Nine days that didn’t shake the world (2026)

From the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

At 11.59 pm on 3 May 1926 the General Strike began, called by the General Council of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in solidarity with much put-upon miners in the coal industry. The intention was to force the British government to act on behalf of over one million locked-out colliers.

The coal industry was in decline. It had reached its peak annual production, of 292 million tonnes, in 1913. Seven years later output had fallen to 233 million tonnes. The First World War (1914-18) had made such demands on the industry that many of the better coal seams had been depleted.

The same period had seen the expansion of coal production in other countries such as Poland, Germany and the USA. After 1918, as coal working became more difficult in British mines, and therefore more expensive to produce, cheaper imported coal became an increasing challenge.

The Dawes Plan of 1924 enabled Germany to once again export coal, ‘free coal’ as it became known, as part of war reparations. The effect was to reduce the price of coal on the international market. A year later the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill, placed Britain back on the gold standard.

This strengthening of the pound sterling made exports more expensive which, along with raised interest rates, led to economic instability in some sectors and a quest for cost cutting in Britain. Coal mine owners subsequently found themselves faced with falling profits.

The reaction was, as usual, to make the workforce bear the cost. There began a sustained process of increasing working hours and reducing rates of pay. Miners, unsurprisingly, reacted against this assault on their living and working conditions.

The response of the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain was, in the words of AJ Cook, the Federation’s leader, ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a second on the day’. As to action, Cook had made his position clear in 1924, ‘I believe in strikes. They are the only weapon.’

Unrest in the mines echoed through many a steel mill and loco shed, through industries also having straitened times. This resulted in widespread sympathy for the hard-pressed colliers, organised workers expressing solidarity.

Stanley Baldwin, Prime Minister of the Conservative government, introduced a nine-month subsidy of miners’ wages along with a Royal Commission under Sir Herbert Samuel to investigate the industry.

Its main recommendations, in March 1926, were nationalised royalties, national (rather than local or regional) pay and employment agreements, along with the withdrawal of the government subsidy and a reduction in miners’ wages of 13.5 percent.

Emboldened by the Commission’s report, mine owners proposed new employment terms of a longer working day with reductions in pay packets. The Miners’ Federation rejected these proposals, exposing the supposed neutrality of governments in such matters.

Following failed negotiations on 1 May, the General Council of the TUC announced that a general strike would commence at a minute to midnight two days later.

Despite there being up to 3 million workers on strike, mainly but not exclusively in heavy industries, there was no clear strategy as to how to conduct or progress the campaign. The government, however, was organised and responsive.

The Labour Party, not wishing to be associated with disruptive and possibly revolutionary action, adopted a sympathetic but distanced attitude. A legal ruling under the Trade Disputes Act, 1906, declared that union funds during a general strike were not protected. This enabled employers to sequestrate union assets.

On 12 May, the TUC called the general strike off. The miners were left to fight on largely alone until the extremes of poverty forced their return to work under even more stringent conditions. Capitalism’s prioritising of profits over the needs of workers had been blatantly demonstrated.

Although the strike garnered mass support, the majority of workers were not directly involved. There were some though prepared to physically confront any who were actively working to mitigate or undermine the strike.

For example, in Leeds, on 5 May, a crowd of over a thousand gathered by the Corn Exchange. They were determined to prevent the continued, somewhat reduced, running of the tram and bus services.

To make their point obvious, coal was taken from a delivery lorry and used to pelt a tram on Duncan Street, smashing its windows, thereby forcing it to stop. Next day more trams and buses were forced out of service the same way.

Such small victories may seem significant in the moment, but they serve only to provoke a predictable response from the forces of the state. The police responded with horses, truncheons and arrests. What occurred at Orgreave six decades later was not unprecedented.

The week after this event the General Strike ignominiously collapsed when the TUC’s General Council went to Downing Street and surrendered. This was always the most likely outcome as was the defeat of the miners’ strike later that year.

Limitations of trade union action

Trade unions have served a positive and useful purpose as a collective response by workers to the depredations inflicted on them by capitalism. Indeed, they have played an important part in tempering some of the worst features of capitalism, fighting to improve wages and working conditions for their members.

They eventually gave workers a voice in parliament by founding their own political organisation, the Labour Party. However, ameliorating the excesses of capitalism was, and is, the extent of their power.

The slogan ‘A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’ gives voice to union and Labour Party aspirations. It leaves capitalism free to determine to its own advantage the definition of the word ‘fair’. Also, the word pay indicates no sense of looking beyond capitalist relations; employers who take profits while employees depend on wages/salaries. A relationship defined in terms of money.

Unions and their political party can only, at best, reform elements of the capitalist system. Miners, in the twentieth century, exemplify this. In the 1920s their parlous state motivated a collective, if limited, response by their fellow workers. Ultimately defeated.

1 January 1947 was Vesting Day, when the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act of the previous year came into force. There were many who welcomed this as a ‘socialist’ measure, along with the NHS a year later, by the reforming Labour government.

Just 25 years later, in 1972, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was taking strike action against the employers, the National Coal Board (NCB). Had coal mining been truly socialist those miners would, effectively, have been striking against themselves.

Mining could not, of course, be a socialist enclave within a capitalist economy, just as there cannot be a single socialist country in a capitalist world. The NCB ran the mines on behalf of the state that itself runs society of behalf of capitalism. Coal mines were reformed, but not socialist.

It has been estimated that 253 coal mines closed during periods of Labour governments between 1964-70 and 1974-76 with the loss of over 200,000 jobs. Prior to 1964 coal was in long-term decline. The economic problems of mining coal in Britain that so adversely affected mining in the 1920s, difficulties in extraction and cheaper imports, along with newer competition from other fuels, oil and natural gas, resulted in falling profitability.

Even the success of flying pickets and a second strike in 1974 could do little to divert capitalist economic logic. By 1984-5, any illusion as to the socialist nature of coal mining was surely dispelled by the Thatcher Conservative government.

No matter how great the solidarity of workers in dispute, or subsequent reforms enacted in response, ultimately capitalism, through its state, will organise matters to its own requirements. Reforms granted are readily withdrawn when increased profitability demands.

Strikes are essential to our lives as wage-slaves, yet their very existence is a mark of the failure, to date, to confront the reality of capitalism and the necessity of replacing it with socialism.

Dave Alton

General Strike (2026)

From the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Union branches will be passing resolutions and holding events to commemorate the centenary of the General Strike that ran in the United Kingdom from 3 May to 12 May 1926.

As an event, it is a Rorschach test: people see what they want to see in it. For Trotskyists, it was a failure of leadership at a revolutionary moment. For the Labour left, another example of betrayal. For the Labour right, a foolhardy adventure, which proves that sensible electoral politics is the way forward.

The background was declining productivity of British coal: around one and a half million men worked in the mines. Output per man was falling, and it was facing competition on the international markets (particularly from the return of German coal). This was compounded by Chancellor Winston Churchill’s attempts to return to the gold standard (effectively over-valuing the pound, making British exports expensive).

The mine owners reacted by wanting to cut wages to restore their profits. The response of the mine workers was ‘Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day’. They sought an assurance of support from the TUC that other unions would back up the mine workers in their dispute, which was agreed.

The Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin intervened: simultaneously buying time by engaging a commission to examine the coal industry and agreeing a temporary coal subsidy, whilst also preparing to meet a widespread strike organisationally. The commission was headed by Herbert Samuels, a former liberal Home Secretary (and recently returned Governor of Palestine). He had, whilst an MP, represented iron mining districts in North Yorkshire.

The report noted that ‘the dominant fact is that, in the last quarter of 1925, if subsidy be excluded, 73 percent of coal was produced at a loss’. It recommended that the state take ownership of the coal in the ground, with compensation for active mines; that mines be amalgamated; that coal mining work more closely with other industries; that research in coal technologies be intensified; that more integration of distribution be carried out; and while the mining day remain at 7.5 hours, working time should be cut from 6 days to 5.

This was a substantial pay cut. Baldwin was happy to accept these proposals, but the miners’ union, obviously, rejected it (along with rejecting compensation for the nationalised mine owners). Without agreement, the government ended the subsidy, and on 30th April the mine owners locked the men out.

