"Squandermania": The Anti-Waste League, Lord Rothermere, and the Conservative Backlash Against Taxes and Government Spending in 1920s Britain
Shortly after the First World War, a British media tycoon launched a campaign to pressure the UK government to end what he described as an "orgy of spending" and "appalling taxation." He urged drastic cuts in public spending, the privatisation of state-owned shipyards and factories, the abolition of regulations, and lower taxes.
The press magnate was Lord Rothermere. He and his brother, Lord Northcliffe, owned some of the most popular British newspapers of the time, such as the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Pictorial, the Sunday Mail, The Times and the Daily Mail (Curran et al. 1991, pp. 50-51; Olmsted 2022, p. 21).
They used their media empires to shape public opinion in order to reinforce conservative values, oppose the rise of the Labour Party, and lambaste the Liberal-Conservative government's brief post-war support for investments in housing, education and welfare. But they also tapped into an emerging middle class resentment towards progressive policies and rapid social and economic change.
Angered by the government's agenda, Lord Rothermere published several articles against what he called "squandermania". Although he would benefit financially from lower taxes, he framed his political activism as being in the national interest. "For more than two years I have waged a rather lonely fight against Squandermania," he wrote in 1921. "I have done so in the national interest, and my only object is to serve my countrymen" (Olmsted 2022, p. 21).
In this article, I will discuss the UK government's post-war policy of increased welfare spending and regulation, the backlash it generated, the press barons' propaganda campaign, and the subsequent restoration of conservative economic and social policies.
On 6 December 1916, while the First World War was raging, David Lloyd George was appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, succeeding H. H. Asquith. Lloyd George formed a wartime coalition government, which included the Liberal Party, the Conservative and Unionist Party (colloquially known as the Tories), and the Labour Party.
In late 1917, political leaders began to plan for the end of the war and for the upcoming General Election. The last election had been held in December 1910. After the UK entered the war, Parliament passed annual bills to suspend elections while the conflict was ongoing.
The Conservatives were preoccupied with various challenges at home and abroad. First and foremost, the Bolshevik coup in Russia and the rise of the Labour Party in the UK coalesced into a fear that a left-wing government could pave the way for a radical upheaval.
The war had strengthened the Labour Party, which in its new 1918 constitution, drafted by Sidney Webb and Arthur Henderson, committed itself to a socialist agenda. Meanwhile, trade union membership rose from four million in 1914 to seven million in 1918.
Second, in 1918 Parliament passed the Representation of the People Act. The new law extended the franchise to all men over twenty-one (over nineteen if they served in the army), and to women over thirty who met a property qualification. 8.5 million women were eligible to vote, about two-thirds of the total female population. The electorate grew from eight million to twenty-one million. The addition of such a large number of voters, and particularly of working class and female ones, created uncertainty among Conservatives.
But at the election of December 1918, the Conservative-Liberal coalition won 53.7 percent of the vote, gaining 526 seats. The Labour Party won 20.8 percent of the vote, gaining only 57 seats.
Strong support for the Conservatives came from business groups and from the middle class. The middle class, especially the low middle class, had been bolstered by the war economy. By 1918 the number of people who paid income tax had risen threefold. As a result, there emerged over 200 "safe" conservative middle class seats representing voters opposed to ideas such as government interference with property, public spending and progressive reforms.
By constructing the image of a mythical class enemy as a threat to social order, and by presenting themselves as the bulwark against socialism and trade unionism, the Conservatives managed to gain solid support among upper middle class and middle class segments of society, and even among some working class groups (see Ball 1996, pp. 61-64; Cracknell et al. 2023, pp. 16-17; Smith 1997, pp. 67-69).
Initially, the Liberal-Conservative coalition was willing to implement bold economic plans. Although the government sought to defend the existing social order and retain the support of its middle class base, it also wanted to appeal to industrial labour and its working class voters by improving people's living standards (Ball 1996, p. 65; Smith 1997, p. 70).
The impetus for this ambitious programme derived from the wartime economy. The need for strengthening national defence during the conflict had led to an unprecedented enlargement of the function of the state, a greater amount of state intervention in the economy which was dubbed by the Manchester Guardian "War Socialism" (Fraser 2017, chapter 9).
Lloyd George's rise to Prime Minister was partly due to his willingness to embrace a state-controlled economy to win the war, which his predecessor, H. H. Asquith, had been reluctant to accept.
In order to mobilise the forces of the nation, the Lloyd George government took over the management of key sectors of the economy: the railways, shipping, the munition industry (it funded state enterprises to compete with private ones), energy, housing and food.
Coal, rents and food prices were controlled, agricultural production was stimulated by the state. Food subsidies and rationing of essential items such as meat, sugar and butter were introduced. Public expenditure increased tenfold, with the national debt rising from £650 million to nearly £7,500 million. To fund government spending, taxes were increased. The wartime state of crisis created the political will to expand the role of government to an extent that would have been unthinkable before (ibid.).
Lloyd George was convinced that the use of state power during the war could be continued in peacetime to solve economic and social issues. In 1917 he established the Ministry of Reconstruction, headed by Christopher Addison. The War Cabinet stated that reconstruction was "not so much a question of rebuilding society as it was before the war, but of moulding a better world out of the social and economic conditions which have come into being during the war".
Lloyd George was aware that shortly after Britain's military victory the public was in the "exalted mood" for doing "big things", but that the opportunity had to be "seized immediately", or else that mood would evaporate (ibid.).
The priorities for the Lloyd George government were the demobilisation of soldiers, health, housing, education and unemployment insurance.
One of Addison's first tasks in the new Ministry was housing. It was estimated that a shortage of around 600,000 houses had been created by the suspension of housing construction during the war. Lloyd George promised that the government would build "homes fit for heroes" for the soldiers returning from the battlefields.
The government believed that in order to avoid a Bolshevik-style uprising, they had to deliver better social conditions. Speaking of the housing plan, Lloyd George told his Cabinet in 1919: "Even if it costs a hundred million pounds, what was that compared to the stability of the state?" (ibid.).
In 1919, the Housing and Town Planning Act was passed, which assigned to local authorities the duty to supply housing, and provided Treasury subsidies to local councils and private builders (ibid.).
