UNREST AT HOME
In order to understand the revolutionary movement in England it is
necessary shortly to review the movements of the past ten years.
Apart from the Independent Labour Party, which was formed in 1893 by
the late Mr. Keir Hardie to introduce Socialists into the Trade Unions
and to procure their nomination for the House of Commons, it may be
said that there were no formidable extremist bodies in Great Britain
before 1911; for the British section of the Industrial Workers of the
World, the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and the Socialist Labour
Party were insignificant in numbers and in influence. In the summer of
1911 there was a great wave of industrial unrest, involving strikes of
dockers and transport workers in Manchester, Liverpool, and London,
followed by a railway strike in August. In three days, with one or two
exceptions, most of the lines ceased working, and troops were called
upon to guard the railways and vital points. The men’s grievances were
submitted to a Royal Commission, and in the debate in the House of
Commons initiated by the Labour Members, for the first time political
action began to attract Trade Union leaders. The Trade Union Act passed
in 1913 gave the Unions power to add political action to the objects
covered by their rules.
In 1912 the coal-miners came into the field with a strike for a minimum
wage, and the Government conceded some of their demands in the Coal
Mines Minimum Wage Act. In South Wales the coal strike was attended
with disorders that called for measures of protection by the military.
In 1913 the Dublin Transport Workers went on strike, and the solidarity
achieved by this body during the strike made the rebellion of 1916
possible.
In April 1914 the Miners, Transport Workers and Railwaymen appointed a
committee to work out a scheme for a Triple Alliance which was to brood
over the community as a threat of paralysis whenever one section of the
Alliance formulated demands which the employers were not disposed to
concede. It was never more than a threat foredoomed to be ineffective,
because the component parts were so unwieldy, and their interests were
so diverse, that they could never be got to work as parts of a single
machine. But as a threat it was held _in terrorem_ over the nation
for seven years. It was believed that the new Alliance would try its
strength in support of the railwaymen, who were said to be meditating
another strike, but however that may have been, the War, that great
composer of petty disputes, intervened to prevent it.
There were two cross-currents in this rapid development of the Labour
movement: on the one side a tendency towards the amalgamation of
unions, as in the case of the National Transport Workers’ Federation
and the Triple Alliance, and on the other, the tendency of the rank and
file in the unions to break away from their leaders.
The declaration of war shattered all the hopes of the International at
a blow. Its promoters had forgotten human nature. In 1907 the Second
International had passed a resolution binding the workers of all
countries to compel their Governments to make peace even if war were
declared, and as late as 1st August 1914 Messrs. Arthur Henderson and
Keir Hardie issued a ‘Manifesto to the British people’ in the sense
of the resolution of 1907. On 2nd August there was a demonstration
in Trafalgar Square to support it. So little knew the leaders the
temper of the people they had been chosen to represent! On 6th August
the War Emergency Workers’ National Committee was formed, and within
three weeks the great mass of Labour was taking part in the recruiting
campaign. In September the Trade Union Congress endorsed their
patriotic attitude.
There followed an industrial truce; strikes were abandoned, and the
railwaymen dropped their national programme; the Triple Alliance was
suspended. This situation might have lasted throughout the War but
for the rise in the cost of living and certain flagrant examples of
profiteering. Conscription gave a great impetus to the revolutionary
Pacifists, and the Workers’ Committees, under the name of the Shop
Stewards’ Movement, seized upon their opportunity.
The International was, in fact, trampled to death by the rapid march
of events. On 31st July 1914 Jean Jaurès had been assassinated in
Paris, and the French Socialists had lost their most trusted leader.
This was rapidly followed by the invasion of Belgium and by the voting
of the war credits by German Socialists. What was now to become of
the doctrine, ‘Should War break out it is the duty of Socialists to
intervene to bring it promptly to an end ... to rouse the populace, and
hasten the fall of the Capitalist domination’?
