The Scottish Socialist Party site is carrying a report on the conference here.

As well as an overview of events there are some comments and feedback from attendees. These are reproduced below, visit the report on the conference for more details.

Brian Garvey, Fourthwrite, Independent Workers Union:

The space given to democratic discussion, the planning and facilitation of the event was impressive and I’m fairly confident that it was because people felt valued theat the exchanges were so constructive.

The honesty and will to learn from recent experience and experiences of others is a great example to us. So to is the acknowledgement that it requires our working alongside many other individuals and organisations to create a new society and on the bus home we talked of the inegrity and earnest of our Scottish friends and look forward to welcoming you to Ireland as we get things moving.

go raibh maith agat

Dan Finn, Irish Socialist Network:

Last Saturday’s conference in Edinburgh was an excellent day, well done to the SSP for organising it.

I learned a lot from the discussions as I’m sure everyone there did.

It was very encouraging to see left activists from Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England who are all working towards similar goals and facing similar challenges come together to see where our work over-laps, what we can learn from eachother and how we can support each other’s efforts.

I hope this is just the beginning.

Statement from Greece, the posting of which was unfortunately delayed.

Tonight, at 9.30 (Greece time) a 15-16 year old boy was shot twice in the heart and was killed by a policeman in eksarxeia, a neighbourhood which is the basis of plenty left organisations and anarchists’ collectives.

A police car was patroling in Exarchia passing through Mesologgiou cobbled street (considered an alternative place with music, bars etc and lots of youth in the streets and an unofficial asylum for the police, so we can easily assume the police car was sent there to provoke and harass the youth). A few young people started shouting to the policemen to go away. There are a few reports that an empty bottle was thrown to the police car. The cops went out of the car provoking the youth by gestures and words. One policeman shot twice against a 15-16 year old boy, right on the heart, murdering him in cold blood. The name of the boy is Alexandros-Andreas Grigoropoulos. Anarchists (mostly), members of left organisations and residents gathered, but riot police forces circled the area.

The police tried to enter the hospital where the young boy was transferred, but the crowd did not allow it. There are hundreds of policemen in the streets around central Athens, while in every city a place is announced through the internet as meeting points. Left organisations have already organised a manifestation that will take place on Monday.

The mass media announced that a group of 50 anarchists attacked to a police car which was just protecting a building and that the policeman shot in order to defend himself. In the contrary, there were comrades that were there and said that the story is as I described it above.

Pamphlet detailed below, split by chapter

• ‘Internationalism from below’ Part 1 of 8
• ‘Internationalism from below’ Part 2 of 8
• ‘Internationalism from below’ Part 3 of 8
• ‘Internationalism from below’ Part 4 of 8
• ‘Internationalism from below’ Part 5 of 8
• ‘Internationalism from below’ Part 6 of 8
• ‘Internationalism from below’ Part 7 of 8
• ‘Internationalism from below’ Part 8 of 8

If you are interested in this topic, discuss it in the comments or e-mail Republican Socialist Convention

The collapse of the ‘Internationalism from below’ Alliance as Conservative Unionism triumphs, and the first seeds of James Connolly’s perspective for the future

In a sense, the 1892 General Election results represented the furthest advance of the incoming swash brought in by the waves of New Unionism and the Home Rule movement. However, like the breaking surf found at the highest point on a beach, the energy was already spent and the backwash was soon in retreat.

The late 1880’s and early 1890’s boom in industry and commerce soon peaked and the employers mounted a counter-offensive. However, in the past, whenever the unskilled and semi-skilled had taken successful industrial action, during periods of boom, both their economic gains and their short-lived union organisations usually quickly fell away, when the boom turned to recession, and the employers once more held the whip hand.

What was new about the situation in the 1890’s was that most of the new general unions did survive, but only by falling back on the methods of Old Unionism – cautiousness in defending pay and conditions, calls for recognised conciliation and arbitration procedures, and the provision of services for members. Furthermore, the elementary mass participation associated with New Unionism when it surged forward, soon gave way to bureaucratic centralised control by general secretaries, opposed to any real independence shown by the branches(A), which might lead to costly and unwanted labour disputes (1).

Workers’ retreats on the industrial front were matched by setbacks on the political front. Although elected in opposition to the official Liberal candidates, both Wilson and Burns took the Liberal whip when they entered parliament (2). Thus, they collapsed into the Lib-Labism that had formed part of Westminster politics since 1874.

The Liberals’ manifesto, for the 1892 General Election, had recognised the challenge represented by New Unionism and adopted the minimum necessary policies the leadership thought were needed to contain it. Nevertheless, the Liberals’ priority was the achievement of a measure of Irish Home Rule(B). Therefore, Ireland was to be the real political cockpit, as Westminster became the focus for a new Home Rule Bill.

However, as the General Election results highlighted, it was in Ireland that the forces of Home Rule were most damaged, and where the forces of conservative unionism were best prepared. Even before the 1892 General Election, the Irish Unionists had begun preparing a convention (3), beginning in their stronghold of Ulster(C), encouraged by Lord Salisbury (4) and Joseph Chamberlain (5).

The Ulster Unionist Convention, which met on June 17th in Belfast, drew together the forces of Ulster Conservative and Liberal Unionism, the Orange Order, and all the main Protestant denominations (6). A real attempt was made to broaden the social base, beyond the usual Conservative landlords and their plebian Orange Order followers, by bringing in Liberal Unionist businessmen and tenant farmers (7). Attempts were made to restrain the grosser anti-Catholic diatribes at the Conference (8). The street preacher and Orange Order provoked riots of 1886 were not the image these Unionists wanted to convey. They were trying to persuade the wider British public of their respectable loyal, Protestant, Empire-supporting credentials in the run-up to the second parliamentary Home Rule bill.

Therefore, above the Convention’s platform were displayed a Royal Arms and the verse, One with Britain heart and soul. One life, one flag, one fleet, one throne (9). A majority vote in the House of Commons had no validity in the delegates’ thinking. This was a time when resort to the anti-democratic Crown powers was required. The Unionists knew they could rely on the reactionary House of Lords and the increasingly jingoist British Conservative Party. They also had the partisan backing of most of the local judiciary, and many army officers. The loyalist organisations could also be depended upon to oppose and disrupt any public presentation of the Home Rule case.

Gladstone did manage to get a majority of House of Commons votes - 301 to 267 - for the Second Irish Home Rule Bill on September 1st 1893 (10). The bill was then predictably voted down in the House of Lords. After this, there was no longer any necessity for Unionist/loyalist moderation. The annual conference of the TUC was being held in Belfast at the time. A large labour demonstration was organised to follow this. Speakers, including Keir Hardie, were severely heckled, whilst John Burns’ horse-drawn brake was attacked by 500 men armed with sticks (11).

Just as the advance of New Unionism had been largely contained, so now the Home Rule movement had been brought to a standstill. Davitt’s ‘internationalism from below’ alliance, already badly mauled, broke apart. Not surprisingly, it was not long before the ‘internationalism from above’ alliance, represented by the rather weak official Liberal support for Home Rule all-round, backed by the divided Irish nationalist parties, fell apart too. Gladstone was dead within a year, and the Liberal Federal Imperialist, Lord Roseberry, became Prime Minister in his stead.

The demand for Irish Home Rule had been seen by its social republican exponents, as part of a strategy to achieve an Irish Republic. However, the vast majority of English, Scottish and Welsh supporters of Irish Home Rule ended up giving their support to the specific measures advocated by the Liberal Party. The heroic days of the Irish struggle, associated most strongly with the Land League, had given way, under Parnell’s National League, to political wheeler-dealing. As a consequence, those Scottish and Welsh Radicals, and later Socialists, who first drew their inspiration from Ireland, tended to fall in behind Liberal formulations of Irish, Scottish and Welsh Home Rule.

The SHRA came increasingly under Liberal Party influence. This could already be seen in an SHRA document published in 1890, when a criticism was made of the greater attention given by the UK state to Ireland(D) - It appears to set a premium upon disorder (12). Meanwhile, in Wales, Thomas Ellis, the Cymru Fydd leader, accepted the post of second Government Whip in the new Gladstone government (13). He felt that his earlier support for Welsh Home Rule was now unnecessary, since there was a sympathetic Gladstonian Liberal government in power at the all-UK level. Ellis was a social imperialist and admirer of Cecil Rhodes. He had friends amongst the Fabians (14). In reality, Ellis’s notion of Welsh nationalism was more cultural than political (15).

The disappointment felt at the inability of the Liberal government to address the main social and religious issues facing rural and Nonconformist Wales led to the setting up of a renewed, more political, Cymru Fydd League, under the leadership of Lloyd George and Beriah Gwynfe Evans(E) (16), chaired by former Welsh Land Leaguer, Thomas Ghee. George’s immediate concern was ‘Welsh home rule’ within the Liberal Party in order to advance the social issues that most concerned Liberal supporters in Wales. His support for Welsh Home Rule within the UK was superficial.

In 1895, just before the fall of the Lord Roseberry-led Liberal government, Cymru Fydd League merged with the North Wales Liberal Federation (17). When a new Conservative and Liberal Unionist government was elected, Lloyd George tried to unite the North and South Wales Liberal Federation (SWLF) on what was effectively the Cymru Fydd League programme. However, this programme addressed neither the needs of the capitalist coal and steel owners, nor the industrial workers of the South Wales valleys, where the majority of the population in Wales now lived. A Newport meeting of the SWLF, held in 1896, completely rejected this merger (18). The gulf between north and mid-Wales on one hand, and mercantile and industrial South Wales on the other seemed alarming and gaping, and the Liberals strove to patch it up by dropping the entire campaign for home rule (19).

