Retrospective. (1916)

From the November 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

While politicians and newspaper scribes are foaming at the mouth over the “rights of small nations” and “our national liabilities”—to say nothing of “our” army, “our” navy, “our” allies, etc., etc., ad absurdum—the present writer took it into his proletarian head to delve among his books and cuttings relating to past history in order to find out something about the above-mentioned mysterious things. Hereunder you will find set out “All the Harvest that I reaped.”

Let us take a mental tour of the world and witness some of the doings of the British Empire (the apostle of freedom) during the last fifty years or so, and examine some of the benefits that have accrued to those who have had the good fortune (!) to be born within its pale.

We will commence with Africa, the land opened up by the Holy Trinity : Bible, Whisky, and Gunpowder.

In 1852 the control of the British Government in South Africa was limited to Natal and Cape Colony, while the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic were in the hands of Dutch settlers. The most powerful native tribe in South Africa was the Zulu nation, under their chief Cetewayo, whose territories bordered Natal. Cetewayo and the Transvaal Republic quarrelled over a certain strip of land and the matter was referred to England (with whom Cetewayo was on the most friendly terms) for arbitration. Four English arbitrators decided that the disputed strip of territory properly belonged to the Zulu nation. Yet in spite of this the English Lord High Commissioner, Sir Bartle Frere, kept back the award for several mouths. This aroused Cetewayo’s suspicions and convinced him that his territory was going to be annexed and he himself sent to prison, as had already happened in the case of Langalibalele in 1864. Eventually Bartle Frere announced the award to Cetewayo, accompanied with an ultimatum that the Zulu army must be disbanded. This was immediately followed by the invasion of Zululand, when the English troops were completely defeated ! (Jan. 22nd, 1879.) In the end, however, the Zulus were vanquished, Cetewayo transported, and the territory divided up. Thus were the “sacred rights” of a small and trusting nation safeguarded. The whole matter in detail will be found in Justin McCarthy’s “Short History of Our Own Times,’ p. 427.

The desire of English capitalists to obtain possession of the rich gold and diamond mines of the Transvaal and their attempted annexation of the Republic’s territory led to the war which culminated in the victory of the Boers at Majuba Hill in 1881.

As the riches of the Transvaal in gold and diamonds became known to the world swarms of adventurers began to invade it and claim full citizenship of the Republic on entry—a claim which the Boers would not grant. The Chartered Company (founded in Cape Colony by Cecil Rhodes) wanted a finger in the pie, and one of their officials, Dr. Jameson (now Sir Starr Jameson, a man of great respectability !) attempted a raid on the Transvaal which was a failure. No doubt a good many readers will recall the famous trail of a few years ago, when. Von Veltheim, adventurer and sometime member of the Cape Mounted Police, was convicted of the attempted blackmail of the Joels. In this case interesting sidelights were thrown on the attempt to provoke war between England and the Transvaal on behalf of the diamond and gold magnates of South Africa.

Perhaps a quotation from Justin McCarthy would be useful at this point :

“The discovery of the gold mines had brought into South Africa a rush of adventurous immigrants from various parts of the world, especially from England and from British territories, whose principal object was to make themselves the absolute rulers of all that vast tract of country which was teeming with limitless sources of wealth. The established republics were not strong enough to secure themselves against the internal disturbances to be expected from such an invasion. The invaders may not have had in the beginning any intention or desire to make themselves the rulers of the whole region, yet it soon became evident that they would endeavour to sweep away from their path any obstacles the existing systems might set up. The rulers and people of the Transvaal Republic were determined so far as they could to manage their State according to their own ideas. The newcomers were equally determined to secure a free-way for the promotion of the principal objects they had in view when they sought for settlement in South Africa.”— (P. 538.)

Such was the material out of which the Boer War arose, resulting in the defeat of the Boers and the triumph of the British capitalists, who immediately proceeded to exploit the rich regions gained with, as I will soon show, disastrous results to the workers. Thus were another small nation’s liberties—defended !

In July 1913 a strike broke out in the Rand Goldfields (part of the region Jameson was knighted for trying to pinch). For many years native labour had been recruited for the mines by the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association and the British South African Native Labour Recruiting Corporation at the rate of about 6,000 per month, and, being cheaper and more easily obtained than white men, the natives were gradually displacing the latter. The strike was chiefly for the eight hours day, better underground conditions, and the restriction of the introduction of native labour.

In the House of Assembly (South Africa), May 28, 1913, the Minister of Mines gave the following figures :

“During the ten years ended December 31, 1913, of those employed in Transvaal mines 52,205 native died and 16,556 were killed or injured in accidents. Between 1907 and 1912 32,103 natives were sent home unfit for work. In 1900 6,900 men died at mines of pulmonary disease alone. . . . No less than 10,000 people die in these mines every year—men in the prime of health.”

Well, the miners struck and the following is a report culled from the columns of the “Morning News and Leader” (11.8.13) as to the result:

“A prominent business man of Johannesburg, writing to Mr. Joseph Fels, gives a graphic description, of the terrible happenings there during the recent conflict between the military and the civil population.

He tells how the police and soldiers rushed a peaceful meeting of strikers, bludgeoning and batoning all and sundry. . . .

Though there were miles of plate glass-fronted shops to loot, very little damage was done, although at this time the crowd had complete control !

On Saturday, in the Rand Club in the afternoon some members were jeering at the crowd, when about 25 of them “rushed” the building.

Fifteen to twenty soldiers formed at the junction of two streets, facing four ways, and fired for 4½ hours intermittently. Everyone who attempted to cross the road was shot. Men were shot down who were merely trying to get away. Two children (one of twelve and the other younger) were shot whilst standing on the side walk. One poor fellow, in a spirit of bravado, stepped into the road and dared them to shoot. He was dead before he had finished speaking. The correspondent adds that an advocate of the Supreme Court told him that he watched three men shot as they were running away. A young man who was sauntering along with his hands in his pockets towards the line of fire was shouted to by the police to go back again. When nearly out of danger he stopped and looked at the soldiers and was shot dead.

A portion of the crowd who were peering round the corner at the soldiers, bulged into the street, and the soldiers fired into the thick of them, killing one man and wounding two others.

It is insisted that there was no more danger in the watching crowd than in a “parcel of school children,” as the unruly element had gone. Sixteen were killed, 150 wounded were treated in the hospitals besides scores who were treated by their own doctors.”

Other figures give the killed as 20.

By 1914 the capitalists, who had originally the control of the diamond and gold mines only, had become the owners of nearly all the land in the Transvaal as well, so that the early fears of the Dutch farmers were justified by the passing years. A writer in the “News and Leader” of 31.3.14 made the following statements on the position in South Africa :

“There are five companies, euphoniously termed ‘Land and Exploration’ companies, which between them own over thirteen million acres, mostly in the Transvaal, The biggest has a four and a half million, the smallest a paltry million, acreage. There are fifteen other companies, each of which has an acreage running into six figures, and seven with areas of tens of thousands of acres. All told these twenty-seven companies own seventeen and a half million acres, or 23 per cent. of the Transvaal.”

The land these companies possess is the very best in the country.

“These ‘land and exploration’ companies were generally floated in the first instance to secure mining rights over very large areas. Thus one company has coal rights over 201 square miles, and possesses in addition a township site. . . .”

The writer concludes as follows :

“The fate of South Africa, then, lies still in the hands of a clever, far-sighted, not too scrupulous coterie of financiers, who have now drawn into their web the farming (and this in Africa means the landowning) community.”

