
Anti-Parliamentarism and Communism in Britain, 1917-1921
R. F. Jones
In this article I shall discuss the growing British
anti-parliamentarist movement in the period immediately preceding the
formation in 1921 of the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation
(APCF). In particular, I want to consider the attempts to unite the
various anti-parliamentary groups into one Communist Party. These
attempts were, I shall argue, a natural development of the
revolutionary movement in Britain. They were cut short by the
formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), an
unnatural development for Britain which was based on the conditions
set by the Communist International in Russia. The subsequent
formation of the APCF was, as a result, a pale reflection of what
could have been.
At the outset it is necessary to try to clarify what is meant by
'anti-parliamentarism'. It is important to realise that, for British
comrades in 1921, anti-parliamentarism was not merely a negative
delineation of tactics -- a rejection of the policy of socialists
standing for and sitting in Parliament -- though this was obviously a
key element of the movement. Anti-parliamentarism has, at this time,
to be viewed in the context of a burgeoning communist movement.
Indeed, until the formation of the CPGB, which took upon itself the
definition of all things 'communist', it would not be too much of an
exaggeration to say that the anti-parliamentary and communist
movements were synonymous. To be a communist before 1920, even 1921,
was to be an anti-parliamentarian. Only after 1921 was the prefix
'anti-parliamentary' needed.
This was true of both Marxists and anarchists. Each shared a
common set of ideas, including the centrality of the class struggle
for social analysis and action; the conception of workers' committees
and councils seizing the means of production and distribution; the
ensuing creation of a Soviet Republic which initially would act as a
'dictatorship of the proletariat'; and, as a necessary corollary of
these, the importance of direct action and anti-parliamentary
agitation. While there was not unanimity on all of these points,
there was a broad measure of agreement emerging.
One revealing example of this convergence of views was the
interpretation which was made by most sections of the revolutionary
movement in Britain of the Russian Revolution in sovietist and
councillist terms rather than in terms of the determining role of a
centralised and disciplined political party. This interpretation
remained almost universal until 1920, when doubts about the exact
nature and direction of the Russian Revolution began to surface in
Britain. It is also significant that these doubts emerged not over
the political practice of the Bolsheviks in Russia -- which were
rationalised away into existing theoretical formulas (though this was
not true of the anarchists centred on the London Freedom Group) --
but over the advice Lenin was giving to German and Italian communists
to participate in parliamentary elections.
Completely absent was any notion of the centralised, disciplined
party as the controlling agent of the revolution. This, however, was
a key element in the Comintern's 'Twenty-One Conditions for Admission
to the Communist International', which all Communist Parties had to
accept before affiliation. Thus Point 12 declares that the party must
be built 'upon the principle of democratic centralisation', and
speaks of control by 'iron discipline'; and of a party central body
with 'the most far-reaching faculties'.
The acceptance of the 'Twenty-One Conditions' by the CPGB
therefore represented a marked break with past British experience.
What was the significance of this? For some historians, such as James
Hinton in The First Shop Stewards' Movement (1973), the unity
negotiations resulting in the formation of the CPGB represented a
'theoretical clarification'. Hinton charts a development of
revolutionary theory from syndicalism and industrial unionism by way
of the experience of the shop stewards' and workers' committee
movement to the ultimate flowering of 'the soviet idea of revolution'
in the CPGB. There is much that is wrong with this interpretation.
Here it is necessary only to note the simple points that the CPGB did
not embody any 'theoretical clarification', and had very little to do
with 'the soviet idea of revolution'. The whole point of the unity
negotiations was to set up Lenin's 'party of a new type' -- that is,
a centralised party loyally following the orders of the Comintern.
Any theoretical or other discoveries made by the British participants
were subsumed within this task. The end result was that the existing
revolutionary movement and any theoretical advances it had made were
largely destroyed.
Let me examine this a little more closely. The first point to make
about the 1920 unity negotiations is that they did not involve
discussions about the theoretical significance of soviet power or the
meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat. There was already a
fair measure of agreement on these issues. The main, almost the
exclusive, topic of discussion was parliamentarism, in the form of
parliamentary action and of affiliation to the Labour Party. As I
shall show later, almost the whole of the revolutionary movement was
anti-parliamentary and was uniting around an anti-parliamentary
platform. For the moment, however, let me assume this point, and
examine how the incipient 'party of a new type' handled the question.
In doing so we shall see how M path was laid for the destruction of
the revolutionary movement in Britain.