The coalition continued the "inflationary regime" of the wartime economy in order to maintain high levels of employment and rising wages, job security for workers and greater bargaining power for trade unions.
The high level of taxation of the war years was retained in order to fund government expenditure. In 1918, income tax stood at 6s (shillings) in the pound (equal to 30 percent), compared to 1s in the pound in 1914.
New ministries for health and transportation were established, the latter with the expectation that it would be in charge of the railway system as soon as it was nationalised. New trade boards were created to set minimum wages in various sectors of the economy such as agriculture and engineering. In 1921, a 33.5 percent tariff on imported goods was introduced (Smith 1997, pp. 70-71).
H. A. L. Fisher, President of the Board of Education in David Lloyd George's government, drew up a law that passed as the Education Act of 1918. It raised the school leaving age from 12 to 14 and instituted a programme of school-building and evening classes for those aged 14-18. It abolished all fees in state elementary schools, and transferred about 60 percent of school funding from local authorities to the central government.
In 1921, a Committee under Lord Burnham addressed the thorny issue of teachers' salaries, raising them to more than twice their pre-war level, though women were not granted equal salaries with their male colleagues (Pugh 1988, p. 139).
Social welfare schemes were expanded. The old-age pension was raised from £26 5s a year to £47 5s. Unemployed benefits, due to expire in mid-1919, were extended to March 1920. The same year the Unemployment Insurance Act was passed, which not only extended a previous 1911 scheme, but also added about 12 million more workers, although it excluded farm labourers and domestic servants (Pugh 1988, p. 139).
However, the bonanza of the immediate post-war years began to draw criticism from two of the Conservative Party's key constituencies: segments of the middle class and the business community. The press barons would soon use their influence to give voice to conservative resentment.
The era between 1890 and 1920 saw a rapid expansion and consolidation of the British media industry. A leading role in this process was played by the Harmsworth family.
By 1921, Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere, controlled the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Pictorial, the Daily Record, the Glasgow Evening News, and the Sunday Mail.
His brother, Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe, controlled The Times, the Daily Mail, The Observer, the Weekly Dispatch (later renamed Sunday Dispatch), and the London Evening News.
Jointly they owned the large magazine group Amalgamated Press. Their brother, Sir Robert Leicester Harmsworth, had a chain of newspapers in the southwest of England. Their press empire had a circulation of over 6 million, one of the largest media groups in the Western world at the time.
The ideology of Lord Northcliffe and Lord Rothermere can be described as a mix of "capitalism" and "nationalism". They believed in private enterprise, individual effort, and national strength. Both were hostile to high taxation, high levels of government spending and intervention in the economy, an attitude that was reflected in their newspapers (Cowling 1971, pp. 45-47; Curran et al. 1991, pp. 50-51).
Today, Lord Rothermere's great-grandson, Jonathan Harold Esmond Vere Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere, is the chairman and controlling shareholder of the Daily Mail and General Trust, which owns various media outlets, including the Daily Mail, Metro and MailOnline.
Other major newspaper publishers of the time were Lord Camrose and Lord Kemsley (the "Berry Brothers"), and Lord Beaverbrook, the owner of the Daily Express, a sensationalist tabloid newspaper that targeted conservative, patriotic-minded working class readers.
In the interwar period there was an increase in the sales of national newspapers, which overtook for the first time local ones. The combined circulation of daily national papers rose from 5.4 million in 1920 to 10.6 million in 1939.
In the 1920s, Beaverbrook, Rothermere, Camrose and Kemsley established a dominant position in the market, owning nearly half of all national and local papers, and nearly one-third of all Sunday papers, with a combined circulation of 13 million (Curran et al. 1991, pp. 51-52).
Press barons used their newspapers to advance their political ideology, though they did so to varying degrees depending on how much control they chose to exercise on each paper.
Beaverbrook later told the first Royal Commission on the Press (1947–49) that he ran the Daily Express "merely for the purpose of making propaganda and with no other motive" (Curran et al. 1991, pp. 52-53, 56).
The main impact of the press barons on society "lay in the way in which their papers provided cumulative support for conservative values and reinforced opposition, particularly among the middle class, to progressive change. The papers controlled by the press barons conjured up imaginary folk devils that served to strengthen commitment to dominant political norms and to unite the centre and the right against a common enemy" (Curran et al. 1991, p. 61, my emphasis).
One example of how the press barons could influence politics, ally themselves with conservative forces, and bring about a shift in public opinion, was Lord Rothermere's "Anti-Waste" campaign.
Between 1919 and 1922, Lord Rothermere launched a virulent campaign against government spending, coining the term "squandermania". He urged cuts in public spending, the sale of publicly owned enterprises, lower taxes and the abolition of wartime-style economic planning (Curran et al. 1991, p. 59).
He wrote a series of articles, which he published in the Sunday Pictorial and then released in 1921 as a book with the title "Solvency or Downfall? Squandermania and Its Story". In the foreword, he denounced "bureaucratic Squandermania", stating:
"The lavish expenditure necessitated by the Great War, coupled with the swift de- preciation in the value of money, set in motion extravagant tendencies which for a time were shared by the entire nation. If after the Armistice the Government began to spend upon a scale which suggested that we had found great wealth instead of having lost much that we possessed, they were pursuing illusions which also misled the business world and the bulk of the general public. The orgy of spending was not confined to this country. It was visible in all countries" (Rothermere 1921, p. viii, my emphasis).
He warned that Britain faced the possibility of starvation, and that the government was demanding of the people money which was not there. He further claimed that if "Labour realised the appalling dangers which are imminent, the word 'strike' would be erased from its vocabulary" (ibid., p. ix). One of the central themes of the book was taxation:
"I find myself still imbued with my original belief that the first step necessary for our economic salvation is a root-and-branch reduction of Government expenditure. If that is done, the rest may follow. Without it, we are lost indeed. More nations have been destroyed by excessive taxation than from any other cause. There is no modern parallel for the appalling taxation under which the British nation is now being steadily crushed out of existence ... Except for a comparatively few people, this country cannot continue to sustain a standard income tax of six shillings in addition to the heavy Customs, Excise, and other dues, and to the huge rise in local rates. It is absolutely certain that even a people so docile as our own will only accept during the menace of war, a menace which has now receded, a Government demand that they shall work for nearly half of every day in order to meet the cost of a criminally wasteful public administration … When the income tax is excessive, it implies a rate of public expenditure which in one form or another imposes excessive burdens on the whole population. High taxation leads directly to unemployment …" (ibid., pp. ix-x, my emphasis).
