Lewis H. Mates

Introduction

The British ‘labor revolt’ immediately before the outbreak of the First World War saw millions of working days lost in strike action and the mushrooming of trade unions. This unrest, which included the first British national miners’ strike in 1912, coincided with a growth in revolutionary agitation. The emergence of syndicalist ideas, essentially revolutionary trade unionism, seemed fortuitously timed to give coherence and revolutionary temper to an urge to revolt evident in important sections of the organized (and previously unorganized) British working class.

‘Syndicalism’ is deployed here in its ‘broadest sense’ to refer to ‘all revolutionary, direct-actionist’ organizations.[227] As Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt have recently argued, syndicalism’s ideological origins lay in the works of the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. That said, self-defining Marxists also developed ideas and approaches that fed into syndicalism.

Consequently, revolutionaries who self-identified as Marxists, anarchists and others all contributed to the syndicalist canon and operated on its ideological terrain; syndicalism thus fed from, and into, both anarchist and Marxist traditions.[228] Nevertheless, the traditional divisions between Marxist and anarchist approaches persisted within syndicalism; there were both points of convergence as well as of divergence even over fundamentals. Syndicalism, therefore, offers a unique forum to study at close quarters the relations between revolutionary activists of the red and the black.

This chapter explores the impact of ideology on the conduct of revolutionary struggle among activists in the Durham coalfield, in north-east England. Coal miners, especially those of south Wales, were fundamental to the syndicalist project in Britain. The single most significant British syndicalist propaganda document was The Miners’ Next Step, written by Welsh miners in 1911 and published in January 1912. It expressed lessons militants had taken from the defeat of the Cambrian Combine dispute. At its peak, the dispute involved 30,000 south Wales miners striking over conditions and wages, and it saw serious rioting at Tonypandy in November 1910.[229]

The unusual socio-economic conditions and radical cultural milieu in south Wales — its miners were 70 per cent more likely to strike than their counterparts in any other British coalfield before 1910 — proved particularly conducive to generating and sustaining syndicalism.[230] Yet contemporaneous upheaval in the Durham coalfield — of a similar size and, like south Wales, dependent on the vicissitudes of the unpredictable export market — offered promising ground for fruitful syndicalist intervention.

The Durham coalfield witnessed some of the first skirmishes in the wave of late Edwardian industrial unrest when, in January 1910, a considerable proportion of lodges affiliated to the 130,000 strong Durham Miners’ Association (DMA) struck against an agreement signed by their executive to institute a ‘three shift system’ in the coalfield. For the vast majority of Durham miners this was an incredibly unpopular change because it demanded they work night as well as morning and afternoon shifts and consequently brought significant disruption to family and social life. The unpopularity of the DMA leaders — and especially the most influential, general secretary and Liberal MP John Wilson — grew with their highhandedness during the national miners’ strike of 1912.

Anger from disenchanted sections of the Durham rank and file after the 1912 national strike was manifest in two main ways: first, in the growth of an aggressive and unofficial (that is, not officially endorsed by the DMA’s official leadership) lodge strike policy and, second, with the institutionalization of efforts to reform the DMA (as well as fight for increased wages), in the form of the Durham Forward Movement.[231] This was a well-supported rank-and-file initiative headed by a group of miner activists of the Independent Labor Party (ILP). Established nationally in 1893, the ILP had become one of the founders of the Labor Party, and had since made some (contested) progress in establishing itself in the coalfield.

This chapter begins by discussing the ideological strands that informed the development of syndicalism in Britain. It then considers the ideological development of Durham coalfield’s two most significant pre-1914 revolutionary activists, Will Lawther and George Harvey, before examining their activities and evidence of their immediate impact. After brief consideration of the wider syndicalist influence in the coalfield, the chapter ends by examining some of the ways in which both Harvey and Lawther’s politics arguably inhibited their potential impact on the wider radical milieu.

Ideological origins of syndicalism

Three currents, involving both Marxists and anarchists, were crucial in shaping the tendencies that arose within British syndicalism. The first major influence came from America in the form of the writings of Daniel De Leon (a self-identifying Marxist) and the subsequent emergence of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or ‘Wobblies’). De Leon developed a theory of revolutionary working-class advancement that demanded both ‘political action’ — defined in this context as standing for elections at local and national levels on a revolutionary platform — and industrial action. The latter took the form of ‘industrial unionism’ (rather than ‘syndicalism’ as such): revolutionary trade unions of skilled and unskilled workers in the major industries. These industrial unions were to work alongside the preexisting unions until they supplanted them; this was dual unionism. De Leon was influential in establishing the Chicago IWW in 1905, successfully proposing an amendment to the IWW’s preamble that committed it to political action. Though ratified, the issue of political action soon split the IWW between De Leon and Wobblies under Big Bill Haywood of the Western Federation of Miners, as well anarchists like Thomas Hagerty (who penned the first draft of the original preamble) and veteran anarchist organizer Lucy Parsons, wife of the Haymarket martyr Albert Parsons. This grouping prevailed at the fourth IWW convention (1908) and the amended preamble precluded affiliation to any political party. Using sadly characteristic language, De Leon denounced the victorious ‘bummery,’ ‘slum proletarians’ and ‘anarchist scum’ and left to form a rival IWW based in Detroit, which soon faded away.[232]

In 1903 and under the influence of De Leon, most of the Scottish branches of the Marxist Social Democratic Federation (SDF) broke away, eventually forming the Socialist Labor Party (SLP).[233] In its early years, the party was an exclusive sect, but it gained importance in the trade union-sponsored working-class educational institution Ruskin College, Oxford. This was evident during the strike of 1908, when the majority of Ruskin students and the college’s principal resigned in protest at its failure to place Marx at the center of the teaching curriculum. The protest led to the founding of the Central Labor College, in London. De Leon’s influence was clear in the choice of ‘Plebs’ League’ (inspired by a De Leon pamphlet) as the name of the organization formed to support the Central Labor College.[234] The SLP began to place an increasing emphasis on the industrial sphere and it grew with the labor revolt after 1910. However, its increasing relaxation of certain sectarian positions also lost it members and the still less sectarian and more flexible syndicalists began to outmaneuver it in the industrial sphere.

