These revolutionary years, deeply influenced by the Russian Revolution, led to many profound changes in the British Labour movement. Following the war, the Labour Party had adopted a new Constitution for the first time and introduced individual party membership. The Party also adopted socialism as its objective, inscribed in Clause Four, part four, of the new Constitution: “To secure for the producers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry, and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible, upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.” Drafted by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, the wording was not the clearest or the most direct, however, it sufficiently encapsulated the need to overthrow capitalism through the public ownership of the decisive levers of the economy under workers’ control and management. The Party’s new radical programme, Labour and the New Social Order, reinforced this immediate aim of eradicating the capitalist system once and for all.
In 1920, the TUC Parliamentary Committee was transformed into a Trades Union General Council as “a central co-ordinating body representative of the whole trade union movement”. The following year saw the establishment of the National Council of Labour, comprising members of the General Council and Labour’s Executive Committee. There was also an increase in union amalgamations, headed by the groups associated with the Transport Workers’ Federation to form the Transport and General Workers’ Union, under the leadership of Ernest Bevin. But there were even more profound developments shaking the Labour movement. The betrayal of August 1914, the carnage of the World War, and the earth-shattering events in Russia, all served to create a tremendous ferment within the mass workers’ organisations, reinforcing a shift to the left.
Following the birth of the Third (Communist) International in March 1919, Lenin and Trotsky had appealed for the formation of mass Communist Parties as a means of rallying the revolutionary workers on a world-wide basis. As a consequence, in 1920 the Independent Labour Party voted at its annual conference to disaffiliate from the discredited Second International, and open negotiations with the Third International. In the same year, a similar initiative was raised at the Labour Party conference. However, this time the right wing managed to scuttle the proposal by 1,010,000 votes to 519,000. Even then, a significant minority within the Labour Party had still voted for the pro-Communist resolution and displayed great sympathy for the Russian Revolution.
Despite this setback in the Labour Party, a number of socialist groupings in Britain did answer the call to form a new united Communist Party. Members and groups of the British Socialist Party, the SLP, ILP, and others undertook a series of negotiations, which concluded with a Unity Conference at the end of July 1920. Some 159 delegates, representing 2,000 to 3,000 members, proceeded to vote to found the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) and affiliate to the Third International. Although small in number, the party attracted the most militant sections of the working class, including many leaders from the Shop Stewards’ Movement. It was, however, far from being a fully-fledged Communist Party in its methods, organisation and approach. For some time it remained an amalgamation of the pre-war propagandist groups, still influenced by syndicalism and sectarianism. These class fighters knew what they wanted, but had great difficulty in agreeing how to achieve these objectives. The Communist International sought to help them root out this sectarianism, which arose from their political immaturity. The Third International under Lenin and Trotsky above all succeeded in persuading the young British party to face towards the factories and the organised Labour movement.