Notes by the Way: The Last Stage in the Old Austria (1938)

The Notes by the Way Column from the May 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Last Stage in the Old Austria

The last-minute resistance before the sudden collapse of Schuschnigg in face of the advance of Hitler into Austria gave a dramatic touch to that event, but also requires explanation. An article in the Nation (New York, April 2nd, 1938) provides the necessary details. It will be recalled that Schuschnigg met Hitler at Berchtesgaden and it was at once taken for granted that Austrian independence was already lost. Then, after a few days, Schuschnigg made a bold move to retrieve the situation. A plebiscite was to be taken on the maintenance of independence, and all anti-Nazi elements were called upon to rally round the Austrian Government on a policy of friendship towards Germany but no absorption. Why did the change take place? The answer is that, although Schuschnigg could get no foreign support against Hitler, an influential body of Austrian industrialists and landowners tried to organise resistance because they feared for their own position if Austria became a German province. Not sentiment but profit was their motive. The body in question included the Austrian Association of Industry and Trade, They submitted a memorandum to the Government and two of their members were promptly called into the Ministry which was to stake its existence on the fight for independence. The Nation gives lengthy extracts from the memorandum, some of which are reproduced below: —

  . . . we must defend the independence of Austria. The loss of our independence under present conditions in Germany would be disastrous for us. It would mean the extinction of large sections of Austrian industry, commerce, and the tourist trade. We have been able to reduce the restrictions dealing with foreign currency on account of the increase of exports and of income from abroad, especially from tourists. Our industries are largely dependent on exports. The German currency restrictions would endanger our exports. At the same time we could not expect to be privileged in the matter of distribution of raw materials, which are scarce in Germany. Most of our industries do not belong to those armament industries which are privileged.

The memorandum goes on to point out the interesting situation of the Austrian iron and steel industry and their opposition to absorption. The Austrian iron mines have a relatively low cost of production, iron and steel mills are near the mines, and many industrial plants have been built up on account of the cheap supply of iron and steel. All of this advantage would be lost if Austria came under the control of German iron and steel interests.

  We were opposed to attempts of the Stahlverein to close iron and steel mills which the Stahlverein controls in our country. We were and still are opposed to being subjected to the control of the German cartels and syndicates in the matter of iron and steel prices. Our machine industries will not be able to compete with German industries if we have to buy iron .and steel from the Ruhr mills. . . . Anyway we shall experience an immediate rise of iron and steel prices in the event of the Anschluss. We shall have to pay the German internal price, which always is considerably higher than the world market price or the price we have been paying. 

Austrian agriculture, like industry, would be sacrificed. Instead of buying cheap fodder abroad the Austrian farmers would have to buy dear fodder from Prussia and Pomerania.

The memorandum develops many other points, all directed to the one argument, that most Austrian industrialists and landowners were better off in an independent Austria: —

  We shall not be able to exert as strong pressure in the Prussian State Bureaucracy as can the large trusts of western and central Germany.

The Nation adds that several other industrial and handicraft organisations also sent resolutions and letters which urged Schuschnigg to refuse Hitler's pressure—"They furnish the key to Schuschnigg's surprisingly stubborn resistance—and to the necessity of Hitler's using military power to effect the Anschluss."

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The First Stage in the New Austria

In the long period after the Great War during which the Social Democrats were active and influential, Austrian industrial capitalists more or less adjusted themselves to the position of offering social reforms (largely at the expense of Austrian landowners and agricultural interests) in return for comparative industrial peace and order achieved with the help of the Social Democratic Party and trade unions.

With the world depression and consequent decline of markets the old situation no longer appealed to the weakened capitalists or to the strengthened landowners and farmers. The Social Democrats and the unions were crushed. Violent repression took the place of social reform. Dollfuss, and after him Schuschnigg, repudiated democracy and stood for the form of dictatorship known as the Corporate State.

Now a further stage begins with the entry of Hitler into Austria. German capitalist and landed interests required the crushing of their Austrian rivals and the Government they controlled. So Hitler and his lieutenants deliberately set out to placate the Austrian Social Democrats and Communists and former trade unions. Schuschnigg penalised the workers who fought for democracy in 1934, Hitler promises them reinstatement in their former jobs. Dollfuss used artillery against the blocks of low-rented flats put up by the Social- Democratic City Council of Vienna. Now the Nazis promise to go back to the programme of the Social Democrats.

