WW1 drama shows the Labour party in crisis is nothing new
ACRISIS in the Labour party at the height of WW1 signalled a crucial intervention by George Wardle, Stockport’s MP.
He demanded to know, ‘if the party leadership were for or against carrying on the war to a successful conclusion?’.
Labour delegates representing two million trade unionists voted massively in favour of supporting the government’s war effort, and introducing military registration for eligible males.
Labour’s party leader, Ramsay MacDonald, and his small clique of antiwar colleagues were outvoted.
George Wardle was elected as Stockport’s Labour MP in 1904, but this was his moment of political stardom, in the crisis year of 1916 which saw the creation of a coalition government in which he became parliamentary secretary at the Board of Trade.
He was also the editor of the Railway Review – an influential journal when any longish journey involved a train. He became a supporter of Lloyd George’s premiership and stood on a Coalition ticket in the ‘Khaki’ election of 1918 when returning soldiers were promised ‘homes fit for heroes’, something the tricky Welshman didn’t quite deliver on.
Stockport’s next colourful Labour candidate, and a friend of Lloyd George, was Sir Leo Chiozza Money, a successful economic theorist who left the government in disillusion to join the Labour Party.
During the war he had been responsible for organising efficient Atlantic convoys of troops and munitions to England. A dapper character, half Italian, with a made-up name, (he added the ‘Money’) - his social and economic theories expounded in books and journalism influenced both Lloyd George and Winston Churchill.
But Sir Leo Money’s 1920 bid to be elected for Stockport after George Wardle’s resignation was a failure.
How public attitudes have changed is illustrated by a charge brought against Sir Leo and a young woman for kissing in Hyde Park on St George’s Day 1928. The case however was thrown out and costs of £10 were awarded against the police.
In 1933 he was again summonsed for kissing a shop girl called Ivy Buxton on her face and neck in a railway carriage. He was fined £2 and a further 10 shillings for ‘interfering with the comfort of other passengers’.
Well that’s probably better than interfering with the due process of democracy. »»The Summer issue of Stockport Heritage Magazine now on sale in newsagents, bookshops, Co-ops, and St Mary’s Heritage Centre also get it on www.stockport heritagemagazine.co.uk.