50 Years Ago: A Warning to Irish Workers (1957)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

There can be no relief for the oppressed Irishman in changing an English robber for an Irish one. The person of the robber does not matter—it is the fact of the robbery that spells misery. National divisions are a hindrance to working-class unity and action, and national jealousies and differences are fostered by the capitalists for their own ends.

The crowd of hungry “intellectuals” clamouring for jobs both within and without the Irish parliamentary party do not represent the interests of the working class in Ireland. They do not, indeed, profess to favour other than capitalist interests, provided that the landlord or capitalist be Irish, but the Irish capitalist is in no wise more merciful than the English exploiter. The national sentiment and perennial enthusiasm of the Irishmen are being exploited by the so-called leaders in the interests of Irish capitalism, and the workers are being used to fight the battles of their oppressors. The Irish capitalist rebels against the English capitalist only because the latter stands in the way of a more thorough exploitation of the Irish workers by Irish capital. Let the thieves fight their own battles!

[From an article on 'The Sinn Fein Policy', Socialist Standard, September 1907.]

News in Review: Algeria (1962)

The News in Review column from the January 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Algeria

In Algeria and in France the blood still flows.

The shootings, the bombings, the threats—even the publicity-worthy attempt, by the OAS to extort money from Brigitte Bardot—are typical of a bitter struggle between nationalists and colonialists.

Recent events have been bad enough. But according to some correspondents they are only the lull before another terrible storm breaks over Algeria.

What has happened to de Gaulle, the strong man who was going to clear up this mess? Whatever local influence the French President has had on the struggle—and there is no denying that he has had some—he is pretty well powerless to resolve the basic dispute.

The Moslems are still adamantly for an Algerian Algeria. The settlers stand firm for French control of the country.

Post-war history has been notable for its bloody nationalist struggles as the colonial powers have been pushed out of country after country, not always going without a fight.

This is what can be expected when capitalism throws up its disputes over property and the right to exploit a country’s workers.

That is basically what the trouble in Algeria is about. Within capitalism such struggles must go on.

Weak politicians can certainly do nothing about this. Strong politicians may make a show of doing something but end up no better than the rest.

Pay Pause

There was, of course, much moaning in the House when they got the news that the pay pause had been defied by the award to the electricity workers.

No moaning in the power stations, though. The workers were bound to resist the pause, because it is a threat to their living standards. That is what drove the teachers to demonstrate and what may cause the civil servants to start working to rule.

For the workers, then, it is simply a matter of fighting for their interests.

And for the employers?

For some of them the pay pause was a welcome thing. But for others it was not so simple.

Some weeks before the electricity award many private employers in the road haulage industry had chosen to ignore the Minister of Labour’s ruling that a pay increase and a cut in hours could not operate until the first of this month. The employees of these firms got their rise and reduction in hours in the middle of last November.

Why did the road haulage firms give in? Simply, they reckoned up the cost of surrender. Then they balanced it against the cost of the strikes and other protests which would follow a postponement of the rise. They found that capitulation was the cheaper course. So they paid up.

Which goes to show how capitalism’s divided interests extend to the employers themselves and often defeat the capitalists’ own ends.

Scooter Slump

One by one, the never-had-it-so-good industries are feeling the unaccustomed draught of recession.

Cars, television sets and refrigerators have already had their slumps. Now a side-show industry in the post war consumer goods boom has taken a fall.

Scooters and mopeds took their share of the boom, winning a lot of young people away from the bicycles they used to pedal around. Like the rest, they had their glorious summer in 1958 when the H.P. controls were off and everything sold like hot cakes.

This was the time when Raleigh Industries, already famous for their pedal cycles came in to try to take their share of the scooter and moped market.

Since then times have become hard. Lambretta recently had to cut their prices drastically in answer to their competitors’ reductions. Now Raleigh, who have already suffered in the slump in bicycle’ sales have announced that in March they will close their factory at Smethwick which turns out their scooters and mopeds. Fifteen hundred people will probably lose their jobs.

Perhaps this only amounts to a recession from which the stricken industries will soon recover. But there are enough of them in trouble now to cause fear that it is more serious than that.

Capitalism is still a system of ups and downs. Its spells of relative prosperity cannot have any permanent value. Workers should not wait until they are on the dole queue before they learn the truth of this.

Lib-Lab?

It is early days yet for the Labour Party seriously to consider an alliance with the Liberals. Mr. Gaitskell still has enough hope of becoming Prime Minister in his own right to explain his description of Mr. Woodrow Wyatt’s suggestion of a Lib.-Lab. link-up as “silly.”

It is safe to assume, though, that the suggestion finds rather more favour among the Labour Party members who arc getting sick of being on the losing side. If the Tories give them one or two more drubbings at the polls, anything could happen.

Nothing new in this, of course. The Labour governments of 1924 and 1929 blamed their alliance with the Liberals for their failure to run capitalism. They swore that they would never again allow their hands to be so tied.

But having the 1945 government to themselves made no difference—the Labour Party failed again. The best that some of them can now suggest is to revive the idea of a Liberal alliance— which they themselves told us was discredited by the events of 1924 and 1929.

There is nothing surprising in this. The Labour Party do not exist to propound political principles. Like any other capitalist party, they are out first of all for power.

This goes for the Liberals as well. They have made it plain that they would only consider an alliance which was worth their while in terms of Members of Parliament.

All good, clean, cynical fun this. May we be excused if we do not see anything to laugh at?

News in Review: Quick look around (1965)

The News in Review column from the August 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Quick look around

To those who find the headlines depressing, and who prefer to look for the news in the newspapers’ smaller columns (“Vicar, 73, Weds Secretary, 21”) we can offer little comfort.

Events which are considered of minor importance reflect the same drab image as the big news.

Nearly two million people are receiving National Assistance in this country, which shows that many more than two million are not sharing in whatever the Tories meant when they talked about our rising prosperity. About three quarters of those on National Assistance are pensioners, which shows again that although the shadow of want may have been lifted from some people (for example the judges who are soon going to get a twenty-five per cent rise in their already big wages) it still hangs over the retired worker.

We have been promised that the report of the government’s Study Group on the North West will shortly be published. The Group found that parts of the North West have the highest mortality rate in the country, due to the fact that so many of its people live in towns and cities, under squalid conditions. It also discovered a fact which some other people had known for a long time; that there are still plenty of slums in this country, and that they are increasing fast. The Group concluded, in fact, that it will take fifty years, at the present rates of clearance, to get rid of the North West’s slums.

In Geneva, United Nations Secretary General U Thant said that on present showing there will be more unemployment, more hunger, more malnutrition, in 1970 than there is today. “The misery of the developing world,” he said, “is a progressive misery. It threatens to grow worse in the second half of the decade.” The only comment to make here is that this gloomy opinion comes from someone who, with the job which he has, must obviously be one of the world’s top optimists.

There is no reason to hope that the news will get any better. It is apparent that there was something seriously lacking in the perceptive powers of the man who first said that every day, in every way, things are getting better and better.

Vietnam mission

It is fairly safe to assume that Mr. Wilson was not heedless of the political advantages to be gained from the publicity which was bound to accompany the suggested peace mission on Vietnam.

Perhaps it was even hoped that in the excitement few people would have realised that the mission had not actually done anything, or gone anywhere and that indeed most of its members had split up and gone home.

The mission was the same sort of empty gesture—like Chamberlain’s trip to Munich, like the Locarno Treaty in 1924 — which convince workers that capitalism’s leaders are about to solve the problem of war.

This conviction rests upon a delusion; that wars are caused by international statesmen omitting to talk before they start shooting—or rather, before they tell their workers to start shooting for them. (At one time there was a popular theory that Stalin’s intransigence could be dealt with by getting him to raise a Kremlin cricket team to play an XI from Westminster.)

