Emanuel Shinwell, the son of a tailor, was born in London
in 1884. One of thirteen children, Shinwell and his family moved to
Glasgow and at the age of 11 began working
for his father. Later he worked as a message boy and in a factory
making chairs but eventually returning to the clothing trade.
In
1903 Shinwell became interested in politics. Neil
Maclean gave him a pamphlet by Karl Marx
entitled Wages, Labour and Capital.
As his later explained in his autobiography: "I was not the first
nor the last young man to discover that Marx is hard going, and his
arguments on the theory of surplus value, his explanation of labour's
part, and his castigation of the exploitation of the working class,
were difficult for my mind to grasp. I read and re-read that pamphlet
and eventually succeeded in extracting
some worth-while material for discussion."
Elected
to the Glasgow Trades Council in 1911, Shinwell worked closely with
other socialists in Glasgow including
David Kirkwood, John
Wheatley, James Maxton, William
Gallacher, John Muir, Tom
Johnston, Jimmie Stewart, Neil
Maclean, George Hardie, George
Buchanan and James Welsh. .
After
the war Shinwell was involved in the struggle for a 40 hour week.
The police broke up an open air trade union meeting at George Square
on 31st January, 1919. The leaders of the union were then arrested
and charged with "instigating and inciting large crowds of persons
to form part of a riotous mob". Shinwell was sentenced to five
months and Emanuel Shinwell got three
months. The other ten were found not guilty.
A
member of the Labour Party, Shinwell was
elected to the House of Commons in November
1922. Also
successful were several other militant socialists based in Glasgow
including John Wheatley,
David Kirkwood,
James Maxton, John
Muir, Tom Johnston,
Jimmie Stewart, Neil
Maclean, George Hardie, George
Buchanan and James Welsh.
Defeated
in the 1924 General Election, Shinwell returned
to Parliament in April 1928. When Ramsay
MacDonald became
prime minister following the 1929 General Election,
he appointed Shinwell as Financial Secretary War Office. He later
served as Secretary for Mines (June 1930 - August 1931).
The election
of the Labour Government in 1929 coincided
with an economic depression and Ramsay
MacDonald was
faced with the problem of growing unemployment. MacDonald asked Sir
George May, to form a committee to look into Britain's economic problem.
When the May Committee produced its report in July, 1931, it suggested
that the government should reduce its expenditure by £97,000,000,
including a £67,000,000 cut in unemployment benefits. MacDonald,
and his Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip
Snowden, accepted the report but when the matter was discussed
by the Cabinet, the majority voted against the measures suggested
by Sir George May.
Ramsay
MacDonald was
angry that his Cabinet had voted against him and decided to resign.
When he saw George V that night, he was
persuaded to head a new coalition government that would include Conservative
and Liberal leaders as well as Labour
ministers. Most of the Labour Cabinet totally rejected the idea and
only three, Philip Snowden, Jimmy
Thomas and John Sankey agreed to join
the new government.
Shinwell, a strong opponent of MacDonald's new government, lost his
seat at Linlithgow in the 1931 General Election.
In 1935 Shinwell returned to the House
of Commons after defeating Ramsay
MacDonald
at Seaham.
In 1936
Shinwell attempted to persuade the British government to supply military
aid to help support the Popular Front
government in Spain. Along with Aneurin
Bevan,
George
Strauss,
Sydney
Silverman and
Ellen
Wilkinson he
toured the country during the Spanish
Civil War. He later wrote: "The reason for the defeat of
the Spanish Government was not in the hearts and minds of the Spanish
people. They had a few brief weeks of democracy with a glimpse of
all that it might mean for the country they loved. The disaster came
because the Great Powers of the West preferred to see in Spain a dictatorial
Government of the right rather than a legally elected body chosen
by the people."
After
the Labour Party won the 1945
General Election the new prime minister, Clement
Attlee appointed Shinwell as Minister of Fuel and Power (July
1945 - October 1947). He also served as Secretary of State for War
(October 1947 - February 1950) and Minister of Defence (February 1950
- October 1951). He lost office after the Conservative
Party victory in the 1951 General Election
but held his seat in the House of Commons
and between November 1964 and March 1967 was Chairman of the Parliamentary
Labour Party.
