The Popular Front in the United Kingdom attempted an alliance between political parties and individuals of the left and centre-left in the late 1930s to come together to challenge the appeasement policies of the National Government led by Neville Chamberlain.
The Popular Front was launched in December 1936 by the Liberal Richard Acland, the Communist John Strachey, Labour's economist G. D. H. Cole, and the Conservative Robert Boothby.
As the author of The Coming Struggle for Power (1932), and a series of other works, Strachey was one of the most prolific and widely read British Marxist-Leninist theorists of the 1930s.
A major part of that unity campaign was to have electoral co-operation against the National Government at a future general election.
By 1937 the Labour Party showed little indication for resolving this issue and those within it ranks such as Cripps faced expulsion as a result.
In putting the case for a Popular Front, he argued that the Labour Party acting alone would not be able to defeat the National Government.
[citation needed] The ILP, who had chosen not to affiliate with the Labour Party during the 1930s, had been supporters of the United Front with Socialists and Communists.
The Labour Party National Executive published a letter on 13 April 1938, opposing the Popular Front.
At the 1935 General Election, former party leader David Lloyd George, through his Council of Action had demonstrated a willingness to support both Liberal and Labour candidates.
After the 1935 elections Lloyd George and his parliamentary group returned to the mainstream Liberal Party and continued with the Council of Action.
The first time the Liberal Party formally considered the Popular Front was at a meeting of their executive committee on 20 October 1936.
[6] At the 1937 Combined English Universities by-election former Liberal MP Thomas Edmund Harvey gained the seat from the Conservatives standing as an Independent Progressive, seeking to rally anti-government supporters on the left.
The Liberal Party had selected Ivor Davies,[7] a 23-year-old graduate of Edinburgh University, despite the fact that he was the candidate for Central Aberdeenshire at the same time.
On 13 September, Davies offered to stand down from the by-election if Labour did the same and backed a Popular Front candidate against the Conservatives.
[8] Eventually, Gordon Walker reluctantly stood down and both parties supported Sandy Lindsay, who was the Master of Balliol, as an Independent Progressive.
He was approached by Richard Acland, Liberal MP for Barnstaple, a seat bordering Bridgwater, about standing as an anti-appeasement candidate in the by-election.
[11] Before the by-election vacancy was known, the local Labour Party had already re-adopted Arthur Loveys their previous candidate, to contest a General Election expected to occur in 1939.
He hailed the result as a defeat for Chamberlain, saying that it showed people understood the dangers of the Government's foreign policy.
It was widely anticipated that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain would call a general election in 1939 and all political parties were going through the process of selecting local candidates.
By May 1940 Winston Churchill had become Prime Minister and had included in his new government other Conservative anti-appeasers and the leaders of the Labour and Liberal parties.