50 Years Ago: Socialism and Materialism (1976)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The politicians of all parties outside the Socialist Party trade upon the economic ignorance of the mass of the workers, but that does not prevent them from stimulating their blind greed. Every proposal which appears in their election addresses is calculated to obtain the support of those who do not realize the futility of such measures from the standpoint of working class interests. Free Trade, Land Taxation, Nationalization, the Capital Levy! What have these measures to do with ethics?, we may ask. They are merely the means by which sections of the master-class seek both to serve their own interests and hoodwink their slaves.

Some high-sounding phrase such as the “public interest” or the “welfare of the community” is used to camouflage their motives and blind the workers, who vainly look for some material gain from these measures.

The Socialist, therefore, has no need to apologise for appealing to the workers to use their intelligence in their own material interests. Our moralizing masters have looked after theirs long enough.

(From an article “Socialism and Materialism” by Eric Boden, published in the Socialist Standard April 1926.)

"The Dictatorship of the Proletariat" (1976)

From the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Communist parties of France and Italy are the biggest in Europe. The Italian party has 1.7 million members, and the French party half a million members. The Italian party holds 29 per cent. of the seats in Parliament and has 33 per cent. of the total vote (Guardian 16th February 1976). The present minority government, the Christian Democrats, depend on the Communists in order to rule, and it seems likely that the Communists will succeed to power. The position in France is said to be that the “Socialists and Communists will combine to form the next government”. Both Italian and French parties, we are told, have renounced the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat and are now relying on democratic methods to obtain and hold political power.

It is not the first time that the Communist parties have turned a complete somersault with embarrassing changes of policy. In the Sunday Times 29th February 1976, Mr. Napolitono, the Italian leader, had this to say about NATO when asked how a Communist party could remain a partner in an anti-communist alliance: “Everything changes. The NATO alliance is not the same as in 1950. In those days we took the view that the NATO alliance was potentially aggressive. But now the danger of an aggressive initiative by NATO against the Warsaw pact has disappeared”. This type of blatant dishonesty characterizes the Communist parties everywhere. A lie becomes the truth when circumstances demand it. What however have not disappeared are the nuclear missiles, the Polaris submarines, and the hordes of armed men ready to disembowel each other over the ownership and control of the earth’s resources at the behest of these unprincipled opportunists and their Moscow parents.

At the moment, the Italian and French capitalist classes are finding increasing difficulty in administering the system. Social problems are mounting, together with the effects of the present world slump. Both countries have unemployment well over the million mark: Italy has 1.3 million unemployed. In these circumstances, the capitalists are prepared to allow the cause of the Communists to advance, having heard them give assurances that they will uphold the national interest at the expense of cutting the ideological ties with the Soviet Union. It is significant that both French and Italian leaders were absent from the Moscow International Congress of World Communist Parties. Perhaps they decided not to risk it.

Communisls & Democracy
Should the Communist parties in both countries take over the running of the governments they will declare themselves for what they really are — the servants of capital. As such they will be forced to come into conflict with the workers and oppose demands where those demands do not harmonize with the interests of the ruling class. This is inevitable, for no political party can serve two masters. They will also show their impotence in solving problems which a class society produces, where events are in control, and where their forked tongues cannot help them.

The new-found democracy they now assume has been produced as evidence of their enlightenment, when in fact it was thrust upon them. Never at a loss to display their talents for turning night into day, they now seem to be claiming credit for discovering democracy. Mr. George Marchais, secretary of the French party, claims to have “defined, clarified and enriched the strategy of the political party line. This line lays down the democratic way we propose to Frenchmen to lead them to socialism . . . we have also taken into account national characteristics and traditions to build socialism with the colours of France”. (Times, 28th February, 1976).

The history of the Communist parties throughout the world is an unrelieved story of dictatorial organizations, having at their head the absolute dictatorship of the Communist party in Russia. The dictatorship of the proletariat and the dictatorship of the Communist party are two fundamentally different conditions. The former, which basically means conscious majority rule, has never existed in Russia. With the present exception of the Chinese party, whose international ideology has had to give way to the building-up of state capitalism and the defence of national interests, all Communist parties have to be regarded as Trojan horses of Soviet capitalism. The fear of the more ignorant politicians is that if the Communists ever get power in the West they will emulate Lenin and never let it go. When the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, Lenin shut down the Constituent Assembly and abolished free elections, set up censorship, and abolished other democratic rights enjoyed by workers. Had free elections been allowed shortly after the hollow victory of the revolution there was a real danger that the Bolsheviks might have been voted out of power, and Lenin was not prepared to risk it.

