Class and colour in South Africa (1955)

From the May 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class struggle

The class struggle in a fully-developed capitalist society is a struggle between the ruling class, which owns the means of production, and the working class, which operates the means of production and is exploited by the ruling class. Such a struggle can be observed in full swing in countries like Britain and America. But in societies which are slightly less fully developed, the capitalist class has to fight not only against the working class, but against the previous ruling class—that is the class which derived its power from the ownership of land, and which formed the master class before the progress of large-scale industry threw up another class to challenge it. Nineteenth-century Britain witnessed the strife between the old landed upper class and the rising industrial upper class, culminating in the victory of the latter in the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832 and the Repeal of the Corn Laws 14 years later.

The situation in South Africa at the present time is in some ways not dissimilar to the situation in this country 130 years ago. There is a class which draws its wealth from the ownership of land; and there is a class which draws its wealth from the ownership of industry. There are, in fact, two kinds of society in South Africa: the old agricultural society, and the new industrial society. South African politics reflect the economic and social struggle between the old form of society and the new.

Dutch South Africa

The farming community of South Africa is very largely composed of Afrikaners—descendants of Dutch, Flemish. German Protestant and French Huguenot immigrants. These Afrikaner farmers own the land and employ Negro labourers. The landowners are and always have been determined that the Bantu shall form merely a floating population, with no stake in the land. The Bantu farm-workers have very little money; the white farmer pays the greater part of his labourers’ meagre wages in kind, in the form of huts to sleep and eat in, rough grazing for their few head of cattle, and seed for their garden plots. This form of society has existed, and from the point of view of the ruling and owning class has prospered, almost since the first settlers were put ashore, by the Dutch in the 17th century, to hold the Cape as a valuable halfway house for the ships trading to the East.

British South Africa

The Dutch took possession of the Cape as a landfall on the way to India; and the British stole (or, to use a more polite word, captured) it from them in 1806 for the same reason. As the century wore on, and the Dutch quarrelled with their new masters, the more independent spirits among the settlers trekked north, to Natal, then across the Orange River, and finally across the Vaal River. But British settlers followed them, attracted by the lure of diamonds and of gold. The apostle of this industrial expansion was Cecil Rhodes, at once Prime Minister of the Cape and Managing Director of the British South Africa Company; its centres of operation were Kimberley and the Witwatersrand, and its outlets Cape Town and the ports of Natal. A number of armed clashes between the British and the Boers culminated at the turn of the century in the Boer War, which, at length, the British won, by means of destroying the farmsteads of their enemies and transporting their families into concentration camps, where many of the Boer children died. It may be doubted whether at that time the strength of the new capitalist class was sufficient by itself to overcome the class which drew its strength from the land; but the ultimate issue was put beyond dispute by outside intervention. The farming-landowning class had been cut off from its former fatherlands in Europe; while the Capitalist class could count on the help of imperialist Britain, then the greatest industrial power in the world

This is the background of the South African scene. But the Boer War did not settle the matter. There was, and still is, much vitality left in the Afrikaner farming class. It still carries on its resistance to the industrial capitalist class; but in the long run one of them must go down before the other.

Black South Africa

The hostility between these two classes can be seen clearly in their respective attitudes to that majority of the South African population—the Negroes—who form the bulk of the working-class, alike on the farm owned by the Afrikaner and in the mine or factory owned by the Britisher. Each of them regards this class as subordinate. But while the Afrikaner’s self-interest drives him to adopt a harsh and oppressive policy, the Britisher, also motivated by self-interest, tends ip take a more “liberal” point of view.

To the Afrikaner the Negro has two possible capacities. He is, first and foremost, a rival for the ownership of the land. There were in 1946 over 8,000,000 Negroes in the Union, against 2,300,000 whites, nearly 1,000,000 Cape Coloured (of mixed white and black ancestry) and 200,000 Asiatics (nearly all of them Indians). Most of the Negroes are the descendants of the Zulu-Xhosa peoples, who came into the country from the North while the whites came in from overseas—the whites having exterminated or driven out the original black inhabitants of the area. These white and black invaders naturally found themselves in competition for the possession of the land. It has always been the policy of the Afrikaner landed interest to confine Negro ownership of land to certain fixed “Native” reserves: the Bantu can emerge from these reserves only as landless labourers on the white-owned farms, and must never be allowed to take root in the great areas of South Africa which are kept exclusively for white ownership. This restriction of Negro ownership always applied in the Afrikaner territories of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State; and the granting of Dominion status to South Africa in 1909 by Asquith’s Liberal Government' enabled the Afrikaners (who were the numerical majority of the white population) to impose the same rule throughout South Africa. Since 1913, Negroes have been able to own land only in certain carefully limited areas of the Union. At the present time, more than three-quarters of the total population of South Africa can own land in only one-tenth of its territory. This fragment of South Africa set aside for Negro ownership consists largely of less favoured land in remote districts, such as the Transkei Reserve in eastern Cape Province. At the beginning of this year there was only one important urban area throughout South Africa where Negroes could own land : and that was in a suburb of Johannesburg called Sophiatown.

Anomaly

The Nationalist Government has now put a stop to this anomalous situation. It has built a new settlement of corrugated-iron-roofed one-storey-huts at Meadowlands, eleven miles outside Johannesburg, and has forcibly begun to evict the Africans of Sophiatown from their freeholds and to carry them and their goods to Meadowlands. There the Negroes will be allowed to become tenants of the land; but they will not be allowed to to own it. The Africans have no say in the matter. The Government says they must go, fixes the exact days, and provides transport and police. This operation is being carried out under the Native Resettlement Act, passed by a Parliament elected almost exclusively by the whites. The Nationalists claim that the removal to Meadowlands is aimed solely at improving Native housing; but there are other African locations around Johannesburg where the housing conditions are worse than at Sophiatown; and, what is more, the shacks of Sophiatown are being destroyed and the area reserved for white occupation— this in a city which is short of 50,000 houses for its black population (Daily Telegraph, 10/2/55). The real aim is clearly to destroy the African’s ability to own land in one of the few urban areas where he still had that right.

Apartheid

The Afrikaner, then, sees the Negro as a competitor for the ownership of the land; and is led thereby to support apartheid, the policy of confining each of the ethnic groups in South Africa to its own areas—with the unspoken corollary that the areas reserved for the white minority shall be much larger than the areas reserved for the coloured majority. But to the Afrikaner the Bantu is not only a competitor for the land: he is also a farm-labourer. If apartheid were carried out in full, as is advocated by the extreme wing of the Nationalists, who would do the work? The extremists, those who embrace apartheid in all its pristine purity, say that the Boers must return to the ways of their ancestors, and themselves work their farms with their own hands and those of their families. But the majority of the Afrikaners are no more prepared to give up the surplus value—that is, the profits —which they make out of their African labourers, than they are to abandon their ownership of the land to the Africans. “On the farms you hear sad tales of how difficult it is to keep Africans, even with the help of legislation, from drifting away to make rather more money in urban employment. No one at these managerial levels suggests that his workers—-or he—would be better off if there were a trek back to the Reserves. On the contrary the cry is for more cheap labour.” (The Times. 14/1 /55: succeeding references are also to The Times). The Nationalists, then, are in a dilemma. They have swept triumphantly into power on the cry of apartheid: they captured 86 of the 156 seats in the South African Parliament in 1948, and in 1953 they increased their members to 94. But even their own supporters would not tolerate them if they ever seriously tried to put apartheid into effect.

Big business

The Nationalists must also, when they are considering apartheid measures, reflect upon the opposition they would arouse among the English-speaking element in the Union. Although this element is now split among the United Party, the Federal Party, and the Liberal Party, it remains very powerful; for it contains within its ranks the owners of the country’s industries. The Times correspondent, coming from a country where the Capitalist class and the ruling class are merely two names for one body of people, finds this distinctly odd. “The situation is a somewhat curious one in which a Government and those who have voted it to power play relatively little part in the conduct of big business. . . . It remains true to say that the bulk of the business in the Union, especially at its directorial and managerial levels, is carried on by men of British stock or by other non-Afrikaner immigrants. The Afrikaner now governs: the minority makes the money in the towns.” (14/1/55). Curious or not, it is the fact; and the Capitalist class gains in economic power with every year that passes. “By 1939 South Africa was well advanced along a course from which, so far as can be seen, there is no turning back and which was transforming her from a land of primary producers and gold and diamond miners into a complex society in which secondary industries were looming more and more large. The process was accelerated by the war-time hold-up leading to demand for consumer and capital goods. Major industries were established or extended.” (11/1/55). Industrial expansion means larger towns and more workers in the factories. If we take four of the largest cities in the Union, Johannesburg, Cape Town. Durban, and Port Elizabeth, we find that between 1936 and 1946 the white population rose by 29%; the Cape Coloured population by 34%; the Asiatic population by 38%, and the Negro population by 71%. Recently Mr. Hepple, a South African M.P., speaking in Parliament, said that in 1936 there were only 175.000 Negroes in industry; now there are 500,000—nearly three times as many (9/2/55).

