Contents

Contents

Introduction

Part 1 Basic Principles 1917-24

1.'Anti-Parliamentarianism' and 'Communism'
2.The Russian Revolution
3.The Labour Party
4.Trade Unions and Industrial Organisation

Part 2 Continuity and Change

1.The Late Twenties and Early Thirties

The following sections are still to come:

1.The Split in the APCF and Formation of the USM

Part 3 Capitalist war and Class War 1936-45

1.The Civil War in Spain
2.The Second World War
3.A Balance Sheet

Introduction

Anti-Parliamentary Communism --
The movement for workers councils in Britain, 1917-45

by Mark Shipway

Introduction

This book developed out of an interest in a political
movement known as 'left' or 'council' communism, which
achieved brief prominence -- particularly in Germany -- at
the end of the First World War.

Before the war the future left communists generally
belonged to the left wing of the social democratic parties
of the Second International. After these parties had lined
up in support of their respective ruling classes at the
outbreak of the armed conflict in 1914, the left
communists were soon to be found among the revolutionary
minority which called on the working class to 'turn the
imperialist war into civil war'. At the same time they
also began to formulate a radical critique of the social
democratic ideas which had led to the Second
International's integration into capitalist society and to
its support for the war.

The left communists were quick to acclaim the 1917 Russian
revolution and in its wake participated in the formation
of communist parties as constituents of a new, Third
International. The left communists confidently expected
their Russian comrades' support in the struggle against
the treacherous social democratic and trade union
leaderships, and against outmoded forms of working-class
action such as parliamentarism. These hopes were soon
dashed, however, when the Third International adopted the
tactics which Lenin had outlined in his notorious attack
on the left communists, Left-Wing Communism -- an Infantile
Disorder.

Besides disagreeing with the Bolsheviks over the most
appropriate tactics for use in the class struggle in
Western Europe, the left communists were also critical of
the direction taken by events within Russia itself,
especially after the introduction of the New Economic
Policy (1921). which they regarded as a 'reversion to
capitalism'. Eventually the left communists argued that
Russia was a capitalist state run by the Bolsheviks and
that the Third International's policies simply reflected
the interests of the Russian capitalist state in the field
of foreign policy. Thus the left communists were driven to
form a new -- anti-Bolshevik -- Fourth International. in
which the interests of the world revolution would take
precedence over the interests of any of the new
International's constituent national parties. Consequently
the term 'left' communism soon became obsolete, since the
'orthodox' communists (that is, the Bolsheviks) were now
recognised as belonging to the capitalist political
spectrum. Thereafter the left communists became more
widely known as 'council' communists, because of their
emphasis on workers' councils (or soviets), rather than
political parties, as the means which the working class
would use to overthrow capitalism and administer
communism.

In the chapter of 'Left-Wing' Communism, An Infantile
Disorder which dealt with the revolutionary movement in
Britain, Lenin's attack was mainly directed against a
group called the Workers' Socialist Federation. The WSF
had started out as an organisation of militant
suffragists, but its political views were transformed in
the direction of revolutionary communism by the impact of
the Russian revolution. The WSF existed until mid-1924 and
changed its name several times during this period, so for
the sake of convenience it is usually referred to in this
book as the Dreadnought group, after the title of its
weekly publication the Workers' Dreadnought, which was
edited by Sylvia Pankhurst.

It was as a history of the Dreadnought group - left
communism's representatives in Britain - that this book
was originally conceived. As the work of researching the
Dreadnought group's ideas and activities during 1917-24
progressed, however, it was exciting to discover that
other anti-parliamentary communist organisations existed
in Britain at that time and that anti-parliamentary
communist ideas survived the Dreadnought's demise.

As well as in the pages of the Workers' Dreadnought
anti-parliamentary communist ideas were also put forward
by a newspaper called the Spur, which was edited by Guy
Aldred. Whereas Sylvia Pankhurst and her comrades were
chiefly influenced by post-First World War left communism.
Guy Aldred and his comrades drew much of their inspiration
from nineteenth-century anarchists such as Bakunin. The
Spur was not the publication of any particular
organisation, but had close links with several
revolutionary propaganda groups throughout Britain. As far
as the history of anti-parliamentary communism is
concerned the most significant of these was the Glasgow
Anarchist Group an organisation which could trace its
lineage back through a succession of Clydeside-based
groups which had propagated an anarchist-influenced
version of anti-parliamentarism since the 1890s.

In 1920 the Glasgow Anarchist Group renamed itself the
Glasgow Communist Group in order to express its affinity
with the Russian revolution and its support for
revolutionary unity in Britain. However, the Glasgow group
also soon became disillusioned with the tactics foisted on
the Western European revolutionary movement by the
Bolsheviks, and in 1921 it took the initiative in the
formation of an Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation to
directly oppose the Russian-backed Communist Party of
Great Britain.

The APCF sustained the anti-parliamentary communist
tradition in Britain until the end of the Second World
War. During this time it suffered two splits in its ranks.
The first of these took place in 19334, when Guy Aldred
and some of his comrades broke away to form the United
Socialist Movement. The second split took place in 1937,
with the departure of some anarchists who were later
involved in the formation of the Glasgow Anarchist
Federation at the beginning of the Second World War. In
this book the APCF is regarded as the genuine
standard-bearer of anti-parliamentary communism in Britain
during the 1930s and 1940s, but the ideas of the USM and
the Anarchists are also examined and discussed.

As research brought more and more information to light
about the history of anti-parliamentary communism in
Britain, the need for an accurate, comprehensive and
sympathetic study of the subject became increasingly
obvious. Biographies of Sylvia Pankhurst dwell at length
on her pre-1917 suffragist ideas and activities;
references to her years as an anti-parliamentary communist
are conspicuous only by their absence. Nor are the
histories of the early years of the CPGB much more
enlightening. The Dreadnought group participated in the
communist unity negotiations which preceded the formation
of the CPGB, but its ideas were at odds with the tactics
which the CPGB eventually adopted. This enables historians
of the CPGB to portray the Dreadnought group as an
'infantile' tributary flowing into the Leninist
mainstream, later to emerge as an effluent which
disappears into the void. None of them assess
anti-parliamentary communist ideas in their own right, and
even their most banal 'factual' comments about the
anti-parliamentarians are frequently mistaken.

Guy Aldred and his comrades have escaped such treatment,
but only because they withdrew from the unity negotiations
at an early stage. Their reward for this has been that
historians ignore them altogether -- a fate which has also
befallen the anti-parliamentary communists active in
Britain after 1924. Only the few present-day revolutionary
groups which acknowledge a political debt to the past work
of the anti-parliamentary communists have shown any
interest in setting the record straight. Yet all too often
even these groups accounts are flawed by superficial
research and a tendency to bend the facts to suit their
own preconceptions.

This book is, therefore, the first serious, lengthy and
detailed account of the theory of anti-parliamentary
communism and of the history of the groups which adhered
to this theory in Britain between the two world wars. Yet
it would be misleading to give the impression that it has
been written simply out of a concern to establish the
historical truth. There is a political assumption
underlying this book's choice of subject. That is, that
the anti-parliamentary communists are worthy of our
attention because the views they held place them among the
relatively small number of groups and individuals which
have put forward a genuine alternative to world-wide
capitalism.

This alternative, which the anti-parliamentarians
described interchangeably as socialism or communism, was
far removed from what is popularly understood by these
terms, such as the policies of the Labour Party or the
system which developed in Russia after 1917. For reasons
which this book will explain, the anti-parliamentary
communists regarded the Labour Party as a capitalist
organisation and Russia as a capitalist state. The
socialism/communism advocated by the anti-parliamentarians
meant the complete abolition of the system which forces
the dispossessed majority into dependence on wage slavery.
producing wealth for exchange in a market economy, to the
profit of a privileged few who rule society in their own
interests. It would involve wrenching the world's
productive resources out of the hands of their present
controllers, and transforming and developing them to
produce wealth directly for use, so that everyone's
individually-determined needs would be provided in
abundance.

Political organisations popularly identified with
socialism/communism have often paid lip service to such
ideas. On attaining power, however, they have always
maintained in existence the very money-market-wages system
they purported to oppose. At no time have the measures
advocated by the anti-parliamentarians ever been put into
practice in any of the so-called socialist or communist
states in the world. Capitalism still exists everywhere,
with all the consequences of its normal way of
functioning: unemployment, war, relentless insecurity and
material deprivation for the vast majority of the world's
inhabitants, and so on. As long as this state of affairs
continues groups such as the anti-parliamentary communists
will always be important, because the socialist/communist
ideas they propagated offer the working class its only
solution to the wars and barbarism which the present world
system holds in store. As the anti-parliamentarians
frequently warned: 'All Else Is Illusion.'

The relative obscurity in which the anti-parliamentary
communists expended most of their efforts has made the job
of researching some parts of their history a difficult
task. It can be confidently asserted, however, that enough
material has been located to form the basis of a detailed
and comprehensive account of what the
anti-parliamentarians were doing and thinking at each
stage of the period covered. What is just as certain is
that this book is unlikely to be the final word on the
subject. For example, not long after the original research
for this book had been completed and submitted for
examination as a doctoral thesis, a comrade in Norway
informed me that in an archive in Copenhagen he had come
across correspondence revealing the practical solidarity
given to two council communist refugees from Nazi Germany
by anti-parliamentarians in Glasgow in the mid-1930s.
Unfortunately, this discovery came too late for its
findings to be included in this text. Nevertheless, it is
to be hoped that this book will inspire others to take an
interest in its subject, and to make similar discoveries
which will help to correct, improve or expand the account
presented here. If this happens the hard work which has
gone into writing this book will have been well worth the
effort.

1. 'Anti-Parliamentarism' and 'Communism'

Anti-Parliamentary Communism - The movement for workers councils in Britain, 1917-45

by Mark Shipway

1. 'Anti-Parliamentarism' and 'Communism'

The term 'anti-parliamentary communism' begs two questions. First, what is 'anti-parliamentarism'? Secondly, what is 'communism'? This opening chapter is intended to answer these questions. It begins with a chronological account of the history of the anti-parliamentary communist groups in Britain during 1917-24, followed by an examination of the meanings attached to 'parliamentarism' and 'anti-parliamentarism' in the debates over tactics which took place within the revolutionary movement during these years. After a discussion of the deeper philosophy of anti-parliamentarism that informed its adherents' views on a wide range of issues, the chapter ends with an explanation of the anti-parliamentarians' conception of communism.

BREAKING WITH SUFFRAGISM: THE IMPACT OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

The association between the Pankhursts and Votes For Women is so firmly established in most people's minds that it may come as a surprise to find Sylvia Pankhurst occupying such a prominent place in this account of anti-parliamentarism. Most descriptions of Pankhurst's life end, or leave an unexplained gap, where this account begins with Sylvia Pankhurst still a militant suffragist, but on the brink of a major change in her ideas.

Until 1917 Pankhurst's political ambitions were summed up in the aims of the Workers' Suffrage Federation, the organisation which she had founded (as the East London Federation of Suffragettes) in 1914:

'To secure Human Suffrage, namely, a Vote, for every Woman and Man of full age, and to win Social and Economic Freedom for the People.' In July 1917 the WSF changed the name of its newspaper from the Woman's Dreadnought to Workers' Dreadnought and expanded its statement of aims slightly in order to clarify that 'Social and Economic Freedom for the People' would be established 'on the basis of a Socialist Commonwealth'.

The WSF argued that the vote would enable women workers to exert influence over the fundamental decisions affecting their lives. Universal suffrage would 'make Parliament obedient to the people's will'. [1] If it was the will of the people that a socialist society should be established, they could bring this about by electing socialists to Parliament. A prerequisite of this strategy was that the suffrage should be extended to every woman and man.

The centrality of the suffrage issue in the WSF's political outlook was reflected in its response to the February Revolution in Russia. The news that the Tsarist autocracy had been overthrown and that 'a constituent assembly is to be elected by the men and women of Russia by secret ballot and on the basis of Universal Suffrage' [2] was one of the main reasons why the WSF reacted favourably towards the February Revolution.

