"Spreading the word . . . " (2004)

Book Review from the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fellowship is Life by Denis Pye, Clarion Publishing, £4.95.

This is a very fine history of what was a probably an unnecessary organisation, based on what was a very nasty journal indeed. In this slim, but well illustrated and superbly presented volume, Pye gives an excellent account of the background and development of the Clarion Cycling Club and its one-time companions in the Clarion movement. The book is a very useful addition to the field of Labour history as a history of The Clarion and its associated organisations has never before been written.

   

The Clarion, or ‘The Perisher’ as was colloquially known, was a very popular ‘socialist’ journal, established in 1891 and flourishing prior to the 1914-18 war. Its popularity was mainly a product of its humorous appeal – initially the journal was little more than the equivalent of a modern university ragmag. While there can be no objection to an injection of comedy, such a magazine should have formed no basis for further organisation. Later on The Clarion became something of a forum for the various contemporary brands of ‘socialist’ (the Socialist Party however seems to have been barred – see the Socialist Standard of November and December 1906). So far as it held political opinions of its own, its ‘socialism’ was pretty poor stuff: Blatchford, the magazine’s guru, defined his “new religion” as being “To love one another as brothers and sisters and to love the earth as the mother of all.” The Clarion combined such ILP-ish, wishy-washy sentimentality with a love of militarism (the greeting of the Clarionettes, “Boots”, and its response “Spurs”, was straight from the barrack-room) and nationalism (one of Blatchford’s books being Britain for the British). Given the lack of ideological clarity it is unsurprising that The Clarion was one of the Left’s most vociferous supporters of the First World War. Although this was initially a rather popular stance, the bloody pointlessness of the not-so-Great War cut the magazine’s feet from under it. The Clarion died a natural and not overly premature death in 1932.

   

It was survived, however, by the Clarion Cycling Club. The original aim of this organisation, like the contemporary Clarion vans (described in Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists), was to sell the paper and thus ‘spread the word’. But the main purpose of the CCC came to be a social one. This was true also of the wide range of other Clarion-related groups. And the range was indeed wide including clubhouses, choirs, amateur dramatic societies, camera clubs and even a café. The social focus was probably inevitable given the vague nature of Clarion ‘socialism’. All this became even more important after 1918 when paper-selling activities were downgraded (to give them their due the majority of Clarionettes did not approve of the paper’s attitude to the war and mostly dropped it thereafter). During the interwar period the Clarion groups became working class social clubs, whose political standpoint, so far as one existed, was Left Labour. The Clarion Cycle Club survives today in much the same fashion (although it must be said that nostalgia is also an attractive factor).

   

Traditionally membership of the Clarion Cycle Club was banned to Socialist Party members, because the political content of the CCC, although marginal, was definitely reformist in nature. While our own Party has always had social activities (and these are important – we are human beings not daleks), these are entirely secondary to propagandising for socialism. From a political point of view mixing with non-socialists in non-sectarian clubs brings opportunities to ‘spread the word’ on a personal level (sometimes far more effective than formal propaganda).

   

Fellowship is Life is a reminder of how much time and effort were spent on what was an entirely unworthy journal. But such are the ways of reformism.

Kaz.

Copies of the book (£4.95 inc. P&P) are available from Clarion Publishing, 34 Temple Road, Halliwell, Bolton, BL1 3LT.KS

Hidden Histories (2022)

Book Review from the November 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Working Class History. Everyday Acts of Resistance and Rebellion. Edited by Working Class History. PM Press, 2020. 328pp.

This book, described as a ‘history of grassroots movements’, goes through all 366 days of the year picking out and briefly summarising either one or two events that have taken place on each of these days in the last 200 years or more in which workers (or peasants) have in some shape or form rebelled against their masters. It does not claim to record all such events, but simply to ‘give a snapshot of the people and movements that have helped improve our world’ and to ‘counter dominant narratives that sanitize the history of capitalism and colonialism’. Given that several hundred of these are recorded, this does not present itself as a cover-to-cover read but rather a book to be dipped in and out of as the reader sees fit.

From the earliest stages of capitalism, workers began to unite in voluntary organisations to negotiate the built-in antagonism of interests between themselves and their employers. The idea was to resist the pressure of the capitalist class on workers’ pay and conditions and to enable workers to get as good a deal as possible (a larger share of ‘surplus value’) in selling their energies and skills to employers. Some examples recorded here, many of them little known, are: the mutiny (successful) of sailors of 15 Royal Navy ships in Plymouth to demand improved pay and conditions (April 26, 1797); the strike (unsuccessful) of 5,000 female cotton mill workers in Pittsburgh for a maximum ten-hour workday and an end to child labour (September 15, 1845); the walk-out (successful) by 1,400 women and girls at the Bryant and May factory in East London in solidarity with a worker fired for criticising appalling working conditions (July 5, 1888); the setting up of the Union of Rural Workers in Hungary which enrolled 75,000 members but was then banned after strike action (December 13, 1905); the strike by black African railway workers across the whole of French West Africa lasting 6 months and leading to numerous concessions from the employer (October 10, 1947); a Maori land occupation near Auckland which was attacked by police, who evicted the protesters, arrested many people and demolished buildings (May 25, 1978); a two-month occupation by 150 mainly female garment workers of Mansoura-Espaňa textile factory in Egypt leading to concessions on job losses and unpaid wages (April 21, 2007).

As can be seen from these examples, these largely untold stories (often reinforced here with stark images) present themselves as anything but simple triumphalism. There are certainly instances of relatively successful attempts to resist oppression or exploitation by workers or peasants but also details of many failed actions and of violence and atrocities carried out by the authorities or by the rich and powerful to counter or crush protests. Indeed the book warns of the ‘disturbing nature of much people’s history’ and that many entries ‘include descriptions of violence, racism, genocide, homophobia, torture and death, and some of them include mentions of sexual violence’.

This panoramic compendium of acts of resistance is accompanied by a foreword by Noam Chomsky and a brief introduction by the compilers of the Working Class History project. Chomsky sees it as part of the fightback for an area of study – labour history – that has been ‘virtually effaced’ in the American educational system and part of the lifting of a ‘veil from central parts of history that had been concealed or sidelined in the standard patriotic version’. The book’s introduction is notable for something rarely found in discussion of ‘class’ in society, that is it supplies a clear and correct definition of ‘working class’. There is no imaginary ‘middle class’ mentioned here but the working class described as referring ’to those of us who do not own factories, farms, offices or stocks therein (also known as “means of production”) and so need to sell our ability to work to people who do’. So we have the class struggle front and centre here, ‘history from below’ in its true sense. The introduction is also effective in highlighting the ‘myriad of ways’ in which the capitalist system seeks to divide workers (eg, employed v unemployed, one nation against another, ‘natives’ against ‘migrants’), to prevent them from uniting to exert their potential power.

It should be added, however, that most of the ‘hidden histories’ recorded here do not arise from the idea of transcending the class divide, ie, doing away altogether with paid employment and the employer-employee relationship and establishing the classless free access society that socialism must be. They are rather understandable (and often courageous) attempts by workers to resist the downward pressure on their pay and working conditions and if possible to make their conditions of life less harsh. The next step in human history is of course for workers to go beyond workplace resistance and beyond single-issue social protest or demands for ‘social justice’, and to organise, as Chomsky has it (and as is the goal of the Socialist Party), ‘to change popular consciousness and understanding’.