Joshua.

(To be continued)

The Bogey Man (1945)

F

rom the March 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ruling classes of all time have used in their armoury of weapons the powerful one of leadership. In order that the workers may be prevented from discovering their own strength and power, priests, politicians and teachers have saturated the workers’ minds with awe, fear and reliance upon some great deliverer, spiritual and otherwise. In times of stress, social, economic or political, the workers’ thoughts (skilfully prepared) turn to a “leader” or “saviour.” This mental condition enables the ruling class to canalise the thought-tendencies of the workers away from the emergent growing class concept of events to one of individualist responsibility, all dependent upon a “good” or “bad” leader. Parents having been trained that way themselves, continue on the same lines with their children.

In order to curb the ardent spirits of their unruly progeny, mothers call to their aid their own childhood teachings, and threaten their offspring with fears of a “bogey man.” The ruling class do the same. In the first years of the nineteenth century British capitalism had as its challenger the new youthful capitalism of France, and in order to harness the common people to their war machine, preached fear of the French through the medium of “bogey man” number one—Napoleon. Whilst the common people were dying at Waterloo to prevent “their” country from being stolen, three million acres of “common” land was filched by various enclosure acts. Four years after (August, 1819) the men who had won Waterloo were peacefully assembled in Peter’s Fields, Manchester, listening to orator Hunt, when the Yeomanry charged them, and the subsequent massacre became known as Peterloo. Half a century after (the Peterloo and Waterloo heroes being safely dead) British capitalism was in danger at its Empire gateway in the Mediterranean, so the workers had to be frightened by “bogey man” number two. This was the Czar of Russia, who on behalf of his own ruling class was seeking a warm-water port. The bones of British working men lay bleaching on the Crimean snows in a war waged so that “Russia shall not have Constantinople.” Half a century later we fought a war to see that she should have it. For fifty years after the Crimean war decent sized “bogey men” were scarce, and only practice matches were played against small-timers learning the trade, such as Dinizulu, Charka, Lobengula, the Mahdi, the Mad Mullah, etc., but the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the present century brought us “bogey man” number three—the Boer Kruger. Now here were the ingredients for a “just and righteous” war. We fought it to free the “outlander,” give “equal rights to all whites,” and at the same time collar the gold of the Rand and the diamonds of Kimberley. The net result being—two independent republics lost their “independence,” cheaper Chinese labour introduced into the mines, and a big slice of Africa marked red on the map. The workers of Britain got an extra dose of unemployment, but had laid low “that” bogey man. Another dozen years passed, and “bogey man” number four appeared on the scene. Not a Frenchman, not a Russian, not a Boer, but a German—the Kaiser. Once again the workers, true to their training, determined to lay him low, and fear of the “bogey man” became most pronounced in such questions as “What would you do if the Germans came?” This time there was to be no nonsense. We would make Germany pay and hang the Kaiser. Alas! the workers paid in blood and tears and intensified toil for some and unemployment for millions, and they didn’t even hang the Kaiser; he settled in Doorn, doing well until he went to his hall in Valhalla. Will the workers always fall for a “bogey man,” or will they learn Socialism?

Lew.

J. Hunter Watts Explains His Vote for Masterman. (1905)

From the February 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The General Secretary of The Socialist Party of Great Britain has received the following communication :

94 Grove Park, Denmark Hill,

15th Jan 1905.

Dear Comrade,—”A lie that is half a truth is the worst lie of all” and it is a half truth to which the Socialist Standard gives currency this month when it says that I voted for a Liberal candidate for the constituency in which I reside and advised other members of the S.D.F. to do the same. A Jameson raider offered himself for election, and as I shall never either forget or forgive any instrument of the iniquity which robbed another of the little peoples of its national freedom I did my best to thwart the ambition of Rutherford Harris. As there is no way of voting against a man other than voting for his opponent I “supported” Masterman, though I know no more of the man than I know of the one who is said to reside in the moon. I shall repeat the offence at the next election even if the raider’s opponent is a circus clown.

Yours fraternally,

J. Hunter Watts.

* * *

Comrade C. Lehane,

Communist Club, 

107, Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, W.C.”

The note to which Mr. J. Hunter Watts referred was as follows :

“In our last issue we dealt with the S.D.F., I.L.P., and L.R.C. members being induced to support the Liberal faction of the Capitalist Party at “Free Trade” meetings and we notice that H. Kirby deals with matter in “Justice.” He describes Mr. Masterman, the Liberal candidate for North West Ham, as “an adept at trailing Liberal red herrings before the workers’ noses.” But we would remind Mr. Kirby that when Masterman contested Dulwich, one of the best known members of the S.D.F., J. Hunter Watts, voted for him and urged other Social-Democrats to go and do likewise. Now, if Masterman was advanced enough for such a leading revolutionary Social-Democrat as Hunter Watts, surely smaller fry should follow such a good example ? Perhaps one of these days the S.D.F. will endeavour to pursue a consistent policy, but we are afraid it will then be too late for them to regain the public confidence,”

We now print a letter written by Mr. J. Hunter Watts to the then Secretary of the Peckham Branch S.D.F. during the election referred to.

“94 Grove Park,, Denmark Hill,

13th December, 1903.

Dear Comrade, Till after Christmas I have so many business claims on my attention (last Wednesday I was obliged to travel to Manchester and shall probably have to return this week) would you kindly intimate to the members of the Elocution Class that we will start work the first Wednesday in January. If convenient to them I would rather hold the class here because all my books etc. will be ready to hand but I leave it to their choice and I will come to the Branch Room if they prefer that rendezvous.

Though it goes very much against the grain to vote for a Liberal, it seems to me a duty to do one’s level best to prevent a Jameson Raider being sent to Parliament as our Parliamentary Representative so I intend to vote for Masterman on Tuesday, Would you kindly ask the members of our Branch to consider tomorrow night whether as individuals they can adopt the same policy though collectively it might be unwise to support Masterman. On Harris’s head rests some of the blood of the peasant farmers slain in defence of their national independence.

We cannot forget this !

Yours fraternally,

J. Hunter Watts.

The Secy. Peckham Branch S.D.F.”

We have no desire to misrepresent anyone, and we publish the whole of the correspondence in order that our readers may see that there is no foundation for Mr. Hunter Watts’ suggestion (or “half truth”) that we were not strictly accurate in our statement that he “voted for Masterman and urged other Social-Democrats to go and do likewise.” As a member of the S.D.F. Mr. Hunter Watts is supposed to believe that there is no difference between the various sections of the capitalist politicians, but by exhibiting a preference for one capitalist candidate he claims to know no more than about the man in the moon, but who, according to another S.D.F. member, is “an adept at trailing Liberal red herrings before the workers’ noses” against another whom he knows as an open enemy of the people, he shows that he recognises a difference, and that there are occasions when he thinks that the workers should vote for their class-enemies.

If Masterman was worthy of S.D.F. votes in Dulwich he is equally so in North West Ham. Here Ernest Gray, Conservative member and candidate, has supported Rutherford Harris and his friends fearlessly and openly, from the Jameson Raid to the Chinese Labour Ordinance. If individuals are to be singled out then “some of the blood of the peasant farmers” rests upon Ernest Gray’s head and he should be kept out of the House of Commons. The S.D.F. should vote against him by voting for Masterman. The blood of the murdered Featherstone miners is upon the head of Mr. Asquith, and the S.D.F. should try to keep him out of the House of Commons by voting for his Tory opponent. But Masterman as a member of the Liberal faction must support his leaders, of whom Mr. Asquith is one. And candidates who support the person responsible for that cruel and cold-blooded butchery should be kept out of the House of Commons, therefore, the S. D. F. should vote against Masterman.

Mr. Hunter Watts says that he will repeat the offence at the next election even if the raider’s opponent is a circus clown. Supposing Mr. Asquith is the opponent, Mr. Hunter Watts will vote for him and show that he considers the South African war more important than the class war here at home.

If particular incidents connected with the capitalist attitude towards the people are to be taken into consideration and capitalist candidates voted for or against because of them, where will it lead ?

Mr. Hunter Watts is apparently aware that there is neither wisdom nor logic in his attitude because he expresses the opinion that it would not be wise for the S.D.F. to do collectively that which he advises the members to do individually. But electoral action which the Body cannot take wisely and logically does not become wise or logical when taken by individual members.

