Bolshevik bogies: red scares in Britain, 1919-24

ABSTRACT

The establishment of an anti-socialist hegemony has been widely accepted as the pivot of the Conservative Party’s electoral dominance in the interwar period. Anti-communism as a component of anti-socialist discourse, though commonly alluded to, has not received systematic attention, and is known above all for its appearance during the 1924 election campaign by way of the Zinoviev letter. This article offers the first comprehensive account of British political anti-communism in the early 1920s and reinterprets its significance and reach by demonstrating the vast extent to which it saturated Conservative propaganda between 1919 and 1924, as well as the range of social groups it sought to appeal to by these methods. It explores the origins and development of political anti-communism from the ‘first red scare’ in 1919-21 to the infamous 1924 campaign, punctuated by a series of ‘little red scares’ by which the fear of communism was perpetuated among key demographics. The 1924 election, rather than being seen chiefly as a triumph of ‘progressive’ Baldwinite Conservatism, must be understood in this context of a developed and pervasive anti-communist discourse that could be effectively deployed to engender a red scare under certain conditions, which the first Labour government was not the first to provide.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-communism
• anti-socialism
• Conservative Party
• Labour party
• Soviet Union

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Paul Corthorn for his valuable advice and feedback on several drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Maurice Cowling, The Impact of Labour 1920–1924: The Beginning of Modern British Politics (Cambridge, 1971), 1–2.

2. On the importance of discourse to the Conservatives’ success, see Ross McKibbin, “Class and Conventional Wisdom: The Conservative Party and the ‘Public’ in Inter-war Britain,” in ed. Ross McKibbin, The Ideologies of Class: Social Relations in Britain 1880–1950 (Oxford, 1990), 259–94; and David Jarvis, “The shaping of Conservative electoral hegemony, 1918–39,” in eds. Jon Lawrence and Miles Taylor, Party, State and Society: Electoral Behaviour in Britain since 1820 (Aldershot, 1997), 131–52.

3. On Edwardian anti-socialism, see James Nicholas Peters, “Anti-Socialism in British Politics c. 1900–22: the Emergence of a Counter-Ideology” (PhD thesis, University of Oxford, 1992).

4. As Peters has argued, Bolshevism “only confirmed, in a more militant form, the anti-Utopian arguments deployed against Socialism in the pre-war period.” See Ibid., 337.

5. Jonathan Michaels, McCarthyism: The Realities, Delusions and Politics Behind the 1950s Red Scare (New York, 2017), 48. The passage refers to the infamous Lusk Committee, established by the New York State Legislature during the First Red Scare to ‘investigate seditious activities’.

6. This is not as true of other fields such as labour, intelligence and even cultural history, whose scattered contributions to our understanding of British anti-communism are too numerous to list here.

7. Jennifer Luff, “Labor Anticommunism in the United States of America and the United Kingdom, 1920–49,” Journal of Contemporary History 53, no. 1 (2016): 1–25, at 5.

8. Stuart Ball, Portrait of a Party: The Conservative Party in Britain 1918–1945 (Oxford, 2013), 52–58, 91–93; David Jarvis, “Mrs Maggs and Betty: The Conservative Appeal to Women Voters in the 1920s,” Twentieth Century British History 5, no. 2 (1994): 129–52, at 145–48; David Thackeray, “Home and Politics: Women and Conservative Activism in Early Twentieth-Century Britain,” Journal of British Studies 49, no. 4 (2010): 826–48, at 837–38; David Thackeray, Conservatism for the democratic age: Conservative cultures and the challenge of mass politics in early twentieth-century England (Manchester, 2013); Neal R. McCrillis, The British Conservative Party in the Age of Universal Suffrage: Popular Conservatism, 1918–1929 (Columbus, 1998).

9. Laura Beers, “Counter-Toryism: Labour’s Response to Anti-Socialist Propaganda, 1918–39,” in ed. Matthew Worley, The Foundations of the British Labour Party: Identities, Cultures and Perspectives, 1900–39 (Farnham, 2009), 231–55.

10. Geraint Thomas, Popular Conservatism and the Culture of National Government in Inter-War Britain (Cambridge, 2020), 25–26.

11. For the fullest account of Baldwin’s political discourse, see Philip Williamson, Stanley Baldwin: Conservative leadership and national values (Cambridge, 1999), 203–43.

