Hands Off Russia Committee
The Hands Off Russia committee was founded at conference called by the London Workers’ Committee on 18 January 1919. The purpose of the conference was to demand the immediate withdrawal of troops from Russia and speakers at the conference included Sylvia Pankhurst as well as many other prominent socialists. 350 different organisations were represented by 500 delegates.
A demonstration held in the evening in support of the campaign was so well attended that two overflow meetings were held.
In June 1919 the Manchester and District Hands Off Russia Committee organised a mass demonstration “to demand that steps be taken to compel the government to cease intervention in Russia and immediately put an end to military and industrial conscription”. The demonstration was held in the Free Trade Hall and was addressed by a number of prominent socialists, including James Henry Hudson, the conscientious objector. The honorary secretary of the committee was Frank Elder, also a conscientious objector.
In 1924 the Committee changed its name to the Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee after Ramsay Macdonald’s Labour government established diplomatic relations with Russia.
WP Coates was elected as secretary of the Hands Off Russia Committee at its inception and continued in that post until his death in 1963. Coates was also involved in the British Socialist Party (BSP), and its successor the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), as were a number of other activists in the organisation.
President of the Committee was Albert Arthur Purcell, who was also involved in both the BSP (in Salford) and the CPGB, although he left the Communist Party shortly after its foundation. He was a member of the Trades Union Congress General Council and in 1929 returned to Manchester where he was elected as secretary of the Manchester and Salford Trades Council.
Other notable figures in the organisation included Tom Mann and David Kirkwood of the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, Willie Gallacher of the Clyde Workers’ Committee and William Paul, a communist activist.
The library’s small collection consists mainly of Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee pamphlets with a limited number of Hands Off Russia Committee leaflets and pamphlets. One pamphlet, by WP Coates entitled Why Russia should be recognised, was published in early January 1924, just one month before the United Kingdom formally recognised the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on 1 February 1924.
