Corporal punishment (1984)

From the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most inner-city High Streets have an army-recruiting office where the raw are taken in (literally) to find themselves in plush surroundings; where the harvesting recruitment sergeant patronises the newly-germinated with smarmy small-talk about ski-ing and discos on far-off shores, using all the underhand skills and techniques of a sales representative for Cannon Fodder Incorporated. The process of recruitment from the High Street Office to the training camp can be as little as two weeks. During this period there is hardly enough time for the recruits to read the large-print in the glossy magazines, let alone the small-print surrounding their twenty-two-year contracts.

At the High Street Office the unsuspecting windfalls are tested in Arithmetic. English and Physical fitness, after which there is an interview. The Arithmetic and English are to ascertain the recruit's degree of simplicity. The medical decides whether the next in line can walk or hold a gun. The interview is perhaps more sinister. This is when the would-be soldiers are asked — prior to taking the Oath of Allegiance — if they are Communists. Have they ever been a Communist? Do they know any Communists? Answering "No" to these questions. they receive their one-way tickets to the training camp. Recruits are then trained like animals in a circus, with tit-bits for the good dog and a crack of the ringmaster’s whip (the Regimental Sergeant Major's pace stick) for those who don’t sit up and beg.

To obtain discipline and control the Army has more subtle methods than boot bulling and potato peeling. They have a long history of expertise in military psychology on which they can draw. The tools they use for processing the recruits are Conformity, Alienation and Competition.

Conformity

To impose Conformity the recruits must first be robbed of their individuality. This is done by inflicting uniformity of looks and behaviour on all soldiers. Uniformity of personal appearance is achieved at the first stop in camp, the barber's shop. The haircut and the clean-shaven look strips many young people of a part of their identity. If they were a little green in joining the Army in the first place, they become greener with a visit to the Quarter-Master's stores where they are issued with about six suits of varying sizes, just as many hats and the obligatory identity tag. informing them of their new name: an eight-figure number. Loaded with more new clothes than they have ever had at any one time, they set off to their accommodation having almost forgotten their frightening new hairstyle.

Impressed by the self-confidence of the reception Corporal, the new recruits are under the misapprehension that all they need to do is put on one of their new suits and they will be transformed into the new macho man. The dormitories each house twelve to twenty and are furnished in the most basic fashion — one bed, one locker and one chair for each person, laid out in a military style which is about as welcoming as a nuclear winter. With so little furniture you could think it easy to keep clean. The recruits soon discover that this isn't the case. For the forthcoming weeks they are cleaning the floor and removing dust from 5am to breakfast and then later from 5pm until lights out. with short breaks in between to clean their kit. Complete uniformity of behaviour is hammered into those with any remaining personality of their own during square bashing. Here marching, saluting and rifle drills are choreographed to such a degree that Lionel Blair would be envious.

Alienation

Alienation is another wrench in the mechanism of the military machine, used to twist the squaddies away from social interaction and to tighten the nut of docile acquiescence. Few of the trainees have much experience in letter-writing and many of their families cannot afford a telephone. so it isn't too long before they become isolated. This separation from family and friends, coupled with the confinement to barracks that most training camps impose. make it impossible to make new friends in the local community. The new soldier becomes so lonely and introverted, bullied helplessly into shape. For the smallest mistake the recruits are humiliated, bawled at and in some cases physically beaten.

A recent case of bullying was that of a new boy, or “sprogg" who, after a kangaroo court in the barrack room, was found "guilty” of not polishing his floor space to the required standard and was sentenced to be hung. He was beaten up by a dozen others, stood on a chair, blindfolded and a noose was tied around his neck. After a lengthy pause in which he broke down pleading for mercy, the chair was kicked from under his feet. Fortunately for him the rope was not secured to the rafters above.

Black balling is common among recruits. and many of the dangers they face in training are from each other, as each tries playing at soldiers with little more than an Action Man comic to go on, plus the stories learned from dad down the pub the night before they left. The recruits show a willingness to participate in any community pursuit and try to to impress anyone and everyone with their mixed-up league of priorities. They will take part in the humiliation of others, pleased that it is not happening to them. They have the childish notion of one who does not know right from wrong; if everyone else does something then it must be right. The alienating process has them so frightened that when they do join in group pursuits they often show their insecurity with violent reaction. 

Competition

Competition is the third bracket that straps the cogs to the tank tracks. Recruits are told from the outset that they must shape up to perform with team spirit in an endless cycle of competition that ends up like a game of snakes and snakes. Those who fail to perform well enough at individual and team skills are made to go back in training (back squadded). Competition strains at every level of the Army. At Battalion level there are about 600 men divided into four Companies, each of which has four Platoons of 30-40 soldiers. They are divided further into four sections of 8-12 and competition is intense for promotion and the cushy life. The sections are at loggerheads to be the best section in the platoon. The platoon is rife with the obsession to be top in the Company and the Company, predictably, is all-out for the coveted Battalion premiership. Of course the Battalion has its role to play at Garrison level and every Garrison goes all-out to be the best in the Army. The question is. where you go with the best Army in the world? Afghanistan? Grenada? or the Falklands?

Armies compete on behalf of the nation-states they represent for strategic positions on the trade map, areas rich in mineral resources and trade routes. In the name of defence they are often sent by governments to embark on expansionist imperialism. The sporting competitions of football and rugby, much advertised in the glossy brochures that could well have been composed by Saatchi and Saatchi, fall by the wayside when the Army enters the big league of politics at its sickening best. With such an extensive conditioning attack it is little wonder that the trainees soon appear to be the unthinking patriotic morons that the drill sergeants, non-commissioned officers and officers have set out to make them. The Army has disrupted everything that was important to the ex-civilian and imposed a new set of values. It is by treating the recruits in this way that governing them becomes easy and so effective.

The Queen's Regulations (the bible of the British Army) make interesting reading. For example, under Section 69(a) of the Army Act 1955 are listed offences against their god — good order and discipline — under which it is possible to charge someone with anything, including breathing. It is not uncommon for soldiers to be charged with “dumb insolence” when there is no better excuse than the face not fitting. Soldiers are caught by the jankers under these Acts. 'Frying to quote from the Queen’s Regulations in their defence can lead to another charge of insolence.

The ranks above are continually reminding the soldiers that they are not paid to think, with the old cliche:

Yours is not to reason why;

Yours is but to do or die.

This is shortly followed by a reprimand for not using their initiative. In recognising that the soldiers go through a very severe conditioning process we ask ourselves a few questions: Does it work in every case? Are there any long-term effects? and Is this conditioning a barrier to socialism? The answer to the first question must be that the conditioning of the soldier does work in most cases, proof of which can be found at the graves of Verdun or the Somme or Arnheim and the countless millions of nameless graves across the world where worker has killed worker for countries in which they had no stake. There are a few trainees who get out of the Army in the first few weeks but the majority feel compelled to stay, under the misbelief that it would be cowardice to leave. Secondly, are there any long-term effects? The sad answer is yes. We are familiar with the war wounded who were never hit by the enemy’s bullets, but were struck by a life in billets and camp songs for whom the last war has never ended. Many workers, however, have learned that no workers' interests are at stake when the capitalists make battle. Thirdly, what about the conditioning process? This is not a barrier to our achieving a socialist society. We have seen American soldiers conscripted to fight in Vietnam desert to the safety of Sweden. We have recently seen a film of the Russian soldiers defecting in Afghanistan and must conclude that as the individuals mature, so do the ideas and vice versa.

Jimmy Bob

50 Years Ago: War, Crime and Punishment (2003)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently two young soldiers were convicted at Berkshire Assizes of robbery with violence. Instead of sentencing them straight away the judge gave them a choice – volunteer “unconditionally” for Korea or go to gaol. After they had a night to think it over their counsel told the judge: “They are eager to take advantage of your lordship’s leniency, and volunteer for overseas service.”

