50 Years Ago: The King and the Slums (1986)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

The publicity given to the decline in unemployment and to increasing prosperity (measured in the capitalist mind chiefly by Stock Exchange prices) is somewhat offset by the conditions in the depressed areas, at the moment in the spot-light.

Dudley Barker, in the Evening Standard (November 16th, 1936), quotes an instance of a typical town in the coal-mining and steel area in South Wales which has 60.6 per cent. of its industrial insurable population unemployed. He instances a case, again typical, of a miner who, when employed, is 6s. a week better off than when unemployed. Similar examples could be given of towns in the coal and steel districts in Durham, Northumberland and Scotland. They have been referred to and described by nearly all the capitalist newspapers. The results of the chronic depression in these industries are appalling. Wide areas are derelict, bearing all the aspects of intense poverty, drabness and malnutrition. The Daily Herald (November 6th, 1936) reported a case of a shipbuilding worker who had not worked at his trade for 16 years. Innumerable cases have been reported of men in their twenties and some nearing their thirties who have never worked. Edward VIII, after his recent visit to the depressed areas in South Wales, said, “Something will be done.” The extent to which ”something will be done,” we prophesy, will not touch the fringe of the problem.

[From an article by H. Waite, Socialist Standard December 1936.]

Here and There: The King and the Slums (1936)

The Here and There column from the December 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

The King and the Slums

The publicity given to the decline in unemployment and to increasing prosperity (measured in the capitalist mind chiefly by Stock Exchange prices) is somewhat offset by the conditions in the depressed areas, at the moment in the spot-light.

Dudley Barker, in the Evening Standard (November 16th, 1936), quotes an instance of a typical town in the coal-mining and steel area in South Wales which has 60.6 per cent. of its industrial insurable population unemployed. He instances a case, again typical, of a miner who, when employed, is 6s. a week better off than when unemployed. Similar examples could be given of towns in the coal and steel districts in Durham, Northumberland and Scotland. They have been referred to and described by nearly all the capitalist newspapers. The results of the chronic depression in these industries are appalling. Wide areas are derelict, bearing all the aspects of intense poverty, drabness and malnutrition. The Daily Herald (November 6th, 1936) reported a case of a shipbuilding worker who had not worked at his trade for 16 years. Innumerable cases have been reported of men in their twenties and some nearing their thirties who have never worked. Edward VIII, after his recent visit to the depressed areas in South Wales, said, “ Something will be done.” The extent to which ”something will be done,” we prophesy, will not touch the fringe of the problem. Can anything the King suggests bring obsolete industries back to life? If so, what will happen to those industries which have grown up and have rendered the older industries obsolete? Can he alter capitalism and the conditions of the world market to prevent certain industries being kept out of it by competition? Would he, for example, close down Indian cotton mills in order to put Lancashire back into the Indian market? If anything could be done to revive capitalist industry in the depressed areas and bring back employment to the workers there, the capitalists, who are able, and have more knowledge about the needs and requirements of their system than Edward VIII, would do it. To them it would mean profit.

There is one aspect of the question to which misguided reformers might devote some attention. Reynolds's (November 8th, 1936) says coal royalties in 1935 amounted to £4,806,139. The share of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for Durham alone amounted to £313,580. There is now a suggestion that the Government buy-out royalty owners at a sum mentioned in the region of £100,000,000. There are 4,000 royalty owners of whom a minority own the major share of royalties. “ Something will be done.” Will the King show his detachment of class interest and recommend as generous treatment for the unwanted scrap of the depressed areas ? He won’t—he can’t! We live in a capitalist world and not in the pages of the fairy tales about good princes and kings who can work miracles. The sooner that workers in the depressed areas realise it the nearer they will be to the real solution of their damnable and unnecessary poverty.

* * *

Damaged Goods

The Observer (November 8th, 1936) comments on a speech by Sir Kingsley Wood, in which he dealt with the Government’s policy on malnutrition and the depressed areas in relation to physical fitness and recruiting. The Observer says:—

Physical fitness is being kept studiously in the foreground of policy, but it could not be gathered from Sir Kingsley Wood’s speech on Friday that the Government are yet beyond the consultation stage. He did, however, allude to the need of “moral leadership"—which is but too obvious. Young men living on the dole who will not even accept an invitation to keep themselves fit at the public expense have need of being recalled to their better selves by means which it should be for a National Government to discover and define.

Pity the capitalist! Faced with the problem even in “prosperous” times, of millions of workers unemployed, he is compelled to provide a meagre dole. Faced with the problem of needing soldiers, fit and strong, to kill or to be killed, in a future war which many capitalists regard as inevitable, the capitalist finds the main source from which soldiers are drawn (the unemployed) to be composed of men rendered unfit by chronic poverty. The Daily Telegraph's military correspondent on the 30th October, gave the figures of men rejected for the army in 1935 as 31,000 out of 68,000, or 47 per cent. The correspondent also pointed out that experiments are being made on some of the “rejects” at Aldershot. These are given a special diet under the supervision of a medical officer. “It is believed,” says the correspondent, ‘‘that eventually they will pass the required standard. This, however, is an expensive way of getting recruits.” The probability is that men whose health has been ruined by years of under-nourishment will defy all attempts to make them fit—despite the special diet. But what obviously concerns the Government more deeply is the fact that fewer workers are presenting themselves for recruitment. Hence the Observer's pointer that the Government should “discover and define ” means of recalling “young men living on the dole” to ‘‘their better selves.” They may have some difficulty in persuading workers who face a mean, drab and poverty-stricken existence every day of their lives that they possess anything worth fighting for. We hope so.

* * *

A Hornet s Nest for the Labour Party

The Daily Telegraph (November 17th, 1936) deals with a speech made by Sir Stafford Cripps, in which he made the statement (amazing for a Labour leader) that he

did not believe it would be a bad thing for the British working class if Germany defeated us. It would be a disaster to the profit-makers and the capitalists, but not necessarily for the working class. (Italics ours.)

