BOLTON SOCIALIST CLUB - A SLOW DECLINE 1914 - 1982
World War
The outbreak of war in 1914 split the socialist movement right across Europe and brought a bloody halt to the hopes and dreams of the previous years. Socialists like Robert Blatchford, the Clarion editor, and Harry Hyndman, founder of the Social Democratic Federation, stepped onto recruiting platforms for the British Army, while others, like Keir Hardy, remained opposed. The Bolton socialists were equally split. Close votes were recorded at Wood Street meetings, for and against the war.
The campaign for women's suffrage followed a similar pattern. Even the Pankhurst family were split - Emmeline and Christobel strongly for, Sylvia just as strongly against. " 'poor Belgium' was brandished like a flaming torch to laggards, and silly women proffered white feathers to embarrassed boys." (Alice Foley; A Bolton Childhood). In Bolton Sarah Reddish opposed it from the beginning. She took part in the Women's Peace Crusade and when conscription was introduced in 1916, supported the 'No Conscription Fellowship'. At the club, she eventually managed to carry the day - in 1916 members voted to leave the British Socialist Party and reverted once again to being the Bolton Socialist Party. They immediately passed a resolution demanding the release of conscientious objectors and began supporting the work of the No Conscription Fellowship.
Revolution in Russia
The club's minute books are strangely quiet in 1917 and make no mention of either the February or October revolutions in Russia. We can only assume that members supported them, because when, in 1919, there was a British military intervention against the Bolshevik government, a meeting was organised on the Town Hall square, under the slogan 'Hands off Russia!'. Also Jim Paulden, club secretary at this time, some years later wrote and published a hundred-page epic poem in praise of Lenin!
The party ends
In the years following the war, Wood Street continued as the main centre of radical activity in the town. Literature sales got under way again with papers like Solidarity, Plebs, and Sylvia Pankhurst's paper The Workers' Dreadnought and outdoor meetings once more became the order of the day - strongly supported by the Clarion cyclists who also played an vital and active role during the 1926 General Strike.
But the Bolton Socialist Party as such began to fade away. Some members joined the Communist Party after its formation in 1920, while others joined the Labour Party - in 1921 a majority voted to affiliate to Bolton Labour Party.
Despite its gradual demise, however, the Bolton Socialist Party was never formally disbanded. Over the years membership of club and party became synonymous. Even now an application to join the club is an application to join the 'party'.
The 'Afternoon Trade'
Sadly the story of the Socialist Club between 1929 and 1979 is not one we can be altogether proud of. 'Wood Street Club', as it became known, gained an unenviable reputation as a haunt of drunks, prostitutes and black-marketeers. When town centre pubs closed between 3 and 6 o'clock in the afternoon, the club became the favourite place to get a drink. As Jim Paulden remembered, 'From then on, the club, in spite of generous donations to political and other causes, steadily accumulated funds.'
Among Boltonians the club’s notoriety became legendary - persisting into the 1980's and beyond and made famous in Jim Cartwight’s play Road.
'Wood street Drinking Club. A woman was crapping behind the piano. Two men were fighting over a pie. A row of prostitutes were sitting there, still made up as in war years. I chose the three pounds thirty-two one and bent her over the billiard table in the back room'. Memories of Wood Street. 'It were a bad bastard day when they closed it. My friend slashed on the town hall steps in protest. But it were done with.'
But this was only part of the picture (and a much exaggerated one at that!). Evenings in the club were very different. Labour movement radicals met socially. Trade union branches held their meetings here and the Clarion Cycling Club still used the downstairs front room.
Closure
One afternoon in May 1979 the club was raided by police and the club lost it licence for serving drinks to non-members. The decision was taken to close. The club reopened again a year later but debts soon started to mount. Substantial funds which the club had built up over many decades were now all gone and in May 1982 a General Meeting of members voted to sell the building.
Furniture and fittings were taken out and put into store and an estate agent's 'For Sale' sign went up outside the building.