An editorial in the Daily Mirror (9th May) strongly criticised the judge’s action. The Mirror asks how the choice of the convicted men could be unconditional in such circumstances,. But there are other aspects of the matter that should be brought out, and the main theme of the editorial (An Insult to the Army) is of little consequence compared to the deeper questions concerning the cause of crime and war in our present society.

The comments of the judge Mr. Justice Hilbery are indicative of the conventional attitude to crime. “You have been convicted of a very grave crime. When you robbed and attacked as you did each was not showing his true nature. Each of you is a better fellow than that. See active service and turn yourselves into men of courage.”

From this it would appear that when people rob and attack others without the sanction of the law they are not showing their “true nature.” If, on the other hand, they take part in organised attack and robbery against other nations (for what else is war?) then they are turned into “men of courage.”

The Daily Mirror believes that the men risking life in Korea are undertaking a high and honourable duty, and that it is not for courts to confuse military service with crime and punishment. In extenuation of the courts it should be pointed out that in the circumstances the confusion is pardonable. “War crime” is a name given, by the nation in a position to inflict punishment, to certain of the “military services” performed by the forces of other nations.

[From an article by “Stan”, Socialist Standard, June 1953.]

These FoolishThings . . . (1995)

The Scavenger column from the March 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The basic contradictions in capitalism cause widespread death, destruction, pollution, poverty and waste. But this is to take the world view. Most of us experience day-to-day capitalism as a series of small stupidities, irritations and frustrations. Here are a few. If you encounter any worth a wry smile, please send them to The Scavenger, who will publish the best.

Corporate loyalty

“In El Segundo, California, just before Christmas, Mattel, the toy manufacturer, made some announcements. Dividends would increase, the company would have record sales and earnings for the sixth year in a row, the balance sheet was strong and getting even better.

“Also, the company would eliminate 1,000 jobs, about four per cent of its work force . . . The deal most workers thought they had — that their jobs would be safer and wages higher if thing were good at the factory — is over”. New York Times.

True courage

“I wore my fur coat to Salisbury's at the weekend and one lady came over to congratulate me on being so courageous,” says Aliza Claremont, director of a lingerie company. Robyn Opie, proprietor of a West End nail salon, says: “I have a full-length silver fox — a serious fur coal — that I walk to work every' morning, and I haven’t had the slightest bit of hassle". Mail on Sunday, 15 January.

Dazed and confused

Paratrooper Lee Clegg who was convicted of shooting and killing a joyrider in a stolen car in 1990, said: “The irony is that, if war broke out tomorrow I would have been willing to lay down my life for these pillars of society who have sent me to prison for life for acting in accordance with my training and regulations.”

Learning

From a local headmaster’s newsletter to parents: “Behind these crimes [junk culture] against education are the profits of big business — large firms and their shareholders . . . They are also the people whose voices are loudest in complaining about education standards. Hypocrisy rules.”

“It’s a free country”

“Britain’s prisons are behind the state of play in our security conscious department stores and town centres . . . Seeing how the outside is actually becoming more like an open prison, the prison system will have at least to try to catch up”. Nigel Burke, Guardian, 19 January.

The Scavenger

50 Years Ago: Conscription (1962)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The question as to whether or not conscription will, in the near future, become a necessity, appears to be once again very much “in the air." Lord Roberts, in the course of a recent speech, during which he implied the failure, and foreshadowed the disintegration, of the Territorial force, advocated more strenuously than ever his pet notion of universal military service. In this advocacy he is, of course, acting quite logically —more logically, indeed, than those “lovers of peace” (chiefly to be found among the Liberals and Labourists) who, while upholding and using all their efforts to maintain the present capitalist social system, at the same time deprecate what is, in reality, quite in accordance, morally and politically, with the development of capitalism.

*

To a man such as Lord Roberts, who has managed to make a fortune and win a title through professional soldiering, military service will, of course, seem all that is desirable. But what the devil is the poor drudge of capitalism, the wage slave, to get out of it? A fortune and a title? Hardly! At what should be the best portion of his life — his early manhood — he would be taken, numbered like a convict or a beast of burden at a cattle show, herded with his fellow beasts in compounds, trained and drilled and bullied and brow-beaten, taught to walk upright and to handle a rifle, taught to shoot sufficiently straight to kill and maim certain of his fellows (whom he has never seen before and with whom he has no quarrel), coming out of the Army at the end of his term with all the virtues of an efficient, non-thinking, non-questioning wage-slave, with all the initiative and all the self-confidence knocked out of him. Truly a delightful prospect!

[From the Socialist Standard, December 1912.]

Onward, Christian soldiers (1977)

From the October 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The armed forces must be prepared to play a new rôle in enforcing democracy in Britain should the present system of government break down.” Thus, the Very Reverend John Field Lister, the Provost of Wakefield Cathedral, as reported in the Yorkshire Post of 15th July.

This gem of current religious philosophy was delivered on the occasion of the laying-up of the regimental colours of the First Battalion of the Coldstream Guards at Wakefield Cathedral. He went on to say: “More and more nations are finding that government is almost impossible to carry out. This may be because democracy is a Christian concept and that without it, it cannot succeed.

“When governments break down, then we have seen in one country after another that the military have to be brought in. It might well be that in the years which lie before us the armed forces will have a new and different rô1e to play, and how important that role will be.” There followed some all-too-familiar references to the power of the unions, the possibility of a general strike, etc., etc.

It is to be hoped that the guardsmen on the receiving end of this will have learned something about their function in the eyes of supporters of the capitalist class. They are themselves members of that same working class they may be ordered to suppress.

Richard Cooper

How Volunteers are made. (1914)

From the October 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Any unmarried man who is big enough and strong enough to serve in the Army is asked to offer himself as a recruit in His Majesty’s forces. In the event of his being accepted his place in Lord Derby’s stable will be kept open for him. . . Any man who has refused to try and serve his country in this way has been discharged. I am glad to say that nearly all have shown their patriotism by enlisting.”—Hon. Geo. Lambton, in the “Daily Citizen,” 4.8.14.

Letter: The Military (1976)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

For the last few years I have been a moderate-type Socialist, though I have never joined a party or been active in any way other than union membership.

I have just read the “Introduction to the Socialist Party of Great Britain” and I would like to know more about your policies, particularly how you hope the Socialist society will be established.

I am at present considering joining the forces. I do not like the idea of killing people or of being used as a tool for the oppression of the working class, but I know that all factors in our society are interdependent and that taxpayers pay a soldier’s wages. However, I would like to know your Party’s attitude to this, whether you would approve of Socialization and a democratic movement working inside the existing armed forces, or if you would rather wait for Socialism to be established and then abolish the military?

Does the SPGB want the present form of society to continue until the majority is convinced, or enabled to put your policies into practice? I would appreciate your help on this. I am not politically active but would like to be.

George Cummings 

Torquay

Reply:

The armed forces are part of the machinery of government, which exists to conserve the class ownership of the means of living. The aim of the Socialist movement is for the working-class majority, when it understands the need to do so, to elect Socialists to Parliament as its delegates to take the powers of government; with control of the machinery in their hands, nothing can then prevent the de-legalizing of class ownership and the establishment of ownership by all. In the Socialist world "the military” — like money and a lot of other things—simply has no function.

The taxpayers who provide soldiers’ wages and weapons are the capitalist class, for the reason given above; and for the same reason there can be no such thing as "Socialization and a democratic movement” changing the armed forces’ nature. You say you “do not like the idea” of killing other working people, being used to break strikes, and carrying out brutal and anti-social acts as ordered. We are not here to advise you about your personal life, and certainly soldiers are members of the working class and can become Socialists as anyone else can; but if they do, they find their employment intolerable.

You say you are "a moderate-type Socialist” and want to be politically active. This means, we think, that you have half-formed ideas about society. Why not spend a time learning about Socialism and getting matters clear? There is plenty of literature available, and Socialists in your area who would be pleased to discuss with you. Yes, a convinced majority is necessary to change society, but we don’t want a long wait; Socialism is urgently necessary, and you can help to bring it about. Sort yourself out.