In the 1895 General Election, the Conservatives won 341 seats whilst their Liberal Unionist allies won 70 seats, between them a net gain of 98 (20). The Liberal Party lost 95 seats, and although their previous Irish nationalist allies gained one seat, the issue of Irish Home Rule had already been buried under Roseberry, and the new parliamentary arithmetic ensured that Irish nationalists had no remaining political purchase upon Westminster.

In Scotland, the Conservative and Liberal Unionists made considerable gains, nowhere more so than in the Glasgow and the Clyde Valley. To maintain their profits made throughout the British Empire, business leaders depended upon British imperial armed might, and a workforce divided on sectarian lines. A Liberal Unionist and Orange Order alliance was cemented. The hostility shown by Conservative landlords, the Orange Order and Liberal Unionist businessmen towards the Irish peasant was extended further, by leading Glasgow Liberal Unionist, Thomas Sinclair, in a speech he made against Home Rule in 1895. It is just as if it were proposed to transfer the interests of shipbuilders and manufacturers of Glasgow from the Imperial Parliament to the control of a legislature swamped by the crofters of the Highlands (21).

In Wales, it was the Conservatives who made the biggest gains in the 1895 General Election, winning six new seats, including significantly both Cardiff and Swansea (22). South Wales, like the Clyde Valley in Scotland, and the Lagan Valley in Ireland, had an economy dependent on the British Empire.

The only remaining independent labour representative in Westminster, ILP member, Hardie, lost his seat in the General Election too. The ILP had fielded 29 candidates, but all were defeated (23). The previous two years had seen attempts to promote socialist unity between the ILP and the SDF (24). These had been unsuccessful, due to opportunist worries of most ILP leaders about the wider appeal of socialism, and to the sectarian socialist propagandist approach of the SDF leaders.

The 1895 General Election signaled the arrival of the period of High Imperialism. The Conservative and Liberal Unionists were to remain in power until 1906. The retreats of New Unionism and the collapse of the Home Rule movement opened the door for further employer attacks on the trade union movement, and for the imperialist triumphalism, highlighted by Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 1897. The Liberal Unionist, Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, proposed the Jubilee be made a festival for the entire British Empire (25).

However, it was precisely in this period of retreat and despair that a remarkable individual came to the fore, who began the process by which the limitations of Davitt’s earlier ‘internationalism from below’ alliance of Irish social republicans and British Radicals could be transcended. That individual was James Connolly. He had been a member of both the Scottish Socialist Federation and the Scottish Labour Party in Edinburgh, and he became a member of the SDF and ILP.

Connolly moved to Dublin in 1896. He soon set about founding the Irish Socialist Republican Party (IRSP). The new party’s programme called for the Establishment of AN IRISH SOCIALIST REPUBLIC (26). Edward Aveling formally joined the IRSP, whilst Eleanor Marx expressed her support (27).

Connolly prepared the theoretical grounding, which could shift late nineteenth and early twentieth century working class politics in the UK beyond the almost defunct social republicanism found in Ireland, and the still influential Radical Liberalism found in Britain. He also developed the first bare outlines of an alternative history of Ireland. Influenced, no doubt, by Engels’ The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (28), he outlined the role of primitive communism in Ireland up to the seventeenth century (29), and opened up the prospect of Socialists being able to re-establish a future communist society, but based at a higher level of economic and social cooperation.

Connolly placed anti-imperialism at the centre of his politics. He advocated a break-up of the British Union and Empire strategy to achieve this. He stated that,

No Irish revolutionist worth his salt would refuse to lend a hand to the Social Democracy of England in the effort to uproot the social system of which the British Empire is the crown and apex, and in like manner, no English Social Democrat fails to recognise clearly that the crash which would betoken the fall of the ruling classes in Ireland would sound the tocsin for the revolt of the disinherited in England (30).

He was over sanguine in his judgement of English/British Social Democrats.

Connolly took a keen interest in India, and published an article, British Rule in India, which attacked

extravagant ideas about the ‘wealth of India’. In reality India was one of the poorest countries in the world, if not the poorest, her population (200 million) in a state of chronic misery. Yet the tribute exacted by the Imperial government amounted to 20 to 27 million pounds sterling (31).

However, Connolly was also an organiser and he soon threw himself into the preparations for an outdoor meeting in Dublin to protest against the Diamond Jubilee. The Rank & File 98 Club(F) held a mass meeting, attended by about 6000, under the slogan, Down with the Monarchy: Long live the Republic! (32). On Jubilee Day itself, the IRSP organised a demonstration, at the front of which was a black coffin marked ‘British Empire’. When Connolly reached the River Liffey, he threw the coffin over the bridge, declaring, Here goes the coffin of the British Empire. To Hell with the British Empire! (33).

Connolly very much appreciated the limitations placed upon the self-determination of nations within an imperialist dominated world. The struggle for political liberation had to be linked to social struggle for emancipation.

If you remove the English army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle, unless you set about the organisation of the Socialist Republic your efforts would be in vain. England would still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country (34).

Davitt had run with the ‘internationalism from below’ baton for the decade from 1879-89, before fumbling with it in 1890, and finally dropping it in 1892. In the darkest days of political and industrial defeats, during the heyday of High Imperialism, Connolly was preparing the grounds for the new ‘internationalism from below’ alliance in the UK and British Empire, built on the politics of republican socialism.

Connolly was to take up this baton, shortly after Engels died in 1895. Eleanor Marx was to commit suicide in 1897, whilst her former partner, Aveling died a year later. Whilst personal relationships and medical problems were the immediate causes of death, their demise can be taken as a sign of the times.

Yet, Marx and Engels left a political legacy – internationalism from below’ - which would be taken up by Connolly and others in the Second International. The tradition of ‘internationalism from below’ was soon to become marginalised within the Second International. Social chauvinism and social imperialism increasingly held sway in the world of High Imperialism. Those adhering to such politics tended to resort to Marx and Engels’ earlier writings to try and buttress arguments moulded by the thinking of the imperial ruling classes.

It took new anti-imperial struggles before a new generation of revolutionary social democrats and communists began to appreciate an ‘internationalism from below’ approach. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, a truly global opposition developed to capitalist imperialism. Those advocating ‘internationalism from below’ came to have a real influence upon those struggling for human emancipation and liberation in the International Revolutionary Wave of 1916-21. This was heralded by the 1916 Easter Rising, which Marx and Engels would little doubt have been wildly enthusiastic about, and in which Connolly played a leading role. Internationalism from below was to become a key component of the new communist challenge.

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Previous - ‘Internationalism from below’ Part 7 of 8

Footnotes

• (A) The warning that Davitt had made from an Old Union viewpoint about the lack of local autonomy in the New Unions, was to come to the fore again, only this time in the form of a socialist republican and syndicalist critique, when unions, such as Sexton’s NUDL failed to support their Irish members’ actions, after 1907, or their Glasgow members in 1911.
• (B) The disestablishment of the Churches of Scotland and Wales were also seen to be important policies to retain the support of the middle class led Scottish Free Church and Welsh Nonconformist churches.
• (C) Ulster Unionists then organised on the traditional basis of a nine county Ulster, although the conference delegates were most heavily represented by Belfast, Antrim and Down.
• (D) The Conservative government, even whilst continuing with its policy of coercion, still made some attempts to relieve the grave economic situation facing the poorest tenants in the West, by setting up the Congested Districts Board for Ireland in 1891. The Liberals continued to give priority to their policy of Irish Home Rule.
• (E) Beriah Gwynfe Evans founded the Society for the Utilisation of Welsh. He was a Liberal Federal Imperialist, and later gave his support to the Boer War.
• (F) 1898 was to mark the centenary of the United Irish rebellion. The Club was a united front between the IRSP and advanced Irish nationalists.

References

(1) see Alastair Reid, United We Stand – A History of Britain’s Trade Unions, pp. 223-5 (Penguin Books, 2004, London)
(2) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Labour_Party#Foundation
(3) Gordon Lucy, The Great Convention – The Ulster Unionist Convention of 1892, pp. 6-8 (Ulster Society Publications, 1995, Lurgan)
(4) ibid., p. 9-10.
(5) ibid., p. 6.
(6) ibid., p. 24.
(7) ibid., pp. 21-3.
(8) ibid., p. 19.
(9) ibid., p. 29
(10) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Irish_Home_Rule_Bill#Passed_ by_the_Commons.2C_defeated_in_the_Lords
(11) see John W. Boyle, The Irish Labor Movement in the Nineteenth Century p. 142 (The Catholic University of America Press, 1988, Washington D.C.)
(12) see Keith Webb, The Growth of Nationalism in Scotland, p. 39 (The Molendinar Press, 1977, Glasgow)
(13) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._E._Ellis
(14) see Kenneth O. Morgan, RoaNW, Kenneth O. Morgan, Rebirth of A Nation, Wales, 1880-1980 (RoaNW) p. 33 (Oxford University Press, 1981, New York)
(15) ibid., pp. 113-4.
(16) ibid., 115.
(17) ibid., p. 115.
(18) ibid., p. 117.
(19) ibid., p. 118.
(20) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1895
(21) see Graham Walker and David Officer, Scottish Unionism and the Ulster Question in Catriona M, Macdonald, edit., Unionist Scotland, 1800-1997, p. 18 (John Donald, 1998, Edinburgh)
(22) see Kenneth O. Morgan, RoaNW, op, cit., p. 30.
(23) see Martin Crick, The History of the Social Democratic Federation (THotSDF) p. 87 (Ryburn Publishing, 1994, Keele University)
(24) ibid., pp. 86-7.
(25) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Victoria#Diamond_Jubilee
(26) IRSP Programme, 1896, in David Lynch, Radical Politics in Modern Ireland: The Irish Socialist Republican Party, 1896-1904, p. 166 (Irish Academic Press, 2005, Dublin)
(27) see Fintan Lane, The Origins of Modern Irish Socialism, 1881-1896,(TOoMIS) p. 219 (Cork University Press, 1997, Cork)
(28) see Frederick Engels, The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State (Progress Publishers, 1968, Moscow) and http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/index.htm
(29) see Donal Nevin, James Connolly, ‘A Full Life’, (JC-AFL) pp. 76-7 (Gill & Macmillan Ltd, 2005, Dublin)pp. 76-7.
(30) Fintan Lane, TOoMIS, op. cit., p. 220.
(31) Donal Nevin, JC-AFL, op, cit., p. 92.
(32) Fintan Lane, TOoMIS, op. cit., p. 221.
(33) ibid., p. 221.
(34) James Connolly, Shan Van Vocht, 1/1897, quoted in P. Berresford Ellis, James Connolly, Selected Writings, p. 124 (Penguin Books Ltd, 1973, Harmondsworth)

