ABSTRACT
While the Liberal Party continued to play an important role in British politics throughout the 1920s,1 by 1923 the Conservatives had come to view Labour as their principal political adversary, and both Conservative Central Office and the conservative press trained the bulk of their fire on the 427 Labour candidates during the 1923 election campaign.2 The violence of Conservative propaganda and press attacks on Labour in this period is difficult to appreciate, especially in light of the two parties’ respectful relationship within parliament. While quotes such as the above, from the conservative Daily Mail, actually made reference to the substance of Labour policy, much anti-Labour propaganda in the 1920s simply dealt in stereotypes and scare-mongering. Conservative Party propaganda, including the 1924 election poster ‘It’s Your Money He Wants’, unsubtly insinuated that British socialism was a front for rapacious Soviet greed, and statements from Conservative politicians such as the die-hard Lord Birkenhead played on fears
1 Even Maurice Cowling, who argues persuasively for the polarization of British politics between 1918 and 1924, admits that the Liberal decline was a ‘more contingent matter than the statistics suggest’ and that the period between 1926 and 1931 was one of ‘acute’ uncertainty in which numerous alternative outcomes were within the realm of the possible. See M. Cowling, The Impact of Labour, 1920-1924 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).
