade union liability in the case of breach of wage agreement or illegal strikes and compulsory arbitration to settle conflicts.12 Although these measures were inimical to the labour movement, they did not amount to the introduction of fascism. Calling it as such was either rhetoric or the result of undue pessimism caused by Hitler’s takeover in Germany. The DNA saw itself as fighting fascism and reaction at the same time. Its crisis policies geared towards full employment and its organizational extension sought to undermine the appeal of fascism to ordinary people, and by combating the non-Socialist parties, it tried to stop the imposition of reactionary measures from above.13 The DNA’s policy here, repeated from one of the closing statements of the 1930 campaign, was not solely a trick to put pressure on the voters. It believed enough in its own rhetoric about the danger posed by fascists and reactionaries to call for a Scandinavian conference of labour movements to discuss how to fight against fascism.14 The perceived danger also provided the impetus behind the DNA’s own reconciliation with democracy. Until reunification with the Social Democrats in 1927, it had in principle believed in the dictatorship of the proletariat. Scepticism about bourgeois democracy had not entirely receded even in 1933, but as Tranmæl said at the conference referring to dictatorship, ‘In times like these we must not play with fire.’15 The Stavanger DNA’s proposals for the radicalization of the party were decisively rejected. These encompassed stronger links with the Soviet Union, workers’ councils as kernels of a future Socialist republic and the reintroduction of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a guiding principle of the party.16 The new tactic was to blame the non-Socialist parties for being anti-democratic because they had taken away the right of those on the dole to be councillors, and the DNA opined that their voting rights might be next. A very large part of the DNA’s greater success than Labour’s in the

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interwar period can be put down to the circumstances of the 1933 election in Norway compared to the 1931 election in Britain. Some of Labour’s disadvantages were inherent in the political system (the government deciding the timing of an election, a first-past-the-post election against a united opposition) and some had been imposed by Labour’s opponents (the 1927 Trade Union and Trade Disputes Act, the breach of the promise not to hold an election). The combination was lethal and spelled the end of Labour’s hopes of governing in the 1930s. And when these circumstances are juxtaposed to the conditions the DNA was faced with two years later, it strengthens the argument further. The DNA was not thrown unwillingly into an election, but potentially had three years to prepare. It was allowed to exploit the full strength of the Trade Union Confederation, and was funded on a scale that would have seemed dreamlike to Labour. It was the largest party going into the election, but free of all blame for governing in an extremely poor economic climate. A depression was going on and the DNA was the only untried alternative. Quite apart from the great psychological strains Labour was fighting under, its development since 1929 presented a mixed picture. This can be seen from the following table: Table 3.1. Labour membership in 1929 and 1931 1929 1931 Constituency parties 578 608 Individual members 227,847 247,000 Affiliated trade 2,044,279 2,024,216 unionists Affiliated Socialists 58,669 36,847 and Co-ops (Source: Labour Party, Report of Annual Conferences. Thirty-sixth Report (London, 1936), p. 54.)

A gratifying increase in the number of constituency parties and the number of individual members showed that Labour was continuing its expansion across Britain, becoming a truly national party. The decrease in the number of affiliated trade unionists was not severe, but since the total membership of the Trades Union Congress at 3,719,401 was higher than in 1929, the trend was working in the wrong direction for Labour.17 Because of the hurried nature of the election, Labour fielded 79 fewer candidates than in 1929 and therefore did not benefit from the party’s growing size directly. The DNA, on the other hand, was able to present much improved figures for all indicators going into the election of 1933. Apart from when it reunited with the Social Democrats in 1927, the DNA was in its

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strongest period of growth since 1918. Its situation in 1930 and 1933 can be summarized like this: Table 3.2. The DNA’s membership in 1930 and 1933 1930 1933 Number of branches 1,713 2,125 Individual members 80,177 95,327 Affiliated trade 139,591 157,524 unionists Members of youth 14,000 21,000 organization (Sources: Det norske Arbeiderparti, Beretning 1930 (Oslo, 1931), p. 11 and p. 44. Arbeidernes Faglige Landsorganisasjon, Beretning 1930. For sekretariatet ved Halvard Olsen og Alfred Madsen (Oslo, 1932), pp. 104-5. Det norske Arbeiderparti, Beretning 1933 (Oslo, 1934), p. 8. Arbeidernes Faglige Landsorganisasjon, Beretning 1933. For sekretariatet ved Halvard Olsen, Alfred Madsen og Elias Volan (Oslo, 1934), p. 137.)

Since the elections concerned are two years apart, it is not a priority to compare these directly with Labour’s figures. However, Labour had only about three times as many individual members in 1931 (after some growth) as the DNA had in 1930. Since the British population was about 16 times as high, the advantage was very clearly in the DNA’s favour. In Britain the League of Youth received something of an improvement in its status in 1931. The League asked for its branches to be allowed to appoint representatives with full voting powers to constituency and local Labour parties.18 Conference agreed to this on the proviso that such representatives were at least 18 years of age. The League became affiliated to the Youth Hostels Association, the Socialist Youth International and the National Workers’ Sports Association in the course of the year. The first and third of these showed the League’s role in the creation of, and participation in, labour culture. It recruited on the basis of its recreational activities and its radical, anti-militaristic ideology.19 It wanted to strengthen the political side and part of the proof lies in joining the Socialist Youth International, which it did upon the basis of having 3,000 members.20 For 1929 it was suggested earlier that the League of Youth may have had 20,000 members. Can the League have shrunk so dramatically? These are clearly uncertain and error-ridden figures. The annual reports of Labour give few details about what the League was up to and no figures for the number of branches until later. The number of AUF branches in Norway is known; it had 410 of them in 1933. There is no doubt that this organization was substantial. As for the press, there had not been significant changes since the earlier elections. Labour’s number of papers was only slightly below what had

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been the case in 1930. In 1931 it had 1 daily, 16 weekly and 69 monthly newspapers. These figures hide one amazing success story. Despite the views among some Labourites that the prestige of the Daily Herald had diminished,21 the increase in circulation was phenomenal after 1929. In that year the Daily Herald passed into the hands of the TUC, and soon the General Council reached a deal with Odhams, the publishing firm. Both the TUC and the annual conference of Labour agreed to Odhams’s vision for the newspaper, and accepted the arrangement whereby the political and industrial coverage of the Daily Herald would continue.22 The entire movement took part in a campaign before the launch of the new version on 17 March 1930, and in the first week it reached a circulation of 1 million copies or four times the previous circulation. A debate then ensued about whether to ask the new readers to join Labour immediately or wait until they had got used to the newspaper.23 The party organizers thought it best to press ahead, manifested in the slogan ‘Every member a Herald reader and every Herald reader a member.’24 Circulation remained at that level for some time, later in 1931 it reached about 1.25 million copies.25 From the beginning of the year at least, a campaign was in place to raise the circulation to 2 million by the anniversary of the new version.26 This level would eventually be reached, but not during the 1931 election. The DNA, like Labour, had lost newspapers since the last election. There remained 43 newspapers of which 21 were dailies, and the rest were published weekly or more often (up to four times a week). Since 1930 plans for a nationwide edition of Arbeiderbladet had been realized, and Fram, as it was called, was distributed to 65,000 households for some considerable time prior to the election.27 The party press had a direct role to play in the election campaign. With funding from the AFL, a bureau was set up to channel standardized written propaganda and pictures to the press.28 The total circulation of the DNA’s newspapers is gauged to be 192,244 in 1933.29 In the same year the Daily Herald alone had a circulation of 2 million.30 It is hard to compare the DNA’s decentralized press with Labour’s portfolio which relied to a great extent on the Daily Herald. Without circulation figures for the other papers the task is best left to future work, but neither Socialist party enjoyed an unquestioned advantage here. There were some problems at this time between Labour and elements among its component parts. This is evident from the record of a meeting held early in 1931. Two ILP candidatures were held up in the constituencies of Glasgow Kelvingrove and Camborne.31 A letter was sent to Glasgow confirming the NEC’s policy of not endorsing candidates on the financial responsibility of the ILP. This was a policy change from 1929 when the ILP had sponsored no less than 54 candidates. It suggested

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Labour wanted a greater degree of control over its MPs or its constituent parts. Indeed, what precipitated the separation of the ILP from Labour was the 1931 Labour conference decision to uphold the standing orders against recalcitrant members.32 The ILP wanted a free hand to vote according to the principles of Socialism. Relations were never put on a completely even keel again. In the election six unendorsed ILP candidates were returned to Westminster, and are usually counted as in the Labour group until 1932 when the ILP disaffiliated from Labour. As for the Co-operative Party there was always a risk of tension, since two separate parties were in a perpetual working relationship. For instance, the new programme of the Co-operative Party had to be sent to the Joint Standing Committee to see whether it was compatible with Labour and the Nation.33 At a later stage a Labour official, George Dallas, raised the issue of what was to be done about the monopolizing of divisional Labour parties by the Co-operative organization where it had the candidate, saying that ‘matters were becoming rather serious.’34 As an initial response, it was decided that the National Agent should prepare a report for the committee. At least during the crisis it became clear that Labour in opposition continued to have the support of the Co-operative Party.35 The latter’s National Executive and Co-operative Parliamentary Group affirmed that its MPs would be part of the Official Opposition under Henderson. The bodies completely approved that its minister A. V. Alexander had resigned along with the government. Any bureaucratic problems about who should be in control of constituency Labour parties would thus not have major repercussions at the national level, though it illustrated the semi-independent nature of the Co-operative MPs which was potentially a problem for Labour. The federal nature of Labour, encompassing as it did two other parties, cannot have been an advantage to it. By the first-past-the-post electoral system neither of these parties had the opportunity to succeed as independent entities. Both depended completely on an electoral deal with Labour. Having made such deals, the ILP and the Co-operative Party took privileges which went beyond what might be expected. They wanted to be parties within the party, whose adherents would see Labour just as a caucus and pledge their real loyalty to either the ILP or the Co-operative Party. It took Labour a measure of effort to put across that this was not acceptable to it. The ILP could not be an independent faction with its own MPs, disregarding Labour policies. The Co-operative members could not be allowed to control the constituency party where the candidate was theirs. If so, Labour members in that division would in reality be excluded from a say in how the branch was run. As a comparative point it does not seem to have impacted on Labour’s larger prospects. The DNA had a

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similar relationship with the AUF, effectively an independent entity. Those relations were more loaded in the DNA’s favour, however, because the AUF relied on money from the main party and did not have its own representation in Parliament. So it could make whatever resolutions it liked, even contrary to the DNA’s policies, but unlike the ILP it had no means to actually carry out those resolutions. Purely in electoral terms, all three parties or factions were assets to Labour and the DNA. Labour approached the election of 1931 in a hasty and improvised manner. Anything else could not be expected owing to the shock it had suffered. A series of moves were taken before the party conference at Scarborough at the beginning of October. It was decided then that the conference should be terminated two days early on Wednesday 7 October in the event of the announcement of a general election while it was going on.36 Owing to the sea change that had taken place, Labour was now at the mercy of its opponents. It was the Conservatives who were clamouring for an election to capitalize on the crisis. The Liberals could not afford one, and while Labour claimed to be ‘confident of victory’, its funds did not allow a winning campaign. It had not been a success in government and was unlikely to be returned to power for some time, despite Sir Patrick Gower, a senior civil servant, believing Labour was sure to win an election in 4-6 months’ time and an immediate election therefore being imperative.37 The announcement of a general election did indeed come on 6 October, and conference had to end early.38 In closing it Henderson revealed that with limited resources, Labour would have to concentrate on marginal constituencies.39 He drew attention to the number of agricultural conferences that had been held since the previous year (35) and that, on many occasions, Labour propagandists had been working in purely rural areas. As Henderson reminded the conference, Labour was doing something to have success in rural areas. Under the auspices of the Agricultural Campaign Committee conferences on this topic were being held across the land.40 At the conclusion of the previous election campaign, the party had reasoned that the key to a majority lay in rural constituencies.41 Now it had set up a ‘majority fund’, but reluctantly had to postpone its efforts to gain those seats for the party. Labour knew it was engaged in a damage-limitation exercise.42 When Henderson on the eve of polling said Labour could not be destroyed because it was entrenched in the heart of the masses, it was a tacit admission that the party could not win.43 Even if Labour had been fighting a normal election it would have struggled in the countryside. There is no doubt that it prioritized such areas, publishing many pamphlets and leaflets and setting up schemes to

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make a breakthrough. But the obstacles loomed large. Dr Christopher Addison, Minister of Agriculture in the Labour government, was anxious to get the rural campaign underway in November 1930, however, no money for special propaganda was available from the General Fund.44 And the difficulties associated with government made Labour unpopular with its supporters in the countryside. In February 1931 the NEC received a delegation from the National Union of Agricultural Workers. They had circulated a memorandum in advance dealing with the Government and farm workers.45 Branches of Labour and the NUAW had also sent resolutions complaining about the absence of an agricultural bill in Parliament to push unemployment insurance through for rural workers. It was by far their greatest grievance, and the memorandum came with a note giving the history of this vexed question. Accordingly, it was the first demand of the delegation, along with the abolition of the tied cottage and a strengthening of the Central Wages Board – all Labour policies. But Will Holmes, the leader of the delegation, said bitterness was spreading in the countryside due to the assurances received from the annual conferences of Labour not being followed up. He put it that the agricultural labourer was getting tired of the party. In Norway the DNA was transferring money to the Forestry and Agricultural Workers’ Union in preparation for the election. As discussed earlier, the DNA did not prioritize this type of workers in 1930 despite the strength of their union. Nor did it in the 1933 election, but the goal was to counteract a possible growth of fascism, to which the DNA imagined peasants were especially susceptible. This also suggests the DNA genuinely thought fascism was a threat. The party had not alienated agricultural workers yet as it had not been in government, and the DNA’s number of votes had risen in the countryside in the 1927 and 1930 elections. If Labour had steered clear of 10 Downing Street, it could have adopted a ‘told you so’ attitude to the financial crisis. Many of its members believed that what was happening in the autumn of 1931 was the predicted breakdown of capitalism. Now the party was facing an election fought on the financial and political crisis, which many voters would have associated with its government, and it was vitally important that Labour had clear proposals for dealing with these issues. Thus when the NEC, General Council of the TUC and Consultative Committee of the Parliamentary Labour Party met on 27 August 1931, they drew up and issued a ‘manifesto’ or alternative crisis plan. The statement argued that the new coalition government was determined to attack the standard of living of the workers to deal with a difficult situation caused by private, unaccountable banking interests.46 The proposals included mobilization of

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3. The class dimension of the 1931 election. By permission of the People’s History Museum

the country’s foreign investments, a temporary suspension of the Sinking Fund which repaid the National Debt, taxing fixed-interest bearing securities and other unearned income and reducing the burden of war debt.47 These policies would be credible enough if Labour achieved a majority at the election. This was what Labour claimed to be fighting for, but up against nearly all its opponents united under its former leader, and not even having been successful in government, its chances were nonexistent. It is a measure of the upheaval caused by the political crisis that in the 1931 election Lloyd George, who had been repeatedly ridiculed and had his motives questioned by Labour in 1929, should become somewhat of an ally, while Philip Snowden, one of Labour’s leaders in 1929, should provide the most devastating attack on the party. The rapprochement of Lloyd George and Labour began at the beginning of October, when the Liberal MPs who were serving in the National Government agreed to a general election.48 The declared aims of the National Government had been to act as a temporary caretaker during the financial crisis, and its leading participants had specifically assured the public that the next general election would be fought on party lines. Remaining a free trader, Lloyd George’s response was to tell Liberal voters in a broadcast that they

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could opt for Labour if no Liberal pledged absolutely to free trade was standing in their constituency.49 A great many Labour candidates printed Lloyd George’s statement in their election addresses, and Labour decided not to oppose the ‘Welsh wizard’ and his son and daughter who were standing as Liberals. In this way the party could make free trade vs. protection a rallying issue during the campaign. Andrew Thorpe notes that Labour candidates talked about going into battle against the tariff enemy before election day.50 In 1931 Labour’s official campaign opening can be said to have been 8 October. That was the day after the dissolution of Parliament and the day of Arthur Henderson’s return from Scarborough with his principal officers. It was reported that the Labour electoral machine would now ‘begin work at the fullest possible pressure.’51 Labour hoped to nominate 500 candidates, and although this was significantly fewer than last time, it might be enough to do well. Constituency parties were urged to bring candidates into the field even if it was late, and were told that emergency procedures meant that Head Office might rubber-stamp their nomination.52 An official at Transport House claimed there were signs of great Labour enthusiasm across the country. This was because many Labourites had been unhappy with their government’s performance.53 ‘The Labour Movement […] saw its Government go out of office with a sigh of relief – certainly with ill-concealed satisfaction.’ 54 Henderson left Scarborough with £10,500 in his pocket towards the election fund, contributed by the trade unions. The TUC had been increasingly alienated by the high-handedness of MacDonald’s government, but the political crisis meant that it might once again play a leading role.55 Although Labour was hampered by not knowing the exact election date until its conference had started, it was able to distribute its materials relatively quickly after that. The election was called on 6 October for 27 October. Labour closed down its conference on 7 October and within two days had sent the election manifesto to its branches.56 Then everything save the Daily Herald’s ‘Mauve Book’ containing facts and arguments was put in circulation for Monday 12 October, and most of it had been sent out by Saturday 17 October. There were fewer materials than in 1929, and the party centrally spent only half the amount it did on that occasion. In Norway two years later there was also increased trade union involvement in the campaign over 1930. The day-to-day running of the campaign was in the hands of the central party, the county and local parties (especially the Oslo DNA, which was responsible for the most visible part of the national campaign). But the lines along which they worked had been drawn up by the Joint Committee of the AFL and the DNA, the Extended Finance Committee which supplanted the Joint

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Committee, along with the working executive of it. The Extended Finance Committee that was set up consisted of two representatives from the regional joint trade organization for Oslo and its environs, two from the AFL’s Secretariat, two from the Oslo DNA, two from the AIF, two from the AUF, in addition to the Joint Committee itself.57 The composition of the Extended Finance Committee was unanimously approved by the deciding body of the AFL’s Secretariat on 14 July 1933.58 This meeting also agreed the financial arrangement for the funding of the election campaign, i.e. extra dues amounting to a daily wage for an employee, incumbent on every federation and to be paid to the AFL as soon as possible. The formal justification for this – given in the undated, unsigned memorandum – had been stated in its earlier meeting of 3 July.59 The Boycott Law, i.e. relating to blockades, would put great difficulties in the way of trade union organization. It was precisely in the smaller enterprises where the AFL wanted to expand,60 having been established in the larger enterprises for some years. The Secretariat wished to discuss the appropriate response of the organized working class, and it was agreed that all means should be utilized in the election campaign and to extend the workers’ political and trade organizations. There was no appetite for meeting the challenges of hostile legislation through strike action. In 1931 employers had locked out 60,000 workers during an industrial conflict from February to August, and another 26,000 had been locked out for part of this period.61 The AFL had held its position well, but memories of such a vast conflict made the organization reluctant to contemplate industrial action and it chose to throw itself onto the political scene instead. Because the DNA saw itself as a movement rather than just another party, there was no definitive point when ordinary activity ceased and electioneering started. Taking the long view, the annual report states that preparations for the election got underway as early as October 1932.62 In that month nationwide agitation was started to put the organization on a good footing in advance of the election year 1933. The momentum behind this carried through to January and February, which normally were dull months for the party. Enlisting new members and trying to expand the organization continued after the conference of May 1933, with notable meetings held during the summer. Even so, August 1933 marked the conscious start of the campaign with tours of the country.63 The first wave of these tours was completed in the middle of September, according to party secretary Hjalmar Dyrendahl. After that, campaigning would intensify with more tours, more stand-alone speeches and work done by the local parties. The AFL tried to keep some control of what was happening. The AUF

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asked for 7,950 kroner (£403) on top of the 5,000 kroner which the Extended Finance Committee had budgeted for its use, and this was in fact granted.64 Before that, however, the chairmen (Alfred Madsen, a parliamentarian but here representing the AFL, and Oscar Torp) were asked to look more closely at how the money had been spent. Thus a letter was written by Madsen to the AUF on 27 September asking for further details, and the AUF’s answer provides real insight into how it ran its campaign.65 There were four elements to the organization’s exertions: (1) tours in every region, (2) the printing of a separate poster, (3) a brochure containing its National Executive’s address to the youth of the nation, and (4) the election issue of its newspaper Arbeiderungdommen.66 The 1933 campaign was fought with seriousness and efficiency. There were vastly more electoral materials than had been the case in 1930. Taken together almost a million copies of the brochures were printed in 1933, compared to 150,000 in 1930. Counting the materials other than the brochures, there was so much propaganda there was almost one item for every Norwegian. And there was a psychological shift from 1930 too. The DNA was clearly aiming for victory and began positing democracy as a laudable system. One of its brochures was simply called ‘Democracy’, and treated the subject in a complimentary manner as did ‘Society – The Voter’s Reference Guide’, which explained the political system. Another brochure was called ‘Norway under the Greenland Dictatorship’, which referred to privately funded Norwegian imperialism on Greenland. The title was a misnomer, but clearly signified that the DNA did not agree with such adventurism. The labour movement found itself under such pressure from employers and their political allies that it was forced to accept democracy as a means of reducing, not abolishing, exploitation.67 So democracy was no longer spurned, and another explanation was that the party felt it could achieve something through parliamentary means. This came out in other brochures produced for the election like ‘All the People in Work’, ‘All the People’s Struggle against Crisis and Need’ and ‘The Road is Clear’. The three other brochures were called ‘A Saturday Shopping Trip’, ‘Out of the Speculators’ Nets’ and ‘The Farmer and the Election’.68 Copies of resolutions from the conference on respectively the crisis in the countryside and fascism were printed and distributed as propaganda. For the first time, the programme was available in the minority language nynorsk, thus improving the DNA’s prospects in the counter-cultural areas. There was an electoral newspaper for women, and another newspaper called ‘The People in Work’ was sent to households in the countryside.69 The AUF and AIF joined in the campaign, and both produced election editions of their newspapers. The DNA also had an election film called ‘All the People in Work’, which was the main theme of

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4. ‘Town and Land Hand in Hand’. ‘All the People in Work’. By permission of Arbeiderbevegelsens Arkiv og Bibliotek

its campaign. Of the 12 copies which existed, five had sound. In its campaign of 1931 Labour suffered from lack of resources and only having a little time in which to prepare its materials. As a result there was no Speaker’s Handbook this year, but notes for speakers were instead circulated on cards.70 Seven different kinds of leaflets were sent free to the constituency parties, and they could purchase another 32 different types. As before there was a contrast with the DNA in Labour choosing leaflets over brochures. Only three different pamphlets were in use in the 1931 election among the specially prepared materials. The party also used a newspaper called The Labour Elector and the ‘Mauve Book’, containing 100 election points, which was printed by the Daily Herald. 71 Henderson began his campaigning tour in his own constituency of Burnley, Lancashire on 13 October. At his adoption meeting he came close to describing the former leader as a traitor. He said MacDonald was allowing himself to be used by his life-long opponents against his life-long political friends, who had faithfully served him.72 Moreover, it was the case that MacDonald had been brooding on serving in a national government for several months.73 By splitting the party and holding an early election, MacDonald and the others who became ‘National Labour’ severely

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damaged the cause. It was even worse when National Labour personalities attacked their former party. The most vitriolic speech of the campaign was given by Snowden on the wireless on 17 October, when he described his former party’s policies in the following terms: ‘I hope you have read the election programme of the Labour Party. It is the most fantastic and impracticable document ever put before the electors […] It is Bolshevism run mad.’74 This may have been the first ever ‘negative’ political broadcast in Britain.75 MacDonald held up worthless high-denomination bank notes from the German hyper-inflation of 1923 at his election meetings.76 This, of course, was an implicit threat. To complement the importance of the Oslo DNA, it has been decided to devote some attention to London. Here the local Labour party had had a setback with the London County Council elections earlier in the year.77 Its conclusion was that the organization must be improved, as it was not thought the bad results had anything to do with Labour policy on the L. C. C. Whatever the reason, the London party was in any case due to fight local elections in the boroughs on 2 November, so preparations for the general election could be combined with the pre-planned campaign. Of course, even after the Labour government had fallen it was not clear exactly when an election would take place. Thus it was decided to hold a conference of Labour MPs, candidates, representatives from Borough and Divisional parties in London, and also some from Surrey, on 17 October, just ten days before what would be polling day.78 This again illustrates the difficulty of not knowing the election date in advance. And although London Labour was fighting an election anyway, its resources were not tremendous, as can be seen from its decision not to engage in a 16-sheet poster campaign owing to lack of funds.79 The Committee did, however, authorize the sale of leaflets which could be bought by local branches. There is very little about the political crisis in the papers of London Labour, mostly because it happened suddenly and taking the delays of printing into account. Moreover, it was a crisis on the national level which in an immediate sense did not bother the workings of London Labour. Its net effect was simply that it lost the election and that Herbert Morrison could rejoin the Executive Committee as secretary, having ceased to be a minister. It was largely due to him that London Labour was probably the strongest local party.80 Morrison’s was the main voice to explain to ordinary members in London what had happened to their government. He spoke at South Hackney on 7 September, and his speech was reproduced in written form.81 What he said gave canvassers and other party activists the arguments they needed for the campaign. The financial crisis had come about through what Morrison called ‘anti-British propaganda’ because it lowered not only the prestige of the Labour government, but

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the reputation of the nation as financially responsible. Foreign financiers as well as domestic investors had believed absurd stories about the policies of the government, had moved out of Sterling and precipitated an economic crisis which could not just be ignored. But the lesson was that Labour must become truly Socialist again. Merely redistributing wealth in ‘a nationalized charity organization society’ would not lead to Socialism. As members returned to party work to face an impending general election, however, they should remember that Labour had in the two and a quarter years of its government made significant progress in foreign and domestic affairs.82 A pamphlet called ‘The Work of the Labour Government’, published by Head Office, bore witness to that fact. This was essentially how Labour presented its case nationally. Its government had done reasonably well, but it lacked a majority. In order to implement its policies fully, it needed the House of Commons behind it. That was what it sought to achieve. The MacDonaldites, now calling themselves ‘National Labour’, had betrayed the party and had no right to the Labour name in any form. Labour had, moreover, stuck to its principles by refusing to make cuts, which showed that it remained uncorrupted. Therefore it was absolutely essential to deny the story put about by opponents that the Labour ministers had agreed to most of the cuts anyway. Henderson had not committed himself to a single proposal until all the options were laid on the table, it was underlined.83 He and his colleagues had not seen the complete scheme, as they had resigned when told the bankers were insisting on cuts in unemployment benefit. Labour warned that if the National Government won, the humiliating and inquisitive means test would come into force for ‘hundreds and thousands of unemployed men and women’.84 The massive funding of the DNA’s campaign in 1933 by the AFL, and also the party’s greater belief in parliamentary democracy, meant that it fought more vigorously than in 1930. Most agitation took place from the middle of August and lasted until polling day on 16 October. In its annual report for 1933 the DNA ordered its agitational tours by county, and the data shows that it took the whole country in its stride. More than two fifths of the party’s campaigning took place in the counter-cultural and consequently difficult areas of the South and West Country, such as Agder, Rogaland, Hordaland, Sogn og Fjordane and Møre og Romsdal.85 In the north of the country, the DNA’s local weak spot Nordland received much more attention than Troms, where the party was strong. Relatively little attention was paid to good counties for the DNA like Buskerud and Telemark in the east of the country. They were visited by only one speaker each. There is no consistent pattern that the best counties were neglected. Nord-Trøndelag was visited by six speakers during the election.

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The most noticeable difference between the campaigns of 1930 and 1933 was the vastly greater resources available in the latter. The preparations for the campaign were drawn up by an Extended Finance Committee appointed by the Joint Committee of the AFL and the DNA. During its meeting on 21 September 1933 it was stated that 409,900 kroner (£20,762) had been received by the election fund, and that 262,100 kroner (£13,276) had been paid out already.86 In retrospect the accounting shows that 551,400 kroner (£27,929) was spent by the DNA centrally during the election.87 This compares with a sum in the region of 75,000 kroner (£4,128) in 1930. The funding enabled a very wide range of activities and sub-organizations to have money channelled towards them. The table below shows how the money was spent.88 Table 3.3. DNA central expenditure 1933 Item Grant (kroner) County and district parties 126,082. 55 The party press 107,769. 60 Fram (national version of Arbeiderbladet) 73,088. 29 Electoral newspapers 19,499. 73 Workers’ Sports Association (AIF) 9,125. 00 Youth organization (AUF) 12,950. 00 Women’s sections 4,687. 05 Workers’ Educational Association (AOF) 10,000.00 Brochures and flyers 81,648. 70 The election film 28,904. 50 Posters 6,135. 26 Canvassing and meetings 47,708. 12 Miscellaneous inc. grant to Forestry and 23,778. 48 Agricultural Workers’ Union Grand total 551,377. 28 (Source: Arbeiderbevegelsens Arkiv og Bibliotek, Oslo: Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1933, sak nr. 553-754, Da 0139, folder marked Stortingsvalget Sak nr. 601 1933.)

The Oslo DNA’s expenses in this election amounted to 65,210 kroner (£3,303).89 40,000 kroner (£2,026) came from central funds. With extra dues being levied, individual trade unions had less money with which to fund local electioneering, but despite this the Oslo DNA received 29,890 kroner from this source. In Oslo after the official opening of electioneering on Sunday 24 September, there were public meetings every day until the election on 16 October, with the exception of Saturday 30 September and Saturday 14 October.90 There was an increase in the level of activity with regard to meetings over 1930, but in that year also a very

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full list of meetings had been held.91 With a few exceptions, all the official campaign meetings were full and in most cases some people had to be turned away.92 The Labour ‘Majority Fund’ reached the total of £30,350 by the end of the campaign, including interest earned.93 That was not a bad achievement at short notice. Labour decided not to spend the entire proceeds from the ‘Majority Fund’, which was a wise policy given that 1931 was about saving the party rather than winning. This is evidenced by the party referring to ‘the most vital electoral struggle in the history of our Party.’ It also said the penalty of losing would be ‘too awful to look upon twice.’94 Labour spent a total of £19,340 on grants to candidates, speakers’ expenses, printing the election literature and advertising. Labour managed to nominate 490 candidates, a little short of its target, and they spent a total of £179,265.95 Adding this to central expenditure and subtracting grants to candidates (£11,872), the total sum arrived at is £186,733. This is a fair amount below what was spent in 1929. Expenditure per candidate was lower, and there were fewer of them. There were four main reasons why it did not manage to reach its target of 500, or why it was not able to match its previous tally of 569.96 Difficult constituencies experienced a dearth of suitable candidates, and then there were financial problems. In addition, the ILP, or constituency parties sponsored by the ILP, put forward 22 candidates who were not endorsed by the NEC. Lastly, there were problems finding candidates to run against the MacDonaldites in constituencies where it had been assumed the sitting MP would be running for Labour. It was, moreover, the deliberate policy of the central party this time not to encourage backward constituencies to put a candidate into the fray. In terms of electoral appeals, there was a very interesting parallel between Labour in 1931 and the DNA in 1933. Labour did not claim throughout the campaign that the National Government was akin to Fascists, but the editorial in the eve-of-poll issue of the Daily Herald alleged that there was a resemblance.97 It said that the Government admired the Fascists, and that MacDonald was thinking in terms of a dictatorship with himself as a dictator and Parliament transformed into a ‘Council of State’ along Fascist lines. MacDonald’s Conservative supporters were even more comfortable with the idea. If the Government were allowed to remain in power, it would attempt the setting up of a dictatorship under a parliamentary guise. The very existence of democracy was at stake, and already the labour movement and the TUC were being seen as dangerous threats to the state. The DNA also suggested that its non-Socialist opponents were similar to the Fascists. Defeating fascism was a theme in its campaign, as when it told students they must join the fight against homegrown fascism, warning

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about the persecution of the Jews in Germany.98 It believed that fascism could emerge in Norway through the non-Socialist parties originating more right-wing policies, through unemployed youth and peasants embracing the ideology and through severe restrictions on the trade unions. The Boycott Law was regarded as the thin end of the wedge in this regard. Labour’s electoral appeals were affected principally by the circumstances of the 1931 election. Unlike what might perhaps be expected, it did not fall back on its most loyal supporters in the propaganda. But there was a lack of coordination between its appeals and its electoral strategy. In particular, while withdrawing from a great many rural constituencies, it continued to write leaflets intended for the people who lived in such areas. Most candidates wrote about day-to-day policies that were relevant to the election, 93 per cent of candidates said they were free traders who were against tariffs, 96 per cent mentioned the cuts in unemployment benefit and 75 per cent wrote about opposing cuts in the salaries of civil servants.99 Labour had wanted to focus as much on the rural classes as it had done in 1929. During 1930 the party published a total of 20 new leaflets, and of these at least five concerned countryside issues. It may seem strange that Labour had such a great focus on those areas. Merely 6.1 per cent of the occupied population earned its living from the land .100 There are probably two reasons. The first is that it wanted to be seen as a national party, and agriculture was still an important sector. The second is that, according to Michael Kinnear’s figures, there were 86 constituencies with more than 30 per cent agriculturalists.101 If Labour was to discount all of these, it needed to do correspondingly better in urban areas, which might also be difficult. The salient points from the leaflets were provided in the Notes for Speakers. They emphasized public land ownership and control, and for agricultural workers the provision of untied cottages, unemployment insurance and a National Wages Board to look into conditions of employment.102 The first two points were repeated later in a section especially for farm workers, along with the Labour Housing (Agricultural Workers) Act and the 40,000 houses which should be built. There was less focus on farmers in 1931 than in 1929. Labour was somewhat ambiguous about them. Farmers were among the ‘useful classes’ in the countryside along with their employees and some professionals, including veterinary surgeons, lawyers, bankers, teachers and parsons.103Although some of the historical literature portrays Labour as opportunistic in its concern for the land and mostly out to win votes, 104 the party had genuine plans for the country. It wanted to nationalize the land, turn farmers into ‘managers’ and raise living standards for agricultural workers. Since these were

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analogous to its industrial plans, they were scarcely less important. As for those materials which made it onto the campaign trail, a noteworthy leaflet is headlined ‘Tell Them This Story in the Village Inn.’ It explained how 150,000 farm workers, tired of their lack of opportunities, had left the land in the previous ten years. When Labour was in office it passed a Land Act allowing farm workers, the unemployed, ex-servicemen and others to settle on allotments and become smallholders.105 Before being driven out Labour provided for 64,000 applicants to settle on the land, and had prepared to place another 120,000 when the National Government took over and ended the policy as an economy measure. This was a well-worded statement because it showed that Labour was leading farm workers to a better life, whereas its successors in government did not have any such measures. In the flyer ‘“National Government” Attacks Farm Workers’ Labour showed that its opponents were promoting illegality in the country.106 Since many employers were not observing Labour’s 1924 Agricultural Wages Act, in October 1929 the new Labour government had appointed a team of special investigators to make enquiries on every farm, visiting each district systematically. The team found that one in five farmers was paying less than the minimum wage. The National Government had dismissed the special investigators, and only Labour could pledge to bring them back and strengthen the Wages Act. A second leaflet also juxtaposed National Government inaction or worse with Labour’s positive policies for the agricultural worker. Appealing to these workers in the boldest way possible, it said that their wages would be cut, working hours extended and thus their standard of living lowered.107 The justification for this claim was that the National Government had already cut the pay of ‘tens of thousands’ of employees. It also mentioned that unemployment benefit had been reduced, resulting in 800,000 workers being handed over to the Poor Law. The aim of this flyer was to scare farm workers, working against the general sense of national calamity put about by the National Government. The reverse page listed what Labour would do for agricultural workers. Among the policies listed were abolishing tied cottages, introducing a scheme of unemployment insurance, safeguarding wages and providing allotments and smallholdings. A majority of Labour candidates (56 per cent) wrote about agriculture in their statements and many of these also focused on what Labour could do for farmers.108 There was real continuity with the preceding election despite the differing circumstances. Farmers received more attention in 1929, but this may have been due to the loss of literature associated with the secession of the Prime Minister. Agricultural labourers remained the main target group. In 1931 Andrew Thorpe believes import boards were somewhat

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embarrassing and therefore ignored by Labour candidates, anxious to portray themselves as free traders.109 They were sometimes hidden under schemes to stabilize prices of imports or of national control, for instance in the statements of W. Holmes of East Norfolk, E. J. C. Neep of Lowestoft and M. W. Moore of Grantham. But other candidates, for instance S. S. Wilson of Saffron Walden and Frank Wynne Davis of Stroud, openly mentioned import boards. Dr Haden-Guest of Wycombe in Buckinghamshire specifically stated that regulation should happen through import boards, not tariffs.110 Wynne Davis of Stroud did not allow his support of import boards to get in the way of claiming to be a free-trade candidate. Although probably intended to work in tandem with land nationalization and associated with emerging Socialism, they did contradict the frequent insistence that Labour was a free-trade party, as mentioned by Snowden in his notorious ‘madcap finance’ anti-Labour speech.111 He had been against them when he was with Labour, and now he could vent his true feelings in public.112 The DNA’s policies towards the rural classes were similar to those of Labour. Because the former had two years more to think through its understanding of countryside issues, there was a greater emphasis on the theme of common interests between farmers and wage earners. The DNA asked the worker and peasant, the fisherman and clerk to understand that they were dependant on each other, and therefore should solve the economic and political difficulties together.113 Appeals to unity based on common interests were probably more convincing than merely stating that peasants and workers were both part of ‘the working people’. Asking farmers to see their crisis as part of a wider picture therefore advanced the issue. If wages were reduced, the prices of farm produce would decrease and the crisis worsen. This was stressed in a brochure addressed to peasants.114 Two years earlier, with all that implies for a developing understanding of counter-cyclical economics, some Labour candidates had had the same insight, although they applied the observation to shopkeepers rather than farmers. Examples of candidates who argued in this way were: Dorothy Woodman of Aylesbury, Arthur Wiltshire of South Dorset, Joshua Ritson of Durham, M. Philips Price of Whitehaven, Sir Robert Young of Newton, Lancashire and F. J. Wise of Harborough.115 This view was quite prevalent, but was not the basis for a town-country alliance or the theoretical underpinning for why Labour could represent both farmers and farm workers. The DNA saw its role as working to build bridges between urban and rural communities, therefore its second slogan in 1933 was ‘Town and Land Hand in Hand’. Accordingly, peasants and fishermen were highly important target groups for the DNA in 1933 as well. It continued to

