Letters: More on Mosley (1970)

Letters to the Editors from the December 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

More on Mosley

Dear Sirs,

I have just seen Socialist Standard for July, in which my pamphlet on West Indian immigration was discussed and your reply published. I trust you will allow me to reply to this in return, even if belated.

I would certainly agree with you when you say it is not immigration itself which causes friction over housing and other problems. since these existed in Britain long before the first West Indian set foot here. Action and Union Movement say that mass immigration has aggravated the already existing problems, which have arisen mainly through the failings of the present economic and social system in Britain.

Our answer is to treat the original problem and the aggravation of it in separate ways, because they arc separate questions. We stand for the humane repatriation of immigrants, creating better jobs and conditions in their homelands to which they can return, through buying their sugar and other produce at good guaranteed prices and otherwise helping them develop their resources. Meanwhile the clearing of all bad housing in Britain, and large-scale rebuilding, will go ahead on mass production lines.

We certainly disagree with you when you say there must be “a social system in which human beings would be able to move freely all over the earth, in which there will be none of the false national barriers and patriotisms of capitalism". There is little likelihood of this utopian state of affairs being established for a very long time to come. Since, as you state, the first requirement is the world-wide abolition of capitalism, the first question is : How long will this take? It is now well over a century since Karl Marx published his Capital, yet capitalism is going as strong as ever, if not more so. Most of the world is dominated today either by the finance capitalism of New York or the state capitalism of Moscow. How much longer must we wait for these bastions to crumble?

Action and Union Movement do not believe in waiting for the socialist millennium, but in doing something now for the present generations, who have seen enough political pledges betrayed. Put very shortly, we stand for a "third force" between the American and Russian varieties of capitalism, which will be neither capitalist or "fascist” itself. Instead of trying to change the system all over the world we confine the change to Europe and its associated lands overseas. The rest of the world can then follow our lead if they think we have made a success of it.

You ask why Mosley “did not object" to British workers being exploited by British capitalists? — the answer is, he did! In pre-war issues of his newspapers there were attacks on sweating in the furniture trade, in the clothing trade, in the cinemas and in the cotton industry. Also there were many exposures (which are just as important) of the cut-price undercutting at home and abroad which British firms had to face. Mosley had his policies then; today they arc to give government power, through the vote of the people, to fix high wages throughout industry, not only in Britain but throughout Europe. That will effectively cook the capitalist goose in Europe!

As for trade unions being "ruthlessly suppressed", nothing could be more remote from Mosley’s aims. The very reverse is true: they would be asked to co-operate with the government and assist in planning its high wages policy, industry by industry. That will give them a far greater role than they have today.

Robert Row

Editor Action.

Reply:
Robert Row refers to "creating better jobs and conditions in (the immigrants’) homelands", “clearing of all bad housing" and so on, as if the solution to capitalism's problems was so simple. These empty words — for that is what they are — are of the kind which are always found in the propaganda of capitalist parties. Reality is much sterner: the economic anarchy of capitalism and its poverty (expressed in mass migration, bad housing, etc.) cannot be touched by promises. Only the abolition of the social system can be effective.

Of course nobody will be misled into thinking that members of Union Movement support Socialism and are in a racist party only because they arc too impatient to join the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Neither will they be impressed with such a phrase as "humane repatriation of immigrants”. But to answer the question; the establishment of Socialism will not be delayed, once the working class understand and want it. And the process of understanding is hindered by the many organisations which advocate capitalism. Union Movement is especially to blame here; they preach the false, divisive doctrines of racism — and may even call their policy Socialism.

The "third force” policy is of course not original. What have the workers to gain from a capitalist state which conducts its international disputes independent of the great power blocs? The blocs are an effect of, not the cause of, the wars of capitalism and the experience of the “neutral” countries in the world line-up is no encouragement to support this policy.

Most of the objections to sweated labour by the pre-war BUF were disguised racist attacks on Jewish employers, with the implied conclusion that British workers would have been better off under a master of their own “nationality". Mosley never attacked the principle of exploitation; much of his policy was aimed at organising a more disciplined labour force for British capitalism. And as for Union Movement wanting trade unions to co-operate with them in government — what was the fate of the unions in those countries where similar organisations got into power?

Editorial Committee

No Demos

I should like to oppose an argument I have come across in your excellent magazine the Socialist Standard. It is the one where you state reasons for refraining from demonstrations against particular injustices in society such as racial prejudice, sale of arms. etc., etc. I would agree with you that this is attacking the symptoms of a disease rather than changing the cause. Anybody who has opportunity and intellectual understanding should by all means attack the cause.

Please however take into account that many people are unable to grasp the meaning of the word “socialism", but are able to see fairly obvious injustices. Demonstrations are valuable in so much that they develop people’s interests in their environment. Further analysis will always reveal capitalism to be the root of the evil, but many are unable as yet to have the time and opportunity to reach this conclusion. Particular issues are a stepping stone! So please do not discourage these activities. Student demonstrations have, I’m sure, aroused interest and this is valuable. Those who are able to make a more dedicated and intellectual commitment should do so, but please do not discourage others.

John Kirby, 

London, W.2.

Reply: 

First of all the Socialist Party of Great Britain is not opposed to demonstrations. Demonstrations in favour of Socialism (or even to express the attitude of socialists to a particular issue) are useful in certain circumstances. Besides drawing people’s attention to our ideas (and for that matter our existence) they can boost the morale and confidence of our members and supporters.

But we do say that a socialist party should not participate in demonstrations alongside organisations to which we are opposed, although we have always taken the opportunity to make contact with people on such multi-organisation demonstrations by distributing leaflets and selling the Socialist Standard.

Since we maintain that capitalism cannot be reformed so as to work in the interests of the majority we do not take part in demonstrations that demand reforms of the capitalist system. We point out to such demonstrators that the proposed reforms would not in fact solve the problems they were aimed at.

Further, the Socialist Party does not advocate reforms since we wish to attract revolutionaries rather than radical reformists. This has not stopped us from analysing the developments in ideas which often express themselves at certain stages in demands for reforms, and showing how these point towards Socialism.

In our propaganda we often point to demonstrations (including strikes) to show that the working class is not prepared to sit back and take all that is handed out to it. We are therefore to a certain extent encouraged by the activity of others in demonstrations against such matters as war and racism. At least this is better than nothing.

Editorial Committee

A Future That Works? (2012)

From the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

The market system works. But not for us. It works for the handful of people who own industry or land. Most of them are doing well and getting richer. For them, the present system works, through our hard work.

For us, the workers, it doesn’t. The real value of wages has shrunk. Housing is becoming more unaffordable for many, rents are rising and benefits are being cut. Unemployment is at staggering proportions, especially among young people.

