Reflections on images (1961)

From the November 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Gaitskell has been saying it again. This time, it was at a meeting at Blackpool, organised by Socialist Commentary during the last Labour Party Conference. Perhaps the Labour leader was joking. Perhaps he was trying to cheer everybody up. Or perhaps he was serious. Anyway, he said it. He denied that the Tories have the predominant appeal to the electorate and added: “I think the Labour Party at the moment has a tremendous opportunity which I hope it will grasp.”

Now what must have struck the audience was that this is the sort of optimistic statement which political leaders are always putting out and which mean exactly nothing. The Labour Party reckoned that they were full of hopeful expectation just before Eden trounced them in 1955, and again when Macmillan came out on top two years ago. It is, in fact, curious that on one occasion when they did win, and with a thumping majority, there is evidence that they were not particularly optimistic. Mr. Shinwell once said that, although he expected the landslide victory in 1945, most of the other Labour leaders took a gloomier view of their chances. Naturally, nobody expects Mr. Gaitskell to say that he is looking forward to losing the next election and that there isn’t really much point in all this arguing about election programmes because the Conservatives already have it in the bag. When he muses upon the Labour Party’s great opportunities and the success which he says is in their grasp we know that, whether he is right or wrong, he is saying what he is compelled to by the necessities of his situation.

For Mr. Gaitskell must project an image of his party to the electorate Labour are out for power over the affairs of British capitalism and to get this they do not have to educate or enlighten people. They only have to persuade enough voters that they are the cleverest, most responsible, most humane bunch of would be ministers in the land. And, of course, the most successful. Most politicians must be attached to the slogan “Nothing, succeeds like success.” Like the salesman who tells you that his product must be good because it sells so well, the political leader must always strive to give the impression that their fortunes are set fair. It is all part of the business of projecting an image.

It does not end there, as we saw at the last Labour Party Conference. This year’s conference rejected once again the idea that they are a party of wholesale nationalisation. Let us say right away that nationalisation is not, and never was, anything more than an alternative method of organising capitalism. But the Labour pioneers used to cling to it as the cure-all for capitalism’s ailments. We may depend on it that they would have castigated Mr. Gaitskell for his milk and water version of their favourite potion. Yet in doing so they would be ignoring the reasons for the Labour Party going back upon itself. Nationalisation, which might have had a brief fling as a vote-getter just after the war, is now an electoral liability. The theme of Mr. Gaitskell’s great battle over Clause Four was his realisation that the surest way to lose votes was to declare for outright nationalisation. True, Gaitskell lost his battle over the clause. But his party’s attitude to State control has changed and to that extent so has their public image.

We also saw at Blackpool—as we expected to see—the Labour Party break off its short flirtation with the unilateralists. Now that was a vote loser if you like. The nuclear disarmers are a small minority in the population—so small that there is no point, in them testing their policy in a parliamentary election. It seems certain that if the Labour Party were to tie themselves permanently to C.N.D., it would not be long before they were counting their members in thousands instead of the hundreds of, thousands of today. That may not worry a party of rigid principle, but for those who are bothered about getting power before anything else, it is a different matter.

Then there is the little business of strikes and this, sadly for Mr. Gaitskell, is something which cannot be shaken off by a conference resolution. There are a lot of political correspondents who think that the London bus strike in 1958 did more damage to the Labour Party in the 1959 election than anything else. We all know why they are associated in the popular mind with strikers. The Labour Party built itself on a foundation of working class sympathy. At one time their members were proud to be at the head of the Jarrow marchers, to wear cloth caps to the Commons, to be militant trade unionists. Inevitably, strikers looked to the Labour Party for support and strikes became part of the party’s image.

That was all very well in the old days, when Labour were climbing to power; it’s very different now. Firstly, if they get into power over British capitalism, strikes are going to be a nuisance which they will have to deal with, just like 1945/50 all over again. Secondly, large numbers of workers regard strikes as stupid, or anti-social, or the work of layabouts, and so suspect a political party which they connect with them. This notion seems to be stubbornly held. If it were not, surely it would have been squashed by the stern anti-strike measures of the 1945 Labour government? Whatever the evidence, however much Mr. Gaitskell may soothe and reassure, no matter what his party may write in their manifestos, the idea will stay in working class heads. Strikes equal Labour. Labour equals strikes. This is the sort of thing which is so bad for the image which Mr. Gaitskell is trying to project.

For the Labour Party now wants to appear a moderate, adaptable party, ready to manage British capitalism without any complications like political theories. There is only one theory of management that is worth anything to capitalism, and that is that the system is administered in the interests of the capitalist class. Unless the Labour Party can convince enough workers that they conform to that theory they are out, and will stay out.

The Tories have fewer worries on this score. True, they have their wild men— the people described by one Labour Party delegate as “hangers, floggers and let’s-ban-the-woggers.” But there is little political kudos for the Labour Party in this. For many workers, among all their other false ideas, support-capital and corporal punishment and, although they may not practice a colour bar, in fact regard Negroes as inferior beings and would agree to some control on immigration. Here is one of the Conservative’s trump cards. Whatever mistakes they may make, however black their record, they always seem to have enough of what it takes to ride their storms and to touch the responses of the working class. This is ironical, in a party which so openly stands for the privileges and inequalities of capitalism. Perhaps it is the Tories’ empirical attitude which does the trick. Perhaps it is political flair. It could be that they are very clever, or that the working class are excessively stupid and forgetful. Whatever the reason for it, the fact is that the Tory image is a successful one.

The two great parties are not alone in worrying about their public image. Every day, everywhere, we are meeting the same thing. We see it in the advertisements which, since the days of fuller employment came to this country, have adopted an especially irritating image type. Now the earnest, well groomed, rising young executive is the chap who buys the right car, uses the right sort of after-shave and knows which wine will not upset his boss. We meet the image on radio and television, with everybody striving to convince themselves that capitalism’s all right and that what really matters is that, as the girl once said to Wilfred Pickles: “. . . people—are nice—to—people.” This is the theme, too, of the newspapers with their unctuous human interest stories telling us about rock ‘n’ roll stars who still love their deaf grandmothers, or rich greengrocers who would swap it all for the pitter-patter of tiny feet.

Irritating and shameful as this may be, it should lead us to the bigger question of why it should happen at all. The answer is that the image men always project an impression of general satisfaction with capitalism. The people who are depicted as wholesome and confident are, after all, supporters of a social system which has produced the terror and insecurity of the modern world. And if we accept their standards the one thing we shall never do is to question the whys and wherefores of capitalism.

