Convergence Through Practice 2: The Traditional Left

The Syndicalist challenge in the Durham coalfield before 1914

Lewis Mates

1) Introduction

The British labor unrest of the years immediately before the outbreak of the Great War saw millions of working days lost in -usually successful (up to a point)- strike action and the mushroom growth of the trade unions. Claiming that the industrial unrest was but one symptom of a deeper and terminal malaise that afflicted Liberal Britain, journalist George Dangerfield later famously claimed that ‘the Great General Strike of 1914’ was ‘forestalled by some bullets at Sarajevo.’[383] Most have dismissed Dangerfield’s contention as, at best, exaggerated, claiming that industrial militancy faded after the national miners’ strike of 1912. However, Bob Holton’s book on British syndicalism took issue with this, pointing out that by excluding the heavy influence of the miners on strike figures, the number of working days lost to disputes rose every year from 1910 to August 1914, and spread to other areas 1913–1914. The economic downturn of the summer of 1914 combined with an increasing counteroffensive by employers suggests that, the industrial turmoil could have reached a hitherto unseen intensity but for the war breaking out. Holton also sought to address the question of the influence of revolutionary syndicalism in Britain, where the pendulum swung too far the other way.[384] Naturally, when compared to syndicalism’s impact in France, Spain and other parts of continental Europe, its role in Britain was of less significance.[385] But it is clear that the industrial unrest of this period offered revolutionaries of varying creeds potentially very favorable conditions to advance their political projects in Britain. The emergence of syndicalist ideas in this period seemed perfectly timed to give coherence and revolutionary temper to an evident urge to revolt among the organized working-class. Recent work by authorities such as Richard Price and David Howell has thrown more light on this phenomenon.[386] Syndicalism in Britain was an amalgam of influences from the rest of the world (and, to a lesser extent at home), mostly the USA and France, and fed from, and into, both Marxist and anarchist traditions. As the study below will show, ideas form the Marxist tradition could in some cases quite easily lead to anarchism. Yet there remained to some extent in syndicalism the traditional differences in emphasis between the Marxist and anarchist traditions. As such, within syndicalism there were both points of convergence between the two traditions and points of divergence; a commonality driving Marxists and anarchists together, and continued differences over, it has to be recognized, fundamentals, that continued to push them apart, even in this apparently relatively un-sectarian era.

This article will examine these themes as they related to revolutionary syndicalist activity in the Durham coalfield before the Great War. Firstly, it considers the context in terms of the politics of the Durham coalfield at this time and particularly the Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) and the challenge of the Labor Party (mostly through, in County Durham, the Independent Labor Party, ILP). The second section discusses the ideological origins of syndicalism in general terms and more specifically to the developing politics of the Durham coalfield’s two most significant revolutionary syndicalist activists, George Harvey and Will Lawther. The final two sections deal with the syndicalists’ activities and achievements, and what this can tell us about their influence, and then comments on the extent to which various kinds of sectarianism and dogmatism conspired against this influence, making this period something of a lost opportunity for revolutionary syndicalism (and with potential contemporary and future relevance).

2) Potentialities in the Durham coalfield

Some of the first shots of the wave of late Edwardian industrial unrest were fired in the Durham coalfield. In January 1910, a considerable proportion of lodges affiliated to the Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) struck against the advice of their executive. This was significant as the DMA’s large membership (111,000 full and 19,000 half members; i.e. under-18s) and extensive finances made it, according to the Durham Chronicle, ‘undoubtedly the strongest trade union in the country.’[387] The strike occurred because the Coal Mines Regulation Act of 1908 had become operative in Durham. This stipulated that no one should be underground for more than eight hours in any 24 (though this excluded ‘winding time’ in mines). This significantly altered an agreement in Durham from August 1890 that limited the working day of hewers (the actual coal getters) to seven hours. In contrast to most other coalfields, before 1908 the majority of Durham collieries operated a two-shift system for hewers (150 collieries with 76% of Durham miners).[388] The effect of the 1908 act was to make many other collieries institute the three-shift system in order to remain competitive; 85% of Durham hewers were soon working a three-shift system, which was incredibly unpopular for the disruption it brought to family and social life.[389]

The unpopularity of the DMA leaders, and especially the most influential, Liberal MP John Wilson, grew enormously in these years as they opposed affiliation to the MFGB (whose affiliates had gained increased wages, in contrast to the DMA) and then mishandled the inauguration of the 1908 act. The DMA executive’s highhandedness in the national miners’ strike of 1912 that successfully secured a (admittedly paltry) minimum wage meant that it only very narrowly survived a lodge vote of confidence by 321–302 votes in April 1912. The leadership’s increasing detachment from its rank-and-file was obvious. Yet, by imaginative use of the union’s rules, a lack of democracy (for example, the voting weights for lodges in DMA council, the trade union’s main policy making body, only partly reflected their relative memberships), a (according to Craig Marshall) divided opposition that lacked leadership figures of sufficient standing within the union as a whole, and because leaders of such institutions are invariably difficult to dislodge, they retained their positions of control. Yet, according to Marshall, the disenchanted sections of the Durham rank-and-file did provide a twofold response of resistance. Firstly, it pursued its own aggressive and unofficial (i.e. not officially endorsed by the DMA’s central leadership) strike policy. The months between the end of the 1912 minimum wage strike and the outbreak of the Great War saw a very high level of unofficial strike activity in the Durham coalfield. Durham miners were understandably angry as their wages were the slowest growing in the country, but unofficial strike action was, without the institutional backing of the DMA, a risky and demanding strategy and its increasing intensity suggested the strength of feeling in the lodges.[390] Secondly, efforts to reform the DMA became institutionalized fully in 1911, in the form of the Durham Forward Movement, a well-supported rank-and-file initiative headed by a group of ILP activists including Jack Lawson, checkweighman of Alma lodge. The ILP was established in 1893 and became one of the founding organizations of the Labor Party. The strong Nonconformist tradition in the Durham coalfield proved to be fertile ground for the ILP’s brand of ethical socialism and it soon developed deep roots in the coal areas.[391]

The Forward Movement also campaigned for the abolition of the three-shift system, for the minimum wage and, when it came, for vast improvements in its levels and the ways in which it was administered. It also agitated for the abolition of the worthless — in the eyes of many miners- Conciliation Board. Its organizing center was the ILP- dominated miners’ lodges of West Pelton near the Labor stronghold town of Chester-le-Street and its early conferences drew support from many of the lodges of the North-west Durham and Chester-le-Street constituencies. Between June and October 1912, its could draw representatives of between fifty and sixty lodges to its conferences that amounted to around one third of the total DMA membership (40,000 out 120,000 DMA members) or more and it claimed the support of a further fifty lodges.[392]