We can gauge how far the WSF was from anti-parliamentarism at this stage by contrasting its views with those of Guy Aldred, whose rejection of the idea that universal suffrage would produce governments which reflected and responded to ordinary people's wishes was evident in his own response to the February Revolution. In May 1917 Aldred wrote: 'We know that the vote does not mean freedom . . . In Britain, our parliament has been a sham. Everywhere parliamentary oratory is bogus passion, universal suffrage an ineffective toy gun of the democracy at play in the field of politics. Why celebrate the triumph of the toy in the land of the ex-Czar?.' [3]

While the February Revolution evoked very different responses from Aldred on the one hand and Pankhurst on the other, the October Revolution in Russia acted as a catalyst in the WSF's ideas which would eventually lead it to adopt the position already held by Aldred and his comrades. This change began in dramatic fashion. The WSF's statement of intent, 'To Secure a Vote for every Woman and Man of full age, and to win Social and Economic Freedom for the People on the basis of a Socialist Commonwealth', no longer appeared in the Workers' Dreadnought after the issue dated 19 January 1918, and the following week's issue carried an article by Sylvia Pankhurst praising the Bolsheviks' dissolution of the Constituent Assembly in Petrograd just eight days previously.

In March 1917 the WSF had looked forward to the establishment of the Constituent Assembly with keen anticipation', in January 1918 the Bolsheviks dispersed the very same Assembly before its first meeting - with Pankhurst's endorsement. Until 1917 the WSF had viewed events such as the February Revolution through the prism of the suffrage issue: after 1917 it would view issues such as suffrage through the prism of the October Revolution.

It was the emergence of the soviets in Russia, seen as the means by which the revolution had been carried out and as the administrative machinery of the post-revolutionary society, which caused the WSF to reject the parliamentary route to socialism. The group's commitment to 'Popular Control of the Management of the World' [4] was not abandoned; it was simply felt that soviets (committees of recallable delegates elected by and answerable to mass meetings of working-class people) would be far better able to bring about this goal than parliaments. In her article on the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly Sylvia Pankhurst argued: 'As a representative body, an organisation such as the All-Russian Workers', Soldiers', Sailors' and Peasants' Council is more closely in touch with and more directly represents its constituents than the Constituent Assembly, or any existing Parliament.' [5] Likewise, the view of the WSF Executive Committee was that soviets were 'the most democratic form of government yet established'. [6]

The WSF's recognition of the superiority of the soviet form quickly cast doubts on the parliamentary approach to which the group had previously adhered. In February l918 Sylvia Pankhurst asked:

"Is it possible to establish Socialism with the Parliament at Westminster as its foundation? . . . We must consider very seriously whether our efforts should not be bent on the setting aside of this present Parliamentary system and the substitution for it of a local, national and international system, built upon an occupational basis, of which the members shall be but the delegates of those who are carrying on the world's work." [7]

Similar doubts about the possibility of establishing socialism by parliamentary means and tentative suggestions of soviets as an alternative were also raised by the rest of the WSF. Resolutions adopted at the WSF's Annual Conference in May l918 showed that the organisation had not yet rejected parliamentarism completely. For example, one resolution urged workers in Britain to elect 'International Socialists' to Parliament and not to vote for any candidate who supported the war. However, another resolution argued that 'Parliament organised on a territorial basis and government from the top are suited only to the capitalist system', and called for the organisation of 'a National Assembly of Local Workers' Committees . . . which shall render Parliament unnecessary by usurping its functions'. [8] The Conference's decision to change the organisation's name from the Workers' Suffrage Federation to the Workers' Socialist Federation also signified a growing rejection of parliamentarism, as did the removal of the slogan 'Socialism, Internationalism, Votes For All' from the masthead of the Workers' Dreadnought in July 1918, and its replacement with a simple appeal 'For International Socialism'.

By the time of the general election at the end of 1918 the WSF's views on parliamentarism were still in a state of transition. When a group of Sylvia Pankhurst's admirers in Sheffield asked her to stand as a candidate in the Hallam constituency, the Dreadnought reported that Pankhurst had declined the invitation: 'in accordance with the policy of the Workers' Socialist Federation, she regards Parliament as an out-of-date machine and joins the Federation in working to establish the soviets in Britain'. [9]

Other responses to the election were less clear-cut. When a General Meeting of the WSF was questioned about its attitude it replied that the WSF 'would not run candidates and would only support Socialists, but that it could not prevent members working for Labour candidates if they wished to'. [10] Furthermore, the following statement by Sylvia Pankhurst could be interpreted as supporting involvement in the election in order to spread revolutionary ideas:

The expected General Election interests us only so far as it can be made a sounding-board for the policy of replacing capitalism by Socialism, and Parliament by the Workers' Councils. We shall be at the elections, but only to remind the workers that capitalism must go. [11]

Thus despite the WSF's growing anti-parliamentarism, in the end it gave support to three Socialist Labour Party candidates (J.T. Murphy, Arthur MacManus and William Paul) and also to David Kirkwood and John Maclean. [12] Indeed, Pankhurst herself travelled to Glasgow in mid- November 1918 to open a Grand Sale Of Work in aid of Maclean's campaign fund.

Pankhurst's support for Maclean enables us to draw another comparison between the WSF's views at this point and the anti-parliamentary position as represented by Guy Aldred. In June 1918 Aldred had opposed Maclean's decision to stand for Parliament, citing the 'Marxian truism that the workers for their own political purpose - which is the social revolutionary one of expropriating the ruling class - cannot seize and use parliamentary machinery of the capitalist state'. This was Aldred's rendition of Marx's statement in The Civil War in France, that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery, and wield it for its own purposes'. [13]

Aldred advised Maclean to 'make your programme analagous to the Sinn Fein programme only with Socialism and not mere nationalism for its objective'. [14] At the 1918 general election the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein had said that its elected Members of Parliament would boycott Westminster and establish their own parliament in Dublin. In the context of communist candidatures the 'Sinn Fein' tactic meant that

Successful candidates would not go to parliament, but would remain in their constituencies till they had a quorum, then they would constitute an assembly, insisting on the right to represent the district which elected them. Thus a dual authority is established. which could possibly spread like wild- fire, as these innovations do, and eventually challenge the state. [15]

The election of a communist candidate standing on the 'Sinn Fein' programme would be an expression of the voters' opinion that 'political authority should be withdrawn from Parliament and represented in Councils or Soviets created by and responsible to the workers'. [16] These references to 'dual authority' and 'Councils or Soviets' suggest that besides the obvious influence derived from the Irish nationalists, the example of the 1917 Russian revolution also entered into the thinking behind the 'Sinn Fein' tactic advocated by Aldred.

Only by 1919 could the WSF be said to have finally arrived at a fully-fledged anti-parliamentary position. In March of that year Sylvia Pankhurst wrote: 'Circumstance are forcing the Socialists of every country to choose whether they will work to perpetuate the Parliamentary system of government or to build up an industrial republic on Soviet lines. It is impossible to work effectively for both ends. [17] It soon became clear which choice the WSF had made. A resolution 'to ignore all Parliamentary and Municipal elections and to expose the futility of workers wasting their time and energy in working for these ends' was submitted for inclusion on the 1919 Annual Conference agenda. In June the resolution was approved and became WSF policy. [18]

On the recommendation of a courier from the newly-formed Third International the Conference instructed the WSF Executive Committee to take steps towards linking up with the new International and with other communist groups in Britain. WSF delegates were told by the Executive Committee to 'stand fast' on the position of 'No Parliamentary Action' in their discussions with other groups. [19]

Guy Aldred's favourable comments about the WSF's attitude around this time indicate the extent of the change which had taken place in the WSF's views in the space of two years; in May 1919 Aldred observed that 'the Workers' Dreadnought, under the editorship of our comrade, Sylvia Pankhurst, has been making great strides intellectually speaking, and seems now to have become a definite Revolutionary Marxian Anarchist weekly with a clear outlook on the question of Soviet Republicanism as opposed to Parliamentarism'. [20]

In July 1919 Pankhurst attempted to enlist Lenin's support for the WSF's anti-parliamentary stance in the communist unity negotiations. In a letter to the Bolshevik leader she suggested that 'if you were here, I believe you would say: Concentrate your forces upon revolutionary action; have nothing to do with the Parliamentary machine. Such is my own view.' [21]

However. Pankhurst's belief was soon disillusioned when she received Lenin's reply. After a few conciliatory remarks about anti-parliamentarians being among 'the best, most honest and sincerely revolutionary representatives of the proletariat', Lenin announced that he personally was 'convinced that to renounce participation in parliamentary elections is a mistake for the revolutionary workers of England'. [22] This was not the sort of response that anti-parliamentarians in Britain had hoped or expected to receive. The example of the Russian revolution had been instrumental in causing the WSF to abandon notions that parliamentary action could play any role in the revolutionary struggle - how quickly Lenin had forgotten the lessons of his own revolution!

Furthermore, the little anti-parliamentarians in Britain knew about Bolshevism had led them to identify it with the anarchist variety of anti-parliamentarism which inspired Aldred and his comrades. In State and Revolution (first published in English in 1919), Lenin had returned to Marx's The Civil War in France in order to revive the idea of smashing, rather than taking over, the existing state apparatus. In its own day Marx's argument had been regarded by his anarchist critics (such as Bakunin) as a retraction of his previous view that state power had to be conquered as a prelude to social change, and as an admission that anarchist views on this issue were correct. We have already seen how Guy Aldred based his opposition to John Maclean's parliamentary candidature on the arguments in The Civil in France. Thus it is hardly surprising that Aldred should have regarded State and Revolution, which put forward the same line of argument, as one of the 'immense services rendered to the cause of the workers' world revolution by Lenin', [23] Reviewing Lenin's pamphlet in December 1919 Aldred wrote that the author, 'in showing the revolutionary one-ness of all that is essential in Marx with all that counts in Bakunin, has accomplished a wonderful work'. [24]

Aldred summed up his perception of the affinity between Bolshevism and anarchist anti- parliamentarism when he wrote: 'No man can be really and truly an Anarchist without becoming a Bolshevist... no man can be really and truly a Bolshevist without standing boldly and firmly on the Anarchist platform.' [25] Other anti-parliamentarians shared this view. For example, one of the topics which Willie McDougall of the Glasgow Anarchist Group spoke about when he toured Scotland as a Spur 'missionary' in the winter of 1919-20 was 'Lenin's Anarchy'. [26]

THE ANTI-PARLIAMENTARIANS AND THE FORMATION OF THE CPGB

The communist unity negotiations, which had provoked Pankhurst to seek Lenin's views, continued throughout the rest of 1919 and most of 1920. One of the most contentious issues was whether or not the communist party should engage in parliamentary action. There was basic agreement that Parliament was not a suitable administrative form for communist society and that the revolution would not be carried out through Parliament. Both of these tasks would be fulfilled by the workers' soviets. Disagreement arose, however, over whether or not Parliament could be put to any use pending the revolution. The British Socialist Party and the Socialist Labour Party supported the use of election campaigns for propaganda purposes and Parliament as a 'tribune' from which to make revolutionary speeches. These tactics were also advocated by the Bolsheviks who termed them 'Revolutionary Parliamentarism'. The other main participants in the negotiations - the WSF and the South Wales Socialist Society - opposed Revolutionary Parliamentarism in favour of complete abstention from any involvement in parliamentary activity.

Guy Aldred had already proposed the 'Sinn Fein' tactic as one attitude communists could adopt towards elections, and in October 1919 he suggested two other options. Communists could use elections to measure the level of support for communism and to 'demonstrate the supreme political strength and unity of the Communist Party, as a prelude to revolutionary action'. Alternatively, communists could 'organise a disciplined boycott of the ballot box'. Aldred favoured the organised boycott, but could support either tactic 'without any violation of principle'. [27]

The 'bottom line' of Aldred's position was that under no circumstances should successful communist candidates take their seats in Parliament; in his opinion Revolutionary Parliamentarism, which required communists to enter Parliament and use it as a platform for revolutionary propaganda, was a contradiction in terms, because 'there can only be revolutionism OR parliamentarianism'. [28] Lenin's support for the tactic was a 'fatal compromise'. [29]

When it became clear that unity in Britain would have to be based on terms dictated by the Bolsheviks, anti-parliamentarians such as Aldred therefore faced the choice of compromising their principles or excluding themselves from the unity negotiations. In May 1920 the Glasgow Anarchist Group had renamed itself the Glasgow Communist Group to express its support for communist unity, and announced that it stood for 'the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the Soviet Republic, anti-Parliamentary agitation, and the Third International'. At the same time, however, the Group had also stated that it would not be party to 'any Unity Convention willing to . . . support men and women sitting in the capitalist Parliament House'. [30] In October 1920 the Group acknowledged that this combination of views amounted to an untenable position when it declared that it had 'suspended' its support for the Third International 'until such time as that body repudiates its "wobbling" on the question of Parliamentary Action'. [31]

The WSF tried to pursue a different course of action. In August 1920 Aldred's comrade Rose Witcop criticised the WSF for having been 'prepared to waive the question of parliamentary action for the sake of unity'. [32] This seems to have been a fair assessment of the WSF's attitude during early 1920. Sylvia Pankhurst suggested that parliamentary action was 'not a matter of principle but of tactics, always provided, or course, that Parliamentary action by Communists is used in a revolutionary manner'. [33] Within the WSF Executive Committee there was 'a very strong feeling against Parliamentary action,' but WSF delegates to the unity talks were advised that 'we might leave the question of Parliamentary Action to be worked out by the party as the situation developed'. [34] Contrary to most accounts of the unity negotiations, therefore, it was not parliamentary action which proved to be the insurmountable obstacle in the way of unity between the WSF and the other groups, but the other contentious issue of affiliation to the Labour Party.

