"In the interests of economy they condemned hundreds of children to death and I call it murder." -
James Maxton
James Maxton appeared to be Keir Hardie's natural successor. Maxton is remembered as one of the leading figures of the Red Clydeside era. His parents were both schoolteachers and he was educated at Hutchesons' Grammar School before going on to study at the University of Glasgow. He, too, was a teacher.
In 1904 Maxton joined the Barrhead branch of the Independent Labour Party. From 1906 to 1910, he was active in the teachers' unions. When the First World War broke out Maxton was an opponent and became a conscientious objector, refusing conscription into the military, and instead given work on barges. During this time he was involved in organising strikes in the shipyards. Maxton's arrest followed his speech at a demonstration on Glasgow Green to protest against the implementation of the Munitions Act and the deportation of the Clyde Workers' Committee leadership to Edinburgh. At this demonstration Maxton, along with James McDougall and Jack Smith (an anarchist shop steward from Weirs munitions factory), gave speeches advocating strike action by Glasgow workers to ensure the non-implementation of the Munitions Act. At the subsequent trial of the three men at the High Court in Edinburgh on 25 April 1916, Maxton and McDougall were sentenced to 12 months' imprisonment and Smith was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment. Maxton won a seat as an MP for Glasgow Bridgeton in the 1922 general election.
Religion in Glasgow at this time was all-pervasive. Maxton, a supporter of Celtic was seen by many as pro-Catholic and he did indeed seek and receive the endorsement of the Catholic Church in Bridgeton, but, in return for their political sponsorship Maxton acquiesced to Catholic dogma on subjects such as birth control and denominational schools. Maxton could not be seen in favour of ILP moves to abolish religious instruction for a more secular educational system and he often acted counter to ILP policy on those issues. In regard to birth control he advocated "
the intelligent control of the appetites and desires"
!! Losing the Catholic vote was too big a risk for a principled socialist stand on family life.
Maxton also agreed with Scottish home-rule and in support of a federal Britain presented in parliament bill argued that
"He would ask for no greater task in life than to make the English-ridden, capitalist-ridden, landowner-ridden Scotland into a free Scottish Socialist Commonwealth"
In some speeches during the 20s he put forward the need for trade unions to supplement political action with extra-parliamentary forms of protest. During Glasgow's 1924 rent strikes he warned that he would bring the tenants on to the streets if the government refused to defend them against the landlords. He also began to align himself closer to the CPGB, supporting their efforts to affiliate to the Labour Party and attending unity meetings. In 1926 General Strike, Maxton was to issue a manifesto in support of the miners which said:
"The [ILP]
National Council calls on its 1,100 branches to place themselves unreservedly at the disposal of the miners and the Trade Union Movement in the biggest struggle in which British Labour has ever been engaged." The ILP put themselves passively at the disposal of TUC.
Maxton's whole political life was devoted to the Independent Labour Party. Maxton was chairman of the ILP from 1926 to 1931, and from 1934 to 1939. He was generally seen as the symbol of the ILP after its break from Labour in 1932. At the 1926 annual conference a series of policy documents were adopted under the title "Socialism in our Time" The "Living Wage Plan" called for a minimum wage for every citizen to be a: priority. This was to be combined with expanded social services and a national system of family allowances to be paid for by heavier taxation on high incomes. Other documents called for the nationalisation of banking and credit, including the City and the Bank of England, a call for the removal of the Ministry of Health's ban on giving advice on birth control at maternity clinics [opposed by Maxton] and a proposal that Labour should vote against all military estimates. There was little that was revolutionary about these demands. Yet the 1927 and 1928 Labour Party conferences rejected each proposal one by one. With the election of the minority Labour government in 1929 the differences between the ILP and the Labour Party leadership came to a head. Austerity measures were recommended by the "May Committee" interim report proposing a series of attacks on the unemployed. Benefits were to be reduced, limited to 26 weeks a year and in addition a series of measures, aimed at depriving married women and part time workers of the dole, were proposed. (Its final report called for more attacks on the unemployed and massive reductions in public sector employees' salaries, including teachers, the armed forces and the police) .Maxton led the opposition. The 17 strong Maxton group were denounced for threatening the government's survival and were vilified by the leadership and the Parliamentary party for exposing the treachery of the Labour government. Emanuel Shinwell, a Red Clydeside comrade, launched a campaign against Maxton from within the ILP.
The National Administrative Council of the ILP in June 1931 carried the following resolution:
"It must be noted as a remarkable fact that to wage a Socialist fight against the poverty of the working class is made more difficult when a Labour Government is in power than at other times, and that obstacles are put in the way and threats directed against working class organisations maintaining that fight."
In the autumn of 1931 massive demonstrations of the unemployed took place against the cuts in benefits introduced by the newly-elected National Government. Ten thousand traditionally non-militant teachers marched in protest at 15% wage cuts and in September the Royal Navy fleet at Invergordon in Scotland "mutinied". Ten thousand ratings struck, refusing to put to sea until pay cuts were rescinded. The 1932 conference of the ILP adopted a new Statement of Policy which pointed to the inadequacy of purely parliamentary action and called for "
mass industrial action as an additional means". The statement declared that capitalism was in deep crisis and that the class struggle as
"the dynamic force in social change was nearing its decisive moment". Maxton and others supported disaffiliation from the Labour Party and an independent ILP. The 1932 Special Conference voted nearly two to one in favour of leaving the Labour Party. A minority led by another Red Clydesider, Kirkwood, rejoined the Labour Party forming the Socialist League.
