Joel A Lewis Youth Against Fascism.pdf

UNITY OF YOUTH
Though the YCL propagated for unity, especially with the ILP Guild of Youth, such
initiatives were often rejected as inherently insincere and potentially dangerous ventures.
52 Aversion against unity emanated from a desire to show the respectability of the
Labour movement and the common knowledge that communists sought to disrupt and
ultimately destroy opponent organizations. These early years of mutual animosity
stagnated the growth of both the socialist and communist youth movements.
The Leninist Generation portrayed a façade of youth reconciliation in their rhetoric,
even though much of their literature advanced a blatant hostility towards other socialist
youth. In a 1926 pamphlet entitled The United Front of the Youth the YCL admitted they
had theoretical differences with the ILP Guild of Youth, but contended that they were
"always prepared to discuss those differences, and win or be won to a change of ideas." 53
In the same pamphlet the YCL dismissed allegations that they were "plotting the destruction
of the Guilds" as "absolutely absurd," positing that "those who fight against the
United Front fight against Socialism!" 54 The pamphlet's cover image was of two youth's
shaking hands, crushing a capitalist and military officer in their grip. (See Appendix)
The cover used a simple general slogan stating, "Two hands are better than one." In their
Congress report of the same year the YCL described the Labour League of Youth and the
ILP Guild as their "most dangerous" opponents, and that "a genuinely militant and
revolutionary class policy for the young workers can be pursued only on the basis of the
programme of the YCI." 55 The watchwords of YCL propaganda centred on themes of
unity, but unity could only be acceptable upon socialist acceptance of a proscribed
Leninist program.
Positions of hostility and insistence on the "correctness" on the YCI were intensified
during the Third Period. In a 1930 League training manual the YCL scorned comrades
for "under-estimating the necessity for sharpening the struggle against the "Socialist"
Youth Movement." 56 This manual urged YCLers to approach socialist youth while at the
same time chastising these groups as tools of the "bourgeoisie to bring the masses under
its spell, and all these organizations are our bitter enemies." 57 Though animosity ebbed
and waned to different intensities throughout the period, the Leninist Generation supported
a general oppositional line against all other British youth organizations, especially
the socialist youth.
In 1933 the YCL relaxed its traditional oppositional positions, fermenting new attempts
at unity with the ILP Guild. After the ILP split from the Labour Party in 1932, the
Ninth Annual Conference of the Guild voted unanimously for its National Guild Committee
to enter into unity negotiations with the YCI. Since the Guild had left the Labour
Party it lost its affiliations with the SYI. The Guild insisted that any common agreements
"should not mean the submergence of the ILP Guild of Youth into the Young Communist
International." 58 The YCI contended the Guild's only choice was either to merge with the
YCLGB under the centralized leadership of the Comintern or to rejoin the SYI and their
"united front with the bourgeoisie." 59 The joint work of the Guild and YCL was to be
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