The second major influence was French. In 1910, Tom Mann, a veteran of the New Union struggles of the late 1880s who had been agitating in Australia, visited French syndicalists with fellow socialist Guy Bowman. Mann had also seen the North American IWW at close quarters. However, indigenous ideas, and particularly those of self-styled ‘communist’ William Morris, also influenced Mann as well as nurturing the development of British syndicalism more generally.[235] Morris had left the rather dogmatic SDF to form the Socialist League. While Morris developed a distinct brand of anti-statist and revolutionary anti-parliamentarianism based on Marxism, many other Socialist League activists gravitated towards anarchism.

On his return to Britain, Mann established the Industrial Syndicalist Education League (ISEL) and began producing the Industrial Syndicalist from July 1910. Mann played a leading role in the industrial unrest in Liverpool in 1911 and his paper, The Transport Worker, achieved an astonishing circulation of 20,000. Mann became even more prominent after reprinting the famous ‘Don’t shoot’ appeal to soldiers policing the picket lines in The Syndicalist of January 1912. His and Bowman’s subsequent imprisonment became a cause celebre for the Left. Nevertheless, the SLP criticized the ISEL’s overemphasis on the use of the ‘general strike’ and its consequent denigration of working-class political action. The SLP also disparaged the ISEL’s apparently weak and informal organization and its industrial sabotage tactic, which they regarded as a counter-productive sign of weakness.[236]

Still, The Miners’ Next Step emerged from this second syndicalist strand. Its authors were the self-styled ‘Unofficial Reform Committee of the South Wales Miners’ Federation’ which included Marxist miners who, like Noah Ablett, had been to Ruskin, were important at Central Labor College, and who had been influenced by De Leon.[237] Aiming for the ‘elimination of the employer,’ The Miners’ Next Step was quite clearly revolutionary.[238] This would occur when the union in each industry was ‘thoroughly organized, in the first place, to fight, to gain control of, and then to administer that industry.’[239] Yet it was also a pragmatic document, laying out in some detail a strategy for making the mines unprofitable so that the workers could assume control. But this would be full workers’ control, not that exercised by the state in some form of nationalization. While the document contained a powerful critique of trade union bureaucracy and leadership in general terms, it still — crucially — advocated internal union restructuring rather than dual unionism. The only area of contradiction in The Miners’ Next Step was around political action, where different sections endorsed and rejected it outright.[240] The emphasis on industrial action (as well as the rejection of dual unionism) meant the SLP denounced the authors of The Miners’ Next Step as ‘anarchist freaks.’[241] But their pejorative use of ‘anarchist’ was merely rhetorical — the word ‘anarchist’ only appeared in The Miners’ Next Step to describe how the mine owners feared the miners’ radicalization.[242] Nevertheless, the inconsistency in The Miners’ Next Step over political action, as well as its strong critique of leadership and power within organizations, meant that it was open to anarchist interpretations.

The third strand of syndicalism was more libertarian and grouped around Guy Aldred’s Herald of Revolt (and its successor from May 1914, The Spur). Bakunin was the major influence, certainly on Aldred, who published translations of Bakunin’s writings in the Herald of Revolt and in his later papers (The Spur, 1914–1921; The Commune, 1923–1929; and The Council, 1923–1933), and, in 1920, an abridged edition of Bakunin’s works and a biography. This strand claimed Mann was too unclear and non-committal on the issue of political action and that Mann’s criticisms of parliament did not go far enough. Aldred’s efforts to establish an ‘Industrial Union of Direct Actionists’ after 1908, however, made little headway.[243] Aldred self-identified as ‘communist’ or ‘anti-parliamentarian.’ Others in this strand explicitly adopted the word ‘anarchist’ to describe their position. While it was possible that a British activist, Sam Mainwaring, first coined the term ‘anarchosyndicalist’ before 1914, it did not come into widespread use until the interwar period.[244] In essence, then, this group’s ideology was a precursor of anarcho-syndicalism.

In the Durham coalfield itself, early anarchist influences were rather different. Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin spoke at the 1882 Durham miners’ gala, as well as elsewhere in the region. Kropotkin’s influence was also evident in the founding of the anarchist commune at Clousden Hill in Forest Hall, just outside Newcastle. In the 1890s, there were anarchist meetings in a handful of scattered Durham pit villages and in several of the larger conurbations bordering the coalfield where anarchist propaganda circulated.[245] While there was a renewed phase of anarchist activity from around 1907 in Newcastle and Sunderland, the growth after 1910 was unprecedented. The form of anarchism also altered in the region, away from Kropotkin’s anarcho-communism towards a syndicalist emphasis on workplace and trade union struggle.