In fact, there is no lack of opportunity for capitalism’s leaders to confer. And, as the Vietnam mission has shown, there are also plenty of informal channels through which they can communicate, even if they do not recognise each other’s existence. It is clear .that they fail to do so only when they think there are other ways of settling their differences.

It is also clear that wars are not caused by a failure of communication. They are caused by conditions which cannot be affected by any conference, and they start when further talking is pointless.

The Western powers are now trying to get the Vietcong to negotiate, when they are convinced that they are close to victory. This is something like Hitler trying to impose his terms on the Allies as his empire was collapsing in April 1945. Like any other war, the one in Vietnam has its own momentum of ruthlessness and it will be played out to its bitter end.

That will not be the end of the matter; Vietnam is only the latest of the small wars in the greater struggle between the world powers over which shall control and exploit South East Asia. There is no sense, no reason, no humanity, in such conflicts—and no “right” either on any side.

It is typical of Labour Party hypocrisy that they should pretend that normal human standards can be applied to the war in Vietnam. They are among the supporters of the social system which produces the war there and which could make it (to use the current ugly jargon) escalate into something which even Mr. Wilson does not pretend to be able to control.

Algerian conflict

During the long war for Algerian independence, the people who suffered in the nationalist cause were comforted by the thought that out of their tribulations freedom would be born in Algeria.

At that time, as the French forces were daily committing the most brutal of excesses, it was easy to represent the FLN as fighters for liberty.

One of the heroes of the rebellion, who quickly emerged as the effective ruler of Algeria after independence, was Ben Bella. He was supposed to be the man who, once the French had been banished, would lead the poor Algerian peasant to freedom and prosperity.

One of Ben Bella’s closest associates, the man who stood by him and did so much to help him root out opposition after the rebellion, was Colonel Boumedienne. If anyone bears a load of responsibility for selling Ben Bella as Freedom’s Messiah, it is Boumedienne.

Yet now, according to the Colonel, the whole thing was a mistake. Ben Bella does not stand for freedom—he is a despot, a demagogue. He squandered Algeria’s resources, he frightened off investors. (We should remind ourselves here that the Colonel, who has pledged himself to encourage investment in Algeria, calls himself a Socialist.)

It is too late, now, to discover that the Algerian rebellion was to result in replacing one despotism by another; it would have saved some lives if at the time Boumedienne had reminded his followers that nationalist risings often have that effect.

All nationalist movements claim that they are fighting for freedom, and not a few of them also claim to be Socialist as well. But when they get power, and the moment of truth arrives, they frequently impose dictatorships.

Algeria is only the latest of several countries in which this has happened recently, and in which the leaders of the rebellion, after they have won, have split and denounced each other as despots. In one after another of the new African states this has happened—sometimes until the imposition of a one-party state has silenced the opposition and left only one side to put over its point of view.

These are the fruits of nationalist rebellion. There can be few causes which have induced so many people to waste so much time, energy and blood.

Gaolbreak

One fact is often overlooked by the man-in-the-street advocate of the deterrent effect of heavy sentences. The more severe the sentence, the greater the incentive to escape.

Heavy sentences are often imposed on members of big and well-organised mobs like the Train Robbers, who are well enough equipped, in daring and organisation, to bring off a rescue from gaol.

The prison authorities are of course aware of this; if rumours are true they have thwarted plans to free two of the Train gang. But the criminals have the same sort of advantages as guerrilla fighters—they can move freely in the world outside, they can watch and wait and pounce when they think the moment has come.

The rescue of Ronald Biggs has confirmed what the escape of Charles Wilson showed—that big time crime is now refined and organised enough not to reject any job. Perhaps some criminals with a sense of humour might reflect that they at any rate are responding to the Labour government’s appeal for greater technical expertise in our work.

It has been often said that men like the Great Train Robbers would make excellent soldiers or big business men. It is apparent that they do have the required amount of ruthlessness to succeed in these fields.

At the moment, however, they prefer to rob people in ways which capitalism says are illegal, and to ignore other methods which are likely to bring them a place in the Honours List.

One thing the robbers fear above everything else, above imprisonment, above the nervous stress of their work, and that is to be a normal member of the working class. They cannot face the prospect of the daily journey to the factory or office, the clocking on and off, the monotonous routine jobs, the kowtowing to the boss, the leisure time spent in visiting or cutting the lawn.

This is one of the influences which persuade them to be criminals. It is also one of the influences which persuade the capitalist class to hang on to their privileged situation, and to the rights it brings them to be legalised robbers.

Cyprus—A Mediterranean Hotspot (1958)

From the June 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cyprus is the healthiest place in the world—for anyone except a policeman. It exports false teeth and fine lace and the seeds from which many an English gardener raises his cauliflowers. It is an island in a state of confused emergency, where the Greeks riot because they want the British occupation to end and the Turks riot because they want it to continue. The British don’t intend to leave, anyway. The island has been a trouble spot for centuries; what is the background to the present disturbances ?

History and Economy

The history of Cyprus is the history of sea-power in the Eastern Mediterranean; the island has always been occupied by a dominant naval power. In 1571 it became part of the Ottoman Empire and this lasted until the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 revived European interest in its strategic position. At the time Russia was penetrating into Asia Minor, and when in 1877 they inflicted a tremendous defeat on the Turks at Adrianople and Armenia, London decided to intervene, (In the music halls they were singing the song which began, “We don't want to fight, but by jingo! if we do. . . .") Turkey accepted Russia’s terms at San Stefano in 1878; at the same time she signed a “Convention of Defensive Alliance” with Great Britain which agreed to British occupation of Cyprus, in return for an undertaking to fight with Turkey against future Russian expansion. On the outbreak of war in 1914 Britain annexed the island by Order in Council, on the grounds that Turkey was then an enemy country. In 1923 Greece and Turkey signed the Treaty of Lausanne, which recognised British possession of Cyprus as part of the territorial balance in the area.

The first Britishers found Cyprus an impoverished land, with backward agricultural methods and suffering from chronic soil erosion. Forests had been ruthlessly destroyed and there were few useful roads, bridges or harbours. As British occupation became established, capital flowed into the island and reafforestation and agricultural development schemes were started. The copper mines (reputed to be the first in the world, but neglected since the Romans left) were reopened. By 1928 the Cypriot population was twice as large as in 1878 and everything was controlled by a police force and legal system similar to the British patterns

The Cypriot economy remains based on its agriculture, which absorbs over half the working population. Mineral production is of great importance, and there is a little minor industry, producing buttons, hand-made shoes, and the like. Most of the exports go to West Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy, in that order; the United Kingdom supply the bulk of the island's imports. The death rate in Cyprus is among the world’s lowest—at 6.3 per 1,000, lower than the U.S.A. and Great Britain. Although it was once called one of the most malarious places in the world, Cyprus has not had a single case of the disease since 1949. At the moment there is virtually no unemployment on the island (unless EOKA can be said to be out of work!), but this could easily change, for 60 per cent. of the exports are made up of minerals, at prices at the mercy of world trading conditions.

EOKA, the Greeks and the Church

EOKA (the letters stand for the Greek words meaning National Organisation of Cypriot Combatants), emphasises the campaign for enosis (union of Cyprus with Greece) by acts of killing and sabotage. At its head is Colonel George Grivas, a romantically 'moustached character who once led the KHI. This undercover royalist movement was held responsible for many murders in the 1946-47 disturbances in Greece.

The EOKA guerrilla hide-out in the Troodos mountains, coming down into the towns to kill selected persons, or to toss a bomb (as many as 20 a day have been known recently). The organisation has been active for about three years, killing over 100 and wounding over 350 British people. For the past year or so things have been quieter until the recent bomb incidents. Now EOKA are threatening another campaign unless the Cyprus question is settled quickly. General Kendrew, who once captained the England Rugby team and who now commands the British security forces, has promised that if EOKA starts up again they will get treatment which will make the Harding regime seem "mild and benevolent" by comparison.

