Unite Sharon Graham's plan for a new workplace politics by Brian Bamford

THE UNITE ELECTION for GENERAL SECRETARY

Playing Politics or having control in the Workplace?

At the end of June the fringe website WORKERS' LIBERTY announced:

'Unite General Secretary candidate Sharon Graham’s proposals for “a Workers’ Politics” point in the wrong direction. In many respects they are a regression from Unite’s current political strategy.

'The wider output from Graham’s campaign says little about political struggles and largely disparages political trade unionism in favour of “returning to the workplace”. She has denounced rival left candidate Steve Turner and his new backer Howard Beckett as “the Westminster Brigade” (“the Westminster Brigade versus the Workplace”). In fact Graham lumps Turner and right-wing candidate Gerard Coyne together as the Westminster Brigade, as if Coyne rather than Turner winning would not matter!'

The website continues:

'Effective working-class politics does need to be rooted in strong workplace and community organisation and struggles, as opposed to just senior union officials hobnobbing with politicians or social media output; but Graham's stance is reactionary populist posturing.'

This small leftist body WORKERS' LIBERTY focuses here upon the spirit of syndicalism in Sharon Graham's strategy and calls it 'a regression from Unite’s current political strategy'.

They argue 'Graham’s campaign says little about political struggles and largely disparages political trade unionism in favour of “returning to the workplace” and that she 'has denounced rival left candidate Steve Turner and his new backer Howard Beckett as “the Westminster Brigade” (“the Westminster Brigade versus the Workplace”).'

In her own election address Sharon says: 'I am not supported by any clique of MP's. I don't have the machine of the current regime.'

THE HISTORICAL TRADITION of BRITISH SYNDICALISM

THE program set out clearly by Sharon Graham today has roots that go deep in the history of British, and indeed, European trade unionsm. It encompasses ideas that stretch back to the foundation of the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union in the 19th century and was popular before the First World War in 1912 when 'The Miners' Next Step' was formulated and articulated as a project for workplace syndicalism and workers' control.

The Guild Socialist and historian G.D.H. Cole has described how British trade unionists tend to return to militant workplace activity in periods when parliamentary politics fails. If Sharon Graham's message today is anything to go by we may well be entering one of those phases. As I read through the addresses of the candidates for the Unite General Secretary today there seems to be an air of disillusionment with party politics and politicians.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that Sharon Graham is cynically drawing upon a 'reactionary popularist posturing' as the hole-in-the-corner Marxists of the 'WORKERS' ALLIANCE' seem to be suggesting in their critique above. Reading her address it seems to me that she is drawing upon her own insider knowledge and experience to articulate a narative of what could be called modern workplace syndicalism. It is not surprising that the politicians are in bad odour right now. They seem to lack common decency and that goes for the Labour Party as well.

Blacklisting & LABOUR'S Defence of the Boss's Right to Vet

IT not surprising that I note that the Manchester UNITE EPIU Contracting Branch North West/1400 have nominated Sharon Graham. This Manchester branch spearheaded the campaign that led to the exposure of the Consulting Association blacklist in the British building industry in 2009. The reason that the Manchester electricians would be sceptical about professional politicians can be found in a letter sent in 2008 to Graham Brady, then a Conservative MP representing one of the blacklisted Manchester electricians; in this letter dated 30th, April 2008, the then Labour Minister for Employment Relations & Postal Affairs, Pat McFadden wrote:

'Employers often vet the people they hire. It is not the policy of the Government to make it unlawful for employers to undertake such necessary vetting in a systematic way, conferring with previous employers as required. However... the Government is aware that irresponsible vetting can lead to abuse...' Then he reassures Mr. Brady MP and his blacklisted constituwent by sternly declaring: 'The Government remains vigilant in this matter and my Department monitors the evidence that information about trade unionists is being misused to discourage employers from hiring them.'

In truth we now know for sure that blacklisting in the Britsh building trade flourished under Labour Goverments because a year later in 2009, the Consulting Assocation and its blacklist files compiled bt Ian Kerr were sucessfuly confiscated by Dave Clancy, the Infomation Commisiioner. It is with our current knowledge of politicians of all governments have a habit of looking the other way and allowing lives to be ruined by blacklist files. With her knowlege of the BESNA in construction and the leverage campaigns she is able to state: 'We can't rely on politicians and I won't be signing any blank cheques for any party [and] I will stop us becoming a branch of the Labour Party, by moving beyond factions and focusing on policies.'

It is this refreshing down to earth approach to the everyday reality that makes Sharon Graham the ideal candidate for those of us who are sick of the fashionable addicion to virtue signaling and delight in someone who has the spirit of everyday reality about her. The alternative candidates Gerald Coyne and Steve Turner both seem to have a flavour of the political factionalism of current mediocre politics.

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Dave Douglass: Why I'm No Longer a 'Wobbly'! *

 Farewell British Isles Industrial Workers of the World
by Dave Douglass

Follonsby Miners Lodge Banner

FOR almost fifty years I have been a member of the IWW since it reformed in Britain in the late 70’s.  At that time it did what it said on the tin, it was a revolutionary union based on the principles on which it was founded in 1905 in Chicago, the principle of One Industry One Union, with all workers in one industry in the same union regardless of craft or skill or grade. United through their industries to One Big Union of all workers.  It sought not just a fair days wage but abolition of wage slavery, it fought for the next slice of bread and demanded the bakery.  Unions like the NUM and NUR at that time were based upon the principle after the early Industrial Unionists and Syndicalists in 1908/ 1909 and programmes like The Miners Next Step, and Industrial Union Britain had a profound influence on the trade union and labour movement.  We (The IWW through the 70’s 80’s and 90’s) continued to work within the mass unions as cells and duel members, we of course worked within communities on community issues too.  During the decades I was associated with the IWW I worked a lifetime in the mines and during that time South Yorkshire and North East IWW branches.  We organised large conferences and rallies within the heart of working-class communities and in mass mobilisations of the class and militant sections of it.  North Eastern IWW hosted a conference on Clean Coal technology and Climate change and commissioned a pamphlet in support of the coal communities and industry in defence of the miners union on the basis of clean coal technology.

The IWW internationally had had a significant impact on the pre-WW1 war and post WW1 war period, particularly within the Irish Socialist Republican Movement and coalfields Miners Federation of GB.

