It has taken two world wars and much complicated and arduous political striving, to achieve a little of what my father sought to accomplish. He was a revolutionary and was consequently looked upon by the establishment as a danger. In England, revolution has always been despised as something conducted by a disorderly mob, usually in disorderly and shabby countries; whereas war has always been considered noble and heroic and tragic-on- the- grand- scale. But counting up the dead and measuring the suffering of two world wars and the many human degradations that went on in between, (many of which, alas, continue even now) I cannot help but wonder if a revolution might not perhaps have caused less agony in the long run. But we just have to accept that revolution, as such, is totally abhorrent to the English. The one revolution that took place here and which led to the transient Commonwealth of Cromwell, has always been graced by the name of ' civil war'; this has given that particular revolutionary fracas a respectability suitable to the English temperament. Revolutions take place in Russia and South America, not in the neat suburban streets or even in the decaying inner cities of orderly and respectable England. When troops of the despotic Tzar of all the Russias fired on and killed hundreds of Russian workers in 1905 in front of the Winter Palace he did not even have to be forgiven, for it roused no more than a flicker of anger here; but when a handful of Russian citizens killed a handful of Russian Royals, it was called murder and ruthless assassination and the Russian people, (and Communism in toto) have never been, and never will be, forgiven for it by the Western, self-styled, democracies. Murder is death inflicted by civilian hands,slaughter by the recognised national armies of the world, is called war and is not only considered acceptable but even laudable; medals, knighthoods and Lordships are bestowed upon its more ruthless and valiant campaigners.
So my father's overt exoteric cry for the same freedom for HIS people that the British took for granted for THEIRS, was termed 'dangerous sedition' and he, who only offered friendship to all instead of merely to a few, was treated as the peoples' enemy and subjected to Scotland Yard scrutiny, to his meetings being banned, (though they had at all times been peaceful and orderly), and finally, and most cruelly, to his permanent exile from the country of his birth, without trial, indeed, even without open accusation. Such was the much acclaimed democratic freedom that was afforded to him.
I would like to explain that much of the recorded material available on Father's early life has been taken from letters written to my brother, Beram, when it was his intention to write a biography, in 1937, a year after Father's death. . One has to take account of the persons who wrote those letters, how well they knew my father and were they friend or foe; was their memory accurate, no matter what their intentions towards Father's memorial might have been. They cannot all be taken as gospel truth; even when facts that are true are related, one has to beware of the interpretation of the intentions behind the facts. Most of the distortions are benevolent and unimportant. As an instance of the tricks that memory plays on witnesses speaking long after the event, I will relate the trivial and harmless recollection of one Mr Desai, a younger man who was a student when he knew our family. Now it so happens that neither of my parents ever used terms of endearment to us or to each other. One of Mummy's close friends once asked her if it did not upset her that Daddy never called her 'Darling'; this same friend later said she understood why Mummy was not hurt by this because, she said, Father spoke Mummy's name caressingly which made it itself a term of endearment. Another trivial fact - Father never added condiments to his meal and was always very proud of Mummy's cooking (both English and Indian and mixtures of the two). But when I met this Mr Desai in Switzerland, twelve years after Father's death, he was affectionately reminiscing about his visits to our family home and he said: "How well I remember your father saying to your mother after a meal, "Well, Darling, that was very nice, but it needed a little more salt." Now such a distortion is totally unimportant and there was certainly no harm done by it; but it serves to show that with the friendliest of intentions, memory can be unreliable.
Most of the Parsi community living in London before world war two were successful doctors, merchants, lawyers who conformed to the well-ordered pattern of English upper-middle-class social customs. And when Father at social banquets sat down when God Save the King was sung at the end of the meal, and did not toast the Royal Family, many Parsis found him a bit of an embarrassment. Usually, they made fun of him. There was no real animosity and most of them were proud of his fame, but his left-wing notions were certainly not to their liking. Also, many people did not make allowances for Daddy's impish sense of humour and a desire to shock and take the micky out of the ultra-respectable and rather pompous pillars of Indian society in London.
One of the letters addressed to my brother in 1937 was from one Spitam Cama who had known Father since 1890 but whose social and political opinions were diametrically opposed to his. Beram had shown this letter, along with all the others to my mother, and she was most indignant about most of it and judged it to be "alot of tommy-rot!" Nonetheless, it existed, and when people have asked for material on Father, I have passed it on with the rest. Spitam Cama related that, as soon as World War I broke out, a small group of Indians, including himself and Father, and Sir Mancherjee Bhownagree, met regularly in a little restaurant at the corner of Dean Street and Oxford Street.
He recalls that Father said their aim should be "to kill as many Englishmen as possible" and said British troops in India could be killed by infecting the Bombay water supply with cholera. If he did use these or similar words, he certainly was not propounding practical intentions; he was probably finding an outlet for his anger against British rule in India in a semi-jocular, verbal torrent. Words and humour were his most potent weapons and refuge. Very often, a seemingly flippant verbal outburst helps us overcome our deeply-felt and passionate rages. I remember when I was working in India House, some male chauvinist made me excessively angry, and I danced through the office brandishing a pair of scissors, threatening to operate on his spheres of virility. Actually, I am too squeamish even to cut someones' finger nails, so his virility was quite safe from any surgical intervention from me. But people recalling the incident and reporting on it many years after, might, understandably, record me as being a violent and cruel maniac. I assure you, I have never acted violently in my life against anyone, except verbally. And so I believe it was with Father. In fact, apart from words, he was consistently gentle and against violence. For instance, he did not like Mother to take us children into butchers' shops or to allow us in the kitchen when she was cutting up meat or fish. I once asked if I could cut the heads and tails off the sprats Mummy had bought and he was most distressed. So I do not think that this assertion by Spitam Cama should be taken as a serious intention of plotting any physical act of violence. For one thing he was not so stupid as to think that you could infect water with cholera and induce it only to affect British troops and not also the indigenous population. I should imagine that most of us have, at one time or another, said in anger: "O, I could KILL that woman!" Such words do not make us all into real or potential murderers - the words suffice to soak up our emotions. So the words ascribed to Father by Spitam Cama, even if true, do not indicate that he was a violent man. Violent men do not have to resort to words, they do the deeds. I certainly do not take them at their face value as some of his biographers may do.
As I have already mentioned, he had for several years been subjected to Scotland Yard inquisitiveness. This was no hardship for his intention was to make everyone, and that included Scotland Yard, aware of his political aspirations. He was certainly not trying to hide them. So it merely amused him to witness the waste of time, effort and money in following him around, playing 'hunt-the-thimble' when the thimble was set in a brightly illuminated display cabinet and not hidden from view at all. Even now, when I thought that a sight of the reports of his movements throughout those early years of his activity would save me much time in research, upon applying for sight of the papers I was informed that I am not allowed to see the dossier compiled by Scotland Yard until seventy years after his death. By that time, of course, I shall be dead too and, who knows, might be hearing from him at first hand of all his exploits. Why there should still be this cloak-and-dagger secrecy I cannot for the life of me imagine. Empires do not topple so easily - and anyway, where is the Empire to be toppled? As far as I know, it no longer exists. Or is it still lurking, extant, in one of the Secret Service files? One great comfort arose from this constant accompaniment of Father by his doppelganger from the Yard - surely there could be no wife in England so secure as my mother in the proof of her husband's constancy and faithfulness; for it is certain that, had the Scotland Yard spies been able to dig up anything discreditable in Father's personal life, they would have done so jubilantly.
Between his return to England in 1913 and his entry into the British Parliament as Member for North Battersea in 1922, his political aims were expressed in increasing activity in the Socialist Movement, the Independent Labour Party, (which he had joined in 1909 in Manchester), the Fabian Society,the Trade Union Movement, the Womens' Suffrage cause, in the Conscientious Objectors' Movement and, of course, above all, the urgent and compelling cry for India's freedom from foreign rule as imposed by the British Government; indeed, he worked to free all peoples from any form of imperialism, the peoples of Africa, China, Ireland, and all others.. He went further than that; he wanted working people all the world over who, after all, were the creators of any country's wealth, to own the means of production in which they worked, be it on the land or in a factory; in other words,he believed passionately and steadfastly in world Communism, believing that nothing less could liberate the working people of the world from exploitation, tyrrany, illiteracy and want.
In all these spheres he became known as an ardent and fluent orator who spoke from heartfelt and sincere convictions and an unshakable belief in the righteousness of all the causes he was serving. He also held the optimistic view that everything he was working for would inevitably one day come to fruition. He seemed to look upon all setbacks as temporary hitches and hold-ups in the ultimate triumph of working-class people everywhere. His determination was profound and unshakeable, and, through his magnetic oratory, infectious.
