The Whole Tragic Mess (1963)

Book Review from the May 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

Britain in the Sixties—Housing, by Stanley Alderson (Penguin Special 3s. 6d.). 

Let us warn you right away. If you think that Mr. Alderson will provide you with a solution to this most pressing problem you are going to be very disappointed. This is quite a well written book, and informative, particularly when you remember that it spans only 174 pocket size pages. But having acknowledged the enormity of the housing scandal, Mr. Alderson gets bogged down in advocating the usual reformist measures to deal with it.

We are left with the awfully depressing feeling that if every one of his suggestions were put into action tomorrow, the housing problem would be just as bad the day after—and for many more days after that. Like all reformist writers, he cannot see that slums, overcrowding, homelessness—in fact, the whole tragic mess—is only part of a bigger general picture of private property society with its sordid profit motive. The emergence of council housing over the past few years does not invalidate this basic contention. Indeed, it is a clear illustration, if any were needed, of the essential indignity of being a member of the working class. The author gives us a hint of this when he tells us on page 94:

  The difficulty is in becoming a council tenant. The man who set about it efficiently would get an essential job, marry young, father a child a year, find himself a slum flat, share it with another family, and develop chronic ill-health. With all these qualifications, he could even expect to get a house before he was thirty.

Like many other writers on this subject, Mr. Alderson is in favour of “a national policy for housing." He has been groping his way towards it, he tells us in the last chapter; and stripped of verbiage, what is this policy? Why, spend more money on housing, of course. He forgets some of the snags mentioned earlier in the book, all of which arise from the profit motive. For instance, on page 11, we read:

   Some of the firms building houses in vast development schemes lose money. . . . Some of the biggest and most efficient firms in the industry refuse to touch housing at all.

And again on page 22:

   What do people want? What can they afford? These are the questions that have to be answered in determining future standards of houses, motor cars, washing powders, or anything else.

So whatever may be planned and intended (and housing is probably the biggest graveyard of scrapped plans that there is) the author admits that we shall get what we can afford, and we all know what that means as far as the working class is concerned. Here is the nub of it, the reason for the poor housing standards of the past, present and future, too, why ". . .  there are houses being erected now which will give dissatisfaction to their first occupants and in ten years will be regarded as sub-standard." It is the factor which plagues and hampers the slum clearance schemes, for as Mr. Alderson points out, lots of the poorer tenants cannot even afford to pay subsidised council rents. At the same time, “many of the old and decayed dwellings needing to be re-built are in areas where there is little or no profit in rebuilding."

It is no intention of ours to sneer at Mr. Alderson’s attempts to grapple with the vast and depressing housing problem. Perhaps it is to his credit that he has at least taken a look at it, for all too often it fosters an attitude of apathy and hopelessness. But when this has been said, there is nothing in his book to shake our conviction that bad housing is a product of private property society. The solution is no to tinker around with Schedule "A" tax reform and extensions of state power, but to institute a world of common ownership and production of goods for use. Houses will then be lived in not just out of necessity, but because they are worth living in, too.

Eddie Critichfield

Housing and Human Problems (1963)

From the May 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

One morning in the early 1920's, a young mother trudged up the front steps of a town hall in one of the London suburbs. She was confronted at the top by a portly commissionaire, pompous in his petty authority, but she pushed angrily past him and found her way to the Mayor’s parlour at last. There was certainly no respect for civic dignity about her as she barged through the door and demanded of the official there when he was going to get her and her family somewhere decent to live.

Her husband had been unemployed for two whole years after his return from the slaughter of the Great War, and their marriage was early feeling the strain of trying to live with their young ones in two small rooms. No wonder the poor woman was at her wits end. In desperation, she pleaded— and threatened (she would drown herself and her three children, she said), but it made no difference. The official was not impressed.

You had to have a “regular” job in those days even to get on the Council’s waiting list. Eventually they took over the whole of their pokey terraced house, but by then there were three more children, so they were not much better off anyway. The young wife did not solve her housing problem. Like many others, she lived, grew old and died in the same seedy place. And like so many others of her day and since, she never did grasp the real reason for her plight, and for the sordid conditions of her life which threw a barrier between her husband and herself, so that they really hardly knew each other, even after forty years of marriage.

Perhaps you could shrug this story off if it were just an isolated instance, but the sheer human tragedy of the housing problem will just not let you do that. The lives of those affected are soaked in misery and despair in the grim struggle to raise families sometimes under the most appalling conditions. It is hardly surprising that tempers fray, nerves suffer and couples who started married life full of love and high hopes, often end up barely tolerating each other. If you think this is far-fetched, remember that social workers in London’s East End, for example, find frequently that among those who consult them about their bad housing conditions are many who are under medical treatment for nervous disorders.

Ironically enough, there is a new brand of neurosis associated with the high blocks of flats in which workers are re-housed, and in fact there is growing suspicion that the very act of taking families from streets and separating them sometimes at great heights is having an adverse effect on their health. The working class mother may have had to cope with ghastly slum conditions before, but at least she did not have to keep her young children cooped up in a flat because the playground is too far below for her to keep an eye on them. Like most workers, she is kept busy, and there is always the nagging fear that one of her kiddies will somehow escape her attention and fall to his death from a balcony or landing.

But bad nerves are only one of the evil effects. It does not take a great deal of brains to realise that cramped and dilapidated dwellings are injurious to health in countless ways. In fact, so great has this become that some local authorities deal with it as a separate priority under “Medical re-housing.” In theory, of course, you are eligible for special consideration if you have some health defect which your doctor thinks has been caused or aggravated by your living conditions. It often carries little weight in practice, though, because the shortage of workers’ houses has become so acute that only a small fraction of those available is allocated to medical cases.

In London, the housing famine is acute, and the County Council have since 1958 been able to reserve only a miserable 250 flats a year for re-housing the seriously ill. Before then, it was a mere one hundred. In 1961, the whole allocation had been used up by the spring and there were still more than a thousand urgent cases outstanding. And even if you are lucky enough to be so ill that you are offered a flat, you may find that it is one of the older blocks, without a bathroom or lift, and with a shared W.C. So your troubles are by no means over and you could easily find yourself back on the waiting list before long.

