Labour policy—false and true

Perhaps the greatest menace to ordered constitutional government is the Labour Party’s acceptance of the method of direct action for enforcement of its policy upon an unconforming community. Many distinguished leaders of the Party have declared against the social dangers of wielding such a weapon, but in spite of such admonitions the Party has resorted to it, and created an elaborate machinery for its application; whereupon those distinguished leaders turned round and supported it as forcibly as they previously condemned it. Once any section of the nation becomes addicted to the facile use of such a species of organized tyranny—because it is nothing else—however humanitarian be the alleged aim or purpose, the death-knell of law and order has been sounded.

The Meaning and Qualities of Direct Action

In the revised edition of their History of Trade Unionism (1920) Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb point out (p. 664) that when they published in 1897 their Industrial Democracy the term “direct action” was unknown. In point of fact, this name for the principle or practice of social coercion through economic pressure made its advent into this country from France and the United States of America in 1905. By 1912 it had passed into full currency among advanced sections of organized Labour in Scotland and parts of England, and in practice almost invariably implies either a sectional Strike by a particular group or groups of labour, or a general strike by all groups of labour combined. All strikes are not, however, direct action. Wage-earners reasonably contend that as any individual workman has the right to refuse to enter into or continue under a contract of service, any group of workmen or all groups acting together in a strike are entitled to exercise a like freedom. Mr. and Mrs. Webb are disposed to call such a strike “an economic strike” and to use the phrase a “non-economic strike” to designate a strike undertaken “not for an alteration in the conditions of employment of any section of the trade union world, but with a view to enforce, either on individuals, on Parliament, or on the Government, some other course of action desired by the strikers.” It is only strikes of the latter type that they place in the category of direct action; in other words, they make the purpose of the strike the test. That is too limited a definition of direct action, but it would include such a case as the refusal in 1917 of the National Union of Sailors and Firemen to work vessels by which two members of the Labour Party were preparing, at the instance of the Government, to travel on their way to Petrograd; also a like refusal of the same Union in 1918 to carry Mr. Arthur Henderson and M. Camille Huysmans across the Channel en route for Paris, the object of the Union being to prevent the organization of an International Socialist Conference. Another case of the same kind was the action of the Electrical Trades Union in 1918 in “calling out” their members engaged in the Albert Hall in London with instructions to appropriate the fuses—which did not belong to them—so as to keep the Hall in darkness and prevent it being used for any purpose, as a reprisal against the proprietors for cancelling the letting of the Hall for a Labour demonstration. Further illustrations of the “non-economic strike” were the threats of the compositors and printers in certain London newspaper offices to cease work during the railway strike in 1919 because of the adverse criticism of the railwaymen by the editorial staff; the threat of the miners to close down the coal mines in 1919 unless compulsory military service was abolished, and unless military and naval action by the British Government against the Soviet Government of Russia was discontinued; the scheme for a strike put forward by the miners in August and September 1920 under the guise of a claim for increased wages, but really for the political purpose of forcing the nationalization of the coal industry.

The very name “direct action” indicates that the action in question is alternative to some other action regarded as indirect, which is invariably the orderly method of procedure, prescribed by industrial agreement, or by the rules of the Trade Union, or by the Constitution of the country. Hence, in my opinion, the fundamental quality of direct action is its anarchic character. Some groups or individuals in the Labour movement resort to anarchic action in preference to orderly procedure, deliberately as recalcitrant minorities, who, bound by the formal agreement of majorities, intend to prevent the view of the majority being carried into effect. Others, impatient reformers who regard orderly methods as too cumbersome and dilatory, and are either not able or not prepared to work for gradual amendment, follow their example. And one further sees direct action adopted with the ulterior object of wrecking existing craft Trade Union organization, as for instance by revolutionary Unionists in old skilled Unions like the Amalgamated Engineering Union, or by revolutionary Syndicalists who wish to exercise and develop all the latent power of manual workers so that the weapon of the general strike may be sharp and bright on the day when it is to be used to hack down the Constitution, and usher in the social revolution. These, however, are special reasons. In the minds of great and slow thinking sections of Labour, direct action has come to be regarded as the easiest and quickest, sometimes as the only, road to political power. Labour is greedy for political power; it intends to make its political fortune, in the words of Horace, “Si possis, recte; si non, quocunque modo....”