After the announcement of a Communist Unity Convention to be held in London on 1 August at which policy decisions would be settled by majority votes binding on all participants, the WSF called an 'Emergency Conference' of 'left wing' communist groups (that is, those opposed to affiliation and parliamentary action). This was originally intended to enable the 'left wing' communists to plan their strategy in advance, since the proposed Unity Convention was bound to be dominated by 'right wing' (that is, pro-parliamentary and pro-affiliation) delegates. [35] In the event, however, the participants at the 'Emergency Conference' (held in London on 19-20 June) decided to take no further part in the unity negotiations. Instead, they proceeded to form themselves into the 'Communist Party (British Section of the Third International)' on a platform of seven 'cardinal points' which included 'refusal to engage in Parliamentary action'. [36]

Besides the WSF the other founder-members of the CP(BSTI) were the Aberdeen, Croydon and Holt Communist Groups, Gorton Socialist Society, the Manchester Soviet, Stepney Communist League and the Labour Abstentionist Party. Fortunately it has been possible to discover a little about who some of these groups were and what they stood for.

An exchange of correspondence between the Aberdeen Communist Group and one of its critics was published in the Glasgow Forward in 1920. The critic paraphrased the Group's views as follows: 'Lenin has been guilty of some fatal compromise, and Guy Aldred is entirely wrong in seeking to use the ballot box in order to register the strength of his following. Johnnie Maclean is a reformist . . . Willie Gallacher is a job hunter.' In reply, William Greig of the Aberdeen group explained that it stood for a 'clear-cut Revolutionary, anti-Parliamentary, anti-Trade Union, anti-Reform policy'. He was opposed to trade unions because they split the working class into '1,300 different sections' and he described parliamentary elections as 'job hunting expeditions at the polling booths of the capitalist class'. [37]

The Stepney Communist League had been a founder-member of the national Communist League, formed on the initiative of the Socialist Labour Party's London District Council in March 1919 and consisting mainly of a few SLP branches plus some of the groups associated with Guy Aldred, such as the Glasgow Anarchist Group. The WSF was also affiliated. The League stood for the formation of workers' committees to 'resist all legislation and industrial action directed against the working class, and ultimately assuming all power, establish a working class dictatorship'. [38]

The Labour Abstentionist Party published its programme in May 1920. The Party's aim was 'The Collective Well-Being of the People', and its 'Tactical Methods' included 'Securing the election of Parliamentary Candidates pledged to abstain from taking their seats' and 'Propagation of the Futility of Parliamentary Action'. [39]

The secretary/treasurer of the Labour Abstentionist Party, E. T. Whitehead, became secretary of the CP(BSTI) at the June conference and was soon soliciting Guy Aldred's support. Whitehead told Aldred that

we are definitely against parliamentary action. This does not mean that we are necessarily against taking part in elections, but the party is against running candidates for the present. It will always be dead against any candidates taking their seats, and should it decide to run them, they would have to adopt your ['Sinn Fein'] programme as suggested by you in the May Spur. [40]

Aldred spurned Whitehead's approach: partly because he was opposed to the way in which the CP(BSTI)'s programme had been 'foisted on the movement' by a conference of 'delegates' with no real mandates from the groups they claimed to represent, but mainly because of the inconsistency of an avowedly anti-parliamentary organisation declaring itself the 'British Section' of an organisation committed to Revolutionary Parliamentarism. [41] This inconsistency. which had led the Glasgow Communist Group to 'suspend' its support for the Third International rather than compromise its adherence to anti-parliamentarism, perplexed the CP(BSTI) for several months after its formation, and the party's attempts to resolve the problem had fractious consequences.

In 'Left-Wing' Communism, An Infantile Disorder (written during April-May 1920). Lenin had just directed a strong attack against anti-parliamentary tendencies within the various Western European communist groups. Regarding the situation in Britain Lenin stated that 'British Communists should participate in parliamentary action' and that communist unity in Britain should be based on 'obligatory participation in parliament'. [42] During the summer of 1920 extracts from Lenin's pamphlet were published in the revolutionary press in Britain. Because of the prestige Lenin enjoyed in the eyes of most British revolutionaries, his pamphlet undoubtedly exerted considerable influence in the debates about parliamentary action. This became clear when the decisive Communist Unity Convention was held on 31 July-I August. In a message addressed to the delegates Lenin repeated that he was 'in favour of participation in Parliament' [43] and it was duly decided by 186 votes to 19 that the Communist Party of Great Britain would adopt Revolutionary Parliamentarism as one of its tactics. At the same time, the Second Congress of the Third International was being held in Moscow. Various resolutions advocating Revolutionary Parliamentarism were adopted and the tactic was also included among the International's Twenty- One Conditions of Admission.

Lenin's pamphlet, his letter to the Communist Unity Convention, and the decisions of the Second Congress, all emphasised the conflict inherent in the CP(BSTI) declaring itself against parliamentary action and for the Third International. The British delegates to the Second Congress, Sylvia Pankhurst among them, left Russia with instructions to unite in a single party within four months of their return, on the political basis of the resolutions adopted by the Congress. Initially the CP(BSTI) remained defiant. At a conference in Manchester on 18-19 September it voted to accept the Third International's Conditions of Admission 'with the reservation that the passages referring to the discipline to be applied to parliamentary representatives does not affect our Party, which does not take Parliamentary action'. [44]

Soon afterwards, Sylvia Pankhurst outlined her views on what course of action the CP(BSTI) should follow. Arguing that the tactic of Revolutionary Parliamentarism was likely to be abandoned at the next Congress of the International, she advised the CP(BSTI) to accept the International's terms of admission and unite with the CPGB to form a single, united Communist Party in Britain. [45]

This advice was based on the impressions Pankhurst had formed whilst attending the Second Congress in Moscow. There had been a sizeable presence of anti-parliamentary delegates from various groups throughout Europe and America. Pankhurst believed that if they held to their views and grew in strength they would be able to form an anti-parliamentary majority by the time the Third Congress was held. Pankhurst also had informal discussions with Lenin, during which he told her that parliamentary action and affiliation to the Labour Party were 'not questions of principle at all, but of tactics, which may be employed advantageously in some phases of the changing situation and discarded with advantage in others. Neither question, in his opinion, is important enough to cause a split in the Communist ranks.' According to Pankhurst, Lenin 'dismissed' the issue of parliamentary action as 'unimportant'; if the decision to employ Parliamentary action had been a mistake it could be 'altered at next year's Congress'. [46] Judging by the advice Pankhurst gave the CP(BSTI), she seems to have been won over by Lenin's persuasive assurances.

Subsequently, at a conference in Cardiff on 4 December, the CP(BSTI) voted to accept fully all Statutes and Theses of the International - although, once again. 'it was made abundantly clear in the argument that this vote did not mean that this party had in the slightest degree changed its views on the advisability of Revolutionary Parliamentarism for Britain'. [47]

Not all CP(BSTI) members agreed with this decision. The four Manchester branches, which between them claimed to have 200 members (a third of the party's total membership), resigned from the party in protest, regarding the decision to unite with the CPGB on the basis of a programme including a commitment to parliamentary action as a 'sell-out' to parliamentarism. [48] E. T. Whitehead replied that as far as he was aware 'no single member of this Party is prepared to be a member of a party which adopts revolutionary Parliamentarism as one of its tactics'. [49] Unity with the CPGB and affiliation to the Third International would involve joining organisations committed to the possibility of using Revolutionary Parliamentarism, but the CP(BSTI) would still be free to argue against the tactic ever being put into practice. To this end, Sylvia Pankhurst advised the anti-parliamentarians to 'keep together and form a strong, compact left block' within the CPGB and to 'insist that the constitution of the Party should leave them free to propagate their policy in the Party and in the Third International as a whole'. The Workers' Dreadnought would continue to appear, as 'an independent organ giving an independent support to the Communist Party from the Left Wing standpoint'. [50]

The CP(BSTI) finally united with the CPGB at a second Communist Unity Convention held in Leeds at the end of January 1921. This provoked an immediate response from those anti- parliamentarians who had doubted the compatibility of opposition to parliamentary action and support for the Third International. The Glasgow Communist Group began publication of a new paper (the Red Commune), because 'there is no other party organ in this country . . . that stands fearlessly for Communism. They all urge or compromise with, in some shape or form, parliamentarianism.' The new platform of the Glasgow Communist Group advocated 'Anti- Parliamentary Activity; (a) Boycotting the Ballot Box; (b) Communist Anti-Parliamentary or Sinn Fein Candidature'. The Glasgow Group also invited all anti-parliamentarians to 'unite with us in an anti-Parliamentary Federation or Party'. [51] As a result a conference was held in Glasgow at Easter 1921 at which the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation was formed as a direct challenge to the pro-parliamentary CPGB. The Glasgow Communist Group became the Central Branch of the new organisation.

OPPOSITION TO PARLIAMENTARISM AFTER THE FORMATION OF THE CPGB

The CP(BSTI)'s expectation that it would be able to put forward anti-parliamentary views freely within the CPGB turned out to be mistaken. In September 1921 Sylvia Pankhurst was expelled from the CPGB because the Dreadnought's repeated criticisms of CPGB policy contravened party discipline as laid down in the Conditions of Admission. [52] Many of Pankhurst's comrades were forced out of the CPGB on similar charges.

The position that Aldred and the Glasgow Communist Group had adopted that anti-parliamentarism and support for the Third International were mutually exclusive commitments - proved to be more perceptive. In 1921, while Aldred was serving a one-year prison sentence for sedition arising out of the publication of the Red Commune, Rose Witcop went to Russia to sound out the possibility of the APCF acquiring 'associate membership' of the Third International. This could be granted to 'groups or parties . . . who in due course would be prepared to join the national Communist Party of their country'. Aldred was not prepared to contemplate unity with the CPGB, but 'he was not opposed to the mission seeking information and financial backing'. Witcop attended the Third Congress of the International and 'received promise of solid financial backing for the Spur, payment of all legal and other expenses of the High Court trial at Glasgow [the Red Commune sedition case], maintenance for Guy Aldred whilst in prison, and financial backing when liberated'. However, such support would only be given 'on condition that she could secure the promise by Aldred and the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation of acceptance of membership of the Communist Party and the Moscow line'. Since this would have required the APCF to abandon its anti-parliamentary principles, when Guy Aldred was released from prison in mid-1922 all contacts between the APCF and the Third International were severed. [53]

Following her expulsion from the CPGB Sylvia Pankhurst involved herself in efforts to regroup anti-parliamentary communists at a national and international level. The anti-parliamentary Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD), which had been excluded from the International following the Third Congress, had announced that it was a forming a Fourth International. The Workers' Dreadnought quickly declared its support for the KAPD's initiative [54] and during the winter of 1921-2 Pankhurst began organising a Communist Workers' Party in Britain. In February 1922 the new party published a brief set of principles which included the statement that it was resolved 'to take no part in elections to Parliament and the local governing bodies, and to carry on propaganda exposing the futility of Communist participation therein'. [55].

