Reginald
Clifford Allen,
the son of Walter Allen,
a drapery merchant, was born in Newport, South Wales, on 9th May 1889.
Educated at Berkhamstead School and University College, Bristol,
where in 1907 he won a scholarship to Peterhouse College, Cambridge.
Walter
Allen, an Anglican and strong supporter
of the Conservative Party, was disappointed
when his son developed left-wing political opinions at university.
Allen was elected president of the Fabian Society
at Cambridge and his impressive performances
in the debates at the Cambridge Union brought him to the attention
of Sidney Webb who arranged for him and
G. D. H. Cole, his contemporary at Oxford
University, to join the Fabian Society Executive.
After leaving university Clifford Allen was
employed as a manager of the first Labour Party
daily newspaper, the Daily
Citizen.
Working for the newspaper brought him into contact with Ramsay
MacDonald. The two men became close friends and both shared the
same socialist and pacifist views. In 1914 Allen wrote a pamphlet,
Is
Germany Right and England Wrong?,
where he argued against Britain becoming involved in an European war.
When war was declared Allen joined with another young pacifist, Fenner
Brockway, to form the No-Conscription Fellowship
(NCF), an organisation that encouraged men to
refuse war service. The group received support from public figures
such as Philip Snowden, Bruce
Glasier, Robert Smillie, and Rev.
John Clifford. Bertrand
Russell, also joined, but as a result, was sacked from his post
as a lecturer at Cambridge University.
At first the organisation carried out a nationwide political and propaganda
crusade against both the war and the introduction of compulsory military
service. After the passing of the Military
Service Act, the NCF mounted a vigorous campaign against the punishment
and imprisonment of conscientious objectors.
As a pacifist Clifford
Allen refused to serve in the British Armed Forces and as a result
served 16 months in prison. Unwilling to co-operate with the prison
authorities, Allen was placed in solitary confinement and put on a
diet of bread and water. Suffering from tuberculosis and close to
death, he was released in December 1917.
The Non-Conscription Fellowship dissolved
after the war. Allen was still very ill and had lost the use of one
lung as a result of the prison-contracted tuberculosis. He returned
to his activities as a member of the Independent
Labour Party and in 1921 he was selected as their candidate in
the safe-seat in the Gorbals in Glasgow.
However, ill-health forced him to withdraw from the contest.
Clifford Allen worked closely with H. N.
Brailsford, the new editor of
the the ILP newspaper, the New
Leader
(the former Labour
Leader).
As chairman of the party, Allen helped to formulate ILP policy with
pamphlets such as Putting
Socialism Into Practice
(1924), The
ILP and Revolution
(1925) and Socialism
in Our Time
(1926).
After resigning as chairman of the ILP he helped manage the Daily
Herald, a newspaper now owned by the Labour
Party and the TUC. Allen was also kept
busy using his contacts with wealthy pacifists to raise funds for
the Labour Party.
Allen surprised his left-wing friends when
he decided to support the National Government formed by Ramsay
MacDonald in 1931. MacDonald gave him a peerage and as Baron
Allen of Hurtwood, supported the government in the House
of Lords. Allen gradually became disillusioned with Ramsay MacDonald's
administration and began to concentrate more on his work with the
League of Nations Union.
Ostracized by the members of the Labour Party
who interpreted Allen's actions as a betrayal of socialism,
Allen formed his own political organisation. Based on ideas expressed
in his book Britain's
Political Future (1934), The Next Five Years Group (NFYG) attempted
to develop a political programme that could be endorsed by leading
figures from all the main political parties. Although the NFYG obtained
considerable support from national newspapers
and the former prime minister, David Lloyd
George, the group was eventually destroyed by internal conflicts.
Allen also formed the Anglo-German
Group, a collection of politicians, journalists and academics with
the objective of reducing tensions between Britain and Germany. The
group developed a comprehensive plan for a new European settlement
and although Clifford Allen met Hitler, the German leader showed little
interest in a negotiated agreement. Accepting that war now seemed
likely, Allen began to make plans to form an organisation that would
resist military conscription.
In December 1938 Clifford
Allen became seriously ill and moved to a Swiss sanatorium. He died
there, aged forty-nine, on 3rd March, 1939.
(1)
Beatrice Webb, diary entry (3rd May, 1915)
The inner circle of the Fabian Society
is distinguished for the intensity of the difference of opinion with
regard to the cause of the war and the right way of ending it. Clifford
Allen, the youngest member of the Executive, is a fanatical anti-war
pro-German advocate who distorts every fact to prove his country wrong.
(2)
Clifford Allen made the following statement at his Military Tribunal
in 1916.
We are all young men, and life is
a precious thing to such men. We cherish life because of the opportunities
for adventure and achievement which it offers to a man who is young.
They say our country is in danger. Of course it is, but whose fault
is that? It will be in danger in fifty years time, if our rulers know
they can always win our support by hoisting danger signals. They will
never heed our condemnation of their foreign policy if they can always
depend upon our support in time of war. There is one interference
with individual judgment that no state in the world has any sanction
to enforce - that is, to tamper with the unfettered free right of
everyman to decide for himself the issue of life and death.
(3)
Fenner Brockway, Towards Tomorrow
(1977)
Among all the men I have known,
Clifford Allen was unique in his magnetic quality. He was frail in
appearance, slight with bent shoulders, his features of classical
beauty, a total impression almost feminine; at the same time his voice
was rich and deep, he was confident and masterly in decision, and
had a genius for organisation.
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