The Socialist Labour Party was a

socialist Socialism is an economic ideology, economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse Economic system, economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production, as opposed to private ownership. It describes ...

political party A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific political ideology, ...

in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

. It was established in 1903 as a splinter from the

Social Democratic Federation The Social Democratic Federation (SDF) was established as Britain's first organised socialist political party by H. M. Hyndman, and had its first meeting on 7 June 1881. Those joining the SDF included William Morris, George Lansbury, James ...

(SDF) by

James Connolly James Connolly (; 5 June 1868 – 12 May 1916) was a Scottish people, Scottish-born Irish republicanism, Irish republican, socialist, and trade union leader, executed for his part in the Easter Rising, 1916 Easter Rising against British rule i ...

, Neil Maclean and SDF members impressed with the politics of the American socialist

Daniel De Leon Daniel De Leon (; December 14, 1852 – May 11, 1914), alternatively spelt Daniel de León, was a Curaçaoan-American socialist newspaper editor, politician, Marxist theoretician (Marxism), theoretician, and trade union organizer. He is regarde ...

, a

Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to analyse class relations, social conflic ...

theoretician and leading figure of the

Socialist Labor Party of America The Socialist Labor Party (SLP)"The name of this organization shall be Socialist Labor Party". Art. I, Sec. 1 of thadopted at the Eleventh National Convention (New York, July 1904; amended at the National Conventions 1908, 1912, 1916, 1920, 192 ...

. After decades of existence as a tiny organisation, the group was finally disbanded in 1980.

Organisational history

Formation

The British Socialist Labour Party began as a faction of the

(SDF) headed nationally by

Henry Hyndman Henry Mayers Hyndman (; 7 March 1842 – 22 November 1921) was an English writer, politician and socialist. Originally a conservative, he was converted to socialism by Karl Marx's ''Communist Manifesto'' and launched Britain's first socialist p ...

. A group of

Scottish Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...

members of the organisation, led by an engineering worker named George Yates, strongly criticised the party leadership of the SDF for supporting the entry of conservative socialist

Alexandre Millerand Alexandre Millerand (; – ) was a French politician who served as President of France from 1920 to 1924, having previously served as Prime Minister of France earlier in 1920. His participation in Waldeck-Rousseau's cabinet at the start of the ...

into the

bourgeois The bourgeoisie ( , ) are a class of business owners, merchants and wealthy people, in general, which emerged in the Late Middle Ages, originally as a "middle class" between the peasantry and Aristocracy (class), aristocracy. They are tradition ...

French cabinet at the 1900 Congress of the

Second International The Second International, also called the Socialist International, was a political international of Labour movement, socialist and labour parties and Trade union, trade unions which existed from 1889 to 1916. It included representatives from mo ...

. The group attacked the party leadership as

reformist Reformism is a political tendency advocating the reform of an existing system or institution – often a political or religious establishment – as opposed to its abolition and replacement via revolution. Within the socialist movement, ref ...

and began to publish their critique abroad in '' The Weekly People'', edited by Daniel DeLeon, official organ of the

.Klugmann, ''History of the Communist Party of Great Britain,'' vol. 1, pg. 18. The tendency, initially known as the "Glasgow Socialist Society," took over publication of

's newspaper, ''

The Socialist ''The Socialist'' may refer to: * ''The Socialist'', the newspaper of the Socialist Party (England and Wales) The Socialist Party () is a Trotskyist political party in England and Wales. Founded in 1997, it had formerly been Militant, an en ...

'', in Scotland in 1902. A purge followed in the SDF at its 1903 Annual Conference, with the

dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 2 ...

radical Radical (from Latin: ', root) may refer to: Politics and ideology Politics *Classical radicalism, the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe and Latin America in the 19th century *Radical politics ...

s denounced as " Impossibilists" by the SDF leadership. On 7 June 1903 the Socialist Labour Party was formally established at a meeting in

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

, with the already extant monthly newspaper ''The Socialist'' declared its official organ. The party began with a membership of only about 80 individuals in 4 branches, all in Scotland—two in Edinburgh, one in

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

, and one in

Falkirk Falkirk ( ; ; ) is a town in the Central Lowlands of Scotland, historically within the county of Stirlingshire. It lies in the Forth Valley, northwest of Edinburgh and northeast of Glasgow. Falkirk had a resident population of 32,422 at the ...

