The Communist Unity Group ( CUG ) was a small communist organisation in the United Kingdom .
91-794: The origins of the group lay in the Socialist Labour Party (SLP). The SLP was a De Leonist group, but in support of the October Revolution , it decided to participate in unity negotiations with the other British communist groups – principally the British Socialist Party (BSP) and the Workers Socialist Federation (WSF). To this end, it formed a Unity Committee in January 1919. This committee included many prominent members of
182-535: A trade union orientation. In April 1876, a preliminary conference took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania bringing together representatives of the union-oriented "Internationalists" and the electorally oriented " Lassalleans ". The gathering agreed to issue a call for a Unity Congress to be held in July to establish a new political party. On Saturday, July 15, 1876, delegates from the remaining American sections of
273-575: A 24-year-old in charge of the party's literature department remembered in his autobiography about the 1905 decision to endorse the IWW: "[The decision] was so sharp and radical, and so opposed to our traditional attitude towards the leaders of the trade unions and Socialist Party, as to cause a certain confusion in our midst.... There was resentment at...committing the party to such a change of policy without discussion.... We had fierce discussions in Glasgow on
364-520: A bitter internal struggle between Marxists, who supported trade union organization as preliminary to workers' revolution and anarchists, led by Mikhail Bakunin , who advocated the immediate revolutionary overthrow of organized government. In 1874, the members of the American-based International, led by cigarmaker Adolph Strasser and carpenter Peter J. McGuire joined forces with socialists from Newark and Philadelphia to form
455-822: A decision made in September of that year at a national conference of the organization held at party headquarters in New York City , despite the fact that the SLP's platform called for the abolition of the offices of President and Vice President. A pro-forma nominating convention was held in New York City in August, attended by just 8 delegates, at which candidates were named and a platform approved. The party's ticket, featuring Boston camera manufacturer Simon Wing and New York electrician Charles H. Matchett , appeared on
546-551: A delegate to the inaugural conference, later recalled: "The question of the name of the new party required a little thought. We were anxious not to create the impression which the official SDF was trying to encourage, that we were only the tools of the American SLP. We thought of 'Republican Socialist Party,' etc., etc. It was Connolly who with characteristic directness proposed 'The Socialist Labour Party.' 'It doesn't matter what you call yourself,' he declared, 'you'll be dubbed
637-634: A founder of the SLP being noted proudly by writers in the SLP press in this period. From 1918, excited by the Bolshevik success in the Russian Revolution , the SLP opened talks with the British Socialist Party with the aim of forming a British Communist Party. The leadership could not agree with the BSP's plan to affiliate the new party to the Labour Party, however, and refused to join in
728-777: A meeting in Edinburgh , with the already extant monthly newspaper The Socialist declared its official organ. The party began with a membership of only about 80 individuals in 4 branches, all in Scotland—two in Edinburgh, one in Glasgow , and one in Falkirk . Although deeply influenced by the Socialist Labor Party of America , members of the fledgling British organisation sought their intellectual independence from
819-532: A move made to actually recruit industrial unionists in opposition to the established trade union officialdom, regarded by the SLP as among the most bitter and incorrigible enemies of the radical working class. Goals and desires notwithstanding, the tiny SLP was singularly unsuccessful in its efforts to challenge the established unions of the TUC. Purity had come at a price. The staunchly anti-reformist, anti-compromise, impossibilist SLP found itself largely isolated from
910-547: A polarizing figure among the SLP's membership during his editorial tenure as historian Howard Quint notes: Even De Leon's opponents were usually willing to concede that he possessed a tremendous intellectual grasp of Marxism. Those who had suffered under his editorial lashings looked on him as an unmitigated scoundrel who took fiendish delight in character assassination , vituperation, and scurrility. But most of De Leon's contemporaries, and especially his critics, misunderstood him, just as he himself lacked understanding of people. He
1001-553: A propaganda group, the British Advocates of Industrial Unionism . Some party members took the ideas of the bitterly anti-political IWW to heart with fervour. In 1908 a syndicalist minority tendency, the Industrialist Union , headed by E. J. B. Allen , organised itself and exited the SLP, disclaiming all political work. With eyes to America, the SLP started its own federation of industrial unions, akin to