The idea of enosis is not new. The first British Governor in 1878 was greeted by the Bishop of Kition with the hope that “. . .  Great Britain will help Cyprus . . . to be united with Mother Greece. . . ." In 1931 there were violent demonstrations in favour of enosis, after which 10 Cypriots, including two bishops, were exiled and the island's Legislative Council suspended. This upset may have been aggravated by the extreme conditions which Cyprus was experiencing in the world slump, but it is difficult to find any similar reason to explain the enosis movement to-day. As we have seen, most of the colony's trade is with Europe, and certainly Greece, with her low standard of living, infantile trade union movement and lack of political freedom should offer little to attract a thoughtful Cypriot. If the emigration figures are a guide, few Cypriots are attracted to Greece. 6,441 Cypriots left the island in 1956; 5,233 of these came to the United Kingdom and 730 went to Australia. Between 1952 and 1955 only 15 Cypriots went to Greece. The principal force behind the enosis movement stems from the fact that 80 per cent. of Cypriots are of Greek origin and are easily misled into supporting the Greek effort in her age-long struggle with Turkey over the territorial carve-up of Asia Minor. The Cypriot Communists also support enosis, even though their counterparts in Greece have been very roughly treated and General Grivas is their fanatical opponent.

The Greek Orthodox Church is a substantial landowner in Cyprus and a powerful supporter of union with Greece. The Church's political influence began with the Turkish occupation, when leaders of the Church were granted the Sultan's commission to collect taxes and to keep an eye on the not always submissive local officers of the Ottoman Empire. These leaders became associated with the illegal anti-Turkish movement; when the Greek War of Independence broke out in 1821 nine of them were publicly hanged and several more beheaded. The British put an end to the tax gathering, but the Church was unwilling to abandon all its temporal activities; it therefore devoted itself to political affairs and, as tradition foretold, gave support to the enosis movement. Now that the movement has gathered its own momentum, the Church dare not drop its support, for fear of losing influence to laymen. Because of their attitude, Archbishop Makarios and the Bishop of Kyrenia were deported to the Seychelles Islands in March of 1956. A year later they were released and allowed to go anywhere except Cyprus.

The Turks

As the Greeks rang their bells to celebrate Makarios’ release, and as Lord Salisbury left the British Government in disgust, so Turkish Cypriots sent a protesting telegram to the Prime Minister of Turkey. What are the Turkish interests in Cyprus ?

Although Russian penetration may present a greater threat, the Turkish Government must still worry about the long struggle with Greece. It remembers the attack of 1922, when the Greeks almost reached Ankara, but were thrown back upon Smyrna, where Kemal Attaturk massacred them with indescribable bestiality. They cannot forget that Cyprus is only 40 miles from the Turkish mainland and commands the approaches to the important ports of Mersin and Iskenderum. They look on a Greek Cyprus as an intolerable threat.

Yet a Turkish Cyprus is out of the question, for the Turks make up only 18 per cent, of the island's population. So Ankara is in favour of British occupation of Cyprus and supports British power in the Middle East, as a check on Greek ambitions. No Cyprus question, therefore, existed for Turkey, until recently they sensed a change in British policy. Then the Turks began to kick over the traces. Only after protest did they make the “final sacrifice" of accepting the idea of partitioning Cyprus. Now, convinced that London is preparing to betray them, they have started rioting, complete with killings and demonstrating schoolchildren. They have called for the dismissal of the liberal" governor. Sir Hugh Foot and the return of the "tough" General Harding. There is a Turkish Resistance Movement which has declared itself “on the verge" of starting its (ominous words) "struggle for freedom.” The Turks have shown that they can be as violent as the Greeks.

British Interests

In all this confusion of interests, the policy of the British Government remains firm to the point of stagnation. Gone are the days of 1915, when the Greeks were offered Cyprus in exchange for support of Serbia against Bulgaria (Athens declined). Every proposal made by the British Government in recent years, including those of the Radcliffe enquiry in late 1956, have clearly presupposed the continuation of British occupation of Cyprus.

Why is Whitehall so adamant ? The 1956 Colonial Office report on Cyprus stated that ". . . Her Majesty's Government formally recognised the principle of self-determination, but considered its application not to be a practical proposition at the present time on account of the existing situation in the Eastern Mediterranean." That is the clue to it. Great Britain was once the dominant power of the Middle East. Now, with the oil discoveries throwing up nationalist Governments, British influence has been squeezed out of one country after another. Apart from her own interest in the oilfields, Britain has a number of strategic obligations to protect the sheikdoms on the Persian Gulf against attack by their neighbours (the most powerful of these is the American-influenced Saudi Arabia). Cyprus, the one remaining toehold in the area, is vital to this conception of British interests, as a convenient springboard from which the Persian Gulf can be reinforced.

Great Britain also has commitments to the Bagdad Pact, which joins Pakistan, Persia, Iraq and Turkey in a defensive alliance with the classical aim of preventing Russian penetration of the Middle East Cyprus—1½ hours’ flying time from Bagdad—is important to British participation in the pact. So the British stay in Cyprus and, for fear of being voted out of the island, will not, allow the Cypriots to express their preference on enosis. To put the matter into sharper perspective we should remember that the bloodshed in Cyprus is small beer compared to that in, say, Algeria. And Greece is not the only small country with imperialist designs; the Yemen, Spain, Guatemala and Mexico are others.

Tragedy

There are people (they often call themselves Socialists) who like to think that the Cyprus struggle is a special sort of regrettable tragedy. They thought the same about Kenya and Malaya, and before that of Ireland. The ignorance and don’t care attitude, which never tries to find out the reason for these problems—that is the real tragedy, in Cyprus and England and over all the world.

Ivan.

The Sinn Fein Policy. (1907)

From the September 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Policy Foreshadowed.

“I had come to the conclusion that the whole system ought to be met with resistance at every point; and the means for this would be extremely simple: a combination amongst the people to obstruct and render impossible the transport and shipment of Irish provisions; to refuse all aid in its removal; to destroy the highways; to prevent everyone, by intimidation, from daring to bid for grain or cattle if brought to auction under distress (a method of obstruction that had put an end to church tithes before); in short, to offer a passive resistance universally, but occasionally, when opportunity served, to try the steel.”

The above lines were written by John Mitchel in 1847 when the Irish Confederation refused to endorse his policy of immediate resistance to the collection of rents, rates, and taxes. The portion relating to the transport and shipment of Irish goods referred to the exportation of Irish produce in a time when the country was devastated by famine and thousands were dying of starvation.

Parnell’s proposition to the Nationalist members, “to withdraw from the British House of Commons and organise the people in Ireland to resist English rule at every point” was defeated on a vote of the party. The idea of carrying on a campaign of passive resistance to British rule in Ireland is therefore not by any means new, but the Sinn Fein Party is the first party that has attempted to organise the people for this object. It has already succeeded in winning over the youngest and most ardent of the Irish race; it has converted four of the official Nationalist members of Parliament including one of their whips, Sir T. G. Esmonde. At a meeting of the Nationalist Party in the House of Commons it was proposed and seconded that the Party adopt the Sinn Fein policy and withdraw from Westminster. In North Leitrim the member, Mr. Dolan, having embraced the new doctrine, is about to contest the seat against the official Nationalist candidate.

The Movement Realised.

The Sinn Fein Party claim to have a majority in favour of their policy in the County and District Councils in the country, and Mr. Sweetman, chairman of the Meath County Council, at the meeting of councillors from various counties proposed and caused to be discussed at length a resolution to this effect: “that we refuse to collect any more rates or taxes”. Thus we see that the Sinn Fein policy will probably in the future be the method adopted throughout Ireland to resist and if possible destroy the domination of “the thrice accursed British Empire”.