Shinwell
wrote three volumes of autobiography, Conflict
Without Malice (1955), I've Lived
Through it All (1973) and
Lead With the Left (1981). Emanuel
Shinwell, who was created Baron Shinwell in 1970, died aged 101, of
bronchial pneumonia, on 8th May 1984.
(1)
Emanuel Shinwell wrote about his education in his autobiography, Conflict
Without Malice (1955)
When I was eleven years old my father moved to another part
of Glasgow and I had to leave the Adelphi Terrace school. My father
then employed me as an errand boy in his business, and my organized
education was over. Many times I have referred to this when I have
addressed meetings where the audience was on a somewhat high intellectual
level and the subject of a commensurate standard. I have disclaimed
any intellectual pretensions, on the grounds of leaving school at
so early an age. I have spoken of my melancholy reflections because
of this, and how I was only consoled when years afterwards I arrived
at the House of Commons and there saw some of the products of the
universities and high scholastic institutions.
But how
I regret those early years and the loss I sustained! It has been a
long and costly struggle ever since: the lack of
direction in my studies, the need for intellectual discipline, the
agony of composition, the reading of many books on many erudite subjects
that I failed to understand. I know all about those famous people
in history who, despite the lack of education, rose to great heights
in the field of politics, literature, art, and in world affairs, but
it is easier to smooth out the problems of living when one is endowed
with all that a good education can give.
(2)
Emanuel Shinwell, Conflict Without Malice (1955)
By the time I was fourteen the Boer question was the chief
source of discussion. It even banished Home Rule from the scene, and
by the time war broke out, a day or two before my fifteenth birthday,
I was a fervid Tory, ready and willing to go to Africa and fight Kruger
with my bare hands. Considering that the war was bitterly opposed
by most Liberals and all Socialists it was not surprising that my
father banished me from the workroom except on business at this period.
I soon
found a better source of education: the Glasgow Public Library. As
soon as my father's friends had effectively put a stop to further
work I would hurry off and remain there until I was turned out at
ten o'clock. The daring theories of evolution by Darwin I found absorbing
reading, and I expanded my knowledge by reading such works of his
as The Origin of Species and Descent of Man. On the
same shelves were books concerned with similar scientific subjects
of the day. I read works on zoology, geology, and palaeontology, for
example, and was thereby encouraged to study the specimens of stuffed
animals and birds, skeletons, rocks, and fossils in the Glasgow museums.
I used to spend every
Saturday afternoon testing myself on the knowledge I had gained from
the verbose and serious works which were the forerunners of the popular
scientific works of later years.
(3)
In his autobiography, Conflict Without Malice (1955),
Emanuel Shinwell described Glasgow
at the beginning of the Twentieth Century.
The working-class people of Glasgow lived in the grimy and
ugly tenements of the Gorbals, Townhead, and Gallowgate, and the dockside
areas of Anderton and Finnieston. The luckier families had two rooms:
with a recessed bed - set in a hole in the wall in the kitchen for
the boys and another in the parents' room for the girls. More usually
the family had one room. One of Glasgow's medical officers, Dr. J.
B. Russell, who attempted the well-nigh hopeless task of arousing
landlords' consciences about housing conditions in the last two decades
of the century, had declared that a quarter of Glasgow's 760,000 inhabitants
lived in one room. One in seven of such one-room tenants took in a
lodger in order to pay the rent. Another quarter of the city's population
lived in two-room tenements.
Improvements
and new buildings since the middle of the nineteenth century had not
kept pace with the growth of population, principally due to the heavy
immigration into the city. Large numbers of Irish had been coming
over for years. Competition between the shipping companies made it
possible for a man to cross the Irish Sea for a few shillings.
