Today, when the miners, railwaymen, and engineers are all engaged in industrial action against the Government, it would be a major step forward for these three powerful groups of workers to form an alliance and confront the Government in a united tashion. Such an alliance would not be without precedent in British history-between 1918 and 1921 the struggle of the working class movement in this country hinged around a powerful Triple Allance" between the miners, railwaymen, and the transport workers. The idea of such an alliance emerged out of the big pre-war labour upsurge, which saw a national rail strike and a number of local transport strikes in 1911 and a national miners strike in 1912. A new mood of militancy was sweeping the rank-and-file, The trade union leadership was forced to make concessions to this, and s0 sought to strengihen the industrial power of the unions.
The Government was coming to play an increasIngly important role in industrial disputes, and it was clearly absurd for a succession of unions to enter the ring alone against the Government and the employers. So the Miners Federation of Great Britain proposed an alliance between the main unions involved in this wave of struggle, Linder the terms of this albance they would agree to put forward their wage claims at the same time, and each pledge that they would not settle until the others had had a satistactory settlement, LABOUR AND WAR The plans fot such an alliance were drawn up u June 1914, in anticipation of a big new round of struggle. However, the World War intervened. and the labour bureaucrats —both in the Labour Party and in the unions bowed down before the patriotic appeals from the ruling class Tor "national unity' in the task of European-wide bloodletting. So the Triple Alliance had to be put on the shelf.
The war imposed big burdens on the working class: both those who were sent to gun down. their fellow-workers on the continent, and those who had to slog out their guts for increasingly devalued wages on the home front. Meanwhile, the ruling class raked in immense profits. But the war also strengthened the industrial and political power of the working class. Booming war production and the demands of the European trenches created a huge shortage of labour which enouraged the rapid As the year 1936 dawned, black revolutionary CLR James warned in the paper of the Independent Labour Party (still at that time a sizeable organisution) that: "The ruling classes, broadly speaking, are pro-fascist.. rule they must, by fraud or through Parliament and the Press, or when that fails by force through fascism... and at the first signs of them we must apply the only remedy-organised bands of workers who will drive the fascists off the streets. 8 Events in Europe highlighted the danger. Nazi terror held sway in Austria and Germany. The Italian workers organisations had long been smashed, In Paris, ciots erupted as Fascists marched on the National Assembly, But the the Communist International placed its hopes on "Popular Frunt alliances between workers and bourgeois parties to 'defend democrucy."
Such a government now ruled in Spain, In July, sections of the amy under Franco's command rose in arms with German and Red Weekly 21 December 1973 Page 4 growth of trade unionism and shop floor organisation. This new industrial muscle was given a preliminary flexing in imporlant war-time struggles on Clydeside and throughout the engineering industry At the same time the Government was forced to assume control over industries such as the railwuys and the mines to ensure their effeotive functioning for the war effort. This, for the first time, gave the workers in these industries the ability to negotiate nationally and win a long-standing objective uniform working conditions ihroughout the whole industry. Government control seemed like astep towards the nationsiblation of these industries, which the miners and milwaymen had long seen as a necessary step towards their economic ains. Onoc the war was over, it was inevitable that an unprecedented wave of working class struggle would sweep the country. The ruling class would face huge difficulties in trying to keep control of the situation, particularly with the example of the Russian Revolution to inspire the British The constitution of the Triple Alliance, drawn up in 1914, was finally ratified in 1917 and the new body was geared up for action. The oppor tunity to test its strength was not long in coming. In January 1919, the Miners Federation of Great Britain worked out its programme of demands on the Government: a reduction of the working day to six hours, a wages increase of 30% and nationalisation of the mines with a measure of union say in their management. The other Triple Alliance unions also pul in claims.