Editorial Committee.

In Flanders Field: Bloody arithmetic (1959)

From the October 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

In times of war, Generals become very important people; sometimes, as in 1917, much too important for the general interests of the ruling-class. Not only did they decide on questions of strategy in their own sectors, they were able to influence or make decisions on the widest scale. Haig, Foch, Cadorna, Joffre, Nivelie, each had taken part in decisions that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. To some extent the Generals constituted a special sectional interest, running things their way, and able to deceive, ignore, or persuade the politicians. False reports (and Haig’s Staff turned these out in hundreds) would serve to blind the politicians to the appalling errors being committed. Once appointed, Generals became notoriously touchy, resenting criticism and blocking any move by politicians to interfere.

The threat of resignation, with the resulting blows at morale of troops and workers, would frequently serve to bring the politicians into line. Generals were removed, but only after their particular front had begun to resemble a slaughterhouse, and sometimes not even then. Kitchener set an example, closely followed by his one-time protege Haig, of the stiff-lipped, silent autocratic General. Haig was scandalised when Lloyd George discussed west-front strategy with French officers and politicians behind his back; he noted in his diary that the man was not a gentleman, a supremely irrelevant consideration, bearing in mind the tremendous interests at stake. Apart from the prestige of their professional positions, the British west-front butchers, Haig and Robertson, had considerable support from the British ruling-class.

They were able to override Lloyd George, who thought west-front strategy useless and incapable of producing any decisive result. Lloyd George did have part of his way after the battles of 1917, for by then even the adoring Lord Northcliffe had begun to have his doubts. It was becoming obvious that the German Army was not destroyed, and that no important gain had been made. There were important reasons why Haig was not given the sack; reasons of morale, social influence, and because Haig was a good general in the limited sense of organising, defensive measures. Robertson lost his job as Chief of the Imperial General Staff; reserves were withheld from Haig, and a. system of closer co-operation with the French came into being.

The problem of maintaining control over the Generals is still exercising the ingenuity of Governments. Churchill was to be in much closer touch with the Generals than Lloyd George. By 1939, the Generals were tamed; the old-fashioned officer gave way to more technically-minded machine-conscious officers. Closer systems of control prevented any repetition of 1917. Slaughter became a subject of scientific planning. Hitler, Stalin and Churchill were careful to be always on their guard against the Generals. The German Staffs were purged again and again; Stalin relegated Zhukov to obscurity after the war.

The Bloody Arithmetic of Attrition

The first world war introduced a new branch of arithmetic—a branch that even the cavalry generals could appreciate. The equation was a simple one; three million dead British and French soldiers plus two million dead Germans could equal defeat for Germany. Some there were, like Lloyd George, who were astute enough to realise that attrition could be dangerous for Capitalism. Lloyd George, as a popular orator, was more in touch with public opinion than were the supporters of this simple arithmetic. Ceaseless battering had led to the final collapse of Russia, and had led to serious trouble for the French Government.

’’Attrition ” was popular with a large section of the ruling-class because it offered something more than mere military defeat; it offered the destruction of a large part of Germany’s manhood, the exhaustion of her economy, and a Europe free for Britain and France to bustle in.

For popular consumption the argument was modified, the enemy was being defeated even though no significant advance was being made. The enemy’s armies were being destroyed (as indeed they were, but not as fast as Haig and his Staff liked to believe, for even at the height of the Flanders battle the Germans could afford to send troops to defeat Italy). Attrition did work, but in a way unforeseen by its supporters. In March 1918 Germany began her last offensive, and in thirteen weeks suffered 700,000 casualties. Germany, desperate to finish the war before the full weight of America could be brought to bear, destroyed the army that had held the western front for four years.

The Dead Weight of Tradition

Capitalist organizations do not always function in the best interests of the ruling-class as a whole. Conflicting demands during wartime may paralyse strategy, so that nothing is achieved. An example is the Dardanelles campaign; (here was no agreement on how many troops to send, the haggling went on for months. It seems that Britain and France almost sustained defeat, not by Germany, but by their own traditions and methods of warfare that had become irrelevant by 1914. As a result, Germany, while maintaining the defensive in the west, was able to gain considerable victories elsewhere, as for instance in Russia. Rumania and Italy. There were alternatives to attrition, but the opportunities were lost, and if such a complex situation can be summarised at all, they were lost because of the outmoded thinking of the ruling-class, of whom the Generals were a part.

A new Waterloo was always just round the corner, and if the Waterloo turned into slaughter-house warfare, there was always the argument for attrition to fall back on. They were full of arguments, those Generals, Haig had another one in his magazine; he had waged the Flanders campaign in order to prevent the Germans from falling on the French. He also waged it because the French had offered their support! And what of the chief participants, the poor bloody soldiers? They were always ready for another effort, another crawl across ground covered by machine-gun fire and under continuous bombardment. The British troops set an example of devotion to duty unequalled in those days; apparently British workers were well-drilled and well impregnated with their ideologies, of which there was a fairly wide choice, all leading to the conclusion that one must tight for one's country, whatever the cost.

The New Passchendaels

The overthrow of one set of myths doesn't matter very much to Capitalism, for there are plenty of brainy people ready to provide variations of the theme “fight and die.” New ideologies are continually being manufactured, and there will always be one or two to suit the needs of the time. The bitterness aroused by 1917 did not make workers into Socialists, but it did give rise to numerous peace movements (in one of which “Go to it” Herbie Morrison was prominent). These movements withered away when Capitalism was once more torn apart by war. With a new appeal, workers could be called out to fight again. Cassino, Stalingrad and Hiroshima mocked the 1918 politicians’ boasts “war to end wars.” The second world war also gave rise to its peace movements, but rather different. The New Pacifists would apparently be prepared to fight if H-bombs were excluded and war consisted of battles like Passchendael, Stalingrad or Cassino.

Breaking the Circle

There is a way out; humanity do not have to tear each other apart; the circle can be broken. What has been said here about ideologies does not mean that there is no end to Capitalism and its wars. A new society can be brought into being. This new society has already taken rough shape in the minds of some of us. Disgust and disillusionment take a slow but steady toll of Capitalist ideas —an example of this is the decline of “white feather” incidents! People in the last war were far less ready to condemn those who stayed at home.

Unfortunately there has been far more apathy and disillusionment than determination to put things right. People are disgusted with politics, including even the Socialist Party in their condemnation. Perhaps in a way there is here a terrible indictment of Capitalism; men and women have lost their faith in a world fit for humans, taking refuge in the acquisition of cars, brass-plates and the material flotsam of a mass-rubbish-producing society. Change is possible; we can reject Capitalism with its Passchendaels, Stalingrads and Hiroshimas. People can act in their own interests, instead of in the barren, blood-smeared interests of ruling groups. The way out does not lie along the road of pacifism or ban-the-bomb (a futile movement if ever there was one). The way lies along the path of Socialist understanding.

F. R. Ivimey.

Between the Lines: The Patriot Game (1989)

The Between the Lines column from the September 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Patriot Game

"Come all you young rebels, enlist while I
 sing

For the love of one's country is a terrible 
thing.

It banishes fear with the speed of a flame


And makes us all part of the patriot game".

These are the opening lines of a song called The Patriot Game, written by Dominic Behan who died last month. The love of countries is, indeed, a terrible thing. It makes fools out of all patriots; it takes noble sentiments of home and community and equips them with guns and bombs. First Tuesday (ITV, 1 August. 10.35pm) allowed the voices of British troops in Northern Ireland to be heard. There are 10,000 of them on active service there: the mugs and thugs who do the dirty work for the British ruling class.