The conditions in a modern capitalist country are very different from those obtaining in Russia are 1917. The parliamentary system of government based on a democratic franchise means that property questions can be settled by a democratic vote. Generally, the democratic system of election and an uncensored press, free trade unions, and the freedom of political parties to have their say, grows naturally out of the conditions of free trade. As Engels said, the bourgeois democratic republic is the natural state for capitalism.

Marx's Phrase
In May 1875 the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Germany, led by Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, and the General Association of German Workers, founded by Lassalle, decided to unite under the name of the Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany. The unity congress was held at Gotha. Prior to the conference, a programme outlining the aims of the new organization was sent to Marx for his criticism. In a letter to Bracke, a founder member of the Social Democratic Party, Marx criticized the Programme. It consisted of a number of vague, and in many cases ethical, propositions which could mean anything. The first proposal, “Labour is the source of all wealth and all cultures”, Marx showed was incorrect, as it ignored the part played by nature.

In criticizing the democratic section II “The Free basis of the State (government machine)” he said : “Between capitalist and communist society lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one with the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the State can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat”. (The letter was published by Engels in 1891, 15 years later). This is the historic statement which Lenin seized upon as justifying the dictatorship in Russia and the failure of the Bolsheviks to solve the problems of production without which Socialism is impossible. The transformation between capitalist and communist society became twisted to mean a transition between Socialism and Communism. Socialism being a “lower stage” and Communism a “higher stage”.

The elaborate falsification of Marx’s theory was connived because the Russian revolution was represented to the world as a Socialist revolution, but the Socialism was absent because the conditions for its establishment were absent. The historic revolutionary rôle of Lenin and the Bolsheviks was to build up a capitalist society in Russia, and they knew it, despite the fact that the Bolshevik party contained a number of Marxist thinkers. There was no other course open to them.

"The Transition Period"

Marx’s phrase about the transformation between capitalism and communism could not apply, because capitalism had not developed in Russia. Moreover, Marx was discussing the kind of action the workers ought to take after they had gained political power and Socialism had been established, and the State had become the agent of working-class emancipation instead of an instrument of oppression, and also what changes the form of the State would undergo in communist society. In Marx’s view there could only be a scientific answer to that, and it was what the conference ought to be discussing: not the “freeing of the State” but its transformation within the new conditions of production which communism would bring forth. Earlier in his criticism, dealing with the section on the “fair distribution of the proceeds of labour”, he said: “What we have to deal with here is a Communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society, which is thus in every respect economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmark of the old society from whose womb it emerges”.

(Critique of the Gotha Programme, p.16, Progress Publishers, Moscow.)

Marx cannot be cited as an advocate of dictatorship. A few years earlier, in his book The Civil War in France, dealing with the Paris Commune, he wrote: “The Commune was essentially a government of the working class: the result of the struggles of the producing class against the appropriating class, the political form under which the freedom of labour could be attained being at length revealed”. Engels, in his introduction to the work, said: “Of late, the German philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the workers’ Dictatorship of the Proletariat: well and good gentlemen, do you want to know what this Dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune, that was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat”. (Civil War in France, p.19, Martin Lawrence, 1933.)

Those who know something of the brief history of the Commune will know that instead of the suspension of democracy, it was founded on its most thoroughgoing use. Dictatorship, in the final analysis, must come to mean a form of government by a single individual or of an organization over a great mass. Both these forms are impossible in a Socialist society. The Socialist movement is not a minority movement, it is a movement consciously pushing the interests of the majority. This marks it off from all previous movements which were movements of minorities in the interests of minorities. This mass movement can only be organized on a democratic basis. Everyone will and must know what fundamental issues are involved, and what is expected of them. Participation requires understanding.

It should be borne in mind that Marx’s criticism of the Gotha Programme was not meant for publication, and it was contained in letter form. Furthermore, it was addressed to Wilhelm Bracke and other founders of the Social Democratic Party to be sent to Bebel and Liebknecht, all of whom were men of long experience in the Socialist movement, and who were all familiar with Marx's ideas and writings. Their interpretation of what Marx meant would have been different from that of the ordinary layman. One thing is indisputable, and that is that the Communist party have no claim whatever to represent the work of Marx. They cannot abandon the Dictatorship of the Proletariat because they have never known the meaning of it, let alone accepted it.

