"Spreading the word . . . " (2004)

Book Review from the December 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fellowship is Life by Denis Pye, Clarion Publishing, £4.95.

This is a very fine history of what was a probably an unnecessary organisation, based on what was a very nasty journal indeed. In this slim, but well illustrated and superbly presented volume, Pye gives an excellent account of the background and development of the Clarion Cycling Club and its one-time companions in the Clarion movement. The book is a very useful addition to the field of Labour history as a history of The Clarion and its associated organisations has never before been written.

   

The Clarion, or ‘The Perisher’ as was colloquially known, was a very popular ‘socialist’ journal, established in 1891 and flourishing prior to the 1914-18 war. Its popularity was mainly a product of its humorous appeal – initially the journal was little more than the equivalent of a modern university ragmag. While there can be no objection to an injection of comedy, such a magazine should have formed no basis for further organisation. Later on The Clarion became something of a forum for the various contemporary brands of ‘socialist’ (the Socialist Party however seems to have been barred – see the Socialist Standard of November and December 1906). So far as it held political opinions of its own, its ‘socialism’ was pretty poor stuff: Blatchford, the magazine’s guru, defined his “new religion” as being “To love one another as brothers and sisters and to love the earth as the mother of all.” The Clarion combined such ILP-ish, wishy-washy sentimentality with a love of militarism (the greeting of the Clarionettes, “Boots”, and its response “Spurs”, was straight from the barrack-room) and nationalism (one of Blatchford’s books being Britain for the British). Given the lack of ideological clarity it is unsurprising that The Clarion was one of the Left’s most vociferous supporters of the First World War. Although this was initially a rather popular stance, the bloody pointlessness of the not-so-Great War cut the magazine’s feet from under it. The Clarion died a natural and not overly premature death in 1932.

   

It was survived, however, by the Clarion Cycling Club. The original aim of this organisation, like the contemporary Clarion vans (described in Robert Tressell’s The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists), was to sell the paper and thus ‘spread the word’. But the main purpose of the CCC came to be a social one. This was true also of the wide range of other Clarion-related groups. And the range was indeed wide including clubhouses, choirs, amateur dramatic societies, camera clubs and even a café. The social focus was probably inevitable given the vague nature of Clarion ‘socialism’. All this became even more important after 1918 when paper-selling activities were downgraded (to give them their due the majority of Clarionettes did not approve of the paper’s attitude to the war and mostly dropped it thereafter). During the interwar period the Clarion groups became working class social clubs, whose political standpoint, so far as one existed, was Left Labour. The Clarion Cycle Club survives today in much the same fashion (although it must be said that nostalgia is also an attractive factor).

   

Traditionally membership of the Clarion Cycle Club was banned to Socialist Party members, because the political content of the CCC, although marginal, was definitely reformist in nature. While our own Party has always had social activities (and these are important – we are human beings not daleks), these are entirely secondary to propagandising for socialism. From a political point of view mixing with non-socialists in non-sectarian clubs brings opportunities to ‘spread the word’ on a personal level (sometimes far more effective than formal propaganda).

   

Fellowship is Life is a reminder of how much time and effort were spent on what was an entirely unworthy journal. But such are the ways of reformism.

Kaz.

Copies of the book (£4.95 inc. P&P) are available from Clarion Publishing, 34 Temple Road, Halliwell, Bolton, BL1 3LT.KS

Jarrow: the truth that was murdered (1986)

From the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jarrow is a trigger word for the British labour movement, detonating emotions, prejudices and false reputations; for half a century it has given nourishment to the misconceptions of Labour politicians. Fifty years ago this month the Jarrow march (it called itself a crusade) set out to bring a petition to parliament from the stricken Tyneside town. It was, to be sure, a moving episode in working class history. now to be celebrated by another march which will climax with the presentation of another petition, worded just as it was in 1936. Most of those taking part will no doubt be sure that they are doing something significant about unemployment and poverty. The crucial question will evade them: why must it happen again, fifty years later?

Labour's propaganda victory of the 1940s was largely based on their asserting that prewar poverty and unemployment was the result of the policies of a heartless Tory government. In support of this, free use was made of photographs of events like the Jarrow march, with nostalgic references to the town's Labour MP, Ellen Wilkinson. In this way the Labour Party succeeded in identifying itself with the march and with the idea that, had they been in power at the time, there would have been no reason for it to happen. In fact the march was not a Labour Party demonstration; it was a protest on behalf of the whole town, the petition was carried jointly by the Conservative and Labour agents and at the time a truce was observed in the local elections. Even more: far from supporting the march the Labour Party and the TUC condemned it. At the Labour conference which took place while the march was on the road the NEC representative made a scathing attack on Ellen Wilkinson. The TUC advised all trades councils to ignore the march. Of course not all of them took this advice but when they did hospitality was often provided to the marchers by the local Conservative Party, or the Territorial Army, or businessmen.

Jarrow's established reputation for militancy comes from its mistaken association with the marches of the National Unemployed Workers' Movement, which happened regularly in the 1930s and which were larger, more demanding and often riotous. Jarrow was anything but riotous; it would be more accurate to describe it as a company town. As it developed during the second half of the 19th century its central industry — in effect its only one — was C. M. Palmer's shipyard, which took advantage of the change from wooden to iron ships to develop a screw-driven collier. Palmer's financial policies have been described, in retrospect, as "exuberant'. which implies that they were recklessly optimistic but at the time they could have had few critics. By 1860 the company was dominant among the iron ship builders of the Tyne. It had grown into a huge, integrated business with its own ironstone mines, its own port, its own coal mines and steel furnaces. Palmer's workforce included a large proportion of highly skilled men such as boilermakers and ship wrights. the kind who are sometimes referred to as an ''aristocracy of labour". Until 1921 Jarrow was, by working class standards, one of the better-off towns, where wages were relatively high. Its people were confident that things would stay that way.

This was reflected in the way Jarrow voted. Until the turn of the century it was a Liberal stronghold. Before 1907 the Unionists would not even contest the seat and one Labour MP grumbled that "There was never a more hopeless constituency for a Labour candidate to attack than Jarrow in the nineties. Sir Charles Mark Palmer, the sitting member, was the most popular man in the north of England". The secretary of the Jarrow march described the place as "more a Tory town than it is a Labour town". After Palmer's death in 1907 the Labour Party won the seat but it then changed between Labour and Liberal until 1929, when a Conservative won there, inflicting on Labour their second worst result in the North-East. When Ellen Wilkinson won the seat in 1935 the Tory vote was as high as 47 per cent. Wilkinson had been a member of the Communist Party, changing to Labour when the Labour Party made it impossible to be a member of both parties. She accumulated the familiar reputation for fearless militancy but — and this again is a familiar story — her career peaked when she became Minister of Education in the 1945 Labour government, which was continually at odds with the Communist Party over its policies both at home and abroad.

In many ways Jarrow represented the economic changes which were forced on British capitalism during the first half of the 20th century. By the 1930s it was accepted by all but the hardest of die-hards that British capitalism had lost for good many of the export markets which it had once dominated and on which so much of its wealth and power rested. As heavy industry and mining, located mainly in the North, went into decline capital was switched to lighter, consumer-orientated industries in the Midlands and South. Jarrow's dependence on Palmer's made it particularly vulnerable in any such movement; the First World War demand for shipping postponed the inevitable but by 1921 the brief post-war boom was at an end and shipbuilding was badly hit. In December that year 36 per cent of the industry's workforce were unemployed, by the following August in Jarrow 43 per cent were out of work. Palmer's were unable to take advantage of the partial recovery which followed and Jarrow might be said to have led the way into the slump of 1929. In July 1932 Palmer 's launched its last ship and in 1933 the yard was closed. By 1934 there were 67.8 per cent of the town's insured workers unemployed, by 1935 it was 72.9 per cent and by 1936 it had reached 80 per cent.