This regional development reflected a countrywide trend (Aldred was critical of Kropotkin); as anarchism became more syndicalist orientated so the anarchist current in syndicalism became stronger. Indeed, by 1914, anarchist syndicalism, partly because of ‘the refusal of many of its supporters to uphold dual unionism,’ was in the ascendancy.[246] The new weekly journal The Voice of Labor (launched in early 1914) helped to draw together disparate anarchist groups around the country, though there remained the divide with the predominately Scottish dual unionist anarchists around The Herald of Revolt. What was the interplay of these influences on George Harvey and Will Lawther, the two main Durham coalfield revolutionary activists before 1914?

Harvey and Lawther’s political development

Both Harvey and Lawther were politically active before they moved to revolutionary syndicalism. Harvey, born in 1885 (and four years Lawther’s senior), spent his early political life as a fairly moderate member of the ILP. Harvey’s radicalization took place at Ruskin College (which he attended from 1908–1909) probably, according to Ray Challinor, under the influence of tutors W. W. Craik and Noah Ablett.[247] While at Ruskin, Harvey joined the Plebs’ League, and the SLP. His rise through the Party’s ranks was evident when he became editor of its journal, The Socialist, between 1911 and 1912. Harvey remained committed to the SLP and industrial unionism throughout the pre-war period. Nevertheless, there was nothing inevitable about either his radicalization or his move into the SLP. Jack Parks, a Northumberland miner and boyhood friend, was Harvey’s roommate at Ruskin. He too became radicalized, though over a longer period, leaving the ILP in 1910 and becoming linked with Mann’s Industrial Syndicalist by March 1911.[248]

Will Lawther’s more complex political trajectory deserves further scrutiny. Born into a Northumberland mining family in 1889, Lawther was initially influenced by Robert Blatchford’s Merrie England and was aware that his grandfather had been imprisoned for involvement in the Chartist agitation (though his own parents were not politically active). Like Harvey, Lawther began his political life (at the age of 15) by helping to establish an ILP branch in his pit village. A year later, the Lawthers moved to Chopwell, a new pit in the north-west Durham coalfield. Lawther soon became secretary of Chopwell ILP branch.[249] He later wrote that his ‘groping for a philosophy hardened into a positive conviction that militant socialism was the answer to most of the problems that beset the working class….’[250] Perhaps more significantly, Lawther rapidly rose in the union; in 1906 he was elected vice-chair of Chopwell lodge and soon after he became its delegate to the DMA.

Lawther’s conversion to syndicalism came at the newly established Central Labor College, which he attended for a year from October 1911, aided by funding from his family and lodge. As an ‘exhibitioner,’ he had already received free education in his spare time at Rutherford College in Newcastle, having been unable, as the eldest of a big family, to take up a scholarship he won to a local grammar school. At Labor College Lawther studied sociology, economics, politics and history. Sociology lectures, delivered by Dennis Hird, considered the work of Herbert Spencer. In economics, the emphasis was, unsurprisingly, almost exclusively on Marx. Lawther read Capital twice and studied other works of his including Critique of Political Economy in addition to well-known studies of Marx by Louis Boudin and Daniel De Leon and Ricardo’s Political Economy. Lawther also read Morris, Bernard Shaw and John Ruskin.[251] Of these, Marx was obviously a significant influence. Lawther’s favorite work was the Eighteenth Brumaire, especially the line: ‘Him whom we must convince we recognize as the master of the situation,’ which he quoted frequently throughout his life.[252]

What of the individuals Lawther met at college? As with Harvey, Craik, who delivered Lawther’s economics lectures, must have been influential, as was Ablett, who Lawther later regarded as ‘the greatest of all pre-war Marxists.’[253] Indeed, Ablett’s influential role was probably crucial; his influence on the two Durham miners was quite different, as Ablett’s own politics had changed significantly between the times Harvey and Lawther came into contact. Ablett had moved from activism in the SLP to rejecting its dual unionism and gravitating instead towards Mann’s less doctrinaire, but more ‘anti-political’ syndicalism.

Lawther also joined the Plebs’ League and, already fired by a militant brand of ILP socialism, he had less political distance to travel than the initially relatively moderate Harvey. While he was still at Labor College, Lawther had clearly imbibed much of the syndicalist case, condemning, in a letter to the Daily Chronicle, DMA secretary John Wilson’s ‘old fashioned notion of conciliation,’ and arguing instead that the union’s attitude should embody the class war.[254] Writing in retirement in 1955, Lawther remained clear about the appeal that the revolutionary doctrine held at that time: ‘to us it was new and exciting. It was the ultimate in extremism, the demand for direct action, and the professed disgust, not only with the class ridden structure, but also with all gradual means of getting rid of that form of society.’[255]

In his last months at Central Labor College, Lawther seemed to endorse a basic syndicalist case in the vein of The Miners’ Next Step. This was evident in the first syndicalist propagandizing Lawther conducted in his own coalfield in May 1912 when he supported south Wales syndicalist miner W. F. Hay’s speaking tour of county Durham.[256] As the chair of these meetings, Lawther’s rhetoric was indistinguishable from Hay’s. After returning to Chopwell in August 1912, much of Lawther’s rhetoric remained in tune with The Miners’ Next Step. For example, there was Lawther’s revolutionary critique of nationalization and advocacy of workers’ control. Speaking in October 1912, Lawther ‘found that nationalization of the mines, state ownership, was nothing more or less than state capitalism ….’[257]

Indeed, the inspiration of The Miners’ Next Step, and particularly its emphasis on aggressive class conflict, the need for workers’ direct action and self-empowerment and the rejection of leaders and bureaucracies, remained evident in Lawther’s rhetoric throughout the pre-war period. For example, in October 1913, Lawther wrote in a letter to the local press, that activists of the ‘New [revolutionary] Movement […] will not wait for the “lead” to come from a chosen few, for they will be conscious of their own desires and destination and their mandate will therefore be supreme.’[258] Yet these were all features of The Miners’ Next Step that readily lent themselves to an anarchist interpretation.

