Editorial: Who would vote Labour? (1990)

Editorial from the November 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labour's bloody war record (1985)

From the October 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

Does Labour stand for war?

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

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

Labour and the Great War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The first Labour government

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

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

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

World War Two and after

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Labour as an efficient party of war

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

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

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

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

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

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

Steve Coleman

Korea: An Imperialist Cockpit (1950)

From the October 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the 12th September Mr. Attlee addressed the House of Commons on new “defence” measures. On the same day the Evening Standard published a report of his address. From this report we learn that:

“The steps we are asking the House to endorse are taken solely with the intention of preventing another war and resisting in its early stages the onward march of aggression.”

What a familiar ring this statement has! The “steps” in question covered increased man-power and equipment for the fighting forces. Larger and more efficient fighting machines mean larger and more efficient killing and destroying machines. More and more of the world’s productive power is being concentrated upon purely destructive purposes as time goes on. During each war we are promised peace and plenty when that particular awkward squad has been removed. But no sooner has one awkward squad been liquidated than another pops up in its place. From the East we are told that the “Western Imperialists” are the niggers in the woodpile, and from the West we are told it is the “Eastern Imperialists.” The fact that it is both is only appreciated by the socialist. In 1914 similar “steps” were taken to stop the Junkers and prevent further wars; they were stopped but it made no difference; wars went on. In the 30*s the “steps” were to stop the Fascists and the Nazis. They were stopped, but not further wars. Now it is the Kremlin and so the comedy is played on. Steps are always allegedly being taken to stop wars but these “steps” consist of building up bigger and better means to wage war.

For nearly forty years we have been living in the midst of a catastrophe or on the brink of one. The Labour Government has learnt nothing more from its predecessors' failures than to follow the same well worn road to the battlefield. It has not a single policy that is directed at the root of the trouble—the property basis of society. The same thing is true of the governments of America, France, Russia and the rest.

Conditions make nonsense of all the “statesmanlike” forecasts of what will be done after hostilities cease. Those who make these forecasts forget that we are not living in a vacuum but in a real world consisting of sections of people with conflicting interests arising out of property relationships. During the last Great War, just as during the previous one, we were assured that Germany would never be allowed to arm again and become a potential threat to world “peace.” Conditions have again knocked the stuffing out of this assurance. Now we are being prepared to accept a re-armed Germany—in the interests of peace! Major-General Sir Francis de Guingard (Sunday Times, Sept. 17th) puts the question in the following way:

“This all leads to the problem of German participation in Western defence. Without it, any question of trying to hold up an aggressor on the Elbe is ruled out.  . . . We must, therefore, accept a major German participation in defence: otherwise we are likely to lose the ‘soul of Germany,’ the good will of the German people, and maybe Europe. Without it there is grave risk that Western Union defence will be unable to marshal sufficient strength, even to hold the Rhine, by 'Danger Day’—say in perhaps one or two years’ time.”

To return to Mr. Attlee’s address. He repeats the kind of phrase that was used in relation to the Nazis by members of the Tory Government.

“I have every confidence that aggression will be halted and a salutary lesson given to would-be aggressors.”

How often have we heard this banal phrase! Later on he makes nonsense of this “confidence” by stating:

“We must face the fact that what happened in Korea may in one form or another be repeated elsewhere.”

It does not require much insight to realise that this is the obvious policy for the Russian Government to follow. Imperialist Russia is in a position to use other groups as tools by playing craftily upon the cupidity of propertied sections that wish to be rid of Western influences and, at the same time, its fake anti-capitalist protestations mislead sections of the working class. The Western “Democracies” on the other hand have to convince those who must bear the burden of the fighting that their existence is jeopardised and that, on this account, sacrifices are “necessary.”

Major-General de Guingard commenced the article, to which we have already referred, with the following words;

“The Western world should be truly thankful for the Korean aggression; for it has set ablaze an alertness and determination that may prove our salvation.”

We wonder what the homeless, battered and suffering Koreans would reply to this expression of high sentiment? How do they feel about being the subject of warfare between conflicting imperialisms? Both in the North and the South homes and industries are being reduced to ruins; Koreans are dying by the thousand and by the thousand they are leaving ruined homes to trek wearily they know not where. When it is all over and some survivors return to the battered ruins that remain what will their feelings be towards their respective backers and “liberators ”? Some forms of liberation they have already experienced; the liberation from life, homes, home-ties and the means of living. An indication of the attitude of the South Koreans, as well as the soldiers of the United Nations, was given in an article by a war correspondent, Richard Hughes, which appeared in the Sunday Times on the 10th Sept. Here are some illuminating extracts from the article.

“Nor is there any real soul to this war. No profound sympathy or even warm liking exists between the Americans and the South Koreans. The soldiers of the United States and Britain notoriously have little abstract opinion or articulate comment on why they are fighting, but they usually detect in any war a menace to their country or to their home. As they profanely insist, they can perceive nothing of that sort in this war.

“However they have now developed a hatred for the enemy, largely because of his atrocities. And their earlier natural resentment at the spectacle of able-bodied Korean youths squatting impassively by the road and watching the white man move forward to ‘defend’ them has disappeared as President Syngman Rhee’s conscription orders become effective and 5,000 Koreans in American battledress are added to each American division to take over hill fighting."

The fact that masses of the South Koreans had to be conscripted before they would bother to take up arms does not suggest that they were very much worried about the threat from the North. If Information were available probably the same kind of thing could be said about the Northerners when they realised the price they were called upon to pay for what they thought would be a minor internal struggle. However both groups of pawns will have plenty more to worry about when hostilities have ceased and they have to set about rebuilding what they have lost

In fact none of the Governments involved were fundamentally concerned about liberating or defending the Koreans as a body. Korea is simply a cockpit, one of the bloodier strategic moves in the greater struggle between rival imperialisms.

