Britain’s Third Labour Government (1945)

From the September 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

“This time there can be no Alibis.”

For the third time Great Britain witnesses the spectacle of capitalism being administered by a Labour Government – though this time with a difference. The Labour Governments which entered office in January, 1924 (for eleven months) and in June 1929 (for two years) had only minority representation in the House of Commons, and were dependent on the support of Members of Parliament belonging to the Liberal Party. This time the Liberal Party is almost wiped out (only twelve M.P.s in a House of 640), and the Labour Party has an overwhelming majority. There are 390 Labour MPs, and with the support of three I.L.P. M.P.s, two Communists and some Independents and Liberals it can count on well over 400 votes as against about 210 Conservative M.P.s and others who will vote Conservative. As one of the Labour M.P.s writes “Labour has no alibi left. If it fails to produce the goods – full employment, all-round national prosperity, international concord, health, homes and happiness for the whole people – it can fall back on no excuse.” (Garry Allighan, M.P., Daily Mail, July 31st).

This time the Labour leaders have given away in advance the “alibi” they used in 1931 when they pleaded that their failure, and the secession of their leaders to form National Government, as the result of an “economic blizzard” – the world industrial crisis – and of a “Bankers’ ramp.” They are going to nationalise the Bank of England and are naively confident that through a National investment Board they can eliminate the normal capitalist trade cycle of expansion and depression. Nationalising the Bank merely means bringing this country into line with the rest of the capitalist world. As the Manchester Guardian points out “Great Britain is almost the only country in the world to have a privately owned central bank.” (Manchester Guardian, August 2nd)

In an Election broadcast Mr. Herbert Morrison, who occupies one of the most important Cabinet posts in the Labour Government, declared that the Employment Policy accepted by the late Government (in which, of course, the. Labour Party was strongly represented), “has quite a fair chance of smoothing out booms and slumps. The idea is very simple. It is one of Labour’s basic ideas. It is to make sure there is enough spending power to buy enough goods to keep everyone at work making them. The thing can be done. Whether it will be done depends on bow firm a grip the Government intends to keep on the spending policies of the great private industries.” (Daily Herald, June 30th, 1945)

The experience now being embarked upon is that of trying to run the capitalist system as if it were not a capitalist system. A Labour Government is going to try to straddle the class struggle and to represent at one and the same time the interests of the owning class, and of the class exploited by the owning class! Labour supporters expectantly and hopefully await the outcome. Socialists do not need to wait to prophesy failure.

After experiencing Labour attempts to run capitalism in Great Britain the workers will discover that Labour administrators cannot make capitalism function in any but the accustomed way.

The reasons for the Labour victory are many, though it must be admitted that hardly any observers expected the turnover of votes to be so large. “Working class mistrust of the Tories, who had been dominant since 1931 in all the National Governments; the discontent and impatience with slow demobilisation of men in the Armed Forces, most of whom voted Labour ; the usual desire of many electors to have a change; the feeling that the very acute housing shortage would best be tackled by a Labour Government – these are some of the factors.

How have the Capitalists taken the event of “Socialism”? Their attitude may, perhaps, be described as one of waiting on events, worried but not seriously alarmed. The avowedly Capitalist Press is disposed to assume that the cautious Labour leaders will prevent any very drastic demands of the rank and file from being pressed. This is illustrated by the attitude of the Conservative Daily Mail (August 2nd), which urges the Labour Government to take steps to let the Press and public in the U.S.A. know that their “ludicrous and dangerous doubts and fears” of the Labour Government are needless and misplaced. The Times (July 30th), accepts that the Labour Government may nationalise coal, at least part of the transport industry, and possibly electricity and gas supply, and is not greatly perturbed. It points out that “to bring public utilities under direct public control and possibly even outright public ownership, is not wholly revolutionary; and coal is politically a special case.” The Times goes on to plead that “with steel, or with manufacturing industries of any kind, the case is rather different,” and takes comfort in the view that “the responsible leaders were more hesitant” than the rank and file on nationalisation, and that they may seek a further mandate from the electors before converting any manufacturing industry into a State monopoly.

