Islington branch. (1911)

Party News from the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

ISLINGTON BRANCH

Are holding the following lectures on Thurs. evenings at 8.15, at Co-operative Hall, 144, Seven Sisters Road (entrance in Thane Villas).

Feb. 2nd—”Socialism versus State and Militarism” …… T. W. Allen

„ 9th—”Society and the Genius”…… A. Reginald

„ 16th—”The Economic Position of the Workers” … J. Fitzgerald

„ 23rd—”The Futility of the Reform Movement” … H. J. Newman

„ 30th—”Socialism and the Religious Question” ……

Have you read “Socialism and Religion,” the latest S.P.G.B. pamphlet? It will interest and enlighten you, whatever may be your outlook on the religious question. It is an important addition to working-class literature.

Islington Branch (1910)

Party News from the January 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

Though the spelling is different in the advert, I'm pretty sure the SLP speaker, 'Budgeon', was Frank Budgen. I suggest that you click on Budgen's wiki page. He was an interesting man who lived a full life.

Meetings, Lectures, etc. (1939)

Party News from the January 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fraud or Fool? An Open Letter to the Bishop of London. (1909)

From the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

My Lord Bishop,—The Press reports you as saying recently, at a meeting convened by the State Children’s Association, that “Any boy now being taught in their Poor Law Institutions might sit on the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury, if he had the brains and power.”

The most charitable construction that can be put upon this startling announcement is that you lack information, and since you are in a position which could readily enable you to obtain such information, you are a fool. As you should have learnt from one of your own textbooks, “A fool despises instruction.”

The inability to definitely posit you as fraud or fool by no means demonstrates that you are neither. In the hazy atmosphere compounded of episcopal mendacity and aristocratic thickheadedness which represents your mental equipment, your public utterances loom up tinged with varying proportions of the murky ingredients which gave them being.

The moral kink treads hard upon the intellectual twist. Folly and Falsehood were ever twin monsters of one brood.

I will not press you to give your definition of the word “power.” The habit you have fallen into of using sounding phrases which may haply disguise insincerity of heart, and clearness of mind, precludes you from giving precision to terms which cry aloud for such treatment at your mouth—”blind mouth,” Milton would have said. Your formal adherence to creeds and doctrines which you dare not examine, your futile juggling with the metaphysical niceties of an outworn creed, your £10,000 a year, are a bar, an ever increasing barrier, between yourself and intellectual candour.

What of your Ordination Oath, when one of your own clergy brazenly proclaims the prostitution of his office and of his intellect ”in his own pulpit at St. Margaret’s Church,” by declaring he mouths “formularies to which, as an individual, he cannot ex animo subscribe” ?

“Power”! Your statement with regard to the word in question simply means that “Any boy now being taught in their Poor Law Institutions might sit on the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury if he could manage to do the trick.” “Any boy can punch his neighbour in the eye if he can.” “What will happen will happen.” 0=0. Startling conclusion ! Cerebation extraordinary—which brings me to the question of

BRAINS.

I understand from your utterance that you hold intellect to be one of the main necessities for success in life. That is a fair inference from your statement. You give adhesion to the taradiddle which declares to the French youth that every private carries in his knapsack the baton of a marshall ; you hold that the humblest clerk in the Admiralty, by strict attention to duty, may one day “become a ruler of the King’s navee”—inferentially that your exalted position is owing partly to an extra dose of grey matter.

A bitter fool !

I wonder what the assembled company in Park Lane thought. Did none wince at that nonsensical nullity of yours concerning “power”? I know naught of Lady Buxton, eke of Lady Courtney, but Mrs. Barnett ? The good lady who so severely takes the servant girl to task for her lack of coherent thinking, who has deplored the lack of “light” among the class which she vainly endeavours to sugar ! And the “secondary and elementary school teachers” present ! Peradventure, the secondaries and elementaries were at Park Lane on strict business bent. “Les affaires sont les affaires, n’est’ce pas.” If the question is not personal, did the presence of those same purveyors of specially doctored capitalist lore afflict you with a sort of sympathetic itching ? On the grounds of a common humanity, sharply and inevitably opposed as you and I must be, my Lord Bishop, on the political field, I sympathise with you for any discomfort you may have felt in the direction indicated. The creepiness of the “secondary” and “elementary” is of so loathsome a nature that a bishop should be spared that infliction.

Perhaps a quotation from Ruskin may help you to grasp my view-point on the question of Success and Brains. The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not swear by Ruskin. It occasionally, perforce, swears at him. But, at any rate, he did see certain isolated facts clearly, if he failed to correlate them, and made a kaleidoscopic colour smudge of what was intended to be an ordered harmony. “In a community regulated only by laws of supply and demand” successful persons are “industrious, resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, unimaginative, and ignorant.” Not much room for brains here. Per contra, “the persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the entirely merciful, just and godly person.” Eh ! Ruskin wasn’t orthodox ? You repudiate him as witness ? My Lord of London, Right Reverend Father in God, bland participator in the profits distilled from the life’s blood of the workingman, reeking with the shame of the unsexed working woman, bloody with the agony-drops of children,—will ye accept the ruling of the phantom figure which you and yours have exploited in your own interest for so long, and whom you have solemnly declared to represent the highest attainable wisdom ? You are never tired of telling us the “His Life” was the highest teaching, irrespective of precept. So. And yet your Incarnation of Highest Truth, your Very-God-of-Very-God-Man made a sorry hash of his life, reproaching the Unbegotten-Very-God-of-Very-God in his dying agony. I beg pardon. You say, ha ! He attained the highest success. M’yes, but that was not the kind of success you contemplated when beaming on the Park Lane assembly. The archbishop’s throne, the bishop’s chair, have not, of recent years, been associated with martyrdom. What you indicated was, that the poor little worker’s kiddy stood an excellent chance of collaring the £15,000 a year attached to the “throne” of Augustine’s successor.

