Pathfinders: Farron, Fossils and Fire Ice (2017)

The Pathfinders Column from the July 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

One claim that raised eyebrows during the recent general election was Tim Farron's assertion that the UK could be completely self-sufficient in renewable energy, this despite the Lib Dems' own manifesto pledge of reaching just 60 percent renewable by 2030 (Link). Team Tim promptly issued a qualifying statement (aka rebuttal) describing his claim as 'visionary as opposed to completely literal'.

Yet Farron has not completely fallen out of his chimney. The UK recently passed an important milestone with its first coal-free day since the 1880s (Link) and just last month the National Grid tweeted news of a further milestone, that on one particularly sunny and windy day in June just over half of UK energy was supplied by renewables for the first time (Link).

Things have changed in the past ten years or so, with renewables becoming steadily cheaper and more efficient, while international consensus on climate change, as well as the economic recession, have exerted a downward pressure on fossil usage. From a thirty-year flatline, renewable production has turned sharply upwards since 2010, crossing the spasmodic free-fall of coal in 2015 to reach 26 percent of the grid, more than any other source except gas (see Graph 3, Link). However, just as Germany plugs the dropouts in its renewable supply by strip-mining and burning brown coal, the UK props itself up by importing a third of its energy in the form of natural gas, mostly from Norway.

Meanwhile, the much-vaunted new nuclear renaissance has largely failed to materialise, with old power stations being kept running beyond their use-by dates and virtually all new building projects cancelled or mothballed, not just in the UK but across the world (New Scientist, 17 May). Blame the recession, and the Fukushima effect.

But it's not all green sunlit pastures for the renewable industry. Capitalist money-chasing gets in the way and renewable investment tends to founder whenever oil and gas prices plummet, as has been the case in the last few years thanks to OPEC price wars and the fracking bonanza. And renewable energy has built-in problems, notably its poor conversion ratio. UK renewable production for 2015 including wind, wave & tidal, biomass and other gas sources, hydro and solar, amounted to the equivalent of just over 7 million tonnes of oil. However conversion losses amounted to a further 6 million tonnes, giving overall a roughly 45 percent conversion loss. Why so much? Because power is rarely used where it is produced, and wastage through pipe bleed multiplies with distance. Meanwhile wind and solar, being sporadic, need buffering to smooth out the bumps, but large-scale efficient batteries do not yet exist, so power is steadily lost in storage. There are various systems which store power by converting it to something else and then reconverting it for later use, but power is lost in these bi-directional conversions. Meanwhile a plan to sell renewable power abroad when in surplus and buy it back when in deficit – known as an interconnector deal - may offset some storage losses while incurring greater transport loss, as well as being prey to the vagaries of the market and, of course, the weather. Just because the wind stops blowing in the UK doesn't mean it will obligingly start blowing in France.

Socialists have said this so often it's hardly worth repeating, but socialism would start addressing energy by looking at ways of not wasting it in the first place. For instance, instead of building extra capacity, it would be more sensible to insulate and double-glaze houses, a task at present left to cash-strapped householders. But the biggest consumer of energy in the UK is not the domestic sector, or even industry, as you might think, but transport, and much of this energy is coughed out of exhaust pipes while miserable commuters sit in twice-daily traffic jams and motorway tailbacks, forced by capitalist economics to chase jobs in other cities. In socialism, where people would only work on a voluntary basis and mostly close to home, there would be no need for regular long-distance commuting. Put freight back on rails too, and the roads may become almost empty, thus reducing energy consumption, not to mention improving air quality.

However, socialists also take a pragmatic view of energy as with other technologies. It makes no sense to come out today against a technology you might need tomorrow. If, for example, socialism were obliged to rely on frack gas deposits, then of course it would use them. A similar rationale applies to nuclear power, GM crops and others which today inspire protest among those who seem keener to oppose than propose.

One technology, though, might give us pause. If you haven't heard of methane hydrates yet, you're going to soon, and probably from the publicity of a colossal 'anti-hydrate' movement which is no doubt gestating even now. If you think fracking is bad, you're about to be horrified.

Methane hydrates, or 'fire ice', are burnable deposits of frozen methane which lie under the world's oceans, most of them close to continental shelves, and between them may offer more energy than all the world's coal, oil and gas combined, or up to 800 years' worth at current gas usage rates. Discovered in the 1960s, fire ice has largely been overlooked because of the difficulties of mining and extracting it, and because fracking is easier for now. However things have changed, and China recently announced a breakthrough in extraction technology which could lead to a new energy gold rush (phys.org, 19 May). So what's not to love? Well, it's methane for a start, like frack gas, and when you burn it, it releases carbon the same way. But it's concentrated, so a cubic metre of fire ice translates to 160m3 of airborne methane gas. There are two problems with this. One is that methane, while being relatively short-lived and in short supply compared to carbon in the atmosphere, is around 86 times more potent for global warming (Link). The other problem is that ocean floor drilling is still at the very edge of what mining companies can do, and a submarine blowout at depth would be like Deepwater Horizon all over again, except spewing millions of tonnes of the worst possible climate gas into the atmosphere. 'If all the methane gets out', said an International Energy Agency spokesman in 2014, 'we're looking at a Mad Max movie' (Link). Added to this, the proximity to continental shelves is predicted by some to cause large-scale underwater landslides which may trigger coastal tsunamis. So, not an energy technology likely to be warmly received in many quarters, especially considering capitalism's ability to promise the moon on a stick and then balls it up and stick us with the consequences.

Paddy Shannon

Aspect: The Future according to Galbraith (1967)

From the October 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the Autumn of 1966 Harvard Professor of Economics J. K. Galbraith gave a much publicised series of lectures on the B.B.C. Home Service. They were part of a book on which he had been working for many years and which he now publishes under the title The New Industrial State. (Hamish Hamilton, 42s.).

In it he describes and explains the rise of the big industrial corporations in America; tells us how they are evolving towards a planned society not foreseen by the supporters of Nineteenth Century capitalism or by socialists; and that where America leads the rest of the world will follow.

Before the era of the big corporations the individual capitalist had to compete with his rivals in a market and at prices neither of which he could control: he also had to fight the trade unions. His sole object was to make as much profit as possible. This, says Galbraith, is still true in the world of the independent retailer, the farmer and the like :

Here prices are not controlled. Here the consumer is sovereign. Here pecuniary motivation is unimpaired, (p. 395)

But according to Galbraith, it is otherwise in the “industrial system”, that is among the “mature corporations” such as General Motors, Standard Oil, Fords, Du Pont, etc. (he names ten of them). Here it is the few big corporations who determine prices and create the market by advertising. They are no longer concerned to show maximum profit because the shareholders, who do want maximum profit, have lost control to the group of technicians, sales executives, engineers, scientists, designers etc. He defines them as all who bring “specialised knowledge, talent, or experience to group decision-making” (p.71) and calls them the “Technostructure”.

The interests and aspirations of the Technostructure lie in their own jobs, their security and prestige, all of which are to be achieved by promoting the technological efficiency and expansion of the corporation to which they belong and by cultivating close relationships with the governmental authorities who regulate and stabilise the general wage and price levels and secure an approximation to full employment. He sees the big corporations possibly merging with the state apparatus. He also sees the trade unions as a declining force.

An essential point in this argument is that the big corporations are able to finance their own expansion out of undistributed profits and have thus freed themselves from dependence on the money market and the banking world through which they formerly raised capital.

He also maintains that (subject to some qualifications), the trend towards control of industrial organisations by the “Technostructure” is in evidence in Russia, and in nationalised industries everywhere.

At the end of the road, unless we are saved by the enlightened intervention of the educationalists and scientists in collaboration with the Technostructure, we shall live our disciplined and liberty-less lives in a world of corporations (private and public) narrowly devoted to the purposes of production, expansion and technological advance.