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favour smaller farmers, the 80-90 per cent with about 12 acres or so, and noted that the Agrarians wanted lower subsidies for these people.116 The Agrarian Party’s policy was redistribution from the average farmer to the larger grain-producing farmers. The DNA was therefore tactically right to target the rural classes. Noting that a very large percentage of the farmers who retained possession of their properties were indebted up to the full value of their farms or even above, it perceived that the threat of eviction lay like a shadow over their minds.117 The novelty was the clear diagnosis of this state of affairs as resulting from lack of purchasing power on the part of workers and clerks. They were the great majority of consumers, but the reduction in economic activity and the lower wages meant they were not able to buy all the food they required.118 The DNA also had concrete, practical policies aimed at the countryside. Because it enjoyed the luxury of being in opposition, it could explain what it wanted to do rather than what it had done. In February 1933 the DNA had launched its new crisis plan, including extra spending on agriculture and forestry to the tune of seven million kroner (£354,556) and debt relief to peasants and fishermen of four million kroner.119 These were voted down by the non-Socialist parties. Going further back, in 1931 DNA had proposed to reduce interest for debtors in the Smallholding and Housing Bank to 3 per cent, with the same arrangement for borrowers in the Mortgage Bank (Hypotekbanken) in comparable circumstances.120 This was also voted down. Its policies for peasants in the election comprised support for the peasant’s right to ownership of the land, land allotments with secure work and life conditions for the new cultivators and effective measures against interest exploitation, such as debt settlement with real improvements for farmers. The DNA’s pamphlet for fishermen was written by parliamentarian Kristian Berg, whose trade was fishing. Entitled ‘Out of the Speculators’ Nets’, it explained that the party wanted to liberate the fishing industry from exploitation,121 a reference partly to the banks and partly to the middlemen who bought the fish. Cutting out middlemen was a good Socialist policy, also shared by Labour on farming. Party intellectual Ole Colbjørnsen’s crisis plan listed 1.5 million kroner (£75,976) for contributions to fishermen for the purpose of acquiring equipment.122 The reasoning was that at the present time the majority of fishermen were so needy, they could not afford to maintain their current means of production, nor obtain such new tools as they required. Their incomes were far below those of pre-war times.123 It had become necessary to support fishing communities by extraordinary works programmes, so for the fiscal year 1932-33 the DNA had proposed 1.5 million kroner for this purpose.124 The non-Socialist parties had blocked the measure, but in June

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1933 the Government had agreed to consider Berg’s other suggestion for the state to build roads and harbours in the coastal districts to inject credit into these hard-pressed communities. Implicitly this could be presented by the DNA as proof that its policies were working somewhat in opposition, notwithstanding the meanness of the non-Socialist parties. The DNA’s agitation to fishermen fitted in well with the general theme of the campaign. ‘Wake up peasants and fishermen,’ it proclaimed, ‘the time to strike down your organizations will come once the fascists have finished with the trade unions.’125 One of these organizations, the Smallholder Association (Småbrukerlaget), was steadily orienting itself away from the Liberals and towards the DNA in the 1930s. This was especially true from 1933, when the leadership was replaced. The Association wanted to be linked to a rising movement, and it took up active crisis policies of its own.126 Because women below 30 had been enfranchised in time for the 1929 election in Britain, there had been a very good reason to focus on female voters in that election. Appeals intended specifically for women were also issued in 1931. One of these illustrates well that Labour ostensibly ran against protectionism. Entitled ‘Tariffs and the Housewife’ it claimed that the National Government’s desire for a free hand would mean ‘dearer food and therefore less food.’127 Since housewives often managed the budget of a family, this point about tariffs was addressed to them in particular, a standard Labour device. Exactly the same argument was made in the leaflet ‘This is for you Madam’.128 Here there was talk of how staple foods like bread, butter, bacon and cheese would all be more expensive ‘when the Tories impose food taxes.’ The message was to vote Labour to make one’s money go further― an example of its typical policy of improving the purchasing power of working people. In a leaflet on the Labour government’s achievements, pensions for women were the first measure described.129 Thousands of women, the party claimed, were unjustifiably denied a pension by the Conservatives. Labour’s Pension Act of 1929 would ultimately benefit more than 500,000 widows, children and old age pensioners who were left out of the previous Act. The Notes for Speakers did have a section headed for women campaigners, explaining how they should urge their sex to support Labour.130 The reasons given were not gender specific, though. Labour was a united party with all of the people’s movement behind it― political, industrial and co-operative― with a clear programme. This was obviously meant to contrast with the National Government’s various component parts and diffuse policies. Perhaps the aims of that programme were thought to be more to the taste of women: national welfare, family security, international peace and co-operation. In actual fact, the real

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agitation to women is to be found later under the section for housewives. Here it was claimed that cuts in grants to health and education authorities would deprive necessitous mothers and babies of milk and hungry children of school meals. With wage and unemployment benefit cuts compounded by price rises, especially on imported goods after Britain left the gold standard, ‘the outlook is a terrible one.’131 In the personal statements of the candidates, women were much in evidence, and like in 1929 there was usually half a page or so written by the candidate’s wife or female relation (unless the candidate herself was a woman). This presented a kind of family to family appeal, and was probably intended to ensure that everyone in a household voted the same way. The appeal to working women was somewhat compromised by the Labour government’s decision to restrict married women’s eligibility for unemployment benefit.132 This had been an economy measure saving £3 million, but also alienated many women in areas where they had often provided a second income.133 Women were still a target group in 1931, as they had been in 1929. Appeals to them were a matter of course. But centrally there is no doubt that women received less attention than in 1929.134 Out of the 20 leaflets produced by the party in 1930, which were mostly discarded owing to the special circumstances, not one can be attributed as being intended particularly for women from the title. There is much to suggest that Labour was driven by circumstances in choosing to whom it would make a special effort in addition to the core voters. How did this rhetoric compare to what the DNA said in the election of 1933? The DNA produced a brochure for housewives in 1933 and an election newspaper for women. In 1930 there had only been a statement. The brochure was intended for female working-class voters, not housewives everywhere. It sought to make politics seem more relevant by connecting it to housekeeping.135 In this respect it replicated Labour’s pitch to women. Because of taxation, the DNA argued, when a housewife bought goods for her family she was supporting the expenses of the state. The problem here was partly that the state spent the revenue unwisely and partly that taxes ought to fall on high incomes, not on necessities. The state’s expenditure on sickness benefit, old age benefit, unemployment and suchlike amounted to around 10 million kroner (£506,508) a year, while servicing the national debt and the military cost about 121 million kroner a year. The revenue from an imported bag of sugar bought on an ordinary Saturday went mostly to the state. The DNA did not want restrictions on imports like Labour, as the former appealed only to subsistence farmers. Its free-trade attitude was therefore not compromised. Written for women, this appeal articulated the perceived

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demands of the working class, peasants and the poorer section of the middle class and contrasted these to the privileges of the wealthy. That at least is one interpretation, it should be noted that the Women’s Section of the DNA always declined to act in unison with women outside the labour movement.136 Labour and the DNA were parties set up to further working-class interests. The rhetoric to these voters was noted briefly for the 1929 election in Britain, but not for the 1930 election in Norway, as the DNA did not aim its written propaganda at them. In the penultimate election of the interwar period, Labour again prioritized this group more than did the DNA. One possible reason was that there was a tradition of Conservative voting by many workers in Britain, which has no Norwegian equivalent. The DNA could be surer of receiving the votes of the workers unless they abstained. A clear message from Labour was provided under the title of ‘You don’t want Lower Wages!’137 Concentrating on identifying MacDonald with Toryism, it stated that the National Government would significantly reduce wages, increase the cost of living by tariffs and food taxes and lay new burdens on industry by forcing the pound back to the gold standard. All these policies were designed to increase the incomes of the rich at the expense of the poor, and favouring the rentier over the producer. The same argument but only applied to wages was to be found in a flyer stating Labour’s opposition to dictation from the bankers.138 It was headed ‘Wages Must Come Down’ and reminded the public that the Conservatives and Liberals were pledged to implementing the bankers’ policy of cuts. The National Government, though, also presented a scare story which was severely frightening to working-class voters. Many of them had accounts in the Post Office Savings Bank and the Government was alleging that their money would have been lost if unemployment benefits had not been cut, because Labour was lending the money to the Unemployment Insurance Fund. A flyer devoted to the issue of coal was intended to extricate Labour from being seen as responsible for the prevailing conditions in the industry.139 It reminded the voters that Labour did not have a majority when it passed the Coal Mines Bill in 1930. Thus it could not implement its policy of nationalization. The bill was heavily modified by the opposition and, moreover, when Labour took over in 1929 coal was in a ‘state of chaos.’ The cotton industry received a similar flyer, noting that the industry had experienced a severe depression since 1920.140 Here Labour had little to offer, though, merely describing how in 1929 it set up a special commission. Its policy was the centralization of the industry with uneconomic units of production being eliminated. This might have been a sensible policy, but does not sound very attractive. Was this meant as an

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appeal to coalminers? The co-operators were responsible for their own propaganda. Much of it was distributed through their candidates, but some was in newsletters covering a wider area. These appeals were important, as more than 6 million people were co-operators. The York Equitable Industrial Society published what must be a free election newsletter, although dated November 1931. Here the Labour candidate for York, Fred Burgess, a life-long co-operator, explained that the aims of the Co-operative and Labour parties were identical.141 He claimed that Labour had kept its hands clean over the recent events, and said the future of co-operation relied upon the return of a Labour government. If that was an exaggeration at least one important thing was held in the balance for cooperators, namely their dividend. The paper warned that for years the Conservatives had been advocating a tax on co-operative profits, and private traders’ organizations had lobbied governments with this goal in mind. Thus, as the headline put it, ‘Your Dividend is in Danger! An Urgent Call!’ Both for the trade unions and the co-operators Labour served as a bulwark against undesirable developments. Given the economic crisis, the cuts and the panic atmosphere in which the election was fought, it is perhaps not surprising that the messages were relatively defensive, not providing a wholesale endorsement of Labour’s own policies. A further consideration in this regard is that MacDonald’s two minority governments had accomplished relatively little. The party, the trade unions and other sympathizing organizations were in reality fighting a rearguard action to diminish the scale of the defeat. Labour’s own Notes for Speakers gives as the reason for the election the Tory wish to kill Labour.142 Three pages later it was stated that Labour was too strong in Britain, and bankers and capitalists could not tolerate this in the world financial centre.143 The election was called in order to destroy the labour movement. Labour knew well enough that it must curry favour with industrial workers and their families, to whom in one role or another the majority of its propaganda was directed, especially if those of analogous status in other sectors of the economy (like the primary sector) are included. In one leaflet J. R. Clynes, Home Secretary in the previous Labour government, explained the party’s attitude on this well. He said Labour was not the narrow class party which it was often accused of being.144 On the other hand, the working class was so large a part of the nation as to nearly be the nation itself. The DNA did not really extend its appeal in 1933 beyond what it had been in 1930, and did not focus unduly on its core blue-collar vote in its

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written propaganda. Of course, its main theme in the campaign ‘All the People in Work’ was greatly to the benefit of these people. Most of the DNA’s other appeals to the working class was to be found in its proposals for social legislation. As described in the manifesto, this included unemployment benefit to be paid for by contributions from the state, the local authorities, employer and employee.145 Old age pensions, which had been passed in principle by Parliament, must come into force. Other forms of benefit were also promised: an improvement in sickness benefit, accident benefit to be extended to all occupations which qualified for social benefit and the introduction of child benefit. Employers’ duties in regard to incapacitated workers would be increased, as part of accident benefit, and protection for the employee extended. Since unemployment was the principal issue for the party, appropriately there were proposals for work sharing: the six-hour day introduced by legislation and the retirement age for civil servants to be brought down to make way for the young. These measures were in reality for all employees, not just for bluecollar workers. * The fact that Labour devoted a lot of its propaganda to working-class people and the DNA did not, could be used as ammunition to support the prevalent idea that Labour was an urban party almost exclusively, while the DNA and other Scandinavian Socialists catered both for workers and peasants. It was clearly easier for the DNA to do well in the countryside than it was for Labour. Norwegian farms were small-scale compared to British farms. As an indication of this, consider Tables 3.4 and 3.5 shown on the following page. There was probably less deference in Norway (not easy to prove, but Labour had to stress all the time that the ballot was secret, while the DNA never did), agriculturalists suffered from serious debt problems and stood in danger of losing their properties. Conditions therefore favoured the DNA, and it is certainly true that it did better in the countryside than Labour by the end of the interwar period. The argument here is that Labour was equally interested in the countryside. Labour also produced more appeals than the DNA designed to gain the sympathy of middle-class people. In 1931 the cuts of the National Government allowed Labour to more fully represent the workers ‘by hand and by brain’, that is reaching above the working class into the petite bourgeoisie and propertyless intelligentsia. The previous decade had witnessed efforts to gain the middle classes for the party, including a Daily Herald campaign in 1925.146 In the same year a contributor to The Labour

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Organiser urged increased attention on teachers, who were vulnerable to the right-wing press’s attacks on ‘progressive education’.147 Winning over non-traditional Labour voters did not amount to a shift in policy, but it was a shift in practice. Table. 3.4. Farm sizes in England and Wales 1925 Size of farm Percentage distribution 5-100 acres 75.7% 100-300 acres 20.4% 300+ acres 3.8% (Source: David Grigg, ‘Farm size in England and Wales from early Victorian times to the present’, Agricultural History Review 35:2 (1987), p. 185.)

Table 3.5. Farm sizes in Norway 1929 Size of farm Percentage distribution 5-50 acres 96.2% 50-125 acres 3.6% 125-250 acres 0.2% 250+ acres 0.02% (Source: Calculated from Statistisk årbok for Norge. 54 årgang. 1935 (Oslo, 1935), p. 38)

So a flyer describing whom a Labour vote would help put the teachers first.148 Next followed servicemen, third were the police. The other groups mentioned were, in order, the unemployed, the workers and salaried officials, and lastly, the persons with small or fixed incomes. Taken together these groups encompassed a more representative picture of the nation than Labour’s core blue-collar trade unionists. It is worth noting that once Labour began asking for support from other groups, once it had clearly stated that it wished to represent them, then the propaganda against wage cuts and some of the other materials hitherto associated with the working class, may have chimed with the new target audiences as well. Contrary to this, however, the middle classes may not have recognized themselves when the TUC issued its ‘Call to the Workers’ in the run-up to the general election.149 Signed by Walter Citrine, it lambasted the National Government for the cuts in the salaries of teachers, civil servants and the police. But when it addressed its audience as ‘fellow workers’ and asked them to reinforce their industrial strength by voting Labour, it was a poor way of appealing to middle-class voters. Among the Labour candidates the overwhelming majority pledged to restore the cuts in wages, salaries and benefits of the affected groups. The appeals to middle-class people were mostly to be found in the statements of individual candidates. It was previously shown that a number of them

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argued that shopkeepers and workers had common interests. Appeals to the lower middle class were not unusual, and some candidates aimed higher up the social scale too. Most of the appeals targeted at professionals were to be found under the heading of resistance to the cuts in salaries. Candidates varied between themselves how much they stressed the plight of the unemployed and the possible hardship of the educated. In order to show that there was an actual and real appeal to the middle class, it will be necessary to quote from some of the candidate statements. Dr Haden-Guest of Wycombe used the term middle class, and claimed that they were threatened. His constituency was experiencing a rise in the number of such people. He said they must avoid economic retrenchment, which had been tried for some years in Germany with disastrous consequences, as they had sunk ‘into the mass of unskilled workers’ while the country had been brought to the brink of bankruptcy.150 In Mile End, East London, John Scurr said the National Government’s variation of allowances for income tax had hit the small shopkeeper very hard (and also the professional man).151 A particularly well-put appeal was by Fred Longden of Deritend in Birmingham.152 The manufacturer and shopkeeper could expect fewer orders under the National Government, but higher taxes to cover the budget deficit and higher rates to fend for the increased number of destitute. Charles Fox of Gloucester said the small trader must choose between being crushed by the combines or joining with the people’s movement.153 A different approach to winning votes from the middle classes could be witnessed in George Lansbury’s East End constituency of Bow and Bromley.154 In an area dominated by workers, he played upon the sympathy of ministers of religion and social workers for the unemployed. Charles Duncan of Clay Cross in Derbyshire said the National Government was balancing the budget by throwing burdens on the poor and middle-class families.155 He underlined the enthusiastic support of the House of Lords for these measures, holding forth a class dimension to the crisis and trying to make those in the middle come down on the side of Labour. As mentioned above, 75 per cent of Labour candidates promised to reverse the cuts in salaries. Some candidates chose to expand this appeal by being more explicit. Although it was mostly caused by the circumstances of National Government cuts, Labour was reminded of its role as the party also for the lower middle class and workers by brain in 1931. Because similar circumstances to the cuts did not exist in Norway in 1933, the DNA did not focus much on middle-class people. The one group which the DNA took some interest in was the white-collar workers. In 1931 the Association of Commercial Clerks (Norges handels-og kontorfunksjonærers forbund) had joined the AFL. This meant that it was partisan

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in favour of the DNA in the election. Even so the DNA’s written propaganda paid only marginal attention to clerks. They may have been part of ‘the working people’, but were mostly neglected in 1930. But in 1933 the DNA seriously sought to form a government and needed as many votes as possible. It was pleased that receptionists, waiters, clerks and others were unionizing.156 Ole Colbjørnsen, author of the party’s crisis plan, mentioned clerks as well as workers when writing about the ‘great mass of consumers’ lacking purchasing power.157 Equally, when he talked about the non-Socialist alternative to the DNA’s crisis policies, he said white-collar workers must be prepared to accept lower wages if they allowed the other parties to pursue their ‘let it slide’ policies.158 Summing up the crisis programme, he opined that workers, clerks and fishermen understood that the old attitude of doing nothing about the most important question of the day had failed, and that it was the labour movement’s way out of the crisis which would work.159 Because unionization was spreading beyond blue-collar workers, the DNA thought it worthwhile to publish a pamphlet called ‘All the People’s Struggle against Crisis and Need. The Labour Movement in the Lead’. Blue and white-collar workers belonged to the same class, it said, as neither owned property.160 The DNA thought they made up about half the population, and they were at any rate two fifths of it. According to the census of 1930, there were 151,688 white-collar workers and 684,853 industrial workers above the age of 15 in the population, and in total there were 2,012,645 Norwegians in that age group.161 The appeal, set within the undercurrent to the contest, was such: ‘Arise all blue and white-collar workers from land’s end to land’s end. Your freedom and lives are at stake. The election this year will provide the answer: For or against fascism!’162 During the election there were three meetings in Oslo held for commercial clerks in association with the local chapters of their union and one for railway clerks.163 Bringing society out of the crisis through increased spending was of benefit to all employees, and the attractions that were offered to workers were equally applicable to the present group. For those who read through the DNA’s materials, it would become clear that a good case could be made for white-collar workers to vote for it in their own interest. That still begs the question of why the DNA did not make the case more forcefully. As in 1930 there were occasional notices in Arbeiderbladet seeking to gain support from white-collar workers.164 These attempted to show real economic advantages accruing from increased support for the DNA, counteracting perceived status considerations which might make them vote for a non-Socialist party. It was becoming clearer that clerks and officials were part of ‘the working people’, but it was still not certain that

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they were. Like three years before, there were no real attempts to gain the support of the professional middle class. In 1930 the DNA had included arguments in its materials designed to persuade Liberal voters to switch to it. In 1933 it did not provide such arguments. In 1929 Labour aimed only a little propaganda especially at habitual Liberal voters (though there was negative campaigning against the Liberal revival), but in 1931 this became a standard line of appeal. This was partly because of Lloyd George’s call to vote Labour where there was no genuine free-trade Liberal standing. No supporters of the National Government were pledged to free trade as it was asking for a doctor’s mandate for whatever the situation demanded. Since the Liberals had uncomfortably submerged their identity in the National Government, aware that their policy of free trade was bound to lose out against the stronger Conservatives’ protectionist stance, they created an opening for Labour to appeal to usual Liberal voters on the basis of free trade and having taken over the Liberals’ role and policies. Labour believed its freetrade stance could be its salvation. 93 per cent of its candidates explained they were against tariffs. The basis for appealing to Liberals often went wider than free trade. There was little central direction on this, therefore it will be necessary to examine samples of candidate statements. The Liberal Manchester Guardian newspaper supported Labour in this election, and wrote an editorial criticizing Snowden’s attack on his former party.165 It also stated that the National Government was ‘perhaps the greatest threat to national unity that we have’ since it was an anti-Labour coalition.166 Dr R. A. Lyster, Labour’s candidate for Winchester, mentioned peace, disarmament, the League of Nations, taxation of land values before his opposition to protection, tariffs and food taxes in his ‘Open Letter to Liberals’.167 Ernest Winterton in Loughborough concentrated on free trade, education, temperance reform and healthy homes as the means to attract Liberals, although these reasons were mentioned on the level of banality. (‘They are keen on education. So am I.’)168 Sometimes the plea to Liberals would go far enough for an alliance to be formed. In South Derbyshire Major D. Graham Pole received an endorsement from the late Liberal candidate E. J. Johnson, not specifying exactly why Liberals should vote for Pole, but criticizing the Conservatives heavily.169 J. R. Oldfield of Essex South East had a brochure about why Liberals should vote for him. The reasons were free trade and disarmament, reparations and currency reform, where he believed Liberals would support his stance. He appended Lloyd George’s remarks as did many of his colleagues.170 F. J. Wise of Harborough said his division was basically Radical, and it would be a shame if Liberals were to vote for a

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reactionary Tory candidate.171 E. J. Pay of Rugby told Liberals that Lloyd George was more radical than Philip Snowden, and reminded them that the former was urging a vote for free trade.172 A. Emil Davies of Manchester Moss-side argued that Liberals had been let down by their leaders, who had disgracefully chosen office over principles173. But it should be said that most of the appeals were about free trade as the salient reason why Liberals should come over to Labour. Other policies had a role in reinforcing a progressive alliance between individuals and the Labour Party. The latter was aided by there only being 24 contests between Liberal Nationals and Labour. Liberal voters elsewhere had a choice between Conservative and Labour candidates. It would thus be true to say that Labour’s basis for agitation became a little wider in 1931 than it had been in 1929. The DNA’s basis for appeals remained much the same in 1933 as it had been in 1930. One might have thought that a defensive campaign, such as Labour fought, might have concentrated only on the core groups, and that the DNA’s new social democratic, practically oriented message deserved to be brought out to a wider audience than before. Neither was the case. To deal with Britain first, Labour’s focus on attracting Liberals, even as Labour was undergoing severe trauma and having its very existence challenged, confirmed its replacement of the Liberals as the party of the left in the two-party system. This had been an ongoing process since 1918 and its goal in the 1920s. But it appears few Liberals took the advice of Lloyd George and voted Labour in the absence of a Liberal absolutely committed to free trade.174 After 1922 Liberals who switched parties increasingly defected to the right, not to the left.175 By appealing a little to the middle classes, Labour began to follow through the implications of its claim to stand for the entire nation. Such an appeal existed, but it might have been stronger and more obvious. At least Labour found that its own attitudes and ideology spoke directly to the middle classes when the National Government cut salaries. In common resistance to an attack on living standards, Labour hoped to forge an alliance stretching from the unemployed into the bourgeoisie. It should be remembered, though, that the appeal was not immediately apparent and that some candidates were less keen than others on the idea, concentrating on appealing to the disadvantaged out of these groups, and ignoring the more fortunate. For those candidates there was no change from 1929. While Labour reached out to important new groups, there were some who were less in evidence in 1931 than in 1929. Farmers were still appealed to in rural constituencies, but no specific campaign was directed at them centrally. It is possible that they would have received more attention had the election been fought at the time of Labour’s choosing.

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The party continued to try to rally agricultural workers with leaflets produced by the party machine, instructions to candidates and locally directed appeals. Women remained a target group for Labour. They were not appealed to in all their roles as in 1929, but primarily as housewives. The focus on them was less intense. This can be laid at the door of the crisis atmosphere in which the election was fought, or simply that 1929 provided an extra impetus since the last section of the female population was enfranchised in time for it. With regard to the DNA’s targeting of potential voters, there was hardly any development between 1930 and 1933. Workers, peasants and fishermen remained the core target groups of the DNA, and the appeals to women were to a subdivision of these people. There was continued emphasis on these groups organizing themselves to push through their justified claims, especially in the brochure ‘All the People’s Struggle against Crisis and Need’. In line with the DNA’s growing belief in bourgeois democracy, however, it now had a parliamentary solution to the most pressing of their problems called counter-cyclical economics. It followed that their votes could achieve much alone. In spite of the differing theoretical underpinnings to the campaigns of 1933 and 1930, it was the same people from whom the DNA hoped to gain support. Ideology therefore seems to have had at best only a minor effect on whom the DNA addressed. * On polling day the front page of the Daily Herald brought three important headlines. The first was simply the request to vote early and to encourage friends, family and colleagues to do the same.176 The second was the disclosure that Baldwin in 1923 had begun the practice of lending Post Office Savings Bank deposits to the Unemployment Insurance Fund. This mattered because the National Government was pretending that not cutting unemployment benefit would have meant losing customers’ savings in the Post Office. Labour had a scare story of its own of undoubted veracity. If the National Government won, the humiliating and inquisitive means test would come into force for ‘hundreds of thousands of unemployed men and women.’ Also important to Labour’s pitch was the reminder that it was the only such party.177 The ‘National Labour Party’ was in fact an anti-Labour group, a name chosen by MacDonald, Baldwin and other coalition leaders to confuse the electorate. This argument was a necessary one, because some loyalists may have felt they were continuing to support Labour by voting for candidates who had their political background in the party. And Labour-sympathizing National

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voters may have rationalized their choice by arguing to themselves there was a ‘Labour component’ to the new Government. Whatever the discourse, it was ultimately a near-impossible task in which Labour was engaged. The climax of the campaign in Oslo, and a great show of strength by the DNA to the country at large, was the final mass rally at Young’s Square on Sunday 15 October, the day before the election. 45,000 people took part according to the Oslo DNA’s retrospective estimate.178 The adjoining streets were also crowded. Among other meetings one in Circus World Theatre had to close its doors an hour before the meeting was due to begin on account of every seat being taken. Several thousand people nevertheless stayed outdoors in the rain to hear the speeches and entertainment relayed from the theatre through loudspeakers. The rally closely followed the precedent of 1930 with a torchlit parade, singing of the Internationale, etc. It certainly created a favourable impression, because the next time the Conservatives took a leaf out of the DNA’s book and held a rally themselves.179 In reporting these events, Arbeiderbladet urged all its readers to go out and vote.180 1931 marked the greatest setback Labour had experienced in its history. The ‘forward march of Labour’ had at the very least been decidedly halted. The results were as follows: Table 3.6. The British general election 1931 Party

Votes (change from 1929) 60.5%

Seats (change from 1929) 521

Conservatives and National Labour 30.6% (-6.5%) 52 (-235) Samuelite Liberals 6.5% 33 (Source: Arthur Marwick, A History of the Modern British Isles, 1914-1999. Circumstances, Events and Outcomes (Oxford, 2000), p. 108.)

All of Labour’s senior figures with Cabinet experience were defeated, except George Lansbury, who duly became the new leader of the Parliamentary Party.181 Henderson lost so badly at Burnley that he abandoned domestic politics until 1933.182 There is evidence that in some places Labour’s defeat came as a surprise to its activists. In more than a 100 constituencies which were lost, the confidence of candidate and agent were not shaken till polling day.183 The activists had thought Labour ‘could not be beaten.’ The new coalition had penetrated into the heartlands of Labour. Only two consoling facts were apparent to the party. In terms of votes it lost less than seven percentage points, and the scale of the defeat would at least provide a fresh start. ‘We are not

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broken,’ declared Henderson the day after the election, ‘The Labour movement […] will rise again stronger and more vigorous than ever.’184 There were also complaints that under the voting system, Labour had suffered disproportionately and its real strength was greater. The results or the preceding political crisis also provided a wake-up call to those in the industrial wing of the movement who had slackened their efforts, because they thought happy times were ahead with a Labour government.185 In contrast, the DNA was rewarded for its efforts. The outcome of the election was the opposite of 1930 with every non-Socialist party stumbling, the DNA advancing greatly and even the Communists improving their performance a little. Table 3.7. The Norwegian parliamentary election 1933 Party

Percentage of votes Parliamentary seats (change from 1930) (change from 1930) Liberals 17.6% (-3.4%) 25 (-9) Conservatives 21.8% (-8.2%) 31 (-13) Agrarians 13.9% (-2.0%) 23 (-2) DNA 40.1% (+8.7%) 69 (+22) Communists 1.8% (+0.1%) 0 (0) (Source: Berge Furre, Norsk historie 1905-1940 (Oslo, 1982), p. 320)

With 69 out of 150 seats, the DNA was getting close to a majority in Parliament. Its interpretation was that town and country had given it a clear vote of confidence, and that the election had been a damning indictment of reaction.186 It particularly thanked women and the young for what they had done during the campaign and for their votes.187 This was the opposite of Labour’s belief that women, and particularly young women, had been to blame for the party’s defeat at the polls.188 Although it did not receive a majority, three days after the election the DNA’s Central Committee agreed that the party should ask for power. A letter was sent to the Liberal Government of Johan Ludwig Mowinckel requesting its immediate resignation, but he refused claiming that Parliament must decide the issue when it was summoned in due course. In the end the DNA had to use parliamentary guile, and with the break up of the non-Socialist united front over the crisis in the countryside, Johan Nygaardsvold was asked to form a government in March 1935. * Labour fought the campaign on a business-as-usual basis despite its former leader acting as the head of the opposing bloc. In reality, it knew it

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could not win as it did not run candidates in difficult constituencies this time, and gaining more of these was a precondition for a majority. Moreover, it faced an unprecedented number of two-way contests against a National candidate. There were 434 such contests in 1931, a fourfold increase over 1929.189 This was a disaster for Labour as the National candidates could generally rely on both Conservative and Liberal votes. To compound Labour’s misery, its internal coalition began to be put under pressure in 1931. There was disagreement with the ILP about the nomination of candidates under its own auspices and financial responsibility. The dispute was not settled within the time that was available until the election, leading to the return of six ILP candidates to Westminster without endorsement by Labour. The scene had been set for the ILP’s disaffiliation from Labour in 1932. There was also the beginning of a long-running dispute with the Co-operative Party relating to the control of constituencies where the candidate was from that party. Fundamentally, these disputes related to how much autonomy the parties affiliated to Labour were to have. Labour preferred them in a subordinate capacity and probably eventually wanted them to dissolve within it. The same fear of independence for component parts could be seen in Labour’s treatment of its League of Youth. In practice it meant that it lost MPs who would otherwise have taken its whip. But even as Labour was put under unprecedented pressure, its electoral appeals went somewhat wider than in 1929. It tried to take over Liberal voters and it began to approach middleclass people, saying it could preserve their living standards. The 1931 election in Britain and 1933 election in Norway were the penultimate contests within the period in each country, and the first to take place after the Depression had begun to bite. As such they illustrate the DNA’s much better prospects for being successful in the 1930s. This book, which is concerned with success, gives a number of reasons why the DNA ultimately is felt to have been more fortunate, but the juxtaposition of these two elections alone explains almost all the divergence. The DNA was amply funded, it had up to three years to prepare for the election, it was the only untried alternative when the Depression overwhelmed its opponents, it had two more years than Labour in which to prepare a counter-cyclical crisis plan, it went into the election as the largest party and faced no censure from wider society. When the other parties tried to put obstacles in the way of trade union organization (the Boycott Law), the DNA reacted by claiming those parties were fascists and that it would be necessary to fight for one’s existence. Labour was only allowed to organize just over half of the TUC’s members, it was less well funded than in 1929, it could not choose the timing of the election which came at the worst possible moment, it achieved little in government mostly due to the

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Depression, it had less time in which to prepare relevant policies for combating it, it had been split and faced a united opposition. Given these circumstances, it almost seems an achievement that Labour was able to hold on to more than 30 per cent of the popular vote. The DNA was able to concentrate seriously on its difficult areas in 1933 because the very generous funding was primarily targeted there. Psychologically, the attitude to electioneering was more positive in 1933 than in 1930. In 1930 the DNA had hoped to progress, but had seemingly reverted to ideas of extra-parliamentary action as the way forward. In 1933, by contrast, one of its slogans was ‘The majority and governmental power to Arbeiderpartiet’, and it felt it had to do well to save itself, the class for which it stood and maybe the petite bourgeoisie of the country to which it had devoted so much attention. Although its pitch was now based on counter-crisis measures, its electoral appeals to social groups went no wider than what they had been in 1930.

4 CONSOLIDATION The Parliamentary Elections of 1935 and 1936

This chapter follows in the mould of the two previous ones. It first gives a short background to the election of 1935 in Britain and 1936 in Norway. Then it examines the state of the two Socialist parties and narrates how they prepared for the elections, before giving more details about how campaigning was carried out. Finance and the electoral materials of each party are then compared. These electoral materials are scoured for appeals to particular groups, which remains a highly prioritized task for this comparison. The chapter ends with information about the outcome of each election and, lastly, there is a conclusion. The British general election of 14 November 1935 is fully described in the book by Tom Stannage.1 A number of articles have also appeared, detailing various aspects of the contest.2 The election pitted the National Government, since June 1935 led by Stanley Baldwin, the Conservative leader, against Labour and those Liberals who had left the Government over the free-trade issue in the autumn of 1932. Due to the gathering clouds across Europe, caused by Hitler becoming Chancellor of Germany in January 1933 and Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia in October 1935, it was an election in which rearmament, the League of Nations and collective security were central. The British economy had markedly improved since 1931, but unemployment was still high. Labour wished to abolish the Means Test, which meant that the level of maintenance the unemployed received depended on their family’s circumstances. The record of the National Government was another issue during the campaign of course, as were Labour’s alternative policies of nationalization and peace through negotiation rather than armed might. Probably because Labour was weak going into the election, there were no major scare stories about the party as there had been in 1924 with the Zinoviev letter or in 1931 about the Post Office Savings Bank.

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The Norwegian parliamentary election of 1936 took place on 19 October. Since 1933 the DNA had actively been seeking power, and in March 1935 it finally managed to dislodge the Liberal government of Mowinckel. The Liberals were financing relief work, but had a laissez-faire policy on the countryside. In 1934 the DNA and the Agrarians forced the Government to implement a package of debt relief to cultivators.3 These two parties stood far from each other ideologically. Nevertheless, they cooperated again on agricultural policy a year later and this time made a farreaching deal. Nygaardsvold’s diary entries for 4, 10 and 27 March 1935 describe the emerging consensus with the Agrarians. For instance, the entry for 4 March reads, ‘They will accept a somewhat higher expenditure against the crisis, but in return we have to accept a sales tax and everything they demand for agriculture.’4 The DNA was allowed to take power and set in motion forward crisis policies. The difficulties of farmers were addressed through a package of subsidies and a measure to increase the demand for butter. The election of 1936 was therefore the public’s first opportunity to sanction or reject the new developments. The economy was the main issue and social policy played some part too, as all the parties except a minor one had voted to implement old age pensions. The nonSocialists warned that the DNA might act dictatorially if given a majority, which no government since 1918 had enjoyed. These were the final elections between the wars in Britain and Norway. Labour improved its position in the 1935 election, which brought the party back to normality after the turmoil of 1931 and confirmed its role as the official opposition to the dominant Conservatives. This was a reasonable outcome of Labour’s efforts 1918-35. It had outmanoeuvred the Liberals to emerge as the second party, and it had survived the devastating shock of 1931. The DNA did not progress as much as it had hoped in the 1936 election. Although devoting even greater resources than in 1933, this did not translate into a strengthened presence in Parliament. However, by gaining more votes and one token parliamentary seat, it received a mandate to continue governing. It had won the political struggle against the non-Socialist parties within this time period. In a sense, both parties had new leaders in these elections. Clement Attlee had taken over from George Lansbury as Labour’s leader as late as October 1935, but was regarded as a stop-gap choice.5 This, incidentally, confirms that Labour was not expecting to win.6 In Norway Oscar Torp was still technically in charge of the party. The leader of the DNA was more like a chairman in the British context. The emergence of Johan Nygaardsvold as Prime Minister in 1935 meant that he was the leading light in the campaign. His face was on a poster and he was a great asset to his party.

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Considerable interest attaches to the state of Labour in 1935 because it had suffered such a massive check to its fortunes in 1931. It lost almost all its leadership in Parliament as well as more than four fifths of its MPs. In 1932 the ILP had disaffiliated, taking with it a further six MPs. Though the popular vote had remained at 30 per cent in 1931, the psychological damage of what had taken place made Labour’s fate uncertain. It had responded with a rethink of its aims and policies, besides campaigns such as ‘A Million New Members and Power’ in 1931-32 and ‘Victory for Socialism’ from October 1933. This work had resulted in a position outside Parliament that was stronger than before, as shown by the table below. Table 4.1. The Labour Party in 1931 and 1935 Year

Constituency parties

Individual members

Affiliated Affiliated trade Socialists and unionists Co-ops 1931 608 247,000 2,024,216 36,847 1935 614 419,311 1,912,924 45,280 (Source: Labour Party, Reports of Annual Conferences. Thirty-sixth Report (London, 1936), p. 54, p. 59.)

The figures for 1935 were therefore very good, with the only weak point being a continuing decline in the number of affiliated trade unionists. All the other indicators were positive, and the steep rise in the number of individual members was particularly gratifying. It meant that the membership campaigns had worked. The party had great potential if only it could become a serious player in Parliament again. After 1935 and its rise to power, and considering the very impressive electioneering in 1933, it was obvious that the DNA was a formidable force in Norwegian society. Therefore, it is no surprise that the wider labour movement had continued its ascent in membership terms. Here are the comparative figures from 1933 and 1936: Table 4.2. Membership of Norwegian labour organizations in 1933 and 1936 Organization 1933 1936 DNA 95,000 122,000 AFL 157,000 225,000 AUF 21,000 30,000 AIF 36,000 62,000 (Source: Arbeiderbevegelsens Arkiv og Bibliotek, Oslo: Brochure by AOF in folder marked AUF agitasjon 1936-1938 in Archive: Arbeidernes Ungdomsfylking, Korrespondanse A-B, 1935-1959, Da 0003.)

