Kropotkin returned to Aberdeen in October 1889 and gave a talk to Aberdeen Junior Liberal Association entitled “Socialism its Modern Tendencies”. Once again it was under the aegis of a respectable organisation, one founded in 1882 with the intention of promoting Gladstonian liberalism and to give a forum open to wide-ranging discussion of politics and social policy. More directly political than the talk given in March 1889 Kropotkin argued that material wealth came from the combined efforts of women, men and children working together, however, these communal acts were fractured when it came to distribution this because commodities became the private property of owners and shareholders leaving, at the best of times, workers with access to only a small fraction of the wealth produced collectively. Hence to achieve a just society all land and factors of production “must belong to the whole community” with individuals making “free agreement” as to how wealth would be divided. Of course this was one of the key disagreements between the anarchists on one side and on the other Marxists who argued on the necessity for the revolutionary state to guard and guide the introduction of a new society, a notion which under the Bolsheviks in Russia became the belief that the revolutionary party embodied and lead workers to where and how their energies should be employed. Not everybody was enamoured at Kropotkin’s idealism. One was the editor of the Aberdeen Evening Gazette he described the world envisioned by the anarchist as wholly impossible, the product of a “poet and a dreamer” who failed to grasp the reality that humanity was essentially egotistical and selfish.
As a political refugee Kropotkin was happy to lecture middle class audiences on the profoundly social nature of humanity so it was that he accepted the invitations to come to Aberdeen. But on all occasions he grasped the opportunity to meet with socialists in the city. By 1889 he was surprised and pleased to find that the movement in Britain had advanced far beyond that from which he fled in the early 1880s. In March 1889, as a local editor put it, Kropotkin met with “friends of the socialistic cause” with George Bisset President of the Trades Council in the chair; showing the breadth of the movement of the time and the willingness to be non-sectarian it included the Rev. Alexander Webster, a Christian Anarchist who gave the vote of thanks.
The following October Kropotkin once again availed himself of the opportunity for propagandising. George Bisset again chaired the gathering which was an animated affair not because of the Prince’s radicalism and him being on the run from the Russian state. No, the flurry of discussion centred on an ongoing labour dispute between workers and management at one of the area’s paper mills. An ideal opportunity for propaganda it would seem.
The dispute centred upon working conditions at Pirie’s paper mill at Stoneywood. Men at the paper-making machine laboured five days 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. followed once a fortnight with a Saturday 6 a.m. until 11 p.m. Compounding the toil these men had no fixed hours for meals, according to Aberdeen Weekly News, having to “snatch their food just as they have the chance while attending the machinery”. Men asked that hours be reduced to 68 per week. Management’s response was, irrespective of later claims, a non-negotiable refusal leaving something like 150 men in the dilemma what to do next? This was about 20th October. It should be recalled that the 1880s was a time of increasing militancy and unionisation of unskilled an semi-skilled workers so unsurprisingly the men looked to solidarity at the mill and fraternal assistance from other workers. They decided to form a union to the consternation and absolute opposition of management who resorted to a lockout of all men,
Pirie’s forced the issue by insisting that only men who signed a document declaring they would not join a union and would accept the existing working hours, only they would be allowed back into the mill. By 22nd of the month about 100 men were locked out with 40 men bowing to management demands. For a very brief period it looked as if the struggle would be drawn-out. Financial donations in support of mill workers were collected locally as well as from paper workers to the south of Aberdeen. Locked-out men demanded the right to “liberty as Wallace and Bruce had done before them”, which meant freedom to join a union. But Pirie would only allow the liberty of a long working week and the freedom for men from other mills to be blacklegs, to take jobs previously held by men in dispute. Anger emerged. At one moment with a rumour doing the rounds that men from the local mill at Muggiemoss were looking to exploit the situation, locked out workers under cover of darkness made an effigy of a blackleg, carried it to the road to Aberdeen and alongside a railway line, there the “blackleg” was hung from a tree where, come daylight, it was stoned by supporters.
For a week militancy and solidarity developed culminating on the 28th October with a mass meeting of about 400 at Aberdeen’s Castlegate, traditionally the gathering place for demonstrations. The meeting was led by men from the Trades Council. All seemed set for a solid front against the bullying tactics of management. But it was not to be. By the following day the headline “Collapse of the Agitation” greeted men. Pirie’s management planted false claims as to the basis of the dispute, trying to split uncertain men from those more committed to the union struggle. Faced with the assertion that nobody in the union would get their jobs back, faced with this it is hardly surprising that men wavered and began to go to the mill gates pledging allegiance to the militant management.
Bitterness and disappointment swept through the men still holding out. Blacksmith George Bisset, leading light in the Trades Council, said of the men who signed the anti-union document that “he never knew a body of men to act so foolishly” an act he said designed to undermine organised labour and give employers the whip hand. Better, he said, that instead of eventual capitulation to management’s demands that the men had never supported the struggle in the first place.
