This quote from the Marxist Social Democratic Federations (SDF) paper Justice is indicative of the relationship at the time between the socialist and anarchist organisations. David Nicoll was the editor at the time of Commonweal, the paper of the anarchist, Socialist League (SL). Following the fitting up and imprisoning on manufactured charges of the Walsall Anarchists he too was jailed for threatening to expose the police�s agent provocateur, Coulon and the devious plot they used to entrap the Walsall Anarchists.
The main effect that the actions and ideas of anarchist groups and individuals had at the time was of encouraging social democratic groupings to spread the idea that they were not an integral part of the socialist movement.
This essay will look at some of the influences which anarchist ideas had upon the socialist movement in Britain mainly in the early 1890s.
To provide some background to the situation it is worth mentioning that the first English anarchist was William Godwin whose book Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (published in the 1793) had a recognised effect on early English utopian socialists such as Robert Owen, who �acknowledged Godwin as his political master�. The Owenites and Chartists of the mid nineteenth century �reprinted many extracts from Godwin�s works in their journals and brought out a new edition of Political Justice in 1842� .
So, the tradition of libertarian anti-statist socialism was already in existence in England before the imported socialist ideas of Marx, Bakunin and Kropotkin arrived. In fact these ideas which were around at the beginnings of the labour movement in other European countries, came long after the founding of many trade unions and after the failure of the Chartist movement. For this reason British Marxist and anarchist organisations struggled to gain any influence at all in industrial trade unionism and were often seen and portrayed by the capitalist press as �outside agitators�.
With these handicaps it was difficult for either the anarchist Socialist League or the Marxist SDF to progress from the status of sect to that of a mass movement. The activities of the SDF are perhaps more important than the anarchists to the British Labour and Trade Union movement not because of their activities of the time but because of the larger numbers of members who left the SDF to became prominent in the movement in later years. Anarchist ideas and influences were not confined to the anarchist groups: �Charlotte Wilson, a Kropotkinite anarchist and a member of the Fabian executive , mustered enough support amongst �anti-parliamentary� Fabians to worry the �possibilists�.� In fact the only Fabian Tract of 1886 was What is Socialism, explaining the �two distinct schools, Collectivist and Anarchist, with the latter written by Wilson� Members of the SL were also members and activists in Trade Unions such as Ted Leggart who became full time organiser of the Carmen�s Union and Charles Mowbray (publisher of the Commonweal) who was active in the Tailors� strike.
Much of the split between the British Marxists and Anarchists can be seen as down to outside influence. Arguments between Marx and Bakunin led to the expulsion of the libertarians from the First International in 1872. An event which Guerin describes thus:
Henceforth the links were broken between anarchism and socialism, a disastrous event for the working class, since each movement needed the theoretical and practical contribution of the other.
In Britain the anarchist Labour Emancipation League, formed in 1881 after that years International Anarchist Congress, was formed by anarchists Frank Kitz and Joseph Lane (an elderly carter who remembered listening to Chartist speakers, who was later to write the Anti-Statists Communist Manifesto). This later affiliated to the SDF in 1884 and then left in December of that year along with William Morris and others to form the Socialist League. The Socialist League too was an uneasy alliance as it comprised those who disliked Hyndman (the stockbroker leader of the SDF) and those who disliked him and his politics. From this time on there was little co-operation and much animosity and faction fighting between the authoritarians and the libertarians.
Lately the attendance at the gatherings has largely increased and between the socialists and ....the anarchists considerable friction has been caused, the various speakers accusing each other of treachery and backsliding. These scenes have nearly led to a breach of the peace.
This article printed in 1894 was at the peak of anarchist organisation and support. When they could match the SDF in numbers for demonstrations and crowds listening to speakers. This was also paradoxically at a time when the capitalist press had made anarchists the scapegoats for all bombings and atrocities carried out on British soil. In fact the anarchist SLs Commonweal under the editorship of H.B. Samuels was gladly claiming responsibility and urging further individual acts of violence. He continued this "noisy editorship of Commonweal" for two years without personal harassment by the police. This led to his suspicion as a police spy but no conclusive proof is yet available. As Quail says: All this could amount to little more than the fact that Samuels was a reckless aficionado of propaganda by deed who combined a certain self-preservative caution with a useful portion of luck What it did do was give the authorities an excuse to arrest or harass anarchists at will with public support. This encouraged the SDF in their instinct to plough a separate and more �respectable� parliamentary democracy route.
