Bill Christopher: A radical born on Bastille Day

From South Africa to West Yorkshire

Brian Bamford peruses the politics of the 1960s, 

as he talks to Joan Christopher about her husband, Bill

THE early 1960s was a time of great expectations in radical left-wing politics.  There had just been the Campaign to Boycott South African Goods, called by the Anti-Apartheid Movement.  The boycott attracted widespread support from students, trade unions and the Labour, Liberal and the then Communist Party.  The Anti-Apartheid Movement had begun as the Boycott Movement, set up in 1959 to persuade shoppers to boycott apartheid goods.

The Campaign to Boycott South African Goods had been preceded by another single issue social movement the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which was founded in 1957 in the wake of widespread fear of nuclear conflict and the effects of nuclear tests.  In the early 1950s, Britain had become the third atomic power, after the USA and the USSR had recently tested an H-bomb.

 Joan and Bill Christopher on holiday in France

Politically this was the atmosphere of the early 1960s, especially in London where Bill and Joan Christopher were to be activist members of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) for most of their adult lives.  However, there were unofficial strikes and industrial struggles going on at that time, and in 1960 Bill had left the I.L.P. to join the Worker's Party [1] formed by Brian Behan [2], when Brian and others had broken away from the Trotskyist Socialist Labour League in 1960.  The Worker’s Party later merged with the Syndicalist Worker’s Federation (SWF).

Later together with the Freedom Press anarcho-syndicalist carpenter Peter Turner, Bill Christopher was to become joint-secretary of the Industrial Sub-committee of Committee of 100 [3], that was a time of great conflict and activity during the national campaign against nuclear weapons and the Bomb.  It was to be out of this Committee of 100 London Industrial Sub-Committee that the industrially based National Rank & File Movement (N.R&F.M)[4], an organisation of militant trade unionists and shop-floor syndicalists, developed and was founded at a conference in London in January 1961.

An article in Freedom newspaper covering this National Rank & File founding conference, of which Bill Christopher was an active member, announced:

'This week-end there is to be held in London the first Conference of the newly-formed Rank and File Movement.  Much work has been put into the preparation of this conference by liaison committees; discussion meetings have been going on in London, resolutions and amendments have been drawn up, and it may well be that this event will be a significant one for militants among the industrial workers at least.

(FREEDOM: January 28, 1961)

Joan Christopher speaking to N.V. in Todmorden, West Yorkshire

  Introduction to the interview by Brian Bamford

These were the days before Spies for Peace and before my own trip to Spain in February 1963 on behalf of the young libertarians of F.I.J.L in France, before the arrest of Stuart Christie in Madrid in 1964, well before the student sit-ins at the L.S.E. in 1967 and before the French events in 1968 and the 'Donovan Report' into the trade unions .  Back then I and my then compañera, Joan Matthews, who were staying with the S.W.F. national secretary Ken Hawkes at his home on Parliament Hill, attended this London national rank and file conference of perhaps 200 workers and activists; we were both employed at that time at the same engineering firm in the North West. At this conference we were sat in front of the Freedom Press anarchists Colin Ward, Philip Sanson and his compañera.  It was the first time that I’d met people like Bill Christopher, Brian Behan, Ken Weller of Solidarity, and Peter Turner of Freedom Press, with whom I became a close friend for the rest of his life.  

In a pamphlet authored by Bill Christopher entitled 'SMASH THE WAGE FREEZE!' (1960s), and published by the Syndicalist Worker's Federation, Bill wrote:

'It is obvious that today only a Labour Government would dare to implement a wage-freeze policy and arm it with heavy penalties for non-implementation...  The opening attack on workers' wages and conditions came with George Brown's Joint Statement of Intent on Productivity, Prices and Incomes.... shop stewards wishing to improve wages and / or conditions in their plant, are subject to the penalties of the Act.  The officials of their respective unions can also be penalised.'

 

The intention of the then Labour government here would be to discourage unofficial strikes, that is strikes not supported and financed by the trade unions: in the 1950s and early 1960s unofficial strikes represented about 90% of all the industrial action taking place.  Historically shop stewards were intended to be simply 'union card checkers', in the 1896 rule book of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, that later became A.U.E.W., this was stated to be the sole role of the steward.  Yet, after the Second World War the shop steward had become a key figure on the shop-floor.  Bill Christopher during his involvement with the S.W.F. and in his writings as an industrial editor on Freedom, was anxious to extend the responsibilities of the shop stewards as was the rest of us involved in the National Rank & File Movement.

*******

Political Journey - wartime South Africa to West Yorkshire

Bill Christopher in the North of England

Bill Christopher was born on Bastille Day in July 1924, and died in January 1993.

Brian Bamford's Joan Christopher interview on Bill Christopher:

Began April 2015 and was finally completed in July 2017.

Brian Bamford: When did you and Bill first move up to Todmorden?

Joan Christopher: We came here in July 1986. I was born an Essex girl in a town called Woodford in 1928, but my family moved to Walthamstow from around 1930.

Brian:  How did you find living up here?

Joan:  We didn't know how things were going to work out. Of course, we had been up to visit Aileen and Bob (daughter and son in-law) several times. But I soon learned to drive after coming up and I began to go to college to do A-level art. Some dear friends of ours Eric and Joan Preston (in the Independent Labour Party) lived in Leeds

Brian:  Has Todmorden changed much since you came?

Joan:  There has not been a great deal of change. There is more of a hint of tourism – a bit like (nearby) Hebden Bridge, and it's more gentrified now. We use to meet people who had not been out of Todmorden all their lives.

Brian:  How does life up here compare with London?

Joan:  Bill use to reminisce about about London. He didn't seem to settle down as much as me. For me I’ve liked living up here and I find ‘Tod.’ people very friendly – I like somewhere a bit rural and countryfied.

Brian:  How did you meet Bill?

Joan:  I use to work with Bill's sister, Jean; sewing. I started working when I was 14-years-old at a dress-making factory cutting, finishing and re-drawing from the pattern book on Hudson Street, Walthamstow for about 4 months.   I then worked at Cannels Ltd dress-making. It was through his sister Jean that I met Bill and we first went out at Xmas 1942. Jean use to say Bill only liked me because I liked playing monopoly.  He had asked me to go to the pictures a week before he went into the RAF.   Bill was a volunteer and didn’t wait to be called-up, nor was he influenced by his mates at the time into his decision to join up.   At that time he was at first doing air-training in St. Johns Wood.

Later he was based in South Africa training to be a navigator, and didn't come home until 1944. After that he was in the Army in India until 1947.

While he was in India during the troubles there; that is during the Bombay riots, I remember him saying that he shot into the air,.rather risk hitting anyone.