The dispute was placed in the hands of the General Council of the TUC, which, according to Miners’ Union General Secretary A.J. Cook’s account, took the dispute out of the hands of miners. As a TUC account of events has it:

‘The only principal unions initially called out in support of the miners were those of the railwaymen, the transport workers, the builders, the iron and steel workers – and the printers, engineers and shipyard workers were called out after the first week.’

As they note, the unions preferred to refer to it as a national strike, rather than a general strike. The strike was enthusiastically supported (better than had been expected by any party).

The government swung into action, and began to call for volunteers to help keep the railways and other services running. They tried to take the high ground. They represented the print workers’ refusal to print the Daily Mail (because its editorials attacked the strikers) as an attack on free speech. They laboured their democratic mandate as the constitutional government. Although police and troops were called out to protect scabs and break picket lines, Baldwin refused Churchill’s call to use armed force against strikers.

The nascent BBC found itself in the firing line: Baldwin was able to broadcast to the nation, but Ramsay MacDonald and the strike leaders were not permitted a voice. Lord Reith did, however, rebuff Churchill’s call for the nominally independent company to be put entirely at the service of the government.

The time won by the subsidy for organisation was put to good use.

As Baldwin said in Parliament:

‘I do not think all the leaders when they assented to ordering a general strike fully realised that they were threatening the basis of ordered government, and going nearer to proclaiming civil war than we have been for centuries past. They laboured—that is, many of them—with the utmost zeal for peace up to the very end. Perhaps they thought that there was nothing more at stake than bringing a certain amount of spectacular pressure to bear, which might suffice to persuade the Government to capitulate without serious damage to the liberties of the nation. But they have created a machine which they cannot control.’

MacDonald’s contribution was ‘With the discussion of general strikes and Bolshevism and all that kind of thing, I have nothing to do at all. I respect the Constitution’, plus a call for ‘co-ordination’ in the industry, which was, after all, the entirety of what he aspired to and called ‘socialism’.

The leaders of the TUC had not intended to overthrow the government, but to win an industrial dispute. The unions and strikers did not represent the whole of the working class (for example, there were as many domestic servants as there were miners). Faced with a resolute government, the TUC backed down and asked for no reprisals (which the government would not commit to). Cook believed that had the TUC held out a few more days, the government would have backed down – and the miners continued their action.

Although a defeat, which led to laws banning sympathy and general strikes, the action was not a disaster. The unions had brought the government to the negotiating table; they had shown the strength of union organisation and feeling. They also survived with their organisation intact. In the end, the reality of coal mining productivity prevailed and world markets asserted themselves. The working class demonstrated resolve and solidarity, but could not overcome the organised power of the state without a clear plan and resolve to that end.

Pik Smeet

Editorial: What the failure of the General Strike teaches (2026)

Editorial from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

A general strike is the refusal to work by employees in many industries, and a manifestation of the class struggle between the working class and the capitalist class that arises within capitalist society. Syndicalists and others have seen it as a weapon to overthrow capitalism. They believe that because workers can stop production they could use this to ‘take and hold’ the places where they work and ‘lock out’ their capitalist employers. However, as long as the capitalists control political power (through political parties that support the system) it is they who have the upper hand, using their control of the powers of coercion and exploiting the fact that workers cannot hold out for long without money to buy what they need to survive.

The British general strike of 4–12 May 1926 was provoked by the mine-owners who, faced with an adverse market for coal, demanded a cut in wages and an increase in working hours from the mineworkers. The Miners’ Federation, led by A.J. Cook and others, asked the TUC to bring out all the major industries, in line with a resolution supporting the miners carried at the 1925 Congress. The Conservative government, with Stanley Baldwin as Prime Minister, had prepared for the strike by recruiting special constables and setting up the strikebreaking Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies. During the strike millions of workers came out in support of the miners. The government monopolised the means of propaganda, however, and the BBC suppressed news that might have embarrassed the government.

After nine days the General Council of the TUC called off the general strike, betraying every resolution upon which the strike call was issued and without a single concession being gained. The miners were left alone to fight the mine-owners backed by the government with the tacit approval of the TUC and the Parliamentary Labour Party led by Ramsay MacDonald. The miners stayed out until August before being forced by starvation to accept the mine-owners’ terms of reduced wages (below 1914 level) and an increase in the working day by one hour. In other words, it was a failure even from a trade-union, let alone a socialist, point of view.

A general strike cannot be used to overthrow capitalism. At most, under favourable conditions, it can achieve some trade union or democratic political aim. To get socialism requires a class-conscious working class democratically capturing state power to prevent that power being used against them.

In 1926, the very facts that the government was firmly in control of political power, that less than two years before at the general election millions of workers had supported them and other capitalist political parties (including the Labour Party), showed that socialism was not on the political agenda.

Workers who do not vote for socialism will not strike for it. Workers who want socialism do not need to strike for it but can use their votes to deprive the capitalist class of political control. That — the need to win political control first — is the lesson of 1926.

Letter: Some questions on Socialist policy. (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Correspondent Answered.

We give below a letter from “Student” and our replies to his four questions : —

Oct. 6th, 1927.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, 

17, Mount Pleasant, 

London, W.C.1.

Dear Comrades,

I am in agreement and have been for a number of years with the Object and Principles of the S.P.G.B., and have been preaching same, yet I must say that I do not agree with actions, statements, and attitude of certain members of the S.P.G.B. which I, like many others, maintain are detrimental to progress to the object of Socialism as stated by the S.P.G.B. I write to ascertain from you your answer to the following questions :—

1. If a person believe there to be a Supreme Being or Living God; or believe in the statements supposed to have been made by the supposed Christ, would such a person be allowed to join or remain a member of the S.P.G.B.?
2. If a person be a member, an active member, of a local unemployed organisation, originated and supported by members of the Tory Party and Fascists, would such person be allowed to join or remain a member of the S.P.G.B.?
3. Is there in your opinion an organisation which does function that is strictly Non-Political: whether it does state so or not?
4. Would you say that nationalisation is, or is not, a step in the right direction toward Socialism?

Thanking you in anticipation for your reply through the ” Standard ” or otherwise.—Yours fraternally,

A Student.

Reply.

(1) Applicants for membership of the Socialist Party are required to demonstrate only that they accept our Declaration of Principles and will adhere to our rules (except, of course, that they must show that they understand what they are signing). But acceptance of Socialism involves acceptance of certain views as to the evolution of society ; there is, therefore, no place in our ranks for those whose “beliefs” prevent them from working confidently for the establishment of Socialism. Belief in a “Supreme Being” possessing and using the power to mould men and things arbitrarily to a “Divine Will ” cuts across our scientific view of the necessity of moulding society ourselves in accordance with our definite views of working-class interests. To show that this is not an exaggerated precaution, we need only consider an amazing document which bears the signature of A. J. Cook, Ben Tillett, George Lansbury, R. Coppock and others. This is the Proclamation of the Industrial Christian Fellowship, issued on April 25th, 1926, for the celebration of ” Industrial Sunday.”

The signatories declare that:

“In attaching our names to this manifesto of the Industrial Christian Fellowship, we proclaim our belief in the Gospel of Christ as the final truth concerning the relationship of men one with another. It is our conviction that statesmanship will fail, and political programmes will prove futile as a solvent of social troubles, unless they embody the spirit and practice of Christ.”

There is much more of this kind of stuff, including an appeal “to our fellow-citizens of all classes” to remedy the evils of the modern world.

Now we offer membership to those who accept our solution of the economic problem of the working class; we cannot offer it to those who pin their faith to Christ, or the “Christian spirit,” or the works of a “Supreme Being,” and who by so doing explicitly or implicitly reject all “political programmes,” including our own. Neither we nor they would benefit from the encouragement such a course would give to the confusion of a double and conflicting allegiance.

(2) and (3) We cannot answer such a question without particulars of the organisation referred to. Members are frequently compelled, in order to work at their trade, to join trade unions founded and dominated by liberals, labourites, and other anti-socialists. We can only say in general that members may not belong to other political parties. Whether a particular organisation is political, or whether for other reasons we consider it undesirable for members to join it, must be decided on the merits of each case.