The thwarting of New Unionism and the renewed Home Rule movements under the impact of the new Imperialism

This ‘annus mirabilis’ had been preceded by significant events. Scotland had seen the formation of a Scottish Miners Federation in 1886, and the widely supported Broxburn shale miners’ strike of 1887, followed by the formation of the Scottish Labour Party and Scottish Socialist Federation in 1888.

In England, the successful London Matchgirls’ Strike (1), led by SDF member, Annie Besant(A) (2), had also taken place in 1888. Elanor Marx, active in the Womens Trade Union League, also gave her support (3). Strike action, organised by Joseph Havelock Wilson(B) (4), led to the formation of the National Amalgamated Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union (NAS&FU) (5). The union’s main base soon became Glasgow, as successful secondary action by dockers led to a victory for union recognition in the ‘Second City of the Empire’.

The NAS&FU then proceeded to extend its organisation to both sides of the Irish Sea, in Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland. The dockers’ support action soon led to the formation of the National Union of Dock Labourers (NUDL) (6), initiated on Clydeside, and led by James Sexton(C) (7). The two biggest sections of the union were Irish Catholics followed by Highland Protestants. The union rapidly extended to Ireland and England. So successful was their recruiting on Merseyside, that the union headquarters were moved to Liverpool in September 1891 (8). A strike was launched on Merseyside, from December 20th 1888 to February 18th 1889, and again from June 6th to July 13th, 1889, over union control of labour (9). It involved both Protestant and Catholic workers(D).

The two key disputes, which made many more people aware that something wider was stirring, were the London Gasworkers’ Strike (10) for the eight hour day in May, 1889, soon followed by the London Dockers’ Strike in August (11) for the ‘dockers’ tanner’, or six pence per hour.

The Gasworkers’ Strike was led Will Thorne (12) and by Ben TiIlet (13). They were both members of the SDF. They also received strong backing from two other SDF members, John Burns (14) and Tom Mann(E) (15), as a well as from former SL member, Eleanor Marx. The immediate effect of the Gasworkers’ Strike was the formation of the National Union of Gasworkers and General Labourers (NUG&GL) (16).

The Dockers’ Strike had an even wider impact. It involved thousands of casually employed dock labourers and other workers who struck in solidarity. It led to rent strike action by the dockers’ partners, and to large-scale international financial support, particularly from Australia. Many of the individual organisers in the Gasworkers’ Strike became involved in the Dockers’ Strike. The Port, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers Union was formed (PWR&GLU) (17). The organisation of the NUDL, initiated in Scotland and then spread south to England and Ireland, contributed to the wave of action that launched what first became known as New Unionism in London. This in its turn spread back to Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

In Wales, the PWR&GLU was able to extend beyond Cardiff docks to include metalworkers badly hit by the effect of McKinley Tariffs (18) introduced in the USA (19). The national protectionism associated with the rise of New Imperialism was making its effect felt.

In Ireland New Unionism developed, where the socio-economic and political situation was different from the rest of the UK, and where the ongoing political struggle over Irish Home Rule, much more fraught. Unlike England, Scotland and Wales, where most of the population had direct experience of the Industrial Revolution, in Ireland, this was only true of the Lagan Valley in north-east Ulster.

Yet, it was precisely in this area that industrialisation failed to create longer term favourable conditions for New Unionism. Its main advocates were too associated with Socialists and Home Rulers for it to be able to take root amongst the Protestant workers. Most of these were politically tied to a cross-class UK Unionism. They mainly supported the Conservatives.

Although there were no major industrial centres in the rest of Ireland, there were railways, docks and, in Dublin, activities such as building, gaswork labouring and carting that employed large numbers of workers. In these areas New Unionism had an impact and led to spin-offs, such as growing support for an eight hour working day, and the demand for the political organisation of labour. The first Dublin May Day parade in 1890 was a considerable success.

In 1890, the effects of New Unionism were still advancing strongly in Ireland. The key NUG&GL organisers, Shields and Canty, gave their support to the strike, launched in March by the Dublin United Building Labourers Trade Union (20). After facing continued employer intransigence, Davitt was once more appointed as arbitrator (21). The supporters of New Unionism increasingly resented Davitt’s adherence to the older trade union traditions of conciliation and arbitration.

Davitt refused to chair a mass meeting, initiated by the NUG&GL, of between 8-10,000 in Phoenix Park on March 30th (22). At this meeting, Shields claimed that Irish workers had as much claim upon Mr. Davitt as the labourers of England, Scotland and Wales (23). There was some truth in this dig, since Davitt was preparing to launch his Labour World in London. This was primarily targeted at what he saw as the more advanced labour consciousness in England and Scotland (24).

Davitt attacked the lack of ‘home rule’, or autonomy, to be found in the new general unions. He feared that an unconsidered extension of British based general unions might lead to a strike or similar action because it may seem expedient or necessary to men unacquainted with the peculiar economic conditions of Ireland to order a resort to such proceeding in Ireland(F) (25). Here, Davitt, in looking to the past, was acting as a brake on the further development of an ‘internationalism from below’ alliance. However, some of Davitt’s long time supporters, such as McHugh and McGhee, and others, such as Canty, were politically ahead of him in their recognition of the importance of New Unionism.

Engels was also well aware of the importance of Davitt in recent struggles. He praised Davitt and his allies’ response to the impetus {given} to the labour movement in Ireland. Many of their branches consist of agricultural labourers (26). This was a recognition of Davitt’s role in founding the Irish Democratic and Trade and Labour Federation (IDTLF) in Cork in January, 1890 (27). It consisted mainly of agricultural labourers and country town workers. Engels claimed that Davitt, too, who had at first wanted independent Irish Trade Unions, has learned from them {the New Unions}: their constitution secures them perfectly free home rule(G) (28). This was too optimistic an appraisal, as events were soon to show.

In December 1890, in the middle of the surge of New Unionism, Davitt’s political bearings were shattered by Parnell’s involvement in the Kitty O’Shea divorce scandal (29). Davitt was the first to publicly break with Parnell over this betrayal of trust. The NL leadership was still prepared to back Parnell, however, and even the Catholic hierarchy initially remained aloof. It was the strong Nonconformist element in Gladstone’s Liberal Party that changed the political balance. They made it known that they could no longer uphold their party’s alliance with the NL. It was then that the majority of the NL leaders turned on Parnell (30).

For, if there was one thing Parnell had drummed into their heads, over the past five years, it was the need to maintain the NL/Liberal alliance, at all costs. Now, only jettisoning Parnell himself could do that. Thus, the majority of the NL leadership unceremoniously dumped Parnell, although he retained enough support in Dublin to hold on to the party apparatus and paper (31).

Davitt joined those who split to form a breakaway party - the Irish National Federation (INF) (32). He still remained convinced of the need for a single national party, yet was helping to create one led by his class enemies, backed by the Catholic hierarchy. They had been prepared to go along with Parnell, so long as the NL could advance their own interests under his umbrella. Now, though, the hierarchy took the opportunity to break with any need for a Protestant frontman, so that it could remould the existing national party to better meet its needs.

Therefore, instead of the previous NL-Liberal alliance, an INF-Catholic hierarchy alliance was forged, which would look to whatever British party could best serve its interests. The INF became the political depository for those Catholic businessmen and better-off farmers, who had previously mainly given their support to Parnell and the NL. These were the people who had largely abandoned the poorer tenants, the landless and agricultural labourers, whom Davitt and his allies had represented within the Land League.

In September 1891, Engels briefly visited Dublin (33). Very much influenced by recent events throughout the UK, he had just written a private memo to the leaders of the German Social Democrats, in support of a federal republic of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, where the two islands are peopled by four nations (34). This was the first time that Engels recognised the existence of these distinct nations, in his own writings, thus clearly distinguishing between Britain/England and England, Scotland and Wales. Davitt and his allies’ ‘internationalism from below’ approach had obviously made its mark.

