Comment: Labour MPs - From Lion Tamers to Women & Men in Suits

Labour MPs - From Lion Tamers to Women & Men in Suits  

From London Socialist Historians Group Newsletter #59 (Autumn 2016).

After the EU Referendum, many Labour MPs who did not support Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader last summer decided, unsurprisingly, that they still didn’t back him. They wanted to replace him but succeeded only in underlining his position as leader in the election which ended on 24 September in Liverpool. Corbyn won the first Labour leader election in September 2015 by more than a country mile because his opponents were politically dull.

Andy Burnham has done great work around Hillsborough but he is hardly a man to set the world on fire. Yvette Cooper can be a very effective performer in the Commons, but again is hardly an orator. The best that can be said for Liz Kendall is that she made the case for a New Labour politics 20 years on. But as her small share of the vote underlined, the world has moved on, New Labour is not ‘new’ anymore.

Owen Smith was not an improvement.

It would indeed be good if the next Labour leader, whenever that becomes an eventuality, were not a man in a suit but a woman. Margaret Beckett was leader briefly after the death of John Smith but that aside Labour has not had a female leader. That does not reflect modern society. However, the Labour leadership is not just about gender but also politics.

The problem the Parliamentary Party has, and it is a big one, is that most of its MPs no longer represent the backgrounds of working men and women — working class voters — it hopes to get the votes of. The process was underway some time before Blair appeared but New Labour made a fetish of promoting the suited representative with no great aspirations to change a world they had usually done quite well in already.

 

Yet Labour MPs were far from always like this. John S Clarke (1885-1959) was Labour MP for Glasgow Maryhill from 1929 until 1931. He learned how to be a lion tamer in circuses in his teenage years and continued to do this throughout his life. He became a sailor and in that capacity ran guns to the 1905 Russian Revolution. He opposed World War One, writing anti-war poems, but rather than apply to become a conscientious objector he successfully went on the run from the authorities. After the War he was a non-voting delegate at the Second Congress of the Comintern in 1920. While in Russia he famously cured Lenin’s dog of an illness. In the early 1920s Clarke became a member of the Independent Labour Party though he left when the ILP disaffiliated from Labour in 1932. After his period as a Labour MP, Clarke, the lion tamer and poet, pursued an interest in Renaissance Art sitting on a range of public bodies that protected it in Scotland.

It seems quite unlikely that a man with such a varied background would make it through a Labour Party candidate selection process today, let alone be elected as a Labour MP. As the manufactured furore, prior to his re-election, around Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership by MPs whose extra-Parliamentary CV is in most cases remarkably thin, underlines the Labour Party and the labour movement is much the poorer for not having people like John S Clarke in its ranks.

Keith Flett

Now in English - Reiner Tosstorff on the Profintern

The Red International of Labour Unions (RILU) 1920 - 1937 

 Reiner Tosstorff, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. Translated by Ben Fowkes. 

 The 'Red International of Labour Unions' (RILU, Russian abbreviation Profintern) was a central instrument for the spreading of international communism during the inter-war period. This comprehensive and scholarly history of the organisation, based on extensive research in the former communist archives in Moscow and East Berlin, sheds significant light on the international trade union movement of the period.

Tosstorff shows how the RILU began as a revolutionary alliance of syndicalists and communists in defiance of the social democratic International Federation of Trade Unions. His text presents a full account of the organisation’s main stages: the decline of the revolutionary wave after World War One, after which many syndicalists left, and others were integrated into the communist parties; the continuation of the RILU as an international communist apparatus; and its dissolution in 1936–7 as part of communism's popular front policy.

First published in German as Profintern: Die Rote Gewerkschaftsinternationale 1920-1937 by Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn, in 2004

For more info see here - now out with Brill as part of the Historical Materialism Book series. 

'Reiner Tosstorff's book gives a detailed account of the history of the Red International of Labour Unions (RILU), founded in 1921 as a body associated with the Communist International. Whereas the Comintern organised the minority of workers belonging to revolutionary parties, the trade-unions were the mass-organisation of the class. Tosstorff traces the various organisational problems that attended the founding of the RILU, and the splits, alliances, manoeuvres, negotiations and compromises that characterised its early years. From 1924 onwards the RILU rapidly became no more than an appendage of the Comintern, echoing the errors and betrayals of the latter body. The book contains a wealth of historical detail that makes it the standard work on the question. It may also have contemporary relevance to the way in which Marxists relate to the post-Seattle generation of anti-capitalists.'
Ian Birchall's review of the German language original in Historical Materialism journal (2009). 

Dennis Skinner film coming soon - Nature of the Beast

New film documentary on Dennis Skinner coming soon ... Nature of the Beast

 A cinematic portrait of the committed socialist and trade unionist who has fought for the rights of the working class for over half a century – Dennis Skinner MP. A feature length documentary, Nature of The Beast will not only trace his rise to a political icon, but will reveal the man behind the Beast of Bolsover. A lover of nature, sports, music and performing, there's more to Dennis Skinner than the wit and passion seen in the House of Commons. A film about one of Britain's most prominent politicians is long overdue. Nature of The Beast will be available next year.

LSHG Seminar series Autumn 2016

London Socialist Historians Group seminar series Autumn 2016

All in Room 304 Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet St, WC1, at 5.30pm. Free without ticket - no need to book in advance. 

