(1) Guy Aldred, No Traitors' Gait (1955)

Early in 1904, discussions in Hyde Park and at the Peel Institute, references to Professor Huxley at the Agnostic Journal office, my own dissatisfaction with mere metaphysics, caused me to study Thomas Huxley. As he was noted for his popularising of science and of Darwin, his Romanes address of 1893 on Evolution and Ethics had a special appeal to me. It made me into a complete socialist .... In his Romanes lecture, Huxley insisted that "the influence of the cosmic process on society is the greater the more rudimentary its civilisation." He spoke of social progress checking the cosmic process at every step, and substituting it for the ethical process. It thus repudiated the gladitorial theory of existence, and permitted Huxley to rebuke "the fanatical individualism of our time" for attempting to apply the analogy of cosmic nature to society....

Social life, and the ethical process in virtue of which it advances towards perfection Huxley defines as being, strictly speaking, "part and parcel of the general process of evolution." Readers of Kropotkin will see in this a support of the latter's view of "mutual aid" as a "factor in evolution". It must be remembered, however, that Huxley's "Ethical process" is developed by its author into a plea for sentimentalism and loyalty to the interests of an abstraction termed "the community". I believe in the community - in a different social order - but I see only two classes today. Huxley sees no classes, only a`community". And Kropotkin's mutual aid tends to create faith in the same paralysing and fatal abstraction.. All this was not clear to me at the time. Huxley has pleaded powerfully the grandeur of the anarchist ideal .... I became emancipated from Neo-Darwinian fears. Capitalism and the struggle for existence were not the last words in social evolution. Equity, mutual aid, freedom, justice, etc. did represent realisable ideals... .This vision of the coming social harmony, this conviction that the new era would dawn, filled me with new energy. I knew that I had to leave the capitalist parties and enter the real movement; that of socialism and working-class emancipation. So I turned my back on compromise and radicalism, on liberal labourism, and pure-and-simple secularism, and joined the Social Democratic Federation.

 

(2) The Reynold's News (21st July, 1907)

Owing to the bigotry and monopolising tendencies of an East End divine, the rights of free speech are being jeopardised at Leman Street East, near the railway arches. On Sunday last, Mr. Guy A. Aldred, a freethought and communist writer and lecturer, and General Secretary of the "Industrial Union of Direct Actionists'" convened a meeting there, but came in conflict with the local police. On his affirming his right to be heard, the intervention of eight policemen notwithstanding, a temporary truce was concluded, Mr. Aldred agreeing to give up his meeting on the condition the police at once closed down the Christian meeting. This was done. Mr. Aldred will organise a series of meetings at this spot, and thus challenge the right of the police to interrupt the right of free speech.

 

(3) The Liverpool Porcupine (September 1907)

It is only a young man - a very young man - who could swallow all that (Free Love, Anarchism, Impossibilism, etc.) at once, and at the same time have the courage - we almost said audacity - to expound so profound a doctrine from the public platform. What it all means no-one - unless exceptionally gifted - can understand, but at all events it strikes at the very roots of organised society. So let the capitalists beware, Mr. Aldred is very much in earnest, and he.... means to turn the world topsy-turvy, so it is just as well that he commenced young... He is in his person a fascinating study and his lectures are delivered with a gravity of style which is in singular contrast to his youthful appearance. He is by turns cynical, argumentative and humorous, and he shows his ability by the manner in which he controls his audience - especially when antagonistic. Altogether one whose career will be watched with interest. But what a programme!

 

(4) Guy Aldred, No Traitors' Gait (1955)

There is no doubt that 1907 was a most important year in the development of my life and thought. It was a period of political and revolutionary research and stocktaking. Then I associated more intimately, wisely or unwisely, with Rose Witcop. A domestic crisis confronted me because I had stalked out of Fleet Street with all its promise, and decided on an independent life. This completed the breakdown with my mother, who knew nothing of free-lance activity and was horrified at the thought that I should refuse to work at the office of a great London newspaper. Such a terrible thing to do!