Engels also went further than his earlier advocacy of Irish Home Rule for non-revolutionary periods, when he took up the demand for a federal republic. By mid-1891, a politically astute Engels could see the weaker position the Irish national movement found itself in, after its recent and ongoing acrimonious split. The Parnellite LL led one section of the Irish labour movement, and the Davitt anti-Parnellites the other. The situation did not yet allow for the open declaration of the independent Irish Republic, which he and Marx had earlier contemplated, in response to the Fenian struggle, and which Engels again hinted at, at the height of the Land League struggle.

Whereas, the 1892 General Election saw two non-competing independent labour slates with seven candidates put forward in Scotland, and another 9 independent labour candidates in England; Ireland only had Parnellite and anti-Parnellite Nat-Lab candidates. The split amongst the Irish nationalists led to an overall drop in the number of their MPs at Westminster from 85 to 81, despite the election, for the first time, of three Nat-Lab MPs, and of Davitt himself.

The Irish Unionist Party was the main beneficiary in Ireland of the nationalists’ setbacks. Ireland was the only nation in the UK that saw advances by both Liberal and Conservative Unionists in 1892. However, in England, Scotland and Wales, the Irish nationalists’ Liberal allies made major gains, with an increase from 192 to 272 MPs (35). This was at the expense of both the Conservative and Liberal Unionists.

From the working class point of view, the real electoral breakthrough occurred in England, where the average vote for 9 independent labour candidates was 2355. New Unionism had made a dramatic impact. James Havelock Wilson and John Burns were elected at Middlesborough and Battersea respectively, whilst Keir Hardie was elected in West Ham (36). Clearly, the recent major labour struggles in London had created a wider stir.

Despite the impact of New Unionism, Henry Hyndman still insisted on pushing an SDF anti-trade union line (37). However, the prestige of the trade union members in the SDF increased as a result of the events in 1889. This meant that Hyndman was challenged more effectively over his stance. Two distinct pro-trade union tendencies did emerge within the SDF (38). Furthermore, Ben Tillet and Tom Mann co-authored the pamphlet, New Unionism, linking it to the idea of a socialist commonwealth (39).

Nevertheless, the continued denigration of trade union work by Hyndman put many trade unionists off the SDF, who were otherwise attracted to the idea of independent labour representation. Furthermore, Tillet’s and Mann’s own pamphlet amounted to propaganda for an abstract socialism. It did not provide an immediate advanced democratic programme, which could have helped combat the renewed Conservative Unionist and employers’ offensives under the conditions of New Imperialism.

Therefore, many trade unionists and Socialists became more attracted to the new Independent Labour Party (ILP), when it was formed in Bradford between January 14th and 16th, 1893. Significantly, the party attracted Robert Smillie, Lanarkshire miners’ leader and SLP member, as well as SDF members, Tom Mann, Henry Champion, and ex-SL members, Bruce Glasier, Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling (40).

However, under the prevailing conditions of economic and political retreat, and British Social Democratic and Socialist political confusion, the ILP soon adopted a very British Labour Socialism, more influenced by Radicalism, Christian Socialism (41) and Fabianism (42), than by contemporary European Social Democracy.

Hardie was very influential in this respect. In 1894, he asked Sir Charles Dilke, a leading Liberal Federal Imperialist, if he would chair the second ILP Conference. Dilke declined, since he was looking to a possible alliance with the Conservatives at the time, in preparation for an imperial war with Russia (43)! Hardie’s open acceptance of British imperialism was also highlighted by his view that Home Rule was only permissible provided the supremacy of the Imperial parliament be maintained unimpaired (44).

The loose structure of the ILP meant that it reflected local traditions in those parts of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland where it was established(H). However, it was unable to provide effective leadership to the wider national democratic movements. This contributed to the further undermining of the ‘internationalism from below’ alliance, already weakened by Davitt’s own political shortcomings.

One consequence of the formation of the ILP was the SLP’s decision, at its final conference in 1894, to dissolve itself into the new party. This no doubt reflected a desire for wider class unity, following the success of independent labour candidates in England in 1892. Furthermore, the ILP itself retained the earlier SLP commitment to Home Rule. Nevertheless, the narrowness of the vote of SLP delegates - 28 to 22 - against the setting up of a specifically Scottish Council (45) within the new ILP, showed that a substantial minority held the same reservations that had led Scottish members of the SDF, then the SL, to form the Scottish Land & Labour League in 1884; and Scottish members of both the SDF and SL to form the Scottish Socialist Society in 1888. This vote contributed to Socialists in Scotland’s secession from the ‘internationalism from below’ alliance and their subsequent adherence to the British Left.

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Footnotes

• (A) Annie Besant, who was of Irish background, was a consistent supporter of Irish (and later Indian) self-rule. She began her political life as a Radical Secularist and Birth Control advocate, alongside Henry Bradlaugh. However, after ‘Bloody Sunday’ in 1887, she soon became a Socialist, joining the SDF in 1888. As well as taking a leading role in the Matchgirls’ Strike, she went on to play a prominent part in the London Dockers’ Strike of 1889.
• (B) Despite the NAS&FU’s militant reputation, Joseph Havelock Wilson himself remained a Liberal Party member, became a Liberal MP, and strongly opposed independent labour representation.
• (C) James Sexton, brought up in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, had a Fenian family background. Like J. Havelock Ellis, once the heroic militant phase of ‘New Unionism’ was over, he too emerged as one of the first of the new generation of trade union bureaucrats, who marked the acceptance and consolidation of the new general unions within the existing British political order.
• (D) The sectarian divisions encouraged by many employers and some politicians, in the ‘Belfast-Glasgow-Liverpool Triangle’ were highly visible in the latter city. This was highlighted by the city’s large number of Conservative Unionist MPs on one hand, and on the other, the fact that the Irish Nationalist MP, T. P. O’Connor, held the Liverpool, Scotland constituency from 1885-1929.
• (E) Tom Mann was also a member of the craft union, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers. He was part of a group of new younger members who contested the ‘Old Unionism’ principles and pro-Liberal sympathies of its long established leadership.
• (F) It is also ironic, that when the next political upturn occurred in the first decade of the twentieth century, James Larkin attacked the British-based NUDL for its lack of support for more militant Irish workers. Times had certainly changed since Davitt’s original worries about the relative backwardness of Irish labour. To his credit, the old Radical, Davitt, was able to learn at least some of the lessons of the need for an independent labour party, and later worked more closely with Socialists.
• (G) When the employers began their retaliatory counter-offensive, the new general trade union leaders usually responded by centralising control in the union HQ, rendering redundant any autonomy, or the sovereignty of the members in their workplaces and branches.
• (H) Despite some very different national and regional traditions, the ILP, due to its regional federal organisation, could encompass the Nonconformist traditions of Scotland, Wales, and Northern England, the Radical secular traditions of London and the East Midlands, and even the loyalism of Belfast and Irish Catholicism of Glasgow.

References

(1) see http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUmatchgirls.htm
(2) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Besant
(3) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_Marx
(4) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havelock_Wilson
(5) see National Amalgamated Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union, 1887-93 on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_of_Seamen
(6) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_of_Dock_Labourers
(7) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Sexton
(8) see William Kenefick, Red Scotland! The Rise and Fall of the Radical Left, c. 1872-1932 (RS) p. 11 (Edinburgh University Press, 2007, Edinburgh)
(9) see Eric Talpin, Liverpool Dockers and Seamen, 1870-1890, p. 64 (University of Hull, 1970, Hull)
(10) Yvonne Kapp, The Air of Freedom: The Birth of the New Unionism (Lawrence & Wishart, 1989, London)
(11) see http://libcom.org/history/1889-the-great-london-dock-strike
(12) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Thorne
(13) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Tillett
(14) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Burns
(15) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Mann
(16) see http://www.unionancestors.co.uk/GMB.htm
(17) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dock,_Wharf,_Riverside_and_General_Labourers_Union
(18) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKinley_Tariff
(19) see Kenneth O. Morgan, Rebirth of A Nation, Wales, 1880-1980, p. 30(Oxford University Press, 1981, New York)
(22) ibid., p. 167-8.
(23) ibid., p. 168.
(24) see see F. Sheehy-Skeffington, in Michael Davitt, Revolutionary Agitator and Labour Leader (MDRAaLL) p. 148 (MacGibbon & Kee, 1967, London)
(25) Fintan Lane, TOoMIS, op. cit., p. 169.
(26) Frederick Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge, 2.11.1891 in Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, Ireland and the Irish Question (IIQ), p. 470 (Lawrence & Wishart, 1978, London)
(27) see Fintan Lane, TOoMIS, op. cit., p. 168.
(28) Frederick Engels, IIQ, op, cit., p. 470 ibid. p. 470.
(29) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stewart_Parnell#The_divorce_crisis
(30) see Liz Curtis, The Cause of Ireland, From the United Irishmen to Partition, (TCoI) p. 156 (Beyond the Pale Publications, 1994, Belfast)
(31) see Paul Bew, C.S. Parnell, pp. 118-9 (Gill & Macmillan, 1980. Dublin)
(32) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_National_Federation
(33) see Fintan Lane, TOoMIS, op. cit., p. 179.
(34) Frederick Engels, Critique of Draft S.D. Programme of 1891, in K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 3, p. 436 (Lawrence & Wishart, 1985, London) and http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1891/06/29.htm
(35) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1892
(36) see Foundation on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Labour_Party
(37) see Martin Crick, THoSDF, op. cit., p. 77.
(38) ibid., pp. 77-9.
(39) see Activist and leader on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Mann
(40) (see Yvonne Kapp, Eleanor Marx. Volume II – the Crowded Years, 1886-1898, p. 527 (Virago Press, 1979, London)
(41) see http://www.answers.com/topic/christian-socialism
(42) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabian_Society
(43) see Roy Jenkins, Dilke – A Victorian Tragedy, p. 393 (Papermac, 1996, London)
(44) see Geoff Bell, Troublesome Business – The Labour Party and the Irish Question, p. 12 (Pluto Press, 1982, London)
(45) see D. Lowe, Souvenirs of Scottish Labour, p. 176 (W & R Holmes, 1919, Glasgow)

The shortcomings of British Socialism in the face of the growth of Independent Labour and the needs of the ‘Internationalism from below’ Alliance

However, Davitt’s attempt to unite Radicals and labour, in an Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales alliance, was thwarted by the political shortcomings of the British Left of his day. By 1885, the Democratic Federation, largely under Henry Hyndman’s influence, had become the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) (1), the first ostensibly Marxist party in the UK. Whilst Hyndman invoked Marx’s Capital, much to his and Engels’ annoyance (2), he was probably more influenced in his politics by Lassalle’s state socialism (3) and by the Radical ‘freeborn Englishman’ tradition(A). He was still motivated by a conception of imperialism whereby the English speaking… peoples would lead the way to Socialism (4). He retained his earlier hostility to Chinese labour immigration and showed anti-Semitic prejudice (5).

