William Morris and the Early Days of the Socialist Movement/13
CHAPTER XIII
LAST DAYS OF THE LEAGUE
WHEN in 1888 at the Whitsunday Annual Conference of the League the parliamentarian faction were decisively out-voted and asked to withdraw from the Party, there was for the moment a general expectation among the victors that the troubles within the League were over, and that its work would now proceed unimpeded by internal strife. Morris, however, was far from hopeful of that result. He knew the movement both in London and in the Provinces better than anyone else did, and he was too quick of eye not to discern the new peril of the situation. Returning that evening from the Conference to Hammersmith he remarked to me rather gloomily, 'We have got rid of the parliamentarians, and now our anarchist friends will want to drive the team. However, we have the Council and the Commonweal safe with us for at least a twelve-month, and that is something to be thankful for.'
This uneasy feeling about what had occurred was often expressed by Morris during my visit. There was, he said, something unnatural in casting out comrades who, however perverse in their methods, wished to remain banded with us. It didn't feel Socialist-like. Had their object been to break away from the League, as indeed in consistency to their principles they ought to have done, the position would have been quite different. Besides, he felt within himself that should it ever come to a choice with him between having to rank himself on the side of parliamentarianism or on the side of anarchism, he would unhesitatingly choose the former.
Morris' apprehensions about anarchism were deep and instinctive. He dreaded the doctrine all the more because he agreed with Anarchists in a great measure in their general affirmation of freedom, and in their belief in voluntary as opposed to compulsory co-operation. But their denial of social authority and discipline, their strong assertion of individual rather than of social rights, their emphasis of the sovereignty or autonomy of the individual, and their constant tendency to view society as the enemy instead of the friend of man, and, while declaring men to be on the whole individually good and trustworthy, at the same time ceaselessly to rail against organised society as inherently wicked and tyrannical, were notions alien alike to his temperament and his reason. He had no patience with the idea that men, apart from the environment of society—its education, customs, and co-operation—were naturally unselfish, amiable, or God-like creatures; nor that 'free' from organised society they could attain any human eminence or happiness. Neither the 'freedom' of Rousseau's 'Man in a State of Nature,' nor that of Thoreau's 'Solitude in the Woods,' appealed to him. He saw that all things that pleased him in life—work, art, literature, fellowship, civic courage and social custom—were the outcome of men associating with, not of men separating themselves from, their fellows, either in work or woe.
In fine, he was a Socialist, not an Anarchist. He believed that man was a social being whose welfare depended on the welfare of Society and on his sharing in its common rights and freedom, not on his striving to assert his own separate powers or inclinations.
Nevertheless, Morris liked many of the Anarchists personally. He shared, as I have said, their desire for freedom as against all class or arbitrary rule. In many ways, too, he shared with men like Edward Carpenter and Bernard Shaw their disregard of habits and conventions that belonged to obsolete social or religious systems and prevented the freer growth of individual initiative and variety in life. Nor had he hitherto found much difficulty in working with Anarchists on a common platform. He had often addressed meetings with Kropotkin (and to the last remained his personal friend), with Mrs. C.M. Wilson, Louise Michel, and other pronounced Anarchists, and several of his colleagues in the Council of the League were decidedly Anarchist in their views. It had indeed been easier on the whole for him to get on with the Anarchists than with the parliamentarians, for the simple reason that the matter of parliamentary policy was involved in almost every practical question that arose, whereas Anarchism as a practical system was, or seemed to be, a question of the far future.
But already it was becoming evident to him and to other of the more observant members of the League in London and in the Provinces, that Anarchism was no longer an abstract theory merely. The Anarchist idea was gaining more and more adherents in the Party; and with their growth in numbers they were becoming increasingly bold in their efforts to apply their principles both within and without the organisation.
There was, in fact, a sort of current of Anarchism rising in the Socialist Movement—a current which a year or two later threatened to carry away with it a large part of the more active propagandists.
It was difficult just then to account for this circumstance. There appeared to be something mysterious in its origin and mode of diffusion. It was hardly to be ascribed to any circumstance in the political or industrial situation of the time. It was rather a reaction of influences within the Movement itself. Nowhere did Anarchism spring up spontaneously, so to speak, in the country, as Socialism so often did. It grew and spread only within the Socialist Movement, parasitically in the branches—a fact which accords with general experience of Anarchist propaganda in other countries.