What was the attitude of communists to the Labour Party? For
anyone thinking in terms of communism (outside certain sections of
the British Socialist Party and the Independent Labour Party), it was
simply inconceivable to regard the Labour Party as having anything at
all to contribute to the developing movement. Then, as now, the
Labour Party, so far as any move towards socialism was concerned --
and never mind about any move towards communism -- was seen as a bad
joke. D. Manion noted at the Communist Unity Convention of 31 July -
1 August 1920:
At the present time in Sheffield no matter how good a
Socialist a man might be he was mobbed if at any Socialist or trade
union meeting he said he was in favour of such [i.e. Labour Party]
affiliation.
And Mrs Bamber from Liverpool added:
The industrial workers were sick to death of the
position of the Labour Party at the present time, and she hoped that
we, the Communist Party, showing the way not to reform but to the
emancipation of the workers, would keep outside the Party that had
done so much to delay the progress of the working class during the
last few years.
If this was so obvious to so many people, why was Labour Party
affiliation ever considered as a serious policy? One factor was that
the BSP, the largest socialist body involved in the unity
negotiations, was already affiliated to the Labour Party, and
continued to argue for affiliation. But a growing number of BSPers,
including Comrades Manion and Bamber, were starting to reject the
policy. There were clearly other factors at work. The most important
of these was the Comintern directive instructing the British
Communist Party to affiliate, backed up by Lenin's rationalisation of
the position in Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder. While the
directive was crucial, perhaps more important was the kind of
argument used to support it -- a strange kind of argument, new to the
British movement and indicative of the kind of reasoning that was to
undermine the communist movement in Britain.
It could be argued that up to this time the main aim of British
socialists and communists had been a simple one of trying to make
socialists and increase the class consciousness of the working class.
Questions about the mechanics of seizing power were not widely
discussed, most people being content to rely on the ability of the
working class to create As own organs of self-government in any
revolutionary situation. Further, the Labour Party was to play no
part in this process, simply because it was not socialist and because
its actions had positively hampered the development towards
socialism.
But such common-sense and seemingly obvious points were to come
under attack from a new breed of 'realists' and 'hard-headed
strategists', who were to play an important part in the unity
negotiations. The common-sense view of the Labour Party now came to
be seen as 'naive' and 'emotional'; one needed a longer-term tactical
view.
The ultimate source of such a view was the Comintern and Lenin
himself. Left-Wing Communism appeared just before the Unity
Convention, and ably summarised the lectures and advice Lenin had
been giving British Communists during the preceding months. In this
work Lenin argued that 'revolution is impossible without a change in
the views of the majority of the working class, and this change is
brought about by the political experience of the masses, and never by
propaganda alone'. Fair enough; but Lenin went on to insist that in
consequence 'British Communists should participate in parliamentary
action, that they should from within Parliament help the masses of
workers to see the results of a Henderson and Snowden government in
practice'. In this way it was hoped that the masses would very soon
become disappointed with the Labour Party and would begin to support
the Communists.
Unfortunately this sort of argument leads directly into the
nightmarish world of the mechanistic and manipulative party
politician. In Lenin's words again:
The strictest loyalty to the ideas of Communism must
be combined with the My to Me A M necessary practical compromises, to
manoeuvre, to make agreements, zigzags, retreats and so on, so as to
accelerate the coming to power and subsequent loss of political power
of the Hendersons ... to accelerate their inevitable bankruptcy in
practice, which will enlighten the masses in the spirit of our ideas,
in the direction of Communism....
Or, in his oft-quoted phrase, Communists would support the Labour
Party 'in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man'.
A good example of these intellectual contortions at work in
Britain comes from R. Page Arnot's intervention at the Unity
Convention on the Labour Party affiliation issue. He readily agreed
that 'we were all sick of the Labour Party', but he added that this
didn't necessarily mean that leaving the Labour Party was 'the best
tactic for the revolution'. Arnot, as befitted the new revolutionary
tacticians, was thinking ten steps ahead, in terms of Communists in
the Labour Party 'splitting off' and taking 'a very large number of
the organised working class with us'. The essence of the new outlook
was to look at matters 'as tactics in a military sense' -- that is,
to 'think the thing out coldly and clearly and get rid of emotion'.
Those who did not have these requisite military skills and who simply
pointed out that the Labour Party was hopelessly reactionary and
would tar the Communist Party with the same brush were said to be
using 'emotional arguments'.
In this manner, Communist policy ceased to be a matter of debate
and discussion by the rank and file, based on the observable
experience of the working class and its institutions. Instead, policy
was now determined by long-term tactical perspectives from above --
an ever-changing series of intellectual permutations and combinations
known as the 'Party Line'. This, when coupled with a centralised
party demanding absolute loyalty, ensured the speedy elimination of
any ideas and practice developed from the class struggle by the
pre-existing communist movement in Britain. If its members didn't
conform to the tactical line, they were simply disregarded as 'naive'
or 'emotional'. Edgar T. Whitehead noted the process at work at an
early period of its operation:
I do like this word 'naive'. It clinches the argument.