That leads us to an even bigger question. Are we satisfied with the terror and insecurity? Are we satisfied with being treated like mental infants who will be impressed by any vapid image that the politicians or the ad-men like to squirt at us?

The working class could rise above this. They could develop their social consciousness so that the political and commercial images lose their appeal. They could do this—in fact, they must do it, if there is to be hope of solving the world’s problems. But there is no reason for the capitalist class to help in this. No matter; let us leave them with their images. We should be tackling hard, material reality.  

Ivan

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

The Leader and the Labour Party (1960)

From the November 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Scarborough it was outwardly politics that were being discussed, but the Leader and his supporters were also on trial. The questions were what should be the policy and who should be the leader.

On the main resolutions decisions were reached which will hold unless and until they are reversed, but the question of leadership was not decided, though various groups which think it was are looking round for Gaitskell's successor.

On different aspects of the dominating issue of nuclear weapons there were four resolutions, and Mr. Gaitskell and the Labour Party executive were defeated on all of them, though not by large majorities. It was a severe but perhaps not yet fatal blow for Mr. Gaitskell and the Labour M.Ps, the majority of whom stood for the official policy.

A resolution was carried that “Labour policy is decided by the Party conference which is the final authority,” but the executive gave it an interpretation which seems to rob it of much of its meaning. Mr. Len Williams, the Party's National Agent, told the Conference that “the Parliamentary Labour Party” (that is, the Labour M.Ps.) is under no direction from conference or any other body. Mr. Williams said the National Executive did not wish to oppose the composite resolution if it was understood that it involved no change in the long-established principle governing relationships between conferences, National Executive and Parliamentary Party. And it had to be understood that nobody had the power to instruct the Parliamentary Party on the way it carried out its responsibilities." (Daily Herald, 5/10/60.)

And the day after the Conference Mr. Gaitskell made it clear that he has no present intention of resigning and on the contrary is preparing to overturn the Scarborough votes. Speaking in a TV interview he declared: “I regard it as absolutely vital that we should reverse this decision at next year's conference and I shall do everything I can to get that done.” (Daily Mail, 9/10/60.)

He also gave it as his opinion that the Parliamentary Labour Party will by a majority support the policy defeated by the delegates at Scarborough, the implication of which is that they will also confirm him in the Leadership, which incidentally carries with it the leadership of the Opposition at a government- provided salary of £3,000 a year.

Many Tory and Liberal newspapers, while criticising and regretting Mr. Gaitskell’s unsuccessful tactics, lavished praise on him and openly hoped that he may survive his defeat by Conference.

But whether he goes or stays the prospect for the Labour Party is bleak indeed. In the constituencies and in Parliament there will be rival groups each determined to put their point of view, and laying the Party wide open to attack from Tories and Liberals. This may, as the Liberal leaders proclaim, give them an opportunity to win back former supporters who joined the Labour Party. One political commentator, Mr. Robert McKenzie, thinks that even if Mr. Gaitskell survives for the moment it will solve nothing for the Party. His opponents will regard it as a cynical trick that Mr. Gaitskell only claims the right to defy the Trade Union block vole when it ceased to support his policy.

It is almost inevitable that the victims of this “trick” will fight on, either until they are expelled from the parliamentary party, or until Gaitskell himself is destroyed. And as the next election looms ahead, even some of those who admire Mr. Gaitskell's courage may decide that he must make way for someone who has at least a chance of reuniting the party.

(Observer, 9/10/60)

His own opinion, and hope, is that a new anti-H-Bomb Labour Party will be formed and that the Gaitskell faction will then come to terms with the Liberals.

Another danger for the Labour Party is that the conflict will lead to loss of some trade union support and may influence relationships between the Party and the TUC. Sir Thomas Williamson. Secretary of the General and Municipal Workers Union told conference that some of the branches would withdraw support from the Labour Party if the anti-nuclear resolutions were carried. (Daily Telegraph. 6/10/60.) The correspondent of The Times (7/10/60) reported that events at the conference had strengthened the already existing movement to reduce or sever the TUC’s connection with the Party.

It is an accepted convention of professional politics that the politician always claims to speak “for the people or, as he sometimes qualifies it—“for all intelligent people.” It is not so easy to decide what a Labour Party conference vote represents. Mr. Cousins claimed that he speaks “for Britain ,” a claim that Tory newspapers angrily rejected. Out of more than 22 million workers in this country, of whom 9,600,000 are in trade unions, the TUC has in its affiliated unions about 8 million, and the Labour Party 5,600,000. If Labour Party conference votes represented the views of its affiliated trade unionists and the additional 875,000 individual members who belong to local parties, cooperative societies, etc., they could be taken as representing directly the considered wishes of the majority among 6 million workers. (A large, but unknown number of the individual members also count as part of the affiliated trade union membership). But Labour Party spokesmen are well aware that their voting methods, including the trade union block vote, can produce distorted results. Even so, the claim of the Daily Herald (which now supports the H-bomb) that the great majority of Labour supporters are with them on that issue is, to say the least, somewhat surprising. According to a poll undertaken by Odhams Press Research Division “an overwhelming majority of Labour supporters and trade unionists are against the West giving up H-bombs and nuclear weapons so long as Russia keeps hers . . . . more than four out of five Labour supporters think that Britain and America should keep the bomb.” (Daily Herald, 4/10/60.)

There are, of course, sceptics who think that public opinion polls may be no more accurate than block votes.

The Guardian shares the Herald's view of the vote and roundly declared that the Conference is not democratic “while it is governed by trade union block votes. . . . There is no democracy in giving Mr. Cousins one million votes. As the world will probably see today, one or two men can turn Labour's policy upside down.” (Guardian, 5/10/60.)

Mr. Gaitskell, defeated on the H-bomb, gained the day on a policy statement which in effect discards old aims of wholesale nationalisation, and puts in their place the possibility of nationalising a few selected industries, together with the plan for a Labour Government to buy shares in companies without taking them over. It recognises that “both public and private ownership have a place in society.” Delegates speaking in opposition called it “underwriting capitalism” and the abandonment of “Socialism.” Mr. Gaitskell retorted that the proposals were just as much “Socialist” as is Nationalisation, a fact on which Socialists can heartily agree, since nationalisation is state capitalism and has never been advocated by the S.P.G.B.

