The development of the organisation of the working class

In the Inaugural Address of the International Workingmen's Association in 1864, Marx wrote of the working class "One element of success they possess - numbers; but numbers weigh only in the balance, if united by combination and led by knowledge". In this he summarised the fundamental requirements for the success of the proletariat's struggle. The primary task of the working class was stated equally succinctly: "To conquer political power has ... become the great duty of the working classes" (Inaugural Address).

From the time of its origin the proletariat struggled to defend its interests, initially in dispersed outbursts, but increasingly realising its strength through combination in unions and political organisations. This was its first task and was also the fundamental objective of the First International, within whose ranks many varied and opposing organisations took their place (see “The First International and the fight against sectarianism [10]”, International Review 84).

In the latter part of the century a very different situation arose. The economy grew with a vigour unseen before and the bourgeoisie grew richer. This situation tended to favour the struggle of the proletariat and it saw real improvements in its living conditions and political rights: "The proletariat affirmed itself as a social force within society, even outside moments of open struggle. The working class had a life of its own within society: there were the trade unions (which were 'schools of communism'), but also clubs where workers talked politics and 'workers' universities', where one might learn marxism as well as how to read and write (Rosa Luxemburg and Pannekoek were both teachers in the German social democracy); there were working class songs, and working class fetes where one sang, danced and talked of communism" (International Review 50 “Continuity of the proletariat's political organisations: The class nature of social democracy [11]”).

The social democratic parties and the trade unions were "the products and the instruments of the combats of this period" (ibid). Social democracy "only developed and organised a real movement that had existed well before it, and developed independently of it" (ibid). Thus the activity of the social democratic parties did not constitute a concession to the bourgeoisie, even if reformist tendencies emerged, but rather the activity necessary for the proletariat in this stage of its struggle (for a fuller account see the article in IR 50 quoted above). Practically, the strategy of the working class was expressed in the concept of the 'minimum' and 'maximum' programmes, the link between which Rosa Luxemburg explained: " ... the proletariat, through its experience of the trade union and political struggle, arrives at the conviction that its situation cannot be transformed from top to bottom by means of this struggle, and that the seizure of power is unavoidable" (quoted ibid).

Britain: birthplace of the working class movement

To what extent does the situation that existed in Britain fit in with the framework we have sketched?

Britain's position as the first industrial country gave it an economic advantage that lasted many decades. It also made it the birthplace of the workers' movement and, most importantly, of what Marx and Engels described as the first political party of the working class: Chartism. The Chartists represented the first conscious attempt by the working class to assert itself on the political terrain. They saw the struggle for universal suffrage as a means through which the working class could come to power, which was an expression of the immaturity of the struggle at that stage. However, Chartism was effectively finished after 1848 and, while the unions remained strong in Britain, they increasingly tended to turn towards reformism and did not spread far beyond the skilled workers. No independent political organisation arose to take the place of the Chartists and the working class movement became, in Engels' famous phrase, "the tail of the 'Great liberal Party'" ("A Working Men's Party", Collected works vol.24), its leaders "rascals", "in the pay of the bourgeoisie" (Engels to Sorge and Engels to Wilhelm Liebknecht, Collected Works Vol.45).

The revival of the workers' movement

"After the cyclical crises of growth which had hit the system about every ten years between 1825 and 1873, for almost 30 years until 1900 capitalism experienced an almost interrupted prosperity" (IR 50). However, within this prosperity there were signs of major changes in the economy, notably in Britain where a slowdown of growth led to difficulties for the capitalists and hardship for parts of the working class. Engels traced this in some detail and concluded that Britain's industrial monopoly was ending with serious consequences for the working class. However, within this, he also perceived the development of conditions which would require the working class to take up the work of its Chartist forebears: "The truth is this: during the period of England's industrial monopoly the English working class have to a certain extent shared in the benefits of the monopoly. These benefits were very unequally parcelled out amongst them; the privileged minority pocketed most, but even the great mass had at least a temporary share now and then. And that is the reason why since the dying-out of Owenism there has been no socialism in England. With the breakdown of that monopoly the English working class will lose that privileged position; it will find itself generally - the privileged and leading minority not excepted - on a level with its fellow workers abroad. And that is the reason why there will be Socialism again in England" (“England in 1845 and 1885”, Collected Works Vol.26). Engels sought to influence this revival with a series of articles in the Labour Standard in which he defended the importance of the unions, but also showed their limitations and argued for the creation of an independent working class party. A decade later, after watching the May Day celebration in London, he declared "on May 4, 1890, the English proletariat, rousing itself from forty years of hibernation, rejoined the movement of its class" (“May 4 in London”, Collected Works Vol.27).

New Unionism

The fundamental reason for this change lay in a resurgence of class struggle, marked especially by a series of successful strikes amongst unskilled workers. These strikes succeeded not only in increasing pay but also in significantly reducing the length of the working day. Engels attached particular importance to the participation of the workers of London's East End in these strikes: "If these downtrodden men, the dregs of the proletariat, these odds and ends of all trades, fighting every morning at the dock gates for an engagement, if they can combine and terrify by their resolution the mighty Dock Companies, truly then we need not despair of any section of the working class" (“Apropos of the London Dockers' Strike”, Collected Works Vol.26).

The New Unions that these workers created to wage their battles were heavily influenced by socialists like Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling and by members of the Social Democratic Federation such as Will Thorne and, as such, differed markedly from the old unions of skilled workers whose leaders were still tied to the Liberal Party.

The first marxist organisation: the SDF

At the start of the 1880s no significant revolutionary organisations existed in Britain. A few survivors of Chartism and Owenism continued to meet, small local groups of socialists came and went, while in London exiled revolutionaries from Germany and Austria regrouped and even managed to publish a weekly journal, Freiheit.

In 1881 a meeting of various radical groups, led to the foundation of the Democratic Federation under the direction of Henry Meyers Hyndman, who considered himself to be a socialist. The Federation gradually expanded and drew in new members, such as William Morris, Edward Aveling, Eleanor Marx and Ernest Belfort Box who sought to push it further towards socialism. In 1884 these efforts led to the federation being renamed as the Social Democratic Federation.

The programme of the Federation called for "The socialisation of the Means of production, Distribution and Exchange, to be controlled by a democratic state in the interests of the entire community, and the complete Emancipation of Labour from the domination of Capitalism and Landlordism, with the establishment of Social and Economic Equality between the sexes". Particular points called for reforms in working hours, in the employment of children, for free education and for a citizen army. A weekly newspaper, Justice, was launched and weekly public meetings held. Engels saw the former as opportunist, launched with neither sufficient financial or literary preparation and written by people "who take in hand the task of instructing the world about matters of which they themselves are ignorant..." (Engels to Laura Lafargue, Feb. 1884, Collected Works Vol.47). Above all Engels criticised the SDF for failing to understand or relate to the working class. This was exemplified in Hyndman's attitude to trade unions and strikes which he described as "varying forms of restless working class ignorance, or despairing revolts against endurable oppression... [which] do but serve to rivet the chains of economic slavery, possibly a trifle gilded, more firmly on their limbs" (quoted in F.J. Gould, Hyndman: Prophet of Socialism). That there is no recognition of the role of the trade unions in developing the consciousness and self organisation of the working class, which Engels had set out in the articles in the Labour Standard, reflects Hyndman's conception of the working class as an inert mass which might respond to events but which required the guidance of leaders like himself to achieve anything constructive. This was to be accomplished through propaganda and, above all, participation in elections.

Hyndman: an adventurer in the workers' movement

If other socialists of the time shared his schematism, Hyndman's efforts to manipulate the workers' movement to further his own career and, above all, to realise his place in history as 'the father of British socialism', marked him out as an adventurer.

Hyndman had previously been an entrepreneur, engaging in journalism in Australia, tourism in Polynesia and financial speculation in America. At the start of 1880 he was in Britain looking for a foothold in politics, promoting a `Tory-Radical' revival to Disraeli and standing as an independent Tory in the election of March that year, during which he declared his opposition to Irish home rule, his support for the colonies (“the special heritage of our working class” - Quoted in E.P. Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary) and for an increase in the size of the navy. He became 'converted' to marxism after reading Marx's Capital on a voyage to America following the failure of these efforts. On his return, he sought out Marx and, in Marx's words, "intruded himself into my house" (Marx to Sorge, December 1881, Collected Works Vol.46). At the launch of the Democratic Federation, the platform of the organisation, entitled "England for All" and written by Hyndman, was distributed to all the participants. Large parts of this were lifted from Capital without Marx's knowledge or consent and contained errors and imprecisions. Faced with Marx's criticism, Hyndman excused himself on the grounds that "Englishmen have a dread of being taught by a foreigner" and that "many have an horror of Socialism and that name" (Marx to Hyndman, July 1881, Collected Works Vol.46). Rebuffed by Marx, Hyndman tried to cultivate Engels, but the latter refused to have any contact until the situation with Marx had been settled and subsequently remained strongly critical of Hyndman. This attitude is often presented as one of personal animosity, stemming from Engels' defence of his friend. In reality it stemmed from a political analysis that both Marx and Engels shared. Marx summed up his view in the letter to Sorge we have already quoted: "All these amiable middle-class writers...have an itching to make money or name or political capital immediately out of any new thoughts they may have got at by any favourable windfall. Many evenings this fellow has pilfered from me, in order to take me out and learn in the easiest way". Engels, with the benefit of further knowledge in the ensuing years, was able to identify Hyndman quite precisely as a careerist and an adventurer (Engels to Bernstein, Dec. 1884, Collected Works Vol.47).

The birth of the Socialist League

From the outset there were tensions within the SDF, stemming largely from Hyndman's dictatorial manner, but also from differences over policy, particularly the exclusive focus on parliament and Hyndman's continuing nationalism.

The tensions broke into open struggle when Hyndman's manoeuvres in Scotland were uncovered. These included attempts to defame Andreas Scheu, one of Hyndman's most implacable opponents, and the sending of letters in the name of the Executive which were not sanctioned by the Executive and which actually went against its decisions. Hyndman also circulated gossip that Eleanor Marx and Laura Lafargue (Marx's second daughter) had plotted against him. At a meeting of the Executive the evidence against Hyndman was presented and a motion of censure was passed. The majority, which included Morris, Aveling, Eleanor Marx and Bax, then resigned from the Executive to form the Socialist League, stating that "since it seems to us impossible to heal this discord, we ... think it better in the interests of Socialism to cease to belong to the council" (Quoted, Thompson, op.cit). Engels gave two further reasons: the possibility that Hyndman would reverse the decision at a subsequent conference by packing it with fictitious delegates and "because the entire Federation was, after all, no better than a racket". However, the consequence was that Hyndman was left secure on the Executive and in control of the paper and all the branches of the SDF.

This placed the Socialist League in a weak position from the outset, but nonetheless it marked a significant advance on the SDF in a number of areas:

• it rejected all nationalism and Jingoism, declaring firmly the necessity of internationalism: "The Socialist League ... aims at the realisation of complete Revolutionary Socialism, and well knows that this can never happen in any one country without the help of the workers of all civilization" (Manifesto of the Socialist League, in: Thompson, op.cit);
• it defended the active, conscious, participation of the working class in the revolution: "Discontent is not enough ... The discontented must know what they are aiming at_ [it] should be, not an ignorant, but an intelligent revolution" (William Morris, quoted Thompson op.cit);
• it took a more realistic view of the work ahead, publishing its paper, The Commonweal, monthly rather weekly: "At last they are going to operate modestly and in accordance with their powers, and not go on pretending that the English proletariat must instantly jump to it the moment the trumpet is sounded by a few literary converts to socialism" (Engels to Bernstein, Dec.1884, Collected Works Vo1.47).

However, the League was also marked by some important weaknesses, that sprang essentially from its failure to link the struggle for the revolution to the immediate demands of the working class. This had been the case with the SDF but, if anything, the Socialist League went further, eventually rejecting all reforms, and particularly participation in elections, in the name of a pure, untainted, revolution. In part this can be attributed to the disgust of the founders at the manoeuvres of Hyndman but, more fundamentally it reflected their isolation and lack of understanding of the working class. Engels pointed to this when he described Aveling, Bax and Morris as "three as unpractical men - two poets and a philosopher -as it is possible to find" (ibid).

The second part will look at the development of the SDF and the Socialist League in the late 1880s and their relationship to the wider working class movement.

North

First published in World Revolution 198 (October 1996)

In the first part of this occasional series (World Revolution 198) we examined the gradual revival of the workers movement in Britain in the early 1880s. We sought to place this in both the general context of the development of the international proletarian movement and the specific conditions prevailing in Britain.

The objective conditions for such a revival, as Engels showed, developed during the 1880s and manifested themselves in an upsurge of class struggle, particularly towards the end of the decade. However, the development of the subjective conditions, the creation of a proletarian organisation able to rally and lead the working class, proved much more difficult. Our article traced the emergence of the Social Democratic Federation in 1884 under the leadership of the adventurer Hyndman and showed how he manoeuvred to build up his position and to defeat those who opposed his dictatorial rule and jingoist attitudes. We ended with the secession of William Morris, Belfort Bax, Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling to found the Socialist League at the end of 1884.

We will return to the evolution of the Socialist League in a subsequent part of the series, but in the present article we look more closely at the practice of the SDF in the second half of the 1880s and show how, under the direction of Hyndman, it worked time and again against the development of the working class movement, by strengthening the tendencies towards sectarianism and isolation and by discrediting socialism in the eyes of the working class.

What kind of organisation?

To understand the role played by the SDF, and Hyndman's faction particularly, it is necessary to begin by considering what sort of organisation the proletariat required to defend itself and advance its interests in the late 19th century. These are the criteria against which the role of the SDF must be judged.

The rapid development of capitalism in this period confronted the proletariat with a bourgeoisie that was tending to become stronger and more unified. To struggle effectively, the working class was required to reply in kind, forging an instrument with a clear programmatic and organisational basis, which recognised the link between the class's immediate struggles and its long term goal and which, crucially, saw itself as part of an international movement.

The Social Democratic parties and, above all, the Second International, were the proletariat's answer. These organisations were not imposed from outside the class as the bourgeoisie like to pretend but "only developed and organised a real movement that had existed well before it and developed independently of it. Then, as today, the question has always been the same: how to fight the situation of exploitation in which it finds itself” (International Review 50, “Continuity of the proletariat's political organisations: The class nature of the Social Democracy [11]”). Social Democracy was a weapon created by the proletariat to wage its struggles. It marked a crucial advance over the past in its adherence to marxism and rejection of anarchism, in the distinction it made between the unitary and political organisations of the class and in the setting out of the minimum and maximum programmes.

These gains did not arise spontaneously but were the fruit of hard and prolonged struggles within the workers movement, in which the main responsibility fell repeatedly to the left wing of the movement, first to win the advances and then to defend them against the forces of compromise and reformism which were stimulated by the seemingly limitless advance of capitalism and the reforms that this advance made possible.

The 1885 election: discrediting socialism

The British election of 1885 was the first since the Reform Act of 1884 which, while stopping far short of universal suffrage, considerably extended the vote and, in Engels' view, made it likely that a number of official labour leaders would get elected with the support of the Liberals. Engels felt that this would aid the development of the independent workers movement since these leaders would "quickly show themselves up for what they are" (Engels to Bebel, October 1885, Collected Works Vol.47).

The SDF put up three candidates, two in London and one in Nottingham. The expenses of those in London were paid for by the Tory Party following an agreement reached by Hyndman's clique behind the backs of the body of the SDF. The candidates were deliberately located in strong Liberal constituencies where they were doomed to fail and on polling day they received just 59 votes between them. When news of the deal leaked out, the Liberal press mounted a virulent campaign denouncing the SDF for accepting 'Tory Gold' and for doing the Tory Party's dirty work. Hyndman and his followers claimed that it was irrelevant who they took money from, but in a letter to Bernstein, Engels spelt out the consequences of Hyndman's action: "Hyndman, however, knew that to take money from the Tories would spell nothing less than irreparable moral ruin for the socialists in the eyes of the one and only class from which they could draw recruits, namely the great radical working masses" (Collected Works, Vol.47). Consequently, the hold of the Liberals over the working class was strengthened and the creation of an independent organisation set back.

Engels' criticism, although not his analysis, was shared by the Socialist League, whose executive passed a resolution declaring "That this meeting views with indignation the action of certain members of the Social Democratic Federation in trafficking the honour of the Socialist Party, and it desires to express its sympathy with that section of the Federation which repudiates the tactics of the disreputable gang concerned in the recent proceedings" (Quoted in Lee and Archibold Social Democracy in Britain). One leading member of the League, Adreas Scheu, denounced Hyndman as "a paid agent of the Tories (or liberal-reactionists) for the purpose of bringing Socialism into discredit with the masses" (Quoted in Thompson William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary).

Within the SDF itself, as the League's resolution noted, there was also strong criticism. One of the candidates claimed he had not been informed and wrote to the press denouncing the deal and "the middle class men of our movement" (quoted by Engels in a letter to Paul Lafargue, Collected Works Vol.47). Opposition was especially strong, amongst the provincial branches and, following the failure of an attempt to censure Hyndman at a meeting in London, a large number of militants resigned, including the entire Bristol and Nottingham branches.

Opposing strikes and promoting riots

Under Hyndman's influence, and despite the presence of a number of Trade Unionists, the SDF adopted a very critical, even hostile, attitude to the unions, telling workers that strikes were futile: "There is nothing in strikes themselves, whether for a rise of wages for all, or the enactment of a minimum wage for the lowest grades of labour in any industry, which can emancipate the propertyless workers or render them less dependent upon the owning and employing class... " (quoted in Gould Hyndman: Prophet of Socialism). In contrast, the SDF actively promoted marches and demonstrations of the unemployed, who were treated to revolutionary speeches and urged to pass unrealistic resolutions.

Shortly after the Tory Gold scandal, the SDF called a demonstration of the unemployed in Trafalgar square, nominally in opposition to a Tory 'Fair Trade' gathering in the same location. In reality, according to Karl Kautsky who observed the affair, the SDF demonstration was mainly composed of lumpen-proletarian elements, while most of the genuine workers were at the other meeting. After a number of 'revolutionary' speeches the SDF led their demonstration towards Hyde Park and as they passed through the wealthy streets of Pall Mall and Picadilly rioting broke out with windows smashed and shops ransacked. The SDF and, to a lesser extent, the Socialist League, saw the riot as positive. For the SDF it salvaged their 'revolutionary' credentials after the discredit of the Tory Gold scandal, while Morris commented that "any opposition to law and order is of use to us" (Thompson, op .cit.). Once again, it was Engels who grasped the real implications: "The absence of the police shows that the row was wanted, but that Hyndman and Co. fell into the trap is impardonable and brands them finally as not only helpless fools but also as scamps. They wanted to wash off the disgrace of their electoral manoeuvres and now they have done an irreparable damage to the movement here" (Engels to Laura Lafargue, Collected Works Vol.47). In a letter to Bebel he condemned the SDF for seeking to pre-empt the real development of the working class movement and compared them to anarchists. The ensuing trials for sedition against Hyndman and others were not seriously pursued and eventually came to nothing, but did much to increase Hyndman's standing amongst socialists and radicals.

The beginnings of a mass movement

Throughout 1886 and the winter of 1887 the SDF continued to orchestrate marches and demonstrations of the unemployed. These were frequently held outside London and were well organised. In the absence of any alternative, the SDF began to assume a leading role within parts of the working class.

In the first part of the year Engels had welcomed the lack of impact of the SDF and the Socialist League on the working class, but as the year passed he recognised the change in the situation. In August he wrote to Bebel "The Social Democratic Federation does at least have a programme and a certain amount of discipline, but no backing whatever from the masses" (Collected Works Vol.47). A month later he acknowledged that Hyndman had strengthened his position and by November was arguing that "Thanks to the stupidity of all its rivals and opponents, the Social Democratic Federation is beginning to become a power" (Engels to Laura Lafargue). This was manifested in further demonstrations of the unemployed in Trafalgar Square during that month, which this time passed off peacefully. The Government again gave a helping hand by first threatening to prevent the demonstrations by force and then backing down. Engels saw in these developments the beginnings of a movement in Britain, but he was very careful to state clearly what he meant: "The Social Democratic Federation is beginning to be something of a power, since the masses have absolutely no other organisation to which they can rally. The facts should therefore be recorded impartially, in particular the most important fact of all, namely that a genuinely socialist labour movement has come into being over here. But one must be very careful to draw a distinction between the masses and their temporary leaders" (Engels to Herman Schluter, Collected Works Vol.47). In short, Engels saw the development of the movement taking place in spite of the manoeuvres of Hyndman.

Against the international unity of the working class

Despite the scorching 'revolutionary' rhetoric of Hyndman's speeches, the SDF internationally allied itself with the reformist wing of the workers movement, since the revolutionary wing was decidedly marxist. In particular, the SDF worked with the Possibilists in France, who defended 'municipal socialism' against the marxist programme of the French Workers Party. In March 1886 Justice carried an article that described the Possibilists as the main socialist organisation in France, ignoring the creation of a workers group in the Chamber of Deputies a few months previously.

Hyndman's hostility to the creation of a marxist working class movement and his effective defence of the interests of the bourgeoisie, reached a high point in his attempt to sabotage the founding of the Second International. In this he was aided by the French Possibilists who, having split the working class movement in France, hoped to do the same internationally.

In October 1887 the congress of the German Social Democratic Party passed a resolution calling for an international congress "But since around this time the Trade Unions had summoned the London Congress, the German party was prepared to drop its congress, on condition that it would be allowed to participate - simply to participate!", however "The conditions of participation formulated by the union committee amounted to the exclusion of all German delegates" (Engels/Bernstein The International Workers Congress of 1889). Paul Brousse, the leader of the Possibilists, with a number of others attended the conference and won its support for their proposal to hold an international congress in 1889, which would exclude the other French workers' parties.

Despite this the SPD and Engels initially maintained their efforts to bring together a single international congress. A conference at the Hague in February 1889 proposed conditions for a single congress but was boycotted by the Possibilists (while Engels criticised the failure to invite the SDF). The Possibilists then issued invitations to their congress while Hyndman publicly attacked the Hague Conference as "a sort of private caucus" which would repeat "the wretched intrigues that broke up the old international" (Justice quoted in Tsuzuki, The Life of Eleanor Marx). These slanders made the stakes of the situation and the course of action clear to Engels, as he wrote in a letter to Sorge in June: "it is again the old split in the international that comes to light here, the old Battle of the Hague. The adversaries are the same, but the banner of the Anarchists has been replaced by the banner of the Possibilists... And the tactics are exactly the same. The manifesto of the Social Democratic Federation, obviously written by Brousse, is a new edition of the Sonvillier circular[1]" (Selected Correspondence).

