The Russian Revolution and the British Working Class

[p008] ~ RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND BRITISH WORKING CLASS Socialist Bureau. On May 1] it issued a leaflet entitled Follow Russia, which described the pur- pose of the Conference as ‘to ascertain and pro- nounce upon the opinions of the working class of this country regarding the developments which have taken place, and are taking place in Russia’, so that these events would receive ‘sympathetic response’ making possible ‘a real international peace based jupon working class solidarity’.® When the convention assembled on June 3 there were 1,150 delegates and 2,000 visitors.’ Motions were passed saluting the Russian Revolu- tion, calling for ‘a peace without annexations or indemnities’, and demanding a complete restora- tion of civil liberties ‘in accord with the democracy of Russia’. The mood of the Conference can be judged from this quotation from the report, issued later by the Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates, of Robert Williams’ speech: “We want to break the influence of the industrial and poli- tical labour “machine’—(cheers)—and this Con- vention is our attempt so to do. ... We are com- petent to speak in the name of our own class, and damn the Constitution. (Loud cheers.) .. . If you are really sincere in sending greetings to Russia I say to you: “Go thou and do likewise”’ (cheers).’ Philip Snowden was rather put off by this enthu- siasm. ‘I had repeatedly to appeal to the delegates against applause as tending to waste of time’, he said afterwards.’ The most significant event of the conference was the passing of a resolution which called upon the trades councils, trade unions and political bodies represented ‘at once to support in every town, urban, and rural district, Councils of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Delegates for initiating and co- ordinating of working-class activity in support of the policies set out in the foregoing resolution (i.e. on civil liberties) and to work strenuously for a peace made by the peoples of the countries and for the complete political and economic eman- cipation of international labour’. These Councils were to defend trade unionism, fight war profiteer- ing, and cater for the interests of soldiers and their dependents. Finally, it was agreed that ‘the 3 Woman’s Dreadnaught, March 31, 1917; The Herald, (March 31, 1917. 4 Labour Leader, April 5, 1917; The Herald, April 7, 1917; R. Postgate, ‘Life of George Lansbury (1951), p pp. 165-9. Labour Leader, May 10, 1917. P. Snowden, An Autobiography (1934), Volume I, pp. 449-52. 7 Council of Workmen’s and Soldiers’ What Happened at Leeds (1917); J. Labour’s Big Three (1948), p. 47. 8 P. Snowden, op. cit., p. 445. AM Delegates, T. Murphy, 73

[p009] Philip Snowden Socialism through parliament and no other way. Convenors of this Conference be appointed a provisional committee, whose duties shall be to assist the formation of local Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Councils and generally to give effect to the policy determined by this conference.’ The failure of the Convention to produce many concrete results has often been asserted. We hope to show, however, that the conference was not devoid of results. The reasons for the failure to achieve more were present at the Convention itself. The proceedings were dominated by the ILP. The ILP represented the basic political section of the Labour Party in the period before its re- organisation in 1918. Because of its verbal opposi- tion to the policies of the right wing, the ILP attracted into its ranks many working class mili- tants. The leadership of the party had, however, no intention of leading any struggle against the right wing. Whilst willing to indulge in left speeches at Leeds men such as MacDonald, Hen- derson and Snowden were capable only of being servants to the right wing. Snowden, who spoke at Leeds for ‘a peace without annexations or in- demnities’ and supported all the other resolutions, explained later his real hostility to what had hap- pened. ‘It may be, I do not rule it out of theoreti- cal consideration, that Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils or Soviets may come to Britain but I am for Socialism coming through parliament and no other way.” It is not just a matter, as Pabloite Ken Coates argues, ‘that the Parliamentarians were caught off balance’.” They fulfilled a definite role in riding the tiger only to kill it. As early as July 5 the ILP leaders warned against the danger that local councils might become rival organizations to the ILP branches rather than means of co- operating between existing political groups" This was despite such statements as that of Tom Quelch, a member of the Provisional Committee, who said that ‘some of the older bodies ... would be nervous lest their functions are being infringed upon—and no effort must be spared to convince them that the Workmen’s and Soldiers’ 74 Councils are bodies whose purpose it is ts strengthen and coalesce all other working-class organizations’. The Provisional Committee arranged a series of regional conferences in late July and early August. Amongst the functions of these was the estab- lishment of Local Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils to campaign on the policies of the Convention.® Included in the 441 delegates to the London Re- gional Conference were 18 from Trade Union Exe- cutives, 41 from Trades Councils, 162 from Trade Union branches and three from Local Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils. The Conference was broken up by a collection of army officers from Canada and Australia, who said they were acting under orders from their superiors, with the aid of all those ‘patriots’ who could be enlisted from the local public houses. This caused ‘the worst riot London has seen for years’ according to one eye- witness, a riot which was carried on with no inter- ference from the 200 policemen present. The South Wales Conference in Swansea on the same day with 125 Trade Union Branch Delegates and 26 from Trade Councils met with a similar fate, as did the Newcastle meeting.