Fighting fascism: the British Left and the rise of fascism, 1919–39

By Keith Hodgson

In the years between the two world wars, fascism triumphed in Italy, Germany, Spain and elsewhere, coming to power after intense struggles with the labour movements of those countries.

This book, available in paperback for the first time, analyses the way in which the British left responded to this new challenge. How did socialists and communists in Britain explain what fascism was? What did they do to oppose it, and how successful were they? In examining the theories and actions of the Labour Party, the TUC, the Communist Party and other, smaller left-wing groups, the book explains their different approaches, while at the same time highlighting the common thread that ran through all their interpretations of fascism.

The author argues that the British left has been largely overlooked in the few specific studies of anti-fascism that exist, with the focus being disproportionately applied to its European counterparts. He also takes issue with recent developments in the study of fascism, and argues that the views of the left, often derided by modern historians, are still relevant today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Release date: Jul 19, 2013
• ISBN: 9781847797575

Keith Hodgson

Keith Hodgson is Head of History at Wigan & Leigh College

Book preview

Fighting fascism

Fighting fascism

The British left and the rise of fascism, 1919–39

Keith Hodgson

Copyright © Keith Hodgson 2010

The right of Keith Hodgson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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Contents

Acknowledgements

Glossary of terms and abbreviations

Introduction

1 White Guards and Black Hundreds: existing concepts of counter-revolution

2 Explaining Italian fascism: from movement to dictatorship, 1919–26

3 The British left and the rise of Nazism

Case study: political evolution and analyses of fascism

4 The left and fascism in Britain, 1919–32

5 Opposing the British Union of Fascists

Case study: political evolution and anti-fascism

6 Fascism and war

Conclusion: the old left and the ‘new consensus’

Bibliography

Index

For my parents

Acknowledgements

My first thanks are to Liverpool Hope University for providing me with a bursary and research funding during the preparation of this work. I also wish to extend my gratitude to those who read all or parts of the work in preparation and whose comments and advice were invaluable. In a roughly chronological order they are Dr Matthew Stibbe, Professor Michael Hopkins, Professor Elizabeth Harvey, Professor Charles Esdaile, Professor Andrew Thorpe and Dr Michael Holmes. Any errors of fact or interpretation remain mine alone.

I am also indebted to the staff of the various libraries and archives used in my research. These include the Labour History Archive and Study Centre at the People’s History Museum in Manchester, the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, the Sidney Jones Library at the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University Library, Liverpool City Libraries, the Sheppard-Warlock Library at Liverpool Hope University, the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull, the library and archives of the London School of Economics, the University of London Library, the Marx Memorial Library, the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick, the Western Bank Library at the University of Sheffield and the British Library and its Newspaper Library at Colindale. I am grateful to Glasgow Caledonian University for permission to quote from holdings in its archives.

I was fortunate enough to interview Jack Jones, who has since died, and who shared his memories of the labour movement, his anti-fascist activities in Britain and his service with the International Brigades in Spain. Bill Hunter has similarly furnished me with invaluable information on his experiences as a member of the fledgling British Trotskyist movement, the Independent Labour Party and the Socialist Anti-War Front. That Bill, aged eighty-four when we met, insisted on keeping our appointment on the day after he had undergone an operation, only deepened my appreciation of his help.

Glossary of terms and abbreviations

Arditi del Popolo: Italian anti-fascist militia.

Biennio Rosso: Literally, the ‘two red years’ of 1919 and 1920, which saw waves of strikes and occupations in Italy.

BF: British Fascisti/British Fascists. Early manifestation of fascism in Britain. Formed in May 1923. Changed its name to the British Fascists in 1924.

BSLO: British Section of the Left Opposition. British Trotskyist organisation founded in April 1932. It evolved from the ‘Balham Group’ of the Communist Party of Great Britain which had developed sympathies with the opposition in the Soviet Union and supported Trotsky’s critique of Stalin and Stalinism.

