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Soviets in Britain: The Leeds Convention of 1917*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

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The Labour and Socialist Convention held at Leeds on 3 June 1917 was held expressly “to follow Russia”. It adopted four resolutions, the most celebrated of which called for the establishment of what have been termed “extra-Parliamentary Soviets with sovereign powers”. It was described shortly afterwards as “the most spectacular piece of utter folly for which [the Socialist left] during the whole war-period, was responsible – which is saying not a little”. A contemporary journal held that many of the ILP men had become “avowed Syndicalists or Bolsheviks”; and the King, in conversation with Will Thorne after the latter's visit to Russia on behalf of the government, expressed some concern about what had taken place. He “seemed greatly disturbed at the famous Leeds Conference”, Thorne recorded. Thome's reply, however, had “seemed to relieve his mind”. F. W. Jowett, a member of the group which issued invitations to the Convention, referred to it to the end of his life as the “highest point of revolutionary fervour he had seen in this country”.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1974

References

page 165 note 1 Orton, W. A., Labour in Transition (London, 1921), p. 104.Google Scholar The meeting is incorrectly dated 9th June.

page 165 note 2 Nineteenth Century and After, LXXXVII (1920), p. 590.Google Scholar

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page 165 note 4 Brockway, A. F., Socialism over Sixty Years (London, 1946), p. 153.Google Scholar

page 165 note 5 Taylor, A. J. P., English History 1914–1945 (London, 1965), p. 89.Google Scholar

page 166 note 1 Middlemas, R. K., The Clydesiders (London, 1965), p. 75.Google Scholar A modern Soviet study has termed the Convention the “culminating moment in the political struggle of the English workers in 1917” (Karliner, M. M., Rabochee Dvizhenie v Anglii v 1914–1918 gg. (Moscow, 1961), p. 271)Google Scholar.

page 166 note 2 Socialist Review, XIV (1917), pp. 9798.Google Scholar

page 167 note 1 P. Snowden in Labour Leader, 29 March and 12 April 1917.

page 167 note 2 Bradford Pioneer, 11 May 1917; J. R. MacDonald in Forward, 13 March, 14 April, 28 April and 12 May 1917; Leicester Post, 7 May 1917.

page 167 note 3 Sacks, B., MacDonald, J. Ramsay in Thought and Action (Albuquerque, 1952), pp. 496–97.Google Scholar

page 167 note 4 Hollingsworth, B., “The Society of Friends of Russian Freedom: English Liberals and Russian Socialists 1890–1917”, in: Oxford Slavonic Papers, New Series, III (1970), pp. 4564Google Scholar; Grant, R., “The Society of Friends of Russian Freedom (1890–1917): A case study in internationalism”, in: Journal of the Scottish Labour History Society, No 3 (November 1970), pp. 324.Google Scholar

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page 168 note 1 Socialist Review, October-December 1914, p. 394.

page 168 note 2 New Statesman, 24 March 1917, p. 578.

page 168 note 3 Lansbury, G., My Life (London, 1928), p. 186.Google Scholar

page 168 note 4 Herald, 31 March 1917, p. 9.

page 168 note 5 Labour Leader, 5 April 1917.

page 168 note 6 Earlier demonstrations were held by the BSP at the Memorial Hall, Farring-don Street, on 26 March 1917; and at Mile End Road on 24 March 1917 under the auspices of the Committee of Delegates of the Russian Socialist Groups. Lansbury insisted, however, that the “Labour and progressive forces of the capital should rally in even larger numbers” (Herald, 31 March 1917, p. 5).

page 169 note 1 Lansbury, G., The Miracle of Fleet Street (London, 1925), p. 113Google Scholar; Meynell, F., My Lives (London, 1971), p. 104.Google Scholar

page 169 note 2 Russia Free! Ten Speeches delivered at the Royal Albert Hall, London, on 31 March 1917. Authorised Report (Pelican Press, London, 1917). Quotations from the proceedings of the meeting are taken from this source unless otherwise stated.