The Liberal Manchester Guardian (July 27th), declared that “Banking opinion expects the Bank of England to be ‘nationalised’ but does not turn a hair at the thought.” Mr. Herbert Morrison recalled during the Election campaign (Daily Express, June 18th), that in 1932 the Tory Lord Beaverbrook was advocating nationalisation of the Bank of England in his Daily Express, and likewise it was Mr. Morrison who stated in a speech on February 11th, 1944 ” that more Socialism ” (meaning State Capitalism) “was done by the Conservative Party, which opposed it, than by the Labour Party which was in favour of it.” Times, February 12th, 1944). Mr. Morrison had in mind, of course, the nationalisation of Telegraphs and Telephones and setting up of Public Utility Boards (which are the model the Labour Party will follow in its nationalisation schemes) such as the Metropolitan Water Board, the British Broadcasting Corporation and the London Passenger Transport Board. The last named was initiated by Mr. Morrison and completed by the succeeding Tory Government.

A factor of importance from the capitalist standpoint is that the Labour Party is wholly committed when taking over industries to do so “on a basis of fair compensation” (“Let us Face the Future,” Labour Party, 1945, p. 7). Some capitalists – those in declining industries – can welcome a change which guarantees their investments against further depreciation since they may receive Bonds with a Government guarantee in place of shares dependent on the ups and downs of fortune of a private company; which recalls a curious comment made by the Times (September 19th, 1942), in an article which urged its readers that “we must beware of the people who advocate Socialism in order to make the world safe for capitalists.”

Doubtless the Labour Government will do away with the restrictive clauses on trade unions introduced by the Tories in their Trade Union Act of 1927. This in itself may have little direct effect in the direction of encouraging strikes, but it is certain that the rule of the Labour Government will be accompanied by many and large industrial disputes. A Tory Government at this time would be faced with much industrial unrest, but with a Labour Government there is no doubt that the trade unions will feel encouraged to make large demands for higher wages and shorter hours. This was doubtless foreseen by Mr. Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour in the Churchill Government, who has now become Foreign Secretary instead. The Daily Express (July 28th), published the following report from Stockholm of a statement made some time ago by Mr. Bevin to a Swedish trade unionist. Mr. Bevin is reported to have doubted a Labour Victory and to have said “Even if we win we shall have hard times before us. To convert industry to peace production with lower wages as a result will be an enormous problem.” Like other governments in this dilemma the Labour Government may be tempted to make the adjustment by allowing prices to rise instead of lowering wages.

In one field the Labour Government will be tackling a problem that many leading capitalists and capitalist politicians are agreed has to be tackled, in order to prevent the interests of the whole capitalist class from being damaged, that is the problem of monopolies. Here the language of the Tory Times and of Mr Churchill in his calmer pre-election frame of mind, is identical with the views advocated by Mr. Herbert Morrison in a series of speeches in recent years. Mr. Churchill in a broadcast in 1943 said – “There is a broadening field for State ownership and enterprise, especially in relation to monopolies of all kinds.” (Manchester Guardian, April 5th, 1943). And the Times put its view in words every one of which could have been lifted from one of Mr. Morrison’s speeches: “It is a sound principle that, whenever competition is ousted by monopoly, the monopoly must come under Government control – though certainly not under Government management – either through a public utility corporation or by other means appropriate to the differing circumstances of different businesses.” (Times, Editorial, September 19th, 1942)

On Foreign Affairs Mr. Bevin hastened to declare “British foreign policy will rot be altered in any way under the Labour Government.” (Evening News, July 26th). In this sphere and in handling India, Egypt, Palestine, etc., the Labour Government will be faced with many knotty problems, not of their own making or to any extent under their control, but arising inevitably out of the normal trade rivalry between the Powers. Here in a most glaring form is demonstrated the childishness of the Labour Party’s belief that Labour Governments, by exercising goodwill, can keep capitalism and yet suppress its tigerish propensities.

To conclude we may repeat the words published in the Socialist Standard in June, 1929, when the last Labour Government entered office:

“We deal elsewhere in this issue with the failure of Labour Government in Queensland. We prophesied that: failure, and with absolute confidence we prophesy the similar failure of Labour Government here. No matter how able, how sincere, and how sympathetic the Labour men and women may be who undertake to administer Capitalism, Capitalism will bring their undertaking to disaster. As in Queensland, those who administer Capitalism will find themselves, sooner or later, brought into conflict with the working class. Like their Australian colleagues, the Labour Party here will find themselves in a cleft stick. Raving no mandate to replace Capitalism by Socialism, they have pledged themselves to solve problems which cannot be solved except by doing the one thing for which they have no mandate.”

There is no need to add anything to that. It still stands, as those who have voted Labour will discover.

Edgar Hardcastle

Letter: Is Socialist Propaganda futile? (1945)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Editor, “Socialist Standard,” 

Dear Sir,

The Socialist Standard for September, 1944, declares, “If the workers in the different countries clearly understood their own class interests, they would act unitedly to rid the world of the capitalist system and introduce Socialism” (p. 65).

