Peace Ballot

The Peace Ballot of 1935 was a nationwide questionnaire of five questions attempting to discover the British public's attitude to the League of Nations and collective security.

The Ballot was largely organised by the League of Nations Union and spearheaded by the LNU's president, Lord Robert Cecil. It was not an official referendum, although millions of people voted in it.

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.

Half-a-million supporters asked all those registered to vote in parliamentary elections. From February 1935 onwards through to May there was a rapid rise in the numbers of people voting in the Ballot. The poll was completed in June 1935 and the final results were announced on 28th June 1935. The total number who voted was approximately 11,000,000. By contrast 20,991,488 of people voted in the general election five months later.

The first question of the Ballot was: Should Great Britain remain a Member of the League of Nations?. "Yes", 11,090,387. "No", 355,883.

The second question was: Are you in favour of all-round reduction of armaments by international agreement?. "Yes", 10,470,489. "No", 862,775.

The third question was: Are you in favour of an all-round abolition of national military and naval aircraft by international agreement?. "Yes", 9,533,558. "No", 1,689,786.

The fourth question was: Should the manufacture and sale of armaments for private profit be prohibited by international agreement?. "Yes", 10,417,329. "No", 775,415.

The fifth and last question was: Do you consider that, if a nation insists on attacking another, the other nations should combine to compel it to stop—

(a) by economic and non-military measures: "Yes", 10,027,608. "No", 635,074.

(b) if necessary, military measures: "Yes", 6,784,368. "No", 2,351,981. [Figures are taken from Harold Nicolson, 'British Public Opinion and Foreign Policy', "The Public Opinion Quarterly", Vol. 1, No. 1. (January, 1937), pp. 57-8.]

The Ballot has been criticised by historians for being apparently amateurish and unscientific in attempting to gauge the public's mood and for the questions being apparently loaded and designed to get the response wanted. It has also been criticised for not asking the public if Britain should re-arm if other countries continued to re-arm.

The Peace Ballot's supporters 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, Anglican Canon Richard Sheppard, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Sybil Thorndike, Miles Malleson, Jack Hobbs, Diana Wynyard, St John Ervine, E. M. Delderfield, A. A. Milne, Rose Macaulay, Professor J. B. S. Haldane, Dr. A. D. Lindsay (the Master of Balliol), Lady Rhondda, Sir Arthur Salter, Sir Norman Angell and H. A. L. Fisher plus sixty-one prominent surgeons and physicians.

Notes

References

*Dame Adelaide Livingstone, "The Peace Ballot: The Official History" (London, Gollancz 1935).
*Harold Nicolson, 'British Public Opinion and Foreign Policy', "The Public Opinion Quarterly", Vol. 1, No. 1. (January, 1937), pp. 53-63.
*A. J. P. Taylor, "English History 1914 - 1945" (Oxford, 1990).