While the delegates were maintaining, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, that they still believe in nationalisation as the answer to the workers’ problems, strikes were going on in the nationalised coal industry (they break out at the rate of over 30 a week year after year), the Railwaymen were preparing for a strike over pay and Postal workers were discussing a strike resolution over hours of work. And it would seem from the rent strikes and the riots that followed forcible eviction of council tenants by a local council that nationalisation's little sister municipal ownership is no less unpopular.

The day that the Daily Herald reported the vote on the policy of the government buying company shares it reported developments in the direction of a little private enterprise by the local Labour parties themselves. They are planning to form a Unit Trust to invest their funds in company shares and thus cash in on the rise in the profits and prices of ordinary shares that has accompanied inflation. A trade union Unit Trust is already being organised.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Emerging World Scene (1946)

From the November 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is no doubt that things are on the move. Incessant activity on the part of politicians leads one to speculate as to what is pending. The Nuremberg Trial is now a thing of the past, the U.N. is proposing to take a breathing spell, the Conservative Party holds a conference, the U.S. takes decisive action in Europe; in short, what we see in our master’s press leads to the belief that the decks are being cleared for action : the capitalist class have, in the main, decided upon what they are going to do.

The American Presidential election takes place in two years’ time, and all those aspiring to office in the United States act, and speak, under the spell of that important fact. Eisenhower, who recently spoke at Edinburgh, Byrnes, the representative at the U.N., Wallace, the former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and many others are thinking when they speak not so much of the subject in hand as of the American election of 1948.

Eisenhower said in his speech of October 3rd : “World neighbourliness must be achieved or else, we shall, in a twinkling, travel a backward route over mankind’s long and laborious progress from his ancient caves to the present.”—(Daily Telegraph, 4/10/46.)

Mr. Byrnes says that if other Powers will agree to the 40-year Treaty proposed by him, this treaty will bind “not merely the present American administration, but its successors.”

Commenting on this, the Daily Telegraph of October 4th says : —

“Of the four Powers consulted upon this proposal, Britain, France and the United States are favourable, and it, is only from Russia that a refusal has so far come. This refusal is no doubt partly based upon those divergencies of view between the wartime Allies to which Mr. Byrnes made discreet reference. The prospect of a democratic Germany as seen by the State Department and by the Kremlin is strikingly different. Yet it is difficult not to surmise that Marshal Stalin’s objection to the Four-Power Treaty is mainly based on the fear, not that the United States will disinterest herself from Europe, but on the contrary, that the Treaty would serve to maintain her influence there. Mr. Byrnes’s reference to the Yalta declaration and the continued American interest in the Balkans indicates that this influence will, none the less, persist.”

Mr. Byrnes has a good election cry for 1948 : his rival, Mr. Wallace, who recently was rapped over the knuckles by President Truman and, as a consequence, lost his job, is losing out in the race; the policy of isolationism is no longer in favour in capitalist circles. 

Mr. Baruch, United States representative on the Atomic Control Commission, has vigorously attacked Wallace, and stated that the latter was totally ignorant of the facts underlying atomic control. Wallace is now trimming his sails, and states, in excuse for his attack on Mr. Byrnes’ policy in regard to Russia, “that he had obviously not been fully posted as to the facts.” The deadlock over atomic control, according to Wallace, results from absence of mutual trust between U.S. and Russia. He faces both ways, like all politicians placed in similar circumstances, by concluding that “the United States is in a better position to assume leadership which will lead,” but he has no plan except that of stopping the manufacture of atomic bombs.

If we read between the lines the general conclusion arrived at is that a peace treaty is going to be patched up. Russia is compelled to accept the U.N. decision on Trieste, and her policy regarding the Danubian Waterway has been opposed so strenuously by Britain, France and the United States that she is compelled temporarily to give way to them.

There is little likelihood of a long or permanent peace; however, the nations will, in all probability, prepare for what, under capitalism, is inevitable with what speed they may. Britain is evidently not going to be caught napping. Look at this: —

£12,000,000 FOB ROCKET TESTS.

AUSTRALIAN PLANT.

“The British and Australian Governments may be involved in an expenditure of between £12,000,000 and £14,000,000 in the construction of rocket-bomb workshops and testing ranges in Australia. The annual maintenance cost is expected to be about £3,000,000.

It is understood the Australian Government has received advice from Britain setting out proposals for research and development and for testing grounds in the centre of Australia. These are based on the recommendations of a mission of experts and scientists which visited Australia early this year”.—(Daily Telegraph, 4/10/46.)

It is against the above background we must judge the speeches of Sir Stafford Cripps at the Empire Trade Conference on October 3rd.

The Tories have recently laid stress on Imperial Preference; the following is Stafford Cripps’ reply.—

“It was an obvious and sensible course for us to pursue to endeavour to extend and consolidate our inter-Commonwealth trade.

"But that trade alone cannot fully meet any of our needs, and it would defeat our object of full employment and prosperity for our own people if we were to concentrate on Commonwealth trade alone and neglect those wider fields of world trade which we must cultivate.”

You are plainly told the Empire is not enough for British Capitalism; the Government must go hunting elsewhere for markets. The system compels expansion; the world is the limit; the clash between nations cannot be avoided. Socialism is the only means of saving mankind from destruction, and, unfortunately, Socialism is not yet fully understood by those who are called upon by history to establish it.

The Conservative Conference was held by men who observe the signs of the times, and are getting ready to deal with a situation they think will arise in the not far distant future.

The Labour Party is designated as the Socialist Party, but one statement made by Mr. Eden will be very interesting to the readers of the Socialist Standard.

“There is one principle underlying our approach to all these problems, a principle on which we stand in fundamental opposition to Socialism. The objective of Socialism is State ownership of all the means of production, distribution and exchange. Our objective is a nation-wide, property-owning democracy. (Cheers.)

These objectives are fundamentally opposed. Whereas the Socialist purpose is the concentration of ownership in the hands of the State, ours is the distribution of ownership over the widest practicable number of individuals. (Cheers.) Both parties believe in a form of capitalism, but whereas our opponents believe in State capitalism, we believe in the widest measure of individual capitalism.”—(Daily Telegraph, 4/10/46.)

Eden knows, and clearly shows, that the difference between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party is a difference in degree and not in kind.

The propaganda of the l.L.P. and kindred organisations have confounded Socialism with State Capitalism.

Mr. Eden is slated for the Premiership and the odds are in his favour.

