When
Sylvia Pankhurst's
Communist Party dissolved itself into the newly founded
Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in January 1921, many libertarian communists refused to join due to the CPGB's policy of
parliamentarism.
Guy Aldred's Glasgow Communist Group immediately responded by publishing the
Red Commune paper, in which they advocated for anti-parliamentarism in the form of
election boycotts and
abstentionism, inviting fellow libertarian communists to a conference at which the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation was established.
Rose Witcop was sent as a delegate to the
Third Congress of the
Communist International, where she received an offer of financial backing on the condition that the APCF joined the CPGB and abandoned any anti-parliamentarism, which the Federation refused and cut ties with the International. During the
1922 United Kingdom general election, Aldred stood in
Glasgow Shettleston on a platform of abstentionism, in a move that was opposed by anarchists within the APCF, with the Federation refusing to lend official support to the campaign. Aldred came last in the election, with only 470 votes. The APCF subsequently distributed propaganda calling for workers to participate in an election boycott during both the
1923 and
1924 general elections. After the
Communist Workers' Party (CWP) dissolved in June 1924, the APCF became Britain's sole anti-parliamentary communist organisation. This led the British anti-parliamentary movement to move away from the internationalism that had influenced the CWP and focus more on local issues, particularly events happening in
Glasgow, the headquarters of the APCF. It even rejected the idea of building a new
political international, with the
Communist Workers' International later complaining that the APCF had made no attempt to contact them.
Opposition to the Labour Party After the
Fourth World Congress of the
Communist International decided to advance the tactic of a
united front between the Communists and the
Labour Party, the APCF further rejected the International's policy, arguing that the Labour Party was an "anti-working class movement, the last earthwork of reaction." , the first
Prime Minister from the
Labour Party. When Labour formed its
first government with
Liberal support, the APCF's changed the masthead of its newspaper the
Commune to "An Organ Of His Majesty's Communist Opposition", indicating their opposition to the Labour government and publishing lengthy criticisms of the new government ministers. Labour's "parliamentarian" policies were further criticised by the APCF as what amounted to a "continuation of capitalism", which the Federation contrasted with several of its own "anti-parliamentarian" policies that were to be implemented for the "overthrow of capitalism". Following the
electoral defeat of the Labour government and
Ramsay MacDonald's resignation as
Prime Minister, the APCF published in the
Commune a report of the government's time in office, in which it claimed that the MacDonald ministry had "functioned no differently from any other Capitalist Government". In their October 1926 issue of
Commune, the APCF reviewed the record of MacDonald's first Labour government, highlighting its use of the military to suppress
strike actions and concluding that it had "functioned no differently from any other Capitalist Government". The APCF also criticised the Labour government's
nationalisation policies as a form of
state capitalism, instead advocating for
social ownership as an alternative to
state ownership, claiming that workers had "nothing to gain" from nationalised industries. The APCF also targeted attacks against individual members of the Labour Party, such as the
Secretary of State for the Colonies J. H. Thomas, the
jingoistic trade union leader
Ben Tillett and the Glaswegian anti-parliamentarist turned politician
John Clarke. The APCF also disrupted a number of meetings that hosted
Arthur Henderson, who they condemned for his participation in
David Lloyd George's
war government, leading to seventeen people being arrested. The APCF declared that "there exists as much Socialism in the constitution and the activity of the
Parliamentary Labour Party as there is divinity in the priesthood" and criticised the CPGB for its continued attempts to affiliate with the "anti-Socialist" Labour Party, reiterating its opposition to the Comintern's
united front tactic. miners outside the Miners Hall during the
1926 General Strike. Having previously opposed the
National Minority Movement's tactic of
working within reformist trade unions, by the time the
1926 general strike broke out, they again opposed the CPGB's collaboration with the
General Council of the
Trades Union Congress (TUC), instead advocating for power to be transferred directly to
strike committees and
mass meetings. After the TUC called off the strike, the APCF condemned the actions of the TUC's leaders, which they believed had proven their own position that reformist trade unions had become another part of the capitalist system. The waning of the
Revolutions of 1917–1923, rise and fall of the Labour government and the defeat of the general strike had all contributed to a sense of pessimism regarding the prospects of any coming social revolution. Despite entering a period of decline, the anti-parliamentary communist movement was maintained throughout the late 1920s by the APCF, which continued to uphold the communist programme that it had developed since before the
Russian Revolution had ever taken place. But before long, the APCF suffered a split.
