Orwell went on to write Homage to Catalonia, one of his most famous books, which revealed the sharpening divisions between Communists and others on the left and exposed the role of Stalinist agents in destroying the revolution.

The trip will take place on the weekend of 19/20th May (75 years since Orwell was wounded) and take in Barcelona, Alcubierre and Huesca. It is hoped that some talks will be given on the Saturday evening at the monastery hotel of Lecinena, close to the Ruta Orwell.

Those expected to attend include members of the newly formed Orwell Society, as well as Orwell’s adopted son Richard Blair, and Quentin Kopp, son of Georges Kopp, a commander of the ILP’s sister party, the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) and later captain of general staff of the International Brigades.

Members and friends of the ILP who would like to join the visit should contact Alan Warren of Porta de la Historia on hill705@googlemail.com.

Costs for accommodation, transport and food are not yet confirmed but the organsiers expect it will not exceed 300 Euros for two nights, not including flights. The idea is to arrive at Barcelona on the evening of Friday 18th May and return to the UK on Sunday 20th after 8pm.

Porta de la Historia is a co-operative initiative of four individuals living in Catalonia who are fascinated with the Spanish civil war and the social struggles that followed the conflict, especially in connection with the International Brigades.

They provide a variety of initiatives and activities to raise awareness of the region’s history in this important period and to help individuals, groups and schools explore the events and places of the civil war.

More information on Porta de la Historia from: www.pdlhistoria.wordpress.com

Land and Freedom, the ILP’s pamphlet about the Spanish civil war is available here.

The Politics of Housing Development in an Age of Austerity and The Big Society: The big con and the alternative will be launched in the Betty Boothroyd Room, in Portcullis House, Westminster, London SW1 on Wednesday 22nd February at 6.30pm.

Speakers include Karen Buck, Labour MP for Westminster North and shadow education minister, plus pamphlet authors Duncan Bowie, Andy Gregg and Mike Davis.

In The Politics of Housing Development in an Age of Austerity, Duncan Bowie examines housing policy over 100 years and provides a powerful critique of new Labour and current coalition government policy.

Both an historian and an experienced housing and planning practitioner, he asks: why are we not building more homes, and with homelessness and overcrowding on the rise, why is there not more affordable social housing?

In The Big Society: The big con and the alternative, Andy Gregg and Mike Davis unmask the paradoxes of David Cameron’s flagship idea, one that keeps rearing its head although few people understand it, including Tories.

Gregg has been chief executive of a number of local, regional and national charities, while Davis worked as a teacher and education adviser for almost 40 years and is now editor of Chartist.

You can download the pamphlets here.

Many cherished the hope that this internationalism would make war impossible. They were to be disappointed.

In times of war, when jingoism was rife, the ILP’s anti-war views made it very unpopular. When Britain took up arms against the Boer republics in South Africa in 1899, the ILP opposed the government and popular opinion. They faced bitter criticism and even physical assault.

But this was nothing compared with the hostility towards ILPers at the onset of the First World War in 1914. The conflict, which led to the death of a generation of young men from Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Turkey, and many from the colonies, was begun with great enthusiasm.

The ILP called for solidarity “across the roar of guns” with their anti-war comrades in Germany. Many thousands of ILPers were jailed for refusing to serve in the armed forces. The ILP was involved in mass campaigns against conscription, attracting many idealistic young men and women appalled by the slaughter. After the war ILPers were active in campaigns against the international arms trade, like War Resisters International.

The ILP also supported national movements in the British Empire, particularly in India and Africa, struggling first for self-government and later for independence.

Leading ILPers, from Keir Hardie in one generation to Fenner Brockway in the next, travelled abroad and exposed the effects of the empire on the colonial working class. The ILP also maintained a stream of criticism against the injustices and exploitation of British rule.

As a result, some black activist found their way into British politics through the ILP. From India came Shapirji Saklatvala, was to join the Communist Party in 1921 and became the Communist member of parliament for Battersea North in 1924. Later from Trinidad came the author and sports writer CLR James, who for a time became a Trotskyist.

The most authoritative black activists in the inter-war years was George Padmore, also from Trinidad. After his disaffection with the Communist movement in which he had played a key role, he established a close relationship with ILP, writing a regular column for its weekly newspaper. The ILP also provided offices and publicity for his influential International African Services Bureau.

Although the ILP has had a long tradition of opposing war, including the Second World War, it was not rigidly pacifist. So when civil war broke out in Spain in 1936 after the fascists rebelled against the republican government, the ILP sent a small contingent to fight alongside its fellow socialists in Catalonia.

One of those volunteers was to find fame as the writer George Orwell. His account of the war and revolution shows the sharpening divisions between communists and others on the left. These divisions also showed themselves when the ILP opposed the Moscow show trials and purges against former Bolsheviks.

One occasion where the left was able to unite was in the Battle of Cable Street in 1936. The British Union of Fascists declared that it would march through London’s East End, the heart of the Jewish community. The ILP and communists called on people to block the streets and thousands answered the call. The fascists were unable to proceed.

In more recent years the ILP maintained its traditions by supporting campaigns for nuclear disarmament and the anti-apartheid movement. It opposed the Vietnam War and the Gulf War. It also campaigned for major defence cuts following the end of the Cold War.

—-

Land and Freedom, the ILP’s pamphlet on the Spanish Civil War is available here

Buy The ILP: Past and Present here

Read other extracts from The ILP: Past & Present here, including:
ILP History 1: The Early Years
- Great Expectations
- Beginnings in Bradford
ILP History 2: Ethical Socialism
- Independent Women
- Living for that Better Day
ILP History 3: Labour’s Rise and Disaffiliation
- Strongholds of the ILP
ILP History 4: War and After

We are doing this, first, because the last edition was published in our centenary year, 1993, which makes it rather dated, and secondly, because there is a growing interest in our history among political activists, Labour politicians and academics. So this seems like a good time to proceed.