Anti-parliamentarianism also featured in the programme of the All-Workers' Revolutionary Union, an organisation formed on the Dreadnought group's initiative in September 1922. The AWRU was set up as 'One Big Union' which would unite workers in the struggle to overthrow capitalism and then function as the administrative machinery of the post-revolutionary communist society. The AWRU's statement of principles declared: 'The AWRU rejects all responsibility for the administration of the capitalist State or participation in the elections to Parliament and the local governing bodies.' [56]

The programmes adopted by the Communist Workers' Party and the All-Workers' Revolutionary Union set the tone for Sylvia Pankhurst's remarks about the general election held in November 1922:

'We expect nothing from the General Election. It belongs to the Capitalist civilisation which is nearing its end. With that civilisation Parliaments and Cabinets as we know them today will disappear. We are looking forward to the advent of Communism and its industrial councils.' [57]

In the November general election Guy Aldred fulfilled his intention of putting into practice the 'Sinn Fein' tactic by standing in the Glasgow constituency of Shettleston. This caused some dissension within the ranks of the APCF: the 'anarchist faction' within the group 'asserted its opposition to the use of the ballot box even as a weapon against parliamentarism', and the APCF refused to give official support to Aldred's campaign. The APCF's decision was somewhat inconsistent, considering that its forerunner, the Glasgow Communist Group, had endorsed the 'Sinn Fein' policy as a valid anti-parliamentary tactic in the Red Commune in February 1921. Nevertheless, 'repudiating the election as a group, the comrades still helped, unenthusiastically, as comrades'. [58]

Aldred's election address stated: 'I stand for the complete and final overthrow of the present social system and the immediate establishment of a Socialist Commonwealth.' He rejected all canvassing, electioneering and promises of reforms. In opposition to 'the capitalist State and the Parliamentary system of Government', he urged workers to 'discover and evolve into a new political or social structure their power on the industrial field'. If elected he would refuse to swear the oath of allegiance to the monarchy or take his seat in Parliament. [59] The result was: J. Wheatley (Labour) 14 695 votes; T. Ramsay (National Liberal) 9704; G. Aldred (Communist) 470.

When the Glasgow Communist Group announced its support for the 'Sinn Fein' tactic in February 1921 the Workers' Dreadnought had commented: 'It is a puzzle to us how to reconcile the anti- parliamentarism of the platform of this Group with its tactics of running anti-parliamentary candidates pledged not to take the oath and pledged not to sit.' [60] Consequently, the Dreadtnought criticised Guy Aldred's Shettleston campaign. dubbing him an 'Anti-Parliamentary Parliamentarian'. [61] In June 1923 Aldred and Pankhurst spoke in opposition to each other in a debate in London. and according to Aldred Pankhurst 'proclaimed herself a convinced anti-parliamentarian and again denounced my Shettleston candidature'. Aldred continued: 'In the Workers' Dreadnought for 7th July, 1923 Sylvia Pankhurst returned to her attack on me for the Shettleston campaign and again sneered from the absolute Anti-Parliamentarian standpoint of one who believed in boycotting the ballot box entirely'. [62]

When Sylvia Pankhurst visited Glasgow in November 1923 to address two Scottish Workers' Republican Party municipal election meetings. the APCF made the most of its opportunity to turn the tables. The SWRP had used a Dreadnought account of the Poplar Board of Guardians' instigation of a police baton charge on a demonstration of unemployed workers as the basis of a leaflet distributed when Poplar Board member George Lansbury addressed Glasgow Trades Council in October l923. [63] This was the only link between Pankhurst and the SWRP, and Pankhurst claimed afterwards that she had spoken against parliamentarism at the two meetings. [64] However, her appearance on the platform of a group contesting twelve seats in the municipal elections proved irresistible to the APCF. They distributed a leaflet for the occasion entitled 'Sylvia's Anti-Parliamentary Comedy', in which Pankhurst's criticisms of Aldred were returned in good measure: How can the person who urges you to "boycott the ballot box" also advise you to "Vote Red Labour" [the SWRP's campaign slogan] . . If it is wrong to support a candidate pledged not to take his seat, is it not more wrong to support candidates who intend to take their seats?.' [65]

Nevertheless, Pankhurst's appearance on the SWRP platform did not mean that she had changed her attitude towards elections or Parliament. During the 1923 general election she called for propaganda to expose the futility of involvement in Parliamentary elections. [66] The APCF also distributed leaflets urging workers to boycott the ballot box. [67] By the time of the 1924 general election the Workers' Dreadnought had ceased publication, but anti-parliamentary propaganda was sustained by the APCF, who repeated that workers 'have nothing to gain from voting. Consequently they should boycott the ballot box.' [68]

REVOLUTIONARY PARLIAMENTARISM

We now turn to a more detailed examination of the precise meanings attached to 'parliamentarism' and 'anti-parliamentarism' during the period covered by the preceding chronological account. After 1917 the anti-parliamentary communists' efforts to define their opposition to parliamentarism were mainly provoked by the Bolsheviks' advocacy of Revolutionary Parliamentarism as a tactic to be adopted by the Third International's member parties. Therefore an examination of the communist theory of anti-parliamentarism is best considered in the context of this tactic.

The Bolsheviks were not suggesting that communists should enter Parliament in order to agitate for reforms. The Third International had been founded on the premise that the era in which reformist legislation benefiting the working class was possible had come to an end, and that 'The epoch of the communist revolution of the proletariat' had begun. [69] Nor were the Bolsheviks suggesting that the revolution could be carried out 'within the framework of the old bourgeois parliamentary democracy'. The 'most profound revolution in mankind's history' required 'the creation of new forms of democracy, new institutions', which the experience of the revolution in Russia had revealed to be the soviets or workers' councils. [70] The anti-parliamentary communists in Britain agreed with the Bolsheviks on these points. Rose Witcop stated that 'it is impossible for the working class to gain its emancipation by Act of Parliament', [71] and the WSF argued that the 'guiding and co-ordinating machinery' of the revolutionary struggle 'could take no other form than that of the Soviets'. [72]

The Bolsheviks, however, drew a distinction between 'the question of parliamentarianism as a desirable form of the political regime' and 'the question of using parliament for the purpose of promoting the revolution'. [73] Although the revolution itself would be carried out by soviets and not by Parliament, this did not rule out the possibility of using Parliament to 'promote the revolution' in the meantime. Whether or not communists chose to use Parliament in this way was entirely a tactical matter:

'Anti-parliamentarianism' on principle, that is, the absolute and categorical rejection of participation in elections and in revolutionary parliamentary activity, is therefore a naive and childish doctrine which is beneath criticism, a doctrine which is . . . blind to the possibility of revolutionary parliamentarianism. [74] The Bolsheviks acknowledged that the abstentionist position was 'occasionally founded on a healthy disgust with paltry parliamentary politicians' [75] but they criticised abstentionists for not recognising the possibility of creating 'a new, unusual, non- opportunist, non-careerist parliamentarism'. [76] According to the Bolsheviks, Parliament was a 'tribune' of public opinion which revolutionaries could and should use to influence the masses outside, while election campaigns should also be used as an opportunity for revolutionary propaganda and agitation. This was what the Bolsheviks meant by 'Revolutionary Parliamentarism'. As Lenin put it, 'participation in parliamentary elections and in the struggle on the parliamentary rostrum is obligatory for the party of the revolutionary proletariat precisely for the purpose of educating the backward strata of its own class'. [77] However, the anti-parliamentary communists in Britain doubted that this tactic could be put to any effective use and advanced three main arguments against it.

First, the aim of winning votes would come into conflict with the aim of putting across revolutionary propaganda: 'the way to secure the biggest vote at the polls is to avoid frightening anyone by presenting to the electors diluted reformist Socialism . . . Whatever party runs candidates at the election will trim its sails'. [78] In her letter to Lenin in July 1919 Sylvia Pankhurst explained that

our movement in Great Britain is ruined by Parliamentarism, and by the County Councils and Town Councils. People wish to be elected to these bodies . . . All work for Socialism is subordinated to these ends; Socialist propaganda is suppressed for fear of losing votes . . . Class consciousness seems to vanish as the elections draw nigh. A party which gains electoral successes is a party lost as far as revolutionary action is concerned. [79]

Secondly, the anti-parliamentary communists disagreed that Parliament could be an effective platform for revolutionary speeches. The Dreadnought pointed out that 'most people do not read the verbatim reports of Parliamentary debates'. The capitalist press never gave revolutionary speeches the prominence enjoyed by the utterances of capitalist politicians, and only reported 'those least wise, least coherent sentences which the Press chooses to select just because they are most provocative and least likely to convert'. [80] Guy Aldred argued that 'the value of speeches in Parliament turn upon the power of the press outside and exercise no influence beyond the point allowed by that press'. As long as newspapers' contents remained dictated by the interests of their capitalist owners, revolutionary speech-making in Parliament would be 'impotent as a propaganda activity'. [81] In his Shettleston election address Aldred maintained that 'street-corner oratory educates the worker more effectively than speeches in Parliament'. [82] This being the case there was little to be gained by entering Parliament: as the Glasgow Anarchist Group argued, 'fighters for Revolution can more effectively spend their time in propaganda at the work-gates and public meetings'. [83]

Thirdly, the anti-parliamentary communists pointed out that 'it is the revolutionary parliamentarian who becomes the political opportunist'. [84] They saw 'nothing but menace to the proletarian cause from Communists entering Parliament: first, as revolutionary Communists, only to graduate later, slowly but surely, as reformist politicians'. [85] No matter what their initial intentions might be, communist MPs would soon 'lose themselves in the easy paths of compromise'. [86] As Pankhurst argued in September 1921, 'the use of Parliamentary action by Communists is . . . bound to lead to the lapses into rank Reformism that we see wherever members of the Communist Party secure election to public bodies'. [87]

When they sought to explain why out-and-out revolutionaries became tame reformists after entering Parliament, the anti-parliamentary communists referred to the class nature of the capitalist state, of which Parliament was a part. The entire function and business of Parliament was concerned with the administration and palliation of the capitalist system in the interest of the ruling class. Parliament was 'the debating chamber of the master class'. [88] Anyone who entered Parliament and participated in its business automatically shouldered responsibility for running capitalism. 'The result of working class representatives taking part in the administration of capitalist machinery, is that the working class representatives become responsible for maintaining capitalist law and order and for enforcing the regulations of the capitalist system itself.' [89] The only way to avoid such lapses into reformism or outright reaction was to shun any participation in capitalism's administrative apparatus - and that meant rejecting any notion that communists should enter Parliament.

The Bolsheviks' most telling response to the anti-parliamentarians' case was to argue that while opportunism, careerism and reformism were characteristics of capitalist politicians, there was no reason why communists should inevitably end up behaving in the same manner. Willie Gallacher, whose anti-parliamentary views were criticised by Lenin in 'Left-Wing' Communism, An Infantile Disorder, recalled arguing with Lenin that 'any working class representative who went to Parliament was corrupted in no time'. Lenin then asked Gallacher:

'If the workers sent you to represent them in Parliament, would you become corrupt?' I answered: 'No, I'm sure that under no circumstances could the bourgeoisie corrupt me.' 'Well then, Comrade Gallacher,' he said with a smile, 'you get the workers to send you to Parliament and show them how a revolutionary can make use of it.' [90]

In retrospect, however, this was an argument from which the anti-parliamentary communists emerged victorious. The CPGB did use election campaigns to advocate all sorts of reformist demands. The few MPs who represented the CPGB in Parliament did not use Parliament as a platform for revolutionary speeches. Soon after the 1922 general election Sylvia Pankhurst observed that the CPGB's MPs had 'told the House of Commons nothing about Communism . . . Yet it is to secure Parliament for speeches on Communism, and for denunciations of Parliament as an institution, that they claim to have sought election'. [91] Where they won places on elected bodies CPGB members did participate in reformist or reactionary administration of parts of the capitalist state. The anti-parliamentary communists' case was strengthened by every 'incorruptible' communist who turned reformist. There was no need to develop any systematic explanation for this phenomenon for, in practice it inevitably occurred, and the anti-parliamentarians were able to point to a never-ending series of examples to support their contentions.

WORKING-CLASS SELF-EMANCIPATION

The anti-parliamentarians' case against Revolutionary Parliamentarism was based on political principles which found expression not only in opposition to the use of elections and Parliament as weapons in the class struggle, but also in every other aspect of their political ideas and activities. It is to a discussion of these underlying principles that we now turn.

