The document summarizes British organized labour and the Labour Party's reactions to the revolutions in Russia in 1917. It discusses how the initial March revolution was seen positively as potentially strengthening an ally against Germany. However, the November Bolshevik revolution was viewed with suspicion and trepidation by the British government, military, and employers as it could cause Russia to leave the war and stir up British workers. While some Labour leaders officially condemned the Bolsheviks, parts of the labour movement were more sympathetic to their cause, as demonstrated by the radical Leeds conference in June 1917 which supported the Bolshevik policy of "no annexations."

2. Organised Labour and the Labour Party – their
reactions to the Revolutions
Background
Dec 1916 formation of the Lloyd George Coalition Government. Labour
ministers in Govt., and Arthur Henderson, Labour leader, in War Cabinet.
British Govt rejects German peace proposals.
March 1917 first Russian Revolution
April 1917 Germans begin unrestricted submarine warfare and USA
enters the war against Germany.
1917 was the worst year of the war for Britain.
Severe privation throughout 1917. Food shortages due to Atlantic losses.
Unrest in a number of cities. Rationing introduced.
May 1917 Large-scale strikes in heavy industry, esp. engineering. Govt
becomes increasingly worried about morale and the war effort. German
bomber planes over London.
Union membership had roughly doubled 1900-1913. It nearly doubled
again 1913-1920.
Conscription was now a year old in 1917 – workforce under strain.

3. Background (cont'd)
Attitude of Labour of supreme importance to the British govt.
Unions became involved in the most important production
decisions.
The March Revolution was seen as a possible strenghthening of
a weak but crucial ally against the Germans, BUT:
The November Bolshevik Revolution was viewed by the British
govt., the military and employers with great suspicion and
trepidation, as a possible cause of Russia leaving the war, while
simultaneously stirring up British workers and undermining
the British war effort.
There was a ”frontal challenge to government” by some unions
during the later phases of the war (Coates and Topham).

4. Bomb damage, King's Cross, London, 1917

5. Food shopping queues, Reading.

6. Bread was the staple working-class food.

7. Potential strenghtening for British labour movement after
first revolution – Labour leaders encourage Russian war
effort
.
● The British govt assisted in sending a telegram of solidarity
from 20 leading figures of the Labour Movement, including
Ministers, MPs and Union leaders.
● The letter stressed the importance of maintaining the war effort
to defeat the “despotism of Germany”.
● It had been necessary to propitiate the Tsar; it was now
necessary to propitiate the Soviet. This was a new feature far
more to be reckoned with than the Provisional Government.
(R. Page Arnot, writing of the period between the Revolutions)

8. The Albert Hall - “Russia Free” Rally, 31 March 1917
● "Five thousand people were turned disappointed from the doors"
and, more than three years into the First World War, "the whole tone
of the meeting was overwhelmingly pacifist and internationalist".
● "This Meeting sends joyful congratulations to the Democrats of
Russia, and calls upon the Governments of Great Britain and of
every country, neutral and belligerent alike, to follow the Russian
example by establishing Industrial Freedom, Freedom of Speech
and the Press, the Abolition of Social, Religious and National
inequalities, an immediate Amnesty for Political and Religious
offences, and Universal Suffrage".
Speakers: George Lansbury (Chairman), Labour politician and
pacifist; Henry Woodd Nevinson, journalist and socialist; Israel
Zangwill, author; Robert Williams, trade union leader; Robert Smillie,
trade union leader, and many others

10. British labour visit to Petrograd Soviet in mid-1917
● Two veteran socialists sent from Britain to talk to Petrograd
Soviet – Will Thorne and James O'Grady – after March
revolution They were supporters of Lloyd George's “fight to a
finish” policy, while the Soviet was working for a quick peace.
● According to Arnot, hatred of the Tsar's oppression was
widespread in GB, and not just in the Labour movement. (The
mounted police in London were known as “Cossacks!”). He
says a rousing welcome to the Revolution was given in every
working-class organisation.
● All parties in the House of Commons supported a govt. motion
welcoming the March Revolution

