Lewisham and free speech (1977)

From the September 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The nineteen thirties were resurrected on 13th August, when the fascist National Front held a march through Lewisham in south London. This area was selected by them because it has a high proportion of black people. The march was claimed to be a protest against mugging, and carried placards which said: “80 per cent of muggers are black, 85 per cent of victims are white”. Implication obvious.

Opposition to the march was organized by the Socialist Workers’ Party, and the result was an afternoon of violence with 214 arrests and 110 people taken to hospital. There was further violence in Birmingham, where the National Front had a candidate in a by-election, and several indiscriminate attacks in London. The SPGB was among the objects of it. Though we oppose both the National Front and the Socialist Workers’ Party and condemn everything which happened in Lewisham, the front window of our premises was smashed by a brick on 16th August.

The question raised is of democracy. Should the National Front be tolerated when they are preaching intolerance? Why cede free speech to them when everything known about them indicates that their aim is to suppress free speech? In the same terms, is there any justification for the Socialist Workers’ Party trying to prevent forcibly the expression of views they object to? The word “fascist” is both definite and indefinite; in the early ’thirties the Communist Party used “social fascist” as a self-granted licence to break up any opponent party’s meetings, and the SWP and its predecessor International Socialists have done the same.

The SWP produced two curious arguments. First, Paul Foot was quoted in The Times (15th August) as saying 98 per cent. of his party are against violence. Since the SWP now claim 4,500 members, this means only 90 support violence and 4.400 are against it. In a democratically-run party a minority accepts the view of the majority. Why are not these 90 expelled from the party? Second, Duncan Hallas said on TV (18th August) the National Front is outside the rules because “it is not a political party”. That is absurd. A political party is a group which aims to win or participate in control of the state machine, and that is the nature of the NF.

The SPGB’s attitude is quite clear. We are against violence as a political means because it denies democracy; we are for the expression of views, however pernicious they are considered to be. The way to defeat the National Front is to expose its policies fully (most of its supporters either do not know or do not understand them). The SWP and others play into its hands by seeking to make superior force the issue. It is not a matter of “should be allowed”. That means, again, some forcibly superior body — in this case the government — deciding what views may or may not be expressed. Most people take it as a question of “right” and “wrong”, but governments do not act on ethics.

The legal “rights” of free speech, publication, assembly and voting are permissions given by the state for historically or immediately practical reasons. They can be withdrawn, as has happened many times and is suggested now; The Times had an editorial on 15th August saying the citizens should not mind losing “these nebulous rights” in the interests of public order. Socialists understand the value of these facilities which capitalism has to allow, and at the same time see them in perspective. We link democracy with Socialism, as an essential of the means for a democratic society to be established.

Democracy depends on knowledge, and that is why we are for all views being expressed, questioned and debated. We do not, however, join with non-Socialists to demand legal rights for them as a stepping-stone to run capitalism. Under existing conditions it is always possible for the bully or would-be tyrant to use democratic procedures which he wants to stamp out. Why should we help them? The application of democracy in the true sense, as part of the demand for Socialism, is the only realistic way to deal with fascism—and all the other evils produced by capitalism.

A related matter is the myth which has grown up round the “Battle of Cable Street” in 1936. Here, the Communist Party and other groups organized opposition to a march by the British Union of Fascists; the street was barricaded, there was fighting, and the BUF leader Mosley agreed to divert his march. This has led to the legend that the fascists were defeated, and the SWP today are trying to emulate it. In fact the fascists marched again in East London, and continued their activity and contested elections until the outbreak of war in 1939. According to Martin Walker in The National Front they gained about 2,000 members in the East End in the two months after the battle of Cable Street.

Finally, it should be noted where the National Front gets its support. Its policies apart from racism are a miserable ragbag which would not in themselves elicit votes on any useful scale. But, like the Nazis and other fascist parties which have won political power, in a depression it attracts workers who are discontented and misdirect their resentment — and, in particular, think parliamentary democracy has been no good to them. The rise of fascism since the first World War is due above all to the failure of the social-democratic parties who consciously rejected Socialism. The policies and activities of the SWP do nothing to alter that.

Robert Barltrop

Is Parliament a Sham? (1973)

From the February 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Writing in the Socialist Worker for 11 November, Duncan Hallas contends that Parliament is (1) “a sham”, (2) “a show to deceive the public”, (3) “a charade”. Otherwise it is not too bad, presumably. He says: “Parliament still matters, but its importance is largely ideological,” and: “It serves as a front behind which the ruling class conduct the struggle to preserve their wealth.”