The conversion of British Labour leaders was very rapid. On 7th
August Messrs. W. C. Anderson and Arthur Henderson, for the Executive
Committee of the Labour Party, stated that while the party condemned
the diplomacy which had made war possible, it advised all its members
to relieve the destitution and suffering which must inevitably ensue,
but on that very day the Labour Party allowed the vote of credit to
pass, and Mr. Ramsay Macdonald resigned in consequence. The Left Wing,
which followed Mr. Macdonald, issued a manifesto on 13th August, in
which it sent ‘Sympathy and Greeting to German Socialists across
the roar of the guns.... They are no enemies of ours, but faithful
friends,’ but on 20th August the Labour Party definitely joined in
the campaign to strengthen the British Army, and even Mr. Keir Hardie
wrote, ‘Any War of oppression against the rights and liberties of my
country I will persist against to the last drop of my blood.’
We are inclined now to imagine that open violence began only at the
beginning of the War. We have forgotten the part played by foreign
anarchists three or four years before--the Houndsditch murders, the
siege of Sydney Street, the outrages of Tottenham. There has been
nothing like these since the Armistice.
We date most of our social troubles from August 1914, as if politically
England was Utopia before the War. I was reminded by a friend the other
day that during the summer of 1913, in a conversation about Labour
unrest, I had said that unless there were a European War to divert the
current, we were heading for something very like revolution. That was
before the railway strike of 1913. I suppose that the dock strike, the
growth of bodies like the Anarchists and the Industrial Workers of the
World, and the unrest that had set in even among disciplined bodies
like the police and prison warders, in all civilised countries, had
induced this unwonted pessimism. Yet there was a section among our own
people who talked glibly about European war producing revolution, and
therefore one cannot blame the Germans for counting us out of the War.
Even during the War itself I can remember several periods when the
outlook among our own people was darker than it is now.
With the Independent Labour Party stood the Union of Democratic
Control, and Pacifist Societies, such as the No-Conscription
Fellowship, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the National Council
for Civil Liberties, began to spring up like toadstools. Internal
dissensions increased to such an extent that at last the loyal Labour
and Socialist group formed themselves, in April 1915, into a body known
as the Socialist Nationalist Defence Committee, to defend themselves
from internal persecution. This committee contributed largely to the
patriotic reception of the Conscription Act. As the time went on the
committee became the British Workers’ League, and by July 1918, the
League had over two hundred and twenty branches. Patriotic Labour
leaders suffered acutely at this time. Through pressure exerted by his
Trade Union one after another was forced to resign from the League.
There is a rapid evolution in political unrest. Subversive societies
are like the geysers in a volcanic field. After preliminary gurgling
they spout forth masses of boiling mud and then subside, while another
chasm forms at a distance and becomes suddenly active. I have described
how the Militant Suffragettes subsided on the day war was declared.
The country was so much preoccupied with the War during 1915 that no
new geyser had a chance of boiling up. It was not until 1916 that the
Pacifist became active.
The Union of Democratic Control was founded in the early days of the
War by a small group, of which Mr. E. D. Morel, Mr. Charles Trevelyan,
Mr. J. Ramsay Macdonald, Mr. Arthur Ponsonby, and Mr. Ralph Norman
Angell Lane, generally known as Norman Angell, were the most prominent.
Its four cardinal points of policy were that no province should be
transferred without the consent of the population, that Parliament
should control all Treaties, that our foreign policy should be
directed towards the setting up of a League of Nations, then called an
International Council, and that England should propose a reduction of
armaments. The public mind was to be permeated with the idea that war
was a criminal absurdity, and of course the Union had strong things
to say about the Foreign Office. The Diplomatic Service was to be
completely reformed, Treaties were to be periodically submitted to a
Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Commons, and a ‘real European
partnership’ was to be substituted for ‘groupings and alliances and a
precarious equipoise.’ In 1916 the Union of Democratic Control added
to the articles of its programme, ‘to prevent the humiliation of the
defeated Nation,’ from which it may be inferred that the members of the
Executive already felt confident that the Allies would win the War.