Split . The fallout from the
Great Depression led the APCF to proclaim that the
end of capitalism was imminent, as the economic collapse had destroyed the
material conditions that incentivised
reformism and - by extension - parliamentarism. In the APCF's appeal
To Anti-parliamentarians, they argued that concessions could only be granted to the working class during a period of upswing, but following the economic crisis it had become impossible to secure reforms, concluding that "grim necessity will compel the workers to
social revolution." In 1929, Aldred correctly predicted the formation of a
National Government by a coalition of
Ramsay MacDonald's
Labour Party and
Stanley Baldwin's
Conservative Party, to which he responded by declaring that "Anti-Parliamentarism has arrived." The
free speech fight in
Glasgow had also provided an impetus for the split within the APCF, as various different organizations had come together to form a Free Speech Committee, in order to engage in a direct action campaign to re-establish
freedom of assembly and
freedom of speech in the city. The Committee eventually evolved into a
workers' council to maintain the unity that had been achieved, but it quickly declined until the council was effectively another front of the APCF. Those that had participated in the movement, including Aldred, became convinced of the necessity to unite the various disparate workers' organisations into a single movement capable of defeating capitalism. They saw the workers' councils as a means of achieving an end to
sectarianism, as they could allow the participation of all factions "without impeaching the integrity of any", concluding on the necessity of abandoning anti-parliamentary agitation in favour of building a workers' council movement. Arguing that, since parliamentarism itself had collapsed with the establishment of the National Government, it was no longer necessary to propagate anti-parliamentarism, Aldred resigned from the APCF in February 1933. , leader of the APCF until 1933, when he split off to form the
United Socialist Movement. The remaining members of the APCF disagreed with Aldred's conclusions and maintained the organisation as it was, causing a split within the movement that divided anti-parliamentarists throughout the 1930s. In spite of the APCF's continuation, Aldred claimed that it had, in fact, dissolved following his departure and considered his new organisation - the
United Socialist Movement (USM) - to be the APCF's direct successor. The APCF had been in a temporary hiatus, but resumed activities in 1935 with the publication of two pamphlets. One was
The Bourgeois Role of Bolshevism by the Dutch
Group of International Communists (GIC), which argued that the
Russian Revolution had from the outset been a
bourgeois revolution, aiming to transform the Russian economy from
agrarian feudalism to
industrial capitalism, where the
Bolsheviks had used the mass movement of peasants and workers to seize power and overrule both of them. The other was
Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy by
Rosa Luxemburg, which they gave the name
Leninism or Marxism? to. The text criticised
Vladimir Lenin's view on the role of
democratic centralism in a
vanguard party to lead a revolution, arguing that
revolutionary spontaneity was the driving force of any labour movement and emphasising that any
dictatorship of the proletariat should be a mass movement of the whole working class rather than the work of a minority political party. Despite the split, the APCF attempted to co-operate with other like-minded groups both in Britain and abroad. After
Paul Mattick's
Chicago-based
United Workers' Party (UWP) rebuffed Aldred's attempts to unite it with the
Communist League of Struggle (CLS), the APCF worked actively to maintain its links with the UWP and their magazine, the
International Council Correspondence. The APCF came together with the USM, as well as the
Independent Labour Party (ILP) and
Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP), to establish the Socialist Anti-Terror Committee in Glasgow, a short-lived organisation formed in order to oppose the ongoing "
Great Terror" in the
Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Aldred's "
domineering personality" brought a number of people to resign from the USM, with some joining the APCF. Nevertheless, the APCF's influence within British politics remained small. By this time, a wave of pessimism regarding the revolutionary prospects in Britain and around the world permeated through the weak and isolated anti-parliamentary movement, now confined to merely analyzing political events from the sidelines. European
council communist ideas began to work their way into the APCF's ideology, which started to pick up
decadence theory, on display in their May 1936 issue of
Advance, in which one members analyzed the
Italian invasion of
Ethiopia as a product of
Italy's capitalistic need to
expand in the face of
bankruptcy. They also made use of decadence theory in their article
Capitalism Must Go!, in which they explained
overproduction, coupled with a rise in
unemployment and a reduction in demand, to be the key reason for the Great Depression. The outbreak of the
Spanish Revolution was welcomed by the APCF, not only a key challenge to the rise of
fascism, but one which had also caused a resurgence in the activities of the previously declining British anti-parliamentary communist movement.
