(1)
Morgan Philips Price, My Three Revolutions (1969)
When I
was fourteen I went to Harrow. My father had been to Eton, but my
Trevelyan uncle and cousins had all been to Harrow, so my mother found
it easier to get my name down for a house. I was very glad she made
that choice. I owe much to Harrow and in all my later life have looked
back on the old School with veneration, love and respect. The object
of a 'gentleman's' education in those days was not to teach him to
work, but rather to enjoy his leisure, to join one of the armed forces
or the Church, and to be a pillar of society. The land-owning aristocracy
still had a big influence, especially in a school like Harrow. But
it had already been considerably tempered by the coming of the middle
classes through-
out the last part of the nineteenth century; and to be in successful
business and well-to-do was considered quite commendable when I was
at Harrow. In spite of certain barriers of aristocratic privilege
which could still be felt at the School, these barriers were breaking
down. New forces were springing up from below. The School was, in
fact, a microcosm of what was going on in the rest of the country
and change was slowly coming even then at the end of the Victorian
era.
(2)
Morgan Philips Price, speech as prospective Liberal
Party candidate in Gloucester
(1911)
What in
general we have to realize is that the State has to compromise between
private and public interests. Private interests, enterprise and initiative
must be allowed free play up to a point, but the great Liberal principle
is that wherever private interests can be shown to be in antagonism
to public interests, then the public interests must prevail. One of
the best ways of preventing abuse of private monopoly and privilege
is by the free exercise of economic laws or, in other words, by free
trade. I look also with great sympathy on the movement of organized
labour, because I maintain that if it is properly guided it can be
of the greatest progressive force in this country and I am sure that
in time the Labour movement will become an international movement
and the only great force that will secure international peace.
(3)
Morgan Philips Price, Union
of Democratic Control,
(July, 1917)
I have
been appalled at the abominable behaviour of the Northcliffe Press
in England, especially of its correspondent, Wilton, in Petrograd,
whom, by the way, I know quite well, for spreading the provocative
reports about the Union of Soldiers and Workers, and trying to discredit
them in Western Europe. I only hope the Russian people will turn the
Times correspondent out of Petrograd.
(4)
Morgan Philips Price, My Three Revolutions (1969)
All these
doubts about the circumstances under which we had become involved
in the First World War were welling up in my mind in the latter part
of 1914. In London, I went to see my cousin, Sir Charles Trevelyan,
who held the same views as I did, and together we went to see Bertrand
Russell, E. D. Morel, Arthur Ponsonby, Lowes Dickinson and Ramsay
Macdonald, who had made a very courageous speech in the House on the
declaration of War. I became one of the founder members of the Union
of Democratic Control: at that time we thought that the best way to
expose the European anarchy that had caused the War was to form a
society of this kind to which people who had not lost their heads
could belong. Also I sat down and wrote a book which was entitled
The Diplomatic History of the War. This aimed to show that
all the European Powers were in some way responsible for the disaster.
Messrs George Alien & Unwin displayed considerable courage in
publishing the book, which was heavily attacked by most reviewers,
as war fever was rapidly rising. Nevertheless, the book sold like
hot cakes and soon went to a second edition.
(5)
Morgan Philips Price, My Three Revolutions (1969)
All this
confirmed me in the view that I might be able to play some part in
helping to inform public opinion about Russia more accurately. I had
been to the country and spoke the language and I thought at once of
Mr C. P. Scott, the famous editor of the Manchester Guardian, for
whom I had already done some work during my journeys in Turkey and
the Middle East in the previous two years. So when I went up to Manchester,
as I regularly did, to see my aunt at the Philips' family home near
Prestwich, I went also to see C. P. Scott. He asked me to lunch at
his house in Fallowfield and there we arranged something that was
to become one of the turning points of my life. It turned out that
Scott had been thinking
just as I had. He scouted the whole idea that Tsarist Russia was going
to change as the result of being allied to us and France; rather he
feared the reverse might happen. He wanted someone to go to Russia
for the Manchester Guardian and keep him informed about what was happening
there. He might not be able to publish everything that was sent for
reasons connected with the War, but at least he wanted to be informed.
So it was fixed up that I should go out to Russia as correspondent
to the Manchester Guardian at least for the coming winter and for
longer if it proved desirable.
While I was still with him, Scott wrote, in immaculate French, a letter
to all concerned appointing me his correspondent in Russia.
(6)
Morgan Philips Price, My Three Revolutions (1969)
Lenin
struck me as being a man who, in spite of the revolutionary jargon
that he used, was aware of the obstacles facing him and his party.
