The luck and fate of post-war premiers

We have a new Prime Minister and ex-Prime Minister. Every time we change PM without an election there is a call for an election, but, rightly that’s not how we do things. However I have revised my history chart.

Prime Ministers, duration of office, means of becoming PM and reasons for departure

The chart was originally designed to help understand if those that inherited the office were more successful electorally than those that became PM by winning a general election. Our recent history skews the data towards the idea that it is not the case. although some might consider me generous in saying that May is a successful inheritor; she remained Prime Minister. With Truss’s resignation, I have to introduce a new category of a PM that didn’t fight an election but I have classified her as ‘couped’.

For Labour we can safely say, that it acquires the premiership through elections and it is unsuccessful in sustaining its inheritors, Callaghan and Brown. The Tory case is more complex, and skewed by its recent post Brexit referendum history, but only Douglas-Hume inherited the office and failed to win an election, but he was set up.

On first examination this is not so easy to read, and maybe I should consider the colour coding of the categories but, Up means that they became PM by winning a general election and all the up bars are solid colours, with blue and red being obvious to non US readers. Bars going down represent administrations that came into being mid-parliament, and a dark hatching is because the PM successfully won re-election, and the light hatching that they did not. Truss is actually a purple, as uniquely she did not fight an election.

The data file (in excel) is here. Feel free to copy it and see if you can find out more. Let me know if you do.  …

England’s founders

England’s founders

Andrew Adonis, on Twitter, has challenged us to name three people as founders of England. I thought that’s a good game. Who would I choose?

What is England? I think it needs to be seen as defined by its Parliament, its capitalist economy and its social wage, the remaining jewel of which is the NHS. So I nominate the Immortal 7, Sir Robert Peel, and Aneurin Bevan.

The Immortal Seven are seven members of the House of Lords who invited William of Orange to England to ensure a protestant succession. Modern historians may argue about the extent this established Parliament as the supreme authority but it is generally considered the act that ended the English Civil Wars and started us down the road to our current constitution.

Sir Robert Peel not only founded the Tory Party but the Joint Stock Companies Act was also passed under his stewardship, I toyed with Marx as an observer of Capitalism and Brunel as the innovator/entrepreneur, except he wasn’t, but capitalism is about capital mobility and capital markets and so that Act which enabled these two things to happen.

Our benefit system is in tatters, Beveridge and Keynes will be turning in their graves, but the NHS remains, and it seems we have to associate Bevan with it. Bevan is of course Welsh.

At least one commentator on the twitter thread makes the point that analysing history through the lives of single people is not wise.

Left by the wayside are Henry VIII, Oliver Cromwell & Horatio Nelson …

Class Struggle 1939-1945, & Elbe Day

I was pointed at this review of, Chris Bambery’s book The Second World War: A Marxist History (2014) which takes a different from normal view of the politics & the history of politics of the second world war; the story where the people’s of the last democracies in Europe united with the United States to fight its fascist blight. I wrote a little review of the review and posted it on my wiki, in an article called “Class Struggle 1939 – 1945”. The wiki article looks at the US financial contribution to the Allied war effort, the Tory Party, even Churchill’s, ambivalence in fighting fascism, and US Capitalism’s contribution to the fascist victory in Spain. The review is more comprehensive and the book would seem to be even more so.

While looking for pictures to decorate the wiki article, I looked at my David Low cartoon book to see if there was one cartoon that would work to be used to decorate my article and my review but Low was contemporaneous with the events and reproducing pages for the book is hard to do with quality of my lockdown IT. In the book, Low draws a cartoon to mark the meeting of the US & Soviet forces on the Elbe on 25th April 1945. Low’s cartoon is typical of his portrayal of allied solidiers but on looking I found this image, published in an article about the 70th anniversary of Elbe Day which I assume from the article is still celebrated in Russia.

 

 

While I think this is a fabulous picture illustrating the penultimate phase of the war against Nazi Germany in Europe, and the, at least, short lived solidarity between the US and Soviet soldiery I wanted to find something closer to Low’s cartoon with a bit more of a personal voice.

