Chapter 20
“It is purely the rapid growth in numbers, in influence, in prestige, of a great body of our fellow citizens who are being taught to repeat and believe in the false doctrines of Socialism, which, if ever seriously put into practice, would reduce this island to chaos and starvation.”
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(Taken from “The Bloody ‘80s” by Derek Farmer, Picador 1978)
“The old order was crumbling, and no group offered an effective policy for progress. As sectarian rioting engulfed the country after the Westminster Bombing, the aged Tennyson, taking a last, pessimistic view of the age, cried “Chaos, Cosmos! Cosmos, Chaos! Who can tell how all will end?” and asked, “When was age so crammed with menace? Madness? Written, spoken lies?”[1]
At this stage, the various socialist sects were still weak, poor and largely attached to the Liberal Party. In 1885, the Social Democratic Federation had at most 700 members; the Socialist League had no more than 150. They had, moreover, little use for what William Morris called the shams of the parliamentary game. As socialists, they had broken with bourgeois society; as factionalists, they were often more hostile to Radical ‘compromisers’ than to the Liberal or Tory leaders. Hubert Bland remarked that the first reaction on becoming a socialist was to ‘shut oneself up as it were in a little mansion of one’s own and with a few eclectic friends to think scornfully of the world outside’. When the SDF ran candidates at Hampstead and Kennington in the 1887 General Election, one candidate received thirty two votes and the other thirty seven[2].
Yet despite their complete Parliamentary failure in 1887, Socialists soon tasted their first electoral success. The passage of the Local Government Bill and the first elections for the new London County Council gave radicals a perfect platform for change; sure enough, in January 1889 the Progressive Party, a front for the Liberals, won 70 of the 118 seats[3]. Amongst them was a large radical contingent; as a result, socialists like Will Crooks, Sidney Webb, Anne Besant and Emmeline Pankhurst[4] all found themselves in elective office for the first time...“
(Taken from “Raising the Red Flag: A History of the British Socialist Party” by Frederick Jones, Berrett 1980)
“The ‘Labour War’ of 1889 and 1890 transformed Socialist politics, and triggered an influx of working-class men into what had previously been a largely a movement of intellectuals and the chattering classes. Most prominent amongst these new socialists were the Labour leaders Ben Tillett and Tom Mann, who had figured importantly in the London Dockers’ strike and now led the newly formed Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers' Union[5]... At first, labour organisers like Tillett and Mann shied away from electoral politics; but gradually, they had become champions of local political action. ‘If only they used their electoral power, there need never be a slum in any village or town’, Tillett advised the dockers of Newport in spring 1890. He was not suggesting at that stage that the dockers send their own representatives to Parliament; yet, once the leap to political involvement in local affairs had been made, its extension to the national scene was inevitable. In an address to the dockers at Goole in June 1890, he proclaimed ‘Never mind party politics, to hell with them all!’; by September he had applied for, and been accepted into the Social Democratic Federation[6].
The enlarged SDF was not without its fissures. Chief amongst these were the twin disagreements over the roles of the Trade Union movement and the necessity for Parliamentary action. The Party had already split with William Morris’ Socialist League over the question of whether Socialists should stand for Parliament or condemn it as a bourgeois tool[7], and Henry Hyndman, the movement’s increasingly dictatorial leader, stubbornly refused to attach any importance whatsoever to the Unions, presciently arguing that they would inevitably become tools of the establishment. Hyndman increasingly began to clash with both Mann and his long-time associate John Burns over the issue, but the dawning realisation that the splits in both major parties would provide the SDF with a great opportunity were an election to be called ensured that the rift was patched over for the time being...
The 1891 Election saw the collapse of both the Liberal and Conservative Parties at the hands of Randolph Churchill’s Unionist coalition; and amidst the electoral confusion and split votes of the urban constituencies, Socialist candidates did far better than anyone anticipated. The SDF emerged with a trio of MPs; in London, John Burns in Battersea and Ben Tillett in West Ham scored memorable victories[8], while in West Bradford the militant Trade Unionist Tom Mann narrowly emerged triumphant in a three-cornered contest that saw the candidates separated by only a few hundred votes[9]. The SDF were not the only Socialist organisation that achieved success in the election; the Secretary of the Scottish Labour Party, Keir Hardie, had achieved a similar result to that of Mann’s in South Ayrshire, while in Dublin’s College Green division a 23-year old named James Connolly won a shock victory standing as an “Irish Democratic Socialist”[10]...”