“ The Glasgow Con- ference, planned for August 11, at which E. C. Fairchild, of the BSP, and Ramsay MacDonald of the ILP were to speak, was banned by the Secretary of State for Scotland on August 10 be- cause ‘grave disorder’ was expected. Within 24 hours the Glasgow Trades Council organized a protest demonstration of more than 5,000.5 The Conferences planned for Birmingham and Leeds were also banned by the Home Secretary. Con- ferences were, however, held in other cities. In Portsmouth a meeting was addressed by Mrs. Despard, and at Bristol 100 organizations were represented including seven Trades Councils and 37 Trade Union branches. Further meetings were held in Leicester, in Norwich, where 10,000 workers were represented, and in Manchester, where the 226 delegates scotched the efforts of 9 Jj. T. Murphy, New Horizons (1941), p. 62. 10 See his introduction to What Happened at Leeds in Archives in Trade Union History and Theory, Series I, No. 4. p. iii. ll Editorial in Labour Leader. 12 The Call, June 21, 1917. 13. Labour Leader, July 12, 1967. 14 Ibid., August 9, 1917; The Times, July 30, 1917; Western Mail, July 30, 1917; Parliamentary De- bates House of Commons (5) XCVI, cols. 1784-8, 15 The Times, August 10 and 14, 1917; Labour Leader, August 16, 1917. 16 The Times, July 16 and 23, and August 22, 1917. FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, NOVEMBER, 1967

[p010] another group of army officers to break up the meeting.” From the regional conferences a national com- mittee was elected, and a list of objects drawn up which emphasized the policies already agreed. It set forward the aims of the Council as: “The consolidation of the efforts of all working class organizations to obtain an ever-increasing share in the wealth produced by the labour of hand and brain together with control over industry.’ After mid-August the Councils were ignored by the ILP, and the Labour Party leaders actively opposed them. On July 18 the Labour Party National Executive stated that ‘it has nothing to do with the Leeds Convention, and that in our opinion no local organization affiliated to the Party ought to convene Conferences which are not in harmony with the general policy of the Party as laid down at its Annual Conferences.” Against this, the BSP campaigned vigorously for the decisions of Leeds. Before the Convention itself, the Party set out a correct perspective for its work: ‘After the Leeds Conference . . . comes the task of setting the whole working-class move- ment deliberately and determinedly on the path so splendidly laid down by our Russian comrades... the workers ... will gladly co-operate in forming the Workmen’s and Soldiers’ Councils but the initiatory work, the organizing and the leading must be done by the Social-Democrats. . . . (The Councils) will soon become strong enough to dominate the towns and districts and determine their future.’ However, the BSP’s failure to under- stand the role of the centrist leaders of the ILP meant that it never analysed or fought against them. At the end of the year Willie Gallagher, a member of the BSP, voiced the bemusement of the party at the limited results of the Convention. ‘When the Leeds Conference was convened’, he wrote, ‘great hopes were held of the work to be accomplished by the committees set up all over the country. Unfortunately this very promising organization has apparently expended all its vitality in the issuing of a few political manifestos.™ Despite this failure to understand what had hap- pened, the events of the Leeds Convention helped the development of the BSP away from a position where it had sought amalgamation with the ILP towards one of opposition to centrism and opportunism. . The Leeds Convention also gave enormous impetus to the shop stewards movement. Many of the leading shop stewards were at Leeds, in- cluding Gallagher and MacManus from the Clyde, Murphy from Sheffield and Peet from Manchester. RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND BRITISH WORKING CLASS They reacted to the establishment of Soviets with enthusiasm. They identified them, however, with their own syndicalist perspectives, reflecting the view of the Socialist Labour Party (SLP) that the Soviets were ‘in the nature of the Clyde Workers’ Committee’. Unlike such sectional workers’ com- mittees, however, the Soviets were all-inclusive class organizations. Despite this lack of under- Standing it was clear that the shop stewards movement gained much encouragement from the Russian example and through it decided to set up a national movement. As J. T. Murphy later ex- pressed it, the shop stewards ‘felt their kinship with soviets’.” Two months after the Leeds Convention the Shop stewards made their first attempt to estab- lish a national organization at their conference in Manchester. The constitution they established, however, reflected the anti-leadership theories pre- valent in the movement and gave no executive powers to any of its ruling corhmittees.* The impact of Leeds nevertheless produced an import- ant change in the shop stewards movement. Its support for the soviets rapidly developed towards an identification with Bolshevism and the effect of the October revolution was to lay the basis for the movement to become the industrial wing of the Communist Party. The October Revolution The October revolution provided at the same time an inspiration and an object lesson for British revolutionaries. A leading figure in working-class struggles of the period later described their hopes and fears: ‘How we watched and waited in those days for every scrap of news from the East! Would the Bolsheviks hold power? Lenin: Trotsky; Could they hold on?™ Only the sectarian, syndicalist-orientated SLP at first understood the decisively different nature of October. Within a month they said ‘The Rus- sian revolution has so far meant the defeat of the middle class and the triumph of the workers’. The SLP was, however, over-enthusiastic in identify- ing itself with the Bolsheviks. “The theories as put into operation by the Russian Maximalists (i.e. Bolsheviks) are similar to those advocated by the 17 Labour Leader, August 9 and 16, 1917. 18 The Call, October 4 and 25, 1917. 19 Leeds Citizen, July 27, 3917. 20 The Call, May 31 and December 28, 1917. 21 The Socialist, April 1917. 22 J. T. Murphy, Preparing for Power (1934), p. 152. 23 Wal Hannington, Industrial History in Wartime (1940), pp. 105-6. 24 J.T. Murphy New Horizons, p. 68. 75