The truth is being revealed across the world: that the system is run in the interests of those who own it. For governments, repaying debts to those who got wealthy from our work is more important than us receiving education or health care.

For us, the future won’t work so long as we depend on an economy based on the market with the private or state ownership of the means of living.

In our workplaces we co-operate. We don’t charge our colleagues for our time: we work together. It’s just that we work together for our employers. If we owned the land and all the places of work ourselves, we could work together to make all the things we need, without buying and selling and without an employing class.

The alternative is voting for parties that support the market system: parties that inevitably have to accept the existence of poverty and unemployment.

While we build a movement to bring about a better future, it’s important that we use trade unions to defend ourselves and get the best deal we possibly can under the present system. We must ensure democratic control of trade unions, and not follow charlatans and adventurers to glorious defeat. We should rely on ourselves, not leaders.

If we want to transcend the defensive position forced upon us by the pressures of the profit system then a vision beyond capitalism has to be on the agenda.

That future we call Socialism, a future where we would have common and democratic ownership of the resources of the world. A future that will work if the majority of us want it and are prepared to work for it using democratic struggle to create a world of common wealth.

– leaflet for TUC demonstration in London on 20 October. For copies to distribute, write to the Socialist Party, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN

50 Years Ago: ‘‘We Want Work’ (2013)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

The sight of a demonstration marching through London demanding work is enough to shake anyone out of his complacency. For some years since the end of the Second World War, workers have regarded relatively full employment as a right, something that was here to stay. How wrong they were! Unemployment in November last topped the half million mark and was the worst figure in that month for over 20 years. And now we witness workless Merseysiders shouting slogans and waving banners. A spectre is haunting us—the spectre of the 1930s, the lean and hungry depression years.

How pathetic it is that an old problem has evoked only the same old stale and worthless ideas for its solution. If we pause for a moment and listen to the spokesmen for the marchers, we shall hear them demanding government action to stop the flow of industry southwards and to force more factories to the depressed areas. At best this will only remove the sting from the hopelessness of the unemployed Merseysider. Like most convenient cut and dried theories, it conveniently ignores the basic cause of the problem and, as we might expect, it is a stock line of the average Labour Party supporter.

In our capitalist society, industry goes where there is profit to be found. Nearness to raw materials, short lines of communication, plentiful supplies of suitable labour, easy access to markets, availability of cheap fuel and power—these are some of the main factors which decide the location of a factory and cause it perhaps to be moved elsewhere later on.

It is true, of course, that governments have also tried to move industry to fulfil political or strategic requirements, and since the end of the war firms have been encouraged to take their factories to the ‘development areas.’ During a period of boom when markets are buoyant and expanding, many companies are quite willing to operate from the more remote areas such as South Wales, Scotland and the North. They have a sellers’ market and good profit margins. But what happens when the markets are tightening, goods are no longer easy to sell, and profit margins are shrinking? Why, production is curtailed, of course, and redundancy threatens.

(from article by Jack Law, Socialist Standard, January 1963)

Branch News (1961)

Party News from the May 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

May Day, 1961

May Day is being held on Sunday, May 7th. and the Party is arranging to hold as many meetings as possible to make more well known the case for Socialism. In London, at Hyde Park, in the afternoon Party members will gather to support the meeting and there will be three speakers. The platform will be in a prominent position on the grass. At 7.30 p.m. there will be an indoor rally at Denison House, Vauxhall Bridge Road (near Victoria Station). At both these meetings, the support of as many comrades and sympathisers as possible will add to the success of the demonstration.

In Glasgow, at Queen’s Park, meetings will be held, followed by an indoor Rally at St. Andrews Halls, Berkeley Street. So, Glasgow Comrades, turn out to support the meetings as the London Comrades will be doing—rain or shine. See that every effort is made to Demonstrate For Socialism.

Trafalgar Square, Easter Monday

Despite drenching rain and cold, grey skies, comrades of the Socialist Party of Great Britain dauntlessly and enthusiastically rallied round and showed their worth by turning out—at least fifty in number, to sell literature at the termination of the C.N.D. Easter march in Trafalgar Square. Some comrades were at the Albert Memorial and others at the Square. Their efforts resulted in the sale of literature to the extent of £13 14s. 44—350 Socialist Standards and 89 War pamphlets. In addition 5,000 Nuclear leaflets were distributed, resulting (up to the time of going to press) in ten enquiries for more information about the Party, and five requests, with Postal orders for War pamphlets. Among these enquiries were requests from Montrose in Scotland and Aberdare in Wales. This was a first-class effort on the part of Party comrades and proves that with enthusiasm and organisation—even the worst weather is not a bar to getting on with the job! One of the Paddington Comrades, in an effort to preserve the literature, wrapped individual copies in cellophane for protection. It is hoped also that the handbills (which were also distributed) advertising the April 19th meeting at St. Pancras Town Hall, will prove equally successful.


Coventry Group
Coventry members are still very active and are in contact with Birmingham Branch with a view to holding some joint outdoor meetings in Birmingham during the summer. The Group members regularly attend political meetings, take part in discussion and then sell Socialist Standards outside the meeting places. For a small group this is very good work and the Group members are hoping that their various contacts will, in the not too far distant future, enable them to form a Coventry Branch.


Central Branch
The Central Branch Secretary would very much like to hear from Comrades A. Bowley and C. J. Hutton. Correspondence has been returned from their addresses, without details of change.


Demonstration For Socialism
A full report of our successful meeting in St. Pancras will unfortunately have to beheld over until next month. We can nevertheless give the essential details. An audience of 400, plenty of questions and lively discussion, and a collection of over £25. All concerned have good reason to be pleased with such a fine result to their efforts — on such a miserably wet night too!

Phyllis Howard

Students in revolt (1987)

From the February 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nineteen sixty-eight was a year that made a deep impression on the French capitalist class. For them, its "second repetition" in 1986 must have come as a tragi-comedy (though for the Chirac government, it was decidedly a farce). Students, in the 70s and '80s, had been tagged (with relief?) as so many recycled zombies from the '50s: cynical. apolitical, self-centred, concerned solely with making it. Flattened out into a manageable crisis, in short. That the media (who either invented or borrowed the notion) were only busy making another of their identity-myths has since become all too evident.

But it was not clear on December 4 1986 (and much less so on November 27. when the first big student-organised demonstration took place in Paris). Considering how much hype was circulating about the apoliticism of the young, it comes as no surprise that the students themselves believed they were doing something apolitical. They wanted nothing to do with any of the official parties, yet they sought to affect the policy of a government.

