Letter to August Enders, December 15, 1891

Author(s)	Louise Kautsky
Written	15 December 1891

Published for the first time. Printed according to the original in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 49

LOUISE KAUTSKY TO AUGUST ENDERS

IN ERFURT

London, 15 December [1891] 122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.

Dear Comrade,

When your letter arrived yesterday, Engels was on the point of leaving. However he read your letter and asked me to reply. In the first place your letter arrived much too late for the circular to be translated and put into the papers. In this instance the bourgeois pa- pers were sooner and better advised of the Germans' intentions than were the comrades over here. To the best of my knowledge Mr Dub- lin, the German delegate, has not yet seen any of the more prominent comrades, besides which the London TRADES COUNCIL^[1] has taken charge of the affair. According to today's papers there was a meeting yesterday at which not one German spoke English well enough to be able to translate. A letter from Mr Liebknecht was read out. At this stage we should only make ourselves look silly were we to tag along behind the rest in the name of the German Party and hence we might as well save ourselves the trouble. So far as I can see from the papers, the meeting went well for the compositors. The English trades unions will do everything they can. If in future you have anything of this kind, will you please send it to Bernstein first. Over here we say, as do the Avelings everywhere, that it is he who represents the German Party and in my view Döblin ought to have gone to Bernstein. Please don't regard this letter as an answer from Engels. He merely agreed that the things should not be published.

With Social-Democratic Greetings,

Louise Kautsky

Mrs Aveling, who is as familiar as anyone with English affairs, is in full agreement with what I have written.

↑ The London Trades Council, which existed from 1860 to the 1950s, was a coordinating centre for the London trade unions. During its first years it played a progressive role, and its leaders—Odger, Cremer, Howell and others—were members of the General Council of the International. Subsequently, however, reformism gained the upper hand there. Together with the leaders of large craft unions, the Trades Council leaders pursued a policy of 'class peace' (class collaboration), ignored the needs of unskilled workers and opposed any independent political action by the working class. In the last decades of the nineteenth century the Trades Council was led by George Shipton, who prevented affiliation to the Trades Union Congress and impeded joint action by the London trade unions in support of the strikers. In the 1890s, due to the pressure of the New Trades Unions, the Trades Council's activity became somewhat more energetic. Since the Fabians, and in the early 1890s the Social-Democratic Federation, were influential there, the Council often took a Possibilist stand on issues of international policy and Britain's participation in international proletarian actions.

[1] The London Trades Council, which existed from 1860 to the 1950s, was a coordinating centre for the London trade unions. During its first years it played a progressive role, and its leaders—Odger, Cremer, Howell and others—were members of the General Council of the International. Subsequently, however, reformism gained the upper hand there. Together with the leaders of large craft unions, the Trades Council leaders pursued a policy of 'class peace' (class collaboration), ignored the needs of unskilled workers and opposed any independent political action by the working class. In the last decades of the nineteenth century the Trades Council was led by George Shipton, who prevented affiliation to the Trades Union Congress and impeded joint action by the London trade unions in support of the strikers. In the 1890s, due to the pressure of the New Trades Unions, the Trades Council's activity became somewhat more energetic. Since the Fabians, and in the early 1890s the Social-Democratic Federation, were influential there, the Council often took a Possibilist stand on issues of international policy and Britain's participation in international proletarian actions.

[1]