11. Thorne and O'Grady visit Petrograd on behalf of British
labour movement, Spring 1917

12. Roy Jenkins Bolshevik!?
It is interesting to note that, on the fiftieth anniversary of
the October Revolution, the London Evening Standard
approached a number of prominent Labour leaders and
asked them which side they would have backed if they had
lived in Russia in 1917. Barbara Castle, RHS Crossman
and Roy Jenkins all replied they would have been on the
side of the Bolsheviks. What needs to be said is that their
historical predecessors certainly were not.
The Origins of British Bolshevism. Raymond Challinor 1977

13. Hopes after the first revolution – differing
standpoints
● The key issue was the War. Most of the Labour Party, all of the
Tories and nearly all of the Liberals hoped Russia would now
be able to fight more effectively.
● A small minority on the Liberal/Socialist left hoped Revolution
would lead quickly to a negotiated peace without
indemnities, annexations etc.
● This last point esp. important for the socialist societies, who
blamed imperialist and territorialist attitudes for provoking war.
● But the bulk of the Labour movement was not actually
socialist.

14. Arthur Henderson's visit to Russia, Summer 1917 –
the “door-mat” incident
● Arthur Henderson, Labour leader and a member of the War Cabinet, was
sent by PM Lloyd-George to speak to the Provisional Government in Russia.
● The aim was to keep Russia in the War. Henderson spent a month in
Russia. On his return he told his govt colleagues the best way to keep
Russia in the war was by exploring with them the path to a negotiated
peace.
● He also wanted British delegates to go to the proposed Stockholm Socialist
Conference, to which German socialists would also be invited. He
persuaded the Labour Party to agree to this.
● This precipitated a crisis with his war cabinet colleagues. Lloyd George
rebuked him, despite originally being sympathetic to Stockholm, and
Henderson resigned (the “door mat” incident). But Labour stayed in the
coalition and Henderson was replaced by a Labour colleague.
● The government refused visas for delegates to go to Stockholm, and the
conference never took place.
(http://www.socialhistoryportal.org/stockholm1917)

15. Henderson's party re-organisation – Labour Party reborn
● The Henderson events of 1917 show a number of interesting
possibilities and contradictions for government and Labour.
Henderson was now convinced that Labour had to become
independent of other parties - prepare itself for role of main
Opposition to a future govt., rather than hanging on to Liberal
coat-tails.
● Opportunity was likely to arise as Liberals were so badly split.
● Henderson formed a new constitution for Labour Party, giving it
constituency organisations, individual membership and its own
foreign policy. Feb 1918 - key date in Labour Party history, (and
also female suffrage!)
● The door-mat cast a long shadow!

16. Attitude of organised labour's official leaders to
Bolshevik Revolution
● For many official leaders of British working-class organisations, the
November Revolution in Russia was a complete disaster. Ramsay
MacDonald told his constituents that Lenin led a party of ‘thoughtless
anarchists... whose minds were filled with violence and hatred’. Philip
Snowden described the October Revolution as ‘tragic indeed’, and the
Independent Labour Party (pacifist and left-wing) repudiated Bolshevik
methods.
● Henry Hyndman, veteran Marxist, wrote , ‘Why We Must Repudiate the
Bolsheviks’, for the Sunday Pictorial:
I am proud to state that I can reckon most of the leading revolutionaries of
Europe and Asia among my friends. But they, in all their uprisings against
abominable tyranny were never guilty of such crimes as those which Lenin
and Trotsky and the Bolsheviks generally are committing... Democracy and
Socialism are now endangered by their conduct.
Probably the most outspoken condemnation came from Jimmy Thomas, the
railwaymen’s leader. He told Parliament that the Bolsheviks’ tyranny was
more terrible than the Tsar’s; the Kaiser was morally superior to Lenin.

