May, Mann, Mosely, Stoke and Brexit

May, Mann, Mosely, Stoke and Brexit 

Theresa May is in Stoke today trying to win support for her bad Brexit deal, by appealing to those social layers for which her xenophobic, nationalistic ideas might have resonance. Choosing Stoke for that purpose is no doubt not accidental. Stoke is where the former “Marxist” John Ward became MP in 1906, as a Lib-Lab. As member of the Social Democratic Federation, he participated in the establishment of the Labour Representation Committee, before he started his steady move right.

Ward was succeeded in that Stoke seat by the first wife of Oswald Mosley, Lady Cynthia Mosely in 1929. Oswald Mosley had left the Tories to join Labour, before himself setting up the New Party in 1931, on his own way to establishing the British Union of Fascists. The Mosely Memorandum, set out his economic nationalist agenda, and as a warning to those drawn towards such fake left policies today, it should be noted that one of those that signed it and provided backing for Mosely was Nye Bevan.  Mosely himself, whose ancestral home was Apedale Hall, just outside Newcastle under Lyme, where he lived for several years, at the start of the last century, stood as New Party candidate in the seat, in 1931, getting 24% of the vote. The same trajectory of support for nationalistic ideas, can be seen amongst some Labour politicians today. Its no doubt why, having secured the support of nationalistic right-wing Labour MP's such as John Mann, May thinks she might be able to pull other such elements in behind her plans. 

Not many people are aware that the foundations of the Labour Party were laid in Stoke, in 1905. As I wrote some time ago, it was in that year that the TUC Congress was held in Hanley, and where the resolutions were passed that enabled the Labour Representation Committee to get on with the task of creating the Labour Party. It was also the year that the 1905 Revolution occurred in Russia, and while it was happening, the Tsar's cousin, Prince Michael, was staying at another of North Staffordshire's ancestral homes, Keele Hall, home of the Sneyd Family, and now part of Keele University campus. The TUC also had other important debates relevant to the current situation, on the introduction of the first set of immigration controls, designed to prevent Jews escaping pogroms in Eastern Europe, coming to Britain. 

The North Staffs Trades and Labour Council was established in 1893 on the suggestion of Tom Mann. I am proud to say that for two years during the 1980’s I was its President. Soon after it was established it succeeded in obtaining the appointment of several old Trades Unionists as magistrates, and was particularly successful in promoting the representation of the working class on to local School Boards and Town Councils. By 1905, nearly all the districts unions were affiliated. The 1905 TUC Congress was held under its auspices, and was one of the biggest to have taken place up to then. 

TUC President James Sexton, spoke on the Aliens Bill. Sexton said it was being used by the government as an “appeal to stupid blind prejudice” to gain votes at the next election. “It is claimed,” he said, “that this Bill will relieve sweated workpeople by prohibiting the introduction of cheap labour from other countries. The political dishonesty of the measure needs no other argument than the fact that while the promoters profess to shut out undesirables from the UK in order to help the British workman here, they rushed a measure through to introduce the most undesirable kind of cheap labour into South Africa.” 

The Aliens Bill was being pushed forward by right-wing Tories, and those to their right in the British Brothers League, a forerunner of the later fascist organisations. The TUC overwhelmingly opposed it, and the nationalistic sentiments it reflected. But, elements of the labour movement were still drawn in behind it, just as today, we see right-wing Labour MP's like John Mann, supporting restrictions on free movement, and the imposition of immigration controls, which place responsibility for the ills of British capitalism on to foreign workers. And, unfortunately, today, as a result of the degeneration of the labour movement under the influence of the national-socialist ideology of Stalinism, they are also supported by that fake left strand in the labour movement, with its own accommodation to economic nationalism, and the promotion of things like import and immigration controls. 

John Ward, who began work when he was seven, went on to found the Navvies Union, and as a result of contact with Tom Mann and John Burns, he was drawn into the SDF, for whom he stood in a number of local elections. But, Ward was already on a rightward trajectory. Having already left the SDF, he argued in the LRC for the Labour Party not to allow in the socialists of the SDF and ILP. He wanted it to be purely controlled by the trades unions, and to disavow any socialist politics. In 1906, he stood as a Labour candidate, but without the support of the LRC. He held the seat in 1910, but was now standing as one form of Liberal or another. In 1918, he was elected to the seat as a Coalition Liberal, and in 1922 as a National Liberal. With Tory and Liberal backing, he hung on to the seat in 1924, standing as a Constitutionalist. 

At the 1905, TUC Congress, Ward had continued to argue opposition to protectionism, but he was already showing his support for nationalistic ideas, in relation to immigration. At the 1900 TUC he had argued against the Boer war on the basis that it was being fought for control over the goldfields for cosmopolitans “most of whom had no patriotism and no country.” In 1905, Ward moved a motion condemning the Government for importing Chinese labour into South Africa, “to prevent it from becoming a white man’s country.” 

