A Look Round. (1907)

From the November 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Writing in the Sportsman for October 14th, “Vigilant,” oppressed by a dread that “Sport would go by the board were the Socialists ever to take charge,” says that what is wanted is that men with big incomes not derived from land should come into the swim and assist the projected movement. It is really, he says, an insurance proposal, if they would only understand.

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The “insurance proposal” emanates from Epsom. It is “a practical scheme for not merely opposing the pernicious doctrines of Socialism, but with further suggestions for providing agricultural employment and enabling the labourers to share in profits.”

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Why should “Vigilant” be afraid that “sport” will be non-existent under Socialism ? In the old English definitions sport was a game, pastime, or amusement, a play, a diversion, a merry-making, a frolic. The word was also used to describe collectively such out-of-door recreations as grown men indulged in, more especially hunting, fishing, racing, shooting, and the like. It was likewise a comprehensive term embracing all forms of athletics and games of skill in which prizes were competed for. There is, therefore, no reason to suppose that, under Socialism, sport will be taboo. On the contrary, there is every reason to believe that it will flourish as it has never done before.

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Of course, sport has been prostituted under capitalism, like most other things. “Sports” (mainly of the Hebrew persuasion) have entered the arena and have fastened themselves on to sport for profit-making purposes. They regard sport as a legitimate Tom Tiddler’s ground, and speculate in it in the same way as the jobber makes a “book” on stocks or the Mincing Lane merchant speculates on the price of petroleum months ahead. These gentry will be unable to play the game under Socialism, and will not need to, because Socialism will provide enough and to spare for all—will establish the Right to Live. The only condition will be that those who desire to live shall recognise and fulfil their obligation to do their share of the necessary work, and as this will be reduced to a minimum and will be joyous and health-giving ; as all will have leisure and opportunity for mental and physical development of the highest order, sport, in its truest sense, will no longer be prostituted, but will form part and parcel of the daily life of the people.

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“I write” adds “Vigilant,” because “I know how racing would suffer under socialistic schemes.” But he knows nothing about it. There is no reason at all why racing should not exist under Socialism, but it will not be subverted to suit the purposes of men on the make, who regard it to-day, not from the point of view of sport, but as a means whereby the “ready” may be transferred from others’ pockets into theirs.

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What should be noticed in particular is the appeal to the sporting fraternity to join with the opponents of Socialism in their efforts to fight Socialism by palliating capitalism. When the S.P.G.B. has pointed out to misguided members of the S.D.F. and I.L.P. that as palliatives tend to perpetuate capitalism they should not be advocated by Socialists ; that the master class would vie with each other to pass laws “to improve the condition of the working class” when they really believed the latter were accepting the principles of Socialism, its members have been denounced as “wreckers,” ”impossiblists,” etc., whereas, as a matter of fact, it is the advocate of palliatives, the striver after reforms, who is the real impossiblist, and is side-tracking the working-class movement. Now that this position is being proved by the defenders of capitalism, is it too much to hope that the aforementioned misguided S.D.F. and I.L.P. members will be honest enough and brave enough to “come out from among them” and join the only Socialist party in this country,—the S.P.G.B. ?

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The apologies of the “palliators” are amusing. A prominent member of the I.L.P. recently took the platform in Manchester in opposition to an S.P.G.B. lecturer and asserted that owing to their lack of education and to their chronic underfeeding and bad housing the working class cannot understand Socialism and it is therefore necessary to work for palliatives in order to fit them to understand it. That, of course, was an admission that one of the charges brought against the I.L.P. by the S.P.G.B., viz., that it does not preach Socialism, is justified. But as the I.L.P. does not preach Socialism, how can it know whether the working class can understand it or not ?

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Moreover, if it is necessary to give the working class better conditions so that they may understand and accept Socialism, districts such as Port Sunlight and Bournville should be hotbeds of Socialist agitation. But are they ? It is just as illogical to assert that revolutionists can only be made out of a well-fed people as it is to say that they can only be made out of a starving people.

