8. The Second World War

8 The Second World War

'CONVERT THE IMPERIALIST WAR INTO CIVIL WAR'
In May 1939 the APCF published an appeal to the working class titled 'Resist
War!' the opening two paragraphs of which expressed in a nutshell the position
adopted by the group throughout the Second World War:

Workers! The Capitalist system - production for Profit instead of for use
- is the cause of War! In the struggle for markets, in which to realise
their profits, the Capitalists of the world clash, and then expect their
'hands' to become 'cannon fodder'!

ALL the Capitalists are aggressors from the workers' point of view. They
rob you until you are industrial 'scrap', and will sacrifice you 'to the
last man' to defend their imperial interest!¹

By analysing war as competition amongst rival capitalists pursued by military
means, the APCF rejected the ruling class's portrayal of the impending conflict
as essentially a democratic crusade against fascism: 'Big Business in this
country [Britain] ... is not concerned about democracy. They would destroy
capitalist democracy and every vestige of workers' democracy to ensure the
continuity of capitalism (i.e. their profits).'² The USM took the
same view. In Guy Aldred's opinion, the 'crimes of Fascism' provided 'no excuse
for supporting the hypocrisy of pseudo-democracy . . . Why should young men go
forward to fight to acquire more territory to be plundered and exploited by
American millionaires? Why should they conceive American democracy to be
something superior to German Fascism?'³ USM member Annesley Aldred
(son of Guy Aldred and Rose Witcop) made the same point in March 1940: 'It makes
no difference to the effect of a bomb whether it is dropped with the hatred of a
Fascist Dictator or the love and kisses of a Democratic Prime Minister ... In
every case it is the workers who are killed. And any form of government which
condones that killing must be intolerable to the workers.'⁴

Besides the APCF and USM, the ideas and activities of a third
anti-parliamentary group - the Glasgow Anarchist Federation - will also be
discussed in this chapter. The Glasgow Anarchist Federation emerged during 1940,
when the Glasgow Anarchist-Communist Federation (formed on Frank Leech's
initiative in 1937), and another Glasgow organisation called the Marxian Study
Group, began joint activity as the Glasgow Group of the Anarchist Federation of
Britain. The Glasgow Anarchists produced a few issues of a small journal called
the Anarchist, but their principal mouthpiece was the newspaper War
Commentary, produced by the AFB in London. The first issue of War
Commentary, published in November 1939, put forward views on the war similar
to those expressed by the APCF and USM:

the present struggle is one between rival Imperialisms and for the
protection of vested interests. The workers in every country, belonging to the
oppressed class, have nothing in common with these interests and the political
aspirations of the ruling class. Their immediate struggle is their emancipation.
Their front line is the workshop and factory, not the Maginot Line where
they will just rot and die, whilst their masters at home pile up their
ill-gotten gains.^?

This analysis was shared by the Glasgow Anarchists. Glasgow Group member
Eddie Shaw, for example, wrote that the only winners in the war would be 'the
small minority who own and control the means of production and who are the only
ones likely to benefit from the conquest of trade routes and foreign markets,
which the sacrifice of millions of innocent people has made possible'.⁶

At the outbreak of the conflict the anti-parliamentary groups all called for
the war between the fascist and democratic capitalist states to be turned into a
war between the capitalist and working classes. The APCF's slogan in 1939 was:
'DOWN WITH NAZISM AND FASCISM, but also DOWN with ALL IMPERIALISM, BRITISH and
FRENCH included!'.⁷ This was elaborated three years later:

We stand for the victory over Hitlerism and Mikadoism - by the German, and
the Japanese, workers, and the simultaneous overthrow of all the Allied
Imperialists by the workers in Britain and America. We also wish to see the
reinstitution of the Workers Soviets in Russia and the demolition of the
Stalinist bureaucracy. In a word, we fight for the destruction of ALL
Imperialism by the Proletarian World Revolution.⁸

The demand raised by revolutionaries during the First World War for the
'imperialist war' between nations to be turned into a 'civil war' between
classes was repeated by Annesley Aldred in 1939:

Democracy is, alike with the Fascism which it is to oppose, merely a
phase of the same Capitalist system. Is it not obvious, therefore, that if
there must be war, it should be a war ... to overthrow the system that is
responsible for all war? It should not be an internecine war between the
workers of different nations, but a war in which they stand shoulder to
shoulder, and refuse to be any longer the victims of Capitalist
exploitation.⁹

The anti-parliamentarians' opposition to all sides in the conflict was
not altered by Russia's entry into the war in mid-1941. As a capitalist state
itself, it was only to be expected that Russia would be drawn into the armed
struggle for markets between the imperialist rivals. In 1939 the Glasgow
Anarchists had planted themselves firmly within the anti-parliamentary tradition
of analysing Russia as a state capitalist regime by publishing a pamphlet,
written by the Russian anarcho-syndicalist G. Maximov, called Bolshevism:
Promises and Reality. This characterised the Russian economy in the
following terms:

Agriculture and industry are organised on the bourgeois principle of the
profit-system, i.e. on the exploitation and appropriation by the state of
surplus value which is swallowed by the bureaucracy. Industry organised on the
capitalist principle makes use of all the capitalist principles of
exploitation: Fordisation, Taylorisation, etc. ¹⁰

Maximov denied that the Russian regime could be regarded as progressive in
any sense and called on the Russian working class and peasantry to revolt as
they had done in 1917, only this time against the Bolsheviks.

When the APCF stated in its appeal to 'Resist War!' that 'ALL the Capitalists
are aggressors from the workers' point of view', it referred not only to the
avowedly capitalist democracies such as Britain and the USA, and the fascist
states such as Germany and Italy (the APCF argued that 'Fascism, is but a
consequence of Capitalism'),¹¹ but also to Russia. As Marxian Study
Group member James Kennedy pointed out in Solidarity in 1939: 'Wage
labour is the basis of capitalism. Russian society is no exception . . . Wage
labour gives rise to commodity production and capitalist relations, therefore,
the control of the means of production and exchange in the hands of the State
and not the proletariat.'¹² The USM likewise 'decline[d] to conceive
that it is possible, from any point of view, to differentiate the USSR from the
general run of capitalist countries'.¹³ According to Guy Aldred,
since Russia was a capitalist state its intervention in the war was no less
motivated by capitalist imperatives than was the involvement of all the other
belligerent states: 'the foundation of the USSR social economy is a system of
hired labour and commodity production. Consequently, the Soviet Union, like the
rest of the capitalist states, needs foreign markets and spheres of political
and economic interest. Foreign markets and spheres of influence make for an
imperialist policy and militarism.'¹⁴

Stalinist Russia's alliance with the democratic states bolstered the
anti-parliamentarians' argument that the conflict had nothing to do with a
crusade for democracy, since they could point out that there were more
similarities between the political organisation of capitalism in Nazi Germany
and Stalinist Russia than there were between Stalinist Russia and the Allied
democracies. Referring to the so-called 'communism' in Russia, USM member John
Caldwell argued: This "communism" of the strikebreaker, the
dungeon-keeper, the executioner and the hired apologist is not the
Communism our fathers preached and suffered to propagate. It resembles more that
other form of bastard socialism, born in similar circumstances in war-exhausted
Germany - the creed of the Nazi.'^l5 Guy Aldred also drew a parallel
between Stalinism and fascism when he observed: 'Democracy, free speech, free
press, the inalienable right of private judgement do not exist in the Soviet
Union any more than they do in Germany or Italy.'¹⁶