Spanish Civil War Although the APCF had previously criticised the
reformist tendencies displayed by the Spanish labour movement with the
Popular Front victory in
1936 Spanish general election, they declared that the reforms brought by the new government were due to the popular movement that had elected the government to power in the first place, describing the Popular Front as a "capitalist administration" and calling for system change rather than mere regime change. But their views on the Popular Front government changed in the wake of the
nationalist coup. They had initially analyzed the coup through an anti-parliamentary lens, commenting that: "The uselessness of parliament should be obvious to all [...] wherever the ruling class decides that parliament fails to express their desires, parliament will be abolished!" But they swiftly took on a notably
constitutionalist approach towards the nascent
civil war by focusing on the nationalists' breaking of "
international law" and describing the Popular Front as an "orthodox democratic government". These terms were used in an attempt to coax intervention from the
United Kingdom and
France into the war, with the APCF criticising the British government for refusing to provide aid to the
Spanish Republic and for placing an
arms embargo on the "legally and democratically constituted government of Spain". , the anarchist
Minister of Health in the
government of
Francisco Largo Caballero. Months after leaders of the
CNT joined the Republican government under
Francisco Largo Caballero, the APCF published a pamphlet by the anarchist
Minister of Health Federica Montseny which defended anarchist collaboration with the republicans, under the cause of the "unity of all
anti-fascists". The initial unity of various differing factions under the
Republican banner was a source of inspiration to the APCF, who urged the formation of a similar
united front in Britain. The Federation even went as far as to suspend its journal, instead collaborating with the
Freedom newspaper on a joint monthly publication
Fighting Call. in
Spain with
Lucía Sánchez Saornil. Despite the APCF's call for unity, its relations with the USM remained hostile, with the two groups competing for recognition as the official representative of the CNT-FAI in Britain, the APCF eventually winning the bid with the support of
Emma Goldman. As a result, the APCF's publications
Fighting Call and
Advance became solely dedicated to publishing material from the CNT-FAI, without criticism, comment or editorial. The feud between the APCF and USM continued when their respective delegates were sent to Spain, with the APCF's delegate Jane Patrick being expelled from the Federation before she even arrived, causing a confrontation between the two groups in Glasgow. By April 1937, relations between the APCF and USM started to improve, following the resignation of the APCF's
Frank Leech, who had frequently prevented their co-operation, going on to found the
Glasgow Anarchist Federation (GAF). The following month, the two collaborated on the publication of the
Barcelona Bulletin, which published their delegates' accounts of the
May Days in
Barcelona, providing a sympathetic view of the
revolutionary faction represented by the anarchists of the CNT-FAI and the Trotskyists of the
POUM. While the USM had long-since revised its position of supporting the Republican government, due to reports from its delegate
Ethel MacDonald, it was only after the May Days that the APCF followed suit. The APCF took the position that the policy of the united anti-fascist front was one of collaboration with capitalism, publishing an article by MacDonald which stated that "Anti-Fascism is the new slogan by which the working class is being betrayed." When MacDonald was arrested and imprisoned by the
Catalan government, the APCF organised a Defence Committee to secure her release, with MacDonald escaping Spain and returning safely to Glasgow by November 1937, leading the Defence Committee to lend its support to other prisoners and refugees of the war. Despite the revision of their position towards the republican government, the APCF never quite diverted from its original policies, publishing some articles that supported the government and others that supported the revolutionaries, often both in the same issue of
Solidarity. In the second issue of the journal, the APCF published a report from Spain which argued that the civil war could have been avoided entirely "if the workers had taken control and eliminated the government", while also publishing a call for a
general strike to force an end to Britain's arms embargo on the Republican government. In a subsequent issue released after the nationalist victory in the war, they published an article by the
Friends of Durruti Group which concluded that "Democracy defeated the Spanish people, not Fascism."