Establishment of Socialism

We in the Socialist movement do not accept the idea of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat as a transitional period. We have no need to because class society will be abolished simultaneously with the establishment of common ownership. The State machine will be under the direct control of Society, and its repressive organs will be the first to be abolished. Other social and administrative functions, will be developed in accordance with prevailing social requirements. All forms of social re-organization will be under the democratic control of the community. No political transition will be required because political society ends with the abolition of social classes. The political transition takes place before the eventual victory of the proletariat. Capitalist ideology has given way to Socialist ideology — the revolution is complete.

One of the difficulties facing Marx was that the Gotha Programme was not a Socialist programme, nor were the parties to it Socialist parties. However, these were all Marx had to work on, and he had to do the best he could, in all the circumstances. Experience has shown that a well-intentioned leadership with Socialist ideas is not sufficient to change society. The SPGB has learnt this lesson from history.

Jim D'Arcy

Education and the Working Class (1976)

From the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The growth of state education was once called “the silent social revolution”. Few phrases ring less true. Silent it is not: loud discord is its characteristic. If a revolution, it has ended in chaos with the strategies all gone wrong and a popular feeling that those responsible deserve the worst.

The thirty-one years since the war have seen the implementation of the 1944 Education Act, which produced a tripartite system of secondary schools, followed by the demolition of that system in favour of comprehensive schools. Under the 1944 Act the school-leaving age was raised from 14 to 15, and in the last two years it has been extended to 16. Each change has been advocated as a reform containing great advantages for “the nation” and the working class, and each in due course has produced despair.

The fruits of the present system can be summarized as follows. 15 per cent, of school leavers are illiterate, according to research carried out by the Cadmean Trust (Guardian Education correspondence, 9th April 1974). It is estimated that half a million school- children in Greater London and another half-million elsewhere do not attend school at all; a high proportion of them are in the “extra year” age group between 15 and 16. “Equality of opportunity”, which was the professed aim of the reorganizations of secondary education, has never materialized. Numbers of schools are bear-gardens and teachers themselves are truants, afraid to face a daily losing battle.

To understand how and why this situation exists it is necessary to go back to the beginning of state education in 1870. At that stage in capitalism its need to systematize the existing partial facilities and have the working class educated to a basic standard had become clear. Philanthropists and radicals had agitated for education to be provided, but the motives for reform are practical ones. In particular, technical change—the petrol engine, the small electric motor, typewriter, telephone, linotype machine, cash register, tramcar, fountain pen and many other new inventions entered industry and commerce in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

The process, extended by further Education Acts in 1902 and 1918, ensured the capitalist class a supply of clerks, mechanics and shop assistants who could add figures and had been taught obedience. It also provided a means of creaming-off more proficient children to be trained for more skilled work and even to enter the universities and professions. From the nineteen-twenties onward, the established grammar schools were encouraged by financial incentives to admit increasing numbers of “scholarship” boys and girls who were likely to do well. Investment in education remained restricted, however. The 1918 Act empowered and recommended local authorities to raise the school-leaving age to 15, but between the wars there did not seem much point in providing additional education for employment when unemployment was chronic.

The 1939-45 war emphasized capitalism's need to comb the working class for the abilities it wanted, and this turned to the special demand for technically-trained people in the nineteen-fifties. It was held that the post-1944 three types of school, based on selection at 11 years old, was inefficient in this respect: neither America nor Russia had a system of early selection, and both produced more science graduates than Britain. It seems to be wilfully forgotten now that this was one of the major arguments for comprehensive schools. Defending them in a recent television discussion Fred Mulley, the Minister for Education, said he was opposed to selection in any form. Yet the statement which committed the Labour Party to introducing comprehensive schools, Learning to Live (1958) opened with a section called “True Selection”. It claimed that selection at 11 was unsatisfactory, and that its plan would mean “real and continuing selection”.

Selection means rejection. As in the adult world for which it is the preparation (the school day is modelled on the working day), in the education system communalty and lofty motives are preached while divisiveness and mercenary aims are practised. In 1964, in a book called English for the Rejected, David Holbrook estimated that three-eighths of the secondary schools’ population formed the residue from the selection procedures, and were treated as “lesser beings” in the education system. Of this large section he wrote: “Who shall blame them for becoming a resentful group expressing their contempt for a society which treated them as ‘dim dregs’, by taking to forms of delinquency and violence, or by other forms of unsocial behaviour?”