George Harvey first national organiser of the IWW in Britain, creator of the Follonsby (Red)Banner. Lodge Secretary Follonsby Wardley Lodge.

It is the inspiration of the miners ‘red banners’ and northern IWW members were influential in recreating the red miners Follonsby banner and forming the Follonsby Miners Lodge Association.  It carries the portrait of Harvey first British organiser of the IWW Connolly first national organiser of the IWW and founder member, Arthur Cook syndicalist president of the Miners Federation during the 26 lock out and General Strike, and V I Lenin whose slogan All Power to the Soviets sounded like the same aims of the IWW and the international Industrial Unions.

It has toured the country and been used as a central plank for lectures on our revolutionary history and culture, as well as publications on the banner and founder members of Industrial Unionism in Britain.  We had been regular guests at the James Connell commemoration in Kills County Meath, a Wobbly and author of The Red Flag, our banners and his influence inspired a radical red RMT union banner.  In major commemorations of 1912, 1926, and annually the Durham Miners Gala where we always had a marquee and bookstall and organised major rallies and discussions about revolutionary class politics.  From time to time we organised workers into the union and represented them at work and tribunals.  I had the honour last year of having the Follonsby Banner as the backdrop to a lecture on the struggles of the IWW and the Wobblies in Irish revolutionary history and the British mines, at the Socialist Republican commemoration of the Hunger Strikers.

To cut a decades long story short, over the last ten years and more I have been more and more distanced and disillusioned with the team calling itself the British IWW , to start with it has become hugely more centralised than it has ever been in its creation.  The decentralised democratic function of the branches is now controlled and centralised into a national leadership.  Sad to say the ‘union’ has become dominated by the south of England and within that a largely middle class London based membership who have carried their liberal left agenda’s straight from that milieu into the policy of the union.  You could be listening to the young liberal leftist Corbynista’s, Climate Extinction or now the IWW.  The social outlook of this milieu has grated for some time.  I was amazed for example as a person who fought for my class for ten years from 83 to 93 against pit closures and the slaughter of the coal industry and miners union and community, to hear anti coal anti mining agenda’s rolled out in the name of the union.  It was simply assumed this being the attitude among the southern middle class it was generally agreed, it wasn’t, not by any of us in the rust belts.  But the final straw for me is the wholesale adoption of Identity Politics, the sectarian politics of sex and gender with enforced PC positions again just assumed to be common sense and currency.  The agenda of class struggle and the sovereignty of the working class as a whole the bedrock upon which all other forms of oppression stem and around which we unite as a common class is the absolute bedrock of the IWW or has been up to now.

IWW picket line Gateshead 2014

Today I get sent this:-

Gemma (East Scotland area organiser) and Maddi (Clydeside Branch co-communications officer) are inviting you to the IWW's first online welcome session for women & non-binary members: Wednesday 15th July, at 7pm on Zoom (details below).

Please note: This message is being sent to all IWW members so that everyone can help spread the word. The welcome session on the 15th is specifically for women (trans-inclusive) and non-binary members. If you are a cis-gender man (you were assigned male at birth, and are still male now) then please stay tuned for news of future welcome sessions, or reply to this email if you'd like to speak to someone from your local branch or in your industry.

And today I resign, it’s a long way from Fellow Worker to cis-gender man and designating me not on my class and class orientation but whether I have a problem with the gender I was born with and actually assuming that that is some common feature of humanity.

The IWW for a long time, even when we were doing great things was always a very poor tribute band to the original, today it is no longer a class struggle organisation and is completely shot through with Middle class PC Identity liberal leftist politics.  A Sad and sorry end to a once great organisation, but they can't take away its fine past and heroic contribution. 

*  Origin of Wobbly Theory #1 - "Eye Wobble Wobble"

Also known as the "Chinese Restaurant Owner Theory", this is the most often cited and embellished theory.  There exists plenty of anecdotal evidence to support this theory as having a grain of truth to it.  Although it is equally likely to be little more than a cleverly crafted tall tale or yarn. We quote from Three Original Sources:
(1) The earliest known reference to the term:

In Vancouver, in 1911, we had a number of Chinese members, and one restaurant keeper would trust any member for means. He could not pronounce the letter "w" (due to the "l" sounds in the pronunciation of the letter), but called it "wobble" and would ask, "you Eye Wobble Wobble?" and when the [red] card was shown credit was unlimited. Thereafter the laughing term amongst us was "I Wobbly Wobbly".

--Mortimer Downing, IWW Member. Quoted in Jack Scott, "How the Wobblies Got their Name," in his Plunderbund and Proletariat (Vancouver, BC.: North Star Books, 1975), p. 153. Also quoted in Jerry Lembcke and William M. Tattam, One Union in Wood, A Political History of the International Woodworkers of America (New York, NY.: International Publishers and Madeira Park, BC.: Harbour Publishing, © 1984), pp. 188-89 n31.
(2) The following account is from the Official IWW History:

It was at this time (1912 during a "thousand mile picket line" railway strike in British Columbia) that the term "Wobbly" as nick-name for IWW came into use. Previously they had been called many things from International Wonder Workers to I Won't Works. The origin of the expression "Wobbly" is uncertain. Legend assigns it to the lingual difficulties of a Chinese restaurant keeper with whom arrangements had been made during this strike to feed members passing through his town. When he tried to ask "Are you I.W.W.?" it is said to have come out: "All loo eye wobble wobble?" The same situation, but in Vancouver is given as the 1911 origin of the term by Mortimer Downing in a letter quoted in Nation, Sept. 5, 1923..."

--From The IWW: Its First 100 Years by Fred W. Thompson and Jon Bekken, 2006, IWW: Cincinnati, page 60..
3) This account is further elaborated in the following quote:

The word "Wobbly", a nickname for IWW members, humorously illustrates the union's efforts to combat racism. A Chinese restaurant keeper in Vancouver in 1911 supported the union and would extend credit to members. Unable to pronounce the letter "w", he would ask if a man was in the "I Wobble Wobble". Local members jokingly referred to themselves as part of the "I Wobbly Wobbly," and by the time of the Wheatland strike of 1913, "Wobbly" had become a permanent moniker for workers who carried the red card. Mortimer Downing, a Wobbly who first explained the etymology, noted that the nickname "hints of a fine, practical internationalism, a human brotherhood based on a community of interests and of understanding."