Nevertheless, the SDF attracted more people to Socialism, in the early 1880’s, than any other organisation in the UK (6). Furthermore, the SDF fought valiantly for the right to hold public meetings. The SDF was thus the next stage, beyond Henry George’s land reform campaigns, in helping many people move beyond Radicalism to Socialism.

However, within a year of its foundation, the SDF had already split, with prominent members, William Morris (7), Eleanor Marx (8), Edward Aveling (9), Ernest Belfort Bax (10), and Andreas Scheu(B) forming the Socialist League (SL) (11). The SL was scornful about the SDF’s concern with ‘palliatives’ and participating in the parliamentary system. They upheld the tradition of the Paris Commune, but had little notion of how to bring such an order into being(C). Therefore, the SL became largely a socialist propagandist organisation, producing its own quite influential journal, Commonweal.

Nevertheless, the SDF and SL still joined forces, on November 13th 1887, with the London Radical Clubs, to protest at continued Conservative government coercion in Ireland. The police and army were well prepared. ‘Bloody Sunday’ led to the death of one protestor, the hospitalisation of 200, with 150 arrested (12). In the aftermath of this setback, the SDF fell back upon socialist propaganda, but now coupled this to contesting elections at all levels. The SL soon retreated into internal disputes, with anarchists gaining the upper hand.

When it came to the ‘Irish Question’, there was a range of opinions held by British Socialists. Some continued in the old Radical tradition, which believed that, if social and economic problems were seriously addressed, the ‘National Question’ would then be rendered obsolete. Amongst their number were those who were against raising the ‘National Question’ at all, seeing it as diversionary and reactionary. However, others upheld another Radical tradition, which acknowledged that the Irish had the right to self-determination, and if that meant they desired Home Rule, this should be supported.

The most advanced thinking, in this respect, was found in the SL. Belfort Bax looked at the issue of Irish Home Rule through anti-imperialist spectacles. He clearly stated that, Everything which makes for the disruption and disintegration of the empire to which he belongs must be welcomed by the socialist as an ally (13). However, given SL’s hostility towards parliaments, there was still an air of British Left condescension in this. It was as if the Irish would have to experience their own parliament first, before they could see the error of their ways, and rise to the ‘true socialist’ politics advocated by the SL.

Just as the SL would not call upon Socialists to join trade unions(D), to assist workers’ political development in the course of their own struggles, so it was unable to call on Socialists to take a consistent lead in democratic(E) (including national democratic) struggles, involving workers and others. Adopting such a stance could have put Socialists in a leading position, ready to push further, whenever the Liberals and Radicals retreated in the face of reaction.

However, it was economic developments and the various struggles in Scotland, which paved the way for the next big leap forward - the creation of an independent labour party. Some of the most advanced industrial production in the British Empire, in steelmaking, heavy engineering, railway locomotive and ship building, was located in Scotland’s Central Belt. The modernised Port of Glasgow was taking traffic away from the antiquated Port of London (14).

This Clyde Valley industrial colossus lay very close to the Highlands and Islands and to Ireland, where some of the most primitive agricultural conditions in Europe still prevailed. A link was provided by migrant workers, who formed a substantial part of the industrial workforce, living either in company mining towns and villages, or in high-density tenements in the cities. As in Ireland’s Lagan Valley, some employers, deliberately cultivated ‘racial’/sectarian divisions, particularly through the Orange Order. Yet some of these divisions were being overcome.

One indication that neither the old SDF, nor possibly the new SL, was adequately relating to the opportunities provided by the ongoing struggles in Ireland and Scotland, was the decision taken by SL members, John Mahon and Andreas Sheu to form the Scottish Land and Labour League (SLLL) as an autonomous part of the SDF (15). Sheu felt that the SDF had neglect{ed} local sympathy for crofter agitation and the Irish Land League (16).

From the middle of 1885, William Small, an SLLL member, was urging Lanarkshire miners to imitate Highland crofters and run their own candidate in the forthcoming general election (17). In the 1886 General Election, Robert Cunningham-Graham(F) (18) had been adopted by the Liberal Party and won the North West Lanarkshire seat on a Socialist manifesto. This included the nationalisation, not only of the land, but of mines and other industries. It also included the demand for an eight hour day, free school meals, universal suffrage, the abolition of House of Lords, and Scottish Home Rule (19).

Small was influential in weaning Kier Hardie, an Ayrshire miners’ leader (20), away from Gladstonian Liberalism. Hardie was invited to SLLL meetings in Edinburgh. He was persuaded of the need for independent labour political organisation (21). In 1888, a vacant seat occurred in Mid-Lanark. Hardie, still under the influence of Lib-Labism, offered himself as a workingman and official Liberal Party nominee. He described himself as ‘a Radical of a somewhat advanced type’, and a supporter of Scottish and Irish Home Rule, votes for women, the regulation of the mining industry, and the eight hour day (22).

Hardie stood and came third and last, gaining 617 votes (23). However, it is doubtful whether such a small percentage vote (8%) has ever had such a wide political resonance. Within months the decision was taken to form the Scottish Labour Party (SLP) (24). John Murdoch, the veteran Highlands and Irish campaigner chaired the preparatory meeting, held on 19th May 1888. Hardie was elected interim Secretary. When the inaugural conference was held on August 25th, the first president was Socialist Liberal MP(G), Cunningham-Graham. The two vice-presidents were Dr. Clark, Crofter Liberal MP, and Davitt’s ally, Ferguson (25). Richard McGhee also joined (26). Davitt sent his apologies (27).

Six branches of the SLLL affiliated, providing much of the SLP’s initial membership (28). The SDF also participated, sending seven branch delegations to the Conference (29). Glasgow Trades Council recommended that its affiliated trade union branches should in turn affiliate to the new SLP (30). Later, the Glasgow Jewish Tailors Union was to affiliate, showing the SLP’s support amongst another, more recent, section of migrant workers (31).

The Conference decided upon seventeen demands, including

Adult suffrage… home rule for each separate nationality or country in the British Empire, with an Imperial Parliament for Imperial Affairs… Abolition of the House of Lords and the hereditary system… Nationalisation of Land and Minerals… 8 hour day, state insurance, arbitration courts and minimum wage… Disestablishment… {and} Nationalisation of railways, waterways and tramways (32).

These demands highlight the SLP’s political location at the point of transition from advanced Radicalism to Socialism. The political demands did not go beyond those of the most advanced Radicals. There is no explicit call to end the British Empire. Indeed the Imperial Parliament is accepted as a focus for activity, albeit with the demand for Home Rule for each constituent nationality or country. A declaration for a republic is not specifically mentioned, although there is a call for the ending of the hereditary system. The call for the disestablishment of the Church of Scotland reflects a combination of secular and Christian Nonconformist influences upon the SLP. The emphasis placed on arbitration courts shows the continued influence of Liberal influenced New Model Unionism (or Old Unionism as it was soon to be called).

However, the SLRLs championing of the linked demands for nationalisation of land and minerals was also taken up. This was acceptable to a few of the most advanced Radicals. Yet, the demand for state control was taken a stage further with the call for the nationalisation of railways, waterways and tramways. Here the SLP was taking up contemporary Socialist demands. The standard Liberal attack on nationalisation, that it buttressed traditional authoritarian rule, was countered by Socialists of the day with the demand for the fullest democratisation of the state, to permit popular control.

Having participated in the setting up of the SLP, both the SL/SLLL and SDF realised that a Socialist pole of attraction was required, to counter the continuing influence of Lib-Labism and Radicalism and to imbue {the SLP}(H) with socialist principles (33). The Scottish Socialist Federation was formed in December, 1888, which involved members from the SDF and SL/SLLL (34). John Leslie(I) (35), a member of the SDF, was the main person involved in forging this new unity. He became the SSF’s first Secretary (36). He was uncle to James Connolly (37).

So by 1889, there was an independent labour party, and a reunited socialist organisation in Scotland, just at the time two key events were about to occur. The first was the foundation of the Second International in Paris; the second was the birth of New Unionism. The SDF, under Henry Hyndman, played a reactionary, anti-internationalist role over the setting up of the Second International. He forged an unprincipled alliance with the Possibilists, the right wing of the Socialist movement in France, and ensured that 15 SDF branches were sent to their alternative Conference in Paris.

