John Shepherd. George Lansbury: At the Heart of Old Labour. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. xix + 407 pp. Illustrations, abbreviations, bibliography, index. $80.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-19-820164-8.
Reviewed by: Jonathan Schneer, School of History, Technology and Society, Georgia Tech.
Published by: H-Albion (August, 2005) St. George
George Lansbury (1859-1940) was one of Britain's socialist and Labour pioneers, a stalwart of the pantheon whose most prominent members included William Morris, Keir Hardie, Robert Hyndman, Ramsay MacDonald and Arthur Henderson. Late-nineteenth-century Radicalism provided his political schooling, but, like so many of his generation, Lansbury graduated into the socialist movement, beginning with Hyndman's Marxist Social Democratic Federation, for which he served a year-long stint as national organizer in 1895. He was active in East London politics as a Poor Law Guardian. Early in the twentieth century he joined the Independent Labour Party and in 1910 he entered the House of Commons as Labour Member for Bow and Bromley.
So far perhaps there was little to distinguish him from other early Labourites who had made politics their life's work and who had proven good at it, except that he was always friendly, never arrogant, truly believed in democratic procedures, and was ambitious for the causes he espoused, rather than for himself. But he had close relations with the Pankhursts and with Marion Coates Hansen, an extraordinary feminist whom historians have forgotten. Under their tuition, Lansbury became the most determined and visible male ally of the suffragette movement in Britain. He felt injustice deeply and sympathized with "bottom dogs" everywhere, most especially in 1912 with the suffragettes. He was thrown out of the House for shaking his fist at Prime Minister Henry Asquith and calling his anti-suffragette policies a disgrace; in 1912 he himself resigned the parliamentary seat, so recently won, in order to force a by-election on "Votes for Women." (He was defeated by his Conservative opponent.) "Stand shoulder to shoulder with the militant women," Lansbury enjoined an Albert Hall filled to overflowing with supporters of the recently imprisoned Emmeline Pankhurst. "Let them burn and destroy property and do anything that they will." This proved too much for the authorities who successfully prosecuted him as "a disturber of the peace and an inciter of others to commit divers crimes and misdemeanours" (p. 131). Lansbury went to jail where he immediately began a hunger strike. Although he was released under the provisions of the notorious "Cat and Mouse Act," which allowed authorities to discharge prisoners until they had recovered their health, in fact he was not rearrested before August 1914, at which time the government decided it had more important matters to pursue.
From 1912 Lansbury also served as the chief proprietor and editor of the Daily Herald, organ for all "rebel" causes in prewar Britain. When war came, the Herald bravely continued to advocate socialist internationalism and peace. Most British Labourites and socialists supported the war, and those who did not usually kept quiet, but Lansbury broadcast his antiwar views in his newspaper nearly every week. He also began developing the Christian pacifist critique of all forms of violence for which he is best remembered. By the end of the war, he was one of Britain's best-known anti-warriors; he was also best-loved or best-hated, depending on the point of view.
Lansbury remained devoted to the poor and unemployed of East London, especially the Poplar in which his Bow and Bromley constituency was located. (He was reelected to Parliament in the "Khaki Election" of 1918.) In 1921 he led Poplar's local government in a rates strike: they demanded that wealthier boroughs pay proportionally more to the London County Council, while they refuse to give over certain taxes (called precepts) so that they would have enough to pay for decent unemployment compensation. For this Lansbury went to jail again, along with a majority of the councilors. In that extraordinarily tumultuous era it seemed, for a time, that "Poplarism" would spread to other poor London boroughs and beyond, that it presaged further rebelliousness and maybe even rebellion.
Lansbury was too prickly and idiosyncratic, too independent really, for Labour's leaders, who passed him over when they formed the first Labour Government in 1924; but in 1929, MacDonald could not avoid appointing him to some office. He thought Lansbury would not cause too much trouble as Minister of the Board of Works. Truly Lansbury did not have much scope in that department, although he did introduce mixed bathing in London parks. But when the economic hurricane of 1929-31 hit Labour, and MacDonald accepted the King's invitation to form a "National" government composed primarily of Conservatives, Lansbury was a leading opponent. And when MacDonald went to the country asking for a "doctor's mandate" to govern, and scored a landslide victory so that nearly all Labour MPs lost their seats, as did nearly all former Labour Cabinet Ministers, George Lansbury, alone among the latter, returned to Parliament with a comfortable majority--so beloved had he become among his East London constituents.