Perhaps the most damning evidence of their lack of practical positive influence upon the Trade Union movement (rather than the socialist movement which was equally pathetically small) of the day was their lack of numbers. Even John Quail who has self declared sympathy with the movement admits that the evidence �...would seem to indicate a maximum of 2,000 English Anarchists in London at that time (1894) -a generous estimate. Equally generous we could double that number for a national total� It would seem that by sticking rigidly to the maxim of revolution or nothing they had distanced themselves ideologically from practical trade disputes and community actions such as co-operatives. In the London dock strike of 1889 the SL were involved only as spreaders of Anarchist propaganda by papers and speeches. They did not take an active part but were �tourists as far as the dock strike was concerned� . This linked with their inability to distribute their propaganda efficiently left the working class with the image of bomb throwing individuals who wanted nothing else but the destruction of civilisation. Hardly designed to attract a mass movement.
The beginning of this reputation was also the beginning of the period when Anarchists were taken at their most serious and when the Commonweal was at its Samuels inspired most militant. As Quail points out:
The arrest, trial and sentencing of the Walsall Anarchists in 1892 deserve more attention than they have received from historians of the left in Britain. From the point of view of the more liberal, there was a disconcertingly straight forward use of agents provocateur by the police. From the point of view of historians of the growth of institutions connected with the working class movement, the existence of options for propaganda by deed and the reasons for the rejection of these options should have given more cause for thought.
In effect (as came out later in one of the police inspectors memoirs) the police fitted up a group of anarchists who were henceforth known as the Walsall Anarchists with a fictitious bomb plot. The hysteria caused was so great that even when the memoirs were published the Walsall Anarchists were still not released from jail. Although �Justice Hawkins declared that �no part of the sentence he passed was because they were Anarchist�..... The Times, however was a little more honest:�
The offence with which the prisoners were charged is one of the most dastardly and wicked which it is possible to conceive. Like treason it is aimed at the very heart of the State, but it is not designed to destroy the existing Government alone. It strikes at all Governments, and behind all Governments it strikes at those elementary social rights for the defence of which all forms and methods of civil rules exist. The crime of which the Walsall prisoners have been found guilty was no isolated act...... Hate envy, the lust of plunder, and the lust of bloodshed are stamped on every line of the Anarchist literature read at Walsall and on every word of the confessions made by Ravachol.
Ravachol was a French anarchist involved in causing explosions in the much wider programme of propaganda by deed on the continent. It could be supposed that this attitude of the press and the heavy sentences and obvious infiltration of police spies in the movement would have deterred further such actions. However, as previously mentioned the new editor of Commonweal actively publicised and encouraged it.
In conclusion the anarchist movement had a decidedly negative effect upon the British socialist movement. This can only be mitigated by the fact that this was all new territory to the activists of the day. The Social Democrats seemed to have their own personal careers more at heart than the revolution which they supposedly espoused. This is perhaps why more of them became leading figures in the reformist Labour movement and why the pathetic efforts of the SDF are seen as more important from our perspective than the pathetic efforts of the anarchists.
Martin Crick, The History of the Social Democratic Federation, 1994 Keele University Press
Ed. David Goodway, For Anarchism, History, Theory and Practice, 1989, Routledge
Ed. Peter Marshall, The Anarchist Writings of William Godwin, 1986, Freedom Press
David Miller, Anarchism, 1984, J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd.
Henry Pelling, A History of British Trade Unionism, 1992, Penguin
John Quail, The Slow Burning Fuse, 1978, Granada Publishing Ltd.
George Woodcock, Anarchism, 1986, Pelican