However, it seemed that it was the DMA leaders’ particular style of leadership rather than their liberalism as such that caused the conflict. As Marshall pointed out, the leaders of the Notts and Derbyshire miners’ leaders were also liberals, but they made more effort at dialogue with their members and, as they served the profitable domestic market, both coalfields saw relatively minor disputes.[393] In terms of rank-and-file conflict with leaders, the DMA shared much in common with the South Wales Miners’ Federation (SWMF). Both coalfields were among the largest in Britain. Providing work for similar numbers of miners, the DMA and SWMF had similarly large memberships that made them both potentially influential members of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain (MFGB).[394] Furthermore, both coalfields were subject to the vicissitudes of the unpredictable export market. This meant the mine owners in both coalfields were more sensitive to pressures to keep wages low in order to make their product competitive on the international market. In South Wales the owners employed the ‘sliding scale’ arrangement, whereby wage levels rose and (normally) fell automatically with coal prices. Both miners’ unions thus saw strong rank-and-file support for a minimum wage but had leaderships which, cognizant of the relative precariousness of international coal markets, sought desperately to minimize their demands on the owners, fearful that if wages went too high, owners would be thrown out of business in the event of an international downturn (a perspective no doubt encouraged by the owners; and a possibility later employed by syndicalists who wanted precisely to throw the owners out of business and take over the running of the mines themselves).

However, there were significant differences too. Founded in 1869, the DMA was a well and long established institution built on the politics of liberalism and Methodism that encouraged individual thrift, paternalism and cooperation between masters and men and that rejected a polarized two-class view of capitalism. In contrast, the SWMF was only established in 1898 as a way of, in part, rejecting these methods. While its leadership under Mabon (William Abraham) remained liberal and moderate, the rank- and-file was not so. David Egan emphasized the existence within the SWMF from its birth of a ‘rank and file imbued in ultra-democratic traditions, possessing considerable autonomy of action and continually militant on matters of wages and working conditions.’[395] Thus, before the explosion of industrial unrest in 1910, South Wales miners were 70% more likely to strike than their counterparts in the other British coalfields. Most significantly for this article, South Wales miners produced The Miners ’ Next Step (written in 1911 and issued in January 1912). Labor historian Henry Pelling deemed it the ‘the high water of syndicalist influence in British trade unionism’ and it was certainly the single most significant piece of syndicalist propaganda produced in Britain.[396] Many of its main authors, like Marxist miner Noah Ablett, had been educated at Ruskin College and they took full advantage of the conditions provoked by the bitter Cambrian combine dispute when mounting their revolutionary challenge to the coal owners and the union’s leaders.[397] Clearly, the unusual socio-economic conditions and radical cultural milieu in South Wales proved particularly conducive to generating and sustaining revolutionary syndicalism. Yet the socio-political upheaval in the Durham coalfield, too, certainly appeared to offer promising ground for potentially fruitful syndicalist intervention.

3) The Ideological Origins of syndicalism

British revolutionary syndicalism drew its inspiration from essentially two foreign sources though (basically) three subsequent tendencies arose. The first foreign influence was American, in the form of the writings of Marxist Daniel De Leon and in the subsequent development of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or ‘Wobblies’). De Leon developed a theory of revolutionary working-class advancement that demanded both political action — standing for elections on a revolutionary platform — and industrial action.[398] The latter was to come in the form of ‘industrial unionism’ (rather than ‘syndicalism’ as such), the creation of trade unions of all workers both skilled and unskilled in the major industries. These industrial unions were initially to exist and work alongside the already existing organizations until they supplanted them; this was dual unionism. De Leon was influential in the establishment in Chicago of the IWW in 1905, successfully proposed an amendment to the IWW’s preamble (the first draft of which was written by anarchist Thomas J. Hagerty) at the IWW’s founding convention that committed the union to political action. Though ratified, the preamble now appeared vague and the issue of political action soon split the IWW between De Leon and Wobblies under Big Bill Haywood of the Western Federation of Miners, as well as Haggerty and veteran anarchist organizer Lucy Parsons. In the fourth IWW convention of 1908 the ‘direct actionists’ finally prevailed and the changed IWW preamble precluded affiliation with any political party. De Leon, denouncing the direct actionists as ‘slum proletarians,’ ‘anarchist scum’ and ‘the bummery’ left to form a rival Detroit-based IWW, which was later renamed and faded away.[399] The language De Leon used to denounce his opponents in this spilled was sadly characteristic of the man and his attitude to all on the left who did not agree with him.

In 1902, a grouping influenced by De Leon emerged inside the British Marxist party, the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), around James Connolly’s newspaper, The Socialist. In 1903 Connolly and most of its Scottish branches left the SDF. Their ‘Glasgow Socialist Society’ soon became the Socialist Labor Party (SLP). With a base on the industrial ‘red’ Clyde, the SLP initially operated almost as a Scottish branch of De Leon’s American party of the same name. Like its American counterpart it too eschewed joint activity with what it deemed the ‘reformist’ SDF and ILP and was in its early years something of an exclusive sect. In some respects, events in Britain mirrored those in the USA in 1906 as a syndicalist element that rejected all action in the political field split from the British SLP.[400]

However, the SLP became significant in Ruskin College, Oxford, influencing the student strike and revolt there in 1908. The majority of Ruskin students and the college’s principal resigned in protest at its failure to place Marx at the center of the teaching curriculum. They then established Central Labor College, in London, De Leon’s influence being clear in the choice of Plebs’ League (inspired by a De Leon pamphlet) for the name of the organization formed to support the idea and then reality of the Central Labor College.[401] Plebs’ League members were, in turn, especially influential in the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants and the SWMF, both of which were involved in the industrial action of the period. While the Plebs’ League was not explicitly anti-Parliamentary, it did regard Parliament as a ‘feeble and timorous body’ and instead advocated the direct action of industrial unionists to bring about revolutionary change.[402]

In terms of its industrial activities, the party’s sectarianism began to diminish in 1907 when it began working in the British Advocates of Industrial Unionism (BAIU) and subsequently the Industrial Workers of Great Britain (IWGB). South Wales miner and Ruskin student Noah Ablett had helped to form a branch of the BAIU in the Rhondda, but he then broke with dual unionism.[403] The increased emphasis on the industrial sphere as the main arena of struggle brought dividends with the labor unrest as, from 1910, party membership and branches grew at a rate commensurate with the SLP’s increasing influence in the labor movement. This growth was in part a result of moves in the party to relax its positions on, for example, a ban on its members addressing the platforms of other organizations. While these changes drew some into the party, others left it. Alterations to the program in 1912 led to revolts in the SLP from those who remained pro-sectarianism and claimed that the party had become reformist, including many members in Lancashire and a grouping that had moved to anarcho-syndicalism. Yet, while SLP activists exercised considerable influence in the Singer’s factory strike on Clydeside, this belied the extent to which the party and the IWGB had been outmaneuvered in the industrial sphere by the less sectarian and more flexible syndicalists. By the outbreak of war, like the other left parties, both revolutionary and reformist alike, the SLP was losing members.[404]

