What is the meaning of the quotations from Marx adduced by Comrade Louzon? [1] It is a fact that Marx wrote in 1868 that the workers’ party would emerge from the trade unions. When writing this he was thinking mainly of Britain, at that time the only developed capitalist country that already possessed extensive labour organizations. Half a century has passed since then. Historical experience has in general confirmed Marx’s prophecies in so far as Britain is concerned. The British Labour Party has actually been built up on the foundations of the trade unions. But does Comrade Louzon really think that the British Labour Party, as it is today, led by Henderson and Clynes [2], can be looked upon as representative of the interests of the proletariat as a whole? Most decidedly not. The British Labour Party betrays the cause of the proletariat just as the trade union bureaucracy betrays it, although in Britain the trade unions approach nearer to comprising the working class as a whole than anywhere else. On the other hand, we cannot doubt but that our Communist influence will grow in this British Labour Party which emerged from the trade unions, and that this will contribute to sharpening the struggle of masses and leaders within the trade unions until the treacherous bureaucrats are ultimately driven out and the party is completely reformed and renewed. And we, like Comrade Louzon, belong to an International which includes the little Communist Party of Britain, but which combats the Second International supported by the British Labour Party that had its origins in the trade unions.
In Russia – and in the logic of capitalist development Russia is exactly the opposite of Britain – the Communist Party, the former social democratic party, is older than the trade unions, and created the trade unions. Today, the trade unions and the workers’ state in Russia are completely under the influence of the Communist Party, which is far from having its origins in the trade unions, but on the contrary created and trained them. Will Comrade Louzon contend that Russia has evolved in contradiction to Marxism? Is it not simpler to say that Marx’s judgement on the origin of the party in the trade unions has been proved by experience to have been correct for Britain, and even there not 100 per cent correct, but that Marx never had the least intention of laying down what he himself once scornfully designated as a “supra-historical law”? All the other countries of Europe, including France, stand between Britain and Russia on this question. In some countries the trade unions are older than the party, in others the contrary has been the case; but nowhere except in Britain, and partially in Belgium, has a party of the proletariat emerged from the trade unions. In any case, no communist party has developed organically out of the trade unions. But are we to deduce from this that the Communist International has orginated wrongly?
When the British trade unions alternately supported the Conservatives and the Liberals and represented to a certain extent a labour appendage to these parties, when the political organization of the German workers was nothing more than a left wing of the democratic party, when the followers of Lassalle and Eisenach were quarrelling among themselves, Marx demanded the independence of the trade unions from all parties. This formula was dictated by the desire to oppose the labour organisations to all bourgeois parties, and to prevent their being too closely bound up with socialist sects. But Comrade Louzon may perhaps remember that it was also Marx who founded the First International, the object of which was to guide the labour movement in all countries, in every respect, and to render it fruitful. This was in 1864, and the International created by Marx was a party. Marx refused to wait until the international party of the working class formed itself in some way out of the trade unions. He did his utmost to strengthen the influence of scientific socialism in the trade unions – as first laid down in 1848 in the Communist Manifesto. When Marx demanded for the trade unions complete independence from the parties and sects of the bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie, he did this in order to make it easier for scientific socialism to gain dominance in the trade unions. Marx never saw in the party of scientific socialism one of the ordinary parliamentary democratic political parties. For Marx, the International was the class-conscious working class, represented at that time by truly a very small vanguard.
From A Necessary Discussion with Communist Syndicalists,
Pravda, 21st March 1923
Comrade Bukharin [3] has told me that the British Labour Party has addressed to their government a proposal that the question of Georgia be inscribed as the first item on the agenda of the Genoa Conference. [4] If this information has been verified I recommend that the All-Russian Central Council of Trade Unions and individual trade unions pass a resolution along the following lines:
The British Labour Party has been pleased to inspire the British capitalist government to intervene in the internal affairs of the Soviet Workers’ and Peasants’ Republics. We are not going here into the question of why it is that the British Labour Party confines itself to Georgia. In Russia too, in the Ukraine, in Azerbaijan and Turkestan and so on, the Mensheviks and their allies were expelled by the workers and peasants in the same way as they were in Georgia. We are, likewise, not going into the question of the motives and inducements which inspire the so-called British Labour Party in its attempts to facilitate the wrecking of the Genoa Conference for the benefit of the extreme interventionist wing of imperialism in Britain, France and other countries. If, however, the British government were to attempt to follow the path towards which the British Labour Party is trying to draw it, we categorically insist that our delegation shall put down on the agenda of the Genoa Conference the question of the liberation of Egypt, India and other colonies struggling heroically for their liberation. At the same time we consider it the paramount duty of the Communist International to redouble its efforts for the exposure of the Socialist hypocrites in Great Britain, who neglect their elementary duty to conduct, hand in hand with the insurgent masses of its colonial slaves, a determined struggle against British imperialism, and at the same time attempt to represent the overthrow of the Georgian bourgeoisie and its Menshevik agents as an act of military coercion.