World War II With the conclusion of the Spanish Civil War, it quickly became apparent that a major global conflict was on the horizon. The APCF's analysis of what became
World War II was one of a military conflict between capitalist nations rivalling for supremacy, rejecting the dominant notion of it being a war of
democracy against
fascism. They called for workers to resist the coming war, claiming that in the making of this war British business interests would "destroy capitalist democracy and every vestige of workers' democracy to ensure the continuity of their capitalism (i.e. their profits)." When the war broke out, the APCF adopted a
revolutionary defeatist position, proclaiming: "Down with
Nazism and
Fascism, but also down with all
imperialism,
British and
French included!" Pointing out that "all the Capitalists are aggressors from the workers' point of view", they called for the destruction of all states that were party to the conflict, including the
Soviet Union. The APCF later elaborated that they stood for the defeat of the
Axis powers not by the
Allies, but by the workers of those countries, while also standing simultaneously for the defeat of the Allies by the workers of their own countries, essentially calling for a
world revolution to end the war. Given that since the outbreak of the war the
trade unions had been opposing
strike action, the APCF believed that the creation of new unofficial forms of organisation were necessary, proposing the formation of
workers' councils as an independent and revolutionary alternative to established trade unions and political parties. In the Winter 1940/41 issue of
Solidarity, the APCF argued that "the recent Spanish tragedy [in which] the incensed ruling class repudiated even their own bourgeois legality and unleashed the most bloody butchery of the proletariat the world has ever witnessed" had proven their case of parliamentarism being a dead-end. They criticised the
Socialist and
Communist Parties for their respective insistence on the need for a "revolutionary parliament" or "workers' government" to replace the
Churchill war ministry, declaring that "at the first threat of resistance to their will, they would immediately establish a
military dictatorship and by sheer weight of arms smash any attempt at progressive legislation." The APCF noted that in Britain at the time, parliament was only being consulted after events had already occurred. This led them to adopt the position that
Guy Aldred had taken when he left the Federation to found the USM: that parliamentarism was obsolete, therefore taking an anti-parliamentary position was no longer necessary. This became the impetus for the APCF changing its name to the '''Workers' Revolutionary League''' (WRL) in October 1941. propaganda poster encouraging
national service. In order to coordinate resistance to the war effort, the WRL came together with the USM and the GAF to organise the Scottish No-Conscription League, in which the WRL's Willie McDougall served as chair for a time. A conscientious objector from the WRL, William Dick, defended himself in front of a
military tribunal in June 1942 on
anarcho-pacifist grounds, declaring his moral opposition to war, the state and violence in general, which granted him an unconditional exemption from conscription. In October 1942, the WRL established one of its main initiatives to combat sectarianism: the
Workers' Open Forum, a weekly meeting open to all parties organised on the model of a workers' council. The Forum invited speakers from GAF and the USM, but also from further afield groups such as the
Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB),
Socialist Labour Party (SLP),
Workers' International League (WIL),
Independent Labour Party (ILP),
Common Wealth Party (CWP),
Peace Pledge Union (PPU), as well as a number of
secularists,
Georgists and
industrial unionists. Over time, the WRL's activities became more and more subordinated to the "interests of the Workers' Open Forum." By the end of the war, the Workers' Revolutionary League had dissolved itself almost entirely into the activities of the Workers' Open Forum, continuing to provide a regular meeting space in Glasgow until the late 1950s.
John Taylor Caldwell commented that the closure of the Open Forum marked the end of an era, one in which
public speaking began to die out as audiences left the inner cities for the suburbs. The
post–World War II economic expansion brought a definitive end to the anti-parliamentary communist movement, as many of the arguments it had made during the early-20th century no longer held weight. ==Positions==