British Workers League | |
|---|---|
| Chairman | James Seddon |
| Secretary | Victor Fisher |
| Founded | 1916 |
| Dissolved | 1927 |
| Preceded by | Socialist National Defence Committee |
| Newspaper | British Citizen and Empire Worker; Empire Citizen |
| Ideology | Unionist |
| Political position | Right-wing |
The British Workers League was a 'patriotic labour' group which was anti-socialist [ citation needed ] and pro-British Empire. Founded originally as the Socialist National Defence Committee , the league operated from May 1916 to 1927.
The league's origins lay in a split in the British Socialist Party in 1915, primarily over the need to win the First World War. A group, dissenting from the pacifism of the Labour Party, would be formed by Victor Fisher and supported "the eternal idea of nationality" and aimed to promote "socialist measures in the war effort". Fisher, and Alexander M. Thompson, would form the Socialist National Defence Committee. [1] This group, included H. G. Wells and Robert Blatchford. [2]
In 1916 the Committee transformed itself into the British Workers National League, subsequently shortened to the British Workers League. [3] It executive included Edward Carson, Leo Maxse, H.G. Wells and fifteen Labour MPs including Will Crooks and John Hodge. [4] Hodge would preside as chairman, and James Andrew Seddon was chairman of the organization committee. [5] The league's first public meeting was held at the Queen's Hall in London on 10 May 1916, and its guest speaker and big advocate was Prime Minister Billy Hughes of Australia. [6] [7]
Now avowedly anti-socialist,[ citation needed ] it described itself as a "patriotic labour" group and focused on support for the war. The Rev. A.W. Gough, Prebendary of St. Paul's Cathedral, was chairman of the British Workers League for London and the Home Counties. [8] Edward Robertshaw Hartley was also a member. The Labour MP Stephen Walsh and the Liberal MP Leo Chiozza Money were vice presidents. [9] During the war period the British Workers League sometimes threatened to break up pacifist meetings. [10]
The League received funding from Viscount Milner [11] and had links to the British Commonwealth Union. [12] The first issue of the league's newspaper, the British Citizen and Empire Worker, published the party's platform: [13]
A Standard Living Wage for Industrial and Agricultural Workers;
The Revival and Development of National Agriculture;
Adequate Pensions for all Our Disabled Soldiers and Sailors;
Victory in the War to be followed by the Expropriation of Enemy Economic and Industrial Interests Within the Empire;
National or Municipal Control of National Monopolies and Vital Industries;
The Full Exploitation of the Natural Resources of the Empire in the Interests of the Whole People.
The league's secretary, Victor Fisher , stressed the need for 'respectable' socialism, noting that, "The British Commonwealth still remains the highest and finest embodiment of social life which men had yet developed...the main business of our public life and of our public activities...must be..To unite by every possible link the scattered states of the British Commonwealth." [14] As such, it was an advocate for Imperial Preference.
In 1916, the newspaper severely criticized Prime Minister Asquith, nicknamed "Squiff", for drinking too much, allowing no crisis to interfere with his two hours of bridge every evening, and, while hundreds of thousands died, spending leisurely nonworking weekends at friends' country houses. He even raised eyebrows on one occasion by attending a Saturday morning meeting at 10 Downing Street in his golf clothes. [15]
1917 was the high water mark for the British Worker's League, with over 150 branches and in open opposition with the Labour Party, and its decision to send politician Arthur Henderson to Stockholm for an international labour conference supported by communists. The conference proved to be Henderson's downfall. [16]
In 1918 the British Workers League stood candidates in the general election as the National Democratic and Labour Party. From 1921 to 1927 the League published a newspaper entitled The Empire Citizen.[ citation needed ]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)| International | |
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Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner, was a British statesman and colonial administrator who played a very important role in the formulation of British foreign and domestic policy between the mid-1890s and early 1920s. From December 1916 to November 1918, he was one of the most important members of Prime Minister David Lloyd George's War cabinet.
The National Democratic and Labour Party, usually abbreviated to National Democratic Party (NDP), was a short-lived political party in the United Kingdom. Its predecessors were the British Workers' National League, and the Socialist National Defence Committee.