"If you're going to Ireland and afraid of being shot, then you're not doing your job", declared a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Green Jackets who exhibited the kind of wisdom that would not qualify him to look after my cat, let alone a pile of machine guns. Thankfully, most of the workers in uniform interviewed were not as desensitised as that they were frightened—petrified. They did not want to be there. Choice had not brought them: most were economic conscripts. making big money by taking big risks. "You get a load of bull when you join . . . you get told it's a good life, so you believe it". What was most striking about these soldiers was their immaturity. Listening to them, it was quite obvious that most had a conception of conflict which had not developed beyond the traditions of the school playground and the more juvenile antics of the football terraces. They were like puerile gang members: They try to wind us up, you try to wind them up”, explained one young keeper of the peace. He explained how they told him that his mother was sleeping with a black man. so he made them stand in the rain for ten minutes for a security check. They call it the war of nerves; well, they wouldn't call it a war of brains.

What was sickening about this patriotic parade was the brutal deference displayed towards violence. Said one soldier of his gun. “We take better care of it than a woman. Without it you're defenceless’. This

must have explained a lot to his wife if she was watching. But, more importantly, "without it you're defenceless"—the piece of designed killing machinery upholds life. It is little wonder that one of the officers, with more than a touch of perverse pride in his voice, declared that the IRA are the best terrorists in the world. Well, there's a compliment, from a man who gets paid and given medals for being a legalised Queen's terrorist.

By contrast—but not by contrast at all— Families At War (BBC1, 7 August, 9,30pm) was about Shane O'Doherty who became a volunteer for the IRA. Because of the state censorship law forbidding interviews with current members of the IRA the BBC had to interview O'Doherty, who has now denounced violence as being counter-productive. It must be said that O'Doherty came across as a much more human being than the current practitioners of armed brutality in the British army. Silly old British state: they pass a law preventing themselves from depicting the sick views of Irish Nationalists who really believe in the nobility of blowing up their fellow workers. O'Doherty had become a victim of the romantic folly of the patriot game by the time he was eight years old: at fifteen he joined the IRA and within a short time was indulging in such 'liberationary" acts as planting a bomb at Baker Street station in London. I bet he treated his gun better than any woman. They all do. And they go to sleep dreaming of piles of dead bodies on the other side. Their minds have been screwed up and they are victims of war; the gun. though pointed away from them, has inflicted an immeasurable injury upon their dignity and decency.

Shooting from the mouth

Whoever said that the pen is mightier than the sword was right. And talking is more potent than shooting. The present writer would not fancy a fist fight with the uniformed dummies in their Irish barracks, but in a debate they would be bloody slaughtered. A Gift Of The Gab (BBC2. 8 August, 9.50pm) was an interesting three-part series by Ludovic Kennedy about the art of oratory. As expected. Kennedy made some highly perceptive points in his first programme (the only one seen at the time of writing), but the series seems in danger of concentrating too much on the well-recorded oratory of parliamentarians and Presidents This emphasis misses a point: the main impetus for public speaking is the need to communicate beyond the available channels. The MP can go through the motions of repeating sterile speech-making formulae and the trade union leader can wave his arms in the time-honoured fashion, but it is the dissident, denied all opportunity to relate to a big audience except through the wit of holding them with his or her words, who usually makes the most intriguing speaker. To be specific. Churchill might have carved out a reputation as a brilliant pro-war orator, but that skill amounted to little compared with the brilliant eloquence of the orator whose dissenting words shout out against the popular support for warfare. "The love of one's country is a terrible thing" and to extinguish such fool's love is a skill to be admired.

Steve Coleman

Brothers in Arms. (1905)

Snippet from the July 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Major Roper Caldbeck declares that the average soldier’s pension is 8s. 2d. per week, whilst that of the officers is £4 a week ! But of course. Capital and Labour are brothers, and the interests of the working-class soldier and exploiting-class officer are identical.

Northern Ireland: Back to power-sharing (2007)

From the July 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

What thirty years of death and destruction in Northern Ireland brought?

It was a great day at Stormont. The great and the good from many countries were there including the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and the Irish Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. Centre stage, of course, were Ian Paisley, yesterday’s ‘Never-Never’ man, now grinning like death in the apocalypse, and Martin McGuinness, yesterday’s IRA commander, expensively tailored and replete with effusive grin.

The event was generally acknowledged to be the formal end of Northern Ireland’s infamous thirty years of internecine warfare in which nearly 4,000 people were killed and some 60/70,000 injured.

Doubtless the fare was rich and the guests ate heartily. Paisley, Adams and their followers especially may have baulked somewhat at the political menu and the public exhibition of having to eat their words – admittedly, generously marinated in personal emoluments well beyond their past dreams of fulfilment. They could all be well satisfied with the price they got for their bloodthirsty ‘principles’.

Among the less great, the voting fodder who were afforded the democratic privilege of watching the circus on television, there was cynicism and utter disbelief but undoubtedly the overwhelming majority of the people of the province looked on the spectacle with differing measures of relief. If this collection of provocateurs and proxy killers was to be endured for peace – or what passes for peace in capitalist society – they would put up with it. The more thoughtful would have scratched comfort from the realisation that its not very different elsewhere.

Who better to end conflict than those who had created it? It was the First Minister in this new legislature, Ian Paisley, then a clergyman in a church of his own invention and busily engaged translating biblical inanities into mantras of political hatred, who was the principal architect of conflict for the last forty-five years.

If he had reason to hate the traditional IRA it might have been because they had publicly renounced armed struggle in 1962, thus threatening the political fabric of an Orange hegemony which was based on the threat of the IRA. Paisley’s religion and its associated politics were nourished by hatred of catholic nationalism and official Unionism’s updated response to the new political climate harboured the promise of a peace that would leave Paisleyism – the brand of bigotry that bore his name – redundant.

Ironically, Paisley’s anger at the threat of peace was shared by those republicans who abandoned the new pragmatic IRA; effectively, those on the catholic republican side who mirrored the hate politics of Paisley and his cohorts.

First killings

When the first shots and explosions in the Northern Ireland conflict occurred the Provisional IRA did not exist. On the 27 May 1966 a three-man gang of protestant paramilitaries went into the catholic Falls Road area with the intention of assassinating a well-known republican. They missed their target but they availed of the opportunity to shoot and kill a drunken catholic called John Scullion.

The circumstances of the second killing demonstrates that, despite Paisley’s bigoted ranting, inter-denomination movement in the Belfast ghetto districts had not yet reached crisis point. At 2 a.m. on Sunday 26 June 1966 four young catholics felt safe enough to go for an after-hours drink in a hard-line protestant area when they were attacked by loyalist killers; three were shot, one fatally. Later the police arrested and charged three members of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF).

Thereafter politico-religious zealots, some directly associated with Paisley, carried out explosions at four reservoirs serving Belfast and a member of Paisley’s religious sect was killed by his own bomb while attempting to blow up an electricity generating station in Ballyshannon, in the Republic of Ireland. Paisley’s close associate and fellow director of the Puritan Printing Company – who, incidentally, stood as a Protestant Action candidate against the World Socialist Party in the late 50s – was convicted on explosives charges.

By now the touch-paper of violence had been well and truly lit. The Unionist Prime Minister at the time, the condescending Captain Terence O’Neill, and several subsequent Unionist Prime Ministers tried to take the heat out of the situation with puny reforms limited by the spectre of a bellowing Paisley demanding their political heads for ‘selling out the protestant people’ but the mass torching of homes had become a grim nightly diversion of the lumpen proletariat on both ‘sides’ . The sectarian police force was overwhelmed and the British Labour government, that had allowed the pot to boil over the years, sent in the army.

Another terror element

This was the period of the so-called Cold War and in the higher echelons of the British army there were those who adhered to the ‘Eastern School’ of military strategists. Their thesis was based on the notion that the balance of terror represented by nuclear warfare made conflict between the two major power blocs improbable. Instead, ‘the enemy’ would make war by proxy, exploiting areas of local conflict and potential conflict.

