10. On the Brink of Revolution¶
Core Argument¶
After the Great War, the British state found itself teetering on the edge of revolutionary upheaval. The collapse of military discipline was immediate and profound: mutinies erupted across the armed forces, with soldiers forming committees modelled on the Russian and German soviets. In January 1919, 3,000 troops marched on Whitehall demanding immediate demobilisation, forcing the government to deploy Household Guards to surround and subdue them. Nearly fifty further mutinies followed within a fortnight. The War Office, alarmed, circulated a secret questionnaire to commanding officers—leaked to the Daily Herald—asking whether troops would assist in strike-breaking or serve in Russia. The responses, reported directly to Churchill, were damning: soldiers refused to be used against strikers and would not fight the Bolsheviks. The Cabinet Secretary recorded fears of “Red Revolution and blood and war at home.” Churchill counselled caution until national support could be secured, while Bonar Law proposed enrolling stockbrokers as volunteers. The War Secretary admitted eighteen battalions would be needed just to hold London. Chamberlain rebuked the Foreign Secretary, insisting the priority was holding the British coalfields, not the Silesian ones.
On the industrial front, the labour movement mobilised with unprecedented militancy. A rank-and-file conference of British and Irish delegates resolved to agitate for a general strike unless all intervention in Russia—military force, economic blockade, and arms to counter-revolutionaries—ceased unconditionally. At the June 1919 Labour Party conference, Herbert Morrison declared the war was against international socialism itself. A motion threatening the “unreserved use of political and industrial power” passed decisively. In May 1920, London dockers and coal-heavers struck to prevent munitions being loaded for Poland. By August, the TUC, Labour Party Executive, and Parliamentary Party jointly threatened to deploy “the whole industrial power of the organised workers,” instructing affiliates to prepare to “down tools” and forming a national Council of Action. Within days, 350 local Councils of Action emerged across Britain, organising supply, strike arrangements, and publicity. Faced with this movement, the government abandoned plans for military intervention. Lenin noted with satisfaction that the bourgeois press recognised the Councils of Action for what they were: soviets.