BSP: British Socialist Party. British Marxist party formed in October 1911. The party became increasingly divided over the issue of support for the First World War, leading its founder, Henry Mayers Hyndman, and his sympathisers to leave in 1916 and found the pro-war National Socialist Party. The bulk of the BSP later supported affiliation to the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1920.

BUF: British Union of Fascists. Founded in October 1932 by Oswald Mosley and others after the failure of the New Party.

CNT: Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo. Spanish anarcho-syndicalist trade union federation.

CPGB: Communist Party of Great Britain. British section of the Communist International, founded in August 1920.

Falange Espanola: Spanish fascist organisation founded in October 1933.

Fasci di azione rivoluzionaria: Pro-war Italian nationalist group formed in January 1915.

Fasci di combattimento: Original name of the Italian fascist movement formed in Milan in March 1919. Later organised as the Partito Nazionale Fascista.

Freikorps: Semi-independent nationalist and revanchist paramilitary units formed in Germany after the First World War. They fought on Germany’s disputed borders with Poland, in the Baltic and against revolutionaries and strikers inside Germany.

Gleichschaltung: The ‘synchronisation’ or ‘co-ordination’ of German organisations, institutions and economic functions under Nazism.

IFTU: International Federation of Trade Unions. Federation of socialist and social democratic trade unions, including the TUC. Founded in Amsterdam, July 1919. Linked to the Labour and Socialist International.

ILP: Independent Labour Party. Formed in 1893. One of the founding organisations of the Labour Party. The ILP was the individual members’ section of the party until 1918, and retained an independent membership structure within Labour after that. It split from the larger party in 1932, in part over the issue of the independence of its MPs from the Labour whip.

KPD: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands. The German section of the Communist International, formed in December 1918.

LSI: Labour and Socialist International. The international association of socialist and social democratic parties. Labour and the German Social Democrats were founder members. The LSI was formed at an international conference in Berne in February 1919 as the successor to the Second International which had broken down with the outbreak of war in 1914.

NCCL: National Council for Civil Liberties. Formed at the Congress of Action Against Hunger, Fascism and War in Bermondsey Town Hall following the 1934 hunger march to London.

NJC: National Joint Council. Liaison body comprising representatives of the TUC General Council, the Parliamentary Labour Party and the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee. Renamed the National Council of Labour in 1934.

NSDAP: Nazionalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei. National Socialist German Workers Party. Formed in January 1919 as the German Workers Party. Nationalist, anti-Semitic and revanchist, despite its left-sounding title. Hitler joined as the fifty-fifth member, quickly taking control of the tiny party and changing its name the following year.

OMS: Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies. British government body formed in September 1925 in anticipation of a general strike.

PCE: Partido Comunista de España. Spanish Communist Party, formed in 1921. Spanish section of the Communist International.

PCI: Partito Comunista Italiana. Founded in January 1921 after a split within the Italian Socialist Party. Italian section of the Communist International.

PNF: Parti Nazionale Fascista. Italian fascist party formed in November 1921 and led by Mussolini until his arrest in 1943. Previously, fascism had taken the form of the black-shirted squads of the Fasci di Combattimento. The PNF worked closely with, and later absorbed, mainstream Italian conservatives.

POUM: Partido Obrero de Unificacion Marxista. Spanish anti-Stalinist Marxist party which had links with the ILP in Britain.

PSI: Partito Socialista Italiana. Italian Socialist Party, formed in 1892. Italian section of the Labour and Socialist International.

PSUC: Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya. Catalan Comintern section formed when the civil war began in July 1936. Created from a merger of existing socialist and communist parties in the Catalan region of Spain.

Reichsbanner: German paramilitary organisation linked to the Social Democratic Party. Later organised as the Iron Front.

Rotfrontkampferbund: Red Front Fighters’ League. Paramilitary organisation of the German Communist Party (KPD).

