The Unemployed are Tough (1942)

From the November 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Writing of the commando raid on Dieppe, the News Chronicle reporter says: “… These boys from the prairies—their average age is only about 23—had waited a year and a half for this chance to fight. Fighting is part of their character. They had grown up in hard times—the great depression and the prairie dust storms had meant long unemployment for many of them.”—-(News-Chronicle, 21/8/42.)

This is the first time we had heard that unemployment made workers “tough.” With this important discovery before them, capitalists will now no longer worry about the effect of unemployment on the morale of the workers. That is, of course, if there is going to be any unemployment in the wonderful post-war world, which has already half been built up—in words.

R. M.