News From Wales (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Coinciding with the plans to close down railways in Wales comes the plan for the dispersal of the civil population in the event of a nuclear attack. The chief — and practically the only area of dense population in Wales — is the county of Glamorgan and a part of Monmouthshire, so the “plan”—if it can be so called—is presumably mainly concerned with the towns of Newport and Swansea and the City of Cardiff, together with the immediate surroundings. Swansea was named in Hansard as one of the 19 areas in England and Wales from which a part of the population might be dispersed.

The Civil Defence Authority, it is stated, would set in motion the scheme for assembling the threatened population in Swansea (it is not stated whether before, during or after the 10 minute warning), though one may suppose it will be during the 10 minutes period of grace. The tragic farce is that no one knows where or when the town’s population would be removed to safety (Western Mail, 9/4/63). “Details for dispersal plans do not exist,” states Mr. Thomas, Assistant Chief Defence Officer, “But I am sure that someone will get on the ’phone and tell us what to do"

These gentlemen are going to be extremely busy during the 10 minute interval — so busy indeed that they can only ensure that “ . . . 43 per cent, of the population would be dispersed . . .  to what are considered to be less likely areas.” We note with “gratitude” the facts that 57 per cent. of the townspeople are likely to be left behind, also that those who are taken out have no guarantee that they will be safe in their new location. The Western Mail points out that “It is widely recognized that the ‘fourth danger—’ fall-out—may even affect reception areas.”

To come back to where we started the “plan” states that the transport for dispersal would be mainly by train but that “other planner,” Dr. Beeching, has so arranged it that the main artery, the Central Wales line, will be non-existent!

The whole sorry business, then, amounts to this—that 70,000 people of Swansea are to be alerted in 10 minutes, are to be transported on a non-existent railway line to an area which is quite likely to be contaminated by the “fourth” hazard (fall-out), leaving 57 per cent, of the population behind. This problem is, indeed, full of disastrous overtones. It is probably the reason why Swansea has appointed an educated man, the town’s Director of Education, to see it through!

With this vital news in the air all other news appears flat, but for good measure, and to be fair, one must report that the various political organizations continue to be active on such vital items as demanding the issuing of police summonses, the recording of Council Meeting Minutes and Rate notices in Welsh, not to mention the singing of the Welsh National Anthem in cinemas and Bingo sessions.

Socialists in S. Wales, whilst constantly pointing out the complete chaos and the inability of the “planners” of capitalism (who cannot even “plan” their own demise with any accuracy) are all too often accused of being unrealistic and “idealistic.” A comparison of the present “plan” for evacuation with the Socialist proposition should quickly enable the critics to decide who are really the unrealistic ones.

W. Brain.

Charity begins at work (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

From time to time appeals appear in the Press or are broadcast on the radio to provide food or shelter for starving or homeless people in such parts of the world as Korea, the Congo or (latterly especially) Algeria.

Easter is traditionally the time when charitable appeals are intensified, and various bodies affiliated to the Freedom from Hunger Campaign then made a particular point of drawing attention to the contrast between the fitness, security, wealth of, for example, the readers of The Observer and the plight of the unfortunates in these countries. War on Want pointed out that so many were starving, homeless, suffering, orphaned or despairing; the Save the Children Fund asked for “shillings or pounds” to provide “food, warmth, life itself ” for starving children. The United Nations Association asked readers to covenant one per cent of their incomes for seven years to “help in education, research and training for the underdeveloped countries ” so that parent could be aided “in the fight for food ’’—heading this appeal, “ No Eggs for 2 out of 3 People in the World.” Elsewhere in the same paper the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, yet another affiliated body, asked for help for “children with hunger-swollen stomachs—without food all day,” and mentioned 634 cases of malnutrition in one centre; it said that £2 would send four children daily meals for a month. Similarly, the previous Sunday in the same paper, War on Want claimed that £15 would provide a Tent Home for eight destitute Algerians.

No doubt the well-meaning organisers of such appeals are frequently hard put to it to carry out even a fraction of their good intentions, for they compete not only with everyday demands on our purses, but also with innumerable other appeals for aid to Tibetan refugees, limbless ex-servicemen, incurable cripples, cancer research, homes for children and the aged, distressed gentlefolk, and residential clubs for sailors (to mention only those that appeared alongside the Freedom from Hunger trio).

They may therefore have been very pleased to hear of the notable effort to relieve hunger and thirst among some 2,000 refugees and unemployed from Britain and the Continent which was made on the night of Monday, April 22, at a large, old but sturdy, building some twenty miles west of Marble Arch. It seems that no actual Koreans, Congolese or Algerians were present—but one must begin somewhere, after all. None of those present is reported to have had a swollen stomach (not, at any rate, swollen by hunger) or to have been actually starving—but the drive out along the Thames Valley may well have stimulated some appetites, and who knows, some of the busier people may have had to skip lunch that day.

What is undeniably true is that a good many of the guests at that ball at Windsor Castle had been out of a job for many years, despite their willingness and availability for the duties of occupying a throne and making themselves generally useful, as advertisements for jobs phrase it, in the ceremonial service of the callous and ungrateful countries who have rejected them. Moreover, a large proportion of the rest have never been employed, and have had to rely on public generosity all their lives.

The scale of this generosity on that Monday night was most impressive. According to William Hickey in the Daily Express, the means by which the 2,000 attained freedom from hunger (and thirst) for at least one evening included: 80 lb. smoked salmon and 300 lb. fresh salmon, 500 oz. caviar, 36 turkeys, 50 ducks, 200 chickens, two barons of beef, 14 large legs of pork, 24 hams, 500 lettuces, 80 lb. tomatoes, 36 cucumbers, 360 eggs, 28 lb. beetroot, 20 lb. Belgian endive, 48 bundles of spring onions, 48 bunches of radishes, 500 lb. fresh fruit, 200 pints fresh cream, 1,600 bottles of champagne, 1,080 bottles of whisky, 720 bottles of gin, 216 bottles of vodka, 2,000 bottles of lager and 20,000 cigarettes. In case they all became hungry again by morning, a further 4,000 eggs and 6,000 rashers of bacon were provided for breakfast; otherwise, of course, there might have been no eggs for 2 out of 3 people in the ballroom. To aid them in the fight for food, 145 servants were on hand, and there were even “half a dozen volunteers from the Royal Mews at Buckingham Palace” to assist in the struggle to open car doors.

Expressing the “hope that everyone will relax and enjoy themselves,” Hickey gave the total cost as between £15,000 and £20,000. This works out at not far short of £10 per head, and presumably includes Joe Loss’s fee for providing a 30-man band to play for dancing. Whether it includes the pay of the 15-man strong band supplied by the Brigade of Guards and the 40 Metropolitan policemen working a double shift within the castle precincts, or the costs of erecting 40 special traffic signs, providing “thousands of freshly cut flowers" from the royal conservatories, and illuminating the exterior of the castle with 52 arc-lamps, is more doubtful. To say that £14 or £15 was spent on each guest would probably not be a wild exaggeration.