A word in conclusion. Your cant and rant have no longer much weight with the class that has worked religion for all it is worth, in the only way that it could be worked, viz., for the befooling and undoing of the worker. But you need not therefore despair. If your class has its philosophic doubters, its ethical philanders, its Cheynes and its Hensons, there are still the

PIOUS LABOUR LEADERS;

there are still the “Socialist” bleaters who find such solace in a quiet hour on their knees that they become permanently afflicted with housemaid’s knee on the brain, meek firebrands, valiant worms, revolutionary P.S.A’ers, to whom you may still address your pagan patter and mushy moralising. A tip, my Lord. Next time you address a gathering on a similar subject, why not invite a few of the meek-eyed crowd herein indicated ? That you may bore each other to mutual damnation is the final wish of

Yours,

SNOGGY

SPGB Meetings. (1909)

Party News from the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

At random. (1908)

From the November 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

“May I say there is a good deal of nonsense talked about capital ?” Thus Lloyd-George at Swansea. And at once adds more “nonsense.” As thus: “The greatest capitalist in this country is Nature.” The implication that all wealth is capital should commend itself to Clarion Vanner (by the grace of Blatchford) Hick.

* * *

This product of what he himself described as the “stately cloisters of Oxford,” told a motley gathering of I.L.P’ers, S.D.P’ers, etc. in Peckham that capital was “wealth used to produce more wealth.” He affected to be much concerned when a member of the S.P.G.B. referred to him as a “catspaw of the capitalist class,” and cried aloud for proof of the charge, hastily adding, at the same time, that no Socialist would be allowed on the platform in opposition.

* * *

Cumulative and damnatory evidence could be given until further orders, that this brand of political quack is effectually doing the work of the master class in several directions, but the mere fact that one of the high-priests of Capital and the Vanner should be engaged in confusing the mind of the worker on vital points is sufficiently significant of itself.

* * *

Nothing suits the game of the capitalist class better than to point to the worker’s pick, his shovel, his dinner-pail, to apostrophise his mental qualities, his endurance, his etc., etc., and call them “capital.” For why ? It BLURS THE CLASS STRUGGLE.

* * *

“Capital does not consist in the fact that stored-up labour is used by living labour as a means to further production. Capitalism presupposes the existence of a class which possesses nothing but labour-power. It is the lordship of realised labour over living labour that transforms stored-up labour into capital”—Author of pamphlet, “Karl Marx.”

* * *

Kautsky, in the second section of his brilliant work, “Das Erfurter Programm,” (issued by the Socialist Party of Great Britain in pamphlet form as “The Working Class,” price one penny, honestly and correctly translated into English.) has pointed out that modern capitalism has developed a sorry type of proletarian—-the educated wage-slave. The death of Churton Collins, a distinguished scholar and acknowledged authority on Shakesperian lore, is one of frequently occurring incidents which emphasises his miserable position who must prostitute his intellect to make a living, and hire out his commodity—education—to the highest bidder. The professor, dying by his own hand, was fearful as to the future maintenance of his children.

* * *

Meantime, a correspondent of the Daily News is suggesting that, to meet unemployment of teachers in London, the L.C.C. shall “reduce present salaries,” and prevent teachers doing both day and evening work !

* * *

The Review of Reviews is concerned about “The Winter Feeding of Starving Children.” (It is not going to let the S.D.P. monopolise that pitch.) In the September issue, p. 295, it says “It would be well if other firms were to follow Messrs. Allen & Hanbury’s example by a systematic endeavour to educate the public in the general principles of the scientific feeding of children.” On p. 303 is a long advertisement crying up the wares of the above named firm. The Review of Reviews “invites the aid of ‘helpers.'” Helpers for what? Who said “alliances” ?

* * *

From the same source we learn that it has been ascertained that the children “could be fed excellently well at a penny a meal, with a extra halfpenny for dinner.”

* * *

Crouch low, you discontented dogs ! Listen to the I.L.P. “Socialist,” Liberal Stead at elbow, telling you the master class can provide sumptious meals for your poor little kiddies at a penny a head, with a extra half-penny chucked in for dinner. Then, begone ! run to your houses, fall upon your knees, pray to the tuppenny gods to intermit the plague that needs must light on “your” country for the ingratitude displayed by the Socialist Party of Great Britain in denouncing such a sorry combination of mouthing knaves and tricksters.

* * *

F. H. Rose, in the Clarion of 18.9.08 writes, with regard to the cotton dispute, “The masters bribe away the best and most knowing of the operators’ officials by giving them better jobs and bigger salaries. It is a ghastly business. Yet if I were to say what every employer knows, I should be charged with ‘giving the game away.'”

* * *

Judged by his own words, F. H. Rose is a traitor to his own class. A deliberate charge is made against unions’ officials which, unfortunately, is no doubt only too true. What plea can he bring forward to justify his silence or the matter ? If fears for endangering his own chances as union official and “Labour” member, why take the pains to emblazon abroad his cowardice ?

* * *

A significant cutting from John Bull. We pray you, note, aye, nota bene ! “Just as the franchise is the political specific for revolution, nationalisation of the public services is the antidote to Socialism.” Instead of which, that egregious political combination which is neither “independent” in action, nor “labour” in spirit, and which exists as a “party” only by grace of anonymous donors (see Manifesto p. 3) and middle-class “sympathisers,” at its last Annual Conference passed the following resolution : “That in the opinion of this Conference the time is ripe for the nationalisation of railways, and that our representatives be asked to urge forward a measure to that effect in Parliament.”

* * *

The Chancellor of the Exchequer says that pensions in Germany had not only raised the standard of life, but had had “the important result of improving the quality of the workman.” Exactly. Read “Bountiful Bournville” in last month’s issue of this paper in connection with this statement. Further comment would be what the Book of Common Prayer simply and beautifully calls “supererogatory.”

* * *

The Manchester Guardian recently wrote “Mr. Hudson repudiated any alliance with the Liberals, but he had heard the good news which Manchester sent on the first night of the election in the not uncongenial atmosphere of the Liberal Club. Being called on for a speech, he said he most earnestly desired to see Mr. Cairns (Liberal) in as well as himself.”