The Socialist Standard for September, 1921, criticising Sir William Joynson Hicks states : “If is a very useful word and many an argument has been balanced on it by word conjurors … it would be better for the knightly champion to erect his defence of the capitalist system on a more substantial basis” (p. 3).

To suggest you relate these two statements is not, I feel, an unfitting start to a reply to your article, “Old Fallacies Refurbished” (S.S., February, 1945), in which you refer extensively to my pamphlet, “Science, Politics and the Masses.”

My pamphlet entertains the possibility that the majority will never think scientifically about politics. Your review affirms at some length that this idea is not new. You claim to be scientific. Since when has scientific method involved evading the issue? Nowhere did the pamphlet assert the idea was new. In fact, it explicitly stated otherwise (v. reference to Le Bon, p. 13). What it did suggest was they might be valid.

You disagree. You think the majority can “learn.” Your article repeatedly so asserts. Since when, though has unsupported assertion been part of scientific method? Science is concerned not with mere reiteration, but with evidence Only once does your article offer this:

“If evidence is needed to show that the workers do possess capacity to understand and act—even if at present it is in a limited sphere—their achievement in building up the trade union movement provides that evidence.”

But does it follow that because workers form unions they can achieve “socialist understanding”? Let us see. In 1904 the S.P.G.B. appealed to the workers (including. one assumes, trade unionists) to bring a “speedy” end to capitalism. Since then, by thousands of public speeches and debates; by hundreds of thousands of leaflets, periodicals and pamphlets, and by countless private arguments and discussions, the S.P.G.B. case has been put to trade unionists—either implicitly (by appeals to the workers generally) or explicitly (e.g. the Socialist Standard, for September, 1921, states on page 2 : “To any trade unionist who reads this article we Socialists say : Understand your class position as a wage slave. . . . ”

With what result? In 1927 the Socialist Standard September, p. 13), said of trade unions, “even when their intention is good, they frequently dissipate their strength or allow themselves to be side tracked.” In May, 1932, it declared : “We regard Trade Unions as insufficient in any case and, in so far as they are composed of non-Socialists, their actions are frequently found to be reactionary, both upon the industrial and political fields” (p. 137). In September, 1944 (p. 65), it observed: “International trade union and Labour conferences rarely exhibit a genuine international working class outlook . . . the irreconcilable nationalistic and capitalistic views of the delegates. . . .”

Relevant, too, is this statement attributed to the American Federation, of Labour delegate at the General Council of the International Federation of Trade Unions :

“Mr. Watt went further and declared boldly that the A.F. of L. believed in private enterprise and would have nothing to do with Socialism.” (News Chronicle, February, 3, 1945).

Moreover, those of the British trade unionists who do claim to be Socialist seem imbued with that conception of Socialism which the S.P.G.B. so consistently brands as capitalism, i.e., “state,” or “national” ownership. No wonder then the party has admitted :

“Also, in recent years, the Trade Unions and the Trades Union Congress have been to an increasing extent drawn into the administration of capitalism (“Questions of the Day,” 1942 edition, p. 24.—my italics).

Nearly half a century the S.P.G.B. has striven : close on 500 issues of the Socialist Standard, 10,000 copies of “Questions of the Day” (first edition) and 20,000 of “Socialism” sold by 1933—to instance but two pamphlets; 3,000 hand bills and 1,000 Socialist Standard distributed at a single meeting (S.S. Feb., 1930, p. 89); “On May-Day, in Hyde Park, thousands of workers thronged our meetings ” (S.S., Feb., 1941, p. 21); 170,000 leaflets distributed for the 1931 election (S.S., November, 1931, p. 47).

Now, according to the Socialist Standard (January, 1929, p. 67), “the notion that general industrial development and economic pressure does not make the workers receptive to Socialism, is belied by the facts of daily experience” (my italics). Yet, in actual fact, “daily experience” shows the very opposite. If the S.P.G.B. doubts this, it may care to refer to the Socialist Standard.

Here one may read such admissions as: “That we are satisfied with our rate of progress we do not, for one moment, pretend,” (September, 1926, p. 13); “the mass of the people want capitalism” (May, 1927, p. 133); “membership of the party is only a tenth of the Socialist Standard circulation” (November, 1930, p. 45); “the road to Socialism is a long-one” (January, 1942, p. 3); “there is no sign at present of the workers deciding to achieve Socialism for themselves . . . the Socialist is faced with years of plodding propaganda and educational work for which no mensurable result can yet be seen” (January, 1943, pp. 4-5—my italics).