One indication that Lawther’s politics were shifting came in his flirtation with dual-unionism. Thus, in October 1912 Lawther based part of his speech at a conference he had helped organize in Chopwell on the IWW’s preamble, saying that ‘they were out for the whole of the workers to be in one organization.’[259] Yet Lawther’s position on dual-unionism is difficult to discern, not least because he was not particularly vocal on this essential issue. Indeed, Lawther later appeared to have a foot in both anarchist camps, contributing to the dual-unionist Herald of Revolt and becoming a leading supporter of the Voice of Labor, which rejected dual-unionism.[260]

There was no mystery where Lawther stood on another fundamental issue though, as he became increasingly vocal on his rejection of political action. At a public debate in Chopwell Miners’ Hall in September 1913, for example, Lawther argued in support of the motion ‘That the emancipation of the working class can be brought about more readily by direct action than by legislation.’[261] He followed this up with a lengthy letter in the local press titled ‘Direct Action or Legislation. Which?’[262] This increasingly overt anti-political attitude suggested Lawther’s syndicalism was moving in an anarchist direction, and, when he began to contribute to the Herald of Revolt, he was in good company. Lawther then began using the term ‘anarchist’ explicitly to describe his politics (as he did when writing about this period of his life as a retired miners’ leader in 1955), though it was clear that he continued to see revolutionary trade unionism as the vehicle for ‘direct action.’[263]

What caused Lawther’s more Marxist-influenced syndicalism to develop into a self-proclaimed anarchism? In terms of his studies at Central Labor College, Morris’ interpretation of Marx must have been pivotal, and seemed particularly evident in Lawther’s anti-parliamentary rhetoric.[264] Lawther later said that Morris ‘made an appeal for life against the machine horrors.’[265] While in London Lawther also met the anarchist engineer Jack Tanner and they later collaborated on several anarchist projects, including the Voice of Labor.[266] Probably the most influential individual was George Davison, who Lawther first met at the 1911 TUC conference in Newcastle (before he went to Central Labor College). A follower of Kropotkin, Davison was an ‘eccentric and courageous millionaire … who held very advanced views on politics and theology.’[267] From a humble background, Davison rose to become a civil servant. He was also a pioneer of photography and a Kodak shareholder. By 1900, Davison was Kodak’s managing director, though his political activities (and alleged lack of business acumen) forced his resignation from the company’s board in 1912.[268] By this time, Davison’s desire to support progressive causes was manifest in his funding of the nascent Central Labor College in 1910. As financial backer of W. F. Hay’s speaking tour of the Durham coalfield in 1912, his path crossed with Lawther’s once more.[269] Davison’s wealth was to impact in at least one corner of the Durham coalfield before 1914.

While Harvey and Lawther shared very similar backgrounds both socioeconomically and politically, the precise timing of the periods they spent in full-time working-class educational institutions helps to explain their adoption of significantly different forms of revolutionary syndicalism, Harvey’s more Marxist and Lawther’s increasingly anarchist. Scrutiny of their activities shows that they also developed their political activism in different ways.

Activities

Harvey and Lawther’s conversions to syndicalism demanded that they propagandize. That they did so to some extent in different ways was more a reflection of their relative strengths as political activists and their access to different resources rather than a result of differing Marxist and anarchist approaches within syndicalism. Harvey, a diminutive and unimpressive presence on the public platform whose head would wobble from side-to-side as he spoke, nurtured a talent for writing reports in The Socialist and information-rich propaganda pamphlets.[270] His first, titled ‘Industrial Unionism and the Mining Industry,’ appeared in August 1911.

In June 1912, Harvey produced a second pamphlet, ‘Does Dr. John Wilson MP, secretary of the Durham Miners’ Association, Serve the Working Class?’ This was an enraged response to a ‘joke’ Wilson cracked at the retirement ceremony of Charles Fenwick (Liberal MP for Wansbeck and a miners’ leader). Lord Joicey, a mine owner, gifted Fenwick £260 and, at the presentation ceremony, Wilson remarked that he would like a similar ‘bribe’ on his retirement. Harvey wrote that Wilson’s ‘aim has always been to bolster up capitalism, and he, more than any other leader perhaps, has swayed the miners to take that particular action which is either harmless or beneficial to the capitalist class … If £260 is the price, then miners’ leaders are cheap and worth getting at.’[271] Wilson demanded that Harvey withdraw the accusation. Harvey refused. The libel case went to court in November 1912 where Harvey maintained that Wilson was an enemy of the working-class and servant of capitalism, citing Wilson’s agreement to a 5 per cent reduction in miners’ wages (which even an arbitrator had deemed unwarranted) in evidence. The judge, however, found in favor of Wilson, and awarded £200 damages and £100 costs.