17. Consequences of the March revolution for attitudes to
peace
Early 1917 sequence of strikes in UK - “combing out” and “dilution”.
This agitation was at an early stage when, on March 12, 1917, the
first Russian Revolution broke out.
Revolution had an immense effect on Labour opinion.
Most Labour men had been uneasy at Russian alliance.
Revolution was hailed as a grand liberation for the consciences
of Allied Socialists as well as for the Russian peoples! (Cole)
Russian workers began to demand a negotiated peace, and to urge
the Socialists of the belligerent countries to force a peace policy upon
their Governments.
Whole of Russia soon on the verge of military as well as economic
collapse.

18. Leeds Conference 1917
● Elements in the British Labour movement were hostile to Lloyd George’s war
policy.
● Unofficial Leeds Conference of June 3, 1917, organised by George
Lansbury’s Herald and the newly formed United Socialist Council of the
Independent Labour Party and British Socialist Party.
● Resolution passed for forming of Workers' and Soldiers' Councils
(Soviets). Because of this resolution the govt had considered banning the
conference under the Defence of the Realm Acts.
● But when the shouting was over, nothing much happened. Neither Labour
Party nor Trades Union Congress would react to the events at Leeds.
● Labour Party kept its place in the Coalition.
● One response was establishment of Joint Industrial Councils, and the
Government announced a Ministry of Reconstruction to prepare the way for
the post-war settlement of home affairs.

19. Leeds Conference attenders
● Speakers at this historic moment of international solidarity in
Britain in 1917 included Bertrand Russell, Ramsay MacDonald,
Sylvia Pankhurst, Tom Mann, Philip Snowden, Charlotte
Despard, Ernest Bevin, Dora Montefiore and Willie Gallacher.
● As Philip Snowden put it, the meeting ‘was not only the largest
Democratic Congress held in Great Britain since the days of the
Chartist agitation’ but a ‘spontaneous expression of the spirit
and enthusiasm of the Labour and Democratic movement’.
● For veteran Bradford socialist Fred Jowett it was momentous:
‘to the end of his life Fred used to refer to the Leeds Congress
as the highest point of revolutionary fervour he had seen in this
country’.

21. Leeds Covention 3 June 1917
● The Leeds Convention was possibly the largest ‘anti-war’
conference held in Britain during the First World War but in any
case it has been described by Ralph Miliband as ‘perhaps the
most remarkable gathering of the period’.
● It saw 3,500 people from across Britain gather at the Leeds
Coliseum (now the O2 Academy!).
● The Convention voted to hail the inspiration of the Russian
Revolution, defend civil liberties, call for an end to the First
World War and to set up Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils in
Britain.
● Robert Williams, seconding, said that it meant “the
dictatorship of the proletariat”, to loud cheers.

22. Leeds Resolution on Foreign Policy
● ... new aspirations towards a stable peace and the brotherhood of nations. In
that belief we pledge ourselves to work for an agreement with the
international democracies for the re-establishment of a general
peace which shall not tend towards either domination by or over any
nation, or the seizure of their national possessions, or the violent
usurpation of their territories – a peace without annexations or
indemnities and based on the rights of nations to decide their own
affairs;
● and as a first step towards this aim we call upon the British
Government immediately to announce its agreement with the declared
foreign policy and war aims of the democratic Government of Russia.
Moved by PHILIP SNOWDEN, M.P.; seconded by E.C. FAIRCHILD, and carried.

23. Voice of dissent
Mr Tupper of the Merchant Seamen's Union
● I want to raise the question of the merchant seamen who have lost
their lives by being torpedoed whilst bringing food to this country. If
there are no indemnities, who will be responsible for reimbursing the
widows and orphans of the merchant seamen? (Cries of “The
shipowners.”)
● Furthermore, may I ask if this Conference will compel the shipowners
to pay? (Cries of “Yes.”) I have said many times in my life in leading
strikes that I would compel the shipowners to do this, that, and the
other thing. Have we been able to do it? (Cries of “Yes.”) I say no!

24. Civil Liberties resolution at Leeds
THIRD RESOLUTION ON CIVIL LIBERTIES
● ... a charter of liberties establishing complete political rights for all men and
women, unrestricted freedom of the Press, freedom of speech, a general
amnesty for all political and religious prisoners, full rights of industrial and
political association, and the release of labour from all forms of compulsion
and restraint.
Moved by C.G. AMMON; seconded by Mrs. DESPARD.