When the Goverament refused to concede the miners" demands, a strike ballot was held waich showed a six-lo one majonty in favour of strike action. Faced with a national coal shortage and the combined power of the Triple Alliance, the Prime Minster, Loyd George, warned the miners that he would use the army to break a strike, and proposed that the strike be postponed and a commission of inquiry into the coal industry set up, with the miners entitled to nominate half of its The MFGB accepted this offer, but only agreed to suspend the strike matioes pending the interin report of the commission, Within a fortnight the commission, chaired by Sir John Sankey. made its interim recommendations: a wage rise of 2%. a shift, a reduction of the working day from 8 to 7 hours, and a continuation of the inquiry into the industry on the basis that the Italian aid and there too brought fascism 1o The shock of these events reverberated through the British working class, It was in this atmosphere that Mosley launched his forces into the working class districts of London's Eust End, where a quarter of the population was Jewish. Claiming Keir-Hardie as the forerunner of the British Union of Fascists, fascist slogans declared: "If you love your country, you are d National. If you love ber people you are a Socialist. Be a National-Socialist!' Intensive recruitment drives rendered the East End the BUF's main base, with walls carrying the message, Perish Judah.' Street battles occurred almost daily.
As winter approached, Mosley announced greatest blow was yet to come. The new line of march across Eust London. from the City via Aldgate to Limehouse and Bethnal Green. Despite constant liberal protests, the Home Secretury declined to intervene. The date was set for 4 October 1936, a Sunday.
CABLE STREET Resistance on a massive scale to Mosley was present system of ownership and working in the coal industry stands condemned. the colliery workers shall in future have an effective voice in the direction of the mines. Both the miners and the Government accepted this as the basis for settiement.
TRIPLE ALLIANCE IN ACTION When the Triple Alliance executives met ou 21 March 1919 it was reported that while both the miners and transport workers had reached satisfactory selflements, the railwaymen were still in deadlock. It was therefore decided that the Alliance would intervene with the threat of a combined strike if the negotiations were not promptly reopened. The Government capitulated immediately.
The Triple Alliance did not restrict its activity to purely industrial matters. In April 1919 it took up the question of the continued presenoe of British troops in Russia, who were working actively with comiter-revolutionary forces against the Balshevik Government. It called pa the Parliamentarv Committee of the TUC (Chea the equivalent of the General Council) to sum Railwaymen's leader J.H, Thomas (laft) with fellow bureaucrat J.R. Clynes. anticipated, but needed organisation, The Labour Party and trade union leaders, however told workers to stay away.* The Communist Party also held back. It had projocted a major youth rally for the same Sunday in Tratalgar Square, and refused to cancel this until l October. The fail Worker played down the issuc until only days before the march, when the pressure had become irresistible. The "official" CP recond, written by Phil Piratin, virtually concedes this: "What should be the character of the action apainst Mosley? I! was felt that the workers would rally in huge numbers, and plans were made accordingly He continues, however: 'On that occasion, the Teadership of the CP was andisputed.: 10 In fact, the Independent Labour Party, which Pirutin fails even to mention, played a leading role in calling for action, The ILl at that time stood to the left of the CP, opposing the inevitable concessions to bourgeois foroes which accompanied the "Popular Front tactic, It was intluenced by revolutionary aeitution, and the Trotskyist movement, though small, was not without impact. mon a special confereno to take up the question of British intervention In Rossi, the withdrawal of the conscription bill the release of conscientions obiectors and the withdrawal of a War Office circular which had initiated an inquiry into the reliability of the any in event of Civil ur industrial disturbances."
The Parliamentary Committee of the TUC refused to act, and the question was taken up apiin at the Labour Party conference in June Despite the determined opposition of the Parliamentary leaders of the party to the use of industrial action for political ends, the Triple Alliance managed to secure a resolution from conference calling on the National Execative fo approach the TUC "with a view to effective action being taken to enforce those demands by the unreserved use of their political and industrial power. When nothing seenied to be forthcoming from either the Labour Party or the TUC, the Triple Alliance met on 23 July and voled averwhelmingly to act on their own. Following a split in 1933, a minority had entered the ILP, and published a paper The Fight as its marxist wing. The majority worked inside the Labour Party and Labour League of Youth through the paper Youth Militant.