In the course of his address Mr. Attlee said: “But it does mean that in our view we must take every practicable step that is possible to prevent war.” There is only one practicable step that can prevent war and that is to abolish the cause of war. This step Mr. Attlee and his colleagues are unable to take, even if they wished to do so, because they sought votes for. and became the government on, a programme that ensures the continuance of capitalism. The continuance of Capitalism necessitates the production of goods for the purpose of ensuring dividends and interest to those who invest. In order to accomplish this object goods have to be sold. Production and sale requires sources of supply of raw materials, markets in which to buy and sell products and unmolested trade routes to the markets and to the places from which the raw materials come. Out of these requirements wars arise, and as long as production is organised for the purpose of selling goods at a profit there will always be wars. When buying and selling have disappeared along with property incomes the objects of wars will no longer exist. Until then "small nations” will be the pawns of the more powerful groups and working men and women will lose their lives in quarrels that do not concern them.

Gilmac.

Disunited Nations (1957)

From the February 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always maintained that the United Nations Organisation, and before it, the League of Nations, could never provide a solution to the problem of war.

We have gone further than this. We have claimed that most politicians, British and foreign, have always been well aware of the fact. But politicians, if they are to keep their jobs, must profess to have an answer. After each world war the working class has looked to its “leaders” for a scheme to prevent the next one. No politician in these circumstances could hope to win votes without some solution to offer.

How many politicians have supported U.N.O. in the knowledge that it could not be effective can only be surmised. That it constitutes a majority we assume from the fact that they are generally no less intelligent than the rest of us.

U.N.O. Moonshine

But here is one who, in an unguarded moment, comes right out into the open. Here is what Ted Leather, M.P., thinks of the United Nations:—

"Sir,—Mr. Gaitskell’s statement that whatever the United Nations may say we should meekly reply “ we obey ” is perhaps the key to much of our differences in the last few weeks. Mr. Awbery, Labour member for Central Bristol, recently referred to the United Nations as a “court” which had passed “judgment” on us. In an ideal world they might both be right. In this one it is the view of many of my friends and I that they are talking moonshine.

For good or ill, it is just not true that the United Nations is a supreme court, or that it hands down objective judgments that have any moral force at all. The Assembly in New York, important though it is, is a body of politicians. They make political speeches, and the great majority of them vote according to their own political interests. A large number of them represent dictatorships. Many are openly hostile to Britain. If there were an international Government based on sound principles, or an international supreme court empowered to enforce law, many of us might support it. To surrender the ultimate sanction of the interests of the lives and interests of the British people to a body constituted as the United Nations now is, seems to me not only unrealistic but downright suicidal.

Yours, etc.,

Ted Leather,

House of Commons.”  

(Letter to the Times, December 10th, 1956.)

We may well wonder how long Mr. Leather has been of this opinion, whether he proclaimed these views when he sought votes at the last election.

He suggests that there are “many of us” who do not support the United Nations. That is what we thought. But we do not remember “many of them” saying so at the election.

We do not think there are many members of the British electorate who now have any faith in the effectiveness of U.N.O. We believe that most of them are aware, if only vaguely, that international conflict is an inevitable outcome of international Capitalism. The trouble is that they see no alternative.

It is that alternative which is offered in Socialism. We urge all workers to study the case for Socialism. With that understanding they will never again surrender their votes for spurious solutions to the problems of Capitalism —whether it be war, or poverty or unemployment or any other of its manifestations.

Read our two pamphlets, on Socialism and on War. Think for yourself and put not your trust in “leaders.”

John Moore

Jottings. (1915)

The Jottings Column from the October issue of the Socialist Standard

It must not be thought that because the “Daily Herald” failed, mainly because it did not know or understand the working-class position, that George Lansbury has given up. Oh, no ! Within the pages of its successor, “The Herald,” he still advances a strange and mysterious dogma. Listen to this :

“Last week I said I wished Arthur Henderson would come out of the Government and against the conscriptionists, set the true ideal of national service by all for the good of all . . . . Whether or no Henderson comes into the wilderness and puts himself at the head of the working class in their march toward the promised land that march will go forward, for out of this present time of trouble and difficulty it is the only road which will lead the nations of the world to safety.”

The pure insolence of young Arthur putting himself at the head of the working-class army is rather in the nature of “coming it.” You must really wait, Arthur, my boy, until we’ve selected you. We must kick a bit about the reference, too, to “the promised land.” We seem to have heard the phrase before. But let Georgie make it clear. In the course of the same discourse he says:

“We need at this moment a spiritual awakening, bidding us all cease our strife for money, for fame, or for power.”

There, there, now ! That’s good, for is it not “light in our darkness,” and does it not prove that “Capital” will probably be forestalled by — the Holy Bible.

* * *

“Profit” Sharing

On Sept. 16th, 1915, the following letter appeared in the columns of the “Daily Express,” written presumably by a City business man. We must compliment this good gentleman on his very correct deduction at the outset, but crave his indulgence at having to severely “strafe'” him regarding his remedy.

A Challenge.

To the Editor of the “Daily Express.”

Sir,—More than a year of the greatest trial and danger that Britain has ever known has not only failed to still the strife between capital and labour, but would even appear, on the contrary, to have widened the breach between them, and if this eternal question is not promptly, carefully, and cleverly handled it is hound to affect disastrously the improved social conditions to which we all look forward when the victory of the Allies shall have brought the great war to an end. 

With a view, therefore, to making an effort towards grappling with this question in a practical manner, may I be allowed to use the medium of the widely read columns of your newspaper to issue this challenge to all or any of the responsible representatives of both capital and labour to state as frankly, briefly, and definitely as possible, through this same medium, their objections to the introduction of a system of profit-sharing into every trade, business, or industry in which it can possibly be instituted.

E. Gordon Bigginson. 

Copthall-buildings, E..C.

