The Democratic Federation and England for All

Flaherty, Seamus

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-42339-1_4

Seamus Flaherty²

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Abstract

Engels described the Democratic Federation, Hyndman’s answer to ‘the Chartist organisation’, as ‘some 20–30 little societies which, under various names (always the same people), have been persistently trying to look important for the past twenty years at least and always with the same lack of success’. According to Engels, it was ‘a very motley society’, and ‘Hyndman, the head of the Democratic Federation’, was ‘an ambitious party leader in partibus infidelium, provisionally in search of a party and meanwhile issuing orders into the blue’. ‘One’s best course’, Engels therefore counselled the German socialist Karl Kautsky, ‘is to do justice to the aspirations without identifying oneself with the persons’.

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Notes

1.
Marx and Engels, Collected Works. Vol. 47, p. 54.
2.
Ibid., pp. 74, 75.
3.
Ibid.
4.
M. S. Wilkins, ‘The Non-Socialist Origins of England’s First Important Socialist Organization’, International Review of Social History, 4/2 (1959), p. 201.
5.
Bevir, Making of British Socialism, pp. 110–111.
6.
Ibid., p. 112.
7.
Marx and Engels, Collected Works. Vol. 47, p. 114.
8.
Ibid.
9.
Hyndman, Further Reminiscences, p. 361.
10.
Hyndman, Record, p. 228.
11.
Bevir, Making of British Socialism, p. 73. Tsuzuki, Hyndman and British Socialism, p. 42.
12.
Hyndman, Record, p. 227. Randolph Churchill also told Hyndman, however, that, as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Salisbury’s second administration, he meant to implement Hyndman’s ‘palliative programme’. Ibid., p. 379. For Churchill and the Fourth Party see Lynd, England in the Eighteen Eighties, pp. 209–219; R. E. Quinault, ‘Lord Randolph Churchill and Tory Democracy, 1880–1885’, The Historical Journal, 22/1 (1979), pp. 141–165; and R. E. Quinault, ‘The Fourth Party and the Conservative Opposition to Bradlaugh 1880–1888’, The English Historical Review, 91/359 (1976), pp. 315–340.
13.
Although it is less well remarked upon, Royle noted the bombardment of Alexandria, for example, as a factor driving a wedge between radicals and the Liberal Party. Radicals, Secularists, and Republicans, p. 219. As did Martin Crick, History of the Social Democratic Federation (Keele: Keele University Press, 1994), p. 18.
14.
For O’ Brien see Alfred Plummer, Bronterre: A Political Biography of Bronterre O’Brien, 1804–1864 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1971); Ben Maw, ‘The democratic anti-capitalism of Bronterre O’Brien’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 13/2 (2008), pp. 201–226; Ben Maw, ‘Bronterre O’Brien’s Class Analysis: The Formative Phase, 1832–1836’, History of Political Thought, 28/2 (2007), pp. 253–289. For the O′ Brienites, on the other hand, see Bevir, Making of British Socialism, ch. 6; Mark Bevir, ‘Republicanism, Socialism, and Democracy in Britain: The Origins of the Radical Left’, Journal of Social History, 34/2 (2000), pp. 351–368; and Stan Shipley, Club Life and Socialism in Mid Victorian London (London: Journeyman Press, 1971), ch. 1. For a more general picture, in addition to Shipley’s account, see Crick, History of the Social Democratic Federation, ch. 1.
15.
Wilkins, ‘Non-Socialist Origins’, pp. 199–207.
16.
Tsuzuki, Hyndman and British Socialism, p. 47.
17.
J. Morrison Davidson, The Annals of Toil, Vol. 4 (London: William Reeves, 1899), p. 438.
18.
Edward Pease, The History of the Fabian Society (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1916), p. 24.
19.
