Notes by the Way: “Daily Express” Gets Into a Tangle (1936)

The Notes by the Way Column from the November 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Daily Express” Gets Into a Tangle

The Daily Express, like other Beaverbrook papers, always refers to the Labour Party as the Socialist Party, just to mislead its readers. The only defence ever offered for the misrepresentation is that whatever, name the Labour Party goes under it is, in fact, the Socialist Party. But read the following from an Express editorial (October 1st, 1936): —

The Daily Express is not the enemy of the Socialist Party, though Mr. Bevin and others profess to think so. The Daily Express, it is true, opposes Socialism, but that is a very different thing. If Mr. Bevin, or Mr. Morrison, or Sir Walter Citrine came to power here the Daily Express would not tremble at those men nor fear their policies.

So the Express calls the Labour Party the Socialist Party because it isn’t a Socialist Party! Now let Beaverbrook lie his way out of the tangle into which he has got himself.

On to Prosperity

Mr. Francis Williams, City Editor of the Daily Herald, promises prosperity because France has “gone off gold,” and “the gold standard is dead ” (Daily Herald, September 28th, 1936). Five years ago Mr. Williams made the same promise as regards Great Britain. But where is prosperity ? Only Mr. Williams knows. The following, from The Daily Telegraph (September 28th, 1936), has a bearing on the point.: —

When eggs were offered to some schoolchildren in Cumberland they did not know how to eat them. They had never had eggs before. Other children at Barnsley, Yorkshire, refused custard, butter and bananas because they were unfamiliar foods.

These instances of the effect of prolonged unemployment were given on Saturday by Mrs. G. R. Evans, a delegate to the National Federation of Class Teachers’ Conference, held at Nottingham. Mr. C. S. Evans, of Rhondda, said that in the area where he taught many of the children were unable to remember their fathers ever having worked and could not tell him even what their fathers’ occupations were.

In his class he had never known fewer than 60 per cent. of the fathers to be unemployed. Only on Fridays, did many of the children get any breakfast at all, and that was because their fathers drew unemployment pay on Thursday.—(Daily Telegraph, September 28th, 1936.) 

When will Mr. Williams learn that capitalism, not any special currency policy, is the cause of working-class poverty ?

Words Worth Remembering

The plain fact is, there is no defence against the horrors of war except peace.

Robert Lynd (News-Chronicle, Sept. 19th, 1936).

If a war occurs, Mr. Lloyd George will doubtless be urging the workers to fight in order to save democracy; but this is what he told a News Chronicle representative: —

If we do not establish peace democracy is doomed, for democracy will never survive another world war.

(News-Chronicle, Sept. 21st.)

A Prophesy of War

Amidst all the current forecasts of war it is interesting to look back at some earlier ones. One paper on June 10th, 1922, prophesied war for certainty, saying that it was only “a matter of time, not even perhaps of years but of months.”

But the war was not the same war that is being prophesied to-day. It was ”war with America, war with America and France.”

The paper was the Communist, June 10th, 1922, official organ of the Communist Party.

The Great War to Create Wars

The great lie of the Great War was that it was a war to end war. By that subtle falsehood the misgivings about the real purpose and cause of the war were swept aside and the blind patriotism of the workers was exploited for the protection of capitalism. Now Mr. Amery, sometime First Lord of the Admiralty, Minister for the Colonies, etc., etc., admits that the war, so far from removing the cause of war, has made the position worse. He was speaking at the annual meeting of the Royal Society of St. George at the Mansion House on April 23rd. (See report in Times, April 24th, 1936.):

Unfortunately a good many people were of the opinion that as we had had one great war it was possible to eliminate the causes of war and patriotism was superfluous. There was, of course, far more to it than that. The process which started in the nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth was accelerated by the War, and the whole growth of national societies inevitably made for closer contacts. We might deplore some of the excesses which their emotions led many people to commit, as shown in Italy, Germany, and Russia, but it was not for us to ignore the intensity of national feeling. If we were to maintain our freedom we had to be strong, and it was the duty of all to widen the influence of our national feelings. (Italics ours.)

Poor Germany!

One of the stories put about by German nationalist propagandists in the years after the War was that the peace treaty had “ruined” Germany and reduced everyone to deplorable depths of poverty. The story was accepted by Labourites in this country and has been adopted by Hitler. It was not, and is not, true. What happened was that many of the German capitalists who had been exceedingly wealthy before the War lost heavily through Germany’s defeat, and some, indeed, were ruined. Others lost their fortunes to new groups of capitalists (Stinnes & Co.) during the years of inflation of the currency. Nevertheless, capitalism continued in Germany without any appreciable change under the Social Democrats and Governments with which they co-operated, and where there is capitalism there will be found contrasts of wealth and poverty. In 1931, for example, there were 40 people in Germany whose property was assessed for purposes of taxation at over 10 million marks each, that is roughly over £500,000.

There were 2,465 with over one million marks (roughly £50,000), 115 with over five million marks (£250,000). These figures from official sources were reproduced in Freiheit organ of the Independent Socialist Party of Germany (June 7th, 1931). As in England and elsewhere, it was the working class who were poor, and Hitler has done nothing to alter that condition of affairs.

He is now talking, as his predecessors did, of dividing up the big estates in East Prussia. The Berlin correspondent of the Daily Telegraph reports (September 2nd, 1936). that it is calculated that in Germany as a whole there are 412 big landowners who hold between them nearly 6,500,000 acres, or enough land to support one million smallholders. Nearly 95 per cent. of all agricultural and forest land in Germany is owned by 22,000 proprietors, that is by less than one per cent. (actually 6 per cent.) of the persons owning land. It remains to be seen how Hitler will fare in handling a problem which brought down other German Governments. Like them he has to face the discontent of the landless on the one side, and the power of landowners and big business on the other.

Douglasites Floored by Facts. The Rise and Fall of Unemployment

Nothing shows up so clearly the failure of Major Douglas and his followers to understand the nature of capitalism as their inability to explain the ups and downs of production and trade. A case in point is their forecast of constantly increasing unemployment. Socialists were not bamboozled in 1931 into the belief that the crisis was any different in kind from all the other crises of capitalism. Socialists were, therefore, able to predict, with confidence, that the increase of unemployment would, in due course, give place to a decrease as capitalist trade and production entered on another phase of expansion. The Douglasites, on the contrary, ignorant of the similar blundering prophecies of their predecessors a century ago, hastened to predict that capitalism would never recover, and that the volume of unemployment would mount continuously without a break. Let us see what events have done to their prophecy.

In its issue of January 25th, 1934, the Douglas journal, New English Weekly, wrote : —

As technology develops, there will be a growing mass of unemployed 20 per cent., 30 per cent., 40 per cent, or more who are deprived of all demand-power, except such as we allow them by way of the dole.

Now let us contrast that prophecy of unemployment increasing from 20 per cent. to 30 per cent., 40 per cent. and more, with the actual happenings, as shown in the Ministry of Labour returns as to the percentages of insured workers unemployed.

January, 1933. ...  23     per cent.

January, 1934. ...         18.6  per cent.

January, 1935. ...  17.7  per cent.

January, 1936. ...         16.3  per cent.

June, 1936. ...      13.1  per cent.

September, 1934. ...     12.4  per cent

In due course capitalism will experience another crash and then the Douglasites, silent as to their past failure, will rush into print, repeating their fallacious theories and prophecies.

Edgar Hardcastle