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These figures leave little doubt that the DNA was considerably stronger than Labour in each respective society. Considering that Norway’s population was about one sixteenth of Britain’s, the DNA did better on individual membership by a factor of four. The figure for affiliated members was also much better in Norway, caused entirely by all of the AFL members automatically affiliating without outside interference. The AFL was not much stronger in societal terms than the full force of the TUC, which had 3,388,810 members in 1935.7 What made the difference was that only just over half those members had a relationship with Labour. In chapter 5 there will be a thorough comparison of the strength of each labour movement using figures from the same years. As for newspapers the situation was the same as before. The DNA had a better regional press, but the Daily Herald made up for this by an exceptional circulation. Labour had 1 daily, 15 weeklies, 52 monthlies, 4 quarterlies and 25 irregulars in 1935, which was somewhat weaker than in 1931.8 The Daily Herald, however, had continued its meteoric rise and had a circulation well over 2 million in 1935, making it the biggest newspaper in the world.9 So Labour’s emphasis was on producing a mass popular daily, whereas the DNA wanted to bring local news to its sympathizers. The DNA’s number of dailies had continued to rise since 1933; it now had 26 of them compared to 21 in 1933.10 It had 16 ‘weeklies’, although all of these were printed at least twice a week. What had happened with Labour was probably that it had lost some monthlies which had become irregular. For the DNA the opposite tendency prevailed: some newspapers which had previously been published a few times a week were now out every day, meaning that the number of ‘weeklies’ had sunk. Labour and the TUC cultivated the Daily Herald by printing flyers urging members and the public to read the newspaper. In recognition of this work, the board of directors of the Herald lent the two organizations a film motor van to be used in the backward areas.11 It also financed the services of a propagandist for a year. Labour also sought to deepen its impact on society by uniting young people around the party’s policies. Though it would brook no opposition from the League of Youth, it did want the organization to succeed. There were about 526 branches of the League at the time of the 1935 election.12 The AUF had 594 branches in 1935.13 The impression given by the rough comparison above is that activities which required a higher degree of commitment were more prevalent in the Norwegian labour movement. After the 1931 election, however, Labour became more of a ‘party of integration’. Immediately after the meltdown the NEC set to work rebuilding the party. It instituted membership, constituency and youth

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campaigns as well as educational conferences.14 Faced with a National Government majority of more than 500, the official opposition could afford to think seriously about the long term. The fruits of this included the Victory for Socialism campaign, set up in October 1933. The idea behind it was that 15 million votes were needed to establish ‘The Socialist Commonwealth’ (or 400 Labour MPs and more than 13 million votes next time).15 Not only would Labour present itself openly as a Socialist party in elections, but it must work all the year round to make Socialists. The activities of the campaign were the usual tasks of holding meetings, demonstrations and rallies as well as the distribution of literature. In this instance, the aim was to give every home in the land a monthly Socialist newsletter. ‘Victory for Socialism’ is not directly relevant to the election, because in June 1935 it was decided to merge its fund with that set up to fight the election.16 That spelled the end of this phase in Labour’s recovery. However, it is worth bearing in mind that once ‘Victory for Socialism’ got underway in 1934, Labour was more or less permanently electioneering and thus becoming a party of integration. It was decided that £5,000 was needed to get the campaign going.17 This level was attained in March 1934, triggering the onset of activities other than fundraising.18 The mass conferences in particular, would be directed at the eight million workers’ homes containing 18 million electors.19 Such activities between the elections made it seem as if Labour was in better shape than the DNA. The DNA had formed a government in March 1935, but only months later was in serious pecuniary difficulties. On 8 August 1935 Oscar Torp gave an ultimatum to the AFL Secretariat: unless 25,000 kroner (£1,256) were paid to the DNA by 10 o’clock the next day, its activities would cease. He also demanded to know how much the AFL had received from its increase of dues for members, and wanted assurances that the money would not be spent on settling AFL debts.20 No explanation exists for why this problem had arisen. The money was indeed forthcoming, the payment being sanctioned by the AFL vicechairman Konrad Nordahl as there was no time to call a meeting of the Secretariat. And on 20 September 1935 the AFL paid another 50,000 kroner (£2,513) to the DNA as a contribution to the latter’s press and educational work.21 In spite of the DNA being in straitened circumstances a year before the election, it spent more money during the campaign than ever before. This was because the electioneering was almost entirely paid for by the AFL and its federations. The nearest equivalent to the Victory for Socialism campaign in Norway was that the areas organizationally most problematic for the DNA, i.e. Vest-Agder, Rogaland and Nordland, were worked on from the beginning of 1936. The first two were counter-cultural, while support for

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the DNA just had not taken off in Nordland. It took 30 years to win the fishermen of that county for the DNA against three for its northern neighbour Troms.22 Work was also done in areas where DNA support was high, but the organization not correspondingly strong. That was the case for parts of Østfold and Oppland. The AFL was expanding rapidly and attempting to bring in new groups like fishermen, trappers and maids, spending at least 20,000 kroner (£1,005) in so doing.23 Each party regarded the impending general election as very important. The DNA had in the last few years abandoned its scepticism about bourgeois democracy, and Labour was anxious to regain a serious presence in Parliament. In Britain the first evidence of planning for actual electioneering in competition with the other parties stems from the end of 1934.24 This memorandum worked on the assumption that the party must be ready to fight an election in the autumn of 1935. Preparations should therefore be in an advanced state the following July. In the first month of 1935 it was possible to see steady progress with regard to Labour’s plans. A Victory for Socialism campaign handbook was now available, and discussions continued on how to turn the general election literature out.25 It was understood, however, that only materials of a general kind, criticizing the National Government and stressing Labour’s main policies, could be taken in hand at once. Special election literature could not be produced until guidance was forthcoming on what Labour’s priorities would be. A meeting was going to take place with the trade unionist directors of the Herald about possible assistance with regard to posters and literature. A few days later the NEC confirmed that 27 February 1935 had been chosen as the date for a pre-election meeting with the General Council of the TUC.26 The primary result of this meeting was to be found in the circular issued by the National Council of Labour, representing the TUC, the Labour Party and the Parliamentary Labour Party.27 Once again, there would be a drive to increase the circulation of the Daily Herald, as it was recognized to be one of the most effective ways of reaching 2 million households every day. The idea, therefore, was that every new member of a trade union or the party should receive complimentary copies of the Herald. It was hoped to publicize the scheme in trade union journals, and general secretaries of unions were to request the assistance of branch officers and committees in bringing about the desired outcome. Because the DNA knew the date of the election in advance, it did not need to discuss its campaigning plans until the year of the contest had dawned. On 20 February 1936 a joint meeting of the AFL Secretariat and the DNA Central Committee met to discuss the plans for the election and its financing.28 As in 1933, it was decided to levy 6 kroner (4s.) on every

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AFL member in full-time work and 3 kroner (2s.) on those in part-time work. This was confirmed in a joint meeting of the AFL federations with representatives of the DNA present.29 The latter meeting also agreed a budget of 800,000 kroner (£40,201) with which the trade unions would fund the DNA’s electoral campaign. The AFL would grant 300,000 kroner directly and the remaining 500,000 kroner would be paid by the federations, themselves deciding whether to levy extra dues on their members or to pay straight from their funds. The actual grant amounted to 864,306 kroner (£43,432).30 This vast sum did not represent the entirety of the AFL’s support in the contest. For instance, all of the district organizations of the AFL were granted sums ranging from 250 kroner (£12 6s) in the case of Romsdal to 2,000 kroner (£101) in the case of Bergen and its environs (usually 500 or 1,000 kroner) for electoral purposes once the contest was underway.31 Fairly large sums were directed towards the party press, an average of 2,640 kroner (£133) a newspaper included in the funding for the DNA.32 In Britain once the general election was closer at hand, it became possible to issue some specific and less overarching plans for how to fight it. In June it was decided that six basic leaflets, four pictorial posters, one placard type poster, a canvasser’s handbook and 12 pamphlets should be sold at once as electoral propaganda.33 Although these were to be sold at an inexpensive price, it was expected that they would be self-financing for the central party. At this stage the local parties were told to put their electoral machines in readiness.34 It was suggested they might like to hold divisional conferences on how to campaign. Even closer to the beginning of the actual campaign, an approach from the Communists for an electoral agreement was rebuffed.35 This was hardly a surprise given the continual rejections of the CPGB’s offers of a united front and its affiliation to Labour. The next development of any interest occurred in October 1935. The month before it had become clear that the Victory for Socialism Fund had been exhausted, and the cash balance on 27 September 1935 was only £180.36 As a result of the precarious state of the Fund, it was decided that recent spending on the campaign of £1,785 must be borne by the Election Fund.37 This was in accordance anyway with the plan to merge the two funds, but it was not intended that expenses should fall on the Election Fund until the official campaign had got underway, and it had not in early October. In recompense £900 received primarily from the sale of literature was put towards the Election Fund. At this stage its balance was £8,000. The difficulty for the party was that it could not keep running down its Election Fund by issuing leaflets and paying propagandists if the poll was not be held for some months. No real decision was reached

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about what to do, but it was noted that losses on literature averaged only £100 a month and that £834 had hitherto been spent on propagandists in 1935. Fortunately for Labour the official election campaign did start in October. A fortnight after the above meeting the first inkling of a 14 November poll was registered.38 It was therefore possible to begin work on the manifesto, and it was agreed that it should be of a somewhat different format from previous years. It should be shorter and not merely consist of a list of policies. The drafting of it was entrusted to Arthur Greenwood. On broadcasting facilities it was noted that Greenwood and Attlee had been in touch with Prime Minister Baldwin on the time to be afforded the political parties by the BBC. Less than a week later Attlee could report that Labour would be given four speaking slots to the Government’s five, with the Liberals being granted two or three slots.39 Discussion henceforth moved on to who those four speakers should be. Attlee had wanted the recently replaced leader George Lansbury to be one of the four if he was willing, but the meeting decided on Attlee, Greenwood, J. R. Clynes and Herbert Morrison. At this meeting Greenwood’s draft manifesto was first considered, and a sub-committee appointed to amend it. The next day the amended manifesto was accepted by the NEC.40 In the Norwegian context the AFL did not just pay for the campaign, but had real influence on how it was going to be conducted. This happened through the Joint Committee, which was the equivalent of the National Council of Labour in Britain. Early in the year the Joint Committee sent out a draft plan to all the party’s local branches.41 The plan laid out specific tasks to be performed at various stages of the year. January and February would witness a series of public meetings connected with Arbeiderregjeringen’s (The Worker Government’s) budget proposals. Posters would be put up with the slogan ‘Better conditions through Arbeiderregjeringen.’ A short brochure would be published with extracts from the debate following the state opening of Parliament, along with a flyer about taxation on the interest of bank accounts. The Workers’ Educational Association AOF would be responsible for these. At the same time work would start in the West Country and Nordland on gathering addresses for free subscriptions to Fram during the election. These were some of the DNA’s least successful areas. March and April were the months for the county parties and local branches to draw up plans for the election based on the main framework. These plans, taking local conditions into account, were to be sent to the DNA centrally. The necessary committees were to be set up, the tasks apportioned and co-operation with the trade unions, the youth

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organization, the sports association and the rest of the labour movement initiated. It was thus to be the entire labour movement which engaged in electioneering, not just the party. From 15 to 22 March there would be a nationwide campaign to gain new subscribers to the party press. May Day had to be prepared as an important occasion in ‘the workers’ struggle to win the political power.’ May was also the time to begin collecting addresses for the free subscriptions to Fram in all areas other than the West Country and Nordland. The party conference would be held 22-24 May and was set to be an integral part of the wider campaign. Organizational and technical questions would be discussed by representatives of the county and local parties invited to the conference. In June, July and August, and preferably as early as possible, nominations for the party lists for Parliament should be arranged. As in 1933, these summer months would otherwise be dedicated to open-air meetings. These could be spectacular affairs. On 21 June 1936 an outdoor meeting was held at Borrehaugene in Vestfold attracting 10,000 participants.42 September and October were the months of actual electioneering and canvassing. This would follow along the same lines as in 1930 and 1933, except that the indoor meetings would have more theatricals, including performances by the children’s organization Framfylkingen. The end of the election campaign should be marked by special events, preferably outdoors, across the country (as had been done in Oslo on the previous two occasions). The quoted document by itself explains in broad terms how the DNA campaigned in 1936. It also lays bare the extent of central control involved. On this occasion, the centre wished to approve the campaigning plans decided upon by the regional parties. In the absence of documents from 1930 and 1933, it cannot be stated with certainty whether this was a new development. There is good reason for thinking it may be. This time the party had the advantage of knowing exactly what its goal was: to gain seven new parliamentary seats, giving it a majority. According to the AOF these seven were most likely to be gained in Oppland, Vestfold, AustAgder, Hordaland, Sogn og Fjordane, Møre og Romsdal and Nordland.43 It followed that the county-wide campaigns in these places were especially important. The DNA therefore had to make sure the relevant plans were up to scratch. And if parties in other counties where the chances of winning additional seats were lower made too costly plans, the DNA could advise that they cut back before awarding them grants. This of course was a relevant way of exercising control. Naturally, it was used in Britain also. The NEC bore ultimate responsibility for Labour’s electioneering, but the day-to-day running of it was left to Head Office. On 14 October 1935 a meeting was held at

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Transport House involving the chiefs of various departments.44 The purpose was to report on preparations for the election. The Co-operative Wholesale Society Savings Bank had agreed to allow Labour candidates overdrafts for electoral purposes. Meanwhile, the selection of candidates for hitherto vacant seats was continuing. Some election agents were also being appointed in constituencies which lacked them. The role of agent involved various electoral duties, and these tasks were made explicit by Head Office. New agents were issued with these guidelines as soon as they were appointed, while the established ones had been sent information about their tasks during the summer. All candidates had also received this information, and there would be further reminders as the campaign progressed. This was one of the methods whereby the central party could influence electioneering in the constituencies. The grants for candidates could also be set according to how likely a candidate was to win and the constituency’s overall importance to Labour’s development. Information about its campaigning would be asked from the constituency party making the application, and cheques could be sent immediately to a maximum of £40 for borough parties and £60 for county parties. This principle had been the same for the other elections, though the sums may have varied. In Norway before elections the Joint Committee of the AFL and DNA took in new representatives and this new body was known as the Extended Finance Committee. On 14 February 1936 the Joint Committee discussed and accepted the monthly plan which has been referred to.45 It was further suggested that the Extended Finance Committee should come into being soon, modelled on the arrangements from 1930 and 1933.46 The day-to-day running of the campaign would be in the hands of the DNA centrally. A meeting on 1 April 1936 suggested that 100,000 kroner (£5,025) be set aside for the working executive of the Finance Committee for grants to various projects preparatory to the campaign. It may have been from this sum that the AUF received what it needed, as both the April meeting and one on 7 March had items on the agenda relating to the organization’s application for money.47 At the second meeting the Workers’ Sports Association (AIF) also claimed 5,000 kroner (£251) as an advance on its election payout. This was in keeping with a plan made by one of its leaders, Rolf Hofmo, who wanted the campaign to start earlier than in 1933 and for the two youth organizations AUF and AIF to be involved from the start.48 The Extended Finance Committee was inaugurated on 1 April 1936.49 Two weeks later it accepted the applications of the AUF and AIF for 5,000 kroner each.50 It also guaranteed that 100,000 kroner be put into an account named Election Fund 1936, in accordance with the Joint Committee’s wishes. This money would preferably have been received

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from the federations, but the AFL clearly wanted the funds to be available early on for the pre-election campaign. Five days later it was decided that the AFL should open the account with 100,000 kroner itself, if it was willing.51 A later meeting also considered whether to produce a giant poster of Nygaardsvold, and this did go ahead.52 The DNA wished to capitalize on the trust and the perceived level-headedness associated with its chief of government.53 Nygaardsvold’s position within the party was not as strong as MacDonald’s had been in Labour before 1931, but he was a charismatic figure. Even in 1933, before he attained the office of Prime Minister, there had been a poster of him.54 The focus on personality was a response to the fascist demand for a strong man to lead the country out of the crisis. By 1936 the AOF had come of age and played an important role in the election. Not only did it hold courses on electoral preparations and for canvassers,55 but it was instrumental in deciding on the means of propaganda to be used. Haakon Lie, later a legendary party secretary, was its leader, and he talked about the issue in a debate at the party conference. He argued that there should be a manifesto, because he thought it essential to crystallize the campaign around simple themes that anyone could understand.56 The DNA had hitherto not used a manifesto like Labour’s. Its closest equivalent was its ‘programme’, which stated its aims and policies. Lie pointed to the success of Lenin’s propaganda before the Revolution, and the example of Hitler before the Nazi seizure of power in Germany.57 The DNA had long ago learnt the art of appealing not just to reason but to the feelings through songs, flags, torchlit parades, insignias, etc., but Lie wanted to go even further and tone down the politics in favour of creating an impression. The object of the ‘new’ methods was for the DNA to extend its appeal among the masses and to create ‘belief and enthusiasm.’ 58 Lie demanded shorter political speeches, but more decorations such as strategically placed red cloths, banners, posters, pictures of labour leaders and flowers, all in good lighting. ‘Even the frame around the meeting must appeal to the feelings and create the atmosphere which is the first precondition for a successful meeting.’59 There must be music at every meeting, he stated, and more advance publicity.60 Basically Lie wanted every meeting, wherever it was held, to be a miniature copy of the rallies of which the party arranged a few during each election. He quoted Finn Moe, a party intellectual and editor of its magazine ‘The 20th Century’ (Det 20. Århundrede), who had formulated five rules of propaganda: (1) it must be simple and easy to understand, (2) it must make a sympathetic impression, (3) it must not rest, (4) it must be agile, and (5) it must be positive.61 And notably, long after the events described here, Lie explained that he and others had read Hitler’s Mein

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Kampf over and over again to gather ideas for the running of the campaign.62 It is very interesting that the DNA used the methods of the fascists precisely to save the country from them. Because the DNA was not just a party but part of a wider movement that represented the working class, it had the ability to create a sense of belonging. The labour movement consisted of people with very similar life experiences, and it could offer social and recreational activities to suit anyone. Of course the policies mattered, and they were to the benefit of these people, but the practical policies had not changed so much since 1918 when the party was less popular electorally. It was by regaining its role as the party of moderate, ordinary workers and small property owners through reunification with the Social Democrats, as well as its impressive campaigning, that it grew. In 1936, incidentally, the Communists fielded candidates in Bergen only, because it wanted to enable its supporters elsewhere to vote DNA. Bergen was a Communist stronghold based on their being the leading Socialist party there for some years after the split from the DNA in 1923.63 While the Communists criticized Arbeiderregjeringen and some of its priorities, they wanted it to continue. An example of this attitude is a book by Arvid Hansen. After finding faults with its budget, the book declared: ‘But this does not mean that we attack Arbeiderregjeringen. We certainly do not want a bourgeois government in the present government’s place [...] Compared to previous capitalist governments the current government is in several ways an improvement.’64 Could Labour also create a spectacle while it campaigned, and could it draw others in by an appeal that went beyond politics into aesthetics and the creation of an identity? It did have this capacity. In 1928 it had staged a Festival of Labour at the Crystal Palace. This featured ‘sports, dancing, community singing, organ recitals, and many other events.’ 65 It opened its 1929 election campaign by staging a rally at the Albert Hall which featured unison singing, though also an earnestly political 65-minute speech by MacDonald. The DNA certainly held no monopoly on the use of rallies as a campaigning tactic. In 1935 Labour held a pre-election campaign called ‘To Win Power’ starting on 14 September. ‘To Win Power’ comprised no less than 40 rallies staged in key centres across the country, beginning in Hull and York, with Leicester, Huddersfield and Nottingham following during the second weekend.66 The ability to draw others in through an appeal to the feelings directly resulted from having a social side to the movement. Matthew Worley sees such activities as ‘extensive’ by the 1930s in most localities.67 The purpose was threefold: to create a sense of fellowship, to recruit members and raise funds, lastly to provide an alternative to ‘capitalist’ leisure pursuits.68 Chris Williams has argued that

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cultural pursuits were a means to the end of aiding Labour expansion in some localities. In Rhondda, Wales they ceased between the early 1920s and the mid-1930s once the party had got off the ground.69 On the other hand, some local parties were so actively engaged in social pursuits that they lost sight of their primary political purpose.70 The League of Youth was engaged in a huge range of cultural, sporting and recreational activities.71 The policy of the Labour leadership was that these activities were secondary to the main political business, but they were a useful way to gain new members and integrating them in the League. Membership figures for the League of Youth vary a lot as do the number of branches it had. At one stage in 1933 it was down to just 66 branches ‘some of them with remarkably small memberships’.72 The next year Labour’s ‘Call to Youth’ campaign brought 30,000 young people into the party and 400 new branches were set up.73 It is known that the League helped with electioneering, but sources detailing what this help involved are scarce. By contrast, it is known in some detail what the AUF did in the elections of 1933 and 1936. In the latter year it buckled down to a long campaign. Asking for 5,000 kroner (£251) as an initial payment, it outlined its plans to the Joint Committee of the DNA and AFL.74 During spring there would be instructional tours to the local chapters to put them on a footing for the election. Among other things, its newspaper Arbeiderungdommen would be issuing a special election edition in at least 100,000 copies. There would be youth meetings across the country with speeches by the AUF, in which participants would be handed a slim brochure containing an appeal to young voters. A standardized programme for these meetings would be worked out by the AUF’s propaganda section and sent to the organizers. Lastly, it intended to try forming more theatre troupes (known as ‘drama gangs’ from a Russian model) for entertainment at the election meetings. Estimated costs for these plans amounted to 15,500 kroner (£779). The request for money was passed on to the Extended Finance Committee.75 In the event, all of the ideas mentioned above came to fruition. Additionally, the Oslo and Akershus chapters organized a course for its members on how to fight the election with the help of the AOF.76 In 1935 Labour returned to fighting an ordinary election campaign. It had the chance to prepare adequately and fielded 552 candidates, 17 less than in 1929 but 62 more than in the crisis election of 1931. These 552 candidates spent on average £365 each.77 Central expenditure is given in Table 4.3 shown on the following page. The total expenditure in the constituencies was thus £201,480. Adding central expenditure minus the grants to candidates, a grand total of £207,860 is arrived at as Labour’s spending in the election of 1935. Over

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half of the money spent centrally by Labour came from the trade unions (£12,600). The National Union of Railwaymen gave £4,000, the National Union of General and Municipal Workers contributed £2,500 and the Transport and General Workers’ Union £2,000.78 A total of £8,571 was received from individuals and £558 from local parties and women’s sections. Out of the money contributed by individuals, £2,605 came from the ‘Shilling Fund’, an appeal for money run in conjunction with the Herald.79 The economy of the party did not permit a central campaign as great in scope as on the two previous occasions. The Election Fund lent £11,000 to the General Fund and this ‘loan’ was never repaid.80 Table 4.3. Labour central expenditure in 1935 Grants to candidates £15,840 Leaflets, pamphlets and posters £2,649 Speaking, printing and postage £3,731 Total £22,220 (Source: Labour Party, Reports of Annual Conferences. Thirty-sixth Report (London, 1936), pp. 98-9.)

The materials produced consisted of 23 types of leaflets, 36 kinds of pamphlets, five pictorial posters, 23 letterpress posters, an illustrated broadsheet (election newspaper), notes for speakers and articles that appeared in the press.81 It is interesting that there were more pamphlets than leaflets, and it could mean that Labour’s ordinary task of producing pamphlets had not been supplanted by the electoral task of producing leaflets this time. This made it more like the DNA, and it could also mean that preparations were downgraded. Head Office made a profit on the manifestos, leaflets and pamphlets, but sustained a loss on the posters, broadsheets and speaker’s notes. There was a net outlay on the materials. Towards the end of the campaign, free materials were dispatched to all the Labour candidates, but it should be noted that except for the letterpress posters, this only amounted to a fraction of the total print. Thus, unsurprisingly, the more affluent divisional parties had a great advantage over the less well-funded ones when it came to the quantity of propaganda. The DNA had a clear ambition in the campaign of 1936: to win a majority in Parliament. When it made a deal with the Agrarians, it was forced to accept a sales tax, which of course acted against the expansion of the economy. Thus it argued that its counter-crisis policies were working, but that it needed a majority to implement them fully. For instance, it had a poster proclaiming that ‘80,000 unemployed demand a DNA majority’. This time, probably unlike 1930, the DNA welcomed

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5. ‘80,000 unemployed demand a majority for the DNA’. By permission of Arbeiderbevegelsens Arkiv og Bibliotek

being the centre of attention and wanted the election to be a referendum on its government.82 The Agrarians had co-operated in the counter-crisis measures, but it was necessary to point out that they had acted as a brake on these. The DNA received 864,306 kroner (£43,432) in total from the AFL for its election expenses. Figures for how this was spent are not available, but it is fair to assume it spent the entire amount. The reason is that it went over budget by 64,306 kroner. The Oslo DNA did tabulate its expenditure and it amounted to 86,820 kroner (£4,363).83 40,000 kroner included in the sum was received from the DNA centrally. As before, the national expenditure and the Oslo DNA’s expenses minus the central grant will be added together to constitute an approximation of how much the party spent in the election. The resulting sum of 911,126 kroner (£45,785) was very high indeed, considering that six years earlier it had spent merely 96,380 kroner (£5,305), assuming that the calculations of another historian are correct. The sum was also very high compared to Labour in 1935. Considering central expenditure, it was more than twice as high as

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Labour’s in absolute terms. Of course, it must be taken into account that in Britain by far the greatest share of electioneering expenditure was in the local constituencies. Even so, the DNA received £43,432 from the AFL and Labour just £12,600 from unions in the TUC. The DNA’s electoral materials spanned wider than before, as might be expected with such good funding. Conceptually, the range of materials was the same as in 1930. Both elections involved two self-produced films. In 1936 ‘Norway for the People’ was to be used in the countryside and ‘Building the Country’ in the towns. There were four larger brochures available, namely the ones for peasants and fishermen respectively as well as ‘The Norwegian State’ and ‘Work and Safe Conditions for Everyone’.84 Then there were ten brochures for individual counties.85 Another 11 brochures were shorter than those mentioned above. There was an electoral newspaper for women and a leaflet about the non-Socialist Society Party. The Society Party was singled out for attention in this way because, like the DNA, its appeal was based on counter-crisis measures. There were three posters, one of Nygaardsvold as discussed earlier, one intended for the rural areas and another for the towns. The DNA published a whole book with arguments, facts and figures.86 It issued copies of its manifesto and a booklet with the programme of principles and the manifesto together. The DNA thus had 26 pamphlets and one leaflet compared to Labour’s 36 pamphlets and 23 leaflets. This is a little surprising since the DNA’s central expenditure was higher in absolute terms, but Labour often reused its ordinary materials in elections. It was previously established that the DNA made serious attempts to attract people in the counter-cultural areas and other places where it was weak. This, of course, continued in 1936, which was an election precisely about reaching out to new groups in order for the Government to obtain a majority. More than two in five speeches were held in the countercultural areas. Around 375 speeches were made in Nordland during centrally directed tours, which is more than one fifth of the total. Throughout the 1930s, the DNA clearly wanted to be a party for all of Norway. The counter-crisis measures took centre stage as in 1933. It was claimed that the Government had created jobs for 70-80,000 people. Although it was admitted the international economy was moving in the right direction anyway, the interventionist policies of Nygaardsvold’s Government were much emphasized.87 In 1936 the DNA’s main slogans were ‘Norway for the People’ and ‘Work and Safe Conditions for Everyone’. Labour fought the 1935 election on ideology, international questions and, unlike previous elections, was keen to emphasize its Socialism.88 Socialism, and its corollary nationalization, was one of the most talked

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6. Johan Nygaardsvold. By permission of Arbeiderbevegelsens Arkiv og Bibliotek

about issues of the election. That was in keeping with Attlee’s goals for the campaign.89 In 1935, 54 per cent of Labour candidates wrote about Socialism in their statements, compared to just 8 per cent in 1929.90 After 1931 and the financial crisis a planned Socialist economy gradually became Labour’s most marked policy. It had previously downplayed its ideology in order to appear more ‘respectable’. Given its approach, it was surprising that Labour objected to the timing of the election. It thought that the Government would benefit from increased national unity at a time of international tension following Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia. However, the invasion highlighted the kind of anarchic world order that Labour wanted to transform through the League of Nations. And since Labour continued to stress its pacifism, the reminder of an unfair war going on was not the worst backdrop to the debate. One of its posters bore the message ‘Election Crosses or Wooden Crosses’, another featured a baby in a gas mask and it also produced a leaflet called ‘Murder from the Air’ about disarmament. Throughout the elections studied here and earlier, Labour had wanted to do well in the countryside. Now it contested difficult constituencies again, which meant that rural dwellers could act on the propaganda and go and vote Labour if so inclined. As an introduction to the party’s policies

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the leaflet ‘What Rural Britain Wants’ summarized Labour’s main objectives. It promised prosperous farms, well-paid agricultural workers, security of tenure, maintenance for those out of work and a thriving economy.91 Naturally, doing away with the tied cottage and providing housing at low rent remained a priority for Labour. The reverse side went into more detail about policy, explaining nationalization of the land, settlement on the land and the national plan for the countryside. The Notes for Speakers put Labour’s understanding of the countryside succinctly. The landlords of huge estates were not occupiers of the land, but they drained off the best of it in rents while leaving some of it derelict.92 Farmers were the next link in the chain, and they enjoyed no security of tenure. This in turn was passed on to their labourers, who were eking out a very tenuous existence. For this reason, Labour concentrated on gaining farmers and agricultural workers for its cause, and would eliminate landlords through nationalization. It thus had policies designed to benefit the farmer and wanted to protect him from middlemen who took part of his profits, and sometimes against foreign competition through import boards. It had even more concrete, understandable policies for the labourers: greater security and higher living standards through untied cottages, higher wages, allotments of land and educational opportunities. It was mainly farmers who were sceptical about Labour’s agricultural policies, so a flyer was produced to set their minds at rest. Meeting the challenge of the Conservatives, it dealt with the assertions that Labour would farm from Whitehall, was out for ‘control’, and would ‘nationalize.’93 It was true that it would nationalize the land, because farmers should get on with farming and not be landowners. But it would allow farmers ‘self-government’ when it came to land management, and would give them security of tenure. And the state would be a good landlord, providing equipment and the necessary capital. Maybe as part of the conscious attempt to build Socialism instead of just winning the election, it ended with an appeal to join Labour and support trade unionism. The DNA said the same things to Norwegian fishermen in 1930. By 1935, however, it was becoming clearer that Labour could not make much headway with farmers. Under the National Government a number of marketing innovations had been brought to farming. Agriculture Minister Walter Elliot’s schemes were not particularly popular, but the disaffection did not take the shape of voting Labour as its reforms were even more wide-ranging.94 Quoting the Notes for Speakers, Ernest Davies of Peterborough in his campaign statement revealed that the National Government had given farmers £45 million a year in direct and indirect

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subsidies. These were not in any way helping the agricultural labourer, whose wages had been falling since 1931, although now restored to that level.95 In addition, many were paid less than the minimum wage, as the inspectors Labour had appointed had been dismissed by the National Government. For these reasons or for others, ‘[t]he Labour Party puts the interests of the farm worker before that of the farmer or the landlord’, according to Davies. He did, nevertheless, repeat Labour’s policy of cutting out middlemen to make sure the farmer received a decent price for his produce. His final appeal was to farm workers only, whom he promised better houses, pensions at 60 and a higher standard of living. The booklet ‘Fifty Reasons Why You Should Vote Labour’ gave reasons why the classes of the countryside ought to support the party.96 Many of these were rehashed from previous elections, but some of the facts at least were new. Number 35 was a new element in Labour’s rural policy: the abolition of tithes. This would be effected gradually over 15 years, as the tithes would be redeemed on the same basis as compensation for the nationalization of land. In the mean time, there should be a sliding scale linking tithes to prices. Because the Ministry of Agriculture’s index of agricultural prices had been falling in recent years, it would imply a lighter burden. The greatest problem for Labour was that the National Government had lavished subsidies on farmers. They had not passed these on in the form of higher wages, and thus it was increasingly clear to Labour that it could not expect much support from them. They had a vested interest in the present state of society, and furthermore as Labour became more Socialist in inspiration, it could not but notice that farmers were employers. Candidates differed in how much emphasis they put on attracting them, probably in accordance with the demography of their constituencies. Labour continued to believe that its majority would come from the rural seats, but in the 1935 election there were something like 200 urban divisions which it needed to win back.97 In its official propaganda Labour did try to gain the farming vote, but its admission of those great subsidies being received by the group must have made most candidates less sure of success. The agricultural workers unquestionably remained a Labour target group. 53 per cent of candidates mentioned agriculture in their statements.98 By the time of the last interwar election in Britain and Norway, Labour had more Socialist rural policies than did the DNA. Labour stood for a consistent, principled policy to nationalize the land, give farmers security of tenure and raise living standards for agricultural workers. It has been argued that it stood for nationalization because it thought it impossible to create large numbers of smallholdings by the 1930s,99 but herein it is seen

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in the context of rising Socialism. The DNA had had much the same policies in 1930, but by 1936 had turned into an interest group for the property rights of the smaller farmers and smallholders. They and the fishermen remained the overwhelming beneficiaries of the party’s propaganda efforts and, while not as certain to vote for the DNA as urban workers, had been there from the start. The DNA’s first parliamentary representatives had been voted in by the fishermen of Troms in 1903. So it might be argued that the DNA had long been a people’s party rather just a party for the workers. At any rate the main daily (then called Socialdemokraten) claimed after the conference in 1901 that the DNA had made this transition.100 And in Troms the party was more associated with the primary occupations than with industry, consequently doing better in rural areas than in the towns.101 Although such figures should be treated with scepticism, 53 percent of smallholders and fishermen and 24 percent of farmers who voted for the first time in the 1930s, seem to have supported the DNA.102 Solving the economic crisis remained the main priority for the DNA, and since rural people were particularly affected by it, the appeals were likely to continue independently of the theoretical Socialist justification for promoting unity. The brochure ‘80 Millions to Combat the Crisis and Destitution’ was a follow-up to the crisis booklet of 1933, this time showing what Arbeiderregjeringen was doing to emerge from it. The brochure reported that the Depression had taken the form of an agricultural crisis. This truism was a mainstay of DNA propaganda because it justified its continuing concentration on country dwellers, as well as its famous slogan from 1933 also used later, ‘Town and Land Hand in Hand.’ This slogan signified that the DNA was not just for urban workers. It alluded also to the DNA’s self-proclaimed ability to overcome one of the cleavages of Norwegian society, indicating that it was finding its role as the party of the state.103 It singled out fishermen and forestry workers as the occupations hit most severely by the Depression; these were, in any case, probably some of the most disadvantaged groups in society.104 Arbeiderregjeringen wanted to give farmers and smallholders higher pay for their work. Minimum payments for these were now guaranteed by it, in the same way that trade unions secured a minimum wage for blue and white-collar workers. The DNA had always been strongly in favour of new cultivation and land allotments. It had fought to raise the expenditure on this by 1.8 million kroner (£90,452), to make this year’s spending total 5.15 million kroner (£258,794). Relief work in the forests had been allocated 1.8 million kroner, designed to provide temporary jobs for the unemployed lumberjacks. For the fishing industry, it was claimed, the government of the DNA had marked the beginning of

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a new era. Previously it had been told to fend for itself. Now was proposed 8.65 million kroner (£434,673) for acquisition grants, loans, tax subsidies, harbour works and new infrastructure, etc. As usual the DNA published a booklet aimed at the peasant and one for the fisherman. The first of these declared the need for a radical revision of the land law. At this stage, however, the larger farmers had much less to fear from the DNA. In 1930 it had been in favour of nationalization, but this gradually changed from 1933. The crisis agreement with the Agrarians could not have taken place if the DNA had continued to be in favour of expropriation. In 1936 the latter was holding forth land ownership as a positive value and wanted more farmers to enjoy this benefit.105 By then the DNA had started to include larger farmers in its proposals for debt management.106 It was still poorer farmers who were the DNA’s main concern though. The revision of the land law must be implemented to satisfy the land allotment which was going on, and just as much to provide extra land for the smallholder, without which he would be doomed to perpetual penury.107 A more equitable distribution of the land was therefore the DNA’s preferred policy at this stage, while previously it had been against private ownership. But the DNA saw its new policy also as a radical law which it alone would be willing to support, thus implicitly the smallholder and those hoping to settle on the soil must back the party. Somewhat revealingly, only towards the very end of the booklet did the DNA mention that it was working on legislation to improve life and working conditions for agricultural workers and servants.108 As the working class of a failing sector of the economy, isolated from organized help, they were at the very bottom of the pile. In the pamphlet addressed to fishermen, the DNA repeated its call for trade organizations to be formed. Like for all exploited people, the liberation of fishermen must be their own work.109 It would be much easier now that the DNA was in government. As before, it listed a number of spending commitments to make life better for the fishermen and this time also what it had done. When the DNA finally began to attract agricultural workers through a brochure, it urged trade unionism also on them. A union for agricultural and forestry workers had been founded in 1927. Because small farmers had been attracted to the DNA at least from 1927, the party had concentrated on them and fishermen, but now it promised to make conditions better for farm workers through the law.110 This was also Labour’s tactic in Britain because it realized that it was exceedingly difficult for this group to unionize. According to the DNA, agricultural workers were the only proletarians whose conditions of life had deteriorated in the last decades. Their money wages in 1935 were about a third of what they had been in 1920, while industrial workers had

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retained 60 per cent of their money wages over the same period .111 But even for them, the rise of the DNA to government meant a fresh start. Together with unionization a vote for the DNA would contribute to satisfactory wages, shorter working hours, nutritious food and better housing. It was therefore very important to farm workers that the DNA got a majority, and they were twice urged to do their bit. Agricultural workers could be important in the DNA’s hopes for a majority as they made up as much as 18 per cent of the working class in 1930.112 Therefore as far as electoral appeal was concerned, the DNA and Labour were virtually in tandem by the last interwar election. Labour had more or less given up on farmers, while the DNA had never tried for what would be large farmers in the Norwegian context. Both parties were interested in agricultural workers and their plight, and would use the law to ameliorate their lives. There was, however, a difference when it came to the policies: land nationalization on the part of Labour versus land redistribution on the part of the DNA. This divergence was caused by the DNA successfully attracting destitute smaller farmers and deciding to stand up for their wishes, which were not becoming tenant farmers of the state but to improve their position within the system of private ownership. More fundamentally, this divergence was caused by unlike social structure in the countryside: Norwegian farms were much smaller. The DNA never appealed to farmers who employed others, as suggested by Knut Kjeldstadli.113 There was a whole class of land-owning peasants in Norway which did not exist in Britain, where there were instead more agricultural labourers and fewer, correspondingly richer farmers. Labour’s situation consequently was a difficult one. The richer farmers were hardly natural Labour voters, and the agricultural labourers were so exploited that they had become apathetic and were probably deferential anyway. * In 1929 Labour had focused to a great extent on women and the DNA had acted similarly in 1930. Women were half the electorate in both countries after 1929, but participated less in the workforce than men. Therefore the parties needed to use slightly different arguments to gain their votes, as much of the propaganda was directed at particular occupations and it was not certain that a wife would vote the same way as her husband. In 1935 in Britain, Labour wrote just one leaflet for women, namely ‘Housewives look at this’. However, it considered women to be more concerned about children and health issues than men, and there were a further two flyers about these matters. ‘Housewives look at this’ was directed at the core Labour female voter. As with the DNA’s

