28.07.2010
A tireless internationalist
Chris Strafford looks at the role of Albert Inkpin in the formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain
Albert Inkpin was born in London on June 16 1884. As a young man he worked as a clerk and came into contact with the Social Democratic Federation through his membership of the National Union of Clerks, which he joined in 1907. In the SDF Inkpin rose through the ranks quickly and at the age of 27 became the assistant secretary of what was the traditional organisation of Marxists in Britain, despite its small size and recent history of splits and internal disarray.
Inkpin took on the old man of British social democracy, Henry Hyndman, in the struggle to unite Marxist forces into a single body on the basis of a commitment to proletarian internationalism. Hyndman was a notorious social chauvinist and autocrat. Inkpin and his comrades took a partial step in that direction with the formation of the British Socialist Party in 1911 and two years later he was elected BSP general secretary.
Unity was essential to give Marxists extra organisational weight within the working class and this was desperately needed as the pre-war strike wave shook the foundations of the British state. Unfortunately the narrow electoralism of the Hyndman-dominated executive committee left it incapable of gaining a mass following amongst the working class. Despite that many of the leaders of the strikes were BSP members.
It was Hyndman’s conservatism and increasing nationalism that led the wider membership to take moves to sideline him in order to win the BSP to internationalist and anti-militarist positions. Hyndman was advocating increased military spending by the British state to hold back “German belligerency”. The struggle against him reached its final stage at the 1913 2nd Conference, held in Blackpool. A Russian revolutionary named VI Lenin remarked that Hyndman had been “acting for a number of years without any attention to the party, and even against the party, on the important question of armaments and war ... the British social democrats, be it said to their credit - would not tolerate this disgrace and shame and heatedly opposed it.”[1]
Hyndman suffered a setback at Blackpool, but the social-chauvinist wing of the BSP had not yet been completely defeated. It was in this fight that Inkpin rose to help lead the internationalist wing of social democracy in Britain.
As the war started in August 1914, social democratic deputies and luminaries across Europe rushed headlong to help the capitalists send millions to their deaths. Britain was no different and at the beginning of 1915 Hyndman, unable to win the majority, split to form the Socialist National Defence League and later the National Socialist Party.
Inkpin, as the BSP new general secretary, supported the positions of the Zimmerwald conference, despite the fact that the revolutionary defeatist and centrist factions of international social democracy were unable to agree on a concrete line of march. Inkpin was also editor of The Call, a weekly paper set up in 1916 by the internationalist faction of the BSP, which became its official organ after the victory of the left.
The BSP greeted the Russian Revolution and set about producing agitation amongst soldiers, demanding that they should not be sent to crush the young soviet republic. It was from these internationalist positions that the BSP became the driving force to unite the communist groups and sects in Britain into a single party affiliated to the new Communist International.
Inkpin played a central role in all of this. He was secretary of the provisional committee which arranged the unity convention held in London over the weekend of July 31-August 1 1920. Inkpin delivered the keynote speech, urging comrades to unite as part of the revolutionary wave cascading out from the upheavals in Russia and central Europe.
As the first national secretary of the CPGB, he commented in The Communist, the journal of the new party: “... the national convention amply justified those who, in the long and sometimes critical course of the unity discussions, held fast to negotiations in the belief that a way over the obstacles to unity would eventually present itself.
“Not the least striking feature of a remarkable gathering was the splendid manner in which the minority on the thorny subject of Labour Parity affiliation accepted the vote and showed their determination not to allow this minor question of tactics to be transformed into a fundamental question of principle.
“The executive committee, in considering the decision of the convention, cannot fail to interpret the generous and tolerant spirit the majority undoubtedly feel towards the minority. The Communist Party is now a fact. Let us devote our energies and enthusiasm towards proving the party, in numbers, vigour and determination, worthy of the great and inspiring cause for which if stands.
“All power to the Communist Party of Great Britain.”[2]
Inkpin was jailed later that year for the crime of circulating pro-Soviet propaganda and served six months, along with national organiser Bob Stewart.
Inkpin attended the Third World Congress of the Comintern in Moscow 1921, where he was elected to the honorary presidium along with Lenin and Trotsky. Such an accolade underlines the high esteem in which Inkpin was held by internationalist forces around the world.
On his return he was again imprisoned by the frantic and scared authorities for printing and circulating communist material, and again he served six months from January to June 1922. During this period he stood as a candidate for the London County Council, where party members and supporters used the election to win support not only for the CPGB, but for the campaign to release Inkpin from prison and end the attacks on the basic democratic right of freedom of the press.
Arthur MacManus wrote in The Communist on the arrests of leading communists: “We on our part are not to be deceived by platitudes. We know capitalism, and understanding it we know just what to expect from it. We know that when any body of workers dares to raise its voice in protest against the continued subjection of the working class by capitalism there is but one thing left to do, hush that voice. The method of dosing with political soothing syrup may be applied in the first place, a process which explains the spineless character of the Labour Party, but when that method fails, as with the Communist Party, then there is nothing left for it but the mailed fist.”[3]
Out of prison, Inkpin was part of the leadership that fought to translate the industrial unrest of the period into political organisation. However, it was not long before he was back inside. He was arrested on August 4 1925, along with Willie Gallacher, Harry Pollitt, Tom Bell, Wal Hannington and six others, charged with the crime of inciting mutiny under the 1797 Mutiny Act. This action was widely regarded as an attempt to cut off the head of the CPGB before the expected General Strike that was drawing ever closer, whether the trade union leadership liked it or not. Inkpin was one of the five leaders sentenced to a year in prison, while others were jailed for six months.
The degeneration of the Comintern infected the British party and in 1929 Inkpin was replaced by a much younger Harry Pollitt, as Stalin was pushing through the disastrous ‘third period’ line. In failing health, Inkpin was reduced to heading Friends of the Soviet Union and later the Russia Today Society.
He died in 1944.
Notes