This renunciation of theory can be explained as a resistance action (not at all distant in character from a trade-union struggle) that grew up around ruling-class efforts to cut corners on the cost of maintaining the country’s educational institutions. Students were actually lampooned (Nouvel Observateur, 5 November and 12-18 December 1986) for revolting in favour of the status quo. And it is quite true that in 1986 most of the reformist assumptions of the soixante-huitards were simply taken for granted by the lycéens and university students. They were, in effect, rising up in defence of a specific ideological configuration of capitalism, what we might call post-Gaullism. There is thus less irony than there may seem in the fact that an old Gaullist like Chirac should have spearheaded a Reagan-style. toothless-ideologue assault on the students’ position.

The issue was twofold: the Devaquet bill (which was moving toward the final stages of enactment) set out to reorganise (privatise) the university administration; the controversy centred around questions of degrees, admissions policy, tuition fees and school autonomy. The minister of national education, René Monory, sought to heighten the government's general de-nationalisation euphoria by introducing a parallel set of reform proposals (not a bill at that point) for the lycées. The most important effect of these proposals would have been to block future access to the universities for a significant percentage of lycéens. Hence, the impulse to contradict the government was a powerful and immediate one. Although the initiative was sparked by UNEF-ID. which was PS and trotskyist in its leanings, the student movement at both levels defined itself, on the whole, solely with reference to with drawing the reforms. (UNEF-ID was the coordinating committee among the university students).

And so it happened that a large body of "apolitical" opinion suddenly coalesced in opposition to the government, became transformed overnight into the Spectre of 1968. to the panic of an entire government; forced a delegate minister’s resignation (Devaquet’s); caused the Prime Minister (Chirac) to announce the withdrawal of the whole reform package; knocked the wind out of the sails of the liberal-conservative coalition's pointless efforts to turn back the clock and thus ingloriously aborted its nine-month état de grâce. And now everyone is talking about "politicisation" again.

How a paradox like this could have come about can best be explained by looking at the context in which the movement arose, which involves decisions about capital accumulation reaching all the way back to the Marshall Plan. Postwar investments in economic recovery and a policy of stimulating expansion in the "poor countries" at length bore their predictable fruit in the form of increased competition from the new accumulators in the developing countries. This generated a tendency towards capital flight into those same areas (where working-class organisations either did not yet exist, were liquidated or severely repressed so as to achieve a systematically under-valued labour-power). This was accompanied by the steady decline of reinvestment in basic heavy industry in the developed countries (with a few exceptions) throughout the 1970s, and it gave rise to an ever-increasing pressure on the developed countries' respective balances of trade.

This in turn ignited fears among the capitalist class in each of the developed countries for its own competitive standing in the world's markets, which has led to a period of relentless budget-chopping. As a result the capitalists currently raise the issue of whether the educational system they have been paying for is really serving its purpose to provide inexpensive (if not cheap) labour-power to keep their profits respectable. If not, then they must shake loose enough free capital from the educational budget (without of course having to retool industry, rethink their growth strategies or — horrors! — axe their precious military investments) to (supposedly) raise profits back up to an acceptable level — given that austerity (for everyone else) must be the order of the day. Throughout the developed world, the 1980s thus began to resound with public-spirited attacks on "outdated" educational systems.

Things were of course no different in France, even though it was a party of the left (the PS) that was commissioned to carry out the hatchet-job. Touted as the reincarnation of May 1968. the new regime of May 1981 fairly gushed with optimism and succeeded in blinding just about everybody, for a short while, to its patent inability to dictate terms to the international crisis. But the real mandate of the Mitterrand-Mauroy/Fabius team was identical (mutatis mutandis) to that of the Reagan administration, the Thatcher government and the Kohl regime. More importantly, however, nobody really seemed to care that a "socialist" party like the PS should be proposing to make a go of bringing back profits and jobs to French capitalism in the first place. The PS/PCF's état de grâce took only a year to hit the reefs, after which it rapidly disintegrated, as the realities of international competition took their remorseless revenge.

The Savary law reforming education thus came on the books in 1984; aspects of it affecting the private schools, however, caused as much of an uproar as Devaquet-Monory which presaged the PS's subsequent defeat at the polls. But the Savary law was itself only a symptom of the PS's underlying shift to the right (its abject caving in to the realities of capitalism), the premise being that the French educational system had become 'uncompetitive'. And so, après le déluge, the earlier Savary legislation still continues to apply by default.

What the "apolitical" students were therefore colliding with was none other than that dehumanising old fogey, the capitalist class itself, bent on extracting candlestick economies out of the school system merely to salvage its profits — even at the cost of flushing a large proportion of the high-school students out of the university system altogether. The students came very close indeed to realising that what were scraps for the workers are scraps for them too. They are all future workers in the end. or most of them are, and the fact that the lycéens had the support and encouragement of their parents indicates another burst of class struggle was in the making. Worry over the prospect of this was one of the principal factors which ultimately triggered the whole chain of events leading Chirac to the microphone to announce the withdrawal of the reforms.

On the other hand, any inkling that life is actually possible — and good — outside the wages system was conspicuously absent from this revolt of the students: for all their rejection of the system's catalogue of evils, their ideas nevertheless remained imprisoned within it. They may hopefully take the opportunity they have created for themselves to do some deeper and more independent thinking on the system's structural tendency to generate emergencies: they at least got off to a good start.

Failing this. 1986 will not turn out to have been so different from 1968 as they thought it was.

Ron Elbert (Paris)

An Echo of the Commune. (1908)

From the July 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Federation of the Seine. S.F.I.O., (French section of the Workers’ International), had issued its annual call to the Paris comrades to fall in and march in procession before the historic wall of Pere Lachaise Cemetery, where in May, 1871, many communard prisoners were shot and buried. The occasion was to be the more interesting because a memorial tablet upon the wall itself, and a monument upon the grave of Eugène Pottier, the writer of our song, the “Internationale,” were to be unveiled, and appropriate addresses delivered.

Arriving rather late at the cemetery, we found the procession slowly coming out and the avenue along which it was passing closely walled in by a line of Republican Guards infantry assisted by numerous policemen. These guardsmen, by the way (cavalry and infantry), are no easy-going two year conscripts, but are picked professional soldiers, who are maintained for the express purpose of providing a perpetual menace to the Parisian working class.

Trying another avenue by which to find the tail-end of the procession, we, with many others, found our way blocked by squads of policemen, and so decided to visit other parts of the famous cemetery, hoping to get access to the historic wall later when the crowd should have left.

