Your Gods, O Israel. (1940)

From the March 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Open Letter to the Rank and File of the Labour Party.

Believe me, you misunderstand the outlook of our Party; I know you have heard your leaders “slanged” from our soap-boxes from time to time. But I would ask you on this point to remember that the object in view is always to “point a moral.” Remember also, that criticism is often founded on pretty acid comments derived from Labour Party sources. I recollect on one occasion discussing some obvious careerists in the Labour Party with a late M.P. In richest Scots he finally wailed, “Yes. There are aching hear-r-ts within the Labour Party itself”—an admission that would hardly have been made other than in a private discussion.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has the utmost respect for the sincere, self-sacrificing rank-and-filers in your Party; its regret is only the deeper that a strong fund of Good Intentions should only be assisting to pave the way to an even worser Hell than Capitalism has hitherto prepared for our class.

The trouble with you and your fellows is twofold; first, you lack SOCIALIST knowledge; second, you are perpetually on the look-out for “leaders.”

As to the first point: You seldom grasp what Socialism involves (READ OUR “OBJECT” carefully); even those among you who have a fairly adequate conception allow your “leader ” to label their sorry mess of meagre Reforms as “Socialism” ; those among you who seek refuge in “Well, they will help to build up Socialism,” should seriously consider the case of Russia, where sweeping Reforms have resulted in a State Capitalism undistinguishable in essential features (more especially as regards personal liberty) from its unholy Nazi twin brother. And remember, for years the S.P.G.B. has clearly indicated the real nature of Russian developments, while your feeble leaders were crying aloud for close union with “Peace-loving Russia.”

Which brings me again to this question of leadership.

Mr. Hugh Dalton served in a Labour Government. A year ago, writing in “your” official Organ, Dalton had the effrontery to declare that (through Arthur Henderson’s “policy”) “Labour had wiped War off the map.” Dalton in any case is not lacking in historical knowledge. He must have known that in 1935 a letter was addressed to George Lansbury “by 37 Indians resident in London, drawing attention to the fact that during the period of the last Labour Party Government, of which he was a member, approximately 4,000 lives of unarmed people were destroyed by the armed action of the British authorities in India.” . . .” Aching hear-r-ts!”

Incidentally this same George Lansbury has his heroes too. “I think history will record HERR HITLER as one of the GREAT MEN of our time.” His book, “My Quest for Peace,” must have fallen pretty flat for this not to have been more commented upon. Still, the one-time leader of His Majesty’s Opposition had given his rank and file a tip for hurling the dart right near the bull’s-eye of GREATNESS.

My dear young friend, I do not deny that Arthur Henderson knew his way about the political world and was an excellent father. I would not question that Hugh Dalton was a first-rate lecturer in a mildly “Left” College, that “good old George” has a Big ‘Eart, but I ask you to carefully consider whether these qualities entitle them to your often pathetic, dog-like, wistful cry for guidance.

Yes. Plainly and plumply, the S.P.G.B. repudiates Leadership.

Ponder for a moment the following, culled from the Bristol Evening Post: —

“Young lady typists were extra keen to secure some memento of the King’s visit. One obtained the serviette he used, while the King’s cigarette-end and the match he used to light his cigarette were secured by another. One girl, not to be outdone, poured the remains of the King’s teacup into a bottle, which she took home.”

Pretty disgusting, most of you, I feel sure, will say. But can’t you see that this particular piece of reaction to Royalty is only an extreme outcome of submission to leadership; these typists are rotten ripe for a Heil Churchill, Heil Pollitt regime. Then there is Mr. Dollan, who wrote in Forward:—”No scarcity of commodities; Plenty for all. . . . If that is the economic doctrine of King Edward, he will have plenty of assistance from Socialists in carrying it into effect.”

Lansbury holds that “The King is as good a Socialist as Bernard Shaw.” (As a matter of fact he is, but George didn’t mean it like that.)

Ponder carefully the two following statements : “We all love great men; love, venerate, and bow down submissive.” (Carlyle). “The human race is gradually learning the simple lesson that the people as a whole are wiser for the public good than any privileged race of men, however refined and cultivated they have ever been, or by any possibility can ever become” (Lewis Morgan, in “Ancient Society”).

In the first lies embedded the real creed of your “leaders,” however they may protest otherwise to you when the election job is on hand. In that creed, slick Labour leaders are helping to prepare new horrors for their misguided followers.

Lewis Morgan (first among ethnologists) proclaimed a creed which pervades and informs with Life the stern political frame of Socialist doctrine as laid down in our “eight points.”

Which will you choose? Never was a time when choice was more incumbent upon you.

Yours in the Galling Chains of the Working Class Fraternity,

Augustus Snellgrove