12. John Ramsden, The Age of Balfour and Baldwin 1902–1940: A History of the Conservative Party (London, 1978), 203.

13. For an account of the conservative press’s coverage of the 1924 election, which in many ways reflects this article’s analysis of the campaign via Conservative printed propaganda, see Laura Beers, Your Britain: Media and the Making of the Labour Party (London, 2010), 57–67.

14. See, for example, Antony Best, “’We are virtually at war with Russia’: Britain and the Cold War in East Asia, 1923–40,” Cold War History 12, no. 2 (2012): 205–225; Erik Goldstein, “Britain and the Origins of the Cold War, 1917–1925,” in eds. Michael F. Hopkins, Michael D. Kandiah and Gillian Staerck, Cold War Britain, 1945–1964: New Perspectives (Basingstoke, 2003), 7–17.

15. See Matthew Gerth, “British McCarthyism: The Anti-Communist Politics of Lord Vansittart and Sir Waldron Smithers,” History: The Journal of the Historical Association 107, no. 378 (2022): 927–948.

16. See ed. Robert J. Goldstein, Little ‘Red Scares’: Anti-Communism and Political Repression in the United States, 1921–1946 (Burlington, 2014).

17. Jarvis, “The shaping of Conservative electoral hegemony,” 135.

18. Discussion of Conservative fears around the post-war working-class can be found in David Jarvis, “British Conservatives and Class Politics in the 1920s,” English Historical Review 111, no. 440 (1996): 59–84, at 68–75.

19. McKibbin, The Ideologies of Class, 295.

20. What Bolshevist Socialism has done for Russia it would like to do for you, 1918, Bodleian Library, PUB 401/1(hereafter abbreviated to Bodl.); Election Notes, 1918, Bodl., PUB 224/7A, 44–45, 56–60.

21. War Cabinet Conclusions, 5 February 1919, TNA CAB 23/9. On the Belfast strike, see Olivier Coquelin, “A Strikers’ ‘Soviet’ in Belfast’? The Great Belfast Strike of 1919,” Labour History Review 87, no. 3 (2022): 255–75; on Glasgow, see Gordon J. Barclay, “’Duties In Aid of the Civil Power’: The Deployment of the Army to Glasgow, 31 January to 17 February 1919,” Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 38, no. 2 (2018): 261–292; on the police strikes, see Ron Bean, “Police Unrest, Unionization and the 1919 Strike in Liverpool,” Journal of Contemporary History 15, no. 4 (1980): 633–653.

22. War Cabinet Conclusions, 4 February 1919, TNA CAB 23/9; War Cabinet Conclusions, 30 May 1919, TNA CAB 23/10.

23. War Cabinet Conclusions, 3 March 1919, TNA CAB 23/9. For a comprehensive survey of the British government’s handling of the Bolsheviks following the revolution, see Richard H. Ullman’s trilogy, Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1917–1921, Volumes I-III (Princeton, 1961–1972).

24. Christopher Andrew, Her Majesty’s Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (London, 1985), 224–46.

25. There is not a great deal of research on overt political policing of communists, less so than on the activities of Special Branch and the Secret Service, but it appears to have been fairly widespread. See Jennifer Luff, “Covert and Overt Operations: Interwar Political Policing in the United States and the United Kingdom,” The American Historical Review 122, no. 3 (2017): 727–57, at 742–44.

26. For a survey of these organisations, see Stephen White, “Ideological Hegemony and Political Control: The Sociology of Anti-Bolshevism in Britain 1918–20,” The Journal of the Scottish Labour History Society 9 (1975): 3–20.

27. Arthur McIvor, “’A Crusade for Capitalism’: The Economic League, 1919–39,” Journal of Contemporary History 23, no. 4 (1988): 631–55.

28. War Cabinet Conclusions, 31 January 1919, TNA CAB 23/9.

29. Westminster Gazette, 19 March 1920.

30. The Scotsman, 25 March 1920.

31. On the Liberal’s muddled anti-socialist rhetoric, see Michael Bentley, “The Liberal Response to Socialism, 1918–29,” in ed. Kenneth D. Brown, Essays in Anti-Labour History: Responses to the Rise of Labour in Britain (London, 1974), 46–53.