Now in view of the above perhaps the working-class reader will commence to wonder what 20,000 of his class laid down their lives for on the yellow South African veldt— and perhaps he will carry parallel reasoning to the existing case, where his follows are pouring their blood out on the Continent.

Before leaving Africa to continue our personally-conducted tour we will just, notice a further article relating to South Africa which appeared in the “News and Leader” for 26.7.13.

It appears that the Chartered Company (founded by Cecil Rhodes) proposed leasing to an international company one million acres in Rhodesia (that’s a decent chunk of “our” Empire to give away !) and the writer waxes somewhat indignant on the matter. He says :

“These grants of land are far too common in the British Empire. They are made too readily, and with much too little regard for native interests.

The prevalent land-owning custom in Europe is private ownership. In Africa it is communal ownership. Therefore, if we hand over great tracts of this territory to private owners and those private owners proceed to exact rents or grazing dues, the African native does not regard that as a normal economic development. He regards it as an act of aggression, of conquest—an arbitrary charge wrung from him in bitterness, and leaving behind a deep sense of injury. That resentment has been the cause of most of the African wars and rebellions since the presence of the white man in Africa.

Take this great concession in the country of the Chartered Company. The company assert that the black population in that territory is thin. But there is a considerable population—perhaps some hundred thousand or so human beings—especially as the concession allows the new company to choose selected areas throughout Rhodesia. What would be the use of the concession to the new company—a company for extracting the essence of oxen and delivering it to the invalids of Europe—if they do not possess power both over the cattle and over the labour of the country which is handed over to them ? Plainly if they are going to pay one shilling an acre for this land they will expect to possess powers of this kind. In other words, the Chartered Company is not merely leasing the territory: it is selling the people.”

Such has been the fate of small nations in South Africa under the British Empire.

Gilmac.

(To be Continued.)

Workers Strike in Trinidad (1937)

From the September 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

On June 19th, a strike of large proportions broke out in Trinidad, an island in British West Indies. Five thousand employees from the oilfields came out, following unsatisfied demands for a rise from 3½d. to 6d. an hour. Within a week the strike had spread as far as the island of Tobago. Warehouse and customs porters, busmen, employees in sugar factories, paper pulp works and asphalt lakes, scavengers, domestic servants and stevedores, were among the many workers involved. Strikers patrolled Port of Spain, preventing shops from opening, so that, for practical purposes, the strike was general.

H.M.S. “Ajax” and H.M.S. “Exeter” were called in by the Governor, who felt that his local forces were unable to cope with the situation. Most probably it was felt—as in the 1918 strike— that the negro police would mutiny if asked to fire on the negro workers, who form the majority of industrial workers in Trinidad. In the meantime, able-bodied whites were conscripted as “specials.” Only little information is to hand, but it appears that during disturbances some forty have been killed and many injured, the overwhelming majority of casualties occurring among strikers.

On June 24th the Governor issued a communique stating that unrest was occasioned by increased cost of living, and asked strikers to resume work pending negotiations between representatives of employers and workers.

During Question time in the House, however, Mr. Ormsby Gore could give no assurance that organisations exist through which any but the oil-workers can express themselves or make representations. (See Parliamentary Report, The Times, June 29th, 1937.) The strikers have, however, returned to work a week after the issue of the communique, on the basis of the Governor’s promise, possibly influenced by propaganda leaflets dropped from aeroplanes, whose very presence constituted a threat on the lives of the strikers. It is worth noticing that, on June 28th, The Times reported that an Order in Council had been issued prohibiting picketing on pain of thirty days’ summary imprisonment.

It has been estimated that British syndicates have invested 40,000,000 dollars in the oilfields and the asphalt lakes, while the sugar plantations belong to absentee landlords and native white capitalists. Dividends paid by the oil companies have been very high. Apex (Trinidad) Oil Co., Ltd., paid 35 per cent. last year and 27½ per cent. the year before. It was from this field that workers came out first. Trinidad Leaseholds, Ltd., a company owning subsidiaries throughout Trinidad, paid 25 per cent. in the year 1935-6.

Against this we find that wages are so low as scarcely to maintain life; skilled labourers earn from 17s. 6d. to £2 10s. 0d. a week, unskilled about 10s. 6d. a week with free quarters.

The Olivier Commission (1929) reported conditions of utmost squalor and deprivation, and called attention to the unsatisfactory state of factories from the point of view of health and safety of the workers. The Times (July 1st, 1930) reported that the Bishops of the West Indies presented a resolution to the Secretary of State supporting the Olivier Commission, and asked that something should be done “in view of the extreme gravity of the situation.” If the Christian Church is appalled by the workers' conditions, one can imagine them to be exceptionally bad.

Housing conditions are also bad. In the rural districts wage earners occupy mud huts, with no kind of sanitation. In towns, workers live in barracks—many belonging to the company employing them. Only Port of Spain has a sewerage system.

It was therefore to be expected that the exploitation of workers in Trinidad would eventually lead to a demonstration of discontent. Two features of the strike are encouraging: The first, that, in spite of warships and repressive measures, the strikers were not frightened back into work before establishing the fact that their grievances are serious. The second, that solidarity has been shown to exist between the negro-urban workers and East-Indian rural workers, who are largely exploited by the negro petty-bourgeois and the resident white capitalist.

K. D.

Reported in Hansard (1949)

From the September 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “Daily Herald” Leaves Something Out

Mr. Oliver Stanley (Conservative, Bristol West): ” . . .  I do not know whether hon. Members noticed a very curious omission only the other day. They will remember, I expect, as it is not very long ago, a little incident which took place on 20th July, when Lord Ammon, who had had a little difference with the Government the day before, made a statement in which he said that the Government had gone crazy. That was on the morning of the 20th. I should have thought that was of considerable news value. It is unusual for a Chief Whip to say things like that, whatever he may think. I am sure the Patronage Secretary will agree with me. It was not unimportant. It was important enough to ensure Lord Ammon the sack within 24 hours. Yet, if we look at the issue of the Daily Herald for 21st July, we shall not find any reference whatsoever to the statement by Lord Ammon.” (Royal Commission on the Press, 28/7/49.)

A Labour Minister on Nationalisation

Mr. Gaitskell (Minister of Fuel and Power): “ . . . First of all, the principle is perfectly clear: nationalised boards must be non-party in character and behaviour. We are all agreed about that, on all sides of the House. They must not take sides for or against any political party, whether it is the Government or the Opposition or, indeed, any other party. That has always been recognised by the Government and by the National Coal Board.” (Debate on Fuel and Power, 26/7/49.)

And Another Labourite on Trade Unions

Mr. Awbery (Labour, Bristol Central): ” . . . The trade union movement and its machinery was established 50 or 60 years ago to deal with circumstances and conditions which existed at that time. I feel that it has outgrown these circumstances and conditions, and that it is necessary for the movement to re-design its organisation to provide for the rapid changes that have taken place during the past few years. There is need for the men in the trade union movement to exercise self-discipline; that is one of the things which must be learned. Discipline shown by men themselves is more powerful than when it is imposed from outside. I appeal to the dockers and other members of the trade unions to exercise this self-discipline. (London Dock Strike, 26/7/49.)

