{"id":239,"date":"2024-02-04T15:37:27","date_gmt":"2024-02-04T15:37:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/tdby\/?p=239"},"modified":"2024-02-04T15:37:27","modified_gmt":"2024-02-04T15:37:27","slug":"100-years-of-labour-governments-and-the-military-macdonald-to-starmer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.soton.ac.uk\/tdby\/2024\/02\/04\/100-years-of-labour-governments-and-the-military-macdonald-to-starmer\/","title":{"rendered":"100 years of Labour governments and the military: MacDonald to Starmer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Saturday \u2013 27 January \u2013 I gave a paper in Cambridge at the conference organised by the Labour History Research Unit at Anglia Ruskin University\u2019s Labour History Research Unit: How Labour Governs: A Conference to mark 100 years of Labour Governments.<\/strong>\u00a0 The following summarises my remarks on Labour governments and the defence establishment from 1924 through to 2024 and the prospect of a Starmer administration following the next general election:<\/p>\n

Labour and the military: dealing with the chiefs of staff<\/strong><\/p>\n

In office Ramsay MacDonald sought to neutralise the service chiefs\u2019 antipathy towards a party in which so many senior figures, not least the PM, had opposed the Great War.\u00a0 In 1924 and again in 1929 he appointed proven patriots from the trade union movement to the War Office, and an ennobled ex-colonel to the Air Ministry.\u00a0 Remarkably, a former Viceroy served as First Lord of the Admiralty in 1924; but his successor five years later \u2013 A.V. Alexander \u2013 forged a lasting relationship with the Royal Navy, and as such became a role model for service ministers in later Labour governments.\u00a0 Reappointed as Secretary of State for Air in 1929, Lord Thomson promoted Labour\u2019s claim to be a party of modernity and enterprise.\u00a0 That claim disappeared with Thomson\u2019s death in the R101 airship disaster and the Treasury\u2019s refusal to fund the RAF\u2019s defence of the Schneider Trophy [see H.C. Gwynne\u2019s 2023 His Majesty\u2019s Airship The Life and Tragic Death of the World\u2019s Largest Flying Machine<\/em> which combines a history of the R101 and a biography of Thomson, whose importance to and unlikely close friendship with MacDonald has been overlooked for far too long].\u00a0 Opponents insisted Labour was pacifistic and hostile to the armed forces, citing deep cuts in service spending; and that reputation was reinforced for much of the 1930s.\u00a0 The Churchill Coalition saw a recasting of Labour\u2019s image, but only Attlee, when sitting in for the Prime Minister, and Albert Alexander back at the Admiralty had regular contact with the chiefs of staff.\u00a0 Like MacDonald in 1924 Attlee as PM had to deal with service chiefs who were national heroes: Alanbrooke, Portal and Cunningham.\u00a0 Uniquely he began and ended his premiership heading a war cabinet.\u00a0 A veteran company commander instinctively suspicious of the top brass, Attlee won over a sceptical Alanbrooke, and later replaced Montgomery as CIGS with Bill Slim, a general much in the same mould as the Labour leader.\u00a0 Never slow to exercise his considerable powers of command and control Attlee nevertheless backed down when Bevin and the Chiefs of Staff Committee made his 1946 proposal to quit the Canal Zone a resignation issue.<\/p>\n

Attlee created a template for Labour prime ministers\u2019 dealings with the service chiefs, initiating the long process of reorganisation that ultimately saw power consolidated in the Chief of the Defence Staff and the Secretary of State for Defence.\u00a0 Harold Wilson recognised the full implications of Macmillan\u2019s reforms, and the need for a heavyweight to complete the creation of today\u2019s MOD, and to push through radical changes in strategic priorities, service reform and procurement: Denis Healey remains the model Defence Secretary for both major parties \u2013 a formidable presence in cabinet unafraid to make and support tough decisions, an intellectual bruiser, an ex-officer with frontline experience, a minister with a bank of relevant knowledge, a grounded politician with a reputation for emotional engagement and approachability, and above all, a departmental minister ready to remain in situ for as long as it took to see through significant change.\u00a0 Wilson and Healey accommodated Mountbatten their high profile CDS by compromising over Polaris; and later they convinced a sceptical COSC of the need to redeploy service ministers to cross-departmental roles, and crucially, of the case for ending the UK\u2019s military presence east of Suez.<\/p>\n

The 1974-9 governments drew on ministers\u2019 earlier experience, helped by Healey\u2019s presence at the Treasury and Callaghan\u2019s wartime service in the Royal Navy (seen to good advantage in 1977 when thwarting Argentinian ambitions in the South Atlantic).\u00a0 A criticism of the Wilson\/Callaghan governments is that they rarely questioned successive Chiefs of the General Staff regarding the Army\u2019s counterterrorism and policing operations in Northern Ireland, witness a hardline Roy Mason\u2019s 1976 move from Defence Secretary to the NI portfolio.\u00a0 That general criticism would be applied even more forcibly to the Blair and Brown administrations with regard to Iraq and Afghanistan; the former visibly more relaxed in dealing with the military than the latter.\u00a0 Labour\u2019s personal connections with the armed forces had long since gone, reinforcing Blair\u2019s need in 1997 for a strong personality at the MOD who could quickly master his brief: George Robertson was Defence Secretary at a time when western military intervention in Africa and the Balkans appeared to work, and the services\u2019 begrudging respect helped secure his appointment as Secretary-General of NATO.\u00a0 Geoff Hoon\u2019s role over Iraq and its related controversies effectively destroyed his reputation (\u2018Blair\u2019s poodle\u2019), and John Reid was not at the MOD long enough to have any impact.\u00a0 After that, a succession of short-lived mediocrities set a pattern for serial secretaries of state under Cameron and his successors.\u00a0 A key aspect of \u2018New Labour\u2019 was the politicisation of Blair\u2019s dealings with the CDS and COCS, with less discretion in Whitehall and chiefs of staff more visible in the mainstream media.\u00a0 This left a lasting legacy, with inter-service tensions and personality clashes ever more visible over the following decade.<\/p>\n

Labour\u2019s previous experience provides Keir Starmer and his shadow defence secretary John Healey with a clear indication as to how they should approach matters of national security \u2013 and crucially the processes and procedures of defence management.\u00a0 What should be the incoming Prime Minister\u2019s priorities?<\/p>\n