Take a look at some of the other human tragedies of the housing scandal. Understandably, we are so preoccupied with the plight of families and the bad effects on youngsters that we tend to forget the pathetic conditions that many single people have to endure. Young, middle-aged, and old are all afflicted, but perhaps the last group suffer most because of their infirmities and inability to earn a living. Mostly you will find such people in private (as opposed to municipal) dwellings, such as the oldest tenement blocks of East London. The accommodation is generally cheap, which at once tells us a lot about it in terms of dilapidation and sheer misery for the occupants. Try living for twenty years, as one epileptic did, in a room 7 ft. by 6 ft. with plasterless walls and a leaking roof, and you will get our meaning. Often there is very bad overcrowding, and conditions in many of the houses are indescribable.

Struggling along on the very borderline of destitution, there is a loneliness and black despair which many times overtakes these people, and they seldom manage to get clear of their awful predicament. They are generally the ones with whom capitalism can deal particularly harshly, such as widows, divorcees, those in failing health and even mental cases. Their common misery is the product of their common identity as members of the working class.

But there is one other group who have given up the strain of trying even for the meagre respectability of a dingy furnished room. Ironically, in many cases they have lost what accommodation they had as their lodgings were closed to make way for slum clearance. They sleep anywhere they can—odd nooks and crannies, bombed sites and railway stations. During the day they do work of sorts, although clearly they do not earn much at it. For them, the hopelessness of the situation is just something they have accepted in blank apathy and each day of struggle is pretty much the same as the next. Their predicament gives us an insight into the horrible pressures which mount against single people living on their own in a place like London.

Rarely do they appear on the waiting lists of local councils. They probably realise the utter futility of trying this, because the queue is miles long as it is. As one observer has put it, they suddenly find themselves clinging to the very edges of society. Maybe some have been ill for a while, and without friends or relations to help them have found themselves on the streets. Others have drifted from one dingy room to another before succumbing and joining the rest of the destitutes.

Capitalism does things in a big way. It can produce huge quantities of goods and build enormous cities. And just as surely, in its usual contradictory way, the majority of its people have to put up with narrow, drab lives. And for the lonely ones the very bigness of capitalism's towns restrict their chances of ever belonging anywhere. This extremity illustrates perhaps most of all the underlying tragedy of the whole housing problem. To say that it is a problem of working class poverty is indeed a truism which runs like a thread through workers' whole lives. For poverty of ownership in the means of life begets poverty in so many other things— perhaps in human contact and friendship most of all.

Eddie Critchfield

Editorial: A hundred years (2004)

Editorial from the January 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

This year is the centenary year of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, our organisation having been founded in June 1904. But we have mixed feelings on the matter.

In one sense to still be in existence represents a failure since it means that socialism—our objective—has not been achieved. Had it been, there would no longer be any need for a socialist party, which would have long since been disbanded. Our aim in 1904 was to see ourselves go out of existence as soon as possible. To work ourselves out of a job. That we do still exist is therefore undeniably a sign that we have not succeeded.

But this lack of success is not so much ours, or at least not essentially ours, as we never imagined that the growth of the majority socialist understanding required to establish socialism depended on the campaigning efforts of socialists alone. It is the lack of success of the class of wage and salary workers in general. It's up to them, not us, to establish socialism. But, distracted by Labourite reformism on the one hand and Leninist state capitalism on the other, workers failed in the course of the past hundred years to see the need to abolish the fundamentals of capitalism—the class monopoly of the means of production and the profit motive—if the social problems they face are to be solved. And that's why we are still here.

It is also true that we have never won any election, but then, for us, elections are only a means not an end. We have never been interested in winning elections as such, in getting socialist bums on to the benches of the House of Commons at any price. Socialists will enter parliament when enough workers outside it want to send delegates there, mandated to formally wind up capitalism. But this situation has not yet arisen.

In any event, even in politics, “power” is not the only standard by which to judge success. Politics is also about ideas and their survival and effect. Here we can claim some modest success. We have not only survived as an organisation, for instance producing this journal every month since the first issue in September 1904, no mean achievement when you look at the fate of our one-time rivals over the years, the SDF, the ILP and the Communist Party. We have also kept alive the idea of socialism in its original sense.

At the time the Socialist Party was formed there was widespread agreement as to what socialism was—a system of society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production—even though there were widely divergent views as to how to get there. Here it is those who argued, against us, that the way to socialism was to get into parliament on a programme of reforms to capitalism and then to gradually re-form capitalism into socialism, who have failed. Not just to achieve socialism, or to make any progress towards it, but even to keep alive the idea of socialism as the alternative society to capitalism. The same goes for the partisans of the regime that used to exist in Russia. They, too, came to abandon the original idea of socialism, redefining it to mean the state management of the wages system, or state capitalism.

Since socialism—common ownership instead of class monopoly; production for use instead of production for profit—remains the only practicable alternative to capitalism, and the only solution to the problems thrown up by capitalism, we continue to advocate it. But, it is fair to say, we don't want to have to still exist for another hundred years.

After the Show has Passed (2017)

From the July 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Modern politics is a grotesque circus. An openly evil, insane, pantomime defender of the privilege and power of the one percent is placed opposite a reasonable, fairer-minded option. Today, all those with the basic common sense to put the needs of the majority first, have been enthused by the promises of Corbyn and Labour, swept up in a wave of optimism.

We would not want to pour cold water on that hope and desire for positive change, we feel it too. But there is one nagging problem. Albert Einstein sensibly defined insanity as repeating the same actions but expecting a different outcome. Not to act on what history teaches us would be criminal irresponsibility in the current global crisis. The fact is, the current world system of capitalism is the root cause of every social problem, from poverty in all its forms, to climate change, to impending nuclear war. And a vote for Labour is as much a vote for this social system as a vote for the Tories or Greens or UKIP or SNP or Liberals etc.