Sir Stafford Cripps’ statement is the direct opposite of Labour Party policy, and within a few days of his making it Labour leaders were busy repudiating him: Dr. Hugh Dalton did so with “indignation and astonishment,” which he said be shared with the '‘leading personalities” in the Labour Party (Daily Telegraph, November 11th, 1936). From the point of view of Labour Party opportunism Sir Stafford Cripps is often indiscreet and not always sound. In this case, by accident, or perhaps because he has been reading our literature, he came very near stating an aspect of the Socialist case on war. If such a view were the official policy of the Labour Party (leadership being what it is,, and followers what they are), there is no doubt that the British capitalist class would be seriously impeded—if not actually prevented—from conducting a war. No Government dare go to war if the organised workers were opposed to it. Such are the responsibilities of leadership. Naturally, then, Sir Stafford’s speech got under the skin of the Labour Party opportunists and the capitalist journalists alike. The Daily Telegraph referred to it in a venomous editorial, in which Sir Stafford Cripps was misrepresented as being pro-Nazi. Mr. Thomas Johnston, M.P., in Forward (November 21st, 1936), was almost as bad. He showed how fortunate it is for the Labour Party that Germany happens to be ruled by a dictatorship, giving them the excuse, if war breaks out between England and Germany, of supporting it in the interest of “democracy.” Mr. Johnston, in the event of an English defeat by Germany, saw England as one vast concentration camp under the domination of the Nazis.

“Sir Stafford Cripps is an able man : selfless and sincere, but this kind of talk is a joy to his capitalist enemies . . ." he said.

Is it? Let Mr. Johnston persuade Labour leaders to make similar speeches. Rather than joy, we would hazard that there would be “weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth " among the capitalists.

As Labour leaders go, Sir Stafford is almost unique in.his attitude to war. It will be interesting to see for how long he can maintain his independence of official policy before being brought to heel or dropped entirely from the Labour Party. The Labour Party has meagre scope for people whose “selfless and sincere" independence of thought causes embarrassment to its bureaucratic leadership and spoils its vote-catching.

* * *

Why Socialists Reject Leadership

In a letter to the Daily Herald (November 4th, 1936) a reader says: —

Mr. Shinwell, Mr. Richardson and “Organiser” should come with me into the workshop and hear the adjectives used whenever the Labour Party or Trade Union leaders provide the subject of conversation.

They would learn that we in the workshop are sick and tired of the maudlin sentimentality and rhetoric of our leaders, and that we should like to hear a little less about Germans, Italians. Abyssinians, Spaniards, Russians and others, and would like to hear a lot more about what must be done for the English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Indians and others in the Empire whom it is likely we can assist.

Making a fuss about a day’s holiday with pay to celebrate the Coronation is not leadership.

Leadership is a difficult business, full of trials and pitfalls. Workers who believe in it and want to be led, expect results, and promises to be fulfilled. When results do not materialise they forsake the leaders. That they cannot do otherwise is the outcome of the belief in leadership. Perhaps there is some connection in workers being "sick and tired of the maudlin sentimentality and rhetoric" of Labour leaders and the Labour Party's net loss of 57 seats in the recent Borough elections in England and Wales.

* * *

The State, a Bishop, and Jesus

Addressing his Diocesan Conference on the question of the Christian attitude towards the use of armed force, the Archbishop of Canterbury said : "The use of force by the State was the ministry of God for the protection of the people" (Manchester Guardian, October 13th, 1936). The intention of the speech was to give the Church's approval to war. It was made in direct response to a speech by Mr. Duff Cooper, the Minister of War, demanding that the leaders of the Church repudiate the pacifist doctrines of certain prominent partisans. The modern State controls such fiendish methods of armaments that their use by large Powers, according to much reputable opinion, would mean wholesale destruction and perhaps a “ reversion to barbarism." However, according to the good bishop, the use of armed force by the State is the “ministry of God " and, forsooth, "for the protection of the people." It is curious how, when the Christian religion fulfils its traditional task of adjusting its teaching to the needs of the ruling class, the modern conception of the abstract Christian God becomes more like the personal and intimate God of primitive tribal times. In this case the bishop's God is identified with the State, and the armed forces are his ministry. The bishop should now enlighten the poor sceptics, who, unlike him, have not seen “the light." If the “use of force by the State is the ministry of God," what grounds had he for reproaching the Italian State for grabbing Abyssinia by armed force—or the German State for its repressive measures against the German Protestant Church—or the Russian State for its "anti-God" campaign? Surely, “God moves in a mysterious way " ?

The bishop's attitude is just typical Christian cant. The chief function of the State is the maintenance of class society. The function of the Church is to adapt Christian teaching to the needs of the ruling class. This it does loyally. And why not? Quite recently the Government's Tithe Act compensated the Church for its loss of tithe ownership to the extent of approximately £52,000,000. In return for tithe the Church now holds Government stock bearing 3 per cent. interest. Quite an inducement, surely, to trim the teachings of the out-of-work carpenter, Jesus, to the needs of capitalist millionaires.

The bishop's quotation of the Church's thirty-seventh article in support of his interpretation, brings to mind Marx's scathing reference: “ The English Established Church will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on l/39th of its income."

* * *

Violence and the Agent Provocateur

A letter from a "George Barker, Stepney," published in the New Leader (November 6th, 1936) illustrates the danger of violent tactics in political agitation. Mr. Barker complained that during the recent demonstration against Fascism in East London, ". . . a man in the crowd yelled that the police were coming and urged everyone to throw stones, bottles and anything handy to them . . . and the most striking thing to me was the sudden disappearance of the person invoking the crowd to start the rough stuff." The person in question was, in the opinion of Mr. Barker, an agent, there only to provoke the demonstrators to use violence against the police. He also stated that he had seen it happen at other demonstrations.

The writer of the letter sees the danger of the agent provocateur. What he does not see is that agents provocateurs can only provoke the workers to fight the police who have been nurtured by the Communists and I.L.P.ers into the belief that they can achieve their ends by violent methods.