This repulsive manoeuvre of the conciliators must be mercilessly exposed vis-à-vis the working masses of Britain.
I am giving here not the text of a resolution but only the approximate outline of one. I think that we need to get a move on with this. The resolutions of the various unions as adopted could vary in their working. The more of them there are, the better. We shall be able to transmit them every day by radio. I recommend that this should be discussed by telephone without delay in order to speed things up. [5]
A letter to the Politburo dated 9th February 1922.
First published in The Trotsky Papers edited by J. Meijer and
published by the International Institute for Social History,
by whose kind permission it is here reproduced.
The following idea might also be included in the resolution of our trade unions about the proposal of the British Labour Party concerning Georgia [6]:
In requiring the removal from Georgia of revolutionary troops the British Labour Party is, by this token, leaving Georgia completely at the mercy of imperialism which, first in the shape of Turkish and German troops, and then in the shape of British troops, enjoyed unchallenged domination there prior to the Soviet revolution. In now requiring the withdrawal of the Red Army, is the Labour Party requiring the withdrawal of the British and French fleets from the Black Sea, from which the French and British fleets are undoubtedly threatening the independence and freedom of Georgia? Instead of curbing British imperialism the British Labour Party is striving to disarm, in the former’s interests, the revolutionary maritime countries in relation to which this same imperialism announces its rapacious claims.
I am dictating by telephone only the main idea, not the text. I think that this idea will have importance as propaganda.
A letter to the Politburo dated 10th February 1922.
First published in The Trotsky Papers edited by J. Meijer and
published by the International Institute for Social History,
by whose kind permission it is here reproduced.
A few words on Britain. Here our Communist Party still remains a successfully functional educational and propaganda society but not a party, capable of directly leading the masses.
In Britain, however, the situation is taking shape or tending in a direction favourable to us, outside of the Communist Party’s framework – within the working class as a whole. Today we received a cable that Lloyd George’s government has resigned.
This was the only government older than ours. [Laughter] We were considered to be the least stable among all the governments. This is Lloyd George’s polite gift to our jubilee, so as not to hurt our feelings. [Laughter] It obviously means new elections in Britain. And new elections imply a struggle between the three basic groupings, which are: the Tories, the Unionists, and the Independent Liberals. What Lloyd George does personally is a subsidiary question. He may go either with the Tories or with the Independent Liberals, clasping the Labour Party’s right hand. His personal career is all that is involved here. Essentially the struggle will occur between the three groupings, and therewith chances are by no means excluded that a coalition of the Labour Party and the Independent Liberals may turn up in power. What this means hardly requires comment. The appearance of the working class in power will place the entire responsibility for the government’s actions upon the Labour Party; and will give rise to an epoch of British Kerenskyism in the era of parliamentarism, providing a favourable environment without parallel for the Communist Party’s political work. Should the Tories win (I hesitate to weigh the odds, but let us here assume they are favourable) [7], it would only signify a worsening of the country’s domestic situation; it would tend to sharpen the Labour Party’s opposition and would thereby bring about new elections very quickly, because elections in Britain can take place within a month or a few months, as has happened more than once in the past. In other words, the stability of the domestic political situation, which had been enhanced by the coalition headed by Lloyd George [8], is relegated to the museum with Lloyd George’s departure; and Britain is experiencing shocks and oscillations which can play only into our hands.
From a report on the fifth anniversary of the October Revolution and
the Fourth World Congress of the Communist International to the active
membership of the Moscow organization of the RCP, 20th October 1922.
In Britain, the general elections are now taking place. Because of the collapse of Lloyd George’s coalition government they came sooner than expected. The outcome is still unknown.
