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The Political Culture of Anti-Socialism in Britain 1900 - 1940 Liam Ryan A dissertation submitted to the University of Bristol in accordance with the requirement the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts, School of Humani September 2018 70,740 words 1 Abstract This thesis examines the political culture of anti-socialism in Britain between 1900 and 1940. Previous studies of the topic have examined its importance to the Conservative Party and spe- cific intellectual movements like late-nineteenth century Individualism. The existing scholar- ship has largely judged anti-socialism in relation to its efficacy as a political strategy and rele- vance to intellectual debates about the changing nature of the state. This study argues that both approaches fail to capture the diversity of anti-socialism in early twentieth century Brit- ain. It contends that anti-socialism was a complex political culture defined by strengths and weaknesses. The four decades between 1900 and 1940 witnessed the emergence of the La- bour Party as a significant political force, the expansion of the trade union movement and the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution. The political culture of anti-socialism developed in reac- tion to these seismic developments. Confronted by sizeable social and political movements in favour of socialism for the first time, anti-socialists developed ideologies and practices that would resonate throughout the twentieth century. 2 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor James Thompson for his support and encour- agement over the four years it took to complete this PhD. I would also like to thank Claire Hamer and my parents. 3 Author’s Declaration I declare that the work in this dissertation was carried out in accordance with the requirements of the University's Regulations and Code of Practice for Re- search Degree Programmes and that it has not been submitted for any other academic award. Except where indicated by specific reference in the text, the work is the candidate's own work. Work done in collaboration with, or with the assistance of, others, is indicated as such. Any views expressed in the dissertation are those of the author. SIGNED: ............................................................. DATE:.......................... 4 Table of Contents Abstract 1 Acknowledgements 2 Authors Declaration 3 List of Abbreviations 5 Introduction 6 Chapter One: The Anti-Socialist Use of History, 1900-1914 34 Chapter Two: ‘Saving the Minds of the Young’: The Campaign against the Socialist and Proletarian Sunday Schools, 1907-1927 93 Chapter Three: Rotary Clubs and the Politics of Anti-Socialism, 1918-1939 151 Chapter Four: Popular Fiction and Anti-Socialism, 1900-1940 211 Conclusion 273 Bibliography 279 5 List of Abbreviations CSSU- Children’s Social Sunday Union FBI- Federation of British Industry JIC- Joint Industrial Council LCC- London County Council NCSS- National Council of Social Service 6 Introduction ‘The success of the Labour-Socialist candidates’, declared a 1909 Times editorial retrospectively surveying the after effects of the 1906 general election, ‘came as a shock, not only to the old political parties, but also to the general public’.1 The article went on to warn about the attitude of complacency that had arisen in the intervening years after the election; the outwardly decorous and respectable behaviour of socialist parliamentarians masked ‘an agitation of a different kind’. The ‘extreme elasticity’ of socialism and the multiplicity of its forms hindered the development of clear and effective opposition. Thomas Kirkup, an altogether more sympathetic observer than the right-wing Times, nevertheless agreed that socialism was marked by a variety of manifestations. United in one sense by a shared economic basis, calling for ‘a fundamental change in the relation of labour to land and capital’ the ideals and movements associated with the term socialism also decreed the necessity of change in relation to the ‘political, ethical, technical and artistic arrangements....of society’, which taken together would ‘constitute a revolution greater than has ever taken place in human history’.2 The broadness of the socialist vision, which extended beyond adjustments to political and economic conventions, was also recognised by the Conservative politician and intellectual, Noel Skelton. Writing in 1923, Skelton, the figure who coined the phrase and developed the concept of the ‘property owning democracy’, spoke of the pressing need for Conservatives to expound clear and definable ideas in order to counter principles which offered ‘a comprehensive view of life’ that ‘greatly extended the boundaries of politics’. 3 1 ‘The Socialist Movement in Great Britain’, The Times (London), 7 Jan. 1909. 2 T. Kirkup, A History of Socialism (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1909), 10. 3 N. Skelton, ‘Constructive Conservatism: II.- The New Era’, The Spectator, (5 May. 1923), 744. 7 Fighting on the ‘broadest of fronts’, the task for its Conservative adversaries was to construct a rival and plausible ‘view of life’.4 The belief that the growing prominence of socialism, or perhaps more accurately socialisms, in early twentieth-century Britain expanded the sites and frontiers of political activity is central to the analytical framing of this thesis. Socialist ideals possessed a transformative logic and nature that extended beyond the narrow purview of party politics. Socialists pledged to overturn private capital in favour of public ownership, sought to replace the materialistic and competitive urges of capitalism with the ethical communitarianism of cooperation, privileged structural rather than personal factors in the shaping of individual capabilities, looked to the creation of new ways of living and alternative selfhoods, and argued for greater parity of esteem for workers, women, and colonial peoples. These guiding principles presumed and incorporated seismic alterations to the existing character and constitution of society, culture, politics and economics. For its opponents, the all- encompassing nature of the socialist ‘threat’ meant that an adequate counter-response, however exaggerated and sensationalised it may now seem to contemporary observers in light of the labour movement’s relative moderation, had to encapsulate key battlegrounds in civil society, organised religion, popular culture, and intellectual debate as well as party politics. This formative characteristic of anti-socialist thought and activism provides the central framing mechanism and justification for undertaking this thesis. K.D. Brown’s influential 1974 edited collection Essays in Anti-Labour History prefigured some of the major concerns and issues raised in this thesis.5 The essays in this work addressed 4 Skelton, ‘Constructive’, 744. 5 K.D. Brown (ed.), Essays in Anti-Labour History: Responses to the Rise of Labour in Britain (London: The Macmillan Press, 1974). 8 the ‘common theme of how representatives of the older political traditions reacted to the rise of an independent labour movement in Britain’.6 Much has changed in a historiographical sense since this collection was published four-and-a-half decades ago with dominant interpretations relating to the forward march of Labour, the connected decline of the Liberal Party, and the Conservative reliance on suburban ‘Villa Toryism’ all being convincingly challenged and reassessed.7 Essays in Anti-Labour History was very much a product of its time, reflecting the prevailing influence of the ‘rise of class politics’ thesis, which contended that the late-Victorian and Edwardian period had witnessed a fundamental realignment of politics along the lines of class and material interest. 8 Pieces by K.D. Brown, Michael Bentley and Nicholas Soldon, for example, probed the anxieties of Conservatives, Liberals and anti-socialist organisations as they came to grips with ‘the growth of collectivist sentiment and the politicisation of the working classes’, developments which ultimately found political 6 ‘Introduction’, in Brown (ed.), Essays in Anti-Labour History, 1. 7 For challenges relating to Labour’s