The anarchic character of direct action constitutes its real danger far more than its non-economic purpose, if the purpose be non-economic, which it very frequently is not. Just as any anarchic method betokens, so does it beget, a lawless as distinguished from law-abiding quality of mind. Human nature is not lawless in one sphere of its activity and constitutionally minded in another, anarchic, for example, in industrial affairs and orderly in politics. The same strain runs right through; an undisciplined individual makes as bad a citizen as he does a Trade Unionist. It was the anarchic character of direct action that impressed itself most strongly on the writer’s mind during the anxious years 1914-1918 before any non-economic strikes such as those described above had occurred.

Direct Action on the Clyde, 1916

Take for instance the strikes of March to April 1916, in the engine shops of Clydeside, which the writer had to handle. The Government had made with the Trade Unions the “Treasury” Agreements of March 1915, providing for the suspension of Trade Union customs in order to accelerate and increase output. The Amalgamated Society of Engineers Executive Council had formally submitted the agreements by ballot to its members, who by a large majority had accepted them. Acting under the agreements the Government proceeded to introduce women into engineering shops throughout the country with the co-operation of the A.S.E. Executive. But on Clydeside members of the A.S.E. refused to allow women to enter the shops on the agreed conditions, or at all.

Many of the shop stewards[5] in the engineering shops on Clydeside were members of the Socialist Labour Party. The principles of the S.L.P., copied from those of the I.W.W., involve (see p. 54) class-warfare, the destruction of the official Trade Unions and of all industrial organizations except those of a similar type and creed to the I.W.W. itself, the overthrow of all existing forms of constitutional government and their replacement by a government of manual workers. The method to be employed is direct action. Mr. Beer, in his History of British Socialism (Vol. II, p. 393), says: “The S.L.P. theories came nearest to those of Lenin and Trotsky.”

On Clydeside in March 1916, the S.L.P. shop stewards saw their revolutionary opportunity. The writer held innumerable conferences with them trying to introduce harmoniously the agreed scheme of dilution of labour, but as fast as he made progress with the assistance of the Executive Council of the A.S.E. and their local Glasgow officials, it was countered by preparations for obstructive direct action. Finally, the direct actionists matured their plans. It is a principle of theirs always to use the sharpest weapons. There was one immediately to hand. The army in France was in dire need of heavy howitzers to smash the system of trenches which the Germans had commenced to consolidate; Mesopotamia urgently required flat-bottomed barges. These two classes of munitions were being manufactured in engineering shops and shipyards on the Clyde. The direct actionists therefore brought out, or tried to bring out, on strike, all employees in every shop and yard where the howitzers or any part of the howitzers or the flat-bottomed barges were in course of construction, with almost complete success, and with disastrous national results. But the Government met direct action by action more direct, and deported from the Clyde the ringleaders, and the strike collapsed. In this direct action strike the purpose was to nullify the agreement between the Government and the Trade Unions as to the introduction of women into the engineering trade, and to destroy the old craft organizations of the A.S.E. and set up a new industrial organization for that trade. The purpose, therefore, was economic, but the method was anarchic.

Subsequently, the Clyde Workers’ Committee (a committee of Clydeside shop stewards working in co-operation with the Socialist Labour Party) established revolutionary Workers’ Committees in various parts of England, and were behind similar direct action unofficial strikes, repudiated by the Executives of all the Unions concerned, in Barrow-in-Furness in June 1916, on the Mersey in the autumn of 1916, in the engineering shops of England in May 1917, and at other times. These were all economic strikes against trade agreements and arrangements constitutionally concluded between the Government and the Unions. That such anarchic strikes are entirely subversive of all law, order and government in a Trade Union organization as well as in the body politic needs no emphasis. They are just as dangerous to society as any strike regularly declared by a Trade Union for a non-economic purpose.

