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Collective Security or Colonial Revolution? The 1938 Conference on Peace and Empire, Anticolonialism, and the Popular Front

Williams, Theo

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Abstract

The 1938 Conference on Peace and Empire was emblematic of the deep divisions within the British socialist movement over the inseparable issues of fascism, war, capitalism, and colonialism. One grouping, around the Communist Party, the Labour Left, and the India League, espoused a reformist anticolonialism tied to a Popular Front of socialists and liberals and the collective security of the democratic powers against the menace of fascism. Another grouping, around the Independent Labour Party (ILP) and the International African Service Bureau (IASB), believed distinctions between ‘democratic’ and fascist colonialism to be flawed and instead advocated anticolonial revolution while rejecting what they saw as pleas to support colonialist policies under the guise of antifascism. This article advances three overlapping arguments. First, that the Popular Front strategy led Communists to promote antifascist alliances that necessarily diminished their anticolonialist activism. Secondly, that the IASB-ILP coalition was the most consistently militant anticolonialist force in Britain during the second half of the 1930s. Thirdly, that we need to more thoroughly integrate both the history of anticolonialism and the ideas and activism of people of colour into our understandings of inter-war British socialism.

Citation

Williams, T. (2021). Collective Security or Colonial Revolution? The 1938 Conference on Peace and Empire, Anticolonialism, and the Popular Front. Twentieth Century British History, 32(3), 325-349. https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwaa008

Journal Article Type Article
Online Publication Date Apr 27, 2020
Publication Date 2021-09
Deposit Date Nov 3, 2020
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Twentieth Century British History
Print ISSN 0955-2359
Electronic ISSN 1477-4674
Publisher Oxford University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 32
Issue 3
Pages 325-349
DOI https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwaa008

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Copyright Statement
This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Twentieth Century British History following peer review. The version of record (Williams, Theo (2021). Collective Security or Colonial Revolution? The 1938 Conference on Peace and Empire, Anticolonialism, and the Popular Front. Twentieth Century British History 32(3): 325-349) is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/tcbh/hwaa008




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