25. Origin of delegates at Leeds
● Trades Councils and local Labour Parties 209 delegates
● Trade Union Organisations 371 delegates
● Independent Labour Party 294 delegates
● British Socialist Party 88 delegates
● Other Socialist Societies 16 delegates
● Women’s Organisations 118 delegates
and others
● Ben Tillett, veteran of the dockers Union, thought many of the
delgates looked very young, and some seemed to be
“aliens” ...”the malignity of these new revolutionaries”...”these
people have no country”.

26. Not everyone an enthusiast at Leeds
● Ernest Bevin of the Dockers' Union expressed scepticism that
the German Social Democrats could be persuaded to comply
with the moves towards peace. He also cast aspersions on the
motives of some Labour politicians, especially from the ILP,
whom he accused of furthering their careers with their pacifist
stance. Disorder resulted from his remarks.
● (Bevin was for many years head of the Transport Workers Union (TGWU)
and a government minister from 1940 to his death in 1951.)

27. Reaction in South Wales
● Aneurin Bevan, Minister responsible for setting up the NHS in
the 1940s, was in 1917 a young miner, and once recalled:
“I remember so well what happened when the Russian
Revolution occurred. I remember the miners, when they heard
that the Tsarist tyranny had been overthrown, rushing to meet
each other in the streets with tears streaming down their
cheeks, shaking hands and saying: ‘At last it has happened’.”
●
There were strong links between South Wales and the early
years of the Soviet Union. The South Wales Socialist Society,
enthusiastically supported the October Revolution.
The mining village of Maerdy flew the red flag and was
referred to as “Little Moscow”.
Lenin wrote to those in Wales attempting to found the first UK
Communist Party.

28. Pro-democracy meetings and anti-pacifist violence in
Swansea
● Public meetings were held throughout South Wales to mark the
abdication of the Tsar.
● After the Leeds Convention, a similar gathering was planned
for July 1917 in Swansea. Many branches of the Miners' Union
were particularly radical.
● The meeting went ahead but 500 pro-war demonstrators broke
in on it “and ejected the hundred or so remaining delegates with
considerable violence.” There are suggestions that government
agents played a part!
● An excellent account of the situation, the radical socialist politics and the
conflicts in South Wales is here:
https://fournationshistory.wordpress.com/2017/05/22/wales-and-the-russian-
revolution/

29. Joy in South Wales on the Russians' behalf
In “A History of Wales” historian John Davies wrote:
The unrest in the coalfield was encouraged by the
revolution in Russia… “There was no place outside of
Russia where the Revolution has caused greater joy
than in Merthyr Tydfil,” proclaimed the Merthyr Pioneer,
and the miners of Ammanford sang: “Workers of the
Vale of Amman/ Echo Russia’s mighty thrust.”

30. Women's Peace Crusade, Merthyr, July 1917

31. The Labour Movement in the years after
1917

32. The “Jolly George” issue and the Councils of Action
● May 1920 London dockers refused to load arms on the “Jolly
George” destined to help the Poles fight the Bolsheviks.
● Aug 1920 Lloyd George said he would send troops to support
the Poles.
● Labour Party and TUC formed a Council of Action. Jimmy
Thomas admitted they were challenging the Constitution.
Ramsay MacDonald said “confidence in Parliament is forfeited”
● Ernest Bevin and the TGWU supported the action. The govt.
backed away from war.
● 350 local Councils of Action were set up. A general strike was
discussed. That year came the formation of the Communist
Party. It is arguably the most radical moment in British
Labour history, and is closely connected with the
Bolsheviks' attempt to defend their Revolution in the
Russian Civil War.