Engels now pushed resolutely for a separate congress, working to win over the leaders of the SPD and transmit the lessons won with such difficulty in the struggle against Bakunin in the First International. In July the Marxist and Possibilist congresses were held in Paris. The former brought together 400 delegates from 20 countries while the latter regrouped a disparate gathering of Trade Unionists (a number of whom were drawn to the Marxist congress), Possibilists, Hyndman's clique and anarchists united solely by their opposition to marxism. The Marxist congress succeeded in resisting the attempts to disrupt it by the anarchists and ensured that the Second International was founded on the organisational advances made by the First.

Attempting to split the movement in Britain

Defeated at the international level, Hyndman nonetheless maintained his offensive against the unity of the working class movement by endeavouring to divide it in Britain. However, whereas in the past he had frequently been able to dominate the isolated and weak stirrings of the workers, he was now going against the rising tide of a movement that was gathering strength at home and drawing inspiration internationally.

Amongst a number of resolutions passed by the founding congress of the Second International, was one calling for international workers' demonstrations on May Day. This was enthusiastically supported by the Gas Workers and General Labourers Union which through a successful struggle to win the eight hour day for gas workers had gathered some 100,000 members. Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling had actively worked with the union and their achievement was such that Hyndman felt it necessary to publicly slander them with accusations of taking money from the union. The Union now called for a mass demonstration in Hyde Park, to be held not on May 1st but on Sunday 4th, since this would enable more workers to attend. This was opposed by the London Trade's Council, which represented the old conservative unionists who excluded the unskilled workers. The Council made common cause with the SDF and they sought to pre-empt the Gas Workers proposal by booking Hyde Park for the 4th with the aim of preventing a demonstration dominated by the radical working class and the marxists. However, Aveling pushed the authorities to allow the original demonstration so that on 4th May two rival demonstrations were held. The result was another defeat for Hyndman and his allies. Engels, who watched the demonstrations, wrote a vivid account which clearly draws out the significance of the event: "On the one side we find conservative workers, whose horizons do not extend beyond the wage labour-system, and next to them a feeble but power hungry socialist sect; on the other side,the great bulk of workers who had recently joined the movement and who want no more to do with the Manchesterism[2] of the old Trade Unions, preferring to win their complete emancipation themselves, with allies of their own choice, and not with those imposed by a tiny socialist clique (...) The grandchildren of the old Chartists are stepping into the front line. For eight years the broad masses have been moving into action, now here, now there. Socialist groups have emerged, but none has been able to transcend the bounds of a sect; agitators and would-be party leaders, mere speculators and careerists among them, they have remained officers without an army... The tremendous movement of the masses will put an end to all these little sects and little groupings by absorbing the men and showing the officers their proper places" (Collected Works Vol .27). As if to confirm this last point, Engels noted that three entire branches of the SDF took part in the marxist demonstration, rather than that organised by their leaders.

Some conclusions on Hyndman and the SDF

Engels' analysis of the socialist sects can be seen to be confirmed in the case of the SDF. From its formation and until the last years of the 1880s, the SDF maintained its position as the largest socialist organisation in Britain and so was able to place itself at the head of the working class movement when it began to grow. This was the time when Hyndman's manoeuvres were generally successful, both in maintaining his own dominance and in ensuring that the movement remained small enough for him to manipulate. This was why he allowed the Tory Gold scandal to discredit socialism in the eyes of the working masses and why he preferred to direct marches of the unemployed rather than participate in unionism and strikes.

The rise of a mass workers movement inevitably began to weaken Hyndman's position and the establishment of the Second International on a marxist foundation was a serious setback, not only for Hyndman but for all like him who thrived on the weakness and division of the proletariat. The May Day demonstration not only expressed the growth of the workers' movement in Britain, but was also testimony to the international nature of the proletariat, since the victory of 1889 at the international level paved the way for the victory of 1890 at the national level.

These defeats did not mean the end for Hyndman, on the contrary he continued to work against the unity of the workers movement, particularly by seeking to introduce the poison of nationalism into the socialist movement by waging a campaign against `Hohenzollen militarism' and for an increase in the British Navy, which we will return to later. Above all, the lasting legacy of Hyndman's domination of the SDF was to inculcate a purist, 'revolutionary', attitude amongst successive generations of working class militants, including many of those who opposed Hyndman. The British revolutionary movement was dogged by confusion and even opposition to trade unionism and the winning of immediate reforms, which contributed to a situation where the minimum and maximum programmes of the working class were embodied in separate and opposing organisations, to the severe detriment of both, and resulting in the long-term weakening of the workers movement in Britain.

How then are we to understand Hyndman and the SDF? In the first part we identified Hyndman as an adventurer who put his personal advancement above the movement he claimed to support. In fact, his actions went beyond his own self-interest since they also objectively coincided with the aims of the bourgeoisie which, time and again, has sought to destroy the revolutionary movement from within. Moreover, his contacts with the bourgeoisie, from his meeting with Disraeli in 1880 to the deal with the Tories in 1885 poses questions about his relationship to the state. While we are not in a position to give a definitive answer today, we can note that on more than one occasion his contemporaries accused him of being an agent of the bourgeoisie. Engels, for his part, showed that Hyndman stood in continuity with Bakunin, that beyond their differences they were united in hatred of marxism and opposition to the development of a revolutionary movement based on the principles of centralisation and internationalism. Both were parasites on the workers' movement, opposing their dictatorial authority, based on affinity, sectarianism and intrigue, to the collective, formalised functioning of the proletariat. Just as Engels drew on the experience of the First International[3] to arm the Second, so today revolutionaries have again to learn from the past in waging the continuing battle against political parasitism and all who would destroy the revolutionary organisation.

If we have identified Hyndman as being opposed to the advancement of the proletariat and hostile to marxism, what of the Federation as a whole? Can it be considered to be a proletarian organisation? The answer to this is yes, and it is Engels who gives us the reasons for such an answer: specifically in his insistence on distinguishing between the leadership and the body of the organisation and, more generally, in his analysis of how the dynamic of the working class can take hold of organisations and transform them. This was why he advised Bernstein at the end of 1887 to deal with the SDF differently than before, and why, in a letter to Sorge, he criticised those who only look at the surface and see "only confusion and personal squabbles" when "under the surface the movement is going on [and] is embracing ever wider sections" (Selected Correspondence).

While the origins of the SDF were in a plethora of largely non-proletarian groupings and while it never went beyond being a sect it would be a serious mistake to see just this. Despite its origins the SDF was a socialist organisation and, in many of its parts, firmly marxist, even if the leadership was equally firmly hostile to marxism. The proletarian life within the SDF was expressed in the collaboration of members, especially outside London, with other socialists and in their participation in the life and struggles of the class. The contradiction within the organisation resulted in recurring opposition to Hyndman and the regular formation and departure of left-wing minorities. It is to this opposition, and particularly one of its most significant expressions, the Socialist League, that we will turn in the next part of this series.

North

First published in World Revolution 205 (June 1997)

Throughout the history of the Social Democratic Federation (see the second part of this series in World Revolution 205) opposition regularly developed to the policies and practices of the dominant Hyndman clique. At times this just resulted in the resignation of individual members - throughout its history many thousands passed through the SDF and it is clear that many of these were simply lost to the workers' cause. At other times organised left-wing factions emerged and were either expelled or left to found new organisations. In the 1880s the Socialist League and the lesser-known Socialist Union were formed, while in the first years of the 20th century the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the Socialist Labour Party were created. These splits are often presented as the consequence of personality clashes with the dictatorial manner of Hyndman but, in reality, they were a response to the needs of the workers' movement at the time. Thus, if we have characterised these organisations as the left-wing of the movement, this does not imply that they were simply more 'radical' than the SDF. In the 1880s the prerequisite was to go beyond the narrow sectarianism of the SDF and build a mass workers movement. The Socialist Union, which left after the 'Tory Gold' scandal, placed its emphasis on constitutional means, particularly Parliament, to achieve this. In the 1900s the primary task had become the combat against the growth of opportunism within the Second International, with both the SPGB and SLP defending the necessity for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism against the illusions of reformism. If all of these organisations had serious weaknesses and confusions, it is nonetheless essential to grasp the dynamic underpinning them. Such a grasp makes it clear that the workers' movement in Britain was not something peculiar to this country, the product of its 'unique' history as we are so often told, but is irrefutably part of the international workers movement. In Germany, France and Russia it is possible to trace the same fundamental struggle to first go beyond the phase of sects and circles and then to defend the marxist and revolutionary nature of the workers' movement against opportunism and reformism. An examination of the history of the Socialist League, which is the focus of this third part of our series, of the struggles that took place within it and its ultimate collapse, confirms this analysis with precise detail.

The potential of the Socialist League

In August 1885, a few months after the foundation of the Socialist League, Engels wrote to Kautsky, "After the elections ... the basis for a socialist movement here will become broader and firmer. And therefore I am glad to see that the Hyndmanite movement will not take serious roots anywhere and that the simple, clumsy, wonderfully blundering, but sincere movement of the Socialist League is slowly and apparently surely gaining ground" (Collected Works Vol.47, p.320-1). At the start of the following year, in a letter to Sorge, after criticising the electoral manoeuvrings of the SDF, he concluded "but should it prove possible to educate within the Socialist League a nucleus with an understanding of theoretical matters, considerable progress will have been made towards the eruption, which cannot be long in coming, of a genuine mass movement" (ibid, p.394). This understanding of the potential arising from the evolution of the objective conditions is the fundamental reason why Engels gave his support to the creation of the Socialist League, giving advice to Morris, Bax and the Avelings, helping to write its draft constitution and contributing an article to Commonweal, the League's paper. In this last, he underlined that it was the deteriorating economic position of Britain that would lay the foundation for the revival of socialism, the implicit message in this being that socialists must work with this process, advancing with the workers and seeking to push them forwards, rather than seeking to impose a pure doctrine from outside.

The policy and organisation of the League

This strategy was clearly set out in the draft constitution, drawn up by Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling with Engels' guidance, which called for participation in elections and support for trade unions and for other socialist bodies. The overriding aim was "to form a National and International Socialist Labour Party" (quoted in Thompson, William Morris: Romantic to Revolutionary p.381). This was adopted by the provisional council, formed immediately after the split, but then overthrown, with Morris' support, at the first conference of the League in July 1885 in favour of an anti-electoral position.

In a number of areas the League took important steps forward. At the programmatic level, the Manifesto of the Socialist League emphasised the revolutionary overthrow of society by a class conscious proletariat, rejecting "certain incomplete schemes of social reform", and firmly declaring its internationalism: “for us there are no nations, but only varied masses of workers and friends, whose mutual sympathies are checked or perverted by groups of masters and fleecers whose interest it is to stir up rivalries and hatreds between the dwellers in different lands". At the organisational level, and in direct contrast to the SDF, the League's paper was seen as expressing the views and being under the control of the organisation: "the Editor and Sub-Editor [Morris and Edward Aveling respectively] ... are acting as delegates of the Socialist League, and under its direct control: any slip in principles, therefore, and misstatement of the aims or tactics of the League, are liable to correction from that body" (introduction to Commonweal issue 1, vol.1). At a more general level, the League generally adopted a marxist approach to history. This was seen most clearly in the series “Socialism from the Root up”, written jointly by Morris and Bax, and published in the Commonweal between May 1886 and May 1888. The greater part of the series was devoted to an exposition of 'scientific socialism', including a precis of the economic analysis of Capital.

However, the weaknesses which played a large part in the eventual disintegration of the League were also present. Programmatically it failed to grasp the link between the struggle for immediate reforms and the goal of revolution, rejecting all palliatives, and particularly participation in elections, in favour of "the realisation of complete Revolutionary Socialism". Organisationally, despite the existence of an Executive Council and the holding of annual conferences, the structure was very informal, with the branches retaining a high degree of autonomy.

The result was that the League stood apart from the workers own struggles. If it preached the importance of a general strike, it failed to grasp the potential within the actual strikes going on under its nose, being content with an all-purpose leaflet which told workers that a strike just over wages "will be useless as a means of permanently bettering your condition and a waste of time and energy, and will entail a large amount of suffering on yourselves, your wives and families in the meantime" (quoted Thompson, op.cit. p.435-6). A similar approach was adopted towards the electoral struggle, with another all-purpose leaflet simply calling on workers not to participate. Consequently, the League placed the greatest emphasis on education, Morris arguing that "Education towards Revolution seems to me to express in three words what our policy should be..." (“Our Policy”, Commonweal Vol.2, No.14). The members of the League devoted their efforts to spreading the word, by mouth and in print, participating in the free-speech struggles that marked the mid 1880s, often showing extraordinary levels of courage, commitment and self-sacrifice for the cause, but nonetheless failing to respond to the workers’ movement growing around them, even when the workers showed their willingness to move towards socialism, as during the miners strikes in Scotland in 1887 when workers attended meetings in their tens of thousands.

Marxism versus anarchism

The isolation of the League from the real life of the working class, despite the sincerity and efforts of very many of its members, stemmed from its failure to grasp the tasks of the period and to build an organisation capable of carrying them out. This failure was not inevitable but was, fundamentally, the result of the struggle between the marxist and anarchist factions within the League.

These factions were present from the start. The anarchists were headed by Joseph Lane and Frank Kitz, who emerged from the ultra-radical milieu in London in the late 1870s and founded the Labour Emancipation League in 1881. Its programme united various traditional radical and Chartist demands with calls for the collectivisation of the means of production, while its activity, which focused on its base in the East End of London, included a call for a rent strike. In the same year, at the invitation of Hyndman, it participated in the conference that founded the Democratic Federation, the forerunner of the SDF, seeking to "set them up with the most advanced programme we could force on them" (Lane, quoted in Quail, The Slow Burning Fuse: The Lost History of the British Anarchists, p.25). The LEL affiliated to the SDF, but did not join in order to maintain its 'autonomy'. It took little part in the activities of the SDF until the split in 1884 when it sided with the seceders, although it had been asked to participate in the decisive-meeting by Hyndman who, presumably, thought he could rely on it a second time. Subsequently the LEL affiliated to the League. This time its members were to play a much more significant role, Lane and Kitz initially taking places on the provisional council and then on the Executive Council, where they formed the nucleus around which the anarchist faction developed within the League.

The marxist faction, which included Bax, Aveling, Morris and Eleanor Marx, suffered its first setback with the rejection of the draft constitution, although a proposal by Lane to transform the League into a federation of independent branches was defeated. Many of the faction, and Morris above all others, completely underestimated the danger posed by the anarchists and opened the door to their destructive influence. Only Eleanor Marx grasped the danger, writing to her sister Laura shortly after the establishment of the League "the Anarchists here will be our chief difficulty. We have many on our Council, and by and by it will be the devil to pay. Neither Morris, nor Bax nor any of our people know really what these Anarchists are: till they do find out is a hard struggle to make head against them - the more that many of our English men taken in by the foreign anarchists (half of whom I suspect to be police agents) are unquestionably the best men we have" (quoted in Tsuzuki The Life of Eleanor Marx, p.129). Her predictions were rapidly borne out. In April 1886 Engels wrote to Laura Lafargue "Here all is muddle. Bax and Morris are getting deeper and deeper into the hands of a few anarchist phraseurs, and write nonsense with increasing intensity" (Collected Works, Vol.47, p.438). In May Aveling resigned as Sub-editor of Commonweal (Bax replacing him) and shortly afterwards Eleanor Marx stopped writing her column of “International Notes”. By August Engels noted that "the League is going through a crisis" (Engels to Bebel, Collected Works Vol 47, p.471).

The struggle came to a head at the third conference in 1887 when the Marxists sought to overturn the anti-electoral and sectarian policy of the League. The main resolution, proposed by J.L Mahon, essentially reiterated the strategy of the draft constitution. It is possible that Engels helped to draft this resolution since, despite his reservations about the capacity of the League, he saw that the development of a broad workers' movement in Britain was imminent. During the preparation of the Conference the anarchists busily mobilised their forces whereas the Marxists were silent and inactive. At the Conference Morris played a decisive role, first seeking to put off a decision and then swinging behind the anarchists to defeat the Marxist resolution and restate the policy of abstention. Subsequently the Marxists attempted to work as a fraction within the League, establishing themselves in the Bloomsbury Branch and, paradoxically, within the Hoxton branch of the Labour Emancipation League, in which they were now in the majority. This work seems to have been done badly (the anarchists portraying it as a plot to stage a coup within the League) and at the fourth conference the attempt to change the League's policy resulted not only in defeat, but in the expulsion of the Bloomsbury Branch and the disaffiliation of the Hoxton LEL. Henceforth the League was in the hands of the anarchists.

Morris, although firmly declaring himself a marxist and opposed to anarchism, continued to underestimate the threat posed by the anarchists. At the founding conference of the Second International he joined with the others in the League delegation in protesting at the handling of the anarchists' attempt to disrupt the meeting. He also revealed his poor understanding of the organisation question in his report on the congress, when he concluded "such gatherings are not favourable for the dispatch of business and their real use is as demonstrations, and...it is better to organise them as such" (“Impressions of the Paris Congress II”, Commonweal, Vol.5, No.186). It was not until 1890 that he finally broke with the League and only in the few remaining years of his life that he began to grasp the dynamic of the real movement.

The anarchists gradually reduced the League to nothing, seeking to outdo each other in radical posturing, using Commonweal to advocate terrorism and assassination while breaking up the branches. If at this stage the presence of police spies and agents provocateurs became obvious (even to the anarchists), the decisive period was that of the confrontation between the marxists and anarchists. The potential of the League when it began ensured that the state paid close attention to it. We have seen already that Eleanor Marx suspected the presence of police agents amongst the foreign anarchists but, given the experience of the British state, it is impossible to rule out the likelihood that amongst the native anarchists was a smattering of state agents.

Towards the mass workers' movement

The degeneration of the Socialist League, as with the manoeuvrings of the SDF before it, prompted significant minorities to attempt to go beyond its limitations. This took various forms. Branches of the League, especially those in the provinces, developed links with other local socialist bodies, including the SDF, as well as with the trade unions. For example, in 1888 branches in Scotland supported the formation of the Scottish Labour Party. J.L Mahon, at one time Secretary of the League and stalwart of the anti-parliamentarians, changed his position and left the League to establish the Northern Socialist Federation and to work with the Scottish Land and Labour League, both organisations supporting participation in elections and unions. However, as we will see later in this series, many militants, in their eagerness to break from sectarianism, veered the other way and tended to see parliament as the only road to socialism, thereby succumbing to the arguments of reformism and opportunism. Again, this tendency arose from the objective situation, where the continuing expansion of capitalism enabled the workers movement to extract concessions from the bourgeoisie.

The promise of the Socialist League was not fulfilled. It failed to discharge the tasks demanded of it. However, along the way, through the struggle to spread the message to the class and through the confrontation with the anarchists a significant number of militants began to understand why and how to be part of the mass movement. The great weakness was that along the way much time and energy had been wasted. While the socialists were locked in their sects, the working class movement in Britain began to develop and leave them behind. This situation meant that the non-socialist and anti-socialist elements, with a helping hand from the state, had a disproportionate weight within the new movement. In the next part of our series we will look more closely at the beginnings of this movement, as a prelude to consideration of the place and role of the Independent Labour Party.

North

First published in World Revolution 208 (October 1997)

This series of articles began by outlining the resurgence of the working class movement in Britain at the end of the 1880s. It went on to deal with the particular roles of the Social Democratic Federation and the Socialist League, concluding that both failed to respond to the needs of the proletariat (see WR 198, 205 & 208). In this fourth part, we return to a more detailed consideration of the revival of struggle in the 1880s and 1890s, to show why and how it developed and to draw out both what it shared with the international workers' movement and what distinguished it.

The balance of class forces

While no mass political movement was created in Britain in the decades following the defeat of Chartism, the working class, nonetheless, constituted a force within society. The fundamental reasons for this were the strength of trade unionism within the working class and the bourgeoisie's own understanding of the potential threat posed by the proletariat. These points were emphasised by Engels in 1881 in an article on the Trades Unions in The Labour Standard. "The Act of 1824 [which repealed the Combination Laws which had banned Trades Unions] rendered these organisations legal. From that day Labour became a power in England. The formerly helpless mass, divided against itself, was no longer so. To the strength given by union and common action was added the force of a well-filled exchequer - `resistance money', as our French brethren expressively call it" (Collected Works Vol.24, p.384). The unions became "a power which has to be taken into account by any Government of the ruling class" (ibid, p.386), winning not only economic concessions, such as the regulation of wages, hours and factory conditions, but also political reforms with the gradual extension of the vote. However, they failed to use these "new weapons". The majority of union leaders remained staunch liberals. Indeed, as Engels showed, it was the bourgeoisie, "which knows their strength better than they do" (ibid) who took the initiative, 'volunteering' the extension of the vote to parts of the working class. The bourgeoisie was quite clear about its aims in doing this: "every man who is not presumably incapacitated by some consideration of personal unfitness or of political danger is morally entitled to come within the pale of the constitution" (Gladstone, quoted in Torr, Tom Mann and His Times). Thus, while the struggle for the franchise was an important aspect of the wider class struggle at this time, its acquisition was only a victory for the working class to the extent that it was consciously used as part of that wider struggle. Engels concluded the article in The Labour Standard by arguing that the unions' failure to use the franchise in this way meant that the working class had been "moving in the wrong groove" (op.cit).

The trade union struggle ensured that part of the working class shared in the advantages that flowed from Britain's economic supremacy but, as Engels repeatedly argued, the union struggle, by its nature, could not challenge the wages system itself. Furthermore, the very success of the unions fuelled illusions about the existence of common interests between the classes and helped create strong support for the Liberal Party within significant parts of the working class, thus ensuring that the political initiative lay more with the bourgeoisie than the proletariat. For this to change decisively there would have to be an equally decisive change in the objective conditions.

The start of the decline of British Capitalism

The early industrialisation of Britain gave it an advantage over all of its rivals that lasted for much of the 19th century. However, by the 1880s competitors such as France, Germany and America were threatening this monopoly. While their total productive capacity still lagged behind Britain at the start of the decade, its more rapid rate of increase indicated that this would not long remain the case. This sharpening of competition fuelled the growth of imperialism as each nation struggled to increase its share of the world market. The previously unexploited parts of the world, notably Africa and Asia, became the focus of intense rivalry in the last decades of the century.

In Britain, as Engels noted, the classical industrial cycle had begun to change with the periods of collapse lengthening and recovery becoming more difficult: "... what distinguishes the present period of depression, especially in cotton and iron is this, that it has now for some years outlasted its usual duration. There have been several attempts at a revival, several spurts; but in vain. If the epoch of actual collapse has been overcome, trade remains in a languid state, and the markets continue incapable to absorb the whole production" (“Iron and Cotton” published in Labour Standard 1881; Collected Works vol.24, p.411-2). There were depressions at the end of the 1870s and during the middle years of the 1880s (the Great Depression) while throughout there was a gradual decline in the rate of growth. These developments not only heralded the end of Britain's economic monopoly but were also the first signs of the end of the period of ascendancy of capitalism as a whole and the beginnings of its period of historical decline or decadence (see our pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism [13]).