[p011] Maxim Litvinev A rousing reception for the Bolshevik emissary from Labour delegation in January I9I8 international Socialist Labour Party. The BSP, in the period before the October revolution, was closely following the course of events in Russia. As early as the beginning of October they called for the Soviets to take power because ‘the Soviets is the only body that can rally the people of Russia in the defence of the revolution’. Thus, the BSP saw the October revolution as a necessary develop- ment. Within a week of the revolution its paper said: ‘The expected has happened, Kerensky and the provisional council have been overthrown and the Soviet has taken control of Petrograd.”* The BSP’s enthusiastic support for the revolution was soon to drive a wedge between them and their erstwhile allies in the ILP. As news of the actions of the Bolshevik govern- ment arrived—in particular the publication of the secret treaties and the call for peace negotiations— more and more workers rallied in support of the revolution. At a meeting during the Labour Party Conference in January 1918 delegates gave a rousing reception to the Bolshevik emissary Litvinov, the Red Flag was enthusiastically sung and there were cheers for the Russian Revolu- tion and for Trotsky. On January 27 a massive pro-Bolshevik demonstration was mounted in Glasgow.”” While all this was happening the ILP leaders refused to comment on the course of the revolution. Only in February did they express any reaction, and their enthusiasm was somewhat muted.”* After this, members of the ILP sympa- thetic to the Bolsheviks had to wage an increas- ingly bitter struggle against the leadership. The War of Intervention From mid-1918 to the end of 1919 Britain saw numerous mass class actions and many isolated revolts of revolutionary potential. In the months when the BSP, SLP and other organizations were going through their tortuous negotiations to form the Communist Party, the militancy of the British working class was at a high peak. At the same 76 time, British armies were leading an imperialist offensive against the new workers’ state. Opposi- tion to this intervention, in which the revolu- tionary groups played an essential role, is one of the most glorious chapters in the internationalist history of the British working class. In 1918, with big strikes threatening in every industry, Mrs. Webb, arch-Fabian and _ later admirer of Stalinist Russia, wrote: “The leaders of the labour are distinctly uneasy about the spirit of revolt among the rank and file, which openly proclaims its sympathy with the lurid doings of Petrograd.” At the same time, growing unrest in the army and in the police force was causing in- creasing concern to the authorities who thought that the rank and file committees being set up amongst policemen and soldiers represented ‘a determined effort to emulate the Russian Bolshe- viks in this country’. In August of 1918 there were extensive police strikes in many cities, and again in the following July in Liverpool combined with large scale riot- ing. In the summer of 1918 lower-deck commit- tees were elected in south-coast naval bases and there was news of riots at base camps and the shooting of military policemen.” In November of 1918 a revolt at Shoreham in Sussex involved over 1,000 men. ‘Antagonism to officers’ is listed as one of the major causes of revolts which broke out in Folkestone on January 3, 1919." Ten thousand soldiers marched into Folkestone and put up pickets to prevent troops from being de- mobilized. At the same time it was said that ‘everywhere the feeling is the same: “the war is over, we won't fight in Russia and we mean to go home”’’.* Further mutinies against conditions at Valdelure and elsewhere in Northern France re- sulted in the camps being taken over and being run by the men, who forced the officers to come and go only with the authorization of permits signed by the camp committees. At Vendroux, the whole of an ordnance corps group went on strike until 25 The Socialist, January and February 1918. 26 The Call, October 4 and November 15, 1917. 27 Labour Leader, January 24 and 31, 1918. 28 ZJIbid., February 7, 1918. An article on March 7 entitled The ILP and the Bolsheviks is hostile ae the Soviet government, largely on a pacifist asis. 29 B. Webb, Diaries 1917-24, (1952), p. 106. 30 Davidson Papers, January 10, 1918: quoted in R. K. Middlemas, The Clydesiders (1965), p. 89. 31 A. Hutt, Post-War History of the British Work. ing Class (1937), p. 13. 32 JT. H. Wintringham, Mutiny (1936), pp. 305-328 gives an account of many of these events. 33. The Herald, January 11, 1919. FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, NOVEMBER, 1967

[p012] two of their number who had been arrested were released.* At Shoreham, in March, a _ further outbreak involved 2,000 unarmed troops marching into Brighton to the cheers of the populace.® In January the War Office sent out a circular to all Commanding Officers asking them whether the troops under their command would be willing to break strikes or to fight in Russia, and also whether there was any sign of trade union organization or rank and file committees amongst the troops. The government was clearly worried.® This unrest in the army was often consciously linked with the struggles of the working class in Britain. It was the failure to materialize of ‘the expected general strike which had begun on the Clyde’ in January 1919 which was ‘largely respon- sible’ for the failure to extend the Valdelure soldiers’ strike.” A leading participant in the en- gineering strikes themselves later said that ‘a rising was expected. A rising should have taken place. The workers were ready and able to effect it: the leadership never thought of it’.