32. There were of course a number of other reasons for the Liberal Party’s decline, including the increase in class-based voting and the impact of the Great War. For a survey of this topic, see G. R. Searle, The Liberal Party: Triumph and Disintegration, 1886–1929 (New York, 1992).

33. The Frozen Breath of Bolshevism, 1919, Bodl., PUB 37/1/2; Bolshevism is not Democracy, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2.

34. Shall the People Rule?, 1919, Bodl., PUB 37/1/2.

35. Ross McKibbin, Parties and People: England 1914–1951 (Oxford, 2010), 62.

36. Stephen White, “Labour’s Council of Action 1920,” Journal of Contemporary History 9, no. 4 (1974): 99–122, at 101.

37. The ‘Labour’ Party’s Challenge to the People, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2; also see ‘Council of Action’ Plans: What Trade Union Leaders Say About The General Political Strike, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2; The Dictators: Who’s Who in the ‘Council of Action’, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2.

38. Oil and Vinegar: What Does the ‘Labour’ Party Stand for?, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2.

39. Jarvis, “Mrs. Maggs and Betty,” 145.

40. National Union of Conservative and Unionist Associations Annual Conference minutes, 1920, Bodl., NUA 2/1/36.

41. The Bolshevist War Against Christianity, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2; Women! Don’t Touch Bolshevism, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2. Women were generally supposed to be more religious than men in interwar Britain, and this is reflected in Conservative propaganda.

42. Clarisse Berthezène, Training minds for the war of ideas: Ashridge College, the Conservative Party and the cultural politics of Britain, 1929–54 (Manchester, 2015), 37; Michael P. Perduniak, “Pamphlets and Politics: The British Liberal Party and the ‘Working Man’, c. 1867-c.1925” (PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2013), 217–18.

43. What Bolshevism Means to Women, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2; Ourselves Under the Socialists: A Word to Women by Mrs. F. H. Glanville, 1920, Bodl., PUB 402/3.

44. An Eye-Witness on the Bolshevist Terror, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2.

45. Hurrah for the Red Republic by Comrade Bob Williams, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2; see also, Heavy Civil War, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2; If, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2; What Bolshevism Means to Women.

46. This author has identified, based off a survey of local and regional newspapers, at least two Central Office speakers whose full-time occupation appears to have been lecturing on the subject of Bolshevism, although evidence suggests that many more speakers regularly discussed it.

47. Chichester Observer, 15 June 1921.

48. Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, 29 October 1920.

49. Dover Express, 27 August 1920.

50. Mid Sussex Times, 14 December 1920. For further insight into the Conservative preoccupation with middle-class apathy in the 1920s, see Jarvis, “British Conservatism and Class Politics in the 1920s,” 76–79.

51. North Wales Weekly News, 16 December 1920.

52. David Thackeray, Conservatism for the democratic age, 192–200.

53. Annual Conference of the National Unionist Association Labour Committee, 1920, Bodl., PUB 401/4. The best general account of the NUA Labour Committee is located in McCrillis, The British Conservative Party in the Age of Universal Suffrage, 110–145.

54. The Popular View, June 1921, Bodl., PUB 211.

55. e.g. The Times, 10 June 1919.

56. Diamonds for the Daily Herald, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2.

57. Life Under Lenin and Trotsky, 1919, Bodl., PUB 401/2.

58. The Frozen Breath of Bolshevism.

59. A ‘Striking’ Contrast: Bolshevist Joy and Bolshevist Bullets, 1919, Bodl., PUB 37/1/2.

60. The Worker Under Bolshevism, 1919, Bodl., PUB 37/1/2.

61. Bolshevism is not Democracy.

62. Bolshevism at First Hand: What Col. John Ward, the Labour M.P., Saw in Russia, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2; Listen to Clynes, 1919, Bodl., PUB 37/1/2; Bolshevism As Labour Saw It, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2; Save those you love from Bolshevism, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2.

63. A Challenge to Trade Unionists, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2.

64. The Frozen Breath of Bolshevism.

65. Bludgeoned to Work: Labour Slaves in Nationalised Russia, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2.

66. A ‘Striking’ Contrast; What the ‘Labour’ Party Wants: Their Programme in Their Own Words, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2.

67. Andrew Taylor, “The Party and the Trade Unions,” in eds. Anthony Seldon and Stuart Ball, Conservative Century: The Conservative Party since 1900 (Oxford, 1994), 477.