J. B. Priestley, in his English Journey, described Jarrow as he saw it in 1933: "Wherever we went there were men hanging about, not scores of them but hundreds and thousands of them". The town had long suffered a high incidence of tuberculosis — the result of bad housing, malnourishment and topography — in spite of its relative prosperity. In the 1930s the rate of TB rose to double the national average. In 1934, when the infant mortality rate was 47 for each thousand live births in the Home Counties, in Jarrow it was 114. So alarmed was the Board of Education at the malnutrition among Jarrow's schoolchildren that they sent a request to the council to increase free school meals.

Little wonder that Jarrow should feel, in its desperate plight, that an especially harsh discrimination was being applied to it. If, as the title of the famous book has it, it was The Town That Was Murdered who., or what, did the killing? During the recessions of the 1920s and the 1930s some industries attempted to defend themselves by forming cartels with the object of restricting (they called it "co-ordinating" or "rationalising") production and marketing, in the hope that this would enable part of the industry to survive in profitability. Much the same thing happens now in. for example, the oil industry. The steel industry organised the British Iron and Steel Federation, which set itself to oppose any efforts by non-members to open up production. It was opposition from the BISF which caused the abandonment of a plan for an integrated steel plant in Jarrow — the event which sparked off the march.

The shipbuilders' cartel was National Shipbuilders Security Ltd. set up in 1930 with most of the industry and the big banks as shareholders. The NSS was financed through a levy on its members and its object was to buy up shipyards and then "sterilise” them. By 1934, in this way, it had finished off 137 berths, or two-fifths of the British industry. with a production capacity over a million tons. Among them was Palmer s yard at Jarrow, which went into receivership in 1933 and was sold — delivered up to — the NSS in 1934.

With their dreams and their confidence in tatters, it was tempting for desperate, starving workers to think of Jarrow as being murdered. cut off in its prime, by a small group of greedy capitalists supported by a pitiless government. This is a common enough reaction to unemployment; it goes with the theory that capitalism's problems — its disorder, its crises, its inadequacies — are abnormal and could be avoided by running the system differently. Jarrow, it was said, was the victim of a monstrous crime and crime is. or should be. abnormal.

By the standards under which capitalism must operate, what happened to Jarrow was perfectly normal and reasonable. This society does not produce wealth to meet people's needs, or employ them so that they can be healthy and happy. Its wealth is produced for sale on the market, intended to yield a profit to the minority who possess the means of production and distribution, including things like steel works, mines, shipyards and ships. Workers are employed, that is to say their labour power is bought by the capitalists, in order to turn out that wealth. But it is impossible to predict how the market will behave, to control it. to guarantee that it will always absorb what has been produced. That is why every so often there is a "surplus" of some sorts of goods, however much people may need them. When sales are high, in a boom, "exuberant" investment policies are praised as divine wisdom; in a recession they are condemned as blindly irresponsible. So it was with Palmer's; had things turned differently the company would have been a favourite among the economic experts and the apologists for capitalism as a masterpiece of financial and industrial genius.

Jarrow was badly hit in the slumps of the 1920s and 1930s but it was not alone for the entire shipbuilding industry was in decline. In 1920 British yards turned out over 2 million tons but by 1933 this had fallen to 133.000 tons. In 1932 the industry had nearly 60 per cent unemployment; that was the year when, according to the Home Office, two unemployed men committed suicide every day. There was a similar story in towns which had depended on other branches of heavy industry; Dowlais. Brynmawr and Motherwell, for example, all had unemployment at about 75 per cent in 1934.

Some of this must have been in the minds of the Jarrow marchers, as they assembled for their trek to London. This was one of the smaller of the many protest marches of that time — 200 selected men compared to the thousands who would take part in the demonstrations organised by the NUWM. It did not demand better benefits or more humane treatment for the unemployed; its object was to persuade the government to direct investment into the town. The marchers were generally regarded benignly by the police (Special Branch kept close observation on all demonstrations by the unemployed for no matter how desperate working class poverty may be it could be permitted to arouse only the best-mannered of protests), the press and the government — in contrast to the NUWM marches which were battered with relentless sneers and criticism and, by the police, with unprovoked assaults.

As the Jarrow men made their way to London The Times congratulated them on their stoicism and sympathetically reported their blistered feet and their fatigue. They enthusiastically cheered King Edward VIII. who happened to be passing by in The Mall. The Home Office agreed that, as ". . . the marchers show every sign of being orderly, it would be a good way of encouraging them and placating them" to allow them to be entertained in the Houses of Parliament. Taking tea with the MPs was hardly the way to bring down capitalism, or even to change its course. Even more, friendly Members took them on a boat trip down the Thames, which caused them to be absent from the climax of the march — the presentation of their petition. They also missed the government's response, which was bluntly translated for them by a Jarrow councillor: "It means you have drawn a blank". The next day the Jarrow men caught the train back home, to the end "well disciplined . . . conduct was exemplary" in the words of the police report.

Apart from putting the town's name and that of its MP — into the history books and the laying out of one small public park, there was nothing to show for the Jarrow march. Its objectives were restricted and short term but even at that they were beyond its reach. No government can change the nature of capitalism or divert it from its natural course and that was why they had to refuse to do anything to revive industry in Jarrow. They even stopped the marchers' unemployment pay, on the grounds that they were not available for work for the period of the march (there was, of course, no work in Jarrow for them to be available for. but never mind). Capitalism continued on its troubled way; while Jarrow agonised the excessively rich Tory MP Henry Channon set out in his diary some of the difficulties his class were experiencing in early 1937:

[I] had a large dinner party . dinner was magnificent. Lady Granard could hardly walk for jewels.

And later that

I find a new, unexpected joy at the age of nearly forty, in accumulating money and watching it grow.

Those appallingly smug words illuminate the real social and political issue, in the 1930s and now — the class division of society based on the private ownership of the means of life. As Channon wrote, one per cent of the population owned 56 per cent of the wealth in private hands. The situation is very little different today. The social system which exploits and impoverishes the majority, which forced the men of Jarrow to that moving, fruitless crusade, remains in being. Now. after another post-war boom, we are in another recession which again has affected the shipyards of the Tyne. Unemployment in the area is at 25.6 per cent. This is what brings the people of Jarrow to London once more, to set down their protest at the effects of capitalism but giving no thought to abolishing the system. That the famous march must happen again, fifty years on. is no cause for celebration for it demonstrates how futile it was in 1936 — and how futile today.

Ivan

A Socialist Survey. (1914)

From the July 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent writing to the “Daily Citizen” (4.6.14), gives information of a singular occurrence in a signal box on one of the main railways. The box was visited by a company of soldiers, who were admitted in batches of nine. They were accompanied by the district inspector and a plain clothes officer, who instructed them in the art of railway signalling and block working, much to the surprise and discomfort of the signalmen on duty.

Yet the “Daily Citizen” and its supporters are always howling for the nationalisation of the railways !

* * *

When the “Storstad” arrived at Montreal after her disastrous collision with the “Empress of Ireland,” she was at once seized by the sheriff and placed under arrest. When the writ was nailed to the mast Captain Andersen demanded to know: “By what authority do you board my vessel and arrest her?” The sheriff replied (probably because the “Storstad” was a “foreigner”) that his authority was “the authority of the British Empire.”

Under that authority, of course, anything could be “pinched.” That’s how Eugland became “great.”

* * *

Keir Hardie appears to believe that the emancipation of the workers is but of secondary importance. Capitalist measures should receive prior attention. He told his audience at a labour demonstration at Lesmahagow (Lanark) that the Labour Party were out to unite the working “classes,” but before this could be done the Home Rule question had to be got out of the way.

The Socialist Party, I might point out, are also out to unite the workers, but with this difference—they are out to unite them for Socialism. And of the various obstacles in the way of this unification they have had to encounter, one of the biggest is, not Home Rule, but—the Labour Party !

* * *

At a recent meeting of the Blackburn Board of Guardians it was stated that the sum spent in out-relief during 1913 was £2,000 less than that paid in respect of officials’ salaries. I am beginning to see why there is such a rush for these jobs.

* * *

Mr. Rockefeller’s millions appear to bring him endless trouble. He is now expecting to be called to give evidence before the Inter-State Commission which is investigating the affairs of the Newhaven Railroad, U.S.A. In one portion of the evidence a Mr. Millen, ex-president of this concern, said that enormous losses were made through financial trickery. He alleged that over £2,000,000 were juggled away by the late Mr. Pierpont Morgan.

