Three decades before McCarthyism made its name in the USA, Britain experienced her own version of a “Red Scare” in the 1920s. The British press and the Conservative Party went through strenuous efforts to convince the British public that the Bolsheviks were trying to gain a foothold in Britain and advance the Communist cause. Steve Prout explains.
UK Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald with Christian Rakovsky, Head of the Soviet diplomatic delegation, in 1924.
Post War Britain
The political demographics in Britain had changed in the interwar years. The electorate had expanded to include all males under the age of twenty-one. Many had fought in the war and were returning home to a land promised “fit for heroes” which did not materialise. All women over thirty were now eligible to vote for the first time.
These changes had made their impacts on the long-established two-party dominance of the Liberals and Conservatives in British politics as the Labour had now emerged as a credible political party. They began their first government in 1924 much to the surprise of everybody even the party itself. Alarmists were claiming that socialism was gaining a damaging foothold consequently were opening the doors to Bolshevism. The right wing-controlled media would try to ensure the public believed that this was the reality.
The economy was now becoming under pressure and the post war boom was starting to wane exacerbating already tense industrial relations. Strikes were regular and union membership was growing. The mining industry was feeling the adverse effects of competition from the German and Polish mines who had now challenged British exports in the European market. It gave further concern to the already nervous Conservatives
Socialism was new to the British and its intention were not completely understood. Being as the Russian Revolution was still fresh in people’s minds the combined efforts of the press and Conservatives would blow the picture out of all proportion, but what was happening in Britain was as remote as it could get from the recent events that happened in the USSR.
The Conservative and the First Labour Government
The success of the Labour Party’s first election victory that came as a surprise to everybody including the Labour Party itself and so began this fabrication. The Conservatives stirred up anti Soviet hysteria that they could connect to the Labour Party and thus damage their image. They had plenty of material to exploit and mould into the fearful image they wanted to project. This is what we would call today “Fake news” but it did have its effect.
The new Labour Government immediately attracted unflattering quotes and Churchill, true to literary form, offered no restraint himself by announcing that “The enthronement of a socialist government is a serious national misfortune”; elsewhere on the same topic the Chairman of the Leeds and Yorkshire Bank clearly expecting a blooded coup stated, “now is the time for unflinching courage.” Their fears were completely unfounded.
Labour in fact kept to the mainstream path of politics and the status quo of British politics remained unviolated. By the time Labour had achieved office the members that were of a Trade Union affiliation comprised less than half (98 out of 191). Furthermore their membership was no longer exclusively working class - middle and upper classes had also joined their ranks. For a myriad of reasons many viewed old guard politicians as the reason for the cause of the Great War which still remained unforgiven and left deep scars in every village and town in Britain.
Another subtle fact also ignored by the antagonists was that Labour also actively avoided recruiting communists into their ranks, a fact the press chose to overlook. Only two MPs, Walther Newbold and Shapurji Saklatvala, for a short amount of time were on the benches in the House of Commons. The former quickly lost his seat and his enthusiasm from communist ideals. In fact, they repeatedly refused Communism in both the Party and the Trades Union Congress.
Even if Labour were a radical party, they did not command a majority in Government to bring any change about as they depended on the support of the Liberals to vote in their favour in the House of Commons. The reality was Labour also lacked experience, and the economic and political picture of this period was one that required stability not radicalism so in effect they were realists. As MacDonald would remark they were “in office but not in power. “
Labour’s early recognition of the USSR in 1924 created another furore. So did the financial negotiations on trade that ensued but came to no fruition. The Labour Government in fact showed no favouritism to the USSR. The talks of a loan to the Soviet Union were subject to certain conditions, one being the satisfaction of the war debt owed to Britain. There was an idea of opening British goods to the Soviet market that would help Britain’s floundering economy. There was nothing in these negotiations to indicate a blossoming friendship.
Much to the media’s silent disappointment, there would be no socialist revolution.
The Russian Revolution and its aftermath
The USSR was still augmenting its post revolution position and was far too weak economically and militarily to even consider further communist expansion beyond its borders. She was still recovering from losing a succession of wars with Poland where she ceded ninety percent of her lucrative industrial lands. She was isolated with no dependable allies, the exception being the Rapallo Treaty with her former and future adversary, Germany.
This did not stop the British press - it was determined to manufacture a threat and another opportunity came along in the form of a fake document called the Zinoviev letter purported to be from Moscow ordering underground communist sedition in Britain. It coincidentally appeared and was published while MacDonald’s first Labour government was in office. The incident was more akin to a damp fuse than a major incident. Taylor terms it “a puzzle of no historical importance” and it did not actually cause the demise of the first Labour Party. Its authenticity was questioned by the King himself, but it did not reach the public ear and it would have been too late for his words to have any impact.