68. Roy Douglas, “The National Democratic Party and the British Workers’ League,” The Historical Journal 15, no. 3 (1972): 533–52, at 548–50.

69. Kevin Morgan, Bolshevism and the British Left Part One: Labour Legends and Russian Gold (London, 2006), 196.

70. Annual Conference of the National Unionist Association Labour Committee, 1920.

71. For a particularly egregious example, see The Elector, September 1924, Bodl., PUB 146/2.

72. Birmingham Daily Gazette, 3 September 1920.

73. This was certainly not true of all, or probably even most, working-class women however, many of whom were just as class-conscious as their male counterparts, see Annmarie Hughes, Gender and Political Identities in Scotland, 1919–1939 (Edinburgh, 2010), 34–36.

74. The Roly-Poly Revolution, 1925, Bodl., PUB 406.

75. For example, Conservative candidates in industrial Lancashire towns frequently made use of the same anti-communist themes as national propaganda literature when addressing women’s meetings, see James K. Dearling, “The Language of Conservatism in Lancashire Between the Wars: A Study of Ashton-Under-Lyne, Chorley, Clitheroe, Royton, and South Salford” (PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 2002), 147–50.

76. A Call to Women Against the Red Terror: By Mrs. Philip Snowden, 1920, Bodl., PUB 37/2. Unsurprisingly, Snowden’s assertion that ‘it is not socialism’ was left out.

77. Home and Politics, July 1925, Bodl., PUB 212/5.

78. The debate around the relevance of Empire to interwar British society and politics is too complex to discuss here. For works which acknowledge a decline, though not a terminal one, of popular imperialism between the wars, see Andrew Thompson, The Empire Strikes Back? The Impact of Imperialism on Britain from the Mid-Nineteenth Century (London, 2005); Jim English, “Empire Day in Britain, 1904–1958,” The Historical Journal 49, no. 1 (2006): 247–276. On the preoccupation of policymakers with the Soviet threat to the Empire, and India in particular, see John Fisher, ‘The Interdepartmental Committee on Eastern Unrest and British Responses to Bolshevik and Other Intrigues Against the Empire During the 1920s’, Journal of Asian History 34, no. 1 (2000): 1–34.

79. Goldstein, Little ‘Red Scares’, xiv. For another recent work in this tradition, see Nick Fischer, Spider Web: The Birth of American Anticommunism (Urbana, 2016).

80. Robert O. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (New York, 2004), 105.

81. John Stevenson, “Conservatism and the failure of fascism in interwar Britain,” in ed. Martin Blinkhorn, Fascists and Conservatives: The radical right and the establishment in twentieth-century Europe (London, 1990), 275–76. The conception of early British fascism as ‘Conservativism with knobs on’ is a widely held one in the literature.

82. Despite the substantially different philosophies of the two types of Sunday schools, they were most often considered by Conservatives to be essentially the same. Quotation taken from The Campaign Guide: The Unique Political Reference Book, 1922, Bodl., PUB 224/8, 1002.

83. The only extended research carried out into the BEU and NCU is Ian Thomas, ‘Confronting the Challenge of Socialism: The British Empire Union and the National Citizens’ Union, 1917–1927’ (MPhil thesis, University of Wolverhampton, 2010).

84. Goldstein, Little ‘Red Scares’, xiv.

85. Thomas, “Confronting the Challenge of Socialism,” pp. 27–29.

86. The Times, 27 February 1923.

87. Jessica Gerrard, Radical Childhoods: Schooling and the Struggle for Social Change (Manchester, 2014), 89. Several similar bills were introduced by different Conservative MPs later in the interwar period, although none attracted nearly as much attention.

88. “Socialist and Revolutionary Schools: Memorandum by the Home Secretary,” 25 April 1922, C.P. 3948, TNA CAB 24/136.

89. This figure if accurate would amount to nearly half the number of people that voted in the 1922 and 1923 elections. Although it can be called into question, particularly because repeat signatures may have been common, it is not beyond belief for the signatures to have totalled somewhere in the millions, given that the BEU enlisted the membership of several mass organisations such as the Mothers’ Union and the Primrose League in their campaign. See Liam Ryan, “The Political Culture of Anti-Socialism in Britain, 1900–1940” (PhD thesis, University of Bristol, 2018), 140–44.

