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Title: Recollections and Reflections Author: Frank Kitz Date: 1912 Language: en Topics: Freedom Press, United Kingdom, autobiography Source: Retrieved on 30th August 2021 from https://www.marxists.org/archive/kitz/reflections.htm
Knowing that I was engaged in Socialist propaganda prior to the
foundation of the existing Socialist organisations in this country, some
comrades think that my personal recollections of events subsequent to
the decline of the British Federation of the International and of the
revival of Socialist agitation will be of interest to readers of
Freedom. I do not profess to be a facile writer, nor do I lay claim to
literary ability; but I will give as coherent a narrative as my memory
will enable me to do.
In autobiographical sketches it is expected that a writer should give
some account of his early life, and whilst I am reluctant to put my own
personality in the forefront of a narration of events in which I was a
humble and obscure actor, I think that a relation of the causes which
made me an antagonist of the capitalist system, and led me to engage
during the best years of my life in persistent warfare against it, may
not be out of place.
I have been asked frequently of late years how I became a Socialist and
the reasons for my conversion. Some have hinted — not ill-naturedly, I
hope — that I was born with a rebellious kink in my composition, which
is, perhaps, near the truth. I was a fatherless lad living in a single
room, for my mother had to go out to service. I supported myself as an
errand boy, porter, and messenger in various situations: ill-shod, badly
clothed, and seldom enjoying a square meal, except occasionally when my
mother smuggled me into her employer’s kitchen. This employer, I may
mention, was a vitreous, scraggy old maid, related to a well-known firm
of manufacturers. She occupied her spare time in writing to Tory
magazines advocating military drill for the working class, especially on
public holidays. And now we see the working class voluntarily lending
itself to this scheme to make the gallery fight the battles of the
stalls.
I decorated the walls of my lonely room with pictures of the French
Revolution, which I purchased out of my scanty earnings. Brought up in
the neighbourhood of the West End, with the evidences of wealth and
luxury confronting me — wealth unearned, comfort undeserved — and with
my own undeserved hardships, I needed no lectures upon surplus value or
dissertations upon economics to cause me to challenge the justice of a
system which confers wealth upon the parasites of society and clouds the
lives of thousands, as it had already darkened mine at the outset, with
care and poverty.
At the time I am writing of it was still possible to catch glimpses, on
clear days at some points in London, of the distant Surrey hills or the
Northern heights, now obscured by an ever-extending canopy of smoke. I
have an intense love of the country, and it was my habit to make
excursions on foot nearly every Sunday, with a scanty wallet of food,
into the then remaining rural spots around the Metropolis. Those
“kneaded fields,” as Ruskin described them, have long since become
noisy, sooty wildernesses of bricks and mortar. In later years, when
engaged in Socialistic propaganda, I have listened with mingled anger
and amusement to opponents who alleged that we desired to destroy
everything that is beautiful and upbraided us for our “grossly
materialistic aims;” and I have thought of the vanished pleasaunces, the
desecrated landscapes, the obliteration of every reminder of Nature, and
also of the crowded slums which have replaced those scenes. Ruskin has
poured out the vials of his wrath upon the spoilators, and Morris owed
in great part his conversion to Socialism to his abhorrence of this
aspect of the beast of Capital.
I was soon to undergo wider experiences which gave shape to my
ill-defined hostility to the present system, and made of me an active
propagandist against it. I had been articled to a garment dyer, but his
conditions of service were such that I determined to seek fresh fields.
I left him abruptly, and obtaining a shilling from a too-confiding
recruiting sergeant, I enjoyed a steak washed down with stout at her
Majesty’s expense. The call of the road was upon me, so getting a little
help from a few friends, I sallied forth on tramp. Starting out through
Surrey, I traversed the South-East Coast, repeating near garrison towns
the recruiting experiment, for as there were rumours of war, and England
expected to be involved, the roads were being scoured to pick up likely
recruits. All the recruiting-sergeants said I was a fine young fellow
who would be better off in the service. I did not stay long enough in
those parts to gather their subsequent opinions of the “fine young
fellow.” I had no intention of dying for a country which condemned me to
tramping and starvation.
Among my experiences on this comparatively short tramp — for I doubled
back from the Cinque Ports through Kent — I made acquaintance with “doss
kens” and casual wards, and often had to shelter beneath a barn or a
hedge. In passing through Rochester on my way back to London, I asked
for employment of a local dyer who was standing before his counter
measuring up the next day’s work, a custom at that time. He gruffly told
me, throwing down a 1/2d., that he had no room for tramps. That night I
had to sleep in a casual ward at Strood. Upon my return to London, I
learned that the dyer of Rochester was dead, and that his widow wanted a
hand. I secured the job, and returned to Rochester to measure up work on
the same spot where I had been so harshly treated.
My next tramp was undertaken in the depth of a hard winter, when the
unemployed were thronging the streets of London. This time I journeyed
towards the North, passing through the Midlands and North Wales into
Liverpool, where I arrived lame and penniless, without boots. They had
long since departed, and I had been forced to take to my clogs. In
Liverpool I secured temporary employment, and forgetting my past
troubles, the frozen roads and grim lodgings, with the bouyancy of youth
I managed to pass a pleasant time. Still, my wanderings were not ended,
and I went still further north, in all covering over two hundred miles
on foot on the upward journey alone. I found everywhere the same
conditions — the factory with its iron discipline, the mazes of mean
streets and insanitary slums for the workers, the enslavement of women
and children. He champions of the family and those who predict its
dissolution under Socialism might see what capitalism does in that
direction if they witnessed the rows of mothers outside a factory at
meal times suckling their babies brought to them for the purpose.
In the course of my travels I met with widely different treatment when
forced to ask for assistance. I have been hospitably treated by parents
for the sake of a son, a wanderer like myself, whose whereabouts they
knew not. At other times I have been threatened having the dog set on me
if I did not clear. As a propagandist of Socialism, I have returned to
some of the towns in which I first arrived as a wanderer; and the
memories of my own sufferings and the sufferings of my class have given
emphasis and force to my attacks upon the citadel of property and
privilege.
I need not dwell longer upon the subject of my tramping experiences. On
my return to London I settled in Soho, and here I was induced by a
friend to attend a political discussion held at a public-house ; and
becoming a regular attendant at those meetings, I there became
acquainted with G. Odger, John Rogers, G. Milner, W. Townshend, the
brothers Murray, G. Harris, and G. Eccarius, all members of the lately
defunct British Federation of the International.
This society was styled the Democratic and Trades Alliance Association.
Most of the members were Soho tailors and shoemakers, always the most
advanced amongst the workers. I became a member and a regular attendant
at the meetings. There I made my first attempt to open a debate, reading
a paper against political action, and was sat upon heavily and informed
that I would never be a speaker and not to try again.
