The Party had no money and no premises. The Provisional Committee had met in one another’s houses, several times in a bedroom. For the first meetings of the Executive, Hans Neumann arranged a room on alternate Saturdays at the Communist Club. This was a house in Charlotte Street, off the Tottenham Court Road, where for several years continental socialists met to have discussions and hear lectures. 10
The initial Executive Committee meeting was held in the afternoon of 18 June 1904. The fourteen’s most immediate tasks were to arrange meetings and find some literature to be sold in advertisement of the Cause. There would have to be a Party paper and Party pamphlets, of course, but for the time being some publications had to be approved for sale by members. ‘The following brochures were declared suitable’, minuted the Secretary: Socialism and the Worker, by Sorge: Wage Labour and Capital, by Marx; Socialism and Radicalism,
by Aveling; Liebknecht’s No Compromise; and The Socialist Revolution, by Kautsky. The membership was asked to suggest additions to the makeshift list, and the other titles approved in subsequent weeks were Morris’s How I Became a Socialist, Jones' Boy by Spokeshave, two drink question pamphlets by J. Russell Smart, Widdup’s The Meaning of Socialism and some others by Marx and Engels.
It was suggested that the Party write to Reeves and Co, the publishers, seeking to buy the copyright of The Communist Manifesto for a small sum. The suggestion, or the letter, must have been a little naive: within a week Reeves replied rather sharply that the Manifesto was still in print, and they had no intention of parting with its copyright. A feeler in another direction brought more satisfactory response, however. Neumann was anxious to translate Karl Kautsky’s Das Erfurter Program, and a letter asking permission brought a favourable reply. This was, in fact, the first English translation of one of the German socialist classics, and Kautsky took a close and sympathetic interest in the work as it progressed.
A committee was appointed to prepare the ground for the
Party newspaper, and a ‘mass meeting’ was arranged for the next morning in Finsbury Park. It was recognized that outdoor addresses had to be the backbone of propaganda: indeed, apart from occasional meetings in hired halls, they were the only means available. One’s voice had to be heard, literally. The tradition of open-air oratory was a long one, extending back to the agora and the mediaeval hillside. In 1904 the sects and parties vied with each other in the streets and parks, and the Socialist Party flung itself enthusiastically into the fray.
Almost every member was ambitious to be a speaker; the only reticents were those for whom the penalties in loss of livelihood might have been too great. Aspirants to the platform practised declamation on one another with Men of England, The Bells and The Charge of the Light Brigade, and learned key-passages from important works by heart. Bits of Shakespeare, too — it was a fine thing to support the analysis of private property with
‘. . . You take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live ’
And the opportunities for platform-speaking were multifarious. Hyde Park had not then become a national freak-show and tourist attraction, and was only one of a score of parks and open spaces where audiences awaited anyone with a bone of contention. Any town had room for speakers in its market place and main roads. It is worth recalling that William Morris spoke in this way for years and Bernard Shaw was, at the time of the Socialist Party’s foundation, one of the most popular soap-box men in England.
It was by no means easy, however. Socialists and their sympathizers, with Liberals and reformers generally, represented in the main the more thoughtful skilled and semi-skilled working men. By an irony which was as tallow to the flames of a socialist’s anger the most deprived and coarsest sections, the objects of his great concern, were the supporters of Conservatism and Empire. A speaker too vigorous in attacking the prejudices of a prejudiced audience was asking to be thrown in the horse-trough, and not uncommonly he was. Robert Tressell in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists describes the recep¬tion of a Clarion van in Hastings:
‘The man on the platform was still trying to make himself heard, but without success. The strangers who had come with the van and the little group of local socialists, who had forced their way close to the platform in front of the would-be speaker, only increased the din by their shouts of appealing to the crowd to “give the man a fair chance ”. This little bodyguard closed round the van as it began to move slowly downhill, but it was completely outnumbered . . . “We’ll
give the swines Socialism !” shouted Crass, who was literally foaming at the mouth. ’
There were in fact several organizations with such names as the Anti-Socialist Union, the Liberty and Property Defence League, and the Middle Class Defence Organization, listed in the Daily Mail Year Book as ‘the societies whose purpose it is to combat Socialism’. But the Socialist Party members themselves stopped only at physical aggression in the vigour of their attacks on all opponents. They bustled into audiences anywhere, shouting questions, counter-assertions and challenges. An Anti-Socialist or an ILP meeting equally was likely to be disturbed on Clapham Common or in Finsbury Park by the roaring boys of the new party: Jack Fitzgerald, short, thick, fierce-eyed, with a scarlet tie, pushing his way to the front and shouting: ‘I demand to take the platform and speak in opposition !’
