Fighting fascism: the British Left and the rise of fascism, 1919–39

Keith Hodgson

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780719091216
• eBook ISBN: 9781847797575
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

A new work that looks at the struggle against fascism in Britain between the wars, argues that the British left have been overlooked in studies of anti-fascism, and maintains that the Labour Party, the Communist Party and other left-wing currents developed sophisticated analyses of fascism on a par with those of European socialists and communists.

1 White Guards and Black Hundreds: existing concepts of counter-revolution

Given Britain’s long democratic tradition, the domestic left had for the most part relied on foreign examples when it came to examining authoritarianism and counter-revolution. It was the French ‘Thermidor’ of 1794–95, the wave of reaction that swept Europe in 1848 and the crushing of the Paris Commune in 1871 that had largely informed their view. These images were later complemented by the repressive actions of Tsarism towards the end of the century and its crushing of the 1905 Russian revolution.¹ Their image of counter-revolution was set firmly in place by the study of the ‘White’ movements which emerged in response to the social upheavals that occurred in countries such as Russia and Hungary at the end of the First World War. The left was therefore better equipped than most when it came to analysing reactionary movements and their earlier observations provided a template which guided them in their understanding of fascism.

When the first reports of fascism reached Britain, set in the context of the disturbed conditions that prevailed in Italy in 1919, it seemed to many an entirely new and bewildering political phenomenon. It attacked workers’ organisations, yet its programme contained at least as many policies culled from the left as from the right. It was led by former socialists who now mouthed ultra-nationalist slogans. It railed against bourgeois democracy, yet stood in elections. It declared itself republican, but numbered aristocrats and monarchists amongst its backers. It condemned those industrialists who had profited excessively from the war, and also those workers who struck against low pay and occupied the factories. It demanded justice for the peasantry that had made up the bulk of the army, yet murdered them when they seized the great estates on their return from the front. Given all this, it is unsurprising that some who first observed fascism struggled to locate it in the political firmament.²

However, British socialists and communists quickly recognised fascism as a reactionary and counter-revolutionary force, assigning its anti-working-class actions and its association with Italy’s economic elite a far greater significance than its rhetoric or the political origins of some of its leaders. The issues that the British left faced in its early attempts at analysis arose not from doubts about whether fascism was left or right, revolutionary or counter-revolutionary, but concerned what similarities it had with earlier reactionary movements, how to explain any incongruities, and how it could best be opposed.

Despite a general agreement as to the essential political alignment of fascism, the parties of the left differed concerning its relationship to the state and other social forces, as well as over how best to oppose it. These elements of concurrence and divergence regarding fascism can be seen in the left’s responses to earlier and parallel movements. The differences in their analyses lay in the fundamentally different psychologies of reformist and revolutionary parties, and in the contrasting conclusions each drew from their experience of the war itself and from the bitter struggles which convulsed Europe between the Russian revolution of 1917 and Mussolini’s assumption of power in Italy in 1922. It was these formative events which set in place the prism through which fascism was initially perceived by the British left. An examination of certain features of these years, which perhaps seem disparate and unrelated at first glance, but which later emerge either as aspects of fascist movements, regimes or ideology, is therefore valuable.

Perceptions of war and reaction, 1914–18

The general political stance either of the organisations of the British left, or of the individuals within them, largely defined their attitudes to the outbreak of war in 1914. This can be seen clearly in the response of the Independent Labour Party, which reflected the fact that it was an amalgam of radicals and reformists. It contained a significant current of opinion which was either pacifist or internationalist, or both. Many significant figures within the party held these views and, like Ramsay MacDonald, an ILP stalwart who was also chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party at the outbreak of war, were unwilling abandon their principles. While more moderate ILP figures followed the Labour line of support for the war effort, MacDonald and others chose not to condone the war and removed themselves from the Labour leadership, but remained active within both the ILP and the larger party.³ In all, the ILP divided over the war in the same proportions, and with the same lack of bitterness, which characterised its left/right divisions before the conflict.

Labour itself was much more composite and its moderate ethos meant there was no doubt that the party would accept it had to support the war effort. Once it was obvious that Britain must become involved, Labour quickly placed its internationalist principles in storage, agreed to support the government’s demand for war credits of £100 million, accepted an electoral truce for the duration and from 1915 onwards saw its leading figures serve in coalition cabinets.⁴ James Middleton, Labour’s Assistant Secretary, provides a good example of how the less ideological elements within the party leadership were able rapidly to move beyond any sentimental attachment to the politics of the Second International and to accept that Labour had to play its part in an unavoidable conflict. He had dutifully attended an anti-war rally in Trafalgar Square on 2 August, before the British declaration of war, and heard Keir Hardie and George Lansbury issuing calls for solidarity between workers of all nations. However, he recalled that ‘It seemed a little unreal … knowing full well that peace was impossible … when Germany had already declared war on Russia.’⁵ Hardie himself, formerly an advocate of a general strike in the event of a conflagration, quickly changed his views and stated later in August 1914 that ‘With the boom of the enemy’s guns within earshot[,] the lads who have gone forth to fight their country’s battles must not be disheartened by any discordant note at home.’⁶

