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From International Socialism (1st series), No.5, Summer 1961, p.32.
Thanks to Ted Crawford & the late Will Fancy.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The First Labour Government
Sidney Webb
Political Quarterly. Stevens
The pitiful inadequacy of the reformist mentality is strikingly revealed in a memorandum by Sidney Webb on the 1924 Labour Government, published for the first time in the Political Quarterly for Jan.-March 1961.
The opportunity offered by history to this, the first Labour Government in Britain, was seen by Webb as the opportunity to demonstrate that Labour could act as responsibly as either of the traditional bourgeois parties. When strikes threatened, naval ratings were made available to man the power stations. When ‘terrorism’ broke out in Bengal the Cabinet did not flinch from its duty. Powers of arbitrary imprisonment were immediately vested in the Provincial Government. So anxious indeed was Webb to safeguard the image of Labour as moderate that he condemned the ‘rebelliousness’ of Herbert Morrison.
At times, Webb descends to ludicrous triviality – for example, when he solemnly records that this was probably the first Cabinet at which members smoked and again when he, tells us that for the first Privy Council the king was prepared to allow Ministers who had not frock coats or top hats to go to the Palace incorrectly dressed.
As a revelation of ‘Parliamentary cretinism’ this is not to be missed.
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Last updated on 17 February 2010