How They Ran the Derby. A Tale of a Great Jockeying. (1916)

From the April 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite the protests to the contrary by the Daily News and other organs of Liberalism, the conscriptionists are winning point after point in their campaign. With the usual British cant, humbug and fraud, the campaign has been carried on under various disguises and pretences so beloved by our politicians, though it is none the the less effective in obtaining results, as we can see all around us.

A brief examination of the progress of this campaign will not only be interesting in itself, but will be useful in showing clearly the sinister character of those who claim that the Allies are fighting for Justice, Freedom, Righteousness, and—er— the capture of German Trade. 

Having secured a victory in the Cabinet, their first step was to arrange a scheme to save the faces of Liberals who still professed to believe in the "voluntary" system. This was the "Registration Act" that was merely "to take stock of our resources in men," and Liberal members of the Cabinet indignantly repudiated the suggestion that it was the beginning of conscription. Based on this Act the "Group Scheme" was set up with Lord Derby, a wealthy Lancashire landowner, "with a stake in the country," at its head. He announced that, though a conscriptionist, he would do his utmost to make the "voluntary" system a success, while declaring in the same breath that he was going "to wind up a bankrupt concern." About halfway through the period allotted to the scheme he suddenly announced that the married men joining the army under the scheme would not be called up until all the single men, except those engaged in munition and other national work, had been called up first. If the single men did not come forward, "voluntarily" then they would be fetched. That master of shuffle and ambiguity, Mr. Asquith, endorsed the statement in a "pledge" of curious clearness, coming from such a source. 

This cunning move of Lord Derby, or his employers, resulted in a double success. Firstly, large numbers of married men, taking Lord Derby's remark that "he hoped it would be possible to have sufficient young men to bring the war to a successful conclusion without having to put the older and, married men into the field of operations" as another "pledge," joined up in the belief that they would escape service. Secondly, the loudly advertised claim that this scheme gave the "last chance" for the "voluntary" system drove many to become unofficial recruiting agents, who called the single unattested men "slackers," and used various means to bully these "slackers" into the army even to the extent of threatening to strike against working with them in some factories and workshops. This stupidity enabled the conscriptionists to claim that the demand for compulsion came from "the people" and not from any small section. 

Then came the notorious "Derby Report" on the results of the scheme. This Report was specially prepared to show that the scheme had failed to bring in the single men required, although it admitted that the amazing total of 2,829,263 men (married and single) had offered their services. When it is remembered that the Prime Minister admitted that 3,000,000 men were in the army before the scheme started the total becomes more remarkable still. 

But the conscriptionists were determined to have compulsion and started an agitation among the married men—attested and unattested—calling for the "fetching" of the single men. Doubtless large numbers of the married men believed that by supporting this campaign they would save themselves from being called upon to serve in the army. So the Military Service Bill was introduced. To show how completely they were bound to, and depended upon, the master class for their jobs, the majority of the "Labour" Party supported the Bill. Some of the Radical opponents of conscription, however, were not so subservient, and Sir J. Simon, Mr. Hogge, and Mr. Pringle severely criticised both the Bill and Report upon which it was based. But the most crushing and merciless exposure of the fraud of the whole report came from Mr. T. Lough (W. Islington). For some peculiar reason practically every daily paper forgot to report this speech that will be found in the Official Report of Parliamentary Debates for 11th Jan., 1916. 

It had been loudly proclaimed that the married men had joined in large numbers while the single men held back. Mr. Lough showed that not only was this not true, but that twice as many single men bad joined the army as married men, and "The whole agitation was a sham." (col. 1518). He pointed out the significant fact that while 10 per cent. of the population of France and in Germany 11.4 percent. had come forward, in Great Britain 14 per cent. had offered themselves. Then proceeding to deal with the 651,000 single "slackers," he showed that about 500,000 of these consisted of men who had been rejected as medically unfit when trying to enlist, before the Derby scheme was started. How strikingly true is this statement was shown in our leading article in the March "S.S." No wonder he could claim that his figures "knock away the whole basis on which the Bill had been brought in." (ibid). On March 16th Sir J. Simon supported this view when he described the Report as "that interesting work of imagination and fancy" and stated "that the whole calculation upon which the National Service Bill was based was a calculation got at by subtracting a figure of which, according to the Under Secretary of State for War, "no record exists, from another figure which, according to the accurately compiled."—Official Reports, cols 2294 and 2300. 

