11. From the Minute Book of the General Council. Central Council Meetings ( September 1865)
September 12, 1865
A discussion then took place as to the forthcoming conference taken part in by Marx, Weston, Lubez, Cremer, and on the motion of Citizen Lubez, seconded by Mantz, the further consideration of the question was adjourned till the 19th inst., the meeting to be special for the consideration of the conference.
September 19, 1865
Citizen Marx announced that no delegates from Germany would attend the conference, but that a report of the doings in Germany would be sent him which he would read to the conference.[282] He had also sent [a letter] to Ernest Jones asking him to be present and speak at the soirée.[283]
Endnotes
[282] published in the summer of 1865, not before June 6 (when Lewis was elected Corresponding Secretary for America). In view of the enquiries coming into the Central Council about the time of the Congress of the International, it was decided on June 13, 1865 to refer the question to the Standing Committee. The Committee's report reflected the viewpoint of Marx who held that it was too early to convoke the congress in 1865 and suggested holding a preliminary conference in London. The programme for the London Conference, included in this report in amended form, was reproduced in two leaflets issued by the Central Council in August and September 1865 and was also printed in The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 200, August 12, 1865. The announcement of the conference was published in The Workman's Advocate, Nos. 130-33, September 2, 9, 16 and 23, 1865. The preparations were also discussed at the Council's subsequent meetings (see this volume, p. 384). This document was published in English for the first time in The General Council of the First International. 1864-1866, Moscow, 1962. An aliens act was passed in Belgium as early as 1835 and was renewed every three years. Despite widespread protests by the Belgian press and the public, this law was renewed for the tenth time at the end of June 1865. At the end of July 1865 John Bredford Leno, proprietor of The Miner and Workman's Advocate, a weekly newspaper published in London from 1863, proposed placing it at the service of the Central Council of the International. The proposal was supported by the Council members. They discussed the matter at the Council meetings of August 8 and 15, at which Marx was not present, since he was busy working on Capital. But he was informed about the details of the discussion by Eccarius, who wrote to him on August 16, 1865. On August 22, after the regular Council meeting, the shareholders of the Industrial Newspaper Company, established to finance the newspaper, held their foundation meeting. The meeting, which was attended by Marx, approved the address to the working men of Great Britain and Ireland, written by Council members earlier, and the Company's Prospectus, both published here, in the Appendices. On September 25, 1865, the London Conference declared the paper, which on September 8 had assumed the name of The Workman's Advocate, an official organ of the International Association. At the beginning of November 1865 the paper became the full property of the Industrial Newspaper Company. In February 1866 it was renamed The Commonwealth. Marx was a member of the Company's Board and remained on it until June 1866. However, the growing influence of reformist elements in the paper's Editorial Board and the vacillation and conciliatory policy on the part of the trade-union leaders on the Company's Board did not let Marx and his followers avert the transformation of this working-class paper into an organ supporting the policy of bourgeois radicals. It was published until July 20, 1867. On September 11 Marx wrote to Wilhelm Liebknecht in Hanover inviting him to attend the London Conference of the International as a delegate from Germany (see present edition, Vol. 42). Liebknecht replied that he would not be able to come but would send a report on the working-class movement in Germany. Liebknecht's report in English was not, however, read by Marx at the conference because it devoted too much attention to Marx personally, as he himself explained to Liebknecht in a letter of November 21, 1865. The report has survived in manuscript form (see The General Council of the First International. 1864-1866, Moscow, 1962, pp. 251-60).
[283] A reference to the ceremonial evening to celebrate the first anniversary of the International to be held on September 28, 1865 in St. Martin's Hall, London. It was part of the London Conference programme. Jones had promised to attend, but was unable to leave Manchester.