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VII. Arthur Henderson, the Russian Revolution, and the Reconstruction of the Labour Party*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

J. M. Winter
J. M. Winter
Affiliation:
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
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The dominant role of the secretary of the British Labour party, Arthur Henderson, in the reconstruction of the party in 1917–18 has never been disputed. It is surprising, therefore, that little attention has been paid in recent historical literature to the development of Henderson's political ideas during the First World War and, more particularly, to the impact of the Russian Revolution on his attitude towards the conduct of international affairs and domestic politics. The neglect of this aspect of an important chapter of labour history has obscured the fact that Henderson came to advocate the reconstruction of the Labour party only after and partly as a result of his visit to Russia in mid-1917

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , December 1972 , pp. 753 - 773
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

References

1 The best discussion of the Stockholm Conference is Hildemarie Meynell, ‘The Stockholm Conference of 1917’, International Review of Social History (1960), pp. 1–25, 202–25.Google Scholar

2 Pelling, H. M., A Short History of the Labour Party (1961), pp. 41–2;Google ScholarCole, G. D. H., A History of the Labour Party from 1914 (1949), p. 36,Google Scholar recently reprinted in The Left and War: The British Labour Party and World War I, ed. P. Stansky (1969); and Beer, S. H., Modern British Politics (1966), pp. 144–52,Google Scholar which relies heavily on Cole's account. All books cited are published in London unless otherwise noted.

3 In a survey of the twenty-nine new Labour M.P.s in 1906, Henderson stated that the book which had influenced him most was Wesley's Sermons. Cf. ‘The Labour Party and the Books that Helped to Make It’, Review of Reviews (June 1906), pp. 568–82.Google Scholar His first political experience was as a Liberal member of the Newcastle-upon-Tyne Town Council. He also served for seven years as election agent of the Liberal M.P. Sir Joseph Pease, the chairman of the North-Eastern Railway. When Pease retired from politics in 1903, Henderson decided to stand for the vacated seat in the Durham constituency of Barnard Castle. On instructions from his union, the National Society of Ironfounders, which financed his candidacy, he broke with his political past and ran as a member of the Labour representation committee. He won in a three-cornered fight by forty-seven votes, and was re-elected comfortably three years later. Cf. Bealey, F. and Pelling, H. M., Labour and Politics 1900–1906 (1958), pp. 152–5;Google ScholarPoirier, P., The Advent of the Labour Party (1958), pp. 196–206;Google ScholarPelling, H. M., Social Geography of British Elections 1885–1910 (1967), p. 337.Google Scholar

4 British Library of Political and Economic Science, ‘The Infancy of the Labour Party’, 11, 94, text of resolution passed by International Socialist Bureau, 12 Oct. 1908.

5 Pelling, , A Short History of the Labour Party, p. 32.Google Scholar

6 Labour party library, War Emergency Committee Papers, Box: From Conference to Conference, Text of proposed objects and membership of Peace Emergency Committee.

7 Ibid.

8 War Emergency Committee Papers, Box: From War to War Office, Circular signed by W. C. Anderson and Henderson on behalf of the Labour party, 6 Aug. 1914.

9 Labour party library, Labour party NEC minutes, 5 Aug. 1914. The vote was 8–4.

10 Labour party NEC minutes, 19 May 1915.

11 Labour party NEC minutes, 7 Dec. 1916.

12 Labour Party Annual Report, 1917, p. 82.Google Scholar

13 Ibid. p. 137.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid. p. 105.

16 Ibid. pp. 106, 110.

17 P.R.O., Cabinet Papers [hereafter referred to as ‘Cab’ ] 23/1, no. 47 (10), 29 Jan. 1917.

18 Cab. 23/1, no. 25 (4), 2 Jan. 1917.

19 Cab. 23/2, no. 104 (5), 26 Mar. 1917.

20 Cab. 23/2, no. 107 (9), 28 Mar. 1917.

21 Labour party NEC minutes, 9 May 1917. The vote was 9–4.

22 Cab. 23/2, no. 136 (15), n May 1917. Ultimately Purdy withdrew from the deputation because he objected to being associated with ILP-men like MacDonald and Jowett, who were also invited to Russia as minority delegates. Roberts declined to go for the reason that ‘as a member of the Government his inclusion in the Executive deputation might lead to misunderstanding’. They were replaced by Hutchinson and dynes, who both later changed their minds. Finally Roberts reversed his decision after consultation with the cabinet, and Carter joined him along with MacDonald and Jowett for the ILP and Julius West for the Fabian Society. But when they got to Aberdeen, with government permission to do, Havelock Wilson's National Sailors’ and Firemen's Union refused to service a ship carrying known pacifists en route, they thought, to consultations with the Germans, who had just begun their policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. Henderson's intervention was in vain. The boat left without the Labour delegates, who agreed to go together or not at all. Cf. Labour party NEC minutes, 1 June, 7 June, 20 June 1917.

