The League Against Imperialism - Our History 15 (Vol. 2 New Series)

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Communist Party History Group

of the Egyptian Parliament “under the protection of British bayonets” and of the “constant flight” of British military aeroplanes over Afghanistan. The League’s activities, according to a letter of 27 February 1929 on the Special Branch file from the Secretary of State for India to the Home Secretary, were certainly troubling the former. Over to Viscount Peel: “...I am seriously perturbed by the dangerous possibilities of the League’s interference in Indian affairs, particularly in view of the great interest which Moscow is known to be taking in India at the present time...The possible steps that can be taken amount to little more than the proscription and interception of literature from the League, and the refusal by the Government of passports to Indians who are known to be connected with the League, and desire to attend League Conferences in Europe; to these will be added the power – when the Public Safety Bill has been enacted in India – of deporting from India any non-Indian persons working on behalf of the League....” In early March of the same year a meeting under League auspices was held in Finsbury Town Hall. This demanded the withdrawal of all British forces from Egypt and pledged support for the struggle of the Egyptian people for complete independence, while protesting too against British Government interference in Afghanistan. Early in April the Independent Labour Party’s Conference at Carlisle recognised the right of Egypt (and China) to independence, and “of a democratically elected Indian Parliament to decide its relationship to the British Empire”.

8.The Meerut conspiracy The League’s work was granted a huge impetus on 20 March, when in India the sudden arrest (for active support of India’s independence, in effect) of more than thirty trade union and socialist leaders took place, followed by custody and protracted prosecutions at Meerut. This swoop followed a year and more crammed with labour disputes and strikes. The League Against Imperialism:The Hidden History of the British section

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The League Against Imperialism - Our History 15 (Vol. 2 New Series)

Published on Jan 4, 2017

Communist Party

As late as the early 1940s, Britain’s government ruled over a quarter of the globe’s land surface, while insistently resisting the idea that this state of things must change, enabling subject countries to achieve national independence. Amongst Britain’s colonised peoples, independence movements had their own histories. Early colonised India’s was at an advanced stage. Other European governments (France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands) and Japan on the other side of the world, had their own lesser empires in which independence struggles had also developed. Several decades more were to pass before these formal empires became museum items.