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The Independent Labour Party and Foreign Politics 1918–1923

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

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The Independent Labour Party, which was founded in 1893 had, before the 1914–18 war, played a major part within the Labour Party to which it was an affiliated socialist society. It was the largest of the affiliated socialist societies with a pre-eminently working-class membership and leadership. Because the Labour Party did not form an individual members section until 1918, the I.L.P. was one of the means by which it was possible to become an individual member of the Labour Party. But the I.L.P. was also extremely important within the Labour Party in other ways. It was the I.L.P. which supplied the leadership – MacDonald, Hardie and Snowden – of both the Labour Party and the Parliamentary Labour Party. It was the I.L.P., with its national network of branches, which carried through a long-term propaganda programme to the British electorate. Finally, it was the I.L.P. which gave most thought to policy and deeply affected the policy of the Labour Party.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1962

References

page 34 note 1 I have treated this liason much more fully in an article in the Yorkshire Bulletin of Economic and Social Research, Autumn, 1961: The Entry of Liberals into the Labour Party, 1910-1920.Google Scholar

page 34 note 2 Labour Party Conference Report, 1921, p. 179.Google Scholar A similar point of view can be seen in the following extract from a Bradford I.L.P. resolution, “This meeting strongly protests against the proposal to cancel the Trade Agreement with Russia. It declares that the reasons alleged in no way justify either unemployment or the danger to peace which would result” - Bradford I.L.P. Minutes, 14th May, 1923.

page 35 note 1 Journal of Modem History, Sept., 1956. Labour Foreign Policy in Great Britain 19181929.Google Scholar

page 35 note 2 An I.L.P. pamphlet “Foreign Policy and the People”, by Morel and Ponsonby, p. 2 (1925) makes the connection between home and foreign politics explicit when it refers to “the intimate telations between the external policy of the State… and those very issues upon which Labour was concentrating the whole of its strength.”

page 35 note 3 For confirmation of this point see Maddox, W. P., Foreign Relations in British Labour Politics, P. 26 (Camb. Mass., 1934).Google Scholar

page 36 note 1 Labour Leader, 13th Aug., 1914.Google Scholar The Labour Leader was an official I.L.P. newspaper.

page 36 note 2 ibid., 25th Nov., 1920 and Forward, 9th Feb., 1918.

page 36 note 3 ibid., 25th Nov., 1920.

page 37 note 1 Socialist Review, July, 1918.Google Scholar Socialist Review was the monthly theoretical journal of the I.L.P.

page 37 note 2 Report of I.L.P. Annual Conference, 1919, p. 73.Google Scholar

page 37 note 3 Forward, 8th Jan., 1921.

page 37 note 4 Labour Leader, 5th June, 1919.Google Scholar

page 38 note 1 Labour Leader, 30th Sept., 1920.Google Scholar

page 38 note 2 ibid.. 17th Nov., 1921.

page 38 note 3 See note of mine in Political Studies, Oct., 1961, Ramsay MacDonald and Direct Action.

page 38 note 4 Pamphlet by A. F. Brockway. A similar attitude was shared by the U.D.C. men in the I.L.P. “The U.D.C. was never what is ordinarily called a Stop the War or Peace Society” it advocated “at the close of the war a settlement should be adopted which instead of sowing the seeds of future conflicts, should lead to a durable and democratic peace.” F, Cocks, s., Morel, E. D.The Man and His Work, p. 119 (London, 1919).Google Scholar

page 39 note 1 Snowden, P. in Labour Leader, 24th Aug., 1918.Google Scholar

page 39 note 2 P. Snowden in ibid., 20th Feb., 1919. See also MacDonald, J. R. in Socialist Review, July, 1919.Google Scholar

page 39 note 3 I.L.P. Annual Conference Report 1919, p. 41.Google Scholar

page 39 note 4 Labour Leader, 5th June, 1919.Google Scholar

page 39 note 5 I.L.P. Annual Conference, 1920, pp. 8788.Google Scholar

page 39 note 6 Forward, 26th April, 1919.

page 39 note 7 ibid., 17th May, 1918.

page 40 note 1 Forward, 22nd Feb., 1919.

page 40 note 2 C. R. and D. Buxton, In a German Miner's Home, I.L.P. pamphlet, p. 13, (Jan., 1921).Google Scholar

page 40 note 3 South Wales News 15th Jan., 1923.Google Scholar

page 41 note 1 Manifesto in Forward, 26th Nov., 1921.

page 41 note 2 Labour Leader, 6th May, 1921.Google Scholar

page 41 note 3 New Leader, 2nd Feb., 1925.Google ScholarThe Labour Leader changed its title in the middle of 1922.Google Scholar

page 41 note 4 For example, J. R. Clynes and J. Stirling Robertson.

page 41 note 5 J. R. MacDonald in Labour Leader, 27th Feb.

page 42 note 1 Labour Leader, 20th May, 1919.Google Scholar

page 42 note 2 ibid., 15 th May, 1919. Trevelyan, C. P. criticised the Treaty and League in a letter to the Daily Herald, 21 st May, 1919.Google Scholar E. D. Morel attacked the League in Labour Leader, 21 stMay.

page 42 note 3 A good example of this attitude can be found in the Labour Leader, 19th Feb., 1920.Google Scholar “The idea of the League of Nations is a magnificent conception. In its present form the League gives neither form nor substance to this great idea.”

page 42 note 4 Labour Leader, 10th March, 1921.Google Scholar Analysis by R. C. Wallhead, Chairman of the I.L.P.

page 43 note 1 New Leader, 19th Jan., 1923.Google Scholar

page 43 note 2 C. R. and Buxton, D. J., In a German Miner's Home (1921Google Scholar). They described the departure as follows: “But none of us could quite say what we felt. As he bundled our bags into the train his face resumed its accustomed air of solemnity and the 'goodbye' was a long tight grip of the hand.”

page 43 note 3 Forward, 24th May, 1919.

page 43 note 4 New Leader, 5th and 13th Oct., 1922.Google Scholar

page 43 note 5 See Forward, 7th Oct., 1922 for an interesting article on this subject, by R.L. Outhwaite.

page 44 note 1 On the question of armaments the general dislike of the French by I.L.P.ers was once again let loose. See New Leader, 29th June, 1923 where the decision to double the size of the British Air Force is blamed on French militarism.

page 44 note 2 Taylor, A. J. P., The Trouble Makers, p. 169 (London, 1957).Google Scholar

page 44 note 3 I.L.P. Annual Conference, 1919, p. 10.Google Scholar See also Brockway, A. F. in Labour Leader, 19th Jan., 1922Google Scholar: “The I.L.P. believes that the problem of poverty can only be solved, the danger of war can only be averted, by definitely re-organising human society on a Socialist basis.”

page 45 note 1 Labour Leader, 20th Feb., 1919.Google Scholar The reference is to Havelock Wilson, a rabidly pro-war British trade unionist.