General Goering, according to The Times correspondent in Vienna (The Times, April 2nd, 1938), has promised work to the Austrian unemployed, and Dr. Neubacher, the Nazi Burgomaster of Vienna, has lifted whole chunks from the former Social-Democratic programme. The Times Vienna correspondent reports him as follows:—

  Dr. Neubacher delivered a speech at the Vienna gasworks recently in which he promised big housing schemes on the lines of those which made Vienna famous under the Social-Democrats, extensive slum demolition, an extension of the municipal services, and the beginning of work on the promised Port of Vienna as soon as possible. He reinstated 80 workmen who had been dismissed because they fought with the Socialist Schutzbund against the Dollfuss Government in 1934, and declared that he did this not as an act of grace, but as a restitution of rights. 

The moral is obvious. Those who administer capitalism, whether by democratic or dictatorial methods, cannot ignore the views of the mass of the workers, but must seek their support or, at least, their tolerance of what is done. But will the workers be deceived for ever? Has Hitler discovered some new and infallible method of blinding the workers to their own class interests ? Plainly no, for, as is shown above, all that Hitler can do in Austria is to go back to the method employed during the period of influence of the Social Democratic party. The fact that he can think of no other and better method than promising the stock social reforms is proof positive that, sooner or later, the workers who have for the time being been deceived by Hitler, will see through him when they find that the promised social reforms leave capitalism unchanged.

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The Troubles of the Labour London County Council

The Labour Party majority, who control the London County Council, are in a sea of troubles. Trade Unions with members employed by the L.C.C. and the London Borough Councils complain that the joint meeting of the above bodies—dominated by Labour Councillors—curtly rejected their demand for increases of pay to compensate for the increase of prices. The Councillors, of course, are thinking of the rates. More expenditure means higher rates, and higher rates mean fewer votes for Labour candidates at the next elections.

We see masked nurses addressing meetings of nurses employed at L.C.C. hospitals, called to protest against their conditions of service. Mr. G. Vincent Evans, General Secretary of the National Union of County Officers, spoke at one such meeting, and is reported in the Daily Telegraph and Morning Post (April 6th, 1938):—

  . . . when the Nurses Charter was introduced . . . it was felt that the L.C.C. would set an example to the rest of the country.
  Instead, when the testing time came, the L.C.C. showed that such a spirit of leadership was sadly lacking. The result was the use of this inaction as a vicious and indefensible argument for defeating the Limitation of Hours Bill in the House of Commons.
  “It was left to the Middlesex County Council/' he went on, “to become the pioneers of this progressive movement of reform when it introduced the 48-hour working week. The lead was followed by many of the voluntary hospitals and other provincial county boroughs.
  "Surely the great trade unionist movement in London, and throughout the country, must feel that progress has been stultified."

Again the Rates!

Then we find tenants who are to be given the blessings of an L.C.C. housing scheme signing petitions of protest. The Daily Telegraph (March 28th) reports as follows:— . .

  Residents of Bethnal Green are protesting against a proposal by the L.C.C. to demolish their homes and to rehouse them in five-storey flats instead of in two-storey cottages, which they prefer.
  In a petition delivered recently to the King in Council, through the Home Secretary, on behalf of 4,000 persons, it was stated that the cost of the suggested five-storey blocks.would be greater than for two-storey cottages.
  “The argument that more people can be housed on a site by building blocks instead of houses has been blown sky high,” said Mr. William Catmur, on behalf of the petitioners. “The people are in revolt against flat-blocks and want houses with small gardens. Such houses can certainly be provided at no greater cost."
  The petition claims that the local authorities refuse to repair houses which could be repaired, and insist on ejecting the tenants, that they are destroying the businesses as well as the homes of many small shopkeepers, and that they are “behaving with the most outrageous disregard of the law."

In this case again, in spite of the argument used by the petitioners, it is probable that the five-storey flats are cheaper. Otherwise we must assume that the Labour Party, who are responsible for the scheme, have some abstract preference for flats, whether the workers like them or not. In any event, we can be quite certain that if the flats were like those privately-built ones available to people who can afford to pay, and if they were available at rents no higher than those paid now by the Bethnal Green tenants, the latter would raise no objection.

But the L.C.C., in spite of its Labour majority, cannot tackle the real problem—poverty caused by capitalism. All it can do is to nibble at the effects of poverty, hoping to convince the electors that this is better than leaving the L.C.C. to the Municipal Reformers. Labour leaders never learn the lesson that capitalism administered by Labour Councils is so little different that, after a few years, the electors turn again in desperation to the openly capitalist parties. So it will continue to be until the workers decide to have Socialism.

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Major Fey—A Liberal and a Communist Viewpoint

Major Fey, who committed suicide (or was perhaps murdered) when the Nazis entered Vienna, was one of those guilty of the brutal onslaught on the Viennese workers in February, 1934.