He didn't talk much about South Africa! It was the war that influenced his later political views as well as his later (post war) experience in India (in the Army).  When he went to the war he had been a Christian and as a boy he wanted to be a missionary in the Church of England. My Mum too had been a strong believer before she met my Dad.

After he left the Army, Bill (Christopher) went back to working in the print (industry) in the 1940s up to the 1970s.  He was an Imperial Father of Chapel (Works Convenor) at the Daily Mail in NATSOPA and Sogat. After he left school he worked flat-bed printing on 'The Queen' magazine, which was a glossy.  He was doing White Chapel preparation though his grandfather had been a copy-taker.   He left the Daily Mail, went on to Teacher’s Training College, and later began teaching in the early 1970s.  He taught at Leyton County High School for Boys.  Bill was a member of the NUT (National Union of Teachers).   Bill came into teaching as a mature student and ended up teaching sociology as part of his teacher’s training certificate.

Brian:  Why did you both come up North?

Joan:   In July 1985, he decided to retire, because Bill didn't have a degree and he assumed that he wouldn't get a job in a 6^th form College or High School. He was 61 (Bill was born in July 1924). We already had a daughter living in Cornholme in Todmorden. Our daughter, Aileen, has lived in the North longer than down in London. She originally lived in Cornholme, Todmorden, but is now over the border in Burnley.

When we got here Bill studied for a Master's degree (entitled) 'The women's role in the factories in World War II'. An oral history involving (research) doing interviews with workers (who had) worked in the mills and factories in the Tod(morden) area (in the War). It was a dissertation for his MA (Master's Degree), and I typed it up for him on a Word. Processor. He started studying for a Phd shortly before he died.

Brian:  What do you reckon of today's politicians?

Joan:  You can see that I am a Labour supporter (a Labour Party poster is in the window). Both me and Bill voted Labour in the 1945 and 1951 general elections: although I haven't got a lot of faith in any of them. Because they make promises and then can't deliver. I look on Labour as being the lesser evil. I always vote, because people died to get the vote. The trouble is that big business has more control, although you do get the odd MP who does a good job.

Brian:  But you were both in the Independent Labour Party (ILP)?

Joan:  (The I.L.P. merged with the Labour Party in 1975) when the I.L.P. stopped being the Independent Labour Party and became the 'Independent Labour Publications'.

Bob Galliers (Bill's son-in-law) intervene here to say that Bill had always been a syndicalist or anarcho-syndicalist, and that they (Bill and Joan) had been raided by the police in 1963 after the revelations in the Spies for Peace documents.

Joan Christopher then continued:

In the mid-1960s Bill wrote and edited industrial and labour reports for the Freedom newspaper with Peter Turner, who was a carpenter in the building trade.

I wrote for Freedom (the anarchist weekly newspaper) a piece about that raid after the 'Spies for Peace' [5] incident at Aldermaston at Easter in 1964. (At that time this 'subversive' document was being widely circulated by anarchists, independent socialists and pacifists and) at a Conference of the I.L.P. in Yorkshire [probably Scarborough] everyone were asked to reproduce the 'Spies for Peace' leaflet.  (At that time) Eric Preston, Bill’s friend in the I.L.P., was being followed by the police as he moved 'Spies for Peace' leaflets and other materials from Leeds to London, but when he his copies in the Left Luggage, the police moved in and took them. The organisation 'Solidarity'* (nothing to do with the current Solidarity Federation) started the 'Spies for Peace' campaign. (Bob then intervened to say the journalist Natasha Walter published a book on the 'Spies for Peace'): (her father was, Nicolas Walter the well-known anarchist writer, and the only member of the 'Spies for Peace' to go public on this matter).

We also duplicated a rank and file newsletter the ‘Seaman’s Voice’ in Cumberland Road, and as I recall one of the seamen ended-up stapling his own finger, but he was still enough of a gentleman to avoid swearing in front of a woman, although I’m sure that he wanted to.

Bill unsuccessfully fought the Walthamstow parliamentary seat (at different times) for both the ILP and CND.. He was a member of the (anarcho-syndicalist) Syndicalist Worker's Federation (SWF) and produced both 'Worker's Voice' (then the paper of the Worker's Party) and 'World Labour News'. Earlier in 1959, we were both involved in the 'Worker's Party'* with Brian Behan* (the brother of the play-write Brendan Behan and musician Dominic), but Brian was very mercurial.

Bill rejoined the I.L.P. around 1980ish, and the 'Friends of the ILP' are now part of the Labour Party.

Brian:  What did you do in the Miner’s Strike?

Joan:  We supported the miners! 

We had an ‘I.L.P. Miner’s Support Group’ through which we channelled our support. We were awarded a Miner’s Lamp for our efforts. I’ve still got that lamp here at the bottom of the stairs.

Brian:   I believe that William Morris was born in Walthamstow?

Joan.:  Yes, in the 1930s the house were he was born was turned into a clinic, and when I was a kid, I attended the clinic for treatment in about 1935.

Brian:  Many of those anarchists and syndicalists in London in the 1960s, I remember as having a wide variety of other interests as well as politics. Over the years from the 1960s I often stayed in London on the Peabody Estate behind Chelsea Town Hall on Kings Road with Bill’s old mate, the joiner Peter Turner and his then wife Gladys, and we often would talk about you and Bill.  Peter loved cinema, the arts and above all music.  As I recall from talking to Peter, he Bill and Jack Stevenson were all very enthusiastic about Jazz – I think Jack and Bill had disputes over their tastes in Jazz?

Joan:  Yes, we all had a passion for Jazz!  But at first I was into the Classics, and Bill was into Jazz.  When we were living on Cumberland Road we made it open-plan, and, on Jack Stevenson’s advice bought a Pye Black Box.  We liked Bruck, Mendelssohn, Mahler, and Oscar Peterson.  But it was through Jack Stevenson we came to know the track by Jack Teagarden ‘Tribute to Sydney Bechet’ (Joan at this point started to hum the tune). ‘I want that played at my funeral’, she said.

Brian:  Did you know many other people at Freedom besides Pete Turner? People like Vernon Richards, Colin Ward and Philip Sanson?