During the passage of the Bill through the House of Commons Mr. Asquith gave another "pledge" in reference to widows' sons, quoting a ballad of the time of Henry V. to strengthen his statement (12.1.16). So many "pledges" had now been given on various points that one of our members suggested that the Government had sufficient to open a pawn-shop. As mentioned in the March "S.S.," there has been a persistent consistency about these pledges. They have all been broken. The records of the Tribunals have shown the complete contempt with which these bodies have regarded that pledge of the widows' sons. Doubtless the widows' sons may gather some comfort from the fact reported in the Daily Chronicle for March 14th that the Market Bosworth Tribunal "exempted all the men employed by Atherstone Hunt," this, of course, being "an industry of national importance"—for the capitalists, who take care to enjoy themselves hunting foxes as a slight relaxation from hunting quids. Market Bosworth Tribunal could, of course, cite Lord Derby himself as one who opposed all exemptions and exceptions —except for capitalists and their fox-hunting attendants. 

Still the mythical millions failed to materialise, and so another lie was started, that the Tribunals were granting an "enormous number of exemptions" (Daily Mail, 19.2.16). The facts were in such glaring contradiction to this lie that the conscriptionists saw the need of starting another. Lord Derby practically admitted the fraud of the whole business when he said that neither the Group Scheme nor the Compulsion Act had brought in the men "expected." Even a conscription Act does not seem capable of producing men that, as Mr. Lough had shown, had never existed. So a fresh, lie—that these "slackers" were hiding in munition factories and reserved occupations—was hatched, and a campaign was begun among the married attested men calling for "fair play" and the fulfilment of the "pledge" that "single men should go first." Having been nicely caught in the net, some of these men are prepared to assist in this campaign, but in reality they are only helping the conscriptionists to carry out their full programme. The number of men who can be spared from munition and other works of national importance will be small, and realising this, the conscriptionists have already started their last move. Colonel Yate voiced their views when on March 14th he asked the Prime Minister if he was "aware that married men who had attested are being laughed at and ridiculed for doing so by other married men who have not attested, . . . and whether he will now consider the question of treating all married men of military age upon the same footing" (Official Report, p. 1850.). This drew forth the retort from Sir W. Byles, "Are the married men shirkers now ? "

But a far more dastardly trick has now been brought to light. When the Compulsion Bill was passing through the committee stage a prolonged discussion took place on Jan. 18 as to the position of those men who would refuse to take up military service. A large number of members, including Mr. Whitehouse, Mr. King, Mr. Morrell, Mr. Outhwaite, Mr. Harvey, Mr. Leif-Jones, Mr. Rowntree, Mr. Allan Baker, Mr. Snowden, and Mr. Byles, raised the question from various points of view. For a long time the Attorney-General, Sir F. E. Smith, acting for the War Office, refused to give any undertaking on the matter, and even pretended for a while to misunderstand the questions. At length a statement was drawn from him and embodied in the Act in the following terms :

   a man who is deemed to have been enlisted and transferred to the reserve under this section shall not be liable to suffer death in respect of failure to obey an order calling him up from the reserve for permanent service. (Military Service Act, clause I, section 2, Subsection c.)

On the 14th March Mr. Snowden raised the question in the House again, and as practically all the newspapers misrepresented his question it will be preferable to quote the Official Report.

   Mr. Snowden asked the Under Secretary for War if the undertaking given by the Attorney-General in the House of Commons on 18th Jan. last . . . extends to a person taken by force under the Military Service Act 1916, who refuses to submit to military orders and discipline; and if so, if he will state what is the maximum penalty of imprisonment in such a case.
  Mr. Tennant: I think my right hon. friend's assurance was limited to the conscientious objector. I think it must be obvious that once a man, deemed to have been enlisted under the Military Service Act 1916 joins for duty with the colours he must be subject to the Army Act in exactly the same way as any other soldier. . . . It would obviously be improper for the death sentence to be applicable to those who have enlisted voluntarily and inapplicable to those who join the Army under compulsion. (Italics mine.)