There was no doubt that Lenin was the driving force behind the Bolshevik
Party and so of this second Russian Revolution. He was the brains
and the planner, but not the orator or the rabble-rouser. That function
fell to Trotsky. I watched the latter, several times that evening,
rouse the Congress delegates, who were becoming listless, probably
through long hours of excitement and waiting. He was always the man
who could say the right thing at the right moment. I could see that
there was beginning now that fruitful partnership between him and
Lenin that did so much to carry the Revolution through the critical
periods that were coming. What would have happened if they had not
been there, particularly Lenin, is one of the riddles of history.
Probably there would have been the same result in the end, but only
after long periods of chaos and distress. There was to be plenty of
that anyway, but without Lenin there would have been much more of
it. This fact clearly disproves the Marxist theory that objective
conditions alone determine the course of history. The personalities
of Lenin and Trotsky and their respective roles in the Revolution
shows that that is not so.
(7)
In his book, My Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution, Morgan
Philips Price described the demonstrations that took place in Russia
on 1st May, 1917.
I do not
think I ever saw a more impressive spectacle than on this occasion.
It was not merely a labour demonstration, although every socialist
party and workmen's union in Russia was represented there, from anarcho-syndicalists
to the most moderate of the middle-class democrats. It was not merely
an international demonstration, although every nationality of what
had been the Russian Empire was represented there with its flag and
inscription in some rare, strange tongue, from the Baltic Finns to
the Tunguses of Siberia. The First of May celebration, 1917, in Petrograd
and throughout the length and breadth of Russia was really a great
religious festival, in which the whole human race was invited to commemorate
the brotherhood of man. Revolutionary Russia had a message to the
world, and was telling it across the roar of the cannons and the din
of battle.
(8) Morgan Philips Price, Manchester Guardian
(17th July, 1917)
There then rose upon the tribune a man whose name has been on all
lips for many weeks past - Lenin. He is a short man with a round head,
small pig-like eyes, and close-cropped hair. The words poured from
his mouth, overwhelming all in a flood of oratory. One sat spellbound
at his command of language and the passion of his denunciation. But
when it was all over one felt inclined to scratch one's head and ask
what it was all about.
(9)
Morgan Philips Price, Manchester Guardian
(17th July, 1917)
In a large
house in the main street I found the headquarters of the Kronstadt
Soviet. With some little misgiving I passed by the sentries and asked
to see the President. I was taken into a room, where I saw a young
man with a red badge on his coat looking through some papers, who
appeared to be a student. He had long hair and dreamy eyes, with a
far-off look of an idealist. This was the elected President of the
Kronstadt Workers', Soldiers' and Sailors Soviet.
"Be
seated," he said. "I suppose you have come down here from
Petrograd to see if all the stories about our terror are true. You
will probably have observed that there is nothing extraordinary going
on here; we are simply putting this place into order after the tyranny
and chaos of the late Tsarist regime. The workmen, soldiers and sailors
here find that they can do this job better by themselves than by leaving
it to people who call themselves democrats, but are really friends
of the old regime. That is why we have declared the Konstadt Soviet
the supreme authority in the island."
"The
soldiers and sailors were treated on this island like dogs. They were
worked from early morning till late at night. They were not allowed
any recreations for fear that they would associate for political purposes.
Nowhere could you study the slavery system of capitalist imperialism
better than here. For the smallest misdemeanor a man was put in chains,
and if he was found with a Socialist pamphlet in his possession he
was shot."
I was taken
to a prison on the south side of the island, where were kept the former
military police, gendarmes, police spies and provocateurs of fallen
Tsarism. The quarters were very bad, and many of the cells had no
windows at all.
I met a
Major-General, formerly in command of the fortress artillery of Kronstadt.
He stood in his shirt-sleeves - no medalled tunic decorated his breast
any more. His red-striped trousers of Prussian blue bore signs of
three months' wear in confinement. Sheepishly he looked at me, as
if uncertain whether it was dignified for him to tell his troubles
to a stray foreigner.
"I
wish they would bring some indictment against us," he said at
length, "for to sit here for three months and not to know what
our fate is to be is rather hard." "And I sat here, not
three months, but three years," broke in the sailor guard who
was taking us round, "and I didn't know what was going to happen
to me, although my only offence was that I had been distributing a
pamphlet on the life of Karl Marx."
I pointed
out to the sailor that the prison accommodation was unfit for a human
being. He answered, "Well, I sat here all that time because of
these gentlemen, and I think that if they had known they were going
to sit here they would have made better prisons!"