Judging by the Press reports the following day, the benevolent hopes of William Hickey were fulfilled. At any rate there is no indication that those who danced the twist so well that midnight were unduly disturbed by the thought that what had been spent on this one “vast and glittering party” would have housed more than 10,000 destitute Algerians or provided 4,000 starving children with daily meals for well over a year, or paid the fuel bills of the 10,000 old people estimated to have died this winter as a result of inadequate heating. Why should they worry? They themselves receive, just like their ancestors or precursors, the benevolence of the greatest charitable body the world has ever known: the working class.

There were no advertisements or radio appeals, of course, for contributions to the expenses of the splendid celebration at Windsor and of the subsequent display of wealth and privilege surrounding the marriage of an actual, real live cousin of the Queen. None of the British and foreign royals and ex-royals and their favoured friends was observed standing on a street corner with a tin and a poster or a collection of little paper crowns to pin on the lapels of generous passers-by. No, this particular charity is much better organised: they save you the trouble of taking money out of your pay-packet to put it into a tin, or of writing out a cheque. In a way, you pay for it all because it comes out of the surplus value which is extracted from every moment of your working day.

No doubt a good many of those who provide this surplus value would pay for things like this even if they were asked—like the man who wrote to the Daily Express saying: “If we really want our royals—and I can’t imagine ourselves without —for goodness' sake let us foot the bill cheerfully and generously." The same poverty of imagination is presumably suffered by the thousands who waited for hours outside Westminster Abbey to catch a precious glimpse of the great occasion. But there are thousands, probably millions, more who would if pressed admit to at least an occasional hankering after a bit more of the wealth which they, and only they (together with their fellow-members of the working class all over the world) produce. After all, if you are starving or homeless it would be nice to have some food or a roof over your head, wouldn't it? Even if your food or your accommodation is not inadequate in quantity but merely inferior in quality, it would be nice have something better, wouldn't it?

Some of the more daring of us may go so far as to wish that we, too, could sometimes visit the many beautiful places in the world, see more of the sublime achievements of the great painters and sculptors, have more time to appreciate literature and poetry or study languages or history or science —or simply wish that we had more chances to use our talents, our skills and abilities, our intelligence and creative ability, to the full, instead of being condemned to the grinding monotony of boring, meaningless and often futile work, day after day. Most of us assume such wishes to be unrealistic and pointless day-dreams, inevitably doomed to frustration. To have to go to work each day and devote most of your waking hours to tasks with little or no connection with your interests is as inescapable a necessity as denying some of your wants in order that more urgent ones shall be met.

Yet there is no necessity whatever for the frustrations, the deprivations and the disappointments that are our accustomed lot to continue a moment longer than we allow. It is our own willingness, as a class of workers, to go on permitting the capitalist class—the owners of the means of production, the buyers of our energies—to take all that we produce and return to us a pittance, that enables wealth to be blatantly flaunted and wasted in a world of poverty and want and threatening mass-destruction. It is because we “can’t imagine ourselves without’’ our royals, our landowners, our shareholders, our financiers, our soldiers and sailors and airmen and police, our masters and our State apparatus, that they continue to dissipate the abundant riches we produce, in the display of luxury and the machines of death.

Two or three generations ago poverty, unemployment, war, and the myriad daily frustrations and miseries of life under capitalism ceased to be necessary at all. Since that time the capacity of man to satisfy all his wants has increased many times. When the workers of the world at last see that this is so, and organise to appropriate the wealth they have created, when they do away at last with the entire system of buying and selling and paying of wages, and prices, and all that goes with it then every man, woman and child on the planet will have enough to eat, there will be ample clothing and housing for all. No barriers, political or economic, will frustrate travel anywhere over the face of the globe for all who will, and the creative potential of every human being will be used to the full.

P. R. Collins

Socialist Opposition (1950)

From the December 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Advocates of Socialism meet with curious opposition when outlining the claims of Socialism as a solution for the world’s problems. The word curious is used advisedly, for most of the opposition appears to be simply prejudice. Opposition to Socialism may be appreciated by those who understand its implications; the capitalists and the defenders, press, pulpit and politician, because it would abolish the privileged position which Capitalism assures them. The Socialist can understand this. It is difficult, however, to understand the prejudice of the man in the street, we repeat we think it curious. It is this curiosity of ours which prompts the attempt to find out what it is. Remember the Socialist comes forward with a specific claim that the only cure for the world’s social, political, and economic maladjustments is Socialism, i.e., common ownership and democratic control of the means of life. We think it reasonable to expect from those who are adversely affected by the present social system, at least a patient hearing: an eagerness to hear the socialist solution.

Remember again that within the lifetime of most adults there have been two major devastating world wars; the more than usual lean times in between the wars; the untold suffering of countless thousands directly and indirectly affected thereby. The causes of these disasters to human well being! Is it not worth while discussing?

Socialism does not pose as a “divine” saviour of humanity—it offers a solution—far more important. What an opportunity the socialist offers. He is striving like all forms of life to adapt himself more favourably to his every-day environment.

To those then who are eager to share in this effort, we are at least deserving a sympathetic hearing. But we don’t get it, otherwise our numbers would be tens of thousands strong.

So what are the difficulties? The socialist has to deal in abstractions. We refer to a social system “divided into two classes”: “the working class who produce and distribute the world’s wealth"; “the capitalist class” owners of the product and the means of wealth production.

The socialist becomes unpopular with his audiences when he describes the motives which cause the working class to support Capitalism. The worker has been “through the mill,” moiled and bludgeoned and alternately fussed and petted by the class who rule. Nevertheless, he cannot believe “he hasn’t a dog’s chance that Capitalism has got him, hook, line and sinker! No. He’ll never admit to this. The existence of the British Legion, the political working men’s club, and a host of other organisations all engaged on pouring oil on the social wounds of the masses, notwithstanding. The titled gentry make this work their life’s mission also. So our parting words are give our speakers a fair deal. The magnitude of our task is a gigantic one. Nevertheless the socialist comes forward, cheerfully, hopefully—in short philosophically, to tell you the facts as they appear. If you imagine you “will get there,” “make good,” we must agree with you because we know that when you seriously begin to study Socialism you “will get there”—with us. The emancipation of the world’s working class will not be accomplished ^ without effort—sacrifice of time and money.

This Socialism asks—nay, demands. This way alone Socialism will grow and we wish you joy in the task and welcome when you join our ranks.

Billy Iles

The Election Farce in America (2000)

Editorial from the December 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who won a majority in the US elections? Actually, neither Bush nor Gore. The non-voters did—by far. More people chose that option than voted for both Bush and Gore put together. Not that it made any difference who won since everyone knows that the Republican and Democrat parties—whose champions were both millionaire members of the ruling class—stand for the same thing: the maintenance of capitalism at home and abroad.

The farce in Florida did, however, raise an important point that will still be relevant in socialism: the need to have clear agreed-on standing rules for deciding how to count votes and settle any disputes before the vote takes place.

