Left Unity and the industrial question – 100 years ago
ILP leader Keir Hardie
Edd Mustill reflects on the challenge of building left unity a hundred years ago
It’s 1912, and socialists in Britain are asking themselves a lot of questions. Why, they wonder, were there so many different socialist groups? Why is the Labour Party unfit for purpose, not reflecting the interests of the class it is supposed to represent? How should socialist activists relate to what’s going on in the trade unions?
Does any of this sound familiar? OK, I won’t labour (aha) the comparisons. But the pre-WW1 period is worth a quick visit, for anyone who’s interested in discussions about left unity now.
The landscape of the Left in the early 20th century was, broadly speaking, like this (and forgive the inevitable generalisations):
The Independent Labour Party was the largest socialist group. It had been founded in 1893 to put up electoral candidates who, as the name suggests, were to be representatives of the working-class, independent of the Tories and Liberals. Among its leaders we find such illustrious names as Keir Hardie, Ramsay MacDonald, and Philip Snowden. Influenced by ethical and Christian socialist ideas, it was fairly strong in the workshops of the country.
The Social Democratic Federation was the largest avowedly Marxist group, founded way back in the 1880s by Henry Hyndman, a Tory journalist who read some Marx and decided to cross to the other side of the barricades. It attracted to its ranks many of the leaders of the New Unionism that swept through the ranks of unskilled workers in 1887-9, such as Tom Mann and Ben Tillett, as well as Russian and Jewish political exiles from Tsarism, keen to join the socialist party when they got to England.
A couple of other groups are worth a mention: The Socialist Labour Party because, although small, they were influential in training many shop stewards in socialist theory, and advancing the ideas of industrial unionism. Scottish-Irish revolutionary James Connolly was perhaps their most famous member. And the Socialist Party of Great Britain because they’re still around today, raising the unblemished flag of impossiblism over Clapham High Street.
Then, of course, there was the Labour Party. This was the fruit of a long and not always smooth alliance between the ILP, Fabians, and some unions, to fight elections. In the 1906 election Labour won 29 seats, rising to 42 in 1910.
But these figures belied something – most early Labour electoral victories were won by arrangement, not struggle. The Liberals agreed to stand aside. A tranche of MPs came across to Labour when the Miners’ Federation switched allegiance from the Liberals in 1909, bringing its Parliamentarians with it. But their politics stayed essentially Liberal.
There was an exception. In 1907, a 25-year-old firebrand socialist called Victor Grayson had narrowly won a by-election in the Colne Valley, which had been regarded as safe Liberal territory. What made the victory even more remarkable was that Grayson, standing on a platform of uncompromising socialism and a clean break with the Liberals, did not have the backing of the Labour Party or the leaders of the ILP. His victory was won by rank-and-file members of all the socialists groups, as well as suffragette activists.
Grayson soon made a name for, and a nuisance of, himself in Parliament, refusing to be bound by the institutions stupid traditions. He got thrown out, at the height of the spike in mass unemployment in the late 1900s, for calling the Commons a house of murderers, and became one of the most popular speakers and agitators on the socialist lecture circuit.
From 1910, disillusion with the Labour Party among socialists grew rapidly. The Parliamentary Party was tailing the Liberal Government, which had a large majority anyway, and getting nothing to show for it. At the same time, British society was about to enter the most prolonged period of serious industrial conflict in its history.
The strike wave started in the South Wales coalfields in the autumn of 1910. The following year, a national railway strike terrified the government. On Merseyside, the transport strike developed almost into a general strike under the leadership of a committee including socialist veteran Tom Mann. Workers were killed by soldiers and police in Llanelli and Liverpool. In 1912, the strike wave continued with a national strike of coalminers, which won a minimum wage, and a second dock strike in two years.
Against this backdrop, the clamour for socialist unity was getting louder. Grayson, now out of Parliament, teamed up with Robert Blatchford, who edited the socialist Clarion newspaper, to popularise the idea of a new socialist party. Their aim was not to create an organisation from scratch, but to win majorities in favour of unity in the existing organisations. It seemed possible – the SDF leaders were talking openly about unity, and dissident members of the ILP leadership had published the “Green Manifesto,” criticising the party’s close links to Liberalism. Similarly, the SDF had its dissidents, people like Leonard Hall and Russell Smart who criticised the party’s hostility to the strike wave.