(10)
Morgan Philips Price, wrote a memorandum about the Bolsheviks
on 28th October, 1917.
The soldiers
in the garrison towns in the rear follow the Bolsheviks to a man;
and small wonder; for what interest have they to leave the towns and
go to sit in trenches to fight about something that is of no interest
to them, especially when they know that at the front they will get
neither food to eat nor proper clothes against the winter cold? The
workers in the factories are also strongly inclined to go with the
Bolsheviks, because they know that only the end of the war will give
them the food, for the lack of which they are half-starving.
(11)
In his book My Reminiscences of the Russian Revolution, Morgan
Philips Price, described a speech made by Irakli
Tsereteli when the Bolsheviks
were threatening to close down the Constituent Assembly.
In this
swan-song apology for the history of the previous eight months, Tsereteli
was the same as ever - thoughtful, unemotional, philosophic, calm,
like some Zeus from Olympus, contemplating the conflicts of the lesser
gods. "The Constituent Assembly," he said, "elected
democratically by the whole country, should be the highest authority
in the land. If this is so, then why should an ultimatum be sent to
it by the Central Soviet Executive? Such an ultimatum can only mean
the intensification of civil war. Will this help to realize Socialism?"
On the contrary, it will only assist the German militarists to divide
the revolutionary front. The break-up of the Constituent Assembly
will only serve the interests of the bourgeoisie, whom you (the Bolsheviks)
profess to be fighting. The Assembly alone can save the Revolution.
(12)
Morgan Philips Price, Manchester
Guardian (19th November 1917)
The Government
of Kerensky fell before the Bolshevik insurgents because it had no
supporters in the country. The bourgeois parties and the generals
and the staff disliked it because it would not establish a military
dictatorship. The Revolutionary Democracy lost faith in it because
after eight months it had neither given land to the peasants nor established
State control of industries, nor advanced the cause of the Russian
peace programme. Instead it brought off the July advance without any
guarantee that the Allies had agreed to reconsider war aims. The Bolsheviks
thus acquired great support all over the country. In my journey in
the provinces in September and October I noticed that every local
Soviet had been captured by them. The Executive Committee of the All-Russia
Council of Workers' and Soldiers' Delegates elected last summer clearly
did not represent the feelings of the revolutionary masses in October.
The Bolsheviks, therefore, insisted on a re-election and the summoning
of a second All-Russia Soviet Congress, only the Right Wing of the
Socialist parties opposing this. After the statement of Mr Bonar Law
that the Paris Conference was only for military purposes, they seemed
to have decided on armed rebellion.
(13)
Manchester Guardian (8th
January 1918)
Our Petrograd
correspondent, in his interesting and candid analysis of the Bolshevik
policy, tells us that the Germans are anxious to hurry negotiations
in order to show results, whereas the Russians, knowing the internal
conditions in Germany, want rather to gain time in order that the
inner meaning of the crisis may sink into the minds of the German
people. They hope to produce a dangerous political crisis in Germany
and even disaffection among the German troops.
Our Petrograd
correspondent is also very frank about the difficulties of the Bolsheviks.
Some of them seem to be saying that, if the Allies do not accept their
principles and join in the negotiations, that will relieve them from
insisting on the principle of self-determination elsewhere. That,
of course, is a threat. When will the English people understand that
in questions of international policy, they are not in the position
of school-masters awarding marks for good conduct and moral excellence!
We are not called upon to pronounce an opinion on the Bolsheviks,
but to defend the interests of our own country and (though here the
responsibility is divided with others) of humanity at large. We know
of no way of helping British interests except through the Bolsheviks.
Whether they are potentially wise or not is not the question. Did
we ask that question when the Tsar was in power, when we concluded
our arrangements with Russia with regard to Asia?
(14)
Manchester Guardian (31st
January 1918)
The Allied
Imperialists accuse us of being the agents of Germany. The German
Imperialists accuse us of being the agents of the Allies. The combined
accusations, neutralizing each other, prove the hypocrisy of both
and our honesty. Hindenburg knows he cannot break the West Front and
hopes to strengthen the Prussian oligarchy at the expense of revolutionary
Russia. Their psychology is such that they think that since Russia
wants peace at any cost, and they want peace at Russia's cost, the
more they demand the more they will get. This is not a national and
territorial but a class struggle, for the Prussian oligarchy wants
to save the German aristocracy in the Baltic provinces from ruin at
the hands of the Russian Revolution. How cynical and hypocritical
are the Allied Imperialists who seem ready to agree to a compromise
and an annexationist's peace at the expense of Russia. What else did
Lloyd-George mean when he said Russia should make her own terms with
Germany?