* It was in January that the coal miners decided to campaign for nationalization and improved con- ditions and in February the transport workers put in for a big wage rise. The November national railway strike was one of the most bitterly fought class battles the country had ever seen, in many aspects foreshadowing the General Strike of 1926. While all this was happening the struggle against imperialist intervention in the Soviet Union was rallying thousands of British workers to the de- fence of the Russian Revolution. At this high point of militant struggle it was said that there was ‘no single issue that that has ever within living memory so amazingly moved the imagination and heart of the working class as the intervention in Russia’.*® As soon as the intervention began in the middle of 1918 the ILP echoed the protests of the Bolsheviks. They did so only while dissociating themselves from the revolution itself. Ramsay MacDonald took to advising the employers that ‘intervention . . . even from a capitalist point of view ... is bad’. The BSP on the other hand called for the end of intervention on the grounds that ‘the cause of the social revolution in Russia is the cause of the workers of the world’. By November, the BSP was centring its campaign inside the Labour Party on opposition to inter- vention. It issued an appeal to the Labour Party Conference which began ‘Long Live the Socialist Republic! No Intervention Anywhere!” By December even the Labour Party had issued a manifesto calling for the withdrawal of allied troops, but the parliamentary party did nothing RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND BRITISH WORKING CLASS about it until the following July. During 1919, the revolutionary groups were actively involved in the struggle against interven- tion. On January 18, in the week when Karl Lieb- knecht and Rosa Luxemburg were murdered, a conference mainly organized by the shop stewards in London set up a national ‘Hands Off Russia’ committee. The five hundred delegates represented 350 organizations including 48 from trade union branches and district committees, and leading figures from the shop steward movement and all the main revolutionary groups. Motions were passed at the conference during the day and at a mass meeting in the evening calling for strikes and other sympathetic action to defeat not simply intervention in Russia but also the blockade of Germany.” Mass meetings were held in early February at the Albert Hall and the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, which passed identical motions asserting that ‘intervention must be ended’ and ‘that the working class must see this demand en- forced by the unrestricted use of their political and industrial power’. Further efforts to co-ordinate the national movement were made at a Manchester meeting in June, and in September Harry Pollitt became national organizer. On October 26 the BSP was mainly responsible for the establishment of a London organization. On November 7 the national body was set up again ‘representing the united forces of the political and industrial work- ing class movement without distinction of opinions or tendencies.’ By the end of the year the ‘Hands Off Russia’ movement was running campaigns in every major city every night of the week. These were usually addressed by Lieutenant-Colonel Malone, Liberal MP, recent visitor to Russia and recruit to the BSP, or by Principal Goode who had also been to Soviet Russia. These meetings were continued during 1920, and other activities of the campaign included the circulation of union branches and the leafleting of factories and dock gates. 34 B. G5 Connell, From Monk to Busman (1935), Pp. oU-<. 35 R. Groves and A. Hodge, The Long Week End (1940), pp. 25-6. 36 W. Crook, The General Strike (1931), p. 240-3. 37 T. H. Wintringham, op. cit., p. 328. 38 W. Gallagher, Revolt on the Clyde (1936), p. 234. 39 The Call, December 11, 1919. 40 Labour Leader, July 11 and August 1, 1918. 4] The Call, November 14, 1918. 42 The Call and Workers’ Dreadnaught during 1919 and 1920 make clear the extensiveness of the campaign. See also Harry Pollitt, Serving My Time (1940), ch. 6. 43 A. Hutt, op. cit., p. 36. 77

[p013] Harry Pollitt Made National Organizer in September 1919 During 1919 these campaigns began to bear fruit. British sailors refused to sail to Russia from Rosyth, Invergordon, Portsmouth and a number of other ports. At Rosyth, dockers had supplied SLP pamphlets to the men who brought their cruiser back to port rather than go to Russia. These sailors had to be demobilized as a result.“ In March the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain called for the withdrawal of British troops.® On April 16 this demand was taken up by the Triple Alliance, though opposed by the TUC. At the Labour Party Conference in early June the national executive was instructed to consult with the TUC leaders ‘with a view to effective action being taken to en- force these demands (i.e. the ending of interven- tion) by the unreserved use of their political power’. Only the revolutionary groups fought to carry out these policies. On Sunday July 20 there were international demonstrations against inter- vention. A joint leaflet issued by the BSP, the SLP, the WSF and the South Wales Socialist Society called for support of the Sunday demon- stration and the workers to ‘Down Tools on Monday July 31st!’ This call was disowned by the Labour Party leaders, but received some response, notably from London dockers.*” By September the TUC Conference condemned its Parliamentary Committee for failing to support the direct action policies of the Triple Alliance earlier in the year. These developments in the working-class move- ment forced Churchill to promise to withdraw troops by the end of the year, a promise which was never carried out. Because of the failure of the Labour leaders to extend the campaign Lloyd George could assert by the end of 1919 that ‘there is no basis for peace with Russia’.