However on the negative side, there was the problem with the leading ministers, and these can include MacDonald. MacDonald questioned his leading ministers’ performances; however it can be argued that there performances tires as he himself tired. Furthermore he was quite poor in the case of handling his colleagues, and was sometimes described as rather arrogant towards them, and so this set a likely precedent for future problems. Moreover the Party’s weakness on policy was exposed, as the Party only really had a long-run and vague commitment to socialism. The Party didn’t have a majority and so the distinctive policies which the Party did have were effectively ignored. A clear example of this was with the case of unemployment where there was no such strategy. Although raising unemployment benefits was mentioned as a positive, there was the obvious negative to follow, that more people would just prefer to be unemployment and collect about half of what they would normally collect in exchange for doing nothing. Also the economical situation under the Chancellor Snowdon was rather dubious with the lack of coherent policies to improve the functioning of the essentially capitalist society was a fundamental weakness. The Party had managed to alienate the Left wing, as it had failed to make any significant shifts towards socialism, despite having a vague commitment to it. The government further highlighted the problems in the relationship between elected politicians and the trade unions. This was due to the industrial disputes and the government had no guiding strategy in the interests of the whole Labour movement. When looking more specifically at domestic affairs, it is clear that Labour did not really achieve very much on the whole. Firstly the economics; the government chose to pursue an orthodox approach, typical under Snowdon, despite the fact the economy was still in depression and unemployment was at record highs. Snowdon chose a liberal budget by returning to the gold standard, reducing government expenditure, reducing direct and indirect taxes and moving Britain back to a free-trade economy. By modern economics, it is clear that reducing government expenditure decreases aggregate demand and therefore increases unemployment; however Snowdon actually believed the former. With unemployment, as mentioned earlier, Labour had no concrete policy, in fact the only real ‘attempt’ at a policy was to leave it alone and in the long run, it was assumed that socialism would eliminate all capitalist poverty and unemployment. With the case of industrial relations, the period just proved that the trade unions pursued their own objectives and the Labour in response was rather un-coordinated. Although housing is seen as an area of improvement, the underlying problem of poor quality housing was far from tackled. This was rather a typical general attitude taken by Labour, i.e. to tackle those surface problems but not from their foundations thus solving the long term problems. In the foreign sphere, the Labour government were relatively successful. However there was the issue of the Soviet Union, which was a negative and it led to the eventual collapse of the Labour government. MacDonald personally did not share the Party enthusiasm for friendship with the Soviet, however he choose to grant diplomatic recognition. However the mistake was to negotiate a commercial treaty with Russia, in which the British would be compensated for assets seized during the Bolshevik revolution and the British would therefore loan £30m to the Soviet. This was a mistake as it was extremely controversial, and immediately it was attacked by the Conservatives, and eventually the Liberals (with the added input of Lloyd George) attacked it thus seemingly leaving the Labour government doomed.
The Labour government of 1929 was again a minority government, however it was the biggest single party, but it must then be noted that in the event that the Liberals and Conservatives combined – Labour could be defeated. In general, the domestic situation remained stable and unemployment was still a serious problem. In terms of the positives for the new Labour government; these appeared significantly in foreign affairs. Although MacDonald and the new Foreign Secretary, Henderson, often disagreed, together they accomplished quite a lot. Examples of their achievements include the Young Plan, in which Henderson took the lead in order to reduce international tension. This followed their general pattern of promoting international conciliation and improving international relations. Henderson was more trusted than MacDonald in terms of the League of Nations, and his success in this area was highlighted by the fact that Henderson was made president of the World Disarmament Conference in 1932. Another positive was the way in which MacDonald dealt with American relations in order to agree, together with Japan, a 5-year break in battleship construction. In terms of foreign policies, it is clear that Labour took an active role in promoting international conciliation. The same foreign policies were followed when dealing with colonial issues, however with less success. With domestic policies, in general, the Labour government failed. However it must be noted that there were some domestic reforms to Labour’s credit. There was the reform of the unemployment insurance system, the introduction of ‘Coal Mines Act of 1930’ which served as a compromise cutting down working hours, reducing competitive pressure and stabilising prices and wages. It followed for the same basic act for agriculture in 1931. The London transport system was also regulated in order to use the profits of bus scheme to pay for underground losses. Furthermore Wheatley’s Housing Work in 1924 was continued by Greewood in 1930, with the ‘Housing Act’. As mentioned earlier, unemployment was a big problem, however the government did try to raise employment, e.g. with schemes for £42million worth of public works therefore creating 60,000 jobs. A major positive must be Mosley’s radical alternative. This was a comprehensive and imaginative scheme drawing on the ideas of Lloyd-George, Keynes and the Conservative Protectionists, and he called for tariffs and system for planning foreign trade, public control of banking and expansion of government expenditure. This was not accepted, however it was still a positive as it showed that at least one person on the committee had the energy and intellectual capacity to produce some form of solution to the growing problems.
