On Sunday 19 August, comrades of the Revolutionary Communist
Group and supporters of Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! gathered in Leith, Edinburgh for a meeting on
three major revolutionaries: James Connolly, John MacLean and Sylvia
Pankhurst.
All of these figures were centrally active in the working
class movements of England, Scotland, Ireland
and Wales
in the period before the First Imperialist War of 1914- 1918. All were active
in opposing that war: Connolly, who was born in Edinburgh
and joined the socialist movement in Dundee, led the Irish working class in
arms in Dublin
in 1916. They proclaimed that they would serve 'neither King nor Kaiser' but
would fight for Ireland's
freedom from British rule. MacLean was sentenced and jailed at the Edinburgh
High Court a few weeks after that Easter Rising. He had risen in prominence on
the streets of Glasgow
for battling to organise against the imperialist war. Pankhurst broke with her
mother and sister over the suffragette movement's support for the war and based
herself in East London, building political and
practical support for working class women, including the relatives of
conscripted soldiers drafted in to fight the British ruling class' war. As a
socialist she had been with MacLean in Glasgow
in the last weeks of his life organising with him amongst the unemployed.
The speaker's contributions covered the lives and enormous
contributions of these courageous people and are available here... The meeting
brought together people from Leith,
Republicans from Glasgow, supporters of the Spanish miners, unemployed and
students. The discussion showed that the event was no historical lecture but a
collective endeavour to draw out the lessons of history for the working class
today in order that we can prepare for the future to challenge the cuts,
austerity and imperialist war.
Long Live Connolly!
Long Live MacLean!
Long Live Pankhurst!
1. James Connolly, his life and times
1) How do get from fighting for free speech in Dundee in
1889 to being shot in Dublin
in 1916? Crudely, this was the life of our James Connolly but those 27 years
were an incredible journey of revolutionary struggle for the rights of Ireland and the
working class. Before his cruel execution Connolly told his distraught wife
Lillie Reynolds:
Hasn’t it been a
full life Lillie? And isn’t this a good end?
(Last conversation
between James Connolly and Lillie Connolly, cited Nevin D, James Connolly, A Full Life
Dublin 2005 p. 667)
2) James Connolly’s life was indeed a full and good life in
the moral sense, a life of determined study, relentless organisation and
decisive action. Yet what are we to make of another comment made at the time of
the Easter Rising of 1916:
The Socialists will
never understand why I am here…They will all forget I am an Irishman
(…unattributed,
cited Reed D, Ireland: The Key To The
British Revolution London
1984 p.59)
In that remark, in that statement, we are presented with the
central question which faces all progressives in the era of imperialism.
Understanding that categorical remark is the purpose of this introduction. This
is an attempt to salvage the reputation of a socialism which appeared for
Connolly to have repudiated the anti- imperialist struggle.
3) As Bernadette McAliskey said in her contribution to the
recent Celebration of Resistance event in Derry
on 26 July, James Connolly is not here now to explain things. He’s dead. For us
that expression of apparent rejection of socialism needs to be satisfactorily –
it is critical! - understood or we might as well pack up now.
4) I recommend this comrades. When you’re landed with the
responsibility of preparing these introductions there is a natural evasion, a
hesitation, a doubt as to susceptibility of the subject to quick analysis and
summation but then you are suddenly exposed to the abundance of all the already existing material on Connolly. And
become aware of how rewarding it is to read that material.
5) As one of our comrades David Yaffe frequently points out,
many, many questions confronting us have already been answered by earlier
writers and we make no apology for the many references to these works.
6) In C Desmond Greaves biography of Connolly we come across
these observations in the introduction:
Connolly entered
political life just in time to witness the disappearance of the world in which
he had been
brought up...The
hitherto accepted pillars of society, the landlord and the industrialist, gave
way before
the investor...Britain had
ceased to be the workshop of the world...Instead came imperialism. The profits
of empire were to
perfume and spice British capitalism- and incidentally finance the bloodless
liquidation
of Irish landlords.
Ireland
became a financial colony.