* * *

A Fabian in Russia

Mr. Sidney Webb (Lord Passfield) lecturing to Fabians at Friends House, made some interesting comments about Russia. As Mr. Webb has almost the authority of a Russian Government representative on matters concerning the internal affairs of Russia, what he has to say is of some interest. He pointed but that

More than half the adult population of Russia were working for themselves, fifty or sixty millions of them in partnership. There were probably fifty to sixty thousand managements, all of a public character, from village councils upwards, and including newspapers and theatres employing workers with wages. It was therefore ridiculous to say that the State was the only employer.—(Manchester Guardian.,October 30th, 1936.)

In view of the enormous statistics emanating from Russian sources, which are likely to give the impression that Russia is one vast factory, Mr. Webb’s statement is interesting.

* * *

Popular Front Progress

The following is taken from the Daily Telegraph (November 6th, 1936), and is from its Paris correspondent: —

M. Daladier, the Defence Minister, is determined to check Communist and Socialist propaganda among French troops. 

M. Gitton, a Communist Deputy, complained that, while certain “Fascist” newspapers were permitted in the barracks, the Communist 'Humanité' was banned.

In reply, M. Daladier said: “The Communist Party has formed 'cells' in the Army, which are sometimes known as such and at other times called 'committees of Republican defence.' I have decided to dissolve all these cells."

“I consider very dangerous," he said, “the section in which the 'Humanité' publishes letters from soldiers insulting their officers. The repercussions on the morale of the troops can be deplorable. I note that the 'Populaire’ has for some time been imitating the ‘Humanité'. "

The “Populaire” is M. Blum’s organ.

M. Daladier and M. Blum are both in the Popular Front. M. Blum is Premier. 

Harry Waite

50 Years Ago: The Uses of Monarchy (2008)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

The present Royal Family comes as close as any capitalist politician could desire to the modern monarchical ideal. No interference in politics, but a worthy interest in science; admirably suited to gather prestige abroad; most of all, a continual and absorbing attraction to the working class. There have been hints recently that the publicity has been overdone, that there have been too many chambermaids’ reminiscences and news items like the Sunday Pictorial’s announcement that the Queen’s bust-line had improved to maintain the essential dignity of royalty. Nevertheless, the Crown today as never before embodies the national ideals—the ideals, that is, of the national ruling class.

But does monarchy serve any interest for ordinary people, beyond giving a holiday and a pageant now and then? It may be said that if it does them no good, it does them no harm either. If it were true that to fill people’s heads with nonsense did no harm, that might be so; and most of it is nonsense. There is no reason for thinking that the Queen and her husband are not pleasant, decent people. If things were otherwise, however, the truth is that they would still be presented as paragons. Some monarchs have been cruel, irresponsible and contemptibly low, but their subjects have still been asked for reverence. Within a week of Edward VIII’s abdication his shortcomings were common knowledge, and Sir Charles Petrie (in the book already quoted) hinted at a strain of abnormality in Edward from the Hanover ancestry; would those things have been said if Edward had remained the King?

It is not the monarch that is at fault in all this, but the social system which needs a shining symbol; where there is no monarch, something else has to be held up to dazzle the dispossessed. The man with the flag and the girl admiring the pictures in her magazine have the light full in their eyes just now—but they need only look away for a moment to see who holds it up, and why.

(From front page article by Robert Coster, Socialist Standard, March 1958)

Passing Comments: The City (1950)

The Passing Comments Column from the August 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

The City

The government's efforts are appreciated in some quarters. V. J. Burtt, the City Editor of the Daily Herald, wrote on June 22nd: “Fresh signs of Britain's healthy economic progress are to be seen almost every day. They are scattering the prophets of gloom. On the home front, the strong rise in British government stocks, which made further headway yesterday, reflects confidence in government policy." And two days later the City Editor remarked: “During the past month there has been renewed buying of British government securities by foreigners who believe Britain is making great headway." So shareholders, both British and foreign, are confident that the government will look after them.


Railway Nationalisation

Mr. V. M. Barrington-Ward, C.B.E., is the son of Canon Barrington-Ward, D.D., and the brother of Sir Lancelot Barrington-Ward, K.C.V.O. He was educated at Westminster School and Edinburgh University. He has held posts on the managerial side of the railways since 1919, beginning at the “bottom” (as Assistant Engineer to the Engineer-in-Chief of the Midland Railway) and working his way up; by 1947 he had become Divisional General Manager on the L.N.E.R. With the “revolution” of 1948, when the railways were nationalised, he passed naturally to a comfortable job on the new Railway Executive. So when he gives his views of nationalisation, they should be worth examining; especially when he gives them in the “Trifler” (of June, 1950), a Westminster School magazine which is intended mainly for the consumption of past and present Westminster boys.

  “To my mind, socialisation” [he means nationalisation] “of our railways is a natural event in transport history. The shareholders of the four old Companies have had a blessing in disguise if the true financial position of the Companies after the war is critically examined. It is perfectly true to say that if these Companies had been given back their property after the war (during which time they operated under a Control Agreement) they would have quickly been in financial difficulties, and it needs no words of mine to elaborate what this would have meant. As it is, under the Transport Act of 1947, they have been given a Guaranteed Stock which has, at least, a capital value at a reasonable rate of interest.”

When we recall that during the first year of nationalisation the shareholders received each week more than five hundred thousand pounds interest on their stock, we can agree with Mr. Barrington-Ward that they have had a blessing; though perhaps the disguise he mentions was not very heavy.


The Duke of Windsor

Compton Mackenzie's “Windsor Tapestry” tells the story of the life, reign and abdication of the Duke of Windsor. In it the author complains of the mean spirit shown by Parliament in refusing to give the Duke a pension “in gratitude for a quarter of a century's devoted service to the State.” Further evidence is now available of the poverty to which the Duke was reduced.

The Daily Mirror had an article on the Duke's sartorial habits (9-6-50): “The Duke orders about 12 suits a year, paying roughly £50 for each—which is comparatively little for America. Even with evening dress, he never wears a waistcoat. So this helps keep prices down.”