--Mark Leier, Where the Fraser River Flows, The Industrial Workers of the World in British Columbia (Vancouver, BC.: New Star Books, 1990), page 35.

Weighing the Evidence

Conceivably, Downing's account could be the honest truth. According to Dan Cornford (in Workers and Dissent in the Redwood Empire, ©1987, Temple University Press), The IWW was the first labor union in North America to refuse to discriminate against Chinese and Chinese Americans. (Many earlier left-wing organizations, including the Greenback Labor Party and the Knights of Labor discriminated vehemently against Chinese and Japanese Americans. Former members of these organizations (such as George Speed) later joined the IWW and jettisoned their racism). Such interracial solidarity most certainly did not go unnoticed in the Chinese American community, and they would likely have responded favorably to the IWW.
However, all the evidence of the "Chinese Restaurateur Theory" apparently stems from Downing's letter. There is no known independent source that verifies Downing's story. His account may just as easily be a romanticized embellishment of the truth, or it could be pure fiction, and there is no credible proof that it isn't. Downing's narrative also suggests deeply ingrained stereotypical views of Chinese and Chinese-American speech patterns, even by 1911 standards.
Quoting Mark Leier again:

In a letter to the author, dated 31 January 1989, Craig M. Carver, managing editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English states that the Chinese restaurateur version is not given "much credence ... because the story is simply unverifiable." Those with a scientific bent must conclude that the etymology is unknown; romantics may choose to stick with Downing.

--Mark Leier, Where the Fraser River Flows, The Industrial Workers of the World in British Columbia (Vancouver, BC.: New Star Books, 1990), p 35.

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Dave Chapple’s MAY DAY Speech

Wells May Day 2018:

International Worker’s Day greetings from a life-long Somerset trades unionist, a school-cleaner for 11 years, a postman for 38, a shop steward for 35 of those years, to the Wells Constituency Labour Party for organising this, the first May Day March in Somerset for 24 years.

Solidarity, also, to Wells, from Somerset’s working-class capital: Bridgwater.

Bridgwater, a town where, today, 14 out of 16 town councillors; 10 out of 15 district councillors, and 2 out of 3 county councillors are Labour.

Bridgwater, home of 17 pub-based workers Carnival Clubs, which organise, at weekly meetings of 10 to 30 members, on November’s first Saturday, the greatest West Country working class cultural event, one enjoyed by 100,000 people from all over. 

 

Bridgwater:  The home of Robert Blake, Cromwell’s General at Sea, staunch republican if not a regicide, who personally inflicted some of the first Royalist casualties of the Civil War.

Bridgwater, where, after the battle of Sedgemoor in 1685, no member of the Royal Family set foot in the town for over 300 years.

Bridgwater, the town, a century later, that remembered Judge Jeffries sending 800 Monmouth rebels to Barbados sugar plantations, so well, that radicals like John Chubb organised Britain’s first ever petition against the slave trade.

Bridgwater, which, even if the town’s large factories have been replaced by warehouses, still hosts militant trade union organised workplaces, like the Unite union at Refresco-Gerber and ARGOS, who have struck for two weeks and three weeks, respectively, in the last few years. 

 

Like Hinkley Point “C” construction workers, who won back lost bad weather wages recently after a successful and illegal sit-in. 

 

Like my former workplace, the Royal Mail Delivery Office, where, still, national and regional managers are regularly thrown into panic upon rumours of yet another wildcat strike being planned by the CWU Reps and Committee;

But what of the rest of Somerset?  What of the Mendip area?  What of Wells itself? Well, it seems clear now, 33 years after the epic NUM strike of 1984/5, that Tory Governments planned, starting with the miners, to shut down whole industries in order to weaken or eliminate strong trades unions. 

 

Over the next decades, Thatcher, Major and Blair were glad to wipe out 90% of UK manufacturing, to critically wound trades unionism as a whole. So Somerset, too has been almost completely de-industrialised: we now have hardly any large factories that make things. 

 

Think at all those losses: the dozen or so Somerset Clarks shoe factories; Moorland and Bailey sheepskins; printers and packagers like Butler and Tanner, Mardon, Purnells; Cider makers like Showering; Evercreech dairy; Nutricia; St Cuthberts paper mill at Wookey; and for Wells, skilled engineers like Clares and EMI. 

 

So it wasn’t just the cities, not just the NUM: Somerset has, also, descended, within two generations, from a place where working-class people through their union could negotiate reasonable wages, conditions and pensions, to a dog-eats-dog individual race to the bottom: bullying supervisors, zero-hours, no holidays, no sick pay, no pension no rights at all.

But why, then, I am proud to announce, in the last few weeks, has Wells hosted the launch of Mendip TUC, the newest local trades union council in the UK?

Because trades unionism still exists in the Mendips, there are reps and stewards and union branch officers in every town and many villages.

Because rural trades unionism can still thrive: in every village school, every small town Royal Mail Delivery Office, every time you see a BT Openreach worker shimmying up a telegraph pole, shop in most supermarkets, try and find a job in one of the few remaining job centres, you will come across trades unionists: in the CWU, in the NEU, NASUWT, UNISON, in PCS, Unite, GMB or USDAW.

If you are a Mendip area trades unionist, join us at our next Wells meeting in the Lawrence Centre, Union St, 6pm on Monday May 21st!

What of the radical and socialist tradition in Mendip, and Wells itself?

George Howell was a bricklayer, shoemaker, and Chartist.  He was also an auto-didact, a historian, and Secretary of the TUC Parliamentary Committee in the 1870’s and 1880’s. George was born and grew up in Wrington. 

 

Fred Swift was a Writhlington coal miner, an ILP/Independent Labour Party socialist and, with the Bridgwater railwayman James Young, one of the first two socialists elected to Somerset County Council before World War One.

Arthur James Cook: AJ Cook, born at Wookey in 1883, brought up in Cheddar where he worked on Caleb Durbin’s dairy farm, became at 17 a Rhondda miner, a fiery and revolutionary syndicalist orator jailed twice, for sedition and for opposing World War One, and finally, leader of the MFGB during the General Strike and Miner’s Lockout of 1926. 

 

The General Strike, where the local Wells strike committee, led by railwaymen, ordered 200 copies of the TUC’s daily The British Worker during those epic nine days. 