The position is as illogical and contradictory as is that of the S.D.F. towards the L.R.C. Although the Body withdraw because it “might be committed to the support of candidates whom, by its rules, it was bound to oppose ; while it could not honestly accept aid for its own candidates unless it supported those favoured by the majority of the delegates” it yet allows its members all over the country to act as delegates to the L.R.C., and to do precisely that which the S.D.F. says it cannot do.

Mr. Hunter Watts, like many others, has allowed his emotions to get the better of his convictions. He may be unable to forget or forgive any instrument of the iniquity referred to, but neither the defeat of Harris nor the return of Masterman would restore freedom to the Boers any more than the defeat of Asquith would bring back to life the murdered miners. The instruments of both iniquities were the capitalist-class, acting in the interests of their class and against the interests of the common people, here and abroad. Capitalist politicians cannot be considered individually, but only as “all the rest, Tories, Unionists, Whigs, Liberals and Radicals who form a part of that hateful army of parasites which is permanently quartered on you and your children” (see S.D.F. Manifesto, General Election, 1895). Speaking at Canning Town last month Mr. D. Irving, also a member of the S.D.F. Executive, declared that “it does not matter a brass farthing whether Balfour or Campbell Bannerman reign at Westminster.” We agree. Let us be able to assert that neither shall do so by the votes of Socialists.

Editorial Committee.

Atrocities—Cynical Ruling Class Attitude (1945)

From the June 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

For weeks on end the British Press carried horrifying accounts and pictures of atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps; mass starvation, brutality, sadistic cruelties perpetrated by degenerate guards on helpless men, women and children, prisoners buried alive, tortured by solitary confinement and so on. Some of the worsened conditions of recent months may have been due, as one of the German guards said, to transport difficulties—the stupendous Allied bombing of roads and railways can hardly have failed to produce disorganisation—but this does not affect the main facts of appalling brutalities over a long period. But if the facts are substantially agreed this is certainly not true of the conclusions that can be drawn from them. Far from accepting the views of many newspapers and capitalist politicians we deny their right to raise hands in holy horror; or to attempt to fasten the responsibility on the German workers. On several counts the British ruling class and their spokesmen have not the slightest justification for the attitude they adopt.

Mr. John Gordon in the Sunday Express (April 22nd). recalls that this is not a new story. “It has been going on in Germany for something like 15 years," and the Sunday Times correspondent who visited the Belsen camp writes: “It is a thing you read about and refused to believe in from 1933 onwards."—(Sunday Times, April 22nd). A News-Chronicle correspondent, under the heading “Guilty Germans" makes a specific charge against the German workers that their guilt was that of “supine surrender" to the Nazis and that their slavishness was brought on themselves “when they failed to seize their chance in 1918." (News-Chronicle, April 24th). It is all very well for these charges to be made, but what were the newspapers and politicians (with a very few exceptions) saying and doing in 1933 when Nazi atrocities began, or to go further back, in the years from 1922 when Italian Fascist atrocities began? Some, like the late Lord Rothermere were carrying on active propaganda in support of the Nazis and Fascists. They knew all the facts about atrocities (at that time perpetrated against German and Italian workers), but they either denied the truth or glossed it over, or maintained that it was a purely internal affair of the German and Italian Governments. Here was the late Lord Rothermere's declaration : — 

  These ranters . . .  have started a clamorous campaign of denunciation against what they call 'Nazi atrocities' which, as anyone who visits Germany quickly discovers for himself, consist merely of a few isolated acts of violence, such as are inevitable among a nation half as big again as ours, but which have been generalised, multiplied, and exaggerated to give the impression that Nazi rule is a bloodthirsty tyranny. If one turns to the English newspapers of the years 1921 and 1922, one finds that the old women of both sexes in our country were just as hysterical then about alleged Fascist ‘outrages' in Italy. . . . the minor misdeeds of individual Nazis will be submerged by the immense benefits that the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany."—(Daily Mail,  July 10th, 1933).

It suited British capitalist policy in those years to give support to Mussolini and Hitler so there was no protest about concentration camp horrors and no attempt to hold those two individuals responsible. Instead we had stuff like Mr. Churchill's account of his interview with Mussolini, reported in the Times (January 21st, 1927):—

 "I could not help being charmed, like so many other people have been by Signor Mussolini's gentle and simple bearing and by his calm, detached poise in spite of so many burdens and dangers." 

Lord Rothermere was similarly affected by Hitler :

  "He exudes good fellowship. He is simple, unaffected, and obviously sincere. . . . His courtesy is beyond words, and men and woman alike are captivated by his ready and disarming smile. He is a man of rare culture:.”—(Daily Mail, May, 1938, quoted In “Socialism Can Defeat Nazism."—I.L.P.).

Others, like the Beaverbrook Press, and many Conservative politicians, were preaching for British capitalism the line of cutting off from all Continental entanglements (meaning in effect let Germany and Russia fight it out), so they were against any interference in Germany's internal affairs, and German concentration camps were an internal affair. It was only when capitalist interests were involved in the struggle with German capitalism that these gentlemen discovered that Nazi brutalities were horrifying. When it was only working class organisations that were being crushed in Italy and Germany, British capitalism did nothing, made no protest, and was utterly indifferent; in some quarters actively approving.

Russia, too, was following the same line, just after the Nazis came to power Russia renewed her agreements, with Germany, and Litvinov for the Russiau Government had this to say in shamefaced defence of Russian policy :—

  ‘‘We, of course, are sensitive to the sufferings of our German comrades, but we Marxists can be reproached least of all for permitting our feelings to dominate our policy. . . . We do not interfere in the internal affairs of Germany, just as in those of other countries, and our relations with her are determined not by her internal, but her foreign policy. We want to have the best relations with Germany, as with other states."—(Moscow News, January 6, 1934).

As for the charge that the German workers were supine and that they ought to have seized their chance in 1918, does the News-Chronicle recall the attitude of the British ruling class towards those German workers who were not supine? The Daily Mail was urging that Karl Liebknecht should be shot “like a mad dog,” and the Allied authorities, put pressure on Germany by threatening to withhold essential supplies of food and other materials unless the authorities suppressed the insurgent German workers.

Ruling class sensitiveness to atrocities is not based on sentiments of humanity, but is merely a weapon in the struggle to protect capitalist interests against rival capitalist States. Their horror consequently changes direction along with foreign policy, it is worked up or allowed to subside according to the needs of the moment. At one period it is directed against Turkey or the Boers, at another against Russia or France. It is always on tap, ready to be turned on or off as interests dictate.

It was, of course, not the British Government, but mainly working class organisations that protested against the sufferings of Boer women and children in the Concentration camps established by the British authorities in South Africa during the War with the Boer Republics.

A British historian: G. M. Trevelyan has this smug account of it. “Finally, to catch the farmers in these vast spaces where the scattered population was on their side, it was found that no method would answer but to destroy their farms and concentrate their families in camps. Unfortunately many of the children died there." (British History in the Nineteenth Century," 1922 (p. 422).

Michael Davitt in his “Boer Fight for Freedom," (1902, p. 587), says that there were 45,000 women and 50.000 children “inside of barbed wire fences surrounded by British soldiers, arms in hand," and that “14,000 of these children have died already of sickness induced by the cold and the privations inflicted upon them in one year.”

In the first World War much was made of German atrocities, including the fictitious, but very effective propaganda story of the Corpse Factories in which German dead were supposed to he boiled down for oils and fats, etc. It was not until 1925, when British policy had veered against France and towards Germany, that the story was dropped. Only then did Sir Austin Chamberlain announce in the House of Commons that “The Chancellor of the German Reich has authorised me to say, on the authority of the German Government, that there never was any foundation for it. I need scarcely add, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, I accept this denial, and I trust that this false report will not again he revived.’’ (Hansard, 2nd December. 1925). The German Government, by the way. had been denying the story for eight years and it was the British Government in the first place which had circulated the false report

Memories are short or the use made by the capitalists of atrocities would be realised. In 1927 when Mr. Churchill found Mussolini such a charming man, Russia was still a main worry of the British Foreign Office, and Churchill was therefore not concerned to denounce the “bestial appetites and passion” of Italian Fascism, but applied those words to what he called “Leninism.”

In 1919 Mr. Churchill, as Minister for War, had told the House of Commons that he had been looking at photographs of Bolshevik atrocities and found them “of a very painful nature."—(Hansard, November 20th, 1919). That year the Foreign Office published a White Book dealing with alleged Bolshevik atrocities and some of the contents of the book were recounted by Mr. Clement Edwards, M.P., in the House of Commons, on April 2nd, 1919. In Mr. Edwards' view they showed that the Lenin regime was synonymous with “mad anarchy” and “wicked cruelty beyond any possible conception of any British mind at least.” Among the cases cited was that of 12 labourers who were alleged to have been cast alive into a hole in which were hot slag deposits; naval officers burnt alive on planks which were slowly pushed into furnaces inches at a time; others tortured with jets of scalding steam followed by exposure to freezing air; men bound, put into barges and the barges sunk.