Though a monthly ‘lecture list’ was compiled to distribute the speakers regularly over the meeting places in all parts of London, most speakers had their own special grounds. The doyen of all the Party’s speakers, without any doubt, was Alex Anderson. It is difficult today to assess how great an orator he really was. Speaking was his life. Had he chosen one of the big battalions to do political battle, Anderson would have been legendary as Maxton, Bevan or Arthur Cook. He had the power to make people weep at street-corners; he stirred and played on every emotion, ridiculed and denounced opponents with astonishing rhetoric and wit.
Anderson’s centre was the Tottenham area of north-east London. Besides Finsbury Park, its main speaking stations were St.Anne's Road, Highbury Corner, High Cross, and the corner where the West Green and Seven Sisters Roads flow together into the High Road. On Sundays he would tram-ride or walk from one to another of these places for morning, afternoon and evening meetings, subsisting between them on coffee-shop snacks, drinking from a lemonade bottle on the platform to ease his voice. At the late meetings he would cast an irresistible spell upon his hearers: up to and after midnight he would stand above a sea of faces in the gaslight, appealing with outstretched hands for the world to be cleansed.
Early pictures of Anderson show a Byronic head with curled hair, wide forehead and sensual mouth. He had firm, classical features and a slight cast which gave his eyes, according to Fox, ‘a fine rolling frenzy on the platform’. He was tall, bony, commanding, and he led a life of incredible hardship. To the difficulties of a painter’s unsteady employment he added others from his contempt of employers and foremen. Always out of work, always behind with the rent, he often
hurried away from a mass meeting to conduct a midnight removal of family and furniture. Once, turned out by yet another landlord, he left on the wall: Rent is Robbery and Profit is Plunder.
How much effect had Anderson’s persistent oratory, and how enduring was his message ? He brought in numbers of recruits, particularly from the young men who listened to him (in later years they were known half-contemptuously as ‘Anderson’s pups’). At the height of his popularity the Tottenham Branch of the Party was almost a hundred strong, but its existence was vested entirely in him. After his death in the nineteen-twenties it went into steady decline, and survived thirty years more only as a dwindling group of elderly men talking of the past. To many in his audiences he was simply a superb entertainer; one may willingly submit to a spell, but the morning air will still be cold.
But it was the message itself that failed to take a hold. Magnificently stated, it remained a gospel of despair in most people’s ears. When the working class rises and overthrows the system,
Anderson cried, human happiness can begin, but until that day want, squalor and misery must reign. There can be no alleviations: to struggle for improvement is useless while capitalism remains. He declared hope¬lessness in the daily struggle to keep heads above water, insisting on the rejection of every attempt to better conditions. Nothing but the spread of socialist knowledge could lead to release of the working class from its bondage in poverty.
Anderson went farther in his conviction of the intractability of capitalism than many other members of the Party. And that is saying a great deal. The basic principle for all of them was belief in the irrevocable law of the depression of the mass of people by the system. Nevertheless, there were differences in outlook on the daily struggle for subsistence. While all agreed that revolution and not reform was the answer, and all showed equal fervour in condemning every less-than- diametrical opposition to capitalism, there were varying opinions as to the functions and potentialities of working-class organizations.
Thus, the Inaugural Meeting had instructed the Executive to arrange at once a members’ conference on the question of trade unions. Some of the founders leaned towards the idea of industrial unionism — the Party had not yet finished with the SLP. Others, of whom Anderson inevitably was one, saw the unions as bodies aiming to meliorate but not abolish the capitalist system, and so dismissed them. The special meeting was arranged for 9 July, at the Food Reform Restaurant in Furnival Street, Holborn. Lehane, Anderson and Neumann were appointed by the Executive Committee to prepare a
draft resolution to put before the meeting. On the preceding Saturday afternoon, they reported that they could not agree and presented two conflicting resolutions.
Anderson’s proposal, which Neumann seconded, was direct and uncompromising.