I suppose we scarcely come within the gentleman's description of the “responsible representatives of labour,” but anyhow, we’ll have a shot at dispelling his acrobatic remedial notion. Briefly, we object to co-partnership because it is a complete snare and altogether useless as a means of “stilling strife.” Co-partnership or any other form of so-called profit-sharing in almost every instance means extra profit for the “boss.” As anything extra in wages earned by the co-partners is purely money paid for extra work done, it becomes quite obvious that the master class does not share his profits with his co-partners. As the basis of all “profit”-sharing schemes is the intensification of labour’s production—as witness the introduction of professional “sloggers” as instructors—does the gentleman still miss the objective, i.e., that the displacing of many workers owing to the increased output means increased dividends for the ordinary shareholders ? If the remaining workers earn, say, an average of two shillings more per week, who pockets the wages of the labourers displaced, save for the little that is necessary to woo those who, by doing their work, force them out of employment ? Thus while the workmen still engaged receive a wee bit extra in return for a big bit extra, the big balance always, by some wise dispensation of providence, finds its way into the master’s pocket. Will the writer of the letter see how the scheme works at Port Sunlight, The South Metropolitan Gas Co., and many other such works and engage the confidence of the “heads” there. The remedy for an evil will certainly never be gained by increasisg the evil. Understand this, my boy, there are ten thousand ways of missing the bulls-eye but only one way to hit it.

* * *

The following is from the Bristol Congress and is worthy of a place in anybody’s cutting-book :

“To a resolution expressing approval of the Labour Party’s action in assisting recruiting, the National Union of Clerks tabled an amendment regretting that they had not first secured from the Government guarantees of adequate provision for disabled soldiers. This “huckstering” spirit was hotly denounced by several speakers.” – Daily Mail,” 10.9.15.

The report that the assembled Congress received a telegram from the disabled trade unionists offering profuse thanks for services rendered is grossly exaggerated. Some people have all the luck while gratitude pays all our debts. Needless to add the amendment was lost.

* * *

The attached cutting was something in the nature of a smack in the eye for the dear Congress delegates. It reads :

A SOCIALIST MANIFESTO

.

The Socialist National Defence Committee, the members of which include Mr. H. G. Wells, Mr. Robert Blatchford, Mr. John Hodge, M.P., the acting Chairman of the Labour Party, and Mr. Charles Duncan, M.P., has issued a manifesto to the members of the congress. In it they say :

“In this hour of supreme national peril, when the independence of the people is brutally and the established public law and liberties of Europe are ruthlessly violated, a handful of PSEUDO-SOCIALISTS in this country are breaking the national solidarity and weakening the national efforts in face of the enemy ; it has become a duty for TRUE BRITISH SOCIALISTS to expose and repudiate the errors of these dreamers.”

Having explained so lucidly what is the duly of “true British Socialists,” the “true British Socialists” proceed to perform that duty. They accomplish the painful task of exposure and repudiation with surprising cheerfulness, proceeding upon the true British lines of the true British bulldog. They say :

“Some of them are extreme pacifists, some are aliens by both blood or sentiment, and ALL OF THEM ARE CONSCIOUSLY OR UNCONSCIOUSLY THE AGENTS OF GERMAN KAISERDOM, and traitors to the IMPERISHABLE IDEALS OK LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY which have united free Britain, independent Belgium, and Republican France in an indissoluble and glorious alliance.”

One seems to see in that hooligan jibe “alien” the moving finger of Blatchford, the “true British Socialist who once publicly announced (in the “Clarion”) his antipathy toward Spaniards. Could any other hand so carefully have drawn that fine distinction between “German.” Kaiserdom and all other kinds of Kaiserdom ? or so cunningly have obscured the fact that, even he could not find a term that would serve to bring autocratic Russia into that “indissoluble and glorious alliance” which had been created by the “imperishable ideals of liberty and democracy” ? Yet it was easy enough. What was wrong with “Holy” Russia ? That should have appealed to the author of “God and My Neighbour,” and in the matter of veracity it would have matched the rest. And “lest we forget,” congratulations are due to two such eminent literateurs as Wells and Blatchford on the production of that gem, “aliens by both blood or sentiment.” And then again the reference to “pseudo-Socialists” and “true British Socialists” is indeed delightful. Fancy referring to Ben Tillett as an agent of German Kaiserdom, after all he has done, too. This is too bad, and the Tower Hiller has our deepest sympathy. Never mind, the truth about some men is never known until after they are dead, and even then you cannot find it on their tombstones. All the signatories to the manifesto are expected to figure in the next Birthday honours lists.

B. B. B.

The Socialist Party exposes Mr Chamberlain and his Labour Critics (1938)

Blogger's Note:

 As I just scanned in the October 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard, which covered in some detail Neville Chamberlain and his actions in and around what is now known as the Munich Crisis, I thought I'd take the opportunity to also post on the blog the full text of the 1938 SPGB pamphlet, 'The Socialist Party exposes Mr Chamberlain and his Labour Critics'.

In its long history the SPGB has not made a habit of rushing out special pamphlets dealing with an 'issue of the day' — that is what the Socialist Standard is in place for  — but the Munich Crisis was self-evidently such a burning issue with the threat of possible impending war that the SPGB felt it was necessary to publish a standalone pamphlet which went into greater detail on the matter. It exposed the hard nosed political hypocrisy of Chamberlain's actions and the double-talk of both the Labour Party and the British Communist Party.

Such turbulent times called for special measures, and the SPGB were to publish another 'issue of the day' pamphlet the following year under the title of 'The Socialist and Conscription'. War was for the working class the issue of the day.

The Socialist Party exposes Mr Chamberlain and his Labour Critics (1938)

 

So the crisis is over. Representatives of the four major European Powers sat round the table and concluded arrangements that carve up Czechoslovakia, freeze Russia out of Europe, and, we are fervently assured, lay the basis of “peace in our time”. Lest there should be any doubt about this peaceful future, a great drive to develop armaments is proposed, and plans are being made to ensure that everybody will have a niche in defensive and offensive operations. The temporary popularity of Chamberlain, the general relief at the banishing of immediate war danger, and the united support worked up on behalf of the Czechs, are being utilised to push forward the increased armament campaign.