He praised the pre-war era as a mythical past that should be restored:
"I wish we could get back to the old Whig tradition of frugality with the nation's purse. I read the other day that Mr. Gladstone was so passionate an advocate of national economy that he grudged the money spent on a few flowers for the garden at the back of 10 Downing Street. At this juncture Government squandering is a form of sabotage. It devours the financial resources necessary to restore trade, and it is just as effectual in stopping economic recovery as the smashing of machinery and the tearing up of railway lines" (ibid., p. 7, my emphasis).
Lord Rothermere went on to attack social programmes such as the housing scheme and investments in education, even arguing that 14-year-old kids should go to work instead of attending school:
"I must again call attention to the monetary side of the Housing Act, which appears to be a striking example of muddled finance … I regard the Housing Act in its present form as destined to fail …
"Again, I view with disquietude the trend of our expensive educational policy. I am well aware that in quarters which cultivate pedantry my views on this subject may be regarded with scorn, but I say emphatically that there is no special sanctity in educational schemes, and that they must be examined in the light of common sense. As things stand, it is a mistake to keep back the bulk of our youths and girls too long from the paramount task of learning to earn their own living. The knowledge they require to fit themselves for the battle of life is not gained in schools and colleges alone. For the majority of the community there is such a thing as being too long at school … Aptitude for business or industry is best acquired in the teens, and the plunge should not be too long delayed" (ibid., p.11, my emphasis).
As we can see, Lord Rothermere claimed that there was no money to fund government spending, although in reality he was saying that he did not want to pay taxes to fund spending. He also argued that educating and housing the people were not a priority, or even desirable, thus creating a narrative in which harsh competition and poverty had to be accepted as simple facts of human existence. Most of his articles follow the same line of reasoning.
So fierce was his opposition to government spending that he decided to get involved in politics. In January 1921, he threw his support behind a candidate challenging the Conservatives on an "anti-waste" platform: Sir Thomas Polson, a Director of the British Motor Trade Corporation whom Rothermere had met while Director-General of the Army Clothing Department. At the Dover by-election, Polson managed to unseat the Conservative incumbent.
Following the Dover victory, Lord Rothermere announced in the Sunday Pictorial the founding of a new party: the "Anti-Waste League". He made himself president of the League, while Polson served as treasurer. The sole purpose of the party was to advocate for a reduction of government spending and taxation. The strategy was to attack the Conservatives from the right.
The Anti-Waste League went on to win two by-elections at St George's and at Hertford in June 1921. In the Westminster (Abbey) by-election in August, the official Conservative candidate held on to his seat only because he ran as a "Constitutional and Anti-Waste" candidate. Conservative MP Esmond Harmsworth (Lord Rothermere's son) became leader of the League's Parliamentary group and its chairman, though he retained the Conservative whip (Boothroyd 2001, p. 15; Cowling 1971, p. 56; Pugh 1988, p. 141; Taylor 1996, p. 244).
Using a contemporary term, the Anti-Waste League could be described as a "protest party" that attacked the governing establishment and the bureaucratic apparatus in order to defend the interests of certain sections of society. In this case, the business community and segments of the middle class were united in their growing dislike of the government, because they felt that its policies were harming them.
The financial instability caused by the overheating economy had led to losses in the value of stocks and shares, owned by upper and middle class voters. They resented high taxes, especially the income tax. Various groups, such as the Middle Class Union, founded in 1919, local taxpayers' associations and conservative constituents began to agitate against the government, demanding cuts in public spending and taxes, and a return to pre-war financial orthodoxy. In the party conferences of 1920 and 1921, the grassroots openly revolted against the Conservative leadership, compelling many party candidates to declare that they would run as independents in the next election.
At the same time, the Treasury, the Bank of England and financial interests within the City of London were also calling for reduced spending and taxation in order to protect Britain's financial status in the world economy. At the beginning, the business community and the middle class had been supportive of Lloyd George, because he was viewed as a bulwark against socialism and the Labour Party. But they turned against him due to the high level of spending and taxation, and his inability to rein in labour movements.
Criticism of projects such as the costly housing scheme was growing. Lloyd George's government, instead of opposing the left, appeared itself revolutionary, appeasing labour demands and creating a new type of state-led economy (see Smith 1997, pp. 72-73).
Welfare spending was under assault. For example, it was argued that workers refused to take jobs because they received unemployment benefits (the 'dole'). The image of the lazy dole recipient was created and spread by the right-wing press. As a Daily Mail correspondent wrote: "It is almost impossible to get a domestic servant in this town, and it is certainly high time this dole business ceased. The streets are full of girls … who, frankly, say that as long as they are paid to do nothing they will continue just as they are" (quoted in: Lethbridge 2013, p. 152).
There was also a cultural and moral component to criticism of the government. As Smith (1997) explained:
"Much of the Conservative passion for retrenchment by 1920-1 sprang from a desire to rekindle traditional, and seemingly lost, values. High government expenditure and excessive welfare provision destroyed personal responsibility and reverence for the family. Boom conditions, by encouraging militancy and wage demands, sapped respect for established authority and the rule of traditional educated Ć©lites. An interventionist government also undermined the balance of the constitution by advancing the power and influence of trade unions, and interfered in precincts of society that were the traditional role and function of the Church, landlords and local representatives … Part of the moral backlash was nostalgia for the prewar era, a desire to return to 'certainties and convention at a time of rapid change and instability'" (Smith 1997, pp. 73-74, my emphasis).
Backlash against the government began to push the Conservatives further to the right. In April 1920, less than three months after the beginning of Lord Rothermere's anti-waste campaign, Austen Chamberlain, the Chancellor, raised the bank rate. This led to a "deflationary regime" that ended the economic boom. Unemployment rose from 2 to 18 percent. The bargaining power of trade unions was thus diminished. Manufacturing collapsed to three-quarters of its 1913 level and GDP to four-fifths of its 1913 level. The long-term goal was to restore the gold standard, a tenet of pre-war financial orthodoxy. This would be achieved in 1925.