Men are often what is described as 'born Socialists'—born, that is to say, with altruistic natures, abhorrent of all social wrong, and with minds easily attracted by Utopian ideas. Men are also often enough 'born individualists'—wholly obsessed, that is to say, with their own self-interests and desires. Men are never 'born Anarchists.' Anarchism is not an innate predisposition in man; it is an acquired state of mind, and a very unstable one usually. The Anarchist is either a Socialist who has got muddled with individualist ideas, or an individualist who has got muddled with Socialist ideas.
Undoubtedly the presence in the movement of a large element of foreign refugees, particularly from Russia and Poland and Spain, afforded Anarchism a stimulating soil for growth. These exiles, bred under Tsarist despotism, knowing government only as a machine of oppression, and possessing no attachment to British traditions of constitutional liberty, and often failing to acquire any deep sense of civic responsibility, were naturally disposed to favour 'autonomist' and insurrectionary ideas. It was amongst these people also that the police agents of foreign governments were for ever prowling for their victims.
And here, as events proved, we are near to the main source of the 'propaganda by deed' excitement which, under the name of Anarchism, so widely infected the movement at that period. That this Anarchist propaganda was organised and stimulated by police spies and agents provocateurs, admits of no doubt. The subsequent tragic incidents of the Walsall Anarchist bomb plot, and the revelations that then and afterwards ensued, especially in connection with the notorious Coulon, proved that for years the police had been at work devising Anarchist plots and inveigling dupes into their criminal net.
The Socialist League was, of course, particularly vulnerable to Anarchist propaganda, because of its avowedly revolutionary aims, and anti-parliamentary policy. Many of its members found it difficult to draw the line clearly between the League principles and Anarchism, just as on the other hand many Fabians found no obstacle to their supporting Liberalism in opposition to Labour. Even Morris himself, clear as he was in his own mind as to the fundamental distinction and opposition of the two philosophies, could not always in precept or in practice separate them. Especially was this the case when dealing with his immediate associates at the headquarters of the League, some of whom he personally liked though disapproving their autonomist views and inflammatory utterances. The consequence was that already at the headquarters, as well as in some of the branches, Anarchistic ways of a disquieting nature were beginning to establish themselves.
The Anarchistic emphasis on no rules, no censorship, no 'bourgeois' morality, was, in fact, beginning to sap the stamina of certain of the branches and clubs; and a tendency was noticeable, not only of a lapsing from Socialist principles, but from moral standards. An affected bravado of 'do as you please and damn public opinion' was accepted as a substitute for any declaration or witness of Socialist conviction; and the specious catchword 'propaganda by deed,' which was beginning to allure some of the more earnest members from the drudgery of holding public meetings into dalliance with revolutionary heroics, was not always interpreted in a political sense. The Autonomie Club, becoming bolder and bolder, were about to issue a few years later (1894) leaflets entitled 'Vive le Vol' ('Long live Theft'), and even to justify theft not only on the part of the poor from the rich, but by comrades from comrades.
It was the apprehension aroused by these personal bizarre extravagances, more than their mere political intransigence, that vexed and repelled Morris. Strongly opposed as he was to the diversion of Socialist propaganda from its real object, 'the making of Socialists,' into attempts to excite insurrections that would only lead to fruitless bloodshed, and head the nation back to sheer reaction, he was not really alarmed on that score. There was, he knew, not the least likelihood of the Anarchists succeeding in arousing any proletarian insurrection in this country. But he saw clearly that their present course must inevitably end in tragic consequences to some of themselves or to their dupes at the hands of the police, and that meanwhile their conduct was calculated to demoralise the movement, destroy the tradition, and deface the ideals of the Socialist cause.