Luxury Cruise

Here is part of the account of the great African cruise on the Cunard White Star liner Caronia which appeared in the American magazine “Life” (3-4-50). It needs no comment.

  “The Caronia’s 550 American passengers had paid nearly $3 million for basic accommodation on the luxury liner. The cheapest fare for the 80-day trip, half-occupancy of an inside stateroom, was $2,400. The highest was $20,000 for a suite. These prices included food and lodging, but not very much else. To participate in all of the optional shore excursions at the vessel's 28 ports of call in the West Indies, South America, Africa and the Middle East, a passenger would have to fork out an additional $6,646.
  “This probably was no great hardship for the Caronia’s cruisers. The passenger list glittered with names like Urschel and Vanderbilt, and the Reuters news agency estimated the combined wealth of those aboard at ten times the cost of the ship. The Caronia cost $20 million.”

Stalinists Begin Here

It is time we heard something more of Soviet chess. Readers will remember that Suzanne Labin's book “Stalin’s Russia” (reviewed in the Socialist Standard last January) reported the Soviet Public Prosecutor, Krylenko, as saying “We must make an end to neutrality in chess. We must once and for all condemn the formula 'chess for the sake of chess’ just as we have condemned the formula 'art for art’s sake.’ We must organise shock-brigades of chess-players and set ourselves to carry out a 5-year plan for chess immediately.” Surely Harry Pollitt should take the lead in the founding of a true people’s game, with miniature Stakhanovites in place of pawns (which are revealed by their very name as monarcho-fascist dupes, tools of imperio-capitalism), Red Army tanks in place of castles. Heroes of Soviet Motherhood instead of knights, and anti-God commissars in place of bishops. (Sorry—we forgot that Stalin is now the protector of the Russian Church; purge that anti-God commissar and we'll have a Metropolitan Patriarch instead.) Since both the king and queen—viewed from different angles—can lay claim to being the most important piece on the board, obviously a model of our great leader Stalin must be both. This will be a little confusing at first, but fortified with the limitless resources of Leninism-Stalinism, and confident of the eventual inevitable victory of the forces of Peace, War and what have you, we will march on to world-wide democratic success. And anyone who is unable to re-orientate himself to the correct line will do five extra shifts a week in honour of Uncle Joe’s next birthday.

Alwyn Edgar

The Uses of Hate (1929)

From the May 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

The word hatred describes an emotion with which we are all familiar. Like all such "emotional" words it is habitually overworked, and is used to describe all the variations of dislike, from a mild indignation to a maniac's obsession. A dividing line is difficult, but it should obviously be confined, in human affairs, to describing a dislike that is intense and long continued. Like all emotions, it is ephemeral, unstable, and erratic, and if too intense, or too protracted, either burns itself to ashes or becomes a form of lunacy. That is why it is so completely untrue for the enemies of Socialism to describe it as a doctrine of hatred. We need not, and do not, worry because they say that, for they will continue to use all forms of abuse so long as they are deemed effective. A somewhat different aspect of hatred is given by those—Communists and others—who say we do not infuse enough hatred into the workers; those who view hatred as a formidable serial factor; those who contend the working class will be drawn into a revolutionary struggle for power through a growing hatred of their masters. The answer to both criticisms is a brief one. As already stated, hatred is merely a feeling, an intense and prolonged dislike. Action can follow, and often does follow, as a result of the feeling, but as the emotion is an unstable one, the action is more than likely to be equally erratic. Passion may burst a way through a wall, but one cannot build a wall on it. Hatred may be A factor, it cannot be THE factor. Socialism has but small use for it. Whilst we depict the cruelties and infamies of capitalism in order to rouse the indignation and fix the attention of our fellows, we should be worse than fools to build a movement on mere indignation.

In our perusal of history, in our observation of the world around us, there is always enough to keep our indignation alive, but we do not peruse history or look at our world for that. We study these things that we may understand how our society has come to be as it is, and how it may be made to serve human happiness more perfectly. We may perceive that malice, ignorance or sheer perversity may have added to human misery or may have diverted the results of communal effort into private channels, but indignation will not remedy it. Neither will action based upon mere hatred of the human agents involved. Socialism has little use for hatred. We prefer to concentrate on knowledge, for with knowledge comes understanding, and from understanding proceeds intelligent, definite action. This is one great difference between the Socialist Party and the Labour Party. The latter—and this is not a mere jibe—specialises in sob-stuff. Its Press and its political representatives are absorbed in the appeal to sentiment. They appeal constantly for your tears for the orphan, the underfed, the widow, the aged, the out-of-work, the casual labourer, the poorly housed, the "ex-Service man," and dozens of other categories of poverty. And being a mere sentimental appeal, and further, being without the correct knowledge and understanding, they invite you to get the Government to give a pension to this one, increase the pension to that one, feed the children of the other one, and so on. They assure you that this kind of thing is "practical Socialism," and implore you to give them the keys of power so that they may dispense the appropriate plaster for each social sore. The appeal is purely sentimental; a fatal basis upon which to build an effective party. People may respond more quickly to an appeal to their feelings, rather than their reason, but, action based upon reason will go further, make fewer mistakes and get there, long before sentimentalism has exhausted all the possibilities of error. Perhaps a couple of recent examples will illustrate the point. Lans-bury is an incorrigible sentimentalist. He is one of those many critics of our Party who say : "Yes, the object of your organisation is quite good, but it is useless to oppressed and starving men. What we want is something practical: something now." He is one of those who have alternatively called forth the workers' anger against their oppressors, whilst addressing heart-stirring appeals to the oppressors to be just, charitable, equitable and what not. In our twenty-five years of existence we have consistently demonstrated the utter futility of the "something now" policy, and the rank and dangerous absurdity of the mere appeal to righteous indignation. In the "New Leader" of April 19th, Lansbury writes :—

   "Small measures of reform are of no use. Tories and Liberals will all the time outbid us on them. We have reached the end of our journey along what might be described as the Palliative Highway."

