Editorial: Who would vote Labour? (1990)

Editorial from the November 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

This year's Labour Party Conference was an unashamed exercise in image-building. The whole affair was stage-managed by professionals from the world of advertising to project the Labour leaders as fit to govern.

We must admit to being convinced by the show. Yes, the present Labour leaders are quite fitted for running the affairs of British capitalism. They have convinced us that they will not waste government money on increasing pensions and other benefits and that they will restrain the unions and stamp on excessive wage demands. They have convinced us that they will maintain the armed forces at a sufficient level to further the overseas business and commercial interests of British capitalism — and that they will be prepared to go to war in the Gulf in pursuit of these interests. The City and Big Business need have no worries on these scores.

We only wonder whether the image-builders may not have gone a little too far. Most people, we suspect, will have gained the impression that the Labour leaders were ready to sacrifice everything — principles, policies, traditions, even their own dignity and self-respect — just to get their hands on the reins of office.

We wonder too why the delegates bothered to turn up. They must like being film extras. They certainly didn't go to Blackpool to make policy. That had already been decided by the leaders of the party in Parliament in the light of what market research had suggested would attract the floating voters.

The leaders stated in advance that they were not going to take the slightest notice of what the delegates might decide. And so it was. When the delegates voted to spend an extra £6 billion on pensions, the leaders explained that a future Labour government could not possibly be committed to such extravagance. When the delegates voted to cut military spending by the same amount, the leaders explained that a Labour government could not possibly be so irresponsible. There was a time — a long while ago now, it is true — when the Labour Party would have promised to cut military spending to increase pensions. Of course when they were elected they never did. But now they openly declare, even before they get into office, that they will put maintaining the military might of British capitalism before the needs of pensioners on the poverty line.

We don't want to exaggerate. It wasn't some great sea change that took place at this year's Labour Conference. The Labour Party has always supported capitalism. It always was the parliamentary leaders not the Conference who determined party policy. When in office Labour always has done what has been necessary to further the interests of British capitalism, not hesitating to break strikes, impose wage freezes, cut benefits and equip the armed forces with the most destructive weapons of war available. Nothing has changed in these respects.

What has changed is the image the Labour leaders want to convey. They now no longer wish to be seen as a party committed, however vaguely, to transforming society in the interest of workers. Instead they wish to be seen as prudent and efficient managers of capitalism.

"Don’t dream of what may be", Kinnock told the delegates, "Work for what can be." In other words, don't think of achieving some new system of society even by gradual means. Accept society as it is — a profit-governed market economy where a tiny handful own and control the means of production as their private property — and work within it, according to its criteria of what can be.

At least this clears the air. All workers, and not just socialists, now know exactly what to expect from the Labour Party.

Labour's Tombstone: The New Policy on Nationalisation (1957)

Pamphlet Review from the September 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Party has produced a pamphlet with the title “Industry and Society,” and a sub-title “Labour’s Policy on Future Public Ownership.” This pamphlet sets forth a change in the Labour policy which has been coming on gradually for a long time. The excuse for this change is that:—

“The structure of industry is rapidly changing. If we could accurately describe the private sector of 1918 it would certainly present a very different picture from the private sector of today." (Page 11.)

Is this so?. Let the pampbet answer the question:

"Nevertheless, the shareholders still retain the legal rights of ownership, and the financial rewards that accompany them. These are of major importance, for the capital gains arising in the large firm sector account for something like 80 per cent. of the total capital gains and a large share of the total company dividends arising in British industry. What is more, these gains accrue to a very small section of the population." (Page 56.)

In the earlier years State ownership—or nationalisation—was the central plank in the Labour Party’s policy. It was to be the means to achieve for the worker “the full product of his labour.” As J. R. Clynes put it, in his presidential address to the Labour Party Conference at Portsmouth in 1909:—

"The Trade Unionist asks for but a share of the wealth he creates, the Socialist tells him to claim the full product of his labour and call upon all who are able to do so to give their share of service for their share of wealth." (New Age, 4th February, 1909.)

In the Socialist Review for February 1908 Ramsay MacDonald wrote:—

"A Labour Party in the House of Commons can do as much for Socialism as a Socialist Party can do, because the former can use to the maximum every Socialist tendency of the present day." (Page 15.)

How does the present policy shape up to these two complementary statements? First of all “State Ownership” and "Nationalisation” have been exchanged for another phrase, "Public Ownership,” because it allows of a much wider interpretation that practically blots out the early interpretation. As they put it, after setting forth certain objectives:—

"The achievement of these aims was expected to be assisted by the extension of public ownership generally. As aims, however, they did not point to any particular form of organisation which public ownership should take, nor any particular order of priorities which should be followed. On these matters the Labour Patty has always been flexible." (Page 8.)

The aim of those who formed the Labour Party did point to a particular form of organisation. It was State Ownership, of the form represented by the Post Office, and Land Nationalisation. When they wanted to change their policy they discovered, in the words of Attlee, that the Post Office was "the outstanding example of collective capitalism.”

But let us quote again from Ramsay MacDonald's article:—

"Thus, the duty of the Socialist now is to select from the complexity of social movements those tending towards collective organisation and to marshall them for political' purposes; and this duty becomes more and more imperative and pressing as the propaganda of the Socialist idea becomes more and more successful."

Now turn to the pamphlet and compare what it says with the views of Clynes and Macdonald:—

"The Labour Party recognises that, under increasingly professional managements, large firms are, as a whole, serving the nation well. Moreover, we recognise that no organisation, public or private, can operate effectively if it is subjected to persistent and detailed interventions from above. We have, therefore, no intention of intervening in the management of any firm which is doing a good job. (Page 48.)

In fact so satisfied are they with the conduct of the large firms that they have decided to change their approach to "public ownership” or, as they put it, "adopt the forms of public ownership to meet the particular problems involved.” Thus:—

"There are a number of ways by which the community may become the owner of industrial shares. It can do so as a consequence of our National Superannuation proposals through which a fund is to be set up under the control of independent trustees, to take up the surplus of contributions over pension payments which will gradually build up. We have emphasised in our proposals that these trustees should be able to invest in whatever manner they consider will best safeguard die interests of contributors. They will not be precluded, any more than private insurance companies, from investing part of their funds in equity shares. At the same time, investments of the fund should be a powerful influence in helping to strengthen the gilt-edged market.

"There are also other matters and other agencies through which State participation in share ownership is possible. We would emphasise, however, that it is not our intention that the Government should indulge in a wildly inflationary scramble for shares; both the timing and occasion for acquiring shares will need careful consideration." (Page 40.)

Lest anybody thinks that the effect of all this will be the boasted “more equitable distribution of wealth,” we would call attention to the following:—

"It may be that public participation in a private firm can be secured through State investment in it. Where public ownership is extended, full and fair compensation will, of course be paid." (Page 47.)

In other words, the former shareholders, like those of the railways, mines and banks, will receive bonds that will ensure them and their successors a secure and labour free life indefinitely. This is the abolition of private ownership by perpetuation!

The pamphlet contains many arguments to show that the Labour policy has produced valuable results. But then we are told that opposite policies have produced the same results!

For example. On page 21 we are told that a considerable amount of self-financing during the 1949-1953 period can to some extent “be attributed to the political and fiscal barriers which the Labour Government erected between profits and dividend distribution.” The next paragraph has this to say:—

"Government policy, however, is not the only influence at work. In the United States, where no restraints have been placed upon dividends, the postwar picture of company finance is broadly similar to our own."

Again, on page 8, we are told:—

."At the same time [during the Labour Government] the nationalisation programme was designed to make a real contribution to the broader aims of Socialism—to social justice, economic security and a new spirit in industry. These expectations, as the developments separately reviewed in the policy statement Public Enterprise show, have been substantially realised." (Page 8.)