Note the dirty evasion by the "Honourable" Tennant. The question had nothing to do with a person who "joins for duty with the colours," but with one who refused to join at all.

  Mr. Snowden: Are we to understand that the pledge of the Attorney-General which was incorporated in the Act is now withdrawn, and if a person who refuses to act as a soldier because he thinks he has been unjustly treated or because he has conscientious objections he is to be shot ? Are we to understand that to be the purport of the Right Hon. gentleman's reply ?
   Mr. Tennant: No, Sir, the Hon. gentleman is not to understand that. What the Attorney-General said was that no conscientious objector would be subjected to the death penalty. I think the Hon. member should put the question to my Right Hon. friend.
  Mr. Snowden : I have tried to do so, but the question was not accepted at the table.
 Mr. Tennant : I have been in communication with my Right Hon. friend, and the answer I have given is the joint answer agreed upon.

For cool effrontery and calculated contempt for the working class this would be hard to beat, even by the gang that hold such a gigantic record in that direction. With the Act in operation scarcely a fortnight, an important clause is torn out upon "the joint answer agreed upon" by two officials without any legal authority being given them for doing so. Violent resistance to the law was strongly deprecated by Sir John Simon. What does he think of this deliberate violation of the law by two of his colleagues, one of whom is the Attorney-General ? 

But the capitalist class of this country is being rapidly pushed on to the horns of a dilemma. Practically all the men available for military service have been taken up. As the Daily Chronicle, (17.3.16) says, "The orange has been nearly sucked dry." More men for the Army can only be obtained by taking them from munition works, and the mills and factories engaged in the trade and commerce of the country so necessary for the maintenance of credit and exchange abroad. The enormous importance of the latter point will be clearly seen when it is remembered that England is the financier for the Allies. The appalling ignorance and extreme narrow-mindedness of the militarist section is quite capable of causing them to involve the business of the country in ruin for the purpose of increasing an army that ultimately could neither be armed nor fed. 

The replacement of men by women and of skilled men by unskilled takes a certain amount of time, and this is just what the militarists cannot spare. Signs are not wanting that this replacement has reached its limit for the present, as is shown by the thousands of women vainly seeking employment, and by the fact that many employers, despite the bait of low-priced female labour, are finding that such labour-power can be too dearly bought in bad production and damaged machinery, and are refusing to take more into their works. Even so violent a recruit for the Army as Mr. J. H. Thomas, the "labour" M.P., warns the Government that "It was impossible to replace a single skilled man by an unskilled married man," (Times, 16.3.16) and the First Lord of the Admiralty, Mr. Balfour, admitted that they could not increase their production of aeroplanes because the manufacturers of aeroplane engines were unable to obtain more skilled men for this work. The remedy of the conscriptionists is to take the men that are at work. 

Amidst the vast blunders and glaring stupidities perpetrated by the ruling class and its agents we can see the low cunning that, with them, takes the place of the intellectual capacity and grasp required for a scientific organisation of society. The swindle of the Registration Act, the setting of the married men against the single, the attested against the unattested, and so on, are the mean, despicable methods, below the level of Fagin, that they love to employ. 

Yet it is to such crafty ignoramuses and slimy incompetents that the working class have handed not only the control of social affairs, but their own limbs and lives for these scum to dispose of as they please. 

With power within their reach to take control of the social forces for themselves, with the means, by way of capturing political power, of abolishing wars by uprooting their cause—the capitalist system of production for private profit —with the future showing clear and splendid because of the enormous powers of production now at hand and being developed, making it possible for all to enjoy the best that human knowledge an power can produce, the Socialist sounds a clarion call to the working class: 

Away with superstitions, religious or economic. Be men and women in the full sense of the word, self-reliant and confident. Come out to take your glorious heritage, for you have no thing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win.