Another alleged Bolshevik atrocity was the employment of Chinese executioners, “who were sawing prisoners into pieces.”—(Hansard, April 16th, 1919 (col. 2,978). About this last story Colonel Wedgwood pointed out that it was based on what an anonymous Englishman was told at Stockholm by an anonymous Estonian—nevertheless it was good enough for our Foreign Office. He also pointed out that the stories about the Bolsheviks were “worse than any atrocity stories we have seen during the war against Germany." He should not have been surprised. Capitalist Governments are not concerned with atrocities as such, but with the use that may be made of reports, true or false, proved or merely rumoured, against the enemy of the moment.

In “The Russian Soviet Republic,” by E. A. Ross, Professor of Sociology, Wisconsin University (Allen & Unwin, 1923), there are further particulars of alleged atrocities reported in the British and American press, including such incidents as 38,000 Russian soldiers, returned from imprisonment in Germany being starved to death in a Russian Concentration Camp (New York Times, 24th February, 1919). The newspaper's correspondent passed on the statement of his informant who “saw train load after train load of corpses being transferred from the camp to the municipal refuse destruction furnaces." (p. 280).

In the same issue was a report of “impalement on wooden stakes, torture by flame, and mutilations too hideous to relate."

Just as Germany was the target from 1914 for many years until it was finally dropped in 1925, and is again the target now, so also Russia was alleged to be the worst offender for many years after 1919. All attacks on Russia stopped in 1941, but does any one doubt that with some future change of policy that tap may be turned on again in full force. Then we shall be told about existing concentration camps in Russia, not to mention the material already used only a few months ago against the Greek E.LA.S., and its Communist supporters.

Those with long memories will recall how, for a space in the early nineteen twenties, France was singled out on account of the French occupation of the German Ruhr by black troops: British foreign policy had by then diverged from close association with France.

An important aspect of the recent German atrocities is the conclusion drawn by many people that they prove the brutality and degeneracy of the German people as a whole. If they do then the world is peopled with degenerates—no nation escapes the indictment. Who invented concentration camps? The British in South Africa; and many foreign countries affected to be horrified. Were Churchill and the British Government, in 1919, right about Bolshevist atrocities? are then the Russians, as a Nation also brutal and degenerate? What of the Belgians in the Congo slaughtering or maiming native men, women and children by the thousand because they failed to bring in sufficient tribute of rubber? Or the French in their neighbouring African colony, with a like brutal record. What of the atrocities alleged against the Boers in the Boer War; against the British Black and Tans in Ireland; the Chinese in the Boxer rising and their counter charges against the occupying white troops?

The charge against whole nations will not hold. Every nation can show u certain number of people brutalised by the conditions under which they live, but the responsibility rests in every case with the authorities who deliberately train and use such people as part of the state machinery of suppression.

During the last War the British Government appointed a committee to consider and report on the evidence of outrages committed by German troops. It was presided over by the late Lord Bryce and among its members was the late H. A. L. Fisher. Mr. Francis Hirst writing to the Times (May 3, 1945), quotes from Fisher’s life of Bryce the following observation:—

  “Bryce knew far too much to draw an indictment against the whole German nation. He knew that in every country there are a certain proportion of savage natures, in some countries more than in others, and that in the excitement and demoralization of war such temperaments find a free vent."

As far as the recent Nazi atrocities are concerned we should remember that when there were in existence working class organisations opposed to the Nazi regime (and eventually suppressed by it), the ruling class in countries outside Germany who could have helped did nothing to protect them or aid them. Later on individual Germans opposed to Nazi brutalities were helpless. As a contributor writing to the Times reminds its readers (April 23rd), the large majority of the prisoners in the Nazi camp at Buchenwald, Belsen and elsewhere were Germans, and the Observer's correspondent who interviewed a German Pastor in a village near Belsen received from him a convincing answer to his question why did the Pastor not make a protest.

  “But what could they do said the little man. Preach against it? If he preached against it once his wife and children would be taken to a concentration camp."—(Observer, April 22).

   The Pastor went on to remind the correspondent that he had himself just seen what the camp was like, and asked the correspondent if he would have done anything to send his own wife and children to such a fate.

Of course the German people were responsible for voting, in large numbers, to put the Nazis into power, but the Germans can hardly be distinguished from voters of other nations in respect of credulously swallowing the extravagant and high sounding promises made by vote-catching politicians and discovering their mistake only by experience.

Moreover, there is evidence that at least some German workers were opposed to the Nazis and their methods and did what little they could. The News-Chronicle (April 21st), reports an interview with a French Army Officer who had been a prisoner in Germany. He said:—

  “There was considerable anti-Nazi sentiment in the Ruhr among the workers. They have been opposed to the War I think since the start, and many of them have been cruelly punished by the Nazi for their views." The News-Chronicle correspondent adds this;—

    “I came across concrete instances of how some German workers helped the victims of the Nazis.

    One working-class family in a Duesseldorf suburb has for two years hidden two Jews, feeding them out of their own rations, to save them from the Nazis.

    A Polish slave worker hunted by the Gestapo for his underground activity was sheltered by a German girl who helped him in his work.”

By all means we protest against atrocities and brutality, but we do so not as an expedient according to circumstances but against atrocities and brutality wherever and whenever they occur.

It is for the working class of the whole world to see as it really is the cynical and hypocritical use made, by the capitalist class of atrocities, and not to let themselves be divided by capitalist propaganda directed against first one and then another foreign nation. It is capitalism itself that produces the worst atrocity of all—war, and which everywhere has a record of brutality towards the working class and colonial peoples in peace or in war.

Only Socialism can end it and only world working class unity can achieve that end.

Edgar Hardcastle

Outposts of Empire. (1910)

From the July 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ruling class of Great Britain have managed to seize more of the earth's surface than any of their competitors. Capitalists of other lands are handicapped, therefore, in finding a market for the increasing quantity of products that result from modern industry. In consequence they have of recent years shown great activity in organising and extending their fighting forces, in view of the wars rendered almost inevitable in the fierce struggle for markets and colonies, present and to come. The capitalist dam of England are using all endeavours to safeguard their interests and to maintain their supremacy, and they view with dismay the admitted fact that the state of recruiting is such that the authorities dare not impose the severe training that obtains in the armies of their Continental rivals. They see that it is no patriotic motive that leads a man to join the "colours,” but merely the want of the necessaries of life. The Army Medical Department in their August 1908 report said :

    “The majority of recruits were growing lads and a large number were out of employment at the time of enlistment. Experienced recruiting agents estimate the proportion of the latter as high as 95% of the total. In many instances the lads were suffering from want of food and »ere generally in poor condition. The old tests which recruits used to be subjected to are far too severe for the would-be soldier of to-day "

To remedy this state of affairs, to get a larger and better supply, our masters are trying to arouse and foster the military spirit in the sons of the workers. Hence, they institute rifle ranges in the schools, start Boys' Brigade and Boy Scout movements. They also use men who have a following among certain circles — men like Robert Blatchford —  to write articles in their Press, praising the British Army and painting the life of “Tommy Atkins" in rosy colours.

The ignorance of the workers is one of the chief obstacles which Socialists at present have to face. On the other hand it is the one thing upon which the capitalists trade, when dealing with the workers. It is with a view to dispelling the ignorance of how the employing class treat those who serve them that the following two extracts from the Liberal Press are given.

   “Brooding over poverty and his inability to find employment, Joseph Henry Broad, twenty-eight, a builder’s labourer, of Gold-street, Stepney, ended his misery by committing suicide. The inquest disclosed a pathetic story. The widow stated that her husband was formerly a soldier in the 2nd Essex Battalion. He served in the South African war, and had two medals and three bars. They had been married eleven months, and during the whole of that time had been particularly unfortunate, her husband having had only six weeks’ work. He was much depressed owing to not being able to obtain employment, and on the day of his death she found him sitting by the fire, crying bitterly. Witness left the room for a few minutes, and on her return she found that he had hanged himself with a leather belt. Medical assistance was summoned, but her husband was found to be dead.
  “Witness added that her husband recently had influenza. The reason he was crying was because they could not meet their expenses. After paying the rent on that morning they had only two farthings left. The deceased was invalided home from South Africa, and had a pension of sixpence per day. The Coroner: How have you managed to live? Witness: We borrowed on the pension. Witness farther stated that she and her husband had been very short of food. On Friday last all they had to eat was a bloater between them, and on Saturday a halfpennyworth of fried potatoes. Of late they had subsisted mainly on bread and butter. Her husband’s relatives were poor people, but used to make a collection weekly in order to help them.”