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#17327728177141092-402: A rejection of traditional craft-based trade unionism and towards industrial unionism including unskilled workers, was to make the call for a new Communist Party an appeal which many SLP activists found impossible to resist. As a result of their work in the industrial field and their relentless focus on educational work, something they had in common with Scottish radical John MacLean of the BSP,
1183-650: A wide array of literature from the Marxist canon and emerged as the single most important distributor of Marxist literature in Great Britain. It has been noted that "there can have been scarcely a single person involved in the foundation of the Communist Party of Great Britain who was not, at some time, influenced by the SLP and its literature." In 1905 in the United States there was established
1274-735: The British Section of the International Socialist Labour Party , turned towards Trotskyism and became the Revolutionary Socialist Party , fusing with the Revolutionary Socialist League in 1938. Socialist Labor Party Progressive Era Repression and persecution Anti-war and civil rights movements Contemporary The Socialist Labor Party ( SLP ) is a political party in
1365-580: The Hudson County, New Jersey ( Jersey City ) Central Labor Federation were covered in detail under the recurring headline "Parliaments of Labor". The doings of individual unions in the New York area and around the world were similarly covered in short summary. Despite its active role as cheerleader and publicist, the SLP was unable to exert any sort of real influence in the Knights of Labor until it
1456-634: The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a revolutionary industrial union which sought to organize workers across all industries as a prelude for the socialist transformation of the economy. American Socialist Labor Party theoretician Daniel DeLeon was among the radical leaders who joined together to establish the new organisation—a group which included Eugene V. Debs of the Socialist Party of America and William "Big Bill" Haywood of
1547-555: The Revolutionary Socialist Labor Party as part of an International Workingmen's Association . The official organ of this short-lived splinter group was a newspaper called The Anarchist . In 1882, Johann Most , a former German Social Democrat turned Anarchist firebrand, came to the United States, further fueling the growth and militancy of the American anarchist movement. The SLP further divided
1638-602: The Socialist Labor Party of America . The tendency, initially known as the "Glasgow Socialist Society," took over publication of James Connolly 's newspaper, The Socialist , in Scotland in 1902. A purge followed in the SDF at its 1903 Annual Conference, with the dissident radicals denounced as " Impossibilists " by the SDF leadership. On 7 June 1903 the Socialist Labour Party was formally established at
1729-618: The Socialist Party of America . After his death in 1914, De Leon was followed as national secretary by Arnold Petersen . Critical of both the Soviet Union and the reformist wing of the Socialist Party of America, the SLP became increasingly isolated from the majority of the American Left . Its support increased in the 1950s and into the early 1960s, when Eric Hass was influential in the party, but slightly declined in
1820-609: The South American island of Curaçao , De Leon had been resident in the United States for 18 years before he began to play a leading role in the American socialist movement. De Leon attended a Gymnasium in Hildesheim, Germany in the 1860s before studying at the University of Leyden , from which he graduated in 1872 at the age of 20. De Leon was a brilliant student—well versed in history, philosophy and mathematics. He
1911-541: The United Labor Party to support Single Tax advocate Henry George in the 1886 New York City mayoral election . The party remained almost completely separated from the English-speaking workers movement and longing for leaders who could traverse the seemingly insurmountable language barrier which limited the organization to a sort of Teutonic ghetto. Throughout the decade of the 1880s, the SLP
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#17327728177142002-781: The Western Federation of Miners . Parallel attempts to establish the IWW organisation were made in Canada, Australia, Great Britain, and elsewhere. The leadership of the Glasgow-based Socialist Labour Party was quick to follow the lead of DeLeon and the American SLP, giving hearty endorsement of the new IWW organisation. This decision came at the cost of nearly tearing the British SLP asunder, however. Socialist Labour Party activist Tom Bell , then
2093-462: The 1886 workers' campaign for the Eight-Hour Day and the brutal excesses of the police which came with it. De Leon was on the committee which nominated Henry George to run for Mayor in that same year and he spoke in public several times on George's behalf during the course of the campaign. De Leon participated in the first Nationalist Club in New York City, a group dedicated to advancing