He tried always to make the British working classes understand that, so long as British Imperialism created cheap labour in the Empire, the jobs of the workers in the United Kingdom were put in jeopardy. For even the most lowly paid English worker enjoyed a far higher standard of wages and living than his fellow workers in India, Africa, China, etc. Sweated labour in the Empire meant unemployment at home. He did not attempt to appeal to any altruism in the British working class, (he was too much of a realist to attempt that), but he tried to make them understand that it was in their self-interest to fight for equal wages and standards of living for the working class peoples of the Empire. The cotton weavers, the coal miners, the jute workers in the United Kingdom, were all being foisted out of work by the low wages paid to similar workers in India and Africa. In other words, it was in the mutual self- interest of workers of the world to unite and work together for what should be recognised as a common cause. It was this international aspect of Socialism that Father stressed throughout his life. As early as 1911 he had addressed a letter to the Trades Union Congress and Labour Representation Committee outlining his ideas for the English Trade Unions to take up the cause of working people in India but, he told his friend Arthur Field, the result was disappointing and disillisioning. The trades union movement in 1911 was very active and powerful. In was in that year that Keir Hardie, M.P. published a pamphlet, "Killing no Murder" in which he said, "...The year 1911 will long be remembered for its strikes. Beginning with the seamen, the strike spread like an epidemic in the Middle Ages, until it seemed to affect every class of low-paid worker. As, however, my aim is to concentrate attention on matters mainly, though not exclusively, connected with the Railways dispute, I pass the others over, merely remarking that they revealed a power of cohesion and degree of class solidarity among the most sweated and helpless callings which no one suspected, and few believed possible." Well, Father obviously hoped that it would be possible for that class solidarity to cross national boundaries and lead to a concerted strategy with working people on an Empire, if not upon a global, scale.
On November 24th and 25th, 1912, the International Socialist Congress Against Imperialist War met in Basle, called by the International Socialist Bureau. It confirmed their stand taken in Stuttgart five years earlier: "The Congress appeals to you, Proletariats and Socialists of all countries, to make your voice heard in this decisive hour! Proclaim your will in every form and in all places; raise your protest in the Parliaments with all your force; unite in great mass demonstrations; use every means that the organisation and strength of the proletariat place at your disposal! See to it that the Governments are constantly kept aware of the vigilance and passionate will for peace on the part of the proletariat! To the Capitalist world of exploitation and mass murder, oppose in this way the proletarian world of peace and fraternity of peoples!" This was a stirring call for international unity and action and one to which, there can be no doubt, Father wholeheartedly subscribed. A message of brotherly love, an exhortation to love thy neighbour. Had not such a request been made almost nineteen hundred years before? Well, I suppose we have progressed slightly; at least no one addressing that Congress was actually crucified.
It was in 1915 that Arthur Field took Shapurji along to the City Branch of the I.L.P. and he spoke from the floor of the meeting. His capacity as a speaker was noted and thereafter he lectured on behalf of the I.L.P. all over London and, subsequently, all over the country. As usual, his meetings were always well attended and his name drew large and enthusiastic audiences wherever he was scheduled to speak.
In that same year he had reason to rejoice in the birth of his third son, but also reason to mourn for the death of Keir Hardie with whom he had worked through the years and for whom he held an undying admiration. Keir Hardie's gentle but passionate teaching of the Socialist gospel had contributed greatly to Saklatvala's unshakeable belief in the need for Socialism in order to achieve the widest spread of human happiness. Keir Hardie had written in 1901 to David Lowe, "I could go on. There is so much to be said, and the desire to make Socialism understood is growing into a passion. I see no other chance of redeeming the world from poverty and sin and war and lust and all manner of uncleanness. But my solitary candle is burning low in its socket. ........Here there are warm hearts and peace. Where these are, Heaven is."
In 1916, there was the Easter Rising in Dublin by Sinn Fein and Saklatvala was sympathetic to their cause for he was an ardent upholder of the right of the Irish to freedom and independence.
In 1937, Arthur Field had written to my brother and I quote now from his letter: "........ In 1917 Mr C.F.Ryder and Arthur Field founded the Workers´ Welfare League of India. At that time there were but one or two genuine trades unions in India, and, of course, no T.U.Congress there. Within a year, Saklatvala had joined this W.W.L.I. Movement, and unitedly we agitated and organised for a trade union movement in India and its support and recognition by the T.U. Movement in Britain. It is claimed that without the W.W.L.I. neither trades unions nor T.U. Congress would have arrived on the scene for years. As it was, they followed our agitation, and we were recognised as the cause, and officially thanked for the work." Saklatvala no doubt used the Workers' Welfare League of India to propagate the beliefs he had expressed in his letter to the T.U.C. in 1911 and which had, apparently, fallen on deaf ears and blind eyes.
1917 proved to be surely the most momentous year of the century in Europe and Shapurji Saklatvala watched all the developments keenly. On 16th April, Lenin arrived in Petrograd. On 18th April, Lenin's "April Theses" were submitted, thought by many to be historically more important than those which Martin Luther had nailed to the Church door in Wittenburg. It was printed on 26th April 1917 for open discussion and it caused general surprise and much controversy. On 15th May, 1917, the new Provisional Government was formed in Russia. On 1st June of the same year a Great Socialist Conference was held in Leeds in support of the new Government in Russia. The Independent Labour Party and the British Socialist Party translated and distributed Lenin's writings. (Saklatvala was, of course, an active member of both these groups) On July 15th, 1917, half a million workers formed a demonstration of protest in Senate Square, Petrograd, and the Provisional Government, with Tzarist soldiers, fired on them and killed more than 400. Documents were forged and issued which claimed to implicate Lenin in a collaboration with Germany and he was forced to go into hiding for more than three months. On the 10th August, 1917, Arthur Henderson called a Conference of the British Labour Party in support of the Stockholm Project and he was sacked from the War Cabinet. Labour Delegates wishing to attend the Stockholm Conference were refused passports and could not, therefore, attend. (What price the human rights issue then?) During the autumn and winter of that year, Arthur Henderson and the Webbs elaborated a new Socialist programme, more socialist in spirit than hitherto.
The following year, 1918, the Peoples' Russian Information Bureau was formed in Britain and Father joined it. Like many other Socialists, he thought the Russian pattern was only a prelude to a radical change in the politics of the whole of Europe and this was a period of much hope and optimism.
On 20th February 1918 the Inter-Allied Socialist Conference on War Aims was held in London.
There was a General Election in 1918 and Father travelled frequently to Leicester to give his support to the electoral campaign of Ramsay MacDonald and spoke at many of his meetings. Herbert Bryan, a Daily Herald correspondent, who also wrote in Indian newspapers, wrote to Arthur Field after Father's death, "...with regard to my general impression of him, I think the points that stand out most in my memory about him are (1) his grasp of British political affairs and his great command of English on the platform, and his speaking ability in general, and, (2) the fact that he was absolutely tireless and never considered sparing his physical powers in the least if he thought there was something to be done to advance the cause he had at heart. I think that there can be no doubt whatever that he wore himself out prematurely by reason of the strain of incessant propaganda work and the constant travelling involved, which brought about his premature death.
"The most striking instance I can remember at the moment of the way in which he used up his physical strength for propaganda purposes was during the General Election of 1918. For some time during the Election, Sak travelled from London to Leicester evening after evening to speak for Ramsay MacDonald, and travelled back again to London the same night. ....."
At that time, Father was still working in the Tata office and did a full day's work after his nocturnal activities in Leicester.
The following year, when he was 45, I was born and he finally achieved the "baby Sehri" he had hoped for in 1915. His adoration for the new arrival bored the rest of the family (my aunts and uncles) but he was at home so seldom, due to the load of political meetings he was addressing all over the country, that he became a stranger to me and I cried when he picked me up when I was still a baby. This caused him a good deal of anguish. But the political meetings won the day and he continued to travel tirelessly almost every week-end. As soon as I was about three, he used to take me with him, on his wanderings; I still have vivid memories of his meetings, of visits to gypsy encampments, to coal mines and to mills. And, of course, the two of us got to know each other a little better!
Although Arthur Field says the Workers' Welfare League of India was founded in 1917, it was not until 1918 that the League published a "Statement of Principles". On the title page of the pamphlet setting out these principles the office bearers are listed as follows: President: J.M.Parikh (a close friend of Father's), Treasurer, K.P.Mehta, (as has already been said, he was Father's closest and oldest friend), Secretary of the Indian Committee: S.Saklatvala, Secretary of the English Committee: John Arnall and General Secretary: Arthur Field. The Statement was addressed to the British Trades and Labour Bodies; it would seem to be very similar in content to Father's letter addressed in 1911 to leading men of the T.U.C. (whose reaction to it had been so disappointing), and I feel certain that his hand is writ large on this document which I offer in full below:
"This League is not associated with any political party or religious movement. Its chief claim is that our Oriental fellow-subjects of the working orders of society have a right to identical or equivalent measures of general welfare and labour protection as have been instituted for the working class in Great Britain. Whatever views may be taken of the soundness and adequacy of the measures of social welfare granted to the workpeople of Great Britain,it cannot be denied that if such concessions are beneficial here these or equal measures of relief are still more necessary for Indian workers.
"It is not, however, intended to adopt a doctrinaire attitude, and to propose the application to India of measures that may be even opposed by the unwilling objects of misguided philanthropy. The regulations and enactments to be proposed will be discussed point by point by Indian and English committees of this League. The essential part of the League's propaganda is the movement to secure from the people of this country a recognition of the right of the people of India to equal consideration with themselves.
"There is a considerable mass of otherwise fair-minded men and women in this country who exhibit little or no consideration for peoples of a different colour from themselves, even when performing similar services as subjects of the same Empire. Most British citizens declare their belief in the righteousness of democracy, yet many of them see no absurdity in limiting its application by the shade of a man's or a woman's skin.