At the same time as these developments led to an increase of rivalry within the capitalist class, they also provoked an intensification of the struggle between the classes. The employers sought to protect their profits by increasing the exploitation of the working class, both by changes in working practices and attempts to keep down, or even cut, wages. By the turn of the century wages had ceased to increase and even moved into reverse. The recessions threw hundreds of thousands of workers into unemployment and destitution, with rates reaching 12% in 1879 and 10% in 1885-6, before falling back to 3 % during the relative recovery of the later 1890s.

The proletariat was hit very hard by these developments and initially membership of the unions slumped, but from the latter half of the 1880s on its combativity gradually recovered, with significant strikes taking place in the mines in Northumberland and in the engineering industry in Bolton. These strikes were marked by an increasing bitterness, the employers forming national organisations to protect their interests and the state intervening in a number of strikes, such as Manningham Mills in 1890 when police broke up the strikers’ meetings. This increasingly direct confrontation between the classes eroded the illusions weighing on the working class and created the conditions for a politicisation of the proletariat's struggle.

The economic struggle

The most significant aspect of the economic struggles of this period was the mobilisation of the unskilled workers. In March 1889, agitation by the gasworkers in London, with regular demonstrations of several thousand and the enrolment of 20,000 workers in the National Union of Gasworkers and General Labourers, forced the employers to concede an 8 hour day and a pay rise. Later the same year the London dockers' strike generated massive solidarity, with the marches and demonstrations involving 100,000 workers. Official figures for the period show 119,000 workers involved in disputes in 1888, 360,000 in 1889 and 393,000 in 1890, rising to a peak of 634,000 in 1893, and remaining high for the rest of the century.

This historic movement of the working class is often subordinated to the story of 'new unionism' and its leaders which, while of great importance, can obscure the real significance of the movement. In the dock strike for example, previous attempts at unionisation by Ben Tillet had only limited success and the strike itself began amongst non-union workers who, while they subsequently turned to Tillet for assistance, formulated their demands independently, as had the gasworkers previously (see Mann Tom Mann 's Memoirs, pp 58 & 61). Furthermore, while a large number of new unions sprang up subsequently around the country, both they and the gains they won frequently proved unsustainable. The dockers had to accept a compromise (although achieving their main demand of 6d an hour and 8d overtime) and the Gasworkers were defeated in a strike at the end of 1889. Between 1892 and 1894, the new unions only comprised some 107,000 out of the total of 1,555,000 union members.

The real success of the struggles lay in the mobilisation of the working class, in the demands advanced and in the determination with which they were fought. The dockers stayed out for five weeks, sustained by the solidarity of the proletariat internationally. An act in keeping with the foundation of the Second International that same year.

That socialists, such as Eleanor Marx, Will Thorne and Tom Mann were able to play a leading role was primarily a consequence of the maturation of the class consciousness of the proletariat in Britain. It also reflected the capacity of these socialists to break with the sectarianism of the main socialist organisations (even though Thorne and Mann remained members of the SDF) and grasp where the real movement of the working class lay. This movement was not towards the immediate acceptance of socialism, to which many workers remained hostile, but away from domination by bourgeois ideology and politics and towards independent class organisation.

The political struggle

This dimension of the class struggle generally developed in a far more dispersed and hesitant manner than the economic struggles.

Although the SDF and the Socialist League were never more than sects, they did have a lasting impact in some parts of the country. The SDF particularly had a presence in parts of Scotland and above all in Lancashire, where the involvement of some of its members in a number of industrial disputes had left a legacy of branches in towns such as Salford, Blackburn and Rochdale. Some of these were far less sectarian than the parent organisation and worked readily with other socialist and labour organisations. The splits from the SDF (see part 3 [14] of this series) had produced organisations which, while generally short-lived, had left some traces. These organisations had tended to react strongly against the 'revolutionary' purism of the SDF, the Socialist Union, for example, adopted exclusively reformist and legalistic positions.

In 1888 the Scottish Labour Party had been formed in the wake of Keir Hardie's failure to be elected as an independent labour candidate in Mid Lanark. Although it sought to draw in socialists, much of its platform was composed of traditional radical liberal demands and, more significantly, it showed a continued willingness to negotiate with the Liberal party to obtain electoral deals. Despite this, the election and its aftermath indicated that the grip of the Liberal party was weakening, although it sought to respond by adopting a more radical programme at the 1891 election. In other parts of the country similar efforts to field independent labour candidates in local and national elections gradually gained support, Hardie being elected in the West Ham South constituency in 1891.

In various parts of Britain independent labour organisations emerged. Labour Unions were established in Bradford, Halifax, Hartlepool and Keighley, the founding resolution of the first declaring that "its objects should be to advance the interests of workingmen in whatever way it might from time to time be thought advisable...its operation should be carried on irrespective of the convenience of any political party" (quoted in Howell, British Workers and the Independent Labour Party, p.179). In Manchester a local Independent Labour Party was established in 1892, the fourth clause of its constitution stated "That all members of this party pledge themselves to abstain from voting for any candidate for election to any representative body who is in any way a nominee of the Liberal, Liberal-Unionist or Conservative parties" (quoted in Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party, p.97). Other organisations included the Aberdare Socialist Society in South Wales and the Newcastle Labour Party.

Another important aspect was the growth of labour and socialist papers, such as the Labour Leader, Labour Elector, the Workman 's Times and Clarion at the national level, alongside a host of local or sectional papers, such as The Miner and the Yorkshire Factory Times. Even though many titles were short-lived and the motives of both proprietors and journalists were often questionable, they still expressed the forward movement of the proletariat. In 1892, the Workman 's Times, which was edited by Joseph Burgess, a long-time supporter of independent labour activity, launched an appeal for readers to send in their names to support the formation of an independent labour party. Over 2,000 replied and a number of branches were established, although without any national organisation.

Conclusions

The developments that we have sketched out are frequently presented as both uniquely 'British' (reflecting the 'common-sense' pragmatism of the British working class) and as simply the raw material of the ILP, which itself was but a preparation for the Labour Party, the inevitable destination of the working class. In reality, as we have repeatedly stressed, the working class movement in Britain was an integral part of the international movement although, as with each part, it was influenced by its particular situation.

In the first place, the international working class affirmed itself as a class with its own interests opposed to those of the ruling class. If this found its highest expressions in the great Social Democratic parties in countries like Germany and, above all, in the creation of the Second International, it could also be seen in the vibrancy of the proletariat's social life, in its clubs with their emphasis on education and in the proliferation of newspapers, journals and pamphlets. Engels repeatedly expressed confidence that this dynamic would rapidly lead the workers to socialism. Commenting on the strikes of 1889 he argued "Moreover, the people regard their immediate demands only as provisional although they themselves do not know as yet what final aim they are working for. But this dim idea is strongly enough rooted to make them choose only openly declared Socialists as their leaders. Like everyone else they will have to learn by their experiences and the consequences of their own mistakes. But as, unlike the old trade unions, they greet every suggestion of an identity of interest between Capital and Labour with scorn and ridicule, this will not take very long... " (Engels to Sorge December 1889, quoted Pelling op. cit). It was this dynamic which was expressed so forcibly in the massive May Day demonstration in London the following year and which prompted Engels to declare, "There can be no doubt that on May 4, 1890 the English working class joined the great international army" (“May 4 in London”, Collected Works vol. 27, p.66).

At the same time however, an opposite dynamic emerged, based on the very success of the unions and independent workers organisations in wrestling concessions from the ruling class. The bourgeoisie was able to grant these because of the immense continuing growth of capitalism. In the case of Britain, although it suffered from the loss of its monopoly position, it still remained immensely powerful and in the later 1890s enjoyed a period of prosperity in which the falling price of foodstuffs temporarily offset the decline in the rate of increase in workers' wages. This favoured not just a preoccupation with winning immediate reforms but also the development of an opportunist tendency which transformed this error into a political principle. This led eventually to the rejection of the class struggle, the abandonment of the revolutionary goal of the proletariat and, ultimately, to the defence of capitalism against the working class.

What particularly marked the situation in Britain was the existence of a number of factors which gave added weight to this tendency:

* Firstly, the weakness of the socialist movement in Britain, undermined organisationally by the parasitism of the dominant Hyndman clique in the SDF and the destruction of the Socialist League by the anarchists with aid from the state. The consequence was that, while Socialists played an active and significant part in the emerging movement, they did so in a dispersed and unorganised way that wasted much of their efforts. For many workers socialism was identified with the 'revolutionary' bluster of Justice (paper of the SDF) and the glorification of violence in Commonweal (paper of the Socialist League).

* The nature of the union movement in Britain gave an added weight to reformism. As we have seen, the traditional unions remained the dominant force, while the new unions were unable to sustain their original memberships and gradually moved towards the more traditional forms of organisation according to trade and level of skill.

* The activity of organisations such as the Fabian Society, which essentially advocated an opportunist and class-collaborationist policy and opposed marxism, gave a further push to reformism. Although the Fabian Society was small it was well organised and funded and the stupidities of the revolutionary sects gave it room in which to work.

* Lastly, the state itself worked actively against the working class movement. If its use of spies and agent-provocateurs was the most obvious aspect (and even here it was more skilled than its continental counterparts) the more dangerous was its ability to use concessions against the class struggle, particularly by playing the democratic card through the extension of the vote. This was underestimated throughout the workers movement, where the oppression of Bismarck in Germany and the Tsars in Russia was contrasted with the 'liberties' enjoyed in Britain. The weight of democratic illusions has remained a consistent weakness in the revolutionary movement in Britain.

However, it is essential to underline that the movement that came to life at the end of the 1880s and which flourished in the 1890s, was a genuine expression of the proletariat as a revolutionary class and that it had the potential to develop into the mass socialist organisation that Engels envisaged. Contrary to our bourgeois historians it was not pre-ordained that it would end in the Labour Party. The period which now began, and which lasted until the First World War, was one of an intense struggle for the creation of a mass workers party and against opportunism. It is the first part of this struggle, the founding years of the Independent Labour Party, that we will take up in the next article in this series.

North

First published in World Revolution 213 (April 1998)

During the 1890s, the mass workers' parties succeeded in gaining many reforms that improved the living conditions of the working class. While the struggle for such reforms was an important aspect of the class struggle in this period, the winning of reforms brought the danger of nurturing illusions in the possibility of capitalism peacefully evolving into socialism. However, the marxist foundation of most of these parties ensured that, within a minority at least, there was determined opposition to the growth of reformism and opportunism, exemplified by the efforts of Rosa Luxemburg in the German Social Democratic Party. The working class in Britain was confronted by the same situation but with the crucial difference that it sought to create a class party in the face of the reformist tide and without an organised marxist fraction.

Between the late 1880s and the early 1890s the working class in Britain took up the struggle against its exploiters in a decisive and frequently spectacular manner. The previous part 4 of this series [15] traced the development of this movement at both the economic and political level, noting that the latter was characterised above all by a tendency to break from the grip of the Liberal Party, which had traditionally been supported by the majority of working class voters, and to move towards independence. Engels hailed this development as the start of a dynamic that would lead the working class to socialism, brushing aside the pretensions and phrase-mongering of sects like the Social Democratic Federation and other assorted would-be leaders.

The founding of the Independent Labour Party in January 1893 marked an important stage in this dynamic with the working class creating an independent political force for the first time since the Chartists (see the article in WR 214). However, for this nascent organisation to really become an effective weapon in the struggle between the proletariat and the ruling class it had to continue to move forwards politically and organisationally and it was here that the new movement, composed mainly of young proletarians who were relatively inexperienced and politically unformed, immediately faced major difficulties. The preceding years had led to a situation where there was no organised marxist fraction outside the SDF (dominated by the Hyndman clique), leaving the field free to various species of reformism and especially the Fabian Society and the Trade Unions. The nucleus of theoretically-formed militants that Marx had once hoped would develop within the Socialist League had never appeared and those who claimed allegiance to marxism were dispersed in various organisations or were isolated individuals. Thus, the real question facing the working class was whether the dynamic could be deepened and the forces of reformism and opportunism, which were gathering strength throughout the international workers' movement, could be identified and combated, and a party built that was not just socialist but marxist.

In this part we will start by looking at the Fabians before going on to examine the foundation of the ILP and the struggle between the reformist and revolutionary tendencies in the workers' movement.

The Fabians: opposing marxism and the class war

The Fabian Society was founded in 1884 but its roots went back to a group called The Fellowship of the New Life, which was set up two years previously with the aim of establishing a Utopian community, although they could not decide between Bloomsbury and Peru for the location. The membership of the Fabians was originally exclusively composed of the petty bourgeoisie and included anarchists and psychical researchers. The writer Bernard Shaw was an early and influential member. While a number of workers subsequently joined the provincial branches (often combining it with membership of other groups like the SDF and Socialist League), the London leadership remained much the same, with the addition of government civil servants such as Sidney Webb, whom Shaw deliberately sought to recruit to counteract the 'mob'. Hostility to the working class and marxism lay at the heart of both their theoretical and political activity. In Fabian Essays in Socialism published in 1889, the labour theory of value was rejected in favour of the theory of 'final utility', while the analysis of surplus value was opposed with a spurious theory of rent. The role of the class struggle was ridiculed and belittled in order to deny the role of revolutions in history and to bolster the notion of evolution. The practical consequence of this was the strategy of 'permeating' the Liberal party and, thus, opposing the dynamic towards independence that was animating the working class at the time. Engels characterised the Fabians as "a clique of middle class 'Socialists' of diverse calibres from careerists to sentimental Socialists and philanthropists, united only by their fear of the threatening rule of the workers and doing all in their power to avert this danger by making their own leadership secure..." (Engels to Kautsky 1892, Selected Correspondence, p.423). He was equally scathing about their activity: "The means employed by the Fabian Society are just the same as those of the corrupt parliamentary politicians: money, intrigues and careerism. That is the English way… These people are immersed up to their necks in the intrigues of the Liberal party, hold party jobs, as for instance Sidney Webb, who in general is a genuine British politician. These gentry do everything that the workers have to be warned against" (ibid).

In the period leading up to the conference in Bradford that set up the ILP, the leadership of the Fabian Society attempted to block the dynamic. In 1891 Sidney Webb wrote in the Workmen’s Times, "the nature of an Englishman seems to be suited only to a political fight between two parties - the party of order and the party of progress" (Quoted in McBriar, Fabian Socialism and English Politics, p 246). Three months before the conference, when its preparation was actively underway, he wrote again: "What can we do but laugh at your folly... The only vital difference between the Fabian Society and the SDF is that the Fabian wants to grow the plums first and make the pies afterwards, whilst the Federation wants to make the pies first and find the plums afterwards. This is also the idea of the Independent Labour Party, which thus turns out to be nothing but an attempt to begin the SDF over again..." (Quoted in Pelling, Origins of the Labour Party, p.114). This attack provoked a reply from within the Fabian Society by an anonymous individual who signed himself 'Marxian': "If the big guns of the Fabian Society would only spend a little time outside the Liberal club they might see how wrong are their assumptions" (Quoted in McBriar, op.cit. p.248). When it became clear that the ILP was to be founded despite their efforts, the London Fabian Society, which was composed of the 'big guns', agreed to participate only on condition that it could maintain its separate existence, a condition not requested by any of the provincial Fabian societies which took part. On the eve of the conference Shaw made a last effort when he told a meeting of the Fabian delegates that the foundation of a new party was premature.

The founding of the ILP: A step towards the class party

The Bradford Conference brought together some 120 delegates, the vast majority from the newly formed independent labour groups, but also including delegates from Trade Unions and Trades Councils, and from provincial branches of the Fabians and the SDF. The leadership of this last refused to participate in what it described as "another of the many attempts which have from time to time been made to head back the genuine Social-Democratic movement in Great Britain" (Justice, April 1893, quoted in Crick The History of the Social-Democratic Federation p .85). The London Fabians were only admitted by one vote following harsh criticism of their previous behaviour, including one motion moved by the Liverpool Fabian Society.

The conference voted to adopt the name Independent Labour Party over Socialist Labour Party, but then took as its objective "to secure the collective and communal ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange" (Quoted in Howell, British Workers and the Independent Labour Party, p.294). Its programme included the abolition of overtime, piecework and child labour, the limitation of the working day to 48 hours, support for the sick and elderly, the introduction of progressive income tax and support for "every proposal for extending electoral rights and democratising the system of Government" (Quoted ibid, p.297).

The party organised itself on a federal basis in order to accommodate the disparate groups at the conference, but the SDF and the London Fabians rejected even this, although most of the provincial Fabian societies immediately dissolved themselves into the ILP. It rejected a motion not to allow ILP members to join other organisations (Shaw specifically defending his membership of a Liberal Association), adopting instead the general statement that "no person opposed to the principles of the party shall be eligible for membership" (ibid p.298). In keeping with the federal principle it established a National Advisory Council rather than a more powerful central organ.

The fundamental achievement of the conference was that it drew together many of the disparate forces that had emerged within the working class in the preceding years. If its programme was largely restricted to immediate demands, and if its structure was tentative, the new organisation nonetheless marked a very significant moment in the life of the working class in Britain. From the spontaneous dynamic produced by the intensification of the class struggle, the proletariat had forged an instrument with the potential to impulse and deepen that dynamic in a conscious and organised manner. In short, it had laid the foundation for the class party.

The fundamental weakness of the new organisation was the absence of an organised marxist current within it. Edward Aveling was the most well-known marxist and he was not only relatively isolated, but increasingly distrusted by many in the movement due to his dubious personal behaviour.

Nonetheless Engels' initial assessment of the ILP was positive: "The Social Democratic Federation on the one hand and the Fabians on the other have, because of their sectarian attitude, not been able to absorb the rush towards Socialism in the provinces, so the formation of a third party was quite a good thing. But the rush has now become so great, especially in the industrial areas of the North, that the new party was already at this first Congress stronger than the Social Democratic Federation or the Fabians, if not stronger than the two together. And as the mass of the membership is certainly very good, as the centre of gravity lies in the provinces and not in London, the centre of intrigues, and as the main point of the programme is the same as ours, Aveling was right in joining and in accepting a seat on the Executive. If the petty private ambitions and the intrigues of the London would-be-greats are held somewhat in check here and its tactics do not turn out too wrongheaded, the Independent Labour Party may succeed in detaching the masses from the Social Democratic Federation and in the provinces from the Fabians too, thus forcing them to unite" (Selected Correspondence, p 428).

1893-95: The growth of reformism

In the first two years of its existence the ILP grew rapidly. By 1895 Keir Hardie claimed a membership of 35,000, although analysis of dues paid gives a figure of just under eleven thousand (Howell op.cit, p327-8). It also secured significant votes in various local elections and worked actively to provide relief to the rising numbers of unemployed.

However, this forward momentum did not go unopposed with both the Fabians and the TUC working actively against it.

The initial response of the Fabians seemed to be an acknowledgment of the validity of the decision to form the ILP. In November 1893 Shaw and Sidney Webb wrote an article, “To Your Tents, Oh Israel!”, which attacked the Liberal Party and declared support for independent Labour representation, provoking some Liberal members of the Fabian Society to resign. In reality it was a manoeuvre aimed at maintaining the influence of the Fabians, as Beatrice Webb acknowledged when she wrote of their "fear of being left behind" by the ILP (McBriar op.cit, p.250). Shaw for his part described it as a concession to "the more ardent spirits" in the Fabian Society (Pelling op.cit, p.147). It was followed by a proposal that the TUC establish a fund to support Labour candidates, but, in calling for support for all such candidates and for candidates to be selected by Trades Councils, which were controlled by the Unions, its real aim was to undermine the ILP.

The TUC adopted a more overtly hostile attitude. In response to the efforts of the ILP to develop a socialist bloc within the TUC, which had led to the passing of a motion to establish a fund to support independent Labour candidates, the TUC Parliamentary Committee proposed a number of measures to counter the influence of socialists. These included the introduction of card votes based on union membership, the exclusion of trades councils (where the ILP had a lot of representatives) and the restriction of participation to working trade unionists or union officials. These were passed by one vote in the committee and passed to the 1895 Congress, while the previous motion was allowed to lapse.

More generally, the ILP was confronted by the tide of reformism that was rising throughout the workers' movement, with the struggle for socialism being reduced to the winning of reforms or confused with the strengthening of the state. In Britain such illusions were spread by popular journalists such as Robert Blatchford, the editor of the Clarion, whose book Merrie England, published in 1894, sold three-quarters of a million copies in its first year. It distinguished between 'Practical' socialism, which it presented as anything which strengthened the hand of the state (including the Post Office and compulsory education), and 'Ideal' socialism when money and exchange would be abolished, which was put off into the distant future. Socialism was presented as arising naturally out of capitalism: "Socialism will not come by means of a sudden coup. It will grow naturally out of our surroundings and will develop naturally and by degrees.... it is too late to ask when we are going to begin. We have begun… Nearly all law is more or less Socialistic, for nearly all law implies the right of the State to control individuals for the benefit of the nation." (Merrie England, 1908 edition, p.128). This was accompanied by a wide range of Clarion Clubs - cycling, camera, glee-singing and scouts - which dissipated the class's militant energy while sowing dangerous confusion.

The ILP itself was far from immune to the tide, not least in seeing elections as the primary area of its activity. Petty-bourgeois careerists also began to be drawn to it, such as Ramsey Macdonald who left his position as a paid Liberal Party agent when they refused to accept him as a candidate. At the second conference in 1894 Keir Hardie was elected president, grandly telling the ILP that he had now decided to give up his preference to work as a freelancer. Above all, no marxist grouping had yet developed. Aveling, who opposed Hardie, not only failed to be re-elected to the Administrative Council, but was actually expelled from the ILP in May 1894.

Engels was now far less confident of the capacity of the ILP to rise to the challenge: "The Independent Labour Party is extremely vague in its tactics, and its leader, Keir Hardie, is a super-cunning Scot, whose demagogic tricks cannot be trusted for a minute". However, he still asserted that "there are very good elements both in the Social Democratic Federation and in the Independent Labour Party, especially in the provinces, but they are scattered..." (Engels to Sorge, November 1894, Selected Correspondence p.449). A few months later he went further, writing that there was "nothing but sects and no party" but still insisting that "The socialist instinct is getting stronger and stronger amongst the masses" whilst pointing out that "so-called 'democracy' here is very much restricted by indirect barriers", such as the cost of political periodicals, the expense of contesting elections and the dominance of the existing parties (Engels to Hermann Schluter, January 1898. Selected Correspondence p.452).

Both tendencies could be seen at the second conference: on the one hand the changes in the membership of the NAC produced a lot of back-stage wheeling and dealing; on the other a number of measures were taken to strengthen the organisation. The federal structure was replaced by a unified one, a development which simply reflected reality, a draft constitution was prepared and a national Manifesto was adopted.

