Name Glossary

ADLER, Friedrich (1879-1960) – Austrian Social Democratic politician. From the mid-1920s he was Secretary General of the reconstituted Socialist International.

ADLER, Victor (1852-1918) – Founder of Austrian Social Democracy; supported Austria’s involvement in the war; Foreign Minister in the interim government of Karl Renner after November 1918.

ASQUITH, Herbert Henry (1858-1928) – British Liberal politician and lawyer; Home Secretary 1892-95, Chancellor of the Exchequer 1905-8 and Prime Minister 1908-16.

BALDWIN, Stanley (1867-1947) – British Conservative politician; Prime Minister three times 1923-1924, 1924-1929 and 1935-1937; Prime Minister during the General Strike.

BENTHAM, Jeremy (1748-1832) – English jurist and philosopher, founder of utilitarianism.

BIRKENHEAD, Lord (Smith, Frederick Edwin) (1874-1930) – Right-wing Tory and lawyer. Solicitor-General in 1915, Attorney-General from 1915-18, Lord Chancellor from 1919-22, and Secretary of State for India from 1924-28. Resisted Irish Home Rule and led the prosecution at the trial of Sir Roger Casement.

BRAILSFORD, Henry Noel (1873-1958) – Socialist writer; joined the ILP in 1907 and took a pacifist position in the First World War; an opponent of MacDonald within the ILP. He was active in efforts to reunite the Second and Third Internationals and in the ILP campaign of 1926 entitled ‘Socialism in Our Time’.

BRIAND, Aristide (1862-1932) – French politician and renegade socialist. Served as Prime Minister eleven times from 1909-29 and Foreign Minister from 1926-32.

BROCKWAY, Archibald Fenner (1888-1988) – Born in Calcutta, the son of a Christian missionary. Came to Britain and in 1907 joined the ILP. Pacifist during the First World War. Organising Secretary of the ILP in 1922, General Secretary in 1928 and 1933-39, Chairman from 1931-33. Editor of New Leader from 1926-29 and 1931-46. He acted as leader of the ‘left’ of the ILP following its disaffiliation from the Labour Party, and was the moving spirit behind the ‘London Bureau’ of centrist parties established in 1932. In this capacity he played an active role in such capitulations to the Stalinist ‘Popular Front’ as those perpetrated by the POUM in Spain, and was strongly opposed to Trotsky’s call for a Fourth International. He took a centrist position during the Second World War and quietly rejoined the Labour Party in 1946.

BUCHANAN, George William (1854-1924) – British ambassador to Russia 1910-18. Encouraged British intervention against the Bolsheviks.

BUKHARIN, Nikolai (1888-1938) – Russian Bolshevik; after the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) he adopted more right-wing positions, encouraging the peasantry to enrich itself; after Lenin’s death he developed the theoretical basis for the theory of ‘socialism in one country’; despite allying with Stalin against the Left Opposition he was executed during the Moscow Trials.

BUNYAN, John (1628-1688) – Former soldier in the revolutionary parliamentary army who became a radical preacher. While in prison for preaching without a licence he started The Pilgrim’s Progress, one of the most widely read and translated works of seventeenth century English literature.

BURNHAM, James (1905-1957) – American political theorist. During the 1930s he was a leading member of the American Trotskyist movement. After the Soviet invasion of Finland in 1939 he was involved in the faction fight about the class nature of the Soviet Union that led him and Max Shachtman to split from the Socialist Workers Party and set up the Workers Party in 1940. Shortly afterwards he resigned from the Workers Party and moved to the right, eventually ending up as a leading supporter of the Cold War and theoretician of conservatism.

CALVIN, John (1509-1564) – French Protestant theologian during the Protestant Reformation. His ideas on civic and religious governance greatly influenced Scottish Presbyterianism, English (and later American) Puritanism, and the Dutch Reformed Church.

