The Anti-Appeasers

: A study of the parliamentary opposition to the National Government’s foreign and defence policies Ewan Lawry

Abstract

Appeasement is a well-trodden area of historical enquiry, suffused with Churchillian notions of one great man (Winston Churchill) standing tall as the prophetic figure who correctly recognised the threat posed by Nazi Germany to world peace. The historiographical debate has hit the dead end of the ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ of appeasement as the basis of British foreign policy in the 1930s, but has failed to adequately challenge Churchill’s influence. This thesis poses this challenge by placing him in a wider network of anti-appeasers in all three major political parties who, in numerous ways, opposed British attempts to come to terms with the dictators and sought to prepare the country to fight. Churchill was clearly significant in this, bringing his undoubted flair and energy, but that should not obscure the equally important role of, for instance, Sir Austen Chamberlain, Clement Attlee, Hugh Dalton, Archibald Sinclair, Lord Davies of Llandinam, and a host of other figures who, by the end of the decade, were loosely aligned against appeasement. Of course, like the appeasers themselves, the magnitudinous international crises of the 1930s propelled these anti-appeasers along. And at key points when this disparate network appeared to be gaining solid form, it melted away in the face of political expediency. Their alternative suggestions were also as numerous as the group itself, with their failure to agree to a single policy around which all could unite proving to be a serious obstacle. And yet, whether it was campaigning under the ‘Arms and the Covenant’ banner or uniting senior Tory backbenchers to criticise Britain’s defensive inadequacies, they were recognised as a potentially potent force that made a significant contribution to the tone, direction, and substance of British foreign and defence discourse before the Second World War.

Date of Award	2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Aberystwyth University
Supervisor	Sian Nicholas (Supervisor) & Steve Thompson (Supervisor)