2184-580: The British working class, a small sect in a big working class ocean. The party's agitation for industrial unionism did have appeal to others in the radical political sphere, however. The idea of industrial unionism permeated the left wing of the Social Democratic Federation, becoming more or less a permanent ideological feature of that organization and its successor after 1911, the British Socialist Party . This common orientation,
2275-620: The Communist Unity Group. The CUG adopted a policy of negotiated unity with parliamentary agitation but opposition to the Labour Party. A small number of SLP branches joined the CUG, but the group drew fewer members than they had hoped. However, around two thirds of its members were from the SLP. The group attended the Foundation Congress which formed the Communist Party of Great Britain on 1 August 1920. Although
2366-457: The Congress, the leading figure of the American SLP, party editor Daniel DeLeon, paid his Scottish followers a visit en route home to America. A historian later recalled that "DeLeon's visit was no more than a moderate success. His speeches savoured more of the university lecture room than the socialist platform. He had none of the flowering rhetoric at that time deemed essential." By July 1905
2457-723: The First International gathered in Philadelphia and disbanded that organization. The following Wednesday, July 19, the planned Unity Congress was convened, attended by seven delegates claiming to represent a membership of 3,000 in four organizations: the trade union-oriented Marxists of the now-disbanded International, and three Lassallean groups—the Workingmen's Party of Illinois, the Social Political Workingmen's Society of Cincinnati and
2548-579: The German-speaking newspaper editor August Spies , began to develop early in the 1880s, with the split formalized by 1883, a year in which the SLP and the IWPA held competing conventions in Baltimore and Pittsburgh, respectively. At its December 1883 Baltimore Convention, the SLP made a vain effort at reestablishing organizational unity with the IWPA, adopting a particularly radical "proclamation" in
2639-531: The Industrial Workers of the World. The British incarnation, established in February 1906, was known as the British Advocates of Industrial Unionism (BAIU). This group was essentially a propaganda society at its inception, attempting to disseminate the ideas of Daniel DeLeon about revolutionary industrial unionism. This group was reorganized in 1909 as the Industrial Workers of Great Britain , with
2730-574: The SLP Scots were told by the credentials committee of the congress to submit their credentials for participation to the British delegation, a group which included the rival Social Democratic Federation. The SLP delegation refused and were excluded from the congress for the remainder of the proceedings. This experience served to heighten the suspicion of the party towards the International and the party remained henceforth unaffiliated. Following
2821-478: The SLP and WSF. As discussions broke down, the Unity Committee proposed that the issue could be avoided by holding a vote on Labour Party affiliation one year after the formation of a communist party, reasoning that once the party was formed, BSP members would conclude they did not need to remain part of Labour. Not only was this proposal unsuccessful, but the SLP executive publicly repudiated and dissolved
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2912-401: The SLP anyway.' And the SLP we became." Radical Irish republican and trade union leader James Connolly attempted to play a vital role in the British SLP's formative days, energetically traveling back and forth across Scotland, addressing dozens of meetings on behalf of the organisation. His efforts were largely ineffectual, however, as no major influx of Scottish workers into the SLP's ranks
3003-500: The SLP came under the influence of Daniel De Leon , who used his role as editor of The Weekly People , the SLP's English-language official organ, to expand the party's popularity beyond its then largely German-speaking membership. Despite his accomplishments, De Leon was a polarizing figure among the SLP's membership. In 1899, his opponents left the SLP and merged with the Social Democratic Party of America to form
3094-430: The SLP consisted of 30 sections and two years later it had doubled. Three new privately owned English-language newspapers were briefly established, although none could achieve the critical mass of subscribers and advertising revenue necessary for survival. The SLP attempted to again make a foray into American electoral politics despite its still heavily German composition, joining forces with other labor organization into