Science seeks facts. I am prepared to accept as a fact that the S.P.G.B. has one of the most;, if not the most logical of all party cases. Therefore, I suggest, the figures of its membership are important data for scientific study. Will you, then, kindly make known the year by year statistics of the party membership since 1904 (including percentage of trade union members), so they may be included with other evidence regarding the limits and possibilities of human understanding ?

Yours faithfully,

Richard Tatham.

Reply.

The gist of the argument in our correspondent’s letter is that as the S.P.G.B. is a very small organisation by comparison with the capitalist parties, notwithstanding its 40 years of propaganda, therefore it is reasonable to assume that the workers cannot understand Socialism. This fallacious reasoning was dealt with in the article referred to (February Socialist Standard) and our correspondent’s letter gives further material to re-inforce our case. In the February, S.S. we said : —

“What we are up against is not an innate incapacity to understand, but the massive and tireless machinery of capitalist propaganda, including the red herrings of the Tatham kind, but our efforts—small at present—are aided by the constant pressure of capitalism on the working class.”

Our correspondent seeks to answer this by giving figures showing the extent of S.P.G.B. propaganda—but the figures prove just the opposite of what he intended to show. Just to take one example out of the several given in his letter, there is the reference to 170,000 S.P.G.B. leaflets distributed at the 1931 General Election. At that time there were 30,000,000 electors and on a very conservative estimate the three large parties (Tory, Liberal, Labour), must have distributed between them upwards of 100 million leaflets. At least nine out of ten workers have never heard the S.P.G.B. case presented to them. Those that have heard it have done so against the background of an intensive barrage of anti-Socialist propaganda on the platform, in the newspapers, on the wireless, etc. This, says our correspondent with strange logic, indicates that the workers cannot understand the socialist case! Of course it indicates nothing of the kind.

The further important point that our correspondent overlooks is that the working class have progressed towards class consciousness and political maturity. Any Socialist propagandist who compares the reception given to the S.P.G.B. case now with the apathetic and very hostile reception of 40 or 30 years ago knows that this progress has taken place. That it does not result in a large and rapid increase in our membership is neither surprising nor disturbing; we never underestimated the power of the rich and resourceful capitalist class to delay the flood that will some day overwhelm them.

On our correspondent’s assertion that, “nowhere did the pamphlet assert the idea was new. In fact, it explicitly stated otherwise,” we offer the following extract from page 11, of his pamphlet:—

“We shall be referring here and now to Walsby’s discovery of the Demos and to his analysis of its structure and development. The limited scope of this pamphlet precludes any detailed account of the process by which he arrives at his results, though all this must sooner or later be examined if one is to have full evidence for the conclusions about to be described.” (Italics ours).

Again on the same page is a reference to Walsby’s “theories and discoveries.”

Why the claim that they are Walsby’s discoveries and results if they are Le Bon’s or someone else’s?

Incidentally, as our correspondent accepts Le Bon’s assertion that civilization has been the work of a small minority of superior intelligences and not of the mass of “inferior elements” one wonders how it was that our correspondent and his associates not long ago organised what they described as “Mass Meetings.” If it is only worth while to address “superior intelligences” what was the real purpose behind those abortive attempts to “tickle the ears of the groundlings”?

More important still is the admission in the pamphlet that we have yet to see how Walsby reached his (or Le Bon’s) conclusions, and the full evidence for them. In face of this presentation of unsupported conclusions it is strangely inconsistent for our correspondent to chide us with making unsupported assertions, even if it were true that we had done so. But our claim that where we can reach the workers with our limited resources, we can count on their capacity to understand our case is not unsupported. It is something within the experience of every S.P.G.B. propagandist and we do not need to go to Le Bon or some one else who lacks our direct experience.

Ed. Comm.

Our Indian Sisters (1945)

From the September 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

The debased condition of women in India is both a reflection of India’s economic backwardness and a bar to its progress. In the limits of an article we can only examine a few of the aspects of this problem.

It has been said that comparisons are odious, but nevertheless they have their uses in that they heighten contrasts. Only by relating the status of women in India to the status of women in Western countries may we appreciate the deplorable state of the former.

In the West nowadays every girl receives some education, usually earns her living for a period and attains a degree of independence unknown even a hundred years ago. She chooses her husband and, if wise enough, determines if and when she will have children. She chooses her religion or discards it, appears in public and possesses the franchise. With what she will enjoy under Socialism it is meagre, but by comparison with her Indian sister she has a world within her grasp.