Joan:    Indeed, we were close to quite a few people at Freedom Press, and would go over for lunch on the odd Sunday to Philip Sansom and his partner’s house. We knew Tom Cowan and his Italian wife Gabrella. He was in the building trade. We were also close to Ken Hawkes, a sports journalist on the Reynolds News and the anacho-syndicalist editor of World Labour News – the journal of the Syndicalist Worker’s Federation (SWF) in the 1960s. Brian Behan, the brother of the play-write Brendan Behan, was another good friend who we knew Brian was a bit eccentric, he lived in a pre-fab with his wife and use to wear bicycle clips, and we asked him about this he turned his pockets out and showed us the holes. The bike-clips were there to catch the coins in.  His wife later went into teaching.  Brian was a carpenter in the building trade who was blacklisted and ended-up at university. I’m still in touch with Dave Picket who took over the S.W.F., when Ken Hawkes, who lived on Parliament Hill in Hampstead, left to go to work for the BBC.

Brian:  Thank you for that Joan, and please express my thanks to Aileen and Bob for all their help in producing this short rendering of the life of Bill Christopher.

******

[1] The Worker's Party was a breakaway from the Socialist Labour League in summer 1960.

[2] Brian Behan, the brother of the Irish play-write Brendan Behan, founded a short-lived 'Workers Party', which published Worker's Voice and was active in support of the Seaman's Strike.

In 1964, Behan wrote his first piece on his family life, With Breast Expanded. Forced to give up building work due to an arm injury, he moved to live on a boat in Shoreham-by-Sea and studied history and English at Sussex University. He then studied teaching, before in 1973 becoming a lecturer in media studies at the London College of Printing.[3] In 1972, he contested in a swearing match at the British Museum, to mark the republication of Robert Graves' Lars Porsena.[2]

[3] The Committee of 100 was set up after a difference in CND about the use of civil disobedience as a political weapon between Canon Collins and the philosopher Bertrand Russell,

[4] The National Rank & File Movement. Affiliates of SWF; the Worker’s Party; the ILP; Commonwealth; London Anarchists; Socialism Re-affirmed (publication Agitator - later Solidarity).

[5] The ‘Spies for Peace’ was a clandestine group of individuals including we now know the Freedom Press anarchist, Nicolas Walter, later admitted involvement: His Wikipeadia entry states: ‘Walter was a member of Spies for Peace, the only member to be publicly identified, only after his death. In March 1963, it broke into Regional Seat of Government No. 6

(RSG-6), copied documents relating to the Government's plans in the event of nuclear war and distributed 3,000 leaflets revealing their contents.’

In his book ‘Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow’ the historian David Goodway wrote:

‘The Spies for Peace were essentially this group (Solidarity), locating and entering the Regional Seat of Government (RSG) at Warren Pow, Berkshire, and circulating the pamphlet, Danger! Official Secret: RSG-6.

[6] ‘Solidarity' publication of the Socialism Re-affirmed Group edited by Christopher Pallis and Ken Weller, was originally entitled the 'The Agitator' until 1961.

Eric Preston: A life ‘lived for that better day’

OUR dear friend and comrade Eric Preston died on 20 September. He was a driving force in the Independent Labour Party (ILP) for 60 years, shaping much of its perspective and political thinking. ILP chair DAVID CONNOLLY gave the eulogy at his funeral in Leeds on 8 October.

It is a great honour to be asked by the family to give the eulogy today for our dear friend and comrade, Eric Preston. We will miss him greatly but today is an opportunity to remember his contribution to all our lives.

Eric was born to loving parents, Frank and Dorothy in Ossett on 15 June 1932 and he came into this world weighing 14 pounds. His father was a miner and unfortunately a serious accident at the pit put Frank in hospital for 18 months.

As money was tight, to say the least, Dorothy had to walk to Leeds to see her husband and Eric was often fed by the neighbours during this difficult time. His mother was horrified that she had to rely on their help in this way.

Unable to continue as a miner, Frank had various jobs including at one time managing Ossett Conservative Club where the family lived for a while. Eventually they moved to Leeds where Eric’s brother, John, was born in 1946.

Eric left school at 14, his teacher telling him that he would make “a very good lorry drivers’ mate” – and Eric never even learned to drive.

He had several different jobs before signing up for the RAF for three years where he was a keen rugby player. One weekend Eric wasn’t able to play. He went to see the plane carrying his team return but tragically it crashed on landing killing several of his teammates.

Covered in aviation fuel, he was badly affected by the experience of digging them out, hence his subsequent fear of flying.

While stationed for a year in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) he saw so many wounded soldiers evacuated from the war in Korea that when he came home he assumed the streets would be full of the maimed and injured.

Angry and frustrated with the world, Eric’s political views at this time were distinctly right wing.

It was while working with Doreen Towler at the Co-operative Insurance Society that he met her husband, Dennis Towler, who was on the left. Eric, Joan, Doreen and Dennis went on a cycling holiday in 1954 during which Dennis challenged Eric’s conventional assumptions about British society and the world in general.

Immediately afterwards Eric read as much as he could about left-wing politics, including George Bernard Shaw’s Everybody’s Political What’s What and Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

It profoundly changed the way he thought and briefly led him to join the Communist Party, which he left in 1956 following the Soviet invasion of Hungary.

Eric and Joan had first met when he was 17 and she was 15. He asked her to write to him when he joined up. They were married on 31 July 1954, a marriage that was to last 66 years. Robert was born in 1960 and Karen in 1962.

https://www.independentlabour.org.uk

************************************************************

Eric Preston former ILP activist has died

by Brian Bamford

ERIC PRESTON who lived in Leeds died last month.

Eric Preston who had been an active member of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) since the 1950s has died. In 1959 when I first met him he was involved in founding the Rank & File Movement in London: the ILP together with the London Anarchists; the Syndicalist Workers Federation (SWF); the Solidarity Group (formerly 'Agitator'); the then Worker's Party which later merged with the SWF; and some subscibers to the paper Freedom set up the Rank & File movement to try to introduce an organised shopfloor form of libertarian campaigning element into the then active shop-stewards movement.

This Rank & File movement was mainly London based and according to Pete Turner later an editor of Freedom, this movement merged into the London Industrial Sub-Committee of the Committee of 100. Futher events like the Spies for Peace revelations emerged as a natural consequence of political evolution of these activists in the early 1960s. Eric Preston, who lived in Leeds, and his friends Bill and Joan Christopher at that time based in London, were central to these developments on the libertarian left.

Bob Galliers writes: Eric's funeral will be next Thursday but because of Covid restrictions etc we will not be going as numbers allowed to attend are few and standing outside is impractical and limited numbers too. The plan is that someone will film the ceremony so that those who cannot attend will be able to access it - not sure yet if this will just be recorded or live. There is a lot of research going on about Eric's early involvement in the ILP/ politics but sadly so many have passed on and those that are still alive have very vague memories. Seems that there are plans to have a good bash next year sometime to remember Eric. If there is a written obituary or I get any more information I will pass this on.