To help with the process, we are publishing the whole of the original pamphlet on the website and we hope readers will take the opportunity to respond and comment on the material.

We aim to put the text online in six stages, starting below with the chapters which deal with the early years of the ILP and the birth of the Labour Party. Each of these instalments will be supplemented by a series of ‘side stories’, boxed out material from the original pamphlet which highlight some important aspects of the ILP’s journey.

It is then over to anyone who wishes to respond to do so. This will help us to enrich what we hope will be a moving account of how different generations of people have sought to build a better society.

Of course, if you wish to purchase the printed version of the pamphlet, complete with images and historical photographs, you can do so from our publications page – we still have a few copies left.

—-

The ILP: Past & Present

The ILP in the 30s

Despite its numerical decline, the ILP remained a significant political force throughout the thirties. In addition, it retained a small but vocal parliamentary presence until Jimmy Maxton’s death in 1946.

But, if disaffiliation appeared to resolved the ILP’s dilemma about its role as a left group within the Labour Party, it posed a new and equally crucial question. What was to be its role outside the party? Squeezed between the electorally cautious Labour Party linked wit the unions, and the manipulative Communist Party linked with the international communist movement, the ILP found it had little room for manoeuvre.

Influenced by a pro-communist group in the ILP, serious consideration was given to affiliating to the Communist International. But the terms were found to be too stiff, just as they had been two decades earlier when the ILP tried to set up a alternative international movement (known as the Two-and-Half International) to build a bridge between reformist and revolutionary socialists. In particular, the ILP was unwilling to subordinate itself to Moscow’s demands.

At the same time, the ILP’s relations with the British Communist Part worsened due to the latter’s subservience to the Soviet Union. Like its counterparts in the rest of the world, the Communist Party in Britain took its political line from the Soviet leadership. That often meant rapid political changes to conform to changes in Stalin’s foreign policy. This was usually accompanied by wholesale abuse of others on the Left who disagreed. The Moscow trials and execution of former Bolshevik leaders further widened the breach between the two main left parties in Britain.

In spite of the difficulties facing the ILP in its new role, it continued with its active propaganda, including the open air meetings for which it was famous. It also retained an energetic youth section where a great many political activists were schooled.

The major campaigns of the decade had a strong ILP presence. The Unity Campaign, organised jointly with the Communist Party and Socialist League, the Hunger Marches, and the anti-fascist activities are among the better known examples. The ILP played a leading role in mobilising mass opposition to thwart the march by Oswald Mosley’s fascist through London’s East End, the heart of the Jewish community.

After the rise of fascism, first in Italy and later in Germany, the ILP actively supported the work of socialists from those countries. There was also a fierce debate about how to respond to the fascist threat while not siding with the imperialist powers.

Mussolini’s invasion of Abyssinia in1935 brought these matters to a head. Arguably, it led to one of the least honourable decisions taken by the ILP. At first, the ILP conference agreed to support independent working class action against Italy, to oppose its aggression, and to boycott the transport of arms and other supplies. Among the keenest supporters of this policy was a small Trotskyist group inside the ILP, led by the black writer, CLR James.

Jimmy Maxton and the parliamentary party strongly disagreed with the position. They argued that working class sanctions would be indistinguishable from other sanctions and would make war with Italy more likely. They made it clear that they felt unable to comply with the policy. As a result, the conference backed down and agreed to ballot the ILP membership.

As Fenner Brockway wrote: “I agreed at once without any illusions about the result. I knew it was inevitable that the vote would be influenced by the desire to retain Maxton and his colleagues than by the political issues.”

He was right. This led to a political attack on the ILP by the exiled Trotsky who until then, had seen it as a useful channel for his group’s activities. They then left the ILP, although CLR James continued to co-operate with the ILP in anti-colonial activities.

Spanish Civil War

In 1936, to the horror of socialists across the world, there was a fascist uprising in Spain against the elected republican government. Led by General Franco, the rebels were actively backed by Hitler and Mussolini and greatly assisted by the non-intervention of the British and French governments.

To begin with, people fought off the fascists with great courage but they were ill-equipped and the republican side was politically divided. It was also dependent for arms and other material help on the Soviet Union – and Stalin had his own very different agenda. Anxious to forge an alliance with Britain and France against Nazi Germany, he did not wish to do anything that would greatly upset them.

Obviously, developments in Catalonia and its capital, Barcelona, were particularly disquieting for him. A social revolution was taking place and society was being completely reorganised. Influenced by anarchist and socialist ideas, workers were running the factories and the local administration and peasants were collectivising the farms and taking control of the countryside.

Stalin wanted to defeat the fascist but he did not want a revolution, fearful that if he was seen to support if he would fail to woo Britain and France into an alliance. So while he encouraged Communist-led International Brigades to fight, he was also at great pains to stifle the rest of the Left and bury the revolution.

A small ILP contingent went to fight in Catalonia. Among the ILP volunteers was the writer Eric Blair, who was later to find fame under the name of George Orwell. The ILP gave particular support to the non-Stalinist, revolutionary Marxist workers’ party (POUM) which was ruthlessly suppressed by the Communists. Foreign sympathises of the POUM were jailed. Among them was Bob Smillie, chair of the ILP Guild of Youth, who died a prisoner after being arrested at the border.

Stalin succeeded in suppressing the revolution but by 1939 the fascists had won the war. Spain was to endure four decades of Franco’s oppressive rule. Tens of thousands of Spaniards lost their lives in the fighting and even more were killed when the fascists took control.

Labour Relations

It would be a mistake to suppose that the ILP’s disaffiliation from the Labour Party had ended the relationship once and for all. Not so, several attempts were made to re-open the links in the 1930s.

