Workers' Liberty

Morris was no dilettante on matters of organisation. Once he had decided to become a socialist he joined the Democratic Federation and became a leading activist and public spokesperson. This entailed speaking at open-air meetings, selling papers and other literature and giving educational lectures on a regular basis. Far from being a Sunday socialist, he became a dedicated semi-professional revolutionary.

The issue of party democracy was one of the reasons behind the split with the SDF in late 1884. When the Socialist League was set up, it specifically subordinated the paper Commonweal to the control and supervision of the organisation, rather than treat it the personal property of the editors. (Edward Thompson 1976 p.685)

He emphasised the need to “make Socialists” by patient propaganda. But Socialists also had to intervene in existing struggles, in the unions, for free speech, on Irish Home Rule etc. As he put it in Our Policy in Commonweal (March 1886): “I say that our business is more than ever Education… This educational process, therefore, the forming a rallying point for definite aims is necessary to our success; but I must guard against misunderstanding. We must be no mere debating club, or philosophical society; we must take part in all really popular movements when we can make our own views on them unmistakably clear; that is a most important part of the education in organisation…” (Salmon 1994 pp.125-126)

Morris also continued to speak and work alongside the SDF and other socialists when a member of the Socialist League. As he expressed it in the same article, “when the principles and tactics held are practically the same, it seems to me a great mistake for Socialist bodies to hold aloof from each other.” He was to write one of his best-known articles, How I Became a Socialist, for Justice in 1894, when he reconciled to some extent with the SDF.

After breaking with the Anarchist leaders of the Socialist League in late 1890, he and the Hammersmith branch continued to organise and publish. In 1893 the Hammersmith Socialist Society initiated a unity manifesto with the SDF and Fabians. In 1894 Morris lamented the lack of united party, writing in The Labour Prophet that, “The materials for a great Socialist party are around us, but no such party exists. We have only the scattered limbs of it”. (Edward Thompson 1976 p.745)

----------
Back to 1) William Morris – a Marxist for our time