Jack Fitzgerald

Sparks From The Anvil. (1916)

From the April 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

Few journalists of the capitalist Press have exhibited such insight into the character of contemporary politicians as Mr. W. Purvis. This gentleman, in an article (“The Man Who Saved France”) setting forth the merits of the late Adolphe Thiers—one time President of France —gives vent to the following gem of political wisdom:

   There was something of Mr. Lloyd George and a great deal of our English Premier in Adolphe Thiers. In his unconscious and amusing egotism he reminds one often of our Minister of Munitions; and he does so, too, in the case with which he could turn on the tap of poetic and patriotic eloquence, as well as in certain flashes of poetical inspiration.

“Sunday Chronicle,” 16.1.16.

How far this comparison is true may be gathered from the following extracts from the character sketch of M. Thiers given in Marx’s “Civil War in France” :

  Thiers, that monstrous gnome, has charmed the French bourgeoisie, . . . because he is the most consummate intellectual expression of their own class corruption. . . . The massacre of the Republicans in the rue-Traumonain, and the subsequent infamous laws of September against the Press and the right of association were his work.

This is particularly appropriate in view of the Featherstone massacre, and the fact that Asquith is the head of, and Lloyd George a member of, the government which has suppressed more journals in the interests of capital than any other of recent years. “Thiers was consistent only in his greed for wealth and his hatred of the men that produce it. Having entered his first ministry under Louis Phillips poor as Job, he left it a millionaire.” Lloyd George started with nothing; he now gets £5,000 a year and still is in his own opinion “a comparatively poor man.” (Marconi affair.) He is getting on.

*  *  *

  We are sorry to hear that the original inventor of Kinematography, Mr. Friese-Greene, is to-day living in absolute want. “John Bull,” Jan. 22, 1916.

The same old story of the inventor under capitalism. He wears his brain away and rots in poverty while the capitalists, having cheated and robbed him, realise the full fruits of his invention. How many fortunes are to-day being built up through the medium of the Kinema industry? Yet Friese-Greene has to be dependent upon charity—the statement above quoted being followed by an appeal for his support, addressed with unconscious irony to those “who are to-day benefiting so largely in connection with the moving picture industry.”

*  *  *

The manner in which the “standard of living” of the workers is “rising” is illustrated by this cutting from the “Daily Dispatch" of 4th Feb., 1916. “Those who find beef or mutton beyond their means will be at least interested to learn that horseflesh may now be bought at properly-equipped butchers’ shops.” This, mind you, from a paper that is continually informing us of the extravagance of the working “classes” in this time of high wages, war bonuses, etc., etc., of which an example is seen in the next column of the same paper of the same date:

   A woman who was stated to earn 13s. 1d. for a week's work of 61 hours at Salford applied in vain at the Manchester Munitions Tribunal yesterday to be allowed to go to another firm. . . . The firm’s representative, in answer to a question by Mr. P. W. Atkin (the Salford stipendiary) regarding the girl’s total wages, said she worked a normal week 50½ hours and 8¾ hours overtime, making a total, including the extra payment for overtime, of 61 hours. Her total wages with the war-bonus were 13s. 1d., which the firm considered was fair remuneration having regard to her age and experience. . . The Chairman, whilst remarking that the firm might consider giving the worker more wages, declined to grant the certificate.

*  *  *

The tendency to supervise more strictly that which the worker sees, hears, and reads, and only to allow that which is considered, “good for him,” is increasing. The Altrincham licensing magistrates have decided that “in future all licences would be endorsed to the effect that anything to 'educate the young in a wrong direction,’ or anything which is likely to produce tumult or a breach of peace,’ should not be shown.’ Daily Dispatch,” Feb. 4, 1919.

*  *  *

  At a moment of unexampled anxiety the Treasury are faced with the virtual bankruptcy of the National Insurance Scheme. The Government are heavily in debt to the panel chemists, while the remuneration of the doctors — generous enough at the outset—has, upon one pretext and another, been reduced almost to the level of the old Friendly Society terms. Meanwhile, instructions have been issued that only cheap medicines, and not too much of these, shall be prescribed.

“John Bull,” 12.2.16.