On September 30th hysterical crowds went wild with joy and hero-worship. War had been averted, and it was believed that Chamberlain was the man who accomplished that deed. His smiling face appeared on placards, in newspapers, and on the moving-picture screen. His wife shared in his fame, and crowds fought to shake her hand. For a while he was the most popular man in England. Yet the strange part of it is that Chamberlain’s fame is based on the circumstance that apparently his plans nearly went entirely wrong; raised the spectre of war, and eventually brought the Munich instead of the Godesberg Agreement. The British Government have been landed in a position in European affairs that was not expected by them. So far Hitler and not Chamberlain has gained most out of the diplomatic manoeuvres of months past.

What were the real facts of the situation? On what does Chamberlain’s claim to fame rest?

The immediate source of Chamberlain’s popularity is not hard to find. For a few days modern war, with its horrors, weighed like a black cloud on the minds of everybody. The subsequent relief on hearing the message of peace released an uncritical joy that deified the messenger.

What part has Chamberlain really played in this dangerous business?

For a long time the capitalist government of this country has been split into different camps over foreign policy. The reasons for this are too long to go into here. It is sufficient to say that they are partly economic differences and partly differences of view as to what best serves the general capitalist interest. One group favours “minding our own business” and leaving other nations to mind theirs; another group urges a better understanding with Russia and the resisting of the imperialist policies of Germany and Italy; a third group presses for a general pact between England, Germany, France and Italy, and the shutting out of Russia from any influence on European affairs.

The third policy is the one that has been urged by the Chamberlains and their supporters for some time past. It was given expression to by Chamberlain on the eve of the Munich meeting when, in his Parliamentary statement, he criticised the provisions of the Versailles Peace Treaty.

Even while a member of the Baldwin Government, which had taken half-hearted measures to resist Italy’s policy in Abyssinia, Chamberlain made clear his disagreements on foreign policy. Sir Charles Petrie, an admirer of Chamberlain, describes the circumstances of the public statement in 1936 and, at the same time, made plain the nature of the support behind Chamberlain. He describes the incident as follows:

“Mr Chamberlain stepped into the breach. On the 10th June he was the guest of honour at the annual dinner of the 1900 Club, and he took the opportunity to declare against the continuance of Sanctions. The effect was tremendous. An audience which represented the wealth and power of Great Britain cheered the Chancellor to the echo” (The Chamberlain Tradition, page 249).

Since Chamberlain became head of the Government, foreign policy has changed its direction. The efforts of Government diplomacy have been turned towards finding a basis of agreement with Germany and Italy and the weaning of France away from its alliance with Russia.

The Munich conference of the four Powers appears to have been a long step towards accomplishing this object, though it occurred under dangerous circumstances, with the threat of war hanging over it. The fact that Czechoslovakian unity was sacrificed in the process was a small matter to the imperialist powers concerned.

The attitude of the Chamberlain group towards Italy’s Abyssinian venture and Germany’s march on Austria, gave Hitler a hint that further territorial conquests would not be seriously opposed providing these conquests did not interfere with British capitalist interests. When Chamberlain made his first trip to Hitler, on what was wrongly presumed to be an effort to save Czechoslovakian independence, he evidently went with the intention of being a party to the slicing up of that territory. His explanation in Parliament, on the eve of his last visit, makes this clear to those who examine the statement critically.

Taking into consideration the nature of Chamberlain’s foreign policy, as briefly outlined, the war situation out of which he “rescued” peace was largely of his own making.

While the Prime Minister was basking in the sunshine of mistaken adulation, one of his supporters pointed out that the real danger that menaces the interests of British capitalists is outside of Europe. On the morrow of the Munich pacts, while Germany was sending emissaries to Turkey and Yugoslavia, to widen its markets and its sources of raw materials, British politicians were heaving sighs of relief and turning to face “the danger again displayed by the Dominions and India, which has not passed unnoticed in Europe”.

The last remark is taken from an article in the Evening Standard (October 3rd) by Sir Arnold Wilson, who also makes the following significant statement:

“The Parliamentary Opposition parties are representing the redrawing of the map of Europe, now in progress, as a victory for Hitler, which it is, and a defeat for Britain, which it is not”.

This is another way of showing that Chamberlain went to Germany prepared to accede to the plans for dismembering Czechoslovakia. And why not? What does it matter to the British capitalist class whether the Czechs are independent or incorporated in Germany? The “National Honour” idea is a myth only invoked when it suits the interests of our rulers to beguile us with it. If Chamberlain, as is claimed, really set out to help Czechoslovakia, then “National Honour” went down on its knees before Hitler along with Chamberlain. Or, as the Daily Express (October 3rd) put it more genteelly:

“But this fact must be recognised by all: Britain accepted the Munich Agreement because our defences were not in a condition enabling us to take any other decision”.

This plea relating to the defences is being popularised as a means to obtain workers’ support for A. R. P. and similar defensive programmes—with all that these things will eventually mean.

One piece of information, relating to the crisis, that has now some significance was published in the News Review on July 14th, over two months before the crisis occurred:

“‘August, 1914’, is a date poignant with memories. What is it that makes Georges Bonnet, France’s Foreign Minister, so mysterious about August 1938?

To journalists who discussed the holiday question with him last week, Bonnet’s tendered the advice, ‘Certainly, take your holidays in August, but don’t leave Paris if you can help it’.

Though pressed for an explanation, he refused to say more than that ‘there will be a great deal to do,’ and that he himself would be at his desk throughout the month”.

What was in Bonnet’s mind? It could hardly have been war. Was in Godesberg?

The shameless diplomatic methods adopted have misled a number of people into believing that the whole business, including the threat of war, was a fake, deliberately contrived to secure acquiescence in the provisions of the Munich Agreement.

Two writers in the New Statesman (October 8th), J. M. Keynes and Robert Dell, make out a plausible case to show that it was a put-up job. That the crisis and the eleventh hour conference, with its solution, had been arranged beforehand. Although there are curious incidents that lend colour to this view, there are solid objections to it. The risk of war did ultimately enter into the game. Apart from other reasons it is too much to allow that a capitalist government would go into the huge expenses of war preparation, running into over £20 millions, either to lend substance to the shadow or for practice purposes.