The Spur argued that anyone who sought to abolish capitalism by first gaining control of Parliament was going the wrong way about it, because 'Parliament is not the master of capitalism but its most humble servant'. [92] The state, including the Parliamentary apparatus, arose from the conflict between social classes and serves the interests of the ruling class. But the fundamental source of the capitalist class's power lies in its ownership and control of the means of production. Therefore, the Glasgow Anarchist Group argued, 'the State cannot be destroyed by sending men to Parliament, as voting cannot abolish the economic power of the capitalists'. [93] In order to achieve revolutionary social change the working class had to organise its power not in Parliament but on the economic field. As Guy Aldred put it: 'the working class can possess no positive or real power politically until the workers come together on the industrial field for the definite purpose of themselves taking over directly the administration of wealth production and distribution on behalf of the Workers' Republic'. [94] Parliamentary action was therefore a futile diversion from the real tasks facing the working class. It was necessary for workers to 'look, not to Parliament, but to their own Soviets'. [95]

In order to convey this view to the rest of the working class, it was the duty of revolutionaries to reject parliamentary activity 'because of the clear, unmistakeable lead to the masses which this refusal gives. [96] The Dreadnought group believed that 'the revolution can only be accomplished by those whose minds are awakened and who are inspired by conscious purpose'. [97] The working class's attachment to Parliament would have to be broken as much in the minds of working-class people as in their activities:

For the overthrow of this old capitalist system, it is necessary that the people should break away in sufficient numbers from support of the capitalist machinery, and set up another system; that they should create and maintain the Soviets as the instruments of establishing Communism. To do this, the workers must be mentally prepared and must also possess the machinery which will enable them to act. [98]

Revolutionaries could not assist this process of 'mental preparation' if they denounced Parliament as a capitalist institution whilst leading workers to the polling booths to elect communist candidates into that institution. Such behaviour would only create confusion. The use of elections and the Parliamentary forum was 'not the best method of preparing the workers to discard their faith in bourgeois democracy and Parliamentary reformism', [99] since 'participation in Parliamentary elections turns the attention of the people to Parliament, which will never emancipate them'. [100]

The anti-parliamentary communists emphasised the importance of widespread class consciousness because they believed that the revolution could not be carried out by any small group of leaders with ideas in advance of the rest of the working class: 'the revolution must not be the work of an enlightened minority despotism, but the social achievement of the mass of the workers, who must decide as to the ways and means'. [101] Parliamentary action restricted workers to a subordinate and passive role as voters and left everything up to the 'leaders' in Parliament: 'Any attempt to use the Parliamentary system encourages among the workers the delusion that leaders can fight their battles for them. Not leadership but MASS ACTION IS ESSENTIAL.' [102] Opposition to parliamentarism was vital, therefore, in order to 'impress upon the people that the power to create the Communist society is within themselves, and that it will never be created except by their will and their effort'. [103]

The term 'parliamentarism' was in fact used by anti-parliamentarians to describe all forms of organisation and activity which divided the working class into leaders and led, perpetuated the working class's subservience, and obstructed the development of widespread revolutionary consciousness. These reasons for opposing parliamentarism - in the widest sense of the term - were expressed in 1920 by the Dutch revolutionary Anton Pannekoek, who was one of the foremost theoreticians among the left communists in Germany:

parliamentary activity is the paradigm of struggles in which only the leaders are actively involved and in which the masses themselves play a subordinate role. It consists in individual deputies carrying on the main battle; this is bound to arouse the illusion among the masses that others can do their fighting for them . . . the tactical problem is how we are to eradicate the traditional bourgeois mentality which paralyses the strength of the proletarian masses; everything which lends new power to the received conceptions is harmful. The most tenacious and intractable element in this mentality is dependence upon leaders, whom the masses leave to determine general questions and to manage their class affairs. Parliamentarianism inevitably tends to inhibit the autonomous activity by the masses that is necessary for revolution. [104]

Parliamentary action - in the strictest sense - was a paradigm, that is, the clearest example of the sort of activity which anti-parliamentarians opposed; but other forms of action were also open to criticism on precisely the same grounds. For example, Sylvia Pankhurst also described trade unionism as a 'parliamentary' form of organisation, since it 'removes the work of the union from the members to the officials, [and] inevitably creates an apathetic and unenlightened membership'. [105]

The principle of working-class self-emancipation implied that the revolution could be carried out only by an active and class conscious majority of the working class. The anti-parliamentary communists' opposition to electoral and parliamentary activity was an expression of this principle, since parliamentary action obscured the vital point that Parliament was useless as a means of working-class emancipation and diminished the capacity for action by the working class as a whole. Opposition to parliamentary forms of organisation and activity was the 'negative' aspect of the principle of working-class self-emancipation; its positive aspect was expressed in the anti- parliamentary communists' support for all forms of working-class activity which encouraged the development of the class's own consciousness and capacity to act by and for itself.

THE MEANING OF COMMUNISM

The belief that widespread class consciousness was one of the essential preconditions of revolutionary working-class action - a belief which played such an important part in determining the antiparliamentarians' opposition to parliamentary action - also meant that descriptions of socialism or communism (the two terms were used interchangeably) occupied a prominent place in the anti-parliamentarians' propaganda. The anti-parliamentary communists believed that 'until the minds and desires of the people have been prepared for Communism, Communism cannot come', [106] and that 'since the masses are as yet but vaguely aware of the idea of Communism, its advocates should be ever vigilant and active in presenting it in a comprehensible form'. [107] The subject of the final section of this chapter is the idea of communism which the anti-parliamentary communists presented to the masses.

According to the anti-parliamentarians, communist society would be based on common ownership of all wealth and means of wealth-production. The abolition of private property would be decisive in overthrowing capitalism: 'Social revolution means that the socially useable means of production shall be declared common-wealth . . . It shall be the private possession of none.' [108] As soon as private property had given way to common ownership all men and women would stand in equal relationship to the means of production. The 'division of society into classes' would 'disappear' [109] and be replaced by 'a classless order of free human beings living on terms of economic and political equality'. [110] Communism would also mean the destruction of the state, which, as an institution 'erected for the specific purpose of protecting private property and perpetuating wage- slavery', [111] would disappear as a consequence of the abolition of private property and of the division of society into classes. This classless, stateless human community, based on common ownership of the means of production would also involve production for use, democratic control and free access. These three features of communist society will now be explained and examined.

Under capitalism, virtually all wealth is produced in the form of commodities, that is, goods which are produced to be sold (or otherwise exchanged) for profit via the market. In other words, there is no direct link between the production of wealth and the satisfaction of people's material needs. Such a link is established only tenuously, if at all, through the mediation of the market and the dictates of production for profit. Regardless of their real material needs, people's level of consumption is determined by whether or not they possess the means to purchase the things they require. What the system of commodity production means in practice is that the class in society which owns and controls the means of production accumulates vast extremes of wealth, while the class which is excluded from ownership and control of the means of production - the vast majority of the world's inhabitants - exists in a state of constant material insecurity and deprivation. The solution to this problem would be: 'The overthrow of Capitalism and its system of production for profit and the substitution of a system of Communism and production for use.' [112] Communism would abolish the market economy and undertake production to satisfy people's needs directly.

This takes us to the second feature of communist society mentioned earlier - democratic control, or 'the administration of wealth by those who produce wealth for the benefit of the wealth producers'. [113] Just as the struggle to overthrow capitalism would involve the conscious and active participation of the mass of the working class, so too in the post-revolutionary society of communism would the mass of the people be able to participate actively in deciding how the means of wealth-production should be used. In institutional terms this would be realised through the soviets or workers' councils, which would be 'the administrative machinery for supplying the needs of the people in communist society'. [114] The soviets would be 'councils of delegates, appointed and instructed by the workers in every kind of industry, by the workers on the land, and the workers in the home'. [115] Council delegates would be 'sent to voice the needs and desires of others like themselves'. [116]

In this way 'the average need and desire for any commodity [meaning here, any object] will be ascertained, and the natural resources and labour power of the community will be organised to meet that need'. [117] Decisions about what to produce, in what quantities, by what methods and so on, would no longer be the exclusive preserve of a minority as they are in capitalist society. Instead, the soviet decision-making machinery would 'confer at all times a direct individual franchise on each member of the community'. [118] All decisions concerning production would be made according to the freely-chosen needs and desires expressed by all members of society.

We come now to the third feature of communist society mentioned earlier: free access. The abolition of commodity production and the establishment of common ownership would mean an end to all forms of exchange: 'Money will no longer exist . . . There will be no selling, because there will be no buyers, since everyone will be able to obtain everything at will, without payment.' [119] Selling and buying imply the existence of private property: someone first has to have exclusive ownership of an object before they can be in a position to dispose of it by selling it, while someone else first has to be excluded from using that object if the only way they can gain access to it is through buying it. If common ownership existed there would be no reason for people to have to buy objects which they already owned anyway. In short, access to wealth would be free.

As a classless society of free access and production for use, communism would also mean an end to exchange relations between buyers and sellers of the particular commodity labour power (that is, between the capitalist and working classes, or bourgeoisie and proletariat. No-one's material existence would depend on having to sell their ability to work in return for a wage or salary. Sylvia Pankhurst wrote that 'wages under Communism will be abolished' [120] and that 'when Communism is in being there will be no proletariat, as we understand the term today'. [121] The direct bond between production and consumption which exists under capitalism would be severed: there would be no 'direct reward for services rendered'. [122] People's needs would be supplied 'unchecked' and 'independent of service'. [123] On the basis of the principle that 'each person takes according to need, and each one gives according to ability', [124] everyone would share in the necessary productive work of the community and everyone would freely satisfy their personal needs from the wealth created by the common effort.

The establishment of free access to the use and enjoyment of common wealth would facilitate the disappearance of the state's coercive apparatus. The concept of 'theft', for example, would lose all meaning. Thus, 'Under Communism, Courts of Justice will speedily become unnecessary, since most of what is called crime has its origins in economic need, and in the evils and conventions of capitalist society'. [125] For the same reasons, 'stealing, forgery, burglary, and all economic crimes will disappear, with all the objectionable apparatus for preventing, detecting and punishing them'. [126]

Common objections encountered by advocates of communism are that a society based on free access to wealth be open to abuse through greed and gluttony and that there would be no incentive to work. Such assertions are often based on a conception of human nature which sees people as inherently covetous and lazy. The standard communist response is to deny that any such thing as human nature exists. What these opponents of communism are referring to is human behaviour, which is not a set of immutable traits but varies according to material circumstances. Such a distinction (between human nature and human behaviour) is useful in making sense of some of the anti-parliamentarians' arguments. However, a conception of human nature does appear to lie beneath other arguments that they used - albeit a conception radically different from that which sees people as naturally idle beings. Rose Witcop argued that 'the physical need for work; and the freedom to choose one's work and one's methods' were in fact basic human needs and urges. [127] Indeed, this could be taken as another example of capitalism's inability to satisfy basic human needs. Within the capitalist system workers are not free to choose what work they do and how they do it. Such decisions are not made by the workers, but by their bosses. Only when the workers manage the industries', Sylvia Pankhurst argued, would they be able to make decisions about the conditions of production 'according to their desires and social needs'. [128]

At this point it might be helpful to draw a distinction between 'work', meaning freely-undertaken creative activity, and 'employment', meaning the economic compulsion to carry out tasks in order to earn a living. The anti-parliamentarians felt that an aversion to the latter was perfectly understandable, since employment in this sense could be seen as 'unnatural': 'a healthy being does not need the whip of compulsion, because work is a physical necessity. and the desire to be lazy is a disease of the capitalist system'. [129] In a communist society employment, or forced labour, would give way to work in the sense of fulfilment of the basic human need for freely-undertaken creative activity. As Guy Aldred pointed out, the urge to satisfy this need was evident in workers' behaviour even under capitalism; communism would provide the conditions for its most complete fulfilment: 'Men and women insist on discovering hobbies with which to amuse themselves after having sweated for a master. Does it not follow that, in a free society, not only would each work for all, but each would toil with earnest devotion at that which best suited and expressed his or her temperament?'. [130] Sylvia Pankhurst shared Aldred's expectations: in her vision of communism 'labour is a joy, and the workers toil to increase their skill and swiftness, and bend all their efforts to perfect the task'. [131] Thus the severance of all direct links between 'services rendered' and 'rewards' would not result in any lack of inclination to work, because in a communist society work would be enjoyable and satisfying in itself, instead of simply a means to an end.