Much of this ground has been covered before though without the systematic treatment given it by Galbraith. The first name that comes to mind is James Burnham with his The Managerial Revolution published in 1942; but with a surprising indifference. Burnham saw his models of the Managerial state in Germany, Russia and America. For him the 1939 war was “the first formative war of managerial society”. It would be followed, he said, by wars for world domination between the only three possible centres, America, Europe and the Far East. (See Penguin edition 1945 pages 219 & 220). Galbraith sees the Managerial revolution producing the exact opposite, a coming together of the “free world” and the “communist world” because “it will dispose of the notion of inevitable conflict based on irreconcilable difference” (P.391).

Galbraith here makes one of several references to Marx, most of which betray an almost total failure to understand what Marx held to be the nature of capitalism. He charges Marx with not having foreseen this coming convergence: on the contrary Marx did foresee that Russia would become, as it has, a capitalist state. But Marx did not explain that the conflict between capitalist states as being due to their unlikeness but to their likeness. As he wrote in the Communist Manifesto, “The Bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle . . .  at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries”. They are in conflict over markets, raw material sources and strategic points.

Russian and American capitalism may indeed find common ground for a time (as they did in the last war) but not for the reason he gives. Then it was the need to resist German and Japanese expansion. Next time it may be the need to contain Chinese expansion.

Galbraith's confusion is the common one of supposing that socialism (or communism) in the Marxian sense means nationalisation or state capitalism. The consequence is that although he has a chapter on “Socialism” and many references to it elsewhere he nowhere even considers the possibility of the human race finding the solution to the problems he raises by going over to a classless social system without wages, prices, profits or production for sale.

The evidence Galbraith gives to support his case is in almost every instance exaggerated, or based on trends which may be reversed or is mere assumption about what may happen.

It is indeed true that a tendency in recent years in this country has been for big companies to rely more on providing capital for expansion out of undistributed profits, instead of raising capital from outside. It is however, partly the result of the method of taxing company profits, which could be altered again. Even so we have such examples as ICI raising £60 million in 1966 by loan stock, and three big companies, English Electric, Associated Electrical Industries and Rolls-Royce, which between them have outstanding loans from banks and acceptance houses of nearly £100 million. They at least have not become self-financing.

Galbraith believes that the propertied class as a whole, though its interest would be served by getting maximum dividends and by curbing the big near-monopolies, will passively allow the Technostructure to thwart it. There are, however, influential groups in political parties and business circles determined to prevent this. In the last resort it will be settled by government action one way or another.

Then there is his belief that the trade unions are declining. He bases this on the fall in the number of industrial workers (blue-collar workers in American terminology) among whom trade unionism has been strong, and that white-collar workers (clerical, technical, administrative etc.) though growing in number are “not within the reach of unions”. With growing affluence, he says, the workers in the corporations are on better terms with their employers and less militant; but at the time of writing 160,000 American workers are on strike against one of his named corporations, Ford, and other motor companies are likely to be involved.

The position of trade unionism among British white-collar workers was examined recently by George Sayers Bain in the British Journal of Industrial Relations (November 1966) and while showing a remarkable growth of white-collar unionism in recent years he reaches a conclusion rather like that of Galbraith, on the ground that so far only a small proportion are organised. But is this conclusive? At one time trade unionism was confined largely to craftsmen and it was argued then that “unskilled” workers were unorganisable.

The non-manual workers affiliated to the TUC, covering civil servants, local government staffs, draughtsmen, supervisory and technical workers, professional, clerical and entertainment workers have increased from 917,000 in 1947 to 1,679,000 in 1966: to which should be added about 300,000 teachers. Why should this trend not continue? On present evidence it will.

In support of his case that it wont continue Galbraith relies heavily on the “affluence" of workers in the industrial countries and on the ability of governments, using Keynesian techniques, to maintain nearly full employment. Millions of workers do not share his optimism on either count, not forgetting the current British unemployment of 600,000, expected to rise substantially this winter; and the “low unemployment" of about three million in USA, commonly regarded as understating the real number. Included in the unemployed in Britain are quite a lot of Galbraith’s ‘Technostructure”. They suddenly found that they were not in control after all.

If the strike of Ford workers knocks a big hole in Galbraith’s belief about trade unions, another event in USA does the same for his belief that the big corporations so dominate the market that they can fix the prices at which they sell their products. One of his ten corporations is Du Pont, the largest chemical company in the world. It was reported in the London Times (9 September) that Du Pont had announced an expected fall of twenty per cent in their profit this year. And the reason? “a sharp decline in the prices of synthetic fibres". So much for the Galbraith theory.

Among Galbraith’s misleading references to Marx are his statement (p.290) that Marx assumed "the progressive immiseration of the working class” and that as revolution was inevitable according to Marx, why was it necessary to advocate it. (p.321).

He overlooks that Mara’s statement about the lot of the worker growing worse was set in relation to the accumulation of capital and “be his payment high or low”. And Marx, who insisted that man makes his own history, never supposed that socialism could be achieved without the conscious act of the organised socialist working class.

Marx would, for example, not have subscribed to Galbraith’s despairing doctrine (p396) that the belief “that he can decide the character of his economic system" is no more than “the vanity of the modern man”.

Modern man does not have to resign himself to Galbraith’s grim new industrial state.

Edgar Hardcastle

Editorial: The Labour Government: Truth Will Out! (1929)

Editorial from the August 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain was formed 25 years ago to work for Socialism. We found ourselves then, as now, opposed by the I.L.P. and other bodies, whose members believed that it was useless to preach Socialism. Their method was to try to win working-class support by promising and agitating for Old Age Pensions, Health Insurance and other reforms. The workers, they said, want not Socialism, but “something now.” Let us promise them what they want and thus get a Labour Government. The numerous benefits it will bestow on the workers will then win their support for the introduction of Socialism.

This theory, as we pointed out, was based on a series of misconceptions. It assumed that a Labour Government could so run Capitalism as to remove the great problems which have been, and are being, produced by Capitalism. It assumed, in other words, that unemployment, poverty and the like, are the outcome, not of the system, but of the stupidity, malevolence or incompetence, of Liberal and Tory statesmen. It overlooked the very important lesson of modern representative Government that the party which happens to be in power gets blamed by working-class electors for the evil effects of the Capitalist system on themselves.

All these years we have carried on the hard struggle to build up a party of Socialists, understanding and ready to work for Socialism. Our critics, in the meantime, have carried on their work of building up the non-Socialist Labour Party, incidentally making our work tenfold more difficult. They have succeeded to the point of being in power, the largest party in the House. But no sooner do they get to work than they discover the truth of some of the counts in our argument.

Mr. J. H. Thomas, Lord Privy Seal, is commander-in-chief of the special section devoting its energies to the problem of unemployment. On Friday, July 5th, he addressed at Southampton the Annual General Meeting of the National Union of Railwaymen. He first admitted that the Labour Government is in office to administer the Capitalist system. He said :—

  I have been entrusted with the responsibility of seeing how far within the limits of our Parliamentary traditions and our resources of the State—and accepting the present order of society —how far it is possible to mobilise, organise, institute, and get going useful works for those now unemployed. (See “ Daily Herald ” Report, 6 July.—Italics ours.)

His subsequent remarks indicated that even a few weeks of office have taught him how little difference a change of persons makes to the administration of Capitalism. He said :—

   We ask you not to expect too much, nor attempt to force from us, because we are a Labour Government, what you would not force from a Capitalist Government.

Thus we have the delightful spectacle of the workers being asked not to demand their instalment of “something now” (which they have already waited a generation to get) by the very people who have preached the doctrine of “something now" in opposition to Socialism.