The threat of war appeared in the scene because Chamberlain, in shaping his policy, apparently overlooked the fact that Hitler might not be inclined to bargain over territory that he felt strong enough to take if he wished to do so.

One purpose, among many, has been served by the crisis. It has been used as a means for enabling the British and French Governments to recognise officially the Italian conquest of Abyssinia without too much sanctimonious dust being raised about it. Now the way is open for British capitalists to invest freely in Abyssinia and to share with their Italian brothers the wealth squeezed from the Abyssinians.

In this time of stress where did the self-styled leaders of the working class, the Labour and Communist Parties, stand? The answer is easily given. They stood ready, if necessary, to man the guns and shoulder the burden of Empire in the mistaken idea that they were defending democracy against autocracy. Which shows how easy it is to divert movements that are anchored in the shifting sands of mere discontent. Such movements are easily directed into channels that serve the interests of the capitalists. The experience of decades has shown that when the cry “the country is in danger” is raised, the propertyless workers are urged by their leaders to flock to its defence, and to be ready to lay down their lives for a system that does not even guarantee to them the satisfaction of their elementary needs in food and shelter.

Over and over again the workers have been told by the Labour Party and the Communist Party that capitalism is on the down-grade, and that therefore they cannot hope for much improvement in wage conditions. Yet the country has been shown lately to be so wealthy that it could afford to throw away millions of pounds’ worth of goods in defensive measures, when it was believed that war threatened. Under a sensible social system workers would have bread instead of gas-masks.

Now that a great drive for armaments is proposed, the Labour and Communist Parties are logically bound to support it owing to their attitude during the war scare. This fact has been seized upon by all influential newspapers, which point out that the country is united in its desire to build up huge armaments.

Extracts from official sources show clearly the folly and the panic of those who claim to lead the workers.

On September 27th the Daily Herald published an article by the Editor, which contained the following statement:

“If there is war, it will be faced with calmness, with resolution, with unshakable courage. All that could be offered to Germany in honour and justice has been offered—far more than that, indeed . . . But if war there must be, since Herr Hitler is set on war, then it is better that it should be now, when Britain has strong allies beside her and to support her, the united opinion of the civilised world, than hereafter, when Germany, by successful aggression has won the mastership of Europe”.

Again, on September 30th, the Daily Herald spoke officially:

“In these last days two emotions have sustained the British people. One has been the desire for peace, if peace consistent with honour were possible. The other has been the determination to stand firm, if necessary to the ultimate degree—for the great principles of equity and justice in international affairs by which alone civilisation can flourish”.

International Information (September 12th), a typed sheet issued by the “Labour and Socialist International”, contained this statement:

“Whatever the risks involved, Great Britain must take its stand against aggression. There is now no room for doubt or hesitation”.

The above quotations are sufficient evidence of the Labour Party’s readiness to back the Government if war had been declared. The workers should also note also the insistence on “Honour”, “Justice” and “Equity”, all of which, it was contended, would be flouted if Czechoslovakia were split up. It is another example of the fatuity of the utterances of Labour when one remembers the official view of 18 years ago. In 1920 the Labour Party declared:

“Permission to the predominantly German areas of Czechoslovakia to determine their political future should be granted”—Quoted by the Evening Standard (September 16th).

If it were honourable, just and equitable for these areas to determine their political future in 1920, why has it become dishonourable, unjust and inequitable for them to do so now? Above all, why is it necessary that thousands of lives should be sacrificed now for something that was quite proper 18 years ago? The plain fact is that the Labour Party leaders do not know where they are.

The Communist Party is in a like position, and in addition responds blindly to the changing signals from Moscow. On October 3rd the Daily Worker published an article by the Editor. The following extracts from it are interesting as a logical interpretation of the Communist Party’s demand that Britain should stand firm in opposition to Hitler’s designs on Czechoslovakia.

“Had war broken loose on Saturday, as seemed almost certain up till Friday, the corpses of hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, would now be strewing the streets of Prague, Paris, Berlin, and even London”.

(. . .)

“That the ‘peace terms’ signed by Chamberlain are such that they strike a mortal blow at the interests and security of the British people”.

(. . .)

“The leaders of the British Labour Movement have to bear a great measure of responsibility for the sullying of British honour. For they who had the power to mobilise a tremendous public opinion, powerful enough to compel Chamberlain to have stood resolutely by France, Russia and Czechoslovakia, fell into the trap of assuming that Chamberlain was intent upon making a stand against Hitler, when actually he had no such intention”.

(. . .)

“There must be no further confidence in Chamberlain. Labour must stand firm in Parliament to-day and give a lead which will rally all the truly patriotic and progressive forces in Parliament against the shameful Munich betrayal”.

Two days later the Secretariat of the Communist Party repudiated the article. But they probably did so because it was too outspoken a statement of the logic of their position—that Britain and France should take a strong line against Hitler. That this would in all probability have led to war is shown by Russia’s war preparations and Litvinov’s explicit statement that Russia was prepared to join Britain and France in going to war in aid of Czechoslovakia if it were attacked.

It must be clear to anyone not blinded by prejudice that the Editor of the Daily Worker (who presumably was familiar with the attitude of the Party of which he was an official spokesman) based his article on Communist policy.

The Communist Party, like the Labour Party, has completely changed its attitude on Czechoslovakia. It has gone even further in its change of front. Consider its present insistence on Britain rallying to the support of Czechoslovakia and resisting the march of “reactionary Fascism”, and then examine the following quotation from The Struggle against War, and the Tasks of the Communists, a 6d pamphlet issued by the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1928:

“In the last imperialist war the Allies made use of the slogan ‘Fight against Prussian Militarism’, while the Central Powers used the slogan ‘Fight against Czarism’; both sides using the respective slogans to mobilise the masses for the war. In a future war between Italy and France, or Yugoslavia, the same purpose will be served by the slogan ‘Fight against reactionary Fascism’, for the bourgeoisie in the latter countries will take advantage of the anti-Fascist sentiments of the masses to justify an imperialist war” (page 14).

