Hyndman and British Socialism, by Tsuzuki

[p024] H. M. Hyndman and British Socia- lism. By Chushichi Tsuzuki, edited by Henry Pelling. Oxford University Press, 35s. Bertrand Russell once wrote, in an essay ‘On Catholic and Protestant Sceptics ’, about the differences to be observed between freethinkers of Catholic and Protestant origin, reflect- ing the theology they were taught in their youth. ‘ The difference between Protestant and Catholic jis just as marked among freethinkers as it is among believers; indeed, the essential differences are perhaps easier to discover, since they are not hidden behind the ostensible divergences of dogma.’ It is interesting to trace the corresponding differences of outlook to be found among those who came into the British socialist movement from Tory and Liberal backgrounds respectively. The maiority of the men who joined one or other socialist group in Britain at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, insofar as they were mot political virgins, had Liberalism for their previous association; but there were some ex-Tories too, including impor- tant individuals like H. H. Champion, Hubert Bland and the subject of Professor Tsuzuki’s biography, H. M. Hyndman, who was for so_ long Beitain’s ‘ Mr. Marxism’. Hyndman’s Tory heritage showed itself above all in jingoism. He convinced himself that the dawn of socialism was nearest in Britain, where capitalism was most highly developed, and from this deduced that the cause of British imperialism in conflict with German, from about 1900 onwards, was ‘the cause of Socialism. From opposing agitation in defence of the Boers, on the grounds that, after all, South Africa ‘belongs neither to Boer nor to Briton’, Hyndman evolved to his position during the First World War, when he promoted witch-hunting of socialists who followed an interna- tionalist line. _ two causes. LABOUR REVIEW—Summer 1961 This aspect, among others, of the Hyndman story is well set out in Professor Tsuzuki’s book (which clearly owes a good deal to Pelling’s editing), and it fills a real gap in the literature of British labour history. It is extraordinary that Hyndman should have had to wait so long for a scholarly biography, and significant of the interest in Marxism in Japan that it should be a Japanese who has undertaken it. BP. Radical Pioneer