Mr. Thurtle misfires (1946)

From the October 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Ernest Thurtle, Labour M.P. for Shoreditch, sometime member of the Fabian Society and I.L.P., and sometime belligerent war-supporter turned pacifist turned war supporter, writes a weekly column of pontifical political comment and behind-the-scenes chit-chat for Beaverbrook’s Sunday Express under the title “ Labour Point of View.” On Sunday, September 1st, he wrote the following: —

"Sympathy for the little fellow struggling against the big one is natural, but in the present dispute between the little and big unions of the transport workers common sense appears to be on the side of the big battalion.

Mr. Frank Snelling, the national organiser of the little union, which is fighting so spiritedly, is what is known in Labour circles as an S.P.G.B’er. Decoded, this means a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, a strict Marxist sect of microscopic membership.

Because the little party had so few members, who oozed Socialist self-righteousness, the larger movement was wont to refer to them derisively as the Small Party of Good Boys.”

That is all Mr. Thurtle has to say. He gives no facts about the dispute and no reasons why he believes that all the common sense is on one side. He does not mention that the S.P.G.B. has members in the T. & G.W.U. as well as in the N.U.P.W., and it is evident that his sole object in. referring to the dispute was to provide a peg on which to hang the unoriginal remarks about the S.P.G.B.; from which we conclude that his anguished outcry is really due to some of the “microscopic membership” of the S.P.G.B. having got under his skin some time or other.

We thank him for one thing. He concedes that the kind of self-righteousness we ooze is “Socialist”—our complaint about Mr. Thurtle and his party is that Socialism is the last thing they can be self-righteous about.

Nearly all of the remainder of Mr. Thurtle’s column was devoted to a penitent’s lengthy explanation of his own errors.

“Let me confess,” he wrote, "that I, along with other Labour candidates at the General Election, in stressing the importance of good relations with Russia, avowed confidently that a Labour Government would win the co-operation of the Soviet. We believed this. How wrong we were !”

Yet he still cannot see that the capitalist clash of interests is not altered by having British capitalism run by a Labour Government and Russian State capitalism run by a so-called Communist Party. He still Ands the situation ‘‘puzzling.” If he had any Socialism to ooze he would not have believed the nonsense he told the electors. (Incidentally, as he obviously obtained votes under a misapprehension, what about emulating his father-in-law, the late Mr. George Lansbury, and resigning to give the electors a chance to say whether they still want him as their M.P.?)

There are occasions when Mr. Thurtle, in his efforts to coin a telling phrase, tells more of the truth than he ever intended. On April 14th, in his Express article, he congratulated Mr. Dalton on having “achieved another Budget success ” ; but he added the following two-edged remark: —

"His 1946 favours are neither large nor numerous, but they have been distributed with great skill. It needs much knowledge of human nature to be able to please so many with so little." (Our italics.)

That final sentence should be treasured as a fitting emblem of Labour Governments—but it needs to be read alongside another saying; that you can’t fool all the people all the time.

P. S.