 

From syndicalism to Parliamentary socialism: Only two generations ago, Labour and Tory were almost neck and neck in Wells: In the 1945 General Election, the Tory majority over Labour was reduced to only 2,465.

In 1950 Labour polled 18,000 votes to the Tories 20,600 in a turnout of 87.8%.

In 1951, Dai Llewellyn, former Welsh miner and veteran International Brigader from the Spanish Civil War, the Somerset Miner’s Agent, won 21,500 Labour votes and again came a narrow second.

It wasn’t until 1974 that the Liberals overtook Labour in Wells. 

 

You can never tell me, looking back at that astonishing working-class Labour support, in Wells, a Cathedral City for goodness sake, the “Belly of the Tory Beast” that what happened once, a long time ago, could not happen again, but better still, Labour winning Wells!

Why not? People can sometimes change very quickly! 

 

After all, 50 years ago, a fortnight before the French Revolution of May 1968, were not learned Marxist historians predicting decades of working-class subservience? 

 

To start winning, we do need to organise, campaign, show solidarity, on a Somerset county-wide basis. 

 

From Dulverton to Bath, Portishead to Chard, Burnham on Sea to Frome, Keynsham to Yeovil, Radstock to Wellington, Cheddar to Wincanton.

Poor public transport does make this difficult. 

 

You can get a bus from Clevedon or Wells to Bristol up to 10.30pm at night, yet try and get to Bridgwater from Glastonbury, or Burnham on Sea from Bridgwater, after 7pm, and this is the same First Group bus company! 

 

Reason: the Tory Somerset County Council is the only West Country county that cannot be bothered to have a County Transport Forum: then again, how many Tory Councillors have ever caught a bus? 

 

Somerset needs county-wide independent campaigns, supported by the six Somerset Trade Union Councils and all local Labour Parties:

Against Library Closures; 

Against cuts and closures to NHS Community Hospitals;

Support teaching and other education unions fighting Academy attacks on their pay and conditions;

Against Tory County Council cuts to children centres, children and adult disability learning services;

Against outsourcing of NHS District Hospital non-medical staff: 

 

The list of dismantled Somerset public services is almost endless. 

 

I suggest that, from 2019, trades unionists and socialists in every Somerset town host an event, such as a public meeting, on May 1st, but for all Somerset towns to come together in Wells, the centre of our County, to celebrate International Worker’s Day on this first May Saturday. 

 

Today, we still honour the sacrifices of those anarchist workers in Chicago who in the late 1880’s suffered state execution for fighting for the 8-hour day, but in dying for our socialist cause, they lit a torch that still, if sometimes dimly, burns.

2018 should be the year that Somerset’s workers get of their knees, learn that if you fight you can win, if you never fight you always lose.

Don’t be a drop-out! Get up, get into it, get involved! Refuse to lose! 

Three rap titles from the greatest of all popular musicians, The Godfather of Soul, the Minister of Super Heavy Funk, James Brown.

But, 2018 in Somerset, not Atlanta, Georgia: Get involved in what? Refuse to lose what? Fight for what?

I hope you don’t mind me ending with a personal point of view.

Just remember, I was a Labour Parliamentary candidate a long 31 years ago!

I have been a Somerset socialist agitator for over 40 years, but I’m not tired:

I fight for a country that is run by a radical industrial workplace democracy, that has priority over councils and parliament; 

The fundamental units: Community Assemblies (They were called Soviets);

The old and still un-achieved Chartist demand for annual elections with recallable delegates;

An anti-militarist, non-nuclear federation of the nations, where the rotor blades of Westland/Leonardo PLC really are turned into Bristol Channel wind and underwater turbine blades;

Where swords really can become ploughshares;

Where, here in Somerset and throughout the world, the long-suffering working-class, the peasants and the poor are anything but meek, are so bloody-well organised that they really can inherit the earth.

See you in Wells on our very own First May Saturday in 2019?

07707 869144 davechapple@btinternet.com

Who Was Guy Bowman?

 by Christopher Draper

Fortunately for the rich, World War I transformed Britain’s raging class war into a murderous conflict between Nations.  Pre-war militancy was inspired by Syndicalism, a scheme for workers to organise into one big class-conscious union to run their own industries and revolutionise society and the prime movers were Tom Mann and Guy Bowman.  Curiously, whilst Mann’s story is well known the life of Guy Bowman remains a mystery.

Manchester’s Massed Militants

Britain’s first national syndicalist conference was convened by Bowman at Manchester Coal Exchange on 26th November 1910. Two hundred delegates representing sixty-thousand organised workers gathered with the speakers including Liverpool stonemason Fred Bowers, Huddersfield socialist Fred Shaw, Irish activist Jim Larkin and Spanish anarchist Lorenzo Portet. Tom Mann moved the founding motion; “That whereas the sectionalism that characterises the trade union movement of today is utterly incapable of fighting the capitalist class and securing the economic freedom of the workers, this conference declares that the time is now ripe for the industrial organisation of all workers on the basis of class – not trade or craft – and that we hereby agree to form a Syndicalist Education League to propagate the principles of Syndicalism throughout the British Isles with a view to merging all existing unions into one compact organisation for each industry…”

Don’t Shoot!

The authorities responded to strikes by sending in the army; shooting dead a miner at Tonypandy, killing 2 railwaymen at Llanelli and 2 dockers in Liverpool.  Unbowed, in 1912 Guy Bowman published in”The Syndicalist” a “DON’T SHOOT!” appeal to soldiers to refuse to fire on fellow workers and was sentenced to 9 months with hard labour as a consequence.

International Man of Mystery

Despite more than a decade of high profile activism Bowman revealed little of his personal life and what he did say is difficult to substantiate.  He claimed to have been born in St John’s Wood, London in 1871 to a French mother and Scottish father yet there’s no official record of his birth.  As an anarchist he might well have chosen to dodge officialdom yet at the height of his political activism he duly completed the 1911 census form, which bears his characteristic signature, yet he’s oddly absent from records covering both his pre and post-political years.

Guy Takes a Bow

Guy’s claimed birth year seems about right so he was already in his early thirties before he became known to English activists.  In 1906 he popped up in London as a journalist claiming specialist knowledge of European political movements.  Joining the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) he pursued a journalistic interest in the recent anarchist assassination attempt on the Spanish king. The founder of the International Modern School movement, Francisco Ferrer, had been arrested by Spanish police and charged with complicity in a move widely interpreted as a political frame up. In September 1906 Bowman published an article in the SDF’s newspaper “Justice” defending Ferrer and the following month he travelled to Spain to cover the continuing prosecution.