‘Whereas the Declaration of Principles of the Socialist Party of Great Britain is one of hostility to all other parties in the political field, and
Whereas the Trade Unions have definitely taken up a position other than that of the Socialist in that field, the Socialist Party of Great Britain in General Meeting assembled declares that while through other circumstances its members may be compelled to belong to such organizations, such members and any others who may deem it advisable to be in Trade Unions shall simply use their position therein to reiterate the Socialist position, but shall in no case accept any official position where their actions would be controlled by the Trade Unions instead of by Socialist convictions. ’
The other resolution took a different view of the functions of trade unions. Since there was always pressure from the employers to keep wages down, there must be organized counter-pressure by the workers. ‘This twofold organization of the hostile classes in society’ simplified and sharpened the historic struggle which would lead to socialism. It was part of the task, therefore, for socialists to work in their unions to promote greater efficiency in the struggle and translate industrial militancy into political consciousness, and, at the same time, convert unionists to support for the Socialist Party.
It was a dispute which was to continue and recur in controversies round reforms, industrial conflicts and political events. Underneath was not really the trade union question but the question of the character of the Party. What ultimately determined each controversy was an attitude of mind, and in this respect Anderson lost battles over policy but won the war. The interests of the working class could not be conceived as having any other expression than in organizing for socialism. The keystone — ‘the only true position’, as the first Manifesto put it — was the Hostility Clause in the Principles which insisted that those who were not with the Party were against the Party.
The Executive Committee supported Anderson’s resolution.
The General Meeting did not; the other motion, put by Lehane and T. A. Jackson, was carried instead. But the air was full of amendments, and a further meeting was arranged for 7 August. First there was a proposal that trade unions should be seen as ‘essentially economic organizations’, sectional and lacking real class-consciousness, and that
support should be given only to such unions as cared to affiliate themselves to the Socialist Party; then a motion by Fitzgerald for the establishment of Party-controlled ‘cells’ within the unions. These were lost, and so were several more including another condemnatory motion by Anderson.
Finally this second meeting put off the entire question ‘until a decision is arrived at as to whether Trade Unions are political organi¬zations and therefore if our relations thereto are covered by our Declaration of Principles’. This was shuffling, and it produced two more special meetings in September that came no nearer to a decision. And on 3 December the Party’s General Meeting agreed to a resolution which was barefaced evasion. Since the Party Principles were a clear guide to members in all contingencies, it said, there was no need at all for any special explanation.
The indecisiveness was not what the Party aimed at, and in 1905 two statements were made that ended it. The first was a resolu¬tion passed by the Easter Conference, when F.C.Watts and G.R.Harris moved:
‘Whereas the Trade Unions, while being essentially economic organizations, are nevertheless taking political action either to safeguard their economic existence or for other purposes, and
Whereas any basis of working-class political action other than that laid down in the Declaration of Principles of the Socialist Party of Great Britain must lead the workers into the bog of confusion and disappointment, be it therefore
Resolved that this Conference of the Socialist Party of Great Britain recommends that all members of the Party within Trade Unions be instructed to actively oppose all action of the Unions that is not based on the Principles of the Party. ’
In June 1905 the first Manifesto of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was published. It was a red-covered pamphlet setting forth the historical and economic case for common ownership and condemning the SDF and ILP, the Fabian Society and the Labour Representation Committee; and it dealt at length with the trade unions. Their securing of legal recognition and protection, it said, had sapped the ‘grasp of the class antagonism’ which they earlier had. Now, ‘taught by the assiduous agents of the capitalist class’, they acted on the theory that capital and labour had common interests. The Manifesto went on:
The basis of the action of the trade unions must be a clear recognition of the position of the workers under capitalism, and the class-struggle necessarily resulting therefrom . . . All actions of the unions in support of capitalism or tending to side-track the workers
from the only path that can lead to their emancipation, should be strongly opposed: but, on the other hand, trade unions being a neccesity under capitalism, any action on their part upon sound lines should be strongly supported. ’
This statement was accepted by the Party, and the second edition of the Manifesto in 1907 solidified it in a preface. Affirming that workers’ organization must be founded on class solidarity and class interests, the preface ended:
'Politically, such an organization exists (the SPGB), industrially, it has yet to be born.’