SA: Sturmabteilung. The Nazi Party’s brownshirt militia. Its leaders were brutally purged by Hitler in 1934 over their calls for a ‘second revolution’ which would have altered the balance of economic power in Germany and placed control of the army in their hands.

SPD: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands. German Social Democratic Party, founded in 1869. Its initial Marxism gradually evolved into reformism. German section of the Labour and Socialist International.

TUC: Trades Union Congress. British trade union confederation founded in 1868. Organisationally linked to the Labour Party through the National Joint Council, renamed the National Council of Labour in 1934.

USI: Unione Sindicale Italiana. Italian anarcho-syndicalist union.

WSF: Workers’ Socialist Federation. British Marxist party formed in September 1918 by Sylvia Pankhurst and others. Briefly part of the CPGB in 1921. Expelled for supporting the Russian Left Opposition and because of Pankhurst’s opposition to communist attempts to affiliate to the Labour Party.

Introduction

The definitions of Fascism abound, and are marked by the greatest diversity and even contradictory character, despite the identity of the concrete reality which it is attempted to describe.

Rajani Palme Dutt¹

The British left and fascism: some questions

The British left is frequently overlooked when historians examine what socialists and communists thought of fascism in the inter-war years.² There is a significant body of work dedicated to the analyses and responses of the German, Italian, Spanish and French labour movements to this complex and dangerous political phenomenon in the 1920s and 1930s.³ Yet it is all too often assumed that the Labour Party, the organisations of its left wing, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) and British Marxists of various hues lacked valid ideas and strategies when compared with their European counterparts.⁴ More generally, the ideas of the left regarding fascism are regularly dismissed as being outdated, invalid or to have been superseded by more sophisticated modern analyses. This book aims to counter those myths.

The left’s general political perspective, its innate perception of society being divided along class lines and its interpretation of ideas, movements, parties and policies from this vantage point made its analyses different from, say, those of anti-fascist Conservatives and Liberals. There were many reasons to oppose fascism, of course, and most people in Britain and beyond were and are, therefore, ‘anti-fascists’. In inter-war Britain, there were Conservative MPs and peers who opposed fascism mainly on the grounds that the rise of aggressive nationalist regimes in Italy, Germany and elsewhere could pose a mortal threat to Britain’s global trading interests and the Empire itself. Liberals and democrats shared some of these fears, and also abhorred fascism’s destruction of parliamentary democracy and abuses of the rule of law, while humanists and libertarians decried the enforced uniformity and loss of individual freedom which fascism represented. Yet it is the left’s viewpoint that this work is concerned with. The left placed fascism in the context of the prevailing economic system and related it to other powerful forces and social classes in a way that other anti-fascists did not. It did not generally oppose fascism from a national or an individual perspective, but rather in terms of the inherent and perpetual class conflicts, sometimes acute and highly visible, sometimes submerged, which characterise capitalist societies. One of the purposes of this book is to assess the worth of analysing fascism in this way.

It is too simplistic to assert that the British left opposed fascism, and to leave it at that. Other questions automatically flow from that bald statement. These organisations did oppose fascism, of course, but on what basis? Were there any historical precedents which informed their thinking? The left agreed on certain fundamental characteristics of fascism, yet their interpretations differed in some respects. Why did these differences come about and what role did they play in the often fractious relations between the left parties?

Then there is the question of anti-fascism. The left had to decide how fascism was actually to be opposed, both internationally and domestically. These issues became acute in the early 1920s, with Mussolini’s rise to power in Italy and, shortly afterwards, with the creation of the first fascist organisations in Britain. Different parties developed different strategies of opposition, but why was this? Furthermore, several parties changed their anti-fascist tactics during the period, taking either a more moderate or a more militant stance over time. Why should that be the case?

In establishing these things, a final question arises. Can the perceptions of those British socialists and communists, who after all observed, analysed and confronted the threat at first-hand, bring some clarity to the ongoing debate about the nature of fascism?