See Eugenio Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment, Reform: Popular Liberalism in the Age of Gladstone, 1860–1880 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Biagini, British Democracy and Irish Nationalism; and Royle, Radicals, Secularists and Republicans.
20.
Hyndman, England for All, pp. 64–65.
21.
Arnold Toynbee, ‘Are Radicals Socialists?’ (1882), in Lectures on the Industrial Revolution in England: Popular Addresses, Notes and Other Fragments (London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1908), p. 203. For Toynbee see Alon Kadish, Apostle Arnold: The Life and Death of Arnold Toynbee, 1852–1883 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1986).
22.
Toynbee, ‘Are Radicals Socialists?’, p. 204.
23.
T. H. Green, ‘Lecture on Liberal Legislation and Freedom of Contract’ (1881), in Works of Thomas Hill Green, Vol. 3: Miscellanies and Memoir (London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1911), p. 307. For Green, see Melvin Richter, The Politics of Conscience: T. H. Green and his Age (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1964).
24.
Green, ‘Liberal Legislation’, p. 307.
25.
G. J. Goschen, ‘Laissez-faire and Government Interference’ (1883), in Essays and Addresses on Economic Questions (London: Edward Arnold, 1905), p. 308.
26.
Ibid., p. 309.
27.
Toynbee, ‘Are Radicals Socialists?’, p. 215.
28.
Ibid., p. 216.
29.
Ibid.
30.
Ibid.
31.
Ibid., pp. 219–220.
32.
Ibid., p. 220.
33.
Ibid.
34.
Ibid. Toynbee’s father had been a friend of Mazzini. Toynbee described Mazzini as ‘the true teacher of our age’, estimating The Duties of Man ‘more important than the work of Adam Smith and Carlyle’. Kadish, Apostle Arnold, p. 2.
35.
Green, ‘Liberal Legislation’, p. 370.
36.
Ibid.
37.
Ibid.
38.
Ibid., p. 371.
39.
Ibid.
40.
Ibid., p. 374. See David Nicholls, ‘Positive Liberty, 1880–1914’, The American Political Science Review, 56/1 (1962), pp. 114–128. For the new liberalism more generally see Peter Clarke, Liberals and Social Democrats (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Stefan Collini, Liberalism and Sociology: L. T. Hobhouse and Political Argument in England, 1880–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Michael Freeden, The New Liberalism: An Ideology of Social Reform (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978); Andrew Vincent, ‘The New Liberalism in Britain, 1880–1914’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 36 (1990), pp. 388–405; Peter Weiler, The New Liberalism: Liberal Social Theory in Great Britain, 1889–1914 (New York, Routledge, 1982).
41.
Green, ‘Liberal Legislation’, p. 372.
42.
Ibid., p. 376.
43.
Toynbee, ‘Are Radicals Socialists?’, p. 219.
44.
Green, ‘Liberal Legislation’, pp. 385–386.
45.
Hyndman, England for All, p. 85.
46.
Ibid., 91. See also Hyndman, Historical Basis, p. 2, 5, 16. As Samuel remarked, ‘the first generation of Marxists grew up in the shadow of Thorold Rogers … The early Marxists took over the liberal-radical version of ‘people’s history’ virtually intact’. ‘British Marxist Historians’, p. 39. Hyndman, moreover, continued to recycle Rogers’s views. See The Economics of Socialism (London: Twentieth Century Press, 1896), p. 28. See, also, Anna Vaninskaya, William Morris and the Idea of Community: Romance, History, and Propaganda, 1880–1914 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010).
47.
On this ideological strategy see Skinner, Visions of Politics, Vol. 1, pp. 152–153.
48.
Hyndman, England for All, pp. 4–5.
49.
Ibid., p. 91.
50.
Ibid., p. 62.
51.
Ibid., p. 24.
52.
Ibid., p. 123.
53.
Ibid., p. 84.
54.
Ibid.
55.
Norman Geras, ‘The Controversy about Marx and Justice’, New Left Review, 150/1 (1985), pp. 47–85.