. Although deeply influenced by the

, members of the fledgling British organisation sought their intellectual independence from the start. Whereas the American SLP strongly opposed advancing ameliorative "immediate demands," the new British organisation did not follow, instead initially choosing to adopt a programme of immediate demands matching those of the SDF from whence it sprung. Indeed, there was some discussion as to whether the new party should adopt an altogether different name so as to further delineate themselves from their American counterparts. Trade unionist Tom Bell, a delegate to the inaugural conference, later recalled:

"The question of the name of the new party required a little thought. We were anxious not to create the impression which the official SDF was trying to encourage, that we were only the tools of the American SLP. We thought of 'Republican Socialist Party,' etc., etc. It was Connolly who with characteristic directness proposed 'The Socialist Labour Party.' 'It doesn't matter what you call yourself,' he declared, 'you'll be dubbed the SLP anyway.' And the SLP we became."

Radical Irish republican and trade union leader James Connolly attempted to play a vital role in the British SLP's formative days, energetically traveling back and forth across Scotland, addressing dozens of meetings on behalf of the organisation. His efforts were largely ineffectual, however, as no major influx of Scottish workers into the SLP's ranks was forthcoming. The party's development was further hampered by Connolly's departure to the United States in September 1903, exacerbated by the resignation of the editor of ''The Socialist,'' George Yates, that same month. Still, the tiny group managed to persevere, with a young engineer named Neil Maclean serving as National Secretary. As was the case with the American party of the same name, from which it drew inspiration, the Socialist Labour Party considered itself a highly principled and uncompromising organisation. The group refused to work in tandem with "reformists" such as those populating the SDF or the

Independent Labour Party The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was a British political party of the left, established in 1893 at a conference in Bradford, after local and national dissatisfaction with the Liberal Party (UK), Liberals' apparent reluctance to endorse work ...

. The SLP instead focused on producing and distributing its own

propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...

, leaflets, pamphlets, and papers calling for establishment of a bloc of industrial unions as a necessary first step to socialist

revolution In political science, a revolution (, 'a turn around') is a rapid, fundamental transformation of a society's class, state, ethnic or religious structures. According to sociologist Jack Goldstone, all revolutions contain "a common set of elements ...

. The group insisted that its members should avoid taking part in

unemployment Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is the proportion of people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work du ...

demonstrations as these were "sentimental" and built false hopes in the viability of the existing system. Echoing the perspective of the American SLP, the majority of the Scottish SLP argued for the use of

political action In sociology, social action, also known as Weberian social action, is an act which takes into account the actions and reactions of individuals (or ' agents'). According to Max Weber, "Action is 'social' insofar as its subjective meaning takes acco ...

for propaganda and publicity purposes. The SLP was a highly disciplined and

centralised Centralisation or centralization (American English) is the process by which the activities of an organisation, particularly those regarding planning, decision-making, and framing strategies and policies, become concentrated within a particular ...

organization. Following the lead of its American counterpart, it mandated that its central press should be directly owned by the party. The party sought to enforce the ideological purity of its printed propaganda through a strict requirement that no branch be able to distribute any literature not previously approved by the SLP's Executive Committee.Kendall, ''The Revolutionary Movement in Britain,'' pg. 68. The party saw the path to socialist revolution blocked by a conservative

bureaucracy Bureaucracy ( ) is a system of organization where laws or regulatory authority are implemented by civil servants or non-elected officials (most of the time). Historically, a bureaucracy was a government administration managed by departments ...

at the top of the established trade union movement, committed to a "pure and simple" policy of increasing wages and improving conditions in the shop rather than fighting for socialist organization of industry as a whole. Instead, the party sought to establish a network of explicitly socialist unions which would do battle with the so-called "labour fakirs" of the existing union movement. The organization never had sufficient numbers to carry its professed desires into action, however. The Socialist Labour Party remained headquartered in Scotland, the location of an overwhelming percentage of its members, although it did establish some individual members and small section in Northern England, especially

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ) is an area of Northern England which was History of Yorkshire, historically a county. Despite no longer being used for administration, Yorkshire retains a strong regional identity. The county was named after its county town, the ...

. The organization was thus well-placed to play a leading role in the

Red Clydeside Red Clydeside was an era of political radicalism in Glasgow, Scotland, from the 1910s until the early 1930s. It also referred to the area around the city on the banks of the River Clyde, such as Clydebank, Greenock, Dumbarton and Paisley. Red C ...

movement. They had a great deal of influence on the Clyde Workers Committee, but failed to win it to socialism. Other members, such as J.T. "Jack" Murphy, were influential in the Sheffield Workers Committee and gradually abandoned the DeLeonist strategy of creating dual unions, coming to adopt the strategy of working within existing unions and " boring from within" in an effort to win them to their ideas.