(Taken from ‘Britain, from Churchill to Chamberlain’ by Peter Moorcroft, Star 1983)
“No new Members of Parliament ever made a more flamboyant entry to the Palace of Westminster than did the three Social Democratic representatives on March 9th 1891. Ben Tillett and John Burns’ new constituents were determined to give their first Socialist Members a rousing send-off, and the results were spectacular indeed. They hired a horse-drawn wagon, with a cornet player on the box seat, to drive Tillett, Burns and Tom Mann from a mass meeting on Kennington Park[11] to Westminster[12]. Their attire was even more unorthodox. In place of the usual formal dress and top hat, all three men defiantly wore suits; Mann had also donned a flat cap. It was enough to make the most conservative Members tremble with alarm, and wonder if the day of the red revolution was near at hand...
At Westminster, the three SDF Members met their Socialist cousin, Keir Hardie of the Scottish Labour Party. His dress was even more idiosyncratic; a colourful check suit, red tie and deerstalker hat made it little wonder that Punch magazine soon dubbed him ‘Queer Hardie’[13]. Tellingly, Henry Hyndman, their titular leader, was nowhere to be seen; he had refused to attend the celebrations in a fit of pique after it became apparent that he would not be the centre of attention...
The arrival of Mann, Tillett and Burns in Parliament utterly changed the power structure of the SDF. Before 1891, Henry Hyndman was able to bully his colleagues into adopting his view; now, despite the fact that his strategy of gaining parliamentary representation had borne fruit, he began to be marginalised. At a stormy meeting in February 1892, Hyndman tried to wrest control of his Party back from the insubordinate MPs, and failed; soon after he angrily left the SDF with small band of allies and formed a new movement entirely focused on his own person, the National Socialist Party[14]...”
(Taken from “A History of the Trades Union Congress, 1868-1938” by George Campbell, Picador 1981)
“At annual meetings of the Trades Union Congress, militants like Ben Tillett and Tom Mann played an increasingly important role as ones who favoured cutting all ties with the Liberals and establishing an independent labour party with a socialist programme, either affiliated to the SDF or part of it. This might be achieved, if the parliamentary committee could be induced to recommend it; and in autumn 1890 Tillett had become sufficiently well-known and respected by TUC delegates to win election to the standing orders committee, and to the influential parliamentary committee. Yet even as the Socialists made their first moves towards capturing the TUC, another force threatened to snatch the organisation from their grasp.
Before the final months of 1890, the ongoing schism within the Conservative Party seemed to have little direct relevance to the labour movement, whose militants had fought primarily against the representatives of the older and more pacific craft unions whose political links were usually with the Liberals, or those new unionists who, for whatever reasons, accepted “Lib-Lab” arguments. As Randolph Churchill progressively wooed segments of the Liberal Party’s radical wing into his Unionist coalition however, the danger that political Unionism might swallow trade unionism became increasingly apparent.
The General Election of 1891 brought the two rival factions into sharp relief. The TUC establishment, once solidly ‘Lib-Lab’, had joined the radicals in throwing aside their whiggish colleagues, and were leaning towards the Unionists; the Secretary of the Parliamentary Committee[15], Charles Fenwick was officially an Independent Member of Parliament but one who was increasingly inclined towards Churchillian sentiment, while his veteran predecessor Henry Broadhurst had stood and won re-election to Parliament under the ‘Radical Unionist’ banner[16]. Ranged against them were three of the disparate Parliamentary Socialist contingent; Tillett and Burns from the SDF, and Keir Hardie, the Scottish Labour Member.
The first struggle was over the push towards independent working-class representation in the House of Commons. While all members of the Parliamentary committee agreed that the creation of a political fund to aid working-class candidates was desirable, Tillett was determined that the chosen candidates should be socialist; he therefore pushed an amendment, moved by an SDF colleague James Macdonald, stipulating that ‘Candidates receiving financial assistance must pledge themselves to the nationalisation of the land, mines, minerals, royalty rents and the whole means of production, distribution and exchange’[17]. The result was uproar, and Tillett quickly realised that he had badly overplayed his hand.