Though this was my first entrance into membership of any democratic
society, I had in boyhood attended nearly every meeting or demonstration
held by the advanced movement in London. In the riot at Hyde Park at the
time of the Reform League my white printer’s jacket made me conspicuous
in the skirmishes with the police, and only my nimbleness saved me from
arrest. The police behaved then with their usual brutality, and when a
deputation from the Reform League afterwards waited upon the Home
secretary Walpole to protest against the outrages they committed,
Walpole shed tears at the recital of their doings; as the Press had it
“he wept upon the bosom of the League.” The League turned the incident
into profit, for at the great triumphal meeting at the Agricultural Hall
they reaped a harvest by selling Walpole’s tears in penny bottles.
This is a digression, however. I was now to be a co-worker with men to
whom in the past I had been an unknown auditor.
They have all joined the great majority, many passing away in abject
poverty, neglected and forgotten by the class for whom they sacrificed
the best years of their lives. I recall them as I write, the steadfast
old guard who in the midst of the reaction following the collapse of
Chartism and the decline of the Owenite agitation were the last remnant
of the British Federation of the International. Deserted by the Trade
Unionists at the outbreak of the Commune, they still upheld the
principles of the Social Revolution. The English Trade Union leaders of
this period, with the exception of George Odger and a few others, were
the rump of the Manchester School of Liberals. They battened upon bogus
political associations and electioneering dodges of every description.
Here is a sample of their tactics. A certain Alderman who sat for a
London constituency had always employed the Mottershead party as his
election committee; but, tiring of the bleeding process, he determined
to dispense with their services in one election. Consternation reigned
in the camp of the boodlers; visions of dry throats and empty pockets
rose before them. But they had heard that an itinerant herbalist had
Parliamentary ambitions and also a little cash. They waited upon him as
a deputation of the electors, and urged him to put himself up as a
candidate. He rose to the bait, parted with several pounds, and the next
day the division was placarded with his name posted over that of the
Alderman, who capitulated and put them upon his committee ; and the
herbalist was a sadder and poorer man. The difference between the old
Trade Unionist and the new variety is that to their credit it must be
said they did not use Socialistic phrases to cover their nefarious
designs or to gain power.
In this survey of the time, one notes that whilst a strong Republican
and Freethought agitation was being carried on all over the country,
there were only the few elderly men of the British Federation to
represent and uphold Socialism. As a young recruit, I stood alone. Of
literature there was little worth mentioning, except that issued in the
Republican and Freethought propaganda. In passing, I must pay a tribute
and own my indebtedness to them for their sledge-hammer attacks upon the
landocracy and theologians. The facts and knowledge they spread
broadcast had an educational effect which has been of advantage to other
and more advanced movements. We owe nothing to Christianity, the
historic foe of all progress. Personally, I have met only with virulent
opposition from Christian advocates when battling for Socialism. The
intrusion of Christianity into the Socialist movement to-day is designed
to vitiate it and thwart its aims.
But to return. Having shed some of the mere Trade Unionist members, we
evolved as the Manhood Suffrage League. Nominally a political society,
its members were the chief actors in bringing about the revival of
Socialism and laying the foundations of the present movement. Our
activities at the time were small, for it was a time of political
apathy. As a delegate of this society, with the late C. Murray, at a
conference on the land question, I defeated a proposal by C. Bradlaugh
for small proprietorship. We also took part in the magnificent reception
given to Michael Davitt upon his release from prison. I imbibed my
knowledge of past movements from my elderly colleagues who had been
associated with Robert Owen, H. Hunt, J. Harvey, Ernest Jones, Bronterre
O’Brien, Feargus O’Connor, W. Lovett, whom I met once before his death,
and a host of others. Dr. Travis, who was a friend of Owen, became a
member of our society, and Dr. Gammage, the historian of Chartism, was
an associate.
A sketch of some of the members will bring me to other matters in
connection with my narrative. First in my memory is W. Townshend, a
tall, gaunt, kindly old shoemaker, the possessor of a vast accumulation
of books and knowledge pertaining to the cause. He would read us
voluminous essays upon the helots of Greece and the plebeians of Rome,
which caused a stampede of our younger and more flippant visitors. Poor
Townshend! he died in poverty, and his beloved books which he struggled
so hard to acquire fell into the hands of strangers. Then there were the
brothers C. and J. Murray, who had been in every movement from the
Chartist onwards ; J. B. Leno, the Buckinghamshire poet, who struck at
the landlord system in rhyme and verse; J. Rogers, friend of Karl Marx;
and Maltman Barry, also on the most intimate terms with Marx. Barry had
won a certain notoriety by his tourneys with the political economists of
the Manchester school, especially Leone Levi. I and others mistrusted
him, but he appeared to break a lance for Democracy, and his intimacy
with Marx made him unassailable. Whether he used Marx or Marx used him
is a point that remains unsolved. Barry was the enemy of the old school
of Trade Unionists and Liberals, and posed as a Revolutionist. My
hostility to Barry frequently brought me into collision with my old
friend J. Rogers, who worshipped him. After years of deception, towards
the close of his career he threw off the mask and stood revealed as a
Tory agent. There is another Tory who, having manipulated the Socialist
movement, has not yet unmasked ; and it is, therefore, not a matter for
surprise that Justice should publish a friendly obituary of the late
Maltman Barry.
I have alluded to the defection of the English Trade Unionists from the
International. After the Commune, the remnant of the British Federation
called a meeting in Hyde Park to show sympathy with the Parisian
workers. There was a great gathering in response, which the Press did
its utmost to belittle by describing it as exclusively composed of
foreign refugees. A second meeting called at St. George’s Hall was
prohibited by the police, who guarded the doors with mounted men. The
capitalistic Press indulged in a furious campaign of calumny against the
Commune and all who sympathised with it. With the public hostile or
indifferent, and the secession of the Trade Unionists, it fell to the
lot of the foreign branches in London, by holding annual celebrations,
to keep alive the memory of the Commune.
Conspicuous amongst the foreign revolutionary forces in London at that
time was the German Working Men’s Communist Society. Founded, if I
remember rightly, after the abortive upheaval in Berlin in 1848, it
became a rallying-point and home of refuge for all who were proscribed
for the cause. Marx, Engels, Weber, Lessner, Herman Jung, were among
those who associated with and became members of this society. In
conjunction with the French, Slavonic, and Scandinavian elements of
London, they organised commemoration meetings. The Press chortled over
the almost exclusively foreign character of the audiences, and said that
the British working man would never imbibe the doctrines of foreign
revolutionaries. I recall a meeting whereat L. Weber, having spoken in
German, had, in the absence of any English speakers, to address the
gathering in English. He asked bitterly, where were the Englishmen who
had belonged to the International and the alleged upholders of freedom.