The neglected British left

It is perhaps surprising that when the British left is considered in relation to fascism and anti-fascism, its main organisations, namely the Labour Party and the TUC, have suffered a grievous neglect. It is too often thought that these issues were the concern only of smaller groups on the radical fringe. Anti-fascism is frequently overlooked in histories of the Labour Party, and when fascism is discussed, it is often in relation to the party’s foreign policy as opposed to what Labour actually believed it to be.⁵ Michael Newman is a case in point, arguing that when it came to European fascism, Labour was ‘extremely tentative about defining its nature’, and maintaining that the party examined fascism on a country-by-country basis ‘at the expense of any general theory.’⁶

The TUC can also appear distant from the struggle against fascism as well as being analytically disengaged. No British union leaders had to summon their members onto the streets in response to a fascist challenge, as in Italy, Spain or Austria, nor strike in defence of democracy, as in France. Indeed, British unions did not take official industrial action over any event relating to fascism in this period. Given these facts, it has been tempting for some authors to suppose that the TUC was concerned only with workplace issues, and that it held no firm views as to the nature of fascism or how it was to be defeated.⁷

Furthermore, when significant episodes in British anti-fascism are considered, such as the violence that attended Oswald Mosley’s rally at Olympia in 1934, the ‘Battle of Cable Street’ in 1936, or the domestic contribution to the International Brigades, Labour and the TUC are seen as being organisationally absent.⁸ Their aversion to these more militant forms of action has tended to obscure their actual stance, leading one historian to brand them as ‘passive anti-fascist forces.’⁹ Henry Srebrnik stated that Labour was ‘strangely quiescent’ over taking action against the British Union of Fascists’ (BUF) campaign in London’s East End.¹⁰ In analytical terms, Thomas Linehan has been critical of Labour and the TUC for what he identified as an ‘absence of a detailed consideration of the social basis of the BUF’s support in East London.’¹¹ Keith Laybourn’s history of the party went so far as to conclude that Labour ‘chose to ignore British fascism’, while G.C. Webber argued in relation to the BUF that, after 1934, the Labour leadership ‘ceased to worry about the movement.’¹² Though it is true that Labour was less doctrinal in its analysis of fascism and less confrontational in its approach than some groups on the British left, this can in no way be equated with an absence of theory or a lack of concern.

A perception that Labour and the TUC were bereft of ideology has also contributed to the scarcity of studies regarding their attitudes towards fascism. This arises partly from the fact that, in contrast to these mainstays of the British labour movement, European socialist and social democratic parties had been founded on the basis of Marxism. Their attendant trade unions had not been created simply to represent their members, but as instruments of a class struggle seen as being inherent within capitalist societies. Over time, many such parties matured and contended for or even held governmental office, while the unions often engaged with mechanisms of arbitration and conciliation. Yet even though large sections of the European left had relegated the revolutionary transformation of their societies to a faraway point in the future, they rarely disavowed their Marxist creed in the interwar years. They may have adapted its tenets to suit their new roles, but it was far from unusual to hear European party leaders citing Marxism as the guiding principle of their actions, and a classless society as their ultimate goal.¹³

The Labour Party was born with no such embedded ideology, being founded primarily by pragmatic trade unionists and Fabian reformers.¹⁴ Furthermore, many of the socialists within the party took more inspiration from Christianity than from Marxism, and senior Labour figures did not hide the fact that ethics and morality outweighed any dogma in their world view.¹⁵ Clement Attlee argued that ‘probably the majority of those who have built up the Socialist movement in this country have been adherents of the Christian religion … In no other Socialist movement has Christian thought had such a powerful leavening effect.’¹⁶ He illustrated the point by observing of George Lansbury, his predecessor as Labour leader, that he had been ‘a Socialist who practised and preached the brotherhood of man. He was a sincere and devoted Christian who strove to follow in the footsteps of his Master.’¹⁷ Ramsay MacDonald, twice a Labour Prime Minister and key to the formulation of the party’s ethos, asserted that ‘Socialism is founded on the Gospels … It denotes a well-thought out and determined attempt to Christianise Government and society.’¹⁸