In contrast, the SLP sent John Ogilvy to represent it at the founding conference of the Second International (38). SLP members, Hardie and Cunningham Graham went too (39). Eleanor Marx, Edward Aveling and William Morris also attended, and the latter was elected as British representative on to the Executive (40). The most significant decision taken was to back an international campaign for an ‘8 Hour Day’, to be launched by worldwide May Day demonstrations in 1890. This demand was central to the wave of strikes that marked the birth of the New Unionism.

The American Federation of Labor (41), meeting in St Louis in December 1888, set May 1, 1890 as the day that American workers should work no more than eight hours. The… Second International, meeting in Paris in 1889, endorsed this date for international demonstrations, thus starting the international tradition of May Day (42).

Therefore, when the series of strikes, which gave birth to New Unionism in the UK, broke out in 1889, it was in the wider context of the formation of the Second International, and the growing international campaign for the ‘8 Hour Day’. However, this New Unionism also developed within the context of the political confrontation over the future of the multi-nation UK and the British Empire.

On this political front, Davitt and his allies’ wider ‘internationalism-from-below’ movement was trying to push further than the leadership of the Irish nationalist/Liberal Home Rule alliance, in opposition to growing Conservative and Unionist reaction. The latter’s jingoist, racist and sectarian offensive, against any campaign for national self-determination within the UK, drew support from leading sections of British capital. The capitalist class now faced intensified competition in a New Imperialist world. Support for hardline conservative unionism was no longer confined to the Anglo-Irish/Irish-British landlord class.

Whenever the Conservatives’ vision for the future of the UK and Empire clashed with that of the Liberals in narrowly party terms, it was the Conservatives who emerged as the victor. The Liberals either lost out to the Conservative-dominated Unionist alliance; or they further accommodated themselves to the dominant politics of New Imperialism, despite the desertion of the Liberal Unionists. The days of the old Cobden and Bright Liberal, free trade, pacifism were fast receding.

Several influential Liberals had schemes in mind, which were every bit as grandiose as those of the Conservatives, when it came to the future of the Union and Empire. The gung-ho imperialist, Cecil Rhodes (43), was a Liberal Party supporter. He wanted to create an Imperial Federation and Parliament, with direct representation in Westminster from the white colonies. He opposed the Conservatives because of their promotion of over-centralised imperial control by Westminster.

Liberal Imperial Federalists envisaged the British Empire as a future English/Scottish/Irish/Welsh British imperial ‘joint-stock holding company’ with ‘share issues’ also reserved for the white British colonies. The various colonial assemblies found in Canada, Australia and New Zealand probably informed some Liberals’ thinking about the possible Home Rule arrangements they wanted in the UK, just as they inspired some Irish constitutional nationalists.

The Liberal Party, though, officially stuck to its more limited policy of Irish Home Rule or, sometimes, ‘Home Rule-all-round’ (including Scotland and Wales) for the UK only. Like the Imperial Federalists, the Liberal Home Rulers still wanted to maintain the over-arching British Imperial Parliament at Westminster, but were not so keen on the complications that direct white colonial representation at Westminster would bring. Both wings of liberal unionism, however, shared the idea of a division of labour between a strong Imperial Parliament and subordinate assemblies.

In contrast, the Conservative and Liberal Unionists remained focused on the defence of a unitary Westminster, with only administrative mechanisms permitted to deal with distinctive national issues in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the colonies. Conservative unionism was not very keen about greater self-determination for the white colonies either. When it came to the non-white parts of the Empire, they promoted either direct rule for the Crown Colonies, or indirect rule through conservative princes and tribal chieftains for the Protectorates.

Conservative and Liberal Unionists saw Irish Home Rule as a ‘Trojan Horse’, which would lead to the break-up of the Union and British Empire. Therefore, just as the UK had not been transformed into a unitary British state in the earlier nineteenth century, so neither was the British Empire politically reformed into an Imperial Federation in the later nineteenth or early twentieth centuries.

Davitt and his closest allies realised that the issue of Irish Home Rule had produced a faultline through British politics. They decided to open this up further, by giving their support to Home Rule for Scotland and Wales too. However, in order to ensure that the issue was not completely dominated by hostile class forces, such as those now ranged behind Parnell in Ireland, the issue of Home Rule was linked to land and labour struggles in Scotland and Wales.

In effect, Davitt widened Engels’ earlier insight that Home Rule was the best political banner, under which to initiate a wider political struggle, when less heady political conditions prevailed. This fitted the situation Davitt found himself in, after the Gladstone-Parnell pact had successfully derailed the earlier revolutionary challenge represented by the Irish National Land League in 1882, and after the defeat of the first Home Rule Bill in 1886.

The Scottish Home Rule Association (SHRA) had been formed in 1886 (44). Its membership included the Crofter Liberal MP, Dr. G. B. Clark, the Socialist Liberal MP, Robert Cunningham-Graham, the veteran land campaigner and SLRL member, John Murdoch, the miners’ leaders, Keir Hardie and Robert Smillie. Davitt’s close ally, John Ferguson, gave his support too (45).

John Morrison Davidson held perhaps the most advanced conception of the relationship between Home Rule-all-round and future society. He had been an organiser of the first anti-coercion demonstration in Hyde Park, and an SLRL candidate for Greenock in 1885 (46). He was one of those Radicals who made the leap to Socialism.

In arguing for a British Federal Republic (England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales) he wrote,

Nay, I go further, and affirm that the day is approaching when the commune, township or parishes cooperatively organized for the purpose of production and distribution, will be recognised as of more consequence in the social and political world than the nation itself. In the ‘process of the suns’ the nation may wither, but the commune will be more and more and future (47).

Yet, in the early SHRA, radical rather than socialist republican politics dominated. Scottish Home Rule, along with Irish Home Rule, won support from the infant Scottish Labour Party, when it was formed within 1888. However, neither the SDF nor the SL/SLLL, nor even the united Scottish Socialist Federation, were able to push beyond the political limitations of Radicalism. Their best members appreciated that Irish Home Rule might weaken the British Empire, but did not see the need for Socialists to take the lead in the democratic struggles for self-determination in Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Such a strategy would have formed part of a break-up of the British Union and Empire perspective, the better to prepare the grounds for Socialism itself. Thus, the continued influence of political Radicalism often led Socialists into tail ending Irish constitutional nationalist, or Scottish and Welsh Liberal, versions of Home Rule instead.

This tendency was accentuated because the SHRA also involved a number of Liberals, once Gladstone gave his support to Scottish Home Rule. As a consequence, the SHRA leadership soon fell under the sway of the liberal unionism. Support for Home Rule was seen in the context of maintaining an over-arching Imperial Parliament at Westminster.

Hardie was much influenced by Radical thinking, and settled for a liberal unionist version of Home Rule within the UK and Empire. He held to his own Left vision of Imperial Federation, which was based on the advances he saw being made by white workers in Australia, Canada and South Africa.

However, in contrast to the principal advocates of Imperial Federation, Hardie also went on to support Home Rule for India. In this respect, he did distinguish himself from the Anglo-Saxon/Teutonic racist politics of the Liberal Imperial Federalists. In a sense, Hardie was taking up the mantle of the much earlier Radicals, James Mill, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Macauley, which had been cast off by most Radicals, after the shock of the 1857 Indian Rebellion. It was from the Nonconformists that Hardie inherited his pacifism, now also being jettisoned by ‘free trade’ Liberals too.

The hold of Liberalism on the Welsh Home Rule movement was even stronger. When Cymru Fydd (Young Wales) (48) was formed in 1886, it remained an organisation within the Liberal Party. Initially it was mainly confined to the new group of Welsh Liberal MPs in London, along with the party officials and office bearers in their constituencies. Tom Ellis (49), the recently elected MP for Merionydd/Merioneth, was its principal spokesperson, whilst a young Lloyd George was also a supporter.

When Cymru Fydd members looked towards Ireland, it was not the political demand for Home Rule that provided most with its main inspiration, but Parnell’s creation of a disciplined Irish Parliamentary Party. In effect, Cymru Fydd wanted a Welsh Parliamentary Party, not to challenge the UK state as such, but to achieve ‘Welsh home rule’ within the Liberal Party. The formation of such a Welsh parliamentary grouping would make the party more effective in promoting the concerns of those Welsh recently enfranchised by the 1884 Act.

The new plebian electors were much more consciously Welsh than those members of the Welsh middle class who already had the vote. Many of the new MPs were the product of a Welsh-speaking, Nonconformist, rural and small town society of tenant farmers, agricultural labourers, shopkeepers and artisans. Furthermore, a growing Welsh speaking working class was also to be found, not only amongst the slate quarriers of North and Mid Wales, but the miners in the north and west of the South Wales coalfield. As a consequence of these economic and social developments, the Welsh speaking intelligentsia had become more confident. Its members addressed a wider range of political, social and economic issues in a vibrant national and local Welsh language secular and religious press.

The new post-1885 wave of Welsh Liberal MPs expressed this Welshness in much more overt political terms than their Radical middle class predecessors. When they opposed the Anglican Church’s control over education, they were more likely to highlight its ‘alien’ English nature, and its links with the Anglicised landlord class. They thought that the Welsh language had a great future, not just a noble past(J). The National Eisteddfod Association had been formed in 1880 (50). The Society for the Utilisation of the Welsh Language was founded in 1885 (51). Furthermore, this new generation of Welsh Liberal MPs believed that Westminster should step in and set fair rents for tenant farmers, something very much against the grain of old Liberal laissez-faire economics.