Before examining the position of Indian women it may be useful to explain, though very briefly, how it came about.

Peoples evolve in a similar manner, but do so unevenly, and in India we see capitalism side by side with relics of Feudalism. In the isolated villages primitive communism is only just disappearing before the inroads of modern industry. India has been invaded by many different groups of people throughout her history, but the principle invaders have been Turkish people. India has therefore many religions, but the predominating religions are Hindoism and Mohammadanisni. Out of every 100 persons in India 68 are Hindus and 22 are Mohammadans (Muslims).

With the development of property women came to be regarded as chattels and religion adopted that status in its evolution. The Muslims secluded their women in order to secure them from robbery and the Hindus adopted this method. It is known as the Purdah system and consists of secluding the girl when she attains puberty. Religion also decreed, as in many early religions that the woman’s god on earth is her husband and she must serve him as such. Her life is only really justified when she bears a son wlio will assist her husband’s soul to continue its journey to its next life, which is one of many. The Brahamins (priestly group) dominate the Hindu religion and at birth, death, marriage, etc., the Brahmin must be paid. The Brahmin makes it incumbent on parents to arrange marriages early for their children, at birth or shortly after. At puberty the girl is sent to her husband despite the fact that the Sanda Act of 1929 penalises the marriage of girls under 14 and of youths under 18, this act has never been adequately enforced. The woman has no rights of divorce or property under Hindu law mainly it is explained because marriage is a sacrament.

The Muslim woman comes off better in theory than her Hindu sister as marriage is to her “a contract for the procreation of children” and as such may be dissolved by both parties. The Muslim woman has property rights and the custody of her children after a divorce, but it is in the main a facade of freedom as Purdah shuts her off from the world and makes enforcement of rights difficult and, due to lack of education, she may even be ignorant of them. Her husband’s divorce is easier than hers, and he may illtreat her and take other wives.

The seclusion of both Hindu and Moslem women is really the worst crime perpetrated against them, property rights began it, religion sanctioned it and the dead hand of custom continues it. Tuberculosis is rife among Purdah women.

“In Calcutta between the ages of 10 and 15 years for every boy that dies of tuberculosis 3 girls die. Between the ages of 15 and 20 for every boy that dies of tuberculosis five girls die.”

(Quoted from “Key of Progress,” a symposium written by Indian and other writers and edited by A R. Caton, 1930. Page 108). Early marriage is the main factor responsible for the high rate of tuberculosis among women.

Venereal diseases are rife in India and the stock is therefore often infected at the start, and early marriage produces a very high rate of abortions among the girls below sixteen. The maternal mortality rate in India is three times—great as in U.S.A.—24.5 against 8.5. Full-term pregnancy may prove to be a catastrophe also. The girl who is kept indoors away from air and sunlight and fed mainly on vegetables and rice nearly always has some degree of rickets and in Purdah continues to develop adult rickets known as osteomalacia. The bones soften and bend and the pelvis may becomes so completely altered from its normal snape as to render normal delivery impossible and Caesarian section is the only method possible should the girl be got to hospital in time. The girls require ante-natal care more than then western sisters but seldom get it. The so called midwives or dais are worse than untrained and have no knowledge of even the rudiments of cleanliness; the wonder is that any mothers survive. More hospitals are being provided but Purdah women are slow to make use of them and in any case they must be completely staffed by women, for the Purdah woman is so well schooled in her creed that she would rather die undelivered than be attended by a male doctor.

The Indian mother possesses much maternal instinct but little maternal capacity for she is still only a child herself. She lives in the joint family system which operates in most parts of India and here her mother-in-law assumes control and trains her in the bad old ways. The Hindu religion whilst on the one hand debasing women on the other it makes the grandmother a matriarchal symbol of great veneration, hence her power, but alas she has had no opportunity to learn aught save a few outmoded superstitions. Religion also teaches that over zealous care of babies angers the jealous gods against them, making neglect preferable. Whilst this is bad in any country, in disease ridden tropical India it is disastrous and the infant mortality rate per 1,000 births is 162 as against Australia’s 38.