All logic falls flat before it. Anti-parliamentarians are so naive,
in face of the mephistophelian astucity [sic] of these revolutionary
parliamentarians.
(The Spur, November 1920)
There could be no direct answer to such charges of 'naivety',
because the Communist Party had developed its own particular logic,
impervious to any questioning from outside.
Anti-parliamentary communists became increasingly puzzled by the
attitude of the 'Maiden Lane Communists' (the CPGB, with its office
in Maiden Lane, London) to the parliamentary question. Whitehead
voiced a question which was baffling many: 'Why do the Maiden Lane
Communists want participation in Parliament so much that they would
rather split the movement than forgo it?' Given that the propaganda
value of electoral activity was not a serious difference with the
anti-parliamentarians, and given the repudiation of Parliament by the
organised Workshop Movement, what possible reason could there be for
wanting to pursue participation in Parliament at all costs? Whitehead
concluded: 'It is almost inconceivable that Maiden Lane should have
been so blind and mad as to cease to take into account these
realities, and instead, sheep-like, to blunderingly follow a tactic
dictated from Moscow. . . .'
But this is almost certainly what did happen. The increasing
invective and abuse from Maiden Lane was part of what Lenin called
the 'liquidation of "left" doctrinairism'- a necessary stage which
the class-conscious vanguard (the Communist Party) had to pass
through to establish its supremacy. There is no space to document
this process further, though it may be seen in its most dramatic and
pathetic form in the amazing intellectual somersaults of people like
William Gallacher and J. T. Murphy, who were very effectively
'liquidated'. The unity negotiations were in fact a crucial phase in
the 'liquidation of "left" doctrinairism' in Britain. Rather than
attempting to unite the existing revolutionary groups in Britain --
indeed the negotiations created more division than unity -- the main
aim was to create Lenin's party 'of a new type', a party strictly
conforming to the Comintern's conditions and with little regard for
the British situation. This, and its consequences, were clearly
foreseen by the anti-parliamentarians at the very foundation of the
CPGB. Thus Whitehead noted:
Maiden Lane must understand ... it is Britain we are
dealing with, and British industrialists and Proletarians, British
historical conditions, and British realities. Until Maiden Lane faces
these facts, gains some backbone and grey matter of its own, and
ceases to be merely a gramophone for the Moscow Records, we can do no
other than build our own party, propagate our Soviet and Communist
principles in accord with realities.
Unfortunately Maiden Lane was incapable of facing these facts and
continued to play Moscow Records. The tragedy of this is that in the
process a real possibility of unity was lost and indeed destroyed.
What was this possibility? Put simply, it was the chance to bring
about a unity of a number of anarchist and Marxist groups who had in
common their support of the Russian Revolution and who were moving
towards a common communist philosophy. If carried forward, there was
a possibility of uniting once again the differing conceptions of Marx
and Bakunin in a communist movement of great potential significance.
At the outset, it must be realised that long before the Russian
Revolution there was a communist movement in Britain, and that after
1917 it was a rapidly developing and largely non-sectarian movement.
A good example of its nature on the eve of the Russian Revolution is
given by Jim Griffiths in his description of the activities of the
Communist Club at Ammanford in South Wales. Griffiths reports on a
series of meetings held there in the early days of 1917:
The aim of these meetings has not been to propagate
any particular brand of Socialism or Communism. They have aimed
rather at providing a common platform -- a workers' Forum -- where
all who are interested in social problems can meet, and freely and
frankly exchange opinions on vital social questions, the members of
the club being convinced that the providing of opportunities for such
meetings is the greatest service they can render to the working class
movement at the present time. If the movement is to survive the hard
times ahead, it must cease wasting its energies in fruitless wrangles
over this, that or the other policy. It must return to first
principles.... We must aim at securing an intelligent class-conscious
rank and file.
(The Spur, April 1917)
In this non-sectarian atmosphere socialists were beginning to
forget their 'fruitless wrangles' and move towards a common
conception. Thus within the anarchist movement there was a growing
section of what Guy Aldred called 'Marxian anarchists' who were
distinguished from other anarchists (especially 'Kropotkin
anarchists') by their acceptance of the Marxist analysis of the state
and their recognition of the importance of the class struggle. These
anarchists were becoming increasingly impatient with those who, in
the words of Freda Cohen of the Glasgow Anarchist Group, were merely
content with 'fine phrases or poetical visioning'. What was needed,
she continued, was 'knowledge . . . for the class struggle, by giving
a scientific basis in place of a sentimental belief' (The Spur,
January/February 1918). She concluded that 'knowledge of economics,
history and sociology are of primary importance', and that due
recognition should be given to the fact that 'industrial unionism,
IWGBism [the Industrial Workers of Great Britain], the Shop Steward
movement, etc., are questions that concern the daily life of the
worker ... [and] are coming more and more to the fore. We must
discuss them thoroughly and define our attitude towards them.'