Division in the Labour Party is probable, and the Communists may hasten it along. “For or against the Soviet Union” may arise as an issue out of the present political situation. The Cabinet will be up against it if they are forced to decide between Russia and the United States. The “Labour Progressives”, supported by Communists, will go wholeheartedly for Russia if such an issue develops, so will many of their followers in the Unions, and the question, is what will happen to the Labour Government in these circumstances?

Anthony Eden is the most likely man for the Premiership in the Coalition Government which it is anticipated would then spring into being as a matter of course.

The above is how the prophets have worked it out; they may be right, but, as Shaw says, “You never can tell.”

Meanwhile the wage slave plods his weary way. his meagre rations barely sufficient to enable him to carry on.

So Capitalism staggers along through the stages that precede its dissolution. It must live its life, but the end is drawing nearer every day.

Wherever you go nowadays you find working men not only discussing the political situation, but analysing it ably and well.

The war has not succeeded in blowing out the light within the brains of the members of our class; it has accelerated the growth of class consciousness, and increased the knowledge of the system that is its cause.

In the chain gang of wage slavery this knowledge is being passed from man to man and from woman to woman. The substance of Socialism is being absorbed by ever-increasing numbers.

The effects of this may be clearly revealed in the intelligence displayed by the workers in the strenuous conflicts that lie ahead.

The inherent antagonism between the exploited and their exploiters cannot be suppressed; it will become world wide; wherever Capitalism goes Socialist ideas cannot be prevented from appearing and playing their historic part.

The Capitalist class are bent on rejuvenating a system that is now senile. They cannot give it a new lease of life.

The working class will soon be forced to try and discover ways and means of ending it. We are with them because we are of them. There is no doubt as to the result. Society must establish Socialism or perish. The expropriation of the expropriators is the only way out.

Charles Lestor

How Labour governed (2025)

From the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eighty years ago this month, the Labour Party won a landslide victory in the General Election held on 5 July 1945. Clement Attlee became the Prime Minister of the first Labour government to have had a parliamentary majority.

Labour hadn’t fought the election on a socialist programme, but its manifesto did declare — in words that would cause ministers in the present Labour government to throw up their hands in horror — that ‘The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain’. By ‘socialism’ was meant the nationalisation of the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy — coal, steel, railways, electricity, gas, and water.

On this they were as good as their word. The coal mines, the steel plants, the railways and the utilities were nationalised, as was the Bank of England. The previous owners were given generous compensation, with the shares they had held being transformed into interest-bearing bonds. The workers in these industries remained wage-workers and the interest paid to the bond-holders came out of the surplus value they produced. This was state capitalism, not socialism.

That the Attlee government governed in the interest of the working class is a myth.

It did establish the National Health Service with free treatment and free prescriptions. Although this was introduced in the capitalist interest to provide a fit workforce, it would be churlish not to recognise that not having to pay for medical treatment and medicines was of benefit to workers. Other measures that could be so regarded were the repeal of the anti-trade union laws introduced after the capitalist class victory in the 1926 General Strike, and a democratisation of the franchise.

But it was still a government of capitalism and, as capitalism cannot run in the interests of the working class, the Attlee government inevitably came into conflict with the workers. A leaflet we distributed in a local election in Northern Ireland in 1963 recalled a number of the actions it took as ‘part of Labour’s black record when it waged war against the workers in the interests of British capitalism between the years 1945 and 1951’:

(1) Used CONSCRIPT TROOPS to BREAK strikes.

(2) Imposed a ‘PAY PAUSE’ and ‘INDUSTRIAL CONSCRIPTION’.

(3) Used (in peace time) a wartime Order, 1305, in an effort to have striking trade unionists JAILED.

(4) Had workers RESISTING BLACK-LEG LABOUR sentenced to IMPRISONMENT and FINES under old PROPERTY-PROTECTION ACTS of 1875.

The Attlee government itself first introduced charges for some health services. It also developed the atomic bomb.

It is not just the present Labour government that is governing in the interest of the capitalist class. The Attlee government, despite its socialist pretensions, had to as well since that is what has to happen if you take on responsibility for running the political side of capitalism. You have to apply its economic laws that prioritise profit-making. It doesn’t matter how able, sincere or sympathetic you might be. Capitalism simply cannot be run in the interest of the working class.

Blogger's Note:

The July 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard carried a number of pieces on, what was then, the seventieth anniversary of the 1945 Labour Government. Articles included:

• Editorial: Labour's Strange 'Revolution'
• Labour Government Wasn’t the Way to Socialism 
• 50 Years Ago: 9 Months of Labour Rule

A reasonable journey (2025)

From the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Richard Headicar describes how his socialist viewpoint on the world developed, and some of the people he met along the way.

Few, if any, of the guests at my 21st birthday party in 1954 would ever have imagined that their cheerful host – then a chauvinistic, Tory-supporting Christian monarchist – might someday become a member of the SPGB. Indeed, I would myself have dismissed such a proposition as utterly delusional. Yet while some may consider such a comprehensive transition remarkable, I simply regard it as nothing more than the consequence of a number of eminently reasonable decisions taken in the light of changing circumstances.

In fact, although I was blissfully unaware of it, the first seed of change had already been planted. It had been surreptitiously sown a week previously by Dr Donald Soper on my very first visit to Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park. Soper was one of three brilliant Methodist preachers who had held me spellbound from the age of 14 by their outstanding oratory (the others were Dr Leslie Weatherhead and Dr William Sangster, then the doyen of Westminster Central Hall and the grandmaster of the craft of homiletics). What Donald Soper said that day about the use of atomic bombs against Japan completely shocked me. He cast doubt upon the official version of events offered in justification: that doing so averted the need for an invasion, thereby saving millions of lives. So profound was my disbelief that I departed the park firmly resolved to prove him mistaken. Surely, I thought, governments – well, Western governments anyway – would never countenance such an extreme act without incontrovertible reasons. My shock was much greater, however, on discovering that not only was everything Soper said absolutely true, but there was so much more that he had omitted to say. For several years I became immersed in trying to learn all that I could about the real situation, following a trail from Gottingen (where research into nuclear physics had been carried out) to Los Alamos (in California where the first atomic bombs were developed) through to the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Needless to say, I had not the faintest notion of where this newly-acquired knowledge would lead me, never for a moment thinking that it would affect my political allegiance. Very soon, however, a series of events occurred that were to have a significant impact in that respect.