CASEMENT, Sir Roger David (1864-1916) – Irish nationalist, a leader of the Irish Volunteers. After the outbreak of war, he became convinced that the German imperialists could serve the cause of Irish freedom, and went to negotiate with them on this basis. Having failed to achieve his aim he nevertheless persuaded the Germans to send some arms to the Irish Volunteers on a ship called the Aud and to send him on a submarine so he could try to prevent the planned rising. Together with the arms, he was captured by the British in April 1916, tried for treason and executed the following August. Before the trial, the British government circulated excerpts said to be from his private journals, which detailed homosexual activities. Given prevailing views and existing laws on homosexuality, this material undermined support for clemency for Casement.

CHAMBERLAIN, Arthur Neville (1869-1940) – Tory leader. Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1923-24 and Prime Minister from 1937-40. Although his father, Joseph, had been something of a political outsider, Neville’s policies were those of the mainstream of ruling class opinion, notably in his desire to fight communism at all costs on an international scale, and to arrive at an accommodation with the German fascists.

CHAMBERLAIN, Austen (1863-1937) – Tory politician. Chancellor of the Exchequer 1903-6. Secretary for India in Asquith’s 1915 coalition and a member of Lloyd George’s War Cabinet. Chancellor once again 1919-21. Helped to draft the plans for de-controlling the coal industry in 1921 which led to the ‘Black Friday’ defeat for the miners. Foreign Secretary in Baldwin government. Played an important part in framing the 1925 Locarno pact, an attempt to stabilise the capitalist powers in Europe. Known to enjoy family holidays with Mussolini.

CHAMBERLAIN, Joseph (1836-1914) – Imperialist politician and capitalist. After a period as Mayor of Birmingham he entered parliament as a Radical, joining the Liberal government in 1880. Although an advocate of social reforms, he was a strong supporter of all forms of imperialism and resigned from Gladstone’s government in 1886 in opposition to Irish Home Rule. Subsequently led the ‘Unionist’ section of the Liberal Party which joined the Conservatives in 1895. Colonial Secretary until his resignation in 1903. Father of Austen and Neville Chamberlain.

CHARLES I of Great Britain and Ireland (1600-1649) – Came to the throne in 1625 and attempted to rule without calling parliament after 1629. Failing to arrive at agreement with his 1640 parliament he led the royalist forces against the parliamentary army in the Civil War from 1642 until his surrender in 1646. He was finally executed in 1649.

CHARLES II of Great Britain and Ireland (1630-1685) – Assumed the title of king in exile on his father’s execution; crowned in Scotland in 1651. Tried unsuccessfully to regain rule over England. Re-installed with the fall of the Commonwealth in 1660. Formed an alliance with France to fight Holland in 1670. Built up British naval power. His reign was marked by a measure of economic development resulting from the bourgeois revolution.

CHIANG Kai-shek (1887-1975) – Generalissimo of the Chinese nationalist army that finally, with Communist support, overthrew the warlords in 1925 and then turned against the Communists and the working class, massacring the workers of Shanghai, Canton, and other cities. Defeated in the civil war by Mao Tse-tung and retreated to Formosa in 1949, where until his death he ruled over a statelet of his own under the patronage of US imperialism.

CHICHERIN, Georgi (1872-1936) – Russian Social Democrat, later Soviet diplomat; Menshevik before the First World War, adopted an anti-war position and drew closer to the Bolsheviks; jailed in Britain in 1917, Trotsky secured his release in exchange for hostages including Buchanan, British ambassador to Russia; formally joined the Bolsheviks early in 1918 and was appointed Trotsky’s deputy at the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs; succeeded Trotsky on his resignation and remained Commissar for Foreign Affairs until 1930, when he was replaced due to bad health.