There were moments when worry and study and even propaganda were forgotten. I recall one Saturday when I went out to Chingford Old Mount with Rose Witcop. It was a beautiful day. And there there was an old-world garden and house called Rose Cottage, quaint and very cottagey. There tea and cakes, and eggs boiled or fried, were served in the garden. It was completely old-world and away from everywhere. There one sat and drank tea and romanced. Rose Cottage was run by two old ladies whose charges were certainly not excessive. They exuded beauty in their attitude and their garden was a haven. Alas! they were quite old, and unless they are near one hundred and twenty years of age they must have passed away by now. So ruthless is time and destiny!'

 

(5) Guy Aldred, No Traitors' Gait (1955)

I explained my attitude. I accepted the idea that marriage was a secular contract and not a church sacrament. Mating was a contract between two people. It need not be registered. There was nothing immoral in two people mating, and not promising to matefor life. The promise was void from the very start, for neither party knew if it would hold for life. Arising out of such mating there were obligations and duties that arose from ethics and self-respect, and had no necessary relation to love. Regard for children, if children resulted, was a duty of affection. Even without affection it remained a duty to be discharged. In current monogamic society, woman was denied equal status with man. Motherhood was not regarded as a service to the community, therefore the man ought to provide the means of support for his children.

This brought me to other questions. In the first instance, I deemed woman the equal of man. Therefore she should retain her birth-name in marriage. In the second instance, I considered that `born in wedlock' a male property disqualification of many children not so born. It was a stigma that some sensitive offspring felt for an alleged "sin" of which they were innocent. It was opposed to sound law and every principle of equity. All children ought to be deemed legitimate. Other things being equal, the mother ought to rank, in every case, as the real deciding parent in law. The man should support all his children equally.

I went further. I stated that it was said that sex relationship was necessary to the physical and mental well-being of every adult person; if this were so, since there were more women than men in society, there must be sex association outside of legal mating. (Mother was horrified.) This meant either some kind of promiscuity, or, even accepted without recognition, polygamy. Actually, legal marriage testified to the truth of this fact. Many women did not mind their husbands associating with prostitutes, or even having mistresses, as long as they could say "Here is my wedding ring! Here are my lines! He belongs to me!"

To my mind all this was immoral, and merely a survival of chattel slavery. I did not believe that the love emotion was exclusive always. It might be better if it were. The fact was that marriage did not work. Hence the scandals in papist society, and the divorce laws in Protestant countries. In any case, neither church nor State could seal men and women in marriage. No woman should substitute her name nor attach a handle "Mrs." or "Miss" to it because she had declared before a Registrar or Priest her intention of sharing her lot with a male companion. And if the male died first her name might change again. In short, her life, in time, would read like a house passing from person to person. A disgraceful state of affairs.

 

(6) Guy Aldred, The Spur (May 1917)

The other day we strolled from the Higher Barracks to our present residence, the City Workhouse, Hevitree Hill, Exeter. We were under military police escort, and were unable to take that interest in our surroundings that we would have liked. But we noticed a big flaming placard, announcing tht convening of a meeting to celebrate the Russian Revolution. We smiled. In Wandsworth we had Lansbury's Herald announcing meetings in London to celebrate the same event. And we knew that throughout the country the great "British Nation", whatever that entity might be, was rejoicing and waxing exceeding glad at the overthrow of Tsarism. The smile deepened, for we knew something of the celebrators and their antecedents.

 

(7) The Glasgow Evening News (20th June, 1921)

A somewhat unusual calendar of cases was submitted at the sitting of the Glasgow High Court, which commenced at Justiciary Buildings, Jail Square, today.

In all, there are 29 cases involving 74 persons. Two capital charges are included in the list, but most interest will centre on trials in which a Sinn Fein element is introduced. Several batches of individuals are charged with one or other of the following offences: sedition, illegal drilling, contravention of the Explosive Substances Act, mobbing and rioting.

Unprecedented interest was taken in the Court proceedings. Hundreds of persons gathered outside the Court Buildings.... Demands for admission to the Court gallery were heavy, and the police took the precaution of seaching every person who entered the Court precincts.

A long legal discussion heralded the commencement of the sedition charges against Guy Alfred Aldred.... Mr. Aldred, who was undefended, held that there was nothing seditious in the statements.

