London History

Of all the strange footnotes in East End history, none is much odder than the single-handed efforts of David Anidjar Romain, one of the governors of the Bishopsgate Institute to suppress the Minute Book of the First International. In a doughty attempt to stop Red Revolution in England, Romain cast the book into the vaults of the Institute, decreeing that it would never be seen again.

The International Workingmen’s Association (IWA) was an international socialist organisation founded at a meeting in St Martin’s Hall, in London in 1864. The aim was to pull together the disparate socialist and trade union groups scattered around Europe. Congresses followed over the next few years in Geneva, Lausanne, Brussels and the Hague. The IWA’s official journal claimed a membership of 8 million. Though this is thought to be an optimistic count, the IWA certainly had at least 1.2 million members at its peak. At its heart and at its head was Karl Marx, who had based himself in Soho. Many other European socialists had, of course, taken refuge in Spitalfields, Shoreditch and Whitechapel.

The grouping was bewildering to outsiders. A loose confederation of French Mutualists and Blanquists, Italian Republicans, English Owenites, and the Collectivists of Mikhail Bakunin. The IWA became known as the First International, gained new members and expelled others, increasingly becoming polarised into two camps - one supporting Marx, the other Bakunin. A weary Mark increasingly lost patience with the IWA - he was engaged in his epic writing of ‘Das Capital’ - and he encourage the International’s move to New York City in 1872. Four years later, at the 1876 Philadelphia conference, the First International was disbanded.

The minutes of those early meetings covered the years 1866-69. By the turn of the century they had entered the collection of George Howell, who had been MP for Bethnal Green North East in the 1880s. An early trade union leader, Howell’s collection of papers on the labour movement was one of the finest in private hands. Howell had planned to write a history of the IWA. It never came about and in 1905 the papers were acquired by the Bishopsgate Institute.

In 1919, Raymond Postgate, the son in law of George Lansbury, sat with the minute book in the library at the Institute. The journalist, novelist and social historian was writing a history of the Builders Union, which would eventually appear in 1923. But once the book was returned Romain insisted that any requests for the book (the Bishopsgate Institute operated a bizarre ‘closed access’ system, so readers were unable to browse the shelves for themselves) be turned down. Perhaps he was mindful of the recent revolution in Russia, perhaps of the constant fear of anarchism, communism and revolt that had beset Establishment London in the 1890s. Whatever his reasons, so frightened was Romain of the journal’s effect on readers that he ordered the minute book be locked in the Institute’s strongroom.

Banning the book only added to the mystique of course, and to demands to see it. But Romain’s decree held firm for 14 years. Then, during his absence on holiday in 1933, the other governors decided to rid themselves of the problem by giving the book to the British Museum. Romain returned in a fury - the offer boldly contradicted his order that nobody, anywere, should ever see the seditious tome. He angrily called the book back and had it locked in the vault of a City bank.

Finally, in 1941, the book emerged. The Soviet Ambassador to London, Ivan Maisky made a plea through the News Chronicle newspaper to see the book. As ever, the request was flatly refused. He then went to the top. Britain and the Soviet Union were engaged in a common battle against Nazi Germany, and the threat of revolution in London probably seemed a slight matter by comparison. Prime minister Winston Churchill wrote a stern letter on behalf of Britain’s Russian allies, and there was a swift change of heart by the board of governors. Maisky’s wife and a secretary then spent several years transcribing the book, and it was eventually published in Moscow in 1950.

Red revolution in England had been averted, though how much of that was down to the enthusiastic censorship practised by Mr Romain was open to question. With the IWA minute book in the hands of the Russians, Soviet Communism persisted for another four decades.

* For further reading go to Karl Marx by Francis Wheen, ISBN-10: 1841151149.