23 Cab. 23/2, no. 136 (15), 11 May 1917.

24 Cab. 23/2, no. 141 (15), 21 May 1917.

25 Cab. 23/2, no. 144 (1), 23 May 1917.

26 Ibid.

27 Labour party NEC minutes, 1 June 1917. Mayer, Arno, in his Political Origins of the New Diplomacy 1917–1918 (New Haven, Conn., 1959), p. 215,Google Scholar is wrong when he claims that ‘at the time of his departure [for Russia], Henderson was still uncommitted on the Stockholm question’.

28 ‘Mr. Henderson in Russia’, The Times, 2 June 1917. The Russian use of the Julian calendar, which was thirteen days behind the Gregorian calendar used in the west, meant that Henderson arrived in Russia on 19 May, their time. I have used the western dating throughout.

29 Buchanan, Sir George, My Mission to Russia (1923), I, 144 ff.;Google ScholarHamilton, Mary Agnes, Arthur Henderson (1938), p. 126.Google Scholar

30 Wade, Rex, The Russian Search for Peace (Stanford, Calif., 1969), chs. II, III.Google Scholar

31 Wade, Rex, ‘Irakli Tsereteli and Siberian Zimmerwaldism’, Journal of Modern History (Dec. 1967). pp. 425–431.Google Scholar

32 P.R.O., Foreign Office Papers (hereafter referred to as ‘F.O.'), 371/3010, Buchanan's cable on his interview, dated 27 May 1917.

33 Ibid.

34 Wade, The Russian Search for Peace, ch. IV.

35 ‘Mr Henderson's Mission’, The Times, 6 June 1917.

36 Ibid., and F.O. Papers, 371/3010, cable of Henderson to Lloyd George, 8 June 1917.

37 Ibid.

38 ‘American Mission in Petrograd’, The Times, 18 June 1917.

39 Cf. Wilton, Robert, Russia's Agony (1918),Google Scholarpassim for a full statement of his anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik attitudes.

40 Lenin, V. I., British Labour and British Imperialism (1969), pp. 172–3.Google Scholar Cited from Collected Works (Moscow, 1934), xx, Bk. i, 287–90.Google Scholar

41 Ferro, Marc, La Révolution de 1917 (Paris, 1967), p. 352,Google Scholar citing Pravda of 8–21 June 1917. The English translation is mine. Cf. also Zinoviev's speech to the Petrograd Soviet on 16 June, cited in Gankin, G. H. and Fisher, H. H., The Bolsheviks and the World War (Stanford, 1940), pp. 623–6.Google Scholar

42 ‘Imperial and Foreign News Items’, The Times, 14 June 1917; and Wilton's letter to the editor of The Times, 31 Dec. 1917, signed ‘Petrograd Correspondent’.

43 ‘Mr Henderson in Moscow’, Daily Chronicle, 3 July 1917.

44 F.O. Papers, 371/2997, cable of Buchanan to F.O., 5 July 1917.

45 F.O. Papers, 371/2997, Henderson to Lloyd George, 1 July 1917.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid.

48 F.O. Papers, 438/10, letter of Lockhart to Buchanan, 23 July 1917. A copy of Henderson's speech and the reaction of his audience may be found in Sack, A. J., The Birth of the Russian Democracy (New York, 1918), pp. 374–6.Google Scholar

49 F.O. Papers, 371/2997, Henderson to Lloyd George, 1 July 1917.

50 F.O. Papers, 438/10, Lockhart to Buchanan, 23 July 1917.

51 Ibid.

52 F.O. Papers, 371/2997, Lockhart to Buchanan, 3 July 1917.

53 Lockhart, R. H. Bruce, Memoirs of a British Agent (1932), pp. 187, 188.Google Scholar

54 F.O. Papers, 371/2997, Henderson to Lloyd George, 1 July 1917.

55 ‘Socialist Peace Terms’, The Times, 7 June 1917. Text of letter dated 4 June to Petrograd Council: ‘We are more than ever convinced that a plenary meeting to which would be admitted those who are supporting the present policy of the Majority Socialists in the Central Powers would be harmful and dangerous and would leave the doubt that a just and permanent peace is possible before the imperialism of aggression has been destroyed.’

56 Labour party NEC minutes, 20 June 1917. He reiterated his opposition in a cable of 17 June.

57 ‘New Allied Note to Russia’, The Times, 8 June; ‘The French Reply to Russia’, The Times, 9 June 1917.

58 ‘Duma Speaks Out’, The Times, 18 June 1917.

