The Independent Labor Party and World War Peace Objectives

Abstract

From the outset socialist parties have had to formulate a policy towards militarism and its fateful corollary, war. In England the Independent Labor Party [I.L.P.], one of several socialist organizations burgeoning forth in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, did not hesitate to declare its views on the subject. To its thirty thousand active members, among whom were Keir Hardie, Philip Snowden, and Ramsay MacDonald, socialism stood for the brotherhood and the divinity of the human race, whereas war stirred international hatreds and destroyed the manhood of nations. The current clashes in particular were characterized as simply a phase of the imperialist expansion of their arch-foe, capitalism. The outbreak of the World War was to them but a continuation of this struggle for world markets. In the light, however, of the assistance given the government by the working class movement, the leaders of the I.L.P. thought it inadvisable, if their party were to retain its influence with British Labor, to cling too narrowly to their pacifist tenet. Throughout the war, accordingly, they took an active part in discussing peace objectives, endeavoring to place them on as idealistic a plane as possible. The story of that attempt is the content of this paper.2