(Greaves C D, The Life
and Times of James Connolly London 1960 p.27)
7) James Connolly joined the Socialist League in Dundee in 1889 at the age of 21. His introduction to politics
was familiar to our comrades: Magistrates in Dundee
had banned the holding of open air political meetings in particular areas of
the town. The Social Democratic Federation, the Socialist League and Dundee
Trades Council took up the challenge and called a protest meeting. With the
right sort of numbers- 20,000 people- the crowd marched marched into the High
Street to defy the bans. The socialist speakers were arrested but the campaign
of defiance continued.
An indignation
meeting held immediately afterwards does not appear to have been interfered
with. The
police were trying
their strength...a few weeks later the magistrates climbed down...Meetings were
resumed
in the High Street.
(Greaves C D, op
cit p.25)
8) In Donal Nevin’s biography, James Connolly, A Full Life, he has found an interesting picture of
the young man, written by John Leslie of the Scottish Socialist Federation, the
form of branches of the Social Democratic Federation in Scotland:
I noticed the young
man as a very interested and constant attendant at the open air meetings. Once
when
a very sustained
and virulent personal attack was being made upon me and when I was almost
succumbing
to it, Connolly
sprung upon the stool and to say the least of it, retrieved the situation. I
never forgot it. The
following week, he
joined our organisation and it is needless to say what an acquisition he was...
(Nevin D, op cit
p.33)
8) Connolly was also coming into active politics just as the
period of the 1890’s known as the “New Unionism” was beginning. Connolly
actually had to postpone his wedding, like a certain Ernesto Che Guevara, due
to the commitments of struggle! He and his brother John were the organisers of
a proposed strike for reduced hours. The halls of the SSF in Dundee
were to become organising centres of the “New Unionism” of the unskilled
workers. As Greaves points out, there were so many strikes being organised in
this period that it was impossible to distinguish between them.
9) A possible distinction that can be made is the emerging
difference between the organisation and militancy of different sections of the
working class. Between the unskilled and skilled workers. C Desmond Greaves
makes the point that:
The heart of
Scottish socialism was Edinburgh.
Notwithstanding Glasgow’s
superiority in the numbers and
industrial
concentration of its working class...socialism won more influence at the outset
among the
unskilled than the
skilled workers...a large proportion of these were Irish and, of those who
joined the
SDF, many had been
members of the Land League.
(Greaves C D, op
cit p.28-29)
10) And it was to this Edinburgh-
the city of his birth in 1868- that Connolly returned. Greaves is most useful
in recognising and developing this central point about the different sections
of the working class. In 1890 Connolly had secured- hardly the right term for
casual, intermittent labour- work as a carter and their organisation and
militancy was worrying the local Trades Council. This working class trade union
organisation was to stand in direct opposition to the carter’s fight for an
eight- hour day and it was down to Connolly’s organisation, the Scottish
Socialist Federation, of which his brother John Connolly was secretary, to
organise the demonstration on this issue for May Day in Edinburgh in 1893. The Trades Council did
organise a speaker though, a “Labour” candidate from London
who openly opposed the campaign for a reduction in hours and opposed Home Rule
for Ireland.
As Greaves states: “The old guard wanted no action at all”
(Greaves, op cit p. 36)
11) What we are trying to draw out here is a brief but
important account of two sectors of the working class moving in opposite
directions. A further wee example here of the perfidy of this trade union body:
Connolly’s brother had been dismissed by the city council for speaking at the
Edinburgh May Day demonstration. While
the Trades Council did complain, they eventually gave up any fight and John
Connolly stayed sacked. The Trades Council would have represented thousands of
workers in various trade unions and a threatening sign from them would have
saved John’s job but again “The old guard wanted no action at all”!
12) In one of his first articles for “Justice” James
Connolly shows that he was alive to what was going on:
The population of Edinburgh…Even the
working- class portion of the population seemed to have imbibed the
snobbish would-
be-respectable spirit of their betters and look with aversion upon every
movement running
counter to
conventional ideas…Leith on the other hand is
pre-eminently an industrial centre. The
overwhelming
majority of its population belong to the dis-inherited class…reasonably
expected to develop
socialistic
sentiments much more readily than the Modern Athens.