The question of international affiliation

The new party determined to send a delegation to the 1904 Amsterdam Congress of the

and selected a group of five to represent the organisation there. Upon arriving, the SLP Scots were told by the credentials committee of the congress to submit their credentials for participation to the British delegation, a group which included the rival Social Democratic Federation. The SLP delegation refused and were excluded from the congress for the remainder of the proceedings. This experience served to heighten the suspicion of the party towards the International and the party remained henceforth unaffiliated. Following the Congress, the leading figure of the American SLP, party editor Daniel DeLeon, paid his Scottish followers a visit en route home to America. A historian later recalled that "DeLeon's visit was no more than a moderate success. His speeches savoured more of the university lecture room than the socialist platform. He had none of the flowering rhetoric at that time deemed essential." By July 1905 the party had established a total of nine branches, including groups at

Oxford Oxford () is a City status in the United Kingdom, cathedral city and non-metropolitan district in Oxfordshire, England, of which it is the county town. The city is home to the University of Oxford, the List of oldest universities in continuou ...

Southampton Southampton is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Hampshire, England. It is located approximately southwest of London, west of Portsmouth, and southeast of Salisbury. Southampton had a population of 253, ...

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands (region), West Midlands region, in England. It is the Lis ...

, and

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. The Oxford branch was particularly influential, with the party making inroads with the trade unionists enrolled at

Ruskin College Ruskin College, originally known as Ruskin Hall, Oxford, is a higher education institution and part of the University of West London, in Oxford, England. It is not a Colleges of the University of Oxford, college of Oxford University. Named ...

and the party's literature playing a role in the local strike movement as well as the establishment of the Central Labour College and Plebs League. The SLP published a wide array of literature from the

canon and emerged as the single most important distributor of Marxist literature in Great Britain. It has been noted that "there can have been scarcely a single person involved in the foundation of the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPGB ...

who was not, at some time, influenced by the SLP and its literature."

The industrial unionism of the IWW

In 1905 in the United States there was established the

Industrial Workers of the World The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), whose members are nicknamed "Wobblies", is an international labor union founded in Chicago, United States in 1905. The nickname's origin is uncertain. Its ideology combines general unionism with indu ...

(IWW), a revolutionary industrial union which sought to organize workers across all industries as a prelude for the socialist transformation of the economy. American Socialist Labor Party theoretician Daniel DeLeon was among the radical leaders who joined together to establish the new organisation—a group which included Eugene V. Debs of the

Socialist Party of America The Socialist Party of America (SPA) was a socialist political party in the United States formed in 1901 by a merger between the three-year-old Social Democratic Party of America and disaffected elements of the Socialist Labor Party of America ...

and William "Big Bill" Haywood of the

Western Federation of Miners The Western Federation of Miners (WFM) was a labor union that gained a reputation for militancy in the mines of the western United States and British Columbia. Its efforts to organize both hard rock miners and smelter workers brought it into ...

. Parallel attempts to establish the IWW organisation were made in Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and elsewhere. The leadership of the Glasgow-based Socialist Labour Party was quick to follow the lead of DeLeon and the American SLP, giving hearty endorsement of the new IWW organisation. This decision came at the cost of nearly tearing the British SLP asunder, however. Socialist Labour Party activist Tom Bell, then a 24-year-old in charge of the party's literature department remembered in his autobiography about the 1905 decision to endorse the IWW:

" he decisionwas so sharp and radical, and so opposed to our traditional attitude towards the leaders of the trade unions and Socialist Party, as to cause a certain confusion in our midst.... There was resentment at...committing the party to such a change of policy without discussion.... We had fierce discussions in Glasgow on the question of policy and finally, with a majority group in our branch, I resigned from the party. We remained outside for nearly a year."

Despite its espousal of revolutionary

industrial unionism Industrial unionism is a trade union organising method through which all workers in the same industry are organized into the same union, regardless of skill or trade, thus giving workers in one industry, or in all industries, more leverage in b ...

, the SLP still believed in use of the ballot box for educational purposes in the short term and as a transformative tool in the future, when the working class had come over to its ideas. It maintained its party organisation but established a propaganda group, the British Advocates of Industrial Unionism. Some party members took the ideas of the bitterly anti-political IWW to heart with fervour. In 1908 a

syndicalist Syndicalism is a labour movement within society that, through industrial unionism, seeks to unionize workers according to industry and advance their demands through strikes and other forms of direct action, with the eventual goal of gainin ...

minority tendency, the Industrialist Union, headed by E. J. B. Allen, organised itself and exited the SLP, disclaiming all political work. With eyes to America, the SLP started its own federation of industrial unions, akin to the Industrial Workers of the World. The British incarnation, established in February 1906, was known as the British Advocates of Industrial Unionism (BAIU). This group was essentially a propaganda society at its inception, attempting to disseminate the ideas of Daniel DeLeon about revolutionary industrial unionism. This group was reorganized in 1909 as the Industrial Workers of Great Britain, with a move made to actually recruit industrial unionists in opposition to the established trade union officialdom, regarded by the SLP as among the most bitter and incorrigible enemies of the radical working class. Goals and desires notwithstanding, the tiny SLP was singularly unsuccessful in its efforts to challenge the established unions of the TUC. Purity had come at a price. The staunchly anti-reformist, anti-compromise,

impossibilist Impossibilism is a Marxist theory that stresses the limited value of political, economic, and social reforms under capitalism. As a doctrine, impossibilism views the pursuit of such reforms as counterproductive to the goal of achieving socialism a ...