The most promising attempt began in 1938 with an initiative by the Labour Party leader and former ILPer, Clement Attlee. Both Labour’s executive, with a clear majority, and the ILP’s administrative council, with a narrow one, agreed the general terms of re-entry.

In supporting re-affiliation, Fenner Brockway argued that the ILP had changed significantly. He claimed: “when the ILP was in the Labour Party it had no fundamental philosophy or policy and could not act with a united purpose; but during its period outside it had developed a revolutionary socialist basis and its personnel, although smaller in numbers, had vastly improved in dependable quality; the ILP of 1938 was very different from the mixture of reformism, sentiment, utopianism and awakening revolutionism which characterised the ILP of 1932. This being so, was there not a great deal to be said for entering the Labour Party as a disciplined unit, regarding it not as a socialist party with a policy that commanded our consent, but as the class party of the workers and therefore the right and most fruitful field of activity?”

The ILP convened a special conference to decide its future. The meeting never took place. The conference was called for September 1939, the month that Britain declared war on Nazi Germany.

The two parties differed in their attitude to the Second World War as they had done to the first. Opposing involvement, the ILP saw it mainly as a battle between rival imperial powers and once again its members were imprisoned for refusing military conscription. During the war the ILP played a role in what became a broad current of radical dissent against Churchill’s coalition government and there was a revival of interest in its publications.

Actively supporting the war, Labour participated in the war-time coalition. And it emerged from the hostilities stronger, with a reforming programme, winning its first overall majority in the Commons in 1945.

After the War

Post-war Britain left the ILP in continuing decline, with the return of many of its leading figures, like Fenner Brockway, to the Labour Party. The ILP continued with its anti-colonial work, opposed the post-war Labour government’s use of troops in the docks for strike breaking, and participated in a European campaign to build a united socialist Europe.

But as it shrank so its hostility to the Labour Party increased. Although a minority of its members actively supported Labour in their localities, the formal position of the ILP towards the Labour Party really was sectarian. This purism was reinforce by those who recounted stories of left-wingers who joined the Labour Party to transform it but who were themselves politically transformed.

While the ILP continued to support a host of progressive campaigns during these years – particularly in the peace movement – it was inclined to indulge in pious resolution-mongering. Its libertarian outlook attracted people who were unhappy about the lack of tolerance and democracy on much of the left, but otherwise its politics became diffuse.

While the ILP almost sank below the political horizon in these years, it survived by a fine thread. This was due to the resources it had accumulated in earlier years but, more importantly, thanks to the loyalty and commitment of ILPers with fond memories of the party in days gone by and wished to keep something of that alive. The ILP has always been more than a political party. It was a political movement which valued socialist fellowship and this made it possible for it to renew itself.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was a small but significant influx of younger activists from the anti-nuclear movement, and some former members of the Communist Party who were disillusioned after the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Unhappy about the lack of radicalism and democracy in the Labour Party and wary of the politics and practices of the far left, the new generation were looking for some kind of alternative. Whatever its faults, the ILP provided them with space to rethink their politics.

In doing so, they became frustrated with the lack of direction of the ILP which by now was a very weak organisation. They challenged its lack of perspective and, as they developed their ideas, they sought to turn the ILP outwards and to reconsider the relationship of socialists to the Labour Party. Support for this rethink also came from longstanding members of the ILP.

In 1974, after several years of debate, the ILP re-adopted a socialist commitment of the Labour Party in its Outline Perspective. In 1975, it changed its constitution to become Independent Labour Publications. On both occasions there were members present who had attended the 1932 disaffiliation conference. Indeed, there were some whose experience went back to before the First World War.

A few months after the decision to change the ILP’s constitution, the national executive of the Labour Party agreed that members of the ILP could join the Labour Party and vice versa. Not only did this end four decades in which the ILP had gone its separate way from the Labour Party but it opened a new chapter in the ILP’s history.

Buy The ILP: Past and Present here

Read other extracts from The ILP: Past & Present here, including:
ILP History 1: The Early Years
- Great Expectations
- Beginnings in Bradford
ILP History 2: Ethical Socialism
- Independent Women
- Living for that Better Day
ILP History 3: Labour’s Rise and Disaffiliation
- Strongholds of the ILP

]]> http://www.independentlabour.org.uk/main/2012/01/22/ilp-history-4-war-and-after/feed/ 0 http://www.independentlabour.org.uk/main/2012/01/13/it-was-119-years-ago-today/ http://www.independentlabour.org.uk/main/2012/01/13/it-was-119-years-ago-today/#comments Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:32:24 +0000 Matthew Brown http://www.independentlabour.org.uk/main/?p=2497 It was on this day, 13th January, 119 years ago that 120 or so young, working class, mainly male delegates gathered at the Labour Institute in Bradford to found the Independent Labour Party. It has been in continuous existence ever since.

The ILP has gone through several transformations during the intervening years, most recently in 1975 when it became Independent Labour Publications and opened membership to the Labour Party, but many of the concerns and objectives of those founding members remain today, albeit under radically changed circumstances:

• how to construct and sustain a living political community in a hostile world;
• how to combine fellowship in heated political debates;
• how to relate parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggles;
• how to advance progressive causes in political culture unsympathetic to left ideas;
• and, later, how to respond to the Labour Party.

The conference was chaired by Keir Hardie and passed a resolution declaring the party’s aim to “secure the collective ownership of all the means of production, distribution and exchange”.

It also pledged to work for “independent Labour representation on all legislative, governing and administrative bodies”, thus adopting a dual perspective which embodied the tension between long-term social change and short-term electoral gain that remains problematic for all on the left today.

Beneath that tension, however, the early ILPers brought to their politics a passionate moral fervour, a sense of outrage at the injustices of capitalism that were all around them.