(4) Nationalisation, or State Capitalism, in this country is emphatically not a step in the right direction. In a backward country like Russia, faced with the need to go through Capitalism before Socialism is a practical possibility, State Capitalism may be a step in the right direction, in that it may hasten capitalist development and enable it to proceed without certain of the worst excesses which competitive capitalism exhibited in this country in the early days.

Editorial Committee.

The General Strike (1976)

From the May 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

On its 50th anniversary the tales of the General Strike, real and legendary, will be told. The strike action of those Trade Unionists and others who took part was not based on a clear recognition of the position of the workers under capitalism and the class struggle resulting therefrom. The workers were not class-conscious, and therefore their actions were not a challenge to the existence of capitalism. Nevertheless, under the present order workers have to defend their living standards against their employers, and to that extent the General Strike must rank as a landmark in the history of the British working class; as the most determined display of solidarity we have seen this century. That is encouraging to the Socialist — if workers can unite on one issue for a limited purpose, they can certainly unite on the greater issue of Socialism. “Unity is strength”, and “A house divided against itself shall fall”.

In 1925 the mine owners, faced with the re-emergence of Germany as a trade competitor, served notice on the Miners’ Federation to terminate the National Agreement ending the minimum wage and demanding severe wage cuts. Working hours were to be increased from 7 to 8 hours daily without extra pay, and District Agreements were to replace the existing National one. The miners put their objections before the TUC at a joint meeting held on 10th July 1925. The TUC supported the miners, set up a special commission, and issued instructions to all railway and transport workers forbidding the movement of coal and the handling of export coal. “All men engaged in delivering coal to commercial and industrial concerns will cease Friday night 31st July”. A specially summoned conference of Trade Union executive committee members gave unanimous support to these instructions.

Baldwin (the Prime Minister) summoned miners and mine owners to 10 Downing Street on the morning of Friday 31st July 1925 (“Red Friday”) and announced the granting of a subsidy to the coal industry amounting to about £25 million, extending over nine months. The wage cuts and other demands of the mine owners were postponed until April 1926. Evidently the government was not ready, but the nine months’ respite gave them time to set up their strike-breaking organization OMS (Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies), the appointment of civil commissioners, and the enrolling of large numbers of special constables and the formation of mobile police squads. Winston Churchill, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: “We therefore decided to postpone the crisis in the event of averting it, or if not averting it, of coping effectively with it when the time came”.

In the meantime a Royal Commission, presided over by Sir Herbert Samuel, presented its report. The report was very definite in demanding wage reductions and the lengthening of the working day, and it became clear that the government would back the mine owners. A. J. Cook, the miners’ leader, in his pamphlet The Nine Days recalls the attitude of Ramsay MacDonald and the Parliamentary Labour Party in relation to the evidence placed before the Commission. “The only difference of opinion was between the industrial movement and the political movement regarding compensation for the royalty owners. Strange to say, the leaders of the Parliamentary Labour Party who had been preaching Socialism for many years were the ones who opposed the policy of the Miners’ Federation and the Trade Union Congress in regard to the question of compensation or confiscation of royalties”.

Before the Commission report came out, the British coal owners declared publicly that they would never again meet the miners’ representatives, nor submit to National agreements, and that they would insist on District agreements. This was an attempt to break the solidarity of the miners since the building up of the Miners Federation. The Federation, at a meeting held on April 9th 1926, re-affirmed its total opposition to the mine-owners’ proposals. Later, on 14th April 1926, the TUC Negotiating Committee passed the following resolution: “This Committee reiterates its previous declaration to render the miners the fullest support in resisting the degradation of the standards of life, and to obtain an equitable settlement of the case with regards to wages, hours and a National agreement”. In April 1926 the coal owners announced that unless the miners accepted their terms, a reduction in wages and the working day lengthened by one hour, they would close down the mines as from 1st May. This effectively “locked out” one million miners.

A conference of the Trade Union executives was held on Saturday 1st May at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon St, London, and two decisions were made: (1) That no negotiations should take place until the lock-out notices had been withdrawn, and (2) that the General Council of the TUC should be empowered to go ahead with a General Strike. 3,653,529 voted for, 49,911 voted against, and 319,000 were unable to reply in time. Further, it was agreed that no-one should return to work at the end of the General Strike unless all Union agreements were maintained. The General Strike was set to commence on Monday 3rd May. On Tuesday 4th May, the absence of trams, railway trains, buses, newspapers, and road transport were the first obvious indications that the workers in the mass supported the strike decision. The strike was on in earnest.

The General Strike will be remembered for two things. Firstly, the enthusiasm and solidarity of the workers, and secondly, the cowardice and treachery of the TUC in calling it off nine days later behind the backs of the miners, and ratting on every resolution upon which the strike call was issued. The inglorious betrayal of the finest effort of the British working class on the industrial field should surely have taught the workers not to place their trust in leaders. Not a single concession was gained, and one million miners were left alone to fight the mine owners backed by the government with the tacit approval of the TUC and the Parliamentary Labour Party led by Ramsay MacDonald and J. R. Clynes. The miners were locked out for over three months after the strike, and forced by starvation and privation to accept the coal-owners’ terms of reduced wages (below 1914 level), more unemployment, and an increase in the working day by one hour. It is a sad commentary on the present attitude of the National Union of Mineworkers that their recent ballot within the last few weeks was a demand for the retention of overtime working.

The idea of using the weapon of a general strike as a means of abolishing capitalism is still held by anarchists, syndicalists, International Socialists, Communists, and others. Daniel De Lon, the patron saint of the SLP (now defunct), held that the political revolution would fail unless the workers backed up the political organization by the strike, which he described as the economic organization. The 1926 strike showed all too clearly that when there is a class struggle those who hold political power are in control. The workers in their millions had only two years earlier voted to power the Baldwin government, and it was that government which said that wages must come down, and was prepared to use the whole machinery of government to give effect to their policy. This task was made easier by the miserable collection of renegades, led by that arch swindler “Honest” Jimmy Thomas who would have sold his own grandmother. True to character, a few years later he was accused of selling secret information about the contents of the Annual Budget.

Had the general council of the TUC been composed of men of principle, loyal to the class they had the honour to represent, the capitalists would not have gained the victory they did. Union after Union was forced to accept wage cuts or increases in working hours. The Trades Dispute Act, passed a year later, was only opposed by the Labour Party because of the contracting-out clause which affected their income from the Political Levy.

Writing about the Strike fifty years later, what lessons were learned by the workers? Have they abandoned the idea of leadership inside or outside the Unions? The answer is no. Has the Trade Union organization and the TUC undergone a change of attitude on the question of class co-operation? Again, the answer is no. If anything, Trade Unions have become more insular: more concerned with the narrow issues affecting their individual members. They are completely steeped in capitalist ideology. Their world begins and ends with their members’ interests, not with the interests of the working class as a whole. The TUC is nothing other than a political wing of the present Labour government. Those who think in terms of a successful general strike with Jack Jones, Hugh Scanlon, Len Murray, and the other untalented servants of capital, in place of J. H. Thomas, Swales, Hicks, Tillett and Pugh, etc. are deluding themselves. The present Trade Unions are hopelessly compromised with the Labour government, and this is to their disadvantage. They are expected to co-operate on wage reductions, redundancy policies, wage freezes, and hosts of other schemes which are of direct help to the capitalists. But the general strike is not a means or an aid to the establishment of Socialism. Joint action by groups of Unions against groups of employers can achieve benefits or prevent living standards from being depressed. This is the most that can be expected. The capitalist class will not, nor cannot, succumb to any other form of economic pressure as long as they control the State machine.

We do not make a distinction between workers organized in Trade Unions and those outside. Both have to understand how to use the political weapon. Both have to renounce leadership, whether it be industrial or political. Both have to understand the consequences of their social action before embarking on that action. Socialist understanding must come first, it cannot be learned later, because without this understanding and knowledge Socialism cannot be established.