What is the nature and origin of the Sinn Fein movement? The words Sinn Fein mean “ourselves alone”, and those who are acquainted with Ireland know that within the last ten years a movement was set on foot for the restoration of the Irish language, customs, industries, music and art; started and organised  by the Gaelic League it was at first strictly non-political and non-sectarian, its ultimate object was an Irish Ireland, everything in language, clothing, manner and sport which was not originally Irish was banned and ridiculed, and the offenders were termed “Shoneens”, “Flunkeys”, and “West Britons”. The Gaelic League was a decided success and it did not exist long before it had a political party formed independent of all others and having for its object “Ireland a Nation”, not in the sense of a British colony, but independent of all external authority. This party was formed on the same basis as Wolfe Tone a century ago formed the “United Irishmen”, and like Tone it wanted “to unite Catholic, Protestant, and Dissenter under the common name of Irishman”. “Our independence must be had at all hazards; if the men of property will not support us they must fall; we can support ourselves by the aid of that numerous and respectable class of the community, the men of no property”. Thus we see the Sinn Fein Party is the child of the Irish education movement, and is alluded to by the Parliamentarians as the “crowd of intellectuals”, “armchair agitators”, etc.

It sees the Futility of Compromise…

The Sinn Fein Party is now possessed of several weekly journals that voice its views. It has also published a large number of pamphlets that have aided considerably in bringing the Party to its present position. In their weekly journals the Sinn Feiners riddle the arguments of the Parliamentarians, they point to the fact that in 1847 the population of Ireland was 9 millions, while today it is about 4 millions after over half a century of labour on the “flure of the House”. That the Land Acts were fraudulent and did not even touch the question of the poverty problem, that a Liberal Government is now in office but not officially pledged to Home Rule; in short, that the Nationalist Party is ineffective as a weapon against British misrule in Ireland.

The Sinn Fein Party propose the immediate withdrawal from Westminster of the 82 Irish members and that the £30,000 now annually spent in maintaining this useless weapon be spent in sending consuls to foreign countries to open up markets for Irish goods. That all monies invested in the banks of Ireland at the present time be withdrawn and a People’s Bank be formed to lend money and transact all business at interest to cover only the cost of management. That a National Stock Exchange be formed in Dublin. That the people refuse to pay rent, rates, or taxes, and that the County Councils and other such bodies responsible refuse to collect same. That, if possible, no articles from which the British Government derives a revenue be consumed by the people. That the money saved in rent, rates, and administration be used in fixing machinery and starting the disused mills and factories, to revive dying industries and introduce new ones. That, in short, by common consent, by means of duly elected members or a general council of the County and District Councils the people of Ireland will refuse to recognise English law, authorities, or customs, and that henceforth Ireland shall be ruled only by the will of the people of Ireland.

Some of the chief spokesmen of this movement are large land owners and capitalists. Mr. John Sweetman owns a large tract of land in C. Meath, is a county councillor, railway director, etc. Edward Martyn is a landowner of County Galway, a J. P. and the exact reflex of the English capitalist. Sir T. G. Esmonde, Bart, M.P., is a bank director, railway director, and landlord. These and many other connected with the Sinn Fein movement give as their principal reason for supporting it the insecurity of their stock, the railways are not making any profit worth speaking of, the canals are idle, and so on.

… But is itself Futile.

From this it is quite evident that if the Sinn Fein movement succeeds profits are intended to rise at the expense of the Irish worker. The Irish capitalist class is still to remain the proud possessor of the land, factories, mills, railways, etc., and readers of this journal know what that means for the poor wretches employed.

The proud boast of the Sinn Fein Party is that Hungary was placed in much the same position as under Austria as Ireland is under England, and that when Hungary established her independence in exactly the same manner as the Sinn Fein movement proposes Ireland should, her trade increased by leaps and bounds, her population increased and new industries were developed, yet we know that today the Magyar is as much a slave as ever, and that there are in Hungary workhouses, prisons, asylums, unemployed, and all the other characteristics of the capitalist system. We know that the trade of Great Britain was greater last year than ever before, and that last year was nevertheless for the workers a year of great unemployment, poverty and privation. Even regarding the present success of the Sinn Fein movement it may be pointed out that the prospect differs vitally from that of Hungary in the important fact that Hungary was almost the equal in population and strength of Austria, and so was able to command political success. Hungary was also helped by the important tactical position it occupied as a barrier against Russian and Turkish advance. But as far as the condition of the people is concerned the Hungarian worker is not one whit better off than the Irish worker, whilst emigrants from Hungary may be counted by the hundred thousand, by whom, it is evident, the foreign exploiters are found at least no worse than the Hungarian masters from whom they flee.

For only Socialism can help the Workers.

In view of these facts it is our duty to warn our fellow-workers in Ireland of the futility of the Sinn Fein policy as far as they are concerned. There can be no relief for the oppressed Irishman in changing an English robber for an Irish one. The person of the robber does not matter—it is the fact of the robbery that spells misery. National divisions are a hindrance to working-class unity and action, and national jealousies and differences are fostered by the capitalists for their own ends.

The crowd of hungry “intellectuals” clamouring for jobs both within and without the Irish parliamentary party do not represent the interests of the working class in Ireland. They do not, indeed, profess to favour other than capitalist interests, provided that the landlord or capitalist be Irish, but the Irish capitalist is in no wise more merciful than the English exploiter. The national sentiment and perennial enthusiasm of the Irishmen are being exploited by the so-called leaders in the interests of Irish capitalism, and the workers are being used to fight the battles of their oppressors. The Irish capitalist rebels against the English capitalist only because the latter stands in the way of a more thorough exploitation of the Irish workers by Irish capital. Let the thieves fight their own battles! For the worker in Ireland there is but one hope. It is to join the Irish wing of the international Socialist working class and to make common cause with the Socialist workers of all countries for the end of all forms of exploitation; saying to both English and Irish capitalists: “A plague on both your houses”. For the true battle-cry of the working class in broader, more significant and more inspiring than mere nationalism, and that rally cry is: THE WORLD FOR THE WORKERS!

J. McManus

Letter: Nationalist Parties (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

I should like to ask the Socialist Party view on nationalism and anarchism and some other points.

There is hardly a country in Western Europe that has not spawned a nationalist or separatist movement. Basques and Catalans in Spain, Bretons and Corsicans in France, Frisians in Holland, Scots, Welsh and Cornish in Britain. As all political parties are expressions of class interests, where do the nationalist movements stand on this score? Are these movements fighting to save minority cultures, and if they are is this good? As you advocate Socialism on a world scale you will surely need to satisfy the linguistic and cultural demands of minority peoples.

Second, your views on anarchism. I have read anarchist literature and found that their view of post-revolutionary society is similar to the Socialist Party’s, the disagreements appear to be over the methods used to obtain this objective. This being so, should Socialists work with anarchists?

As the capitalist class has vast wealth not only in cash but also in goods (houses, cars, art objects etc.) will these be confiscated after the revolution?

As the world cannot be expected to become Socialist all at once what would be the relationship between the Socialist and capitalist countries, for instance what would be the relationship between a Socialist Britain and capitalist Saudi-Arabia, considering that the latter supplies most of our crude oil? Would a country becoming Socialist have to achieve self-sufficiency?

Finally, do you think it desirable that the Socialist parties round the world unite to form a single World Socialist Party?

Ian Greenslade

Southminster

Reply:

What makes capitalists a class is that they have in common their ownership of the means of living, and an interest in preserving it and continuing production for profit. However, there are various sections of the capitalist class, and the regime in any one country reflects the dominance of a particular section. In Britain and other advanced countries the industrial capitalist holds sway, and other sections — as, in the recent past, the housing landlord — can be sent to the wall for his benefit. Thus, not one but several parties represent the interests of capitalists; each will favour a particular section, and will argue that to pursue policies on those lines is the best thing for the system as a whole.