The prewar rebel, militant suffragist, anti-warrior, and jailbird, now a septuagenarian, became leader of the Labour Party by default, there was no other qualified Labour Member. He was a mere tattered remnant, but he led with panache. Unfortunately these were the locust years: Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany. Lansbury was a deft hand at rallying the troops to oppose Conservative domestic policy in the House, but less so when it came to foreign affairs. He did not merely oppose British rearmament, he wanted Britain to give up unilaterally its army and navy. He thought pacifism could answer jackbooted fascism. He advocated a world conference in which the "have" nations would satisfy the "have-nots." Even a majority of his own party thought this unrealistic, although many continued to cherish him for his idealism, sincerity and honesty. But the situation was anomalous and, as is well known, Ernest Bevin of the Transport Workers Union ended it with a brutal speech at the 1935 Labour Party annual conference. Lansbury resigned as leader and Clement Attlee took his place.
Lansbury, however, would not go quietly into retirement--in fact he had no thought of it. Relinquishing the leadership freed him to speak his mind and to act accordingly. He could see and feel the war clouds gathering and was determined to spend his all trying to disperse them. He traveled to the United States, where he met with President Franklin Roosevelt, whom he thought promised to convene the world meeting of "have" and "have-not" nations. Lansbury also traveled to Germany and met with Hitler, who indubitably promised to attend, if one took place; next he traveled to Italy, and to half a dozen other countries, meeting with kings, prime ministers, and dictators. He was an old man in a hurry, but, of course, to no avail. When war came despite his best efforts he was shattered. He died in 1940. During the Battle of Britain the Germans bombed his East-End house.
Lansbury's is a familiar story, though perhaps not familiar enough, since the only previous full-length biography was written in 1951 by Raymond Postgate, Lansbury's son-in-law. John Shepherd has done a remarkable job researching this more up-to-date volume. He contacted Lansbury's granddaughter, the actress Angela Lansbury, and other descendents, many of whom shared reminiscences and gave Shepherd access to papers no historian had seen before. He tracked down the papers of practically everyone who left any and who had contact with the protagonist. He combed the secondary sources exceedingly well. To give a characteristic example: he quotes from the memoirs of the man who was Hitler's translator at the interview with Lansbury in Berlin in 1936. Shepherd knows the more important secondary literature as well, including the debates among historians about Edwardian feminism, and about the fall of the second Labour government, for example.
Shepherd's expert knowledge puts him in a position to cast light on little known aspects of Lansbury's career. He is able to illuminate, with well-chosen extracts from personal correspondence, Lansbury's uneasy relationship with Ramsay MacDonald; he is excellent tracing the web of connections linking the Poplar councilors; and he rightly reminds us of Lansbury's talents as a fundraiser and organizer more generally. His detailed research also enables him to write knowledgably about Lansbury's home life. Here he is primarily concerned to unravel the contradiction between Lansbury's feminism and his attitude towards his wife, Bessie Brine, who raised, fed, and clothed his twelve children, kept the house tidy, and managed the domestic economy, despite her husband's penchant for giving all his money away.
No doubt because he is so steeped in the literature and the sources, Shepherd occasionally takes his readers' knowledge for granted. One would have liked more context for understanding Lansbury's battle with John Burns and the Charity Organization Society over farm colonies for the East-End unemployed. One would have liked more about his relationship with another East-End MP and local councilor, Will Crooks. More on the American philanthropist Joseph Fels would have been welcome. And what ever happened to the extraordinary Marion Coates Hansen, who appears to have been a seminal influence on Lansbury? One would have been grateful too for more focused discussion of much broader issues: Lansbury's views on revolution, the parliamentary road to socialism, and the Communist Party, for example.
To review John Shepherd's biography is to remind oneself of a politics, a movement and a historical context that seem irretrievably lost, for George Lansbury was one of the great exponents of the "religion of socialism," which has little purchase today. But his socialism was infused specifically with Christianity, indeed he could not conceive of the one without the other. He did not wear his religion lightly, but neither did he use it as a cudgel. Tolerant, democratic, friendly, determined, honest, he was in his own times, and remains today, a model for anyone who believes that religion should inform politics. So there is a contemporary resonance after all.
Citation: Jonathan Schneer. "Review of John Shepherd, George Lansbury: At the Heart of Old Labour," H-Albion, H-Net Reviews, August, 2005. URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=10561128699327.
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