Common Wealth Party - The War Years

The War Years

Common Wealth was founded in July 1942, during World War II, by the alliance of two left wing groups, the 1941 Committee – a think tank brought together by Picture Post owner Edward G. Hulton, and their 'star' writers J.B. Priestley and Tom Wintringham – and the neo-Christian Forward March movement led by Liberal Party Member of Parliament (MP) Richard Acland, along with independents and former Liberals who believed that party had no direction. It appealed to the egalitarian sentiments of the English populace and hence aimed to be more appealing to labour’s potential voters, rather than liberal leaning voters than to Conservative. Disagreeing with the electoral pact established with other parties in the wartime coalition, key figures in the 1941 Committee began sponsoring independent candidates in by-elections under the banner of the Nine Point Group, following the electoral success of Tom Driberg with this support in 1942, there was a move to form the Committee into a political party, through a merger with Forward March, though many disliked the idea of being a Party rather than a social movement, and through pressure from Priestley and Wintringham, the word 'Party' was never formally part of Common Wealth's name. Led by Sir Richard Acland, Vernon Bartlett, J. B. Priestley, and Tom Wintringham the group called for common ownership, "vital democracy" and morality in politics. Its programme of common ownership echoed that of the Labour Party but stemmed from a more idealistic perspective, later termed "libertarian socialist". It came to reject the State-dominated form of socialism adopted by Labour under the influence of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, increasingly aligning itself instead with co-operative, syndicalist and guild socialist traditions. One party proposal was that all incomes should be subjected to an absolute upper limit.

Initially chaired by Priestley, he stepped down after just a few months, unable to reconcile himself with the politics of Acland – who as a sitting MP had undue influence within the party. Wintringham was Priestley's natural successor but deferred to Acland, despite very real political differences between them.

Acland himself had a less easy-going approach, in his book The Forward March he had claimed that in Britain under an FM government:

the community as a whole which must decide whether or not a man shall be employed upon our resources, and how and when and in what manner he shall work... run camps for shirkers on very tolerable conditions.

Acland went on to say of these camps:

has stumbled across (or has needed to make use of) a small part, or perhaps one should say one particular aspect of, what will ultimately be required of humanity.

and these tensions which lead to Priestley's stepping down for the leadership, and gradual withdrawal from the party (though he continued to support and endorse individual candidates), were a source of continued tension between former 1941 Committee and Nine Point Group members on one side and Forward Marchers and Christian Socialists on the other.

These differences in underlying approach within Common Wealth were highlighted in a booklet by Tom and Kitty Wintringham in 1944 titled Fellowship or Morality?

During the war years, there was an all-party coalition government incorporating the Conservative, Labour, and Liberal Parties, who agreed that casual vacancies should be filled unopposed. CW intervention allowed a radicalising electorate to return socialist candidates in Conservative heartlands, in Eddisbury, Skipton and Chelmsford. John Eric Loverseed, elected in Eddisbury, left the party in November 1944 and joined Labour in May of the following year. In the 1945 general election, voters deserted CW for Labour and only Chelmsford (not fought by Labour) was held. In 1946 after Tom Wintringham finally left the party, Common Wealth's MP, Ernest Millington, crossed the floor to join the Labour Party.