There is a likelihood that the previous ultra-imperialistic grouping will be returned to power. But even if they do win, their reign will be short. A new parliamentary orientation of the bourgeoisie is clearly being prepared both in Britain and France. The openly imperialist aggressive methods, the methods of the Versailles Treaty, of Foch [9], Poincaré [10] and Curzon [11], have obviously run into a blind alley. France cannot extract from Germany what Germany hasn’t got. France in turn is unable to pay her debts. The rift between Britain and France keeps widening. America refuses to renounce collecting payments of the debts. And among the intermediate layers of the population, especially among the petty bourgeoisie, reformist and pacifist moods are growing stronger and stronger: an agreement ought to be reached with Germany, and with Russia: the League of Nations should be expanded; the burden of militarism should be lightened; a loan from America should be made, and so forth and so on. The illusions of war and defencism, the ideas and slogans of nationalism and chauvinism, together with the subsequent hopes in the great fruits that victory would bring – in brief, the illusions which seized a considerable section of the working class itself in the Entente countries are giving way to more sober reactions, and disillusionment. Such is the soil for the growth of the “Left Bloc” in France, and of the so-called Labour Party and the independent Liberals in England. Naturally, it would be false to expect any serious change of policy consequent upon the reformist-pacifist orientation of the bourgeoisie. The objective conditions of the capitalist world today are least suited to reformism and pacifism. But it is quite probable that the foundering of these illusions in practice will have to be experienced before the victory of the revolution becomes possible.
From the report to the Fourth World Congress of the Communist International
on The New Economic Policy and the Perspectives for World Revolution,
14th November 1922.
In Britain the situation is no less instructive. The rule of the Liberal-Tory coalition has been replaced, as a result of the recent elections, by a pure Tory government. Clearly, a step “to the right’! But on the other hand, the figures of the last election precisely go to show that bourgeois-conciliationist Britain has already fully prepared a new orientation – in the event of a further sharpening of contradictions and growing difficulties (which are inevitable). The Tories obtained less than 5½ million votes. The Labour Party, together with the independent Liberals, almost 7 million. Thus the British electorate has, in its majority, already swung from the lush illusions of imperialist victory to the emaciated illusions of reformism and pacifism. It is noteworthy that the “League for Democratic Control” [12], a radical-pacifist organization, has had its entire committee elected to parliament. Are there serious grounds for believing that the incumbent Tory regime may bring Britain directly to the dictatorship of the proletariat? We see no such grounds. On the contrary, we assume that the insoluble economic, colonial and international contradictions of the present-day British Empire will tend more and more to swell the plebeian and petty-bourgeois opposition in the person of the so-called Labour Party. From all indications, in Britain more than in any other country on the globe, the working class will, before passing over to the dictatorship, have to pass through the stage of a Labour government in the person of the reformist-pacifist Labour Party which has already received in the last elections about 4¼ million votes ...
It is by no means excluded that the German revolution may erupt before the present-day aggressive imperialist governments are replaced in France, Britain and Italy. No one disputes that the victory of the German proletariat would give a mighty impetus to the revolutionary movement in every country in Europe. But just as the impact of the Russian revolution within a year brought Scheidemann and not Liebknecht to power in Germany, so the impact of the victorious proletarian revolution in Germany might bring Henderson or Clynes to power in Britain; and Caillaux [13] in an alliance with Blum [14] and Jouhaux [15] in France. Such a Menshevik regime in France would, under the given historical conditions, be only a very brief interlude in the death-agony of the bourgeoisie. There is even a possibility that in such a case the communist proletariat in France might come to power directly over the heads of the (French) Mensheviks. In Britain this is less likely. In any case, such a perspective presupposes the victory of the revolution in Germany during the next few months. Is victory certain so soon? Scarcely anyone would seriously maintain this. At all events it would be the crassest blunder to restrict our prognosis to such a one-sided and conditional perspective. On the other hand, without a prognosis it is generally impossible to arrive at a far-reaching revolutionary policy. But our prognosis cannot be mechanistic. It must be dialectical. It must take into account the interaction of objective and subjective historical forces. And this opens up the possibility of several variants – depending on how the relation of forces shapes up in the course of living historical action.