Expelled

On Tuesday 23rd October Guy Bowman was arrested in Madrid and interrogated by Spanish police for two days before being “conducted over the border” into France.  It was variously speculated that the police had been tipped off by either the Spanish Embassy in London or the British Government that Bowman was an undesirable alien intent on promoting anarchist insurrection.

Meeting of Minds

Thanks to the campaigning of Bowman and other activists around the world in June 1907 Francisco Ferrer was released after a year’s imprisonment. Immediately resuming his promotion of libertarian education Ferrer made an extended visit to England over the springand summer of 1909 (21 April to June 12). Bowman was then employed as General Manager of the SDF’s print & publications department, ”Twentieth Century Press” and was living at 4 Maude Terrace, Walthamstow (outer East London).

During his time in England Ferrer met the respected anarchist Peter Kropotkin and was reacquainted with his old Spanish comrade Lorenzo Portet. Ferrer entrusted Portet to continue his educational work (LP founded a “Modern School” in Liverpool) in the likely the event that the Spanish authorities would ultimately succeed in silencing him.  A few weeks later Ferrer was duly silenced.

On his return to Spain he was arrested, subjected to a show trial and shot dead by firing squad.

The French Connection

Bowman supported Ferrer’s educational ideas but was ultimately more interested in French Syndicalism. Guy was particularly impressed by the approach of the French Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT) trade union. So much so that when leading labour activist Tom Mann landed at London’s Victoria Dock on May 16th 1910 (having returned from 8 years organising overseas) Guy persuaded Tom to accompany him to Paris, “to meet the men of direct action”. On their return to the UK the pair commenced publication of The Industrial Syndicalist (with Bowman as publisher, Mann as editor) and set about organising a national conference in Manchester.

Bowman’s French connection is intriguing. He spoke fluent French as well as English and German and it was frequently noted that Bowman didn’t look or sound English. Newspapers repeatedly questioned his claimed origins with the Globe typically asserting, “Bowman, of olive complexion and with pointed grey beard and hair brushed back has the appearance of a foreigner. In fact he speaks with a pronounced foreign accent, but is stated by his friends to be an Englishman.”  The Pall Mall Gazette observed,  “Guy Bowman is an Englishman who looks like a Frenchman”.

Bowman was certainly in Paris in 1905, where he attended the International Freethought Congress. After meeting Gustave Herve at the Congress he agreed to translate his “Leur Patrie” for an English edition published as, “My Country, Right or Wrong”, but was Bowman there as a French resident or merely a roving English reporter?  Everyone recognised that Bowman was a highly educated and fluent linguist so how did he acquire this learning?  Where was he educated and who were his parents?

Don’t Shoot!

When a DON’T SHOOT appeal to strike-breaking soldiers appeared in the January 1912 Syndicalist, Guy Bowman as the publisher was arrested.  Charged with, “Feloniously endeavouring by publication of a certain article…to seduce persons serving in His Majesty’s land forces from their duty and allegiance to His said Majesty and to incite them to commit divers mutinous acts and traitorous practices”, Bowman was sentenced to serve 9 months in prison with hard labour.

Tom Mann was subsequently prosecuted for reading out the DON’T SHOOT appeal at a demonstration.  Two printers of The Syndicalist were also prosecuted although Bowman received the severest sentence.  Fortunately public protests forced the authorities to relent and Bowman was out after two months.  Curiously Guy was back in court within weeks and fined £1 for two counts of travelling in a first class train carriage with a third class ticket.

Organiser or Disorganiser?

With 41 million strike days in 1912 industrial militancy eclipsed parliamentary politics as syndicalists prepared to organise internationally. Several continental groups offered to host an international conference but Bowman insisted it was held in England.  The FIRST INTERNATIONAL SYNDICALIST CONGRESS was duly held in London, in September 1913 but Bowman’s unreliable behaviour cast doubt on his integrity.  He was accused of dragging his feet in arranging the event and questions were raised about his inability to account for monies he’d been entrusted with. Regarded as divisive by both local and international comrades Bowman subsequently failed to furnish the Bureau set-up by the Congress with promised minutes, delegate addresses and other essential documents.

The International Bureau was left with little alternative but to appeal over Bowman’s head direct to English comrades , “to assist us to remind Guy Bowman of his duty of conforming to the decision of the Congress. By his conduct he renders the functioning of the Bureau particularly difficult.”

Class War or World War?

Meanwhile continental comrades confidently pronounced that if national governments declared war then organised workers would simply down tools and refuse to take up arms against fellow workers, regardless of nationality.  Throughout 1914 Bowman continued to tour Britain promoting syndicalism. In January he brought the gospel to the Pioneers Hall, Rochdale and over following weeks he spoke in Leeds, Sheffield, Birmingham and London.  On Sunday 8th February Guy publicly advised, “SABOTAGE” at the Co-operative Hall, Charing Cross whilst on Friday 13th March he informed an audience at Sheffield’s Temperance Hall that his advice wasn’t really DON’T SHOOT but DO SHOOT!  “When they (soldiers) were asked to shoot the working class they would turn and shoot those who gave the order...”

Bowman’s Misdirected Arrow

As World War approached, rifts developed between Bowman and Mann.  Both agreed organising industrially was the way to go but Mann was less willing to completely abandon parliamentary politicking.  Bowman was sympathetic to the idea of “dual unionism”, creating parallel anarchist style unions alongside existing organisations whereas Mann insisted on revolutionising established unions from within.  Just as ISEL began losing influence in March 1914 Bowman sued the National Labour Press over its publication of, “From Single Tax to Syndicalism” (Tom Mann wrote the text and Bowman supplied the introduction).  As publisher of the book, Bowman had the previous year contracted with the printers to produce 2,000 copies but then failed to pay the bill so to recoup their costs the printers published the book themselves and kept the proceeds.  Whilst accepting that the printers had technically violated Bowman’s copyright the court offered him no recompense and Guy was left having to pay his own costs and with his reputation in tatters.