The News Chronicle correspondent in Vienna, Mr. John Segrue, was responsible for the following account, published in the News Chronicle on February 17th, 1934:—

  Vice-Chancellor Fey . . . organised the plan that goaded the workers into resistance. Last Sunday, in a speech at Stebersdors, near Vienna, he told the Heimwehr that Dr. Dollfuss was “one of them" and added that he intended to begin work in earnest against his enemies on the following day.

His “earnest work” was to mean artillery fire against workers' homes; and when the fighting was over Fey promised “scores of hangings all over Austria." It was indeed the British Government which actually intervened to stay the slaughter.

Now Fey is dead, victim of his own ambitions and perfidy (he was believed to have played false both to Dollfuss and to the Nazis).

A correspondent draws our attention to the way this event was reported in the Liberal Manchester Guardian and in the Communist Daily Worker (both dated March 17th, 1938).

In the Guardian Fey was given the headline, “Minister who Destroyed the Socialists.”

In the Daily Worker the headline ran: “Austrian Patriot Leader’s Suicide.”

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A Noble Lord on Tax-dodging

The Times recently published an article on tax-dodging, and showed how wealthy people employ the best legal brains to evade income tax and surtax. Other newspapers estimated the loss to the Treasury through this at £50 millions a year.

The Times then published a number of letters on the rights and wrongs of tax-dodging, one of the most enlightening being a letter from that representative of a very noble house, Lord Hugh Cecil. He argued that the tax-dodger is entitled to get away with anything, provided he keeps within the law. If the tax-dodger “acts openly and above board, and clearly conforms to the law, I can see no reason why he should not do anything the law allows in order to lighten the load of taxes.”

This is an ingenuous way of phrasing the claim that wealthy men are entitled to get round the plain intention of Parliament, provided that their lawyers can find the usual loophole. Such is patriotism.

The Times (April 1st, 1938) disclosed that “cases are on record in which members of the House of Commons, who have voted to impose taxes on others, have themselves resorted to evasive operations in order to avoid the very taxes to which they have consented. "

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Bernard Shaw Trips up

Bernard Shaw entertained the readers of the Daily Express (March 26th, 1938) by giving answers to eight questions on world affairs. He ridiculed national frontiers, attacked Hitler for Jew-baiting, denounced Nazi Nordic nonsense as being only an imitation of the “enormous arrogance” of the Jews in claiming to belong to God’s chosen race, expressed appreciation of Hitler’s book, "My Struggle” (“though it is a great pity that he did not read my works instead of Houston Chamberlain’s”), denied that there is any natural reason for the existence of a German Empire—or a British Empire—and thought that war between Britain and France and Germany will only break out "if Hitler loses his head, and is confronted by enemies who have not any heads to lose.”

Altogether a typical contribution. But on one point Shaw fell into a trap, as a reader of the Daily Express promptly pointed out. The question was about returning Germany’s colonies. In the course of his reply, he said: “My slogan is, ‘Africa for the Africans’.”

But it is only two years ago that Shaw was campaigning under the banner "Abyssinia for the Italians.”

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Winston Churchill has Second Thoughts on Spain

At the beginning of the Spanish War Churchill was all for Franco. He has gradually veered round until now, in the Evening Standard (April 5th, 1938), he writes gloomily of the dangers of a Franco victory for British Imperial interests, and regrets that opinion in England and France is so divided as to prevent any action being taken.

  A thoroughly Nazified Spain, retaining its German nucleus, may well be a cause of profound anxiety both to France and Britain. At any rate, it appears to be a matter upon which they should exert themselves, if indeed the faculty of action still resides among them.

It need hardly be said that Churchill’s motives never include any consideration for the exploited. He backed Franco from motives of ruling class sympathy with a dictator and now turns against him when British ruling class interests appear to be at stake.

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What British Seamen Owe to the Empire

If there were anything in the argument of the Imperialists about the advantages of belonging to a seafaring Empire, possessed of enormous naval power, surely the conditions of British seamen would demonstrate the truth or otherwise of their belief. The Times recently published some articles which showed a decidedly unattractive picture of those conditions, and on March 29th a letter was published from Lieutenant-Commander H. G. Boys-Smith, which contained the following: —

  May one who boards over a thousand ships every year (chiefly British and North European) express gratitude for the outspoken articles by your Labour Correspondent of “Ships and Men ” ?
  My opportunities for observation enable me to say, without fear of contradiction, that the accommodation provided for British crews is so much inferior to what is usually found in Scandinavian, Danish, Dutch, and German ships that it constitutes not only a grave wrong to our seamen but an equally grave reflection on British ship-owning interests.

He went on to confirm a statement made by another correspondent that shipowners’ representatives give "hints” that forecastle conditions must not be spoken of.