But what was our surprise to find shortly, a party of soldiers, rifle on shoulder, step down from among the tombs and press us down the avenue towards the main entrance. And as we proceeded the folk gathered in the avenue bordered by the resting-places of famous men — artists, poets, statesmen, generals; while from between the tombs on either side came the rifle, cartridge-pouch, uniform, and flesh and blood within it that make up the soldier — hundreds of him. They were clearing the cemetery. Passing out and walking a few streets from the cemetery we saw a troop of Guards cavalry pass. They have no barracks in the quarter, neither do they mount guard at any public building there. Their presence could have but one meaning, namely, to remind the Parisian working class of the murderous powers at the disposal of the master class. And, indeed, what menace was there not in these rifles, swords, and trampling hoofs? What more was needed to call to mind the bloody week of May, '71, when some 35,000 men, women, and children of the working class were massacred by the army, which had been released by the German Government for that purpose?

Indeed must the master class feel its position shaky that it should think necessary such exhibitions of force! Meanwhile, for us, do not history and passing events reveal the despotic and murderous characteristics necessarily provoked in a master class? Yes! beyond all question. And therefore we must order our conduct, our teaching, and our organisation in conformity with the knowledge so acquired.

J. H. Halls

Aldermaston Marchers (1960)

From the June 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Easter Sunday and we are standing at the roadside between London Airport and Hounslow. Standing in spring sunshine edged by a cold wind blowing across the subtopia of Hounslow Heath. The traffic is humming along in unending stream, intent upon its own Eastertide massacre.

Small, expectant crowds gather, staring down the road to Aldermaston. Suddenly, the marchers appear, black banners tossing in the wind. They have the appropriate, pilgrimage atmosphere, with people falling in and out of the column, adding to the Indian contingent a lot of white faces and mixing young females with the section which, by its banner proclaiming “Eton Boys,” would have us believe that the famous school is in revolt. It is these youngsters who catch the eye. Are their funny hats, weird hairstyles and beards a substitute for argument? Or colourful manifestations of sincerity? Their political development seems to be youthfully low.

Yet there is some comfort in this march. After the barren years of the delinquents, large numbers of young people seem to be getting active in a movement of protest against a social problem. Comfort, yes. How much?

Illustration from the original article.

The marchers are a mixed bunch, ranging from Communists to Unitarians, but all united (at least on the surface) against nuclear weapons. We should remember that “Ban the Bomb!" is only the latest cry of the Communists, who have shouted their way from demands for “Second Front Now!" to ”Peace!" Anyway, they are only opposed to nuclear weapons this side of a line through Eastern Europe. Of the others, pacifist groups like the Quakers have at least stated an opposition to all wars. We are left with those who are more concerned with the Bomb than with war itself.

To these we say, simply and clearly: H-Bombs or blunderbusses, or any other weapons, are the expression of technical social skill manifested in the field of war. Wars are caused by the conflict between capitalist groups over raw materials, markets, zones of influence and profit. Get rid of capitalist society and we have rooted out the cause of war. Then social skills can be applied to society's benefit instead of to its destruction.

For years, Socialists have been urged to neglect the case for a new society and join the general clamour against some current evil. This has been the argument of, among others, the tail end of the pro-Boer left wingers, the United Free lrelanders, the supporters of Colonial Freedom, the pro-Soviet-anti-Fascist groups and a host of movements for simple Peace and Plenty. In I960, after the De Valeras, the Nkrumahs and the Verwoerds, we can see how shallow were the arguments for these causes. The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament will go the way of the rest.

For demonstrations, of course, are nothing new. The over-40's will remember the many pre-war occasions, their slogans fierce and denouncing compared to the Aldermaston youngsters piping, "We ain't gonna study war no more!” The police were more numerous in the 20's and 30's, now, they follow the anti-nuclear marchers in a motor coach. But for all the changes, the reformist arguments are the same.

And will these marchers go the way of the pre-war demonstrators? Will they become bemused by full employment, settle down with a little car, a little house and a large mortgage? Become humdrum ratepayers, respectfully voting for the respectable party? We have seen it all before.

The need for Socialist propaganda is greater than ever, to urge people to look deeply into the terrible problems of capitalist society, deeper than the slogans and the banners. As they swing away down the road, that is the thought the Aldermaston marchers leave with, at any rate, one of their observers.

Jack Law

The Raunds and Leicester Marches. (1905)

Editorial from the July 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The striking bootmakers of Raunds have marched into London and have marched out again, and, thanks to the fine weather experienced, the astuteness of the Liberal Party politicians en route (who tried, with considerable success, to make party hay while the sun shone) and the fact that the capitalist press had no other sensation to write up at the moment, they seem to have had a moderately good time.

Encouraged by their example, 500 unemployed workers set out from Leicester on a similar pilgrimage. But their time was not so happily chosen, and their numbers were unwieldy. So that they were reduced to sleeping on straw after marching in rain.

That the action of both parties enlisted a good deal of public sympathy at the moment is clear. But public sympathy butters few parsnips, and already the historic marches are among the faint memories of those districts that were covered, while outside of them they have faded from most recollections.

The Conditions of Successful Demonstrations

What good purpose, from the point of view of the working-class, was served, cannot be clearly seen. Had the men set out in the full knowledge that the capitalists of London had interests in no way differing from the capitalists of Raunds or Leicester; had they commenced with no delusions on the score of the reception they would get at the hands of the representatives of the master-class in the House of Commons and Buckingham and Lambeth Palaces; had they understood that their position was the inevitable result of the private ownership of the means of life; and had their march therefore been frankly a demonstration of class-conscious workers in revolt with the object of stirring their class to revolt also, good work would have been accomplished. But to set out ignorant of their class position, and under the impression that if they were very peaceful and law-abiding and abstemious, and sang their grace before meals with becoming reverence, the capitalist-class would help them, as they appear to have done, was a folly that will bear fruit of disappointment and despondency for themselves; while by accepting the interested and much advertised hospitality of their enemies of the Liberal Party, the Raunds men have contributed materially to the confusion of their class, whose discriminating powers may not unnaturally be unequal to the task of grappling with the problem of why the Liberal Party, who helped the workers of Raunds, are not the friends, but the enemies of the workers of Raunds.

Pioneers of Confusion

How far the Raunds leader, Mr. Gribble of the S.D.F. (whose action, by the way, the S.D.F. made many pathetic attempts to exploit for their own party purposes with equally pathetic results), understood the dangers of the movement to the working-class whose interests he ostensibly serves, we do not pretend to know. Having undertaken the task of organising the march he had, of course, to find lodgment and food for the men, but if he had the knowledge that is claimed to be in the possession of all members of the S.D.F., he must have known in the first place that the appeal to capitalism in London would be as profitless as the appeal to capitalism in Raunds had been, and he must have seen in the second place how inevitably the class struggle would be obscured by apparent fraternisation with the representatives of the capitalist-class in the Liberal Party.