* * *

Mr. Hudson is a “Labour” M.P. The “Constitution and Organisation” section of the Manifesto of the “Labour” Party contains the following : “Candidates and members must abstain strictly from promoting the interests of any Party not eligible for affiliation.” Is the Liberal Party ”eligible for affiliation” ? Verily, in the words of their own Chairman at the Belfast Conference, “The Labour Party were a queer party and they are a queer party.”

* * *

At a “Socialist” demonstration recently, J. R. Clynes, another “Labour” M.P., and I.L.P’er to boot, said “The unemployed are a waste to the country. Would it not be better to enable a man to work for his maintenance and something over for the country.”

* * *

“Something over” = profit.

“The country” = the capitalist class.

* * *

In spite of protestations to the contrary, the “Labour” Group is out to maintain the present system. Its actions speak louder than its words, which, Heaven knows, should be loud enough to wake the somnolent wage-slave to a recognition of the real position.

* * *

“Radical Socialism,” “I.L.P. Socialism,” “Labour Socialism”—in short “Bourgeois Socialism”—all were summed up fifty years ago in the most luminous little working-class work ever penned (the “Manifesto of the Communist Party”).

“Free Trade—for the benefit of the working class, Protective duties—for the benefit of the working class, Prison reform—for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois Socialism. It can be summed up in a phrase the bourgeois is a bourgeois—for the benefit of the working class.”

Augustus Snellgrove

SPGB Meetings (1908)

Party News from the November 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

At Random. (1908)

From the October 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Mr. Burrows ought to be in Parliament; he is much the sanest of the Party to which he belongs.” (W. T. Stead, Review of Reviews, August, 1908.

* * *

After this handsome certificate of comparative “sanity” from one of the most notorious tin gods of Nonconformist-Liberalism, the suave gentleman who plays “Socialism” on a cracked pipe in an impossible key to the tune of “Reform,” should experience no trouble in making one of those “compacts” with the master-class which the Social Democratic Party would never endorse.

* * *

What, never ? Well; hardly ever ! See Manifesto of the S.P.G.B., pp. 1, 9, and 10.

* * *

The “humanity” of individual members of the governing class often throws a lurid light on the all-essential conception of class-consciousness. We learn from the Correspondent of the Daily News that “President, Faillères and M. Clemenceau have stubborn objections to capital punishment.”

* * *

Whether a criminal shall take his last look through the “little window,” or be immured in prison, has little, or very remote, bearing on the interests of the gentlemen in question as members of the governing class. Quite otherwise with a strike. The sabred right of the capitalist to exercise his unfettered “freedom” in brutal exploitation is challenged. The genial Fallières and the clement Clemenceau have no hesitation then in shooting.

* * *

“Stubborn objections to capital punishment” en masse, in the interests of the employers, have as little existence with Fallières and Clemenceau. as with Asquith and Burns.

* * *

When will the worker fully grasp the fatal significance of the armed forces of the nation to himself ? “Hard times” are in store during the coming winter. Sharp reminders of the real moaning of such forces may serve to help even fatuous fools of the Blatchford type to see that preservation of “our” country is the function of the army and navy only on the clear recognition of the fact that “our” is synonymous with the class that hold and control the instruments of production.

* * *

The worker is fatherland-less. Stripped of all claim to any advantages which he may have formerly enjoyed from the use of land, the appeal to save “our” country from foreign conquest by the Editor of the Clarion, is on a par with his strenuous begging for funds to finance “our” Vans—which belong, as you please are solely controlled by—spite the feeble Clarionese kickers—the Editor of the Clarion

* * *

As thus : “MY method is soon told. I look out for good men. When I find one, I give thanks. I put him into the right place. I give him a free hand.”

“Alderman E. R. Hartley will be appointed Van Organiser.—Clarion (recent issue).

* * *

Inimitable style, Nunquam’s ! ! My very dear friends of the Clarion brand of “Reform,” DO YOU READ “YOUR” ORGAN?

* * *

Listen to the tale of woe ! The Class Teacher this time. “Pious professional protests, pious professional tears have all been in vain. In some cases we (the teachers’ unions) are actually progressing backwards.”

“One gets sick unto death of it all: we are singing and making merry while the ship is sinking.”

* * *

The “dearth” of teachers has come to a most brutal, beastly, unseemly end. The poor pedagogue is actually being brought face to face with “iron laws of supply and demand.” But—soft ! We will take heed unto ourselves, we will take counsel of the miner, we will learn wisdom from the bricklayer, and the gasworker. We “will reduce the number of possible blacklegs.”

* * *

Why, damme ! if it comes to that, “we will adopt strike principles.”

* * *

Ay ! Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the Counter-Jumpers’ Champion, noise it not abroad in the Dustmen’s Herald—we will bow our heads, and admit “uncertificated teachers” to the Union what time we declare that “with the ‘supplementary ‘ teachers we have no cause in common.”

* * *

“No cause in common.” Fools and blind ! Compelled to sell your pitiful commodity, a shoddy education, at a rate which compels you too oft to occupy your “leisure” time in petty trading, in divers pursuits which a false pride and an eye to income tax compels you to hide, you have yet to learn that you have a “cause in common” with your class, the working class.

* * *

Meanwhile, the President of your Union is discovering that there is a “great sense of unity” among teachers in the wonderful German Empire.

* * *

A comrade from Manchester, who modestly hides his individuality under the weird title of “Jaybee,” writes: —

“The futility of endeavouring to put a stop to industrial operations by such a method as the general strike, was shown during the recent strike in Paris ; Mr. Clemenceau, the Premier, said he would be able to place at the disposal of the directors, military engineers to take the place of the men in supply stations if they went on strike.”

* * *

“Further, he was prepared to supply TROOPS TO GUARD THE MAINS.”

* * *

A striking commentary on the soundness of the position taken up by the Socialist Party of Great Britain, viz: that, whilst fully recognising the necessity of organisation on the industrial plane, the seizure of the political machinery (including the armed forces of the nation) by the worker, is absolutely essential to working-class emancipation.

