No . . .‘No Irish, no Blacks, no Dogs’, set in quotesFrom a world and a time long gone, or soIt might be presumed, or should it now goNone of those arriving in rubber boats?Ballistics do not respect borders,As poverty pays no heed to flags flown,Changing climate means sea levels have grownDangerously high; by such disordersPeople, not migrants, are forced to retreat,To abandon homes, to cross stormy seasHoping for better, but no guarantees,Somewhere fairness is the common conceit.Meanwhile, politicians are none too slowAt taking advantage of saying, ‘NO!’D. A.
Sunday, November 23, 2025
Socialist Sonnet No. 211: No . . . (2025)
Tories in search of a policy (1947)
Annual Conferences of the major political parties are convenient and useful affairs. Delegates make speechlets on the ”Platform’s” proposals without really affecting them in any way. Other delegates politely listen. On occasions they even clap or cheer these speechlets. Such a social gathering helps to generate a feeling of amity and good-fellowship suggestive of the atmosphere of the Annual Outing or “Beano.” For the party leaders it is an admirable sounding-board by which to magnify their personal influence over their followers. It also enables them to indulge in those spell-binding speeches which do so much to rekindle the fires of their supporters’ political enthusiasm. Fires, which often tend between one Conference and another to burn dangerously low.
This, of course, really covers the water front of the Brighton Conservative Conference. Nevertheless, incidentals arising from it might paint a moral or adorn a tale.
Bernard Shaw’s “A Black Girl in search of God” has nothing on a Tory Party in search of a Policy. In the past such mundane things as detailed policies have rarely troubled them. Maintenance of Law and Order ; Preservation, of Our Glorious Empire; and an occasional red-herring like Tariff Reform have been considered ample for securing votes. With these and other nebulous promises they successfully moved the Electorate. Neither can they claim that the Electorate have been unduly fickle or faithless. Apart from two short and not highly significant breaks of the 1924 and 1929 Labour Governments the Tories enjoyed political power for eighteen years. Forty-odd years of Labour Party “Nationalisation” propaganda, among other things, provided some useful spade-work for digging a hole round the Conservative castle. It was through this hole that the Tory majority finally disappeared. The working class at length decided to give “Labour” a chance at running things.
The need of finding a rival policy to attract votes from the Labour Party has caused consternation in the Conservative ranks. Last year, at Blackpool, they began their search for one. This year’s Conference has shown it is not to be found in Brighton. To be restored as the “rightful claimants” of political power by the Tories time-honoured expedient of holding a successful General Election Inquest on the Labour Government's failures, appears the only hope.
Unfortunately for the Tories their failure to find some concrete alternative to the Labour Party programme lies deeper than any apparent inability to formulate one. The need of British Monopoly Capitalism compels the State to become more and more an active partner in its affairs, and so unify the diverse elements in accordance with the requirements of capitalism as an economic unit. This leads to that rigorous uniformity of political measures which is so marked a feature of modern capitalist administration. The main task of alternative Government is in essentials to supplement and extend what the last Government began.
Thus it can be said of any real alternative policies for running Capitalism what a geological text book once said of “Snakes in Iceland”—”there are none.” That is why, to use an Irishism, the more the Tories are different from the Labour Party the more do they seem the same thing—only even more so.
The Tories claimed that their Charter was “a bold advance in political and social affairs.” The merest cursory glance shows it to be a retreat into the Cloud-Cuckoo Land of vapid platitudes and cloudy generalisations. Mr. Eden once again took on the role of drummer-boy for the Tory, Brave New World. Although sounding the tocsin valiantly he could produce nothing more than The Need of Real Leadership : a Properly Balanced Budget; More Production, and Streamlined Controls. All of which led the Manchester Guardian (3/10/47) to say: “The seven points of the Charter would have been subscribed with equal fervour by most members of the Labour Party.”
Even the Tory Daily Telegraph could only lamely underscore Mr. Eden’s speech by saying that “in the first essentials of Government the Conservatives could provide better men.” It also significantly commented : “an alternative Government can be found which will either do other and better things—or the same things better.” This suggests that the Conservative Campaign will boil down in essentials to the exhortation: “Play the game you Labour cads. It’s our turn to bat.”
Because political parties exist for the requirements of Capitalism as a whole the Tories could not afford to indulge in sterile controversy about the alleged principles of Nationalisation. The Telegraph simply stated :—”Nationalisation had gone far. enough.” The mines will not, then, be denationalised in the event of a Tory Government. Likewise no indication was given that Railways, Electricity or Gas would be returned to Private Enterprise or, more correctly, Private Monopoly. Neither have they suggested that shareholders in the Bank of England or stockholders in Cables and Wireless should yield up good Government scrip signed by a Treasury official for something signed by a company director. As for the suggestion of denationalising the Steel Industry time will come for that when the Labour Government has finally made up its own mind on the matter of nationalising it.
Such a decision to preserve the already accomplished projects of the’ Labour Party implies, no reversal of the economic traditions of the British Capitalist Class. Whether it bo the Post Office, the B.B.C., Municipal Gas or Electricity, Governments in the past have never hesitated to take them from private control where it has been thought necessary for the interests of the Capitalist Class as a whole. If further evidence was needed there is Mr. MacMillan’s book, “The Next Five Years,” suggesting that Armaments, Transport, some forms of Insurance, and Electricity, were suitable for State Control. Mr. Churchill in the 1918 Election also urged a measure of State Control over all monopolies, especially Transport and Power, a fact which the adroit Mr. Morrison reminded them of in the House of Commons Debate on The Address. (Times, 21/11/46.)
Even the Tory cry of “Give Private Enterprise a chance” merely echoes the Labour Party’s oft repeated claim of leaving, after Nationalisation schemes had been carried through, eighty per cent. of Industry in Private Control. Mr. Morrison informed his own electors at Lewisham that Nationalisation must be carried through where necessary in the interests of efficiency, but most of Industry should remain private and prosperously enterprising. (The Economist, 10/5/47.)
The Tories also propose to retain Controls even, to the point of “streamlining them.” Mr. Wilson, President of the Board of Trade, has also announced : “Controls will be streamlined.” (Evening News, 7/10/47.)