**************************************************************

“The Red Flag of Anarchy” by Andrew Lee

A Book Review by Christopher Draper

DO you remember those wooden rulers on sale at Woolworths with the names and dates of all the British Kings and Queens on the back?  That was the kind of history I learnt at school.  Regrettably, a lot of alternative history isn’t much better with a similar emphasis on London-based leaders.  I’ve always preferred to read about radical lives and politics away from the metropolitan bubble and Andrew Lee’s new history of Sheffield’s pioneering socialists and anarchists is a perfect paradigm of “people’s history”.

ANDREW Lee’s book embodies the ideals it chronicles with a beautiful cover designed by libertarian socialist Walter Crane.  The text is printed on decent quality paper and it’s lavishly illustrated with numerous portraits and political posters.  Computer screens might usefully churn out dry facts but Andrew Lee appreciates that wisdom is more surely gained through a slow, aesthetically pleasing book-read and there is a lot to mull over in “The Red Flag of Anarchy”.

Focussed on the Sheffield scene from 1874 to 1900 the author depicts a rich political culture created by predominantly working class activists of every flavour.  He doesn’t push any political line but the book is suffused throughout its 178 pages with an inspiringly libertarian spirit.  Lee’s achievement is to conjure up a vivid picture of a welcoming, inclusive yet militant socialist milieu.  Activists who for an all too brief moment managed to create the germ of a new society within the shell of the old. An alternative society that created communist colonies, embraced gay lifestyles, published a regular anarchist newspaper, operated a “Commonwealth Café”, organised picnics and ran raffles with books by Bellamy and Thoreau as prizes or alternately “A Handsomely Framed Portrait of Ravachol”!

“The Red Flag of Anarchy” is invaluable not just for its contents but as an inspiration and model for socialists all around Britain to get your shovel out and start digging down into your own local libertarian past.  I know from my own researches that there’s always been far more going on out of London than our erstwhile chroniclers would have us believe.

I have just two criticisms which I hope Andrew might address in future editions.  The first is the absence of an index.  This isn’t so much of a handicap as it would be in a text-only volume as the extensive contents list and numerous illustrations facilitate navigation but digitisation makes compiling an index simple and speedy.  Secondly I would like some analysis of why Sheffield’s socialist oasis became barren.  At the end of the book Lee observes, “It was the end of an era, everything was going to change…Parliamentary politics was to become the order of the day” but it wasn’t inevitable, what exactly occurred in Sheffield? My own research, for example, shows that in Leicester all manner of socialists cooperated for years until the foundation of the ILP in 1893.  Thereafter Leicester ILP refused to have any truck with local anarchists whose direct-action was thought detrimental to attracting votes. ILP sectarianism thus transformed Leicester’s lively socialism into bureaucratic electoralism. Were the same forces at work in Sheffield?

If we are ever to regain the radicalism and comradeship of early socialism it’s crucial that we identify what went wrong last time.  Andrew Lee reminds us of an era when Labour Clubs were far more than dreary drinking dens.  Available from Amazon for £10.00, in my opinion “The Red Flag of Anarchism” is the most valuable and entertaining study of grass-roots, pioneering Anarchy in the UK since John Quail’s classic “Slow Burning Fuse”.

SAD END TO A GREAT INSTITUTION!

'Bookfair couldn’t guarantee the banner’s safety', said Dave Douglass
 

by Dave Douglass (South Shields}

THE annual Anarchist Bookfair in London was for many many years the highlight of the Anarchist and radical Marxist calendar.   It brought together the most splendid , vivid fascinating and eccentric, profound and trivial, exciting and profane, hilarious and spiritual assortments of people.   They came in thousands, they bathed in the rainbow variety of factions, tendencies, visions and issues.   Workshops and presentations, entertainment and discussion filled the entire day as the crowds crammed past stalls laden with literature and art, T-shirts and stickers, posters and badges, cards and calendars, a myriad of interesting and unique stuff you would never find anywhere else under one roof.   The Vegan food commune outside the venues hawked the most interesting of pastries and butties, tatties and cakes, rich wonderful chocolate cakes and angel cakes which tested the will power of the most dedicated of health freaks.  In my own judgement the Anarchist bookfair almost vied with the Durham Miners Gala (almost) in terms of ‘not to be missed’ events.  Ancient aud Anarchists rubbed shoulders with the Mohican punks of yesterd-a-year, born again hippies, young activist, and what a Glasgow paper talking of the anti polaris demonstrators of the 60’s called ‘ beardies, weirdies and lang lagged beasties’ 
 
Sadly the great spirit of comradely diversity, the ‘let a million flowers blossom let ten thousand schools of thought reign’ which Mao had once said and may actually at one time believed, had started to change and smoulder into authoritarian intolerances.  In a gradual change of attitude which I think has spread from the Ultra PC ‘no platforming’ ‘shut them up’, ‘safe space’ evangelists of the US campuses, only very particular schools of thought would be allowed to be heard.  

Invited to speak one year I suggested I bring the famous ‘red’ miners banner of the Follonsby Lodge.   The banner originally drafted in 1928 famously sets forth the options and variety of radical working class ideologies and ‘roads’ depicting as it does Social Democracy, Bolshevism, and Anarcho-syndicalism, the ballot box and the gun, in the form of Kier Hardie, James Connolly in the uniform of the ICA, V.I.Lenin , A.J.Cook and George Harvey.  The banner encapsulates the trajectory of ideological struggle and events which led through the birth of the IWW, the ILP, the development of the Soviets, the General Strike, The Easter Irish rising and the Russian revolution.  In this trajectory the debate around the nature of the state and working class democracy ideas of the anarchists and syndicalists, the Industrial Unionists, how society could function once capitalism was defeated were all marked by the birth of this banner. 

I had concluded that the Anarchist Bookfair was an ideal platform to retell this story and the way in which working class history had developed.   'Nope’, I was told , the bookfair couldn’t guarantee the banner’s safety.  One look at the central portrait of Lenin flanked by the hammer and sickle would be enough to stifle any debate and could lead to the destruction of the banner.   It was an early demonstration of the chain of thought which would seek to re-write history by tearing down all statues and memorials and references to un-pc historic figures.   It would be the fingers in the ears while shouting 'lalala’ to stop the sound of words too wounding to be heard. 
 
Then four or five years ago we had a gang attack on Comrade Brian Bamford of the Northern Anarchist Network.  Brian has a knack of rubbing folk up the wrong way it must be said, he had been irreverent to an old stalward of traditional anarchism who had passed away, Brian’s obituary was thought to be insensitive, which it undoubtedly was.  But it led to his stall being turned over his books trashed and he beaten up and sprayed with ketchup.  This was in the middle of an event of Anarchists who are supposed to believe we can govern ourselves without enforcement and laws imposed upon us.   It got worse, as first Brian then members of his group were banned from regional anarchist bookfares, not simply from having a stall but attending on pain of violence.   Book and Newspaper shops which stocked the NAN magazine were visited and warned not to stock the journal, the printers likewise were given the Gypsies Warning.   He hasn’t mounted a bookstall since. 
 
