The victory of New Unionism in the 1890s proved an historic breakthrough in the evolution of the British labour movement. Not since the heyday of Chartism was there such an earth-shattering development. It represented the uprising of the most downtrodden and oppressed sections of the proletariat, which constituted its great majority. In one year alone, from 1889 to 1890, the numbers joining the trade unions more than doubled. In 1890, Britain – with eight per cent of its industrial workers in unions – had by far the most organised labour force of any capitalist country in the world. The organisation of the mass of unskilled workers, this great sea of proletarians, served to revive a thirst for socialist ideas and eventually laid the foundation for a new party of organised labour. The stormy developments of the late nineteenth century had begun to dramatically transform the outlook and consciousness, from which no section of the working class was exempt.
As explained, Marxian socialists had played a key role in the formation of New Unionism. Tom Mann, John Burns, Ben Tillett, Will Thorne, Eleanor Marx and others pioneered trade unionism amongst the labourers and unskilled on the docks, gas works, transport and other industries. These leading figures had rejected the sterile dogmatism of the Social Democratic Federation, which, in the words of Engels, “renders itself incapable of ever becoming anything else but a sect.”[1] Marx and Engels were strenuously opposed to pompously lecturing the workers from the sidelines, forcing ideas as articles of faith “down the throats of the workers”, instead of making the workers “raise themselves to its level by dint of their own class instinct.”(Engels)
Marx and Engels were also deeply contemptuous of sectarians, especially those self-styled Marxists who acted in their name and turned their ideas into a sterile dogma. The main point was to take the movement as it was, and not as one might like it to be. They offered sound advice. “The first great step, of importance for every country newly entering into the movement, is always the constitution of the workers as an independent political party, no matter how, so long as it is a distinct workers’ party…” stated Engels. While they argued for British workers to break from the tailcoat of Liberalism and establish an independent party of labour, they understood it would not necessarily be on “theoretically perfectly correct lines.” The weak theoretical basis of the movement, despite its confusion and deficiencies, would be rectified by experience itself.
The masses must have the time and opportunity to develop, and they can have the opportunity only when they have a movement of their own – no matter in what form so long as it is their own movement – in which they are driven further by their own mistakes and learn to profit by them.[2]
“The great thing is to get the working class to move as a class; that once obtained, they will soon find the right direction…”, continued Engels. All those who failed to understand this “will be left out in the cold with small sects of their own.”
He went on to urge not to
“make the inevitable confusion of the first start worse, confounded by forcing down people’s throats things which, at present, they cannot properly understand, but which they will soon learn. A million or two of working men’s votes next November for a bona fide working men’s party is worth infinitely more at present than a hundred thousand votes for a doctrinally perfect platform.”[3]
The path of setting up a mass party of labour in Britain would not be an easy one, with many pitfalls and disappointments. Nevertheless, four years after the founding of the SDF in 1888, the Scottish Labour Party was formed under the leadership of Keir Hardie. At the following general election, Hardie, together with Havelock Wilson and John Burns won election to the House of Commons on independent Labour tickets. Ten other workers were elected, but as Liberal candidates. Whereas Wilson and Burns succumbed to the parliamentary pressures, and made their peace with Liberalism, Hardie continued to fight hard for his dream of a mass party of labour.
At the 1892 Trades Union Congress, he carried a resolution instructing the Parliamentary Committee to draw up a plan for a Labour Representation fund. Although the decision was reaffirmed in 1893, together with a resolution urging unions to support only candidates pledged to “the collective ownership and control of the means of production, distribution, and exchange”, the leadership dragged its feet and delayed the implementation of the resolution. But the pressures for independent political action were growing.
In the same year, the Independent Labour Party was founded in Bradford. This was again an important milestone in the process of establishing a genuine party of the working class. Of course, the SDF – embroiled in its own sectarian world – remained typically aloof from this new development. ILP trade union activists, however, headed by Keir Hardie of the Ayrshire miners, targeted union branches and Trades Councils in their agitation for a political voice for the working class. Given the growing political ferment, the prospects of creating a mass workers’ party appeared promising. For this reason, Engels gave the founding of the ILP an enthusiastic welcome. Although the SDF remained on the sidelines, Marxists like Edward Aveling, and militant trade unionists like Tom Mann (shortly to become ILP secretary for a time), joined the ILP and played a leading role on its executive committee, hoping to give it a more correct political and theoretical direction.
At this time independent Labour politics began to get an echo in the working class, as witnessed by Keir Hardie’s election to Parliament. Robert Blatchford, the famous socialist propagandist and editor of The Clarion, explained:
If an employer’s interests are opposed to yours in business, what reason have you for supposing that his interests and yours are not opposed in politics? If you oppose a man as an employer, why do you vote for him as a Member of Parliament? His calling himself a Liberal or Tory does not alter the fact that he is an employer. To be a trade unionist and fight for your class during a strike, and to be a Tory or a Liberal and fight against your class at an election is folly… Do you elect your employers as officials of your trade unions? Do you send employers as delegates to your Trade Union Congress? You would laugh at the suggestion…
But the ILP proved unable to unify all socialist forces into a single party. The chief weakness was its lack of a mass base in the trade unions as well as its rejection of the class struggle. From a promising beginning, the party veered towards opportunism in an attempt to widen its appeal, which served to attract into its leading bodies former Liberal-types, like Ramsay MacDonald and Philip Snowden. “The ILP is extremely uncertain in its tactics, and its leader Keir Hardie is a more than crafty Scot”, noted Engels. In the general election of 1895, as a display of strength, the ILP fielded 28 candidates, and the SDF 5. But all were defeated, including Keir Hardie who stood in the West Ham constituency of East London, which he had won three years earlier. It was a setback, which gave glee to the conservatives in the TUC. Yet despite this, an unstoppable tide continued to move in the direction of independent political representation.