Labour’s strenuous attempts to distance itself from communists and communism have also contributed to the idea that the party eschewed ideology. MacDonald always stressed the fact that Labour’s socialism was consensual and in keeping with British democratic traditions, arguing in 1919 that ‘for a progressive movement here to try and copy Russian methods, or create Russian conditions, is to go back upon our own evolution.’¹⁹ Labour sought to effect change through the ballot box rather than in the streets or through industrial struggle, and as such tried to extend its appeal to broad sections of the electorate. Philip Snowden, a close ally of MacDonald and an influential figure in Labour’s leadership, assured voters in 1922 that ‘The Labour Party is the very opposite of a Class Party’, which actually sought ‘justice for all men and women of every class who live by honest and useful work.’²⁰

Even some in Labour’s own ranks doubted that it had a distinct set of beliefs. Richard Crossman argued in 1939 that the party’s socialism was ‘so deeply imbued with Liberal philosophy and springs so directly from the religious tradition of non-conformity that it has not produced any ideas peculiar to itself.’²¹ Yet any study of Labour between the wars will find the speeches of its leaders and the output of the party press replete with references to socialism and the constant restatement of the democratic methods by which the party intended to apply its policies. Labour argued for a better deal for the working class and for restraints on the worst manifestations of capitalism while making it clear that this need not fundamentally threaten the economic system or parliamentary government.

The fact is that Labour did at that time have a distinct ideological corpus and a methodology of implementation. That it was moulded in Britain’s peculiar political environment does not devalue it in relation to European socialism, or make it unworthy of study. The TUC was formed in 1868 and Labour in 1900. Both developed in a relatively liberal democracy, which had not been the case at the birth of many of their European equivalents. Both organisations, despite periods of intense class struggle in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, were nonetheless committed to the democratic system which guaranteed them the right to exist, which generally allowed them the freedom to act and which gave them the possibility of effecting change within its parameters. Stuart Macintyre, who has charted ideology within the British left, accurately reflects this reality, stating that while Labour leaders accepted that workers and employers might clash so that necessary advances could be made, the party’s ideas ‘lacked a hegemonic perspective’, and ‘did not involve any notion of the incompatibility of those interests with the capitalist class.’²²

Perhaps a more objective witness than Richard Crossman to Labour’s distinctiveness was Egon Wertheimer, London correspondent of the German Social Democrat paper, Vorwärts. He had an intimate knowledge of the left in both countries and in 1929 wrote ‘How different is the Labour Party! … The lack of a Marxist foundation has given to British socialism an immediacy in its consideration of practical questions, such as no other Socialist movement in the world possesses.’²³ While Crossman may have been correct about the provenance of the party’s ideas, Wertheimer recognised that the variant of socialism propounded by Labour and the TUC was the product of unique political conditions and gave rise to a unique political perspective.

Another visiting German Social Democrat, Oscar Pollack, observed that Labour and the TUC lacked ‘the psychology of the catacombs’ which repression had engendered in many European socialists.²⁴ Some of his British counterparts evidently agreed. In 1930 the Independent Labour Party (ILP), which predated Labour and had helped create it, discussed breaking away to create a more doctrinal party of the left. One opponent argued against Marxist secessionists that ‘British Labour cannot be regimented … The continental temperament is different. There the Social Democrat parties march each as a disciplined battalion under the banner of Marxian dogma. We might do the same had we grown up under the shadow of illegality and persecution instead of in the tender shade of Liberalism and Nonconformity.’²⁵

Given that, it has been all too easy to assume that the influence of legality and constitutionalism, the prevalence of an essential moderation and the failure to embrace Marxism, rendered both Labour and the TUC incapable of fully comprehending, let alone of combating the challenge of fascism. So when Labour has been considered in relation to fascism and anti-fascism, the focus has often been on the more militant and doctrinaire elements of its left wing, the ILP and the Socialist League.²⁶