Hallas’s evidence for the impotence of Parliament is that the government of the day does not consult Parliament but goes in for “direct negotiations with the TUC and big business as in the case of the Industrial Relations Act”; and a quotation from Professor J. Mackintosh who wrote in his book The Government and Politics of Britain that:

the old nineteenth-century role of Parliament as a body which chose the Government, maintained it, and could reject it, has gone 

and

the life of a back-bench M.P. becomes unsatisfactory, and offers little scope for achievement.

Effective Representatives

Hallas also tells us “There was a time, roughly from the seventeenth to the beginning of this century, when Parliament was in fact, as well as in law, the supreme policy-making body.” Says our scribe, quoting from Professor Plumb: “No member of the ruling class was kept out of Parliament if he wanted to get in.” But today, says Hallas, “Parliament does not contain most of the big-business bosses, bankers and financiers . . . and therefore all the important decisions are taken outside Parliament”. 

How, may we politely ask Duncan Hallas, does he prove the ineffectiveness of parliament by stating that the government negotiates directly with the TUC and CBI? Was the Industrial Relations Act read three times to the whole House of Commons and did a majority of MPs vote for it? Obviously, they did: it became law. What is this nonsense that MPs “were not consulted”? They approved the policy on which the Cabinet conducted the detailed negotiations, apart from the fact that the Cabinet (the government) is supported by a majority of the majority party in the House of Commons.

As for the statement that Parliament is no longer Parliament because it “does not contain most of the big business bosses, bankers and financiers, or the important Trade Union leaders” — there are only about 600 seats anyway, so Parliament could never "contain” all these people. But whether it does or whether it doesn’t: so what? The important point is that it contains representatives of the big-business bosses who get elected to Parliament because the electors vote for them. Incidentally, we would question the statement that Parliament no longer contains bosses or bankers.

Old-hat Appeals

But what is the inference behind all this mullarky about Parliament being “a sham”, “a show” and “a charade” (they used to call it the Gas Works too)? It is the old, old, antiquated, exploded, bankrupt notion that the workers can achieve their aims outside of, and therefore in opposition to, Parliament and the government. It is a popular idea with impatient frustrated workers who are not clear on the nature of Socialism and think (if it can be called thinking: "feeling” is more like it) that fighting "the day-to-day struggle” and "partial struggles for limited ends” in some way promote Socialism. They do not. No amount of marching, demonstration, strikes, rent-strikes, boycotts, etc., etc., makes the slightest contribution to the Socialist objective.

The workers can march the shoes off their feet, and in some cases literally have, for any reform they fancy from "ban the Bomb” to “lower rents” and "abolish the non-cohabitation clause”. It all does precisely nothing for Socialism. The very fact that they are doing this shows that they want the reform of capitalism.

If the International Socialists regard Parliament as a sham, what is their "revolutionary party” going to do? Are they going to refuse to nominate candidates and contest elections? If not, will their candidates fight on a straight Socialist programme? And will they then stop supporting the Labour Party at elections? If they fight the elections on the reform slogans in their present programme they may get more votes than the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Though "Nationalization of the Land, Banks and major industries” is a bit moth-eaten and many of the major industries — steel, gas, electricity — are nationalized already.

In a further article in the same paper for 18 November, Hallas expresses the view that the State machine will not obey the orders of a Socialist Parliament. The judges and police will not enforce laws repressing private ownership, the generals will not suppress pro-slavery rebellions. This is backed by the usual Marxist quotation employed by Lenin:

One thing especially was proved by the Commune, namely that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made State machinery and wield it for its own purposes.

From this Lenin concluded that the working class must smash the State machine. What Marx and Engels had in mind, obviously, were the bureaucratic excrescences of the French Empire. In other words, a parliamentary Socialist majority will dispense with those parts of the State machine that Socialism does not require.

When you think it all out, the end determines the means. If you think that the only way to get Socialism is to persuade a majority that capitalism cannot be reformed in their interest you must be in favour of electoral methods. What the workers will do with their political power when they take it, nobody can know in detail. Whether it will need the help of force remains to be seen. If on the other hand you stand for:

"A Minimum Wage of £25 a week."
"Five days’ pay for five days’ work.”
“Equality for Women.”
“Against secret diplomacy."
“Against Nuclear Weapons.”
“National Liberation.”
“Nationalization of the Banks."

—and many other things, you are not International Socialists but National Reformists. (Anyway, probably the best way to alter those things is Parliament.)

Final Arbiter

The people who count in the end are the voters. If they won’t vote for Socialism, they won’t fight for it outside Parliament. Anti-Parliamentarianism, at bottom, is the old Anarchist-Syndicalist Direct Action nonsense, which leads directly to the prison cell and the firing squad. And the policemen and soldiers who will quell the riots, like the judges and warders who commit rioters to prison, are recruited, paid and instructed by a government department — headed by a Cabinet Minister, instructed and appointed by Parliament.

Horatio.