This led to a left unity conference in 1911, which agreed in principle to the founding of a British Socialist Party. In December 1911, the new party published 50,000 copies of a ‘Manifesto for Railway Workers’, which was distributed in depots across the country.
In 1912, the part held its first conference, in Manchester. Of the many debates, a key one was about what attitude the party should take to the industrial unrest. Syndicalist-influenced delegates, against the old guard of the SDF, argued that industrial action should be given equal priority to political, and that the two should complement each other. Sadly, the old guard were having non of it and the syndicalists’ lost by 100 to 46.
By 1913, as the industrial unrest reached its most bitter level in the Dublin Lockout, sparking further solidarity action in England and Wales, the BSP had simply reduced down to a rebranded SDF. In December of that year, under pressure from the Socialist International and the changing mood of its members, the BSP affiliated to the Labour Party.
So what am I trying to say?
You may well ask. Surely there’s no point trying to take inspiration from early 20th century Britain. After all, back then, society was very different. Everyone was a miner or a docker, whereas now we know, thanks to the BBC, that there are seven social classes. Don’t we need to find new languages, new politics, new ways of organising?
Aside from giving me an excuse to write about a fascinating and neglected period of the history of British socialism, I wanted to make the following points:
Unity of who?
Anyone doing politics, at any time in any place, operates in a landscape not of their own choosing. Grayson, and Blatchford, saw the landscape they were in and decided to change it. They worked both through and beyond existing organisations in order to win them to a pro-unity position. Today, yes, a healthy scepticism towards a lot of groups on the left is necessary, but the unity argument must be won within, between, and outside of those groups.
Unity for what?
We’ve lost a lot of the optimism that was a hallmark of the pre-WW1 socialist movement. And by optimism, I don’t mean “The meeting was a huge success because we sold five papers.” I mean the belief, the genuine belief, that a completely different form of society is both necessary and possible, and that it is called socialism.
Back then the movement was full of positive demands for leisure time, for cultural activity, for finding full human expression in what Edward Carpenter called “the larger socialism.” We need to rediscover and proclaim this, not shy away from it because we’re afraid that people won’t know what this or that word means. So what? Then we tell them what it means, have the political argument, and reclaim socialism as a positive creed. I was glad, therefore, to read that Ken Loach called for an explicitly socialist party at LU’s national meeting.
What about the industrial question?
This is the big one.
There’s a union elephant in the room. Hardly anything I’ve seen written on the LU site talks about unions – either as they are or as we would like them to be. A working-class party (and yes, let’s use the term working-class, because socialism is about bringing the working class to political power) has to have an orientation to the politics of the workplace.
Ignoring this question was the biggest mistake the ILP and SDF leaders made a century ago, and ensured that the BSP failed to grow at a time of remarkably militant industrial unrest.
We haven’t had much in the way of a coherent industrial strategy against austerity from any union in the last 3 years, and the existing left has had little to say about it (except tired sloganeering around a “general strike,” but that’s a whole other debate…).
The job of the left shouldn’t be to give platforms for union general secretaries to talk about how terrible the government is (yes, I’m looking at you, Peoples Assembly) – they can do that on the telly.
Rather, we should talk about what sort of unions we want, how industrial muscle can be best used to stop cuts to living and working conditions, and how to organise those vast sectors of the service economy which provide the shitty, degrading jobs that most young people find themselves doing.
There are examples, from the 3 Cosas campaign of the University of London cleaners, to the Fight for 15 in the US fast food industry, to the Supersize My Pay campaign run by Unite in New Zealand, which left wing activists should take up to start discussions in their own unions.
Taking political organisation seriously means taking industrial organisation seriously. If we don’t, this nascent new unionism will pass us by while we’re busy listening to Mark Serwotka tell us why cuts are bad.
16 comments
16 responses to “Left Unity and the industrial question – 100 years ago”
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What happens to socialism when all the “work” is done by robots?
Much of the current problems for ordinary people happened under the watch of Unions. I would hope Union members join LU, but play by any LU ‘.rules’. Nothing to stop any member of any group being active in LU too, like playing cricket and football, you can play both, belong to two clubs. You can promote sport in general, but you cannot selectively use any cricket rules in a game of footy. I read this to article mean, let’s get what the unions want, then think again. I hope we start from where we are and all push left. At some stage we will arrive at what the union members want, and a lot more people besides.