CHURCHILL, Winston Spencer (1874-1965) – Leading imperialist politician of twentieth century. Entered parliament as a Conservative in 1900 but joined the Liberal Party in 1906. As President of the Board of Trade from 1908 he was responsible for the introduction of Labour Exchanges. Home Secretary 1910. He called out troops against striking miners and dockers in 1911 and personally directed the burning to death of a group of armed anarchists in Sidney Street, London. Secretary for War and Air 1919-21 and the leading supporter of armed intervention against Soviet Russia. After the 1924 election he returned to the Conservative Party. Chancellor of the Exchequer in Baldwin’s Cabinet 1924-29. Responsible for the disastrous return to the Gold Standard in 1925 which increased export prices and led to substantial wage cuts for miners and other workers. During the 1926 General Strike he organised the anti-labour blackleg government newspaper, the British Gazette. Observed with favour the rise of Mussolini and Hitler in this period, but later became the spokesman for the anti-German section of British imperialism. As a result, he was again in the Cabinet in 1939 and was appointed Prime Minister of the War Coalition Cabinet in May 1940 with Attlee as Lord Privy Seal. Defeated overwhelmingly in the 1945 General Election. Tory Prime Minister again 1951-55.

CITRINE, Walter McLennan (1887- 1983) – TUC General Secretary 1926-46.

CLEMENCEAU, Georges (1841-1929) – Leading French bourgeois politician. As Prime Minister from 1917-20 he was hailed as the ‘architect of victory’ and was the leading figure at the Versailles peace conference in 1919, as well as the inspirer of intervention against Soviet Russia.

CLYNES, Joseph Robert (1869-1949) – British trade unionist and Labour politician; supporter of British involvement in the First World War; became leader of the Labour Party after the war; served as Home Secretary in the second Labour government (1929-31), but split with Ramsay MacDonald in 1931 over the proposed austerity measures.

COOK, Arthur James (1883-1931) – Miners’ leader. After the defeat of the miners in 1926 he denounced the General Council for its role. In 1927 he joined the General Council itself and attacked the collaborationist policies of the Mond-Turner talks. Though always a militant and never losing the confidence of the miners, Cook nevertheless remained a prisoner to his syndicalist prejudices and lacked any overall perspective to deal with the crushing attacks on his members.

CRIPPS, Sir Richard Stafford (1889-1952) – Labour MP for Bristol 1929-1950. Leading member of the Socialist League, founded in 1932, and affiliated to the Labour Party.

CROMWELL, Oliver (1599-1658) – Leader of the English Revolution. Born into a family of minor gentry in Cambridgeshire. MP in 1628 and again in 1640. One of the most uncompromising of the Puritans, he achieved prominence as a military commander in the Civil War, raising a New Model Army of those with strong religious convictions and military skill. This army not only defeated the Royalists, but also rebellions in Scotland and Ireland. After the Civil War Cromwell not only pushed hard for the execution of the King, he also opposed and defeated movements inside and outside the army such as the Levellers and Diggers who demanded greater democracy and social equality. After this he became virtual dictator, though refusing the title of King. He did much to extend the basis of capitalism not only in domestic affairs but through the pursuit of colonial wars. Tried many forms of government such as military rule and a nominated Parliament, but died as Lord Protector without having discovered a satisfactory political alternative to the monarchy. Though the Stuarts were restored less than two years after his death, the movement he led had irrevocably altered the relations between the classes and the balance of political power.

CURZON, George Nathaniel (Lord Curzon) (1859-1925) – Aristocrat educated at Eton and Oxford. Viceroy of India 1898-1905. Strengthened the apparatus of colonial rule, partitioning Bengal and fortifying the North-West Frontier against a threat from tsarist Russian imperialism. Became an earl in 1911 and joined Lloyd George’s War Cabinet in 1916. Foreign Secretary first under Lloyd George in 1919 and then under Bonar Law and Baldwin, 1922-24. A leader of the right wing of the Conservative Party in this period, he combined traditional hostility to tsarist Russia with his class loyalty to act as an arch-enemy of Soviet Russia, against which he carried out endless diplomatic manoeuvres.

DENIKIN, Anton Ivanovich (1872-1947) – Tsarist general, organiser and commander of counter-revolutionary Volunteer Army in South Russia, 1918-1920.

DERBY, Earl of (Edward Stanley) (1865-1948) – Conservative politician. Actively opposed the social reforms of the pre-war Liberal administration. During the war he served at the War Office in both Asquith’s and Lloyd George’s administrations, perpetrating the notorious ‘Derby scheme’, which placed enormous pressure on young men to join the army.