Thus the trade unions were rejected for their political involvement and their compromise with capitalism. Their function in a limited sphere was recognized, but the action on ‘sound lines’ that would win the Party's approval was largely hypothetical. Its nature would be to aim at benefit for the working class as a whole, excluding any rapport with employers or government and any sectional concern. With each union of necessity seeking what it could get for its members alone, the chance was remote; but, failing it, the Party stood aside.
Sterner judgements about the relation of trade unions to politics would be made after the formation of the Labour Party in 1906. Not long before that, Valentine McEntee’s name was seen in a newspaper as a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour Representation Committee. Asked to resign from the Party, McEntee contested the point in the light of a long memorandum he had sent to one of the special meetings, but the Executive Committee insisted. A curious parallel light on the Party’s valuations appears through another question at the same time. A woman member wrote that she was on the Board of Guardians in her town: was it all right ? And the Executive replied that, so long as she kept her socialism and her Guardianship apart, it was.
Perhaps, on the other hand, it was not so curious. Labourism was to be the bete noire of the Party, hated as much as the capitalist system itself. Its growth was to lead to the hardening of Party attitudes almost to the point where even the wish to improve everyday conditions was considered iniquitous. The resentment was heated by the fact that many of the rising Labour leaders had been fellow-members of the Social Democratic Federation and once professed the revolution. No words were strong enough for the Party’s contempt. In the Socialist
Standard they were called ‘fakirs’, a strong allusion to self-seeking piety, and on the street platforms ‘Labour bleeders’ (T.A.Jackson coined the clumsy, angry phrase).
The Socialist Standard first came out in September 1904. Its
name was chosen by the Executive Committee from a list of suggestions which included The Red Flag, Socialism, The Socialist Republic and The Socialist News. Estimates were sought from printers and cash guarantees were obtained from members and Branches. The paper appeared as specified by the Executive: ‘A Party Organ, 8 pages 10” x 15”, to be issued monthly. Advertisements to be allowed.’ The title was drawn in swashbuckling Victorian characters by Freddie Watts, who also designed the Party emblem (a globe with the inscription ‘The World for the Workers’). Responsibility for the Standard was delegated to an Editorial and Management Committee of five, drawn from the Executive Committee.
The first issue said on its front page:
‘In the Socialist Party of Great Britain we are all members of the working class, and cannot hope that our articles will always be finely phrased, but we shall endeavour to lay before you on every occassion a sane and sound pronouncement on all matters affecting the welfare of the working class. What we lack in refinement of style we shall make good by the depth of our sincerity and by the truth of our principles. ’
And it went on:
‘We shall, for the present, content ourselves with a monthly issue, but we are confident that the various demands upon us, by the quantity of matter at our disposal, and by the growth of the Party, will necessitate in the near future, a weekly issue of our paper. ’
The writer of these words was also the printer and the only advertiser. He was A.E.Jacomb, one of the founders; he had a little printing-shop in Stratford under the name ‘Jacomb Brothers’, and he was determined that no one but he should print the Socialist Standard. The original estimate of £7 10s 6d for 3,000 copies was made simply by undercutting all the other estimates. Jacomb never sent in his bill, and from time to time the Executive Committee was obliged to set up sub-committees to discover or assess how much was owed to him.
Nor was this the careless generosity of a successful business man. Jacomb never made a respectable profit in his life, and struggled continually against poverty and impending bankruptcy. He was simple, honest and good-hearted, but he had a razor-sharp mind. There was little in economics and history he had not read, and he was a lucid and forceful writer. His output went far beyond the regular articles on socialist theory signed by him in the Standard: when the first enthu¬siasm of contributors to a new paper died down and the supply of material became thin, Jacomb filled the gaps over pseudonyms and with articles composed as he set them in type.
Besides his expositions of Marxist economics, Jacomb had a flair for rhetorical invective of an astonishing kind. Its style was outmoded even in 1904: it suggested Jorrocks, even Ally Sloper.
Nevertheless, it was a perfect vehicle for the Party’s unlimited attacking enthusiasm. Here is Jacomb roaring and nose-thumbing at ‘King Capital’s Coronation’ in 1911:
‘A King is to be crowned.
In the presence of our Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and the Premiers of the five dominions of “our” mighty Empire, and the assembled monarchs of many lands, and the Lord God of Israel and the Stock Exchange himself.