STATE INTERVENTION IN THE ERA OF CAPITALIST DECADENCE
The anti-parliamentarians based their refusal to take sides in the war in
part on an appraisal of the state as a product of the division of society into
classes, used by the ruling class to enforce and maintain its own domination
over all other classes in society. Under capitalism the state could clothe
itself in a variety of guises, but whether fascist, democratic or whatever, it
remained nonetheless an instrument of capitalist domination over the working
class. By dismissing the differences between democratic and fascist forms of
political rule as superficial compared to the capitalist mode of production
common to both, the anti-parliamentarians could argue that the democratic and
fascist states were basically the same. From the working class's point of view,
therefore, there was nothing to choose between them.
During the war some anti-parliamentarians developed another method of
approaching this same conclusion. The APCF argued not only that the various
nation states were all equally capitalist, but also that they were all equally
totalitarian - or tending to become so - and that this was a historical tendency
accelerated by the war. This view was summed up by the German revolutionary
émigré 'Icarus' (Ernst Schneider), writing in 1944: The present imperialist
war anticipates and precipitates the economic and political forms to come. Under
the smokescreen of freeing Europe from "Totalitarianism", this very
form of monopoly capitalism is developing everywhere.'¹⁷

As Icarus's remark suggests, in the APCF's view changes in the political
organisation of capitalism were bound up with capitalist economic developments.
In a 1940 appeal To Anti-parliamentarians' - based word-for-word on an article
which had appeared five years earlier in International Council Correspondence
- the APCF explained this link by situating totalitarianism in the context
of capitalism's movement through ascendant and decadent phases: 'we have
definitely left the era of democracy, the era of free competition. This
democracy which served the conflicting interests of small capitalists during the
developing stage, is now no longer compatible. Monopoly capitalism in a period
of permanent crisis and war finds dictatorship and terror the only means to
ensure it a tranquil proletariat.'¹⁸ The APCF's 'Principles And
Tactics' (1939) observed: 'Even for Capitalist purposes, Parliament is more and
more being "consulted" AFTER the event.'¹⁹ Concluding that
parliamentary democracy was becoming increasingly obsolete (a conclusion
strengthened after the beginning of the war when the Emergency Powers Act gave
the government authority to legislate without reference to Parliament), and thus
that 'the question of parliamentary activity is of very much decreasing
importance', the APCF's appeal argued that 'the name anti-parliamentary
therefore is historically outdated and should be discarded'.²⁰

Consequently, in October 1941 the APCF abandoned its old title and began calling
itself the Workers' Revolutionary League.
Another article putting forward the view that totalitarianism was part of
capitalism's strategy for self-preservation in its era of decadence and
permanent crisis was published in Solidarity at the beginning of 1941.
The author, M.G., argued that

Capitalism in crisis cannot afford to indulge in democracy. The insoluble
contradictions of the system are so manifest that it is no longer possible for
the ruling class to find even a breathing space within the framework of the
old parliamentary regime. In order to stave off for a time at least the
inevitable collapse, it renounces so-called democratic rule and resorts to the
most flagrant and unabashed methods of class domination, otherwise fascism.²¹

In short, as Icarus wrote in 1944: ' "Nationalisation" is on the
way, with or without Hitler, because there is no other outlook for capitalist
imperialism. The inevitable form of organised capitalism is Nazism (Fascism).
What has happened in Italy, Russia, Poland, Germany, Austria, and so on, is
developing in Britain and everywhere else.'²²

For reasons which F.A. Ridley explained in 1942, this developing tendency
towards generalised state capitalism had been greatly accelerated by the
specific needs of capital during wartime:

modern war itself is pre-eminently a totalitarian regime . . .
consequently, the democratic powers, when faced with the necessity to wage on
their own behalf a war that is necessarily conducted in the manner that is
natural to their totalitarian opponents, must become, in fact, totalitarian
themselves in order to carry it on at all effectively.²³

In other words (as the APCF put it): 'Democratic capitalism can only fight
fascist capitalism by itself becoming fascist.'²⁴

STATE INTERVENTION IN WARTIME BRITAIN

During the war the anti-parliamentarians in Britain found plentiful evidence
to support their contention that the democratic regimes were abandoning their
liberal facade and resorting to totalitarian forms of political rule.
Introducing an extension of the Emergency Powers Act in the Commons in May
1940, Clement Attlee stated: 'It is necessary that the Government should be
given complete control over persons and property, not just some persons of some
particular class of the community, but of all persons, rich and poor, employer
and workman, man or woman, and all property.'²⁵ The entire productive
apparatus became oriented towards war production at the expense of every other
sector. Food and clothing were rationed, consumer goods and services were
severely restricted in range and quantity, gas and electricity were diverted
from domestic supply to the war economy, and so on. There was an official ban on
strikes, enforced overtime, state direction of where workers were employed,
suspension of agreements regarding working conditions, internal surveillance,
internment of 'aliens', and censorship of the media. Workers also had to be
mobilised to transform the armed forces from relatively small, professional
units into mass conscript armies. Most of the rest of this chapter concentrates
in greater detail on some aspects of the imposition of a centralised state
capitalist war economy in Britain, and on the resistance offered by the
anti-parliamentary communists.
From November 1939 Defence Regulation 18B enabled the Home Secretary to
order, at his own discretion, the detention of any person 'of hostile origin or
associations', and anyone 'recently concerned in acts prejudicial to the public
safety or the defence of the realm or in the propagation or instigation of such
acts'.²⁶ In May 1940 the Regulation's powers were broadened to permit
the internment of members of any organisations which might be used 'for purposes
prejudicial to the public safety, the defence of the realm, the maintenance of
public order, the efficient prosecution of any war in which His Majesty [sic!]
may be engaged, or the maintenance of supplies or services essential to the life
of the community'.²⁷ At the end of 1943 Guy Aldred and J. Wynn
published a well-documented pamphlet subtitled 'Investigation of Regulation 18B;
its origin; its relation to the constitution; with first-hand accounts of what
suffering has been involved for those who have been arrested and interned under
it.' This argued that the Regulation had in effect established unrestrained
executive power - in other words, a form of dictatorship: 'no man who differs
from his fellows in his opinion of the Government's policy and dares to voice
that opinion is safe from sudden and secret arrest ... As matters now stand
there is no judicial safeguard for the liberty of the subject against arbitrary
acts of the executive'.²⁸

Regulation 18B was mainly used to intern members of the British Union of
Fascists, and people of Italian or German nationality or descent (some of whom
had fled their native countries because of their opposition to fascism). In
addition it was also used against some Irish Republicans in Britain, and at
least once to jail a striking shop steward (John Mason of Sheffield in August
1940). However, since the Regulation was operated entirely at the discretion of
the Home Secretary, no-one was beyond its reach: 'All that now stands
between any citizen and his secret and hurried incarceration in a gaol or prison
camp is the incalculable whim of whoever may chance to be in the office of Home
Secretary.'²⁹ Hence the title of Aldred and Wynn's pamphlet: It
Might Have Happened To You!

In the same month (May 1940) that the Home Secretary was granted potentially
dictatorial powers through the extension of Regulation 18B, the Emergency Powers
Act was also extended to empower the Minister of Labour to direct labour and set
wages. hours and conditions of work in 'key' establishments. Around the same
time, the Conditions of Employment and National Arbitration Order ('Order 1305')
was introduced. This outlawed strike action unless disputes had first exhausted
a set negotiation procedure involving the Ministry of Labour and the National
Arbitration Tribunal. In effect, workers could only strike legally if they had
the state's permission!
The Essential Works Order, introduced in March 1941, gave the state further
control over labour by obliging workers to obtain the National Service Officer's
permission if they wanted to change jobs. So rarely was this granted that
virtually the only way workers could leave workplaces controlled by the Order
was by provoking their own dismissal. Under the EWO workers could also be
prosecuted and imprisoned for absenteeism or for failing to carry out any
'reasonable order' issued by the boss. By the end of 1941 nearly six million
workers were working in industries controlled by the EWO or the similar Docks
Labour and Merchant Navy Orders.
By December 1941 growing labour shortages had necessitated the introduction
of industrial conscription for women aged 20-30. 'Mobile' women (meaning those
without family responsibilities) could be sent to work in any part of the
country, while 'immobile' women were directed to employment nearer home.

