The Labour Governments of 1924 and 1929-31 Demonstrated that the Labour Party was Fit to Govern

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The Labour Governments of 1924

and 1929-31 Demonstrated that the Labour Party was Fit to Govern

In March 1924, the Conservative party lost of vote of confidence, and

a minority Labour government came into power for the first time in

their history. Again, in 1929, the Labour government came in to power

as a minority government. The main focus of their reigns in power, was

not as complicated as how well they improved the country, but just,

simply whether they could rule at all. By 1931, and the fall of the

Labour government, after the Wall street crash, the country was in

serious economic problems, and appeared that the Labour government had

failed, but was it there fault, was there anything they failed to do

to stop the depression, and did they succeed in proving that they had

become a major political force, which could directly compete with the

Conservative party.

Labour, the party set up for the working class, by trade Unionists,

was an idealistic Socialist party. It was a centre-left party, who

were not as extreme as the Socialists or Communists, and not as

central as the shattered Liberals. This meant, that although, their

efforts would primarily be aimed at improving the lower classes

standards of living, they would not persecute or destroy the upper

echelons of society. This won them support from several, socialist

middle and upper class voters.

The Labour governments had many domestic achievements, which did

primarily help the poor. The obvious examples are the John Wheatley's

Housing Act and the Hadow report in the first Labour governments. The

first, providing £9 million p.a. to pay local councils to build homes.

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George, to create public work schemes, or to listen to the proposal

made by Oswald Mosley and the economist Keynes, to restrict imports,

they stuck with traditional conservative views, which worsened the

crisis.

Not only was the Depression, a serious problem for Labour, even had

they have wanted to introduce radical reforms; they may have been

blocked, by the Liberals or Conservatives, as they were a minority

government.

Therefore, I believe that the Labour government proved that it could

be a successful government, and should have been taken seriously, as a

major political party. However, their failure to deal with the high

unemployment levels, caused by the recession and worsened by the Wall

Street Crash, meant that they were correctly removed from power, and

replaced by a coalition National Government.

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