7. “The First Giant Step”¶
Core Argument¶
The victory of New Unionism in the 1890s doubled trade union membership from 1889 to 1890, making Britain the most organised labour force globally, with eight per cent of industrial workers unionised. Marxian socialists—Tom Mann, John Burns, Ben Tillett, Will Thorne, and Eleanor Marx—pioneered the organising of unskilled workers, rejecting the sterile dogmatism of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). Engels argued that the priority was establishing an independent workers’ party, however imperfect, rather than forcing doctrinally pure platforms. The Scottish Labour Party formed in 1888, and Keir Hardie won election as an independent Labour MP. The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was founded in 1893, but lacked a mass trade union base and veered toward opportunism under figures like Ramsay MacDonald. After Engels’ death in 1895 and Eleanor Marx’s suicide in 1898, the Marxist circle collapsed. Employer lockouts and legal attacks, culminating in the Taff Vale judgment of 1901—which made strikes effectively illegal—drove unions toward independent political representation. At the 1899 Trades Union Congress (TUC), a resolution for a special conference on Labour representation passed narrowly. In February 1900, the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) was founded, with the ILP’s centrist position prevailing over the SDF’s demand for a fully socialist party; the SDF withdrew the following year. Taff Vale caused LRC affiliations to rocket. At the 1906 general election, Labour returned 29 MPs, later rising to 40 when the Miners’ Federation instructed its Lib-Lab MPs to join.
The 1905 Russian Revolution, sparked by the January massacre of a peaceful demonstration, generated mass support within the British labour movement and shifted the LRC leftward. At its 1905 conference, the LRC adopted an overtly socialist resolution calling for public ownership and the overthrow of capitalism, though it was not binding. The 1906 general election brought a Liberal government which, responding to working-class militancy, passed the Trades Dispute Act, reversing the Taff Vale judgement and legalising picketing. Lloyd George introduced reforms on pensions, unemployment insurance, and a minimum wage, which deepened Lib-Lab illusions among Labour MPs. In 1908, Victor Grayson won the Colne Valley by-election as an uncompromising socialist independent, denouncing Labour MPs as traitors to their class. At the 1908 Stuttgart Congress, the Labour Party was affiliated to the Socialist International on a motion by Kautsky, despite Lenin’s defeated amendment noting its lack of real independence from the Liberals. Lenin nonetheless welcomed affiliation as a first step towards a class policy. The period 1910–14 saw growing militancy and a leftward shift among trade unions and the Labour Party.