 

(8) The Glasgow Evening News (21st June, 1921)

Aldred, who last night spoke for over an hour, today occupied another hour in his resumed address to the jury. He recalled the speeches made eight years ago by Sir Edward Carson and Lord Birkenhead, speeches that were so well calculated to incite to violence and sedition that they prevented a constitutional solution to the Irish problem, and were responsible for the murders and outrages taking place in Ireland today. Those men were now honoured Judges in England, and what the workers felt was that if you preached sedition in a certain way you might be honoured by being required to fill the highest positions in the land; but the workers, who were without culture and University education, and said things bluntly, found that a different attitude was taken to everything they might say.

 

(9) Patrick Dollan, The Daily Herald (21st June, 1921)

In continuation of his defence, Aldred spoke for a futher hour this forenoon, and in an eloquent plea for free speech said that Communism might be wrong, but a free Press was always right. He reminded the jury that the Liberals had threatened to destroy the House of Lords and were not prosecuted. If that was proper advocacy it was equally proper to urge the destruction of the House of Commons as an agency of government.

 

(10) Chris Dolan, An Anarchist's Story (2009)

Guy considered many kinds of responses to oppression and poverty, from social democracy to communism, but finally settled on the revolutionary left. He read Bakunin and agreed that authority itself must be challenged. In the first decade of the twentieth century, he published a series of Pamphlets for the Proletarians, in one of which he asked "Was Marx an anarchist?"

Aldred's thinking on feminism and male power brought him to believe that marriage was a male form of institutional oppression, and it was as an advocate of "free love" that Guy Aldred first hit the headlines. We should remember that that term had different connotations at the turn of the twentieth century than it does today. Aldred's thinking on the matter would be nearer to William Stewart Ross's and Robert Owen's than to, say, Allen Ginsberg's and the counter-culturalists of the -1950s and 1960s, the focus more on eliminating the State's and the Church's involvement in any personal contract between a man and woman, than on the right to multiple partners or promiscuity. Aldred, however, would have defended any person's right to love whomsoever they wished.

His partner from 1907 was Rose Witcop. They were not married, and had a son, Annesley. Unlike Emmeline Pankhurst, Aldred was a conscientious objector during World War I - serving a prison sentence as a result. Rose's cause celebre was family planning and birth control, and for their speeches and writings on these subjects they were both arrested. The government tried to silence Rose by threatening to deport her - Rose, nee Rachel Vitkopski, was Jewish and born in the Ukraine. Deportation was avoided by her marriage - after, in fact, they were estranged - to Guy.

Aldred was next in trouble over a different matter. Naturally an exponent of Home Rule and dismantling of the colonial system, he was arrested for publishing an article by Shyamji Krishnavarma. The Indian nationalist's writings had already been legally declared seditious and were banned; Aldred published the article under his own name, which earned him twelve months' hard labour.

His connections with Scotland were cemented when the Clarion Scouts invited him to speak in Glasgow The Scouts were a youth socialist pioneer group, a progressive take on Christian Fellowships. Launched in the last decade of the nineteenth century, they organised bike rides in the country, camping trips, weekend activities, all of which ultimately led to the formation of Socialist Sunday Schools. At the time they were not allied to any particular party, but worked with the ILP and anarchists alike. The Scouts invited Guy to speak in 1912, and he attracted such a crowd and enthusiastic responses to his ideas on women, free speech and worker self-determination that he was invited on a regular basis.'the connection with Glasgow was put on hold, however, when he was court-martialled for refusing to fight or even drill for the 3rd London Rifles, and spent another spell of hard labour - drilling and digging - in a military compound.

 

(11) Guy Aldred, Trade Unions and Class War (1919)

The struggle of the Tolpuddle Martyrs for the right of combination under the Reform Ministry of 1832 marks the beginnings of British Trade Unionism. The glamour of romance which belongs to its origin has contributed to its successful development as a social institution. Eight years after the Repeal of the Combination laws, Trade Unionism was deemed an illegal conspiracy. Today, it is a bulwark of the capitalist system. Something more than tradition is necessary to explain this passage from outlawry to respectability. The explanation is an economic one. Trade Unionism has conquered social power and commanded influence in so far as it satisfied and arose from the social necessities of the capitalist epoch. Because it has answered capitalist needs, the Trade Union has qualified for its modern position as the sign manual of skilled labour.

