Last updated British Empire Union poster from the immediate post-war period, titled "Once a German—always a German!"
The British Empire Union (BEU) was created in the United Kingdom during the First World War, in 1916, after changing its name from the Anti-German Union, which had been founded in April 1915.[1] From December 1922 to summer 1952, it published a regular journal.[2]
It stood for patriotism, social reform, industrial peace, promotion of the Empire and anti-socialism.[3]
On 28 July 1916 the Vice-Presidents of the BEU, Lord and Lady Bathurst, subscribed to a full-page advertisement in The Morning Post stating their objectives:
1. To consolidate the British Empire and to develop Trade and Commerce within the Empire and with our Allies. 2. To alter our existing naturalisation laws to render it impossible for aliens seeking naturalisation to become British citizens so long as they remain subjects of other countries. This is to apply to existing cases. 3. To pursue an Educational propaganda throughout the country in furtherance of the policies that have been expounded by Mr. W. M. Hughes [Prime Minister of Australia]; to establish branches in every constituency and county, and to support candidates pledged to these policies in both the country and in the House of Commons; to urge the importance of the measures proposed to assist the more vigorous prosecution of the war, and to bring about its speedy and satisfactory termination, and to controvert the false economic doctrine so aptly described as 'Laissez-faire'.[4]
In 1936, the Soviet newspaper Izvestia attacked the BEU as the main opponent of socialism in Britain, which the BEU proudly quoted in its Report: "No other society was mentioned".[5] In 1960, it was renamed the British Commonwealth Union and was taken over by a group of directors in 1975, who ceased its political activities.[6]
Notes
↑ Panikos Panayi, The British Empire Union in the First World War, in Tony Kushner and Kenneth Lunn (eds.), The Politics of Marginality: Race, the Radical Right and Minorities in Twentieth Century Britain (Abingdon: Frank Cass, 1990), p. 113.
Left-wing politics support social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition of social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished. According to emeritus professor of economics Barry Clark, left-wing supporters "claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated."
Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party, as the political prelude to the establishment of communism. The function of the Leninist vanguard party is to provide the working classes with the political consciousness and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism in the Russian Empire (1721–1917). Leninist revolutionary leadership is based upon The Communist Manifesto (1848) identifying the communist party as "the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country; that section which pushes forward all others." As the vanguard party, the Bolsheviks viewed history through the theoretical framework of dialectical materialism, which sanctioned political commitment to the successful overthrow of capitalism, and then to instituting socialism; and, as the revolutionary national government, to realize the socio-economic transition by all means.
Marxism-Leninism is a communist ideology which was the main communist movement throughout the 20th century. It was the formal name of the state ideology adopted by the Soviet Union, its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc, and various self-declared "scientific socialist" regimes in the Non-Aligned Movement and Third World during the Cold War as well as the Communist International after Bolshevisation. Today, Marxism-Leninism is the ideology of several communist parties and remains the official ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam as one-party socialist republics, and of Nepal in a multiparty democracy.
Socialism is a political, social, and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It includes the political theories and movements associated with such systems. Social ownership can be public, collective, or cooperative. While no single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism, social ownership is the one common element. Socialisms vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation, on the structure of management in organizations, and from below or from above approaches, with some socialists favouring a party, state, or technocratic-driven approach. Socialists disagree on whether government, particularly existing government, is the correct vehicle for change.
The United Kingdom was a leading Allied Power during the First World War of 1914–1918, fighting against the Central Powers, especially Germany. The armed forces were greatly expanded and reorganised—the war marked the founding of the Royal Air Force. The highly controversial introduction, in January 1916, of conscription for the first time in British history followed the raising of one of the largest all-volunteer army in history, known as Kitchener's Army, of more than 2,000,000 men. The outbreak of war was a socially unifying event. Enthusiasm was widespread in 1914, and was similar to that across Europe.
The British Workers League was a 'patriotic labour' group which was anti-socialist and pro-British Empire. Founded originally as the Socialist National Defence Committee, the league operated from May 1916 to 1927.
Communism is a philosophical, social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, namely a socioeconomic order structured upon the ideas of common or social ownership of all property and the absence of social classes, money, and the state. Communism is a specific, yet distinct, form of socialism. Communists agree on the withering away of the state but disagree on the means to this end, reflecting a distinction between a more libertarian approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers' self-management, and a more vanguardist or Communist party-driven approach through the development of a constitutional socialist state.
Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a liberal-democratic polity and a capitalist-oriented mixed economy. The protocols and norms used to accomplish this involve a commitment to representative and participatory democracy, measures for income redistribution, regulation of the economy in the general interest, and social welfare provisions. Due to longstanding governance by social democratic parties during the post-war consensus and their influence on socioeconomic policy in Northern and Western Europe, social democracy became associated with Keynesianism, the Nordic model, the social-liberal paradigm, and welfare states within political circles in the late 20th century. It has been described as the most common form of Western or modern socialism, as well as the reformist wing of democratic socialism.
The Fabian Society is a British socialist organisation whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in democracies, rather than by revolutionary overthrow. Fabian Society was also historically related to radicalism, a left-wing liberal tradition.
Nazism, the common name in English for National Socialism, is the ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. During Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Europe, it was frequently referred to as Hitlerism. The later related term "neo-Nazism" is applied to other far-right groups with similar ideas which formed after the collapse of the Nazi regime.
State socialism is a political and economic ideology within the socialist movement advocating state ownership of the means of production, either as a temporary measure or as a characteristic of socialism in the transition from the capitalist to the socialist mode of production or communist society. Aside from anarchists and other libertarian socialists, there was, in the past, confidence amongst socialists in the concept of state socialism as being the most effective form of socialism. Some early social democrats in the late 19th century and early 20th century such as the Fabians claimed that British society was already mostly socialist and that the economy was significantly socialist through government-run enterprises created by conservative and liberal governments which could be run for the interests of the people through their representatives' influence, an argument reinvoked by some socialists in post-war Britain. State socialism went into decline starting in the 1970s, with the occurrence of stagflation during the 1970s energy crisis, the rise of neoliberalism and later with the fall of state socialist nations in the Eastern Bloc during the Revolutions of 1989 and the fall of the Soviet Union.
The Revolutions of 1917–1923 was a revolutionary wave that included political unrest and revolts around the world inspired by the success of the Russian Revolution and the disorder created by the aftermath of World War I. The uprisings were mainly socialist or anti-colonial in nature. Some socialist revolts failed to create lasting socialist states. The revolutions had lasting effects in shaping the future European political landscape, with for example the collapse of the German Empire and the abdication of the German Kaiser.
Socialism in the United Kingdom is thought to stretch back to the 19th century from roots arising in the aftermath of the English Civil War. Notions of socialism in Great Britain have taken many different forms from the utopian philanthropism of Robert Owen through to the reformist electoral project enshrined in the birth of the Labour Party.
Harold Joseph Laski was an English political theorist and economist. He was active in politics and served as the chairman of the British Labour Party from 1945 to 1946 and was a professor at the London School of Economics from 1926 to 1950. He first promoted pluralism by emphasising the importance of local voluntary communities such as trade unions. After 1930, he began to emphasize the need for a workers' revolution, which he hinted might be violent. Laski's position angered Labour leaders who promised a nonviolent democratic transformation. Laski's position on democracy threatening violence came under further attack from Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the 1945 general election, and the Labour Party had to disavow Laski, its own chairman.
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