Synonyms
Definition/Description
British and European socialists have historically advocated socialism at home while advocating militarism and imperialism abroad. The British left typically supported imperialism and war to advance nationalism as opposed to internationalism.
There is one, and only one, kind of real internationalism and that is – working whole-heartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one’s own country, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy and material aid) this struggle, this, and only this, line in every country without exception. (Lenin 1965, p. 80)
Lenin was moved to offer this adamantine definition of internationalism during the First World War when millions of workers and peasants from Britain, Germany, Turkey, India, and China and many other nations and states were slaughtering each other at the behest of their imperialist...
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References
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Selected Works
Bayley, C., & Harper, T. (2004). Forgotten armies: Britain’s Asian empire and the war with Japan. London: Penguin.
Carr, E. H. (1982). The twilight of Comintern 1930–1935. London: Macmillan.
Field, G. G. (2011). Blood, sweat and toil: Remaking the British working class, 1939–1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fielding, S., et al. (1995). England arise! The labour party and popular politics in 1940s Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Hinton, J. Labour and socialism: A history of the British labour movement 1867–1914. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Howe, S. (1994). Anti-colonialism in British politics: The left and the end of empire 1918–1964. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kirk, N. (2011). The politics of empire Britain and Australia 1900 to the present. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Kolko, G. (1968). The politics of war: Allied diplomacy and the world crisis of 1941–45. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Marwick, A. (1991). The deluge. Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Ovendale, R. (1984). The foreign policy of the British labour government, 1945–51. Leicester: Leicester University Press.
Redfern, N. (2005). Class or nation: Communists, imperialism and two world wars. London: I.B. Tauris.
Semmel, B. (1960). Imperialism and social reform: English social-imperialist thought 1895–1914. New York: Doubleday.
Thompson, A. (2005). The empire strikes back? The impact of imperialism on Britain from the mid-nineteenth century. Harlow: Pearson Longman.
Thorpe, A. (2000). The British communist party and Moscow 1920–1943. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
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Redfern, N. (2020). British Left and Imperialism: The Fainthearted Internationalists. In: Ness, I., Cope, Z. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_192-1
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