The passage of the Industrial Conciliation Act further eroded the SDF’s foothold in the Union Movement. Mann and Tillett lost no time in attacking the Act and trying to persuade individual Unions to repudiate the new Conciliation Board, which they saw as a further tool of Governmental coercion[18]. This provoked the TUC hierarchy, which strongly supported the measures, into action. At the 1892 Congress, held in Glasgow, Charles Fenwick attacked the SDF as a ‘bogus independent party’ and then successfully moved for the creation of a subcommittee to examine proposals to revise the standing orders of the TUC. The three recommendations that resulted were clearly designed to eradicate the Socialist voice in Congress permanently; ending the representation of the strongly Socialist Trade Councils, and establishing proportional representation to favour the conservative coal and cotton unions[19]. Despite the best efforts of the Socialists, the Parliamentary Committee approved the proposals by a significant margin. The SDF would continue within the TUC for another year, but the damage was done; the organising mechanisms of the organised labour movement had been lost to Socialism[20]...”
(Taken from “Raising the Red Flag: A History of the British Socialist Party” by Frederick Jones, Berrett 1980)
“In retrospect, the year 1891 seems to mark the crest of the first Socialist wave. It had swept Tillett, Mann, Burns and Hardie into Parliament; it had borne the emerging leaders of unskilled casual labour into battle with employers and frequently to victory along a flood tide of labour militancy. Now however, the tide began to turn. Triumphs there still would be, most notable among them the formal establishment of the British Socialist Party in September 1893. Defeat, however, predominated from this point forward for the new Socialist movement. The dramatic events of the summer of 1892 began as a desperate attempt to break the circle drawn by the Shipping Federation against the dockside unions. Dedicated to the destruction of the movement, the employers’ new organisation maintained pressure by provoking a series of disputes directed against the strongholds of union strength[21]. Given the renewed depression, they feared that the unions could not match the employers’ resources. The struggle would prove a formative moment in the creation of a Socialist identity...
The dispute opened on May 6th 1892, when Liverpool clothing merchants hired non-union labourers to work alongside Docker’s Union members. This was correctly viewed by the men as the thin end of the wedge; if the employers could open the closed shop, as they had in Hull the previous year, then the union’s power would be broken. As a result, the union workers walked off the job, to which in response the employers contracted a local representative to procure black-leg labour, declared a lockout and would not allow the men to return to work. The men immediately referred their grievances to the Conciliation Board, but when the panel ruled that they had to return to work while their claim was processed, the Union leaders withdrew from the arbitration processes. The strike quickly spread to local tramwaymen and sailors. On the 11th May, the first blacklegs, brought in from nearby Bootle, arrived. Scuffles quickly followed; even by the standards of late nineteenth-century Lancashire the Bootle dockers were renowned for their fearsome nature[22], and the predominantly Protestant visitors loathed the generally Catholic union men whom they were brought in to replace.
With the dispute steadily growing more serious and Liverpool brought to a complete standstill, the Union executive voted to provide the men in the city with strike pay. The same day, the Government drafted soldiers into the city in large numbers, and warships were anchored in the Mersey. The next day, Tom Mann spoke in Parliament; he had originally intended to address the workers in person but chose to change the venue as a means of avoiding prosecution for sedition[23]. His speech, aimed at the soldiers stationed in Liverpool, later became one of the most printed and quoted of the era...”
(Taken from Hansard, May 12 1892)
Mr Mann (West Bradford): Mr Speaker, what should I say if I were in Liverpool? What were I to say if I met one of the many military men who have descended on the city? I should say ‘Brothers! You are in the army. So are we. You, in the army of Destruction. We, in the Industrial, or army of Construction. You are Workingmen’s sons. When we go on Strike to better our lot, which is the lot also of your Fathers, Mothers, Brother and Sisters, you are called upon by your Officers to murder us!’
Interruption.
Mr Mann (West Bradford): It is not unparliamentary, sir! I would say to that solider, you are ordered to murder us, as you did on Bloody Sunday, at Bristol, at Hull. Don’t you know that when you are out of the colours and become a ‘Civvy’ again, that you, like us, may be on strike, and you, like us, will be liable to be murdered by other soldiers?