The second foreign influence that helped inform the second syndicalist strand in Britain was French. It was manifest in the changing politics of Tom Mann, a veteran of the ‘New Union’ struggles of the late 1880s. Mann had been away working and agitating in Australia, but had grown weary of the reformists in the Australian labor movement. In 1910 Mann went to France with fellow socialist Guy Bowman to learn about the ideas and practices of French syndicalism. Mann had also, however, been to America where he had seen the IWW at close quarters. Yet Mann’s case provided evidence of the indigenous traditions that also fed into Britain syndicalism. Bob Holton claimed that a significant influence on Britain syndicalism was the Marxist William Morris; his anti-statism and anti-Parliamentarianism certainly influenced Mann’s politics.[405]

On his return to Britain, Mann established the Industrial Syndicalist Education League (ISEL) and began producing the Industrial Syndicalist to propagate syndicalism; its first number appeared in July 1910. In some contexts his propaganda appeared successful. His paper, the Transport Worker, achieved an astonishing circulation of 20,000 in the working-class foment and upheaval in Liverpool in 1911.[406] Mann became even more prominent after reprinting the famous ‘Don’t shoot’ appeal to soldiers policing the picket lines in The Syndicalist of January 1912. Originally published in July 1911 by Jim Larkin, a syndicalist in Ireland, the arrest of Mann and Bowman led to their imprisonment. The publicity and outrage that followed helped to make syndicalism far better known, with those who remained unsympathetic to it nevertheless appealing for their release on the grounds of free speech. The SLP did not take kindly to Mann’s encroachment on ‘their’ industrial territory and criticized the syndicalists’ over emphasis on the power of the ‘general strike’ and consequent underestimation of the need for political action to capture state power. Further, the SLP rejected British syndicalism’s apparently weak and informal organization and regarded their tactic of industrial sabotage as both counter-productive and a sign of weakness.[407]

The Miners ’ Next Step is best understood in the context of this second syndicalist strand. It was produced by the self-styled ‘Unofficial Reform Committee of the South Wales Miners’ Federation’ that included Marxist miners who, like Ablett, had been to Ruskin, were important at Central Labor College, and who had been influenced by De Leon’s work.[408] It was quite clearly revolutionary, aiming for the ‘elimination of the employer.’[409] This would occur when the union in each industry was ‘thoroughly organized, in the first place, to fight, to gain control of, and then to administer that industry.’[410] Yet it was a highly pragmatic document, laying out in some detail a strategy for making the mines unprofitable to the capitalists so that the workers could take over and run them. But this control was not to be exercised under the egis of the State in some form of nationalization; The Miners’ Next Step was quite clear in its advocacy of real workers’ control.

It also contained a strong critique of trade union bureaucracy and leadership in general terms: ‘The possession of power inevitably leads to corruption. All leaders become corrupt in spite of their good intentions. No man was ever good enough, brave enough, or strong enough to have such power at his disposal, as real leadership implies.’[411] Every leader was compelled to control their own members because ‘In order to be effective the leader must keep the men in order, or he forfeits the respect of the employers and the “public,” and thus becomes ineffective as a leader.’[412] Consequently, ‘In a word, he is compelled to become an autocrat and a foe to democracy.’[413] Crucially, the emphasis in The Miners’ Next Step was on working to reform radically existing miners’ unions from the inside rather than creating new ones (dual unionism).[414] This rejection of dual unionism and emphasis on industrial action induced the SLP to denounce The Miners ’ Next Step as the work of ‘anarchist freaks’ who were hell-bent on using the ‘political strike’ at the cost of all else.[415] The use of ‘anarchist’ here was merely as a pejorative term. Indeed, the word ‘anarchist’ only appeared in The Miners ’ Next Step in relation to how the mine owners feared the contemporary radicalization of the miners.[416]

As Bob Holton pointed out, the only issue on which The Miners ’ Next Step was contradictory was that of political action. One section affirmed that the miners’ organization ‘shall engage in political action, both local and national, on the basis of complete independence of, and hostility to all capitalist parties, with an avowed policy of wresting whatever advantage it can for the working class.’[417] In another section (presumably penned by another activist and reflecting the disagreements among syndicalists on the matter), there is a stark contrast drawn between the ideal of ‘industrial democracy’ and Parliamentary democracy.[418] This second syndicalist strand split, however, in 1913 when Bowman convinced many of the leading ISEL figures to drop their ‘bore from within’ industrial strategy and adopt what was essentially the IWW position. Those opposing this change, including the key South Wales miner activists Ablett, Sam Mainwaring and Noah Rees left to form the Industrial Democracy League. Its program reaffirmed the essence of The Miners’ Next Step[419]

The inconsistency in The Miners ’ Next Step over political action meant that it lent itself fairly readily to an anarchist interpretation. This was the third strand of syndicalism in Britain before 1914, the anarcho-syndicalist. Grouped around Guy Aldred’s Herald of Revolt (and its successor from May 1914, The Spur), the anarcho-syndicalists took Mann’s rejection of political action to its logical end. Indeed, anarcho-syndicalists claimed Mann was unclear and hesitant on the general issue of political action, and that his criticisms of Parliament did not go far enough. However, their efforts to establish an anarcho-syndicalist ‘Industrial Union of Direct Actionists’ from 1908 made little headway.[420]

Anarchism had had some kind of active and organized presence in Britain since the 1880s, emerging in organized form within William Morris’ Socialist League in the late 1880s, which had in turn split from the SDF. Indeed, Morris’ developing politics had fed the growing anarchism of this grouping, though he was never an anarchist himself.[421] It declined in the 1890s. In north-east England, there was some form of anarchist activity, often low-level, for some years before 1910. In the early to mid- 1880s, Russian anarchist Prince Kropotkin’s work appeared in the Newcastle Daily Chronicle, and he spoke at the 1882 Durham miners’ gala and elsewhere in the region. Kropotkin’s influence was also felt in the establishment of the anarchist commune at Clousden Hill in Forest Hall, just outside Newcastle. In the 1890s, there were anarchist meetings in the pit villages of Silksworth and Stanley as well as in several of the larger conurbations that bordered onto the Durham coalfield like Sunderland, South Shields and Gateshead. Anarchist papers circulated elsewhere in Durham pit villages.[422] A more recent phase of activity saw anarchists active in Newcastle and Sunderland in 1907, and, by 1909, there existed an active Newcastle anarchist club. The revival in terms of influence and ideas anarchism was to experience in the late Edwardian period was quite unprecedented. According to Holton, by 1914 anarcho-syndicalism was on the upturn. Partly as a result of ‘the refusal of many of its supporters to uphold dual unionism,’ it became a more substantial component of revolutionary industrial activity.[423] The launching of new weekly journal The Voice of Labor in early 1914 helped to draw together the many hitherto fragmented anarcho-syndicalist groups dotted around the country, though the Scottish dual unionist anarcho-syndicalists grouped around The Herald of Revolt remained outside this organization.

In summary, syndicalism in Britain certainly allowed for the possibility of considerable overlap of the Marxist and anarchist traditions (though John Quail’s remark on the ‘almost completely ignored Anarchist contribution’ to the British syndicalist revolt still holds).[424] This overlap and transference of ideas did not invariably occur however, as the studies of the political formation of the two most significant Durham coalfield revolutionary syndicalists before 1914 shows.