For socialism will of course be a democratic society with elections and referendums.

It is also a basic tenet of the Socialist Party that the establishment of socialism involves the capture of political power via the ballot-box. For this to happen presupposes the existence of a "bourgeois democracy". But while such an arrangement is undeniably preferable to political dictatorship we don't entertain any illusions about the nature of this "bourgeois democracy". It is a very limited kind of democracy indeed.

Under this kind of democracy, the population is permitted to choose between representatives of different political parties to supposedly "represent" them in parliament. This is more or less the extent of popular participation—once every other year in America—in the "democratic process"; thereafter control is surrendered to the politicians. But the politicians themselves are constrained to operate within parameters set by the economic system for which they stand. Based upon minority ownership of the means of living, capitalism can only ever operate in the interests of the capitalist minority, not the electorate as a whole.

There are other aspects of bourgeois democracy, such as free speech, which are similarly compromised by the nature of the system. In this case by the disproportionate power it bestows on those who own and control the media. And even where workers are able to exercise some measure of democratic control over their own organisations, such as trade unions, their capacity to influence events is limited by the essentially defensive nature of such organisations and their inability to circumvent the dictates of the profit system.

Socialism, by bringing to an end minority ownership, will remove these fundamental structural impediments to genuine democracy. Along with this, it can be assumed, it will bring about a marked change in the form of decision-making—from representative democracy (a weak form of democratic control) towards stronger manifestations of democratic control, notably the use of mandated delegates and direct democracy—aimed at encouraging popular participation and preventing the emergence of a new ruling class in the form of a decision-making elite.

Cooking the Books: Abolish Money – But Not Now (2017)

The Cooking the Books column from the February 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists want to see money disappear, because of the rationing it means for most people, but only as a consequence of the establishment of the common ownership of the means of wealth production. This, in enabling production to be carried on to directly meet human needs, would render money redundant. With the end of production for the market and of buying and selling, there would be no need for money.

We do not envisage the ‘abolition of money’ with nothing else changing, i.e. its abolition while the rest of the economy remains capitalist. That would lead to chaos and hardship, as was seen when at the beginning of November the Indian government suddenly announced that all 500 and 1000 rupee notes (worth £6 and £12 respectively) still in circulation at the end of the year would be cancelled. Since these were used to carry out some 85 percent of cash transactions in India this was tantamount to abolishing 85 per cent of money. So as not to lose out, Indians had to exchange any such notes at a bank by that date.

Marx once remarked that, while no kind of bank legislation could eliminate a money crisis, ‘ignorant and mistaken bank legislation’ could intensify one (Capital, Vol. III, ch.30).  What happened in India has proved his point.  According to Ed Conway, Sky News’s economics editor writing in the Times (23 December), as less than half of Indians have bank accounts, this measure, aimed at catching tax dodgers and money launderers, hit the poorest half of Indians the most:

‘The real victims of demonetarisation are not wealthy ne’er-do-wells, who long ago shifted their money out of cash and into other currencies and assets: gold, Treasury bonds, apartments in London and New York. No, the real victims are, as so often, the poor.’

So, no, we are not envisaging the abolition of money within capitalism.

Meanwhile, in a more advanced part of the capitalist world, in Seattle on the West Coast of the USA:

‘Amazon has unveiled its first bricks and mortar grocery store, which does away with tills and queues and lets shoppers grab what they want and stroll out’ (Times, 6 December).

That’s more like what we envisage happening in socialism, except that, under capitalism, it is not as simple as that – the shoppers still have to pay in the end:

‘Shoppers will be billed using an array of cameras and sensors tracking their every move … Customers will need to download an Amazon Go app and tap in with their phone at special barriers when they enter, then they can take what they want from the shelves and walk out. When a customer leaves the shop the app adds up their purchases and charges their Amazon account.’

No doubt, in socialism, in some stores in some parts of the world, electronic devices will help stock control by automatically noting what has been taken, but there will be no need to record what each particular individual has taken, only what has been taken in total over a given period.

Conway, whose article is headed ‘Cash belongs in the past so let’s abolish it’, favours a cashless society because this would be ‘a hammer blow to the black market and the corrupt criminals and cronies who benefit from the anonymity of paper money.’ But the price would be an increase in the surveillance state in which the authorities would be able to know how all of us spent our money. Besides, some geniuses have invented an anonymous electronic money – bitcoins -- another waste and misapplication, alongside Amazon’s app, of human ingenuity and IT brought about by capitalism.

A History of Assassination (2017)

From the February 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey reminds us that this particular form of political violence is still very much in use. Both states and those without states (‘terrorists’ or ‘freedom fighters’) believe this tactic still to be useful in furthering their political agendas. Perhaps a brief historical perspective on the phenomenon could help us decide whether they are correct in their continuing belief of its efficacy.

We begin with what is still, probably, the most infamous example of this form of homicide in western Europe’s history – the assassination of Julius Caesar. Fearful of losing their power as a class in Rome a gang of patricians including Brutus and Cassius decided to end the meteoric political career of Julius Caesar. Under the banner of ‘saving the republic’ from a tyrant they stabbed him to death en-masse on the senate floor. Subsequently they were hunted down by Caesar’s hatchet man Mark Anthony who himself was obliged to commit suicide by Caesar’s nephew, later his adopted son, Augustus. Rome was then in the power of such successive madmen as Tiberius, Caligula and Nero. This particular assassination, then, was an unmitigated failure and Rome became a totalitarian state dominated for centuries by megalomaniacs. Could they have been successful? Historically Rome followed many other cultures in evolving from some form of a republic into a monarchy and it would appear that they were defying economic and political necessity which, in the end, defines historical progression. Ironically, because of the assassination and the subsequent power achieved by his descendants, Caesar’s name was taken by the all of the rulers of Rome, and in its form of Czar and Kaiser together with the medieval title of ‘Holy Roman Emperor’ has been used ever since to designate political absolutism.

The term ‘assassin’ originated in Persia and later Syria and was used as a pejorative to describe a murderous Ismaili sect active in the middle ages. During the crusades the Franks encountered them and brought back the term to describe the similar internecine phenomenon in the West. The word may well have been used to describe our next victim of political murder in 1170 –Thomas Becket. Henry II of England had expected his friend to be an ally in the struggle for power with Rome when he made Becket archbishop of Canterbury. However this was not to be as Becket defended the autonomy of the church fiercely against his king’s political machinations. Upon hearing one of Henry’s most ferocious condemnations of his old friend four of his knights took it upon themselves to murder the ‘troublesome priest’. Henry maintained that he was shocked by the killing and did penance as did Beckett’s assassins who, ironically, ended up as crusaders attempting to find redemption for their sins. Thomas Becket was pronounced a martyr and canonised only two years after his death – giving valuable propaganda to the Pope and thus strengthening his power in England; yet another example of the failure of assassination to achieve the desired political aims.