Howard Moss

Ancestors (2010)

Book Review from the May 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors. By Mark Crail. Pen & Sword Books. £12.99.

This book is rather badly titled and is actually a guide to archive holdings relating to trade union, ‘socialist’ and other similar organisations rather than a mere accessory to the family historian and as such is potentially extremely useful to those interested in what is termed ‘labour history’.

It could also be used as a pocket guide to the historic Left (of which, it should be pointed out, the Socialist Party does not claim to be part) as the entry for each organisation includes a potted history. Unfortunately many of these are less than accurate, including that for us. For instance, a couple of minor historical errors: the group which went on to form the SPGB did not simply break “with the Social Democratic Federation over its ‘reformist’ line and the increasingly erratic leadership of Henry Hyndman” but because of the dallyings of the SDF with non-socialist organisations and the anti-democratic (leadership) role of its Executive Committee. Also, the Socialist Standard has not been published since the “launch” of the Party in June 1904 but from September of that year.

These are however chickenfeed compared to the ideological bloopers. Following “a tradition known as ‘impossibilism'” (mainly by historians), the Socialist Party allegedly holds that “reformism is of limited value in overthrowing capitalism”. Not limited value but no value whatsoever. Individual reforms – that is legislation aimed at altering particular aspects of life under capitalism – may be to the advantage or disadvantage of the working class but as a policy such legal alterations are not “stepping stones to socialism” but the road to nowhere. Capitalism reformed is still capitalism. However beneficial (or otherwise as is now usually the case) individual reforms might be, the interest of the working class lies in overthrowing capitalism, not altering its workings.

Keith Scholey

Mixed Media: Dick Gaughan: Exmouth Arms, London (2013)

Dick Gaughan in concert.

The Mixed Media column from the November 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dick Gaughan, the singer-songwriter, recently played at The Cellar Upstairs folk club at the Exmouth Arms, Euston in London. Gaughan, of Irish descent was brought up in the musical traditions and culture of the Gaels; the Scots and Irish in the port of Leith near Edinburgh.

Gaughan began his recording career in 1972 in the Scots-Irish celtic band, The Boys of the Lough, played with Brian McNeill, fiddle player with The Battlefield Band, recorded a tribute album to Ewan MacColl, recorded a tribute album with Bert Jansch to Woody Guthrie, duetted with Billy Bragg on The Red Flag on the album The Internationale, and worked with 7:84, the 'left wing agit prop' theatre group.

Gaughan interspersed his set with anecdotes of his life in music and slices of Scottish radical, nationalist and Irish socialist history. He tells the audience that somebody said he was an 'unreconstructed socialist'. His website lists Karl Marx, Lenin, John Lennon and Groucho Marx as influences, and he supports the Morning Star newspaper. His song Ballad of '84 describes the 1984-85 Miners Strike and salutes Miners leaders Arthur Scargill, Peter Heathfield, and Mick McGahey.

Gaughan performed The Yew Tree by Brian McNeill which describes the 1513 battle of Flodden, and also Calvinist John Knox. He performed Now Westlin Winds by the Scots bard Robert Burns and another Brian McNeill song No Gods (and Precious Few Heroes) which describes the defeat at Culloden. The song Thomas Muir of Huntershill by Adam McNaughton is about the Scots political radical Thomas Muir, supporter of the French Revolution, friend of Tom Paine, and who in 1794 was sentenced to 14 years transportation to Australia for high treason.

Gaughan performed the elegiac Song for Ireland by Phil & June Colclough, and then speaks of the James Connolly, 'Big Jim' Larkin and the 1913 Dublin Lock-Out which involved 25,000 workers and lasted five months. Connolly was a Scot of Irish descent like Gaughan, for a while a socialist in the Scottish Socialist Federation and later the Socialist Labour Party. Stephen Coleman wrote that Connolly's impossibilist ideas (socialism is impossible until the working class understands what socialism means) were an influence, among others, upon Jack Fitzgerald, a founding member of the SPGB in 1904. Connolly later abandoned this socialism and took up Irish nationalism and the armed struggle in the 1916 Easter Rising for which he was executed by the British.

Gaughan concluded his set with Geronimo's Cadillac by Michael Martin Murphey which describes how Indian land was taken by the White Man and the Indian people given capitalism in return.

Steve Clayton

What is the Left? (1966)

Book Review from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Left in Europe since 1789 by David Caute (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 12s. 6d.)

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, although it has Left ancestors, is not a party of the Left. Wc have always refused this title partly because it is a term which categorises the parties of capitalism and partly because of its ambiguity. Caute defines Left in terms of “popular sovereignty." political and economic. He himself is a man of the Left and would probably regard himself as a sympathiser of Marxism. He is also, however, one of those who denounce as dogmatic those who point out how people like him distort Marx.

Caute’s distortions aren’t even original: smashing the bourgeois state, progressive pauperisation, nationalisation, etc. We are told that Marx "argued that economic systems, feudal, capitalist, state socialist, communist, succeeded one another in logical succession." Where did State Socialism come from, Mr. Caute?

The labour theory of value is a moral theory according to which

  Commodities have objective values dependent on the amount of labour embodied in them. Yet market prices arc invariably higher. The difference, "surplus value," is pocketed by the capitalist or middleman and in this way the worker is exploited.

This distortion was too crude even for A. J. P. Taylor, an old hand in this game (New Statesman, March 4th).

All this suggests that Caute might really believe that, as the text in fact reads, the 1891 Erfurt Programme of the Social Democratic Party of Germany was written by Marx—eight years after his death! Such is the shoddy workmanship found in a book by a man currently billed as a brilliant young academic.

Caute's twists and turns to include the so-called Communists in his category of Left rival those of the agents of Russian State capitalism themselves. He records their totalitarianism and authoritarianism, their cult of leadership and the forced labour camps and anti-semitism of Russia. Yet still, for Caute, they rank as Left, even extreme Left. The attitude of "the Left" to Russia suggests that perhaps hypocrisy might be a better yardstick than popular sovereignty.

As a history trying to cover over 250 years in as many pages this book is inevitably superficial, but the many illustrations are interesting.

Adam Buick

The Communists Re-write Working Class History. (1938)

Book Review from the May 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Communist Party has issued some amazing pamphlets, but the “March of English History" (September 4th, 1936), illustrating, as it does, several sides of "Communist" mentality, calls for the consideration of all who are looking forward to working class emancipation.

The front page is adorned with fourteen "great figures of English History" and "while we bear aloft the red flag of Modern Socialism, we continue on the road trodden by the great names of England's people" (page 11). An elementary knowledge of English history will prompt the question: “What is Oliver Cromwell doing in that collection?" Two of his most noted feats were the violent expulsion of a Parliament and the bloody suppression of the "Levellers," a political party with a very substantial social and democratic outlook which threatened the triumphant squirearchy represented by Cromwell. But people who speak of the "Glorious Revolution" (1688)— without quotes—are capable of any misinterpretation of history. Up-to-date representatives of “Modern" Socialism include John Bums, Keir Hardie, and Tom Mann. One of-.these worthies is no longer with us, so we will not linger long to enquire his right of admission to Socialist ranks. On page 8 we read: "1889—Tom Mann, Ben Tillet, and John Bums . . . launch their Socialist Movement, together with William Morris, Keir Hardie, and many others."