Last year, a section of the Anarchist wing fighting alongside the PKK against ISIS were invited to speak at a workshop.  The hall was invaded by students from the Gulf states who although purporting to be progressives were basically supporters of the Jihadists and Theocrats.  They stamped and chanted and no platformed the speakers.  Bending over backward to preserve our traditions of free speech they were invited to present an alternative view before the anarchists spoke, which they did, and then broke up the meeting and stopped them being heard. 
 
This year was the final straw.  One of the anarcho-feminists had been circulating a leaflet saying why they didn’t allow transmen to attend women only sessions and workshops, when she was surrounded and shouted down and threatened by a gang of 'transmen’, who not only stopped those sessions but demanded a whole list of demands from the bookfare in general be met.  This was as to content of stalls, workshops, items displayed and on sale.  The organisers under a constant barrage have just said ’bollox’ you organise your own, we’re done’.  ‘That’s it, were done organising this event’. 
 
I cannot in conscience blame them.  The only way to stop this march of intolerance would have been to not tolerate it and to physically impose free thought and free speech on people who plainly don’t believe in it.  Which would be a contradiction too hard for Anarchists to cope with.  Its a sad reflection on where mostly middle class ‘safe space’ victim-mongering, no-platforming , witch hunting, tyranny has taken us.   It is a very sad day in my view.  We have to ensure that this intolerance and denial of free speech and basic liberty is not fed into working class organisations and events. 
 
Tyneside anarchists in conjunction with the Follonsby Wardley Miners Lodge Association will be hosting a Guy Fawkes Workers Bookfare in Newcastle next year, Nov 3rd.   This will be an opportunity to present books on working class political ideology and history and progressive thought which one would not get the chance to see in conventional book venues. It will very much be in the tradition of the once famous bookfare although we don’t expect the same numbers.   At this bookfare the principle of free speech and political liberty will be guaranteed, and anyone who doesn’t accept the principle ‘left’ or right will be not invited and if necessary excluded. 
 www.fiveleavespublications.blogspot.com/2012/10/  

******

SORRY END TO A GREAT INSTITUTION

by Dave Douglass (South Shields}

THE annual Anarchist Bookfair in London was for many many years the highlight of the Anarchist and radical Marxist calendar.  It brought together the most splendid , vivid fascinating and eccentric, profound and trivial, exciting and profane, hilarious and spiritual assortments of people.  They came in thousands, they bathed in the rainbow variety of factions, tendencies, visions and issues.  Workshops and presentations, entertainment and discussion filled the entire day as the crowds crammed past stalls laden with literature and art, T-shirts and stickers, posters and badges, cards and calendars, a myriad of interesting and unique stuff you would never find anywhere else under one roof.  The Vegan food commune outside the venues hawked the most interesting of pastries and butties, tatties and cakes, rich wonderful chocolate cakes and angel cakes which tested the will power of the most dedicated of health freaks.  In my own judgement the Anarchist bookfare almost vied with the Durham Miners Gala (almost) in terms of ‘not to be missed’ events.  Ancient aud Anarchists rubbed shoulders with the Mohican punks of yesterd-a-year, born again hippies, young activist, and what a Glasgow paper talking of the anti polaris demonstrators of the 60’s called ‘ beardies, weirdies and lang lagged beasties’ 
 
Sadly the great spirit of comradely diversity, the ‘let a million flowers blossom let ten thousand schools of thought reign’ which Mao had once said and may actually at one time believed, had started to change and smoulder into authoritarian intolerances.  In a gradual change of attitude which I think has spread from the Ultra PC ‘no platforming’ ‘shut them up’, ‘safe space’ evangelists of the US campuses, only very particular schools of thought would be allowed to be heard.  

Invited to speak one year I suggested I bring the famous ‘red’ miners banner of the Follonsby Lodge.   The banner originally drafted in 1928 famously sets forth the options and variety of radical working class ideologies and ‘roads’ depicting as it does Social Democracy, Bolshevism, and Anarcho-syndicalism, the ballot box and the gun, in the form of Kier Hardie, James Connolly in the uniform of the ICA, V.I.Lenin , A.J.Cook and George Harvey.  The banner encapsulates the trajectory of ideological struggle and events which led through the birth of the IWW, the ILP, the development of the Soviets, the General Strike, The Easter Irish rising and the Russian revolution. In this trajectory the debate around the nature of the state and working class democracy ideas of the anarchists and syndicalists, the Industrial Unionists, how society could function once capitalism was defeated were all marked by the birth of this banner. 

I had concluded that the Anarchist Bookfare was an ideal platform to retell this story and the way in which working class history had developed.  'Nope’, I was told , the bookfare couldn’t guarantee the banner’s safety.  One look at the central portrait of Lenin flanked by the hammer and sickle would be enough to stifle any debate and could lead to the destruction of the banner.  It was an early demonstration of the chain of thought which would seek to re-write history by tearing down all statues and memorials and references to un-pc historic figures.  It would be the fingers in the ears while shouting’ lalala’ to stop the sound of words too wounding to be heard. 
 
Then four or five years ago we had a gang attack on Comrade Brian Bamford of the Northern Anarchist Network.  Brian has a knack of rubbing folk up the wrong way it must be said, he had been irreverent to an old stalward of traditional anarchism who had passed away, Brian’s obituary was thought to be insensitive, which it undoubtedly was.  But it led to his stall being turned over his books trashed and he beaten up and sprayed with ketchup.  This was in the middle of an event of Anarchists who are supposed to believe we can govern ourselves without enforcement and laws imposed upon us.   It got worse, as first Brian then members of his group were banned from regional anarchist bookfares, not simply from having a stall but attending on pain of violence.   Book and Newspaper shops which stocked the NAN magazine were visited and warned not to stock the journal, the printers likewise were given the Gypsies Warning.   He hasn’t mounted a bookstall since. 
 
Last year, a section of the Anarchist wing fighting alongside the PKK against ISIS were invited to speak at a workshop.  The hall was invaded by students from the Gulf states who although purporting to be progressives were basically supporters of the Jihadists and Theocrats.  They stamped and chanted and no platformed the speakers.  Bending over backward to preserve our traditions of free speech they were invited to present an alternative view before the anarchists spoke, which they did, and then broke up the meeting and stopped them being heard. 
 