"It must not be presumed from our insistence on the conditions of workers in factories, mines, etc. (who, in India, form but a small part of the population), that we neglect the questions of agriculture and agricultural labour, of the Indian Lascars (that is, the maritime workers), etc.
"From England an impetus can be imparted to initiate far-reaching changes for the masses in India. It is a good and proper thing for a Home Government to defer to the opinion of the Dependency, but in the course of this proper procedure the opinion that now prevails is the opinion of the merchants and of the manufacturers. The former are not favourable to any proposal that tends to alter the simple and unambitious masses. The latter, in the face of the experience of the whole world, believe that cheap labour profits them. If legislation, even the mildest, is proposed, they believe the English authorities are trying to spoil Indian industries. The opposition to reform is not exclusively from these directions. Opposition to the Viceroy's Bill of 1906 for extending the Factory Act also arose from persons who advocate self-government and claim to be democratic. There is even an element of mistaken self-interest in some English working-class circles promting a toleration of present conditions of Indian labour. Against this pressure of interest and ignorance the best intentioned proposals in the Home Legislature can succeed only by the organised influence of the British working classes. Such efforts, in the opinion of the League, should be directed to improvements of as general an application as possible - industrial, agricultural and educational. British democracy might be able to secure the appointment of a Labour Minister forIndia in the Parliament of Great Britiain, with the effect of providing a channel for Indian opinion of a different character from that which now prevails.
"The work of the League lies clear before it, but the further stages need not be more minutely defined at present. Well organised effort can undoubtedly influence British opinion to care about matters that would otherwise be neglected. Such an effort is now inaugurated on behalf of the British subjects in India. The people of Great Britain must be convinced that their own interests are in no way opposed to, and are even bound up with, a just and generous treatment of their Eastern brothers and sisters."
After giving details of subscriptions and membership of the League, there follows a further address from "The T.U. and Labour Section of the League to the Trades and Labour Bodies of Great Britain". This reads:
"The Workers' Welfare League of India feel that the democracy of Great Britain has unwisely neglected to keep touch with the working people of the Empire. By such neglect they lose in moral, national, and democratic strength. By neglecting the conditions of the industrial and agricultural workers in India they have made it possible for their employers to work industries in India against industries in England. In this case mutual safety dictates an immediate study of the problem. There is danger of a deliberate competition of Indian with English conditions, unless steps are taken to discuss and improve the conditions in India.
"It is not presumptuous or futile to attempt to undertake such a work, for the control of India lies, and will for some years continue to lie, with the Legislature in England, while the democratic elements here are gaining an increasing share in the control of affairs.
"The workers in Great Britain have been, as participators in the British Empire, discussing questions of the most far-reaching importance. At such a juncture, when every co-operation is essential, instead of a voice from India we are confronted by a dumb people,so far as Labour is concerned.
"This leaves it possible for declarations to be made, in the name of India, that this or that trifling change is not only necessary but sufficient to satisfy India's needs. We also find this type of advocates declaring that the people of India will greatly resent an extension of Labour legislation, and that it is unnecessary; while they themselves resent suggestions of improved conditions and increased wages. We feel instinctively that this attitude is unjustified, but until we investigate we cannot say we know. We must end this practice of neglecting to secure verified British -Indian opinion and co-operation. These being available through the Workers' Welfare League of India, we invite the help of the T.U. and Labour world in the circulation and utilisation of the information available.
"The Trade Unions and other organisations that consider this appeal will naturally ask, "What do you expect us to do?" Our reply is, we ask you to allow one of yourselves on your Committee to devote himself to purely British-Indian Labour questions, and he might also make himself incidentally useful by a study of Labour conditions in other Oriental countries, which may equally affect Labour in Great Britain and British India. If you cannot spare a committee-man's activities for these purposes, we suggest that you co-opt a special member for the purpose. When appointed he should be entrusted with the following duties:-
(A) To ascertain what are the conditions of Indian Labour in the corresponding industries in India.
(B) To collect proposals for the amendment of Indian conditions.
(C) To examine how far, if at all, the interests of English Labour are affected by inequitable conditions of Indian Labour.
(D) To condense the data and briefly report to the Committee from time to time.
"With the special member thus appointed the T.U. and Labour Section of the League is prepared to keep in touch, acting gratuitously as a Bureau of Information relative to Oriental Labour.
"As the result of continued deliberation, we hope to arrive at an organised presentation of suggestions and proposals to the Labour members in Parliament. We hope that the Trade Unions may eventually combine to send to India a Commissioner to investigate the subject on the various localities, and gather facts otherwise unobtainable. The result of a ready co-operation of the trade and Labour organisations in this effort of the W.W.L.I. might even be the appointment, by their own vote and initiative, of a permanent official on their behalf, and under their own control, to keep in constant touch with the Members for Oriental Labour Questions on each of the T.U.Committees."
(Documents relating to the W.W.L.I. appear as Appendix "A" to Chapter 7.)???
In that same year (1918), Saklatvala was a delegate to the Independent Labour Party Conference, where he represented the City of London Branch. It may be of general interest, in view of the Labour Party's subsequent repudiation of Communist sympathies and the often hysterical eschewing of any links with Marxism, that in that year, the Chairman's address included the following exhortation:
"The first Sunday in May, which has been for so long specially dedicated by the Socialist movement to Internationalism, is this year the centenary of the birth of Karl Marx. In normal times, the Socialist movement would have taken advantage of this event to do honour to one of the greatest names in the history of Socialism, but, at a time like this, it is especially fitting that we should recognise the work of the man who was the pioneer of Internationalism. We desire, however, that branches of the I.L.P. should, this year more than ever, set aside the first Sunday in May for international demonstrations, and that at such demonstrations special reference should be made to the life and labours for International Socialism of Karl Marx, and to the indebtedness of the proletariat for his great services to Socialism and Internationalism. In the name of the Party we propose to arrange for a wreath to be laid at his graveside, and to take such other steps as seem advisable to pay homage to his memory."
John Scurr, representing Bow and Bromley then moved:
"That the demand of the Indian people to be recognised as equal partners within the British Commonwealth is essentially democratic and that to realise the ideal each country must have the opportunity for self determination. This Conference, therefore, demands that a measure granting self government to the Indian people be placed on the Statute Book at the earliest opportunity."
In moving the resolution, Mr Scurr said there was one matter to which he would like to refer. In a certain newspaper, mention has been made of the foreign accents of delegates of that Conference. The one delegate to whom that reference could refer was Shapurji Saklatvala, a native of Bombay, and, therefore, a subject of the British Empire, and in every sense of the word entitled to the same rights and privileges as themselves. He happened to be a journalist himself, but he sometimes had to admit that he belonged to the most dishonourable profession in the world; and that there should be in a so-called leading newspaper such a reference showed the reliance they could place on everything else which a paper of that kind might say. The resolution was agreed to.
Shapurji Saklatvala (City of London), then moved:
"That this Conference requests all members of the Party who take an active interest in and aid the work of the Indian National Congress, and who propose delegations from Indian bodies to British Labour Conferences, to call upon their Indian colleagues to give a place in their political programmes to Democratic measures which they so far have opposed or neglected, such as 'no representation on Councils in India except by popular election'; immediate legislation to improve the hours, wages and general conditions of workers; and an open advocacy of the Nationalisation of Lands, Railways, Mines, and other large and important industries."
Mr Saklatvala said he was not there to carry on a fight for any one class in India, he was there as a Socialist, a sincere, ernest, whole-hearted believer and supporter of the policy of the Independent Labour Party. He could not help it that his accent was a little foreign, but his heart was not foreign. Those of his comrades who had known him since he joined the Party in 1909 would know that he only wanted to do one thing, and that was to spread Socialism from one end of the world to the other.
The National Organiser had told them that it should be possible to make the membership of the Independent Labour Party 100,000. It might go much further. The people of India suffered from ignorance, not ill-will. They were essentially Socialist in mind, and his imagination carried him to the time when the Independent Labour Party might have ten million members.
When Mr MacDonald was proposing the resolution on the Soldiers' Charter he did not think that it was in the remotest part of their minds that while they were talking of 27s 6d (27 shillings and sixpence) allowance they who were responsible for the soldiers' pensions in India were guilty of paying a pension of 5s (5 shillings) a month and a separation allowance of 10s (10 shillings) a month. They were guilty of giving compensation of £5 to £10 to the families of those who had lost their lives. They did not realise it. They had not asked the Indian National Congress during the four years of war to move any peace resolution. They had put on their list 8 million voters, yet they had not asked their Indian friends to put 8 voters on the list. He therefore appealed to them to be more definite in talk of Internationalism. They should realise the duty that was before all of them of looking to themselves and the opportunities that were before them.
The resolution was agreed to.