Those injustices are still all around us, and that very ethical kind of vision remains at the heart of the modern ILP’s perspective.

Next year the ILP will celebrate its 120^th anniversary and we invite you to join us. Watch this space for details of how we plan to mark the occasion.

–

For a fuller account of the ILP’s history, click here.

For a statement of the modern ILP’s perspective, click here.

The Nelson ILP Clarion is the sole survivor of the early socialist Clarion movement that existed to propagate views for a fairer, more humane society.

Over time hundreds of Clarion Houses around the country have closed or become private buildings. In 2011 the last remnants of the Clarion at Chevin End above Menston was legally wound up.

But a dedicated group have kept the Nelson Clarion on Jinny Lane, Newchurch in Pendle open and serving refreshments every Sunday so passing ramblers and cyclists can meet with local socialists and relax in a setting that still openly supports socialist views.

There are many costs involved in keeping this unique ‘monument to a movement’ in good repair, but it is too important a part of our Labour history to lose.

All are invited to help celebrate 100 years of the Clarion on 11^th and 12^th August 2012 and if anyone can persuade their trade union or trades council to make a contribution that would be really appreciated.

More information from the Clarion website: www.clarionhouse.org.uk

John Lowe of Clipstone in Nottinghamshire was just another breadwinner, an ageing father of five who had worked as a miner from the age of 14.

He was off sick in spring 1984 when the National Coal Board and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government put into motion their long-prepared pit closure programme. The miners’ strike for jobs erupted almost overnight and John, stuck at home, found his conscience tearing him apart.

The opinion of his wife Elsie was unequivocal: “You need to come off the club (sick leave) and get on strike.”

The proudest and most damaging year of his life began with the April monthly branch meeting, held the next day at the miners’ welfare.

“Twelve Derbyshire lads were outside lobbying,” he wrote on that day. “At one point I stood and asked just how much we were prepared to take, or if we were going to stand up and fight the closure programme.

“My final words were, ‘If there are any men left here with red blood in their veins, they’ll follow me outside now and stand beside those Derbyshire lads.’ The invitation was accepted by 50 men almost immediately.”

The following events were to transform him in both a political and emotional sense. He recorded everything that happened to him and his comrades in a diary, now published by Pen and Sword Books under the title If Spirit Alone Won Battles: The 1984-5 Miners’ Strike in Nottinghamshire.

The foreword is written by Labour MP Dennis Skinner, the famed ‘Beast of Bolsover’ and stalwart of the Left who recently quoted Only Fools and Horses’ Del Boy in labelling Prime Minister David Cameron a “plonker” in Parliament. He recalls knowing John as a young man in Clay Cross before encountering him again as an activist during the strike.

“Early in the dispute I did a big meeting at Worksop set up principally to galvanise the local NUM (National Union of Mineworkers) forces in Nottinghamshire,” writes Skinner.

“And there was John Lowe – and he wasn’t just a member of the crowd. He was asking questions, making speeches… I had to say to someone, ‘Is that the same fella?’ And the reply was ‘Yes’. It was a revelation to me.

“If I was to be asked whether people could turn into giants, politically and industrially, as a result of a battle with the management and the government and the police, I would put him in the top 10 of those people.”

‘Scab county’

Friends and family recall his firm and fair character, qualities he took into his union business after accepting the role of strike committee chairman and picket manager for Clipstone Colliery.

Appalled by the treatment of his beloved union and the portrayal of the miners in the media, John – in his fifties and suffering physically due to the decades spent underground – never wavered in the pursuit of his avowed duty to fight for the jobs of future generations.

He could never come to terms with Nottinghamshire’s historical reputation as ‘scab county’, one borne out in this most vicious and disgustingly political of industrial disputes, especially as this Yorkshireman born and bred had gifted almost his entire working life to it – and to Clipstone in particular.

“[Tonight I saw] the most disgraceful reaction that I have ever seen: when ‘Spencerism’ was mentioned as a danger, the result from the other side was one of cheers and shouts,” he wrote.

“When the break-up of the union was brought up, this was openly encouraged, again, to cheers. I felt physically sick.”

The majority of miners in Notts and other parts of the Midlands remained at work, as they had during the General Strike of 1926, when George Spence formed a breakaway mining union to circumvent the industrial action. In 1984-5 the strikers were therefore treated as lepers, whereas in other NUM areas, such as Yorkshire and Durham, the support for strike action was wall-to-wall.

Anne Scargill recently told me: “The strikers in Notts had it the hardest of anyone in the strike.”

These hardships extended beyond the bile spat in their direction by the ‘working miners’: the police harassed them day and night and failed to provide protection when they were targeted by their opponents; the court system, ostensibly in place to serve justice, sought only to criminalise them; and government departments deliberately blocked applications for financial and legal aid at all levels.

Much of what went on in the name of ‘law and order’ was illegal, although legislation rushed through Parliament quickly made it less so but all the more frightening for that. These lessons have had to be relearned again and again as successive administrations have disregarded and, at times, actively clamped down on working class and liberal-minded folk.

Destroyed faith

For John, the lesson was also learned the hard way – at the hands of police officers on the picket line.

“I stood my ground because of my intention to check the line, a regular practice I have followed right through the dispute,” he wrote. “A local constable was saying, ‘Mr Lowe, go back please’.

“I asked repeatedly what I was doing wrong and, if I was causing an obstruction, to tell me how and where. My questions were ignored while the officers continued to jostle me.

“I sat on the grass, telling them I was refusing to move; two grabbed me, one on each side, by the arms and pulled me to my feet.

“I pulled back and one of them must have lost his footing because the one to the left of me fell, pulling me down with him which in turn pulled the one on the right down on top of me.

