Members came and went. The various disputes and controversies took away groups which included founders and early stalwarts.
E. J. B. Allen, a talented speaker and writer, went into the Industrial League (in 1909 he debated their case against Fitzgerald at the Latchmere Baths, Battersea). Hicks, McEntee and a few others entered the Labour Party. T.A.Jackson left under different circumstances. In dreadful poverty, he grasped an opportunity to become a paid speaker for the ILP. Writing to a member named Craske, he professed a desperate cynicism: ‘I will join the SDF, ILP and “Clarion” mobs and peg away — bleed the swines — till I am expelled.’
In fact, Jackson’s abilities were appreciated more outside than they had been inside the Party. Impeded by his troubles — his address changed continually — he was unreliable at the regular committee work which was pressed on members; the minutes done by him in a brief spell as Party Secretary are the least legible and coherent in the whole record of Executive meetings. When he lived in North London he was disliked and resented by Anderson, who had his branch bring a case against Jackson’s speaking on the Party platform. Despite his protestations to Craske, he was quickly reconciled to the ILP — he too took a turn at debating Fitzgerald — and began the long career which made him a leading figure in left-wing politics.
Coming into the Party there were, for example, Moses Baritz and Adolph Kohn. Baritz, originally a Conservative, became known half round the world as a socialist agitator, a man without political or
personal inhibitions. Short and squat, with thick glasses and a terrifying
voice, he exuded vitality and passion; among other things, he had wrestled with Georges Hackenschmidt. In T.A.Jackson’s autobiography, Solo Trumpet, is a story of Baritz’s being barred from a meeting of the SDF where Hyndman was to speak. Moses climbed on the roof with a clarinet, poked it into a ventilator shaft and blew piercing, unbearable obbligatos into the hall until he made them let him in. He was feared
almost as much by friends for the embarrassments caused to them as by
opponents for his rabid, conscienceless attacks. Almost incongruously, he was a man of scholarship and a recognized musical authority. In the
nineteen-twenties he often broadcast on music, and he had an important position with one of the recording companies.
Baritz was a Manchester man. He joined the Socialist Party there in 1906, soon quarrelled violently with the Executive Committee over an administrative detail and left. He was re-admitted not long after¬wards and began the extraordinary career in which he carried the case for revolution everywhere. Between them Baritz and Kohn gave the lectures and conducted the economics classes which led to the formation of the New York Socialist Society and, later, the Workers’ Socialist Party of the United States.
Kohn became a socialist in his teens and was still very young when he set up as a bookseller. A minor flood of socialist works was under way in America, and Kohn became agent for their sale in London. Hence the regular journeys across the Atlantic, and the appearance on socialists’ shelves of books printed and published by Charles H. Kerr and Company, Chicago. Kerr’s was a small co-operative before the first world war it provided an entire library of theoretical and polemical works. Some of them were first-time translations of European social-democratic writings and of Marx and Engels: the great third volume of Das Kapital had its first — and for almost fifty years, its only — English publication from Kerr’s in 1909. There were Marx’s historical works; Engels’s Landmarks of Scientific Socialism, Socialism Utopian and Scientific, and Origin of the Family; Joseph Dietzgen’s Positive Outcome of Philosophy; Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society; Paul Lafargue’s Social and Philosophical Studies and The Right to be Lazy; and many more.
Besides these, there were works by American Marxists. Ernest Untermann, as well as being an indefatigable translator, contributed such titles as Science and Revolution and The World’s Revolutions. Another prolific writer was Arthur M. Lewis. His Ten Blind Leaders of the Blind was enormously popular — a volume of lectures attacking such diverse thinkers as Henry George, Kant, Lombroso, Carlyle, August Comte and Bishop Spalding. Indeed, the appeal of this kind of work is the indication of what was to become a weakness, even a fatuousness, in the socialist movement: the belief that philosophers and scientists were easily dismissed on the ground, more or less, that they did not see the class struggle in society. What was learned from the socialist scholars in the long run was that learning was a waste.
