Bridlington Quay, 15 Aug. 81

Dear Mr Shipton,

I am utterly at a loss to understand how you could have misunderstood Mr Kautsky’s article so strangely and badly. You objected to the first passage because state interference “goes against the grain with many prominent trade union men”. Of course that is so, since at bottom they are men of the Manchester School; and as long as their opinions are taken into account, no workers’ newspaper is possible. But my addition to the passage in question must have convinced you that the state interference mentioned here means solely such interference as has been current in England for years: factory legislation and nothing else; things against which even your “prominent men” have nothing to say.

In the second passage Mr Kautsky says: an international regulation of competitive warfare is just as necessary as the regulation of open warfare; we demand a Geneva Convention for the workers of the world. The “Geneva Convention” is an agreement concluded by the various governments for the protection of the wounded and field hospitals in war. Mr Kautsky now demands a similar agreement between the various governments for the protection of the workers not of one country but of all states against overwork, especially of women and children. How you can make of this an appeal to the workers of the world to meet together at a delegates’ conference in Geneva I am utterly unable to understand.

You will admit that the appearance of such a misunderstanding on your part can in no way encourage me to alter my decision.

As regards the Hirsch article, I know Mr Eccarius, and only too well, as a traitor to our cause, and it is completely impossible for me to write for a newspaper that puts its columns at his disposal.

Moreover, I see no progress. The “Labour Standard” remains the same channel for the most diverse and mutually contradictory views on every political and social question that it was—perhaps unavoidably—on the first day of its existence, but which it no longer need be today if there existed in the British working class a current directed towards emancipation from the liberal capitalists. Since no such current is as yet discernible, I must assume that it does not exist. Were there unmistakable signs of its existence, I would make special efforts to support it. But I do not believe that one column a week, drowned as it were among the other manifold views represented in the “L[abour] Standard”, could do anything to set it in motion.

As I informed you, I had decided to stop writing after the Trades Union Congress on account of lack of time; whether I write a few articles before then would be immaterial.

Awaiting and hoping for better times, I remain

Yours faithfully,
F. E.