It’s a law of the Internet that, the better and more thoughtful the piece of writing, the fewer the comments and discussion it will generate. This piece seems to have obeyed that law! Great piece of writing, very thought provoking, thank you.
Thanks Stuart – I was worried it was a bit too long, maybe that’s put people off. Hopefully people are still reading if not commenting.
Today was the 150th anniversary of the birth of the German worker-class movement, and its growth didn’t depend on political prostitution for unions. Besides, most of today’s “freeters” in Japan, “emergent service workers” in the UK, and properly defined “precariat” outside the UK aren’t unionized.
Unions, no matter how radical, have a tendency to stick to sectional economic issues. Leave that stuff to them. Leave mass class politics to mass class parties.
Jacob,
Sorry, but ‘leaving that stuff to them’ is a bit difficult if ‘we’ are ‘them’. If LU members are in unionised workplaces then it is essential to work within them and win over people to our view of society. If we don’t, then any ‘political’ campaign or election process will easily be derailed by the ruling class. We need enormous support from working people to ensure that a fairer society becomes possible.
If you are working but not in a union – form one and start the struggle to improve conditions and challenge the right of management to rule as they see fit.
Edd is absolutely right, if the ‘political’ and ‘industrial’ battles are fought separately then we will not win. End of.
Ray G, I’m not saying that LU activists belonging to unions should ignore union work. I am saying that there is a clear delineation between the two kinds of work, which you alluded to at the end. Intertwining the two has proven to be a mistake time and time again.
Did these San Jose activist volunteers intertwine political and union work? No: http://raisethewagesj.com/
One of the reasons why Continental socialists have been relatively more successful is because, while they did both kinds of work, they did them on a separate and not intertwined basis.
If there is to be things like “organized labour” funding, it should come directly out of the pockets of union activists and individual union member sympathizers, not out of the union treasury itself where less sympathetic union members paid their dues.
Jacob,
I am sorry, but I still, genuinely, do not understand the position you are taking. You need to explain it more fully. I may just being a bit dim today.
The unions are taking or seek to take a more politicised agenda these days. They are also involved in opening up community style membership to those outside the industrial sectors. I wonder though, if LU would not be accused of entryism itself if members were encouraged to work within unions ‘to win them over to our point of view’ as Ray G seems to say. Not a good move not least because there is no cohesive LU view of society at this stage – eg anti-cutters don’t necessarily perceive the relationships between labour, land and capital under capitalism we socialists refer to. I agree with Ken Loach about LU being socialist and I wouldn’t say people should keep quiet about LU but it just seems premature to be considering interaction with other organisations. I also want to add that historically not all early unions (or co-operative movement for that matter)were socialist. Uniting the workers in a workplace is not the same as uniting the working class in society! Of course it’s interesting to see where the unions are heading, but tacking to/from any current development more a diversion, I’d say.
The whole point of LU, surely, is to win over as many people as possible to our views, including, crucially working people and trade unionists. By ‘point of view’ I mean the need to create a more equal and just society where the economy is democratically controlled in the interests of the majority of the population.
I was not addressing the issue of whether Trade Unions should affiliate to LU. That issue is not on the agenda just yet, and probably not for ages yet. Why should trade unions want to ditch the Labour Party and jump to us unless we can prove ourselves as a serious force for the transformation of society.
Thanks for the comments. Just want to raise a couple of other ideas based on what people have said in the discussion:
1) Jacob is right that LU shouldn’t limit itself to “union politics” – in fact I was trying to argue this too. Arguably the great early tragedy of the Labour Party is that socialists built it, but turned the politics of it over to the union. As Ray says, its not about getting union affiliations (not going to happen any time soon anyway), it’s about equipping LU supporters with an analysis and a set of coherent ideas to take into their union…
2) And on that note, the failure of the socialist groups in mention in the article is that they didn’t do this – they just sort of left their members to it when it came to union activity. This is sort of the attitude of, for example, the SP and SWP today too, I think.