The girl’s ignorance is not only limited to infant care but to all branches of knowledge. Literacy among the women of India in 1941 was 5 per cent., the following indicates the reason why :—

“It is not so much the view that ‘education is unbecoming the modesty of the sex,’ as the view that education is entirely futile and has no bearing on home life which must to-day be combated. And who could deny that a year, or perhaps two, spent in parrot-like repetitions of meaningless words, is an absolute waste of time? Even as a creche (the usual use to which primary schools are put), the primary school is hopelessly unattractive. There is none of the apparatus little children love, no sand heaps, coloured books, chalks, or handwork; only an abracadabra of sounds and signs leading nowhere. . . . Over the middle and high schools where literacy at least might be attained, Purdah and early marriage have cast their long shadows.”— (“Key of Progress,” page 18), and again, “In no province does one girl out of five attend school; in some provinces not one of 20 or 25.” (page 3).

Schools for girls have only existed since the middle of the last century and it must be remembered that co-education is rarely permitted. Girls must be taught by women, and parents are rarely interested in careers for girls, so the vicious circle continues resulting in a lack of women teachers, nurses, and doctors. What schools exist are mainly in the towns and though the population of the towns is almost that of America yet 80 per cent. of India’s population live in the villages.

Education is administered by the provincial governments and these have failed to obtain sufficient money to establish an adequate number of schools; co-education is, however, permitted in Madras, but hardly anywhere else. A further problem is that of the caste division; an untouchable may not attend school with the Brahmin, etc., and requires a separate school, rarely attained. Until present customs are broken down the activities of the Indian woman in the sphere of education are greatly restricted.

The life of the Indian village women may be less strict in the observance of Purdah if she be very poor, but education will be nil. Village life has become poorer due to facts beyond the scope of this article which are bound up with the destruction of native crafts, lessened productivity of the soil, heavy taxation and religious customs requiring payments. During the last century tea and coffee plantations were set up, factories built in the towns, mines opened up and railways laid down. Many of the impoverished peasants offered their labour power, but the man was so exploited that it became necessary for the wife and family to share his toil. Modern industry acknowledges no religious laws so the wife exchanged Purdah for a confinement of another sort.

Women work in the mines in India, and though eliminated from them in 1935, have been brought back during the present war. The 1931 census stated there were 8,600 women employed in “the exploitation of minerals” and the 1942 census gave 281,563 women employed in factories. Comparatively few women therefore work away from the home, and industry is mainly confined to the towns where payment and housing are very poor.

“In Bombay a woman earns half of what a man earns, in Ahmedabad it is more than half and in Sholapur it is much less than half. It would be absurd to suggest that the relative efficiency and productivity vary in this way in these three industrial centres. An assumption therefore that the employers are able to exploit woman labour in different degrees in these places is perhaps nearer the truth.” (page 155, “Our Cause,” edited S. K. Nehru).

Workers are always badly housed, but in India this means something worse than in other countries.

“A description of the housing of factory workers in Ahmedabad shows that out of 23,706 tenements observed, 5,669 had no provision of water, 5,360 had no latrines, few had any kind of drainage. . . . the tenements of Bombay provide unsanitary housing on large scale in a more compact shape.” (Page 150, “Our Cause”)

No study of women in India would be complete without consideration of prostitution which exists on a large scale and may be divided for purposes of discussion into religious and commercial, needless to say both are now commercial.

The religious prostitutes or devadasis, to give them their proper name, are girls vowed to the temple service by their parents, and are “married” to the god. Their duties consist of singing and dancing before the idol at certain times, and at others they are at the disposal of pilgrims, whose contributions go to tho temple whilst the girls receive maintenance. The community in Madras alone numbers 200,000 ! Many wish to free themselves from this slavery but legislation on their behalf is slow. Dr. Reddi, who has been active on their behalf comments: —

“Government officials in the assembly have always ignored the progressive Indian view in social matters, while they have showed too much anxiety to respect orthodox sentiments which have been suicidal to the social and moral welfare of the Indian masses.” (P. 184.185, “Key of Progress.”)

Commercial prostitution is also on a large scale. The 1931 census figures for female “beggars, vagrants and prostitutes” were 486,539. The rise of Industry is a partial explanation of its existence as it is almost nil in country districts; soldiers and sailors frequent towns and ports and evidence shows that the Government in the past has endeavoured to keep a special group for the use of the British Army in order that the incidence of V.D. might in some measure be controlled. Many of the prostitutes are recruited from India’s widows.

Before the advent of the British it had been customary to burn the widow with the husband’s corpse because it was believed she was the cause of the death. The British rendered it illegal but were powerless to remove the stigma attached to widowhood. In 1931 there were 25,496,660 widows who are treated as outcasts, half-starved and abused by their families, and many turn to prostitution.

Other recruits for the profession come through Pathan money lenders who terrorize poor people into giving up their daughters when they cannot pay the money borrowed. Once in these hideous dens of vice the girls lead a life that is a hell on earth, the keepers take all the money merely feeding the women and forcing them to serve whether ill or well, even when suffering from acute forms of venereal disease.