Reynolds’ Newspaper, 1.5.10. 

   “Three little children were murdered at Islington last night It is alleged that their father cut their throats with a razor during the mother’s absence from home. The cause of the dreadful crime was poverty. The scene of the tragedy was a house in Dennis-street off the York-road, when Henry Higginbottom, his wife, and three of a family occupied one room. Higginbottom, who has been in the army, is a carman, but of late has been out of employment. He is only 25 years of age. . . . Continued unemployment had made him depressed and this preyed upon his mind. . . . Higginbottom is said to have served in the South African War, and to be at the present time in the Army Reserve and in receipt of a pension. The wife is employed at a coffee shop. She was called from her employment to hear the news of the tragedy, and when she saw her children lying dead she fainted.”

Reynolds’ Newspaper, 24.4.10.

After fighting for those who rule, they were left to suffer hunger and to face unemployment; to see those dependent upon them want. These men helped the capitalists to get a “United South Africa ”; to raise the Union Jack over the graves of thousands of men, women and children on the veldt. How different has Lord Kitchener been treated on his return! Feted by the leading lights of the capitalist class everywhere. They did not let him want. The workers, after all, are so many, so they can be left to starve.

The Liberal and Tory party voted £50,000 to Lord Kitchener and £100,000 to Lord Roberts for their misdeeds in South Africa.

Fellow workers, your masters take advantage of your hunger and nakedness to enlist you in their battalions. For what? To defend their property at home and abroad; to keep your fellow slaves in subjection in Britain ; to extend the boundaries of their empire.

You own no property to defend ; you have no freedom to conserve. It behoves you, therefore, whether inside or outside the army, to join the Socialist Party.

The aim of the Socialist Party is to abolish the property conditions that give rise to wars; to institute a system wherein armies and navies become unnecessary and merely figure in the memories of a hated past. Read its literature.

Adolph Kohn

Patriotism or Plunder? (1913)

From the June 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Significance of "Empire Day."

At the time of writing these lines preparations are being made to observe in a fitting manner, what has now come to he regarded as a fixed institution, viz, Empire Day. Each successive year sees an endeavour made to stimulate and extend the sentiment of “patriotism.” School children are paraded round the village, waving flags and singing patriotic airs under the direction of an enthusiastic teacher. Afterwards they are marshalled in front of the school, where they are treated to a speech on their “Responsibility, Duty, and Self sacrifice.” After giving vent to their feelings in three cheers for “The Empire” and singing “God Save the King,” they are marched into the school to the strains of "Soldiers of the Queen,” and their receptive minds are stuffed with stories of the valour of Nelson, Drake, and other butchers.

The churches are also to the front on this occasion. On the Sunday following May 24th special sermons are preached emphasising the importance of allowing themselves to be chloroformed for the national good. Advantage is taken by scaremongers and jingo politicians to point out the necessity for compulsory military service, and the need for supporting rifle clubs, and such institutions as the Boy Scouts, the Territorials, the National Service League, etc. The “Big Navy” party take pains not to let the occasion pass without trotting out once more the old cry of “adequate defence” so clear to the heart of Hyndman & Co.

It is safe to say that not one person in a thousand of those who are compelled to participate in these displays realises the significance underlying this noisy “appeal to patriotism.” They are requested to believe that it is for the “honour and integrity of our glorious empire.” OUR Empire! Let us see how much of the Empire is ours.

In the first place every schoolboy knows that before one country can assume control over another it must have recourse to force or threats, the people of the country which is to be brought under control must be subjugated and a footing established.

Various reasons are put forward from time to time to show the necessity for such steps being taken, but the ultimate analysis shows that in every case the fundamental and determining factor is economic advantage, or, to put it another way, plunder.

As almost every nation is engaged in the race for economic advantages, it resolves itself into a sort of running fight, in which the weaker succumbs to the strongest. England herself has annexed nearly a third of the earth and is still unsatisfied. Her “greatness” lies, not in that she stands for “Justice, good government, and liberty,” as Lord Rosebery would say, but in the fact that, up to now, she has been the biggest plunderer.

Her “interests,” and the machinery necessary for maintaining the same, are not operated for the benefit of her people, as is claimed, but only for the benefit of a small section of her people —the capitalists. Hence the need for armies, navies, and other murderous institutions, to guarantee the security of that class, and incidentally to capture more plunder whenever the opportunity presents itself.

It cannot be said that we have done badly, for in whichever direction we turn we are sure to let on a piece of “our” Empire.

It is an old saying that trade follows the flag, but what follows trade? Ask the people of the different nations that comprise “our Empire.” You will find the same conditions obtaining there as here—that is, poverty, misery, degradation. and all the other evils which follow in the wake of capitalism. Who among us has not felt his blood surge when reading of “our” conquests in various parts of the world ? Take, for instance, the occupation of India—that vast land of untold wealth (and poverty) which the native is debarred from developing only in the interests of the “Great White Raj," otherwise the capitalist class. Are we to suppose that India was acquired solely for the purpose of doing good to the “poor benighted heathen” ? At least this is the impression they gave us at school. Was it in their interests the Government paid four million pounds to the Khedive of Egypt for his shares in the Suez Canal in order to obtain complete control of the highway to India ? Not much !

Ever since the occupancy of India advantage has been taken of the diversity of the races to set race against race, creed against creed, caste against caste in order to preserve the security of the invaders. It was this circumstance which was in great part responsible for the historic Mutiny, the suppression of which involved such fiendishly horrible cruelty as to hardly bear relation.

What applies to India applies also to every other land where the British have asserted themselves.

Since New Zealand was “purchased” from the chiefs the Maoris have become practically extinct through the introduction of war, liquor, and other vices which follow close upon the heels of “civilisation.”

The same country is at the present time in a state of serbonian anxiety, the colonists being faced with the same problems of capitalism as confound the people here.

It is the same with Australia, where wild endeavour is being made to exclude the coloured races and to establish a “White Australia”— which policy has the support of the imperialistic “Labour” Party at present in power. This proposition stands some chance of success, since it has been discovered that white labour is more productive than coloured, hence the profits resulting from the exploitation of the former are greater.

The acquisition of Hong Kong was due to the resistance of the Chinese to the introduction of opium by the British, who forced them at the cannon’s mouth to accept it. Only recently a cargo worth some six millions was dumped at Shanghai. The Chinese refused it, so the British gunboat “Flora” was sent to overawe them into submission.

British interests in China, as elsewhere, are wholly commercial, though very often tbe Christianising of the natives is put forward as an excuse for meddling.

The conversion of China into a republic has somewhat upset Britain’s calculations, for now it may mean that the United States and Germany will stand a better chance of a look in—to English capitalists’ detriment. Their commercial interests are threatened, and the opening of the Panama Canal will not add to their peace of mind.

The alacrity with which the Churches responded to the Chinese politicians’ appeal for prayers on behalf of the new republic only recently, gave the game away entirely. Their predatory instincts are once more aroused, and their strong point is to get a foothold in China ahead of the other European nations, especially as that country may yet become a formidable competitor in the Eastern markets.

I point out these things to show that it is solely the material interests of the ruling class that produce wars and other international troubles—that all the piffle about the “glory of our world Empire,” and our “mission of justice and mercy” is only so much bunkum, intended to deceive the mass of the people who comprise “our” Empire—that it is in reality only part of the unscrupulous tactics adopted by those thievish swindlers of every nationality who are running the “British” Empire.

Who does not remember the envious eyes cast upon the Transvaal when it was announced that gold had been discovered by the Dutch farmers ? Almost immediately the “British” gentlemen who run the Empire for “us” tried to persuade the Boers to part with their find. Failing in this they had recourse to other persuasive methods, which cost a little matter of 250 million pounds and the lives of many thousands of members of the working class. When, after having conquered (!) the republic it was declared that the country would be opened up to the British worker it was found to be a delusion, for, instead, the “whites” found themselves displaced by the Kaffir, the Chinese, and the Indian. And now we find the “British" patriots who own South Africa, and in whose interest war was made, going around with bulging waistcoats and equally bulging pocket-books, preaching loyalty to the Empire.

This, then, is the significance underlying the institution known as “Empire Day.” It can be summed up in one word — plunder.

Knowing that the workers are not yet wise enough to see through their game, the capitalists are prepared to go to any length to prevent their enlightenment.

Thus it is we have members of the master class financing such things as rifle corps, Boy Scouts, and other potential warriors. The Boy Scouts in particular demand special mention as being looked upon as a great national asset, whose “usefulness,” both at home and abroad, will some day be apparent.

King Edward VII shortly before his death sent a message to a big review of scouts in which be said : “Tell the boys that the King takes great interest in them; and tell them also that if he calls upon them later in life to take up the defence of their country, the patriotic responsibility and discipline they are now acquiring as boys, will enable them to do their duty as men, should any danger threaten the Empire.”