It would appear that John Wilkes Booth’s assassination of American president Abraham Lincoln was motivated primarily by revenge. As a supporter of the Confederacy he was outraged by Lincoln’s support of voting rights for blacks and swore vengeance. Although the fifteenth amendment of 1870 did guarantee these rights it was repealed in 1894, something that would have delighted Booth.  To the shame of the USA black people had to wait until 1965 before they again had the legal right to a vote in every State in the Union. Booth’s act, then, had no impact on the course of US history. Karl Marx, on behalf of the First International, had sent Lincoln a letter of congratulation on his re-election just before the assassination and was sincerely saddened by his death. No doubt this event featured in his fierce debate with Michael Bakunin and the anarchist element within the International who supported assassination as a valid political strategy. Marx won the debate but lost the International which split along an Anarchist/Socialist fault line. Since that time no socialist has seriously believed that assassination can change anything politically but it has remained something of an anarchist fantasy.

No historical assessment of assassination would be complete without a mention of the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in 1914. The decaying Austrian empire took advantage of this event to rattle its rusty sabre one last time. In doing so it provided the catalyst that sparked the First World War in which all of the European powers vied for supremacy. Princip was motivated by his knowledge that the Austrians sought to prevent the pan Slavic nation that he so desired and as part of the ‘Black Hand’ group he conspired to assassinate the Archduke. It could be argued that this event did contribute to the creation of Yugoslavia after the war in 1918. However the religious and cultural tensions within the peoples of that region led to its dissolution in 1991. A look at the ebb and flow of national borders in Europe during the twentieth century makes it obvious that nation states composed of federations of different ethnic and religious communities are often unstable and exist only courtesy of the strength or otherwise of the political illusions used to manipulate the populations by ruling classes. Princip’s anachronistic politics, and those who shared them, ensured the eventual doom of his dream.

In my own lifetime it was the assassination of President Kennedy that caused the most outrage. I remember, as a child, the sense of shock in my parents as they watched the drama unfold on TV. Without commenting on the numerous conspiracy theories that surround this event, it does seem possible it was more than the just act of one isolated ‘lone gunman’ in the shape of Lee Harvey Oswald. We will never be entirely sure of his motives as he was himself murdered soon after the killing of the President; it may have been revenge for the aborted invasion of Cuba or merely an act on behalf of what he saw as an ideological struggle between the USSR and the USA. We do know that it made no difference to the momentum of US militarism and imperialism across the globe.

We also know that none of the above acts of violence made any significant difference to the course of history; and that they will continue to be politically irrelevant. Only the ideologically naive believe that individuals hold immense power and that to annihilate these people would change anything in the lives of the majority. In contrast if we can convince the majority of the illusion of this belief, in both the legitimacy of attempting to allocate power to single individuals and the possibility that they can wield it successfully, then we can assassinate one of the causes of political murder.          

Wez.

Socialist Party under attack (1986)

From the June 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

It's not much fun being lumped together with Alcoholics Anonymous, the Society of the New Church, the Catholic Apostolics, Recovery inc. and Neurotics Nomine. But that's what's happened to the Socialist Party in a recent book. Ideological Groups: Similarities of Structure and Organisation by R. Kenneth Jones (Gower. Aldershot. 1984) claims that the Socialist Party is like those other groups in being "sectarian", that is in exhibiting certain characteristics which cut its members off from the outside world and make them hostile towards it.

Some of the author's information, he tells us, is from an unpublished study of the Socialist Party by a fellow sociologist called Peter Rollings. In addition he visited the Party's head office in London looking at methods of organisation and interviewing members. Finally he read a sample (quite a small one by the looks of it) of Socialist Party literature. So he made an effort to get to know about the party. But was it enough? Well, whether it is or not, something went badly wrong somewhere, because his picture of the organisation is a travesty.

For a start a lot of the small details about Party organisation are wrong. It's not true, for example, that "branches have their secretaries on the Executive Committee and the Conference" or "that membership in each of these branches will not amount to thirty at the most". It's not true either that the Party is or ever was "reconciled to a policy of non-recruitment”. On the contrary it's never stopped recruiting and the influx, especially in recent years, of many new young members is causing it to grow and to make an impact far out of proportion to its numbers. As for the sociologist's analysis of party members' occupations, it brought one of the biggest smiles of the year. According to Jones, we are mainly "skilled workers and in particular building workers" with "little evidence of any young intellectual element drawn from the universities" and we are "more likely to be primary school teachers with a non-university background". Anyone who is a member of. or closely associated with the Socialist Party will be smiling too because they'll know that the membership comes from an extraordinary diversity of backgrounds, educations and occupations and none predominates. In other words just about anyone can understand and want socialism — an encouraging thing for the spread of socialist ideas.

The impression is that mistakes like these have come mainly from Rollings. He says at one point that Rollings' work, done in the sixties. is. “still as accurate today as it was 17 years ago", whereas if the bits he quotes directly from Rolling are anything to go by that work was inaccurate then and still is today. But not all the mistakes can come from Rollings. The interviews he quotes with Party members are his own original material and they too give a false impression. They make the average Party member an elitist, a dogmatist and a person who never thinks to question the ideas of the Party. They also make it seem that members are likely to be in the Party for personal therapeutic reasons. Apart from the fact that we don't know how many members Jones has interviewed and how selective he's been in quoting from his interviews, no person with a good knowledge of the party will agree that this picture accords with their experience of the outlook and attitudes of the membership as a whole. As an old long-dead member used to say with a touch of exaggeration, on the subject of our questioning our own ideas: "Do we have to disagree with one another on absolutely everything?".

Is Jones therefore deliberately out to distort? What has probably happened is that he's approached the party with a fixed idea. That idea, of the party's "sectarianism", was perhaps in the first place transmitted to him by Rollings but at any rate it fitted in with the theory which he was trying to prove and which is the main thesis of his whole book — that non-religious or anti-religious groups can and do share certain characteristics with religious groups. This theory may or may not be valid — it probably is — but the Socialist Party doesn't provide an example of it and Jones shouldn't have given in to the academic's temptation of making the evidence fit the theory.

Without suggesting that Jones has done this at a conscious, calculating level, more evidence that this is what's happened can be seen in the way he finds, on the flimsiest of impressions, that the Socialist Party is one of those organisations that goes in for the "socialisation" of its members. They are in the business, according to the author of "managing the identity of their members with a relative totality which which permeates their social lives". If Jones looks a little more closely at the Socialist Party, he'll find that this, more than anything else he writes, is just daft. And as for Jones's suggestion of "the member being seeped in the ideology of the movement", the democratic structure of the SPGB means that there's no mechanism to do any "seeping". People join freely and participate as they themselves see fit. They're not subject to any kind of pressure. This isn't of course to say that when human beings have a common interest and get together to promote it in a group they don't form an emotional attachment to the group and that this doesn't happen in the Socialist Party. It does, just as it happens in darts clubs, writers' circles and Gingerbread groups. But so what? It doesn't exclude contact outside the group and. unless you can show it does, it's not fair to say there's anything "religious" or "sectarian" about it.