90. The Times, 5 March 1923.

91. Fife Free Press & Kirkcaldy Guardian, 1 December 1923.

92. Liam Ryan, “The Political Culture of Anti-Socialism in Britain,” 141–42.

93. National Union Executive Committee minutes, February 1923, Bodl., NUA 4/1/4.

94. e.g. St. Pancras Gazette, 13 January 1922; Bucks Herald, 18 March 1922; Bromley and West Kent Mercury, 16 June 1922. The practice of having National Union and Central Office speakers lecture about the SSS/PSS ramped up as the campaign gained more momentum in early 1923.

95. Daily News, 27 February 1922; The Vote and How to Use it, 1922, Bodl., PUB 38/1. The party’s journal of record, Gleanings and Memoranda, whose readership consisted of Conservative speakers and activists, also carried ample information regarding the PSS, e.g. Gleanings and Memoranda, May 1922, Bodl., PUB 220/55.

96. Vote Unionist and Stop Socialist Blasphemy, 1922, Bodl., PUB 38/2.

97. Gerrard, Radical Childhoods, 91; Ibid.; The Vote and How to Use it.

98. e.g. The Scotsman, 13 November 1922; Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 14 November 1922; Kent and Sussex Courier, 10 November 1922.

99. Why You Should Be Unionist, 1922, Bodl., PUB 38/1. Also see, Is It Fit To Govern? ‘Labour’ Party Judged By Its Actions, 1922, Bodl., PUB 38/1; What Some ‘Labour’ Party Members Want, 1922, Bodl., PUB 38/2; The Campaign Guide, 1922, 39–41.

100. What Socialism means to Women, 1922, Bodl., PUB 38/1; Women! Learn the Lesson Russia Teaches, Don’t Touch Socialism, 1922, Bodl., PUB 38/2.

101. Socialism and Religion, 1922, Bodl., PUB 38/2.

102. Russia’s Object-Lesson in Socialism, 1922, Bodl., PUB 38/1.

103. This shows what Socialism means in Russia, 1922, Bodl., PUB 38/2; Socialism has reduced Russia to the Depths of Despair, 1922, Bodl., PUB 38/2.

104. Popular interest in the SSS/PSS declined from mid-1923 and waned significantly after 1924. See Ryan, “The Political Culture of Anti-Socialism,” 148–49.

105. For the Labour Party’s rule-tightening to exclude communists in these years, see David Howell, MacDonald’s Party: Labour Identities and Crisis, 1922–1931 (Oxford, 2002), 380–404.

106. Chris Cook, The Age of Alignment: Electoral Politics in Britain, 1922–1929 (London, 1975), 144–45. Also see Fighting Notes against Liberals and Socialists, 1923, Bodl., PUB 385, which consistently represents Soviet socialism as the natural endpoint of British socialism.

107. Williamson, Stanley Baldwin, pp. 29–31.

108. John Shepherd and Keith Laybourn, Britain’s First Labour Government (London, 2006), 40.

109. Ibid., 200–202.

110. Ibid., pp. 157–59; Andrew J. Williams, Labour and Russia: The Attitude of the Labour Party to the USSR, 1924–34 (Manchester, 1989), 13–15.

111. For a full account of the Campbell affair, see Shepherd and Laybourn, Britain’s First Labour Government, 163–69.

112. Neville Kirk, Labour and the politics of Empire: Britain and Australia 1900 to the present (Manchester, 2011), 116. For an authoritative account of the mystery surrounding the Zinoviev Letter, see Gil Bennett, The Zinoviev Letter: The Conspiracy That Never Dies (Oxford, 2018).

113. Chris Cook, “By-elections of the first Labour government,” in eds. Chris Cook and John Ramsden, By-elections in British Politics (London, 1973), 57.

114. Ramsden, The Age of Balfour and Baldwin, 200.

115. Cook, “By-elections of the first Labour government,” 37–57.

116. Ball, Portrait of a Party, 292; Leo Amery to Stanley Baldwin, 14 November 1923, cited in Ibid., 99.

117. Stamfordham memorandum for the King, 7 October 1924, cited in Eds. Philip Williamson and Edward Baldwin, Baldwin Papers: A Conservative Statesman, 1908–1947 (Cambridge, 2004), 159.