* * *

“Direct action,” however thickly veiled with high-seeming Socialist phrases, is Anarchy, and he who would persuade the worker to “drive out Beelzebub with Beelzebub” is working present woe, and hindering future weal in a way that is the more tragic, in so far as a genuine desire to serve his class often dominates the misguided devotee to an ancient and obsolete faith.

A. Reginald

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For October. (1908)

Party News from the October 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

S.P.G.B. Lecture List, September. (1908)

Party News from the September 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Outdoor Meetings (1936)

 Party News from the August 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Unwillingly to school (1950)

From the August 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Hardman is Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education. On July 1st he opened his heart to a meeting of teachers at Dorchester; the Observer thought it important enough to accord a splash heading “New School Time Table.” Stressing as he did the urgent need for “co” ordination between hand and brain, and the high importance of inducing “delight” in the pupil while acquiring culture in its best sense, the words of the Secretary were a signal advance in the right direction; at least the ghost of Robert Lowe who flung his brutal “Board Schools” and scornful words in the face of the Working Class in 1871 has been well and truly laid; it may be hoped the Dorchester audience of Prime Minister Lord Rosebery’s “captains and guides” grasped the full significance of Hardman’s speech.

But alas! even today the gulf between the aspirations of the advance guard in education and the possibilities of fulfilment yawns discouragingly. That gulf can only be bridged, when a New Society (Socialism) has swept away the inevitable evils that must frustrate educational effort under the Capitalist System, in spite of the good intentions on the part of reformers.

It would be folly to deny that there has been a notable diminution in the lads and lassies who creep unwillingly to school; there has been a welcome and growing comradeship between pupil and scholar; there has been a definite, if slow, distrust of the Examination Myth—Hardman himself gave a sour glance at it.

But after all. Education in the long run is governed by political considerations; it was by no odd freak of history that in ancient Greece the Spartan youth was trained to a super-Fascist "hardness,” while the Athenian youth (of the privileged classes, of course), was trained to enjoy Homer and Aeschylus; tradition counted, it is true, but the outstanding fact was that Sparta had no walls, and no sea barrier.

Fifty years ago, Margaret McMillan, the pioneer of Nursery Schools, wrote an enthusiastic Clarionette: “You teachers do love the Grind.” They did, and unfortunately even on the plane of mere amelioration, a lamentable number still do. In the last War, a London school found itself sharing the dubious hospitality (morning and afternoon shifts) of a Secondary School in a South Coast town. An elderly member of the latter staff proudly expressed his determination (a siren wailing applause) to carry through "his” Final Somethings, come weal, come woe. "I’ll stick to the deck, said he, so they stuck him on deck with glue,” as an irreverent youngster of the London School afterwards remarked to his colleagues.

A pitiful handful of school reformers are gallantly striving to keep alive private schools where the child is the centre of the picture, where Wordsworth’s “blind authority beating with his staff the child that might have led him” no longer applies. Happy kiddies! but, with relatively large staffs, etc. these schools are expensive, and therefore for the children of the well-to-do only; further. Government grants are a far-off contingency when “a daily act of public worship” is laid down as part and parcel of grant-earning. This type of school is different.

There has been a spate of loose talk about "equality of opportunity” since the last Education Act, a new version of the old Napoleonic bilge about marshal’s baton and private’s knapsack. It is pretty apparent that the vast mass of pupils attaining Grammar School status will never attain the prize dangled at the top of the greasy pole; the unwholesome preoccupation of youngsters to reach a prescribed goal, the abiding dread of failure, failure itself, entails sheer tragedy for many a sensitive plant in Shelley’s garden. Face the fact, too, of the working-class parents scraping and sacrificing to come somewhere near the school’s requirements in clothing alone; face the fact of much prized “traditions” which are a veritable hot-bed of snobbery, spite of good intentions; face the fact of a child gradually sensing a growing divergence in speech between himself and relatively uneducated parents. It is easy to brush these things aside, to attribute exaggeration to a sketchy outline of potential child torture.

It may well be asked here: what is the remedy, granted the picture is even moderately true? The S.P.G.B. has no hesitation in replying—that only by removing the causes of evil can a final remedy be accomplished. Quinine is a benign alleviator of malaria—elimination of the foul pools with their disease carrying insects is the recognised scientific remedy. The evils inherent in the Capitalist system which, spite of pietistic mouthing, elevates material success to a major virtue, can at its best endeavour but alleviate the worst horrors of infant torture which marked the period of mine and factory hells. And it is worth calling to mind that there were Christian apologists in that period who affected to believe that "wholesome toil ” was a good thing for the pitiful little broken and disfigured scraps of humanity.

The achievement of Socialism will and can be only accomplished by the Working Class; the main appeal of the S.P.G.B. is therefore to that class, but it may not be irrelevant to point out that everything in the educational garden of Eton and Harrow and their kind, as far as pupils are concerned, is not lovely; bullying, even if not of the order of Tom Brown’s schooldays, is not unknown—"worse remains behind.” Socialism would be a happy change for many a sensitive school- tie kiddy.

Hardman means well—as does his chief, ex-schoolmaster Chuter Ede, despite a lapse occasionally into the hectoring Trade Union leader when condescending to speak to his late co-workers. But fine words butter no parsnips, indeed buttery sentimentalism adds to the rough pack of the unthinking worker a new element of dangerous slipperiness; Sir Peter Teazle’s “O damn your sentiments ” seems to meet the situation.

To Working Class fathers, the S.P.G.B. makes this special appeal: even if you fail to realise completely the dire meaning of wage-slavedom for yourself: if you have but imperfectly grasped that Capitalism entails a harassed and inhumanly overworked wife, at least give a thought for your children, your bidden guests. The joy of life, childhood laughing as it goes, faces “ in which sweet records meet, promises as sweet ”—these can be a realised aspiration under SOCIALISM alone.