It will be seen that the main points for which the Union stood are in
process of realisation.
The Union of Democratic Control grew rapidly, and within less than a
year it had founded sixty-one branches. A branch was also in process
of being formed in Paris. Naturally, the Union became the rallying
point for most of the Pacifists in the country, and though the Union
itself disclaimed any desire to hinder the prosecution of the War,
it could not be said to have done anything to support it. One rather
prominent member set himself to palliate the German disregard for
treaties and international usages. But while the Union included people
whose attitude is always pro-anybody except pro-British, there were
others who would have deeply resented any imputation of a lack of
patriotism. Its speakers encountered a good deal of opposition by
bodies such as the No-Conscription Fellowship and the Fellowship of
Reconciliation. The Union of Democratic Control was an academic body:
the No-Conscription Fellowship speedily came within the reach of the
law. Compulsory service was bound to provoke resistance and, as all
those who have sat on tribunals are aware, the Conscientious Objectors
included men of very different character. Perhaps the smallest class
had real conscientious scruples. Many of the others mistook for
conscience a natural bent for resisting any kind of compulsion, and
there was, besides, the class of young man whose personal vanity
was hypertrophied, and who courted martyrdom for the sake of its
advertisement. One would have said he was peculiar to England if the
same type had not appeared in Holland and America. Looking back on
this period, I am very doubtful whether conscription could have been
safely introduced at an earlier date. The country had been drained of
its best men, and the pity of it was that the finest material for the
officers who were so badly needed later in the war was sacrificed in
the trenches. But it was this very sacrifice that prepared men’s minds
for conscription and neutralised the strong opposition to compulsion.
As seemed to be inevitable, the Germans were our best friends in this
matter. By the outrages in Belgium, by the callousness of submarine
commanders, by the sinking of the _Lusitania_ and hospital ships, the
Germans kept up our own war spirit and themselves neutralised the
danger of Pacifism.
The Pacifist societies had marshalled quite a respectable little army
of conscientious objectors. These, while they gave great trouble to
government officials, from the tribunals down to the prison warders,
were really of very little importance while such tremendous events
were proceeding. Public opinion ran strongly against them, and even in
Princetown, Dartmoor, where the population had been accustomed to see
nothing but the worst class of felon, murmurs were heard that it was
time to send back the old convicts who knew how to behave themselves
instead of the dreadful people with long hair and curious clothing who
infested the single street.
All through 1916 the Ministry of Munitions had a separate little branch
for keeping themselves informed about labour unrest that was likely to
interfere with the output of munitions. In December 1916 they came to
the conclusion that the work would be more efficiently and more cheaply
done by professionals, and I was called upon to take over the service
with my own trained men. Pacifism, anti-Conscription, and Revolution
were now inseparably mixed. The same individuals took part in all three
movements. The real object of most of these people, though it may have
been sub-conscious, appeared to be the ruin of their own country. This
is no new thing in English history. There were pro-Bonapartists in the
Waterloo time, and pro-Boers eighty-five years later, and though this
modern brand were not perhaps strictly pro-enemy in sentiment, they
acted as if they were. Does not Maitland record how, when Napoleon
Bonaparte was leaving Plymouth on his last voyage to St. Helena, an
attempt was made by his friends in London to serve a subpœna on him in
the hope of delaying his departure?
The Unofficial Reform movement was first heard of in South Wales
in 1911, where it opposed the policy of conciliation of the South
Wales Miners’ Federation. Probably it resulted from Mr. Tom Mann’s
Syndicalist campaign in 1910. _The Miners’ Next Step_, published in
1912, set forth its programme, which was the first attempt on the
part of declared revolutionaries to attack Trade Unionism. This book
demanded one union to cover all mines and quarries in order to be in a
position to call a simultaneous strike throughout the country.