1895: Towards the next stage of the struggle

The election of 1895 gave an insight into what the ILP had accomplished in its first two years. Superficially it suffered a setback with no seats being gained and Hardie losing his. The Fabians celebrated this: "...the result is not altogether unsatisfactory... the field had to be cleared. . . the ILP has completed its suicide. . . So long as the ILP existed as an unknown force of irreconcilables, the more reasonable policy of permeation and levelling-up was utterly checkmated" Beatrice Webb quoted in McBriar op.cit, p.252).

However, in winning some 40,000 votes for the 28 candidates it ran (it should be recalled that the electorate was much smaller at this time) and in exposing in practice the hostility of the Liberal Party to Labour representation, it had affirmed the necessity and the fact of its existence as an independent political force. If it had not moved decisively towards becoming the class party, neither had it relapsed into a sect, contrary to Engels' comments. It still remained a vigorous expression of the advancing political life of the working class and was still the main arena in which the struggle between the different tendencies within the workers' movement in Britain was fought. In the years immediately following the election the focus of this struggle shifted to the issue of socialist unity. This will be the subject of the next part in our series.

North

First published in World Revolution 215 (June 1998)

The establishment of the Independent Labour Party in 1893 laid the foundation for the creation of a mass workers’ party in Britain. However, as we showed in the previous article (Part 5 [16], from World Revolution 215), the possibility of realising this potential was severely weakened by the absence of an organised marxist fraction that could provide a clear political analysis and orientation. This gave room for the forces of reformism, which were particularly strong amongst the leadership, to grow and push out many of the scattered marxist and revolutionary elements.

However, this did not mean the automatic triumph of reformism. On the contrary, the ensuing two decades, from 1895 to 1914, saw the working class in Britain struggle alongside its international brothers and sisters against the tide of revisionism and opportunism. Significantly, this struggle took place on two fronts which rarely seemed to relate to each other.

On the one hand, large parts of the workers’ movement were animated by an almost elemental striving towards unity, which manifested itself in major efforts in the late 1890s and 1900s. These, however, were marked both by confusion within the working class, stemming from its lack of political formation, and by the manoeuvres of many of its erstwhile leaders, allowing the right wing to push through its own version of unity.

On the other hand, the small minorities who constituted the left of the existing organisations, principally within the Social Democratic Federation, struggled to create the politically formed marxist minority required by the proletariat. But in doing so, they were deeply scarred by the sectarian legacy of the SDF.

The bourgeoisie benefited greatly from this situation and certainly contributed to it as much as it could, enticing the leaders with the pleasures and privileges of the ruling elite, and granting reforms to fuel the idea of a peaceful transformation of capitalism, whilst showing the occasional flash of steel and gunshot to the rebellious masses.

The dynamic of socialist unity

The goal of unity was a commonplace of the workers’ movement in this period. The Second International called on all socialist organisations to unite in a single party in each country. In Britain, the resurgence of the workers’ movement in the early 1890s began to sweep aside all the sectarian divisions that had riven the movement in the preceding decade. The foundation of the ILP represented a major step towards unity, since it was based on the unification of a whole range of new socialist organisations as well as branches of existing ones. The dynamic continued, with resolutions calling for the unification of all socialist organisations regularly being debated at the annual conference of the ILP. Notably, however, these were supported by the local branches of the ILP rather than the leadership, which became more dominated by the reformists with the disappearance of radical elements like Tom Mann (who had been secretary) and the leaders of the new unions. Over the next few years the National Administrative Council (NAC) became dominated by Hardie, MacDonald, John Bruce Glasier and Phillip Snowden, while its position within the party was strengthened at the expense of the rank and file. All of the ‘big four’, who were to take turns as party chairman up until 1909, had close links with the Fabian Society and were influenced by its politics of gradualism and class collaboration.

In February 1894, the second conference of the ILP voted down a resolution calling for amalgamation with the SDF. In July of that year Robert Blatchford, the editor of the Clarion, who had advocated for the creation of the ILP, launched a campaign for socialist unity. This was opposed by the leaders of both the SDF and the ILP. Quelch for the SDF describing the ILP as “a sort of half way house” and demanding that all real socialists should join the SDF, while Hardie asserted that “As an organisation for uniting all the forces into a solid fighting phalanx the ILP fits the bill” (Quoted in Crick, The History of the Social Democratic Federation, p.86), although he subsequently proposed an annual conference of all socialist organisations, possibly in an attempt to stem the tide which saw many local ILP branches passing resolutions in favour of unity. The fourth ILP conference took up the idea of such a gathering of socialist organisations and passed a resolution instructing the NAC to issue invitations, but the proposal was rejected by the SDF annual conference.

The push for unity continued to move forwards nonetheless, with pressure coming from the branches of both the ILP and the SDF. In July 1897 an informal conference of the two organisations led to the creation of a joint committee to agree the details of unity. In the referendum that followed, the joint membership voted by 5,158 to 886 in favour of fusion. The leadership of the ILP immediately began a campaign against the result. Hardie, who at the informal conference had proposed the resolution which declared the union of the SDF and ILP was “in the interests of the socialist movement”, now wrote in the ILP News “It may be that there is something in the methods of propaganda, if not the principles of the SDF, that not only render it somewhat antipathetic to our members, but out of touch and harmony with the feelings and ideals of the mass of the people… It might be, therefore, that the introduction of its spirit and methods of attack would check rather than help forward our movement” (Crick, op.cit. p88-89). The NAC refused to accept the result on the grounds that the turnout had been too low and stated that the issue would have to be discussed again at the annual conference. This gave the leadership time to mount a campaign in favour of federation rather than fusion. At the conference, despite criticism and resistance from the floor, they openly manoeuvred to get the result they wanted, first denouncing the SDF and then proposing that the vote be taken again. The resolution on the NAC’s proposals was carefully worded so that delegates had to decide immediately for federation or to refer the matter back to the branches for the members to vote “whether they are in favour of a federation, or dissolution of the ILP, and fusion with the SDF” (Quoted in Howell, British workers and the Independent Labour Party, p.315. Our emphasis). However, it was indicative both of the domination of the leadership and of the political and organisational weakness of the pro-unity elements that their opposition went no further.

The Labour Representation Committee – a victory for the right wing

With the immediate threat of socialist unity blocked, the right wing of the British workers’ movement was able to realise its goal of labour unity, in which the trades unions would dominate.

The right wing was composed of a number of elements, most notably the leaders of the ILP, the trades unions and the Fabian Society.

Many of the leading members of the ILP persistently opposed marxism, which they tended to associate with Hyndman and the dominant faction of the SDF. At the founding conference Ben Tillett, one of the leaders of the London Dock’s strike of 1889, declared that “he thought English trades unionism was the best sort of socialism and labourism. He wished to capture the trade unionists of this country, a body of men well organised, who paid their money, and were socialists at their work every day and not merely on the platform… With his experience of unions he was glad to say that if there were fifty such red revolutionary parties as there was in Germany, he would sooner have the solid, progressive, matter-of-fact fighting trade unionism of England than all the harebrained chatterers and magpies of continental revolutionaries” (quoted in Wrigley “The ILP and the Second International” in James et al [eds] The Centennial History of the Independent Labour Party, p299). Hardie had long campaigned for a ‘Labour Alliance’ and, despite the mythology of his commitment to socialism, was always ready to give prominence to his radical and liberal beliefs if it was likely to gain him more votes. The NAC pursued this while the struggle for unity was being waged, using the authority of the 1896 conference’s debates to contact the secretaries of the SDF, the Fabians and the TUC’s Parliamentary Committee. This last refused to act without approval from the TUC and the NAC’s first attempt to get a resolution proposed by a sympathetic union failed for technical reasons. After the defeat of the move for fusion, the NAC had no trouble in getting the 1899 Conference to pass a resolution “That the NAC use every means at its command, consistent with the constitution, to bring about joint action with the Trade Union, Co-operative and Socialist Societies in both Municipal and Parliamentary elections” (Howell, op.cit. p317). This allowed the ILP leaders to become involved in preparations leading up to the founding conference of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) and was used by the delegates to the conference to justify their opposition to attempts to commit the LRC to socialism since it did not specifically require them to do so.

The trade unions had shown their hostility to socialism frequently in the past, notably in the changes made to TUC rules at the 1895 Congress in order to exclude socialists (see part 5 [16] of this series, also in WR 215). The majority of union leaders continued to support the Liberals who in return allowed the election of a small number of ‘Lib-Lab’ MPs. The change in attitude that led a majority to support the foundation of the LRC can be attributed to two factors: the need to defend the unions against the attacks of the ruling class and the need to prevent the movement becoming too ‘extreme’.

The tide of class struggle that developed from the late 1880s to the early 1990s prompted the bourgeoisie to mount a counter-offensive. The employers in various industries established organisations to strengthen their fight against the unions through common action and financial assistance and the provision of blacklegs. Alongside this the courts passed a series of judgements to limit strike activity, initially by curtailing the activities of pickets, then going on to threaten unions’ funds. In this the employers in Britain received the active assistance of their American counterparts.

The politicisation of a considerable part of the working class, that went alongside the growth in combativity, also posed a threat to the union leadership. If the dynamic of socialist unity proved successful it might create a body that would challenge the unions’ authority, since this body would bring the political struggle to change, or even overthrow, capitalism to the fore, in place of the unions’ efforts to improve the economic position of the working class within capitalism. In the face of these threats the 1899 Congress passed a resolution calling on “all Co-operative, Socialistic, Trade Unions and other working class organisations” to send delegates to a conference “To devise ways and means for securing the return of an increased number of Labour members to the next Parliament” (quoted in Roberts The Trades Union Congress 1868-1921, p166).

The Fabian society had largely disappeared after the foundation of the ILP, being left with only a handful of branches and a few hundred members, but the consequence of this was to strengthen rather than weaken its influence in the workers’ movement. In the absence of a body capable of defending and deepening marxism (Hyndman’s grip on the SDF tending to ensure that it could make no coherent contribution), the Fabians effectively became the theoreticians of the movement in Britain. By 1897, some 75 Tracts had been published arguing for this or that reform (municipalisation of gas, the role of Parish Councils, reform of the poor law etc). Its lecturers now targeted socialist and labour organisations rather than radical and liberal bodies as previously. Following the defeat of the movement for socialist unity, the Fabians proposed a joint committee with the ILP to pool electoral experience. This became a permanent body bringing together leading figures from both organisations. The Fabians readily supported the creation of the LRC, since they had called for just such a party, dominated by the unions rather than socialists, in 1893.

The conference called by the TUC met in February 1900 with 129 delegates from the unions, the ILP, the SDF and the Fabians. A resolution moved by the SDF, calling for the creation of “a distinct party, based on the recognition of the class war and having for its ultimate object socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange” (quoted in Lee and Archibold Social Democracy in Britain, p158) was defeated, as was another by the TUC Parliamentary Committee which simply proposed a Labour Platform of “four or five planks embracing questions upon which the vast majority of workers in the country are agreed” (quoted in Roberts op.cit. p168). The conference adopted that proposed by Hardie which called for “a distinct Labour Group in Parliament who shall have their own whips and agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to cooperate with any Party which for the time being, may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interest of Labour, and be equally ready to associate themselves with any Party opposing measures having an opposite tendency” (quoted in Pelling The origins of the Labour Party, 1880-1900, p209). An executive was created composed of seven trade unionists, two representatives from the ILP and the SDF and one from the Fabian Society. Much is made by bourgeois historians, such as Pelling, that socialists actually dominated this body, since some of the unions representatives were socialists. In reality it was the forces of reformism and opportunism that dominated.

The significance of the LRC

Contrary to the propaganda of the bourgeoisie, the LRC did not constitute the inevitable destination of the working class in Britain, asserting its true national character of ‘realism’ and ‘pragmatism’ over the unrealistic posturing of the ‘continental revolutionaries’. But it was a real reflection of the powerful illusions that held sway over the majority of proletarians at this time, as well as the theoretical weaknesses of the proletarian political organisations of the day. We have repeatedly shown in this series that the working class movement in Britain was engaged in the same struggle and faced the same tasks as the proletariat throughout the developed capitalist world. We have gone on to show how this was affected by the particular circumstances of the movement in Britain, and most significantly by the absence of an organised marxist fraction.

The working class was pushed to struggle by the sharpening class antagonisms of the last decade of the 19th century, due both to the drawing to an end of capitalism’s period of ascendancy and, more particularly, to the erosion of Britain’s previous economic dominance. The working class in Britain already had a long history of struggle, having created first the chartists, then the unions and the creation of a mass revolutionary party was a real possibility. However, there were also tendencies that went in the other direction, arising from the legacy of Britain’s economic strength, which had allowed part of the working class to benefit, and from the weight of bourgeois ideology, which the skilled ruling class was learning to manipulate.

At the level of the political expressions of the working class, marxism was not able to implant itself in a coherent, organised and dynamic way. The pretensions of the SDF to be the true defenders of marxism tended to drive many workers away since, in the hands of people like Hyndman, it was reduced to an empty dogma and the resurgent working class was forced to look elsewhere for its political and theoretical weapons. The practical result was that instead of creating the mass party that the period required, in which the struggle for the minimum and maximum demands of the proletariat could be unified, the working class ended up rallying to a mass reformist party which could see no further than the minimum programme of immediate reforms and became increasingly hostile to the maximum programme of the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. In turn, those elements which attempted to defend the maximum programme tended to completely reject the struggle for reforms, seeing this as simply a betrayal of socialism. The significance of the foundation of the LRC is above all that it consolidated the separation of the maximum and minimum aspects of the proletariat’s political programme in different organisations to the immense detriment of both parts. In the next part we will examine the development of the LRC and its transformation into the Labour Party.

North

First published in World Revolution 218 (October 1998)

The foundation of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) in 1900 was a victory for the right wing of the workers’ movement in Britain and for the forces of opportunism generally. It was consolidated in the years leading up to the 1906 election when 29 LRC candidates were successful and the LRC was transformed into the Labour Party. While both the LRC and the Labour Party remained part of the workers’ movement throughout this period and beyond, it is possible to see the dynamic of class collaboration that ultimately led to Labour’s betrayal of the working class in 1914. Contrary to various myths, there was no socialist Golden Age for the Labour Party. Even when it was part of the workers’ movement, it was very far from being the class party that socialists in Britain had been fighting for.

The structure of the LRC

The LRC was composed of individual trade unions, the main workers’ political organisations – the ILP and the SDF – as well as the Fabian Society. Each kept their separate identity, standing their own candidates in elections (with the exception of the Fabians) and promoting their own platforms, although there was a fair amount of mutual support for each other’s campaigns. However, far from maintaining the accountability of these organisations to their members, this arrangement strengthened the control of the leaders. The Executive of the LRC was composed of representatives chosen by the constituent organisations, allowing the leaderships to appoint whoever they wanted and thus to exercise considerable control over the preparation of the list of candidates for any election. The annual conference was likewise composed and the only accountability was to the TUC, to which it was required to present an annual report.

This last point underlines the fact that, from the start, the LRC was essentially a tool of the unions. Not only did they compose the majority of the membership and of the Executive, but they also provided the funding, even if this was very modest at first, requiring the constituent organisations to use their own resources. This reluctance is explained by the mutual hostility that had frequently characterised relations between the unions and the socialist organisations (particularly the SDF).

The ILP leadership hailed the new organisation, its official organ proclaiming “The national combination for which we worked and prayed [has been] brought about. How long have we dreamt of the ‘United Democracy'” (quoted in Poirier. The advent of the Labour Party, p89). In this way the ILP leaders glossed over the struggle of the previous years on the question of unity (see part six of this series, “1894-1900: Socialist party or labour alliance?” [17], WR 218) in order to present the LRC as the true culmination of all past efforts, thereby helping to start the myth that the bourgeoisie maintains to this day. Ramsay MacDonald, one of the ruling clique of the ILP, was appointed secretary and, although he was not officially on the Executive, the structure of the LRC allowed him to exercise a great influence, since he was responsible for the production of pamphlets and leaflets as well as the organisation of meetings with trade unions and trade councils. MacDonald was openly hostile to revolutionary socialism and in 1902 wrote a book defending ‘evolutionary’ socialism (subsequently he edited the ‘Socialist Library’ of the ILP, which published Bernstein’s Evolutionary Socialism in 1909).

The Fabian Society greeted the LRC as the fulfilment of its own policy, hailing the founding resolution as “typically Fabian in its Possibilist attitude towards politics” (quoted ibid, p88). Their place in the Executive was taken by Edward Pease, the secretary of the Fabian Society, who was quite clear about the significance of the LRC: “The Socialist lions have lain down with the Trade Unionist lambs, and if either party be ‘inside’ it is certainly not the lambs!” (ibid). Although not publicly active, he played a central role in strengthening the LRC, in particular through the establishment of the Labour Member’s Maintenance Fund at the Third Annual Conference in 1903. The Fund was financed by a levy on union members and administered by the LRC. As one of the standard histories of the Fabian Society concludes: “The connection of the Society with the Party, though unspectacular, should not be minimised; while the Party was ‘growing for six years in obscurity’… the secretary of the Society in accordance with Fabian discipline, was doing his donkey-work in the shadows” (Cole, The Story of Fabian Socialism, p91). At the same time the Fabians continued to be the main publisher of ‘socialist’ literature, frequently giving away thousands of copies of various Tracts to targeted groups, such as County Councillors and Trade Union Secretaries.

The presence of the SDF might appear odd at first sight, given its taste for ‘revolutionary’ and ‘marxist’ rhetoric, but in practice, given the aim of the ruling Hyndman faction to dominate the workers’ movement, it found no difficulty in taking up an opportunist position when it thought this might be to its advantage. Its withdrawal eighteen months later had less to do with its failure to ensure that all LRC candidates were ‘socialists’, than its inability to dominate the new body and its need to defend itself from charges of opportunism being made by many elements on the left of the Federation.

In summary, the structure of the LRC removed control from the working class and put it in the hands of unaccountable leaders who preferred to work behind the scenes through the use of informal networks and influence. This tendency in many ways mirrored the political manoeuvring typical of the bourgeoisie.

The growth of the LRC

In 1901 only 41 of the 1,272 unions were affiliated to the LRC. The combined membership of these unions was 353,000. Two years later it had grown to 127 unions, representing half of the nearly 1.9 million union members. This included nearly all of the new unions founded in the 1880s and 1890s which did not have the historical attachment to the Liberal Party of the older ones.

The rapid increase in affiliation was driven by the continued counter-offensive of the bourgeoisie against the wave of class struggle that ended the 19th century. A series of legal judgements, most notably the Taff Vale case of 1901, sought to limit trade union activities by removing the legal protection for their funds. The main aim of the unions was to get a new Trade Union Act passed to reverse this situation.

The bourgeoisie supports the growth of opportunism

One of the main themes of the period from 1900 to 1906 was the cooperation between the LRC and the Liberal Party. For the LRC this was the consequence of the weight of reformist ideology, the continuing attachment of many to Liberalism and its exclusive focus on elections. In 1900, Hardie called directly on Liberals to support an ILP candidate, declaring that he would “vote straight on every Liberal measure” and support “every item of what [was] known as the Liberal programme” (Poirier op.cit. p176). This position was supported by MacDonald, who wrote in 1905 that “Socialism marks the growth of society not the uprising of a class” (ibid, p91). Such attitudes led directly to efforts to make deals with the Liberals in order to get measures passed and win seats in elections.

From its earliest days the Fabian Society had rejected the class struggle and sought to draw Liberalism and Socialism together. This was one of the aims in joining the LRC, as Pease himself recognised: “In 1903 it transformed itself into a Party,[1] and then began the somewhat strange anomaly that the Fabian Society as a whole was affiliated to the Labour Party, while some of its members were Liberal members of Parliament… The Labour Party itself never complained of the anomaly in the position of the Society or questioned its collective loyalty. And the Liberals in our Society never took any action hostile to the Labour Party or indeed…supported any of the proposals occasionally made that we disaffiliate from it” (Pease, History of the Fabian Society, p151). Concerning the 1906 election, Pease comments that of the 29 successful LRC candidates “Four… were members of the Fabian Society, and in addition three Fabians were successful as Liberals…” (ibid, p153). The real ‘anomaly’ of the Fabian Society was that it was a bourgeois organisation within the workers’ movement. The fact that many of its members were leading figures in that movement does not alter this: it is not possible for a proletarian organisation to straddle the class divide since the bourgeois element will always be dominant given that the bourgeoisie is the dominant class.

However, in the period after the formation of the LRC the decisive role was taken by the leaders of the Liberal Party who allowed the LRC to fight a number of elections unopposed. This is presented by the bourgeoisie as a defence of its party interests against the threat posed by the LRC. In reality it was a defence of the class interests of the whole bourgeoisie, even if some of the more backward elements could not comprehend it and occasionally insisted on standing Liberal candidates when it had been decided to withdraw them. The aim was quite simply to draw the workers’ movement onto the terrain of the bourgeoisie. If this was an implicit recognition of the potential of the threat posed by the working class, more importantly it was an explicit recognition that the current weakness of the movement in Britain gave the bourgeoisie an opportunity to try and destroy that potential. This was grasped by Herbert Gladstone, the Liberal Chief Whip, who wrote in 1903: “The Labour party, was, in fact, a new, vigorous political movement, directed to a certain side of politics but none the less it was political, and being political, it could not be separated from other parties whose sympathies ran concurrently with its own on most of the great political questions of the day” (quoted in Poirier, op.cit. p185).

The possibility of derailing the workers’ movement had perhaps first been glimpsed by the bourgeoisie during the Boer war when socialists and anti-war Liberals united on the ground of Liberal, not proletarian, opposition to the war (we will return to this question in the next part of this series). Towards the end of the war a number of attempts were made to formalise this co-operation. In 1900 the National Democratic League was formed but failed to win support from the ILP, SDF or Fabians. Another attempt in 1902 by J.A. Hobson, one of advocates of ‘new liberalism’, was supported by Hardie, but also did not succeed. The underlying reason for these failures was that a significant part of the working class, for all the democratic and reformist illusions that weighed on it, remained hostile to such overt attacks on its political independence. The response of the bourgeoisie and the opportunist leaders was to make a secret deal behind the backs of the workers.

The leading figures in this were MacDonald and Hardie for the LRC and Herbert Gladstone for the Liberals. After the election of 1900, when only two LRC candidates were elected (one of them being Hardie) Gladstone claimed that the Liberals had deliberately left Labour and Socialist candidates clear runs. This was repeated in some of the by-elections that followed and in 1902 Phillip Snowden received the public backing of 26 Liberal MPs and leading Liberal papers, such as the Manchester Guardian. Co-operation also developed on issues such as free trade, where LRC members and Liberals shared platforms and signed petitions together. The Manchester Guardian went so far as to argue that the ILP had taken up the traditional policies of Gladstonian liberalism. The ILP also received funding from Liberal supporters, notably £500 from George Cadbury to assist leading ILP figures including Hardie and Snowden. Cadbury was quite open in his aim, writing to Herbert Gladstone “I hope that any influence I may have acquired will be used to prevent the ILP from opposing Liberals” (quoted ibid, p127).

