Communist League | |
---|---|
Abbreviation | CL |
Leader | Guy Aldred |
Founded | March 16, 1919 |
Dissolved | Early 1920 |
Split from | Socialist Labour Party |
Succeeded by | Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation |
Newspaper | The Communist |
Ideology | Left communism Anarcho-communism Abstentionism |
Political position | Far-left |
Part of a series on |
Anarchist communism |
---|
Part of a series on |
Left communism |
---|
The Communist League was a small far-left organisation in the United Kingdom which existed during the year of 1919. Its stated goal was to establish a network of workers' councils that would "resist all legislation and industrial action directed against the working class, and ultimately assuming all power, establish a working class dictatorship". [1]
Following the Allied victory in World War I and the success of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution, a growing number of British anarchists became increasingly attracted to Marxist theory and began to synthesize a form of "anarcho-Marxism". This coincided with the re-emergence of anti-parliamentarism within the ranks of many left-wing political parties, including the Independent Labour Party (ILP), Socialist Labour Party (SLP) and British Socialist Party (BSP). This process culminated in an attempt to unite the anarcho-communists with the anti-parliamentary socialists under a single formation, an initiative that was taken up by dissident London branch of the SLP, [2] which in February 1919 proposed the convocation of a unity conference to bring together the nascent British communist movement. The London SLP preemptively drew up a provisional constitution for the new organization, including: [3]
- a call for local workers' committees and councils to aim at seizing the means of production and creating a proletarian dictatorship;
- the ultimate aim of a republic of federated communes;
- and a declaration that the parliamentary vote is obsolete and that direct industrial action should be adopted as an alternative.
The Communist League was founded in March 1919 by the London District Council of the Socialist Labour Party and various anarchist groups in London and Scotland, including Guy Aldred's Glasgow Anarchist Group. [4] The anarchist newspaper Freedom published a report on the founding conference in which it noted that, despite the League not being itself a specifically anarchist organization, its anti-parliamentary program provided a big step in the direction of anarchism for many of its members, [3] while also reporting on early disputes between the League's members over theoretical issues such as "economic determinism" and the "dictatorship of the proletariat". [2]
The establishment of the Communist League was welcomed further in April 1919 at a London anarchist conference, which claimed that the new-found anti-parliamentarism among socialists and communists was due to anarchists' past propaganda work and called for closer cooperation between anarchists and the Communist League, which eventually resulted in a joint conference being held between the two. [2] [5] Anarchist criticisms of the League even led to the decentralisation of the organization's governing body into a "Local Delegate's Committee", which followed the anarchist model of elected delegates subject to instant recall, with the aim of preventing the rise of "boss domination and cliqueism". [5]
The League set about "agitating, educating and organizing" the working class, entering into workers' committees in order to develop their class consciousness, which the League argued would eventually lead to the overthrow of capitalism and the committees then taking over the administration of the newly-established communist society. [6] As its official organ, the League began publishing a newspaper, The Communist, in which George Rose remarked that: [2] [3]
we know that there must develop the great working class anti-Statist movement, showing the way to Communist society. The Communist League is the standard bearer of the movement; and all the hosts of Communists in the various other Socialist organisations will in good time see that Parliamentary action will lead them, not to Communism but to that bureaucratic Statism correctly named by Hilaire Belloc the ‘Servile State’.... Therefore, we identify ourselves with the Third International, with the Communism of Marx, and with that personification of the spirit of revolt, Bakunin, of whom the Third International is but the natural and logical outcome.
— George Rose, May 1919
The organization quickly expanded over the subsequent months, forming a number of branches mostly in London and Scotland. A South Wales branch was also established by coal miners in Treherbert, led by the Welsh trade unionist William Mainwaring, who registered his disagreement with one particularly section of the League's constitution, stating that: "to say [the parliamentary vote] is obsolete will lead many to suppose that it once was useful." [3] The League later entered into negotiations with the aim of merging with other anti-parliamentary communist groups such as the Workers' Socialist Federation (WSF), [3] but this proposal was rejected by the WSF's leader Sylvia Pankhurst. [7] Attempts by Aldred to open discussions with the ILP, the SLP and the BSP did not prove fruitful either. [5]
Although Aldred had expressed in an October 1919 article that the revolutionary moment was "drawing closer and closer together on a platform of practical revolutionary effort", divisions still existed over the question of parliamentary elections. In an attempt to find a "tactical compromise" between the parliamentary position of electoral participation and the anti-parliamentary position of the election boycott, the Communist League decided to imitate Sinn Féin's abstentionist tactic of using elections as a platform for their propaganda, while pledging not to take their seats if elected. When a by-election was called in Paisley, the Communist League attempted to put this proposal into action, offering to support an SLP candidate that stood on an abstentionist platform. However, the local SLP leader William Paul ended up declining the offer to stand entirely and took on the hardline anti-parliamentary position. Declaring that "every vote withheld is a vote for socialism", Paul called for an election boycott that particularly targeted the Labour Co-op candidate John Biggar, [5] resulting in the victory of the Liberal candidate and former Prime Minister H. H. Asquith.