The Leicester leader, Mr. Sherriff, of the I.L.P. (whose action, by the way, the I.L.P. also made pathetic attempts to exploit for their own party purposes), seems to have endeavoured to make his contingent's march a demonstration in support of the Government's "Unemployed" Bill, which Mr. Burns says, and for once says rightly, is not worth crossing the street for, let alone tramping a hundred miles to support.  And Mr. Sherriff should have known that under present conditions any “Unemployed" Bill must be a capitalist dodge to rid themselves of responsibility while endeavouring to convey the idea that they accepted it and were prepared to bear the burden of it.

The Position of the S.P.G.B. 

We are far from desirous of creating the impression that we are out of sympathy with class manifestations of the working-class. The Socialist Party of Great Britain is a working-class party; and is therefore concerned to do everything possible to arouse the class it represents from indifference into organised action against the present form of industrial organisation to which can be traced the evils under which the workers suffer to-day, But we well know that no working-dam manifestation can he effective, no successful conflict with capitalism can be entered into except it be based upon a clear understanding of the class position. Upon this basis alone can be built the fighting organisations, political and industrial, of the working-class which by concentrating upon the conquest of political power and the substitution of the common ownership and control of the means of life for the present private ownership thereof, shall achieve the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the Socialist Republic. And it is because we know, what apparently the Raunds and Leicester men did not know, that nothing short of Socialism can materially affect the condition of the workers, and because we know that all attempts to secure a betterment in working-class conditions that do not take full cognisance, and are not made in the full knowledge of this fact, are foredoomed to failure, and must tend to retard rather than to expedite the realization of Socialism, that we deprecate the actions of the persons responsible for the Raunds and Leicester marches.

A. J. M. Gray

Socialists and the "October" Revolution (1968)

Party News from the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists were out in force to sell genuine Socialist anti-war literature at the pro-Vietcong, and thus pro-war, demonstration held in London on Sunday 27 October, about which the press spread such hair-raising scare stories.

On the Friday evening, when students of the London School of Economics occupied college buildings to turn them into a sanctuary for the demonstrators, Socialists (including two who were LSE students) were able to hold an impromptu meeting and sell a few dozen socialist standards. A photograph appeared in Saturday’s Morning Star in which one of our members selling this journal could clearly be seen.

At 12.30 on Sunday, thirty or so Socialists were at Charing Cross to get ready to sell literature to the demonstrators as they marched to Hyde Park (we stayed well away from Grosvenor Square and the hooligans). Of course, as with CND, we did not join the march but sold literature to the marchers and by-standers. The cover of the October Socialist Standard can have left no one in doubt as to our position: VIETCONG. NO! MAO, NO! CHE, NO! SOCIALISM, YES! Up to 600 copies were sold in what turned out to be a very successful afternoon’s socialist activity.

May Day Musings: The Tragedy of Demonstrations (1936)

From the May 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

On May 1st thousands of workers walk in procession and gather round platforms to listen to fiery speeches and pass idle and fruitless resolutions on questions of the day. For many years now these May Day demonstrations have been held, and the net result of them all is nil, as far as helping the workers out of their difficulties is concerned.

Like most things, whilst they were new they called forth great enthusiasm, but that was long ago. In pre-war days they were taken seriously, and budding Labour leaders felt that if they wished to make a mark they must appear prominently in these gatherings. Those were the days before Labour Parties had taken a hand in government. Nowadays “statesmanship " fills up the time of the former rebels, to the almost complete exclusion of popular demonstrations. In other words, the labour machine is now so effective that it no longer needs to depend on these demonstrations to the extent that it used to do.

Each year at May Day demonstrations there is a star question of temporary importance, about which the speakers lash themselves into a fury. In pre-war days Ireland and India frequently occupied first place. Since the war Russia, the Means Test and Fascism have competed for first place. This year repression in Germany and Italy will take an important place and the orators will doubtless shed a tear for Ethiopia. It is interesting to record, as an example of the futility of mere protests, that exactly 50 years ago, after eight years of savage repression of the workers' organisations in Germany, the Reichstag, despite the protests, extended the anti-Socialist law for a further two years. Jew-baiting and the repression of labour agitation were as strong in Germany then as now, so little do times change as long as the mass of the people fail to understand Socialism and its implications. Italy, too, in the 'nineties of last century, passed through a period which exhibited almost every feature repeated since the war under Mussolini.

Fundamentally, the speakers on May Day are mainly concerned with abstract questions of justice or detailed questions of hours and conditions of labour in particular industries. It is for this reason that people of great diversity of political opinion can gather together on the same platform, and this is also reflected in the conflicting political views of the audiences that unite to cheer the speakers. In pre-war days the writer has seen Cecil Chesterton, Victor Grayson, an Indian Nationalist, an Irish Home Ruler, and other speakers expressing sectional viewpoints, all uniting to pass the resolution of the day—a protest against something or other that was about as useful as appealing to the sky to cease raining.

It is for this reason, the failure to obtain any real alteration, that the popularity of May Day is waning. But the empty satisfaction of registering a mere protest will still draw large crowds to these and similar demonstrations.

Enthusiasm is an excellent and valuable thing when rightly applied, but when it is wasted in fruitless directions it only leads to disheartenment and apathy. It is partly on this account that we criticise the May Day demonstrations, and not with any desire to jeer at the genuine enthusiasm of misinformed workers. To watch the serried ranks of bannered processions marching by and to realise that it is but the enthusiasm of a day is heartbreaking to those who have witnessed them for years.

Many of those who in times gone by loudly proclaimed the solidarity of labour from May Day platforms were afterwards found either on recruiting platforms or in other ways supporting the war of 1914-1918. Doubtless any future war will show many who are now leading the processions following a similar course. Then it was resistance to the German attack on freedom and the plight of small nations. To-morrow it will probably be the same, only with a different name—possibly Fascism and Ethiopia in place of Prussianism and Belgium.

But back of it all there is a gleam of hope. One day the processions that pass will be different. The marchers will be bent on ending the system that exploits them and plunges them into wars, for they will understand the real cause of their troubles and the only way to end them.

Gilmac.

Marching along together (1985)

From the May 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

With thousands of others I marched behind my union banner in London last March against wage cuts and rate capping. As always, it was a field-day for the Left Wing. Every variety and type of hole-and-corner reformer: Anti-Blood Sports. Free Abortion on Demand, Gays, Lesbians, Vegetarians - you name it, they were there. Greenham Common Women, CND, Support the Miners and Keep Music Live. The road was littered with thousands of leaflets. Two in particular caught my attention.