The answer to the question is, of course: Nearly everybody. The London crime figures for 1975 showed a continuing increase in crime by young persons; 37 per cent, of thefts of and from cars were committed by children between 10 and 16. In connection with this and other figures a police official said London is “heading for the most violent period in its history” (The Times, 11th March 1976). This misrepresents the situation insofar as, throughout the history of capitalism, parts of big cities have always been infested with delinquents. The writer Jack London in his youth in the early eighteen-nineties ran with gangs of hooligans and took part in muggings. The sentiment today is that it is specially deplorable after so much social reform, in education particularly.

However, the fact is that the capitalist class — abetted, and whether consciously or not does not matter, by reformists—has gone too far. In its anxiety for profit it has demanded the perfection of a method for grading and separating prospective workers. The outcome is a youthful mass who are labelled “low-grade” but kept in the education system which has no use for them. In the 1914-18 war the capitalists found likewise that their greed had rebounded on them: large numbers of the working class, starved and deprived, hardly had the strength to fight for capitalism.

Similar observations can be made about illiteracy. Its true extent is never ascertainable because illiterate people themselves and schools both seek to conceal it. On 3rd March 1976 The Times reported that the government was giving money to the Adult Literacy Resource Agency “for the campaign to teach more than two million illiterate adults to read and write”. In 1850 it was estimated that eight million, or just under a third of the population of Britain, could neither read nor write. If it is assumed that the Cadmean Trust’s figure of 15 per cent, is an underestimate, after more than a century of compulsory education illiteracy has been halved.

This looks like the failure of the education system, but it is not. The system carries out what is required of it by capitalism. Its apparent problems are problems of the capitalist organization of society, that it is mistakenly expected to solve. On 19th December 1972 The Guardian's Education Notebook, referring to a discussion in New Society on the proposition “education is our main hope for social change”, said:

. . . the compelling evidence is that readers of New Society have got it wrong. In the last few months four separate studies have been published, and they have iterated a single message: that there is little, perhaps nothing, that the education system in isolation can do to alter the pattern of our society.

What it reflects overwhelmingly is the position of the working class, and the futility of hopes of “equality of opportunity”—or of “learning to live” in such a system.

Socialists have an interest in education of another kind: workers must learn about capitalism and what to do to get rid of it. We are often asked what prospects there are of this, in view of the lack of success in getting large numbers to learn in school. It is an educational commonplace that people, including school failures, learn swiftly when they want or need to. Backward boys become wizards of mental arithmetic if they take to buying and selling goods, and people “pick up” foreign languages they would never have learned at school. If Socialism were no more than an idea, the task would indeed be hopeless. But that is not the case. The drive to understand it comes from the pressure of the class division in society, and the compulsion for workers to know and pursue their interests.

We are asked, too, about education in Socialist society. The fact that Socialism is based on common ownership means that, for the first time, education will be for the purposes only pretended today—the benefit of the community and its individual members, not for an exploiting class. As regards literacy, the fact is that any literate adult can teach a child to read (many children teach themselves) and, with social disabilities removed, it would cease to be an achievement for some but not for others. The study of numbers may well acquire a different status, since its chief elementary function today is dealing with money.

Beyond the basic things, there will be choice in place of compulsion. As teachers know, people learn little or nothing at all of what they are not interested in. In any case, the amount learned of any subject in the school-lesson system over several years is pitifully small, aiming only at a general minimum. The purpose of true education is not to stuff knowledge into others, but to develop the desire and show the way for each one to obtain it for himself. Once it exists, the desire is not extinguished at 16 or when an examination is over. In a sane society, education would be available at every time in life.

Robert Barltrop

Socialists in Ireland Battle On (1976)

From the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Explanation of failure to reply to earlier communication . . .

CIRCULAR RECEIVED BY A SPGB MEMBER FROM THE WORLD SOCIALIST PARTY OF IRELAND, BELFAST :

Some time ago our premises at Pimm Street, Belfast suffered bomb and fire damage and had to be vacated. The proprietor of a small printery, whose basement workshop in the same building was only slightly damaged, decided to continue in business and agreed to accept incoming mail on our behalf.

