Parties at War

Andrew Thorpe's Parties at War is an unusual addition to the huge literature on the Second World War. Although the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberals normally engaged in conflict bordering on warfare, a political truce was called from 1939 until the eve of the 1945 election. While the country pulled together against the external enemy, party leaders thought that outright political conflict should be abandoned in the interests of national unity. Thorpe's examination of party organisation in wartime Britain is therefore in part a study of the sinews of political warfare, of battles in the making and of the impact of this political truce on the outcome of the 1945 general election. For many years, Conservatives promoted the view that their party organisers had focused during the war on civic and other activities through their patriotic commitment to the national cause. Meanwhile, Labour organisers had worked away on the home front, developing the popularity which culminated in the 1945 election victory. Thorpe's book takes this idea as one of its major themes. The book contains eight substantial chapters, building a picture of the three main political parties, with asides on both the Communist Party and the dissident Common Wealth grouping. The chapters cover and reflect the way in which the parties were organised for action. The book looks down through the power chain, examining firstly the national organisations’ leadership and relations with party leaders, and then the local role of respectively the MPs and parliamentary candidates and the agents and organisers. This is followed by a detailed dissection of party membership, three chapters on the respective parties’ activities and one on their financial resources. In addition to the papers of organisations and individuals, which Thorpe uses assiduously, particularly in the first half of the book, the latter half draws on the records of 28 regional bodies and 230 constituency or related party organisations. Thorpe clocks up and records his constituency archives in the same way that some men clock up their sexual conquests. Although some of these constituency papers have been commercially microfilmed and purchased by a few major libraries, compiling this bibliography involved trips to 94 of Britain's often less salubrious record offices. While contributing to political history, Thorpe has also done his best to aid the survival of Britain's public transport system

Communism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Popularity · Power (physics · Realigning election · Socialism · Sociology · United front · Victory · World War II · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Public Administration

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