By contrast, Lawther was less of a theorist than Harvey. He did not write detailed propaganda pamphlets.[272] Yet he was active from the point of his return from Central Labor College. Lawther soon established a ‘Workers’ Freedom Group’ based on similar groups in the south Wales coalfield, which engaged in energetic and varied propagandizing.[273] Lawther reported in July 1913, for example, that: ‘by selling FREEDOMS [the London-based anarchist newspaper] and pamphlets and by discussion circles, the kind of propaganda that matters is being kept up….’[274] Lawther also performed a pivotal role in organizing a conference to discuss syndicalism in October 1912, which attracted representatives from seven Durham lodges to Chopwell.

Furthermore, Lawther contributed to public debates, corresponded with the local press and involved himself in community struggles. In spring 1913, there was intense agitation throughout the coalfield against a 50 per cent increase in the doctors’ fee for miners, a result of recent National Insurance legislation. Lawther was central to the campaign in Chopwell for a return to pre-Act fees.[275] Retaining his commitment to working-class education, Lawther also ran Plebs’ League classes three times a week in Consett and South Shields as well as Chopwell.[276] He clearly regarded this form of education as essential propaganda work; Lawther later commented ‘that the Labor College was of the utmost influence….’[277]

Political ambition was evident in this frenetic work. Lawther and the Chopwell anarchists’ aims extended well beyond creating a stronghold in their own pit village. In July 1913, the Chopwell group wanted ‘the message of direct action to be carried right throughout the coalfield and no help is refused.’[278] Thus, the previous month, Lawther had spoken at the ‘new ground’ of Crawcrook (another Durham pit village), while in July he spoke at the miners’ annual gala on the ‘need for direct action and revolution.’[279] The DMA annual gala, or ‘Big Meeting,’ was a day out for all Durham miners and their families, and tens of thousands thronged to Durham racecourse to hear speeches from local and national leaders. It was an obvious place to take propaganda efforts. Lawther was also concerned that anarchists should organize effectively together in the region and nationally. In April 1914, for example, he took a delegation and spoke at an anarchist conference in Newcastle. The conference concerned itself with national organizational issues such as supporting a new anarchist newspaper and international topics such as the (recently state-executed) Spanish freethinker Francisco Ferrer’s ‘modern schools,’ as well as organizing an international anarchist conference in London in September 1914.[280] Lawther spoke at a modern school in east London in summer 1913.[281] To maintain the lines of communication, Lawther supplied regular reports to the national anarchist paper Freedom as well as contributing to other anarchist and syndicalist publications. In summary: both Harvey and Lawther were committed activists. Harvey’s strength was theoretical and embodied in his written propaganda, while Lawther excelled as a speaker. These strengths, which reflected their personal abilities and inclinations, fueled the syndicalist movement of the Durham coalfield. But what was the impact of their efforts?

Specific and immediate impacts

Clearly, Harvey and Lawther’s specific activity had some degree of immediate impact. That Harvey, Lawther and their groupings were also (in Lawther’s words) ‘fellow slave[s] of the lamp and pick’ must have encouraged a sympathetic reception at a time of intense industrial and socio-political flux in the Durham coalfield.[282] Harvey’s pamphlets were particularly important. ‘Industrial Unionism and the Mining Industry’ sold 2,000 copies, and Harvey received invitations to speak all over the Durham coalfield about it in summer 1911. An audience of 3,000 saw Harvey speak at a Chesterle-Street meeting on ‘Industrial unionism and fakirdom in the DMA.’[283] Similarly, the libel case surrounding Harvey’s June 1912 pamphlet attacking John Wilson received extensive press coverage. The verbatim reports read like a trial of the old methods by the new revolutionary ideas; this trial encapsulated the revolutionary challenge to the old DMA leadership. Certainly, the press coverage enhanced Harvey’s reputation and raised the profile of his politics. Indeed, Harvey’s very public championing of the Durham miner in 1912 must have played an important part in his securing a checkweighman post only a year later, at Wardley pit near Gateshead (see below).

The 1912 trial also gave Harvey’s political project a welcome boost. A matter of days after the court-case, Harvey launched the ‘Durham Mining Industrial Union Group,’ what the Durham Chronicle deemed somewhat wearily ‘still another organization anxious to reform the Durham Miners’ Association.’[284] The group formed after a meeting of ‘about twenty representatives’ at Chester-le-Street, and decided to issue lodges with a copy of its industrial unionist manifesto.[285] This built on Harvey’s own local grouping, ‘Chester-le-Street and District Industrial Union.’ Harvey certainly maintained a strong local support base wherever he worked in the Durham coalfield throughout his life. One example of the longer-term influence he exercised came in the form of Tom Aisbitt, one of his Chester-le-Street industrial unionist converts. The same age as Harvey, Aisbitt had also been a member of Chester-le-Street ILP (he was its secretary) as well as helping to found Chester-le-Street trades council.[286] Aisbitt later secured an influential post in the Newcastle trades council with which he influenced regional labor politics in the interwar period.[287]

While Lawther did not introduce anarchism to the region, he certainly brought its syndicalist version into the Durham coalfield in a concerted and energetic way. Naturally, it was in Lawther’s home pit village of Chopwell that his direct influence was most obvious, and in the form of bricks and mortar. Lawther’s wealthy anarchist contact George Davison agreed to sponsor a ‘Communist Club’ in Chopwell. One of only three in the country, it opened in December 1913. The police were certainly impressed with the club’s members, who were apparently ‘mostly young men and are above the average miner in intelligence.’[288] Only four months after its opening, there was an anarchist conference in Newcastle. Freedom reported that ‘the Chopwell boys came in their dozens, each an embryo fighter, from whom more will be heard anon, we hope.’[289] Many of these must have been Lawther’s converts, directly or indirectly.