The case of nationalist organizations is for local capitalists instead of foreign ones, and this is supported by programmes of reforms which they say would be made possible by the change. There are many recent examples to enable you to form an opinion of the consequences. The desire to preserve regional speech and traditions need fear nothing from Socialism. These suffer under the capitalist nationstate; “education” has ironed them out severely, and many people divest themselves of local speech and manners because they find them handicaps in getting jobs and maintaining prestige.

Socialists have a fundamentally different view of society from anarchists’. The latter see not the capitalist system but “authority”, particularly that of the state, as their enemy and therefore reject the idea of gaining control of the state machine to change society. It is difficult to generalize about anarchists because of the variety of their opinions as to what they seek to do, but anarchist publications continually demand social reforms. What is the use of advocating a free society and at the same time bolstering this one; or opposing the state and at the same time applying to it? We have nothing in common with that.

We are concerned with people getting houses in Socialism because they cannot get them now, not with "confiscation”. You will find that when servants are not available the desire to live in palatial houses will vanish (this is already happening now). When art objects no longer represent large sums of money there will be a different evaluation of them. We have all heard about priceless masterpieces found in attics; presumably they were put there because their owners thought poorly of them, until the discovery of the money connection endowed them with remarkable beauty after all.

To answer your final questions briefly, Socialism in one country is not possible. But you are assuming a one-way dependence. Turn this round and ask how a monarchical dictatorship would manage in a Socialist world, whether it would be capable of self-sufficiency, and how likely it would be in those circumstances to resist the movement towards Socialism in its own territory. There are Socialist parties with the same Object and Principles as ourselves in several countries, and with the growth of the movement we shall no doubt have to consider world organization. Hasten the day!

Editorial Committee.

Promised Land (1982)

From the December 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “promised land” of Biblical myth is so-called because, for all the impoverished Jewish and Arab workers who are trained to kill over it. “promised” is all it will ever be. Investors, capitalist employers of one side or another will continue to dominate, or come to dominate, the lucrative industry and markets there as long as world capitalism remains.

Class division among Jews was typified towards the end of the last century by the reaction of the “Cousinhood” of established Anglo-Jewry to the wave of poorer Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. For example, Benjamin Cohen, the Conservative MP for Islington at the time, supported the 1905 Aliens Act to limit further immigration. The historical tendency towards international integration and class polarisation makes Jewish nationalism, like its Palestinian counterpart, a pointless and reactionary response to the exploitation and oppression of the past and present. There is no Jewish “race": Israeli and British workers share the same interest in i breaking down national boundaries and forming a democratic, socialist society.

In the nineteenth century, Zionism developed as a nationalist movement similar to many others involving the setting up of capitalist states. Because of the banning of Jews from many fields of work in the Middle Ages, and the Christian ruling against taking part in money-lending, many Jews ended up as moneylenders. This was used as part of the vicious campaign of persecution directed against Jews over centuries, as they were used as a scapegoat for the problems of poverty and conflict which were endemic to the rise of capitalism. In the twentieth century, the idea of giving the Jews a country where they might be safe from the painful discrimination and attacks they had suffered was harnessed to the need for Western capitalism to have an outpost in an area of great strategic importance, the Middle East.

As early as 1840 Lord Shaftesbury, anxious to ensure an overland route to India, proposed a scheme of Jewish colonisation to use “the wealth and industry of the Jewish people for the economic development of a backward area”. In the nineteenth century Rothschild invested £2 million in Palestine, and the French government showed an interest in colonisation. The first Zionist conference was held in 1897 at Basle, at a time of violent anti-semitism in Germany and France. Herzl originally advocated a Jewish settlement in Uganda, but the congress decided on the area of Palestine, because of its religious significance. For thousands of years, it had been a crucially situated trade centre. The pogroms in Russia since the 1880s had sent thousands of Jews fleeing across Europe, and the prospect of a Jewish state seemed welcome to them.

During the First World War, as pact of its contradictory war-bribes, Britain promised the Jews a “national home” and the Arabs independence throughout the Middle East. In 1940 Joseph Weitz, then heading the Jewish Agency Colonisation Programme, wrote in his diary:

Between ourselves it must be clear that there is no room for both peoples together in this country . . . the only solution is Palestine without Arabs (Quoted in Socialist Charter, February 1979).

Indeed, the attempt to solve the problem of anti-semitism within a nationalist framework demanded that Jews should remain in a majority in the newly created state, with all of the immigration restrictions that implies, if the exercise was not to lose its point.

The state of Israel was founded in 1948, and by 1968 the annual influx of capital invested in the area was equivalent to about one tenth of the total world “aid” bill. Most of this capital was owned by British, French and American investors who did not live in the Middle East and for whom the religious ideals of Zionism meant nothing, other than a pool of labour inspired by those ideals to work hard to produce a substantial return for such investors.

Did the formation of Israel solve the problem of anti-semitism? Clearly not, and for three reasons in particular. First, the only real binding factor between people calling themselves Jewish is the acceptance of Judaism. Like other religions, Judaism is a reactionary dogma with its own implicit racism, in its reference to the “chosen people”. Second, capitalism generates racism and divisiveness because of its class divisions, and the competition between nations over world markets and between workers over jobs. The problems of poverty, unemployment, state violence and war are as evident in Israel as anywhere else. Israel is allied to the segregated state of South Africa. At least three Israeli trade unions bar Palestinian Arabs. The elements of Jewish culture which have attracted some to Zionism are all but wiped out by the demands of the capitalist state. Shops are opened on Saturdays, despite the religious ruling against it, to compete more aggressively for the market. Yiddish has been all but suppressed.

Thirdly, there is the creation of a new, Palestinian "diaspora” around Israel, and a Palestinian minority within Israel. The search for a scapegoat for the problems of the area, in the form of “Arab terrorists”, or the official anti-Jewish policies of some of the surrounding Arab states, are yet another way in which Zionism has generated racism, rather than ending it.

The persecution of Jews over many centuries, culminating in the Nazi genocide of the ’thirties, led many Jews sincerely to hope for a better future in the creation of a “humane” Jewish homeland in the Middle East. Such hopes are dangerously idealistic, and have themselves proved divisive and reactionary. The Zionists and Palestinian nationalists who argue over the borders in the area hardly own between them a single acre of that territory. As workers, owning no substantial property, they are arguing about where and by whom they will be exploited. The solution to the oppression which Jews have suffered is not to build “Jewish” prisons, tanks and bombs. The truncheons in the hands of Israeli police feel no different to those wielded in Germany, Russia or Ireland. In this respect, Israeli nationalism is basically no different from dozens of other nationalist movements with their roots in the nineteenth century expansion of capitalism. Each has its own myths, its own religious sanction, irrational loyalties, violence and senseless support for capitalism.

One final way in which racism is still being generated is in the reaction towards Israel’s recent military policies. Liberal newspapers like the Guardian, for example, have tried to interpret events by unsubstantiated racist myths:

Most opponents of the government are Ashkenazi, and most supporters of the government are oriental. "And those people don't understand peace or compromise.” said the journalist, "they understand dominance. And that's what Begin promises them.” For much of this constituency, the arguments about Palestinian purposes don't matter. (Martin Woollacott, 2 September 1982)

Like every other state, Israel is a political unit for the accumulation of capital. From 1948 to 1968, productivity increased nine-fold. Lacking natural resources, Israel imports more than 67 per cent of its raw material requirements, uses its pool of labour to work these up into finished products, and then exports nearly half of the resulting industrial production to earn foreign currency. In 1981, about 5 billion dollars was received from industrial exports, and 7.5 billion dollars spent by Israel on the world market. Since the early ’seventies there has been a high technology boom, which has largely replaced textiles and other industries of the ‘fifties. The general way in which the profit system functions across the world has been very clearly summed up in the ease of Israel as follows:

That magic ingredient (“added value”) is the difference between the cost of raw materials, plus transport and related costs, and the same price after the raw materials have been turned into highly sophisticated equipment . . . the higher the added value, the more foreign currency Israel earns. With diamonds, for example, the added value is between 20 and 25 per cent; in many electronic and other highly sophisticated products, it can reach between 45 and 70 per cent.