Last week this printer decided to go into the unoccupied part of the building in search of some timber and there he came on the front door of the rooms we had occupied. The door had been blown from its hinges and had actually fallen into a lower floor of the building but it still had affixed to it the mail box. Later examination revealed some letters in the box including yours of 29th March 1974.

It is a crazy little chapter from the sad and crazy world we live in; however we now enclose our reply and our apologies.

ACCOMPANYING LETTER FROM SECRETARY :

The enclosed circular will explain why we did not reply to your letter of the 29th March 1974.

The circular gives an insight into the problems we face in N. Ireland at present. We did manage to maintain premises up to two years ago but even this was a dodgy proposition. Our “meeting” night was Tuesdays but most evenings people were afraid to come out and I have memories of sitting long hours alone beside a dirty paraffin stove. Sometimes the foot on the stairs brought mixed feelings; “Good! Someone . . ." but there was the fear that the "someone” might not be good! Just before the premises were blown up they were vandalized by the military and, on another occasion when I foolishly took my seventeen-year-old daughter (who was a Party member) with me, we had a visit from some worthies who were obviously confident that if they could provoke us into starting something they could handle both of us.

Finally, our “national heroes”, the Provos, in pursuit of their “economic war” or their equally intelligent counterparts, the Loyalists, blew the place up. It must have been a victory for something.

After that we tried to get an old slum shop and dwelling in a “borderline” area. It had been vandalized and was going very cheap and I had arranged with the agent to accept £200 deposit and the £500 balance by weekly instalments of £2. Unfortunately, when the crunch came, the woman who owned the place refused to sign the contracts.

Now we have learnt that the premises at Pimm Street have been bought by a tyre trader who carries on his business in the adjoining property. The place is being re-roofed and repaired in a make-shift way and we are hopeful that we might get our old room back.

Of course normal political activity is impossible at present in this lunatic asylum but, still, an address that could be used openly would open some avenues. At present, apart from putting the case to individuals in general conversation (and this with some caution!) we confine our activities to sending the Socialist Standard to various groups and individuals and to the principal newspapers. It is dangerous to write to the papers; both morning and evening newspapers print most of their letters under pen names but require that the writer enclose his name and address; a friend of mine who had a letter published criticizing the Loyalist “strike” of ’74 received a threatening telephone call the following day — this despite the fact that his letter had been published over a pseudonym. Obviously one does not want to put one’s family at risk by identifying one’s home address but, if we get premises, we will use the address openly for letters and the occasional leaflet.

I am convinced that we must show some evidence of our continued existence during this period, however slight or sporadic. To fail to do so will leave us open to the charge of deserting our case when it was dangerous to stand by it. Honest explanation of our smallness and lack of resources can be made for little activity in the present period but we would have no excuse for total silence.

Over the past two months I have engaged in an exchange of letters with the Secretary of a Dublin group who call themselves the Socialist Party. Some progress has been made but the issues of nationalism and religion still prove tortuous (what a dis-service the “Marxist” Connolly did for Socialism!). In my last letter I suggested that I would like to visit the group and, if I get a favourable response, I will take a week-end in Dublin.

Bad as the situation here is I feel it is not without a glimmer of hope. Some of the old loyalties are being scrutinized more incisively than heretofore by many on the political touchlines; the anger of the moment may not reflect this but there is much evidence to show that it is true. Some — indeed, many — of the Loyalists have lost some of their intractable “Britishness” and, equally, many of the Catholic Nationalists have been disillusioned by blatant indifference shown to their plight by a self-preserving Southern capitalism. True, the battles go on; today’s fought in the bitterness of last night’s memories. Increasingly, however, it is only the scarred and the most deeply committed who can maintain the fight on a no-hope diet of hatred. When the anger ebbs the old values will be in the melting pot and while, then, Socialist hands may be few, they will at least be clean.

Richard Montague

Too Much Work (1976)

Book Review from the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Right to be Lazy, by Paul Lafargue. Charles H. Kerr, Chicago. New edition. $1.25.

Many people will be delighted that The Right to be Lazy has at last been reprinted. It appears at a time when “the Right to Work” is being demanded again. This was the slogan, put in currency in 1848 and persistent ever after, that Lafargue satirized. He urged the workers to raise their sights and demand something better: the right to take life easy.

The essay is part humane vision, part anger. Economists, philosophers, politicians and priests united in preaching the capitalist doctrine of “work, work, night and day”. Lafargue quotes them — and lashes the working class for acquiescing and making work its be-all. He describes the consequences the workers have brought on themselves.

