Stafford Cripps - Joining The Labour Party

Joining The Labour Party

At the end of the 1920s Cripps moved to the left in his political views, and in 1930 he joined the Labour Party. The next year, Cripps was appointed Solicitor-General in the second Labour government. This post was customarily accompanied by a knighthood, making him Sir Stafford Cripps. In 1931, Cripps was elected in a by-election for Bristol East. During his time in parliament, he was a strong proponent of Marxist social and economic policies, although his strong faith in evangelical Christianity prevented him from subscribing to the Marxist rejection of religion.

In the 1931 general election, Cripps was one of only three former Labour ministers to hold their seats alongside the party leader George Lansbury and deputy leader Clement Attlee. In 1932 he was one of the founders of the Socialist League, which was composed largely of members of the Independent Labour Party who rejected its decision to disaffiliate from Labour. The Socialist League put the case for an austere form of democratic socialism.

In 1936, Labour's National Executive Committee dissociated itself from a speech in which Cripps said he did not "believe it would be a bad thing for the British working class if Germany defeated us". Cripps also opposed British rearmament: "Money cannot make armaments. Armaments can only be made by the skill of the British working class, and it is the British working class who would be called upon to use them. To-day you have the most glorious opportunity that the workers have ever had if you will only use the necessity of capitalism in order to get power yourselves. The capitalists are in your hands. Refuse to make munitions, refuse to make armaments, and they are helpless. They would have to hand the control of the country over to you".

Cripps was an early advocate of a United Front against the rising threat of fascism and he opposed an appeasement policy towards Nazi Germany. In 1936 he was the moving force behind a Unity Campaign, involving the Socialist League, the Independent Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain, designed to forge electoral unity against the right. Opposed by the Labour leadership, the Unity Campaign failed in its intentions, rather than face expulsion from Labour, Cripps dissolved the Socialist League in 1937. Tribune, set up as the campaign's newspaper by Cripps and George Strauss, survived. In early 1939, however, Cripps was expelled from the Labour Party for his advocacy of a Popular Front with the Communist Party and anti-appeasement Liberals and Conservatives.