The doctors are kicking, the chemists are kicking, but the workers, the dupes of the scheme, where are they? They go blandly along — “forepence a week he gives, forepence a week,” but not for ninepence.

R. W. Housley

Where the B.S.P. Sucks. (1916)

From the April 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

The British Socialist Party are once again to the fore with their insistent claim that from their inception they have fought the battle of the wage-earners, though how they have fought that battle still remains for them to prove. True, they tell us that members of their organisation are also prominent members of trade unions, and staunch supporters in every fight for higher wages; that they, as an organisation, have always supported every movement for higher wages and better conditions. But if this is what they call fighting the battle of the wage-earners, then they can claim to be no more belligerent towards capitalism than the trade unions themselves.

Every new hardship inflicted on the working class calls for strenuous denunciation by the British Socialist Party, and a palliative for the workers to pin their faith to, and waste their energies on. Conscription, national service, rising prices; these and many other things only serve to encourage the inventive faculties of the leaders of the British Socialist Party. They have a separate remedy for each and in most cases it is necessary for the vast majority of the working class to act together in order to apply the remedy.

For a party claiming to be Socialist to propose to educate and organise the workers, or at least a majority of the workers, to take some kind of action against the ruling class for anything short of Socialism, is fraudulent. By such an attitude the party's original object, indicated by their name, is negated; for they must either be revolutionary and work for "the day" or they must be merely a reform party and work to put off the Revolution. The B.S.P. denies this by stating that each reform will bring Socialism nearer, but merely stating such does not prove it.

The British Socialist Party, after explaining the terrors of a proposed national service law, says in conclusion:

"The Government officers would have to assign to each man or woman their several tasks. Thus there would be no equality. In practice, of course, it would be only the men and women of the manual working class who would be sent to the factories. It is not suggested that the capitalist employers should be conscripted and put to work on fixed rates of pay instead of profits."

"Thus there would be no equality," they say. Does this mean that equality would end and that henceforth society would be made up of inequalities? Is it to be understood that the. British Socialist Party mean that equality exists to-day and that national service would abolish it? I wait patiently for some evidence of this equality, which the British Socialist Party assume to be present in capitalist society, or failing that, some justification of their own existence, with the avowed object of establishing Socialism.

Where is the need for them if equality already exists to-day ?

But perhaps they mean that there would be no equality among the workers; which, of course, would be untrue, as the workers are already on an equal footing in the sense that they must all sell their labour-power. Under national service they would have fresh grounds of equality. They would all have their tasks assigned to them by government officials.

The last sentence in the above quotation is, however, the choicest, "It is not suggested that the capitalist employer should be conscripted and put to work on fixed rates of pay instead of profits." We have to remember, in order to appreciate this remark, that it is addressed to members of the working class, who believe implicitly in the necessity of "capitalist employers." The average working man accepts the capitalist's description of himself,—one who finds the capital and the brains, without which society could not exist. Believing this much he would naturally resent the British Socialist Party's attempted sarcasm. He would say, "We must have employers, if not where is the capital coming from to run industry?" And the B.S.P.'er would either be dumb or he would have to hark back to first principles. He would be compelled to explain the nature and history of capitalism, carefully defining nearly every word, answering innumerable questions, and debating everything debatable. In short, these words, to the average worker are nonsense, they can only be appreciated by one who has already apprehended the Socialist philosophy. Until the worker understands that the capitalist performs no useful function in society he will resent all suggestions that profits are not the legitimate rights of those who find the capital that sets him to work and enables him to earn wages.

"In practice of course it would be only the men and women of the manual working class who would be sent to the factories." "Of course." Who is it that works in the factories now? The same workers who believe in the necessity of capitalists, believe also in the necessity and the justice of their enforced labour. In short, they believe in capitalism; they have faith in the system because, poor and wretched as they are, without the opportunity of working for some capitalist they would quickly starve. This is the attitude of the average worker, to whom there is a difference between employers and degrees of poverty, that is about all. He has no conception whatever of the real meaning of Socialism. By what sort of logic, then, do the British Socialist Party reconcile their literature with their name ? A Socialist party should provide the working class with a genuine understanding of Socialism; it should give to the workers the conception they lack, before it can expect them to appreciate its sarcasm.

