A while back a friend of mine lamented how the US Left had a much more robust tradition of radicalism when compared with her country, Britain. There’s a long history of violent/armed struggle by socialists and other leftist factions in the USA that the UK never seems to have had.
Black Panthers, Venceremos, Weather Underground, Symbionese Liberation Army, even the old school labor revolts like the Battle of Blair Mountain. To my knowledge the British Left has nothing remotely similar to these things and what I’ve heard of the CPGB hasn’t been very flattering as far as their activity and messaging goes.
Are we both just missing this history of violent/armed labor struggle in Britain or is there really a dearth of radical activity from the British Left and why is that if so?
Not trying to smear my British comrades, to be clear. Just looking for clarification. I don’t know much about the history of British Labor.
Although your friend is right, I don’t think she gives some movements enough credit. The IRA was obviously not nationally British, but operating on British soil and besides being broadly anti-imperialist it had its Marxist phases similarly to the Black Nationalist movement in the US. I suppose some factions of the suffragettes were also pretty radical too.
But besides that and the social imperialism as others mentioned, I think it also has to do with relative size of their colonies. The US didn’t start colonising overseas nations until around WW1, so there’s been a lot more class conflict inside continental borders. Meanwhile the UK’s most notable upheavals are usually those in the colonies, like India or Turkey or Ireland.
Domenico Losurdo talks about this in Class Struggle, he mentions Benjamin Disraeli policies throughout the 19th century were succesful quelling internal unrest from socialists by offering them property abroad through settlerism, or what he calls social imperialism, this is pretty much what evolved to the concept of labour aristocracy.
However its worth mentioning that there have been communist sympathizers in the UK, one that comes to mind is Kim Philby, a very prominent british spy that was a closet communist and acted as a double agent and shared info with the USSR.
If you ever get the chance, I would look up Fabian “socialism” as a microcosm to the answer to your question; its history and anti-marxism, and how those paradigms then fit into the below:
This may be a result of Britain having the first labor aristocracy. Britain had the largest empire, and so its masses could live to a certain extent off the spoils of said empire, so had less motivation to revolt. After World War II, the US stole away that empire, but because of that labor aristocratic history, the British working class never did any revolts while the US had much labor militancy before becoming the imperial hegemon after World War II.
Now after becoming the imperial hegemon, and therefore the U.S. working class becoming its own labor aristocracy, the USA has had much less labor militancy, as to be expected from the British example.
The lesson to be learned here is that revolution is never going to begin from the imperial core, but only after the imperial core loses all of its imperial holdings, so is no longer able to pay off its people. Only then will imperial core people’s material interests actually become aligned with that of all other workers in the global south rather than with the empire.
Britain had the largest empire, and so its masses could live to a certain extent off the spoils of said empire, so had less motivation to revolt.
Also many people were coerced to participate in imperialism by promising their part of the cake, aka property on stolen land.
Black Panthers, Venceremos, Weather Underground, Symbionese Liberation Army
The only really meaningful movement listed here are the Black Panthers, right? And they built off severe racial discrimination that wasn’t present in the same way in Britain.
I also wonder if the stronger welfare state in the UK since the war has discouraged radicalism?
Good points. The unspoken purpose of the welfare state is to pacify the working class via concessions.
I remember Karl Marx spend some time in London and even died there.
London was so awful it killed Marx smh
I have never been there, so I wouldn’t know. I heard it has a lot of smog there.
Certainly in Marx’s time there was a huge smog problem. Nowadays i think with how deindustrialized England is, it’s far less. The problem with London is that it’s absurdly expensive, and really not that great a place to live unless you are very wealthy. Even working there is a bit of a nightmare because commutes can be very long from the outskirts of London where regular people can afford to live.
The same friend I mentioned in the OP lives in London and she hates it lmao.
I think the church of england has done a lot to deradicalize workers. The CoE has historical had a near monopoly on religious indoctrination in GB and it is 100% behind the ruling class. USA doesn’t have a state religion that it can use to indoctrinate people. Competition among theologies means that state friendly churches have to give more value to workers or risk losing them to revolutionary friendly theologies.
this is an interesting idea, it just seems odd as I’ve never met anyone who even goes to church, do you mean like historically?
Impacts of religion on culture will go on for several generations even if they stop going to church.