At the beginning of 1944 the 'Bevin Boy' scheme was introduced involving the
initially optional but later compulsory conscription of one in ten young men
into coalmining rather than into the armed
forces. This measure provoked the Tyneside and Clydeside apprentices' strikes
of March-April 1944. When four members of the Trotskyist Workers' International
League were prosecuted for supporting the Tyneside strike, an Anti-Labour Laws
Victims Defence Committee was formed in which members of the Glasgow Anarchist
Federation were involved.³⁰ The state's response to the apprentices'
strikes was the introduction of Regulation 1AA, which prescribed five years'
imprisonment and/or a £500 fine for 'any person who declared, instigated, made
anyone take part in, or otherwise acted in furtherance of a strike amongst
workers engaged in essential services'.³¹

In 1944 Solidarity summarised the burden of such legislation from the
working class's point of view:

Industrial conscription has been introduced in the form of the EWO. Workers
are forced to stay in poorly paid monotonous jobs, which require them to work
overtime to have a wage in keeping with the increased cost of living. Labour
is directed from 'non-essential' to 'essential' work, young women are
transferred from factory to factory to suit the needs of capitalism. And now,
the youth of the country is being forced, willy nilly, down the mines.³²

Add to this the struggle against military conscription (a struggle in which
the anti-parliamentarians were actively involved, and which will be discussed
later), and it becomes obvious why the APCF should have thought James Connolly's
remarks about war so pertinent as to reprint them in Solidarity 21 years
after they were first uttered: 'In the name of freedom from militarism it
establishes military rule; battling for progress it abolishes trial by jury; and
waging war for enlightened rule it tramples the freedom of the press under the
heel of a military despot.'³³

WARTIME STRIKES AND ANTI-PARLIAMENTARY PROPAGANDA
Paradoxically, the rapid and extensive growth of state power during the war,
aided and abetted by organisations traditionally regarded as defenders of
working-class interests, created conditions in which some aspects of
anti-parliamentary propaganda could actually gain a
hearing among the working class more readily than before. Extensive state
intervention in the direction of labour power and production, and the
co-operation of official labour organisations in drawing-up and operating labour
legislation, meant that radical anti-state and anti-trade union propaganda was
bound to strike a sympathetic chord with at least some sections of the working
class.
Before looking at this more closely, however, it would be wise to sound a
note of caution. It is not disputed here that most British workers believed
sincerely in the justice and necessity of waging a war against fascism. What
they did object to in many cases was the introduction of 'fascist' measures 'at
home' in order to prosecute the war. There was a widespread feeling among
working-class people of wanting to fight the war on their own terms, and not at
the beck and call of notoriously anti-working class politicians (such as
Churchill) who had not hidden their sympathies towards fascism before the war.
As the figures for wartime strikes testify, workers were willing to take action
in defence of hard-won rights on numerous occasions, even if it involved setting
aside 'higher considerations' and coming into conflict with the bosses, the
state, the law and their own 'official representatives' (see Table 8.1).

Table 8.1 Disputes involving stoppages (all industries), 1939-45

Source: Department of Employment and Productivity,
1971.

At such moments certain elements of anti-parliamentary propaganda coincided
with what militant workers were beginning to conclude from their own
experiences. The crucial point of divergence was that militant working-class
action never broke out of its antifascist context. 'Industrial conflict arose
from a wide range of circumstances relating to the industrial interests of
particular groups of workers; it did not arise because of any substantial
opposition to the Second World War itself.'³⁴ In other words, workers
were prepared to oppose the capitalist state and the capitalist trade unions,
but mainly in order to prosecute more effectively the capitalist war.

Nevertheless, the Glasgow Anarchist Federation (most of whose members were
industrial workers attracted to the group because of their experiences during
the war) certainly believed that wartime conditions provided a fertile soil for
its ideas. A 'Clydeside Worker', writing in War Commentary in 1943,
observed how state power and an anti-statist opposition could grow hand-in-hand:
'in the atmosphere of Political Dictatorship, such as prevails today, with all
its trappings, regional Gauleiters, total negation of representation, total
conscription of labour, with their resultant starvation wages, the Clydeside
worker is taking to Anarchism, the road to freedom, just like water fills the
hollows of a plain'.³⁵ On the integration of trade unions into the
state, Eddie Fenwick of the Glasgow Group argued that the anti-strike position
adopted by the unions had undermined their traditional hold over the working
class:

When they openly form a united front with the ruling class for the avowed
purpose of strikebreaking then surely their days are numbered . . . The trade
union machine as at present constituted is disintegrating before our eyes. It
will survive only as long as the workers take to forge in struggle their new
and revolutionary forms of organisation.³⁶

While the actions of the state and trade unions during the war helped to
emphasise the relevance of anti-parliamentary ideas to some militant workers,
the single most important factor which created this situation was the Communist
Party's sudden swing to fanatical support for the war following Germany's attack
on Russia in mid-1941. The practical consequences of this overnight reversal
jeopardised the leadership of and control over the actions of militant workers
that the Communist Party had been able to exercise until then in several key
areas and industries. 'Whenever the workers did come out on strike against their
hellish conditions', reported Alex Binnie of the revived Clyde Workers'
Committee in 1943, 'they found that this party [the CPGB], instead of giving
them support, tried to get them back to work in order that production would go
on'.³⁷ It was this which gave groups which still supported the
continuing class struggle, such as the anti-parliamentary communists, the
opportunity to step into the breach.
Reports in War Commentary written by Glasgow Anarchist Federation
members show how the Anarchists intervened on the margins of some industrial
disputes during the war and tried to propagandise the lessons of such struggles.
In November 1941. for example, the Glasgow Anarchists supported a strike by
Glasgow Corporation bus drivers and conductors at the city's Knightswood depot
against the introduction of a new running-time schedule. The bus workers' union
opposed the strike, 'Yet several hundred workers had so little respect for the
good faith of their trade union', reported the local evening paper, "that
they refused their appointed spokesmen's guidance'.³⁸ The
Labour-controlled Corporation Transport Committee also condemned the strike,
expressing its astonishment at its employees' failure to take account of 'the
serious time in which we were living'.³⁴ The Committee sent dismissal
notice to the strikers and replaced the strike-bound services with 80 Army and
Air Force buses. Despite solidarity from other depots the Knightswood strikers
were forced back to work. The Transport Committee's actions met with bitterness
among the strikers. According to Frank Leech, ' "Did our boys join up to
be used against their fellow workers" was one of the questions.'⁴"

Such incidents, involving anti-working class actions by the local state and
Labour Party, were grist to the mill of the Anarchists' propaganda.
Towards the end of 1943 Glasgow Anarchist Federation members were also
involved on the periphery of strike action in the Lanarkshire coalfield, where
the APCF, USM and Anarchist Federation all had active affiliated groups around
Blantyre, Burnbank, Hamilton and Motherwell. On 20 September 1943 500 miners
went on strike at Wester Auchengeich pit after the colliery contractor had
accused 3 miners of malingering. The action spread to Cardowan colliery, where
1000 miners joined the strike with their own demand for the release of 16
colleagues who had been jailed for non-payment of fines imposed for taking part
in a strike the previous May. By 28 September the strike had spread throughout
Lanarkshire, and to West Stirlingshire and East Dunbartonshire.
The National Union of Scottish Mineworkers President, CPGB member Abe Moffat,
blamed the strike on incitement by 'a group of people identified with the
Anarchist movement, ILP and so-called militant miners, who are definitely
opposed to the war against Fascism'.⁴¹ War Commentary responded
by admitting that 'our Scottish comrades have been carrying on propaganda in the
coalfields since the beginning of the war', but maintained that 'the strike was
the spontaneous result of the men's resentment at lying accusations made by a
coal contractor against three strippers at Wester Auchengeich colliery, and the
imprisonment of 16 Cardowan miners for refusal to pay fines imposed on them for
participating in an "unofficial" stoppage last May'.⁴²

The leaders of the NUSM 'immediately set to work to discredit the strikes in
every way' and tried to 'force the men back to work'. On 29 September the NUSM
Executive suspended three Cardowan branch officials for supporting the strike.
The following day, however, a mass meeting of strikers overwhelmingly rejected a
Communist-proposed resolution calling for work to be resumed in the interests of
the war effort and for negotiation of the miners' demands to be left in the
hands of the union executive, and voted to continue the strike for the release
of the imprisoned miners and the reinstatement of the suspended officials.