Even that last stronghold of Toryism—Imperial Preferences—has fallen. It has been taken in the rear by that doughty “Empire Free Trade” Crusader, Mr. Bevin. Perhaps the bitterest quarrel that may yet ensue between “Labour” and Tory may be over who are “the true breed” of our great Imperial Traditions. Mr. Eden taunted the Labour Party with the fact that they are mere recruits who have only recently begun to think imperially. (Daily Telegraph, 3/10/47.) The Daily Herald (3/10/17) stung to the quick of its Imperial pride, retorted that “unlike the Tories who have only thought Imperially, the Labour Party acted Imperially.”
The leading article of the same issue told its readers that the Tories had put forward no practical measures beyond those already put in force by the Labour Government. Indeed its general tenor was to the effect that the Conservative proposal really supported what the Labour Government were doing. It is surely a strange logic by which to justify its own policy. How often in the past have Labour Party spokesmen condemned the Tory Party as the Party of Wealth and Privilege?
It now finds that acceptance by the “wealthy” and “privileged” of their main planks is a source of comfort and even congratulation. For the honest and humble “Labour” stalwart the fact that his party shares so much common political ground with ”The Traditional Enemies” of the working-class should be a source of embarrassment and shame.
There is, of course, the vexed problem of rival bidding for working class votes. While the Tories may not want to offer more inducements than their Labour Party rivals they cannot make it seem that they are offering less. In a class system of exploitation based on private property ownership of the means of living they propound the tragic jest of a nation-wide community of property owners. Mr. Eden in his opening speech (Daily Telegraph, 3/10/47) could offer no more than some future vague ownership of largely mythical houses for the working class, and the dangerous expedient of Co-partnership and Profit Sharing.
Ownership by workers of their habitation does not mean ownership of the means of living. It is only ownership of mills, factories, railways, raw materials, etc., which constitute that. These things are the monopoly of a privileged class and provide the sole means which enable them to live on the unpaid labour of the workers. This class privilege will remain as long as Capitalism endures.
Co-partnership is equally a tasteless joke. There can be no partnership between owners of the instruments of wealth production and non-owners. Evidently the Conservatives view it as a means to stimulate greater productive activity from the workers. But, as The Economist (12/10/46) in dealing with the Tory pamphlet on the subject said, “There is nothing to show that such schemes would be more successful in the future or as a means to incentive for greater production.” The Economist even agreed that Co-partnership as it stands “is an empty mockery.” It will, of course, remain an empty mockery under whatever form it appears. They commented that the Tories had much to learn about Industrial Psychology. They even suggested “Sir Stafford Cripps knew a lot more about how to get increased output from the workers.” Recent events might -suggest how right they were.
As befits a great leader, Mr. Churchill repeated his Blackpool performance by absenting himself from the three days’ Conference proceedings. The old gentleman nevertheless turned up as usual on the Saturday afternoon. The delegates then enjoyed a rare display of oratorical fireworks. So a good time was had by all.
Mr. Churchill, as an accomplished political quack of long standing, had no difficulty in showing to the satisfaction of those present, that the famous “Tory blue powders” were superior in every way to the Labour Party’s “pink pills.”
According to an American authority on the subject the rate of output of suckers is one per minute. Undoubtedly if increased production could be applied here it would greatly assist the Tory “Confidence men” to pull off their political “Three Card Trick” once again.
It has been suggested in what may be well informed quarters that an early Conservative election victory might in the long run prove disastrous for them. The return of either a Tory or Labour Government will certainly prove disastrous for the real interests of the working-class; both in the long run—or short run.
Ted Wilmott
Editorial: From Comintern to Cominform (1947)
The Communist International, formed in 1919 at a time when Lenin and his associates expected the workers of all the leading countries to place Communists in power, continued in existence as an instrument of Russian foreign policy until it was wound up in 1943, presumably because, with problems of the peace settlement ahead, the Russian Government thought it tactful to remove an organisation that was at that time not very useful but was a source of irritation and alarm to the Allied governments.
On October 5th, 1947, the birth of an Information Bureau was announced (named by opponents the “Cominform”), representing the Communist parties of nine countries, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Rumania, Russia and Yugoslavia. According to the statement issued by the new group (Daily Worker, 6/10/47) it represents “the anti-imperialist and democratic camp, the principal aim of which is to undermine imperialism, strengthen democracy and liquidate the remnants of Fascism.”
It will “elaborate an agreed platform of action” directed against “the main forces of the imperialist camp – against American imperialism, its British and French Allies, the right-wing Socialists, in the first place in Britain and France.”
Again according to the Daily Worker, the communiqué issued by the Cominform “names Attlee, Bevin and Leon Blum among the ‘treacherous leadership’ of the Socialist movement,” It is explained by the Russian Communists that the new organisation “by no means signifies the restoration of a global Communist organisation with a centralized leadership, such as the Communist International represented at the time” (Daily Worker, 11/10/47), but it is evident from the declared objects that the aim is just the same, that of smashing Labour parties as a step towards the conquest of power by the Communist parties in the various countries.
What should be the attitude of workers to the new organisation? Are its aims and methods deserving of working-class support? Is it genuinely a body aiming to defend democracy, to oppose capitalism and imperialism, and to work for triumph of Socialism?
Let us first consider who engineered its formation by what methods. It was formed at a secret meeting in Warsaw in September, held on the initiative of Soviet Russia. The meeting was kept secret, not only secret from the openly capitalist press and capitalist parties of the world but secret also from the working class of the world, including the rank and file members of the Communist parties of the nine countries. The formation of the new body, like the dissolution of the old one in 1943 was decided over their heads and with their knowledge. The rank and file and even the leaders of the British Communist Party only learned of it after its secret decisions had been decided upon. The meeting, moreover, was called by Russian Communist Party officials, acting, of course, on the instructions of the Russian Government. In that country the Government is in the hands of the Communist Party, the membership of which numbers only a very small minority of the population. No political party is allowed to exist except the Communist Party, so that there is no political party to put up candidates in opposition to Communist Party candidates at elections. When, therefore, the Communist Party in this or any other country declares its support for “democracy” that is what they mean by democracy.
