Action Replay: Wasn’t me, Guv (2026)

The Action Replay column from the November 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

We can take no stance on the charges against Manchester City, allegedly involving sham contracts that may have enabled them to pay inflated transfer fees and wages, resulting in them becoming the dominant force in English (and maybe even European) football. The potential punishments could involve massive fines, relegation, having titles revoked, and the owners perhaps having to sell. City have appealed over the guilty findings, and no doubt the appeal will take months to sort out, so we cannot comment on what the club may or may not have done. Findings of dishonesty can be overturned, as happened at the top level of Turkish football in 2015, after allegations of match-fixing dating from 2011.

But we can say that the sporting world is in no way above cheating. This can apply to individual competitors who take drugs to improve their performance. At the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, for instance, a sneaky way was employed to get round anti-doping measures, but it was unmasked, and a number of athletes were banned. Cyclist Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France seven times, but had the titles removed after admitting to taking performance-enhancing drugs.

It can also involve cheating at club level. In 2006 Juventus had two Italian league titles taken away when they were found to have manipulated referees. Marseille lost their 1993 French league title after being found guilty of match-fixing. They were relegated from the top flight, and did not win Ligue 1 again till 2010. At a less exalted level, Elgin City lost their 1993 Highland League title after having the date of one match changed so they could field banned players.

Sometimes the cheating comes from outside the sport, with gambling being an obvious source. In 1997 an Asian betting syndicate bribed stadium workers to cause the floodlights to fail at Premier League matches at times when the scoreline suited their profits. They got away with it twice, but on a third attempt the police were tipped off. In 1964 ten Football League players (including Tony Kay and David Layne) were jailed after betting on the result of matches when they had agreed to influence the outcome. One of the most notorious examples occurred in 1919, when some players in baseball’s Chicago White Sox took bribes to lose the World Series, at the behest of a betting syndicate.

So sport, like capitalist society in general, is often not exactly a level playing field.

Paul Bennett

The Cycle “Maker”. (1910)

From the October 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not an uncommon sight within the past few years was the cycle “maker” riding one machine and carrying the frame of another on his back, en route to the “enamelers’ and nickel-platers’ shop. Usually a racing man, belonging to a cycling club and possessing some mechanical knowledge, he was able to turn it to account and “make” machines for his fellow clubmen. At the time of the boom of ’96-’98, a large number of machines were put on the road by these small makers. Buying the fittings, tubes, saddle, tyres, etc. from the factors and their agents, they executed the necessary brazing, filing and erecting in cellars, sheds, back kitchens, and other places more or less suitable, yet they were able to turn out very creditable jiggers, and, moreover, they reaped a very substantial monetary advantage.

The appliances were few and not costly. Beyond a vice, gas-brazing hearth (usually a tray filled with coke), and a few files, no other tools were necessary. With the development of capitalism these small makers are fast disappearing, and in their place have arisen the cycle engineers, who have brought to their aid every appliance of ingenuity and science, availing themselves of automatic machines uncanny in their movements and amazing in their output. An outcry (emanating from the capitalist Press of the cycle trade) for the standardisation of bolts, nuts and fittings generally, was raised and met, with the result that the number of firms catering for the rider is gradually being reduced, and the amalgamation of the Edie Manufacturing Co. with the B.S.A. Co.—together employing thousands of “hands”—means that the small manufacturer of fittings, like the small cycle maker, is being completely crushed out.

The slight mechanical knowledge imparted at the schools of to-day by engineering and drawing classes, is largely responsible for the leaning shown by lads towards the engineering trades. But the youngster on entering the factory is soon made aware that he is allowed, much less required, to learn but very little of the trade. Placed under a tyrannical foreman (picked out from his class by virtue of his “directing ability,” i.e. his hustling powers) the lad is put to work a machine previously set up by a charge hand (a prospective candidate for foreman’s honours) and simply performs an operation on some part of a cycle fitting ; and he keeps on “a doin’ of it” all day long, week in and week out, so long as he can be exploited. It will be understood that machine-tool manipulation is not the only process required to turn out bicycles—the filing and fitting is so simplified by systematic handling and constant repetition that waste is eliminated.