 

 …

English Revolution

pikes

I have just seen the first of Melvyn Bragg’s documentaries in a two part series called “Radical Lives”. This was about John Ball, a radical priest in England who in 1381 supported the Peasants Revolt. The documentary does a fine job in describing the feudal economic and racist oppression by the scions of the Norman invasion. The original poll tax was levied at this time and the reaction from the peasantry was swift and violent. They rose up and marched on London, sacked the Tower of London and executed several leading government officials.  …

The struggle of the class

The struggle of the class

I stayed up the People’s History Museum after the meeting and had a quick wander round the standing exhibition. Since it’s a museum of the working class, it’s stronger on the period after the industrial revolution and focuses on the coming of the franchise, the foundation of the trade unions and the Labour Party and the suffragettes. I did however stop at their exhibitions on Thomas Paine and even earlier the Levellers. It opens with two panels on corruption of power and the secret societies which were the precursors of the trade unions, both of which are becoming more accurate by the day.  …

Remembering our history

Earlier today, Peter Tatchell launched a a petition on Change.org and publicised it on twitter arguing that the Dead, not the generals should be the focus of our remembrance of WW1

Also at opendemocracy, an article entitled, “Hiding behind the Cenotaph, Cameron will seek to re-write history” makes a longer and better evidenced appeal to remember that

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santanya, “Reason in Common Sense” 1905

I recommend you read the Opendemocracy article, it reminds us that WW1 was a bloody culmination of a race to empire where dead paid the ultimate price under the incompetent, malevolent and propertied leadership, both political and military. …

It’s guns that made a difference.

It’s guns that made a difference.

With so many articles and other writing stuck in production, I thought I”d knock out a quick blog inspired by at Naked Keynesianism; he posted an article called, The Fiscal-Military State and Western Hegemony. The article has a quick look at a select choice of the literature, and reminds us of Charles Tilly‘s allegedly famous argument that “War made the State, and the State made war”, although I suspect that Tilley was not the first to make this argument. Most interestingly, he argues that where cavalry warfare was in the ascendancy, it acted as an inhibitor to  military technological development and latterly superiority. I would suggest it was the development of cities, and their density in Europe together with their walls that necessitated the invention of artillery to conduct siege warfare and an infantry to protect it. Similarly, the development of naval warfare and overseas empires, incubated by Europe’s geography reinforced, or maybe preceded the evolution of land based cannons.  …

This House, or when whips served the Party

I went to see “This House” earlier today. It’s the story of the Labour Whips who kept the Wilson and Callaghan government in power for 4½ years, without a majority for much of the time, from 1974 to 1979. It brought back many memories as I had joined the Labour Party in 74 and of course much of my politics was learned and established in the next 10 years. …

Electing a Prime Minister

It’s been an exciting couple of days in British Politics. One interesting fact that I was pointed at by Paddy Ashdown on the Radio this morning is that of the 12 Prime Ministers since the 2nd World War, only 6 came to office by winning an election. i.e. Only 50% of post war Prime Ministers came to office by winning an election.

How 1940’s 1950’s 1960’s 1970’s 1980/90’s Post 1997
General Election Attlee Churchill Wilson Heath Thatcher Blair
Between Election Eden & MacMillan Dougas Home Callaghan Major Brown

The table above doesn’t show Wilson’s second administration. Also Ashdown says that it was five who became Prime Ministers on the basis of the ability to command a majority in the House of Commons, rather than on the back of a general election, so I may have made a mistake. I used Wikipedia’s British General Elections page as my source. …

Memento Park, Budapest

A sculpture park full of the public statues from Budapest during the Communist era. The Hungarians, after the fall of the communist state in 1989 had a long and protracted debate about what to with that state’s public art. I think its important that they’ve chosen to preserve it, and also to do so in the context of this museum. If you visit this park yourself, buy the guide book, “In the shadow of Stalin’s boots”. As it says in the guide book, the Memento Park is not about Communism, but the fall of Communism.  …