Keir Hardie: “There is not, and cannot be, any antagonism between Christianity and the Labour movement " (Browning Settlement, December 5th, 1910). From the “Communist" point of view, of course, this "Keir Hardie transfigured into the impassioned Christian," to quote the report, certainly deserves including. Communists to-day are holding the "outstretched hand" to Catholics. (See February Labour Monthly.) J. R. Campbell (Daily Worker, February 10th, 1938) holds the "outstretched hand" to Christians, all and sundry. He outlines "a few of the issues on which Communists and Christians can easily find a basis for co-operation." . . . Enough to make the mummified remains in the Red Square at Moscow rise and walk!

John Bums, who was once denounced by the Battersea branch of the Social Democratic Federation as a renegade, is now promoted by the Communist Party (which absorbed a large part of the organisation which succeeded the S.D.F.) from the political Chamber of Horrors to take rank with Shelley and Morris. (Oh, yes; Shelley and Morris are among the fourteen: you will know now what the big intellectual “ leaders " in die Communist Party mean when they murmur " Dialectic." It would be funny if there were not a proportion of really decent young people who are taken in by the brag and bluster of the C.P.

Tom Mann is one of the star turns of the Communist Party. "May Day, 1936," issued by the Party, gives a short biography of their hero-—omitting some very significant facts. It would be interesting to know whether the very damaging account of his formation of the “Socialist Party of Victoria," given in The Socialist of May, 1909, has ever been answered. In any case, an advertisement which appeared in the official organ of the S.P. of Victoria gives some indication of the outlook of this organisation: "A white Australian uses white American 'White Rose' kerosene, because it is made by highly-paid white Labour." This will surprise no one who follows current expression of political opinion. Says Tom Mann, in January Labour Monthly, after visiting the very source and fount of "Communist" inspiration: "Over a period of many years in the movement, I have seen many demonstrations; but never, not even in Russia, had I seen anything approaching this magnificent celebration of efficiency in all departments. Of necessity, the Red Army was there, in many thousands. The great March Past was extremely impressive, every section of the fighting forces in full equipment, telling of millions of others, ready on the instant to spring to the defence of the Fatherland." (Italics our own.)

—And such a "Fatherland"! In the next issue of The Socialist Standard it is hoped to marshal a few facts (culled, many of them, from Soviet official sources) which will give a genuine picture of this “Fatherland" as it affects the gagged, deluded underdogs of the Red Fascist régime.

Meanwhile, in choirs and places where they sing, the Communist Party in this country will "raise their glasses" and join His Excellency the Soviet Ambassador (still living, lucky dog!) in drinking a toast to His Britannic Majesty.

Reginald.

Blogger's Note:

See 'Reginald's' article, 'Stepfather Stalin',  in the August 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Pro-Labour History (2017)

Book Review from the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

'Rebel Footprints'. By David Rosenberg, (Pluto Press)

Labour history, like all history, is seen through various lenses, distorting and magnifying certain aspects of reality, filtering out unwanted intrusions. Its resulting narratives reflect fundamental assumptions and serve to boost and consolidate those convictions. Here, David Rosenberg, presents us with a particular view of Radical London designed with a particular aim in mind. One which, since it already carries ‘likes’ from Corbyn and the TUC, ought to be pretty obvious.

Such it is not to the uncritical eye. For the best propaganda does not look like propaganda. Ostensibly, this book really does tell the story of ‘how defiant grassroots Londoners responded to their circumstances from the beginning of the 1830s until the end of the 1930s’ in relation to localities in which they occurred. Here, indeed, are the strikes, the campaigns, the events which any historian of the subject would be bound to include.

Already, however, our vision is limited time-wise. Why 1939? Did history magically end, Fukuyama style, with the invasion of Poland? Of course, this is not Year Zero at all. For the Left Labourite, the Golden Age began and history ended with the general election of July 1945. Hurrah for the use of troops to smash the dockers! Hurrah for the Indian massacres! Hurrah for the atom bomb! Go Clement go! And since that time, the Labour Party has been a most integral part of the political ruling class, so any account of strikes, campaigns, would inevitably be a Jeremiad (!) against that very Labour Party, which Rosenberg has come to praise. And not, like us, to bury.

What then, is the point of these campaigns, these strikes, that Rosenberg (to give him credit) accurately (bar a few niggles) and with an attractive liveliness (if with also butterfly flitting) describes? Whereto is the admirable sense of solidarity generated by the action of working together for a common cause directed? And how are the questions inevitably posed by such campaigns answered? Why, sir, need you ask! Instead of directing such justifiable anger, such togetherness, such criticism, against the system, the Labourite, consciously or unconsciously, co-opts these sentiments for their own ends.

And these are made clear: A change of political masters; Government charity – ‘free’ wigs, a council flat, and a nice job on the bins – for the worker; and a comfy seat on the board for ‘his’ rep. Apart from capitalism as normal, its wars, its poverty, its misery, this is all we can expect from the resurrection of Corbynite Old Labour. That this alternative to the Blairite New Labour holds any sort of appeal shows the depth to which we have sunk, propelled thence by the twin millstones of Leninist ‘Communism’ and Labour’s ‘Socialism’ – both in reality one and the same state capitalist nightmare.

As to the alternative, the world turned upside down, the lowly made high and the masters downtrodden, of this, to which a good half of those name-dropped herein subscribed, nominally or genuinely, there is no mention. We, and those like us, do not want ‘justice and equality’, our path is not mere protest, defensive and backward looking, but the revolutionary road to the world made anew.

Kaz.

Letters to the Editors: Money must go (1997)

Letters to the Editors from the November 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money must go

Dear Editors,

I wish to thank you for your review (August) of my book The Universal Impediment, in particular because, despite having sent copies to many persons and organisations likely to be interested, I have received virtually no comment, favourable or otherwise. That perhaps is because it is difficult to imagine how society could function without money. You may have voiced the general reaction therefore when you said that the weakness of the book lies in how it could be achieved. I recognised the problem. Because we cannot visualise how something can be done we tend to assume that it can’t be done and therefore should not be attempted. That is why my suggestions were not intended as a blueprint but to point out that that which we create we can eliminate.

Again, if I do not call myself a socialist it is only because socialism itself has to move on. Just as 18th century capitalism became inappropriate in the nineteenth century, so 19th century socialism is no longer the complete answer to the problems of the twentieth. Social thinking cannot stand still. We progress only by returning to and questioning fundamentals.

But my main concern was that freedom and scarcity, the two essential features of my thesis— and of human satisfaction—were not mentioned.

Government of whatever sort, elected or not. must by definition, be dictatorial. As we have seen in Russia and elsewhere, a socialism that is imposed from above, whatever its merits, always defeats its objectives. Putting the means of production in the hands of the community is a meaningless concept if that community is itself dictatorial. Party politics, the exercise of power for years by one sector over the rest, is no exception.

As I explained, the money system justifies itself by maintaining the concept of scarcity, but today there need be no scarcity. Already, by genetic manipulation, we are able to produce enough food to feed the world. If we cannot yet duplicate all nature’s resources, we have the technology to create substitutes or alternatives to them to meet all our needs and wants, giving us a world of plenty, so that the money system—and its corollaries, power and government—become not just superfluous but a crippling impediment to production and distribution. No longer is it necessary to take from Peter to give to Paul, to fight over that which could freely and plentifully be made available to everyone.

Not only is the money system inefficient, wasteful and socially destructive, but it will corrupt any system in which it operates. This means that there can be no fundamental social advance while we retain a money system. Like all radical concepts, social organisation without money is difficult to envisage and therefore seems impossible, but we ignore the implications of refusing to do so at our peril.

