Book I - Fading Glory and Class Wars: The Rise of Socialist Britain
Chapter V
The Worker's Revolution
As Arthur Henderson motored back to London from Windsor Castle, he contemplated the mammoth task ahead of him. As Britain’s first Labour Prime Minister, he felt the weight of the entire labour movement on his shoulders. For many long years, unionists had worked so hard for this day, and they expected much of Henderson. As he settled into his new office at 10 Downing Street, still sporting the personal belongings of his predecessor who had departed in such a hurry, Henderson embarked on the task of pulling together a Cabinet for his Government of National Unity. Jix resigned from the leadership of the rump Conservative Party, to be replaced by Churchill who became the leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.
The Great Offices of State were divided between Labour and the Liberals. Henderson appointed former Labour leader and his close friend Ramsay MacDonald to the Home Office; Phillip Snowden (Labour) was selected to be Chancellor of the Exchequer and Henry Asquith returned to government as the Foreign Secretary. The National Unity Tories also received two senior Cabinet positions as Neville Chamberlain was appointed to the War Office and Edward F.L Wood was selected as President of the Board of Trade. The rest of Cabinet was split between Labour and the Liberals. The Department of Supply, which was seen as a tool of oppression against the union movement was immediately abolished. Most of the department's responsibilities were transferred to the Home Office under MacDonald.
The Labour men who tried to pull Britain from the brink (l to r): Prime Minister Arthur Henderson, Home Secretary Ramsay MacDonald and Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Snowden.
MacDonald’s first action as Home Secretary was to disband the despised Auxies along with the Civil Guard. Stringent restrictions were placed upon the police, who were prohibited from entering strike sites and were unable to break up protests. As a result, police forces in London and the major industrial cities were virtually withdrawn from the streets, giving free reign to strikers and protestors. Violence and looting was commonplace in these cities, leading to an exodus of the middle class and shop owners into the suburbs and countryside. The army remained in place around key government buildings in London, such as the Palace of Westminster, the Royal residences, BBC Radio headquarters and various Ministries, but was forbidden to act unless those locations were under direct threat.
As the police, Auxies and army withdrew from the streets, their places were eagerly taken by the newly established Volunteer Worker Battalions (VWB), which were organised and led by the firebrand Scottish trades unionist and Red Clydeside veteran Willie Gallacher. Armed with whatever they could find, including looted arms from police stations and Auxie bases, these battalions were a rough-and-ready band of unionists, Communists and sympathetic soldiers who had defected and joined the workers’ cause. Under the supervision of the Local Action Committees (LAC), these battalions had initially been formed to protect striking workers from the police and aggressive Auxies, but were now deployed across the major industrial cities as a paramilitary police force, in an effort to try and curb looting, and to protect the NACLM leadership.
Cook and the NACLM had all but supplanted the TUC, and were now firmly entrenched in the London Trades Union Hall where they directed the General Strike and wider protest movement through an ad hoc but surprisingly well organised system of planning and administration. The fall of the much hated Jix Government and the rise of Arthur Henderson as Prime Minister did little to temper Cook’s calls for radical change. He was no fan of Henderson and the leadership of the Parliamentary Labour Party, who he considered puppets of the Establishment. Upon hearing of Henderson’s appointment as Prime Minister by the King, Cook scoffed that nothing would change, and was particularly scornful that Henderson was willing to work with the National Unity Tories. On Cook’s orders, the more radical members of Parliament, including James Maxton, boycotted Henderson’s Government and refused to return to take their places Parliament. While Cook agreed to undertake discussions with Henderson about ending the General Strike, he refused to attend any meetings that included Tory Ministers. On 5 August, when Henderson agreed to lead a Labour/Liberal delegation to meet with the NACLM, Cook agreed but the meeting was terse, and failed to make any progress at all. Cook simply refused to work with Henderson.
Despite this bruising rebuke from Cook and the NACLM, Henderson launched into the task of transforming Britain with great gusto, hoping his reform agenda would appease the rank and file workers and result in the collapse of the strike. For the first few days of Henderson’s premiership, Parliament held marathon sessions to push through a myriad of new legislation designed to overhaul labour laws, improve pay and working conditions and curtail the power of the State to break up industrial action. Meanwhile, under the direction of the Cabinet Office, thousands of Civil Servants worked feverishly drafting further legislation to introduce a comprehensive pension system, as well as wide sweeping reforms to the education and health systems. While things were moving at a frantic pace for Whitehall, it was not nearly quick enough for NACLM, which accused Henderson of being too cautious and far too willing to compromise with the ‘class enemies’ of the workers and people. “This is the opportunity for us to forever change the face of Britain,” Maxton told a crowd of trades unionists and left-wing activists on 6 August, “and we must not waste time in the fruitless effort to compromise with those who want to keep us down. We must act now!”
Despite Henderson's reform efforts, industry remained paralysed by the growing revolutionary momentum across the country.
