Answers to Correspondents: Socialists and Parliament. (1938)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. G. E. J. Hill (Cheddar) asks the following questions:—

(1) Do you intend to send your own candidates, if possible, to Parliament ?

Answer.

Yes. A start is being made in East Ham North, where our candidate is in the field. The increase in the number of candidates and the return of Socialist candidates to Parliament depends, of course, on the growth in the number of Socialists among the electorate.

(2) Is there any present Parliamentary party you support?

Answer.

No. There are no Members of Parliament who were returned as Socialists, simply on the programme of instituting Socialism. The. Labour M.P.s and the handful of Communist and I.L.P. M.P.s were all returned on a reformist programme, by electors who still believe in the policy of trying to reform capitalism instead of abolishing it.

(3) Could not the S.P.G.B. enter the Labour Party and endeavour to lead it towards a genuine Socialist policy? .

Answer.

The S.P.G.B. is endeavouring to persuade the members of the Labour Party and also the much larger number of workers who are outside that party to adopt the Socialist policy instead of the reformist one. It is a difficult task. Many thousands of workers who know what the S.P.G.B. stands for reject it and choose Labour Party reformism instead. Some day they will learn better and choose Socialism, but already the choice is clear to them. If the S.P.G.B. entered the Labour Party (assuming, which is most unlikely, that the Labour Party would let us) the clear choice would disappear. The S.P.G.B., instead of standing plainly for Socialism, would be associated with reformism and would have to devote the greater part of its energies to explaining that it was in the Labour Party under false pretences and that it did not really accept the Labour programme and policy, although in order to receive affiliation it had to pretend that it did.

This would not keep the Socialist issue clear nor would it speed up the progress of Socialism.

Ed. Comm.