(ibid p. 39)
13) Connolly was plainly not interested then in trade union
respectability and covering up injustice for the sake of “unity” in the labour
movement. He denounced Glasgow Trades Council as happy to be associated with
the Co-operative Society even though it paid less than union rates. Anything to
keep the divie up! Divide and rule he fought against as well, exposing an
attempt to split the workers according to nationality. The Master Bottlemakers’ Association had
refused to meet strikers because there were foreigners amongst their number.
Connolly railed against this racism:
It was all very
well to employ a foreigner at starvation wages and so cut down the wages of the
native- but
to treat with the
foreigner…Why it was preposterous!
(ibid p. 40)
14) And what of Ireland? The Irish constituted a
fair proportion of the electorate in municipal areas and the issue of
Home Rule for Ireland was calculated by
respectable politicians as a means to secure votes. Posing as friends of Ireland and
plotting secret electoral alliances with Labour candidates, the Liberal party
endlessly connived to deliver this vote for themselves. Connolly was having
none of it! An electoral article for his candidacy as a Socialist in 1894 in
St. Giles in Edinburgh
shows his fierce advocacy of the common class interests of Scottish and Irish
workers:
Perhaps they will
learn how foolish it is to denounce tyranny in Ireland then to vote for tyrants
and
instruments of
tyranny at their own door. Perhaps they will see that the landlord who grinds
his peasants
on a Connemara estate and the landlord who rackrents them in a
Cowgate slum, are brethren in fact and
deed. Perhaps they
will realise that the Irish worker who starves in an Irish cabin and the Scots
worker who
is poisoned in an Edinburgh garret are
brothers with one hope and destiny. Perhaps they will see that the
Liberal Government
which supplies police to Irish landlords to aid them in their work of
exterminating their
Irish peasantry,
also imports police into Scotland
to aid Scots mineowners in their work of starving the Scottish
miners
(Nevin D, op cit p.
39)
Coming third with 14% of the vote, Connolly’s analysis of
the limits of the electoral contests is appropriate to today, he denounced the
lack of difference between “the Liberal Tweedledee and the Tory Tweedledum”
(Greaves C D, op cit p. 51)
15) In the year of 1894, Connolly had also been expressing
views about the class character of the nationalist movement in Ireland:
As an Irishman who
has always taken a keen interest in the advanced movements in Ireland…the
Parnellites…
(and)…the
McCarthyites…are essentially middle-class parties interested in the progress of
Ireland
from a
middle-class point
of view
(Nevin D, op cit p. 38)
His comrade, John Leslie, who had brought Connolly into the
socialist movement 5 years before, had delivered a series of lectures in 1893
which were eventually published in pamphlet form as The Present Position of the Irish Question. Nevin gives full
coverage to its arguments and it is undoubtedly the case that Connolly, having
served in the British Army for 7 years during the Land League agitation
combined his experience there with the powerful thesis of Leslie’s that Ireland’s salvation
lay in its working people. That this class struggle for social, economic and
political emancipation would liberate itself and, in the national struggle
would, end imperialist rule by Britain.
Nevin suggests convincingly that this contention was the origin of Connolly’s
Labour in Irish History. Published in 1910 and written during Connolly’s years
in the USA, it is a Marxist
treatment, a materialist treatment of class and national struggle in Ireland under
British imperialism.