page 169 note 3 Lansbury, G., The Miracle of Fleet Street, pp. 113, 114.Google Scholar

page 169 note 4 Call, 5 April 1917.

page 169 note 5 8 May 1917, Lansbury Papers, Vol. 7, No 310, British Library of Political and Economic Science.

page 170 note 1 Postgate, R., The Life of George Lansbury (London, 1951), p. 165.Google Scholar

page 170 note 2 The details as recorded in the Call are printed in Karliner, op. cit., pp. 254–55 and 266. Meetings at Brighton on 18 May, and at Liverpool on 20 May are reported in the Woman's Dreadnought, 26 May 1917; and a “Russia Free” meeting in Merthyr Tydfil on 6 May is noted in the Merthyr Tydfil Pioneer, 12 May 1917.

page 170 note 3 Lansbury, G., The Miracle of Fleet Street, p. 116.Google Scholar

page 170 note 4 ILP, Annual Conference Report, 1917, p. 23.

page 170 note 5 ILP, NAC minutes, 15–16 October 1914, p. 110, and 6–7 July 1916, p. 201, British Library of Political and Economic Science.

page 170 note 6 The Fabian Society decided on 24 November 1916 to seek the right of veto for each society represented on the USC; but this appears to have been unforth-coming (Fabian Society, Executive Committee minutes, 24 November 1917, C/8/B/13, Nuffield College, Oxford).

page 171 note 1 ILP, Annual Conference Report, 1917, pp. 23, 24–25. The formation of the USC is incorrectly dated 1917 in the Labour Year Book 1919 (London, 1919), p. 320Google Scholar; and it is incorrectly termed the United Social Council in Bullock, A., Life and Times of Ernest Bevin, I (London, 1960), p. 74.Google Scholar

page 171 note 2 Labour Leader, 17 May 1917; Bradford Pioneer, 18 May 1917; Forward, 19 May 1917. A form of Application for Delegates and Credentials is in Edinburgh Central ILP, Correspondence, 1917, National Library of Scotland.

page 172 note 1 Circular of 23 May 1917, Edinburgh Central ILP, Correspondence, 1917, loc. cit. (printed in the Labour Leader, 31 May 1917); Labour Leader, 24 May 1917.

page 172 note 2 Forward, 2 June 1917.

page 172 note 3 Glasgow Trades Council, minutes, 16 and 30 May 1917, Mitchell Library, Glasgow.

page 172 note 4 London Trades Council, minutes, 31 May 1917 (microfilm, Warwick University Library, Coventry).

page 172 note 5 Yorkshire Factory Times, 7 June 1917.

page 172 note 6 Leeds Trades Council, minutes, 30 May 1917, Sheepscar Library, Leeds.

page 172 note 7 Leeds Weekly Citizen, 8 June 1917. Tom Quelch, whose letter of thanks for local hospitality is printed in the same issue, offered the consoling thought that the local hoteliers had lost about £1,000 through their action.

page 173 note 1 Leeds Weekly Citizen, 8 June 1917; Herald, 9 June 1917. The Times reported that the authorities had “yielded to patriotic pressure” (2 June 1917).

page 173 note 2 What Happened at Leeds (London, 1917), p. 1Google Scholar; Labour Leader, 7 June 1917 (the account of the proceedings of the Convention, unless otherwise stated, has been drawn from these sources); Leeds Weekly Citizen, 8 June 1917. The figure quoted in the Woman's Dreadnought of 11,051 delegates is clearly an over-enthusiastic misprint (Vol. 4, No 11, 9 June 1917, p. 733). A contemporary eye-witness account is provided in the Diary of Alfred Mattison (Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library). The authorities, he recorded, were “panicstricken” and “all the young hooligans of the town joined in the looting. However no worse harm befel and all passed off calmly” (Vol. C, pp. 11, 14).

page 173 note 3 Gallacher, W., Revolt on the Clyde (London, 1936), p. 149Google Scholar, wrongly reports Lansbury as present.