A Capitalist’s Viewpoint

Sir A. Gridley (Conservative, Stockport): “ . . .  I and others like me, as I have said, are very much concerned with the amount of unrest which exists in so many industries of this country at the present time. Not only are Ministers gravely concerned, but I believe that leaders in the T.U.C. are as anxious about it, and I am quite sure that many representative employers are equally concerned. What we want in the grave crisis which confronts us is peace in our time, if I may use that old phrase. We do not want a kind of disturbance like that of the London dockers going on, which is such a disaster to the nation, to employees and to managements. Those of us who have had materials lying in ships in London docks in these last few weeks know full well the consequences of that, because we have not been able to send our products to dollar and other countries. It is in the national interest that we should get together if we can.” (London Dock Strike, 26/7/49.)

London—Russian Version

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Mayhew): ". . . First, I would quote this broadcast by Moscow Radio of an article which appeared in Pravda on 13th July by the well-known commentator, M. Zaslavsky. He commented upon a speech by the Prime Minister in which Fascist and Communist disturbances in London were mentioned. He said:

“In Britain, the Fascist cut-throats, hooligans and bandits, the adherents of Hitler, organised a demonstration against democracy. . . . They were well guarded by the police, but the honest workers who came out into the streets to protest against the instigators of a new war and the revival of Fascism were beaten up, thrown into police torture chambers, tried and imprisoned. Such all-powerful, arbitrary police action is impossible and unthinkable in a true democratic State. The workers were making preparations for the peaceful celebration of international May Day, but the Government said ‘ No ' and the police transformed the town ”

— that is, London— .

“into an armed camp. Armoured cars assembled in front of the workers’ districts. Lines of police waited in full military preparedness. Mothers hid their children so that they should not fall before the merciless bullets of the police of the enemies.” (Jamming of B.B.C. Broadcasts by Russians, 30/7/49.)

[Incidentally, not one word of reference to this Debate appeared in the columns of the Daily Worker.]

Worthy of Record

The Minister of Labour (Mr. Isaacs): ”. . .  I think I ought first to express the thanks of the community, and those of the Government and the House also, to the troops for the way in which they undertook the duties imposed upon them, not only for their actual service but for the cheerfulness with which they undertook it.” (The Dock Strike, 26/7/49.)

Taunt from a Tory

Earl Winterton (Conservative, Horsham): “In view of the difficulty of training the Army at the present time and of the frequency with which troops have been used in the last year or so in this and similar strikes, will the right hon. Gentleman consider in future adopting the alternative method of calling for civilian volunteers, after a clarion call by the Minister of Labour, singing, for example, ‘ The Red Flag ' ”? (Question Time, 26/7/49.)

Stan Hampson

Legal Murder. (1913)

From the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not so long ago that section of the Press that professes to be democratic and which is generally engaged in whitewashing the Liberal Government, was pretending to be horrified because once again the troops had been used in defence of the sacred property of the bosses on the Rand, Their leader writers were “astounded” that a Liberal Government could countenance the massacre of working men. They “demanded” an “impartial” enquiry into affairs “which caused every decent Britisher to blush with shame at the deeds perpetrated under the British flag.”

And now we have the diabolical outrage repeated—this time nearer home. Not quite so near as Featherstone or Llanelli, Liverpool or London—all of which have been the scenes of events that have no doubt conveniently slipped from the memories of the leader writers—but at Dublin, the green city.

 

* * *

It is not proposed here to reprint the tales of horror which have found such wide publicity through other channels and which must still be fresh in the public mind—the tales of brutal bludgeoning of women and children, and of the murder of unarmed men. Suffice it to say, in the words of a Government supporter :

”Hundreds of people were injured by the police and two men died as a result of injuries received. Women returning from Mass with prayer books in their hands were grossly assaulted by the police; little girls were thrashed by the police; one girl in her teens was dragged through the streets by the hair of her head and beaten by the police; women were dragged out of their beds and beaten while lying nearly naked, by the police. All these charges have been made and repeated by reliable people.”

The “Times” says: “The police deliberately waited for runaways and clubbed them as they ran,” and that “the whole proceedings were monstrous and unnecessary.”

 

* * *

Reliable witnesses testify that no violence was offered by the crowd and that Nolan, one of the murdered men, was trying to get away when he was struck to the ground by a policeman. “As he fell five Dublin Metropolitan police and two Royal Irish Constabulary struck him. When he tried to get on his knees he was beaten again.” A supporter of “law and order”—one who rushed to defend H. H. Asquith, the assassin of Featherstone—Mr. Handel Booth, M.P., says that the police, with pitiless brutality, charged the crowd, which was a perfectly peaceful one.

 

* * *

Radical, ragtime “Reynolds’s” is horrified. “Someone should be charged with murder for this,” it screeched. How innocent! Someone should have been charged with murder on the Rand, and at Featherstone! At Mitchelstown in 1887 the coroner’s jury returned a verdict of wilful murder against the county inspector and three constables. But what happened? The same as will happen in Dublin and at St. Austell in Cornwall; the same as happened at Featherstone.

An enquiry was held into the affair which has made the last mentioned place notorious, which whitewashed all concerned, and—nothing was done. No action was taken by the Government to attach blame to any of its officers.

 

* * *

The explanation is simple. Those in charge are quite prepared to admit that a mistake has been made, but the mistake is not that the people have been slaughtered. Oh, no!—that happens every day in the pursuit of profit. The blunder is that the workers have been suppressed in such a way as to arouse suspicion and distrust.

The workers have been told that the police are out to “keep the ring,” and that the law is for rich and poor alike; but these “incidents” tend to show that the police are maintained to protect private property and the interests of the shareholders of private concerns.

If all that is said is true, those in charge of affairs in Dublin have something to answer for besides which the Marconi ministers’ little deal pales into insignificance. Yet we are still waiting to hear a denial of the statements made by a trade union official, Mr. P. T. Daly, that the magistrate, E. G. Swifte, and chief prosecutor, Sir Patrick Coll, are shareholders in the Dublin United Tramways Company, and are therefore directly concerned in smashing the strike.

 

* * *

These narrow-minded tradesmen and petty officials are always as putty in the hands of the lords and masters of the land, but when their own petty interests are directly at stake, there is nothing too degrading and brutal for them to do. If it be true that the magistrate who proclaimed the meeting and who tried Larkin, together with the Chief Prosecutor for the Crown and the wife of the Under Secretary for Ireland, to say nothing of certain of the Irish Constabulary, are shareholders in the Dublin United Tramway Company; if it be true that any or all of these were directly concerned in the company against which the men were striking, then the “blunder” is easily understood. Their precious dividends were at stake, and they would risk all their hopes of a front seat in heaven for a few dirty pieces of gold.

In any case the position is clear. As in Africa the workers, struggling against adverse circumstances, faced with worsening conditions, strike for some improvement in their miserable lot, and call a public meeting to discuss these matters. “Under the British flag” both these courses are supposed to be legal. The “right” of free speech is, of course, well known. Yet in Dublin as in Africa, these meetings are proclaimed, in the one case by an interested party, and in the other case by a government under the control of the Randlords. Upon the workers attempting to exercise the right they are popularly supposed to possess, a gang of hooligans, trained to murder, are let loose upon them with baton and bullet.

 

* * *

“The proceedings were monstrous and unnecessary.” What a confession! Is it true that they could be monstrous and necessary?

The capitalists exist to exploit. Their only concern with the worker is to rob them. They dabble in company shares to get dividends and dividends they must have at all costs; the toilers are not looked upon as aught else than wealth producers, and immediately they threaten to stop producing profit they must be coerced. Why dodge the fact?