Puff of Smoke

Once war was declared in August 1914, socialists everywhere abandoned their promises and rallied round their respective national flags whilst Guy Bowman was nowhere to be seen. In his introduction to a reprint collection of Syndicalist newspapers, Geoff Brown observed, “The last references I have found to him (GB) in the labour movement press are in the Labour Leader in January and March 1915…”   But that wasn’t quite Bowman’s last acknowledged outing.  Guy still occasionally visited Kropotkin who was by then similarly isolated from former comrades (because of his un-anarchist support for the war).  I’ve discovered that Bowman also spoke at Hounslow Adult School, Whitton Road on Wednesday 12th April 1916 on, “The Fraud Called Democracy”, under the auspices of the “Syndicalist Education League (SEL)”.

Partners in Crime?

So what did Bowman do next?  If he’d simply opted to dodge the draft that doesn’t explain why he never reappears in records after the war (or why he wasn’t recorded before his 1911 census declaration).  None of Bowman’s erstwhile associates seem any the wiser and there are further mysterious circumstances.  Bowman’s self-completed 1911 census return recorded that he was then living with two French nationals, “39-year-old Jeanne Bonnard and 10-year-old” Jack Bonnard. “Jeanne” was a “Widow” and Jacques presumably her son.  Like Guy, neither of this pair appear in subsequent records except on 17th April 1912 Jeanne, the widow, had another child, Guy L Bowman. So who was this equally mysterious partner of Guy senior?  My theory is that she was none other than the abandoned common law wife of the deceased Francisco Ferrer.  If I am correct her real name was not Jeanne but Leopoldine Bonnard who partnered Ferrer in Paris from 1898 until 1905 when they split acrimoniously.  I think the boy “Jack” was really Regio Bonnard, the son of Leopoldine and Ferrer, born in Paris in 1900.

Unlike his parents, Guy L Bowman does feature in subsequent official records and his middle name appears to substantiate my theory of his parentage for on 13th September 1949 the UK Air Ministry announced that, “The KING has granted unrestricted permission for the wearing of the undermentioned decorations conferred upon personnel indicated in recognition of valuable services rendered in connection with the war – Bronze Star Medal - Sergeant 1376906 Guy Leopold BOWMAN, Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve”

So it seems the son of the man sent to jail for publishing “DON’T SHOOT” in WWI was decorated for his contribution to WWII! It is also recorded that in the years 1938-9 Guy Leopold Bowman served at a trio of London’s top hotels (Dorchester, Ritz, Langham respectively) as a “reception clerk”.

Syndicalist or Sinner?

Bowman’s disappearance from the political spotlight is not unusual, many labour activists retire into obscurity but few cover their tracks so effectively.  Research almost always uncovers backgrounds and life stories but I’m not the first to remark on Bowman’s elusive biography.  I might, though be first to suggest that Bowman’s “invisibility” appears artful.   I’m inclined to believe he concealed his curriculum vitae for good reason.  His unexplained high level education suggests his origins and possibly allegiance were not working class.  It is quite possible “Guy Bowman” was in fact raised abroad by a military family bearing an entirely different name and committed to an imperial mission anathema to socialism.  I can’t prove Guy and his family concealed the truth for cynical reasons but it would make sense of otherwise inexplicable evidence.  It is curious that after Bowman’s family disappeared during WWI the sole member to resurface was decorated by the RAF having previously served in the run up to war in a role notoriously employed by secret services to keep tabs on visiting foreign “diplomats”.

Tom Mann, like many fellow labour leaders, published a memoir so why not Guy Bowman?  His widely published expulsion from Spain and high profile imprisonment would surely have guaranteed good sales and his extensive knowledge of labour activism would have ensured historical value yet he kept it all to himself, an odd response for a professional journalist.

The Secret State

Recent events uncovered extensive State infiltration of every level of radical organisation (even NV is currently subject to legal threats from a secret policeman involved in blacklisting) so it’s time to re-examine the credentials of past “activists”.  Guy Bowman’s integrity is questionable.  Kropotkin’s confidante Varlaam Tcherkesov was certainly dubious; “Bowman, half-English, half-French, quite an esprit boulevardier, a despotic man, wanted the entire movement for himself and kept it in his hands. He quarrelled with young syndicalists, scorned them, and stood alone”.

In contrast to the subject of my next article in this series there’s no smoking gun. Bowman might yet be innocent but I submit he has a prima facie case to answer.  Perhaps modern day advocates might care to submit snippets of new evidence in Bowman’s defence.  Meanwhile, I invite readers to adjudicate for themselves.

Christopher Draper (May 2017)

British Syndicalism Talk in Wakefield

Comrades
British syndicalism emerged in the years after 1900 in response, Holton (1976) says, to "urgent economic and political problems facing the working class."
Firstly, British capitalism was still struggling -despite the end of the "Great Depression"- and real wages fell some 10% between 1900 and 1912.
Secondly, capitalist industry was increasingly concentrated.  Businesses were amalgamating.  Employers associations were being set up.  "Federated capital" was more visible (Holton 1976).
Thirdly, technological change was displacing/downgrading certain craft skills.
And finally labour leaders were increasingly being incorporated into state sponsored collective bargaining structures and into the bourgeois parliamentary system.  Trade union officials now seemed increasingly remote from the rank and file.  And Lloyd George would boast in 1912 that parliamentary socialists were the "best policemen" when it came to managing and diffusing industrial unrest.
Face with all this -falling wages, deskilling, larger units of capitalist production and conservatism on the part of traditional labour leaders- workers began to look beyond sectionalism and reformism to class unity, direct action and industrial unionism.
This syndicalist sentiment was influenced by what had been going on in Europe, the US and Australia.  But it also drew from domestic traditions of workplace militancy and what Holton (1976) describes as "anti-State socialism."
On Saturday 13 May at 1pm at the Red Shed, Vicarage Street, Wakefield WF1, the Wakefield Socialist History Group are holding an event, SYNDICALISM AND THE GREAT UNREST.  The speakers are Robin Stocks and Alan Brooke.  Other speakers tbc. The chair is Adrian Cruden.  Admission is free and all are welcome.  A free light buffet will be provided.

Fraternally

Alan Stewart

Convenor, Wakefield Socialist History Group

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

U.S. Syndicalist Comment on Trump & Hillary

Dear friends,

If you would like to know some of our thoughts, for what they are worth ...

Don't mourn!  Do not attach yourself to the destiny of other people!