“What followed then is something of a nightmare: I was conscious of at least three other officers on the floor holding me down; one said, ‘Put the handcuffs on him’, and I received a clip to the right side of my jaw followed by a forearm brought viciously down across my throat.”

Ultimately charged with obstruction and assault, John’s faith in law and order was destroyed forever. But despite this and the myriad difficulties, there were moments of hope.

As with the recent public sector action, support at grassroots for those involved was often unstinting and arrived from unexpected sources. Such generosity from sympathisers enabled the strikers to give their families a decent Christmas, for example, and reinvigorate their spirit at a time when they were most vulnerable.

“Time for the kids’ party finally came around and right from the start the place was bursting at the seams: not only the kids – around 90 – but mums, dads, grandparents and even the ones with no kids,” he wrote.

“Not for one moment did the tempo and enthusiasm slacken and I, for one, was completely knackered by the end. Maggie, you should have been there to see just how beaten we are!”

The hardest report

It was not to last. With the economy on its knees and the NCB belligerent in its demands of the strikers – openly hostile to them, even – the unthinkable nevertheless happened: areas of the NUM moved to return to work without agreement, but with their honour intact.

At the beginning of March, John’s diary was as important to him as ever before – in its role as an emotional outlet and record of events for posterity.

“This report is the hardest I’ve ever had to try and write. I feel so full of emotion – anger, frustration, shame, bewilderment. I’m finding great difficulty in putting my thoughts together,” were his words.

“Mid-afternoon the news came through that the [NUM delegates’] conference had decided narrowly, 98 to 91, that the strike was at an end. Although expected, it came as a body blow, well below the belt. My wife cried tears for me that I couldn’t cry for myself; they’ll probably come later.

“I feel so proud of her for the support she’s given in spite of all the difficulties and heartaches she’s suffered. When the history of this dispute is written, the Elsie Lowes of this world will surely stand out above everything: Thatcher pales into insignificance and will never bear mention in the same breath.”

‘General’ John Lowe died in 2005 as an NUM and working class hero to many. For decades after the dispute and subsequent collapse of his industry he remained committed to leftist politics, to his sacked comrades in the mining community and to those who showed ‘loyalty to the last’ in 1984-5, his home a shrine to these allegiances.

Mansfield MP Sir Alan Meale spoke movingly of his friend at the official launch of If Spirit Alone Won Battles in his constituency.

“John Lowe was a big, big man in Nottinghamshire,” he said. “He was one of three, in fact: there was John, Sid Richmond and Peter Harrison, the three musketeers. They were involved in everything – and John was in charge.

“He was decent, honourable, a trade unionist first and foremost and a community person. It’s an honour and privilege to remember him and I pray to God, if there is one, that we find another one or two like him in the remaining time that we are all left on this planet.

“Comrades, all we have to do is to try and follow the principles that this man had. He found them late in life but he lived them to the full and did so with a belief that we all have inside of us: that all we have to do is to try and do the right things.

“If you do the right things as often as you possibly can, then you are moving society forward and building a community worth living in.”

It’s a message to chime with today’s activists, and equally one alien to the cronyism inherent to the right and Cameron’s government.

—-

The 1984/85 Miners’ Strike in Nottinghamshire: If Spirit Alone Won Battles: The Diary of John Lowe, by Jonathan Symcox, is published by Pen and Sword (£12.99).

When I was getting interested in working class history, back in the early 1970s, I was fascinated by a book called The Hard Way Up. It was written by a Northern working class woman called Hannah Mitchell. She was born in rural North Derbyshire and moved as a young girl to what must have seemed like the thriving metropolis of Bolton, where I was brought up. She became involved in the embryonic socialist movement and read Blatchford’s Clarion newspaper.

One of her earliest influences was Katherine St John Conway, herself a recent recruit to ‘the cause’ but from a very different class background. She heard her speak at a packed meeting in Bolton about the new gospel of socialism. She was fascinated by this articulate young woman and went away “with an inspiration which later sent me out to the street corners with the same message.”

Hannah Mitchell went on to become an accomplished speaker and activist for the fledgling Independent Labour Party. She got involved in the women’s suffrage movement which was particularly active in the Lancashire mill towns and campaigned across the North of England. Her socialism was of the ethical, humanistic kind which became so popular across the North where the ILP was strongest.

This kind of politics, in her words, “attracted a type of socialist who was not satisfied with the stark materialism of the Marxist school, desiring warmth and colour in human lives: not just bread, but bread and roses, too. Perhaps we were not quite sound on economics as our Marxian friends took care to remind us, but we realised the injustice and ugliness of the present system. We had enough imagination to visualise the greater possibility for beauty and culture in a more justly ordered state. If our conception of Socialism owed more to Morris than to Marx, we were none the less sincere, and many found their belief strengthened by the help and inspiration of the weekly meetings held in these Northern towns.” (The Hard Way Up, p 116).

This sums up Hannah’s politics, and the beliefs of thousands like her in the years before the First World War. But as well as having this romantic vision of socialism Hannah was a very practical activist. She became involved in local politics in Ashton-under-Lyne where she was elected onto the local ‘Board of Guardians’ responsible for poor relief.

A further move, to Manchester, led to her adoption as a council candidate in the face of some opposition from her male Labour colleagues. She was elected for the working class ward of Newton Heath, which she served with dedication for many years. In The Hard Way Up she mentions one of her proudest achievements being the public wash house which she struggled to get built to make working class women’s lives that bit easier. Her desire for ‘beauty in civic life’ blossomed in her work on public libraries, parks and gardens.

During the 1920s she became a regular correspondent for the ILP paper Labour’s Northern Voice. She wrote dialect sketches as ‘Daisy Nook’, poking fun at petty injustice and arguing the case for socialism in a light, accessible style which was quintessentially ‘Northern’.