How "substantially” they have been realised we are told later in the pamphlet. For example:—

"Indeed, the slow progress of tax policies—both progressive taxation and death duties—in reducing significantly inequalities in private wealth, must in large part be attributed to the special character of equity shares and their ownership by the rich. Increases in industrial production will sooner or later in a private enterprise system be reflected in higher equity values. The quicker the pace of industrial expansion (and the pace has quickened under full employment), the faster share values are likely to rise. It follows, therefore, that egalitarian policies which rely on high progressive taxation and high progressive death duties can be in part or in whole counteracted by private capital gains." (Page 33.)

"In an era of unprecedented high taxation, the waiting lists of our Public Schools are longer than ever before and conspicuous consumption continues unchecked." (Page 51.)

A great deal of the pamphlet is taken up with the argument that the capitalist no longer owns or controls the principal industrial units; that, as shareholders, they have no power in the huge companies. On page 28 they quote Berle’s statement as a neat summary of the position:—

“The capital is there and so is Capitalism,

The waning factor is the Capitalist."

They follow it with this gem:—

"All that remains is the claim of the capitalist, as legal owner, on the income and wealth which these great corporations continue to generate."

Yes, that’s all!! Poor old Ellerman, Wolfson, Onassis, Nuffield, Clore, and Fraser. Lest anybody has an exaggerated idea of the total number of shareholders in the country and the distribution of shares, the pamphlet points out:—

“If the distribution of share ownership in the U.K. is similar to that in the U.S.A., then something like 50 per cent. to 60 per cent. of total capital gains will accrue to the wealthiest 5 per cent. of shareholders. Since shareholders themselves account for no more than 6 per cent. of the adult population, roughly 0.3 per cent. of the population will enjoy at least 50 per cent. of the capital gains. (Page 34.) 

That, in their own words, is the result of over 50 years of Labourism, during which the Labour Party has three times held office; the last time for five years.

They put forward more proposals, but very tentative ones, for controls and the taxation of capital gains, but kill the ideas with such statements as:—

“It is therefore clear that the purpose of controls is both to prevent and to encourage economic activity, according to the nation's requirements. Negative controls are, it is true, easier to operate. Controls which aim to encourage rather than to impede action are necessarily more uncertain." (Page 44.)

"Although much useful spade work has been done many of the facts upon which judgment must be based are simply not available to an Opposition Party; and an additional complication in a period of great Industrial development—the facts themselves can rapidly change." (Page 46.) 

Before concluding, we must call attention to another change in the Labour Party's outlook. It used to boost the Co-operative movement as a valuable partner in the stealthily evolutionary movement that would gradually abolish the private ownership of the means of production. Now they tell us:—

“But in spite of its past success, the share of total capital resources controlled by the Co-operative Movement is in fact small. Taking full account of its future possibilities, the Co-operative Movement cannot be expected by itself to make an adequate contribution to the diffusion of private wealth." (Page 35.)

On the whole, this pamphlet clearly illustrates how bankrupt the Labour Party is on every ground except one —the defence of the capitalist social system. 

Gilmac.

Answers to a Correspondent: How Should Socialists Vote? (1933)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

How Should Socialists Vote?

Several questions have been put to us by two readers at Brighouse, Yorks. The first concerns the use of the vote.

Must a Socialist refrain from voting at the Parliamentary and Municipal Elections until such times as the S.P.G.B. membership warrants its own candidates’ standing ?

If so (and we gather from your paper that such is the case), do you not thus help establish a permanent Imperialistic Tory rule? In advising your readers and members not to vote, surely this has the effect of strengthening the anti-Labour parties.

Reply.

If the S.P.G.B. case is sound then the Socialist must vote for Socialist candidates only, and if there are no Socialist candidates then not vote for any of the non-Socialists, whether Liberal, Tory, Labour, Fascist or Communist. The only object of the Socialist Party of Great Britain is to achieve Socialism, which necessitates first gaining a majority of convinced Socialists and then gaining control of the machinery of government. To win over the workers to Socialism involves convincing them that capitalism and all the parties which take part in administering capitalism are undeserving of working-class support, and that Socialism is literally the only thing worth fighting for. How could we do this if at the same time we were telling the workers that the difference between Liberal and Tory, or between Tory and Labour, is worth fighting for? Our certainty that in the long run the workers will come over to Socialism is based on the impossibility of any party making capitalism run smoothly and in a way satisfactory to the workers. But if it is in fact an impossibility to make capitalism satisfactory to the workers, then it inevitably follows that any party which associates itself with the administration of capitalism must sooner or later find itself an object of working-class hatred and discontent. In other words, every party which becomes the Government under capitalism is bound to fall into disrepute with the workers. The only possible and logical course for the S.P.G.B. is, therefore, the one it adopts of dissociating itself from the Labour Party and every party which is prepared to administer capitalism. Our strength is bound up with our independence and with the fact that we have never misled the workers by telling them that capitalism can be made to work to their advantage.

Our correspondents draw the unwarranted conclusion that the attitude of the S.P.G.B. helps the Tories. Actually our membership is drawn from men and women who were formerly in all the capitalist parties, or in no party at all. The Socialist Party grows at the expense of Liberals and Tories, Fascists, I.L.P. and Communist, as well as at the expense of the Labour Party and the unorganised. The possibility of Socialists voting for any non-Socialist candidate does not and cannot arise. If those who proclaim themselves Socialists were to vote later on for non-Socialist candidates, it would be because they had ceased to be Socialists—or had never understood Socialism—and in that event, having lost their political bearings, they are just as likely to vote Tory as to vote Labour. Take, for example, those so- called Socialists who voted for the National Government.

Finally, we would remind our correspondents that all over the world there are Governments of the kind they describe as “Imperialistic-Tory.” Who was it made those Governments possible? Obviously not the small minority of Socialists, whose votes are so few that they could not make any difference to the result of elections. No, what made those Governments possible was, among other things, the disgust and disillusionment created among the workers, by the attempts of Labour Governments to administer the capitalist system.

Is the Labour Party the lesser evil? 

Now, agreeing that some economic system must operate until the establishment of Socialism, and that system is capitalism, is not the Labour reformism type (with all its faults) preferable to the shade that extends beyond to the Hitler extreme?

For International policy alone, is it not worth our while to support the Labour Party?

Reply.

This question, like the first one, takes no account of the impossibility of making the workers satisfied with capitalism. Because of that every party which comes into office on a wave of discontent and temporary popularity, is fated to be kicked out of office after a brief term—discredited, disliked, disheartened and disunited; to give way to another party rising on a new wave of discontent. To say that the Labour reformism type of party is preferable to other parties, up to Hitler's party, is to overlook the fact that all of these parties are reformist parties of the same general type. No political party can nowadays gain power unless it appeals successfully with a programme of reforms to the mass of the electors. Hitler is playing this game strictly according to the rules. Indeed, his promises of drastic reforms and Socialism in a few months, and his pretence of bustling energy show that he has beaten the Hendersons and Webbs and Maxtons, and the other reformist leaders at their own game.

The reference to the international policy of the Labour Party is somewhat staggering. The party which entered the war-time coalition Governments, and shares responsibility for every action of those Governments at home and abroad, is not in a position to boast that it is in any respect more enlightened than the Liberals and Tories. The international scene is not to be changed by fair words and humanitarian sentiments uttered from behind the ramparts of the British armed forces. International discord exists because of capitalism, and the two Labour Governments in Great Britain, with their five new cruisers, their bomb-dropping on native villages in Iraq, and their “continuity" of suppression in India and elsewhere, were quite unable to remove the discord or materially alter international relationships. They were regarded abroad simply as the mouthpiece for British capitalism.

Trade Unions and Politics.

We note the S.P.G.B. agrees with Trade Unionism and such protective activity for the proletariate under the present conditions.

Can you, then, deny the view that those unions, to be most effective, must send representatives (at present Labour) to Parliament?

Reply.

We do most emphatically deny that the trade unions have become more effective through sending Labour M.P.s to Parliament.

