tomc
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Post by tomc on Oct 20, 2024 0:49:09 GMT
For the purposes of this thread I'm not bothered about how Britain avoids WWII, whether or not we just turn a blind eye to a German invasion of Poland or alternatively have stopped Hitler in 1938 doesn't matter. But what happens in India in this case? There will be a General Election in 1940 presumably and if the Tories win then nothing will change for the Parliament but the independence movement will perhaps become more strident and less peaceful.
If Labour win then hopes would be raised in India since Atlee was personally in favour of independence but I don't think it was mentioned in the manifesto and it may well not have been a priority perhaps disappointing those hopes. In either case could the UK find itself embroiled in some sort of Vietnam situation?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 20, 2024 7:12:41 GMT
For the purposes of this thread I'm not bothered about how Britain avoids WWII, whether or not we just turn a blind eye to a German invasion of Poland or alternatively have stopped Hitler in 1938 doesn't matter. But what happens in India in this case? There will be a General Election in 1940 presumably and if the Tories win then nothing will change for the Parliament but the independence movement will perhaps become more strident and less peaceful. If Labour win then hopes would be raised in India since Atlee was personally in favour of independence but I don't think it was mentioned in the manifesto and it may well not have been a priority perhaps disappointing those hopes. In either case could the UK find itself embroiled in some sort of Vietnam situation? A 1940 election would be fascinating. What did polls suggest would happen? |
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Post by hullenedge on Oct 20, 2024 8:11:40 GMT
For the purposes of this thread I'm not bothered about how Britain avoids WWII, whether or not we just turn a blind eye to a German invasion of Poland or alternatively have stopped Hitler in 1938 doesn't matter. But what happens in India in this case? There will be a General Election in 1940 presumably and if the Tories win then nothing will change for the Parliament but the independence movement will perhaps become more strident and less peaceful. If Labour win then hopes would be raised in India since Atlee was personally in favour of independence but I don't think it was mentioned in the manifesto and it may well not have been a priority perhaps disappointing those hopes. In either case could the UK find itself embroiled in some sort of Vietnam situation? A 1940 election would be fascinating. What did polls suggest would happen? No polls in 1940 but the consensus in 1939 (before war was declared) was a Tory victory. NC was rather popular at that time. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 20, 2024 8:12:29 GMT
A 1940 election would be fascinating. What did polls suggest would happen? No polls in 1940 but the consensus in 1939 (before war was declared) was a Tory victory. NC was rather popular at that time. Might Tories replace him in 1939? If Poland is allowed to fall |
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Post by hullenedge on Oct 20, 2024 8:15:02 GMT
No polls in 1940 but the consensus in 1939 (before war was declared) was a Tory victory. NC was rather popular at that time. Might Tories replace him in 1939? If Poland is allowed to fall Let's assume that the election is called before events raidly deteriorate. Spring 1939? The November 1938 local elections were okay for the Tories. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Oct 20, 2024 8:57:10 GMT
Might Tories replace him in 1939? If Poland is allowed to fall Let's assume that the election is called before events raidly deteriorate. Spring 1939? The November 1938 local elections were okay for the Tories. Would the boundary changes which were brought in for the 1945 election have been in place for a 1939 election? I guess not, although most of the population growth which made them necessary in certain areas had already occurred by then |
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Post by hullenedge on Oct 20, 2024 8:59:50 GMT
Let's assume that the election is called before events raidly deteriorate. Spring 1939? The November 1938 local elections were okay for the Tories. Would the boundary changes which were brought in for the 1945 election have been in place for a 1939 election? I guess not, although most of the population growth which made them necessary in certain areas had already occurred by then Definitely not. The abnormally large constituencies would have been untouched. |
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Post by hullenedge on Oct 20, 2024 9:09:53 GMT
Would the boundary changes which were brought in for the 1945 election have been in place for a 1939 election? I guess not, although most of the population growth which made them necessary in certain areas had already occurred by then Definitely not. The abnormally large constituencies would have been untouched. - A quick search of the newspaper databases and there's the briefest of mentions, in 1938, of possible enlargement of the HoC (a meeting of Tory agents?). An extra 50 seats is mooted. |
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Post by Pete Whitehead on Oct 20, 2024 9:10:29 GMT
Hendon was I think the largest in 1935 with an electorate of almost 165,000. I wonder if it would have surpassed 200,000 by then.
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Post by hullenedge on Oct 20, 2024 9:23:45 GMT
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J.G.Harston
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Leave-voting Brexit-supporting Liberal Democrat
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Post by J.G.Harston on Oct 20, 2024 10:17:03 GMT
On the subject: it depends on how strong Chruchill's influence is. In the passage of the 1935 India Act he was part of a core of backbenchers opposing passing responsibility to Indians. Also, Labour at the time opposed the bill, but for differing reasons, the bill didn't go far enough. It took a lot of effort to get the 1935 Act passed, and it had to have a lot of concessions and ambiguities written into it to get it passed.