 

* * *

We are in the midst of a class war, of a bitter struggle that can know no cessation until the master class are overthrown. Brute force is the last resort, and to brute force the capitalists turn, knowing full well that they hold the master card in the game. The Socialist did not make the struggle, neither does he desire it. But he does appeal to the toilers to take a lesson from these facts and to remember Dublin and Johannesburg, Peterloo and Mitchelstown, Tonypandy and Featherstone, when next they invited to throw up their caps for the Liberals or any other such murderous crew.

Twel.

Editorial: General Smuts (1950)

Editorial from the October 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

As in this century it has become a widely accepted convention for professional politicians to speak well—and indeed flatteringly—of their party opponents when they die it would perhaps be unreasonable to expect obituary judgments to be well balanced and critical. With this in mind we could pass over the exaggerated praise of the work and qualities of the late General Smuts but still demand that those who attempt to assess him should give a recognisable portrait. But to do that the writers need to recognise what part Smuts played and the background against which he played it. In particular they need to see that he was a figure in the world of capitalism, thrown up by class interests and strictly limited in his action by the social system in which he lived and by the forces he represented. Instead many of the writers, including some who might have been expected to have at least some understanding of the reality, try to interpret him as if he had complete freedom of action to behave according to some abstract ideal, and as if therefore his seeming inconsistencies had to be explained as defects of character or courage or as errors of judgment.

A line taken by many who paid tribute to Smuts is that he was a man above class and national prejudices. To Mr. Attlee there was “in his large heart . . . a place for all humanity. His great contribution to the creation of the United Nations is but one example of his breadth of view and world statesmanship." (Daily Herald 12/9/50). The Prime Minister of Canada described him as having “adopted the world as his nation,” and Mr. W. N. Ewer (Daily Herald 12/9/50) credited him with “imaginative genius and liberal instincts . . .  His real greatness lay, perhaps, in his imaginative understanding of wider issues.”

These and many similar opinions explain nothing and merely fog the issue. The picture of the errant genius, usually triumphing over obstacles and the stupidity of lesser men, but occasionally falling below his own high ideals is and must be fundamentally false. The real Smuts started as a representative of the Boer farmers in their unsuccessful war against British imperialism and then came to power in South Africa as a capitalist politician, trying, as all administrators of capitalism must do, to reconcile divergent propertied class interests while defending South African capitalism against white workers and the non-white majority of the population. When we are told that he represented “all humanity” we need only remind Mr. Attlee of his own position as a caretaker of British capitalism—there is no room in capitalist administration for a “Minister for the welfare of all humanity.”

Attlee and Ewer cannot have forgotten how the Trade Union Congress condemned Smuts for his part in the crushing of the striking gold miners on the Rand in 1922. Mr. Ewer does in fact refer to it but interprets it (as also Smuts' attitude towards the natives) as “limitations” of his character. “His iron-fisted handling of the great Rand strike . . . cannot be forgotten in any judgment of him. And, though he opposed the ‘native' policies of Herzog and Malan, he was always a rigid up-holder of the idea of ‘white supremacy.' " 

The miners on the Rand in 1922 faced an attempt by the owners to force down wages and to undercut their standards by employing more low-paid native workers. In the strikes and rioting that followed it was Smuts who declared martial law and used troops, artillery, tanks and bombing planes to crush what he called a “reign of Red Terror.” Many lives were lost and many workers imprisoned.

The aspect of this that interested the writer of the lengthy tribute in the Manchester Guardian (12/9/50) was the bold way in which Smuts handled it. “Smuts’ personal courage and decision in this emergency are still the subject of talk in South Africa; after proclaiming his intention to impose martial law, he made his way secretly to Johannesburg, took command, and within a few days restored order.”

No noticeable evidence of the much praised love of “all humanity” there!

The Times gets nearer to a recognition of the class nature of Smuts’ activities and interests when it points out how his party was defeated at the election in 1924 and he lost his own seat: —

“Of the many charges brought against Smuts, who had been in power for so long a time, two of the most widely circulated and effective were, based on his use of troops in suppressing the Johannesburg strike in 1922 and his connection with the Chamber of Mines, whose agent he was declared to be.”—(Times, 12/9/50.)

The South African workers had not forgotten how Smuts’ intervention strengthened the hand of the Chamber of Mines in their attack on wages.

It may be that Smuts had what Mr. Ewer calls liberal instincts but a capitalist politician cannot serve two masters, he cannot sacrifice the interests of the class for whom capitalism functions in order to serve the interests of those whom capitalism exploits. His love of all humanity did not include the white workers and the native population when their actions in their own interests clashed with those of the ruling class, and it would not be far wrong to say that a large element in the universal scope of Smuts’ vision was the necessarily world-wide interests of a country the main economic basis of which is the production of gold for world trade. South Africa had grown from a Boer farming community to an expansionist capitalism and Smuts’ horizon expanded with it.

The Trade Union Congress. (1911)

From the October 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the recent Trade Union Congress, held at Newcastle-on-Tyne during the week beginning September 4th., Mr. William Mullin, in his presidential address, made an appeal which is certainly worthy of note. In speaking of the railway strike he expressed admiration for the men, saying that “they accomplished a great deed, and the fruits will speedily come to them.” The present writer has been puzzling his brains to think what great deed, such as would call forth the admiration of Mr. Mullin, was accomplished by the railwaymen in their strike, and has come to the conclusion that it can only be the sheep-like readiness they evinced to return to work at the bidding of their leaders.

Surely that must be it. Such action would undoubtedly commend itself to Mr. Mullin, for he continued his address by urging upon the railway workers to “place implicit trust in their leaders.” Presumably in the same child-like fashion as they did in 1907, when Richard Bell and the other A.S.R.S. officials delivered them over, bound hand and foot in the meshes of the “conciliation” scheme.

But this appeal to the workers to put “implicit trust” in their leaders becomes really almost too funny for words when we consider—upon a perusal of the report of the Congress proceedings on the following Friday—the spirit in which such trust has been accepted by the trustees. A resolution was moved on the Friday severely condemning the Bill introduced into Parliament by Mr. Will Crooks to end industrial disputes. The Bill is a curiosity. No one who has any knowledge of Mr. Crooks would accredit him with any excessive degree of subtlety. He often speaks of himself as being nothing more than a “plain, honest man.” But one would have thought that even Mr. Crooks could have managed to frame a bill that was not so obviously all in favour of the employers. Why did he not obtain the Machiavelian help of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald or Mr. Snowden ?

A delegate remarked, during the discussion, that he could understand such a bill coming from an employers’ association, or from those interested in keeping the workers down, but he could not understand its being the proposal of a trade unionist. We, however, of course, can quite understand the bill—apart from its lack of the confusing elements usually to be found in Labour bills—being the work of a “Labour leader.” All that has happened is that “plain” Mr. Crooks has, in this particular instance, been rather too plain in his support of capitalism.

Briefly, it is a bill that seeks to abolish strikes altogether. It lays it down that employers and employees should give at least thirty days notice of an intended change affecting conditions of employment with respect to wages and hours ; that it shall be unlawful for any employer to declare or cause a lock-out, or for any employee to go on strike on account of any dispute before or during a reference of such a dispute to a board of conciliation and investigation, any employer declaring or causing a lock-out being liable to a fine of not less than £20 nor more than £200 for each day or part of a day that such lock-out exists, and any employee going on strike being liable to a fine of not less than £2 nor more than £10 per day. (Why didn’t Mr. Crooks make the employees’ fine £100 or £1,000 per day while he was about it ? The modesty of the bill in only claiming £10 per day from a man who is probably striking for a living wage is distinctly rich.)