Corbyn has made it explicitly clear that he believes that capitalism can be modified but not ended. He and May are absolutely in agreement about one key belief – which they are both wrong about : that there will always be this system of wage slavery, of employment/exploitation, of profits and power for a tiny minority, because that’s what we have now, and profound change must be kept off the agenda permanently as ‘unrealistic’.

This same facade of picking the more ‘decent’ candidate rather than the absurd ogre has succeeded in keeping real change off the agenda in every election for over a hundred years. It was the received and accepted agenda with Trump and Clinton, with Blair, Thatcher, and especially with the Labour landslide victory of 1945. But if these well-meaning reform campaigns to soften capitalism rather than get rid of it had been even remotely successful, then we wouldn’t be back here yet again today, faced with all of the problems which incoming governments similar to or more radical than Corbyn swore they would solve.

Without exception, within months of getting in, such governments have been forced to abandon and reverse their promised policies, because unless we end the capitalist system entirely, its uncontrollable market forces continue ultimately to direct policy rather than vice versa. This may be an unpalatable fact, it will certainly be scoffed at by many, and we may be accused of pessimism or worse. But this is realistic, it is the inexorable lesson of history. A vote for any of these parties, however nice and well-meaning their profile, is actually giving your political consent to a global social system which is the most exploitative and murderous in history, and may destroy us all.

The tiny minority with vast wealth and power delight in this bullying pressure, this gross assumption that our democratic responsibility simply consists of selecting who should supervise our exploitation, whilst real change is derided by all sides as ‘unrealistic’. Real change would mean all productive resources being held in common, with the production of wealth socially organised, directly for meeting all human needs rather than to be sold in a market for profit; the beginning of real, total social and economic democracy.

Clifford Slapper

Obituary: William Travers (1974)

Obituary from the March 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist movement has had some grievous losses in recent months. From Glasgow we hear of the death of William Travers, the oldest member of the branch there. He was 90, and died suddenly at his home in Mace Road.

Willie Travers was one of the most lovable of comrades. Bright-eyed and full of almost boyish zest, he had worked enthusiastically for the Socialist Party for many years. He often came to London and spoke as a delegate at our Conferences, and his small neat figure and trim white beard were well known among members. He was a scholarly man who imparted knowledge to everyone he met: it could be Marxian economics, or a discourse on the Book of Kells. Willie had a lively relevant wit, too. It was he who rose to say to a ponderous speaker: “Let’s call a spade a spade, and not a metallic implement for penetrating the earth’s crust.” 

He continued selling and talking about the Socialist Standard to people in his area until his health became impaired by bronchitis. There are many besides the Glasgow branch members who will wish to extend their sympathy to his two daughters; and the Glasgow branch wishes also to express to them its great appreciation for their generous gift of Willie’s extensive library.

Snakes and ladders (1963)

From the May 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is one game which has been going on too long and too fruitlessly for the people who have been forced to play it. The housing problem which we know today came in with capitalism and has defied over a century's efforts to reform it out of existence. The working class are still lost among the Snakes and Ladders, still bemused by the measures which, the politicians assure them, will improve the housing situation but which turn out to have no effect on the problem. The ladders are few and what there are of them are short and rickety. The snakes are many and they are long and slippery and venomous. The promised land—the square marked “Home" is as far away as ever.

That black thing which we now call the Housing Problem was born in the intense transformation of this country during the Industrial Revolution. The break up of the agricultural communities forced the farm workers into the towns, where the greedy factories were demanding human labour. These people had to have somewhere to live, even if this was a secondary consideration to their ability to produce a profit for their employers. As they were only workers, there was no especial need to provide them with adequate washing and sanitary facilities; no need either to give them an excess of living space and fresh air. So the men who had lately spent their days in the wind and the sun were stacked away, when their stint in the factories was done, into cellars, into the back-to-backs, and into the court houses. In their book The Bleak Age the Hammonds record this description of such homes in Manchester in the 1840’s:

They are built back to back; without ventilation or drainage; and, like a honeycomb, every particle of space is occupied. Double rows of these house form courts, with, perhaps, a pump at one end and a privy at the other, common to the occupants of about twenty houses.

For the capitalist class, the Industrial Revolution was no time for thinking about anything other than making money. Few of them were farseeing enough to realise that bad housing was a false economy, because it could spread disease the cost of which could wipe out a lot of the profit to be made from the pale, emaciated wretches who lived like vermin in the squalid homes of the expanding industrial towns.

A cholera epidemic in 1832 highlighted this fact and in 1851 came the first Public Acts dealing with housing—The Common Lodging Houses Act and The Labouring Classes Lodging Houses Act. These were thus the first of the many ladders to be propped up for the working class and, typically, they turned out to be snakes after all. The Acts gave local authorities certain powers which were supposed to enable them to combat the housing problem, but these powers were hardly used—for the good, sound, capitalist reason that the cost of doing so was prohibitive. Since then there have been any number of other Acts dealing with housing. Sometimes the Statute Book has become so choked with legislation that another Act has been needed to clear up the mess and to consolidate the existing measures. Nowadays the term “The Housing Acts” is taken to refer to no less than thirteen separate Acts and to other closely related legislation such as the Town and Country Planning Acts.

Hardly a trick has been left untried. All manner of financial juggling has been authorised, many kinds of inducements have been offered to housing authorities to build. The ladders have all proved to be snakes. The 1923 Housing Act, which was Neville Chamberlain’s brainchild, was supposed to encourage private building for sale, so that the buyers would leave their “intermediate” houses to be hungrily occupied by people from the slums. Chamberlain and his experts forgot, however, that the majority of people under capitalism have to live within the limits of their wage. In 1923 there were so many unemployed, and wages were so low, that very few workers could afford the deposit on a house, even though it was only a few pounds. The whole idea of the Act quickly collapsed. In 1924 they had another go. The Housing (Financial Provisions) Act of that year provided for Exchequer grants for houses to let. The capitalist class themselves dismantled that ladder; in 1932 the Ray Committee on Local Expenditure recommended the abolition of all Exchequer aid for housing other than that for rehousing slum dwellers because the economics of the thing did not justify government aid. This recommendation was put into effect by the Housing (Financial Provisions) Act of 1933.