Although Foreign Affairs appeared an area of significant achievement for Labour, there were still some negatives. Firstly there was the issue of the agreement with USA and Japan; the French and Italians refused to sign this, and it followed that the Japanese repudiated it. A clear negative was that although the Labour government promoted international cooperation and reconciliation – it was not in office long enough to see these aims through. With colonial issues, although the same policies of conciliation and agreement were followed, success was harder to come by. In particular this was a negative area as the doctrine did not work well – firstly in India with Gandhi who responded by calling for a programme of civil obedience thus causing the British the to use oppressive measures. In Egypt, negotiations broke down, following the sacking of Lord Lloyd, when Egypt wanted control of Sudan. The same problem arose with the Jews and Arabs over Palestine – especially considering the Labour government could not afford to antagonise the Arabs. Overall, the foreign sphere was relatively successful, however the domestic sphere was extremely unsuccessful. As Adelman said, “It was their [Labour] failure after 1929 to reduce the steadily increasing numbers of unemployed that sapped the will and confidence of the Labour Ministers and left them in a desperately weak position to grapple with the even greater problems that faced them in the crises of 1931’. Labour had the same problem as in 1924, it did not have a developed policy on how to tackle unemployment. Labour had to operate within the context of a capitalist society and so the question was how to reduce unemployment. However in 1929 – there was the stock-market crash in USA meaning world demand decreased and therefore also there was a financial and economic crisis in Europe. As a result exports fell by 50% in the next 2 years and unemployment rose from 1.2 million in 129 to 2.6 by 1931. Obviously any government would have struggled in these conditions; however Labour were unfortunate as they were associated with the dramatic rise in unemployment. However this was a failing for Labour as it failed to come to grips with the problem, and find appropriate policy. Labour did set up a committee, however it lacked the intellectual know-how and experience to deal with the problem. Certain individuals such as Snowdon were also preventing solutions behind found by blocking an expenditure increase. Furthermore although creating 60,000 jobs was good, it was nowhere nearly enough on a large scale as was needed to solve this massive unemployment. Labour failed again by trying to improve the efficiency of it’s heavy industries by encouraging mergers and the elimination of excess capacity. This was a failure as Labour was reluctant to intervene on a large scale and so the immediate effect was to increase unemployment again. The final failure was to dismiss Mosley’s radical alternative. It would have been unlikely for a government to simply accept such a radical proposal, but Labour failed by simply not even considering parts of it, but rejecting it. As AJP Taylor said about the programme – ‘…offered a blueprint for most of the constructive advances in economic policy to the present day’. This failure was then enforced by MacDonald’s decision to appoint himself in charge of unemployment policy when he did not have real plans or a policy to proceed with.
In conclusion, when comparing both governments to each other, the Labour government of 1924 was much more successful than that of 1929. Perhaps this was because the country’s expectations of Labour were originally very low, and so by running the country sufficiently (and successfully), the government appeared more successful. The positives from 1924 far outweigh the positives from 1929, as in 1924 – the government proved it could run the country, it stakes it’s claim to the moderate centre-ground, it achieved goals in the housing and education markets, and when it actually was defeated – it managed to escape relatively unscathed. In 1929 – there were advantages especially in Foreign Affairs with international conciliation and improved relations, however this did not work with the colonial issues. Furthermore with the stock-market crash of October 1929 – this put Labour into an extremely undesirable position and one in which it failed to deal with even adequately. In 1929 there were the negative of the weakness on policy, especially with unemployment, and this continued with the next government. In terms of individual success, the 1924 government was extremely successful as it proved the majority of people wrong that Labour could run the country. The 1929 government was more successful in foreign policy however it failed to solve the domestic problems and for a government to work properly – the domestic situation must be positive. Therefore the 1929 Labour government was rather unsuccessful as a government.
