Labour policy—false and true

by Lynden Livingston Macassey

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:

“When the action referred to was taken, if too much interference was attempted they might be compelled to do things that would cause the present authorities (i.e. the Government) to abdicate. They might be forced to tell them that if they could not run this country in a peaceful manner without interfering with other nations, they might be compelled, against all constitutionalism, to chance doing something to take the country into their own hands.”

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:

“We felt that with the policy of Mr. Lloyd George, which sways to and fro according to events, we were menaced with war from the moment that the Poles were in peril. Together with several friends we drew up a manifesto which even the Conservatives among the Labour leaders signed, because they recognized clearly that they could no longer oppose the advanced elements which had for so long insisted on the employment of direct action.”

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.