On 1 October the imprisoned miners were freed after paying their fines under
pressure from Moffat, and the strike ended. Lord Traprain, the Ministry of Fuel
and Power's Regional Controller, 'thanked the trade union officials for their
tireless efforts to ensure a resumption and noted with deep satisfaction that
these efforts met with considerable success'.⁴³

A third strike in which the Glasgow Anarchists were involved took place at
Barr and Stroud's engineering factory in Glasgow when 2000 women went on strike
on 13 December 1943 in support of a pay demand. At the beginning of the strike
the men in the factory voted to support the women's strike fund, but did not
actually join the strike themselves - in limited numbers - until 6 January 1944.
This lack of basic solidarity forced the women to reluctantly abandon the strike
on 11 January 1944.⁴⁴

The strike displayed several features which the Glasgow Anarchists could use
in their propaganda. The TGWU and AEU had both urged a return to work: The role
of the trade union bureaucrats was the same despicable one they have adopted
throughout the period of the war.' Since three-quarters of the women did not
belong to any union, however, the strike bypassed official union forms and
procedures (one woman who had argued that 'success could only be achieved
through recognised channels of negotiation' was voted off the strike committee
by 'an overwhelming majority').⁴⁵ The Anarchists emphasised the
positive potential of this aspect of the strike:

You have demonstrated that you can organise without the Trade Unions. The
'leaders' are against you. Their funds are closed to you. And yet you have
taken part in one of the most solid strikes of recent years. The form of
organisation you have set up i.e. the Strike Committee and the Hardship
Committee is the beginning of the form of organisation advocated by
Syndicalists, whether you know it or not. You must extend this form of
organisation.

The formation of committees to organise food supplies and to spread the
strike to other workers were among the suggestions made. Ultimately, wrote Frank
Leech: 'We would like to see you forming Committees to prepare for the taking
over of the factory and commencing the production of the goods you require.'⁴⁶

TRADE UNIONS AND WORKERS' COUNCILS

The Glasgow Anarchist Federation's most interesting account of wartime
industrial action was a pamphlet published in February 1945 called The
Struggle in the Factory. Written under the pen-name 'Equity' by a worker in
the Dalmuir Royal Ordnance Factory, it described how, following Russia's entry
into the war, the CPGB shop stewards at Dalmuir had 'proceeded to sabotage all
direct action' by the workers and 'linked themselves with the policy of the
employing class, their lackeys the Trade Union leaders, and the Labour leaders'.⁴⁷

As such the pamphlet conveyed basically the same points that other Anarchist
Federation members had expressed in articles published in War Commentary; as
Equity pointed out, 'the history of Dalmuir ROF ... is the history of any other
war-time factory'.⁴⁸ What was distinctive about Equity's pamphlet was
that, unlike the articles written by most other Glasgow Anarchists, it did not
propose 'anarcho-syndicalism' or 'revolutionary industrial unionism' as the
solution to the problems it had identified. Instead, Equity explained the
reactionary nature of trade unionism in a way that called into question the
viability of any form of unionism created as an alternative to the
existing trade unions.
In The Struggle In The Factory, and in articles published in War
Commentary, Equity argued that 'the function of Trade Unionism was to
bargain for reforms',⁴⁹ and that by performing this role trade unions
'could, and did, win advantages in wages and conditions during the growth and
expansion of the Capitalist System'.⁵⁰ However, this period of
ascendancy had now come to an end - The present capitalist system of society has
ceased to expand'⁵¹ - and the capitalist class had 'no more reforms
to give'.³² The material basis of trade unionism as a reformist
working-class movement had therefore vanished. 'The Unions have moved towards
their eclipse as working class organisations, and they now proceed rapidly along
the road towards complete integration with the capitalist state machine.'⁵³

With each national capital only able to survive in an increasingly
competitive world market by attacking the wages and conditions of its own
working class, the new function of trade unionism had become that of 'accepting
on behalf of the workers, all kinds of anti-working class measures',
'announcing] further reductions in working conditions'⁵⁴ and
'organising] poverty on behalf of capitalism'.⁵⁵

Equity's writings thus related the function of trade unionism, and the limits
of what it might be able to achieve on behalf of the working class, to
capitalism's movement through different historical periods (ascendance and
decadence). As we have already seen, this was the approach adopted by the
European left or council communists, and the APCF had also begun to take up some
of these ideas since the mid-1930s. It is interesting, therefore, to find a
pamphlet published in the name of the Anarchist Federation arguing from within
the same current of thought.
During the war the APCF applied the same theory of capitalist decadence to
the development of its ideas about the emergence of class-consciousness. In its
1940 appeal 'To Anti-parliamentarians', the APCF argued, as Equity would later,
that 'During the upswing period of capitalism, when it was developing and
expanding, it was possible to grant concessions to the working-class because of
the increase in productivity and the resultant increase in profits'. However,
this upswing period belonged to the past: 'The present period of capitalist
decline is one in which no concessions are possible for the working class.'⁵⁶
Through their experience of bankrupt capitalism's inability to grant even the
most basic of their needs in its period of permanent crisis, working-class
people would become conscious of the necessity for a complete change in the
organisation of society: 'Though their primary demands will be for reforms the
logic of events will force the pace. Capitalism cannot grant what is required.
Grim necessity will compel the workers to social revolution.'⁵⁷

The instruments of this revolution would be workers' councils, arising from
the working class's struggle for basic needs - increasingly informed by a
consciousness of the need to destroy the existing system - combined with the
necessity to wage these struggles outwith and against existing forms of
organisation. The basic outline of this process had already become apparent
during the war, when the trade unions' opposition to strikes had forced workers
to pursue their demands by creating new, 'unofficial' organisational forms.

The APCF's belief that workers' councils were 'the real fighting
organisations of the working class''¹⁸ distinguished the group from
the 'old' labour movement, which saw revolution in terms of the conquest of
power by a party. In a call 'For Workers' Councils' published in Solidarity
in 1942, the basic features of the council form of organisation were
outlined by Frank Maitland. The councils would be universal, organising
all workers 'of whatever race, sex, religion, age or opinion'; industrial, 'organised
in units of factory, workshop, store, yard, mine or other enterprise'; proletarian
in composition, 'representing only the working class'; democratic, 'organised
in the simplest possible way, with the participation of all workers'; and

revolutionary, fighting for 'the overthrow of capitalist authority'.
Maitland also stressed that workers' councils would be independent bodies,
'in the sense that they must be class organisations, that is, not councils
initiated or controlled by any particular party or subscribing to a particular
programme or financed by a particular union - they must represent the workers as
workers'.⁵⁹ This emphasis on the councils' independence
dovetailed precisely with the APCF's attachment to the principle of
working-class self-emancipation.
THE PARTY AND THE WORKING CLASS
The role political parties could play in the emergence of revolutionary
consciousness was the subject of an important debate in Solidarity during
the war.
The first contribution to the discussion was an article titled 'The Party and
the Working Class', which had originally appeared in International Council
Correspondence in September 1936. The APCF attributed the article to Paul
Mattick, but its author was actually Anton Pannekoek. Pannekoek argued against
the traditional conception of the party as 'an organisation that aims to lead
and control the working class'. He did not oppose revolutionaries joining
together to

form organisations distinct from the rest of the working class, but these
would be 'parties in an entirely different sense from those of today', since
their aim would not be 'to seize power for themselves'. Instead, they would act
as propaganda groups -'organs of self-enlightenment of the working class by
means of which the workers find their way to freedom'. The actual revolutionary
struggle itself, however, would be 'the task of the working masses themselves .
. . The struggle is so great, the enemy so powerful that only the masses as a
whole can achieve a victory'.⁶⁰