33. Radical Summer of 1920 -
“Hands Off Russia!” remains the rallying call
August 1920: Arthur Henderson asked every local Labour Party for
immediate citizen demonstration against intervention in Russia.
August 8, 1920: Special issue of Daily Herald under the headline "Not a
man, Not a Gun, Not a Sou" , and quoting from the manifesto of the CPGB.
August 9,1920: The Parliamentary Committee of the TUC and the
Executive of the Labour Party decide to call national conference in London
and to lay before it resolutions for a General Strike if war were made on
Soviet Russia.
Special Labour Conference of 1,000 delegates demanded no support for
Poland versus Russia, removal of British naval blockade against Russia,
recognition of the Soviet Govt and establishment of trade with Russia

34. The coal heavers ... refused to coal the SS Jolly George on May 10th
1920. They struck better than they knew!…The strike on the SS Jolly
George has given a new inspiration to the whole working class
movement. On May 15th, the munitions are unloaded back onto the
dock side, and on the side of one case is a very familiar sticky-back,
‘Hands Off Russia!’ It is very small, but that day it was big enough to
be read all over the world. Harry Pollitt, 1935
Pollitt was a leader of the Jolly George action, and a founder and later
long-time leader of the CPGB.

35. A rather doleful celebration picture after Pankhurst's
release from prison, 1921

36. Sylvia in her prime

37. Melvina Walker
● Harry Pollit, payed special tribute to Melvina Walker, an activist
and wife of a docker.
● "Mrs Walker of Poplar toiled like a Trojan, on a shopping
morning you could rely on seeing her in Crisp Street, talking to
groups of women about Russia and how we must help, asking
them to tell their husbands to keep their eyes skinned to see
that no munitions went to those trying to crush the revolution".
● She was a Suffragette colleague of Sylvia Pankhurst and also
helped establish the CPGB in 1920.
● Sylvia on Merlvina: “I could imagine her on the barricades,
waving the bonnet rouge, urging on the fighters with
impassioned cries. When in full flood of her oratory, she
appeared the very embodiment of toiling, famine-ridden,
proletarian womanhood”.

38. Crisp Steet market

39. Red Clydeside
An era of political, social economic militancy from about 1910 to the early
1930s. Charismatic individuals, organised movements and socio-political
forces.
During WW1 the issues were conscription, families deprived of
breadwinners, shortages and profiteering, increasing rents and eviction
.
The Clyde Workers Cttee led the campaign against the Liberal govt
and the Munitions Act.
Anti-war activity also took place outside the workplace.
The Marxist John Maclean and the ILP's James Maxton were both
jailed for anti-war propagandizing.

40. John Maclean, the Glasgow Women's Housing Association and the
George Square Meeting
Under Mary Barbour, Mary Laird and Helen Crawfurd the GWHA
became the driving force of the rent strike of 1915 in Govan.
Maclean was the British socialist admired most by Lenin – though he
referred to him as “English”!
After the end of the war, he led campaign for a 40-hour week.
On 31 January 1919, a massive rally of trade unions took place on
George Square, Glasgow; perhaps 90,000 were present, and the Red
Flag was raised in the centre of the crowd.
The Riot Act was read, and attacks made on the strike leaders as they
exited.Troops in local barracks were locked in, and soldiers and tanks
from other areas were sent to maintain order.
.

41. Rent strike, Glasgow, during WW1

42. John Maclean dies, aged 44, in 1923.
Maclean's health was ruined by his constant political activity, five terms of
imprisonment and his period on hunger strike. The funeral march, led by the
Clyde Workers' Band, was followed by 10,000 people on its way to
Eastwood cemetery.

43. Was Red Clydeside a Revolutionary movement, and January 1919
“the moment”?
Willie Gallacher, later a Communist MP, said that, while the leaders of the
rally were not seeking revolution, in hindsight they should have been!
He said they should have marched to the Maryhill Barracks to persuade the
troops to come out on the protesters' side.
The trade union leaders who had organised the meeting, were arrested.
Most were acquitted, although both Gallacher and Manny Shinwell were
jailed.
Labour left-wingers replaced the Liberal Party in Glasgow as the party of
the working-class by the 1922 general election.
The group was known in Parliament for some years as the “Clydesiders”.
John Wheatley was a housing minister in 1924 and developed council
housing. Glasgow was notorious for some of the worst slums in Europe.

