1919 - strikes, struggles and soviets

“... The year 1919... The entire structure of European imperialism tottered under the blows of the greatest mass struggles of the proletariat in history and when we daily expected the news of the proclamation of the soviet Republic in Germany, France, England, and Italy. The word ‘soviets’ became terrifically popular. Everywhere these soviets were being organised. The bourgeoisie was at its wits’ end. The year 1919 was the most critical year in the history of the European bourgeoisie... What were the premises for the proletarian revolution? The productive forces were fully mature, so were the class relations; the objective social role of the proletariat rendered the latter fully capable of conquering power and providing the necessary leadership. What was lacking? Lacking was the political premise; i.e. cognisance of the situation by the proletariat. Lacking was an organisation at the head of the proletariat, capable of utilising the situation for nothing else but the direct organisational and technical preparation of an uprising. of the overturn, the seizure of power and so forth — this is what was lacking.”
Leon Trotsky: The first five years of the Communist International.

Democracy, Direct Action and Class Struggle: the Defects of Bourgeois Democracy

The malaise of bourgeois democracy in Britain is now a subject of much discussion and concern. The discussion on democracy, early in 1982, between Michael Foot, then leader of the Labour Party, and Socialist Organiser, a forerunner of AWL, may help readers form a clearer picture of the issues beyond small-scale financial corruption. When Foot wrote articles in the Observer on democracy, revolution, socialism, and Stalinism, his immediate point was to insist that Trade Union direct action to resist the attacks of the Thatcher Government on the working class and the labour movement, would be a...

Remembering Rosa Luxemburg — standing against the socialist betrayers, by Clara Zetkin

Together with Karl Liebnecht and — a little later Leo Jogiches — Rosa Luxemburg was murdered by right wing reactionaries in January 1919, after the failure of the rising by the Spartacists, the young, small, newly-formed Communist Party of Germany. She had spent the years of the First World War mainly in jail. At the outbreak of that war the leaders of the mass German Social-Democratic Party, the most important socialist party of that time, boke with all Marxist precedent and with previously declared party policy and supported Germany in the war. The event that marked this treason of...

Labour Anti-Bolshevism in 1919

Reading through some old issues of the East End News and Chronicle (I think I might have mentioned by local labour history nerd-ism before), I stumbled across this short article. Although much as changed since the days when Socialist was spelt with a capital 'S' and paragraphs went on forever, some...

Hate The Rich

In May 1919, the Ministry of Labour reported a Home Office survey listing causes of revolutionary feeling amongst the working class. The top six?

  • high prices
  • bad housing
  • hatred of the rich
  • education
  • leadership
  • unemployment

I wonder what a similar survey might come up with today. Admittedly, they...

The Partition of Ireland

The events of 1912-22, and their consequences for Ireland today. 1912 April: Third Home Rule Bill introduced into Parliament by Liberal Government. The House of Lords veto has been abolished in 1911, so the Bill seems sure to pass. September: 447,000 people sign Ulster Solemn League and Covenant, pledging to resist the Bill. 1913 January: Ulster Volunteer Force formed and begins drilling. November: Irish Citizen Army and Irish National Volunteers formed. 1914 March: Army officers at the Curragh camp in Ireland declare they will resign rather than coerce Ulster. Government backs down and gives...

Ukraine The Unfinished Revolution part one

The ‘Orange revolution’ in the mirror of history, by Chris Ford The role played by the young Ukrainian socialist movement is most significant. This movement has connected the national liberation question to all the problems of the liberation of the working class: it has raised this question to the level of those political problems which can be solved by no other means but democratic struggle, by the development of class conflict in Ukrainian society. Thus has progressed Ukrainian socialism always following the same route, confirmed by the undoubted truth that in all present day liberation...

Hungary 1919 - 133 days of workers' rule

For a few months in early 1919 a workers' government ruled in Hungary. In 1896 Hungarians celebrated a thousand years of the founding of their nation and Budapest staged a Millennium Exhibition to rival anything seen in Paris or London. As one half of the 18th century Habsburg 'Dual Monarchy', Hungary shared control and administration over the largest dominion in Europe. Eighteen million people lived within the borders of the area controlled by Hungary, almost half of them non-Hungarians. In fact 'Greater Hungary' was an unstable patchwork quilt of nationalities including Northern Romania...

Stalinist mind at the end of its tether/ 3

Revolutions only bring chaos? "For [AWL] the overthrow of Mohammed Daud's - republican-royal - regime by the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan was a "Stalinist military coup" which brought upon the heads of the masses nothing but decades of terrible suffering. Exactly the same message pushed by the White House, CIA, BBC, Hollywood action films, The Sun and the whole well oiled imperialist propaganda machine." Is what we have said untrue? The question has been raised about all revolutions: was it worth the cost in lives and social disruption? It is a reasonable question. Only those who...

A different sort of Labour council

from Workers' Liberty no.66 In Hackney, east London, the Labour/Tory coalition administration - the first in Britain since World War Two - is making drastic cuts to local services in one of Britain's poorest districts after an unelected council official used Tory legislation to put a halt to any expenditure not mandated by law or required by legal contracts. The Labour councillors' response? To continue the coalition and promise that they're getting the council budget in order at last! The story of the very different Labour council in Poplar - also in east London - in 1919-21 shows an...

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