page 175 note 1 Review of Reviews, LXI (1917), p. 8Google Scholar; Leeds Mercury, 5 June 1917; Daily Chronicle, 4 June 1917.

page 175 note 2 Labour Leader, 7 June 1917.

page 175 note 3 Merthyr Tydfil Pioneer, 9 June 1917.

page 175 note 4 Telegram of 3 June 1917, Lansbury Papers, Vol. 7, No 329, lœ. cit.

page 175 note 5 Pankhurst to Lansbury, June 1917, No 324; Mrs Despard to Lansbury, 7 June 1917, No 337; Pethick-Lawrence to Lansbury, 3 June 1917, No 335; A. A. Watts to Lansbury, 15 June 1917, No 348, Lansbury Papers, Vol. 7.

page 176 note 1 The Diaries of Beatrice Webb, 1912–1924 (London, 1952), p. 88Google Scholar, entry for 7 June 1917.

page 176 note 2 Woman's Dreadnought, 9 June 1917, p. 770; Labour Leader, 7 June 1917.

page 176 note 3 Watts to Lansbury, 15 June 1917, No 348, Lansbury Papers, Vol. 7.

page 177 note 1 Rothwell, V. H., British War Aims and Peace Diplomacy 1914–1918 (Oxford, 1971), p. 97.Google Scholar

page 177 note 2 Woman's Dreadnought, 9 June 1917, p. 773; New Statesman, 9 June 1917, p. 218. Sylvia Pankhurst's journal recommended that the Councils be renamed “Workers', Soldiers' and Housewives' Councils” (Woman's Dreadnought, 21 July 1917, p. 807).

page 178 note 1 Herald, 26 May 1917, p. 8; ibid., 9 June 1917, p. 2.

page 178 note 2 Labour Leader, 7 June 1917; Snowden, P., An Autobiography (London, 1934), I, p. 456.Google Scholar

page 178 note 3 Pravda, 17 May 1917 (old style). Direct support for the Bolsheviks was not envisaged. At a conference in Leicester a delegate called for three cheers for Lenin, which were given “half-heartedly”. The chairman pointed out that “they did not want that, as they were neither Leninites nor Kerenskyites, and such incidents would give their opponents an opportunity of misrepresenting them” (Leicester Pioneer, 3 August 1917).

page 178 note 4 Woman's Dreadnought, 9 June 1917, p. 773; Murphy, J. T., Preparing for Power (London, 1972), p. 152Google Scholar, and New Horizons (London, 1941), p. 63.Google Scholar This view is endorsed in Pollitt, H., Serving my Time (London, 1950), p. 91.Google Scholar

page 179 note 1 Snowden, P., An Autobiography, I, p. 455Google Scholar; Manchester Guardian, 30 July 1917, p. 6; Elton, G., Life of James Ramsay MacDonald (London, 1939), p. 322.Google Scholar

page 179 note 2 ILP, NAC minutes, 30 June 1917, p. 222, loc. cit.

page 179 note 3 Woman's Dreadnought, 7 July 1917, p. 795; Herald, 27 October 1917, p. 10.

page 179 note 4 BSP, Annual Report, 1918, p. 43, quoted in Kendall, W., The Revolutionary Movement in Britain 1900–1921 (London, 1969), p. 379, note 43.Google Scholar

page 179 note 5 The ILP's warning is contained in the Labour Leader, 5 July 1917. See also G. Lansbury, My Life, p. 188.

page 180 note 1 Kendall, op. cit., suggests incorrectly that the Convention elected a nine-man Provisional Committee. The names of the thirteen members and two secretaries are recorded in What Happened at Leeds, p. 2.

page 180 note 2 Call, 21 and 28 June 1917.

page 180 note 3 Call, 12 April 1917, p. 4, and 31 May 1917.

