Fulham, London, S. W. 6.3rd Sept., 1932.The Editor, the Socialist Standard,Tell the truth and riddle the opportunists.
Dear Comrade,
In saying that I am now supporting the Maxtonites and implying that I have joined the I.L.P. once more, you are reading into the letter, headed, “The Puritan Strain” and appearing in The New Clarion recently, much more than you are entitled to do. Certainly, I admire Maxton and Brockway, Jennie Lee and Geo. Buchanan for having the courage of their convictions and taking the road into what may mean the abandonment of the flesh-pots, far away from which you will never find Laski, Brailsford, Wise or Dollan. For the courage of your convictions and the same disregard of advancement I have always admired the S.P.G.B., about whom I could equally well have said in that concluding sentence of my letter : “I do not agree with the (l.L.P.) in much, but they have the courage of their convictions.”
I was brought up, and have again become a Quaker. Twenty-five years I have been moving around the whole Labour and Socialist Movement and here and there and now and then I have found men and women who dared to say what they thought and damn the consequence to their careers. But for the most part the Movement lacks “guts.” Where there is no vision, it is quite true, the people perish. That is why the most appalling mess of all will be the Third Labour Government. But that is inevitable. That you and I know. Now, as to my going to Motherwell in 1918, and the means I took most deliberately to force the Catholic clergy, step by step, to reveal themselves as the enemies of Socialism and to bring them into antagonism to the interests of the Irish as a nation struggling to be free, and as workers needing either to limit their families or break away from the Catholic morality of private property on the basis of the patriarchal family. When I went there I was still a member of the Society of Friends. A priest charged me with being an atheist. The letters I produced caused him not only to apologise but, praising the society, practically to call Catholics to vote for me.
Well was I aware of the fact that the worst enemy the Socialist Movement has ever had in its ranks was the late John Wheatley. The Catholic Socialist Society we now know to have been “a contradiction in terms.” Pius XI tells us no Catholic can be any kind of a Socialist. John Wheatley substituted for Socialism his plans for Housing Reform. He turned the whole Socialist Movement of Scotland, including old Freethinkers like John Downie, of Wishaw, down that false scent. Motherwell and Wishaw were the worst-housed burghs in Scotland. With my eyes on John Wheatley I chose to fight in Motherwell.
The Catholic clergy dared not come out openly against the republican independence for Ireland. For that, if I was to stand, I had to break with the Labour Party. When the Clyde division came to Westminster I took good care that I spoke in the House of Commons ahead of John Wheatley. Always, John Wheatley was trailing behind me. Always, John MacLean was advising me. Together, we insulated John Wheatley. We did it as individuals and so committed no one but our two selves.
It was not John Wheatley who broke the discipline of the Labour Party, but myself, supported by an old garrison-soldier and pioneer of the Labour Colleges, George Barker, of Abertillery, when we divided the House on May Day, 1923, against Singapore Naval Base. Following up, I opposed other Navy Votes. John Wheatley, Geo. Buchanan and Tom Henderson joined me. Deliberately and in defiance of the Communist Party “polbureau ” (which had ordered me to demonstrate in Sheffield that day) did I force this split in Labour Party discipline on armaments. Deliberately and without consulting “the polbureau,” did I stage my suspension from the House in a debate on the danger of a war.
Deliberately, did I steal John Wheatley’s thunder in the debate on the Housing Bill, and cause him to come to me afterwards urging and telling me “Your business is to preach revolution ! Mine to preach reform ! Keep to your job !”
Deliberately, in the spring of 1926, did I make it possible for the advocates of Birth Control to go to the Clyde via Motherwell to start a campaign that I knew must split “the Left” so ingeniously got together by John Wheatley. The manoeuvre succeeded and the I.L.P. fell a-quarrelling, “Marxists” for birth-control propaganda, Catholics and all opportunists against it.
When the riot against me in Wishaw in June, 1926, occurred and I saw the chief Catholic town councillor inciting the crowd on because of my attack on the Rev. Barr and his opposition to birth control, I knew that I had lit a fire in Motherwell and Wishaw that will not finally go out till it has burned the Catholic church out of the West of Scotland.
Clericalism is the enemy on “the Right,” “Communism” of Moscow’s Comintern the enemy on “the Left.” I have used them both, and the taste on my tongue is very sweet.
Wishing you many years of good, hard hitting and fearless statement of what seems to you to be the truth.
Yours fraternally,
Walton Newbold.
Reply
We accept the correction about the I.L.P. but disagree with many of the views expressed in the letter.
Edgar Hardcastle
2 comments:
I think you'd need to have a PhD in British Labour History during the interwar years to parse through that letter from Newbold . . . fascinating as it is. (The mention of John Maclean is especially fascinating,)
For all this vitriol directed at the Catholic Church in the letter, according to Working Class Movement Library website, he converted to Catholicism towards the end of his life. Surprised no one's written a biography of him. I guess him moving rightwards in later life put him beyond the pale for most Labour historians.
PS - Yep, I know I've probably used the word 'parse' incorrectly.
PPS
Should have mentioned it in the previous comment, but Newbold is presumably replying to this column - written by Edgar Hardcastle - in the September 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard:
Curious Communist Electioneering.
Mr. J. T. Walton Newbold, until just recently a supporter of the National Government, writing in the O.B.U. Bulletin (Winnipeg, 28th July), tells how he and Saklatvala, who were candidates of the Labour Party, and later became communists, angled for the non-socialist votes of Irish nationalists and Catholics. He says that he, at Motherwell, and Saklatvala, at Battersea, had deliberately picked seats with a large Irish vote and set out to capture it by appealing to nationalist sentiment. Newbold claims that fully half of the votes he received in 1918 were Irish votes. In the 1922 election, after Newbold had joined the communists, 5,000 out of his 8,000 voters were Catholic Irishmen. This is what the communists called winning elections for Communism and Internationalism.
Newbold has had cause to welcome the split in the I.L.P. Having been a Fabian, then in turn a member of the Labour Party and I.L.P., the Communist Party, the I.L.P. again, then the Social Democratic Federation, then the MacDonald National Labour Group, he was for the moment stumped to find a new party to join. The split in the I.L.P., by increasing the number of parties, has given him another chance, and he is now supporting the Maxtonites.
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