The main protagonist of this doctrine was Brigadier Frank Kitson, then a senior officer serving with the British forces in Northern Ireland and responsible for key elements of army strategy. Kitson had served in Aden where the practice of army sponsored gang-and-counter-gang operations had been operated unsuccessfully against the two opposing nationalist forces fighting the British there. The evidence of collusion in sectarian killings levelled against the army over the years in Northern Ireland are consistent with the working of such a policy.

The entry of the British army brought another element of terror into the Northern Ireland conflict. Not only was the army bereft of any ultimate political objective, it was heavily influenced by some officers who perceived a local conflict in absurdly wider terms, and, despite the evidence of then current happenings, its intelligence base was that of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), a notoriously anti-nationalist paramilitary police force.

The IRA (later called the Official IRA), wanted no part in a sectarian war and to its credit initially refused to release weapons to its Belfast and Derry members to use against protestant workers who were loyalists. In the wings a small group of republicans were endeavouring to create a movement that would offer armed resistance to loyalists. Their efforts were sustained by the bigoted posturing and naked aggression of Paisley, the partiality of the RUC, and the crass stupidity of the military strategists.

In July 1970 the army put a ring of steel around part of a nationalist area in west Belfast, declared a curfew, brutally confined people to their homes and killed four civilians. The curfew lasted over the week-end during which houses were systematically searched . On the Monday the media showed the destruction the troops had wrought. That destruction could be said to be the birth pangs of the Provisional IRA; the republican sectarians now had an army and a surfeit of recruits.

It would be naive to believe that the reckless move on the part of the army – a move which could only give emotional muscle to those promoting a return to militant republicanism – was an act of military stupidity, but in the background there were events which explain why the London government, which, as always, were the puppet masters of the generals, permitted the move.

The previous month had seen the return of the Tories – the Conservative and Unionist Party – to power in Britain. This gave the Ulster Unionists – the Tories’ political cousins – a more sympathetic ear at Westminster and in Northern Ireland the Ulster Unionist Prime Minister, James Chichester Clarke, was in serious trouble and inevitably Ian Paisley was prominent among those creating that trouble.

Go, so I can take your place

Paisley had led a strident crusade against Clarke’s predecessor, Terence O’Neill, because O’Neill had shown a willingness to remove some of the notoriously undemocratic practices used to consolidate Unionist political hegemony; practices which affected the working class in general but which catholic nationalist leaders nourished as purely anti-catholic grievances.

Paisley had raised the slogan ‘O’Neill Must Go!’ and it found sufficient response among the backwoodsmen of the Unionist Party to force O’Neill’s resignation. Now his slogan was ‘Clarke Must Go!’ The legend for Clarke’s proposed exit was because the writ of the sectarian Unionist Party did not run in some nationalist areas of Belfast and Derry. Again, Paisley’s activities were causing tremors within the Unionist Party whose Standing Committee was summoned to debate Clarke’s fate. Five days before that debate was scheduled to take place the army carried out its ruthless attack temporarily removing the sting from the Paisley threat.

Others who took on the Prime Ministerial role and later the role of First Minister had to ‘Go! before the present incumbent – Paisley – got the job.

By now, of course, the Provisional IRA’s murder campaign was in full swing endorsed by the notion that they were fighting a war to drive out the Brits but inexorably they were drawn into tit-for-tat sectarian killing. Additionally, they murdered catholics and protestants in any way tenuously associated with the British administration – numerous in an economy where public money underwrote some 60 percent of all jobs. Especially ruthless and cowardly, the Provisionals forced non-combatants to fight their dirty war by forcing them by threat to themselves or their families to deliver bombs to determined targets.

The IRA and the protestant paramilitary gangs as well as the duplicitous ‘security’ forces were killing people with military ordinance. Paisley brought death and disorder by threats and phantom battalions of red-bereted ‘defenders’ and midnight squadrons of men waving their government-issued firearms certificates.

Now Paisley’s DUP and the IRA’s Sinn Fein are together in government. Sane people can only hope that the electorate put them there because it was the despicable price that had to be paid for peace – for the game was always about power – even in Mother Erin’s British-subsidised Fourth Green Field.

Ironically, Paisley’s antics over the last 40 years have done more to emaciate Unionism’s power base than the IRA; conversely, Sinn Fein is now an integral part of the political structures its murder campaign was supposed to destroy.

It is reasonable to ask what the working class got in return for its suffering, for the victims – the killed and the killers, the mentally and physically maimed, the prisoners – were, as always, overwhelmingly of the working class. The media clarions our reward; we are going to get peace, we are told. The agencies that were making war have gone into partnership – showing once again that peace and war emanate from the same source.

Meanwhile real power will not reside in Stormont, or London, or Dublin. It will reside in the cheque books of the billionaires and the multinational consortiums whose profit considerations will decide the priorities. Ultimately it is their writ that determines how we live in latter-day capitalism – even, indeed, if we live.

Richard Montague

50 Years Ago: Fighters for the right (2004)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard 

But our Labour Party leaders are not concerned with abolishing capitalism and, along with it, war; they want to keep capitalism, and their chief concern about war seems to be that there shall be more up-to-date weapons for the workers to kill each other with. Mr. Churchill recently announced in the Commons that the new rifle with which the British Army is to be equipped is not one of British design, which had been recommended earlier; the new rifle finally adopted was designed in Belgium. The reason for this seems to be mainly that the U.S.A. is likely to adopt the Belgian rifle, whereas had the choice rested on the British rifle it is probable that the U.S.A. would not have adopted it, and therefore an increased measure of standardization would not have been possible. This decision has aroused a storm of protest among Labour M.P.s. Mr. Woodrow Wyatt alleged that it was due to the Prime Minister not standing up to the Americans for something he knew to be “right” (20-1-54). What is “right” about a machine designed for the single purpose of killing human beings? Presumably Mr. Wyatt knows, but if he does he has not told us. Mr. Shinwell took the opportunity to proclaim the superiority of inventions produced by the British capitalist system over those produced by foreign capitalism: he asked the Prime Minister “why this preference for foreign products?” (27-1-54). Mr. Attlee, ex-Major, rose indignantly and complained that the new rifle “has to have all sorts of bits and pieces put on it before you can even use the bayonet.” Really, Mr. Attlee? Is this a disadvantage in your eyes? Many people would have thought that this was to be numbered among the rifle’s good points.

(From “The Passing Show” by Joshua, Socialist Standard, March 1954)

The Admiral’s speech (2023)

From the February 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the ways the mass media propaganda system works is through emphasis and de-emphasis of stories. Sometimes a story might be reported, and a piece is put in a small corner of their content (so they can always say later that they did cover it), but if something is emphasised, it becomes screaming headline news. For example, the massacres by the Wagner group in Mali in March this year barely caused a ripple in the UK press (months later, the Guardian would report them, as part of an anti-Russian stance). To take another example, the Susan Hussey scandal, indicative as it was of racial and cultural attitudes among the royal entourage, was blasted to full-bore front-page coverage by the BBC and other outlets, presumably because of the potential Harry and Meghan angle. In some ways, it probably deserved a couple of inches in the gossip columns.

A side effect of this, is when insiders are talking to each other, they can safely say scandalous things that many may find objectionable, but they will never be reported (or, in some instances, will be held onto and reported at a later date, when scandal becomes convenient to one faction or other). To take a recent example: Tony Radakin, the Chief of Defence Staff (the highest ranked officer in the armed forces) gave a speech at the Mansion House of the City of London on 19 October last year. The full text is online here.

The City of London itself is an interesting body of insiders: although it is a local authority of a kind with the usual powers of such, it has corporate electors (nominated employees of firms based in the City). As such, it is intimately bound up with the globe-spanning businesses of the financial centre of London. As the journalist Matt Kannard in the muck-raking website Declassified has noted (without whose output, Radakin’s speech may have gone unnoticed too):

‘The Corporation recently blocked Declassified’s request for the release of information about the foreign schedule of its leader, the Lord Mayor, but we have managed to see his 2019-20 agenda. This saw him planning to visit an average of three different foreign countries every month, considerably more than the foreign secretary typically does’ (tinyurl.com/yehtryxf).