These were also the concerns of many members of the Socialist
Labour Party and left-wing members of the British Socialist Party and
the Independent Labour Party. Workers in these socialist groups were
beginning to share a common literature and to exchange views and
debate the key issues raised by the political and industrial
struggles of the moment. For example, James Morton of the London
Industrial Workers' Committee took part in a debate with the SLP in
1917 on direct action, and ordered six dozen copies of J. Blair
Smith's anarchist pamphlet Direct Action versus Legislation for
distribution at this and other meetings.
Rank-and-file members of socialist bodies were starting to
question the established political shibboleths of their particular
groups. SLPers, for instance, started to query the DeLeonist attitude
to parliamentary action -- some, like Joseph Linden, leaving the SLP
to join the anarchists. Within the anarchists, too, there was
dissent. Robert Selkirk, an anarchist from Cowdenbeath, questioned
Aldred's rejection of the workshop struggle: 'It is as well to speed
the day when "the Socialist organisations will cease to be glorified
debating clubs and become fighting units". And this can be done in
the despised "workshop struggle... (quoted by Aldred, The Spur, June
1919). A number of anti-parliamentarians and anarchists (such as
Whitehead and R. M. Fox) accepted the importance of the 'workshop
struggle' at this time, and thus came close to the position of
dissident SLPers and socialist militants in the Shop Stewards and
Workers' Committee movement.
The important point is that these questions were a matter for
debate and discussion within a developing anti-parliamentary
movement. Thus, on the 'workshop struggle', for example, Aldred was
to make a speedy and effective reply to such palliative fights for
'petty ends', as he viewed them, in his debate with T. L. Smith of
the Workers International Industrial Union (WIIU) (The Spur, August
1919). There were other fierce arguments between collectivists and
communists, between those who were for or against action in the
workshop, and between others on the precise nature of the anti-
parliamentary attitude to the ballot-box. Such arguments, however,
were 'becoming less real', as Aldred had noted, with a 'growing
tendency of socialists to accept a common theory and to meet on a
common democratic footing' (The Spur, March-April 1919). Moreover,
this tendency was 'a natural growth, capable, truly, of extensive and
intensive cultivation; but still a vital development from within a
movement'. But Aldred was well aware of 'a hypocritical parade of
unity' by those whose 'desire is not for unity, but for capture'.
Such a 'mechanical inspiration from without', as he described it,
would destroy the natural growth within the movement towards unity --
and this is precisely what happened at the Unity Convention.
But what happened in the intervening years? A number of important
initiatives were made in the period from 1918 to 1920 to articulate
the approaching unity in organisational terms. I shall briefly
examine two of hew initiatives -he formation of the Communist League,
and the formation of the Labour Abstentionist Party, both in 1919.
The more important of the two, the Communist League, was an
attempt to unite dissident branches of the SLP with London anarchists
centred on the Spur and Freedom papers. From it came the first paper
in Britain to be called The Communist, and also -- and more
significantly -- a real attempt to unite Marxists and anarchists in
one organisation. The first step towards the new group came from the
London District Council of the SLP, which in February 1919 issued a
proposal to convene a conference for rank and file members of the
British socialist movement to discover a basis for communist unity.
The proposal was accompanied by a lengthy manifesto which included a
draft constitution for a new Communist League. Key elements in the
constitution were: a call for local workers' committees and councils
to aim at seizing the means of production and creating a proletarian
dictatorship; the ultimate aim of a republic of federated communes;
and a declaration that the parliamentary vote is obsolete and that
direct industrial action should be adopted as an alternative.
The unity conference was held on 16 March 1919, and the Communist
League was established on an explicitly anti-parliamentary programme.
George Rose well expressed the spirit behind the new movement in the
first issue of its paper The Communist:
We know that there must develop the great
working-class anti-Statist movement showing the way to Communist
society. The Communist League is the standard bearer of the movement;
and all the hosts of Communists in the various other Socialist
organisations will in good time see that Parliamentary action will
lead them, not to Communism but to that bureaucratic Statism
correctly named by Hilaire Belloc the 'Servile State'. . . .
Therefore, we identify ourselves with the Third International, with
the Communism of Marx, and with that personification of the spirit of
revolt, Bakunin, of whom the Third International is but the natural
and logical outcome. (May 1919)
The essence of the new movement was thus an attempted fusion of
Bakuninism and Marxism in an anti-parliamentary movement working for
the creation of revolutionary workers' councils and factory
committees.
Over the next few months the League developed and expanded. An
attempt was also made to unite with the Workers' Socialist Federation
(WSF), but the WSF had its own plans. While most branches of the
League were to be found in Scotland and London, William Mainwaring
announced the formation of a Treherbert branch in South Wales in May.