The deal eventually agreed, following a number of secret meetings, provided for some 30 LRC candidates to be given a clear run by Liberals at the next election.

The 1906 election

The election saw a massive revival of the Liberal Party who won with an overwhelming majority. All of the workers’ organisations that participated trimmed their sails to the prevailing wind of opportunism. The LRC’s manifesto managed to avoid mentioning socialism altogether, taking its stand on the question of the representation of labour in Parliament and the demand for the reversal of the Taff Vale judgement. The TUC’s manifesto went further, declaring that “For the past ten years monopoly has been unchecked, and a government which came into office to give old age pensions to the aged poor has impoverished the people to benefit the idle rich” (quoted ibid, p246). The ILP’s manifesto was restricted to a list of reforms and the SDF also proposed “a series of palliatives of the existing capitalist anarchy” (ibid).

Of the LRC candidates elected in England and Wales, all but three had been given clear runs. The election of 29 Labour MPs was widely seen as an event of significance. Though in appearance an expression of the growing influence of ‘organised labour’, its true significance was grasped by one of Herbert Gladstone’s allies in a letter to Gladstone: “All of the LRC men and all other Labour men we supported won except in Birmingham, Darlington, Liverpool and York… The only seats won by the LRC men where a liberal was also stood were seats to which Labour was entitled…” (ibid, p264).

In the next part of this series we will look at the position of the British workers’ movement on the questions of internationalism and war. Questions which are vital for fully understanding both the dangers of opportunism and the struggle against it.

North

First published in World Revolution 222 (March 1999)

Throughout this series we have sought to show that the working class movement in Britain has always been part of the international movement, confronted by the same fundamental issues and struggling towards the same goals. We have also shown the specific difficulties that set back its efforts to create a strong class party. In the next two parts we examine its understanding of internationalism and its relationship to the Second International.

The importance of internationalism

Internationalism is the bedrock of the working class movement. This is not a matter of sentiment but a practical necessity. Capitalism can only be overthrown and communism established on a global scale, and the struggle against the bourgeoisie can only be successful if the working class is united across national boundaries.

The foundation of the First International in 1864 was a decisive moment in this task. It sought above all to lay the foundations of the proletarian revolutionary organisation by overcoming the weight of petty-bourgeois and reformist ideology and sects. Its greatest achievement was the defeat of the attempt by Bakunin and his followers to sabotage this work (see the articles in International Review 84, 85 and 87).

The first task of the Second International was to reappropriate these lessons, a task in which Engels played a central role (see part 2 [18] of this series in WR 205). The main work of its first four congresses between 1889 and 1896 was to defeat the anarchists and establish itself on a firm marxist basis. Subsequently its congresses dealt with two fundamental questions that arose from the historical development of capitalism. On the one hand, the struggle against revisionism and opportunism, which grew from the illusions created by the last great expansionary thrusts of ascendant capitalism and, on the other, the attempt to oppose the threat of war that presaged capitalism’s slide into decadence.

The British working class movement took part in all of these struggles. Its organisations sent large delegations to all of the congresses and its delegates, including many of its leading figures, were active in the commissions, and in chairing sessions and proposing resolutions. However, while the likes of Hardie and Hyndman readily talked of fraternity and internationalism, behind those words lay not only confusion about the nature of internationalism but also hostility towards marxism and, especially in the case of Hyndman, a strong dose of nationalism and other bourgeois prejudices.

The understanding of internationalism

The subjective understanding of the meaning of internationalism within the political organisations in Britain was often very poor. Over and above any grand statements about peace and international brotherhood, the movement tended towards a localist and insular attitude that frequently slid into outright nationalism.

This was directly expressed by Robert Blatchford, the editor of the Clarion newspaper and in books such as Merrie England and Britain for the British that sold in their thousands. He set out a reformist and nationalist version of socialism, arguing for example that Britain should produce all its own food as a safeguard against war and that socialism would reverse the decline in the country’s trading status.

The Independent Labour Party appeared more internationalist in attitude, its conferences in 1894, for instance, calling for “disarmament and universal peace” (quoted in Howell, British Workers and the Independent Labour Party). In 1898 the ILP declared its opposition to conscription and a year later argued that peace could only be achieved when “the workers of all countries recognise their solidarity of interest and unite on a co-operative basis of production and exchange” (ibid). However, these sentiments had little or no practical consequences. The ILP remained focused on immediate and local issues and in the International opposed the exclusion of anarchists and sided with the revisionists. Some of its leading figures, such as Tom Mann, were more concerned with developing international trade union organisations.

Of all the organisations, the Social Democratic Federation seemed the most concerned with international matters. One third of the pamphlet announcing the formation of the SDF, England for All written by Hyndman dealt with foreign matters and Hyndman regularly attacked British colonial policy and called for workers to intervene. In 1886, in the face of possible military action between Germany and France over the Balkans, he called for international action by the working class if war broke out, effectively raising the possibility of revolution to prevent war. Similarly, in 1896, during the Fashoda incident, when Britain and France clashed in Africa, the SDF joined calls for working class unity made by Jean Jaures of the French Socialists. However, such arguments were totally contradicted by the SDF’s defence of the British navy. Following the Jameson Raid of 1896 an SDF manifesto supported “the adequate increase of our navy” (quoted in Tsuzuki H.M. Hyndman and British Socialism). During the Fashoda incident Hyndman argued for the maintenance of a large naval fleet, stating that “Such a fleet is a luxury for France: for us it is a necessity” (ibid).

These contradictions expressed the weight of bourgeois ideology within the working class movement in Britain. Events at the turn of the century began to increasingly highlight these contradictions and to indicate how opportunism could lead to the betrayal of the working class, as was to happen with such terrible consequences in 1914.

Opposing war: rhetoric and practice

From 1900 on, when the Paris Congress of the Second International discussed a resolution on militarism moved by Rosa Luxemburg, the question of war and the response of the workers’ movement steadily gained in importance as the tensions between the great powers intensified. In his last days Engels had warned of the danger of a generalised war arising from the acceleration of imperialist rivalries. Luxemburg’s resolution made the same analysis and called on the socialist movement to begin a struggle against militarism by pursuing the class struggle, voting against military expenditure and organising demonstrations and protests against militarism. The resolution was carried unanimously.

The outbreak of the Boer War in 1899 had already tested such sentiments. Initially, the majority of organisations seen as part of the working class movement opposed the war, with even the Fabian Society discussing a resolution criticising it. The main exception was Robert Blatchford, who openly rallied to the side of the bourgeoisie and contributed to the wave of jingoism that affected much of the population. However, opposition to the war, even if sometimes determined, was fundamentally flawed because its lack of a marxist method rendered it incapable of making a class analysis. All of the opposition made serious concessions to the bourgeoisie.

This was inevitably the case with the Fabian Society since, as we have shown previously, it was a bourgeois organisation. Both the pro and anti war resolutions were framed in the interests of British imperialism. That opposing the war, after denouncing ‘imperialism’ nonetheless pledged “to support the expansion of Empire only in so far as that may be compatible with the expansion of that higher social organisation which this society was founded to promote” (quoted in McBriar Fabian Socialism and English Politics). After a pretence of equivocation, the Fabians sided with the ruling class and offered it advice on what to do after the war ended. The Paris Congress of 1900 censured these attitudes and several leading figures of the ILP resigned from the Fabian Society.

The leaders of both the ILP and the SDF attacked the war as a capitalist war. In 1900 Hardie wrote in the Labour Leader “The war is a capitalist war. The British merchant hopes to secure markets for his goods, the investor an outlay for his capital, the speculator more fools out of whom to make money and the mining companies cheaper labour and increased dividends” (Hughes (ed) Keir Hardie’s speeches and writings). In common with many radicals Hardie openly sympathised with the Boers, even presenting them as defending the interests of the working class: “President Kruger and his Government would not permit the introduction of this system of slavery [of bondage contracts] into the gold mines of Transvaal. He is also opposed to the mines being worked on Sunday…and…actually had introduced an Eight-Hours Bill for all workers […] As socialists our sympathies are bound to be with the Boers. Their Republican form of Government bespeaks freedom, and is thus hateful to tyrants, whilst their methods of production for use are much nearer our ideal than any form of exploitation for profit” (ibid). In their agitation the ILP worked very closely with radical Liberals opposed to the war and their arguments were fundamentally the same, focussing on the wickedness, greed and undemocratic practices of individual capitalists and administrators. Hardie, for example, revelled in denouncing Joseph Chamberlain as a dissolute drunkard.

The SDF denounced the war in similar terms to the ILP and some of its members, such as Bax, were as open as Hardie in their support for the Boers. However, Hyndman, not only took up the denunciation of individual capitalists but went even further from a class analysis by introducing a strong element of anti-Semitism. An editorial in Justice was entitled “The Jews’ war on the Transvaal” and presented both the British ruling class and its press as being controlled by “their masters, the capitalist Jews” (Baker, The Social Democratic Federation and the Boer War. Our History Pamphlet 59, Summer 1974). Hyndman was not alone in this, the ILP News declaring at one point “it is no exaggeration to say that the Jew financier controls the policy of Europe” (quoted in James op.cit.). As the war progressed Hyndman returned increasingly to the nationalism that underpinned his whole attitude to international affairs, writing in 1901 “I begin to doubt whether we shall win this South African War; whether in fact it will turn out the beginning of the downfall of the British empire” (quoted in Baker op.cit.). He declared his intention to withdraw from agitation against the war, writing in a letter to Justice that it was “a struggle between two burglars” and that “if I am going to agitate for the independence of anybody, it is for the independence of the splendid native tribes who are being crushed by the Boers and ourselves together” (quoted in Tsuzuki op.cit.). The SDF executive supporting this, stated in a resolution that continued opposition was “a waste of time and money” (ibid).

Both Hyndman’s anti-Semitism and his switch to supporting the war (the comments about supporting the native tribes being just rhetoric) provoked opposition from a minority within the SDF, leading eventually to splits and the temporary resignation of Hyndman from the Executive. We will return to this in the future.

Conclusion

The questions of internationalism and war are closely linked, with the latter providing the fiercest test of any revolutionary organisation’s understanding and capacity to defend the internationalist position.

None of the organisations of the working class in Britain clearly understood the question of internationalism. The SDF’s attitude, as to most issues, was fundamentally dictated by Hyndman’s personal ambitions to dominate the workers’ movement and his opposition to the formation of a real marxist revolutionary organisation. His radical language was used to hide the fact that his final loyalty was to the interests of the British bourgeoisie. England’s colonial policy was presented as an aberration rather than the inevitable consequence of the development of capitalism. The ILP, caught between the tendency to see internationalism as an ideal and the tendency to see it as an extension of trade unionism, was unable to recognise it an irreplaceable political and practical weapon in the proletariat’s struggle against its exploiters.

Confronted with war, neither organisation was capable of providing a class analysis. The opposition they mounted, for all the courage and spirit shown by individuals, actually contributed to the blurring of class lines. Further, if the majority of the working class movement was blind to the dangers of this situation, parts of the bourgeoisie were becoming increasingly aware of the opportunities it offered to them. The more intelligent parts of the ruling class were beginning to believe that accommodating the reformist wing of the workers’ movement could actually reinforce the capitalist system. It was this understanding that lay behind the secret deal between the Liberals and the Labour Representation Committee which allowed the latter to gain a number of seats in the 1906 election (see part 7 [19] of this series in WR 222).

In the next part of this series we will examine the participation of the British working class movement in the activities and debates of the Second International.

North

First published in World Revolution 225 (June 1999)

 

The previous part of this series, in WR 225, examined the understanding of internationalism by the working class movement in Britain, concluding that its response to the Boer War showed some serious weaknesses. We continue this work here by considering the role played by the British working class movement in the Second International in the years leading up to the admission of the Labour Party in 1908.

The struggle against anarchism and for a marxist international

In the second part of this series (WR 205) we described the attempt by Hyndman to sabotage the foundation of the Second International by working with the Possibilists and anarchists, an attempt Engels explicitly compared to the efforts of Bakunin in the First International. We also showed that William Morris, despite participating in the marxist congress, failed to grasp its significance and joined the protests against the exclusion of the anarchists (part 3 in WR 208).

Subsequently, the SDF joined the International and Hyndman took an active part in its debates, from its third congress onwards, including supporting the expulsion of the anarchists. In fact the SDF transformed itself into one of the strongest opponents of anarchists, voting to expel then from the SDF at its 1890 congress and beginning a campaign against them during the preparation of Zurich Congress of 1893, with the SDF paper Justice characterising them as “extreme reactionists” (Tsuzuki, H.M. Hyndman and British Socialism. Original Phd Thesis). At the congress itself and the subsequent one in London in 1896, the SDF actively supported the exclusion of the anarchists. At the latter Hyndman presided over the session that finally settled the debate and definitively excluded them, declaring in his speech “I yield to no man in toleration…but I denounce Anarchy. I denounce disorder, and I stand up for order and organisation of International Social Democracy” (Conference Record, quoted ibid).

This change of face did not mean that Hyndman had abandoned his efforts to dominate the workers’ movement but that rather, in the face of defeat in 1889, he had changed tactics. Thus in changing sides on anarchism he did not abandon his hostility to marxism but sought to distinguish between Social Democratic ‘authority’ and marxist ‘dictation’:“Such self-arrogated dictation…the Anarchists are quite right to protest and revolt against…But to confuse reasonable, necessary and democratically appointed authority with this objectionable, injurious and self-appointed dictation is foolish, and hinders the progress of Socialism generally” (Justice, June 1890, quoted ibid). His enmity towards Engels remained particularly sharp. When an Austrian socialist wrote a book about British Socialism, Justice described it as the first “honest endeavour on the part of a German resident to tell the truth…since January 1881” (quoted ibid). Years later Hyndman attacked The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State as “merely a rehash of Morgan’s doubtful theories with some questionable speculation of Engels’ own” (Justice, quoted in Jackson Solo Trumpet). Following Engels’ death in 1895 Hyndman attempted to move closer to the centre of the international movement by developing links with the German Social Democrats who had previously regarded him with suspicion. Hyndman had earlier shown his bourgeois colours by warning of the threat posed by Germany to British interests and calling for an expansion of the British navy. However, he succeeded in winning over Wilhelm Liebknecht, one of the most respected figures in the workers’ movement, and the SPD paper Vorwarts described the SDF as “the solid kernel around which the mightily growing English Social Democracy will crystallise” (quoted in Tsuzuki op.cit). If these efforts did not give Hyndman the domination he wanted, they did contribute significantly to the SDF overcoming the defeat of 1889 and maintaining its position within the workers’ movement. However, an attempt by the SDF to organise a separate, purely ‘socialist’, congress alongside the London congress of 1896, which was presumably calculated by Hyndman to increase his influence (not least because the ILP would have been unlikely to attend such a congress) won no support from the International. An attempt to restrict the next congress to Social Democratic Parties was also defeated.

Many of the leaders of the Independent Labour Party and the TUC, who formed the majority of the British delegations, were resolutely opposed to marxism (see part 6 of this series ‘1894-1900: Socialist party or labour alliance?’, WR 218) and actively opposed the exclusion of the anarchists, although they tended to vote for resolutions which made acceptance of the political struggle a condition of participation. At the London Congress, Hardie and Mann spoke against their exclusion, Hardie arguing to the ILP delegation “It might be alleged that if they supported these people’s claims they were sympathising with Anarchists. For his part, he was more afraid of doing an unfair thing towards a body of Socialists with whom he did not see eye to eye, than he was of being called an Anarchist” (quoted in Wrigley ‘The ILP and the Second International: the Early Years, 1893-1905’ in James et al The Centennial History of the Independent Labour Party). In fact Hardie and other ILP leaders associated themselves closely with the anarchists, not only breaking their mandates to vote against their exclusion but also speaking at a public meeting with the likes of Kropotkin, Malatesta and Michel. The TUC elements, who had been given the main responsibility for organising the London Congress, supported this stance and had initially sought to transform the congress into an international trade union conference.

The struggle against revisionism

After the struggle to establish the International on a marxist basis, the congresses in 1900 in Paris and 1904 in Amsterdam were dominated by the fight to defend marxism as the revolutionary tool of the proletariat against the errors and betrayals of revisionism and reformism. If this arose first within the German Social Democracy, the same tendencies were seen throughout the workers’ movement: “fundamentally, reformism was the product of the pressures emanating from bourgeois society in a period of impressive economic growth and prosperity in which the perspective of capitalist collapse and the proletarian revolution seemed to be receding into a remote horizon. …Social democracy was gradually being transformed from an organ geared essentially towards a revolutionary future to one fixed on the present, on the gaining of immediate improvements in the working class’ living standards” (‘The revolutionary perspective obscured by Parliamentary illusions’ [20], IR 88).

At the Paris congress debates focused on the participation of the French socialist Millerand in the bourgeois government that included General Gallifet, who had led the massacre of the Communards in 1871. Kautsky attempted to reach a compromise by proposing a resolution that effectively opposed such participation in principle while accepting it in practice: “The entry of a single socialist into a bourgeois ministry cannot be considered as the normal beginning for winning political power: it can never be anything but a temporary and exceptional makeshift in an emergency situation” (quoted in Cole A history of socialist thought, Vol. III). The Bolshevik paper Iskra denounced this as an ‘india-rubber’ resolution, but at the congress it was carried by a majority of 29 to 9.

Of the British delegation, it was inevitable that the ILP, the Fabians and the Trade Unionists would support the resolution since their whole orientation was towards participation in and collaboration with the bourgeois parliament. However, the SDF also supported it, despite its publicised opposition to revisionism (Bax even called for Bernstein, the ‘architect’ of revisionism, to be tried before a ‘court of heresy’ and expelled), showing once again the reformism beneath its radical rhetoric: “We of the SDF have always acted upon the principle that Socialists are not only justified in entering into conflicts which arise from time to time between bourgeois parties, but that it is frequently their duty to do so in the interests of justice and humanity and in defence of such political liberties as we at present possess […] We held it to be the duty of French Socialists to support the Waldeck-Rousseau Ministry against the clerico-military reaction” (Justice, September 1899, quoted in Tsuzuki, op.cit.). Under pressure from Liebknecht and the opposition provoked within parts of the SDF, Hyndman subsequently backtracked in an effort to maintain his leadership.

The Amsterdam Congress dealt directly with the question of revisionism, taking up a resolution passed at the SPD’s congress in Dresden in 1903 that explicitly condemned it: “The Revisionists wish to substitute for the conquest of political power through the overcoming of our enemies a policy of meeting the existing order of things half way” (quoted in Cole, op.cit.). An attempt to amend the resolution into a compromise acceptable to all was not supported and the Dresden resolution, with only minor changes, was passed by 25 to 5 with 12 abstentions.

On this occasion the British delegation divided, casting one for and one against. The ILP strongly opposed the resolution, Bruce Glasier opening a campaign against the ‘class war’ that was to last several years, one of whose aims was to isolate the SDF. Of the debate at the congress he commented: “all of the speakers, with the exception of Bebel, seemed to rant away at the phantom enemy ‘Capitalisme’ and I less than ever felt drawn to the typical ‘continental socialist’. Hyndman and Quelch as usual did the British serio-comic turn – nay I am wroth when I think of the ineptitude of it all” (quoted James et al, op.cit). The SDF given its previous opposition to revisionism and its stance as the defender of marxist orthodoxy, threw its support behind the resolution. That this also kept it in line with the majority of the Social Democracy, including Kautsky, was undoubtedly important in Hyndman’s calculations as well.

Opposing the tide of militarism

As we showed in the last part, the struggle against the rising tide of militarism began to preoccupy the International from the Paris Congress of 1900 onwards. At the Stuttgart Congress of 1907, the debate showed that the response to this question was intimately connected to the debate on revisionism, with the left of the International ensuring that the final resolution made clear that “the struggle must consist…not simply in replacing war by peace, but in replacing capitalism by socialism” (Lenin, “The International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart”, Collected Works Vol.13). This resolution was adopted virtually unanimously. However, the length and complexity of the debate showed that there was a dangerous lack of understanding of the question. Four different resolutions were submitted, including one which advocated national defence if a country were attacked and another which called for a general strike and uprising if war were threatened. In general, the growing weight of the reformist vision of the peaceful transformation of capitalism, which had not been curtailed by the resolution of 1904, stood in open contradiction to the idea of the Stuttgart resolution that war was inherent to capitalism and peace required its forceful overthrow. The debate on colonialism also expressed the weight of bourgeois ideology with the proposed resolution ignoring the question of imperialism and arguing that under socialism colonial policy could play a civilising role, a view echoing that of the Fabians. This was only narrowly defeated, leading Lenin to conclude that “it revealed a negative feature in the European labour movement” (ibid, p77). The British delegation voted unanimously for the resolution on militarism but divided over the question of a ‘socialist’ foreign policy.

The affiliation of the Labour Party

The International’s understanding of the working class movement in Britain can be seen from the debate on the affiliation of the Labour Party that took place in the International Socialist Bureau in 1908. A small minority, but, significantly, one led by the SDF, opposed affiliation altogether unless the Labour Party explicitly recognised the class struggle. The main resolution, proposed by Kautsky, whilst acknowledging that the Labour Party did not so recognise the class struggle, nonetheless concluded that it should be admitted since “in practice the Labour Party conducts this struggle and adopts its standpoint, inasmuch as the Party is organised independently of the bourgeois parties” (quoted by Lenin in “Meeting of the International Socialist Bureau”, Collected Works Vol.15). Lenin, while supporting the admission of the Labour Party, opposed this formulation since “in practice the Labour Party is not really independent of the Liberals and does not pursue a fully independent class policy” and proposed that the grounds for affiliation should be amended to read “because it represents the first step on the part of the really proletarian organisations of Britain towards a conscious class policy and towards a socialist workers’ party” (ibid). Lenin’s amendment was lost, but in recognising both the potential of the workers’ movement in Britain and the threat it still faced from the bourgeoisie and its own opportunist leaders, he recognised the continuing dilemma facing the working class’ movement; a dilemma that would become sharper in the following years.

Conclusion

The involvement of the workers’ movement in Britain in the Second International offered the possibility of a counter-weight to the prevalent insularity of the movement, but this opportunity was rarely grasped and instead it further revealed the weaknesses of the movement, which frequently aligned itself with the opportunists and reformists.

The response to the question of organisation revealed that the working class in this country still lacked a solid marxist foundation. In the ILP this incomprehension was a consequence of its reformism and opportunism, while within the SDF it was created by the parasitic manoeuvrings of the dominant Hyndman clique. The debate over revisionism showed the opportunism of both organisations. The leadership of the ILP were the natural allies of Bernstein and Jaures while the leadership of the SDF switched allegiance as and when they felt it would advance their interests. On militarism, the opposition to the Boer war had already exposed the weaknesses of the movement on this question, while Hyndman’s nationalism and anti-Semitism utterly contradicted the SDF’s support for the anti-militarist resolutions.