The majority of the men and women workers are not supporters of the Labour Party, but are sympathetic to the Liberals, the Tories, or to no party at all. The way to get the workers to come together most effectively in trade unions is to emphasise their common interest as workers. This cannot be done if the unions are affiliated to one party—the Labour Party—and supporters of other parties are made to appear almost unfit for trade union membership. A great deal of harm is done to the trade unions through their support of the Labour Party. (A few unions have tried to get over this difficulty by running candidates as Liberals and Tories, as well as Labour.) The dangers of the position become most obvious when a Labour Government is in office. When that happens the influence of the Labour Party is at once used to prevent the unions from embarrassing “their" Government, that is, to prevent them pressing demands for higher wages.

It is not denied that against these big disadvantages the presence of trade union representatives in Parliament has certain advantages, but the disadvantages are far weightier. From the Socialist point of view one of the most serious is that the trade union M.P. almost invariably comes to regard himself as speaking for the “industry," so that we see so-called non-party groups in Parliament, representing the railways, the mines, agriculture, road transport, etc. Periodically this brings its natural consequence in the shape of trade union M.P.s in one group backing the employers against a similar group in a rival industry. This has happened, for example, in connection with the rivalry of railways and road transport.

Such a position cuts right across the lesson the Socialist is trying to teach, that the interest of the working-class is opposed to that of the capitalist class.

Socialism in one country. 

Can one country, having elected a Socialist Power, and the rest of the world remaining capitalistic, operate Socialism within its own borders? 

If not, what would that Socialist Government do?

Reply.

The possibility of one country having a Socialist majority long before other countries need not be seriously considered, and certainly it is idle to consider it now when the number of Socialists in all the countries together is almost negligible.

The factors which govern the growth of the Socialist movement (the contradictions of capitalism, the more and more glaring evidences of wealth and poverty, the inability to plan production and distribution or to abolish unemployment, and the carrying on of Socialist propaganda) operate everywhere under capitalism. There is no sign that the Socialist movement will grow more quickly in one than in another of the more developed capitalist countries. If it should happen then it will not be a question of a Socialist Government deciding what it will do about the matter, but a question of the whole international Socialist movement deciding what it will do about it. They will have to decide in the light of all the conditions then existing. As we do not know the conditions we cannot prophesy what decision the Socialist movement will arrive at.

Ed. Comm.

Labour's bloody war record (1985)

From the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

War is mass murder, made glorious by legality and respectable by morality. Our century has seen more deaths from war than any other; it has witnessed the sophistication of the instruments of mass destruction to a point where total human annihilation is not a deranged fear, but a prospect ever more probable. Surrounded by the wounded of past battles and the cries of the present victims of military competition, workers in 1985 look towards the future in the knowledge that the next big war could be the last one. Clichéd an observation as it has become, we are on the brink of destruction.

The urgent task before us is to avoid another war not just a nuclear war or a world war. but any war. The only way to make war impossible is to destroy its cause: the system of society in which production is for sale on the market with a view to profit and in which the endless competition between companies and nations over markets, trade routes and raw materials inevitably breaks out into violent conflict. It is the worldwide profit system which makes war necessary and that hideous necessity will never be eradicated while capitalism is left intact. That is why the only genuine anti-war party is the Socialist Party; and why all parties which stand for capitalism are pro-war parties.

Does Labour stand for war?

Certainly, the Labour Party did not set out to become a pro-war party. When it was formed in 1906 its founders, like many Labourites today, thought the Labour Party possessed the moral strength and reforming zeal required to make wars impossible under Labour governments. It was to be the party of peace and many doubtlessly sincere workers gave it their support, having witnessed the miserable slaughter which British militarism had inflicted on the working class in the nineteenth century. Here was to be a party which, when elected to form a government, would refuse to support the old imperial policies. The Tories and the Liberals had led the workers to the trenches for the sake of enriching the capitalists; Labour was for peace. "The Army and Navy do not exist to defend working people" stated Labour MP. Philip Snowden, in the House of Commons in June 1913. Ten years later the ILP’s Socialist Programme was adopted, stating that as soon as there was a Labour government it would "take the initiative in making positive proposals for immediate universal disarmament" According to Snowden, this would be achieved by a Labour government negotiating "a general reduction of armaments. leading to universal disarmament". (If Labour Rules, 1923.)

Within a year of those promises the Labour Party was elected to office as a minority government. At last it had the chance to show workers what it meant by peace policies.

Labour and the Great War

Before turning to the war record of the first Labour government. let us recall the role of the Labour Party in 1914 when British workers were called to sacrifice themselves in a war which even most modern historians recognise to have been over nothing but capitalist economic interests. As a party which was "for peace" did Labour urge workers not to fight? On the contrary, no sooner had the war been declared than the Labour Party placed itself "at the disposal of the Government in their recruiting campaign' (Labour Leader, 3 September 1914.) Later in the war. in an interview with the Manchester Guardian, W.F. Purdy declared that

As Chairman of the EC of the Labour Party I am not going to meet or sit in conference with the representatives of the enemy countries while we are at war. I mean to carry out the policy of British Labour as laid down by our representative gathering. That policy is to pursue the war to a successful termination, which means to a complete victory over the enemy. (7 June 1917.)

That was the policy of the so-called peace party when its credentials were put to the test: it wanted the war to be won by the capitalists of Britain at the cost of the lives of the fighting workers. And Labour's leaders lost no time in recruiting workers to the cause of killing other members of their class. Arthur Henderson, the Labour member of the war-time government, contributed an article to The Times Recruiting Supplement in which he wrote:

A clarion call has been sounded, the nation's imperative and essential need has been proclaimed. and under the leadership of the Sovereign the young manhood of our country is generously responding and volunteering for national service ... (3 November 1915.)

Keir Hardie not only addressed meetings to recruit workers to the killing organisation, but urged workers at home to work with a greater sense of dedication to the country:

A nation at war must be united . . With the boom of the enemy's guns within earshot the lads who have gone forth to fight their country's battles must not be disheartened by any discordant note at home (Merthyr Pioneer, 14 August 1914.)

George Lansbury, who made a great noise about being a pacifist before the war began, refused to print any anti war letters or resolutions in the Daily Herald. And Ramsay MacDonald who was described in a recent public debate by Richard Balfe MEP as the leading Labourite to oppose the First World War. wrote a letter to the Mayor of Leicester stating that

Should an opportunity arise to enable me to appeal to the pure love of country which I know is a precious sentiment in all our hearts I shall gladly take that opportunity. If need be I shall make it for myself. 1 want the serious men of the Trade Union, the Brotherhood, and similar movements to face their duty To such men it is enough to say "England has need of you". (Daily Chronicle. 14 August 1914.)

Which is not quite the same as saying "Workers of all lands unite ". In 1914 the Labour Party acquired its first bloodstain. Those who recruit workers to kill and die are no less culpable for the consequences of such action than the most dedicated warmonger-. at least the red. white and blue Tory nationalists did not pretend to be advocates of peace and socialism.

The first Labour government

Before forming a government, the Labour Party adhered vaguely to the contention that war could only be abolished by ending the social system which is its cause. In The Labour Leader of 14 December 1916 Ramsay MacDonald wrote that an "order from which war issues as an inevitable offspring has to be destroyed before we have satisfactory guarantee of peace". But MacDonald and his party did not understand the nature of the order which necessitates war (capitalism) and therefore ended up running it. MacDonald appointed Lord Thomson as Air Minister and. so successful was his work as organiser of British militarism, that his Tory successor, Sir Samuel Hoare, made a speech six days after the defeat of the Labour government in which he could state:

The citizens of London can rest assured that the air defence of these shores is substantially better than it was twelve months ago. (Speech at London Guildhall, 10 November 1924.)

It has been argued by apologists for the Labour Party that those first two governments were not real Labour governments because they only had a minority in the Commons. Having a minority of MPs is no excuse whatsoever for doing the dirty work of running capitalism's war machine. Supposing for one moment that the minority of Labour MPs had been socialists, it would have been quite possible for them to refuse to vote in favour of any military expenditure to disrupt in every way possible any parliamentary efforts to strengthen or preserve the war machine. This is what a minority of socialist MPs would no doubt do if they found themselves elected to parliament before a majority of workers have opted for socialism. But the Labour Party’s opportunism led them to abandon their verbal commitment to peace and to administer that "order from which war issues as an inevitable offspring".