During the period of the suffragette movement, certainly from as early as 1908 when he participated in a protest rally and march in Hyde Park, Saklatvala was closely associated with the movement and was a great admirer of Sylvia Pankhurst's leadership. But from 1917 onward, Sylvia Pankhurst became a passionate devotee of Communism as she felt that events in Russia presented the working classes with a completely new social structure that could alleviate the deprivations of poverty, so acutely manifesting themselves during the war. She changed the name of the newspaper of which she was editor from The Womens' Dreadnought to The Workers' Dreadnought. Father was a regular reader of this paper. Later, she also changed the name of her organisation from The Workers' Suffrage Federation, to The Workers' Socialist Federation. Later still, in 1919, when the Third International was formed in Moscow, she became a dedicated advocate of affiliation of British Socialists to the Third International. She went even further than most Socialists of her time and refused to participate in parliamentary activity, actually turning down the offer of becoming a parliamentary candidate. (This attitude was not upheld by Lenin and she was much criticised within the Communist fold) While, clearly, Saklatvala was against the boycotting of parliamentary procedures, he remained a friend and admiring political colleague of Syvia Pankhurst, respecting her courage, dedication and sincerity.
At the I.L.P. Conference the following year, 1919, Saklatvala was once again a delegate for the City of London Branch, and heard the following stirring address by the Chairman, Mr Philip Snowden:
"The last year has been crowded with events of tremendous importance. We have seen the beginning of the end of the old order of class domination and economic slavery. The new order is being born in blood and suffering. Slowly and painfully humanity has climbed the hard road to the summit of Calvary, but the resurrection to the new life of freedom and brotherhood is at hand. Over two thirds of Europe the Red Flag of Socialism, red with the blood of our martyred dead, floats where but yesterday despotism held the people in vile subjection. The mighty reverberations of the Russian Revolution have sounded through the world, and
'The slave, where e'er he turns feels the soul within him climb??
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime
Of a century
Burst full-blossomed on the thorny stem of time.'
With prophetic insight, the Independent Labour Party, in its manifesto issued on the outbreak of war in August 1914, said: 'In forcing this appalling crime upon the nations, it is the rulers and diplomats, the militarists, who have sealed their doom. In tears and blood and bitterness the greater democracy will be born. With steadfast faith we greet the future; our cause is holy and imperishable, and the labour of our hands has not been in vain.' The state of the world today is a fulfilment of that prophesy."
In reply to various other points raised, the Chairman said that the National Administrative Council of the ILP were watching the international situation very closely, and they hoped to put before the Conference some statement giving an outline of its suggested reconstitution. The N.A.C. looked upon the matter with very grave concern, and, if events did develop to such an extent as in their opinion to call for a special Conference of the Party, such a Conference would be called.
Saklatvala requested the N.A.C., when they did call this special Conference, to be prepared with a proposal by which the rank and file of the Labour Party might be induced to remove from the Labour Party those men who were the obstacles ,to the spirit of Socialism.
The Chairman read the following resolution:
"This Conference demands the withdrawal of British troops from Ireland, and the recognition of that form of Government which is desired by the Irish people.
"It further regards the claims of the Indian and Egyptian peoples to self-government as essentially just, and demands that they be granted at the earliest opportunity."
Shapurji Saklatvala, in supporting the resolution, said he had to ask them to read much more into the resolution than appeared in the wording, and also, owing to the shortness of time, he had to ask them to hear much more in his words than merely the words he spoke. The whole position was this - a foreign domination existed in a country which had nothing in common with them. They might wonder that from time to time people in India had acquiesced in their presence in the country. The true reason was not because they were enamoured with Lord Curzon or Lord Hardinge, but now and again they had seen on the horizon an Englishman like Keir Hardie. When they had seen a Ramsay MacDonald, and had pinned their faith in Philip Snowden they had been living in hopes that England was full of Englishmen like these, and it was for this reason alone that India had acquiesced in the presence of the British. His demoralised, unarmed and tyrannised countrymen, through fear, had launched out to assist the jingoes of Great Britain in the war. They had become partners in a hideous crime. No sooner was the war over than the imperialist, militarist rulers of India gave to India Rowlatt Acts, and the very aeroplanes and armoured cars they had presented to the British Government were used against an innocent and unarmed crowd. Bombs had been dropped on meetings held in the streets, and 250 casualties were admitted. These Rowlatt Acts were given to India in the name of Great Britain. Did the British men and women identify themselves with such militarist acts?
Speaking of the capitalist exploitation as the cause of the troubles of the Indian people, Mr Saklatvala quoted from the results of a particular enquiry into the monthly expenses of 11, 000 workers; for a family of five,- father, mother and 3 children - the expenses, regulated by wages, were as follows: 12s - 6d (12 shillings and 6 pence) per month for rice for father, mother and 3 children, 4s -6d a month for meat, fish and mutton, 9d per month for butter,oils and sauce; 1s -7d per month for vegetables.
They wanted the solidarity of the Labour of Great Britain with the Labour of India.
The resolution was carried.
In a letter addressed to my brother about a year after my father's death, Lord Snowden wrote, "...I first knew your father before he joined the I.L.P. when he was connected with the India Reform Movement. Afterwards he joined the I.L.P .Then he was a prominent figure at the annual conferences of the I.L.P. Later he became a Communist and, as you know, entered Parliament as a Communist M.P. He was quite a figure in the House of Commons, and made an impression by his volcanic eloquence. ....I had a high regard for his honesty and disinterested sincerity. ....His comparatively early death was a real grief to me."
With the new interational scene that was emerging after the Russian Revolution, factions arose within the I.L.P., some members being fiercely in favour of affiliation with the Third International and others being equally fiercely opposed to such affiliation. Saklatvala was, of course, a strenuous and vociferous advocate for affiliation. In 1920 he was not a delegate at the annual conference of the I.L.P. and his attempt to be elected to the National Administrative Council was unsuccessful. This may well have been due to his pro-affiliation propaganda within the City of London Branch. He was one of 159 signatories to a Declaration of the Left Wing of the I.L.P., made in 1920 under the heading "The Call of the Third International" (The text of this document appears as Appendix "B" to Chapter 7.)
At the 1921 Annual Conference of the I.L.P. we see him appearing as a delegate for Clapham. This would seem to indicate that he had perhaps already left the City of London Branch and joined the Branch in Clapham, but there is no hard evidence for this assumption. Both Herbert Bryan and Arthur Field gave their version of events leading up to Saklatvala's resignation from the I.L.P. but neither of them gave any precise dates. I quote them both below:
Extract from a letter from Herbert Bryan written to Arthur Field in 1937: "After the war, a movement arose in the I.L.P.in favour of affiliation of the Party to the Third International. Sak took a leading part in this movement, and when the proposal to join the Third International was rejected by the I.L.P. Annual Conference, Sak left the I.L.P. and joined the Communist Party. Before leaving the I.L.P., however,he moved a resolution at the City Branch meeting to the effect that the Branch should secede from the I.L.P. and become the City of London Socialist Society. This proposal was rejected by the Branch."
Extract from a letter from Arthur Field to my brother in 1937: "The Menshevik Revolt of Russia in 1917 - and its effect in England (Council of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers) - found us forwarding it - but pressing for more radical developments. The Bolshevik victory in Russia in 1918 , both of us saw, ... must mean our plunge into a red union at the earliest moment. The British Socialist Party became the British Section of the Third Communist International, and we tried to get the very advanced men of the National Administrative Council of the I.L.P. to press the national body to affiliate. With the rejection of the proposal by the Annual Conference of the I.L.P., the walk-out of the reds occurred and Saklatvala joined the C.P...."
At the Annual Conference of the I.L.P. in 1921, Saklatvala represented the Clapham Branch.
Speaking in the debate on the international situation and in particular as to whether the I.L.P. should or should not affiliate with the Third International, Mr Saklatvala (Clapham) said he did not intervene to urge upon one section or the other to strive to gain a sectional victory. He asked them to bear in mind socialism. As one of thosefortunate foreigners, might he put it to the Conference to imagine the effects of the decisions they might take on the outside world.
There was not the slightest doubt that in the twenty-one conditions there was some attack on their traditional emotions. Had the I.L.P. succeeded in going to Zimmerwald, the history of the International might have been different, but they had also been guilty of taking up a provocative attitude at a critical juncture, and they had been responsible for a portion of the bitterness in those twenty-one points. He would apologise to Comrade MacDonald for taking him as an illustration. MacDonald stood as an avowed official secretary of the Second International. With his own characteristic temperament he would be the last person to accept an official position in the Second and in the Third. There would be, as the American Divorce Act expressed it, 'incompatibility of temperament', and, sooner or later, one or the other would haveto apply to the Courts for divorce papers.
The Third International did not ask them to deport him after the manner of Lloyd George. All they said was that comrades with such convictions should not hold offices, and he thought the one person in the Conference who would agree with him was Comrade MacDonald himself.
He would say to his pacifist comrades, to his comrades to whom human life was sacred and dear, turn to Amritsar, where in half-an-hour General Dyer poured his bullets out until he had killed 1200 people for the simple reason that the whole of that unfortunate crowd was unarmed.
There was nothing to prevent them from putting their point of view before the Third International, but when the majority of the members of the International had decided upon their policy and their constitution, it must remain binding on the minority, otherwise no organisation in the world could continue to exist.
Capitalism was stronger than it was five years ago. Imperialism in Great Britain had not only not been destroyed, but had not even been arrested at the point at which they found it before the war. British Imperialism, with its great idealist opponent, the I.L.P., had managed to get a million more square miles. British militarism today had reached the highest point of brutal bestiality, and had gone beyond all bounds of honour.