Kohn himself was a man for whom books were everything. His business developed successfully and he quickly gained respect as a lecturer and, occasionally, a vigorous writer on current politics. For him, as for the others, what mattered was to be ‘scientific’ — to insist
on precision and exemplary logic in the argument for socialism. ‘Scientific Socialism’ was the Party’s watchword, and ‘unscientific’ its deadliest condemnation. When Neumann described socialism as a philosophy, Fitzgerald rose in fury: socialism was a science, and
Neumann for such confusion was unfitted to conduct the Party classes.
Every applicant for membership was questioned carefully on his understanding of scientific socialism. Usually the questions were asked from round the room in a meeting of a branch; for the more distant applicants to the Central Branch, however, there was a written test. The first question was always: What is socialism ? and the answer, A social system based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production and distribution. All the answers, indeed, were proof of assimilation more than understanding, for they required stock phraseology and continual reference to the Party Principles: What is the class struggle ? How is socialism to be established ? What is the Socialist Party’s attitude to reformist organizations ? and so on.
The only scope for verbal originality was afforded when the applicant was asked his opinion of religion. Words like ‘freethinker’, ‘agnostic’ and even ‘atheist’ were unscientific; a socialist was a Marxist materialist. Some answered with a reference to ‘the opium of the people’, some with a touch of science (‘Matter can be neither created nor destroyed’); and there were always those with a confession, lapsed Jews and the Catholics in revolt. When a member left, it was usually put down to imperfect understanding of the socialist position.
Those who went and became prominent in other organizations were held to be careerists, of course, and it was assumed that at heart they ‘understood’ still, whatever professions might be made.
The most exacting test, however, was for speakers. Any member could speak from Party platforms, but he was expected first to equip himself with knowledge at the Party’s classes in economics and history. Little attention was paid to the study of current events. The view was taken that if a man knew the Marxist theory of value and the progress in society from early times he was equipped to analyze anything. In fact, when an important matter arose Fitzgerald or another expert dealt with it in the Socialist Standard for the guidance of speakers and members in general.
The speaking test was applied only when a speaker failed or deviated from correctness of theory. It did not enquire about rhetorical ability; its sole concern was the speaker’s knowledge, to discover if he was fitted to represent the Party. The examiners, except on special occasions when the EC itself acted, were two or three members in good
repute. The questions began with definitions of the component categories of the theory of value: What is value ? What is exchange value ? What is a commodity ? What determines price ? Those simple facts established, the test went on to more detailed questions on Marx 's economics — surplus-value, accumulation, labour-power — and to history and revolutionary political theory.
Some aspects of the Party argument were unique. It was insisted, for example, that the working class did not pay taxes, and at intervals a main article in the Standard recapitulated this. In the Marxist theory of the state, parliament acted for the capitalist class with money subscribed — however reluctantly — by that class. The differences between the political parties were, in fact, largely questions of the collection and expenditure of these funds. If the working class contributed to the state by taxation, it too would have an interest in govermental factions. The argument was both a priori and a posteriori; the working class could not pay taxes, but it did not.
Few working people were concerned by direct taxation. Paying income tax was, like keeping a bank account, a mark of riches. Nevertheless, a direct tax on all working-class incomes would not affect the position. Wages were actual money received, not a theoretical gross payment; such a tax would in the final analysis be paid by the employers, even though it appeared as an item on the wages bill. Indirect taxation was a charge on profits, not on buyers’ pockets. The government had to choose industries where monopoly control was providing uniform prices and high profits for creaming off. The retail price of, say, tobacco was not an economic price with a tax added; it was simply the high price a monopoly could demand, with tax payable from the profits. To support the argument there were several cases where taxes on goods had been reduced with little or no effect on prices, and one where the retail price had actually risen.
It was a difficult argument, involving almost a willing suspension of disbelief at a time when local rates and national taxation were rising fast, and it arose continually when the Party contested municipal elections in the pre-1914 years. The first election campaign was in 1906, when nine SPGB men stood for the Battersea Borough Council and three for the Tooting division of Wandsworth. The Battersea results were:- Latchmere Ward: Craske 117, Moody 117, Money 113; Winstanley Ward: Blewett 57, Roe 49, Witcher 45; Church Ward: Greenham 93, Fawcett 88, Hunt 77. At Wandsworth Barker gained 94, MacManus 77, and Dumenil 59.