(4)
Emanuel Shinwell described the meeting that took place at
George Square on 31st January 1919 in his autobiography
Conflict Without Malice (1955)
At the Central Police Station some of my friends were also
being charged. Willie Gallagher was there, despite the fact that he
had actually been given police protection so that he could bawl out
to the crowd: "March off, for God's sake." David Kirkwood
had also been arrested. He was excitable but was really a peaceable
soul and had, as a matter of fact, been hit on the head by a policeman
almost as soon as he ran down the steps of the City Chambers, being
attacked from the back as he raised his hand to quieten the crowd.
That might not have meant his discharge at the subsequent trial except
for the lucky fact that a press photographer took a picture of the
policeman's baton raised and Kirkwood collapsing - evidence which,
of course, meant his dismissal from the case when the picture was
exhibited.
(5)
Emanuel Shinwell, Conflict Without Malice
(1955)
To dismiss MacDonald as a traitor to Labour is nonsense. His
contribution in the early years was of incalculable value. His qualities
as a protagonist of Socialism were of a rare standard. There has probably
never been an orator with such natural magnetism combined with impeccable
technique in speaking in the party's history. Before the First World
War his reputation in international Labour circles brooked no comparison.
Keir Hardie, idolized by the theorists in the movement, did not have
the appeal to European and American Socialists that MacDonald had.
There is no doubt that his international prestige equalled that of
such men as Jaures and Adler. Among his people in Scotland he could
exert almost mesmeric influence.
No one
has ever completely explained the magnetism of MacDonald as a young
man. He was the most handsome man
I have ever known, and his face and bearing can best be described
by the conventional term "princely." Partly this was due
to the spiritual qualities which are so often found in the real Northern
Scottish strain, with its admixture of Celtic and Norse blood. Some
of it probably came from the paternal ancestry which gave him aristocratic
characteristics and marked him as a leader of men. Lesser men might
despise this suggestion of heredity; the people who loved him in those
early days recognized it as an inborn quality. It also put him in
Parliament. Leicester was intrigued about this Labour candidate who
was the sole opponent of the Tory in 1906. If he had been an uncouth
firebrand it is unlikely that he would have found much favour. The
immense Liberal vote was his from the start. The Liberals and sentimentalists
were utterly charmed by this handsome idealist whose musical voice
wove gently round their spell-bound hearts. He won that election by
emotionalism rather than intellect - as others before and since have
won elections.
(6)
Emanuel Shinwell, Conflict Without Malice
(1955)
When the Spanish Republican Government was formed in 1936
the news was received enthusiastically by Socialists in Britain. Many
of the new Government members were well known in the international
Socialist movement. The emergence of a democratic regime in Spain
was a bright light in a gloomy period when war had raped Abyssinia,
and Germany had repudiated the Locarno Treaty. On the sudden outbreak
of civil war in July, 1936, Socialist movements in all those European
countries where they were allowed to exist immediately took steps
to consider whether intervention should be demanded.
The Fascist
attack was regarded as aggression by the majority of thinking people.
Leon Blum, at the time Prime Minister of France, was greatly concerned
in this matter. As political head of a nation which was bordered by
Spain he had to consider the danger of some of the belligerents being
forced over the border; as a Socialist he had a duty to go to the
help of his comrades, members of a legally elected Government, who
had been attacked by men organized and financed from outside Spanish
home territory.
In Britain,
although the Government was against intervention, the Labour Party
had to face the strong demands from the rank-and-file for concrete
action. The three executives met at Transport House to consider the
next move, and I was present as a member of the Parliamentary Executive.
We were largely influenced by Blum's policy. He had decided that he
could not risk committing his country to intervention. Germany and
Italy were supplying arms, aircraft, and men to the Spanish Fascists,
and Blum considered that any action on the Franco-Spanish border on
behalf of the Republican Government would bring imminent danger of
retaliatory moves by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany on France's eastern
flank. As a result of this French attitude Herbert Morrison's appeal
in favour of intervention received little support. Although, like
him, I was inclined towards action I pointed out that if France failed
to intervene it would be a futile gesture to advise that Britain should
do so. We had the recent farce of sanctions against Italy as a warning.