Violet Georgina Milner, Viscountess Milner was an English socialite of the Victorian and Edwardian eras and, later, editor of the political monthly National Review. Her father was close friends with Georges Clemenceau, she married the son of Prime Minister Salisbury, Lord Edward Cecil, and after his death, Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner.
Milner's Kindergarten is the informal name of a group of Britons who served in the South African civil service under High Commissioner Alfred, Lord Milner, between the Second Boer War and the founding of the Union of South Africa in 1910. It is possible that the kindergarten was Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain's idea, for in his diary dated 14 August 1901, Chamberlain's assistant secretary Geoffrey Robinson wrote, "Another long day occupied chiefly in getting together a list of South African candidates for Lord Milner – from people already in the (Civil) Service". They were in favour of the unification of South Africa and, ultimately, an Imperial Federation with the British Empire itself. On Milner's retirement, most continued in the service under Lord Selborne, who was Milner's successor, and the number two-man at the Colonial Office. The Kindergarten started off with 12 men, most of whom were Oxford graduates and English civil servants, who made the trip to South Africa in 1901 to help Lord Milner rebuild the war torn economy. Quite young and inexperienced, one of them brought with him a biography written by F.S. Oliver on Alexander Hamilton. He read the book, and the plan for rebuilding the new government of South Africa was based along the lines of the book, Hamilton's federalist philosophy, and his knowledge of treasury operations. The name, "Milner's Kindergarten", although first used derisively by Sir William Thackeray Marriott, was adopted by the group as its name.
A ginger group is a formal or informal group within an organisation seeking to influence its direction and activity. The term comes from the phrase ginger up, meaning to enliven or stimulate. Ginger groups work to alter the organisation's policies, practices, or office-holders, while still supporting its general goals. Ginger groups sometimes form within the political parties of Commonwealth countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, and Pakistan.
The Supreme War Council was a central command based in Versailles that coordinated the military strategy of the principal Allies of World War I: Britain, France, Italy, the United States, and Japan. It was founded in 1917 after the Russian Revolution and with Russia's withdrawal as an ally imminent. The council served as a second source of advice for civilian leadership, a forum for preliminary discussions of potential armistice terms, later for peace treaty settlement conditions, and it was succeeded by the Conference of Ambassadors in 1920.
John Turner Walton Newbold, generally known as Walton Newbold, was the first of the four Communist Party of Great Britain members to be elected as MPs in the United Kingdom.
Allan Louis Benson was an American newspaper editor and author who was the Socialist Party of America nominee for President of the United States in 1916. Known for his outspoken anti-war views, Benson and his running mate George Ross Kirkpatrick received 590,524 votes, 3.2% of the total vote in the election.
Carl D. Thompson was an American preacher, Christian Socialist, and Social Democratic politician. A Congregationalist minister early in his life, Thompson is best remembered as a lecturer and political organizer for the Socialist Party of America.
The Socialist National Defence Committee also known as the Socialist National Defence League was a pro First World War socialist faction.
The Kienthal Conference was held in the Swiss village of Kienthal, between April 24 and 30, 1916. Like its 1915 predecessor, the Zimmerwald Conference, it was an international conference of socialists who opposed the First World War.
During the First World War there were a number of conferences of the socialist parties of the Entente or Allied powers.
The Social Democratic League of America (SDLA) was a short-lived social-democratic political party established in 1917 by electorally-oriented socialists who favored the participation of the United States in World War I. Led by such intellectuals as John Spargo, Emanuel Haldeman-Julius, and William English Walling, the SDLA maintained effective control over the venerable American socialist newspaper The Appeal to Reason during 1918, the year of the group's greatest public influence.
The Labour and Socialist International was an international organization of socialist and labourist parties, active between 1923 and 1940. The group was established through a merger of the rival Vienna International and the Berne International, and was the forerunner of the present-day Socialist International.
The Second International, also called the Socialist International, was an organisation of socialist and labour parties, formed on 14 July 1889 at two simultaneous Paris meetings in which delegations from twenty countries participated. The Second International continued the work of the dissolved First International, though excluding the powerful anarcho-syndicalist movement. While the international had initially declared its opposition to all warfare between European powers, most of the major European parties ultimately chose to support their respective states in World War I. After splitting into pro-Allied, pro-Central Powers, and antimilitarist factions, the international ceased to function. After the war, the remaining factions of the international went on to found the Labour and Socialist International, the International Working Union of Socialist Parties, and the Communist International.