The moral of this has been seen by at least one Labour opponent of the Socialist Party, Mr. Tom Kirk, alderman at West Ham. In a letter to the “New Statesman" (July 13th) he states that the Labour Government’s declarations on unemployment caused dismay among their supporters in the House. But what is most significant is Mr. Kirk’s admission that the building up of the Labour Party has been at the expense of Socialist propaganda. He writes :—

  The work, however, of building a Labour Party thrust “critical revolutionary” Socialism into the background, where it stubbornly maintained itself in the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Mr. Kirk, one of those who helped to thrust Socialism “into the background” is now convinced that the Labour Government will prove a broken reed. "Indeed,” he writes, "unless I read things wrongly, we shall soon witness a reversion to the earlier standpoints of the old S.D.F.”

To this we need only add that the earlier standpoints of the S.D.F. are embodied in the Socialist Party of Great Britain, the only organisation which declined to abandon Socialism in order to build up the Labour Party, and the only organisation which will not be implicated in the disgust and disillusion which will follow the inevitable failure of Labour Government.

"Our Prime Minister" (1929)

From the September 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

To justly appreciate the value of a "Great Man” it is wise to study his early life, when he was forming his views. Now, Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald is a "Great Man”—he must be, because he is Prime Minister—to understand him correctly one must look at his past. Let us do so.

I was very much struck with the ease with which Mr. MacDonald carried his top hat and the dignified way he wore his frock coat. Frankly, I was puzzled, as I took him for "a man of the people, raised from obscurity and clothed with a little temporary authority,” as Mr. George Barnes used to say, when he was "doing his bit” at home during the war. But a glance into the past helped me to solve the riddle. I came across an old copy of "To-day,” Vol. VII., January-June, 1887, and on page 66 found an article by Mr. MacDonald entitled "A Rock Ahead.”

In this article Mr. MacDonald is breaking a lance with certain unnamed Socialists to whom he refers as "censors of Socialism,” and in criticising them he makes clear his own position. He writes:—

    "Of course, those Socialists who see in every tall hat the mark of a traitor, in every respectable outline the sign of a money-grabber, and in every appeal to reason a bait of the enemy’s, will not for a moment allow that the coming revolution is to be directed from the study; to be one, not of brutal need, but of intellectual development; to be, in fact, a revolution of the comparatively well-to-do. But, nevertheless, so it must be, to be of any good. By pandering to all the desires of the very lowest class, we may soon gather round us a mob, and just possibly even make a revolution, but the social reconstruction of society will be further removed from us than ever. And yet I scarcely know if with such material a revolution of any sort would be a possibility.”

There, then, you have a fairly clear explanation of the origin of Mr. MacDonald’s "statesmanlike” capacities.

As becomes a man who has climbed to position in spite of motor-cars and biscuit factories, Mr. MacDonald had, in his early days, a fitting contempt for mere hewers of wood and drawers of water such as you and I, fellow-worker, and he expressed his view quite plainly. Here is how he put it:—

     “Intimately, then, as Socialism concerns labour, and despite the efforts made in certain quarters to flout all Socialists who have not been ground in the mill of a labourer’s position, yet labour as such is simply useless for freeing itself. They tell us that the little glory we have, as heads of creation, is due to our being the last forms developed from the higher animals. And that may be true. But there is a second man in us now. That man is the intellect. Socialism is the first stage of its development. The intellect, as it develops, makes us feel our social evils—poverty, slavery, privilege; and our mental needs—leisure, beauty, hope. We become Socialists. The rude and uncultured masses, as a rule, espouse the same cause because the intellectual atmosphere they breathe has taught them to be discontented. The educated espouse it because of its natural justice. The former is the bad ground, the rock ahead; the latter the fruitful soil . . . "
    "We want men who are clear-headed and far-seeing, men who, by moral force, can command respect, and who, though compromising nothing, know how to be reasonable.

Thus, then, did Mr. MacDonald lay down the path to guide him to his present position as chief of the Cabinet that controls the destinies of this great empire. He most emphatically knew “how to be reasonable.” And if, at election time, he exhausted himself working up constituencies by grand tours he was, no doubt, helping the “uncultured masses” to breathe the “intellectual atmosphere.” To people such as we are, motor tours through the deserts may appear almost as curious a way of gaining information of the practical steps necessary to achieve Socialism, as, for instance, Mr. Thomas’s trip to Canada to solve the unemployment question in England. But that is the difference between culture and lack of culture, as Mr. Webb has demonstrated by taking a peerage in order to abolish privilege, and Mr. Snowden by taking. a firm stand on behalf of the British property-owners at the Hague in order, no doubt, to abolish property. All this is very complicated and puzzling to us. But then we are but the uncultured mass whose business it is to present our backs as ladders for the use of the cultured people with ideals who, as they assure us, will bring Jerusalem to this green and pleasant land if only we will be patient and wait long enough.

If these gentlemen, in the course of their climbing, enjoy good dinners, nice wines, and grand tours, is it not fitting for cultured gentlemen like them ? And if we go without our dinners, drink water (if it rains) and tour the labour exchanges, while presenting our backs for the use of the climbers, well, is it not fitting for uncultured mugs like us?

I can hardly do better than finish this eulogy with the closing words of Mr. MacDonald’s article:—

   Remember, then, if one of thy members offend thee, to cut it off and cast it from thee, for it is more profitable that one member should perish than that the whole body should be cast into the hell fire of failure.

Gilmac.

Women in Industry. (1929)

From the October 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is it "right” or "fair” that women should continue to hold those positions in industry that formerly were held by men?

Mr. Charles Pilley's article in the Sunday Graphic of August 25th tells us that it is neither.

His first paragraph sounded rather promising. He said, "We are groping for remedies without a true understanding of the nature of the disease.” His last shows us poor Mr. Pilley still hopelessly groping. It is as follows: "It would be instructive if we could learn how many women are working at jobs which once belonged to men at wages below a decent minimum, thus unfairly competing with male rivals and cheapening the worth of labour to the detriment of all.”

We take it, of course, that Mr. Pilley really means the price of labour power.

Directly labour power has been expended by the worker the labour is embodied in the product and as such can be of no further concern to him. It has become the property of the master who bought the labour power. Thus a worker can sell his labour power for a specified time, but not his labour, for it is not his to sell.

It should not be difficult for Mr. Pilley to get the figures of women in men’s jobs (although, as women can perform the work, I do not see the point for calling them men’s jobs), but when he has them, what does he suggest doing about it? His article does not say anything on the matter, so we must presume that he has not thought so far ahead as that. But let us view this question in the light of the Socialist knowledge. The war forced many young women into industry probably very many years sooner than normally would have been the case.

At the same time the introduction of labour-saving machinery so lightened some kinds of physical labour that men were not required to perform many of the tasks on which they were previously employed. Added to this, women’s labour power can often be bought more cheaply by the masters, because of the fact that the future supply of labour power comes into men’s responsibilities. The man’s wages include the upkeep of a wife, a home and a family. A woman’s is the price of her own maintenance, in the main. Again the woman is a more tractable worker. More easily frightened by threats of the sack and less easily organised in trade unions. In some cases her work is better, especially where cleanliness, neatness and dexterity are required..

Then, the fact that so many women leave after a few years’ service, to get married, obviates the necessity of a pension. These are the things which count when the pros and cons are weighed up by the employers. Where women are as competent and the advantages outweigh the disadvantages the employers will take them in preference to men.

It is of no use men kicking against these facts and blaming women for it. They must realise that as the capitalist system becomes more and more developed, these and greater hardships will be suffered by the working-class in their struggle for existence. In their endeavours to obtain more profit the masters will exploit the labour power of the workers, men and women, by every conceivable method. But they, as well as the workers, are in a vicious circle. Trade depression becomes more pressing and continuous, and it is only the lack of understanding on the part of the workers that keeps capitalism going on. International agreements, doles and charities are some of the methods by which the capitalist class try to alleviate the worst of the workers' troubles, but on the day that the workers are ready to vote solid for Socialism the game is up. It only remains, therefore, for the workers to look beneath the surface of all their troubles to find that the remedy for each and every one of them is Socialism. Armed with the necessary knowledge, they are all-powerful and the capitalists know it, and that is why their paid hirelings disseminate so much confusion on the subject.

