Major John Stilwell

Major John Stilwell was an Alban democratic socialist politician who served as Prime Minister of Albion between 1931 and 1946. Serving during the Great Depression and Second World War, his handling of these crises has contributed to a popular reputation as one of Albion's greatest prime ministers. His ministry is the first in the Labour governing dynasty known as the High Muckamucks, which saw Labour govern Albion from 1931 to 1955.

Born in England, he immigrated to Albion in 1910. Prior to his entering politics, he had served as an educator and a union activist. He was elected to the House of Commons in 1922 as a relatively young dark-horse candidate and became a prominent figure in the Labour Party until assuming the party's leadership in 1929.

Stilwell led the Labour Party to an election victory in 1931 and implemented a popular selection of social welfare programs designed to mitigate the impact of the Great Depression. During the Second World War, he navigated internal party divisions concerning pacifism and militarism and led Albion's successful contributions to the war in the Pacific. The policies implemented by Stilwell's government contributed to the long-term development of Albion's manufacturing base and social safety net.

Early life
Stilwell was born in Great Torrington on November 3, 1888.

While attending Exeter University, he met and became engaged to Elisabeth Fielding, but put off the eventual ceremony in order to travel to Albion in 1910, where he taught history and literature at Buffalo Dale School, a high school in the then-small town of Stannassipi, Kisatchewan. Upon returning home in 1912, Stilwell and Fielding were married, then returned to Kisatchewan to settle down.

Political career
Well-known in the community as a prominent young educator by 1918, Stilwell ran for and won a seat on town council in that year's election.

Stilwell made his debut in federal politics in the 1922 election with the retirement of Stannassipi-Lastlake MP George S. Danfield. The seat was considered a likely Labour hold, and Stilwell was chosen to carry the party's banner that year. While he would go on to win election by a four-point margin over Liberal challenger R.S. Means, Labour would be defeated by Peter Forbes Tolman's Grits, consigning Stilwell and the rest of the Labour Party to the Opposition.

While initially a quieter presence in the House, Stilwell was influential in local politics in that he worked to organize regional farmers, labourers and other working-class people in the area into a formidable political machine. The Labour "muckamucks" he organized would go on to see success at the city council level and later in provincial politics, forming the nucleus of the later High Muckamucks machine. Stilwell would eventually emerge as a notable critic of the Tolman government's labour and agricultural policies. He was sufficiently successful that he won his seat again in 1926 with an increased mandate.

Stilwell was a prominent figure in the Tolman-Trench Affair of 1927. With Tolman's government hanging on by a thread and facing allegations of misuse of Department of Transportation funds, Stilwell put forward an amendment that would censure the government and compel its resignation. The amendment looked poised to come to the floor despite government efforts to forestall it, until Tolman approached Governor-General Lord Trench to request the dissolution of parliament. Tolman instead gave Labour Leader Richard Garner an opportunity to govern. Stilwell was in the conversation for a Cabinet position but declined an appointment as a minister without portfolio. The government was quickly defeated, and Stilwell retained his seat in the ensuing 1927 election, which saw Labour lose a few seats en route to a slightly more secure Tolman minority.

Leadership campaign
Garner's resignation as Labour leader in 1928 created a wide-open field in the party. The party went into its 1928 convention anticipating its first all-member leadership election. Party insiders were backing long-time Athabasca-area MP F. Clark MacMichael as their champion, but the rank-and-file, wary of MacMichael's perceived conciliatory attitude towards the right, increasingly backed Stilwell, who was seen as a dark horse. Stilwell performed surprisingly well on the first two ballots before pulling out a clear majority on the third ballot, mostly collecting supporters of party stalward T.S. Chatsworth after he fell off the second ballot.

Stilwell spent the years leading up to the next election both consolidating the Labour Party's weakened internal structure and mounting a robust criticism of Tolman on both economic and ethical grounds. The party structure Stilwell committed to constructing resembled the ones he'd sponsored in his home province, building alliances between farm workers and urban labourers to create an effective electoral machine.

