1919 - strikes, struggles and soviets

The British left hailed the Russian revolution in 1917. On 18 January 1919 in London, a mass meeting launched the ‘Hands Off Russia’ campaign to oppose British military intervention in support of the White armies’ attack on Bolshevik Russia. The campaign’s National Committee brought together the scattered sections of the British left: the British Socialist Party, Independent Labour Party, Workers’ Socialist Federation and Socialist Labour Party. On 8 February, Hands Off Russia held an even larger mass meeting, at the Royal Albert Hall. Shows of support took place beyond London too, with a...

This would be the year in which the capitalist state rigorously enforced the role of the police, purging them of rebels, ensuring their loyalty and cutting any link between them and the workers’ movement. The events of 1919 shaped the police force we have now: an obedient enforcer of the system’s interests. The year began with unfinished business. In 1918, British police had taken strike action and the government, keen to avoid distraction from its war effort, conceded all their demands except one. Official recognition of their trade union – the National Union of Police and Prison Officers...

1918 had ended with British women voting in a general election for the first time ever. But it was only those aged 30 or over and who met a property qualification who could vote. That general election saw the first woman elected, but the successful candidate, Constance Markiewicz (pictured), refused to take her seat in the British Parliament that she and her Sinn Fein colleagues did not recognise as legitimate. Instead, Constance became Minister of Labour in the Dail Eireann, the first female Cabinet minister in Europe. The Labour Party pushed for extension of women’s rights, and in March 1919...

After Britain and its Allies had won the war, proclaiming themselves champions of freedom and democracy, the people of its imperial possessions stepped up their democratic demand for some of that freedom for themselves. India In its largest colony, India, Britain imposed the Rowlatt Act, extending wartime powers of indefinite imprisonment without trial. It prompted anger and rebellion, against both the Act and continuing British rule. The British left supported self-determination for India and other colonies, and in April, held a large public meeting in London, demanding ‘India for the Indians...

While workers were angry and willing to fight, too often their anger was aimed at fellow workers of a different colour rather than at the employers and authorities responsible for their exploitation and poverty. Sometimes this occurred in the absence of socialist political leadership, but on occasion, labour movement misleadership played a poisonous role. On 23 January, four days before the Glasgow general strike, trade union leader Emmanuel Shinwell told a 600-strong seafarers’ union meeting that the unemployment they faced was caused by Chinese sailors joining British ships. White sailors...

With engineers and others taking on the employers, the time was ripe for the other bastions of industrial power – the rail workers, miners and transport workers – to join the fray. The government was certainly afraid that they would, knowing that these workforces’ unions had a deal, known as the Triple Alliance, that they would strike in solidarity with each other if asked. But the government and employers would outflank them, with the union leaders allowing their confrontations to be pushed to the later part of the year, by which time the authorities were ready to contain or even beat them...

The stories of 1919 are historic struggles. But mostly, they failed. Even when they succeeded in heading off a particular attack or winning an advance, they did not succeed in remaking society. Imagine if they had. Imagine if workers had succeeding in taking and holding power in Germany, Hungary and elsewhere, and had linked up with Soviet Russia. Imagine if movements in the colonies had won full independence and brought an end to empire; the end of war had seen a democratic and internationalist peace rather than a punitive one. Imagine if Britain’s trade union battles had won public ownership...

Janine Booth introduces her pamphlet '1919: strikes, struggles and soviets' Available to buy here. See Workers' Liberty's channel for other playlists , and individual videos .

As we go to press on 15 January 2019, it is exactly the 100th anniversary of the murder of the Polish¬German revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg. She was killed by a right-wing militia operating under the Social¬Democratic government which was heading off the German workers’ revolution. We have a pamphlet in production on Luxemburg and the German revolution. Readers can also find a good summary of Luxemburg’s political work in two articles, from 1935 and 1938 , by Max Shachtman. The 1938 article is in print as an item in our book In Defence of Bolshevism . Much more on Rosa Luxemburg on our...

2019 is the centenary of the year in which British workers had probably their greatest opportunity to make a revolution. Inspired by the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, British workers struck more than ever before, servicemen and police mutinied, and Labour took big strides electorally. But communists in Britain had still not formed a united party, Labour’s representation in Parliament was unfairly small and politically rubbish, and the trade unions were still dominated by bureaucrats. There were similar workers’ mobilisations around Europe, rebellions in the British and other empires’...