World War Two and after

In 1939 Britain went to war, not for democracy or to save the Jews from persecution by the Nazis (if the former was the reason it was odd that Britain’s ally was Stalinist Russia. and if the latter it is strange that the British government had been so willing to tolerate Nazism for six years), but to protect British markets, trade routes and raw materials against expansion by the Fascist powers. Speaking in the House of Commons on 9 June 1939, Labour MP Manny Shinwell stated the real reason for the war cry:

Clearly the Government must make up their minds what is their objective in relation to foreign trade. Is it to capture our lost markets, no matter where they are . . . or are we to allow Germany . . to prevent this country from re-establishing herself in foreign markets?

It was an economic war over who got what that is to say, which set of national capitalists. For workers the war was unworthy of support. But, like in 1914, the Labour leaders were ever ready to act as recruiting sergeants for British capitalism.

After the war had wasted the lives of millions of workers who owned and controlled no markets, contrary to Shinwell's possessive adjectives, a Labour government was elected with Clement Attlee as Prime Minister. In the Daily Herald on 19 May 1945 Attlee was reported as stating that "We can prevent war; we can abolish poverty". The claim that the Labour government could abolish poverty has been shown to be ridiculous. But what of its promise to prevent war?

In 1945 Attlee sent a Labour observer to the atomic bombing of Japan There is no evidence of any government effort to prevent this barbaric act. Attlee commented:

. . . the use of the atom bomb at Hiroshima brought the war to a sudden end. It was, of course, an immense relief. (As It Happened, p.150.)

Over 100,000 workers dead and the Labour Prime Minister felt "immense relief". Then Attlee’s government commenced work on producing a British atomic bomb. The British atomic/nuclear programme was not initiated by the wicked Tories, but by the "peace-loving" Labourites. How flattered the Labour MPs must have been when, on 24 October 1952, after the Tories had defeated Labour in a general election. Winston Churchill stated in the House of Commons:

All those concerned in the production of the first British atomic bomb are to be warmly congratulated on the successful outcome of an historic episode and I should no doubt pay my compliments to the Leader of the Opposition and the party opposite for initiating it. 

Every member of the Labour Party in 1985 should consider that compliment seriously.

The Labour government helped to set up the NATO alliance, which has since become one of the two major war organisations in the modern world (the other being the Warsaw Pact). In recent years, despite Labour Party pretensions to becoming a more peace-loving party, every time British participation in the NATO murder machine has been questioned at Labour Party conferences there has been an overwhelming majority in favour of retaining British membership.

In order to support its militarist policies the Attlee government increased armaments expenditure from £692 million in 1948 to over £1 billion in 1951. In 1938, in the heat of war preparations, there were 380,000 members of the armed forces; by 1951 there were over 700,000. If, as we have quoted Snowden as saying, "the army and navy do not exist to defend working people", it does not require much intelligence to see that Labour's increase in the cost and size of Britain's army and navy was in order to benefit the non-working class — the capitalists.

Far from preventing war, the Attlee government positively supported it. They gave military support to the Dutch capitalists in their war to retain possession of Indonesia. In the House of Commons on 18 February 1947, the Labour Minister of War, Fred Bellenger, stated:

Arms of the appropriate nature were provided for Dutch units in Indonesia on a normal basis for a force numbering 62,000. We are in the process of providing similar arms for a further 19,000 Dutch troops.

Similarly, the Attlee government played its full part in the Korean bloodbath, with Labour Minister Herbert Morrison, stating that entering the war "was the only way to preserve peace" (The Times, 3 July 1950). The same government was the first in Britain to impose peace-time conscription.

Unlike in 1924 and 1929. the 1945-51 Labour government could not fall back on the excuse that it was a minority government. They had a big majority and quite intentionally carried out their appalling war policies. By 1951 any worker in any doubt about Labour’s pro-war stance had nothing to blame but self-imposed historical blindness. Whatever other claims they might want to make, the Labour Party could no longer pretend to be any less bloody in the pursuit of capitalist competition than their Tory rivals. To blame but self-imposed historical blindness. Whatever other claims they might want to make, the Labour Party could no longer pretend to be any less bloody in the pursuit of capitalist competition than their Tory rivals.

Labour as an efficient party of war

We need not waste much space on the Wilson-Callaghan Labour governments (1964-70 and 1974-79). Even Labour's most naive idealists make few claims for the "socialist" nature of these governments. If in the 1920s Labour's war policies could be blamed on the government's minority status, and in the 1940s they could claim to be inexperienced, by the age of Harold Wilson the Labour Party had become no more or less than a party out to serve capitalism, but to serve it better than the Tories. By the 1960s Labourites were not shocked when their party initiated horrific war policies this is what they expected and anyone who refused to endorse war could have nothing to do with supporting the government. Many Labourites got into the habit of disowning Labour's war policy — they were for Labour, but "we don't support the nasty bits; we are working for a left-wing leadership which will make labour against war".

This is a wholly untenable position. Firstly, one cannot support actively the election of a government and then disown it when it gets its hands dirty with working-class blood. To do so is like collecting funds for the IRA and then disassociating oneself from the bombing of pubs full of workers. Those who feed the beast are culpable for those it slays. Secondly, there is no way that a so-called left-wing leadership of the Labour Party will be any different from previous ones. A party which is going to run the system, which means dancing to the tune of the British capitalists, cannot ignore the defence of their master s capital. That is why Michael Foot, veteran CNDer, became leader of the Labour Party, feeding thousands of Labour leftists with the hope that he would lead his party away from war and then proceeded to play down his party's semi-anti-nuclear policy and make endless statements during the 1983 general election about how a Labour government would be fully committed to NATO and all the old war policies. Again, that master of opportunist compromise. Neil Kinnock, has made it plain that all of his leftist posturing in the past will count for nothing if ever he is given the chance to serve the capitalist class as their Prime Minister.

The Wilson governments supported the American capitalists in their war in Vietnam. After the Pinkville Massacre George Brown, then Labour s deputy leader, declared that "the Americans should stop weeping and get on with the Vietnam war". (Evening Standard, 21 November 1969.) It was Callaghan. as a minister under Wilson, who intensified the war in Ireland by sending British troops there, thus giving sectarians the perfect reason to take up arms and recruit members to. the cause of violence. And it was the last Labour government which developed the British nuclear submarine programme — doing so without even taking the matter to parliament. Today Labour can be seen as an efficient party of war. Should it come to power again few generals will be contemplating the need for a military coup: the honoured killers of the British armed forces now know that Labour is a party with which they can work quite well. Indeed, it is an irony that the policy of the Labour Left is to expand the conventional armed forces — of the kind used during the Falkland war, which almost every Labour MP supported — and to attack the Tories for running down Britain’s military arsenal. For example, the Labour Party is pledged to expand the British navy; when the Chatham naval dockyards were closed down Labour MPs were attacking the Thatcher government for being traitors. This supports a comment made by an American political journalist in the New York Times in April 1963:

Labour's main point of difference with the Conservative government is a feeling that Britain is not making sufficient contribution to NATO in conventional terms.

Is it not at least possible that some of the millionaires who are making their profits out of armaments manufacture are hoping for another Labour government?

The hard fact which must be laced by Labourites is that they will never eradicate war and the grotesque preparations for it without making war unnecessary. While there is capitalism war is necessary and bombs will not be banned in response to the chants of the pious. The question which should be on the minds of all Labour Party supporters is: Is it worth supporting a party which has repeatedly participated in the killing business in the hope that its rhetoric will drown out experience, or is it urgent to throw aside the dogmas of Labourism for the sake of doing some serious, conscious organising to get rid of the system which will destroy us if we do not destroy it first?

Steve Coleman

Scapegoats for the Labour leaders (1950)

From the October 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

For five years the Labour voters were very loyal to the government of their choice. Through a series of “crises” they patiently worked and waited for the better times they were told would soon be here. Then just as they were preparing to reap the reward they expected when they had delivered the stipulated production and “closed the dollar gap” they received an icy shock that changed their political outlook more than anything that had gone before. This was the Prime Minister’s curt announcement that a new round of austerity is on the way to provide for re-armament, the Korean war and the other wars that it is feared may follow. The new blow has brought to a head the cumulative effect of past disappointments, showing itself in a wave of wage demands and “unofficial ” strikes in disregard of the appeals of Ministers and Trade Union officials.