The ILP was formed in 1893 and was one of the socialist societies which united with trade unions to found the Labour Party. Until 1918 it was the home not just of socialists, but of anyone who joined Labour individually and not through affiliation via a union. It remained a distinct and independent entity within Labour until it broke away in 1932. At its peak it could claim the allegiance of a majority of Labour MPs, and furnished the party with leaders such as Keir Hardie, Ramsay MacDonald, and George Lansbury.²⁷

That the policies of the ILP were not implemented, even by its members who held office in the Labour governments of 1924 and 1929–31, is illustrative of the conflict between socialist principles and the realities of political power. The history of the ILP between the wars is a classic example of the dilemmas facing socialists in a capitalist democracy. Those who moderated their ideas to attain power were generally found wanting when it came to delivering significant improvements for the working class. Those who maintained their beliefs intact were often driven further to the left by the failure of electoralism and reformism to bring about fundamental change. The radicalisation of the ILP can be traced back to 1918, when Labour’s new constitution officially distanced the party from the more open socialism of its left wing. The ILP moved further to the left in 1924 when, dismayed at the performance of the first Labour government, it replaced the conciliatory Clifford Allen as leader, first with the more recognisably socialist figure of Fred Jowett, and then the following year with the Glasgow firebrand, James Maxton.²⁸ Maxton championed a more combative and class-based politics and developed policy accordingly. As a consequence of this the ILP began to shed its reformists and attract radicals and revolutionary socialists who had previously stood aloof.²⁹

Increasing dissatisfaction with Labour came to a head after its disastrous second tenure in office ended in 1931. The Labour cabinet split under the tremendous strain of the Depression, leading to the defection of some of the party’s leading figures, including MacDonald and Snowden. They formed a coalition ‘National Government’, dominated numerically and politically by Conservatives. Though the ILP’s secession the following year was nominally over the independence of its MPs from the Labour whip, it is generally recognised that this was but a symptom of a wider disenchantment with reformism. Maxton wrote that he could not face ‘the cost of remaining inside and working another thirty-eight years for a repetition of the fiasco of 1931 … I intend to be outside the Labour Party, where I can carry on my work for Socialism among the working people of this land without the harassing preoccupation of having to fight the leaders of the Labour Party for permission to do it.’³⁰ Another leading ILP figure, Fenner Brockway, concurred, stating ‘We have come to the conclusion that the leadership, policy and organisation of the Labour Party are unequal to the needs of the working class.’³¹ Independence drove the party yet further to the left, an outcome foreseen by G.D.H. Cole, formerly of the ILP but who had chosen to remain within Labour’s fold. Shortly after the disaffiliation, he predicted that ‘ILP candidates will be under a constant inducement to outbid, as well as to out-Socialist, the Labour candidates to whom they will be opposed.’³²

The ILP failed to outflank Labour on the left in electoral terms, but it is the contention of this study that its radicalisation, its developing analysis of fascism and the tactics it adopted in its time outside of the larger party, constitute important chapters in the history of the British left and the study of anti-fascism. Secession allowed the party to think and act in ways which would not have been possible had it remained a resentful, but ultimately constrained, element within Labour.

The validity of studying the ILP, even before the split, has been questioned, partly because it was dwarfed by the much larger Labour Party, and partly because, despite the theoretical allegiance of large numbers of MPs, it did not succeed in having its policies adopted by the Labour leadership. Furthermore, there has been an assumption that the party could safely be ignored because it had cast itself into the political wilderness after 1932.³³ The ILP certainly suffered numerically after the split. Bill Hunter, who joined in the late 1930s, remembers that ‘the ILP had a certain base, but … in one sense was just an island of the base they’d had when they broke with the Labour Party.’³⁴ Some writers have concluded that the ILP became atrophied in terms of both policy and activism after 1932. One work claimed that from 1936 ‘the last spasms of independent vigour died out in the party’, while John Saville argued that ‘the ILP, in theory and practice, was largely irrelevant to the problems of the decade.’³⁵

