Welsh Journals

WALES AND THE 'NEW SOCIALISM', 1926-1929* in 1924 the Labour Party suffered a major electoral setback for the first time in its history. Having formed the first minority Labour government at the beginning of the year, the Party decided to appeal to the electorate once more before its close and was decisively beaten into second place by the Conservatives, experiencing a net loss of forty seats in the process. In reality, the Labour collapse was far from catastrophic. The Party's total vote actually increased by more than a million, it stood to gain from the crushing defeat inflicted upon the Liberals, and it demonstrated that it enjoyed bedrock areas of support in certain well-defined parts of the country. One such area was the south Wales coalfield, where the Party won all sixteen seats and 56-6 per cent of the total vote. 'These industrial districts are now thoroughly Labour. They have no fears of Socialism', commented Welsh Outlook.1 Outside the coalfield of the south, however, Labour's position in Wales had deteriorated, for the Party lost the three marginal constituencies of Cardiff South, Swansea West and Wrexham, all of which it had gained in the previous year. For these losses, the issues upon which the general election campaign had been fought were primarily responsible, for Labour had entered the campaign charged with recklessness and pro-Russian, pro-Communist sympathies, and the election was fought on one key issue in Wales as elsewhere i-the alleged extremism of the Labour Party, Constitutionalism against anti-Constitution- alism. It is difficult to deny the Labour Monthly's comment: Class politics are now established in Britain in the most open form Never before have the 'two nations' been so clearly marked out.3 Clearly, if Labour wished to be elected as a majority government, to emerge as the largest party in the state, it needed to create a situation where the 'two nations' did not stand out so conspicuously, a situation in which it could win support outside the areas of the traditionally militant industries. It could achieve this only by adopting a stance of moderation and constitutionalism, by proving *This article is based upon my thesis 'The General Election of 1929 in Wales, (unpublished University of Wales M.A. thesis, 1980). I am grateful to Dr. John Davies, its supervisor, and to Dr. Kenneth 0. Morgan, its examiner, for much assistance and encouragement. I am especially indebted to Dr. Morgan for commenting upon an earlier draft of this article. 1 Welsh Outlook, December 1924. 'At no election that we remember has so little attention been paid in Welsh constituencies to purely Welsh questions' ibid., November 1924. Labour Monthly, December 1924.