But the growth in social and political importance of the Trade Union leader has not menaced the foundations of capitalist society. He has been cited more and more as the friend of reform and the enemy of revolution. It has been urged that he is a sober and responsible member of capitalist society. Consequently, capitalist apologists have been obliged to acknowledge that he discharged useful and important functions in society.

This admission has forced them to assert that the law of supply and demand does not determine, with exactness, the nominal - or even the actual price of the commodity, labour power. Hence it has been allowed that Trade Unions enable their members to increase the amount of the price received for their labour-power, without being hurtful to the interests of the commonwealth-i.e. the capitalist class-when conducted with moderation and fairness.

Modern Trade Unionism enjoys this respectable reputation to a very large extent because it has sacrificed its original vitality. This was inevitable, since, in its very origin, it was reformist and not revolutionary. Trade Unionism has sacrificed no economic principle during its century's development. It has surrendered no industrial or political consistency. But it has not maintained its early earnestness or sentiment of solidarity. Had it done so, it would have been compelled to have evolved socially and politically. Instead of stagnating in reform, it would have had to progress towards revolution.

The Trade Union apologist, consistently with his reformist out-look, has had to defend the restrictive tendencies of sectional organisation. He has had to deny the revolutionary solidarity of labour in order to defend the Union manufacture of blacklegs. He has rejoiced in a craft organisation that materially injures the interests of labour as a whole, without even benefiting it sectionally. He has shown no qualms about supporting a representative system of administration, which betrays the worker to capitalist interests.

All this activity proceeds inevitably from the belief that Trade Unionism benefits the worker economically. It follows naturally from the notion that the worker can improve his social and economic status under capitalism.

Trade Unionism, therefore, is intelligible only on the ground that reform is possible and revolution unnecessary. Industrial palliation, like political palliation, is based on the understanding that no epoch ever attains to a crisis. This is the best that can be said for the necessity of Trade Unionism.

But suppose that the law of supply and demand does determine, with exactness, the nominal as well as the actual price of the commodity, labour power?

Then the best that can be said for the necessity of Trade Unionism as opposed to revolutionary communist organisation and action has ceased to possess any meaning.

To develop this economic argument in favour of the social revolution, and against Trade Union reform, is my purpose in writing the present brochure.

 

(12) Guy Aldred, Communism (1935)

The terrible massacre of the Kronstadt sailors by Trotsky in March 1921, whom Trotsky had previously termed the flower of the Revolution, and the support of Trotsky by Zinoviev and Dibenko, was a shameless and shameful affair. The fortress and city were bombarded for ten days and it cannot be pretended that the sailors were moved by peasant ideas or that they were other than genuine Socialists or Communists. Trotsky's conduct was defended and even applauded in the Communist press of the world by Radek, who immediately after the October 1917 Revolution boasted a luxurious apartment and maid-servant. Radek's apology no longer carries weight for time exposed him as a panderer. He defended Trotsky's own exile and expulsion and the persecution of Rakovsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev. Radek's 1921 apology was made worthless by his subsequent record and castigation by Trotsky. If we are to accept Radek's apology for Kronstadt in 1921, then we must accept Radek's apology for Stalinism and the Stalinist persecution of Trotsky from 1927 on to the time of his assassination. Radek's own trial and " confession " put him out of court entirely as a witness.

The Kronstadt massacre was succeeded a month lator by the massacre of the Moscow Anarchists when Trotsky shelled their headquarters and finally abolished their propaganda. All this was justified on the ground that Anarchists were counter-revolutionists. Stalin has popularised this cry so thoroughly that no genuine revolutionist takes it seriously. Robespierre assassinated the French Revolution and finally himself by this very same parrot cry of counterrevolution. Men do embrace counter-revolutionary philosophy and they do pursue counter-revolutionary policies; but it does not follow that we must therefore give heed to every clamorous cry of counter-revolution when it is dictated by the hysterical needs of an aspiring bureaucrat, whose aim is to arrest the development of the revolution and to build his sect, or his party, or his clique into the edifice of power.