16) Connolly never wavered from this argument and eventually
was to advance it in arms directly against British rule in the Easter Rising of
1916. Thousands of pages have been written, millions of words have been spoken
on this subject, on the relationship between national struggle and class
struggle, between nationalism and socialism. Is it really that difficult, who
has a problem with it?, is it a practical question? Or a matter of abstract
theory or debate? A distraction, a diversion from class struggle, from
socialism? Reading Connolly, of his life, of his commitment and action for the
working class, there can be no doubt that he advanced in absolute clarity- in
word and deed- the combined struggle of that class in Ireland to win
socialism and defeat imperialism. Yet his statement about the “socialists not
understanding why” he was there still needs explanation. Some say Connolly had
despaired of Socialism as an ideology, as a force, and embraced nationalism
belatedly but this is an unsustainable argument given the abundant evidence of
his long standing commitment to a free Ireland and the arguments he was to make
about the central role of the Irish working class in this struggle right up
literally to the dawn of Easter Monday:
We are out for Ireland for the
Irish. But who are the Irish? Not the rack-renting, slum-owning landlord;
not the sweating,
profit-grinding capitalist; not the sleek and oily lawyer; not the prostitute
pressman- the
hired liars of the
enemy. Not these are the Irish upon whom the future depends. Not these, but the
Irish
working class, the
only secure foundation upon which a free nation can be reared.
The cause of
labour is the cause of Ireland,
the cause of Ireland
is the cause of labour. They cannot be
dissevered. Ireland seeks
freedom. Labour seeks that an Ireland
free should be the sole mistress of her
own destiny,
supreme owner of all material things within and upon her soil. Labour seeks to
make the free
Irish nation the
guardian of the interests of the people of Ireland, and to secure that end
would vest in
That free Irish
nation all property rights as against the claims of the individual, with the
end in view that
The individual may
be enriched by the nation, and not by the spoiling of his fellows.
(James Connolly Selected Writings London 1973 p. 145. Cited Reed D, op cit p.
52-53)
Clearly our comrade had not abandoned socialism or the
working class, although there are many who would like to see it that way! As
David Reed has argued in Ireland: The Key
To The British Revolution, Connolly was anticipating the lack of support
from the “Socialists” of the time and in this he was again right. All the major
organisations of the European left rejected the Rising of 1916. Some on the
spurious grounds that it had nothing to do with socialist or working class
struggle, some on the grounds of its timing, some because it was an armed
campaign.
The Scottish ILP
weekly Forward uttered the empty
abstraction, ‘a man can be a nationalist or an
internationalist’…Socialist Review, journal of the ILP,
announced in September 1916, ‘In no degree do we
approve of the Sinn Fein rebellion. We do not approve
of armed rebellion at all, any more than any other
form of militarism
or war’
(Reed D, op cit p. 59)
17) In C Desmond Greaves’ account he suggests that a useful
way of tackling Connolly’s life and works is to consider that his political
life corresponded almost exactly to the period of the Second International,
that is from 1889 to 1916. What does this mean, what was the Second
International and why was it over by 1914?
18) We have to go back to the beginnings of the communist
movement from 1848 with the publication of the Communist Manifesto in that year
and the study and work of Marx and Engels on Ireland. We will shamelessly borrow
from David Reed’s book, no accident that it was originally begun as chapters in
our newspaper Fight Racism! Fight
Imperialism! entitled ‘The Communist Tradition on Ireland’.
Cutting through the crap which the left, “The Socialists”, had continued to lay
down about Ireland
it was plain to see that Connolly was standing in a fine and principled
position for socialism and national liberation right up to the Rising against
British imperialism. The 1st International had been won to support
for the cause of Ireland,
huge demonstrations made up of working class English and Irish marched in 1869
for an amnesty for Irish political prisoners. Engels was to state later in 1888
that:
The masses are for the Irish. The organisations and the
labour aristocracy in general, follow Gladstone…
(Marx K and Engels
F, Ireland and the Irish Question (MEOI) Moscow 1978 p.57. Cited
Reed D, op cit p.11)
He had earlier exclaimed in 1867:
…the London proletarians
declare every day more and more openly for the Fenians and, hence- an unheard-
of and splendid
thing here- for, first, a violent and, secondly, an anti- English movement.