Replying to Pannekoek in the following issue of Solidarity, Frank
Maitland took up an opposite point of view. While Pannekoek had stated that 'The
belief in parties is the main reason for the impotence of the working class',
Maitland argued that the party had an indispensable role to play in the class
struggle as the bearer of consciousness to the workers:

the great mass of proletarians live and engage in the class struggle,
without being conscious of the struggle, without understanding it ... The
class struggle by itself will not educate and organise the masses ... It still
remains for the conscious minority to enlighten the masses ... A party is
necessary as the brain of the class, the sensory, thinking and directing
apparatus of the class, of tens and hundreds of millions of people.

While rejecting 'The social-democratic conception of a parliamentary party
and the communist idea of a party dictatorship', Maitland maintained that the
solution to the party question was not to 'get rid of the party' (as Pannekoek
had argued), but to 'struggle for the control of the party by the working class,
in opposition to the control of the working class by the party'.⁶¹

Paul Mattick was next to enter the debate, ostensibly to defend Pannekoek's
position against Maitland. In doing so, however, Mat-tick went much further than
Pannekoek in denying the party's role altogether. Taking as his starting-point
'parties as they have actually existed,' rather than 'Maitland's conception of
what a party ought to be', Mattick pointed out that parties 'have not served the
working class, nor have they been a tool for ending class rule'. The 'decisive
and determining' source of revolutionary consciousness would not be political
parties but 'the actual class struggle': The "consciousness" to rebel
against and to change society is not developed by the "propaganda" of
conscious minorities, but by the real and direct propaganda of events. The
increasing social chaos endangers the habitual life of greater and ever greater
masses of people and changes their ideologies.'⁶²

After they had appeared in Solidarity, Pannekoek, Maitland and
Mattick's articles were also published in Modern Socialism, a journal
edited in New York by Abraham Ziegler. Ziegler's comments on the debate were
duly printed in Solidarity. This seems to have been the final
contribution. Ziegler rejected Maitland's support for a 'Leninist
"leadership" party' which would 'guide [the workers] to victory', and
he also disagreed with Pannekoek and Mattick's view that revolutionary
consciousness was a more or less spontaneous product of the class struggle. On
the other hand, Ziegler agreed with Pannekoek on the desirability of parties
acting as 'non-power, non-leadership' groups 'in the interests of working class
enlightenment'. Alongside this he also cited Kautsky and Lenin's view that
revolutionary consciousness had to be injected into the class struggle from
outside by radicalised members of the bourgeois intelligentsia. This synthesis
of positions was to be found in Daniel De Leon's conception of the party 'as a
teacher, not as a leader over the working class'. As an 'educational-propaganda
organisation' the party had an essential role to play in the struggles of the
working class.⁶³

The APCF's views on the subject shied away from either extreme. Some of the
group's statements, such as the following, suggested that like Mattick they
believed revolutionary organisations had little to contribute to the emergence
of class consciousness: 'Relative poverty must of necessity become absolute in a
declining capitalism. This will cause an increasing unwillingness to tolerate
capitalism; a willingness to RESIST its encroachments and finally a revolution
against it. Socialism will follow.'⁶⁴ As with Mattick's belief that
increasing social chaos would change people's ideas, this implied that
revolutionary consciousness was economically determined and inevitable, and left
no useful role for intervention by organised groups.

At other times, however, Solidarity also expressed the opposite point
of view. At the end of 1942, for example, it observed that 'political clarity
and understanding do not develop simultaneously with awakening
class-consciousness . . . spontaneity of action and revolutionary fervour do not
always embody the necessary knowledge of proletarian strategy and tactics'.
Moving in Maitland's direction, the APCF argued that 'those already conscious
and politically advanced workers' had a duty to 'come together in common unity'
in order to 'give a clear cut and directive lead to the social aspirations of
their less politically advanced fellow workers'⁶⁵
Even so, this view did not seek to deny completely the importance of
workers' own experiences, since intervention by organised groups would only be
effective if the revolutionary ideas they put forward could be tested against
reality and recognised as correct: 'propaganda is not the only factor in making
the workers realise the opposition of their interests to those of the ruling
class. Class antagonism arises not because of propaganda but because a
divergence of economic interest actually exists . . . Regarding propaganda, the
workers compare what is said with what is done.'⁶⁶ In other words, it
was not a question of workers learning either from experience or from
propaganda; in practice, both sources had positive contributions to make.
Of all the contributors to the debate the APCF was closest to Pannekoek's
position. Like Pannekoek, the APCF rejected 'the orthodox party conception',
meaning the idea of parties as power-seeking minorities. Nevertheless, the APCF
still believed that as an organised revolutionary group it had an important role
to play in the class struggle: 'It is our mission to educate, agitate and
enthuse; perhaps even to inspire. We will gladly give service as propagandists,
as advisers or as delegates. But we do NOT seek to boss or control. We would
impel, not compel, seeking the maximum self-initiative and direct action of the
workers themselves.'⁶⁷ Ultimately, the only guarantee against a party
seizing power and exercising a dictatorship over the working class would be for
groups such as the APCF to 'sow as much socialist propaganda as possible', so
that working-class people would be 'as immune as possible from the danger of
various types of Fuhrers, who, on the promise of solving the problems they must
ultimately solve themselves, will but change the form of slavery'.⁶⁸

INDIVIDUAL WAR-RESISTANCE
Although the anti-parliamentary groups all started off by calling for
industrial action against the war, such appeals received no large-scale
response. For this reason the anti-parliamentarians' own opposition to the war
was mainly forced to take the form of 'direct individual action'.⁶⁴
As Frank Leech observed: 'We Glasgow Anarchists issued a leaflet calling workers
to resist conscription by a General Strike . . . there was no response. Ever
since, in common with other groups and individual workers, we have fallen back
on individual resistance.'⁷⁰

Such action was an important feature of the anti-parliamentary groups'
activities. A measure of the earnestness with which the principle of refusing
involvement with any part of capitalism's military apparatus was treated can be
ascertained from the minutes of a USM group meeting held in May 1942:

Comrade Lennox informed the Group that she had been strongly advised to
obtain a gas mask, and that she intended acting on this advice. In view of
this decision she felt she could not continue membership of the USM. After the
discussion the Chairman expressed the feeling of the Group in informing
Comrade Lennox that this was a private matter and did not affect membership of
the Group; though several members considered it a matter of principle not to
possess or carry a gas-mask.⁷¹

Participation in Air Raid Precautions work and compulsory fire-watching
schemes was also shunned. As Anarchist Federation member Eddie Fenwick explained
when prosecuted for refusing to fire watch at his workplace, since the 'owners
of private property had denied him the elementary rights of man, he was entitled
to refuse to protect private property'.⁷² When Frank Leech was fined
for refusing to comply with the fire watching regulations, and then imprisoned
after declining to pay, he went on hunger strike in Barlinnie Prison, Glasgow,
explaining afterwards that he would not 'be used by any ruling class in their
wars ... I am determined that our dictators will only conscript my dead body.
Not whilst there is breath in it will I submit to them'. After going without
food for 17 days Leech was released when friends paid his fine.⁷³

The main focal point of the anti-parliamentarians' individual resistance was
opposition to military conscription. During the First World War Lenin had argued
that workers should not refuse to enter the armed forces: 'You will be given a
gun. Take it and learn the military art. The proletarians need this knowledge
not to shoot your brothers, the workers of other countries . . . but to fight
the bourgeoisie of your own country.'⁷⁴ The anti-parliamentarians
rejected this tactic:

militarisation is intended to accustom the masses to submissiveness and
ready obedience. This, in turn, leads to a psychology which would be, to say
the very least, unfavourable for a flowering of real workers' democracy.
Rather it would encourage the growth of the stifling fungi of bureaucracy and
despotism all over again. On this triple count, therefore, militarism should
be resisted in every possible way.