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brochure for housewives in 1933, it was thus a gendered appeal to the working class. The flyer alleged that the National Government had increased food taxes by £19.3 million from 1931 to 1934. While it was right to control the supply of foodstuffs, it was wrong to make the poor pay. The health leaflet concentrated on issues of interest to women such as maternal mortality, health insurance benefits for women, nursery schools and maternity and child welfare.114 Labour would establish a public health service, which would include all of the priorities it was accusing the National Government of neglecting. Such a centrally funded national health service had been adopted as a policy in 1934.115 Because most of the issues related to children in some form, it was primarily to mothers that Labour was able to appeal with this flyer. Labour was in any case promising to provide good maternity services, nursery schools and school meals for everyone, not just the certifiably under-nourished. The leaflet to parents was not gendered at all, but dealt with the education of children. Therefore it is debatable whether it was part of the appeal to women in particular. In 1929 there had been a leaflet to agricultural workers which tempted them with better education for their children, and this was not aimed especially at women. The Notes for Speakers opened its section on women with the argument that they were more acutely affected by the injustices of the present economic system.116 The DNA had said exactly the same thing in 1933. The rest of the text was divided into arguments for housewives, mothers and working women. To the housewife Labour pointed out that the National Government had doubled food taxes. Labour was primarily talking to the working-class housewife here, a fact which it acknowledged openly. It promised to remove the food taxes. To the mother it held out a comprehensive maternity service, for which plans existed when it was thrown out of office.117 It reminded her that the National Government had abolished free secondary schooling. The working woman was wooed with plans for proper legislation in regard to safety, health and ventilation.118 This held true for both industrial and office workers. Labour added that the National Government caused hardship to unemployed married women with the Anomalies Act. Such were the arguments Labour used when communicating with women. If there was a difference in how it addressed men and women, it was in focusing more upon the latter as consumers. The attractions of the welfare state which Labour held out to women also related to their being users of services which would improve their quality of life. As Socialists Labour believed in welfare, and having few economic ideas beyond nationalization it was inevitable that the provision of decent services should occupy such a large part of the party’s policies. In general, Labour’s

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wooing of women related to a perception of their needs, their role in the family, prospects to be part of the economy and their perceived interests in peace and opportunities for children. Since the party’s progressive attitudes favoured opportunities for women, the creation of a welfare state and anti-war policies, there was a natural affinity between Labour and women. The DNA’s appeal to women was virtually identical to Labour’s in the last interwar election of 1936. It knew that women were more likely to abstain, and the DNA needed to do even better than last time in search of its desired majority. In 1933 turnout had been 79.8 per cent for men and 70.7 per cent for women .119 Consequently, it produced a brochure for housewives or female voters and an election newspaper for all women. The election newspaper had broad arguments for various sub-groups, like the Notes for Speakers in Britain. As in 1933 safe homes and conditions for children were the themes of the brochure. It said that it understood the pain of housewives when there was unemployment in the family. Furniture and objects that had been gathered over many years were sold or taken to the pawnbroker’s.120 However, the good news was that Arbeiderregjeringen had already done much in the struggle against unemployment. Possibly also aiming for sympathy votes, the brochure said the reader could aid those in need by helping to give the DNA the majority it required for putting all the people in work. The brochure mentioned the social legislation the party had brought in, and looked forward to unemployment, disability and child benefit and a better sickness benefit. The coming of a modern welfare state was thus used as an argument for women to support the party. In the main brochure (Arbeid og trygge kår for alle!) women were told how the DNA had actively engaged in women’s liberation, opening up all areas of society to them.121 The DNA’s technique of appealing to women was to imagine itself in their place. Thus in 1933 it spoke to them as a consumer doing the family shopping and in 1936 as the wife of an unemployed man. It played on their feelings as social beings as well as on their perceived interests. Work for the young was an important demand in the newspaper; naturally this would satisfy the mothers of the unemployed too.122 Equally, education was thought to particularly interest women, as the newspaper said, ‘We are anxious that our children get the best possible education.’123 In the remainder of the newspaper there were appeals to women in general, or ‘women of the working class,’ and to working women. The arguments used, the emphasis on the target group and the assumptions about what women valued were identical for Labour and the DNA at the time of the last interwar election. ‘Women won’t have a War Government’, Labour had proclaimed in 1929. In 1936 the DNA showed

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that it too believed women were attracted by pacifism, by printing gruesome war pictures on the back of its newspaper for women. ‘We choose peace. Vote for the Norwegian Labour Party’ was the legend. Labour’s electoral materials did not span that widely in terms of appeals to various groups. The party had instead an ideological agenda to put across, exemplified by its programme from 1934 For Socialism and Peace. Because Socialists could be found in all walks of life, there was less of a need to stress particular groups as benefiting from Labour policies. The DNA, on the other hand, needed votes wherever it could get them. It was its effective counter-crisis policies on which it wanted the focus. Nygaardsvold did not deny that his party was Marxist, but he said that it had always been geared towards practical solutions rather than dogma. It compromised its Socialism by abandoning nationalization of the land, banking and insurance and when it made a lukewarm appeal to forestry workers.124 It promised to introduce minimum wages and maximum working hours, but instead of being willing to appoint inspectors like Labour had done, it said these would be to no avail if the forestry workers did not first create strong unions to protect the standards. It was electoral success, the prospect of attaining a majority and the fear of fascism which caused the DNA to compromise in this way. The similarity of electoral appeals by the two parties eventually included the middle classes. In the course of the three elections which have been charted, both parties came to believe that professionals and small property owners were at least worth approaching. In 1931 Labour had reached out to middle-class people who had had their salaries cut. The reason this was important is explained by Labour thereby becoming a truly national party, since it was already focusing on the classes of the countryside. It was a people’s party too, looking after the interests of common people more than it worried about advantages for industry and commerce. After 1931 Labour continued focusing on those who were better off than workers. This can best be seen in Sir Stafford Cripps’s pamphlet from 1933, Are You a Worker? Where the Middle Class Stands and another effort from 1934, Lawrence Benjamin’s The Position of the Middle Class Worker in the Transition to Socialism. The titles implied that the middle class also was a working class. In 1935 there were many articles in the Labour newspaper Forward by Herbert Morrison, Frank Rose and the owner Thomas Johnston, urging greater attention to white-collar and technical strata.125 The reason given was that such occupations were growing. Cripps’s pamphlet attempted to enter into the mindset of middle-class people, much like an article in The London News had done before the 1929 election. Beginning carefully, he underlined that Labour sought a classless

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society, not one in which the present position of the classes were reversed.126 He went on to question whether there could be any middle position between capitalists and employees, stressing that this class division was not based on birth or even wealth.127 Unusually for Labour, this was a Marxist argument. Small property owners should remember that any day under the present system they might be thrown into unemployment and impoverishment.128 Cripps said this was a much greater worry than that their small savings or house might be lost, traditionally their reason for throwing in their lot with the capitalist parties. He also reminded them that ‘hundreds and thousands’ of these petit bourgeois people were now claiming unemployment benefit or were on the Poor Law, while the large capitalists were using the aforementioned savings to prop up the profits of private enterprise.129 Security was the main reason why the middle classes should support Socialism. An argument which he advanced was that state employment had always been seen as the safest way to make a living. This held true for the civil service, the colonial and Indian services, the army, the police or local government. Under Socialism of course the state would be the only employer, and everyone would partake of these secure conditions. Therefore the real choice every elector had was between safety and security under Socialism, or his savings preserving him from destitution under capitalism. Naturally, there were a great number of ideal factors as well such as the plight of others, the opportunity to serve the community, the poor living and housing conditions under capitalism and the war which would inevitably result from the anarchy of international capital.130 Cripps thus united two strands within recent Labour thinking: the renewed emphasis on Socialism and the need to communicate with the more prosperous members of the nation. Lawrence Benjamin, naturally enough, was also out to reassure professionals that they would not lose their livelihood under Socialism. Neither would they be brought down to the conditions presently prevailing for labourers.131 On the contrary, the aim was to ‘level up’ the lower paid to the position and status of professional workers. While there would be a transfer of ownership from the relatively few to the entire public, the personnel of these industries, both skilled and manual, would continue as before.132 It would be possible to raise the many without lowering the educated because Socialism would mean an expansion of national output. This was a completely reasonable assumption at the time, since capitalism was associated with the economic crisis. In addition, Socialism presented attractive prospects for those who were engaged in society’s civilizing work― the middle classes― and Benjamin went on to enumerate almost all of these people.133 He promised that Socialism would

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make provision for the economic and social status of every useful professional worker, and would liberate him from having to struggle to keep himself and his family in decent circumstances.134 Cripps and Benjamin were able to present coherent arguments why the middle class should not be afraid of Labour, and even advanced reasons why their lives would be better under Socialism. It is doubtful if this was a very successful appeal. In the view of Jack Reynolds and Keith Laybourn, Labour’s image as the party of the working class made it unthinkable for the bourgeoisie to vote for it. Contrary to its intentions, stressing Socialism may have alienated the latter, and in any case, Labour did not have the leadership to match the National Government.135 At least the theory suggested it was worth a try. Neither Cripps nor Benjamin really addressed the concerns of small property owners, though, what is called the lower middle class. Cripps’s mention of these people was to make the purely negative point that their situation was not good under capitalism either, but what future did they have under the common ownership of the factors of production? In reality, Labour could not accommodate this group if it was going to stress its Socialism, which is why in 1935 it all but neglected the petite bourgeoisie. In 1931 some candidates began stressing the unity of interests between wage earners and shopkeepers or small manufacturers. The last two could not sell their goods if workers were left unemployed or received serious pay cuts. This was still an entirely valid argument, but fewer candidates made it. To deal with someone who made a serious appeal, William Hirst in Bradford South produced an election newspaper, in which an imaginary shopkeeper explained why he would be voting Labour.136 This shopkeeper had previously voted against the party, but was now on board because the spending power of his customers mattered to him. He represented how the party thought about this occupation, and it assumed small property owners had voted for Labour’s opponents out of status consciousness. There were no centrally produced brochures for the lower middle class, although it could be argued that much of the information about health, education and such matters would be equally applicable to this group as to wage earners. As shown above, Socialism was no hindrance to paying attention to the needs of professional workers; indeed the ideology in itself had something to offer. Often the altruistic reason of wishing to abolish the extremes of wealth and poverty was appended as well. Hirst’s Bradford South election paper also included a fictitious architect and he made this point, although saying that the narrow interests of his profession would lead him to support Labour anyway, as the party wanted large housing developments. While in For Socialism and Peace there was no special mention of the petite

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bourgeoisie, in it Labour ‘appeals to the technician and the professional man, because it believes that it can offer them a wider and more creative opportunity of public service than is theirs today.’137 Although Labour’s interest in these people was rising, it should not be imagined that appeals were commonplace or that it saw them as part of its base. It is also conceivable that Labour failed to distinguish more positively between professional workers and labourers, believing that they would both recognize themselves as wage earners or workers. This, if so, was a failure of rhetoric. Herbert Morrison had been in the vanguard of appealing to middle-class people, and when he said that the Labour Party promoted all who labour, the clarification that this included doctors, company directors and civil engineers was in fact necessary.138 The DNA mostly chose the less challenging approach of wooing middle-class people on the basis of its crisis policies, rather than by claiming they would benefit from living in a Socialist state. The virtues of Socialism argument which Labour used, was not entirely absent though. A year before the election of 1936, the DNA published a brochure called ‘Out of the Deadlock. Plan and Order’. Here it described itself as an organization primarily promoting Socialism, open to all sections of the working population – industrial and farm workers, fishermen and seamen, white-collar workers and workers by brain.139 When the actual election came, the party chose to appeal on the basis of the bourgeois values it believed many of these people had. Two brochures were undoubtedly for ordinary middle-class people, those for shopkeepers in Oslo and clerks, and in addition the brochure ‘Healthy Finances’ was for centrists, whom it might be imagined overlapped with this category . White-collar workers were asked to reflect on how well Arbeiderregjeringen was running the economy and what that meant for them personally.140 Aggregate income had risen by 104 million kroner (£5.2 million) in 1935, the greatest increase since 1919. 70 or 80 thousand people had found work. Furthermore, the DNA had managed to reduce the national debt by 9 million kroner and had run a budget surplus of 19 million kroner (£954,774) for 1935-36. It was true that there had been some new taxes: on interest (to make tax evaders pay) and the sales tax. But all the money thus raised went on measures to increase employment and to help destitute local authorities. The arguments were based on judging the DNA by the standards of the previous non-Socialist governments and appreciating how responsible the party had been. There might even be tax cuts in the future, it said, when the unemployment problem had been solved. So successful had the new Government been that delegations and researchers from across the globe were arriving to study the Norwegian example. That was also the case for Denmark and

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Sweden, which under the Social Democrats were doing equally well. Together these three countries had become the ‘best run and happiest in the world’ under freedom and democracy.141 The DNA presented its case differently to white-collar workers than to its core groups. It was unusual for it to promote nationalism. Freedom and democracy were bourgeois values, not really the DNA’s, and it normally focused solely on how it was tackling the crisis, not on how prudently it was running the economy. Its claims were accepted in the British context, where Arthur Greenwood in the 1935 election had told radio listeners that probably ‘the happiest and most prosperous countries in Europe today’ were Denmark, Norway and Sweden, which all had Labour governments.142 The brochure for white-collar workers portrayed the target group as somewhat superior to workers, but the brochure for the small businessmen of Oslo likened their situation in life to wage earners. It said the DNA realized how hard shopkeepers worked, and compared their shops to other places of employment where the DNA was stronger.143 Because Arbeiderregjeringen considered its most important task to be putting people in profitable work, there was more money around and new opportunities for traders. So most shopkeepers were registering more sales, and had reason to be satisfied with the DNA. The task now was to continue this trend. By putting more people in work, the DNA was creating new sources of income for businesses. This argument was exactly what Labour had said in 1931 and (occasionally) in 1935. Despite this brochure talking about the unity of interests between employees and shopkeepers, the DNA was not entirely comfortable with the latter group. Those who employed others had ‘capitalist interests’ it wrote in other pamphlets, and so were not part of ‘the working people’. Both election films featured shopkeepers as villains. The brochure was only in use in Oslo, meaning that the DNA did not target them elsewhere. In the new state the DNA was going to build, it could not afford to ignore the petite bourgeoisie of the towns. It had already made their country cousins part of its base. Nevertheless, the DNA was clearly doubleminded about shopkeepers. They were better off than small property owners in the country, and many were Conservative voters. For the entire bourgeoisie the DNA published a brochure called ‘Healthy Finances’, in which it declared that while it had spent 200 million kroner (£10 million) on fighting the crisis, and although the results had exceeded all expectations, the national debt had not risen by a krone.144 The point was underlined, as was the assertion that the state’s finances were in the best condition for 20 years. As for those middle-class people of an open-minded or Socialist disposition, there was a serious appeal to them in the form of a film.

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‘Building the Country’ was intended for the towns, and gave a new perspective on politics for those with whom the DNA had never communicated before. It was a political love story, and of a high enough quality to be watched for pleasure.145 The main characters are an engineer struggling to find work and his fiancée, who has a working-class background. The young woman can be seen as representing the DNA, which proved that the party was friendly to middle-class people. Due to her influence and the frustration caused by unemployment, the engineer becomes a Socialist. His family’s situation deteriorates further when his father the banker receives a salary cut. The engineer largely abandons hope, but he is inspired by his new beliefs to join the labour movement and a trade union acquaintance helps him find work as a mechanic. Meanwhile, the economy improves due to the DNA’s crisis policies. Jobs are created for the workers, which results in the need for more clerks and technicians too. Workers by hand and by brain must stand together. The young man gets his first engineering position partly due to his trade union friend. The DNA is in fact telling professionals that the party can give them new opportunities. It means to take charge of the state, welcoming everyone who desires to help build the country. The film was surprisingly similar to one made by a Labour ward party in Nottingham called ‘Love and Labour’. It was first shown on 14 November 1934, and also featured a Socialist heroine whose young man is a Tory. He is converted at a Labour meeting, the plot ends with their wedding and shows their happy home life two years later.146 ‘Building the Country’, however, also has villains, and it is somewhat odd given the party’s appeal to small businessmen in the campaign that one of them is the fiancée’s employer. This shopkeeper is portrayed as a reactionary who is failing to come to terms with the new order of the DNA in government, and as a profiteer who has bought half a crisisridden farm, which he uses as a holiday home. It may be asked why a shopkeeper is pictured even less sympathetically in the rural equivalent of the above film, ‘Norway for the People’.147 The answer is that it is set in a counter-cultural, nynorsk speaking, teetotal environment where merchants were local dignitaries. (Only in Oslo did the DNA appeal to shopkeepers through written propaganda.) The owner of the village store, Mr Berg, is shown enjoying a bourgeois lifestyle, and represents the capitalists in an understandable way to the fishermen who were the target audience for the message. Just as with the urban film, the DNA here attempted to persuade those who might have traditional qualms about voting for the party. By the last interwar election the hesitant approach of Labour and the DNA in wooing middle-class people was virtually over. Counter-cyclical economic insights made this seem natural, and both believed that

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Socialism was a selling point too, though the DNA was a little reluctant to antagonize anyone in an election in which it had to gain seven new seats. Both parties stated they were for ‘workers by hand and by brain’ (the DNA’s phrase hånden og åndens arbeidere means just that). Therefore it was entirely appropriate that they should devote some attention to professional and clerical workers. In 1936, and only in 1936, was there an extension of the DNA’s social base. Firstly, ‘the working people’, the DNA’s appellation for its potential supporters, was explicitly defined to include white-collar workers and small producers.148 White-collar workers had long been defined within the perimeter of those who would gain by Socialist policies, but had often been neglected. In the main brochure they were wooed with the reform of economic life. It would be more regulated and under the control of society to a greater degree.149 This would put clerks and officials, especially the less well-off, on parity with other workers as for security of tenure. Arbitrary dismissals and salary cuts would not be tolerated, and promotion would depend on seniority and experience.150 Secondly, the appeals spanned wider than before, but in some cases this was not mirrored by justification of who were potential DNA voters. Knut Kjeldstadli has put the figure at nine out of ten Norwegians in 1936, up from seven or eight tenths in 1930.151 It is assuredly correct that the DNA considered about 90 per cent of the population to constitute ‘the working people’ in 1936. Evidence of this is forthcoming from the county brochures, which begin with details about the local economy. Here it is stated that ‘the working people’ are all blue and white-collar workers, farmers and other small producers.152 They are characterized by living off their own work. Despite the film, professionals were not included in the ‘the working people’. This might be thought a logical error since they lived off their own work. The county brochures stated that høiere funksjonærer were defined as people with capitalist interests along with employers (whether they worked themselves or not), rentiers and larger farmers. The DNA was supposedly a Marxist party and Labour was not, but it was the latter which correctly interpreted that professionals were not capitalists. On the other hand, it was not until the 1940s that Labour similarly defined itself to stand for nine tenths of the people.153 Nonetheless, the DNA did try to gain the support of professionals. In a meeting on 10 September 1936 in Oslo for technicians and engineers, party secretary Einar Gerhardsen talked about how the help of graduates was needed in building the new state. While the DNA originated among the ‘little people’, it now sought the support of the entire community, he said.154 This is indicated by the old and new interest groups for which the DNA convened special meetings in Oslo: agricultural workers, architects,

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artists, charladies, hospital staff, hotel and restaurant workers, maids, lawyers, physicians and various kinds of clerks.155 * Labour’s electoral efforts in 1935 ended the night before polling day with a series of demonstrations and meetings across the country, taking in almost every city, town and village.156 Clement Attlee wrapped up his campaign in Whitechapel and Mile End before returning to his own constituents in Limehouse, also in East London. In the event, he spoke challengingly about the state of the world: ‘What we are witnessing today is the breakdown of the capitalist and imperialist system, and the question is whether, in this country, we can lead the world away from disaster.’157 He claimed victory was theirs for the taking, if only everyone did their best to get Labour supporters to the polls. By addressing audiences at several meetings in the East End, he notched up a personal total of 50 speeches given in a fortnight. When the results came out, Attlee’s reaction was that the tide of the party was turning.158 The main parties fared as follows: Table 4.4. The British general election 1935 Party Votes (change from 1931) Seats (change from 1931) Conservatives 53.7% 432 Labour 37.9% (+7.3 %) 154 (+102) Liberals 6.4% 20 (Source: Arthur Marwick, A History of the Modern British Isles, 1914-1999. Circumstances, Events and Outcomes (Oxford, 2000), p. 114.)

Attlee expressed disappointment with the number of seats gained, although Labour advanced by more than a hundred, making the party’s presence in Parliament substantial again. 24 former ministers who lost their seats in 1931 were returned.159 He was more satisfied with the total number of votes cast for Labour, which constituted a higher percentage than ever. This showed how widespread was support for the policies of Socialism and peace. The editorial in that day’s Herald was clear-sighted in view of what would happen subsequently. It summed up the feelings of the party by saying the result was not as good as had been hoped, but better than it at first appeared.160 It noted that the idea of overturning such a massive government majority was probably illusory in the first place. But the future was between Tory and Labour, as the Liberals had effectively been eliminated. And Labour’s basis in terms of both policies and support was ‘sounder than ever before.’ Its votes were more evenly dispersed around the country.161 Since its number of seats did not match

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7. End of campaign rally, Young’s Square, Oslo, 1936. By permission of Arbeiderbevegelsens Arkiv og Bibliotek

its performance in terms of votes, it was nevertheless the case that Labour MPs predominantly represented industrial areas and the poorer parts of London.162 The grand finale to what the DNA considered as its year-long campaign was the traditional mass rally at Young’s Square in Oslo the day before the election. It followed the precedents of 1930 and 1933 closely, but there were also some new costly features.163An aeroplane spelled out the message ‘vote DNA’ in the sky. Headlights illuminated the headquarters of the party, while the 40,000 participants were surrounded by flags, banners and the torches of the youth organization. Einar Gerhardsen gave the first speech expounding how town and country, clerks and workers, men and women, young and old, technicians and intellectuals had joined the party to create a better society. In other words, Socialism had become an ideology for everyone. This theme was echoed in the second speech by Martin Tranmæl. ‘We are living through a sea change of historic proportions,’ he said. ‘The death knells are tolling for bourgeois society, tomorrow the Norwegian people will undertake its funeral!’ At the end of the meeting the crowd refused to leave, with only a few thousands trickling away. Those who remained were able to watch ‘Building the Country’ projected onto the façade of the party headquarters. In spite of such rousing rhetoric and the unparalleled resources expended on the campaign, the DNA did not obtain the majority in Parliament it so earnestly desired. Although advancing to 42.5 per cent, it

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only picked up one new seat. Its 2.4 percentage points’ increase was probably caused mostly by the 1.5 percentage points’ drop in the support for the Communists, who gave the DNA a clear field everywhere except Bergen. This suggested that in the present climate the DNA had reached its maximum level of adherence. * This chapter has compared Labour’s efforts before and in the general election of 1935 with those of the DNA in the parliamentary election of 1936. Even though both parties had hoped to do even better than what they actually achieved in 1935 and 1936, these elections turned out to be about consolidation. Labour needed to regain its strength in Parliament, and while it ended up with 154 seats in 1935 against 287 in 1929, there was steady progress from the disaster of 1931. It had consolidated its role as a serious alternative to the Conservatives. The DNA had mobilized for a majority in Parliament. This did not come about, but it had consolidated its role as the government. In 1927 it had become the largest party and in 1936 it reached 42.5 per cent of the popular vote, well ahead of the second-largest party, the Conservatives, on 22.6 per cent. In terms of membership, the number of branches and labour movement strength, both parties had progressed since they last faced the electorate. With Labour the picture was somewhat mixed as it lost newspapers and affiliated members, but overall the party was in a good state. Particularly promising was the number of individual members: it had 419,311 in 1935 compared to 247,000 in 1931. Its only daily newspaper the Daily Herald was also doing spectacularly. In 1935 it was the largest newspaper in the world with a circulation of 2 million. The DNA improved its position between 1933 and 1936 by every conceivable indicator, except that it lost one newspaper. On the other hand, it had 26 dailies in 1936 against 21 in 1933. Both parties suffered economic difficulties along the way, Labour especially in 1934 when it had to raid the Election Fund and the DNA in 1935 when it required immediate assistance from the AFL. As before Labour did not know when the election would be called, but started planning for it in the autumn of 1934. It held its first joint election meeting with the TUC on 27 February 1935, and polling day turned out to be the 14 November. Between the elections of 1931 and 1935, Labour conducted a number of campaigns such as ‘A Million New Members and Power’ in 1931-32 and ‘Victory for Socialism’ in 1933-35. These campaigns made it more of a party of integration than it would otherwise have been.

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The DNA also believed in the year-long electioneering concept, and all of 1936 was used for gentle preparations for the election. In January a plan for what should be done month by month was circulated to the local parties. This plan was accepted by the Joint Committee of the DNA and AFL on 14 February 1936. It began work in the most difficult areas earlier than elsewhere, and during the election it devoted a lot of attention to these areas. It sought to make its campaigning as entertaining as possible through the use of drama troupes, singing, films, red flags, etc. This was not a novelty, but extremely good funding allowed this approach to be extended. Labour spent £207,860 during the campaign of 1935 and the DNA spent £45,785 in the election of 1936. Both parties spent more than in the previous election, except that Labour’s central expenditure was lower than in 1931. The increase in expenditure overall was more marked for the DNA. Spending on the elections was related to the success each party achieved. Both attained its best result when it spent the most money, but the DNA only marginally exceeded its 1933 election result despite spending a great deal more money in 1936. By the last interwar election in each respective society, Labour’s and the DNA’s appeals to social groups were virtually identical. Both were very woman-friendly in 1935 and 1936. Throughout the three elections considered, both parties had been anxious to woo the rural classes. In 1935 Labour more or less gave up on farmers, and the DNA had never tried for what in the Norwegian context would be larger farmers. Labour continued to appeal to agricultural workers and the DNA began such appeals in 1936. The DNA had concentrated on fishermen in 1930, 1933 and 1936. Labour never showed much interest in this group, a consequence of the smallness of the occupation in Britain. Labour appealed to the middle classes in 1935 through its Socialism, but it was not a very systematic or sustained effort. Besides professionals it had some interest in shopkeepers. The DNA was most comfortable appealing to white-collar workers in 1936. It tried for shopkeepers too, but was ambiguous about this group. It theoretically regarded professionals as having capitalist interests, but its efforts to woo them were no less serious than Labour’s. Both Labour and the DNA were people’s parties by this time, not just interest groups for urban workers.

5 THE BRITISH AND NORWEGIAN LABOUR PARTIES IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD

One of the purposes of this book is to shed new light on the success of the Socialist parties between the wars. Since a comparative framework was chosen, it may be asked whether there was a significant difference between the two parties in this regard. When the Second World War started in September 1939, Labour could look back upon three years in government. Its first government lasted nine months and its second two years and three months. The problem was that these two governments led by MacDonald had achieved very little for Labour’s supporters. The party had accepted the responsibility of forming minority governments twice. By doing so it had proved that it could run the country, and especially the 1924 government had helped disqualify the Liberals as serious contenders for power.1 It was in the election that took place in 1924 after MacDonald had resigned that the Liberals collapsed, going from 158 to just 40 MPs. This was very much to Labour’s advantage. But in terms of real achievements from being in government twice, it had little to show for itself. It was much lauded for its accomplishments in the field of foreign policy, which confirmed that it was capable of governing.2 The electoral propaganda for the three campaigns looked at in earlier chapters, though, had promised great material improvements and these simply had not occurred. It had carried out some minor social reforms and useful rationalization schemes for the agricultural and coal industries.3 These domestic achievements had often been nullified by the Conservative government 1924-29 or the National Government, which ended inspections of what farmers paid their agricultural workers and suspended Wheatley’s Housing Act. The record of the second Labour government was not a happy one. It had failed to do anything about unemployment,

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which had risen from 1,533,000 in January 1930 to 2,735,000 in June 1931.4 The DNA had been in government for four and a half years consecutively when the Second World War started, after Nygaardsvold became Prime Minister in March 1935. This government had at no time enjoyed a majority, relying instead on a deal with the Agrarians initially and then support from various parties in Parliament as it progressed. What is crucial is that it had achievements to show for itself. Unemployment had stood at 31.3 per cent among trade unionists when the DNA had come to power.5 In September 1939 it had been reduced to 13.1 per cent. This was not solely a result of its policies as unemployment had begun decreasing after 1933.6 Nevertheless, the DNA seemed to be moving towards ‘all the people in work’. It had successfully implemented old age pensions in 1936 and unemployment benefit in 1938. These were achievements that had a degree of permanence about them. They had been introduced in Britain some years earlier, unemployment benefit by the Liberals in 1911 and pensions by the Conservatives in 1925.7 In fact, Labour lost power in 1931 for refusing to cut unemployment benefit, whereas the DNA got credit for introducing such a scheme seven year later. This suggests that the Norwegian setting was more conducive to the DNA than was Britain’s for Labour. The DNA’s government brought in a law on the protection of employee’s rights in 1936, replacing the previous legislation from 1892. It made universal the improvements obtained by some trade unions such as the eight-hour day and nine days’ holidays.8 The DNA was therefore seemingly a success in government, making life better for the populace. A lot of the reason for its better standing at the end of the interwar period than Labour’s was fortuity. It came to power as the Depression was receding, not while the economic crisis was going from bad to worse like Labour did in 1929. But by being the largest and most influential party in the 1930s, the DNA established a secure position which stood it in good stead for later. The contention therefore is that the DNA was more successful than Labour in the interwar period as a whole. The débâcle of 1931 when Labour lost four fifths of its parliamentary seats, looms large in the explanation of why the DNA should be seen as the more successful of the two parties, although in the election of 1935 Labour was returned to the role of a serious opposition party. If it may be assumed that the DNA had greater success between the wars, the question arises of why this should be the case. As mentioned in chapter 1, the classes of the countryside have been seen as highly important for the outcome of the political struggle between the wars. Both Gøsta Esping-Andersen and Gregory Luebbert have pointed to the role of peasants in the making of social democratic regimes. There are two

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possible reasons how this may have had an effect: 1) There were not enough urban workers in the population for Socialist parties to gain a majority, and it was therefore necessary for them to seek support among other strata.9 2) In Denmark in 1933, in Sweden later the same year and in Norway in 1935, there were deals with parties representing medium-sized farmers. Luebbert and Esping-Andersen believe this was what effected a ‘social democratic breakthrough before World War II’ in the words of the latter.10 The views may be dealt with one at a time. (1) The DNA and Labour both believed they would not gain majorities without the rural classes. Neither party was able to achieve an actual majority between the wars. The closest Labour came was in 1929 with 288 out of 615 seats and the DNA managed 70 out of 150 seats in 1936. These results were equivalent; both parties held 47 per cent of the seats in Parliament after their best election. According to Clare Griffiths, 40 out of Labour’s 288 seats were from rural areas in 1929.11 By the Norwegian constitution two thirds of parliamentary seats were allocated to the countryside, and the DNA therefore had no choice but to do well there. In the 1936 election it took 40.9 per cent of votes cast in rural areas against 46 per cent of those cast in urban areas.12 This was a good result, and it would never have been able to form a government if it had done poorly in the countryside. In parliamentary terms, however, it did exactly as well as Labour overall. The DNA’s greater ability to attract support in the rural areas was therefore not the reason why it achieved more than Labour between the wars. (2) The crisis agreement with the Agrarians paved the way for the DNA to enter government. It took a year and a half before its impressive result in the 1933 election was transformed into governmental power. The only way Labour could have replicated such a deal was to make one with the Liberals after the 1929 election, which Robert Skidelsky believes it should have done.13 However, once the DNA had formed a government and given the Agrarians what they had wanted in return, it did not rely on that party for its parliamentary majority. It agreed a budget with the Agrarians in 1936 as well as the crisis agreement over the budget in 1935, but the latter stressed they were free to oppose the DNA on other issues. It was a minority government seeking support wherever necessary. Labour was allowed to form a government without making concessions to any party in particular, and afterwards MacDonald’s second government was in the same position as

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Nygaardsvold’s. It had to seek support from wherever it was able. Therefore, just as with point 1), this was probably a necessary cause for the DNA to come to power, without which there would have been no government. But Labour achieved the same basic outcome as the DNA without either point 1) or point 2) being present, i.e. winning a maximum of 47 per cent of the seats in Parliament and forming a minority government. Neither of these explanations is therefore comparatively the reason why the DNA is judged to have achieved more between the wars. What then are the explanatory factors for success? As a starting point, Tables 5.1 below and 5.2 overleaf show the election results for the interwar period in Britain and Norway. Table 5.1 British general elections Year 1918

Conservatives

Labour 22.2%

Liberals 12.1%

1922 1923 1924 1929 1931

38.5% 38.1% 48.3% 38.2%

29.7% 30.5% 33.0% 37.1% 30.6%

28.3% 29.6% 17.6% 23.4%

Others Coalition 47.6%, Other Conservatives 6.1%

Conservatives and National 60.5%, Samuelite Liberals 6.5%

1935 53. 7% 37.9% 6.4% (Source: Arthur Marwick, A History of the Modern British Isles, 1914-1999. Circumstances, Events and Outcomes (Oxford, 2000), p. 56, p. 90, p. 92, p. 94, p. 102, p. 108, p.114.)

It will be seen that with the single exception of 1931, Labour advanced at every election between 1918 and 1935. The picture for the DNA is more complicated, with an initial decline followed by a great leap forward in 1927, another downturn in 1930 and then the election victories of 1933 and 1936. However, even in 1930 the DNA got more votes than in the previous election: 374,695 in 1930 against 368,100 in 1927.14 Its seeming decline was only a relative one vis-à-vis the non-Socialist parties, which succeeded in driving large numbers of habitual abstainers into the polling booths, under the pretence that the DNA were dangerous revolutionaries

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who would abolish Christianity.15 This leads to an important rule for both Labour and the DNA: in the interwar period, unless it were split, the party would advance in terms of votes at every election. The 1931 Labour catastrophe was caused by a split within the party (according to this rule), and the DNA’s downturns of 1921 and 1924 were caused by the splits leading to the formation of the Social Democratic Party and the Communist Party respectively. Table 5.2 Norwegian parliamentary elections Year

DNA

Liberals

1918

Conservatives 30.0%

Agrarians

Communists

30.9%

32.7%

1921

33.7%

21.3%

22.6%

13.1%

1924

32.5%

18.4%

20.4%

13.5%

6.1%

1927 1930 1933

25.5% 30.0% 21.8%

36.8% 31.4% 40.1%

18.7% 21.0% 17.6%

14.9% 15.9% 13.9%

4.0% 1.7% 1.8%

1936

22.6%

42.5%

16.4%

11.6%

0.3%

Others Joint lists 5.2% Social Democrats 9.2% Social Democrats 8.8%

Society Party 1.5% Society Party 2.2%

(Source: Berge Furre, Norsk historie 1905-1940 (Oslo, 1982), p. 320.)

The Depression was a vital factor in determining the success or otherwise of parties in the 1920s and 1930s. The outcome of the political struggle between the wars was decided primarily in the early 1930s, so the elections featured in previous chapters were the crucial ones. It will also be noticed that there was a neat symmetry in the results of the featured elections. Labour won the election of 1929, but went on to lose those of 1931 and 1935. The DNA, meanwhile, lost the election of 1930, but won those taking place in 1933 and 1936. The Depression came in-between the first and second election in each country, reversing the fortunes of the Socialist party. In 1929 the Depression had not started in Britain. Unemployment was 10.4 per cent for union members, down from 10.8 per cent the year before.16 In 1930 it was 16.0 per cent, in 1931, 21.3 per cent and in 1932, 22.1 per cent. This was the Depression making itself apparent. In Norway the Depression had not started in October 1930. Average unemployment for union members was 16.6 per cent in that year, only a little higher than the year before at 15.4 per cent.17 But in 1931 the Depression was beginning to bite: unemployment increased to 22.3 per cent and in 1932 it reached 30.8 per cent.

