United Socialist Movement
Following a split in the Anti-Parliamentary Communist Federation, a number of its prominent members including Guy Aldred and Ethel MacDonald resigned and established the Workers' Open Forum (WOF) in August 1933.
[3] Despite his relegation of anti-parliamentarism, Aldred's history caused a dispute within the Glasgow Federation of the ILP, leading to his expulsion and the resignation of the Townhead branch, which in July 1934 came together with the WOF to establish the United Socialist Movement (USM).
[10] Out of a growing sense of pessimism with the revolutionary prospects in Britain, Aldred decided it was "imperative that Anti-Parliamentarism should be heard again" and in May 1936 launched the USM's new journal Attack, which only lasted a single issue.
In August 1936 the USM founded the semi-weekly newspaper Regeneracion and began to hold frequent open-air meetings which, according to John Taylor Caldwell, "drew bigger crowds than at any time since the general strike".
[14] Subsequent issues of Regeneracion reaffirmed the USM's support for the Republic, stressing the legitimacy of the Republican government in their attempts to encourage intervention from democratic nations such as Britain and France, with Aldred criticising their continued neutrality.
[16] The USM and APCF carried their dispute through the first year of the civil war, as they both competed for recognition as the official British representative of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT).
[19] The USM chose Ethel MacDonald to represent them in Spain[20] and on 19 October she left Glasgow to make the trip through France to Barcelona, where she broadcast English language programs from the CNT's radio station.
In the wake of the repression that followed the events, Ethel MacDonald was arrested and imprisoned by the Catalan government, but after the USM and APCF co-operated in the formation of a joint committee in her defence, she was released and fled the country in September 1937, arriving back in Glasgow by November.
"[29] The USM also refused to differentiate between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies, holding that the USSR was a capitalist state with the same motivations for war as the other powers and again drawing comparisons between fascism and Stalinism.
"[32] The USM collaborated with the APCF and Glasgow Anarchist Federation in the establishment of the No-Conscription League, with Guy Aldred serving as the organisation's chairperson, publishing a pamphlet detailing the rights of conscientious objector and even offering them legal counsel.
[40] After the Allied victory in Europe was proclaimed, a general election was called, in which Aldred ran as the USM candidate for Glasgow Central on an anti-militarist, anti-authoritarian and abstentionist platform.