May Day is the day upon which the working class of the world demonstrate their international solidarity. So far the working class have ignored the splendid proposition or prospect of a Socialist society. In doing so, they have denied themselves the opportunity to cleanse the world of the scourge of capitalism. Men live their lives in time, so why squander it? There is nothing we cannot do if we have a mind to. There is no force on earth which can prevent the establishment of Socialism when the will is there.

Jim D'Arcy

The lesson of the coal dispute. (1927)

From the January 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

What Mr. Cook has failed to learn. 

The dispute in the coal industry has prompted many writers to indulge in their favourite practice of pointing a lesson. Mr. A. J. Cook, as the chief representative of the miners, tells us in the New Leader, 26.11.1926, what is “The real lesson of the coal war,” “The lesson which the working class must, and will, draw from the greatest industrial upheaval in our history.”

Mr. Cook emphasises again and again the bitter hostility that exists between the Capitalist-class and the working-class. His first reference is to arbitration and conciliation.

“It seems to me that anyone who can suppose that the workers can to-day obtain either a living wage or tolerable conditions in industry by these means must be quite ignorant of the national and international facts of present-day capitalist industry.”

A realization of this fact during the dispute might have saved much time wasted, and dignity lost, searching for a basis of agreement. It should, moreover, be apparent that every attempt to reason concessions out of employers must, in the face of this antagonism be futile. Nothing has ever been won for the workers by conferences between employers and Labour leaders. The deciding factor is always power. If the workers are unable to damage Capitalist interests by withholding their labour-power, the oratory of their leaders cannot save them from defeat. What that defeat means for the working-class Mr. Cook informs us next:

“The growing intensity of our industrial disputes, waged now not to gain new privileges for the workers, but in desperate attempts to preserve old gains, proves conclusively what we, as Socialists, have long been saying. Keir Hardie himself summed up the lesson in his famous phrase, “You must either end capitalism or capitalism will end you.” We are now face to face with the fact that we can only end capitalism by creating and constructing a new social order. That is the historic mission of the working-class movement.”

Mr. Cook then outlines certain facts connected with Capitalist methods and development which he finds only lead him to the same conclusion : the clash of interests between the Capitalist-class and the working-class. He says :

“If this analysis of the present condition of capitalism is sound, then clearly there can be no identity of interest in present circumstances between the owners of capital and the workers.”

Mr. Cook arrives at this conclusion by means of a quite unnecessary recital of recent Capitalist developments, “overcapitalization, the return to the gold standard, the burden of war debts, the scarcity of markets and etc.” He fails to see that it is not in the development but in the nature of Capitalism that the source of class antagonism lies. Ownership of the means of wealth production by the Capitalist-class, and the merchandise character of human labour-power; the basic principles of Capitalist society, make harmonious relations between the two classes impossible.

A further process of reasoning brings Mr. Cook to the conclusion “that Capitalism can only exist with a permanent unemployed system connected with every industry,” and the further conclusion contained in the following :

“At the same time, every attempt to introduce new methods of production which increase output means that yet another consignment of workers is thrown on the industrial scrap heap. Next, as a result of facing economic facts,”

Mr. Cook says :

“Surely no one can now doubt that the object of the Government and the Capitalist Press— those twin brothers of oppression—is to smash the whole Trade Union and Labour Movement, and that they will be satisfied with nothing less.”

From these facts and conclusions we are asked to learn that :

“The lesson of this struggle is that Socialism is the only hope of the worker, his wife and his child; that we must equip ourselves for the control of industry; that, if we would accomplish our great purpose in our own day, we must start now.”

It will not be out of place here to summarise Mr. Cook’s most important conclusions :

1. The futility of arbitration and conciliation.
2. That there is no identity of interests between Capitalists and workers.
3. That new methods which increase output mean increased unemployment.
4. That the Capitalist Government is determined to smash the workers’ organisations.
5. That Socialism is the only hope of the workers.

These conclusions are now in a convenient form for reference. Mr. Cook in his subsequent remarks forgets that he has written them. We shall see how he throws them overboard in a few sentences.

Nos. 1, 2 and 4 go by the board in a single sentence :

“I appeal not only to workers but to every thinking man and woman in the country, no matter their class, to realise the gravity of the choice that lies before us.”

How is it possible for Mr. Cook to think, at one and the same time, that the Capitalists are determined to smash the workers’ organizations, and yet are capable of being influenced by a statement of the consequences?

If the interests of the two classes are opposed, how can the Capitalists be expected to respond to appeals for unity of thought with the workers?

No. 3 is next discarded in the most shameless manner. Still connecting the two classes as thinking men and women, he says :

“Cannot they realise what the I.L.P. has grasped—that a living wage and reorganised industry must go together, and that these two are the only hope of our country.”

The italics are not ours. Throughout the pages of “The Living Wage” the I.L.P. insists that new machinery, better organization, standardization and mass production are necessary to the “living wage.” Mr. Cook gives them his blessing in the same column in which he declares that such methods mean yet another consignment of workers thrown on the industrial scrap-heap. ”These two—a living wage and reorganised industry—are the only hope of our country,” he says, yet only a few lines above he had written, “Socialism is the only hope of the worker.” In that contradiction No. 5 went by the board; yet so eager was Mr. Cook “to start now” that he ruled Socialism out in the next paragraph to which he asserted its paramount importance :

“We must make every city, town and village ring with our first and most urgent demand—the nationalisation of the mines.”

Nationalisation of the mines is a question for those Capitalists who are dependent on the mineowners for supplies of coal. Neither the miners nor the working-class as a whole would be any nearer Socialism as a consequence, either of its achievement or its advocacy. The first step in that direction is one of knowledge. Not with nationalisation, but with the knowledge of Socialism must “every city, town and village be made to ring” before we can truthfully say we are well on the road to Socialism.

F. Foan

The Antics of the Left-Wing. (1926)

From the March 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

Without even having read the book one cannot help smiling at the diverting title chosen by the novelist who wrote “The Man with Two Left Feet.” How can a man have two left feet? If they both point to the left, as left feet should, the man must walk forever in a narrow circle, arriving nowhere in particular. If the feet are not side by side but in line, how does he manage to preserve his balance? Probably the novelist credits nature with this deformity, but if such things happened one might well imagine it to be an instance of nature imitating art—the art of politics.

Can a man have two left feet? Can a “united” party have one right, a centre or so, two and possibly three left-wings ? It can.

Can such a party march forever in a circle, arriving nowhere? It does. Can a party be achieving “progress” continually for. a generation and yet leave the beneficiaries of that “progress”—the workers—worse off at the end than at the beginning? If you doubt it, look at the Labour Party. Can a man balance on two left feet? Can one oppose Weir Houses and not vote against them, and support Weir Houses without voting for them? Watch the statesmanlike MacDonald and the Jesuitical Wheatley. Can Mr. Thomas and Mr. Cook engage heatedly in public conflict and remain loyal to the same programme, the same policy and the same methods? The “Daily Herald” says that they can.

Mr. MacDonald has reached the pinnacle of success, but there are many who are ready to pull him down if he stumbles, and fight like wolves for his place and power. Every political student knows that there is no surer method of forcing one’s way to the front rank than by stagemanaging well-timed rank and file “revolts”—hence the present flood of left wings.

Mr. Wheatley.

MacDonald was in his own tortuous way something of a genius, but for sheer subtlety we think he has met his match in Mr. Wheatley. Wheatley is on one of the left wings, but not so far to the left as to have to refuse office in the Labour Government. He is himself a Capitalist of some degree of wealth, advocates the abolition of Capitalism when speaking on the Clyde, believes a Labour administration prolongs the life of Capitalism, introduced as Labour Minister of Health a Housing Bill which he himself described as “Capitalist”—“an attempt to patch up Capitalism,” says the Labour Party is not Socialist and also that the Labour Party’s support of religion proves that Socialism supports religion. But perhaps his finest piece of work was shown in his attitude to “direct action.” He proclaims his belief in the necessity of urging soldiers to disobey orders should they be used against strikes. He attached his signature to a letter protesting against the Communist Trial Verdict. It read as follows :—

“It was stated on behalf of the Crown that it is seditious—(1) to preach the Class war; and (2) to appeal to soldiers, in case of industrial troubles, not to shoot their fellow-workers. There is a special danger to Labour in this assumption that these doctrines are illegal. The great mass of the Labour Movement believes in them, and expresses—and will continue to express—its belief.”—(Daily Herald, 30th November, 1925.)