Because, lending ear to the fallacious words of the economists, the proletarians have given themselves up body and soul to the vice of work, they precipitate the whole of society into these industrial crises of over-production which convulse the social organism. Then because there is a plethora of merchandise and a dearth of purchasers, the shops are closed and hunger scourges the working people with its whip of a thousand lashes . . . With pale faces, emaciated bodies, pitiful speeches they assail the manufacturers: ‘Good M. Chagot, sweet M. Schneider, give us work, it is not hunger, but the passion for work which torments us'.

The first version of The Right to be Lazy appeared in Guesde’s paper L’Egalité in 1880. In 1883 Lafargue, with Guesde and Dormoy, was sent to prison for six months for advocating social seizure of industries; and in prison he re-wrote it. It is not explicitly a plea for Socialism, though in the conclusion Lafargue says: “A citizen who gives his labour for money degrades himself to the rank of slaves.” He urged that the machine was “the saviour of humanity” and “the god who shall give him leisure and liberty”.

It is important to realize this view of Lafargue’s. Some commentators, uneasy at a possible gift to opponents of Socialism in the word “lazy”, have claimed that the title in its original French meant “the right to leisure”. This is not so: the title is “Le Droit à la Paresse” — idleness — and when Lafargue means “leisure” he uses the word “loisirs”. His argument was essentially the same as Wilde’s in The Soul of Man Under Socialism, that machinery could and should do all the work. He says in The Right to be Lazy (somewhat optimistically):

Ploughing, so painful and so crippling to the labourer in our glorious France, is in the American West an agreeable open-air pastime, which he practises in a sitting posture, smoking his pipe nonchalantly.

He believed that conditions would improve for the working class if they did not, by their willingness to toil, make the human machine the cheapest one: “O, idiots, it is because you work too much that the industrial equipment develops slowly.” His assumptions about “labour-saving” under capitalism were mistaken, but that does not diminish the strength of his appeal for man to live more fully. The Right to be Lazy remains a lively attack on the mentality of capitalism, and a pointer to a future of fun and freedom.

This new edition is rather utilitarian in its production, but that is a sign of the publishing times. It has a useful historical introduction by Fred Thompson, giving an account of Lafargue’s life and the political background in nineteenth-century France. The introduction has also some interesting material about leisure in history and in the present-day world. The English price of the pamphlet (82 pages in all) is not yet known.

Robert Barltrop

The Myth of Red Clydeside (1976)

From the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The "Red Clydeside" first put itself on the map in the agitated years of the First World War. Since then, it has received plenty of examination. It has been portrayed as a possible revolution in the making; one that could have formed a link with the Bolsheviks and the Spartacists. The Clyde Workers' Committee was the main body in the agitation of the period. It was an unofficial industrial organization of the type that is today favoured by various claimants to the Bolshevik title.

When Britain entered the war in August 1914, the Clyde area joined in the nationwide enthusiasm. Yet soon after, it proved to be an area that would tolerate opponents of the war who were elsewhere reviled. John MacLean, in particular, soon became noted for his pugnacious attitude. A member of the British Socialist Party,[1] the local members shared his stand along with Independent Labour Party and Socialist Labour Party members. All three groups were relatively strong in the area although only the ILP had any significant strength.

 At first the recalcitrance of part of the population was not strong enough to warrant any special attention. More important was the production of munitions from the local engineering works. The government had soon realized that success in the war depended as much on the armaments as the bodies that could thrown into the fray. Clydeside as an engineering centre was thus under heavy scrutiny on the home front.

Trouble first arose over the negotiation of a wage agreement by the local engineers. The skilled craftsmen who had lost out on the last deal, put in a pace-setting claim for 2d an hour which the employers rejected. Early in 1915, an overtime ban and then a strike in support of the claim brought patriotic wrath down on them. The executive of the men's union, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers, had already pledged its support for the war effort and condemned the strike. With no official support, the strike was organized by the shop stewards — a growing influence in the Union. A ballot conducted by the ASE showed a 10-1 majority against the acceptance of an offer by the employers. However, with no strike money and in an atmosphere of slander and government threats, the strike folded after two weeks. In the end they half of their original claim.