page 181 note 1 Forward, 2 June 1917; Herald, 2 June 1917, p. 7; Labour Leader, 31 May 1917; Snowden, P., Labour in Chains (London, 1917), p. 16.Google Scholar W. C. Anderson was at this time the President of the National Council of Civil Liberties, Smillie was one of its Vice-Presidents, and Mrs Snowden was the organization's Honorary-Treasurer. The objects of the NCCL coincided closely with the third resolution on civil liberties (Farbman, M., The Russian Revolution and the War (London, 1917), p. 47Google Scholar). Of some 1,020 affiliated bodies in August 1917, 20 were national trade unions, 164 were Trades Councils and Labour Parties, and 376 were local trade union branches or other industrial, political and social organizations (NCCL, Circular of August 1917, Edinburgh Central ILP, Correspondence 1917, loc. cit.).

page 181 note 2 Woman's Dreadnought, 9 June 1917, p. 770.

page 181 note 3 Labour Leader, 7 June 1917; Glasgow Trades Council, minutes, 6 June 1917, loc. cit.

page 182 note 1 Leicester Pioneer, 8 June 1917; Bradford Pioneer, 8 June 1917.

page 182 note 2 F. S. Cocks in The U.D.C, 9 July 1917, p. 103; Herald, 8 September 1917, p. 2.

page 182 note 3 Herald, 9 June 1917, p. 8. The editorial comment in the Times was predictably hostile. The object of the meeting, it was held, was really to “stop the war”. The organizers would then embark upon a “domestic war”; but even the Times did not suggest that this would be other than “afterwards” (4 June 1917).

page 182 note 4 Industrial Peace, Vol. 1, No 29, October 1917.

page 183 note 1 J. T. Murphy, Preparing for Power, pp. 106, 107.

page 183 note 2 Bundock, C. J., The ILP and the Soldier (London, 1918), pp. 4, 10, 12.Google Scholar

page 183 note 3 Herald, 31 March 1917, p. 6 (all references to this meeting are derived from this source unless otherwise stated). The 189 delegates represented Labour bodies in the main, including 89 London trades councils.

page 183 note 4 Thompson, B., Queer People (London, 1922), p. 283.Google Scholar

page 184 note 1 Thomson, B., “Bolshevism in England”, 23 December 1917, FO 371/3300, paper 212521 of 28 December 1918, Public Record Office, London.Google Scholar

page 184 note 2 Kenworthy, J. M., Soldiers, Sailors and Others (London, 1936), p. 100.Google Scholar

page 184 note 3 Cabinet Paper GT 832, Cab 24/14, Public Record Office, London.

page 184 note 4 WC 147, 25 May 1917, conclusion 11, Cab 23/3.

page 185 note 1 Milner to Lloyd George, 1 June 1917, Lloyd George Papers F/38/2/8, Beaver-brook Library, London.

page 185 note 2 WC 154, 5 June 1917, conclusion 22, Cab 23/3.

page 185 note 3 WC 200, 31 July 1917, conclusion 1, Cab 23/3; Cabinet Paper GT 1522, “Formation of Soldiers' and Sailors' Committees”, 26 July 1917, Cab 24/21.

page 185 note 4 In his War Memoirs, IV (London, 1934), p. 1948, he wrote that he “thought it would be a mistake to treat it too seriously. […] The leaders were mostly men of the type which think something is actually done when you assert vociferously that it must be done.”

page 185 note 5 Herald circular, 28 June 1917, Lansbury Papers, Vol. 7, No 359.

page 186 note 1 Herald, 23 June 1917, pp. 3 and 7 (editorial).

page 186 note 2 Herald, 23 June 1917, pp. 8–9, 28 July 1917, p. 7, and 30 June 1917, pp. 8–9.

page 186 note 3 Bullock, A., Life and Times of Ernest Bevin, I, p. 76Google Scholar (similarly Postgate, R., The Life of George Lansbury, p. 170Google Scholar); Middlemas, R. K., The Clydesiders, p. 75Google Scholar; Thomson, B., The Scene Changes (London, 1939), p. 283.Google Scholar

page 186 note 4 Woman's Dreadnought, 9 June 1917, p. 773.

page 187 note 1 Workers' and Soldiers' Council, Manifesto to the District Conferences, National Library of Scotland (printed in the Herald, 7 July 1917).