Workers are asking themselves whether the Labour Party is any better at keeping its pledges than were the Conservatives. Those who looked on the Labour Party as the enemy of conscription and armaments find themselves heading for a third world war. Those who wanted higher wages and lower prices are asked to be content with wage-restraint, a rising cost of living and demands for more sacrifices. Those workers who thought that nationalisation would solve their problems find that it makes no difference to them. Labourism has been tried and has failed but politicians do not easily reconcile themselves to losing office and power. The leaders are bewildered at the failure of their plans, and frightened as they find themselves caught up in capitalism’s swift descent towards war; but they do not yet despair. Like many a government before them they hope to be able to turn a critical situation to their own advantage. If the workers at home dislike the increase of fares, the rising cost of food, the extension of conscription to two years, the entry into the Korean War, the refusal to grant wage increases, perhaps their resentment can be turned away from its natural targets of capitalism and the Government that administers capitalism, and turned in another direction by a campaign against Russia and Communist agents.

It is all so easy—just as it was when the Tory Government worked it to the full during and after the first world war, and used it again to unseat the Labour Government in 1924.

Of course Russian State capitalism and Russian imperialism are evil things but so is capitalism and capitalist imperialism in Western Europe, Britain and America. And the Western Governments’ real objection to the Russian Government’s actions is only that of rival concerns in the same line of business. As Mr. Sefton Delmer, Daily Express correspondent, said in an interview with the Indian Prime Minister, Nehru;—

“We objected to Communism because the countries where it had established—itself mostly by force of arms or terrorism—had been closed to Western trade. This deprived both them and us of commodities essential to our prosperity and progress." (Daily Express, 19-9-50).

The other side of the picture is given by an article in the journal of the Czeckoslovak Ministry of Foreign Trade. (Quoted by the Manchester Guardian, 16-9-50). The Czeckoslovak Ministry’s article discloses that while they encourage the Russian move to promote strikes of dockers in the countries allied to America, on the ground of alleged sympathy with the dockers, at the same time the Ministry is urging foreign business men to send their cargoes through the strike-free ports of Poland and thus avoid hold-ups and consequent loss of profits. Under the East European capitalist dictatorship the dockers strike at their peril.

The British Labour leaders profess to be very much opposed to governmental regimentation of the workers as practised in these countries. Yet at the same time we have Mr. Deakin, General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union demanding the suppression of the Communist Party and the Daily Worker (Manchester Guardian 18-9-50), Mr. Isaacs, Minister of Labour threatening legal action and if necessary legislation against the “promoters of illegal strikes” (Daily Herald 16-9-50). Meanwhile Scotland Yard are studying the activities of “Communist agitators”—“Blue print for the arrest of dangerous communists within a few hours, if empowered by legislation, is ready.” (Evening Standard, 18-9-50).

So, in the blessed name of freedom and democracy, the Labour Government prepare to bring British legislation and suppressive measures more closely into line with those of the dictatorship countries.

The position is so fantastic that we have Mr. Deakin, the servant of union members who pay their contributions to support an organisation for the purpose of making wage claims, denouncing Communists on the ground that “they were out to create and encourage wage claims and to use every possible opportunity to cause dislocation.” (At a Press Conference. Daily Telegraph, 19/9/50).

It is true that those who direct Communist policy are not interested in the welfare of the working class being concerned to exploit discontent in order to help Russia, but the discontent exists and will go on expressing itself no matter what the Communists do and even if they are suppressed.

Past experience should warn the Labour leaders of the likely outcome of the policy they contemplate. From 1917 onwards the charge of being pro-German or “Red Agents” was made against all who were critical of the war and all who took part in strikes, and among the results was that more and more workers gave their support to Ramsay MacDonald and Snowden and to trade unionists like Smillie, Williams and Arthur Cook who were thus enabled to gain popularity at the expense of the old leaders. Eventually the workers discontent exploded in the General Strike of 1926. Since the rise of the new men did not mean progress towards the only solution—the replacement of capitalism by Socialism—it only led to further disillusionment and in that respect also a repetition of the process now will be merely another phase of misdirected work and purposeless suffering by the working class.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain will continue to urge the workers of the need to rid themselves of the delusion that Labour Party or Communist Party administered capitalism can solve their problems; also of the need to retain their trade union weapon, the strike, and above all of the need to recognise that only through a world wide movement to establish Socialism can their emancipation be brought about.

The Fabian Society again (2026)

From the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Around the end of 2025 social media was full of howling comments about ‘Fabians’ and how an insidious conspiracy was spreading through society, in the form of ‘Fabians’ who were undermining ‘our institutions’.

The reason was a judge in the Epping hotel case who, in August that year, ruled against the government and had been a member of the society. Suddenly, the internet was full of how this 140-year-old organisation was hell-bent on a secretive mission to undermine the nation state and implement socialism.

The claims are that not only are most of the cabinet Fabians, but also people like the judge and prominent staffers at the Bank of England. The implication was that they are ‘controlled’ as if the Fabians were a secret society.

The Fabian Society is actually quite open. Its website advertises it as one of the world’s oldest think tanks, but it is also a membership organisation:

‘The Fabian Society consists of socialists. It therefore aims for a classless society, where a just distribution of wealth and power assures true equality of opportunity. It holds that society, through its democratic institutions, should determine the overall direction and distribution of economic activity and seeks to promote where appropriate the social and co-operative ownership of economic resources’.

But, as the rulebook also notes: ‘The society as a whole shall have no collective policy beyond what is implied in rule 2; its research shall be free and objective in its methods’.

Formed in 1884, it took its name from the tactics of the Roman General Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus (nickname Cunctator, the ‘delayer’). He beat Hannibal’s superior forces by avoiding frontal assault: grinding his opponent down. This became the metaphor for the gradualist approach the society hoped to implement.

An earlier form of its rules stated: ‘The society seeks recruits from all ranks, believing that not only those who suffer from the present system, but also many of those who are enriched by it, recognise its evils and would welcome a remedy’. That is, advancing by appealing to the powerful.

Its early coat of arms was a wolf in sheep’s clothing: since abandoned for its obvious negative connotations, but dug up gleefully by the commentators as a sign of the conspiratorial nature of the society.

Its Wikipedia page notes that 174 entries in the Dictionary of National Biography are listed as Fabians, a sign of the number of prominent people who have belonged to the society. Currently, its executive committee has five MPs, so it is definitely well connected. It has 6,000 members, and seven affiliated trade unions.

The right-wingers have latched onto the eugenicist associations of the early society: many of the original members did believe in eugenics, this was in keeping with a science-oriented approach that saw society being fixable through rational if authoritarian organisation, rather than through human freedom. It might seem strange that right-wingers, normally attracted to such ideas, should condemn this, but in part this is down to the stigmatisation of eugenicist ideas, and partly the right’s adoption of fears of dystopian ‘fifteen minute cities’ and World Economic Forum domination.

They are correct that Blairites in the 1990s used to talk of a hegemony strategy: staying in power long enough to become the establishment by filling posts with like-minded individuals. We’ve written in these pages before how apparently natural networks of the old ruling class (public school, university, clubs, professions) provided a basis for trust and collaboration, and outsider networks, like the Labour Party, the Fabians, Labour Together, the British American Project and the like are built up to replace those networks.

This replaces the ‘natural’ establishment with consciously political appointments (in itself a good thing) but this opens up a partisan tit-for-tat, as the last Tory government began to swiftly and openly remove Labour appointees in favour of people of their own ilk.

The central flaw in the Fabian strategy is that albeit, as H.G. Wells put it, an open conspiracy, it addresses itself to the powerful, and achieves its advances despite the consciousness of the public.