May Otway

Mr. Belloc and the Servile State. (1929)

From the November 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

In our October issue we quoted from the Co-operative News (September 7th), the following passage from their report of an address by Mr. Hilaire Belloc:—

Under Socialism all men were to be in the servile state. There were to be no free men ordering other men about, but the politicians were to do that instead.

We invited Mr. Belloc to defend his mention of Socialism in connection with the Servile State.

We have received from him the following letter, from which it will be seen that Mr. Belloc was mis-reported:—

                                                          “Kings Land,
                                                             “Shipley, Horsham,
                                                                  “October 8th, 1929.

          “The Editor, The Socialist Standard,

“Dear Sir,
     “I don’t know who wrote that sentence as being mine. I never said it or wrote it. The Servile State does not mean the Socialist State: it means a State in which the larger number are compelled directly by law—not indirectly, by economic pressure —to work for the benefit of the rest. In my book, the “Servile State,” I show how the tendency of which such a condition would be the final result, has now been established and is increasing in force.
                                         “Very faithfully yours,
                                                       “ H. BELLOC.”

Labour's Man of Destiny. (1929)

Book Review from the November 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

James Ramsay MacDonald: Labour's Man of Destiny. By H. Hessell Tiltman. (Jarrold’s. 352 pages. 21s.)

This is a book about James Ramsay MacDonald, P.C., M.P. It is also as much a sketch of the Labour Party, of which he is held to have been the creator.

Ramsay MacDonald is portrayed as a man of great strength of character, who by sheer eloquence and intellectual ability is able to dominate and discipline the Labour Party, in spite of the I.L.P. “ginger” group of unruly schoolboys. An example is given (page 164) of an unofficial gathering of responsible Labour leaders who in 1924 met to discuss whether it was expedient to form a Government with the support of considerably less than a third of the number of seats in the House of Commons. They decided unanimously that it was not expedient. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald arrived upon the scene, and having listened to their arguments, proceeded to riddle them. In a very short time every man there was in agreement with him that they should take office. In contrast, we are presented with another side of his character, his "aloofness” and reserve, his love of the country and of quiet family life, and his having forsaken an academic career to which he is naturally inclined. Mr. Tiltman almost gives the impression that, but for this sacrifice by Mr. MacDonald of his liking for the academic life, the Labour Party would not have existed.

There are many people who hold the opinion that the Labour Party and the I.L.P. in the past were “more socialist” and "more revolutionary ” than they are to-day.

Mr. Tiltman’s book dispels the illusion. The policy of the Labour Party and its affiliated bodies, right from its inception, was reformist. The term socialism when it is used, is defined as being synonymous with municipal tramways, waterworks, and other Government services. Abundant material in support of this is reproduced from speeches and articles, and from local and parliamentary election programmes.

After the General Election of 1906, 29 Labour M.P.’s found their way to the House of Commons. (In the preceding Parliament there had been only four.) This was largely due to "compacts” and "understandings” with the Liberals. According to Mr. MacDonald one very important factor was the discontent that set in after the Boer War, which made their propaganda, which included a "criticism” of that campaign, acceptable to a larger percentage of the electorate. (See appendix, page 287.)

The author leads us up to the war. The Labour Party, after having drawn up a resolution in opposition to the Government’s "policy which had produced the war,” deserted MacDonald after the debate in the House of Commons, almost to a man. It must, however, always be remembered that Mr. MacDonald’s stand on the war was never based upon the Socialist refusal to defend the interests of the national groups of the capitalist class, but upon opposition to the Government’s foreign policy. He was of the opinion that, when "we were in it, it had to go on." Several speeches, articles, and letters (including the recruiting letter sent to the Mayor of Leicester) are reproduced in this book.

To those who lay great stress upon the fact that Ramsay MacDonald risked political suicide because of his war policy it may also be pointed out that Mr. MacDonald did not imagine that he was permanently destroying his career. He made a speech in the House of Commons on August 3rd, 1914 (see appendix C, page 285), and said : "I not only know, but I feel that the feeling of the House is against us. I have been through this before, and 1906 came as part recompense.” As indicated above, the 1906 elections showed a tremendous comparative increase of seats in the Labour Party’s favour. Far from anticipating political suicide it would seem that Mr. MacDonald expected his policy of criticism to capitalise in an eventual increase in the Labour Party’s representation in the House of Commons.

Mr. MacDonald is an astute politician, but he seems to have made some miscalculations in 1914—as, indeed, did many others.

For the rest, the book is sketchy and makes somewhat tedious reading. The author is too anxious to show Mr. MacDonald as a "great” man. That MacDonald has broken down the obstacles of a humble start in life, has been a good husband and a father may be very true. But how "great” would he have been had he preached Socialism, instead of preaching the advanced Liberal doctrines on which the Labour Party is built? Like others, he would have lived in comparative obscurity, his qualities unnoticed because they did not bear the hall mark of success as estimated in a capitalist world.

Harry Waite

A Communist Sums up the Communist Party (1929)

From the December 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

Quoted from the November 1929 issue of the Communist Review:

  Indeed, what with the anxiety of the “Rights” to prove themselves to be “Left,” the Party leadership is in such a state of confusion that one almost stands aghast at the situation. I will illustrate the criticism. First examine the way in which the anti-war question is being handled, and especially the Russo-Chinese crisis.
  In Workers’ Life of August 30th, headlines of a splash article on the Russo-Chinese crisis proclaim : “Hostilities have broken out.” It goes on to tell that we are on the brink of world war. We must “Organise demonstrations and strikes against the war-makers' Government.” The first paragraph of the article qualifies the headlines. The second and third paragraphs hold America responsible as the devil behind the Chinese Government. The fourth tells us that the Labour Government is assisting the Border States to prepare for war. But it does not say a word as to what the Labour Government is doing in relation to the Russo-Chinese war. How shall we get the British workers to strike against the Labour Government because America is pushing the Chinese on to war in Manchuria is not explained to us at all.
   Then, please turn up the next issue of Workers' Life, September 6th, and it will be found that the Russo-Chinese crisis has vanished into thin air and nobody knows why. There is no news of the strike we were to call the previous week; no news of the world conflagration that was overwhelming us. This also has vanished. Surely we ought to have been told how this happened. But by September 13th the Russo-Chinese crisis quietly re-appears.
  Can we hope to win influence amongst the workers so long as the most serious questions are treated in such an irresponsible manner? The Party appears to be wildly gesticulating and nothing happens, except that we continue to report decline in sales of Party papers. Is it surprising? (J. T. Murphy, in the Communist Review, November.)

The British Communist Party (1967)

From the November 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Thirtieth Congress of the so-called Communist Party meets in Camden Town Hall at the end of this month the delegates will have before them a new draft of their programme The British Road to Socialism. There is nothing new in the draft. It is merely a watered-down version of the old programme in line with the change from Daily Worker to Morning Star. The vanguard role of the party gives way to that of being little more than the tail-end of a reformed Labour Party:

  It is not the aim of the Communist Party to undermine, weaken or split the Labour Party. On the contrary we believe that the struggle of the socialist forces within the Labour Party, to make it a party of struggle and socialism, will grow (p.25).
  The Communist Party and the Labour Party in which the right wing has been defeated, will be the political organisations of the working class primarily responsible for the success of the building of socialism (pp. 33-4).

Of course by Socialism they mean nothing of the sort but nationalisation or state capitalism, to be achieved through Parliament and the ballot-box. So after nearly fifty years the Communist Party reaches the position once held by the Labour Party.

When the Communist Party of Great Britain was set up in August 1920 it stood, like all affiliates of the Communist International, for a policy of armed minority uprising to seize power. Lenin and the Bolsheviks firmly insisted that all their supporters should split from Social Democratic parties and set up independent communist parties. This was duly done in France in Tours in December 1920, in Germany in Berlin the same month and in Italy in Leghorn the following February.