“In Czechoslovakia and in the Balkan countries, in Italy, in France, Spain, Belgium and Great Britain (Ireland) there are also oppressed nationalities. The Communist Parties must support the liberation movement of the oppressed nations and national minorities in all these countries, lead them in the revolutionary struggle against imperialism and unreservedly champion their right to self-determination, which must include the right to complete separation” (page 31. Italics in the pamphlet).

It is doubtful if anyone but the Communist Party could make such a blatant and complete somersault in policy. Possibly the greatest joke of the whole tragic business, though it might have been a tragic one, is the spectacle of the Communist Party urging the British and French workers to be ready to lay down their lives in defence of democracy—and “bourgeois” democracy at that!

One thing at least can be said. Chamberlain’s actions were consistent, in line with his views on Czech dismemberment and his desire for unity with European Powers. But the attitude of the Labour and Communist Parties is a complete reversal of their former views. They held previously that Czechoslovakia should be allowed to be split up—in the name of “Justice” and “Liberty”. Now they want it to remain intact in the name of the same deities.

The reversal of policy by the latter two parties, just as much as the tricky diplomacy of the Chamberlain group, should be a warning to workers not to be misled by high-sounding phrases, but to look behind these phrases. Base their attitude on their class interest alone and they will not be led into the support of groups or parties that pursue a policy which obscures the fundamental antagonism of interest between worker and capitalist, of all races, colours and creeds.

The attitude of the Labour Party, the Communist Party, and others of like views, relating to the position of the Czechs, is due partly to fright, which has developed an acute attack of anti-Fascitus. They are prepared to see cities littered with the corpses of hundreds of thousands of working men, women and children, for what? To prevent what would be in the main merely a change of rulers.

While the workers of the world are prepared to put up with capitalism, and all that capitalism means, a change of rule is a minor question. Certainly not worth a war which would put back the movement for Socialism amongst both victors and vanquished. The present position of Germany, Austria and Italy is a striking illustration of this fact.

In conclusion, we must stress the fact that the only attitude for the workers to adopt, if they would free themselves from the horrors of both war and peace, is to organise together for the purpose of establishing a system of society in which the wealth of the world will be commonly owned by all the people of the world.

Labour’s Department of War (2025)

From the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people are surprised and disappointed by Keir Starmer’s Labour government. Yet, it is a typical Labour government. Fundamentally, it is a belief in state action to co-ordinate the market economy that characterises them in power. Thankfully, any association between this belief and socialism has long since been dispelled.

Indeed, to their credit, this government is faithfully carrying out the objects set out in the Labour Party’s rulebook, which commits the Party to work for:

‘A DYNAMIC ECONOMY, serving the public interest, in which the enterprise of the market and the rigour of competition are joined with the forces of partnership and cooperation to produce the wealth the nation needs and the opportunity for all to work and prosper with a thriving private sector and high-quality public services where those undertakings essential to the common good are either owned by the public or accountable to them’ (Clause IV.2.A).

And:

‘Labour is committed to the defence and security of the British people and to cooperating in European institutions, the United Nations, the Commonwealth and other international bodies to secure peace, freedom, democracy, economic security and environmental protection for all’ (Clause IV.3).

No-one can pretend that the present Labourites have not been up-front with this commitment, at least: anyone voting for them without illusions should have known.

We can see this in action in the way that Downing Street announced the UK taking part in the NATO agreement to spend 5 percent of GDP on Defence.

‘Marking a step change with the approach of previous governments, the National Security Strategy directly answers to the concerns of working people, aligning our national security objectives and plans for economic growth in a way not seen since 1945’.

The reference to ‘working people’ is labour-washing this strategy, which will be about making phenomenal amounts of profit for defence contractors and arms manufacturers. As the NATO press release on the agreement notes:

‘Research and development (R&D) costs are included in defence expenditure. R&D costs also include expenditure for those projects that do not successfully lead to production of equipment’.

This is the NATO agreed definition of defence expenditure. The agreement is for this figure to reach 3.5 percent of member states’ GDP, with an additional 1.5 percent of GDP to be spent:

‘annually to inter alia protect critical infrastructure, defend networks, ensure civil preparedness and resilience, innovate, and strengthen the defence industrial base’.

So, NATO states are preparing to fiddle the figures by defining as much as they can as defence expenditure (see for example rumours Italy is looking at designating a transport bridge as defence expenditure).

Of course, the US has long done this, with a substantial veterans benefit system: spending about $300 billion annually, 90 percent of which is split between income support for veterans (including pensions) and medical costs. This is itself part of the economic conscription of workers to fight in the armed forces for the people who own the country.

Starmer’s government wants to use its military spend as part of its drive to generate planned profits for capitalists through that ‘dynamic economy.’ According to the MOD 463,000 jobs (about 1 in 60) are supported by the defence industry (that includes 272,000 jobs supported by military spending – 151,000 directly and 121,000 indirectly) on top of the 181,890 serving military personnel.

However, as the Institute for Government notes:

‘The single largest cost to the MoD is the Defence Nuclear Enterprise, which is responsible for the procurement, maintenance and disposal of the UK’s nuclear submarine fleet. This was allocated 38% of the 2023-2033 Equipment Plan, or 20% of total defence spending’.

That is, maintaining the UK’s capacity to launch a nuclear device at any nation in the world. Interestingly, they also note that:

‘Most additional UK defence funding between 2015/16 and 2023/24 was allocated to capital spending, to acquire or maintain fixed assets like equipment and land. This element of spending increased by 95.5% in real terms over this period’.

Depending on how you count it, the UK is the 5th or 6th biggest-spending military country in the world. This expenditure is necessary to give continued diplomatic clout.

This comes at a cost. Those tens of thousands of service personnel are removed from the workforce and from doing any potentially useful work (neither generating profits for capitalists, nor creating use values for the community).