The position of women in India therefore is one which evokes horror. We find mere babes married, divorced, widowed and prostituted, the former and the latter appearing equally evil. The cause of widows is particularly bad although a few societies are springing up to educate them as teachers. The women who have escaped Purdah to enter factories or mines have gone, under present conditions of exploitation, from one slavery to another. Many work earnestly for the cause of women, but in India as elsewhere the fate of women is bound up with that of men and only a change in the social system will work any real salvation.

In Turkey and parts of Russia, where previously the conditions of women resembled that of India, intense industrialization was the determining factor in changing their way of life. Capitalist society demanded female labour for the factories and got it, with the blessings of Kemel Ataturk and Stalin : Industry, though growing in India during the present war, is infinitesimal in comparison with the wealth of the country and the needs of its peoples. Indian would-be capitalists are stirring and will either open up the country themselves or force this situation upon the British who have hitherto preferred to keep it as a dumping ground for their own imports : India’s wealth will be exploited and with it, her people. The change will not be a happy one until the workers become experienced enough to make their claims heard, but the position of Indian women at least cannot be worsened. Modern industry when firmly established requires moderately healthy, literate workers as the Russians discovered. We can only await that time and when it comes India’s women and men will be receptive to Socialist ideas and finally demand Socialism, which is the only solution to the problem of the Indian workers as it is to the problems of the rest of the workers throughout the world to-day.

W. P.

Problems Facing the Labour Government. The Menace of Unemployment (1945)

From the September 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recently elected Labour Government is faced with the responsibility of clearing up the mess caused by war. This is an unenviable task for those who consider the only way it can be done is to restore capitalist “prosperity.”

The ruling class are apparently not seriously perturbed; they have been assured by their advisers that capitalist interests will be preserved. The Financial Times (July 28th) speaks to its readers as follows.

“The result of the election is not regarded tragically. . . . So long as the new Government does nothing to harm the national credit—and it is likely to be very circumspect in this respect—the holders of Government stock will have nothing to fear. This applies indeed to all well established holdings. It would be a mistake for their owners to allow themselves to be frightened into throwing them on the market, and fortunately there is no sign of anything of the kind happening. . . .

Apart from political and economic consequences of any move toward nationalization, the financial aspect would turn upon the eventual definition of the fair, but not excessive compensation of which Mr. Attlee has spoken.”

The emancipation of the working class is not anticipated by our masters: economic security even is now relegated to the limbo of forgotten things: “employment for all” has served its purpose, and is now being discarded as impracticable. Those who live by the exploitation of their fellows under Capitalism have but one object in view in regard to Labour and that is to keep their slaves in bondage. Professor Henry Clay recently delivered a lecture on War and Unemployment. He spoke as a Warden of Nuffeld College. He is an economist with practical experience inasmuch as he has been in an advisory capacity in close touch with the Bank of England during the recent expansive period. He was connected with certain key enterprises launched by the Bank while the war was on and his opinion is that the problem is how to survive in a world which threatens Britain? economic destruction.

The Statist (July 21st) discussing Professor Clay’s speech says.

“But the British economic and social problem can be reduced to terms of the utmost simplicity with an appreciable increase of value. After enduring the storms and stresses and sacrifices of war for six years the British populace, economically untutored and still politically ignorant, has been led to suppose that by the magic of the Beveridge schemes or their pale twin the Government White Paper on Employment Policy, there can be attained for all that mysterious something known as Social Security, and the maintenance of a high and stable level of employment. Some still believe that full employment can be assured. The task of the statesman is to fulfill it, to prevent a disillusioned and hurt populace from overthrowing the social fabric.”

Professor Clay says : —

“If I am right, the unemployment problem with which the last war confronted the country had not been dealt with when the present war broke out, and the identical problem with which this war will confront the country will not be a transient condition which can be left to cure itself. Something more than the proposals of the White Paper in this matter—a continuation of controls to regulate prices and priorities and the erection of controls to direct the location of new enterprise— will be needed if the influence of war in aggravating unemployment is not to be important for a generation or two.”

The Statist goes on to say :

“Again reducing the complexity to a sublime simplicity, the thought behind the official and academic approaches to the employment problem is that if the total national expenditure—spending power exerted—is sufficient to employ the whole population at the current level of wages all will be well, and therefore when the natural and almost instinctive flow of private spending begins to weaken all that; the State has to do to save the situation is to inaugurate or stimulate a flow of public expenditure. This blithe thought Professor Clay combats. ‘Mere expansion of Government expenditure,’ he says, ‘can prevent unemployment only by inflation : the impact of the additional income created will force up prices where there is a shortage and maintain them where there is a redundancy.'”