Our opponents further say:

"The proposals for the partial control of output and the limitation of profits in controlled establishments are altogether insufficient. The situation demanded and demands that private profit-making should be abolished, that the Government should take the production of munitions entirely out of private hands and carry on that production on a real national basis under national control."

Again, while Socialism alone is sufficient for the Socialist, why refer to a certain Government action as insufficient and assert that the situation demanded something more—which something more was not Socialism? Do the British Socialist Party mean to say that their proposal would amount—to use a hackneyed phrase —to an instalment of Socialism ? But we must not suppose anything. The members of the British Socialist Party ought to know that when the Government runs an industry it runs it in the interest of the class it represents, and that the workers employed by the Government have no more control over that industry than other workers, nor have they learned anything of Socialism as a result of their change of employers. "But the production of munitions of war, whilst important, is only one aspect of the national crisis." With the British Socialist Party, national sentiment evidently comes before international ideals. "Britain for the British" (capitalists) first, and what then ?

"The great increase in the cost of living since the war began is directly attributable to the private ownership and control of those commodities on which life depends." It would have been as well if the B.S.P. had informed their readers that the private ownership of the "commodities on which life depends" is a result of the private or class ownership of the means of wealth production. Failing to do this, those readers are left to infer that only the increase in prices is due to this private ownership. Why particularise about a mere modification when every social evil afflicting the working class is the result of the class ownership of the means of life, and could all be effaced by Socialism.

"The production and supply of food and fuel must no longer remain the monopoly of those who seek to make private gain out of public necessity, and to whom the satisfaction of national requirements is always secondary to the making of profits. The munitions of life, as well as the munitions of war, must be placed under complete national control, in the interests of the nation, now and after the war."

Here the B.S.P. spokesmen have forgotten one of the cardinal facts established by Socialism; that there are only two classes in society, and that public necessity and national requirements mean capitalist necessity and requirements. Both are capitalist phrases, used with suspicious frequency in the capitalist Press. The Socialist knows that they are used in this way in order to perpetuate among the workers the belief that social relations within the nation are in the main harmonious; that class division is natural, necessary and unavoidable ; and that territorial divisions are of vital importance, as indeed they are— to the capitalist class. The B.S.P. only repeat the false and hypocritical stock phrases of the master class. Pretending to be in antagonism to that class, their hypocrisy and fraud are even greater than those whose heresies they repeat.

Moreover, they are the Socialists (!) who propose to change human nature—we have heard of them often from members of the Anti-Socialist Union. They propose that a capitalist government and class should cease to take the fullest advantage of its control over the means of wealth production and its consequent domination of the working class. The B.S.P. have yet to learn that systems are more easily changed than classes can be persuaded to relinquish their power or, knowingly, act against their own interest.

"Fellow Citizens, in. the hour of Britain's greatest need capitalism has proved a hopeless failure, and it is to Social Democratic proposals that the community has been compelled to turn."

We have only to look for the changes that have been introduced during the period of the war, in order to discover what these ''Social Democratic" proposals are. State control of those industries necessary for the prosecution of the war. If this is all the B.S.P. have to offer as a solution for working-class problems, they are indeed bankrupt as a working-class party. These changes have effected nothing even for the workers engaged in those industries. On the contrary, according to the B.S.P.'s own showing, the Government control and interference has robbed these workers of rules and customs that it has taken them " generations of collective effort against the employing class to establish." So much for "Social Democratic" proposals.

Next they say "Every stage in the great national crisis through which we are now passing has demonstrated the collapse of competitive capitalism." Do they suggest non-competitive capitalism, and do they claim that social-democratic proposals would have this effect ? If so, they will find that all such ideas were exploded by Marx long before they were adopted by them or the "Fabian Society" before them.

"Every effective step that has been taken has shown the practicability and necessity of Socialism. That is the great lesson the nation should learn from the terrible experience of the last eleven months. The system of national control and ownership, already partly applied, must be continued and extended, -and on the ruins of capitalist civilisation must be established the foundations of the Socialist Commonwealth."

