The movement included members of the Independent Labour Party, the British Socialist Party, Workers Socialist Federation, and the Herald League, who wanted to show international workers’ solidarity with their Russian comrades. Where other attempts at cross-factional unity had failed, the Hands Off Russia! campaign proved to be a powerful galvaniser of British left-wing sympathisers. It really got going in January 1919 when a National Committee for the Hands off Russia! campaign was elected at a conference in London. Many of the groups and individuals who congregated under the umbrella of Hands Off Russia! later went on to form the Communist Party of Great Britain in August 1920.
http://armingallsides.on-the-record.org.uk/case_studies/hands-off-russia/
towards a new universalism
http://www.spiked-online.com/spiked-review/article/towards-a-new-universalism-brexit/18595#.V7nqPU0rIdW
“A belief in individuals’ capacity for reason is utterly absent
from the new cosmopolitanism. This is clear in the general
outlook of the new international bodies, which continually
promote the idea that global forces and conditions render
both individual and national decision-making superfluous,
or at least insufficient.
“And it is also clear from the media and political elites’
response to the EU referendum. One of their key arguments
has been that global issues are simply beyond the comprehension,
never mind the control, of the average citizen or community,
and therefore expert and technocratic institutions are required
to deal with such matters.
“‘Ignoramuses’ — that’s the general public — don’t have ‘the
experience to do… due diligence on the highly complex economic
and social issues [of Europe]’, said Richard Dawkins.
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