Notes by the Way: No Labour or Materials for Deep Bomb-Proof Shelters (1940)

The Notes by the Way Column from the October 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

No Labour or Materials for Deep Bomb-Proof Shelters

Long before the war was entered into Professor Haldane and others were warning the Government that air raids on the scale witnessed in Abyssinia and Spain would necessitate deep bomb-proof shelters being built. On various grounds those whose job it was supposed to be to provide protection rejected the demand. Now that the raids are here and people who can find no safety or sleep aboveground are crowding into the underground railways at night the Government finds that in any event “we have not the materials or labour for effectual burrowing.”—(Manchester Guardian, September 24th, 1940.)

Some pertinent comments have been made on this belated discovery, one by Mr. Lloyd George and others by the City Editor of the Daily Herald, and Mr. R. R. Stokes, Labour M.P. for Ipswich : —

“In a newspaper article to-day Mr. Lloyd George describes as “sheer nonsense” the Government view that deep shelters cannot be provided at present. He points out that the Spaniards dug their deep shelters at the time when they were actually being bombed, that we have 800,000 unemployed to meet the labour problem, and that we have enough material to make the roofs of the shelters able to bear the pressure upon them. Mr. Lloyd George is too old a campaigner to make such statements without sound evidence up his sleeve.

Nor is he the only one. Mr. R. R. Stokes, the Labour member for Ipswich, himself an engineer, is to ask Sir John Anderson whether he is aware that competent engineers believe we could dig deep bombproof tunnels for the whole of London’s population at a cost of £120,000,000. If such statements can be substantiated, and particularly if it can be shown that we have enough materials, the Government will find itself in a weak position, for it has already abandoned by implication its view that the principle of deep shelters is wrong. It did that when it countenanced the closing of the Holborn-Aldwych Underground line, which ran its last train last night. If it is right to turn this tunnel over to the public as a deep shelter, why not make others ?”—(Manchester Guardian, September 23rd.)

This is what the City Editor of the Daily Herald has to say about the scarcity of cement: —

“One of the authorities’ professed reasons for not supplying London with more underground shelters is an alleged shortage of building materials, particularly cement.

To tell the public flatly that cement supplies cannot be obtained is highly misleading. Our cement output is large, and the Government itself can and does decide how much should be used for what purpose.

If it wished to use a certain quota for shelters, it could do so.

Secondly, the public should realise that our cement manufacturing capacity has been restricted for years past by the Cement Ring—which includes the great combine, Associated Portland Cement. The Chamberlain Government allowed this ring persistently to limit our output capacity in the interests of high prices and profits.

For instance, in the summer of 1939 Associated Portland Cement bought a cement factory at Hartlepool and closed it down on the ground that its capacity was “redundant.”

In the previous November Lord Wolmer, chairman of the Cement Makers’ Federation, made a speech loudly lamenting the “surplus capacity” in the industry, and the “influx of newcomers.” This speech was believed to have succeeded in preventing a big new cement plant being put up.

And now the people are told that there is not enough cement for proper shelters.

Apologists for the ring, though admitting its restriction policy, argue that the industry would have greatly increased its capacity before the war if Mr. Chamberlain and Sir John Anderson had been willing to place firm long-term contracts for cement to be used for shelter purposes. Even this our pre-war Government refused to do.”—(Daily Herald, September 24th, 1940.)

* * *

The Land of “Socialism”— Russia

“The first sentences under the recent decree making directors, engineers and others liable to imprisonment for defective production were announced here to-day. Three men were sentenced to five, six and eight years respectively on charges of producing faulty condensers.

A decree provides that persons charged with loafing or leaving work will be tried by a judge alone, not, as hitherto, by a judge and a factory delegate.”— Reuter.—(News Chronicle, August 17th, 1940.)

* * *

“Intelligent Life”

From an interview with the Astronomer Royal:

“The Astronomer Royal declares that vegetation exists on Mars. He affirms that intelligent life may have been there in the past, but there is no indication of it now.

So the conclusion of the Astronomer Royal is this. Conditions in which intelligent life was possible have existed on Mars. They will exist in Venus. But in all our planetary system at this moment, the Earth is the only place where we can be sure intelligent life does exist”.—(Sunday Express, September, 1940.)

* * *

Two Views of “Hospitality”

From the London Correspondent of the Manchester Guardian : —

“Meanwhile Londoners continue to use the Underground stations as shelters in spite of official discouragement. There is really strong feeling behind this, and not only in East London, where the lack of deep public shelters is most felt. Everybody with whom I discuss the matter is filled with admiration and pity for the people who come so far and endure such discomfort to sleep in peace.

I cannot remember any time for years when there has been among the luckier section of the population here such a vivid realisation of the social injustice which gives the less lucky section rickety houses in which no safety can be found and rickety incomes which give them no hope of escape to something safer. Middle-class indifference to working-class hardship has always been mostly a matter of ignorance, but there is no ignorance in this case. All of us know now what it feels like to be lonely and exposed in air raids. The demand for deep shelters and decent shelters comes from us all.”— (Manchester Guardian, September 23rd.)

