10.04.1997

The admirers of the Revolution

From The Call, paper of the British Socialist Party, April 5 1917

Last week saw a large number of public meetings celebrating the Russian Revolution. Peers of the realm and ministers of the crown, supported by retired revolutionists and patriotic émigrés from Russia, vied with one another in singing paeans of praise to the “greatest event in the war” and extolling the virtues of the Russian people.

And these retired revolutionists and patriotic émigrés, who but a short time ago were preaching so eloquently the union sacré of all classes of the Russian nation with the government of the tsar and were pinning their faith on the ‘glorious’ victory of Holy Russia over Germany and her allies as a means of attaining national freedom, eloquently expatiated now on the wisdom and courage of the revolutionary people who have risen under the sting of defeats and have broken the bonds of alliance with the tsardom ...

It is more pleasing to turn to the meeting held by our Herald friends in the Albert Hall. The spirit of that great audience, as at our own meeting in the Memorial Hall the previous Monday, reflected the effect of the Revolution on the workers here. But even there one listened vainly for the true lesson of the Revolution. We insist that the only response of value that can be given to the revolutionary Russian workers is the response which recognises the obligations the Revolution imposes upon us and sounds the note of international labour solidarity and uncompromising hostility to capitalist imperialism and war ...

Every day that passes makes more imperative the need for courage, outspokenness and definitiveness. The country waits for a lead, and it is only by giving that lead that we shall have the right to say to the Russian workers: ‘Your work is also our own’.