As Engels put it in 1892:

‘The means employed by the F[abian] S[ociety] are just the same as those of the corrupt parliamentary politicians: money, intrigues, careerism. That is, English careerism, according to which it is self-understood that every political party (only among the workers it is supposed to be different!) pays its agents in some way or other or rewards them with posts. These people are immersed up to their necks in the intrigues of the Liberal Party, hold Liberal Party jobs, as for instance Sidney Webb. who in general is a genuine British politician. These gentry do everything that the workers have to be warned against’.

As the years have gone by, the end goal of socialism has been eased out, in favour of diffuse reforms to capitalism as an end in themselves. Far from being a sinister conspiracy to end capitalism, it is just a career path and training ground for the soft-left. To that end, they are a normal, if mistaken, part of the legitimate democratic social ecology.

What is interesting is that by casting them as a sinister conspiracy, right-wing commentators are delegitimising them, casting ‘the left’ as some sort of alien goal to destroy society, that will need to be swept out. This would be the response of the powerful to a hegemony strategy: openly exercising power to shore up their position.

We have always stood against the Fabian gradualist strategy, as reforms only attract people interested in the reforms themselves, they do not build the case or support for socialism. And enacting supposedly socialistic reforms irrespective of workers’ views is a recipe for confusion and resentment.

We continue to insist that only the active self-organisation of the working class, the vast majority of the population, can bring socialism into being: if we had a coat of arms, it would be a human in human clothing, because that is the only thing that will build socialism.

Pik Smeet

The Rise and Fall of Clause Four (1994)

From the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1918 the Labour Party transformed itself into a national organisation. At the same time it adopted a list of Party Objects, the fourth of which read: ‘To secure for the producers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry, and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible, upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry and service.”

This was the nearest the Labour Party ever came to committing itself on paper to Socialism, since this could be interpreted as a somewhat wordy definition of real Socialism not all that different from the Object we in the Socialist Party adopted when we were founded in 1904: ‘The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.”

However, since it was drawn up by the Fabians Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and since the Fabians stood for a state capitalism run by an educated elite, it was meant to be understood as a reference to state ownership, or nationalisation, i.e. state capitalism.

This was confirmed when in 1929, as a result of left-wing pressure to commit the Labour Party to the nationalisation of the banks, the words “distribution and exchange” were added after “the common ownership of the means of production”. This made it absolutely clear that what was envisaged was not real socialism but state capitalism.

To talk of the common ownership of the means of exchange is a contradiction in terms. Where there is common ownership there can be no exchange since exchange can only take place between separate owners, i.e. where private ownership not common ownership exists. In a socialist society based on common ownership goods are simply distributed not exchanged, so there is no need for money, banks and the rest of the financial system.

After Labour lost the 1959 election the then leader Gaitskill tried to get rid of Clause 4 on the grounds that it was an electoral liability, but had to back down in face of the opposition. Now Tony Blair is going to try again, with more chance of success it appears.

In a sense he his right: Labour does not stand for state capitalism – it stands for working within the present profit-driven market system dominated privately-owned companies. It stands for capitalism pure and simple. The dropping of Clause 4 will merely make this absolutely clear.

Letter: "Three clarifications" (2004)

Letter to the Editors from the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Three clarifications"

Dear Editors,

The August issue stated in the article ‘Why socialism is still relevant’ that: “Our party was formed to oppose the Labour party.” This raises three clarifications. Firstly, as the writer makes clear earlier in the article,”‘in short, the cause of our Party’s formation, capitalism, continues”, thus, reiterating the point that socialists are opposed to capitalism full stop. Secondly, whereas our opposition to the individual political parties of capitalism is merely incidental to the cause for our formation in 1904 we can only voice this opposition once they are actually formed, or in the process of being formed. Historically, the Labour Party was formed in 1906, two years after the SPGB – though even before its formation socialists were opposed to its reformist predecessor, the Labour Representative Committee. Thirdly, we are opposed to all other political parties regardless of whatever name they happen to go under and not just the Labour Party For they all stink of dishonesty, opportunism and quick-fix solutions and are so steeped in corruption they can only be obliterated by the conscious decision and concerted activity of a majority of the working class.

Brian Johnson, 

Pontypridd.

Wasting time at the seaside (1966)

From the November 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is very considerate of the Labour, Liberal and Conservative Parties to hold their annual conferences in the autumn.

At any rate, the seaside hotel keepers must think so, because the conferences bring them some welcome business just as the season is dying; and so must all those seaside landladies, who can keep the secret machines which put lumps into the porridge and burn the toast in profitable operation for another week or so. There is even the sea, which everyone expects to be cold in the autumn, allowing politicians to prove what lovable eccentrics they are by having themselves photographed taking a dip.

It is all good fun, although since the object of it is to win the game of power politics it can hardly be described as clean. But more than other any other reason for feeling grateful for the autumn conferences is that they provide us with something to chuckle over in the long, dark evenings ahead.

There are two types of annual conferences. One sort is run by the parties which are out of power; a certain amount of freedom is allowed here. In most cases—although there have been some famous exceptions, of which more later critics can be treated indulgently, as living proof of ruthless self-criticism, a restless drive for new ideas and a young, zestful heart.

When, for example, Edward Heath was asked on television what he thought about the prospects of receiving a lot of criticism of his leadership at this year’s Tory conference he replied, with a huge grin, that he enjoyed conferences and would be there all the time. Jo Grimond, far from being upset at the noisy activities of the Young Liberals at their conference, went out of his way to praise them and was photographed having an amiable drink with some of them.

There is no such carefree goodwill towards the rebels in a party which is in power. At their conferences the leaders on the platform, are trying to justify broken promises, to explain away diametrical changes in policy and, above all, to convince everyone that, although the present times are hard, with patience and support and unity all will be well. In this situation, critics are not welcomed as a stimulus; they are condemned—sometimes outlawed—as traitors to their party and to what politicians like to call the country.

There are many weary hours to be spent in the conference hall, and it is common for the newspaper men to try to brighten these up a little by fastening their attention upon some so-called personality of the conference. This usually means a lot of publicity for someone who, although he does no more than repeat the same weary platitudes and misconceptions which have been heard so many times before, wakes everybody up by sounding as if he actually believed what he says.

So it was this year with the Young Liberals, who came storming down to Brighton to demand all sorts of reckless things like “workers control” in industry (the inverted commas are intended, and necessary). These young people laid about them and one of them went so far as to shatter the peace of the conference by swearing—or at any rate he said “bloody” and “damn”, which in this age of Kenneth Tynan probably no longer rate as swear words.

The newspapers loved it and decided that no title would be appropriate for the Young Liberals short of Jo Grimond’s Red Guards. It is interesting to wonder what the fanatical young hooligans in Peking would think about being compared with a few hysterical students daring to say “bloody” to an assembly of Liberals on an autumn afternoon at an English seaside resort.

Such, however, are the ways of the press, which also has a liking for putting the finger on what they consider to be political stars of the future who enter the limelight at a conference. This is what the papers did some years back to Ray Gunter, who has now risen so far and so fast that he has the important job of implementing the very policy on wages which his party once scorned. This year, at the TUC, some reporters decided that Leslie Cannon, President of the Electrical Trade Union, showed by his speech that he is a future MP, perhaps even a Minister.

It is hardly necessary to point out that to win this nomination for future stardom a man has to agree with official policy. No member of the Labour Party has ever been selected as a rising leader after making an attack, no matter how capable, on his party’s line on wages or nuclear armaments; Frank Cousins, the most prominent of the critics on those issues, has always been regarded as something of a joke. Still less would a person be noticed for attacking the fundamentals of the Labour Party—its capitalist policies, its obsession with leadership, its unavoidable failure. The newspapers have their own standards of success and they are sticking by them.

Behind all the ballyhoo and the alleged drama and excitement what are conferences for? Every man in the street knows that they are supposed to lay down their party's policy and to take decisions based on that policy. A simple man in a backward street may even think that, because the capitalist parties profess to be democratic, the decisions taken by their conference delegates are binding.