Plain, isn’t it ?

We find that by fostering a feeling of animosity against the people of other nations, our rulers succeed in keeping the workers divided, and increased security in their tenure of existence is secured. It is significant to note how in this they receive the blessing of the'Church. To the student of history this is not surprising, for the Church throughout history has stood for militarism and slavery.

Patriotism, then, means simply the acquisition of power for the maintenance and conquest of market a in the interests of the ruling class. Capital being international, and not troubled by any sort of sentiment, it follows that it will make its way wherever its operations are likely to be successful. Consequently its owners are patriotic or anti-patriotic according as their interests are affected.

Only a few weeks ago an order for the construction of four British steamers, amounting to half a million sterling was placed in France. The reason given for sending the order abroad was that the cost would be leas than if the vessels were built in this country. Material interests first—patriotism nowhere!

An examination of the economic status of that small portion of the British Empire known as the British Isles, reveals the dismal fact that thirteen millions of its population are on the very verge of destitution. It also reveals the fact that the thirty-eight millions who represent the people who are asked to display their patriotic feelings on the 24th of May, who build the palaces, the motor-cars, and the yachts their Empire-loving masters gad about in; who provide them with bread, clothes, and boots—who, in fact, produce everything— possess nothing!

Where does the patriotism come in ? What have they to be patriotic about?

We also find the income of the rich has increased by millions, whilst a million married women are compelled out of sheer necessity to work in the factories and shops.

No wonder that paupers have increased by 70,000 since 1900, and lunatics by 20,000, despite the “benefits” of the Old Age Pensions Act and the like!

Was it a feeling of patriotism that prompted 290,000 workers with their families to depart from these shores last year ? They tell us there is no room for them in this country, yet some millions of acres are set apart for deer shooting alone! Why is this ?

It is simply because a handful of privileged pirates are allowed to own all the wealth which we produce. This is the “Secret of England’s Greatness ”! It is for this we are asked to cultivate a feeling of “patriotic responsibility,” and later on to “ take up the defence of ’’!

What do you think about it ? Do you think it is for us this “great and glorious” Empire is being run ? Do you think it is on our account that the squabbles in Parliament take place? Do you honestly believe that any party represented in Parliament to-day can legislate in our favour whilst all the time they are sucking our very life’s blood and exploiting us for all they are worth? Do not be led astray.

If an end is to be put to this rotten system it must be by the efforts of the workers themselves. This effort can only be exerted by a revolutionary organisation, conscious of its class mission. This organisation is already in existence in the Socialist Party of Great Britain. It is the only Socialist party in this country, and only by enrolling yourselves in this party can the abolition of the present system of robbery and corruption be made certain.

It was the end of this that the terrified Lord Rosebery foresaw when he wailed: "Socialism means the end of Empire" a few years ago. And Lord Rosebery was right for once!

Tom Sala

The Social Democratic Federation: Does it deserve the support of the working class? (1905)

From the October 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sydney Hall, York Road. Battersea, now in the possession of the Battersea Branch of The Socialist Party of Great Britain, was crowded on August 31st, the occasion being a debate upon the question asked above, between Mr. W. H. Humphreys, an accredited lecturer of the S.D.F, and Comrade J. Fitzgerald, representing the Executive Committee of the S.P.G.B.

Mr. George Hicks, O.B.S., presided, and after explaining the object and conditions of the debate, called upon the opener.

Mr. Humphreys said that it mattered little to him whether the workers joined the S.D.F., S.P.G.B., or I.L.P., as long as they joined some Socialist organisation. The members of the Battersea Branch S.P.G.B. had gone to S.D.F. meetings and by their bickerings had undone the good work of the S.D.F. He maintained that the S.D.F. deserved the support of the working-class, although he strongly favored the formation of a United Socialist Party. The S.D.F. had helped to raise the physical and mental conditions of the workers. He did not always agree with its tactics. Politics was a dirty game and left its marks on those who played it. Years ago, when he joined the Army, he had belonged to the Socialist League, and did not believe in political action. When he left the Army the Socialist League was dead, while the S.D.F. still lived. This fact converted him to political action. The S.D.F. had produced much valuable literature and altogether had done an enormous amount of educational work. By backing up palliatives the S.D.F. kept the flag of Socialism flying. Some reforms might throw things back, hut other reforms were also the means of getting better conditions for the workers and of dispelling superstition. The feeding of the children and secular education would make for the social revolution, as they would physically improve the race and abolish superstition. If we took political action the electors demanded a certain attitude on all questions. He was an anti-vaccinist because he objected to having his child poisoned. This was not Socialism, but a question of human well-being. He was an Internationalist and therefore considered that it was the business of Socialists to prevent the Capitalists setting the workers of the world against each other. He was glad of the cordial relations existing between the French and English fleets. It seemed to him that The Socialist Party of Great Britain was opposed to the feeding of the children only because some capitalists now advocated this reform. The S.P.G.B. argued that feeding the children meant making better wage slaves of them. The S.D.F. on the other hand held that the children when fed became more physically and intellectually fit. The workers could not at the present time control the political machinery. In order to do that they would first have to abolish plural voting and obtain payment of members and of election expenses. The second ballot would also be of advantage to the Socialists, as in three-cornered fights many would not risk their votes by voting for Socialist candidates as they would much rather back the winner. When the lecturers of the S.P.G.B. alleged that the workers were bought and sold like pieces of merchandise it amounted to backing up the bourgeois political economists. According to Karl Marx the workers only sold their labour-power. He held that material interests did not control all actions, as was easily proved by the action of the Japanese at Port Arthur, the Communards of Paris, and the Socialists who, owing to their revolutionary propaganda, were sent to Siberia. Principles very often controlled man's actions. Mr. H. M. Hyndman rightly denied that the workers could emancipate themselves, they must be taught and guided by such middle-class men as marx, Engels, Hyndman and William Morris. They must not place too much reliance in working-class labour representatives. Battersea would have done much better if it had one such middle-class man as its Parliamentary representative instead of John Burns.

Comrade Fitzgerald pointed out that the subject of debate was “Did the S.D.F. deserve the support of the Working-class", it must be clear that an organisation to deserve the support of the working-class must strenuously work on behalf of that class, and that class alone. The declared object of the S.D.F. was the emancipation of the working-class from the thralldom of capitalism, but in their political action they were going contrary to their principles. If it were true that under capitalism the workers had to sell themselves, their emancipation could surely only lie in becoming free men who could establish and control their own conditions of labour. To do that they must first capture the present political machinery, which was the means of entrenching the capitalist-class so firmly in their citadel of economic domination. He would like Mr. Humphreys to explain how a man could sell his labour-power without selling himself. Man was therefore a commodity, and differed from other commodities only in one respect. In the case of other commodities you could separate the seller from the commodity, whilst the worker was inseparable from his labour-power. And as the worker was bought by the capitalist to produce a profit, he must be robbed. The most important thing in life was to obtain the means of living, and this material fact must of necessity be the dominant factor in human movements. If that were so then the interests of capitalist and labourer must be irreconcilably opposed to one another. And if in order to become economically free the workers must get hold of and control the political machinery, then it stood to reason that any assistance given to the capitalists or their henchmen was decidedly taking antagonistic action to working-class interests. In 1894, Mr. H. M. Hyndman said that Socialists must not bend their knees to any capitalist party. In 1897, when there was a slump in the Socialist Movement, the S.D.F. at their Conference resolved that no candidates should be run unless there was proof of their command of at least 10% of the votes. In 1898 their Annual Conference empowered the E.C. to decide the policy of the organisation, subject to ratification by the branches. In 1899 the Conference decided that the members of the S.D.F. vote Tory, in order to smash the Liberal Party, in 1900, when the Boer War was on, they considered that they could not very well support the Tories; so they passed a resolution to support several Liberal candidates, viz., Labouchère at Northampton, Philip Stanhope at Burnley (Hyndman's candidature being withdrawn), Lionel Holland at Ilford, and John Burns at Battersea—a member of the E.C. of the S.D.F. working for Burns on his election day. In 1897 the S.D.F. ran W. G. Pearson for the London School Board and he polled 12,000 votes. After the death of Pearson they again contested the seat, with George Hewitt as the candidate, in 1900. The largest branch in the district. Bow and Bromley, fell out and so disrupted two other branches, viz., Whitechapel and Poplar, that they also fell out and subsequently collapsed. The Mile End Branch alone was left to carry on the campaign. All that disloyalty and disruption were due to the fact that Hewitt stood for Secular Education, which, G. Lansbury and his followers complained, would lose Lansbury the Non-conformist support for his Parliamentary candidature for Bow and Bromley. Mr. Cluse, au S.D.F. lecturer, stated that supporting capitalist candidates was not supporting the capitalist party, as the issue in 1900 was the Boer War. But he (Fitzgerald) would like to point out that this excuse could not hold water as the total casualties in the Boer War were less than 60,000, while the official returns for one year in four trades in the United Kingdom showed over 100,000 victims. Moreover, after the War was over, J. Hunter Watts supported Masterman, the Liberal candidate at Dulwich, and Will Thorne supported Percy Alden at Tottenham against the wish of the local Branch of the S.D.F. This labour leader also signed the Free Trade Manifesto of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union Congress. If Socialists held that the cleavage between Capital and Labour was growing wider and that the workers could only obtain their emancipation by means of capturing the political machinery it was worse than madness to support capitalists or their nominees. The rank and file of the S.D.F. could obtain no information as to the doings of the E.C., as that body claimed that the members ought to have confidence in the elected men and trust them implicitly. Because some members of the S.D.F. had kicked against the Kautsky Resolution at the Paris International Congress they were accused of having inspired the letters that appeared in the New York People on that subject. When at the S.D.F. Conference at Blackburn, H. W. Lee and H. Quelch were accused of withholding from the Organisation a certain letter Lansbury had addressed to the E.C., both denied having done so. When, later, the letter was published and could no longer be denied as in existence, Quelch stated that he was not present when it was read although the E.C. minutes stated he was present at the meeting where the letter was read, and if he came in late, it was absurd to suppose that so important a letter was not shown to him. At Shoreditch, H. W. Lee admitted having told a lie and in justification said that under similar circumstances he would so again. Lansbury's letter had announced his resignation as S.D.F. Parliamentary candidate for Bow and Bromley because lie could see no good coming of it unless the S.D.F. made common cause with the Liberals. When Socialists fight straight their political game is clean, when they back up Liberal hacks it becomes a dirty game. It was on account of their not fighting straight that a great number of members, some of the oldest members among them, came out of the S.D.F. and formed the S.P.G.B. The facts mentioned showed clearly that the S.D.F. was neither Socialist nor Democratic and therefore did not deserve the confidence of the working-class.

