30.01.1997

The BSP and the Allies’ war aims

From The Call, paper of the British Socialist Party, January 25 1917

Throughout the war the British Socialist Party has stood with other bodies in demanding a statement of Allied aims. We believed this would clear the air and prepare the path to peace.

At last the Allied governments, unable further to resist the widespread demand for terms, have published their aims. But the true tone of their statement, their callous opinion that an early peace is impossible, their stated and implied objectives plainly reveal the aggressive spirit of capitalist imperialism, and amply justify the attitude of our party since the beginning of the war.

Coming to the Allied peace note, we strongly protest, firstly against the studied policy of recrimination calculated to embitter national relations and to stave off peace; and secondly ... we protest against the reference to our “inviolable fidelity to international obligations”, which can only exhibit us as hypocrites to the entire world. While promising liberation to the peoples under the heel of the Central Powers, the Allies are silent concerning their own domination of Finns, Poles, Moors, Egyptians, Indians and Irish.

We view with alarm such dangerous and loose phrases as the “reorganisation of Europe”, and the “fitting reparation” to Russia, France and Romania: and “compensations” due to other nations which, choosing their opportunity, entered the struggle at various stages. We contend that any such “compensations”, annexations or re-annexations, play into the hands of imperialist schemes and sow seeds of future wars. Permanent settlement of any of these questions must be based on the democratically expressed will of the peoples concerned ...

As a British section of the Socialist International, we indict imperialist aims, the secret diplomacy and the firebrand press of every country as responsible for the sanguinary struggle. In every country a small clique of imperialists have sprung to power and are directing the whole national resources for aggressive ends ...

The aims of the Allied governments are now made manifest by the reply to the American note. They are not in conformity with the objectives for which it was asserted the governments entered the war and for which the peoples of the respective countries rallied to take up arms. No working class interests can be served by the achievement of these publicly declared aims. On the contrary the continuation of the war in pursuit of such purposes will entail the utter ruin of the peoples of all countries.

We therefore maintain our unshakeable hostility to the continuation of the useless sacrifice and urge the workers of all countries to exert pressure on their governments to bring it to an immediate conclusion on the basis of no annexations, no imperialist expansion, no transfer of provinces, save with the free consent of the peoples in the territories concerned. We declare that the only guarantee of a lasting peace lies in the solidarity of the world’s workers.

Executive Committee of the British Socialist Party