From a letter to the News Chronicle: —

“On Wednesday at 2 a.m., with a party of about 30 people, mostly women residents and servants from a neighbouring street, I was evacuated at a moment’s notice to a luxury hotel in Park Lane. Many of us were in night clothes ; all of us had had a shock. The hotel lounge was crowded with people in evening dress, smoking, eating and drinking. No one took the slightest notice of us except a hall porter who, when approached, told us to sit on the staircase. No comfort or refreshment of any kind was offered, and it was with difficulty, after half an hour’s insistence, that I was able to buy some cigarettes.

What would have been our reception in an East End home ?

Mary Glasgow. S.W.3.

P.S.—I was wrong in saying “no comfort or refreshment was offered.” At one point a gentle elderly lady came with a bag of dog biscuits asking whether there was any animal with us.

—(News Chronicle, September 23rd.)

* * *

Dean Inge on Hitler and Napoleon

“There is a delicious story in John Bailey’s Diaries. An old don was presented to Napoleon during the Peace of Amiens. On his return his friends asked him what he thought of the Emperor.

“Oh,” he replied, “you could see that he is not a University man!” That was the donnish way of saying that he was not a gentleman ; Wellington said the same.

Napoleon, though a genius, was certainly a cad. He was utterly unscrupulous and immoral. His soldiers admired him, but he never made a friend. The two men with whom he could not dispense, Talleyrand and Fouché, both betrayed him, as he knew they would. His two wives were as unfaithful to him as he was to them. He left a legacy to a man who tried to kill Wellington. “A shabby thing to do,” said the Duke.

Nevertheless, he never descended to such depths of villainy as Hitler. For he was Emperor of the French, and the French, though they have their faults like other people, are not savages.

Hitler, whose real name, if he has a name, for his father was a bastard, is Schicklgruber, is a criminal of a rather uncommon type.

He is an absolutely shameless liar, but he is also a wholesale murderer. On June 30th, 1934, he organised a massacre of inconvenient friends, who had raised him to power. It is believed that about 700 were killed. Since then, he is responsible for the deaths of innumerable Jews, Communists, Poles, and others. He is the perfect criminal.”

— (Evening Standard, September 23rd, 1940.)

Napoleon, we notice, was immoral. The Dean curiously does not mention Napoleon’s conqueror, Nelson, in this connection. Incidentally, it may be observed that it has pleased various prominent men in recent times to gloss over the vices of Hitler and his ally, Mussolini. Lord Rothermere, for example, was for years an admirer of and apologist for Hitler. In 1933 (Daily Mail, July 10th, 1933), Rothermere was saying : —

“The world’s greatest need to-day is realism. Hitler is a realist. He has saved his country from the ineffectual leadership of hesitating, half-hearted politicians. He has infused into its national life the unconquerable spirit of triumphant youth.”

Six months later when he was running his “Hurrah! for the Blackshirts” campaign, and telling Daily Mail readers to join Mosley’s organisation (Daily Mail, January 15th, 1934), Germany and Italy were held out as models to be followed.

* * *

Pointed Remarks about Lord Rothermere

A correspondent, writing to the News Chronicle (September 20th, 1940), makes some telling observations : —

“In view of the fuss raised about Gracie Fields one notes with interest the fact that Viscount Rothermere is residing quietly in America. Was it not this reactionary who proclaimed not so long ago that Hitler was “no ogre” but, on the contrary, “exuded good fellowship,” and oh that there was “no man in Europe in whose judgment he (Rothermere) would sooner trust ?”

Did not his Lordship, on one famous occasion instruct his readers to vote for Mosley ? Funny, that the noble Viscount should not happen to be in England in these exhilarating days !

* * *

Constructive Franco and Generous Balbo

This game of praising the dictators still goes on. When Marshal Balbo died in an air battle in Lybia (or was got out of the way by Mussolini as other reports have it) Mr. Ward Price, in the Daily Mail (July 1st, 1940), ended a flattering article on him with the words: —

“A frank, generous spirit, who lived dangerously, Marshal Italo Balbo was an adversary of the kind that Britons instinctively respect.”

and the Times (September 25th, 1940), could write about Franco’s “wise policy of reconstruction” in Spain.

The Manchester Guardian (July 1st, 1940), had this comment to make about “chivalrous” Balbo : —

“He was, in fact, one of those Fascist Rases, or “bosses,” who in the period of the “March to Rome” fought for Fascism and carried it to success by the most brutal and unscrupulous means against its political opponents. Cesare Rossi and Finzi said that Balbo organised the bludgeoning of the dissident Fascist deputy Misuri when he tried to expose abuses in the Fascist party. Certainly it was Balbo, the Ras of Ferrara and head of the Fascist Militia, who in August, 1923, sent the notorious order to the Fascist Secretary of his city about how to deal with some Socialists who had been acquitted after being kept in prison without trial for two and a half years. They were to be got out of Ferrara, but if they persist in remaining, thus causing unrest, they must be bludgeoned, not to excess, but methodically, until they make up their minds to go. . . . The police will do well to persecute them by frequent arrests, every week at least, … if there should be any beatings (which will be conducted “in style”) there is no desire to see prosecutions instituted.”

