Description:This is a page from the 1914-1921 minute books of the Birmingham Branch of the Independent Labour Party, which was chaired for most of the First World War by the Edgbaston artist Joseph Southall. Under his direction the branch maintained an unambiguous pacifist stance supported by a range of activities in a campaign for greater awareness of alternative critical views on the war.
At the outbreak of hostilities the ILP's main concern was to clarify its policy differences with the Labour Party. In protest against Labour’s pro-war alliance with the government, in October 1915 the Birmingham branch of the ILP proposed disaffiliation,<small><sup>1</sup></small> with Southall obtaining a second separatist branch resolution in March 1917. Anti-war and pacifist themes are echoed in all the talks heard at the Birmingham local meetings, such as ‘The Doctrine of Non-Resistance’ by Chairman Briggs of September 1915 and, a month later, ‘War and Social Order’ by the leading Quaker Alfred Barratt Brown, who spoke out against ‘greed and self-aggrandisement’ and especially the ‘will to power’. A manifesto entitled ‘Terms of Peace’ was sent out to clergymen and ministers throughout the city, whilst a ‘Peace Negotiations’ petition of June 1916 was actively supported.
The Birmingham branch constantly sought to expose the dubious ethics of the war and the corrupt motives perceived to be behind it. For example, Comrade Norman’s talk ‘The Secret Influences Behind the War’ (December 1916), identified an intrigue of diplomats and newspaper proprietors aiming to maintain a state of war in the interests of capitalism. The branch also ensured that the public libraries received copies of Henry Noel Brailsford’s 'The War of Steel and Gold', a study of the armed peace that implicated financiers and industrialists in a conspiracy, while members were urged to read 'Ten Years of Secret Diplomacy', one of several radical pro-peace publications by the Quaker Edmund Dene Morel, a close friend of Joseph Southall.
The ILP branch minutes also show how its fundamental principle of conscientious objection to the war inevitably brought members into conflict with the state. An early warning was heard in a branch talk on ‘The Perils of Conscription’ in June 1915 and a resolution was soon passed to oppose it. However, early the following year thirty-two branch members were liable for conscription and two were already in prison. Several others followed them, such as Hugh Gibbins and Wilfred Littleboy, who in January 1917 received a telegram of support ‘upon their departure for Wormwood Scrubs’.
Never wavering in his convictions, Joseph Southall’s absolute pacifism continued to ring out in his post-war resolution that ‘the future peace and liberty of the whole world demand nothing less than total disarmament on the part of all nations and that this should be the policy of Great Britain henceforward’.
<font color="#666633"><small><sup>1</sup> Minute Book, Independent Labour Party, Birmingham Branch Minutes, March 18th 1915-April 21st 1921</small></font>