DEWEY, John (1859-1952) – American philosopher, psychologist and educational reformer, one of the founders of Pragmatism. In 1937 he chaired the commission of enquiry that cleared Trotsky of the charges made against him by Stalin.

FOCH, Ferdinand (1851-1929) – French general; as supreme commander of the Allied armies in 1918 he accepted the German surrender; highly critical of the Versailles Treaty for being too lenient on Germany; advised the Polish army during its invasion of Russia in 1920.

GLADSTONE, William Ewart (1809-1898) – Liberal leader and Prime Minister of merchant origin. First a Tory, then supporter of Peel and Free Trade, eventually joining the Liberal Party whose leader he became in 1866.

GREY, Edward (Lord Grey) (1862-1933) – British Liberal politician, Foreign Secretary 1905-16.

GROVES, Reginald (1908-1988) – British Trotskyist. Member of the Westminster ILP in the 1920s, but later joined the CP. Developed opposition to the policies of the third period on the grounds that they gave poor practical results. Expelled from the CP in August 1932. Within the Trotskyist movement after 1932 he opposed the entry into the ILP. On the collapse of his own ‘independent’ group he joined the Labour Party in 1935.

GUEST, Haden Leslie (1877-1960) – Extreme right-wing Labourite.

HARDING, Warren (1865-1923) – American Republican politician, president of the US (1921-1923).

HENDERSON, Arthur (1863-1935) – Right-wing Labour politician; leader of the Party who rallied the party to support the First World War and became a government minister. He later served as Home Secretary in the first Labour government (1924) and Foreign Secretary in the second Labour government (1929-1931). A devout Wesleyan Methodist throughout his life. Left an estate of £23,000.

HOOVER, Herbert (1874-1964) – Republican President of the United States, 1929-32. A Quaker, Hoover was identified with the laissez-faire, less protectionist wing of American capitalism which was held in retrospect to have contributed to the Wall Street crash and the development of the slump.

HYNDMAN, Henry Mayers (1842-1921) – A founder of the British Marxist movement. The son of a colonial merchant, he qualified as a barrister and became a City businessman. Converted to socialism by reading Capital on a transatlantic voyage in 1880. In 1881 wrote England for All, drawing on many of Marx’s ideas without acknowledgement. Set up the Democratic Federation, later Social Democratic Federation, the first organisation in Britain at the time claiming adherence to Marxism. Hyndman also led the British Socialist Party into which his movement merged, but led a pro-war minority which left the 1916 conference to set up a National Socialist Party. Despite his role in the propagation of Marxist ideas in Britain, Hyndman was always an extreme chauvinist, who never lost his airs as a city gentleman or gained an adequate grasp of Marxism.

JAMES, Cyril Lionel Robert (1901-1989) – Trinidadian Marxist who was active in the Trotskyist movements of both Britain and the United States. He came to Britain around 1933 and joined the Marxist Group in the ILP in 1935 and refused to support entry to the Labour Party. After this he went to the United States to join James P. Cannon in 1938 and was in the SWP until he left in 1940, together with Shachtman. He rejoined in 1947, but split again in 1950 during the Korean War. He wrote a book on the decline of the Comintern, World Revolution (1937), and another on the Haitian Revolution called The Black Jacobins (1938).

JOHNSTON, Thomas (1881-1965) – Labour MP. Elected to Parliament in 1922 as one of the Clydeside group of ‘left’ Labour MPs. Began to take an interest in the affairs of the British Empire which he thought “could be made the greatest lever for human emancipation the world has ever known”. Remained closely identified with MacDonald.

JOYNSON-HICKS, William (1865-1932) – Extreme right-wing authoritarian Conservative politician; Home Secretary from 1924 to 1929. As such, he was responsible for the prosecution and jailing of the leaders of the CPGB for sedition during the run-up to the General Strike, and during the strike itself he was one of the most hawkish members of the government.

KANT, Immanuel (1724-1804) – German philosopher and cosmologist regarded as the last great philosopher of the Enlightenment.