(MEOI p. 155. Cited
Reed D, p.13)
19) These revolutionary developments, caused by imperialism,
were undermined by imperialism. Britain’s
colonial and industrial monopoly meant that the respectable sections of the
working class: skilled, on relatively high wages, in secure trades grew in
influence and power. Aye, they had their trade unions to fight for their wages
and conditions but on matters of “colonial policy”- as Engels remarked, they
thought no differently from their masters. And why should they? Empire was
“sweetening and perfuming capitalism”. “Socialism” was still advocated as a
means of securing the fruits of their labour, as they saw it, but freedom for
the colonies was a step too far now! Safe, respectable, electoral campaigning
would secure the rightful status of the working man. Across Europe
these socialist and labour parties, social democratic parties, constituted
themselves as the Second International and became in some cases mighty
organisations. The German Social Democratic Party had a million members, huge
trade union affiliates, offices, newspapers, journals, full time staff,
parliamentary deputies, the works! The
Socialists of the Second International considered that as all workers were
deemed equal that expressions of nationalism undermined workers unity and
encouraged national division. Opposition to imperialism and colonialism was not
considered a priority, rather, the abstract “unity” of the working classes was
advanced. Indeed socialists could not reject all colonial enterprises as
certain” non- cultured peoples” need looking after!
20) Likewise with the issue of wars, of course the parties
of the Second International opposed them. Resolution after resolution proved
this. Yet by 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War those organisations
had all run for their national flags. Having denounced nationalism as
chauvinism and reactionary and divisive, here they were now on the recruiting
platforms with the soldier and the priest and the trade unionist. Connolly
challenged those who had derided Irish nationalism and who were now calling for
the defence of their “nation”. Now it was he who properly asserted the unity of
the working class and called for action to sabotage imperialist war.
Should the working
classes of Europe, rather than slaughter each
other for the benefit of kings and
financiers, proceed
tomorrow to erect barriers all over Europe, to
break up bridges and destroy the transport
service that war
might be abolished, we should be perfectly justified in following such a
glorious example, and
contributing to the
final dethronement of the vulture classes that rule and rob the world.
(Greaves D, op
cit p. 284)
21) It was not to be and Connolly made the decision that “England’s difficulty” would be” Ireland’s
opportunity.” The Rising against Britain was on. The workers of Dublin and the revolutionary wing of the nationalist
movement were united in the battle to attempt to break the connection with Britain in
1916. In doing so Connolly was doing what Lenin was also to urge in this
period: to “turn the imperialist war into a civil war” for class struggle, for
socialism. In Russia
by 1917, that direction had matured into the Bolshevik revolution of October
and the world’s first socialist state was born. Lenin had immediately
recognised the historical significance of the Rising and understood and
supported the motives and forces behind it. For him the Second International
had repudiated genuine socialist struggle, had become a “stinking corpse” and
was an enemy of the working people, of the masses. We shall end here with a
final quote from Lenin:
There is one, and
only one, kind of real internationalism, and that is- working whole-heartedly
for the
development of the
revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one’s own country, and
supporting (by
propaganda, sympathy and material aid) this struggle, this and only this, line,
in every
country without
exception.
(James Connolly, Collected Works, Dublin 1987 Volume 1
pp. xiv)
James Connolly embodied this principle to the end. Long Live
James Connolly!
2. John MacLean, lessons for today
1) Organiser of the
unorganised
2) Defence of democratic
rights
3) Internationalism and
Anti Imperialism
In this short talk on the
life and work of John MacLean I want to draw attention to three main areas (1)
his organisation of the unemployed and other sections of the working class who
not represented in the British trade union movement (2) his struggle in defence
of democratic rights (3) and his internationalism and anti imperialist
politics.
1)
John MacLean was
a student, teacher and revolutionary.
As an organiser of the
unorganised he was a popular figure amongst the poor in Glasgow in the early 1900s. His approach to
combating poverty and the root of poverty - the capitalist system - was daring,
creative and educational. MacLean could not only propose ideas he could put
them into action and combined this action with theory. Whilst shaming middle
class Christian church goers into giving their money to the poor he understood
that charity could only provide a short term solution to the problems of the
poor. The long term solution was an overthrow of capitalism. To this end he
organised and gave lectures on Marxism and Marxist economics to working class
people across Britain
throughout his life.