Hannah’s life and work has been one of the main inspirations behind the formation of an organisation to promote the continuing relevance of ethical socialism and the need for a new debate on the importance of devolution for the North of England. A small group of socialists from across the North met on November 11^th in the station pub at Sowerby Bridge, near to the Lancashire/Yorkshire border, and agreed to go form a Northern ‘think tank’ and to name it in honour of Hannah.

The Hannah Mitchell Foundation – “an ethical socialist campaign for regional government for the North” has as its main purpose to be “a forum for the development of a distinctive democratic socialism in the North, rooted in our ethical socialist traditions of mutuality, co-operation, community and internationalism. Its prime focus will be to develop the case for directly-elected regional government for the North of England – either as a whole or for the three regions which make up ‘the North’.

“Creating a devolved structure of governance for the North would be based on the key principles of democracy and subsidiarity, social equity and justice, and sustainable development in its social, environmental and economic senses. The foundation is named in memory of an outstanding Northern socialist, feminist and co-operator who was proud of her working class roots and had a cultural as well as political vision.”

Early days, but the foundation has already attracted lots of interest and could become the catalyst for a new approach to progressive regional politics.

Paul Salveson is convenor of the Hannah Mitchell Foundation. Donations are very welcome (cheques should be made to ‘The Hannah Mitchell Foundation’ and sent to HMF, 90a Radcliffe Road, Golcar, Huddersfield HD7 4EZ)

Membership details, including charges, will be published on our website shortly: www.hannahmitchell.org.uk.

We are doing this, first, because the last edition was published in our centenary year, 1993, which makes it rather dated, and secondly, because there is a growing interest in our history among political activists, Labour politicians and academics. So this seems like a good time to proceed.

To help with the process, we are publishing the whole of the original pamphlet on the website and we hope readers will take the opportunity to respond and comment on the material.

We aim to put the text online in six stages, starting below with the chapters which deal with the early years of the ILP and the birth of the Labour Party. Each of these instalments will be supplemented by a series of ‘side stories’, boxed out material from the original pamphlet which highlight some important aspects of the ILP’s journey.

It is then over to anyone who wishes to respond to do so. This will help us to enrich what we hope will be a moving account of how different generations of people have sought to build a better society.

Of course, if you wish to purchase the printed version of the pamphlet, complete with images and historical photographs, you can do so from our publications page – we still have a few copies left.

—-

The ILP: Past & Present

Labour’s Rise

From 1918 Labour’s star was in the ascendant. Within four years it held over 140 parliamentary seats and it began to eclipse the Liberals. Other factors lay behind Labour’s rise. In 1918, under the influence of both Sidney Webb, the leading Fabian, and Arthur Henderson, the Labour Party secretary, Labour’s organisation was transformed. From a loose electoral alliance it became a more tightly-knit machine based in the localities. Individual part membership was regularised, removing the need to join through affiliated bodies.

To overcome trade union leaders’ unease about the new local parties becoming too radical, they were accorded even greater power. Trade unions were to have control of the elections to an enlarged national executive and the separate places for affiliated socialist societies were eliminated.

In completing the reform package and to show that Labour had a sense of purpose, the party adopted Sidney Webb’s famous Clause IV, the call for the collective ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. However, as he rather pointedly explained, his intention was to transform “the Labour Party from a group representing the class interests of manual workers into a fully constituted political party of national scope, ready to take over the government of the country”.

The changes also had a major impact on the ILP. Deliberately so, as both Labour Party and trade unions leaders were determined to ‘fix’ the left after the war. In many areas, the new local Labour parties began to siphon off many activists. No longer did the ILP hold a seat on the national executive, although some ILPers continued to hold seats in the divisional Labour Party section.

Following the party’s constitutional changes, some right-wing ILPers questioned the continued relevance of the ILP. For example, Philip Snowden MP, argued that the ILP had served its historical purpose. The left disagreed, arguing that the ILP was need to act as a socialist pressure group within the Labour Party.

For a time the ILP’s political dilemma about its role in the restructured Labour Party was resolved by the rise of Clifford Allen. An upper class intellectual with great financial skills, he sought to turn the ILP into a high-powered influential policy-making body. Having served three years imprisonment for refusing war-time conscription, he was able to secure financial support for the ILP from middle-class, pacifist sources.

Allen argued: “We must state the case for socialism so convincingly that all people of intelligence and goodwill will turn to it…if the ILP can become the instrument of such a policy, it will sweep all before it.”

As chair of the ILP, he gathered an impressive array of radical intellectuals around it. He relocated the ILP’s head office to palatial surroundings, established research and information departments, and revitalised the flagging Labour Leader newspaper which became New Leader (1922) with a highly paid editor. In addition, the ILP summer schools were transformed into largely middle-class assemblies.

He also cultivated his friendship with Ramsay MacDonald, who had been restored to the Labour leadership after the war which he too had opposed. When MacDonald became Labour’s first prime minister in 1924, Allen was a regular visitor to Downing Street.

However, Allen failed to persuade MacDonald or the Labour Party to set up commissions to prepare detailed schemes of socialist construction for when Labour was in office. So he encouraged the ILP to do so instead. The first commission, on agriculture, included the call for the nationalisation of land. Promoted by the ILP, it was adopted by the Labour Party conference.

But the commission attracting the most attention did not gain Labour’s support. Socialism in Our Time or The Living Wage (as it was also known) was to become a precursor to Labour’s reforms two decades later. It called for the immediate introduction of a fixed minimum wage for all industries and for family allowances. To provide for these the banks, mines, land, electricity and transport were to be nationalised. Any essential industry failing to comply with the minimum wage was also to be taken into public ownership.