However, the argument that the ILP did not matter is disputed by others. Richard Stevens’ study noted that ‘the general paucity of research concentrating on the ILP after 1932 constitutes a major gap in the historiography both of the British labour movement as a whole and of far left political parties.’³⁶ Tom Buchanan maintained that even in 1936, four years after departing from Labour, the ILP was still ‘a self-confident and avowedly independent political agent.’³⁷ Brockway, who was later to rue the decision to secede, nevertheless saw the conflict with the Labour Party as the point at which the ILP ‘began its inner struggle towards a revolutionary socialist position’, and the period spent outside Labour as ‘a chapter of working class history of importance to all interested in the development of Socialism.’³⁸ For this study the ILP is especially relevant: its radicalisation and increasingly militant anti-fascism are illustrative of the fact that when a party shifts its overall position, its interpretation of fascism is similarly transformed.

Many ILP members chose to remain with Labour in 1932, including not a few who shared the sense of disillusionment and betrayal felt by those who departed. It was they who were at the core of the ILP’s successor on the Labour left, the Socialist League. They included such luminaries as Stafford Cripps, G.D.H. Cole, Harold Laski and Aneurin Bevan. Initially championing Labour’s socialist tradition as the ILP had, the League became increasingly radicalised as the threat of fascism grew. Though ultimately unsuccessful in its aim of introducing more overtly socialist policies into Labour’s manifesto, the League did put forward distinctive interpretations of fascism and a radical strategy for defeating it, until its enforced dissolution by the party leadership in 1937. Even after that, Cripps and others continued to argue within Labour that the threat of fascism necessitated a drastic change in outlook and tactics, which culminated in their expulsion in 1939. The analysis of fascism espoused by the Socialist League was significant in its own terms, and as a contribution to the debate within the Labour Party. The differences between the League and the Labour leadership over anti-fascist tactics are a further illustration that the overarching political stance of a party or group in large measure dictates its reactions to fascism.

While national peculiarities have led some to question the worth of Labour’s socialism, the same has been true for British Marxism. Those in Britain who took Marx’s teachings to heart were largely confined to the smaller parties, and even sympathisers were sometimes willing to admit that they had not mastered its complexities in their entirety. Frank Betts of the ILP acknowledged that ‘We have a vague idea of Karl Marx and have tried, without success, to fight our way through Das Kapital.’³⁹ Here again, Oscar Pollack, the outsider looking in, was able to illustrate the different mentalities of the British and European labour movements. The spirit of reform and conciliation which generally prevailed within Labour and the TUC, he argued, had led to Marxism being misunderstood here as ‘a dry, dreary and narrow economic doctrine’, as opposed to the total conception of history and struggle which gave many European parties their sense of mission.⁴⁰

These views echo later accusations that Marxism was less clearly understood in Britain than elsewhere and that its domestic advocates put forward a less rounded and nuanced version than did foreign adherents. Stuart Macintyre noted that British Marxism has been accused of being ‘deficient in the philosophical sphere … [reflecting] the same empirical and non-metaphysical bent of the national culture.’⁴¹ Another historian of British communism, John Callaghan, pointed out that many of Marx’s earlier works, along with those of later Marxist thinkers such as Rosa Luxemburg, Georg Lukacs and Antonio Gramsci, were unpublished in Britain between the wars, maintaining that this prejudiced a full understanding of the doctrine.⁴² These charges are seemingly reiterated by the absence of British writers from David Beetham’s otherwise excellent anthology, Marxists in Face of Fascism.⁴³

