Secret diplomacy. (1926)

From the November 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

Much has been written since the war of the iniquity of “secret diplomacy.” The Labour Party says that the abolition of secrecy and the introduction of some publicity into the international relations of capitalist states would prevent war. This is an absurd belief. Capitalism is itself the cause of war, and the capitalist class, placed in power by non-Socialist workers, will go to war when necessity demands, without worrying overmuch whether their previous intentions and actions are secret or are known to everyone. Unfortunately, the workers who are politically so imbued with capitalist ideas that they place the capitalist class in power, are also unable to see the fallacy of the argument that war must, on occasion be supported by them in order to defend “their” country. The workers know and accept war and preparations for war. The Labour Party in war-time and peace time, in office and out, votes regularly each year for the maintenance of the armed forces of the capitalist state, and openly speaks of the need for defending the “country’s interests” which are the cause of and the excuse for war. There is, therefore, no reason for believing that the Labour Party intends to depart from ordinary capitalist practice. In any future war, as in the last, the Labour Party will not betray the interests of the British capitalist class.

We find, moreover, that the Labour Party’s belief in the merits of publicity is as shadowy as its opposition to war. Neither the leaders nor the rank-and-file really believe that the workers are capable of managing their own affairs. They still are as firmly convinced as the older parties of the need for “experts” to settle so-called delicate questions behind closed doors. It is, therefore, not exceptional or surprising that this attitude should be carried over into the realm of diplomacy.

The Trades Union Congress and the Labour Party have a “Joint International Department. ” A “Sub-Committee on Foreign Services,” presented in February, 1925, a “Private and Confidential” Memorandum (No. 333 B.), dealing with “The Foreign Office and Labour Governments.” It deals not with foreign policy, but with practical procedure, and contains the following interesting remarks on a definite programme which was being drawn up to govern the relations between the Foreign Office and any future Labour Government.

“It was further agreed at a meeting on February 12th, that this programme should be divided into two—the one strictly private programme, to be adopted by the Executive and applied by the Labour Foreign Secretary on taking office; the other the public proposals that should be made part of the general party programme by discussion and adoption at party conferences. This should be given a popular appeal and as much publicity as possible.” (Italics ours.)

Now the interesting point is not the proposals themselves, but the manner of selecting them. The members of the party are not to be consulted. They are to popularise the public proposals, seek votes for them, and are kept in ignorance of the private programme for which only the Executive are responsible. We need not seek for motives. It is sufficient to recognise that the men who do this are not themselves convinced of the necessity for democracy, and the party whose structure and membership permit such procedure is not a democratic organisation. Can anyone doubt that the same men apply the same methods to the rest of the nebulous and forever shifting programme of the Labour Party ?

J.

Bobby bribed. (1919)

From the July 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bobby Bluebottle, then, is to receive £3 10s. a week and upwards, with other advantages. The news comes as a bit of a surprise. It shows that the master class got a nasty jolt when they found their bull-dogs organising with the other workers. Therefore, having tried bullying with indifferent result, they now resort to bribery.

It says a great deal for the work our bosses expect to call upon the police perform, that they should offer them such money. Taking this in conjunction with their recent attempt to find out how far the soldiers were prepared to deal [with] strikers, it gives warning we will do well to heed.

Be prepared.

J.

Blogger's Note:

See also

May 1919: May-Day Talk. 

June 1919: Bobby's Discretion 

August 1919: The Police v. The Police 

Comparisons. (1919)

Jack Cornwell, VC
(8 January 1900 – 2 June 1916)

From the August 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

“We do not forget Jack Cornwell,” said the Lord Mayor of London addressing same of the men of the Navy. The humbug of it is paralyzing to those who remember how the class for whom he was speaking kept Jack’s mother out of her pension, tied up the money publicly subscribed for her benefit, and left her to starve. 

Similar cant is the Government’s eulogies of the rank and file who did the fighting and the suffering, and the workers who supplied the means by which the war was carried on and won. Thousands of those who bore and reared the men who died in the trenches or at sea, and those men and women, and boys and girls, who were blown to pieces in the munitions factories, are Old Age Pensioners, yet, we are informed by the “Daily Chronicle” (Aug. 5th), notwithstanding that the London Old Age Pensions Committee is “still urging the Government to authorise a special allowance to old age pensioners in order that none of them, owing to poverty, should be left out of the peace rejoicings,” the Chancellor of the Exchequer “has hitherto declined to authorise a special allowance of 5s. to every pensioner, as recommended by the Committee.”