The first was issued by the Trades Union Alliance of the Workers Revolutionary Party and wanted the TUC to call a General Strike to fight rate capping. Seeing that the GLC has pulled the rug from under their feet by setting a rate the whole stunt became even sillier, but the idea that the TUC would call a General Strike against rate capping - or for anything else - is ludicrous. The TUC cannot call a strike anyhow. It is difficult to know why the WRP think that payment of local rates is a working-class issue, since it mainly concerns local businesses. The poverty of the working class is not caused by high rates but low wages. If rates go down, wages follow. But the most comical conclusion of the WRP is the proposal to form community councils, or soviets, as the basis of a Workers' Revolutionary Government. It is unbelievable that 68 years after the soviet "experiment" - which failed to produce anything but state capitalism, with some of the harshest conditions and lowest wages in Europe a political party still talks about soviets to establish a Revolutionary Workers' Government. In 1985 the government is that party which gains the most seats at an election. This gives it control of the machinery of government, which is political power. The notion that a party can seize power by a minority revolt, using Leninist tactics, is ridiculous. There is no analogy whatever between Britain in 1985 and Russia in 1917. The Workers' Revolutionary Party is living in a cloud- cuckoo-land of street battles for soviets (which is only Russian for councils anyway).

It is tragic to see during such demonstrations the number of sincere, enthusiastic young people deluded by this pathetic rubbish. Fortunately there is not the slightest likelihood of any local soviets being formed. If they were and they staged their illegal, unconstitutional revolts, they would be cut down like chaff. There is no socialism without a majority of socialists, and it can only be established by a democratic route. What the WRP mean by a Workers' Revolutionary Government they do not say. Socialism will not be a workers' government, but a classless society.

This brings us neatly onto the next leaflet, from the Holborn and St. Pancras Miners' Support Group which states that the 1984/5 NUM strike "ended amid anger and heart-rending tears . . not for the £5.000 to £10,000 every striking miner had invested in this great struggle" but for the "betrayal" of thousands of miners by "the snivelling reptile Bill Sirs; David Basnett; Murray and Chapple . . . these pea-brained Quislings now kneeling in the House of Lords"

Obviously the Miners' Support Group of St. Pancras has not learnt the lesson of this strike. The recipe for a successful strike (bearing in mind that the best strikes are those that never happen), would include these elements:

First, consider very carefully whether conditions are favourable. Fifty million tons of coal stockpiled was no recommendation for the miners to strike. Then strike only after a completely democratic ballot has demonstrated solid support. Keep the strike firmly in the hands of union members with decisions to continue or return by majority ballot only. Give no blank cheques to leaders. Do not be led astray by resolutions and cheers at Trade Union Congresses.

For the St. Pancras Miners' Support Group to complain after about fifty or sixty years of betrayals by leaders, from the General Strike onwards, shows how little they have learned. It is no use denouncing "snivelling reptiles" of leaders if members put them there and fail to control them.

Horatio.

Ballot-Box or Baton? (1922)

From the April 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

An "Unemployed Demonstration" is one of the most saddening spectacles that civilisation can provide. Most of the industrial towns have their daily débâcle in front of the Union, but the futility of their actions does not seem to strike the demonstrators; in fact, all that seems to strike them is the policeman's baton. The humanitarian must turn aside in pity at the sight of a few hundred, or maybe thousand, starving and physically weakened individuals parading their distress and wretchedness up and down the streets, to be eventually sent scampering down back streets and alleys at the word of command from a police inspector. If only it were an equal combat, one would not feel its injustice quite so much. But there you have it. The master class takes the best from amongst the working class, feeds them and clothes them, strengthens them physically, enslaves them mentally by exercise and military discipline, and uses them to protect its property against the turbulence of the dispossessed. Indeed, so imbued with Capitalist notions are these working-class protectors of their masters' property that the authorities do not even fear that they will shirk the task of clubbing their mates and fellow-townspeople into obedience. This was exemplified a little while back, when Scotch soldiers were detailed to quell disturbances in Glasgow! As for the demonstrators, they play into Master's hands in just the right fashion. They don't know anything about the Capitalist wirepullers but "Here's a policeman; let's heave a brick at him!" Thus we get the working class busy fighting each other and the Capitalist maintaining his hold on the wealth that he steals from them!

Yet the remedy is so simple, and the method more simple still. The cause of poverty is the ownership of the means and instruments of wealth production by the Capitalist Class. The remedy, therefore, is to dispossess that class of its ownership. It maintains its ownership by virtue of its political control. Its economic domination would cease the moment that the working class captured the political machinery that sends the police and the soldiers against them. Curiously enough, the working class never seem to discover that it is they who gratuitously give the Capitalist Class the power to enslave them every time they go to the ballot-box! It is obvious, then, that the method of recapturing political control is going back to the ballot-box and voting for Socialism! It doesn't hurt as much as a whack on the head from a baton, anyway!

Stanley H. Steele

Are we armchair socialists? (1966)

From the September 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

The charge is one of indifference, of detachment, of sectarianism. of refusing to join the blood-and-earth struggles for the betterment, the dignity and the survival of the human race. It is, in other words, a charge of being talkers, theorists—armchair Socialists.

We plead not guilty.

We have only one witness to call and that is History, whether it is the history of our early days or of more recent times.

During our sixty-odd years of life, the Socialist Party of Great Britain has seen two World Wars and many other periods when politics was a violent business. At such times, if we had truly been armchair theorists, we could have packed up our platforms, forgotten all had we ever said about capitalism and Socialism and quietly slunk away.

In fact, we intensified our activity. In wartime we stood out against the official propaganda. We exposed the lies which were being used to persuade British workers to take arms against their brothers abroad. Our members went to gaol rather than join in the slaughter. More than once our speakers were assaulted, our meetings broken up. In London's Hyde Park, during the Second World War, we spoke out for Socialism with anti-aircraft guns banging away across the grass; often ours was the only meeting there at such times.

In fact, whatever restriction—official or unofficial—we have met we have persisted in our propaganda and our attitude has never wavered. This can hardly be described as politics from the armchair; there were no soft seats in Wormwood Scrubs, nor in the Serpentine.

If there is any excitement in the politics of the power-hungry parties, then we have none of it. There are no throngs, no massive marches for us. If we ever came out on to a balcony the only living things to mark our presence there would be the pigeons. As far as excitement and glamour of that sort is concerned, we live a politically abstemious life.