Act the Man! Act the Brother! Act the Human Being! Property can be replaced! Human Life? Never! Think things out and refuse any longer to murder your kindred. Help us win back Britain for the British, and the World for the Workers![24]
Honourable Members: Shame!“
(Taken from “Raising the Red Flag: A History of the British Socialist Party” by Frederick Jones, Berrett 1980)
“Tom Mann’s speech triggered predictable uproar in the House of Commons, much comment in the press, and an ill-fated attempt by some Unionist backbenchers to resurrect the ancient penalty of Parliamentary impeachment[25]. Yet all of this outrage entirely missed the fact that Mann’s comments were aimed at the wrong target; it was not the military that threatened violence in the Liverpool standoff, but a schism within the city’s own working class. On Monday 16th May, a group of striking dockers assembled at the Exchange railway station to try and turn back the arriving Bootle blacklegs. A pitched brawl quickly broke out along the platform; the police were slow to react, and the Bootle men were forced to flee into the city, where many took refuge in local churches. A counterstroke quickly came. Outraged by the treatment of his co-religionists and looking for an excuse to fight ‘Papism’, a local vicar named George Wise[26] gathered a small group of Orangemen and Round Table ‘Knights’ and went seeking revenge. At around lunchtime, his mob attacked a picket line at Collingwood dock with clubs, wrenches and bottles...
The “Battle of Liverpool”, as it soon became known, was a disaster for the cause of militant Trade Unionism; as what had begun as a labour dispute had degenerated into a sectarian free-for-all, it quickly became clear that the Shipping Federation had successfully used the religious issue as a means of driving a wedge in the working population of Liverpool[27]. For three days, all thoughts of strike action were forgotten as the “Protestant Defence Committee” rallied around the cause of the Bootle Blacklegs; the pitched fighting between Wise’s gangs and the forces of the “Catholic Emergency Association” soon grew so out of control that the Army were sent in to occupy the city for the first time since the riots of 1887. When order was finally restored, twenty four people were killed, scores wounded, and the dockers of Liverpool had little choice but to return to work. The only result of the strike was to polarise the workforce; Protestant workers cleaved ever closer to the TUC and Unionism, while Catholics and a few Nonconformists quickly aligned themselves with the growing rebel grouping of militant unions...”
(Taken from “The Encyclopaedia of British Politics”, ed Fred Timms, Star 1976)
WORKMEN’S INSURANCE AND WAGES ACT: Influential piece of social legislation enacted by the Unionist Government of Randolph Churchill in 1893. The Act built on the Industrial Conciliation and Unemployed Workmen’s Acts of the previous year, and was intended both to alleviate the appalling conditions that many unemployed and injured working-class people existed in, as well as curbing the power of the militant Trade Unions that had sprung up during and after the Liverpool riots of 1892. The Act expanded the Conciliation Boards, giving them the power to set agreed minimum wages in certain industries regarded as being particularly vulnerable to ‘sweating’[28]. It also introduced limited health and unemployment insurance; unemployed workers could claim five shillings a week for up to 10 weeks a year, and health insurance was provided for workers earning less than £100 per year[29]. Both schemes were contributory, but the Governmental share of the entitlement was only accessible by workers who were members of Unions that had signed up to the Conciliation Act[30]. In this way, the Churchill Government hoped to drive workers into the moderate unions at the expense of the militant organisations...
(Taken from ‘Britain, from Churchill to Chamberlain’ by Peter Moorcroft, Star 1983)
“The passage of the Workmen’s Insurance and Wages Act cemented the already yawning split in the Trade Union movement. The defeat of the militants at the 1892 Conference had already led to the creation of a parallel association of rejectionist Unions, dominated by SDF men; the TUC’s categorical condemnation of the Dockers’ rejection of arbitration during the Liverpool dispute that year simply accelerated the process. By this point, the remaining Socialists on the parliamentary committee were entirely isolated. The establishment of the General Federation of Socialist Trade Unions in Bradford in June 1893 ended any chance of a rapprochement. For better or for worse, the TUC had been incorporated into the political establishment...”