If that was the potency of I.L.P. idealism, why were they offended when others came and said, 'Keep your idealism, but make it more potent'? He would, therefore, appeal to them to go to Moscow, accept the twenty-one points, and those who felt the points were too bitter, swallow them.
The twenty-one points he referred to are given below:-
"The Second Congress of the Communist International decides that the following shall be the conditions of admission to the International.
1. The daily propaganda and agitation must be of a positively Communist character. All the organs of the party press must be edited by undoubted Communists who have proved their devotion to the cause of the proletarian revolution. It is not enough merely to speak of the dictatorship of the proletariat as a common phrase learned by rote; propaganda must be carried on in such a fashion as to make the necessity for it clear to every worker, man or woman, to every soldier, and to every peasant, from the facts of daily life systematically noted by our Press. In the columns of the Press, in public meetings,in trade unions, in co-operative societies, and wherever the partisans of the Third International have access, they must stigmatise mercilessly and systematically not only the bourgeoisie, but also their accomplices, the reformists of all shades.
2. Every organisation desirous of joining the Communist International must regularly and systematically remove all reformists and 'centrists' from posts of any responsibility whatsoever in the Labour movement (party organisations,editorships, trade unions, parliamentary parties, co-operative societies, and municipalities), and replace them by proved Communists - without any hesitation, especially at the outset, at having to replace experienced militants by workers taken from the ranks.
3. In all countries where, owing to a state of siege or exceptional law, Communists cannot carry on all their activities legally, a concomitance of legal and illegal action is indubitably necessary. In nearly all the countries of Europe and America the class struggle is entering upon a period of civil war. Communists cannot, in these circumstances, rely upon bourgeois legality. It is their duty to form everywhere, side by side with the legal organisation, a clandestine organisation which,at the decisive moment, will be capable of fulfilling its duty towards the revolution.
4. Systematic and constant propaganda and agitation is necessary among the troops. A Communist nucleus must be formed in every unit. The greater part of the work will be illegal; but to refuse such work would be treason towards our revolutionary duty, and therefore incompatible with affiliation to the Third International.
5. Well-directed and systematic agitation in country districts is necessary. The working classes cannot prevail unless they are supported by at least part of the rural workers (day labourers and the poorest peasants), and unless, by their policy, they have rendered neutral at least part of the rural population. Communist action in rural districts is becoming at present a matter of capital importance. It should be principally the work of Communist workers connected with rural districts. To refuse to do this work or to entrust it to doubtful semi-reformists means renunciation of the proletarian revolution.
6. It is the duty of every party desirous of belonging to the Third International to denounce false and hypocritical social-pacifism as much as avowed social-patriotism; what is required is to prove systematically to the workers that unless there is a revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, no international arbitration tribunal, no discussion on the reduction of armaments, no 'democratic' reorganisation of the League of Nations can preserve humanity from imperialist wars.
7. It is the duty of parties desirous of belonging to the Communist International to recognise the necessity of a complete and definite rupture amongst the members of the organisations. Consistent Communist action is only possible at this price. The Communist International demands this rupture imperatively and without discussion, and it should take place with the least possible delay. The Communist International cannot admit that proved reformists, such as Turati, Modigliani and others, should have the right to consider themselves members of the Third International. Such a state of things would make the Third International too closely resemble the Second.
8. On the question of colonies and oppressed nationalities, the parties of those countries where the bourgeoisie possesses colonies or oppresses other nations should have an exceptionally clear and precise line of conduct. It is the duty of every party belonging to the Third International mercilessly to unmask the exploits of 'its' imperialists in the colonies, to demand the expulsion from the colonies of imperialists from the mother-country, to foster amongst the workers of the country really fraternal sentiments towards the working population of the colonies and the oppressed nationalities, and to maintain amongst the troops of the mother-country continual agitation against any oppression of native peoples.
9. Every party desirous of belonging to the Communist International must carry on constant and systematic propaganda with the trade-unions, co-operative societies and other organisations of the working masses. Communist nuclei should be formed whose persevering and constant work will win the trade unions to Communism. It will be their duty to show up, in and out of season, the treason of the social patriots and the hesitations of the ' centre.' These Communist nuclei must be completely subordinate to the party as a whole.
10. It is the duty of every party belonging to the Communist International to fight vigorously and stubbornly the yellow Trade Union International founded at Amsterdam. It should, on the other hand,contribute to its utmost ability to the international of the Red Trade Unions adhering to the Communist International.
11. It is the duty of parties desirous of belonging to the Communist International to revise the composition of their Parliamentary parties, to remove doubtful elements from among them, to make themselves subservient, not in word but in fact, to the Central Committee of the Party, to demand from every Communist deputy that the whole of his activities should be subordinated to the true interests of revolutionary propaganda and agitation.
12. The Press, whether of a periodic nature or otherwise, should be entirely subject to the Central Committee of the Party, whether the latter is legal or illegal. The organs of publicity cannot be permitted to misuse their autonomy by engaging in a policy which does not conform to that of the party.
13. The parties belonging to the Communist International should be based on the principle of democratic centralisation. In the present time of ruthless civil war the Communist Party cannot fulfil its role unless it is organised in a most centralised manner., unless an iron discipline, bordering on military discipline,is admitted, and unless its central body is armed with extensive powers and enjoys the unanimous confidence of the militants.
14. The Communist Parties of countries where Communists are agitating legally should proceed with a periodical weeding out of their organisation in order to remove interested and petit-bourgeois elements.
15. Parties desirous of belonging to the Communist International should give their unreserved support to all Soviet republics in their struggles against counter-revolution. They should untiringly preach the refusal of workers to transport munitions and equipment intended for the enemies of Soviet republics, and carry on propaganda, legally or illegally, amongst the troops sent against Soviet republics.
16. It is the duty of parties who are still keeping to their old Social Democratic programmes to revise them without delay, and to draft a new Communist programme adapted to the special conditions of their country and conceived in the spirit of the Communist International. It is the rule that the programmes of affiliated parties shall be confirmed by the International Congress or by the Executive Committee. Should the latter refuse its sanction to any party, that party will have the right of appeal to the Congress of the Communist International.
17. All decisions of the Congress of the Communist International, as also those of the Executive Committee, are binding for all parties affiliated to the Communist International. The Communist International and its Executive Committee should take into account the very varying conditions of struggle in the different countries, and not adopt general compulsory resolutions save on questions where such are possible.
18. In accordance with all that precedes, the parties belonging to the Communist International should change their name. Every party desirous of belonging to the Communist International must call itself: Communist Party of ...(Section of the Third International). This question of name is not a mere formality; it is also of considerable political importance. The Communist International has declared war without mercy on the whole of the old bourgeois world and on all the old yellow Social Democratic parties. It is important that the difference between the Communist parties and the old 'Social Democratic' parties or official 'Socialists', who have sold the flag of the working classes, should be made clear in the eyes of every worker.
19. All parties which belong to the Communist International or have requested to be admitted to it are pledged to convene as soon as possible, and not later than four months after the Second Congress of the Communist International, an extraordinary Congress for the purpose of examining these conditions.
20. Those parties which would now like to enter the Third International, but have not radically changed the tactics they have hitherto followed, must, before their entry into the Third International, see that not less than two-thirds of the members of their Central Committees and all the most important central institutions consist of comrades who before the Second Congress of the Communist International had publicly expressed themselves unequivocally in favour of the entrance of the party into the Third International. Exceptions may be made if confirmed by the Executive of the Third International. The Executive of the Communist International has the right to make exceptions also in favour of the representatives of the 'centrist' tendency mentioned in Condition 7.
21. Members of parties who reject on grounds of principle the conditions and guiding principles laid down by the Communist International are to be expelled from the party. This applies in particular to the delegates to the Extraordinary Congresses."
This 1921 Conference of the I.L.P., in rejecting the proposed affiliatiion with the Third International, was for Father, a momentous one. Although he did not make up his mind in haste, the rejection by the I.L.P. of affiliation left him, now a convinced Communist, little choice. His devotion up to this moment to the I.L.P. was beyond doubt and he had served it whole-heartedly since 1909 and had many close friends within it. He had been one of their staunchest and most vigorous propagandists addressing numberless meetings up and down the country; as a speaker, he always drew big crowds and his oratory had served the party well. (At an earlier Conference he had said that he envisaged a day when 10 million Indian members would join the I.L.P) The Conference ended on the 29th March and he returned home from Stockport a lonely and much saddened man. He had become alienated from comrades with whom he had hitherto shared his political ideals and aspirations. He had worked tirelessly to persuade them to accept affiliation and he had failed. It was, to say the least, disillusioning. Of course he was to have his Communist colleagues now, but he had hoped that old friends and new friends would affiliate and remain in one body together. The schism was a painful wrench to him. Almost exactly a year before, on the 3rd April,1920, his father had died in Manchester. They had been very close and his death had left Shapurji with none of his Indian family near him in England. And now his constant association with old political allies and friends, some of whom had known him almost from the time of his first arrival in this country, was to be severed. It was a bitter blow and he must have felt very isolated - for now he only had the loved and loving Sehri as an unquestioning and ever-present supporter of any decisions he might feel compelled to make.
"Of all my fears
It is loneliness that wears
The worst mask, with lips bitten and bleeding,
And eyes full of tears."