Conversion of the Labour Party to Use of Direct Action

But to revert to the non-economic strike: Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Webb, who have a wide knowledge of the currents and under-currents of opinions in the industrial world, say on p. 672 of their History of Trade Unionism (1920):

The kind of direct attack by the Government which the writers had in mind was action such as disfranchisement of the bulk of the manual workers, or deprivation of the Trade Unions of their present rights and liberties, or confiscation of their funds. Short of attempted measures like these, it was the considered opinion of those eminently competent writers, looking out over the Trade Union world as recently as the autumn of 1919, that direct action would be rejected by the Trades Union Congress. But the Portsmouth Congress of 1920 was yet to come.

The specific issue of direct action, in connection with the operations against Russia, was brought before the Trades Union Congress in September 1919, but was strategically shelved. Resolutions were, however, passed demanding the cessation of operations against Russia and the nationalization of coal. To enforce these demands, the Parliamentary Committee was instructed in the former case to call a special Trades Union Congress to decide what action should be taken; in the latter to decide “the form of action to be taken to compel the Government.” This special Congress was held on December 9, 1919—by that time nationalization had become the real issue—but pending the effect of more forcible propaganda, direct action to enforce nationalization was deferred until March 1920. In March, another special Congress was held at which two means of enforcing nationalization were outlined to the Congress—one a general strike, the other intensive political propaganda. Congress decided (p. 63) on a card vote against direct action and in favour of intensive political propaganda in preparation for a General Election.

The solidarity of the Party was seriously endangered by the decision; the direct actionists included influential sections of miners, railwaymen, transport workers and engineers, to many of whom direct action had become an article of belief. Many moderates and extremists, therefore, strove to find an issue on which direct actionists and constitutionalists could be persuaded to co-operate. The production of munitions of war for use in Ireland and against Russia was chosen as the issue. It was cleverly contrived, and at a special meeting of the Trades Union Congress in July 1920, a resolution was passed in favour of a general strike to compel the Government to desist from armed intervention in Ireland and in Russia, and instructing the affiliated Unions to make the necessary domestic arrangements for such a strike. Moderate Labour was thus impaled on the horns of an adroit dilemma, and the more pacificist it was, the more it was impelled to vote for direct action. The Labour Party congratulated itself that it had restored its all-essential solidarity; but the solidarity achieved was more apparent than real—Trade Union domestic arrangements for a general strike progressed with no enthusiasm.

Then came the Polish imbroglio which the extremists exploited to the full in order to establish direct action as the recognized weapon of organized Labour in this country. It is important to follow this development. On August 6, 1920, the Labour Party, without the slightest justification, publicly charged the Government with meditating a war against Soviet Russia in support of Poland, and claimed that the workers would be justified in refusing to render labour services in such a war. A special emergency meeting of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, the National Executive of the Labour Party, and the Parliamentary Labour Party met on August 9. “It felt certain,” so the resolution ran, “that war was being engineered between the Allied Powers and Soviet Russia,” and “warned the Government that the whole industrial power of the organized workers would be used to defeat this war.” Arrangements were made for a national conference of Labour, and all affiliated organizations were advised to instruct their members to “down tools” on instructions to that effect from the national conference.

Establishment of the Council of Action

On August 13, 1920, the national conference met, 689 representatives of Trade Union executive committees, and 355 representatives of Local Labour Party organizations and Trade councils. Three resolutions were unanimously carried. The first endorsed the creation of the Council of Action which had been formed on August 9 representing the Parliamentary Labour Party, the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress and the Executive of the Labour Party. The second continued the Council in being until it had secured: (1) a guarantee there should be no military or naval intervention against the Soviet Government; (2) the withdrawal of all British naval forces “operating directly or indirectly as a blockading influence against Russia”; (3) “the recognition of the Russian Soviet Government, and the establishment of unrestricted trading and commercial relationship between Great Britain and Russia.” It also authorized the Council to order any and every form of withdrawal of labour which circumstances might require to give effect to the foregoing policy, and called for swift, loyal and courageous action by every Trade Union official, executive committee, local council of action, and membership in general, in response to such an order. The third resolution authorized the Council to take any steps necessary to give effect to the decisions of the conference, and to “the declared policy of the Trade Union and Labour movement.”