The printed address to the electorate expounded the Party’s case about taxes, as well as the economics of capitalism and the
necessity for working-class organization against reformism. Its ending displayed another unique standpoint of the Socialist Party:
‘Fully realizing and pointing out to workers the strict limitations of the power of local bodies, making no promises that are beyond our power to fulfil, we ask the members of our class, when (but not before) they have studied these facts and realize their correctness, to cast their vote for the candidates of the SPGB, who alone stand on the above basis.’
The Socialist Standard, reviewing the election results, confirmed the point; the candidates, it said proudly, had done no canvassing. The SPGB was to be the only party in political history that discouraged votes. Unceasing in its tirade against ‘ear tickling, side tracking, vote catching election promises, it demanded that only convinced socialists should vote for it and insisted that all the others should not. There were arguments with expansive anarchists and casual sympathizers who wanted to give the Party votes which were friendly but not fraternal; members pleaded and bullied to reject their votes, desperate with anxiety that no non-socialist should make his mark for a revolutionary candidate. After the 1906 elections it was agreed, too, that only members might sign a candidate’s nomination form — a self-imposed barrier to contesting all but two or three parliamentary constituencies.
If was planned to have Jackson and Fitzgerald as candidates in the 1907 London County Council elections, but they never stood. A branch questioned the authority behind the campaign, and Jackson’s residential qualification disappeared. There was an attempt at Burnley in 1908, encouraged by the fact that Burnley was a hotbed of social-democracy, but the two Party members, Schofield and Tamlyn, polled only 15 votes between them. Tooting and Tottenham had campaigns too and despite all the Party’s efforts to deter mere followers of
personalities Anderson, at Tottenham, gained an individual vote of
more than twice as many as Stern or Rourke, who stood with him.
There was never enough money to have a candidate for parliament. The next best thing was the publication of leaflet ‘manifestos’ at election times, and this was done on several occasions. With nothing to offer but socialist understanding, and everything to attack, some of these were minor masterpieces of invective. One of the earliest used savage irony on the electioneers’ wooing of the poor:
'Fellow members of the working class ! at the present moment you, or those of you possessed of votes, are being urgently reminded of a fact that you may be pardoned for having forgotten — you are of consequence; then you, who but yesterday were “hands”, dependant,hirelings, articles of merchandise are today dictators, history-makers,
free men, you are the power in the State. You hold the destiny of the Empire in the hollow of your hand. Yesterday, those of you who were unemployed were whining wastrels, scum unemployable, treated as children on the one hand and dogs on the other. Today if you have votes — you are the bone and sinew of England’s greatness. “You count.”’
In the absence of Party candidates, to vote for any other was unthinkable. On the other hand, the power to vote was not to be neglected. The members resolved the dilemma by going to the polls and writing ‘Socialism’ across their ballot-papers: the votes were recorded, but as spoilt papers. It was contended that this was, in effect, voting for what one wanted, and it was regarded as a duty — in 1918 the Socialist Standard printed a specimen spoilt ballot paper on its front page. Other groups of demonstrators occasionally imitated the practice, but its real status was that of a gesture at the politics of capitalism.
One other question which arose from election campaigns was hotly debated in 1909 and 1910: would a socialist, elected to parliament, take the Oath of Allegiance to the Crown ? Without the oath, he would never take his seat at all, and the Party Conference of 1909 decided that ‘oaths and forms imposed by the constitution shall not be allowed to prevent elected representatives from taking their seats’. The elected representative would take the oath. A number of the members disagreed. To swear allegiance, even with mental reservations, was to compromise with the crown, the church, and all the powers of the existing order . . . and behind this feeling were men who had never taken a court oath, risen for the national anthem, accepted the marriage ceremony or celebrated Christmas since they became socialist.