The gulf between the Clyde militants and their union widened during the year. The ASE executive signed the Treasury Agreement and a referendum endorsed this.[2] Then the passing of the Munitions Act in July established the ground on which the CWC was to form. The Act, to be applied to munitions work, outlawed strikes, abolished restrictive practices and limited the right to leave a job. Prosecutions and convictions followed and the weak response of union officials to this prompted the establishment of the Clyde Workers' Committee in November.

The CWC was based on the organization that had developed during the 2d strike. Their manifesto proclaimed the Committee's aim as the defence of the trade union rights summarily abolished by the Munitions Act. It claimed to be " . . . composed of Delegates from every shop . . . untrammelled by obsolete rule or law . . . We can act immediately according to the merits of the case and the desire of the rank and file." This was a challenge to the government and was soon recognised as such. Government officials began discussing the best way to dispose of this obstacle to their plans.

Unrelated to the activities of the CWC, the 1915 rent strike was coming to a conclusion at about the same time. The war had brought an influx of workers into an area already infamous for its housing and the landlords had been raising rents to an extent that earned them the title — "the Huns at home". A rent strike had been in progress and in November some men were taken to court to get unpaid rent stopped from their wages. On the day of the case a number of sporadic strikes took place and a demonstration outside the courtroom threatened a wider strike unless the rises were stopped. The cases were dismissed and soon after rents were frozen. This was done seemingly on demand in order to avoid what would have been, in the government's eyes, unnecessary trouble (and, even more important, more wage disputes).

Meanwhile the CWC was more concerned with the looming threat of dilution. In recent years, the development of new techniques had been making the skills of the engineering craftsman increasingly redundant. The ASE, in which most of them were organized, had resisted this threat to their livelihoods by a closed-shop policy designed to keep semi-skilled workers and their lower wages out of the craftsman's traditional preserves. In this they had a measure of success with the results that their skills were often under-used and the employers reluctant to introduce new methods. This was an obvious obstacle to the government's demand for the maximum output of armaments and they were determined that it should go. A greater division of labour was to be brought in and dilutees, mainly women, were to be put on much of the work. In the short term this would have no effect on the engineers as there was an overwhelming demand for them. However, when the war was over it was likely that ASE members would find a restricted market for their abilities in a modernized industry.

The CWC was now operating regularly with 250-300 delegates attending their weekly meetings. The most representative delegations came from the heavy engineering works and this was reflected in the composition of the small working committee. This included men from the ILP, BSP and SLP with the latter having the most coherent influence.

The CWC was not an anti-war organization and this was shown by the policy adopted to meet dilution. This, in contradiction to the ASE, accepted the inevitability of dilution but wanted nationalization and workers' participation in management in return. This led to the expulsion from the CWC of two of MacLean's associates who wanted opposition to the war effort, not workers' participation in the management of it.

It was wishful thinking to believe that any great opportunity was missed by the consequent split between the CWC and MacLean. Quite simply, when it came to the crunch they were concerned with industrial matters where he was concerned to oppose the war. After this, he and a small band of supporters, interrupted by jail sentences, continued with tenacious opposition gaining much sympathy but no real support. Despite his principled stand, MacLean's optimistic illusions about the development of the Irish nationalist and Bolshevik movements show that he did not understand Socialism and what was required to achieve it.

The CWC ignored political reality in pursuing their dilution policy. Regardless of the implications of their demands, they made no provision to back them up. On a visit to Glasgow in December, Lloyd George, the Minister of Munitions, contemptuously dismissed the proposals. Later, after the Minister's stormy meeting with 3,000 workers, and ILP and a BSP paper were suppressed for printing truthful accounts of the proceedings.

Con Friel

(To be continued)

[1] The BSP was basically the Social Democratic Federation under a new name. Statements in some publications that the BSP was a breakaway from SDF are wrong.

[2] Of 190,000 eligible to vote, 18,000 were for and 4,000 against. (Quoted in "The First Shop Stewards Movement" by James Hinton.)

Obituary: E. Ford (1976)

Obituary from the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ted Ford was the oldest member of the Party and had he lived a few more months he would have been 94 years of age. Ted, till the last, was cheery, full of fun and as optimistic as ever that the day was not far away when the workers of the world would embrace a Socialist system of society.

Born in the village of Thrupp, Gloucestershire, in 1882, he neither lost his accent nor his affection for the county of his birth. He was for years a contributor to the correspondence columns of the Stroud Journal, challenging unsound views on a variety of subjects and putting forward the Socialist message. (Nobody who became acquainted with Ted for long was unaware of the Party and the case for Socialism.)