These militants pressed for mass action to halt Mosley. Hundreds of Labour Party members and trade unionists responded to the call, and splits appeared in the East End CPs and YCLs. Jewish workers ignored the appeals of their bourgeois Board of Deputies to avoid conflicts Dock workers voted to participate. By mid morning on the Sunday, 250,000 workers were on the streets. I1 Some 7,000 police materialised to protect the fascists, whose coach windows were smashed by flying stones from the crowd. The police repeatedly charged to clear a way through, and shop fronts cased in as the workers clung to their positions, blocking Gardners Corver. Trams abandoned by untifascist drivers reinforced the mass resistance. 12 As the battle spread beyond control, the police invaded Cable Street, only to encounter prepared barricades. Milk bottles and stones showered on them, forcing several to actuaily surrender, The Spanish workers" slogan They Shall Not Pass' carried the day. With the fighting still raging, the police at last ordered the fascists to withdraw. The blackshirts retreated across the city, leaving the antifascists to celebrate for hours.
It was decided to hold a ballot of their combined memberships to ask them if they were willing to strike to secure the abolition of conscription, the ending of military intervention in Rusia, and to stop military Intervention in trade union disputes. This proposal did not have the support of all the Triple Alliance leaders, however. J.H. Thomas, secretary of the NUR and one of the most notorious bureaucratic scabs in the history of the British labour movement, denounced the proposals: "1 cannot understand and do not subscribe to the policy that asks men to strike today for what they refused to put a cross on the ballet paper yestenday ... We ought clearly to recognise that, if Lahour b going to govern, we can't have some outside body attempting to rebel against Parliamentary institutions without it recoiling on our own heads.' In the ent, before the strike ballot couid be held the Government was in full retreat: within one week of the Triple Alliance decision, it announced that all British troops would he pulled out of Russia by the end of the summer and conscription abolished by the end of the year. "DIRECT ACTION' ASCENDANT This was a tremendous victory for the Tripie Alliance and for the policy of using the industrial power of the working class to affect Government actions, Right-wingers Like Thomas were put on the defensive and, temporarily, had to retreat. At the TUC held in September 1919 the advocates of "direct action" were firmly on top: a motion of censure was passed against the Parliamentary Committee for refusing to call a special Congress, and a right-wing motion rejecting strikes for political ends was defeated This meeting of the TUC was confronted with an important development in the struggle between the miners and the Government. After the acceptance of its interim report by both the Government and the miners in March, the Sankey Commission had gone on to examine the organisation of the industry Over this question there were, naturally, sharp divisions between the miners representatives and the coalowners. Nevertheless, the state of the industry under private ownership was an overwhelming argument in favour of nationalisa tion and the commission Chairman, supported by the miners' representatives, came out in favour of nationalisation in his report, delivered on 20 June.
The Government delayed its reply, playing for time. Finally, towards the end of August, despite its prior commitment to accept the Commission report, the Government unequivocally rejected nationalisation.
The problem now facing the labour movement was how to force the Government to accept the miners' demand. This discussion was on the agenda of the September TUC, which pass.. AND AFTER The Government, said Blackshirt, had surrendered to Jewry. 13 Now the working class movement faced the crucial task of developing this victory to smash the fascists outright. But the Stalinists reverted to calls for a Popular Front, as opposed to organising the mobilised masses. A CP statement summarising the workers' triumph on the night of the battle ended Forward now to the united front and the People's Front all over Britain,' pointing to the forthcoming Labour Party conference. Predictably, such hopes were dashed, Within ten days the Daily Worker was reflecting how the Labour Conference rose again and again in London workers,' but 'the resolution carried only found the incident "deplorable" 115 In the face of social democratic inaction, the ILP drew a different moral: Unity of action must he maintained, and out of it must be bullt not only a movement of reaistance to Tascism, but a united militant working class which will go forward to win Workers' Power.. In East and North London today, the workers ate compelled senously to consider the question of establishing an organisation to defend themselves. l6 The ILP proposed an all-in conference of workers" organisations to contmence this task.