We often read, in stories of the old buccaneering days of the Spanish Main, where pirates used to cheat each other out of their share of the plunder, and which invariably ended up in a fight and a lot of blood-spilling.

Similarly, to-day, the industrial pirates quarrel over their share of the booty. Whilst agreed that the manner of acquiring it is satisfactory (to them), yet, as soon as they begin to handle the loot they cheat each other mercilessly, and invariably wind up in a fight—not a bloody fight, but a legal one.

In this case blood is spilled in order to get the booty—not the blood of the pirates, but that of the toiling millions who are bludgeoned and battered into turning it over to them.

* * *

Many meetings have been held of late to protest against the employment of Chinese and other “foreigners” as seamen on board British ships. Yet one thing seems to have been left out of account. That is that “Sea Scouts” are now being shipped as deck hands on board British vessels. Possibly it is only to gain experience—but experience of what ? Is it the same experience that Boy Scouts are undergoing in connection with the military forces ?—experience that may be turned to account “should any danger threaten the Empire” from within or without ?

The scout law says : “A Scout must be loyal to his King, and to his officers, and to his parents, his country, and his employers. He must stick to them through thick and thin against anyone who is their enemy, or who even talks badly of them.” In other words the “Scouts” are there to be used as the tools of capitalism against the workers. That fact is obvious enough, at any rate. They are well organised on land ; now they are turning their attention to the sea, and the introduction of a few Scouts on board merchant ships also marks the introduction of the thin end of the wedge. Of course, there may be nothing in it, but I “hae ma doots.” It opens up possibilities.

* * *

The Rev. A. G. Waldron tells the “Daily Sketch” (12.6.14) that : “Modern Socialistic philosophy has had a bad effect on many people. They want everything done for them.” Which causes one to wonder what the reverend gent does for a living, that he can afford to talk like that. My experience of these professional medicine men is that they don’t do anything for a living. They live on the product of other people’s toil. To use this pulpit thumper’s own words, they “want everything done for them”—and thanks to the unmitigated foolishness of those workers whom “modern Socialistic philosophy” has not yet “spoiled,” they get “every­ thing done for them.”

Waldron also said that he had “tried the experiment of allowing questions to be asked after the sermon, but it was a failure. Only the fools asked questions in church.” I suppose every person who asked a question was considered a fool. Well, perhaps he was. Only fools and rogues are to be found in churches, and it is the height of a fool’s folly to question a rogue concerning his roguery.

* * *

How is this ? Have the workers of Tonypandy already forgotten the treatment they got at the hands of the capitalists’ butchers ? It would appear so, judging from a picture which was published in a recent issue of the “Daily News and Leader.”

It seems that the Prince and Princess of Teck had paid a visit to Tonypandy. Of course, they went about the mines, where their presence created great enthusiasm (which, by the way, is a very useful element, and quite necessary now-a-days to the capitalists’ game of bleeding the workers), so much so that, instead of going home, they lined up at the pit-mouth, all in their dirt and grime, just as they had come up out of the bowels of the earth, and sang with feeling and gusto, “Land of my Fathers.” This is distinctly good, only the wording of the hymn appeared to me to be inappropriate. It should have been “Land of my Masters.”

* * *

How terrifying is that oft-maligned and much misunderstood phrase, “the class war” ! How soon it will disturb the even temperament of a respectable congress ! For instance, the International Textile Workers held their congress during the second week in June at Blackpool. The congress was asked by the foreign delegates to say that the International Congress would only accept those unions for membership which stood by the principle of the class war. The English section, however, did not like the phrase, “because in England it had rather a bad repute, and was only connected with one small part of the Labour movement.” (This is where the Labour Party chuckles.)

In face of this refusal the Continental delegates were compelled to seek another expression, so they hit upon the phrase “organisations that combat the present capitalistic state of things.” This was accepted.

What surprised the Continental delegates, said one of them, was that, far from looking down upon the workmen, the English employers treated them on a fraternal footing, and with the ordinary politeness of human intercourse. That will explain the repugnance of the English section to the introduction of the class war principle. Naturally, if they are so pally with the bosses, the class war won’t exist for them.

Tom Sala

Exhibition Review: ILP, old and new (2024)

Exhibition Review from the February 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard 

The Independent Labour Party (ILP) was founded in 1893. To mark the 130th anniversary, the Working Class Movement Library (WCML) in Salford ran an exhibition ‘That Impudent Little Party’ in the final months of last year. It comprised original pamphlets, handbills and photos, supplemented by posters discussing the party’s ideas and history.

At its founding, Keir Hardie, who was one of the ILP’s leading lights, stated that it was an expression of a principle rather than an organisation, as it had ‘neither programme nor constitution’. In fact it did have an aim, ‘collective and communal ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange’, but this is contradictory, as ownership in common excludes exchange. In reality it stood for a series of reforms, such as abolishing the monarchy and the House of Lords, and doing away with indirect taxation.

The ILP was officially pacifist in the Boer War and the First World War, but many members did join the armed forces in the latter conflict. In the Spanish Civil War it was an ally of the Trotskyist POUM, which naturally brought it into conflict with the ‘Communist’ Party of Great Britain. The ILP was opposed to the CP, as it thought there was no need for a revolution, but there were informal links between the two parties, and some ILPers (members of the so-called Revolutionary Policy Committee) left to join the CP.

The ILP lost influence after the Labour Party adopted Clause 4 in 1918, which also inconsistently combined common ownership and exchange. In 1932 the ILP disaffiliated from the Labour Party and, in the words of a WCML poster, this left it ‘caught between’ the Labour government and the CP. Many people were now wondering what the ILP was for. In 1945 it decided not to rejoin Labour, and many members resigned. It struggled on to 1975, when it was eventually disbanded. Its successor is Independent Labour Publications (www.independentlabour.org.uk), which rejoined Labour that same year and campaigns pointlessly for a more left-wing Labour Party.

The first issue of the Socialist Standard argued that ‘the working class should have nothing to do’ with the ILP. Socialists continued to criticise it as a left-wing reformist organisation throughout its existence (see October 2009 Socialist Standard). Like other attempts to push or pull the Labour Party leftwards, it got precisely nowhere and eventually disappeared.

Paul Bennett

A Mayday from the sinking ship (2000)

From the May 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mayday as a cultural event seems to be dying. It has become increasingly dissociated from the cultural horizon of the vast majority of the working class—becoming a mere preserve of enthusiasts and the official Labour movement.

Mayday has fallen into the hands of the Labour hierarchy and its trade-unionist minions, and has become a celebration of their organisations: a day for Labourite triumph and self-congratulation, to the extent that this year’s TUC’s main celebration, in an act of superlative lick-spittlery, kow-tows to the awful taste of their political masters in being held at the Millennium Dome.

The reason why Mayday has become dissociated from relevance and meaning to most working class lives is that the bodies associated with it, and with the whole way of life it typifies, have become divorced from the lived and meaningful experience of most workers. Like, alas, so many divorces, this one too is the result of an affair—a bitter and tragic business that has led merely to disappointment.

The state and the unions came together in the dark days of the last World War. Their collaboration produced production agreements and no-strike clauses, coupled with an increased say for unions in the running of industry. The result of this collaboration was to produce what is known as “the post-war consensus” in which Tory and Labour governments took it in turns to manage the corporate state, bringing business and unions together in formal institutions. So great, in fact, was this desire for unions and state to work together that Churchill’s government after 1951 actually appointed more trade unionists to state positions than Attlee’s had. The full consummation, though, of the corporatist state came under the Harold Wilson government, in the form of the National Economic Development Council, in which the unions, government and the CBI took part. The unions were gradually seduced by the prospect of having more of an institutionalised say in how capitalism was administered.

