Bradlaugh contra Marx

Book Review by Nick Matthews

Bradlaugh contra Marx, Radicalism versus Socialism in the First International.

Published by the Socialist History Society, Occasional Publication No 28.
86 pages £4.00

This is a short quite delightful monograph published by the Socialist History Society (the successor organisation to the Communist History Group) and written by playwright and society member Deborah Lavin. It is a well researched paper about the tussles between Karl Marx and Charles Bradlaugh in the workings of the International Working Mens Association. She seems to have discovered details of this interesting tussle whilst working on her biography of Dr Edward Aveling the partner of Karl Marx’s daughter Eleanor.

The journey through the exile organisations of late nineteenth century politics are reminiscent of Joseph Conrad’s Secret Agent or of in the case of Bradlaugh, who she virtually accuses of being an agent provocateur, G.K. Chesterton’s the Man who was Thursday.

In Lavin’s hands neither Marx nor Bradlaugh come out of this episode very well. Marx comes across as an arrogant, sectarian whilst Bradlaugh comes across as an opportunist, charlatan. In one critical episode, what she describes as the oaths question, she argues Bradlaughs battle over taking the Parliamentary oath, was not a matter of principal but merely a misunderstanding.

The six year struggle ending in the “Tories oaths Act of 1888 is generally credited as a Civil Rights victory for Bradlaugh, but as he only got entangled in the oaths question by accident, and the moment he was allowed, Bradluagh willingly swore allegiance to Queen Victoria on the Bible.”
She says that it is “quite erroneous to see Bradlaugh as playing the part of the heroic man of principle”. Equally to give Bradlaugh some credit, however, he was an extraordinarily good public speaker, something Marx could never be accused of, and was also an extremely tenacious campaigner.

Lavin is clearly more sympathetic to Marx and he was clearly successful in keeping the mere Liberal Bradlaugh out of the IWMA but ultimately he kept everyone else out of it too by moving its HQ to New York ostensibly to escape the anarchist Michael Bakunin.

Bradlaughs attempts to recreate a version of the IWMA under a new name the International Labour Union also failed. Bradlaughs effort to court the newly rising working class however does show their emerging importance in Liberal politics.

There is much in this wonderful monograph, very rich in references, that would repay careful reading but it does highlight two obvious things. Firstly there is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come. How any of the organisations portrayed in this paper could have lasted more than a second or had any lasting influence is astonishing. And secondly it does not pay to look too closely at ones heroes as their feet are undoubtedly made of clay as they too are mere flesh and blood and subject to the same vanities and needs as the rest of us.