Out of this grew the Rank and File Movement, which covered that extreme
body, the Clyde Workers’ Committee, and, in common with the British
Socialist Party and the Socialist Labour Party, it had sympathetic
relations with the Industrial Workers of the World. It had a definite
policy of the Russian Bolshevik type, arrived at quite independently,
which was, through the Workers’ Committee, to overthrow Trade Unions
and reorganise all workers in a single union with a committee vested
with full power to seize all workshops and factories, and thus bring
about the Social Revolution. There were special reasons in 1916 why
the Rank and File Movement should become popular. The industrial truce
of the Trade Unions, arrived at for the successful prosecution of
the War, had weakened the influence of the Executives. Most of the
agitators were strong Pacifists, and it was easy for them to represent
the Trade Union leaders as having betrayed the cause of the workers by
abandoning their hard-won rights in order to support a Capitalist war.
Any improvement in working conditions which tended to allay discontent
was opposed by the Workers’ Committees because it set back the day when
any ill-feeling between Capital and Labour would make it impossible for
employers to carry on their business. A better understanding between
employers and employed was to them a propping up of the Capitalist
system of society. While the Rank and File Movement was not identical
with the Shop Stewards’ Movement, the revolutionary element secured so
many posts as Shop Stewards that the two became confused. Gradually
the Shop Stewards developed into a useful institution. As the elected
representatives of labour in our factories they could make the views of
the workmen clear to the foreman and the employer, and so save a great
deal of friction. Unfortunately, at first, the movement had fallen into
the hands of persons with revolutionary views, who decided to use the
Shop Stewards as a means of ousting the regular Trade Union leaders. It
was to be a ‘Rank and File’ Movement, and the power to call a strike,
vested nominally in the rank and file, was really to be exercised by
an Association of Shop Stewards, all of revolutionary views. What
they wanted was an excuse for sudden action, and the excuse came with
dilution and with conscription.
On 5th May 1917 began the most serious strike of the War. It broke
out at Rochdale on a pottery dispute in which the employer was in the
wrong. He had applied the dilution scheme to civilian work that had
nothing to do with the War. The Shop Stewards among the engineers at
once held a secret meeting at Manchester, and determined to call a
national strike. Two days later the Rochdale men went back to work,
but by that time the engineers were out at Manchester, Coventry, and
Sheffield, and within a week a ’bus strike was preventing munition
workers from getting to Woolwich. The excuse given was the proposal to
‘comb out’ the young unskilled men, and it was curious to find South
Wales, the Clyde, and Leeds standing firm at a moment when a national
strike was in the air. On 16th May the strike spread to Southampton,
Ipswich, and Chelmsford. Important work on large howitzer shells
and range-finders, all urgently needed, was held up, and the country
was faced with the gravest danger that it had had to meet since the
beginning of the War. We knew all the men who had brought about the
strike, and the only question was whether they should be prosecuted.
There was, of course, the risk that their arrest might precipitate a
general strike, but as that seemed likely to come in any case, the risk
seemed worth while taking. I felt pretty sure that as soon as a few
arrests were made the strike would collapse.
The Government had always said that it was ready to meet the strikers
with their official executive, but the official leaders hitherto
had declined to deal with men who had flouted their authority. They
consented only after several arrests had been made, and on 19th May
the strike was called off on condition that there should be no more
arrests but that the prosecution of the men already arrested should
be proceeded with. The ’bus strike had collapsed on the previous day.
Nine men appeared at Bow Street and gave an undertaking that they would
not again do anything to obstruct the output of munitions, and as the
strike was at an end they were released.
It must not be judged from the extent of the Labour disturbances of
1916 that the Workers’ Committees of Shop Stewards had really captured
the body of Labour. It must be remembered that the people at home, as
well as the soldiers in the trenches, were suffering from war-strain.
Probably at no time have men ever so much needed a holiday. This
was shown by the behaviour of those who went on strike. So far from
collecting at street corners and listening to Pacifist harangues, the
Lancashire men took advantage of the fine weather at Blackpool, or
were found quietly working in their allotments.