Frederick Victor Fisher was a British political activist.
The War Policy Committee was a small group of British ministers, most of them members of the War Cabinet, set up during World War I to decide war strategy. The committee was created at the request of Lord Milner on 7 June 1917, through a memorandum he circulated with his peers on the British War Cabinet. Its members included the Prime Minister, David Lloyd George, Lord Milner, Edward Carson, Lord Curzon and Jan Smuts. The committee was formed to discuss the strategic matter of the Russian Revolution, and the new entry of The United States. Coincidentally or not, the timing of Lord Milner's memo coincided with the detonation of 19 underground mines filled with explosives on the Western Front, which created the largest human explosion of all time. The night before this explosion, General Harington said to reporters "Gentleman, I don't know whether we are going to make history tomorrow, but at any rate we shall change the geography". In Milner's memo, he stressed that the allies must act together for the common good, and not devolve to piecemeal arrangements that satisfied specific countries. The War Policy Committee was formed, and it discussed every major initiative taken by the allies until the end of the war. It was chaired by Lord's Milner and Curzon, with Jan Smuts as its Vice Chairman.
The Monday Night Cabal was a 'ginger group' of influential people set up in London by Leo Amery at the start of 1916 to discuss war policy. The nucleus of the group consisted of Lord Milner, George Carson, Geoffrey Dawson, Waldorf Astor and F. S. Oliver. The group got together for Monday night dinners and to discuss politics. Throughout 1916 their numbers and influence grew to include Minister of Munitions David Lloyd George, General Henry Wilson, Philip Kerr, and Mark Jameson. It is thought that word of the Ginger Group reached Douglas Haig, prompting him to invite Lord Milner to France in November for an 8-day tour of the Western Front. It was through the Ginger Group that Times editor Geoffrey Dawson published a December 4, 1916 news story titled "Reconstruction" that set in motion events that caused Prime Minister H. H. Asquith to resign, signaling the rise of the Lloyd George Ministry. Among the group's primary objectives was the formation of a small war cabinet within government to fight the war against the German Empire effectively. This point was advanced by The Times as early as April 1915, so it is unknown if the Ginger Group, or one its predecessor elements was responsible for the idea behind Lloyd George's decision to create a War Cabinet on the day he was appointed Prime Minister. However, his surprise choice of Lord Milner as one of the War Cabinet's five members shows the influence of the ginger group on him.
The RMS Kildonan Castle was a Royal Mail Ship and passenger liner that went into service with Castle Line, and its successor, the Union-Castle Line. She was built to run the mail route from Southampton, England to Cape Town, South Africa starting in 1900. However, she began her life early, in December 1899, being requisitioned by the government to carry 3,000 troops to Cape Town at the start of the Boer War, and was temporarily used in South Africa to house POW's. She returned to England in 1901 for an outfitting to carry passengers and mail. She was one of nine ships on the England-South Africa run. At the outbreak of World War I, she replenished the South African Army with arms and ammunition. She also served as a hospital ship during the Dardanelles Campaign, outfitted with 603 beds, and converted in March 1916 to an armed merchant cruiser. In January 1917, she took Lord Milner and 51 VIP delegates from England, France and Italy to Murmansk, Russia, on the Petrograd Mission. She then undertook convoy duties in the North Atlantic, returning to her normal South African mail run after the war.
The Garden Suburb is the name given to a collection of ministerial positions created by the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George in December 1916, to help facilitate the running of World War I. They were housed in temporary wooden structures in the Garden of 10 and 11 Downing Street. Due to their contacts with the press, they were sometimes regarded with suspicion, and their ideas at times created trouble for the Cabinet Secretary Maurice Hankey, who was charged not just with supervising the taking of minutes at War Cabinet meetings, but also with executing their decisions. Known as the Prime Minister's personal secretariat and private "brain trust", the Garden Suburb included the likes of Professor W. G. S. Adams, Lord Milner, Philip Kerr and Waldorf Astor.