His activism and
willingness to take on the authorities was relentless. In 1910 he stormed the
stock exchange in Glasgow
leading a crowd of unemployed workers around the floor before marching back
out. In the same year he supported women factory workers striking in defence of
their living standards. In 1915 he supported rent strikes throughout Glasgow as working class
communities fought attempts to increase the cost of housing. MacLean menaced
the British Government as he called openly for the liberation of the poor from
the shackles of poverty. In 1921 MacLean was sentenced to 12months in prison
for telling the poor not to starve but to take food from the shops. During his
trial he was asked why he had organised the unemployed; he replied 'because no
one else would'.
The ‘no one else’ he was
referring to was the British trade union movement and Labour Party. MacLean
threatened to expose their refusal to unite with the poor at home and oppressed
internationally against the British ruling class. Dominated mainly by old,
white males, from skilled and middle class professions these privileged
sections of workers were not interested in supporting and fighting for
revolution. They were more concerned about defending their stake in the rotten
system that gave them their privileges - British imperialism.
True to the words of the
Russian revolutionary Lenin MacLean went beyond these privileged sections; ‘to
the real masses' whose interests demanded a complete overthrow of capitalism
and imperialism. MacLean was one of the few activists to take up the fight
against the British ruling class and their agents within the working class
movement.
2) Another fundamental
part of MacLean’s work was focused on the struggle to defend democratic rights.
As the British Government moved to criminalise and limit protest against the
first imperialist world war MacLean continued to organise. He believed as James
Connolly and Sylvia Pankhurst argued that it was the task of each countries
working class to declare 'war on the war makers', their ruling classes, instead
of on each other. In 1915 he was jailed for 5 days for stating 'I have been
enlisted in the socialist army for 15 years, the only army worth fighting for.
God damn all other armies'. He was
centrally involved with setting up Free Speech Committees at this time to
defend the right to protest against the war and this came with consequences. A
number of progressive newspapers, including MacLean's 'Vanguard' were banned by
the Government and MacLean was repeatedly arrested and imprisoned. In all he
was imprisoned 6 times between 1916 and 1922. Charged with sedition in 1918 he
was sentenced to 5 years The Defence of the Realm Act. While he was imprisoned
attempts to drug his food forced MacLean to go on hunger strike. Torture by
force-feeding was used against MacLean a number of times. Despite this physical
and mental abuse the government could not break his spirit and each time he was
released he went head first back into the struggle. The British Labour and
trade union movement did not support him whilst he was in prison and refused to
organise anything in his defence. It was only after calls for his freedom were
made at home and internationally, which threatened to expose their inactivity,
that the trade union and labour
politicians set up a campaign for his release. They knew that MacLean was out
to change the world and they knew this change would strip them of their
parasitic privileges. MacLean was their enemy.
3) Why an enemy – why
would a communist be considered an enemy to the British trade union movement?
It was because MacLean was not only an organiser of people in Britain he was
fundamentally an anti imperialist. He combined calls for the release of
political prisoners in Britain
with calls for international solidarity with Irish Republican political prisoners
and political prisoners in Spain
(murder of anarchist Francisco Ferrer 1909 - p6 of pamphlet), the US and beyond.
He opposed and exposed the 'Empire socialism' represented by the British trade
union leaders on the Clyde shipyards who agreed to carry on war production as
long the work was well paid. He repeatedly spoke out against the British
occupation of Ireland and in
support of the Russian revolution and despite never actually visiting Russia was appointed by Lenin the representative
of the Bolshevik revolution in Britain.
For MacLean the British Empire was not an
opportunity to become wealthy - British Imperialism was an enemy to the
oppressed internationally but also to the struggle of the British working
class. The solution was to unite the struggles of the poor in imperialist
countries with those of the oppressed internationally under the slogan 'workers
of the world and oppressed peoples unite!’ In practice this meant calling for
Irish, Indian and Egyptian independence from Britain
on protests against the attack on living standards in Britain. The
British ruling class were the enemy of the poor in Britain and oppressed abroad - a
common enemy.
