The English Radical Tradition and the British Left 1885-1945 ENDERBY, John Stephen Available from the Sheffield Hallam University Research Archive (SHURA) at: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/26096/ A Sheffield Hallam University thesis This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author. When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given. Please visit http://shura.shu.ac.uk/26096/ and http://shura.shu.ac.uk/information.html for further details about copyright and re-use permissions. The English Radical Tradition and the British Left 1885-1945 by John Stephen Enderby A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Sheffield Hallam University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy October 2019 I hereby declare that: 1. I have not been enrolled for another award of the University, or other academic or professional organisation, whilst undertaking my research degree. 2. None of the material contained in the thesis has been used in any other submission for an academic award. 3. I am aware of and understand the University's policy on plagiarism and certify that this thesis is my own work. The use of all published or other sources of material consulted have been properly and fully acknowledged. 4. The work undertaken towards the thesis has been conducted in accordance with the SHU Principles of Integrity in Research and the SHU Research Ethics Policy. 5. The word count of the thesis is 78,574 (excluding bibliography and footnotes) Name John Enderby Award Ph.D Date of Submission October 2019 Faculty Social Sciences and Humanities Director(s) of Studies Professor Antony Taylor 1 Abstract This thesis is an intellectual history of the British left and explores the conscious appropriation of an English radical tradition during the formative years of the British labour movement. At the heart of the thesis is an assessment of the ways in which this radical democratic history came to shape the core identity and political values of the new labour movement, rooting it in a national democratic history rather than an imported European Marxist tradition. The thesis explores the evolution of this democratic tradition within the British labour movement and assesses the ways in which the British past offered up a deeply contested history, as each faction within left/labourism claimed exclusive ownership of this democratic master narrative. I explore this complex process within a linear narrative history, which begins with the early socialist movements of the late nineteenth century and ends with the turbulent period of the Popular Front, when the major intellectual figures of the period became engaged in a fierce battle for the ownership of this national democratic past. The time- frame is a long one, but the expansive chronology of the thesis allows the opportunity for an analysis of key themes that emerged within the narrative of the British progressive tradition over time. Above all, this thesis is a history of ideas, rather than of organisations, and analyses their impact on key thinkers and strategists on the political left during the period. 2 Contents Acknowledgements…………………………………………………….……4 List of Abbreviations………………………………………………………………...5 Introduction…………………………………………………………………..6 Chapter 1 The First to Claim a Radical Past: A Powerful Tradition………………………………………………………......................33 Chapter 2 The Inheritors of a Radical Past………………………………………………..........................................84 Chapter 3 The Deliberate Appropriation of a Radical Past …………………………………...................................................................191 Chapter 4 Guardians of the Radical Past: The WEA and the Intellectuals of the Left……………………………………………………….……… . ..286 Conclusions……. ……………………………………………………..........335 Bibliography……....……………………………………………………… 342 3 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Professor Antony Taylor of Sheffield Hallam University for his guidance, advice and enthusiasm in navigating me through this interesting project. In addition, I’d like to thank the staff of the Working Class Movement Library in Salford, for their help with the primary source material. 4 Abbreviations CND - Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament CPGB – Communist Party of Great Britain CPHG – Communist Party Historians’ Group ILP - Independent Labour Party SDF – Social Democratic Federation TUC - Trades Union Congress WEA – Workers' Educational Association 5 Introduction This thesis explores the conscious appropriation of an English radical past by the British left and its labour movements within the formative years of 1885 to 1945. Indeed, it aims to demonstrate the ways in which this democratic history became an integral part of the memory and traditions of the British labour movement, helping to shape its ideological values and political trajectory throughout this eventful and formative period in labour history. This was a rich and eclectic historical tradition that was rooted in a colourful pageant of heroes and heroines which featured