If WW2 hadn't intervened, in the normal course of events there would have been a commission around 1940-1945 for further steps. The consensus seems to be a returned Conservative government in 1939 or 1940. In India itself there was dissatisfsaction with the 1935 Act as it did not go far enough, in Britain it went too far. I think the aspirations for a federal India would have been dropped, and the, by that time, overwhelming push for seperatism would have been written into a new India Act and explicitly set up seperate countries. The 1919 Act had already set up Ceylon and Burma as seperate "countries". Without participating in WW2 there would have been the ability to be more detailed in working out the boundaries of the new countries. There will still have been dissatified border areas. The Pakistan movement was insisting on all areas with at least one Muslim, Congress were going for majority population.
A stumbling block was always the Princley States. They were part of India, but not part of British India. Britain hoped they would voluntarily join the new Indian countries, but some of them coveted their own independence. Some acceeded to the "wrong" new country in the minds of their people and were forcible taken over, some refused to acceed to a new country and were similary forcible taken over. And of course part of the source of the problem with Punjab is the mismatch between the religious allegence of the rulers and the people.
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nodealbrexiteer
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Post by nodealbrexiteer on Oct 20, 2024 10:50:37 GMT
From wikipedia
Before 1943
Date(s)
conducted Pollster Client Gov. Opp. Don't Know Lead
Feb 1940 Gallup N/A 51% 27% 22% 24%
Dec 1939 Gallup N/A 54% 30% 16% 14%
Feb 1939 Gallup N/A 50% 44% 6% 6%
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Post by Davıd Boothroyd on Oct 20, 2024 11:20:16 GMT
If memory serves the consensus view of historians is that, without war, Chamberlain would probably have won a Spring 1940 general election with a reduced but still large majority. Probably looking at these sort of figures
Conservatives 340
Other National affiliates 30
Total National 370
Labour 250
Liberals 20
ILP 3
Irish Nationalists 2
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The Bishop
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Post by The Bishop on Oct 20, 2024 11:27:20 GMT
From wikipedia Before 1943 Date(s) conducted Pollster Client Gov. Opp. Don't Know Lead Feb 1940 Gallup N/A 51% 27% 22% 24% Dec 1939 Gallup N/A 54% 30% 16% 14% Feb 1939 Gallup N/A 50% 44% 6% 6% Not that such figures were terribly meaningful from September 1939 for obvious reasons. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 20, 2024 11:34:26 GMT
If memory serves the consensus view of historians is that, without war, Chamberlain would probably have won a Spring 1940 general election with a reduced but still large majority. Probably looking at these sort of figures Conservatives 340 Other National affiliates 30 Total National 370 Labour 250 Liberals 20 ILP 3 Irish Nationalists 2 So we could get Labour winning in 1945, anyway. |
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nodealbrexiteer
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non aligned favour no deal brexit!
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Post by nodealbrexiteer on Oct 20, 2024 19:20:10 GMT
From wikipedia Before 1943 Date(s) conducted Pollster Client Gov. Opp. Don't Know Lead Feb 1940 Gallup N/A 51% 27% 22% 24% Dec 1939 Gallup N/A 54% 30% 16% 14% Feb 1939 Gallup N/A 50% 44% 6% 6% Not that such figures were terribly meaningful from September 1939 for obvious reasons. But no war means election in 1940 at latest and on that trajectory probable reduced Tory majority |
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Post by iainbhx on Oct 21, 2024 10:02:37 GMT
Hendon was I think the largest in 1935 with an electorate of almost 165,000. I wonder if it would have surpassed 200,000 by then. I think by 1940, Romford would have been larger, but not by much. |
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Post by adlai52 on Oct 25, 2024 13:35:02 GMT
Isn’t it very hard to imagine what the approach would be re India without knowing what had happened to stop the UK entering WW2?
What I mean is, a world where the UK has some kind of entente with Nazi Germany or even an anti-soviet alliance is quite different from one where the Weimar Republic survives or the Germany expansionism is nipped in the bud in the Rhineland for example?
I suspect the most likely way you avoid UK involvement in a second world war is one of the many mainstream nationalist figures pre-empts the Nazi takeover in the early 1930s – perhaps Kurt von Schleicher forms some kind of nationalist junta?
In such a world you have a Germany that is cautiously pushing back against the post-WW1 settlement, no doubt displacing French influence in Eastern Europe and maintaining a quite complicated relationship with the USSR - the German military would be ideologically hostile but both countries had a lot of shared interests which saw plenty of clandestine cooperation between the wars (right up to the Molatov-Rippentrop pact).
This probably leaves the UK with a lot of free bandwidth – Chamberlain and the National Government were far more focused on domestic politics and the long rebuilding process after WW1. They will want any colonial issues to go away – but I suspect here that more bandwidth and less pressures from continental affairs means that the UK gets drawn into a long and drawn out process of either dividing up the Indian subcontinent or trying to establish an Indian dominion in the face of some serious resistance from groups like the Muslim League.
Given the UK’s preference for ‘divide and rule’ in India – I think its likely that the UK tries to establish either a very loose federation or separate state and I don’t think that would be sustainable, meaning you might actually get a much more drawn out involvement in the continent as the UK tries to disentangle itself and handover to a stable regime. You might even see a situation analogous to NI but on a much grander scale emerge in the 50s.
Here it might also be worth considering what Japan and the US are up to in the Pacific as instability in India would be of interest to both – as it would be for China.
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