KAUTSKY, Karl (1854-1938) – One of the leading theoreticians of the German Social Democratic Party and the Second International. By the outbreak of the First World War, he had abandoned revolutionary Marxism and took up an indecisive position between revolutionary opposition to the war and patriotic support for the German bourgeoisie. As such he became the theorist of ‘centrism’ in the socialist movement and strongly opposed the Russian Revolution.

KERENSKY, Alexander (1881-1970) – Russian lawyer with a reputation for defending radicals and revolutionaries. With the outbreak of the 1917 February Revolution, he entered the Provisional Government as a representative of the Socialist Revolutionaries. Head of the provisional government from July. Overthrown by the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution. After briefly attempting to retake Petrograd, he fled to France.

KEYNES, John Maynard (1883-1946) – British economist who advocated government intervention in the economy to mitigate the negative aspects of the business cycle (what later became known as Keynesianism); a member of the British delegation to the negotiations leading to the Versailles Treaty, he published a devastating critique called The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

KIRKWOOD, David (1872-1955) – Scottish politician and trade unionist. In 1914 he joined the Socialist Labour Party but soon after moved to the ILP being influenced by MacDonald’s half-baked pacifism.

KITCHENER, Horatio Herbert (1850-1916) – Irish-born British soldier who commanded British imperialist forces in Egypt and Sudan. In 1900 he succeeded Lord Roberts as commander of the British forces in South Africa during the Second Boer War. Served as Secretary of State for War from 1914 until his death in 1916.

KOLCHAK, Alexander (1874-1920) – Russian admiral and leader of the counter-revolutionary White forces in Siberia; captured and executed in 1920.

LANSBURY, George (1858-1940) – Labour leader. In 1912 he helped in the foundation of the Daily Herald and was its editor from 1919 to 1922. After its move to the right for a short time he ran a paper called Lansbury’s Labour Weekly (1925-26). MP from 1922 until his death. Commissioner for Works in the 1929-31 Government, and as the most prominent Labour leader to retain his seat in the 1931 landslide, he found himself at the head of the Party. He handed this position over to Attlee in 1935 after a vitriolic attack on him by Ernest Bevin for opposing on pacifist grounds the policy of the League of Nations sanctions against Italy after her bloody seizure of Abyssinia. He then toured Europe in an attempt to influence political leaders in favour of peace and disarmament.

LAW, Andrew Bonar (1858-1923) – Conservative MP from 1900 and leader from 1911-21 and 1922-23. Particularly active in support of army mutinies in opposition to Irish Home Rule before 1914. Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons under Lloyd George.

LLOYD GEORGE, David (1863-1945) – Liberal politician and arch-imperialist. Minister of Munitions 1915. In 1916 succeeded Asquith as Prime Minister forming his ‘War Cabinet’ with the Tories, lasting until 1922. Dictated the vindictive Versailles Treaty, together with French Prime Minister Clemenceau. Backed the White Guards in the Russian Civil War and every form of terrorism against the Irish people, but in both cases was forced to retreat. More successful in dealing with the leaders of the trade unions, notably the miners. Abandoned by the Tories at 1922 General Election in favour of Law’s Tory cabinet. His subsequent position oscillated between his earlier reformism and extreme reaction as he fought in a rapidly declining and hopelessly split Liberal Party. Returned to parliament in 1931 at the head of a party with only four seats. At different times intrigued with Labour leaders, expressed admiration for Hitler (1936), and supported Keynesian policies, but never regained his previous influence.

LOCKE, John (1632-1704) – English philosopher, first of the British empiricists.

LOCKHART, Robert Hamilton Bruce (1887-1970) – British diplomat and secret agent. British envoy in Russia from January 1918; implicated in a plot to assassinate Lenin; jailed and condemned to death, but was spared and released in exchange for the Soviet diplomat, Maxim Litvinov. He later wrote about his experiences in an autobiographical book, Memoirs of a British Agent (1934).

LONGUET, Jean (1876-1938) – French lawyer and socialist who held a pacifist position in the First World War but invariably voted for war credits.

