Common Wealth stood for three principles: Common Ownership, Morality in Politics and Vital Democracy.[1] Disagreeing with the electoral pact established with other parties in the wartime coalition, key figures in the 1941 Committee began sponsoring independent candidates in by-elections under the banner of the Nine Point Group.
Following the electoral success of Tom Driberg with this support in 1942, the Committee, a social movement, proposed becoming a political party through a merger with Forward March, though many preferred movement status. Through pressure from Priestley and Wintringham, 'Party' was never formally part of Common Wealth's name. The group was led by Acland (MP), Vernon Bartlett, J.B. Priestley, and Tom Wintringham. Its programme of common ownership echoed that of the Labour Party but had more idealistic perspective, later termed "libertarian socialist". It came to reject the State-dominated form of socialism adopted by Labour under the influence of Beatrice and Sidney Webb, aligning itself instead with co-operative, syndicalist and guild socialist traditions. A party proposal became that personal income, by taxation, should have an upper limit.[3]
Though the party was initially chaired by Priestley, he stepped down after just a few months, unable to reconcile himself with the politics of Acland – who as a sitting MP he viewed as exerting undue influence. Wintringham was the natural successor but deferred to Acland, despite very real political differences between them.
Acland himself had a less easy-going approach. In his book The Forward March he had claimed that in Britain under a Forward March government:
[it is] the community as a whole which must decide whether or not a man shall be employed upon our resources, and how and when and in what manner he shall work ...[the community will] run camps for shirkers on very tolerable conditions.
Acland went on to say of these camps:
[Hitler] has stumbled across (or has needed to make use of) a small part, or perhaps one should say one particular aspect of, what will ultimately be required of humanity.
These differences, which led to Priestley stepping down from the leadership and his gradual withdrawal from the party (though he continued to support and endorse individual candidates), were a source of continued tension between former 1941 Committee and Nine Point Group members on one side and Forward Marchers and Christian Socialists on the other.
These differences in approach within Common Wealth were highlighted in a 1944 booklet by Tom and Kitty Wintringham entitled Fellowship or Morality?. Wintringham encouraged C. A. Smith to become party chairman, the two having been brought together for the journal Left, after quitting their respective Marxist parties (the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Independent Labour Party) for their support for the war, and Smith's election in 1944 strengthened the party's syndicalist, libertarian vision.
The war administration was an all-party coalition government incorporating the Conservative, Labour, and Liberal Parties, who agreed that their MP vacancies should be filled unopposed. Common Wealth intervention allowed a radicalising electorate to return socialist candidates in Conservative seats: in Eddisbury, Skipton and Chelmsford.
In February 1943 the party contested and lost four by-elections: on the tenth in AshfordCatherine Williamson against the Conservative by 5,000 votes; the next day, Wintringham in North Midlothian against that party's candidate by 869 votes; on the sixteenth and twenty-third against others in North Portsmouth and Watford by more than 2,000 votes.[4]
In April, John Eric Loverseed amounted to the first winning candidate returned to the Commons, by winning Eddisbury.[4] In November 1944, he left the party and joined Labour in May of the next year.[5] In the 1945 general election, voters deserted Common Wealth for Labour – only Chelmsford (not fought by Labour) was held. In 1946 after Wintringham left the party, that MP, Ernest Millington, crossed the floor to join the Labour Party.
Post–war development
The inability to maintain a Parliamentary presence created a crisis for Common Wealth and at the Hastings conference in 1946, the party split. Two-thirds, including the original leadership, defected to Labour but were unable to persuade the remainder to disband. Tom and Kitty Wintringham left and Tom joined the Labour Party, though kept friendly with CW members and kept an active interest the party and the development of its theory and stance until his death, Kitty remained informally involved with The Libertarian until she died in 1963. Many of the new leadership then elected had joined when in the armed forces among which prominent figures of the Cairo Forces Parliament.
During the 1950s, the party made preparations to contest Oxford, with Douglas Stuckey as prospective candidate, but these were never brought to fruition. For the remainder of its existence it became, de facto, a pressure group, its organisation evolving, and generally contracting, as old age took its toll of the leading figures.
In the postwar period, CW was active in some domestic and international campaigns; it developed worldwide contacts. For Israel and the less-than-state of Palestine, it advocated two internationally recognised states. At home, it helped to form the Industrial Common Ownership Movement (ICOM) and co-campaigned for small parties to be allowed to make party political broadcasts. Through the latter campaign it developed close links with Plaid Cymru (sharing a syndicalist tradition) and the Scottish National Party.