They argued that as the trips were privately funded, freedom of information laws do not apply. Kennard was told: ‘It is the role of the national government to lead on foreign policy. It is the role of City of London Corporation to support the City. As part of this role the City Corporation engages with business partners across the world and throughout the year’. That the Lord Mayor of London also liaises with the Foreign Secretary on a regular basis shows just how influential this business clique is.

So, when addressed by the head of the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom, it is unsurprising that an honest and frank description of the state of the world is to be expected.

As he attests, international order and the rule of law:

‘matter here in the City of London too, because markets thrive on stability, and our prosperity rests on a world that is safe for the passage of trade’.

‘And when the rules are broken, volatility and instability follow. When aggression is left unchecked the costs ricochet through global markets. This affects people everywhere, and especially the world’s poorest.’

This is a voice of the very pinnacle of the defence establishment clearly stating that the purpose of having armed forces is to help benefit the commercial relations of capitalists within the UK. He emphasises:

‘The role of the United Kingdom Armed Forces, even with a war in Europe, is more than just focusing on defending the nation’.

‘It is about a maximalist approach to the military instrument. Using our power and influence in all its guises: both to further our security and prosperity. But especially – when we get it right – to add to the agency and authority of the British Government and the nation.’

‘Agency and authority’ are the very arguments Putin uses to justify his approach to foreign policy too. A lot of voters in the UK might sincerely believe that the military exists to protect their lives and their homes, and might, rightly, be expected to object to a notion that the military exists to help corporations make deals worldwide. That, after all, is pure gangsterism. Indeed, the propaganda in movies and TV is exactly that the military exists to ensure we ‘sleep safe in our beds’, not to make money overseas. But:

‘We spend more than £20 billion with British industry every year. And in 2020 we generated almost £8 billion in defence exports, more than any other European country.’

The defence exports are part of the leverage, creating friendly states bound by military ties, and in turn supporting the existence of governments whose own military is there to protect the leaders from the people. But it is still interesting to see the economic aspects of Britain’s war machine being so clearly laid out.

Radakin also notes: ‘Britain is an expeditionary rather than a continental power’. This might be expected of an Admiral. After all, the rivalry between the services is about funding, and a purely defensive British defence strategy would have less need for the clout of a big navy.

There is an element of hypocrisy too. He notes Putin’s ‘nuclear rhetoric’. As the Peace Campaigner Milan Rai has noted:

‘Daniel Ellsberg, the US military analyst who leaked the Pentagon’s secret internal history of the Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers, wrote in 1981: “Again and again, generally in secret from the American public, US nuclear weapons have been used, for quite different purposes: in the precise way that a gun is used when you point it at someone’s head in a direct confrontation, whether or not the trigger is pulled.” Britain has used its nuclear weapons in the same way, repeatedly’ (tinyurl.com/2cksf6ex ).

The armed forces are a gun pointed at the world’s head, for the benefit of the owners of society, and it is refreshing to hear them admit it.

Pik Smeet

A Look Round. (1929)

From the August 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Army of To-Day.

When we point out to so-called Communists and others that as a prelude to emancipation a Socialist working class must control the political machine in order to give them control of the armed forces of the State, we anticipate certain stereotyped objections. These we have met again and again in these columns. So far, no evidence has been produced to show that our policy understood by a majority of workers would not enable them to deal with any eventuality that might arise in the future. One of the stock objections raised is that the Army and Navy is officered by members of the capitalist class, and will therefore refuse to take instructions and orders from a Socialist-controlled Parliament. Apart from the fact that those who get control also get control of the finances upon which the whole Army must depend, the bulk of the Army and Navy officers are today not members of the capitalist class. By the time also that a considerable Socialist opinion has developed among the working class, it is reasonable to assume that soldiers drawn as they are from working-class homes will be more or less permeated with Socialist opinions.

The Capitalists of today are a numerically small class, and are compelled to have their Army, Navy and Air Force officers trained in the same way that they have to train their managers, organisers and specialists. Just as the latter have grown more numerous than their masters’ requirements, so is the Army officer landed in a similar plight. When, for various reasons the master class no longer require the services of their “gentleman” officers, they become the most helpless section of the numbers who go to swell the growing army of the unemployed. Let the Communists note well the following :—

“At Clements Inn alone over 2,000 ex-Officers are registered as unemployed, and these are only a part of those who, apart from work, need food and clothing. Ex-Officers there are with University honours, who are compelled to perform menial tasks in lodging houses in order to earn money for food. In a similar plight are men from all the leading Universities, men from Eton, men from Sandhurst, members of the Institute of Civil Engineers. (Letter to the “Daily Telegraph,” 9/7/29, from W. E. Southgate”, Capt., ex-Officer Unemployment Committee.)

Our Rich Friends.

“Socialism does not mean confiscation. Labour protests against the misleading suggestions of its opponents that it attacks private property and preaches class war.” (Mr. Arthur Henderson, at Blackburn, “Daily Chronicle,” 27/5/29.)

We have always claimed, and proved, that Socialism necessarily involves the conversion of capitalist private property into the commonly owned property or means of life of the whole of society. Such a revolution we also claim would remove the antagonism in society which arises out of the capitalist ownership of the workers’ means of living and their consequent enslavement. That antagonism of interest is the class struggle, eventually manifesting itself as a struggle for emancipation. Mr. Bernard Baron, a wealthy capitalist, apparently understands this, and sees that only Socialists will ever struggle for emancipation.

He knows that the Labour Party cannot be a Socialist Party without Socialist supporters, and that in their own words they are a “bulwark against revolution.” Other capitalists who support or join the Labour Party know likewise, and that the political ignorance which such a party reflects will also preserve the system which enables them to filch nine-tenths of Labour’s product. Need we be surprised, then, when we read that “Mr. Bernard Baron forwarded to Mr. Arthur Henderson a cheque for £5,000 for the Socialist (!) Party funds? Mr. Baron contributed a similar amount at the General Election of 1924” (“Daily Herald,” 10.5.29.). We also are entitled to protest against the “misleading suggestion” that the Labour Party is, or ever was, a Socialist Party.

Either or Either.

Sir Herbert Samuel is one of those brainy Liberal gentlemen who, like the rest of his lawyer-like tribe, can prove black is white as occasion arises. People who don’t handle the truth carefully, should, as the maxim reminds us, cultivate retentive memories, otherwise “bright young people” may discover that these gentlemen are nothing but political charlatans. After the following we need not wonder either, how it is that Liberal lawyers like Sir W. Jowitt can go to bed Liberal and wake up “Labour.” No wonder Ramsay wrote “I have often wondered what there was of any substance which really divided us.” (“Times,” June 8, ’29.) Says Sir Herbert number one: “In the Labour Party’s manifesto Socialism was relegated to the background. For the most part it was a Liberal programme which Mr. MacDonald and his colleagues advocated” (“Times,” May 2, ’29). Says Sir Herbert number two : “The Labour Party declares itself to be definitely Socialist. The speeches of its leading members, the resolutions passed by its conferences, have made this clear beyond the possibility of doubt.” (Article in “Answers,” May 25, ’29.) Without doubt Sir Herbert Samuel would also find no more difficulty in turning a political somersault than Sir W. Jowitt.

The Right to be Lazy.

According to the “Daily Chronicle,” (10.7.29), there are 1,142.400 out of work, an increase of 24,593 on the previous week. The total on July 1 comprised 889,000 men, 28,300 boys, 199,500 women and 25,500 girls. In the same paper, same date, same column, we also read under the sub-heading of “Society Acrobats” that:

“The diverse activities of well-known people have been keeping the photographers exceptionally busy, according to this week’s issue of that bright review ‘The Sketch.’ Half the social world appears to have skipped over to Le Touquet for the golf tournament of Buck’s Club, while the other half was either at the Peterborough Foxhound Show or the extraordinary circus held in a West-End mansion. Polo and a water party at Roehampton claimed many notable people, some of whom are seen doing complicated ‘physical jerks’ on Major Paget’s lawn to time set by gramophone ” (Ibid).