The same article also argued against the idea that communists should enlist
in order to subvert the armed forces:

military authorities will not regard with detached benevolence the
consistent spreading of revolutionary thoughts and literature . . . work under
such conditions must entail the watering down of these ideas to such an extent
as will present no danger to the authorities. That leads one to ask whether
entry into imperialist armies for this purpose is worthwhile at all.⁷⁵

This article's observation that workers in uniform were rarely 'hemmed off
entirely' from contact with the rest of their class was later taken up by
another article on the same topic: The majority of the members of the forces are
members of the working class, and their outlook is just as progressive as the
outlook of the best of the workers . . . the members of the forces, having
strong working-class connections, will - in a period of crisis - develop a
revolutionary outlook.'⁷⁶ In general, therefore,
anti-parliamentarians eligible for conscription opted to try their luck before
the Conscientious Objectors' Tribunals.
The APCF, USM and Glasgow Anarchist Federation were all active to varying
degrees in the Glasgow and West of Scotland No-Conscription League. Willie
McDougall of the APCF and Guy Aldred both served spells as Chair of the
organisation. In 1940 Aldred wrote a pamphlet for the NCL's Advisory Bureau
titled The C.O., the Tribunal, and After, which explained the rights of
C.O.s, described the Tribunal and Appeal procedures, and offered legal advice.
Having often been on the receiving end at courts of law, Aldred was well
qualified for the task of advising C.O.s, and the Word's reports of C.O.
Tribunals and Appellate Courts frequently mentioned his appearances on behalf of
the defendants.
In August 1940 four members of the Glasgow Anarchist Federation - James
Kennedy, Frank Dorans, Eddie Shaw and Frank Leech - were prosecuted for
allegedly inciting people to evade the duties and liabilities relating to
conscription laid down in the National Service (Armed Forces) Act. The basis of
the charge was that they had advertised the offer of information and advice for
prospective C.O.s and had held mock tribunals to help C.O.s prepare their cases.
The four defendants were found not guilty, however, since in the judge's opinion
their actions had not technically amounted to 'incitement'.⁷⁷

The anti-parliamentary groups' members experienced varying degrees of success
in their own appearances before the Tribunals. Since as a rule the
anti-parliamentarians did not conceal their willingness to fight in the class
war, in many cases they naturally failed to satisfy the Tribunals'
requirement that defendants had to have a conscientious objection to all use
of force. Once the process of Tribunals and Appeals had been exhausted,
unsuccessful C.O.s were required to undergo medical examination before being
enlisted. Refusal to submit to examination was a criminal offence. In April 1944
Frank Leech reported that 'Dozens of our members have served twelve months'
sentences for refusing M.E. [Medical Examination]'.⁷⁸

Court appearances were frequently used as an opportunity to denounce
conscription and the capitalist war. At his trial in September 1941 for refusing
medical examination, Glasgow Anarchist James Dick stated his refusal to fight in
a war 'for the defence of those in this country like Churchill, who helped build
up Fascism and praised Hitler and Mussolini for the grand work they were doing
for civilisation!'. This speech earned Dick a further 14 days' imprisonment for
contempt of court on top of the customary 12 months for refusing medical
examination.⁷⁹

Aided by experts such as Aldred, other C.O.s made full use of all legal
technicalities, loopholes and procedural irregularities. One of the craftiest
defences was offered by Glasgow Anarchist Eddie Shaw. After two years of court
appearances and prison sentences Shaw was required to attend for examination at
the Medical Board centre in Dumbarton Road, Glasgow, at 2.30 pm on 21 June 1944.
He was taken from custody at Marine Police Office and arrived at Dumbarton Road
at 2.20. After refusing examination he was taken back to the Police Office,
arriving there just after 2.25. Six days later he was sentenced to 12 months'
imprisonment. Shaw then lodged an appeal, pleading that he had been physically
prevented from submitting himself for examination because he had been in police
custody at the appointed time! Suitably confounded by the ingenuity of the
appeal, the judge quashed the conviction and awarded Shaw ten guineas expenses.
USM members Annesley Aldred, Johanna Haining and John Caldwell all succeeded
in gaining unconditional exemption at the first or second attempt.⁸¹

Leigh Fisher of Burnbank, Lanarkshire, was less fortunate. Like Eddie Shaw, he
too spent nearly two years being dragged through court appearances and prison
sentences until the Appellate Tribunal finally decided in November 1942 that he
could register as a C.O. if he resumed his previous employment or found work in
the building trade.⁸²

William Dick, an APCF C.O., appeared before the Tribunal in June 1942.
Unusually, he put forward a pacifist defence - 'My opposition to war, although
it is connected with my opposition to the State and to the State organisation of
Society, proceeds definitely from clear moral opposition to violence' - and was
granted unconditional exemption.⁸³

During the war the USM's Word recounted the details of Guy Aldred's
repeated imprisonments during 1916-19 for resisting conscription, and also
published accounts of the general history of Conscientious Objection to the
First World War. One of the purposes this served was to attack supporters of the
Second World War who had been C.O.s during the 1914-18 conflict. The most
frequent targets of such criticism were the Clydeside politicians Patrick Dollan
and Thomas Johnston. Both had a reputation for being C.O.s during the First
World War, but they supported the second and were now 'enjoying places of honour
in the State' as Lord Provost of Glasgow (Dollan) and Regional Defence
Commissioner for Scotland (Johnston). Guy Aldred considered that this was
'hypocritical' and suggested: 'If you despise the 1940 conchies, sack the 1916
ones also' (many private employers and more than a hundred local government
bodies sacked or suspended C.O.s in their employ).⁸⁴

The about-turn of former opponents of war such as Johnston and Dollan was of
course regarded as further proof of the corrupting effect of parliamentarism.
The 'practising conscientious objectors of 1914-1918' had been transformed into
'stern practising militarists' by a 'growing adaptability to ideas of reformism,
and a growing parliamentary sense of responsibility to capitalist institutions'.⁸⁵

The theme of contradiction and inconsistency also featured in the USM's
attacks on the CPGB. Before the outbreak of the war the USM criticised the CPGB
for proposing to abandon the position of 'turning imperialist war into civil
war', and for campaigning in support of a war for democracy.⁸⁶ When
Russia signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Germany in 1939 and the CPGB reversed
its position, the USM criticised the hypocrisy of today's friendly alliance
with yesterday's bitterest enemy. Russia's entry into the
war in 1941, which caused yet another somersault, simply added to the abundance
of inconsistencies which characterised the CPGB's record. The lone CPGB MP
Willie Gallacher frequently bore the brunt of the USM's attacks; in 1942 Aldred
commented: 'Every Socialist will recall how [Gallacher] was for a "People's
Peace" and for the sabotage of war when Stalin made his famous pact with
Hitler; and how, when Hitler broke the pact, he became the jingo of jingoes, in
defence of the Soviet Union! The man's contradictions and worthlessness defy
full recording.'⁸⁷