John MacLean died on 30
November 1923 due to poor health after going through another spell of imprisonment.
He was 43 years old. His life and politics hold many lessons for us in today’s
struggle to organise the unorganised against the cuts, to expose the inactivity
and parasitic nature of the British trade union establishment who are refusing
to break with the labour party and challenge the anti trade union laws, to
defend democratic rights and most fundamentally to oppose British imperialism's
ongoing attack on oppressed peoples abroad - in Ireland, Afghanistan, Libya,
Syria, Somalia and elsewhere.
The 'workers of the world
and oppressed peoples must unite!’
3. Sylvia Pankhurst, a revolutionary life
It's about time we remembered Sylvia
Pankhurst. She was an artist, feminist,
socialist, writer, editor, mother and revolutionary. Her unique contribution to
anti-racist, anti-imperialist and socialist politics leaves inspiring lessons
for us today, and we know they're needed.
We are seeing rising unemployment, increasing military intervention,
cuts to benefits and services and increasing homelessness, with working-class
women bearing the brunt of austerity. Capitalist crisis means poverty for 3.6
million children in Britain,
and starvation for people around the world. Sylvia struggled against capitalism
over 100 year ago, and I'm glad comrades here want to revive those lessons to
continue to fightback.
Of course, her revolutionary contribution
has been forgotten by the ruling class, who fill school history books with her
now more famous mother Emmeline and sister Christabel. They were committed
campaigners for the vote for women, but this only extended to women with
property. Sylvia disagreed that this was where change was going to come from.
Her move to the working-class East End of London signalled a break from her
family. This break was confirmed when her mother and sister went on to abandon
their call for votes at the start of the first world war in order to drum up
support for the war effort itself, calling for subscription before the
government. These are the suffragettes we're encouraged to remember.
Sylvia was steadfastly against the
imperialist war. She organised carefully
against it at first, because the majority of young men from the East End were on the frontline, dying for the ruling
class. The organisation she established, the East London Federation of
Suffragettes, focused its efforts at first on setting up nurseries, and places
to eat and work. Together, they struggled against poverty, illiteracy and
illness that increased with war. They set up cheap restaurants, run by local
women. Children were looked after in free communal nurseries. The community
could eat, stay healthy and organise; alongside relief from hunger came real
organisation, against exploitation at the hands of the ruling class, against
the double-exploitation of women, and in time, against the war. Their actions
were far from charity. It is from here that she organised delegations to demand
the vote. Her actions on the street led to her frequent arrest. She started hunger and thirst strikes in prison, and was
force-fed many times, which permanently damaged her health. She would also walk
round her cell until she collapsed. She was not alone in this, and many
militant suffragettes suffered at the hands of the state. She was one of the
few who organised a defence against this, setting up safe-houses to
defend women who had been temporarily freed from prison for ill-health. This
was part of a wider, organised resistance against violence at the hands of the
police, courts and prisons. She worked to establish a People's Army in 1913, so
that activists could, in her words,' fit themselves to cope with the brutality of
government servants'. It was joined by over 1,000 women as well as men, and was
crucial to resisting police violence and preventing arrests. We need to take
inspiration from this, as today we're not only talking about the brutality of
the police, courts and prisons, but also their privatisation, about
mega-companies set to profit from injustice and suffering.
Throughout these struggles, Sylvia moved to the left. Even from
early public campaigns, she was clear that the vote was to be won, as she said, 'not by the secret militancy of a
few enthusiasts, but by the rising of the masses.' She knew the need for
agitating, of joining workplace struggles with the feminist movement; for her,
the struggle was for the working-class; if the roots of oppression
lay in capitalism, women's oppression could only be defeated with an end to
class exploitation - in other words, a revolutionary overthrow of the state.