Just after the turn of the century he came up to London to become an apprentice outfitter, living over the master's shop in Upper Street, Islington (a veritable Mr. Kipps). At that time he was a keen pacifist as were his parents and others in the family. An amateur actor, he joined the local group and there met the women who was to be his life-long partner.

The SPGB had been formed in 1904 and shortly afterwards Ted's burning opposition to the injustice and violence of capitalist society led him to attend the meetings of our Islington Branch and become a member. In 1906 the branch came into head-on collision with the Executive Committee and was finally expelled by the membership, including Ted. One might say a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater! He used to say that had he been more aware of the situation at the time he would have applied for re-admission.

However, he never lost either his concern or support for the Party and always considered himself a member.

During the First World War, when his time came, he stood up to be counted, declaring himself a supporter of the Party, and having no quarrel with other workers that justified their slaughter. Like many others he found himself serving his time in both Wandsworth and Wormwood Scrubs prisons. Outside these prisons Ted's family — his sisters and young nieces with their parents — would stand singing the 'Red Flag' and the 'International' and other songs to raise the spirits of the political prisoners.

Subsequently he re-joined the Party and during the Second World War was the literature secretary of the Edgware Group — later Branch — and is well remembered as a regular seller at the indoor and outdoor meetings.

Throughout his life he was plagued with deafness which was almost complete in his latter years. Despite this handicap he retained his cheerfulness, his great interest in literature and poetry and his optimism for the future.

His cremation took place on March 2nd, which was attended by relatives and friends, amongst whom were several members. A member spoke on behalf of the family and the Party.

A.H.G.

More from the career of Leigh Burr-Parti (1976)

From the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Broken Reid (1976)

From the April 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

After twenty-five years Mr. Jimmy Reid, the doyen of Left Clydeside, has left the Communist Party where he was an Executive Committee member. His reasons for leaving the Party are obscure, as this institution of meddle and muddle has not altered either in its reformist leadership case, or in its slavish acquiescence to the foreign policy of the Soviet Union. (How could it, when the Morning Star, the Party organ, depends on Russian finance? Russia, and the Iron Curtain countries take nearly 14,000 copies of the Morning Star out of the daily number sold of 41,000 copies: Sunday Telegraph, 15th February 1976). According to the Sunday Telegraph, this amounts to a subsidy of 250,000 a year out of a total of 500,000 a year which is required to keep the paper alive.

This fact must have been known to Mr. Reid as a member of the Executive Committee. The British Road to Socialism, the Party statement upon which Mr. Reid bases his faith, has certainly made a large detour through Eastern Europe.

Unfortunately for the working class of Clydeside, Jimmy Reid did not leave his ideas, so we can expect the usual windy dialogues and mis-information about Socialism when his conscience has settled down, or his career has got the better of it. In an interview given to Ian Smith in the Daily Telegraph 13th February 1976, "Mr. Reid said that if a political party emerged which showed it supported Socialism and democracy he would consider joining it". Where has Mr. Reid been during his twenty-six years in politics if he does not know that such a Party has existed for over 70 years — the SPGB? Not that we are waiting on the doorstep to welcome Mr. Jimmy Reid into our ranks. Fortunately we have a choice over those who may decide to join us, and in his present state of muddle we could not permit an individual as ignorant on the fundamental aspects of Socialism to enter our organisation.

By Socialism Mr. Reid, in common with all left-wing parties, means freedom to worship reforms, State capitalism, a touch of Scots Nationalism, and anything else which will provide a peg for opportunist propaganda. It's all in the pamphlet The British Road to Socialism of which he was co-author.

In an interview given to Peter McHugh of the Daily Mail (13th February 1976) he expresses interest in the newly-founded Scottish Labour Party of Mr. Jim Sillars, MP, who apparently is a personal friend and who also is the same type of modern Labour fakir. Both men have in common their rejection of the organisations which brought them to political prominence. It is people like Reid and Sillars who hold back Socialist propaganda, and expect prestige for doing it, as does every professional left-wing politician.

It has taken twenty-six years in politics to convince Reid he backed the wrong horse in the Communist Party. Instead of making public confessions of his ignorance of politics he should gracefully retire to develop a few real Socialist principles. For his and others' information, Socialism means a social system based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of living, and its achievement depends on understanding.

Jim D'Arcy