EAST END CONFERENCE The need for organised and sustained masa. ed overwhelmingly a strongly worded resolution on this matter:
.. the Congress instructs the Parliamentary Committee. -adopting the Magority Keport.. 'In the event of the Government still refusing to accept this position, a Special Congress shall be convened for the purpose of deciding the form of action to be taken to compel the Government to accept the Majority Report of the Commission.' action was apparent. Vengeance seeking Mosleyites terron 1 Jewish passers-by in Mile End Road, throwing a seven-year old girl through a shop window. Fifteen thousand workers marched the next Sunday under the slogan 'Fascism must be smashed!" The ILP opened an anti-fasciat HQ, beld nightly mectings. and estublished a fund to combat Mosley. constantly urging the creation of a workers' delence force.
Eventually, an East End anti-fuscist conference was held, organised by the Socialist Leaguc at Whitechapel. The official Labour Party leadership discouraged attendance, but 125 delegates came from union branches, local Labour Parties. applause at every reference to the victory of the Labour League of Youth branches, tbe ILP, and some CP and Jewish community organisations. A committee was elected, and an agrecment reached on unilied stewarding for working class meetings and on organised resistance to the BUF, despite Cl attempts to "water down' these efforts, 17 But obviously these moves by themselves carried insufficient strength to take the working class on to a general offensive. This permitted the State to intervene.
FASCISM ABANDONED The arousal of the masses had seriously worried the ruling cluss. The government therefore rushed in the Public Order Act, banning pontical unforms and Amiting the right to organise demonstrations, to the delight of the Labour Pucty opposition in Lloyd George in Parliament-he warned that he would use troops to break miners' strike.
- to insist upon the Government ment, left on various occasions. major rallics. steel." This resolution was moved by Robert Smillie of the MFGB, and seconded by. J.H. Thomas! Had this veteran right-wing bureaucrat suddenly become a convert to direct action'? Not quite his real purpose would become clear in the months ahead, during which a dramatic tur was to take place in the fortunes of the Triple Alliance, and of the whole British labour moveBRIAN SLOCOCK parliament. This "anti-fascist legislation has since been generously applied to the socialist The ILP, for its part, warned that: Any such proposals must be resisted to the ulmost workers must not think that this will end the menace of fascism, 18 This proved correct. 2. The failure to build on the Cable Street victory allowed Mosley to fight on for months. ment, 1934. Despite a tinancial crisis and splits inside the BUF, the fascists provoked another violent clush in Jamaica Road, South London in 1937; took 20% of the votes in some local elections; 5. and us late as 1939 could gather 15,000 at 1934.
The approach of war, however, with its conse- 1935 quent armaments drive, destroyed Mosley's dreams of a new depression that would instigate fascist rule, and the alignment of British Imperialism against Hitler finally instailed the BUF's Jeadership in Brixton prison under Defence Regulation 186 in May 1940, Capital 10. had no further need of this instrument of 11.
It is beyond doubt that the successes at Cable Street and elsewhere had dented and damaged the fascist movement, In clear contrast to the tunidity of reformism, and the zig cuezing pulicies of Stalinism, revolutionaries and 15. militants in the working class movement had 16. Caalioned unity in action by the masses on the 17, streeti Their call for a standing workers" detence fores, indenendent of the State 18.
Next Issue:
'Black Friday': the Death of the Triple remains valid in our time whenever fascism лово да шака Loc Lay LO stasa fascism to its logical corollary in eliminating the root problem capitalism itself The Corporare Store, by A. Raven Thomson, published by the BUF Blackshüt, BUF papet, 1 June 1934.
Who Backs Mosiey? Labour Research Depart Democracy and Forcism, Communist Party pamphlet, 1933.
Printers and the Fasciar Menace, published by the Printing and Allied Trades Anti-Fuscist Movemen The Faschr Curterty, Vol 1, No. 1, January The Fascist in Britain, by Colin Cross, Barne & Rockilt, 1961, page 123.
New Leader, ILP weekly, 3 January 1936. Daily Herald, 3 October 1936 Our Rag Stays Red, by Phil Piratin, Thames Pubiiations, 1948.
New Leader, 9 October 1936.
Piratin, ep.uit Bickshit, 10 Oclober 1936.
Daily Worker, 5 October 1936.
Daily Worker, 15 October 1936 They Did NOT Pan, ILP pumphlet, 1936, New Leader, 6 November 1936.
New Leader, 23 October 1936.
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