RADICAL BIRMINGHAM.

Radicalism came early to Birmingham. As a 'free' town without serfdom or merchant and craft Guilds, it developed in medieval times, at least in theory, a democratic form of government where important decisions required the consent of the 'bretheren and sisteren' of the town. Most unusual. By the seventeenth century its industrial development naturally led it to support Parliament against Charles I who claimed the 'divine right of kings' to Rule despotically.

After Charles II was restored in 1661 the Act of Uniformity demanded that all Nonconformists return to the use of the Book of Common Prayer and another act forbad anyone who refused to conform to the Act to live within five miles of a corporate town. As Birmingham was not a corporate town it attracted the radical Nonconformist families who were to be its future ruling class.

The French Revolution of 1789 with its promise of liberty, equality and fraternity at first met with almost universal approval in Birmingham, but by 1791 when the execution of Louis XVI was imminent Church and King mobs were organised against Dr. Joseph Priestley and others who were celebrating the second anniversary of the Revolution. Priestley's house and priceless scientific instruments were destroyed.

Subsequent wars with France and economic hardship arising from had trade and the development of the Industrial Revolution brought government repression culminating in the Combination Acts which from 1799 to 1825 made it illegal to organise either political clubs or trade unions.

When the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, instead of the expected prosperity a deep slump ensued, and despite continued repression the modern working class organisations of trade unions, political parties and co-operatives emerged.

During the second post-war depression of 1829 to 1833 Birmingham led the way nationally in agitating for an extension of the vote. The great Gathering of the Unions, said to number 200,000, on Newhall Hill led by the Birmingham Political Union is generally agreed to be the key action forcing the government to pass the 1832 Reform Act or face revolution. Unfortunately, the Act gave the vote only to the middle class, and not to workers.

At this time Birmingham became gripped by the Socialism of Robert Owen. Owen believed that by setting up Socialist Colonies, in which people both lived and worked, capitalism could be peacefully superseded. Another strand of Owen's thought was that labour was the source of all value and that the commodities people produced could be exchanged directly through Labour Notes. To operate the scheme Labour Exchanges were set up across the country. Birmingham's Labour Exchange opened in August 1833 and remained operative until the middle of 1834 when it was the only Exchange to close voluntarily and produce a profit.

Yet another strand of Owenism was the One Big Union. The trades comprising it would establish their own co-operative workshops and Socialism would have been peacefully achieved. In Birmingham this began with the setting up of a Builders' Guild under Joseph Hansom, the architect of Birmingham Town Hall. The Great Operative Builders' Union was to link up with other trades into the Grand National Consolidated Trade Union which Owen set up in 1834.

Both the Builders' Union in Birmingham and the GNCTU nationally were defeated by lack of finance to support members when private employers refused to be superseded peacefully and locked out trade unionists who belonged to the unions.

The third Long Depression after the Napoleonic Wars from 1839 to 1843 produced the most important agitation of the century.

This was Chartism. Again, Birmingham played a leading national role and at first it was led by the traditional middle class leadership of the Birmingham Political Union. Chartism was a movement which through three mass petitions to Parliament between 1839 and 1848 sought to force the government to grant the vote to working class men. To support the first Petition and decide on measures if Parliament refused the vote, a General Convention was set up in London. Chartist leaders were being arrested, however, and the Convention was moved to Birmingham which was considered more militant. Here Ulterior Measures were discussed which led the Birmingham middle class leaders to conclude that 'physical force' Chartism was prevailing over 'moral force' and they resigned from the Convention. Not only that, but as demonstrations and protests continued in the Bull Ring, the erstwhile leaders, who also controlled the local council, brought 60 police from London who promptly closed down meetings and created the Bull Ring Riots which lasted for a fortnight.

The reneging of the middle class leaders in Birmingham had little effect since by this time the movement was controlled by the working class. Chartism in Birmingham not only survived the third Petition of 1848 but continued to be the main working class political movement until 1860.

One reason for the decline of Chartism was that from 1850 Britain entered its Workshop of the World period and slumps and unemployment were less severe. Chartism was replaced by Secularism. This movement was founded by George Jacob Holyoake, an Owenite Socialist, who was born in Birmingham at number 1 Inge Street. It was a movement supporting radical measures such as the vote for working men, ending Church rates, and support for foreign freedom fighters such as Kossuth of Hungary and Garibaldi of Italy. It was also anti-religious, continuing the tradition of religious indifference which followed the excesses of Puritanism.

From 1870 Secularism created Republicanism driven by the perceived uselessness of the monarchy as Victoria prolonged her retirement and mourning for Albert; also disgust at the vast fortunes made by the landed aristocracy while agricultural labourers starved.

By 1874 however, the great economic expansion was at an end. It. was succeeded by the Great Depression from 1875-1895 as rival countries industrialised and took our markets. This killed Republicanism stone dead and also drained the power from the trade unions. It took ten years of demoralisation and lowered living standards back almost to the Hungry Forties level before a rebirth of Socialism in the 1880s.

But before leaving the Workshop of the World period, another strand of radicalism must be followed. From the Reform Act of 1832 when Birmingham was first granted two MPs it was a Liberal town. Gladstone was the hero of the working class and when the Trades Council was formed in 1866, it also was Liberal. Joseph Chamberlain became the organiser of Birmingham Liberalism. Chamberlain retired from making a fortune in the screw trade to devote himself full-time to politics. His organising genius created the Caucus which dominated Birmingham politics until 1945.  He became the pioneer of Municipal Socialism and enunciated the 'doctrine of ransom'. This told his fellow industrialists that unless they surrendered enough of their ill-gotten profits to provide decent conditions for working people they would find all their wealth appropriated.