Cymru Fydd’s immediate practical concerns were more economic and cultural than political nationalist. The political situation in Wales contrasted with that in Ireland, where Gladstone was forced to put forward the first Irish Home Rule Bill; or in Scotland, where he conceded a greater measure of administrative devolution, through the appointment of a Scottish Secretary, sitting in the Cabinet (52). This disregard for Welsh political reform came about because the demand for Welsh Home Rule was initially more muted. Some members of Cymru Fydd believed that as long as Gladstone’s Liberal Party controlled Westminster, this was enough to ensure their economic and cultural demands would be met.

Therefore, a major political weakness of the ‘Home Rule-all-round’ political demand, which Davitt and his Radical allies used to front his ‘internationalism from below’ land and labour alliance, was its inability to break free from the limitations imposed by dependence on Parnell’s National League in Ireland, and Gladstone’s Liberal Party in Scotland, Wales and England. Certainly, the pressure of new class forces from below was a vital component of any ‘internationalism from below’ alliance, but this needed to be complemented by political demands, which went beyond the constitutional nationalism of Parnell, and the constitutional liberalism of Gladstone’s admirers. It also needed to go beyond the still dominant Lib-Labism found in England, Wales and Scotland, and beyond the Nat-Labism(K) which Davitt was about to promote in Ireland.

Furthermore, the British Socialism, which Davitt came into contact with, did not offer a political perspective beyond that of the Radical Liberalism – Irish Home Rule or Home Rule-all-round. The SDF largely accepted the UK state (whilst pushing for certain reforms) as the framework for campaigning. Most SL members saw little need to conduct political work within the existing representative bodies. The SLP began with a pro-Commune, anti-Parliamentary stance, before collapsing into individualist anarchism.

Just at a time when the major section of the British ruling class was resorting to the full panoply of the anti-democratic powers of the UK state - the House of Lords, the judiciary and certain military officers - as well as building up their own reactionary extra-parliamentary force, in order to face down the new challenge represented by the national democratic movement in Ireland, a clear republican socialist politics failed to develop. Furthermore, the events of 1889 provided a huge opportunity to advance such politics.

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Footnotes

• (A) The titles of Hyndman’s first attempted ‘Marxist’ books, England for All and The Historical Basis of Socialism in England, strongly suggest this influence.
• (B) Andreas Scheu was a founder member of the Austrian Social Democratic Workers Party and an early mentor to Karl Kautsky. He was forced to leave Austria. When the DF became the Social Democratic Federation in 1883 he joined, but soon left in protest at Hyndman’s authoritarianism and chauvinism. Along with William Morris, Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling, he formed the Socialist League in 1885. He moved to Edinburgh helping to set up the Scottish Land and Labour League. He was later involved with the Scottish Socialist Federation with the young James Connolly.
• (C) Whereas the French Commune came out of a communal and republican club tradition found in the French Republic from 1793-5, the equivalent tradition in the UK came from the earlier United Irishmen, Friends of the People and Chartist Conventions, and was to come later from Councils of Action based on the local branches of trade unions.
• (D) This was the time when conservative Lib-Lab trade unionism still dominated, so the SDF’s and SL’s shared hostility to trade unions was more understandable. Individual members of both parties did involve themselves in trade unions, particularly when strike action occurred.
• (E) The SDF, in contrast, saw the need for political struggle, but understood this mainly in electoral terms, i.e. putting forward candidates in elections at all levels, from Westminster to School Boards and Boards of Guardians.
• (F) Robert Cunningham-Graham was an unusual person to become a Socialist. He was a minor Perthshire laird who had traveled extensively. Nevertheless, when elected, he took part in many Radical and Socialist campaigns. He was injured and arrested on Bloody Sunday in 1887; expelled from Westminster for protesting about the working conditions of chainmakers; campaigned in London with the New Unions; and led the parliamentary campaign for the eight hour day, first for miners then as a general principle. He attended the foundation meeting of the Second International in 1889, and was expelled from France in 1890 for making a revolutionary speech.
• (G) Cunningham-Graham stood independently as an SLP candidate in the 1892 elections, but failed to get re-elected.
• (H) This quote from Desmond Greaves wrongly implies this decision was made upon entry into the Independent Labour Party. The ILP was not formed until 5 years later. It was the SLP which was the focus of the SSF’s attentions.
• (I) John Leslie was a former Fenian who lived in Edinburgh. Later, he was to write the first Marxist analysis of The Irish Question, and involve himself in gun-running to Russian revolutionaries.
• (J) Matthew Arnold, the influential English literary critic, had already developed an approach in his Celtic Literature by which he hoped to overcome both the earlier arrogant British ruling class dismissal of all things Celtic (Welsh and Gaelic), and the consequent resentments found amongst those living in the ‘Celtic fringe’. Arnold believed that the Celtic languages and societies were indeed dying, but had already contributed much to the dominant English language and literature. Furthermore, a scholarly study of these ancient languages and cultures was as valid as studying those of the Romans and Greeks, which then held high status in schools and universities. This way of thinking would have appealed more to the previous generation of Welsh Liberals, such as Henry Richards, but could not win the support of the new wave, associated with Cymru Fydd, for whom Welsh was very much a living language.
• (K) Nat-Labism called for the Irish National League (and its successors) to adopt labour candidates in the same manner as the Lib-Labs called upon the Liberal party to do this.

References

• (1) see Martin Crick, The History of the Social Democratic Federation (THotSDF) p. 36 (Ryburn Publishing, 1994, Keele University)
• (2) ibid., pp. 24 and 64.
• (3) ibid., p. 33.
• (4) ibid., p. 33.
• (5) ibid., pp. 33 and 38.
• (6) ibid., p. 32.
• (7) William Morris
• (8) Eleanor Marx
• (9) Edward Aveling
• (10) Ernest Belfort Bax
• (11) see Fintan Lane, The Origins of Modern Irish Socialism, 1881-1896,(TOoMIS) p. 108 (Cork University Press, 1997, Cork) and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_League_(UK,_1885)
• (12) see Martin Crick, THotSDF, op. cit., p. 47.
• (13) Fintan Lane, TOoMIS, op. cit., p. 111.
• (14) Frederick Engels, The Abdication of the Bourgeoisie, in Karl Marx & Frederick Engels, Articles on Britain, p. 395 (Progress Publishers, 1975, Moscow)
• (15) see Fintan Lane, TOoMIS. op, cit., p. 107.
• (16) Martin Crick, THotSDF, op, cit., p. 38.
• (17) see Michael Keating & David Bleiman, Labour and Scottish Nationalism (LaSN) p. 47-8 (The Macmillan Press Ltd, 1979, London)
• (18) Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham
• (19) ibid., Liberal Party MP
• (20) Keir Hardie
• (21) see Jonathan Hyslop, The Notorious Syndicalist, J. T. Bain: A Scottish Rebel in Colonial South Africa, p. 73 (Jacana Media (Pty) Ltd, 2004, Johannesburg)
• (22) Robert Maclean, Labour and Scottish Home Rule, Part 1, Mid-Lanark to Majority Government (LaSHR) p. 11 (Scottish Labour Action, undated, Broxburn)
• (23) see D. Lowe, Souvenirs of Scottish Labour (SoSL) (W & R Holmes, 1919, Glasgow) and Scottish Labour Party (1888)
• (24) ibid., p. 14.
• (25) see Elaine McFarland, JF, op. cit., pp. 206.
• (26) see D. Lowe, SoSL, op. cit., p. 24.
• (27) see Michael Keating & David Bleiman, LaSN, op. cit., p. 51.
• (28) see William Kenefick, Red Scotland! The Rise and Fall of the Radical Left, c. 1872-1932 (RS) p. 66 (Edinburgh University Press, 2007, Edinburgh)
• (29) Robert Maclean, LaSHR, op, cit., p. 67.
• (30) see Michael Keating & David Bleiman, LaSN, op. cit., p. 51.
• (31) see D. Lowe, SoSL, op. cit., p. 83.
• (32) ibid., p. 24.
• (33) C. Desmond Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly, (TLaToJC) p. 39 (Lawrence & Wishart, 1986, London)
• (34) see D. Lowe, SoSL, op. cit., p. 128 and Scottish Socialist Federation
• (35) William Kenefick, RS, op. cit., pp. 15, 65, 72-3.
• (36) see C. Desmond Greaves, The Life and Times of James Connolly, (TLaToJC) p. 39 (Lawrence & Wishart, 1986, London)
• (37) James Connolly
• (38) see D. Lowe, SoSL, op. cit., p. 43.
• (39) ibid., p. 38 and Scottish independence and the Scottish Labour Party on Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham
• (40) see Martin Crick, THotSDF, op. cit., p. 59.
• (41) see Early years and Early membership and exclusion on American Federation of Labor
• (42) United States on Eight-hour day
• (43) Cecil Rhodes
• (44) Scottish Home Rule
• (45) see Elaine McFarland, John Ferguson, 1836-1906, Irish Issues in Scottish Politics, p. 196 (Tuckwell Press, 2001, East Linton)
• (46) see Autopylus, Grand Old Man of Fleet Street, pages unnumbered, in J. Morrison Davidson, Politics for the People (William Reeves, 1892, London)
• (47) J. Morrison Davidson, Scotia Rediviva – Home Rule for Scotland (William Reeves, 1890, London)
• (48) Cymru Fydd
• (49) T. E. Ellis
• (50) see Kenneth O. Morgan, Rebirth of A Nation, Wales, 1880-1980, p. 21 (Oxford University Press, 1981, New York)
• (51) ibid., p. 95.
• (52) Secretary of State for Scotland

The first victory of Conservative Unionism and Davitt’s building of a wider Home Rule Alliance

It was during the 1885 General Election that Parnell decided to launch his new NL on a new political course, which involved a break with the Liberal Party. He could see that continuing coercion and evictions made public support for the Liberal government near impossible. Parnell argued that Irish voters in Britain should switch their support to the Conservatives in the forthcoming General Election, whilst standing against Conservative, Liberal and renegade former HRL candidates in Ireland. He hoped to influence any possible minority government.