STRANGE BEDFELLOWS
In June 1943, after another fruitless attempt by the CPGB to affiliate to the
Labour Party, the ferocity of Aldred's opposition to the Communist Party
provoked him to urge workers to 'rally round the Labour Party Executive in its
firm struggle against the Communist Party conspiracy for power and
dictatorship'.⁸⁸ This call was quickly condemned by Word reader
V. Wilson, who argued that compared with the 'Labour guardians of
Capitalist-Imperialism' the CPGB was merely 'a handful of irresponsible clowns'.⁸⁹

Wilson suggested that Aldred's appeal had been made 'in a moment of aberration'.
Yet there were several other occasions during the war when the Word's readers
found good cause to criticise alliances proposed or actually entered into by
Aldred.
Although the USM's opposition to the war was initially founded on
revolutionary principles, the group soon exhibited a willingness to ally itself
with other organisations and individuals who were against the war for all sorts
of different reasons. This led to the formation of some absurdly unholy
alliances - or perhaps 'broad church' might be a more appropriate term, since a
striking feature of the Word was the number of articles it contained
written by Unitarian, Baptist and Humanist Reverend Ministers who opposed the
war on Christian-Pacifist grounds.
As editor of the Word, Aldred also gave considerable space and
coverage to the articles and speeches of anti-war labour movement politicians
such as Creech Jones, John McGovern, Rhys Davies and Fred Jowett. Davies and
Jowett had both been members of the 1924 Labour government so vehemently
criticised in the past by Aldred, but these previous antagonisms were
temporarily forgiven for the sake of preserving anti-militarist unity.
Another of Aldred's opportunist liaisons was with Alexander Ratcliffe,
secretary of the Scottish Protestant League and editor of its newspaper. Vanguard.
This association illustrated very well how two people could oppose the same
thing for totally different reasons. Like the Word, Ratcliffe's paper
criticised Patrick Dollan for the hypocrisy of supporting war in 1939 after
opposing it in 1914 - but it also attacked him on the sectarian and racist
grounds that he was a 'Papist' and an 'Irish-Paddy'. Aldred rejected such
'prejudice and abuse',⁹⁰ but even so he regularly published articles
by Ratcliffe in the Word throughout the war. In contrast the Glasgow
Anarchists refused to allow the Protestant League's bookshop in Glasgow to
distribute War Commentary, because the League was anti-Semitic
(apparently Vanguard tended to 'devote half its space to statements to
the effect that "the Jew So-and-So" has been appointed to this or
that').⁹¹

Aldred's most unlikely alliance by far, however, was the one he concocted
with the Marquis of Tavistock, Hastings Russell, who later became the Duke of
Bedford. Alec Kaye, a USM member in London, warned Aldred about Bedford in May
1940:

I attended Lord Tavistock's peace meeting at the Kingsway Hall . . . The
meeting reeked with propaganda for the British People's Party, an obviously
camouflaged Fascist movement. I recognised several known Fascist supporters as
stewards . . . Tavistock is not all that he appears to represent. If I ever
heard a whitewashing of Hitler, it was by him. Even when he regretted the
brutalities, he still had some justification for such acts.⁹²

As well as being an apologist for Nazism, Bedford was a believer in Social
Credit monetary theories, and articles written by him about this subject, plus
others advocating a negotiated peace with Germany, filled numerous pages of the Word
every month.
In 1984 Aldred's relationship with Bedford was defended by John Caldwell, who
related that the pair first met as speakers at an anti-war meeting in Glasgow:

Tavistock mentioned he was having difficulty having his pamphlet printed
because of the war and the fear it gave publishers . . . [Aldred] sympathised
with the Marquis in the frustration of not being able to spread his anti-war
message. The Strickland Press had just opened . . . There was printing
capacity to spare. In this way, when no one else dared to do so, Aldred became
printer to the Duke of Bedford.

According to Caldwell, 'Neither influenced the other, nor subsidised, nor
subverted the other'.⁹³

In fact, the association between Aldred and Bedford went much further than
the disinterested commercial relationship described by Caldwell. Aldred held
Bedford in rare esteem - 'He is a man of fearless integrity'⁹⁴ - and
in August 1941 went so far as to suggest the formation of a Socialist-Pacifist
coalition with Bedford at its head: 'We would have him the leader of the
opposition to the present Government, and so the next Prime Minister.'⁹⁵
As we will see later, Aldred also accepted some of Bedford's Social Credit
ideas.

The flood of readers' letters to the Word agreeing with Aldred's
proposal for a Bedford-led Socialist-Pacifist alliance illustrated the sort of
audience the paper was reaching - and addressing - during the war. Nevertheless,
there was a minority of readers who were severely critical of Aldred's
opportunism, and whose views deserve to be restated. Alec Kaye, whose criticism
of the Duke of Bedford has already been quoted, argued in June 1940 that
'Genuine Socialists' could not enter into any 'Popular Front for peace' with
'pseudo-Socialists and peace-lover-cum-fascist advocates'.⁹⁶ In
November 1944 Daryl Hepple of Gateshead described the Word's contents as 'a
hotch-potch of Socialism, Social Credit, Freethought and Pacifism, not
forgetting pandering to Labour MPs, who happen to be Pacifists, several reverent
gentlemen and much boosting of the Non-Socialist Duke of Bedford. Strange
bedfellows indeed for one who claims to be an Anarchist.' The Word's 'sentimental
bourgeois pacifism . . . Asking rival Capitalist gangsters to negotiate a just
peace' made as much sense as it would to 'ask a lion to turn vegetarian'.⁹⁷
In 1945 John Fairhead of Woking attacked Aldred's 'uncritical and completely
comradely alliance with men of the type of Rhys Davies and the Duke of Bedford
... In so far as you oppose the cancer of Stalinism, more power to your elbow;
in so far as you continue to dally with the day-dreams of an anachronistic
anarchism, may you be damned.'⁹⁸

Aldred replied to such criticism by stressing the value of free speech and
the need to discard 'sectarian considerations'. Defending the heterogeneity of
the Word's contributors in May 1942 he wrote: 'I do not worry whether I
share their views or otherwise. I simply say to myself: Is this a truthful man?
Does he write sincerely? Has he a message? Will his views bear discussion and
help mankind? If the reply is "Yes", I publish the article. I am not a
censor but a defender and advocate of freedom of speech, thought and writing.'⁹⁹

Two months later Aldred justified the Word's editorial policy in similar
terms: The Word is a forum of democracy and its columns are closed to
none. It is open to all heretical opinion, and since we believe violence and
exploitation to be wrong, to all Pacifist and all Socialist
opinion.
THE APCF AGAINST SECTARIANISM
Like the Word under Guy Aldred's editorship, the APCF's paper Solidarity
was also a forum for the expression of a wide range of views - though not of
the sort that the Word's revolutionary critics condemned. Class struggle
anarchists such as Albert Meltzer and Mat Kavanagh, council communists Anton
Pannekoek and Paul Mattick, the Trotskyist Frank Maitland, Spartacist Ernst
Schneider ('Icarus'), F. A. Ridley of the ILP and James Kennedy of the Marxian
Study Group - all contributed to a fruitful interplay of ideas on many topics.