Hillary Clinton could have saved the country from impending disaster, simply by withdrawing from the campaign late last winter.  All of the normal indicators then demonstrated that Mr. Sanders had become a very viable candidate (the sheer amount of monies collected from ordinary people to support the Sanders' campaign; the incredible numbers and diversity of people attending his rallies; the simple fact that Bernie had no problems of character (unlike both Trump and Clinton).  For much of the campaign it was clear that Hillary's efforts were not focused on winning.  She was tired.  She was absent-minded.  Self-absorbed, she wanted to win but she did not want to struggle to win.  She refused absolutely to learn new ways of doing things.

Wikileaks and other sources revealed that the Democrat Party machine was not even fair with Mr. Sanders.  The DFL machine in Minnesota, especially, cannot learn anything new; they just keep repeating their limited rituals from out of the past.  Always, they are obsessed with nothing but 'control'.  They are the worst example of machine politics in the country today.  How do they stave off the inevitable collapse?  They can't, and they won't!

Mr. Sanders was the first person in national political life in the United States since the 1930s and 1940s to openly use words like 'socialist' and 'socialist democracy', and to do so in positive contexts.  Considerable numbers of people had no problems with his efforts, thus putting the big lie to all the secret 'socialists' and secret 'communists' of several generations.  What did Proudhon and Kropotkin say about acting in our own right, and in our own name, and for ourselves?

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, two Center-Rightists portraying a ritualized dispute, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, after furious verbal battle set down their weapons and quietly agreed to “peaceful” and friendly transition of 'power'.  It doesn't matter to either of them; one thoughtless Center-Rightist is as good as another!

We are witnessing the malaise of late-stage capitalism.  It is nothing but a spectacle of dysfunction and chaos.  Trump, the first truly Imperial President, the new Caesar, the new Bonaparte, proposes to accomplish what Aaron Burr, in the long ago, could not.  Many people will suffer greatly as the extreme Center-Right experiments with their 'new' vision of a “new” Utopia, a plebeian and élitist if not fascist Utopia.

However, even in the time of Hitler or Stalin, people could still think and act creatively and positively in the world.  Do not allow yourselves to become demoralized or depressed!  (That is the real devil; not Trump!)  Act and think for yourselves!  In the collective context of social responsibility, act and think now for a better future!

I'm sure you will find many opportunities in the near future for constructive direct action.

In solidarity,

The activists of SAN (Syndicalist Action Network),

in the U.S.A.

Toxteth Teacher Exposed as Anarchist!

Nellie and Jim

by Christopher Draper

(Lives of Northern Anarchists - part 9)

THERE are two versions of education.  One encourages kids to explore the world so that they may in time confidently create their own future.  The other moulds youngsters into adults able to perform predetermined roles in pre-existing society.  The latter authoritarian tradition controls State schools but, as seeds beneath the snow, there have always been individuals fighting for the liberation of learning and practising alternatives.  Jimmy Hugh Dick opened an anarchist school in Liverpool in 1908 and for almost half a century continued to preach, practice and promote “free-education”. 

Early Influences
Born on 15 November 1882 to James, a Scottish policeman, and Barbara, a Cumbrian housewife, James Hugh Dick grew up in Toxteth surrounded by a large bunch of brothers and sisters.  Although Liverpool was a political city, as a youth Jimmy wasn’t interested in politics.  Initially, perhaps influenced by his mother’s Quakerism, he was a mild, teetotal secularist employed as a grocer’s assistant.  With an undemanding job and a yearning for 'self-improvement', in his early twenties Jimmy enrolled at a local Commercial College where he befriended Lorenzo Portet, a young Spanish anarchist employed as a language teacher.

Jimmy was soon won over to Portet’s syndicalist politics and as a friend of Francisco Ferrer, and a teacher himself, Portet was keenly interested in education.  When Ferrer visited Portet in Liverpool in 1907 Jimmy was inspired to drop the groceries and take up teaching.

Anarchy in Action
Supported by enlightened parents of the Liverpool labour movement, in 1908 Jimmy started an Anarchist-Communist Sunday School in the old Toxteth Co-op hall in Smithdown Street.  As the hall was about to be rebuilt, in 1909 James and his 38 students transferred to the ILP (Independent Labour Party) rooms in Tagus Street.  

Jimmy supported Ferrer’s international approach to education and was keen for the school:  
'To break down national prejudices and that patriotic piffle which is inculcated into the children of our present-day schools.'   He believed the kids should exercise initiative in learning but he also laid on overtly political lectures.  The school’s 1909 season included, 'The Paris Commune' by Matt Kavanagh, 'Whiteway Colony' by Chas Keane and, intriguingly, 'Faeries' from local syndicalist stonemason, Fred Bower.

The school developed within a flourishing syndicalist mileu.  Industrial syndicalism appeared increasingly attractive to the labour movement as, according to one observer:
'To many it appeared that the incorporation of union officials within bargaining institutions had succeeded in defusing their earlier radicalism.'
It was time to take up direct action and Jimmy’s 1908 reports for the anarchist newspaper FREEDOM, emphasised the, 'class-conscious and anti-parliamentary viewpoint' of not just fellow syndicalists but also, increasingly, of Liverpool ILP and the SDF comrades.

Liverpool International Club
Jimmy saw learning as liberation, not just something we do to kids but a definitively political process that we’re all involved in, and inherently anarchist.  Besides the school and his labour activism he was a key member of Liverpool’s International Club in Canning Place.  Fellow club members included Fred Bower, Lorenzo Portet and the radical painter Albert Lipczinski.  Through such club contacts Lipczinski came to paint both Tom Mann and Jim Larkin and according to David Bingham the latter portrait came to a dramatic end after it was, 'held as a banner by the Irish strikers in Dublin prior to the Easter Uprising and while being held aloft in this way, it was targeted by the infamous Black and Tans with their weapons and destroyed with gunfire.'

Talkin’ About a Revolution

Jimmy attended the huge, First Conference on Industrial Syndicalism held at the Coal Exchange, Manchester, in November 1910 as one of Liverpool’s two Revolutionary Industrialist delegates, the other was Peter Larkin. Lorenzo Portet attended as a delegate of the International Club whilst Fred Bower represented the Liverpool stonemasons. Although the gathering marked a real syndicalist advance it wasn’t sufficient to satisfy Jim’s revolutionary ardour.  He detected a residual belief in Parliamentary methods amongst delegates and informed FREEDOM that while, “it was obvious that the general feeling of the meeting was to shake off the political element” he still felt most, “were like the slaves of all superstitions, who hate the chains yet cling to them madly.” This insight informed and drove both my own and Jim’s lifelong commitment to liberated learning.