What a pity it should have taken him half a lifetime to learn what we have been saying for a quarter of a century. We wish we could think he meant what he was saying. And then there is A. J. Cook, another sentimentalist. Full of appeals to feeling, to hatred, to indignation and anger. According to the “Sunday Worker,” April 21st, he is alleged to have said in 1926 :

  “If ever you read of me dining with Royalty, you workers can say Cook has deserted you.” 

And yet in 1929, only the other day, Mr. Cook is lunching with the Prince of Wales. Dearie me! More apropos of the point under discussion, he contributed an article to the “Evening Standard” of April 20th, bulging with the most sentimental, inept twaddle that journal has published for some time. It was called "The Prince of Wales.” Apart from its rather fulsome eulogy of the Prince as an individual (quite possibly true) phrases like the following occur. “I never met a man with such a rigid conception of fair play.” He has been “a good democrat.” “When the Prince went to Durham he was horrified. He said so; and when he told what he had found, he cut clean through old controversy —economic and every other kind.” “That man had no use for pomp and formulae. He was not concerned with theory. It was, it is, men, not manners, that concern him; conditions, not conventionality. ”

These are a few of them. And what do they all mean? How far do they take us? What problem is solved? None! For none is stated. We are even told that the sound of the Prince’s voice over the wireless, reduced him to tears and caused him to empty his pockets for the Miners’ Fund. That is the worst of emotion; its victims alternate between raving hatred and slobbering affection. Their only stability is a pause between absurdities. Cook records in the article that a woman, also listening to the Prince’s wireless appeal, cried out wonderingly, "Why, Arthur, it might have been you or Bob Smillie appealing.”

When Cook has dried his eyes, perhaps he will take another look at that remark. Just as Lansbury has found out that Tories and Liberals can outbid Labour on palliatives, so Cook should reflect that the Prince of Wales can do what he and Smillie are doing, quite as effectively, possibly more elegantly, and certainly with no more danger to Capitalism. To return to the heading of this article. Hatred, auger, indignation, are not enough. Socialism is a practical, scientific proposition, to be applied to existing society. It will not be brought” into operation by angry men, for anger is a bad counsellor. Socialism will be resisted, even when economic necessity has made it imminent, by desperate, powerful interests, and those who would lead the workers against those forces armed with nothing but indignation and a sense of wrong, are criminal lunatics. Hate is ephemeral, knowledge eternal. Anger is warping, science is certain. He who feels is the creature of his feelings. He who knows is superior to them.

W. T. Hopley

The King's Question Answered (1936)

From the April 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Slums and Luxury Liners

After some caustic remarks about the Glasgow slums, King Edward VIII, on his recent visit to the new wonder liner, “Queen Mary,” turned to a member of his party and said, “How do you reconcile a world that has produced this mighty ship with the slums that we have visited?” Lord Melchett, who reports this (Daily Telegraph, March' 12th) does not say what answer, if any, was given to the King’s question, nor does his own toying with it throw any light on what to him is evidently the unsolved mystery of our age. Lord Melchett, faced with a problem which can only be solved by a complete change, a social revolution, could only recoil from such a notion and proffer its opposite, “ The only inkling I can give you in regard to its solution may be summed up in one word — equilibrium. . . . We have got to produce things in a balanced way, and in relation to all other things of which the community has need.”

Here Lord Melchett just touched the fringe of the problem, but without having even an inkling of what is under his nose. There is no such thing as "the community,” and its "needs” are, therefore, an abstraction that has no meaning. We live in a world which consists of two communities, those who own and control the means of producing and distributing wealth—the capitalists—and those who, not having property on the income from which they can live, have to work for wages or salaries. Lord Melchett is so accustomed to viewing the monetary aspect of things that he cannot be expected, without assistance, to see below the surface. Let us, then, assist him by pointing out that the wages system, which looks so natural and inevitable when viewed from above, is purely capitalistic and will pass with capitalism. It disguises a conflict of interests, an exploitation of one class by another, every whit as callous as chattel slavery. The chattel slave produces wealth for the slave-owner, but must, of course, be provided with the necessities of life. The wage- and salary-earners, making up the great majority of the population, produce wealth for the capitalists, the owners of the means of production and distribution. In return the workers receive, when they are at work, the price of the commodity they sell, their labour-power. If their standard of living is sometimes above the chattel slave level they suffer the torments of insecurity unknown to the latter.

Now let us examine Lord Melchett’s phrase, “Things of which the community has need.” A glance is sufficient to show its absurdity. The community of the rich needs good and abundant food, roomy, luxurious and well-situated houses, expensive cars, and foreign travel in luxury liners. The community of the rich, having property rights in all the wealth produced by the workers, and having to return only a part for their upkeep, not only wants these things, but can pay for them, and has them. It is their privileged position, their ability to pay for whatever they want which determines how the world’s resources shall be used.

On the other hand, the workers also want these things, but cannot pay for them and, therefore, do not get them. The workers lack what the economists call “effective demand.” They get slums, poor and inadequate food, shoddy clothing and ineffective advice from Lord Melchett.

In face of these two worlds, the world of the rich and the world of the poor, talk of equilibrium gets us nowhere. Producing more and better food, so far from improving the state of things, would actually increase the disequilibrium Lord Melchett has in mind, for the workers could not buy it, and the capitalists already buy all they need. Like a bumper crop, or a big increase in productivity in any industry, any such increase of food production would merely throw out of work thousands of the workers in the food trades, because the owners could not sell the increase at profitable prices.