So it has gone on through the years. One government after another has produced its plausible schemes to tackle the problem once and for all, but every one has failed. In November, 1960, Mr. Henry Brooke, who was then Minister of Housing, apparently decided that the problem was not, after all, one of building houses so much as putting baths into the houses which did not have them. Admitting that in England and Wales there were three million houses which were “far from ideal,” he announced: “The battle for a bath in every home has begun.” But before Mr. Brooke could let off his first cannon he had lost his job as Minister of Housing to Dr. Charles Hill. Dr. Hill had the bright idea of going to have a look at the slums himself, but almost as soon as he had come back he, too, was removed from the job and replaced by yet somebody else who was going to clear up the mess—Sir Keith Joseph. Sir Keith also went to visit the slums, and the slums—in the shape of some homeless members of the working class—came to visit him, giving the press some fetching pictures of Sir Keith’s wife smiling bravely as she admitted several scruffy children to her posh home. Then the new Minister had an inspiration. He would speed up slum clearance! He even went so far as to mention Cable Street, Stepney, as one place which could do with some attention. Everybody was amazed; here was obviously a Minister of Housing who knew a slum when he saw one.

This is typical of the floundering which has accompanied this past century of reform, some of it administered by wordy politicians who have climbed to high office after notching up a dismal record on housing. And what has been the result of it all, up to the present? You can take your pick from the facts and figures which clamour for attention. In 1954 there were officially 850,000 houses in England and Wales which were condemned as unfit; this figure is a wild understatement, because it only took account of the slums which local authorities thought they could clear, instead of those which they thought should be cleared. And faster than any slums are pulled down, others take their place. In July last year Dr. Lichfield, an urban economist who had just left the Ministry of Housing, said that over twenty-three per cent. of our houses were built before 1875 and that even if the present rate of slum clearance were doubled there would still be a million of them left in 1982.

Capitalist politicians are fond of telling us that the housing problem springs from a physical difficulty of building enough homes for those who want them. It is nothing of the kind. Rich people simply do not have housing difficulties; these are reserved exclusively for the working class, who must budget for their housing, just like the other essentials of living, against a restricted wage packet. And that is something which no reform of capitalism can alter.

It is true that the majority of workers do not live in what are officially classified as slums. Even so, the poverty of their lives is reflected in their homes. We all know what an average three-up-two-down working class house, perhaps the pride of its occupant’s life, is like. We know how cramped are the rooms, how the doors don’t fit, how the draughts whistle around in the winter, how poor are the materials of which the place is built. Yet officially these people have no housing problem. They are off the list.

The fact is that, however many reforms batter themselves against it, the problem of housing will remain for the working class and all of them will be afflicted by it. As long as capitalism lasts none of them can escape it. After all, the first rule of Snakes and Ladders is that it is a game for any number of players.

Ivan

Party Notes. (1908)

Party News from the February 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Manchester Branch continues to do well. Each week brings fresh tidings of meetings held and literature sold. They attend meetings of other parties, asking questions and offering opposition, and selling Manifestoes. This is distinctly good business. On Jan. 19th Moses Baritz was refused permission to oppose an I.L.P. speaker. Owing to his persistency the Manchester (Central) branch closed the meeting, whereupon Baritz addressed the audience and afterwards had a good sale of our literature.

* * *

At the Co-operative Hall, Burnley, last month, Mr. Philip Snowden was asked bow he reconciled his position with the compacts made by l.L.P. candidates with the Liberals at Leicester and Halifax at the general election. Mr. Snowden denied that any compacts existed.

* * *

A Manchester comrade has sent Mr. Snowden, in a registered envelope, a copt of the Manifesto of the S.P.G.B. in which full particulars of these compacts are given. Mr. Snowden will therefore be enabled to reply to the question differently when he speaks at the Free Trade Hall, Manchester, on Feb. 2nd.

* * *

The Manifesto is the most comprehensive statement of our position yet made, and all comrades should do their best to push it. A Third Edition is now ready, the second edition of 5,000 being sold out within seven months. This edition should be sold out before the Easter Conference.

* * *

The second of the Kautsky pamphlets will he shortly on sale at a penny. Branches can be supplied at the usual price of 13 copies for 9d.

* * *

The last month has seen a large number of debates, and preparations for several are even now in progress.

* * *

At Poplar on Jan. 12th Anderson debated with R. C. K. Ensor the question of “Reform v. Revolution.” Ensor boasts of being the best educated man in East London, but his arguments on behalf of reform were of the usual kind dealt with in these columns. Will Crooks M.P., was present at the debate and assisted the proceedings by shouting “liar!” “liar!” during the course of Anderson’s speech.

* * *

Although wit and learning were thus combined against us in Poplar, and although our man had to speak first to draw the crowd, some of the audience will have been given furiously to think as a result of hearing a word for the other side.

* * *

The Islington Branch have fixed up a debate in Grovedale Hall, Upper Holloway, on Thursday, Feb. 6th, at 8 p.m., between A. Anderson and Councillor Dey on the question whether “Socialism would be detrimental to the interests of the People.”

* * *

Meetings will be continued on subsequent Thursdays until further notice in Grovedale Hall.

* * *

Fitzgerald debated at Battersea with an Anarchist on the 12th Jan. All the other Anarchists present disagreed with their exponent’s exposition, with the result that Fitzgerald debates again, with another Anarchist, in the same hall. Watch Battersea’s lecture list.

* * *

Tooting Branch have challenged the Rev. Waldron to debate, and he has accepted. Negotiations are pending.

* * *

We have received a letter from Comrade T. Dix, from Toledo, Ohio, U.S.A., in which he draws a gloomy picture of poverty in the land of the free. He corroborates our conviction that there is no essential difference between the conditions of the working class in Protectionist and in Free Trade countries. Comrade Dix sends fraternal greetings to his old comrades. He will be remembered as the secretary of the Tottenham Branch a year or so ago.