SLP found itself largely isolated from the British working class, a small

sect A sect is a subgroup of a religion, religious, politics, political, or philosophy, philosophical belief system, typically emerging as an offshoot of a larger organization. Originally, the term referred specifically to religious groups that had s ...

in a big working class ocean. The party's agitation for industrial unionism did have appeal to others in the radical political sphere, however. The idea of industrial unionism permeated the

left wing Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social hierarchies. Left-wing politic ...

of the Social Democratic Federation, becoming more or less a permanent ideological feature of that organization and its successor after 1911, the

British Socialist Party The British Socialist Party (BSP) was a Marxist political organisation established in United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Great Britain in 1911. Following a protracted period of political faction, factional struggle, in 1916 the party's ...

. This common orientation, a rejection of traditional craft-based trade unionism and towards industrial unionism including unskilled workers, was to make the call for a new Communist Party an appeal which many SLP activists found impossible to resist.

The SLP and the emerging communist movement

As a result of their work in the industrial field and their relentless focus on educational work, something they had in common with Scottish radical John MacLean of the BSP, the SLP had grown to the point at which it could claim over 1,000 members in 1919. Their official organ, ''The Socialist,'' boasted a circulation of 8,000 by the start of the next year. The Socialist Labour Party was also extremely active in publicizing the struggle for national self-determination then taking place in Ireland. That one of the leaders of the Irish national liberation struggle, James Connolly, had also been a founder of the SLP being noted proudly by writers in the SLP press in this period. From 1918, excited by the

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

success in the

Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution, social change in Russian Empire, Russia, starting in 1917. This period saw Russia Dissolution of the Russian Empire, abolish its mona ...

, the SLP opened talks with the

with the aim of forming a British Communist Party. The leadership could not agree with the BSP's plan to affiliate the new party to the Labour Party, however, and refused to join in the foundation of the Communist Party of Great Britain. This decision by the party leadership incensed many

rank and file Rank and file may refer to: *A military term relating to the horizontal " ranks" (rows) and vertical " files" (columns) of individual foot-soldiers, exclusive of the officers *A term derived from the above used to refer to enlisted troops, as oppo ...

members of the organization. A section of the organization, including key figures such as

Shop Stewards Movement The Shop Stewards Movement was a movement which brought together shop stewards from across the United Kingdom during the First World War. It originated with the Clyde Workers Committee, the first shop stewards committee in Britain, which organised ...

activist Jack Murphy formed an organised faction called the Communist Unity Group, which ultimately left the SLP to join the CPGB at its founding conference in the summer of 1920. Other leading members of the SLP such as

Arthur MacManus Arthur MacManus (1889 – 27 February 1927) was a Scottish trade unionist and communist politician. Biography Early years Arthur MacManus was born in Belfast, Ireland, in 1889, later moving to Glasgow, Scotland, with his parents. Political c ...

and William Paul also joined. The loss of such key activists was a great blow to the SLP.

Decline and final disbanding

A small remnant of the SLP was reorganised by Leonard Cotton and survived for many years. Although the party seems to have been moribund by the 1960s it was revived by younger people and only finally dissolved in 1980. One splinter group in Edinburgh, the British Section of the International Socialist Labour Party, turned towards

Trotskyism Trotskyism (, ) is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an ...

and became the Revolutionary Socialist Party, fusing with the Revolutionary Socialist League in 1938.

Conferences

General Secretaries

* 1903: Neil Maclean * 1907: Frank Budgen * 1910: Leonard Cotton * 1918: Tom Bell * 1919: Tom Mitchell * 1929: Leonard Cotton * 1956: T. A. Kelly

Prominent members

* E.J.B. Allen * Tom Bell * John S. Clarke *

David Kirkwood David Kirkwood, 1st Baron Kirkwood, PC (8 July 1872 – 16 April 1955), was a Scottish politician, trade unionist and socialist activist from the East End of Glasgow, who served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for nearly 30 years, and was as a ...

* Neil Maclean * Seán McLoughlin *

John William Muir John William Muir (15 December 1879 – 11 January 1931) was the editor of ''The Worker'', a newspaper of the Clyde Workers' Committee, who was prosecuted under the Defence of the Realm Act for an article criticising World War I. Born in Glasgow ...

* J.T. "Jack" Murphy * William "Bill" Paul * George S. Yates