(Editor of "Justice"; Author of "The First of May: International
Labour Day"; "A Socialist View of the Unemployed Question";
"Social-Democracy and the Zollverein"; "The Triumph of the Trust
under Free Trade"; "The Great Strike Movement of 1911"; and
"Why Starve? Britain's Food in War—and in Peace.").
WITH
FOREWORD BY WILL THORNE, M.P.
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY PRESS (1912), LIMITED.
(Trade Union and 48 Hours),
37, 37a and 38, Clerkenwell Green, London, E.C.
February, 1919.
FOREWORD BY WILL THORNE, M.P.
I have been asked to write a brief introduction to the pamphlet which my old friend and comrade H.W. Lee has written on the undercurrent of Bolshevist propaganda going on in this country, of which the recent unauthorised strike outbreaks are outward and visible signs. I do this gladly. Our comrade Lee, through being long associated with the Social-Democratic Federation as its Secretary, and his editorship of "Justice" during the last five years, has gained a knowledge of International Socialist movements in their many phases which renders his pamphlet both authoritative and reliable.
I hope the pamphlet will have a wide circulation in all the large industrial centres, because I feel convinced that the majority of the rank and file of the wage-earners do not and cannot know what it is that our Bolshevists are striving for. They have not the faintest idea in what direction some of them are being led. The Bolshevists in certain industrial centres want to impose their own authority on the rank and file of the workers, using catch-words for that purpose. If they succeed in this direction they will set to work to undermine the trade union movement of this country, and upset, instead of making use of, the means we at present possess for improving our economic conditions.
Our minds go back to the Leeds "Convention," held in June, 1917. The delegates at that Conference declared that they were in favour of Workmen's and Soldiers' Councils being formed in all the large industrial centres of the country. Nothing whatever came of it. But the W.S.C.s then controlling the revolutionary undercurrent in Russia were totally different from the Bolshevist tyranny of to-day, and many of the delegates who formed the W.S.C.s in various parts of Russia after the Revolution have been imprisoned or shot because they opposed the domination of Lenin and Trotzky.
Last Tuesday I saw two friends whom I met in Petrograd in April, 1917, and both of them absolutely confirm the statements made in the Press about the hundreds of men and women who have been shot without any trial or confirmation of the charges brought against them.
An article which appears in the "Nineteenth Century" of January, written by Mr. Pierson, who was imprisoned in the Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul last October, after being arrested at the British Embassy in Petrograd at the same time that Captain Cromie was shot, also confirms the brutalities that are taking place constantly in Petrograd and other parts of Russia.
A letter in the "Daily Express," written by Colonel John Ward, M.P., shows the terrible hell which Bolshevism is making, and the methods that are being pursued by the followers of Lenin and Trotzky. If the Soldiers' and Workmen's Councils had done their duty in the latter part of April, 1917, after Lenin made his two hours' speech in the Duma on April 17, they would have sent him back whence he came, because it is a well-known fact that he was allowed to pass through Germany with thirty other companions in a first-class saloon. I am quite convinced that it was not the Russian people who were paying his expenses during the time he was carrying on his pernicious propaganda work in various parts of Russia. The downfall of the Soldiers' and Workmen's Councils has been the consequence of their giving Lenin and his thirty companions full freedom to spread their anarchical creed and the wiping out of duly elected Assemblies.
The leading men of the Bolshevik movement in this country are out for the overthrow of things as they are by physical force as soon as they feel confident that they have a good number of the rank and file of the wage-earners behind them. I want to warn the wage-earners—men and women of my own class—against being associated with such people, because I know that their tactics cannot remedy the economic and industrial injustices under which the industrial workers are suffering. They can be rectified by Social-Democratic education, scientific organisation in the trade union movement, and by using political powers to that end.
The methods adopted by the unauthorised shop stewards movement in the different parts of the country must be rigorously suppressed, and properly appointed shop stewards and works committees in all factories and workshops must be elected instead. By that method industrial and economic improvements can be brought about with the greatest benefit and the least harm to all.
The pamphlet gives a very clear statement about what is taking place in connection with the Bolshevist movement. That is the reason why I trust that it will have a wide circulation in all the large industrial centres of the country.
WILL THORNE.
February 13, 1919.
"BOLSHEVISM":