A further clause in the bill declares that any person who incites, encourages, or aids in any manner any employer to declare and continue a lockout, or any employee to go or continue on strike, shall be liable to a fine of not less than £10 nor more than £200.

Apart, however, from its contents, the Bill is noteworthy by reason of the position and action of one of its backers as showing how he regards the “implicit trust” that has been placed in him by his followers. The bill was backed by Mr. Arthur Henderson, Mr. George Barnes, Mr. Fenwick and Mr. Enoch Edwards. The last-named gentleman, upon the bill being attacked and severely criticised as being in every sense derogatory to the interests of trade unionism, gave a remarkable explanation and repudiation of his backing. He said, firstly, that “the Bill contained propositions which he, after 40 years study of these questions, could not support.” He then went on to explain that “when I gave my name to Mr. Crooks, I had no idea I was being asked to put my name to a bill of this sort . . . my name is there purely by inadvertence, and I shall take every means possible to assure everybody that the sentiments in that bill are not in harmony with my own views. To tell you the honest truth, I had not seen the bill.” (Vide “Daily Chronicle,” 9.9.11.)

A delegate hereupon very pertinently remarked that “Only fools put their names to things without looking at them.” But this expression is not strong enough to be used in condemnation of the criminal negligence and vacuity of an avowed leader and paid representative of Labour, who assents to a Parliamentary measure which, if passed and carried into effect, would take from the workers the only weapon they possess while capitalism lasts, to combat the encroachments of their masters on the economic field. These be your gods, O Israel; these are the men in whom the workers are asked to place “implicit trust.” The impertinence, the cynicism, of such an appeal !

It might have been expected—that is, except by anyone who had some general knowledge of trade union officialdom—that one of the most important points to be considered at the Congress, and one that would raise the most animated discussion, would have been the question of the late Labour upheavals and their so-called settlements.

But, as a matter of fact, only a very lukewarm interest was shown in the resolution passed condemning the use of the military by the Government, and in the congratulations extended to the transport workers upon the result of their previous strike. Neither the prominent leaders, nor the Standing Orders Committee, nor the assembled delegates, appeared desirous of raising any great discussion on the matter. Doubtless there were efficient reasons for this inanition. But when Mr. Will Thorne brought forward his “hardy annual” on Secular Education, then were the delegates in their glory. In spite of the fact that at the last general election he had, according to the “Daily Chronicle,” 2.12.10, the support of ministers of religion, and that he had S.W. Ham placarded with posters announcing that he had answered the questions of the Free Church Council satisfactorily, Mr. Thorne moved his absurd resolution re the trade union education policy, and incidentally gave an opportunity (which was immediately seized) to the assembled Christians to give proof of their Christian meekness and charity by addressing one another as “cowardly hounds,” and by raising what one report calls “a perfect pandemonium” for about ten minutes.

Mr. Thorne had previously in the week distinguished himself by seconding, and speaking in favour of, a resolution advocating the establishment of a citizen army. His view appeared to be that, in some way or other, if organised Labour were armed and trained for defensive purposes—it was not quite clear whether voluntary or compulsory—the need of conscription would be obviated.

In speeches opposing the resolution it was pointed out that “Lord Roberts, General Hutchinson, and all the Service Press advocate Thome’s bill,” and that Lord Roberts had said in the hearing of a dozen or more of those present : “I don’t care whether you call the army a citizen army. Call it what you like so long as you give me authority to bring the men in and train them. I will see what they do.”

Undoubtedly a citizen army would be a very good thing—from a capitalist standpoint. It would probably make the workers stronger and more efficient wage-slaves; it would implant into them a sense of discipline and obedience to their “superiors,” which would be found very useful by their employers in the event of any industrial dispute; it would, by concentrating their minds on military training and exercises, tend to stultify at a very vital and important period of their lives, any desire they might have towards understanding and solving the various problems that affect their economic position.

It will thus be seen that in supporting a measure such as this Mr. Will Thorne is only doing what might have been expected of him—that is, furthering the continuance of the present social system.

There were other incidents and interludes during the week, notably one interlude wherein Mr. Ben Tillett and another “fraternal delegate” came to blows over a “black-leg” trade union which had, apparently, been formed in opposition to one in which Mr. Tillett happened to be interested.

Sufficient evidence has, however, been given and sufficient conclusions drawn, to show how trade unionism, as exemplified by the proceedings at the Trade Union Congress, actually stands. The reports of the meeting show, with what dignity and mastery the various subjects were tackled by the chosen delegates of the trade unionists.

Mr. David Shackleton and the other advisers to the Home Office and Board of Trade will be able to carry to their Departments gratifying reports of the proceedings. And, one thinks, the Liberal Ministers, on hearing or reading these reports, will wonder how they could ever have thought it necessary to bring military coercion to bear upon the workers during the recent strikes, when there were, all the time, such serviceable exponents of confusion and puerilities as the trade union leaders and officials, who could surely have been depended upon to keep in hand such of their followers as dared to evince a tendency to disturb the even tenour of Liberal reform legislation.

F. J. Webb

Who is the alien? The working-class view of the burning question. (1911)

From the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Opportunity is a Fine Thing.

The recent world-stirring East End melodrama (in which provoking police agents seem to have pulled the strings) has afforded another opportunity to the capitalist platform, pulpit and Press to thunder against the “alien”. The pseudo-Socialist organisations and Press have, in their fear of losing supporters through this business, been profuse in their repudiation and condemnation of the “crime”, and in their praise of the armed forces in dealing with it. It is, as usual, left to the Socialist Party to point out the Socialist lesson, both with regard to the “crime” and the anti-alien agitation which it served to stir up.

On contemplating all the facts of this “mysterious anarchistic” display, the question rises uppermost in our minds: “Who are the alien impostors and criminals?” And the Socialist answer is – “the capitalist class”.

Why, the attempt to obtain property without labour is contrary to the very principles of Socialism, which insist upon labour for all and subsistence for all. But those who to-day are endeavouring to obtain wealth by filching – and with the aid of armed force into the bargain – are only carrying out the basic principle of capitalism to its logical conclusion.

Who is more honoured to-day than the successful thief, who filched millions from the product of other people’s toil? For his operations capitalist economists find such high-sounding names as “industry”, “foresight”, and “thrift”. And who is more despised and down-trodden than the worker, whose labour produces all wealth? His outrage and robbery, so long as it is carried on in the orthodox way (which converts the plunder into “rent, interest, and profit), is “legalised” by the robbers and supported by giant instruments of murder, while his aspiration to keep for himself the produce of his own toil, draws upon him every term of reproach and contempt.

Let us look back upon the record of the British Government for the last twenty years, and we shall see that the armed forces of capitalist society have been used again and again against unarmed, defenceless workers – men, women and children. In contrast to this, the modern burglar is up against the whole forces of the State, armed to the very teeth.

A Little Bit of History.

In September 1893, the Liberal Government, with Mr. Asquith as Home Secretary, sent soldiers to Featherstone, and striking miners were fired upon, some being killed and others wounded. (See Hansard, vol 17, pp. 1725-1726.) In 1894 the same Government sent a gunboat to Hull to help quell the dockers on strike in that town. In 1907 a Liberal Government again sent military with Maxim guns to Belfast, where a lock-out of dockers had taken place, and the police had gone on strike out of sympathy. In that instance again unarmed workers were maimed and murdered. And recently during a lock-out of Welsh miners, troops and police were sent to fight the masters’ battle for them, and once more wounds and death were dealt out to defenceless workers who wanted to enjoy a little more of the fruits of their toil.