There were two main figures in the advocacy of revolutionary syndicalism in the Durham coalfield before 1914, George Harvey and Will Lawther. Harvey, born in 1885 (and four years Lawther’s senior), spent his early political life as a not especially left-wing member of the ILP. In February 1907, for example, Harvey had endorsed conciliation boards in the ILP’s regional journal. Harvey’s radicalization took place at Ruskin College which he attended 1908–1909. Ray Challinor claimed that this was probably due to the influence of tutors W.W. Craik and Noah Ablett. While there Harvey joined the Plebs’ League, and the SLP. His rise in the ranks of the party was evident when he became editor of the party journal, The Socialist, for a year 1911–1912. Harvey remained committed to the SLP and industrial unionism throughout the pre-war period. Nevertheless, there was nothing inevitable about Harvey either being radicalized or, when having done so, moving into the SLP. Jack Parks, a friend of Harvey’s from the north-east, was Harvey’s roommate at Ruskin. He too became radicalized, though over a longer period of time, leaving the ILP in 1910 and becoming a syndicalist linked with Mann’s Industrial Syndicalist (in which he appeared as a Northumberland miners’ speaker contact from March 1911).[425] (As argued below, it was a pity for syndicalism in the Durham coalfield that Harvey chose the SLP).

For the purposes of studying at the individual level the dynamics of a political development from Marxism to anarchism through syndicalism, Will Lawther’s case deserves far closer scrutiny. Northumberland born into a mining family in 1889, Lawther was initially influenced by Robert Blatchford’s Merrie England and was cognizant that his grandfather had been imprisoned for involvement in the Chartist agitation (though his own parents were not politically active). Like Harvey, Lawther began his own active political life (at the tender age of 15), by helping to establish an ILP branch in his pit village.[426] A year later in 1905 his family moved to Chopwell, a new pit in the north-west Durham coalfield. Lawther soon established himself as the young and active secretary of Chopwell ILP branch.[427] He later wrote that his ‘groping for a philosophy hardened into a positive conviction that militant socialism was the answer to most of the problems that beset the working class...’[428] Perhaps more significantly, Lawther rapidly rose in the lodge hierarchy; in 1906 he was elected vice-chair of Chopwell lodge and soon after he became delegate to the DMA.[429]

Also like Harvey, Lawther’s conversion to syndicalism came at the newly-established Central Labor College, which he attended for a year from October 1911, aided by funding from his family and Chopwell lodge. He had already, as an ‘exhibitioner,’ received free education in his precious spare time at Rutherford College in Newcastle, having been unable, as the eldest of a big family, to take up a scholarship he won to a local grammar school. At Labor College Lawther studied sociology, politics and history. Sociology lectures, delivered by Dennis Hird (MA), considered the work of Herbert Spencer. In economics, the emphasis was, unsurprisingly, almost exclusively on Marx. Lawther read Kapital twice and studied other of his works including Critique of Political Economy in addition to well-known studies of Marx by Louis Boudin and Daniel De Leon and Ricardo’s Political Economy. Lawther also read William Morris, Bernard Shaw and Ruskin.[430] Of these, Marx was obviously a significant influence. Lawther’s favorite work was the Eighteenth Brumaire, especially the line: ‘Him whom we must convince we recognize as the master of the situation,’ which he quoted frequently.[431]

What of the individuals Lawther met at college? As with Harvey, Craik, who delivered Lawther’s economics lectures, must have been influential, as was Ablett, another of his lecturers who Lawther came to regard as ‘the greatest of all pre-war Marxists.’[432] (That the influential Ablett’s politics had changed between the times Harvey and Lawther came into contact with him from involvement in the SLP to rejecting its dual unionism and moving towards Mann was of potentially great significance). Lawther also joined the Plebs’ League and, already armed with a militant brand of ILP socialism pre-Labor College, he had less distance to travel politically than Harvey, a more moderate ILP member pre-Ruskin. While he was still at Labor College, Lawther had clearly imbibed much of the syndicalist case, condemning, in a letter to the Daily Chronicle, the DMA secretary John Wilson’s ‘old fashioned notion of conciliation,’ and arguing instead that the DMA’s attitude should embody the class-war.[433] Writing in 1955, a retired Lawther remained clear on the appeal that revolutionary syndicalism held at that time: ‘to us it was new and exciting. It was the ultimate in extremism, the demand for direct action, and the professed disgust, not only with the class ridden structure, but also with all gradual means of getting rid of that form of society.’[434]

In his last months at Central Labor College, Lawther seemed to endorse a basic syndicalist case in the vein of Mann and, more importantly, The Miners’ Next Step. This was evident in the first syndicalist propagandizing Lawther conducted in his own coalfield, which came in May 1912 when he supported South Wales syndicalist miner W.F. Hay’s speaking tour in county Durham.[435] Lawther’s rhetoric was indistinguishable from that of Hay, the main speaker at these meetings. However, after returning home to Chopwell in late August 1912 Lawther’s politics began to show signs of a shift towards anarchism. True, much of his rhetoric remained in tune with The Miners’ Next Step. For example, there was Lawther’s revolutionary critique of nationalization and advocacy of workers’ control. Speaking in October 1912, Lawther ‘found that nationalization of the mines, state ownership, was nothing more or less than state capitalism....’[436] One indication of a shift was a move from an implicit endorsement of the approach of The Miners ’ Next Step (and Mann) that emphasized working inside existing institutions for their radical reform, to support for creating new organizations (dual unionism).[437] Thus, in October 1912 Lawther based part of his speech at an ‘industrial unionist’ conference in Chopwell on the preamble of the dual-unionist IWW, saying that ‘they were out for the whole of the workers to be in one organization.’[438] Yet Lawther’s position on dual unionism is hard to pin down, not least because he was not particularly vocal on this essential issue.[439] Indeed, Lawther later appeared to have a foot in both anarcho-syndicalist camps, contributing to the dual unionist, Scottish-based Herald of Revolt and becoming a leading supporter of the Voice of Labor, a weekly journal launched early in 1914 that did not advocate dual unionism.[440]

The inspiration of The Miners’ Next Step, and particularly its emphasis on aggressive class conflict, the need for workers’ direct action and self-empowerment and the rejection of leaders and bureaucracies, remained in evidence in Lawther’s rhetoric throughout the pre-war period. For example, during the January 1913 agitation over an increased doctors’ fee miners had to pay as a result of the new National Insurance legislation, Lawther claimed that ‘The time had come when it was essential that every member of their fighting strength must develop a consciousness of what they had in view when they found it necessary to go out and do battle with the enemy.’[441] In October 1913, Lawther wrote in a letter to the local press, that activists of the ‘New [revolutionary] Movement...’ ‘will not wait for the “lead” to come from a chosen few, for they will be conscious of their own desires and destination and their mandate will therefore be supreme.’[442] Yet these were all features of The Miners’ Next Step that lent themselves readily to an anarchist interpretation.

