Editorial: Armies of Liberation (1944)

Editorial from the October 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Our men marched singing with a smiling light in their eyes. They had done their job. They thought it was the war to end war. They had won, they thought, the greatest victory in the world.” (Sir Philip Gibbs on the Armistice, 1918. Evening Standard, September 6, 1944.)

“It is against Hitlerism we fight. And we have no quarrel save with those who would help to perpetuate its tyranny in Europe. Because this is the issue, it transcends national frontiers. It transcends nationality itself. . . . Thus the freedom-loving German Socialists make common cause with the British Trades Union Congress, whose president said yesterday that ‘We stand four-square until we have smashed Hitlerism forever and created a world of true brotherhood among the worker'” (Daily Herald Editorial, September 5, 1939.)

If the course of war is rarely predictable, the same is true about war’s aftermath. There are people who, forgetting what happened after 1918, went into the war in 1939 with a simple faith that the military defeat of Nazi Germany would solve all problems and liberate humanity from a prison of oppression into a world of universal peace, and harmony; they must already be wondering. The departure of the German armies from the occupied countries opens up a situation quite unlike the visions of the Daily Herald five years ago. The war, said the Herald, was not to be one for possessions but for spiritual values in keeping with true internationalism. Yet the coming end of hostilities in Europe finds most of the Powers staking out their claims for territories. Russia wants a large slice of Poland and offers in return that Poland shall have a large slice of Germany. This is 1918 again, but on a larger scale, for the Labour Party 25 years ago vigorously condemned the Treaty which gave Poland comparatively small areas in which the population was German or Russian. Russia, according to Negley Farson (who defends the claim), wants to keep the former Baltic Republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, though he makes no pretence that the population’s views will be considered : —

“In 1940, under strictly Soviet commissar-conducted plebiscites, Stalin made the people of all three little countries declare themselves members of constituent republics of the U.S.S.R. Not even the Russians will try to pretend there was any such thing as a choice or freedom about it.” Daily Mail, July 26, 1944.)

American spokesmen are busy laying claims to strategically situated territories in the West Indies and the Pacific. China is demanding territories all round the Pacific, hitherto conquered and held by Japan and the Western Powers. French political parties are contemplating an extension of France to the Rhine and beyond, and most of the smaller Powers that were early on the winning side are hoping to get something in the carve-up.

The Daily Express, in its editorial on September 18th, 1944, candidly admits and encourages the Imperialist aims of U.S. A. and Britain.

“Here is a section of American opinion arguing in favour of United States Imperialism after this war. And here in this country concern and apprehension are sometimes expressed in high places on that account. Such fears are quite out of place. If British Imperialism is good for the British, then American Imperialism is good for the Americans. . . . The American Imperialists want a foothold in Dakar, and in the East and the Far East. They seek control of those islands in the Pacific which have been a source of menace and misery to them when held by the Japanese. Is that a good policy for the Americans ? Of course, it is. … Is it good for Britain too? Of course.”

It will be noticed that the Express here writes as if the world is going to be divided between American and British Imperialisms, saying nothing about the fact that other Powers (among them Russia) will also want a say.

It will be argued that these claims are justified on the ground that the Allied Powers will need to hold territories to bar any further attempt by German capitalism to gain military and economic control of Europe—but is this what the Daily Herald and its supporters envisaged by their talk in 1939 of “a world of true brotherhood among the workers?” Obviously the post-war world is going to be a world of capitalist competition, as it was before. Sir Stafford Cripps is so apprehensive about this that he warns us : “A return to open competition between the nations will inevitably lead to another and even more disastrous war” (Daily Express, September 18, 1944).

What of the promised re-establishment of democratic methods ? In some of the defeated countries this is likely, though experience after the last war shows that such re-establishment is no guarantee of permanence in a world of capitalist poverty and crisis. Moreover, one-party dictatorship is still the rule in Russia, and, according to the News-Chronicle correspondent recently in China, the present trend is towards totalitarianism in that country. He writes : —

“Already in China there is no freedom of the Press or of speech or assembly—no right to express any opinion that does not conform with the Government’s political line.” (News-Chronicle, May 2, 1944).

He pointed out that the Kuomintang Government (which he referred to as “Kuomintang Fascists”) has half a million of its best troops engaged, not in fighting the Japanese armies, but in blockading the Chinese Communist forces. He ended his article with the ominous words, “A Fascist China might in time be as dangerous as an Imperial Japan.”

Coming back to Europe and the populations liberated from Nazi occupation, no one need doubt the enthusiasm with which liberation has in the main been received, even though this is by no means universal. A correspondent with the advancing Allied armies in France records that in Alsace and Lorraine (territories annexed by Germany in 1871 and “liberated” in the first world war) the reception of the Allies was distinctly cold :—

“As you near Germany and touch the fringe of Alsace-Lorraine, you can sense the change in the attitude of a people that has lived so near to Germany as to be almost German in outlook and in blood. No longer, as we enter a village, do we get the vociferous welcome that cheered our progress to Paris. . . . The villagers look on you sourly; they are less ready to be helpful. Cases of sabotage which we never had in Normandy or on the way to Paris are now being reported.” (News-Chronicle, September 7, 1944.)

What sort of world is it into which the populations are liberated? Are they to open one prison door only to find they are faced with others? Since the world is still to be a world of capitalism, that is what is bound to happen. What is going to be the outcome when workers find that liberation and the end of the war merely means a return to the old chaotic conditions of pre-war capitalism, aggravated for at least some time by the problems of the switch-over to peace? Some will turn to Socialism, others will fall for new nostrums or return to old ones.

Mr. Alan Moorehead, writing on his impressions of France and Belgium, says that from the standpoint of living conditions, life under German overlordship was not as bad as had been reported—”if you were willing to obey the Germans and keep out of their way, then you did not have a bad life—certainly a more comfortable one than in war-time England (Daily Express, September 10, 1944), The reason why the Germans were “hated passionately and viciously” was “because they took away the one thing the people finally cared about, their liberty.” When the Germans went, the population regained their right to take part in political activities, but as the war in Europe ends they will also suffer in the changeover which will affect workers in all countries, the change from capitalism working at full pressure for war and providing full employment to capitalism resuming its normal peace-time condition with unemployment again mounting in volume. This has already occurred in Italy. The Manchester Guardian writes : —

“The economic situation is admittedly disastrous, and it is claimed, it is to be hoped wrongly, that the Germans allowed the people more food than the Allies…. It is extremely short-sighted to allow the Italian people to fall into a mood of such misery and despair that they will blame us for their misfortunes, rather than the Fascist Government which led them to disaster. (Manchester Guardian, August 15, 1944.)

A Times correspondent in Rome writes in a similar strain : —

“The Allies cannot afford to have the population of a capital city on their lines of communication reduced to desperation. A hungry and idle people becomes an easy prey to any extremist political agitation which promises it a quick way out of its troubles.” (September 8, 1944.)

Part of the present difficulty in Italy may be due to military demands on transport, but even when these have ceased and everything is normal again, Italian workers, like other workers, are going to have to face the usual evil results of capitalism. The war has not removed these evils; they are as insoluble as they were before 1939 or before 1914, though this was not at all foreseen by leaders of the Labour Party when they went into the war. They did not envisage the war ending with a return to the conditions of 1939 but vainly imagined that capitalism would be on its last legs and Socialism almost here—just as they had in the world war of 1914-1918. Here is an extract from a speech by a Labour Party spokesman, Mr. Arthur Greenwood, M.P., at his Party’s Conference at Bournemouth in May, 1940. It makes curious reading now : —

“Because we have the courage of our convictions as a movement now, we shall have greater power when it is over than we have to-day. We shall have a trembling capitalist system which can never recover again. We shall have broken the back of the vested interests, and we can build a Socialist commonwealth which will be a powerful factor in the world.” (Daily Herald, May 14, 1940.)