 

What, then, is the remedy? It is so plain and reasonable that the slowness of the workers to accept it is a matter for recurring amazement. Abolish the capitalist ownership and control of the means of production and distribution. Rid society of this institution which has now become a fetter for the mass of the population. Let society itself, through its own democratic control, utilise the land to produce food for the needs of the whole community, and the factories and railways, etc., likewise. Let us have our means of life turned into means of producing the requirements of humanity, not the profits of a class. Let us turn our two hostile communities into one real community, freed for ever of the rivalry of interests between those who own and those who do not own, a rivalry which restricts the production of useful and beautiful things, condemns vast masses to sordid poverty, excites class hatred and international war, and poisons human relationships in a war of the jungle instead of a co-operative endeavour to enrich life.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Uses of Monarchy (1958)

From the March 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Quite a thing has been going on recently concerning a picture of the Princess Margaret. This is virtually a repetition of what went on over the same painter’s portraits of the Queen and her husband, and there is no need here to add comments or repeat arguments. What is of greater interest is the trend of which this tiny storm is part: that is, that the Royal Family to-day is as constant a news-feature as football or film-star gossip and is, in fact, more popular than royalty has been since the nation-state began. When you consider that fewer than ninety years ago the reigning monarch was tipped as the last, and a vigorous republican movement was being led by prominent politicians and writers, it is obvious that the British monarchy has somehow had a boost in recent times.

Kings and Queens, traditionally, are romantic figures, the subjects of an inculcated mythology from everybody’s childhood. Every fairy tale revolves round them: once upon a time there was a Beautiful Princess or a Handsome Prince or a King who was Also a Magician. Elementary-school history devolves upon them: Merry Monarch, Good Queen, Peacemaker, Bluff King (never hooligan or wife-beater). For all that, the fact is that only for the last twenty years—if as long—has the Crown been really popular in Britain, and for a large part of the time it was very unpopular. Some idea of the change in the climate of opinion was given last year by the frenzy against critics of the Royal bearing and diction: the young Queen Victoria was ridiculed by cartoonists, and George V openly disparaged in the Press on his accession.

The idea of the monarch as head of the nation is a modern one, belonging to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and depending on the Crown’s holding no political power. Mediaeval kingship was a different thing. The king was supreme overlord, apex of the pyramid of feudal owning interests; his power was actual, deriving from and integral to the feudal system. This kind of monarchy declined as feudalism declined; as rival interests grew, the king became merely head of one of the contending factions. Edward IV, Richard II, Henrys Four, Five and Six were dependent on their factions, and their successors reasserted monarchy and appeared strong kings for a time only because the factions had exhausted themselves fighting.

The struggle against the monarchy was a vital part of the struggle of the rising commercial class. For half a century it held back for the struggles against the Papacy and Spain, but the storm was gathering before Elizabeth I’s reign ended. The bourgeoisie was a revolutionary class, needing control of the powers of government: the execution of Charles I was, in fact, the decapitation of an epoch.

After the swan-sang of the Restoration and James II's short, pitiful reign, the Whigs had one political aim above all others: to keep the Stuarts, with their feudal traditions and their Papal associations, off the throne. Even William III, brought and maintained by the Whigs as mere figurehead, was never pushed too far by them for fear he should name a Stuart as his successor.

Thus, the Hanover family was imported to be the new Crown dynasty, with nothing to commend them and the populace not prepared, as the 1715 and 1745 Rebellions showed, to lift a finger to support them. Drunken, stupid George I, of whom Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote “Our customs and laws were all mysteries to him, which he neither tried to understand, nor was capable of understanding if he endeavoured it.” and Lord Chesterfield said: “The King loved pleasure, and was not delicate in his choice of it. No woman came amiss to him, if they were very willing and very fat"; George II, full of senseless cruelty; George III, shaking hands with the trees in Windsor Park. Of the whole bunch, indeed, Sir Charles Petrie wrote in his Monarchy in the Twentieth Century: “There had clearly been a streak of abnormality . . . from the beginning.” A nineteenth-century poet, Landor, expressed it more feelingly:

“When George the Fourth from earth descended.
Thank God the line of Georges ended.”

However, it was with the Georges on the throne that the modern concept of monarchy developed. Bolingbroke’s Idea of a Patriot King, published in 1749, proposed (although Bolingbroke had the Stuarts in mind) the monarchy as the embodiment of national ideals, and after the final collapse of Jacobite opposition, this became accepted as the real function of monarchy. In fact, there were no interests now that the monarch could represent other than the “national” ones—that is, those of the propertied classes as a whole. No longer an overlord, removed from control of armed forces, set up in maintenance of bourgeois interests against those of the old order, the king had become King Capital’s torch-bearer.

Whatever remained of royal power and prestige sank to rock-bottom in Victoria’s early years. Her predecessors had shown as much interest as they were permitted in government; Victoria’s acquiescence established the convention that the Crown did not take part any more. The working class had little reason for enthusiasm, and the ruling class no longer had to support this dynasty in case something worse came along. When Victoria withdrew from public life after her husband’s death, a strong movement headed by Thackeray, J. R. Green. Morley. Joseph Chamberlain, Bradlaugh and several more asked if the monarchy were necessary at all. The movement faded, principally because the Empire-builders found the Crown too useful a figurehead, but the Crown had learned that it ought to show itself in public.

For that reason, the last years of Victoria's reign had royal display in plenty, and Edward VII gained still greater benefit from pageantry. It is doubtful if the monarchy became much more popular in Edward’s time, except among the beer-swilling and odds-laying sections, but he did open an important new field for the ruling class by carrying regal display—and with it, British interests— abroad. His visit to Paris, starting with compliments to actresses and ending with cheering crowds in the streets, in 1903 prepared the ground for the Franco-British Entente. Lansdowne and Grey conducted the negotiations, but the French President spoke of the “happy impetus” given to them by Edward's window-show. Subsequent monarchs and their families have done as much and more.

There has been one other important influence in the twentieth century in securing the position of the British monarchy: the rise of rival nations with other kinds of figureheads. First the Kaiser, then Mussolini. Hitler and Stalin caused the thought that, if this kind of thing were the modem alternative, there was something to be said for the British monarchy after all. George V was never greatly popular, but in the nineteen-thirties he was almost the only national figurehead in Europe whose public utterances were not inflammatory harangues on war and encirclement.