The first thing to say about this is that some of the delegates’ votes are cast in ways which are anything but an expression of their members’ opinions. At this year’s Labour conference the voting policy of the Amalgamated Engineering Union changed suddenly from support of the government to opposition. This was not because the AEU delegates had received different instructions from their members. It simply happened that their leader, Bank of England director Sir William Carron, who is an unmovable supporter of the government, left Brighton for a meeting of the board of the Fairfield shipyard.

This apparently left the AEU delegation floundering, until a series of other absences gave the leadership to Hugh Scanlon, who is generally critical of the government. The result of this was that the AEU, voting as whoever was their leader at the time wished, was one day for the government and another against it.

Yet even without this sort of maneouvering, the votes of a conference are anything but decisive. Labour this year declared several times in favour of the government—on wage freezing, Rhodesia, foreign policy. But when the conference went the other way on other issues—redundancy, Germany and support for America over Vietnam—Ministers made it plain that they would take no notice. It was all summed up by Harold Wilson himself, in one word, when he asked what he intended to do about the famous Cousins victory over work sharing—“Govern”.

This has of course happened before. In 1959, when Labour was licking its wounds after Macmillan had thrashed them at the polls, they decided at one of their rowdiest conferences not to follow Hugh Gaitskell’s advice to delete Clause Four from their constitution. So in theory, and by conference decision, the Labour. Party stands for the sort of capitalism where all the means of production, distribution and exchange are nationalised. But of course they have not the slightest intention of doing anything about it.

Poor Gaitskell had a knack of infuriating his party’s conferences. Another example of a refusal to accept inconvenient decisions was when, after the 1960 vote in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament, he declared his intention to “fight, fight and fight again” and, because on that occasion some of the big unions had voted against him, questioned the morality of the block vote which had always been accepted as long as it docilely accepted the policy of the platform:

I sometimes think, firmly, that the system we have by which great unions decide their policy before even their conference can consider their executive's recommendation is not really a wise one or a good one.

It is clear that when a conference agrees with its leaders it is the authentic voice of democracy, rich in wisdom. When it disagrees it is irresponsible and treacherous. The peculiar thing is that, although the members of the capitalist parties must know this very well, they are still prepared to be delegates to their conferences, they still work for their party, they still welcome its taking power.

The plain fact is that whatever a conference may decide, a party’s policy is already fixed. No matter how bloodthirstily the Tory hangers and floggers pursued their prey at conference, Conservative Home Secretaries stuck out for penal reform. No matter what support the Rhodesia lobby gathers, the Conservative leadership must agree that the Smith regime should be brought to an end.

Similarly, even if the 1960 vote on nuclear weapons had not been reversed, no Labour government would have surrendered the British Bomb simply because their conference had told them to. Whichever way the vote went on this year’s battle over incomes, the government's mind was made up and the more coercive Part IV of the Prices and Incomes Bill was ready to be brought into operation.

And while we are on the subject, there is something which we should notice about the Prices and Incomes Bill. It is the first openly anti-trade union legislation for something like 40 years—and it is the work of a party which came into existence as a result of a conference decision of February, 1900, to establish

a distinct labour group in Parliament . . . which must embrace a readiness to co-operate with any party which for the time being may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interests of labour and . . . with any party in opposing measures having an opposite tendency.

What, we asked, are conferences for? Even if their decisions can be, and are, ignored they are often an opportunity for a party to pronounce on its policy. Perhaps some people may prefer to describe this as warning the working class what to expect, or as making the promises the breaking of which later conferences will have to explain away. In 1963, for example, Labour was hypnotised by the Wilson vision of a technological Britain, with a wise government guiding massive investment into the “science based” industries, with technicians enthusiastically at work in their laboratories and at their drawing boards and with everyone’s wages going up in a nice, steady, organised curve. It was all very good for the headlines, for the electoral image and all the other political public relations man's obsessions.

It usually happens that at such times there is so much concern with a party’s public image that nobody notices the policies which are being expounded from the platform do not amount to much. Consider George Brown’s unoriginal idea of settling the Vietnam war by recalling the Geneva conference—the very conference which first set up the division of the country and so played its part in bringing about the present war there.

At other times the publicity a conference receives can be disastrous for the party, like the 1960 Labour uproar over CND and the public spectacle of Tory leaders savaging each other as they clawed for the place left vacant by Macmillan’s retirement during the 1963 Blackpool conference.

Or a conference can be an outlet for a party's donkey workers. It can give them a break from the hard slog of committee work, canvassing, addressing. They can come to express their doubts and disappointments, to wonder what happened to the visions they once had, Then they can stifle their doubts, admire their leaders and finally submerge themselves in what they call loyalty, but for which there is an unkinder if more accurate name, at a mass rally. Then they can go back to the donkey work with renewed energy.

No conference ever probes, or even discusses the facts. No resolution ever says that the parties of capitalism exist to run the social system which oppresses and degrades millions of human beings, that this system can only be run in the interests of a minority and to the detriment of the majority. Labour’s “left wing” come to their conferences convinced that they are looking for the lost soul of their party—none of them points out, perhaps none of them realises, that a capitalist party is bound to deceive, to override its members’ wishes and to disappoint its followers by pushing through unpleasant and inhuman measures.

Conferences make a lot of noise, exhale a lot of hot air, attract a lot of publicity. But when it is all over, when the delegates have gone home and the hall has been cleared and the seaside has sunk back into its out-of-season doze, one thing is abundantly clear.

It was all a waste of time.

Ivan

Have pity on them (1947)

From the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

At times the many-sided interplay of World Affairs presents a confused and complex character that does not permit of ready and facile interpretation. To admit that often we are only wise after the event is not necessarily a confession of a lack of one’s powers of perception or a deficiency in native intelligence.

It may also be that in this process of becoming wise after the event there are some who take longer than most. It may even be that there are others who never become wise about events at all.

Which brings us to Mr. Clynes’ article, “When Crisis comes to the Cabinet.” (News of the World, l4/9//47.) Mr. Clynes also sketches there what, for him, were apparently the essential features of the 1931 economic crisis. That crisis happened sixteen years ago, a fair period you will agree for cogitation and reflection on what it was all about. After reading Mr. Clynes’ article we can only conclude that sixteen years has not been long enough for him to have become really wise after the event.

Mr. Clynes, who was Home Secretary in the 1929-31 Labour Government, says that during crises he has been behind “closed doors.” He means 10, Downing Street, of course. With such qualifications he offers the newspaper’s readers “a picture of what happens.”

Perhaps the ”negative” of the picture has remained in “the dark-room” of Mr. Clynes’ memory too long. For, to use a slightly technical term, the picture is sadly lacking in definition and detail. Instead of a clear-cut impression of the real political significance of the events produced by and associated with, the 1931 crisis there is merely a confused blur of disconnected incidents and trivial political minutiae. Thus we get a presentation of “day by day Cabinet meetings, of men with white strained faces, going painfully over one scheme after another to meet a frightening situation.” Of strained nerves and tempers. The sudden bitter enmity of life-long friends. A broken-hearted and bewildered Cabinet deserted by their leader, Ramsey MacDonald, and so on. Touching, no doubt, but scarcely enlightening as a piece of political history.

Neither does any word issue from the lips of the chief characters in the picture to indicate in the slightest what the real nature of the Cabinet Crisis was. Indeed, so far as the understanding of events being gathered from what at the time was said, its significance apparently is to be found in what was not said. For Mr. Clynes’ tells us that not only was MacDonald reticent to the Cabinet concerning a visit to him in the early crisis days by the private secretary of King-George V, but, moreover, he refused to disclose to them what had passed between the King and himself at a Buckingham Palace interview. One could comment that MacDonald’s preference for a silent part in “the picture ” was indeed a rare choice for perhaps the most garrulous politician of the age.

In spite of the apparently crucial importance which Mr. Clynes rather obscurely attaches to MacDonald’s silence in the matter of the crisis, we could assure him—if that were needed—that whatever passed between King and Premier in the crisis talk would not have materially affected the nature of the 1931 economic crisis or the main trend of events which resulted from it.