The Statist comments again :

“In short the problem is not one of merely maintaining purchasing power at a ‘sufficiency.’ It is one primarily of redressing economic maladjustments caused or augmented by the war, or indeed by other abnormalities or developments in human life—redressing them in such a way that their fulfilments can be brought into a proper coincidence, and redundancies distributed or absorbed or liquidated in some tolerable way.”

“The Government will be possessed of large stocks of goods with a commercial use. One industrialist of my acquaintance has argued that, since they were created for war purposes, these stocks should not survive the War, but be dumped into the Atlantic, otherwise by competing with current production for limited markets they will prevent industry from recovering its peace time balance. The remedy is too heroic for any conceivable Treasury, but it brings out a problem : more than a quarter of the machine tool makers in this country were forced into bankruptcy after the last war by the competition of war surplus supplies.”

“Markets disrupted, interrupted, diverted : production disrupted interrupted and diverted : labour diverted and rendered less fluid than it used to be : skill in making and marketing lost: transit diminished: financial technique warped or perverted—these are the causes of potential British unemployment, rather than the simple mathematical disequilibrium of the power to spend or the will to spend. Until these causes are cured the tendency of the nation may be, thinks Professor Clay, to slip unconsciously into a policy of perpetuating the war economy.”

It is a danger which he sees vividly.

“The Problems which will present themselves if war controls are lifted will offer so terrifying an aspect that a totalitarian direction of the whole economy of the country may have less terrors. I hope we shall rot drift into that solution.”

To show how helpless the ruling class are at the present moment I have quoted extensively from the Statist. The readers of the Standard must bear in mind these quotations are from Capitalist sources and show how helpless is the outlook for capitalist and how hopeless a Labour Government is that thinks it can run the system better than our masters.

The Statist concludes :

“There then is the statesmen’s problem—not to be led by bureaucratic and donnish mind into assuming that mere manipulation with State spending can effect the benefits which the populace has been promised, nor to relieve the fears of a frightened community by offering the tyrannical protection of a totalitarian system, but to find a means of enabling enterprise to restore its markets, restore fluidity to labour, and adjust diverted production and war surpluses in such a way that new production suffers the minimum of delay in catering for peace demands in the minimum of obstruction in disposing of its products.”

“In dealing with so complex a problem as the restoration and increase of a high level of stable employment, there is much danger in generalisations, which are unfortunately what constitutes the electoral stock in trade of statesmen and politicians. If the bureaucratic fetish of a mathematical adjustment of spending powers is inadequate to a problem involving manifold human factors, so also is the hustings panacea of a 50 per cent. rise in exports. The British trading community—from producer through to finance negotiator and retailer does not live by exports alone essential though they are. Neither does exporting industry as a whole offer scope for so gigantic an increase.

Mr. J. O. M. Clark, Chairman of J. and P. Coates, at the recent annual meeting said quite frankly. ‘Prominent politicians and others at various times have stressed the importance of increased exports after the war and a figure of 50 per cent. increase has at times been mentioned. If this is included merely as a tragic figure, little need be said about it, but if anybody seriously believes that the volume of goods to be exported from this country would within a reasonable period be raised by 50 per cent., without the introduction of an entirely new technique of selling, I fear he is doomed to disappointment. In our own case, of J. and P. Coates, in spite of certain advantages which the Company enjoys, could succeed in increasing the export volume permanently by anything like 25 per cent. after the War I should consider it had accomplished a remarkable performance.'”

“So indeed would many other directors of large scale companies with efficient past selling records facing spoilt or invaded export markets. Britain it is clear to everyone outside a bureau or a sanctum of a confirmed Bloomsbury planner cannot survive the post-war struggle for trade, much less provide all the promised social betterments to her people merely by tinkering with the streams of private and public expenditure or by shouting for a 50 per cent. increase in exports. She has to discover much more drastic and realistic methods of stimulating trade and employment than those.”

The events now about to transpire will prove to the hilt the truth of the Socialist Party’s position.

What can the Labour Party or any Party do to improve matters when compelled to operate within the framework of Capitalism? The system is played out. It cannot go until the workers realise it is their job to abolish it. The great task is to make the workers realise this, and what they are called upon to do. In other words Socialists are wanted to establish Socialism.

Charles Lestor