It would be an insult to Mr. Greenwood’s intelligence to ask if he thinks that his prophecy has been fulfilled. Instead, we would like to ask whether he would risk prophesying what the state of Europe and the world, seething with nationalistic hatreds and torn by the rival claims of capitalist groups, will be like at the end of the next four years. Will it be Socialism triumphant, democracy safe, and “true brotherhood among the workers,” or will it be the same old capitalism? Austrian workers who declared (Manchester Guardian, July 33, 1944) “that they do not intend to work for Anglo-American capitalists but desire to collaborate with progressive elements in the Allied countries,” have the right view of the situation, but, contrary to Mr. Greenwood’s anticipation of a trembling and broken capitalist class, that class is in power and the world is still their world.

Not mere release from foreign rule or home-bred dictatorship, but only Socialism will ultimately unite the world’s workers and achieve their emancipation. The workers’ army of liberation is the international army of class-conscious, politically organised Socialists, bent on achieving the conquest of political power for the purpose of ending capitalism and inaugurating world-wide Socialist society.

50 Years Ago: A Labour Prophet has a Fall (1999)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the Labour Party Conference in May, 1940, when the Labour Party decided to enter the Churchill Government, Mr. Arthur Greenwood, M.P., made a prophecy about the outcome of the war:

“We shall have a trembling capitalist system which can never recover again. We shall have broken the back of the vested interests, and we can build a socialist commonwealth which will be a powerful factor in the world.” (Daily Herald, May 14th, 1940.)

On the 10th anniversary of the outbreak of war Mr. Greenwood gave a message to the Daily Mail (September 3rd, 1949) which included the following:-

“This peace has not yet been won, and Britain’s effort to-day must be directed towards the fullest use of all human and material resources, so as to play our part in the reshaping of the whole world.”

British Capitalism is indeed in a bad way, but what the Labour Government is now doing is to direct all their efforts to trying to put it on its feet again while urging the workers to refrain from making demands that would stand in the way of British capitalist recovery. The Labour Party’s latest pronouncement of policy is appropriately called “Labour Believes in Britain,” not “Labour Believes in Socialism.”

(From Socialist Standard, October1949)

A Vision of the Post-War World (1941)

From the May 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard 

And Some Good News for Vegetarians 

During the course of the “war to end war” (World War No. 1), the promise was frequently held out to the people that after the war there would be a land “fit for heroes to live in.” We do not know what sort of a land the coiner of this phrase, Lloyd George, had in mind, nor what sort of a land was thereby conjured up in the minds of his hearers. The interested enquirer, however, who remembers this England of before the last war, if he cares to take a walk round some of the suburbs of London or any other “great” city, will notice that there is no essential difference in the appearance of these quarters—there are the same long rows of dingy-looking streets—the same dingy-looking inhabitants living on the same low-protein diet. At first sight, the only noticeable difference is that the area covered by the dwellings of the workers has become vaster in extent. Huge new estates of semi-detached houses have covered the outskirts of the big towns like a flood ; in them the hire-purchase occupiers, in the delusion that they are “buying their own homes,” are constantly harassed by the too-frequent repair bills caused by jerry-building workmanship, the necessity of keeping up the payments to the building society converts the spectre of unemployment into a nightmare; while in the majority of cases, these “family homes” become converted—in an effort to meet the recurring costs—into two-storey flats—but flats much smaller than those of pre-1914 flats, in fact, so microscopic that the phrase “no room to swing a cat” has completely passed out of the lingo.

But stay, as one looks around, and ponders, a new, castle-like building suddenly strikes the eye—it is a police station. Obviously a first-class architect must have designed the magnificent proportions of this mosque-like structure; of harmonious forms, it towers over the landscape like the feudal castle in some mediaeval city. Looking around again, one notices that other buildings have also imposed themselves upon the landscape. Here is a magnificent new employment exchange; there a block of luxury flats at rents equal or superior to the entire contents of the average worker’s wage packet. No jerry-building here, my friends, of ferro-concrete construction and parquet floors, it will stand foursquare to the winds of time when the jerry-built homes of England have long-since been condemned by the “enlightened” local authority. We mentioned diet. Those who are familiar with workmen’s eating-houses and wayside cafes—not to mention the imitation-marble teashops where so many town dwellers take their mid-day meal, will have been struck by the extent to which during the last twenty years the roast beef of old England has been replaced by dishes in which baked beans are the staple food; so that to fill the void, one’s first thought is not “roast beef and two veg.,” but baked beans on toast, baked beans and sausages, or baked beans and chips. In public-houses “roast beef and two veg.” has been replaced by “roast beef and three veg.,” but the portion of roast beef has grown smaller and is made up by the third veg. —baked beans ! Since the time of the “war to end war,” the roast-beef eating Englishman has been transmogrified into the baked-bean eating Englishman! This, then, is the “land fit for heroes to live in“—a land of police stations, labour exchanges, luxury flats, slum dwellings and bean eaters.

But now another conflict is afoot, and the powers that be need the support of the workers in order that it may be waged to a successful issue. For the first twelve months of the war, the promises were few and far between; but now they are becoming a deluge, and Church dignitaries, Labour leaders and company directors vie with one another in their promises to the electorate. Mr. Hugh Dalton, the Minister for Economic Warfare, says :

“We must build a new economics of plenty, founded on a rational plan. In face of our immense productive powers, there should be no poverty nor hunger any more. Nor workers by the million standing idle against their will.”—(Sunday Times, December 1st, 1940.)

While Mr. Arthur Greenwood, the Minister without Portfolio, and Labour leader, says: —

“After the war, Britain will not tolerate in her midst the tragic spectacle of abject poverty and unemployment … It will, I believe, be the pride of the nation to succour its citizens who during the war, or afterwards, fall on evil days, through bereavement, disability, disease or old age. We shall look forward to developing our educational system and social services. We are planning to get rid of ugliness in our towns, to build a fairer Britain, and to replace hovels by worthy homes.”—(News-Chronicle, January 14th, 1941.)

Notice the implication that these things were still in existence twenty years after the promise of a “land fit for heroes to live in.”

Herbert Morrison adds his little mite with, “I want change so big that I do not like to tell you you about it” (Evening Standard, December 12th, 1940). We would add—”so vague, that nothing can be made of it.”

The Church, not to be outdone, adds its voice to the crescendo of promises. Signifying their approval of the Pope’s five points, including the “development of universal love,” four prelates of the Churches—Dr. Lang, the Archbishop of Canterbury; Dr. Temple, the Archbishop of York; the Rev. Walter Armstrong, Moderator of the Free Church Federal Council; and Cardinal Hinsley, Catholic Archbishop of Westminster—-have agreed on five additional peace aim points, to wit—

“1. Extreme inequalities in wealth and possessions should be abolished.

“2. All children should have equal opportunities of education.

“3. The family as a social unit must be safeguarded.

“4. The sense of a Divine vocation must be restored to man’s daily work.

“5. Earth’s resources should be used as God’s gifts to the whole human race.”

(News Chronicle, December 23rd, 1940.)

No. 5 sounds very much like Socialism, but is obviously inconsistent with No. 1, which assume the continuance of inequalities in wealth.

The scientific impossibility of putting into effect the many promises which have been and are being made while capitalism rules, has been examined in previous issues of the Socialist Standard. Here we are concerned to know what this post-war world will be like. As a result of this little survey, we can safely say that if the carrying-out of the last lot of promises is anything to go by, this world of “changes too big to mention,” will consist of bigger labour exchanges, bigger police station: super-de-luxe flats of even greater luxuriousness, and greater slums inhabited by a race of complete vegetarian Englishmen.

A famous statesman used to say : ”You can deceive some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time, but you can’t deceive all the people all the time.” If he were alive to-day however, he would appreciate that times have changed, and all you have to do to-day is to deceive most of the people most of the time—the minority simply doesn’t count !

In conclusion, it may not be inappropriate to re-quote Liebknecht’s words: —

“Every power outside ourselves on which we seek to lean is for us only weakness.”