“* Labour’s re- 78 cord had indeed been, as Snowden was forced to admit, ‘a sordid story of apathy and indifference’.* The Polish war and the ‘Jolly George’ It was in the spring of 1920, when the war against Poland began, that the issue became fur- ther inflamed. It was clear to everyone that ‘the Marionettes are in Warsaw but the strings are pulled from London and Paris’. At first ‘Labour’s protest in parliament lacked fire’." But, on May 10 ‘two years of tremendously hard and unremitt- ing work on the part of a devoted band of com- rades in London’, mainly members of the WSF, bore fruit when dockers refused to load a cargo marked ‘HMS Munitions for Poland’ on to the Jolly George at the East India Dock.” This action transformed the situation. In the weeks that followed the BSP turned its campaign against intervention towards the TUC and the Labour Party. Opposition to the Polish intervention was described as ‘Labour’s Acid Test’ and the party helped to organize a national appeal to the TUC and the Labour Party for strikes against the intervention, signed by, amongst others, Robert Smillie, President of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain, and Alex Gossip, Gen- eral Secretary of the Furniture Trades Associa- tion.’ At the Labour Party annual conference in July BSP members campaigned for a general strike against intervention. Ernest Bevin, however, per- suaded the delegates to pass a purely formal motion on the subject. Very soon, however, events were to take a more serious turn when the British army threatened to intervene in defence of the belea- guered Poles. This produced the famous telegram from Henderson to every local Labour Party: ‘Extremely menacing possibility extension Polish Russian war. Strongly urge local parties organize citizen demonstrations against intervention and supply men and munitions to Poland. Demand peace negotiations immediate raising blockade, re- sumption trade relations. Send resolutions Premier 44 T.:.H. Wintringham, op. cit., p. 36. 45 S$. R. Graubard, British Labour and the Russian Revolution (1956), pp. 71-2. 46 pabour Party, Annual Conference Report (1919), p. . 47 Workers’ Dreadnaught, July 19 and 26, 1919. 48 S.:iR. Graubard, op. cit., pp. 81 and 87. 49 Labour Leader, November 13, 1919. 50 Daily Herald, April 30, 1920. 51 S$. R. Graubard, op. cit., p. 93. 52 Pollit, op. cit., pp. 111-8. 53. The Call, May 20 and June 10, 1920. FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, NOVEMBER, 1967

[p014] and Press. Deputize local MPs.** On Saturday and Sunday, August 7 and 8 there were demon- strations in every part of the country. The Daily Herald on August 9 and 10 mentions about 70 meetings run by local Labour Parties and Com- munist Party branches, as well as many resolu- tions from union branches and executives. On the 9th there was a special conference of the TUC and Labour Party which called for ‘the whole indust- rial power of the organized workers’ to be used against the war, and set up a national Council of Action which included Clynes from the right, Purcell from the left and many others. On the 10th the Council saw the Prime Minister, who made no verbal concessions, but was later to give no help to the Poles. A call was issued on the same day for local Councils of Action to be set up. On Friday 13 at a national meeting of the Council of Action there were 1,044 delegates from 689 trade unions and 355 labour parties and trades councils. Men who had done nothing to oppose the war in 1914 now felt that they could exonerate themselves by making statements as extreme as possible, and doing as little as they could. Jimmy Thomas, whose respect for the constitution bordered on religious mania, said that unconstitu- tional measures were necessary because ‘the disease is so desperate and dangerous that it is only desperate and dangerous methods that can pro- vide a remedy’. The conference passed a motion calling for the withdrawal of British troops from the war, for the recognition of the Soviet Union and authorizing the Council of Action ‘to call for any and every form of withdrawal of labour which circumstances may require to give effect to the foregoing policy’. In the weeks that followed a national campaign was initiated where 350 coun- cils were set up, usually accompanied by big meet- ings, millions of leaflets calling for peace with Russia were printed and distributed, and national demonstrations were run on August 27 and October 17.% It seems most likely that this had little effect on the Government’s policy, since they probably had little intention of helping the Poles anyway. The fact is they did not do so.” Winston Churchill, however, thought that the ‘violent agitation’ of the Labour movement ‘under Communist influence and guidance’ forced Lloyd George to tell the Poles that ‘the British Government could not take any action against Russia’ even if the Poles were de- feated® These assertions are, however, of less interest than the developments in the working class associated with the Council of Action. Lenin, in a speech delivered some weeks later, RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND BRITISH WORKING CLASS said that ‘the entire British Bourgeois Press de- clared that the Council of Action meant soviets. It did not call itself by that name but actually that is what it was. It was the same kind of dual power as we had under Kerensky from March 1917 onwards’.*® No one was clearer about this than the right-wing leaders of the Council of Action themselves. On August 17 the National Council of Action issued a leaflet to the local councils under the militant title Form Your Councils of Action, but which went on ‘care should be exercised as to the functions of the Local Councils. They are not in any way to usurp the powers of the Trade Unions’ Executives, especially so far aS withdrawal of labour is concerned, but are to act as centres of information’. The national leadership boldly declared in October that ‘there appears no likelihood of [peace with Russia] being secured by direct action’, and refused local requests to extend the campaign to other issues such as the demand for Irish independence by claiming that ‘the Council’s mandate is strictly limited’. Josiah Wedgewood, a recent convert from Liberal- ism and a member of the National Council, was clear about the Council’s need for restraint: ‘It has the necessary unanimity which ensures moderation . . . unanimity is not often achieved in action. Its power will be measured by its ability to avoid action.”