After nearly two weeks in power, with no sign of the General Strike ending despite the Henderson Government’s promise of sweeping reform, the Prime Minister again tried to organise a meeting with Cook and the NACLM. Cook reluctantly agreed, and just after lunch on the sweltering summer afternoon of 15 August, Henderson and a small delegation of Labour and Liberal Ministers made their way from Downing Street to the Trades Union Hall. Along the way, many of the city streets were choked with protestors who had set up camp. They booed the Prime Minister and threw rocks at his car as it sped by. Despite this, Henderson was not shaken and when he arrived at the Trades Union Hall he confidently addressed the crowd gathered outside, while flanked by members of the VWB as his Special Branch security men were pushed aside. Henderson gave a short speech, outlining his Government’s reform agenda and its goal to create a fairer British society. His speech was met with lukewarm applause at best. The crowd expected much, but did not trust Henderson to deliver.
As the Prime Minister turned around and started walking towards the Hall’s entrance, three loud gunshots pierced the air. Henderson, with two gunshot wounds to his back, stumbled and then collapsed. Thomas Shaw, the Minister for Labour, was also hit in the arm. Members of the VWB and the crowd immediately turned on the perpetrator, thinking he was a reactionary assassin. In truth, the man was actually Rupert Jones, a mentally unstable young Communist Party member who was convinced Henderson had been planted in the Labour Party by the Conservatives. While the VWB men who dragged Jones’ limp body into the Hall later discovered his true identity, it was immediately suppressed by the NACLM, and it would be many years before the truth was revealed.
After months of tension and growing violence, Henderson’s assassination was the spark that finally ignited the British Revolution. As word spread that Henderson has been killed by a reactionary, violence swept across Britain. Spearheaded by the swelling ranks of Gallacher’s VWB, mobs of protestors descended on Whitehall, the heart of the British Government. While some soldiers manning the blockades and checkpoints put up stiff resistance, for the most part the soldiers, completely overwhelmed, abandoned their posts or even joined the mêlée. One after the other, key Ministries and government buildings were stormed and captured, including the Foreign Office, Home Office, War Office, Exchequer, Cabinet Office and 10 Downing Street. The now empty and lightly defended Buckingham Palace also fell, and dozens of red flags were unfurled from the windows as the crowds below cheered wildly. Westminster Palace fell to the rampaging revolutionaries just after 4pm. This had been the site of some of the stiffest resistance from loyalist army units, but the sheer weight of the revolutionary onslaught finally broke the weary soldiers after hours of heavy fighting.
Soldiers outside the Cabinet Office just hours before it was stormed by revolutionaries.
As the turmoil engulfed London, Churchill telephoned the King and urged him and his family to evacuate to France immediately, as per the secret contingency plans drawn up by the Department of Supply during the final months of Jix’s Government. The King initially refused, as he did not want to abandon the country. Thanking Churchill for his concern, the King then tried in vain to get in contact with leading members of the National Unity Government, including MacDonald and Asquith, in an ettempt to appoint a new Prime Minister. As the hot summer afternoon wore on, the news filtering in to the King’s study at Windsor Castle became more and more worrisome. This wasn’t just a riot or an escalation of the protests. This was revolution and the situation was beyond being salvaged.
By 5pm, it was clear that much of central London, as well as Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol and Glasgow were in the hands of the revolutionaries. At just after 6pm, word reached Windsor that a large group of ‘violent revolutionaries’, some armed, were making their way across Western London to Windsor Castle so they could ‘arrest’ the King and force his abdication. It was reported that the large group, in a motley convey of old trucks and cars, was just entering Brentford, a mere 30 minute drive from Windsor. The Imperial General Staff told the King that they could try to scramble some army units to intercept the convoy, but were doubtful it could be done in time, as communications were in meltdown, forces were stretched beyond breaking point and the loyalty of many units was in question. The Cheif of the Imperial General Staff, not wanting to hide the gravity of the situation, informed the King that both the army and navy in Britain were facing widespread defections and there were even cases of outright mutiny. He urged the King to evacuate immediately. Shaken by this news, and remembering the fate of his cousin Nicholas II of Russia at the hands of revolutionaries, the King finally relented and agreed to evacuate. Shortly after, the King, his family and the servants of the Royal Household, carrying whatever they could gather with them, boarded a heavily armoured military train which swiftly took them South to Dover, from where they departed Britain via ship to France later that night. Less than half an hour after the King fled, the convoy of revolutionaries reached Windsor Castle. Abandoned by the army, the castle was quickly overrun. Red flags soon flew from atop the Round Tower at the centre of the castle.
A Volunteer Worker Battalion (VWB) Commander using a field radio kit to relay information to the NACLM about the fall of Windsor Castle.
As the King fled Windsor Castle, a triumphant Cook, flanked by his NACLM comrades, entered Westminster. Shortly after, he addressed the jubilant crowd of revolutionaries packed into the House of Commons. Standing in front of the Speaker’s chair, he proclaimed that the British Government and Establishment had been vanquished. “I stand before you tonight, the workers and people of Britain, and proudly proclaim that His Majesty’s Government is no more!” After a few minutes of deafening applause and cheering, he continued. “Through a hard won struggle, and after much bitter sacrifice and spilled blood, we have prevailed. We have brought our enemies to their knees. The country is ours!" Cook concluded his long victory speech by announcing that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland had been abolished. In its place, the Socialist Republic of Britain was proclaimed. “Here tonight, we are witnessing the birth of Socialist Britain,” Cook told the euphoric crowd.