The first of these was the Suez crisis in 1956. Out of curiosity, I joined a march from Speakers’ Corner to Trafalgar Square where a massive anti-war rally was taking place. All I knew about Egypt was that it had pyramids and that according to headlines dominating the popular press, a scheming Egyptian politician named Nasser was causing trouble. Also that the British Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, seemed to be changing his mind every week about what he should do. But, once again, my political complacency was challenged when I learned of the dubious motives of the Western powers, centred on the protection of their substantial economic interests in the Middle East. One of the speakers that day was Anuerin Bevan, another compelling orator, and the passionate humanity of his words persuaded me that perhaps the Labour Party was the place to be in order to restore my faith in our political leaders…

Over the ensuing years, as a result of my ongoing investigations into the labyrinthine deceptions surrounding the manufacture and use of the first atomic bombs, I developed a particular concern regarding the rapid escalation of the arms race, especially in relation to nuclear weapons. My next reasonable step seemed only logical: on 7 February 1958, I attended the inaugural public meeting of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Appropriately enough, given my wavering but just about extant Methodist beliefs, the meeting was convened at Westminster Central Hall.

The promising news that over 70 Labour MPs had pledged their support to the cause provided precisely the nudge I needed to join the Labour Party. At its 1960 conference in Scarborough, a unilateralist motion proposed by Frank Cousins, the leader of the Transport and General Workers Union (T&GWU) succeeded in winning a narrow majority. It was countered immediately by Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell with his oft-quoted, highly emotional avowal to ‘fight and fight and fight again to save the party we love’. Amazingly, it was at this point in the Labour Party’s long history that a group of MPs came to the realisation that the use of the ‘block vote’ was ‘undemocratic’. This was something the left-wing minority had been pointing out for many years, but obviously such a belated recognition of their previously disregarded submission was in no way related to the fact that, on this occasion, it had worked against the Executive Committee. Bill Rodgers, aided and abetted by four other ‘moderate’ MPs – Dick Taverne, Anthony Crosland, Douglas Jay and Roy Jenkins – wasted little time in forming the Campaign for Democratic Socialism (CDS). These fervent supporters of democracy, however, appeared determined to devote most of their energy in a concerted effort to portray CND as a haven for ‘communists’.

A deliciously ironic confirmation that my initial optimism about the Labour Party might have been misplaced occurred on the publication of the Tory government’s 1961 Statement on the Defence Estimates about military budgets. Five Labour Party MPs, including future leader Michael Foot, had the whip withdrawn (basically, expelled) for voting against the government. I was not altogether surprised, therefore, when at Labour’s Blackpool conference, the combination of a dodgy ‘compromise’ proposal, more skulduggery and blatant vote fiddling, by which certain Unions were permitted to reverse their original mandate, ensured that the 1960 unilateralist resolution was duly overturned. In his excellent pamphlet Nuclear Disarmament and the Labour Party, Tony Southall comments ‘one important effect of the new events in 1960-1 was that a whole generation of CND activists shunned the party’.

So far as I was concerned, fully awakened at least to the routine misappropriation of the word ‘democracy’ in pursuit of political expediency, I left the Labour Party, never to return. It was a disappointment to me that so many of my unilateralist comrades chose to remain. By now thoroughly despairing of party politics and sadly disillusioned with the efficacy of ‘democracy’, I was increasingly drawn to the philosophy of anarchism. Nevertheless, I remained firmly wedded to the unilateralist cause while undergoing a number of shifts and slides in my personal evaluation of the official CND position. I found it too narrow and confining and much preferred the intellectually stimulating atmosphere of the divergent attitudes I encountered in the Committee of 100 direct action group. Although broadly supportive of CND’s work, it remained absolutely independent and welcomed other speakers who presented the anti-war case in varying styles and from an individual perspective.

For some time I had been running a platform every Saturday and Sunday at Speakers’ Corner centred around CND. I also participated regularly in acts of civil disobedience and eventually ended up in jail for protesting at the Soviet embassy. I was sentenced in October 1961, a day or so after the Labour Party’s infamous Blackpool conference. Coincidentally, I was due to take part in a much-anticipated debate with an eloquent SPGB representative, Melvin Harris, but was prevented from doing so at Her Majesty’s pleasure. I often wonder whether had I not been so inconsiderately detained, my SPGB membership would have been more expeditious? A much-missed friend and comrade, Edmund ‘Eddie’ Grant, relished relating his own version of my non-appearance, that I simply got cold feet at the last moment and deliberately chose prison as a means of avoiding the superior reasoning of the SPGB.

During the years I spent speaking in Hyde Park on behalf of CND, I’m afraid that I regarded the SPGB as an arrogant bunch who found it almost impossible to see merit in anyone but themselves. In relation to CND, although the SPGB’s criticism of it was correct, the unengaging, predominantly negative manner in which it was presented was decidedly counter-productive. Eddie Grant was one of only three members with whom I enjoyed regular dialogue in a friendly and non-judgemental manner then. Eddie, especially, was a welcome visitor to my platform and in his deceptively disarming way invariably raised thought-provoking questions.

An excellent example of Eddie’s method of patient, albeit politely persistent interpolation is the imaginative ruse he employed to breach my unyielding refusal to entertain the possibility of a society devoid of money or markets. The apparent immutability of both had been deeply ingrained in my psyche from a very early age. Following the publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson’s pioneering book Silent Spring, Eddie had listened to me orating passionately on the disastrous effect on the environment resulting from military activity and developments. On the next occasion we met he presented me with a piece of paper on which he had copied a quote from William Morris:

‘Is there money to be gathered? Cut down the pleasant trees among the houses, pull down the ancient and venerable buildings for the money that a few square yards of London dirt will fetch; blacken rivers, hide the sun and poison the air with smoke or worse, and it’s nobody’s business to see it or mend it: that is all that modern commerce, the counting house forgetful of the workshop, will do for us herein’ (The Lesser Arts) .

He also recommended two books: Morris’s News From Nowhere and Robert Tressell’s The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. Unfortunately, my reading at the time continued to be dominated by the tedious and complex tomes concerned with weapons and ‘defence’ strategies. I was also becoming increasingly interested in the ideas propounded by various philosophers. Consequently, some 20 years elapsed before I finally read Robert Tressell’s heart-breaking but inspiring masterpiece and grasped that the rational implications of the William Morris quotation spoke of the necessity for a change far more fundamental than environmental intervention. It was only many years after I joined the SPGB that I finally got round to reading News From Nowhere, prior to a talk I gave at Fircroft on ‘The Stateless Society’. With Eddie very much in mind, I included the quote he had handed me all those years previously.