* * *

We have pleasure in reporting the formation of a branch of the Party in Clapham. There is plenty of S.P.G.B. work to be done there and anyone willing to assist should communicate with the secretary (see Branch Directory).

* * *

Romford Division Branch are making satisfactory progress in their new Club premises. On Jan. 19th J. Kent dealt with other parties, specially criticising the Ilford Socialist Party. The discussion was long and lively, and was eventually adjourned to Feb. 2nd.

* * *

At the S.P.G.B. Club, 27, York Road, Ilford, a speaker’s class is held every Thursday, at 9 p.m., conducted by J. Kent.

K.

Russia 1917: As We Saw It (2017)

From the July 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Standard described the Council of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies as a 'broken reed' for supporting the continuance of the war.

That we have due justification for refusing to slap the Russian on the back, with expressions of sickly sentiment, congratulating him upon having achieved his emancipation (sic !) is clearly shown by the fact that the Council of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies despatched a congratulatory message to the Leeds conference in which an invitation to Stockholm was embodied.

Despite the dearth of news from Petrograd and other centres we are in a position to know that the Russian capitalist class still hold the field, both economically and politically. If it were not so, then M. Kerensky, clearly an agent of the Russian ruling class, would have been removed long ago. Indeed, his election could never have been even mooted by the victorious proletariat.

Signs are not wanting that the workers out there are already losing strength, as the following words issued in manifesto form by the Council of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies to the Commander of German troops on the Russian front in reply to the pourparlers with a view to concluding peace, bear witness:

"He has forgotten that Russia knows that the overthrow of her Allies would mean the overthrow of Russia and the end of her political liberty." Daily Chronicle, 10.6.1917.

Such words are hardly indicative of class-consciousness and form strong contrast to the much-lauded "no annexation, no indemnity" pronouncement.

When, too, it is pointed out that just prior to the issuing of this statement a meeting of the self-same deputies had stood up and vociferously cheered M. Kerensky, the new figurehead of Russian oppression, it will become increasingly apparent that in giving trust to such a body the Russian worker is relying upon the proverbial broken reed.

Small wonder, then, that the labour hacks in this country are so anxious to assist in their usual slimy, game of confusing working-class minds and conflicting vital issues.

If proof should be wanted of Kerensky's little game ― and, needless to say, he has been pointed to as a genuine Socialist by the prostitute Press ― it is contained in the following extract from an Order of the Day issued by the wily Minister of War to the Russian troops:

"Remember that whoever looks behind, stops, or draws back will lose everything. Do not forget that if you defend not the honour, liberty, and dignity of the country your names will be cursed. The will of the people must rid the country and the world of violators and usurpers. Such is the high deed to which I call you."― " Daily News, 28.5.17.

It, would appear as though Kerensky's mortal fear lest the wretched soldiers look back is prompted by a dread that his own game might be discovered. The chances are, too, that if he, the Russian soldier, stands to lose everything, he will also be losing his chance of a German bullet. Certain it is that enough evidence has been forthcoming to conclusively prove the reluctance of a very large proportion of the Russian Army to continue the senseless slaughter which has transformed the European plains into vast graveyards.

(Socialist Standard, July 1917)

On The Box (1998)

TV Review from the October 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last Friday I found myself in a television studio feeling unable to take part in what was going around me without wanting to throw up. I am seldom at a loss for words, but I am struggling now to describe this programme with any degree of objectivity or enthusiasm. I wouldn't know whether to call it a game show or a quiz show. And I am still not quite sure what the point of it was. True the information I had received on it had not endeared it to me long before I was due to take my place, along with three other socialists, in the studio audience. I rarely watch programmes of this ilk. A woman representing the Audience Research Unit had promised me we would be involved in a lively debate. Now I think I could be forgiven for believing this might lead to an opportunity to voice ideas sympathetic to socialist thinking. I didn't know then that the studio audience had been—how can I put it? — manipulated.

We arrived at the television centre several hours before the programme was due to go out, whereupon we were ushered upstairs, along corridors, round corners until we finally reached a place called "hospitality", but which looked like a works canteen. We were invited to help ourselves to tea and coffee. I jokingly asked if we got a glass of wine. Sharon from the Audience Research Unit told me "We can't run to that." I bet they "ran to it" for the guest celebrities. Someone called out names from a list and about six people marched off to another part of the building. The same people turned up later, already in place in the studio, and did most of the talking once the programme had got underway. And I had thought it was going to be a free for all. What naivete on my part; but this was my first time ever on television. Of course this did not necessarily mean we could not voice our opinions, but what it did mean to us was that having once discovered that people had been previously singled out for their contribution, and having realised also that the programme was tasteless and a load of rubbish to boot, we became hard put not to sit in the front row of the studio audience with arms folded and wearing, each of us, expressions of doom. It was so awful.

This is what was on offer. A panel of three celebrities (one of them describing herself as a "socialist anarchist" in some information handed out to us), a studio audience taken from a cross-section of the public, a well-known name to "host" the programme, and a chair reminiscent of the Mastermind hot seat. Three people in the news that week had been asked along to occupy the chair, one at a time. Each member of the panel would ask questions of the newsworthy guest with the intention, I think, of making him squirm. The audience got its turn, but the people who had been primed beforehand spoke first and had the most to say. Anyone lucky enough to get in after that was often cut short so that the next chair guest could be introduced. But not before we had voted. We were asked to hold up a card with an H on one side and a V on the other. H for hero, V for villain. Such responsibility! We three didn't bother, except that I did vote once in an attempt to look as though I was joining in. Debate was very limited before we were expected to make that all-important decision as to whether the chair guest was a hero or a villain. One contestant for the chair was the landlord of a pub who had incurred local disapproval for wishing to employ male strippers on his premises. The host went to town on this one with a line in jokes and puns on male genitalia, the kind of which I had given up laughing at when I was thirteen years old, and I didn't laugh much then either. "Turkey's giblets" was one of the expressions used. It was all so pathetic that my fellow-socialists and I looked at our watches and yawned. It was going to be some time before we could repair to the pub.

