Lord Robert Cecil described the MCU as a strike-breaking body designed to encourage "the smaller trading, propertied and professional
classes [to] band themselves together to protect their interests ... and secure their property ... from
revolution and extreme
Labour demands". The group saw the
middle classes being squeezed by not only a growing labour movement but also by a government that was taking on an increasing role in economic life and banded together with the aim of protecting middle-class interests against both potential enemies. Its main pre-occupation was its opposition to
socialism and in particular
strike action, although it also became associated with the policies of
eugenics and sterilisation programmes as a means to reduce the population and as a result reduce poverty. In opposing high taxation to pay for social reform the Union pre-empted the policies of the
Anti-Waste League, a party formed in 1921 from a similar middle-class basis which briefly threatened the hegemony of the Conservative Party on the political right. George Ranken Askwith did not found the Middle Class Union. He became the president when it was re-organised under the name the National Citizen's Union in 1921 and attempted to attract a wider membership.
The Times (6 March 1919) gives no mention of his name or that of his wife at the founding meeting in 1919. John Pretyman Newman was one of the founders and became its first chairman, a position he resigned when he was elected vice-president on 9 July 1922. Speaking at the meeting when the MCU was relaunched as the National Citizens Union in 1921 Askwith rather pointedly said "the Union supported the maintenance of representative government and would oppose direct action for political purposes" (
The Times, 19 December 1921). Clearly the re-launch of the MCU under a new name had entailed some hard thinking on the part of its council. ==National Citizens Union==