The anti-parliamentary communists approached the problem of abuse of free access in a number of ways. First, on a common sense level, Rose Witcop pointed out that 'a man can consume two lunches in one day only at his peril, and wear two suits of clothing, or make a storehouse of his dwelling, only to his own discomfiture'. In the unlikely event of anyone wanting to discomfit themselves in such a way, 'we will be content to humour such pitiful perverseness. It is the least we can do'. [132]

Secondly, the anti-parliamentary communists argued that greed was a behavioural response to the scarcity which characterised capitalist society. Different material conditions would produce other forms of behaviour. The establishment of communism would 'provide a soil in which the social instincts of mankind will rapidly develop. The anti-social propensities not being stimulated by unbearable economic pressure will tend consequently to die out.' [133] Sylvia Pankhurst also argued that as a behavioural response to scarcity greed would disappear when the circumstances which stimulated it were abolished. While suggesting that a communist society would not permit anyone to 'hoard up goods for themselves that they do not require and cannot use', she went on to argue: 'the only way to prevent such practices is not by making them punishable,' it is by creating a society in which . . . no-one cares to be encumbered with a private hoard of goods when all that they need is readily supplied as to need it from the common storehouse'. [134]

These comments suggest a third way of overcoming the problem of abuse of free access. 'Over- indulgence' presupposed a continuation of scarcity: if one person consumed more than their 'fair share' there would be insufficient left over for everyone else. However, if there was sufficient wealth to satisfy everyone's needs, no matter how much any individual wanted to consume, then the problem of abuse of free access would disappear, along with any need to refute such an objection with arguments concerning altruism, human nature and so on. This was the main way in which the anti-parliamentary communists addressed the problem of abuse of free access. According to Sylvia Pankhurst, in a communist society there would be 'Abundance for all' [135] and people's needs would be satisfied 'without stint or measure'. [136]

The question of how a communist society would be able to provide abundance was tackled in a number of ways.

First, the meaning of abundance was related to the level of needs which people in a communist society might be expected to express. Rose Witcop observed 'how few things we really need' : food, clothing and shelter by way of material essentials, and work, comradeship and freedom from restrictions by way of non-material essentials. [137] This might sound more like austerity than abundance - but if a communist society satisfied only these basic needs and nothing more it would still be a vast improvement on capitalism for most of the world's population, since capitalism has never shown itself capable of providing even these most basic of needs for more than a small minority of the world's inhabitants.

Even if abundance is defined merely as the adequate provision of basics such as food, clothing and shelter, this still begs the question of how communism would be able to provide everyone with such things when capitalism patently cannot. To answer this question we must move on to a second argument put forward by the anti-parliamentary communists. Through its constant development of the means of production and distribution capitalism itself had laid the technological foundations upon which a society of abundance could be built. So long as the level of production remained fettered by the dictates of production for profit via the market, the potential for abundance which capitalism had created would never be realised. The communist revolution would smash these fetters and institute direct production for use. New inventions and technology in the field of production would be applied to the satisfaction of human needs. They would 'constantly facilitate' greater and greater increases in society's productive capacity and 'remove any need for rationing or limiting of consumption'. [138] In short, there would be 'plenty for all'. [139]

Thirdly, the anti-parliamentary communists argued that levels of production would also be boosted by integrating into socially-useful productive activity the vast numbers of people whose occupations were specific to a money-market-wages system:

Just consider the immense untapped reservoirs for the production of almost unlimited supplies of every imaginable form of useful wealth. Think of the scores of millions of unemployed, not forgetting the useless drones at the top of the social ladder. Estimate also the millions of officials, attendants, flunkeys, whose potentially valuable time is wasted under this system. Consider the wealth that could be created by the huge army of needless advertising agents, commercial travellers, club-men, shop-walkers, etc., not to mention the colossal army of police, lawyers, judges, clerks, who are ONLY 'NECESSARY' UNDER CAPITALISM! Add now the scandalous waste of labour involved in the military machine - soldiers, airmen, navymen, officers, generals, admirals, etc. Add, also, the terrific consumption of energy in the manufacture of armaments of all kinds that is weighing down the productive machine. Properly used, these boundless supplies of potential wealth-creating energy, could ensure ample for all - not excluding 'luxuries' - together with a ridiculously short working day. Likewise, there would be pleasant conditions of labour, and recreation and holidays on a scale now only enjoyed by the rich! [140]

Finally, the anti-parliamentary communists argued that communism had to be established on a global scale, so that to assist its aim of bringing about abundance for all communism would have the productive capacity and resources of the entire world at its disposal.

Only when abundance was not assumed did the anti-parliamentary communists fall back on a view of people as naturally altruistic beings. Sylvia Pankhurst acknowledged the possibility of 'some untoward circumstance' producing 'a temporary shortage'. To cope with scarcity in such circumstances everyone would 'willingly share what there is, the children and the weaker alone receiving privileges, which are not asked, but thrust upon them'. [141]

When the anti-parliamentarians described themselves as communist, therefore, they meant that they stood for the establishment of a classless, stateless society based on common ownership and democratic control of the world's resources, in which money, exchange and production for profit would be replaced by production for the direct satisfaction of people's needs and free access to the use and enjoyment of all wealth.

The description of communism was a vital element in the anti-parliamentarians' propaganda, since it held out the prospect of a solution to the problems confronting working-class people every day of their lives. However, the description of communist society was more than just a pole-star guiding the direction of the class struggle. After the Russian revolution the anti-parliamentary communists were confronted with a regime under which, it was widely believed, the distant goal of communism was actually being brought into reality. In Chapter 2 one of the issues which will be discussed is the extent to which the anti-parliamentarians were able to evaluate this claim by using the conception of communism outlined above as their yardstick.

2. The Russian Revolution

Anti-Parliamentary Communism -- The movement for workers councils in Britain, 1917-45

by Mark Shipway

2. THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

For better or worse the events of the Russian revolution and its aftermath influenced virtually all the areas of anti-parliamentary communist thought discussed in Chapters 1-4 of this account. Particular aspects of the revolution's impact-such as the way in which perceptions of the soviets' role during and after the revolution changed the WSF's view of Parliament as an instrument of social change -- are mainly dealt with in Chapters 1, 3 and 4. This chapter concentrates on the anti-parliamentary communists' interpretation of the revolution itself, their theoretical and practical responses to it, and their assessment of the changes which took place in Russia after 1917.

FROM THE FEBRUARY TO THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION

During 1917 two demands dominated the WSF's propaganda: extension of the suffrage to every adult woman and man, and an end to the war. Because of these emphases in its own politics the WSF welcomed the February Revolution in Russia. The tyrannical Russian monarchy had been overthrown, clearing the way for government by a constituent assembly elected on the basis of universal suffrage. Moreover, since the overthrow of the Tsar had been motivated by war-weariness and a desire for peace on the part of the Russian workers and peasants, it seemed logical to conclude that these same workers and peasants would proceed to elect a government pledged to end Russia's involvement in the war. If this happened the other belligerent countries would surely be quick to follow Russia's example.

The WSF's views were not shared by Guy Aldred and his comrades. Aldred conceded that the new Russian government might be 'more enlightened' than its predecessor and that a republic might be 'saner' than a monarchy, but if the experience of parliamentary democracy in Britain was anything to go by the establishment of a similar system in Russia gave little cause for celebration. 'We know that tomorrow, the apostle of socialism will be jailed again in Russia, for sedition and what not. And so "we do not celebrate the Russian revolution". We prefer to work for Socialism, for the only possible social revolution, that of the world's working-class against the world's ruling-class.' [1] Aldred and his comrades also differed from the WSF in their views about how to end the war. While the WSF regarded peace as something for the people to demand and for governments to negotiate, anti-parliamentarians such as Rose Witcop advocated direct action by the working class. 'The suggestion of telling the Government what we want points to the incapacity . . . to grip the spirit of the Russian people. In Russia they did not reason with or explain to the Czar . . . they just gave the Government to understand by downing their bayonets!'. In addition to the view implied by this remark -- that mutiny among the armed forces would be one way of bringing the war to an end -- Witcop also called for 'industrial action' and 'no bargaining with Governments'. [2]

Despite their contrasting responses to the February Revolution, writers in the Spur and the Dreadnought agreed that the struggle in Russia was unlikely to come to a halt at whatever had been achieved in February.

In October 1917 Glasgow Anarchist Group member Freda Cohen reported widespread dissatisfaction in the ranks of the Russian army and 'some rumour of the peasants seizing the land'. To all close observers of events it was obvious that the struggle going on in Russia was 'not, as it seemed at the beginning, simply a political or anti-Czarist one'. According to Cohen 'the struggle going on there in broad daylight, just reflects the self-same struggle that has been, and is going on underground, all over the world'. By this Cohen meant the class struggle between the capitalists and the working class, and she predicted that the Russian workers would not be content with 'settling down in the old work-a-day world with no other gain than a new set of masters and newly forged chains'. [3] Sylvia Pankhurst had hinted at a similar prognosis a few months earlier when she had asked rhetorically: 'Is it not plain that still the Russian Revolution is continuing: still the struggle is going on: still the hold of the capitalists is upon the country and only in part is it overthrown?' [4]

Following the February Revolution the Dreadnought had drawn attention to the situation of dual power which existed between the Provisional Government appointed by the Duma and the 'Council of Labour Deputies' responsible to workers and soldiers. [5] At the end of June 1917 it reported that the 'Council of Workers' And Soldiers' Deputies' was now capable of overthrowing the Provisional Government should it wish to do so. Discussing the various Russian political parties' attitudes towards this situation the Dreadnought explained that while the Mensheviks were disinclined to support any seizure of power by the workers' and soldiers' councils,

The Maximalists and Leninites, on the other hand, desire to cut adrift from the capitalist parties altogether, and to establish a Socialist system of organisation and industry in Russia, before Russian capitalism, which is as yet in its infancy, gains power and becomes more difficult than at present to overthrow. We deeply sympathise with this view. [6]

Thereafter the Dreadnought continued to note the growing strength of the Bolsheviks and to express its agreement with their aims. In August, for example, mass desertions from the army and rapidly-falling living standards in Petrograd were said to be winning support for 'the position adopted at the outset by Lenin ....namely, that Free Russia must refuse to continue fighting in a capitalist War'. The Dreadnought added that Lenin's view was 'a position which we ourselves have advocated from the first. [7]

At the end of September the Dreadnought reported with 'great satisfaction' that 'the Socialists who are variously called Bolsheviks, Maximalists and Leninites have secured a majority on the Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates'. For the benefit of its readers the report outlined the main points of the Bolshevik programme:

The Maximalists are the International Socialists who recognise that this is a capitalist War and demand an immediate peace, and who desire to establish in Russia not a semi-Democratic Government and the capitalist system such as we have in England, but a Socialist State. They desire Socialism, not in some far away future, but in the immediate present. The Maximalists desire that the CWSD [Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates] shall become the Government of Russia until the Elections for the Constituent Assembly have taken place. [8]

Finally, when it heard that the Bolsheviks had seized power in the October Revolution the Dreadnought announced its wholehearted Support for this turn of events: 'the latest revolt of the Russian Revolution, the revolt with which the name of Lenin is associated, has been brought about in order that the workers of Russia may no longer be disinherited and oppressed. This revolt is the happening which definitely makes the Russian Revolution of the twentieth century the first of its kind'. The seizure of power was described as a 'Socialist Revolution' with 'aims and ideals' which were 'incompatible with those of capitalism'. [9]

The Spur's immediate reaction echoed this assessment of the October Revolution's nature and historic significance. An article signed by 'Narodnik' drew comparisons with the French Revolution of 1789; like its historic predecessor, the October Revolution was 'a social revolution in the fullest meaning of the word: a radical changing of all the economic, political and social arrangements; a grand attempt to reconstruct the whole structure of society, upon an entirely new foundation'. [10]

WAR AND INTERVENTION

While the Spur group regarded the October Revolution as a herald of the social revolution of the world's working class against the world's ruling class to which Guy Aldred had referred after the February Revolution, the WSF welcomed it more as a blow struck for world peace, and responded by demanding the conclusion of a peace to end the world war and by campaigning against Allied military intervention in Russia.