56.
Hyndman, England for All, pp. 63–64, 85.
57.
Ibid., p. 86.
58.
Ibid.
59.
Ibid., p. 194.
60.
A. J. Balfour, ‘Land, Land Reformers, and the Nation’, in Industrial Remuneration Conference: The Report of Proceedings and Papers (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, [1885] 1968), p. 337.
61.
Ibid., p. 338.
62.
Ursula Vogel, ‘The Land-Question: A Liberal Theory of Communal Property’, History Workshop Journal, 27/1 (1989), p. 106.
63.
Ibid., p. 122.
64.
F. M. L. Thompson provides a historical outline in ‘Land and Politics in England in the Nineteenth Century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 15 (1965), pp. 23–44.
65.
See John Saville, ‘Henry George and the British Labour Movement’, Science & Society, 24/4 (1960), pp. 321–333; and Wolfe, From Radicalism to Socialism, pp. 52–65, 79–93.
66.
See Skinner again, Visions of Politics, Vol. 1, ch. 8.
67.
Hyndman, England for All, p. 63.
68.
Ibid., p. 56.
69.
Ibid.
70.
Ibid., p. 86.
71.
Mallock, ‘Civilization and Equality’, Contemporary Review, 40 (Oct, 1881), p. 661.
72.
Ibid.
73.
Hyndman, England for All, p. 84.
74.
Ibid.
75.
Ibid., p. 85.
76.
Ibid.
77.
Mill, Chapters, p. 252.
78.
Hyndman, England for All, pp. 103–104. Hyndman visited the United States in 1880. He offered his reflections on the political situation there in ‘Lights and Shades of American Politics’, Fortnightly Review, 29/171 (Mar. 1881), pp. 340–357.
79.
Mill, Chapters, p. 252.
80.
Ibid.
81.
Hyndman, England for All, p. 107.
82.
Ibid., p. 102. For a discussion the railways and ‘state purchase’ during the nineteenth century see Barry E. Eldon, Nationalization in British Politics: The Historical Background (London: Jonathan Cape, 1965), pp. 78–108.
83.
Mill, Chapters, p. 279.
84.
Hyndman, England for All, p. 109.
85.
Ibid., p. 107.
86.
Biagini, Liberty, Retrenchment, Reform, pp. 86–89. Contrary to Bevir’s suggestion, Hyndman’s nostalgia for the ‘golden age’ was consistent with Mill’s, Fawcett’s, W. T. Thornton’s, and Cowen’s. Making of British Socialism, p. 67.
87.
Hyndman, England for All, p. 27. See Antony Taylor, ‘Richard Cobden, J. E. Thorold Rogers, and Henry George’, in Matthew Cragoe and Paul Readman (eds.), The Land Question in Britain, 1750–1950 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 146–166.
88.
Alfred Russel Wallace, ‘How to Nationalize the Land: A Radical Solution of the Irish Land Problem’, Contemporary Review, 38 (Nov. 1880), pp. 716–736. Hyndman tried to convert Wallace to his own views. Initially, he failed. But there were members of the DF, like Mill’s stepdaughter, Helen Taylor, who were members of both The English Land Nationalization Society and the DF. Hyndman, Further Reminiscences, pp. 515–516. For a discussion of Helen Taylor see Persky, Political Economy of Progress, pp. 169–171; and Wolfe, From Radicalism to Socialism, pp. 77–78, 105–106.
89.
T. M. Parssinen, ‘Thomas Spence and the Origins of English Land Nationalization’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 34/1 (1973), pp. 135–141.
90.
Wallace, ‘How to Nationalize the Land’, p. 721.
91.
Ibid., pp. 722–724.
92.
Hyndman, England for All, p. 30.
93.
Ibid.
94.
Ibid.
95.
Ibid.
96.
Ibid.
97.
Ibid.
98.
Mill, Representative Government, p. 447.
99.
Ibid., p. 451.
100.
Ibid.
101.
Ibid.
102.
Ibid.
103.
Ibid., p. 450.
104.
Ibid.
105.
Ibid.
106.
Hyndman, England for All, p. 156.
107.
Ibid., p. 97.
108.
Ibid., p. 102.
109.
Mill, Representative Government, p. 252. That Mill took a different view later is beside the point. But see Duncan Bell, ‘John Stuart Mill on Colonies’, Political Theory, 38/1 (2010), pp. 34–64.
110.
Hyndman, England for All, p. 168.
111.
Mill, Representative Government, p. 449. Hyndman, England for All, p. 170.