Augustus Snellgrove

SPGB Meetings (1950)

Party News from the August 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx and Morals. (1908)

From the August 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The author of the “Secret of Herbart” has made a notable advance in the direction of a clearer understanding of the real “problems” underlying “Education” since his last work, “The Secret of Herbart,” was published. In his latest essay, “Education and the Heredity Spectre,” he says:—

“No one claims that improved moral instruction will be a panacea for all ills. The time may come when the minds now devoted to the cause of moral instruction may urge the importance of other factors. Or a happier time may come when all factors will have been so adjusted that advocacy of any one of them would be gratuitous. The immediate need is to lay stress on the importance of moral instruction.”

The advance herein indicated consists in the growing consciousness of the fact that his own particular pet palliative may, in the face of other “factors” making for righteousness, prove to be extremely inadequate, if not wholly ”gratuitous”—a loose agglomeration of learnedly ignorant “ideas” and “ideals” presented as a “system,” but lacking in coherence and in healing virtue because not broad-based on the truths of

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, searching the dark places of capitalism with the torch lit by Marx, again urges its claim to be the only agency at work in Britain which is consciously and persistently plying its axe at the root of the social evil which underlies all “problems,” whether “educational” or otherwise.

Dr. Hayward himself well says : “Something little short of infanticide prevails at the moment in those homes where the child is the chief bread-winner.” His prescription for this and other glaring evils is, in brief, “a wholesome, rich, and stimulating mass of story and poem and history”—for the unfortunate victims of a system which must

INEVITABLY BREED INFANTICIDE !

The absurdity of the suggested cure is surpassed only by the tragic waste of intellectual energy and misdirection of benevolent aspiration which is implied in the following unintelligible jargon of idealism : “Man, capable of becoming, as you will, a wild animal or personified reason (!), needs an art which shall build him up in order that he may receive the form that is right” (Herbart).

What kind of “form” is “right” for this same “personified reason” ? A race of Calibans, bred among and gazing upon nothing but a hog-breed, would doubtlessly regard its race as the “right” form of humanity. The more than hideous Caliban, fell Capitalism, necessarily hugs its vile offspring, Wage-slavedom, proclaiming it to be the “form that is right.”

And as to the particular kind of story, poem, and history ? Will the State—expression of the power of the master class to oppress and perpetuate a slave class—permit other than such pabulum as will inculcate the “duty” of thanking God for placing the worker in that station in life from which it is becoming increasingly difficult to rise ? We ask a direct question of Dr. Hayward. How would he, in his capacity of “Inspector,” view the teaching of Shelley’s “Men of England,” or of the “Red Flag,” as part of the “English” syllabus ? Will he tell us, in all seriousness, what diminution of prostitution followed the production of the “Bridge of Sighs,” how much less total exploitation of child and woman labour followed as the result of “The Song of the Shirt” and “The Cry of the Children” ? Any amelioration in the lot of any section of the working class has been dictated by

ECONOMIC CONSIDERATIONS.

Mr. Geo. Cadbury, astute representative of the master class, recognising the increased possibilities of the clean, better-fed, better-clad human machines as a source at once of more cocoa and more profit, only recently said, “Starvation wages pay neither employed nor employer.”

“Moral” instruction by “direct” or “indirect” method ? Yes. By both, especially by the latter ; but inculcated by the hirelings of a master class—wage-slaves themselves, sedulously taught to believe in the sacred “rights” of property—the “morality” filtering down to the “elementary” scholar from Executive Officer to bottom-dog “Assistant” will be

SLAVE MORALITY.

The crowd that will throw up its sweaty nightcaps and cheer itself hoarse to greet a king of knaves on Epsom Downs can hardly be expected to appreciate a “Queen of curds and whey,” be her charms sung ever so sweetly by immortal bard, can it, Doctor? Allopathic doses of the “Recessional” and “Rule Britannia,” or even homoeopathic doses of Seeley’s “Expansion of England ” on Empire Day are of more than doubtful value in curing the evil which the army of social quacks are endeavouring to grapple with.

“WE ARE ALL IS A FOG”

says the worthy Doctor. Too hasty generalisation, based upon an assumption which may be dispelled by a reading of the Manifesto of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, or, assuming this work to be beneath the notice of a “D. Litt., M.A., B. Sc.,” by a perusal of the works of Marx and Engels, who are allowed even by the master class to have been possessed of some small erudition, and one of whom, in issuing an epoch-making work, the crowning triumph of historical research and of the application of the evolutionary theory to sociology—”Das Capital” —omitted to mention the fact that he possessed the highest academic honours a German university could confer. Historical Materialism, whose main proposition is “that in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political, intellectual, and moral history of that epoch,” leaves revolutionary Socialists in no “fog” on matters educational. Capitalist society, nurtured on the life’s blood of the worker, fell Moloch and filthy Satyr, drunk with the blood of children, and leering bestially at the desecration of womanhood, is solely responsible for the infanticide and the prostitute, the crime and the criminal. Real “Moral Instruction” can only consist to-day in stinging the wage-slave into a recognition of his hopeless position while possessed of nothing but his labour-power to sell, and in pointing out the way to that emancipation which must be his work and his alone, by proclaiming the fact that economic freedom involves intellectual and moral advancement.

As what he sees is, so have his thoughts been,

Whether he first sees light

Where the river in gleaming rings

Sluggishly winds through the plain,

Whether in sound of the swallowing sea—

As is the world on the banks,

So is the mind of man.

A. Reginald

Blogger's Note:

A. Reginald (Augustus Snellgrove) had previously written about Dr. Hayward in the March 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Notes and Clippings. (1908)

From the May 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fred. Jowett, M.P.,—who signalised his career as a public man by bargaining with the Liberals for the exchange of support—has been giving what the Clarion is pleased to call “a Lesson in Political Tactics.” The lesson does not consist, as one conversant with his actions would suppose, in an exposition of the gentle, if somewhat dirty, art of collecting “fly-paper” votes. On the contrary, the member for West Bradford lectures the Scotch representatives on their “docility,” pointing out that Irishmen have.obtained concessions by reason of their militant attitude.