In 1876 Chamberlain became a Liberal MP and advocated his socialism nationally in Parliament. But times were changing, the Great Depression was biting. In 1886 Chamberlain made an extraordinary U-turn. Objecting to Gladstone's Home Rule for Ireland bill, he formed the Unionist Party which quickly merged with the Conservative Party and he took virtually all his supporters with him. Chamberlain was transformed into an Imperialist.

The rebirth of Socialism began in 1884 with the emergence of the Fabian Society and two Marxist revolutionary organisations. the Social Democratic Federation and an offshoot organised by William Morris, the Socialist League. All these organisations put down roots in Birmingham.

In 1893 the Independent Labour Party was set up with the avowed intention of returning working people to local councils and Parliament. In 1906 as a result of a secret pact between the Liberal Party and Ramsay MacDonald, twenty nine Labour MPs were returned to Parliament and they promptly transformed themselves into the Labour Party.

These were joined by a plethora of other Socialist organisations. There was the 'cheerful Socialism' of Robert Blatchford's Clarion newspaper spawning Clarion Cyclists. Clarion Scouts, nature clubs, social clubs, Cinderellas for giving Christmas and summer treats to poor children, and much else. Labour Churches initiated by the ILP appeared. All these organisations, revolutionary and reformist, coexisted peacefully together under the umbrella of the Socialist Centre at 76 Corporation Street.

The prosperous years of 1910-14 brought the Great Unrest. Unskilled and semiskilled workers were organised for the first time in the Workers' Union to win, by a series of spectacular strikes, wage increases from 18/-d. to 23/-d. thus giving these lowest paid workers a subsistence wage for the first time. The Great Unrest also included the women agitating for the vote in Birmingham and elsewhere and with mutinies in Ireland it began to look as if Britain was becoming governable.

All this ended with the 1st World War in 1914. Socialists had vowed to oppose war as being created by capitalism and argued that workers of the world should refuse to kill each other. These promises were quickly forgotten, but opposition to the war was maintained in Birmingham by some ILP branches, the British Socialist Party and the considerable number of conscientious objectors centred around the Quaker institutions of Birmingham.

After the war a Land fit for Heroes was promised. It lasted for just two years. A dreadful slump from 1921 to 1923 brought a return of mass unemployment and poverty. The Russian revolution brought the threat of a continuance of the war, this time against the Bolsheviks. There was almost unanimous opposition to the wars of intervention campaigning against which was now joined by the newly created Communist Party which exercised considerable influence in Birmingham during its early years.

The vision of a better life continued, however, exemplified by the General Strike of 1926 when workers struck not for their own wage demands, but against cuts in the wages of miners. To the amazement of many the strike in Birmingham was solid. It was ended after nine days by trade union and political leaders who had neither wanted the strike nor thought it could be won.

In 1929 the second Labour government was formed and for the first time there was a decisive inroad into 'cloth cap Chamberlainism.' Six Labour MPs were elected. The high hopes for this government were soon overtaken by the slump. Influential in Birmingham at this time was Oswald Mosley the Labour MP for Smethwick. Mosley, together with some Birmingham and Black Country MPs advocated proto-Keynesian methods to end the slump i.e. spending on essential projects instead of cutting wages and services. Ramsay MacDonald refused to accept the Mosley programme and he resigned from the government, initially with much sympathy from Labour supporters. But Mosley then formed his own party which rapidly degenerated into fascism. Ramsay MacDonald brought the second Labour government to an end when the Labour Party refused to accept the cuts he proposed and MacDonald formed a 'national' government with the Tories and Liberals.

From 1933 the rise of Hitler brought dangers of a new war. This was met by the Tories with a policy of Appeasement which basically aimed at turning Hitler's ambitions to the east rather than the west; this would have the double advantage of destroying the Bolsheviks and strengthening British imperialism. In 1936 Franco rebelled against the democratically elected Republican government of Spain using German and Italian armed forces. A powerful Aid Spain movement grew up and Birmingham volunteers fought with the International Brigade. But the movement to prevent war by collective security in an alliance with the USSR was too little too late. In 1939 came the betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich and when Chamberlain finally came to see that he had been duped by Hitler, war was inevitable.

The sacrifices of the Second World War again raised widespread feelings that we should never return to a society of mass unemployment and war. The result was the election in 1945 of a Labour government with a massive majority and a mandate to create a welfare state and nationalise the basic, run-down industries vital to our survival. In Birmingham the Chamberlain stranglehold was finally overcome. Ten out of the thirteen Parliamentary seats were captured by Labour which then took control of the City Council.

After the war capitalism contrived an unexpected world wide boom which lasted until 1974. During this period, provided both parents worked, family living standards soared. But the present generation has again experienced unemployment and insecurity. No one knows what capitalism will do to us next. But the idea that it can be left to itself and the free market will produce peace and prosperity has again been totally debunked by the experiences of Thatcherism.

At present we have New Labour which enjoys the support of a large majority of the population, but capitalism will move on as will history. Those best equipped to face the future will he those who know where they have come from. This is the value of history.