To Allen’s dismay MacDonald instantly repudiated Socialism in Our Time as “flashy futilities”. This left Allen in a much weakened position in the ILP. Ironically, the policies formulated by his commissions contributed to his downfall. They formed part of the growing shift to the left in the ILP and they widened the rift with the Labour Party.

Fenner Brockway, then ILP general secretary, gave three reasons for Allen’s fall and Jimmy Maxton’s rise: “First the ILP was becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the MacDonald leadership of the Labour Party, particularly after the first Labour Government of 1924. Second, the rank and file outside of London, which remained proletarian, became impatient with the middle class domination of Head Office and the grand scale of its up-keep. Third the membership having accepted the Socialism in Our Time plan seriously, were in a mood to challenge aggressively the gradualism of the Labour Party.”

Growing Divide

Spearheading the criticisms of Allen’s leadership were the militant Clydeside MPs, including Jimmy Maxton and John Wheatley. Under their influence, the ILP embarked upon a more confrontational course with the Labour leadership.

A fierce and fine orator, and a deeply committed and incorruptible socialist, Jimmy Maxton reasserted the party’s class politics. He confirmed the growing conviction of many ILPers that the Labour and trade union leaderships were becoming obstacles to socialism.

During the 1926 General Strike and miners’ lockout, which the Labour leadership found deeply embarrassing, the ILP published The Miner for the impoverished mineworkers’ union, selling 90,000 copies weekly. Following the miners’ betrayal and abandonment by the TUC, Maxton and the miners’ General Secretary, Arthur Cook, himself an ILPer, published a joint manifesto denouncing all forms of class collaboration. The Cook-Maxton Manifesto, coupled with the campaign for Socialism in Our Time, which was regularly defeated at Labour Party conference, made the ILP increasingly unpopular with the Labour leadership.

These differences of political strategy came to a dramatic climax with Labour’s return to office in 1929. MacDonald’s main aim was to show that Labour was ‘fit’ to hold office. Given that the Liberals held the voting balance in the Commons, he was only prepared to introduce measures which they would find acceptable.

As a result of this approach, the minority Labour government soon found itself in deep trouble with its own supporters. Unwilling to challenge the capitalist system, the government soon fell victim to the pressures of a capitalist recession. Public expenditure was cut repeatedly, unemployment soared, and the working class was made to bear the brunt of the crisis.

The ILP’s case, which MacDonald dismissed as mere romanticism, was that a Labour government should stand or fall by a radical programme. First, it should introduce expansionist popular measures  and, at the point when the Liberals blocked further changes, the Government should campaign with the slogan: “The people versus the banks”.

In vain, the ILP rebels in the Commons mounted a desperate resistance to the government. The remainder of the Parliamentary Labour Party dutifully voted as  instructed, obeying the call to “Trust MacDonald”. In desperation, the ILP’s executive announced that its 140 MPs must take the ILP’s whip and not the Labour government’s. Most refused and 123 MPs were expelled.

These divisions bit deep into the ILP itself. In Scotland the ILP branches condemned Maxton for voting against the government by 103 votes to 94, although the ILP nationally upheld ‘the rebels’.

As the economic crisis deepened – and as the labour movement became more resistant – Ramsay MacDonald and the chancellor, Philip Snowden, defected. In consultation with King George V, they collaborated with the Tories to form a national government, sending shockwaves through the Labour Party, but it did nothing to heal the rift with the ILP.

Disaffiliation and its Effects

The specific issue which triggered the ILP’s disaffiliation from the Labour Party was a heated debate on the relationship of the ILP MPs to the Parliamentary Labour Party. In the aftermath of the conflicts with the MacDonald leadership, the new Labour leadership insisted that ILP-sponsored MPs should now be subject to the same parliamentary whip as Labour MPs. The ILP refused.

But, as we have already shown, the roots of the conflict lay much deeper. They relate to the frustration that different generations of socialists have often felt about Labour’s lack of radicalism.

In its early years, ILPers had hoped that by creating and sustaining the Labour Party, in alliance with the trade unions, they could reach the working class and win them to socialism. By 1932, at an emotionally-charged, special conference, this approach was rejected. The branches voted to disaffiliate by 241 votes to 142.

Support for the break came from a younger generation of working class activists, angry and dismayed at the shameful record of the MacDonald minority government. Disaffiliation had significant consequences for both parties. With the ILP’s departure, the Labour Party became more manageable. The right wing were well placed to strengthen their hold, to keep down the remaining left forces and to direct the party how they wished.

Following MacDonald’s defection, Labour suffered badly in the general election. In response, trade union leaders decided to exert greater control over the party, rather than to trust the parliamentarians as they had done in the recent past. The union leaders’ efforts were made easier because the parliamentary party was in a weaker position, numerically and politically.

But what really strengthened the unions’ grip was the changing nature of the block vote. To survive the recession, the unions were merging into big general unions where power was concentrated at the top. With their massive voting strength they could, if they chose, dominate the party organisation.

Men like Ernest Bevin, head of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, began to shape Labour’s future. An alliance was constructed between ‘moderate’ parliamentarians and trade union barons that was to last for decades. The block vote became the property of a handful of trade union leaders who placed it at the disposal of right-wing Labour leaderships.

Bevin dismissed the ILP, saying that they “let their bleeding ’earts run away with their bleeding ’eads”.

For a time, the internal opposition to the Labour leadership and trade union control came from a regrouping of Labour lefts with former ILPers. Together, they set up the Socialist League but it never had the chance to establish a sizeable grass roots base along the lines of the earlier ILP.

Under the somewhat eccentric leadership of Sir Stafford Cripps (who foundered the newspaper Tribune in 1937), the Socialist League came into conflict with Labour’s tough-minded national executive. Eventually the executive expelled Cripps and proscribed the Socialist League (although Cripps was later returned to become a most conventional, post-war chancellor of the exchequer). The League disbanded.