I pass over those years of triumphant reaction and apathy, and come to
the breaking of the dawn of a revival which is yearly growing in
strength and momentum. We in the small political society I have
previously mentioned had our conflicts with the purely Trade Unionist
members, who, when our foreign comrades solicited our help, opposed
co-operation. The bills announcing the celebration (and brave bills they
were, with the Red Flag printed upon them) were removed from the
club-room notice board. The brothers Murray, who represented our
speaking power at the time, went unofficially to help them. Eventually
we shed this fossilised element, shifted our quarters, and blossomed out
as the Manhood Suffrage League. The advanced reader may be somewhat
surprised at the mild political titles we assumed. We were pushing
forward the doctrines of Socialism under a political disguise, whilst
there are a number in the Socialist movement to-day who are mere
politicians disguised as Socialists.
Freed from obstruction and opposition, we cordially co-operated with our
foreign comrades in holding an international meeting at the Cleveland
Hall to celebrate the Commune. It was a most enthusiastic demonstration,
and marked the beginning of the revival. A large number of English
working men attended. Our comrades Louise Michel and Kropotkin spoke (I
think that was their first appearance upon a public platform in this
country). I made my first speech in a public hall on that evening. At an
informal meeting of comrades afterwards I was urged by my comrade Johann
Neve (since done to death in a German prison) to form an English section
of the Socialist party. I succeeded in getting together a number of
comrades, including those of the British Federation whom I have
previously referred to, and thus was started an English Revolutionary
Society, which, working with the foreign element, was to take its part
in the International Socialist movement. In referring to this period I
may be allowed to mention that H. M. Hyndman, who is styled by his
admirers “the father of Social Democracy,” has recently published his
reminiscences. I have not perused the book, but a reviewer of it states
that it is a record of thirty years of work on behalf of Socialism. The
reviewer in question must be in error, for about the time I am writing
of “the Father of Social Democracy” was wooing the suffrages of a London
constituency (Marylebone) as a Tory. Some have unkindly suggested that
his conversion was too sudden to be thorough, and that his lapses into
Jingoism and his Chauvinistic ideas of a purely English Socialism are
but signs of the old Adam peeping forth again.
New Toryism or Tory Democracy was being put forward to distract the
attention of the workers from the land question, which was being
vigorously discussed in working-class clubs and conventions. The
landlords were quite willing to divert the attacks from themselves to
the capitalists, and when the English section got to work amongst the
working class we had to combat their agents, who advocated thrift,
emigration, and Malthusianism as alternatives to Socialism. We routed
them in many a stormy meeting, and the emigrationists had frequently to
emigrate in undignified haste from the meetings they had convened.
Another society was now formed in the East End, named the Labour
Emancipation League; and, co-operating with them, we held a great
anti-emigration demonstration upon Mile End Waste. One of the banners
depicted an angry armed crowd chasing the landlords and capitalists into
the sea, as the only kind of emigration necessary. Some have thought
that this alleged conspiracy of the landocracy to preserve their
ill-gotten possessions even at the expense of their fellow thieves, the
capitalists, is a mere surmise; but the efforts of the Tories Oastler
and Shaftesbury in reference to the factory children whilst the
labourers upon the Shaftesbury Estate were in a deplorable condition
(vide Engel’s letters upon the condition of the working class in
England); and, coming to our own times, the pressure put upon Dr
Gibbins, the author of the “Industrial History of England,” to abate his
condemnation of the landlords; and the reduction of the position of the
Financial Reform Almanack from being a text-book upon the land question
to a mere catalogue—these are evidences of the landlords’ influence.
In these days of British Socialism, which is, I presume, a by-product of
the purely English variety, and has given us those strange human
documents, the Jingo Socialists, it may not be out of place to note that
the Socialist movement in England owes its origin largely to the
propagandist zeal of foreign workmen, who wherever they came into
contact with their English confreres sought to enthuse them with what
was then, even in its Parliamentary form, a new gospel. The C.A.B.V.
(the German Communist Society I have previously referred to), in the
masons’ strike, subscribed their funds and their members helped to
picket the Law Courts, and they were the means of getting away again
several batches of German masons who had been brought here under false
pretences. They also conducted a vigorous agitation amongst their
compatriots. When the Crown Prince Frederick visited this country, some
German tuft-hunter arranged a loyal demonstration, with a choir to sing
patriotic songs; but the Communists got there first and treated the
Prince to a by no means patriotic version of the “Wacht am Rhein,”
ending with a free fight and the defeat of the loyalists, which threw
the English Press into a rage. The prominence given to the German
Socialist movement caused some inconvenience, for wherever we (the
English section) addressed open-air meetings we were dubbed “damned
Germans,” and as some of our members hailed from the Green Isle, the
description was slightly out of place.
Gradually we won our way. From the West we extended outwork into the
East End. Mile End Waste was our outdoor rallying-point, and
indoors—let not the temperance reader be shocked—the club-rooms of
various public-houses, where under the guise of debating societies or
similar harmless-sounding titles we pursued our propagandist work. The
Radical clubs had still a leaven amongst them of ‘Chartists and
Republicans, and their platforms were at our disposal. They have long
since been nobbled by the middle class and brewers, and the amateur
negro minstrel stands where the lecturer should be.
By a combination of all the sections we established a club in Rose
Street, Soho. Having a hall of our own, we were enabled to hold public
meetings with greater frequency.
Almost the first meeting in our new quarters (over which the late G.
Shipton presided) was that held to protest against the Liberal
Government’s policy of coercion in Ireland. We organised a large
contingent from this club to attend the immense Anti-Coercion
Demonstration held in Hyde Park. Our revolutionary banners (which
included one with the well-known lines, “Blessed be the hand that waves
the regicidal steel”) roused the ire of O’Connor Power, and he incited a
section of his followers, Roman Catholics, to destroy them. We were soon
to experience Governmental persecution ourselves.
The passing of the Anti-Socialist Law in Germany in 1878 tried our
resources to the utmost. The club was crowded with refugees : our hall
at times resembled a railway station, with groups of men, women, and
children sitting disconsolately amidst piles of luggage. To vast numbers
expatriation meant utter ruin; it inflicted suffering and hardship upon
all. Shortly after this influx of refugees the sections jointly issued a
pamphlet, written by J. Sketchley, entitled “The Principles of Social
Democracy,” thus taking advantage of the interest awakened by the
operations of the coercive measures of the German Government. Many
thousands of this pamphlet were sold, the German section bearing the
major portion of the cost, in order to aid propaganda among our own
working class. The English section undertook the reissue of two
pamphlets on Communism by H. Glasse; they also published an address to
the amnestied Communists of Paris, and 50,000 copies of this leaflet
were distributed.
