The Keel is an organ devoted to the exposition of “Tyneside Socialism.”
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As thus : “Social Reform is inoperative. We want to change the basis of society.” (Oct. ’08.)
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As a means to the end which the
Keel vainly imagines it is working for, it warmly supported the candidature of
Hartley at Newcastle.
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Hartley, in his
election address, declares himself “first, last, and all the time, a Socialist.” As evidence in support of this assertion he trots out six “questions,” every one singly, or all in their entirety, of which are exploited by Liberal or Radical politicians. These he considers to be of primary importance.
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Every one of the six “questions” is concerned with a policy of more or less—chiefly less—effective patching of the vile garment which is doing duty to hide the obscenity of the Body Politic.
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Clearly the Keel has lost its compass “Social Reform is inoperative.” Hartley’s “programme” is Reform, Reform, and yet again, Reform. Therefore we support Hartley. Shades of Q. E. D. !
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A member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain recently expressed the opinion that a few millstones, the deep blue sea, and labour “leaders”—the ingredients duly and well approximated—were among the first essentials of the Social Revolution.
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Recent utterances of the labour “leader” surely justify the opinion. Place for Philip Snowden ! Room for Gentle Jesusism and the Brotherhood of Capital and Labour !! Make way for Cant; strew the dead hopes of the deluded worker in the path of oily Sham and baleful Ignorance.
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“He did not propose to rob the millowners of their property. No ; they would compensate them for their mills as they would compensate the landowners and railway companies. That was sound political doctrine.”
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Instead of which a Manchester comrade writes “Seeing that the workers only receive one-third of their product (and have to spend this third in buying the necessaries of life) how can they buy out the capitalist class ? If the workers acquired political power—thereby robbing that power of the sting it has hitherto possessed, the power, namely, of the oppression of a class, they would not need to “compensate.”
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While that power is not possessed the capitalist class would refuse to be “bought out,” even it the miracle of producing the purchase money were to be performed, since, if every avenue of investment were closed to them the said purchase money would be useless.
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Compensate ? Listen !
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“I once heard a manufacturer ask an overlooker ‘Is so-and-so not back yet’ ‘No.’ How long since she was confined ?’ ‘A week.’ ‘She might easily have been back long ago. That one over there only stays three days.’ ”
(Official Report on Mills, 1844.)
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Again: “I have seen a girl of eleven years who was not only a fully developed woman, but pregnant, and it is by no means rare in Manchester for women (!) to be confined at fifteen years of age.”—(Dr. Robertson, 1844.)
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Once more—this is YOUR SHOW, brothers of the working class, ye whose sisters were at the mercy of every millowner, ye who NOW provide the prostitute for the class to be “compensated”—”In stench, in heated rooms, amid the constant whirling of a thousand wheels, little fingers and little feet were kept in ceaseless action. They slept by turns and in relays, in filthy beds that were never cool. Many died and were buried secretly at night in some desolate spot, and many committed suicide.”
(“Industrial History of England,” p. 180.)
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Compensate ? In the name of the oppressed of all time, in the name of the maimed and the scrapped, the outraged woman and the joyless child, by the suffering and agony and the bloody sweat of OUR CLASS, who prates of compensation ?
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THEY SLEPT BY TURNS IN BEDS THAT WERE NEVER COOL.
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Compensate !
SNOGGY.
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