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Why might the slump be so important politically? It justified the two main political events of the 1930s in Britain and Norway. The National Government was formed to combat the financial crisis which resulted from the Depression. The DNA made a crisis agreement with a political party of the right in 1936 because both farmers and workers were in a very precarious position. Both events were extraordinary and counter-intuitive occurrences, at least that a government primarily of Conservatives and Liberals should be led by a Labour man. It was therefore vital to be in a good position before the Depression changed the rules of the game. That is where contingency comes in, as neither party knew there would be a depression. Unemployment was permanently high during the interwar period. Labour had been in government also in 1924 without being able to bring it down by much. Nevertheless, it advanced at the subsequent election. The Depression seemed to herald the breakdown of the liberal capitalist economic order, and thus it permitted a wider range of political alternatives to come to the fore. It is by no means a full explanation for the political achievements of the DNA, but it has not gone completely unnoticed that the party was fortunate in the timing of its accession to government. As noted by one scholar, the election of 1930 has gone down in DNA history as ‘the great defeat,’ but with hindsight there is no doubt that the party was lucky to avoid governmental responsibility at the outset of an economic crisis that had not yet materialized fully when the votes were cast.18 Its other stroke of luck was to be thrown out of government in 1928 in such a way that it ‘united all workers.’ Within a few years the same crisis paved the way for a genuine take-over of power by social democracy. The Depression had a somewhat gentler effect in Britain than in many other countries,19 but in Norway during the years 1932-34 unemployment stood at above 30 per cent and during the winter it went above 40 per cent.20 This explains the intense appeal behind the DNA’s main slogan in the 1933 election ‘All the people in work.’ For Britain David Howell has stated that Labour was unlucky to win the election of 1929, and therefore form a government in unpropitious circumstances. Had it not done so, it ‘would have been free from the trauma of 1931’.21 Counter-crisis proposals had an undoubted pedigree in the DNA, going back to 1921 and the joint programme with the AFL.22 Planning and proto-Keynesian economics had a similar tradition in Labour.23 Labour and the New Social Order, its programme from 1918, mentioned demand management, and it was especially popular between 1920 and 1922 when J. R. Clynes was leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party. After 1922 the approach declined with the return of MacDonald and Snowden to positions of prominence, except that the ILP formulated two demand

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management schemes called ‘Revolution by Reason’ (1925) and ‘The Living Wage’ (1926). In the 1910s and 1920s the DNA was a party regularly gaining more than 30 per cent of the votes (except when split), and in the latter decade it also presented a marked Socialist image. It was in the 1930s that it formulated anti-crisis measures that it seriously intended to implement, and went above 40 per cent in electoral contests. These had far more purchase with the voters than the rhetoric and policies formulated during its theoretically Marxist period. It was no longer bourgeois society in itself which necessitated Socialism but the economic crisis.24 The DNA became the Norwegian equivalent of the Popular Front, marshalling the support of most people with progressive views.25 But it was only possible to widen the appeal through counter-crisis measures after the Depression had started. Although much of the theory behind planning and demand management already existed in the 1920s, the hyper-radicalism of the DNA made their adoption unlikely, and in any case it had not yet filtered down to even politically-minded people in Norway. The two popularizers of planning and counter-cyclical economic policies in that country were the geographer Axel Sømme and the selftaught economist Ole Colbjørnsen, who produced A Norwegian Three Year Plan in 1933. The latter simplified it into a brochure entitled All the People in Work! for the DNA’s use during the election campaign. Colbjørnsen was a cosmopolitan, and his economic ideas had developed from exposure to Stalin’s under-consumptionist analysis while resident in the Soviet Union. He was likewise familiar with Keynes’s theories.26 He may also have been inspired by German planning, both that of the trade unions and the Nazis.27 If it required time to mature counter-crisis schemes, Labour was profoundly unlucky in what year it rose to government. However, it should be noted that the DNA was the largest party in Parliament after 1927, and yet did not seek power until 1933. It reluctantly was forced to form a government in 1928, but it wrote such a radical accession statement that it was immediately thrown out of office by the nonSocialist majority. This was what the ILP wanted Labour to do in 1924: present a challenging Socialist programme, wait until the other parties rejected it and then cash in on the propaganda value of what had occurred.28 The DNA’s scepticism about seeking power was informed by a critical approach to the doctrine of ministerialism. It needed ample justification for why it should form a government. Labour did not share this critical attitude. In 1924 some in the party had been worried that it would be corrupted by ‘the system’ if it took power,29 but in 1929 everyone including the ILP wanted MacDonald to accept the king’s offer. The ILP wished MacDonald’s government to seize the initiative on

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unemployment, though, not to govern on the say-so of the non-Socialist parties.30 In 1924 Labour was not even the largest party. The example of the DNA shows that it was not forced to take power when it had become so in 1929 either. As was argued above, both these parties advanced at every election (unless they were split), and they could therefore afford to wait until they felt they could achieve genuine improvements for their followers. Neither party knew the Depression was going to start, which is why the deciding issue was a contingency, but they were not completely powerless in their own fates. A critical approach to what could be achieved by a Labour minority government was an attitude that would have aided Labour in the 1920s and 1930s, rather than blindly accepting the commission whenever it was offered. After the catastrophe of 1931, in particular the election, it decided it was going to work all the year round to make Socialists rather than pursue voters who were ‘swayed by sentiment’.31 This was on par with the DNA’s attitude in 1930 and before. Dick Geary has sketched four hypotheses concerning relations between a labour movement and the state within which it exists.32 The first is that the more liberally the state reacts against emerging working-class organizations, the more moderate and integrated the Socialist party will be. The second and the third principles also concern the causes of moderation in the labour movement. They state that the richer and more willing a nation is to provide a decent standard of living for its workers, and the more employers’ organizations accept trade unions and deal with them, the more integrationist and moderate the labour movement will be. The fourth postulates that confessional loyalties hinder the development of a non-religious workers’ party. On this account, the only real difference between Britain and Norway is that the former state was more affluent in the period, and hence able to offer a somewhat higher standard of living for its workers. The DNA got credit for introducing unemployment benefit in 1938, while Labour left office in 1931 over failure to agree on cutting this benefit which already existed. The example points towards the DNA having an advantage in Norwegian society being less developed. It meant that it could potentially form that society in its image. ‘Building the Country’ as a slogan would not have had the same resonance in Britain. It is true that Britain’s labour movement was more moderate until 1931, but when Geary says that its bourgeoisie remained committed to democratic politics and employers were tolerant of trade unions and willing to make collective wage agreements, exactly the same could be said of the Norwegian equivalents.33 He makes an exception of some employers who were not so liberal, and again that might be said of some Norwegian employers. Certainly, the response of the state was fundamental to the moderation or radicalism of the Socialist party. One of the reasons the

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DNA radicalized in 1918 was an electoral system that discriminated against it. In 1918 it got almost as many votes as the Liberals, but only one third as many parliamentarians.34 Because the DNA was so radical in the 1920s, it avoided taking power just before the Depression started. It should not be imagined that Labour’s predicament was entirely caused by its misfortune in attaining power at the wrong time. If it had been in opposition, it would presumably not have been split, but that does not lessen the responsibility of the MacDonaldites in what they did. Coming to power as a minority government in 1929 turned out to be a poisoned chalice. Ross McKibbin has stated that all governments in power in 1930 and 1931 in English-speaking countries were turned out by the Depression.35 These nations were a high proportion of all democracies in the world. It is not an English-speaking country, but in Denmark in 1929 the Social Democrats formed a minority coalition government with the Radical Liberals, a party for smallholders. This government was nevertheless able to rule the country until the invasion of Denmark in 1940. In 1933 it made a crisis agreement with the Liberals, a primarily agricultural party. Agriculture was aided through devaluation to make its exports cheaper and a package of subsidies. In return, the Government received support for its proposed relief work and was allowed to bring in social reforms. This was the first such deal in a Scandinavian country to be followed the same year by kohandeln (the Cow Deal) in Sweden, then by the crisis agreement in Norway in 1935. It is therefore natural to think that these agreements were the deciding reason why social democracy triumphed in Scandinavia but not elsewhere. And since none of the three Scandinavian Socialist parties had majorities at that stage, they were indeed necessary. However, as has been argued, the DNA did not rely especially on the Agrarians after it had been allowed to form a government by the terms of their agreement. David Marquand argues that there was no alternative to economic orthodoxy available to Labour, even in embryo, between 1929 and 1931.36 This premise cannot be right as both the ILP and the Liberals had originated schemes of counter-cyclical economics. It was admittedly not yet clear to the entire labour movement that such policies were the way forward for improving the lives of its supporters.37 Therefore the timing to power was crucial also in terms of ideology: once counter-crisis proposals had been accepted, Socialist parties knew that they wanted to be in government. Writing about Socialists outside Scandinavia, Donald Sassoon states that such parties did not know what to do with their powers.38 And he also says: ‘[…] in Britain it was only when Labour was in opposition that Keynes’ ideas on the causes of unemployment became influential within the Labour Party. For this to happen Keynes had to be

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dressed up in Socialist language, a task accepted with varying degrees of success by Hugh Dalton and Douglas Jay.’39 For a simpler answer to the question of why the DNA achieved more between the wars than Labour, it is sufficient to look at the comparison of the 1933 election in Norway with the 1931 election in Britain. The DNA had the advantage in every conceivable way over Labour in the penultimate interwar election. Using Sheri Berman’s insight that at crucial points in history matters are decided for many years to come, these elections set the stage for what was to happen until the beginning of the Second World War. The DNA centrally spent £27,929 in 1933, Labour centrally spent £19,340 in 1931. Taking into account the relative size of Norway and Britain, this is a very real difference. The DNA had three years to prepare, Labour had about three weeks. The DNA was the only untried alternative in a situation where the Depression was calling for new solutions. Labour had been the incumbent government as little as two months before, and had manifestly not been able to cope with rapidly rising unemployment. The DNA tried to take over from a minority government of the Liberals, who were unwilling or unable to co-operate with the other non-Socialist parties. Labour faced a united, majority government consisting of both the non-Socialist parties, and even including its own erstwhile leadership. Was the DNA’s much more fortuitous campaign in 1933 compared to Labour’s in 1931 solely the result of events or was it based upon a stronger labour movement foundation also? In each chapter this has been considered as the backdrop to the elections treated. Because the elections did not occur in the same years, these comparisons have been in the nature of snapshots to show broad tendencies. Worthwhile indications have emerged from these, but it is necessary to give the full picture over a number of years to fully investigate the comparative strength of the parties. The following table describes the British labour movement between 1928 and 1939. There are no earlier national figures, and in any case it is the second half of the interwar period which has been focused upon here.40 Table 5.3 Labour 1928-39 Year

Individual membership

Trade union membership

1928 1929 1930

214,970 227,897 277,211

2,025,139 2,044,279 2,011,484

Socialist and Cooperative societies 52,060 58,669 58,213

The British population 45,578,000 45,672,000 45,866,000

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The British Socialist and population Cooperative societies 1931 297,003 2,024,216 36,847 46,074,000 1932 371,607 1,960,269 39,911 46,335,000 1933 366,013 1,899,007 40,010 46,520,000 1934 381,259 1,858,124 39,707 46,666,000 1935 419,311 1,912,924 45,280 46,869,000 1936 430,694 2,013,663 45,125 47,081,000 1937 447,150 2,527,672 43,451 47,289,000 1938 428,826 2,630,286 43,384 47,494,000 1939 408,844 2,663,067 40,153 47,762,000 (Sources: Labour Party, Reports of Annual Conferences. Thirty-sixth Report (London, 1936), p. 59; Labour Party, Reports of Annual Conferences. Fortieth Report (London, 1940), p. 45; B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge, 1988), p. 13.) Year

Individual membership

Trade union membership

Equally, the table below gives figures for the Norwegian labour movement between 1928 and 1939. Table 5.4 The DNA 1928-39 Year 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939

DNA individual membership 70,823 76,579 80,177 83,071 87,315 95,327 104,514 122,007 142,790 160,245 170,889 c. 170,000

Trade union membership

Youth organization

106,182 127,017 139,591 144,595 153,374 157,524 172,513 224,340 276,992 323,156 344,795 356,796

c. 13,500 14,000 14,000 16,000 21,000 24,775 29,000 c. 32,000 ‘Greatest ever’ -

The Norwegian population 2,790,497 2,799,713 2,815,164 2,832,599 2,850,457 2,866,229 2,882,182 2,896,239 2,910,798 2,926,686 2,944,920 2,963,909

(Sources: DNA Annual reports: 1928, p. 25; 1929, p. 27, pp. 37-38; 1930, p. 11, p. 44; 1931, p. 7, p. 37; 1932, p. 11, p. 41; 1933, p. 9, p. 48; 1934, p. 7, p. 42; 1935, p. 8, p. 38; 1936, p. 51, p. 86; 1937, p. 8; 1938, p. 8, p. 46; 1945, p. 13. Arbeidernes Faglige Landsorganisasjon, Beretning 1939 (Oslo, 1940), p. 51, Statistisk årbok for Norge. 69. årgang. 1950 (Oslo, 1950).) What is the meaning of these numbers? Labour strengthened its position organizationally between 1928 and 1939. Its individual membership rose steadily, although it reached its peak in 1937 and thereafter declined.

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Affiliated trade union membership was at its lowest ebb during the worst years of the Depression, and was higher before and afterwards. It made a significant leap forward in 1937, the same year when individual membership was at its highest. Socialist and Co-operative society membership within Labour declined between 1928 and 1939. It alternately rose and declined. There does not seem to be a logical pattern to its development. For instance, there were more such affiliates in 1933 than in 1932, even though the ILP left the party in 1932 (and also more in 1932 than in 1931, so the expected decrease did not show up in the earlier figures either). The greatest drop in this kind of membership happened between 1930 and 1931. It may be speculated that this was caused by dissatisfaction with the second Labour government by the more ideological members of the movement. In 1928 individual membership of Labour was limited to 0.47 per cent of the British population. In 1939 this percentage had risen to 0.86, almost doubling in percentage terms. To take the year 1937 when Labour seemed to be advancing well, the prevalence of individual members in the population was 0.95 per cent – almost one in a hundred Britons had made a conscious decision to be a card-carrying member. And in the same year, 5.35 per cent of the population had a relationship with Labour as affiliated trade unionists. In 1928, 4.44 per cent of the population were trade unionists affiliated to Labour. By the end of the interwar period in 1939, 5.58 per cent of the population was in this category, so Labour had improved its position in the course of the 1930s. Socialist and Co-operative affiliates made up 0.13 per cent of the population when they were at their strongest in 1929. Membership of these organizations was thus limited to just over one in a thousand in the general population, but was a quarter as strong as Labour’s separate individual membership. These figures take on much more meaning when compared with equivalents for the DNA. In 1928, 2.54 per cent of the Norwegian population were individual members of the DNA. The party thus outperformed Labour on this measure by a factor of more than five. In 1939 about 5.74 per cent of the Norwegian population were individual members of the DNA, in other words more than one in twenty. Labour at that stage included less than one in a hundred. As for affiliated trade unionists, the DNA was lucky not to have wider society interfering by banning automatic affiliation. Consequently, the percentage of DNAaffiliated trade unionists in the Norwegian population was 3.81 in 1928. By 1939 as many as 12.0 per cent of Norwegians were members of the AFL and thus affiliated to the DNA. This was greater than Labour by a factor of more than two. The AUF represented a more radical and principled ideological current within the social democratic labour

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movement, as did the ILP, Co-operative Party and perhaps the Fabian Society within Labour. In the best year for which there are figures, namely 1936, the AUF united 1.1 per cent of Norwegians – significantly higher than Labour’s alternative groupings at 0.13 per cent in their best year. The Labour League of Youth has deliberately been left out of the comparison, as membership figures are contradictory and uncertain. The DNA’s youth organization was more recognized within its labour movement. It is of greater relevance, therefore, to list its members alongside the Fabian Society and Co-operative Party, which correspondingly were independent organizations within Labour. Co-operative Party membership is separate from being a non-political co-operator. In 1930 there were 6,403,000 cooperators in Britain or as much as 14 per cent of the population.41 In Norway in the same year only 4 per cent of the population were cooperators,42 and the movement had no relationship with the DNA anyway. Throughout the second half of the interwar period, the DNA was stronger overall than Labour. In one case this can be seen in absolute numbers: the British National Workers’ Sports Association had 13,000 members in 1936 compared to 62,000 in the Norwegian AIF.43 That the DNA had a proportionately larger organization is interesting from an electoral point of view. As will be shown, when the Norwegian movement chose to make a serious bid for power, it was much better funded than Labour. Not only was Norwegian society younger and less developed than Britain’s, allowing the DNA to make a greater imprint on it, that society also had a labour movement which was much more influential within it. By any indication, the DNA’s figures continuously got better, whereas Labour’s tended to get better but with occasional setbacks. This mirrors the political situation for the 1930s, though not for the 1920s when Labour was advancing all the time electorally, and the DNA tended to advance but with frequent setbacks. Labour membership figures before 1928 are not official, which is why they are not included. It would have been pertinent also to compare the two parties for the 1920s, when Labour was probably doing better than the tumultuous DNA on many indicators. Information about the press of each labour movement has been extended from the relevant chapters. According to Labour, ‘no sooner is one fresh [paper] published by one Party than another gives up the effort’, making it a difficult task to compile lists of its regional newspapers.44 The Labour Year Book was discontinued in the early 1930s, so there is no place where all this information is collated. In any case, the fact that a newspaper exists says little about its circulation and how influential it is. However, as a convenient reminder of what was stated in the earlier

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chapters and with full information about the frequency of the Norwegian titles, Tables 5.5 and 5.6 below are appended to display the different nature of the two press networks. Because circulations are not given, this tends to favour the DNA in the comparison as Labour’s only daily after 1930 was the Daily Herald, which became the newspaper with the largest circulation in the world towards the end of this period. In mid-1933 it became the first newspaper in the world to reach a circulation of two million, although the Daily Express equalled the achievement within days.45 As a much smaller nation, it was impossible for Norway to have a title like the Daily Herald with its enormous circulation, but in 1930 the total circulation of all the DNA’s newspapers was 120,000, or a fifth of the entire market.46 In 1933 the total circulation had risen to 192,244 and by 1936 it was 200,000. In 1933 the Daily Herald alone was bought by 4.3 per cent of the British population. The total circulation of all the DNA’s newspapers in 1933 was 6.7 per cent of the population. It is not known how this compares with Britain, as Labour had about 15 weeklies and many other papers in that year whose circulations are not specified here. Since they were published no more than once a week, they may not have added greatly to the circulation of Labour’s papers on any given day. In the last interwar election in 1935, Labour enjoyed the support only of the Herald, the Daily Worker and Reynold’s News (a Sunday paper) among the national press.47 Table 5.5 Labour and Co-operative newspapers Year Newspapers 1928 2 dailies, 27 weeklies, 74 monthlies, 5 quarterlies and 1 irregular 1931 1 daily, 16 weeklies, 69 monthlies 1935 1 daily, 15 weeklies, 52 monthlies, 4 quarterlies and 25 irregulars (Sources: The Labour Year Book 1928 (London, n.d.), pp. 540-41; The Labour Year Book 1931 (London, n.d.), p. 549; Royden Harrison et. al., The Warwick Guide to British Labour Periodicals 1790-1970 (Hassocks, 1977).)

Table 5.6 DNA newspapers Year 1930

Newspapers 20 dailies, 1 published 4 times a week, 11 published 3 times a week and 2 weeklies 1933 21 dailies, 1 published 4 times a week, 12 published 3 times a week, 8 published twice a week and 1 weekly 1936 26 dailies, 1 published 4 times a week, 8 published 3 times a week and 7 published twice a week (Sources: Det norske Arbeiderparti, Beretning 1930 (Oslo, 1931), p. 51; Det norske Arbeiderparti, Beretning 1933 (Oslo, 1934), pp. 51-3; Det norske Arbeiderparti, Beretning 1936 (Oslo, 1937), pp. 79-80.)

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This book focuses on elections and it is appropriate to tabulate the expenses the parties incurred in each contest. It is known how much Labour spent in each year because figures are available for average expenditure per candidate, and the published sources explain what was spent centrally. Adding expenditure in the constituencies to what was spent centrally minus the grants to candidates (already counted in the constituencies), gives the table below. In 1929 Labour could if it had wished spent more. £9,200 raised for campaigning went unused, and was subsequently transferred to the general fund. Table 5.7 Labour election expenditure Year Number of candidates Amount spent 1929 569 £282,188 1931 490 £186,733 1935 552 £207,860 (Sources: Andrew Thorpe, The British General Election of 1931 (Oxford, 1991), p. 185. Labour annual reports: 1929, p. 221; 1932, p. 58; 1935, p. 53; 1936, pp. 98-9; David Butler and Gareth Butler, Twentieth Century British Political Facts 1900-2000 (Basingstoke, 2000), p. 260.)

The DNA’s expenditure is less straightforward. For each of the three election years, it is impossible to tell how much local and municipal branches raised and spent. Fortunately, the budgets and actual expenditure of the Oslo DNA, by far the most important local party, are available for all three years. In addition, almost all money came from the AFL and was distributed in areas outside the capital. In the table below the Oslo DNA’s expenditure minus the grant it got from the DNA centrally has been added to the DNA’s central expenditure. Table 5.8 DNA election expenditure Year Amount spent 1930 £5,300 1933 £31,301 1936 £47,795 (Sources: Per Maurseth, Gjennom kriser til makt (1920-1935). Arbeiderbevegelsens historie i Norge (vol. 3) (Oslo, 1987), p. 543; Oslo Arbeiderparti, Beretning og regnskap 1930 (Oslo, 1931), p. 47; Oslo Arbeiderparti, Beretning og regnskap 1933 (Oslo, 1933), p. 55; Arbeiderbevegelsens Arkiv og Bibliotek, Oslo: Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1933, sak nr. 553-754, Da 0139, folder marked Stortingsvalget; Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, Serie: Ac- Sekretariatets protokoller, Ac 0011, Sekretariatets protokoll 1937, p. 24; Oslo Arbeiderparti, Beretning og regnskap 1936 (Oslo, 1937), p. 65.)

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In order to compare Labour and the DNA, it will as before be necessary to take the size of the populations into account. The DNA’s spending in 1930 was considerably below Labour’s in 1929 per capita. The equivalent sum in Britain in 1929 would have been about £85,980, so Labour outspent the DNA by a factor of more than three. Since 1929 represented Labour’s most costly election, it may be used as a yardstick. If compared with the DNA’s serious attempts to gain power in 1933 and to extend it in 1936, it is discovered that the DNA spent a fair amount more relative to Norway’s smaller population. In 1933 the DNA’s per capita expenditure was 1.77 times as high, and in 1936 it spent 2.66 times as much by the same measure. This of course parallels the fact that the DNA-affiliated trade union movement in Norway was stronger than the Labour-affiliated one in Britain. In Britain in 1929, 4.48 per cent of the population was affiliated to Labour through the TUC. In Norway in 1933, 5.5 per cent of the population was affiliated to the DNA through the AFL, and in 1936 the equivalent figure was 9.52 per cent. By 1936 the Norwegians had a marked advantage here, but even in 1933 the DNA received significantly more money despite being only a little stronger within the AFL than Labour was within the TUC in 1929. On the basis of the above figures, the Norwegian labour movement appears mightier than the British in the 1930s. That tendency was not so clear around the year 1928, when Labour had more affiliated trade unionists in terms of percentage of the population. It spent proportionately a lot more money on the 1929 election than did the DNA in the election of 1930. Neither of these elections produced a majority for any party, but Labour got 37.1 per cent of the votes and the DNA 31.4 per cent. Before 1931 the DNA was outperforming Labour on most variables. Individual membership of the party and the press network were areas where there were great divergences in favour of the Norwegians. After the disaster of 1931, the advantage lay even more squarely with the DNA. Although Labour recovered, it could not attain power for some time. The DNA did attain power and this strengthened its membership position. From doing worse over affiliated membership than Labour in 1928, it outperformed its British counterpart substantively by 1939. The one area where it may not have cemented its advantage vis-à-vis Labour after 1931 was the press, with the rise of the Daily Herald. This is a paradox as Labour lost newspapers in that decade. * The remainder of this chapter will focus on interesting similarities and

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differences between the campaigning of the two parties. The most striking contrast is the confederative nature of Labour, which had an effect when preparing for elections. In 1929 and 1931 the affiliated Independent Labour Party and Co-operative Party joined Labour in its efforts. In 1935 the Co-operative Party remained affiliated to it. There were both advantages and disadvantages for Labour in its relations with the autonomous components. The ILP had its own national and central organization and a press network, including its long-established journal, the New Leader.48 It could only be a benefit to Labour that the ILP’s resources were added to its own. In areas where the ILP was particularly strong and dominated local Labour organizations such as in Bradford, Glasgow and Clydeside, its disaffiliation in 1932 must have been a heavy blow to Labour. The blow was perhaps softened by the decreasing number of seats which the ILP won for Labour. In 1929 ILP influence was quite extensive. It sponsored 37 of the intake of Labour MPs, and another 123 MPs had membership of the ILP.49 In 1931, when no agreement could be reached, and the ILP contingent was technically running independently of Labour, it returned just six MPs. The ILP had been the natural home in the Labour Party for individuals who had no trade union, but by disaffiliating it forced those of its members who were ambitious to leave it behind. The disadvantage for Labour lay in the extra effort involved in coordinating its electoral activities with another organization. As was noted in chapter 3, wrangling between the NEC and local parties ensued in 1931 because Glasgow Kelvingrove and Camborne constituencies had chosen ILP candidates on the financial responsibility of the affiliate. As for the Co-operative Party it was a similar story. In 1929 the local co-operative society was often lauded for the efforts it made in campaigning for Labour candidates.50 That was irrespective of whether the candidates were sponsored by the Co-operative Party. In 1929, 12 Labour candidates received their funding from the Co-operative Party, and of these nine were elected.51 Although it has been stated that the programme of the Co-operative Party remained essentially subservient to Labour’s plans, there were nevertheless very real tensions between the two which cost the NEC much time and effort to repair.52 The essential difficulty was that the Co-operative Party National Executive had power over its MPs elected on a Labour ticket. In 1934 relations deteriorated to a crisis point owing to the disagreement over who should control the constituencies where the candidate was a member of the Co-operative Party, continuing into 1935. If these difficulties had persisted, it is easy to see that the electioneering of Labour might have been compromised one way or the other. Either the Co-operative Party might have disaffiliated, making it

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much harder to win the seats where the MPs belonged to it, or, if left unchecked, Labour might have been completely sidelined in those areas. The DNA as a unitary party did not have anything like the same problems with co-operators. In 1935 as matters were brought to a head in Britain, the DNA merely instructed its members who also belonged to the cooperative movement to vote against proposed constitutional changes strengthening the neutrality of that organization.53 It nevertheless thought it important enough to send a circular to trade unions and local party branches on this issue.54 However, leaving aside the associated problems, the confederative nature of Labour strengthened it vis-à-vis the DNA. It meant Labour could often add the resources of its affiliates to its own. Appeals issued by the Co-operative Party were important because there were more than 6 million co-operators in Britain in the 1930s. Another difference in the campaigning strategies, though a small and relatively unimportant one, was that the DNA relied almost exclusively on pamphlets for its written propaganda. Election newspapers were used by both parties, but only in a few cases did the DNA produce a leaflet. By contrast, for the 1929 election William Henderson of the Research and Publicity Committee suggested that Labour should stop issuing pamphlets altogether in order to concentrate on leaflets.55 But Labour continued to use both pamphlets and flyers during the campaigns. Several of the DNA’s pamphlets were densely argued and required some effort on the part of the reader. On the other hand, there was a greater theatrical component to the DNA’s campaigning than Labour’s. It was there from the start as 1930 featured both amateur drama and open-air meetings, which had an element of show about them. These were considerably increased in 1936 as a function of greater funding and the introduction of ‘drama gangs’ of youngsters, making a spectacle of what might otherwise have been mundane political meetings. In each election year there was a mass rally at Young’s Square in Oslo the evening before polling day, attracting more than 40,000 people every time. These were carefully choreographed to produce a pleasing and powerful impression in the minds of the spectators. Apart from the political content represented by speeches, there was communal singing, recitals and music. The election film was shown in nearby halls, while in Britain ‘Labour film propaganda was conspicuous by its absence.’56 In 1936 one of the two films was projected onto the walls of the headquarters of the DNA.57 In that year especially, and to a lesser extent in 1930 and 1933, many of the DNA’s meetings were mini-versions of the final rally. The sources give no indication that Labour emphasized entertaining propaganda like the DNA, although Labour clearly had the capacity to create a spectacle if it wanted to. It staged as many as 40 rallies in the run-up to the 1935 election, and it

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is highly unlikely that these consisted entirely of political statements. Having brought these circumstances out, it should be stated that major differences were not found in the electioneering of Labour and the DNA. It was mentioned earlier that the former was more moderate until after 1931, but this could not be deduced from the rhetoric employed during campaigning. Both parties argued for higher living standards for workers and other disadvantaged people, stressed their commitment to peace and claimed to be constitutional. It was entirely true for Labour and essentially true for the DNA, though when the Norwegian party was deliberating among itself its greater radicalism shone through. At the party conference of 1930 its deputy leader, the historian Edvard Bull, called democracy ‘an old superstitious phrase from the nineteenth century.’58 Three years later DNA leader Oscar Torp said democracy was a ‘fictitious concept’, but it mattered to many from whom the party needed support.59 There is an interesting parallel in the way the two parties used rhetoric about the nonSocialist parties essentially being fascists who were dangerous to the labour movement. In 1931 Labour claimed that if the National Government won the election, it would ‘naturally and inevitably’ lead to a dictatorship. Ramsay MacDonald wanted to be a dictator with Parliament as a ‘Council of State on the Fascist model.’ The labour movement was already being seen as a national menace, and the TUC as a ‘dangerous enemy which must be curbed.’60 Evidence for the above was to be found in capitalist-supporting newspapers and speeches made during the campaign. This is an exact parallel to what the DNA claimed in 1933. Martin Tranmæl argued at the party conference that year that the reactionary capitalist parties were trying to create a Norwegian form of fascism.61 At a public meeting in the early stages of the election campaign, Socialist politician K. F. Dahl said that the Agrarian and Conservative press contained articles in praise of fascist governments.62 Democracy in Norway was also at risk from a dictatorship in the fascist mould, he claimed. The question of electoral appeal to a variety of groups has been the subject of much attention in each national context. Labour was by nature a party for the workers, but of whom exactly did it seek support in these three elections? In 1929 Labour showed some concern for the lower middle class. The manifesto claimed that the Conservative Government had put massive indirect taxes on shopkeepers and other small property owners.63 This was the de-rating measure which gave tax breaks for larger industries, but not for landlords and small businesses. Women under 30 could vote for the first time in 1929, and Labour tried particularly hard to gain their support as well as their older sisters’. Nine out of 66 available leaflets were directed especially at women, and most candidate statement

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stressed their importance. Rural dwellers were the other main priority. As stated in chapter 2, 14 out of 66 leaflets were intended for the classes of the countryside. Most of these appeals targeted agricultural workers, but several of them were addressed to farmers. Among the workers, subsections such as the young and the old were appealed to, and there was a little bit of focus on the non-unionized, including domestic servants and fishermen. The appeal to shopkeepers was not extensive, and there was hardly any attempt to attract parts of the middle classes. In 1931 some middle-class people were added to Labour’s perceived base, when the party promised to restore cuts in salaries. This did not, however, have as great a priority as restoring cuts in unemployment benefit.64 Shopkeepers were more often mentioned as a target group than they had been in 1929. There was some emphasis on the unity of interests between small business people and workers. The rest of the desired social coalition remained the same with renewed interest in rural dwellers. 1935 was not wholly different either. Between these two elections, Labour produced two pamphlets arguing the case for Socialism to professionals. Women continued to be in evidence as a high priority for the party. Labour was already a people’s party in 1929, and the subsequent elections brought something of a widening of its base in class terms. By far the most propaganda was directed at workers in all these elections. As for the DNA, the development of its electoral appeal closely matched Labour’s. For all three elections its target group was officially ‘the working people’, which comprised the workers, smallholders and fishermen. In 1930 the written propaganda was overwhelmingly directed at these, not least the rural dwellers because other parties also sought their support. Women were given especial attention, but not to the same extent as with Labour.65 The written propaganda was hardly conscious of clerks, though they and the smaller group of civil servants received some attention in Arbeiderbladet, and meetings in Oslo were held specifically for them. As with small property owners in Britain, it was hoped that they would vote for the party, but they were not prioritized to the same extent as the core groups. In 1933 the target groups remained essentially the same, and there was marginally greater focus on white-collar workers in the electoral materials. A specific brochure was written for women, ‘A Saturday Shopping Trip’, which sought to relate politics to everyday affairs. The arguments were the same as in 1930, but the brochure had a better layout. The DNA still did not address itself seriously to middle-class groups, and it was not made apparent that they or white-collar workers belonged to ‘the working people’. Only in 1936 did this change. That election saw the widening of the DNA’s self-perceived base to nine out of ten people.66 All the groups that had previously been included within the

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social coalition remained there, of course, and some that had previously been neglected were concentrated on. These included non-unionized workers such as maids, agricultural labourers and forestry workers, each receiving their own brochure. It was finally confirmed that clerks were part of the ‘the working people’, and they also had a brochure to themselves. Not so much in the written electoral materials, but through Arbeiderbladet and one of the election films, an appeal was for the first time directed at technicians and professionals.67 They were called on to use their expertise in the service of the new state the DNA intended to build. It will thus be seen that major differences did not exist between Labour and the DNA as for campaigning strategy or from whom it sought votes. In view of the established explanation of success, it is particularly important that Labour continuously addressed itself to the classes of the countryside. It did not, however, make as much progress with them as the DNA. 1929 was Labour’s best election in terms of seats in the interwar period, and it took 40 rural constituencies in that year.68 This was a good beginning, but it ground to a halt in 1931 when Labour could not afford to run candidates in the rural areas (though it produced propaganda for them). In 1935 it continued its wooing of the countryside, now concentrating even more on agricultural workers than on farmers. Labour had concluded that to obtain a parliamentary majority it needed more support in the countryside, as had the DNA. As a party with national aspirations, Labour wanted to represent all regions. It was even more important for the DNA to gain support in rural areas. In Norway 100 out of 150 seats were located there, in Britain about 141 out of 615 had more than 20 per cent agriculturalists.69 Luebbert argues that no good could come to the Socialist party from organizing the agrarian proletariat.70 Strictly speaking, his point holds true for the present comparison. Labour did try to gain the support of farm workers throughout this short period, and its agricultural policy designed to benefit them went back at least to the early 1920s. It admitted at that time that agriculture was its weakest area, but said there was growing appreciation of it within the party.71 The DNA tried for support from this group as well, but most of the efforts were directed at smallholders and fishermen, and it was only in 1936 that it singled out agricultural labourers for attention with a brochure intended for them. But Luebbert’s argument cannot apply to Britain anyway, because not bringing farm workers into the party was preparatory to making a crisis deal with the family peasantry.72 In Britain such an agreement could only have been with the Liberals, who had some rural support and may have been the party of medium-sized farmers, at least in the Celtic fringe. When the Liberals held the balance of power from 1923 to 1924 it was too early for a crisis deal.

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In 1929-31 again a Lib-Lab pact would have ensured a majority, and the Liberals had fought the election on counter-crisis proposals. The problem was that Labour had not. It had no plan of counter-cyclical economics, and had ridiculed Lloyd George for his. Philip Snowden, the party’s acknowledged financial expert, was set against borrowing to finance relief work or any form of bold action on unemployment. In actual fact, though, this chapter has been arguing that it was not necessary to have an urban-rural class alliance in order for a Socialist party to attain power and govern successfully. Esping-Andersen’s and Luebbert’s explanation acted as a guide to the present work because it was predicated on the successful Scandinavian social democrats. In Norway, however, the crisis agreement between the DNA and the Agrarians simply involved the former being allowed to take power and their agreeing on the budget of 1935. They later agreed on the budget of 1936. There was no alliance as such. The DNA continued to need support from other parties to push its reform agenda through Parliament. Its position was no more promising than Labour’s in 1929. Both formed a minority government, both had 46 or 47 per cent of Parliament behind it. The major difference was that the Depression was just around the corner for Labour, whereas the DNA took power at the tail-end of it. This made Labour’s task a nightmare, while the DNA received support for apparently alleviating it (although this development had started two years before it took power). The DNA had counter-crisis proposals in 1933, but none in 1930, which was analogous to the British general election of 1929. In this comparison of two countries only, the trajectories of the parties seem to matter much more than the role of medium-sized farmers. This study has set out to be an historical account of differences in success between the DNA and Labour. Through a narrative of the most relevant interwar elections and juxtaposition of the trajectories of the parties between the wars, the hope has been to explain why the DNA performed better than its British counterpart in that period. The book says nothing about what happened after the Second World War, although it must have been to the DNA’s advantage that it had been the largest and the governing party in Norway before that conflict.73 Even before it had won the election of 1945, all the other parties signed a blueprint for reconstruction, based upon wide-ranging economic planning and nationalization.74 The DNA deserves to be more well-known among comparative scholars of Socialism. Some of the conclusions in this study may also have applications for work on other Socialist parties. Sheri Berman has argued that there are certain points in history when the outcomes for many years ahead are decided, and that the Depression was one such crucial moment. This study is in total agreement with that

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assessment. Many of the writers whose works have been touched upon in chapter 1 are political scientists rather than historians. They have necessarily looked for structural explanations, and have found them in the role the classes of the countryside played in the 1930s. An historian like Knut Kjeldstadli has also focused upon electoral outreach among rural people in connection with the DNA. The work of Clare Griffiths similarly shows that Labour was not just an urban party. The emphasis upon farmers, fishermen and agricultural workers has been retained here. As noted, Labour suffered from the disadvantage that British farms were larger than Norwegian. This made it difficult for the party to gain support from cultivators, also creating a rural proletariat who were deferential and somewhat helpless. In a comparative context it is probably not the reason why Labour failed to make a breakthrough before 1945. Griffiths states that few scholars believe Labour needed to win the countryside for its elusive majority.75 The Scandinavian urban-rural crisis deals were undoubtedly important, in fact very likely a necessary cause in Denmark, Norway and Sweden for why their social democratic parties managed to come to power or retain it. If transposed to a British context, the lesson would be that Labour should have made a similar deal with the Liberals and accepted their Keynesian proposals. Skidelsky’s argument about the desirability of this has been strengthened by the Scandinavian comparisons. However, as has already been pointed out, the DNA made no alliance with the Agrarians. It simply agreed to a budget giving them what they wanted in the countryside, and in return was allowed to form a government. The DNA used parliamentary guile to reach the same situation Labour was granted after the election of 1929. It had no partner to rely on for its other measures. The DNA rejected deficit financing, and the budget for 1935 (‘the crisis deal’) was probably fiscally neutral since it included a sales tax.76 But it gained power at the tail-end of the Depression, not at its outset like Labour did, and its remedies seemed to be working.77 The counter-crisis polices were probably not what brought the other Scandinavian countries out of the Depression either.78 Politics is often about perceptions. As has been shown, organizationally the DNA made a heavier impact on Norwegian society than Labour did in Britain. How much did this affect the outcome for the interwar period? The DNA strengthened its position vis-à-vis Labour in the 1930s on affiliated members and maintained its superiority on individual members. One good reason why the DNA went from being inferior on affiliated members to being superior by a factor greater than two was probably the success it had. This complicates a straightforward organizational-might-to-political-success model. It was worthwhile joining the AFL if one thereby became linked

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with a rising movement that was winning elections and delivering the goods in government. Labour also improved its figures on individual and affiliated members, and it may be guessed that this resulted from its membership campaigns and from doing well in the 1935 election. There was a great advance in 1936 and 1937 on both these indicators, though 1937 turned out to be the top of the curve as for individual members. Success helps and since the DNA enjoyed more success, its figures for the organization got progressively better. In 1928 it did better than Labour on individual members by a factor of more than five. In 1939 this advantage had risen to become a factor of more than six. By the end of the interwar period, in broad terms, the DNA did better than Labour on everything. This had not been the case in 1928-30. Labour held an advantage over the DNA on affiliated trade unionists by 4.44 per cent to 3.81 per cent in 1928, and since it lost 1.2 million affiliates as a result of the Trade Union and Trade Disputes Act, its superiority would have been correspondingly greater if it had not faced such hostility from wider society. In the 1929 election compared to the DNA’s election of 1930, it outspent its Norwegian counterpart by a factor of more than three. It achieved a better result too – 37.1 per cent of the votes for Labour in 1929 compared to 31.4 per cent for the DNA in 1930. Overall the organization of the DNA was more developed than Labour’s in 1929, but this did not entail a better election result. There is no straightforward link between either the strength of the organization and electoral results or spending and electoral results. The larger the organization and the higher the electoral expenditure, the better for the electoral result obviously, but the trade-off between spending and organizational strength is difficult to ascertain. Labour achieved roughly the same electoral result in 1929 and in 1935 in terms of votes. It spent more on the first occasion― £282,188 against £207,860 – but had fewer individual members in 1929. The DNA seems to have spent more money with every election from 1927 to 1936 and improved its organization in every year. (See table 5.4, it had 68,016 members in 1927.79) It got a better result on each occasion except in 1930. It may have been vastly better funding in 1933 from the AFL which pushed it above 40 per cent for the first time. On the other hand, it may have been because it was free of blame for the Depression and was going to deal with it. In Norway there is a link between organizational strength and spending. In 1933 and 1936 every member of the AFL (i.e. affiliated member of the DNA) was levied a day’s wages to fund the campaigns Whether it was the number of members, the increase in spending or more popular policies, the DNA made a leap forward in 1933. Labour’s weaker organization in the 1930s compared to the DNA’s cannot have hampered it. The 1931 and 1935 elections were practically unwinnable, given the

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Conservative dominance. The National Government got an absolute majority of votes on both occasions. Labour’s organization was much stronger at the end of the 1930s than it had been in 1929. Once the DNA had seriously decided to try to win elections in 1933 and 1936, its organization allowed it to raise the necessary funds to do so. And since it won the first of these two elections then formed a government in 1935, these events in turn strengthened its organization. It was worthwhile to join a party with wind in its sails. The arrow of causality therefore points in both directions. In addition to having a stronger organization than Labour, the DNA was aided by societal factors. Norway was less advanced than Britain, therefore the DNA got credit for introducing social benefits which had long since been implemented in the other country. Norwegian farming was on a smaller scale, therefore the DNA could more easily gain support from cultivators. The 1927 Trade Union Act caused difficulties for Labour. No such legislation was introduced in Norway, although in 1921 there had been ‘The Great Strike’, which the AFL had lost like the TUC lost the General Strike of 1926. Labour had two advantages over the DNA. Firstly, the British population included proportionately more industrial workers.80 This advantage was rescinded because the British Conservatives were much better at securing working-class support than their Norwegian counterparts. Ross McKibbin estimates that the working class was about equally divided between the Conservatives and Labour in the interwar period.81 Secondly, the British co-operative movement comprised a much higher percentage of the population. It was allied to Labour, whereas the Norwegian co-operators were politically neutral. It has not been mentioned in this book, but the British had the House of Lords which could frustrate some Labour plans, whereas the Norwegian parliament was unicameral. Societal factors and organizational ability favoured the DNA over Labour. * The examination of the last three interwar elections in each country showed that there were no significant differences in electoral appeals or campaigning strategy. Labour sought the support of the rural classes as much as did the DNA. Their approach to women, lower middle-class people and professionals was also the same. In the second of these categories, Labour was most interested in shopkeepers and the DNA was most interested in white-collar workers. Labour devoted a larger proportion of its propaganda to blue-collar workers than did the DNA. This may have been because there were proportionately more of them in Britain or because Labour faced more competition for their votes.

