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An Early Pilgrimage to Soviet Russia: Four Conservative M.P.s Challenge Tory Party Policy*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Roger Schinness
Roger Schinness
Affiliation:
University College, Cranford, New Jersey
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Type
Communications
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 18 , Issue 3 , September 1975 , pp. 623 - 631
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1975

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References

1 For two incomplete accounts of the trip, see Boothby, Robert, I Fight to Live (London, 1947), pp. 71–72,Google Scholar and William, P. and Coates, Zelda, A History of Anglo-Soviet Relations (London, 1943), pp. 226–28.Google Scholar

2 Lyall, Archibald, Russian Roundabout: a Non-Political Pilgrimage (London, 1933), p. 183.Google Scholar

3 Daily Mail, 11 June 1920, p. 4; The Times, 6 June 1920, p. 11; National Unionist Association, Bolshevism as Labour Saw It (London, 1920).Google Scholar For an objective analysis, see Graubard, Stephen, British Labour and the Russian Revolution, 1917–1924 (Cambridge, Mass., 1956), pp. 214–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Morning Post, 28 Feb. 1925, p. 13; Daily Mail, 28 Feb. 1925, p. 6; The Times, 28 Feb. 1925, p. 13; Spectator, CXXXIV (7 Mar. 1925), 353.

5 The Times, 29 June 1925, p. 9.

6 For the Soviet attitude, see Margulies, Sylvia, The Pilgrimage to Russia: the Soviet Union and its Treatment of Foreigners, 1925–1957 (Madison, Wisconsin, 1968).Google Scholar Three Tories did visit Russia before 1926. In 1924 Sir Martin Conway, M.P., a noted art expert, spent six weeks there to see if the Bolsheviks had destroyed or sold art objects, as was claimed by many Conservatives and Russian émigrés. Upon returning, he praised the Soviets for preserving the treasures; see Soviet Union Review, VI (17 01. 1925), 59–60.Google Scholar A short rime later, Assheton Pownall, M.P., spent a week each in Moscow and Leningrad and issued a bleak description of conditions under ‘this most appalling tyranny’; see The Times, 25 Sept., p. 7, II Oct. 1924, p. 11. His views were published in a pamphlet by the Conservative Central Office, The Plain Truth about Russia Today (London, 1924).Google Scholar In 1925 Lord Newton, a prominent anti-Soviet peer, stayed in Leningrad for several weeks. His few public remarks indicate disgust with what he had seen; e.g. Spectator, CXXXVI (2 Jan. 1926), 13.

7 E.g. Saturday Review, CXXXVIII (27 12. 1924), 647–48;Google ScholarSpectator, CXXXIV (7 03. 1925), 353–54.Google Scholar

8 Benn, Ernest, About Russia (London, 1930), p. 7.Google Scholar

9 For a short analysis of Anglo-Soviet relations during this period, see Northedge, F. S., The Troubled Giant: Britain among the Great Powers, 1916–1939 (New York, 1966), pp. 310–15.Google Scholar

10 The Export Credits Act was enacted in 1920 to assist sagging exports by establishing an export credits department to guarantee payment of bills of exchange drawn by British firms on foreign buyers. If the bills were not met, the government guarantee became operative.

11 House of Commons Debates, 5th series, CXCII, cols. 999–1158, 5 03. 1926.Google Scholar

12 Morning Post, 17 Apr. 1926, p. 14.Google Scholar

13 Short biographical sketches of the four M.P.s can be found in Dod's Parliamentary Companion for the Year 1926 (London, 1926).Google Scholar

14 The Times, 15 Sept. 1924, p. 14; H.C.Deb., CLXXXI, 359–65, 3 Mar. 1925.

15 E.g. The Times, 10 Aug. 1926, p. 17, 9 May 1927, p. 12.

16 H.C.Deb., CLXXXI, cols. 772–74, 5 Mar. 1925.

17 E.g. H.C.Deb., CXCII, col. 1106, 1 Mar. 1926. In May 1925 Boothby had intended to visit Russia on a trade mission, but for some reason the trip was never made; University of Birmingham, Boothby to Chamberlain, 1 May 1925, Chamberlain to Boothby, 5 May 1925, Sir Austen Chamberlain Papers, AC 52/107, 52/108.

18 Public Record Office, Nelson to Chamberlain, 12 Mar., 15 Mar. 1926, Locker-Lampson to Nelson, 15 Mar. 1926, Chamberlain to Nelson, 17 Mar. 1926, FO 371/11788.