When the results of the 1885 General Election came in April, it looked as if Parnell’s ‘balance of power’ tactic had paid off. There were 335 Liberals and supporters and 249 Conservatives and supporters elected in the 1885 General Election – a difference of 86, exactly the number of Irish nationalists elected (1). Yet, it was not the Tories who emerged as the largest party in Westminster, but the Liberals. Nevertheless, with coercion continuing, the NL soon became impatient with Gladstone’s latest government, and the Irish Parliamentary Party (IPP) used its voting power to help the Conservatives force it into resignation in June (2).

However, once out of office, Gladstone became persuaded that the best way to defend the unity of the UK was through its liberal reform by means of Irish Home Rule. Parnell switched back to supporting the Liberal Party. Since the Conservative government continued the policy of coercion, the IPP helped Gladstone turf them out of office.

The Conservatives were opposed to any constitutional reforms designed to conciliate Irish nationalists, none more so than Randolph Churchill (3). During the Conservatives’ short spell in office, between 1885 and February 1886, he became the Secretary of State for India. Soon after ordering the latest imperial conquest in Burma (4), he visited Belfast in a pretty gung-ho mood, at the invitation of the newly formed Ulster Loyalist Anti-Repeal Union(A) (5). He invoked the Orange card (6). Later, with Gladstone back in office, Churchill attended another anti-Home Rule rally in the city, and gave the reactionary Unionists a free hand – Ulster will fight, and Ulster will be right (7).

Gladstone returned to office in February 1886. The Conservatives built up an ultra-Unionist alliance, uniting with the darkest forces of reaction. The previously sidelined Orange Order and its leaders, Colonel Saunderson(B) (8), and William Johnston(C) (9), newly elected Irish Conservative MPs for North Armagh and South Belfast, were brought into the centre of politics. Saunderson helped to found a new Irish Unionist Party in Dublin, in 1886. In public, this party put forward a respectable face and was dominated by the Irish Conservatives, but also drew support from the breakaway Irish Liberal Unionists. Meanwhile, on the streets, particularly in Belfast, members of the Orange Order linked up with the Protestant bigot, ‘Roaring’ Hanna, in provoking anti-Home Rule riots, which ended up with over 50 killed (10).

The Belfast Riots occurred soon after Gladstone put his Home Rule Bill to Parliament in August. He found that the Radical Liberals led by Joseph Chamberlain (11), and the aristocratic Whigs, led by Lord Hartington, had defected. Chamberlain also revealed the flaw in many Radicals’ thinking(D), when he said, I have cared for the honour and the influence and the integrity of the Empire (12).

Chamberlain and Hartington joined together to form the Liberal Unionists and voted with the Conservatives to defeat Irish Home Rule. The Conservative leader, Lord Salisbury, showed that he had taken on board the new ‘scientific racist’ thinking. You would not confide free representative institutions to the Hottentots for instance… self government… works admirably when it is confided to people who are of the Teutonic race (13).

However, before the Liberal government was swept away, it rushed through the Crofters Act (14), to try and stem the challenge represented by the crofters’ continued direct action, and the emergence of independent Radical MPs outside its own ranks. With the defeat of the Irish Home Rule Bill, another General Election was looming. It was now clear to all that Conservative reaction would be a real factor. This had the effect of pulling Davitt and his allies in the NL behind Parnell. The NLGB, the Highland Land League and the ‘Crofter Party’ MPs were drawn back into the Liberals’ ranks for the General Election of 1886. Even the SLRL gave its support (15).

After the election, the Liberal Party only held 192 seats, whilst the Conservative and Liberal Unionist alliance held 393. The Conservatives held 316 seats and the Liberal Unionists 77 (16). In Ireland and the Highlands, the NL and Liberal Party undoubtedly put up a better show due the continued actions taken by tenant farmers, and their organisations’ strong concern about their future prospects under a Conservative and Unionist government.

The extent of the Conservative and Unionist victory, in August 1886, highlighted the increased domination of politics by New Imperialism. This made its effect felt on the remnant Liberal Party, the Radicals, and even upon the nascent Socialists. Gladstone’s Liberals had seen Irish Home Rule as part of a new liberal unionist settlement, which left the running of the British Empire largely untouched. Radicals were not so sure. Many Socialists were confused. The Conservatives realised that if Irish Home Rule was ever to be introduced, then the landlords’ Protestant Ascendancy would come to an end. The Liberal Unionists feared that any Irish parliament might impose extra taxes or import levies, which could damage Ulster businessmen’s profits.

When it came to Irish Unionism’s and Irish nationalism’s ‘mainland’ allies, the Conservative Party and Gladstone’s Liberal Party respectively, the conservative unionist alliance was far more solid and hence coherent. In contrast, the Liberals, frightened of independent movements from below, had continually compromised and pursued policies, such as coercion in Ireland and intervention in Egypt, which had more benefited their Conservative political opponents.

The Conservatives continued to build their all-UK, reactionary block consisting of the House of Lords (with its veto on new Bills), the Conservative and Unionist Party, the Irish Unionist Party(E), the Orange Order, army officers, local magistrates, Protestant church leaders and street corner preachers, all under the jingoistic, racist and sectarian banners of Union and Empire. From now on, it was clear that the demand for Home Rule would lead to a major political confrontation, and hence a constitutional crisis.

The new Conservative government was quick to clamp down on any opposition. Arthur Balfour (17) became the Secretary of State for Scotland, and sent the police and marines to the Highlands and Islands to deal with the continued crofters and cottars’ struggles. Then, in 1887, his ‘skills’ were turned to coercion in Ireland, when he was made Secretary of State there. He soon earned the nickname ‘Bloody Balfour’(F). The road forward for Gladstone’s liberal unionist and Parnell’s constitutional nationalist politics was now blocked. The only possible road forward lay in social republican and anti-imperialist politics.

In response to the new situation, Davitt decided to further develop his ‘internationalism from below’ strategy. He brought Wales into the alliance. The South Wales valleys had undergone hothouse industrial and urban development, based on the coalmining and iron industries and a major influx of labour. The new workforce had been sucked in from all over the UK, including from both England and Ireland. However, the western valleys and the northern fringes, particularly around Merthyr Tydfil, had taken in many Welsh speakers from Mid Wales, where the old woollen industry had declined, and where agricultural depression now hit the tenant farmers and farm labourers. Furthermore, even in what superficially appeared to be rural North and Mid Wales, the impact of the Industrial Revolution was also felt. Slate quarrying employed many workers, some of whom held smallholdings (18). Therefore, the links between land and labour soon became apparent.

In 1886, a Welsh Land League was established at Rhyl, with the Radical preacher and publisher, Thomas Ghee (19) as President (20). In February, Davitt addressed meetings in Flint, along with the Crofter Liberal MP, Dr. Clark. He addressed another in the slate quarrying town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, along with Michael Jones (21), the founder of the Welsh ‘Zionist’ colony in the Chubut Valley in Patagonia.

Another still unresolved issue, in Wales, was the payment of tithes to the (Anglican) Church of Wales. An Anti-Tithe League was formed in September 1887. This followed a full-scale riot at Mochdre, Flint, in June, where 50 civilians and 34 policemen were injured (22). In 1887, the Welsh Land and Anti-Tithe Leagues were merged as the Welsh Land, Commercial and Labour League, which also included amongst its aims, limitation of mining royalties(G)… the abolition of all game laws and the throwing open of rivers to all fishermen (23). Wales was catching up fast.

In May 1887, Davitt visited the Scottish Highlands and Islands and addressed a large meeting in Portree. The crowds carried banners in English and Gaelic calling for ‘Land for the People’. It was also addressed by Angus Sutherland, the recently elected Crofter Liberal MP, and by John Murdoch (24). Just as the Catholic Davitt had earlier demonstrated his ability to win over Protestant, including Orange, tenant farmers in Ulster, so he now showed his ability to win over crofter and cottar members of the Free Church.

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Footnotes

• (A) Just as the formation of Parnell’s National League represented the triumph of Irish Catholic business and better-off farmer interests over the older landlord-led Home Rulers, so the formation of a distinctive Ulster Loyalist Anti-Repeal Union marked the rise of northern Protestant business interests amongst the Unionists, who soon gained considerably more political influence than the southern landlord-based Irish Loyal and Patriotic Union.
• (B) Colonel Saunderson was an officer in the Royal Irish Fusiliers.
• (C) William Johnston, a County Down landlord, had taken the lead of the plebian Orange Order opposition to the government’s 1850 banning of Orange demonstrations. With the help of the Rev. Hugh Hanna and the Protestant Working Men’s Association of Ulster, he successfully stood against the official Conservative c