And so there is hardly any ground for a categoric assertion that the proletarian revolution. in Germany will triumph before the domestic and foreign difficulties plunge France into a governmental parliamentary crisis. This crisis would mean new elections and new elections would result in the victory of the “Left Bloc”. This would deal a heavy blow to the Conservative government in Britain; it would strengthen the Labour Party opposition and in all likelihood produce a parliamentary crisis, new elections and the victory of the Labour Party as such or in an alliance with independent Liberals. What would be the effect of such events upon Germany’s internal situation? The German Social-Democrats would immediately drop their semi-oppositional status in order to offer “the people” their services in restoring peaceful, normal, etc., relations with the “great Western democracies”. This was the sense of my remarks to the effect that a shift in the domestic policy in France and Britain, should it occur prior to the victory of the Communists in Germany, could for a while lend wings to the German Social-Democracy. Scheidemann [16] could once again come to power – but this would already signify the open prelude to the revolutionary culmination. For it is perfectly obvious that, under the existing European conditions, the impotence of the reformist-pacifist regime would be laid bare not over a number of years but in the course of a few months or weeks. In his speech on the draft programme [of the Comintern] Comrade Thalheimer [17] quite correctly reminded us once again about those basic causes which exclude the possibility of a turn in capitalist policy toward Manchesterism [18]; pacifist liberalism and reformism. In power, Clynes or Caillaux-Blum or Turati [19] would be unable to pursue a policy essentially different from the policy of Lloyd George, Bonar Law, Poincaré and even Mussolini. [20] But when they come to power the position of the bourgeoisie will be rendered even more difficult, even more inextricable than it is today. Their complete political bankruptcy – provided, naturally, we pursue correct tactics, i.e. revolutionary, resolute and at the same time flexible tactics – can become laid utterly bare in a very brief span of time. In a ruined and completely disorganized capitalist Europe after the illusions of war and of victory, the pacifist illusions and the reformist hopes can come only as the ephemeral illusions of the death agony of the bourgeoisie. Comrade Ravenstein [21] is apparently willing, with a reservation here and there, to recognize all this so far as the plebeian capitalists are concerned, but not as touches the capitalist aristocrats, i.e. the colonial powers. In his opinion the perspective of a reformist-pacifist prologue to the proletarian revolution is as inappropriate for Great Britain, France, Belgium and Holland as the slogan of a workers’ government. Comrade Ravenstein is perfectly correct in linking up the slogan of a workers’ government with the fact that the bourgeoisie still disposes of a reformist-pacifist resource, not a material but an ideological resource in the shape of the influence still retained by the bourgeois-reformist and the social-democratic parties. But Comrade Ravenstein is absolutely wrong in offering exemptions to the colonial powers. Before bringing her armed might upon the Russian revolution, Britain sent her Henderson to assist Buchanan [22] in steering the revolution on to a “correct” path. And it must be said that during the war Russia was one of Britain’s colonies. The British bourgeoisie followed exactly the same course in relation to India: it first sent well-intentioned and liberal viceroys and then, on their heels, squadrons of bombing planes. The growth of the revolutionary movement in the colonies would doubtless accelerate the assumption of power by the British Labour Party despite its invariable and repeated betrayals of the colonies to British capitalism. But it is equally unquestionable that the further growth of the revolutionary movement in the colonies, parallel with the growth of the proletarian movement at home, would once and for all topple petty-bourgeois reformism and its representative, the Labour Party, into the grave of history.
From Political Perspectives,
Izvestia, 30th November 1922
What then does the general picture add up to? Extreme right-wing Conservatives in Britain; extreme imperialists, the National Bloc [23], in France; the Fascists in Italy; the conservative rights in Poland; the counter-revolutionary Liberal Party in Rumania and one of the latest developments, the counter-revolutionary coup in Bulgaria. [24] We seem to be observing the swing of counter-revolutionary reaction flying forward to reach its highest point. To understand this more clearly and concretely let us say two words on the domestic situation in Britain and France.
In Britain the Conservatives hold power. The Liberals have become numerically the third party. The Labour Party forms the immediate opposition. At the elections it won more votes than the Liberals. The whole of British politics now stand under the sign of the inevitable coming to power of the Labour Party. You know the Labour Party there: it is British Menshevik reformism. The leaders of the Labour Party represent essentially the bourgeoisie’s political agents. For the fact is that there are periods when the bourgeoisie rules through agents like Curzon (who was the British Viceroy of India) but there are also moments when it is compelled to move to the left and govern the masses through MacDonald, Henderson and others.