It was at Speakers’ Corner also that I met the Hungarian philosopher Alfred Reynolds (Reinhold), who was to prove by far the greatest influence in my life. He somehow managed to transform my thinking and attitudes without once telling me I was ‘wrong’ but instead patiently explaining his points of disagreement without once claiming they were ‘right’. Two areas in which he shared valuable insights were the danger of ‘group thinking’ and the ‘nature of truth’. He held much respect, even affinity, for the SPGB and claimed that at some point in the 1930s he was briefly a member, though for reasons that I recount in a brief biography I have just completed, it would have been under an assumed name that he joined.

In the mid-1980s, when I gave a talk for the Islington branch of the SPGB (prior to becoming a member myself), a telling contribution from Eddie Grant, challenging my rejection of the democratic process, removed the final obstacle to SPGB membership. I became a member of the Party in 1988 and Eddie’s lucid rebuttal of my contention that the right to vote was meaningless was instrumental in that decision. Given my many conversations with him during the preceding years, my protracted journey to membership should have been much shorter. Alas, I had been too preoccupied with saving the world from perceived nuclear annihilation to pay proper attention to his wise illuminations.

In the process of change, interspersed with landmark episodes, there are countless subtle and often subconscious influences too complex and personal to properly record, and some are perhaps destined to remain unfathomable. I frequently ponder upon my own readiness to take the reasonable steps that led me to my eventual destination.

Was I born with a predisposition to more readily embrace ‘logical’ development? How much importance should be given to the impact the Methodist preachers had and the early lessons they conveyed to me about listening, constructing and delivering an argument and the use of humour? Would I ever have moved on at all if I had not been confronted with those dramatic political events? How much does the chance of circumstance play? Meeting with such exceptional individuals as Eddie and Alfred was most assuredly not pre-ordained.

Are we simply the products of our personal, social and political environments? If this is so, why are we not ‘behaviourists’ like B F Skinner? Is becoming a socialist the result of a conscious choice, and what do we mean by this? If choice is assumed, can we ever be sure it is not merely the result of circumstance? In presenting the case for socialism, should more consideration than at present be given to the philosophical and psychological implications?

Richard Headicar

Blogger's Note:

Richard's obituary appeared in the same issue of the Socialist Standard.

Doing the Splits (1971)

From the December 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

How seriously should we take the splits in the Labour and Conservative parties over the Common Market ? Is there likely to be some massive realignment of capitalist politics, with Roy Jenkins leading a coalition of Liberals and pro-Market Labourites in a new party ? Will the great machine of capitalist politics suffer irreparable damage, or can we still sleep of nights secure in the knowledge that it will continue to deceive, coerce and exploit us ?

To begin with, nobody should allow themselves to think that the splits have anything to do with principles. Of course all members of the capitalist parties say their political allegiance is based on principle, but issues like the Common Market, which they say are also matters of fundamental principle, cross the party lines so that George Brown agrees with Heath, Wilson with Enoch Powell and so on. This shows how flexible are the “principles” of our parties and it tells us something about their splits.

One notable, but not unusual, feature of the splits over the Common Market is that both the big parties are suffering at the same time. This makes it difficult for either of them to adopt the attitude of pious shock which they affect when only the other side is split. Then they can say that such disputes are evidence of their opponents’ irresponsibility. When they themselves are divided on some issue they claim that this goes to show what a lively lot they are, vibrant with debate yet tolerant and united enough to contain the argument and apply it for the benefit of all those voters outside. This is all part of the jolly game of politics.

In this country, it is the Labour Party who have become famous for their splits, very often splashing them into the public eye. This has tended to promote the idea that the Tories are more stable and united but there is some evidence that this is not true. Since the 1929 Labour government, the Labour Party have had only four leaders—Lansbury, Attlee, Gaitskell and now Wilson—and of these Lansbury was never more than a caretaker after the defection of MacDonald. During the same period the Tories have had seven leaders —Baldwin, Chamberlain, Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Home and Heath—and in almost every case they have changed to the accompaniment of a public dispute.

At the same time, behind those gentlemanly Tory facades, there have been fierce splits over matters of policy. For example, Macmillan was much occupied with persuading his party to move out of the Edwardian era (which he was said to personify) and to accept the decline of the British Commonwealth. This seemed to be no more than accepting the obvious and the inevitable, but Macmillan was bitterly fought by a strong section of the Tories headed by Lord Salisbury, who always looked and spoke and thought like an archetypal Tory backwoodsman. For Salisbury, the final blow was the surrender of independence to Cyprus and he resigned to snipe at the Tories for their policies on the old Empire and to mumble about the shocking treatment being handed out to our kith and kin in Rhodesia.

Life was no more placid for the Tories before the war. They were split on the best method of dealing with the rebirth of German capitalism; when that matter was settled in the forties they found scapegoats for their own doubts and disunity in Baldwin and Chamberlain. Of these two, Chamberlain always kept a pretty firm grip on his party, at least until the end, but Baldwin’s career at the top was almost continual turmoil, as he was under constant attack.

The Labour Party do not have the Tories’ reputation of the party of gentlemen and usually conduct their rows like public house brawls. Perhaps that is why they are so famous for their splits, which have very often blinded the voters to the fact that Labour is always solidly united on the basic issue of trying for power to run British capitalism. Their most damaging split, in 1931, was not on any fundamental issue; they were united in the opinion that the working class had to suffer in some way during that time of crisis for British capitalism. None of them ever suggested Socialism as a way out of the whole sorry mess.

Having survived the debacle in 1931, Labour had a comparatively tranquil time until they came to power after the war, when the group which eventually became known as the Bevanites were constantly rocking the boat, which was in any case leaky and unstable. Here again the splits were never on fundamentals but were always over the best—often, quite openly, the most vote catching — methods of running British capitalism. In the end, at the Brighton conference of 1957, Bevan shocked many of the followers to whom he was a new Messiah by publicly making his peace with Gaitskell. The conference was debating nuclear armaments and Bevan, who was supposed to be the man who would guide us all to Socialism, argued that British capitalism needed these arms to protect its position against the other capitalist powers and that failure to recognise this would be electorally disastrous.

