The Peace Ballot of 1934–35 was a nationwide questionnaire in Britain of five questions attempting to discover the British public's attitude to the League of Nations and collective security.
[2] According to Dame Adelaide Livingstone who wrote the official history of the ballot, the first objective of the Peace Ballot from the outset, even before the questions had been posed, was to prove that the British public supported a policy of the League of Nations as the central determining factor of British foreign policy.
They included the Labour Party, the Liberal Party, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Archbishop of York (and more than fifty bishops), the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool, the President of the National Council of Evangelical Free Churches, the General Secretary of the Baptist Union, the Moderator of the English Presbyterian Church, the Chief Rabbi, and numerous celebrated intellectuals and professionals.
Winston Churchill in 1948 said it meant Britons were "willing, and indeed resolved, to go to war in a righteous cause," provided that all action was taken under the auspices of the League.
Philip Noel-Baker later wrote it showed Britain "was prepared to stop Mussolini by armed force if that should be required.
"[8] The Conservative government did pay attention, and decided to use the League more in its foreign policy, especially in the crisis over Italy's invasion of Ethiopia.