It is no wonder that when the programme went out the cameras seemed to have missed the three of us. We could be seen as three blurred images. It was obvious that someone in authority had given us the thumbs down. What self-respecting producer, concerned for his ratings, is going to allow shots to be taken of three people who look as though they are taking part in a mass suicide? What a relief. Who wants acquaintances coming up to them in the street the next day saying "I saw you on telly last night" when in reality that turned out to be the last place they ever wanted to be. And talking of reality-that little square box in the corner of our living room is not reality whatever else anyone thinks it is. Even members of the celebrity panel looked bored and lethargic and they were getting paid. Since we live in a world where money is the name of the game then perhaps audiences should be paid too. Not that a freebie could ever be any inducement for me to take part in such tripe.

Heather Ball

Housing in Industry (1963)

From the May 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the most persistent fallacies with which the worker seeks to explain away bis present miseries is the belief that things were handled much better in the past. Nowhere is this more apparent than when we are confronted by the tragedy of bad housing. “It never used to be like this,” runs the argument, “there was once plenty of accommodation available, especially for young people who could start life with a decent home.” We have all heard this line of reasoning as well as the inevitable conclusion, “that our problems are a product of the modern world and could be cured by a return to ancient virtues.”

History, however, proves such an idea to be quite wrong and that, far from being modern, housing problems are as old as property society itself. Unfortunately poverty and suffering are not considered to be very interesting, so that while there is a mass of information on the great buildings of the world, very little is available on the dwellings of those who by their labour made such works possible.

In the lands where the winters are hard and cold, shelter is a desperate necessity, a matter of life and death, while to be homeless is a grim experience. The burning of houses and the destruction of cities has long been one of war’s cruellest weapons, and throughout history the exploitation of the need for somewhere to live has been one of the nastiest and most profitable of rackets. It is in the great and thriving cities of the world that this racket has had the greatest, scope.

Ancient Rome was the capital of a vast empire, and people flocked to it as today they flock to London and New York. This created a situation that was ideal for exploitation on a grand scale. Most people lived, not in the elegant villas that are usually portrayed as typical Roman houses, but in blocks of tenements. Built of brick and concrete, their construction was shoddy to an extent that would have shocked even a modern jerry-builder. Builders economized on bricks to such a degree that the buildings often collapsed, and a decree of Augustus forbade the building of tenements more than 70 feet high. Tenants could purchase a room or a floor, but usually rented space at an exorbitant price. Water on the premises was rare, and fires a common disaster. Many of the famous figures of Rome owed their wealth to this source. Such was the hardship, that Julius Caesar used it to buy political advantage by giving a year's rent to all below a certain income level.

Nearer to our time, the 16th century was the turning point for England in general and London in particular. Previously London bad been a town on the edge of the large network of European trade; now it became the centre of a much greater one, spreading over continents. Its population mounted steadily and suburbs sprawled beyond the city walls. People flocked in from the country, many driven by economic changes, and overcrowding became intense as ground rents soared. Meanwhile from France and the Netherlands came thousands of craftsmen to start up business. These were accused of taking the houses of the Londoners, and there were anti-alien riots. A popular demand was that provincials should be sent back home, where it was alleged there were “plenty of empty houses,” and to  "stop pestering the houses of London.” Or in modern terms, “Stop the drift to the South.”

Another common misconception to be found mainly amongst “progressives," is that grim housing conditions began with the Victorians and the Industrial Revolution. Most books on town planning and urban development give this impression by swinging from the expensive buildings of the Georgian era and contrasting them with working class housing of the 19th century.

But the conditions described by Engels in 1848 in such terrible slums as the Rockeries could have applied equally to earlier periods. Already in the 17th century, the pattern of the 19th century slum, large houses originally built for the wealthy and broken into make-shift tenements, was well established. It is a pattern which persists to this day. In Commonwealth London a house in the Dowgate Ward was reported to hold 11 married couples and 15 single persons, while a ten room house in Silver Street was inhabited by 10 families, all of whom managed to fit in lodgers. Even the 20th century would be hard put to rival this for overcrowding.

But if the Victorians did not invent degrading housing conditions, they certainly spread them far and wide. Mean housing estates covered what had been a green and pleasant land, and this not only in the old industrial areas but in hitherto thinly populated parts of the country. So now the workers, in addition to living in crumbling old houses, could live in cramped badly built ones put up specially for them.

The 19th century saw the beginning of modern methods of compiling information, and reports and accounts from this period are numerous. But statistics make dull reading: far better to go into the streets of any town, large or small, and look at the rows of grim little houses known as bye-law houses. These were built as a result of Acts of Parliament that gave to local authorities powers to introduce bye-laws controlling housing conditions. The point about these houses, bare brick terraces of the meanest proportions, often back-to-back with no garden and with the living room opening on to the street, is that they were an improvement on what had existed before. This fact speaks more eloquently than any report of what conditions had been like before.

Meanwhile across the Atlantic in New York City similar legislation was being enacted. An act of 1867 made it unlawful to cover the entire lot when building a tenement. A backyard of 10 feet had to be provided. It became illegal to let rooms that were completely underground. The ceiling had to be 1 foot above kerb level. A later Act insisted on such luxuries as a window in every room. Again, these were improvements. And as with England even these meagre efforts came after many years of agitation.

The 20th century has continued this story. Numerous reports, years of work by well meaning people, constant propaganda and political promises, have produced a string of feeble Acts and bye laws. The success of which readers can judge for themselves.

Les Dale

Exhibition Review: The Peace Museum, Bradford (2017)

Exhibition Review from the July 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are plenty of museums that cover wars, the armed forces and military history, but rather few that deal with peace and peace movements. The only accredited one in Britain is Bradford Peace Museum, founded in 1994, which has connections with the International Network of Museums for Peace (museumsforpeace.org) and the Division of Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. In 1997 the local council declared Bradford a ‘City of Peace’, though it is hard to see what that achieves.