The Crown, and the Orb, and the Sceptre, and the Sword of State, and the Cap of Maintenance, and the Rod with the Dove, and the Monkey on the Stick, and all the other symbolic insignia and regalia which have come down to us from barbarism, along with ye Ancient Order of Foresters and ye game of skittles, are to be brought from their dungeon in the Tower (where they have rivalled a pawn-broker’s window) and taken to the House of God at Westminster, there to be used in the great ceremony.
And there, before a vast concourse of gentlemen who have won the same distinction in the divorce court that their forefathers gained in piratical, slave-hunting and other plundering forays of the past, and of high-born dames whose “Sir Joshua Reynolds” peach-bloom cheeks are veritable triumphs of the house-decorator’s art and other high-born dames whose ancient lineage goes back to the mighty Pork Kings of Chicago, one George Wettin, a most cosmopolitan British gentleman, will swear great oaths to be faithful to certain hoary superstitions, and to uphold certain important and worthy institutions, and to do it all for the dirt-cheap, upset-competition price of a million a year or nearest offer. . .
What does it mean: the Crown, and the Orb, and the Sceptre, and the Sword of State, and the Cap of Maintenance, and the rest of the jewelled symbols ?
What does it mean: the barbaric pomp and splendour, the lavish display of wealth, the clank of arms and armour and the jingle of spurs, the foregathering from the ends of the earth of the Empire’s rulers?
What does it mean: the flaunting flags, the streets lined with police and military, the hoarse acclamation of pallid millions whose rags flutter a significant reply to the bunting overhead, the bestowing of a meal upon thousands of little children whom hunger makes glad to accept even such a trifle from hands so heavy-laden with wealth that
they cannot feel the weight of the charitable grains they scatter ?’ Euphemism was scorned in the Standard, and the contributors said exactly what they meant. Lloyd George was ‘this oily-tongued time-server’, Asquith ‘the assassin’, their confreres hypocrites, frauds and political prostitutes. Labour candidatures at the polls were ‘futile trickery’; when the Manchester Guardian slighted the Party, a Standard headline called it the ‘Liberal Skunk Press’. Not unnaturally, there was trouble from time to time. In 1906 Richard Bell took the Party to court for libel. Bell, the General Secretary of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants, had addressed a mass meeting of railwaymen to defend his executive’s acceptance of an arbitration finding against a decision of the membership. The Socialist Standard had as its front¬page headlines for August:
FOUND OUT:
LABOUR LEADERS SELL THE UNION MEMBERS AND THEIR APOLOGIST GETS A WARM RECEPTION Copies were sent to all the branches of the Society, and shortly afterwards writs were served on the Party’s Executive Committee.
When the case was heard in July 1907, before Mr Justice Darling, Bell was represented by C.F.Gill, KC, and the Standard by Anderson and Fitzgerald, both out of work. The judge in his summing-up laid down that the union executive was not bound to obey the North-Eastern Railway members who had been involved in the dispute but had to consider the interests of the Society as a whole, and the plaintiff was entitled to a verdict if he had not betrayed his trust.
The jury may have succumbed to Anderson’s eloquence; at any rate, they awarded Richard Bell only £2 damages. The sight of two unemployed men in their twenties haranguing the court must have been remarkable. As Anderson and Fitzgerald left, a well-dressed man said heartily: ‘You did very well, boys’ — and presented a sovereign to buy themselves a drink. Largesse for a moral victory: with the jubilant members who had come to hear, the defendants made for the nearest coffee-shop and paid for a banquet. The next issue of the Standard reported the case in terms more libellous than those of the original article, and proclaimed: ‘This is our first libel action, but it may not be our last. We will take that risk, and others that may arise.’
In 1907 Jacomb himself was in trouble with authority. He had written and published a book on the position of women in society, a great question of the day. But unlike other writers of books about it Jacomb paid no attention to the moral conventions of his time, and the book was banned as soon as it was published. Police went to Jacomb’s workshop to take away the copies, and as a consequence of their visit his machinery was damaged and his type destroyed. The effect of this and other incidents, from prosecutions for selling literature in unauthorized places to mild brushes with the police over out-door meetings, was less to create resentment than to foster a conviction of grandeur. The Socialist Party had the truth about the system: the capitalist class was afraid.
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