Milbourne

The Labour Party Enters the National Government (1940)

From the June 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

The entry of Labour leaders into Mr. Churchill’s National Government on May 11th makes the fifth occasion in the history of the British Labour Party on which prominent Labour leaders have occupied Cabinet posts and been wholly or partly responsible for the affairs of government. The first time this happened was during the first great war, when Mr. Arthur Henderson, Mr. John Hodge, Mr. J. R.. Clynes and others entered the Government. It ended rather ingloriously with Mr. Henderson resigning in August, 1918, because the Government refused his and the Labour Party’s wish for a restatement of war aims and an international conference of Labour Parties, and with his Labour successor, the late Mr. G. N. Barnes, signing in 1919 the Versailles Peace Treaty. He did so in defiance of the declaration of the Labour Party National Executive repudiating the Treaty because “The Treaty involves a violation of the principles embodied in Labour and Socialist Conference decisions.” (Manifesto of June 4th, 1919, issued by the National Executive of the Labour Party.)

The second occasion was the minority Labour Government of 1924, which ended with the Zinoviev letter and the election of October, at which the Labour Party’s representation was reduced from 191 to 151.

In 1929 the Labour Party were back in office. Then, after two years of mounting unemployment and falling confidence, the “crisis” found their leaders, MacDonald and Snowden, entering the National Government, but repudiated by the bulk of the Labour Party.

Now, in order to prosecute the war, Mr: Attlee, Mr. Herbert Morrison, Mr.. Greenwood, Mr. Bevin and others, take office under Mr. Churchill.

Speaking at the Labour Conference at Bournemouth, where the decision to join the Government was endorsed by 2,413,000 votes to 170,000, Mr. Greenwood explained that the Labour Party had for years “built up a strong policy of resistance to aggression, and when at long last a wavering Government plucked up its courage to resist, the Labour Party had no alternative but to accept the implications of its own policy.” (Daily Herald, May 14th, 1940.)

He went on to prophesy : —

“Because we have the courage of our convictions as a movement now, we shall have greater power when it is over than we have to-day. We shall have a trembling capitalist system which can never recover again. We shall have broken the back of the vested interests, and we can build a socialist commonwealth which will be a powerful factor in the world.”

Socialists would wish that the words were really prophetic; but time will show them to be otherwise. Socialism does not spring from the catastrophe of capitalism at war any more than it came from the other catastrophe of capitalism, the crisis of ten years ago. No doubt Mr. Greenwood hopes that something else as well as victory may come out of participation in the Government; but Socialists remember similar hopes in the last war when the Labour Party, in its 1918 declaration of policy, “Labour and the New Social Order,” affirmed that it would not tolerate the revival of the social and economic system which the war was supposed to have destroyed, but would seek to build up a new social order based on co-operation in production and distribution for the benefit of all who labour by hand or by brain.

Nothing came of those hopes, and the men who cherished them still do not show that they understand why. They spent years preaching peace and disarmament, and trying to lessen international antagonisms, and tried equally hard and unsuccessfully at home to lessen the evils of the social system. The two things they never frankly faced up to are that there never will be or can be any real solution to the twin problems of poverty and war until capitalism has been replaced by Socialism. So, little by little, each one of them had to abandon his belief in Peace by disarmament or appeasement or League of Nations. It is not, as Socialists have been at pains to point out, that war is a kind of capitalist conspiracy—the view of the Communists—but that capitalism forces states into deathly rivalry even though at a given period one group of states may be doing their utmost to preserve peace against the encroachments of their rivals.

The Socialist is consistent in opposing the Labour Party policy.

The Communist critics of the Labour Party can claim no such consistency. Apart from having vigorously supported in the opening weeks the war that they now oppose, they are in the curious position of denouncing a Government which is as nearly as possible their own choice.

Communists Get the Government they Asked for

The Communist Party is annoyed about the new Government. They do not like the Government led by Mr. Churchill, which includes Mr. Attlee and other Labour leaders, along with Sir Archibald Sinclair and other Liberals. The Daily Worker of May 10th, 1940, says in its editorial: —

“The Daily Herald thunders against Chamberlain, but it is silent about Churchill.

What a man to take under the wing of the Labour Party !”

The next day (May 11th, 1940) the Daily Worker had another fierce article against the National Government, under a headline “Fight against Labour participation in Churchill’s new War Government.”

So far it is clear enough, except to those who recall that, only in September last, after the war had broken out and Churchill was already in the Government, the same Daily Worker was backing the war wholeheartedly and writing of “determination that now that war has come it shall be fought in our cause, and to a finish. This war must be made a people’s war to end Nazism, and its attendant evils of oppression and violence for ever.” (Daily Worker, September 16th, 1939.)

By the time Mr. Churchill had become Prime Minister in order to fight the war to a finish, th Communists no longer wanted the war.

But further examination shows more mystery. The Communists now do not want the war, or Mr. Churchill, or Mr. Attlee or Sir A. Sinclair It was not always so. Only last year the Daily Worker was campaigning for a Popular Front Government and urging that the men of its choice should get together and form an all-party Government in order to carry out an active policy of “collective action against new aggression and threats of aggression” from Nazi Germany.

And who were the men of the Communist Party’s choice ? None other than Mr. Churchill, Mr. Attlee and Sir A. Sinclair ! The front page of the Daily Worker (March 30th, 1939) carried in bold headlines : —

“COMMUNIST APPEAL TO ATTLEE, SINCLAIR AND CHURCHILL—URGED TO DEFEAT CABINET AND FORM NEW GOVERNMENT.”

It went on to say: —

“In a swift and sensational move to get practical action to save the country in the rapidly deepening crisis, Harry Pollitt, on behalf of the Communist Party of Great Britain, yesterday addressed to Major Attlee, leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Sir Archibald Sinclair, leader of the Liberal Party and Mr. Winston Churchill, most prominent of the Conservative ‘rebels,’ an appeal that they shall get together without another minute’s delay.”

We live in tragic days, when wrong theories have culminated in appalling consequences for the workers of all countries. One of the most tragic aspects of the situation—as tragic as working-class support for Nazism in Germany—is the spectacle of workers accepting misguided Communist theories.

Editorial: The Passing of a Capitalist "Great Man" (1945)

Editorial from the May 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

For about 15 years, including the period of the first World War, Lloyd George served the purposes of the capitalist class in various ministerial offices. Then, his hold over the electorate diminished and his usefulness as a Cabinet Minister exhausted, he spent nearly a quarter of a century outside the charmed circle, making ceaseless, but ineffectual attempts to demonstrate that he was still indispensable

But when he died, on March 26th, his erstwhile opponents, who had many of them denounced him in times gone by, united in the discovery of his greatness. Here are some of the verdicts pronounced in the House of Commons on March 29th :—.

“The greatest Welshman .... since the days of the Tudors,” “He was the champion of the weak and poor,” . those who came after would find pillars of his life's toil upstanding, massive and indestructible.”—(Mr. Winston Churchill).

Mr. Arthur Greenwood, speaking for the Labour Party, endorsed everything that Mr. Churchill said : “We mourn the passing of a great Parliamentarian and I am certain my Right Hon. Friend has expressed, irrespective of party, the views held by the House about the great Mr. Lloyd George. ... He was the friend of the oppressed.” Mr. Aneurin Bevan, concurred—“We have lost our most distinguished member, and Wales her greatest son.” . . . He was first and last a democrat.”

Then Mr. Gallacher, the Communist M.P. had his say about this astute defender of the capitalist system. He quoted Lenin as having said that Lloyd George “was the greatest political leader this country had known ” and confessed that Lenin advised him to study Lloyd George. (This may explain many things about Mr. Gallacher). Like the other speakers, Gallacher found that Lloyd George was a friend of the “common people.” “. . . . he played many parts, great parts, always with the fervour and intensity of a son of the people, for it was the common people that bore him. It was the suffering of the common people that called him forth to battle against poverty and neglect.”