British Israel Trade, journal of British-Israel Chamber of Commerce, May/June 1982.

The wages and salaries on which the majority of Israelis depend in order to live are simply one of the "related costs" which this process seeks to minimise.

Seventy per cent of capital in Israel is owned by private investors, ten per cent is controlled by the state and about twenty per cent is owned by Hevrat Ovdim, the industrial holding company of the Histadrut, the main trade union, which is otherwise known as the General Confederation of Labour. In any of these cases, the same extraction of "added value” from the subordinate class of wage- and salary-workers is carried on in the interests of capital; 35 per cent of the budget goes on arms. When the Sinai Peninsula was evacuated it still had over 17 billion dollars' worth of military bases and armaments invested in it. It was Israeli and American shareholders who lost out as a result, not wage-earners or peasants.

Earlier this year, the President of the Israeli Bonds Drive attended a London lunch given by Bank Leumi for “business people and financiers”. He reported that Israel’s stock exchange, currently valued at over 11 billion dollars, is growing "by leaps and bounds" and is second in profitability only to Singapore, with an average rate of profit of 18 per cent. Israel Bonds are now the third most widely held security in the USA, after US government bonds and shares in AT and T. The President of the Bonds Drive stressed that Israel Bonds were “making an important contribution to peace". They are in fact doing so no more than Israeli bombs.

Some of the more idealistic of the early Zionists thought that it would be possible to establish a separate country which would be insulated from the conflicts and crises of world capitalism. This hope has also been shown as ill-founded by the course of history. Ernest Japhet, Chairman of Bank Leumi, said at the Industrial Club in Israel in January 1982, that “the Israeli economy, more than many other national economies, is dependent on developments in the world economy” and he went on to list problems such as fluctuations in markets and prices, and the uncertainties of market demand for Israeli exports.

The only practical way in which the majority of Israelis. Palestinians and others in the Middle East are going to come together in harmony and solidarity is through the recognition of their common class interest against their border-drawing rulers. How many Arab workers and peasants sat at the Arab summit conference of oil-sheiks and princes, which proclaimed the PLO the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people”? How many Israeli workers, their wages and salaries trailing desperately behind the spiralling cost of living in Israel, are among the millionaire shareholders in high- technology industries, or American and French arms and firms?

Hundreds of thousands of Israeli workers have recently been involved in the Peace Now movement against the war in the Lebanon. If they are to make their dream of peace into a practical reality, they must be prepared to throw off their ideological chains of religion, nationalism and support for the profit system in any of its many forms. They could do worse than to follow the advice given nearly a hundred years ago. in the Yiddish socialist paper Arbeiter Freund (“Workers' Friend"). January 15, 1886:

We say again that no colonisation, no land of one's own and no independent government will help the Jewish nation. Jewish happiness will come with the happiness of all unhappy workers, and Jewish emancipation must come with the general emancipation of humanity.

Clifford Slapper

Blogger's Note:

A correction to an item in this article appeared in the January 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Will Belgium survive? (2008)

From the September 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

No permanent government has emerged from the elections held in June last year. Does this matter to the working class there?

Belgium is a patently artificial state inhabited by people speaking two different languages. It survived for many years with one of them (French) as the dominant language because it was the language of the ruling class. Now that this has ceased to be the case, and Dutch (Flemish) has also become a language of a part of the capitalist class as well as of the state, Belgium is beginning to show signs of coming apart at the seams. Revision of the constitution — How much autonomy should the regions be given? Should or should not Belgium become a federal state? How far out should the limits of Brussels (basically a French-speaking city surrounded by Dutch-speaking communes) go? — has become an issue preventing other issues being dealt with.

Belgium is a state which the then Great Powers allowed to be set up in 1830. Before that the territory that is now Belgium had formed part, first, of the territories of the King of Spain, then of those of the Emperor of Austria. After the French Revolution Belgium became, in 1792, part of France and remained so until after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. While part of France the Napoleonic code of law, which swept away feudal remnants, was introduced and manufacturing industry began to develop in the South. This, together with strategic considerations, was one of the main reasons why in 1815 Belgium was detached from France: not only were the frontiers of France to be moved further back from the Rhine, but France was also to be deprived of a nascent industrial base. Belgium became part of a kind of Belgian-Dutch federation under King William of Holland.

In 1830, in what Belgian history books refer to as a “national revolution”, the wealthy classes of Belgium broke away from those of Holland and set up an independent State. Though Holland protested, the Great Powers let this change happen as it still left the territory of Belgium detached from France.

The circumstances which led to the establishment of Belgium are worth recalling in that they have shaped the Belgian political scene to this day. Holland was essentially a trading and agricultural country and as such its ruling groups tended to favour free trade. The nascent industrial capitalist class in the south of Belgium, however, wanted tariff walls as a protection against British competition. The Dutch government did make some moves to accommodate them but not enough. In the end the Belgian capitalists decided to break away. This was not too difficult in view of the loose, almost federal character of the Belgian-Dutch State; in addition, the population of Belgium was greater than that of Holland. But the nascent Belgian capitalist class in the South needed support in the Dutch-speaking Northern part of the territory. This they managed to do, despite being French-speaking and anti-clerical in the tradition of the French Revolution, by an opportunist alliance with the Catholic Church over the schools issue. The Dutch government wanted to introduce a system of universal state education. The Catholic Church, (the majority religion in Belgium, unlike Holland which was a Protestant State), vehemently opposed this, insisting on its exclusive right to “educate” Catholic children.

The capitalists got their state. The Belgian constitution of 1831 was a model of bourgeois-liberal government. Power was in the hands of a parliament elected only by wealthy property-owners; the king (a minor German princeling imported specially to fill the post) was a mere figurehead. Their language, French, became the official language of the new State, despite the fact that a majority of people in its territory spoke Dutch.

But there was a price to pay: the power of the Catholic Church, and its control of its own schools, had to be respected. From a short-term point of view, the lack of a modern education system had certain advantages for the Belgian capitalists: they were able to extract very long hours of work for very low rates of pay, to such an extent that Marx once described Belgium as “a capitalists’ paradise”.

The industrialisation of Belgium, apart from Antwerp and Ghent in the Dutch-speaking North, almost exclusively in Wallonia, the French-speaking Southern part, brought into existence an industrial working class and, inevitably, working class attempts at political and industrial organisation. A Belgian Labour Party (Parti Ouvrier Belge) was set up in 1885, along the same lines as was later the British Labour Party except that the co-operatives rather than the trade unions provided the bulk of the members and funds. A deliberate decision was taken not to call it the “Belgian Socialist Party” on the grounds that the word “socialist” was unacceptable to many workers. With a start like this, the POB was destined for a pitiful career of gradualism and reformism. The POB was never really even a social-democratic party in the sense that the German SPD was; it never accepted Marxism as its ideology; in fact it had a contempt for theory altogether, concentrating on trying to get piecemeal social reforms for the working class; it was in short a simple “Labour” party.

In its early years the POB was at least militant on one issue of importance to the working class: the right to vote. The general strike of l893, which forced the Belgian parliament to extend a vote to adult males, was a magnificent episode in the history of the Belgian working class. The strike did not achieve “one man, one vote”, since the rich and educated were given more than one vote, but it did force the members of the Belgian parliament, in which there was not a single POB representative, to do what most of them were opposed to: grant a vote to adult (male) workers. Later strikes to try to get plural voting abolished were less successful, but by then the POB had its own members of parliament and had begun to get involved in parliamentary manoeuvres with its new-found allies, the radical bourgeois Liberals.