The expulsion of the revolutionary Johann Most from Berlin, after
serving a term of imprisonment, and his arrival in London, were the
signal for renewed activity amongst the German Communists here. His
fiery eloquence and poetic fervour enthused their somewhat flagging
spirits. The Freiheit was established and proved a thorn in the side of
the German despots. Despite their vigilance, large quantities of this
periodical were smuggled into Germany. As the title was changed from
week to week, each issue demanded a fresh prohibition by the
authorities. (One issue bore the title of Lehmann, the name assumed by
Prince William when temporarily a fugitive during the Berlin rising.) On
several occasions, however, we were puzzled by the fact that the German
Government was aware of the new titles before the paper reached Germany,
and thus forestalled us. Johann Neve and I set to work to find out the
cause. Suspecting a member who had recently joined, we supplied him with
a specially printed copy of the paper, bearing a title different from
the one we actually intended to use. The bogus title was prohibited, but
the other escaped. I regret to say that this member met with a serious
accident when attending a fete held in support of the Freiheit.
The State Socialists of the Marxian school pursued Most with bitter
animosity. The usual charge of police spy (imitated by their English
prototypes recently in the case of Emma Goldman) was made against him.
Seeing that he passed altogether ten years of his life in prison and
that Johann Neve, his friend and colleague, was, as I have previously
related, murdered in a German prison, this kind of espionage does not
seem as profitable as the publishing of treatises at so much nett!
Serious conflicts took place between the adherents of the old school and
those who shared the opinions of Most, and eventually resulted in a
split. The State Socialists seceded and established themselves in
another club, retaining the title of “ C.A.B.V.,” which is, I believe,
still applied to a restaurant in the West End.
I now have to deal with a historic event which had far-reaching results.
Russia was then, as now, groaning under an intolerable despotism; every
attempt made by the intelligent few to improve the condition of the mass
was repressed with ferocious brutality. Alexander II. and his satraps
executed or imprisoned all who tried, by even the mildest methods, to
rouse the people to a higher conception of life, until at last the Party
of the Will of the People determined to meet force by force, and on
March 13, 1881, Alexander was assassinated. The British Government
(under that saponaceous old word-spinner, Gladstone, who styled the
bloodstained autocrat “the divine figure of the North”!) arrested Most
and seized the printing plant of the Freiheit, owing to the publication
of an exultant article upon the death of the tyrant. The method of the
seizure and all the subsequent arbitrary proceedings (which ended in the
infliction of a sentence of sixteen months’ hard labour upon Most) were
Russian rather than English. It is worth noting, in passing, that
Anglo-Russian ententes are always fostered when a Liberal Government is
in power in England.
Whilst a great amount of indignation was aroused, and vigorous protests
made against this infraction of the traditional policy of England in
regard to political refugees, it was not comparable with the storm which
caused the fall of Palmerston for his betrayal of the brothers Bandura.
We have seen the last vestiges of the right of asylum destroyed by a
Liberal Government, so far as revolutionaries are concerned. The hunting
of the members of the Duma when here, and the handing over, under the
Aliens Act, of refugees, to be executed or imprisoned, has completely
exploded the belief that England is a refuge for the oppressed.
The Party of the Will of the People addressed an unavailing appeal to
the new Tsar to change the policy of brutal repression and enter on a
path of reform. They said : “You have lost a father, but we have been
bereaved of parents, children, and all we love by the murderous agents
of your power.” More executions followed, including the hanging of
Sophie Perovskaya for alleged complicity in the assassination of the
tyrant. It will be remembered that the death of this heroic girl
inspired the stirring verses of Joaquim Miller in her memory.
To return to the Freiheit. A strong committee was formed to defend Most.
The English section took up the challenge of the Government and issued a
manifesto, which sold in great numbers on the streets and was copied in
extenso by the Times and other dailies throughout the country. The
section also published an English edition of the Freiheit (“Freedom“),
of which I was the unpaid editor. There was much speculation as to
whether we would publish the incriminated article in English. Poland,
who prosecuted for the Government, had to read a translation of the
article to the magistrate at the preliminary hearing. Thereupon I
published it in the English Freiheit as an eloquent speech addressed by
Poland to the magistrate, thus defeating their object of enmeshing me in
the prosecution !
If it had been the purpose of the Government and their Russian allies to
spread the doctrines of Socialism, they could not have chosen a better
course than the prosecution. Brassey, a member of the Government — I
forget in what capacity, but as he was a road contractor, doubtless it
was at the Admiralty — had subscribed to Most’s election expenses when
he stood for the Reichstag, and this fact I was commissioned to
communicate to the late Lord Randolph Churchill, and he used the
information to annoy the Government and not from any other motive. On
that visit to the “Gasworks” I interviewed that sturdy old Radical,
Joseph Cowen, M.P. for Newcastle, who promised to contribute a large
share of our legal expenses. Catching sight of A. M. Sullivan in the
Lobby, he asked him if he would undertake the defence of Most, and after
a few moments’ hesitation, for Most’s opinions were opposed to his own,
he said, “This man is being-persecuted, and I will do what I can for
him.” I also interviewed Biggar, who contributed a small sum, for doing
which he got into trouble with his Catholic confreres.
Before passing on to other matters, I wish to refer again to J Cowen.
Although a manufacturer upon a large scale, he had assisted every
movement at home and abroad which had for its object the overthrow of
tyranny. He recruited a legion here and fitted out a vessel at his own
expense to assist Garibaldi. Remembering the refusal of the Turks to
deliver up Behm and Kossuth to the Austrian Government, he was a bitter
antagonist of Gladstone’s pro Russian policy in relation to the Eastern
Question. And he assisted us from a feeling of hostility to the Power
whose ruthless methods are a menace to mankind.
In closing this account of the Freiheit prosecution, I may summarise
some of the points which occur in connection therewith. The whole legal
machinery of the Liberal Government was put in motion to crush a
political refugee at the instigation of Russia : but the Gladstone
Government had also in view the suppression of the germs of Socialism in
this country. The head and front of the offence of the party behind the
Freiheit was their propagandist efforts to spread the principles of
Socialism amongst the English working class. They paid out of their
funds towards every attempt made in that direction. In 1879 Sketchley’s
“Principles of Social Democracy” was published and issued broadcast by
the German section. They also helped to start an International
Federation of Trade Unions, in opposition to an attempt by Bradlaugh and
others to set up a caricature of the old International. Their opposition
to the coercion of Ireland, and the comments of the Freiheit upon the
Phoenix Park affair, brought upon them a second prosecution, when
Schwelm and Mertens, two compositors, were sentenced to six and three
months’ imprisonment respectively. Schwelm, upon receiving his sentence,
pointing to the sword of justice suspended over the head of the judge,
said, “That sword ought to fall upon you.” A few months later the emblem
did fall upon the chief sheriff.
As I have shown, the prosecution had the result of awakening public
interest in the question of Socialism, and the English section had now a
wider field of operations before it. Our record for a small band of men
working under difficulties was no mean one. From Marylebone in the West
to Stratford in the East we had pushed our propaganda. We had published
pamphlets and issued addresses—one to the amnestied Communists of Paris
circulated through Europe.
But the pace was not quick enough for an ambitious young member named E.