And at the moment when they are refusing a stingy 5s. to the poverty-stricken fathers and mothers, and grandfathers and grandmothers, of their “heroes,” they are showering hundreds of thousands upon their fighting-chiefs, and fighting like the very devil to pass a Bill to raise their own salaries from £2,000 a year to £5,000. They are as dead to shame as they are to humanity.

Stir yourselves, workers, and settle with the gang once for all.

J.

Socialism Still International. (1916)

From the November 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an editorial in the “Daily Chronicle” of' October 4th appeared the following:

Nothing in this war of revelations and revolutions has astonished the world more than the failure of all forms of internationalism to be international.—Christianity, Socialism, civilisation have all become as distinctively national as the several belligerent armies themselves, and in Germany they fight for the Zeppelins and in England against them. Nationalism appears to be the master virtue of the day to which all others have to conform.

This, of course, as regards Socialism, is a deliberate lie. The truth is that the very essence of Socialism is internationalism. Christianity never has been, never even bas pretended to be international— that is, based on the unity of interests of all nations ; it is not even, and never bas been, based on the unity of interests of all Christians. More than that, it is not based on so broad a base even as the unity of interests of all the Christiana of a given country. Far indeed from being a form of internationalism, it is too narrow, too mean, too wretched, and too sordid to be even truly national. Its pulse beats for no nation, but only for the capitalist element of the nation.

Socialism, on the other hand, has remained international, as it must ever do. That which passes with our masters' hireling Press for Socialism, and which they assert to have failed to be international, is not Socialism at all. We, years before the war broke out, denounced the so-called Socialist International for what it was, and events have simply proved us correct.

The very fact that the International Labour and Socialist movement, so-called, was split asunder by the first trumpet-call to defend national interests, reveals the fact it was built on the shifting sands of ignorance and compromise. Had it been reared on Socialist principles, grounded in science and unswerving in purpose, capitalist battle-cries, entreaties and arguments would have been met with derision and scorn.

J.

A Dirty Lie (1919)

From the February 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the “Daily Chronicle” of Jan. 24th appears the following, purporting to be sent by that paper’s “diplomatic correspondent.” It occurs in a pronouncement dealing with Wilson’s proposal to ask Russian representatives to a conference on one of Prince’s Islands.

The conditions of existence in Russia were shown to be appalling; the nationalisation of women and other facts of Bolshevik rule pointed to a species of organised depravity.

Whoever this “diplomatic correspondent” may be he is a filthy-minded liar. His statement that the Russian Revolutionaries have nationalised women is so ridiculous one would think only the mental and moral dregs of the bourgeoisie could swallow it. It bears the impress of the organised campaign of slander and villification which the parasitic ruling class invariably launch against any section of the working class which has the temerity to challenge its supremacy. Such stuff is written for working-class consumption. Our masters, arguing that a class which will for ages permit themselves to be plundered by another class must be fools indeed, never hesitate to show their contempt for working-class intelligence, and too often they are justified by results. But in this instance, surely, they have reached a little too deep into their mental cesspool in their eagerness for unnameable filth to throw at those they are at a loss to combat in any other way. The muck they have reached up reveals its source in its stench. It stinks of capitalism. It reeks of the system in which, as notorious cases at present before the Courts show, the young beautiful women—nay, children, for “suffer little children to come unto me” is no less the command of the capitalist ravishers than the capitalist Christ, and their victims often are dead and buried before they can be called women—of the working class are at the disposal of the “rich friend”—private monopoly, not nationalisation! Note the difference.

No, working class revolution has never yet failed to effect a moral cleansing. When the Commune of Paris was in being the prostitutes of Paris flocked to Versailles, to their bourgeois patrons. In Paris no woman had to sell herself for food under the Commune. Prostitution is a pillar of capitalism, a common foundation of starvation wages. That this feature of the system of private property should assume a “nationalised” form along with the “nationalisation" of all the other means by which they are enabled to plunder the workers easily enough suggests itself to the filthy minds of the capitalists, and it goes without saying that there will be some mugs in the workers’ ranks ready to swallow the noxious concoction. 

J.