Internally the USSR had a multitude of problems meaning her energies had to be focused on these issues, namely the famines which resulted in Lenin appealing for help from the wider world. Lenin even contemplated on back-pedalling on some of his communist policies to introduce a limited degree of private enterprise to combat the economic devastation. Any talk of worldwide revolution within the ranks in the USSR was purely fanciful words expressed only by the deluded and the wishful thinking idealists. The media had to look elsewhere and further afield that place was in China.
The Chinese Uprisings
In March 1927, another opportunity was seized upon by the media. In Nanjing, China local soldiers began looting the British, US and Japanese embassies in what was known as the Chinese Uprisings; six foreign nationals were killed two of whom were British which resulted in an immediate demand for retribution. The media immediately saw this as tangible evidence of a Red Menace showing its hand and threatening British interests. Meredith Atkinson summed up the anti-Soviet hysteria spread at the time by comparing it with the crusades of previous centuries: “All Holy wars fade into insignificance beside the fanatical Jehad of the Red International.” This was an exaggeration.
The Comintern (a Soviet backed international organisation founded in 1919 to expedite the spread of communism) was no tangible threat anywhere and it played little part in the unrest in China. The disquiet was more down to Britain’s application of her imperialism that resulted in unequal commercial and trading terms. Nationalistic fervor rather than any communist intent was the underlying driving force all along and Britain was seeing this grow in her possessions around the globe, namely Iraq, India, Ireland, and Egypt. The truth was that the British failed to recognize the changing times and an Empire that was becoming untenable to maintain.
The typical British response was to use force to re-impose their authority as they did in Iraq and Ireland failing to realise that their own heavy-handed suppressive ways did nothing to calm the discontent or arrest the Empire’s decline - if anything it accelerated it.
The Home Front and the aftermath of the General Strike
The judiciary, law enforcement and the government all but abused their positions to suppress any communist presence or opinions. Britain had only recently become a proper more inclusive democracy in the early part of the century with expanding the electorate, but it appeared people could still be persecuted for their political beliefs if it were not palatable with the newly elected Conservatives.
The Home Secretary William Joynson-Hicks whom HG Wells described at the time one as somebody who “represents the absolute worst element in British political life” was particularly energetic in these endeavours. Hicks was renowned for his ruthless persecution of members of the British Communist Party. In 1925 he would be instrumental in the imprisonment of twelve individuals just based on their political beliefs, one of who was Harry Pollit, the General Secretary of the British Communist Party.
This antipathy was evident in his early political career when he called Kier Hardie a “leprous traitor.” Hickson was a strange and contradictory individual who on the one hand was a firm supporter of the female vote but on the other could discard democratic ideals.
The General Strike of 1926 for all its grand scale and disruption only resulted in four thousand arrests out of millions of strikers. There was minimal property damage and Churchill's forebodings of mass violent action and sedition failed to happen as only a thousand of those arrested served a prison sentence. The strike was unsuccessful and did not require the use of any governmental emergency powers. The desire revolution never existed in mind or body of the people or the strikers, but this did not stop Churchill trying his best in being typically provocative by labelling British workingmen as the enemy. Bellicose and true to form he used a newly founded British Gazette to loudly promote this distorted view. His attitude during the strike was one of a minister being on a war footing and demanding an “unconditional surrender” of the strikers rather than seeing it as a genuine protest with genuine grievances and concerns
Attitudes in 1925 emanating from the Trade Unions were about negotiation, as AJP Taylor remarked, and were not about Bolshevism. Incidents of striking by 1925 were only a tenth of what they were in 1921, further pointing to evidence that any intensity was diluted. Most union leaders did not see class war as a tool for change. The old class arguments were outdated and were replaced by more progressive attitudes. Ernest Bevin in fact wanted to work with the employers to bring change. The press of course continued its antagonistic line unnecessarily.
Conclusion
The Red Menace incident was an isolated piece of British history that was forgotten amid the headlining events that shook Europe between the two world wars and the. It is interesting and frightening how the British government could easily meander around the judicial and democratic ideals to deal with opposing political views for a threat that was essentially contrived by themselves.
Had this have been a decade later in the 1930s then there would have been some justification for a Red Menace as the USSR executed its purges, intervened in Spain, and allied itself to the Nazi Regime in 1939. Even so, this does not excuse the political suppression at home or abroad.
The inter war years do have their interesting aspects as we see how Britain came to terms with the changes following the First World War and how she behaved in the build up to the second.
What do you think of Britain’s 1920s communist scare? Let us know below.
Now, read Steve’s article on Britain’s relationship with the European dictators in the inter-war years here.
References
Ariane Knusel -British Conservatives, the Red Menace and Anti-Foreign agitation in China 1924-1927 – Cultural History 2013- Edinburgh University Press
AJP Taylor – English History 1914-1945 – Oxford University Press
Extracts from Chronicles of the Twentieth Century – Longman -1987
Jonathan Dimbleby -Barbarossa: How Hitler Lost the War – Penguin Books 2021