3185-533: The SLP had grown to the point at which it could claim over 1,000 members in 1919. Their official organ, The Socialist, boasted a circulation of 8,000 by the start of the next year. The Socialist Labour Party was also extremely active in publicizing the struggle for national self-determination then taking place in Ireland. That one of the leaders of the Irish national liberation struggle, James Connolly, had also been
3276-524: The SLP: Tom Bell , Arthur McManus , J. T. Murphy and William Paul , all of them proponents of a united communist party . The main difficulty in the negotiations was the BSP – the largest group – were affiliated to the Labour Party and wished any new communist party to be so, or at least that former BSP members could maintain their individual affiliations, a position vehemently opposed by
3367-639: The Sheffield Workers Committee and gradually abandoned the DeLeonist strategy of creating dual unions , coming to adopt the strategy of working within existing unions and " boring from within " in an effort to win them to their ideas. The new party determined to send a delegation to the 1904 Amsterdam Congress of the Second International and selected a group of five to represent the organisation there. Upon arriving,
3458-544: The Social Labor Movement , appeared monthly from Detroit in the shadow of the powerful Chicago German-language radical press until it was finally discontinued altogether at the end of 1883. The party was so thoroughly German that it published the stenographic proceedings of its 1884 and 1885 National Conventions only in that language. From 1885, the official organ of the party was a German-language weekly, Der Sozialist . No English-language SLP organ existed from
3549-849: The Social-Democratic Workingmen's Party of North America. The organization formed by this Unity Convention was known as the Workingmen's Party of the United States (WPUS), and the native English-speaking Philip Van Patten was elected as the party's first "Corresponding Secretary", the official in charge of the day-to-day operations of the party. A number of socialist newspapers also emerged around this time, all privately owned, including Paul Grottkau 's Chicagoer Arbeiter-Zeitung , Joseph Brucker's Milwaukee Socialist and an English-language weekly also published in Milwaukee called The Emancipator. German émigrés dominated
3640-662: The Socialist Labour Party considered itself a highly principled and uncompromising organisation. The group refused to work in tandem with "reformists" such as those populating the SDF or the Independent Labour Party . The SLP instead focused on producing and distributing its own propaganda , leaflets, pamphlets, and papers calling for establishment of a bloc of industrial unions as a necessary first step to socialist revolution . The group insisted that its members should avoid taking part in unemployment demonstrations as these were "sentimental" and built false hopes in
3731-521: The Supreme Court ruled against them in Presser v. Illinois . The anarchist movement expanded rapidly with the debate over tactics between the electorally -oriented socialists and the direct action -oriented anarchists becoming ever more bitter. The 1881 SLP Convention in New York saw some of the party's anarchist members and one New York section split from the party to form a new party called
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3822-486: The United States . It was established in 1876, and was the first socialist party formed in the country. Originally known as the Workingmen's Party of the United States , the party changed its name in 1877 to Socialistic Labor Party and again sometime in the late 1880s to Socialist Labor Party. The party was additionally known in some states as the Industrial Party or Industrial Government Party . In 1890,
3913-538: The Unity Committee, and decided against further unity negotiations. The main figures of the Unity Committee – with the exception of Murphy – continued to attend the unity negotiations unofficially, and in April 1920 they organised a separate conference alongside the SLP conference. This event was not well attended, but the Committee had now moved in opposition to the SLP and directed the conference to constitute itself as
4004-409: The ballot in just six states and drew a total of 21,512 votes. The number of votes gathered by the SLP ticket in 1892 constituted 0.18% of the national presidential vote that year. In percentage terms, the next two presidential elections of 1896 and 1900 were the most successful for the party as the SLP presidential candidate Charles H. Matchett received 0.26% of the national popular vote in 1896 and
4095-547: The best and the brightest of the German-American socialist movement, including Alexander Jonas , Adolph Douai , and Sergei Shevitch and Herman Schlüter ; and quickly emerged as the leading voice of the SLP during the last decades of the 19th century. About this same time, the American anarchist movement gained strength, fueled by the economic crisis and strike wave of 1877. As socialist Frederic Heath recounted in 1900: The line between Anarchism and Socialism
