‘Comrades! The spirits of Tom Paine, William Lovett, George Loveless, and all those who suffered for this day can rest easy knowing that we have achieved the remarkable – some said the impossible. Some will call it compromise. I call it Congress.’
– John Maclean, hailing the passing of The Motion for Limited Federal Control and Authority Combined with Regional Autonomy, 1 March 1926
The Congress Concludes
John Durham
People of London celebrating the conclusion of the Inaugural Congress, 2 March 1926
The foreign policy of the Inaugural Congress having been discussed in the previous chapter of this volume, it now falls to me to conclude this book’s analysis of the Congress as a whole. What did it conclude in those crucial final days? Who were the winners and losers, both individually and factionally? And, perhaps most crucially, how well-received were the reforms that the Congress voted on, and did they get put into practice properly?
The final two weeks of the Congress had been designated as ‘Matters regarding infrastructure and domestic matters’ – a term so broad it might as well have been ‘any other business’. The first item on the agenda (drawn up by General Secretary Philip Snowden) was the determination of the exact role that individual workers, Syndicates and Unions, and the ‘central government’ would take in shaping Union policy and practice. The Federationists having a clear majority as a voting bloc by this stage, it was expected that their way of thinking was going to triumph. It was therefore of no surprise to anybody when a nine thousand word document titled ‘The Motion for Limited Federal Control and Authority Combined with Regional Autonomy’[1] was presented by a steering committee chaired by administrative genius and former miner Arthur Horner. Representatives involved in its authorship included Tom Mann, James Maxton (former radical Labour MP[2]) and Jimmy Thomas, the Railway Union leader. The document was both radical and uncontroversial – a theme that runs throughout the years that gave birth to our Union. It was radical in the level of power it gave to local Syndicates and Unions (several Unions made up a local Syndicate, each with their own Congress House), yet uncontroversial in how much power it presented to the Federal Council – effectively the new ‘cabinet’. The Council would act only in cross-Syndicate matters as a mediator, and would determine national ‘goals’ each year that were to be voted on at each national Congress (held every September). The only other matters that the Federal Council would involve itself it were international affairs and matters of infrastructure – railways, electricity and so on – that crossed the boundaries of each Syndicated region. All other matters – the organisation of trades and prices between unions, law enforcement (the police unions were re-educated along the same lines as the army, and elected Commissioners introduced), local transport, utilities and more – fell to the authority of local Syndicates. It was this that was most offensive to the Maximists. Eric Blair called it ‘a blueprint for underachievement’ while Mosley and Cook both made speeches railing against the lack of a centralised industrial body. There were also those who considered the whole Motion ‘utterly unconstitutional’, but it was pointed out that the Constitution, proclaimed a few months ago, had always left provision for a proper administrative structure ‘to be determined during a Congress of the Trade Unions’[3].
The Motion was put to the vote in an atmosphere of extreme tension. Oswald Mosley nonchalantly remarked to anyone who would listen that ‘if we splinter here, the whole bloody structure could come crashing down’. It took over four hours of debate and numerous amendments to the Motion (which had already spend ten days in the hands of the steering committee), but eventually it passed by a majority of 355 to 280 – enough, under the Constitution, to make it lawful. There was a great collective sigh of relief as now, finally, it was clear how the country would actually be run. Britain’s future, at least for the short term, was secure.
The other major area of policy that had to be defined (and voted on for the first time) was the Armed Forces. As Comrade Hobsbawm’s article earlier in this volume pointed out, the ‘apolitical army’ was the consensus of the day. Maclean, as usual, gave a passionate speech explaining the need for this move. Using a typically Macleanian technique, he gave just enough ground to appear impeccably socialist while at the same time making sure the only conclusion that could be reached was his own. In this instance, he declared that it was indeed a sad state of affairs if Britain had to rely on the remaining members of a ‘once royalist army’, but it would be sadder state if she had no military minds at all defending her from German bayonets or Royalist shells. Seizing on the spirit of compromise, he proposed that Tom Wintringham, the fiercest proponent of hanging or imprisoning all former army officers and rebuilding the whole service from scratch, be placed in overall command of the operation to ensure socialist values became entrenched in the existing armed forces. Wintringham appears to have accepted this compromise – other than those army, navy or RAF officers who would not swear to protect the people of the Union rather than ‘that decadent crown’, no officers came to any harm (either prison or the noose) under his command. All this was the result of the general vote on the matter, the motion being ‘To preserve the officer corps of Britain’s armed services, with provisos for their political re-education, for reasons in the National Interest’. It passed by a reasonable majority, with Cook’s Maximists being the only faction encouraging its members to vote ‘Nay’[4].
Tom Wintringham (middle row, second from right) posing with his committee. William Gallacher (back row, middle) and Harry Pollitt (middle row, far left) played a key role in shaping Wintringham's policies towards the army's re-education.
