Leading Scottish Marxist John MacLean looks at the impact of the First World War on British workers’ organizations, including cooperatives, the trade union, the Labour Party, and labor colleges.

‘British Workers and The War’ by John MacLean from Socialist Review. Vol. 8 No. 1. December, 1919.

Stolid as are the workers of Britain as a whole, they have nevertheless been stirred by the war and its accompaniments beyond all precedent and have advanced in thought and organization so rapidly that they have reached a point that might have been reached twenty years hence, had no war occurred with its revolutionary consequences.

Let us take the cooperative movement first. The rise in prices from the very start of the war drove masses of workers into the movement and the increase would have been greater had it not been for food-rationing during the course of the war. Under the rationing scheme cooperative societies only received allowances in proportion to membership and purchases prior to the war, with the result that many members had to go to the private traders. So bad were the flour and other raw materials supplied to cooperators that the same “disloyalty” of members ensued. Appeal was made to the Government after a huge conference in London in October, 1917, but the supercilious attitude of Lloyd George, who refused to meet the conference’s delegates, compelled the cooperative movement to plunge into politics independent of the Labor Party, although friendly thereto. Ten candidates were put up at the general election of December, 1918, and obtained 57,676 votes. One, Mr. A.E. Waterson, was returned to Parliament.

All things considered, the growth of cooperation is phenomenal. At the last the last Cooperative Congress in June the Cooperative Union was unable to provide complete statistics be- yond the close of 1917. Still a close reading of the Cooperative News and the Scottish Cooperator enables us roughly to estimate the growth till the end of 1918. In 1913 the membership was 3,011,390; in 1917 it was 3,835,376, and in 1918 it rose to over 4,000,000. This shows that the numbers rose at least a million during the war period, or 33 per cent.

In 1913 the total sales were £130,035,894; in 1917, £224,913,795, and in 1918 about £280,000,000. Care must be taken to note that these figures include wholesale and retail sales, and that the wholesale societies exist to supply the retail ones, so that the duplication of the wholesale statistics necessarily occurs in the totals given. In 1917 the wholesales sold to the retails £75,441,542, which in turn sold the products to the members at a higher valuation, about £100,000,000.

Since the signing of the Armistice the Cooperative Wholesale Society (C.W.S.) and the Scottish C.W.S. separately and jointly have been striving to get access to raw materials throughout the world on a larger scale than before and are preparing to trade with Cooperative Wholesale Societies in other lands. At the same time preparations are being made to meet the trusts in production and the multiple shop companies in distribution. The struggle in this direction will drive cooperators to see that their only hope lies in world–established socialism, since workers’ capital cannot compete with that of the capitalist class.

Trade Union Growth

The Defence of the Realm Act made strikes illegal, thereby placing the trade unions’ funds at the mercy of the Government. The union leaders were paralyzed in consequence and only became active (largely on the Government’s side) when spontaneous outbursts or threats of strikes resulted from the rapidly rising cost of living. To avert strikes the Government compelled employers to negotiate with the union leaders, or laid down the rate of wages and conditions itself. In these circumstances non-union workers, especially women and the unskilled or semi-skilled, were driven in shoals into the trade unions; between 1913 and 1917 the general labor unions increased by 389,000 members. The total membership of the 1,133 unions has risen from 3,952,861 in 1914 to 5,287,522 in 1917. At present the total is about six millions, an increase of two millions, or 30 per cent.

The tendency since the signing of the Armistice has been towards amalgamation, a tendency fostered by the workshop committee movement, Government war-control of industry, trustification, the establishment of Industrial Councils by the Government, the ambitions of trade union leaders (who realize that their importance in political life is determined by the numbers behind them), and by the spread of industrial unionism.

Although the Triple Alliance of the miners, the railwaymen, and the transport workers came into being before the war, it did not begin to function till after the start of the war. It claims to have brought pressure to bear on the Government repeatedly during the war. At any rate this year it has loomed large in the public gaze, and as it has been formed to negotiate and to conduct strikes many unionists and to conduct strikes are urging their industrial federations to join it, so that some see in it the nucleus of the One Big Union in opposition to the British Empire Producers’ Organization and are actively promulgating the idea.

The rendering of strikes illegal under D.O.R.A. (our Espionage Act) brought into being the unofficial workshop or shop stewards’ movement as typified by the London, Sheffield & Clyde workers’ committees, and the miners’ reform movement. By developing strikes along the lines of industry they have helped to kill the old craft spirit and, by the spread of literature and papers inside the workshops as well as by holding demonstrations, industrial unionism and revolutionary socialism have been rapidly spread amongst the unions. Despite the efforts of most union leaders the tendency is to see in the unions amalgamated, allied and transformed the main instrument of the class war for the overthrow of capitalism. Instead of being simple agencies of negotiation with the employing class they are being transformed into engines for the destruction of the system and the running of the workers’ commonwealth. Typical of this tendency is the South Wales Miners’ Federation, driven onward by the unofficial committee there.

