Working-class struggle against the Tory-Liberal coalition government 1918-1922

I gave a talk at Workers' Liberty's 'Ideas for Freedom' event last weekend entitled 'Working-class struggle against the Tory-Liberal coalition government 1918-1922'. Here are my notes - I don't have time at the moment to convert them from notes into an article or 'proper' blog post, so make of them what you will ...

1918
- End of ‘Great War’
- Representation of the People Act
- General Election
- ‘khaki’ election / ‘coupon’ election
- Coalition Conservative - 3,472,738 votes (33.3%); 271 seats
- Coalition Liberal - 1,396,590 (13.4%); 127 seats
- Labour - 2,245,777 (21.5%); 57 seats

The Coalition Government
- Prime Minister: David Lloyd George (Coalition Liberal)
- Chancellor: Andrew Bonar Law (Coalition Conservative)
- Minister of Health: Christopher Addison (Coalition Liberal)
- Foreign Secretary: Arthur Balfour (Coalition Conservative)
- 179 MPs were company directors
- ‘hard-faced men who looked like they’d done well out of the war’ (Baldwin)

The Labour Party 1918
- introduced individual membership
- adopted ‘Clause 4’
- leader = William Adamson
- Daily Herald

The 'Great Unrest' resumes
- 1910-14: strikes; trade union membership rose 2.5m to 4m
- 1918: Unrest resumes
- soldiers’ protests
- summer 1918: strikes in London by dockers; gas workers; council workers; bus, tram and Tube workers; clothing workers; police
- 1919: average 100,000 workers on strike each day
- ‘repression and concession’: troops to coalfields; commissions into coal and port industries
- March 1919: Transport Workers’ Federation wins 44-hr week

Red Clydeside
- 1910-1932
- John MacLean, Helen Crawfurd, Emanuel Shinwell, James Maxton, John Wheatley, Mary Barbour 
- 1919: strike for 40-hour week
- 30 January: 40,000 engineering & shipbuilding workers, 36,000 miners, thousands of other workers on strike
- 31 January: battle of George Square (Bloody Friday): 60,000+ demonstrators attacked by police -> arrests
- 10 February: strike called off: engineering and shipbuilding workers win 47-hour, cut of 10 hours

1919 railway strike
- 9 days: September-October
- new pay scales – cut pay of lowest-paid rail workers 
- NUR strike
- ASLEF supported
- Lloyd George: ‘anarchist conspiracy’
- win for unions

Solidarity with Russia
- 10 May 1920: Jolly George
- Hands Off Russia Committee
- 31 July 1920: Communist Party founded
- August 1920: TUC and Labour Party threaten general strike

Late 1920: slump
- collapse in export trade
- ‘a fit country for heroes to live in’
- government abandoned/reversed social reform
- job losses: eg. 60,000 rail jobs March 1920-21
- unemployment
- 1920: LDCU; 1921: NUWM
- ‘work or full maintenance’
- Go to the Guardians / factory raids
- ‘wait for better times’

Miners' lockout and 'Black Friday'
- Triple Alliance: miners, railworkers, transport workers
- 31 March 1921: coal industry de-controlled
- pay cuts for miners: those who refused were locked out
- 15 April 1921, ‘Black Friday’:
- rail and transport unions failed to support miners
- broke up ‘Triple Alliance’
- ‘the heaviest defeat that has befallen the Labour movement within the memory of man’

Poplar
- East London dockland area
- population = 160,000
- 24% poverty
- infant mortality: 83 per 1,000
- 33,000+ people lived in ‘overcrowded’ housing
- 1919: elects Labour Council

'Poplarism'
- ‘Labour Councillors must be different from those we have displaced, or why displace them?’
- housing inspectors; new housing
- expanded services
- de-casualisation of work
- public works – refused funding
- unfair funding system
- 1921: withheld precepts to cross-London bodies
- “The master class has made the laws”

Prison and Victory
- 25 men / 5 women in prison, from 1 September
- mass mobilisation; organising behind bars
- Herbert Morrison pursues Lloyd George
- will other councils follow the call?
- Local Authorities (Financial Provisions) Act 1921
- Poplar gained £250,000+ per year
- “This is a great discouragement to those who believe in constitutional action and a great encouragement to those who believe in revolutionary methods.”

The Geddes Axe
- Lord Rothermere: Anti-Waste League
- August 1921: Lloyd George sets up committee
- Sir Eric Geddes
- 1922: recommended £87m cuts
- Cabinet decided on £52m cuts
- total social spending (education, health, housing, pensions, unemployment) fell from £205.8m in 1920-21 to £182.1m in 1922-23

The end of the Coalition
- October 1922: Tories leave Coalition
- November 1922: general election
- Conservative: 5,294,465 votes (38.5%); 344 seats
- Labour: 4,076,665 votes (29.7%); 142 seats (+85)
- Liberal (Asquith): 2,601,486 votes (18.9%); 62 seats
- National Liberal (Lloyd George): 1,355,366 votes (9.9%); 53 seats
- Lansbury, Wheatley into parliament; Macdonald new Labour leader
- ‘Labour men everywhere viewed the Lloyd George era as a time of class war and class rhetoric’

Then and now

‘The next government is going to have many challenges, but tackling a public sector that has become obese and poor value for money is going to have to be a priority’, The Times, 2010

‘There are signs of an astonished realisation of the alarming bill for civil pensions that in a few years will be a millstone on the taxpayer's neck.’ The Times, 1922