From the Socialist and working-class standpoint these dictatorial organisations, arriving at decisions at secret meetings, are wholly evil. Their activities are the antithesis of democracy and their work can only hinder the growth of a genuinely democratic, working-class Socialist movement.
There are, it is true, certain differences between the new organisation and the old. Instead of claiming world-wide scope it is at present limited to nine countries, most of them so placed that the Russian Government is in a position to extract direct and powerful influence on these governments with or without the camouflage provided by the Cominform. Its headquarters are to be in Belgrade, not Moscow, which suggests that the Russian Government will be able whenever it wishes to do so disclaim direct responsibility. As far as influence over the Communist Parties themselves is concerned the actual form taken by the new organisation is not of much account because the Communist Parties invariably toe the line laid down by Russia. They did so under the Comintern and continued to do so when the Comintern was officially abolished.
How little the Communist Parties and the Communist leaders in various countries are able to pursue a line of their own choosing was shown in 1939. The British Communist leaders came out in support of the war against Germany but immediately had to recant, make abject apology, and fall into line with Russian policy. It has been shown again by the Russian Government’s decision to support Jewish immigration and partition of Palestine. In the past the British Communists opposed it, now they must reverse their policy. Speaking in the House of Commons on June 19th, 1936, Mr. Gallacher, Communist M.P., declared: “Palestine can never be a home for the Jews.” He said that the Jews “have been fooled by their politicians who, under the leadership of the Zionist movement and who are the agents for British Imperialism against Arab masses.” He described the revolt of the Arabs against the attempt to set up a Jewish state as “a thoroughly justifiable revolt. It demands the end of immigration of a character which threatens the existence of Palestine.” Likewise a pamphlet published by the Communist Labour Monthly opposed partition as a scheme of British Imperialists. (“Who is Prosperous in Palestine?” 1936, p. 41.)
The Communist Parties are merely the propaganda agents for Russian governmental policy. What they is not a consistent policy based on principle but a policy based on the day-to-day tactics of the Government in its fight against the other imperialist powers.
In home policy there is the same want of principle. They alternatively oppose the Labour Party, saying it is a capitalist party, and support it, saying is a socialist party. In 1929 they described nationalisation as “State Capitalism” and the Labour Party as the “third Capitalist Party” (“Class Against Class,” p. 8), yet now pretend that nationalisation is socialism and ask the Labour Government “how is it that only one industry has been nationalised?” (Daily Worker, 13/10/47.) In 1939 they took the initiative in asking Mr. Churchill to form a National Government along with the Labour and the Liberal parties. When this was done they attacked the Labour Party for associating with Churchill! Then in 1941 when Russia was invaded they supported Churchill and now again discover that he has all along been and enemy of the workers.
The future Socialism depends on the growth of democratic, socialist organisations. The new Cominform, as well as the Communist parties that are at present not affiliated to it, are the enemies of both Socialism and Democracy.
Russian gold (1947)
People whose only principle is to praise every act of the government of State Capitalist Russia, need to be very careful how they throw stones at the other capitalist states. In the Daily Worker (23/9/47) Mr. Allen Hutt pokes fun at “our elaborate apparatus for extracting the yellow metal at enormous expense from deep holes in the ground in South Africa in order to bury it again in deep holes in the ground in Kentucky.”
This is indeed one of the daft things that necessarily go with capitalism, but why is it more daft to mine gold in South Africa and bury it at Fort Knox in U.S.A. than to mine it in the gold-fields scattered all over Russia in order to hoard it in Moscow? Already by 1934 Russian gold production, according to the “U.S.S.R. Handbook” (1936, p.197) had been expanded so much that Russia claimed to be second only to South Africa as a gold producer. Mr. Hutt should read “U.S.S.R. in Reconstruction,” May, 1937 (published in Moscow) where he will learn how gold production was increased fourfold between 1930 and 1936 and was still rapidly expanding. He will read how more and more men and materials were being-poured into the remote gold regions, how scientists were perfecting methods of mining, how mines were going to deeper and deeper levels.
“The principal gold fields,” we read, “are situated hundreds of kilometres from railways and navigable waterways. Goods are transported through Taiga, boundless steppe, sand dunes and over mountain ranges to the gold fields.”
And all for what purpose? “Soviet gold flows in a broad stream to the capital of the Union of Soviet Republics, where it is refined and stamped according to the world standard.” Some of it is then sold to U.S.A., to go into the vaults at Fort Knox. The same Russian publication quotes a resolution passed by the Russian Communist Party in 1922 affirming that government policy must be “to maintain the gold fund inviolable and to develop the mining of precious metals.”
Some of the mining is carried on by the State and the rest by individuals organised into co-operative groups. Of course it is all described as “Socialist” gold-mining, whatever that is supposed to mean.
Mr. Hutt in the Daily Worker recalls how Voltaire in “Candide” describes the land of El Dorado, where gold lay about disregarded and treated like dirt. He might also have recalled how Sir Thomas More in his “Utopia ” anticipated the use of gold and silver not as precious metals but to make “chamber-pots.” It was doubtless from that source, or possibly from Kautsky’s book “Thomas More and his Utopia” (p.203), that Lenin got the idea that under Socialism gold would be used “for making public lavatories in the streets of the great cities of the world.” (Quoted by Ralph Fox in “Lenin.”)
Sir Thomas More had another notion, which was that in “Utopia” gold would be used by the masters to make ”chains and fetters for their slaves.” That is certainly the effect on the minds of the workers under capitalism, wherever the worship of the Golden Calf still flourishes.
There is another, more grim, joke that Mr. Hutt overlooked. In U.S.A., while it is an offence against capitalist law to try to make forcible entry into the vaults at Fort Knox, it is at least not illegal to disclose where the gold reserve is situated. In the Russian ‘”Utopia” they have made even that a criminal offence. According to Soviet News (11/6/47, published in London by the Soviet Embassy) the new Criminal Code makes it an offence for a private individual to disclose “information on the current account balance and operative financial plans of the U.S.S.R.,” or to disclose “the place and system and safekeeping and transportation of precious metals of the State Fund, currency valuables and money coins.”