Empty illusions

As with, sadly, too many seductions, it was based on illusions and empty promises. Capitalism can only ever be run in the interest of the masters. In repeated endeavours to save their rocky relationship, the corporate collaborators entered into repeated incomes policies and agreements. In return for helping to organise the working class for the capitalists’ needs, union leaders were given some rewards, legal protection from union’s being sued, and legal enforcement of closed shops—so the unions could increase their head-counts and incomes. Up until then the state had been largely content to leave shop floor industrial relations to the respective parties, but the corporatist period began a serious increase of state involvement.

The involvement of the state increased the power of the leaders of the unions, and strengthened their position. However, when economic conditions dictated and conflict sharpened between employers workers, they found it harder to keep their members in order and their relationship to the employers began to sour. The unions clung ever closer to the state, determined to save that friendship, and tied their fortunes to the Trade Union and Labour Relations Act (1974), and later to the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act (1978) which guaranteed the right of workers to join a union and engage in union activities.

The increased conflict with employers began under the Wilson and Callaghan Labour governments which took steps to discipline the workers and which led to the Winter of Discontent. The advent of the Thatcher government provided the means by which to bring the unions to further heel. This turn, though, was not unique, and not solely down to the wickedness and enmity of Tories. Union organisations all over the advanced capitalist world began to suffer from the late 70s on, as endemic unemployment weakened the workers’ negotiating position.

State control

The Tories’ first strike was to increase state involvement in the internal affairs of unions. The Employment Act (1980) was intended to “provide for payments out of public funds towards unions’ expenditure in respect of ballots”, whilst at the same time repealing the 1974 Act’s protection of the closed shop. This proved to be only the first of a number of salami tactic assaults upon the unions, which gradually, and almost irrevocably tied them in to state power.

In the eighteen Tory years a total of eight Acts (almost as many as in the rest of the century) were passed with regard to regulating unions. The course of this tactic was clear, the eventual “juridification” of industrial relations—increasingly bringing the courts in to organise industrial relations, with the continual threat to the funds and structures of the union hierarchs. The Employment Act (1982) removed unions’ immunities given by the 1974 Act, so that their strikes could be challenged in the courts (section 15). It made contracts requiring employers to deal only with unionised businesses unenforceable in law, making it more difficult for unions to support one another’s struggles. Further, in all the cases where the unions were actionable in the civil courts, the 1982 Act required a responsible officer to sanction all union activity, clearly forcing union leadership to choose between protecting union funds, or backing members’ actions.

As state protection through contract law was removed, so too was the state used offensively, to interfere with the internal workings of unions. The Employment Act (1984) laid down procedures for organising union ballots, requiring a secret postal ballot by “marking paper” (as opposed to a show of hands); laying down a legal duty to have union officers elected; and spelling out the exact legal duties for how unions must keep their accounts and keep lists of members. This legal enforcement of “democracy” was precisely the opposite of that: it meant that the members of a union no longer had any power to shape or build the rules of their union as they wished, and that, effectively, the internal organisation of the unions became a state matter.

The assault on the internal democracy and independence of the unions was continued in the Employment Act (1988) wherein—in the double-speak of the Act—it was prohibited to “unjustifiably discipline” (i.e. expel from branch, fine, etc.) any member of a union. The Act defined unjustifiably disciplining, as such occasions where a member was guilty of “failure to participate in or support a strike or industrial action”, even where such action had been properly and democratically voted upon. Such members, of course, were free under this and previous Acts, to take their union to court if the union failed to follow those procedures properly.

In 1992 these union laws were codified into the Trade Unions and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act (TUCRA), which became the effectively mandatory trade union rule book. New unions need no longer bother drafting their rules, that Act supplies them ready made. The great Neo-Liberal Conservative government, bane of state interference, privatiser by principle, was responsible for the de facto nationalisation of the unions.Though they are subject to strict state and judicial control, they are still referred to in law as “independent unions”. The divorce was nearly complete, and the unions no longer resembled anything remotely like autonomous self-creation/organisation of the working class.

Same old story 

Yet the officers of these unions remained true to their darling state—and lo, they were rewarded in 1997 by the election of a Labour government. This, far from releasing the unions, has merely extended the principle of state-co-opted unionism, though with throwing some new bones to the union officials. The main bone given them was compulsory union recognition, so that instead of the workers needing to organise themselves to demonstrate their collective existence to an employer, unions only needed to fulfil certain (cumbersome) bureaucratic requirements to add to their head count. Of course, all of this must be conducted under the continuedly strict judicial control. Further, the government introduced the minimum wage, wherein the state steps in to fulfil the role of the working class in unions of setting their own wages.

The process has been one of ideological assault on the idea of unionism. The Tories persistently presented their assault upon unions, with all its contradictions, as being a battle for individual rights. Individuals were given the right not to join unions, to not be “unjustifiably disciplined”, to use the courts to influence the unions. The requirement for unions to have to officially defend, or renounce actions of their members means that unions are prevented from articulating their message in the public space. The damage this has done can most clearly be seen in the fate of the Liverpool dockers, where the strike was crushed by silence as the union leadership stood by. The government cannot stop industrial action occurring, but what it can stop is the ideas spreading, and stop people spreading consciousness of unionism.

The process is one of continual removal of the working class from any real control over their own economic lives, alienating institutions they created into state domination. As such people become increasingly alienated from the cultural manifestations of workerdom, enabling Labour and their union lackeys to make Mayday their day. However, all need not be lost. Remembering that 364 days a year belong to their employers, workers can take steps towards wrenching Mayday from the grasp of alienated union officialdom, and making Mayday our day.

Pik Smeet

A May Day Address (1960)

From the June 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hyde Park May 1st 1960

Comrades,

On the occasion of this annual event it is customary to cast a critical glance over the political scene and take stock of the position in which the working class finds itself. The Socialist Party gladly joins in this popular exercise of the day—not that we are going to ask you to vote for any resolutions instructing somebody to go and see the employers' representatives to call attention to some grievance.

We do feel it useful to try and estimate the actual position of the workers today, especially as the popular catch cry of the moment is that “you (meaning the workers) have never had it so good." Before examining the wider field I must frankly say, after watching a few thousands of you march into the Park, that either you are not workers—or you are among the unfortunate ones. If the appearance of the great majority of you, both at this meeting and the others, is any criterion—either you are starving and worried capitalists—or very needy and seedy workers.

Of course, it may well be that more prosperous workers are not attracted to any expression of discontent—albeit as vague and feeble as the Labour Party.

Whatever may be the situation in Hyde Park this afternoon, there is no doubt about the position in the country in general. I can’t, in a large open air meeting, bore you with long lists of quotations, but please do bear with me while I quote just one or two references. I think, if you listen to the facts, you will quickly realise that the prosperity stories we are hearing are only partly true. I might mention that we have heard them all before, about all sorts of places at various times.

They were the tales put about by interested parties in the United States fifty years ago - El Dorado—the golden land. The West Indians have been told this tale about us here in Great Britain. Double wages can be made in Australia—at double prices, this is why so many emigrants (those who can) hurry back home. Then, of course, there is Sweden—the most prosperous (?) working class in Europe. Incidentally, the people of any country lucky enough to escape the main consequences of the war could not  but consider themselves fortunate. Now, may I cite a few facts.

"The number of applications dealt with by the National Assistance Board during 1958 was 2,161,000,” which was so good that there were 8.200 more than in 1957. (Ministry of Labour Gazette, July, 1959.) A further proof of the 1960 British workers’ prosperity was the refusal of a grant to a further 341,000 applicants.

Now about wages, I quote from the Socialist Standard, May issue, a statement by Heathcote Amory, Chancellor of the Exchequer, that weekly wage rates had increased by about 42 per cent, between 1952 and January, 1960, and by about 3½ per cent. between 1958 and January, 1960. In point of fact, real wage rates, i.e., wages geared to the Cost of Living figure—or the things that wages will buy—have increased by 9½ per cent. since 1938, BUT this figure is based on standard weekly rates of industrial workers. If this included clerical and salaried workers it would probably show no increase at all.

A summary of the situation has been made by Professor Titmuss, of the London School of Economics—not a very keen supporter of the S.P.G.B., who says in a pamphlet The Irresponsible Society, that one in every seven in Britain NOW are precariously close to poverty. He puts the total of the poverty line citizens at between seven and eight millions.