It’s not a large museum, but there is plenty of interesting material, covering the period from World War One down to the present day. There are original documents, banners, posters and other objects relating to the two world wars, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, in the main, as well as material on migrants to Bradford, including recent refugees and asylum seekers. Aldermaston Marches and activities at Greenham Common illustrate some of the efforts of peace movements. In the last two years of World War One there was an active, if nowadays little-remembered, anti-war movement among women in Bradford.

A copy of the 1919 Versailles Peace Treaty is accompanied by a quote from Ferdinand Foch, who was Supreme Allied Commander during the war: ‘This is not peace, it’s an armistice for twenty years.’ He meant that Germany had not been punished sufficiently, but even talk of an armistice was a bit optimistic, considering all the fighting that took place between the two world wars.

There is a mention of a claim made (it is not said by who) in 2003, that there were two superpowers, the USA and worldwide public opinion, which is just wishful thinking. A quote is shown from Norman Angell (who wrote a best-selling book The Great Illusion in 1910, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1934 and was for a short period a Bradford MP): ‘The obstacles to peace are in the minds and hearts of men.’ Unfortunately this naive remark underlines the fact that the museum exhibits do not include any attempt to explain why wars break out, or references to the role of capitalism. 

Paul Bennett

Colonialism (1961)

Book Review from the November 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Twilight of European Colonialism By Stewart C. Easton. (Methuen, 50s.)

When the Second World War started, there were about 700 million people living under colonial rule. Twenty years later there were not many more than 100 million; most notably, the number under British rule had been virtually cut in half.

It was to all intents and purposes inevitable that the colonies should have developed their nationalist organisations, to demand that a native ruling class should have the right to exploit their country's mineral wealth and human labour. In the Congo, this desire has bred nationalism within nationalism, with the Katangese wanting to be left alone with the immense riches that are under their feet.

Apart from such complications, and unless a colony has a settler population— as in Central Africa—or unless there is a military problem involved—as in Cyprus —the road to independence is usually fairly smooth. Ghana is the classic example of this; and it has had its effect all over Africa.

When independence has been agreed to, there is a lot of political work to be done. A constitution must be drafted, political parties must work out their programmes for the new state, elections mast be arranged. This, and the political events which have preceded independence, make the subject matter of Mr. Easton's book.

It is obvious that such a work will leave a lot unsaid. The author knows what the suppression of the African native has meant, and what it must lead to. The African’s dignity, he says, " . . . was constantly insulted”; he was regarded as ". . .  a menace to the most uncomely white woman . . .” And now, such is the tradition of bitterness that it is too late to make amends.

On the other hand. Mr. Easton has a trick of playing down the savage history of colonialism. He almost whitewashes Leopold II. The black story of the missionaries is summarised; “Inspired by Livingstone's exploits, thousands of missionaries entered the field, and traders followed soon after.” A simple soul would think it was all one big coincidence.

We should be able to take all this in our stride. There is need for a political reference book to supplement the economic studies of the colonies, and the blood-chilling works of men like E. D. Morel. Political developments have their place in history, and we should all be familiar with them. For this Mr. Easton, in his agreeably smooth and economical style, has produced a very adequate book.

Ivan.

A Week of Meetings in London (1967)

Party News from the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Gt. Britain organised a demonstration for Socialism in Trafalgar Square on Sunday afternoon, September 3rd. Despite uncertain weather there was a large crowd throughout the 2½ hour meeting, listening to the socialist case and putting questions to the speakers.

Over £16 worth of socialist pamphlets and journals were bought by interested workers, including 480 copies of the Socialist Standard. (In addition 300 Socialist Standards were sold in Hyde Park on the same day.) Our introductory leaflets in different languages were also much in demand and helped us to explain the Socialist Party’s position to workers from France, Germany, Turkey, Vietnam and elsewhere.

A photograph of the meeting which appeared next day in The Times picked out very nicely one of our slogans calling for “Abolition of the Wages System”. Surely the first time that phrase has appeared in those august columns!

Monday September 4th

The newly formed Camden group held its first meeting—on “Israel, Vietnam, Biafra— Problems for the Left”—on Monday evening. Over forty people turned up to discuss these issues.

The group meets at ‘The Enterprise’, Chalk Farm Road—which is opposite the Round House. The room is comfortable and the atmosphere relaxed and informal. So if you want to discuss socialist ideas, or have other views which you would like to give an airing, why not come along to the next meeting?

Thursday 7th September

The Socialist Party held two teach-ins on Thursday evening. One was at Conway Hall, where representatives from Oxfam, the United Nations Association, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and the SPGB opened a discussion on “World Hunger—What is the solution?" Although most of those present were not members of the Socialist Party, the audience was keenly aware of the deficiencies in the ‘solutions’ to world hunger put forward by the various reformist organisations. The socialist analysis of food shortages came across as the only positive and constructive answer to this problem of capitalism.

The other teach-in, organised jointly by West London and Greenford branches, was also well-attended. There was a wide-ranging discussion on Socialism and socialist tactics, with various brands of trotskysists and other would-be socialists ‘arguing’ a case for entrism.

Sunday 10th September

The week ended with a five-hour meeting in Hyde Park. A string of party members spoke from a specially erected platform on the grass. There was some lively discussion and on more than one occasion a member of the audience was given the platform in order to explain his objections to Socialism, a socialist speaker then replying. Party literature was again selling briskly and—many workers from Germany and Austria were interested in the Wiener Freie Wort—the organ of our comrades in the League of Democratic Socialists.

Germany Revisited (1950)

From the September 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party is not interested in travel articles or personal reminiscences, as Socialism is essentially an impersonal movement on philosophy. But perhaps in this case as I visited Germany for ten consecutive years before the war, and again for the first time since the war this summer, with a knowledge of Germany and plenty of good contacts, this should be useful in assessing the situation, and these reminiscences might not be so much out of place.

Firstly there are no Nazis now in Germany, nor anybody who ever subscribed to the Nazi philosophy. All the present population in British, French, or American zones were never supporters of Hitler, or at least so they say!