44. Tanks at the ready, Glasgow 1919.

45. Excellent resource for further study
The Russian Revolution and Britain, 1917-1928
Warwick University Modern Records Centre
https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/explorefurther/digital/russia/

46. “Soviet Russia : An Investigation by British Women Trade
Unionists - April to July, 1925”
From the conclusion of their printed report, of more than 100
pages:
We do not at all mean to deny that there is still much suffering,
much poverty in the Soviet Union.... If we have described and
emphasised the good, it is for two reasons. In the first place,
there are not lacking scribes in this [GB] and other countries who
are continually, not merely painting the bad sides of present-day
Soviet Russia, but exaggerating them out of all proportion.
Secondly, and far more important, we have emphasised the good
because the bad is entirely an inheritance of the past; the good is
the work of the present and an earnest of the hope of the future.

47. Continued
Whatever our abstract theoretical views may be of the soviet system
of government, however we may differ from the Bolsheviks in points of
detail, or even in general outlook as regards the position of affairs in
our own country, no honest observer of present-day Soviet Russia can
doubt for one moment that a great and sincere experiment in working-
class government
We consider that this experiment is worthy of the interest, sympathy,
and assistance of the workers of the world; that there is much in
Soviet Russia that our workers might do well to study;...this
experiment has resulted in bringing about enormous benefits for the
toiling masses of Russia; that these benefits are lasting and are likely
to become more and more widespread as the economic position of
the country recovers from the blows dealt it by world imperialism and
capitalism, and from the ruin and miseries it has inherited from the
Tsarist regime.
M. QUAILE A. BRIDGE A. LOUGHLIN L.A. ASPINALL

48. The Banner
During their stay Russian women trade unionists presented the
British women with a banner. The slogan on the front of the
banner reads “Workers of the World Unite. United Struggle of
Russian and English Men and Women Workers Will Ensure
World Victory of the Proletariat”.
The Women Trade unionists of Tvet, May 1925”.
Further information on Mary Quaile, chair of the delegation:
https://maryquaileclub.wordpress.com/who-was-mary-quaile/

49. Banner presented to the women's delegation

50. The delegation in Kislovodsk, a spa city in the North Caucasus
region of Russia.

51. Tom Mann's visit to Russia 1921, including the famine
areas of the Volga
I have had a long talk with Lenin... I spent two hours with him. I am
very favourably impressed with him. Unassuming, pleasant spoken,
easy of access, no side, perfectly clear as to what he is after, +
centres all upon the complete 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat'. Trotski
[ Trotsky ] is equally nice, + equally free from any thing approaching
airs.
Tom Mann also visited areas affected by very severe famine, and was
shown suffering communities. In later times foreign visitors were
shielded from such things.
... every morning the responsible local committee...collected all the
young children up to about 14 years of age... about two hundred.
These are taken to a collecting house and are kept there for a few
days. The children are fed after a fashion, but it is woefully deficient
and indeed there was a deficiency of every comfort and of every
reasonable necessary. The children are taken from the collecting
houses to hospital, if necessary, or to a home which combines
education with physical care...

52. Tom Mann
Tom Mann was a veteran socialist, anarchist, Trade Union leader and
syndicalist. In 1921, aged 65, he was chair of the British Bureau of
the Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern), which later
became the National Minority Movement.

53. Another take on the famine -
Tory candidate for Walsall,1925
THE TRUTH ... ABOUT ... The Food Question! The
reason why the loaf is so dear is the ruin of Russia by the
Socialists. Before Bolshevik rule Russia grew sufficient
wheat to feed all her millions, and sent to England millions
of bushels besides. Under Socialism Russia is no longer
able to feed her people (4,000,000 have already died of
starvation and disease) and is forced in order to save the
remainder of her population from a similar fate to buy
against England in the wheat markets of the world, thus
forcing up prices in this country. DO NOT RUN ANY
RISKS! VOTE FOR BILLY PRESTON YOUR OWN
TOWNSMAN!