MIA > Archive > Harry Pollitt
From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 2 No. 59, 18 July 1922, pp. 447–446.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2020). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
The English Labor Movement is just now having its annual dose of conferences. The Labor Party has just held its annual conference at Edinburgh. It was attended by over 800 delegates. It met at a most critical time for the English workers. It met after a colossal defeat of the Engineers, a defeat the consequences of which must inevitably shatter the old forms of craft unionism in the engineering and shipbuilding industry.
Yet despite all these things, it was only m terms of success at the next elections that the big men of the conference would think. Every question had been discussed and analyzed from an election and vote-catching point of view, so that our impression is that the conference, faced with infinite possibilities of rousing the workers out of their present apathy and despair, failed miserably in its task.
Although we live in times that are witnessing immense revolutionary changes, the Labor Party stands still? and still imagines that problems and tactics can be discussed from the 1914 standpoint. Consequently not a single ray of hope to the workers has gone out from Edinburgh.
The decisions of the Conference regarding the affiliation of the Communist Party will by the force and logic of events a short period be reversed. While the official caucus can manipulate the Bloc which can just now keep the Communist Party outside the Labor Party, the leaders cannot keep the rank and file from Communist meetings.
In Edinburgh, the Labor Party leaders could only get small attendances at their public meetings, whilst the Communist Party had a splendid demonstration attended by over 1,500 workers, who listened to MacManus, Gallacher, Pollitt, Crawford, and others who put the case for the Party.
Last week, July 3rd to 7th, the National Union of Railwaymen had their Annual Conference. Many domestic problems were discussed. In matters of public interest such as the demand of the Durhole branch that he resign his Privy Councillorship or his position as General Secretary for the N.U.R., Thomas carried’ the Conference with him despite a good case put up by 3 delegates. I have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Thomas is thoroughly representative of the N.U.R. The impression that his union is somewhat revolutionary is erroneous, and Mr. Thomas is clever enough io be able to exploit the mentality of his union, but we believe that he has been able to get such a hold on the union through the very favorable position that his members now occupy in comparison with most other unions. This position is not the result of Mr. Thomas’s clever leadership, but is owing to economic circumstances, and the N.U.R. will shortly be brought up against conditions which will very sharply test M. Thomas’s leadership and which we believe will find it wanting.
The N.U.R. stand isolated, and very soon the offensive on their base rales will have commenced. Mr. C.L. Cranp (Industrial Secretary to the N.U.R.) stated that they stand for three great principles.
Over and again he has declared hat the N.U.R. would never give up these concessions. Well these brave words will soon be tested. Everyone is conscious of the demands that the coal and steel capitalists are making to the railway bosses for the lowering of freight rates. The railway bosses say: “But our wages bill is too high.” The coal and steel bosses retort: “Very well, so was ours, but we have reduced it, you must do the same.”
The press is busy preparing the necessary atmosphere, all the London papers last week hinted at a fall in freight rates, this means that the war on wages, guaranteed week and eight hour day will soon commence. The N.U.R. will have no sympathy because the rest of the workers are down and out and they remember the action of M. Thomas on Black Friday.
The conference of the N.U.R. did not appear to have discussed these questions. We feel sure they are in for a rude awakening, and then when Mr. Thomas is put into a position where he has to display the real arts of leadership, he will fail, and at the annual Conference of the N.U.R. in 1923 there will be more than 3 delegates in opposition to the present policy of the National Union of Railwaymen as personified in J.H. Thomas.
The Miners’ Federation of Great Britain hold their annual Conference on July 18th at Blackpool. Never in its history has the Federation been faced with such a crisis as confronts it at the present time. Since the strike of last year the conditions of the miners have gone from bad to worse. They are living and working under conditions of the most awful and abject poverty.
Two years ago, the miners were the most powerful factors in English economic life. Today they are the cinderellas of English industry. In many districts wages are down to the minimum. In others they are below what they were in 1914, and the cost of living is still 80% above 1914.
Unemployment is still abnormally high, over 100,000 miners being out of work. In South Wales in some coal pits after working 6 days the miners have £1 18s. to take as wages. The position is now so grave that the press and Parliament have taken the matter up. The press advocates cheapening transport to assist in a trade revival and so find the miners work, at the same time the press points out to the miners that the railwaymen’s wages much higher than theirs, and blames the trade depression on high freight rates.
Parliament through its capitalist representative, Mr. Bridgeman, told the miners to “Grin and bear it”. But the miners are getting into an ugly mood; their Conference will be a place where all the bitterness and misery of the last 12 months will find an outlet.
It was stated in Parliament on July 6 that in 1920 the number of fatal accidents in mines were 1,103, and there were no fewer than 117,000 persons seriously injured. This is a terrible price to pay for getting coal, and particularly so when the coal is got for wages which only mean starvation.
We are confident the Conference will demand an end of the present agreement, and that unless the capitalists are prepared to increase wages, then there is every probability the miners will be on strike in September.
A resolution that will arouse a keen debate is down in the name of South Wales, asking the Federation to secede from the Amsterdam International and join the Red Trade Union International. Mr. Frank Hodges will oppose this, but he will have to fight very hard to prevent the South Wales delegates from carrying the conference with them.
There is also sure to be a keen discussion on the action of Frank Hodges in writing articles for a capitalist newspaper, in the course of which he made an extremely ditty attack upon the miners’ veteran leader, Bob Smillie. The miners will have some strong words to say to this young upstart from Ruskin College who at 34 is a snobbish prig, and has forgotten that the miners paid for his education to enable him to fight their battles against capitalism. If Hodges is half the man that Bob Smillie is when he arrives at the latter’s age he will have done well.
Altogether the Conference of the miners will be well worth studying.
Last updated on 5 May 2020