(Taken from “Raising the Red Flag: A History of the British Socialist Party” by Frederick Jones, Berrett 1980)
“The task of uniting the disparate strands of the Socialist movement into an organised Party had always been an issue on the left of British Politics. Yet it had been a daunting, and often hopeless task. The SDF, true to its original autocratic form, simply wanted members of other bodies to join them as the only disciplined Socialist Party. This outcome may have been possible in 1892, when William Morris’ Socialist Alliance approached the SDF and the Scottish Labour Party with a view to forming a new grouping[31]. However, by autumn 1893 there was a new force on the scene; the Independent Labour Party, formed in the January of that year and already a major force in the North of England[32]... In the summer, the unity campaign scored a major victory, when a joint poll of the SDF, ILP and SLP membership was held to augur enthusiasm for fusion. The proposal was overwhelmingly accepted 10,245 to 1345, and a joint committee was set up to work out the precise details. In August, the Party conferences approved a deal whereby all Socialist groups would fold themselves into the dominant grouping in the County; this ensured SLP dominance in Scotland, SDF supremacy in Lancashire and London, and the survival of the ILP in Yorkshire and Wales...
All that now remained was the matter of parliamentary representation. The delegates who assembled in Committee Room Six on a rainy day in September 1893 were a strange and diverse assembly; the sober suits and bowler hats of the Trade Union men highlighted the bright dresses of Annie Besant and Emmeline Pankhurst, and contrasted with the eclectic range of styles the eight MPs who had gathered that afternoon favoured. The four SDF Members- Tillett, Mann, Burns and the newly elected MP for Merthyr, Henry Champion[33]- were joined by four allies; Keir Hardie, of the Scottish Labour Party, the Irish nationalists James Connolly and T. P. O'Connor[34], and the Independent Trade Unionist MP John Ward[35]. At around half past twelve, the eight MPs signed a written agreement ‘Recognising the other’s right to liberty in all matters of detail, banding ourselves together under the broad principle of Socialism’. There was a smattering of applause. In less than prepossessing circumstances, the British Socialist Party had been born[36].
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[1] “Locksley Hall Sixty Years After” is published as OTL in 1886. As this is actually a year before the assassination of Queen Victoria, the author of this extract is being slightly elastic with his chronology.
[2] This occurred OTL as well; part of the reason for their appalling performance was the scandal that broke over the Conservative Party’s partial funding of the candidacies as an attempt to split the Radical vote.
[3] They did so OTL as well.
[4] OTL, women were not allowed to stand as Councillors until the Local Government Act of 1907, so female political agitators like Besant occupied themselves as Poor law Guardians. ITTL Churchill’s Local Government Act gives women the right to stand, so they avail themselves of the chance.
[5] Actually Mann had been a member of the SDF since 1884, but had not previously been particularly prominent in the organisation.
[6] Tillett had a similar shift OTL, although it took him slightly longer and he remained associated with the broader labour movement rather than the SDF.
[7]Hyndman was determined to stand for Parliament, and in 1884 when Morris and his allies won a vote of no confidence in his leadership of the SDF he simply refused to stand down, purging his enemies soon afterwards.
[8] OTL both Battersea and West Ham returned Socialist MPs- John Burns for the former as a Lib-Lab Member, and Keir Hardie as a member of the Independent Labour Party for the latter. There were several other close calls, and ITTL thanks to the general radicalism of the Unionist manifesto the Socialist vote is slightly higher. OTL, the failure of the SDF to win any seats ensured the eventual dominance of first the ILP, and then from 1903 the Labour Party.
[9] OTL Ben Tillett stood in West Bradford in 1892, and came third in similar circumstances.
[10] OTL, in the early 1890s Connolly had been active in Scottish Socialist politics and knew Keir Hardie very well from his time as Secretary of the Scottish Socialist Federation. ITTL Connolly never goes to Scotland and remains in Dublin; he is still active in Socialist politics however, and wins College Green thanks to the voters’ frustration with the constant infighting of pro and anti-Parnellite Nationalist factions.
[11] Kennington Park, previously Kennington Common, had been the venue for the Chartist ‘Monster Rally’ in 1848 and so had symbolic importance to the Socialist movement.
