Yesterday, on the eve of the opening of parliament, the National Labour Party

Following the economic crash of 1929, MacDonald’s second Labour government broke up in 1931 on the issue of unemployment benefit cuts. MacDonald then formed the National Government, a coalition with a majority of Conservative ministers, including Baldwin and Chamberlain. It also comprised Liberals, headed by Samuel, and Labourites. MacDonald and the Labourite ministers, who were consequently expelled from the Labour Party, formed a marginal National Labour Party, which carried little weight.

held an important lunch which was attended by nearly the entire Cabinet, with MacDonald, Baldwin and Simon delivering major speeches. Their gist was that we are living, as before, in very threatening times and that ‘the National Government’ ought to remain in place. Baldwin even made it clear that a return to the traditional policy of single-party Cabinets was hardly to be expected in the near future. Simon plunged into philosophy: the post-war situation, it turns out, has demanded everywhere an extraordinary concentration of national forces. On the continent, this concentration takes the form of one-man dictatorships of various peoples, while in ‘democratic England’ it issues in a ‘National Government’. Evidently, yesterday’s lunch supplied the decision-making circles of the ruling classes with their guidelines, slogans and platform for the coming winter and perhaps even beyond.