1931 election
The onset of the Great Depression, combined with the Dust Bowl in the summer of 1930's impact on harvests in the east, delivered a significant blow to the Tolman government. Voters widely blamed the Liberals for ineffective efforts to forestall job losses.

Tolman had responded to the Depression by largely sticking to a laissez-faire economic policy, refusing to provide bailouts to the unemployed and predicting that "the businessman will guide us through this crisis." But his accession to Britain's Imperial Policy in terms of trade showed little success in forestalling the worst of the job losses. As protests and strikes broke out through 1930 and into the 1931 election run-up, Tolman's government responded with force. Blaming many of the protests on "communist agitators," Tolman's government utilized Section 103 of the Criminal Code of Albion to allow detention of suspected leftists with no presumption of innocence. Tolman infamously proclaimed his intention to "flatten Bolshevism in Albion beneath the iron heel of freedom."

As unrest mounted, the government opened a series of low-wage labour camps in the north, effectively forcibly deporting unemployed men to the colder parts of Albion to work for starvation wages. In urban areas, meanwhile, job losses escalated to the extent that the sight of bread lines and crowded soup kitchens became commonplace. The term "Tolmobile" emerged to describe an unfueled, engineless car drawn by a horse, an increasingly frequent sight in urban areas hit hardest by the loss of jobs.

The 1931 campaign pitted an increasingly unpopular Tolman against an electorate furious with hungry for change. Going into the election, a wide range of fringe parties joined the Liberals, Labour and Conservatives on the ballot. Stilwell went into the campaign promising to implement a program he described as the "Fair Society" initiative - a broad slate of social welfare programs designed to create a safety net for unemployed workers.

While Tolman campaigned on his "British Policy" approach and attempted to criticize Stilwell as "the Young Bolshevik," Stilwell declined to rise to Tolman's attacks. Labour largely resurrected "Doc" Green's successful playbook, mounting a grassroots campaign and mingling with workers on picket lines, at work camps and in soup kitchens. Wherever Stilwell went, he promoted his signature Fair Society policies.

The election delivered the most varied Parliamentary mix in history, with six parties and two independent MPs winning seats. All the major parties lost votes, but the largest losses fell to the Liberals, with Labour losing relatively few voters. The widespread vote splits were enough to deliver Labour and Stilwell a majority government.

First mandate - 1931-35
Stilwell was immediately confronted with the need to try and pull Albion out of the Great Depression. With a large slate of Fair Society promises to deliver on, he moved quickly to select a Cabinet of reformers who strongly supported his social programs. Notably, he named Battle River MP Margaret Derring Minister of Labour - the first woman ever appointed to Cabinet in the history of Albion. Derring, alongside Defence Minister Laurence Geddes (Kiottowa Bridgeview), Agriculture Minister John Burns (Fife-Marquette), Immigration Minister Andrew MacEwen (Granville Kingsway) and Trade Minister Neal Charles Melburne (Mackenzie), formed a close group of high-powered ministers known informally as the High Muckamucks, key influencers driving Stilwell's decisions.

Stilwell moved quickly to roll back the most harmful of Tolman's laissez-faire policies, deviating from British policy by implementing particular tariffs and easing others. The most consequential early bill to emerge from the Stilwell government was the National Unemployment Insurance Act, a massive piece of legislation that would provide cash payments to unemployed Alban workers. The Act was passed ahead of Christmas in 1931 but immediately challenged by the opposition Liberals and taken to the Supreme Court, delaying the payout of what Stilwell hoped would be a round of Christmas cheques for struggling workers.

The Supreme Court struck down Unemployment Insurance in 1932, claiming it was an illegal federal government imposition on jurisdiction constitutionally guaranteed to provincial governments. Stilwell promptly appealed to the Committee of the Privy Council, but the government had anticipated such a ruling and opened negotiations with the provinces to come to a memorandum of understanding concerning the program. By the end of 1932, the government had secured an agreement from the provinces to amend the constitution, ceding the federal government the power to administer the Unemployment Insurance program. Workers received their first unemployment cheques by December of 1932 through the initial provincial MOU, with the full federal program coming online for 1934 following ratification of the amendment.