(Ronald Duncan, "This Way to the Tomb")
Concurrently with his work with the Independent Labour Party he was working with equal fervour for the London Labour Party of which he was an active member.regularly attending and participating in their meetings and conferences.
At one such meeting on 16th September 1920, applications for affiliation to the Third International were considered together with a letter from the National Agent reporting the refusal of the Labour Party to accept. It was unanimously decided that the applications could not be acceded to, and the Secretary was instructed to send a suitable letter stating the grounds for the refusal.
Two months later, at a meeting of the Executive Committee of the Party, the Secretary reported on various matters connected with the Conference and it was resolved:- 1) That Mr Saklatvala be informed that he may run for both Executive and Auditor but that he could only serve in one such capacity.
.....................................3) That the Secretary make the fullest use, in his discretion, of the extracts from the Convention at which the Communist Party was formed, in the Labour Chronicle.
.....................................5) That the request of the Communist Party for a representative to address the Conference on the question of their affiliation be declined on the grounds that it would be ultra vires.
On 3rd March, 1921, a few days before the fateful I.L.P. Conference, the Executive Committee of the London Labour Party decided that the Party should not be represented at the conference called by the Workers' Welfare League of India..
It was also decided that Battersea Trades Council be informed that the London Labour Party has no constitutional status in so far as the endorsement of Parliamentary candidates is concerned, and that the terms of Resolution 19 re the Communist Party, be quoted for the information of Battersea Trades Council.
Although it is not stated that this has anything to do with Father's parliamentary candidature, I think we can safely assume that it had. But, at that time, even his formal membership of the Communist Party did not debar him from standing as a parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party in the General Election of the following year.
Let us, therefore, move on now to that General Election and Saklatvala's years as a Member of Parliament.
Statement Submitted to the Joint Committee on Indian Reforms on Behalf of The Workers' Welfare League of India.
By Shapurji Saklatvala supported by Duncan Carmichael.
Published by The Workers' Welfare League of India, 18, Featherstone Buildings, High Holborn, LONDON
To The Chairman, The Joint Committee of the Houses of Parliament on the Government of India Bill, House of Commons, Westminster ,S.W. dated 22nd July, 1919
My Lord,
I am directed by the Council of the Workers' Welfare League of India, to offer myself as a witness before your Committee, and to bring to your Lordship's attention the peculiar claims of the League as the only body that combines in it the actual knowledge of Indian economic conditions with practical experience of the working of British Labour organisations in this country.
The League devotes its attention and activities to the betterment of the condition of workers, including peasantry in all parts of India with the object of securing some approximation to the standards which prevail in all civilised parts of the world. The League, as a general Labour organisation is not unmindful of the disastrous consequences that must ensue generally to the progress of Labour, and therefore to the material well-being of the masses in Great Britain and the British Colonies by the continued degraded conditions of their fellow-workers in India.
The League for the first time submits, as no other body has hitherto done, the grave, almost catastrophic situation that is being created against a solid industrial advancement and social civic progress within the Empire by utilising millions of additional persons for production of modern requirements of life by up-to-date Western methods, without permitting these very millions to be in their turn the additional consumers of those or other similar products, or to partake of the new social and political privileges that are being evolved, as an effect of and that are intended to be maintained by these material productions.
The League is carefully constituted with two component parts standing together on one common moral and economic platform where the moral and material interests of the two groups, one Indian, and the other European, do not clash, but will harmonise together and which unitedly must essentially form one British standard in a British Empire, and the absence of which should draw away from Great Britain any excuse for direct or mandatory control over other countries. The Indian section with its Indian knowledge and Indian sentiment and the English section with its advanced experience form in equal halves our united Council. The latter section join the League on account of its existing economic relations with, knowledge of, or partiality for the Indian fellow-workers, and the former or the Indian section is formed from such Indian residents in this country who have relations with, knowledge of, or partiality for Labour organisations in this country.
My Council in directing me to submit their united British Case to you, not only bear in mind my information on Indian economic and Labour conditions but they also take in view my fairly long and active membership of the National Union of Clerks, The Independent Labour Party, the British Socialist Party, the Labour Party, and similar organisations, which feature,your Lordship will perceive, is not existing in case of Indian representatives of purely Indian bodies, or other individual members offering their evidence.
In the proposed Government of India Bill my League foresees a further and accelerating accentuation of the evil that the League is formed to combat against. On the one hand it ignores all rights and direct powers to peasants and workers, and on the other hand it enhances existing privileges, and creates new powers for a limited group of persons, who, however well-intentioned and well-meaning, have throughout the world, through a false nervousness in the direction of self-preservation, and through an absorbing attention to one particular phase of limited "progress", have created and are creating a condition "where only wealth accumulates and men decay."
If after more than one hundred years of settled British Rule in India need is felt to FURTHER "reform" the Government of India, all attention and energy in the main must be directed to those phases of life and government which have so far obtained the least progressive measures and democratic consideration.
We consider any measure of Government Reform not only incomplete but unthinkable for a Government that claims to be civilised, never mind Democratic, that does not pin its faith in the progress of the masses and by the efforts of the workers themselves in unison with all the workers within the same Empire, and even in the neighbouring States. To treat, today, in India, after all the mature experiences in Europe, suffering Labour as not worthy of self-assertive rights, and to create higher powers and privileges for the happier portion in the same society, is like transferring the sweepings of old Europe into India under disguise of giving to India a set of reforms and progressive and evolutionary measures along lines of Western culture.
If the bold and right measure of referring the whole Bill back to the Government for re-construction on modern basis be not acceptable, my League would consider the following amendments as absolutely essential:-
(a) Introduction of popular franchise for Indians that would include all workers and soldiers.
(B) Questions of Labour Legislation to be treated as indivisible British Empire questions, under the protection of the Imperial Parliament, similar to the questions of Army, Navy and Foreign Policy, and suspension of any transfer of power over lives of millions of Indian Workers to the control of the Indian or European non-labouring classes in India, before the workers are given full franchise rights in India.
(C) From the commencement of the new Councils there must be statutory recognition of the right of the workers to combine.
(D) All the old laws and regulations that humiliate Labour, that make Labour punishable criminally for Labour faults, or that make a person's service compulsory instead of a free-will contract, should be abolished or withdrawn forthwith, and made a matter of the barbarous and oppressive past, viz: such legislation as the Assam Emigration Act, the Madras Planters' Labour Act, and regulations and practice of Impressment of Labour, Indentured Labour, and recruitment of Labour by Agents of private companies with direct or indirect forms of Government assistance.
(E) A system of Indian Labour Ministry in Parliament, with similar Ministries in all the new Councils of India be introduced, with an understanding of such posts being given preferentially to persons that are connected with and experienced in British Labour organisations; and also the intercourse of British and Indian Labour through recognised agents of British Trade Unions for communion between Indian and British bodies, as well as for communications with the Indian Ministries be recognised and accepted, both as a material and moral support to Indian Labour, and also in view of the repercussion of Indian conditions on Labour conditions of the United Kingdom.
(F) The practice of safe-guarding Labour interests through nominees of a Government, in the election of which Labour has no direct vote, should not only be condemned, but should be admitted as one stage worse for Labour interests, than leaving Labour altogether unrepresented.
(G) Some immediate reforms in the indefensible rates of wages, and hours of work for the employees of the Government of India themselves, which conditions have been briefly described in the memorandum submitted by the League to Mr Secretary Montagu on 25th January last, and a copy of which is attached herewith.
My League is aware of some of the erroneous ideas that exist against the above suggestions, and I am prepared on their behalf to show by evidence, the groundlessness of fears, and interests that seek to prevent the introduction of these reforms.
Some illustrative fallacious contentions may be briefly reviewed as under:
(a) Indian workers should be denied franchise on account of their illiteracy:
Literacy has never been made the sine qua non condition of franchise rights. The Reform Acts and other Acts from 1830 to 1870 enfranchised large numbers of illiterate persons in this country. It is the absence of the vote that is responsible for the negligence of educational rights and facilities. If society is made to suffer from illiterate voters, it will expel illiteracy, if Society is permitted to protect itself by boycotting illiterate persons, it will take up their cause in a leisurely fashion. The Indian village worker, though illiterate, is far from being uncultured. The latest revolution in Russia proves at least one thing, that an illiterate Asiatic when given a vote and voice in State affairs, is capable of appreciating and enjoying it to the extent of living up to it, fighting for it, and dying for it, as ardently as his literate European comrade.
(b) Indian Labour questions must be treated as quite separate Indian questions from the Indian point of view alone, and are not of the nature of questions of Foreign Policy, the Army and the Navy.
Our Foreign Policy, Imperialism, the Army, the Navy are all maintained to support and safeguard the material welfare of the State and to defend as well as to increase the industrial activity of the Empire. Labour, the most important factor of Industry, is therefore the life and soul of everything, and the intelligent union and undivided progress of the Empire's Labour is a question of Sovereign and Imperial importance of the first magnitude.
Conditions of modern industries within the Empire are almost uniform, the interiors of factories, mines, dockyards, etc., being almost the same with the same tax on human mind and body. The Companies' Acts that safeguard the interests of investors are uniform. The Indian managers, directors, merchants, investors and large dividend earners, large land proprietors, lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc., have all changed their lives, housing, food, clothing, etc., and brought them in close approximation to the lives of modern merchants and masters in Europe, thus proving the advantageous applicability of a uniform standard of life for Europeans and Indians engaged in the same professions or trades.
