British Labour’s hands-off-Russia campaign pushed Churchill to withdraw troops by 1919

Evidence

Th e struggle was widely popular throughout the British labor movement, which launched a strong campaign for “hands off Russia.” Starting in January 1919 and covering the issue daily, Labour tried to convince the government to withdraw troops from Russia. At the Labour Party conference of June 1919, the speech of the chairman invoked the offi cial stance of the Labour Party: “We must resist military operations in Russia”- (A Voice: “And Ireland”)- “and the perpetuation of conscription at home. Th ere can be no peace so long as we continue to indulge in military adventures in Russia. Russia must be left free to work out its own political salvation, and it would be far better to send to the people the means to stabilise and consolidate the democratic growth of the country than the means for one section to destroy another or perhaps also the Revolution itself” (Report of the Nineteenth Annual Conference of the Labour Party, June 25, 1919, 113, at https:// babel . — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 1666

Categorization

• XREF: Plaza against foreign intervention — labor internationalism resists imperial war; connects to contemporary war-resistance movements and the 1917 governmental enquiry discussed elsewhere in the chapter.