We are not kill-joys, nor are we much concerned with these antics about which the tripe journalists write so much trash. What we do object to is the humdrum existence we, like the rest of the workers, have to submit to because they do not understand the ease and comfort possible for all if the present means of wealth production were commonly owned and utilized for that purpose. If the pleasures of these idlers appear somewhat inane and trumpery, it is mainly because they are only the pleasures of a pampered few which in the present system is based upon the slavish and joyless existence of the many. An intelligent race of men and women would require more elevating enjoyment than baby parties, freak dinners or society circuses. When the working class begin to realise that the ushering in of a system free from stupid social absurdities and contradictions depends entirely on their own efforts, the end of this capitalist pandemonium will be well in sight.

Catholic Truth.

In these days when everything in the political world is dubbed Socialism, those desirous of obtaining knowledge should ever be critical even of those claiming to be Socialists. One would hardly expect the late Prime Minister to air Socialist views, yet in a leading article in the "Daily Mail” (June 10, ’29) we are seriously informed that:—

“Mr. Baldwin has contributed as much to the growth of Socialism as Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, for he is a Semi-Socialist. His speeches and his pronouncements have frequently been indistinguishable from those of avowed Socialists.”

Of course, this is only eye-wash for the working class. Our masters and their agents know that the Socialism that they dread is that which is in line with the teaching of Karl Marx, a Socialism founded on Science. It is because of our masters’ need to know the real enemy, and not the bogey used to frighten the workers, that we sometimes get the truth in strange places as follows :—

“It is of little purpose to point out that the Socialist condemned (by the Pope) is Marxism, and not Fabianism or its analogues in various countries.” (Catholic Encyclopaedia, Vol. 14, p. 67.)

Something Now.

The futility of the policy of waiting for “Somebody to do something” is illustrated in the following. In the House of Commons it appears there is a catering department the staff of which receives the following enormous wages : Waiters, 31/6 (with food), barmaids (after 10 years’ service), 29/-; cash desk attendants, 24/-; kitchen hands, 20/- per week. Remembering that we have in office a Labour Party for whom eight million people voted, it is instructive to note that, in answer to a question in Parliament, a Mr. Compton, Labour member and Chairman of the Kitchen Committee, stated that : “An immediate revision of wages could not be entertained” (“Daily Chronicle,” 18.7.29.). After all it might set a bad example to cotton operatives, railwaymen, and others to concede wages to these people on a level with the cost of the keep of paupers and convicts (sic). Perhaps we shall be told that the Labour Party is not yet in power.

Pills for Earthquakes.

“The workman who owns his own house and has saved enough to assure himself at least of bread and butter for his family is one of the rocks against which the doctrines of revolution will always foam in vain.” (“Evening News,” 13/7/29.)

Although apparently this thrifty individual becomes a householder, he still remains a workman. Only a very small percentage of the millions of the workers own their own houses. If house ownership could form rocks against revolution, we wonder why our masters don’t rush to pay wages that might enable the majority to buy a shelter. Let us suppose, only suppose, mind you, that they did. Would not the wicked revolutionary creep in with his insidious economics and point out that, with an all-round removal of the cursed rent item, a lowered cost of living would mean lowered wages? He would ! True, numbers have to save, scrape, and mortgage in order to buy a house; they could not get one in any other way to-day, but it requires more than a house or a Post Office Savings account to secure the worker against the insecurity of modern times. None but a fortunate few manage to save even sufficient to provide for an emergency or old age, and irony of ironies, millions who have toiled their lives through piling up wealth for others pay a few coppers insurance per week to save them from the stigma of a pauper’s grave.

W. E. MacHaffie

The Treachery of Leaders: A second reply to a critic. (1928)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to R. M. Phillips June letter.

To the Editor of the Socialist Standard.

Hornsey.

(1) Your statement that “Socialists, like any other beings, cannot escape the pressure of the forces surrounding them, and there is no reason to believe that Socialists would be more trustworthy than other people, except that they at least understand the social forces, and may be expected to avoid gross blunders,” bears out my contention that Parliament would offer the same inducement to modify their tune to S.P.G.B.’s as it has done to Labourites.

(2) It is through no gift of prophetic vision that I hold that the Capitalist class will make use of every weapon to stifle Socialist teaching should it be winning supporters. To-day, sheer force is used to suppress anything that threatens, even minutely, their class interests :—The Colonial oppression, the Great War, imprisonment of agitators, and the E.P.A. are witnesses to the fact that still harsher methods would be used to strangle the Socialist Party should it ever look like becoming dangerous.

Parliamentarism and constitutional action leaves the workers unprepared for this. Capitalists will not interfere with the gradual growth of Socialism, they are led to believe, and will unresistmgly, in accordance with the code of sportsmanship, accede to the enactments (the King not daring as head of the Constitution to veto them) that means their expropriation.

(3) The S.P.G.B. to become the preponderating party in Parliament must pass through the phase of second party. There is no sudden conversion that you speak of, when the S.P.G.B. becomes the strongest party during the office of an anti-Socialist government. The Capitalist government can keep the Socialists waiting for years, and, knowing the constitutional law-abiding character of the Party, feel safe in adding another ten to fifteen years to their life.

(4) Your Party, in such respects, is up in the clouds. These things have got to be faced. To speak about generals and officers as workers is to apply abstract economic categories to existing conditions without any attempt to allow for the modifying factors of the psychology of the men concerned, and their close connection with the Capitalist class.

They are used to ordering workers about, and it is well known the hatred they have for Parliamentary interference. The question of how will the officers and generals act when instructed by a Socialist War Minister, is like that of what shall we do if the sun drops from the sky. The two are possibilities too remote to trouble about. The S.P.G.B. will never get so far as a Government unless it intends to legislate for the Capitalists.

(5) I offer at the moment, no alternative to your policy of following the constitutional path as pointed out to you by the Capitalists. Your readers have only to think deeply and face up to unpleasant facts and alternatives will suggest themselves to them.

Thanking you for answering my previous letter, Yours fraternally,

R. M. Phillips.

Our Reply.

(1) The question is not whether Socialist M.P.’s would be offered inducements to modify their attitude, but whether the electors would tolerate such modification. Labour electors do not want capitalism overthrown, and therefore do not object to their M.P.’s non-Socialist politics and actions. Socialist electors would object and would enforce their wishes.

(2) Mr. Phillips here makes the error of assuming that the actions of the capitalist class are synonymous with their wishes. We do not urge the workers to rely upon the “code of sportsmanship” or the voluntary adherence of the capitalist class to “constitutionalism.” The capitalist class maintained the parliamentary system because the problems of capitalism compelled them to do so. The majority of the English capitalist class are well aware of the limitations and dangers of using force openly against discontented workers. They use, and are likely to continue to use, the much more effective weapon of propaganda in the schools, the newspapers, etc. When they use force now they can still defend them selves by the plea that they have the majority of the electors supporting them. When that plea has been undermined (i.e., when the majority of the electors are Socialist) the capitalist class will have to yield or be faced with the problem of trying to administer capitalism by military force, against a hostile majority of the population. That problem is insoluble, not (as Mr. Phillips thinks we believe) because of any scruples of the capitalists, but because of the nature of modern industry and trade, and the complexity of the administration of capitalism.

(3) Mr. Phillips forgets that the capitalist class, being human beings and desiring to go on living, will not be prepared to pay any price, however great, in order to have the satisfaction of blocking the way to Socialism. When the working-class have become predominantly Socialist, and are organised politically and economically on class lines, they will be easily able to obstruct the normal working of capitalism. The majority of the capitalist class, faced with the alternative of yielding to the wishes of the majority of society, or of entering into a period of continued industrial and administrative chaos, will certainly choose the former.

(4) Mr. Phillips said (June Socialist Standard) : “The generals, officers, bureaucrats, etc. . . . are drawn from the ranks of the capitalist class and its lackeys.”