In fact the Belgian Labourites tended to be, at this time the tail-end or left-wing of the Liberal party. After more than twenty years of Catholic party rule, the Belgian Liberals were feeling left out in the cold, but they realised they were unlikely to get power again without support from the POB. Accordingly, in preparation for the 1910 election they launched a great anti-clerical campaign and attempted to get the leaders of the POB involved. This was easy, as the POB leaders were anticlerical themselves (and indeed many were freemasons). It is quite clear that had the occasion arose (which it didn’t, because the Catholic party won the election) the POB would have supported a Liberal administration and would probably have gone so far as to have formed an anti-clerical coalition with them. This no doubt would have caused a stir in the Second International, to which the POB was affiliated along with other Labour and Social-Democratic parties. After the First World War, of course, all the Social-Democratic parties were prepared to take power within capitalism and accept responsibility for running it, but it is a measure of the depth of the reformism of the POB that they would have been prepared to do this in 1910 when their fellow reformists still had some doubts.

The Belgian Liberals were, by and large, French-speaking and anti-clerical. As in practice their leftwing, the POB shared these characteristics, with unfortunate results for the development of the Belgian trade union movement, which took place mainly after the founding of the POB and partly under its auspices. As the industrial centre of Belgium was in the French-speaking South it was natural that the trade union movement should be strongest there, but it was by no means inevitable that this movement should have been dominated by an anti-clerical political party, thus cutting itself off from workers of catholic origin.

It would be wrong to put the entire blame on the POB for the present split in the Belgian trade union movement into two main groups, each with about a million members: the Labourite Fédération Générale du Travail de Belgique and the self-explanatory Confédération des Syndicats Chrétiens (which is in fact the larger). The Catholic Church shares an equal blame; they combatted the POB before the first world war by organising rival co-operatives, sick clubs — and trade unions. Their trade unions didn’t have much success before the first world war, but grew rapidly between the wars as industrialization spread to the Northern part of Belgium. Employers preferred to deal with the less militant Catholic unions than with the “socialist” unions and their talk of the class struggle. But the Catholic unions also took up a very real grievance which the Labourite unions tended to neglect: the position of the Dutch language, spoken by workers in the North of Belgium.

French was the official language of Belgium after 1830. It was the language of the State and, even in the Dutch-speaking area, the language of the bourgeoisie. Thus in Northern Belgium a Dutch-speaking working class faced a French-speaking capitalist class. The Labourite unions, perhaps for the very good reason of not wishing to split the working class on linguistic lines, did not chose to exploit this situation, but it was taken up to some extent by the Catholic unions.

Today there is virtually no difference except in ideology — the FGTB is, on paper, committed to “the disappearance of the wages system”, while the CSC denounces the class struggle— between the two rival trade union groups. In practice both act as pure-and-simple, bread-and-butter unions negotiating over wages and conditions of work; on the political field their leaders are reformists, being supporters either of the Belgian Socialist Party (as, unfortunately for us genuine socialists, the POB has been called since 1945) or of the catholic political party.

The other great division in the Belgian working class besides the catholic/anti-clerical one is of course language. As stated, despite being the minority language, French was made the official language of the Belgian State set up in 1830. Dutch in fact has only been given completely equal status with French since 1932. Since the last world war the centre of economic gravity in Belgium has tended to shift from Wallonia, the French-speaking South, to Flanders, the Dutch-speaking North, and the numerical superiority of Dutch-speakers has began to make itself felt on the political scene.

The man who must share a great responsibility for side-tracking the French-speaking part of the Belgian working class on the language issue was a militant trade union leader in the Liège engineering industry, André Renard, who died in 1962 and who is still something of a myth for many militant trade unionists in Belgium, Towards the end of the grande grève, the general strike of 1960-1 over the government’s attempt to cut workers’ living standards, Renard suddenly introduced the quite unrelated political issue of “federalism”. Claiming that the workers in the French-speaking south, where the strike was virtually solid, had been betrayed by the Dutch-speakers in the North (where the Catholic unions, following a lead given by Cardinal Van Roey in his Christmas message, urged their members to stay at work), Renard argued that if Wallonia had the power to pass its own laws on economic matters it would be able to carry out various “anti-capitalist structural reforms”. He called for Belgium to be converted into a loose federation which would give Wallonia this power, virtually a demand for independence of course. This demand, and the reformist strategy behind it was supported by both the so-called Communist Party (which, under proportional representation, had a handful of members of parliament) and the Trotskyists (including, conspicuously, their international leader, Ernest Mandel, who was from Belgium).

The effect of this appeal was to heighten language-consciousness amongst French-speakers. In the years that followed French-speaking federalist groups increased their representation in parliament. So, on the other side, did the Dutch-speaking federalists, organised in a series far right parties. Today, it is the Flemish federalists and separatists who have been making the running, reflecting the fact that Flemish capitalists don’t want to continue to pay for the state benefits received by workers in Wallonia where heavy industry (coal, steel, engineering) has been considerably run down since Renard’s day.

That the working class in Belgium should be divided on linguistic lines is, from a socialist point of view a matter for regret, but it also confirms the correctness of our opposition to ”leftwing” groups in that they should be partly responsible for it.

Whether Belgium will eventually split up, or at least become a federal State of some sort, remains to be seen, but one thing is clear: this constitutional issue is of no consequence whatsoever for the working class of the area. Whatever the constitution it will be that of a capitalist State and the working class will remain propertyless sellers of labour-power to the minority who own and control the means of production.

Adam Buick

Editorial: Palestine, the Arabs and the Zionists (1946)

Editorial from the August 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

As Socialists we are determined to end for all time the exploitation of one class by another. We sympathise with all the victims of capitalism, the exploited workers and peasants, the men and women robbed of loved ones or maimed in capitalism’s wars whether in the "victorious” or the vanquished countries, and the hundreds of thousands of homeless refugees. Among the latter are many Jewish people who seek escape from their present miserable plight by leaving the European countries where they have known much suffering and sorrow. Some among them would go to any country that offered them refuge, but most of the governments, faced with problems of housing shortage and threatening unemployment, not to mention the prejudice that still greets “foreigners," are more apt at expressing sympathy than at welcoming refugees. In one instance, that of Austria, where the Government has welcomed the application of 2,000 Austrian Jews to return to Austria from Palestine, the opposition comes from local authorities, the mayors of twenty-two principal towns having jointly protested for "economic reasons" (Manchester Guardian, 15/7/46).

Other Jewish refugees look only to Palestine for refuge, and some of these Zionists have as their declared aim to make Palestine a Jewish State. They are, in short, "nationalists," looking to solve their problems not by abolishing capitalism, but by creating one more national state in a capitalist world of national states and empires. Zionist nationalism, as such, is not different from the other nationalisms and we, as Socialists, are opposed to them all, British, Russian, American, Polish, Indian and the rest. The most that could be said for nationalist movements where directed against alien rulers was the argument that, with alien rule ended, it would be easier for the workers to grasp the fact that their enemy is capitalism, whether the capitalists are aliens or not. It is, however, clear, from the experience of the last half-century, that the exploiting class of each country finds it about as easy to set the workers against the workers of other countries as it was to set them against a foreign ruling class. It is only necessary to look at the national antagonisms stirred up between the workers of the countries of Europe to see how illusory was the old belief that when Czecho-Slovaks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Poles and others were freed from their respective foreign oppressors they would live amicably side by side. To the Socialist, what has happened is not surprising. What are called nationalist movements are essentially the movements of capitalist groups striving to drive out foreign exploiters so that they can mount the vacant saddle. Having achieved that aim capitalism continues to range one national group against another in the competition for markets and the endeavour to secure lines of transport and communications, sources of raw materials and strategic frontiers.