With these and other administrative questions answered (some of which will be expanded upon in later chapters covering the development of the Union in the 1920s), the Congress now turned to the matter of electing those of its members who would oversee their putting into practice. While the election of Syndicate chairmen was a matter to be decided locally, the ‘Federal Council’ that would meet each week in Congress house was to fill the role of the cabinet under the failed state. The people who sat on this council would have briefs and, in some cases, Commissions (based largely on the old system of ‘ministries’). The Commissary for the Exchequer, for instance, would be based out of the old treasury building for the time being, keeping control of inflation through careful mediation of price control among the regional Syndicates. The old ‘Foreign and Colonial Office’ was stripped of its paintings of foreign dignitaries and Emperors (notably a disgustingly large picture of Napoeleon III that Queen Victoria had allegedly refused to keep in any of her homes, and so given to the Foreign Office) and re-opened as the ‘People’s Commission for Foreign Affairs’. The election of the men to fill these posts, then, was to be the final stage of cementing the government of the Union of Britain.
Philip Snowden had already been elected as General Secretary of the Congress of the Trade Unions (CTU)[5], so the major roles that remained to be filled were the Exchequer, Foreign Affairs, Home Infrastructure and Industrial Relations. Several candidates had each put together a manifesto for why they should be considered for these posts, but there were clear frontrunners in each category. Arthur Horner was a close ally of John Maclean and well-known as a superb mathematician, so easily took the job in the Exchequer, despite strong opposition from Oswald Mosley, beginning their decade-long feud. Ernest Bevin, given his recent escapades abroad, was the obvious choice for Foreign Affairs. Jimmy Thomas, head of the National Union of Railwaymen who had successfully crippled the Reactionary efforts to keep the country moving during the Revolution[6] made his case for being the Commissary for Home Infrastructure by arguing for a strong system of railways, bolstered by popular support and Union involvement, carrying more freight and passengers around the country to help underdeveloped sections grow. He was elected to little opposition. Finally, the eccentric James Maxton was elected as Commissary for Industrial Relations after much recommendation by his old friend John Maclean. Maxton was, in many ways, the ideal candidate as a mediator between Syndicates and Unions (this being what the job entailed). His experience in parliament made him one of few Revolutionaries who had spoken with real power behind his words before now, and his fiery manner was well-respected by tough-talking Union leaders. The first ever Federal Council, therefore, was thus:
Chairman of the CTU John Maclean
General Secretary of the CTU Philip Snowden
Commissary for the Exchequer Arthur Horner
Commissary for Foreign Affairs Ernest Bevin
Commissary for Home Infrastructure Jimmy Thomas
Commissary for Industrial Relations James Maxton
Chairman of the Committee for Reformation of the Armed Forces Tom Wintringham
And so the Congress entered its closing stages. John Maclean praised the work that had been done thus far, and talked positively of the change that lay ahead. However apprehensive people like Mosley had been about the Congress, the outcome was clear – the people of Britain, through their representatives, were genuinely prepared to ‘give it a go’, as Comrade Hobsbawm once said. On the other hand, there were certainly 'winners and losers' in the debate - the Maximists had had their centralised views rejected (for now) and had been opposed to a number of Federationist measures that were passed successfully. But the implementation of the policies would be undertaken in a local, regional and fundamentally decentralised manner, and this is what made the process so popular and easy for local administrators. So what conclusions can be drawn from the end of the Congress? A sense of optimism, no doubt inspired by the Revolution itself and the decadence of the previous regime, played a large part in the congeniality of this first Congress. A degree of British openness and fairness resulted in the free debate that carried on almost without interruption over every issue. The most important conclusion, then, in the mind of this author, is that the Inaugural Congress symbolises the very essence of where our Union came from. A Revolution with very little bloodshed, compromise abound and a hand of brotherhood being extended to those who, under the Bolshevik Rebellion, for instance, would have been executed. The Congress was, therefore, the perfect microcosm of what Tony Benn would later call ‘our unique brand of a very British Socialism’.
[1] Hardly a catchy title, it quickly became known as the ‘Limited Federation’ motion.
[2] Maxton had foregone the post-Revolution ‘examination process’ his parliamentary colleagues underwent by personally joining a Popular Militia during the early days of the Revolution, and helping plan the attack on the Houses of Parliament using his own knowledge of the building. A close friend and ally of both John Maclean and Arthur James Cook, he had served as a principled socialist politician for his entire career, and as such was under little scrutiny anyway.
[3] Article iia, line 23,
The Constitution of the Union of Britain, original pamphlet from November 1925
[4] The Congregationalists were also initially uneasy about the militaristic tone of the motion, but gave it their support after Annie Kenney negotiated an amendment to the Motion which placed the emphasis on Britain’s defence rather than any overseas operations.
[5] The role of General Secretary was a powerful administrative one that involved the planning of all Union Congresses and the maintenance of the very structure of the state itself. Snowden would have found it easy to set a precedent for the General Secretary outshining the Chairman and eventually overtaking him as the
de facto head of state and take his crucial ‘casting vote’, but this never took place, to our Union’s benefit. The General Secretary remained the role it was supposed to be.
[6] One amusing incident saw students at Oxford University offer to fire and run steam locomotives from their local depot in an attempt to undermine the strike. When desperate bosses put the manicured scabs to work, they found that all the students were capable of doing was ruining fireboxes and, in one case, permanently warping a boiler. So laughable was the attempt that after the Revolution, the students responsible’s punishment was simply to be named and shamed on pamphlets around the city.
I especially liked the way you solved the Irish problem. I always thought that Ulster was lost during the Easter Uprising, not after the revolution, but your version seems plausible as well. Especially the Cornwall joke