This, you may say, is perhaps rash, but surely the spirit is commendable? But just consider with me for one moment. When troops are so used they are under Martial Law, liable to the death penalty for disobedience; and when in 1924 an amendment was introduced in the House of Commons to abolish the death penalty, Mr. Wheatley voted against it. (Hansard 3 April, 1924, Army (Annual) Bill).

Is this not a mark of genius? Mr. Wheatley is a Catholic and a worthy descendant of the sixteenth century Jesuits who proved that Catholic subjects might legitimately assassinate Protestant rulers. But they added a rigid proviso that on no account may one put poison in a man’s food or drink, for this, they said, would make him a suicide—which would be most improper.

In a coarse age like ours it is at first sight by no means easy to appreciate the refinement of scruple, the delicate thoughtfulness of these Jesuit Philosophers. But, rightly looked at, what comfort it must have brought to the souls of murdered princes that they were despatched to their Maker not by poison in their beer, but by a poisoned dagger in the back. Wheatley, explaining his point of view to soldiers sentenced under an Act he voted for, because they took advice he gave, is surely entitled to a place beside his Jesuit forefathers.

A “Better Spirit.”

Mr. Cook is another left wing hero—an evangelist unaccountably strayed into the Labour Movement. He has the usual Capitalist outlook on work and wages. He asks for instance (“Daily Herald,” 9 March, 1925) “was it not a mistake that a miner was working for a less wage than that paid to a scavenger?” Why this slighting reference to scavengers? Why is it not a mistake, may we ask, for a miner to get less than a miner’s official, or less than the Editor of the Herald? Is this how Mr Cook proposes to unite the working class?

Mr. Cook, in company with Lansbury, Purcell, Ellen Wilkinson, Coppock, Tillett, and other left wing “stars,” put his signature to a recent manifesto of the Industrial Christian Fellowship, which manifesto contains useful information about their queer beliefs.

It begins, “We stand for Christ and His Principles, independent of Party,” which is surely a promising basis for a left wing. “It is our conviction that statesmanship will fail, and political programmes will prove futile as a solvent of social troubles, unless they embody the spirit and practice of Christ. . .. . We are moved . . . in a sober and serious spirit, to make this appeal to our fellow-citizens of all classes, without regard to their political affiliations …”

This, you may observe, is not quite in the strain these people use at left wing gatherings. But then, of course, some of them are in the habit of being moved, if rumour speaks truly, not by a “sober, serious spirit,” but by some other.

It does seem that those who call Cook “Emperor Cook” are hardly fair. Surely in his more exalted moments it is Jesus Christ he thinks he is?

Why not two left wings? Or three? Or four?

As we pointed out above, there is more than one left wing. The man has not only two left feet, but the two left feet want to walk in different directions. One, engineered by the “Sunday Worker,” called its little meeting of selected persons, only to find that “Lansbury’s Weekly” had called another little meeting of selected persons. Then they fought over the right to be the original and only left wing. One bone of contention was the Communist Party. Should they be admitted or not? In the meantime the Communists claim that they are themselves the real genuine article, but their position, it must be confessed, as a potential third left foot, is somewhat obscure. The parent body quite rudely cut them off and they are really the foot of another man altogether—a man living in Moscow. Does an amputated foot which insists on hanging around, really belong to its former body or not? That is the question of the moment. The I.L.P. claims to be a self-contained left wing itself, but Mr. Brailsford has given his Editorial benediction to one of the other left wings—which one we forget at the moment.

To be quite candid, we find this business of left wings a trifle confusing. What is going to be the outcome of this mess of intrigue? Suppose we grant, for the sake of argument, that the prime movers in these backstairs “palace revolutions” have only one motive—the welfare of the workers. Are they likely to achieve something beneficial by such means? Does experience show that anything worth while ever came out of such plotting and lying and wire-pulling? Is it not obvious that the only gainers will be the Wheatleys and Cooks and their imitators, and that the climbers who get left below will simply perpetuate the disgusting tradition in endless years of silly “tactical” marching and counter-marching, groupings and dissolutions, amalgamations and secessions? They agree only on the unworthiness of the Labour Party. Yet, ironically enough, we who alone maintain an attitude of open hostility to that unworthy party, and who consistently fight for Socialism and nothing else, are told by these very people that we confuse the minds of the workers !

Edgar Hardcastle

Socialist Brevities. (1929)

From the May 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Gate to More.

You all know, of course, that Unemployment can be both nice and nasty—the degrees of niceness and nastiness depending entirely upon the quality of wisdom displayed in choosing one’s parents. Locker- Lampson, Fat-fee Smith, Lloyd George, etc., etc., suffer their pangs amidst the lush verdure of the Riviera, but we workers prefer to cultivate our faculties of observation by meandering around looking for the display of that soul-stirring caption — "Hands wanted”! (Of course, if you are a baker, you may be expected to use your feet!)

However, let us look at unemployment as known to, and regarded as a normal risk by, the workers. Labour "leaders,” "economists,” and "captains of industry,” have constantly asserted that the cure for this disease is "More production,” "Rationalisation ” or "Nationalisation” —all fancied names for the increased exploitation of the workers. "Look at America!” they say. But let us look at England first. Lord Ebbisham, the President of the Federation of British Industries, in an article in the "Morning Post” (14/1/29), surveying British industrial conditions during 1928, makes the following statement:—

   Lastly, the reliability of unemployment returns as an index to industrial activity has been affected by the economy of effort and labour, which is one of the outstanding features of post-war industrial reorganisation. There is little doubt that post-war methods of manufacture aim at increasing output while actually decreasing the number of men engaged in production. That most of the workers so displaced will find employment in new industries does not minimise the significance of the possibility that, if the present tendency continues manufacturing, as opposed to marketing, finance, and other commercial activities, will in the future make progressively decreasing demands on the population, and in that sense will play a smaller part as a contributor to the general prosperity. (Our Italics.)

More production, more—unemployment! 

Observe that manufacturing (i.e., wealth production) will continue to make lesser and lesser "demand on the population.” A very generous interpretation of the 1921 Census returns gives us 7,615,198 workers engaged in productive occupations out of a population of about 45,000,000 (see pamphlet "Socialism,” pages 9 and 10), so the workers should feel quite complacent as to their prospects of increased leisure in the future.

But apparently, marketing, finance, etc., will make more and more “demands on the population.” Perhaps. Let us see. The “Morning Post” (1/1/29) provides us with a nice little tit-bit:—

ROBOT BANK CLERKS

  Will there be fewer openings for junior clerks in our large banks, owing to the ever-increasing efficiency of the ledger-posting, exchange-reckoning automatic devices being introduced? One of the latest of these devices is an American ledger-posting machine which writes out customers' bank balances in their pass-books and posts the amount of credit and debit.
  Under the new system a girl can do the work of two or three men. One of the largest London Banks is doing all its complicated exchange conversions by machine, and all foreign currencies can be turned into pounds sterling by turning a handle. A British machine for ledger-posting is being used at Lloyds’ head office, and nearly all bank branches are saving hours every week by up-to-date machines.

One need not be a prophet to see what this state of affairs might lead to in the future. I will hazard a guess, anyhow! 

Scene : A big Stores in 19—?

Salesman (to customer): “Bank clerks, Sir? Yessir! Fine line in to-day, sir. Six for sixpence each, sir. Or thirteen for a shilling if you are not superstitious, sir. Four gross, sir? Thank you, sir. They will be delivered to-morrow, sir, 12.30 p.m., in one of our plain vans, together with our free insurance policy. Good*day, sir.”