Now what about the other side of the picture—the profits of the capitalists? Provisional estimates show that dividends paid by companies in 1959 were about 78 per cent. higher than in 1952 and about 12 per cent. higher than in 1958. According to Mr. Amory ‘‘the balance has been restored.” By this he means that the British workers have almost completely restored the gigantic losses in property destroyed during the war. The workers have presented the capitalists with a new productive outfit—with their own real wages stationary. This is the part of the business which keenly interests Socialists—and only Socialist Economics give the correct way to judge this matter.

The most important thing for workers to realise today is not whether they are drawing £10 or £12 a week now, whereas in 1930 they only drew 15s. 3d. from the Labour Exchange. Decisive for the worker is his position in relation to the capitalist—whether his share of wealth he produces, Wages, has increased compared with the capitalists.

Most of the evidence today shows that while many workers have improved their position—the profits made by many huge capitalist trusts have been all-time records.

These times of comparative prosperity in days of good trade are not new, they were well known to observers liker Marx, who mentioned that they are used by workers to recompense themselves for the bad times. Actually, it is the self-styled “realist” who is so convinced that workers are no longer poor, because they are not howling for work in dole queues, who cannot see the wood for the trees. He it is who, obsessed with the past, judges his own position by 1930, instead of opening his eyes to the facts of 1960.

Undoubtedly we live in a world of great and rapid change—but one thing has not changed, even for the prosperous worker—his dependence on the capitalist for his livelihood, who allows him to live only while his labour keeps the employer in opulence.

Yes, even with his television set and his motor car the worker of today finds himself beset with an array of gnawing problems.

Socialists hold that Capitalism cannot be fundamentally improved for the workers. We see no evidence at all to prove the unsoundness of our case. Only common ownership of the means of production can solve the workers' problems.

When we think of the number of May Day meetings held in the Park today, such as those of the Labour and Communist Parties, of the time and effort involved in chasing Aunt Sallies like Summit meetings or Nationalisation projects, and getting nowhere, we resolve still more strongly to raise aloft the banner of International Socialism.

Who else, but the Socialist Parly of Great Britain, with its fifty years unblemished record of uncompromising independence and opposition to all fakers and reformists is entitled to say today “Workers of the World Unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains. You have a world to win.”

Yes! But to win it, you must break with Reformism!

Horatio.

The Decline of May Day (1951)

From the May 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Capitalism pollutes almost every institution with which it comes into contact. Whether such institutions are absorbed from a previous social system or whether they grow from the foundations of the capitalist system itself, they are either moulded to suit the interests of the capitalist class or are deflected from their original purpose to meet the needs of capital May Day is no exception.

From time immemorial men have adopted the practice of setting aside a day in each year to celebrate or commemorate some event. In earliest recorded times such days usually had a religious significance. Prior to the rise of the modern religions when men imagined that supernatural agencies were at work in everything around them, they set aside annual days for the worship of their various gods. With the spread of Christianity and other religions that accepted the central theme of “the one god," the annual days of pagan worship disappeared, but their place was taken by a considerable number of saints' days. On the days dedicated to the greater of the saints men rested from their work. G. M. Trevelyan in his "English Social History" tells us that:

  “But men rested on Sundays and an indefinite number of greater saints' days. Custom enforced this rule, and the church courts did useful service in exacting penance or fine for work on Sundays and Holy Days."—(Longmans Edition, p. 88).

The urge to produce wealth for an ever expanding market gave rise to the determination to keep men, and women, at work for as many days and hours as possible. Nothing could be allowed to interfere with a workers right to work and to create profit for his employer. If religious custom stood in the way, then religious custom must be overthrown. The saints days, as holidays, disappeared until today the only religious days of significance that remain as customary holidays, in an emaciated form, are Good Friday and Christmas Day.

Capitalism in its turn adopted the practice of days of celebration, although not in the form of days of rest. In different countries the day selected for flag-wagging and fireworks, patriotic speech making and military parades, is a day to commemorate the emancipation of the national capitalist class, either from the yoke of Feudalism or from the domination of a foreign capitalist power.

In America, the Fourth of July is the anniversary of American independence from British domination-independence Day. In France, the Fourteenth of July is a day to celebrate the acquisition of political power by the French capitalist class in 1789. It was the day of the fall of the Bastille. In Russia, the Seventh of November, the day of the fall of the Provisional Government and the seizure of power by the Bolshevik party, is a day of national celebration. In Britain, a day is earmarked on the 24th of May, the anniversary of the birth of Queen Victoria, to enable children to parade and rejoice over the “Glorious British Empire." These celebrations, like the empire, are dwindling. So on at length. New Zealand and Canada have Dominion Days on September 26th and July 1st respectively, whilst Northern Ireland has its Orangeman's Day.

In July 1889 the First Congress of the Second International met in Paris. This was a second attempt to form an international organisation of working class political parties, many calling themselves Socialist parties, in an endeavour to achieve international working class solidarity. The issue of an eight hour working day was foremost. In many countries, with varying degrees of success, the struggle for a reduction of the working day to eight hours had been carried on for the past decade. The Congress set about the task to make the eight hour day international and legal.

To this end the representatives of workers of 22 countries carried a resolution:

   “.. . There shall be organised a great International Demonstration on a fixed date, so that in all countries and towns simultaneously on the given day the workers shall demand of the authorities the legal reduction of the working day to eight hours.”-(Quoted in “Labour's Turning Point,” edited by E. J. Hobsbawm.)

The day selected was May 1st and the first May Day Demonstrations were held in 1890.

This was not a day of celebration or commemoration but a day of demonstration; not a day of rejoicing or puerile sentiment but a day of demand with determination. It was to be a day on which the workers in all lands should cease work in order that they might congregate in some local, central place to evince their solidarity with one another. It was the beginning of a new kind of annual day—the workers’ day— a day of prominence in the class struggle.

The leaders of the reformist, self-styled “Socialist parties," had little conception of the class struggle. At the outset they altered the date of the demonstrations to avoid any question of strike action. Instead of the 1st of May they chose the first Sunday in May. The Congress carried a further resolution urging:

   “. . . to hold a single demonstration for the workers in every country and that this demonstration should take place on the First of May, and recommends strike action everywhere where such action is not impossible.”—(Quoted by Emile Burns in “Labour Monthly,” April 1932) 

The Amsterdam Congress of the Second International in 1904, also found it necessary to resolve on the matter.

   “Whereas the unity of the demonstration only exists in some countries, and in others not the First of May, but the first Sunday in the month is celebrated, the Amsterdam Congress reaffirms the resolution (of proceeding Congresses) and asks all socialist parties and trade unions of all countries to organise energetically for working-class demonstrations on the first of May . . . but this demonstration can be most effective only through the suspension of work on the 1st of May.”— (Quoted by Emile Burns in “Labour Monthly.” April 1932.)

The idea of a day of working class idleness was abhorent to the employers. Their toadies and cronies in the reformist political parties set to work to render May Day harmless. The Second International was not an alliance of Socialist parties but of parties akin to the British Labour Party; parties which neither accepted nor recognised the class struggle; parties which were nationalist in outlook and reformist m character. The International was powerless to enforce its will on its component parties. Gradually the class character of the May Day demonstrations evaporated. Not only were the demonstrations organised for the first Sunday in May instead of May the First, but where any demonstration was held on May the First it was invariably in the evening, so as to avoid dislocation to trade and stoppage of work. In 1927 the London Labour Party, soon followed by the Labour Party and trade union officials throughout the country, set out to boycott the “single demonstration of the workers in every country" by organising a series of local demonstrations in preference to the main demonstration that had always been held in Hyde Park, London and in similar open spaces in other cities and towns.

May Day today has little of its original character left. It is not taken seriously by many workers. Whereas it was once an opportunity for an outing with a definite purpose in view, it is now merely an opportunity for an outing, which few are prepared to take.