Now if it can be shown that the capitalist class have obtained their possessions by robbery, that in the process of robbery thousands of workers’ lives have been sacrificed, and that in their effort to protect their ill-gotten gains they employ the armed forces of the State to butcher the workers, then it is proved to the hilt that it is the master class, and not the foreign workmen, who are the real aliens, the race apart from and antagonistic to, the people.

The last point has been sufficiently proved by the preceding descriptions of the British Government’s action during certain strikes and lock-outs. The first point is most fully and effectively established by Karl Marx, in his great work Capital, particularly in the historic chapters, which are based on documentary evidence in the British Museum. The second point, however, still requires substantiation.

And a Few Eloquent Facts.

Now according to Government statistics about 2¼ million members of the working class are annually in receipt of poor relief. That means that they are, to all intents and purposes, on the very verge of destitution. Over 200,000 workers annually meet with accidents (over 5,000 fatal) in the course of their employment, and most of these accidents can be traced to the want of life-protecting contrivances – which are not adopted by the master class because their cost would lessen profits.

In addition to this, many thousands gradually starve to death, for not all unemployed and destitute workers apply for poor relief. Thousands, too, die through over-work, bad housing, and insanitary conditions, or are driven insane by the awful economic stress of the present system of society.

So the Socialist allegation that capitalism spells the robbery and murder of the workers by an alien class is fully justified. And the workers in the East End, against whom the master class direct their epithets of “undesirable aliens”, dirty “foreigners”, and the like, and against whom they assiduously try to foster popular hatred, these workers form part of the army of the exploited. And as such they are received with open arms by the very class which, in order to cover their own plundering, attempt to direct popular anger and scorn against them, as the authors of working-class poverty.

Pocket Patriots.

When in 1905, during the debate on the Alien Bill in Parliament, an amendment was moved to keep the foreign workers out during strikes and lock-outs, the great mass of the members of Parliament, representing the vested interests of the capitalists, – the robbers living upon rent, interest, and profit – of course rejected the amendment.

The patriotism of the master class, like their professions of kindness, generosity, and magnanimity, is sheer hypocrisy. In the quest for profits all barriers are broken down, and the capitalist’s love of his country withers before a fraction percent on the yield of his capital. He has no scruples in the matter of displacing the native worker with the “alien”, provided that it pays him – any more than he hesitates to displace either with machinery, directly he can save wages by so doing.

We do not stand alone when we allege that the “alien” workers of the East End are even more completely robbed and worse treated, if that were possible, than the native workers. The Rev. Canon Barnett, of Toynbee Hall fame, writing in the Daily News of January 10th last on the “Sidney Street Lesson”, made the following statements:

“The great need in East London is that the people by receiving more respect should gain self-respect. They do not receive such treatment. The streets in which they live are not lighted or cleansed according to the standard which respectability demands. The second or third best in buildings or in entertainment are good enough for the East End, and Police Court humour and Police Court law, which most vividly represent the attitude of society, are often insulting. I doubt if it would have been possible for the police to have adopted in a West London Square, the methods they adopted in Sidney Street. Respect for the neighbours and neighbourhood would have prevented them from setting men to fire at and to burn two criminals in the open streets.”

A “Socialist” Adviser.

And what has Robert Blatchford, the jingo cat’s paw of gutter-press journalism, to say on that question? The following are from his article in the Weekly Dispatch of January 8th.

“Our wise and kindly British law was not made to deal with foreign Thugs of the twentieth century type . . . I am not discussing the existing law. I am only suggesting that the police should be legally empowered to deal with undesirable aliens immediately on their arrival at any British port. In all such cases as this, where the foreign police have warned our police against an immigrant, that immigrant should be sent to the right about turn at once. In cases of suspicion the immigrant should be detained and, failing a satisfactory explanation, should be deported.”

The above is not quote with a view to proving Mr. Blatchford to be an anti-Socialist of the worst type. His actions have fully exposed him, and very few people indeed can still believe him to be out for Socialism. His German war scare, his glorification of the Army and Navy, and lastly his present attitude on the “alien” question, show distinctly enough that Mr. Blatchford is ignorant of the very rudiments of Socialism. And that is not the most annoying feature. That which Socialists most resent is that the capitalist class should obtain from professing Socialists, advice as to measures of repression and persecution against members of the working class.

The whole Houndsditch spectacle looks as if it had been instigated by Russian police agents in order to create a popular clamour for legislation against “criminal” aliens, to the end that political offenders (especially Socialists) might have cut off their last means of escape from the savage vengeance of the knout and the appalling horrors of Siberia.

The capitalist press, pulpit and platform continually gloat over the apathy and indifference of the workers hailing from other countries to their own utter poverty, misery, and degradation, and whenever the dominant class make an attack upon the Socialists it suits their purpose to praise these “aliens” to the skies as splendid examples of “peaceable and law-abiding citizens”, On the other hand the master class, when it suits their purpose, ascribe the poverty of the native workers to the presence of “alien workers” in this country, or to the importation of labour products from abroad.

In short, it is the business of the capitalists to set one section of the working class against another in order to prevent them perceiving who are their real enemies. Hence the outcry against the “alien” which has followed upon the recent affray. But the development of the present murderous system is gradually revealing to the workers of all countries, that between worker and worker there can be no alienism, because there can be no alienation. They are bound together by the common ties of their class position – a common class interest. On the other hand, they have nothing in common with the master class, whose interests are everywhere opposed to theirs. Therefore it is the master class who are the aliens.

H. J. Neumann

The Emergency Regulations in the Dock Dispute (1949)

From the August 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

By proclamation under the Emergency Powers Act, 1920, the Labour Government on 11th July issued Emergency Regulations dealing with the dock dispute. The 1920 Act authorising the use of emergency powers was parsed by the Lloyd George Coalition Government against the fierce opposition of the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress. Its repeal was demanded by the Labour Party Conference in 1921, the resolution being moved by a docker. The Act was used by the Tories against the General Strike in 1926 and the T.U.C. that year carried a resolution which held that at no time during the strike need the Act have been used.

Yet this is the Act now used by a Labour Government in a dispute that is of negligible proportions compared with the 1926 General Strike.

The sixteen Emergency regulations give the Government sweeping powers over the working of the docks and over any attempt to interfere with the carrying on of work. The Daily Herald (12/7/49) published a summary of all sixteen regulations from which the following are quoted:

“Regulation 3. This concerns acts of sabotage and declares:

” ‘No person shall do any act with intent to impair the efficiency or impede the working or movement of any vessel, aircraft, vehicle, machinery, apparatus or other thing used or intended to be used in the performance of essential services.’

“Regulation 4. Deals with trespassing and loitering on any premises taken over for the maintenance of essential services.

”Mere presence in or near such premises is sufficient for conviction, if it can be shown that the person’s character suggest a purpose prejudicial to public safety’

“Regulation 5. Covers acts of violence endangering, obstructing or interfering with troops, police and others engaged in essential services.

“Regulation 6. Makes it an offence to induce any troops or police to commit breaches of discipline. Possession or distribution of leaflets or other documents likely to cause disaffection comes under this heading.

“Regulation 7. Authorises the Home Secretary to employ police from outside the area for the maintenance of public order.