19 Observer, 18 Apr. 1926, p. 15.Google Scholar

20 Soviet Union Monthly, I (05, 1926), 75.Google Scholar

21 Sir Robert Hodgson (British chargé d'affaires in Moscow) to Chamberlain, 8 May, 1926, FO 371/11788.

22 Report appended to FO minute by Locker-Lampson, 11 May 1926, FO 371/11798. Although endorsing the spirit of the report, Bourne felt unable to sign it.

23 Cambridge University, Sir Patrick Gower to Nelson, 14 May 1926, Stanley Baldwin Papers, vol. CXIII, p. 42.

24 FO minute by Locker-Lampson, 11 May 1926, FO 371/11798.

25 FO minute by Locker-Lampson, 17 May 1926, FO 371/11798.

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 FO minute by Locker-Lampson, 18 May 1926, FO 371/11798.

29 Revised report attached to ibid.

30 FO minute by Locker-Lampson, 18 May 1926, FO 371/11798.

31 Public Record Office, Locker-Lampson to Tyrrell, 19 May 1926, Godfrey Locker-Lampson Papers, FO 800/227.

32 FO minute by Locker-Lampson, 18 May 1926, FO 371/11798.

33 Boothby to Geoffrey Fry (Baldwin's private secretary), 20 May 1926, Baldwin Papers, vol. CXIII, p. 44.Google Scholar

34 FO minute by Locker-Lampson, 18 May 1926, FO371/11798.

35 FO minute by Chamberlain, 20 May 1926, FO 371/11798.

36 Boothby to Fry, 20 May 1926, Baldwin Papers, vol. CXIII, p. 44.Google Scholar

37 Daily Telegraph, 14 June 1926, p. 8; Saturday Review, CXLI (5 06 1926), 669–70;Google ScholarSpectator, CXXXVI (5 06 1926), 937.Google Scholar

38 H.C.Deb., CXCVII, cols. 707, 715, 25 June 1926; National Review, LXXXVII (08. 1926), 857–66.Google Scholar

39 FO minute by J. D. Gregory (head of the Northern Department), 1 June 1926, FO 371/11788. The M.P.s paid for the trip themselves. Nelson was especially piqued by intimations that they were official guests. Because they also paid for the publication of the report, less than a hundred copies were printed.

40 H.C.Deb., CXCVII, cols. 715, 763–64, 25 June 1926.

41 Izvestia, 4 June 1926, quoted in Hodgson to Chamberlain, 12 June 1926, FO 371/11788.

42 E.g. Cardiff Western Mail, 12 June 1926, p. 6.

43 H.C.Deb., CXCVII, cols. 699–778, 25 June 1926.

44 Ibid., 752.

46 Daily Telegraph, 4 June, p. 10, 5 June, p. 12, 7 June 1926, p. 10.

46 Spectator, CXXXVII (3 07 1926), 5–6,Google Scholar (10 July 1926), 42–43 (17 July 1926), 83–84.

47 English Review, XLIII (07 1926), 38–44.Google Scholar

48 FO minute by Sir Geoffrey Butler (parliamentary private secretary to air secretary Samuel Hoare), 10 June 1926, FO 371/11786.

49 The Times, 10 Aug. 1926, p. 17. See also H.C.Deb., CCVI, cols. 2272–79, 26 May 1927.

50 E.g. H.C.Deb., CCVIII, cols. 824–25, 11 July 1927.

51 Minute by Baldwin on a letter from Sir George Armstrong (British journalist) to Eyres-Monsell, 9 June 1926, Baldwin Papers, CXV, 127.

52 Fischer, Louis, The Soviets in World Affairs: a History of the Relations between the Soviet Union and the Rest of the World, 1917–1929 (Princeton, 1951), II, 482.Google Scholar

53 John de Vere Loder, defeated in the election, visited Russia in late 1929 and again in 1930; see his Bolshevism in Perspective (London, 1931), pp. 95–164.Google Scholar Lady Astor accompanied George Bernard Shaw on his tour in Sept. 1931; see Collis, Maurice, Nancy Astor (New York, 1960), pp. 160–74.Google Scholar In Sept. 1932 four backbenchers went there, and in the same month Harold Macmillan also made the trip; see his Winds of Change, 1914–1939 (New York, 1966), pp. 295–325.Google Scholar Captain Cunningham-Reid visited in the summer of 1933; see Ellis, R. J., He Walks Alone: the Public and Private Life of Captain Cunningham-Reid (London, 1945), pp. 95–96Google Scholar. Boothby returned in the spring of 1934 but was quite critical of the Soviets this time; see his I Fight to Live, pp. 86–87.