However, not all Chopwell radicals were convinced by this new gospel. Certainly, the response to the war effort from Chopwell — 500 went to fight, including two of Lawther’s own brothers — suggested that the village’s revolutionary nucleus had had a distinctly limited impact. Only a small hardcore, that included Lawther and two other brothers, took a militant stand against the war and became conscientious objectors.[290] This response to Harvey and Lawther’s propagandizing efforts suggests a rather circumscribed degree of influence of syndicalist ideas in the Durham coalfield. A possible explanation is that the activists concerned lacked conviction, their propaganda deficient in substance. Since this charge has been leveled at Lawther, in particular, it bares considering, before turning to an alternative understanding.

The syndicalists’ wider influence?

In assessing syndicalist influence in Durham, commentators have tended to focus on Harvey and Lawther (and to a lesser extent their groupings), though their conclusions have been quite different. Roy Church and Quentin Outram, for example, claimed that syndicalist influence was negligible in County Durham, basing this on an interpretation of Lawther’s role and politics.[291] Specifically, they endorsed John Saville’s view that in his early years Lawther ‘described himself as a Marxist, syndicalist, anarchist and member of the ILP’ (which echoed Robin Smith, a prospective biographer of Lawther, in the North-east Labor History Society journal).[292]

In one respect Saville was right, for, as we have seen, syndicalism was attractive for some self-defined Marxists as well as anarchists. But syndicalism’s emphasis on direct action and eschewal of parliamentary or ‘political’ action easily lent itself to anarchist interpretations within what was a fairly broad church. Neither the theories nor (most of) the organizations formed to advocate them were exclusive, ideologically pure and self-contained in this time of flux.[293] Indeed, Robin Smith employed his (the original) claim about Lawther’s politics to illustrate this very point, though Smith was referring to the whole period before 1926 (when Lawther was aged between 15 and 36). This was unhelpful, as the period before 1926 saw considerable change in Lawther’s politics, which reflected developing events on the international scene. The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution had had a tremendous impact on the revolutionary Left in Britain, resulting in the formation of a British Communist Party from sections of the SLP, shop stewards’ movement activists, left-wing ILP members and others in 1920. Lawther was thus a communist-supporting Labor Party activist by the early 1920s. Furthermore, the birth of the British Communist Party heralded a slow drift towards more exclusivity and sectarianism among the Left.

Nevertheless, the implication of Smith’s claim and the accounts of those who endorsed it was that Lawther was something of a dilettante, a political butterfly, flitting between parties and political programs at whim, or that he was confused about his true political home. That Lawther ended his career as a right-wing national miners’ leader after 1945 has also thrown doubt over his early revolutionism. In reality, there were distinct and logical phases in the development of Lawther’s politics between 1905 and the early 1920s. There is no reason to question the sincerity of his conversion to syndicalism from activism in the ILP in 1912 and his subsequent move to anarchist syndicalism before August 1914. The very intensity of his activity is sufficient evidence of the extent to which his political conversion was felt. The shorter pieces Lawther published in the local press in the war period reveal an individual capable of grasping and expressing applied theory including that of Marx. Certainly, it is rather facile to claim that, because Lawther ended up on the political Right, that this was where he was always destined to go. If the authenticity of Lawther’s politics is the yardstick for measuring syndicalism in the Durham coalfield then it was a significant force.

Unlike Smith, Bob Holton took Lawther and Harvey’s politics very seriously. Indeed, his study of the two informed his judgment that the Durham coalfield provided the second most important ground for syndicalism after south Wales.[294] Unfortunately, Holton’s wider discussion of the Durham coalfield was insubstantial, and suggested a relationship between syndicalism and militancy that was difficult to sustain. He noted the particularly strong unrest in the coalfield over the return to work after the 1912 national strike, but later acknowledged that the major coalfield to vote for a return to work in 1912 was south Wales (where syndicalism was strongest). While Holton explained this vote by the peculiar conditions in south Wales including a lack of resources after the Cambrian Combine dispute that engendered strike weariness, there was clearly no simple correlation between industrial militancy and syndicalist influence.[295] While there remains considerable research to do in this area, Holton’s work makes clear that, thanks to Harvey, Lawther and their groupings, syndicalism did have an impact in the Durham coalfield, but that it was not as far reaching as that in south Wales. In Durham, the ILP had been remarkably effective in channeling miners’ grievances through the Durham Forward Movement. But by the same token, the Forward Movement’s success testified to the continued existence of considerable grievances among Durham miners. Syndicalists, too, could have spoken to this rank-and-file discontent. How, then, did Harvey and Lawther apply their politics and how might this have blunted their potential impact in the Durham coalfield?

Dogma, pragmatism and sectarianism

Two intertwining aspects of the Durham syndicalists’ own politics — their puritanism (or, more negatively put, their dogmatism) and their sectarianism — militated against their influence. First, some aspects of their politics inhibited their ability to propagate their message, thereby helping to isolate them from the wider movement. Second, the revolutionary alternative Harvey and Lawther offered in the Durham coalfield was, and remained, to some extent divided both theoretically and organizationally (as elsewhere in Britain).