We have glanced at the "effective steps" and the "national control and ownership, already partly applied" and have seen how worthless they are, either as palliatives or as object-lessons for the workers as to the practicability of Socialism. The working-man with an average amount of common-sense needs no telling that nationalisation solves no problems for him. Whatever national control may mean in the minds of the B.S.P., the postal employees and the overworked munition workers know from experience that it does not mean control by them, or improved conditions for them. To continue and extend these "Social-Democratic" proposals is, consequently, only to drag more workers within the scope of national control, and make them directly subject to the State. In so far as this is done, "national service," which the B.S.P. denounce, becomes more of a reality. They say:

"Just as on the industrial field the British Socialist Party has demanded the complete State ownership, organisation, and control of the nation's industrial resources to meet the national emergency, so in existing circumstances IT RECOGNISES THAT THE MILITARY RESOURCES OF EVERY NATION MUST BE ORGANISED FOR PURPOSES OF NATIONAL DEFENCE. It has urged, in accordance with the decisions of International Socialist Congresses, the universal military training of every able-bodied male citizen in a democratic citizen army, free from military law in times of peace, FOR THE PURPOSE OF HOME DEFENCE ALONE. Such a force could neither be used to deprive the working class of their popular liberties, nor to further the ambitions of capitalist imperialism."

As the army of every country is to be for home defence only, there can be no fear anywhere of aggression, consequently no need even for defensive armies. Why do the B.S.P. want armies? Under capitalism all nations organise fighting forces to make secure the domination of the ruling class; to clear the way for the commodities produced by the "industrial army," that they may be placed on the world's market for the benefit of the class that owns them, and, to intimidate and compel the "industrial army" to submit to exploitation. These are the uses of armed forces. Socialism, with its common ownership and democratic control of all the means of wealth production, would, by the abolition of class-ownership, destroy class domination, and armed forces would be unnecessary. Why do the B.S.P. want armies? Because they want capitalism, with its class domination, to remain. Hence the British Socialist Party are anti-Socialist. 

F. Foan

The Commune of Paris: A Lesson for Today. (1916)

From the April 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

On March. 18th, 1871, after the capitulation of Paris to the Germans in the Franco-German War, Thiers, the new head of the French Government, foreseeing danger to the exploiting class in the retention of arms by the workers, who chiefly formed the National Guard, endeavoured to disarm them. The attempt to steal the guns these workers' pence had paid for precipitated a revolt. On the 28th of March the Commune of Paris was declared. Containing at first mainly, and later almost exclusively, working-class elements, the Commune endeavoured to express, according to its understanding, and within the limits of its power, the proletarian interests that lay behind it. This was its great merit. This it was that called down upon it the ruthless hostility of the capitalist government. For three months the working-class revolt struggled on, succumbing at last under a deluge of blood to the armed forces of capitalism. The German Government aided the French ruling class in this bloody work. With the defeat of the Commune, after an eight days' struggle,

“the murder of defenceless men, women, and children, which had raged the whole week through in ever-increasing proportions, reached its highest point. The breech-loader no longer killed fast enough; the conquered were slaughtered in hundreds with the mitrailleuses ; the "wall of the Federals" in the Père la Chaise Cemetery, where the last massacre took place, remains to-day a dumb but eloquent witness of what frenzy of crime the governing classes are capable as soon as the proletariat ventures to stand up for its rights.”

Thus spoke Engels of the final act of the tragedy; and this brief note of that defeat of the workers cannot more fitly end than in the words of Marx, written in May, 1871, which are eloquent of his view of the relative importance of the national and the class struggles.

“That after the most tremendous war of modern times the conquering and the conquered hosts should fraternise for the common massacre of the proletariat—this unparalleled event does indicate, not as Bismarck thinks, the final repression of a new society upheaving, but the crumbling into dust of bourgeois society. The highest heroic effort of which old society is still capable is national war ; and this is now proved to be mere governmental humbug, intended to defer the struggle of the classes, and to be thrown aside as soon as that class struggle bursts out in civil war. Class rule is no longer able to disguise itself in a national uniform ; the national governments are ONE as against the proletariat!”