Melvin Chapman,

Bath

And wages too

Dear Editors,

I would like to thank you for having reviewed Bread & Roses in your September issue, though I found myself in disagreement with a few points mentioned in the review concerning both the IWW historically and today.

The Industrial Workers of the World was founded in 1905 and was a very influential union for the first twenty years of its history. In fact, despite the attempts of the American State to crush it both during the First World War and at the time of the Russian Revolution, it continued expanding to reach a peak membership of 100,000 in 1923. The IWW began to decline in 1924 as a result of a split between those who wanted to build links with the Communist Party and those who were opposed to this.

I am not convinced that in 1907 the IWW came to be controlled by doctrinaire Anarcho-Syndicalists (the term was not then in use). The IWW refused to align itself with any political parties or ideologies because its role was to organise the workers of the world into one big union to "end the use of workers against each other anywhere—in the same plant, or in the same industry, or across oceans, in peace or war. either to cut each other’s pay or to kill each other’s kids". (Fred Thompson in the introduction Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology.)

Experience had taught them that (i) parties and ideological groups were more interested in promoting their own philosophies and taking control of the union than in promoting industrial unionism, and (ii) that, as explained by your reviewer, the membership of the union would then not have had many more members than there were members of the Socialist Party.

It is our aim to unite all workers into an organisation committed to what we believe to be the basic principles which are vital to any successful labour movement, that is, solidarity, internal democracy. a commitment to changing things ourselves rather than relying upon leaders to change things for us, and having an ultimate aim, which for us means Industrial Democracy and the abolition of the wages system.

The IWW has always had a large influence both through it own activity and also in its influence on other unions. It is because of this that the IWW is worth promoting today. Currently the IWW is in the rise and has negotiating rights and a workplace presence in a large number of towns and cities across North America. It is true that the IWW is still essentially a propagandist group, but for a growing proportion of our members it is also a functioning union. To give just one example, there is a rapidly expanding Construction workers section, some of whose members recently brought 300 building workers out on strike in support of the United Parcel Service strikers.

Our union is also spreading again throughout the world, with increasing activity not just in places where the IWW has been active before like Britain and Australia, but also in Japan, Taiwan, Russia, the Ukraine, Germany, Austria, Colombia, Sweden and. most importantly, West Africa, where our office in Sierra Leone was looted by soldiers during the recent coup there.

Bill Runacre,

Reading.

Refusing support for lost causes (1995)

Book Review from the July 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The History of the Social Democratic Federation by Martin Crick. Ryburn Publishing. Keele University Press.

A good history of the SDF has long been needed. This is not a good history, but neither is it useless; indeed, the author has clearly spent some time with the archives of the Federation, particularly investigating its local activities in Lancashire and Yorkshire, and there is much within the 300-plus pages which is educative.

Unlike Tsuzuki, whose book Hyndman and British Socialism  was published in 1961, this study recognises that the SDF was more than just Hyndman, much as the latter failed to understand this himself. Hyndman was a racist who has no place in a socialist organisation (the 1900 conference had to pass a resolution condemning his anti-Semitism) and an arrogant authoritarian who could not have survived outside of a small political sect which he controlled. Hyndman has been given too generous a place in the historical record of the socialist movement in Britain.

There are eight references to the SPGB in this book, each of them mean and disparaging. This is par for the course: Crick is clearly the kind of historian for whom the repetition of cliched prejudice comes easier than objective analysis. Otherwise he would have surely pointed out that unlike the SDF, which first sucked into the embryonic Labour Party and subsequently into the formation of the Communist Party, the SPGB resisted support for lost causes and stuck to its revolutionary principles.

Of more detailed historical significance, the few pages devoted to the departure from the SDF of the so-called impossibilists, who were to form the SPGB in 1904, is badly confused. Briefly, Crick suggests that there were three positions within the SDF in the early 1900s: the impossibilists who opposed working in capitalist trade unions; the SDF Left, led by Quelch, who supported activity in the unions but wanted political independence; and the SDF Right (mainly from the north of England) who wanted the SDF to become a trade-union party. Now, it is quite correct that there were SDF members who wanted the SDF to join a trade-union-based alliance, and the Federation did end up joining the Labour Representative Committee for a while together with the Fabians and the rest, but the description of the "impossibilists" is far from accurate.

For a start, the so-called impossibilists were divided between the De Leonists in Scotland, who theoretically at least adopted the position of opposing the existing unions and seeking the formation of socialist unions. In reality, even these people who were to form the British SLP in 1903, realised that times were not propitious for the establishment of separate socialist unions and many of them were active and militant trade unionists in Scotland. As for the London "impossibilists", who were to be active in the formation of the SPGB, it is pure nonsense to state that they were against working in the unions. For example, Jack Fitzgerald and H. J. Hawkins, the two London impossibilists whose expulsion from the SDF helped precipitate the formation of the SPGB, were respectively members of the Builders' Union and a delegate to the TUC three times, and a member of the London Trades Council. Indeed, those who have taken the trouble to research seriously the early history of the SPGB are aware that many of its founder members were militant union members. True, there was an early debate within the party about the need for socialist industrial unions, in which E. J. B. Allen was their greatest advocate (he subsequently became a close friend and comrade of Tom Mann, the syndicalist), but, despite the considerable respect which many early SPGBers, including Fitzgerald, had for De Leon's ideas, the party was committed to a recognition of the class struggle and this necessitated, at least until the political movement was bigger, working within the existing trade unions.

Incidentally, Crick makes much of the SDF's Marxism, but he should remember that Hyndman preferred his own writings to be studied rather than Marx's and there was actually a ban on Marxian economic education within the SDF: Fitzgerald was thrown out partly for running just such study classes. As a lesson for socialists, the history of the SDF, which ended its existence in the 1940s as a pathetic right-wing dinner club for Labour MPs, is that its greatest moment came in 1904 when the real socialists transcended it.

Steve Coleman 

The Chartists (1987)

Book Review from the June 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Chartists — Popular Politics in the Industrial Revolution, Dorothy Thompson (Wildwood House Ltd., 1986, £6.95)

This is a paperback edition of a work first published in hardback in 1984. The reviews which appeared then made the point that this work represented the most comprehensive treatment to date of the Chartist movement. On the whole this view has considerable justification.

The book makes clear that working class participation in the Chartist movement was greater than many suppose. There were three main political strands in Chartism. Firstly, a small far-seeing revolutionary component. Secondly, reformist elements which, as capitalism developed, attached themselves to the coat-tails of the Liberal Party for most, if not all, of what remained of the 19th century. Thirdly, there was a strand that was really looking backwards to pre-capitalist days when in many ways people had more control over their lives than is permitted under capitalism. There was, for example, resistance to state control of education, with the object of retaining the informal system of earlier times whereby craft skills and other knowledge was passed from one generation to the next within a relatively small community.

Interesting details are given of the reaction of opponents of the Chartists. The following sentiments, expressed by Elliot Yorke, MP for Cambridgeshire, were no doubt felt by many:

If gentlemen think there is nothing to be dreaded from our rural labourers, I fear they are greatly mistaken. I do not believe there is any village in my neighbourhood that would not be ready to assert by brute force their right (as they say) to eat fully the fruit arising from their own labour . . . Every parish in this neighbourhood is . . . ripe for any outbreak. (p. 175)

Whereas nowadays all kinds of arguments are put forward to try to show that the workers do effectively receive the full fruit of their labours, and that the profit of capitalists is the reward for their own effort as well as ensuring future prosperity, the above statement is brutally frank. This MP seemed to accept that the worker is robbed but was determined, by "brute force" if necessary, to keep things that way. The propaganda with which we are familiar today — in which socialism is portrayed as an unworkable utopian pipedream — appears to be of somewhat later origin, appearing after the more brazen "you could but you mustn't approach had ceased to be subtle enough.