In March 1921, Lord Addison was replaced by the more conservative Sir Alfred Mond, who immediately scaled back the housing scheme. In August 1921, the government appointed a committee under Sir Eric Geddes to examine spending reduction. His report recommended a cut of £175 million from the government's budget, hitting particularly hard the areas of housing, education and unemployment. Although resistance from some members of the government managed to limit spending cuts to one-third of the initial proposed sum, it signalled the winding down of the post-war drive to use the state to achieve social improvements. The 1922 budget cut not only spending, but also taxes, thus implementing most demands of the "anti-waste" campaign (Pugh 1988, pp. 141-143; Smith 1997, p. 75).
The next election proved that the Conservatives had a coalition capable of winning without having to compromise with the left. In 1922, the Conservative Party won 344 seats, with just 38.5 percent of the vote. Labour received 29.7 percent, gaining 142 seats. The Liberals led by H. H. Asquith collapsed, winning only 18.9 percent of the vote and 62 seats. Lloyd George ran as a National Liberal, and his party garnered 9.9 percent of the vote and 53 seats. The division between Asquith and Lloyd George liberals greatly benefited the Conservatives. Labour, though it gained more votes than in the previous election, proved to be a useful bogeyman for right-wing propaganda, consolidating the support of upper and middle class electorate for the Tories.
Faced with attacks from the anti-waste movement, the Conservatives had shifted to the right, co-opted Lord Rothermere's agenda, and in the process become the dominant party in Parliament. They propagated a traditional, financially prudent, small-state ideology, regaining the support of the middle class. In cultural terms, they appealed to tradition, patriotism, imperial grandeur, stability, and to the mythical image of a tranquil, rural, religious country (Smith 1997, p. 79).
Since the Conservatives adopted an agenda of austerity and financial orthodoxy, anti-waste activism soon subsided. But Lord Rothermere continued his political engagement. He and Lord Beaverbrook found a new cause: solving Britain's economic problems by turning the Empire into a free trade area protected by high tariffs. They backed the United Empire Party (UEP), and endorsed its by-election candidate in 1930, who won the Tory seat of Paddington, an upset compounded by another defeat at East Islington, where the Conservative candidate arrived in third, after Labour and UEP. The Conservatives once again ceded ground and implemented some imperial preference policies (Curran et al. 1991, p. 60).
In the following years, Lord Rothermere shifted further and further to the right. He became an admirer of fascism, and used his newspapers and personal influence to spread far right propaganda.
In July 1933, following Hitler's rise to power, Rothermere wrote an editorial in the Daily Mail titled "Youth Triumphant", praising the Nazi regime:
"Something far more significant than a new Government has arisen among the Germans. There has been a sudden expansion of their national spirit … Youth has taken command."
He dismissed reports of Nazi violence as exaggerations, and he made anti-Semitic statements justifying Nazi ideology:
"In the last days of the pre-Hitler regime there were twenty times as many Jewish Government officials in Germany as had existed before the war. Israelites of international attachments were insinuating themselves into key positions in the German administrative machine." Hitler, he concluded, had "saved his country" (quoted in: Olmsted 2022, p. 29).
The Nazis used Rothermere's "Youth Triumphant" article for their propaganda. Hitler praised Rothermere as "one of the very greatest of all Englishmen" and stated that the Daily Mail was "doing an immense amount of good" (ibid.).
In 1934, Rothermere endorsed the British Union of Fascists (BUF), helping the small and obscure organisation gain more members thanks to his newpapers' coverage (Curran et al. 1991, pp. 60-61).
Although he withdrew his endorsement after about five months, he continued to support the Nazi regime. Already in 1933 he had reached out to Hitler through Stephanie zu Hohenlohe, an Austrian aristocrat. He also cultivated ties with the German ambassador to Britain Joachim von Ribbentrop.
In December 1934, Rothermere travelled to Berlin and Munich. There he met with Hitler and other leading Nazis, including Gƶring and Goebbels. A banquet was thrown in his honour at the Reich Chancellery. Afterwards, Rothermere and Hitler would occasionally exchange letters (Curran et al. 1991, pp. 60-61; Gƶrtemaker 2022, p. 151).
Rothermere was one of the most influential voices in favour of appeasement and cooperation with the Nazis.
"Our two great Nordic countries should pursue resolutely a policy of appeasement for, whatever anyone may say, our two great countries should be the leaders of the world", he told Joachim von Ribbentrop on 7 July 1939 (quoted in: Norton-Taylor 2020, chapter 6, my emphasis)
Ten days later, Rothermere wrote a letter to Hitler:
"My Dear FĆ¼hrer, I have watched with understanding and interest the progress of your great and superhuman work in regenerating your country … The British people, now like Germany strongly rearmed, regard the German people with admiration as valorous adversaries in the past, but I am sure that there is no problem between our two countries which cannot be settled by consultation and negotiation" (ibid., my emphasis).
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. At 11.15 a.m. on September 3, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced that the UK was "at war with Germany".
In 1945, the Labour Party under the leadership of Clement Attlee won the General Election. The Labour government implemented a programme of reform and welfare unprecedented in UK history. In 1946 it created the National Health Service, which made healthcare free on the basis of citizenship. It introduced social security. It nationalised one-fifth of the economy, including the coal industry, electricity utilities, railways and long-distance haulage. Between 1945 and 1951, it oversaw the construction of more than 1 million homes, 80 percent of which were social housing.
Ball, Stuart (1996). The Conservative Party and British Politics, 1902-1951.
Boothroyd, D. (2001). The History of British Political Parties.
Cowling, M. (1971). The Impact of Labour, 1920-1924.
Cracknell, R., Uberoi, E., Burton, M. (2023). UK Election Statistics: 1918- 2022, A Long Century of Elections.
Curran, J., Seaton, J. (1991). Power Without Responsibility. The Press and Broadcasting in Britain.
Fraser, D. (2017). The Evolution of the British Welfare State.