In 1935 the USSR signed an agreement with France, the Stalin-Laval Pact, which explicitly recognised imperialist France's right to national defence. Maxton had already predicted, in 1934, what the outcome of the view Stalinist policy would be. Maxton declared:
"The Russian government cannot become allied with the French Government without subduing the class struggle previously carried on by the French Communists. It cannot seek an alliance with the British Government without moderating the class struggle carried by the Communist Party here. Neither can it support the struggle carried on by the oppressed colonial peoples against both British and French imperialisms."
In September 1935 the ILP conference had taken a decision to adopt a dual defeatist position referring to the war as a conflict between "rival dictators". At the same time they dropped the campaign for workers' sanctions against Abyssinia. Maxton, however, insisted upon the pre-conference policy in defence of Abyssinia and for the defeat of imperialist Italy. Maxton immediately convened a meeting of the Parliamentary Group of the ILP where they agreed unanimously to threaten resignation rather than carry out conference policy. The conference was bullied into accepting a referendum and was held with the Parliamentary Group holding a gun to the head of the membership. The referendum returned a three to two majority in favour of Maxton's change of policy. The ILP parliamentarian's motivation for the split from the Labour Party was to preserve its own independence. Now preserved that same independence, this time from the membership of the ILP! Maxton also became more critical of the entryism of Trotskyists and in late 1935 and 1936 and there were demands for the dissolution of all organised groups in the ILP, a measure aimed primarily at the Trotskyist "Marxist Group".
On the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War Maxton called for the government to support the policy of Non-Intervention but later Maxton argued that the overt intervention of Germany and Italy required a British response and that Franco had practically unrestricted aid from the two fascist powers, while Britain had done nothing to help the Republicans. Worse than that, the Government had in effect tacitly supported the Fascists. Their
"class prejudices were with Franco". He argued that non-intervention had actually been an act of discrimination against the Spanish people's government. If Spain had been ruled by a right-wing government, it would have been accorded all the rights normally accorded to foreign powers. As a pacifist Maxton opposed re-armament in the 1930s and supported the appeasement policies of Neville Chamberlain. After the outbreak of the Second World War Maxton continued to advocate pacifism.
Maxton said in accepting the ILP leadership: "
It is the place of the ILP to lay stress on the mind and will of man as the determining factor in bringing about a change in social and economic affairs, and to work for and propagate socialism with speed but without catastrophe." But, of course, that "determining factor" was always subordinated to achieving a Labour majority in Parliament, as we have earlier said Maxton was willing to re-prioritise policies to satisfy his supporters prejudices.
In a debate with the SPGB, Maxton stated he "
entirely agreed with the case put forward by his opponent. This statement of Socialist first principles was unassailable. The definitions were clear and correct. He accepted absolutely the diagnosis given. The workers accept capitalism and believe that the capitalists are a superior and necessary class. The only remedy is for the workers to awaken to the loss they suffer in being deprived of the necessities and luxuries of life. The problem before the Socialist is to awaken the worker to his subject position in society...The first necessity of an effective working-class organisation is the possession of a clear aim and policy. He and his opponent are equally doing the necessary propaganda...Socialism is a question of human will and human organisation. Socialism can be attained by violence or by the 'inevitability of gradualness.' All depends on human will and human intelligence. It depends not on any god or other power outside ourselves...The ILP will play an important part in achieving Socialism, a work not for the. ILP or the SPGB, but for the workers of the world."
In 1924 when the first Labour government came into office, out of 193 Labour MPs 132 were members of the ILP. Twenty-six of them were in the government and six of them, including the Prime Minister MacDonald, were in the cabinet. In 1929 out of 288 Labour MPs over 200 were members of the ILP. Again it was very strongly represented in the government and cabinet including, as before, MacDonald as Prime Minister. Among the MPs was another ILP member, Clement Attlee, who was to become Labour Prime Minister in the 1945 government. The ILP could congratulate itself on building up the mass party Keir Hardie and Maxton wanted. But what of the next stage, getting the Labour Party to accept socialism as its object? And if the ILP was to win over the the workers to socialism, who was to win over the ILP membership and its leaders to socialism as a first step? Despite the ILP publishing works by Marx and Engels, and while Maxton could declare his support for their conception of socialism, their own publications and election programmes were full of proposals for reforming capitalism. ILP members had been recruited, not on the demand for socialism, but attracted by its reforms. The ILP consistently misled the workers with its description of nationalisation as socialism and Maxton especially welcomed the nationalisation of the Bank of England.
Maxton died on 23 July 1946, still a sitting MP for Bridgeton. When Maxton first won the seat in 1929 he got over 21,000 votes. When the ILP put up a candidate there at the 1955 election his vote was 2619 and he lost his deposit. The ILP has vanished and Maxton has become almost forgotten. Having devoted all his political life in the service of the ILP James Maxton's efforts achieved nothing for socialism.
Report of Fitzgerald/Maxton debate
Review of Maxton biography by Bill Knox