Perhaps at bottom Jones has doubts too because in his chapter on the Socialist Party he keeps repeating that we show features of "transcendental sects" and these repetitions suggest that he's not fully convinced himself. It's as though repeating it will somehow make it come true. Also, though his language is on the whole sociological jargon and the general tone pure condescension (it's good to know that "members certainly do not appear to be aggressive or misfits or in any way eccentric"), the terminology he uses to link the party with religious groups does not shrink from the emotive "priesthood of all believers", "moral elitism". "fundamental creedal devotion". Nor does he deny himself the old cheap "Small party for good boys” sneer. The fact that he needs to bolster his arguments in this way can't help making you think that somewhere deep down he himself recognises the fragility of his own case.

And if his analysis of the Socialist Party is anything to go by, it makes you wonder about the accuracy of his work on the other organisations. After all the Catholic Apostolic Church deserve to have the truth told about them just as much as anyone else. And how must they feel being lumped together with the Socialist Party of Great Britain?

Howard Moss

Editorial: The Proxy War in Syria (2017)

Editorial from the February 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

When Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson rather undiplomatically criticised key British ally, Saudi Arabia, for being amongst those 'puppeteering' in Syria, he blurted out the truth. What has been going on in Syria for the past five or so years has been much more than a civil war. Rival regional powers, as well as the West and Russia, have been intervening both directly and via groups on the ground which they finance and arm.

What started as a bid to spread the so-called Arab Spring to Syria, with the aim of transforming a secular classic dictatorship (one party state, secret police, torture chambers) into a secular political democracy (which would have been a welcome development) was soon hijacked by Islamists of one degree of extremism or another with a quite different agenda. They won the support of the Islamic states, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and of Erdogan in Turkey who would like to turn his country into one too.

With Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey using Sunni Muslim groups as their puppets and Iran, which supports the Syrian government, using Shia Muslim ones as theirs, the conflict has taken on the appearance of being a religious one. Some commentators have suggested, much more plausibly, that the real issue, for these states at least, has been for control of territory through which an oil pipeline from the Gulf to a Mediterranean port could pass most directly.

For the West and Russia, it has been more a matter of geopolitics. The Syrian government, long controlled by a wing of the Arab Nationalist Baath party, has been sympathetic to Russia since the days of the Cold War, if only because during that period America kept trying to overthrow it. It even claimed to be 'socialist' but only in the sense of running a state-directed capitalist economy as in the former USSR, to which its dictatorial political system was similar too.

Although Syria was not specifically included in Bush's 'axis of evil' it was still regarded as a hostile state deserving regime change. Russia, even though the pretence of being socialist has (thankfully) been dropped, continued to support the regime, if only to maintain its naval base in the Mediterranean, an objective of the Russian state since the time of the Tsars. For the moment at least, Russia has proved more determined in the defence and pursuit of its interests than the West, and it looks as if the regime is not going to be changed.

These various clashes between rival capitalist interests have led to a minimum of at least 300,000 being killed, many more injured and much destruction as in the images from Aleppo. Millions more have been displaced both within Syria and as refugees living in misery in camps in Turkey and, if they didn't drown trying to get there, Greece.

As socialists, we place on record our abhorrence of this latest manifestation of the callous, sordid, and mercenary nature of the international capitalist system, while hoping that the fighting, the killing and the destruction stop immediately and unconditionally.

Obituary: George Deval (1983)

Obituary from the November 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

With the death on 30 July of George Deval at the age of 78, the SPGB lost a comrade who unstintingly gave of his time and energy working for the Party for more than fifty years. George was introduced to the socialist case during the twenties and became a member in the early thirties. His employment brought him to Birmingham and he helped to restart the Birmingham Branch during the latter part of the war. He subsequently filled all Branch positions, ending as Secretary. Branch members remember him with gratitude for his dedication and hard work in all the tasks he undertook. We extend our sympathy to his wife and family.

Aberfan: Disaster In The Hillsides (2016)

From the November 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the early winter of 1966 Hoover Limited sent a minor manager from their vacuum cleaner factory in West London to the massive plant in Merthyr Tydfil South Wales where they made washing machines. The manager took a train to Cardiff where he was picked up by one of the company cars and chauffer to take him to a hotel where he was to stay for a couple of nights. During the journey both men were silent, without the chatter which usually enlivened their journeys together. When they arrived at the hotel they got out of the car and looked across to some high land where floodlit earth machines were at work. Then the driver spoke. ‘Aberfan’ he said. It was November 1966 and they were looking at the site of the worst mining-related disaster in British history.   

Aberfan is a village in South Wales which was once heavily dependent on employment at the nearby Merthyr Vale colliery. It now has a community centre, flourishing with its swimming pool, fitness rooms and café. There are also two schools, which provoke unbearable memories of that tragedy fifty years ago. Coal mining began there in 1869, when a pit was sunk on the banks of the Afon Taff; in 1875 the first commercial coal was brought to the surface – the beginning of a history proud enough to accentuate the grief and misery which devastated the village in October 1966. On that occasion the deaths did not originate underground, in a coal mine; many of the people who died were buried and suffocated in lethal slurry from the open ground above. A total of 144 people were killed in minutes; 116 were children and no survivors were found after 11am. Many of those who did survive have since suffered from persistent psychological disorders – for example the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2003 recorded that half have suffered from PTSD, which for about a third of them will persist as a lifetime disorder. A typical comment was by the author Laurie Lee who, after visiting Aberfan a year afterwards, described the school children there as ‘…the unhealed scar tissue of Aberfan’.  The colliery was closed in 1989.

Slurry

The basic cause of the disaster was tipping – the deposit of spoil of varying content and consistency  which had been extracted from the colliery, onto the ground overlooking  Aberfan when more convenient lower sites had been filled to their limit. By 1966 there were, looming above the area so that they could be distantly viewed from that hotel, a number of mounds – or tips – which were known by numbers 1 to 7, the last of which was the most ominous. There was no proper regular inspection and maintenance of the tips to check on their stability although they were composed of loose rock and other extracted material within a massive layer of sandstone. This was a dangerously absorbent composition which through the addition of water from underground springs could develop into a slope steep enough to accelerate the descent of the heavier spoil and slurry which would wipe out whatever – and whoever – lay in its path. In fact some local councils had questioned, in 1963, whether it was safe to dispose of the colliery waste in that way, particularly when in the direct path of such a descending geological missile there were the village primary and senior schools as well as other inhabited buildings. But any such questions were effectively ignored by the local National Coal Board.