4186-529: The bills with a job teaching Latin, Greek and math at a school in Westchester, New York . This teaching job enabled De Leon to finance his further education at Columbia Law School , from which he graduated with honors in 1878. Thereafter, De Leon moved to Texas , where he practiced law for a time before returning to Columbia University in 1883 to take a position as a lecturer on Latin American diplomacy. De Leon seems to have been further politicized by
4277-408: The combined political and industrial action of the working class organized in industrial unions . In 1872, the International , a European-based international organization for a variety of different left-wing socialist, communist and anarchist political groups and trade union organizations, moved its headquarters to New York City. It was in a weakened and disorganized state, having recently suffered
4368-458: The convention approved Labour Party affiliation by 100 votes to 85, the CUG joined the CPGB, initially becoming its second largest component. Centrist Marxism Socialist Labour Party (1903-1980) The Socialist Labour Party was a socialist political party in the United Kingdom . It was established in 1903 as a splinter from the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) by James Connolly , Neil Maclean and SDF members impressed with
4459-461: The demise of the Bulletin in 1883 to the establishment of the Workingmen's Advocate in 1886. The party's membership situation was so dismal that the English-speaking Corresponding Secretary of the organization, Philip Van Patten, left a suicide note in April 1883 and mysteriously disappeared. He later surfaced as a government employee, a socialist oppositionist no more. Membership in the organization atrophied to just 1,500 by 1883. What growth there
4550-441: The election of two aldermen in St. Louis, four aldermen in Chicago, three members in the Illinois House of Representatives , three members in the Missouri General Assembly , and one member in the Illinois Senate . Ernst Schmidt , their nominee in the 1879 Chicago mayoral election , received over 20% of the vote. The SLP suffered its first split in 1878. Members who were displeased with the exclusively political actionist turn of
4641-440: The ephemeral Social-Democratic Workingmen's Party of North America , the first Marxist political party in the United States. Despite these organizational efforts, the socialist movement in America remained deeply divided over tactics. German immigrants preferred the parliamentary approach employed by Ferdinand Lassalle and the fledgling Social Democratic Party of Germany while longer-term residents of America usually supported
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#17327728177144732-473: The first time in the New York elections of 1886, in which it put forward a full ticket headed by J. Edward Hall as its gubernatorial nominee and Alexander Jonas as its candidate for Mayor of New York . Fewer than 3,000 votes were cast for this ticket throughout the entire state of New York, a result so disheartening that the German language party paper the New Yorker Volkszeitung and some prominent party leaders advocated abandonment of electoral campaigns for
4823-406: The foundation of the Communist Party of Great Britain. This decision by the party leadership incensed many rank and file members of the organization. A section of the organization, including key figures such as Shop Stewards Movement activist Jack Murphy formed an organised faction called the Communist Unity Group , which ultimately left the SLP to join the CPGB at its founding conference in
4914-415: The greater part of the New York district from the organization, thereby hastening the Knights of Labor's demise. Friedrich Engels was critical of the SLP and referred to it as "the decay of the specifically German party in America" in 1890. The year 1890 has long been regarded as a watershed by the SLP as it marked the date when the organization came under the influence of Daniel De Leon . A native of
5005-503: The group, Sozialistischen Arbeiter-Partei). There was an upsurge of support for the new organization, reflected in the proliferation of the socialist press. Between 1876 and 1877, no fewer than 24 newspapers were established which either directly or indirectly supported the SLP. Eight of these were English-language publications, including one daily, while 14 were in German, including seven dailies. Two more papers were published in Czech and Swedish, respectively. Just two years later, in
5096-521: The historian Bernard Johnpoll notes, the SLP which Daniel De Leon joined in 1890 differed little from the organization which had been born at the end of the 1870s as it was largely a German-language organization located in an English-speaking country. Just 17 of the party's 77 branches used English as their basic language while only two members of the party's governing National Executive Committee spoke English fluently. The arrival of an erudite, well-read and multilingual university lecturer with English fluency