* * *

And how does this Political Bottom comport himself when confronted by the assembly which he so valiantly belabours on paper? Call a witness—Lloyd George : “There were only five or six Socialists in the House of Commons. Though some of them might make wild speeches outside, in the House of Commons they were thoroughly tame. They were there, tinkering up bills, and doing odd jobs of that kind in the Liberal workshop.” Verily, the master class, relieved and amused at the nightingale “roaring” of the bogus lions, may well say “Let ’em roar again, let ’em roar again.”

* * *

A paid organiser of the Independent Labour Party, speaking in opposition to a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, on the 12th of April, in Finsbury Park, said that he had had it on the best authority that Ramsay MacDonald had been offered a post in the government by Asquith, and his manly bosom “visibly swelled” when he informed his hearers that the man whom Quelch says is out for the making of his own career, refused.

* * *

Query: Did the organiser expect him to accept ? Had he done so, what would have been the position of the Independent Labour Party ?

* * *

We pause for a reply—which we do not expect from officials or organisers of the I.L.P. An expression of opinion from any of the rank and file of that organisation would be warmly welcomed—and recorded—by the Socialist Standard. Personal contact with members of the I.L.P. has given more than one of us high hopes of the rank and file. Not a few who had been merely lacking in information as to the methods of their organisation, when enlightened by the mouth or pen of a genuine Socialist, have expressed deep dissatisfaction, which must lead to the inevitable discovery that false methods are the inevitable outcome of a false theory.

* * *

Anything short of the recognition that the emancipation of the working-class must be the work of the working-class itself, will inevitably breed the particularly noxious species of parasite that lives upon its own kind, the sentimentalist whose attitude is an eternal compromise between broken-bottle-anarchy and we-are-all-brothers fatuousness, disappointment, disgust, and apathy.

* * *

The National Federation of Assistant Teachers—one of the six unions to which some fortunate pedagogues may belong!—is of opinion that “there is immediate necessity for an alteration in the salaries of assistant teachers.” But alack and alas! the organ of the N.F.A.T. has discovered that “the earnest devotee of the scholastic art is as much a victim of the iron law of supply and demand, as any luckless wight of a miner, joiner, or bricksetter ever was.”

* * *

The remedy proposed, of course, is the old, old Trade Union fake. Strive to create a corner in labour. Lesson the supply. In view of the fact that the “powerful” London Teachers’ Association, represented on the London County Council by the late rejected of Peckham has failed to perceptibly influence the Council with regard to its policy of flooding the market with “scholarship” lads and lasses, bearing in mind that the parents who are only just able to send their children to “secondary” schools, feeling the “economic pressure” which is steadily squeezing them down, down to ever lower levels, are eagerly availing themselves of the opportunity to “place” their children, is it likely that the mop of Unionism can stem the advancing flood ?

* * *

No hope, no light for the teacher until he recognises the fact that the “iron law” which binds him and the miner is but an expression of the fact that he and the miner, having nothing to sell but their labour-power, are wage-slaves, and that the united efforts of teacher and miner, joiner and bricksetter, are required to abolish wage-slavedom. This is only possible by an organisation which shall embrace the whole working class. In a word, the basis of the workers’ organisation must be class solidarity and class interests. Its tactics must be aggressive, and its aim revolutionary. Such an organisation (the S.P.G.B.) exists.

* * *

Mem. for “devotees of the scholastic art” :

Socialist Standard, June, ’06 : “The declared reason for the existence of the National Union of Teachers is the furtherance of the interests of the child. Is there not a danger that it may become the happy hunting-ground of the eloquent Party-man in a hurry to round his own life into a success?”

Daily Chronicle, April, ’08: “Everyone rejoices in the deserved promotion that has come to Dr. Macnamara, who has worked with unstinted devotion for the cause of Liberalism.”

* * *

Salary, £2,000.

* * *

Another mem. “N.F.A.T. Handbook,” p. 57 : “The following standard of salaries has been adopted by the National Federation of Assistant Teachers and the National Union of Teachers as a just and reasonable remuneration for Class Teachers:—

Metropolitan Men, Maximum, £220.

Women, Maximum,                  £165.”

* * *

Really, the humility of the average “class teacher,” if the above may be taken as a true reflection of his opinion, “passeth all understanding.” He deliberately rates his services at a tenth of that of his astute former colleague. How is this estimate arrived at ? Will some of the younger members of “the profession” enquire? Why are a woman’s services rated lower than those of a man ?

A. Reginald.

The Secret of Marx. (1908)

From the March 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

An Open Letter to the Author "The Secret of Herbart." 

Dear Dr. Hayward,

Your book, “The Secret of Herbart,” must impress everyone who reads it with the feeling that you are earnestly endeavouring to do something beyond what you are primarily expected to do by your employers, viz., apply the screw to the “captains and guides of the democracy” in order that they shall the better grind out of the school mill more efficient wage-slaves as exploitation material for the class which laughs up its sleeve at your misdirected efforts to bring about the millennium by Dickens-readings and the generous administration of chunks of “apperception” stuff. But at the same time we feel impelled to point out to you that your book is

AN UNCONSCIOUS FRAUD.

The “secret” which you set out to discover to a grateful public, and the knowledge of which shall add stature to those who are wallowing in your “professional gutter,” is so “portentous” that, at the finish, it whittles down to what looks uncommonly like an 80 pp. puff of books advertised on the cover. Where the “priceless biographies of the Bible,” let alone the lives of Curtius and Livingstone have failed, can your pinchbeck “hero of the situation” with his “Book of Moral Lessons” effect the desired alteration ?