The influence of the Labour Party is growing continuously. You read yesterday in the newspapers that Robert Smillie [25], one of the left leaders of the Labour Party, won the Morpeth bye-election, advocating moreover a programme not only of maintaining the agreement with the Soviet Union but also of full diplomatic recognition of Soviet Russia. He obtained a very considerable majority of votes over a bloc of Conservatives and Liberals. This fact is indicative. Comrades, anyone who follows the life of Great Britain will tell you that the bourgeois parties there are counting upon the Labour Party coming to power in a year or two’s time as an unavoidable fact, and that the bourgeoisie are having to accommodate themselves to the fact that their interests will be represented not by their old acknowledged leaders but through the intermediary of the Menseviks from the Labour Party.
From a speech to party, trade union, Young Communist and other organizations
of the Krasnaya Presnya district (Moscow), 25th June 1923
1. Robert Louzon (1882-1976), a French communist who held the syndicalist idea of the “unqualified independence” of the trade unions from political parties. [His book on China has been translated into English by Socialist Platform Ltd and published, 1998.]
2. Arthur Henderson (1863-1935), a leader of the British Labour Party, who rallied the party to support World War I and became a government minister. He later served as Home Secretary in the first Labour government (1924) and Foreign Secretary in the second Labour government (1929-1931). – J.R. Clynes (1869-1949), British trade unionist and Labour politician; supporter of British involvement in World War I; became leader of the Labour Party after the war; served as Home Secretary in the second Labour government (1929-31), but split with Ramsay MacDonald over the prop0osed austerity measures.
3. Nikolai Bukharin (1888-1938), Russian Bolshevik revolutionary; joined RSDLP in 1906 and became part of the Bolshevik faction; opposed World War I; worked with Trotsky and Kollontai on Novy Mir in New York; wrote Imperialism and World Economy, which influenced Lenin’s better-known Imperialism – The Highest Stage of Capitalism; his writings on the state also prompted Lenin to write The State and Revolution; on his return to Russia he was elected to the Bolshevik Central Committee; after the October Revolution he became editor of Pravda and wrote the ABC of Communism together with Evgeni Preobrazhensky; opposed the Treaty of Brest-Litovk and proposed that instead the Bolsheviks should prepare for a revolutionary war to spread the revolution; Lenin also considered his ideas on the national question to be one-sided and ultra-left; after the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) he adopted more right-wing positions, encouraging the peasantry to enrich itself; after Lenin’s death he developed the theoretical basis for the theory of “socialism in one country”; allied with Stalin against the Left Opposition and then against the Joint Opposition; when Stalin veered to the “left” by collectivising agriculture and introducing the First Five-Year Plan in 1928,the alliance between Stalin and bukharin collapsed; expelled from the party but capitulated to Stalin; engaged in journalistic activities during the early 1930s and participated in the drafting of the Soviet constitution; eventually arrested and condemned to death at the Third Moscow Trial (1938), after which he was executed.
4. This proposal had been made by a conference representing the Labour Party, the TUC and the Parliamentary Labour Party. See previous note on Genoa.
5. Lenin, and subsequently the Politburo, rejected Trotsky’s proposal and recommended that the Soviet trade unions take no action but that Izvestia should publicly welcome Henderson’s suggestion of expanding the Genoa agenda to include questions of national self-determination.
6. See Extract 96.
7. The Conservatives won the 1922 General Election.
8. David Lloyd George (1863-1945), Welsh Liberal politician, responsible as Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) for the introduction of old age pensions, unemployment benefit and sickness benefits; prime minister from 1916 to 1922.
9. Ferdinand Foch (1851-1929), French general who became supreme Allied commander on the Western Front in 1918 and took a leading part in framing the Versailles Treaty.
10. Raymond Poincaré (1860-1934), French Prime Minister from 1922 to 1924.
11. Lord Curzon (1859-1925), British Conservative politician who served as Viceroy of India and was Foreign Secretary from 1919 to 1924.
12. Actually Union for Democratic Control
13. Robert Cailleaux, leader of the French Radical Socialist Party, which was in fact a bourgeois liberal party.
14. Léon Blum (1872-1950), the leader of the French Socialist Party (SFIO) from 1920 after the split which let to the majority forming the Communist Party. A characteristic reformist politician of the Second International, bitterly opposed by the Stalinists until they became advocates of the Popular Front. Prime Minister in the Popular Front government elected in 1936 as “honest manager” for the bourgeoisie. Attacked by the Stalinists for his part in non-intervention in Spain. Imprisoned by the Germans and put on trial at Riom in 1942. Resumed position in French politics after the war, shifting even further to the right.