Mainwaring, however, did reject the League's constitution on a couple
of details, including the interesting point that it was nonsense to
speak of the parliamentary vote as 'obsolete' because 'to say it is
obsolete will lead many to suppose that it once was useful. To this
we do not agree! (The Communist, June/July 1919.)
Reports in Freedom cast light on developments in London and the
influence of the League on anarchists there. A generally favourable
report on the initial unity conference, while noting that the League
was not an anarchist organisation, recognised that 'the repudiation
of Parliament is a long step in our direction' (April 1919). But
subsequent issues carried an acrimonious exchange between William
Hopkins of the Stockport Workers' Anarchist Group and David Bloom of
the Stepney Branch of the Communist League, concerning seemingly
irreconcilable differences over a communist dictatorship and economic
determinism, among other matters (June, July, October 1919).
The prominence given to this ill-tempered debate should not
obscure the progress being made towards unity in London. Among a
section of London anarchists there was a desire for action to prepare
the way for an expected revolution and an impatience with the
primarily literary propaganda of the Freedom Group, as exemplified in
1919 by the appearance of a new Anarchist Propaganda Group. To these
anarchists the best chance of the desired kind of action seemed to
lie in co-operation with the Communist League. Thus at a Conference
of London Anarchists in April 1919 it was argued by some comrades
that 'the time had arrived for action' (May 1919):
The anti-parliamentary attitude of many Socialists and Communists
was greatly due to our propaganda in the past, and good results would
undoubtedly follow if we worked with them. Steps, therefore, are to
be taken towards holding a Conference with the Communist League to
consider a joint plan of campaign.
The resulting conference, held in June 1919, was not without
points of dispute, including the vexed question of the nature of any
proletarian dictatorship. But, significantly, the discussion was
'very friendly in tone, the desire on both sides being to find points
of agreement rather than points of controversy' (July 1919). Finally,
it was hoped that the points at issue could be resolved at a future
National Conference to which anarchist groups would be invited.
Possibly in response to anarchist criticisms, a novel feature of
the League was its attempt to create a decentralised ruling body
called the Local Delegates' Committee. This embodied the principle of
an elected delegate committee (each branch electing delegates in
proportion to its membership), with mandated delegates subject to
immediate reporting back and instant recall if they failed to follow
their mandates. The aim here was to sweep out 'boss domination and
cliqueism' (The Communist, August 1919): 'It must be a movement of
the rank and file, expressing itself to the rank and file.' A real
test of this new ruling body in practice was to be the first national
conference of the movement. It is not clear, however, whether the
conference ever took place, for the Communist League seems to have
disappeared without a trace at the end of 1919 or the beginning of
1920.
This, though, was not the end of attempts to find a basis for
unity between anarchists and Marxists. Aldred in particular continued
to pursue closer relations with SLP, BSP and ILP comrades. In an
important article Aldred again spoke of the revolutionary movement
'drawing closer and closer together on a platform of practical
revolutionary effort' ('Bricks and mortar', The Spur, October 1919).
There was now common agreement that the Soviet Republic could not be
established by parliamentary action, but there was still considerable
division over the question of the precise usefulness of parliamentary
action.
To overcome this division, and particularly addressing SLPers,
Aldred proposed he 'Sinn Fein' tactic -- communist antiparliamentary
candidates adopting the Irish Nationalists' use of the ballot-box for
agitational purposes, with a pledge not to take the oath and not to
sit in Parliament if elected. While preferring the straight
anti-parliamentary position of boycotting elections, Aldred put
forward the 'Sinn Fein' alternative as 'a tactical compromise ... for
effecting a wider unity'.
The tactic was put to the test in the Paisley by-election of
1919-1920, when Aldred offered to support the SLP candidate if he
stood as a communist anti-parliamentarian. The offer no doubt had
some effect on the local SLP branch, for when William Paul declined
to stand as their candidate, they decided to forget all compromise
and conducted a 'Boycott the Ballot Box' campaign aimed particularly
at the Labour Party candidate, Biggar. Their leaflet concluded:
'Every vote withheld is a vote for socialism. . . . Abstain from
voting. Work for the social revolution.' (Quoted by D. M. Chewter.
The History of the Socialist Labour Party of Great Britain. B Litt
thesis, Oxford 1965.)
Such action was perhaps indicative of a growing unease in the
ranks of the SLP with the parliamentary policy of the party. Although
quite a lot is known about the activities of SLP dissidents like Paul
and Tom Bell, who were to form the Communist Unity Group of the SLP,
very little is known about the developing anti-parliamentarism in the
party as exemplified by the Paisley action. There is evidence that
other SLP branches were accepting the anti-parliamentary position.