The Press followed the same line. To the “Daily Herald” (March 27th), Lloyd George in the first World War was a giant, the nation is eternally in his debt and his qualities “at his finest were the great qualities of our Democracy : he was fearless, he was tireless, he was ablaze with the spirit of liberty, equality and fraternity.”

Mr. R. Page Arnot in the Daily Worker (March 27th), gave a less unbalanced, but still lopsided account of Lloyd George’s career. He accepts the popular view of Lloyd George in pre-1914 days as waging war on the capitalist class. (“The City and the propertied classes were cast into frenzy”), yet a moment’s thought would recall that Lloyd George was-Chancellor of the Exchequer in a Liberal Capitalist Government, backed by his Liberal colleagues and by the majority of the party, a party which whole-heartedly represented the interests of the manufacturing section of the propertied class: It was merely the quarrel of that section against landed and financial interests. Page Arnot, like Gallacher, quotes Lenin on Lloyd George, but more to the point:—“a first class bourgeois business man and master of political cunning, a popular orator, able to make any kind of speech, even r-r-revolutionary speeches before Labour audiences.”

The fact that a man is dead does not sanctify him, and what we said of him living we continue to say after his death; but now let us recall what others were saying of Lloyd George when he was in active politics. In 1922 the leader of the Labour Party, the late J. R. MacDonald, far from finding Lloyd George a “giant ’’ in the war accurately summed him up as follows:—“His great contribution to the war was an unequalled genius for placing false and flashy issues with much fervour before the country.” (“Labour Magazine,” November, 1922). His “greatness” in MacDonald’s eyes was that his four years as Prime Minister in the Coalition Government, 1918-1922 were a “great failure.” MacDonald went on to describe him as a rhetorical demagogue, and an adept at “nimble-witted trickery.” This, of course, was the way all the Labour Party and Trade Union spokesmen were describing him after the last war. Have the workers forgotten his dragooning of the trade unions during and after the war, his trickery of the miners over the Sankey Report on Nationalisation of the Mines, which led Mr. Hartshorn, Miners Leader, to declare, “We have been deceived, betrayed, duped.”—(Labour Party Speaker’s Handbook, 1922. P.48). Was Lloyd George “first and last a democrat”? What of his part in the trickery which foisted conscription and defence of the realm acts on the workers in the last War, and the way he intrigued Asquith out of the Premiership and himself in? In the House on March 28th, 1945, Mr. Churchill described it as “Presently Lloyd George seized the main power in the State and the headship of the Government”; and he reiterated the word “seized” when interrupted. In 1922, the Communist Party were denouncing Lloyd George as the friend of Italian Fascism, preparing to instal Fascism here. The break up of the Coalition Government in 1922 was, according to the “Communist” (November 4th, 1922), a “swindle to demoralise the workers ” and leave them "defenceless before the oncoming of the Iron Heel of the new plutocratic Dictatorship.” Lloyd George, they said, was “a party to the conspiracy.” The Communists too used to be fond of recalling that Lloyd George “was responsible for the black and tan regime in Ireland.” (“Class against Class,” C.P.G.B., 1921), p. 8.)

Lloyd George was throughout his life an upholder of the capitalist system. His niggling reforms were designed to help British capitalism meet its overseas trade rivals and to allay some working class discontent which had reached a bitterness that might be dangerous to capitalism. Even in that field he was largely a borrower from others (“Lloyd George, on going to the Treasury, found an Old Age Pensions Bill already drafted by his predecessor, and after he had carried this through he turned his thought towards schemes of national insurance against sickness and unemployment, and visited Germany in the autumn of 1908 to study the German insurance system”—Times, March 27th, 1945.)

As for being a friend of the oppressed, his life work was devoted to preventing capitalism from being overthrown. Here we have some of his own admissions. On January 21st, 1922, he was pleading for continued Liberal-Tory unity. "What is there to quarrel about? Private enterprise, the resistance to the revolutionary policy to overthrow the individual enterprise that has made this country—what is the difference between Liberals and Conservatives? They are both supporting the same cause .... We are fighting to defend the same fortress. Let’s combine forces.” (Labour Speakers Handbook, 1929. P.141).

On October 25th, 1924, in a speech at Cardiff he was again telling the Tories that if they destroyed the Liberal Party they ran the risk of aiding Socialism. “Are you going to destroy a party which does not agree with you . . .  but which is just as firmly rooted as you in the existing order”? (“Daily News, October 26th, 1924).

In the “Socialist Standard,” (December, 1918), we said this of Lloyd George.

  “Behind this mountebank marionette stands the Imperialist section of the capitalist class, composed of both Liberals and Tories, who are striving to extend their dominion and power of robbing the working class, over larger areas of the globe. It was to protect their interests that this country entered into the War. When two years ago the military situation looked serious for the Allies this section looked for a more pliant tool to take charge of the Government. One was at hand possessing a glib tongue. always ready with large and extravagant promises quite unscrupulous, and able to sway crowds with his clap-trap. A dirty political shuffle took place and Lloyd George became Prime Minister.”

There is no reason to modify that statement.

Greasy Pole: Alcoholics Non-Anonymous (2004)

The Greasy Pole column from the May 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Just when the Lib Dems could have been pardoned for congratulating themselves on their progress towards being the electoral alternative to the Labour Party their leader Charles Kennedy had to spoil their fun by catching a stomach bug, or smoking too much, or suffering from the over-consumption of alcohol. Or perhaps all three. Whatever the matter with him it prevented Kennedy contributing to the pointless shenanigans of Prime Ministers Questions and the Budget statement – which cost his party some TV publicity. He made it, just about, to the Lib Dem’s spring conference but that did not turn out too well because the media concentrated on the fact that he had lost weight and was sweating as he spoke. Of course that might have been down to nervous guilt at having to mouth yet more of the nauseating deceptions inescapable from capitalist politics. What worried his party’s spin doctors was that his condition was so entrancing to the media that it got in the way of them getting the kind of publicity they crave. “We could not” wailed one M.P., “have too many weeks like last week again”.

So Kennedy got a lot of advice – unwanted, unqualified, unheeded – about his health. Cut down on fags, take more exercise, drink less. And while he was about it could he give some attention to his lack of what is called gravitas?  It does not help the case of a party which has ambitions to be involved in government to be led by someone known as Chatshow Charlie after his appearance on the politician-baiting Have I Got News For You. It does not help either for him to have so keen a reputation for what is politely known as a “sociable lifestyle”. Kennedy brushed it off as a bad case of media stereotyping; as a red-headed Highlander he had to be assumed to be over- fond of a tipple which, if it sometimes gets the better of him, will have to explained away as a passing malady.

Parliamentary Drunks

Well of course Kennedy is not the first example of the Mother of Parliaments nurturing someone with an alcohol problem. Arthur Greenwood was a power in the Labour Party between the wars. In Ramsay MacDonald’s 1929 government he was Minister of Health (a lot more important a job than it is today) and after the 1935 general election, while the MacDonald experience still tormented Labour  he was elected  Deputy Leader of the party. But his addiction to alcohol prevented him reaching his potential in the ascent of the greasy pole. By 1940 he was losing his grip, although in the Coalition government and later in the 1945 Attlee government he was allocated some lesser posts. It was almost as if someone felt sorry for him. He died in 1954.

Then there was Nicholas Scott, who was M.P. for Chelsea before it was combined with Kensington to form the safest Tory seat in the country. In the Thatcher government Scott was Minister of State for Social Security and the Disabled, which sounded like a nice job for a man with  a reputation as a kindly toff. Whatever chances he had of being nominated to stand for the Tories in the new seat (the M.P. for Kensington was obligingly standing down) were blown away when he was found face down in the street after attending a Conservative Party reception. The Tories who had successfully stomached the Falklands war, the defeat of the miners and the introduction of harsher conditions for benefit claimants, drew the line at their Member advertising his drink problem and Scott was deselected. In his place the Tories chose Alan Clark, who was not known as kindly but who could be relied on to drink with the best of them without falling over in public.

