The British Socialist Party (BSP) was a Marxist political organisation established in Great Britain in 1911. Following a protracted period of factional struggle, in 1916 the party's anti-war forces gained decisive control of the party and saw the defection of its pro-war right wing. After the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia at the end of 1917 and the termination of the First World War the following year, the BSP emerged as an explicitly revolutionary socialist organisation. It negotiated with other radical groups in an effort to establish a unified communist organisation, an effort which culminated in August 1920 with the establishment of the Communist Party of Great Britain. The youth organisation the Young Socialist League was affiliated with the party.
Organizational history
Formative period (1911–1914) The founding conference which established the British Socialist Party was called by the Social Democratic Party (SDP), a group best remembered to history by its pre-1908 moniker, the Social Democratic Federation (SDF). The old SDF had long sought the unity of the British Left, having originally begun negotiations on the topic with the Independent Labour Party (ILP) not long after the formation of the latter in 1893. The ILP had long been unwilling to merge forces with a doctrinaire Marxist organization such as the SDF, however, and unity negotiations had reached an impasse. Finally, as the decade of the 1910s dawned, there seemed to be some interest in the topic among the rank and file of the ILP, and the 1910 Annual Conference of the SDF/SDP had decided to try again in earnest.
The gathering, held in Salford also drew some Independent Labour Party branches and groups adhering to the Clarion newspaper, alongside individuals and representatives of smaller socialist groups. It continued to publish the SDF's newspaper, Justice. The resulting organisation, the BSP, contained a multiplicity of views and was organized as a loose federation of clubs and branches rather than as a centralised and disciplined party.
Leading members of the former SDF, led by the party's patriarch, H. M. Hyndman, rapidly took control of the new organisation. This leading group advocated that the BSP place an emphasis on electoral politics and the effort to capture the state through the ballot box rather than through labour agitation, the formation of trade unions, and pursuit of an extra-parliamentary route to power via the strike movement.
This cautious, electoral orientation of Hyndman and the early BSP leadership put the party at odds with the tumultuous situation in workplaces around the country. The five years before the eruption of the First World War in August 1914 were a period of mass labour turmoil. As one historian has noted:
"The mass strike wave of 1910 to 1914 remains unique in British history. A wild, elemental, pent-up force seemed suddenly let loose, disregarding precedents and agreements, impatient of compromise, shaking the old complacent trade unionism by the ears, sometimes, as in the rail strike of 1911, forcing conservative leaders ahead of it like fallen leaves driven before an autumn wind. The trade union leaders, almost to a man, deplored it, the government viewed it with alarm... yet disregarding everything, encouraged only by a small minority of syndicalist leaders, the great strike wave rolled on, threatening to sweep away everything before it."
The 2nd Conference of the BSP was held from 10 to 12 May 1913 at the seaside town of Blackpool. It was attended by about 100 delegates, the majority of whom stood in opposition to the standing Executive Committee of the party. This executive was headed by Henry Hyndman one of the founders of the SDF, an individual who had grown steadily more nationalistic in viewpoint, coming to advocate for the increase of Britain's military budget to oppose potential German aggression. This proved increasingly controversial within the BSP, and opposition to militarism among the party's rank and file came to a head at the 2nd Conference.
The events of the 1913 Blackpool Conference were described by a radical Russian émigré named Vladimir Ulyanov, better known to history by his pen name, N. Lenin:
