01.06.1995

Harold Burgess

From Workers’ Dreadnought, paper of the Workers’ Socialist Federation, May 29 1920

The Russian Bolshevists and the Labour delegates in Russia

MANY PEOPLE are declaring themselves Bolshevists today, and many are saying they desire the Workers’ Revolution. One man, Harold Burgess, has tried to do something to prepare for that revolution ... He hastened to make a beginning in preparing not only revolutionary propaganda, but action itself ...

Comrade Burgess has been sent to prison for six months, because some soldiers betrayed his confidence ...

The Wireless Press, on May 21, issued this passage, written by Stekhlov, editor of the Moscow Izvestia:

“Without rifles and machine guns, the workers would never have obtained their liberty; would never have been able to defend it ...

“In order to be prepared to ward off the blows which at all times may fall upon Soviet Russia, we must be possessed of colossal reserves of armed and trained forces.”

Such words have been the inspiration of Harold Burgess ...

... Now it has at last become the fashion for respectable British Labour leaders to visit Soviet Russia and to make congratulatory addresses upon the Workers’ Republic ...

AA Purcell, who is a member of the parliamentary committee of the Trades Union Congress, [said], “When we return to England we shall tell the workers what is taking place in Russia, how the Russian proletariat are building up their lives, so that they may strive to attain the same ideal which the Russian proletariat is struggling for.”

Will Purcell come back to England, prepared to do his part in bringing about the British Workers’ Revolution and in establishing the soviets in our own country? ...

It may be that we shall test the Bolshevism of our comrades by the simple question: What is your opinion of the case of Harold Burgess?

E Sylvia Pankhurst