All the cherished Trade Union principles had been surrendered one by
one. The men had submitted to dilution, and even to dilution with
women, to an increase in hours of labour and in output, and to the
exposure of their pet fallacy that engineering is so highly skilled a
trade that an apprenticeship of several years is necessary before even
a moderate efficiency is acquired.
The damage caused by industrial disturbances to our national prosperity
was enormous. In 1918 there were 1252 strikes, involving a loss of
6,237,000 working days. In 1919 there were 1413 strikes, involving a
loss of 34,483,000 working days, and the persons involved in these
disputes numbered 2,581,000.
I suppose that England has always been divided between the unreasoning
optimists and the unreasoning pessimists, and that public opinion
oscillates between the two. In 1919 the word ‘revolution’ was on every
lip, as it was in 1793, 1830, and 1848: in 1922 you will hear that
the British working man is too staid and sensible a person ever to
think of revolution except through the ballot-box. And in a few months
the pendulum will have swung the other way and people will again be
in a flutter. The optimists of 1922 are right, but they forget what
determined minorities can do with an irresolute mass. A single fox
will clear out a hen-roost while it is cackling its indignation to the
skies. If Louis XVI. had mounted his horse and charged the mob there
might have been no Thermidor: if Louis Philippe had spoken two words
to his soldiers there would have been no 1830. In Paris a street riot
became a revolution, and street riots unchecked were formidable affairs
in those days. Who now remembers what happened in London in 1780? Yet
William Beckford writes from Antwerp on Midsummer Day, 1780:
‘This characteristic stillness was the more pleasing when I looked
back upon those scenes of outcry and horror which filled London but
a week or two ago when danger haunted our streets at midday. Here I
could wander--without beholding a sky red and portentous with the
light of houses on fire, or hearing the confusion of shouts and
groans mingled with the reports of artillery.’
Until six months after the Armistice there were several independent
organisations for furnishing information. Every new Ministry created
during the War almost inevitably formed an ‘Intelligence Section.’ It
is true that nearly all these co-operated closely with one another,
but there was overlapping and waste of energy, to say nothing of the
inevitable waste of money. Moreover, it was nobody’s business to act
upon the information with reasonable despatch. By the time it reached
a particular Minister it was generally too late for action. This
applied particularly to Civil Intelligence at a time when the Russian
Government was financing subversive organisations in this country. It
was decided, therefore, to co-ordinate all this kind of information
under a single head who would be responsible to a Minister for any
action that ought to be taken.
On 1st May 1919 this new arrangement came into force. A most admirable
and efficient little staff was organised at a very low cost to the
country. The revolutionary press tried to spread the belief among its
readers that enormous sums were being lavished, that I went about with
bulging pockets corrupting honest working men; whereas, in fact, all
the most useful and trustworthy information was furnished gratuitously
and the corruption was all on the other side. Many of the Communist
leaders and organisers were receiving salaries from Russia, and, as a
Communist said feelingly a few months ago, ‘These men are all out for
money, and they would sell their own grandmothers.’ I have a shocking
confession to make: I numbered among my friends Communists who, while
quite honestly entertaining Communist views, disapproved very strongly
of the manner in which the movement was being exploited.
There are a number of virtuous people who think it highly improper for
a Government to keep itself quietly informed of what is going on in its
own and other countries. They forget that they themselves, in the lobby
of the House of Commons, in their clubs, and at their dinner-tables
are collecting and dispensing intelligence all the time. That is how
public opinion is formed. The duties of an Intelligence officer are
very like those of a journalist, the difference being that in the case
of the Intelligence officer he tries to sift out the truth, and to give
it all to his superiors, whereas the journalist has first to consider
what it is good for the public to know, and what will contribute to the
popularity of his newspaper. I have tried hard to put myself into the
mental attitude of the good people who think intelligence ‘immoral,’
and I cannot help feeling that their real objection is that it is
inconvenient.