In terms of dogmatism, Lawther’s politics suffered the most. His anarchism demanded a rejection of any form of constitutional office and he did not stand for any lodge, DMA or party position (until 1915). This was significant as Lawther had been a Chopwell lodge official in one of the largest and most militant pits in county Durham before going to Labor College. Being a lodge official earlier in his life had brought Lawther into contact with influential Durham miners throughout the coalfield, as well as with significant national and international figures within the movement.[296] Lawther’s principled decision not to stand for any constitutional office was undoubtedly laudable. It further testified to Lawther’s complete commitment to his politics at this time. But it denied Lawther access to important means of exercising local and regional influence. By contrast, two significant south Wales syndicalists, Noahs Ablett and Rees, were elected to the SWMF Executive Committee in 1911, thereby demonstrating their prominence in the coalfield and enhancing their authority.

George Harvey did not have these particular qualms. Indeed, the (in some respects) more pragmatic Harvey had been instrumental in altering the SLP’s proscription on members standing for trade union office. Harvey pointed out that in Durham any prospective party member would have to relinquish trade union office to join the party. Naturally, they refused to do this, and yet the lodges in which these individuals were officials were also those that bought the most SLP propaganda.[297] The newly unshackled Harvey then won a checkweighman post in 1913. This development was of considerable significance, as this prestigious position demanded a high degree of trust from the pit’s miners. In his application letter, Harvey clearly stated he was ‘a Revolutionary Socialist and a strong believer in Industrial Unionism.’[298] Harvey’s election both reflected his already established reputation as well as entrenching and widening his influence.

The growing interest in syndicalism between 1910 and 1914 seemed to allow for a blurring of the barriers between Marxism and anarchism, at least at the level of theory. The relative ease with which individuals could move between the two traditions, exemplified by the (rapid) development of Lawther’s politics, reflected the wider socio-economic flux of the times. This blurring of the boundaries between Marxism and anarchism was also evident, for example, in the explanation Lawther gave (during the time of the cold war) for the naming of the Edwardian ‘communist clubs’ such as that in Chopwell. They were ‘supposed to be the rallying grounds for those interested in communism and anarchism, a communism, by the way, which bore little resemblance to the Russian brand today [1955].’[299] Marx and Marxists had clearly influenced Lawther, though he soon branded himself an anarchist, and in a similar way the Chopwell ‘Communist Club’ (which was also known in this period as the ‘Anarchist Club’), was a forum for the discussion of various revolutionary ideas that were in many respects difficult to disentangle.

Ray Challinor wrote of the SLP’s diminishing sectarianism in this period too.[300] However, sectarian divisions remained between the syndicalists in the Durham coalfield. Harvey was the main offender. This was evident at the Chopwell syndicalist conference in October 1912, where Harvey and Lawther vied to convince the audience of their case. Lawther glossed over the differences in politics between himself and Harvey, concluding his speech, ‘they were out for the whole of the workers to be in one organization. They could call that Industrialism, Unionism [sic. presumably a press mistake for ‘industrial unionism’] or syndicalism, or what they liked …’[301] Harvey, speaking after Lawther, suggested his audience should propagandize for a Durham mining industrial union. There was certainly overlap: Harvey’s call for education and organization, his claim that ‘Leaders and politicians could do nothing’ and that the ‘hope of the working-class lay in the working-class themselves’ all echoed Lawther. Harvey’s description of industrial unionism — working on the principle ‘that an injury to one is an injury to all’ (an IWW slogan) — also resonated with Lawther’s speech.[302]

However, Harvey then underlined where he and Lawther differed in explicit terms:

they ought not to go in for syndicalism, because if it were a halfway house they had to recognize sooner or later that they must go to the higher pinnacle of organization. He contended that the scientific weapon was industrial unionism. They were out for industrial and political action. The two must go hand in hand.[303]

This political action included fighting all elections, not for votes as such but on a ‘revolutionary issue’ to ‘create a fever heat of industrial revolution and they could only do that by industrial and political propaganda.’[304] Indeed, the extent to which Harvey argued in favor of political action caused problems in his own party. His claim in The Socialist (March 1912) that SLP candidates would be the best parliamentarians as only revolutionaries could win reforms, sparked extensive internal criticism. It provoked the secession of most of the party’s members in Lancashire, claiming that the SLP had become reformist.[305]

More unfortunately, Harvey, like many SLP activists, replicated aspects of De Leon’s language, denouncing other revolutionary groupings as ‘fakirs.’ Harvey was similarly a ‘virulent critic’ of Tom Mann’s syndicalism.[306] In response to Mann’s imprisonment for publishing the famous ‘Don’t shoot’ article appealing for soldiers not to fire on strikers, Harvey wrote in The Socialist (of April 1912) that his Party were not syndicalists and ‘have no sympathy with syndicalism.’ That said there were limits to Harvey’s sectarianism. On this occasion, the SLP reprinted Mann’s banned article because they were ‘fighters for freedom and the free press.’[307] It was perhaps then rather unfortunate that sectarianism was apparently the most noteworthy aspect of Harvey’s politics for authors such as Robin Page Arnot.[308]

In County Durham, Lawther seemed prepared to accept Harvey’s attempts to mark a clear ideological divide between them; and Harvey’s support for ‘political action’ remained anathema to Lawther’s anarchism. Nevertheless, Lawther continued to promote solidarity with Harvey. In February 1913, Lawther made an impassioned appeal for Harvey in the aftermath of the Wilson case:

It is up to us, as miners, to show to George Harvey, by word or deed, that we believe that what he said [about Wilson] was true … And I believe that, during the forthcoming summer, the gospel of revolt, of direct action, of anti-leadership will spread, not because Harvey or any other person believes in it, but because of the oppression and tyranny that is taking place in the mines … [309]

In July 1913, the two men, among others, shared a platform at the Durham miners’ annual gala.[310] Notwithstanding a willingness to share public platforms, Lawther and Harvey offered two distinct brands of syndicalism in the Durham coalfield. Their differing visions of revolutionary politics and the theoretical terms they used to express them to an interested, but not necessarily informed miner audience (for example, at the Chopwell conference of October 1912), must have confused more than just the local press.

