Preparing for the people's war: the left and patriotism in the 1930's

In the 1930S the Labour Party was engaged in an intense debate over the direction of its foreign
policy in response to the rise of expansionist fascist powers in Europe. The lift of the party rejected
rearmament by the National govemment. Others, like Hugh Dalton, called for rearmament. Some
historians have seen this second stance as incompatible with socialism, describing it as an adjustment
to reality. This article argues that the Labour re-armers accommodated national difence within their
socialism, and that this benefited the party when in 1940 it entered the Churchill coalition and in
1945 when it faced the electorate.