The jobs and industries supported by defence spending do produce profits for the companies involved, but those profits are essentially transfers from elsewhere, as they are paid for by taxes extracted from the profits of other capitalists.

Defence does bring in some profit. ‘UK arms exports: Statistics’, a House of Commons report from July this year notes that ‘the UK won defence orders worth £14.5 billion in 2023. This is a 39 percent increase in real terms on the previous year’. Over 50 percent of this was aerospace. This would represent a poor return on all that defence investment, but in fact it also reflects the UK geostrategic interests, as shown by where the sales went to:

‘Europe was the largest market for UK defence exports, accounting for 34% of total exports over this period, followed by the Middle East (32%), North America (18%), the Asia Pacific (7%), Latin America and Africa (both 1%). The remaining share (8%) was exported to a mixed or unidentified region’.

There are other defence spin-offs in terms of new technologies. The recently published government document, ‘Defence industrial strategy: making defence an engine for growth’ notes: ‘The Spending Review confirmed that MOD’s research and development budget will be over £2 billion in 2026-27 and will rise each year’. This includes a mandate to spend 10 percent of the MOD’s procurement on novel technologies, including AI-driven solutions.

Finding new and inventive ways to kill people seems a very roundabout way of creating wealth, but it is a way which has to exist in a society characterised by a tiny minority controlling the productive resources at the expense of the majority.

Pik Smeet

Manifesto To the Proposed International Congress. (1917)

From the July 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Manifesto of the Socialist Party of Great Britain

To the proposed International Congress

COMRADES,—

Residing as we do under the control of the “democratic” British Government, we are not permitted to send Delegates to the Congress to state our views, present our case, and defend our policy, as we so strongly wished. All the more is this to be regretted as our organisation is the only one in the British Isles that takes its stand upon a definite and avowed Marxian basis and follows a policy logically deduced from that basis.

We hold that the Working Class must march to its emancipation from wage-slavery and the domination of the Capitalist Class, by the conquest of political power. In the British Isles the means wherewith to accomplish this are already in the hands of the workers, as, despite certain anomalies in our franchise, the workers have the overwhelming majority of the votes at their disposal when an election takes place. Hence the great, immediate, and pressing work requiring to be done is the education of the Working Class to an understanding of Socialism—to a realisation of their slavery and the method of their emancipation.

The Working Class are slaves to the Capitalist Class. While the Workers produce all existing wealth by applying their labour-power to the materials provided by Nature, this wealth, and the instruments necessary for its production, along with the great storehouse of Nature’s materials -the earth- are owned and controlled by the Master Class under a system of private ownership that necessitates the selling of the bulk of the products upon the markets. But while powers of production increase by leaps and bounds, the markets grow but slowly. Hence the struggles between the various groups of Capitalists for the control of these markets and the routes thereto so that they may dispose of the commodities the wage-slaves have produced. Practically all the wars of the last three centuries, from the struggle against the Dutch and Portuguese in India to the present colossal carnage which is devastating the whole world, have had their essential causes rooted in the demands of the various groups of Capitalists to control these markets and routes.

The Workers’ share of these conflicts has been to slaughter each other in their Masters’ interests, to find a grave if killed, or be offered the degrading and comfortless shelter of the workhouse if disabled or maimed. The hardship, misery, want, and suffering following these wars fall always upon the Working Class. Thousands of cripples and tens of thousands of men with constitutions ruined by military service will feel the horrors of the struggle for existence with tenfold bitterness after the war. In the midst of the conflict the Pensions Minister, Mr. G.N. Barnes – a member of the ILP and of the “Labour Party”, and “Labour” Member of Parliament for Blackfriars Division of Glasgow – has admitted that over 100,000 men have been discharged from the British Army as medically unfit for Service without allowance or pension of any kind. To soothe the ruffled feelings of these unfortunate victims of capitalist brutality this so-called representative of the Workers said:

“It has been claimed that these men should be put on pension . . . . inasmuch as the doctors have passed them in . . . . I want to say that they will not get it while I am in the office.”—Official Report, col. 254, March 6th, 1917.

No matter which group of the Masters win the struggle, the Workers remain enslaved. The division of interests is not between the peoples of the world, but between the classes — the Master Class and the Working Class. Not, therefore, in their fellow Workers abroad, but in the Master Class at home and abroad, are the working-class enemies found.

What interest have the Workers, then, in either starting or carrying on war for their masters? Absolutely none.

Every Socialist must, therefore, wish to see peace established at once to save further maiming and slaughter of our fellow Workers. All those who on any pretext, or for any supposed reason, wish the war to continue, at once stamp themselves as anti-Socialist, anti-working class, and pro-capitalist.

Moreover, where the Working Class have the necessary means —the franchise— for their emancipation within their grasp it is clearly an anti-Socialist and treacherous act to urge them to use those means for the purpose of placing political power in the hands of the masters. The flimsy excuses so often used to cover up such acts of treachery to the Working Class merely add evidence to support the truth of this statement.

Applying these tests of real understanding of Socialist principle and correct action to the organisations in this country claiming to be Socialist, we find all of them except the Socialist Party of Great Britain failing to stand that test. The Fabian Society, with Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. Sidney Webb at its head, merely wishes for an extension of the Civil Service system under the control of a bureaucracy, and is opposed to the Workers being emancipated from their slavery. In addition to supporting the carrying on of the war, both the society and its individual members readily support the return of Liberal Capitalists to Parliament.

The so-called Independent Labour Party is ready at all times to make political bargains with the Capitalists and to urge the Workers to place power in the hands of the masters. Thus Mr. Ramsay MacDonald at Leicester, Mr. Philip Snowden at Blackburn, Mr. F. Jowett at Bradford, Mr. James Parker at Halifax, Mr. G.H. Roberts at Norwich, Mr. G.N. Barnes at Glasgow, and Mr. Clynes at N.E. Manchester all owe their seats in Parliament to bargains made with the Liberals, in return for which they gave their support to Liberals in these and other constituencies. While protesting — in some forms — against the war, and now urging “Peace by negotiation”, the ILP allowed its members like Mr. Parker and Mr. Clynes to assist in the recruiting campaign.