E C Edge

Against the Left (1978)

From the August 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

The SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN has consistently maintained that the 'left-wing', despite their claims to being socialist are, in reality, reformist rather than revolutionary organisations, with no more than a sentimental attachment to the working class. In the first of a series of articles providing a searching analysis of the left, we begin with the historical origins of leftism. Future articles in the series will deal with — Bolshevism, Stalinism and the Communist Party; Trotskyism; Sectarianism and Principles, concluding with a look at the Road Ahead.

I. ORIGINS OF LEFTISM

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses . . . this distinctive feature; it has simplified the class antagonism. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: the Bourgeoisie and the Proletariat. (Marx, The Communist Manifesto, 1848)

THROUGHOUT RECORDED HISTORY there have been oppressors and oppressed, exploiters and exploited, rulers and ruled. Marx and Engels were not the first to recognise this historic antagonism of interests, nor were they the first to seek a future society based on egalitarianism. Philosophers have sought The Good Society' for as long as there has been human misery. In the middle of the nineteenth century, however, conditions developed which gave rise to the conviction that society based on class division and exploitation could be ended.

The rise of industrial capitalism broke down the complex class relationships of feudalism and created two classes: the capitalists, who own the means of wealth production and distribution and live in comfort by accumulating rent, interest and profit, and the working class who produce the wealth of society in return for wages and salaries that roughly equal the cost of survival. In the course of production workers are exploited by producing a surplus over and above the value of the wages and salaries paid to them. This exploitative system, by using new technological inventions and by forcing workers to expend as much labour as possible for the price paid, created the potential for an abundance of wealth. Such material abundance is a prerequisite for a society based on the satisfaction of human needs. The fruits of this technological progress did not benefit the producers of wealth because, under capitalism, production takes place with a view to profit and not for use.

It was Marx and Engels who, by examining the economic laws of capitalism, were able to see a practical alternative to class society. Their concept of socialism (which was by no means a well developed formulation) was based on the working class winning control of the State machine and abolishing the class ownership of wealth. The new society would be based on 'an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all'. Marxism was essentially different in two important ways from other political philosophies. Firstly, its theory (for Socialism) was inseparable from its practice (political struggle). One can no more be an 'inactive' Marxist than an armchair footballer. Secondly, Marxism has no claim to be 'in the interest of all' — it is the political expression of the interest of the vast majority: the working class.

What was the reaction of the nineteenth century working class to their new-found means of emancipation? The history of the British labour movement in these years was twofold. On the one side was the emergence of the industrial trade union movement for the defence of wages and conditions of employment which has culminated in the well organised trade union movement of today. On the other side was the political movement of the working class from which emerged the Labour party.

In 1824 and 1825 the Combination Acts, which were passed to prevent the organisation of trades unions at the time of the French Revolution, were repealed. By the second quarter of the nineteenth century some workers were beginning to realise that the employed had a common interest to protect and that the defeat of one group of workers could best be averted by the formation of a union of all workers. In 1830, after the defeat of the cotton spinners' strike, John Doherty, an Irish Catholic, founded a General Union, the National Association for the Protection of Labour which claimed a membership of 100,000 by 1831. The NAPL advocated co-operative production (it was a forerunner of modern ideas of Workers' control), but attempts to organise co-operatives by constituent unions, such as the Operative Builders' Union failed when faced with a series of lock-outs. The NAPL collapsed because of divisions which existed between workers, cunningly fostered by employers.

The next attempt to form a General Union was led by the Utopian Socialist, Robert Owen. In 1834 he formed the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union. Its significance has been overstated by labour historians; it claimed a membership of 500,000, but was certainly less than half that. One reason for its collapse was the series of lock-outs of its members in Derby, Leicester and Glasgow. Another was the intensification of State action against the unions, such as the famous case of the Tolpuddle martyrs in 1834. The new Whig government, having supported parliamentary reform in 1832, was anxious to demonstrate its loyalty to the ruling class. Its suppression of workers' combination was a most convincing display of class loyalty. The workers, on the contrary, were lacking in confidence and education. Because of the former they were dependent on middle class leadership and because of the latter they were easily misled, as seen in 1832 when they rioted in the streets to give their employers the vote and in the failure of Chartism in the 1840s. The abortive attempts by workers to form a General Union in the 1830s signified the beginning of working-class consciousness. Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that in the 1830s there were still more cobblers than cotton spinners in Britain and the concentration of workers into vast, impersonal places of employment was yet to be fully experienced.

At this stage in the history of the working-class movement political ideas became most significant. So far the story has essentially been one of workers struggling to improve the price of their labour-power and conditions. Once this struggle came into conflict with the State, as representative of the employing class, a political question presented itself: How far can the working class improve its position within the capitalist system? Looking at it from a bourgeois point of view capitalism had everything going for it. With progressive reform and scientific development it seemed that the luxury of the ruling class and the condition of the working class could improve infinitely. According to Marxism the system contained irreconcilable class antagonisms which were bound to produce increasing misery for the workers. The Left found itself divided between these two analyses. On the one hand they claimed to accept the Marxist critique of capitalism, but on the other they were tempted by the optimism and immediacy of reformism with its promise of making capitalism run in the interest of the workers. Increasingly, trade union leaders were won to the idea that the unions should co-operate with the State. They were soon to be attracted to parliamentary careers in the Liberal party which cynically exploited the working class vote.

There were two organisations at the end of the last century claiming to stand for Socialism: the Social Democratic Federation and the Fabian Society. Both organisations comprised philanthropic leaders who saw the working class as incapable of changing society for themselves. This was in opposition to Marx's 'Provisional Rules' of the First International which stated

That the emancipation of the working class must be conquered by the working class themselves.

Neither the SDF or the Fabian Society stood for Socialism, but for the reform of capitalism. Socialism was accepted as the ideal, but the sincerity of idealism was no substitute for revolutionary principles.

The SDF was set up in 1881 by a group of disillusioned Liberals, led by H. M. Hyndman. Amongst its main leaders were H. H. Champion, Eleanor Marx, Belfort Bax, Tom Mann and John Burns, both leaders of skilled unions, and William Morris, the craftsman, poet and chief financial contributor to the SDF. Within the SDF there were certainly a number of sound Marxists, but, as an organisation, its effect was negligible and its reform programme was in contradiction to its claim to be Socialist.

The Fabian Society was based far more upon popular Christian morality than on any principles of a serious nature. Its motto described its gradualist approach to social change:

For the right moment you must wait, as Fabius did most patiently, when warring against Hannibal, though many censured his delays; but when the time comes you must strike hard, as Fabius did, or your waiting will be in vain, and fruitless.

