20. Retord of Marx's Speech on The Bee-Hive. From the Minutes of the General Council Meeting of April 26, 1870
Cit. Marx proposed that the Council should cut off all connections with The Bee-Hive. He said it had suppressed our resolutions and mutilated our reports and delayed them so that the dates had been falsified, even the mention that certain questions respecting the Irish prisoners were being discussed had been suppressed.[505]
Next to that, the tone of The Bee-Hive was contrary to the Rules and platform of the Association. It preached harmony with the capitalists, and the Association had declared war against the capitalists' rule.
Besides this, our branches abroad complained that by sending our reports to The Bee-Hive we gave it a moral support and led people to believe that we endorsed its policy. We would be better without its publicity than with it.
On the Irish Coercion Bill[506] it had not said a word against the government.
Endnotes
[505] The Bee-Hive's policy of compromise became particularly manifest in its attitude towards the Irish national liberation movement. T h e newspaper openly supported Gladstone's Government in this question, having refused to print the General Council's resolution in defence of the Fenians. On November 1, 1869 Engels wrote to Marx: "I've never seen such a filthy issue as yesterday's. This cringing before Gladstone and the whole bourgeois-patronising-philanthropic tone should soon break the neck of that paper and make it necessary to have a real workers' paper " (see present edition, Vol. 43).
[5 0 6] See Note 499.