For example, we know that Aldred was running a mission in 1919-1920
under the auspices of the Shettleston SLP which, in the words of its
secretary J. Bowman, was to 'thump home that anti-parliamentary
truth' (The Spur, March 1920). Realising that 'this is not the SLP
position', Bowman insisted however that 'there must be no
parliamentary sidestepping'. This attitude to Parliament also
surfaced at the Carlisle conference of the SLP in April 1920, which
spent an unusual amount of time discussing the case for and against
parliamentary action.
Similar developments were taking place in branches of the BSP --
for example in Scotland at the Tradeston and Anderston branches --
and in ILP branches too. The rank and file of these parties were
getting impatient with the traditional party arguments for
parliamentary inaction, and were beginning to cooperate with
individuals across party lines in practical propaganda. Individuals
and branches were moving towards communist unity on their own
initiative, independently of party leaders. Thus in May 1920 a
Communist Group was formed in Paisley of ex-BSP members, while in
June 1920 J. E. Scott announced the formation of the Acton Communist
Party by discontented members of the Acton and Chiswick branch of the
Herald League. The parliamentary constraints of the old parties and
organisations were now hampering revolutionary propaganda, as Scott
noted: 'We have stood always for the Revolution and the extreme
propaganda but could not carry on whilst affiliated to the National
Labour Party through no fault of our own' (The Spur, July 1920).
It was also at this time, in May 1920, that the Labour
Abstentionist Party made its brief appearance. It was essentially the
creation of Whitehead of the WSE Its programme was largely a summary
of the anti- parliamentary 'Sinn Fein' tactic as evolved by Aldred in
the 1918-1919 period, but spiced with Whitehead's distinctive
conception of independent proletarian ideology. Although it is not
clear how much support the party could command, it did at least have
the unqualified approval of Tom Mann, who wrote a foreword to
Whitehead's pamphlet The Labour Abstentionist Party (1920),
commending 'the fine tactics of the Irish Sinn Feiners', and desired
'to see the same tactics resorted to in Britain'. The formation of
the party is thus another indication of the growing
anti-parliamentarism in the movement.
Within a few months of these developments, however, hopes of a
rapprochement between Marxists and anarchists were dealt a fatal blow
by the Communist Unity Convention. I have already shown how the
ensuing Communist Party, based on the ludicrous programme of
participation in parliamentary elections and affiliation to the
Labour Party, was completely out of step with the evolution of the
revolutionary movement in Britain at this time. But why didn't this
evolution continue independently of the new party? This is a very
difficult question to answer. One historian, Walter Kendall in The
Revolutionary Movement in Britain, 1900-1921 (1969), has argued that
the secret hand of Moscow gold was at work, which, in creating a
situation of financial dependency for the small revolutionary groups,
slowly but surely ensured that they were all sucked into the CPGB.
There may be some truth in this, but the process was a little more
complex.
It is clear that after the formation of the CPGB in August 1920
the new party was subject to a Comintern directive to unite with
other selected revolutionary groups on the basis of the 'Twenty-One
Conditions'. As a result, any further negotiations towards unity on
an anti-parliamentary programme were a non-starter. But why didn't
these other groups create their own initiative independently of
Moscow? Unfortunately, they couldn't ignore Moscow and the CPGB,
especially because most of them -- including the SLP, the WSF, and
the Shop Stewards and Workers' Committee Movement -- were on the
Comintern's hit-list. What is surprising, though, is that in the
subsequent negotiations most of the revolutionary groups gave up
their allegiance to their anti-parliamentary principles without much
of a fight.
There was a fair amount of Comintern trickery in these
negotiations through their British stooges. Most notable here,
perhaps, was William Gallacher in his notorious attempts to discredit
the leading Scottish Marxist John Maclean in the eyes of the SLP
executive committee and his machinations in relation to the Communist
Labour Party (which under his guidance became a conduit to funnel
Scottish communists into the CPGB). But, despite Gallacher & Co.,
we must note that members of the various organisations were willing
accomplices in this trickery and the intellectual somersaults it
involved. As happens repeatedly in the history of British socialism
in the twentieth century, there was a complete abdication of critical
judgement when basic principles and beliefs are put to the test by
supposed friends and allies.
Thus the British Communists were a push-over when faced with the
simplistic and ludicrous arguments that the Russian Revolution
depended on a united revolutionary movement in Britain and that,
towards this end, Lenin and the Russian Bolsheviks knew best about
tactics since they had already created a successful revolution. If
there were any doubts, they could be rationalised away by fondly
imagining that one could work for a change in policy from within the
CPGB and/or the Comintern. The Scottish Communists accepted this
latter nonsense tom Gallacher, and many others were to find
themselves on the same slippery slope. In most cases intelligent
people simply rejected their own revolutionary traditions and
experience for the sake of a collective delusion -- loyalty to the
Party.
