Editorial: The Disintegration of the I.L.P. (1934)

Editorial from the June 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another New Party Formed.

Less than two years ago the I.L.P. decided to leave the Labour Party, which it had spent thirty years trying to build up and control. A large minority declined to accept this decision, formed the Socialist League and the Scottish Socialist Party, and remained in the Labour Party. Now, after a painful experience of trying to work with the Communist Party without being swallowed up by it, the I.L.P. has seen another large section of its membership secede in order to form yet another organisation, the Independent Socialist Party.

The secessionists are the I.L.P. branches in Lancashire and neighbouring counties, and their reason for seceding is that they object to the policy adopted by the majority of forming a united front with the Communist Party. They also protest that the policy of the Maxton group is leaning away from democratic and parliamentary methods towards minority action and armed revolt, that is, towards the discredited doctrines of the Communists.

The resolution passed at the inaugurating conference was as follows (Manchester Guardian, May 14th):—

  That this conference, believing: that poverty, unemployment, war, and restriction of liberty are the inevitable accompaniment of capitalism, declares for the establishment of a Socialist Commonwealth in which the land, and instruments of production, and exchange are publicly owned and democratically controlled and in which economic equality, will obtain. Understanding that the change from capitalism to Socialism involves a revolution, the conference affirms that this can only be accomplished by the enlightened democratic assent of the majority of the people and by the full use of the political, industrial, and cooperative strength possessed by the British democracy. To this end it pledges itself to establish an independent Socialist Party which will present not merely “collectivism” as an economic necessity, but Socialism as an ethically superior social system.

This resolution can be taken as giving a good idea of the outlook of the new movement. It is perhaps an advance on the series of programmes adopted in the past by the I.L.P., but it contains many confused and ambiguous phrases, dangerous not only for what they say, but also for the certainty that they will be differently interpreted by different people. What, for example, is meant by public ownership and democratic control of the “instruments of exchange"? Exchange is the process of buying and selling, of giving one privately-owned commodity in exchange for another. It can have no place in a Socialist system of society where articles will be produced for use, not for sale. It may be, of course, that the framers of the resolution did not mean “exchange" but "distribution," but that only indicates their unfitness yet to propagate Socialism. And why the term “publicly owned" ? This is the conveniently obscure name used by Mr. Herbert Morrison to describe the form of capitalism which goes by the name public utility corporations. What is meant by “ political, industrial, and co-operative strength"? There can be no Socialism until a Socialist majority have organised politically for and have achieved the conquest of the machinery of government. To link up industrial action with this as if the two were of equal importance shows confusion. The reference to "co-operative strength" is worse, for it implies that the new party has inherited the I.L.P. belief, that the joint stock capitalist trading, known as the Co-operative Movement, is an organisation which exists to help achieve Socialism.

One test that can be applied to this new party concerns the S.P.G.B. On the surface they have come a considerable way towards recognising the soundness of the S.P.G.B.’s position, and prominent members, such as Mr. Middleton Murry, have on occasions admitted this. If, then, they are clear and determined in their belief that Socialism is the only solution, and that independent democratic political action is the method, why did they hasten to form yet another party, instead of joining the S.P.G.B. ?

If, on the other hand, they hold that the S.P.G.B.'s position is unsound, why do they not state their case against it? They have not done so, but—and this includes Mr. Middleton Murry in particular—they have carefully avoided dealing with the S.P.G.B. at all.

That the founders of the new party are completely muddled in their conception of what constitutes political independence is, however, shown by their statement (Manchester Guardian, May 17th) that members of the I.S.P. are to be allowed to be members of the Labour Party as well. If the basis of the new party is really different from that of the Labour Party, as is claimed, how can individuals be permitted to belong to both parties?

The fact that this is to be permitted will be interpreted, and rightly so, as an indication that the I.S.P. stands in the same kind of relationship to the Labour Party as did the old I.L.P., that of a reformist group calling for a more “militant," but not essentially different, policy and objective. It will also open up the way to that bugbear of working class organisations, the political careerist, who will be able in the I.S.P., as in the former I.L.P., to run with the “left wing” hare while hunting with the Labour Party hounds.

So far there has been no talk in the new party of putting forward a programme of reforms or immediate demands, but since they acknowledge their faith in the old traditions of the I.L.P., and are willing to allow membership of the Labour Party, it is to be expected that they will go the same way as all the other parties which have wanted Socialism a little, but have wanted a large membership, and parliamentary and local government electoral victories, more than they wanted Socialism.

In passing, it is worth recording the result of the Upton by-election, at which Mr. Fenner Brockway was the I.L.P. candidate. The I.L.P. (that is, the Maxton-Brockway fragment of the once popular and wealthy party) is now near-Communist, and it put forward Mr. Brockway in order to queer the pitch of the Labour Party candidate. The result was that the Labour candidate obtained 11,988 votes, the Conservative 8,534, and Mr. Brockway only 748, thus forfeiting his £150 deposit. The I.L.P. (and the Communists, who supported them in the election) sought comfort in the view that, at any rate, they had got real revolutionary votes. A glance at Mr. Brockway's election address shows, however, that he solicited votes on the usual reform measures. In his programme were the following: Old-age pensions of 20s. at sixty years of age, thirty hours' work a week, all-round increases of wages “to a decent human standard," restoration of the wage cuts on the pay of postmen, teachers, soldiers, sailors and the police, etc., etc. One little thing shows the shoddiness of this reformist vote-catching. Mr. Brockway now asks for old-age pensions at sixty; forty years ago the I.L.P. was asking for old-age pensions at fifty. Is this what is meant by a more “advanced" programme?

This kind of reformism once gave the I.L.P. a 60,000 membership, and 200 of its members seats in the House of Commons as Labour M.P.'s. Now its membership is probably less than a tenth of that number, and its M.P.’s are reduced to two or three. When the Maxtons and Brockways are finally forced to recognise that the tide of reformist votes is flowing strongly towards the Labour Party, it may be expected that they and their shattered remnant of followers will slink back into that safe harbourage. 

Their experiment in reformism, independent of the Labour Party, has been every whit as harmful to the Socialist movement as their years of working hand-in-hand with the Liberal and Labour Parties.

It remains to be seen whether the Independent Socialist Party has really learned by that experience or whether it, too, will gravitate back to the magnet of trade union votes and trade union money inside the Labour Party. There is no place for a really independent working class party except on the basis of clear-cut Socialist principles from which every vestige of reformism and vote-catching have been excluded.