A counter-resolution to the 1910 Conference proposed: ‘That any member elected to Parliament shall not take the Oath of Allegiance.’ It was lost and the previous year’s decision affirmed, but a poll of the membership had to be taken to give finality to the affair. Once again some members left, sure that the Party was on the slopes of compromise and confusion. Indeed, there gathered slowly a little group of loyal ex-members, the by-product of successive controversies and quarrels. They attended the meetings, discussed the Standard, sent converts they had made; some had resigned in anger with a hypothesis of future policy, some had been expelled for infringements. And for almost all of them, the fierce pride that made them uncompromising with the system made them unwilling to ask to come back.
It is a little surprising that there was never any dispute over the Party’s attitude to female suffrage. The aim of the suffrage movement
was to gain votes on the same terms as men, for whom there was a property qualification. It was not denied that this would mean votes for a small number of well-to-do women only; but male suffrage had begun like that, and there was a widespread sentiment that the start what mattered. However, the Party’s concern was with more than the idea of supporting rich women. The Women’s Social and Political Union had a close link with the ILP and was ready for a deal with the Liberals. Into what deep water could innocent association with it lead ?
The Party had its women members — mainly, wives and sisters of the men. Fitzgerald’s sister Kitty and her husband, Harry Gostick, were members; so were Anderson’s wife and Kohn’s sister. There were a few others attracted from the general flow of interest in emancipation. One, Elizabeth Lechmere, was a frail spinster who earned a small income by writing fairy stories. Another was the lady from the Board of Guardians: the membership of these boards was one of the few public offices open to women, and there were more than a thousand female guardians before 1914. During the war the Party administration was largely taken over by women members, Executive Committee and all.
Hut for every man in the Party whose wife or sweetheart shared in the struggle, there were others for whom domestic friction was part of a revolutionary’s martyrdom. Conformity and regard for the institutions of society are conditions of personal security; not many men, but even fewer women, are or were willing to oppose them. For the members’ families socialism was too often synonymous with unemployment, arguments, and absentee fathers. A wife who ‘understood’ — i.e. supported or tolerated her husband’s activities — was a rare jewel, and a few homes where this was the case were the centres of such social life as the Party had.
In 1912 the Party moved again, to 193 Grays Inn Road; this time the place was next door to a coffee-shop. The part played by these working-class eating-houses and tea-shops may require some explanation. Few of the members drank beer or went in public houses.
‘Drink’ was a major social problem when the Party was founded, and the struggle between the Conservative brewers and the ‘temperance’ Liberals in the late nineteenth century had linked anti-Conservatism with disapproval of drink. Besides this, there was a strong asceticism in the Party, a seriousness of purpose which involved rejection of the well known ways in which other men dissipated money and intelligence.
The place of rendezvous and informal discussion between members was, therefore, invariably a coffee-shop. Several of the branches met in rooms behind or over coffee-shops. One or two rented
rooms for their weekly meetings in workmen’s clubs or co-operative society buildings, and some of the smaller groups used members’ houses. The last was always looked-down upon, however — in particular, because the Party claimed proudly that all its meetings were open to the public, and a private house was not the thing for this. Coffee-shop proprietors were nearly always willing to let if they could, for besides the fee for a room there was the prospect of heavy tea consumption when the arguments went on late.
The Grays Inn Road premises had two ground-floor rooms and a basement. They were considerably more spacious than the rooms above the junk-shop. At Sandland Street there was hardly room for a visitor to stand when the Executive was in session; here, a member named T. W. Lobb was able to make long wooden seats on the walls for audiences at EC meetings. The basement was somewhere to fold, despatch and store the literature. The stocks of pamphlets and issues of the Standard were sorted and neatly set out for the first time.
And there was an old-fashioned printing press with a long arm that somebody had picked up, with a supply of type. It was used for reports, circulars, leaflets and anything else; Walter Alley would set up the type and leave a note for whoever came in next, and the members took turns swinging the long arm while they talked. The leaflets generally were articles reprinted from the Socialist Standard referring to issues of the day, for distribution at other parties’ meetings. One of the most zealous literature-sellers and leaflet-distributors was a tough old man named Germain who had lost both his arms in an accident in Africa. He was out in all weathers, selling bootlaces and matches from a tray hung round his neck, and knew everything that was going on in London.