As for Franco’s wise policy of reconstruction in Spain, Mr. William Munday, for many years Daily Mail correspondent in Spain, writes as follows : —

“It is dangerous to think aloud in the cafés, and Franco has carried out a big political clean-up. Spies are everywhere, ready to inform on the indiscreet. There is no room in the gaols for all the political prisoners, so they are left at large and collected as wanted.

All roads out of Madrid are well policed, and travellers are closely scrutinised by keen-eyed Civil Guards, who stop cars and demand papers. Railway tickets are only sold against safe conduct permits.

The result of all this is that Madrid is a vast rabbit warren in which are hidden hundreds of enemies of the regime, unable to escape. The police drag-net makes its daily haul.

That is Spain to-day. Spaniard against Spaniard. Families split up.”—(Daily Mail, August 6th, 1940.)

If Franco is trying to improve this desperate situation in Spain he certainly ought to; he waged civil war, and was largely responsible for causing it.

* * *

Russian Oil and German Bombers

Although it is reported (News Chronicle, September 4th, 1940) that Russian shipyards are building numerous tankers for transporting Russian oil from Black Sea ports into Germany, it may be that so far comparatively little Russian oil has been supplied to Germany. On the other hand, the Russo-German Pact was partly designed to increase the supply of materials to Germany, and it was said that on the anniversary of the Pact the Russian Press emphasised the value of the Pact “as a weapon against Britain’s blockade.”-(Daily Herald, August 24th, 1940.)

While this is going on the Communists indignantly protest when British oil firms go on supplying oil to Japan to be used in the war against China. The principle is the same in both cases, the sordid capitalist principle that all trade, including trade in means of destruction, is legitimate. This is not a principle that Socialists have ever adopted or condoned.

* * *

The Future of Gold

The Nazi Minister of National Economy, Funk, in a recent speech in Berlin, boasted that “gold will play no role in future as a basis for European currencies,” and again “a currency does not depend on its gold cover, but on the value which the State gives it,” but the Nazi Government’s actions show how little it believes in Funk’s doctrine, for Gerrmany has gone to extreme lengths in the past year to seize gold in all the occupied countries.

Similarly the Russian Government is now disputing with the British and American Governments the possession of gold held in London and New York on behalf of the Baltic countries overrun by Russia. Molotov, in a recent speech, addressed angry words to both Governments about “these illegal acts.”— (Daily Worker, August 2nd, 1940.)

It all shows how little the Russian and German Governments believe in the possibility of capitalism being overthrown as a result of the war, and how little they believe even in the likelihood that a better basis can be found for capitalist trade than the gold basis.

* * *

Further Progress of the Red Army

“Marshals of the Red Army are in future to wear a five-pointed star consisting of 31 diamonds in a gold and platinum mounting. The largest of the diamonds will be one of 2.62 carats.”—Reuter.—(Manchester Guardian, September 4th, 1940.)

* * *

From a Communist Manifesto Secretly Circulated in Italy

The Daily Worker (July 8th, 1940), published a manifesto of the Italian Communists. It is interesting to see that they at least have not been taken in by Nazi-Fascist talk of the need for “Lebensraum.”

“The Fascist potentates declare that we must win supremacy in the Mediterranean, that we must defeat British plutocracy so as to put an end to our poverty and tribulations. What a brazen lie ! Our country possesses sufficient natural riches to satisfy the lives of our people.

The overthrow of British plutocracy is the job of the British people. Our job is to overthrow the Italian Fascist plutocracy who, like vampires, suck the blood of our people.”

The manifesto does not contain any of the specious doctrines by which the Communists here and in Russia justified the invasion of Finland and the Baltic States.

* * *

What is Happening in France? A Question to the Communists

The Communist Party is in rather a dilemma about happenings in France. On the one side the Communists declare that the Communist movement in unoccupied France is strong and popular, and on the other that the Petain Government is very weak. Why then do not the French Communists put their “mass movement” theories into practice and seize power ? Who is there to stop them? Not Petain, for “the Petain Government’s authority is extremely weak” (World News and Views, August 24th, 1940), while “there is widespread opposition to the Petain regime, especially among the industrial workers, demobilised soldiers and unemployed, in those areas where the Communist Party’s influence was strong before the war, e.g., Toulouse, Lyons and Marseilles.”

Similar information of “serious and widespread popular unrest” is reported in the Daily Worker (August 16th, 1940).

If, then, Petain could not stop such widespread unrest, who is stopping it ? Who is preventing the Communists from carrying out their usual plan of taking over the Government. Can it be Stalin or Stalin’s friend, Hitler?

Truly a curious situation.

Edgar Hardcastle