This year was the final straw.  One of the anarcho-feminists had been circulating a leaflet saying why they didn’t allow transmen to attend women only sessions and workshops, when she was surrounded and shouted down and threatened by a gang of 'transmen’, who not only stopped those sessions but demanded a whole list of demands from the bookfare in general be met.  This was as to content of stalls, workshops, items displayed and on sale.  The organisers under a constant barrage have just said ’bollox’ you organise your own, we’re done’.  ‘That’s it, were done organising this event’. 
 
I cannot in conscience blame them.  The only way to stop this march of intolerance would have been to not tolerate it and to physically impose free thought and free speech on people who plainly don’t believe in it.  Which would be a contradiction too hard for Anarchists to cope with.  Its a sad reflection on where mostly middle class ‘safe space’ victim-mongering, no-platforming , witch hunting, tyranny has taken us.   It is a very sad day in my view.  We have to ensure that this intolerance and denial of free speech and basic liberty is not fed into working class organisations and events. 
 
Tyneside anarchists in conjunction with the Follonsby Wardley Miners Lodge Association will be hosting a Guy Fawkes Workers Bookfare in Newcastle next year, Nov 3rd.   This will be an opportunity to present books on working class political ideology and history and progressive thought which one would not get the chance to see in conventional book venues. It will very much be in the tradition of the once famous bookfare although we don’t expect the same numbers.   At this bookfare the principle of free speech and political liberty will be guaranteed, and anyone who doesn’t accept the principle ‘left’ or right will be not invited and if necessary excluded. 
 fiveleavespublications.blogspot.com/2012/10/

******

Russian Revolution in Somerset

Subject: The Russian Revolution in Somerset

Friends,
Bridgwater Trades Union Council is hosting a special public discussion to mark the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

Date: Tuesday October 31st. Time: 7pm. Venue: The Engine Room, 50-52 High St, Bridgwater, Somerset, TA6 3BL

The meeting is part of the Engine Room's "Bridgwater Together" celebrations, running from Saturday October 28th to Saturday 4th November.

From Tuesday 31st to Saturday November 4th, the Russian Revolution theme continues with an Engine Room exhibition of rare and original Soviet Posters and photographic magazines, organised and curated by Bridgwater's Irena Brezowski.

                                                                     *********************************************************

Dave Chapple, Bridgwater TUC Secretary, said:

‘For millions of people throughout the twentieth century, and for many thousands of socialists in our country today, the overthrow of Kerensky's Government by the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, Trotsky, and Kamenev in October 1917, was a world-changing, inspiring and liberating event.

‘October 1917 was hailed by most shades of left-wing opinion in Britain: the militant shop stewards and syndicalists, South Wales miners, Glasgow engineers, the Socialist Labour Party, the British Socialist Party, Sylvia Pankhurst, John Maclean, and many like George Lansbury in the Independent Labour Party. During the next few years it was British Labour's strike threats against Lloyd George's war-mongering  that helped to ensure that the besieged fledgling "soviet" state survived.

‘However, even before Lenin's death in 1924, many previous admirers world-wide, begun to have doubts about the policies and direction of the new state.

‘As Lenin and Trotsky gave way to Joseph Stalin's murderous dictatorship, and right down until 1989, millions of workers in the Soviet Union and its satellites developed negative, critical or hostile attitudes to communist state authority, attitudes which led some Russians and Eastern Europeans after 1989 to seek intellectual consolation or refuge in the bright lights of western consumer capitalism.

‘In Bridgwater today, still Somerset's premier working-class town, live hundreds of unrepentant and dedicated local socialists, and they are working alongside hundreds of migrant workers from Eastern Europe, including many Russian speakers from Lithuania. Local trades unions have welcomed migrant workers into membership and some are already shop stewards. Of course, many migrant workers retain personal or family memories of pre-1989 days, and so will have their own views on communism and October 1917. 

‘This is why Bridgwater TUC's  public meeting on October  31st is being organised as a serious discussion between different opinions and perspectives,  and not a celebration.’

                                                                                             ***************************************

Speakers are Liz Payne, President of the Communist Party of Britain; Dave Chapple, Secretary of Bridgwater TUC; and Irena Brezowski, a Bridgwater College lecturer who has family and personal links to the old Soviet Union.

Tuesday October 31st, 7pm, The Engine Room, 50-52 High St, Bridgwater, Somerset, TA6 3BL

Please pass this invite onto any of your contacts who might be interested.

ALL WELCOME!

******

The Leeds Soviet – 1917!

by Christopher Draper

HISTORY's most remarkable social experiment began one hundred years ago. As the Russian war effort disintegrated, autocratic Czarism was abolished and a revolutionary SOVIET system substituted.  Soviets were collectives of workers and soldiers organised to end the war and radically democratise Russia.  In March 1917 (February in the old Russian calendar) the PETROGRAD SOVIET led the revolution and despatched a four-man delegation to England to encourage British workers to follow their lead.  On 3 June 1917, over a thousand workers’ representatives met at LEEDS COLISEUM, Cookridge Street to emulate their Russian comrades and organise a British network of ”extra-parliamentary Soviets with sovereign powers”. 

Powder Keg

The War Cabinet was worried.  A strike started at a Rochdale engineering company already affected 48 towns and involved over 200,000 workers.  Colonial Secretary Edward Milner confided fears about the Leeds Soviet to the PM, 'this Convention will begin to do for this country what the Russian Revolution has accomplished in Russia…and I fear the time is very nearly at home when we shall have to take some strong steps to stop the rot in this country unless we wish to follow Russia into impotence and dissolution.'

Breaking the Mould

Convened by the “United Socialist Council”, the Leeds gathering included delegates from Trades Councils and Unions, local Labour Parties, the British Socialist Party and the Independent Labour Party as well as independent Socialist Societies, Women’s organisations, local Co-ops and assorted Peace  Groups.

The Yorkshire Evening Post more colourfully described the congregation as, 'a heterogenous crowd of Pacifists, republicans, Pro-Germans, Socialists, Industrial Unionists, Syndicalists and Anarchists.'

With the anarchist movement divided over Kropotkin’s support for the war, both factions nevertheless welcomed the Russian Revolution.  Despite issuing no formal invitations to anarchists, libertarian ideas received full expression from delegates disenchanted by the compromising, careerism of professional Labour Party politicians and Trade Union Officials.  

