James Maxton

James Maxton (born June 22, 1885 in Pollokshaws near Glasgow , † July 23, 1946 ) was a British politician ( Labor Party , Independent Labor Party ) and pacifist. Maxton was for many years a member of the British House of Commons and leader of the Independent Labor Party.

Life and activity

Maxton was the son of a teacher couple. He attended Hutchesons' Grammar School and then studied at Glasgow University . During his student days he developed into a staunch socialist. In 1904 he therefore joined the Independent Labor Party (ILP).

After his studies, Maxton worked as a teacher, where - according to his own account - the poverty of many of his students, which he experienced every day, further strengthened his socialist convictions. From 1906 he worked in the teachers' union (Schoolmaster Union).

As a staunch pacifist, Maxton appeared publicly as an opponent of the war after the outbreak of the First World War and called for it to be ended quickly. After the system of involuntary military service was introduced in Great Britain in 1916, Maxton refused military service. Instead he worked as a dock worker. In the same year he was arrested because of his involvement in organizing strikes by dock workers and imprisoned for one year on charges of political disintegration during wartime (Sedition).

In 1918 Maxton was elected to the National Council of the Labor Party. An advocate for self-government for Scotland, Maxton served as President of the Scottish Home Rule Association in the early 1920s.

In the British general election of December 1918 Maxton applied for a seat in the House of Commons , the British Parliament, for the first time , but was defeated by the conservative opponent. In the general election of November 1922, he was finally elected as a Labor Party candidate in the Glasgow Bridgeton constituency to be elected to the House of Commons, to which he then belonged for almost twenty-four years, until his death in 1946, without interruption as a member of parliament. During this time, Maxton's mandate was confirmed five times (in the 1924, 1929, 1931, 1935 and 1945 elections). After his death, Maxton's mandate was taken over by James Carmichael .

Because of his effectiveness as a speaker in and outside of Parliament and as a debater in Parliament, Maxton was rated by many contemporaries and many retrospective observers as one of Britain's most talented and best political speakers in the first half of the 20th century, including: B. also from his political antipode Winston Churchill , who recognized him as "the greatest parliamentarian of his day" ("the greatest parliamentarian of his day").

From 1926 to 1931, 1934 to 1939 officiated Maxton as chairman ( chairman ) of the Independent Labor Party (ILP). Between his two terms in office and in the years after the end of his second term until his death, he was also the unofficially dominant figure of this party. In 1932 Maxton caused the ILP to break its traditional connection with the Labor Party as its parent party and instead to take a sharp opposition to it: The background for this step was that Maxton - like most other ILP leaders - the decision of the Labor Party in the The year 1931, to form a coalition government with the Conservatives, was judged as a betrayal of the Labor Party of the working class or as a collaboration of the Labor Party with the representatives of the anti-working class capitalist economy. The ILP maintained its opposition to the coalition government under Ramsay MacDonald until its end in 1935. After Maxton's death, the ILP quickly fell into disrepair and ceased to be a notable political force.

In addition to his work as a member of parliament, Maxton was also extremely productive in the journalistic field: In addition to a large number of brochures and pamphlets in which he presented his positions and the positions of the Independent Labor Party and promoted them, he also published a biography of the Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin before.

Even today Maxton Great Britain often has the reputation of an emphatic advocate for the concerns of the socially disadvantaged and is therefore considered a kind of folk hero and accordingly attracted public interest and journalism as well as historical and political research long after his death. So concerned z. B. the future Prime Minister Gordon Brown in his dissertation (PhD thesis) with Maxton.

family

Maxton's son John Maxton was a member of the House of Commons from 1979 to 2001 as a member of the Cathcart constituency and has been in the House of Lords since 2004.

Fonts

• A Living Wage for All: Dr. Salter's Speech in the House of Commons on Wednesday March 7, 1923 , Bermondsey Independent Labor Party, London 1923.
• The Left Wing: Its Program and Activities , National Left Wing Provisional Committee, London 1926.
• Twenty Points for Socialism , ILP Publication Department, London 1927.
• Our Case for a Socialist Revival , Workers' Publications, London 1928. (with AJ Cook)
• The Roads to Socialism: Chairman's Address at the ILP Conference , ILP Publication Department, London 1929.
• The Case of Benn v. Maxton: Being a Correspondence on Capitalism and Socialism, to which is Appended the Report of a Broadcast Debate , E. Benn, London 1929.
• Speech on the Government's Unemployment Proposals in the House of Commons 4 November 1929 , ILP Publication Department, London 1929.
• Where the ILP Stands: Presidential Address of J. Maxton to the ILP Conference, together with the Declaration on the Relation of the ILP to the Labor Party , ILP Publication Department, London 1930.
• Lenin , D. Appleton & Co., New York 1932.
• Widespread Poverty: "The Existing Social Order Must Go." , Independent Labor Party, London 1933.
• A Clear Lead , Independent Labor Party, London 1933.
• Keir Hardie: Prophet and Pioneer , F. Johnson, London 1933.
• Dictators and Dictatorship , Independent Labor Party, London 1934.
• If I Were Dictator , Methuen, London 1935.
• The Unity Campaign , National Unity Campaign Committee, London 1937. (with Richard Stafford Cripps and Harry Pollitt )
• Maxton's Great Anti-War Speech , Civic Press, Glasgow 1939.
• Why We Oppose Conscription Independent Labor Party, London 1939.
• Break Truce with Tories and Build Labor Unity! A Statement for Consideration by Men and Women of the Labor Movement , Independent Labor Party, London 1943.

literature

• Gordon Brown : Maxton: A Biography , Mainstream Publishing Co., 1986.
• Graham Walker: "Maxton, James (1885-1946)", in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , Oxford University Press, 2004.