™ Such leaders could not, however, prevent local initiatives of all kinds. After the Hyde Park demon- stration of August 8 for instance ‘a crowd of about 4,000 assembled on the Edgware Road... blocking the thoroughfare. Police were called in to restore order, red flags were waved and there were cries of ““Hands off Russia!”, “We don’t want any war!”, “Down with organized force!”, “Three cheers for Sinn Fein!”. As a result four arrests were made’. Other local initiatives were 54 W. & Z. Coates, A History of Anglo-Soviet Rela- tions (1943), p. 42. 55 Council of Action, Report of the Special Con- ference on Labour and the Russo-Polish War (1920). 56 F. Bramley, J. Middleton and H. Lindsay, Report of ihe Council of Action (October 18, 1920), pp. O-/. 57 See S. R. Graubard, op. cit., pp. 111-4 for a dis- cussion of this point. 58 W. Churchill, The World Crisis: the Aftermath (1929), p. 269. 59 V. Lenin, Collected Works, Volume 3] (London, 1966), p. 308. 60 F. Bramley, et al., op. cit., pp. 8 & 7. 61 Article entitled The Council of Action: Triumph for Labour Unanimity in Review of Reviews, September-October 1920, p. 170. 62 Willesden Chronicle, August 13, 1920. 79

[p015] Ramsay Macdonald Advised the employers intervention is bad. of a more organized nature though they varied with the circumstances. There were councils of action in London, Manchester, Birmingham and other cities. In Sheffield, the Council of Action was set up on August 15 and included the General Executive of the Trades and Labour Council, local shop steward convenors, union district committee members and two representatives from the Co- operative Societies. Later the Council was calling for its activities to be extended to the questions of Ireland, unemployment and trade with Russia. The Council continued in existence until the fol- lowing February. In Merthyr Tydfil every organized worker was represented on the Central Council of Action, which had a complicated net- work of committees to deal with such matters as transport, propaganda and finance. This organiza- tion was set up at a special meeting at the end of August when its role was outlined. “Trade Unions . . . function only in time of industrial peace.’ When there is a crisis in industry then ‘the normal functions of trade unions are over, and there is no machinery to take up the problems in a systematized way, preserve order and carry on the administrative work that is necessary then.’* This was precisely the role the Councils of Action were to play during the General Strike in 1926. _ The revolutionaries, though to some extent aware of the possibilities existing in the situation, did little to seize the initiative. The WSF, by now calling itself the Communist Party (British Sec- tion of the Third International) made the correct propaganda point but did little to act on it. ‘It now rests with the rank and file to see that these councils do not become dead bodies, but that they infuse them with life and energy so that they are really Revolutionary Councils, which will 80 work for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a Communist Commonwealth. The mere setting up of Councils is not enough. They must be permeated with the Communist spirit, and to that end, all communists should endeavour to be represented on them.’”* Some members of the month-old Communist Party of Great Britain, just formed from the BSP and sections of the SLP, tried to act on this advice, but they clearly thought their membership of the local Councils was a right to be expected, rather than a privilege to be won. A year later a leading member of the Communist Party explained how it was that little had been achieved: ‘The Central Council .. . maintained its hold on the situation. This was not a result of any brilliant measures on their part, but simply because no effort was pre- pared which would lead to their removal as the crisis developed. Had a vigorous criticism of their policy been maintained, had the idea of a new leadership representing the local councils of action been steadily forwarded, the possibility of securing new leadership would have been advanced enormously, and its main effect would have been to force the central authority to a more vigorous policy.” It was the political immaturity of the British Marxists which made them unable to seize the initiative at his high point in-the militancy and internationalism of the working class. In 1917 and in 1920, when soviets were begun in Britain, they could only have been developed through a struggle against centrism and the rapidly expanding bureaucracy. On these two occasions the defence of the Russian Revolution was an important event in the development of the working class and the revolutionary movement. In the future it could have led either to an appre- ciation of the gains which were being defended or to the mechanical defence of all things Russian later characteristic of the Stalinized Communist Party of Great Britain. A British October revolu- tion will be carried forward only by those who can defend the gains of the last October revolu- tion, and can carry out that struggle against centrism and betrayal so lacking fifty years ago in Britain. 63 Sheffield Federated Trades and Labour Council Executive Minutes for August 15 and 17 and September 14, 1920, and January 14 and February 64 W. Paul, Communism and Society (1922), p. 174-5. The Pioneer (Merthyr Tydfil), September 4 and 18, 65 Workers’ Dreadnaught, August 21, 1920. 66 The Communist, August 26, 1920. 67 Article entitled On Leading the Masses in The Communist Review, February 1922, p. 271. FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, NOVEMBER, 1967

[p016] Ramsay Macdonald Advised the employers intervention is bad.