Mr. Humphreys in continuing the debate again asserted that the capitalist did not buy the worker but only his labour-power. If he bought the worker he would look after him, as, however, he did not purchase him he let him go to the devil. In spite of the bad conditions of the workers they could revolt against brutality. The desire to do good induced Hyndman, William Morris and others to fight for the working-class. It does not matter what class men are born in but what class they fight for. Henderson, Bell, and similar men were as bad as Liberal Capitalist candidates. It was an important matter to obtain better conditions for the workers as for instance free feeding of the children and secular education. Mr. Straus, the late Liberal candidate for Mile End declared himself in favour of Socialism. Socialists accepting the co-operation of capitalists in obtaining reforms must make sure that these capitalists were earnest in helping forward those palliatives and there were some who were earnest. One must judge candidates on personal grounds. If the Tory candidate in Battersea declared in favour of feeding the children he would support him against Bums. Mr. Hunter Watts supported Masterman because Rutherford Harris had the blood of the South African farmers on his hands and it was not a question of mere numbers of victims; but Hunter Watts was wrong in supporting the Liberal candidate because that candidate was not in favour of the S.D.F. palliatives. That was a great mistake. All parties make mistakes. It was not in the material interests of the working-class in 1897 to have displayed their great loyalty to the Royal family. He had looked up Hansard and had found that in 1900 eight Radical members had voted against supplies for the Boer war. If they supported these men individually they did not support the Capitalist Party. It was true that a member of the E.C. of the S.D.F. supported and worked for Burns during the election in 1900. This was, however, done in conjunction and with somebody, who is now a member of the S.P.G.B. Will Thorne was called over the coals by the E.C. for supporting Percy Alden. If the rank and file of the S.D.F. did not get to know anything of the doings of their E.C. it was due to the fact that their organisation was poor and their full E.C. met only once a quarter. Their organisation had no money to waste and therefore were wise in deciding to run candidates only when they were sure of 10 per cent. of the vote in a constituency. Their expenses were heavy as it was. Golden sovereigns were hard to get. It was better to spend money on literature than on hopeless candidatures.

Comrade Fitzgerald in replying said that be had taken 25 minutes to bring the facts, points and arguments to show that the S.D.F. was acting against the interests of the working-class, but Mr. Humphreys had made no attempt at refuting his statements. The capitalist buys the worker’s Labour power bit by bit, hence had to buy his body. Under chattel slavery he bought the slave right out, but to-day he only bought the wage slave piecemeal, and owing to the number seeking sale was able to disregard their welfare. If some of the capitalist class act contrary to the interests of that class that does not prove that that class fights for the interests of the working-class. Mr. Hyndman had said that no slave class had brought about its own emancipation — the class above it had emancipated it. Therefore the middle-class would emancipate the working-class. Those who voted for individual capitalist candidates supported the capitalist party in the most effective manner, viz., politically. Capitalists were all in one camp, and must be the enemies of the working-class, if Socialist principles were true. Mr. Hunter Watts’ defence for voting for Masterman was absurd. If Rutherfoord Harris had the blood of the South African farmers on his hands, Masterman, as a Liberal, had the blood of the murdered Featherstone miners on his, which was worse. Two and two were four, even if the accountant made a mistake in adding up. Apparently the S.D.F. did not mean to learn by all their blunders and mistakes of the past. H. W. Lee, their Secretary, said in the current number of the Social Democrat that twenty years ago the Radical advocated payment of Members of Parliament, now the S.D.F. must do that work. The E.C. of the S.D.F. not only make mistakes but deceived the workers in regard to their tactics, which were not Socialist but Radical. At the last Annual Conference of the S.D.F., at Northampton, Mr. Dan Irving threatened to leave the Conference if his motion were not carried. When L. Cotton, at the Shoreditch Conference, insisted that his vote had been falsified, Mr. Irving refused to go into the matter. Mr. J. P. Lloyd had moved that some scheme should be devised to let the members know more of the work of the E.C. Members of the S.D.F. were kept in ignorance of things, and when information came to them and they revolted they were at once branded as impossible. He (Fitzgerald) was described as a danger. At Burnley when he called for evidence, Quelch declared he had none. The S.D.F. having broken its pledges by backing up the capitalist position, directly and indirectly, did certainly not deserve the support of the working-class.

Hans Neumann

Empire and Poverty (1943)

From the July 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Pages from South African History

A corner stone in the British Empire is the Dominion of South Africa, the Prime Minister of which. General Smuts was made a Field-Marshal of the British Army on his 71st birthday two years ago. The approval accorded to him in the British Press contrasts rather forcibly with the rather nasty epithets bestowed upon the politicians of other countries who have accepted office under their conquerors, during the past year or so.

While still in his twenties Smuts became State Attorney of the Transvaal Republic under Kruger, whose administration (according to most British accounts) was one of the most corrupt on earth. After the war of 1899—1902 the Boer politicians were out of the limelight, their territory being annexed and administered by a High Commissioner of the Crown. The grant of responsible government a few years later, however, gave them their chance once more. General Louis Botha (who had succeeded Joubert as commander during the war) formed Het Volk and secured a majority in the first elections 1907. From that time onwards Smuts was in close association with Botha, until the latter's death in 1919, occupying ministerial positions under him and eventually succeeding him as Premier of the Union. He held this office till 1924, when he gave way to General Hertzog and the National Party, triumphant at the polls with the aid of the Labourites. Some eight or nine years later, however, when the economic blizzard had affected the popularity of Hertzog's ministry, we find Smuts again in office as Minister of Justice in a Coalition with his late rival. Since then Smuts has reaped the reward of his pertinacity and occupied the supremacy so dear to him.

Smuts cannot be accused of neglecting his opportunities, a fact which can be appreciated best against the background of history.

His countrymen fought the war of 1899-1902 in the desperate attempt to preserve their political independence. This had been in a precarious state ever since the British occupied the Cape; and some three-quarters of a century earlier the Boers in large numbers had trekked northwards to avoid British control. Their primitive mode of life was gradually complicated by the discovery of minerals and the arrival in the country of prospectors and their hangers-on, and this led to a clamour for annexation. One attempt in 1877 lasted over three years. The Boers tolerated the position while the British were engaged in their struggles with the natives (chiefly the Zulus) and then revolted successfully, resuming' the status of a Republic in 1881. A few years later the discovery of gold on the Rand laid the foundations of the economic “fifth column," which led to its final downfall.

A description of some of the gentry the Boers were expected to tolerate is contained in a small volume, "South Africa" by J. I. A. Agar-Hamilton, lecturer in modern history at Pretoria University. ("South Africa" Modern States Series: Arrowsmith.)