However, Lawther was, unlike The Miners’ Next Step, decisive in his total rejection of the use of political action (defined as standing candidates for elections to parliament and local councils). This marked Lawther’s syndicalism as of the anarchist variety, and he became a contributor to the Herald of Revolt, where he was in good company. Lawther also began to use the term ‘anarchist’ explicitly to describe his politics at the time, and he spent some time emphasizing this aspect of his revolutionary creed.[443] For example, in September 1913 at a public debate in Chopwell Workmen’s Hall, Lawther argued for the affirmative on the title: ‘That the emancipation of the working class can be brought about more readily by direct action than by legislation.’[444] He followed this debate up with a lengthy letter in the local press entitled ‘Direct Action or Legislation. Which?’[445]

Determining the cause for the development of Lawther’s more ‘Marxist’ syndicalism into a self-proclaimed anarchism is difficult. In terms of the works he read at Central Labor College, Morris’

Brand of Marxism must have been pivotal, especially evident in Lawther’s anti- Parliamentary rhetoric.[446] Lawther later said that Morris ‘made an appeal for life against the machine horrors.’[447] While in London Lawther also met the anarchist engineer Jack Tanner and they later collaborated on several anarchist projects, including the Voice of Labor[448] Yet probably the most influential figure in this development was George Davison, who Lawther first met at the 1911 TUC conference in Newcastle, before he went to Central Labor College. A follower of Kropotkin, Davison was an ‘eccentric and courageous millionaire... who held very advanced views on politics and theology.’[449] Davison had risen from a poor beginning to become a civil servant. He was also a pioneer in the developing area of photography, bought shares in Kodak and became, by 1900, the company’s managing director, though his political activities (and alleged lack of business acumen) forced his resignation from the Kodak board in 1912.[450] By this time Davison’s desire to fund progressive causes was manifest in the funding he provided for the nascent Central Labor College in 1910. As financial backer of Hay’s speaking tour of the Durham coalfield in 1912, his path crossed with Lawther’s once more.[451] His money was to have some impact in at least one corner of the Durham coalfield before 1914.

4) The Influence of Revolutionary Syndicalism

For both Harvey and Lawther conversion to revolutionary syndicalism demanded that they propagandize for the new ideas. That they did so in to some extent different ways was more a reflection of their relative strengths as political activists and their access to different resources rather than a clear manifestation of the varying Marxist and anarchist approaches to syndicalism and propagandizing. Harvey, a diminutive and unimpressive presence on the public platform, developed a talent for writing both reports in The Socialist and detailed and well-researched propaganda pamphlets.[452] His first came in August 1911 and was entitled ‘Industrial Unionism and the Mining Industry.’[453] In June 1912 he produced ‘Does Dr. John Wilson MP, secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association, Serve the Working Class?’ This was an enraged response to a ‘joke’ Wilson cracked at the retirement ceremony of Charles Fenwick, Liberal MP for Wansbeck and a DMA official. Lord Joicey, a mine owner, had awarded Fenwick a gift of £260. At the presentation, Wilson remarked that he, on his retirement, would like a similar ‘bribe.’ Harvey’s answer to his pamphlet’s title was very firmly in the negative: Wilson’s ‘aim has always been to bolster up capitalism, and he, more than any other leader perhaps, has swayed the miners to take that particular action which is either harmless or beneficial to the capitalist class ... If £260 is the price, then miners’ leaders are cheap and worth getting at.’[454] Wilson, who had written a lengthy and sycophantic pean to Joicey on his death in late 1911, demanded a withdrawal of the accusation, which Harvey refused.[455] The libel case went to trial in November 1912. Harvey maintained in court that Wilson was an ‘enemy of the working class and servant of capitalism’ and provided examples such as Wilson’s agreement to a 5% reduction in miners’ wages which even an Umpire had deemed unwarranted. The judge found in favor of Wilson, who was awarded £200 damages and £100 costs.

On his return from Central Labor College, Lawther established a ‘Workers’ Freedom Group’ based on similar groups in the South Wales coalfield.[456] Lawther appeared less of a theorist than Harvey and did not write more detailed propaganda pamphlets on conditions in the Durham coalfield and other questions. Yet his group engaged in energetic and varied propaganda activities, Lawther reporting in July 1913 that: ‘by selling FREEDOMS [an anarchist newspaper] and pamphlets and by discussion circles, the kind of propaganda that matters is being kept up ....’[457] The group also organized public meetings with important syndicalist speakers including Tom Mann, and the Irish Transport worker’s organizer Jim Larkin and his brother Pete.[458] Lawther’s impetus was surely crucial in bringing representatives from several local lodges to Chopwell to discuss industrial unionism in October 1912. Lawther also contributed to public debates, corresponded with the local press and involved himself in community struggles. In Spring 1913, there was intense agitation throughout the coalfield against one of the provisions of the new National Insurance act that colliery doctors had used to increase their medical fees charged to miners’ lodges by 50%. Lawther was central to the campaign in Chopwell for a return to pre-act fee levels.[459] Retaining his commitment to working-class education, Lawther also ran Plebs’ League classes three times a week in Consett and South Shields as well as Chopwell.[460] It was clear that, for Lawther, this educational work was also essential propaganda work; he believed ‘that the Labor College was of the utmost influence ...’ [461]

Yet Lawther and the Chopwell anarchists’ aims were greater than merely attempting to create a stronghold in their own pit village. In July 1913, the group wanted ‘the message of direct action to be carried right throughout the coalfield and no help is refused.’[462] Thus, the previous month, Lawther had spoken at the ‘new ground’ of Crawcrook (another Durham pit village), whilst in July he spoke at the miners’ annual gala on the ‘need for direct action and revolution.’[463] The DMA annual gala, or ‘Big Meeting,’ was a day-out for all Durham miners and their families, and they thronged to Durham to congregate on the racecourse and hear speeches from local and national leaders. It was an obvious place to take propaganda efforts.[464] Lawther was also concerned that anarchists should organize effectively together in the region and nationally. In April 1914, for example, he took a delegation and spoke at an Anarchist conference in Newcastle. The conference concerned itself with national organizational issues such as supporting a new anarchist newspaper and international issues such as the (recently state-executed) Spanish freethinker Francisco Ferrer’s ‘modern schools,’ as well as the organizing of an international conference of anarchists in London in September 1914.[465] Lawther spoke at a modern school in east London in summer 1913.[466] To maintain the lines of communication between local and national Lawther supplied regular reports to the national anarchist paper Freedom as well as contributing to other anarchist and syndicalist publications.

