League of Nations Union - Activities

Activities

The LNU played an important role in inter-war politics. According to one source it had been successful in converting the mainstream of British society, including labour, the churches and the principal newspapers to the cause of the League of Nations. It also carried great influence in traditional political circles and particularly in the Liberal Party. One historian has gone so far as to describe the LNU as "a key Liberal pressure group on foreign policy" and to call Liberal Party members the "true believers" of the LNU. Its first President was Edward Grey the Liberal foreign secretary during the First World War. Other leading Liberal lights in the LNU included Geoffrey Mander Liberal MP for Wolverhampton East from 1929 to 1945 and Professor Gilbert Murray, who was Vice-President of the League of Nations Society from 1916 and Chairman of the LNU after 1923. The recruitment of Conservative politicians to support the LNU and the League of Nations itself was more problematic for the LNU but they pursued it to demonstrate the cross-party nature of the Union, which was important for the credibility of an organisation which was active politically in pursuit of international goals. High profile Conservatives did then come into the LNU, notably Lord Robert Cecil and Austen Chamberlain who were both members of the LNU Executive Committee. However, most Conservatives were deeply suspicious of the LNU's support for pacifism and disarmament – an analogous position to the opinions held by Conservatives in the 1980s in respect of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Even Austen Chamberlain remarked that the Executive Committee contained "...some of the worst cranks I have ever known".