After the failure of the German uprising in 1921 the Bolsheviks changed their tune. Now, they said, there must be a United Front of all workers’ parties. The poor Communist Party in Britain which had just been opposing Labour now had to support them.

In fact the zigs and zags of the Communist Party attitude towards Labour can only be explained by changes of policy in Moscow. The United Front policy lasted until 1928 when Stalin ordered an abrupt left turn. From now on the Social Democrats were “social fascists”. The 1929 election manifesto Class Against Class denounced Labour as “the third capitalist party”. Harry Pollitt called for the break-up of Labour meetings. On January 29, 1930 he wrote in the Daily Worker:

  Workshop meetings should be called by such workers and resolutions for the support of our Party should be carried, but the mere passing of resolutions is not enough. There should not be a Labour meeting held anywhere, but what the revolutionary workers in that district attend such meetings and fight against the speakers, whoever they are, so-called ‘left’, ‘right’ or ‘centre’. They should never be allowed to address the workers. This will bring us in conflict with the authorities, but this must be done. The fight can no longer be conducted in a passive manner.

During this period two prominent Communists debated the Socialist Party of Great Britain: J. T. Murphy (soon to be expelled as a ’rightist’) in Sheffield in March 1930 and Peter Kerrigan in Clydebank in May 1931. Both Murphy and Kerrigan came out with the old nonsense about Parliament being a capitalist institution and the need to smash the state in an armed uprising.

With Hitler in power in Germany the line again changed. Of a sudden the Communist Party became patriotic and for democracy (which, like the fascists, they had been denouncing for years as a farce). Soon the call extended from a United Front to a People’s Front (to include open capitalist parties like the Liberals) and later to a National Front (to include anti-fascist Tories). William Gallacher wrote to the old News Chronicle on July 18, 1936:

   Will the Communists work with the Liberals? Surely, if the Liberals are prepared to fight for peace and for the practical proposals that will mean an advance in the health and well-being of the workers. Already we have been on peace platforms with Labour, Liberal and Co-operative representatives. What’s wrong with that? If we can get unity of the workers' forces, the strength gained thereby will attract more and more the middle class towards our movement. The liberals who represent these middle class forces will have to come towards us. If they are prepared to support the campaign that we are making — such campaigns, for instance, as the fight against the Unemployment Regulations, shorter working week, peace, etc, — it would be political folly not to accept their co-operation.

The Communists made a determined attempt, not without some success, to infiltrate the ILP which had broken from Labour in 1932. All the same, as the Communist Party put on a respectable image they were frequently out-sloganed by the ILP.

When the war broke out in 1939 the Communist Party here in backing Britain and France jumped the gun. They were ordered by Moscow to retract, to denounce the war as imperialist and to call for peace talks with Stalin’s new friend, Hitler. After the German invasion of Russia in June 1941 the Communist Party at last got a chance to show how low they could stoop in patriotism. They managed to rival Horatio Bottomley’s first world war performance; they backed Tory candidates at by-elections; they opposed strikes and wage demands; they denounced all opponents of the war, including pacifists, as fascists. In a pamphlet put out in August 1942 under the title Clear Out Hitler’s Agents! An exposure of Trotskyist disruption being organised in Britain such weak and watery characters as Maxton, McGovern and Fenner Brockway of the ILP were denounced as trotskyists and fascists. “They should be treated”, said the pamphlet in a thinly disguised incitement to violence, “as you would treat a Nazi”. This scurrillous pamphlet partly explains the following reply which our West Ham branch received in answer to a challenge to the debate. The secretary of the West Ham Branch of the Communist Party wrote on February 23, 1943 as follows:

    The Communist Party has NO dealings with murderers, liars, renegades or assassins. The SPGB, which associates itself with the followers of Trotsky, the friend of Hess, has always followed a policy which would mean disaster for the British working class. They have consistently poured vile slanders on Joseph Stalin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, told filthy lies about the Red Army, the Soviet people and its leaders, gloated over the assassination of Kirov and other Soviet leaders, applauded the wrecking activities of Trotskyist saboteurs in the Soviet Union. They have worked to split the British working class and are in short agents of Fascism in Britain. The CPGB refuses with disgust to deal with such renegades. We treat them as vipers, to be destroyed, (Socialist Standard, May 1943).

No wonder the Communist Party came to be known as “scummunists".

In the 1945 election the Communists put up a few candidates of their own but elsewhere supported Labour. They backed the government, soft-peddling the trade union struggle, until 1948. Then in France and Belgium Communist Ministers resigned and policy again took a “left turn." The ‘‘right-wing leaders" of the Labour and Social Democratic parties were denounced; a vicious anti-Americanism was stirred up and a bogus peace campaign launched. At this time the original British Road to Socialism was adopted. Communist policy has changed little since.

Now the party is in a sorry state. Many members left over Hungary. A few, hopelessly disorganised, members back China. It is true that some older members of the Labour Party, including councillors, trade union officials and even some MP’s, have a certain amount of sympathy for Russia and the Communist Party. But for younger people Russia has none of the attraction it used to have. More and more are seeing that what exists there is state capitalism, not Socialism. And, as the party tries to become more respectable, both romantic revolutionaries and union militants are turning elsewhere, to the various anarchists and trotskyist groups (who — but this is another story — are repeating many of the mistakes the Communists used to make).

There is no need to feel any sympathy about the fate of the so-called Communist Party. On the contrary, it is to be welcomed. It is merely getting what it deserves for dragging the name of Socialism through the mud and for selling out the interests of the working class to the rulers of state capitalist Russia.

Adam Buick

Cowardly weapons (1970)

From the December 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

During recent rioting in Belfast rioters, on a number of occasions, threw nail-embedded sticks of gelegnite at the British Army's notorious “snatch” squads. A number of soldiers were injured about the legs.

Newspapers, politicians and clergymen — who see in the club-swinging, gas-throwing, house-breaking and machine-carbine totting activities of the Army a way to end violence — were quick to condemn the new weapon.

Various Army spokesmen described the weapon as "vicious”, “brutal”, "depraved", and the British Army's Military Governor of the Province described the men who used such a device as "cowards”.

An Army statement pointed out that the new riot weapon was probably an amateurish imitation of the British Army’s "Claymore" anti-personnel device and one newspaper. which was particularly loud in its condemnation of the "vicious cowards" who used the gelegnite-and-nail weapon on the Army, pointed out that while it was based on the Army’s own Claymore bomb it was not, of course, nearly so effective.

Obviously it is not the weapon, then, that makes the "thug" and the “coward” but the purpose for which it is used. If the slum-dwelling, unprivileged youth of Northern Ireland who have been spoon-fed bigotry and hatred all their lives by those politicians whose function, either deliberately or in ignorance, is to maintain the exploitative process of capitalism, if such youth, in sheer frustration at the apparent ineptitude of the politicians to solve their problems and without the necessary political understanding to pursue the solution of these problems themselves, resort to the use of imitation Claymores, then they are “thugs", “cowards" and "hooligans".

If these same youth, in a similar condition of political ignorance, joined "The Professionals” they could learn to use the most sophisticated weapons for dispensing death to their fellow-members of the working class in such areas as where the "peace" and “security" of their capitalist masters are deemed to be in jeopardy. As “Professionals” they could use their Claymores “with pride".

Violence has three sides in Northern Ireland; one side is labelled “Protestant", one “Catholic" and the third, the most proficient by far, is called the "Security Forces'. All are part of the sad tragedy of working class, ignorance.

Richard Montague

NEXT MONTH: A survey of the post and present role of the IRA from the World Socialist Party in Belfast.

What the paper said (1990)

From the May 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why on earth aren't there more socialists about? It surely can't be because the daily newspapers (at least, those that are referred to as the quality papers since they are supposed to provide news rather than gossip) don't reveal all about the society we live in, namely capitalism, a class-divided society with the rich and privileged on the one side and the deprived and struggling on the other. This writer happened to have had a little extra time to go thoroughly through a recent issue of The Times.