Clearly, the specific activities of both Harvey and Lawther had some degree of immediate impact. That Harvey, Lawther and their groupings’ were also (in Lawther’s words) ‘fellow slave[s] of the lamp and pick’ must have helped to ensure a sympathetic reception at a time of intense industrial and socio-political flux in the Durham coalfield.[467] Harvey’s pamphlets were of particular significance in terms of his impact. ‘Industrial Unionism and the Mining Industry’ sold an impressive 2,000 copies and with Harvey receiving invitations to speak all over the Durham coalfield in summer 1911.[468] His pamphlet of June 1912 had in some respects an equally important impact. The libel case surrounding ‘Does Dr. John Wilson MP, secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association, Serve the Working Class?,’ received extensive press coverage. It read like a trial of the old methods by the new revolutionary ideas; it was the single event that encapsulated the revolutionary challenge to the old DMA leadership. And the press publicity certainly helped Harvey further enhance his reputation and that of his politics.[469] Indeed, Harvey’s very public championing of the Durham miner in 1912 must have played an important part in his securing a checkweighman post only a year later, at Wardley pit near Gateshead.[470] Harvey’s political project also received a welcome boost. A matter of days after the media reported court-case Harvey launched the ‘Durham Mining Industrial Union Group,’ what the Durham Chronicle deemed somewhat wearily ‘still another organization anxious to reform the Durham Miners’ Association.’[471] The group formed after a meeting of ‘about 20 representatives’ at Chester-le-Street, and decided to issue lodges with a copy of its industrial unionist manifesto.[472]

This built on Harvey’s own local grouping, ‘Chester-le-Street and District Industrial Union.’ Harvey certainly maintained a strong local support base wherever he worked in the Durham coalfield throughout the course of his life.[473] One example of the longer term influence Harvey exercised came in the form of Tom Aisbitt, one of his Chester- le-Street industrial unionist converts. The same age as Harvey, Aisbitt had also been a member of Chester-le-Street ILP (he was its secretary) as well as helping to found Chester-le-Street trades council.[474] He later secured an influential post in the Newcastle trades council with which he influenced regional labor politics in the inter-war period.[475]

While Lawther certainly did not introduce anarchism to the north-east (as seen above there was a long though marginal history and an, albeit flimsy, structure in place before 1912), his and his groups’ impact was significant, bringing anarchism into the Durham coalfield in a more concerted and energetic way. Naturally, it was in Lawther’s home pit village of Chopwell that his direct influence was most obvious, and in the form of bricks and mortar. Lawther’s wealthy anarchist contact George Davison agreed to sponsor a ‘Communist Club’ in Chopwell, one of only three in the country. The club opened on 9 December 1913, two weeks into a strike at Chopwell pit. Indeed, the club’s influence might well have been immediate as on its opening night 26 coal trucks from a local pit were deliberately set loose to run down a hill and then crash, destroying a long section of line and causing £3,000 worth of damage.[476] The local police noted this ‘strange coincidence’ though there was no direct indication that the men finally arrested (and acquitted) for this act of sabotage had drawn any inspiration from the inaugural meeting at the Chopwell Anarchist club.[477]

At an Anarchist conference in Newcastle in April 1914 (only a few months later), Freedom remarked that ‘the Chopwell boys came in their dozens, each an embryo fighter, from whom more will be heard anon, we hope.’[478] Many of these must have been Lawther’s converts, directly or indirectly. The local police were certainly impressed with the Anarchist club’s members, who were ‘mostly young men and are above the average miner in intelligence.’[479] However, not all Chopwell radicals were convinced by this new gospel. For example, Vipond Hardy, an important figure in the village and lodge (he was its delegate) who Lawther (in his ILP phase) had converted to socialism, certainly was not convinced by anarcho-syndicalism.[480] At a discussion in October 1912 he remained unconvinced by Lawther’s claim that miners’ leaders could be replaced effectively with delegates who would return to the mines once their union work was done.[481] Indeed, the immediate popular response to the war effort from Chopwell families — 500 men left the village to fight, including two of Lawther’s own brothers — suggested that the revolutionary nucleus had had a distinctly limited impact on the political consciousness of the village’s inhabitants. Only a hardcore that included Lawther and two other of his brothers, took a stand against the war and became Conscientious Objectors.[482]

What can be said about the wider influence of syndicalism in the Durham coalfield before 1914? Commentators have tended in their assessments of this influence to look at, understandably, the activities of George Harvey and Will Lawther (and to a lesser extent their groupings), though their conclusions have been quite different. Roy Church and Quentin Outram, for example, have claimed that syndicalist influence was virtually nil in County Durham, basing this assessment basically on a somewhat cursory and mistaken reading of Lawther’s politics and activities.[483] Specifically, they quoted John Saville’s comment that in his early years Lawther ‘described himself as a Marxist, Syndicalist, anarchist and member of the ILP’ (which echoed Robin Smith, a prospective biographer of Lawther, in the North-east Labor History Society journal).[484] In one respect, this comment was valid, for, as we have seen, syndicalism grew from some interpretations of Marxism, but its emphasis on direct action and eschewing Parliamentary or ‘political’ action easily lent themselves to anarchist interpretations within what was a fairly broad church. Neither the theories nor (most of) the organizations formed to advocate them were exclusive and ideologically pure and self-contained in this time of flux.[485] Indeed, Robin Smith employed his claim about Lawther’s politics to illustrate this very point, though Smith was referring to the whole period before 1926 (when Lawther was aged between 15 and 36). This was unhelpful, as it encompassed a good deal of change in Lawther’s politics and there was, with the advent of the Communist Party in Britain in 1920, something of a drift towards more exclusivity and sectarianism among the left after the end of the Great War. Nevertheless, the implication of Robin Smith’s claim and the accounts of those who endorsed it was that Lawther was something of a dilettante, a political butterfly, promiscuously flitting between parties and political programs at whim, or that he was confused about his true political home. In reality, as discussed above, there was a quite distinct development of Lawther’s politics from 1905 to the earlier 1920s. There is no reason to doubt the genuineness of Lawther’s conversion to syndicalism from activism in the ILP in 1912 and his subsequent move to anarcho-syndicalism before August 1914. The very level and intensity of his activity in this period is evidence on its own of the extent to which his political conversion was deeply felt. If the authenticity of Lawther’s politics are to be the yardstick for measuring syndicalism in the Durham coalfield then it was a significant force. Needless-to-say, this measurement is, in itself, of limited value in assessing a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon.

In contrast, Bob Holton, the only writer to date to take British syndicalism as his central subject (in a book published in 1976), took Harvey and Lawther’s politics very seriously. His consideration of these two activists formed the bedrock of his discussion of syndicalism in the Durham coalfield. Indeed, he went as far as to remark that syndicalism had its next most important impact after South Wales in the Durham coalfield.[486] Holton’s wider remarks on the Durham coalfield made in substantiating this claim are, however, rather insubstantial. He noted the particularly strong unrest in the coalfield over the return to work after the 1912 national strike, but later acknowledged that the major coalfield to vote FOR a return to work in 1912 was South Wales (where syndicalism was strongest). While he explained this with the peculiar conditions in South Wales including a lack of resources which had brought about strike weariness, there is clearly no simple correlation between militancy in 1912 and syndicalist influence.[487]

5) Dogma, Pragmatism and Sectarianism

While considerable research remains to be done in this area, it is clear that, thanks to the activities of George Harvey and Will Lawther and their groupings, syndicalism did make some kind of impact in the Durham coalfield but that this was not as great as that in South Wales. Though George Harvey’s pamphlets were effective, they did not compare to The Miners’ Next Step in terms of applied theory or the extensive process of debate that led to its production. The South Wales coalfield contained many autodidact militants; the Durham coalfield but few and this both reflected the conditions in and culture of the coalfield and in part explained the degree of impact.