In reply I pointed out that this is not true. Being dependent on their pay for their livelihood, the great majority of these persons are members of the working-class. Mr. Phillips now agrees that they are members of the working-class, but says that I made no attempt to allow for the “psychology of the men concerned.” By this he means, apparently, that these people, although members of the working-class, do not recognise their class position and are not Socialists. This is perfectly true, but in this respect these people are in no essential way different from other sections of the working-class. The great majority of all workers are still ignorant of their class position, and are not Socialists. As regards those members of the working-class who are army officers, civil servants, etc., the majority, even apart from acquiring greater knowledge of their class position, will act in accordance with their bread and butter interests, i.e., they will take orders from the authorities who control the political machinery and their pay.

Mr. Phillips makes a statement that the “S.P.G.B. will never get so far as a Government unless it intends to legislate for the capitalists.” The meaning is obscure, and he gives no evidence or explanation whatever. What we can reply with confidence is that when the working-class are organised in a Socialist Party they will take control of the political machinery with the object not of legislating for the capitalists, but for the introduction of Socialism.

(5) Mr. Phillips, like other critics, here exposes the hollowness of his case. He makes the elementary error of supposing that a policy is proved unsound if difficulties can be mentioned. He forgets that every policy and every action, great or small, has to deal with some difficulty or other. The only test is to compare the practicability of one policy with that of an alternative, and weigh up the respective advantages and disadvantages. Instead of doing this, Mr. Phillips offers no alternative, but naively assures us that our readers “have only to think deeply …. and alternatives will suggest themselves.”

May we ask Mr. Phillips to believe that dead and living members of the Socialist Party have thought deeply before offering the S.P.G.B. Declaration of Principles, and so far none of our critics has succeeded in discovering a practicable alternative.

Edgar Hardcastle

Letter: The Treachery of the Leaders. (1928)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent sends the following questions :—

Albert Road, Hornsey, N.

21st May, 1928.

Dear Comrade,

Having read this month’s S.S. and noticed reproduced therein a letter criticising your Party, I take an opportunity of placing before you one or two points concerning the S.P.G.B. on which there is much controversial matter.

It is a tenet of your policy that Parliament is the means through which the working-class will achieve Socialism. Once returned why should your members be any more true to the workers than say labour representatives? Would not a growing Socialist Party provide plenty of scope for parliamentary position hunters who, if necessary, would emasculate your policy as has happened of late with that of the Labour Party.

When, if it should happen, the Socialist Party develops to the second party of the State all the forces at the disposal of the Capitalist class, yet in power, will be brought to bear for the suppression of Socialist teaching. At that stage the workers who have been lulled into an “all will be well in the future" feeling will find themselves faced with the alternative of engaging in a revolution for which the parliamentarism of the S.P.G.B. has left them unprepared, or of submitting to a still more stringent and harsh suppression which the Capitalist class would find necessary to use to smash the possible resistance of the workers.

Yet again, it is likely that, following the hypothesis of a growing Socialist Party, the workers at a period may be prepared in the majority to overthrow Capitalism only the fact of a Capitalist Government being in power, having been elected prior to the swelling of the Socialist Party, forces them to withhold themselves until a new general election (2, 3, 4 or more number of years may be the waiting time —Socialism by permission of Capitalists).

A bare majority of Socialists in the House of Commons would necessarily have to resort to force in order to break the resistance of the Capitalists who they are dispossessing (unless by this time the S.P.G.B. policy of "revolutionary” action has dwindled to the gradualness and legislative tinkering of the reformist Labour Party). This would entail the use of the army. The generals, officers, bureaucrats, etc., from whom the soldiers take their direct commands are drawn from the ranks of the Capitalist class and its lackeys—would they be prepared to translate a Socialist Government's decrees into action? I rather think that they would use the obedience of the soldiers, sheltered from Socialist teaching, in supporting the refractory Capitalist class.

It appears to me that the Socialism of the Socialist Party of Great Britain leads inevitably to an open and unashamed dictatorship of the Capitalist class with a further and acuter exploitation of the masses.

I trust that you can answer these points!

Yours fraternally,

R. M. Phillips.

Our Reply.

(1) Mr. Phillips has read the last month's issue of the “S.S.,” but appears to be quite unfamiliar with the principles of the Socialist Party. He asks what guarantee there is that Socialists would “be any more true to the workers than, say, Labour representatives,” and is evidently unaware that the Socialist Party does not offer itself to the workers as alternative leaders, willing to replace the Labour Party and promising to conduct the working class to Socialism. Socialists, like other beings, cannot escape the pressure of the forces surrounding them, and there is no reason to believe that Socialists would be more trustworthy than other people, except that they at least understand the social forces and may be expected to avoid gross blunders of ignorance. If Socialism depended upon finding trustworthy leaders, in or out of Parliament, then Socialism would never come into being. The S.P.G.B. tells the working class that they alone can replace capitalism by Socialism, putting their trust in no leaders at all. The only guarantee against the evil effects of betrayal by leaders is to have no leaders. The capitalist class do not buy leaders for their brains or their ability, but because they have a sheep-like following. Socialists know what they want and how to get it, and are not followers. A Socialist membership will make their own policy, and M.P.s will not be able to “emasculate" that policy. The policy of the Labour Party has never been Socialist because its members have never been Socialist. Its past and its present policy accurately reflect the views of the majority of its members. A Socialist membership would not formulate a non-Socialist policy, and if an M.P. elected by Socialists advocated a non-Socialist policy he would lose his seat.

(2) Mr. Phillips claims that he knows what the capitalist class will do at some particular point in the future development of Socialism. We are not quite so confident of our powers of prophecy, but we can at least point to some improbabilities in his forecast. How does he know that the capitalist class, who do not suppress Socialist teaching when Socialists are few in number, will decide that it is a wise policy for them at some future date when Socialists form a large part of the population and suppression will be difficult, if not impossible?

It is plainly absurd to suppose that the Socialist workers will lull themselves into an "all will be well in the future ” feeling, if the circumstances around them are incompatible with such a feeling. Mr. Phillips does not trouble to explain why the use by a revolutionary working class of the franchise to obtain control of Parliament should unfit them to face whatever situation may arise. Conversely, whatever may be the state of "feeling” of a minority, if they are too small and powerless to resist those who control the machinery of government and have the majority behind them, then the minority has to submit to superior force and continue their work in whatever manner they consider best until they have become strong enough to take some other action. Does Mr. Phillips know of any alternative?

(3) Mr. Phillips wants us to consider the hypothesis of a working class suddenly converted in great numbers to Socialism in the short space of two, three or four years between elections. If Mr. Phillips looks round him and observes how desperately hard and slow is the work of making Socialists he would perceive that his hypothesis is absurd, even allowing for a considerable speeding up in the progress of Socialist propaganda with the development of capitalism.

But even if it should happen, would Mr. Phillips consider it sound policy to pursue a difficult and dangerous course of action only in order to save a year or two’s delay?

(4) Mr. Phillips bases his argument here on two confident assumptions—both of which happen to be false. He says the "Generals, officers, bureaucrats,” etc., "are drawn from the ranks of the capitalist class and its lackeys.” The truth is, of course, that the great majority of "generals, officers, bureaucrats, etc.,” are people dependent on their pay for their living, members of the working class like the rest of the so-called professional sections of the working class. At worst these officers, etc., would be divided.

The second assumption is that soldiers are, or could be, "sheltered from Socialist teaching.” Soldiers come from working-class homes, and when those homes are pre-dominantly Socialist these soldiers cannot possibly remain unimpressed by Socialist teaching.

And Mr. Phillips has overlooked the fact that soldiers schooled in the necessity of obedience to orders from above will not be likely to follow blindly and unthinkingly orders given to them by a section of their officers who are themselves flouting the lawful orders of their superiors, as well as defying their fellow-officers.

Editorial Committee.