The unlucky Russian worker who lets out that the Russian “Socialist” gold reserve is kept at Moscow or wherever it is “shall be pimishable by confinement in a reformatory labour camp for a term of from five to ten years.”
This “mild” sentence is given “provided such action cannot be qualified as treason or espionage.” What happens for the aggravated offence of giving this information to foreigners and thus committing treason is not stated. If Mr. Hutt had written his little paragraph in Russia he would have been for it.
Edgar Hardcastle
Postal censorship—An Old and Respected English Custom (1947)
The opinion of most people on the practice of opening letters in the post would probably be that it is a nasty foreign habit, suitable to Totalitarian Russia, but out of place in a democratic State. Perhaps some such attitude of mind influenced the Financial Editor of the Manchester Guardian to write the following.
“The decision to search letters, leaving this country for currency notes, securities, and other valuables, will come as a profound shock to the public …. It is a necessary evil in the present situation of the country, but nothing can make postal censorship in peace-time anything else than an abomination.” (Manchester Guardian, 24/9/47.)
In truth all governments, ever since the Post Office was first formed, have interfered to some extent with the “secrecy of the post” ; in war always and in peace sometimes, and not always within the powers granted by law.
The Labour Daily Herald, reporting the new policy, seems to have felt somewhat ill-at cease about it, and sought re-assurance in the thought that only a small number would be affected.
“In any case only letters selected at random will be opened or X-rayed—there is no question of censorship or opening all overseas mail.” (Daily Herald, 24/9/47.)
Even this comfort was removed a few days later when a Post Office official told the Evening Standard (24/9/47) :
“We shall gradually increase the percentage of mail to be examined.”
How extensive the practice can become was shown in connection with the opening of letters believed to relate to lotteries. In 1932 100,000 letters relating to Irish Sweepstakes were seized, and another 250,000 relating to other lotteries.
Labour M.P.’s who in the past have protested against the opening of letters can see what their policy of trying to subject capitalism to controls leads to. Labour M.P.’s were prominent among those who protested against the seizure, in 1929, of the manuscript of poems by the late D. H. Lawrence. On that occasion it came out that the poems (regarded by the Home Scretary as indecent) were discovered accidentally in a routine examination of book packets to find out if letters had been enclosed, this making the packets liable to letter rates.
The excuse that the number of letters opened under an order of the Home Secretary (apart from Sweepstake letters) is very small has often been used. It was put forward in the secret report of a Committee appointed by the House of Lords in 1844 arising out of the protest made by the Italian refugee, Joseph Mazzini, that his correspondence was opened and the contents conveyed to foreign governments.. As their Lordship’s report had it:
“the issue of six or seven warrants upon a circulation of 220 million of letters cannot be regarded as materially interfering with the sanctity of private correspondence, which, with these exceptions, there is not the slightest ground to believe has been ever invaded.”
The Report also mentioned the Committee’s interesting discovery that “for a long period of time, and under many successive administrators,” it had been the established practice of the Foreign Office to open and read all the correspondence of foreign ambassadors in this country before forwarding it on. This had been done without even legal authority, so the Postmaster General discontinued it in 1844.
Earlier still, when Sir Robert Walpole was Prime Minister (1721-1742), the government kept its own private organisation at the Post Office, ostensibly to keep an eye on foreign correspondence but additionally to open the letters of its political opponents, including M.P.’s. The M.P. ‘s were incensed about this. The opening of other people’s letters they could tolerate but it was not playing the game to open their own. Horace Walpole, remembering what his father did, always assumed that his letters would be opened by the Postmaster-General in a later government, and took elaborate precautions to circumvent it.
That is the kind of thing that still goes on wholesale in the modern dictatorships, where the secret police are a main instrument of government. It is true this is not what the Labour government is doing, but we note that Labour M.P.’s who used to protest so vigorously when Conservative governments opened letters in the post are silent now.
P. S.
Have pity on them (1947)
At times the many-sided interplay of World Affairs presents a confused and complex character that does not permit of ready and facile interpretation. To admit that often we are only wise after the event is not necessarily a confession of a lack of one’s powers of perception or a deficiency in native intelligence.
It may also be that in this process of becoming wise after the event there are some who take longer than most. It may even be that there are others who never become wise about events at all.
Which brings us to Mr. Clynes’ article, “When Crisis comes to the Cabinet.” (News of the World, l4/9//47.) Mr. Clynes also sketches there what, for him, were apparently the essential features of the 1931 economic crisis. That crisis happened sixteen years ago, a fair period you will agree for cogitation and reflection on what it was all about. After reading Mr. Clynes’ article we can only conclude that sixteen years has not been long enough for him to have become really wise after the event.
Mr. Clynes, who was Home Secretary in the 1929-31 Labour Government, says that during crises he has been behind “closed doors.” He means 10, Downing Street, of course. With such qualifications he offers the newspaper’s readers “a picture of what happens.”
Perhaps the ”negative” of the picture has remained in “the dark-room” of Mr. Clynes’ memory too long. For, to use a slightly technical term, the picture is sadly lacking in definition and detail. Instead of a clear-cut impression of the real political significance of the events produced by and associated with, the 1931 crisis there is merely a confused blur of disconnected incidents and trivial political minutiae. Thus we get a presentation of “day by day Cabinet meetings, of men with white strained faces, going painfully over one scheme after another to meet a frightening situation.” Of strained nerves and tempers. The sudden bitter enmity of life-long friends. A broken-hearted and bewildered Cabinet deserted by their leader, Ramsey MacDonald, and so on. Touching, no doubt, but scarcely enlightening as a piece of political history.
Neither does any word issue from the lips of the chief characters in the picture to indicate in the slightest what the real nature of the Cabinet Crisis was. Indeed, so far as the understanding of events being gathered from what at the time was said, its significance apparently is to be found in what was not said. For Mr. Clynes’ tells us that not only was MacDonald reticent to the Cabinet concerning a visit to him in the early crisis days by the private secretary of King-George V, but, moreover, he refused to disclose to them what had passed between the King and himself at a Buckingham Palace interview. One could comment that MacDonald’s preference for a silent part in “the picture ” was indeed a rare choice for perhaps the most garrulous politician of the age.