Four Steps to Heaven…

There were just four resolutions to be voted upon at Leeds, with no amendments permitted. After speeches and debate, all resolutions were enthusiastically supported. They were (in abbreviated form);
a)  'This Conference of Labour, Socialist and Democratic organisations of Great Britain hails the Russian Revolution'
b)  'This Conference...shares with the Provisional Russian Government…the pledge to work for an agreement with the international democracies for a re-establishment of a general peace…a peace without annexations or indemnities'
c)  'This Conference calls…for full political rights for all men and women, unrestricted freedom of the Press, freedom of speech, a general amnesty for all political and religious prisoners…'
d)  'The Conference calls upon the constituent bodies at once to establish in every town, urban and rural district, Councils of Workmen and Soldiers…'

Delegates, Messages and Speeches

An opening message was read to the delegates from an army unit recently returned from France:
'We should very much like to see the establishment of a society on lines similar to those of the Council of Soldiers and Workmen in Russia for we are quite convinced that the great majority of men in the Army are in sympathy with the Russian aims (Cheers).'

Ramsay MacDonald, Noah Ablett, Ernest Bevin, Charlotte Despard, Bertrand Russell and Tom Mann all made stirring platform speeches but the pithiest comments came from Willie Gallacher, Sylvia Pankhurst and Fred Shaw of Huddersfield.

Gallagher presciently advised delegates that the Russian Revolution was far from settled.  Their Russian comrades, 'have the biggest fight on, not against the capitalists of Russia but against the capitalists of other countries who have determined that the Socialists of Russia have to be beaten back.  Give your own capitalist class in this country so much to do that it will not have time to attend to it.'

Sylvia Pankhurst underlined the inspirational importance of solidarity amidst the senseless carnage, 'I am very glad to feel that at last we shall come out of this slough of despond and that the workers will be united in common action'.  She saw Soviets as, 'a straight cut for the Socialist Commonwealth we all want to see'.

Fred Shaw expressed shop floor enthusiasm for 'WORKERS AND SOLDIERS COUNCILS' -  'As one of the rank and file I support this resolution because of its revolutionary possibilities. The time is ripe for the working classes to take things into their own hands and follow Russia. This war has driven out of the minds of the workers many of the old middle-class ideas about the State.'

The Next Step

The Leeds Convention set dates and venues for regional follow-up meetings to create a national network of a dozen 'SOVIETS' or 'WORKERS AND SOLDIERS COUNCILS (WSC)'.

The NORTH comprised 3 SOVIETS or WSC, based respectively at Newcastle (“North East Coast”), Leeds (“Yorkshire”) and Manchester (“Lancashire, Cheshire & North Wales”).

As soon as dates and locations were advertised for these founding meetings there were serious problems. Leeds Council had already created difficulties for the June Convention by cancelling the organisers’ original booking of Leeds’ Albert Hall. Delegates were also turned away from Leeds hotels despite having reservations and many had been forced to sleep overnight in railway carriages. When the Government learned of the outcome of the Leeds Convention they determined, in Milner’s memorable phrase, “to take strong steps to stop the rot”. As a result only 3 of the 12 WSC Districts were able to successfully organise meetings without suffering cancellations, bans, violence or arrests and none of these were in the North.

Stopping the Rot - Leeds

When the August date of the follow-up Leeds WSC meeting was announced no specific venue was advertised prompting gleeful press speculation that no-one was prepared to provide a venue for the occasion. Refused once again by the local authority, the press crowed, “the local pacifists must surely have been at their wit’s end to find a hall or they would never have taken the course of asking the Corporation to grant them the use of the Town Hall”.

The Government was even more at its wit’s end that the Council might finally relent so it stepped in and peremptorily banned the meeting under the draconian provisions of DORA (“Defence of the Realm Act”). “His Majesty’s Secretaries of State, in pursuance of Regulation 9a of the Defence of the Realm Regulations…do hereby prohibit the assembly of persons for the holding of a meeting to promote Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils which is proposed to be held in the City of Leeds on Saturday 25th August 1917 or on whatever other date it may be proposed the same.”

Selection of a Yorkshire delegate to the Central WSC had to then be conducted by postal ballot. David Blythe Foster, a founding member of Leeds Tolstoyan Brotherhood Workshop was duly elected.

Stopping the Rot – Newcastle

The Newcastle WSC meeting was one of the first advertised, 'Saturday 28th July, 3pm, Newcastle Town Hall'.  Then Newcastle Council stepped in and cancelled the booking.  Fortunately the local committee were able to secure an alternative, though smaller venue, Newcastle Central Hall for the same date.  As the Daily Mail reported, it was a lively meeting:
'Violent scenes were witnessed at the conference in Newcastle promoted on Saturday afternoon promoted by the Workers and Soldiers Council… The platform party was about to take their seats when several interrupters broke into the meeting and it was found that the doors had been rushed by a crowd of noisy demonstrators following a succession of free fights.  Mrs Despard made a successful effort to restore order but by that time a young Navy man and others who had mounted the platform endeavoured to address the meeting.  One of the interrupters who wore a gold stripe on his civil uniform divested himself of his coat and baring his arm showed a wound and shouted, That is what I got for fighting for traitors. Colonial soldiers afterwards stormed the platform and a wild scene ensued, during which there were violent altercations and free fights on the platform…It was found impossible to continue the meeting.'

Ashington miner, George Henry Warne, was subsequently selected by postal ballot as the District’s delegate to the Central WSC 

Stopping the Rot – Manchester

The Manchester WSC meeting was scheduled for Saturday 11th August 2.30pm at Milton Hall, Deansgate. By then, violent attacks by soldiers on WSC meetings were commonplace and it was clear this disruption was tolerated if not encouraged by civil authorities who prosecuted the victims rather than the perpetrators. The possibility of such violence was cynically exploited by the authorities as an excuse to cancel WSC bookings.

When Manchester Council banned the Deansgate meeting the booking was quietly transferred to Stockport Labour Church in the hope of avoiding disruption – no such luck! “Lively scenes were witnessed at Stockport on Saturday afternoon at a meeting to elect a delegate to the Workers and soldiers Council. A hostile crowd attempted to rush the hall…Footpaths to the hall were chalked, This way to the traitors’ meeting. On leaving the hall the delegates were set upon on all sides, the women smacking the faces of their pacifist sisters…stalwart men looked most humiliated as they were bowled over and battered on the ground…the rioting continued for over an hour.”

Charlotte Ann Findlay was eventually selected as WSC delegate. She had little political profile but her husband was a well-known lecturer at Manchester University and campaigner for progressive education.