The national political parties that formed the Second International lined up with their respective capitalist gangs in the 1914-1918 war and urged their members at each others throats in a war they said would end war. No May Day demonstrations were held in this country during that war. The discontent amongst the workers following that war caused a brief revival of the May Day demonstration spirit. On May 2nd, 1920, the Daily Herald estimated that "not less than 8,000,000 workers took a full day's holiday” and the London demonstration was estimated at nearly one million. Similar demonstrations were held throughout the capitalist world and demonstrations were held in Japan, China, India and other eastern and colonial countries where they had not been previously organised. 1926, the year of the General Strike in this country, was another year of large May Day demonstrations, but, apart from these occasional bursts of enthusiasm, May Day as a day of demonstration of working class solidarity has steadily declined. The labour and trade union leaders have assisted this decline and helped to ensure that May Day shall not embarrass the capitalist class by providing an opportunity for international working class activity. Because, if the workers can act in world wide co-operation on one day in the year, there is no reason to suppose that they will not do so on the other 364 days.

As class consciousness grows amongst the workers in all lands, co-operative action will be planned. It will not stop at the organisation of marches and demonstrations to the parks and squares of the great cities. It wifi be co-operation to speed the abolition of capitalism.

Until then we will use May Day to re-emphasise our very real and genuine expression of solidarity with our fellow workers all over the world and to reiterate our pledge to oppose all capitalist wars and to work for the emancipation of our class without distinction of race or sex.

W. Waters

Economics at Central Labour College. (1919)

From the May 1919 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Central Labour College was established in 1909, the working-class movement, according to its founders, was about to be placed on a sound educational basis. Young men from the trade unions were to be thoroughly equipped with the necessary knowledge to leaven the whole labour movement with revolutionary principles. Classes were to be formed all over the country, and the "Plebs' Magazine" was to be published monthly, in order that the workers might be instructed in Politics, History, Sociology and Economics.

The founders of the college advertised their wares so effectually among the trade unions that they have reduced the debt they started out with almost to zero, and are now completely subsidised by the South Wales Miners' Federation and the National Union of Railwaymen—the college being owned and controlled by these two unions. This fact accounts for the almost purely trade-union propaganda of the magazine: those who pay the piper call the tune, and the C.L.C. tune is trade unionism, industrial unionism, labourism, or any other ism where its pupils can find jobs after they have gained their "degree" at this "Clark's College" of the labour world.

In its curriculum the college advertises economics according to Marx. But in the columns of the "Plebs" the readers are treated to the same economics they get from Municipal Reform candidates at County Counoil elections. In the current number, for instance, Mr. George Barker (Miners' Agent, Abertillery), says: "There are about fifty millions of debt hanging round the necks of the workers of Europe. The worker cannot pay huge dividends to the capitalist class and pay the interest on this colossal debt."

Of course not ! as wage slaves they can only pay away what they receive as wages, and wages —even according to the "Plebs"—being barely sufficient to supply the worker with necessaries, must be spent on necessaries. If they were able to do more there would be something wrong with the capitalist system, which, generally speaking, operates in favour of the ruling class by compelling the workers to accept wages that only provide them with the wherewithal to live and propagate their kind.

In the same number Mr. W. W. Craik, dealing with the Coal Commission, asks a simple question in economics : "What is capital ?" But although economics is an important subject at the college, and a correct definition of "capital" is very essential to that subject, the writer seems quite unable to give one. "What is capital ?" he asks. "Wealth used to produce more wealth," he replies, quite ignoring the fact that, thousands of years before Capitalism evolved, men used weapons and tools to "produce more wealth," and no one—either then or now—with the exception, perhaps, of avowed anti-socialists, would think of describing such things as capital.

Of course, the anti-socialist uses this more general definition to cover up or mask the true one. Capital is wealth used for exploitation. But Mr. Craik is not obliged to accept the anti-socialist definftion, and, to do him justice, he does not seem satisfied with it; and as there appears to be no limit to the number of guesses allowed, he tries again. "Capital is the ownership of labour, the ownership of the labour of yesterday and of to-day," and further on still he refers to capital as "i.e., ownership."

Now, it must be obvious that capital is something that is owned, and not the act of ownership, and Mr. Craik is only adding to the confusion that already prevails when he tells the "Plebs" readers that capital is the ownership of pit props, winding gear, machinery, etc. Adam Smith's definition that capital is "wealth used for the production of profit" is a far more scientific one, and always good enough for the Socialist, because it can easily be shown that there are no profits without exploitation.

When the Central Labour College was established its object was stated as follows: "The Central Labour College is founded to train men and women for the industrial, political and social work of the organised Labour Movement, under the supreme control of the Labour organisations in the United Kingdom, and to assist in the establishment of similar institutions elsewhere."

The founders declared for independence in the three fields—educational, industrial and political. The so called independence of the Labour Party is, therefore, the measure of Labour College independence—no more and no less. The mistaken notions of the South Wales miners, and the Liberal politics of the Labour Party, form the basis of the college instruction, which is carried back to the trade union and I.L.P. branches as independent and scientific knowledge of the working-class position. Thus neither the college nor the unions can get beyond the compromising and reform attitude of the Labour Party.

Notwithstandingall their frothy denunciations of Capitalism, and their continued affirmation that they are travelling the right road toward the emancipation of the working class, they are merely supporting and countenancing a movement that opposes the ruling class within the basis of its own system, and with no definite or settled principles for carrying through the revolution for which they admit the necessity.

They ruled themselves out of the revolutionary movement right from the first, when they said: "Just as the needs of the individual correspond to his environment, growing in complexity with his development, so the needs of the working class change and become more complex with industrial evolution. Industrial, Political and Educational organisation are each in their turn called into existence by the development of productive forces."

Thus, instead of learning from Marx that the workers can achieve their emancipation as soon aa they acquire the knowledge of their class position, and see clearly that the source of capitalist power is the political machinery, the C.L.C. waits on industrial evolution—to instruct them in a new philosophy for each epoch—and marks time with the political and industrial labour leaders until the rank and file shall have marched past to achieve their own emancipation.

F. Foan

Sixty Years of May Day Demonstrations (1949)

From the May 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

May Day, as a day of celebration, has a history that passes well back through the ages. In the days of ancient Greece and Rome it had a significance. In medieval England it was a national holiday celebrated on village green and market square with maypoles, Morris dancing, stage plays and bonfires. The remnants of these celebrations in modern times are the parades of decorated horses and vans that are held on May Day.

The May Day political demonstrations have a separate history. In 1889 a conference of the Second International, held in Paris, decided to proclaim the first of May as a day for demonstrations to agitate for the eight-hour working day. Since then, in many parts of the world, the first of May, or the first Sunday in May, has been a day when workers have marched with banners and bands to some suitable open space to listen to political and trade union speakers.

In London the demonstrators usually congregate in Hyde Park. Workers assemble in outlying districts and march to the park carrying the banners of their trade union branches or lodges, and posters and placards bearing topical slogans. Each contingent is shepherded by detachments of police and is frequently led by a band whilst the tail end is composed of small groups of workers who chant slogans in chorus as they march.

The contingents enter the park by different gates and proceed to the platforms that have been previously erected for the occasion. When all are assembled, speakers of many shades of so-called “left” opinion, often sworn political enemies, will mount the platforms and utter protests for or against the existing government, or declare what they, or their respective organisations would do if given the opportunity. The proceedings invariably end with the passing of some wordy, pious, meaningless resolution and the crowds drift away to other meetings or to the gates of the park where the literature of a variety of organisations is offered for sale.

In former days, men who have figured prominently in Labour Governments were to be found on these platforms, even, at times, in the ranks of the marchers. But today most of these men are too respectable to indulge in that sort of thing. Besides, they have affairs of state to attend to. A "big name” on the platforms is something of a rarity these days.

The slogans on the marchers' placards indicate the text of the speeches. Points of popular discontent are dealt with in a manner calculated to please the main part of the audience. In recent years we have heard harangues about increased production, friendship with the Soviet Union, the high taxation on cigarettes, delay in bringing the troops back from Greece, the Marshall Plan, the repatriation of prisoners-of-war, etc. Looking farther back we can remember fire eating oratory on such subjects as the means test, cuts in unemployment pay, the Government’s attitude to Spain, demands for peace, demands to open a second front in the last world war, the Trade Disputes act, and a host of other aspects of Capitalism.