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There were, however, vast differences in funding for these elections. In the first set, occurring in 1929 and 1930, Labour’s electoral spending dwarfed the DNA’s. In the second and third set, occurring in 1931/1933 and 1935/1936, the advantage lay squarely with the DNA on spending. Even if the parties devoted few resources to the elections, they were able to get just over 30 per cent of the votes, which may be regarded as their minimum level of support by that stage. In order to get over 40 per cent, it was necessary to devote great resources. Only the DNA managed this, a consequence either of having a more developed organization in the 1930s or, what amounts to almost the same, not being hindered by the other parties through legislation reducing the trade unions’ ability to give donations. In practice, however, the DNA’s strength in Parliament after the 1936 election was exactly the same as Labour’s after the 1929 election. The DNA did face one electoral hurdle imposed by the non-Socialist parties. A change to the voting system, initiated by them before the 1936 election, allowed unused votes for one party to be transferred to another. The DNA’s own electoral calculations showed that it would have received 79 seats out of 150 and thereby a majority, had it not been for the electoral alliances between the non-Socialists.82 Academic research agrees that the DNA would have gained up to nine more seats in 1936 if it had not been for the electoral alliances.83 On the other hand, the Communists stood down in favour of the DNA everywhere except in Bergen, and most of the 2.4 percentage points’ increase in the DNA’s share of the votes is attributable to the equivalent 1.5 drop in support for the Communists. It was posited at the beginning of this chapter that the DNA was more successful than Labour in the interwar period. Its length of tenure was longer than Labour’s and in the ratio 3:2. The DNA’s rule was consecutive, and it achieved much of what it wanted in office. It reduced unemployment to half of what it had been, brought in old age pensions, disability and unemployment benefits, allowed fishermen and seamen to join the illness insurance scheme, improved employment rights across the board and ended anti-labour legislation such as the ‘workhouse laws’ which protected strikebreakers. Many of these benefits accrued to Britain earlier than they did in Norway, but non-Socialist governments could take the credit. Labour’s best performance was in the field of international relations. It recognized the Soviet Union in 1924, Snowden managed to uphold Britain’s share of reparations from Germany in 1929, 84 it negotiated a naval treaty with the United States in 1930 and Arthur Henderson began convening the World Disarmament Conference in Geneva. Labour was not entirely without achievements on the domestic front. It included many widows and orphans in the pension scheme which the Conservatives had left out in 1925.85 Labour set up a transport system

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for London, which the National Government implemented (and thus got the credit for). It passed the Housing (Rural Authorities) Act in 1931, which the National Government set aside.86 Given the large internal problems that the British and Norwegian societies faced between the wars, especially unemployment, even a masterly foreign policy on its own cannot be seen as being of crucial importance. As for the explanation of the DNA’s greater success, it was mostly found in the contingency of the party being in government at the tail-end of the Depression rather than at the beginning. A similar empirical solution is simply to juxtapose the conditions under which Labour fought the 1931 election with the setting for the DNA in the 1933 election. Those elections determined the outcome of the political struggle for the remainder of the 1930s. This was because they set patterns. In Britain Labour was so weakened that it could not realistically expect to win the next election either. In Norway the pattern set was that the DNA alone was almost on parity with all the non-Socialist parties put together. If for any reason the DNA’s opponents could not join forces, the DNA would come to power sooner or later since it was now willing to govern. In comparison with Labour, the DNA was aided by having a stronger organization, by Norwegian farms being smaller, by Norwegian society being less advanced with less of a welfare state and, since Labour never willingly called an election, by there being fixed-term cycles of Parliament. It also benefitted from the absence of an unelected upper house in Parliament, and from the Norwegian establishment and state being weaker. British conditions whereby the Agrarians and the Conservatives were just one party with the support of a powerful, united elite behind it, would have made the DNA’s task more difficult. Labour’s advantage in there being proportionately more industrial workers in Britain was balanced out by there being a real debt-crisis in the Norwegian countryside. This caused smallholders to turn to the DNA, which had been actively courting them from 1927 or earlier. The DNA’s crisis agreement with the Agrarians, and the lack of a similar agreement in Britain, is not the underlying reason why the DNA achieved more between the wars than Labour. The Norwegian party, having the examples of similar deals in Denmark and Sweden before it, made a good move in the prevailing circumstances. It allowed the Agrarians to get what they wanted in return for being able to form a government implementing forward crisis policies. The crisis agreement was only a necessity due to the other parties being unwilling to let the DNA into government, although it was the largest party. Consequently, the urban-rural thesis of Luebbert and Esping-Andersen is shown to be a local explanation, not a general one. Stanley Baldwin resigned as soon as

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the 1929 election results were out and pointed the king to MacDonald. Johan Ludwig Mowinckel refused to resign after the 1933 election, continuing to lead a government with 25 out of 150 seats in Parliament. So Labour was in the same position in 1929 as the DNA was to be in after the 1936 election: in government, 47 per cent of parliamentarians behind it and needing support from any or all opposition parties. The difference was a context where the Depression was about to start, against one where it had run its course. The 1935 budget passed by the DNA and the Agrarians was probably fiscally neutral. And since the DNA had no reliable partner for its other measures, the crisis deal must not have its importance exaggerated. It is true that if Labour had made a deal with the Liberals between 1929 and 1931, it would have been in a better position. It is unlikely that the DNA or other Scandinavian Socialists would have been ready for such an agreement at so early a stage. The Danish Social Democrats, who also rose to government in 1929, waited until January 1933. So it is hardly surprising that Labour was not ready either.

NOTES

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Chapter 1

Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers, ‘The uses of comparative history in macrosocial inquiry’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 22:2 (1980), p. 183. Stephen Kalberg, Max Weber’s Comparative-Historical Sociology (Cambridge, 1994), p. 152. Max Weber, Economy and Society (vol. 1) (Berkeley, 1978), p. 286. George M. Fredrickson, ‘From exceptionalism to variability: recent developments in cross-national comparative history’, Journal of American History 82:2 (1995), p. 600. A. A. Van Den Braembussche, ‘Historical explanation and comparative method. Towards a theory of the history of society’, History and Theory 28:1 (1989), p. 22. John Breuilly, Labour and Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Essays in Comparative History (Manchester, 1991), p. 2. See Stefan Berger, ‘Herbert Morrison’s London Labour Party in the interwar years and the SPD: Problems of transferring German socialist practices to Britain’, European Review of History 12:2 (2005), p. 299. Van Den Braembussche, ‘Historical explanation’, p. 12. Charles Tilly, Big Structures Large Processes Huge Comparisons (New York, 1984), p. 81. Skocpol and Somers, ‘The uses’, p. 175. Skocpol and Somers, ‘The uses’, p. 196. Skocpol and Somers, ‘The uses’, p. 178. Raymond Grew, ‘The case for comparing histories’, The American Historical Review 85:4 (1980), p. 769. Sheri Berman, The Social Democratic Moment. Ideas and Politics in the Making of Interwar Europe (Cambridge MA, 1998). Knut Heidar, ‘The deradicalisation of working class parties: A study of three Labour branches in Norway’, Ph. D. thesis, University of London 1980; David Redvaldsen, ‘The representational base of the Norwegian Labour party

154 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY in the 1930s’, Parliaments, Estates and Representation 28 (2008), pp. 165-181. See Ivar Arne Roset, Det norske Arbeiderparti og Hornsruds regjeringsdannelse i 1928 (Oslo, 1962). Tilly, Big Structures, p. 88. Tilly, Big Structures, p. 82. Kalberg, Max Weber’s, p. 85. Kalberg, Max Weber’s, p. 87. Stefan Berger, ‘Comparative history’ in Stefan Berger, Heiko Feldner and Kevin Passmore (eds), Writing History. Theory & Practice (London, 2003), p. 165. William H. Sewell jr., ‘Marc Bloch and the logic of comparative history’, History and Theory 6:2 (1967), p. 208. Sewell jr., ‘Marc Bloch’, p. 209. Berger, ‘Comparative history’, p. 164. Kalberg, Max Weber’s, p. 152. Kalberg, Max Weber’s, p. 145. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jürgen Kocka, ‘Comparative history: Methods, aims, problems’ in Deborah Cohen and Maura O’Connor (eds), Comparison and History (New York, 2004), p. 81. Michel Espagne, Les transferts culturels franco-allemands (Paris, 1999), p. 11. Chris Lorenz, ‘Comparative historiography: Problems and perspectives’, History and Theory 38:1 (1999), p. 30. Espagne, Les transferts, p. 36. Espagne, Les transferts, p. 41. Haupt and Kocka, ‘Comparative history’, p. 32. Berger, ‘Comparative history’, p. 171. Espagne, Les transferts, p. 37. Fredrickson, ‘From exceptionalism’, p. 588. Sewell jr., ‘Marc Bloch’, p. 214. Haupt and Kocka, ‘Comparative history’, p. 32. Haupt and Kocka, ‘Comparative history’, p. 30. Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy. The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000 (Oxford, 2002), p. 177. In addition to the books mentioned, there is a second study of Britain and Germany namely, Breuilly, Labour and Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Europe. There are also three studies of Britain and Sweden: Malcolm B. Hamilton, Democratic Socialism in Britain and Sweden (London, 1989); Mary Hilson, Political Change and the Rise of Labour in Comparative Perspective. Britain and Sweden 18901920 (Lund, 2006); Jonas Hinnfors, Reinterpreting Social Democracy. A History of Stability in the British Labour Party and the Swedish Social Democratic Party (Manchester, 2006). Stefan Berger, The Labour Party and the German Social Democrats, 1900-1931 (Oxford, 1994) Carl Cavanagh Hodge, The Trammels of Tradition. Social Democracy in Britain, France, and Germany (London, 1994), p. xiii. Francis G. Castles, The Social Democratic Image of Society. A Study of the Achievements and Origins of Scandinavian Social Democracy in Comparative Perspective

NOTES 44 45 46 47 48

49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

155

(London, 1978). Leighton James and Raymond Markey, ‘Class and Labour. The British Labour Party and the Australian Labor Party compared’, Labour History 90 (2006), pp. 23-41. Tony Insall, Haakon Lie, Denis Healey and the Making of an Anglo-Norwegian Special Relationship 1945-1951 (Oslo, 2010). Robert Geyer, The Uncertain Union. British and Norwegian Social Democrats in an Integrating Europe (Aldershot, 1997). See earlier reference to this. Gøsta Esping-Andersen, Politics against Markets. The Social Democratic Road to Power (Princeton N.J, 1985); Gregory M. Luebbert, Liberalism, Fascism or Social Democracy. Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe (Oxford, 1991). Especially through Clare Griffiths’s book Labour and the Countryside. The Politics of Rural Britain 1918-1939 (Oxford, 2007). Luebbert, Liberalism, Fascism or Social Democracy, p. 268. Esping-Andersen, Politics against Markets, pp. xv-xvi. Luebbert, Liberalism, Fascism or Social Democracy, p. 288. The classic contemporary article was Dag Bryn and Halvard Manthey Lange, ‘Klasse eller folk’ in Det 20. Århundrede 1930, pp. 67-75. Cf. Knut Kjeldstadli, ‘“Arbeider, bonde, våre hære…” Arbeiderpartiet og bøndene 1930-1939’ in Tidsskrift for Arbeiderbevegelsens Historie 2/1978, especially pp. 135-6. Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures. England 1918-1951 (Oxford, 2000), p. 108, p.106. See Michael Kinnear, The British Voter. An Atlas and Survey since 1885 (London, 1981), p. 57. Andrew Thorpe, The British General Election of 1931 (Oxford, 1991), p. 262. Stefano Bartolini, The Political Mobilization of the European Left 1860-1980. The Class Cleavage (Cambridge, 2000), p. 356. E. A. Rowe, ‘The British general election of 1929’, B. Litt. thesis, Oxford University 1959; Jason G. Howard, ‘The British general election of 1929’, Ph. D. thesis, Cambridge University 1999; Thorpe, General Election of 1931; Tom Stannage, Baldwin Thwarts the Opposition. The British General Election of 1935 (London, 1980). M. W. Hart, ‘The realignment of 1931’, Twentieth Century British History 3:2 (1992), p. 197. Thorpe, General Election of 1931, pp. 87-8. Stannage, Baldwin Thwarts, p. 11. Stannage, Baldwin Thwarts, p. 69. Stannage, Baldwin Thwarts, pp. 69-70. See above for full details. William Miller, Electoral Dynamics in Britain since 1918 (London, 1977), p. 37. Odd Sverre Norrøne, ‘Arbeiderpartiet og Stortingsvalgkampen i 1936’, Cand. Philol. thesis, University of Oslo 1978. Kjeldstadli, ‘“Arbeider, bonde, våre hære...”’ , p. 151. Stein Rokkan, ‘Norway: Numerical democracy and corporate pluralism’ in Robert A. Dahl (ed), Political Opposition in Western Democracies (New Haven CT,

156 69 70 71 72 73 74

75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY 1966), p. 83. Bryn and Lange, ‘Klasse eller folk’, p. 69. Stein Rokkan, ‘Geography, religion and social class: Crosscutting cleavages in Norwegian politics’ in Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignment: Cross-National Perspectives (London, 1967), p. 431. Kjeldstadli, ‘“Arbeider, bonde, våre hære…”’, p. 135. Kjeldstadli, ‘“Arbeider, bonde, våre hære…”’, p. 120. Hans Fredrik Dahl, Fra klassekamp til nasjonal samling. Arbeiderpartiet og det nasjonale spørsmål i 30-årene (Oslo, 1969), p. 58. For a very comprehensive treatment of the debate, see Hallvard Tjelmeland, ‘Avradikaliseringa av Det norske Arbeiderparti i mellomkrigstida. Ei historiografisk drøfting’, Cand. Philol. thesis, University of Tromsø 1982. For the DNA’s time in the Comintern, see Knut Langfeldt, Moskva-tesene i norsk politikk (Oslo, 1972); Per Maurseth, Fra Moskvateser til Kristiania-forslag. Det norske Arbeiderparti og Komintern fra 1921 til februar 1923 (Oslo, 1972). Edvard Bull sr., ‘Arbeiderbevægelsen i de tre nordiske land 1914-1920’, Tidsskrift for Arbeiderbevegelsens Historie 1/1976, p. 4. Bartolini, The Political Mobilization, p. 28. Ross McKibbin, The Ideologies of Class. Social Relations in Britain 1880-1950 (Oxford, 1991), p.1. Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism. The West European Left in the Twentieth Century (London, 1996), p. 16. Robert Self, The Evolution of the British Party System 1885-1940 (London, 2000), p. 143. Arthur Marwick, A History of the Modern British Isles, 1914-1999. Circumstances, Events and Outcomes (Oxford, 2000), p. 56. Marwick, A History of the Modern British, p. 90. Richard W. Lyman, The First Labour Government 1924 (London, 1957), p. 88. Eley, Forging Democracy, p. 294. Ben Pimlott, Labour and the Left in the 1930s (Cambridge, 1977), p. 10. Knut Kjeldstadli, Et splittet samfunn 1905-1935. Aschehougs Norgeshistorie (vol. 10) (Oslo, 1994), p. 22, pp. 34-5. Sassoon, One Hundred Years, p. 12. For a contrary view, see Tertit Aasland, ‘Valgordningen 1906-1918’, Historisk Tidsskrift 44 (1965), p. 287. Kjeldstadli, Et splittet samfunn, p. 24. Åsmund Egge, Komintern og krisen i Det norske Arbeiderparti (Oslo, 1995), p. 12. Sassoon, One Hundred Years, p. 33. For a discussion of this term, see Eley, Forging Democracy, p. 89. Tim Greve, Det norske Storting gjennom 150 år. (vol III) Tidsrommet 1908-1964 (Oslo, 1964), p. 322.

Chapter 2 1 2

Jason G. Howard, ‘The British general election of 1929’, Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University 1999, p. 103. Det norske Arbeiderparti, Protokoll over forhandlingene på Det norske Arbeiderpartis

NOTES 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25 26 27

157

28. ordinære landsmøte i Oslo 14-16 mars 1930 (Oslo, 1930), p. 45. DNA, Protokoll 1930, p. 124. Per Maurseth, Gjennom kriser til makt (1920-1935). Arbeiderbevegelsens historie i Norge (vol. 3) (Oslo, 1987), pp. 544-7, Einhart Lorenz, Arbeiderbevegelsens historie. En innføring. Norsk sosialisme i internasjonalt perspektiv. 1. del 1789-1930 (Oslo, 1972), p. 186, Hans Fredrik Dahl, Norge mellom krigene. Det norske samfunn i krise og konflikt 1918-1940 (Oslo, 1971), pp. 63-4. Stefan Berger, The British Labour Party and the German Social Democrats, 19001931 (Oxford, 1994), p. 101. Ross McKibbin, The Evolution of the Labour Party 1910-1924 (Oxford, 1983), p. 43. Minutes of the National Joint Committee of the Labour Party and the Cooperative Party 19 March 1929 (in National Executive Committee minutes). Independent Labour Party, The Report of the Annual Conference. Held at Birmingham April 1930 (London, n.d.), pp. 3-4. Duncan Tanner, Political Change and the Labour Party 1900-1918 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 437. Berge Furre, Norsk historie 1905-1940 (Oslo, 1982), p. 314. Terje Halvorsen, Partiets salt. AUFs historie (Oslo, 2003), p. 172. Labour Party, Reports of Annual Conferences. Twenty-ninth Report (London, 1929), p. 233. Labour Party, Reports of Annual Conferences. Thirtieth Report (London, 1930), p. 28. Labour Organiser IX (August 1929), p. 151. Zig Layton-Henry, ‘Labour’s lost youth’, Journal of Contemporary History 11 (1976), p. 279. G. D. H. Cole, A History of the Labour Party from 1914 (London, 1969), p. 144. Halvorsen, Partiets salt, p. 135. One Communist source says 150 of 200 branches joined them. Walter Citrine (ed), Report of Proceedings at the 61st Annual Trades Union Congress. Held at Belfast September 2nd to 6th 1929 (London, n.d.), p. 79; Labour Party, Reports of Annual Conferences. Thirty-sixth Report (London, 1936), p. 59. Arbeidernes Faglige Landsorganisasjon, Beretning 1930. For sekretariatet ved Halvard Olsen og Alfred Madsen (Oslo 1932), p. 105. Berger, The British Labour Party, p. 107. Det norske Arbeiderparti, Beretning 1930 (Oslo, 1931), p. 51. Arbeiderbevegelsens Arkiv og Bibliotek (AAB), Oslo: Memorandum by Oscar Torp dated 18 January 1930 in Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1930, sak nr. 34-128, Da 0113, folder marked DNAArbeiderbladet sak nr. 77 1930, p. 1. Memorandum by Oscar Torp dated 18 January 1930, pp. 8-9. Interview with Haakon Lie 26 June 2006. Gregory M. Luebbert, Liberalism, Fascism or Social Democracy. Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe (Oxford, 1991), p. 257. Minutes of the National Executive Committee 19 December 1928. Daily Herald, 15 March 1929, p. 1. The National Archives (TNA), Kew: MacDonald Papers. PRO 30/69/1174. Marked Polit Party Correspondence

158 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY 1929 C-M. MacDonald to Arthur Henderson 14 March 1929. DNA, Beretning 1930, p. 71. DNA, Beretning 1930, pp. 30-31. Oslo Arbeiderparti, Beretning og regnskap 1930 (Oslo, 1931), p. 33. Sam Davies, Liverpool Labour. Social and Political Influences on the Development of the Labour Party in Liverpool, 1900-1939 (Keele, 1996), p. 20. DNA, Beretning 1930, p. 72. Arbeiderbladet, 25 September 1930, p. 1. Labour, Annual report 1929, p. 49. Minutes of Research and Publicity Committee 2 November 1928. University of Manchester: Labour History Archive and Study Centre (LHASC), Labour Party Archive, LP/ELEC/1929/1. Order form no. 1 marked JN 1055 1929. Chris Cook, The Age of Alignment. Electoral Politics in Britain 1922-1929 (London, 1975), p. 23. Labour, Annual report 1929, p. 49. Report of the General Election Propaganda presented to the Research and Publicity Committee 18 July 1929. Minutes of Research and Publicity Committee 25 September 1928 and 2 November 1928. TNA: MacDonald Papers. PRO 30/69/1174 Marked Party Correspondence 1929 A-Z. William Henderson to J. S. Middleton 12 March 1929. William Henderson to Rose Rosenberg (MacDonald’s secretary) 14 March 1929. Lord Sydenham of Combe, A Perilous Election (London, [1929]), p. 6. Daily Herald, 29 May 1929, p. 1. Daily Herald, 12 April 1929, p. 1. E. A. Rowe, ‘Broadcasting and the 1929 general election’, Renaissance and Modern Studies 12 (1968), p. 112. Mark Pegg, Broadcasting and Society 1918-1939 (London, 1983), p. 187. Knut Kjeldstadli, Et splittet samfunn 1905-1935. Aschehougs Norgeshistorie (vol. 10) (Oslo, 1994), pp. 208-9. Hans Fredrik Dahl, Fra klassekamp til nasjonal samling. Arbeiderpartiet og det nasjonale spørsmål i 30-årene (Oslo, 1969), p. 46. Also see Arbeiderbladet, 8 October 1930, p. 3. Arbeiderbladet, 4 October 1930, p. 1. Arbeiderbladet, 15 October 1930, p. 11. Arbeiderbladet, 6 October 1930, p. 9; Arbeiderbladet, 15 October 1930, p. 2. Walter Galenson, Labor in Norway (Cambridge MA, 1949), p. 68. Hans Fredrik Dahl, ‘Fra nød til sejr’ in Knut Kjeldstadli and Vidar Keul (eds), DNA—fra folkebevegelse til statsstøtte (Oslo, 1973), p. 141. Dag Bryn and Halvard Manthey Lange, ‘Klasse eller folk’, Det 20. Århundrede (1930), p. 69. Oslo DNA, Beretning 1930, p. 33. Daily Herald, 29 April 1929, p. 1. London News, May 1929, p. 1. London Metropolitan Archives, Islington. Acc 2417/A/1. Minutes of the Executive Committee of the London Labour Party 7 March and 2 May 1929. Labour Organiser IX (August 1929), p. 159.

NOTES 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87

159

Tom Jeffery, ‘The suburban nation. Politics and class in Lewisham’ in David Feldman and Gareth Stedman Jones (eds), Metropolis London. Histories and Representation since 1800 (London, 1989), p. 189. David Butler and Gareth Butler, Twentieth-Century British Political Facts 19002000 (Basingstoke, 2000), p. 260. AAB: Letter from AFL to DNA 6 September 1930 in Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1930, sak nr. 34-128, Da 0113, folder marked DNA-Arbeiderbladet sak nr. 77 1930. Maurseth, Gjennom kriser til makt, p. 543. Maurseth, Gjennom kriser til makt, p. 568. Rolf Danielsen, Borgerlig oppdemningspolitikk 1918-1940. Høyres historie (vol. 2) (Oslo, 1984), p. 208. E. A. Rowe, ‘The British general election of 1929’, B. Litt. thesis, Oxford University 1959, p. 534. Oslo DNA, Beretning 1930, p. 46-7. Arbeiderbladet, 30 October 1930, p. 3. Edvard Bull jr., ‘Kriseforliket mellom Bondepartiet og Det norske Arbeiderparti i 1935’, Tidsskrift for Arbeiderbevegelsens Historie 2/1985, p. 53. Labour Organiser IX (June 1929), p. 105. Minutes of the National Executive Committee 27 February 1929. Cf. Labour, Annual report 1929, p. 45. The sum of £14,500 comprises £12,000 for ‘general election preparation’ and £2,500 which was transferred from the Bid for Power Fund to the General Fund in January 1929. Daily Herald, 15 October 1935, p. 15. Karl Egil Johansen, ‘Proletar eller småborgar? Fiskarane i politikk og samfunn’, Historisk Tidsskrift 81:2 (2002), p. 379. Kjeldstadli, Et splittet samfunn, p. 109. Nils Elvander, Skandinavisk arbetarrörelse (Stockholm, 1980), p. 95. Francis G. Castles, The Social Democratic Image of Society. A Study of the Achievements and Origins of Scandinavian Social Democracy in Comparative Perspective (London, 1978), p. 107. Geoffrey K. Fry, ‘A reconsideration of the British general election of 1935 and the electoral revolution of 1945’, History 76: 246 (1991), p. 54. Finn Olstad, Med knyttet neve. LOs historie (vol. 1) 1899-1935 (Oslo, 2009), p. 372, p. 394. Jorunn Bjørgum, Martin Tranmæl og radikaliseringen av norsk arbeiderbevegelse 1906-1918 (Oslo, 1998), p. 353. Knut Kjeldstadli, ‘“Arbeider, bonde, våre hære…” Arbeiderpartiet og bøndene 1930-1939’, Tidsskrift for Arbeiderbevegelsens Historie 2/1978, p. 59. LHASC: Labour Party Archive, LP/ELEC/1929/1. Labour Speaker’s Handbook passim p. 3, p. 10. Speaker’s Handbook, pp. 30-1. Speaker’s Handbook, p. 66. Speaker’s Handbook, p. 74. Speaker’s Handbook, pp. 78-81. Speaker’s Handbook, p. 20. Speaker’s Handbook, pp. 28-9.

160 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104

105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY AAB: Arbeiderpartiet og valget 1930. Håndbok for agitatorene in DNA Brosjyrer 1930 marked 329(481)15 N81br, p. 3. Arbeiderpartiet og valget 1930, p. 4. Arbeiderpartiet og valget 1930, p. 23. Arbeiderpartiet og valget 1930, p. 24. Arbeiderpartiet og valget 1930, p. 32. LHASC: LP/ELEC/1929/1. Folder marked 1929 GEN. ELECTION SCOTLAND + WALES BOROUGHS COUNTIES. LP/ELEC/1929/1. Leaflet 197 in folder marked JN 1055 A6. Leaflet 185 in folder marked JN 1055 A6. Leaflet 199 in same folder. Leaflet 198 in same folder. Clare V.J. Griffiths, Labour and the Countryside. The Politics of Rural Britain 19181939 (Oxford, 2007), p. 258. Kevin Manton, ‘The Labour party and the land question, 1919-51’, Historical Research 79:204 (2006), p. 255. LP/ELEC/1929/1. Leaflet 198 in folder marked JN 1055 A6. Leaflet 186 in same folder. Rowe, ‘General election of 1929’, p. 29. LP/ELEC/1929/1. Leaflet 272 in folder marked JN 1055 A6. Gabriel Øidne, ‘Litt om motsetninga mellom Austlandet og Vestlandet’ in Politiske valg i Norge. En artikkelsamling (Oslo, 1966), p. 102. It may, however, be true that the DNA failed to expand much beyond workers in those areas. Knut Kjeldstadli, ‘Arbeiderbevegelsen og andre folkelige bevegelser’, Arbeiderhistorie 2000, p. 20. Inger Bjørnhaug, ‘Arbeiderbevegelsen en folkelig bevegelse?’, Arbeiderhistorie 2004, p. 179. AAB: Arbeiderpartiet og valget 1930 in DNA brosjyrer 1930 marked 329(481)15 N81br, p. 71. AAB: I. K. Hognestad, Jorden og bønderne in DNA brosjyrer 1930, p. 3. AAB: K. M. Nordanger, Landsbygda og valget. Gjelds og skattepolitikken i lys av partienes stilling. En avsløring av bondepartiets folkebedrag in DNA brosjyrer 1930 Ivar Arne Roset, Det norske Arbeiderparti og Hornsruds regjeringsdannelse i 1928 (Oslo, 1962), p. 63. Hognestad, Jorden og bønderne, p. 7. Hognestad, Jorden og bønderne, p. 22. Hognestad, Jorden og bønderne, p. 23. Nordanger, Landsbygda og valget in DNA brosjyrer 1930 marked 329(481)15 N81br., p. 13. Hognestad, Jorden og bønderne, p. 32. AAB: Alfred Madsen, Rasjonaliseringen og arbeidsløsheten. Kamp mot den skjerpede utbytning in DNA brosjyrer 1930, p. 8. Johansen, ‘Proletar eller småborgar?’, p. 379. Madsen, Rasjonaliseringen og arbeidsløsheten, p. 8. AAB: Arbeiderpartiet og valget 1930 in DNA brosjyrer 1930, p. 49. AAB: Fiskerne og valget. Samvirke og plan— eller gjeld og avhengighet in

NOTES

161

DNA brosjyrer 1912-1936 marked q329(481)15 N81br., p. 4. 120 Aksel Zachariassen, Fra Marcus Thrane til Martin Tranmæl. Det norske Arbeiderparti fram til 1945 (Oslo, 1977), p. 319. 121 Arbeiderbladet, 22 October 1930, p. 1. 122 Cf. Håkon Meyer, ‘Arbeiderpartiet 1914-1923’ in Halvdan Koht (ed), Det norske Arbeiderpartis historie 1887-1937 (Oslo, 1939), p. 219. 123 J. Graham Jones, ‘Wales and the “new socialism”, 1926-1929’, Welsh History Review 11:2 (1982), p. 193. 124 Daily Herald, 4 June 1929, p. 4. 125 Labour Organiser X (July 1930), p. 119. 126 Michael Kinnear, The British Voter. An Atlas and Survey since 1885 (London, 1981), p. 48. 127 Alun Howkins, ‘“Death and rebirth?” English rural society, 1920-1940’ in Paul Brassley, Jeremy Burchardt and Lynne Thompson (eds), The English Countryside between the Wars. Regeneration or Decline? (Woodbridge, 2006), p. 18. 128 Griffiths, Labour and the Countryside, p. 324. 129 Griffiths, Labour and the Countryside, p. 156 and p.158. 130 Jorgen Rasmussen, ‘Women in labour: The flapper vote and party system transformation in Britain’, Electoral Studies 3:1 (1984), p. 47. 131 Rasmussen, ‘Women in labour’, p. 54. 132 LHASC: LP/ELEC/1929/1. Leaflet 12 in folder marked JN 1055 A6. 133 1929 Elector, 22 May 1929 in folder JN 1055 A6, front page. 134 Martin Francis, ‘Labour and gender’ in Duncan Tanner, Pat Thane and Nick Tiratsoo (eds), Labour’s First Century (Cambridge, 2000), p. 192. 135 1929 Elector, 22 May 1929, p. 4. 136 1929 Elector, 15 May 1929 in folder marked JN 1055 A6, p. 2. 137 1929 Elector, 22 May 1929, p. 2. 138 Leaflet 214 in folder marked JN 1055 A6. 139 Leaflet 195 in JN 1055 A6. 140 David Jarvis, ‘Mrs Maggs and Betty. The Conservative appeal to women voters in the 1920s’, Twentieth Century British History 5:2 (1994), p. 150. 141 AAB: Kvinne! Du avgjør valget i år!! in DNA brosjyrer 1930 marked 329(481)15 N81br 142 Arbeiderbladet, 20 October 1930, p. 3. 143 Statistisk årbok for Norge. 54. årgang. 1935 (Oslo, 1935), pp. 170-1. 144 Dahl, Norge mellom krigene, p. 66. 145 Quoted in F. W. S. Craig (ed), British General Election Manifestos 1918-1966 (Chichester, 1970), p. 55. 146 LHASC: LP/ELEC/1929/1. Labour Speaker’s Handbook 1929, facing p. 1. 147 LP/ELEC/1929/1. Leaflet 223 in folder marked JN 1055 A6. The correct figure should have been £400,000, as made clear by the leaflet’s text. 148 Leaflet 224 in folder marked JN 1055 A6. 149 Daily Herald, 6 May 1929, p. 1. 150 Dominic Wring, The Politics of Marketing the Labour Party (Basingstoke, 2005), pp. 26-7. 151 James E. Cronin, Labour and Society in Britain 1918-1979 (London, 1984), p. 48. 152 Kjeldstadli, Et splittet samfunn, p. 109.

162

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

153 AAB: Arbeiderpartiet og valget 1930 in DNA brosjyrer 1930 marked 329(481)15 N81br., p. 86. 154 Arbeiderpartiet og valget 1930, pp. 20-21. 155 Det norske Arbeiderparti, Lover, program og retningslinjer (Oslo, 1932), p. 21. 156 Kjeldstadli’s understanding from reading the programme of 1930 is that clerks were part of ‘the working people’. ‘“Arbeider, bonde, våre hære…”’, p. 15. 157 AAB: K. F. Dahl, Husleiereguleringen og Stortingsvalget. Frem til forsvar for hjemmene in DNA brosjyrer 1930, p. 7. 158 Oslo DNA, Beretning 1930, p. 35. 159 Arbeiderbladet, 17 October 1930, p. 1. 160 Arbeiderbladet, 17 October 1930, p. 2. 161 Gabriel Øidne, ‘Sosial og politisk struktur i Oslo. Del I: 1906-1937’, Tidsskrift for samfunnsforskning 11 (1970), p. 129. 162 Rowe, ‘General election of 1929’, p. 207. 163 Howard, ‘General election of 1929’, p. 121. 164 Stuart Ball, Andrew Thorpe and Matthew Worley, ‘Elections, leaflets and whist drives: Constituency party matters in Britain between the wars’ in Matthew Worley (ed), Labour’s Grass Roots. Essays on the Activities of Local Labour Parties and Members, 1918-45 (Aldershot, 2005), p. 14. 165 LHASC: LP/ELEC/1929/1. H.B. Lees-Smith’s last letter in folder marked JN 1055 A6. 166 Stephen R. Ward, James Ramsay MacDonald. Low Born among the High Brows (New York, 1990), p. 171. 167 LP/ELEC/1929/1. Speaker’s Handbook 1929, p. 128. 168 AAB: Fiskerne og valget in DNA brosjyrer 1912-1936 marked q329(481)15 N81br 1930, p. 5. 169 Edvard Bull jr., Arbeiderklassen i norsk historie (Oslo, 1977), p. 308 170 AAB: Stem med Det norske Arbeiderparti in DNA brosjyrer 1912-1936 marked q329(481)15 N81br 1930. 171 AAB: Fiskerne og valget in DNA brosjyrer 1912-1936, p. 6. 172 Fiskerne og valget, p. 11. 173 Harald Berntsen, I malstrømmen. Johan Nygaardsvold 1879-1952 (Oslo, 1991), p. 263. 174 Labour Organiser IX (May 1929), p. 88. 175 Labour Organiser IX (May 1929), p. 94. 176 Daily Herald, 29 May 1929, p. 1. 177 Daily Herald, 4 June 1929, p. 4. 178 Christopher Howard, ‘Expectations born to death: Local Labour expansion in the 1920s’ in Jay Winter (ed), The Working Class in Modern British History. Essays in Honour of Henry Pelling (Cambridge, 1983), p. 70. 179 Cf. McKibbin, The Evolution, p. 151. He calls it a ‘mistaken view.’ 180 Duncan Tanner, ‘Class voting and radical politics: The Liberal and Labour parties, 1910-31’ in Jon Lawrence and Miles Taylor (ed), Party, State and Society. Electoral Behaviour in Britain since 1820 (Aldershot, 1997), p. 120. 181 DNA, Beretning 1930, p. 34 182 Arbeiderbladet, 20 October 1930, p. 1.