5187-415: The ideological purity of its printed propaganda through a strict requirement that no branch be able to distribute any literature not previously approved by the SLP's Executive Committee. The party saw the path to socialist revolution blocked by a conservative bureaucracy at the top of the established trade union movement, committed to a "pure and simple" policy of increasing wages and improving conditions in
5278-405: The leading national union of the day. A decade later, the SLP retained a faith in the established trade union organizations to conduct their own affairs along a generally socialist course. In each issue of The People during 1891 the weekly affairs of the New York Central Labor Federation, the New York Central Labor Union, the Brooklyn Central Labor Federation, the Brooklyn Central Labor Union and
5369-433: The location of an overwhelming percentage of its members, although it did establish some individual members and small section in Northern England, especially Yorkshire . The organization was thus well-placed to play a leading role in the Red Clydeside movement. They had a great deal of influence on the Clyde Workers Committee , but failed to win it to socialism. Other members, such as J.T. "Jack" Murphy, were influential in
5460-444: The mid-1960s. The SLP experienced another increase in support in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but then subsequently declined at a fast rate with the party last nominating a candidate for president in 1976. In 2008, the party closed its national office and the party's newspaper The People ceased publications in 2011. The party advocates "socialist industrial unionism ", the belief in a fundamental transformation of society through
5551-521: The mischief-making, scatterbrained reformers and 'labor fakirs' or you were against them. You either agreed on the necessity of uncompromising revolutionary tactics or you did not, and those falling into the latter category were automatically expendable as far as the Socialist Labor Party was concerned. The Socialist Labor Party advocated a two-pronged attack against capitalism, including both economic and political components—trade unions and electoral campaigns. The SLP ran candidates under its own name for
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#17327728177145642-417: The name of the party and eliminating the position of National Secretary to allow the form of decentralization favored by the anarchists. The issue of violence proved an insurmountable barrier to unity between the SLP and the anarchist movement and as Paul Grottkau, Alexander Jonas and their co-thinkers began to again forcefully espouse the Marxist point of view in 1884, the SLP began to rebound. In March 1884,
5733-479: The next year when Marxist Paul Grottkau was forced by the anarchists to resign as editor of the Chicago daily, the Arbeiter Zeitung. In his place August Spies was installed, a man later executed as part of the anti-anarchist repression which followed the Haymarket affair of May 1886. After a brief honeymoon period in the late 1870s had run its course, the SLP saw the departure of most of its English-speaking members. The party's English-language organ, Bulletin of
5824-453: The organisation, led by an engineering worker named George Yates , strongly criticised the party leadership of the SDF for supporting the entry of conservative socialist Alexandre Millerand into the bourgeois French cabinet at the 1900 Congress of the Second International . The group attacked the party leadership as reformist and began to publish their critique abroad in The Weekly People , edited by Daniel DeLeon , official organ of
5915-402: The organization, although in Chicago Albert Parsons and G.A. Schilling maintained an active English-speaking section. In 1877, the Workingmen's Party met at Newark, New Jersey in a convention which changed the name of the organization to the Socialist Labor Party (generally rendered in English throughout the 1880s as "Socialistic Labor Party", a more stilted rendition of the German name of
6006-429: The party had established a total of nine branches, including groups at Oxford , Southampton , Birmingham , and London . The Oxford branch was particularly influential, with the party making inroads with the trade unionists enrolled at Ruskin College and the party's literature playing a role in the local strike movement as well as the establishment of the Central Labour College and Plebs League . The SLP published
6097-455: The party who wanted the group to focus more on organizing workers formed the International Labor Union . Members were not barred from belonging to both, but there was still some animosity between the two organizations. Amidst economic crisis and factional squabbling, membership in the SLP plummeted. As the 1870s drew to a close, the Socialistic Labor Party could count about 2,600 members—with at least one estimate substantially lower. The WPUS
6188-446: The party's candidate in 1900 Joseph Maloney received 0.29% of the popular vote nationwide. The latter's run was also the first time the SLP candidate was eclipsed by another socialist as Eugene Debs ran for the first time for the Socialist Party that year and received 0.6% of the national popular vote. Although SLP presidential candidates would go on to get higher vote totals in the mid-20th century, they would never again surpass 0.25% of