The overwhelming majority of TUC leaders followed the same path, displaying initial unease about the prospect of war until Britain’s entry, and then urging their members to volunteer for the forces, expend extra effort at work, endure infringements on their conditions which would not have been tolerated in peacetime, avoid strikes and, when it came in 1916, to accept conscription.⁷

Labour and the unions took difficult decisions during the conflict. They had demonstrated that the British national cause, and defence of the British democratic system, weighed far more heavily in their calculations than the more ephemeral notions of international solidarity or a principled aversion to war. Labour leaders were willing to tolerate a serious but temporary erosion of the democratic process, and the concentration of power within the country, often in the hands of unelected ministers who had been considered bitter enemies of the working class in the years before 1914. To the Labour leaders, the ends justified the means. The ultimate defence of democracy was, to them, well worth the sacrifice.

Labour and the TUC had emerged from the war with their faith in democracy strengthened. Their participation in the wartime government had engendered a desire to return to power by electoral means, and had impressed upon them the need to expand their support base in order to achieve this. Senior figures had performed well in office and had proved to themselves and many of their detractors that they were capable of running the country. One historian of British socialism, Paul Ward, argued that by 1918 the Labour leadership felt themselves to be a government in waiting, believing that ‘politics were to be fought solely in the parliamentary arena … this new role could only be achieved by being a party of the nation, not one in opposition to it. This involved a concentration on winning parliamentary seats at the expense of socialist propagandising.’⁸

Their commitment to democracy and electoralism meant that they regarded the communist revolutions and attempted revolutions which shook Europe, especially those in Russia, Hungary and Germany, with great suspicion and hostility. They came to see convulsions like these as being as much of a threat to reform and socialism as they were to the ruling classes they sought to overthrow. Where autocracies fell, Labour was adamant that the transition should be to a parliamentary democracy, and its leaders showed themselves willing to support democrats in these situations, however difficult or unpopular some of the actions taken to establish the new democracies were. They felt that the creation of a democratic system could accommodate all but the most determined adherents of the old regimes, whereas revolutionary attempts to impose a dictatorship of the proletariat inevitably released the forces of counter-revolution as a consequence. While Labour might decry the social, political and economic aims of counter-revolutionary movements, the feeling amongst the bulk of the party was that extremism begat extremism and could have incalculable consequences for the labour movement.

Revolutionaries, however, saw things very differently. If society was naturally divided into competing classes, and the working class had to prevail through the revolutionary seizure of power, then the forces arrayed against the working class and its interests had to be clearly identified and understood in detail. British Marxists generally held that capitalism could function and politically manifest itself either in the form of a democracy or a dictatorship of the right. If, as they maintained, parliamentarism was a dead-end which corrupted those who trod its path, then revolution was the means by which working-class power was to be established and capitalism overthrown. This meant that in the post-war world, the counter-revolution could be represented not only by those trying to establish or restore a dictatorship of the right, but by social democrats attempting to create a parliamentary democracy. The range of counter-revolutionary agents appeared wider to those on the far left than was the case for moderate socialists. British revolutionaries therefore devoted more attention to matters such as the nature of class rule, be it under democracy or dictatorship, and the composition or real or potential counter-revolutionary movements than did Labour or the TUC. Analysing the behaviour of classes, particularly in times of economic and political upheaval, was integral to the practice of these groups. It was also the case that those who saw themselves as being in the business of revolution obviously felt they had the most to fear from reaction. These parties therefore had a greater incentive in formulating a clear understanding of its origins, aims, composition and dynamics.

Nationalism and the left

Though the mainstream of the British labour movement supported the war, they did not generally reflect the excessive patriotism that was evident elsewhere in society. The outbreak of war had been regretted, as had the failure of international socialism to prevent it, but once it had begun, Labour and TUC leaders, and the bulk of the rank and file, accepted it as a necessary evil forced upon Britain, justifiable as being in defence of democracy against absolutism.

Yet the appeal of nationalism, and its effects, even upon elements of the left, was demonstrated to all during the war. Robin Page Arnot, who would gravitate to Bolshev...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary of terms and abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 White Guards and Black Hundreds: existing concepts of counter-revolution
• 2 Explaining Italian fascism: from movement to dictatorship, 1919–26
• 3 The British left and the rise of Nazism
• 4 The left and fascism in Britain, 1919–32
• 5 Opposing the British Union of Fascists
• 6 Fascism and war
• Conclusion: the old left and the ‘new consensus’
• Bibliography
• Index