NOTES

163

183 Arbeiderbladet, 22 October 1930, p. 1. 184 Arbeiderbladet, 22 October 1930, p. 4. 185 Stein Rokkan, ‘Electoral mobilization, party competition and national integration’ in Joseph La Palombara and Myron Weiner (eds), Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton NJ, 1966), pp. 251-2. 186 Hans Fredrik Dahl, ‘Arbeiderbevegelsen og offentligheten’, Tidsskrift for Arbeiderbevegelsens Historie 1/1979, p. 7. 187 Arbeiderbladet, 30 October 1930, p. 3. 188 Matthew Worley, ‘Building the party: Labour party activism in five British counties between the wars’, Labour History Review 70:1 (2005), pp. 79-80. 189 Labour Organiser IX (March 1930), p. 38. 190 Andrew Thorpe, A History of the British Labour Party (London, 1997), p. 41. 191 Knut Martin Heidar, ‘The deradicalisation of working class parties: A study of three Labour branches in Norway’, Ph. D. thesis, University of London 1980, p. 35.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10 11 12 13

14

Chapter 3

Labour Party, Annual Reports of Conferences. Thirty-second Report (London, 1932), p. 63. Minutes of the National Executive Committee 26 August 1931 at 2 p.m. Minutes of the NEC 26 August 1931 at 5 p.m. Minutes of a meeting of the Three National Committees 27 August 1931 (in NEC minutes). Daily Herald, 28 August 1931, p. 1, p. 3. Daily Herald, 29 August 1931, p. 1. Det norske Arbeiderparti, Protokoll over forhandlingene på Det norske Arbeiderpartis 29. ordinære landsmøte i Oslo 26-28 mai 1933 (Oslo, 1934), p. 39. DNA, Protokoll 1933, pp. 43-4. Decided in the AFL-DNA Joint Committee 13 July 1933. See Arbeiderbevegelsens Arkiv og Bibliotek (AAB), Oslo: Archive:Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1934, sak nr. 2-34, Da 0140, folder marked Finanskomiteen sak 525 1933 9 1934. AAB: Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1933, sak nr. 201-290, Da 0136, folder marked Samarbeidskomiteen sak nr. 235 1933. Berge Furre, Norsk historie 1905-1940 (Oslo, 1982), p. 203. Jardar Seim, Hvordan Hovedavtalen av 1935 ble til. Staten, organisasjonene og arbeidsfreden 1930-35 (Oslo, 1972), p. 87. For a scholarly view identical to the DNA’s see Einhart Lorenz, Arbeiderbevegelsens historie. En innføring. Norsk sosialisme i internasjonalt perspektiv. 2. del. 1930-1973 (Oslo, 1974), p. 18. He argues that fascism and reaction were not just represented by Quisling’s National Socialists, but by the other capitalist parties. Their ‘continual attacks on elementary civil rights’ turned the labour movement into the protectors of democracy. AAB: Minutes of Joint Committee 16 November 1933 in Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1933, sak nr. 201-290, Da 0136, folder marked Samarbeidskomiteen sak nr. 235 1933.

164 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY DNA, Protokoll 1933, p. 41. Torgrim Titlestad, Stavanger. Norges røde by (Stavanger, 1989), p.56. Walter Citrine (ed), Report of Proceedings at the 63rd Annual Trades Union Congress. Held at Bristol September 7th to 11th 1931 (London, n.d.), p. 72. Labour Party, Annual Reports of Conferences. Thirty-first Report (London, 1931), p. 14. Stephen G. Jones, Workers at Play. A Social and Economic History of Leisure 19181939 (London, 1986), p. 150. University of Manchester: Labour History Archive and Study Centre (LHASC): The Labour Party Report of the Conference of the League of Youth 9 January 1932 in folder marked Organisation Sub-Cttee Membership papers Jan-Apr 1932. Box marked By-election reports 24 July 1929- 6 Sept 1937 Election Sub-Cttee Minutes 3 May 1934-1 Dec 1944 Box I. Minutes of Annual Consultation on Organizing Staff 10 October 1930. Labour Party, Annual Reports of Conferences. Thirtieth Report (London, 1930), p. 60. Labour Organiser X (April 1930), p. 71. Labour Organiser X (May 1930), p. 77. Labour, Annual report 1931, p. 61. Minutes of the NEC 28 January 1931. Det norske Arbeiderparti, Beretning 1933 (Oslo, 1934), p. 50. DNA, Beretning 1933, p. 51. Svennik Høyer, ‘Partiet i pressen—et omriss av arbeiderpressens utvikling i Norge’, Tidsskrift for Arbeiderbevegelsens Historie 1/1979, p. 18. Huw Richard, ‘The Daily Herald’, History Today 31 (Dec. 1981), p. 15. Minutes of the NEC 24 February 1931. Matthew Worley, Labour inside the Gate. A History of the British Labour Party between the Wars (London, 2005), p. 142. Minutes of the NEC 24 February 1931. Minutes of the Organization Sub-Committee 18 June 1931. Daily Herald, 1 September 1931, p. 3. Minutes of the NEC 2 October 1931. The National Archives (TNA), Kew. PRO 30/69/388 Political General Election October 1931. Letter from Rose Rosenberg to the Prime Minister 29 September 1931. Cf. PRO 30/69/1320 Pol. Party General Election Correspondence & Cuttings. Letter from Rose Rosenberg to the Prime Minister 29 September 1931. Labour, Annual report 1931, p. 202. Labour, Annual report 1931, p. 227. Labour, Annual report 1931, p. 9. Daily Herald, 4 June 1929, p. 4. Cf. Daily Herald, 10 October 1931, p. 1. Andrew Thorpe, ‘Arthur Henderson and the British political crisis of 1931’, Historical Journal 31:1 (1988), p. 137. Minutes of the NEC 25 November 1930. Minutes of the NEC 24 February 1931. Appendix to minutes of a meeting of the Three National Committees 27

NOTES 47 48 49

50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64

65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

165

August 1931. R. Bassett, Nineteen Thirty-One. Political Crisis (London, 1958), p. 185. Daily Herald, 2 October 1931, p. 1. Daily Herald, 10 October 1931, p. 1. Although bed-ridden, Lloyd George played some part in the drama by correspondence. Cf. e.g. TNA, PRO 30/69/388 Political General Election October 1931. J. Ramsay MacDonald to Lloyd George 30 September 1931. Andrew Thorpe, The British General Election of 1931 (Oxford, 1991), p. 242. Daily Herald, 8 October 1931, p. 3. Labour Organiser XI (September 1931), p. 164. Ben Pimlott, Labour and the Left in the 1930s (Cambridge, 1977), p. 9. Labour Organiser XI (November 1931), p. 202. Neil Riddell, Labour in Crisis. The Second Labour Government 1929-1931 (Manchester, 1999), passim p. 56, p. 59, p. 89, p. 205; Labour Organiser XI (September 1931), p. 164. Report on the General Election to the National Executive Committee dated 10 November 1931. AAB: Minutes of meeting of the Joint Committee 13 July 1933 in Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1934, sak nr. 2-34, Da 0140, folder marked Finanskomiteen sak 525 1933 9 1934. AAB: Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, Protokoller 1933-1934, Ac 0009, AFL Forhandlingsprotokoll 1. Januar-31 Desember 1933, pp. 158-161. Same source, pp. 135-7. Furre, Norsk historie 1905-1940, pp. 203-4. Knut Kjeldstadli, Et splittet samfunn 1905-1935. Aschehougs Norgeshistorie (vol. 10) (Oslo, 1994), p. 184; Furre, Norsk historie 1905-1940, p. 196. DNA, Beretning 1933, p. 73. Arbeiderbladet, 12 September 1933, p. 9. AAB: Minutes of the working executive of the Extended Finance Committee 21 September 1933 in folder marked Finanskomiteen sak 525 1933 9 1934 in Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksakiv 1934, sak nr. 2-34, Da 0140. AAB: Folder marked AUF agitasjon 1932-1933 in Archive: Arbeidernes Ungdomsfylking, Korrespondanse A-B, 1932-1956, Da 0002. Same folder. Vidar Keul and Knut Kjeldstadli, ‘DNA— fra folkelig bevegelse til herskerapparat’ in Kjeldstadli and Keul (eds), DNA—fra folkebevegelse til statsstøtte (Oslo, 1973), pp. 104-5. DNA, Beretning 1933, p. 74. DNA, Beretning 1933, pp. 74-5. Labour, Annual report 1932, p. 63. Also see Report on the General Election to the National Executive Committee dated 10 November 1931. Daily Herald, 16 October 1931, p. 11. Daily Herald, 14 October 1931, p. 1. This is borne out by the sources. See John D. Fair, ‘The Conservative basis for the formation of the National Government of 1931’, Journal of British Studies 19:2 (1980), p. 146; Austen Morgan, J. Ramsay MacDonald (Manchester,

166

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

1987), pp. 174-5; Philip Williamson, ‘1931 revisited. The political realities’, Twentieth Century British History 2:3 (1991), p. 332 74 A. D. Edwards, 1931: The Fall of the Labour Government (London, 1975), pp. 55-6. 75 Dominic Wring, The Politics of Marketing the Labour Party (Basingstoke, 2005), p. 23. 76 David Rubinstein, The Labour Party and British Society 1880-2005 (Brighton, 2005), p. 67. 77 London News, April 1931, p. 1. 78 London Metropolitan Archive, Islington. Acc 2417/A/2. Minutes of a meeting of the Executive Committee of the London Labour Party 17 September 1931. 79 Minutes of a meeting of the Executive Committee of the London Labour Party 9 July 1931. 80 Stefan Berger, ‘“Organising talent and disciplined steadiness”: The German SPD as a model for the British Labour party in the 1920s?’, Contemporary European History 5:2 (1996), pp. 172-3. 81 London News, October 1931, p. 3. 82 London News, October 1931, p.5. 83 Daily Herald, 9 October 1931, p. 6. 84 Daily Herald, 27 October 1931, p. 1. 85 See DNA, Beretning 1933, pp. 10-18. 86 AAB: Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1934, sak nr. 234, Da 0140, folder marked Finanskomiteen sak 525 1933 9 1934. 87 AAB: Summary of expenses in connection with the electoral work autumn 1933 in Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1933, sak nr. 553-754, Da 0139, folder marked Stortingsvalget sak nr. 601 1933. 88 The DNA’s total expenditure was 551,423. 45 kroner according to the most complete record in the archival source above, but the table has been quoted verbatim. 89 Oslo Arbeiderparti, Beretning og regnskap 1933 (Oslo, 1933), p. 55. 90 Oslo DNA, Beretning 1933, pp. 19-21. 91 Oslo DNA, Beretning 1933, p. 18. Oslo Arbeiderparti, Beretning og regnskap 1930 (Oslo, 1931), p. 35. 92 Oslo DNA, Beretning 1933, p. 18. 93 Labour, Annual report 1932, p. 58. 94 Labour Organiser XI (September 1931), p. 161 95 Thorpe, General Election of 1931, p. 185. 96 Report on the General Election to the National Executive Committee dated 10 November 1931. 97 Daily Herald, 26 October 1931, p. 8. 98 Arbeiderbladet, 30 September 1933, p. 6. 99 Thorpe, General Election of 1931, p. 220. 100 Ross McKibbin, The Ideologies of Class. Social Relations in Britain 1880-1950 (Oxford, 1991), p. 279. 101 Michael Kinnear, The British Voter. An Atlas and Survey since 1885 (London, 1981), p. 120.

NOTES

167

102 LHASC: Labour Party Archive. LP/ELEC/1931/1. Notes for Speakers, p. 1633 in folder marked SERIALS JN 1055 1931. 103 Labour Organiser X (July 1930), p. 120. Note that the author goes on to question whether all farmers really are needed. 104 Nicholas Mansfield, English Farmworkers and Local Patriotism, 1900-1930 (Aldershot, 2001), p. 162, p. 190. Ray Groves, Sharpen the Sickle! The History of the Farmworkers’ Union (London, 1949), pp. 218-9. 105 LHASC: LP/ELEC/1931/1. Leaflet 319 in folder marked JN 1055 A6. 106 Leaflet 324 in same folder. 107 Leaflet 323 in same folder. 108 Thorpe, General Election of 1931, p. 221. 109 Thorpe, General Election of 1931, p. 248. 110 LHASC: LP/ELEC/1931/2. Folder marked 1931 GEN. ELECTION ENGLISH COUNTIES. Folder marked GEN. ELECTION ENGLISH BOROUGHS. 111 Thorpe, General Election of 1931, p. 248. 112 Michael Tichelar, ‘The Labour party and land reform in the inter-war period’, Rural history 13:1 (2002), p. 89. 113 AAB: Ole Øisang, Bonden og valget. Krisen i jordbruket. Arbeiderpartiets og Bondepartiets krisepolitikk in Brosjyrer utgitt av Det norske Arbeiderparti Stortingsvalget 1933 marked 329(481)15 N81br. 1933, p. 10. 114 Øisang, Bonden og valget, p. 9. 115 LHASC: LP/ELEC/1931/2. Folder marked 1931 GEN. ELECTION ENGLISH COUNTIES. Folder marked 1931 GEN. ELECTION ENGLISH BOROUGHS. 116 AAB: ‘Den økonomiske politikk. Stortingets stilling til krisen’ in K. M. Nordanger and Alfr. Aakermann, Det norske Arbeiderparti og valget. Stortingspolitikken 1931-1933 marked 329(481)15 N81br 1933, p. 59 117 AAB: Ole Colbjørnsen, Hele folket i arbeid! in Brosjyrer utgitt av Det norske Arbeiderparti Stortingsvalget 1933 marked 329(481)15 N81br 1933, p. 5 and p. 6. 118 Colbjørnsen, Hele folket, p. 6. 119 Colbjørnsen, Hele folket, p. 22. 120 Colbjørnsen, Hele folket, p. 20. 121 AAB: Kristian Berg, Ut av spekulantenes garn. Fiskernes interesse ved Stortingsvalget in Brosjyrer utgitt av Det norske Arbeiderparti Stortingsvalget 1933, p. 20. 122 Colbjørnsen, Hele folket, p. 28. 123 Berg, Ut av spekulantenes, p. 3. 124 Berg, Ut av spekulantenes, p. 7. 125 AAB: Gunnar Ousland, Hele folkets kamp mot krise og nød. Arbeiderbevegelsen går foran in Brosjyrer utgitt av Det norske Arbeiderparti Stortingsvalget 1933 marked 329(481)15 N81br 1933, p. 23. 126 Olav Rovde, ‘Bonde-, småbrukar- og arbeidarrørsla i konflikt og samarbeid’, Arbeiderhistorie 2000, p. 64, p. 66. 127 LHASC: LP/ELEC/1931/1. Leaflet 308 in folder marked JN 1055 A6. 128 Leaflet 314 in same folder.

168

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

129 Leaflet 304 in same folder. 130 LP/ELEC/1931/1. Notes for Speakers, p. 1663 in folder marked SERIALS JN 1055 1931. 131 Notes for Speakers, p. 1665. 132 Mike Savage and Andrew Miles, The Remaking of the British Working Class, 1840-1940 (London, 1994), p. 87. 133 Andrew Thorpe, A History of the British Labour Party (London, 1997), p. 75. 134 Cf. Pamela Graves, Labour Women. Women in British Working-Class Politics 19181939 (Cambridge, 1994), p. 149. 135 AAB: En lørdagshandel in Brosjyrer utgitt av Det norske Arbeiderparti Stortingsvalget 1933 marked 329(481)15 N81br 1933. 136 Ida Blom, ‘Introduction’ in Helmut Gruber and Pamela Graves (eds), Women and Socialism. Europe between the Two World Wars (New York, 1998), p. 417. 137 LHASC: LP/ELEC/1931/1. Leaflet 318 in folder marked JN 1055 A6. 138 Leaflet 312 in same folder. 139 Leaflet 325 in same folder. 140 Leaflet 311 in same folder. 141 LP/ELEC/1931/1. York Equitable Industrial Society ltd. Vol. 34-Local, No. 117 November 1931 in folder marked JN 1055 A5. 142 LP/ELEC/1931/1. Notes for Speakers, p. 1664 in folder marked SERIALS JN 1055 1931. 143 Notes for Speakers, p. 1667. 144 LP/ELEC/1931/1. Leaflet 313 in folder marked JN 1055 A6. 145 AAB: Det norske Arbeiderpartis prinsipielle program. Arbeidsprogram. Stortingsprogram marked B329(481)15 N81 pr. 1933, p. 8. 146 Stefan Berger, The British Labour Party and the German Social Democrats, 19001931 (Oxford, 1994), p. 63. 147 Dominic Wring, ‘Selling socialism: Marketing the early Labour party’, History Today 55:5 (2005), p. 42. 148 LHASC: LP/ELEC/1931/1.Leaflet 302 in folder marked JN 1055 A6. 149 LP/ELEC/1931/1. Folder marked JN 1055 A8. 150 LHASC: LP/ELEC/1931/2. Folder marked 1931 GEN. ELECTION ENGLISH COUNTIES. 151 LP/ELEC/1931/2. Folder marked 1931 GEN. ELECTION LONDON. 152 Folder marked 1931 GEN. ELECTION ENGLISH BOROUGHS. 153 Same folder. 154 Folder marked 1931 GEN. ELECTION LONDON. 155 Folder marked 1931 GEN. ELECTION ENGLISH COUNTIES 156 AAB: Den økonomiske politikk. Stortingets stilling til krisen in K. M. Nordanger and Alfr. Aakermann, Det norske Arbeiderparti og valget. Stortingspolitikken 1931-1933 marked 329(481)15 N81br 1933, pp. 156-7. 157 AAB: Ole Colbjørnsen, Hele folket i arbeide! in Brosjyrer utgitt av Det norske Arbeiderparti Stortingsvalget 1933 marked 329(481)15 N81br1933, p. 6. 158 Colbjørnsen, Hele folket, p. 7. 159 Colbjørnsen, Hele folket, p. 42. 160 AAB: Gunnar Ousland, Hele folkets kamp mot krise og nød in Brosjyrer

NOTES 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185

169

utgitt av Det norske Arbeiderparti Stortingsvalget 1933, p. 4. Statistisk årbok for Norge. 57. årgang 1938 (Oslo, 1938), p. 9. Ousland, Hele folkets kamp, p. 23. Oslo DNA, Beretning 1933, p. 18. E.g. Arbeiderbladet, 5 September 1933, p. 12; Arbeiderbladet, 12 October 1933, p. 6. LHASC: LP/ELEC/1931/1. Folder marked GENERAL ELECTION 1931. HISTORY & DESCRIPTION. GOLD STANDARD PRESS CUTTINGS. Manchester Guardian, 20 October 1931 (editorial). Stephen Koss, The Rise and Fall of the Political Press in Britain (London, 1984), p. 511. LP/ELEC/1931/2. Folder marked 1931 GEN. ELECTION ENGLISH COUNTIES. LP/ELEC/1931/2. Folder marked 1931 GEN. ELECTION ENGLISH BOROUGHS. Folder marked 1931 GEN. ELECTION ENGLISH COUNTIES. Same folder. Folder marked 1931 GEN. ELECTION ENGLISH BOROUGHS. Same folder. Same folder. Kinnear, The British Voter, p. 50. D. H. Close, ‘The realignment of the British electorate in 1931’, History 67:221 (1982), p. 402. Daily Herald, 27 October 1931, p. 1. Daily Herald, 27 October 1931, p. 2. Oslo DNA, Beretning 1933, p. 19. Rolf Danielsen, Borgerlig oppdemningspolitikk 1918-1940. Høyres historie (vol. 2) (Oslo, 1984), pp. 294-5. Arbeiderbladet, 16 October 1933, p. 1. Paul Adelman, The Rise of the Labour Party 1880-1945 (London, 1972), p. 72. Thorpe, General Election of 1931, p. 128. Labour Organiser XI (November 1931), p. 203. Daily Herald, 29 October 1931, p. 1. London Metropolitan University: Trades Union Congress Library Collection. Box local Labour parties. London Trades Council. Seventy-second Annual Report (1931) and Statements of Accounts (marked JN 1129L), p. 3.

186 187 188 189

Arbeiderbladet, 17 October 1933, p. 1. Arbeiderbladet, 17 October 1933, p. 3.

1

Tom Stannage, Baldwin Thwarts the Opposition. The British General Election of 1935 (London, 1980). Geoffrey K. Fry, ‘A reconsideration of the British general election of 1935

2

Labour Organiser XI (November 1931), p. 217. Nick Smart, ‘Constituency politics and the 1931 election’, Southern History 16 (1994), p. 126.

Chapter 4

170

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY and the electoral revolution of 1945’, History 76 (1991), pp. 43-55; William Thomas Morgan, ‘The British general election of 1935’, reprinted from the South Atlantic Quarterly, Vol. XXXVII, no. 2 (April 1938); James C. Robertson, ‘The British general election of 1935’, Journal of Contemporary History 9:1 (1974), pp. 149-164. Øistein Hveding, ‘Gjeldsforliket mellom Bondepartiet og Arbeiderpartiet i 1934’, Historisk Tidsskrift 58 (1979), p. 354. Harald Berntsen (ed), Johan Nygaardsvold. Dagbøker 1918-48 og utvalgte brev og papirer 1916-52 (Oslo, 1998), p. 102, p. 105. Stannage, Baldwin Thwarts, p. 180. Matthew Worley, Labour inside the Gate. A History of the British Labour Party between the Wars (London, 2005), p. 169. Sir Walter Citrine (ed), Report of Proceedings at the 67th Annual Trades Union Congress. Held at Margate September 2nd to 6th 1935 (London, n.d.), p. 83. Calculated from Royden Harrison et al., The Warwick Guide to British Labour Periodicals 1790-1970. A Check List (Hassocks, 1977). Citrine (ed), 67th Annual Trades Union Congress, p. 83. Det norske Arbeiderparti, Beretning 1936 (Oslo, 1937), p. 78; Det norske Arbeiderparti, Beretning 1933 (Oslo, 1934), p. 51. Labour Party, Reports of Annual Conferences. Thirty-third Report (London, 1933), p. 55 Labour Party, Reports of Annual Conferences. Thirty-fifth Report (London, 1935), p. 35. Calculated from DNA, Beretning 1936, p. 86. ‘Victory for Socialism’ letter dated 3 October 1933 in National Executive Committee minutes. University of Manchester: Labour History and Archive Centre (LHASC),Victory for Socialism in box marked 329.12, p. 14; ‘Victory for Socialism’ letter dated 3 October 1933. Minutes of the Finance and General Purposes Sub-Committee 21 June 1935. Minutes of the NEC 1 March 1934. Minutes of the NEC 27 March 1934. Minutes of the Finance and General Purposes Sub-Committee 14 May 1934. Arbeiderbevegelsens Arkiv og Bibliotek (AAB), Oslo: Letter from I. B. Aase to AFL Secretariat 13 August 1935 in folder marked Det norske Arbeiderparti Sak nr. 173 1935 106 1936 (304, 1934) in Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1935, sak nr. 172-270, Da 0155. Letter from I. B. Aase to DNA 20. September 1935 in same folder. Øyvind Bjørnson, På klassekampens grunn (1900-1920). Arbeiderbevegelsens historie i Norge (vol. 2) (Oslo, 1990), p. 222. Arbeidernes Faglige Landsorganisasjon, Beretning 1936. For sekretariatet ved Olav Hindahl og Lars Evensen (Oslo, 1937), p. 4. Research and Publicity Committee, Memorandum on General Election Literature Preparations marked 21 November 1934. Minutes of the Research and Publicity Committee 17 January 1935. Minutes of the NEC 23 January 1935. The General Election and the Daily Herald, February 1935.

NOTES 28 29 30 31

32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48

49 50 51

171

AAB: Minutes of 20 February 1936 meeting in folder marked Stortingsvalgkampen 1936 sak nr. 301 1936 in Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs Saksarkiv 1936, sak nr. 280-482, Da 0167. Minutes of 28 February 1936 meeting in Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, Protokoller 1936-37, Sekretariatets protokoll 1936, Ac 0011, pp. 84-5. Sekretariatets protokoll 1937, p. 24 in same archive as above. Minutes of meeting of working executive of Extended Finance Committee, 2 September 1936 in folder marked Stortingsvalgkampen 1936 sak nr. 301 1936 in Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1936, sak nr. 280482, Da 0167. List in same folder as above. Reproduced as appendix 2 showing payments in 1933 and 1936. Minutes of the Research and Publicity Committee 18 June 1935. Labour Organiser XV (June 1935), p. 101. Minutes of the NEC 19 September 1935. Appendix to meeting of the Finance and General Purposes Sub-Committee 2 October 1935. Minutes of the Finance and General Purposes Sub-Committee 2 October 1935. Minutes of the Election Sub-Committee 16 October 1935. Minutes of the NEC 22 October 1935. Minutes of the NEC 23 October 1935. AAB: Folder marked Samarbeidskomiteen in Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs Saksarkiv 1936, sak nr. 33-45, Da 0163. Sverre Hjertholm, Arbeiderbevegelsen i Vestfold. Trekk fra den politiske og faglige arbeiderbevegelse 1906-1956 (Drammen, 1956), p. 226. AAB: Brochure by AOF in folder marked AUF agitasjon 1936-1938. Archive: Arbeidernes Ungdomsfylking, Korrespondanse A-B 1935-1959, Da 0003, p. 1. Memorandum marked ‘General Election 1935’ dated October 1935. AAB: Minutes of Joint Committee 14 February 1936 in folder marked Samarbeidskomiteen in Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1936, sak nr. 33-45, Da 0163. DNA, Beretning 1936, p. 57. There called ‘Election Committee’. The issue, like the funding, was decided at a meeting of the federations 28 February 1936. Folder marked Representantskapet sak nr. 244 1936 in Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1936, sak nr. 132-275, Da 0166. Letter from AIF to AFL Secretariat and DNA Central Committee dated 17 December 1935 in folder marked Arbeidernes Idrettsforbund sak nr. 113 1935 in Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1935, sak nr. 71-113, Da 0153. Minutes of Extended Finance Committee 1 April 1936 in folder marked Stortingsvalgkampen 1936 sak nr. 301 1936, Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1936 nr. 280-482, Da 0167. Minutes of Extended Finance Committee 15 April 1936. Minutes of Extended Finance Committee 20 April 1936.

172 52 53 54

55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY Minutes of Extended Finance Committee 2 September 1936. Lill-Ann Jensen and Svein Damslora, Bildet som våpen. Norsk arbeiderbevegelses bruk av bildet i kamp og agitasjon (Oslo, 1984), p. 145. AAB: Minutes of the working executive of the Extended Finance Committee 27 September 1933 in Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1934, sak nr. 2-34. Folder marked Finanskomiteen sak 525 1933 9 1934. Da 0140. AAB: Arbeidernes Oplysningsforbund, 1936. Beretning for det femte arbeidsåret in Arbeidernes Oplysningsforbund. Beretning 1932-38 marked 374.2(481) Ar 15b, pp. 16-17 Det norske Arbeiderparti, Protokoll over forhandlingene på Det norske Arbeiderpartis 30. ordinære landsmøte i Oslo 22-24 mai 1936 (Oslo, 1937), pp. 65-6. DNA, Protokoll 1936, p. 65. Lill-Ann Jensen, ‘I hammerens tegn. Nye agitasjons- og propagandaformer i norsk arbeiderbevegelse på 1930-tallet’, Arbeiderhistorie 2002, pp. 103-4. Brochure by AOF in second manuscript in folder marked AUF agitasjon 1936-1938. Archive: Arbeidernes Ungdomsfylking, Korrespondanse A-B, 1935-1959, Da 0003, p. 3. Brochure by AOF, second manuscript, p. 3 and p. 5. Brochure by AOF, second manuscript, p. 2. Odd Sverre Norrøne, ‘Arbeiderpartiet og Stortingsvalgkampen i 1936’, Cand. Philol. thesis, University of Oslo 1978, p. 20. Finn Olstad, Arbeiderklassens vekst og fall. Hovedlinjer i 100 års norsk historie (Oslo, 1991), p. 101. Arvid Hansen, Arbeiderbevegelsens politiske kurs (Oslo, 1936), p. 14. Stephen G. Jones, Workers at Play. A Social and Economic History of Leisure (London, 1986), p. 145. Daily Herald, 14 September 1935, p. 11. Worley, Labour inside, p. 167. Worley, Labour inside, p. 166. Chris Williams, Democratic Rhondda. Politics and Society, 1885-1951 (Cardiff, 1996) p. 113. Labour Organiser XII (April 1932), p. 57. Labour Organiser IX (August 1929), p. 151; Labour Organiser IX (November 1929), p. 219. Labour Organiser XIII (August 1933), p. 193. Labour Organiser XIV (May 1934), p. 12. AAB: Letter from AUF to Joint Committee 2 March 1936 in folder marked Stortingsvalgkampen 1936 sak nr. 301 1936 in Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs aksarkiv 1936 sak nr. 280-482, Da 0167. Letter from Joint Committee to AUF 19 March 1936 in same folder. AAB: Arbeidernes Oplysningsforbund, 1936 in Arbeidernes Oplysningsforbund 1932-38, p. 20. David Butler and Gareth Butler, Twentieth-Century British Political Facts 19002000 (Basingstoke, 2000), p. 260. Labour Party, Reports of Annual Conferences. Thirty-sixth Report (London, 1936), p. 53.

NOTES 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89. 90 91 92 93 94

95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107

173

Labour, Annual Report 1936, p. 52. Labour Party Balance Sheet 21 December 1934 General Election Literature Preliminary Report. AAB. Brochure by Arbeidernes Oplysningsforbund, third manuscript in folder marked AUF agitasjon 1936-1938 in Archive: Arbeidernes Ungdomsfylking, serie Korrespondanse A-B, 1935-1959, Da 0003, p. 1. Oslo DNA, Beretning 1936, pp. 64-5. DNA, Beretning 1936, p. 59. Arbeiderbladet, 1 October 1936, p. 4. This was Olav Vegheim, Fra kaos mot plan i Norge. Material samling valget 1936 (Oslo, 1936) Tore Pryser, Klassen og nasjonen (1935-1946). Arbeiderbevegelsens historie i Norge (vol. 4) (Oslo, 1988), p. 55. Worley, Labour inside, p. 150. Stannage, Baldwin Thwarts, p. 169. Stannage, Baldwin Thwarts, p. 291, E. A. Rowe, ‘The British general election of 1929’, B. Litt. thesis, Oxford University 1959, p. 83. LHASC, Labour Party Archive, LP/ELEC/1935/1. Leaflet 42 in folder marked GENERAL ELECTION 1935 LABOUR PARTY. LP/ELEC/1935/1. Notes for Speakers in folder marked JN 1055 A8, p. 57. LP/ELEC/1935/1. Leaflet 15 in folder marked GENERAL ELECTION 1935 LABOUR PARTY. Stannage, Baldwin Thwarts, p. 163. Cf. Nicholas Mansfield, English Farmworkers and Local Patriotism, 1900-1930 (Aldershot, 2001), p. 197. In the 1920s many farmers clamoured for state intervention, but they could not bring themselves to vote Labour. LP/ELEC/1935/1. Folder marked 1935 GENERAL ELECTION ENGLISH COUNTIES. LP/ELEC/1935/1. Folder marked JN 1055 A6. Labour Organiser XV (July 1935), pp. 139-140. Stannage, Baldwin Thwarts, p. 291. Michael Tichelar, ‘The Labour party and land reform in the inter-war period’, Rural History 13:1 (2002), p. 86. Halvard Lange, Fra sekt til parti. Det norske Arbeiderpartis organisasjonsmessige og politiske utvikling fra 1891 til 1902 (Oslo, 1962). Svein Lundestad, Arbeiderbevegelsens politiske gjennombrudd i Nordland og Troms. En sammenligning mellom to ulike fylker med særlig vekt på vilkår for oppslutning om sosialistiske partier i perioden 1900-1940 (Bodø, 1988), pp. 33-4. Stein Rokkan, ‘Geography, religion and social class: Crosscutting cleavages in Norwegian politics’ in Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives (London, 1967), p. 428. Cf. Rokkan, ‘Geography, religion and social class’, p. 402. AAB: 80 millioner til kamp mot krise og nød in DNA Brosjyrer 1936 marked 329(481)15 N81br/1936. Pryser, Klassen og nasjonen, p. 118. Hveding, ‘Gjeldsforliket’, p. 330 AAB: Bonden, jorda hans og valget in DNA brosjyrer 1936 marked

174

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

329(481)15 N81br 1936, p. 9. 108 Bonden, jorda hans, p. 31. 109 AAB: Fiskeren og valget in DNA brosjyrer 1936 marked 329(481)15 N81br 1936, p. 7. 110 AAB: Landarbeiderne og valget in DNA brosjyrer 1936 marked sm 329(481)15 N81 br1936. 111 Edvard Bull jr., Klassekamp og fellesskap 1920-1945. Norges historie (vol. 13) (Oslo, 1979), p. 113. 112 Stefano Bartolini, The Political Mobilization of the European Left 1860-1980. The Class Cleavage (Cambridge, 2000), p. 476. 113 Knut Kjeldstadli, ‘“Arbeider, bonde, våre hære…” Arbeiderpartiet og bøndene 1930-1939’, Tidsskrift for Arbeiderbevegelsens Historie 2/1978, p. 151. 114 LHASC: LP/ELEC/1935/1. Leaflet 38 in folder marked GENERAL ELECTION 1935 LABOUR PARTY 115 Martin Francis, ‘Old realisms. Policy reviews of the past’, Labour History Review 56:1 (1991), p. 16. 116 LHASC: LP/ELEC/1935/1. Notes for Speakers marked JN 1055 A8, p. 47. 117 Notes for Speakers, p. 50. 118 Notes for Speakers, p. 51. 119 Statistisk årbok for Norge. 54. årgang. 1935. (Oslo, 1935), p. 170. 120 AAB: Trygge kår for barn og hjem in Brosjyrer utgitt av Det norske Arbeiderparti Stortingsvalget 1936 marked 329(481)15 N81br 1936 121 Arbeid og trygge kår for alle! Marked sm329(481)15 N81br 1936, p. 27. 122 Kvinnenes valgavis in DNA brosjyrer 1912-1936 marked q329(481)15 N81br 1936, p. 2. 123 Kvinnenes valgavis, p. 5. 124 Norrøne, ‘Arbeiderpartiet’, p. 34; AAB: Hedmark in Brosjyrer utgitt av Det norske Arbeiderparti Stortingsvalget 1936, p. 12. 125 W. W. Knox and A. Macinlay, ‘The re-making of Scottish Labour in the 1930s’, Twentieth Century British History 6:2 (1995), p. 180. 126 LHASC: Are you a Worker? Where the Middle Class Stands in box 329.13, p. 3. 127 Are You a Worker?, p. 5. 128 Are You a Worker?, p. 6. 129 Are You a Worker?, p. 7. 130 Are You a Worker?, p. 8. 131 LHASC: The Position of the Middle-Class Worker in the Transition to Socialism in box 329.13, pp. 15-16. 132 The Position, p. 10. 133 The Position, p. 16. 134 The Position, p. 17. 135 Jack Reynolds and Keith Laybourn, Labour Heartland. A History of the Labour Party in West Yorkshire during the Inter-war Years 1918-1939 (Bradford, 1987), p. 126. 136 LHASC: LP/ELEC/1935/1. Folder marked 1935 GENERAL ELECTION ENGLISH BOROUGHS. 137 Labour Party, For Socialism and Peace. The Labour Party’s Programme of Action

NOTES

175

(London, 1934), p. 3. 138 What Labour Stands for in LP/ELEC/1935/1. Folder marked 1935 GENERAL ELECTION ENGLISH COUNTIES. 139 AAB: Ut av uføret. Plan og orden. Utnytt landets rikdommer. Slutt op om Det norske Arbeiderparti marked sm329(481)15 N81br 1935. 140 AAB: Ingen enkelt stand in DNA brosjyrer 1936 marked 329(481)15 N81br 1936. 141 Cf. Sir E. D. Simon, The Smaller Democracies (London, 1934), p. 175. 142 Daily Herald, 5 November 1935, p. 4. 143 AAB: Vi handlende in Brosjyrer utgitt av Det norske Arbeiderparti Stortingsvalget 1936 marked 329(481)15 N81br 1936. 144 AAB: Statens finanser in folder marked Brosjyrer DNA 1936 329(481)15 N81br 1936. 145 AAB: Olav Dalgaard, Vi bygger landet marked v 324.5 (481)V. 146 Labour Organiser XIV (December 1934), p. 219. 147 AAB: Helge Lunde, Norge for folket marked v. 324.5 (481)N. 148 AAB: Nord Norge in DNA brosjyrer 1936 marked 329(481)15 N81 br1936, p. 3. 149 Arbeid og trygge kår for alle! Marked sm 329(481)15 N81br 1936, p. 36. 150 Arbeid og trygge, pp. 36-7. 151 Kjeldstadli, ‘“Arbeider, bonde, våre hære…”, p. 151. 152 Hedmark in Brosjyrer utgitt av Det norske Arbeiderparti Stortingsvalget 1936 marked 329(481)15 N81br 1936, p. 4 153 Steven Fielding, ‘Labourism in the 1940s’, Twentieth Century British History 3:2 (1992), p. 143. 154 Arbeiderbladet, 11 September 1936, p. 3. 155 Cf. Oslo Arbeiderparti, Beretning og regnskap 1936 (Oslo, 1937), pp. 24-30. 156 Daily Herald, 13 November 1935, p. 2. 157 Daily Herald, 14 November 1935, p. 2. 158 Daily Herald, 16 November 1935, p. 1. 159 Keith Middlemas, Politics in Industrial Society. The Experience of the British System since 1911 (London, 1980), p. 229. 160 Daily Herald, 16 November 1935, p. 6. 161 John Swift, Labour in Crisis. Clement Attlee and the Labour Party in Opposition, 1931-40 (Basingstoke, 2001), p. 95. 162 James Hinton, Labour and Socialism. A History of the British Labour Movement 1867-1974 (Brighton, 1983), p. 155. 163 Arbeiderbladet, 19 October 1936, p. 2; Oslo DNA, Beretning 1936, p. 24.