The courts were a significant block on many of Stilwell's early initiatives. The Old Age Security Act of 1932 was similarly blocked by the court on jurisdictional grounds, but settled by the 1934 amendment. More permanent was the court's striking down of of the Minimum Wage Act and the Hours of Work Limitation Act, laws intended to both establish a nationwide wage floor and set a work week no longer than 40 hours. These laws remained in force for industries under solely federal jurisdiction, but Stilwell was obliged to spend much of his premiership badgering the Premiers to pass their own versions of the laws. All of them did, though minimum wage was not set at a consistent threshold across Albion.

Further establishments in Stilwell's first term included the late-1931 admission of Muskegon as a province, responding to long-held appeals from residents around Churchill tired of distant government from Stannassipi. His government went on to establish the Bank of Albion in 1933 as the counry's central bank and the Albion Broadcasting Corporation as the country's public broadcaster.

Stilwell's welfare programs were supported by a robust public infrastructure program driven by the National Infrastructure Trust. This robust building campaign created good-paying jobs constructing roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, ports and airfields across the country. Many of Albion's modern highways have their beginnings in early NIT roads built during the Depression. More controversially, Stilwell established the Albion Wheat Board and created a mandate for farmers in the east to ship grain through the Port of Churchill. The rates involved created tension with Eastern farmers;

Relations with the British Empire
Stilwell's relations with the United Kingdom weakened as Albion deviated from British policy, a move he felt comfortable in making following assertive advocacy for greater regional autonomy. This was realized early in his mandate with the late-1931 Statute of Westminster, which gave Albion legal autonomy as a self-governing Dominion, though the British Parliament retained authority to amend the constitution at the Alban Parliament's request.

With the passage of the Statute, Stilwell's government went on to abolish appeals to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1932, with civil appeals following in 1935.

Despite occasional friction with London, Stilwell continued to support an increased uptake of resources to Britain, a policy which prevented a highly trade-exposed Albion from being forced to default on its debts. However, he also sponsored business development initiatives domestically to try and diversify the economy away from what he felt was its Achilles' heel: An over-reliance on base commodities. Stilwell's policies spelled the end of the traditional "farming, forestry and fisheries" focus postulated by Amor Davida fifty years prior and marked a rapid transition towards a manufacturing economy. Alban firms established new branch relationships with British counterparts and started up production lines for domestic products, and new federal investments paved the way for companies such as Boeing Albion to increase their market share.

This divergence from British priorities was most reflected in Albion's military posture, particularly in procurement of aircraft and ships. Albion's immense geography and massive coastline required equipment with greater range than the typical British equipment, which was designed for short-range European engagements. Through Stilwell's first term, the government began a series of new investments in the military, laying down the first of a new generation of homebuilt ships and aircraft designed to move expediently through the country - and to put men to work.

1935 election
Labour rolled into the 1935 election with mixed reception, on the one hand acknowledged as moving in the right direction with his social programs, on the other criticized from both the right and the left for the continuing hardships of the Depression. Stilwell was perceived in some quarters to have failed to mitigate the economic crash's worst effects, running up the federal deficit in the process. Despite softening poll numbers, Labour maintained an advantage derived from the steady emergence of radical parties on both the right and the left.

The election saw Labour lose a net of eight seats, retaining their majority by a seven-seat margin but losing ground to the Liberals and Progressives. The vote saw the old Conservative Party wiped out in favour of far-right insurgent parties, mainly the National Socialist Labour Party - the only election in which a Nazi-aligned party won seats - and the the Christian Workers Party. The Communist Party also secured four seats, largely running on criticizing Stilwell from the left.