We can trace this in the agitational and hugely popular paper
she ran and edited, the Women's Dreadnought, which in 1917 became the Worker's
Dreadnought. It started as, in her words, "...a
medium through which working women, however unlettered, might express
themselves, and find their interests defended.", it became a revolutionary
paper with a circulation of over 10,000. It was one of the very few, if only,
papers to be edited by a woman. It was the first paper to employ a black
journalist. It was non-sectarian, publishing a wide range of articles, from
local workers struggles to support for international resistance to imperialism.
This led to the offices being raided, articles censored by the state and
arrest, but Sylvia continued to find ways to publish the paper. The writings of
Marx and Lenin, deserting soldiers and rank and file workers reports, support
for the Easter Rising, filled the pages. John MacLean wrote for the
Dreadnought, urging workers to educate themselves. The paper was a weapon,
against ruling class lies; a legacy we see so powerfully in the Black Panthers,
for example, and one so necessary today with the disgusting control of the
bourgeois media. The prisoners letters in FRFI are an inspiring example of
ongoing resistance.
The paper became vital in sharing news from the Bolsheviks, and
Sylvia was one of the first leaders to show any support for Soviet Russia. She
was a key organiser of the 'Hands Off Russia!' committee, and started Councils
of Action. Of course, she would not only write for the paper, but as with all
campaigns, took to the streets! It was around this time that she made most of her
contributions to communist politics. Her organisation was renamed the Worker's
Socialist Federation by the time of the Third International, and it was the
first organisation to affiliate with it. Throughout unity talks in 1919 between
communist groups, and throughout her role in forming the Communist
Party of Great Britain, she was clear; she did not believe in an alliance with
the Labour Party, and saw it as a waste of energy to add to its fire, when it
was not revolutionary. She saw parliament as limited at best, pushed by the
masses, and a dead-end at worst. Here, its not Sylvia's individual contribution
that is most important, but her commitment to the struggle of the
working-class, her analysis of where change was going to come from, and where
opportunism lies. This is a lesson too easily forgotten today by a lot of the
left today.
Throughout
her changing alliances, her commitment to anti-racism and anti-imperialism
remained central, and she showed a unique
understanding of the relationship between the oppression of women, racism,
imperialism and fascism. Of course, she wasn't separate from the movements she
was involved in, but she was one of the lone voices on the left at the time
challenging imperialism. Many Left leaders were arguing for the use of the
colonies to improve working conditions at home, to better their lives and because they
understood themselves as biologically and culturally superior to what they
called the 'non-adult races'. Sylvia was arguing ahead of her time, publishing
key articles from groups resisting empire in Africa.
She published pieces on the exploitation of women in India, not calling for charity, but
for revolution.
She campaigned for solidarity with Ethiopia, which whilst this became
a more isolated focus at the end of her life, it began as an
anti-imperialist, anti-racist campaign.
She was right to champion its independence, and also right in believing
the left wouldn't be interested in a black country. Her anti-racism made her
aware of the dangers of fascism before the majority of the left. Even fairly early into her anti-imperialist development,
she was expelled from the Women's Social and Political Union for
speaking at a meeting, alongside James Connolly, calling for James Larkin's
freedom. Crucially, the British TUC refused to show such support. Not only was
she there in opposition to imperialism, but also because, as she said, 'behind
every poor man there was a still poorer woman'.
This
sums up her main contribution. Her ability to link the struggles is the most important
lesson to learn. People have often argued with us on the streets today, saying
that if we talk about women's oppression, capitalism or racism in relation to
the cuts, that people won't understand, or that it dilutes the struggle. Sylvia
was charged with the same comments by people who refused to fight back then,who
inevitably tied the struggle behind ruling class and limiting forces. To link
inequality, war, patriarchy and racism is not to dilute the struggle, but to
seek its cause; to challenge capitalism itself. Again, we can learn from Sylvia
– her trust in people, and faith in the working-class learning and developing
in struggle, her belief in organised working-class resistance. We can learn
from her aim to reach as many people as possible on the streets and through the
paper, and to defend those fighting back, politically and practically, in Britain and
around the world. We must organise today, and take inspiration, come together
to continue the against fight capitalism and austerity, and to fight racism and
fight imperialism!