(7)
Emanuel Shinwell initially argued that the
British government should give support to the Republicans in the Spanish
Civil War. He wrote about his visit to Spain in his autobiography,
Conflict Without Malice (1955)
While the war was at its height several of us were invited
to visit Spain to see how things were going with the Republican Army.
The fiery little Ellen Wilkinson met us in Paris, and was full of
excitement and assurance that the Government would win. Included in
the party were Jack Lawson, George Strauss, Aneurin Bevan, Sydney
Silverman, and Hannen Swaffer. We went by train to the border at Perpignan,
and thence by car to Barcelona where Bevan left for another part of
the front.
We travelled
to Madrid - a distance of three hundred miles over the sierras - by
night for security reasons as the road passed through hostile or doubtful
territory. It was winter-time and snowing hard. Although our car had
skid chains we had many anxious moments before we arrived in the capital
just after dawn. The capital was suffering badly from war wounds.
The University City had been almost destroyed by shell fire during
the earlier and most bitter fighting of the war.
We walked
along the miles of trenches which surrounded the city. At the end
of the communicating trenches came the actual defence lines, dug within
a few feet of the enemy's trenches. We could hear the conversation
of the Fascist troops crouching down in their trench across the narrow
street. Desultory firing continued everywhere, with snipers on both
sides trying to pick off the enemy as he crossed exposed areas. We
had little need to obey the orders to duck when we had to traverse
the same areas. At night the Fascist artillery would open up, and
what with the physical effects of the food and the expectation of
a shell exploding in the bedroom I did not find my nights in Madrid
particularly pleasant.
It is
sad and tragic to realize that most of the splendid men and women,
fighting so obstinately in a hopeless battle, whom we met have since
been executed, killed in action - or still linger in prison and in
exile. The reason for the defeat of the Spanish Government was not
in the hearts and minds of the Spanish people. They had a few brief
weeks of democracy with a glimpse of all that it might mean for the
country they loved. The disaster came because the Great Powers of
the West preferred to see in Spain a dictatorial Government of the
right rather than a legally elected body chosen by the people. The
Spanish War encouraged the Nazis both politically and as a proof of
the efficiency of their
newly devised methods of waging war. In the blitzkrieg of Guernica
and the victory by the well-armed Fascists over the
helpless People's Army were sown the seeds for a still greater Nazi
experiment which began when German armies swooped into Poland on 1st
September, 1939.
It has
been said that the Spanish Civil War was in any event an experimental
battle between Communist Russia and Nazi Germany. My own careful observations
suggest that the Soviet Union gave no help of any real value to the
Republicans. They had observers there and were eager enough to study
the Nazi methods. But they had no intention of helping a Government
which, was controlled by Socialists and Liberals. If Hitler and Mussolini
fought in the arena of Spain as a try-out for world war Stalin remained
in the audience. The former were brutal; the latter was callous. Unfortunately
the latter charge must also be laid at the feet of the capitalist
countries as well.
(8)
Henry
(Chips) Channon,
diary entry (4th April, 1938)
An incident in the House
of Commons. Mr Shinwell made himself highly objectionable, and unfortunately,
Commander Bower, the (Conservative) member for the Cleveland Division
of Yorks shouted 'Go back to Poland' - a foolish and provocative jibe,
though no ruder than many that the Opposition indulge in every day.
Shinwell, shaking with
fury, got up, crossed the House, and went up to Bower and smacked
him very hard across the face! The crack resounded in the Chamber
- there was consternation, but the Speaker, acting from either cowardice
or tact, seemed to ignore the incident and when pressed, refused to
rebuke Shinwell, who made an apology, as did Bower, who had taken
the blow with apparent unconcern. He is a big fellow and could have
retaliated effectively. The incident passed; but everyone was shocked.
Bower is a pompous ass, self-opinionated, and narrow, who walks like
a. pregnant turkey. I have always disliked him, and feel justified
in so doing since he once remarked in my hearing 'Everyone who even
spoke to the Duke of Windsor should be banished - kicked out of the
country'. But the incident does not raise Parliamentary prestige,
especially now, when it is at a discount throughout the world.
Available
from Amazon Books (order below)