Dunn; there was no limelight upon our obscure and ill-requited efforts;
and therefore he convened meetings of all sorts and conditions of men,
from which gatherings there evolved the Democratic Federation, the
forerunner of the Social Democratic Federation ; and thus, if we leave
out of sight the other workers of the preceding years, Dunn was the real
“father of Social Democracy.”
Some Tories of the Neo-Tory school attended the preliminary meetings,
including >H. M. Hyndman, with the blushing honours of his recent
candidature still fresh upon him. That gentleman, whom Frank Harris in
his book “The Bomb” describes as a prosperous-looking Jewish gentleman,
soon engaged in a conflict with Dunn for the leadership, and evicted
him, and has reigned with the aid of permanent officials ever since.
There have been revolts within and secessions from the “only” Socialist
organisation, for it was not to be expected that patriotism could be
substituted for internationalism, and palliatives take the place of
principles, without some exposure of the cloven hoof, and consequent
protests; but rigorous discipline, coupled with slander-spread by
faithful henchmen, has hitherto sufficed to preserve this ancient
institution.
But to return to the work of the English section. With the view of
starting a no-rent agitation and an onslaught upon landlordism, our
activity took another form and we became for a time the Local Rights
Association for Rental and Sanitary Reform. The Daily Chronicle, amongst
other papers, reported our earlier meetings, although they said there
were some suspicious Irish and German names in our membership. We
explored the slums and published our reports of the homes of the
workers, giving the names of the titled and lesser landlord and owners,
thus causing some commotion in dark places. The Press quickly discerned
our real object and dropped us. Now at this time in that terrestrial
inferno, St. Luke’s, a retired policeman laboured to save his fellow
creatures from perdition and earn a living for himself. We beguiled him
into letting us have his mission hall for our meetings. There we
conducted a vigorous no-rent and anti-landlord campaign. The missioner
soon took alarm and stopped our meetings’. “Why,” said he, “all my rich
subscribers will leave me if they know of it!” We on our side, to prove
our fidelity to principle, refused to pay. A rival labourer in the
vineyard of the Lord, to wit General Booth, has entered into the sphere
of the ex-policeman’s domain, and with the lucre bestowed upon him by
the British public for the Darkest England scheme has bought up some of
the slums, also a fully licensed house. All are in going order at
increased rentals and are a veritable godsend to the modern “profit,”
Booth.
Whilst conducting our agitation an anonymous subscriber helped us to
publish a pamphlet on the land laws, dealing chiefly with the
Metropolitan properties of the Bedford, Salisbury, Portman, Grafton,
Portland, and other descendants of the pimps, procurers, courtesans, and
informers of the past, who now have London in their grip.
It should be remembered that the English section and the comrades of the
Labour Emancipation League worked with only one aim, and that was to
permeate the mass of the people with a spirit of revolt against their
oppressors and against the squalid misery which result from their
monopoly of the means of life. No thought of kudos or personal
aggrandisement had entered into their efforts to spread the light, and
therefore the squabbles between would-be leaders had no interest for
them. We determined to devote ourselves exclusively to circulating
leaflets amongst the people, to do which we raised money by means of
concerts and lotteries, and purchased some printing materials, the
deficiencies of which were supplied by involuntary contributions from
printing firms where some of our members were employed. In this way a
well-known firm of Government printers furnished us with some excellent
ink, paper, and other requisites for printing our revolutionary
manifestoes and addresses, for which I now tender them my belated
thanks.
The methods of the Liberal Government of the day in regard to the
Freiheit and in Ireland made us cautious, and to give no points we met
secretly. Our first meetings were held in a street near King’s Cross,
but the neighbours and police becoming inquisitive, we shifted into
Boundary Street, Shoreditch, then a notorious slum. We occupied a floor
there as a co-operative printery, our next neighbours being two
deaf-mute beggars. The denizens of the street looked askance at our
intrusion into their region, regarding us as police “narks” (spies). One
of our members who had the misfortune to live in their midst reassured
them, and their suspicion changed into contempt for lunatics who could
open a printery in “our street.” The furnishing of the “printery” was a
model of economy and simplicity. Our seating accommodation was made of
packing cases provided upon the involuntary plan. A paving stone was our
making-up stone and inkslab combined. Candles stuck in the composing
cases was our lighting installation; and a roller hand-press our
machinery.
From this primitive establishment we issued the leaflets “Fight or
Starve,” an appeal to the unemployed; “Are We Over-populated?” an answer
to the Malthusians ; the “Revenge” leaflet, which caused a question to
be put in the House of Commons in regard to its origin ; and many
others, notably the “Appeal to the Army, Navy, and Police,” the terms of
which appeared to be so strong to the comrade who was setting it up that
at midnight he suddenly threw down his composing stick and declared that
he would not go on with it. His place was immediately taken by another
compositor in the room. That leaflet found its way into several garrison
towns. We sallied out on nocturnal bill-sticking expeditions, and
despite the destruction by the police of some of our handiwork, we
managed to placard the East End with incendiary manifestoes. By our
persistent distribution of literature and championing of Socialism in
lecture halls and schoolrooms — in fact, wherever Socialism was being
discussed we were present as upholders of the cause — we could fairly
claim a large share in bringing about the awakened interest and
enthusiasm for Socialism which prevailed at this time, especially in
East London.
Some of our members were also members of the Social Democratic
Federation and the Labour Emancipation League. Those in the former were
wasting their time in the futile task of combatting the opportunism and
Jingoism of their shifty leader. These causes were the factors in the
split which took place in 1885 and resulted in the formation of the
Socialist League by the seceding members. The purely propagandist and
non-Parliamentary objects of the League appealed to our members, and we
joined it at once. We found, how ever, that the demands upon our scanty
leisure were too great to allow us to attend to both the printing group
and the League, and we finally decide to merge our work into the
League’s, with its possibilities of a wider field of propaganda.
True to our anti-rent campaign, we owed some rent to the landlord of our
“printery.” At the final meeting of our group a heated debate took place
as to the best method of settling this liability, some arguing in favour
of cash payment and others for payment in kind. Finally, it was decided
to liquidate our indebtedness to the slum landlord by leaving him our
ink-slab (the previously mentioned paving-stone) as being akin to his
own heart.
Before describing the work and activities of the Socialist League, more
than a passing reference must be made to William Morris, the most
conspicuous amongst its founders. This is the more necessary as in the
short years that have passed since death removed this great personality
from our midst a fictitious Morris has been created by interested
scribes, who have invented for their own purposes a false legend around
his memory, and seek to deprive Socialism of the influence which his
adhesion gave to the movement.
Even the firm which bears his name, and which he with others founded to
raise the artistic taste of the public in regard to domestic decoration
and furnishing, whilst departing widely from the standard of excellence
which Morris set up, in a booklet recently published by the firm has
made a slighting reference to his Utopian ideas.