Ah! But engineering will always be safe for the workers. Munitions, ships and things. Do not, therefore, let the following paragraph, culled from the “Manchester Guardian” (14/1/29) disquiet you unduly: 

  Mr. James Rowan, general secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, in his monthly report to the members, writes that the most remarkable feature of the past year has been the heavy production on the one hand in most of the staple industries, and on the other the large percentage of unemployment in the same industries. Shipbuilding in 1928 produced a tonnage in excess of all previous years, except 1922, yet so great has been the progress of labour-saving devices that the percentage of unemployed in shipbuilding districts never seems to have gone below 10 per cent., and in many cases had reached 20 per cent., and even 25 per cent.
   In the engineering section much the same state of things has prevailed. The motor section had a great year, and certainly there was a boom in electrical engineering.
   Noting this, and while again noting there has been a record output both in volume and value, the percentage of engineers unemployed has been remarkably high. In all the productive sections of industry the same remarks apply. To think that at the end of a year of such enhanced production it should leave us with about two millions of the workable population redundant, is something that casts a very grave reflection on the powers that be. If this is the result of rationalisation, so far as it has gone, then it seems rationalisation has gone mad.

Engine-very-neers!

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Happy Erin.

Now how can poverty be cured before the cause is discovered? There are too many of us, that’s the true cause. Not enough jobs to go round, obviously. At least, that is what the Labour “leaders,” “economists ” and “statesmen” tell us—and they ought to know! The population of Ireland has been declining for centuries, so we will doubtless find here a happy, prosperous and healthy people. Especially now they have “Home Rule.” You will see this is so by the paragraph below, taken from an article on “Progress under Home Rule” by the “Morning Post” special correspondent (31/12/28).

  I do not suppose anybody will contradict my statement that the Government till is empty, or that the farmers are in a deplorable state. Mr. Cassidy, Labour Member for Donegal, made this remarkable statement in the “Dail” some weeks ago: “Unemployment and destitution prevail, thousands of farmers are in the state of poverty, thousands of fishermen are destitute, and nothing is being done for them. I think it is indeed strange that the Government should have given a thousand pounds to the Royal Zoological Society for the keep of wild animals while at the same time they refuse to keep human beings in the country."

Oh! dash it all. I’ve given the wrong paragraph!

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He Changeth Not.

What we want is “leaders.” Leaders who will lead! Sincere, honest, champions of the worker’s cause. Bromley, Cramp, Smillie, Newbold: all of these used to fill the bill. Even Trotsky is more than doubtful just now! But A. J. Cook is the man. He is the one pearl in the ointment, the true gilt on the cokernut.

’Erb Smith? N.G. Cook? The Miners' Messiah, the workers’ Whatname! Leaders may come, leaders may go; but Cook remains, with a tow-row-row! Cook the—    but what’s this little bit in the “Sunday Worker” for March 10th? Can it be? The great A.J? I’m afraid it can!

In his weekly article in that newspaper, this paragon, so well boosted by the Communists, seems to have followed his late partner, Maxton, and crumpled up entirely under the threat of the Labour mandarins. Here is a piquant extract:—

  A Labour Government would bring new life and hope to the workers, would increase faith in trade unionism, and thus would lead us nearer to Socialism. Therefore I regret the actions of any party or sections that start new unions, or that endanger the return of a Labour Government. This is my view after an active life of many years in the Trade Union and Socialist Movement. No doubt I shall be called reactionary, a compromiser, etc., etc., by the Communists in particular. I want every reader to become an active Trade Unionist, and control his own destiny, believing Socialism is our only hope.

You see, you get nearer Socialism, the only hope, by supporting Capitalism.

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Another Wreck!

In the same issue of the “Sunday Worker" there is another interesting item, which, by the way, may have some bearing on the defection of A. J. Cook :—

  The National Left Wing Committee meeting, held in London last week-end, decided by ten votes to one that the Left Wing Movement as a national organisation should be dissolved. It was emphasised that this decision does not mean the cessation of Local Left Wing activities, which should continue on the basis of local united front committees and workers' electoral committees, their work based on concrete issues before the workers. The decision was made after thorough and frank discussion, in which two points were strongly urged as making continuance of the organisation impossible.
  The first point was that the Birmingham conference political and organisational decisions have made it hopeless to turn the Labour Party into a working-class party. The "loyalty” resolution now makes Left Wing work in the Labour Party impossible.
  The second point emphasised was that the continuation of the National Left Wing movement in its present form involves the danger of a new Party which would be detrimental to the interests of the working class. The resolution adopted advised all Left Wing workers who desire to carry on a fight for Socialism that they can best do so by joining the Communist Party, now fighting alone for full emancipation of the workers.

Have you seen any of these “full emancipation" programmes of the Communist Party? Their slogans, too, are quite good —“God save the People” is the very latest, I believe!

In the minefield (1985)

From the January 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

To each side in the coal dispute, this is more than just another strike. For the NUM it is a struggle to keep miners in employment, whether this is profitable or not; it is also, for some strikers, a stroke at the heart of the Thatcher government which may end in Arthur Scargill becoming the champion of the Labour movement. For the government and Ian McGregor it is a matter of asserting that management must be allowed to "manage", by which they mean allowed to implement the principle that coal mines are like any other productive unit and must be closed if they run consistently at a loss. Both sides are aware of the events of 1973 and 1974, by now a part of left-wing folklore, when the Heath government blundered into a fight with the miners, the Three Day Week crisis and then to electoral defeat. In case anyone is hoping the miners will repeat that particular piece of history, it should be remembered that that alleged triumph for the organised working class resulted in the 1974-79 Labour governments, which were notable for their continual assaults on workers’ living standards, their strike breaking, their encouragement to cross picket lines and at the end the infamous Winter of Discontent. And what came out of that? When Callaghan called the election in 1979, class society was as strongly entrenched as ever. The means of life, including those parts of it which had been nationalised, were still owned by a minority of exploiting parasites while the useful, productive majority were still bound to submit themselves for exploitation in order to live. The miserable impotence and disarray of those governments persuaded millions of workers to vote for the Thatcher government who made no secret of their intention to curb the trade unions, if need be in the kind of fight to a finish which the miners may now be engaged in.

Back beyond 1973, there is an ominous resemblance—by no means accidental or insignificant—between what happened in the 1920s and what is happening today. At the end of the First World War many of the staple industries, on which the British capitalist class relied so much, were in decline; coal was affected by competition from continental rivals such as the Ruhr and Poland and the productivity of British mines lagged behind that of their most serious competitors. In 1925 a slump in coal exports contributed to the industry showing losses of about £1 million a month and the mine owners gave notice of their intention to negotiate a new agreement with the union based on a longer working day and a reduction in wages. The miners resisted and. as the TUC declared their support, a general strike seemed unavoidable. What deflected the strike was the government's agreement to provide a subsidy, which eventually amounted to £23 million, to keep the mines working.

The day the subsidy was announced 31 July 1925 — has also gone into folklore as Red Friday, an enduring triumph for the working class. The secretary of the miners’ union. A.J. Cook, trumpeted: "We have already beaten, not only the employers, but the strongest government in modern times".

There were two serious mistakes in this claim. The miners had not beaten anyone; the subsidy could only postpone or modify the operation of that law of capitalism — no profit, no production (which Ian MacGregor is trying to apply now). Baldwin's government had not been defeated; they had merely bought time to organise for a more conclusive confrontation with the workers. They used the time by setting up, in September 1925, the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies to recruit and train volunteers (or rather blacklegs) who would keep services running during a general strike. Administratively the country was divided into regions of government, each under a Civil Commissioner, and then into smaller areas under committees responsible for transport, police and other services. A grateful mine owner, probably not susceptible to left wing hysteria, praised ". . . the respite purchased by Mr. Baldwin" and the Prime Minister himself assured the critics of the subsidy on his own side:

  . . . if the time should come when the community had to protect itself, with the full strength of the government behind it. [its] response will astonish the forces of anarchy throughout the world. (House of Commons. 6 August 1925)

When the time Baldwin was referring to came, the state machine was ready as it had not been on Red Friday. The general strike lasted but nine days and it did not bring capitalism down, nor the government to their knees, nor even the coal owners to a more conciliatory mood. In fact the owners grew more obstinate with the passage of time, which tended to upset even the people who were supposed to represent their interests. J.L. Garvin described them in the Observer (25 April 1926) as ’tactless and irritating to the last degree” and Lord Birkenhead said he would have thought the miners' leaders were the stupidest men in England had he not met the coal owners.