(15)
Morgan Philips Price, My Three Revolutions (1969)
Karl Radek
had furnished me in Moscow with introductions to Karl Liebknecht and
Rosa Luxemburg, the famous Spartakist leaders in Germany. So I began
to search for them and, after a while, I found the headquarters of
the Spartakusbund, the most revolutionary of all the German Left parties.
After my credentials had been carefully inspected, I was taken to
see Rosa Luxemburg.
A slight
little woman, she showed at once a powerful intellect and a quiet
grasp of any given situation. She had heard about me and of the fact
that I had taken up a strong stand against the Allied intervention
in Russia. She proceeded to question me about the situation in Russia.
I told her how the White Counter-Revolution had been beaten on the
Volga and thrown back to Siberia, but that Lenin had spoken to me
not long before with some apprehension of the possibility of Allied
military support for the Russian Whites in South Russia, now that
the Dardanelles and Black Sea were open to British and French warships.
Then she asked me a question, the significance of which I did not
appreciate at the time. She asked me if the Soviets were working entirely
satisfactorily. I replied, with some surprise, that of course they
were. She looked at me for a moment, and I remember an indication
of slight doubt on her face, but she said nothing more. Then we talked
about something else and soon after that I left.
Though
at the moment when she asked me that question I was a little taken
aback, I soon forgot about it. I was still so dedicated to the Russian
Revolution, which I had been defending against the Western Allies'
war of intervention, that I had had no time for anything else. But
a week or two later I began to hear that Rosa Luxemburg differed from
Lenin on several matters of revolutionary policy, and especially about
the role of the Communist Party in the Workers' and Peasants' Councils,
or Soviets. She did not like the Russian Communist Party monopolizing
all power in the Soviets and expelling anyone who disagreed with it.
She feared that Lenin's policy had brought about, not the dictatorship
of the working classes over the middle classes, which she approved
of but the dictatorship of the Communist Party over the working classes.
The dictatorship of a class - yes, she said, but not the dictatorship
of a party over a class. Later, I began to see that Luxemburg had
much wisdom in her attitude, though it was not apparent to me at the
time. Looking back, it seems that she was not so critical of Lenin's
tactics for Russia. She did not want them applied to Germany. Alas,
she never lived to use her influence on her colleagues in the Spartakusbund
for more than a few weeks after I saw her.
(16)
Morgan Philips Price, My Three Revolutions (1969)
I found
that the cost of upkeep of the farms was swallowing up the whole of
the estate rents and more. Inflation of costs and prices had made
deficits on landed estates inevitable. So I finally decided to sell
half the farms on the Tibberton estate and use the money for the upkeep
and improvement of the remaining farms and for house-building. Meanwhile,
I gave a considerable sum, which had accumulated as dividends from
the timber business, to the Daily Herald. For George Lansbury then
required help to build the paper up and, being a paper of the Left,
it had a hard struggle to make good in a country where the newspaper
industry was commercialized. So I gave my brother Power of Attorney
to pay to George Lansbury £15,000 to help the Daily Herald.
(17)
Morgan Philips Price, My Three Revolutions
(1969)
Early
in the summer vacation (August 21st) the Labour Government resigned
and each Labour M.P. received a letter from the Prime Minister informing
him that he had felt constrained to form a National Government and
had secured the support of Mr Baldwin, the leader of the Opposition.
Some Conservative Members would be taken into the Government. Mr Snowden
and Mr J. H. Thomas had agreed to continue in their offices and it
was hoped that the Parliamentary Labour Party would agree with what
had been done. At the same time a message arrived summoning all Labour
M.P.s
to attend a meeting of the Parliamentary Party in London. Incredibly,
I was playing cricket when it arrived. I rushed up to
London at once. I found Members delighted that Ramsay Macdonald, Philip
Snowden and J. H. Thomas had severed themselves from us by their action.
We had got rid of the Right Wing without any effort on our part. No
one trusted Mr Thomas and Philip Snowden was recognized to be a nineteenth-century
Liberal with no longer any place amongst us. State action to remedy
the economic crisis was anathema to him. As for Ramsay Macdonald,
he was obviously losing his grip on affairs. He had no background
of knowledge of economic and financial questions and was hopelessly
at sea in a crisis like this. But many, if not most, of the Labour
M.P.s thought that at an election we should win hands down. I was
not so optimistic and wrote in a memorandum which I published in a
local paper in my constituency at the time. "The country is thoroughly
frightened and our Party has not proved that it has an alternative
policy or the courage to put one through if it had one."
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