In Durham the ILP had done remarkably well in the Durham Forward Movement in channeling miners’ grievances in such a way as favored them and to some degree isolated them from the more revolutionary alternatives on offer.

Nevertheless that the Durham Forward Movement existed at all was testament to the level of grievances present among the lodges of the DMA, the kinds of grievances that the revolutionary syndicalists could appeal to. It is clear that two aspects of the syndicalists’ own politics that intertwined -their puritanism, of negatively put, their dogmatism and their sectarianism-militated against their influence. Firstly, aspects of their politics served to inhibit their ability to propagate their message, and isolate them from the wider movement. Second, the revolutionary syndicalist alternative was to some degree divided within itself in the Durham coalfield as elsewhere in Britain.

In terms of dogmatism, Will Lawther suffered the most. His anarchism meant that he was opposed to any form of constitutional office and therefore he did not stand for any lodge, DMA or party position (until 1915). This was significant as Lawther had been a lodge official before going to Labor College, in one of the largest and most militant pits in county Durham. Being a lodge official earlier in his life had brought Lawther into contact with influential Durham miners throughout the coalfield, individuals such as Peter Lee, as well as with significant national and international figures within the movement.[488] This principled decision, while undoubtedly laudable, denied Lawther access to certain important means of exercising local and regional influence. While in South Wales two syndicalists, Ablett and Rees were elected to the SWMF Executive Committee in 1911, both demonstrating their prominence in the coalfield and further enhancing their authority . The Durham lodges did not even have an opportunity to show whether Lawther’s new revolutionary politics had gained him the level of standing required to secure election.

George Harvey, on the other hand, did not have this particular problem. Indeed, the (in some respects) more pragmatic Harvey had been instrumental in altering the SLP’s doctrine that had prevented its militants for standing for any trade union office.

Harvey pointed out that in Durham any prospective party member would have to relinquish trade union office to join the party. Naturally, they refused to do this and yet the lodges in which these individuals were officials were those that bought the most socialist literature. In doing so, they gave the party greater opportunities to spread their propaganda.[489] Thus, the now unshackled Harvey won a checkweighman post in 1913. This was of considerable significance as the position of checkweighman was of great prestige in any miners’ lodge, reflecting a high degree of trust that the miners had in its incumbent. Harvey’s election both reflected his already established reputation (certainly as a trade unionist, possibly as a revolutionary), as well as further entrenching and widening his influence.[490]

In some respects, the period before the Russian revolution, and especially 1910–1914, saw sectarianism between Marxists and anarchists diminish. The Marxist and anarchist traditions could both feed into and emerge from syndicalism. In the apparent relative ease of movement between the two traditions, exemplified in the development of Will Lawther’s politics, they in some respects reflected the wider socio-economic flux of which they were a part. This was evident in, for example, Lawther’s Cold-war informed explanation for the naming of the Edwardian ‘Communist Clubs’ such as that in Chopwell. They were ‘supposed to be the rallying grounds for those interested in communism and anarchism, a communism, by the way, which bore little resemblance to the Russian brand today [1955].’[491] As Marx and Marxists had clearly influenced Lawther, though he had branded himself an anarchist, so the ‘Communist Club’ (which was also known in this period as the ‘Anarchist club’), was a forum for the exchange and imparting of various revolutionary ideas that were in a state of flux and in many respects difficult to separate.[492]

Ray Challinor wrote of the decline in the sectarianism of the SLP in this period too.[493] However, it still existed and in terms of sectarianism between the revolutionary syndicalists in the Durham coalfield, Harvey was the main offender. This was evident at the Chopwell industrial unionist conference in October 1912, where Harvey and Lawther both vied to convince the audience of their case. Lawther sketched over the differences in politics between himself and Harvey, concluding his speech, ‘they were out for the whole of the workers to be in one organization. They could call that Industrialism, Unionism [sic. presumably a press mistake for industrial unionism] or syndicalism, or what they liked...’[494] Harvey, who spoke after Lawther, pleaded that the audience should go away and propagandize for a Durham mining industrial union. His call for education and organization, his claim that ‘Leaders and politicians could do nothing’ and that the ‘hope of the working-class lay in the working-class themselves’ all echoed Lawther. The description of industrial unionism -organizing all British workers in one mechanism with departments for different industries ‘working on principle that an injury to one is an injury to all’ (an IWW slogan)- also resonated with Lawther’s speech.[495]

However, Harvey then underlined where he and Lawther differed in explicit terms: ‘they ought not to go in for syndicalism, because if it were a halfway house they had to recognize sooner or later that they must go to the higher pinnacle of organization. He contended that the scientific weapon was industrial unionism. They were out for industrial and political action. The two must go hand in hand.’ This political action included fighting all elections, not for votes as such but on a ‘revolutionary issue’ to ‘create a fever heat of industrial revolution and they could only do that by industrial and political propaganda.’[496] Indeed, the extent to which Harvey argued in favor of political action caused problems in his own party. His claim in The Socialist (March 1912) that SLP candidates would be the best parliamentarians as only revolutionaries could win reforms, received extensive criticism from within the SLP and provoked the secession of most of the party’s members in Lancashire, claiming that the Party had become reformist.[497]

More unfortunately, Harvey also adopted the language of many SLP activists in Britain, who in turn reproduced that of De Leon, slandering other revolutionary groupings and denouncing them as ‘fakirs.’[498] Harvey was thus a ‘virulent critic’ of Tom Mann’s syndicalism (perhaps unfortunately his sectarianism was the most noteworthy aspect of Harvey’s politics for some later authorities).[499] In response to the imprisonment of Mann for publishing the famous ‘Don’t shoot’ article appealing for soldiers not to fire on strikers, Harvey wrote in The Socialist (of April 1912) that his Party were not syndicalists and ‘have no sympathy with syndicalism.’ Nevertheless, on this occasion, as the SLP were ‘fighters for freedom and the free press,’ they reprinted Mann’s banned article.[500]

On the ground, though, it seemed that Lawther was willing to accept Harvey’s attempts to place a clear ideological dividing line between them, though Harvey’s support for ‘political action’ remained anathema to Lawther’s anarchism. In February 1913, Lawther made an impassioned appeal for Harvey in the aftermath of the Wilson case: ‘It is up to us, as miners, to show to George Harvey, by word or deed, that we believe that what he said [about Wilson] was true ... And I believe that, during the forthcoming summer, the gospel of revolt, of direct action, of anti-leadership will spread, not because Harvey or any other person believes in it, but because of the oppression and tyranny that is taking place in the mines...’[501] In July 1913, the two men, among others, shared an (unofficial) platform at the Durham miners’ annual gala.[502] Notwithstanding Lawther’s evident desire to accommodate Harvey and not allow political differences to divide them, they evidently offered two distinct brands of syndicalism in the Durham coalfield and the effect of them both sharing similar but different visions of a revolutionary politics with an interested but not necessarily informed miner audience must have confused more individuals than the journalist recording the event for the local press.