In the opening chapters of these recollections I alluded to the causes
which mainly contributed to his conversion to Socialism, these being the
hideous squalor of our towns and the defilement of Nature by commercial
greed. He saw that the debasement of art and the destruction of natural
beauty were the certain results of a profit-mongering capitalist system,
and the production of tawdry, shoddy articles under a system of fierce
competition and sweating is destructive also of health and life; and
that it was useless to expect the modern worker to possess artistic
perception under such hellish conditions.
He looked back longingly to a pleasanter England, when in a more
spacious age the handicraftsmen of the guilds wrought at anvil and loom
the masterpieces of artistic workmanship, the wonder of to-day. He
loathed the modern factory hell and the grimy prison towns, the
slave-pens of capitalism; and this feeling found expression in his
verses. The following brief quotation from “The Day is Coming” show how,
like Gerald Massey and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, he detested the
factory system :—
The whole of his poetry and prose is permeated with sympathy and love of
the poor, the victims of landlord and capitalistic greed. This note of
sympathy distinguishes him from many who surrounded him and who babbled
of art and culture, but were mere tuft-hunters, devoid of any desire to
raise the status of the working class.
And thus it came about that the artist and poet, bred in luxury and
trained in an aristocratic university, met upon terms of equality men
who had felt their way towards the light from totally opposite
surroundings. His keen intuition and broad humanity had led him out from
his environment towards them; and they, enduring the horrors of the
factory and the slum, revolting against their conditions, joined hands
in propagandist work against the monopolists of the means of life.
Morris’s preference for the society of his humbler confreres gave great
offence to some superior persons, including the great G. B. Shaw, who
upon the death of Morris wrote an obituary of him for a daily paper,
wherein he complained of Morris’s preference for the company of “tinkers
and tailors.” There were several erroneous statements in that notice,
presumably paid for at ordinary press rates. The French term this sort
of thing “making capital out of a corpse.” Blatchford, who had just
previously had a violent quarrel with “G.B.S.” and patched it up,
reprinted the obituary in the Clarion, no doubt “to oblige Benson.” I
think also that in wading through the works of another superior person,
H. G. Wells, and his brand-new version of suburban Socialism and
wonderful Gulliver-like stories, I came across some sentences deriding
the street-corner Socialist orator. Morris did not object to take his
share in that kind of propaganda. At one time the police were attempting
to suppress our outdoor meetings at Bell Street, Edgware Road; and
several comrades, amongst them the late Sam ainwaring, were arrested and
heavily fined, upon the usual pretext of obstruction. Unlike the arm
chair philosophers of the Wells stamp, who sell their treatises and
fearsome literary concoctions, Morris went to the danger-point; but,
much to his chagrin, the police would not molest him, but victimised the
poorer comrades.
So convinced was he of the utility of open-air propaganda that he stood
by my side on many a windy, inclement night at the corner of some
wretched East End slum whilst I endeavoured to gain him an audience by
addressing a few listless stragglers as “the working class of England.”
He had no feeling of contempt for those who do the rough work of the
movement. He was well aware that the persistent efforts of the governing
class to suppress free speech is a testimony to the efficacy of this
form of propaganda, and he was willing to share the risks which working
men ran when making themselves conspicuous by outdoor advocacy of
revolutionary principles.
Although his audiences were at first somewhat mystified by his method of
delivering his message, for he was no great orator, they gradually
grasped his meaning : and as he preached to those toil-worn crowds in
those gloomy East End byways of the possibility of realising the dream
of a beautiful England free from the curse of commercialism, he would
warm to his subject, and his audience would enter into the spirit of his
address. The following extract from one of his addresses will furnish an
idea of his style and give an answer to those who, as I previously
remarked, seek to claim the artist and poet, and deny his Socialism.
Speaking of the workers’ claim for a higher life, he said :—
“I have looked at this claim by the light of history and my own
conscience, and it seems to me so looked at to be a most just claim, and
that resistance to it means nothing short of a denial of the hope of
civilisation. This, then, is the claim : It is right and necessary that
all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of
itself pleasant to do; and which should be done under such conditions as
would make it neither over-wearisome nor over anxious. Turn that claim
about as I may, think of it as long as I can, I cannot find that it is
an exorbitant claim; yet again I say that if society would or could
admit it, the face of the world would be changed ; discontent and strife
and dishonesty would be ended. To feel that we were doing work useful to
others and pleasant to ourselves, and that such work and its due reward
could not fail us! What serious harm could happen to us then? And the
price to be paid for so making the world happy is Revolution.”
In the midst of so much that was of the earth earthy, when even
Socialism was presented by many as an urban doctrine still redolent of
bricks and mortar and the factory, his ideal of a natural life was like
the sweet aftermath of new-mown hay, which is carried by night winds
from distant fields into the city streets.
In “Nupkins Awakened” he scathingly satirised the methods of class-made
judges. In “John Ball” we are carried back to pictures of ancient rural
England, with a love tale subtly interwoven into the story, of the
Kentish priest and the rising of the peasants. The poet is, after all,
the fashioner of men thoughts, and sometimes the prophet of vast changes
in this everyday, prosaic world ; and in “News from Nowhere,” which was
written in opposition to Bellamy’s “American store Socialism,” we have a
glimpse of the coming fight between the “haves” and the “have-nots.”
When the Armageddon of Labour is fought, his idealism will mayhap be the
guiding thought which will give it inspiration; and the soil of England,
of which we have been despoiled by violence and legal chicanery, be yet
the home of a really free and happy people. To bring this about, the
strike will give place to the taking back of our common heritage, the
land, and the means of life produced from it. In that time which we hope
and strive for, his solemn words of warning and hope in “All for the
Cause” will be realised :—
In the police-court proceedings which followed upon the attempt of the
authorities to suppress free speech at Dod Street, Limehouse, a charge
was trumped up against him of assaulting a constable in court. The
Nupkins on the bench, Sanders, had never heard of William Morris, and
was unmercifully chaffed throughout the Press for his ignorance. A
cartoon appeared representing Sanders tearfully blacking Morris’s boots.
When the latter left the court he received a great ovation from a
tremendous crowd outside, which somewhat perturbed him, for he disliked
hero-worship; but it evidenced the feeling of the East-Enders towards
him.
Writing of this reception of Morris by the people of the East End
reminds me of the ovation accorded G. R. Sims some years before, when he
had touched the hearts of the people by his writings, notably his
“Christmas Day in the Workhouse.” That gentleman is now only known to
fame as the patentee of a hair restorer, which is but right seeing that
his later literary effusions are calculated to cause baldness. Sims had
shaken hands with the late King, and space will not permit of giving a
list of those who, from Chamberlain (erstwhile Republican) down to the
editor of Justice, have gone astray after undergoing that fateful
handshake.