15. Léon Jouhaux (1879-1954) began his career as a revolutionary syndicalist and became general secretary of the CGT in 1906. A supporter of the war in 1914, he joined the government and became a Commissioner of the Nation gearing the working class to the war effort. Supported a reformist policy after the war. Opposed the Bolshevik Revolution. Dominant figure in the CGT and supported by the Stalinists after the 1935 re-unification. Negotiated the end of the strike wave that followed the election of the Popular Front government in 1936. Arrested and deported by Vichy regime. Organized split in 1948 which led to the formation of “Force Ouvrière” unions. Advocate of class collaboration. Awarded Nobel Peace Prize, 1951.
16. Philipp Scheidemann (1865-1939), leading German right-wing social-democrat.
17. August Thalheimer (1884-1948), German Communist theoretician; joined SPD before World War I and was active on its left wing; opposed the war; participated in the production of the underground Spartakusbriefe; joined the USPD after the split in the SPD; founder member of the KPD; led the party together with heinrich brandler in the period 1923-24; blamed along with Brandler for the debacle in October 1923 and removed from the leadership; in Moscow during the years 1924-28; returned to Germany against the will of the Comintern leadership in 1928; rejected the imposition of Stalinist policies by the KPD leadership around Thälmann; expelledfromthe KPD he and brandler set up the KPO; fled to France in 1933 and managed to escape from France to Cuba in 1940 just ahead of the invading German troops; his return to Germany after World War II was hindered by the occupying Allies and he died in Havana in 1948.
18. This refers to the economic policies of free trade and laissez-faire advocated by nineteenth century radicals like Cobden and Bright, who led the Anti-Corn Law League which was founded in Manchester in 1838.
19. Filippo Turati (1857-1932), Italian sociologist and Socialist Party politician
20. Andrew Bonar Law (1858-1923), Canadian-born British Conservative politician, became leader of the Conservative Party in 1911; aligned thee Conservative Party with the Irish Unionists in opposition to Home rule; entered the war-time Coalition government led by Herbert Asquith in 1915 as Colonial Secretary; served as Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons under Lloyd George; resigned as Chancellor after the end of the war; resigned as Tory leader in 1921 due to ill-health; after the fall of the Lloyd George coalition in 1922 Bonar Law became prime minister, but had to resign due to his continued ill-health in may 1923. – Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), Italian fascist and dictator of Italy from 1922 to 1943; originally a left-wing socialist; editor of the Socialist Party paper Avanti! 1912-14; expelled from the party in late 1914 after setting up the pro-war Il Popolo d’Italia, allegedly with money provided by the French secret service; returned from war as militant anti-socialist; set up the fascist movement to combat the revolutionary workers’ movement; appointed prime minister by the king in 1922, proceeded to dismantle all democratic institutions and established dictatorship; after the Allied invasion of Sicily deposed by the Fsascist Grand Council, which signs armistice with the Allies; captured by partisans in 1945 while trying to flee to Switzerland and shot.
21. Ravenstein, Dutch communist who defended an ultra-left position at the Fourth World Congress (1922) opposing any parliamentary activity and participation in reformist trade unions.
22. George Buchanan (1854-1924), British diplomat, ambassador to Russia 1910-1918.
23. The right-wing coalition government formed by Alexandre Millerand (1859-1943), the former socialist, in France in 1920.
24. A military coup d’état led by General Tsankov and backed by right wing parties overthrew Stambulisky’s Peasant Union government in June 1923. The Bulgarian Communists adopted a mistaken position of neutrality towards this seizure of power but were soon subjected to persecution and following an abortive uprising in September driven underground by Tsankov’s regime of White terror.
25. Robert Smillie (1857-1940), Scottish trade unionist and Labour politician; president of the Scottish Miners’ Federation (1894-1918 and 1921-1940) and president of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (1912-1922); played an important role in the foundation fo the Scottish TUC in 1894, chairman of STUC (1894-1899); called for negotiated peace during World War I and opposed conscription; called for nationalisation of the mines; Labour MP (1923-1929) but refused government office in the first Labour governbment (1924).
Last updated on: 2.7.2007