The fact that MacDonald refused to spill the beans on what was said is open to the more charitable suggestion that so far as any concrete proposals about the handling of the crisis was concerned he had no beans to spill. It may even be that he didn’t discuss the crisis with the King at all. After all it is Secret History and our guess might be as good as anybody’s in the matter.

Mr. Clynes does, however, inform us that MacDonald and the Cabinet had agreed on matters which it seemed were regarded as unalterable; although about the question of what these matters were, Mr. Clynes himself is highly reticent. Albeit MacDonald altered the unalterable by the simple device of continuing his Premiership with the aid of the Tories instead of that of the Labour Party.

Mr. Clynes, anxious perhaps to cushion any criticism of his party’s failure to effectively deal with the problems of Capitalism in so far as they affect the workers’ interests, assures us that Ministers are fallible human beings. We, of course, have never said anything to the contrary. To which he further adds a somewhat tearful, spare a kind thought for the poor politician plea, by exhorting us “in our own worry and uncertainty to have Pity on them.”

It would seem that only at Election Times does the cloak of Papal infallibility fall upon the shoulders of political spokesmen. Only then, with much fingering of their political rosaries, do they proclaim with almost divine assurance to the electorate that “They are the Way, the Truth and the Light.” Only then does isome leader take on the role of a political Moses whose mission it is to lead the workers into “The Promised Land.”

It is only when political parties have become the Government of the country that they discover they are liable to be the prey of the mysterious and malignant economic visitations popularly known as “Blizzards,” “Catastrophes” and “Disasters” and for whose coming they assume no responsibility or claim any real control. It is these things which it seems set to nought their good intentions and bring to dust their political programmes and promises. In this manner do “our statesmen” translate the economic contradictions of Capitalism into librettos for the eternal political theme of the struggle between the Forces of Good and The Powers of Darkness.

Mr. Clynes tells us that Ministers “are, perhaps, family men each with domestic worries and as deeply involved as the rest of us in the common disaster which threatens our common citizenship.” No doubt this touching spectacle of the domestic worries of Ministers, such as paying the rent, meeting the milk bill or the uncertainty of the next meal, getting all mixed up with the affairs of State, is a sombre reminder of the price that has to be paid for “Democracy.” Whether the Fascist Dictatorship can be explained by the fact that Hitler was a bachelor up to the last few days of life and presumably had no family responsibilities, might engage the attention of those “psychological gentry” who are always trying to explain social and economic events by processes which have nothing to do with them. Nevertheless both Goebbels and Goering were family men and for that matter, so was Mussolini.

Doubtless, the raising of families by our Ministers is a worthy and human concession to the democratic notions of our age, but what precisely its connection is with the objective cause of the economic crises of Capitalism, Mr. Clynes fails to explain.

Mr. Clynes then tells us that “as the result of an half-an hour’s angry disagreement we were going out into the desert deprived of four-figure salaries, secure positions, the confidence of bewildered supporters and indeed of any political future for which we had painfully given our working lives.” This, indeed, must have been the supreme moment “When Crisis comes to the Cabinet.” In view of all this it will not perhaps come as a surprise when he informs us that among the varying emotions experienced by some of his colleagues, avarice was one of them.

And if the gentle reader impatiently asks what has all this to do with the political and economic events of the 1931 period, we can only say that it is Mr. Clynes’ article on the crisis and not ours.

Nevertheless Mr. Clynes does make some attempt to more realistically portray how the crisis came to Britain. For instance we are informed that foreign countries’ confidence in Great Britain was shaken—a not altogether unknown phenomenon in this country’s history. As a result of this lack of confidence “shipload after shipload of gold was loaded at the docks and passed overseas.” “At every bank queues of people tried to draw out silver and notes. Business almost stopped.” Again, £10,000,000 in gold was withdrawn and the Bank of England was by an emergency Act relieved of the necessity to pay out gold on demand. To remove any possible misapprehension these shiploads, of gold were not the nest-eggs of the working class becoming an article of export. Neither were the bank queues those of workers trying to draw out their “savings” as a preliminary to departing to sunny climes. The “going off the Gold Standard” in this country was of no vital concern to the workers because they had never been on it. Indeed the only standard the working class have ever been on in the present system is, a “Copper” one and that will remain their money evaluation as a class, whatever financial arrangements the capitalist class come to in times of crisis.

For Mr. Clynes, however, the cessation of the normal functions of The Bank of England indicated that “Britain shivered on the verge of catastrophe”.

To cap it all that other great working class institution, The Stock Exchange, closed down temporarily. However, those other working class institutions, the Labour Exchange and the Public Assistance Committee, were very much open and marked by a continuous and feverish activity.

“Then,” says Mr. Clynes, continuing his crisis theme, “for no apparent reason confidence returned.” “At mid-day Treasury officials felt a degree of terror. By the afternoon speculators were buying instead of selling . . . the tide had turned … a great crisis was weathered.” Such a description of the nature of the crisis strongly suggests a marked affinity with that vague and unaccountable phenomenon called an Act of God.

At a less sensational level we could offer the somewhat more accountable explanation, that the year 1931 was witnessing one of those familiar trade cycles which Capitalism is periodically subject to. Also the fact of going off the Gold Standard was merely an effect—not a cause of the crisis. Capitalists all over the world, faced with glutted markets and unsaleable stocks, were not only anxious to cut their commitments but were demanding gold as the means of payment in any transaction that occurred. Other Capitalists and their financial institutions were busily trying to call in loans, in view of the slump. Faced then, with the catastrophic decline of international trade it was inevit able that the creditors of British Capitalism should seek bullion as the only means for liquidating debts incurred. Thus a heavy drain on the Bank of England’s gold reserves was an automatic consequence of the conditions brought about by general and chronic “overproduction.”

To explain a capitalist crisis of “overproduction” in terms of financial panics and stringency is like attempting to explain Delirium Tremens by the patient’s shudders and shivers. Although Mr. Clynes tells us “that the crisis in money was passed” a few incidental features of the crisis, like nearly 3,000,000 unemployed, economy cuts, falling wages, distressed and devastated areas and the general intensification of poverty, remained for some years. Such crisis events, however, are not the best kind of reminiscences to keep for one’s political old age. Neither perhaps do they constitute the best form of Sunday afternoon reading for the working-class readers of the News of the World.

We have, of course, on other occasions dealt with some of Mr. Clynes economic fallacies, as far back as 1919 and as recently as the June Socialist Standard of this year. Undoubtedly Mr. Clynes’ consistent propaganda in “more production” campaigns has revealed him as an untiring advocate of harder work for other people.

But Capitalism is a profit-motive economy and it is profit anticipation which not only determines how wealth is produced but in the final analysis how much is to be produced. Thus with every increase in wealth-producing efficiency a greater quantity of goods are enabled to be thrown on to the market. Workers’ wages constituting but a fraction of the wealth they produce, it is insufficient to absorb the ever greater amount of the goods turned out by them. In the case of the Capitalists their effective ability to consume the products of labour is fixed by the limits of their personal and physical capacities. Hence a greater portion of their “surpluses” tend to go into greater investments of those industries which turn out productive goods,. The contradiction between the expanding forces of production and the limited class income distribution inherent in Capitalism is thus intensified. It is this which finally leads to glutted markets. Effective demand ceases, or to put it another way, a condition is reached where no purchasers can be found. Profit anticipation then declines or disappears. Production is, then curtailed; plants close down; workers are dismissed and all the familiar conditions of a slump make their appearance.

Thus Mr. Clynes’ sovereign remedies—greater productive output on the part of the worker—for dealing with unemployment and low wages, provide the very means for bringing about in a shorter time those very conditions which he seeks to obviate.

It would appear that Mr. Clynes has been so busy during his life, assisting or seeking to assist in the administration of Capitalism that he has never had time to acquaint himself with a few simple facts about the system he has, helped to run. Thus do “Practical Politics” keep our statesmen, so far as the understanding of this present system is concerned, in a perpetual economic “Egyptian Darkness.”

Should we then include Mr. Clynes among those politicians he asks us “to have pity on?”

Ted Wilmott