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“Education and an empty belly are the raw materials of revolution” writes “Vanoc” in the Referee for to-day (Oct. 20th). I think this as near to the truth as one can get because education is put first. It is not imperative that the individual should have both the education and the empty belly. It cannot be questioned that an increasing number of the wage-earners, amongst the rising generation in particular, are seizing every opportunity to widen their mental outlook, as is evidenced by the enormous demand for scientific (which, of course, includes economic) and classical literature now prevalent, and by their attendance at public meetings, lectures, and debates. (There is a lesson here which the publicans might learn with advantage, as some few have already done, instead of wasting their time bewailing the emptiness of their unattractive, seatless, sawdust-floored horse-boxes, and cursing the clubs). The wage-earners are therefore obtaining education of the real kind, and capitalist development, with its facilities for disseminating information relative to industrial conditions all over the world, and its production of empty bellies in increasing numbers, is doing the rest. Education is enabling the wage-workers who are in employment to recognise that a very slender partition separates them from their “empty-belly” confreres.

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When a sufficient number have educated themselves, when a mental revolution has been accomplished, the way will have been prepared for the social revolution that shall end the struggle for existence between man and man, and relieve human beings of the fear that oppresses the majority of them under capitalism, viz, that at any moment they may be, through no fault of their own, thrown on to the industrial scrap heap or forced into that flotsam and jetsam of humanity which one can observe running to seed day by day.

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The secretary of the Liberty and Property Defence League writes to the Press from 25, Victoria Street, Westminster, that twelve months ago the League published a sixpenny volume of papers entitled “Socialism : Its Fallacies and Dangers” in which every phase of Socialism— economic, social, and political—is discussed by writers who have made the subject the study of their lives. They have two new pamphlets in the Press: “The Socialist Spectre” and “The Impossibility of Socialism.”

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What a lot of noise over a spook and a thing that cannot be ! But, as the poet says :

“Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That, if it would apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or, in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear” !

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Speaking at a meeting of Liberal Registration Agents at Aberdare on October 1st, Mr. D. A. Thomas, M.P., suggested that if the I.L.P. would help the Welsh nonconformists in their fight for religious liberty (whatever that is), he would help them to oppose candidates “of the Whig or neo-Tory type who attempted to sail under the Liberal flag.” In view of Keir Hardie’s tactics when he contested Merthyr and the facility with which I.L.P. atheists became Christians during the Kirkdale election, the deal proposed by Mr. Thomas should appeal to them “in once.”

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At a meeting held at Manchester on October 5th, under the auspices of the Ancoats Healthy Homes Society, Mr. J. Grime said the Medical Officer of Health had reported that during the past two or three years no other part of the city had improved so much as Ancoats (possibly no other part needed it so much). Where the people lived and worked, he said, were the important parts of the city to be cared for.

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That’s a good capitalist dictum, and one in which Sir John Gorst, among others, firmly believes. He supports the S.D.F. agitation for free meals in order to make more efficient profit producing workers.

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Commenting on Mr. Keir Hardie’s visit to Bengal, the Statesman (India) says the fact that Mr. Hardie was the guest of the Maharajah of Mymensingh disposes of the suggestion that he has been guilty of anything serious. Apparently, the Statesman thinks that a man will not speak ill of you after having fed at your expense. Is the same view held by English Liberal and Tory M.P.’s who invite Labour members to banquets ?

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Mr. Herbert Burrows, of the S.D.F., will contest the Parliamentary division of Haggerston at the next election providing the present Liberal member is not a candidate. Thus the S.D.F. again shows that while it professes to be equally opposed to Liberal and Tory, it really believes there is a difference between the two, a difference in favour of the Liberal, whom it therefore refuses to oppose.

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“It is a good thing for employers,” said the Daily Chronicle on October 9th, “that Labour should be organised, for organisation tends to promote a higher sense of responsibility. That truth is so obvious that in France the Socialists for whom M. Hervé and M. Jaurès speak, deprecate the formation of strong trade unions on the ground that by their very strength and wealth they operate as a restraint on rashness, and tend always to be pacific.”