In contrast to the Bolsheviks revolutionary defeatist wartime slogan of 'turn the imperialist war into civil war', the peace appeals issued by the new Bolshevik government called for a 'just, democratic peace' based on no annexations, no indemnities, and the right of nations to self-determination. This policy, which 'contained an element of calculated appeal to American opinion and to such radical opinion in other countries as might be sympathetic to it', [11] immediately struck a sympathetic chord with the WSF. Sylvia Pankhurst had already suggested in August 1917 that the WSF should make a new banner bearing the slogan 'Negotiate For Peace On The Russian Terms: No Annexations: No Indemnities', [12] and after the October Revolution Pankhurst's articles in the Workers' Dread,iought frequently linked the call for peace on these terms with the fact that these were also the Bolsheviks' demands. In December 1917, for example, Pankhurst stated: 'We take our stand on the Russian declaration: "No annexations, no indemnities, the right of the peoples to decide their own destiny".' [13]

When peace negotiations between Russia and Germany opened at Brest-Litovsk towards the end of 1917, the WSF argued that other belligerent governments should follow Russia's example -- 'The Russian Socialist Government is showing us the way to obtain a just Peace' -- and urged the British labour movement to give 'strong backing for the Russian negotiators at Brest-Litovsk'. [14] While the talks were in progress Sylvia Pankhurst pointed out that 'whilst some capitalist sections would endeavour to cajole the Russian Socialists [such as the German government, which had agreed to negotiate], others would coerce them'. [15] Opposition to such coercers' -- governments which sought to overthrow the Bolshevik regime by military intervention and aid to the Bolsheviks' internal enemies -- became the predominant element in the WSF's response to the Russian revolution after Russia's withdrawal from the war in March 1918. Harry Pollitt recalled that his 'main sphere of activity at this time was with the Workers' Socialist Federation, doing propaganda for Russia. Sylvia Pankhurst was, of course, the leading spirit in the Federation . . . I covered the greater part of London with her group. We held meetings on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings, afternoons and evenings'. Even 20 years later, by which time he had become a high-ranking member of the CPGB, Pollitt's experience of working with the WSF in the anti-interventionist 'Hands Off Russia' campaign forced him to admit that the WSF had been 'made up of the most self-sacrificing and hard-working comrades it has been my fortune to come in contact with'. [16] This gives a revealing insight into the importance which the WSF attached to opposing intervention, and the amount of time and effort which it put into the campaign. Opposition to intervention was also a persistent theme of Sylvia Pankhurst's articles about international affairs in the Workers' Dreadnought until the threat of intervention finally came to an end in the autumn of 1920.

The WSF's campaign against intervention was aimed at three targets. One of these was the British government. In March 1918 Sylvia Pankhurst wrote of the 'urgent need that the Governments of all Europe should feel the pressure of the workers in their respective countries to prevent the crushing of Socialism in Russia'. [17] At its 1918 Annual Conference the WSF called on the British government to bestow legal recognition on its Russian counterpart and to initiate peace negotiations on the Bolshevik terms of no annexations, no indemnities and the right of nations to decide their own destinies. [18]

Secondly, the WSF's campaign was intended to influence the organised labour movement in Britain. A Dreadnought editorial addressed to delegates attending the January 1918 Labour Party conference urged the labour movement to 'bring every means at its disposal to support the Russian Socialist Government, the first working class Government that the world has ever seen'. [19] This meant protesting against foreign intervention in Russia.

Thirdly, the WSF's campaign was aimed at rank and file workers. At the end of 1919 the WSF demanded recognition of the Russian government, withdrawal of aid to its internal enemies and an end to intervention, and called for the organisation of a rank and file conference to make these demands and to censure the leaders of the Labour Party, TUC and Triple Alliance for their failure to organise militant opposition to intervention. [20] In July 1918 the WSF participated in the formation of a People's Russian Information Bureau which was intended to increase British workers' awareness of developments in Russia and so arouse them from their role as 'passive spectators' and 'inarticulate tools in the great struggle between the old regime of capitalism and the uprising workers of the world'. [21] The WSF believed that workers in the Allied countries held 'the key to the situation', since 'the International Capitalist war against the Workers' Soviet Republics cannot be carried on a day without the assistance of Allied workers'. Accordingly, in July 1918 the WSF called for a 'Workers' Blockade Of The Counter-Revolution', by means of an international general strike which would force the 'International Capitalists' to make peace with the 'Soviet Republics'. [22]

In the main, therefore, the WSF's efforts were directed towards encouraging workers in Britain to act as a pressure group to try to influence the British government's policies in favour of the interests of the Russian government. Only occasionally did the Dreadnought hint at a different approach to the survival of the Bolshevik regime. In April 1919 Sylvia Pankhurst argued that the 'most effectual way' to end 'the war against the Soviets of Russia' would be to 'set up the Soviets in Britain'. [23] Similarly, on May Day 1920 she wrote that there would be no peace with the Russian regime, nor with any other 'Communist republic' which might be established, 'whilst capitalism rules the powerful nations of the world'. [24] These comments suggested that the fate of the Russian revolution depended on the overthrow of capitalism elsewhere in the world -- that the best way to defend the Bolshevik regime would be to attack the capitalist regimes. As will become apparent later, however, the infrequency with which the WSF put forward such a line of argument is particularly significant in view of the Dreadnought group's subsequent reappraisal of the events of this period.

'SOCIALISM IN THE MAKING'

The amount of time and energy which the WSF put into the 'Hands Off Russia' campaign invites an examination of what the WSF thought it would be protecting when it called for defence of Soviet Russia.

Several of the comments quoted already from the Workers Dreadnought referred to the 'socialist' or 'working class' government in Russia, and to Russia as a 'soviet' or 'workers' republic. The WSF believed that the October Revolution had given the Russian working class control of state power. This belief was based on the view that the soviets or workers' councils were in charge of post-revolutionary Russian society. Since the soviets were exclusively working-class organisations, and Russia was being ruled by the soviets, this meant that the working class was now exercising its own power over society as a whole.

The Dreadnought's accounts of the changes taking place in Russia after the revolution were frequently published under the headline 'Socialism In The Making', implying that the Russian working class was presiding over a society in which socialism was being built. The ideas which the anti-parliamentarians put forward during 1919-21 concerning this notion of a 'transitional period' provide one of the most striking examples of how the Russian revolution and its aftermath made an impact on the views of the anti-parliamentary communists in Britain.

In August 1921 Sylvia Pankhurst wrote: 'Frankly, we do not believe that society will reorganise itself without the use of force on both sides, because the present system is maintained by force.' [25] In its attempts to seize and maintain power the working class would encounter violent resistance from the ruling class. The revolutionary period would be akin to 'civil war'. [26] The Dreadnought group repeatedly argued that for the duration of this period of revolutionary civil war the working class would have to exercise a dictatorship over the rest of society through its soviets. [27] This was a view shared by Guy Aldred and his comrades. In 1920 Aldred wrote of the need for a transitional period during which the workers must protect the revolution and organise to crush the counter-revolution. Every action of the working-class during that period must be organised, must be power-action, and consequently dictatorial.' [28] When the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' became a contentious issue amongst anarchists who interpreted anarchy literally as the abolition of all authority, Aldred insisted that 'there can be no efficient pursuit of working class emancipation without the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship'. [29] He was, moreover, quite prepared to defend the implication of this view -- that anarchists who did not support the dictatorship were in effect counter-revolutionaries: 'those Anarchists who oppose the dictatorship of the proletariat as a transitional measure are getting dangerously near assisting the cause of the reactionaries, though their motives may be the highest. As a believer in the class struggle, I do not share their infatuation for abstract liberty at the expense of real social liberty.' [30]

Supporters of the proletarian dictatorship saw it as a temporary expedient: 'The dictatorship in so far as it is genuine and defensible, is the suppression by Workers' Soviets of capitalism and the attempt to re-establish it. This should be a temporary state of war.' [31] The dictatorship would be necessary until the counter-revolution had been quelled and the expropriated ruling class had 'settled down to accept the new order'. [32] With the disappearance of social classes, the dictatorship - initially the political expression of working-class power over the rest of society - would gradually wither away: 'As the counter-revolution weakens, the Soviet Republic will lose its political character and assume purely useful administrative functions'. [33]

Pending the achievement of a completely classless society, however, the working class would have to adopt a series of transitional measures. As long as the state of civil war continued the workers would have to disarm the ex-ruling class and create their own 'Red Army'. [34] Anyone attempting to reintroduce economic exploitation or refusing to undertake socially useful work would be deprived of political rights: 'No person may vote, or be elected to the Soviets who refuses to work for the community, who employs others for private gain, engages in private trading, or lives on accumulated wealth. In the Soviet community such persons will soon cease to exist.' [35] This system would be enforced in part through the administration of 'revolutionary justice' by judges elected by and answerable to the soviets. [36]

During the transitional period work would be compulsory for everyone. Sylvia Pankhurst suggested that 'in the early stages before the hatred of work born of present conditions has disappeared, the community might decide that an adult person should show either a certificate of employment from his workshop or a certificate from his doctor when applying for supplies from the common storehouse'. [37] In other words the compulsion to work would come from material necessity, since only those people who had first made a contribution to production would be allowed to satisfy their needs from the communal storehouses.

Sylvia Pankhurst was explicit that during the transitional period a wages system would still exist: 'after long experience of Capitalism . . . it would be difficult to abolish the wage system altogether, without first passing through the stage of equal wages'. [38] No indication was given of how long this 'stage' or 'era' might have to last, nor was there any suggestion as to how the step from the equal wages system to a wageless society might be effected. Equal wages would be accompanied by free provision of staple necessities and 'equal rationing of scarce commodities' until the application of technology began to produce wealth in abundant quantities. [39]

Workers' labour power was not the only commodity which would be subject to buying and selling during the transitional period. The CP(BSTI)'s programme assumed that all exchange transactions should be under the exclusive control of the state: 'For the period in which money and trading shall continue, local and national Soviet banks will be set up and shall be the only banks.' [40]

Practically all the features of the anti-parliamentarians' description of the transitional period were also features of early post-revolutionary Russia. During 1918-20 a civil war raged as the White forces and foreign powers tried to overthrow the newly-established Bolshevik regime. The Red Army was created to defend the state against this onslaught. During the same period the economic system known as War Communism came into being. Work became, in effect, compulsory for all: 'On every wall . . ."He who does not work, neither shall he eat", was blazoned abroad.' [41] Staple necessities were provided free and scarce commodities strictly rationed: 'At its lowest, in the first quarter of 1921, only 6.8 per cent of "wages" were paid in money, the rest being issued free in the form of goods and services.' [42] Efforts were made to reduce wage differentials with the aim of achieving equality of wages. The State Bank and all private banks were seized, nationalised and amalgamated into the People's Bank of the Russian Republic. State finance came under the control of the Supreme Council of National Economy. Attempts were made to bring all trade under state control: there was 'a resolute attempt to suppress free trade in essentials. Private trade in a wide range of consumers' goods was forbidden.' [43]

Thus the anti-parliamentary communists in Britain used the specific experience of post-revolutionary Russia as a model for all future communist revolutions. This reveals a great deal about the anti-parliamentarians' view of the Russian revolution and the society which emerged afterwards. They would not have generalised from the Russian example in such a manner had they not believed that the October Revolution had been a working-class, communist revolution, and that Russian society after 1917 was in the midst of a transition towards a communist society.

THE 'REVERSION TO CAPITALISM'

While such an assessment sums up the anti-parliamentarians' view of Russia during the first three years after the revolution, a very different point of view emerged thereafter. Until 1921 the anti-parliamentarians believed that although the Russian workers had not yet achieved their final goal they were still progressing in the right direction. What characterised the Dreadnought's analysis from the end of 1921 onwards, however, was the identification of a reversal in the direction of events - in fact, a 'reversion to capitalism'. [44]

An early intimation of this view appeared in the Dreadnought in September 1921, when Sylvia Pankhurst referred to 'the drift to the Right in Soviet Russia, which has permitted the re-introduction of many features of Capitalism'. Pankhurst also noted 'strong differences of opinion amongst Russian Communists and throughout the Communist International as to how far such retrogression can be tolerated'. In the same issue of the Dreadnought A. Ironie drew attention to the recent re-establishment of payment for basic necessities, restoration of rents, and reinstatement of property to expropriated owners. Ironie argued that the Bolsheviks could not 'justify their claims to being the means of transition towards common-ownership whilst the decrees quoted above witness a retrogression in the opposite direction'. [45]

These two articles marked the beginning of the Dreadnought group's thoroughgoing reassessment of the society which had emerged in Russia.