The SDF and the Fabians failed to win mass working-class support. At the same time the trade unions were becoming increasingly effective, for example in the success of the dockers' strike in 1889. Objectively, the prospects for Socialism seemed quite good. Engels, in a moment of excessive enthusiasm wrote that

The masses are on the move and there is no holding them any more. The longer the stream is dammed up the more powerfully will it break through when the moment comes. (Marx and Engels on Britain p. 523)

Indeed, those who see history as a series of progressions would find it strange that by the dawn of the Twentieth century the stream of working-class consciousness was as dammed up as ever and the moment which Engels predicted showed no signs of coming. History is not simply the record of events occurring when the moment is ripe, but is as much the story of the effect of ideas and movements on material circumstances as that of the environment on men and women.

The first factor in the ascendancy of leftism was the decline of the First International. Marx had worked since 1867 to bring the International Working Men's Association, the international association of trades unions and progressive political organisations, to adopt Socialist principles. At first he had to defeat the followers of Proudhon. From the 1870s until the collapse of the International the anarchist doctrines of Bakunin prevailed and Marxism was rejected. Despite the existence of the International, few British trade unionists were won over to orthodox Marxism. They were more concerned to limit their efforts to the industrial struggle which could never fundamentally alter the cause of their oppression.

More important in the rejection of Marxism was the rise of the Labour Party. The few independent representatives of labour elected to the House of Commons after 1867 were soon seen to be, in the words of Joseph Chamberlain, 'mere fetchers and carriers for the Gladstonian party'. This disillusion led the trades unions to consider forming their own political party to defend their interests. On 13th January 1893, at the Bradford Labour Institute, one hundred and twenty delegates from various branches of the SDF, the Fabian Society, Keir Hardie's Scottish Labour Party and a few trades unions, assembled to consider establishing an independent labour party. The object of its formation was not to unite socialists, but to defend the unions. After the defeat of the engineers' strike in 1898 the TUC received a resolution from the Railway Servants' Union asking it

to devise ways and means for securing the return of an increased number of labour members to the next parliament.

Following the acceptance of this resolution by the 1899 Trade Union Congress a conference took place, on 27th February 1900, at the Memorial Hall in Farringdon Street, which appointed the Labour Representation Committee consisting of two members of the SDF, one member of the Fabian Society, and seven trades unionists. In the election of 1900 the new Independent Labour Party put forward ten candidates of whom two (Keir Hardie and Richard Bell) were elected. In the 1906 election, following the Taff Vale case in which strikers were legally discriminated against, the number of ILP members elected was trebled.

So, by the beginning of the present century trade union representatives were sitting in parliament. Surely, one might think, it was better to elect to parliament people who were at least sentimentally attached to the working class rather than avowed capitalists.

The record of the last seventy years, after six Labour Governments, has proved otherwise. The SPGB argued from its formation (in 1904) that only Socialism can provide a solution to the problems of the working class. Trade union efforts can only provide limited success and reforms can only eliminate aspects of the system and not the system itself. The rise of the Labour party as a political expression of trade unionism has caused inestimable damage to the revolutionary movement for Socialism.

Steve Coleman

The Founding of the Trades Union Congress (1968)

From the June 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Trades Union Congress was founded in the Mechanics Institute, Manchester, on June 2 1868 by thirty-four delegates who had responded to an invitation sent out by the Manchester and Salford Trades Council. In every way the aims of the founders were strictly limited, and in some important respect those limitations are still to be found in the TUC to-day, in spite of its vastly greater representative capacity and the widening of its activities.

This was not in any sense a revolutionary body and even its structure reflected a falling away from earlier attempts to form a unified National Trade Union body with power to act in strikes. The delegates came together only to discuss matters of mutual interest. It was, as George Woodcock describes it in the recently published History of the TUC 1868-1968, no more than "a small debating society".

In the letter of invitation sent out by the Manchester and Salford Council it was called a "Proposed Congress of Trades Councils and other Federations of Trades Societies". This form of organisation was preferred because it would cost less to have delegates from Trade Councils than to have delegates from from separate unions.

Its aims were to enlighten public opinion about trade unionism, and to try to influence Parliament in the matter of trade union legislation. It was to be modelled on the area meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, with the reading and discussion of papers on trade union problems, "with a view of the merits and demerits of each question being thoroughly ventilated through the medium of the public press". Twelve subjects for papers were suggested in the letter of invitation, ranging from trade union law and the Royal Commission on Trade Unions then sitting, to "the effect of trade unions on foreign competition", "Limitation of Apprentices", "The Regulation of the Hours of Labour" and "Arbitration and Courts of Conciliation".

The immediate background of the formation of the TUC was provided by three events then much discussed. The first was a short trade depression in 1966-7 which gave rise - as it does to-day - to complaints by business men and politicians that British goods were being priced out of markets by "high" British wages - hence the proposed discussion of foreign competition at the Congress.

The second was the blowing up of a non-unionist's house in Sheffield in 1866 which led to a storm of abuse of trade unions generally. The unions were anxious to present a collective view repudiating violence, in evidence to the Royal Commission which was considering this and other aspects of trade unionism. (Actually the evidence was presented by the group of trade union officials in the London Trades Council, most of whom were no more than lukewarm about what they regarded as a rival movement from Manchester).

The last event which stirred the unions into activity was a ruling by the High Court in the case of Hornby v Close, which meant that trade union, though not criminal organisations, were still illegal and consequently not protected (as they had thought they were) by the Friendly Societies Act 1855. In particular they could not take court action to protect their funds from defaulting branch officials.

It was in these fields that the TUC claimed to have been successful in the early years of its history, in the shape of a series of amendments of trade union law, growing acceptance of the "responsibility" of trade unionism, and the extension of the franchise.

The early TUC can be seen in perspective by comparing its outlook with, for example, that of the Chartist Labour Parliament held in Manchester in 1854, attended by trade union delegates from all over the country. Marx and Louis Blanc were elected honorary delegates. They did not attend but Marx sent a message in which he expressed the view that the proceedings should be aimed at organsing the working class for the conquest of political power and taking over ownership of the means of production by the workers. The letter was read at the conference.

The TUC did not even try to put into practice what had been attempted unsuccessfully by the Sheffield Association of Organised Trades in 1866, who had called a conference to form a National Trade Union organisation to give financial and other support to workers locked out by their employers.

The early attitude of the TUC is largely to be explained by the fact that the dominant unions represented only part of the working class. B. C. Roberts wrote of this:

The TUC . . . was representative of little more than half a million skilled artisans. The remainder of the working class the millions of unskilled workers, were, with the exception of the cotton industry and a few other rare exceptions, unorganised, and for the most part barely taken into consideration by the Parliamentary Committee. Its policy reflected the philosophy of unions whose members were crafts,en, conscious of their skill, and standing in the community as worthy, respectable and independent citizens. (The Trades Union Congress 1868-1921.)

Marx referred to this in a letter to Bebel* (28 Oct. 1885), pointing out that the craft unions in the TUC deliberately kept the "unskilled" workers outside their ranks.

But do you suppose the unions ever dreamt of doing away with this silly bunk? Not in the least. I can never remember reading of a simple proposal of the kind at a Trades Union Congress. 

If anything else was needed to mark the contrast between the socialist outlook and that of the founders of the TUC it is only necessary to recall the paper Marx submitted to the Geneva Congress of the First International in 1865 (Value Price and Profit) in which he called on the unions to give up the motto "a fair day's work for a fair day's pay" and adopt instead "abolition of the wages system".

Edgar Hardcastle 

*In fact, it was actually Engels who referred to this in a letter to Bebel.

The rise and fall of the ILP (2009)

From the October 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

With proposals to set up a united leftwing party to challenge Labour, we look at a previous attempt at this.

