86 Mornington Street, Stockport Road, Manchester London, June 14, 1870
Dear Friends,
Today I received a letter from Stumpf (Mainz), in which he says, among other things:
"Liebknecht authorises me to write to you that because of the Reichstag elections, which are to be held precisely at that time, it might be better to hold the congress here on October 5. Last Monday[3] the congress in Stuttgart[173] also came out in favour of October 5. I hear that Geib is authorised to write to you in this matter."
Liebknecht and the other members of the International ought at least to be familiar with its Rules, which expressly state:
"§ 3. The General Council may, in case of need, change the place, but has no power to postpone the time of meeting."h
When I spoke in the General Council in favour of your urgent invitation to have the congress moved to Germany, I naturally assumed that you had taken all the circumstances into consideration. According to the Rules there can be no question of postponing the congress.
Another passage in Stumpfs letter is also far from reassuring. In it he says:
"I have just come from the Burgomaster. He wants a solvent citizen to guarantee that if the Schweitzer people were to start a fighting, the town would be recompensed for any damage in the Electoral Hall of Marble, which has been promised to us for the congress, etc."
You proposed the towns of Mainz, Darmstadt or Mannheim, thus in fact assuming, vis-à-vis the General Council, the responsibility of ensuring that the congress can be held in any of these towns without scandalous scenes which would make the International, and the German working class in particular, the laughing-stock of the whole world. I hope that you have taken all the necessary precautions in this respect.
What is the numerical proportion of Schweitzer supporters in Mainz and district to your own people?
In the event that a scandal cannot be avoided, steps must be taken in advance to ensure that it rebounds on its instigators. The plan of the Prussian police to obstruct the international congress in Mainz — which they are unable to prevent from convening by direct means — through their tool, the Schweitzer organisation, or to prevent the peaceful holding of its sessions, must be denounced in the Volksstaat, Zukunft and in other German papers open to us. As soon as this had been done in Germany, the General Council would then arrange for similar articles to be published in London, Paris, etc. The International can stand a conflict with Mr. Bismarck, but not alleged spontaneous "typical German factional brawls between workers" labelled "struggles of principle".
I daresay that Stumpf — in collaboration with you — will see to it that the delegates find cheap lodgings.
Salut et fraternité
Karl Marx
I take this opportunity of sending the Committee my kindest regards. Ever since the Schweitzerites in Forst informed the Burgomaster in advance of their intention to create mayhem and he allowed matters to take their course, the connection between these gentlemen and the police is an established fact. Perhaps Stumpf could enquire of the Schweitzerites through the Burgomaster of Mainz whether they have been instructed "to fight". It is anyway high time these people were exposed in the press everywhere as police agents pure and simple, and next time they try their hand at "fighting" they should be given a taste of their own medicine. This is naturally out of the question at the congress, but in the meantime they can be given a thrashing fit to put them off fighting for good. The manner in which Herr Bismarck is portraying these things in the English press is evident from the enclosed cutting, which is doing the rounds of all the papers. The North German Correspondence is an organ founded by Bismarck with Guelphic money.[174]
With kindest regards
F. Engels
Endnotes
[1] In the autumn of 1867 the General Council of the International Working Men's Association launched a widespread campaign among the English workers in support of the Irish national liberation movement led by the Fenians. The memorial written by Marx was an integral part of this campaign. The Fenians were Irish revolutionaries who named themselves after the "Féne"— a name of the ancient population of Ireland. Their first organisations appeared in the 1850s in the USA among the Irish immigrants and later in Ireland itself. The secret Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, as the organisation was known in the early 1860s, aimed at establishing an independent Irish republic by means of an armed uprising. The Fenians, who expressed the interests of the Irish peasantry, came chiefly from the urban petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia and believed in conspiracy tactics. The British Government attempted to suppress the Fenian movement by severe police reprisals. On September 18, 1867, the Fenians made an armed attack on a prison van in an attempt to liberate Kelly and Deasy, two of their leaders. The latter managed to escape but a policeman was killed during the clash. Five Irishmen (Maguire, Condon, Larkin, Allen and O'Brien) were charged with murder and brought to trial. Although there was no direct evidence, they were sentenced to death. Maguire was subsequently pardoned, and Condon, as an American citizen, had his sentence commuted to life imprisonment. The others were executed. The Fenian trial in Manchester aroused a storm of protest in Ireland and England. On the insistence of Marx, the General Council of the International began, on November 19, a discussion on the Irish question during which the leaders of the international proletarian organisation expressed their solidarity with the struggle of the Irish people for independence and condemned the position of the reformist trade union leaders who, in the wake of the English bourgeois radicals, denied the right of the Fenians to resort to revolutionary methods in the struggle. The discussion was scheduled to continue on November 26 (see this volume, pp. 189-93), but when the news of the conviction was received, the General Council convened a special meeting on November 20 and addressed a memorial to the Home Secretary asking for the commutation of the death sentence. The British Government ignored the memorial. Because of opposition from the trade union leaders, the English labour press did not publish the memorial in its original wording. A report on the special meeting of the General Council, published in The Bee-Hive, No. 319, November 23, 1867, only summarised it, and named the General Council members who had signed it. The French translation was published by Le Courrier français, No. 163, November 24. In English the memorial was first published in full in The General Council of the First International. 1866-1868, Moscow, 1964. This document is also preserved in the form of the manuscript copy made by Mrs. Marx which fully coincides with the text entered into the Minute Book. Written as an article, this copy was apparently to be sent to the press. In this volume the memorial is reproduced from this copy.
[3] Marx wrote this item on the basis of a letter from Johann Baptist Schweitzer dated April 29, 1868. The item was included in the report of the General Council meeting of May 12, 1868 published in The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 344, May 16, 1868, but is not to be found in the Minute Book. Informing Engels of Schweitzer's letter, Marx wrote to him on May 4, 1868 that he intended "to use this question in the interests of the Party", and insisted on an inquiry into the condition of the workers employed in the iron trade of the Rhine Province (see this letter and Marx's letter to Engels of May 7 and the latter's reply of May 6-7, 1868, present edition, Vol. 43).
[173] The Stuttgart Congress of the German Social-Democratic Workers' Party took place from June 4 to 7, 1870. It summed up the results of the party's activity for the past year, paying great attention to the work among the masses. The Congress discussed the peasant question. On Bebel's proposal it adopted the resolution on the socialisation of the land, formulating it in the spirit of the Basle Congress resolutions. In its political programme the Congress sharply criticised the Bakuninist views on the political struggle and the state. The Congress also discussed the next congress of the International in Mainz. "
[174] This refers to a special fund at the personal disposal of Bismarck which was used for bribing the press.