Humans aren’t entirely rational beings driven to act solely by the logic of reasoned argument otherwise we’d long ago have overturned a system that provides Philip Green with a yacht and his workers with the sack.  Our underlying psychology and feelings of empathy and solidarity develop in infancy, or not, and if we’re shaped by authoritarian social structures we grow to crave authority and leadership instead of independence, autonomy and freedom.  Anarchists from Eric Fromm to Colin Ward have since sketched in the details but Jimmy Dick pioneered the liberation of learning in Liverpool in 1908.

Marching Orders

At the end of 1909 the school moved again to another ILP building at 1 Clarendon Terrace, Beaumont Street, though Jim was openly critical of the didactic moralising of the ILP’s own approach to education.  He complained to FREEDOM:
'One thing that seems to mar the socialist Sunday Schools is the repetition of the silly platitudes and a declaration known as the Socialist Ten Commandments. Who had the audacity to draw up such a series of impositions and dare to cram them down the child’s throat, I do not know…Let us have done with this ceremonial business. Stereotyped characters are not for the new era. We want to make men and women not virtuous automatons.'

Jimmy was happy to observe that even national newspapers began to appreciate the unique character of his libertarian venture, “We have it on the authority of the Fortnightly Review that our school is the pioneer school.” Unfortunately, a reactionary storm was unleashed by sensationalist reporting of the “Houndsditch Affair”, when newspaper inaccurately identified murderous robbers as anarchists. Utterly wedded to electoral politics the ILP got cold feet and pulled the plug on Jimmy’s enterprise. There were no votes in accommodating anarchists so in January 1911 Liverpool’s “Independent Labour Party” kicked them out. The school was homeless.

In February 1911 Jimmy finally managed to re-locate the school to Alexander Hall, Islington Square, Liverpool but it was a long way for the kids to travel and attendance began to decline. In May Jimmy reluctantly decided it would have to close and his thoughts began to focus on his own political educational. 

Meeting of Minds

In the autumn of 1911 Jimmy Dick moved down to London and enrolled at the Central Labour College, a syndicalist-inspired breakaway from Oxford’s Ruskin College which had proved useless to militant working class students itching to advance the class-struggle.

Back in Liverpool Jimmy had written a children’s column for The Voice of Labour and one of his devoted readers, Naomi Ploschansky, following Jimmy’s example had in 1912 started her own anarchist school in London’s East End. On May Day 1913 “Nellie” (as Naomi was familiarly known) took her school students along to join the celebrations in Hyde Park (“we carried a banner, Anarchist-Socialist School”) where she spotted the Central Labour College banner. “So I went up to ask for “Uncle Jim”. I saw a young man with grey hair who looked gentler than the rest and I asked him if James Dick was there. He bowed: “I’m James Dick” he said.” It was the beginning of a long and beautiful friendship.

Nellie and Jim

Nellie had arrived in London from Kiev as a baby in 1894 with her impoverished Russian family. Both her dad, Solomon and mum, Hanna, had since abandoned the synagogue and embraced anarchism. Attending the Jubilee Street anarchist club with her parents provided Nellie with the contacts to start her own Ferrer School, although she was only a teenager herself.

As Jim and Nellie’s friendship developed he agreed to assist her as co-director of her anarchist school and in 1914 they moved in together. As at Jim’s Liverpool school, the London students controlled their own learning but were encouraged to engage with wider political activities and demonstrations. Rudolf Rocker and his older son assisted at their London school and Rudolf jnr subsequently opened his own libertarian school in Canada.

When war was declared, Rocker was imprisoned and as the kids handed out anti-war leaflets the police were encouraged to raid the premises. After conscription was introduced Jim and Nellie, in 1916, got legally married to avoid the draft but soon that exemption was denied and the couple decided they should emigrate to assist the Free-Schooling movement in America.

Anarchist Education in America

Nellie, 22 and Jim, 34 sailed from Liverpool to New York aboard the St Paul on 30 December 1916. They were welcomed to America by anarchist comrades but Nellie was shocked and disappointed on visiting Emma Goldman to discover that she employed her own personal black maid!

Almost immediately the pair settled into an anarchist community at Stelton where they ran the school on the same libertarian lines they’d developed earlier in England. For the next forty years, including a period running a similar venture at Mohegan, Jim and Nellie pioneered anarchist education along with encouraging, visiting and corresponding with comrades around the world similarly committed to the liberation of learning. 

Eventful Visits

After the 1917 revolution, Nellie’s parents both returned to Russia whilst her sister Dora trained first as a nurse and then as a teacher in America. Nellie and Dick visited Britain together in 1919 and their only son, Jim jnr, was born here on that visit but at the same time Nellie’s brother, Samuel, was caught shop breaking by PC Clarke. He was convicted, sent to prison for a year and then deported back to Russia. 

In 1931 Jimmy came to England to attend a conference on progressive education and visited Summerhill, Britain’s flagship free school, at the invitation of A S Neill. Jimmy also took the opportunity to meet up with old comrades like Will Lawther and Tom Keell.

Having been welcomed to America by exiled Russian anarchist Bill Shatoff in 1917, when Jim, Nellie and Jim visited Russia in 1933 they were keen to meet up with him again. Shatoff had since returned to his homeland to help the Bolshevik revolution without ever abandoning his own anarchist principles. He never turned up at his apartment and was subsequently reported to have been arrested and “liquidated” by Stalin.

Legacy?

Jimmy continued to teach into his seventies before ill health forced retirement.  Despite their age, when the Rosenbergs were executed in 1953 it was Nellie and Jim who stepped in to look after their kids.  Their final anarchist educational venture, Lakewood Modern School which they had founded 25 years earlier, closed its doors in 1958 and Jimmy died seven years later, in 1965 aged 82.  During my own half century in education I met very few teachers in England who’d heard of Jimmy and a tragically diminishing number who practise his approach to schooling.  Hidden away in a few schools there are still anarchist “seeds beneath the snow” but there’s been a very heavy snowfall over the last couple of decades.