Those who knew Nazi Germany well will remember how almost every man, woman and child went out of his or her way to assure you that everybody was for Hitler, and the few communists or Jews that were anti-Hitler had fled abroad in shame. The towns in Nazi Germany were no place for a holiday because of the ceaseless propaganda night and day which made the atmosphere more like that of a boiler house. Munich station was always covered with a mass of flags and banners to remind visitors that Munich was “Die Hauptstadt der Bewegung” (chief town of the movement). To-day it is a ruin with no roof over the major portion. A photograph of the ruin of “ Haus Wachenfeld ” (Hitler’s mountain chalet) adorns the walls of the station at Berchtesgaden alongside a picture depicting its former beauty. Foreign visitors are interested in these things, but German’s aren’t.

Nobody talks about Hitler unless you first raise the matter. A change-over from the days when everybody had to greet everybody else or a business house or shop had to greet their customers with Heil Hitler. There was no good morning or good bye in Nazi Germany, it was all “Heil Hitler.” Everybody had to salute the banners carried by storm troopers every few minutes of the day. Photos of Hitler besmirched the walls of every cafe, restaurant, shop, business house, etc., just like those of Uncle Joe in Red Fascist Russia!

If the working class have forgotten Hitler and his night-mare, then what are they thinking about to-day? Like the working class in England, they are in a state of mind oscillating between confusion and apathy. Those who used to argue that Nazism was a special type of Socialism applicable to Germany and adapted to German needs, have now chucked over-board this argument, but they have got nothing in its place. Those many thousands one meets who have, fought on the Russian front and been prisoners of war, say they are thoroughly convinced that the Soviet system is not Socialism, and that the Russians have a much lower standard of living than the Germans were accustomed to. They were also much impressed by the high standard of living of the Commissars, and the tyranny over the masses, with the indescribable poverty of the peasants.

In Austria the present Christlische-Volks Partei, which is in power, have not been slow to capitalise anti-communist ideas by plastering the place with pictures of Austrian soldiers behind the barbed wire in Russia with the caption “Listen to us, we’ve tasted Socialism in the workers Fatherland.”

The harm that has been done to Socialism, as we of the Socialist Party understand it is incalculable both from the Nazis calling themselves Socialists and also from the Russians, who not only persist to-day, but are everywhere on the continent pretending to champion democracy. Indeed the official designation of the Russian zone of Germany is “Demokratic Deutsches Republik.”

One sees in Germany, and Austria, no Marxist literature and no indication that the workers are making up for time lost in getting an understanding of Marxism. There is nothing of the nature of a Socialist Party based on Socialist knowledge. The bookshops contain no literature which indicates that things are moving in an enlightened direction. After the first World War Germany produced a great crop of anti-war books, such as the famous “No More War” and “All Quiet on the Western Front” and hundreds of others. At present the best sellers are Churchill’s “War Time Memories,” and Rommel’s book. Anti-communist books, so common in Switzerland, are entirely absent in Germany and Austria. Nothing is rationed in either country and the black market and cigarette currency has disappeared. One sees and hears little about unemployment. Germany is busy making consumer goods perhaps one day destined to compete with England’s for the export market when trade gets really going. Austria is experiencing a wave of “prosperity” brought on by the many tourists plus Marshall Aid. In both countries American troops spend lavishly (by Austrian workers’ standards) and bring their relatives from home there.

Neither the War nor the Nazi experiences seem to have taught the workers anything useful, for many of them to-day would be only too pleased to fight against the Russians with the knowledge of America behind them, with all the financial aid and equipment that can mean.

Our case has always been that you can’t get Socialism out of war, nor does war lead to Socialism, as Lenin and others have claimed. The Germans have been through a lot of tragic experiences from which very few have learned anything, except that it is unpleasant. If the present position of Germany has any lesson for us, it is that it confirms our philosophy that Socialism comes and can come only from understanding.

Horace Jarvis

Editorial: People's Capitalism (1956)

Editorial from the August 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

It had to come and here it is—"People’s Capitalism,” the description given to the U.S.A. in an advertisement of General Electric (New Yorker, June 16, 1956). We have had "peoples' democracies,” the name given by Communists to Russia and her East European Satellites—now admitted to be thug-ridden police-states. We have had "people’s courts” in the same countries, where framed-up victims of political and personal vendettas "confess” to non-existent crimes. We have been told that this is the century of "the common man,” in which the common man is not only exploited, conscripted, intimidated and humiliated—just as he was in the century before—but in which, in addition, he is now expected to take pride in being master of his fate. Oscar Wilde’s definition of democracy seems to be particularly appropriate, "bludgeoning of the people by the people, for the people.”

The General Electric claims that American Capitalism is quite different from Capitalism anywhere else:—

   “Around the world me term 'capitalism' has been applied to economic systems which bear little resemblance to each other. Our American brand of capitalism is distinctive and unusually successful because it is a 'people's capitalism.’ All the people share in its responsibilities and benefits.”

The advertisement goes on to list the ways in which the American brand is supposed to differ from the others—and in almost every particular the list shows the falsity of the claim. Those who run Capitalism in London, Delhi, Moscow, Warsaw, governments in all the continents, all the Powers, big, medium and small, make almost identical claims. Here are the eight principles in which Americans are said to believe:—"We believe in providing opportunities for the individual to develop himself to his maximum potential mass production and low prices; high wages, high productivity and high purchasing power; "we in America believe in innovation and in scrapping the obsolete”; instalment buying; shorter hours and more leisure; "broad share ownership of American business . . . and almost everyone indirectly owns shares through insurance policies, savings banks, pension plans, mutual funds, bank accounts and other investments ”; "and finally, we in America believe deeply in competition versus the cartel.”

So little does Capitalism in the different countries differ from the above eight-point declaration that an all-in conference of Governments in United Nations would probably vote unanimously for a resolution embodying them—and then each Minister would go home to preserve the realities of Capitalism, poverty for the mass, and wealth and privilege for the few. Capitalism takes on many masks and disguises, and ingenious party vote-catchers have invented innumerable names and slogans to make capitalism acceptable to its victims, but everywhere its economic features (production, for sale and profit, the system of wage-labour, and capital investment in company shares and government bonds) sufficiently conform to a common pattern amply to justify the common destination capitalism.