Monday October 10^th  - Steve Cushion: 'A Working Class Heroine Is Also Something To Be: Where women workers fit into "A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution, How the Working Class Shaped the Guerrilla Victory"'

[POSTPONED] Ian Birchall: 'Lenin’s Moscow by Alfred Rosmer'  (book launch) [This has now been postponed to Spring 2017 due to illness]

Monday November 7^th  - Simon Hall: '1956: The World in Revolt'

Monday November 21st - John Boughton (Municipal Dreams blog), 'High Hopes - Labour and the rise and fall of High Rise housing'.  

Monday December 5th - Merilyn Moos: 'Breaking the Silence. Voices of the British Children of Refugees from Nazism'

For more information please contact LSHG convenor Keith Flett on the email address above...

CFP: Revolutionary Pasts

Revolutionary Pasts   Revolutionary Pasts: Representing the Long Nineteenth Century’s Radical Heritage’, 4 and 5 November, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne   How did activists remember, represent and reassess the revolutionary heritage of the ‘long nineteenth century’? On 4–5 November, Northumbria University’s ‘Histories of Activism’ research group will examine this question in association with the Society for the Study of Labour History (SSLH) and with the support of Durham’s Centre for Nineteenth Century Studies. We will explore how movements, groups and organisations evoked the memory of particular events (e.g. the revolutions of 1789 and 1848, the Paris Commune, the Haymarket Affair) and how they cast or recast the legacy of particular movements (e.g. utopian socialism, Chartism, feminism). In doing so, the event explores narratives about radical and revolutionary legacies in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We are currently accepting paper proposals for this event. Please send us a brief abstract (c. 200 words) and a biographical note or CV by 12 September. You can contact the organisers (Daniel Laqua, Charlotte Alston, Laura O’Brien) via historiesofactivism@gmail.com. Members of the SSLH may wish to note that the Society’s AGM will take place during the conference. A full programme and registration details will be available in late September.

Social Histories of the Russian Revolution

SOCIAL HISTORIES OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION
A year-long series of monthly discussion meetings, timed to take place during the run-up to the centenary of Russia’s revolutions of 1917.
Venue: Birkbeck, University of London
Full programme and further information:  https://socialhistories1917.wordpress.com/
Each discussion will be opened by historians, scholars working in academia who have spent many years studying the revolution in the Russian archives. But these are not academic seminars - they are open to all who share our interest in the history of the Russian revolution as a landmark struggle for social liberation. At each discussion there will be an opening talk of about 30 minutes, followed by open debate.
The emphasis in the discussion meetings will be on the social histories of the revolution - that is, how it was experienced by the mass of working people who participated.
By taking this approach we aim not to brush aside the role of political leaders, and their disputes and decisions, but rather to move beyond these well-known debates and reach a deeper understanding of the revolution as the active participation of millions of people in changing history.
We hope that by developing our theme over a year of meetings, we will be able collectively to engage in serious thinking and re-thinking about the revolution and its significance for our past and present.
William Dixon, Brendan McGeever, Simon Pirani (Organisers)  

TIMETABLE OF EVENTS
2016
Oct 27 – Steve Smith (University of Oxford): The Social History of the Russian Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921
Nov 24 – Brendan McGeever (Birkbeck, University of London): Antisemitism and Revolutionary Politics in the Russian Revolution, 1917-1919
Dec 15 – Andy Willimott (Reading University): Living the Revolution: Urban Communes in 1920s Russia and the Invention of a Socialist Lifestyle

2017
Jan 26 – Sarah Badcock (Nottingham University): The 1917 Revolutions at Local Level
Feb 23 – Katy Turton (Queens University, Belfast): Women in Revolt: the Female Experience of the 1917 Revolutions
March 16 – George Gilbert (Southampton University): The Radical Right and the Russian Revolution
March 30 –Dimitri Tolkatsch (University of Freiburg, Germany): The Ukrainian Peasant Insurgency in the Revolutionary Period
April 27 – Chris Read (Warwick University): The Social History of the Revolutionary Period
May 25 – Barbara Allen (La Salle University, USA): Alexander Shlyapnikov and the Russian Metalworkers in 1917
June 29 – Don Filtzer (University of East London): The Working Class and the First Five-year Plan, 1928-32
Sep 28 – Wendy Goldman (Carnegie Mellon University, USA): Taking Power: Remaking the Family, Levelling Wages, Planning the Economy
Oct 12 – Lara Cook (University of York): Local Soviets in 1917-18 and their Relations with the Central Executive Committee
Oct 26 – 1917 A Century On: A Debate (Speakers TBC, including Simon Pirani (author of The Russian Revolution in Retreat 1920-1924)
Nov 23 – Gleb Albert (University of Zurich): Early Soviet Society and World Revolution, 1917-27

John Blanke Plaque event

 The John Blanke Project will be part of a BBC event to celebrate John Blanke

 

For one night only - Friday 5th August 20:15 to 21:15 - the BBC will project a plaque commemorating John Blanke - the black trumpeter to the courts of Henry VII and Henry VIII. The BBC will be launching and projecting onto the Colonnades at the Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich - the site of Henry VIII's favourite residence, Greenwich Palace.   

 

This plaque event is part of a forthcoming BBC Two series called A Black History of Britain, presented by historian and BAFTA Award-winning broadcaster, David Olusoga.  The series explores the relationship between Britain and the continent of Africa and people of African descent.  This event will be filmed as part of the series, which features the launch of about 20 plaques in Britain and beyond. 

 

Music and poetry from the John Blanke Project will be played and read at the event. Children are especially welcome.

For health and safety purposes, please RSVP with numbers attending to Jyoti Mehta jyoti.mehta@bbc.co.uk by noon Thursday 4th August.