Solidarity's editorial policy typified the APCF's
view of its own relationship to other revolutionary groups. Believing that no
single party would 'ever have in its ranks ALL the BEST elements in the working
class', the APCF rejected the spectacle of 'numerous competing bodies all
play-acting at being THE vanguard'.¹⁰¹ No party could claim to have
held the correct position on every issue in the past, nor could any group be
certain that it would take the right line on every question which might arise in
the future. Many of the issues separating revolutionaries would be settled only
by the future course of the class struggle itself 'rendering obsolete or
clarifying many of the errors previously held'.¹⁰² In the meantime,
revolutionaries had enough in common to adopt a more co-operative attitude and
practice: 'Pending the final show-down with capitalism there will arise many
issues upon which all revolutionaries, irrespective of section, SHOULD agree.
For such objects we ought to put our party loyalty second to class loyalty which
all profess, in order to attain the

maximum possible striking power.'¹⁰³ In practical terms this
meant the formation of revolutionary alliances 'either for an agreed limited
programme or for any single issue arising in the class struggle'.¹⁰⁴

The APCF's belief that 'All educational or agitational propaganda that
awakens or deepens class consciousness should be welcomed'¹⁰⁵ was
another anti-sectarian attitude taken seriously by the group. In 1941, for
example, the Word acknowledged 'the splendid propaganda zeal of our
comrade, W. C. McDougall, of the APCF, editor of Solidarity. His
circulation of pamphlets and papers is a feature of Glasgow activity in war
time. Last month he circulated nearly 300 Words.'¹⁰⁶ Besides selling
the USM's paper the APCF also distributed War Commentary, the main paper
of the Glasgow Anarchist Federation.¹⁰⁷

Another of the APCF's anti-sectarian initiatives was the establishment of the
weekly Workers' Open Forum in Glasgow in October 1942, based upon the slogans:
'A Workers' Council for eliminating error. All parties invited. Let the Truth
prevail!'. By mid-1943, according to a report in Solidarity, the Open
Forum had been addressed by speakers from the Anarchist Federation, SPGB, SLP,
Workers' International League, ILP, Common Wealth, Peace Pledge Union,
No-Conscription League, the Secularists, a Single Tax group and 'unattached but
prominent Industrial Unionists, etc'.¹⁰⁸ As the war dragged on, the
activities carried out by the APCF in its own name were 'largely submerged ...
in the interests of the Workers' Open Forum'.¹⁰⁹

The following passage, from the APCF's 'Principles and Tactics",
encapsulates the group's modest estimation of its own self-importance and its
unshakeable belief in the working class's capacity to emancipate itself through
its own efforts:

Instead of struggling for supremacy, revolutionary parties should aim as
far as possible at complete liquidation into the workers' Soviets, where they
can advance their policies by courage, initiative and example. Practical,
instead of abstract problems, will be on the order of the day, and the best
solutions, irrespective of who advocates them, should be adopted without
prejudice. We will find, in practice, that the Vanguard interpenetrates and
overlaps all existing parties; and that workers, previously of no party at
all. are able to contribute in a surprising degree and to over-shadow many who
were previously considered as indispensable and of the elite!¹¹⁰

THE END OF THE WAR
The anti-parliamentary groups had all expected that as in 1917-18 the war
would end in revolution. In 1941 Guy Aldred predicted: 'Demobilisation and other
difficulties would bring about a crisis: for the war represented a breakdown of
Capitalist Democracy and faced it with Revolution.'¹¹¹ In 1943
Glasgow Anarchist Eddie Shaw envisaged widespread revolution as the various
nation states disintegrated under the stress of the conflict,¹¹"

while Frank Maitland anticipated that 'the invasion of Europe will produce
revolts and revolutionary attempts'.¹¹³

Events in Italy in 1943 encouraged such thinking. In March a strike at the
Turin FIAT-Mirafiori plant spread throughout the city, and then to large
factories in Milan. Around 300 000 workers were involved. The strikes provoked a
crisis within the Italian ruling class, and Mussolini was dismissed as head of
government. These events were regarded as the first steps in the direction of
far greater changes. The Glasgow Anarchists' 'Manifesto on Italy' proclaimed
that the Italian workers had

struck the first real blow against Fascism since this war started - a
blow for Social Revolution, AND ANARCHY . . . Forward to the call of the
Italian workers, beckoning you to a new world, free for ever from war,
poverty and enslavement. Prepare for action, HANDS OFF THE ITALIAN WORKERS.
No Arms, Men or ammunition to crush the revolutionary Italian workers.¹¹⁴

A similar appeal was made in 1944 after the start of the Civil War in Greece.
When British troops were dispatched to aid the Greek government against the
'Communist' guerrillas, a Glasgow Anarchist leaflet 'distributed widely on the
Clyde' warned: 'Workers, your brothers in uniform are being used as the advance
guard of reaction ... It is in our interests not to allow ourselves to be used
as blacklegs against fellow-workers in other lands.'¹¹⁵ At a
'Withdraw From Greece' protest meeting chaired by Willie McDougall in Glasgow in
January 1945, the Anarchist Federation speaker Jimmy Raeside 'was very warmly
received for his forthright call to industrial action'.^l16

As it turned out, of course, 1945 saw no repetition of the revolutionary
upheavals that ended the First World War. The enduring popularity of
anti-fascism was insurance against revolution in the victorious Allied
countries, since revolution would have required a massive break with this
ideology which had helped to sustain the war effort for six years. At the end of
the First World War the defeated powers had been those most prone to
insurrection, but the military occupation of the defeated powers' territory at
the end of the Second World War effectively ruled out any prospect of
working-class uprisings there. The victorious ruling classes were as mindful as
the anti-parliamentarians of the spectre of 1917-18, and used every means at
their disposal against the workers of the countries they had supposedly come to
liberate to ensure that this spectre did not become incarnate.
For Guy Aldred the war ended with a parliamentary campaign in Glasgow Central
in the 1945 general election - a far cry from the revolutionary crisis he had
predicted in 1941. Opposition to the oppressive measures introduced during the
war was a prominent theme of Aldred's election address:

I am opposed to conscription. 1 am opposed to the control of labour.
Control Finance. Control Foreign Policy. Control the social use of all wealth
that is socially produced. But control the individual free man or free woman
by controlling and directing his or her own labour power! I say no. My
programme is: end all control, all direction of labour; end conscription and
regimentation.¹¹⁷

There were also faint echoes of the 1922 'Sinn Fein' candidature in
Shettleston. Aldred declared that he would not indulge in any electioneering or
canvassing, and emphasised that he was 'not seeking a career';¹¹⁸

the candidature was simply a means to 'register opinion and the growth of an
idea'.¹¹⁹ Another echo of 1922 was a mention of the soviet system
advocated prominently in the Shettleston address: 'Parliamentarism, talking-shop
politics, ought to be liquidated in an economic and culturally organised
society, with an industrial franchise, and direct control of representation at
every point by the common people: the wealth producers.'¹²⁰

Alongside these ideas were reformist demands such as a call for an end to
'secret diplomacy'. The blatant contradiction here between advocating world socialism
one moment and popular control of 'foreign' policy the next was typical of the
whole address. The influence of the currency crank Duke of Bedford was also
evident:

The doctrine of social credit cannot be substituted for Socialism, but the
idea that money is merely a medium or measure of exchange, and not a
commodity in itself, is a sound one. Money, so long as money is tolerated -
and I believe in the complete abolition of the money system - should be
reduced to true use-function . . . Labour ought to be free and wealth, which
is social, ought to be socialised.¹²¹

Such ideas were totally at odds with the ABC of communism usually propagated
by the anti-parliamentarians. If wealth was socialised -as Aldred demanded -
access to it would be open to everyone without restriction on a free and equal
basis; there would be no need for money or any other system of exchange. The
existence of money, precisely as a medium or measure of exchange, implies
commodity production and the exclusion of a section of society from the control
or use of wealth. In other words, 'merely' capitalism. Money can never function
as anything but a commodity in itself; indeed, it epitomises commodities, since
its only use is to store or exchange wealth and it has no true
use-function whatsoever.
On polling day Aldred made no advance on his previous forays into the
electoral field. The seat was won by a Conservative with 9365 votes, while
Aldred came bottom of the poll with 300.

Remaining true to the anti-parliamentary tradition, on the day of the
election members of the Anarchist Federation 'toured the Glasgow streets with
the loudspeaker, exposing politics and politicians, and advising workers to stop
using their votes and start using their brains'.¹²²