59 Cited in Wade, The Russian Search for Peace, p. 59. His source was a passage in Tsereteli's memoirs, also cited in Ferro, La Révolution de 1917, p. 362.Google Scholar

60 F.O. Papers, 371/2997, Henderson to Lloyd George, 1 July 1917.

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid.

63 Buchanan's opinion was similar. He cabled the Foreign Office on 5 July: ‘Nothing would 1 think help Kerenski so much at the present moment as announcement that Allied Government had accepted Russian proposal for Conference in early September.’ F.O. Papers, 371/2997.

64 ‘Mr Henderson's Views on Stockholm’, The Times, 24 July 1917.

65 Wilton's letter to the editor of The Times, 31 Dec. 1917, signed ‘Petrograd Correspondent’.

66 Wade, Rex, ‘Argonauts of Peace: The Soviet Delegation to Western Europe in the Summer of 1917’, Slavic Review (Sept. 1967), pp. 453–67.Google Scholar One of the delegates, Rusanov ‘found Henderson impressed with the ideals of the Russian Revolution but depressed over what he considered the leadership's “impracticability”, that is their lack of concern over strikes and disorders and other matters which he considered serious and wished to discuss’, p. 459.

67 Labour party NEC minutes, 25 July 1917. The Russians argued that the Conference could not be postponed beyond 22 August due to the Swedish and Russian elections at the end of August and September, respectively. Henderson probably argued in the terms he used in a letter to the American Labour leader, Frey, J. P., cited in Pelling, H. M., America and the British Left (1956), p. III:Google Scholar ‘When in Russia I became aware that as far as the Russian democracy was concerned they were determined to have a conference if possible, and decided to advise my Executive to send delegates.’

68 Labour party NEC minutes, 9 Aug. 1917. The vote was nine to five. The minority wanted to leave the decision up to the conference without instructions.

69 Labour Party Annual Report, 1918, p. 47.Google Scholar

70 Ibid. p. 48.

71 Ibid. pp. 48–9.

72 Ibid. p. 51.

73 Cab. 23/3, no. 211 (1, 5), 10 Aug. 1917, 6.15 p.m. Curzon, Milner, Bonar Law, Carson, and Lloyd George attended.

74 Cab. 23/3, no. 212(1), 11 Aug. 1917, 11 a.m.

75 Cf. Hamilton, Mary, Arthur Henderson, p. 164:Google Scholar ‘By far the most important long-range result’ of the trip to Russia was the development of his ‘international outlook, before dim and rather conventional, now gradually became vivid and personal and never again left him’.

76 Cab. 23/3, 202, 1 Aug. 1917.

77 Cab. 23/3, 207 (5), 8 Aug. 1917.

78 The importance of the Russian visit for Henderson's attitude raises serious doubts about the argument of Samuel Beer in Modern British Politics (1966), ch. v, about the reconstruction of the Labour party. To discuss British political ideas in 1917 without mentioning the Russian Revolution, let alone Henderson's thoughts about it, is to invite distortion. Beer's mistake is that he failed to separate in his analysis the reasons for the ratification of the constitution by the trade union movement from the reasons for the formulation of the party constitution in the first place. His argument (p. 149) that ‘The adoption of socialism as an ideology was functional to [the Labour Party's] choice for political independence’ may explain the first, but it does not explain the second part of the problem.

79 Henderson, Arthur, The Aims of Labour (Manchester, 1918), p. 10.Google Scholar

80 Ibid. p. 13.

81 Ibid. pp. 61–2.

82 Ibid. p. 59. Cf. also his other comments on the reconstruction of the party: ‘The Need for Democratic Solidarity’, Herald, 1 Dec. 1917; ‘The New Labour Party Constitution’, Fabian News, Jan. 1918; 'The Outlook for Labour’, Contemporary Review (Feb. 1918), pp. 121–30;Google Scholar and Labour Party Annual Report, 1918, pp. 98–100.Google Scholar

83 Labour party NEC minutes, 26 Sept. 1917.

84 Ibid. 24 Oct., 12 Dec. 1917.

85 Ibid. 26 Sept. 1917.

86 Clause four, as it came to be known, was first submitted to the executive before Henderson returned from Russia in two forms. One limited the party's object to gaining ‘The Common Ownership of All Monopolies and essential Raw Materials’. The other was the clause eventually adopted. Why two drafts were necessary is not clear, but after Henderson returned from Russia, a watered-down version of party objects was no longer needed. The conservative members of the NEC would vote the way he told them to. Labour party NEC minutes, draft constitution, 18–25 July 1917. 87 Labour party NEC minutes, 10 Nov. 1917.

88 Ibid. 1 Nov. 1917.