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The last stage of democratic evolution has generally been a conflict between the Haves and Have Nots, and to this goal democracy seems to be moving slowly in England, in France, and in the United States.—Daily Mail, Oct. 5th.

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What the country wants is a more proportionate representation of organised labour—not a revolution.—Mr. GRAYSON, M.P., at Liverpool, Oct. 6th.

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The pioneers of the co-operative movement, in trying to reconcile capital and labour, were dealing with the root cause of social evils and inequalities.—Mr. SNOWDEN, M.P., at Birmingham, Sept. 28th.

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A teetotaler is an infinitely better man than even a moderate drinker, physically, morally, and intellectually.—Mr. H. QUELCH at Luton, October 2nd.

J. Kay

To the Death. (1907)

From the November 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are going, dear friends, to have a very hot time. We shall soon, we understand, be fighting for our very lives. So far we have had an easy time of it. Up to now we have been left severely alone. The “Constitutional” forces have held their hand. We have been allowed plenty of rope. We have enjoyed unfettered liberty; unrestrained license. And we have used our opportunities. We have insinuated our delusive doctrine into the working-class mind. We have inoculated the working class with the poison of our principles. We have preached an unreasonable discontent with things as they are. We have sown dissension between master and man. We have upset the harmony between Capital and Labour. We have dammed up the river of progress. We have throttled industry. We have choked the breath of life out of enterprise. And, if we may loan the chaste expression of the ”Constitutional” poet, Kipling, we have played hell generally.

But now we are to be taken in hand very severely. Our pernicious propaganda is to be scotched. Our license is to be endorsed. Reason, my friends, is to be re-seated on its throne, and gems of knowledge will be scattered broad-cast as chaff before the wind. The confidence of the “working classes” is to be restored. They will no longer go abroad with the canker of Socialism gnawing at their vitals. Fear for the safety of their little hoards will no longer haunt them. The millions in the Post Office Savings Bank will be rescued from danger of the avaricious maw of the professional agitator. Trade will return from the exile to which we have banished it. There will be plenty of work. Bellies that to-day are filled with the East wind will then be soft and sleek and with fat capon lined. And sweet Peace and happy Content will brood o’er the smiling land of “Wiggin” and “Snellin” and “Owdam” and Manchester, and may even, although this would be expecting too much, come as far South as London and Watford !

So, if we are to maintain our hold on the people; if we are not to be deprived of our comfortable jobs; it we are to continue in the enjoyment of our riotous debauchery; if we want to batten upon the credulity of the workers in the future as now and heretofore, it behoves us to re-organise the forces of brigandage, to look to the joints of our devilish harness, to sharpen our swords and test our bucklers ; to strengthen our outworks and our outposts, so as to be ready when the slogan of the “British Constitution Association ” and the shrieks of the Shanghai Press herald the imminent attack.

Verily the outlook is dark and full of fearsome portend. But, thank God! the Daily News is still to be relied upon. It is going to stand by us in the hour of trial. “And who shall say at close of day which side will have to mourn” while our weakness is voluntarily augmented by its strength ? It gives us heart, this chivalrous offer of the noble News. We have no words wherewith to frame our thanks—so, on the whole it will be well not to attempt it. But we take courage knowing what we have behind us in Fleet Street, and feel as if we might, much daring, even venture to open the attack. And indeed, that course would, haply, be the best. It would bring our waiting suspense to the issue of action. Yes—we will chance it. We will risk our all on this hazard. We will enter the lists. We will pick up the gauntlet—if it has been thrown. We will throw it ourselves if it hasn’t. We will. Now! Up ! herald. Hang our banner on the outer wall. And you there, you with the trumpets, blow! you beggars, blow !