At that time the Labour Party, in the aftermath of Suez, were smelling the approach of power. In the event the Tories hung on and when the election came in 1959 Labour’s defeat threw them into another uproar of dispute, with the Gaitskellites arguing that the party’s traditional policies (or rather their traditional propaganda, because the policies were so easily ignored by governments) should be abandoned. This was to be, not because the policies were not socialist, not even that they went against working class interests under capitalism. It was simply that they lost the party votes. The next couple of years saw another row, this time over nuclear weapons, until Wilson came along and settled the whole matter by running British capitalism with a single-minded concern for the interests of the ruling class, while assuring everybody that he was doing something entirely different.

It very often happens, that a split reveals a future leader—sometimes in the role of peacemaker, like Wilson, sometimes as a man of honesty. In this Common Market split in the Labour Party, Roy Jenkins has come into prominence; he has been a consistent supporter of British capitalism joining Europe and perhaps one explanation of all the coverage he has had recently is the publicity boys’ surprise at finding a politician who says the same thing on more than one occasion.

It is distinctly pathetic, to see the Labour Party putting so much faith in Jenkins, perhaps as an overreaction to the exposure of Wilson as a tawdry trickster. They were once similarly hopeful about Wilson, as they were about all the many leaders who disappointed them before. Once again they are ignoring facts; the records show that Jenkins is no less cynical, no less a vote-grabbing politician, than the rest. For example, in a book he wrote in 1959 — The Labour Case — he avowed that Labour’s policies could be carried out “. . . without any question of an increase in the tax burden. On the contrary, they should leave room for substantial reductions.”

Apart from the fact that Jenkins was here descending in his anxiety to grab votes for his party, to pandering to the ignorance of workers who think the level of taxation affects their material interests, it is clear now that he was making another of those empty politicians’ promises. The Wilson government based a lot of their policies on steeply increased taxation—and Jenkins, as Chancellor of the Exchequer for about two years, was directly responsible for a lot of it. He was the inspiration for a lot of the Wilson government’s attacks on workers’ living standards, frequently lecturing us from the television screen on our spendthrift ways which were causing such terrible poverty among the grouse moors and the slums of Park Lane and Eaton Square. In a recent debate in the Commons (see The Guardian, 10 November 1971) he denounced unemployment just as if his government was not in power when it first became a serious problem and attacked the Tories for their ". . . silly little argument . . . that unemployment was an inevitable result of wage claims, and that those responsible must just take the consequences.” Yet this is what he said when he was Chancellor, at a union conference which was debating a motion condemning an incomes policy backed by legal sanctions:

An uncontrolled wages situation could undermine the Government’s central purpose, by putting back into people’s hands the purchasing power that the Budget had siphoned off . . . (The Times 25/4/69).

Jenkins is said to be a “liberal”, yet he did not resign over the racist laws passed by the Wilson government, which outdid the Tories in pandering to working class colour prejudice. He supported the reintroduction of prescription charges — much higher than the Tory charges which Labour had stopped; the raising of the school leaving age, the end of free school milk, the cuts in the housing programme. He was prominent in a government which kept the British nuclear weaponry. And that is only part of the list of anti-working class acts for which honest Roy, martyr to his conscience, must take his full share of responsibility.

So if the Labour Party decide to put their faith in Jenkins as yet another new saviour, they will be as bitterly disappointed as they were with Wilson, MacDonald and the rest. Jenkins may look and speak like a stern, unbending schoolmaster but what he actually is, is an ambitious capitalist politician. His function is to get power to run the affairs of the British capitalist class and to carry this out he is quite ready to join in the deception and the trickery which make an essential part of capitalist politics.

When the uproar over the Common Market has died down and workers who have been so fascinated by it, and who have been deceived into taking sides, have settled back into their proper, lowly place in capitalist society another incident will have been written into the history of politics. Then the whole futile business can start all over again.

Ivan

50 Years Ago: Has Bevan Sold the Pass? (2007)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

A lot of people who have for years worshipped Aneurin Bevan have now turned against their hero because of his support for the H-Bomb at the Labour Party Conference. Bevan says that he is as strongly against the bomb as ever he was and that his speech and vote at Brighton (decided on “after a lot of agonising thinking”), were only designed to find “the most effective way of getting the damned thing destroyed” : but this is a bit too subtle for those who have passionately believed that Bevan was hundred per cent, against the bomb and now find that he isn’t.

But actually the disgruntled Bevanites have little ground for complaint for, as it happens, Bevan has changed his politics hardly at all. If any deception has been carried out it is their own self-deception; an obstinate refusal to take note of what Bevan has for years been saying and doing.

If a few of them are genuine pacifists who resolutely refuse to support armaments or war, they are fully entitled to be opposed to Bevan who supported World War II and the Korean War, and conscription and re-armament, but they cannot pretend that Bevan has deceived them about his record of war-supporting.

With others the revulsion of feeling may appear to be more soundly based, but again it will not stand examination. They take the view (like Bevan) that armaments are necessary and that war is sometimes unavoidable and must be supported no matter what the cost in death and destruction. They reject the Socialist view that war arises from capitalism and can only be got rid of by establishing Socialism. They can stomach it all, the millions of dead and maimed, the trench warfare, machine guns and artillery, the bombing raids, the napalm and even the A-Bomb— but the H-Bomb. No !

(Front page article by H, Socialist Standard, November 1957)

The Weakness of CND (1960)

From the September 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Writing only a few years after the end of the second world war and witnessing on every hand the active preparations for another on an even more gigantic scale, it is not necessary to emphasise that war is literally an issue of life and death for men, women and children in every part of the globe. Nor is it necessary to prove at length that another war may be immeasurably more destructive of life and the means of sustaining life than were the wars from which the human race has suffered already during the present century. Everyone who takes even a casual interest in news of the atom and hydrogen bombs and other weapons of mass destruction of cities and peoples has received some impression of the agonising fate that may be in store for all the centres of civilisation if the Powers again come into armed conflict."

Socialist Party and War.

June, 1950.

Ten years ago, the writer stood on a little wooden platform in a North London suburb, flourishing a copy of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. With youthful earnestness he was haranguing the multitude—eight members of the local branch (trying hard to look like genuine strollers stayed by the speaker's eloquence), one school boy, two very old gentlemen, one ”mum” encumbered with Saturday shopping, and, of course, the alert and sympathetic mongrel.

The atomic scientists had written with concern, many with disgust—about the terrible effects of the weapon (conceived in 1942), which in desperate haste, the American Government was developing in an attempt to maintain its atomic supremacy—the "Hydrogen Bomb.”