“Regulation 8. Gives powers for billeting of soldiers, sailors and airmen.

“Regulation 9. The Postmaster-General is authorised to hold up the delivery of packages and refuse the use of telephone and telegraph services as he thinks fit.

“Regulation 11. Gives police power to stop any vehicle if it is suspected that an offence is being committed against the Regulations. A constable may seize any incriminating evidence he finds.

“Regulation 12. Gives to any constable power of arrest of suspects without obtaining a warrant.

“Regulation 13. Makes it an offence to incite any person to commit offences against the Regulations.

“Regulation 14. Directors, general managers or secretaries of companies or corporations offending against the Regulations will be liable unless they can show that the offence was committed without their knowledge or connivance.

“Regulation 15. Provides that persons convicted shall be liable to three months jail or a fine of up to £100 or both.

“Taking part in, or peacefully persuading a person or persons to take part in a strike is not an offence.

“Regulation 16. Enables the authorities to seize any articles believed to provide evidence of an offence.”

The use of troops and of civilian workers brought into the docks from outside is governed by Regulation 2.

In spite of the long years of Labour Party denunciation of the Emergency Powers Act the Emergency Regulations received the sweeping support of Labour M.P’s. Not one Labour M.P. voted against.

Blogger's Note:

This issue of the Socialist Standard also carried two other pieces on the Dockers' dispute:

• Editorial: The attitude of the London Dockers
• The Dispute at the London Docks

Editorial: The Dock Strike and the Emergency Powers Act (1948)

Editorial from the August 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

After the unofficial strike of London dockers had lasted several weeks and sympathetic strikes were taking place at other docks the Labour Government on 28th June declared a state of emergency under the Emergency Powers Act, 1920. The Daily Herald the next day reported this as follows:

“Armed with full powers under the State of Emergency plroclamation signed by the King, the Cabinet last night prepared regulations to meet any possible crisis arising from the dock strikes.”

“The government, with its emergency powers, will, if necessary, requisition accommodation in and near the London docks for troops and other labour, and seize warehouses for storage. It is also expected to take powers for the control of all arrangements at ports, including the turn-round of ships, and for dealing with acts of sabotage or attempts to dissuade troops from carrying out their duties.” (Daily Herald, 29/6/48).

The Prime Minister swiftly followed up the proclamation with a broadcast appeal to the men on strike and the next day the strike was called off. Whether the strikers were more influenced by the appeal, or by the threat, is a matter of opinion, but there is no doubt what would have been the outcome had the strike continued. The prestige and continuance in office of the Labour Government were at stake and it would have been a fight to a finish.

Labour M.Ps. and supporters saw in the incident a personal triumph for the Prime Minister’s eloquence and sincerity. The Opposition had a double target to attack. They abused the Ministers, for dilatoriness and lack of courage, especially Mr. Isaacs. Minister of Labour, who, they gleefully pointed out, had not only flown off to America to attend an I.L.O. Conference but had actually done so in an American plane. They also laid the blame at the doors of the mammoth Transport and General Workers Union, which, they said, must be badly managed and quite incapable of serving its members properly since the latter repeatedly show their discontent by ignoring the Union and striking against its advice. Others saw in the whole affair a Moscow-inspired Communist plot to upset the Labour Government and sow dissension between workers and their anti-Communist officials.

Mr. Arthur Deakin, General Secretary of the Transport Workers Union, indignantly defended himself and his Executive against all the charges levelled at the Union. Writing in the Record (July) he made what is on paper a good case. Its fatal fault is that it is too good since it claims to demonstrate that the men had nothing to strike about. Thousands of men do not stop work, remain out for weeks on end without strike pay, bitterly denounce their officials and shout down speeches urging a return to work if, as Mr. Deakin writes, “there was no reason for the strike to start.” Mr. Deakin’s account is as follows : The dispute arose about the piece-work rate for unloading zinc oxide and on several occasions the men refused to complete the job. For this breach of discipline they were punished with suspension for one week and disentitlement to attendance money (i.e. their minimum guaranteed pay) for 13 weeks. They appealed but came out on strike before the appeal was heard. Subsequently after an appeal tribunal had failed to agree a new tribunal was set up under an independent chairman and reduced the disentitlement to two weeks. Mr. Deakin makes much of the fact that the bodies which imposed the penalty and heard the appeal are joint bodies on which the Union is represented, and also of the point that because the strike was a breach of agreements entered into by the Union “it had no alternative but to honour its obligations and order a return to work.” He maintains that the agreements had been “at every stage approved by constitutionally elected lay committees of rank and file members” and concludes therefore that “there was no reason for the strike to start, and every reason why work should have been resumed immediately the appeal tribunal gave its decision.”

To all of this, as has already been indicated, the existence of bitter discontent in the minds of the men is a complete answer. They belong to and pay into the Union in order to be protected in disputes with the employer. They are entitled to get it even though their officials may think and tell them that the action they propose to take is unreasonable, unwise and unnecessary. They are, after all, likely to he the best judges of where the shoe pinches.

There is another and equally vital aspect of the dispute. The Labour Party does not believe that strikes are an inevitable outcome of the class-struggle which underlies the capitalist system. They have told us so often how a Labour Government would avoid strikes; by a policy of high wages and low prices, by arbitration and conciliation, by nationalisation which would “eliminate the profit motive,” by a wise and humane administration of industry including trade union representation on disciplinary bodies. These and other things were offered as an alternative to the Socialist remedy of abolishing capitalism and with it the wages system. Yet what happens in practice? Not high wages but “wage-freezing,” not lower prices but rising prices. Not the cessation of strikes, but over 600,000 workers involved in strikes (mostly unofficial) in 1947. Not industrial harmony but the invoking of the much-hated Emergency Powers Act. This is an Act that was passed under Lloyd George’s Tory-Liberal Coalition Government, in 1920. It was opposed at the time by the Trade Unions and the Labour Party. At the 1921 Labour Party Conference a resolution demading its repeal was carried. (It was moved by a delegate of the Dock Workers’ Union.) The Act was used by the Baldwin Tory Government against the General Strike in 1926. At the T.U.C. that year a resolution of condemnation was carried which held that at no time during the General Strike was it necessary to apply the Act.

Yet this is the Act invoked by a Labour Government in a relatively small dispute.

Of course they have their excuses ready: we live in critical times which necessitate wage-freezing; the people must be fed even if it means using troops and in effect smashing a strike; if you have capitalism and the wages system the Government cannot tolerate failure to keep agreements between workers and employers; and finally the Government administering capitalism must govern in such a way as to keep the system functioning. It is not worth while arguing about these various points. All they add up to is that the way to working class emancipation does not lie through Labour Government. No matter how much Labour Ministers may hope and strive through humane administration to “decapitalise” capitalism their actions are broadly determined by the necessities of that system. The road to crisis, class conflict and war is paved with the good intentions of Labour Governments.

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

By The Way: The Labour Government’s Communist Friends (1945)

The By The Way Column from the November 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Government’s Communist Friends

The Communist Party helped Labour M.P.s everywhere at the July elections, rejoiced in their success and is backing the Labour Government. Now read what choice epithets they applied to the last Labour Government.

“It shoots down the workers and peasants in India; it imprisons such gallant workers as the Meerut prisoners, who have fought for the economic and political freedom of the Indian workers and peasants; it sends warships to intimidate the Egyptians; warships and soldiers to China. The Labour Government is the most open and blatant tool of imperialism, both in its attacks on the workers at home and in its policy of bloodshed and violence abroad.”—(Mr. Harry Pollitt in “The Workers' Charter,” published in 1930, by the National Minority Movement).