Gƶrtemaker, H. (2022). Hitler’s Court.
Lethbridge, L. (2013). Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times.
Norton-Taylor, R. (2020). The State of Secrecy.
Olmsted, K. S. (2022). The Newspaper Axis. Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler.
Pugh, M. (1988). Lloyd George.
Smith, J. (1997). The Taming of Democracy. The Conservative Party, 1880-1924.
Taylor, S. J. (1996). The Great Outsiders. Northcliffe, Rothermere and the Daily Mail.
The press magnate was Lord Rothermere. He and his brother, Lord Northcliffe, owned some of the most popular British newspapers of the time, such as the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Pictorial, the Sunday Mail, The Times and the Daily Mail (Curran et al. 1991, pp. 50-51; Olmsted 2022, p. 21).
They used their media empires to shape public opinion in order to reinforce conservative values, oppose the rise of the Labour Party, and lambaste the Liberal-Conservative government's brief post-war support for investments in housing, education and welfare. But they also tapped into an emerging middle class resentment towards progressive policies and rapid social and economic change.
Angered by the government's agenda, Lord Rothermere published several articles against what he called "squandermania". Although he would benefit financially from lower taxes, he framed his political activism as being in the national interest. "For more than two years I have waged a rather lonely fight against Squandermania," he wrote in 1921. "I have done so in the national interest, and my only object is to serve my countrymen" (Olmsted 2022, p. 21).
In this article, I will discuss the UK government's post-war policy of increased welfare spending and regulation, the backlash it generated, the press barons' propaganda campaign, and the subsequent restoration of conservative economic and social policies.
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| Palace of Westminster 1921. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
The Election of 1918 and the Liberal-Conservative Coalition
On 6 December 1916, while the First World War was raging, David Lloyd George was appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, succeeding H. H. Asquith. Lloyd George formed a wartime coalition government, which included the Liberal Party, the Conservative and Unionist Party (colloquially known as the Tories), and the Labour Party.
In late 1917, political leaders began to plan for the end of the war and for the upcoming General Election. The last election had been held in December 1910. After the UK entered the war, Parliament passed annual bills to suspend elections while the conflict was ongoing.
The Conservatives were preoccupied with various challenges at home and abroad. First and foremost, the Bolshevik coup in Russia and the rise of the Labour Party in the UK coalesced into a fear that a left-wing government could pave the way for a radical upheaval.
The war had strengthened the Labour Party, which in its new 1918 constitution, drafted by Sidney Webb and Arthur Henderson, committed itself to a socialist agenda. Meanwhile, trade union membership rose from four million in 1914 to seven million in 1918.
Second, in 1918 Parliament passed the Representation of the People Act. The new law extended the franchise to all men over twenty-one (over nineteen if they served in the army), and to women over thirty who met a property qualification. 8.5 million women were eligible to vote, about two-thirds of the total female population. The electorate grew from eight million to twenty-one million. The addition of such a large number of voters, and particularly of working class and female ones, created uncertainty among Conservatives.
But at the election of December 1918, the Conservative-Liberal coalition won 53.7 percent of the vote, gaining 526 seats. The Labour Party won 20.8 percent of the vote, gaining only 57 seats.
Strong support for the Conservatives came from business groups and from the middle class. The middle class, especially the low middle class, had been bolstered by the war economy. By 1918 the number of people who paid income tax had risen threefold. As a result, there emerged over 200 "safe" conservative middle class seats representing voters opposed to ideas such as government interference with property, public spending and progressive reforms.
By constructing the image of a mythical class enemy as a threat to social order, and by presenting themselves as the bulwark against socialism and trade unionism, the Conservatives managed to gain solid support among upper middle class and middle class segments of society, and even among some working class groups (see Ball 1996, pp. 61-64; Cracknell et al. 2023, pp. 16-17; Smith 1997, pp. 67-69).
Progressive Policies and Right-wing Backlash
Initially, the Liberal-Conservative coalition was willing to implement bold economic plans. Although the government sought to defend the existing social order and retain the support of its middle class base, it also wanted to appeal to industrial labour and its working class voters by improving people's living standards (Ball 1996, p. 65; Smith 1997, p. 70).
The impetus for this ambitious programme derived from the wartime economy. The need for strengthening national defence during the conflict had led to an unprecedented enlargement of the function of the state, a greater amount of state intervention in the economy which was dubbed by the Manchester Guardian "War Socialism" (Fraser 2017, chapter 9).
Lloyd George's rise to Prime Minister was partly due to his willingness to embrace a state-controlled economy to win the war, which his predecessor, H. H. Asquith, had been reluctant to accept.
In order to mobilise the forces of the nation, the Lloyd George government took over the management of key sectors of the economy: the railways, shipping, the munition industry (it funded state enterprises to compete with private ones), energy, housing and food.
Coal, rents and food prices were controlled, agricultural production was stimulated by the state. Food subsidies and rationing of essential items such as meat, sugar and butter were introduced. Public expenditure increased tenfold, with the national debt rising from £650 million to nearly £7,500 million. To fund government spending, taxes were increased. The wartime state of crisis created the political will to expand the role of government to an extent that would have been unthinkable before (ibid.).
Lloyd George was convinced that the use of state power during the war could be continued in peacetime to solve economic and social issues. In 1917 he established the Ministry of Reconstruction, headed by Christopher Addison. The War Cabinet stated that reconstruction was "not so much a question of rebuilding society as it was before the war, but of moulding a better world out of the social and economic conditions which have come into being during the war".
Lloyd George was aware that shortly after Britain's military victory the public was in the "exalted mood" for doing "big things", but that the opportunity had to be "seized immediately", or else that mood would evaporate (ibid.).
The priorities for the Lloyd George government were the demobilisation of soldiers, health, housing, education and unemployment insurance.
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| David Lloyd George, via Wikimedia Commons |
One of Addison's first tasks in the new Ministry was housing. It was estimated that a shortage of around 600,000 houses had been created by the suspension of housing construction during the war. Lloyd George promised that the government would build "homes fit for heroes" for the soldiers returning from the battlefields.
