Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

YOUTH AGAINST FASCISM
argued that the universalism and international coordination of their programme was a
necessary and positive feature of the communist youth movement:
The next characteristic feature in our organizational development is our continuous development
into a strictly centralized world organization. The Young Communist International
can today with full justification call itself an international league, in which
many languages are spoken, but completely uniform work and struggle is carried on.
Our Executive Committee is no question box, no information bureau, as that of the social
patriotic International of Youth.... It actually leads almost the whole work of the individual
sections in a general manner. 128
National variations and diverse strategies were considered social-democratic methods
that needed to be replaced by centralized and uniform methods. Despite this, the British
and American YCLs were faced with very different national challenges in their early
years. 129 Many of the setbacks of the early British and American YCLs were rooted in a
failure to mature and develop to the external realities of the limited national political
spaces open to them, instead focussing on the internal dictates of the YCI.
Post-war Britain was a nation fraught with political realignments that opened up a
variety of political opportunities for working-class radicalism. Prime Minister Lloyd
George commented that between 1917 and 1919 Europe was "filled with the spirit of
revolution… the whole existing order in its political, social and economic aspects is
questioned by the masses of the population from one end of Europe to the other." 130 In
places like Glasgow, where striking workers raised the "red flag" in George Square, the
Prime Minister reacted by bringing a "big howitzer [into] the city chambers, tanks in
Glasgow, machine guns on top of the post office and the hotels, and soldiers who were
not from the front." 131 Lloyd George feared veteran troops would potentially sympathize
with worker's demands and could not be "relied upon to act against" striking workers. 132
The industrial crisis reached such dramatic heights that the Government inquired as to
whether the Royal Air Force had the capacity to "bomb British urban centres such as
Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow" in order to crush any possible popular uprisings. 133
To combat working-class radicalism, employers and the state coordinated efforts in
utilizing both repression and reform to diffuse protests. 134
The Labour Party played a vital role in channelling working-class discontent into less
radical avenues. After he had visited Russia in 1917, Arthur Henderson argued that the
best way to fight against the growing tide of revolutionary fervour was to adopt a Parliamentary
socialist program for the Labour Party. 135 Henderson and other Labour leaders
argued that the mass extension of the election franchise opened new political opportunities
for socialists to capitalize upon. 136 Labour merged the radical energies of British
workers with aspirations of progressive middle-class elements into filling the political
void left by the fledgling Liberal Party. The adoption of Clause IV into their constitution
dedicated the Labour Party to the advancement of socialism, while the reformist influence
of the ILP and the Fabian Society helped Labour to assert that it was a "respectable
party" that was "fit to rule Britain." While the Labour Party was able to absorb adult
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