6279-410: The politics of the American socialist Daniel De Leon , a Marxist theoretician and leading figure of the Socialist Labor Party of America . After decades of existence as a tiny organisation, the group was finally disbanded in 1980. The British Socialist Labour Party began as a faction of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) headed nationally by Henry Hyndman . A group of Scottish members of
6370-443: The question of policy and finally, with a majority group in our branch, I resigned from the party. We remained outside for nearly a year." Despite its espousal of revolutionary industrial unionism , the SLP still believed in use of the ballot box for educational purposes in the short term and as a transformative tool in the future, when the working class had come over to its ideas. It maintained its party organisation but established
6461-401: The rest of his life. De Leon never assumed the formal role of head of the organization, National Secretary, but was always recognized—by supporters and detractors alike—as the leader of the SLP through his tight editorial control of the official party press. While increasing the exposure and popularity of the organization among the American-born during his editorial tenure, De Leon proved to be
6552-414: The shop rather than fighting for socialist organization of industry as a whole. Instead, the party sought to establish a network of explicitly socialist unions which would do battle with the so-called "labour fakirs" of the existing union movement. The organization never had sufficient numbers to carry its professed desires into action, however. The Socialist Labour Party remained headquartered in Scotland,
6643-500: The socialist ideas expressed by Edward Bellamy in his extremely popular novel of the day, Looking Backward (1888). De Leon was also deeply influenced by The Co-operative Commonwealth by Laurence Gronlund . The failings of the Nationalist Club movement to develop a viable program or strategy for winning political power left De Leon searching for an alternative. This he found in the scientific determinism underlying
6734-613: The socialist movement fleeing the crackdown on radicalism launched with the Anti-Socialist Laws of 1878. This influx of new German members, coming during a time of low ebb of the English-speaking membership, extended Germanic influence in the SLP. Excluded from the voting booth by their lack of citizenship status, many of the newcomers had little use for electoral politics. An SLP German militia sued on Second Amendment grounds to keep and bear arms in Chicago parades. However,
6825-465: The start. Whereas the American SLP strongly opposed advancing ameliorative "immediate demands," the new British organisation did not follow, instead initially choosing to adopt a programme of immediate demands matching those of the SDF from whence it sprung. Indeed, there was some discussion as to whether the new party should adopt an altogether different name so as to further delineate themselves from their American counterparts. Trade unionist Tom Bell ,
6916-428: The summer of 1920. Other leading members of the SLP such as Arthur MacManus and William Paul also joined. The loss of such key activists was a great blow to the SLP. A small remnant of the SLP was reorganised by Leonard Cotton and survived for many years. Although the party seems to have been moribund by the 1960s it was revived by younger people and only finally dissolved in 1980. One splinter group in Edinburgh,
7007-417: The time being. The National Convention of 1889 upheld the policy of political action and the SLP was again active in the New York elections of 1890. In 1891, the party's electoral effort was led by the candidacy of Daniel De Leon for Governor of New York . De Leon polled a respectable 14,651 votes in the losing effort. The party nominated its first candidate for President of the United States in 1892,
7098-475: The viability of the existing system. Echoing the perspective of the American SLP, the majority of the Scottish SLP argued for the use of political action for propaganda and publicity purposes. The SLP was a highly disciplined and centralised organization. Following the lead of its American counterpart, it mandated that its central press should be directly owned by the party. The party sought to enforce
7189-522: The wake of an economic crisis, not one of the privately owned English newspapers had survived. In 1878, the party established its own English-language paper, The National Socialist, but managed to keep the publication alive only one year. The year 1878 saw the establishment of a more enduring newspaper: the German-language New Yorker Volkszeitung ( New York People's News ). The Volkszeitung included material by
7280-721: The workers against the militia in a strike. ... The arms-bearing tactics were opposed by the Executive Committee of the SLP, the Secretary of which was Philip van Patten. A fight ensued between the Verbote , which was the weekly edition of the Arbeiter Zeitung , of Chicago, and the Labor Bulletin , the official party organ which Patten edited. The SLP was electorally successfully in 1878 and 1879 with