On the 30th Aberdeen Free Press followed the line being spun by the employer, blaming the disruption on “local agitators” telling readers “This is not the first occasion of recent times that the same parties [from the Trades Council] have interfered in labour disputes in which they had little or no concern . . . to foment strife and prejudice . . . reckless and wrong-headed”. William Livingstone, then President of the Trades Council, echoed the anger of his colleague George Bisset when he described those who capitulated as “truckling knaves . . . cringing back to their masters, licking the very dust off their boots”. He must have been consumed by his fury as he went on to wish them the worst, “He hoped the employers would put the screw on them very much more than before . . . would take the very last drop of blood out of their veins”. In the space of a week men had gone from the utmost optimism to the depths of defeat and this was briefly witnessed by Peter Kropotkin, no stranger to the rise and fall and rise again of class struggles.
On the day of defeat, announced by the local Press, the Russian addressed two meetings. One was to the Junior Liberal Association on the subject “Socialism its Modern Tendencies” and later in the evening when workmen and women were better able to attend, with free entry, the Prince took as his subject “Is Socialism Practicable?” In the earlier meeting he argued that the very dynamics of capitalism laid the foundation of what he described as socialism. Not only did “modern” society draw workers into extended communal enterprise but this was done on the back of increasing productivity with the help of science and technology making it possible and probable that a society without borders with material plenty was historically necessary.
At the evening meeting with a more working class audience Kropotkin advanced his argument that socialism, or anarchism as he preferred to term it, was not simply material tinkering with the share of a national cake rather it was revolution with authoritarian institutions overthrown to be replaced by federal living and active moral choices made by individuals. Hence Kropotkin did not doubt, for example, that free school meals would benefit poor children, however, he argued this was not socialism. Nor was winning an eight hour day for workers as this did not free men and women from exploitation; it simply tweaked the pattern of wealth being appropriated by capital. Nonetheless, struggle was necessary,whether it was rural or urban labour, without struggle nothing was possible with the proviso that those who fought needed to see beyond immediate demands to greater possible goals. Kropotkin praised, for example, the great London dockers strike of August 1889 at the same time insisting that labour had to raise its voice against authority, property and capital as such, go beyond amelioration of an unjust world.
He chose as two examples of what might be achieved when men and women united around opposition to big social-economic evils, grasping different historical forces in the fight for liberty: the abolition of serfdom in Russia and slavery in the USA. The former had been achieved without resort to violent revolution (although he well-knew that free peasants suffered under the new system); on the other hand the struggle in America had required the bloodiest of wars a consequence of the absolute refusal of the South to condone any freeing of slaves. Hence violent change followed. This underpinned Kropotkin’s stance on whether violent revolution was necessary. He did not condemn anarchist “outrages”, individual acts of terror and assassination, circumstances dictated what might or might not be done. Given the unbending Tsarist opposition to democracy nihilism and violent attacks upon the Russian state were established tactics in Kropotkin’s home country. Amongst his closest of friends and political confidants was the nihilist Stepniak, responsible in 1878 for the assassination of the head of Russia’s secret police. If the owners of wealth and capital refused to bend towards the just demands of workers then revolution could only take a violent course. As he said to the assembled workers in Aberdeen “if the owning classes were unable to understand [the justice of working class demands], the change would happen the nevertheless” as the whole of Europe was ripe for revolution. Stepniak called Kropotkin an “ardent searcher after truth”.
For the next twenty eight years the anarchist’s search for truth continued to reach across Europe; he remained an exile from this native land returning only in 1917 following the Russian revolutions of that year. The world had moved on. No more clear perhaps than when in 1916 the revolutionary Kropotkin gave his support to allied powers in the conflict with Germany, reflecting the deep division then separating revolutionaries from reformers and imperialists. With the emergence of soviets and mass class struggle opposed to the autocratic Russian regime the now aged anarchist must have had such hopes for the future. Sadly for the Prince, his dream of liberation was not realised. The Bolshevik Revolution was far from the free-association of individuals envisaged by the anarchist. Political ideology, the forces of the counter-revolution and the exigencies of class war conspired to leave the idealism of Kropotkin all but a footnote in the history of struggle. He died February 1921. His funeral drew thousands to mark the passing of the man.
Not that he is forgotten. Anarchism continues to motivate individuals and groups across the world. Kropotkin’s published works remain guides to followers, especially his Mutual Aid which is a counterblast to some evolutionary Darwinism, positing that the natural inclinations of humankind to cooperate rather than compete was a sound base for anarchism.
In Aberdeen the Prince’s views found echoes in the emergence of a local group calling itself Aberdeen Anarchist Communists. In March 1893 Agnes Henry gave a lecture on the ideals of the movement being founded on “science and facts”. The group debated the rights and wrongs, the strengths and weaknesses of the dominant trend towards parliamentary socialism and the values of the Independent Labour Party. The anarchists attended local demonstrations such as May Day with banners calling for Bread and Liberty and at times decrying the timidity of labour-trade union representatives. The Trades Council became the focus of criticism when there was, to say the least, a hesitancy for the local “voice” of workers to be seen associating with anarchists. In July of 1895 they clashed when the local followers of Kropotkin asked the Trades Council to join with them in protesting the jailing of Walsall anarchists on trumped up terrorist charges. Aberdeen’s anarchists were denounced and described as following a “revolutionary catechism . . . of the dagger and the rope”. But grudgingly it was decided to send delegates to the protest, however, when push came to shove only representatives of the Social Democratic Federation made an appearance. Respectable labour stayed away but some 300 others attended which would have gratified the far from wholly respectable Kropotkin.
Wee Bits of History 