Trapped in a Blind Alley (1973)

Book Review from the August 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

World Crisis: Essays in Revolutionary Socialism by John Palmer and Nigel Harris. Hutchinson. £2.25

This book is a collection of essays by prominent members of the group known as International Socialism. The basic argument of the book is summed up by Duncan Hallas in the final essay, "The Way Forward."

Basically the case rests on the analysis of the world crisis . . . and particularly on the thesis that, in the changing conditions of capitalism, reformist policies will be less and less able to provide these partial solutions to the problems confronting the working-class that they have been able to provide in the decades since the Second World War.

In other words, the road to reform is closed; the capitalist class can no longer afford to grant the improvement in working-class conditions which it had done in the past. Does this mean, then, that IS do not include reforms in their programme, and base their support on the sole issue of establishing Socialism? Of course that would be expecting too much. Duncam Hallas, in the same essay, states clearly that "the development of a programme (includes) a detailed statement of partial and transitional aims." And the book is scattered with phrases like "connecting the concrete issues that workers face with a generalised perspective." (Higgins and Palmer, Introduction).

Why, therefore, does IS put forward demands for reforms when they believe rightly or wrongly, that these demands cannot be met, instead of putting forward  a demand for Socialism? The answer is, of course, that they believe that it is only by being led up the garden path of reforms and smashed against the brick wall of capitalism that the workers will learn "through their own experience" that capitalism cannot give them what they want. Of course we would accept that socialist ideas arise from the struggles engaged in under capitalism by the working class, but the idea of making "impossible demands" shows a definite contempt for the working-class and their ability to understand socialism.

Predictably enough, another false idea expressed was that of violent insurrection. Paul Foot devoted his energies to an analysis of "Parliamentary Socialism," concluding that democracy is all a sham and that the French workers had shown the way in May, 1968. One of his main mistakes was in assuming Parliament and the vote are inherently reformist, and that revolution must mean a bloodbath on the streets. He states, for example, that the Independent Labour Party "lost its socialist impetus through the insistence on Parliamentary priorities," and that the Communist Party had degenerated since the 1930's when it had "sustained itself . . . by a revolutionary attitude towards Parliament."

This line of argument shows a great deal of confusion. The vote can be used to maintain capitalism, to achieve certain reforms, to destroy democracy (as in the case of Nazi Germany) or to achieve Socialism, depending on the consciousness of the working-class. There is therefore no such thing as a "revolutionary attitude towards Parliament." The ILP, of course, never had a "socialist impetus."

Given the rejection of Parliament, the only alternative IS seem able to offer is syndicalism. Paul Foot writes of the need of the workers "to seize the factories and offices". Tony Cliff says the shop stewards are "the pillars on which any real revolutionary socialist policy must be" (T. Cliff, "The Class Struggle in Britain"). Such beliefs are extremely dangerous—any attempt by IS or any other group to institute "seizure" of the means of production would be suppressed by the State, no doubt at the expense of a good deal of working-class blood; IS would discover, through their own experience, where the real power lies in society.

It would be mistaken to believe that there is nothing of value in this book. Though most of the contributors seem to be trapped in a blind alley, Nigel Harris in part of his essay "Imperialism Today," comes very close to the correct socialist position. In his analysis of armed struggle in backward countries he states:

Marxism is irrelevant to success in guerrilla warfare . . . Marxism dissolves into pre-Marxist populist socialism, the closest analogies to which occur in Narodnik  thought in Tsarist Russia.

He concedes that revolutions in such circumstances are made by small minorities relying on élan and slogans, and that Fidel Castro, for example, was a radical liberal rather than a socialist. Harris therefore comes very close to our position, that groups such as the Vietcong are the equivalent of nineteenth-century bourgeois revolutionaries, seeking only to establish capitalism. We give them no support, but for Nigel Harris the dilemma remains—why does his organization give them "unconditional support"? In his fifty-page essay, he gives no answer at all, except for the pious remark that "socialists instinctively feel a warm sympathy for those struggling for national independence."

Inevitably, there are constant references throughout the book to Lenin and the Russian Revolution. Nowhere is it explained, however, why a revolution which took place fifty-five years ago in a backward, pre-industrial country in which a decaying feudal regime collapsed under the strain of war has any relevance to conditions in Britain or any advanced capitalist country to-day. All the other standard IS ideas crop up regularly—the false Lenin theory of imperialism, the equally false crypto-Keynesian theory of the "permanent economy," the peculiar obsession with productivity deals. When all is said and done, however, the IS gap still looks to the Labour Party for its philosophy. It was fitting, therefore, that Duncan Hallas, on the last page of the book, should state that "there are still genuine socialists active in the Labour Party". Needless to say, he did not name any.

Brendan Mee