Schools

On that dreadful day – 21 October 1966 – South Wales had already suffered several spells of torrential rain, which in itself was enough of a problem for the pupils of the local Pantglas School as they scurried from home to the last school day before  breaking up for the half-term holiday. Soon after 9.15 am a mass of liquid containing material brought up from the mine broke free from the tips and began to smash down towards the village and the homes and the schools and the children below. A gang of workmen who were on Tip 7 to inspect a fault with the railway which carried the disposable material from the mine were resting with a cup of tea when they saw the rapidly approaching disaster but they were unable to warn the village about it because the cable of their telephone had been stolen (although the subsequent enquiry was clear that no warning could have improved the situation). The gang watched helplessly as a mass of over 150,000 cubic metres of saturated mining spoil broke free, moving down the slope in a series of surges. Some of it clung to the ground, leaving about 40,000 cubic metres to carry on into Aberfan.  ‘All I could see’ remembered one of them ‘… was waves of muck, slush and water… I couldn’t see - nobody could …’ The first victims were a farm and twenty houses which were swiftly obliterated with all the occupants. At Pantglas School the teachers were checking and recording attendance when the buildings were overwhelmed by a compound of muddy rubble up to ten metres deep. One eight-year-old recalled ‘… a tremendous rumbling sound and all the school went dead … Everyone just froze in their seats. I just managed to get up and I reached the end of my desk when the sound got louder and nearer, until I could see the black out of the window. I can’t remember any more’. The slurry eventually came to halt at about 9.15am; the damage had been done and by 11am the last living child had been brought out from the school; it was several more days before the last body could be found.

Nationalised

The reaction of their employers, in whatever context, and their political defenders was tediously predictable. One of the more prominent of these was the late Claude Granville Lancaster who went to school at Eton then trained at the Royal Military College Sandhurst and who eventually inherited the excessively stately Palladian Kelmarsh Hall in Leicestershire from his father along with the family investments in coal mining and farming. Like his father he was a Conservative MP, in his case for Fylde. When the Attlee government nationalised the coal industry Lancaster recognised the inevitable and ‘… gave all his support to the National Coal Board … to do his best to bring what he felt was much-needed drive and decisiveness to its cumbersome and slow-moving organisation’. He had an early opportunity to live up to these standards when the slurry came down on Aberfan but he was abroad, in what were then known as the Trucial States (since 1971 the United Arab Emirates). Soon after he returned another MP asked him to comment on the possible cause of the tragedy. To which this meticulous expert in coal mining replied ‘I fancy that you will find that it was a trickle of water’.

Another, rather different, example was a man who was raised, not into the ancient land-owning nobility but by Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to be chairman of a key nationalised industry. This was Alfred Robens who was Labour MP for Wansbeck and then Blyth until he took over Britain’s coal mines which also entailed him being ennobled, so that he became Baron Robens of Woldingham. He took to all of this with a determination which was expressed in his car being numbered NCB1 and his  access to a private jet plane and a posh flat in a most expensive part of London. These privileges he defended behind a style of management later described most moderately as demanding.

Chancellor

This style came under focus as the people of Aberfan were grappling with their demanding emergencies. To be specific on that day of 21st October Robens did not, as was expected of him as the overlord of the mines, attend that scene of suffering – although his staff falsely assured the Ministry of Power that he was there soothing the distress of the people. In fact he chose to attend a ceremony at the University of Surrey to be installed as Chancellor. The anger which this aroused locally was aggravated by his opinion that the original cause of the avalanche was ‘some … natural unknown springs’ which was particularly provocative to the grieving local people who had long-standing acquaintance with that very water source since they had played there as children. When the official enquiry was seriously critical of Robens’ behaviour throughout he offered to resign from the NCB but this was dismissed as unnecessary. At the same time the NCB refused to pay the full cost of removing the tips- an attitude which persisted until the first Blair government agreed to meet the bill – although without the interest which would have considerably raised the total. This evasion was pointedly described by another Labour MP Leo Abse as ‘… the graceless pavane danced by Lord Robens and the Minister, as the chairman of the National Coal Board’ and more recently by the Geoscientist –The Fellowship Magazine of the Geological Society of London:   ‘What happened in Aberfan was a mass betrayal of intergenerational equity … not only ripped the heart out of one small Welsh village - it sucked life out of an entire industry’. When Robens took over there were 698 pits; when he left there were 292. Which left the Thatcher government to carry on so that in the Merthyr area nearly 30 percent of the able-bodied were unemployed, apart from the other adults whose industrial diseases had led to them being registered as disabled.

Coal mining was always a dangerous occupation, to be taken up only because there was nothing less threatening on offer. This was the case in Aberfan. At the same time the miners had to struggle against a poverty as concentrated as the risks they endured in and around the pits. And the harsh reality of all this is that the employing class have an enduring priority that production – of coal or whatever – should be as cheap as possible. As they did in Aberfan with the over-looming tips and the workers’ homes. This was untouched by the continuing requirements of nationalisation with the substitution of management by an ex-left wing Labour MP for a traditionally aristocratic Tory. In commemorating that disaster it must not be ignored that Aberfan was an episode entirely typical of the demands of class ownership for human suffering and denial.

Ivan

Amadeo Bordiga as Intransigent Socialist (2017)

Amadeo Bordiga

From the January 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

We begin a three part series on the pre-1917 political views of this Italian thinker who later became the first leader of the Italian Communist Party and then a Left Communist critic of the state capitalist regime in Russia.

Amadeo Bordiga (1889-1970) was probably the closest among Italian political thinkers and activists to the revolutionary ideas put forward by the World Socialist Movement. We would share his consistent opposition to reformism, militarism, and all forms of nationalism as well as some of his views on the use of parliament. We would, however be entirely opposed to his advocacy of insurrectionary violence, his aversion for democracy (which was determined by his identification of it with the freemasonry of his day), and his support for a centralist control model.

His early political activity began when he joined the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) in Naples in 1910 at the age of 21 while a student of engineering.  According to Bordiga’s own later account, his enrolment in the PSI was a reaction to pressure being put on him to join the freemasons, which he despised. The situation inside the PSI when Bordiga joined it was complicated. In theory, it was organized along the lines of the German Social Democratic Party, with the difference that the PSI did not have funds and so lacked organisers and professional politicians. There was a group headed by the leader and party secretary and as well as a parliamentary group elected by party members but there was often disagreement between the two, especially on political strategy. The parliamentary group was headed by Filippo Turati, who had been largely responsible for the creation of the party in 1882 and was a reformist despite the fact that he considered himself, and was often recognized as, an orthodox Marxist. 

The PSI had expelled the anarchists in its ranks at its second congress in 1892 and likewise the revolutionary syndicalists in 1907. Yet in 1910 it was still home to a variety of political  positions. There were ‘right-wing’ reformists such as Leonida Bissolati and Ivanoe Bonomi, the ‘left-wing’ reformists of Turati and Giuseppe Modigliani, and the ‘the revolutionary intransigent fraction’ led by Costantino Lazzari, who, according to Luigi Gerosa, influenced much of Bordiga’s early thinking with his 1911 pamphlet ‘The Principles and Methods of the Italian Socialist Party’. In his pamphlet Lazzari harked back to the Party’s 1892 programme and the various ‘degenerations’ of it that had taken place since then. As explained in a previous article (Antonio Labriola: A strict Marxist?, Socialist Standard, February 2016),  it is arguable that the 1892 programme put forward a vision of Marxist socialism substantially as conceived by the World Socialist Movement today. Bordiga wanted it to remain faithful to its maximum goal, which was the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism rather than the minimum goal of changing capitalism by means of reforms.  It was at this stage too that Bordiga started to develop the idea of a party that did not need leadership by individuals, but required, rather, a clear and unchangeable programme to be followed by its adherents.             