The real reason why the King never did so. apart from whatever personal inclination he may have had, was simply that it was not his place to speak as a leader or to state foreign policy. The monarchy in modem times is devoid of political power or autonomy. The last time a British monarch expressed himself independently on a political matter was when Edward VIII showed concern over the slums of Glasgow and South Wales; few people believed that the King’s wish to marry Mrs. Simpson was the only issue in the constitutional crisis of 1936. However, many people must have been given food for thought by the fact that potentially the most popular of all British monarchs was dismissed, as summarily as a worker from a factory, when he refused to toe the line laid down by the Cabinet on behalf of the ruling class.

If there was doubt among pro-capitalist politicians in the nineteenth century of the usefulness of monarchy, there is none today. The Conservative Party has never wavered in supporting monarchy, of course; and, since the first Ministers in the first Labour Government made their low obeisances, nor has the Labour Party. Indeed, in the Abdication crisis the Labour Party was solidly behind the Conservative Cabinet, and the Daily Herald's commentary was undistinguishable from that of the Mail or the Express. And since the war there has been ample opportunity—a royal wedding, an accession, a coronation, and a great deal of subsidiary display—to see the cap-touching and sycophancy which make plain the allegiance of a party which initially gained support by big talk about the abolition of privilege.

The only Labour criticism of royalty in fairly recent times was made from the viewpoint of what was good for Capitalism. Shortly after the coronation of George VI, Mr. Attlee spoke of the need for the Crown to come down to the man in the street a bit more—and found Conservatives agreeing heartily (“For them he must be no mere king in a gilt State coach.” wrote Wilson Harris in The Spectator). That policy was pursued with a vengeance, less with George VI himself than in the preparation of his daughter for the throne. No monarch ever started off so well for popularity: a popularity favoured by youth, romance and motherhood and skilfully fostered by every newspaper in the land (most of all, incidentally, by the pro-Labour Mirror and Pictorial).

The present Royal Family comes as close as any capitalist politician could desire to the modern monarchical ideal. No interference in politics, but a worthy interest in science; admirably suited to gather prestige abroad; most of all, a continual and absorbing attraction to the working class. There have been hints recently that the publicity has been overdone, that there have been too many chambermaids’ reminiscences and news items like the Sunday Pictorial’s announcement that the Queen's bust-line had improved to maintain the essential dignity of royalty. Nevertheless, the Crown today as never before embodies the national ideals—the ideals, that is, of the national ruling class.

But does monarchy serve any interest for ordinary people, beyond giving a holiday and a pageant now and then? It may be said that if it does them no good, it does them no harm either. If it were true that to fill people’s heads with nonsense did no harm, that might be so; and most of it is nonsense. There is no reason for thinking that the Queen and her husband are not pleasant decent people. If things were otherwise, however, the truth is that they would still be presented as paragons. Some monarchs have been cruel, irresponsible and contemptibly low, but their subjects have still been asked for reverence. Within a week of Edward VIII’s abdication his shortcomings were common knowledge, and Sir Charles Petrie (in the book already quoted) hinted at a strain of abnormality in Edward from the Hanover ancestry; would those things have been said if Edward had remained the King?

It is not the monarch that is at fault in all this, but the social system which needs a shining symbol; where there is no monarchy, something else has to be held up to dazzle the dispossessed. The man with the flag and the girl admiring the pictures in her magazine have the light full in their eyes just now—but they need only look away for a moment to see who holds it up, and why.

Robert Barltrop

Puppet Kings and Labour Prudes (1937)

From the January 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The most talked-of political event of the past month was the dramatic exodus of King Edward VIII. One week he was the world’s most publicised figure, titular head of the world’s greatest Empire, moving with the authority of his position among one of the world’s wealthiest circles yet at the same time able to arouse great enthusiasm among the poorest of the poor by his visits to depressed areas and references to the poverty problem. The next week saw him spirited away under cover of darkness to a wealthy semi-exile, robbed of his royal position, and replaced by his brother. And this, says Mr. Baldwin, all occurred because the proposed marriage to a woman who bad been married twice before to men still living would have robbed the Crown of some of the lustre and respect essential to the maintenance of the bonds of Empire.

For us, as Socialists, the incident has its own significance. We aim at a system of society, Socialism, that will have complete stability because its foundation, the method by which the wealth of the community will be produced, owned and distributed, will be completely satisfying to the mass of the population. Having no privileged class, such a society will have no need of armed forces to protect the haves from the have-nots. Nor will it need those institutions which cover the naked reality of class privileges and class rule with the glamour of kingship and aristocracy, and thus prevent the working class from perceiving how they are robbed and by whom. Socialism will need no kingship, for it will have no need of an institution the main function of which now is to hide the fact that the State is an instrument used by the propertied class to enable them to exploit the propertyless.

It has always been the aim of the Socialist Party of Great Britain to point out how easily that State machine could be captured by the working class and transformed into an instrument of working class emancipation. Our propaganda has been faced with many obstacles, two of which have centred round the Crown. We have been told, on the one side, that the King “rules as well as reigns,” and that, therefore, to gain control of Parliament is useless, as the King could defy a Socialist majority controlling Parliament. On the other side, we have had to meet the argument that the Crown is not part of the capitalist machine but an independent force which might help the workers against capitalists and the capitalist class. The events of November, strikingly dispose of both contentions and thus will help to remove from workers’ minds doubts that prevented acceptance of the Socialist message.

In the first place we have witnessed how easy it was for the Party controlling Parliament to dismiss the most popular monarch of centuries because he would not accept their conditions, be a docile royal rubber stamp, and order his life as they wished. Many members of the Cabinet must have reflected that it was more easily carried out than the dismissal of organised wage-earners in their own factories. (Incidentally, those who still believe that Parliament is an unworkable machine may usefully observe how expeditiously it put through on operation of such magnitude and importance to the ruling class.)

The second point concerns the former King himself, for here we had an individual on whose behalf it has been claimed that he. interested himself in some of the problems of the working class. The extent of his understanding or the depth of his interest need not concern us here. It can, however, be said that it is impossible for anyone brought up in such surroundings to gain a correct appreciation of the working class point of view, let alone accept it. Nor would such an individual be prepared to support the only remedy, Socialism, since that involves the end of class privilege as well as the end of the monarchy. Inevitably, in essentials, the Crown must be the handmaiden of capitalism.

