Hackney S.P.G.B. Lecture
An interested audience heard college lecturer Anne Young describe her impressions of an eight weeks tour of the United States in the course of her recent lecture on "My American Journey," at Hackney Trades Hall, to the Socialist Party of Great Britain's Hackney branch.
She had conversed on a diverse range of subjects with Americans of many different types, ranging from housewives to University professors, said Miss Young.
She was received with enthusiastic hospitality by members of the S.P.G.B.'s Companion Party, the World Socialist Party of the U.S.A., which this year celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Extremely active, its membership is widespread and its views highly respected. It had recently acquired an influx of keen youthful members. Its official journal The Western Socialist was displayed in many public and University libraries and regular radio broadcasts by the Boston branch, brought the message of Scientic Socialism to several million people.
Negro integration problems, she continued, were becoming acute in the North. Riots arose from slum conditions, poverty, frustrations and hopelessness of the young Negroes, many of whom were well-trained, but could not obtain jobs. There was little integration in housing, although Rich Negroes, who looked down on their poorer brothers, were being accepted in the better-class "white" neighbourhoods. The Negro problem was more a class than a race problem. In the South liberal intellectuals, pained by charges of ill-treatment of Negroes claimed, with justification, that the economic plight of Negroes in the North was worse.
"Immature Workers"
American workers are industrially very militant and their unions efficient, but politically they are immature. The recent airline strike was settled favourably to the employees and now pay claims in a wide range of industries were being made and many strikes expected. Prices are high and rising. Many workers do two jobs to earn enough for better amenities and to educate their children. Much buying is done on credit. Job security is low, employment contracts are mostly yearly and many workers speculate on a small scale on the Wall-street Stock Exchange, imagining themselves as capitalists and hoping, like British workers with football pools, to gain fortune and security.
U.S.A, like Britain, is experiencing a balance of payments crisis. A television speech by President Johnson sounded, word for word, like a speech by Harold Wilson, with the accent on more production, harder work, more saving and wage restraint. There was however a considerable hard core of unemployment in some areas. Many school-leavers could not obtain work and children were encourage to remain longer at school.
The Vietnam War, she claimed, was really a conflict with China over control of the wealth of South-East Asia, and was causing much rebelliousness among youth. Many, who could afford it, sent their sons to college University thus avoiding conscription. Many Negroes and poor Southern "whites" had been drafted in Vietnam. Anti-war feeling was rising with the increase of casualties, but, despite the gravity of the situation and the opposition of Robert Kennedy, it was likely that President Johnson would retain the support of the electorate.
Quoting American journals. Miss Young reviewed aspects of education, medical care, crime and other subjects and concluded:
"The American workers face the same problems as workers wherever Capitalism holds sway. They strive for a lifetime to achieve security. The acquisition of money continually dominates their thinking. Blind to the basic realities of the Capitalist system, they have yet to learn that their problems are inherent in it and can only be abolished by ending the social system which breeds them, and replacing it by World Socialism, a moneyless, classless society."
"Immature Workers"
American workers are industrially very militant and their unions efficient, but politically they are immature. The recent airline strike was settled favourably to the employees and now pay claims in a wide range of industries were being made and many strikes expected. Prices are high and rising. Many workers do two jobs to earn enough for better amenities and to educate their children. Much buying is done on credit. Job security is low, employment contracts are mostly yearly and many workers speculate on a small scale on the Wall-street Stock Exchange, imagining themselves as capitalists and hoping, like British workers with football pools, to gain fortune and security.
U.S.A, like Britain, is experiencing a balance of payments crisis. A television speech by President Johnson sounded, word for word, like a speech by Harold Wilson, with the accent on more production, harder work, more saving and wage restraint. There was however a considerable hard core of unemployment in some areas. Many school-leavers could not obtain work and children were encourage to remain longer at school.
The Vietnam War, she claimed, was really a conflict with China over control of the wealth of South-East Asia, and was causing much rebelliousness among youth. Many, who could afford it, sent their sons to college University thus avoiding conscription. Many Negroes and poor Southern "whites" had been drafted in Vietnam. Anti-war feeling was rising with the increase of casualties, but, despite the gravity of the situation and the opposition of Robert Kennedy, it was likely that President Johnson would retain the support of the electorate.
Quoting American journals. Miss Young reviewed aspects of education, medical care, crime and other subjects and concluded:
"The American workers face the same problems as workers wherever Capitalism holds sway. They strive for a lifetime to achieve security. The acquisition of money continually dominates their thinking. Blind to the basic realities of the Capitalist system, they have yet to learn that their problems are inherent in it and can only be abolished by ending the social system which breeds them, and replacing it by World Socialism, a moneyless, classless society."
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