But let us come to close grips. You aim at a better state of Society. Good. “Education” so far has failed. Granted, — from your point of view, and from ours too. But it has succeeded admirably in serving the purpose for which it was intended, and is intended, by the framers of “codes,” past and present. Have you read a soul-inspiring work, “German Schools,” by one of your late colleagues? In that mass of pseudo-scientific collation of facts, and of inane inconsequentialities, two observations stand out which typify the trend of thought of the average “educationist” who is hired by the capitalist class to help to bolster up a system which it is beginning to feel, in spite of its Caliban-like mental outlook, has already taken a decided cant in a direction which inspires him with deep misgivings.

The writer of the work in question notes with deep satisfaction that arithmetic is most successfully taught in Hamburg, and has no doubt that this is owing to the stress laid on the subject by the merchants of that city. What kind of a “circle of ideas” does the mind of

THIS VERY PETTY BOURGEOIS

run in? This man had “charge” of L.C.C. schools once, Doctor. He derived immense satisfaction on one occasion from the fact that poor little mites of seven to nine years old were somewhat hazy as to which was “subject” and which was “predicate” in the sentence “I saw a man running round a rock.” It evinced such high scholarship, such acuteness to discover that the infantile mind is unable to grapple with the niceties of a subject which may be safely ignored by the cultured man, and is the sheerest futility to “teach” to children.

The other observation is that with regard to the massing of children, and their devout rendering of a German national song. This picker-up of peddling trifles, whose whole vision seems obsessed by “average sums right,” “average mistakes,” waxes as eloquent as his very “practical” mind will allow him. He says :

“The commemorative gathering (Sedan-Day) was held in the large hall of the school. A long address was read, after which recitations alternated with songs of a patriotic kind. . . The impression made upon me was profound—a pious assembly met in a God-fearing way to celebrate their great triumph. With such a people it would be much to be friends, it would be disquieting to have them for enemies.”

You see the point ? Good arithmetic—better clerks ; patriotic ritual—obedient wage-slaves, quiet, docile animals who would not, could not, be guilty of lèse majesté, under no conditions whatever would read Marx and Engels, but who should thank God that they were only pelted with hard speeches instead of harder bullets, and should join their English fellow-workers in striving to order themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters.

This view, judging from your work “The Secret of Herbart,” is not satisfactory to you. I hope it is not too personal to observe that, in your official capacity, you must feel like the proverbial fish out of water. You are seeking to penetrate, not only the “impenetrable carapace” of the Blatchfordian gin-drinking wastrel, but incidentally the equally “impenetrable carapace” which officialdom invariably assumes. Has it ever struck you that possibly

BOTH ARE TWIN MONSTERS

born of the same hideous mother—foul, unholy capitalism. Has it ever occurred to you that the “circle of ideas” can only revolve in a

MATERIAL FRAMEWORK.

You occasionally glimpse the position. You say “Lust and brutality are generated as certainly as scrophula or typhus.” They are. Typhus and scrofula are the outcome of certain conditions. The merry typhus germ may career around for all time, as far as we know, without doing any damage until it finds suitable soil. Unhealthy surrounding are an absolute necessity for the fell work of the typhus germ,—the foetid atmosphere generated by capitalist society is peculiarly adapted for the growth of “lust and brutality.” Social relations determine the prevalence of typhus and scrofula,—no less do social relations determine the prevalence of “lust and brutality.” And here we come full on the

SECRET OF MARX,

beside which the alleged “Secret of Herbart” stands abashed. That secret is

“In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch.”

The highest philanthropic and missionary work, you say, is that which seeks to “implant wholesome interests.” Allow me, my dear Doctor, to introduce you to the

SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN,

which is seeking to implant the most wholesome interest a worker can have, namely, interest in himself as a unit of a slave class, interest in seeking to learn the genesis of that class, interest in seeking methods to remove the cause of his slavery. Can you ask higher ? What greater service can you render to a slave than to make him feel his position keenly (to be “class-conscious”), to point out the origin of his enslavement, and to show him the only road to his salvation? If “apperception” be “the process of interpreting some new fact or experience by means of our previous knowledge” then the Socialist Party of Great Britain may lay claim to be the only true disciples of Herbart to-day. The “new fact” of wage-slavery we interpret in the light of the “previous knowledge” appertaining to the growth of private property in the means of life ; sin, morality, and a thousand other abstractions we insistently seek in material causes. While your “educationists” are piffling about “faculty doctrines,” etc., while your sociologist is “tabulating the causes of poverty,” the Socialist Party of Great Britain is proclaiming aloud the one cause of poverty— capitalism—and is educating the worker in the only “doctrine” which will “implant wholesome interests,” the doctrine that the emancipation of the working class must be the

WORK OF THE WORKING CLASS ITSELF.

“Realising that, as in the order of social evolution, the working class is the last class to be emancipated, the emancipation of the working class will involve abolition of all class distinctions and class privileges and free humanity from oppression of every kind, the Socialist Party of Great Britain enters the political arena, in full faith that the members of our class will work out

THEIR HISTORIC MISSION,

hurls defiance at all forces of reaction. Generated by capitalist society, heir to the slavery of ages, outcast of civilisation, the working class will prove a fitting instrument of the movement of history, and by the brain and sinew of Labour will arise the Socialist Commonwealth, a society wherein poverty, privilege and oppression will find no place, and wherein all may lead a full, free, and joyous existence.”

Will you come and help ? Does our position demand attention ? What do you think of the “Secret of Marx”? “Recondite?” Maybe. “Portentous ?” Aye, verily.

A. Reginald

SPGB Meetings. (1908)

Party News from the March 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note.

The speakers at the S.P.G.B. Club in Ilford (Romford Branch) in March 1908 were not as well known as the speakers featured that month at the Battersea and Islington Branches, so here's a wee bit of background on them:

H. C. Phillips was a founder member of the SPGB. The following information about him is from Kaz's document on the founding members of the SPGB:

"Phillips [of Fulham Brnach] was a member of the Provisional Committee of May 1904, of the EC in 1904-6 and was an outdoor speaker from 1904 to 1908. Previously he had been secretary of the SDF Mile End branch (1901-3). He is presumed to have lapsed membership around 1914. He rejoined Central branch on 3rd November 1931, finally leaving through being lapsed on 1st December 1936."