In spite of the apparently crucial importance which Mr. Clynes rather obscurely attaches to MacDonald’s silence in the matter of the crisis, we could assure him—if that were needed—that whatever passed between King and Premier in the crisis talk would not have materially affected the nature of the 1931 economic crisis or the main trend of events which resulted from it.
The fact that MacDonald refused to spill the beans on what was said is open to the more charitable suggestion that so far as any concrete proposals about the handling of the crisis was concerned he had no beans to spill. It may even be that he didn’t discuss the crisis with the King at all. After all it is Secret History and our guess might be as good as anybody’s in the matter.
Mr. Clynes does, however, inform us that MacDonald and the Cabinet had agreed on matters which it seemed were regarded as unalterable; although about the question of what these matters were, Mr. Clynes himself is highly reticent. Albeit MacDonald altered the unalterable by the simple device of continuing his Premiership with the aid of the Tories instead of that of the Labour Party.
Mr. Clynes, anxious perhaps to cushion any criticism of his party’s failure to effectively deal with the problems of Capitalism in so far as they affect the workers’ interests, assures us that Ministers are fallible human beings. We, of course, have never said anything to the contrary. To which he further adds a somewhat tearful, spare a kind thought for the poor politician plea, by exhorting us “in our own worry and uncertainty to have Pity on them.”
It would seem that only at Election Times does the cloak of Papal infallibility fall upon the shoulders of political spokesmen. Only then, with much fingering of their political rosaries, do they proclaim with almost divine assurance to the electorate that “They are the Way, the Truth and the Light.” Only then does isome leader take on the role of a political Moses whose mission it is to lead the workers into “The Promised Land.”
It is only when political parties have become the Government of the country that they discover they are liable to be the prey of the mysterious and malignant economic visitations popularly known as “Blizzards,” “Catastrophes” and “Disasters” and for whose coming they assume no responsibility or claim any real control. It is these things which it seems set to nought their good intentions and bring to dust their political programmes and promises. In this manner do “our statesmen” translate the economic contradictions of Capitalism into librettos for the eternal political theme of the struggle between the Forces of Good and The Powers of Darkness.
Mr. Clynes tells us that Ministers “are, perhaps, family men each with domestic worries and as deeply involved as the rest of us in the common disaster which threatens our common citizenship.” No doubt this touching spectacle of the domestic worries of Ministers, such as paying the rent, meeting the milk bill or the uncertainty of the next meal, getting all mixed up with the affairs of State, is a sombre reminder of the price that has to be paid for “Democracy.” Whether the Fascist Dictatorship can be explained by the fact that Hitler was a bachelor up to the last few days of life and presumably had no family responsibilities, might engage the attention of those “psychological gentry” who are always trying to explain social and economic events by processes which have nothing to do with them. Nevertheless both Goebbels and Goering were family men and for that matter, so was Mussolini.
Doubtless, the raising of families by our Ministers is a worthy and human concession to the democratic notions of our age, but what precisely its connection is with the objective cause of the economic crises of Capitalism, Mr. Clynes fails to explain.
Mr. Clynes then tells us that “as the result of an half-an hour’s angry disagreement we were going out into the desert deprived of four-figure salaries, secure positions, the confidence of bewildered supporters and indeed of any political future for which we had painfully given our working lives.” This, indeed, must have been the supreme moment “When Crisis comes to the Cabinet.” In view of all this it will not perhaps come as a surprise when he informs us that among the varying emotions experienced by some of his colleagues, avarice was one of them.
And if the gentle reader impatiently asks what has all this to do with the political and economic events of the 1931 period, we can only say that it is Mr. Clynes’ article on the crisis and not ours.
Nevertheless Mr. Clynes does make some attempt to more realistically portray how the crisis came to Britain. For instance we are informed that foreign countries’ confidence in Great Britain was shaken—a not altogether unknown phenomenon in this country’s history. As a result of this lack of confidence “shipload after shipload of gold was loaded at the docks and passed overseas.” “At every bank queues of people tried to draw out silver and notes. Business almost stopped.” Again, £10,000,000 in gold was withdrawn and the Bank of England was by an emergency Act relieved of the necessity to pay out gold on demand. To remove any possible misapprehension these shiploads, of gold were not the nest-eggs of the working class becoming an article of export. Neither were the bank queues those of workers trying to draw out their “savings” as a preliminary to departing to sunny climes. The “going off the Gold Standard” in this country was of no vital concern to the workers because they had never been on it. Indeed the only standard the working class have ever been on in the present system is, a “Copper” one and that will remain their money evaluation as a class, whatever financial arrangements the capitalist class come to in times of crisis.
For Mr. Clynes, however, the cessation of the normal functions of The Bank of England indicated that “Britain shivered on the verge of catastrophe”.
To cap it all that other great working class institution, The Stock Exchange, closed down temporarily. However, those other working class institutions, the Labour Exchange and the Public Assistance Committee, were very much open and marked by a continuous and feverish activity.
“Then,” says Mr. Clynes, continuing his crisis theme, “for no apparent reason confidence returned.” “At mid-day Treasury officials felt a degree of terror. By the afternoon speculators were buying instead of selling . . . the tide had turned … a great crisis was weathered.” Such a description of the nature of the crisis strongly suggests a marked affinity with that vague and unaccountable phenomenon called an Act of God.
At a less sensational level we could offer the somewhat more accountable explanation, that the year 1931 was witnessing one of those familiar trade cycles which Capitalism is periodically subject to. Also the fact of going off the Gold Standard was merely an effect—not a cause of the crisis. Capitalists all over the world, faced with glutted markets and unsaleable stocks, were not only anxious to cut their commitments but were demanding gold as the means of payment in any transaction that occurred. Other Capitalists and their financial institutions were busily trying to call in loans, in view of the slump. Faced then, with the catastrophic decline of international trade it was inevit able that the creditors of British Capitalism should seek bullion as the only means for liquidating debts incurred. Thus a heavy drain on the Bank of England’s gold reserves was an automatic consequence of the conditions brought about by general and chronic “overproduction.”
