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Independent Labour Party

A reformist organisation founded by the leaders of the "new trade unions" in 1893 during the active strike movement and the mounting drive for independence of the British working class from the bourgeois parties. The membership of the I.L.P. consisted of the 'new trade unionists" and members of some of the old trade unions, as well as intellectuals and petty bourgeois holding Fabian views. The leaders of the Party were James Keir Hardie and Ramsay MacDonald. From the day it was founded the I.L.P. devoted its chief attention to parliamentary forms of struggle and parliamentary deals with the Liberal Party. On the outbreak of the WWI the I.L.P. issued a manifesto against the war, but shortly afterwards adopted a social-chauvinist stand.

Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany

A party formed in April 1917 at a congress in Gotha amid an atmosphere of revolutionary enthusiasm stimulated by the February revolution in Russia. The German Social-Democratic Party was losing the confidence of many of its own leftist members.

Centrist leaders of the German Social Democracy made an attempt to form the so-called "independent" party. The Independents preached unity with the social-chauvinists and renounced class struggle. The bulk of the party was made up of the Kautskian organisation Arheitsgemeinschaft – which was the "Labour Group" in the Reichstag.

For a time the Spartacus group was associated with the party of "Independents" as an affiliated group, which preserved its organisational and political independence, and continued its illegal work and struggle to free the Social-Democratic workers from the influence of the Centrist leaders. In 1918 the Spartacus League left the Independent Social-Democratic Party and formed the core of the newly founded Communist Party of Germany.

At its congress in Halle in October 1920 a split occurred in the Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany. In December 1920 many of the "Independents" joined the Communist Party of Germany. The Rights formed a separate party and adopted the old name of Independent Social-Democratic Party of Germany. This party existed up to 1922, when it rejoined the German Social Democratic Party.

All-India Federation Of Organisations Of Democratic Rights

It was formed in 1982 in Guntur in Andhra Pradesh. It included the Association For Democratic Rights, Punjab, The Organisation For Protection Of Democratic Rights, Andhra Pradesh, The Lokshahi Hakk Sanghatana Maharashtra and The Gantatrik Adhikar Suraksha Samiti, Orissa. Its main aim was to strive for the correct practice in the democratic Rights movement. It stresses on the right to struggle as a fundamental right, and not just obtained from the constitution. It has brought out all-India fact-finding reports. These include a report on the Punjab problem, the movement against the Baliapal base, the attacks on Christians, causes of drought, etc. In Andhra Pradesh, programmes were taken up consistently against police encounters by the O.P./D.R. These were particularly against Naxalite encounters. In Punjab, A.F.D.R. brought about reports against the Khalistani and state terror.

Submitted by Harsh Thakore,
February, 2001

Inter-District Organisation of United Social-Democrats

Formed in St. Petersburg in November 1913 with the declared object of working for the unity of the R.S.D.L.P.; i.e. uniting the Bolshevik and Menshevik parties.

During the First World War the members of the Inter-District Organisation occupied a Centrist position; considering the war to be an imperialist war and were against social-chauvinism, but would not completely break with the Mensheviks.

In 1917, the I.D.O., among whose members were Trotsky, Lunacharsky, Joffe, Manuilsky, Volodarsky, Uritsky and Yurenev, declared itself on the side of the Bolshevik party. At the elections to the Petrograd district councils in May-June 1917, the I.D.O. and Bolsheviks formed a bloc. Later, at the Sixth Congress of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.), the I.D.O. (membership about 4,000), became members of the Bolshevik Party.

The I.D.O. published a journal of its own, Yperyod. One number was put out illegally in 1915, and publication was resumed in 1917, when it came out legally from June to August as the organ of the St. Petersburg Inter-District Committee of the United Social-Democrats (Internationalists). Eight issues were put out. After the Sixth Congress of the Party the editorial board was changed, and No. 9 of the journal appeared as the organ of the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.). Publication was discontinued in September 1917 by decision of the Central Committee.

Internationale group

Precursor to the Spartacist League, the Internationale group was a sub-group within the German Social-Democratic Labour Party, formed by Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Franz Mehring, Clara Zetkin and others at the beginning of the First World War, on the basis of being opposed to the World War. Soon after the group denounced the German Social-Democracy, and formed the Spartacist League.

International Left Opposition

Formed after the Left Opposition was dissolved in the Soviet Union. Following Trotsky's exile to Turkey and his closer contact with other groups in opposition to the CSPU, the International Left Opposition was organized in 1930 as a faction of the Communist International.

After the failed attempt to overthow Stalinism in the Soviet Union, crushed by the mass executions and arrests in the Moscow Trials of 1936-38, the ILO created the Fourth International in 1938.

International Socialist Bureau (I.S.B.)

The permanent executive and information body of the Second International located at Brussels. It was founded by a decision taken at the Paris Congress of the Second International (1900). It consisted of two delegates from each national party, and was to meet four times a year, the Executive Committee of the Belgian Labour Party being charged with its direction between sessions. Vandervelde was its chairman, and Huysmans, its Secretary. Lenin was a member of the Bureau, as a representative of the R.S.D.L.P., from 1905. From June 1914, on Lenin's proposal, M. M. Litvinov was appointed to represent the R.S.D.L.P. Central Committee. When the First World War broke out the I.S.B. became a pliable tool in the hands of the social-chauvinists.

International Working Mens Association

See: First International