In case anyone is looking for it, there is a massive compensation for this. The politicians who feed on glamour and public acclaim may find it an agreeable diet, but there is a bill to pay for it: they must have a hard time convincing themselves that their theories are in any way relevant to modern society. Perhaps there is glamour in appearing at the door of Number Ten to announce that your policy is in ruins. Perhaps there is excitement in getting up in the House and promoting something which is in direct contradiction to what you have always said you stood for. This may suit some all-too-famous temperaments. But even they must wonder, in the wee small hours, at the meaning of self-respect.

This is a problem which Socialists do not have. We have never had to go back on our policy, we have never had to betray our principles, we have never had to compromise. Our analysis of capitalism remains valid. The capitalist social system still produces a mass of terrible problems; human beings still suffer, are still deprived, suppressed, degraded and killed—because of capitalism. And the solution to it all is, still, the setting up of a Socialist commonwealth.

To this, to say it, to read it or hear it, may not quicken the heart beat. But the facts, the facts of History and the evidence of the world we live, say that it is correct and in that there is more satisfaction—more inspiration even—than all the mass rallies and the demonstrations of the vote-catching political parties.

Perhaps this seems smug. There are many protest movements which have no formal connection with the big parties. although in fact most of them in the end come down to an attempt at influencing the policies of one of the two parties which are likely to get into power. We have no part in these protests. Although we refused to fight in the 1914/18 War, we did not join the demonstrations against the war. (Apart from anything else, we knew that many of the demonstrators would soon be enthusiastically rolling on their puttees. And in 1939 the political descendants of those 1914 demonstrators were gathering again in Trafalgar Square—but this time they were in favour of war.)

We did not join the Hunger Marchers, nor the anti-fascists, nor the CND, nor the Freedom From Hunger demonstrators. Of course, we have left out a lot of other protests which are, or have been, popular—Second Front Now, Movement For Colonial Freedom, Victory for the Vietcong. If we brought them into the argument we might be facing another charge; of selecting our evidence.

Why didn't we join? First, we must be clear that we do not stand aloof from lack of sympathy with the motives which may lurk somewhere in the depths of the protests. We, too, are affected by capitalism, and we do not like it. Our members were out of work and hungry in the Thirties. We didn't relish the prospect of a dictatorship. The Bomb would wipe us out along with the rest. We are moved and indignant when we see photographs of starving children.

We don't join for the simple reason that the demonstrations are a waste of time. The first thing which is clear is that, after decades of protest about the effects of capitalism, the system goes on throwing up the very problems which the protest industry exists on. In all this time, a few problems may have been suppressed—although the demonstrators would have a hard job to prove that they were responsible for this—but in their place more have appeared.

Anti-Fascist protests have not made democracy any more secure—especially as many of the protesters were themselves anything but democrats. Pacifist marches have not removed war. After some ten years of CND, nuclear weapons are spreading all over the world and in this country the government of which unilateralists once had such high hopes has cooly gone back on all it ever said about abandoning the independent British Bomb.

Hunger, disease, poverty, fear, crime—capitalism, which can produce scarcity in the essentials of life, has them all in abundance. The demonstrators have marched and shouted, scuffled with the police, shown up in court and paid their fines. The things they protested about are still there, waiting for the next outburst. These problems have seen off many generations of protesters, some of whom have grown old and become part of the Establishment against which the protests break their fists.

It is impossible to separate the problems of capitalism from the system itself. Capitalism cannot exist without war. It cannot function unless the mass of its people are condemned to live in poverty. It is a system without a system—an anarchic society which will not be planned or controlled. It inexorably produces glaring anomalies and contradictions. It has millions of people starving while it destroys the food which would keep them alive. It wastes a huge part of its knowledge and resources on destruction, while it admits that it desperately needs to create and construct. It condemns its people to compete against each other when they need, and long, to co-operate.

The only effective protest against the effects of capitalism is to protest against the system itself. How to do this? What keeps capitalism there? The fact is that capitalism's people themselves keep the system in existence. Although they may hate and fear what it does to their lives, they give it their unwavering support. When they think about it, they decide that capitalism is the best of all possible societies; they work for it year in and year out and every so often, when called upon to do so, they give capitalism's political figure-heads another lease of power to continue running society in the interests of a small minority of parasites.

There is only one way in which this can be changed. To strike at the ideas which keep capitalism in existence is to strike at its heart. But we cannot strike at those ideas by suggesting that capitalism can be altered so that it need not produce the problems which are in fact inherent in it. We do not, for example, strike at them by complaining about nuclear weapons while we support a political party standing for the social system which has bred those weapons. We do not, in other words, strike at capitalism's heart by compromising and by confusing the issue.

For the issue is plain. We can have capitalism, with its problems and its never-ending parade of protests. Or we can build a new society in which men stand equally about the world's wealth—a society of freedom and dignity. We can have capitalism or Socialism.

But we won't have Socialism by urging people to keep up their support for capitalism. We won't have it by protesting that capitalism can be tamed by the right reforms, or by the right leaders, or by the right sort of demonstration. All of these have been tried and in the end it has been capitalism which has done the taming.

It is because the demonstrators are confused and contradictory that Socialists will not join them. This does not remove us from the struggle; we are committed to attack capitalism at its roots—to attack the ideas which feed and nurture the system. We stand—and we protest and we demonstrate—for the new, better, saner world.

And we who are called Armchair Socialists will not rest until we have got it.

Ivan 

Look back, move forward

Cross-posted from the Socialism Or Your Money Back blog

Two things are utterly predictable whenever there is a mass protest, or a demonstration of significant size, and the anti-cuts demonstration organised by the TUC on 26 March was no exception. The first is that the police will do their best to turn it into a riot and to intimidate all present with violence. The second is that, regardless of police actions, most people will come away with a new sense of purpose and meaning in their lives – awake and invigorated, full of the collective joy that spontaneously arises when human beings get together to show their strength of feeling or merely their urge for festivity. After many decades of a relatively lonely and boring struggle to survive, a struggle that those in power have faithfully promised us will get worse in the coming years, people will have come home on 26 March at the least relieved that "I'm not alone".

That's the positive side. Unfortunately, with the decline of the traditional left and trade unions in this country and around the world, and the accompanying lack of faith in democracy and political parties, it's hard to know what exactly to do with those feelings – how to transform a feeling of solidarity and commitment to opposition into something that will last, something capable of delivering long-term, lasting change for the better.

That lack of faith is not just confined to the mass of people who are not ordinarily involved in politics. It is sometimes declared to be a positive thing from those committed to radical change. The thinking is that the traditional political parties and trade unions and so on have held us back – their ideas have been tried and failed and defeated, and their hierarchical structures and outmoded ideas are boring and not fit for purpose. Instead, we are to celebrate spontaneity and freedom – to get together in small groups and do exactly whatever we want.