However, none of this meant that the working class movement in Britain was defeated and that the struggle for the class party was over. The growth of the Labour Party expressed, as Lenin recognised, the continued movement towards socialism of the British working class while the opportunism of the main organisations increasingly provoked opposition from their left wings. The task facing these minorities was how to maintain the combat against opportunism without isolating themselves from the mass working class movement, particularly faced with the massive development of the class struggle in the years leading up to the First World War. This was a task they shared with the whole of the left wing of social democracy. In the next part we begin to trace this effort by looking at the opposition that developed within the SDF in the first years of the century.

North

First published in World Revolution 226 (July/August 1999)

The struggle that took place within the international workers’ movement in the first years of the twentieth century can only be understood in its historical context. While the foundation of this struggle lay in the clash between the reformist and revolutionary wings of the movement, the latter, in seeking to defend marxism, the necessity for revolution and the revolutionary potential of the working class, was also forced to confront a number of new questions that were being posed as capitalism moved into its period of decadence. These concerned the nature of the period, the form of the class struggle and, most importantly from the point of view of this series, the implications for the role and functioning of the revolutionary organisation. Both Lenin and Luxemburg devoted major works to the first, while the second was addressed through the debate on the mass strike and the lessons of the 1905 revolution in Russia. The most significant contribution on the third was made by the Bolsheviks who, in insisting on the need for a revolutionary organisation to be composed of committed and disciplined militants, moved towards the understanding that the era of the mass party, formed around the minimum programme, was coming to an end and that the organisation capable of struggling for the maximum programme, the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, would necessarily regroup only a minority of the proletariat. The developments in the revolutionary movement in Britain in the first years of this century can only be properly understood in this context.

By the turn of the century the tendency towards a division in the movement in Britain between a mass reformist organisation, under the control of the right wing, and much smaller revolutionary currents, was becoming increasingly marked. This followed the defeat of attempts to unite the Independent Labour Party and the Social Democratic Federation in the later 1890s by the leadership of these two organisations and was consolidated by the formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 and the Labour Party in 1906. One lasting consequence of this has been to reinforce the myth, actively peddled by the bourgeoisie, that the working class in Britain is inherently conservative and under the sway of illusions in bourgeois democracy. While this partly reflects the reality of the situation, resulting from the historic power of British capitalism, it ignores the equally important existence of a persistent revolutionary current within the working class of this country. Furthermore, as the dominance of British capitalism within the global market ebbed away under pressure from its younger rivals, the resurgence of the class struggle began to challenge the reformism and opportunism of the right wing and offered an historic opportunity to the left wing.

The left of the ILP and the SDF

In 1900 the Independent Labour Party and the Social Democratic Federation were the two main socialist organisations in Britain, although they had recently seen a decline in membership. In both, the right wing dominated the leadership. However, both also contained a left wing struggling against this domination.

The defeat of the demands for unity greatly strengthened the grip of the right wing of the ILP. The leadership effectively rotated within a small group, consisting of professional politicians like MacDonald, Snowden and Hardie. Although they might refer to Marx, and even claim to be the embodiment of marxism, in practice they were anti-marxist, opposing the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat in favour of manoeuvres and deals with the bourgeoisie to gain seats in Parliament. They controlled every aspect of the ILP, from its finances through to its congresses. The left wing, in contrast, was even more weak and fragmented than at the time of the unity negotiations, not least because a significant number of militants had left to join the SDF. They seem to have had no clear organisational form, their existence mainly being expressed through the resolutions calling for unity with the SDF that were still quite frequently sent to the ILP annual conference.

In contrast, the left wing of the SDF became highly organised, with its own meetings and publication. In part this reflected the greater weight of the left of the SDF since there was no organisation further left to which they could go, but it also arose in response to the strength of the leadership, which frequently used its position to expel troublesome elements. One of the tactics used to maintain this position was the reserving of half of the seats of the executive for London, where the Hyndman clique was based.

The left of the SDF itself included a number of different factions. The strongest was located in Scotland where there had been a growth in membership in the 1890s, leading to the creation of a Scottish District Council on which the left had a majority. Within London there were some elements who largely shared the critique developed by the grouping in Scotland and who subsequently shared the name ‘impossibilists’. Both groupings, but especially the one in Scotland, were influenced by the Socialist Labor Party in America, led by Daniel DeLeon, who strongly attacked the socialists he felt were compromising with capitalism. He advocated replacing the traditional craft unions with industrial unions that organised all workers in a particular industry rather than just one particular craft or skill. A second grouping in London centred around Andrew Rothstein and was particularly active in opposing the anti-Semitic analysis of the Boer war presented by Hyndman and others in Justice.

The critique of the left in the SDF

The two currents on the left of the SDF shared some positions, notably opposition to the official stance of the SDF on the Boer war, but they were sharply opposed on the direction the SDF should take. Rothstein argued that for the SDF to break from being a mere sect it had to be involved in the everyday struggles of the working class and emphasised the importance of the minimum programme alongside the maximum one: “Political and civil freedom, cheap justice, wide and sound education, aesthetic culture, and innumerable minor things which, despite our professed programmes, very frequently leave us indifferent, are of the utmost importance to the proletarian class and should concern us as much as its material wellbeing” (Social Democrat [theoretical journal of the SDF] 1900, quoted in Kendall, The revolutionary movement in Britain 1900-1921, p12).

The impossibilists, in contrast, attacked the SDF for making concessions to reformism. In the debate over the participation of socialists in a bourgeois government at the Paris Congress of the International, the only member of the British delegation to oppose the Kautsky resolution, which took a centrist position by rejecting participation in principle while allowing it in practice, was George Yates, a member of the Scottish District Council. The impossibilists linked this to an attack on the Hyndman clique, not only opposing their domination of the party, but also what they saw as the dissolute habits of the leadership. In seeking to defend the revolutionary goal they tended to play down the struggle for immediate reforms, a significant proportion opposing them altogether. One practical consequence was that they violently opposed any move towards unity with the ILP.

Linked to the critique of reformism was a critique of the ideology of ‘state socialism’, which associated an increase in the powers of the state with a move towards socialism. The Fabians were to the fore in this since they openly opposed the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, but it was prevalent also in the ILP and the SDF. After leaving the SDF, that fraction of the impossibilists who formed the Socialist Labour Party set out their definition of socialism: “By this we do not mean what is variously called ‘State Socialism’, ‘Public Ownership’ or ‘Municipalism’ – that is, the ownership of certain public utilities by a community in which capitalism is still dominant. A worker is as much exploited by a capitalist state or corporation as by a private employer… We insist upon the political overthrow of capitalism as a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the working class” (quoted in Challinor, The origins of British Bolshevism).

The struggle in the SDF

The struggle between the leadership of the SDF and its left wing was centred around the SDF’s annual conferences between 1901 and 1904. In 1901, the impossibilists opened the struggle with a resolution condemning the vote on the Kautsky resolution and a call for the organisation rather than Hyndman to control Justice. Both were lost but closer links were established between the impossibilists in London and Scotland. The fruits of this were seen at the conference in 1902 with the two groups meeting before the conference and working together during it. Although their specific resolutions were lost, particularly one calling for the formation of socialist trade unions, they increased their share of the vote (Challinor states that on average they got 40%) and won three places on the executive. Subsequently the impossibilists sought to further strengthen their position, establishing a liaison committee and launching their own paper, The Socialist.

The SDF leadership now moved against the left, taking advantage of the differences within it. In particular they had the support of the faction led by Rothstein who described the impossibilists as ‘traitors’. Amongst the impossibilists there were also tensions, both over political positions but also arising from personal animosity. Above all, there was a division between those who thought it necessary to form a new party and those who called for a continued struggle within the SDF. In particular, the issue of The Socialist prior to the 1903 conference contained a very strong attack on ‘the official SDF’ which had not been submitted to the London faction for their approval before publication.

The conference itself was held in London, the centre of the Hyndman clique (Hyndman himself had resigned from the executive in 1901 but his acolytes still controlled it; the move was purely formal). George Yates, the author of the article was expelled and the earlier expulsion of the Finsbury branch was confirmed. The impossibilists lost their seats on the executive and the new one gave itself powers to expel without appeal any individual or branch that opposed it.

At a joint meeting of the impossibilists after his expulsion, Yates called for the formation of a new party. The majority of the London impossibilists opposed this as premature but in May 1903 the Socialist Labour Party was founded. The result was that the left was now divided between the Rothstein faction, which had rallied to the leadership, the group which had formed the SLP and another still within the SDF. This last now had no chance of effectively combating the leadership and its leading militants were expelled at the 1904 conference. In June they formed the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Balance sheet of the struggle

The struggle that took place within the SDF in the first years of the century confirmed not only the existence of a left wing within the revolutionary movement in Britain, but also that it had a significant weight and was seeking to take up the questions posed to the working class by the new period that was opening up.

On the method of the class struggle, the SLP began to pose the need to go beyond the educational and parliamentary struggles that dominated the movement in Britain. However, while industrial unionism implied a criticism of reformism in the existing trade unions it did not open a perspective towards identifying the form of the proletariat’s revolutionary struggle in the way the experience of the soviets in the 1905 revolution did. Before long, the DeLeonist notion of industrial unionism became another sterile, sectarian dogma which discounted the real experience of the working class. Of the other parts of the left, Rothstein’s emphasis on relating to the actual struggles and concerns of the working class was essentially a restatement of a fundamental orientation of marxism in the face of its distortion by the leaders of the SDF and the ILP and the Fabians. The SPGB, for its part, quite rapidly made ‘education’ and elections their only spheres of activity. An early debate on the Trade Unions, whilst rightly seeing them as reformist, showed that they had failed to grasp the political aspect of economic struggles, in particular their role in the development of class consciousness.

On the question of the nature of the organisation, while Rothstein’s positions rightly defended the necessity for revolutionary organisations to relate to the actual state of the class struggle, this tended to still be within the framework of building a mass party. The SLP, and to a lesser extent the SPGB, recognised the necessity for revolutionary organisations to be disciplined and theoretically formed, but did so at the cost of a sectarian attitude towards the larger working class movement. Both organisations refused to work within the Second International and denounced the socialist parties of other countries as reformist, failing to see the struggles going on within them.

The question of how to struggle within an organisation was also posed. Rothstein’s strategy was to struggle within the SDF. If his criticism of the impossibilists was understandable given this, his readiness to defend the SDF, and even Hyndman personally, suggests a centrist position towards the struggle within the SDF. The SLP on the other hand split from the SDF prematurely, ignoring the advice of James Connolly who was a major influence on them. The SPGB showed a greater reluctance to abandon the SDF but were given no choice.

Overall, no single organisation was able to make a sufficient analysis of the weakness of the movement in Britain in their practice, let alone their theory. All of them carried a lot of baggage from the SDF. Rothstein refused to work with other parts of the left while the SLP and SPGB carried the sectarianism learnt within the SDF into the new organisations. In the years that followed these developments the working class in Britain mounted a strike wave of a size and seriousness unseen since the Chartists and showed once again the strength and potential of the British working class. It is to these developments and the challenge they posed to the working class movement that the next part in this series will turn.

North

First published in World Revolution 228 (October 1999)

From 1908 to 1914 the working class in Britain threw itself into an intense struggle against its exploiters, part of an international wave of struggles across Europe, which included the mass strike in Russia in 1905. The days lost through strike action reached a level never seen before and only surpassed by the General Strike in 1926. Even more significantly, these struggles saw the workers begin to wrest control from the union leaderships and move into open confrontation with the state.

Only the unleashing of the First World War curtailed this explosion of class anger and then only for the first two years of the war. With these strikes the working class in Britain answered the notion of its supposed passivity and conservatism and reaffirmed itself once again as an integral part of the international proletariat.

The decline of British capitalism

Underpinning this development were the changes in capitalism as it moved out of its period of ascendance into its decadence, and the specific form it took in Britain. In our pamphlet The Decadence of Capitalism [13], we show the extent to which the growth of production has slowed down in the period of decadence and go on to draw the economic and political consequences of this, not least the dramatic increase in imperialist rivalry leading to an escalation of war and the tendency for the living and working conditions of the proletariat to come under attack. Britain not only fully shared these tendencies but, as a consequence of its previous position as the most advanced capitalist state, tended to experience them sooner.

As early as the 1880s Engels had noted the relative decline of British capitalism. Between 1883 and 1914 Britain’s share of the global economy declined from 31.8% to 14.1%. After 1870, the economies of Britain’s two greatest rivals, the US and Germany, grew at about twice the rate that Britain’s did. One of the factors behind this was the flight of British capital abroad, leading to a reduction of investment in the domestic economy and a consequent decline in the growth of productivity (between 1856 and 1873 productivity grew at 1.3% per annum; between 1873 and 1913 this declined to 0.9% per annum). This only further stimulated the flight of capital so that in 1907 investment abroad exceeded investment at home.

For the working class the result was an increase in its level of exploitation as the bourgeoisie tried to make up for the decline in productivity. Rothstein, in From Chartism to Labourism, brings together a range of statistics to illustrate this situation. Real wages (i.e. wages in relation to prices), after steadily increasing from 1870, began to decline after 1907; fewer workers had to do more work; unemployment began to go up, reaching 7.8% in 1908; and industrial accidents increased.

The weight of reformism: the unions

The political situation also contributed to the context in which the class launched its struggles and was a significant factor in shaping the form they took. The Trade Unions were the dominant organisations of the working class in Britain throughout the second half of the 19th century. They were also strongholds of reformism and class collaboration. Their role in opposing the development of the class party of the proletariat has already been examined (see part 6 [17] in WR 218). The extent to which they had actually abandoned the class struggle can be seen in the relationships they developed with the employers and in aspects of their internal organisation.

In the latter part of the 19th century a number of mechanisms were established between workers, or rather between their union representatives, and the employers to regulate wages and disputes. In the mining industry the sliding scale linked wages directly to the cost of the coal produced. In 1893 the unions and employers in the cotton industry signed the Brooklands Agreement which established a conciliation board to settle disputes, again based on the fluctuations of the employers’ profits.

In 1896 the Conciliation Act encouraged the creation of conciliation boards, which brought employers and union leaders together to ‘settle’ disputes, with 282 coming into existence by 1910, increasing to 325 by 1913. The result was that the majority of disputes went before the boards: in 1909 1,997 disputes followed this course (of which 1,025 were resolved) while only 436 resulted in strikes or lockouts. In 1911 the Liberal Government enabled the state to intervene directly by setting up the ‘Industrial Council’ to resolve disputes that the conciliation boards could not settle.

The hostility of the union hierarchy to strike action was also expressed in the separation of strike funds from other funds, such as unemployment and sickness benefits, and the low level of the former. Strike funds were also invested, making it difficult to access them when needed.

Such open class collaboration was an advantage for the bourgeoisie not the workers since the unions won neither significant pay rises nor improvements in working conditions. While wages did increase between 1875 and 1900 the real reason for the improvement in living standards of the working class was the fall, of up to 50%, in the price of basic foodstuffs over the last 25 years of the century. Similarly, the eight hour day, which had been a goal of the workers’ movement since the time when the General Council of the First International was based in London, continued to elude many parts of the working class. Cotton workers, for example, saw a reduction of just one hour in their working week from 56.5 to 55.5 over the twenty years from 1886 to 1906.

In such a situation, where the unions could appear either unnecessary or ineffectual, it is no surprise that their growth slowed down and even, as in the first few years of the century, went into reverse (in 1900 there were just over two million union members, in 1904 this figure had declined by over 50,000, but thereafter it steadily increased as the wave of strikes developed).

The Labour Party

The election of 24 Labour MPs in 1906 was hailed by its leaders as a historic step forward. In reality, as we showed in part 7 [19] (WR 222), it was part of a conscious strategy by the most enlightened part of the British bourgeoisie to blunt the threat of socialism. The range of social measures passed in the first year of the new government continued this strategy by seeking to ameliorate some of the worst aspects of capitalism, such as the poverty commonly associate in old age, sickness and unemployment. All of these measures received the uncritical support of Labour, as did the annual budgets, including expenditure on the army and navy.

The same was true of the measure which had provoked the unions into supporting the LRC: the reversal of the Taff Vale decision, which had rendered union funds vulnerable to claims for damages from employers following industrial action. Although there was strong opposition from the more reactionary elements in the Liberal Party, as well as from the Conservative Party and much of the press, the legislation was passed virtually in the form desired by the unions. While bourgeois historians, such as Pelling in his History of British Trade Unions, suggest this was a factor behind the growth of militancy in the succeeding years, its actual purpose was precisely the opposite: to strengthen the unions’ hold over the workers.

Subsequently, support for the Labour Party began to decrease, opposition being expressed on the one hand by the return to the Liberal Party of many voters, resulting in a sharp reduction in the number of Labour MPs following the two General Election of 1910, and, on the other, by support for more clearly socialist candidates, the best example of this being the election of Victor Grayson in 1907 standing as a Socialist rather than a Labour candidate.

The class consciousness of the proletariat in Britain

The form taken by the workers’ movement in any given period fundamentally reflects the level of consciousness of the working class. If the leaderships of the unions and the Labour Party most clearly expressed the ideology of opportunism and reformism in the years covered by this series, they were able to do this because the working class allowed them to, because it shared the ideology. The roots of this lay in the material situation of the working class, in the fact that the great expansion of capitalism in the final decades of its ascendancy meant that the working class as a whole saw improvements in its living conditions. As Rothstein argues, the fact that in Britain this arose from the fall in the cost of foodstuffs, rather than from increases in pay won through the class struggle, particularly strengthened illusions in the beneficence of capitalism.

However, while this explains the dominant tendency within the working class in Britain, it is important to also recognise the existence of a counter-tendency. This was evident in the struggles of the late 1880s, leading to the creation of ‘new unions’ of unskilled workers; in the numbers participating in the May Day demonstrations of the 1880s; in the growth of socialist organisations in the same period; in the struggle for the unity of the SDF and ILP in the early 1890s; and in the fight against opportunism within the SDF at the turn of the century.

1908 to 1914: the escalation of the class struggle

The immediate cause of the strike wave lay in the steady increase of prices in the period from 1900 to 1914 and the attacks by the ruling class on wages and working conditions. While the first major strike did not break out until 1908, a number of developments in the years preceding expressed the changes beginning to take place within the working class. In 1905-6 a movement arose in the South Wales coalfields to organise the previously unorganised miners, through the use of force if necessary, in order to prepare for a confrontation with the owners. The demand for a minimum wage was also raised. In 1906 the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants called for an all-grades increase and recognition of the union. The membership also voted for strike action.

A detailed account of the development of the strike wave is outside the scope of this series and instead we will just highlight the major developments:

• 1907: Lockout of Belfast dockers following a dispute provoked by employers. Soldiers and police occupy part of the city, with fights leading to several deaths.
• 1908: Strike by cotton workers in response to employers’ demand to cut wages under the terms of a previous agreement. Compromise reached after 7 weeks which was effectively a defeat for the workers. Strike by engineers following the threat of a pay cut and against the advice of union leaders.
• 1909: Strike by ship workers, breaching the previous conciliation agreements, and leading to the resignation of the secretary of the union. Sporadic strikes continued and a further ‘general’ strike threatened even after the bosses and union leaders struck a deal.
• 1910: Strikes by miners in South Wales leading to fighting with the police and mobilisation of the army. Two strikers killed by troops. Union leaders refused to support the call for a general miners' strike and some had to be protected by police when visiting the coalfields. Syndicalists elected to union leadership. Refusal by cotton workers to accept reduction in pay under conciliation agreement, leading to the threat of a lockout. The government intervened to resolve the dispute.
• 1911: Strike by Transport Workers Federation uniting dockworkers in London. All transport in London stopped. The government initially threatened to send in troops before negotiating. Strike by railwaymen in Liverpool met by mobilisation of troops, street confrontations and the sending of two warships to the Mersey. Followed by a general strike on railways (although not complete). The government mobilised troops, but faced with the continuing strike by the South Wales miners and a growing movement for a general strike amongst all miners, it eventually forced the employers to agree to the workers demands.
• 1912: General strike of miners launched despite efforts of both the government and the union leaders to prevent it. However, the employers and government were well prepared with ample supplies of coal stockpiled and the strike was defeated after 7 weeks, the government passing a bill compelling the miners to accept a deal previously rejected.
• 1913: Dublin Transport Workers strike. Supported by workers in Britain but not by the union leadership, who manoeuvred to prevent support being given.
• 1913-14: Smaller strikes continue.

The outbreak of the war brought the strike wave to a halt. In the first seven months of the year there were 836 disputes involving 423,000 workers. In the following five months there were 137 disputes involving 23,000 workers. The ideological defeat inflicted on the working class by the open betrayal of the Labour Party and Social Democratic parties across Europe, with their support for imperialist war, disorientated workers. However, the working class was not beaten, which was shown most emphatically with the outbreak of the revolutionary wave in 1917.

Organisation and consciousness

Between 1910 and 1913 more than 10 million days were lost through industrial disputes every year. In 1912 this reached a peak of 38 million days. The strikes smashed through the opportunist policies and agreements of the union leaderships. Beneath the specific issues involved in each struggle ran two fundamental tendencies: towards the unification and politicisation of the class struggle.

Through its struggle the working class found again, as Marx had argued, that its only real weapons are its organisation and consciousness. The impact of these events on the development of socialist organisations and syndicalism in Britain will begin to be examined in the next part of this series.

North

First published in World Revolution 230 (December/January 1999/2000)

The wave of class struggle that broke out between 1908 and the start of the First World War had a profound impact on the workers’ movement in Britain. Through the scale and militancy of the struggle the working class confronted not only the state but also the dominant trade union and political organisations of the workers’ movement. Their reformism, opportunism and class collaboration had fettered the class struggle for many years. Through their struggle the proletariat in Britain reasserted itself as a class, showing not only vigorous combativity but also a consciousness of its interests as a class.

The movement was marked by two main tendencies. The assertion of the necessity for militant industrial action, including the general strike on the one hand, and for unity on the other. These tendencies were also expressed in the wave of struggles in the late 1880s that led to the creation of the new unions and the ILP, were a corrective to the excessive focus on the parliamentary struggle, that marked both the ILP and the SDF, and to the sectarianism and division to which the movement had succumbed during the intervening decades. At its most fundamental the wave of struggle expressed again the potential of the proletariat in Britain to create a revolutionary class party.

The situation that actually developed became defined by the growth of syndicalism and by the creation of the British Socialist Party and it is these two aspects that will be examined in this and the next part of the series.

