The attitude of the ILP¶
Core Argument¶
Here the author recounts the experience of contesting the Neath by-election, using it as a case study to expose the bankruptcy of the Independent Labour Party (ILP) leadership and to vindicate the tactic of running a revolutionary candidate against a Labour Party that had entered a wartime coalition. The core narrative thrust is that the ILP’s refusal to support the anti-war candidate revealed its leadership as cowardly and unprincipled, indistinguishable in practice from the reformist Labour-Tory coalition it claimed to oppose. The key evidence is the ILP’s conduct in the concurrent Newport election, where its candidate Bob Edward’s address could not be distinguished from official Labour policy: he skirted the war question, failed to criticise the Labour Party, and ignored the central problem of international solidarity with the German working class. This is contrasted with the rank-and-file ILP members in Neath, who gave wholehearted support to the campaign, courageously defending the revolutionary socialist message.
The author argues that the ILP leadership’s refusal of a united front with the anti-war candidate objectively helped the capitalist class and the Churchill government. The chapter draws on the historical context of the wartime coalition government and the betrayal of the Labour leadership, situating the by-election as a moment of heightened class consciousness. The local press is cited as evidence: headlines such as ‘Grenfell Answers Communist Charges’ showed the Labour leaders were on the defensive. The vote itself is dismissed as an unreliable measure of worker sentiment, reflecting instead a lingering loyalty to the Labour label despite deep disillusionment.
A notable polemic is directed against the Stalinists, who are lumped with reformists as betrayers. The author argues that the campaign’s lasting achievement was not the vote but the heightening of political consciousness: older embittered workers found new inspiration, while working-class youth responded with rapt attention. The chapter concludes with a confident prediction that Trotskyism has found its roots in Wales, and that the combination of Welsh Labour’s fighting capacity with the ideas of militant socialism will produce a new revolutionary leadership. The polemic is thus double-edged: against the ILP leadership for its cowardice, and against reformism and Stalinism for their repeated betrayals, with the Neath campaign presented as the first step toward a genuine revolutionary alternative.