Editorial: Sound and Fury. The Election and the Workers. (1931)

Editorial from the November 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

The general election has come and gone, and nothing fundamental has been changed. The workers were asked to give a mandate for the continuance of the social system that enslaves them, and in their blindness they have done so.

The National Government supporters just prior to the election numbered 327. They return to office with about 560 supporters, of whom 170 are Conservatives; 70 are Liberals; and 13 are members of the MacDonald Labour Group. The opposition consists of 52 Labour and I.L.P. M.P.s and four Lloyd George Liberals. The total is made up by a few Independents and Irish Nationalists. The Labour Party is now reduced in size approximately to the number elected in 1918.

At the last election, in 1929, the Conservatives polled 8,656,173 votes and won 260 seats. This time they have polled 12,000,000 votes. The Labour vote in 1929 was 8,389,512, and they won 289 seats, many of them on minority votes. The Liberals, in 1929 won only 58 seats, although their vote was 5,308,510. This time the Labour vote has fallen to about 6,650,000, while their seats have dropped far more. They are now less numerous than the Liberals, although the Liberal vote on this occasion is less than 2,500,000. The MacDonald Labour M.P.s polled only 338,000. In the 1929 Parliament there were over 200 Labour M.P.s who, although elected as Labour candidates, were also members of the I.L.P. There were no Communists in the last Parliament, nor are there any in the new one. The Mosley candidates all failed.

Since 1929 the electorate has grown from 28,850,000 to 30,159,000. The number of electors who did not vote for any candidate increased considerably. So much for the figures.

What were they fighting for?

Many observers, both at home and abroad, some of whom ought to have known better, accepted the rash claim, made for electioneering purposes, that the election was a clear-cut struggle between Capitalism and Socialism. This is a grotesque misreading of the situation. On the one side the Government parties under MacDonald were asking for “a free hand, nothing ruled out,” although most of their candidates construed “nothing ruled out” as meaning “tariffs ruled in” ; in spite of the fact that by far their most formidable standard bearer in the fight was Mr. Snowden, who is a staunch free-trader.

On the other side were the Labour Party and the group of free-trade Liberals under Mr. Lloyd George. The Labour programme gave prominence to free-trade, to the restoration of the cuts in wages and unemployment pay, and to the nationalisation of the banks. Mr. Lloyd George told his followers that the last of the three chief Labour aims need not be taken seriously, and that Liberals ought to vote for the free-trade Labour candidates. Mr. Snowden, until recently an advocate of bank nationalisation, now opposed it. He also pointed out that the Labour leaders’ enthusiasm for free trade was as suspect as their repudiation of the cuts they had approved when in office. In a letter to the Press (see “Daily Telegraph,” 22nd October) he made the following illuminating and unanswered statement about his late colleagues in the Labour Government :

“Mr. Graham put the case for the tariff. He told us a tax of 10 per cent. on imported manufactured and semi-manufactured goods would raise £25,000,000 a year, and a tax on all imports £60,000,000 a year.

We took two votes. The first was whether we should adopt the proposal of a 10 per cent. tax on manufactured and semi-manufactured imports. Fifteen members, including Mr. Graham, voted for that, and five against. Then the question of a duty on all imports was put, including food and raw materials. Mr. Graham and four others voted for that, and fifteen against.

It was only after these votes, when it was seen that we could not get unanimity, that the proposal was dropped, because, as Mr. Henderson put it, if it had been persisted with it would have broken up the Cabinet.”

This discussion in the Labour Cabinet took place towards the end of August, and was reported in the “Daily Herald” at the time. On August 20th the Herald had a bold headline across the front page—”Tariffs in the balance.” The report goes on to say that in the Cabinet :

“There was a tense debate on the proposal for a revenue tariff on imports.”

The day before the “Herald” had said :

“the proposal for a revenue tariff will receive support from ministers who have hitherto been rigid free-traders.”