You can choose any issue you like and you'll nearly always find something along the lines of the following. Casually turn over a page and there's a picture . . .  47, Grosvenor Sq. in Mayfair described as “having a discreet facade" harbouring “an opulent interior. . . hiding one of the most expensive homes in London". In case of visitors or a large family "there are 10 bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, six reception rooms, swimming pool, gym and sauna, all decorated in the style of an Arabian palace, including tented ceilings, huge chandeliers and ornate mouldings picked out in gold." Not bad, eh? and we're told “it's a snip at £15 million".

Well, we heard that the East Germans had a fit of apoplexy when they learnt of the high-style living and larks of Honecker & Co. but dear Erich, even if he could have monopolised half his comrades' privileges, could not have matched this, so how are the East German workers going to react now that they have the blessings of the free market bestowed upon them, and with those in the upper spheres above them enjoying the aforementioned trappings?

Leaving this for the future to work out, one would have thought that the Editor would have been careful about where to place the above item, but no! Right underneath, as if to lend point and contrast, we find a report which tells us that the National Audit Office (a money-saving watchdog committee acting conscientiously on behalf of the capitalist class) is deploring the fact that £11 million is spent "needlessly" because doctors are too liberal in giving out sick notes to workers for benefit claims. That means that if you're not feeling quite yourself one morning and not inclined to join the scrum to get to work and then having to face those dreary hours till knocking off time, and then the bustle of the return journey, think twice before rushing off to the doctor. We're told that even a 1 per cent drop in these untaxed (shame!) benefits would save £11 million but, just think, even this sum wouldn't be enough to buy that two by two in Grosvenor Sq. We're also told that the basic rate of Invalidity Benefit is £43.60 a week although (heaven be praised for the generosity of the capitalist class) in certain cases this can rise to £60 or (wonders will never cease) to £100 per week. One small point, though: these sums would not be sufficient for the upkeep of the premises mentioned above.

Tarred with same brush

Not to labour the point (does it need labouring?) let's turn to another page. Now, we've heard recently, over and over again from all directions, about the end and demise of Communism or, as one BBC programme had it, "The flight from Communism". It so happens that this programme was dealing with the events in Poland, and it also happens that in this issue of The Times a correspondent in Poland informed us that a lot of former secret police of the Interior Ministry are turning to making an honest living by acting as private tecs, but who and what for? “It is to protect rich businessmen who feel nervous in the classless(!) society". Amongst other things their brief:

is to protect private villas, private shops and warehouses, transport valuables, etc. Crime is rising quickly everywhere. A particular target for thieves are houses with expensive satellite dishes—in Poland a sign of substance and wealth. Millionaires abound . . . there are jewellers, perfumers, cake wholesalers, sunglass manufacturers, computer importers and money changers who have become de facto private bankers. One detective agency assured us that 'when the Western capitalist comes here we can provide the finest bodyguards' (Times. 12 January).

Turning to another page we find the story of John Smith, the Shadow Labour Chancellor being piqued by the suggestion that Labour's policies would impose huge burdens on business and spending "huge amounts of time in boardrooms and at City dining tables explaining how a Labour government would get manufacturing industry on its feet again". Now did you think these industries were flat on their faces? You wouldn't think so looking at some of their profit and loss accounts in the financial pages.

On another page, there's Maggie going on something awful about the workers asking for more money in their wage packets . . .“very disturbing”, "jobs at risk”, “Britain's wage costs higher than main competitors”. "wage costs must be kept down", but at the same time “it was essential to keep higher interest rates going for the foreseeable future".

As we socialists say, they're all tarred with the same brush and, as Mercutio put it in his last moments (and we hope fervently that the working class will not wait until such an eventuality), "A plague on both your houses".

Max Judd

Strange ways (1990)

From the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Was the Strangeways Riot the work of the Devil? According to the prison governor, Brendan O'Friel, there is a very simple explanation: the riot was "something of a battle between good and evil" (The Observer, 6 May). The cause for this battle had to do, it seems, with the alleged success last year of a Christian mission within the prison. Later on, during the protest, the god-fearing Governor "became increasingly alarmed by the signs that something was going to happen on Good Friday. The omens were pretty bad. Good Friday was also the thirteenth, and we were getting some signals from the roof that sounded pretty ominous".

As an explanation for the riot, this is absolute moonshine. O'Friel claims that the "success" of the 1989 Christian mission led to a riot. But was this mission a success? Out of 1600 prisoners (some very distressed, possibly suicidal), only 200 made "a commitment to Christ", This is only 1 in 8: the majority rejected the message. To claim this as a success is as silly as Kenneth Baker's attempt to claim the result of the local council elections as a massive Tory victory. Another improbability about this "success of the mission" theory is the timescale. Why did the "forces of evil" wait so many months before mounting this alleged counter-offensive? Then there's the Governor's view of what happened on Friday 13th—Good Friday. As a result of his forebodings, he enlisted the prayerful support of his fellow-believers. Down on their knees they went.

History relates that nothing very dreadful happened that day. Two more of the prisoners surrendered and the siege continued as before, without any "diabolical" incidents. This, to the devout Governor, was evidence of the success of "the spiritual outpourings . . .  (of) the Christian community". In other words, bending the ear of the Almighty produces better results than appeals to the Home Office for reinforcements.

It is characteristic of true believers that they claim events as supporting their beliefs whatever the outcome. In this case, if, as he predicted, a “holocaust" had happened. that would have supported his belief in the activity of these supposed "forces of evil”.

This was a naive attempt by Governor O'Friel to persuade the outside world that there were no commonsense, material circumstances which could be expected to have triggered this and other jail protests. He would have us believe that this riot had more to do with the saving of souls than with slopping out. He apparently said nothing in his press conference of the conditions which the prisoners had to put up with in the jail: of the unhygienic and inhuman overcrowding in claustrophobic conditions; of the understaffing, which renders ineffective any attempts to make conditions less unbearable; or of the righteous fervour which inspires Manchester's god-fearing police and magistrates with a zealous determination that even those awaiting trial for motoring offences must be locked up.

One of the young rooftop protesters was a teenage boy on remand, waiting month after month for his trial for taking a car without consent and drunk-driving. The jails of this country are overcrowded because people like him are locked up in cells, waiting for months for their cases to be heard. Mounting frustration and exasperation may well have been one of the factors that contributed to the protest.

Strangeways—a good name for a system which treats live people like dead sardines.

Charmian Skelton

The Lies That Kill (1990)

From the July 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bandsmen, and even, now, in deference to the times, bandswomen, sit around waiting against a discordant cacophony of banging drums and snatches of pop tunes, or “party" airs, played inexpertly on fifes or accordians. Even in waiting, the pipe bands are disciplined, more expert, better turned out and better at planning their waiting time.

But a pipe band can cost an Orange Lodge a lot of money. Economics have, thus, created a niche in the market for the gather-up, four or five tune outfits that will swagger aggressively behind the well-suited Orangemen. The four or five tunes will synopsize a version of history; remind Fenians that they were given a bloody good hiding at Derry, Aughrim and. on the 1st July 1690 (before Pope Gregory XIII changed the calendar) at the Boyne. Especially when passing a Roman Catholic chapel or an area inhabited by catholics, an aggressive increase in volume will taunt and threaten latter-day enemies.

Festival of bigotry
Hail. rain, sunshine or snow, the bands will march on the Twelfth. The serried ranks of marching Orangemen will tramp their way to “The Field” to be regaled yet again with the pure fiction that represents history— for, if ever a people were kidded and cajoled by what Marx called “the tradition of all the dead generations", it is both the protestants and the catholics of Northern Ireland.