When the other unions backed out of the general strike the miners struggled on. Cook, who was by then the best loved or the worst hated man in the country, had declared in March 1926:

  We are going to be slaves no longer and our men will starve before they accept any reductions in wages.

And starve they did, as the months passed by and with each tightening of the screw by the owners and the government. Cook's rhetoric could fill no stomachs and some miners began to doubt the usefulness of struggling on. The trail back began — Warwickshire in July. Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in August — until in December Durham went back and the surrender was complete. The miners had to concede the longer working day and the cut in wages, which were cut yet again a couple of years later. Such was the suffering in the mining communities that the Lord Mayor of London, in the best traditions of capitalist charity, was moved to set up a Relief Fund. In the aftermath of bitterness, the breakaway Miners' Industrial Union was formed in the Midlands.

The 1984 battle is over pit closures but it too springs from the plight of the British coal industry in a time of world slump. The dispute goes back some way before the start of the strike, to the time when the government applied something of the Baldwin 1925 strategy, conceding the miners' case in order to prepare for a more final solution. It was in February 1981 that the government, in face of a threatened national coal strike, withdrew their plans to close ten pits during the next year. They did not then stand on the argument that it is impossible to keep "uneconomic” pits in operation; they accepted NUM policy on restricting coal imports and announced a subsidy of £300 million to finance these measures. Tory backbenchers were restless about the deal, as were the Institute of Directors. They need not have worried; a year or so later the government were ready to do serious battle and announced plans to shut down about 60 pits by 1991, some through exhaustion and others as loss makers. This opened the battle which is raging today, on the picket lines, in the courts and in the media.

This was not sudden or unexpected, except perhaps to those people who think that capitalism can be made to operate against its essential nature. After the Second World War it did not take long for the coal mines to feel the pressure of competition, from electricity — with nuclear power stations — oil and the re-emergent gas industry. During the 1960s the NCB tried to catch up, investing in powered supports and mechanised systems which increased productivity and helped cut the workforce by half but behind that production fell from 184 million tonnes a year to 134 million tonnes. In 1973, just before the Plan for Coal was agreed, it stood at 130 million tonnes.

The Plan for Coal was in fact a sign of a burgeoning optimism in the industry, partly due to the price advantage which coal regained as a result of the oil crisis of 1973- 74. which put its price per therm at about half that for oil. It was generally expected that the market for coal would expand and the unions, the NCB and the government planned for production to rise throughout the 1980s and 1990s to reach about 170 million tonnes in the year 2000. For the NUM these plans represented not just security of employment for the miners but also a strengthening of their bargaining power. However the whole exercise rested on the kind of assumptions which the economists and the politicians are continually making and which are continually found to be false. There was the politicians' presumption that the economic problems of 1974 were no more than a little temporary difficulty which could be cleared up with some adjustments in budgeting and taxation. There was the presumption that when that happened the coal industry would compete ever more successfully in the energy market. And the conclusion from both these presumptions was that it would make economic sense to keep open pits which, in more stringent circumstances, the NCB would want to close as loss makers. It was not just the 1974 Labour government which deceived itself in this way; in June 1980 Thatcher's Energy Secretary assured the Commons that "Coal is our greatest single natural resource . . . coal's prospects have never been better ".

As the crisis of 1974 deepened into a world recession, the hopes and plans were exposed as the work of people who had little real understanding of how capitalism operates. The market for coal did not expand, it contracted. Ian MacGregor recently referred to the "over supply world-wide" on short term markets and predicted that intensifying competition from American exports will bring about "a coal glut for Western Europe" (Guardian, 2 October 1984). Following their retreat in 1981, the NCB's return to the matter of closures in 1982 was in some ways the Thatcher government's 1926. except that now there is no Triple Alliance to support the miners in their resistance. In place of the hard-faced, complacent private owners there is Ian MacGregor, the nationalised boss and not one whit more sympathetic for that, the despair of those like the clergy who think the whole unfortunate matter could be settled in a cosy, family chat. And of course the successor to A.J. Cook is the combustible Arthur Scargill. as much loved and hated as Cook was in the 1920s.

These resemblances are not coincidental, for MacGregor. Scargill and the rest are filling roles in a script which is structured on the needs of this social system. Capitalism has not basically changed since 1926; it is still a society of class ownership, of conflict, of commodity production and of the boom/slump cycle. The administrators of the system cannot control these things, they can only respond to them. The miners are weakening now, as they did in 1926, because they belong to the class who depend for their lives on selling their working abilities. When a miner goes back to work it is not a victory for "the national interest", or "common sense", or democracy; it is a bitter acknowledgement of the essential poverty and degradation of all workers. of whatever industry, everywhere.

A defeat for the miners could lead to them being treated much as they were in 1926. forced to accept terms which are some way worse than were on offer earlier in the strike. That will be an acknowledgement of the other side of the class war, of the fact that the owning class are also the ruling class and that they dominate through their control over the coercive state machine. At the points where 1984 resembles 1926 there is more than a repeat of history. There is a signal for the strikers and for the working class as a whole. There is little to show for these sixty years of struggle except cracked heads and bruised bodies; capitalism, a repressive society of privilege against poverty, remains to be dealt with.

Ivan

A Look Round. (1930)

From the January 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Communist "Intellectual."

Many workers imagined that the Communist Party were Revolutionary; but one of their leaders, R. Palme Dutt, admits in The Workers' Life (Nov. 15th), that it is not so. He says :—

  “The chief task of the coming congress is to revolutionise the party and its leadership in readiness for the developing period of mass struggles.”

According to his view they need to get rid of relics of Social Democracy and find new leaders and to get into contact with the masses. He is still talking of factory groups years after the “thesis” merchants declared that factory nuclei were the basis of the party. He states that “the question of leadership is at the centre of the whole situation.”

The article is full of the usual high-sounding phrases like “orientation,” “dialectics," “objective situations,” but one looks in vain for any understanding of the road to Socialism. He talks of the need “to press fighting demands on the Labour Government,” and never once points out that the sole need of the working class is to organise to control political power to establish Socialism.

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Labour Deals With Unemployment.

The Labour Government, through its leaders, MacDonald and Thomas, are continually telling us that the only real road to curing unemployment is to increase our trade—especially our export trade. One of the chief defenders of the Labour Party is Forward of Glasgow, which has to admit that their leaders’ theory is all wrong. Forward quotes an answer in the House of Commons (Nov. 26th) by the President of the Board of Trade, and heads the paragraph, "More Work and Fewer Men.” This is the information given by the Board of Trade:—

  “The total mercantile tonnage launched in the United Kingdom in 1925 (excluding unregistered vessels of under 15 tons gross) was 1,123, 049, while the estimated number of persons in the ship-building, ship-repairing, and marine engineering, etc., industries, who were insured against unemployment in July was 301,340.
   “But while in 1928, the comparable tonnage had risen to 1,458,058, the insured workers in these trades had fallen to 257,460.”

The “great” schemes of granting millions to railways, gas companies, road boards, etc., to make these services more efficient; plans to cheapen costs in coal and steel industries, and similar policies, are therefore bound to fail to reduce or arrest unemployment, because efficient industry increases output faster than trade increases.

Mr. Thomas said in the House of Commons (Nov. 4th) that he did not attach so much importance to work schemes as a solution of our unemployment problem as he did to the wider aspect of the “development of our export trade.”

But the Labour Leaders know that when Britain’s export trade was good unemployment and poverty were widespread and now that productive powers have been vastly increased in every country the increase of export trade cannot cure unemployment.

Look at America with its vast Home market and great export trade—a country in which the Telegraph tells us there are millions of “out-of-works”! Was it not only the other day that leading commercial men warned the motor trade that there were a million surplus motor cars in the U.S.A. looking for a market!

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The Labour Liberals.

