Letter to Ferdinand Domela Nieuwenhuls, February 23, 1888

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 23 February 1888


First published, in Russian, in the magazine Istorik-Marksist, No. 6 (40), Moscow, 1934
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 48


ENGELS TO FERDINAND DOMELA NIEUWENHUIS

IN THE HAGUE

London, 23 February 1888 122 Regent's Park Road, N.W.

My dear Nieuwenhuis,

I informed Kautsky of the contents of your letter immediately it arrived and understand that he has since seen to everything you wanted.

The news from here is pretty good on the whole. The various socialist organisations have refrained from forcibly accelerating the natural, normal and hence somewhat slow process of development of the English working class; hence less fuss, less vainglory, but also less disappointment. Moreover they get on amongst themselves. As to setting the masses in motion, that has been taken care of by the incomprehensible stupidity of the government and the imperturbable cowardice of the Liberal opposition. The Trafalgar Square affair[1] did not simply breathe new life into the working men; the deplorable way in which the Liberal leaders behaved then and subsequently is driving more and more radical workers over to the socialists, the more so as the latter behaved very well on that particular occasion and were to be seen everywhere in the front rank. Cunninghame-Graham is a declared Marxist and at the meeting last Monday[2] demanded outright that the nation confiscate all the means of production. So here too we are represented in Parliament.

The best proof of how far the workers over here have advanced is provided by the radical working men's clubs[3] in the East End. What impressed them above all was the example set by the New York election campaign in November 1886;7 for what America does makes a greater impression over here than anything the whole of the continent of Europe may do. The example set by New York made it clear to the chaps that in the end the workers would do best if they formed their own party. When the Avelings returned, they seized on this mood and since then their activities have proved most effective in these clubs[4] —the only political workingmen's organisations of any importance that exist here. Both Aveling and his wife give several lectures a week down there and exert a great deal of influence; there's no doubt that they are now the most popular speakers with the workers. The main thing, of course, is to wean the clubs from their dependence on the great Liberal Party, prepare the ground for their own labour party and gradually bring the chaps over to conscious socialism. For, as I have said, the cowardice of the Liberal leaders, as also of the majority of London Liberal and Radical Members of Parliament, has been of enormous help to us over here. The people who were elected 3 or 4 years ago as workingmen's representatives, the Cremers, Howells, Potters, etc., are already completely played out. Were a second ballot to be introduced here instead of the matter's being decided, as it now is, by a relative majority at the first ballot, we should be able to organise a labour party within six months; under the present electoral system the creation of a new, third party is made very difficult. But it will come, no question of that, and in the meantime we can content ourselves with the knowledge that we are advancing all along the line.

An English edition of the Communist Manifesto, revised by myself, will be coming out in the next week or two; I shall send you one—there's a big demand for it over here, which is also a good sign.

You too will have been delighted at our brilliant victory in the Reichstag in Berlin. Bebel surpassed himself.[5] He came to stay with me last autumn[6] and I only hope that gaol suits you5 as well as it does him.[7] He says he always feels very much better afterwards (he suffers from nerves and in gaol his nervous excitation dies down).

Shall you be coming over here again next summer? With kindest regards.

Yours,

F. Engels

  1. ↑ In view of the frequent meetings of the unemployed from the autumn of 1886 to the spring of 1887, the Chief Constable of London, Charles Warren, banned demonstrations and meetings in Trafalgar Square by his fiat of 8 November, 1887. In reply the Metropolitan Radical Federation (see note 22) appointed Sunday, 13 November 1887, as the day of a rally. On that day Trafalgar Square was cordoned off by the police and soldiers, and nearly all the demonstrators, about a hundred thousand strong, were dispersed with exceptional cruelty on their way to the square. Hundreds of workers sustained injuries in clashes with the police (with three workers receiving deadly wounds); numerous arrests were made. Also taking part in the demonstration was Eleanor Marx-Aveling, who described the events of that day in the Pall Mall Gazette on the 14th of November 1887. 13 November 1887 went down in the history of the British working class movement as 'Bloody Sunday'.
  2. ↑ On 19 February 1888, a big rally was held in London on the occasion of liberation of the socialists Robert Cunninghame-Graham and John Burns, convicted for taking part in the Trafalgar Square demonstration of 13 November 1887 (see note 185).
  3. ↑ Radical Clubs began to emerge in London and other cities in the 1870s. They consisted of bourgeois radicals and workers. In the Clubs of London's poorer areas, such as the East End, the workers predominated. The Clubs criticised the Irish policy of Gladstone's Liberal government and urged an extension of the suffrage and other democratic reforms. From the early 1880s they engaged in socialist propaganda. In 1885 London's Radical Clubs united in the Metropolitan Radical Federation.
  4. ↑ After their return from the USA (see note 3) Eleanor Marx-Aveling and Edward Aveling launched a large-scale socialist propaganda campaign in London's Radical Clubs (see note 22). Their purpose was, among other things, to familiarise the British workers with the experience of the US labour movement.
  5. ↑ The debates in the Reichstag about the motion to prolong the Anti-Socialist law (see note 52) in January-February 1888 ended in a defeat for the government. This outcome was largely predetermined by the speeches of August Bebel (30 January and 17 February) and Paul Singer (27 January and 17 February) during the first and the third reading of the draft bill, respectively. Both speakers exposed the provocative activities of the government which was planting spies in the labour unions. On 17 February 1888, the Reichstag prolonged the law for the last time, but not for a term of five years, as the government had suggested - the action of the law was extended for two years only (until 30 September 1890). The new clauses suggested by the government for the law were not adopted (see note 220).
  6. ↑ Bebel visited Engels as guest in the latter half of October 1887.
  7. ↑ From mid-November 1886 to 14 August 1887 August Bebel was in prison in Zwickau. He was one of a group of German Social Democrats (others included Ignaz Auer, Johann Dietz, Georg Vollmar, Karl Frohme) condemned on trumped up charges of belonging to a 'secret union' whose purpose it was to obstruct by illegal means the enforcement of laws and government regulations. The indictment was based on the defendants' participation in the 1883 Copenhagen Social Democratic Party Congress. The court brought in a verdict of not guilty. However, the government appealed to the Imperial Court, which sent the case for re-examination to the Saxony State Court in Freiberg. On 4 August 1886 the latter sentenced the defendants to various prison terms. In the subsequent two and a half years another 55 trials of socialists were staged, resulting in the conviction of 236 people.