(c) The Government may claim that they do not prevent any legitimate and constitutional labour activity.
The existing repressive measures are capable of destroying any activity. In the initial stages, any well-intended labour programme of a really independent character, free from master-class wire-pulling, would arouse political suspicions, and would be crushed by existing laws even before germination. It is absolutely essential to have distinct legislation framed to sanction labour activities along the lines of British standards. A statutory sanction is different from a benevolent acquiescence or of not putting into operation existing harsh measure or regulation.
(d) Excuse may be held forth, that the old laws and regulations, more worthy of a pirate chief than of a settled government within the country, are no longer put into operation with their early days' rigour, and things are different, etc., etc.
We are talking of Reforms. No reforms are British reforms that do not immediately do away with unBritish principles and laws enacted under stress of war-like conditions. British Labour is British Labour, here or in India, and several of these Indian Acts are an insult to, and an outrage upon British Labour, offered by a ruling caste that did not view labour very differently from slavery. To save the British name, reform of this unspeakable condition is of primary importance.
(e) India is not ripe for Labour Ministry, etc., etc.
any antidote is required most where the evil is the greatest and acutest. Ministries of Labour are more needful in backward countries than in forward ones. To set out today to create a new machinery of Government along lines of Western culture and modern standards, and to omit a specialised and separate Ministry of Labour, independent of commercial interest, is, to say the least, a very grave omission.
(f) Labour being backward in India, the Government desire to give them protection through a suitable nominee, and care will be taken to select a very disinterested gentleman, etc., etc.
Even in this country, we notice that it is not the person's previous career which makes him appear "suitable" - but it is the medium through which he gets into a position, that moulds his political and adminstrative psychology in his future work. In all conscience a Government cannot escape from its own view-point and the customary nervousness attached to responsibility of a small class ruling over a large mass, and the more honest and careful the selection of a nominee the more fatal in the long run, it proves to the interest of the protected ones. A free, healthy control by electors' votes is the only known means to check political deterioration. An absence of an elected agent to protect an interest is a drawback, but the fact of such absence throws an amount of risk as well as responsibility upon the one-sided administrative force. The presence of a nominee selected by those against whom protection is to be sought becomes a positive calamity by your opponent thereby securing your so-called assent and sometimes even your thanks, for undesirable measures, through this dangerous medium.
(g) The Government might argue that they based the wages on prevailing standards, and did give even a low wage to villagers who previously had none.
No Government is justified in comparing a condition of bygone days with the present. Free of control from without, every country undergoes changes and evolves from one stage into another. The Government of India, in perpetuating an old system, set a bad example to private traders, and then adopting the traders' standard, continue the perniciously low wage system for ever. The villagers' life conditions are changed, but his life standards are forcibly maintained unaltered. From a quiet, leisurely, uncontrolled, free-will, non-nerve-wracking cottage industry, he is moved into modern mines, factories and places of work, demanding different exactions from his mind, body and morals, and the Government set no new standard of life for him, subject him to newly created miseries of poverty, filth, of ignorance, etc., which in his previous condition were absent.
Every industry in India is capable of bearing a much higher wage today. The selling price of articles produced and the commercial value of public services, such as transport, post, police, etc., are today subject to the law of world prices, and give to controlling interests almost the values in India as in Europe. A glance at the record of Indian concerns as given in the attached copy of the Capital is sufficient to convince one that Indian industrial concerns can spare a bigger margin for workers' wages. The Government must first reform its own methods before legislating for others. On moral grounds the Government of India should seek this reform before any other, unless it prefers to court contempt or ridicule from the civilised world, which has not yet fully realised the very low level of Indian wages. Here is one instance, the President of the General Electric Company of Schektady - America, in his capacity as the Chairman when, speaking at the Annual Meeting of the Institute of Electrical Engineers in 1918 held up to the contempt of the world the German Government that in occupied territories in Russia, was employing Russian labour at two roubles a day for ten hours daily. Should not the Government of India reform itself even to this contemptible standard? Is the world's opinion never to effect it harmfully? The Postal Rate in India should be exactly what it is in Britain, because the Investor and the Trader uses the Post Office for similar profits as here, and not the illiterate population of 300 millions out of 320 millions. Out of this excess revenue the Indian Post Office Worker must be paid at the rate of Rupees 15 a week at least. Similarly the Government Railway Worker, Policemen, Soldiers, Village Teachers, Public Works Labourers could all be put on the 15 Rupees Weekly Standard, and rates and taxes on commercial communities duly increased and brought up to British Standard. The hours of work should be reduced under the Reform of Government of India Bill immediately to ten from 12, and then a further annual reduction of one hour every year, till a limit of 8 is reached. With better wages and greater leisure the wage earner will become a consumer of goods, and a caretaker of his own house and sanitary surroundings. His demand will largely increase industrial activity, industrial taxation, and public revenues, and the fictitious plea of poverty, which in a nature's rich country can only mean bad banking, of the Government of India will vanish, and India will acquire a British Standard of life, which will irresistibly be followed by a British Standard of Government and Politics. The present method of reforming the Government of India from the top is unnatural, unhealthy, and unjust not only to India, but even to the Empire.
My League declines to accept the plea of cheap living in favour of low wages. Cheap living is a myth, and even if it were true,coul d only base itself in deceiving the food -grower by giving him suc h poor remuneration for his toil, that he cannot maintain himsel f and his children in a standard of modern comfort and modern dece ncy. But this cheap living does not exist. The law of world prices levelises selling prices. Prices of wheat, rice, oilseeds, clo thing, even meat, etc., are fixed after a daily telegraphic exch ange of views among all the merchants of the world. Scientific ad vancement that produces preserved bananas, tinned fruit and fi sh, powdered eggs and milk, tends towards levelising prices of w hat used to be perishable articles. The Indian workers' cheap li ving is not based on his actually obtaining articles of lower val ues, but is literally based on his doing without everything that constitutes a worker's healthy and happy life. He has to go witho ut regular meals of nutritious food, without furniture of any ki nd, without medicine, without books, or education, without suf ficient clothing (the European worker in the hotter climate of S outh Africa does not go ill-clad), without soap, without cups an d saucers, without umbrellas, without tram rides to and from his work, without any sanitary house, and so forth. The Administrat ion and the Government of India have produced this condition, an d then on account of this very condition the Government and the in terested public have kept the worker a political outcast. Then o n account of this political disability his condition has to cont inue to be the same. No Government of India Act can therefore,cla im to be a reform unless it first reformed the heinous condition n ow euphemistically called cheap living. Death rates of 60 per 1000 and infantile mortalityof 500 to 675 per 1000 tell their own tale.
The following instances require careful sympathetic and also bold and unorthodox thinking, as pointing to the hopelessness of the attempt of reforming a people's life-conditions without recognising the right and voice of the very sufferers themselves.
(1) The Government of India, and the non-popularly elected Councillors leave the widows of the Indian soldiers on pensions of 14 pence to 30 pence a week. That same Government and Councillors make a gift of £6,000,000 yearly to Great Britain to help her pay her widows at the rate of 25 shillings to 35 shillings weekly. Had the Indian soldier and his widow a vote, such a scandal would not have existed, and had their case been lost in an adverse Council in India, their genuine representative would have appealed to the honour and self-respect of England and English widows not to touch this Indian money, and to spurn this gift of political motive before the Indian widow herself was paid at least 20 shillings (£1) weekly.
(2) The Indian Ryot (peasant) is deep in debt, and in the hands of extortionate money-lenders, who are not disconnected with the commercial fraternity. The Government of India would for years, not open land banks to advance money to them at standard interest, on the grounds of the Government being no money-lender, and also of the Government of India being a poor hand-to-mouth concern. The same Government (see The Mining World and Engineering Record, published Gresham House, London, E.C. issue of Saturday, November 23rd 1918 - p.416 & p.421) now advance a loan of £200,000 at 5�% to a very rich and prosperous commercial concern, known as the Burma Corporation. If you further strengthen the voice of the Chambers of Commerce and leave the worker out entirely, where will be the revenues of the poor worker entrusted to such a State? From the above quoted report one can perceive that cheap labour and cheap coal, (which again means cheap mining labour) are the attractions that draw new British industries to India with its freedom from Labour Troubles. One would welcome this migration of Industries if this freedom from Labour Troubles was based on an intelligent and spontaneous contentment of the worker, well-housed, fully-clad, sufficiently fed, well educated and well looked after medically. But when this migration depends entirely on the factor of the powerful and resourceful ones easily taking advantage over worse simpletons than what they find at home, the conditions become a set-back to India and to the Empire, and a Government of India Bill that further favours and strengthens such conditions must in the end prove a serious set-back.
(3) In free America, the farmer grows his cotton, and before parting with the product of his toil, secures to himself sufficient remuneration that would obtain him a well-appointed sanitary house, good rich food, ample furniture, ample clothing, medicine in illness, education for his children, and occasional luxuries of life, all with a consequent low death rate.