LOVESTONE, Jay (1898-1990) – American communist. Occupied various leading positions in the CPUSA in the 1920s, was expelled in 1929 and ran various organisations supporting his views in the 1930s. Later he moved to the extreme right and became a pillar of American imperialism through his work in the labour movement and the building of CIA-backed anti-communist union organisations in various countries.

MACDONALD, James Ramsay (1886-1938) – Scottish Labour politician; member of ILP; adopted pacifist position during the First World War, Prime Minister in the first (1924) and second (1929-1931) Labour governments, defected in 1931 with Philip Snowden and James Henry Thomas to form National Government with the Conservatives after the Labour government split on the question of cutting unemployment benefits; served as Prime Minister until 1935.

MACLEAN, John (1879-1923) – Scottish revolutionary socialist and opponent of First World War; leading influence on the movement known as Red Clydeside; jailed in 1916 for his anti-war activities, but released again in 1917; supported October Revolution and appointed Soviet consul in Scotland, but never joined the Communist Party.

MARTOV, Julius (1873-1923) – Russian Social Democrat, leader of the Mensheviks.

MAXTON, James (1885-1946) – ILP leader much admired by Winston Churchill. Generally considered the leader of the ‘Clydeside group’ of left Labour MPs. After the disaffiliation of the ILP in 1932 he was its main political leader. He became associated with the Popular Front and in a notorious speech in 1938 expressed support for Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler.

MCGOVERN, John (1887-1968) – A leader of the ILP in the 1930s, leaving it in 1947. He visited Spain as a supporter of the POUM. Participated in some of the hunger marches of the 1930s, but in later life became virulently anti-communist and joined Moral Re-Armament in 1954.

MILL, John Stuart (1806-1873) – British philosopher, political economist and politician. He was a leading liberal thinker of the nineteenth century and an advocate of utilitarianism. Son of James Mill.

MILLERAND, Alexandre (1859-1943) – French socialist politician; his membership of the Waldeck-Rousseau cabinet in 1899 alongside Gallifet, the butcher of the Paris Commune, provoked a heated debate within the international socialist movement about ‘ministerialism’; expelled from the Socialist Party in 1903 he moved to the right, becoming Prime Minister for eight months in 1920 and president of the French Republic from 1920-24.

MILYUKOV, Pavel Nikolayevich (1858-1943) – Historian and liberal politician in pre-revolutionary Russia; founder of the Constitutional Democratic (Cadet) Party; member of first Provisional government in 1917; forced by mass movement to resign; after the October Revolution he supported and advised the counter-revolutionary White forces during the Civil War.

MORRISON, Herbert (1888-1965) – Right-wing Labour politician; held posts in the wartime coalition including Home Secretary 1940-5, showing his anti-communism by banning the Daily Worker and imprisoning Trotskyists. Leader of the House of Commons in 1945-51 and Foreign Secretary in 1951.

MOSLEY, Cynthia Blanche (1898-1933) – Daughter of Lord Curzon. She married Oswald Mosley in 1920; in 1931, along with her husband, she left the Labour Party to set up the ‘New’ Party, which soon became the British Union of Fascists.

MOSLEY, Sir Oswald Ernald (1896-1980) – Leader of British fascism in the 1930s. Conservative MP from 1918-24 and Labour MP from 1924-31. Husband of Cynthia Mosley. As Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in MacDonald’s 1929 Labour government, he tried to put forward various radical capitalist solutions to unemployment. When the Labour leaders would not accept them, he set up a ‘New’ Party, which became the British Union of Fascists in 1932.

MUSSOLINI, Benito (1883-1945) – Italian fascist and dictator of Italy from 1922 -43.

OWEN, Robert (1771-1858) – British utopian socialist.

PATON, John (1886-1976) – Secretary of the ILP 1927-33.

PEPPER, John (1886-1939) – Hungarian communist, associated with Bukharin in the International Right Opposition. Ultra-left at the time of the Third Congress of the Communist International; described by Trotsky in the late 1920s as “a political parasite”.