A good example of the process at work may be found in the
political trajectory of Whitehead in the latter half of 1920. He was
closely involved in attempts at unity among the anti-parliamentarian
groups after the Unity Convention, including a proposed conference in
September 1920 to bring together revolutionaries associated with the
Spur, Worker and Solidarity papers. The 'anti-Labour Party and
anti-parhamentary in tactic' nature of such revolutionaries was
stressed. Later Whitehead wrote a series of uncompromising
anti-parliamentary articles in The Spur. Thus in October 1920 he
said:
None more than ourselves desire complete unity for
action throughout the whole of the parties inside the Moscow
International, but it has got to be a unity on an effective tactic.
With the salt of the proletariat instinctively opposed to
Parliamentarianism it is impossible to march forward along a
parliamentarian road.
And he repeated the argument with increasing eloquence in November
in his discussion of 'Maiden Lane sophistries'. The sophistry to
which he devoted particular attention was the current nonsense of
'revolutionary parliamentarianism'. For him 'Parliamentarianism means
talk', and ' "revolutionary parliamentarianism" [means] revolutionary
talk'! Or, from another perspective: 'It is on the industrial field
where Communists must be busy, there and everywhere where there are
workers. There are no workers in Parliament. Get out of it'
But by the following month, all had suddenly changed. In December
1920, at the Cardiff conference of the Communist Party (British
Section of the Third International), Whitehead and others voted
overwhelmingly in favour of acceptance of the Comintern's 'Twenty-One
Conditions', including Point 11 in favour of parliamentary action.
This amazing turn-around was justified, Whitehead explained, by the
relative insignificance of British theoretical concerns in the face
of demands for 'loyalty to the world revolution'. From then on he was
to become a vigorous champion of the new CPGB and the Comintern.
Many other comrades followed a similar path; Henry Sara and Robert
Selkirk are two who spring to mind. This kind of transformation was
not limited to Britain; a similar process occurred in the United
States, for example, with Robert Minor being a particularly famous
and influential instance. The same kind of arguments were used; Minor
stressed loyalty to the revolution, and suggested that the anarchists
could act as the left wing of the Communist Party!
Most of these recruits subsequently left the CPGB within a few
years, thoroughly disillusioned (though some, like Selkirk, remained
in it). Sara, for example, was one of the founders of the British
Trotskyist movement; but more common was the experience of Whitehead,
who joined the Labour Party and became a vigorous anti-Communist
propagandist. This was the fate of many good comrades, and it is too
easy, as James Klugmann shows in his official History of the
Communist Party of Great Britain (Volume 1, 1968), to dismiss them as
opportunists and revolutionary dilettantes of no importance to the
movement. But if anti-parliamentarism and real communism are ever
again to have any importance, it is a trajectory which must be probed
and understood beyond such convenient insults.
One contribution to such an understanding might, it could be
argued, be the lack of any critical information about Lenin and the
Russian Revolution in the British socialist press. This may have been
true at an earlier period, but when decisions were being made to join
the CPGB critical articles about Bolshevik policies were already
beginning to appear. In The Spur, for example, a series of articles
by the Austrian anarchist Rudolf Grossmann (Pierre Ramus) appeared
from September 1919 onwards lambasting Lenin and the Bolshevik
government. At first these articles were greeted with hostile
disbelief by Aldred and others, but as Aldred in particular gained
more information he came to similar conclusions. Aldred, however, was
an exception in conducting such uninhibited intellectual inquiry. For
most people, it seemed that nothing could get through the mind-block
of the 'unity at all costs' school.
It was not long before the attitudes of this school became frozen
into immovable dogma. After the formation of the CPGB, you criticised
Lenin and other Communist leaders at your peril. Thus, because of his
criticisms of Lenin and Gallacher, Aldred suddenly found that his
lecture engagements with the Greenock Workers' Committee and the
Paisley BSP were cancelled, and that halls booked for meetings were
no longer available (The Spur, August 1920). In this manner the
openness of the movement, with its free discussion and debate,
crumbled away after mid-1920 in the pursuit of unity with the CPGB.
Such developments also affected the SLP. Individual SLPers were
joining the CPGB, especially in Scotland via the CLP (John S. Clarke
being one notable example). The SLP, because of this loss and the
effects of unemployment, was declining in numbers at a rapid rate. To
stem this decline the remaining members closed ranks and reverted to
an undiluted DeLeonist position, leaving little scope for any
development in an anti- parliamentary direction.
As a result of such retreats and the consolidation of the CPGB,
what was left of the evolving revolutionary and anti-parliamentary
movement came to be centred on The Spur and Guy Aldred. He and his
associates were now almost alone in both being enthusiastic
supporters of the Bolshevik Revolution and yet not falling for the
spurious unity line of the CPGB. All that could be accomplished now
was to bring together the few remaining Communist and anarchist
groups which still adhered to an anti-parliamentary programme.