Labor Colleges.

Hand in hand with this agitational and organizing work goes the educational. As a breakaway from the Ruskin College, in 1908 there came into being the Central Labor College, now located in London and controlled by the railwaymen (N.U.R.) and the South Wales Miners’ Federation. The C.L.C. was suspended during the war: it reopens this September. However, the Plebs League, composed of former students and Marxian devotees, has developed a system of classes over England during the war period on Marxian economics and industrial history, and with the object of spreading the classes, gaining support for the C.L.C., establishing other colleges, and stimulating the study of Marxism generally, many conferences of delegates from working-class bodies have been held.

In Scotland this September a Labor College will be opened and supported by classes all over the industrial belt. In May the third conference was attended by 571 delegates from 869 Labor organizations.

In Ireland classes have been run in Dublin and elsewhere since the war, and the birthday of James Conolly was celebrated in June by a concert, the proceeds of which will be devoted to establishing a Conolly Memorial Workers’ College. This mighty mental awakening is to be attributed to the conditions arising out of the war, and will be the basis for a newer and higher activity of the British workers.

The great growth of reading has brought into being the Peoples’ Year Book, first issued in 1918 by the Cooperative Press Agency, and the Labor Year Book, first issued in 1916 by the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress and the Executive Committee of the Labor Party.

Labor in Politics.

The Labor Party acquiesced in the war from the start, and most of its leading members, like those of the trade unions, acted as recruiting sergeants. On December 11, 1916, the Labor Party joined the Coalition Government formed by Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Arthur Henderson entering the War Cabinet. At the Labor Party Conference in August, 1917, and again in January, 1918, the British Socialist Party urged withdrawal from the Government. Ultimately it withdrew before the General Election in December, 1918. This supineness of the Labor Party, viewed by the younger men in the light of the Bolshevik Revolution, led to a reaction against “parliamentarism” made manifest in June, 1919, at the Labor Party Conference, by the passing of a resolution instructing the National Executive to consult the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress with a view to effec-tive industrial and political action to stop further Allied intervention in Russia.

At the same time it must be noted that the Labor Party membership has grown from 1,612,147 in 1914 to 2,465,131 in 1917, a 50 per cent. increase due to the growth of the trade unions predominant in the Party. At the General Election of 1910 the votes cast for the Labor candidates amounted to 506,020, and in 1918 to 2,482,566. This increase can partly be accounted for by the increased number of candidates, the vote granted to women of 30 years of age and over, and to the breakdown of independent liberalism. Henderson anticipated coming to power as Scheidemann arrived in Germany, but the Labor Party has only 59 seats in a House of Commons of 706. Only one of the 59, Mr. Neil Maclean of Glasgow, stood out as an anti-war socialist. All other anti-war labor and socialist candidates were wiped out by the combined forces of capitalism. This partly explains the intensified industrial strikes, and the decision of the Labor Party in connection with allied attempts to suppress Bolshevism. The war saw the Independent Labor Party leaders and membership largely against militarism, but its activities were largely suspended through the operations of D.O.R.A. MacDonald and Snowden made occasional speeches in Parliament, although more of a pacifist than of a socialist type.

The B.S.P. was paralyzed by the attitude of its organ, Justice, and most of the Executive Committee, led by Hyndman, who with Blatchford of The Clarion went war-mad; but it recovered on the defection of Hyndman and a few others who formed the National Socialist Party. After the suppression of The Vanguard at the same time as the suspension of The Forward (both of Glasgow) the reconstructed B.S.P. started the official organ, The Call.

It must be confessed that none of the socialist parties as such played a prominent part during the war, as the most determined men saw that really effective work could alone be done inside the workshops. Hence we find mighty resistance to capitalism springing up in the Clyde area amongst the engineers, steel-workers, and ship-builders and in South Wales amongst the miners. The great war strikes and threats of strikes spread from these storm-centers. New centers were established at Manchester, Sheffield, Coventry, and London in steel and engineering. The socialists led all the fights, as might be expected.

The war has tended to drive the rank and file of the I.L.P. into Marxism, and there is the possibility of the best elements linking up with the B.S.P. and the S.L.P. and other groups to form a communist party outside of and antagonistic to the amorphous Labor Party.

Dissatisfied as some of us are with the progress of the British working class in the light of European developments, great strides have nevertheless been taken in the education and organization of the people.

The Socialist Review was the organ of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, and replaced The Intercollegiate Socialist magazine in 1919. The society, founded in 1905, was non-aligned but in the orbit of the Socialist Party and had an office for several years at the Rand School. It published the Intercollegiate Socialist monthly and The Socialist Review from 1919. Both journals are largely theoretically, but cover a range of topics wider than most of the party press of the time. At first dedicated to promoting socialism on campus, graduates, and among college alumni, the Society grew into the League for Industrial Democracy as it moved towards workers education. The Socialist Review became Labor Age in 1921.

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