#    #    #    #

Communists Denounced Nationalisation and Now Support it

The Communists now approve of the Labour Government's nationalisation schemes, but read what the Communists said about the schemes when they were drawn op.

“The Labour Party and the trade union leaders try to hide their policy of surrendering the workers’ daily interests to the capitalists, by using socialist phrases, so called Socialist schemes, such as were adopted at the Leicester and Newcastle Conferences.

“All their schemes for the 'control of banking system,’ 'public control of industry land trade,’ 'transport boards’ are schemes of capitalist reorganisation, designed to strengthen capitalist monopoly at the expense of the working class.” 

(From “Resolutions adopted by the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain.”—Published by the C.P.G.B., 1932. Pago 6)

#    #    #    #

“A Third Labour Government Will be Even Worse than the Second ”

After the collapse of the second Labour Government, when MacDonald had joined the National Government and the 1931 Election was in progress the Communist Party published “The Workers’ Answer to the Crisis,” by R. P. Dutt.

Here are some extracts: —

“But the policy of the Labour Party was and remains the policy of maintaining capitalism, of attempting reforms within the framework of capitalism, of taking over the capitalist state, of administering capitalism, of denial of the class struggle, of unity with capitalism. . . . The outcome for the workers who trust the Labour Party is disaster. The talk of socialism and reforms becomes only deceiving the workers, because the practice is capitalism.

“This is the lesson of the two Labour Governments.” And again:—

“Will a Third Labour Government be any better than the second Labour Government? Will a Henderson Labour Government be any better than a MacDonald Labour Government?

No, a third Labour Government will be even worse than the second Labour Government, because of the greater intensity of the crisis of capitalism, will deal even heavier blows against the workers, will lead to worsening of the crisis and end in intensified capitalist dictatorship. . . .

What are the promises of the Labour Party worth ? Nothing, as experience has abundantly shown. The Labour Party speak of ’socialism,’ of ’Nationalisation of the banks/ of ' public ownership and control ’ of the key industries. This is a paper programme of promises to deceive the workers. . . . It is meaningless deception so long as the capitalist exploiters are in fact to be left secure.”

#    #    #    # 

Less Compensation for Coal owners

“After the discovery of atomic energy we are unlikely to want coal as a source of power 20 years hence. If the mines stayed in private ownership, their value would be small. When they are nationalised it would be ridiculous to compensate the shareholders at anything like the present Stock Exchange prices. The railways will probably be obsolete in another 30 years, so the same applies to them.” —Prof. J. B. S. Haldane in Daily Worker, 2.8.45.

Was it not Professor Blackett who said on the wireless in 1935 in discussion on Science with Julian Huxley that “scientists, if in the position of politicians, would act like politicians”? So a man of Haldane’s unquestionable scientific ability—because harnessed to the C.P.-Labour Party policy of compensation for poor capitalists—can see nothing more in the supercession of the old forms of production and transport by atomic energy than a haggling point to pay less compensation.

The Communist Party, which started by “taking the Labour Party by the throat,” now pleads for lest compensation.

#    #    #    #

Too Unreliable

Gangsters for Commandos.

Proposal Was Dropped.

“Among recruiting suggestions considered in the early days of the commandos was whether it would be better to use real toughs or gangsters either from the United States or British cities rather than soldiers. The view taken, it is revealed in 'Soldier,' the British Army magazine, by Brig. Dudley W. Clarke, who recruited the first commandos, was that the gangster was too unreliable. The idea was dropped.

“So, too, was a proposal from a convict who offered to form a commando of convicts And warders.”—Sunday Times, August 12, 1945.

#    #    #    #

Liberation

German charges that Moroccans attacked Girls. 

“Rumours arising out of German allegations that more than 1,000 women were raped by Moroccan troops during the first few days of the French occupation are still growing in the German city of Stuttgart. Hundreds of girls in the city were Poles or Russians brought there by the Germans as slave labour.

“The German police chief in the new administration working under U.S. occupation, Karl Weber, said most of the women were attacked in their own homes by the dark-skinned, turbaned Moroccan troops, who broke down doors in looting forays.

“The official German police report lists 1,198 rape cases involving women whose ages ranged from 14 to 74. Weber claims that each case has been verified and estimates that twice that number of women were attacked but were ashamed to report.—Sunday Express, August 12, 1945.

#    #    #    #

Reluctant “Comrades"

A correspondent of the Manchester Guardian reports the extremely difficult problems which repatriation of Russian “displaced persons” involves. First, he points out that by the Yalta agreement the Soviet authorities do not recognise “ non-repatriables” like the other powers—i.e., they insist on the handing over of all Russian citizens. 

Secondly, and more importantly,

“Apart, however, from certain questions of principle involved, there are practical difficulties about doing this, as some are prepared to fight rather than be arrested. Individuals or groups may well have arms, and there is an obvious reluctance to risk the lives of British or American soldiers for what is essentially a matter of internal Russian policy.”—Manchester Guardian, August 31, 1945.

So what does emerge is that thousands of former Russian citizens, having escaped the “Socialist Fatherland” during the war, are prepared to risk their lives fighting to avoid repatriation to the Soviet Utopia.

We have a splendid solution! Let all those hysterical and vociferous Communists who haunt Socialist Party meetings volunteer to go back to Russia in place of the missing Russian nationals in Germany, who will remain where they prefer. A good time will then be had by all! We wonder!

#    #    #    #

Strikers Shout Down Officials!

The Telegraph for July 30th reports that officials were shouted down at a railway strikers’ meeting. Delegates called for nationalisation of the railways.

A Birkenhead representative declared: “If we continue our present (strike) action the new Government will be able to turn to the companies and tell them they cannot manage their business. It would then be an easy step towards nationalisation. ’'

He got his answer on July 31st, one day later, when “three hundred soldiers swept in through the Surrey Commercial Docks at 1 p.m. to-day in lorries to take over loading and unloading of ships which had been at a standstill because of the dockers 'go slow.’ ”—Evening News, July 31.)

Strike action of itself will never achieve nationalisation of the railways or any other industry—even if nationalisation were in the interests of the workers. Only political power can do that, because it involves the State. The Labour Government will “nationalise” certain industries because it has a mandate (power) from the electorate to do so. It has persuaded working-class electors that it does so in their interests—though it is actually the policy of some of the industrial capitalists. Strike action against the State-brings the Army in to do the job, and breaks the strike.

#    #    #    #

Bombs and Trade

“Post-war trade relations in the Far East are being rewritten by B.29 Super Fortresses and India’s Industrial future—particularly in textiles—looks extremely rosy in the glow of firebombs on Japan, 'Every time the Superforts hit Osaka’ said a leading Indian textile operator, ' I say to myself: There’s another year free of Jap competition in the Indian textile market.’ ”—(New York Herald Tribune, June 13th, 1945. Quoted in Plebs, September, 1945).

#    #    #    #

That Odd Bird the Labour Party

Mr. Laski is reported to have said: “The bright bird of Socialism needs two wings—it can’t fly on a right wing only, or a left wing only.”—(Daily Mail, September 4th).

If Mr. Laski had stopped to consider the kind of progress made by a bird with oddly assorted wings, one pushing forward and the other pulling back, he would have realised that his analogy is very apt though not in the sense he intended.

Horatio.