The government believed that in order to avoid a Bolshevik-style uprising, they had to deliver better social conditions. Speaking of the housing plan, Lloyd George told his Cabinet in 1919: "Even if it costs a hundred million pounds, what was that compared to the stability of the state?" (ibid.).
In 1919, the Housing and Town Planning Act was passed, which assigned to local authorities the duty to supply housing, and provided Treasury subsidies to local councils and private builders (ibid.).
The coalition continued the "inflationary regime" of the wartime economy in order to maintain high levels of employment and rising wages, job security for workers and greater bargaining power for trade unions.
The high level of taxation of the war years was retained in order to fund government expenditure. In 1918, income tax stood at 6s (shillings) in the pound (equal to 30 percent), compared to 1s in the pound in 1914.
New ministries for health and transportation were established, the latter with the expectation that it would be in charge of the railway system as soon as it was nationalised. New trade boards were created to set minimum wages in various sectors of the economy such as agriculture and engineering. In 1921, a 33.5 percent tariff on imported goods was introduced (Smith 1997, pp. 70-71).
H. A. L. Fisher, President of the Board of Education in David Lloyd George's government, drew up a law that passed as the Education Act of 1918. It raised the school leaving age from 12 to 14 and instituted a programme of school-building and evening classes for those aged 14-18. It abolished all fees in state elementary schools, and transferred about 60 percent of school funding from local authorities to the central government.
In 1921, a Committee under Lord Burnham addressed the thorny issue of teachers' salaries, raising them to more than twice their pre-war level, though women were not granted equal salaries with their male colleagues (Pugh 1988, p. 139).
Social welfare schemes were expanded. The old-age pension was raised from £26 5s a year to £47 5s. Unemployed benefits, due to expire in mid-1919, were extended to March 1920. The same year the Unemployment Insurance Act was passed, which not only extended a previous 1911 scheme, but also added about 12 million more workers, although it excluded farm labourers and domestic servants (Pugh 1988, p. 139).
However, the bonanza of the immediate post-war years began to draw criticism from two of the Conservative Party's key constituencies: segments of the middle class and the business community. The press barons would soon use their influence to give voice to conservative resentment.
The Press Barons
The era between 1890 and 1920 saw a rapid expansion and consolidation of the British media industry. A leading role in this process was played by the Harmsworth family.
By 1921, Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere, controlled the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Pictorial, the Daily Record, the Glasgow Evening News, and the Sunday Mail.
His brother, Alfred Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Northcliffe, controlled The Times, the Daily Mail, The Observer, the Weekly Dispatch (later renamed Sunday Dispatch), and the London Evening News.
Jointly they owned the large magazine group Amalgamated Press. Their brother, Sir Robert Leicester Harmsworth, had a chain of newspapers in the southwest of England. Their press empire had a circulation of over 6 million, one of the largest media groups in the Western world at the time.
The ideology of Lord Northcliffe and Lord Rothermere can be described as a mix of "capitalism" and "nationalism". They believed in private enterprise, individual effort, and national strength. Both were hostile to high taxation, high levels of government spending and intervention in the economy, an attitude that was reflected in their newspapers (Cowling 1971, pp. 45-47; Curran et al. 1991, pp. 50-51).
Today, Lord Rothermere's great-grandson, Jonathan Harold Esmond Vere Harmsworth, 4th Viscount Rothermere, is the chairman and controlling shareholder of the Daily Mail and General Trust, which owns various media outlets, including the Daily Mail, Metro and MailOnline.
Other major newspaper publishers of the time were Lord Camrose and Lord Kemsley (the "Berry Brothers"), and Lord Beaverbrook, the owner of the Daily Express, a sensationalist tabloid newspaper that targeted conservative, patriotic-minded working class readers.
In the interwar period there was an increase in the sales of national newspapers, which overtook for the first time local ones. The combined circulation of daily national papers rose from 5.4 million in 1920 to 10.6 million in 1939.
In the 1920s, Beaverbrook, Rothermere, Camrose and Kemsley established a dominant position in the market, owning nearly half of all national and local papers, and nearly one-third of all Sunday papers, with a combined circulation of 13 million (Curran et al. 1991, pp. 51-52).
Press barons used their newspapers to advance their political ideology, though they did so to varying degrees depending on how much control they chose to exercise on each paper.
Beaverbrook later told the first Royal Commission on the Press (1947–49) that he ran the Daily Express "merely for the purpose of making propaganda and with no other motive" (Curran et al. 1991, pp. 52-53, 56).
The main impact of the press barons on society "lay in the way in which their papers provided cumulative support for conservative values and reinforced opposition, particularly among the middle class, to progressive change. The papers controlled by the press barons conjured up imaginary folk devils that served to strengthen commitment to dominant political norms and to unite the centre and the right against a common enemy" (Curran et al. 1991, p. 61, my emphasis).
One example of how the press barons could influence politics, ally themselves with conservative forces, and bring about a shift in public opinion, was Lord Rothermere's "Anti-Waste" campaign.
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| Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere (1930). Painting by Philip de LĆ”szlĆ³. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. |
"Squandermania" and Austerity Politics
Between 1919 and 1922, Lord Rothermere launched a virulent campaign against government spending, coining the term "squandermania". He urged cuts in public spending, the sale of publicly owned enterprises, lower taxes and the abolition of wartime-style economic planning (Curran et al. 1991, p. 59).
He wrote a series of articles, which he published in the Sunday Pictorial and then released in 1921 as a book with the title "Solvency or Downfall? Squandermania and Its Story". In the foreword, he denounced "bureaucratic Squandermania", stating:
"The lavish expenditure necessitated by the Great War, coupled with the swift de- preciation in the value of money, set in motion extravagant tendencies which for a time were shared by the entire nation. If after the Armistice the Government began to spend upon a scale which suggested that we had found great wealth instead of having lost much that we possessed, they were pursuing illusions which also misled the business world and the bulk of the general public. The orgy of spending was not confined to this country. It was visible in all countries" (Rothermere 1921, p. viii, my emphasis).