On August 22nd the “Herald” brought the Trades Union Congress into the picture :

“There is keen division in the T.U.C. on the subject of a tariff for revenue purposes, but the majority would be in favour of such a proposal as an alternative to any cuts in unemployment benefit.”

But, it may be asked, if the Labour Party leaders were prepared, even reluctantly, to support the economies and a revenue tariff, why did they oppose the National Government, most of whose members also wanted those things? The answer is, of course, that the party leaders on both sides were doling what they and their predecessors have always done; they were fighting for office. Faced with the National Coalition, the Labour Party grabbed for the Liberal free-trade vote. Mr. Henderson (a few days later than Mr. MacDonald) journeyed to see the Liberal leader, Mr. Lloyd George, on his sick bed. They had a “cordial” but secret talk. The local Labour Parties withdrew their candidates who were opposing Lloyd George and his son and daughter. He, in his broadcast, and in an interview given to the “Daily Herald,” and the “Manchester Guardian,” and other Liberal papers in their editorials, gave a plain lead to the Liberal voters to vote Labour. During the week before polling day the “Herald” printed column after column of reports of Liberal speakers, Liberal money, and Liberal Party machinery being placed at the disposal of the Labour candidates. All the past bitter condemnation of Lloyd George and his party was forgotten in the twinkling of an eye when the chance of office and the security of seats were at stake. Forgotten was the admission, so frequent in recent years from Labour leaders, that the issue of free-trade versus protection was of no importance to the workers. No longer was Lloyd George the “coiner of purple phrases and breaker of promises,” as the Herald had so happily described him in their special “Lloyd George Number” of December 1st, 1923. No longer was he to be shunned as the man who always wreaks “incredible destruction,” the “shoddy salesman” of politics, the “two-faced” politician who “tricked the miners with Sankey Commissions, Duckham Reports, and so on, until the coal-owners had all ready for their bitter attack on the Federation.” Then “A vote for Lloyd George is a vote for the enemies of the workers and the foes of democracy”; now Lloyd George Liberals and Labourites were all together, fighting the battle of “progress” !

These are the depths to which the reformers have dragged the name Socialism. On the one side MacDonald with his, “I am still a Socialist,” leading the Tory army in their fight for tariffs, and on the other side Henderson and Labour Party, attaching the word socialism to their programme of reforms behind which Lloyd George could muster his free-trade capitalist “enemies of the workers.”

The utter shamelessness of the Labour leaders can be seen from their plea that they were fighting to defend the workers against the high prices which would follow tariffs. In all the years up to 1929 they had proclaimed themselves the party of low prices. Suddenly, when they came into office in that year they discovered that prices were falling heavily, the thing they had promised to bring about. Promptly they swallowed their low-price theory, and told their disappointed followers that falling prices were the cause of all the trouble. The “Daily Herald,” now so strong for cheapness, then carried on for months a campaign for inflation and higher prices. The following is from the “Herald” editorial on July 14th, 1931 :—

“It is urgent—imperatively urgent—that without delay the necessary steps be taken so to regulate currency and credit as first to raise and then stabilise prices…..Inflation—and it is folly to be frightened by a word—is the only possible remedy.”

Three months later, when it was “imperatively urgent” to catch the Liberal free-trade vote, they were back on their old platform of low prices.

The I.L.P. and the Communists.

In this election, for the first time, the I.L.P. ran its own candidates without the endorsement of the Labour Party, the endorsement being withheld because the I.L.P. would not undertake always to vote with the Labour Party. In two of the nineteen constituencies which the I.L.P. fought (Peckham and Shettleston) there was also an official Labour Party candidate, while in Stockport (a double member constituency) where the Labour man has hitherto run in double harness with a Liberal, the Labour Party refused to back the I.L.P. interloper who threatened to spoil the arrangement with the Liberals.

The result is interesting. In 1929 the total Labour vote in these nineteen constituencies was 332,413, and they won thirteen seats. This time the I.L.P. polled 260,344 and gained only three seats. They held Shettleston against the official Labour man, and in Peckham their candidate received many times the vote of his official Labour opponent. In Peckham, the official Labour man and the MacDonald Labour man both forfeited their deposits.

