While on holiday in the United States in 1881,
H. M. Hyndman read a copy of Karl Marx's
Das Capital. Hyndman was deeply
influenced by the book and decided to form a Marxist
political group when he arrived back in England. The Social Democratic
Federation (SDF) became the first Marxist political group in Britain
and over the next few months Hyndman was able to recruit trade unionists
such as Tom Mann and John
Burns into the organisation. Eleanor Marx,
Karl's youngest daughter became a member, and so did the artist and
poet, William Morris. Other members included
George Lansbury, Edward
Aveling, H. H. Champion and Ben
Tillet. Hyndman became editor of the SDF's newspaper, Justice.
By 1885 the organisation had over 700 members.
In the 1885 General Election, Hyndman and
Champion, without consulting their colleagues, accepted £340
from the Conservative Party to run
parliamentary candidates in Hampstead and Kensington. The objective
being to split the Liberal vote and therefore
enable the Conservative candidate
to win. This strategy did not work and the two SDF's candidates only
won 59 votes between them. The story leaked out and the political
reputation of both men suffered from the idea that they were willing
to accept "Tory Gold".
In 1886 the SDF became involved in organizing demonstrations against
low wages and unemployment. After one demonstration that led to a
riot in London, three of the SDF leaders, H.
M. Hyndman, John Burns and H.
H. Champion, were arrested but at their subsequent trial they
were acquitted.
Some
members of the Social Democratic Federation disapproved of Hyndman's
doctorial style and the way he encouraged people to use violence on
demonstrations. In December 1884 William Morris
and Eleanor Marx left to form a new group
called the Socialist League. H.
H. Champion, Tom Mann and John
Burns also left the party. Although the membership was never very
large, the Social Democratic Federation continued and in February
1900 the group joined with the Independent Labour
Party, the Fabian Society and several
trade union leaders to form the Labour Representation
Committee.
The Labour Representation Committee eventually evolved into the Labour
Party. Many members of the party were uncomfortable with the Marxism
of the SDF and Hyndman had very little influence over the development
of this political group. In August 1901 the SDF disaffiliated from
the Labour Party.
H. M. Hyndman eventually established a
new group, the British Socialist Party (BSP). The BSP had little impact
and like the SDF, failed to win any of the parliamentary elections
it contested.
Hyndman upset members of the BSP by supporting Britain's involvement
in the First World War. The party split
in two with Hyndman forming a new National Socialist Party. The Social
Democratic Federation continued as a separate organisation until 1939.
William
Morris designed the membership card
of the SDF
(1)
Tom Mann, Memoirs, (1923)
William Morris joined the Democratic Federation in 1883. He favoured
a distinctively Socialist policy, and his body became the Social Democratic
Federation in 1884. It soon became manifest that differences of opinion
existed, and no doubt some incompatibility action was a bone of contention.
William Morris and other members of the executive decided to resign,
and to form the Socialist League.
(2)
Edward Carpenter joined the Social Democratic
Federation in 1883.
My ideas had been taking a socialistic shape for many
years; but they were lacking in definite outline. That outline as
regards the industrial situation was given me by reading Hyndman's
England For All. Later on in the same year I one evening looked in
at a committee meeting of the Social Democratic Federation in Westminster
Bridge Road. It was in the basement of one of one of those big buildings
facing the House of Commons that I found a group of conspirators sitting.
There was Hyndman, occupying the chair, and with him round the table,
William Morris, John Burns, H. H. Champion, J. L. Joynes, Herbert
Burrows, and others.
(3)
George Lansbury, Looking Backwards
and Forwards (1935)
I was a great admirer of Henry George and believed firmly in the taxation
of land values. During the years 1886 to 1892 I came more and more
under the influence of William Morris and H. H. Hyndman, Will Thorne,
Tom Mann, Ben Tillet, and decided to join the Social Democrats.
(4)
Emanuel Shinwell,
Conflict Without Malice (1955)
My experience among the miners in some of the mining villages
of Fife and Lanarkshire was that the policy of the Social Democratic
Federation made a greater appeal than that of the I.L.P. The miner
everywhere is suspicious of novelty until he has studied its advantages
and disadvantages. The Social Democratic Federation was so close to
the old Radical movement that the miner could accept it without misgivings
despite the fact that it was essentially English, inspired by Marx's
best-known English disciple, H. M. Hyndman, and with little Scottish
blood in its hierarchy at the outset. England for All, the
title of Hyndman's exposition of the S.D.F. policy, was hardly conducive
to the creation of enthusiasm across the Border, though the nationalism
we know in Scotland today was not at the time so marked. In the event,
the S.D.F.'s powers soon declined, for England for All was
really just an anglicized simplification of Marxian views, written
without acknowledgment to the originator. Marx did not forget the
slight, and by the time I began to read Marx it was the I.L.P. which
had received the seal of approval from his collaborator, the other
great European Socialist force, Engels.
Two notable
S.D.F. members in my day, who played a leading part on the Clydeside,
deserve mention; the likeable but formidable Willie Gallagher, and
that great exponent of Socialism, John McLean, both of whom served
several terms of imprisonment because of their political activities.
(5)
David
Kirkwood, My Life of Revolt
(1935)
For some years before the outbreak of war I had been a Socialist,
but I had taken no part in any movement except the Trade Union and
Temperance. There were great discussions at that time about the Social
Democratic Federation, which was in turmoil. H. M. Hyndman and Harry
Quelch, two of the foremost pioneers of Socialism, were being opposed
by a younger school led by Yates, Matheson, and Tom Clark. When this
group failed in their effort to capture the Social Democratic Federation,
they formed the Socialist Labour Party. This Party had one outstanding
feature. It was purely educative, setting out to pervade the people
with the idea that in Socialism lay their only hope of economic progress.
They used to tell the people not to vote for them unless they were
in favour of Socialism. At that time there was a great deal of talk
among the working class that certain individuals took an interest
in the working-class movement only for
the fleshpots of Egypt - that is to say, to become well-paid Trade
Union officials. To prove that they were not of this type, the S.L.P.
made it a condition of membership not to take a paid position in the
Trade Union movement and to work for the cause and not for filthy
lucre.
(6)
Herbert
Morrison, An Autobiography
(1960)
I have to confess that my fidelity to the SDF was short-lived. While
a willing and interested student of Marx I was fed up with the excessive
adulation of the man and the attitude of the SDF leaders that he was
a prophet and his book akin to the Bible as regards the distillation
of truth in it. Hyndman's recurrent references to his friendship with
Marx were both boring and suspect.
Hyndman had talked to
Marx only once so far as anybody knew - in 1880. Twenty-six years
later he was still describing the master's conversation as if it had
happened yesterday. The suggestion that Marx liked and trusted Hyndman,
which the latter was never tired of explaining, was probably really
a confession that Hyndman had a childlike faith in, and unrequited
adoration for, Marx.
Marx was not the type
of man who liked anybody, least of all a rich and aristocratic young
man with the manners and accent bred into him at Eton and a high regard
for the genteel frock coat and top-hat without which Hyndman never
appeared in public.
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