Not that Morris desired that Socialism or Socialists should approve themselves to what is termed the nonconformist conscience. But he wished Socialism to approve itself to earnest-minded Socialists themselves, and to all good-hearted and right-headed men and women. He often said of himself that he was not a puritan; and in the customary or scoffing sense of the word he assuredly was not But there was a sense in which it might be said of him that not only was he a puritan, but a puritan of the puritans. No man was more repelled by, or more sternly disapproved unsocial conduct, or actions that he regarded as dishonourable, base, ugly, or cruel. He had, it is true, no liking for asceticism, dinginess, or mere straitlacedness of any kind. Merry-making and jollity were after his own heart, and one of the constant affirmations in his writings was that only under Socialism could real merriment and joy in life abound. But feasting and mirth must be won by work and diligence in the needful duties of life; it must not be taken by idleness and thoughtless self-indulgence. With Bohemianism as a cult, or the bravado of hedonism, he had no sympathy whatever. Debauchery, blackguardism, idleness, and looseness of life he abominated, as greatly as he admired George Borrow, and revelled in 'Pickwick' and the fun and mischief of 'Huckleberry Finn,' precisely because they were expressions of strong, resourceful, or good-natured character, and protests against humdrum ways of life.
The men, as I have said, with whom Morris was most closely associated in the official work of the League at that time were Joe Lane, Frank Kitz, and David J. Nicol. Lane was co-trustee with Morris of the Commonweal, Nicol was sub-editor, and Kitz was Secretary of the League.
Lane I hardly knew personally, having only met him once or twice at conferences. He was an intensely earnest man, but as I gathered, of a rather narrow, doctrinaire mind, who perpetually worried himself and others with his pet dogma the iniquity of the State, and the necessity of the complete abolition of all political government. Nevertheless Morris had much respect for him.
Frank Kitz was of a wholly different mould. He was a dyer by trade, and had sometimes been employed by Morris at his Merton Abbey works. He was, I always understood, a fairly competent workman, but irregular in his habits. A sturdily made, bluff, breezy chap, fond of his beer and jolly company, and with something of originality in his composition, Morris liked him for a time and forgave him a thousand faults. There was a rough humour and wit in him, and a sort of perverse ingenuity of ideas, and bold aptness of phrase which made his talk and his public speaking attractive to the crowd. He was a rebel by temperament rather than Anarchist by philosophy. He was out for the social revolution rather than for Socialism, Communism or Anarchism. What precisely his idea of the social revolution was he never perhaps made quite clear.
In the pages of To-Day Bernard Shaw, who, like Morris, was attracted by Kitz's unconventional characteristics, devoted two amusing articles to a good-humoured sally on Kitz's revolutionary bluster.
David Nicol was yet another type. Possessed of a good education, and originally of some moderate means, he was drawn into the movement by his idealist tendencies. He had some literary gift, and one or two of his songs, such as the 'Workers' Marseillaise' and 'The Coming of the Light,' have a glow of poetic fire in them. Kindly and gentle by nature, there was a strain of weakness in him mentally. He steeped his mind in clandestine literature, especially that dealing with the homicidal details of Government oppression and popular revolt, and became obsessed with the notion of arousing an insurrectionary working-class struggle in this country.
It was mainly into the hands of these three men, together with Charles Mowbray, whose whole Socialist career fell afterwards into disrepute as one who was at least the tool of police agents, that the control of the Commonweal and the League passed, when Morris and the Hammersmith branch broke off from the League. The result was inevitable.
There were still, it is true, a few members of the Anarchist-Communist type who gave no countenance to these eccentricities, but their example and reproof were alike disregarded. Morris showed all along, as we have seen, astonishing forbearance to his erring comrades. Even when they succeeded in capturing, as they did at the Annual Conference in 1889, the Council of the League, and he resigned from it and from the editorship of the Commonweal, he continued for many months to meet the deficit in the treasury to the tune of several hundred pounds. Eventually, however, the position became unendurable, and he cut off all supplies. Before doing so he discharged the debt of the paper and the League, leaving his comrades with not a penny of past debt to burden them. The League and the Commonweal between them exacted a tribute from him in donations and debt payments of at least ₤500 a year.
The after-history of the League is briefly told. The majority of the provincial branches, disagreeing with the Anarchist policy, ceased to send affiliation fees. The Commonweal became a monthly instead of a weekly pucatbliion, and an avowed organ of Anarchism. Police spies and agents provocateurs played their accustomed part. Nicol, the editor of the Commonweal, got imprisoned for a seditious article, and later came the Walsall Anarchist Plot, which led to Fred Charles, Joe Deakin, and two others getting long terms of penal servitude. The chief instrument of this plot was Coulon, a spy in the pay of the French Government.
To this strangely inglorious and tragic end came the Socialist League, founded and inspired by the teaching, and made glorious by the genius of one of the most gifted of the sons of men.