  Pioneers are always pleasanter in retrospect than in close proximity in the flesh, and many of the earliest inhabitants of Barberton and Johannesburg were drunken rowdies and ne'er-do-wells, who were a pest to any law-abiding citizen. In the second wave came international crooks, swindlers and bullies, criminals of every sort who needed a respite from the attentions of the European police. (P. 36.)

More formidable were the large financiers such as Rhodes, who became Prime Minister of Cape Colony in 1890 with the support of Hofmeyr, the leader of the Cape Dutch. The Rand magnates backed the demand for the enfranchisement of the alien element in the Transvaal. .The answer of the Kruger Government was to raise the residential qualification to fourteen years (1890), and any prospect of a more moderate attitude was killed by Dr. Jameson (Rhodes' friend and Administrator of Rhodesia), who "invaded" the Transvaal in 1895 in the vain hope of bringing to a head a much talked of rising on the Rand. The Boers rounded him up with his 500 men and handed the captives over to the British High Commissioner. This magnanimity, however, did not indicate any weakening of their purpose. In October, 1899, the Transvaal and Orange Free State, making common cause, demanded the withdrawal of British troops and the war was on. The Boers could not maintain their initial success. In June, 1900, their capital, Pretoria, was in British hands and Kruger was in flight. None the less, the conflict dragged on, guerrilla fashion, for another two years. To bring it to a conclusion. Kitchener had to evacuate the rural population; concentrate them in camps, and supply them with rations.

The farmhouses were then systematically destroyed and blockhouses and barbed wire sought to restrict the movement of the commandos. ("South Africa," p. 44.)

So great a havoc was wrought that no indemnity from the vanquished was possible. On the contrary, the victors had to advance considerable sums to restore agricultural production.

Although the Boers could hardly be suspected of aiming at world domination, the workers in Britain were fed the customary pap about their "enemies" being skulking cowards who hid behind rocks to snipe the manly British Tommy, who, as often as not, had to beg his bread in British streets when the war was over. The bioscope shows of the day depicted the ruthless Dutch farmers attacking the hospitals (plainly marked with red crosses) and molesting the helpless and attractive nurses. A large percentage of the wounds were supposed to be due to "dum-dum" bullets. Then of course the Boers were brutal to the niggers; but this did not prevent them being allowed to retain their rifles, when peace was signed, "for their protection" against these same niggers, and they were "secured against a native franchise." (South Africa, p. 44.)

From the Orange to the Limpopo the countryside lay waste, without house or inhabitant, and its simplest agricultural needs were imported from elsewhere— Swiss milk, Australian butter and Irish eggs. The whole rural population had to be repatriated, the economic machinery of the country must be set going once more, and a new civil service and administration recreated. (p. 48.)

Under these circumstances it is hardly surprising that Botha and Smuts felt their dependence on their conquerors, and that their policy of conciliation received the support of the majority of their countrymen for a period of several years. In the Orange River Colony which had no large English-speaking population like the mining towns in the Transvaal, this policy was by no means so popular. Nevertheless the Union of the two ex-republics with the British colonies of the Cape and Natal was eventually effected in 1910.

Botha became the first premier. He expanded Het Volk into the South African National Party aiming to include British as well as Boer supporters. The mining interests of the Transvaal, however, combined with British elements in the Cape to form the Unionist Party, which retained its independent existence for ten years. The Labour Party, though strong in the Transvaal towns, was naturally weak in an agricultural country run on unenfranchised native labour, and "direct action" has, on more than one occasion, led to considerable violence on the Rand.

It was not long before the Government found itself in conflict with this element of the working-class. In July, 1913, a miners' strike brought out the whole Imperial garrison to restore order. Six months later an attempt at a general strike, including the State railwaymen, "was countered by the Proclamation of Martial Law. . . . Nine trade union leaders were summarily deported without trial" (South Africa, p. 58.)

A few months earlier, Hertzog (one of Botha's ministers who was dropped on account of his open hostility to the British elements) formed a new National Party. When the European War broke out in 1914, he advocated neutrality. The Botha Government, however, proceeded to send an expedition to invade German South-West Africa. A 'rebellion led, among others, by De Wet, gave them some trouble, but the leaders of the Nationalist Party had little confidence in its success and Botha kept control of the situation; his party lost ground, however, as the followers of Hertzog increased in number. Smuts held a place in the Imperial War Cabinet in 1917 along with Lord Milner, the High Commissioner of Boer War days.

Botha died "execrated among his own people" but "the hero of the Imperialists" (South Africa, pp. 62-3) and " Smuts inherited a peck of troubles. The elections (1920) returned the Nationalists as the biggest single party, while the Unionists lost heavily to the advantage of Labour in the towns" (p. 65). Smuts had only one course in order to retain office. He secured support from the Unionists who sank their identity in his party and allowed three of their members to join the Cabinet. Botha's dream of conciliation was realised—a Dominion of the British Empire in South Africa had been established.

March, 1922, saw a revival of the Rand trouble. Strikers drilled openly on the Reef, the defence commandos were called out and aeroplanes and field artillery were finally required to quell the rising.

At the next election in 1924 the Labour Party formed a pact with the party of Hertzog to avoid splitting the anti-Government vote. As a piece of tactics it was an immediate success. The Nationalist-cum-Labour coalition had a substantial majority and two Labour leaders entered the Ministry.

In order to secure the support of the Labour Party the Nationalists dropped the Republican clause from their constitution. Nevertheless General Hertzog spent some years trying to clarify the status of the Union. He wanted the right to secede recognised and it took two Imperial Conferences to satisfy him. In economic matters his government pursued a policy of Protection coupled with Factories Acts, Wages Boards and Industrial Conciliation.

In native affairs Hertzog stood for white supremacy and repressive legislation (such as the Colour Bar Bill, 1926, which limited natives in mines to unskilled labour, the Riotous Assemblies Act, 1930, and the Native Service Contract Act, 1932) found its way on to the Statute Book. As Mr. Agar Hamilton points out, he "could always rely on the support of ultra-British Natal for the more repressive side of his policy" (South Africa, p. 122). And, we may add, that of the more short-sighted white members of the working-class who fail to realise the necessity for organising irrespective of race or colour.

In 1929 the Labour Party split over the Question of continuing their pact with Hertzog. In the elections of that year the Coalition lost ground but the Government retained its majority. The following year the world depression made itself felt throughout the Union where the number of mortgaged farms is abnormally high. "Long established landowners were ruined and those small farmers and "bywoners" who normally lived dose to the poverty line suffered appalling privations" (South Africa, p. 80),

The diamond mines were closed as the price of their product collapsed and thousands of diggers in the Western Transvaal found themselves destitute. Relief works became the order of the day.

After a vain struggle to remain on the gold standard the Government finally abandoned it in December, 1932. During the following year negotiations were opened between the Nationalists and the South African Parties. The two Labour Ministers were dropped while Smuts and five of his supporters joined the Government. "Parliament was dissolved, but an adroit system of parcelling out the seats ensured the return of the two big parties very nearly as before " (South Africa, P. 84).

Thus the intrigues and trickery with which we are familiar in the case of the Mother of Parliaments, are very closely reflected in her youngest daughter. Those workers who believe that the British Empire is democratic in principle might reflect on these facts; and, further, ask themselves what is the lot of the workers in the latest addition to the Commonwealth of Nations. According to Mr. Agar Hamilton, "two major problems commonly exercise the minds of the people of South Africa, the Poor White and the Native" (p. 105).

The Carnegie Commission reckoned that in 1929-30, before the effects of the depression were felt, 17.5 per cent, of the white population were "very poor." After 1930 the position became more serious, i.e., 20 per cent. Poverty among white workers in Africa has its peculiar features due to local conditions yet Professor Macmillan says: "The poor whites are little more than the 'reservoir' of unemployed to be found wherever Western industrialism has dislocated the old agrarian system." (Complex South Africa, p. 16.)

The native population of five and a half million may be divided broadly into three groups. First some two and a half million have their homes in "Reserves," i.e., "the last vestiges of the land once occupied by independent tribes" (South Africa, p. 111). They are little more than a breeding ground; for the majority of the able-bodied males are away working in the mines or on farms for the greater part of the year. The Reserves are not capable of feeding their inhabitants and the shortage of production has to be made good by imports paid for largely by remittance from the absent wage-earners.

The second group of two million (the so-called "squatters") reside on the farms of the white invaders who annexed and divided up the land. They pay for the accommodation either in labour or produce according to the requirements of the owners. The remaining group work in the towns.

All alike suffer poverty. In the words of Professor Macmillan: "There is little room left for doubt that the natives of the Union as a whole are a community dragging along at the very lowest level of bare subsistence." (Complete South Africa, p. 221.)

From all of which it would appear that the Commonwealth of Nations is not incompatible with the poverty of its people.

Eric Boden