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Who is Father Christmas?

The Daily Herald (April 9th, 1938) reports that a certain wool merchant who recently died leaving £1,176,813, was known locally as' the Father Christmas of the textile industry, because he made generous gifts to his employees at Christmas time. It will never have occurred to this gentleman that he was only able to become a millionaire because his employees were making "generous gifts” of unpaid labour to him, not only at Christmas, but throughout the year.

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Capitalism's Welfare Work

A Mr. A. Hudson-Davies, who was formerly engaged in industrial welfare work, spoke at the Conference of Management Associations at Oxford on April 1st, 1938, about the employer’s view of welfare work. He confirmed what Socialists have always argued. The following report is taken from the Manchester Guardian (April 2nd, 1938): —

  Mr. A. Hudson-Davies said that under the present dispensation their main job as managers was undoubtedly to find profits for the shareholders, adding: “All this business about welfare activities and improving working conditions is really a matter of making profits in an enlightened way, and there is no point in making a song and dance about it because it costs only a fraction of the outgoings of the company.”

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Facts and Fiction About the Empire

The Sunday Chronicle (April 3rd, 1938) had articles by two well-known people, both of whom touched on the question of the standard of living of British workers. They flatly contradicted each other.

Sir Philip Gibbs, in “The Story of the British Empire,” said: —

  Youth in Britain to-day . . . well clothed, well fed, well housed . . . owes everything to the Pioneers of Empire.

Mr, Duncan Sandys, M.P., in “Politics from the Inside,” wrote about the Children’s Minimum Council, the aim of which is to ensure “that no child shall, by reason of the poverty of its parents, be deprived of at least the minimum of food and other requirements necessary for full health.” They gave a luncheon, the menu being based on the British Medical Association’s minimum diet necessary for health, costing, at present prices, 6s. 6d. a week per person. Mr. Sandys says: —

  . . . it is unhappily the fact that even this frugal fare is beyond the reach of every unemployed man without separate means who has a wife and children to support. What is more, very many of the lower paid wage earners are just as badly off . . . there are actually over four million people in this country who cannot afford to spend more than 4s. a week on food.

It would seem that Sir Philip Gibbs' pioneers of Empire might have been better employed putting things right at home than in extending capitalism’s evils to the unfortunate inhabitants of other countries.

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Who Makes Politics Disorderly ?

After Mr. Shinwell had slapped the face of Commander Bower in the House of Commons the latter (who, unfortunately, suffered some injury through the blow) issued a message to a Conservative Parliamentary candidate, saying that Mr. Shinwell’s action is an indication of the kind of disorder we may expect when Socialists get power. As Mr. Shinwell’s Party is the Labour Party, not the Socialist Party, and as it is committed to reforming capitalism, not abolishing it, the reference to Socialism by Commander Bower should be taken as an indication of the profound ignorance of Conservative M.P.s. But regarding the conduct of M.P.s, there are a few other things to be said.

In the first place, the Conservatives themselves have a black record. The Conservative Evening Standard (April 6th, 1938) says this: —

  Commander Bower’s taunt and Mr. Shinwell’s reply, with physical violence, were equally unjustifiable.
   It is . . . an unpleasant feature of the present huge Government majority that there are a number of Conservative members who are utterly unmannerly in their treatment of the Opposition, and who are ready to hurl any taunt, however offensive, across the floor of the House.

The News Chronicle (April 5th, 1938) recalls that. “for systematic brawling” it is necessary to go back to the early ’eighties (the Liberals, Tories and the Irish then had the House to themselves), when hardly a night in the whole session was free from "scenes,” and that the late Lord Cushenden “once threw a book at Winston Churchill and hit him in the eye.” In April, 1924, Mr. Amery hit Mr. Buchanan, and more recently Mr. Beckett (now a Fascist) ran off with the Mace.

When we turn from the Members of Parliament, who, presumably, ought to be able to set a good example to their constituents, and examine the conduct of the constituents themselves, we of the S.P.G.B. can say that behaviour of audiences at meetings is good.

But, then, the S.P.G.B. makes a point of allowing questions and opposition at propaganda meetings and the audiences appreciate the fact that no attempt is being made to fetter the expression of opinion.
It is interesting to notice the tribute paid by the Commissioner of Police for London to the workers who march in demonstrations. (See Report for 1936, Stationery Office, Is., p. 25.) He comments on the increased number of meetings in 1936 arising out of events in Abyssinia and Spain and out of the March of Unemployed, and says :

  But these meetings were in every case orderly, and the conduct of the unemployed marchers beyond reproach.

Shinwell and Bower should not be above learning from their constituents how to behave.

Edgar Hardcastle