A meeting in support of Ward’s candidature was held on Friday night in Longton Town Hall with a crowded attendance. Cllr. H. Leese presided. The chairman said the Congress had one great objective, “namely, that the workers of the country instead of crying out for Empire should have better conditions under which to toil and live.” Whether this was a veiled attack on Ward’s position is not clear. 

The nationalistic ideas that are being promoted by the Brextremists, including those right-wing nationalistic Labour MP's such as John Mann, Caroline Flint, Kate Hoey et al, are totally in the tradition of the arguments against immigration and free movement that were being put forward at the start of the twentieth century, that pandered to xenophobia, and created the trajectory towards even more extreme forms of nationalism. So, it's no wonder that May has come to Stoke, to appeal to that strand of nationalistic sentiment within the Labour Movement. Socialists should do all they can to oppose it, as they did in 1905. 

In 1918, Ward, the former “Marxist” organised labour battalions to fight for King and Country, in the First World War. Having done that, he linked up with Kolchak, the leader of the Tsarist forces in Russia trying to overthrow the Bolshevik Revolution.   Its possible that the character of Jack Ford, in the TV series "When The Boat Comes In", may have drawn on this experience, though Ward was not alone in this form of anti-Bolshevism amongst trades union bureaucrats.  Ward himself appears as a character in the TV series "Downton Abbey", as a cameo.

What happened next in Ward's Stoke seat, which is today mostly the Stoke South seat, held once again by the Tories, on the basis of promotion of nationalism and xenophobia, is also interesting and relevant to today. Ward the “Marxist” had completed his journey into the camp of reaction, under the inevitable logical dynamic of his underlying nationalism. But, Ward lost the seat in 1929 to Lady Cynthia Mosely, first wife of Oswald Mosely. Cynthia was the daughter of Lord Curzon, whose ancestral seat was just across the Staffordshire Border, in Derbyshire, at Kedleston Hall. She stood in 1929, under the Labour ticket, her husband having left the Tories in 1922, and joined Labour in 1924. Mosely's own ancestral home was in North Staffordshire, at Apedale Hall, where he lived with his mother, and his Grandfather, Sir Oswald Mosley, 4th Baronet. His grandfather was also known as “John Bull”. 

Whilst Ward, like Mussolini, had moved from “Marxism” to extreme nationalism, Mosely appeared to be moving in the other direction, but the underlying dynamic was not based upon class. It was founded upon nationalism, and that is a characteristic of fake left politics. Mosely's, sojourn in the Labour Party lasted only slightly longer than his stay in the Tory Party. In 1931, reminiscent of today's narrative in relation the “left behind”, Mosely left Labour supposedly because of its complacent response to high levels of unemployment. In the 1920's both he and Cynthia were Fabians.  MacDonald had aligned with the Tories to push through cuts in Unemployment Benefit, as the Depression reached its greatest depths, causing the Labour Party to split. In fact, under George Lansbury, in this period, the Labour Party probably was at its most radical, with the ILP, which had flirted with the idea of joining the Trotskyists, but having aligned itself with the so called 3½ International, had decided to undertake an entryist tactic in the Labour Party. 

Mosely stood in his wife's former seat in Stoke, in 1931, under the New Party banner. Like all New Party he candidates he lost, but he secured 24% of the vote.   Mosely quickly made the move from the New Party to the creation of the British Union of Fascists, where the underlying nationalistic ideology was given full vent, in blaming foreigners for the problems of British capitalism, and like the “national-socialist” ideologies of Mussolini and Hitler, it placed great store on violent action to suppress the actual socialists fighting to defend workers interests, against the interests of capital British or foreign. 

As with Mussolini and Hitler the fact that this nationalist ideology is dressed up in anti-capitalist language, and the fact that it appeals to backward sections of the working-class, and under-class is no reason for socialists to in any way appease those sentiments, or to rationalise them. We do not share common cause with those elements, as reflected in the so called Gilets Jaunes. On the contrary, they represent a backward trajectory even from liberalism. Socialists should subordinate their own politics to neither the reactionaries nor the liberals. But, as Trotsky indicated in relation to fighting fascism in Germany, in Spain and in France, that does not at all mean that we do not recognise the differences in these forces. 

The battleground upon which these fundamental ideas, of the primacy for socialists of class not nation, of the primacy of socialist internationalism is being fought out, is Brexit. That May, following in a long line of reactionary nationalists should come to Stoke, today, in an attempt to rally support for her Brexit agenda is no surprise. Socialists should redouble their efforts to defeat that reactionary nationalist ideology in whatever guise it is presented. Immediately, that means defeating Brexit, and beginning to forge a new international socialist organisation.