Tensions between the anarchists and the Marxists within the League had also heightened during the latter half of 1919, with fierce debates breaking out over the theoretical differences that had been present in the organization since the founding conference. [3] By the turn of 1920 these tensions completely boiled over, leading to the complete dissolution of the Communist League. [2] Aldred went on to found the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation the following year, [7] while the Stepney branch of the League took part in the establishment of the Communist Party (British Section of the Third International) along with Sylvia Pankhurst's Workers' Socialist Federation and E. T. Whitehead's Labour Abstentionist Party. [8]
Workers' Dreadnought was a newspaper published by variously named political parties led by Sylvia Pankhurst.
Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst was a campaigning English feminist and socialist. Committed to organising working-class women in London's East End, and unwilling in 1914 to enter into a wartime political truce with the government, she broke with the suffragette leadership of her mother and sister, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst. She was inspired by the Russian Revolution and consulted Lenin, but defied Moscow in endorsing a syndicalist programme of workers' control and by criticising the emerging Soviet dictatorship.
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.
The Workers' Socialist Federation was a socialist political party in the United Kingdom, led by Sylvia Pankhurst. Under many different names, it gradually broadened its politics from a focus on women's suffrage to eventually become a left communist grouping.
The Communist Party (British Section of the Third International) was a Left Communist organisation established at an emergency conference held on 19–20 June 1920 at the International Socialist Club in London. It comprised about 600 people.
The Scottish Labour Party (SLP), also known as the Scottish Parliamentary Labour Party, was formed by Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, the first socialist MP in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, who later went on to become the first president of the Scottish National Party, and Keir Hardie, who later became the first leader of the Independent Labour Party and the Labour Party.
Abstentionism is standing for election to a deliberative assembly while refusing to take up any seats won or otherwise participate in the assembly's business. Abstentionism differs from an election boycott in that abstentionists participate in the election itself. Abstentionism has been used by Irish republican political movements in the United Kingdom and Ireland since the early 19th century. It was also used by Hungarian and Czech nationalists in the Austrian Imperial Council in the 1860s.
Guy Alfred Aldred was a British anarcho-communist and a prominent member of the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation (APCF). He founded the Bakunin Press publishing house and edited five Glasgow-based anarchist periodicals: The Herald of Revolt, The Spur, The Commune, The Council, and The Word, where he worked closely with Ethel MacDonald and his later partner Jenny Patrick.
The Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation (APCF) was a communist group in the United Kingdom. It was founded by the group around Guy Aldred's Spur newspaper – mostly former Communist League members – in 1921. They included John McGovern.
The United Socialist Movement (USM) was an anarcho-communist political organisation based in Glasgow. Founded in 1934 after splitting from the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation, the USM initially aimed to unite revolutionary socialists into an anti-fascist alliance and played a role in the early discussions on the founding of a "Fourth International". During the Spanish Civil War, it shifted its policies away from unconditional anti-fascism towards a revolutionary anti-militarism, which going into World War II led the USM into attempting to form a "Socialist-Pacifist alliance" and even collaborating with some reactionary elements in their opposition to the war. After the war, left with only a small old guard of anarchists and anti-parliamentarists, the USM again shifted its focus towards abstentionism, running unsuccessfully in a number of elections before its eventual dissolution in 1965.
Jane Hamilton Patrick, born Jenny Hamilton Patrick (1884–1971), was a Scottish anarchist of some standing, and played a crucial role in a number of radical organisations.
The Socialist Labour Party was a socialist political party in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1903 as a splinter from the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) by James Connolly, Neil Maclean and SDF members impressed with the politics of the American socialist Daniel De Leon, a Marxist theoretician and leading figure of the Socialist Labor Party of America. After decades of existence as a tiny organisation, the group was finally disbanded in 1980.
The Communist Unity Group (CUG) was a small communist organisation in the United Kingdom.
The British Socialist Party (BSP) was a Marxist political organisation established in Great Britain in 1911. Following a protracted period of factional struggle, in 1916 the party's anti-war forces gained decisive control of the party and saw the defection of its pro-war right wing. After the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia at the end of 1917 and the termination of the First World War the following year, the BSP emerged as an explicitly revolutionary socialist organisation. It negotiated with other radical groups in an effort to establish a unified communist organisation, an effort which culminated in August 1920 with the establishment of the Communist Party of Great Britain. The youth organisation the Young Socialist League was affiliated with the party.
Far-left politics in the United Kingdom have existed since at least the 1840s, with the formation of various organisations following ideologies such as Marxism, revolutionary socialism, communism, anarchism and syndicalism.
Norah Lyle-Smyth was a British suffragette, photographer and socialist activist.
Edgar Thoreau Whitehead (1890–1956) was a British political activist, who served on the executive of the Communist Party of Great Britain but later became a fascist.
The Executive Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain was the governing body of the Communist Party of Great Britain between 1920 and 1991. It governed the party between congresses, at which successive ECs were appointed/elected. The EC played an important leadership role, according to the principles of democratic centralism to which the CPGB adhered.
The Anarchist Federation of Britain was a British anarchist organisation that participated in the anti-war movement during World War II, organising a number of strike actions and providing support to conscientious objectors. Over time it gravitated towards anarcho-syndicalism, causing a split in the organisation, with the remnants reconstituting themselves as the Syndicalist Workers Federation.
{{cite book}}
: |website=
ignored (help)