Dealing with the motives which led Morris to attack the system which has
surrounded us with ugliness and squalor reminds me that the
Anti-Socialists have issued a leaflet warning us of the danger to art
and culture should Socialism prevail. This combination of the most
sinister anti-human interests — land thieves, slum owners, stock
jobbers, proprietors of the reptile press, all of the kind which the
late Bronterre O’Brien depicted in his “Vision of Hell” — standing as
the defender of art, is a sight to make angels weep. Their
hireling-speakers are continually attempting to besmirch the memory of
Morris, but that is beyond the power of those who, as Ruskin has said,
“pawn the dirty linen of their souls in order that they may dine.”
Many provincial branches severed their connection with the S.D.F. and
joined the newly formed League, of which new branches were formed in
fresh centres. It was in the course of furthering the provincial
propaganda that I revisited many towns where, as I have previously
related, I had formerly arrived as a tramp. The propaganda was carried
into Wales, Mainwaring and myself holding meetings at Aberdare, Merthyr
Tydvil, and upon the historic Rocking Stone at Pontypridd, Mainwaring
using the Welsh language in his addresses. We might fairly claim to have
been the pioneers in Wales of modern Socialism, which has now taken root
in the Principality. Certainly, the real Prince of Wales, the arquis of
Bute, will not fail to furnish the Welsh with object-lessons in landlord
rapacity and greed. Acting upon his right of possession, he has quarried
and sold half the mountain upon the summit of which the ancient Rocking
Stone stands. Popular clamour at the desecration of an ancient landmark
has been of little use to arrest the work of destruction. And why not?
Can’t a Marquis do what he likes with his own mountain?
In summarising the work of the League, its leaflets were the most
effective method of propaganda. Amongst those issued were “Ireland a
Nation” showing the futility of Nationalist proposals to free Ireland;
“The Causes of Prostitution”; T. Barclay’s (Leicester) inimitable parody
upon the old nursery rhyme, “The House that Jack Built” (when will this
be republished?) ; and many others, including one by myself, an “Address
to Working Women and Girls,” which the S.D.F. have done me the honour to
republish — without acknowledgment.
Events across the Atlantic were to give the League an opportunity to
distinguish itself from the State Socialists. Men, women, and children
had been shot and bludgeoned by Pinkerton’s police and the militia in
the ferocious and brutal attacks upon unarmed crowds in the eight-hour
agitation in Chicago. At last, after many had been murdered, some one
(who has never been discovered) threw a bomb at the police who, at the
memorable meeting in the Haymarket on May 4, 1886, were advancing upon
the people; and this time the police were slain. Although this act of
reprisal stopped the murders by the police, it furnished a pretext for
the arrest of eight of those most prominent in the Labour agitation. Of
the subsequent infamous trial and martyrdom I cannot write here. My
object is to show the attitude taken up in this country by the League
and other advanced sections in relation to these tragic events.
The capitalists of America and other countries deluded themselves with
the belief that the hanging of our devoted comrades — Parsons, Spies,
Engel, and Fischer — had stamped out the embers of Anarchy. The reptile
press on both sides of the Atlantic, guided by a common inspiration of
hatred towards the workers, gloated over the tragedy of November, 1887 ;
and, indulging in an orgy of abuse and calumny of our martyred comrades,
vainly hoped that by the stifling of their voices they had secured
undisturbed mastery of their own position. But the dying words of August
Spies, “There will come a time when our silence will be more powerful
than the voices you strangle to-day,” were a call to action to the
comrades on this side. The Socialist League, with comrades of the Labour
Emancipation League and the Freedom Group, determined to do their utmost
to defeat the object of the infamous trial and judicial murders in
Chicago, by publishing the lives and speeches of the condemned men, with
a record of the events which led up to the culminating tragedy. At this
distance of time I cannot compute the thousands of copies which were
issued in several editions of the “Chicago Martyrs.” The sale was
phenomenal, and cheaper editions were published. The widow of Albert
Parsons came over at our invitation, and delivered a series of lectures
which were fully attended. Through all the intervening years the memory
of our Chicago comrades has been kept green by annual celebrations
convened by the Socialist League and later by the Freedom Group.
Sometimes the police have deprived us of the use of halls for these
meetings, but that has not prevented the gatherings being held. As the
years have rolled by we have witnessed the growth and spread of
Anarchism, and the attempt to silence it on the scaffold has been
frustrated.
The State Socialists lent no assistance to keep alive the memory and
principles of the Chicago men. “Father” made it the occasion to put a
pamphlet on the market, but his followers were advised to abstain from
attending the commemoration meetings. A similar line of policy was
pursued over the May Day celebrations. The International Congress held
at Paris in 1889 had decided to hold mass meetings throughout the world
on the First of May each year, to show the solidarity and international
character of the workers’ movement. The Trade Unionists decided upon a
Sunday demonstration, and the only Socialist societies which held the
first (1890) May Day meeting in England upon the First of May were the
Socialist League, the foreign sections, and the Federation of All Trades
and Industries, led by Jack Williams. The “only” Socialist organisation
declined to come out. A successful meeting was the result of our
combined efforts, and it created a very different effect to that held
the following Sunday.
There existed, however, in the League itself opposing elements which
eventually led to its disruption. The merely negative policy of
Anti-Parliamentarianism could be endured by the West End branches, of
which Hammersmith was the strongest, and in which Morris’s personality
was dominant; but the East End comrades, confronted by a fierce struggle
for existence and in the midst of gigantic Labour conflicts, drifted
towards a definitely Anarchist attitude. A quantity of ink bus been shed
over the question of the split between the West and East End branches
which caused the dissolution of the League; but the temperamental
differences have always been ignored. Many of the West End members would
have found a more suitable environment and method of exposition of their
ideals within the ranks of the I.L.P. or the Fabian Society; and, as I
have indicated, it was only Morris’s personality which caused them to
give a lip-service to opinions from which many of them have since
seceded. They seemed to be afflicted with the timidity of anaemic
respectability. After a deal of friction between the diverse elements, a
climax was reached, occasioned by an article in the Commonweal by my
co-editor, D. J. Nicoll, on the question of tactics. The publication of
a second instalment of it was made a test question by the Hammersmith
branch, and as he refused to withdraw it, they severed their connection
with the League. As indicative of the attitude of this branch, before
leaving this portion of the subject I may mention that at a meeting held
in the East End (a Commune celebration, I think) the Hammersmith choir
refused to render the whole of the “Carmagnole,’” and deleted the verse
containing the line, “Their gods to hell may fly,” as repugnant to West
End respectability and Hammersmith orthodoxy.