112.
Logie Barrow and Ian Bullock, Democratic Ideas and the British Labour Movement, 1880–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 13. While the anarchist Joseph Lane is not a reliable source, there is probably at least a kernel of truth in his claim that, ‘on the Suffrage Question’, Hyndman, in 1880, ‘made a remark I have never forgotten or forgiven. He asked me if I meant to say that a loafer at the East End of London was to be placed on an equality with myself’. Quoted in Tsuzuki, Hyndman and British Socialism, p. 30.
113.
Mill, Representative Government, p. 333.
114.
Hyndman, England for All, p. 91.
115.
Ibid., p. 92.
116.
Mill, Representative Government, p. 330.
117.
Hyndman, England for All, p. 91.
118.
Mill, Representative Government, p. 345.
119.
Ibid., p. 334. Hyndman, England for All, p. 92.
120.
Mill, Representative Government, p. 370.
121.
Ibid.
122.
Ibid., p. 371.
123.
Ibid., p. 390.
124.
Hyndman, England for All, p. 96.
125.
Ibid.
126.
Mill, Representative Government, p. 399.
127.
Ibid., p. 102.
128.
Hyndman, England for All, p. 99.
129.
Mill, Representative Government, p. 411.
130.
Ibid., p. 412.
131.
Hyndman, England for All, p. 100.
132.
Ibid., pp. 100–101.
133.
Crick, History of the Social Democratic Federation, p. 33. Hyndman might, at times, have behaved otherwise, as Bax’s recollections of Hyndman’s intolerance towards intemperance among working men perhaps shows. But Bax was equally dismissive of the companion-charge that Hyndman was an ex-Conservative. Reminiscences and Reflexions, pp. 98–99, 94–95.
134.
Wolfe noted the ‘sharply authoritarian turn’ taken by Sidney Webb from 1888 onwards. From Radicalism to Socialism, pp. 281–282. Indeed, Hyndman complained that the ‘function of the Fabian Society has been to prepare politicians and their supporters for … an irresponsible, tyrannical, and half-educated bureaucracy … without any mandate from the constituencies or any reference to the mass of the voters’. Further Reminiscences, pp. 211–212. For further objections to ‘a social state regimented and tyrannised over by a body of bureaucratic functionaries’ aimed at the Fabian Society see H. M. Hyndman, An Introduction to the Life to Come (London: 1926), p. 18. For Chamberlain’s Birmingham see Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities (London: Penguin, 1968), ch. 5; and Tristram Hunt, Building Jerusalem: Rise and Fall of the Victorian City (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004), ch. 8.
135.
Hyndman, England for All, p. 100.
136.
G. A. Cohen. See If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2001), ch. 4.
137.
David Leopold, ‘Socialism and (the rejection of) utopia’, Journal of Political Ideologies, 12/3 (2007), pp. 232–233.
138.
Hyndman, Further Reminiscences, p. 254.
139.
Geras, ‘The Controversy about Marx and Justice’, p. 51.
140.
Hyndman, England for All, p. 78. For Mill’s patriotism see Georgios Varouxakis, ‘“Patriotism”, “Cosmopolitanism” and “Humanity” in Victorian Political Thought’, European Journal of Political Theory, 5/1 (2006), pp. 100–118. See, also, the discussion in Peter Mandler, ‘“Race” and “nation” in mid-Victorian thought’, in Collini, Whatmore, and Young (eds.), History, Religion, and Culture, pp. 224–244; and H. S. Jones, ‘The Idea of the National in Victorian Political Thought’, European Journal of Political Theory, 5/1 (2006), pp. 12–21.

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Flaherty, S. (2020). The Democratic Federation and England for All. In: Marx, Engels and Modern British Socialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42339-1_4

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