But Clark was not immune to the effects of alcohol and this, combined with his ready contempt for many of the Members, created a problem for him. In July 1983, as Parliamentary Secretary of State at the Department of Employment, he had to commend- speak in the Commons in support of – an Order. Instead of studying the speech prepared for him Clark preferred to spend the evening dining and “wine tasting” with a friend  and as a result when it was time, later in the evening, for him to speak he was “muzzy . . . I found myself . . . sneering at the more cumbrous and unintelligible passages . . . I gabbled. Sometimes I turned over two pages at once, sometimes three. What did it matter?” This rambling went on until Clare Short, never one to shrink from putting her foot in it, said that although she had read that it was not permissible for an Honourable Member to accuse another of being drunk in the House she believed Clark was incapable and “It is disrespectful to the House and to the office that he holds that he should come here in this condition”. Clark fumbled to the end of his speech. “This week,” he recorded “I went up a stubby ladder; then down a very long snake.”

George Brown  

Probably the most obvious, colourful and instructive example was George Brown, who almost became Labour Party leader and so Prime Minister after the 1964 election. We can only imagine what sort of government it would have been with such an intrusive alcoholic at its head. Brown was not one of Labour’s high flying university graduates; he came up the hard way with a father who drove lorries for a living. A spell as a fur salesman may have provided him with a taste for the high life as well as a sharp, manipulative approach to problems, not to mention a liking for a drink. It did not take him long, after being returned as MP for Belper in the 1945 general election, to immerse himself  in some back stabbing schemes. He took a leading part in a conspiracy to replace Attlee as Prime Minister with Ernie Bevin but Bevin only approved of conspiracies of which he was the instigator and brutally rejected Brown’s advances.

As the post war generation of Labour leaders died away they were replaced by the likes of Gaitskell, Wilson, Callaghan and Brown. In the leadership election after Gaitskell’s death in 1963 the final contest was between Brown and Wilson and Brown did not take it lightly when Wilson won easily. His bitterness endured, in spite of all Wilson’s efforts to heal the breach so that they could both get on with the serious work of running British capitalism—like disciplining the workers, supporting the American war effort in Vietnam, fostering the prosperity of the ruling class and so on.

Perhaps in the faint hope of placating Brown and of keeping him too busy to organise any more conspiracies, Wilson put him in charge of a new ministry with a brief to stimulate the British economy outside the restraining hands of the Treasury. It was called the Department of Economic Affairs; Wilson had his doubts about the move: “I was taking a risk with George Brown, with his erratic habits. The drink problem was always with us.” During the first few months of that government Barbara Castle and Dick Crossman recorded thirteen different occasions when Brown was incapably drunk. But Wilson was canny enough to have been aware that he was driving a wedge between Brown and his other big rival James Callaghan, who as Chancellor of the Exchequer could be relied on the fight the Treasury’s corner against the new ministry.

National Plan

With characteristic energy Brown got his ministry up and running and within a couple of months he produced its first offspring – a Declaration of Intent in which the employers and unions made vows about wage demands, restrictive practises and job security. It was, in brief, an agreement to make capitalism behave out of character and so was doomed but Brown was not deterred from producing his next great delusion. The National Plan emerged in September 1965, with a lot of publicity about long term planning and how a little more effort from everyone (well, at least from those who work for their living) could bring about a controlled economy without any of the slumps and booms which  had become so tiresomely regular.

The National Plan was supposed to organise an increase in national production of 25 percent over the next six years through an annual growth of 4 percent. In fact the unrealistic nature of the whole enterprise was quickly exposed when, just before the plan was published, Brown informed the Cabinet that he could foresee a growth of only 1 percent over the coming year. After the Plan had been consigned to a discredited  past it emerged that the idea of 25 percent growth was not based on any real experience but was an assumption followed by scraping around for evidence to support it. The Plan did not last for six years but for only about ten months. The crisis of July 1966 when, in Wilson’s words, the government’s economic strategy was “blown off course” was enough to collapse all Brown’s promises. The voluntary assumptions in wage negotiations were replaced by giving statutory force to the decisions of the Prices and Incomes Board. It was, in other words, back to Square One; for a while the Plan gathered dust in a few Whitehall trays while the Treasury savoured its victory. In a straight swap with Michael Stewart, Brown became an unlikely Foreign Secretary.

Resign

More and more, he developed the reputation of a hopeless drunk. Ray Gunter – one of his admirers – said he started on the whisky at nine o’clock in the morning. Denis Healey got fed up with “acting as a psychiatric nurse to a patient who was often violent”. When Wilson and a couple of his ministers responded to the latest currency crisis by closing the gold market, which meant asking the Queen to declare a Bank Holiday, Brown offered yet another resignation but perhaps to his surprise – and everyone else’s relief – this time it stuck and he was out of a job. For a while he sulked; nobody took seriously his declaration that “the left has a new leader”. In the 1970 general election he lost his seat at Belper to Geoffrey Stewart-Smith, a Tory distinguished by an ambition to set up a kind of McCarthyite pursuit of Communists in this country. Brown tried his luck with the SDP, went to the Lords and ended his days, predictably, with some comfortable directorships in industry.

Alcohol persuades a lot of its dependents that life is not as bad as it is; problems seem a lot more tractable through the bottom of a glass. It also encourages some people to believe that they have abilities which they did not know they possessed – like the drunk who imagines he is Pavarotti, waking you up singing in the street in the small hours. Perhaps that is why alcoholism is seen so often among politicians. But alcoholic delusions are dangerous, not only to the drunks themselves but to others as well.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: Like father like son (2007)

The Greasy Pole column from the September 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is no reason to believe that he was asked what he thought about it but Tony Benn has been transmogrified from an unbending leftwing critic, protester and campaigner into a National Treasure. Manacled in this identity he will find that participation in any future marches, petitions or demonstrations will provoke only the kind of fond indulgence normally given to senile dogs. In addition Benn may be disturbed by the fact that no offspring has followed in his stumbling political footsteps, for his son Hilary made his attitude clear from the very beginning of his time as an MP: “I am a Benn but not a Bennite” – which may be translated as “please forget all that daring but embarrassing stuff I once raved on about – my career is more important to me than any principles you may have attributed to me”.

We may ask why there are so few examples of admiring offspring following a parent into a successful career in politics – which is, after all, supposed to be an honourable profession with rewards both material and in public esteem. Is it just a matter of rebellious youth defying parental assumptions? Or is there something about the work and the esteem which discourages?

The Greenwoods

Arthur Greenwood was a leading Labour figure, an MP from 1922 until his death in 1954, who held a number of Cabinet posts. In the chaotic 1929/31 Labour government he was Minister of Health and in 1935 he became Clement Attlee’s deputy leader. In the wartime coalition Churchill made him Minister Without Portfolio and then in 1941 Chairman of the Reconstruction Committee – a grandly titled body with the even grander job of organising post-war reconstruction. This committee was expected to produce practical proposals covering a wide range of spheres of action and to this end Greenwood recruited a number of economists and others who thought highly enough of themselves to believe that, at that time of extreme peril for British capitalism, their opinions would have any effect on governmental policy.

In any case the very fact of Greenwood’s appointment was evidence of the low priority given to post-war “reconstruction” for his serious drink problem made him quite incapable of keeping up with the demands of the job. Mercifully, in 1942 he was sacked (the Committee had met only four times) and the government could get on with the serious business of organising the slaughter.

His dismissal from the Cabinet left Greenwood free to take on the (unpaid) unofficial leadership of the opposition. The style of his “opposition” may be judged by his contribution to a debate, in February 1943, on the Beveridge Report, heartily welcomed by so many war-weary people under the impression that the type of reforms Beveridge was proposing would be the reward for all their suffering during the war. The coalition, however, was not to be rushed into any such extravagance and Greenwood, by pre-arrangement with the government, introduced an analgesic motion greeting the Report with the meaningless hope that it would – sometime, somehow, somewhere – be implemented.