The procedure and the speeches in other towns and cities are similar.

Where these demonstrations gather, in the larger cities of this country, there will also be found the platform of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Our speakers will not be found on the larger rostrum. They have something to say that cannot be heard from there. We have an object that precludes us from association with the woolly, reformist notions that emanate from the other speakers. We are hostile to them. They offer the workers nothing but a continuation of the problems that they demonstrate against. The Marshall Plan has faded from prominence to make way for a new red herring—the Atlantic Pact. The troops are home from Greece and more are recruited or conscripted to be sent elsewhere. The problem of the means test has passed and the problem of atomic warfare is to be faced. The Trade Disputes Act is slightly amended but the Emergency Powers Act remains. All through the years the workers have been encouraged to deal with effects and not causes. We present an opposite view. We state that all these things are secondary problems springing from Capitalist society; Capitalism will continue to produce fresh crops of them; abolish Capitalism and solve the lot for ever.

We are interested in May Day. We want it to be a real labour day. A day on which workers will demonstrate their determination to end for all time the system that keeps them in subjection. A day on which they will demonstrate to that effect with such purpose that their masters will realise that the days of Capitalist privilege are numbered. We want a May Day that will end with the passing of a resolution that will have some meaning, in that those who pass it will be organised as a class and determined to put it into operation. To that end we erect our platform in the parks on May Day and invite all workers to come around, not merely to listen, but to question and discuss with our speakers on matters that affect the lives of all.

It was a common practise in past years, to move and carry a resolution at the demonstration, voicing solidarity with workers in other lands. Leaders who sponsored such resolutions have, on two occasions, betrayed their followers by urging them to sally forth to destroy Prussianism or Fascism by slaughtering their fellow workers in other parts of the world. Our May Day message on both those occasions, and today, faced with preparations for the next war, was and is, "having no quarrel with the working class of any country, we extend to our fellow workers of all lands the expression of our goodwill and Socialist fraternity, and pledge ourselves to work for the overthrow of Capitalism and the triumph of Socialism.” That was our stand in 1914 and in 1939. It will be our stand when the present international conflict comes to a showdown, whatever the consequences to ourselves.

We recommend to all workers, in particular to those who attend May Day demonstrations, to think back over the years as far as they can remember. They will see that with each new hardship that has arisen the majority of working class organisations have devoted their time and energies to its removal until some fresh imposition or hardship has attracted their attention. So it has gone on, year after year. Some remedies have been found, some hardships removed, but a fresh crop has taken their place. The fundamental problem of poverty remains and wars continue. They will continue until the workers bring to an end the system of society that produces them.

When the mines, the land, the factories, the laboratories, the workshops, the oil wells; the ships, lorries and aeroplanes and all the other means of production and distribution—when all these things are in the hands of society as a whole (not the state) the need for expressions of solidarity will not arise; there will be no grounds for antagonism. Then, if the people wish, May Day can again become a holiday with all the spontaneous expression of joyousness that characterised it in medieval times.

W. Waters.

Capitalism's Dilemma. (1921)

Book Review from the January 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

England and the New Era, by Brougham Villiers. T. Fisher Unwin. 12s. 6d.

Mr. Villiers' work, "England and the New Era," is so well written and arranged that the subject—with most writers dry and tedious— is made quite interesting and in places even instructive. He assumes that there must inevitably be a new era, because the forces operating within the present order unless consciously controlled will bring disaster and chaos on human society.

According to him, every nation in the old world, with the exception of England, is so weighed down with debt that they are virtually bankrupt, and will be compelled to repudiate their debts. "England," he says, "may readily find herself alone in the new era, the only nation in the whole world bearing a crushing burden of debt, competing with nations which have virtually gone through the bankruptcy court and come out with free hands." From this we discover quite early that his conception of a "new era" is not different from the old order in its fundamentals.

In his introductory remarks Mr. Villiers lays much stress on the aspirations of small nations to establish their independence. He says: "Sinn Fein is no isolated phenomenon: It is only the Irish manifestation of a universal spirit." He fails to show, however, that the realisation of their ambitions will modify in any way the general character of the capitalist system. The capitalists of each country, large and small, will still compete for the world's markets, and amalgamate into opposing groups in the same way that they did in 1914. While the workers can be blinded with the ashes of Imperialism or the dust of Nationalism, it is plain that they have yet to learn that they are both built on their slavery.

Mr. Villiers' second disruptive force is the Labour movement throughout the world. He says: "There are, of course, vast differences in form between its manifestations in various countries and in the same country at various times, but in Germany and France, in Great Britain and in Russia, among the most moderate 'collectivists' and the most extreme revolutionaries, there is an essential unity of idea, a common conception of a new order utterly different from that which is falling to pieces around us. It is here, as will be seen later on, that the hope of the world will be found ; here, if anywhere, is the foundation from which a new order can arise." (Page 52.)

In none of the countries mentioned by Mr. Villiers, nor in those he has not mentioned, is the Labour movement revolutionary. While there may be revolutionaries in every land, the Labour movement everywhere is. merely reformist. The reforms advocated may be different in the different countries; that they are reforms is their "essential unity of idea," and their "vast differences in form" amount to little or nothing because none of the forms are based on Socialism, but only seek to modify the existing order of society.

Mr. Villiers is, of course, unable to show from the manifestoes or programmes of the Labour Party in this country that it is revolutionary, so he gives a brief sketch of the movement in which he says "The terms 'masters and men' had given way to 'employers and employees' even before 1911, an indication in itself of the coming spirit. Just as villeinage could no longer be maintained once the villeins felt it to be an indignity ; if the working classes no longer wish to be employees producing goods for anyone's profit, such a change in the point of view must in the long run be equally fundamental." (Page 59)

All of which is extremely consoling to those capitalists who fear that Bolshevism is the beginning of the end. While capitalists generally will be quite willing that the workers should call themselves by any name they choose so long as they leave them surplus value. But the mere wishing for a better system by the workers, or a rooted objection to produce for the profit of others, will not get them a better system, even "in the long run."

A still more hopeful sign for Mr. Villiers is the revolt of the rank and file of the trade unions against their leaders. If this action were the result of their growing knowledge it would indeed be a hopeful sign; but as Mr. Villiers himself points out, many of the strikes are of a "frivolous nature." As the workers understand their position more clearly it is safe to say that their actions on the industrial field will be based on common sense, instead of becoming wild or frivolous.

The Trade Union and Co-operative movements and their growth in recent years are also indications to Mr. Villiers of the approaching revolution, although the rank and file of these movements are still engrossed with the idea of obtaining paltry advances of wages, or a few coppers in the pound discount on the wages they, spend at the stores—facts that in themselves reflect the ever-growing poverty of the workers.

But the greatest advance of all, according to our author, is the propaganda of "Guild Socialism." He claims, that "this has greatly enriched, if not the philosophy of Socialism, at least the stock of ideas current among British Socialists." One of these enriching ideas is quoted by him from a Fabian pamphlet on  Guild Socialism" by Mr. G. D. H. Cole as follows :

   "There is no hope in Bureaucratic society. Nor any hope or chance of capitalism lasting much longer. . . . That puts it up to you either to accept what I am saying or else find some means by which you can induce men to go on producing, other than the fear of hunger. . . . Hunger has made men work in the past, but it is everywhere breaking down to-day. Either men won't go on working at all or else they will go on working for some quite different reason." (Page 61-2.)

All of which is just as vague and indefinite as Mr. Villiers' indications of a coming revolution. Though he thinks it is all true, and that "capitalism will work no longer for labour is refusing to work it." Of course wild statements of this kind cannot be substantiated by facts. Everywhere the unemployed are demanding that they shall be put to work, and already there are signs that competition for jobs is resulting in speeding up and reductions in wages. Many industries are working short time, but it is against the wishes of the operatives, who would much prefer to work overtime. In their eyes a week's wages is the essential thing, and they must make capitalism work to get it.