The active collaboration led to the joint publication in 1956 of Our Three Nations. This advocated very great devolution in the United Kingdom: a 'confraternity' of self-governing states. CW also favoured regional government in England and was sympathetic to Mebyon Kernow. Members such as Banks joined the Wessex Regionalists. Executive Committee members played an active, at times leading, role in these movements, especially during the 1980s. Others were active in nascent environmentalism, including its then main political party, the Ecology Party.
In 1992, surviving members and political associates met in London for a 50th anniversary lunch. Weeks later, the death of W.J. 'Buck' Taylor, for many years the Secretary, called into question the ability to continue. Common Wealth resolved to dissolve at a Cheltenham meeting the next year.
Detail of the party's formation and by-elections can be found in a biography of Wintringham, The Last English Revolutionary.[6] The tussle between Acland's didactic Anglican-rooted Christianism and Wintringham's syndicalist Marxism is in Socialism and Religion: Roads to Common Wealth.[7]
Primary source contemporary chronologies are in periodicals The Libertarian and then Common Wealth Journal.[8]
Later platform
Common Wealth's later political philosophy was heavily influenced by a notion that a new mode of production, known as managerialism, was replacing the archetypal forms of capitalism. This idea was drawn from works such as James Burnham's The Managerial Revolution (1941). Burnham (a former Trotskyist Marxist turned pioneering neoconservative) argued that the rise of a salaried managerial class, accompanied by the withdrawal of shareholders from active running of big businesses, was creating a split between the (legal) proprietors of organisations and a class of non-proprietorial professionals who were responsible for the day-to-day management of those organisations. CW used this to develop a modified Marxist analysis — this saw managerialism as a historical stage between capitalism and socialism.
This, per Common Wealth, characterised the Attlee government's post-war programme of nationalisation. The party set out its critique of managerialism in a pamphlet entitled Nationalisation is not Socialism (1948). In essence, this critique suggested that: many features of the Labour Party's programme had not been approved by voters; this confirmed the theory that power, in "socialised" economies as much as market ones, was in the hands of a largely unaccountable managerial class, which served the owners of capital at arm's length; most private ownership was continuing; shares were being replaced by loan stock at inflated valuations, the interest on which was paid from the profits of state-run industries; ministers refused to answer questions in parliament on operational matters, meaning that the management of nationalised industries were not subject to meaningful democratic control; worker representation at board level was either token or non-existent and often justified by stereotyping that workers did not yet have the skills required (unconvincing in CW's view given the record of the co-operative movement, the trade unions, and the Labour Party itself), and; a growing cult of "experts" (i.e. technocracy) and a drift towards authoritarianism, as in oft-appointed ex-military officers running such industries.
Although sympathetic to the non-aligned movement, CW was critical of its inclusion of dictatorships from various part of the political spectrum. Some members of CW were active in Amnesty International.
Influences in philosophy
Other influences during this era included humanistic psychology. Noted psychologists Dr Don Bannister and Dr James Hemming were CW members, and via Hemming and Wintringham so did their friend Ernst Schumacher make contributions to party thought. CW enthusiastically adopted the 'executive-sensory nexus' model of organisation, derived from left/right brain theory. Under this, the Executive Committee, responsible for current decision-making, is shadowed by a scrutiny panel, known in CW as the Sensory Committee, whose role is monitoring and review, research and longer-term development. CW's interest in optimising social organisation consistent with its principles also led it to develop close links with the School of Integrative Social Research at Braziers Park, Oxfordshire.
Left 1942-1947 Town and Country Review 1943-44 Common Wealth Review 1944-49 Common Wealth News 1949 The Libertarian 1950-1988 Common Wealth Journal 1989-1990
Libertarian socialism is an anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist political current that emphasises self-governance and workers' self-management. It is contrasted from other forms of socialism by its rejection of state ownership and from other forms of libertarianism by its rejection of private property. Broadly defined, it includes schools of both anarchism and Marxism, as well as other tendencies that oppose the state and capitalism.
Socialism is a political philosophy and movement encompassing a wide range of economic and social systems which are characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the economic, political, and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can be public, community, collective, cooperative, or employee. While no single definition encapsulates the many types of socialism, social ownership is the one common element, and is considered left-wing. Different types of socialism 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 Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse working-class candidates, representing the interests of the majority. A sitting independent MP and prominent union organiser, Keir Hardie, became its first chairman.