1 2

Chapter 5

Carl Cavanagh Hodge, The Trammels of Tradition. Social Democracy in Britain, France, and Germany (London, 1994), p. 76. Robert Skidelsky, Politicians and the Slump. The Labour Government of 1929-1931 (London, 1967), p. x, p. xiii; R. Bassett, Nineteen Thirty-One. Political Crisis (London, 1958), p. 36; Richard W. Lyman, ‘The British Labour party: Conflict between socialist ideals and practical policies between the wars’,

176

3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

23

24 25

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY Journal of British Studies 5:1 (1965), p. 141; Duncan Watts, Ramsay MacDonald. A Labour Tragedy? (London, 1998), p. 108. Paul Adelman, The Rise of the Labour Party 1880-1945 (London, 1972), p. 65. David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (London, 1997), p. 518. Statistisk årbok for Norge. 59. årgang. 1940 (Oslo, 1940), p. 83. See Einar Lie, ‘Hva førte Norge ut av krisen i 1930-årene?’, Historisk Tidsskrift 75 (1996), pp. 325-336. Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism. The West European Left in the Twentieth Century (London, 1997), p. 137. Even Lange, Samling om felles mål 1935-1970. Aschehougs Norgeshistorie (vol. 11) (Oslo, 1998), pp. 45-6. Malcolm B. Hamilton, Democratic Socialism in Britain and Sweden (Basingstoke, 1989), p. 50. Gøsta Esping-Andersen, Politics against Markets. The Social Democratic Road to Power (Prinecton NJ, 1985), p. xv. Clare V. J. Griffiths, Labour and the Countryside. The Politics of Rural Britain 19181939 (Oxford, 2007), p. 324. Statistisk årbok 1940, p. 282. Skidelsky, Politicians and the Slump, p. 198, p. 329. Den norske Arbeiderparti, Beretning 1930 (Oslo, 1931), p. 80; Den norske Arbeiderparti, Beretning 1927 (Oslo, 1928), p. 53. The DNA got 32.1 per cent of the votes in 1915 against 30.9 per cent in 1918. But in absolute terms it got more votes in 1918 than in 1915. The rule therefore holds for the entire interwar period. Hans Fredrik Dahl, Norge mellom krigene. Det norske samfunn i krise og konflikt 1918-1940 (Oslo, 1971), p. 66. R. W. Breach and R. M. Hartwell (eds), British Economy and Society 1870-1970 (Oxford, 1972), p. 382. Statistisk årbok 1940, p. 203. Bjørn Gunnar Olsen, Tranmæl og hans menn (Oslo, 1991), p. 242. Alan Booth, The British Economy in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke, 2001), p.63. Per Maurseth, Gjennom kriser til makt (1920-1935). Arbeiderbevegelsens historie i Norge (vol. 3) (Oslo, 1987), p. 554. David Howell, MacDonald’s Party. Labour Identities and Crisis 1922-1931 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 412-13. Jardar Seim, ‘Stat, parti og fagbevegelse i Norge 1920-1940’ in Jens Christensen (ed), Nordisk arbejderbevægelse i mellemkrigstiden. Stat, parti og fagbevægelse (Århus, 1980), p. 65; Håkon Meyer, Det norske Arbeiderparti 19181924 (Kristiania, 1924), pp. 25-6. K. J. Hancock, ‘The reduction of unemployment as a problem of public policy, 1920-29’ , Economic History Review 15:2 (1962), p. 342; Alan Booth, ‘How long are light years in British politics? The Labour party’s economic ideas in the 1930s’ , Twentieth Century British History 7:1 (1996), p. 14. Hans Fredrik Dahl, Fra klassekamp til nasjonal samling. Arbeiderpartiet og det nasjonale spørsmål i 30-årene (Oslo, 1969), p. 56. Dahl, Norge mellom krigene, p. 111.

NOTES 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45 46 47 48 49

177

Esping-Andersen, Politics against Markets, p. 198, pp. 8-9. Ketil Gjølne Andersen, ‘En norsk 3-årsplan? Ole Colbjørnsen, Arbeiderpartiets økonomiske politikk og den tyske krisedebatten 1932-1935’, Historisk Tidsskrift 82 (2003), p. 113, p. 137. Duncan Watts, Ramsay MacDonald, p. 57. Marquand, MacDonald, p. 311; Richard W. Lyman, The First Labour Government 1924 (London, 1957), p. 88. Andrew Thorpe, The British General Election of 1931 (Oxford, 1991), p. 9. University of Manchester: Labour History Archive and Study Centre (LHASC). LP/ELEC/1931/1. Notes for Speakers in folder marked SERIALS JN 1055 1931, p. 1745. Formulated as ideal types in Stefan Berger, The British Labour Party and the German Social Democrats, 1900-1931 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 250-51. Cf. Dick Geary, ‘Introduction’ in Geary (ed), Labour and Socialist Movements in Europe before 1914 (Oxford, 1989), pp. 2-4, p. 7. Dick Geary, European Labour Politics from 1900 to the Depression (London, 1991), p. 18. Knut Kjeldstadli, Et splittet samfunn 1905-1935. Aschehougs Norgeshistorie (vol. 10) (Oslo, 1994), p. 24. Ross McKibbin, The Ideologies of Class. Social Relations in Britain 1880-1950 (Oxford, 1991), p. 263. Marquand, MacDonald, p. XII. Stephen R. Ward, James Ramsay MacDonald. Low Born among the High Brows (New York, 1990), p. 199. Donald Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism. The West European Left in the Twentieth Century (London, 1996), p. 47. Sassoon, One Hundred Years, p. 62. Duncan Tanner, ‘Labour and its membership’ in Duncan Tanner, Pat Thane and Nick Tiratsoo (eds), Labour’s First Century (Cambridge, 2000), p. 250. Peter Gurney, Co-operative Culture and the Politics of Consumption in England, 18701930 (Manchester, 1996), p. 242. Even Lange et al., Organisert kjøpekraft. Forbrukersamvirkets historie i Norge (Oslo, 2006), p. 609. Labour Party, Reports of Annual Conferences. Thirty-sixth Report (London, 1936), p. 85; Arbeiderbevegelsens Arkiv og Bibliotek, Oslo (AAB). Leaflet marked Arbeidernes Oplysningsforbund, first manuscript in Archive: Arbeidernes Ungdomsfylking Serie: DA-Saksarkiv. Korrespondanse A-B, 1935-1959 Da 0003, folder marked AUF agitasjon, p. 1. Labour Organiser XIII (May 1933), p. 89. Huw Richard, ‘The Daily Herald’, History Today 31 (Dec. 1981), p. 15. Svennik Høyer, ‘Partiet i pressen—et omriss av arbeiderpressens utvikling i Norge’, Tidsskrift for Arbeiderbevegelsens Historie 1/1979, p. 18. Martin Pugh, ‘The Daily Mirror and the revival of Labour 1935-1945’, Twentieth Century British History 9:3 (1998), p. 422. Gideon Cohen, ‘The Independent Labour Party: Disaffiliation, revolution and standing orders’, History 86: 282 (2001), p. 201. Cohen, ‘The Independent Labour Party’, p. 208.

178 50

51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY E.g. in Leyton, see Daily Herald, 9 May 1929, p. 7; Hammersmith, see Daily Herald, 11 May 1929, p. 7; East Ham and Ilford, see Daily Herald, 13 May 1929, p. 7; Islington, see Daily Herald, 15 May 1929, p. 5; Fulham, see Daily Herald, 24 May 1929, p. 7. Labour Party, Report of Annual Conferences. Twenty-ninth Report (London, 1929), p. 8. Matthew Hilton, Consumerism in Twentieth-Century Britain. The Search for a Historical Movement (Cambridge, 2003), p. 87. AAB: Report from a meeting of the Joint Committee 5 February 1935. Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1935, sak nr. 71-113, Da 0153. Circular dated 18 February 1935 in same archive. Minutes of the Research and Publicity Committee 2 November 1928. Dominic Wring, The Politics of Marketing the Labour Party (Basingstoke, 2005), p. 35. Note that Labour used two films in 1929. Arbeiderbladet, 19 October 1936, p. 2. DNA, Protokoll over forhandlingene på Det norske Arbeiderpartis 28. ordinære landsmøte i Oslo 14-16 mars 1930 (Oslo, 1930), p. 45. DNA, Protokoll over forhandlingene på Det norske Arbeiderpartis 29. ordinære landsmøte i Oslo 26-28. mai 1933 (Oslo, 1934), pp. 54-5. Daily Herald, 26 October 1931, p. 8. DNA, Protokoll 1933, p. 39. Arbeiderbladet, 6 September 1933, p. 6. Quoted in F. W. S. Craig, British General Election Manifestos, 1900-1974 (London, 1975), p. 55. Thorpe, General Election of 1931, p. 247. Arbeiderbladet, 20 October 1930, p. 3. Knut Kjeldstadli, ‘“Arbeider, bonde, våre hære…”. Arbeiderpartiet og bøndene 1930-1939’, Tidsskrift for Arbeiderbevegelsens Historie 2/1978, p. 151. Arbeiderbladet, 11 September 1936, p. 3; Arbeiderbladet, 16 October 1936, p. 2 and p. 9. Griffiths, Labour and the Countryside, p. 324. Griffiths, Labour and the Countryside, p. 325. Gregory Luebbert, Liberalism, Fascism or Social Democracy. Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Intewar Europe (Oxford, 1991), p. 288. Philip Snowden, If Labour Rules (London, 1923), p. 44. Luebbert, Liberalism, Fascism or Social Democracy, p. 268. Francis G. Castles, The Social Democratic Image of Society. A Study of the Achievements and Origins of Scandinavian Social Democracy in Comparative Perspective (London, 1978), p. 27. Nils Elvander, Skandinavisk arbetarrörelse (Stockholm, 1980), p. 107. Griffiths, Labour and the Countryside, p. 9. Berge Furre, Norsk historie 1905-1940 (Oslo, 1982), p. 254. Per Maurseth, ‘Hva betydde regjeringsskiftet i 1935 for utviklingen av demokratiet i Norge?’, Tidsskrift for Arbeiderbevegelsens Historie 1/1986, p. 9. Elvander, Skandinavisk, p. 64. DNA, Beretning 1927, p. 28

NOTES 80 81 82 83 84 85 86

179

In 1931England and Wales had 40.2 per cent of its occupied population in industry, in Norway in 1930 the equivalent figure was 25.2 per cent. Statistisk årbok 1940, p. 297. Ross McKibbin, Classes and Cultures. England 1918-1951 (Oxford, 2000), p. 530. Arbeiderbladet, 21 October 1936, p. 13. Bjørn Kristvik and Stein Rokkan, ‘Valgordningen’ in Politiske valg i Norge. En artikkelsamling (Oslo, 1966), p. 23. Bassett, Nineteen Thirty-One, p. 36; Neil Riddell, Labour in Crisis. The Second Labour Government 1929-1931 (Manchester, 1999), p. 54. L. Macneill Weir, The Tragedy of Ramsay MacDonald (London, 1938), p. 352. LHASC: The Record of the Second Labour Government in box 329.12, pp. 10-11.

APPENDICES

Appendix I Topics Mentioned in Labour Candidate Statements 1929 Topic Unemployment Stressed Cures for unemployment: (a) Public works (roads) (b) Raise school leaving age Generous maintenance of unemployed Unemployment increased under Conservatives Peace Stressed Disarmament League of Nations Labour’s good record in international relations Deterioration in international relations under Conservatives Would call disarmament conference Peaceful settlement of disputes Russia Pensions Education Housing and slums Rent Restriction Act Health and welfare services Agriculture Price stabilization Security of tenure Nationalization

Percentage 100 47 59 52 64 28 97 48 50 69 70 56 23 51 50 94 65 83 32 40 45 34 25 70

182

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

Topic Percentage Mines 57 Land 29 Bank of England 25 Taxation Labour would tax fairly 64 Conservative taxation favours rich 62 No taxes on food 43 No taxes on necessities 30 Graduated surtax 31 Chancellor’s ‘raids’ 24 Taxation of land values 31 Safeguarding equals protection 16 Temperance 18 ‘Empire’ and ‘Commonwealth’ 19 ‘Socialism’ 8 Red ‘bogey’ 27 Labour democratic and constitutional 27 Devolution 8 Alternatives to Conservatives is Labour 46 Liberal disunity 27 Factory Act 20 Ratify Washington Agreement 29 Profiteering 21 Local government 17 Women 55 Labour record in fight for vote 41 (Source: E. A. Rowe, ‘The British general election of 1929’, B. Litt. thesis, Oxford University 1959, pp. 207-8.)

1931 Topic Free trade, anti-tariff Taxation Unemployment benefit cut Public servants’ salary cut Means test Nationalization generally Bank of England Coal Iron and steel Transport Land Socialism or anti-Socialism

Percentage 93 48 96 75 21 15 76 50 46 48 40 34

APPENDICES

183

Topic Percentage Crisis Most critical in history 2 Starvation if opponents win 6 Bankers’ ramp 62 Election unnecessary or Conservative ramp 66 National Government ‘reactionary’ 42 Record of second Labour government 34 MacDonald 22 Snowden 8 Baldwin 25 Simon 1 Samuel 3 Lloyd George 8 Henderson 14 Ex-ministers actions in August 14 Employment or unemployment 71 General wage level or standard of living 67 Agriculture 56 Education 34 Housing 54 Local issues 8 House of Lords 14 Electoral reform 1 Trade Disputes Act 27 League of Nations 40 Disarmament 25 World disarmament conference 43 War debt and reparations 61 War in Manchuria (started Sept.) 1 No mention of foreign affairs 14 India 15 (Source: Andrew Thorpe, The British General Election of 1931 (Oxford, 1991), pp. 220-1.)

1935 Topic Democracy, freedom National Government 1931 crisis Socialism, anti-Socialism House of Lords Baldwin Rearmament

Percentage 14 53 12 54 20 12

184

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

Topic Percentage (a) ‘Modernization’, ‘state of preparedness’ 29 (b) Fear of massive rearmament 85 Empire 7 Nearness of war 49 Disarmament 71 League of Nations 90 Italian war on Abyssinia 50 ‘Peace ballot’ 20 Germany 7 No mention of foreign affairs 2 Prosperity, cost of living, standard of living recovery 20 Tariffs, exports, trade 49 Taxation 36 Tax on co-operative societies 41 Employment, unemployment 82 Means Test, Public assistance 84 UAB regulations 56 Distressed areas 60 Public works, ‘prosperity loan’ 32 Agriculture 53 Marketing 8 Land settlement 5 Nationalization Coal 65 Land 66 Bank of England 69 Repeal of Trade Disputes Act 41 Education 76 School leaving age 62 Health (e.g. maternal mortality) 60 Pensions 61 At 60 years 62 Housing 67 Build ‘to let’ 51 Rent Restriction Act, rents 15 Slum clearance 53 (Source: C. T. Stannage, Baldwin Thwarts the Opposition. The British General Election of 1935 (London, 1980), p. 291.)

APPENDICES

185

Appendix 2 Electoral Contributions to the DNA’s Newspapers (Kroner) Newspaper 1. mai Akershus Arbeiderblad Arbeider-Avisen Arbeidets Rett Bergens Arbeiderblad Dagningen Dunderlandsdølen Eidsvoll Arbeiderblad Finnmarken Folkets Frihet Folkets Røst Folkeviljen Follo Fremover Fremtiden Halden Arbeiderblad Hamar Arbeiderblad Haugarland Arbeiderblad Helgeland Arbeiderblad Horten Arbeiderblad Kongsvinger Arbeiderblad Moss og Omegns Arbeiderblad Namdal Arbeiderblad Nordlands Fremtid Nordlys Nybrott Opland

Location Stavanger Lillestrøm

County Rogaland Akershus

1933 8,500 1,000

1936 8,500 1,000

Trondheim Røros Bergen

Sør-Trøndelag Sør-Trøndelag Hordaland

6,500 1,000 9,000

8,500 2,000 5,000

Lillehammer Mo Eidsvoll

Oppland Nordland Akershus

2,000 300 500

3,000 300 500

Vardø Kirkenes Askim Harstad Ski Narvik Drammen Halden

Finnmark Finnmark Østfold Troms Akershus Nordland Buskerud Østfold

1,000 1,000 500 2,500 1,200 2,000 4,000

1,000 500 500 2,500 1,500 3,000 3,000 2,500

Hamar

Oppland

4,000

5,000

Haugesund

Rogaland

2,000

4,000

Mosjøen

Nordland

500

500

Horten

Vestfold

500

1,000

Kongsvinger

Hedmark

3,000

4,000

Moss

Østfold

1,500

1,500

Namsos

2,500

2,500

Bodø

NordTrøndelag Nordland

3,000

3,000

Tromsø Larvik Gjøvik

Troms Vestfold Oppland

3,000 1,500 6,000

4,000 2,000 4,000

186

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

Newspaper Arbeiderblad Rjukan Arbeiderblad Romerikes Blad Sarpsborg Arbeiderblad Smålenenes Social-Demokrat Sørlandet Sunnmøre Arbeideravis Telemark Arbeiderblad Tiden Tidens Krav

Location

County

1933

1936

Rjukan

Telemark

1,500

2,000

Jessheim Sarpsborg

Akershus Østfold

300 1,000

300 1,000

Fredrikstad

Østfold

1,000

1,000

Kristiansand Ålesund

Vest-Agder Møre og Romsdal Telemark

3,500 1,500

2,500 6,000

7,500

7,500

Aust-Agder Møre og Romsdal Finnmark

4,000 3,000

4,000 3,000

Skien Arendal Kristiansund

Vadsø Vadsø 500 Arbeiderblad Vestfinnmark Hammerfest Finnmark 2,500 1,000 Arbeiderblad Vestfold Tønsberg Vestfold 4,000 1,500 Arbeiderblad Vestfold Fremtid Sandefjord Vestfold 500 500 (Source: Arbeiderbevegelsens Arkiv og Bibliotek, Oslo. Archive: Landsorganisasjonen i Norge, LOs saksarkiv 1936, sak nr. 280-482, Da 0167, folder marked Stortingsvalgkampen sak nr. 301 1936.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary sources Unpublished University of Manchester Labour History Archive and Study Centre Labour Party Archive LP/ELEC/1929/1 Labour Party Archive LP/ELEC/1931/1 Labour Party Archive LP/ELEC/1931/2 Labour Party Archive LP/ELEC/1935/1 By-Election Reports 24 July 1929-6 Sept 1937. Elections Sub-Cttee Minutes 3 May 1934-1 Dec 1944 Box I Labour and the New Social Order. A Report on Reconstruction in box 329.12 Labour and the Nation in box 329.12 The Record of the Second Labour Government in box 329.12 Victory for Socialism in box 329.12 Sir Stafford Cripps: Are You a Worker? Where the Middle-Class Stands in box 329. 13 Lawrence Benjamin: The Position of the Middle-Class Worker in the Transition to Socialism in box 329.13 National Archives, Kew, Surrey PRO 30/69/388 Political: General Election 1931 Oct. PRO 30/69/1174 Marked Polit. Party Correspondence 1929 C-M PRO 30/69/1174 Marked Party Correspondence 1929 A-Z PRO 30/69/1320 General Election: Correspondence and Cuttings 1931 Sept-Oct PRO 30/69/1321 General Election: Candidates. Correspondence 1931 Sept-Oct PRO 30/69/1323 General Election: Various 1931 Sept-Oct PRO 30/69/1324 General Election: Receipts and Letters 1931 Sept-Oct PRO 30/69/1327 Shorthand notes of a meeting to discuss Labour policy for the coming election [?1931] PRO 30/69/1364 General Election: Various 1935 Nov PRO 30/69/1493 General Election: Press Cuttings 1929 June PRO 30/69/1535 Donations: General Election 1931

188

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

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Knox, W. W. and Macinlay, A.:‘The re-making of Scottish Labour in the 1930s’, Twentieth Century British History 6:2 (1995), pp. 174-193 Kristvik, Bjørn and Rokkan, Stein: ‘Valgordningen’ in Politiske valg i Norge. En artikkelsamling (Oslo, 1966) Layton-Henry, Zig: ‘Labour’s lost youth’, Journal of Contemporary History 11 (1976), pp. 275-308 Lie, Einar: ‘Hva førte Norge ut av krisen i 1930-årene?’, Historisk Tidsskrift 75 (1996), pp. 325-336 Lorenz, Chris: ‘Comparative historiography: Problems and perspectives’, History and Theory 38:1 (1999), pp. 25-39 Lyman, Richard W.: ‘The British Labour party. Conflict between socialist ideals and practical policies between the wars’, Journal of British Studies 5:1 (1965), pp. 140-152 Manton, Kevin: ‘The Labour party and the land question, 1919-51’, Historical Research 79:204 (2006), pp. 247-269 Maurseth, Per: ‘Hva betydde regjeringsskiftet i 1935 for utviklingen av demokratiet i Norge?’, Tidsskrift for Arbeiderbevegelsens Historie 1/1986, pp. 7-22 Meyer, Håkon: ‘Det norske arbeiderparti 1914-1923’ in Halvdan Koht (ed): Det norske Arbeiderpartis historie 1887-1937 (Oslo, 1939) Øidne, Gabriel: ‘Litt om motsetninga mellom Austlandet og Vestlandet’ in Politiske valg i Norge. En artikkelsamling (Oslo, 1966) Øidne, Gabriel: ‘Sosial og politisk struktur i Oslo. Del I: 1906-1937’, Tidsskrift for samfunnsforskning 11 (1970), pp. 125-158 Pugh, Martin: ‘The Daily Mirror and the revival of Labour 1935-1945’, Twentieth Century British History 9:3 (1998), pp. 420-438 Rasmussen, Jorgen: ‘Women in labour: The flapper vote and party system transformation in Britain’, Electoral Studies 3:1 (1984), pp. 47-63 Richard, Huw: ‘The Daily Herald’, History Today 31 (Dec. 1981), pp. 13-16 Rokkan, Stein: ‘Geography, religion and social class: Crosscutting cleavages in Norwegian politics’ in Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan (eds): Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives (London, 1967) Rokkan, Stein: ‘Norway: Numerical democracy and corporate pluralism’ in Robert A. Dahl (ed): Political Opposition in Western Democracies (New Haven CT, 1966) Rokkan, Stein: ‘Electoral mobilization, party competition and national integration’ in Joseph La Palombara and Myron Weiner (eds), Political Parties and Political Development (Princeton NJ, 1966) Rovde, Olav: ‘Bonde-, småbrukar- og arbeidarrørsla i konflikt og samarbeid’, Arbeiderhistorie 2000, pp. 57-79 Rowe, E. A.: ‘Broadcasting and the 1929 general election’, Renaissance and Modern Studies 12 (1968), pp. 108-119. Seim, Jardar: ‘Stat, parti og fagbevegelse i Norge 1920-1940’ in Jens Christensen (ed): Nordisk arbejderbevægelse i mellemkrigstiden. Stat, parti og fagbevægelse. Rapport fra nordisk konferanse i arbejderbevægelsens historie på Roskilde Højskole 19-21 april 1979 (Århus, 1980) Sewell, William H.: ‘Marc Bloch and the logic of comparative history’, History and Theory 6:2 (1967), pp. 208-218

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Skocpol, Theda and Somers, Margaret: ‘The uses of comparative history in macrocausal inquiry’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 22:2 (1980), pp. 174-197 Smart, Nick: ‘Constituency politics and the 1931 election’, Southern History 16 (1994), pp. 122-151 Tanner, Duncan: ‘Class voting and radical politics: The Liberal and Labour parties, 1910-1931’ in Jon Lawrence and Miles Taylor (eds): Party, State and Society. Electoral Behaviour in Britain since 1820 (Aldershot, 1997) Tanner, Duncan: ‘Labour and its membership’ in Duncan Tanner, Pat Thane and Nick Tiratsoo (eds), Labour’s First Century (Cambridge, 2000) Thorpe, Andrew: ‘Arthur Henderson and the British political crisis of 1931’, Historical Journal 31:1 (1988), pp. 117-139 Tichelar, Michael: ‘The Labour party and land reform in the inter-war period’, Rural History 13:1 (2002), pp. 85-101 Van Den Braembussche, A. A.: ‘Historical explanation and the comparative method: Towards a theory of the history of society’, History and Theory 28:1 (1999), pp. 1-24 Williamson, Philip: ‘1931 revisited. The political realities’, Twentieth Century British History 2:3 (1991), pp. 328-338 Worley, Matthew: ‘Building the party: Labour party activism in five British counties between the wars’, Labour History Review 70:1 (2005), pp. 73-95 Wring, Dominic: ‘Selling socialism: Marketing the early Labour party’, History Today 55:5 (2005), pp. 41-43

Theses Heidar, Knut: ‘The deradicalisation of working class parties: A study of three Labour branches in Norway’, Ph. D. thesis, University of London 1980 Howard, Jason G.: ‘The British general election of 1929’, Ph. D. thesis, Cambridge University 1999 Norrøne, Odd Sverre: ‘Arbeiderpartiet og Stortingsvalgkampen i 1936’, Cand. Philol. thesis, University of Oslo 1978 Rowe, E. A.: ‘The British general election of 1929’, B. Litt. thesis, Oxford University 1959

INDEX

1929 Elector, The 39-40 20th Century, The 99 ‘A Million New Members and Power’ 15, 91, 122-3 Aberdeen 22, 39 Abyssinia, Italian invasion of 89, 105 achievements DNA 126, 150 Labour 73, 125, 150-51 Addison, Christopher 59 Agder 66, 93, 97 Agrarian Party 36, 72, 90, 127, 151 Agricultural Wages Act 35, 70 agricultural workers Britain 34-5, 59, 69-70, 106-7, 110, 145 Norway 32, 59, 109-10 Alexander, A. V. 57 Arbeiderbladet 28, 30, 47 Arbeidernes Faglige Landsorganisasjon (AFL) 22-3, 32, 52-3, 62-3, 91-5, 99, 140, 148 Arbeidernes Idrettsforbund (AIF) 91, 98, 137 Arbeidernes Oplysningsforbund (AOF) 96-7, 99, 101 Arbeidernes Ungdomsfylking (AUF)

58, 62-3, 91, 98, 101 Arbeiderregjeringen 96, 100, 108, 112, 116-17 Arbeiderungdommen 63, 101 Asquith, Herbert 44 Association of Commercial Clerks (Norges handels- og kontorfunksjonærers forbund) 39, 79 Attlee, Clement 15, 90, 96, 105, 120 Australian Labor Party 7-8 Baldwin, Stanley 11, 14-15, 41, 83, 89, 96, 151-2 Benjamin, Lawrence 113-15 Berg, Kristian 72-3 Bergen 23, 95, 100, 122, 150 Bid for Power Fund (1929) 20, 2931, 48-9 see also electoral spending Birmingham 79 Bloch, Marc 1, 4, 5 Bondfield, Margaret 25, 39-40 Boycott Law 53, 62, 69, 86 Bradford, 115-16, 141 broadcasting 26-7, 46, 60-61, 65, 96, 117 Bryn, Dag 13, 28 Bull sr., Edvard 13, 19, 143

202

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

Burgess, Fred 76 Burnley 64, 84 Camborne 56, 141 Cheltenham Agreement (1927) 20, 49 see also Co-operative Party Christianity 24, 26-7, 41, 128-9 Citizen, The 25 clause four 14 Clay Cross 12, 79 clerks see white-collar workers Clynes, J. R. 76, 96, 130 Coal Mines Bill (1930) 75, 125 Coalition, the 14, 43-4 Colbjørnsen, Ole 13, 72, 80, 131 Cole, G. D. H. 43 Comintern 13, 16 Communist Party Britain 11, 15, 22, 49, 95 Norway 11, 16, 21-2, 27, 29, 85, 100, 122, 129, 150 Comparative history 1-6, 30 Conwell-Evans, Thomas 35 Conservative Party Britain 11, 14-15, 29, 40, 75, 81, 149 Norway 16, 25, 42 Co-operative movement Britain 20, 22-3, 73, 76, 98, 1378, 141-2, 149 Norway 20, 137, 142, 149 Co-operative Party 54, 57, 137, 141 counter-crisis policies 43, 102-4, 130-31, 133, 146 see also Keynes, John Maynard counter-cultural areas 24, 47, 63, 66, 93-4, 104, 118 Cripps, Sir Stafford 113-15 crisis agreements 9, 109, 127, 130, 133, 145-7, 151-2

Dahl, K. F. 143 Daily Express 138 Daily Herald 22, 56, 92, 138 Daily Worker 138 Dallas, George 57 Dalton, Hugh 133-4 Davies, A. Emil 82 Davies, Ernest 107 Davis, Frank Wynne 71 De-Rating 41-3 Depression, the 7-8, 86-7, 108, 129-130, 133, 146-7 Derbyshire 79, 81 dictatorship of the proletariat 16, 27, 53 DNA National Executive 19, 24, 48 domestic servants 40, 94, 120, 1445 Drinkwater, Herbert 38 Duncan, Charles 79 Durkheim, Emile 4 Dyrendahl, Hjalmar 62 Election Fund (1935) 95, 102, 122 see also electoral spending electoral materials DNA 25, 63-4, 104, 142 Labour 25-6, 61, 64, 95, 102, 104, 142 electoral results DNA 15-16, 47, 85, 122, 129 Labour 14, 46, 84-5, 120-21, 128 electoral spending DNA 29-31, 67, 98-9, 101, 1034, 123, 139-40, 150 Labour 29-31, 68, 95, 98, 101-4, 123, 139-40, 150 Elliot, Walter 106-7 Extended Finance Committee 27, 61-3, 67, 98, 101

INDEX Fabian Society 14, 136-7 farmers Britain 10, 35, 69-70, 106-7, 110 Norway 31-2, 36-7, 71-2, 108-10 fascism 52-3, 59, 68-9, 143 Fatherland Association (Fedrelandslaget) 27 film 25-6, 63-4, 104, 118, 142, 145 financial crisis 51, 59-60 First World War 7, 8, 14, 44 fishermen Britain 35, 123, 144, 147 Norway 25, 31, 33, 36-8, 71-3, 94, 108-9, 147 For Socialism and Peace 113, 116 Forestry and Agricultural Workers’ Union (Norwegian) 32, 39, 59 Forward 113 Fox, Charles 79 Fram 56, 96-7 Framfylkingen 97 free trade 11, 60-61, 70-71, 81-2, 89 French Socialist Party 2, 7 Gerhardsen, Einar 46, 119, 121 Glasgow 56, 141 Gower, Sir Patrick 58 Greenwood, Arthur 96, 117 Gulbrandson, General 27 Haden-Guest, Dr 71, 79 Hambro, Carl Joachim 27 Hansen, Arvid 100 Hansen, Lorents 45 Harborough 71, 81 Healey, Denis 8 Henderson, Arthur 12, 23-6, 52, 57-8, 61, 64, 66, 84-5, 150 Henderson, William 142 Hirst, William 115-16 Hofmo, Rolf 98

203

Holmes, Will 59, 71 Hordaland 66, 97 Hornsrud, Christopher 4, 16-17, 44 House of Lords 14, 79, 149, 151 Independent Labour Party (ILP) 56-7, 68, 86, 131, 141 industrial disputes 23, 53, 62, 14950 integration, party of 31, 92-3, 123 Jay, Douglas 133-4 Johnson, E. J. 81 Johnston, Thomas 113 Joint Committee of the DNA and AFL 61-2, 67, 96, 98, 101, 123 Keynes, John Maynard 43-4, 13031, 133-4, 147 Labour and the Nation 57 Labour and the New Social Order 130 Labour ‘Majority Fund’ (1931) 52, 58, 68 see also electoral spending Labour Organiser, The 7, 38 Lange, Halvard 13, 28 Lansbury, George 79, 84, 90, 96 Law, Andrew Bonar 14 League of Youth 21-2, 55, 86, 92, 101, 137 Lees-Smith, H. B. 44 Liberal Party Britain 11, 14-15, 43-5, 60-61, 81-2, 86, 125, 145-6 Norway 16, 44-5, 90 Lie, Haakon 8, 99-100 Liverpool 24 Lloyd George, David 14-15, 43-4, 60-61, 81-2, 146 London 28, 65, 120-21 London Labour Party 28-9, 48, 65

204

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

London News, The 28, 43, 48, 114 Longden, Fred 79 Lyster, R. A. 81 MacDonald, Ramsay as Labour leader 11, 14-15, 19, 25-6, 28, 38, 42-4, 46, 61, 76, 99100, 125, 127-8, 130-32, 151-2 in National Government 51, 645, 68, 75, 83, 143 MacDonaldites see ‘National Labour’ Madsen, Alfred 42, 46, 63 Manchester 82 Manchester Guardian 81 Martin, William H. 39 Marwick, W. H. 34 Marxism 8, 33, 113-14, 119, 131 Means Test 12, 66, 83, 89 membership DNA 21-2, 28, 55, 91-2, 122, 135, 140 Labour 19, 21-2, 49, 54, 91-3, 101, 122, 134-7, 140, 148 Mill, John Stuart 1-2 Miners’ Federation of Great Britain 14 ministerialism 16-17, 131 moderation, causes of 34, 113, 132 Moe, Finn 46, 99 Moore, M. W. 71 Møre og Romsdal 66, 95, 97 Morrison, Herbert 29, 65-6, 96, 113, 116 Mosley, Oswald 43 Mowinckel, Johan Ludwig 27, 45, 85, 90, 152 National Council of Labour 94, 96 National Executive Committee (NEC) 22, 43, 49, 51-2, 59, 68, 92, 94, 96-7, 141

National Farmers’ Union 35 National Government 15, 51, 60, 70, 75, 79, 81, 83, 89, 107, 111, 151 ‘National Labour’ 11, 51-2, 64-6, 68, 83, 133 National Union of Agricultural Workers (NUAW) 59 National Union of General and Municipal Workers 102 National Union of Railwaymen 102 National Workers’ Sports Association 55,137 nationalization 15, 34-5, 37, 69, 71, 75, 89, 105-13, 146 see also socialization Neep, E. J. C. 71 New Leader, The 141 Nordahl, Konrad 93 Nordland 24, 49, 66, 93-4, 96-7, 104 Norfolk 39, 71 Nottingham 100, 118 Nygaardsvold, Johan 17, 85, 90, 99, 104-5, 113, 126, 127-8 nynorsk 63, 118 October Revolution (1917) 16, 99 Odhams 56 Oldfield, J. R. 81 Oppland 94, 97 Oslo 13, 28, 42, 46, 48, 117, 121 Oslo DNA 28-9, 67, 139 Oxford Mail 27 Pay, E. J. 82 peasants 9, 33, 36-7, 71-2 see also smallholders and farmers pensions 26-7, 32, 40, 77, 90, 107, 126, 150 Pension Act (1929) 73, 150

INDEX people’s party 13, 108, 113, 144 Pole, D. Graham 81 Poor Law 70, 114 Popular Front 12, 131 Post Office Savings Bank 75, 83, 89 press network DNA 22-3, 56, 92, 95, 122, 138, 140 Labour 22-3, 55-6, 92, 122, 1378, 140 Price, M. Philips 71 professionals Britain 69, 77, 79, 113-16, 119, 123, 144, 149 Norway 33, 81, 113, 118-21, 123, 145, 149 proportional representation 10-11, 16, 44 Quisling, Vidkun 52 radicalization DNA 13, 17, 47, 49, 132-3 Labour 34, 66, 105, 108, 132 rallies 28, 46, 84, 93, 97, 100, 121, 142 Reynold’s News 138 Ritson, Joshua 71 Rogaland 66, 93 Rokkan, Stein 12-13 Rose, Frank 113 Sankey, Lord 51-2 Scarborough 58, 61 Scurr, John 79 Second World War 8, 125-7, 133-4, 146 shopkeepers Britain 41-2, 71, 78-9, 115, 123, 143-4, 149 Norway 116-18, 123

205

see also small businessmen Skien 23 small businessmen Britain 41, 43, 113-15,143-4 Norway 43, 100, 113, 117-18 Smallholder Association (Småbrukerlaget) 73 smallholders Britain 70, 108 Norway 10, 13, 25, 31-2, 36-8, 45, 72-3, 108-9, 144-5, 151 Social Democratic Party Denmark 7, 9, 27, 117, 127, 133, 146-7, 152 Germany 3, 6-10, 15 Norway 11, 13, 16, 20-21, 27, 49, 53-5, 100, 129 Sweden 3, 7-9, 27, 31, 117, 127, 133, 146-7, 152 Socialist International 6, 8, 14 Socialist Youth International 55 socialization 36-7 Society Party 104 Sogn og Fjordane 66, 97 Sømme, Axel 131 Soviet Union 27, 53, 131, 150 Snowden, Philip 25, 51, 60, 65, 71, 81-2, 130-31, 146, 150 Stavanger 23, 53 Sverdrup, Johan 45 syndicalism 16 teachers Britain 42, 69, 77-8 Norway 45 Thomas, Jimmy 25, 51 ‘tied cottages’ 34, 59, 69-70, 106 Tilly, Charles 2-4 Torp, Oscar 23, 63, 90, 93, 143 Trade Union and Trade Disputes Act (1927) 19-22, 49, 54, 148-9 Trades Union Congress (TUC) 14,

206

THE LABOUR PARTY IN BRITAIN AND NORWAY

21-3, 54, 56, 92, 94, 104, 122, 140 Tranmæl, Martin 16, 32, 52-3, 121, 143 Transport and General Workers’ Union 102 Troms 66, 94, 108 Trøndelag 27, 66 Trondheim 16, 23, 25 unemployment 15, 32, 43, 66, 6970, 74, 77, 83, 112, 125-6, 129, 130, 150 United States 150 ‘Victory for Socialism’ 15, 91, 93-5, 122-3 Washington Hours Convention (1919) 32 Weber, Max 2, 4, 5 Wheatley Act (1924) 32, 125 white-collar workers

Britain 42, 69, 78, 113 Norway 42, 80, 116-20, 144 Wilson, S. S. 71 Wiltshire, Arthur 71 Winterton, Ernest 81 Wise, F. J. 71, 81-2 women 14, 24, 39-41, 73-5, 85, 110-13, 144 women’s section Britain 24, 48, 102 Norway 75 Woodman, Dorothy 71 ‘workers by hand and by brain’ 12, 33, 77, 118-19 ‘working people, the’ 33, 36, 42, 48, 71, 80-81, 117, 119, 144-5 Worthington-Evans, Sir Laming 26 York 76, 100 Young, Sir Robert 71 Youth Hostels Association 55 Zinoviev letter 27, 89