page 187 note 2 Herald, 21 July 1917, p. 16. A list of the locations and dates of the District Conferences was printed in the Times, 25 July 1917.

page 187 note 3 Workers' and Soldiers' Council, Circular of 12 July 1917, National Library of Scotland (printed in the Woman's Dreadnought, 14 July 1917, p. 802, and in the Times, 25 July 1917).

page 187 note 4 London Trades Council, minutes, 12 July 1917; Bristol ILP, minutes, 1 August 1917, British Library of Political and Economic Science.

page 188 note 1 Call, 19 July and 2 August 1917; Labour Leader, 9 August 1917.

page 188 note 2 Merthyr Tydfil Pioneer, 4 August 1917; Times, 26 and 30 July 1917.

page 188 note 3 Herald, 11 August 1917; Times, 2, 8 and 16 August 1917.

page 188 note 4 Times, 13 August 1917.

page 188 note 5 Cabinet Paper GT 1625, “Proposed Prohibition of Meeting at Glasgow, 6 August 1917”, Cab 24/22; Glasgow Trades Council, minutes, 6 August 1917.

page 189 note 1 WC 207, 8 August 1917, conclusion 6, Cab 23/3.

page 189 note 2 Glasgow Trades Council, minutes, 6 and 15 August, 5 and 11 September 1917.

page 189 note 3 Glasgow Labour Party, minutes, 2 October 1917, and Glasgow ILP Federation, Executive Council minutes, 5 and 19 October 1917, Mitchell Library, Glasgow.

page 190 note 1 Times, 27, 28 and 30 July 1917; Woma's Dreadnought, 14 August 1917; Russell, B., Autobiography, II (London, 1968), p. 31Google Scholar; Snowden, P., An Autobiography, I, p. 456Google Scholar; Times, 30 July 1917.

page 190 note 2 Russell, op. cit., p. 32; New Statesman, 4 August 1917; Times, 30 July 1917. Three persons were subsequently arrested and charged with causing £500 worth of damage to the Church. They pleaded guilty. They received no punishment, however, the magistrate observing that “persons who let halls for such meetings ought to expect trouble” (Times, 13 and 22 August 1917).

page 190 note 3 Call, 2 and 9 August 1917; Herald, 4 August 1917, p. 5.

page 190 note 4 Call, 23 August 1917; Merthyr Tydfil Pioneer, 8 September 1917.

page 191 note 1 Sheffield Trades and Labour Council, delegate meeting minutes, 28 August 1917, and executive meeting minutes, 25 September 1917, Sheffield Trades and Labour Council.

page 191 note 2 Liverpool Trades Council, minutes, 26 September 1917, and LRC minutes, 3 October 1917, Public Library, Liverpool.

page 191 note 3 Leeds Trades Council, executive committee minutes, 24 October 1917.

page 191 note 4 B. Thomson, “Bolshevism in England”, loc. cit.; Herald, 11 August 1917, p. 6.

page 191 note 5 Call, 25 October 1917; Herald and Merthyr Tydfil Pioneer, 27 October 1917.

page 191 note 6 ILP, NAC minutes, 26 October 1917, p. 231.

page 192 note 1 Cabinet Paper GT 1660, Report on the Labour Situation, 9 August 1917, Cab 24/22; Thomson, “Bolshevism in England”, loc. cit.

page 192 note 2 Yorkshire Factory Times, 13 December 1917.

page 192 note 3 Glasgow Trades Council, minutes, 18 December 1918.

page 192 note 4 Socialist Review, XIV (1917), p. 199.

page 192 note 5 Labour Party, NEC minutes, 18 July 1917, Labour Party, London (printed in the Yorkshire Factory Times, 26 July 1917). The Scottish TUC Parliamentary Committee refused to participate in the Glasgow District Conference (minutes, 4 August 1917, STUC, Glasgow).

page 193 note 1 Socialist Review, XIV, p. 199.

page 193 note 2 ILP, Annual Conference Report, 1918, p. 31.

page 193 note 3 Forward, 22 September 1917.