The Independent Labour Party was born on 13 January 1893 in the Labour Institute, Peckover Street, Bradford. The birth was the culmination of a series of efforts dating back to the creation of the Scottish Labour Party some five years earlier. From the spring of 1891 local ‘Labour Unions’ were formed, with the similar Manchester and Salford Independent Labour Party following in May 1892. The party and its predecessors were primarily the offspring of James Keir Hardie, ILP chairman 1893 to 1900 and long time (1887-1904) editor of The Labour Leader. Hardie had launched his paper (it remained his personal property until 1904 when it was taken over directly by the party) in January 1887 and it would remain the focus of the ILP activity through several renamings (becoming The New Leader in 1922 and The Socialist Leader in 1946) until its termination in the late ‘70s. Essentially the party was a radical split from the Liberal Party and its ideology and outlook were determined by this.

The early ILP’s conception of socialism was a bit of a joke. In 1896 Hardie defined it as “…brotherhood, fraternity, love thy neighbour as thyself, peace on earth, goodwill towards men, and glory to God in the highest” (Justice, 6 June 1896). While, in a 1903 letter to Edward Carpenter (quoted in Stanley Pierson’s British Socialism) John Bruce Glasier, a near-forgotten ILP bigwig, more obscurely referred to socialism as “a power that began with the beginning of the world and permeates infinitude”. I fear he may have been confusing socialism with some form of quantum physics.

Despite its talk of peace and brotherhood, this is what Glasier, then Party Chairman, said at the 1903 Conference:

“Our foreign trade is flagging; our internal freedom and external defence are less secure; our military glory is dimmer; our national character, our literature, our science, our inventions are in less repute; our young and virile population is quitting the country as if it were a sinking ship, and we are getting in pauper aliens and rich predatory aliens instead.”

The ILP was oriented towards parliament from its inception. Hardie had been elected for West Ham South in 1892 but it was not until the formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 that the real breakthrough occurred. The LRC, renamed the Labour Party in 1906, was essentially a tactical move of the formerly Liberal-orientated trade unions but until 1918 the political input was very much from the ILP. In 1906 the party scored seven MPs with a further eleven being trade union endorsed members.

The early strongholds of the ILP were as one might expect in the old industrial zones of West Yorkshire and South Lancashire with considerable support in Leicester, Norwich and Merthyr Tydfil. Scotland, later known as the heartland of the ILP, was to develop later during and after the First World War.

First World War
If the ILP ever got anything right it was by accident and this is seen most obviously in its attitude to the First World War. Opposition to the 1914-18 war was clearly the correct policy: it is now generally admitted that it was an imperialist war, fought not for ‘freedom’ but for economic reasons. During the early months of the war Ramsay MacDonald (as might be expected) but also Keir Hardie (as might not be) encouraged young men to enlist. Despite this wobbling the ILP should be acknowledged as the largest organisation in Britain in opposition to the war and both Hardie and MacDonald came out against the war. However its policy originated in a faulty concept of what the war was all about. In a contemporary leaflet the ILP argued that the war was “a diplomatist’s war, made by about half-a-dozen men…we sit down and ask ourselves… ‘Why has this war happened?’ the only answer we can give is, because Sir Edward Grey has guided our foreign policy during the past eight years.” (Fenner Brockway, Inside the Left, p. 45). That Sir Edward, what a bastard.

Such a conspiratorial theory blended well with the wet pacifism endemic in the lower ranks and the antagonism to Tsarist Russia. But the diplomatic cause theory was to cause problems for the ILP, as it attracted a host of golden daffodils in the shape of the Union of Democratic Control. The UDC essentially consisted of Liberals, some high ranking, who wished for a more democratic and open foreign policy. They also viewed the war as caused by secret diplomacy. The bourgeois intellectuals of the UDC, including HN Brailsford, migrated into the ILP diluting the Northern spit and sawdust of the early party and providing the germ of the London based ‘intellectual’ (wobbly) ILP of the 1930s and after.

The First World War saw the ILP gain a Red reputation with its somewhat half-hearted backing of the Russian Revolution and its incidental association with the ‘Red Clydeside’ strikers. The war also saw the death of Hardie in late 1915 and the rise of James Maxton.

Golden Age
Before the First World War the ILP and the Labour Party were pretty much identical. The ILP leaders, notably Ramsay MacDonald (ILP Chairman 1906-9), were also those of the Labour Party. The 1918 constitution, particularly through the introduction of local Labour Parties, redefined the Labour Party not just as a political wing of the trade unions but as a party in itself. As a result the ILP had to redefine itself and in the 1920s its role came to be that of the left wing of the Labour Party. At first such a role was of considerable use to the party. Boosted by the ‘successes’ of the Labour Party, the ILP reached unprecedented heights in 1926 with an all-time high of 60,000 members in 1075 branches and a New Leader circulation of 70-80,000. Three years later the ILP had 37 MPs plus another 123 who were members of the party standing under other endorsement.
In 1924, to mark the new left turn, the ILP issued the report of its Socialist Plan Committee. Also known as “Socialism in our time”, this became the basis of ILP policy. It defined socialism as the establishment of “a minimum living income” and the “nationalisation of the pivots of capitalism” (i.e. “the banking system, land, mining, electrical generation and distribution, and transport.” (Fenner Brockway, Inside the Left, p. 148) In other words a typical confection of Leftist pseudo-socialism. With the exception of nationalisation of land and the minimum wage this was essentially the programme adopted by the Labour Party in the late 30s and carried out by the 1945-51 government. Given this it might well be asked, “what was the point of the continued existence of the ILP?” The answer is not a lot as we shall see.

Disaffiliation
Something very bizarre happened to the ILP in the early 1930s. Ordinarily the left wing acts as the shock troops of the Labour Party, brought out at election time to do donkey work for a small pay off after. Despite grumbling this usually works well. However occasionally the left gets ideas above its station - the Militant case is typical - or revolts at the unpleasant doings of the Parliamentary party. In this case the particular left of the era receives the order of the boot. They never want to go despite the sniping and grumbling and the parting is acrimonious. After the McDonald debacle however the ILP left voluntarily. This turned out to be a ghastly mistake from their point of view.

Officially the issue at stake was over Standing Orders - whether ILP MPs should without fail follow the Labour Party line. The ILP MPs, led by Maxton, essentially wanted freedom of action - to justify their separate existence as much as anything else. The PLP wanted (as well it might) loyalty in exchange for endorsement (which essentially meant actually getting elected). Neither side was willing to give way, leading to an inevitable break. However behind this was the looming shadow of MacDonald. Disaffiliation occurred in the summer of 1932. MacDonald had formed his National Government with his power-hungry toadies and the Tories the previous year. The Labour Party was badly split and in severe disarray. A major realignment seemed certain. To the ILPers it seemed as if their time had come.

After disaffiliation the ILP clearly didn’t know what to do. Archibald Fenner Brockway, darling of the old left and big cheese of the ‘30s ILP, remarked: “Since 1932 the Party has been a crucible of the change from reformism to revolutionism” (Inside the Left, p. 237). ‘Revolutionism’ clearly meant desperately jobbing around for popular leftwing causes. In the course of the seven remaining years of the 30s the ILP:

“experimented in many directions, at one time approaching the Communist International, and at another moving towards the Trotskyist position, at one stage attaching its hope to united fronts and at another reverting to purism, at one period going all out to prepare for Soviets and at another recognising again the value of Parliament.” (Inside the Left, p. 237)

Reflecting this uncertainty of orientation and plagued by internal factions (pro- and anti-CPGB and Trotskyist) membership plummeted. Immediately before disaffiliation the ILP had 16,700 members in 653 branches. By 1935, just three years later this was down to 4,400 members in 284 branches. This was a particularly dramatic decline given the ongoing depression which had boosted almost all other left wing groups and the ILP’s relatively firm handling of Spain (sending a contingent including George Orwell) and fascism (giving important backing during the Battle of Cable Street).