Labour supporters criticise the Liberal Party’s legislation but they forget that the Labour Party supported all the leading measures passed from 1906 to 1914, although ever since they have claimed these measures were miserly and ineffectual. How close the Liberal Party and the Labour Party were during those years can be gathered from a quotation from the “Life of Philip Snowden, Chancellor of the Exchequer,” by Mr. Bechofer Roberts. The reader can gather how great was the Labour Party’s support of the Capitalist Reform Legislation of the Liberals.

  On the Insurance Act. Snowden took a line directly opposed to the majority of his colleagues, led by Ramsay MacDonald. The Labour Party had put down amendments to the Bill; MacDonald came to an arrangement with the Government not to embarrass it by moving them. Snowden thereupon stood down from the executive of the Labour Party, and threatened to leave it altogether if these tactics were continued. What was the I.L.P. doing, he demanded, to permit such backsliding among its nominees in the House of Commons? Really, the I.L.P. might just as well dissolve, and consider merging itself in the National Liberal Federation; there was simply no difference any longer between the Labour Party and the Liberal Party. And for his part, he wasn't going to acquiesce in this sacrifice of principles to prudence.
  Followed by George Lansbury, F. W. Jowett and Will Thorne, he refused to obey the Labour Whip; they voted against their colleagues. In articles and speeches, Snowden derided the motives which dictated the tactics of MacDonald and the others. Everyone knew, he said, that four-fifths of the Labour Party's members held their seats through arrangements in their constituencies with the local Liberals; was it not ridiculous, therefore, to expect that they would dare to quarrel with the party to whose goodwill they owed their election?

The Labour Party still appeals to and depends on Liberal "goodwill.”

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The Great Left Wing.

Mr. Cook, the Miner’s leader, has declared his entire support for the Labour Government. Mr. Cook, who said that he had a pledge for a 7-hours’ day given by Mr. MacDonald locked up in his desk, is still keen on the Labour Government after they have declined to redeem that pledge. Cook still supports the Labour Government though he confesses that "during the last five months, up to October, 92,655 claims were disallowed by Insurance Officers on the grounds of "not genuinely seeking work'." During the same period, "308,001 claims were disallowed under all the various vile provisions of the Unemployment Insurance Act.” Mr. Cook evidently "forgets” that the "vile” clauses of the Insurance Act were a part of the Insurance Bill passed by the Labour Government in 1924. Yet he sobs, "he has played the game with the Labour Government.” He has ! The Editor of the I.L.P. paper, Forward, describes him (Dec. 14th) as "The greatest cry-baby in Socialist Politics,” but forgets to mention that neither Cook nor the I.L.P. has ever entered Socialist Politics. Forward refers to that curious document called "The Cook-Maxton Manifesto,” in which Maxton and Co. demanded that the unemployed should get maintenance at the same scale as the employed man (since reduced by Maxton and Co. to £l per week). Forward quotes a speech by W. Gallagher, the alleged Communist, to show that he wrote the Manifesto for Cook and Maxton. The Communist Party, it should be recalled, allowed their members to join the Cook-Maxton campaign though they didn’t like the Manifesto.

Gallagher’s speech at a Communist meeting in Glasgow City Hall, on April 7th, was as follows:—

  I have worked with them for years, trying to instil a working-class point of view into them, and all to no purpose. They sent for me to the House or Commons, and there I took Cook down to meet them. There was Wheatley, Buchanan, Campbell Stephen, Kirkwood, and Maxton, and they informed me that they had decided to fight MacDonald and the Labour Party leaders, and wanted my advice as to what they were to do. I told them that a manifesto must be issued and I wrote it for them, and helped them to organise the campaign, and persuaded Cook to go down to St. Andrew's Hall for the opening meeting. When Wheatley was assuring me that he was out to fight the Labour Party leaders, he was busy arranging to bring Arthur Henderson down to Shettleston to speak on his behalf. No, I am absolutely finished with them, and am out to fight them.

Such is the mess that Labour and Communist Politics result in. All reform and "something now” politicians are inevitably involved in the rotten game which Cook says he has played so well.

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Too Much Production.

"Is there enough wealth for all?” is a common question put by anti-Socialists. The existence of luxury all round us and the stored-up wealth that cannot find a market to-day is one aspect of the answer. But what would be the possibilities of wealth production in a society where the workers had access to the raw materials and the machines? That can be seen by the continual reports of the deliberate limitation of production to-day. In the Observer (Dec. 15th) there is a long article on the "Sugar Crisis,” which explains that the only solution for the owners of that industry is to restrict the supply and limit production in Cuba, Java, Czechoslovakia, etc.

The increase in production of sugar has been so immense that the firms such as the Sugar Trust of America are working out a policy to keep the price up by cutting down the production.

In the same paper, on another page, there is an article on "Tin Restriction,” which states that the Tin Producers’ Association, in order to maintain an "economic price” for their metal, propose the cessation of work for 32 hours each week in the mines, and a total cessation of work for one week in January and February, and, if necessary, in March. This applies to all Eastern sources of supply, and also places like Nigeria.

In modern society the ease with which wealth can be produced means lack of work for the worker but only to assure the maintenance of owners’ profits. More wealth could be produced but it does not "pay” the owners to allow that to be done.

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A Social Democratic Curiosity.

Walton Newbold, late Communist M.P., previously in the I.L.P. and now in the S.D.F., explains his "ideas” in the issue of Forward for Dec. 14th. He says :—

   “I am convinced that the propertied classes will never evacuate without the exercise of force. By force I mean physical compulsion. And physical compulsion is absolutely certain, in some phases, to involve an armed clash.”

Walton Newbold, the Labour Party Candidate for Epping, has recently joined the Social Democratic Federation, which holds that the road to Emancipation is by means of the Labour Party. Newbold says that you can only get emancipation by an armed clash, so he joins an organisation that is opposed to it! He does not tell the electors of Epping about the "armed clash” stuff, although he claims, “I did not say one thing on the public platform and do a different thing in Parliament.” And to crown all, he says, “I accept as axiomatic the Class War.” In the next sentence he says, "That is why, viewing the forces ranged on either side, I have declared for a truce.” So he accepts the Class War but wants it suspended for a while! No wonder the S.D.F. welcomes Newbold. He ought to make a good addition to their professional politicians. The Class War with truce!

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More Bibles In Russia.

An answer both to screeching Christians and uninformed Communists is contained in The Tory Daily Record of Glasgow (Dec. 3rd), which reported a meeting of the directors of the Royal National Bible Society of Scotland.

Letters were read from Germany with regard to the introduction of Russian Scriptures into Russia. It was stated that the demand was so great that for some time it had been out of print. "The Soviet Government had itself been printing large numbers of Bibles in Leningrad, Kiev and Odessa.”

Religion is evidently still widespread in Russia under dictatorship.

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The Class Warriors of the I.L.P.

Mr. James Maxton’s recent opposition to Ramsay MacDonald on details of Unemployment Insurance recalls to us how often he has voted for him as leader, and made the usual sentimental eulogies and declarations of loyalty to MacDonald. At the Memorial Hall debate with our late comrade, Fitzgerald, Mr. Maxton said the I.L.P. were not heresy hunters and therefore did not expel their members who supported the Capitalists. Of course, the I.L.P. could not be expected to do this as it would leave them without a membership. When, however, it helps them to catch votes they do expel members, but not on Socialist grounds. They expelled some of their members in Glasgow recently for voting for booze licences. They did not want to lose a lot of their "unco guid” supporters.

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Peace!—But More Arms.

How much nonsense is being written and spoken of the great achievements of the Labour Government in promoting peace schemes! The Kellogg pact was one of the so-called great pillars of peace of which Labour is proud; and it is interesting, therefore, to read in The Daily Herald (Dec. 16th) of the U.S.A. Senator Borah’s speech:—

  "I think that the best evidence of a belief that the Kellogg Pact had removed all question of neutral rights at sea would be a drastic reduction in armaments.
   "If the Peace Pact eliminated all question of rights of neutrals at sea, what can be the reasons for such vast navies? If we do not expect any conflicts at sea, and all conditions in that regard are removed by the Kellogg Pact, then let us manifest our faith in the Pact by taking away the crushing burden of armaments which we are now carrying".

The Senator doesn’t realise that Labour Governments intend to "humanise” war!

Adolph Kohn