J. H. Kennett was a member of Romford Branch, joining the Party in May 1905. 

W. A. Cole was also a member of Romford Branch, joining the Party in April 1906.

Myles O. Bartley was also a member of Romford Branch, joining the Party in September 1907.

A. Reginald was, of course, Augustus Snellgrove. He originally joined the Peckham Branch of the SPGB in September 1905. In 1908 he would have been a young school master, which may explain the subject of his lecture. He resigned from the SPGB a couple of years later over the 'W. B. of Upton Park affair',  rejoining the Party in April 1933.

Highland Fling (1937)

From the July 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Brown beach and shaggy woods, romantic dells, Eigg on the starboard, Mull astern! and yet, and yet —

Current issues of the People's Journal (proudly claiming largest circulation north of the Forth) contain material sufficient to prevent a too hasty trek of the working class of Peckham and Hoxton to Dingwall, Inverness, or to the fast-dwindling collection of picturesque hovels dignified by the name of “villages.” Social inequality breeds similar social disease everywhere—aristocratic insolence, capitalist greed, working-class poverty.

The local authority for Corpach approached the Crown representative with a view to joint action in abolishing “abominable smells” in Crown “houses.” The Crown Minister, “all ’aughty-like,” promptly put the 'umble Councillors in their right place. “The Crown, and the Crown alone, was responsible for the sanitary condition of the houses in question” (June 12th). (“Sanitary" is not a misprint for “insanitary,” if you please. Mister Editor.) The People's Journal heads the article “Need for New Laws.” The Socialist Party of Great Britain avers the necessity for a New System of Society—Socialism.

A drive for a Highland “New Deal” is afoot. A cry is going up for more harbours, more power-stations. A pretty quarrel between industrial capital and landed gentrydom is a big factor against compounding of this particular pill to cure an economic earthquake . . .  an old tale, the Highlands must be “preserved” (not, of course, for people who live in smelly houses).

An historical reminder, culled from chapter 27 of Marx’s “Capital,” Vol. 1—read this chapter and previous two; there is nothing “difficult” here, the grim facts, absolutely unchallenged, gleaned from sober Blue Books and similar documents. . . . The Duchess of Sutherland evicted, from 1814 to 1820, practically all her tenancy (15,000) to make money on sheep. British soldiers assisted in eviction. One old woman was burnt to death refusing to leave her hut. The evicted tenants tried fish-catching in the fishing fiords and glittering lochs of the coast. But, alack!

The smell of the fish rose to the noses of the great men. They scented some profit in it, and let the seashore to Billingsgate. For the second time the Gaels were hunted out.—(p.754, Kerr’s Edition; Everyman, vol. 2, p. 809.)

Fish comes into the picture to-day. Big combines are steadily crushing out smaller enterprise; a frantic cry is going up to keep out Norwegian labour on trawlers; plans are afoot to settle fisherfolk in Vancouver, and a strike is yet unsettled in Campbeltown.

It should be noted that clan land was in primitive times actually “clan” land, common property in the widest sense of the word. The gradual usurpation of common rights of ownership of land by “chiefs” is a world-wide social phenomenon known to all students of works such as Lewis Morgan’s “Ancient Society,” or the more accessible “Origin of the Family,” by Engels, not to mention numerous books by definitely non-Socialist writers. The fact is established. Dog-like devotion—older people who have read Scott in their youth will recall instances— was repaid by expropriation. Roderick Dhu’s contemptuous reference to “fellow-clansmen” as “wretched kerns” was blunter in form, but truer in intent than the sickening patronage and fluffy blah which masks modem approach to the position.

The Macleods had a big gathering in Dunvegan Castle—said castle being anything but common property. “Old-age pensioners and all the crofters of the clan marched up to the castle headed by the clan piper.” The sweet lady, “Flora Macleod of Macleod,” was “overcome with the warmth of the clan spirit.” Burns’

“ There’s some are fou' of love divine. 

There’s some are fou' of brandy” 

seems vaguely apposite here. At any rate, the dwellers in smelly crofts and dear old tartan-clad recipients of outdoor relief were “keenly interested” in seeing the ancient relics of their clan— Cockneys do at least get some opportunity of seeing their relics every day at the London Museum. One of the “relics” deserves “special mention ”: Flora MacDonald’s corset!!

Dingwall Town Council, according to the North Star, gave a “typically Highland welcome” recently to Stewart Mackenzie of Seaforth on his return from honeymoon. Replying to an address, the young man recalled negotiations between the Council and the “estate” in connection with a new water-supply. He said he was “glad to think that now Dingwall had a first-class water-supply and that the estate had not suffered through granting this concession ” (March 13th). Is comment necessary? “Concession”!—and a splash heading of the Journal reads “Highlands need help for water supplies.” The situation is described “as little short of alarming.”

“Alarums and Excursions. Enter the Working Class.” Always “ alarums,” whether north or south of Forth for the working class—“excursions,” in the modern sense, sadly lacking, or of the cheap and nasty type.

Socialists (not reform-mongers, whether “charming” Maxtons, “fiery” McGoverns, or tin-pot Gallachers) still stand by “The World for the Workers.” This will include the humble, but highly-necessary water (without “concessions” from anyone).

MacReginald.

SPGB Meetings (1937)

Party News from the July 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Open Air Propaganda (July) (1937)

Party News from the July 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

A bit of a mystery here. A Party speaker with the surname of 'Otto' is listed four times in the Speakers' List for July. There is no record of an 'Otto' in the Party membership list. This member was obviously well regarded as a speaker 'cos they secured one of the marquee spots speaking at Hyde Park on a Sunday alongside the likes of Sammy Cash and Tony Turner. So, it's either a case of another example of the incomplete membership records or, more likely, that 'Otto' was a pseudonym for a Party member whose name couldn't appear in the Party press.

Also interesting to note that both Adolph Kohn and Eric Boden are listed as speaking. I didn't know they were still doing outdoor speaking this late in their Party lives.