Lawther displayed another kind of sectarianism, however, and, while it served to underscore his revolutionary credentials, it must have inhibited his ability to operate effectively, denying him access to the platforms of potentially influential and sympathetic organizations and individuals in the DMA. One of the first to address the ‘industrial unionist’ conference in Chopwell in October 1912, Lawther opened his speech by explaining why they ‘were out for the new movement. They were out against the “forward movement.”‘[503] Lawther was clearly keen to distinguish himself and his followers from the Forward Movements’ project — indeed, defining them as opponents — from the outset. He did so by first attacking nationalization, the aim of key Forward Movement activists, and thus doing effectively marked the gap between the apparent reformists of the Forward Movement and the revolutionaries. That the Forward Movement leaders were intent on making reputations and careers for themselves on the back of the miners’ discontent was a fairly common theme in Lawther’s rhetoric.[504] (And, ironically, a charge that was made unjustly against Lawther himself, though many Durham Forward Movement activists, like Jack Lawson, did go on to make careers in the DMA or Parliament).[505]

Again, Harvey revealed a little less principled idealism and a little more pragmatism in relations with the wider rank-and-file movement. At his libel trial in November 1912, Harvey asked Wilson if he was aware that he had been heavily criticized by the Forward Movement. Harvey quoted part of a speech by John Jeffries, a Forward Movement leader, claiming that Wilson’s evident talents were ‘from time to time not used for the purpose they ought to be’ and, explicitly, that Jeffries was referring to the conciliation doctrine that Wilson ‘continually dinned into their ears.’ Harvey’s defense here was of great significance, as he was taking the logic of Forward Movement rhetoric a step further, clearly aligning himself with it as he did so. Indeed, Harvey claimed (slightly disingenuously) that he ‘had said no more than what had been said by other bodies during the last decade — by the socialists or the “Forward Movement” — and the action had only been taken against him because he was a working miner.’’[506] The extent to which this benefited Harvey in terms of his ability to propagate his industrial unionism is difficult to measure. But it seems to have secured him a prominent position on the platform of at least one Durham Forward Movement mass meeting. In April 1912 Harvey seconded a motion of censure of the DMA agents, with a speech complaining that the men had been ‘sold-out’ by their leaders. Harvey argued that the leaders should receive the same wage as the miners and perhaps then the leaders would fight for their demands, as ‘every time the men got a rise they would also be better off.’[507] Lawther, unsurprisingly, never appeared on a Durham Forward Movement platform as such, though he did speak at a meeting on the minimum wage in Newcastle in December 1913, this was not apparently under their auspices.[508] That said, he was fortunate in that his words did not prevent cooperation in Chopwell with those active in the Durham Forward Movement. For example, Lawther sat on the negotiating committee in the doctor’s fee agitation in early 1913 with Vipond Hardy, who Lawther had failed to convince of syndicalism and who was, instead, active in the maligned Durham Forward Movement.[509]

6) Conclusion; An Opportunity Missed?

Revolutionary activists are often confronted with a dilemma when faced with favorable circumstances in which to propagate their politics; the extent to which they soft-pedal or compromise on fundamentals in order to be able to access platforms and provide a message that has the potential to chime with large numbers of individuals in some form of struggle; too much compromise leaves them open to the jibe of being opportunistic, too little means they are zealots, inflexible and too dogmatic. To take another example , I have argued elsewhere that in the late 1930s, left-wingers and communists seeking to build a grassroots movement in support of the Spanish Republic sacrificed too much of their politics in ultimately futile attempts to build the Comintern-endorsed ‘popular front’ of all progressives against fascism.[510] (Harvey and Lawther were both involved in these campaigns at different levels and in different forms but by this time both had gravitated to the Labor Party though remaining, to different degrees, sympathetic to the CP). So much did the left activists emphasize the humanitarian aspect of their Spanish aid campaigns that individuals could and did become involved in them solely for humanitarian motives. Thus, the campaigns involved individuals who had no position on the politics of the conflict in Spain at all (and were unlikely to acquire one) and even some who supported British NonIntervention in Spain (essentially a pro-Franco position). Here was an example of political opportunism on the left taken to extremes; so much so that it proved largely counter-productive for the left, both in terms of their organizations and politics and certainly in terms of actual support for the Republic by putting pressure on the government to end Non-Intervention.

In the period of industrial strife 1910–1914, Lawther, certainly, was arguably too pure in his politics, which denied him access to certain platforms and alienated him from those who were potentially his allies. Harvey, on the other hand, was too sectarian, fixated on the finer points of the policy of his infinitesimal party. This is not to argue that Lawther in particular should have abandoned the principled political positions he held that evidently cost him influence. However, it is to recognize that holding such positions did have consequences and that in certain circumstances what is sacrificed for the sake of principle is great. Both Lawther and Harvey in their different ways failed to act in the more pragmatic way that the influential South Wales syndicalists did; for example in soft-pedaling on the more ambitious aspects of their program during the 1912 strike in order to concentrate on the minimum wage issue.[511] In Lawther’s case his relative youth and inexperience might have been significant in explaining his more rigid adherence to self-shackling principle. Anarcho-syndicalism was arguably more theoretically coherent and defensible than the syndicalism of the Unofficial Reform Committee. Yet, even when better coordinated in 1914 it remained a minority strand within the minority revolutionary syndicalist strand of the labor movement. Harvey’s SLP, though more tightly organized for a longer period of time, also remained a minority tendency within syndicalism and, in its efforts to break out of this ghetto, often prompted by Harvey himself, it often seemed to loose almost as much as it gained.[512] In this respect it was something of an unfortunate happenstance that meant there were no significant syndicalist advocates of the Mann/Unofficial Reform Committee groups in the Durham coalfield (though of course, they were to split as well). It seems clear from the October 1912 conference in Chopwell that there was a radical wing to the Durham Forward Movement that was potentially sympathetic to syndicalism. The Miners’ Next Step in particular, written by miners steeled by their experiences in intense industrial struggle and penned in its immediate aftermath, in some respects merely formalized and extended causes that the Durham Forward Movement itself agitated for.

Though necessarily counterfactual, it seems highly likely that a concerted joint effort of Harvey and Lawther’s groupings to provide a sustained and dynamic advocacy of The Miners’ Next Step would have resonated more (and had a greater impact) among the masses of angry Durham miners of the period.[513] Conditions were not as favorable for syndicalism in the Durham coalfield as they were in South Wales. Still, arguably both Marxism and anarchism (and the tensions between the activists who advocated them and their respective organizations) had fallen short in terms of propagating syndicalism in the Durham coalfield.