There were Communist elements, of a definite Anti-Parliamentarian kind, who found no place in the Communist lnternational or else were allowed merely a subsidiary and altogethcr temporary representation at the opening sessions. It may be claimed therefore that the Communist International like the triumph of Leninism in Russia contained in itself the seeds of Stalinism and of later degeneration. That was not obvious at the beginning because the success in Russia of Lenin and Trotsky was an historical success just as the failure of Stalin is an historical failure. The function of Trotskyism is to direct proletarian attention to that failure and in that way to call our attention to the real object and nature of Communist agitation and struggle. For the purpose of comparison, and for this purpose only, and not because we accept the cry, " Back to Lenin," those of us who were Communists before the Russian Revolution of 1917, and remain Communists, now that revolution has passed into history, agree that the Stalin leadership registered the decline of the International to stagnation and death. We differ from Trotskyism in that the Trotskyists think that there was a time when the Communist International really lived as a healthy expression of the workers' struggle. We claim that the Communist International enjoyed only a feverish existence as the after-birth of the Russian Revolution. It was doomed to disaster and to death from the moment of its foundation for its very organisation made it impossible for it to function except as the ramification of the Russian Revolution.

The pet fallacy of Stalinism, "Socialism in One Country," meaning literally, "Capitalism and Dictatorship in Russia," was foreshadowed in every thesis of the Communist International. This fact was not realised by the sections that belonged to the Communist International and it may, therefore, be perfectly true that Trotsky reacted to ideas of Socialism, which were quite foreign to the understanding of Stalin. It is also correct to realise that large sections of the Communist comrades in Russia believed in the proletarian struggle and considered that the Communist International expressed that struggle. To these elements the difference between the two periods of the Communist International will be absolutely real. It is our duty to consider exactly what happened during the evolution of the Stalin leadership.

The Spanish crisis found the Communist International powerless to act because there was no Communist party and no Spanish proletarian policy. Stalinism confronted the fact of the Spanish Revolution with the same blankness of vision as was exhibited by the Second International in August 1914. In every other portion of the globe, even in places where the Comintern had boasted of its mass parties, or its parties on the road to embracing masses, the local section of the International, at the moment of the local crisis, writhed in the agony of impotence.

 

(13) John Taylor Caldwell, Come Dungeons Dark: The Life and Times of Guy Aldred (1988)

The Strickland Pres had some hard times financially, for Aldred always worked to the limit of his capacity. He had little sense of "market potential" and over-printed enormously. He never estimated a cost to find a price, and consistently under-charged. He was lavish in the distribution of free copies, and conducted a postal mission which took The Word to most parts of the world where a glimmer of political awareness was manifest. But the price Aldred had to pay was a constant struggle to keep abreast of his creditors.

He had constantly to appeal for funds. This position worsened when, the war over and the soldiers back at work, the Typographical Society refused to allow suppliers to serve The Strickland Press because it "employed women". Those responsible for imposing"the ban knew well that Ethel Macdonald and Jenny Patrick were not "employed" by the Press, and that whatever reason (if there could have been any) for not allowing women to work at the trade, the Strickland Press was a special case. Guy, Jenny and Ethel were veteran socialists, and they had all been in prison for upholding the cause of the workers. The phrase `male chauvinist pig' had not been coined in those days, but it is still not too late to have it engraved on the tombstones of the Typographical Society officials of that time.

(14) Guy Aldred, speech (7th April, 1946)

Consider the world today, and see how stupid, how thoughtless, is all our activity. In this city tonight a meeting is being addressed by a leading freethinker, Joseph McCabe, a man of about eighty years of age. He had travelled nearly five hundred miles in wintry weather to address a meeting in a cinema. And what is his subject? "Can Christiantity Survive?" It shows how far we have fallen when the leader of a once radical movement can travel so far to speak on such an inane subject. What does the survival of Christianity matter when we are faced with the possible destruction of millions of human beings? Amore important subject would be "Can Man Survive?" What we need to consider is, what to do to prevent world chaos.

