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The Failure of Socialist Unity in Britain c. 1893–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Keith Laybourn
Affiliation:
At The University Of Sheffield

Extract

SOCIALIST unity became an issue for the British left with in a year of the formation of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) in 1884. The secession of William Morris and his supporters from the SDF and the formation of the Socialist League in reaction to the autocratic leadership of Henry Mayers Hyndman brought about a fundamental division within British socialism. Subsequently the creation of other socialist parties, most particularly the Independent Labour Party (ILP) led to further disunity within die British socialist movement. Nevertheless, notwidistanding die proliferation of British socialist societies with their distinctive socialist credentials, diere were several attempts to form a united socialist party between 1893 and 1914. They were normally encouraged, on the one hand, by advocates of the ‘religion of socialism’ such as William Morris, Robert Blatchford and Victor Grayson, and, on the other, by Hyndman and the SDF. The aim of these efforts was to strengdien socialist organisation in times of both political failure and success, but in every instance diey failed due to the intractable problem of bringing together socialists of distinctively different persuasions under the umbrella of one party. These failures have led recent historians to debate two major questions connected with socialist unity. First, diey have asked at what point did socialist unity cease to be a viable alternative to the Labour Alliance between the ILP and the trade unions? Stephen Yeo feels that socialist unity became impossible after die mid 1890s, David Howell suggests that this ‘suppressed alternative’ became unlikely about five to ten years later, as die leaders of die Independent Labour Party opted for the trade union rather than socialist alliance,

Type
Poutical Ideologies in Twentieth Century Britain
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1994

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References

1 Howell, D., British Workers and the Independent Labour Party 1888–1906 (1984), 389–97Google Scholar; Yeo, S., ‘A New Life; The Religion of Socialism in Britain, 1883–1896’, History Workshops Journal, IV (Autumn, 1977), 556CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crick, M., ‘A Call to Arms'; the Struggle for Socialist Unity in Britain, 1883–1914’, in The Centennial History of the Independent Labour Party (eds.) James, D., Jowitt, T. and Laybourn, K. (1992), 181204Google Scholar.

2 Howell, , British Workers and the ILP, 389Google Scholar. This is a view which Martin Crick challenges in his article ‘A Call to Arms’.

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8 Ibid., 6 October 1911.

9 Ibid., 18 August 1911.

10 Ibid., 22 December 1894.

11 Thompson, E. P., William Morris, Romantic and Revolutionary (1971), 605–10Google Scholar.

12 Clarion, 22 December 1894 and subsequent issues indicate the nature of the response.

13 NAC of the ILP, minute book M.890/1/1, Coll. Misc. 464, meetings for 1894, deposited in the British Library of Political Science.

14 Bradford Observer, 12 November 1896.

15 Howell, , British Workers and the ILP, 118Google Scholar.

16 Their hostility had been nurtured further in 1895 when Hardie supported John Lister, Treasurer of the ILP, against the local criticism of the Halifax ILP which had been nurtured by both Montague and Robert Blatchford.

17 Crick, M., ‘A Call to Aims‘, 184Google Scholar.

18 Justice, 7 August 1897.

19 ILP News, August 1897.

20 ILP Annual Conference Report, 1898, 8.

21 Justice, 27 August 1898.

22 Clarion, 3 December 1898.

23 Hill, , ‘Social-Democracy’, 47Google Scholar, and Justice, 14 September 1889.

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28 Hill, , ‘The ILP in Lancashire’, 50Google Scholar and ILP Conference Report, 1899.

29 ILP News, June 1897.

30 Ibid., September and October 1898 and March 1899.

31 Crick, M., ‘A Collection of Oddities': The Bradford Branch of the Social-Democratic Federation’, The Bradford Antiquary, Third Series, number 5, 27Google Scholar.

32 Ibid., 28–9 and Clarion, 20 December 1901.

33 Bradford Labour Echo, 11 April 1896.

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37 Howell, D., ‘Was the Labour Party Inevitable?’, The Bulletin of the North-West Labour History Society, (1984), 17Google Scholar.

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39 Ibid., 7 February 1902.

40 Justice, 4 January 1902.

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42 ILP News, October 1901.

43 Laybourn, K. and Reynolds, J., Liberalism and the Rise of Labour 1890–1918 (1984), 153Google Scholar. Ben Turner obtained 21.3 per cent of the vote in the 1906 general election and 20.2 per cent in the parliamentary by-election of April 1908.

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47 Ibid., 13 October 1911.

48 Ibid., 11 August and 22 September 1911.

49 Clarion, 8 December 1911.

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51 M. Crick presented this percentage in a lecture at the Conference on the Centennial History of the ILP held at the University of Bradford, 30 January 1993 but some hint of diis level is also indicated in Morris, D., ‘The Origins of the British Socialist Party’, North West Labour History Society, Bulletin 8, 19821983, 34–5Google Scholar.

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53 Clarion, 11 August 1911.

55 Ibid., 5 January 1912, in an article written jointly by Tom Groom and Victor Grayson.

56 Justice, 2 March 1912, and 9 December 1911.

57 Conference BSP, 1912, 8.

58 Ibid., 8.

59 Clarion, 26 April 1912.

60 Justice, 10 November 1912.

61 The Socialist Annual, 1913, annual report of Fred Knee.

61 Laybourn, , ‘A Story of Buried Talents and Wasted Opportunities’, 25Google Scholar.

63 A. Gardiner Scrap Book. The source of the newspapers quotation is not indicated.

64 BSP Papers 1910–1914 (Birmingham), in the British Library or Political and Economic Science, Coll. Misc. 155, M228, collected by H. B. Williams. Note particularly item 48/49/5,, and item 46, the letter from Wintringham to Williams.

65 Look at Kahan's, Zelda article ‘Peace and its Perils’ in British Socialists, I, 1912, 5668Google Scholar and Justice from December 1912 to March 1913.

66 Justice, 15 March 1913.

67 Bradford Pioneer, 11 April 1913.

68 Justice, 8 February 1913.

69 The Clarion, 21 June 1912 referred to the BSP decision to go for five million members during the next five years but in the same issue a report on the first annual conference of the BSP refers to H. Russell Smart stating the objective of raising 500,000 Socialists and £10,000. Also look at the ‘Enrol a Million Socialist Campaign’; report in Justice, 31 August 1913.

70 Justice, 31 August and 7 September 1912; Kendall, , Revolutionary Movement, 312Google Scholar.

71 Justice, 9 November 1912.

72 Ibid., 9 August 1913.

73 Ibid., 6 September 1913.

74 Ibid., 16 April 1914.

75 Ibid., 28 May 1914.

76 Marquand, D., Ramsay MacDonald (1977), 200, 208–9Google Scholar.

77 Yeo, , ‘Religion of Socialism’, 31Google Scholar.