Syndicalism and Industrial Unionism

Syndicalism and industrial unionism both saw the trade unions as an instrument of the revolutionary struggle, rather than a means to win reforms from the ruling class and draw the working class together. While the terms have sometimes been used almost interchangeably, in reality, even though individuals moved between the two and there was some co-operation, they were divided on the question of political action and the strategy to adopt towards the existing unions. Syndicalism had its roots in developments within the trade union movement in France, in particular the foundation of the Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT) in 1895. It was strongly influenced by anarchism and rejected political action but worked within the existing unions. Industrial Unionism in contrast, which emerged in America under the influence of the Socialist Labor Party, supported political action while seeking to create new ‘industrial’ unions to replace the old ‘craft’ ones. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) founded in 1905 was an expression of this tendency, although following a split it later became anti-political. Industrial Unionism can be seen as a flawed attempt to respond to the new conditions being posed as capitalism moved from its period of ascendance into the period of decadence and the old trade union form became increasingly obsolete. It sought to provide an answer to the question of how to organise and to struggle in the new period, but the real answer was provided in Russia in 1905 and again in 1917, in the mass strike and the soviet form of organisation.

The SLP and Industrial Unionism

While syndicalist ideas found some echo in Britain during the final decade of the 19th century, it was the ideas of industrial unionism that initially came to prominence and took organisational form. This was the result of the efforts of the Socialist Labour Party (see part 10 [21] of this series in WR 228). In its report to the 1907 Stuttgart Congress of the Second International, the SLP stated that it had been “the pioneer of revolutionary unionism in Britain” (Challinor, Origins of British Bolshevism, p54). From its foundation the SLP took up a very critical attitude towards the existing unions, identifying them as reformist and refusing to allow union officials to join. The creation of the IWW in the US was welcomed by the majority of the SLP, which voted at its fourth annual conference in 1906 to create an organisation to lay the basis for new unions in Britain. In the same year the SLP took an active part in a strike in Dundee which resulted not only in the workers gaining a pay rise of 5% but also in the formation of a new branch of the party. The Advocates of Industrial Unionism (AIU) was set up in August 1907. The SLP dominated the new organisation numerically but deliberately sought to have non-members in leading positions. In this sense the AIU was also an effort by the SLP to overcome divisions in the workers’ movement.

Although the SLP saw industrial unionism as only part of the struggle of the working class, it nonetheless argued that the revolutionary unions it hoped to create would not only be a means of fighting the revolution but would also be the foundation of the future socialist society: “Let us then organise industrially as well as politically for our class emancipation. Industrially to build up in the womb of capitalism the foundations of the future state of society… Politically to unseat the capitalist class from the power of government…” (The Socialist, quoted in Challinor op.cit. p88). Faced with the weight of the existing union structure however, the AIU decided that its militants should remain in the unions to spread the ideas of industrial unionism while also pushing for new unions when possible, a strategy which became known as dual unionism.

While most of the political organisations of the working class gave priority to parliamentary action, even dismissing strikes as irrelevant or counter-productive; some of their militants were influenced by industrial unionism. In the SPGB this led to a split, with the industrial unionists either leaving or being expelled. The SDF initially adopted a similar policy, although it was forced to relax as the numbers supporting industrial unionism grew as the strike wave went on. The ILP for its part took no such action, even though its leaders had no sympathy for industrial unionism. While the AIU itself remained small, with relatively few branches, it put a lot of effort into propaganda, in particular with the publication of a monthly paper The Industrial Unionist and the distribution of many pamphlets.

Many of the militants who joined the AIU were influenced by their experience of the recent strikes and the lack of support from the Labour Party (some of whose members introduced a Bill in 1911 to make strikes illegal unless 30 days notice was given), the ILP and the SDF were drawn towards the anti-parliamentary positions of syndicalism, while the policy of the SLP allowed them to assume control of the Executive of the AIU. The situation came to a head with the publication of an article in The Industrial Unionist that denounced the ballot as sterile and the parliamentary struggle as secondary to the industrial. While this did not actually amount to syndicalism it provoked a strong response from SLP members who formed the majority of the AIU’s membership. They refused to back the Executive, which resigned in May 1908. Others were expelled following the formation of a new Executive. The expelled members formed the Industrial League the same year, going on to reject the policy of dual unionism and gradually moving closer to syndicalism. In 1909 the AIU re-formed as the Industrial Workers of Great Britain but never became a significant organisation.

The Industrialist Syndicalist Education League

Syndicalist ideas were spread in Britain during the 1890s by a number of anarchists, with the anarchist paper Freedom occasionally reporting events in France. A number of short-lived periodicals, such as The General Strike and the Voice of Labour (Published once in 1904 and for the first nine months of 1907), promoted syndicalism and ‘direct action’. John Turner and Guy Aldred were leading figures in this movement, the latter having originally been a member of the SDF, and together they worked on the second Voice of Labour until they fell out. An organisation, confusingly called the Industrial Union of Direct Actionists was also founded by Turner in 1907 but collapsed too after a few months.

The publication in 1910 of the first issue of The Industrial Syndicalist, edited by Tom Mann, who had played a leading role in the strike movement of the late 1880s and subsequently in the ILP and then the SDF, marked the real beginning of syndicalism as a significant trend of the working class movement in Britain. Mann and his collaborator Guy Bowman drew support from a wide range of elements both within and outside the existing political organisations, including leading militants from the railways, transport workers and the South Wales coal fields who were at the forefront of the industrial struggle. In December 1910, a conference at Manchester launched the Industrial Syndicalist Education League. The founding resolution declared “That whereas the sectionalism that characterises the trade union movement of today is utterly incapable of effectively fighting the capitalist class and securing the economic freedom of the workers, this conference declares that the time is now ripe for the industrial organisation of all workers on the basis of class – not trade or craft – and that we hereby agree to form a Syndicalist Education League to propagate the principles of Syndicalism throughout the British Isles, with a view to merging all existing unions into one compact organisation for each industry, including all labourers of every industry in the same organisation as the skilled workers” (The Industrial Syndicalist, no. 6).

The following year when he resigned from the SDF, Mann wrote “I find myself not in agreement with the party on the important matter of parliamentary action… I declare in favour of direct industrial organisation, not as a means, but as THE means whereby the workers can ultimately overthrow the capitalist system and become the actual controllers of their own industrial and social destiny” (quoted in Tsuzuki, Tom Mann, p150). Although originally describing himself as non-political rather than anti-political, by 1912 he was arguing that “political action is of no use whatsoever” (quoted in Hinton British Syndicalism 1900-1945, p65).

The practice of the ISEL was to work within the existing trade unions, although it also contained dual unionists within its ranks. Many of its members were radical union officials, such as those in the Unofficial Reform Committee of the South Wales Miners Federation who produced The Miners Next Step in 1911. It also gave its support to the movement to amalgamate the existing unions, its militants within the building trades, for example, playing an active part in the Amalgamation Committee established within this industry.

The structure of the ISEL was initially very informal, its first AGM only being held in 1913. This, together with the lack of a clear statement of positions, was a deliberate policy of Mann’s to attract the widest possible range of supporters. The AGM followed two special conferences in 1912 and led to the creation of a more formal structure with local branches and an executive committee. Nonetheless, its aim remained to carry out “a campaign of education in the principles of syndicalism” (quoted in Hinton op.cit. p140). These steps were rapidly followed by a split following the growth of a largely anarchist section led by Bowman which had adopted the policy of dual unionism and called for the ISEL to be more revolutionary. The split led to the collapse of the ISEL. New organisations were subsequently set up, including a British section of the IWW, which defended dual unionism, and the Industrial Democracy League, which opposed it. In 1914 The Voice of Labour was launched as an openly anarcho-syndicalist publication, defending work in the existing unions while a rival anarchist publication, The Herald of Revolt, supported dual unionism.

The role of syndicalism and industrial unionism

Many of the militants in both the AIU/IWGB and the ISEL played an active and even leading part in the wave of industrial unrest. However, neither organisation played a role in the real evolution of the struggle. In the case of the ISEL this was because it did not seek to play such a role, the aim of Mann and most of its militants being to prompt the existing unions to take the lead, despite their domination by a conservative, class-collaborationist bureaucracy. In the case of the AIU/IWGB this was largely because it was too small to play such a role, not least because the policy of dual unionism won minimal support from the working class. Its most significant activity arose during a dispute at the Singer factory in Scotland where a branch of the IWGB was established. However, the defeat of the strike saw its militants dismissed and scattered, although many were later active in the struggles on the Clyde during the war.

Over and above these specific factors, both industrial unionism and syndicalism shared the same weakness of reducing or rejecting the political struggle. While the SLP specifically declared the necessity for the political struggle, its illusion that trade unionism could lay the foundation of the future socialist society and its concentration of efforts in the futile attempt to build new unions amounted to an obscuring of the true relationship between the industrial and political struggle. It failed to see clearly both that the essential value of the trade union struggle was the unification of the working class and that its own role was to contribute to the development of the class consciousness of the proletariat through its political clarity. The ISEL, in moving towards an increasingly anti-political stance, largely because it falsely equated political struggle solely with the parliamentary one, also moved towards an anti-organisational one and, ultimately, towards the sterility of anarchism.

While the growth of syndicalism and industrial unionism reflected the working class’ disillusionment with the Labour Party and the class collaboration of the trade unions, it did not contribute to the growth of the revolutionary potential of the working class but, on the contrary, to its weakening. We do not say this because, as the anarchists would claim, we believe that the working class needs a political organisation to tell it what to do, but because the nature and history of the working class show that its struggle is above all political. This is because its revolution is not about building up the new society within the old or creating the means to run this or that industry, or even taking over the economy as a whole, but because it is about taking power from the bourgeoisie and asserting its own class power. In this class war it needs to be organised and to know how to fight. The revolutionary class party is the weapon the working class itself forges in order to fight the bourgeoisie. In the next part of this series we will look at the effort the working class in Britain made in the years before the war to create such an organisation.

North

First published in World Revolution 232 (March 2000)

In the previous part [22] of this series, in WR 232, we began our examination of the impact of the wave of industrial unrest that swept across Britain in the years before the First World War by analysing the development of syndicalism and industrial unionism, showing how its militancy challenged the dominant reformism of the workers’ movement in Britain. In this part we continue this work by looking at the response of the main political organisations of the working class.

The defeat of the attempts to unite the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) in the late 1890s and the creation of the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) in 1900, marked the victory of the right wing of the British working class movement (see part 6 [17] of this series in WR 218). However, it was not a permanent victory and did not mark the end of the dynamic towards unity on a socialist rather than a trade unionist basis. In particular, local branches of the ILP and SDF continued to work closely together, often with overlapping memberships. Resolutions calling for unification with the SDF were regularly proposed at the ILP’s annual conference but the leadership of the ILP was able to either avoid discussing the resolutions at all or to ensure that they were defeated. The leadership also attacked those pushing for unity and dismissed the SDF as a nonentity “out to revive its ebbing existence by engrafting itself upon the ILP” (ILP News, April 1902, quoted in Crick The History of the Social Democratic Federation). Despite such efforts, the minority supporting unity remained significant, the resolution to the 1906 conference receiving 58 votes for and 108 against.

The annual conferences of the SDF also saw regular calls for unity and, since they had the backing of Hyndman and the rest of the leadership, were passed every year between 1904 and 1911. In 1907, the SDF wrote to the ILP inviting them to nominate delegates to join a unity sub-committee it had set up. The ILP’s response to this request, and others that followed in 1909 and 1910, was to call on the SDF to rejoin the Labour Party (the Labour Representation Committee had changed its name to the Labour Party after the 1906 general election), which it had left in 1902, knowing this would be rejected. These developments, while showing that unity remained an issue, were unable to break through the manoeuvres of the leadership of the two organisations. The SDF’s proposals to the ILP and the condition imposed by the ILP were tactics in the struggle to dominate the workers’ movement. The ILP had taken over from the SDF as the largest organisation and in the 1906 election a considerable number of its candidates were elected (see part 7, WR 222). Hyndman was now coming to regret the hasty decision to leave the LRC, since this meant he had lost any real chance of election and he was keen to find a way to regain lost ground. One consequence of this was the decision in 1904 to allow local socialist societies to affiliate to the SDF.

In the second decade of the 20th century, as in the last decade of the 19th, it was the development of the class struggle that brought together and pushed forward the existing tendencies within the working class to create a powerful dynamic for socialist unity.

The impact of the industrial unrest

Faced with the strike wave of 1908 to 1914, the SDF and the ILP were unable to respond to the challenge posed to their traditional positions by the scale and militancy of the strikes and by the advance in the class consciousness of the proletariat.

The SDF, while giving platonic support to strikes once they had started, continued to dismiss them as useless. In 1903 Hyndman wrote in the SDF’s paper Justice: “We are opposed to strikes altogether. They never were a powerful weapon and now they are quite out of date” (quoted in Kendal, The revolutionary movement in Britain 1900 to 1921, p28). Faced with the mass strike of 1905 in Russia, the SDF failed to understand its role in developing the consciousness of the working class, arguing that if the working class was capable of organising such a strike then it was capable of taking hold of power without it. A similar view was put forward in 1907, as the first strikes on the railways heralded the onset of the strike wave: "we of the Social Democratic Party and Justice are opposed to strikes on principle... Political action is far safer, far better and less costly” (Ibid. The SDF took the name Social Democratic Party in 1906 but we have used the old name throughout this series to avoid confusion). The party’s official publication on the strikes of 1911 argued that “industrial struggles such as we have been passing through…inconvenience the general public…add to the bitterness felt…towards the working class by the middle and upper class…engender similar feeling among a considerable section of the public whose sympathies have hitherto been on the side of the men” (ibid, p29). The strike wave as a whole was seen as a massive waste of energy, which should have been spent getting candidates elected to parliament. This position ensured that the SDF did not benefit from the strikes as much as it should. While the first part of the strike wave saw a significant increase in membership, rising from 6,000 in 1907 to 17,000 in 1909, it fell over the next two years to somewhere between 8-12,000 (the figures for these years are imprecise).

The ILP remained preoccupied with parliament. In the two elections of 1910 the agreement reached in secret with the Liberals in 1906 again ensured that a significant number of Labour candidates were elected. While the ILP did not expel members who supported syndicalism or industrial unionism, as the SDF did, Snowden and MacDonald both wrote books attacking such views. The former, after arguing that Marx saw the transition to socialism as an evolutionary process rather than a revolutionary act, dismissed the idea of a general strike as impractical since it was based on an assumption “of working class unity for which there is no support either in experience or probability” (Snowden, Socialism and Syndicalism, p235). While it remained the largest socialist organisation, it saw a decline in membership as the strike wave grew.

The dynamic of unity

Co-operation between militants and local branches of the SDF and ILP grew during this period. There was growing criticism of the existing leadership and, alongside this, a growth of independent local socialist organisations, often under the influence of the Clarion newspaper, edited by Blatchford, who had played a role in the previous push for unity.

In 1904 the Amsterdam Congress of the Second International passed a resolution calling on the socialist organisations in each country to unite in a single organisation. In the wake of this an International Socialist Council for Great Britain was established but it rapidly became another forum for the rivalry of the ILP and SDF. However, the International’s call found an echo amongst some socialists and the strike wave began to turn such efforts into a serious dynamic towards socialist unity. In the same year, the Derby Socialist Society called on the SDF to change its name to the British Socialist Party. In Bury the local branches of the ILP and SDF merged into the Bury Socialist Society. On a greater scale the following year saw a whole range of branches and small organisations come together in the South-East Federation of Socialist Societies, which set itself the goal of a United Socialist Party. However, these organisations were generally short-lived, not least because they faced determined opposition from the ILP. It was able to split the North-Eastern Socialist Federation and MacDonald announced his intention to do the same to the South Eastern Federation.

The tradition of Clarion Vans, touring the country to spread socialism, was also revived by Blatchford and the Clarion movement and was subsequently copied by the SDF.

The campaigns for unity

The election of Victor Grayson in 1907 as a ‘pure’ socialist, sympathetic to industrial unionism and socialist unity, in the face of opposition from the LRC and the ILP, was seen as a powerful expression of the new dynamic. He was also to play a pivotal role in changing the dynamic for unity into a definite campaign. Throughout 1908 Grayson toured Britain speaking at meetings, where he called for unity and a socialist policy. He was made political editor of the Clarion and received support from the SDF. In 1909 he launched a campaign with Hyndman and Blatchford, leading the ILP to cancel all his future speaking engagements. At the ILP conference that year he won support against the National Advisory Council, prompting its four leading figures, Hardie, Snowden, Glasier and MacDonald to resign in an attempt to put pressure on the conference. The opportunism of the ILP leaders came under increasing attack, a number of its leading members signing a manifesto entitled Let us Reform the Labour Party, while the membership began to decline (between 1909 and 1911 46 branches collapsed). The SDF leadership took the opportunity to join the campaign, its conference of April 1911 instructing the executive to call a national conference of unity. Grayson resigned from the ILP in August 1911 and launched a campaign calling for Socialist Representation Committees to be set up as a prelude to founding a British socialist party.

There were in effect two campaigns. That led by Grayson and Blatchford, largely through the pages of the Clarion, and that led by Hyndman through the SDF. While the Clarion campaign sought to create a new organisation on the basis of individual membership, the SDF sought to base it on the fusion of existing organisations, seeing in this a way to assert itself against the ILP. A number of Socialist Representation Committees were created, some through a fusion of SDF and ILP branches and others as new local organisations, while several prominent members of the ILP joined the campaign. Following his resignation from the ILP Grayson launched a speaking campaign to build momentum for a conference the following month.

The British Socialist Party

The Unity Conference of September 1911 that established the British Socialist Party (BSP) was hailed by Grayson and Hyndman as a historic moment in the development of the workers’ movement. It brought together SDF and ILP branches, Clarion Clubs, local Socialist Societies and other organisations with a total membership of about 35,000. The conference received greetings from continental Socialist Parties and from individuals, including Rosa Luxemburg. The new executive seemed to suggest that the SDF did not aim to dominate the new organisation, since only four of the ten members belonged to the Federation. The discussions on the role and aims of the BSP showed that many divisions remained. The founding resolution proposed by the SDF defined the socialist party as “the political expression of the working class movement” which “is not a reformist but a revolutionary party, which recognises that social freedom and equality can only be won by fighting the class war through to the finish” (quoted in Crick, op.cit. p241). The reference to the class war was opposed by a minority but supported by the majority. There were also disagreements over the question of reforms, with the party rejecting any such struggles, and over industrial unionism, with an amendment committing the BSP to “revolutionary industrial tactics” being defeated by 92 votes to 62 (Tsuzuki, H.M. Hyndman and British Socialism).

Despite Hyndman and Grayson’s claims, it rapidly became apparent that no real unification had been achieved because the vast majority of the ILP remained outside. Grayson claimed at the time that 30% of the ILP membership had joined the BSP. The ILP put the figure at just 5%. Certainly, in some areas, such as Lancashire, the ILP was greatly reduced, but in other parts of the country it was barely affected. Within the international socialist movement the new organisation was seen as a failure because it had not brought together the ILP and SDF into a single organisation, which was understood to be the only way to achieve the goal of a single united socialist party in Britain.

The splintering of the BSP

The BSP grew rapidly after its founding. At its official Founding Conference, in May 1912, it was reported that some 370 branches had been formed, with a total membership of about 40,000. In 1909 the SDF had claimed a membership of 17,000. However, even before then the new organisation had begun to break apart with growing conflict between the Clarion and SDF factions. Following the unity conference the rivalry between the Clarion-Grayson faction and the SDF meant that each maintained a separate office. The second meeting of the Provisional Executive Committee of the BSP decided to transfer the executive to the existing SDF office. Since the Unity Conference had also agreed that the SDF should maintain its separate existence until the Founding Conference, this meant that the SDF became the dominant force in the BSP. In short, Hyndman had out-manoeuvred Grayson. Although Grayson attacked the decision as exceeding the authority of the executive he did not attempt to organise any opposition to Hyndman, failing to attend the Founding Conference and ceasing any involvement by 1913.

The conference itself was marked by a new confrontation, this time between the SDF leadership and the supporters of syndicalism and industrial unionism. Initially it had seemed that the BSP would be able to respond to the industrial militancy of the proletariat. In November 1911, 50,000 copies of a Manifesto to the Railway Workers were distributed, followed at the start of 1912 by 150,000 copies of a manifesto to striking miners. The conference adopted a constitution that seemed to compromise between the different factions within the party, declaring as its methods both “the advocacy of industrial unionism of all workers” and also “the establishment of a militant Socialist Party in Parliament”. However, the debate at the conference showed that this masked a sharp division between the old leadership of the SDF, who wanted to keep the industrial and political struggles separate, and those sympathetic to industrial unionism who wanted to give a greater emphasis to the industrial struggles. Leonard Hall, one of the leading supporters of industrial unionism within the BSP, declared that “It was up to the British Socialist Party to declare identity with the new industrial movement” and that “industrial action and political action should be a case of plus not versus” (quoted Kendal op.cit p42). Quelch, Hyndmans’s closest ally, attacked this as a “gross impertinence” to the Trades Union Congress and an intervention by Hyndman helped to defeat the resolution proposed by Hall by 100 votes to 46.

Prior to the first Annual Conference Justice had already attacked syndicalism and industrial unionism as “A recrudescence of the parasitical anarchism which infected the socialist movement in this country some twenty years ago” (quoted in Crick, op.cit. p246).  Following the conference, Hyndman launched a direct campaign against the industrial unionists. In October the Executive issued a manifesto on Political Action and Direct Action which repeated the attacks on industrial unionism. Two members of the Executive, Hall and Smart not only stated that they had not signed the manifesto, but also claimed that it had been altered without their knowledge. Hall and Smart resigned from the Executive, neither attended the 1913 conference and Smart left the BSP with other supporters of industrial unionism, some of whom joined the Socialist Labour Party (SLP).

Conclusion

The impact on the BSP was dramatic. By its second conference membership had collapsed to just over 15,000, less than the membership previously claimed by the SDF. In fact, by 1913, the potential which had existed, not only for uniting the socialist organisations but also for linking the political and industrial struggles into a coherent whole, had been destroyed. While the manoeuvres of Hyndman played a central role in this, in keeping with the parasitic and destructive role he had played within the workers’ movement for the last three decades, the fundamental reason was the overall state of the workers’ movement in Britain. This was a legacy of the past failures of the movement that we have traced in this series. These failures had led to a situation where the movement was defined on the one hand by the opportunism, reformism and class collaboration of the ILP and the Labour Party and, on the other, by the sectarianism of the SDF, which was perpetuated in the groups that split from it, the Socialist Party of Great Britain and the SLP. When the working class launched its militant struggles to defend its interests, its efforts were also marked by a tendency to reject political action, embodied in the growth of syndicalism. One particular factor was the repeated failure of opposition elements to put up a fight against Hyndman. The SLP was a premature split. Grayson gave up when his personal ambitions were thwarted. The syndicalist and industrial unionist faction in the BSP similarly failed to struggle, possibly reflecting their own underestimation of the need for organisation. However, the opposition elements remained within the BSP, grouped particularly around Theodore Rothstein and Zelda Kahan, who defended an internationalist position against the militarism and chauvinism of the Hyndman leadership. They were to play a significant role as the First World War developed. It is to the war and its impact on the workers’ movement that we will turn in the next part of this series.