Lawther revealed another kind of sectarianism, however, and, while it underscored his revolutionary credentials, it hampered his ability to operate effectively, denying him access to the platforms of potentially influential and sympathetic organizations and individuals in the DMA. One of the first to address the syndicalist conference in Chopwell in October 1912, Lawther opened his speech by explaining why they ‘were out for the new movement. They were out against the “forward movement.”’[311] Lawther was clearly keen to distinguish himself and his followers from the Forward Movement’s project — indeed, defining them as opponents — from the outset. He did so by first attacking nationalization, the aim of key Forward Movement activists, and thus effectively marked the gap between the apparent reformists of the Forward Movement and the revolutionaries. That the Forward Movement leaders were intent on making reputations and careers for themselves on the back of the miners’ discontent was a fairly common theme in Lawther’s rhetoric[312] (and, ironically, a charge that was later made, unjustly, against Lawther himself).

Again, Harvey displayed a little less principled idealism and a little more pragmatism in relations with the wider rank-and-file movement. At his libel trial in November 1912, Harvey asked Wilson if he was aware that he had been heavily criticized by the Forward Movement. Harvey quoted part of a speech by John Jeffries, a Forward Movement leader, claiming that Wilson’s evident talents were ‘from time to time not used for the purpose they ought to be’ and, explicitly, that Jeffries was referring to the conciliation doctrine that Wilson ‘continually dinned into their ears.’ Harvey’s defense here was significant, as he was taking the logic of Forward Movement rhetoric a step further, clearly aligning himself with it as he did so. Indeed, Harvey claimed (slightly disingenuously) that he ‘had said no more than what had been said by other bodies during the last decade — by the socialists or the “Forward Movement” — and the action had only been taken against him because he was a working miner.’[313] The extent to which Harvey’s more conciliatory approach to the larger rank-and-file movement in Durham benefited him in terms of his ability to propagate his politics is difficult to measure. But it certainly seems to have secured him a prominent position on the platform of at least one Durham Forward Movement mass meeting. In April 1912, Harvey seconded a motion of censure of the DMA agents, with a speech complaining that the men had been ‘sold-out’ by their leaders. Harvey argued that the leaders should receive the same wage as the miners; then perhaps the leaders would fight for their demands, as ‘every time the men got a rise they would also be better off.’[314] Lawther, unsurprisingly, never appeared on a Durham Forward Movement platform as such — although he did speak at a meeting on the miners’ minimum wage in Newcastle in December 1913, this was not apparently under their auspices.[315] That said, Lawther’s attitude did not prevent cooperation in Chopwell with Forward Movement activists. For example, Lawther sat on the local negotiating committee in the doctor’s fee agitation in early 1913 with Vipond Hardy, who Lawther had failed to convince of syndicalism and who was, instead, active in the maligned Durham Forward Movement.[316]

Conclusion: an opportunity missed?

Revolutionary activists are often confronted with a dilemma when faced with favorable circumstances in which to propagate their politics. To what extent should they soft-pedal or compromise on fundamentals in order to be able to access platforms and provide a message that has the potential to chime with large numbers of individuals in some form of struggle? If they compromise too much they are open to the jibe of being opportunistic, while too little compromise means they could be denounced as zealots: inflexible, too dogmatic.

In the period of industrial strife 1910–1914, Lawther, certainly, adopted a purity of praxis that denied him access to certain platforms and alienated him from some potential allies. Harvey, on the other hand, seemed too sectarian, fixated on the finer points of the policy of his infinitesimal party. This is not to argue that Lawther, in particular, should have abandoned the principled political positions he held. However, it is to recognize that maintaining such ideological positions had clear consequences and that in certain circumstances what was sacrificed for the sake of principle was potentially considerable.

Arguably, Lawther’s anarchist syndicalism was more theoretically coherent and defensible than the looser syndicalism of the south Wales ‘Unofficial Reform Committee.’ Yet, even when better co-ordinated in 1914, anarchism remained a minority strand within the minority revolutionary syndicalist section of the mass labor movement. Harvey’s SLP, though more tightly organized for a longer period, also remained a minority tendency within syndicalism. Furthermore, in its efforts to break out of this ghetto (often prompted by Harvey himself), the SLP often lost as much as it gained. By the outbreak of war, like the other Left parties, both revolutionary and reformist alike, the SLP was losing members.[317] Clearly, conditions were not as favorable for syndicalism in the Durham coalfield as they were in south Wales. Still, in their interpretation and application in syndicalism, both Marxism and anarchism fell short in the pre-1914 upheaval in the Durham coalfield.

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Trevor Bark, Emmet O’Connor, Kevin Davies, Nick Heath, Ken John, Don Watson, Chris Williams, John Patten, and to Dave Douglass, Peter Mates and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts. I would like to dedicate this chapter to the late, great Dr Ray Challinor.