To explain a capitalist crisis of “overproduction” in terms of financial panics and stringency is like attempting to explain Delirium Tremens by the patient’s shudders and shivers. Although Mr. Clynes tells us “that the crisis in money was passed” a few incidental features of the crisis, like nearly 3,000,000 unemployed, economy cuts, falling wages, distressed and devastated areas and the general intensification of poverty, remained for some years. Such crisis events, however, are not the best kind of reminiscences to keep for one’s political old age. Neither perhaps do they constitute the best form of Sunday afternoon reading for the working-class readers of the News of the World.
We have, of course, on other occasions dealt with some of Mr. Clynes economic fallacies, as far back as 1919 and as recently as the June Socialist Standard of this year. Undoubtedly Mr. Clynes’ consistent propaganda in “more production” campaigns has revealed him as an untiring advocate of harder work for other people.
But Capitalism is a profit-motive economy and it is profit anticipation which not only determines how wealth is produced but in the final analysis how much is to be produced. Thus with every increase in wealth-producing efficiency a greater quantity of goods are enabled to be thrown on to the market. Workers’ wages constituting but a fraction of the wealth they produce, it is insufficient to absorb the ever greater amount of the goods turned out by them. In the case of the Capitalists their effective ability to consume the products of labour is fixed by the limits of their personal and physical capacities. Hence a greater portion of their “surpluses” tend to go into greater investments of those industries which turn out productive goods,. The contradiction between the expanding forces of production and the limited class income distribution inherent in Capitalism is thus intensified. It is this which finally leads to glutted markets. Effective demand ceases, or to put it another way, a condition is reached where no purchasers can be found. Profit anticipation then declines or disappears. Production is, then curtailed; plants close down; workers are dismissed and all the familiar conditions of a slump make their appearance.
Thus Mr. Clynes’ sovereign remedies—greater productive output on the part of the worker—for dealing with unemployment and low wages, provide the very means for bringing about in a shorter time those very conditions which he seeks to obviate.
It would appear that Mr. Clynes has been so busy during his life, assisting or seeking to assist in the administration of Capitalism that he has never had time to acquaint himself with a few simple facts about the system he has, helped to run. Thus do “Practical Politics” keep our statesmen, so far as the understanding of this present system is concerned, in a perpetual economic “Egyptian Darkness.”
Should we then include Mr. Clynes among those politicians he asks us “to have pity on?”
Ted Wilmott
Fascism again? (1947)
The last War was ostensibly fought in order that the destruction of fascism might be permanently effected. Its measure of success in this direction may be judged by the recent revival of fascist activity. Under the new guise of the “British League of Ex-servicemen” a number of meetings have been held in the London area. The scenes that characterise these meetings are reminiscent of pre-war days. Rabid anti-Semitic propaganda, intense nationalism, slogan-shouting between supporters and opponents, invariably culminating in street brawls between both rival factions.
As a consequence a large measure of publicity was given by the daily Press. Among those perturbed at this state of affairs was Mr. John Platts Mills, M.P. At a meeting of the Finsbury Council he proposed a resolution “viewing with concern the recent outbreaks of anti-Semitism and increase in Fascist activity.” (Star, 26/9/47.)
He went on to say : ”I don’t think any of us would have imagined two years ago, after a war in which the whole world was embroiled in order to smash the most devilish system of government ever recorded in history, that we would now find people seeking to propagate the same system of government in our country. These people are self-declared traitors.”
Apparently Mr. Platts Mills is one of many who mistakenly assume that wars are fought over political systems and ideologies. It might interest him to know, however, that the S.P.G.B., while steadfastly proclaiming its Socialist opposition throughout the war, re-iterated the unpalatable truth, that whatever the outcome would be, the menace of fascism would not be removed. The cause of fascism must be sought in the economic structure of society prevailing in the world today. This system of Capitalism is based upon the ownership of the means of life by a comparative few, resulting in the consequent enslavement and subjection of the dispossessed majority in society, the working class.
Fascism then, arises when millions of workers, lacking a knowledge of their class position and desirous of seeking a scapegoat as the cause of their economic ills, fall an easy prey to the rhetorical arguments of the fascist demogogues.
Believing also that democracy can serve no useful purpose and therefore what is needed is a one-party government with a strong man at the helm, the workers in their political blindness hand over power to these tyrants, resulting in the inevitable abrogation of democratic institutions, with the subsequent establishment of a ruthless, repressive regime in its place. The rise of Hitlerism in Germany is a classic example of this.
The only safeguard against dictatorship is the conversion of the working class to the ideas of Socialism. When the majority are convinced of its necessity, they will wrest political control from the Capitalist class by sending their own Socialist delegates to the seat of power with a mandate to transform society from one of class ownership to one of common ownership and democratic control.
With the inauguration of a Socialist society, dictatorship, Fascist or otherwise, will be inconceivible, because the means of life will be owned and controlled by the democratic community of the world. Wealth will be produced solely to satisfy the needs of all, whereas today it is produced primarily for the profit of those who own, which results, in the starvation of millions who inhabit this globe if these profits are not forthcoming.
Socialism, then, will not only solve the major problems confronting society today but will afford the fullest possible life imaginable to all humanity. Such monstrosities as war, Fascism and economic insecurity will go and will be replaced by peace, democracy and plenty for all mankind.
J. Pizer
More about funds (1947)
From the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard
In the September Socialist Standard we had a few words to say about funds. As. a result there has been some increase in donations to the Party. The position is, however, still far from satisfactory and it is necessary to amplify what we have already said.
Our current month to month spending on administering the business affairs of the Party Is very heavy. It is heavy because we are much more active than we were in the days before the war and costs of admintstration today are very much higher. Our higher income does not keep pace with today’s cost of running the Party. One important source of income is relatively lower than before the war. That source is the weekly dues from members. These remain at pre-war level. Next year’s Conference is to consider the question of increasing them. If the Party membership decide on an increase it will be with reluctance, and in any case a year or more would pass before such increase would be shown in the Party’s finances. Before such an increase could be felt and be useful the Party could he in debt or seriously hindered in its work. The Executive Committee has, therefore, decided to set up a publishing fund with an immediate target of £500. This fund will be used for publishing our new pamphlets and thus relieve the drain on current expenditure. This is absolutely necessary to meet the cost of publishing literature which it is direly urgent to publish. Confident, that the Party and its friends will respond generously to this appeal the E.C. has instructed our printers to go ahead with the first of our new pamphlets.