Anthony Greenwood

In the post war Labour government Greenwood held a couple of minor jobs but his health steadily declined; in 1950, virtually immobile, he was brought to the Commons in a wheelchair by his son Anthony. “He looked dying” recorded Tory MP Henry Channon, “…Anthony, also a Member, has a Surbiton accent but a pleasant, well-soaped appearance”. That was alright then, everything well set for another, eminently acceptable, Greenwood to take his place in the most exclusive club in the world where they do the business of managing British capitalism.

Greenwood Junior was among those who conform to whatever the priorities of capitalism demand while protesting that their principles as left wingers would prevent them behaving in that way. A member of the anti-nuclear movement from its early days as the Hydrogen Bomb National Campaign Committee, he stood for the party leadership against Hugh “Fight And Fight Again” Gaitskell, who won with almost three quarters of the votes cast. Gaitskell’s death in 1963 brought Wilson into the leadership and Greenwood was plucked from the back benches to become Secretary of State for the Colonies. This was either a mistake by Wilson or an example of labyrinthine subtlety for he had grumbled to Barbara Castle that “Tony has no brains. I soon realised that all he is good at is public relations” – a breathtaking sneer from one who was himself a keen student of the shadowy art of public relations.

Anthony Greenwood had responsibility for a number of decisions which would have outraged any self-respecting left winger. In 1964 there was concern, in London and Washington, that a general election in British Guiana would bring into power a government led by Cheddi Jagan, who was likely to pursue policies unfavourable to American interests in the area. Stifling his earlier reservations for such subversive, undemocratic activity, Greenwood co-operated with the Americans in an intelligence campaign successfully aimed at undermining Jagan’s chances in the election. In 1965 the Americans had designs on building a nuclear base on Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean. The problem was that the islanders did not want to leave so they were removed forcibly, through deportation or attrition; for example Britain bought the only employer on the island and then closed it down. By 1975 the job was finished and the base was there, where once the islanders fished, farmed and harvested the copra.

Hilary Benn

There is nothing in the family antecedents for any existent Greenwood to take pride in. But the tradition, or whatever it is, lives on; the grandson of Anthony Greenwood, Leo Murray, is a co-founder of Plane Stupid, an organisation which in its own way tries to defy the realities of capitalism by campaigning against airport expansion. Watch out for Leo Murray; there is time for him also to get into Parliament, become a minister and forget the days when he was devoted to trying to make capitalism behave out of character.

Such has been the story of so many politicians, among them Hilary Benn, a fourth generation MP who began as a local councillor at Ealing in London. That was in 1979, when Ealing surprised itself by electing a council which, with policies which were presented as eradicating discrimination but which on balance probably had the opposite effect, made them contenders with others such as Camden and Hackney for the title of loony lefties. At the same time Ealing council significantly upped the local rate which, to voters who are under the delusion that such things are important to them, was little short of electoral suicide. In 1983 and 1987 it almost certainly helped to increase the majority for the sitting Tory MP for Ealing North, where Benn was making his first attempt to get into Parliament. Avoiding another failure at that constituency, in 1999 Benn was returned at a by-election for Leeds Central. He has been the most compliant of Labour MPs, voting for ID cards, university top-up fees, the war in Iraq, replacing Trident…and he has moved smoothly up the greasy pole, to his present Cabinet job in charge of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Enough has been said and written about Hilary Benn’s father Tony Benn, left wing irritant turned National Treasure. It is however useful to remember that he was a minister in as succession of Labour governments during the 1960s and1970s, beginning with Postmaster General for Harold Wilson in 1964 and including the misery and chaos of the infamous Winter of Discontent. Among his notable achievements was his very own carbon footprinting when he oversaw development of the Concorde airliner which, apart from what it did to the ozone layer, was the rich person’s exclusive mode of air travel.

If the history of family politicians tells us that successive generations learn little or nothing from experience – well the same, even more so, must be said about the people who, in obdurate masochism, vote to keep them in power.

Ivan

Editorial: Wages in War-Time (1939)

Editorial from the December 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not only in a military sense has this been a "strange war." It has been strangely disarming on the home front also. The politicians and employers and the trade union officials have all remarked on the “good relationship" existing between masters and men.

The Government gave orders that the Departments of State were to seek co-operation with the unions. No big strikes are threatened, and conciliation and arbitration appear to be the order of the day. Primed with the experience gained in the last war, it must seem to those in authority that no cloud can arise to darken this fair scene. Have not the Government declared against profiteering and against a serious rise of prices? And has not Mr. Arthur Greenwood answered that the “trade union leaders have made no attempt to make class capital out of this war"? (Daily Express, November 17th, 1939).

Can anything go amiss with so happy a union? The answer is that it can and certainly will. Rising prices will break down the seeming harmony. Up to November 1st the cost-of-living, as measured by the Ministry of Labour Index, had risen by 14 points, equivalent to nine per cent., or a loss of purchasing power of 1s. 9½d. in the £. To meet this rise some four million out of 18 million workers have obtained war-time increases of wages; and instantly the Press, the City editors, and the economists—with the politicians waiting discreetly in the background—have struck a stout blow against higher wages and in defence of a lowered standard of living. Mr. Keynes, in his scheme for compulsory saving (i.e., the stoppage of part of wages for payment after the war), stated the case in full detail (The Times, November 14th and 15th), and although his plan has not been accepted, the problem as he stated it remains. With more workers at work there will be “a demand for labour in excess of the supply,” wages will rise, and overtime will be worked—in short, the normal peace-time capitalist check on wage increases will not operate.

The working class, as a whole, will have more money to spend just at a time when it is considered essential that productive capacity should be concentrated on war purposes. If workers have this additional money, and spend it, the result will either be a shortage of the goods workers buy or a big rise of prices—a shortage if the prices are kept down by Government action; a rise of prices if they are not kept down by such action.

Mr. Keynes' remedy is to defer payment of part wages until after the war and thus lower the worker’s standard of living while the war is on; in his own words: “It is a proposal . . . nearly as good as a 10 per cent. fall in real wages, while doing no lasting injury to working-class consumption.”

To minimise the effect of the rise of prices the Ministry of Food (Manchester Guardian, November 17th) has already set about showing how a rise in prices can be almost an advantage to the workers. If, says the Ministry, a worker buys margarine because of the increased price of butter he gets “a much, cheaper article, say one-third of the price of butter. The change-over may mean some sacrifice of personal taste, but it is the result of war conditions, and the consumer gets from his lower expenditure on margarine the same vitamin qualities as from his previous expenditure on butter."

Applied all round, this kind of adaptation will, of course, enable the workers to live more cheaply— on a lower standard of living.

Precisely the same argument was used in the last war against workers who complained that wage increases always lagged far behind the rise of the cost-of-living index figures.

But will workers be satisfied to accept quietly a lowered standard of living, either through higher prices or compulsory saving? Or will they be content to make up their wages by working overtime or working more intensely on piece-rate systems and thus suffering in health and vitality? It can be said with certainty that workers will not. The numerous applications for war-time increases of pay indicate already what will happen—an increasingly tense struggle between workers demanding cost-of-living increases because a still lower standard of living is intolerable, and employers resisting the demands.

As the Economist sadly reflects: —

  So far there is no sign that they [the trade unions] have departed from the attitude that, whatever happens to anybody else, the standard of living of their members must not be touched.—Economist, November 18th.

With the aloofness of the economic expert, to whom workers are just “the labour problem,” this writer cannot see the difference between the rich losing part of their superfluous wealth and the poor losing part of their necessaries of life.

Similarly, The Times' City Editor (November 20th) shows a characteristic propertied-class attitude in the matter. His criticism of Mr. Keynes is not on the ground that the Keynes’ plan means a lowered standard of living for the workers but that it would not go far enough.

  Nor does he demonstrate how the maintenance of something not much worse than the pre-war standard of working-class consumption is compatible with the present rate of Government expenditure—except by a correspondingly greater reduction in that of other classes of the population. Most of these people readiest to approve such a plan as this have hitherto assumed that the standards of living of no class could be generally maintained in war-time.