The Party was at Grays Inn Road when the war began in 1914. Before that, however, arose one of the most curious of the continual Party disputes. In its origins it was simple enough; it was complicated and dragged on by the determination, which had become fanatical in ten years, that no-one should remain a member who was confused, unscientific or — another favourite pejorative — unsound. The matter began in the spring of 1914 in Peckham, where a member named Wren had a newspaper shop. Various legislative acts from 1870 onwards were taking away the supply of dirt-cheap labour by children of school age, and Wren joined other newsagents in petitioning their Member of Parliament on the subject of morning-paper boys.
The Peckham branch heard of it and asked the EC’s advice, enclosing a copy of the petition. The reply was: ‘That any member signing the petition sent to the EC has violated the Principles and
should be dealt with under Rule 5.’ Accordingly, at its next meeting this branch resolved by 13 votes to none: ‘That this Branch charge Comrade Wren with violating the Principles of the Party by signing the newsagents’ petition to the local MP, and that the Secretary submit this charge to Comrade Wren and inform him that the same will be dealt with at the Branch Meeting on July 6th.’ On 6 July the motion that Wren be expelled was duly tabled and put to the branch’s vote — and lost, by 6 to 11.
What is most noteworthy in the charge and all that followed is the nature of Wren’s offence. From the beginning to the eventual trailing-off of the affair in the war, its sole concern was the approach for co-operation to a non-socialist politician: the Hostility Clause had been infringed. The cause and purpose of the petition were never mentioned, even when in 1917 the EC found it necessary to issue a four page recapitulation of the whole affair. Members’ personal actions, and if they had businesses their business ones, were outside the scope of the Party argument. Had Wren ill-treated and victimized his paperboys there would have been no case against him from the Party. The capitalist conception of history showed simply that economic interests directed behaviour, and a man who was an employer had to behave like one: the iron compulsion of capitalism.
The expulsion motion had to be carried. The Executive Committee sent three of its members to Peckham to insist that the launch rescind the minute recording the defeated motion, and to see proposed again that Wren be expelled ‘for signing the petition to Liberal MP, thereby violating the Principles of the Party’. This time it was carried by 14 to 7. There remained, apparently, seven who would not agree that a man who approached a Liberal MP must be expelled.
They too were obviously unsound, and on 22 September 1914, Anderson moved and the Executive resolved:
‘That the following letter be sent to King, Hatton, L. Mills, Hall, Bennett, Cowlan and Kimber. . . “You are hereby charged under Rule 20 with action detrimental to the interests of the Party in that, at a meeting of the Peckham Branch held on Monday, July 20th, 1914,you voted against the expulsion of Comrade Wren, who was expelled under Rule 5 for taking action violating the Principles of the Party. ” ’
The seven were duly expelled by the decision of a poll of members early in 1915. The Party had not yet finished, however. 103 had voted for the expulsions, 27 against — a further twenty-seven members, apparently, were unsound. Ballots were not secret; so on 16 March, Anderson and Sidney Auty moved at the Executive:
‘That arising out of the result of the Party Vote on the Delegate
Meeting decision re Peckham, the 21 members who voted against this decision be asked if they recognized that Wren had violated the Principles of the Party and if they have reason to give why they failed to vote out of the Party those members of the Peckham Branch whose, duty it was to expel Wren under Rule 5, but who failed to do so. ’
There was another resolution demanding the names of all those who had not voted, in order that their standing in the matter might be judged.
A witch-hunt in full cry: but 1915 was not the time for it. Members were becoming elusive, the branch secretaries who knew the names were disappearing for periods. Another expulsion was obtained, but the particulars needed for more were impossible to ascertain. The EC passed angry resolutions insisting that someone — anyone — should supply names to them, and Anderson tried to have ten members brought to book who had still dared to vote against the final single expulsion, but it was all of no use. The Peckham affair died an unsatisfactory death in 1917, but not before it had established precedents and affirmed attitudes which were to bear strongly on the future.
Meanwhile, the war began.
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