He warned that Britain faced the possibility of starvation, and that the government was demanding of the people money which was not there. He further claimed that if "Labour realised the appalling dangers which are imminent, the word 'strike' would be erased from its vocabulary" (ibid., p. ix). One of the central themes of the book was taxation:
"I find myself still imbued with my original belief that the first step necessary for our economic salvation is a root-and-branch reduction of Government expenditure. If that is done, the rest may follow. Without it, we are lost indeed. More nations have been destroyed by excessive taxation than from any other cause. There is no modern parallel for the appalling taxation under which the British nation is now being steadily crushed out of existence ... Except for a comparatively few people, this country cannot continue to sustain a standard income tax of six shillings in addition to the heavy Customs, Excise, and other dues, and to the huge rise in local rates. It is absolutely certain that even a people so docile as our own will only accept during the menace of war, a menace which has now receded, a Government demand that they shall work for nearly half of every day in order to meet the cost of a criminally wasteful public administration … When the income tax is excessive, it implies a rate of public expenditure which in one form or another imposes excessive burdens on the whole population. High taxation leads directly to unemployment …" (ibid., pp. ix-x, my emphasis).
He praised the pre-war era as a mythical past that should be restored:
"I wish we could get back to the old Whig tradition of frugality with the nation's purse. I read the other day that Mr. Gladstone was so passionate an advocate of national economy that he grudged the money spent on a few flowers for the garden at the back of 10 Downing Street. At this juncture Government squandering is a form of sabotage. It devours the financial resources necessary to restore trade, and it is just as effectual in stopping economic recovery as the smashing of machinery and the tearing up of railway lines" (ibid., p. 7, my emphasis).
Lord Rothermere went on to attack social programmes such as the housing scheme and investments in education, even arguing that 14-year-old kids should go to work instead of attending school:
"I must again call attention to the monetary side of the Housing Act, which appears to be a striking example of muddled finance … I regard the Housing Act in its present form as destined to fail …
"Again, I view with disquietude the trend of our expensive educational policy. I am well aware that in quarters which cultivate pedantry my views on this subject may be regarded with scorn, but I say emphatically that there is no special sanctity in educational schemes, and that they must be examined in the light of common sense. As things stand, it is a mistake to keep back the bulk of our youths and girls too long from the paramount task of learning to earn their own living. The knowledge they require to fit themselves for the battle of life is not gained in schools and colleges alone. For the majority of the community there is such a thing as being too long at school … Aptitude for business or industry is best acquired in the teens, and the plunge should not be too long delayed" (ibid., p.11, my emphasis).
As we can see, Lord Rothermere claimed that there was no money to fund government spending, although in reality he was saying that he did not want to pay taxes to fund spending. He also argued that educating and housing the people were not a priority, or even desirable, thus creating a narrative in which harsh competition and poverty had to be accepted as simple facts of human existence. Most of his articles follow the same line of reasoning.
So fierce was his opposition to government spending that he decided to get involved in politics. In January 1921, he threw his support behind a candidate challenging the Conservatives on an "anti-waste" platform: Sir Thomas Polson, a Director of the British Motor Trade Corporation whom Rothermere had met while Director-General of the Army Clothing Department. At the Dover by-election, Polson managed to unseat the Conservative incumbent.
Following the Dover victory, Lord Rothermere announced in the Sunday Pictorial the founding of a new party: the "Anti-Waste League". He made himself president of the League, while Polson served as treasurer. The sole purpose of the party was to advocate for a reduction of government spending and taxation. The strategy was to attack the Conservatives from the right.
The Anti-Waste League went on to win two by-elections at St George's and at Hertford in June 1921. In the Westminster (Abbey) by-election in August, the official Conservative candidate held on to his seat only because he ran as a "Constitutional and Anti-Waste" candidate. Conservative MP Esmond Harmsworth (Lord Rothermere's son) became leader of the League's Parliamentary group and its chairman, though he retained the Conservative whip (Boothroyd 2001, p. 15; Cowling 1971, p. 56; Pugh 1988, p. 141; Taylor 1996, p. 244).
Using a contemporary term, the Anti-Waste League could be described as a "protest party" that attacked the governing establishment and the bureaucratic apparatus in order to defend the interests of certain sections of society. In this case, the business community and segments of the middle class were united in their growing dislike of the government, because they felt that its policies were harming them.
The financial instability caused by the overheating economy had led to losses in the value of stocks and shares, owned by upper and middle class voters. They resented high taxes, especially the income tax. Various groups, such as the Middle Class Union, founded in 1919, local taxpayers' associations and conservative constituents began to agitate against the government, demanding cuts in public spending and taxes, and a return to pre-war financial orthodoxy. In the party conferences of 1920 and 1921, the grassroots openly revolted against the Conservative leadership, compelling many party candidates to declare that they would run as independents in the next election.
At the same time, the Treasury, the Bank of England and financial interests within the City of London were also calling for reduced spending and taxation in order to protect Britain's financial status in the world economy. At the beginning, the business community and the middle class had been supportive of Lloyd George, because he was viewed as a bulwark against socialism and the Labour Party. But they turned against him due to the high level of spending and taxation, and his inability to rein in labour movements.
Criticism of projects such as the costly housing scheme was growing. Lloyd George's government, instead of opposing the left, appeared itself revolutionary, appeasing labour demands and creating a new type of state-led economy (see Smith 1997, pp. 72-73).
Welfare spending was under assault. For example, it was argued that workers refused to take jobs because they received unemployment benefits (the 'dole'). The image of the lazy dole recipient was created and spread by the right-wing press. As a Daily Mail correspondent wrote: "It is almost impossible to get a domestic servant in this town, and it is certainly high time this dole business ceased. The streets are full of girls … who, frankly, say that as long as they are paid to do nothing they will continue just as they are" (quoted in: Lethbridge 2013, p. 152).
There was also a cultural and moral component to criticism of the government. As Smith (1997) explained:
"Much of the Conservative passion for retrenchment by 1920-1 sprang from a desire to rekindle traditional, and seemingly lost, values. High government expenditure and excessive welfare provision destroyed personal responsibility and reverence for the family. Boom conditions, by encouraging militancy and wage demands, sapped respect for established authority and the rule of traditional educated Ć©lites. An interventionist government also undermined the balance of the constitution by advancing the power and influence of trade unions, and interfered in precincts of society that were the traditional role and function of the Church, landlords and local representatives … Part of the moral backlash was nostalgia for the prewar era, a desire to return to 'certainties and convention at a time of rapid change and instability'" (Smith 1997, pp. 73-74, my emphasis).
