Notes by the Way: Are the Labour voters Socialists? (1930)

The Notes by the Way Column from the September 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are the Labour voters Socialists? 

Dr. A. Salter, Labour M.P., stated in an article in the Daily Herald (May 2nd), that not 10 per cent. of the electors are Socialist. He said :—

“Labour candidates polled only 36 per cent. of the total votes at the last election, and of that 36 per cent. how many were those of convinced Socialists? I wish I could believe that 10 per cent. of the people of this country desire the establishment of a Socialist Commonwealth !”

Dr. Salter correctly concludes that in face of this the Government has no mandate to introduce Socialism. But in that case, why are they in office, and why is Dr. Salter in Parliament?

* * *

A Labour paradise.

Bermondsey has long had a Labour majority on the Council. The uselessenss of the Labour Party’s policy of reforming capitalism is well illustrated by the following facts about Bermondsey, submitted in evidence to the Licensing Commission by Dr. Salter, M.P. :—

“One in seven of its residents is in receipt of Poor Law Relief. The population is homogeneous in the sense that there are no social strata as in most townships. The middle classes have long since removed from the district, and, owing to obvious residential disadvantages, a steady efflux has been going on for years of all those who could afford to remove to a more open and more desirable neightbourhood. Clerks and artizans have gone, and to-day the people left are almost wholly belonging to the unskilled and casual waterside labour classes. The middle class element is represented only by a small handful of clergy and doctors. There is no resident solicitor or barrister, no civil engineer, architect, or accountant. Most of the non-conformist ministers live outside the borough, and there is no cab-rank or bookshop.”

“Wages are very low, and the average figure for regularly employed adult male workers is well under £3 a week. At the end of 1928 and beginning of 1929 I made an investigation into the wages of 860 successive male panel patients, seen by me with regard to wage rates. I found that the average wage of those in regular employment amounted to £2 16s. 4d. per week.”

“Parts of the borough are very densely covered with a network of small, closely-packed streets and alleyways, while in other districts there are acres of high block dwellings of five or six stories, where the density of the population amounts to between 400 and 500 per acre.”

* * *

Railwaymen's leaders win a "victory" in the Irish Free State.

The officials of the National Union of Railwaymen have won a great “victory,” having obtained recognition from the Irish Omnibus Co. As is usual in such cases what the members have gained is not obvious.

The Great Southern Railway recently bought out the road transport companies which were robbing them of their best paying traffic. They promptly celebrated that move by attacking the wages and conditions of the workers in their road transport concern, the Irish Omnibus Company. The men struck work in April and succeeded eventually in getting the railwaymen to come to their assistance.

The N.U.R. officials had resisted a strike movement among their Irish Free State railway members, but were compelled to recognise the railway strike after it had begun. They then threatened a general strike for Tuesday, July 22nd.

A meeting took place—in secret—between the two companies and the N.U.R. leaders. It was followed by Mr. Cramp’s announcement of a great victory. The terms were that the railway strike was called off, all railway strikers were reinstated, and the N.U.R. was granted official recognition by the Irish Omnibus Co. No guarantee was given for the immediate or ultimate re-instatement of all the ‘bus company strikers, and nothing is said about the wage and other questions which led to the ‘bus strike in the first instance.

As we have often pointed out, the only saieguard against this kind of thing is that the workers on strike should keep the negotiations under their own control, and not entrust them to leaders to conduct in secret with power to accept whatever terms they think fit.

It need hardly be added that the Irish Free State Government, the Government for which misguided Irish workers fought helped the employers just as the British Government used to do before the Irish Free State became “free.”

* * *

St. Thomas the Martyr!

What the Labour Government has done for the Unemployed

Mr. J. H. Thomas, addressing the Conference of the National Union of Railwaymen, in July, 1929, said :

“I have been entrusted with the responsibility of seeing how far within the limits of our Parliamentary traditions and our resources of the State—and accepting the present order of society—how far it is possible to mobilise, organise, institute, and get going useful works for those now unemployed.” (“Daily Herald,” 6th July.— Italics ours.)

Three months later Mr. Thomas had done nothing, but had gained more confidence. In a speech at the Labour Party Conference at Brighton, on Tuesday, October 1st, he told the delegates :—

“I am confident that when February comes our figures will be better than the figures of the late Government.” (“Daily Herald,” 2nd October.)

When February came the figures had gone not down but up—by hundreds of thousands, which drew from his defender, Mr. John S. Clarke, M.P. (who used to worship De Leon, then Lenin, then MacDonald), the explanation that Thomas really knew all the time that unemployment would not fall, he knew that the

“world depression . . . was bound to increase before it showed signs of lifting ; that there was and is no permanent cure for unemployment under a system of private control.” (“Forward,” 31st May, 1930.)

Mr. Thomas, it appears, was really a noble fellow, “suffering a distressing martyrdom without complaint,” and lying for the sake of you and me. Anyway, Mr. Thomas’ luck was out, and in due course he transferred his £5,000 a year martyrdom to another Cabinet ministership. Now the number of unemployed on the register is over 2,000,000, which is the highest figure since the national coal strike in 1921, and represents an increase of 900,000 during the period of the office of the Labour Government.

* * *

Dean Inge studies Socialism.

Not long ago, Dean Inge was presented with a copy of out pamphlet, “Socialism and Religion.” We see that he has been profiting by it. In the course of a lecture at the Wesleyan Methodist Conference at Leeds on July 18th, he spoke about Socialism and Religion and put very plainly the fundamental antagonism between them. He rejected the possibility of Christ having been a Socialist, and the claim that Socialism is based upon New Testament teaching. Speaking of Christ, he said :— (Manchester Guardian, July 19th).

“It is hardly necessary to say that even if He had wished to lay clown a scheme of Socialism, and such an idea never occurred to Him, the conditions of Palestine under Pontius Pilate and Herod would have put it out of the question. His travelling missionaries were to live on alms like begging friars, but this proves nothing. His own little band seems to have carried a bag with money in it, and to have bought food when they needed it. Christ was a prophet, not a legislator.

Some people reject Christianity because they do not understand it; others because they do understand it. To the latter class unquestionably belong the disciples of Karl Marx, for what excites their passionate hatred of Christianity is precisely that idealistic standard of values which cuts the ground from under the feet of their savage and vindictive materialism. If Christ is right, Marx is utterly wrong.”

Except that materialists are almost always less savage and vindictive than idealists, this is just what we point out in our pamphlet. We are, however, startled by Dean Inge’s association of Rousseau and Marx, and by his statement that had there been no Rousseau there would perhaps have been no Marx and no Socialist doctrine.

Dean Inge goes on to repeat a statement he has often made, and which, in spite of being challenged, he does not attempt to prove. That is his assertion that communist-administered capitalism in Russia is the result of applying Marxian theories. It is one of the privileges of being a Dean that statements which are sound sense and statements which are clotted nonsense are alike accepted without question by nine people out of ten. This is bad for the nine people, and has a most demoralising effect on Deans.

P. R.