Despite this the ILP retained local predominance in parts of Glasgow with numerous local councillors and a range of MPs. This was partly due to an electoral pact with Big Labour and lasted until around 1950. There were other residual centres of strength including Merthyr, Bradford, Norwich, Derby and rather bizarrely Great Yarmouth (where one LF Bunnewell was ILP councillor from 1937 to after 1975).

Second World War and after
The ILP recognised the Second World War as basically a conflict between rival capitalists. However confusion remained. The ILP’s ‘Peace Terms’ were: 1. Self determination of ‘peoples’, 2. Subordination of nations to ‘international unity’ and 3. “The establishment of an international economic organisation for the distribution of the world’s resources according to the needs of all peoples”. All of which displays the ILP failure to recognise that whilst the world’s resources are still owned and controlled by the capitalist class, conflicts between sections of that class are inevitable.

The 1945 election was rather successful for the ILP with three candidates, James Maxton, George McGovern and the Reverend Campbell Stephen, elected (one more than the Communist Party). Fresh with a new influx the ILP seemed set for revival. The success was not to last

Maxton died little less than a year later. The following year his replacement, James Carmichael joined up with Big Labour. As did McGovern and Campbell. Fenner Brockway also took the jump, in 1947. Maxton had clearly been holding the party together and without him the thing fell apart. Re-affiliation might have saved the day. In 1945 it had knocked on Labour’s door, asking very politely for re-affiliation, but Labour (sensibly) didn’t open it.

Left out in the cold the ILP fished around for other potential alliances including with us. At the 1947 Conference a motion proposed ‘loose links’ and joint campaigns (peace, colonial freedom and other ‘causes’) with the Anarchist Federation, the Commonwealth Party and the SPGB. We said no. Further proposals were made in 1954 (“Need for a United Socialist Party”) and late 1957. We debated representatives of the ILP, including in 1928 Maxton himself, on numerous occasions throughout its career, the last being in Bolton in 1972.

The ILP gradually faded from view. It soldiered on however until someone let it back in. In 1975 it re-entered the Labour Party as Independent Labour Publications. Actually this was a bit of a cheat as individual members joined up and on 31 March 1975 the party as such declared itself terminated (a similar thing happened to the trotskyist Revolutionary Communist Party in 1949).

Despite the fact that the Independent Labour Party does not now exist, its ghost may be found haunting Left wing shindigs and the like. It remains well thought of by Leftists of a historical bent, but clearly not well remembered.

KAZ

Levellers or Diggers?

Latest post from the SPGB blog, Socialism Or Your Money Back:

Levellers or Diggers?

What is Class (2002)

Book Review from the January 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Industrial Nation. Work, Culture and Society in Scotland, 1800-present. By W. W. Knox. Edinburgh University Press.

This is a history of the working class in Scotland - or, more accurately, as the title suggests, of the "traditional" working class, i.e. manual, in fact essentially skilled manual, workers in mining and heavy industry - by a professional historian.

These days there are plenty of people who say that class is irrelevant and that in fact it never was. Knox is not amongst these (after all, he is a former member of the Socialist Party). Clearly, since 1800 a section of society has seen itself as constituting "the working class(es)" and in the 20th century this found expression on the political field in the Labour Party (literally, the party of Labour). It is true that the Labour Party never was a revolutionary, socialist party but merely sought a better deal for the working class within capitalism. In this, however, it accurately reflected the views of those who voted for it and otherwise generally supported it.

This may not have been how Marx envisaged things developinghe expected the working class to develop from a mere economic category (a "class in itself") into a revolutionary political actor (a "class for itself")but at least the process started even if it did get stuck on route as it were. A "class consciousness" did develop among particular sections of the working class but this did not develop into a revolutionary socialist consciousness. It stopped at trade-unionism and Labourism, the idea and practice of the working class as a class within capitalism but which wanted a better deal within this system, not to replace it with a classless and exploitation-free society. Indeed, there is a school of thought which argues that thisincorporation of the working class into the political structures of capitalist societyhas been the historic role, even the conscious aim, of trade unions and the Labour Party.

So, even if a working class "for itself" has never developed, a class consciousness of a lesser sort did, and it is this that Knox studies in relation to Scotland. In contrast to England, a number of differences stand out. First, partly as a result of the Highland clearances, anti-landlordism was more widespread in Scotland, reflected in the domination of the Liberal Party there up to 1914. Second, emigration of both Protestants and Catholics from Ireland kept alive religious sectarianism. Third, there was the ILP, the Independent Labour Party.

Knox argues that the ILP inherited the programme of radical Liberalism (anti-landlordism, Scottish Home Rule, republicanism, pacifism, teetotalism, and municipal "socialism") and was largely an expression of the views of the apprentice-trained skilled craft workers, who were male and, due to discrimination against Catholics, Protestant. They were respectable workers who didn't drink or swear or beat their wife (or so we are told) and considered themselves a cut above the rest of the working class who lived in slums and worked as labourers or depended on the poor law. Until 1932 the ILP was to all intents and purposes the Labour Party in Scotland, but in that year it committed political suicide by disaffiliating from Labour and trying to go it alone.

Knox sees the disaffiliation of the ILP as a key event in the history of Labour in Scotland because it meant thatin a sense, provided the opportunity forthe Labour Party to reconstitute itself on a new and different basis, as a party which rejected pacifism, Home Rule and republicanism and which embraced state intervention, including nationalisation at UK level, as the way forward; in other words, a state capitalism run by remote planners and bureaucrats such as was implemented by the post-war Attlee Labour government and which has now come to be known as Old Labourism.

While many workers in England deserted Labour for Thatcher in the 1980s, workers in Scotland continued to support Labour. Knox explains this by the fact that many more workers in Scotland than in England are dependent on the state for jobs, housing and income and also by a continuing acceptance of the "core values of democracy, fairness and social justice" inherited from the radical Liberalism of the 19th century. In his view, this is why free-market Toryism will never get a look-in in Scotland and why, as Blair continues Thatcher's campaign against the "nanny State", the workers in Scotland may choose to express these underlying core values in some kind of radical nationalism.

One criticism of the book would be that it is a history only of one section of Marx's "working class in itself", i.e. the class of those forced by economic necessity to sell their ability to work in order to live, in that it ignores non-manual workers. Towards the end the amorphous term "middle class" even creeps in. These now even constitute a majority of the working class in itself. Indeed, it could be said that the reality behind the claim that "we're all middle class now" could be more accurately expressed by saying "we're all working class now".

Finally, a quibble perhaps, but surely Knox knows that the British Socialist Party (the reformist party which eventually provided the bulk of the members of the British Communist Party in 1921) was not, like the British Socialist Labour Party, a "splinter group" from the SDF. It was the name adopted by the SDF when in 1911 it merged with a breakaway from the ILP. Could it be that his proof-reader confused (as Lenin once did) the BSP with the SPGB (which could indeed be described as a "splinter group" from the SDF)?

Adam Buick