[p017] THE STRATEGY and tactics of the Bolshevik Party between the February and October Revolutions of 1917 constitute the most valuable political capital of the proletarian revolutionary movement. It was only through an intense internal struggle on theoretical and programmatic questions that the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, achieved the party unity and discipline necessary to organize the successful insurrection of October. During these vital months, Trotsky joined the Bolsheviks, in- formally in May and openly in July, after years of hesitation during which he was strongly criti- cized by Lenin for refusing to break with the opportunists of the ‘Organization Committee’. After Trotsky joined the Party, Lenin said, there was ‘no better Bolshevik’. Between 1914 and 1917, i.e. between the open desertion of almost the whole leadership of inter- national Social Democracy to the imperialists after August 4, 1914 and the October Revolu- tion of 1917, Lenin found himself in a very tiny minority in the socialist movement on a number of basic questions. Inevitably, one of these was the problem of the attitude of Marxists to the imperialist war and how to mobilize the working class in wartime conditions. In celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the October Revolution, it will be useful to indicate once again the main lines of Lenin’s position, since still today the tasks of revolutionaries include as a vital necessity the struggle against pacifism and for truly revolution- ary methods of struggle against the war plans of the imperialists. This has become even more necessary because of the ‘peaceful co-existence’ line of the Kremlin bureaucracy and its followers, who place ‘peace’ (i.e. the preservation of the bureaucracy’s privileges) above the class struggle. When Trotskyists fight today as the only real defenders of the socialized property relations in the USSR, Eastern Europe and China, they can do so only by combining this defence with the most implacable struggle against the bureaucracy and its policies. Earlier articles in Labour Review’ and Fourth International? have recalled in detail the principled positions of Lenin against the ‘peace’ and ‘disarma- ment’ slogans which were separated from the programme of proletarian revolution. Lenin bit- terly attacked those who appealed to the masses primarily on the immediate question of peace 1 3B. Pearce, ‘Lenin and Trotsky on Pacifism and Defeatism’, in Labour Review, Vol. 6, No. 1. 2 M. Varga, ‘The Consequences of Peaceful Co. existence’, in Fourth International, Vol. 1, No. 1. 81

[p018] because they separated the struggle against war from the proletarian revolution. This, he said, perpetuated the illusion that a democratic peace was possible without revolutions, instead of what was most vital, the mobilization of the workers in each country against their own ruling class. In other words, the peace slogan in practice worked against the only force which could ensure peace: new revolutions prepared through the struggle for political independence of the working class. Thus Lenin wrote: The main distinguishing feature of both these forms of prevailing opportunism (the open oppor- tunists like Scheidemann, Plekhanov, Legien, Hynd- man, etc. and the ‘masked’ opportunists like Kautsky and Martov) is that the concrete questions of the connection between the present war and revolution, and other concrete questions of revolu- tion, are hushed up, concealed, or treated with an eye to police prohibitions. . . . The main defect of the disarmament demand is its evasion of all the concrete questions of revolution. Or do the advocates of disarmament stand for an altogether new kind of revolution, unarmed revolution?” The basic slogan of Lenin, and of the Bolshevik Party, from the onset of the war, was ‘the con- version of the present imperialist war into a civil war’ as ‘the only correct proletarian slogan... . However difficult that transformation may seem at any given moment, socialists will never relin- -quish systematic, persistent and undeviating pre- paratory work in this direction now that war has become a fact’.* Day after day, from the outbreak of war until the February 1917 Revolution, Lenin wrote articles, letters and pamphlets insisting on this preparation for civil war, the only activity worthy of Marxists, against the repetition of phrases. Further, he never ceased to emphasize that ‘peace’ agitation carried on apart from activity to expose the opportunists of all kinds was a fraud. If the fight against war could be won only through ‘a series of new revolutions’ then it was a prime necessity to fight for a new, revolutionary leadership against the opportunists who were part of the bourgeois war-machine. Time and again Lenin outlined the series of tasks which Marxists must undertake if they were to fight effectively against the imperialist war, and his slogan of ‘revolutionary defeatism’ was always put forward in the context of these tasks: The following should be indicated as the first steps towards converting the present imperialist war into a civil war: (1) an absolute refusal to vote for war credits, and resignation from bourgeois governments; (2) a complete break with the policy of a class truce (bloc national, Burgfrieden); (3) formation of an