North

First published in World Revolution 233 (April 2000)

The outbreak of the First World War in August 1914 was a decisive moment in history. Not only did it mark the entry of capitalism into its period of decadence but it was also the point at which large parts of the workers’ movement betrayed the working class and went over to the camp of the bourgeoisie. In country after country the social democratic parties and the trade unions, built up with so much struggle and sacrifice over the preceding decades, rallied to the national flag and called on the proletariat to sacrifice itself on the altar of capitalism. The final two parts of this series examine the response of the movement in Britain to the war.

The weakness of the workers’ movement in the face of war

The question of war has always been an important one for the working class, not least because the proletariat has been slaughtered time and again in the interests of the exploiters. Marx and Engels closely followed and analysed the military rivalries and wars of the ruling class. The First International actively followed both the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War. The Second International, faced with the rising tide of militarism that marked the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, repeatedly discussed the response of the working class to war at its international congresses (see parts 8 and 9 of this series in WR 225 and 226). The Stuttgart Congress of 1907 adopted a resolution that called on the working class “to use every effort to prevent war by all the means which seem to them most appropriate” and, if war were to break out “to intervene to bring it promptly to an end, and with all their energies to use the political and economic crisis created by the war to rouse the populace from its slumbers and to hasten the fall of capitalist domination”. A minority within the International, led by Jean Jaures and Keir Hardie argued for a general strike to prevent war. The majority, including figures like Bebel, Guesde and Plekhanov opposed this position as unrealistic. Trotsky, writing in 1914, argued that in war “the social democrats come face to face with the concentrated power of the government, backed by a powerful military machine” (quoted in Braunthal, History of the International 1914-1943, p4).

The main organisations of the British workers’ movement had a long involvement with the International but showed themselves to be confused and divided over the question of war. One part, under the leadership of Keir Hardie, supported the idea of general strikes as we saw above. Another part, led by H. M. Hyndman, the leader of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) and subsequently the British Socialist Party (BSP), and Robert Blatchford, editor of The Clarion, were ardent patriots who had long warned of the ‘threat’ posed by Germany. The smaller socialist organisations, the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) and the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) were hostile to working with most other organisations, the International included, so played no part in the discussion. In fact, participation in the International often hid the reality that the international situation was not considered that important by the main workers organisations, the Labour Party and the trade unions. Thus, Hardie’s support for the use of the general strike to prevent mobilisation had no consequences for his actual practice of reformism and opportunism. The experience of the Boer war had already shown that the main workers’ organisations in Britain had no understanding of internationalism other than at the level of rhetoric and thus no ability to fight the tendency towards war by the only means possible: intensifying the class struggle. As we said in WR 225, these lessons were not lost on the British ruling class. The outbreak of the war was to show that the weaknesses evident at the start of the century had not just persisted but were actually deeper.

The Labour Party and the unions cross the class line

In the period leading up to the war both the socialist movement and the radical wing of the ruling class were loud in their opposition to war and to the foreign policy of the government. The 1912 Labour Party conference had denounced the policy of the Government as anti-German and, despite official denials, it was widely suspected that a secret deal guaranteeing British support for France had tied Britain into the Franco-Russian alliance. In late July 1914, as the crisis was reaching its climax, the British section of the International issued a manifesto under the names of Hardie and Glasier denouncing the threat of war and calling for mass demonstrations. These were held on 1st August in many of the major cities of Britain, with resolutions adopted calling on the government to make every effort for peace. This reflected the lack of any objective analysis behind the rhetoric. Very rapidly after the declaration of war the Labour Party and the unions gave it their open support. The class war was put on hold in order to give the imperialist war free rein.

Ramsay MacDonald, then leader of the Labour Party, after opposing the declaration of war in the House of Commons, resigned the leadership of the party to make way for the openly pro-war Henderson. However, in practice MacDonald, like the other ‘pacifist’ leaders of the Independent Labour Party, kept his principles pure by putting them aside for the duration: “…we cannot go back now, nor can we turn to the right or the left. We must go straight through. History will in due time apportion the praise and the blame, but the young men of the country must, for the moment, settle the immediate issue of victory” (quoted in Tiltman, James Ramsay MacDonald, p96). Keir Hardie was even more explicit: “A nation at war must be united… With the boom of the enemy’s guns within earshot of the lads who have gone forth to fight their country’s battles must not be disheartened by any discordant note at home” (quoted in Cole and Postgate, The Common People, p507). MacDonald joined the recruiting campaign, as did the party’s only national organiser.

The trade unions did not respond immediately at the start of the war. In late August, the Parliamentary Committee of the TUC called for an end to strikes currently underway and for its constituent unions to ensure that any subsequent disputes should be settled by agreement. In fact, disputes were already sharply declining, from 100 at the start of August to about 20 at the end of the month. On 2 September the Parliamentary Committee published a manifesto supporting the war and welcoming the decision of Labour to support the recruitment campaign. The manifesto also indicated a willingness to accept conscription.

While their declarations of support for the war showed that these organisations had gone over to the ruling class, the full significance of this can only be understood by tracing subsequent developments that led to their integration into the state. This had been the aim of the most intelligent parts of the ruling class for many years. We have already shown how the leadership of the Liberal Party sought to draw the Labour Party towards the state by agreeing a secret deal to share out some seats (see part 7 in WR 222). Significant parts of the Fabian Society, in particular Sydney Webb, had worked assiduously towards this aim. The culmination of their efforts came after the war with the adoption of a new ‘socialist’ platform (containing the famous clause IV) drafted by Webb, and Labour’s transformation into the second party after the Tories as large numbers of Liberals changed allegiance.

The integration of the Labour Party into the state

The major role given to the Labour Party was not direct recruitment for the army but the containment of the working class by acting as its champion. One of the main vehicles for this in the first years of the war was the War Emergency National Workers’ Committee (WENWC) which was formed in the first few days of the war (arising in fact from a meeting originally called to organise opposition to the war). It included trade union leaders, members of the Labour Party, the ILP, the BSP and the Fabians. One of its features was that it included both ‘super-patriots’, like Hyndman and ‘opponents’ of the war as well as ‘sane patriots’ like Webb. This unity was its great strength; but it wasn’t a unity that protected the interests of the working class as it pretended in its public announcements, but a unity that protected the interests of the ruling class by containing working class concerns and anger. Its activities appear prosaic and even benign, being concerned with things like food and rent controls, rates of poor relief as well as individual cases of hardship. However, its first statement made it clear that it stood for a strengthening of the state: “The nation is at the beginning of a crisis which demands thorough and drastic action by the state and the municipalities” (quoted in Harrison, ‘The War Emergency Workers National Committee’, in Briggs and Saville, Essays in Labour History, p225). An attempt was made to hide this with a radical smokescreen calling for the ‘conscription of riches’.

As the war progressed and the state began to organise production and the workforce more effectively, the WENWC became less significant. In 1915 Henderson joined the coalition government as a Cabinet Minister. When Lloyd George came to power more Labour MPs joined the government, one union leader being the Minister of Labour and another MP Food Controller. Lloyd George was very clear about the importance of the ‘Labour Movement’ as a whole to the war: “Had Labour been hostile, the war could not have been carried on very effectively. Had Labour been lukewarm, victory would have been secured with increased and increasing difficulty” (quoted in Williams, Fifty Years March, p230).

The integration of the unions

The trade unions strongly supported the war throughout its duration. At the 1915 TUC Conference a resolution in support of the war was passed with only seven votes against. In 1916 it opposed the call for an International Labour Conference because it included socialists from ‘enemy’ countries. More significantly still, it actively supported measures to control the working class and increase the level of exploitation.

From 1915 on the unions worked with the Committee on Production appointed by the government. The Committee made recommendations to relax trade practices and was also given powers to arbitrate in disputes in order to prevent industrial action. This led to the Treasury Agreement of March 1915 when the unions agreed to suspend industrial action for the duration of the war and to take measures to increase output. The unions and government were cautious in the implementation of the Agreement in order not to anger the workers. The decision by the government some months later to make the terms compulsory through the introduction of the Munitions of War Act allowed the unions to maintain the notion that they were independent representatives of the interests of their members. The government prepared the ground with a campaign attacking workers for impeding production. In reality the National Labour Advisory Council, which had been set up to mediate between government and unions, and included trade unionists amongst it members, was asked by the government to draft the Bill. The Act prohibited strikes and lockouts unless 21 days notice had been given. It also established ‘controlled’ workplaces; here workers could only leave if granted a certificate allowing them to do so.

As the war progressed and opposition and working class militancy grew, the unions joined in the campaigns promising a bright future. The TUC participated in the work of the Committee on Reconstruction, giving its support to the Whitley Report that proposed measures to increase state control, such as the establishment of Joint Industrial Councils and the regulation of wages in certain industries.

A victory for the bourgeoisie

1914 marked the point at which the Labour Party and the trade unions joined the bourgeoisie. However, the dynamic had existed before 1914 and continued afterwards. The bourgeoisie had long worked to corrupt individual union and Labour leaders but now it was the organisations themselves that they captured. These developments were not the result of the betrayals of the leaders but expressed the conscious transformation of instruments created by the working class into weapons to oppress them. Ultimately, they were a consequence of the change in historic period. The ascendancy of the Labour Party after 1918 and its ‘conversion’ to socialism were a consequence of its change in class character. Similarly, the extension of the vote that followed the war was not a step forward for the working class but a reflection of the new reality that bourgeois democracy could no longer be of any use to the working class but was a great deal of use to the bourgeoisie. Working class interests could now only be defended outside of and against both the unions and the Labour Party.

The outbreak of war did not, nonetheless, mark the death of the working class movement in Britain. Revolutionary voices were still raised, both from within organisations that were part of the Labour Party (it was not possible to join the Labour Party as an individual member at this point) and from those opposed to it. This political struggle will be examined in the final part of this series.

North

First published in World Revolution 236 (July/August 2000)

The previous, penultimate part [23] of this series (WR 236) began an examination of the response of the workers’ movement in Britain to the First World War with an account of the betrayal of the working class by the Labour Party and the unions. These organisations, in calling on workers to die for capitalism, crossed the class line into the camp of the bourgeoisie and became the enemies of the working class. This next, and final, part of the series considers the response of the other political organisations of the working class to the outbreak of war.

Lenin’s analysis of the workers’ movement

In 1917 Lenin published the pamphlet The tasks of the proletariat in our revolution which included an analysis of the response of the international working class movement to the war. He identified three distinct trends within the movement:

• Firstly, the ‘social chauvinists’ who supported the war in the name of ‘defence of the fatherland’. These comprised “the majority of the official leaders of the official Social-Democratic Parties in all countries” (Lenin on Britain, p282). Lenin was unequivocal in his judgement: “These people are our class enemies. They have gone over to the bourgeoisie” (ibid).
• Secondly, the ‘Centre’, which “consists of people who vacillate between the social-chauvinists and the true internationalists” (ibid).
• Thirdly, the ‘true internationalists’ whose “distinctive feature is its complete break with both social-chauvinism and ‘Centrism’, and its gallant revolutionary struggle against its own imperialist government and its own imperialist bourgeoisie. Its principle is ‘Our chief enemy is at home’” (p284).

Above all, Lenin insisted that this analysis was dynamic, that it was based on the actions not the words of individuals or organisations: “It is not a question of shades of opinion, which certainly exist even amongst the lefts. It is a question of trend. The thing is that it is not easy to be an internationalist in deed during a terrible imperialist war […] Those who confine themselves to ‘demanding’ that bourgeois governments should conclude peace or ‘ascertain the will of the people for peace’, etc, are actually slipping into reforms. For, objectively, the problem of war can only be solved in a revolutionary way” (p286). It is this method that underpins the analysis that follows.

British Socialist Party

The social-chauvinist and internationalist trends were sharply opposed in the British Socialist Party (BSP), leading eventually to a split. In this the war only brought to a head tensions that had existed in the BSP from its creation and which had already done much to destroy its potential to act as the pole of regroupment for the revolutionary forces of the working class in Britain (see part 13 of this series in WR 233).

One constant source of tension was Hyndman’s nationalism and jingoism, which had led him to call for Britain to increase its navy in order to counter the ‘German menace’. He was not alone in such views, being joined not only by his clique in the leadership of the BSP (and prior to that the Social Democratic Federation) but also by Robert Blatchford, editor of The Clarion newspaper and author of several books on ‘socialism’. Opposition came to a head at the 1911 conference of the SDF and again at the first conference of the BSP in 1912. At the 1912 conference Hyndman lost control of the Executive and in December that year the Executive passed a resolution denouncing German and British imperialism and rejecting any calls for increased military spending. However, the internationalists failed to push home their advantage, the resolution was suspended at the following executive meeting and a compromise voted at the conference of May 1913, which also saw the Hyndman clique regain control of the Executive. This did not bring the struggles in the BSP to an end; instead they began to focus again on the issue of control of the party with Petroff and Maclean leading attempts to overturn Hyndman’s domination.

However, the outbreak of war revealed the extent of the internationalists’ failure. On 12 August Justice published a manifesto, War, the Workers and Social Democracy that supported the war and merely called on the government to ease the lot of the working class. In September, the Executive declared that “the party naturally desires to see the prosecution of the war to a successful issue” (Justice, 17/09/14, quoted in Kendall The revolutionary movement in Britain 1900-21, p88) and called on party members to participate in the recruitment campaign. This statement was adopted by the whole Executive, including FC Fairchaild who had previously been part of the internationalist opposition and Albert Inkpin who had close links to it. The hesitations of the internationalist opposition allowed Hyndman to take the initiative and win over, for the time being, the centrist tendency represented by Fairchild and Inkpin.

However, a true internationalist position was taken by some elements within the BSP. Many branches demanded the statement in favour of recruiting be withdrawn. The lead was taken by the Glasgow branch, of which John Maclean was the most prominent member. Its response to the declaration of war was to take the offensive, not only in holding public meetings in the city, but also sending one of its militants to speak to workers in the munitions factories. Maclean replied to the Executive’s manifesto with a letter to Justice in which he declared “Our first business is to hate the British capitalist system that, with ‘business as usual’, means the continued robbery of the workers” (quoted in Milton, John Maclean, p81). He went on to argue that a war between Britain and Germany was an inevitable consequence of the development of capitalism and had been prepared for by the ruling class of both countries.

The Glasgow branch intervened at many levels. It maintained an active and uncompromising propaganda against the war, not only continuing its main weekly public meetings, where it drew together anti-war elements from other organisation, such as the ILP, but also producing its own paper, the Vanguard, to counter the jingoism of Justice. It also continued to run a series of classes in marxism and related matters to educate new militants. It participated in the immediate struggles of the working class, such as the campaign to ensure the maintenance of dependants of soldiers. More significantly, it was actively involved, alongside militants of the Socialist Labour Party and the ILP, in the first expressions of industrial unrest that were eventually to escalate throughout the Clyde. Within the BSP, it participated in the struggle against the domination of Hyndman, working with elements in London where other opposition elements were regrouped around Fairchild and Joseph Fineberg, although these elements still maintained a centrist position on the war itself.

The Independent Labour Party

At the start of the war the ILP produced a manifesto in which it disassociated itself from the war without actually opposing it: “out of the darkness and depth we hail our working class comrades in every land. Across the roar of the guns, we send sympathy and greetings to the German Socialists…They are no enemies of ours, but faithful friends…In tears and blood and bitterness, the greater Democracy will be born. With steadfast faith we greet the future” (quoted in Dowse Left in the Centre, p20). Within the party a number of different positions were taken but, unlike the BSP, these did not come into open conflict. This lack of conflict within the ILP was not an expression of strength but of weakness, of its attempts to mediate between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat in the name of unity. This was exemplified by the likes of MacDonald and Keir Hardie who, as we showed in the previous part of this series, mouthed pacifist phrases whilst supporting recruitment and calling for victory. MacDonald actually became a leading figure of the opposition and toured the country making speeches calling for a negotiated peace. He repeatedly had his meetings broken up and was subject to a campaign of abuse in the press.

Dowse, in his history of the ILP, argues that as well as a minority openly in favour of the war, there were four different opposition strands, ranging from Christian pacifist to socialist. The latter recognised that the war was capitalist but failed to draw the conclusions that the only way to oppose it was through revolutionary struggle. A tendency common to all of the strands within was to attach themselves to other organisations. MacDonald and his faction worked closely with various bourgeois liberal organisations, such as the Union of Democratic Control, which campaigned for a negotiated peace and greater democratic control over foreign policy, and the National Council for Civil Liberties. Participation in the UDC was very widespread in the ILP with the two organisations, especially at the higher levels, increasingly having common membership. Other elements in the party, including those like Clifford Allen and Fenner Brockway who recognised the war as capitalist, were drawn towards pacifism, participating in the formation of the No-Conscription Fellowship in November 1914 which supported conscientious objectors and worked closely with the Quaker movement. Of 1,191 people tried for conscientious objection, 805 were members of the ILP. The War Emergency Workers National Committee also drew many elements into an inter-classist body whose aim was to ameliorate the situation of the working class without actually opposing the war.

The organisations described above pulled the ILP towards the right and the bourgeoisie. In other areas, notably Scotland where the tradition of the ILP was already more radical, working class militancy and the example of organisations like the SLP and BSP, pulled it towards the left. ILP anti-war militants took part in public meetings organised by the BSP in Glasgow. Its militants were also active within the rent strikes and the campaign against the dilution of labour in the shipyards of the Clyde, although some leading elements, like John Wheatley and David Kirkwood, seem to have played a questionable role in brokering compromises between the sides.

The Socialist Labour Party

The Socialist Labour Party (SLP) became one of the most determined and active opponents of the war. In September 1914 it declared in its paper The Socialist: “Our attitude is neither pro-German not pro-British, but anti-capitalist and all that it stands for in every nation of the world. The capitalist class of all nations are our real enemies, and it is against them that we direct all our attacks” (quoted in Challinor The Origins of British Bolshevism, p125).

However, the outbreak of the war seems to have caused some divisions and serious confusion in the party. Tom Bell, a militant of the SLP, describes three different positions: “The first line led by MacManus and myself, was definite, open hostility to the war; the second led by…John W Muir, was that in the event of invasion we should be prepared for National Defence; the third line was to look upon war with an academic interest, as an event of world importance that would hasten the inevitable collapse of capitalism!” (Bell, Pioneering Days, p102). Bell goes on to argue that the impact of events rapidly united the party around the first position of open hostility. By January 1915 The Socialist was arguing that “As revolutionary socialists, we are bound to make the most of whatever opportunities present themselves for carrying our revolutionary principles into effect, and this war, involving as it does the working class of the leading countries in Europe in common disaster, may prove a blessing in disguise by providing them with the opportunity of throwing off the yoke of their common oppressor” (quoted Challinor, op.cit. p126). They argued that the army contained many revolutionaries forged by the struggles of the previous years and called on the working class to enlist in order to receive training and arms to use against their exploiters in the class war. In practice its militants stayed out of the army, avoiding conscription when it came in so that they could defend their organisation and participate in the struggle at home. The SLP maintained its propaganda work, despite attacks on its militants selling papers and attempts to disrupt its meetings. Its militants also played an important part in the industrial unrest than began to build in the Clydeside from early 1915 on. When conscription was introduced many went on the run, joining those from other organisations in the ‘flying corps’, in order to continue the struggle.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain

The SPGB is unique in that the start of the war produced no divisions in its ranks. From the first it was unequivocal in its denunciation of the war which it described as “this latest manifestation of the callous, sordid and mercenary nature of the international capitalist class”. It declared that “no interests are at stake justifying the shedding of a single drop of working class blood” and concluded “Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our goodwill and Socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of capitalism and the triumph of socialism” (quoted in Perrin, The Socialist Party of Great Britain, p43-4). Subsequent issues of their paper, the Socialist Standard, reiterated and developed this position. They denounced the campaign about atrocities committed by the Germans, pointing out that Britain and its allies were every bit as brutal in their treatment of native peoples and the working class. They showed that the war arose from the economic rivalries of the great capitalist powers and that victory for Britain would not mean more jobs for the working class. They denounced all the religious cant from the Ministers and Priests and exposed the pressure being put on working class men to enlist. Against the recruitment campaign they called on the working class to “Enlist in the army of the Social Revolution. Your OWN class needs you…” (Socialist Standard, October 1914).

However, the force of the SPGB’s words was not matched by its actions. Its opposition to the war remained at the general level, the articles appearing every month made no attempt to analyse the development of the situation, either at the front or at home. Its advice to the working class was not to defend itself or struggle directly against the war, but “stay at home and think” (ibid). In keeping with this, alongside articles on the war, they maintained general educational articles, such as the series on ‘The purpose and method of colonisation’. Their press and their public meetings were their principle activities. The Socialist Standard was allowed to publish throughout the war but their public meetings, like those of other socialist organisations, were regularly attacked. As early as November 1914 they announced a reduction in the number of meetings and in January 1915 their complete suspension. They rejected the idea of struggling to maintain them, arguing that “We have been told that we should have gone on in defiance of the powers that be till we went down in a blaze of fireworks. Our view however was one dictated by our avowed principles. We have always held that supreme power is in the hands of those who control the political machine. The most we could hope for by going on was to prove our contentions by acting in opposition to them” (quoted in Perrin, op.cit. p50). Little effort seems to have been made to compensate for this by increasing sales of literature; no pamphlets were published during the war and there is reference to only one leaflet being produced in the books on the party. The SPGB, while opposing its members enlisting, placed responsibility on the individual. A number registered as conscientious objectors while others went on the run. When conscription was introduced some members were allowed to go because of their financial situation.

This quiescent attitude at a time when revolutionaries had a duty to struggle in every way possible prevented the SPGB from participating in the internationalist trend in the First World War, a failing which it continued in World War Two.

Entering a new period

The outbreak of war in August 1914 ruthlessly exposed the real state of the workers’ movement in Britain. The immediate acquiescence of the majority of the working class to the war and the demands of the state, showed not just the weight of bourgeois ideology on it but also the failure of the revolutionary movement to effectively combat that ideology. This failure fundamentally expressed the influence of bourgeois ideology within the workers’ movement itself but also the legacy of past failures to create a revolutionary party and the consequent sectarianism and dispersal of revolutionary forces. The betrayal of the working class by the mass organisations, the Labour Party and the Unions, and by elements in most other organisations was the practical result.

This did not mean that revolutionary voices were completely extinguished but those that were raised were not only extremely weak and isolated but also deeply confused and threatened by the weight of the prevailing ideology. There was a tendency still to make concessions to the bourgeoisie by compromising what was said or done.

The struggle for the class party was not ended by the war, but when it was renewed it was in a new historical period framed by capitalism’s entry into its decadence and driven by the development of the revolutionary wave.

North

First published in World Revolution 237 (September 2000)