Editing Common Wealth Party (section)

==The war years==
'''Common Wealth''' was founded on 26 July 1942 in [[World War II]] by the alliance of two left-wing groups: the [[1941 Committee]] &ndash; a think tank centred on ''[[Picture Post]]'' owner [[Edward G. Hulton]] and its 'star' writers [[J.B. Priestley]] and Spanish Civil War veteran [[Tom Wintringham]];<ref name="bh">Ben Hughes, ''They shall not pass!: the British battalion at Jarama: the Spanish Civil War''. Botley, Oxford, UK: Osprey Pub., 2011. {{ISBN|9781849085496}} (p. 227).</ref> and the neo-Christian ''Forward March movement'' led by [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal Party]] [[Member of Parliament]] (MP) Sir [[Richard Acland]], along with independents such as the industrialist and designer [[Robert Dudley Best]]<ref name="best">[[Robert Dudley Best]], ''My Modern Movement'', EnvelopeBooks 2021</ref> and former Liberals who believed that the party had no direction. It aimed to be more appealing to Labour's potential voters than those leaning towards Conservatism.<ref name="bookrags.com">http://www.bookrags.com/tandf/commonwealth-party-tf/ {{Dead link|date=February 2022}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last=Lovell|first=Kristopher|year=2017|title=The 'Common Wealth Circus': Popular Politics and the Popular Press in Wartime Britain, 1941–1945|journal=Media History|volume=23|issue=3–4|pages=433|doi=10.1080/13688804.2017.1353908|s2cid=158931370}}</ref>

Common Wealth stood for three principles: Common Ownership, Morality in Politics and Vital [[Democracy]].<ref name="bh" /> Disagreeing with the [[War-time electoral truce|electoral pact]] established with other parties in the wartime coalition, key figures in the 1941 Committee began sponsoring independent candidates in by-elections under the banner of the '''Nine Point Group'''.

Following the electoral success of [[Tom Driberg]] with this support in 1942, the Committee, a social movement, proposed becoming a political party through a merger with Forward March, though many preferred movement status.  Through pressure from Priestley and Wintringham, 'Party' was never formally part of Common Wealth's name. The group was led by Acland (MP), [[Vernon Bartlett]], J.B. Priestley, and Tom Wintringham. Its programme of common ownership echoed that of the Labour Party but had more idealistic perspective, later termed "libertarian socialist". It came to reject the State-dominated form of socialism adopted by Labour under the influence of [[Beatrice Webb|Beatrice]] and [[Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield|Sidney Webb]], aligning itself instead with [[co-operative]], [[syndicalist]] and [[guild socialist]] traditions. A party proposal became that personal income, by taxation, should have an upper limit.<ref name="bookrags.com"/>

Though the party was initially chaired by Priestley, he stepped down after just a few months, unable to reconcile himself with the politics of Acland – who as a sitting MP he viewed as exerting undue influence. Wintringham was the natural successor but deferred to Acland, despite very real political differences between them.

Acland himself had a less easy-going approach. In his book ''The Forward March'' he had claimed that in Britain under a Forward March government:

<blockquote>''[it is]'' the community as a whole which must decide whether or not a man shall be employed upon our resources, and how and when and in what manner he shall work ...''[the community will]'' run camps for shirkers on very tolerable conditions.</blockquote>

Acland went on to say of these camps:

<blockquote>[Hitler] has stumbled across (or has needed to make use of) a small part, or perhaps one should say one particular aspect of, what will ultimately be required of humanity.</blockquote>

These differences, which led to Priestley stepping down from the leadership and his gradual withdrawal from the party (though he continued to support and endorse individual candidates), were a source of continued tension between former 1941 Committee and Nine Point Group members on one side and Forward Marchers and Christian Socialists on the other.

These differences in approach within Common Wealth were highlighted in a 1944 booklet by Tom and [[Kitty Wintringham]] entitled ''Fellowship or Morality?''. Wintringham encouraged [[C. A. Smith]] to become party chairman, the two having been brought together for the journal ''[[Left (journal)|Left]]'', after quitting their respective Marxist parties (the [[Communist Party of Great Britain]] and the [[Independent Labour Party]]) for their support for the war, and Smith's election in 1944 strengthened the party's syndicalist, libertarian vision.

The war administration was an all-party coalition government incorporating the [[Conservative Party (UK)|Conservative]], [[Labour Party (UK)|Labour]], and [[Liberal Party (UK)|Liberal Parties]], who agreed that their MP vacancies should be filled unopposed. Common Wealth intervention allowed a radicalising electorate to return socialist candidates in Conservative seats: in [[Eddisbury (UK Parliament constituency)|Eddisbury]], [[Skipton (UK Parliament constituency)|Skipton]] and [[Chelmsford (UK Parliament constituency)|Chelmsford]].

In February 1943, the party contested and lost four by-elections: on the tenth in [[1943 Ashford by-election|Ashford]] [[Catherine Williamson]] against the Conservative by 5,000 votes; the next day, Wintringham in [[Midlothian and Peebles Northern (UK Parliament constituency)|North Midlothian]] against that party's candidate by 869 votes; on the sixteenth and twenty-third against others in [[1943 Portsmouth North by-election|North Portsmouth]] and [[1943 Watford by-election|Watford]] by more than 2,000 votes.<ref name=":0" />

In April, [[John Eric Loverseed]] amounted to the first winning candidate returned to the Commons, by winning [[Eddisbury (UK Parliament constituency)|Eddisbury]].<ref name=":0" /> In November 1944, he left the party and joined Labour in May of the next year.<ref name="craig">[[F. W. S. Craig]], ''Minor Parties at British Parliamentary Elections''</ref> In the [[1945 United Kingdom general election|1945 general election]], voters deserted Common Wealth for Labour &ndash; only Chelmsford (not fought by Labour) was held. In 1946 after Wintringham left the party, that MP, [[Ernest Millington]], crossed the floor to join the Labour Party.