Second mandate - 1935-39
Stilwell went into his second term widely seen by the media as having been dealt a rebuke by a skeptical public.

He responded with an unlikely pivot, opening talks with the United States as part of an international initiative to battle the Depression. The result was the 1935 Reciprocal Trade Agreement, a turning point in Alban-US economic relations. The RTA reduced tariffs, ended tit-for-tat protectionism between the two countries and opened up Alban firms to produce goods for American markets. Among the most notable contracts would come in early 1936, when the US Army Air Corps procured the Flying Fortress bomber from Boeing Albion, designating it the B-17 - the largest order ever placed by the US military with an Alban supplier. The B-17 assembly lines, arming both countries in the ensuing years, would put Albans back to work building aircraft.

In late 1935, Stilwell signed legislation creating Trans-Albion Airways, the predecessor to Air Albion. The establishment coincided with the government's National Air Transport Strategy, on paper an initiative to provide equitable air transport, in fact a broad strategy to safeguard the sector against private monopolies and American buyouts. Trans-Albion was given priority in serving certain major international routes, buying up several smaller and failing airlines and rapidly becoming the country's largest air transport company, ahead of the privately-held Columbian Pacific Airways.

Matters of royal succession emerged as a fringe issue through 1936 with the accession of Edward VIII as monarch. The new monarch was viewed with some controversy over his relationship with a commoner. An American commoner. An American commoner divorcee - twice. While British media remained deferential over the Wallis Simpson affair, Alban media was more willing to cover it, and the public largely considered him scandalous. When he took the throne in 1936, far left voices in Parliament lobbied to take the opportunity to abolish the monarchy. Stilwell sidestepped the issue for months until Edward abdicated in favour of George VI, settling the issue instantly.

Foreign policy and the rise of Hitler
In March 1936, in response to the German remilitarization of the Rhineland, Stilwell's government quietly informed the British government that if Britain went to war with Germany over the Rhineland issue, Albion would provide logistical and material support. He would later inform the British that Albion would mobilize in the event of a German attack on Britain, but not in the event of an attack on another European country.

In 1937, Stilwell visited Nazi Germany and met with Adolf Hitler, optimistically hoping to find some way to calm rising tensions. The meeting did not go well. A strong egalitarian with no sympathy for racial supremacy, Stilwell came to believe Hitler was a dangerous fanatic whose principles oriented primarily around power and ethnocentrism and who was likely to violate any agreement made with him. In turn, Hitler viewed Stilwell as a cultural Bolshevik and the overlord of a degenerate people tainted by non-Aryan blood and culture - Stilwell was a speaker of Chinook Jargon. A rumour persists that Stilwell accidentally-on-purpose broke one of the taillights on Hitler's car before he left Berlin.

Influenced by his face-to-face meeting with the Nazi dictator, Stilwell became an abiding critic of Hitler. He was convinced that appeasing the Fuhrer would only incentivize him towards war, and he increasingly came to believe that the only way to stop a fascist was to, effectively, punch him in the face. At one point he said of Hitler, "I fear the world will sooner than later come to see the devil in the heart of this man. I cannot abide in Nazism its cruelty, its oppression of the Jewish nation, its regimentation of the society. In these respects, this demagogue Hitler is its perfect standard-bearer."

In 1938, during the crisis over Czechoslovakia that culminated in the cession of the Sudetenland to the Germans, Albans were skeptical of the agreement. Stilwell, who served as his own foreign minister during his second term, criticized the agreement as appeasement. He is reported to have said privately, "The Nazis have fooled Chamberlain, but they won't fool Stilwell. Stilwell is no fool."