Of course the stock argument of such people is that the war is for national aims and all should be prepared to make sacrifice. To which Mr. Greenwood, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, though he supports the war, is constrained to reply that: ‘‘There is too ready an assumption on his (Mr. Keynes’) part that the workers of this country were having a fair share of its wealth, anyway, before the war started.” And the Manchester Guardian pertinently reminds its readers that: "Before the war, Sir William Crawford estimated, eight million people lacked wages sufficient for the bare minimum of food regarded as essential to health by the British Medical Association ” (Manchester Guardian, November 3rd).

So, war or no war, we are back again at the basis of capitalism, the ceaseless struggle between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” Not all the academic theorisings of Mr. Keynes and all the honeyed words of the politicians will prevent the struggle from proceeding, with its customary periodic outbursts of industrial strife.

Mr. Churchill may persuade himself that ours is one of the peaceful parliamentary countries “which aim at freedom for the individual and abundance for the mass” (broadcast reproduced in News Chronicle, November 13th), but he cannot dispute the unchallengeable facts of working-class poverty. Nor can Lord Halifax’s assertion that the Allies aim at a new world which "will enlist the co-operation of all peoples on a basis of human equality . . ." hide the fact that within this democracy, or elsewhere under capitalism, vast inequality is the permanent rule.

All of these people may think they are filled with goodwill towards the workers at the moment, but those who are determined to retain capitalism are maintaining a social system which breeds poverty, strife and class hatred, as surely as it breeds war.

Capitalism for the workers will be no different after the war. Mr. Keynes may promise that the deferred wages (if his plan is eventually adopted) will be paid after the war, but vast numbers of workers will then be suffering from the closing down of war production. Already the City Editor of The Times is considering what will happen “if the usual slump supervenes upon this war as it did upon the last . . .” (The Times, November 16th, 1939).

So this is the prospect for the workers. A struggle to resist a lowered standard of living during the war, and after it a post-war slump in which to celebrate victory.

50 Years Ago: Eight Million Undernourished (1989)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of course the stock argument of such people is that war is for national aims and all should be prepared to make sacrifice. To which Mr. Greenwood, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, though he supports the war, is constrained to reply that: "There is too ready an assumption on his (Mr. Keynes ) part that the workers of this country were having a fair share of its wealth, anyway, before the war started." And the Manchester Guardian pertinently reminds its readers that: "Before the war. Sir William Crawford estimated, eight million people lacked wages sufficient for the bare minimum of food regarded as essential to health by the British Medical Association" (Manchester Guardian, November 3rd).

So, war or no war, we are back again at the basis of capitalism, the ceaseless struggle between the "haves" and the “have-nots". Not all the academic theorisings of Mr. Keynes and all the honeyed words of the politicians will prevent the struggle from proceeding, with its customary periodic outbursts of industrial strife.

Mr. Churchill may persuade himself that ours is one of the peaceful parliamentary countries "which aim at freedom for the individual and abundance for the mass" (broadcast reproduced in News Chronicle, November 13th). but he cannot dispute the unchallengeable facts of working-class poverty.

[From an edtorial "Wages and Wartime", Socialist Standard, December 1939.]

Revolting business (1973)

From the January 1973 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once upon a time there existed, in the swamps of British politics, a strange mutant known as the Independent Member of Parliament. Some of these were elected for the universities, where the equality of man was proclaimed by allowing anyone with a degree to also have an extra vote as a reward for all those years of toil among the books and the lecture halls. Other Independents were elected by ordinary constituencies — in other words by thousands of members of the working class who had never had the time or the money to go to university.

The Independents, who could be politically interesting characters, were supposed to prove something about the unique intelligence and stability of the British electoral system. They were living witness to the fact that personality counted for something against the might of the political machines. One of the first acts of the Attlee government which came to power in 1945 was to abolish the University seats (along with other plural voting rights). This effectively destroyed most of the Independents; the rest were crushed between the upper and nether millstones of the two big parties, which settled down after 1945 to grind British politics into a dull succession of conformities which were referred to as party discipline. This was the heyday of the political gorilla, when the most primitive political man could slide into Parliament, provided he had the right party label around his neck.

Lies, Cynicism and Good Copy

The system now is that when there is a vote in Parliament the members of each side are expected to attend and to vote in accordance with a line laid down for them. It is the job of the party whips to make sure that everyone knows when to attend and how to vote and in case there is any chance of a mistake they often send out their orders in writing, sometimes underlining them. Three underlinings — a three line whip — means that no disobedience will be tolerated.

Yet even with all these precautions the monolithic unity of the big parties sometimes crumbles, as M.P.s who can usually be relied upon to find their way into the correct lobby blindfold appear to have lost all sense of direction and find themselves rubbing voting shoulders with men they choose in other circumstances to call the enemy. When this happens the newspapers assure us that we are witnessing a political revolt. At times the revolt is of little account; only a few M.P.s are in it and at most it reduces a majority by a small amount. At others — for example in the recent debate over the immigration laws in connection with British membership of the Common Market — it can be extensive enough to defeat the government.

There have been history-making occasions when a revolt has been aimed at the leader of a government. In 1940 many M.P.s had become convinced that Neville Chamberlain’s government was too tainted to be able to persuade British workers to die and suffer enthusiastically enough in the struggle of their masters against the threat of German capitalism. There was a great debate in which Chamberlain, although not actually defeated, came close enough to it to feel himself compelled to resign. Some of the speeches made on that occasion were hypocritical enough to find a place among even Parliament’s long history of lies and cynicism. Particularly honoured among the contributions was that of the late Arthur Greenwood, the ex-pacifist who was revered as Labour’s conscience, the gentle hero of the left. Greenwood got up to demand, not an end to hostilities but a more efficient prosecution of the war and, according to many observers, his speech set the seal on Chamberlain’s fate. Then there was the more recent occasion in 1963, when the followers of Harold Macmillan thought that his clumsy handling of the Profumo scandal indicated that he was no longer a sort of political cash register which recorded an ever-increasing vote but someone who was old and out of touch. One Tory actually went to the lengths of pinching an idea of one of Chamberlain’s critics and quoted a suitable piece of poetry in his speech, which at least showed that a university education comes in useful sometimes. It made excellent copy for the reporters and the M.P.s could go home full of pride at their consciences which had operated so strongly in reaching such a weighty decision. Meanwhile capitalism — and even Macmillan for a while — went on as before.

Conscience at Work . . .

But to bring us back to the present, the whole debate on the Common Market has been very confusing for the whips and the disciplinarians because both big parties are split wide open on the issue, which meant that a lot of M.P.s had to be leaned on pretty heavily to persuade them to vote in the right lobby at the right time. There was of course the famous case of Roy Jenkins, who has now taken his conscience into the wilderness for a while, who saw nothing inconsistent in voting for British membership of the EEC and then against the laws which would enable that membership to come into effect. Not for the first time, this type of political agility earned for its exponent the label of a man of principle.

And principle is what political revolt is supposed to be all about. On most issues an M.P. is expected to vote the party line but on a few he is allowed — if he does not assert — dissension on grounds of conscience. Sometimes this is of as much significance to the lives and welfare of the workers of this country as the split in 1928 when, while there were 1,300,000 unemployed, Parliament debated the wording of the book of Common Prayer. Another example is in the battles over the abolition of the death penalty, when M.P.s who had eagerly supported the organised butchery of millions of working people in wartime were prepared to argue that it was barbaric to do the same thing to about a hundred people a year.

Why do the party machines allow what is called conscience to work on such matters? The simple answer is that they have only a small influence on the important events of British capitalism. Much as it mattered that there was a death penalty to the man who was taken to the execution chamber, on the scale of the interests of the ruling class his fate was of no account. Only a few vociferous reformers would get upset about it.

. . . and at Rest

In contrast the issues which are the day to day business of capitalism and of its parties cannot be allowed to be affected by crankish theories of reform. When these are under discussion conscience must be flattened. Membership of the Common Market is of such historical importance to British capitalism that little aberration can be allowed among the people who administer the system. It is the same over the range of the legislation which is generally designed to perpetuate the existence of this national wedge of world capitalism.