The spokesmen of nationalist movements do not in the main declare their capitalist objectives. British capitalism talks of bringing peace to the Middle East, or of helping the Jews and Arabs. Actually British Imperialism is in Palestine for reasons of Imperial strategy and to protect oil interests in that region, doubly important now that the base in Egypt is being evacuated and since, in recent years, enormous and cheaply accessible reserves of oil have been discovered in the Middle East Alongside the imperialist or investment interests of Britain, U.S.A., Russia and France in the Arabic-speaking countries a new factor is becoming of increasing importance. Among the 40 million Arabic-speaking peoples the old social structure and ways of life are being broken down by the development of communications, by trade, and by the growth of the petroleum and other industries. Capitalist industrialisation is making headway and with it its usual expression, nationalist movements.

It is against this background that the demand is made for the settlement of Jewish people in Palestine, with the usual irrelevant arguments so beloved of all nationalisms. The Principal Rabbi of the Federation of Synagogues, Kopul Rosen, writing to the Times (13/7/46), claims that those who work for the return of the Jewish people to Zion, "whether they be Zionists or non-Zionists, are fulfilling not a secular ambition, but the Divine will as revealed in the visions of Israel's prophets." Moslem Arabs can, of course, invoke a like Divine mission.

The spokesmen of some Zionist groups talk in a less fantastic but more threatening tone. In August, 1944, David Ben-Gurion, a Zionist leader, made the following belligerent declaration:—

"We shall go to Palestine in order to become a majority there. If need be we shall take the country by force. If Palestine proves too small . . . her frontiers will have to be extended."

(Quoted in Manchester Guardian, 3/7/46.) 

Such threats to crush Arab resistance and to annex neighbouring territory can, of course, be paralleled with statements of a like belligerency by some Arab nationalists. Like all stirring-up of nationalist antagonisms, these statements hinder development towards Socialism, the world’s only line of progress. Even on the short view of helping the homeless refugees their wisdom is more than doubtful. The Arabic-speaking lands claim that their record in the treatment of Jewish minorities is better than that of most countries. It is certain to deteriorate if the situation moves towards civil war in Palestine, for the reason, among others, that the Arab nationalists see behind the entry of Jewish refugees something else, invasion by more and more Anglo-American capital seeking to control the developing industries of the whole Middle East. 

If we had a Socialist world the population in all countries would welcome men and women rendered homeless by some failure of resources in the land they lived in. There would be no problem. Only capitalism and its wars, and the prejudices it engenders, make it a problem to-day, but at least the organised workers in all countries should have the insight and the humanity to realise their obligation to make it clear that they are willing to receive refugees. If unemployment is the fear, it is a mistaken one. Unemployment is a by-product of capitalism and is not caused or, in the long run, even aggravated by immigration.

On the vital question of the welfare of the working class and the Socialist Movement, we urge all workers, Jewish, Arab and others, to recognise their common interest in standing together as a class for the overthrow of capitalism. There are no circumstances justifying working-class support of capitalist governments or movements, including those that masquerade under the name of nationalism.

Black nationalism in Africa (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nationalism as a political theory originated in Germany around the beginning of the 19th century, when the German nationalists put forward the theory that those who speak the same language form a natural community which ought to govern itself.

This was to develop into racialism and to give rise to talk of the “Anglo-Saxon race ” and the “German race".

Despite the fact that nationalism has no scientific basis for its claims, it has been a powerful force in the world. Of course, it was not something which suddenly appeared out of the blue; its roots are to be found in the beginnings of capitalist development in Britain and France and the effect this had on intellectual life in Germany. This put Germany in a peculiar historical position.

Germans who had absorbed ideas developed in Britain and France turned to nationalism—the unity of all German speaking people—as part of the drive to modernise their country. Similar nationalist movements and theories appeared in Poland, Italy and Hungry, though only in Italy was the movement to have success in the nineteenth century. Here the achievement of national unity and independence was the equivalent of France’s revolution of 1789; it created the political conditions in which the evolution of capitalist society could continue.

In short in many of those countries which underwent capitalist development after Britain and France, the overthrow of the old order was represented as a form of national revolution—in some cases as a move for national unity, in others for national independence and in others for national regeneration. To refer to nationalism as a weapon of the social revolution from feudal society to capitalism is not to say that the nationalist movements were composed of traders and small factory owners. In fact the relationship is not as simple as this.

Capitalism created the social conditions for the spread of nationalism by alienating sections of the population from the old order. It is among this section—students, past and present, modern army officers and wage workers — that nationalists were to be found. These set about agitating among those they considered their fellow nationals in order to awaken their national consciousness.

From Europe, nationalism spread out during the twentieth century to the Middle East and Asia. Today it is spreading through Africa—Macmillan’s wind of change. The outward form of this nationalism varies from country to country depending on historical circumstances, but its essential remains the same; it is an instrument of the capitalist social revolution in relatively backward countries

In Europe the nationalist theories were based on language. In Africa they are based on colour and “race”. For this reason African nationalism is sometimes referred to as “racist ”. This use is permissible in so far as African nationalism does claim to champion the interests of the black people or “race”. Perhaps a better term would be Black Nationalism; this however should not obscure the fact that there are groups working among Africans which do preach race hatred and race domination. These can be called Black Racialist groups.

The intellectual roots of African nationalism go back to the Negro nationalist movements which appeared in America and the West Indies in the first part of this century. These ranged from openly black racialist organisations such as that of Marcus Garvey — the forerunner of the present day Black Muslims in America and the Rastafarians in Jamaica — to the cultural nationalism, so-called negritude, of the poet Aimé Césaire.

From this developed the doctrine of Pan-Africanism, which proclaimed the unity of interest of all Africans and those of African descent. Educated Africans and African students abroad joined in this movement. On returning to Africa, the students set about agitating for national independence. They would have had no success had not social conditions been ripe for the spread of their ideas.

As in Europe and Asia, nationalism in Africa spread only to the degree that the old order was breaking up. The colonial powers, in training Africans as soldiers and priests and civil servants, in employing them in the mines and on the plantations, undermined their own position. For these detribalised Africans formed the social base of the anti-colonialist struggle. Since the war the further break-up of the old order has proceeded apace. So has nationalism. It is only nine years since the first black African state, Ghana, became independent from colonial rule. Now, with the important exceptions of parts of central and southern Africa, most of black Africa has achieved independence.

The regimes that have taken over from the colonial governments have been various. Some have consisted of a motley collection of tribal leaders and opportunist and corrupt politicians. Others have an iron handed industrialising clique. Ghana provides the model of this last type; there the administrative techniques of Russia have been combined with the doctrine of Pan-Africanism to get what Nkrumah calls "African socialism ”.

Other nations which are modelled on Ghana — Guinea, Kenya, Tanzania — are one party states in which a vanguard party is used to mobilise the population for carrying through the capitalist social revolution. Because of the role of the state —and the influence of Russia—it was perhaps inevitable that these regimes would label themselves socialist. In fact they are totalitarian state capitalist regimes in which an élite uses the state power to try to extend capitalism rapidly throughout the area under their political control.

The situation in central and southern Africa is complicated by the presence of a not inconsiderable minority of persons of European descent. These—the whites—once enjoyed certain political and economic privileges at the expense of the Africans. It is in these circumstances that ugly black-white clashes have occurred and will almost certainly occur again. Among both white people and black there are groups preaching race hatred and intolerance. Many of the white workers are under the impression that they can preserve their security through discriminatory legislation. The African workers, on the other hand, see the solution to their miseries in African nationalism. The murders of Mau Mau in Kenya, and those of the Congo rebels, are examples of nationalism in action, just as the terrorist tactics employed by European nationalists in the past were. In Africa, however, they are now complicated as a clash between black and white.

African nationalism and the one party regimes it tends to set up are respectively the theory and practice of the capitalist social revolution in Africa. The spread of African nationalism together with the attempt by the Whites to maintain their privileges, is almost .certain to lead to further inter-racial violence and terror. Nationalism, with its talk of equality, may not at first sight appear as repugnant as racialism pure and simple. It often however, has the same results: bloodshed in which members of the working class are killed—not for their own interests but for those of their masters present and future.

Adam Buick