Whereas in August 1918 the Dreadnought had reported that the revolution had established a system of collective workers' control of industry, [46] in January 1922 Sylvia Pankhurst argued that 'in Russia, as a matter of fact . . . there is an antagonism between the workers and those who are administering industry'. A 'theoretically correct Soviet community' where 'the workers, through their Soviets, which are indistinguishable from them, should administer' had 'not been achieved'. [47]

During the earliest days of the revolution the Dreadnought had also applauded the expropriation of large landowners and the redistribution of land amongst the peasantry. In May 1922, however, Pankhurst cited 'the fact that the land of Russia is privately worked by the peasants' as evidence that socialism did not exist in Russia. [48]

The Dreadnought's belief that the Russian working class exercised a dictatorship over society through its soviets was also called into question. In July 1923 Sylvia Pankhurst wrote that 'the term "dictatorship of the proletariat" has been used to justify the dictatorship of a party clique of officials over their own party members and over the people at large'. [49]

One of Pankhurst's last articles in the Dreadnought on the subject of Russia and the Bolsheviks made a wholly unfavourable assessment of the party she had once admired for its apparent determination to establish socialism 'in the immediate present', and of the country previously taken as a model for the post-revolutionary society. The Bolsheviks, Pankhurst wrote,

pose now as the prophets of centralised efficiency, trustification, State control, and the discipline of the proletariat in the interests of increased production . . . the Russian workers remain wage slaves, and very poor ones, working, not from free will, but under compulson of economic need, and kept in their subordinate position by . . . State coercion. [50]

As we have seen, the Dreadnought group's ideas about the Post-revolutionary transition to communism were modelled on the period when the policy of War Communism was in operation in Russia. In February 1921, however, War Communism was abandoned in favour of the New Economic Policy (NEP). This was regarded by the Dreadnought group as the decisive turning-point in the fortunes of the revolution. Between March and August 1921 private trade was legalised and an agricultural tax in kind introduced (allowing peasants to sell their surplus produce for profit); small-scale nationalisation was revoked; leasing of enterprises to private individuals began; and payment of wages in cash, charges for services, and the operation of trade and industry on an explicitly commercial basis, were all instituted. Thus in September 1921, when Pankhurst first referred to Russia's 'reversion to capitalism', she supported her argument by pointing to the 're-introduction of many features of Capitalism, such as school fees, rent, and charges for light, fuel, trains, trams and so on'. The 'retrogressive' changes noted by A. Ironie were also introduced under the NEP. [51] The Dreadnought group's belief in the direct links between the abandonment of War Communism, the introduction of the NEP, and the 'revival of capitalism' was made explicit in December 1921, when Sylvia Pankhurst referred to 'Russia's "new economic policy" of reversion to capitalism'. [52]

The following two years witnessed a series of events which the Dreadnought group interpreted as confirming its view that the introduction of the NEP had set Russia on course for a return to capitalism. The first such event occurred in December 1921, when the Executive Committee of the Communist International adopted the United Front tactic. The Dreadnought group regarded this as complementary to the NEP: the latter made concessions to capitalism within Russia, the former advocated co-operation with capitalist parties outside Russia. In Pankhurst's opinion, the adoption of the tactic proved that 'the Russian Soviet Government and those under its influence have abandoned the struggle for the International Proletarian Revolution and are devoting their attention to the capitalist development of Soviet Russia'. [53]

Shortly after denouncing the United Front the Dreadnought reported that the Russian government had invited people with technical qualifications to emigrate to Russia to exploit coal and iron concessions in the Kuznets Basin area. Sylvia Pankhurst saw that the 'Kuzbas' scheme would regenerate capitalist social relations between owners of capital and wage labourers, and asked: 'What is to become of the Russian workers' dream of controlling their own industrv through their industrial soviets? . . . for the natives of Kuzbas, it seems that another Revolution will be needed to free them from the proposed yoke.' [54]

Russia's participation at the Genoa conference in April 1922 -- convened after a meeting of Allied industrialists had agreed that Europe's economic recovery depended on 'large-scale investment in Soviet Russia' and 'the exploitation of Russian resources' [55] -- was regarded as further proof of the Bolsheviks' willingness to place Russian workers 'under the yoke of the foreign capitalist', and that 'the principles of Communism in Russia' were 'being surrendered'. [56]

Another apparent indication of the Bolshevik regime's surrender to capitalism was pointed out in 1923, when the German Communist Party was attempting to organise insurrections in various regions of Germany. Trotsky was reported as having ruled out Russian intervention in Germany even if events reached the point of civil war and revolution, since the Russian government was more interested in maintaining the confidence of the foreign capitalists who had invested in Russia: 'Leon Trotzki and his colleagues are prepared to put their trade with international capitalists and the agreements they have made with capitalist firms, before Communism, before the proletarian revolution and the pledge they have made to the German comrades to come to their aid in the hour of need.' [57]

The events outlined above were regarded by the Dreadnought group as symptoms of Russia's 'reversion to capitalism'. When it came to suggesting causes the group put forward an explanation which can be separated into five inter-related parts.

First, the group adhered to the view that all societies had to pass through certain stages of historical development. The Bolsheviks' attempt to establish socialism in a basically feudal society had been 'in defiance of the theory that Russia must pass through capitalism before it can reach Communism'. The Bolsheviks had 'made themselves the slaves of that theory' [58] because they had found it impossible to leap straight from feudalism to communism and consequently had been forced to take on the task of initiating the era of capitalism themselves. The theory of stages of development was bound up with the anti-parliamentary communists' view of communism as a society of free access to wealth. If capitalism had not fulfilled its historic role of developing the forces of production to the point where production of wealth in abundance became possible, one of communism's essential preconditions would be lacking and any attempt to establish a communist society would founder. Thus 'the state of Russia's economic development and the material conditions with which she is faced' had 'rendered inevitable the failure of the Soviet Government to maintain a fighting lead in the world revolutionary struggle'. [59]

Secondly, the Dreadnought group regarded the Russian peasantry as an anti-communist force: 'In Russia the ideal of the land worker was to produce for himself on his own holding and to sell his own products, not to work in co-operation with others.' Socialism would find 'its most congenial soil in a society based on mutual aid and mutual dependence', not in a country where an individualistic peasantry overwhelmingly outnumbered any other class. [60] In 1917 Sylvia Pankhurst had welcomed the redistribution of land among the peasants; later, she criticised the Bolsheviks for having done exactly what she herself had once recommended: 'Instead of urging the peasants, and leading the peasants, to seize the land and cut it up for individual ownership, the right course was to have endeavoured to induce them to seize the land for common ownership, its products being applied to common use.' The Bolsheviks' support for individual rather than common ownership -- an attempt to 'save time by refraining from bringing the land workers to a state of communism' -- had led 'directly and inevitably to reaction'. [61]

A third part of the explanation for the 'reversion to capitalism' concerned working-class control of production. The Dreadnought argued that 'until the workers are organised industrially on Soviet lines, and are able to hold their own and control industry, a successful Soviet Communist revolution cannot be carried through, nor can Communism exist without that necessary condition'. [62] This necessary condition had not been fulfilled in Russia; 'though the Soviets were supposed to have taken power, the Soviet structure had yet to be created and made to function'. [63] To support this view the Dreadnought quoted the Bolshevik Kamenev's report to the seventh All-Russian Congress of Soviets in 1920: 'Even where Soviets existed, their general assemblies were often rare, and when held, frequently only listened to a few speeches and dispersed without transacting any real business'. [64] Such evidence led the Dreadnought to abandon its view that Russian industry was controlled by the workers through their own industrial soviets: 'Administration has been largely by Government departments, working often without the active, ready co-operation, sometimes even with the hostility of groups of workers who ought to have been taking a responsible share in administration. To this cause must largely be attributed Soviet Russia's defeat on the economic front.' [65]

This reference to administration by government departments, as opposed to by the workers themselves, leads to the fourth part of the Dreadnought's explanation. In one of the first Dreadnought articles questioning the authenticity of Russia's claims to communism, A. Ironie had written: 'The realisation of Communism, i.e., not Communist Partyism, but the common-ownership and use of the means of production, and the common enjoyment of the products, still remains a problem to be solved by the creative genius of the people freely organising themselves; or not at all.' [66] Ironie's counter-position of the party and the self-organised working class implied that the interests of the Bolsheviks and those of the Russian workers had conflicted. Only the conscious participation of the whole working class would assure the success of the communist revolution; Ironie's remarks suggested that this essential precondition had been lacking in Russia. Any attempt to establish communism by a small group acting on behalf of the working class would result only in the dictatorial rule of a minority -- not communism, but Communist-Partyism.

The final part of the explanation put forward by the anti-parliamentary communists focused on the failure of working-class revolution elsewhere in Europe, and the Russian regime's consequent isolation. Sylvia Pankhurst argued that other countries' 'failure to become Communist' held back 'the progress of Russian Communism'. [67] There was a limit to the advances the revolution could make, surrounded by a hostile capitalist world. Ultimately, the Bolsheviks' fate would depend on whether or not the revolution could be extended beyond Russia's boundaries. The introduction of the NEP -- seen as inaugurating the 'reversion to capitalism' -- was attributed to 'the pressure of encircling capitalism and the [revolutionary] backwardness of the Western democracies'. [68] Russia's isolation could be overcome either through the world revolution or through succumbing to the pressure of encircling capitalism and compromising with the capitalist powers. In the Dreadnought group's opinion the Bolsheviks had concluded that the first of these options was no longer viable; consequently, the second option had been forced upon them. In November 1922 Sylvia Pankhurst wrote in an Open Letter to Lenin: 'It seems that you have lost faith in the possibility of securing the emancipation of the workers and the establishment of world Communism in our time. You have preferred to retain office under Capitalism than to stand by Communism and fall with it if need be.' [69] The symptoms of the 'reversion to capitalism' -- outlined earlier -- were all taken as evidence of the Bolsheviks' determination to retain state power, even at the cost of Russia's reintegration into the world capitalist economy and the abandonment of communism. While the Dreadnought group argued that the failure of revolutions elsewhere in Europe had forced the Bolsheviks to break their isolation by negotiating with capitalist governments, other anti-parliamentary communists pointed out that the converse was also true: these same negotiations acted as a brake on the emergence of revolution outside Russia. At the Third Congress of the Communist International in 1921 the Communist Workers' Party of Germany (KAPD) delegate Sachs observed that

agreements and treaties which contributed to Russia's economic progress also strengthened capitalism in the countries with which the treaties were concluded . . . Sachs referred to an interview given by Krasin to the Rote Fahne in which the British miners' strike was said to have interfered with the execution of the Anglo-Soviet Trade agreement. [70]

A similar observation had been made by Guy Aldred in 1920. When he learned of Lenin's support for Revolutionary Parliamentarism Aldred was strongly critical of this tactic, yet he realised why Lenin had been forced into making his 'Fatal Compromise': 'Circumstances are compelling [Lenin] to give up his dream of an immediate world revolution and to concentrate on conserving and protecting the Russian revolution.' [71] Such compromises would be 'inevitable until the world revolution makes an end of the present false position in which Lenin and his colleagues find themselves'. [72] Yet the reformist policies of the Communist International could also reinforce Russia's isolation. Lenin was counting on the support of parliamentary reformists in Western Europe to bring temporary protection to the Russian regime, but the regime in Russia could only be saved permanently by the world revolution. It was not the parliamentary reformists who would inaugurate this revolution, but the anti-parliamentary communists, on whom Lenin had now turned his back:

Desiring not to weaken the Russian revolution by declaring war on the political opportunists and parliamentarians, Lenin has succeeded in endangering that revolution by proclaiming war on the anti-parliamentarians and so on the world revolution itself. [73]

The reformist policies advocated by Lenin caused Aldred and his comrades to 'suspend' their support for the Communist International. Lenin had chosen to take whatever measures were necessary to defend the Bolshevik regime; the Spur group had chosen to continue to work for the world revolution. 'Lenin's task compels him to compromise with all the elect of bourgeois society whereas ours demands no compromise. And so we take different paths and are only on the most distant speaking terms'. [74]

THE CAPITALIST STATE AND THE COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL

When Aldred argued that the different priorities chosen by Lenin and the Spur group had forced them to part company, it was tantamount to arguing that the Bolshevik regime's interests no longer coincided with, or were perhaps even opposed to, those of the world revolution. There was the potential in Aldred's argument to conclude that since the Bolshevik-dominated Communist International was the instrument of the Russian regime's foreign policy, if the policies of the Communist International were counter-revolutionary it could only be because the Rus