[12] Keir Hardie made his entrance in a similar way OTL, although ITTL his seat is in Scotland and so a triumphant procession is not particularly practical.
[13] Punch used this name OTL as well.
[14] Hyndman was one of life’s natural splitters; OTL he gutted the SDF, the majority of members of which left for the ILP, and them folded what was left of the organisation into a new “British Socialist Party” in 1911. When he lost the leadership of the BSP in 1916 he founded yet another Party, the “National Socialist Party”, which he renamed the SDF and led until his death. Confused yet?
[15] The Secretary of the TUC Parliamentary Committee is the equivalent of the modern “Secretary General”
[16] OTL, both men were “Lib-Lab” MPs; ITTL the movement splits in late 1890 between those willing to go over to the Unionists and those who are rather more cautious.
[17] The “Socialist Resolution” was passed OTL, and was just as controversial
[18] Tom Mann personally thought the New Zealand Conciliation Act to be a cruel trick on the part of the Government, and another means of dividing the workforce. ITTL his views are the same.
[19] Ironically enough, ITTL similar proposals were put forward by John Burns as a factional strategy of trying to weaken the ILP.
[20] OTL many of Burns’ proposals were watered down; ITTL, the Socialists are seen as more of a threat so are stamped on early.
[21] The Shipping Federation was founded OTL as well, and in 1891 and 1892 pursued a similar course of action in trying to wipe out the Dockers’ and Seaman’s’ Unions.
[22] OTL, Bootle was famous in Victorian Britain for being exceptionally squalid and violent; it was rumoured that women would settle their differences by stripping to the waist and fighting in the street.
[23] OTL and ITTL, Parliamentary privilege allows a far greater leeway to speaking in the Commons Chamber than elsewhere; an easy tactic to avoid freedom-of-speech laws is to speak in the Chamber and then have the words reported in pamphlet form.
[24] OTL, Mann published a similar appeal during and after the 1911 Liverpool Transport strike. He was tried for inciting mutiny, and jailed briefly. ITTL he gets around the restrictions a little more successfully, although the speech causes absolute uproar.
[25] In the House of Commons, any Member may try to instigate impeachment proceedings, although the last time this was attempted was in 1806.
[26] George Wise was infamous in Liverpool as an anti-catholic extremist and evangelical preacher; he dominated politics in the city from the mid 1890s until 1917, causing a series of sectarian riots in the process.
[27] The same thing largely happened IOTL; it’s a reason why the Labour party grew far more slowly in Liverpool compared with other, less sectarian British cities.
[28] Again, this practice is similar to OTL’s New Zealand, which enacted similar laws in the late 19th century.
[29] This was part of the Liberal reforms OTL, although ITTL the amounts of money involved are smaller, at least at first.
[30] I’m not aware of any specific precedent for this sort of provision, although it strikes me as plausible as a means to social and industrial control. Needless to say, Members of non-participating Trade Unions will find it increasingly difficult to find employment...
[31] OTL, something similar happened in 1892.
[32] OTL, the ILP was formed at the same time; ITTL however it does not merge with the Scottish Labour Party, and while having a large Membership does not have any parliamentary representation.
[33] Champion was a prominent member of the SDF OTL, and worked on the Party’s newspaper, Justice. OTL he emigrated to Australia shortly after failing to win a by-election in Aberdeen, and became a prominent Left-wing opponent to the Australian Labor Party.
[34] O’Connor was the MP for Liverpool Scotland from 1885 until 1929, and was the only Irish Nationalist to sit for a mainland UK seat. While O’Connor was never a Socialist and held progressive Liberal views, ITTL Catholic opinion in his seat is rendered so militant by the strikes of 1892 that he decides that aligning with the Left is the best strategic option to prevent a Socialist candidate unseating him at a future election.
[35] Ward was a Navvy and a Lib-Lab Member OTL; ITTL he is far closer to the SDF, but is not a member.
[36] OTL, there were a number of attempts to secure Socialist Unity in the early 1890s; they all failed, mainly thanks to the fact that while the SDF was older and stronger as an organisation, the ILP had a faster growing membership and Keir Hardie in Parliament. ITTL, the SDF is stronger, and is able to impose its will more effectively. This leads to a far more Marxist and revolutionary Party than OTL’s Labour.