So. ‘Tis done. And now, soft, while our champion speaks. Sh-s-ss—

To the Lord Balfour of Burleigh, President of the “British Constitution Association,” the Lord Northdiffe (of the Daily Mail), the Lord Burnham (of the Daily Telegraph), the potential Lord Pearson (of the Daily Express), and all others whom it may concern; give ear. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, the head and front of that which stands to you for offence; the only party in this land that fights consistently and unwaveringly for Socialism; the party that preaches relentless war upon the capitalism for which you stand ; the party that is organising the working class of this country to the end that shall spell the extermination of the capitalist; the party that is inciting the worker to revolt; that is urging him to seize the control of the political machine in his own interest so that he may the more surely capture and hold the factory and the railway and the workshop against the power of the employer ; this Socialist Party of Great Britain gives you defiance and bids you select your champion—the mightiest man amongst you—so that he may do battle in the lists of rhetoric on your behalf and in your defence. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, will meet you in hall or street or Press ; its champions will combat yours one at a time or—or all at once ! They will take you on seriatim—one down t’other come on—or en bloc. They will oppose a working man to the most skilful of your professors, in the largest hall or the smallest, in London or the provinces, on Sunday or any other time, in season or out of season, on any question that will bring to a direct issue the relationship of the working class to the capitalist class. Name your man or men, my lords, or if their valour is out weighed by their discretion, come on yourselves. You will receive the warmest of welcome, but—your case will be slaughtered to make a working-class holiday. The god of Capital help you in that day, my lords, for verily, you will want it.

AGRA.

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Since writing the foregoing the Daily Express (October 10th, 1907), the exponent of what may fairly be called the “bad-egg and flour-bag” method of argument, has come out with a woefully frank, and, for the Daily Express, an amazingly honest expression of the importance of the British Constitution Association and the anti-Socialist propagandist generally. Says Pearson’s Pride—

ANTI-SOCIALIST TACTICS.

The anti-Socialist winter campaign is again in full swing, and the battle will shortly be joined all along the line. There is one tactical feature of the Socialist plan of campaign which is worthy of close attention. It is now the order of the day in the enemy’s ranks to issue challenges to anti-Socialist speakers to take part in joint public debates. The motive of this particular procedure is well defined, and, from our opponents’ point of view the result is likely to be profitable to the movement. 

To accept these challenges—except in special cases and for particular reasons—would be to play into the enemy’s hands. What anti-Socialists want is to put Socialism on its own defence. It behoves us, therefore, to point out quite candidly that, as matters now stand, the average Socialist speaker is better primed on Socialism than the average anti-Socialist. The London Municipal Society will probably make a point of organising a department whose duty it will be to provide text-books as well as speakers to meet the Socialists on their own ground. When that is accomplished we shall probably hear no more of Socialist challenges.”— Daily Express, 8/10/07.

Tlie italics are our own.

Observe, “the battle” is to be “joined all along the line,” but—the join must not be made too effectively. The enemy must be engaged—at a respectful distance. Socialism must be put upon its trial, but for heaven’s sake don’t let the trial take place upon a B.C.A. platform unless the prisoner is muzzled and gagged ! If you do it will surely be to the advantage of the Socialist Movement, because, don’t you see, the Socialist has the facts and the Constitutionalist hasn’t. The Socialist, of course, is all wrong. He hasn’t a leg to stand on. He hasn’t a shred of evidence to support his case. His objective is a chimera. His principles are an outrage on common sense. His methods are fanatical and dangerous to the well known peace and prosperity of this our land. He is a fool where he isn’t a fraud. Put upon its trial Socialism must fail upon every count, but whatever you do, don’t let its champions defend themselves upon your platforms. And don’t get upon the Socialist platform. That would be quite as bad—in fact worse. Join “the battle all along the line,” but—caution, eager hearts ! the Socialist is an artful person and you are artless. When you get that text book you will be all right, but until then put Socialism on its trial—and may the spirit of stern resolve and lofty purpose that animated our Drakes and Whitaker Wrights and Nelsons, Lord Cowleys and the rest of our Empire builders strengthen your arms and direct your aims so that your flour and eggs and other such arguments may speed true. As it is, as it will be until the arrival of that text book, the B.C.A. gentlemen are on the clear confession of the enlightened Express, without even the means of combatting the ‘”absurdities,” “illogical sophistries,” evidence-less postulates and reasonless conclusions, of that danger to the Constitooshion, the Socialist. Did ever army march out to join “the battle all along the line” with such rotten equipment ?

AGRA.