Stilwell's egalitarianism - widely shared by his party - made Albion rather more open than much of the world to receiving refugees from far-right governments in Europe. The most notable example of Stilwell's altruism came in 1939, when the ship MS St. Louis arrived in Churchill with 600 Jewish refugees aboard. Overriding the concerns of immigration officials, Stilwell allowed the ship to dock. These refugees were among thousands of Jews Albion took in in the run-up to the war. They settled in cities throughout Albion, especially in the Golden Fishhook, bringing back stories of German persecutions of Jewish people. Labour took heavy fire from the right over this perceived openness to immigrants and their willingness to treat all Albans as equals, resulting in Jews, Asians, Eastern European and Italian immigrants, Afro-Albans and Indigenous people taking on a greater role in society.

Perceiving that conflict with Hitler might well be inevitable, Labour placed additional focus on the rearmament program commenced in 1934. A key focus of this program was the building up of an Alban navy and flying corps. A Pacific nation at its core, Albion would need ships in order to secure its vast coastline and aircraft to patrol its trackless north and immense ocean boundaries. In 1934, Albion's navy had just seven ships. By 1939, that number had grown significantly, and the nation had developed a budding air force.

These positions put Stilwell at odds with a big chunk of the public, but also with part of his caucus. A pacifist bloc of Labour MPs, led by party elder statesman T.S. Chatsworth, sought to avoid war at all costs and took the appeasement of Hitler as a good sign. While these MPs didn't form a large part of the party, Chatsworth - then the Minister of Trade - was ultimately shuffled out of Cabinet. The decisions left Stilwell open to attacks from the left and accusations that he was too quick to return to war, 20 years after the First World War.

1939 election
The scent of war on the horizon permeated the election of 1939. By this point, the economy had begun to recover, unemployment had fallen steadily, and the Depression was increasingly less of a political issue. Foreign policy became the central pillar of the campaign. Liberal Leader Royson Fuller, a former military man who had served at Vimy Ridge, sought to capture anti-war sentiment by positioning Stilwell as an out-of-touch warmonger who wasn't putting "Albion First," both by seeking war in Europe and by welcoming too many immigrants into society. His positions proved popular enough that, a month out from the election, the Liberals led in the polls and seemed poised to form a government.

Stilwell, however, was no slouch on the campaign trail, and he had an ace in his back pocket: The goodwill he'd built up with the public through his incredibly popular social programs. The Prime Minister positioned himself as the champion of working people, and in a dynamic televised address three weeks prior to the election, he translated that sentiment from the economic stage to the world stage.

Stilwell's "Century of the Common Man" speech remains one of the most notable speeches ever given by an Alban politician. In the address, he described Albion as a nation of workers of all colours and creeds, and he called on Albans to take the lead in the next century, one he said would be led by "the common man." He compared Fuller to Hitler and described isolationism as part of a counter-revolution that would deliver working families "back to the slave world of dollars," one ruled by "fat cats and money men on Broad Street." Essentially he defined Labour's vision of Albion as a force for good in the world and defined the Liberals as a force for evil.

The speech itself might have had less of an impact if not for an incident three days later: The so-called Bloody Sunday Massacre saw three Nazi sympathizers firebomb a synagogue in Merritton, killing 60 Jews and gunning down two firefighters before being subdued. The attack shocked Albans with its brutality, even appalling those with qualms about the influx of Jewish refugees from Europe.

The party leaders' reactions turned the election on its head. Fuller, who had given a speech that morning about how Albion must remain "racially pure," reacted anemically, refusing to even say the words "Jews," "killed," "synagogue" or "Nazis," nor even to condemn the attackers in clear terms. Stilwell, by contrast, went to the synagogue in person and was photographed praying alongside both Christians and Jews, and he denounced the attackers as Nazis, proclaiming that Albion would "smoke the Hitler stooges out into the open." He added a key remark: "If a man can't call evil by its name, what else is he afraid of?"

Stilwell's actions put him squarely in a position of leadership. Voters increasingly saw the Prime Minister as a voice of moral authority in troubled times, while viewing Fuller as weak and indecisive. The polls rapidly reversed, and on election day, Labour won the popular vote by a significant margin and racked up a strong majority of seats in Parliament.

Mere weeks later, Hitler invaded Poland.