3) There are enormous challenges on the industrial field right now. Too many to go into here – but they include organising the service sector (where, as Jacob says, union organisation is almost non-existent), organising the unemployed (which, as Eleanor mentions, Unite are trying to do with Community branches, although I think this model has its own problems too), and organising in workplaces where many different unions are represented. Not to mention organising across international supply chains in companies like Amazon, DHL, etc…
My point is that we should break with the “leftwing general secretaries good/rightwing general secretaries bad” analysis of the unions, and try to rediscover some of the better organising traditions of the past, from new unionism and syndicalism, as well as educating ourselves about the exciting – if small scale – developments that are beginning to happen, which I mention at the end of the article.
Any leftwing party needs to develop an approach to union work, and ideally equip its activists with knowledge of the best traditions of union organising.
the article on voluntary sector, was an example of discussing how the left needs to get behind and actively support initiatives to unionise workers.
The idea of a labour movement orientation, of seeking to support struggle in the labour party and trade unions and of winning militants to socialist poloitics, is a basic tenant for many socialists. Many socialists think that a socialist movement will arise at least in part from working class militants coming into conflict with the bosses and the bureacracy in the unions.
this conflict / class struggle in the labour movement is a vital source of education for future socialists.
I would really say that all left unity supporters should get involved in the unions. left unity should seek to organise some interventions into them.
To be honest I find there’s a lot of ‘vanguard-ism’ in the way people are writing here which worries me, it’s as if this is the only way to ‘do socialism’ i.e. preach to everyone how they should read the world and understand their reality. As an individual I’m committed to the principles of socialism, but I care about how I express my socialism or how I can be a socialist ‘subject’ in ways other than presenting myself as the fount of the one true reality others can drink from, which is often how socialists come across to others. Dispensing general prescriptions for what people should think, understand, read, do, etc is just not healthy, to my mind – or ‘for’ my mind or anyone else’s mind, come to that. To crudely paraphrase Marx, if appearances were true, there’d be no need for science. People here are rattling off policies and strategies here like a teacher calling out the register. To me this is very instrumental type thinking. Although history is referenced, I don’t see a particularly historical approach being used. To start a new party which doesn’t founder after a few years surely involves more subtle consideration than that?
Hi Eleanor, apologies if the tone of my article makes it seem like I’m telling people what to think, that’s not my intention at all.
All I’m trying to say is that I think there’s an urgent need for people to come together and properly debate an effective, left-wing strategy for industrial organising. I raised the history in part because I think those socialists missed a trick despite founding the BSP at a time of great industrial unrest, and as I say I think we might miss a trick if we don’t engage with the new developments in workplace organising that I reference at the end of the article.
BROKEN BRITISH POLITICS – DEMOCRACY – WHAT DEMOCRACY SAY 15 MP’s
Media manipulation in the UK today is more effective than it was in Nazi Germany ,because here we have the pretence that we are getting all the Information we want .That misconception prevents people from even looking for the Truth .A letter to the Lords signed by 15 MP’s asking them to oppose the Gay Marriage Bill because although the Media said it would be a free vote it was not .
Quote from letter to the Lords “The main Parties announced a Free Vote but we saw varying degrees of coercion ,with threats made for example ,to an MP’s future career or withdrawal of Party support at future Elections “.So regrettably not only are the British Public Bullied and Lied to so are MP’s . Full Letter at http://brokenbritishpolitics.simplesite.com
Hi Ed – Actually I’m sorry too if you thought I was aiming my comments at you specifically, as I was being more general and on reflection perhaps feeling a bit frustrated with some of the other debates here, where sometimes even the most genuinely learned socialists here have commented in what seems to me to be a rather anachronistic presentation style of ‘expert’, given what we know about learning being social etc.
Anyway I mostly agreed with your piece and am also interested in early socialism. (Have you read Harry Quelch’s ‘Boots or Beer?’, SDF journal 1909? A great teaching text on many levels imv – perhaps I should blog why, and you could respond?).
Basically, I just don’t want LU to run before it can walk. I guess I could be accused of holding things back here, but we’re talking about core principles in my group in a really in-depth way and I really value this process. I’m active in lots of areas already so perhaps that’s why I don’t feel LU as an organisation has to erect itself Transformer style and start gunning the neoliberal overlords in the next 5 seconds. OK I’m blathering now…
Only just stumbled across this while researching centenary of the ‘Labour Revolt’. Good summary, but I think the main lesson of that period was that the unification of parties was not the way forward. The divisions remained. It was really the syndicalists who were creating a force for change in the working class.