PITT, William, ‘The Elder’ (Lord Chatham) (1708-1778) – Secretary of State from 1756 and effective Prime Minister who led the war with France, raised the militia and reinforced sea power.

PITT, William, ‘The Younger’ (1759-1806) – MP from 1781 and Prime Minister from 1783. In 1794 he raised the forces among the European powers to fight the armies of the French Revolution. He repressed the Irish Rising of 1798 and forced through the Act of Union of 1801. He introduced various other pieces of repressive legislation, notably the anti-union Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800. He resigned in 1801, but became Prime Minister again in 1804 when once more he had to rally the forces of European reaction to fight the French republic.

PLEKHANOV, Georgi (1856-1918) – Founder of Russian Marxism. Degenerated into social patriotism on the outbreak of war, and was bitterly hostile to the Bolshevik revolution.

POINCARÉ, Raymond (1860-1934) – French Prime Minister from 1922-24.

POLLITT, Henry (1890-1960) – British Stalinist leader.

PURCELL, Albert Arthur (1872-1935) – Trade union leader; a member of virtually every left-wing organisation that existed during his lifetime, but remained through a left trade unionist who for a time expressed an admiration for the achievements of the Soviet Union.

RAKOVSKY, Christian (1873-1941) – Bulgarian-born Romanian socialist and Soviet diplomat; Soviet diplomatic representative in London 1923-24 and Ambassador to France 1925-27.

RENAUDEL, Pierre (1871-1935) – French socialist leader, right-wing social patriot during the war.

RHODES, Cecil (1853-1902) – British imperialist active in Southern Africa. Founder of the colony of Rhodesia, today Zambia and Zimbabwe.

ROBERTS, Frederick Sleigh (Lord Roberts) (1832-1914) – Anglo-Irish soldier who was a leading commander of the British Army during the Victorian period. He served in many military campaigns in Afghanistan, Abyssinia and India. He was commander of the British forces in South Africa during the first phase of the Second Boer War in 1899-1900.

ROBERTSON – The name used by a prominent member of the Marxist Group of Trotskyists within the ILP. He visited Trotsky in November 1935 and reported fully to the Group on his discussions about leaving the ILP.

ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques (1712-1788) – Geneva-born philosopher of the Enlightenment whose political ideas had a great effect on the French Revolution and subsequent political developments.

RUSSELL, Bertrand (1872-1970) – British empiricist philosopher of aristocratic background and radical views. Active in various pacifist movements throughout his life. Fined during the First World War as a conscientious objector and imprisoned in the 1960s as an opponent of the H-bomb. At the end of his life, he associated himself with protest movements against Vietnam war. Always hostile to Marxism and Communism, Russell visited the Soviet Union soon after the Revolution and condemned it in The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism published in 1920. A member of the Labour Party from the 1920s, he left it in the 1960s.

SCHEIDEMANN, Philipp (1865-1939) – German journalist and Social Democratic politician; during the First World War he was a leader of the Majority Social Democrats, who continued to vote for war credits; a leader of the provisional government that emerged from the 1918 November Revolution; became Chancellor after the convening of the National Assembly in February 1919; resigned in June 1919 but remained influential in the SPD.

SHAUMYAN, Stepan (1878-1918) – Armenian Bolshevik, member of the Bolshevik Central Committee, leader of the Baku Commune until July 1918; captured by the British occupation forces in Krasnovodsk in September 1918 and executed without trial.

SHAW, George Bernard (1856-1950) – Fabian and playwright.

SMILLIE, Robert (1857-1940) – Scottish trade unionist; Labour MP (1923-1929); refused government office in the first Labour government (1924).

SMITH, Dr. Charles Andrew (1895-1984) – ILP leader; became associated with the policies of Maxton and Brockway. Visited Trotsky in 1933 on behalf of the ILP. By 1939 he had become a social patriot.

SNOWDEN, Ethel (1881-1951) – Active in the Labour, feminist, and temperance movements and a member of the Executives of the Fabian Society, Labour Party, and the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. Married to Philip Snowden.