Cracking the Convention

The State’s determination to prevent the Sovietisation of the British labour movement exacerbated pre-existing cracks in the fragile workers’ coalition. Reservations about the whole SOVIET project were expressed at the Leeds Convention by Joseph Toole, who claimed, “There are already sufficient organisations to do the work which has been outlined – Trades Councils, local Labour Parties, Socialist organisations and various other organisations. Russia and this country suffer from entirely different sets of circumstances”. Toole and his fellow Labour bureaucrats, MP’s and Councillors resented intrusion into their petty fiefdoms. The national Labour Party directed members not to have anything to do with the WSC initiative and the Government piled on the pressure. 

In July 1917 the War Cabinet decreed that no soldier must play any part whatsoever in any WSC and to counteract the anti-war appeal of the Soviet initiative the Cabinet agreed to pour government money into building a nominally “independent” national network of pro-war groups under the umbrella of a “National War Aims Committee” directed by the spy and novelist, John Buchan.  When Prime Minister Lloyd-George spoke for the NWAC on August 4th he exemplified this anti SWC obsession, assuring listeners :  'The Nation has chosen its own Workmens’ and Soldiers Committee (cheers) and that is the House of Commons. We cannot allow sectional organisations to direct the war or dictate the peace (cheers)'.

According to David French (OUP) “The Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch MI5 and Military Intelligence were directed to watch militant trade unionists, peace and anti-war campaigners and socialist activists and isolate them from the rest of the organised labour movement and armed forces.” “By Spring 1917 MI5 had compiled 250,000 cards and 27,000 personal files, going well beyond the estimated 70,000 adult enemy aliens resident in Britain at the outbreak of war.” (Christopher Wrigley).

Voice from the Trenches

Despite the best efforts of the authorities some brave soldiers continued to organise WSC. The Midlands’ WSC representative Private Charles James Simmons(CJS), 2nd Worcester Regiment proved most determined. The Government could hardly brand CJS a disloyal coward as he’d volunteered for the army four years before war was declared and had served in uniform ever since. Severely wounded at Vimy Ridge, one of his legs had to be amputated below the knee and he was sent home as unfit for service but “of good character”. As an evangelical Christian and Socialist CJS fearlessly voiced his conscience and back home in England in 1917 Private James tirelessly campaigned for the WSC in the press, on the streets and on repeated tours around the North.

On Saturday 29th September 1917 the Rochdale Observer reported:
'The campaign that Private C J Simmons has been conducting at Rochdale has been brought to an abrupt conclusion.  On Tuesday he was warned by the police against speaking on account of the nature of his remarks the previous evening but the soldier paying no regard to the caution addressed a large gathering.  Private Simmons should have spoken at a similar meeting at Town Hall Square on Wednesday evening. Mr J W Chadwick, who was in the chair, was in the act of calling on the soldier to speak when two military policemen appeared and arrested him.'

Simmons was held in Rochdale police cells overnight before being taken under military escort to incarceration at Chester Castle. After his case was raised in Parliament he was released and discharged from the army in November 1917.  'Ex-Private Simmons” immediately resumed his anti-war campaigning.  Returning to Rochdale the following month, the local Socialist Society advertised his talk in the “Pioneers Assembly Room” with the strap line, “We sang the Red Flag to him last time. Come and sing it with him this time”!

Continuing his tour into the new year, “Ex-Private Simons” got as far as Burnley before in March 1918 the authorities caught up with him again and he was charged under DORA (“Defence of the Real Act”) that, “On the February 21st he did by word of mouth, at the Cooperative Hall, York, make statements likely to prejudice the training, discipline and administration of His Majesty’s Forces”!

Sentenced to three months hard labour at Leeds’ ARMLEY GAOL he was subsequently employed as an ILP organiser and advised conscientious objectors at military tribunals. By then the authorities were confident they had the militants under control.

Wot no Revolution?

Lance Corporal Dudley was initially more effective than even Private Simmons in declaring a Soldiers’ Soviet at Tunbridge Wells on 24th June 1917!  Representatives of half-a-dozen battalions cooperated with Dudley in approving a Soldiers’ manifesto and declaring a WSC.  The Tunbridge WSC proved short lived as an acting Brigadier rigorously enforced military discipline and dispersed the units with Lance Corporal Dudley promptly posted to active service in France. 

Despite all these interventions by the end of September 1917, all dozen WSC districts had managed to elect delegates to the central body. At the beginning of October Britain’s formally constituted national “WORKERS’ AND SOLDIERS’ COUNCIL” met for the first time.

The central WSC subsequently published a seven point programme laying out its formal objectives. It’s sufficient to consider the first to realise how far the body had retreated from its initial revolutionary ambitions; 
'1. THE WORKERS’ AND SOLDIERS’ COUNCIL has been formed primarily as a propaganda body, not as a rival to, or to supplant,  any of the existing working class organisations but to infuse into them a more active spirit of liberty.'

After expressing six more similarly pious hopes the programme added, “A Sub-Committee is preparing a manifesto on A Plea for a People’s Peace and a vigorous campaign is about to be inaugurated”!

The authorities must have been quaking in their boots! “A Plea for Peace” and “A Vigorous Campaign” disturbed no-one. The Grand Old Dukes of the Labour Party and Trade Unions had stifled the movement with bureaucracy whilst the State had exerted its customary range of repressive measures.  Militants were conveniently constrained by red-tape and the movement emasculated.  The resultant WSC programme so lacked vigour and inspiration that that the delegates never even bothered to reconvene.

Lessons from History?

Besides Private Simons only two other WSC delegates fought on for militant socialism, Sylvia Pankhurst in East London and John Maclean on Clydeside. Of the three Northern delegates, both David Foster and George Warne became run-of-the-mill Labour Party MP’s whilst the third, Charlotte Findlay simply returned to political anonymity (her husband made two unsuccessful attempts to become a Labour MP). 

Private Charles James Simmons also represented Labour as an MP but as the Oxford ONB records, 'Simmons was considered a firebrand by political opponents and allies alike…critical of the Chamberlain government for its rearmament policy, failure to support Republican Spain and appeasement of Hitler.'

After Lenin’s November 1917 coup-d’etat Russian Soviets were subordinated to the Diktat of the Bolshevik Party and the four delegates of the Petrograd Soviet, Genrikh Erlikh, Iosif Goldenberg, Alexander Smirnov and Nikolair Rousanov sent to Britain became persona non-grata in Russia. Iosif
Goldenberg, an ex-Bolshevik critic of Lenin perished in 1922, Smirnov and Rousanov emigrated and survived whilst Erlikh emigrated to Poland only to be executed on Stalin’s orders in 1948.

The Russian Revolution was an experiment that failed and Lenin no more than a mad scientist.  Paul McCartney is right and Sylvia Pankhurst was wrong, there is no “straight cut to the Socialist Commonwealth”, only “a long and winding road”. 

Christopher Draper – January 2017