This day, the Twelfth, is the epitome of protestant culture, folklore and tradition. It is about this that Unionist and Orange leaders have hyped ordinary decent protestants to the anger that maims and kills—maims, kills and divides both themselves and those whom they have been rigidly conditioned to hate and fear. What we know about this festival of bigotry should be enough to cause protestants to look upon it with the same distaste as catholics: not simply because it is one of the elements that creates—300 years after the event—the material conditions for the bloody, futile violence that hurts protestant and catholic alike but because the great majority of those partaking in this orgy of ignorance, those who are Presbyterians, have no reason to celebrate the regime that emerged from William's victory at the famous Battle of the Boyne.

Almost always a ruling class (or, as in the case of Irish catholics, an aspiring ruling class) will suitably distort and fictionalize history to serve its purpose. Usually a substantial historical truth can be "adjusted" sufficiently to convince a lot of ordinary, propertyless workers that their past, and, more importantly, their present, is tied up with the interests of their real or potential exploiters. In the case of the events commemorated by so many decent working class protestants on the Twelfth of July, history has not simply been adjusted—it has been stood on its head.

According to the Orange Order, which uses religion to obfuscate historical reality and confuse and divide the working class, William, Prince of Orange, led a revolution against the Stuart king James II in 1688. James, a sickly pious, but cautious, convert to Roman Catholicism (and the father of William's wife, Mary) was according to Orange legend, an enemy of protestantism and, by defeating him at the battle of the Boyne in July 1690, King Billy won the day for those of the Protestant faith in Ireland. "He gave us our freedom, religion and laws", the Orange demagogue will declaim; "He saved us from popery, brass money and wooden shoes", some other historical expert will assure his listeners.

We are referring here to events which took place, not as irrelevantly far back as 1960, but 300 years ago in 1690. Whatever the facts, the first question that must be put to the Orange Order, and the clerical tub-thumpers who so frequently vomit hatred of their fellow human beings at Orange binges, is why they continue to organise an event which helps to fan violence and hatred and which has no bearing whatsoever on the lives of people today—other than those who may suffer hurt, abuse, or even death from the anger and hatred it generates? Surely, men and women who genuinely wanted peace in Northern Ireland would be prepared to sacrifice the, literally, thousands of annual marches and coat-trailing exercises that feed division and hatred?

That is a question for the holy hypocrites who pose as peace-mongers in Northern Ireland. It is a reasonable question and one that workers who support Orangeism but want peace should be concerned with.

The Pope backs King Billy
But what about the wider question? Was the conflict between King Billy and King James about protestants and catholics? Was Billy's victory one in the eye for the pope? Did his defeat of James at the Boyne make life better for the people of Ireland, or Ulster—or even for all the protestants of Ulster? The answer to all these questions is an unequivocal “No". Before dealing with the consequences of King Billy's victory, however, we should look at the background to the conflict between him and James and the separate interests they each represented.

After the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy there was a marked decline in the the political persecution of Irish catholics. Freedom of the Irish catholics to practise their religion was established and, on the other side, in 1672 Charles II won favour with the Presbyterian settlers in Ulster by granting a Regium Donam, or Royal bounty, to their clergy.

When James the Second became king in 1685 the emerging middle class in England, anxious to promote legislation that would facilitate its growing commercial interests, was striving for political power. Conflict centred around parliament and the king. Religion, the complex in-fighting between the various denominations and especially the broader conflict between the Church of England and Roman Catholicism, was used to disguise this class struggle and marshal the "lower orders" behind the contending factions. James resisted parliament's attempts to restrict his authority and parliament used this and his covert attempts to bring England back into the mainstream of European Catholicism to attack the king.

In 1688 seven members of the English government invited the Dutchman, William, the Prince of Orange, who was married to James's protestant daughter, to become king of England. James, the catholic, sought the assistance of the French king, Louis XIV. Though nominally catholic insofar as kings and members of the ruling class accept religion, Louis was the bitter enemy of Pope Innocent XI. Both leaders were in conflict over the spoils of Europe and both went to considerable extremes to humiliate each other. Louis had seized areas where the papal writ ran and had sent an army against the papal citadel, Rome itself.

The Pope had retaliated by calling together, in 1688, the German Emperor, the King of Spain and William Prince of Orange. Together they entered into the Treaty of Augsberg, the nominal head of which was the Pope. It was the Treaty (or League) powers, of which the Pope was the head, that armed, provisioned and financed King Billy when he landed in Ireland, to where James had retreated, to contend for the throne of England.

So the popular version of events that inflames considerable Orange passion, even now, 300 years after the event, is pure rubbish. It was the catholic king James who was opposing the Pope's interest and it was King Billy who championed the papal cause! Whatever Orangemen—and catholics—may think to-day, there was no doubt about the matter three hundred years ago when, at the behest of the Pope, a Te Deum was sung in St. Peter’s, and special masses said in other European capitals, in celebration of King Billy's victory over James at the Battle of the Boyne.

Presbyterians persecuted

What about the freedom of religion and the victory for protestantism that William's victory is supposed to represent? History attests to the fact that William was largely untainted with the religious bigotry then a political factor in Europe but, in accepting the call of the English parliament, he had to respond to the authority of that parliament which saw catholicism as treasonous and presbyterian dissenters as too independent and lacking in loyalty to England. Ironically, it was the twisted, devious and bigoted catholic King James who unwillingly presided over the abolition of the penal laws against religion in Ireland. After his arrival in Ireland, he summoned a special sitting of the Dublin parliament (in 1689) and that body abolished legal strictures against all religious denominations, making all religions equal before the law. The “patriot parliament", as it was called, also established the right of the people to pay tithes to the clergy of their own church.

After the final defeat of the Jacobite army, at Aughrim in July 1691, what had become known as "the war of the two kings " was formally ended by the signing of the Treaty of Limerick, in October 1691. William agreed to accept, as the first of the Treaty's thirteen “civil" articles, the law on religious freedoms which the "patriot parliament" had introduced. Back in England after his victory in Ireland, however. King Billy agreed, or had to agree, to the establishment of the Episcopalian Church in Ireland, effectively making not only Catholicism illegal but, also, the faith of the majority protestant community in Ulster, then, as now, Presbyterianism.

Immediately following William's victory, and as a result of that victory and the establishment of the Anglican church, Presbyterian ministers were refused the right to administer to their flocks. Delivering a sermon could result, on conviction, in a fine of £100 or three months in jail. They were not allowed to perform a marriage service, so Presbyterians were forced to submit to an alien church or carry the stigma of unlawfully and sinfully co-habitating, with their off-spring denied right of inheritance because legally they were bastards. Ordinary Presbyterians, like Roman Catholics, were denied entry to offices of the Crown, including the law, the army, the navy and the revenue services.

Little wonder then that during the decades that followed into the next century, some 250,000 Ulster protestants. the great bulk of them Presbyterians, left for the new world where their hatred of the regime established by King Billy made them foremost among those American colonists who defeated England in the American War of Independence.

The bosses change their tune

Like their fellow workers who are catholics, the protestant workers have been cheated with historical fairy tales. Once, in the early part of this century, these fabrications were used to marshal them behind those northern capitalist industrialists who feared the introduction of Irish Home Rule and the establishment of Irish trade protectionism. Today, there is not even that justification; free trade is no longer an issue and 1992 and the reality of a Europe united in trade and, increasingly, legislatively beckons the people of property, whether catholic or protestant—the bosses and the business fraternity.

Ironically, it was the political forces that represented these interests which fabricated history to con both the protestant and the catholic poor, before and after the turn of the present century. Today the business community, north and south, are happily united—both in contempt for the working class and in shock at the continuing results of their fabricated history. Academics are busily engaged re-writing history, trying to lie their way out of earlier fictions. Men and women of little talent have forged political careers on the ignorance of those, protestants and catholics, who make up our class, the working class. Sadly, only among our class do the lies prevail—the lies that make loyalists and the lies that make republicans. Lies that kill.