Bordiga began stating this position in the PSI’s youth magazine Avanguardia  and writing in particular in opposition to the Italian government’s colonial policy and to masonic anti-clericalism. In October 1911 when Italy invaded Libya, which was part of the collapsing Ottoman Empire, Bordiga attacked not just the government but alleged socialists in the PSI who supported the invasion. He also criticised revolutionary syndicalists such as Arturo (not to be confused with Antonio) Labriola who espoused the view of the economist Achille Loria that colonial expansion would present an opportunity for the socialist cause. Bordiga argued from the start that nationalism was a capitalist ideology which had nothing to do with socialism, since socialism was by its very nature anti-nationalist and anti-patriotic. This was an idea he would never depart from.

In the years 1911 to 1914 Bordiga and other like-thinking members of the PSI in Naples engaged in opposing those factions who favoured a policy of coalitions with capitalist parties, so-called blocchisti who they saw as revisionists. Bordiga wrote widely on the situation of the party in Naples, arguing strongly against the right of those factions to be in the Party, and also became the regional spokesperson for the Italian Federation of Socialist Youth. 

In April 1912 Bordiga founded the ‘Carlo Marx Circle’ aiming at propaganda activity and the study of Marxist writings. Already in March that year he had denounced the action of some exponents of the parliamentary group such as Bissolati, Cabrini, and Bonomi for supporting the King of Italy after he had been wounded during an assassination attempt. Bordiga demanded their expulsion from the Party, something that actually took place at that year’s Congress, incidentally allowing one Benito Mussolini to take up a primary position in the PSI. The Neapolitan Portici section had sent Bordiga as spokesperson to the Congress with the following motions: 1. to extend the tactic of ‘intransigence’ to local elections; 2. to exclude from the PSI members of bourgeois political associations such as the freemasonry.    

In the same year, at the Congress of the Bologna Youth Federation, Bordiga was involved in discussions that took place on ‘the question of the culture of socialist youth’.  While some of the participants saw the youth movement as having the role of imparting basic political education to its members while not questioning the party’s rulings, Bordiga proposed that the Youth Federation should have its own autonomy and its own magazine and engage in its own struggles against the system. Bordiga won the day and, in the magazine Avanguardia, he wrote, in reply to Gaetano Salvemini, editor of the newspaper L’Unità, that education should be based on action and that instead of saying to the people ‘you are exploited because you are ignorant, free yourself from the priest and you will be free’, socialists should say to workers ‘you are ignorant and cowardly because you are exploited, you are exploited because you submit to the yoke of slavery; revolt and you will be free and you will be able to become civilised.’ For Bordiga, therefore, socialism was based not on education or political culture but on proletarian sentiment and action.

In November 1912, in the Avanti newspaper, Bordiga wrote a piece on ‘Southern socialism and the moral questions’. Here he described the backwardness and inadequacy of the southern Italian capitalist class. He pointed out that the Italian State, which was managed by the capitalist oligarchy of Northern Italy, did not intend to develop the South, because the economic, agrarian and industrial development of the South could only ‘harm the present monopolistic groups of big industries, which are protected and have in the South their natural market of consumption’. The ineptitude of the Southern capitalist class and the corrupt administration of the South was, he argued, exploited by local political factions to further their own self-interest and this was often with the support and collaboration of the clergy. The main opponents of this he saw as the anti-clerical bourgeoisie, who put forward the ‘moral’ argument that what was needed was an honest bourgeois administration, an uncorrupted and ‘efficient’ bourgeois capitalism. Bordiga opposed this way of thinking too, stating that ‘thieving or honest bourgeoisies are the same thing’ and that the PSI should be ‘ultra-intransigent’ against these ‘moralists’, because socialism demanded something quite different.

Rewriting of the PSI’s pamphlet entitled Il soldo ai soldati (‘On Soldiers’ Pay’) was assigned to Bordiga and was then discussed at the 1912 Bologna Congress of Socialist Youth. In this pamphlet Bordiga railed against the ‘barracks’ as being an institution of bourgeois democracy, but took the position on elections that they should be contested but without any kind of agreement with the  bourgeois parties. At this time he saw electoral activity largely as a means of propagating socialist ideas and winning supporters, but his distrust of the electoral system grew as the PSI suffered recurring defeats in elections despite the considerable effort it put into them. Increasingly Bordiga was developing the view that the PSI had ‘degenerated’, that reformism had ‘drowned’ it and that what was important was a defence of its original revolutionary programme based on the formation of class consciousness and working class anti-militarism. In the article ‘Our Mission’, published in February 1913, Bordiga expressed the view that the PSI’s role was to be the vanguard of the proletariat in the class struggle. In it he quoted the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin on the principle of mutual aid and affirmed what he saw as the natural altruism of the proletariat. At the same time he argued that it would be wrong to believe that the bourgeoisie, the capitalist class, dominated by means of workers’ ignorance; instead it dominated by means of culture, by being able to impose its own culture on workers, so the tenets of bourgeois education took on a ‘moral’ dimension in workers’ minds.

Cesco

(Next month: Bordiga’s attitude to contesting elections)         

Election Report (1979)

Party News from the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Although there has only been a branch in the area for a year, the Islington South and Finsbury election campaign was a successful one. Successful, even though the Socialist candidate, Ralph Critchfield, polled only 78 votes. Unlike the parties of capitalism, in our campaign we only asked convinced socialists to vote for us and actually asked people not to vote for us unless they were fully in agreement. It came as no surprise to us that the number of convinced socialists in the constituency was few. Ten thousand manifestos, three thousand bulletins, 20,000 election specials and a number of Socialist Standards were distributed during the election. Our manifesto was published in full in the Islington Gazette. Two well attended public meetings were held. Extensive canvassing was carried out. We thank those of you who contributed to the election campaign, either by activity or by responding to the request for donations to the election fund. The Socialist Party is not just an election-time organisation. Socialism is as imperative now as it was before May 4.

Successful Rally (1974)

Party News from the November 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

General Elections at three weeks' notice are generally disadvantageous to small organizations, but the Socialist Party had one piece of good luck. We had arranged for a major public meeting in Trafalgar Square on 22nd September, so it turned out that we had the stage in the centre of London immediately after the Election was announced. There was Nelson’s plinth displaying our banners, and the sale of Socialist literature in full swing. BBC Television cameras were there for part of the meeting.

Several hundred people — a large number staying from start to finish — listened to our speakers. Comrades Barltrop, Critchfield, Baldwin and Young gave vigorous expositions of the capitalist system and the reasons for the present economic crisis; the failure of reform programmes; the vote-catching humbug of the parties who are unable to control capitalism; and the Socialist alternative to it all.