Please, therefore, send us your contributions now for the new publications, fund. Do not delay, our need is urgent.
Funds Organiser.
Blogger's Note:
The same issue of the Socialist Standard carried the following short notice.
URGENTWe must have 100 by the early part of December in order to get out one of two new pamphlets. Will members and sympathisers search their pockets right away.
Press Cuttings (1947)
The Son of Matteotti
“The municipal elections due to take place next Sunday have been marked by violence towards those left-wing candidates who are insisting on a Socialist line independent of Communist policy. Signer Matteotti, son of the man who died in anti-Fascist resistance during the Mussolini regime and who still vehemently insists on a policy opposing Communism, has had two meetings this week broken up by violence, his car burned and stones thrown at platform speakers.” (Rome Correspondent of the Times, 10/10/47.)
* * *
The Labour Party and Taxation
“We hold that indirect taxation on commodities, whether by Customs or Excise, should be strictly limited to luxuries; and concentrated principally on those of which it is socially desirable that the consumption should be actually discouraged.”—(“Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.19.)
“Mr. J. W. Belcher, £l,500-a-year Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, said last: night: ‘When the price of cigarettes is doubled it makes far more difference to the £5-a-week man than it does, to me. The tobacco tax falls hardest on those who can least afford to pay it.'”—(Daily Express, 10/10/47.)
* * *
The United Nations Can Agree
“Lest it be thought, however, that the United Nations is incapable of making quick and lasting decisions, it should be reported that the Legal Committee yesterday settled something in five minutes that the League of Nations abandoned after ten years’ fruitless argument. It adopted a flag for the United Nations and left it to the Secretary General, Mr. Lie, to decide its dimensions and its code of courtesy. It is to be a white globe on a field of blue. And there is no truth at all in the report that the Yugoslavs have suggested it should bear the motto ‘Manners Makyth Man.”—(Manchester Guardian, 9/10/47.)
* * *
The Labour Party and the Factory Acts
“The amendment and consolidation of the Factories and Workshops Acts, with their extension to all employed persons and the restriction of the working week to not more than 48 hours, is long overdue . . .” (“Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.6.)
“Night work in the factories for girls of 18 and youths of 16 will be legal after September 22.
“And anyone over 16 may work more than 48 hours a week—but not for two weeks running.
“These amendments to general conditions were announced last night as part of the staggered hours plan which will spread the electricity load.
“After September 22 a district inspector of factories can. permit an earlier start or later finish for day work.
“The starting and finishing hours of 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. can be extended to 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., and 6.30 a.m. to 6 p.m. for those under 16.”—(Daily Mail, 2/9/47.)
* * *
“More of Everything for Everybody”
”We have greatly increased our capacity to produce more things during this war. We must use the skill of our people and our great productive resources to make more of everything for everybody in times of peace.”—(From “Your Future—After Victory—What Then?” Published by Labour Party, June, 1944.)
”What the nation needs is undoubtedly a great bound onward in its aggregate production. But this cannot be secured merely by pressing the manual workers to more strenuous toil . . . What the Labour Party looks to is a genuinely scientific reorganisation of the nation’s industry . . . on the basis of the Common Ownership of the Means of Production; the equitable shaving of the proceeds among all who participate in any capacity and only among these . . .”—(”Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.12-13.)
* * *
Sir John Boyd Orr on Food and Capitalism
“Warning the United Nations Economic Committee, at Lake Success yesterday, that more people will die through the food shortage in Europe and Asia in the next 12 months than were killed in any year of the war, Sir John Boyd Orr declared :
” ‘This presents an opportunity to the nations, assembled here to concentrate less on the political problems which engender misunderstanding and conflict, and concentrate more on the concrete problems on which there can be no misunderstanding.’
“He pointed out that the General Assembly agenda contained no reference to food and economic difficulties, and stressed that the food situation in Asia was just as bad as in Europe.
“Food production would need to be increased by 110 per cent, in the next 25 years to provide sufficient for the world’s population.”—(Daily Herald, 7/10/47.)
* * *
“Meanwhile, in the producer countries, the paradox of the years between the wars shows signs of being repeated. While people elsewhere face starvation, farmers tremble at the prospects of ruin—not because they cannot produce the food the hungry peoples need, but because they can produce more than the peoples can buy . . .
“At one and the same time we have these problems : How to get maximum production to salvage the world from present hunger and how to deal with unmarketable surpluses which will again bring ruin and misery to millions of land-workers and endanger the stability of the whole economic system.
“For failure will mean that the existing economic system cannot carry the burden of the material wealth which modern science can produce.”—(Sir John Boyd-Orr, News Chronicle, 1/8/47)
* * *
Labour Party and Conscription
“The Labour Party declares emphatically against any continuance of the Military Service Acts a moment longer than the imperative requirements of the war excuse.”—(“Labour and the New Social Order,” Labour Party, 1918, p.11.)
* * *
Labour Government and Wages
” ‘As a trade union official, if I were, faced with the choice of keeping the Labour Government in office or a reduction in wages, I would advocate a reduction of wages,’ said Mr. Sam Watson, general secretary of the Durham area of the National Union of Mineworkers.
“He was speaking at a week-end school of the National Council of Labour Colleges at Morecambe.
”‘Unless we can lift production, increased wages are simply a means of increasing the dangers of inflation and rising prices,’ he said.”—(Daily Herald, 6/10/47.)