Surely it is evident that our past propaganda is getting out of touch with the world of fact. We must change our method of approach. In a world where distance is annihilated we must alter the focus of our vision. In a world growing smaller we must develop an all-embracing world outlook. We must propagate the idea of a world republic, with a world citizenship.Nationalism must be ended... And so must inter-nationalism, for internationalism implies nationalism, and the representation of national governments. What we require is the direct representation of the people of the world as world citizens in a non-national assembly.

 

(15) Guy Aldred, The Word (January, 1961)

I see no kindness, no friendship, no regard for mankind, no purpose in the universe. It is a miracle that cannot be explained. It seems to be a wonderful evolution from cause to effect, although there seems to be no cause and the effect is without intelligence or aim. So, for for my part, I do not believe in God. That was also the belief of Ethel... Yet for some strange reason a contradiction arises within us. We do change the world. One generation merges into another. The hopes of yesterday's heroes and martyrs become the inspiring slogans of today, passed on to the heroes of tomorrow ... In this frame of sorrow I turn from the lifeless body of my comrade to associate with those in whom still dwells the consciousness of being.

 

(16) Guy Aldred, The Word (October, 1962)

As this paper goes to press news has come that Kruschev has agreed to remove "Offensive" weapons from Cuba. The American people are jubilant. This is hailed as a great victory for President Kennedy. It will be some time before the Americans realise the (for them) chilling truth that Kruschev has run diplomatic rings round Kennedy. Without moving a single Russian soldier, or even raising his voice in anger, he has defeated the intention of the entire military might of the United States, and he has honoured his pledge to go to the aid of Cuba if she were threatened. It should be remembered that the main issue was the invasion of Cuba. The U.S. was building up a force for that purpose before the discovery of the rocket bases. Now they are defeated in that intention. Time will show the Russian leader to have been the better man because (a) he (unlike Kennedy) was not prepared to destroy the world to have rocket bases removed from his doorstep. (b) By building up a secondary point (rocket bases) and then seeming to give way on that, he has scored a victory for the main issue. Krusch¬ev has not lost Cuba. Kennedy has.

 

(17) Scottish Daily Mail (Nocember, 1962)

He has been called the "knickerbocker politician" because of his unshakeable loyalty to that Victorian fashion (probably the only conservative element in his make-up). He has been hated, feared, reviled and imprisoned for his political beliefs. But today, by the odd switch of feeling that only the British public can manage, Guy A. Aldred, Independent Socialist candidate in the Woodside bye-election, is regarded with a good-natured tolerant affection. None of the other candidates can even begin to match the experience and record of Aldred.... It is impossible to believe that this vigorously articulate man is 76 years old. There is not much grey in the dark hair brushed straight back. The black, fuzzy eyebrows twitch as he emphasises a point. But the real gold is in the flow of words. The voice has the slightly brassy, carrying note of one who has learned his public speaking in the tough, street-corner, pre-microphone days, when a man with message had to make himself heard through his own fervour and lung power... The reason for Aldred's private strength and public ineffectiveness, lies, I think, in the fact that he is always the non-conformist who cannot compromise.

 

(18) Guy Aldred, speech (2nd June, 1963)

The title of my address is easy to understand. It arises from a consideration of the state of mankind on Earth coupled with Man's ambition to conquer the heavens. Whether this desire to explore the heavens is right or wrong, whether it is useless or useful, I cannot say. It has a touch of romance, and a touch of bravery, but it seems to me somewhat futile... In every generation Man strives to secure one thing - the conquest of the needs of his mortal existence, to extend his life as fully as possible, and also to procure some degree of happiness. He wants to overcome a sense of insecurity that clings to him and oppresses him. Whether he is doing so in these space operations or not I cannot say.

It is said by those who are behind this very materialist concept of the conquest of the heavens, that Marxism is an expression of materialism. But the strange thing is that Marxists - and every kind of socialist for that matter - are moved by an idealism despite their economic interpretation of the basis of life. And the people who claim to be idealists are the very people who tend to continue a social struggle which destroys idealism and makes brutal and evil materialism the criterion of existence.... We live in times of capitalism, that is, in times of self-interest.