The Bee-Hive
비하이브
A trade-union weekly published in London from 1861 to 1878. George Potter founded it to support the builders' struggle that had begun in 1858; it became the official journal of the London Trades Council and lost that position in 1865. In November 1864 it first printed the Inaugural Address of the International Working Men's Association and went on to serve as the International's organ, printing its documents and reports of the General Council, until the General Council broke with it on Marx's motion in 1870.
In depth
Its first editor was the professional journalist George Troup, with Robert Hartwell as the main contributor and the co-operative activist Lloyd Jones as a leader writer. The paper advocated strike action and supported the New Model Trade Unions of the 1860s. Yet by 1862 its circulation was only 2,700, and Potter had run up debts of £827.
The London Trades Council leadership, known as the Junta, and Potter's supporters feuded furiously. Robert Applegarth called Potter a "manufacturer of strikes", and the enmity between Potter and George Howell kept the paper's supporters out of the early meetings of the Reform League. In 1865 Applegarth led an investigation into its coverage of a dispute in North Staffordshire and accused Potter of dishonesty and maladministration; the Bee-Hive ceased to be the Council's journal and Potter lost his seat on the executive. Potter then founded the London Working Men's Association with the paper as its organ, and it supported the more radical members of the Liberal Party.
Selling poorly, the paper was saved from bankruptcy in June 1868 when the Liberal MP Samuel Morley and Daniel Platt bought shares in it. Henry Solly, editor from 1870, gave it a less radical tone, and Potter returned in 1871. Renamed the Industrial Review in 1877, it went bankrupt at the end of 1878 with debts of over £2,000.
From November 1864 the paper served as the official organ of the International Working Men's Association, but its editors delayed and sometimes falsified the International's documents and handled reports of the General Council arbitrarily. Its position on the Irish question was chauvinistic, and at the beginning of 1870 the liberal businessman Morley became its owner. At the General Council on 26 April 1870 Marx proposed cutting off all connection with it: it had suppressed the Council's resolutions and mutilated and delayed its reports so that even the dates were falsified, it preached harmony with the capitalists against the Rules and platform of the Association, and it had not said a word against the government on the Irish Coercion Bill. Since on the Continent the paper was still taken for an organ of the International, he held that the break had to be made public, and the resolution was adopted early in May.