* * *
Housing under the Swedish Labour Government
”Many tourists, observed Mr. Osborn, have come back believing that the Swedes have everything to tell us about standards of housing and architecture. They are misled by the cleanliness and furnishing taste everywhere displayed. Housing standards in Stockholm are, as in most other European cities, appallingly low. Of the 670,000 people within the city boundaries, 90 per cent. live in flats, and only 7 per cent, in one-family dwellings. More than half the dwellings (51.6 per cent.) have only one room and kitchen or two rooms without kitchen. Another 26.7 per cent. have two rooms and kitchen.”—(Mr. F. J. Osborn, Chairman of the Town and Country Planning Association Municipal Journal, 26/9/47.)
Party News Briefs (1947)
Party News from the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard
The Autumn Delegate Meeting was held at the Trade Union Club, London, and not at the Conway Hall as originally arranged. The change was caused by factors beyond the control of the party. The question of increasing the number of pamphlets published by the party was discussed at length by delegates, and the whole of the party’s literature came under review. Methods of increasing sales were also discussed. The other organised activities of the party were dealt with under their various headings. These items included propaganda, publicity, internal education, finances, contact with companion parties, abroad, etc. There was a good attendance of delegates from London and the provinces who gave an excellent illustration of socialist democracy in action.
Edinburgh Group (Secretary—D. Lamond) have been running outdoor meetings at the Mound throughout the summer, and have planned to recommence indoor study and discussion meetings in the Melbourne Hall, Edinburgh every Sunday from the beginning of October, at 6.30 p.m. They are looking forward to some Glasgow speakers coming over, and there appear to be good prospects of an Edinburgh branch being formed soon. The Melbourne Hall is at George IV Bridge.
Kingston-on-Thames Branch have arranged a debate with the Trotskyists at the Co-operative Hall, Hampton Wick, for November 19th (Wednesday) at 8 p.m. The General Secretary is representing the party, but we have not yet been given the name of our opponents’ speaker. A number of Kingston members went to Brighton on Sunday, 21st, and arranged with the comrades living there to hold a meeting on the front. The beach authorities called in the police to stop the meeting after a very successful start had been made and a large, and rapidly increasing audience, gathered together. Another meeting was held later in the day at “The Level” with moderate success. The Kingston members, had an enjoyable day and the Brighton comrades were enthused by the effort. Friends and members living in the Brighton district who are interested in the formation of a group in or near Brighton can communicate with W. Craske, Green Road, Wivelsfield Green, Sussex.
Islington Branch held two very encouraging indoor meetings during the recent by-election in their area. The Central Library was filled on Sunday, September 21st, and the West Library provided a very interested audience on September 23rd. There were good collections and literature sales at both meetings.
Paddington Branch are firing away consistently with propaganda in their area. There were two indoor meetings in September, one at the Paddington Town Hall, and the other at Harvist Road School, Kensal Rise, N.W. Both were excellently attended and the speakers had to deal with keen questions and discussion. The branch mean to continue with meetings in the Willesden area with a view to laying the foundations for a branch there. Paddington now have their own amplifier which they use on a car for publicity purposes. They are convinced that this method is more effective than posters. There have been weekly outdoor meetings at the “Prince of Wales,” Harrow Road, but the police are shutting our meetings down early because of the rowdy meetings run by other organisations at the same place. The branch also report small, but good, outdoor propaganda meetings at Pennard Road, Shepherd’s Bush, which they describe as a political wilderness. These meetings have been run in conjunction with Ealing branch.
Croydon Branch has now been formed with the sanction of the Executive Committee. Many months of activity as a discussion group has thus borne fruit.
The Metropolitan Theatre, Edgware Road, London, is being booked for a concerted propaganda effort by Paddington branch and the central Propaganda Committee on Sunday, December 7th. Confirmation of the booking has not been received at the time of writing, but no difficulties are anticipated. Paddington branch are putting everything they have into the preparations for the meeting, and intend to engage in wide loud-speaker advertising, posters, handbills, etc. Will members and sympathisers please leave this day free so that this Sunday evening meeting will have the success it deserves.
Hackney Branch’s first meeting in the winter indoor campaign at the Bethnal Green Central Library justified the branch’s initiative in arranging the series. An attentive audience listened to the party’s views on “The Jewish Question”—a particularly appropriate subject as a large meeting of an anti-semitic political organisation was being held at the same time on a street corner a few yards away.
Ealing Branch have two big items in their programme for November. On Monday, November 10th, they are responsible for a debate at the Kensington Town Hall where our A. Turner will oppose Mr. A. Raven Thompson of an organisation called the Union of British Freedom. This party has views which are very much the same as those put forward by a number of other organisations which have been attempting to get in to the political limelight lately by holding large (and generally noisy) outdoor meetings in various parts of London. However much we disagree with the policies of our opponents we are always prepared to subject them to socialist analysis in public, and in doing this we do the only thing that can prevent the spread of false and dangerous ideas in the ranks of the working-class. The second Ealing branch effort is at Baling Town Hall, Ealing Broadway, on Wednesday, November 26th, where C. May and the General Secretary will be speaking. The branch are putting a considerable amount of work into both of these meetings, and expect success.
Clifford Groves,
General Secretary.
SPGB Meetings (1947)
Party News from the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard
Blogger's Notes:
S. Lustigman was a member of South West London Branch of the SPGB from October 1942 until he resigned his membership for personal reasons in December 1952. According to the SPGB's membership records, he was a relative of longstanding SPGBer Julius Merry, who shared the same surname until he changed it because of anti-semitism.
The Revolutionary Communist Party's Jock Haston first encountered the SPGB at Hyde Park in the early 1930s. He recounted his experience in Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson's 1986 book, Against the Stream: A History of the Trotskyist Movement in Britain 1924-38:
"When I first began to question the C.P. line I still sold the Daily Worker, but at Marble Arch I came into contact with the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and a guy who was then the Secretary of the S.P.G.B. called Cohn. He gave me a terrible hammering one night on my ‘Leninism’, and I spent the whole night reading, and when I went back the following night he gave me a bigger hammering. For some months after that I used to attend S.P.G.B. meetings, and learned a great deal from the S.P.G.B. over the course of the next eight or nine months."
The 'Cohn' mentioned in the quote would have been Adolph Kohn. I'm not sure Kohn was the [General] Secretary of the Party in the 1930s but, at various times, he was on the editorial committee of the Socialist Standard.
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