Richard Montague

Food, Hunger and Politics (1990)

From the August 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the present way of organising society cannot ensure that everyone has enough to eat. Millions go hungry in what the Times (10 June 1985) admitted is “a world which is awash with food surpluses”.

High-powered conferences of experts have failed to solve the problem. Reports and resolutions provide empty words for empty bellies. The objective proclaimed in 1974 by Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger that “within a decade no child will go to bed hungry, that no family will fear for its next days bread" (London Evening Standard, 5 November 1974) has been a mockery. There are now. both in absolute and relative terms, a greater number of hungry people in the world than there were then.

The efforts of voluntary relief agencies have fared no better. They face what they have called "donation fatigue' and openly admit that they have to rely on the actions of governments—of those in charge of the system that produces the problem in the first place.

Hiroshima every three days
People are dying in their millions from entirely preventable causes. The side-effects of hunger and malnutrition kill 15 million children a year. Fifteen million completely unnecessary deaths. Poverty killing more than war ever did. And yet the means of ending hunger are to hand. Susan George, Associate Director of the Transnational Institute and writer and broadcaster on world poverty, claims that providing for the needs of 15 million could be done by 3.6 millions tons of grain. World harvests of grain in 1980 were 1.556 million tons. To feed the 450 million estimated by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation to be malnourished would only take 128 million tons of cereals—8 percent of world harvests, less than the United States feeds to its livestock (world-wide, half the grain crop is fed to animals). In 1984 the FAO estimated global cereal carry-over stocks as 294 million tons (State of Food and Agriculture, 1984. p. 47).

That people are hungry because they are poor is a theme which runs through a series of essays written in the 1980s by Susan George and now published in a revised form as Ill Fares the Land (Penguin Books. £5.99). The book is written with a deep concern for the victims of a world where "the toll of hunger on human life is equal to a Hiroshima explosion every three days" (p. 223).

She catalogues in detail some of the seemingly endless contradictions of a world where profit is the driving force behind the production of the means of life. “Higher productivity—and higher profits— actually mean more hungry people . . . " Even a so-called success such as the "green revolution" brings in its wake a loss of land and employment for millions because it was "a means of increasing food production without upsetting entrenched interests (as well as a means of providing increased revenues to the Western firms supplying industrial inputs)" (p.184).

This has resulted in a situation where poor peasants now die of exposure in the Indian province of Bihar. Straw was formerly free for bedding, but the new breeds of cereals have shorter straws which now command a price as a raw material used in paper-making (to replace wood which is in short supply due to deforestation). At the same time, "substantial grain reserves exist partly because half the population is too poor to buy them" (p. 184).

However, while the descriptions of the scale and effect of the profit system are written with a humanitarian concern for the poor and the destitute. George's prescriptions for actions are deeply flawed. Having recognised that the economic power of the more industrially and economically advanced nations is used for the furtherance of profit, and that to this end the privileged elites of the "Third World" are willingly enlisted as allies, she fails to draw the obvious conclusion: if ensuring that all have enough to eat is not a technical problem but a political one, then the techniques and means of life must cease to be the property of a tiny privileged minority. They must be made the common property of the whole of humanity. Production must be directly for use and not for sale on a market where “the poor cannot express their needs in terms of money, the only language the market economy understands" (P. 6).

Third world elites
What George is doing is to decry the effects without removing the causes of those effects. Having, consciously or unconsciously, rejected a complete change in society she is forced back into attempts at reforming the present system. This results in her appealing to the self-interest of nationalists in less developed countries, to the economic self-interest of European capitalists (she has given up on the USA and Russia), and, most futile of all, for "justice".

She appeals to those elites in the Third World (short-hand for those areas of the world where capitalism is still in the process of being developed at the expense of the increasingly landless peasants) who are perceived to be "working for the betterment of their countries". These she calls "true nationalists". But, if as she argues, the system that dominates the world is increasingly global then the solutions to the problems it creates must also be global.

Capital must of its nature expand at the expense of other capitals. To advocate the implementation of schemes that are deliberately labour intensive (so as to provide work for the jobless peasant/worker in the making) is to invite disappointment when the system follows its own immutable laws. She is not unaware of these laws, describing the “trans national corporations" (TNCs) as operating as follows:

In a world of rising costs and diminishing profits, it becomes more important than ever for the industrialised countries and the TNCs to maintain and to reinforce their hegemony over the global economy. They must, from their point of view, increase their control over world production, and world markets . . . Those who believe that these companies have any object besides the enhancement of their own profits are making a serious mistake. (pp. 93-4).

If banks and international lenders see these firms as more reliable and more profitable than local Third World ones, and so give them better credit terms and loan facilities, it is unrealistic to expect them to act otherwise—they exist, after all, in the same profit-seeking economic environment. If in acting this way they "thereby indirectly prevent the creation and expansion of national firms which are short of working capital" (p. 102), nothing can be done about it; this is the way the capitalist system works.

What should be noted here is that we are being asked to take sides with the emergent capitalists in the less developed world—with the very group who control the state and have no compunction in using the military and police to "control" the desperate and hungry when they revolt (as Kaunda recently did in Zambia). Nationalists everywhere have always acted this way when they come to power and are strong enough to implement the rule of the class they represent, using the state "to extract as much wealth as possible from the countryside" (p. 215) (actually, from the labour-power of the people living there).

Giving this parasitic class in the making a sympathetic leg-up to join the first division of robbers will not solve the problems of the poor. George's dream of an improvement in the lot of the Third World poor through economic developmemt "independent" of the more developed capitalist countries is a non-starter. Not that the full development of a successful and prosperous capitalist system is a guarantee against hunger, as the existence of 20 million hungry Americans testifies (Scientific American, February 1987)

Who’s aiding who?

If her appeals for "independent" development in the Third world are unrealistic, her appeals to the power structures of the European Community are unnecessary. She tempts them with the following;

By espousing the cause of three-quarters of humanity. Europe would also, in the fullness of time, reap the more traditional commercial and financial benefits. (p. 68. emphasis added).

She need not worry. This kind of self-interested approach to aid has already been eagerly adopted by both the major British political parties. In a debate a few years ago on famine and debt in developing countries, Timothy Raison, Tory Minister for Overseas Development, told the House of Commons:

I believe that our approach to debt is sound. We have to work constructively in the world that exists. . . .  At the same time of course, we are concerned with British interests. We want to develop good relations and see stability increase and see potential markets grow . . . The aid trade provision enables us to respond flexibly to commercial opportunities . . . Over the last few years some £350 million of aid trade provision has resulted in British firms winning contracts overseas valued at more than £1,400 million. (Hansard. 11 June 1985. Vol 80. colls 779-780).

While in power the Labour Party also embrace "the world that exists" and the "commercial approach". Aid to the Third World is regarded as being in line with "British interests". Judith Hart. Labour Minister for Overseas Development, claimed an even better return than Raison's. This indirect subsidy to British capitalists cost £400m but resulted in £2,400 million's worth of exports—"growth for them means imports from us" (Times. 14 July. 1976).

The other main remedy Susan George relies on is a case for "justice"—an appeal to give the rapidly disappearing peasants a “fair" chance to help themselves. This amounts to trying to make the market system, which is driving them out of existence, work other than the way it must. To complain that TNCs "underpay" for Third World commodities is to ignore the fact that in any market buyers press for the lowest price while sellers press for the highest. Crying foul when the powerful exploit their advantage is no cure. The establishment of an "independent" enclave which would somehow circumvent the weak position of Third World producers is a chimera. The food producers of the EC and the USA, for example, can always as part of a potential trade war dump food on the world markets at prices which Third World peasants cannot compete with.

The only real hope for the hungry and exploited of the Third World lies in their realisation of the potential power they collectively have and organising consciously and politically with their fellow workers in the developed capitalist countries to democratically abolish capitalism and establish socialism. This entails the pursuit not of "justice" but of interest. Free men and women have no need of justice.

Gwynn Thomas