There is something to the argument, but it has lost its appeal in the face of a major attack from the ruling class and its representatives who control the state machine. An extremely serious economic crisis that started with the banks has changed the game. The rich were rescued by huge state bail-outs. The costs of the crisis were shifted instead to the state – and the state intends to shift the burden to us, by slashing our jobs, pensions, social services, benefits, and so on. The attack is organised and centralised – shouldn't the opposition be too?

There are no easy answers to these questions, and we don't pretend there are. But perhaps it's time to hear once again a voice that has been marginalised for over a century. From the formation of the Labour party in 1906, and then the Russian revolution in 1917, socialism has come to mean either state management of welfare capitalism, or state dictatorship over a centralised economy. But these rightly discredited ideas marginalised a previously existing conception that it might be worth reviving. The word socialism was already beginning to lose its original meaning by 1894, which caused William Morris, one of the Victorian age's greatest polymaths, to say:

"I will say what I mean by being a Socialist, since I am told that the word no longer expresses definitely and with certainty what it did ten years ago. Well, what I mean by Socialism is a condition of society in which there should be neither rich nor poor, neither master nor master's man, neither idle nor overworked, neither brain-sick brain workers, nor heart-sick hand workers, in a word, in which all men would be living in equality of condition, and would manage their affairs unwastefully, and with the full consciousness that harm to one would mean harm to all—the realization at last of the meaning of the word COMMONWEALTH."

The 20th century did its best to let the curtain fall for ever on this vision of socialism, but a small number of dedicated activists have done their best to keep it alive. We in the Socialist Party count ourselves among their number. We say that it is right that people have lost faith in traditional politics – it has proved by its actions what it is all about. But to say that therefore we must give up on a vision of the future, and an organised commitment to attaining it, is to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The inspiring struggles for democracy and against austerity we are seeing emerging around the world have a common cause – they are the divided and isolated battles of workers against the relatively united attack of the world's ruling class in its attempt to resolve its economic crisis. We need to follow the ruling-class example – come together and organise in order to resolve the crisis in our way. That is, by organising a political party dedicated to taking state power out of the hands of the ruling class, and to establishing socialism. And given the extremely serious nature of the ecological catastrophe we are all facing, this is not just a nice idea. Increasingly, it's a matter of survival.

Stuart Watkins

Hyde Park and human nature (2003)

From the March 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Bliss was in that dawn to be alive” was how Wordsworth described, in his Prelude, the death of the Ancien Régime in 18th century revolutionary France. He was expressing a popular held belief that his was the dawn of a new age and the birth of an era that would see the overthrow of tyranny and oppression throughout Europe. Many of the million-plus demonstrators on the 15 February anti-war demo in London clearly were feeling similar sentiments after their many hours long march to Hyde Park on a bitterly cold and damp day. People power, it was widely hoped, would deprive Tony Blair of the war he craved.

To the right of us SPGBers at the entrance to Hyde Park (we had leafleted the demo since the multitudes had been gathering at Embankment six hours earlier) an SWPer, megaphone to lips, optimistically announced to the thousands upon thousands pouring through the main gates that two million had turned up to march to Hyde Park and that 140,000 had marched on Glasgow and, more, that three million thronged the streets of Rome. Each proclamation was greeted with a roar from the crowd, perhaps on a par with the cheers that greeted the holding aloft of the severed heads of Louis XVI and co. And again his claim that “we” could bring down the Blair government brought another roar and a tidal wave of dancing banners and placards.

Tired, cold, their bladders bursting, their banners held high and often proclaiming their allegiance to the thousands of groups who had turned up, most were already aware that they were taken part in the biggest demonstration in British political history and that something – maybe not yet defined – was happening.

The once unheard of Stop the War Coalition had had its ranks swelled with 400 affiliated organisations ranging from CND and the Socialist Alliance to Artists Against the War and the Colombia Solidarity Campaign. Palestinian flags waved beside a colourful and intricate banner proclaiming the presence of the Sex Workers Union and Class War flags could be found amidst a thousand home made placards. The young, elderly and infirm, people from all walks of life were on the march determined to show the masters of war that any coming conflict would not be fought in their name. The political parties and organisations aside, this was a demonstration at which the common people were expressing their anger.

It was difficult not to feel proud to witness this demo, to gain comfort from the fact that people were actually asking us for leaflets, hoping they could learn more about the madness at which they were protesting and to ponder whether or not the masses were at last waking up from their state-induced sleep; for few we encountered could not locate the Iraqi crisis in a simple political and economic context – namely, that Bush and Blair were intent on invading Iraq with no other desire than to secure the world's second largest oil reserves. Even the neo-nazis of the BNP, arch enemies of ''the left'' and the scourge of a thousand Moslem communities, and previously forewarned that they were not welcome, had a presence and were claiming this would be a war for oil – well, there's opportunists on every demo!

As we left Hyde Park at 5.30pm, our stock of 15,000 leaflets depleted and darkness rapidly falling, we passed thousands still marching, including a huge Welsh contingent. Clearly fatigued, they walked at a pace those who had preceded them hours earlier would have envied, intent on reaching their destination even if the day's speakers had departed, their platitudes to be read in the Sunday broadsheets. They had come this far and were not going to be deterred by the fact that the demo was at an end.

It would be easy to dismiss this demonstration as a mass gathering of well-meaning reformists, some of whom would happily give Blair their backing for the carpet bombing of Iraq once the contentious “second UN Resolution” was secured. Similarly, it would be simple to point to the immense single-issue focus of many of the demonstrators and to observe that they were unaware that to end war we must first end capitalism. However, at a time when British elections are attracting their lowest turnouts since records began and the mass media regularly speak of the apathy of “Joe Public”, this was Joe Public marching and with no requirement for anyone to define their politics other than to vote with their feet against yet another war in which blood and oil will again be weighed on the scales of profit.

Undoubtedly a march attended by one million-plus in London does not constitute a mass movement bent on charge any more than the massive demonstration in Genoa in July of 2001 signalled the death knell for capitalism And whilst this was clearly no rallying call to socialism, we can at least draw comfort from the fact that the workers cannot now be dismissed as totally apathetic and that people, as we have always maintained, can unite in common cause; that humans are at their best and will work together, when faced with the worst.

Whilst out on the streets promoting the case for socialism, we often encounter jibes from experts on human nature to the effect that “humans are selfish and aggressive and not capable of co-operating in their own interests'. In London on 15 February, one million workers walked together peacefully, and as one, and in opposition to, aggression. Around the world, from New York to Brussels and from Kiev to Sydney, demonstrators took to the streets in their tens and hundreds of thousands in 600 cities to protest their disapproval of the proposed killing of thousands.

What was that about Human Nature?

John Bissett