However this may be, it was certainly the case in 1920 and 1921 that
while our expenditure had decreased there was not much of subversive
activity in any part of the world that was unknown to us, and whether
we liked it or not, we were forced into the position of becoming a sort
of clearing-house for foreign countries. The great art of acquiring
information is to have friends in every grade of society in as many
countries as possible.
During the first three months of 1919 unrest touched its high-water
mark. I do not think that at any time in history since the Bristol
Riots we have been so near revolution. The Workers’ Committees had
acquired the chief power in London, Sheffield, Coventry, Wales, and on
the Clyde, and the cry for shorter hours was seized upon eagerly by
the revolutionaries. On 27th January there were extensive strikes on
the Clyde of a revolutionary rather than an economic character. There
was great restlessness also among the electrical engineers, and a
general strike at the power stations had been fixed for 5th February.
This was stopped by a new regulation which made strikes at power
stations and similar vital undertakings illegal. The authorities had
made arrangements for taking over the service if the strike occurred,
and no doubt some rumours about the arrangements had leaked out among
the electricians. I remember waiting at the telephone at 11 P.M. one
night. If the strike had taken place the leaders would probably have
been brought to trial. I counted on a certain number of men coming
out without the strike becoming general, and in this event we should
not have taken any action. The messages began to come in. No one had
answered the call to strike except in one power station, where twelve
men walked out into the street. Consequently, no action was taken.
Late in January the ‘Hands off Russia’ Movement had been started,
and at a meeting at the Albert Hall on 8th February every section
of the revolutionary movement was represented on the platform. The
speeches were probably the most startling that had ever been made in
that somnolent and respectable edifice. The workers were urged to arm
themselves, and people who had not been following the movement were
in a flutter. To one whose business it is to know individuals and to
watch the formation of subversive bodies this inflammatory oratory
does not quicken the pulse by a single beat. It is all as hollow as
the declamation of a tragedian in a stage rehearsal. One knows so well
that if the drum did beat these fiery orators would take good care not
to be among the first casualties. A retrospect is very instructive,
for one sees how a movement which creates public consternation for a
few weeks boils up, cools, and evaporates. It was so with the People’s
Russian Information Bureau, to which no fewer than a hundred societies
affiliated themselves; it was so with the Sailors’, Soldiers’, and
Airmen’s Union and, later, with the Councils of Action, and it will be
so with the ‘Hands Off Russia’ Movement, with the Union of Democratic
Control, and with many other more sinister movements that will
shake the nerve of future generations. All, all will pass into the
lumber-room, where the dust is already accumulating over the Union of
Democratic Control, and its sisters, the Pacifist Societies.
In April 1919 we learned that a conspiracy was on foot to induce
serving soldiers who enlisted under the Derby Scheme and under
Conscription to ‘demobilise themselves’ on 11th May on the ground
that they enlisted for the period of the War and six months after.
They were to strip off their badges and march out of barracks, not
only in Kempton Park, Winchester, Salisbury, and Oswestry, but in
Rouen, Havre, Boulogne, and Calais. In a speech delivered on May
Day a member of this league who, during 1917, was employed in the
Adjutant-General’s Department, War Office, urged a general strike to
enforce demobilisation on 11th May, and about the same time a leaflet
headed ‘To British Sailors’ incited naval ratings to seize the ports
and invite soldiers and policemen to join them. The _Daily Herald_
of 7th and 8th May published paragraphs supporting the view that the
men were entitled to leave the colours on 11th May. The unrest among
serving soldiers, especially the technical services, such as mechanics,
motor-drivers, and other trades, many of whom were members of Trade
Unions, and had or thought they had jobs waiting for them which might
be snapped up by others, was such that very serious disturbances might
have resulted from this insidious form of incitement. But the Army
Council issued a statement explaining the conditions of enlistment,
which appealed to the good sense of the men, and 11th May passed off
without disturbance.