ABSTRACT
The onset of mass unemployment seemed to many observers to threaten a period of acute instability in British political life, and even a complete breakdown of the traditional procedures of parliamentary
government. The growth of extremist parties, the spread of violent demon-
strations, and the helplessness of politicians in the face of the world slump
seemed portents of fundamental changes in the character of politics and
society. Harold Macmillan, for example, considered that after 1931, ‘Some-
thing like a revolutionary situation had developed’ in Britain.1 For Stafford
Cripps, mass unemployment opened a period in which ‘the one thing that
is not inevitable now is gradualness’.2 John Strachey contemplated the need
to wield totalitarian power in the event of a breakdown of the political system,
while Mosley and the B.U.F. waited for an opportunity to restore order in
the event of a communist revolution.3 For Marxists, the great depression was
clearly the ‘final crisis’ of capitalism. Harry Pollitt wrote in 1933 that ‘we are
moving to a new round of wars and proletarian revolutions, in which the
capitalists and the working class are both striving to find a solution of the
These apocalyptic prophecies were proved false by events. Britain emerged
from the depression with remarkably little change in the nature of her polit-
ical institutions and the tenor of her public life. Although even modern
historians have been tempted to characterise the 1930s as a decade when
‘men of moderate political opinions, or of none, began to talk the language
of revolutionary violence,’ the most significant feature of the decade was the
Thus there was no British New Deal, no wholesale rejection of parliamentary
democracy, and no mass backing for the parties of the extreme left or right.