SNOWDEN, Philip (1864-1937) – Joined the ILP and was one of its most active propagandists; Chancellor of the Exchequer in MacDonald’s 1924 and 1929 cabinets and pursued policies of the strictest capitalist orthodoxy, favouring free trade and balanced budgets and thus proved quite incapable of arresting the growth of mass unemployment and the economic collapse of 1931. In that year he joined MacDonald in alliance with the Tories and became a member of the ‘National’ government and the House of Lords. Married to Ethel Snowden.

STEPHEN, Campbell (1884-1947) – ILP member and MP. One of the Clydeside group of ‘left’ Labour MP.

TEAGUE-JONES, Reginald (1889-1988) – British intelligence officer accused of ordering the execution of the twenty-six Baku Bolsheviks.

THOMAS, James Henry (1874-1949) – Labour and trade union leader. Favoured Labour participation in Lloyd George’s coalition government and broke wartime strikes of railwaymen. For most of the period 1919-29 he played an active part in negotiations between government and unions.

TOLSTOY, Leo (1828-1910) – Russian author, widely regarded as one of the greatest in history. From the 1880s onwards he was famed in Russia as the proponent of a highly individualistic philosophy of Christian anarchism, renouncing property, the Church, and all forms of violence.

TOMSKY, Mikhail (1886-1936) – Old Bolshevik and a trade unionist. Always on the right wing of the Party, he opposed the 1917 insurrection and was closely involved in Stalin’s policies in the mid-1920s, particularly on the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee. He opposed the left turn in 1928 along with Bukharin and Rykov and committed suicide after the first of the Moscow Trials.

VANDERVELDE, Emil (1866-1938) – Belgian right-wing socialist and one of the leaders of the Second International. During the First World War he was one of the most extreme social-chauvinists, becoming Prime Minister, and was extremely hostile to Soviet Russia.

WEBB, Beatrice (1858-1943) – Prominent Fabian. Married to Sidney Webb, with whom she collaborated in all his literary and political activities and shared his admiration for the Soviet Union of the Stalinist period.

WEBB, Sidney James (1859-1947) – Principal Fabian theoretician and Minister in two Labour governments between the wars. Wrote authoritative empirical studies on the History of Trade Unionism (1894) and Industrial Democracy (1897) with his wife Beatrice. They also wrote a multi-volumed work on English Local Government (1906-29), set up the London School of Economics, and began the New Statesman in 1913 as the journal of petty-bourgeois reformism.

WELLS, Herbert George (1866-1946) – British writer and journalist; had vague socialistic views; was a member of the Fabian Society for a short period.

WHEATLEY, John (1869-1930) – Labour MP; joined the Independent Labour Party in 1908; Minister of Health in MacDonald’s first government in 1924. With the defeat of the Labour Government he went over to the left wing of the parliamentary party.

WILLIAMS, Robert (1881-1936) – Trade union leader; an architect of the Triple Alliance; leading member of the Labour Party and a member of the delegation to Russia in 1920. A member of the British Socialist Party and a founding member of the CP, from which he was expelled in 1921 for his role in the events of ‘Black Friday’.

WILSON, Woodrow (1856-1924) – President of the United States 1913-1921; re-elected on an anti-war platform in 1916, Wilson brought the US into the war in April 1917; architect of the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations.

WRANGEL, Pyotr Nikolayevich (1878-1928) – Tsarist officer and White Guard leader who regrouped the remnants of Denikin’s defeated Volunteer Army in the Crimean Peninsula, and with substantial aid from Britain and France, attacked Soviet Russia from the south. His army was defeated by the end of 1920.

YUDENICH, Nikolai Nikolaevich (1862-1933) – Tsarist general during the First World War, commander of the counter-revolutionary White Army in the Baltic area of Russia, which was poised to take Petrograd in August and September 1919.

ZHORDANIA, Noe (1868-1953) – Georgian journalist and Menshevik politician; adopted social-chauvinist position during the First World War working closely with Plekhanov; head of Georgian government from July 1918 to March 1921, when Georgia was occupied by Soviet troops; headed Georgian government-in-exile until his death.