It was not long before the ILP’s high hopes about the advantages to be gained from the split with Labour began to ebb. At first, with unemployment at record levels, with Labour’s electoral decline, and with growing international tensions relating to the rise of fascism, many ILPers had thought that a golden opportunity was at hand. For them, the crisis of capitalism was drawing near. They believed that free from the constraints of a compromised and discredited Labour Party, the ILP would be well placed to drive home the socialist message.

The membership figures for these years tell another story, however. Within four months of the fateful decision to leave, the ILP had lost one-third of its branches. Membership, which had stood at 16,773 in 1932, fell annually. By 1935 it had fallen to 4,392. Three-quarters of the membership were lost in three years.

The Socialist League did not gain many recruits from these losses. Nor did the Communist Party, even though a pro-communist group in the ILP, the Revolutionary Policy Committee, had campaigned hard for the ILP’s break with Labour. Its members joined the Communist Party three years after the ILP’s disaffiliation.

Buy The ILP: Past and Present here

Read other extracts from The ILP: Past & Present here, including:
ILP History 1: The Early Years
- Great Expectations
- Beginnings in Bradford
ILP History 2: Ethical Socialism
- Independent Women
- Living for that Better Day
- Strongholds of the ILP

England & Wales

The first strongholds of the ILP were limited largely to the woollen districts of Yorkshire and parts of Lancashire.

Bradford was a major centre. Here the Liberals were the ILP’s main political contenders for working class support. Influenced by the former textile worker, Fred Jowett (left), the ILP pioneered many of the city’s local government reforms. Activists built a solid political base – which lasted well into the 1920s and 1930s – resting upon a network of ILP clubs and a variety of social activates.

Halifax, a textile town with a radical tradition, became another early focal point. John Lister, whose wealthy but eccentric family had lived at Shibden Hall, Halifax, from the 17th century, was the ILP’s first national treasurer.

Across the Pennines in Lancashire, the ILP faced a popular working-class Conservatism. The ILP grew in Manchester and Salford, and in the cotton textile towns of Blackburn and Preston and it had a presence in Rochdale, Oldham, Hyde, Ashton and Stockport.

In Manchester, where Robert Blatchford initiated the influential Clarion newspaper, ILPers organised soup kitchens at times of high unemployment and challenged the callous attitude of the Poor Law Guardians.

In 1896, Manchester ILPers were jailed for speaking at Boggart Hole Clough, an open site taken over by the city council and long used for public meetings. After enormous protests the council backed down.

In Nelson, where the weavers were a major influence, there was a lively ILP branch which pre-dated the national ILP. The Nelson ILP set up its own institute and built the Clarion House, near Pendle, as a base to explore the countryside.

Outside Yorkshire and Lancashire, Leicester was the most significant of the ILP’s English outposts. The massive presence of radical trade unionists in the boot and shoe industry provided the backbone, as it did in Norwich.

In Wales, the working class had formed close bonds with Liberalism. At the end of the last century, these began to crack with the sharp upturn in industrial disputes among the South Wales miners.

The ILP developed a strong and active base in Merthyr Tydfil from where Keir Hardie was elected to parliament in 1900. In 1922, ILPer Richard Wallhead won the seta. The ILP ran the popular Merthyr Pioneer newspaper and a printing co-operative. It had its own football team.

In the 1930s, massive unemployment meant mass poverty in much of Britain. Wales was badly hit. Babies were said to be contracting rickets in their mothers’ wombs.

The ILP continued to have an important political presence during this period. It was very involved in the hunger marches from Wales to London to draw attention to the terrible conditions. In 1935, it joined with the 300,000 people throughout Wales who protested against the hardship caused by the means test. As a result, the government dropped some of its harsher proposals.

Scotland

Scotland presents a rich and complex picture. Many of the ILP’s first generation of ‘leaders’ were Scottish. The Scottish Labour Party was founded in 1888, five years before the ILP itself. The Party in Scotland was then absorbed by the ILP.

But this early prominence did not mean that there was massive support for the ILP from the outset. Most of the ILP’s leading figures made their reputations only after travelling south.

The Scottish Labour Party had made little headway. This was because of the strong attachment to the Liberals in Scotland. In addition, the working class was deeply divided not only culturally (between the ‘respectable’ and the ‘rough’) as in the rest of Britain, but also nationally (Scottish and Irish) and religiously (Catholic and Protestant).

In time, these obstacles were partly overcome and the Irish question diminished. By November 1922, thousands of people were lining the streets of Glasgow to wave off the newly-elected Clydeside ILPers, such as James Maxton (left) as they headed south for the Westminster parliament.

But this support had not been won easily. It rested upon hard-fought disputes to improve social and working conditions, a well as opposition to war. Working class women were at the heart of these struggles. Housing, particularly in Glasgow, was notoriously bad and yet rent were high. The ILP’s housing committee and the Women’s Labour League, initiated a city-wide housing campaign based on women’s neighbourhood groups.

Conditions worsened with the influx of workers during the First World War. In its first wartime edition, Glasgow ILP’s paper, Forward (which was later suppressed by the authorities), called for the government to limit rent rises.

Women’s groups, together with militant Clydeside shipworkers, organised massive rent strikes. In response to this growing working class assertiveness, the government introduced rent controls.

In the past century, thousands of unknown ILPers across Britain have campaigned for better social conditions, for an end to war, and for a society based on equality and justice. By their own strict standards they did no succeed, but their efforts made a significant difference to the lives of millions.

Buy The ILP: Past and Present here

Read other extracts from The ILP: Past & Present here, including:
ILP History 1: The Early Years
- Great Expectations
- Beginnings in Bradford
ILP History 2: Ethical Socialism
- Independent Women
- Living for that Better Day
ILP History 3: Labour’s Rise and Disaffiliation