1914 – 1945
The outbreak of World War I saw an end to the early 20th century wave of unrest. One breakaway syndicalist union, the Building Workers’ Industrial Union, formed in August 1914, but found its anti-militarism made it a target for the State. The union was quickly suppressed.
During the war many syndicalists became involved in shop stewards and workers’ committees that were springing up in defence of workers’ rights.
These were especially prominent on Clydeside and in Sheffield and a conference was held in Manchester in 1916. The Shop Stewards and Works Committee Movement (SSWCM) was formed in 1917 as a result.
ASRS also continued to emphasise its sympathies with the syndicalists, and was joined in its calls for workers’ control in 1917 by the Nation Union of Railwaymen and Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers. Despite conciliatory noises however the government bogged down negotiations after the war, eventually ditching the idea entirely in 1921.
In the West, the South Wales Reform Committee was strongly influence by syndicalism, and in its 1912 pamphlet The Miners’ Next Step had rejected nationalisation in favour of aggressive working action to drive bosses out, with the unions taking over. This was a minority position nationally, and in 1918 the formal position was agreed that “joint control” was the priority.
This tentative by some unions towards more outright syndicalist policies however was brought up short by the beginning of the Russian Revolution in 1917. After years of slow struggle, many syndicalists were overjoyed at the seeming outright success of the Bolshevik model of revolution, joining the newly-formed Communist Party of Great Britain.
Many became disillusioned later with central directives coming out of Moscow and especially the USSR’s instructions that they should affiliate to the Labour Party.
After sending delegates to the Second Congress of Soviet-dominated political international the Comintern in 1920, the SSWCM split with a minority rejecting the Bolshevik strategy.
Syndicalism nevertheless fell into decline and by the time of the 1926 General Strike its influence was only felt in a few attempts to create alternative structures under direct worker control.
Instead the Communist Party was to become the dominant political focus for the radical left in Britain, reaching a peak of 60,000 members in 1945.
But interest in anarcho-syndicalism began to revive with the onset of the Spanish Revolution in the 1930s. Famed anarchist firebrand Emma Goldman was in London during this period and wrote extensively about the anarcho-syndicalist CNT’s role. Many went to fight.
At the end of the conflict in 1939 many Spanish exiles came to London and helped inspire a number of anarchists who became active during World War II.