7371-421: The writings of Karl Marx . In the fall of 1890, De Leon abandoned his academic career to devote himself full-time to the SLP. He was engaged in the spring of 1891 as the party's "National Lecturer", traveling the entire country from coast to coast to speak on the SLP's behalf. He was also named the SLP's candidate for Governor of New York in the fall of that same year, gathering a respectable 14,651 votes. As
7462-503: Was already in steep decline toward the start of the 1890s, when it won effective control of the New York District Assembly of the K of L in 1893. In that same year, socialist delegates to the governing General Assembly of the K of L were largely responsible for the defeat of Terence Powderly and his replacement by J. R. Sovereign as Grand Master Workman, the chief executive officer of the organization. So great
7553-493: Was also a linguist with few peers, possessing fluency in Spanish, German, Dutch, Latin, French, English and ancient Greek; and a reading knowledge of Portuguese, Italian and modern Greek. Upon graduation, De Leon immigrated to the United States, settling in New York City . There he made the acquaintance of a group of Cubans who sought the liberation of their native land and edited their Spanish-language newspaper. De Leon paid
7644-605: Was among the American radical movement was experienced by the rival anarchist organization, the International Working People's Association (IWPA), also sometimes referred to as the International Workingmen's Association. A split between the electorally oriented SLP and the revolution-minded IWPA, which took with it a good portion of the SLP's left-wing, including such prominent leaders as the English-speaking orator Albert Parsons and
7735-520: Was based upon local "Sections" coordinated by a loose National Executive Committee based in New York City. It was not until 1889 that any move was made to establish intermediate state levels of organization. The SLP did attempt to play an influence in the existing labor movement during the decade of the 1880s. As early as 1881, National Secretary Philip Van Patten joined the Order of the Knights of Labor ,
7826-431: Was forthcoming. The party's development was further hampered by Connolly's departure to the United States in September 1903, exacerbated by the resignation of the editor of The Socialist, George Yates, that same month. Still, the tiny group managed to persevere, with a young engineer named Neil Maclean serving as National Secretary. As was the case with the American party of the same name, from which it drew inspiration,
7917-473: Was not a petty tyrant who desired power for power's sake. Rather, he was a dogmatic idealist, devoted brain and soul to a cause, a zealot who could not tolerate heresy or backsliding, a doctrinaire who would make no compromise with principles. For this strong-willed man, this late nineteenth-century Grand Inquisitioner of American socialism, there was no middle ground. You were either a disciplined and undeviating Marxist or no socialist at all. You were either with
8008-603: Was not at this time sharply drawn in the Socialist organizations, in spite of the fact of their being opposites. Both being critics and denouncers of the present system, however, they were able to work together. As a result of the brutalities of the militia and regulars in the railway strikes of 1877 , a new plan was devised by the Chicago agitators. This found expression in the Lehr und Wehr Verein (teaching and defense society), an armed and drilled body of workmen pledged to protect
8099-565: Was seen as a great triumph for the SLP organization. In the spring of 1891, De Leon was set to work as the National Organizer for the SLP. He pioneered for an English-speaking organization on a cross-country six-week tour to the West Coast and back in April and May. In 1892, De Leon was elected editor of The Weekly People , the SLP's English-language official organ. He retained this important position without interruption for
8190-541: Was the SLP's influence that the newly elected Sovereign promised to appoint a member of the party as editor of the Journal of the Knights of Labor. When he recanted on this pledge, a bitter feud erupted, ending with the December 1895 General Assembly refusing to seat de facto SLP party leader Daniel De Leon as a delegate from District Assembly 49, resulting in an outright break of the two organizations and withdrawal of
8281-487: Was unable to field its own ticket in the 1876 presidential election and its members supported Peter Cooper and the Greenback Party instead. A 44-member delegation from the SLP was seated at the 1880 Greenback National Convention . The SLP ended its participation in electoral politics for a decade after the 1880 election. The years 1880 and 1881 saw a new influx of political refugees from Germany, activists in
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