118. Why the Bolshie Treaties must go, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43; The Limit, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43; Surrender to Red Russia!, 1924, Bodl., PUB 40.

119. Bolshevik Torture of Women, 1924, Bodl., PUB 40.

120. Government’s Bolshevik Friends: Christianity Abolished, 1924, Bodl., PUB 40; Women and the Election, 1924, Bodl., PUB 40; Bolshevik Torture of Women.

121. Communism and the Churches, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43; To Parents: Communists Corrupt Children, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43; To Women: Communism Destroys Marriage, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43.

122. Shall Bolshies Teach Our Boys and Girls? 1924, Bodl., PUB 40; The Kiddies’ Future, 1924, Bodl., PUB 40.

123. To Trade Unionists, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43; A Message to Farm-workers, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43.

124. Freedom Gone in Socialist Russia, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43; Don’ts for Citizens, 1924, Bodl., PUB 40.

125. Beware of False Friends! A Woman’s Warning to Mrs. Worker, 1924, Bodl., PUB 404/6.

126. What is Communism?, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43. This phrase or a variation of it appears in many different leaflets.

127. Russia’s Bitter Lesson, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43; Religious Teaching Banned, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43; Prices in Socialist Russia, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43; The Socialist Government in Russia, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43; Rations Under Socialism in Russia, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43; Socialism Ruins Agriculture, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43.

128. At Last The Truth, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43; Official Warning, 1924, Bodl., PUB 43.

129. Goldstein, Little ‘Red Scares’, xiii.

130. Quotation taken from the 1922 Labour Party general election manifesto, see ed. Iain Dale, Labour Party General Election Manifestos, 1900–1997 (London, 2000), 22.

131. Women Electors, Labour Party leaflet, 1922, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, 36/L41/1/4; To the Woman in the Home, Labour Party leaflet, 1923, Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick, 36/L41/4/19.

132. Beers, “Counter-Toryism,” 233–34.

133. The term is not found in any of the Labour Party’s manifestos between the 1918 and 1924 elections, see Dale, Labour Party General Election Manifestos, 16–31.

134. Cited in Paul Ward, Red Flag and Union Jack: Englishness, Patriotism and the British Left, 1881–1924 (Woodbridge, 1998), 181–88.

135. Taunton Courier and Western Advertiser, 13 April 1921.

136. Forward, 15 May 1920.

137. Cited in F.S. Northedge and Audrey Wells, Britain and Soviet Communism: The Impact of a Revolution (London, 1982), 39.

138. The Scotsman, 27 October 1924.

139. Sheffield Independent, 18 October 1922

140. Jessie Stephen, Submission is for slaves, n.d., 93, Working Class Movement Library, PP/BIOG/16.

141. Hastings and St Leonard Observer, 11 October 1924.

142. The best illustration of Labour’s success in pushing back against Conservative propaganda is the case of the 1919 railway strike, during which their publicity machinery induced an antagonistic press to change its stance on the strike’s ‘unconstitutionality’, see Laura Beers, “’Is This Man an Anarchist?’ Industrial Action and the Battle for Public Opinion in Interwar Britain,” The Journal of Modern History 82, no. 1 (2010): 30–60.

143. For Labour’s significant disadvantage in the press and propaganda spheres during the 1920s, see Laura Beers, “Labour’s Britain, Fight For It Now!,” The Historical Journal 52, no. 3 (2009): 667–95, at 672–3.

144. On the Conservative panic over communist sedition and Baldwin’s uncharacteristic appeasement of it just a week before the arrests, see National Union Annual Conference minutes, 1925, Bodl., NUA 2/1/41.

145. Roger Schinness, “The Conservative Party and Anglo-Soviet Relations, 1925–7,” European Studies Review 7, no. 4 (1977): 393–407.

146. David Vessey, “Anti-Bolshevism and the periodical press in interwar Britain: the case of the Saturday Review, 1933–6,” Historical Research 96, no. 271 (2023): 103–123.

147. Matthew Gerth, Anti-Communism in Britain During the Early Cold War: A Very British Witch Hunt (London, 2023), 109–116.

148. Martin Pugh, The Tories and the People 1880–1935 (Oxford, 1985), 184.

149. G.C. Webber, The Ideology of the British Right, 1918–1939 (London, 1986), 138.

150. Peters, “Anti-Socialism in British Politics c. 1900–22,” 335.