The advanced sections migrated to the East End, and became for a time
the London Socialist League, the Commonweal appearing as an Anarchist
journal. The Walsall police plot and the condemnation of Fred Charles
and others to long terms of penal servitude brought forth an indignant
article in the Commonweal, to which the police replied by seizing the
paper and arresting the editor and writer of the article. It would need
greater space than is at my disposal to give a complete narrative of all
the circumstances which led up to a course of police persecution and
prosecutions directed against the English Anarchists. When in 1881 I had
charge of the defence of Most, I was assured by some of the Radical Club
delegates to the Defence Committee (rebels of the
Sunday-morning-club-visitor type) that no Government would dare to
prosecute Englishmen for free expression ; and the English Press, whilst
chortling over the almost exclusively foreign character of the Socialist
movement of that time, said Englishmen would never imbibe the doctrines
of foreign revolutionaries. The absence of repressive measures against
English movements was due to their innocuous nature and the passivity of
the Anglo-Saxon — in short, it is not necessary to muzzle sheep.
However, the capitalist Governments have forced the pace. From the
prosecution of aliens and the restriction of the right of asylum, they
proceed quite naturally to incarcerate Englishmen for expressing
opinions hostile to the established order, and have introduced Russian
methods in their police prosecutions. We are about to see the most
brutal features of American labour disputes imitated here by the
international exploiters — Pinkertons and hired auxiliary police It is
to be hoped that the organised working men will be prepared to give a
good account of these vermin. And so the logic of events is driving the
English working class forward on the path towards social revolution.
Those whom the gods seek to destroy they first make mad. So runs the
ancient proverb ; and as an old man at one time somewhat despondent of
the success of the revolutionary cause, I thank our masters for their
recent persecution as supplying the needed stimulus to the movement for
the overthrow of the present system.
I have related in these reminiscences the growth of the Socialist
revival from the nucleus of a handful of poor men, without literature
and with scarcely any speakers or meeting-places, up to the present
development of the Socialist and Anarchist movements in this country. I
have been asked to mention the names of some of those who played a part
in those early days. Some have joined the great majority. Where all
co-operated for the cause, it would be invidious to mention one or two
names. The purpose of writing these recollections will have been served
if it shows to those who have entered the movement later, especially our
younger comrades, what a few can do against almost insuperable odds. The
reader will have followed the evolution of the movement I have described
from Parliamentary Socialism to Anti-Parliamentary, and onward to
Anarchism; and in bringing these reminiscences to a close it may not be
out of place, whilst dealing with the Anarchist position, to give some
of the personal and general reasons which have caused the severance from
Parliamentary Socialist agitation and repudiation of its methods and
objects.
In the past, like many others, I would have preferred the line of least
resistance as a path towards the goal of common ownership of the means
of life, if Parliamentary methods had presented a feasible possibility
of arriving at that consummation alone, viz., the administration things
and not of persons. But as the spectacle of a wealthy prelacy preaching
the doctrines of lowliness and poverty, no less than the lies, slander,
and blackguardism of their hindmost supporters, the Christian Evidence
Society, made me an antagonist of Christianity ; so likewise have the
persecuting, despotic methods of the State Socialists within their
nascent organisations shown me what would happen to minorities under
their majority rule. They have displayed a bitter spirit of persecution,
misrepresentation, and abuse towards those who, whilst in agreement with
them as to the common ownership of the means of life, differ upon the
question of tactics and method of agitation. Their nebulous attitude and
even dalliance with Christianity, their display of Jingoism in reference
to the questions of armaments and patriotism, and- their bolstering up
of the State in its inquisitorial and Puritanical interference with the
liberty of the individual, even if we had not the pronouncements of Webb
and Shaw to guide us, would make us alive to the danger of State
Socialism. In a pamphlet entitled “Socialism v. Anarchy,” issued by A.
M. Simons, of the International Socialist Review, in Chicago, after the
death of President McKinley, being a report of an address delivered
against the Anarchists, there occur several statements which, as they
resemble the stock arguments used against us by Socialist opponents, may
be summarised here. He denies that Socialists desire “a further
extension of the powers of Government,” and states further that “they
are seeking to educate the people to use their ballots to the end that
the workers may become the rulers in the present State, and then use the
governmental machinery to abolish exploitation and oppression. This is
the only movement that antagonises Anarchy at every turn.” We are then
assured that there is nothing in the philosophy of Anarchy at variance
with Capitalism, and hence the reason why we are petted by the
capitalists. I have thought over this “petting,” from Pere la Chaise,
Waldheim, Montjuich, and the hecatombs of victims of Russian despotism,
who only wanted to use their ballots, to the ballot-box stuffing and the
bludgeoning and shooting of those under the American Eagle, who also
sought to use their ballots to abolish exploitation.
The disillusionment of Anarchists and Direct Actionists as to the
efficacy of Parliamentary methods has been mainly the work of
Governments themselves. They have shown that they do not intend the
political machine to be used in the manner so fondly dreamed of by the
State Socialists. They will allow a minority to participate in the work
of tinkering at legislation (vide Lloyd George), but the possibility of
a Socialist majority would be met by provoking a conflict or
gerrymandering the constituencies. Let the Standard speak. Alluding to
the common ownership resolution passed at a Trades Union Congress some
years ago, that organ of the classes then said :—
“Assuming for a moment that the majority of the electors in the United
Kingdom were bent upon such spoliation as the Congress proposes, assume
that they seriously set themselves to put the will of the people into
law, even then the battle would not have been won or lost. The strength
of the propertied classes is not to be measured by the counting of
noses, and the promoters of the Social Revolution would find themselves
confronted by sterner arguments than platform rhetoric or Parliamentary
divisions. Only by force can such changes be effected, and in these days
force does not lie in numbers.”
Others have discovered the truth of this last sentence, and may utilise
its lesson; but it was written against the political aspirations of the
State Socialists. Whether it be a Republic, a Monarchy, or an Autocracy,
force is its final expression.
We have borne the brunt of the attacks of the propertied classes, and
our list of martyrs in the cause of human freedom is not recruited by
the armchair Socialists or the pedants who cling to an exploded
political shibboleth. Doubtless they will come in as “experts” and want
to direct the coming storm. In such a case we may remember their past
“services,” and reward them in such measure as they deserve.
The chief of the tactical differences between the Anarchist and the
Socialist position is in regard to religion. As I have shown, the
Socialists have temporised with Christianity because of the belated
adhesion of a few clerics to a mild version of Christian Socialism. We
know that a creed rehabilitated at the expense of the workers’ movement
would close the door of knowledge to the people, especially the
children, in order to bolster up their superstitious creed.
Our comrades are imprisoned for anti-militarist propaganda, while the
Jingo Socialists (!) pocket fees for writing articles in favour of
patriotism and the increase of armaments for the columns of capitalist
papers which are notoriously bitter and virulent enemies of the working
class. And when these same gentlemen tell us that the Government of the
future will be “a gigantic statistical information bureau,” we are not
especially enthused.
If force alone will effect a change, we will approach the coming
conflict with the full determination to end political domination and the
exploitation of man by man; and bearing in mind the lessons learnt from
the mistakes of past revolts, the extinction of human slavery will be
our battle-cry in “the last grand fight to face.”