important political movements from England’s turbulent democratic past. It was a rich narrative incorporating the radical-liberal figures of John Wilkes, Thomas Paine, William Cobbett and Richard Cobden, and the revolutionary movements of the Levellers, Diggers and Chartists. This was a significant democratic tradition with a historical lineage reaching back to John Ball and the peasants’ revolt of the middle ages. It was a powerful tradition which was consciously appropriated for the new cause of socialism and became deeply ingrained in the core identity of the British labour movement. This, then, is a thesis that in the words of Ross McKibbin, seeks out and scrutinises in detail ‘the English road to socialism’.1 My research was initially inspired by the work of the labour historian, Raphael Samuel, who first identified an intimate link between the British left and an earlier radical tradition. Samuel was the first historian, who, building on the work of 1 Ross McKibbin, Parties and People: England 1914-1951 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010), pp. 140- 176. 6 Raymond Postgate and others within the Plebs League,2 set out to explore this rich democratic history and the process by which it was plundered and recycled by an emerging labour movement. With its colourful figures and dissenting factions resurrected for the new cause of socialism, this history became integral to the later radical platform. The defining article of this new historiography was ‘Sources of Marxist History’, which was first published for New Left Review in March 1980. Samuel tended to paint his socialist history with a broad brush though he gave important attention to the period of the Popular Front between the years 1935 to 1939. This focus was more than justified as the Popular Front was to witness the publication of two crucial histories which came to symbolise the new inspiration derived from an earlier radical past. A. L. Morton’s A People’s History of England in 1938, and Christopher Hill’s The English Revolution, 1640 published in 1940 became the defining texts of the Popular Front era, reproduced in cheap, easily available editions, and with an influence and legacy that lasted long after the Popular Front and its political vision had ended.3 Peter Karsten is another non-Marxist historian who has researched this deliberate seizure of an earlier radical past. Karsten’s Patriot Heroes in England and America takes a transatlantic and transnational view of the process and explores the resurrection of the key radical figures, Oliver Cromwell and Thomas Paine, within a wider political framework. Indeed, Karsten believes the appropriation of this radical past was not 2 Raymond Postgate, A Short History of the British Workers (The Plebs League, London, 1926) p.112. See for Samuel’s approach to the heritage and history of the British Labour movement, Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (Verso, London, 1994), pp. 288-312. 3 A.L. Morton, A People’s History of England (Left Book Club: London, 1938), ch. 1 and Christopher Hill, The English Revolution, 1640 (Lawrence and Wishart, London, 1940), ch. 1. See for the impact of these texts, Harvey J. Kaye, The British Marxist Historians: An Introductory Analysis (St. Martin’s Press: New York, 1984), chs. 3-4. 7 exclusive to the British left or to the labour movement. Socialism was not the only political movement to claim this rich democratic heritage, though the historians of the left had by far the greatest impact on its restoration.4 There are other historians who have touched on some of the broader themes within this field of research. Particularly relevant is the work of Robert Colls and Philip Dodd in a collection of essays entitled, Englishness, Politics and Culture 1880-1920; also of equal interest is The Labour Tradition and the Politics of Paradox, a collection of essays edited by Maurice Glasman, which looks at the past and uncertain future of the labour movement within Britain. Another interesting article, which has focused on the period of the Popular Front is ‘The Popular Front Pageant: Its Emergence and Decline’ by Mick Wallis. This looks at the Communist Party and its appropriation of an English radical past in the 1930s, through its rallies, pageants and plays. In much of this work, the emphasis is on the symbolic and rhetorical, rather than purely ideological, appropriation of the events of the national past. 5 Paul Salveson’s Socialism with a Northern Accent: Radical Traditions for Modern Times, is another work which takes a regional approach to this area of research. Salveson believes these radical traditions were firmly embedded within a cultural environment unique to the Pennine region of the North of England incubating elements 4 Peter Karsten, Patriot Heroes in England and America (The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisc., 1978) p.159 5 See Philip Dodd, ‘Englishness and the National Culture’ in Englishness, Politics and Culture, 1880-1920. Ed. Robert Colls and Philip Dodd (Bloomsbury, London, 2014), pp.