The I.L.P. parliamentary group is now, therefore, reduced to three members, and their chairman is outside the House.

Just before the election, their chairman, Mr. Fenner Brockway, writing in the “New Leader” (2nd October), confessed the uselessness of reforms which have been the I.L.P.’s sole stock-in-trade for nearly forty years :

“The system of capitalism is failing so obviously that the policy of reforms within capitalism must be rejected. We must concentrate on winning power of such nature that we can proceed boldly with the transition to socialism all along the line.”

In spite of which the I.L.P. candidates fought as usual on a programme of reforms. Three years ago Mr. Maxton described the Labour Party programme, “Labour and the Nation,” as a programme of capitalism. The 1931 programme, was, he said, “even more reactionary” (“Evening Standard,” 1st October). Yet the I.L.P. allowed a large number of its members to fight as official Labour Party candidates, and endorsed Mr. J. Beckett, as I.L.P. candidate at Peckham after he had declared his “whole-hearted support” of the Labour election programme (South London Press, 9th October). The I.L.P., although much reduced in size, has not altered in its quality. It is still the same body of vote-catching reformists, maintaining a precarious existence on the backs of the trade unions and the Labour Party.

The Communists ran 25 candidates, the same number as in 1920. In 1929 they obtained their aggregate vote of 50,617. This time, on a somewhat larger electorate, their aggregate vote was 70,844. In the ten constituencies which they fought on both occasions their vote was, in 1929, 39,283, and in 1931 48,612. They did best where they were fighting only one candidate, a Labour Party candidate.

They, too, fought on a reform programme of about twenty “demands” (“Daily Worker,” 14th October). In practise their policy is always determined by the actions of the other reformist parties. They run yapping at the heels of the Labour Party, and where the Labour Party goes they go, too. As the Labour Party, at the eleventh hour decided to be a free-trade party, the Communists had to follow suit. So one of their “demands” was “No taxes or tariffs which raise the price of food and clothing for the workers.” On Sunday, October 11th, a Communist Party demonstration in Hyde Park marched behind a banner with the “revolutionary” slogan, “No Taxes on the People’s Food.”

In this general election for the first time the official communist advice to the voters did not, so far as our knowledge goes, include a recommendation to vote for all or even some of the Labour Party candidates.

The Future.

The election changes nothing except the persons who shall occupy office, and some questions of capitalist trade and finance, of interest to sections of the capitalists in their mutual antagonisms. Capitalism is now sunk in one of its periodic crises of overproduction. In due course it will stagger back to “normal,” before falling again into yet other crises. This process will continue until the workers understand socialism and organise in the Socialist Party to achieve it. The votes for the Tory-Labour-Liberal Party under MacDonald, and for the Labour-Liberal Party under Henderson and Lloyd George, are votes for capitalism and reforms of one kind and another. They are not votes for socialism. This is proved by the alternating fortunes of the parties at succeeding elections. We are not prophets, but one thing seems certain—that the Labour Party will never obtain, and do not really want, an independent majority. They may, perhaps, again reach office, but only with Liberal support in the House and in the constituencies. The Leaders understand this, hence the efforts they made at the Labour Party Conference in October to secure the rejectIon of a resolution which, if it had been passed, would have committed them never to accept office as a minority. What we have long pointed out is now becoming clear for all to see. It is impossible to unite the workers on reform programmes. Each reform antagonises as many workers as it attracts. Reform programmes, as we can see before our eyes, split the workers into half a dozen warring sections. Another illusion has also been dispelled. We were told that after voting Labour workers would then vote for Socialism ; instead of which, as we foretold, they have returned to Conservatism. Only the simple demand for socialism will eventually hold the workers.

Those who have patiently waited, bearing all disappointments, but trusting in the Labour Party until such time as it had an independent majority will do well to ponder the prospect of a “Labour” Party tied permanently to Liberal votes, and limited to a programme approved by Mr. Lloyd George and his capitalist free-trade backers.