The Indian farmer for his toil, obtains none of the above when parting with the product of his labour. Similarly the grower of wheat, oilseed; rubber, tea, coffee, coconuts, etc., etc. The Government of India Bill does nothing whatever to reform this condition, but does actually greatly assist the class of Indian and English merchants who are today sitting in concert, to devise plans to secure two million additional bales of cotton, from the Indian farmers' labour with an absolute security of not having to pay him more than his present scandalously low remuneration.
(4) The authors of the Government of India Bill point to the various measures secured from time to time by the happy and privileged classes - Indian and European - in India, always building up further rights through the representation secured at each stage. Labour, having no representation at all to build upon, the following is the movement of wage progress in India from 1875. Please note wages are monthly, and one Rupee may be considered average equivalent of 18 pence. (The wages tables are not reproduced here)
The following was the reply to the above letter
From Committee Office, House of Lords, August 18th 1919 addressed to Shapurji Saklatvala Esq., Workers' Welfare League of India etc., etc.
Sir,
Referring to your letter of the 22nd July, I have submitted your application to the Joint Committee upon the Government of India Bill.
I am directed to say that the Committee have already arranged for the attendance of a representative witness on behalf of Indian Labour.
I am, Sir,
Your obedient Servant,
Edward Vigors
The Call of the Third International
Declaration of the Left Wing of the I.L.P.
(Signed by 159 supporters among whom was Shapurji Saklatvala)
Comrades- We, the signatories to this letter, are of the opinion that we should not be doing our duty either to our fellow-members of the I.L.P. or to the cause that we have at heart if, in this crisis in the history of the Socialist Movement in Britain, we did not come forward and, through such channels as are open to us, to state our case for the adherence of the Party to the Moscow International.
We have neither the machinery of our own, nor freedom to use the machinery of the Party for the purpose of replying to those - pre-eminently the elected representatives of the membership - who oppose adhesion to the International Communist Movement. We do not complain that the National Administrative Council should give its advice to those to whom it is responsible and by whom it has been placed in charge of the administration, that the I.L.P. should not affiliate with the Third International
We are jealous for the maintenance of that reputation which the I.L.P. acquired during the war for its steadfast opposition to the predatory politics of Capitalism and its unswerving determination to recognise no truce with the enemies of the working class. During the war the I.L.P. had no use for the opportunist tactics of pro-war Socialists of the type of Arthur Henderson, Albert Thomas, or Emile Vandervelde, any more than it had for the shuffling tactics of which Karl Kautsky was a prominent exponent.
Though not founded on a theoretical Marxism yet as if by instinct, the I.L.P. as a party held aloof from, and was hostile to those influences which have made of the Second International, a dishonoured corpse that now pollutes the atmosphere of working-class politics.
Though not founded on a theoretical Marxism, yet as if by accompanying Militarism ranged the I.L.P. alongside of the Italian, Serbian and Roumanian Socialists, and those Socialist sections then supporting Liebknecht in Germany and Lenin and Trotsky in the Russian Movement. Comrades, we have been and continue to be proud of our war record, and we fear the associations which we are now bidden to accept and to continue.
It was not to line up with the militarist Socialists, and erstwhile members of National Ministries that our men and women faced the misunderstanding of their audiences, broke the ties of friendship and old associations, and, in hundreds of instances, elected to remain in gaol for years rather than obey the behests of their class enemies and oppressors.
Comrades, the I.L.P. refused to take the "safe and discreet" course during the war and scorned the dangers that lay in its path. After the struggles of the war years, are we to think rather of coming successes in elections and of the chances of office that may lie before us, or are we to continue to face the blast of unpopularity and the ridicule and contempt of those who cannot or will not strive to understand the true significance of Bolshevism?
Our leaders - may we say once more those whom we have instructed to serve us - oppose the very thought of sudden revolution. They point us to the more practical course of gradual reform. They wish - in an evident ignorance of our own nation's history - to achieve the ideal of the common ownership of the means of production and distribution (an end of most revolutionary and drastic character) by the mere use of so-called constitutional means, evolved for and by the advancement of Capitalism, and by landlords and plutocrats who themselves did not always adhere to them in the fundamental crises of British history.
They speak, write and act as if the attainment of Socialism was to be but an incident in the "ins" and "outs" of Parliamentary controversy.
They who have witnessed the shameless trickery of the last six years and of the secret diplomacy which preceded these years; who have put their pathetic trust in the broken reed of American democracy and in spite of the political experience of the past generation, besought a Liberal President of the United States, and an old-fashioned British aristocrat, who had formerly been a Tory War Minister and Foreign Secretary, to rescue the world from chaos; who have seen the League of Nations change from an idealist's vision to a bondholder's nightmare of blockade and intervention; who have before their eyes the pitiless murder of Central Europe by slow starvation of its helpless women and children; advise us to act and to organise as if the capitalists, when we knock upon the door, will be off and say no more. They advise us to think and act as if the propertied classes would acquiesce in their expropriation by parliamentary enactments.
We do not doubt that the capitalists will tolerate the existence and obey the enactments of a Labour Government as it leaves them secure in the possession of land and capital, but we have no use for such a Government. Willing the end, we hold that the I.L.P. must will the means.
In this country the proletariat is an overwhelming majority. A bona fide Labour Government may serve industrial organisations as well as the majority of the Public by what is known as the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Such a Government need make no apology for the use even of the army in the interests of the working classes, just as under Capitalist control, the whole of the armed forces of the nation have been, in the past and are still at the present time, used for the suppression of spasmodic working-class revolts. Scottish comrades, in particular, will remember the invasion of Glasgow by tanks and troops in the early part of 1910 and the elaborate preparations made for the possible crushing, by armed force, of the railway strike of 1919 will be fresh in the minds of all of us. Sir Edward Carson's threatened military operations to keep under servile bondage the whole of Ireland, have silent lessons of their own. General Dyer's rough and ready methods adopted during what is popularly known as the " massacre of Amritsar" to bring into terror-stricken subjugation 300 millions of Indians for the benefit of a few thousand Imperial capitalist exploiters, is not a bad example of the Dictatorship of the Imperialist.
The Moscow International not only does not reject but it emphatically endorses participation in parliamentary elections and entry into Parliament, for the purpose of propaganda by exposure and of depriving the capitalists of whatever obstructionist power there may be in the domination of that institution. Lenin, in his reply to Kautsky's "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" explicitly states his views:
"Or take bourgeois parliaments. Is it to be supposed that learned Mr Kautsky has never heard of the fact that the more democracy is developed the more do the bourgeois parliaments fall under the control of the Stock Exchange and Bankers? This, of course, does not mean that bourgeois parliamentarism ought not to be made use of; the Bolsheviks, for instance, made, perhaps, more successful use of it than any party in the world, having in 1912-14 captured the entire Labour representation in the fourth Duma."
Or let us take yet another definite example: Madam Clara Zetkin, the leading exponent of Communism in Germany, and one of the founders of the Spartacus Group, is an active participant in the Parliament of Wurttemburg.
Whilst we are in favour of exploiting to the uttermost all the opportunities of constitutional procedure, we believe the working class will have no more use for Parliament under Socialism than the revolutionary plutocracy had for the supreme organ of feudalism, the Privy Council. We believe that the whole structure of the State must be dismantled and a new social organisation evolved, through which all who render or have rendered useful social service may participate in the administration of communal life. We definitely reject the principle of occupancy of landed property - the basis of the present franchise - and to require the establishment of a labour right to participate in the administration of society.
We think that the Shop Stewards' and Workers' Committees set up on a basis of organisation of industry, including bodies catering for professional and home workers, constitute the beginning of the new policy and we urge that it shall be the aim of the International Labour Party, by all means in its power, to further the development of labour unions on the above lines.
Such, Comrades, are the general principles and policy which we trust will command your support and, in any case, enlist your sympathetic consideration.
We are fully aware that, in adopting the only means at our disposal for bringing our views before our fellow-members of the I.L.P. we shall, in all probability, be subjected to the kind of criticism which is usually levelled at those who introduce disturbing elements into the realms of official somnolence and complacency. This prospect does not in the least perturb us. We do, however, ask those who, after full consideration, find themselves in agreement with us, to strengthen our hands by sending a brief note to such effect, addressed to Comrade Mrs H.Furguson, 4, Addison Way, Golders Green, London. N.W.
Even more important, however, than indicating your individual views in this way, is to get your Branch to make your voice and influence effective in the ranks of the Party by well-directed action at the forthcoming Annual Conference at Glasgow. This can be done by voting steadily and solidly for the resolution which declares for disaffiliation from the Second International and adhesion to the Third International. This is the issue. Do not allow it to be side-tracked. Vote consistently against shelving motions in whatever guise they may be presented.
Even a decision in favour of affiliation with the Third International may be largely nullified if the carrying out of it is entrusted to a National Council either luke warm or even actively hostile to Moscow. However essential it is that such a resolution passed by Conference and the personnel of the National Council should be in harmony and not in hopeless antagonism, we have to bear in mind that the elections at the Conference take place on previously fixed nominations, and also that they are based on consideration of more than one question relating to the Party. In view of this, it would be necessary to work continually through your Branches to urge upon the N.A.C. to carry out in spirit the wishes of the Branches in regard to our hearty co-operation with the Third International.
We are yours fraternally,
There follow 159 names as signatories including that of Shapurji Saklatvala.
The above document is undated but it was clearly written some time before the Annual Conference of the ILP held in Glasgow in 1920