Nevertheless, in several directions Edward VIII interfered in social and political questions sufficiently to incur the disfavour of the ruling groups, and that was a reason why his abdication was desired in addition to the question of his marriage to Mrs. Simpson. The astonishing ease with which they accomplished that feat should prove to everyone that the notion of the modern monarchy opposing capitalism or even acting as a check on it is fantastic.

The episode is instructive, too, for the way it exposes the ruthlessness and hypocrisy of official circles. The Crown must, in the interest of the propertied class, be an untarnished symbol fitted to deceive the masses into a belief that the ruling class are a superior caste and that the country is governed by them in the interest of all, not merely of themselves. Also, the Monarch must be an apt instrument, prompt to obey capitalist orders. Edward, having some tastes and views of his own, was not willing. So Edward must go. Then, without more than an instant’s pause, the high-powered slush machines—the Press and the Pulpit— plastered the new King with all the amazing attributes with which they had been endowing his predecessor only a week before. One journal, simultaneously with the announcement of Edward’s abdication, hastened to inform its readers that the brother is a better golf player and tennis player, and better all-round athlete. Within a day or two we had learned that the new King is the only member of the Royal Family who was in action in the Great War (Edward was in France, but not in action, it seems, but we were never told so until now), that he drove a railway train, attends summer camp for boys, and takes a keen interest in social questions.

One good thing about all this is that it overreaches itself, and thousands of workers will be set on the road to useful thought through their feeling of nausea at such sycophantic utterances. The capitalists got their new King, but they have fortunately struck a blow at the institution, and through it, at their own position.

Regarding the way in which the dismissal was arranged, the full story will no doubt not be told for a long while. Sufficient is, however, apparent to show that the official Baldwin version is by no means the full story. The insistence that the King’s wish to marry Mrs. Simpson was the whole issue is hard to square with certain facts. It is an open secret that the King’s visit to South Wales, like previous excursions of his, and his awkward references to slums and poverty, were offensive and harmful to the Cabinet. And it was on this issue, not on Mrs. Simpson, that the Times and Daily Telegraph (November 24th and 25th) fired the first public shots in the conflict. They took the line that, to contrast the King’s “personal and representative concern for the well-being of a section of the people with the administrative steps of his advisers, is a constitutionally dangerous proceeding, and would threaten, if continued, to entangle the Throne in politics.” In form the attacks were directed against certain newspapers, but in substance against King Edward. It is interesting to recall also, that, at his accession, the Times evidently had their doubts about him (January 23rd, 1936), and put in a plea for him to be given "time to take the strain of his new duties.” . . . ” There is a feeling instinctive in the British race which likes to give any newcomer to any walk of life a fair chance.”

(Cynical people might say that King Edward ought to have expected trouble as soon as the organ of the British ruling class had started talking about “fairness.”)

On October 14th, The Week published a statement that a scheme was then being set on foot “for a social bomb to be exploded under the King.” This was a few days before Baldwin, according to his own statement, first broached the question of Mrs. Simpson to King Edward. The Times editorial on the South Wales visit (November 24th) coincides with the period in which, according to Mr. Baldwin (Hansard, December 10th), the suggestion had been made of a morganatic marriage. It appears that the Times at that stage was warning the King that even if he gave up Mrs. Simpson, or, alternatively, if the morganatic marriage provided a way out, he would still have to toe the line marked out for him by the Cabinet on behalf of the propertied class.

Two other aspects of the abdication deserve to be placed on record. One is the unanimity with which the Press lords agreed that there was not the slightest attempt to suppress the news about Mrs. Simpson in the months during which it was filling the columns of the foreign newspapers. Yet the New Leader reports that its printer not only refused to publish material on the matter but asserted that other printers would refuse to touch it also. Unofficial pressure by those who control industry and the Press can be as tight as any official censorship.

The other incident is the refusal of the Cabinet to allow Edward to broadcast before his abdication (Times, December 12th, 1936). The significance of this is that the British Broadcasting Corporation operates on a Royal Charter, and is thus nominally an organisation more directly under the authority of the Crown than any other. Yet he was not allowed to address his “own” subjects over his "own” B.B.C. Those who still persist in believing that the Crown has control over the armed forces or other bodies which work in the King’s name should ponder this. In fact, Parliament’s control is effective whenever those who are in a majority want to act. When a politically organised Socialist majority gains control of Parliament they will find it an effective instrument for the emancipation of the working class. Neither lords nor kings, lawyers nor financiers, will be able to stand in the way.

The conduct of the Labour Party towards the question was truly laughable. Having no policy— unless a palsied fear of Fascism can be called a policy—the Labour Party lined up behind "honest” Stanley Baldwin’s Cabinet. It shuddered at the idea of Mrs. Simpson becoming Queen —"married twice already. Both her former husbands are living" (Daily Herald, December 5th)— and echoed the capitalist plea that the Dominions would not accept her. It discovered, with the capitalist Press, that the King's acts "are the links which hold the Commonwealth together” (Daily Herald, December 3rd). The statement is absurd, whether from a capitalist’s or from a worker's standpoint. Capitalist interests hang together in the Empire from motives of mutual profit and mutual fears. The Crown is only the symbol with which the capitalists dazzle the eyes of the dispossessed populations in all the Empire countries. From a worker's standpoint—that is from the standpoint the Labour Party pretends to occupy—what binds the workers of the Empire and non-Empire countries together is their common fate as an exploited class and common interest in ending exploitation. Instead of basing its attitude on these elementary facts of the working class position, the Labour Party supported the capitalist monarchy and helped the capitalist class to sack an awkward occupant of the throne. They even sank so low as to echo the excuse that Edward had failed in his duty of sacrificing his personal affections—“The King failed to subdue the man" (Daily Herald, December 11th, 1936).

What a policy and what a Party!

Edgar Hardcastle