Few stopped to listen. People did not want to hear about nuclear weapons or war or politics. They had had their fill. The piteous agonies of the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were relatively unknown and their import not understood. Such knowledge tormented only an insignificant few who lacked the resources to make known all the terrors of the past and the perils of the future. Others even more knowledgeable, such as the Labour Cabinet, under Mr. Attlee, whose representative was present at the bombing of Nagasaki, quietly arranged the making of a British atomic bomb—thereby smoothing the way for nuclear weapon development under the Conservatives. The so-called Communists who in 1945 had called for further attacks on Japan, were engaged in nullifying the western monopoly of atomic striking power by a hypocritical "Ban the Bomb” campaign.

Later, in 1954, the tragic incident of the Japanese fishermen aroused the anger of millions in Japan and stirred many thousands in other countries to protest. In Britain information about the nature of atomic weapons was gradually assimilated and after a number of false starts, the National Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapon Tests came into being. From it, in 1958, sprang the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Long before the emergence of CND, members of the Socialist Party had become aware of the problems associated with nuclear warfare and weapon tests. Did the use or testing of nuclear weapons make it necessary to modify our political standpoint in any way? Must we deal with the nuclear menace first in order to make the world safe for Socialism? Much discussion ensued and in this article, therefore, we put forward a point of view which is neither a dogmatic response to a new situation nor a hastily conceived compromise designed to gain political support.

As there are still a number of "Campaigners’' who are attempting to change Labour Party policy, it may be useful to comment briefly on the Labour Party’s actions in the past. In its history it has supported several major wars; it was in office when the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan. It has supported the testing of nuclear weapons and in fact, is committed to the use of hydrogen bombs in an “ all-out ” war.

Those who support the Labour Party—which is alleged to have been struggling for Socialism and the “Brotherhood of Man,” are now reduced after fifty-four years of " Socialist" thinking and re-thinking, to seek CND support on grounds which, were the issues not so tragic, would be laughable. After having played a vital part in the making of atomic weapons they have the effrontery to claim a sympathetic hearing from "Campaigners" on the grounds that a minority of the Labour Party are now wholly or partly opposed to nuclear weapons—and this is supposed to he a Socialist Party!

In 1950, the writer recalls asking a Labour Party member how he could reconcile his party’s support of atomic weapons with its professed concern for human brotherhood. After a very apologetic defence, his parting words were, "Ah! Wait till the conference! We’ll show the right-wingers!" Every year we have heard the same pathetic tale. Now, when pressure from CND and elsewhere has made an anti-nuclear weapon vote a possibility at the Labour Party Conference, the Parliamentary Labour Party is considering ways to avoid implementing such a decision!

It is a tragedy that so many well-meaning people spend their lives attempting to build a more sensible world through the Labour Party. If they pondered deeply they would see that in the early days of this century, when Labour Party supporters chose to disregard the sounder theoretical (and therefore more practical) position of the Socialist Party, the path was taken which eventually led to Labour Party support of the trench massacres, the deliberate saturation bombing of working class dwelling areas, the atomic bombings, nuclear weapons and their testing and other chemical and bacteriological weapons. May we say to those young people who seek to use the Labour Party as an instrument of social change, that the problems which now confront us are, in fact, the result of the allegedly more practical policies of those parties prepared to administer capitalism. It would be quite illogical to assist those who bear a share of the responsibility for a world where our innocent children play in the shadow of deadly rockets, as yet unaware of the insidious strontium in their bones.

What have we to say about the Campaign itself? To Socialists, to see so many people expressing their displeasure, after a long period of political inactivity, at the stupidity and recklessness of their rulers, was a refreshing change. Discontent, however, if it is not to undergo an eventual decline from determined idealism to a hopeless cynicism, must partake of sound theory. What has held "Campaigners” together, so far, has been a common revulsion against one of the weapons of mass- murder and a belief that even if the movement was divided in its aims and methods, it was the only means by which the semi-apathetic majority of ordinary people, on whom the pro-Bomb parties relied for support, could be shaken from their dangerous lethargy.

When one examines the propositions of the Campaign — Sanity or Suicide, page 8. —, its inadequacies can clearly be seen. CND says that all wars, even if they did not start as nuclear wars, would become nuclear wars, because the losing side would use nuclear weapons. If it accepts that all wars are going to be nuclear wars and it claims to be opposed to nuclear wars, then it follows that it should oppose all wars. It does not take up this position, however, for at no time does it advocate opposition to conventional weapons.

The fundamental weakness of the Campaign is emphasised in one of its own comments on the subject of nuclear weapons, for it says: “ Even if they had been outlawed and stocks destroyed, the knowledge would be there in the heads of the scientists and they'd be made again." In other words, even if the Campaign achieved its aim it would soon have to start all over again . . . and again! If, as it suggests, however, society would not survive another war, it would be wiser to take sound political action now rather than wait to see the awful results of an admittedly futile policy.

Some “Campaigners,” while agreeing that capitalism is the cause of war in the modern world, maintain that although a new social organisation may be necessary, a nuclear war would prevent the establishment of this, perhaps for all time, and therefore the anti-nuclear movement should be given priority over Socialism. This argument is logically unsound; it assumes that which has yet to be demonstrated. It presupposes that the Campaign will be able to prevent a nuclear war occurring. For the Campaign to “ succeed” it must have a majority of people who are opposed unconditionally to nuclear weapons, in the major countries of the world. These majorities must be prepared to oppose their own governments, to put aside all nationalistic feeling or racial prejudice and be immune to all attempts of their rulers to influence them during periods of international crisis and tension. Is it possible that such internationalist solidarity could be achieved by a movement which is composed of so many fundamentally diverse elements and which lacks any clear conception of an alternative to our inhuman social system? Only a revolutionary Socialist consciousness could ensure such a united unshakeable attitude and in that event the question of opposition to nuclear weapons alone would be redundant.

Some members of CND are conscious of its lack of a positive social policy, and they have devoted much effort in examining the causes of war and other current social problems. It does not seem, however, that the depth and value of the genuine Marxist analysis of society have yet been understood. The leaders of the Campaign still have many illusions about the effectiveness of the United Nations Organisation as an instrument for peace, although they are not unmindful of the economic and political pressures which can be brought to bear on it by the two great power blocs. Sincere attempts to initiate a serious discussion within their movement seldom go beyond a humane liberalism; even the contributions of its associates in the New Left movement are devoid of any ideas radically different from their political predecessors of past decades.

B.