underground organization wherever 82 the governments and the bourgeoisie abolish con- stitutional liberties by introducing martial law; (4) support for fraternization between soldiers of the belligerent nations, in the trenches and on battle- fields in general; (5) support for every kind of revolutionary mass action by the proletariat in general.” From this standpoint, for example, Lenin, while reserving the highest praise for Liebknecht, Luxem- burg and the revolutionary left in Germany, criti- cized their work: A very great defect in revolutionary Marxism in Germany as a whole is its lack of a compact illegal organization that would systematically pur- sue its own line and educate the masses in the spirit of the new tasks; such an organization would also have to take a definite stand on opportunism and Kautskyism.° Lenin refers in the last phrase of this quotation to his major criticism of Rosa Luxemburg’s bril- liant and famous ‘Junius pamphlet’: that it failed to explain the connection between social- chauvinism and opportunism and did not include a thorough critique of opportunism of all kinds as an essential part of its exposure of the imperial- ist character of the war and the tasks of Marxists in fighting their ‘own’ bourgeoisie in every country. Throughout the war Lenin hammered away at this point: only those who broke completely from and denounced opportunism could work consist- ently on a revolutionary line against war. And it was precisely on this point that Lenin crossed swords with Trotsky in relation to ques- tions of war, pacifism and ‘revolutionary defeat- ism’. Brian Pearce, in his article ‘Lenin and Trotsky on Pacifism and Defeatism’”’, has dealt in detail with the differences between the two great revolutionaries on this question. He undertook the necessary task of replying to the systematic and unprincipled attempts of the Stalinists to exaggerate every difference between Lenin and Trotsky before 1917, attempts in which they strove to ‘prove’ that Lenin was always ‘right’ and Trotsky ‘wrong’. In answering the Stalinists, Brian Pearce first put the record straight on the actual 3 Lenin, ‘The Military Programme of the Prole- tarian Revolution’ (September, 1916) in Collected Works, Vol. 23, p. 84. 4 ‘The War and Russian Social Democracy’, state- ment of the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, drafted by Lenin, September, 1914. In Collected Works, Vol. 21, p. 34. 5 Lenin, ‘The Conference of the RSDLP Groups Abroad’, February, 1915, Collected Works, Vol. , Pp. : 6 Lenin, ‘The Junius Pamphlet’, July, 1916. Collec- ted Works, Vol. 22, p. 307. 7 Pearce, op. cit. FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, NOVEMBER, 1967 i t i i i i i

[p019] statements of Trotsky and particularly Lenin, and from this drew a number of tentative conclusions. These were: (a) that towards the end of 1916 Lenin ceased using the formula of ‘wishing for the defeat of one’s own bourgeoisie’, because he learned through experience the correctness of Trotsky’s warnings about its ‘negative’ emphasis; and (b) that, whereas Trotsky came round to Lenin’s viewpoint on organizational questions and a break with the opportunists, Lenin came round to Trotsky’s viewpoint on ‘questions of the tactics and slogans of the fight against war, as on the “permanent revolution’ approach to Russia’s politics’. . We have already seen that for Lenin the ‘war question’, ‘defeatism’ and relations with the oppor- tunists were inseparable. If we go through the writings of Lenin on these matters from 1914 to 1917, then we shall correct what I believe to be a wrong emphasis in Pearce’s article. Instead, we shall see that what Lenin defended in his ‘defeat- ism’ thesis was precisely intransigence against the opportunists, and direction of the revolutionary vanguard to independent work in the proletariat. That Lenin also stopped on a number of occasions to correct the non-Marxist conclusions of Pyata- kov and other Bolsheviks who concluded that all ‘peace’ programmes were non-revolutionary does not detract one whit from Lenin’s consistent line on this question. In October 1914, as contrasted with German Social-Democracy and with almost the whole of the Socialist International, the Bolshevik Central Committee took a stand against the imperialist war and against its ‘own’ bourgeoisie. Its manifesto stated: ‘. . . from the standpoint of the working class and of the labouring masses of all the peoples of Russia, the lesser evil would be the defeat of the Tsarist monarchy’. Pearce quotes this passage, together with the reservation uttered by some of Lenin’s comrades that it was open to the misinter- pretation of desiring a victory for German imperial- ism. He goes on to quote Lenin’s letter to Shlyap- nikov (October 17, 1914): ‘Tsarism is a hundred times worse than Kaiserism’, and concludes ‘Lenin’s defeatism is here advanced, it will be observed, as something special for Russia, not a an international line’.*® This is precisely what Lenin’s critics, including Trotsky, found fault with in Lenin’s slogan, main- taining that it negated internationalism. But Lenin more than once stated his reasons for his emphasis on the reactionary character of Tsarism and the ‘lesser evil’ of its defeat: the particularly reaction- ary character of Tsarism must be exposed and