And when these sort of chips are down, the M.P.s can be relied upon to conform, sometimes stifling their consciences with an assurance that it is all for the good of the party or the country. There need be no mystery about this, for there is one thing on which there is unbroken unity both within and between the parties of capitalism. They are both solidly agreed on the necessity to sustain the capitalist social system, at whatever cost in human suffering and social disarray. Within that unity there is room for an occasional revolt or deviance over a minor issue. We still wait for the real, significant revolt which will be not a matter of conscience but of understanding and which will sweep away capitalism and all its tattered conscience.

Ivan

The Labour Party is not, and has never been, a Socialist Party (1977)

From the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent furore in the press and within the Labour Party itself over whether the Party will admit to its ranks “Marxists” has been the cause of much debate concerning the origins of Labourism. Tony Benn, a member of the Government, defended the notion that Marxism has had a strong influence in developing the Labour Party. Benn’s claim is spurious and unfounded: the rejection of Marxism, and hence revolution, fated Labour to follow a reformist path leading to the inevitable disillusionment of its members.

Most of Labour’s early leaders if asked what books were seminal in shaping their views of society would probably mention John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Henry George’s Progress and Poverty, the Bible. If Capital was mentioned at all it would come a long way down the list. In fact, it has been claimed that the Labour Party owes more to the writings of the founder of Methodism, John Wesley, than to the founder of scientific Socialism, Karl Marx. Keir Hardie, founder of the Independent Labour Party, said: “I claim for Socialism that it is the embodiment of Christianity in our industrial system,” It was said of Hardie’s meetings that they often began with a hymn, followed by a lesson, and concluded with a prayer.

The Labour Party’s view of society at its foundation was not an economic analysis of capitalism. The capitalist system was bad because it was run by hard-faced politicians who were indifferent to social evils, and not because of its economic laws which placed the pursuit of profit above all else. Therefore, the solution to the problems of society lay in removing these men from; office and replacing them with a more decent set who would, by reforms, abolish the poor, feed the hungry, etc.

This was a denial of reality. No party, however well-intentioned, could hope to spirit away the essential basis of capitalism, whilst at the same time acting as custodian of that very system. The only option was to change society in a revolutionary way and this was rejected out of hand by the Labourites. Thus, having no Marxist outlook, it was understandable that Labour leaders would find working with the avowedly capitalist Liberals no hardship (it still is the case). Ramsay MacDonald, the first Labour Prime Minister, said he could see “no profound” gulf between Liberalism and Socialism. He argued that socialism was to be furthered by the close collaboration of men of goodwill from all [sic] classes on the basis of “conceptions of right and wrong” common to all. Keir Hardie’s hatred of class strife was a direct result of his Christian beliefs and Liberal upbringing.

The Labourites from the beginning shied away from the fact that the working class’s interests were diametrically opposed to those of the capitalists. In fact they held firmly to the principles of free-trade Liberalism. Keir Hardie himself left the Liberal Party not because he found the policies of Gladstone distasteful, but as a result of the way the local party branch chose its parliamentary candidates; a method which excluded working men. Hardie affirmed his still-felt affinity for Liberalism when he stood for election as an independent labour candidate in 1892. His election manifesto stated: “Generally I am in agreement with the present programme of the Liberal Party.” So much was Liberalism the cornerstone of much of the early ILP ideology that the Manchester Guardian could say, in 1901, of its annual conference: “what must strike a liberal . . . is, one would say, how much of the proceedings are devoted to the advocacy of traditional Liberal principles.”

When it came to deciding what Hardie’s party was to be called, the 1893 Conference rejected the idea of naming the new party the Socialist Labour Party, for in the words of Katherine Conway: “The new party has to appeal to an electorate, which has as yet no full understanding of Socialism.” This opportunistic approach to the working-class electorate has characterized the Labourites from the earliest times. Its refusal to commit itself to definite principles was the nearest it ever got to having principles, Henry Pelling, the historian, has argued in his book The Origins of the Labour Party that by adopting the broad, indefinite title of the ILP, the party was only reflecting the fact that most of its support lay in local parties and union branches which were not committed to socialism. The object of these bodies was to build a parliamentary party on the basis of social reform, not social revolution. The eight-hour day, abolition of overtime, old-age pensions, and so on, were prominent amongst the ILP’s early demands. Their allies in this were to be trade unions.

This appeal to trade unions proved ultimately successful. It was union support which saved the infant Labour party. For in the general election of the late 1890’s all the Labour candidates had been defeated, polling 44,000 votes in all, and the ILP was on the verge of bankruptcy.

But the unions were not attracted by overthrowing capitalism and replacing it with Socialism. What interested them most was the creation of a political party which would safeguard their immediate existence by using parliament to pass favourable legislation. This would have been entrusted to the Liberals, as traditionally had been the case. However, they had allowed the employers to organize strike-breaking organizations, especially in the docks, they had voted against the eighth-hour day demand, they had watched without a murmur the Taff Vale case of 1900. It was disillusionment with Liberalism and not capitalism which forced the unions to throw in their lot with Labour.

During the period between 1906 and 1914, the Labour mps merely acted as a pressure group, prepared to barter their vote for small, piecemeal legislative measures advancing the cause of trade unionism, and in this they were reasonably successful. For example, they secured the repeal of the Taff Vale judgement in the Trades Disputes Act of 1906. However, Labour was normally content to follow the Liberal lead at this time, which led it to be described as the “handmaiden of liberalism.”

Let us turn to another group concerned in the formation of the Labour Party, the Fabians. They were a group of well-to-do intellectuals, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Sidney and Beatrice Webb amongst them. It was the Fabians who, in Britain, made socialism synonymous with the state. They made the remarkable discovery that in the wasteland of capitalism there were patches of socialism in the form of public baths, parks, playfields, cemeteries, washhouses and public conveniences. Even the War Office and Scotland Yard had for them the character of socialist institutions. Another of their brilliant contributions was the theory of gradualism: the official socialism of the Labour Party. Finding words like “revolution” alien to their vocabulary, the Fabians argued that socialism was to evolve almost imperceptibly over many years, until one night everyone would go to bed (except those on nightshift) and in the morning they would wake up inside socialism. To quote Keir Hardie, Socialism would come “like a thief in the night”. The main agent for this unconscious change in society—no one was to be aware it was occurring, except the Fabians — was to be the state. Attempts at putting this theory into practice via nationalization have not brought Socialism one inch nearer, neither have they reduced class conflict—witness the recent bitter battles with the miners.

The emphasis it placed upon working within the capitalist system, meant that the Labour Party was open to all sorts of social reformers and cranks. Trade unionists, dissatisfied Liberals, well-to-do philanthropists, and out-and-out careerists saw in the Labour Party a meal-ticket. A direct result of the influx of the intellectuals and managerial types was the ousting of working people from the representative positions in the party. By 1945, Arthur Greenwood, Labour’s Lord Privy Seal, could say approvingly: “I look around my colleagues and I see landlords, capitalists and lawyers. We are a cross section of the national life, and this is something that has never happened before.” (Hansard, 17th August 1945)

Thus in the origins of the Labour Party we can see the seeds of future failures. The Labour Party has not brought Socialism about because from the outset it never was a Socialist party. It sought to win votes on the basis of social reform and not social revolution. Any socialists who might have existed in the Labour ranks at that time were swamped by non-socialists, who dictated the party’s course along essentially reformist and capitalist lines. Any notion that once into office the Labourites could take the capitalist dog for a walk has been subsequently shown to be false. The dog has taken them for a long walk down the road of power politics and social evils. Support of two world wars, presiding over massive unemployment, etc., has been the sorry outcome for a party, which failed to realize that capitalism can only be run in the interests of the capitalist class. It was not a question of good men with Christian principles, but of socialist economics.

Bill Knox