Between the speeches we had a roving microphone taken into the audience for questions. It can’t be said that all the questions were of the highest quality, but they gave the speakers opportunities to bring out other aspects of our case. The audience’s interest and appreciation were shown by the fact that a record collection was taken, and sales of the Socialist Standard and other literature were first-class. On a chilly grey day, it was a great success.

Rewarding Election Campaign (1974)

Party News from the November 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

It took a long time to set up: In forty minutes on October 11th it was bare. 307 Finchley Road, our Committee Rooms. 307 is a large corner shop. Its windows ideal for our various posters and propaganda material, read not only by passers by, but seen by hundreds in cars and coaches as day after day they edged along in the almost constant traffic jams. The centre windows had a blown-up copy measuring 8ft. by 4ft. of our Manifesto and Declaration of Principles. The shop was large enough for informal meetings and to display three of the stands from our recent 70th Anniversary Exhibition.

307 became a Socialist centre for just over two weeks. A hive of activity, with some 60/65 members and sympathisers taking part. Our Manifesto (unfortunately not prematurely leaked to the Press — they largely ignored it) came early from the printer. We did not bother with the free post and within seven days had dealt with 18,000 on a house- to-house basis.

All the tube stations in the area were covered night after night by literature sellers. Sales sometimes excellent — sometimes indifferent — but thousands of people in Hampstead now know of the existence of the socialist standard. This activity at some of the stations had been carried on by Westminster Branch throughout the summer and will afford a regular sales outlet in the future.

Never a day went by without a number of people coming into 307 to hear about the SPGB and discuss with us. From mid-morning — often to midnight they came, many hearing of us for the first time. And not just residents of Hampstead. From many parts of the world, Japan, USA, Denmark, Germany, France, Chile etc., they heard the Socialist case. The odd discussion carried on in German and Spanish. Our introductory leaflets in foreign languages were most helpful.

And we held our meetings outdoors, rather grim owing to the weather. Indoors not sparkling, but plenty of informal discussion. We used two sets of public address equipment, one set mounted on a very large mobile caravan, decked from top to bottom with suitable posters.

Literature sales and donations just over £70 (this included about 1,000 copies of the Socialist Standard). We only got a handful of votes (118 in all) but we accomplished our task of making the Socialist case more widely known. Those who took part in the campaign had a most enjoyable and rewarding time; those who were unable to join in missed a treat.

The local press printed a 600-word statement from our candidate (Ralph Critchfield), and we had mention in other local journals and two of the national press. London Broadcasting gave us a couple of minutes and like the other candidates in the area, four minutes on BBC Radio London. This came over very well.

Cyril May

Branch News and Obituaries (1961)

Party News from the December 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Here is a way of increasing sales of the Socialist Standard. For eight shillings a year a copy will be sent to any address in the British Isles. A small amount of money really! Why not persuade a friend to take a subscription for 1962, or pleasantly surprise someone with a gift of one year's “Standards”? It is very simple. Complete the form on page 191 and return it to us at 52 Clapham High Street, with of course the 8s. postal order.

Over 57 years the Socialist Standard has held the torch for Socialism. Consistent, searching and uncompromising has been its advocacy for Socialism. But still our Party journal must be brought to more and more people. The greater its circulation the greater will be the impact of Socialist propaganda, and incidentally, the more economic will be the "Standards" cost of production.

Resolve in 1962 to increase your sales of the Socialist Standard, and redouble your energy in spreading the case for Socialism. 

Wembley Branch were delighted with the success of their first indoor, public meeting on October 30th. “Introducing the SPGB" was Cyril May to a sizeable audience, mainly non-members. More than half the time was devoted to questions and discussion, and the audience took full advantage of it. Collection and literature sales were encouraging. Now for another and more ambitious venture in the near future!

The Branch’s winter lectures are in full swing with a wide range of subjects, every other week. Full details will be found under meetings on page 192. All those who attend will find the meetings stimulating and worthwhile.

Wembley is holding their Xmas Social on December 16th at the Ealing Park Tavern. "Joe's Group” will supply the music, and a repeat of last year’s success is certain. Everything will be laid on, and if you don’t enjoy yourself, it will be your own fault. Full information is on page 191.

Ealing Branch is continuing its winter activities with a showing of Eisenstein’s film "Strike” on December 8th. Comrade Ambridge is providing the comment. Owing to the length of the film, please note that the showing will begin at 7.45 p.m. prompt. Further lectures and film shows are being planned for January, February and March 1962.

Blackpool Lights. Reference was made in this column last month to a literature selling trip made by some members to the Blackpool Labour Party Conference. They hired a van, and throughout the week sold literature, inside and outside the Conference hall, held meetings, and made themselves known very effectively as representatives of the only Socialist Party in the country.

The van was decorated with Party posters and banners, and was stationed at various key points for literature drives and outdoor meetings. Sales totalled £9 6s. 0d. The detailed story of our comrades activities makes interesting reading, but unfortunately space limits us to this very brief report.

What must be said is that the trip was most successful, and the propaganda value was probably much greater than can be assessed at the moment. Next year it is intended to repeat ventures like this, and their growing success will be in no small measure due to the hard (though pleasurable) work done by our comrades this Autumn.

The debate organised by Paddington Branch on October 29th almost didn't take place, and then not quite. Mr. Headicar, the CND representative, “sat down” the previous Saturday and got himself two months imprisonment. At the last moment Mr. S. Cash agreed to put the case for CND. He maintained that Socialism was alright as a theory, but mankind was faced with annihilation and all our energies should he devoted to "banning the bomb.” The SPGB were out of contact with the real world, and death would overtake us all, notwithstanding the propagation of Socialist ideas, unless nuclear weapons were abandoned.

In reply: Melvin Harris for the SPGB showed that CND was similar to many other bodies, which had sprung up in the past, attempting to tackle one or other evil of the capitalist system. These organisations had failed, and CND would fail for the same reason. Nuclear war can not be separated from the problem of war itself. And the constant threat and possibility of war was a direct consequence of the existence of capitalism. The Socialist Party were opposed to all war, and were working for the establishment of Socialism, in which war would be impossible. This was the most important task facing mankind.

A considerable number of questions were put to both speakers, and many of the audience of 200 took part in the discussion. There was not nearly enough time for everyone. The collection was £13 and literature sales were good. Perhaps one day we shall land a debate with the elusive CND?

Obituaries

With sadness we have to record the death of two comrades, Llewelyn McKone and George Sword. Llewellyn McKone died on October 18th at Swansea. He had been a member of the Party since well before the war, and for many years was a member of Wood Green Branch. In recent years he had been working hard with our Swansea Comrades.

George Sword died at the end of October after a short illness. He joined the Party in 1942 and was active with a small group of members at their place of work, where they discussed Socialism and sold literature to their fellow workers. He was a member of Central Branch and until a year ago, when his health began to deteriorate, he worked in the Party Library and helped in the despatch of the Socialist Standard to subscribers.

To both our late comrades' families we extend our deepest sympathy.

Phyllis Howard