However, this study holds that it would be wrong to discount the contribution of home-grown theorists, both within and without the ranks of the main Marxist body, the Communist Party of Great Britain (CBGB). Macintyre concludes that British Marxism in the 1920s and 1930s was far from being of the ‘vulgar’ variety.⁴⁴ It had a long history, with significant Marxist organisations being created from the 1880s onwards. The ideas certainly inspired many organisations of the British left, not least the Labour College movement and its attendant propaganda organisation, the Plebs League. These were both formed in 1909, significantly pre-dating the CPGB, which was founded in 1920. They were dedicated to the political and economic education of the working class and to the spreading of Marxist ideas. However, many of their lecturers, theorists and activists remained outside of the CPGB, some being Labour and ILP members, and some belonging to no party at all. Many prominent activists served their apprenticeships in the Labour College movement, not least G.D.H. Cole, Walter Citrine, Raymond Postgate, Ellen Wilkinson, J.F. Horrabin and Jack Jones.⁴⁵

The Plebs League did not see itself as the progenitor of a future revolutionary party, but believed that Marxism should imbue the existing organisations of the British labour movement. Its stated aim was ‘To develop and increase the class consciousness of the workers, by propaganda and education, in order to aid them to destroy wage-slavery, and to win power.’⁴⁶ These organisations represent a vibrant and often overlooked current within British Marxism, while their journals contain valuable early insights into fascism and provided a forum for discussion of the subject throughout the period.

The CPGB, unsurprisingly, considered itself to be the only true British repository of Marxism. It was scathing of activists like the Plebs, especially those who had recoiled from the discipline that a ‘real’ communist party demanded of its members. It asserted that ‘Marx’s name is glibly on their tongues.’⁴⁷ On the Plebs’ perhaps characteristically British rejection of the need for a disciplined communist vanguard, CPGB ideologue, Rajani Palme Dutt, had thundered ‘Could there be a simpler contradiction of Marxism?’⁴⁸ For most British Marxists, a revolutionary party was the natural concomitant of a revolutionary theory. Dutt wrote to the fellow traveller John Strachey that ‘It is one thing to reach a certain intellectual agreement with the correctness of the communist analysis … It is another thing to reach real revolutionary consciousness, so that the question of entering the revolutionary movement no longer appears as a question of making sacrifices, losing valuable opportunities of work, etc., but, on the contrary, as the only possible basis of work and realization.’⁴⁹

Yet the CPGB has been dismissed on the grounds of its relationship to the Soviet Union, the party being the British section of the Communist International, or Comintern, the worldwide organisation of communist parties formed in 1919 whose adherents were expected to follow policy emanating from Moscow. This ‘Third’ International came after the First, formed by Marx and others in 1864, which collapsed due to the incompatible visions of its anarchist and Marxist components. The Second International, consisting of social democratic and socialist parties, formed in 1889 but was swept away in 1914 with the outbreak of war.⁵⁰ The Comintern was intended by Lenin and Trotsky to be a disciplined global organisation of communist parties, acting in the interests of the Soviet power and working towards revolution on the Bolshevik template in their own countries.⁵¹

Some historians have argued that Comintern membership deprived the CPGB of any freedom of thought and action, thus negating its claim to be an independent political force. The charge that the party was wholly controlled by the Soviets was levelled by its opponents on the left and the right, and is one which recurs in the secondary literature. John Callaghan, for example, believed that, aside from Dutt, ‘there were no theorists’ within the party leadership, and argued in respect of its ideology that ‘there was no alternative source of authority to that of the Bolsheviks.’⁵² The Trotskyist historian, Robert Black, asserted of the CPGB leadership that its implementation of policy changes were merely ‘Stalinist somersaults … [that evinced a] total lack of principle in all the politics of the bureaucracy.’⁵³ Black’s theory discounts much original thinking by British communists. It also ignores the historical fact that pressure from below could on occasion be effective in changing Comintern policy and that in any case, the CPGB was often left to its own devices by a Moscow centre confronted by more pressing issues elsewhere.

That Soviet influence existed is a given, as were the effects on