Socialism in New Zealand had little traction in early colonial New Zealand but developed as a political movement around the beginning of the 20th century. Much of socialism's early growth was found in the labour movement.
Thomas Mann, was an English trade unionist and is widely recognised as a leading, pioneering figure for the early labour movement in Britain. Largely self-educated, Mann became a successful organiser and a popular public speaker in the British labour movement.
Thomas Henry Wintringham was a British soldier, military historian, journalist, poet, Marxist, politician and author. He was a supporter of the Home Guard during the Second World War and was one of the founders of the Common Wealth Party.
The 1941 Committee was a group of British politicians, writers and other people of influence who got together in 1940. Its members comprised liberals, and those further left, who were not generally involved with a political party. Its immediate purpose was to press for more efficient production in order to enhance the war effort. This swiftly developed into discussion of the methods and mores by which the United Kingdom would be governed after World War II. The members met at the home of Edward Hulton, the publisher of Picture Post.
Sir Richard Thomas Dyke Acland, 15th Baronet was one of the founding members of the British Common Wealth Party in 1942, having previously been a Liberal Member of Parliament (MP). He joined the Labour Party in 1945 and was later a Labour MP. He was one of the founders of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).
Ronald William Gordon Mackay, known as Kim Mackay, was an Australian-born British Labour Party politician known for his European federalist views.
Libertarianism in South Africa has influenced political and apolitical structures. While libertarianism has not yet become a distinct political movement, it is instead represented in one form or another in multiple political and non-political organisations. Such libertarianism can either refer to a political movement synonymous with anarchism, left-libertarianism and libertarian socialism, or to a political movement concerned with the pursuit of propertarian right-libertarian ideals which emerged in the 1970s with the rise of neoliberalism.
John Eric Loverseed was a pilot who flew with the Royal Air Force in 1930s, with Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War in 1937/38, and with the RAF again during the Battle of Britain. In 1943 he was elected as a wartime MP for the Common Wealth Party. He was later a co-founder of the pacifist Fellowship Party.
Types of socialism include a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production and organizational self-management of enterprises as well as the political theories and movements associated with socialism. Social ownership may refer to forms of public, collective or cooperative ownership, or to citizen ownership of equity in which surplus value goes to the working class and hence society as a whole. There are many varieties of socialism and no single definition encapsulates all of them, but social ownership is the common element shared by its various forms Socialists disagree about the degree to which social control or regulation of the economy is necessary, how far society should intervene, and whether government, particularly existing government, is the correct vehicle for change.
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 that was founded in 1900.
The 1943 Eddisbury by-election was a parliamentary by-election for the British House of Commons constituency of Eddisbury on 7 April 1943.
The 1944 Skipton by-election was a parliamentary by-election for the British House of Commons constituency of Skipton, Yorkshire held on 7 January 1944.
The World Socialist Movement (WSM) is an international organisation of socialist parties created in 1904 with the founding of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB).
The Popular Front in the United Kingdom attempted an alliance between political parties and individuals of the left and centre-left in the late 1930s to come together to challenge the appeasement policies of the National Government led by Neville Chamberlain.
The history of socialism has its origins in the Age of Enlightenment and the 1789 French Revolution along with the changes that it brought, although it has precedents in earlier movements and ideas. The Communist Manifesto was written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in 1847-48 just before the Revolutions of 1848 swept Europe, expressing what they termed scientific socialism. In the last third of the 19th century parties dedicated to Democratic socialism arose in Europe, drawing mainly from Marxism. The Australian Labor Party was the world's first elected socialist party when it formed government in the Colony of Queensland for a week in 1899.
Katharine Wise Wintringham was an American political activist, best known for her activities in the United Kingdom.
References
1 2 Ben Hughes, They shall not pass!: the British battalion at Jarama: the Spanish Civil War. Botley, Oxford, UK: Osprey Pub., 2011. ISBN9781849085496 (p. 227).
1 2 3 Lovell, Kristopher (2017). "The 'Common Wealth Circus': Popular Politics and the Popular Press in Wartime Britain, 1941–1945". Media History. 23 (3–4): 433. doi:10.1080/13688804.2017.1353908. S2CID158931370.
↑ F. W. S. Craig, Minor Parties at British Parliamentary Elections
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