The effect of these resolutions was clear. Trade Unions handed over their executive responsibility to the Council of Action, or “Committee of National Security,” as one speaker called it. This Council could then impose its will upon the nation through the direct action of seizing it by the throat. That the will may be thought beneficent does not alter in the slightest the anarchic quality of the action. The Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress, in proposing the second resolution, put it plainly: “Giving effect to this resolution does not mean a mere strike; it means a challenge to the whole Constitution of the country.” The report says there were prolonged cheers. He reiterated the same statement at the subsequent meeting of the Trades Union Congress in Portsmouth. The Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Labour Party, in seconding the first resolution, was even more explicit:

There is nothing confused in this outlook. The speaker regarded direct action as the method by which to achieve his ends. The Labour Party would become the Government without the ordinary preliminary of a General Election. The outsider wonders why the “International,” which was sung immediately after the passing of the first and third resolutions, was omitted after the second.

The whole of the Labour argument for this official inauguration of direct action turned on the assumption that the Bolshevik Government was standing in a white sheet and contemplated no ulterior threat to Polish independence. Labour accepted Bolshevik professions to this effect with credulous alacrity. Then came the amazing dénouement. It turned out that, with characteristic Bolshevik duplicity, there had been deleted from the draft of the proposed peace terms, communicated to England, certain vitally important articles going to the root of Polish independence, which, however, were inserted in that presented by the Bolsheviks to the Poles at Minsk on August 19. The doctored English version, after specifying the strength to which the Polish Army was to be cut down, provided that all arms over and above those required for the needs of the army as so reduced, “as well as of the Civic Militia,” were to be handed over to Russia. In the Minsk version, the Civic Militia was the crux of the terms; it was to be recruited from one class only, the workers; to be in strength four times that of the regular Polish army, and armed; in other words, a Red Army in Poland. This exactly enforced Section 8 of Lenin’s Third International Constitution, which stipulates for the “disarmament of the bourgeoisie and the arming of the workers to defend Communism until Capitalism shall finally have been abolished.” There was in truth at no time any argument from Poland to support direct action. The reason for its adoption was far more accurately stated by Mr. Robert Williams, the Secretary of the National Transport Workers’ Federation, a leading member of the notorious Council of Action. In the Daily Herald for August 25, 1920, he is reported to have said as follows:

This recalls Lord Bacon’s aphorism on faction: “It is often seen that a few that are stiff do tire out a greater number that are more moderate.” The extremists had been struggling for ten years to establish the adoption of direct action under all circumstances as Labour’s normal weapon of attack. They succeeded because the chief anxiety of Labour leaders, whether advancing at the head or running at the heels of their flock, is always, at any price, to secure or conserve solidarity.

Setting-up of Local Soviets

Over 350 Local Councils of Action, in many districts called Soviets, were organized to carry out the instructions of the central Council of Action. Somewhat amusing was it to see how quickly the Council of Action, when it realized that public opinion was setting strongly against it, at once disclaimed any intention of calling a general strike in support of Soviet Russia. All it intended at the utmost “was to veto the manufacture or transport of munitions or equipment for the Poles,” The Council quickly appreciated that the nation would not tolerate the application in this country of revolutionary methods. One of the reasons advanced for the formation of the Council of Action was to “prevent interference by the British Government in the affairs of Soviet Russia,” No sooner, however, was it formed, than two delegates[6] of the Council went to Paris, there to interfere between the French Government and French Labour. A little logic was infused into them by the French Government, who promptly ordered them out of France.