Common ownership of jumble sales (1948)

From the December 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Arise ye starvelings from your slumber. It won't be long now. Christmas is coming accompanied by the Daily Worker Bazaar Organiser. Our old Comrades Communist Association are feeling the pinch. The price of whitewash for the decoration of garden walls and railway bridges has gone up. If you want the Revolution unimpeded and such slogans as “long live the Working Class” or “fight for peace” rally to the rescue. Dig out mother-in-law’s old “what’s its” your father’s old thingamybobs and peace be with ye! Dame Rumour has it that the Red Dean will convey the odour of sanctity by donating half-a-dozen old cassocks and two sets of surplices. Old socks and Union Jacks will be democratically assembled in patchwork quilts, rag rugs, and soft dolls with soft heads.

The big day is in December, when the “day to day struggle” begins on the “Jumble” front. Special competitions better than the News of the World crossword will occupy the grey matter. This year’s competition is “What is our Policy?” What’s that? Oh, we have it wrong. That was last year’s competition, we stand corrected. We understand from King Street that the competition will be “What has the Daily Worker got that the others haven’t got?” By way of a few clues they kid us along by a process of elimination. Listen to this bizarre bazaar handbill.

“Look through a week’s issue and you’ll see it’s got everything the other papers have got: All the news from home and abroad — cartoons — features for women — a strip for the kiddies — reviews of films, books, theatre, radio, art, hints on gardening, handicrafts and bringing up children— a page of sports by a team of experts—Yes . . . it’s all there.”

The Jumble Sale leaflet does, however enlighten us a little further. In answer to its own question about what it is the Daily Worker has that the others haven’t got we read: “ Well—it’s no great secret . . . it’s the Fighting Fund That makes it different.”

Wot, no Communism?

“Silence, fool, or suffer excommunication!”

J.D.