It was hoped to create a Communist federation out of these
remaining groups. The principle of federation -- a federation of
Communist groups developed voluntarily from below rather than an
imposed centralisation from above -- was always an important and
consistent part of the anti- parliamentary movement's proposals for
unity. Aldred summarised the position in The Spur:
I have no objections to an efficient and centralised
party so long as the authority rests in the hands of the rank and
file and all officials can be sacked at a moment's notice. But I want
the centralism to be wished for and evolved by the local groups and
not imposed on them from a centre. . . . The Communist party, the
real party, must be evolved through a federation of local groups, a
slow merging of them into one party, from the bottom upwards, as
distinct from this imposition from the top downwards. (August 1920)
The idea of federation was coupled with a demand for
self-determination -- the British revolutionaries should determine
their own policy in relation to British conditions, irrespective of
what Lenin and the Bolsheviks might say. Lenin was faced with
different circumstances, Aldred argued, and might be forced to
compromise to save the Russian Revolution, but in Britain there was
no such excuse for compromise:
Lenin's task compels him to compromise with all the
elect of bourgeois society whereas ours demands no compromise. And so
we take different paths and are only on the most distant speaking
terms.
Or, more directly, we should stop 'chasing the shadows of the
great man [Lenin]. . . . It is not he who is running the British
Revolution, but "ourselves alone". The policy of looking to him to
mind our business is hindering and not helping the revolution.' But
increasingly such advice from Aldred and a few others was ignored, as
the move to join the CPGB gathered pace.
In practical terms, however, little progress was being made
towards the federation that Aldred and the anti-parliamentary
communists wished to see. Early in 1920 the Glasgow Anarchist Group
issued a manifesto and put forward a proposal for unity along
federalist lines (The Spur, January/February 1920). The group hoped
to form a communist federation for Lanarkshire akin to the already
existing Fife Socialist League. A similar federation of communist
groups was planned in Wales towards the end of 1920. But apparently
such plans remained at the proposal stage.
The Leeds Unity Convention of January 1921 -- with the final
fusion of the CPGB with the Communist Labour Party and the Communist
Party (British Section of the Third International), on the basis of
the Comintern's 'Twenty-One conditions' -- dashed any remaining hopes
of a wider unity of anti-parliamentary groups. At this time, Aldred
appealed to the example of the Communist Workers' Party of Germany
(KAPD) as a party which had stood up to the Comintern on the question
of parliamentarism. The KAPD had forced the Comintern to recognise it
as a sympathising party with consultative status. If
anti-parliamentary groups could unite in Britain into a National
Federation or Party, they could then enter into a close alliance with
the KAPD and other continental Communist Parties to form an
International Anti-Parliamentary Federation. In this way Moscow would
be forced to recognise the reality of anti-parliamentary organisation
and be compelled to grant anti-parliamentary groups some form of
representation on the Executive Committee of the Communist
International.
But no one was listening any longer. Shortly afterwards, the KAPD
was to get its 'marching orders' from Moscow -- join the Communist
Party of Germany (KPD) within three months, or else! Clearly the
anti-parliamentary groups had no future inside the Comintern, and all
hopes of this were now dropped. (It should perhaps be noted that Rose
Witcop travelled to Moscow later in 1921 with APCF credentials to
negotiate for 'associate membership' of the Comintern; ultimately
nothing came of this, and it appears to have been her own initiative
to gain financial support for the movement.)
Finally, at the 1921 Easter Conference of the Scottish
antiparliamentary groups, a Scottish Anti-Parliamentary Communist
Federation was formed. This was the beginning of the
AntiParliamentary Communist Federation which was to play a major part
in keeping alive the hopes of a libertarian communism for the next
thirty years.
References :
Files of the following papers :
The Spur (1914-21)
Workers' Dreadnought (1919-21)
The Communist (1919)
The Socialist (1919-21)
Freedom (1918-21)
Books and pamphlets :
CPGB. Communist Unity Convention, London, July 31 and August 1,
1920: Official Report (1920)
W. Gallacher, Revolt on the Clyde (1936)
J.Hinton, The First Shop Stewards' Movement (1973)
W.Kendall, The Revolutionary Movement in Britain, 1900-21
(1969)
J.Klugmann, History of the Communist Part of Great Britain, Volume
One : Formation and early years, 1919-24 (1968)
V.I.Lenin, "Left-wing" Communism, an infantile disorder
(1920)
R.Selkirk, The Life of a Worker (1967)
E.T.Whitehead, The Labour Abstentionist Party: Its Aim and
Tactics (1920)