In his concluding chapter called "Creative Revolution" Mr. Villiers tries to show that the Labour Movement is revolutionary and that its adherents are increasing enormously. He does not tell us, however, that these numbers are made up by including the members of affiliated trade unions, co-operative societies, etc., the bulk of whom have never even tried to understand what the Labour Movement stands for. True they are nearly all more or less discontented and would listen and understand Socialism if it were intelligently presented to them. But the Labour Party and I.L.P. merely advocate reforms that lead nowhere, except that they serve capitalist interests by concentrating the workers' minds on the patching up of the present system, instead of making clear to them the necessity of ending it.

The greater portion of Mr. Villiers' book is taken up with the indebtedness of capitalist governments and the means by which the debt can be reduced or cancelled. On page 84 he presents three main ways of dealing with it.

" 1—To shirk it as much as possible, merely manipulating the taxes from time to time, so as to' provide as long as possible for the payment of interest and perhaps for reducing the principle.
" 2—To repudiate it altogether or in part.
" 3—To devise some great scheme for its repayment either immediately or over a term of years."

With regard to repudiation Mr. Villiers has examined all the arguments except one, and that one, of course, is the most important.

Those who hold the bulk of the war bonds control the political machine. The Cabinet represents their interests, and neither our author nor anyone else will ever succeed in persuading them that it is only justice for them to forego their interests when so many thousands of the workers gave their lives to make the country safe for them.

Heroic measures like repudiation form no part of capitalist policy. Not only so, other wars are expected, and who would lend if the present debt is repudiated ? Moreover, war bonds are a source of income which their holders have no wish to relinquish. The first policy is therefore the most likely to remain.

The third policy, repayment, it is suggested should be by a capital levy. His chief idea is that the stocks and shares now held by capitalists should be transferred proportionately, according to the holdings, to the Government, which would then have an income from which to pay the debt. But if that were all the capitalists might just as well keep their shares and pay themselves with the dividends. They would at least save the expenses of collection and distribution.

The capitalist class and the capitalist government are one in interests and outlook. The debt is owed by the capitalist class as a whole to some of its members. It is the collective responsibility of the capitalist class, and the assets of that class are the means of wealth production, which, operated by the working class, produces the revenue enjoyed by the capitalist class. That revenue will be neither more nor less because some of the shares, or all of them, are held by the Government, If the capitalist class, therefore, adopt Mr. Villiers' suggestion, they would merely be giving up to their executive government annual dividends to be handed back to them as repayment of the executive debt.

Of course Mr. Villiers does not expect the capitalist class to be guilty of perpetrating such a delusion on themselves, but he does think they will allow the Labour Party to do so, or that the Labour Party will accomplish it, they having adopted it as part of their programme.

Debts or no debts, the workers under capitalism can never get more than wages based on the cost of subsistence ; the debt is, therefore, a capitalist debt, must be paid by the capitalist class if paid at all, and is their concern and their concern only.

But what of the Labour Party ? While claiming to be revolutionary it spends its time inventing and advocating schemes to relieve the capitalist class of their indebtedness, to get them out of a tight corner and establish their system on a surer foundation than ever.

If they were really revolutionary they would laugh at the "dilemma of capitalism," and explain to the workers how they can escape from their dilemma—wage slavery—by establishing a system of society where the means of wealth production are owned in common and democratically controlled. Until they do this the Labour Party, instead of being "the hope of the world," are a stumbling block preventing the workers' acquisition of Socialist knowledge. Instilling hope by its sentimental clap-trap, it spreads confusion and breeds apathy in the minds of the workers.

Mr. Villiers dreams of revolution and repayment of war debts at the same time ; but they contradict each other. The one is to overthrow capitalism and the other is to make it solvent. He cannot have it both ways. Either revolution and the abolition of class-ownership in the means of life, and consequently the abolition of interest on war bonds and dividends, and the workers continue to be exploited as hitherto. His failure to deal satisfactorily with his subject is chiefly due to the fact that he does not realise what is meant by revolution and cannot conceive the possibility of a system not based on capital and ownership of capital with all that it implies.

F. Foan

To Heel. (1920)

From the November 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

The antics of the "Daily Herald" are just now extremely interesting and, in these days of fakes and fakers, keep the observer wondering what will turn up next.

We have seen the one in which the Bolshevik £75,000 was turned down in heroic mood, and our admiration was excited—more or less—by the beatific terms of self-righteousness in which the martyrs made public their martyrdom.

Being credulous, we may try to believe in the protestations of Lansbury and Co. that they were ignorant of the negotiations carried on by Francis Meynell in Russia, although it may be noted that this individual resigned from the "Herald" board when their action was made public. Nelson is alleged to have put his glass to his blind eye at the battle of Copenhagen, and one wonders if that was the action of the "Herald" directorate whilst Meynell was wandering around in Russia. In any case, the offer became public property from other sources than the sheets of the "Daily Herald" before its readers were regaled with the details and were asked to express their opinions as to the acceptance or rejection of this mysterious lucre.

If any of my readers followed the published answers to this query they will have waded through extracts giving ayes and nayes, and will have had fresh evidence of the hope for Socialism expressed by such a journal, supported by such a medley of points of view.

The latest turn is the raising of the price of the "Daily Herald" from 1d. to 2d., and at the moment of writing the matter is being presented as a life and death struggle between the capitalist Press and itself. And judging by the tone of the scribes who are entrusted with the "writing up," the demise of the "Daily Herald" would be a double funeral—that of itself and that of Socialism. This, however, is hardly likely to be the case for the following reasons :

The "Daily Herald" is not a Socialist journal, is not run by Socialists, is not written by Socialists, does not present Socialism in any shape or form, and is not read by Socialists as such. The only thing connected with it that has any relation to Socialism is the word, and it has to be presumed that the idea behind the constant use of the term "Socialism" in its columns is that constant repetition of terms is the only necessity for the production of facts.

This point of view may be good enough for readers of the "Daily Herald" (which is so much the worse for them) but it is not good enough for us, and we state unequivocally that Socialism would not suffer one jot or tittle if that paper suspended publication to-morrow.

I am prepared to admit that the "Daily Herald" very occasionally tells a little more of the truth than the organs of the Press when it suits the powers behind it, but the Socialist knows what value to place on the news ladled out daily to the working class, and therefore is not to be carried away by that, and the members of the working class who have not yet awakened to the knowledge of their position in society will not arrive at that awakening any faster by reading what the renegade Atheist, Lansbury, or any of his staff, may decide is good for them to know.

To give an idea of the "freedom" of opinion represented in the columns of the "Daily Herald" we have only to remember that quite a large and growing interest is controlled by the trade unions and co-operative societies, and various of them from time to time vote sums of money to be invested therein. In addition it is common knowledge that a proportion of seats on the board are allotted to their representatives, "responsible trade union leaders" and co-operative society officials, all of which obviously shows that the policy of the paper has to coincide with the ideas of these gentry. Otherwise the funeral service of the paper would soon be read, as it could not exist through many issues without such support.

Thus it is quite clear that any criticisms of the actions of ''responsible trade union leaders'' and their like have to be made, if at all, with an eye to the possible effect upon the funds and circulation. As an illustration of this may be cited Robert Smillie's crawl out over the miner's strike, where he endeavoured to get the miners to consent to their demand for higher wages being made contingent upon increased production. Only Smillie can explain how the miners could benefit under such a scheme, and though he might satisfy the readers of the "Daily Herald" by such an explanation, the could not satisfy a Socialist, and probably only a small proportion of the miners. Anyway, the "Labour" daily dared not criticise Smillie, although its policy—if such a term can be applied to a total absence of any semblance to a definite point of view—appears to be in disagreement with the Smillie backslide.

The same argument applies generally. No journal not supported by Socialists can put the Socialist viewpoint, just as no worker can produce works of art if he is paid to make golly-wogs—"he who pays the piper calls the tune," and the tune the "Daily Herald" has to pipe is called by as motley a crew of anti-Socialists and time-servers as could be found in the whole newspaper world.

When the workers decide that they require a Socialist daily Press they will have it and support it, and they will not invite assistance from Lansbury and his like, or accept it if offered. They will see to it that Socialism is presented and Socialism only, recognising that Socialists can only be made by Socialist propaganda.

D.W. F.