In a letter sent to his constituency on 11th September, 1914, Mr. Ramsay MacDonald said:

“I want the serious men of the trade unions, the brotherhoods and similar movements, to face their duty. To such it is enough to say ‘England has need of you’ and to say it in the right way.

“They will gather to her aid; they will protect her.” Daily Chronicle, September 9th, 1914.

In the Merthyr Pioneer for 27th November, 1914, the late Mr. Keir Hardie, another ILP Member of Parliament, said:

“I have never said or written anything to dissuade our young men from enlisting. I know too well all there is at stake.”

How is all this different from assisting in carrying on the war? How clearly it shows the treachery of the ILP leaders and Members of Parliament!

Moreover, the ILP has allowed its members to accept office in a Capitalist government without making any protest or repudiation. It is true that their 1917 Conference passed a resolution dissociating the organisation from Mr. Parker’s action in taking a Government office, but not only is Mr. Parker allowed to remain a member of the ILP, but no protest at all is made when other members, as Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Barnes, and Mr. Roberts, accept office under similar conditions. While protesting against German Social-Democrats voting war credits in the Reichstag, ILP members have steadily voted for war credits here.

The claim of the ILP to be a Socialist organisation is fully repudiated by the actions of its members, of which the above are but examples.

The British Socialist Party has been just as ready — if with less success — to try and enter into arrangements with the Capitalist parties for seats and offices. At General Elections they have shown their impartiality by advising the Workers to vote for Capitalist candidates of the Tory brand in some constituencies — as South Hackney, Norfolk, etc. — and for Capitalist candidates of the Liberal type in other constituencies. The one MP who until recently was a member of the BSP — Mr. W. Thorne owes his seat to the Liberals and Tories in West Ham combining to make him a present of that constituency. In the early days of the war he, with Mr. Hyndman, Mr. Hunter Watts, and others, took a prominent part in the recruiting campaign, calling upon the Workers of Great Britain to take up arms for the slaughter of their fellow Workers on the Continent, although Mr. Hyndman admitted that whichever side won the Workers would not benefit a single jot. Just lately Mr. W. Thorne has returned from a trip to Russia, taken, along with Mr. O’Grady and Mr. W. Sanders, on behalf of the British Capitalists, to persuade the Russian Workers to continue the war on the Eastern side.

In the ranks of the BSP a division of opinion has developed, resulting, after a struggle between the two sections, in the secession of the defenders of the war – Hyndman, Hunter Watts, Lee, Irving, and the rest — and the formation by the secessionists, of the National Socialist Party. The absurdity of the title is balanced by the merit it has of showing how completely pro-Capitalist and anti-Socialist these individuals are.

The BSP has now joined hands with the ILP in a so-called peace propaganda, but the confusion and double-dealing lying behind this movement is shown most glaringly by the fact that both these organisations remain affiliated to the Labour Party that has whole-heartedly supported the war from its inception.

One of the rewards given for this support was the appointment of Mr. J. Hodge, “Labour” Member for Gorton, as Labour Minister. Within a week of his appointment he tried to show his utility to the masters by threatening to use the powers of the Defence of the Realm Act against the Boilermakers of Birkenhead, who were protesting against the rotten conditions imposed upon them by the employers.

The organisation calling itself the Socialist Labour Party has never understood how the Workers are enslaved, and for years has propagated what it calls Industrial Unionism as the method of emancipation. Its attempts to reconcile this position with its claim to be a political party has led to such confusion in its ranks that when the war broke out it was divided as to whether it should support or oppose it.

THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN alone takes up the Socialist position here. At the beginning of the war we pointed out the essential factors forming its cause which we have given above, and we have steadily and consistently pressed this view by all the means in our power, and maintained it upon all occasions without change or deviation. Thus we said in the first issue of our official organ to be published after Britain’s entry into the war (Sept. 1914):

“THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN . . . whilst placing on record its abhorrence of this latest manifestation of the callous, sordid and mercenary nature of the international capitalist class, and declaring that no interests are at stake justifying the shedding of a single drop of working-class blood, enters its emphatic protest against the brutal and bloody butchery of our brothers of this and other lands, who are being used as food for cannon abroad while suffering and starvation are the lot of their fellows at home.

“Having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our goodwill and Socialist fraternity . . .”

While in the February 1915 issue we said:

“We . . . declare again that there was nothing in the conditions of any country which justified Socialists voluntarily supporting either side in the war, and record our condemnation of such action as a betrayal of Socialist principles arising from lack of political knowledge and unsound political organisation.”

So, with our own hands clean and our every action in accord with the CLASS struggle and the solidarity of the interest of the Working Class the world over, we bring before the international proletariat our DEMAND FOR PEACE without any change of attitude or re-adjustment of policy. We stand for PEACE without reference to terms, since the fruits of Capitalist war are the Masters’, and only the pains and penalties thereof the Workers’.

The grim humour of the claim that Britain is fighting to “crush Prussian Militarism” is clearly shown by the fact that a Bill is being passed through the liberty-loving, democratic British Parliament establishing “Militarism” in a far worse form than either the present Prussian or the late Russian rulers ever attempted. Men who have crossed the seas because they refuse to accept military service are to be forced into the army of the “allied” country they may be in or brought back to serve in the army here!

To the Socialists of other countries we extend our fraternal greetings. As soon as conditions will permit us to do so we shall endeavour to join forces with our Comrades for the purpose of establishing a Socialist International Congress where Socialist policies shall be decided, where misleaders and tricksters who use the name and fame of Socialism will be exposed and denounced, where the message of Socialism will be sent forth to the toilers of all countries in clear and unmistakable terms, where the gage of battle against the Capitalist Class will be thrown down to the clarion call:

“WORKERS OF THE WORLD UNITE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS; YOU HAVE A WORLD TO WIN.”

THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN

193 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1

20th June 1917