Backlash against the government began to push the Conservatives further to the right. In April 1920, less than three months after the beginning of Lord Rothermere's anti-waste campaign, Austen Chamberlain, the Chancellor, raised the bank rate. This led to a "deflationary regime" that ended the economic boom. Unemployment rose from 2 to 18 percent. The bargaining power of trade unions was thus diminished. Manufacturing collapsed to three-quarters of its 1913 level and GDP to four-fifths of its 1913 level. The long-term goal was to restore the gold standard, a tenet of pre-war financial orthodoxy. This would be achieved in 1925.
In March 1921, Lord Addison was replaced by the more conservative Sir Alfred Mond, who immediately scaled back the housing scheme. In August 1921, the government appointed a committee under Sir Eric Geddes to examine spending reduction. His report recommended a cut of £175 million from the government's budget, hitting particularly hard the areas of housing, education and unemployment. Although resistance from some members of the government managed to limit spending cuts to one-third of the initial proposed sum, it signalled the winding down of the post-war drive to use the state to achieve social improvements. The 1922 budget cut not only spending, but also taxes, thus implementing most demands of the "anti-waste" campaign (Pugh 1988, pp. 141-143; Smith 1997, p. 75).
The next election proved that the Conservatives had a coalition capable of winning without having to compromise with the left. In 1922, the Conservative Party won 344 seats, with just 38.5 percent of the vote. Labour received 29.7 percent, gaining 142 seats. The Liberals led by H. H. Asquith collapsed, winning only 18.9 percent of the vote and 62 seats. Lloyd George ran as a National Liberal, and his party garnered 9.9 percent of the vote and 53 seats. The division between Asquith and Lloyd George liberals greatly benefited the Conservatives. Labour, though it gained more votes than in the previous election, proved to be a useful bogeyman for right-wing propaganda, consolidating the support of upper and middle class electorate for the Tories.
Faced with attacks from the anti-waste movement, the Conservatives had shifted to the right, co-opted Lord Rothermere's agenda, and in the process become the dominant party in Parliament. They propagated a traditional, financially prudent, small-state ideology, regaining the support of the middle class. In cultural terms, they appealed to tradition, patriotism, imperial grandeur, stability, and to the mythical image of a tranquil, rural, religious country (Smith 1997, p. 79).
Since the Conservatives adopted an agenda of austerity and financial orthodoxy, anti-waste activism soon subsided. But Lord Rothermere continued his political engagement. He and Lord Beaverbrook found a new cause: solving Britain's economic problems by turning the Empire into a free trade area protected by high tariffs. They backed the United Empire Party (UEP), and endorsed its by-election candidate in 1930, who won the Tory seat of Paddington, an upset compounded by another defeat at East Islington, where the Conservative candidate arrived in third, after Labour and UEP. The Conservatives once again ceded ground and implemented some imperial preference policies (Curran et al. 1991, p. 60).
In the following years, Lord Rothermere shifted further and further to the right. He became an admirer of fascism, and used his newspapers and personal influence to spread far right propaganda.
In July 1933, following Hitler's rise to power, Rothermere wrote an editorial in the Daily Mail titled "Youth Triumphant", praising the Nazi regime:
"Something far more significant than a new Government has arisen among the Germans. There has been a sudden expansion of their national spirit … Youth has taken command."
He dismissed reports of Nazi violence as exaggerations, and he made anti-Semitic statements justifying Nazi ideology:
"In the last days of the pre-Hitler regime there were twenty times as many Jewish Government officials in Germany as had existed before the war. Israelites of international attachments were insinuating themselves into key positions in the German administrative machine." Hitler, he concluded, had "saved his country" (quoted in: Olmsted 2022, p. 29).
The Nazis used Rothermere's "Youth Triumphant" article for their propaganda. Hitler praised Rothermere as "one of the very greatest of all Englishmen" and stated that the Daily Mail was "doing an immense amount of good" (ibid.).
In 1934, Rothermere endorsed the British Union of Fascists (BUF), helping the small and obscure organisation gain more members thanks to his newpapers' coverage (Curran et al. 1991, pp. 60-61).
Although he withdrew his endorsement after about five months, he continued to support the Nazi regime. Already in 1933 he had reached out to Hitler through Stephanie zu Hohenlohe, an Austrian aristocrat. He also cultivated ties with the German ambassador to Britain Joachim von Ribbentrop.
In December 1934, Rothermere travelled to Berlin and Munich. There he met with Hitler and other leading Nazis, including Gƶring and Goebbels. A banquet was thrown in his honour at the Reich Chancellery. Afterwards, Rothermere and Hitler would occasionally exchange letters (Curran et al. 1991, pp. 60-61; Gƶrtemaker 2022, p. 151).
Rothermere was one of the most influential voices in favour of appeasement and cooperation with the Nazis.
"Our two great Nordic countries should pursue resolutely a policy of appeasement for, whatever anyone may say, our two great countries should be the leaders of the world", he told Joachim von Ribbentrop on 7 July 1939 (quoted in: Norton-Taylor 2020, chapter 6, my emphasis)
Ten days later, Rothermere wrote a letter to Hitler:
"My Dear FĆ¼hrer, I have watched with understanding and interest the progress of your great and superhuman work in regenerating your country … The British people, now like Germany strongly rearmed, regard the German people with admiration as valorous adversaries in the past, but I am sure that there is no problem between our two countries which cannot be settled by consultation and negotiation" (ibid., my emphasis).
On September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. At 11.15 a.m. on September 3, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announced that the UK was "at war with Germany".
In 1945, the Labour Party under the leadership of Clement Attlee won the General Election. The Labour government implemented a programme of reform and welfare unprecedented in UK history. In 1946 it created the National Health Service, which made healthcare free on the basis of citizenship. It introduced social security. It nationalised one-fifth of the economy, including the coal industry, electricity utilities, railways and long-distance haulage. Between 1945 and 1951, it oversaw the construction of more than 1 million homes, 80 percent of which were social housing.
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