Upon reaching the age of 25 or so our cycle hand is ripe and fully qualified, from the capitalist point of view, for investure with the order of the “sack.” Younger and cheaper men are pushing him out, or he is getting “slack,” and sees the futility of awaiting promotion. So here is the result of ten years’ cycle “making.” During this period he may have learned to work some three or four machine tools, or, to be correct, to finish a few kinds of repetition work on them, and possibly to fit or assemble parts at the bench. So sure as slack times occur the older “hand ” is discharged to swell the ranks of the unemployed, with only the poor chance of getting a job as an engineer’s improver left him. Should he, however, gain the favour of his foreman he may be placed in the tool room, to devise means of quicker production. And the results of his observations and experience are the extension of output per “hand,” and consequently the reduction of the relative number of workers required.

Fellow worker, so long as the master class own and control the means and instruments of production, so long must the present system of wage-slavery exist. Having only your labour-power to sell you are compelled to slave, and cut one against the other to get a job, receiving on the average no more than sufficient to reproduce your efficiency, and the spectre of unemployment hovers about you always. As the cause of this is private ownership of the means of production, the remedy is to establish yourselves as owners in common of those means.

SPOKE.

News in Review: Algeria (1962)

The News in Review column from the January 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Algeria

In Algeria and in France the blood still flows.

The shootings, the bombings, the threats—even the publicity-worthy attempt, by the OAS to extort money from Brigitte Bardot—are typical of a bitter struggle between nationalists and colonialists.

Recent events have been bad enough. But according to some correspondents they are only the lull before another terrible storm breaks over Algeria.

What has happened to de Gaulle, the strong man who was going to clear up this mess? Whatever local influence the French President has had on the struggle—and there is no denying that he has had some—he is pretty well powerless to resolve the basic dispute.

The Moslems are still adamantly for an Algerian Algeria. The settlers stand firm for French control of the country.

Post-war history has been notable for its bloody nationalist struggles as the colonial powers have been pushed out of country after country, not always going without a fight.

This is what can be expected when capitalism throws up its disputes over property and the right to exploit a country’s workers.

That is basically what the trouble in Algeria is about. Within capitalism such struggles must go on.

Weak politicians can certainly do nothing about this. Strong politicians may make a show of doing something but end up no better than the rest.

Pay Pause

There was, of course, much moaning in the House when they got the news that the pay pause had been defied by the award to the electricity workers.

No moaning in the power stations, though. The workers were bound to resist the pause, because it is a threat to their living standards. That is what drove the teachers to demonstrate and what may cause the civil servants to start working to rule.

For the workers, then, it is simply a matter of fighting for their interests.

And for the employers?

For some of them the pay pause was a welcome thing. But for others it was not so simple.

Some weeks before the electricity award many private employers in the road haulage industry had chosen to ignore the Minister of Labour’s ruling that a pay increase and a cut in hours could not operate until the first of this month. The employees of these firms got their rise and reduction in hours in the middle of last November.

Why did the road haulage firms give in? Simply, they reckoned up the cost of surrender. Then they balanced it against the cost of the strikes and other protests which would follow a postponement of the rise. They found that capitulation was the cheaper course. So they paid up.

Which goes to show how capitalism’s divided interests extend to the employers themselves and often defeat the capitalists’ own ends.

Scooter Slump

One by one, the never-had-it-so-good industries are feeling the unaccustomed draught of recession.

Cars, television sets and refrigerators have already had their slumps. Now a side-show industry in the post war consumer goods boom has taken a fall.

Scooters and mopeds took their share of the boom, winning a lot of young people away from the bicycles they used to pedal around. Like the rest, they had their glorious summer in 1958 when the H.P. controls were off and everything sold like hot cakes.

This was the time when Raleigh Industries, already famous for their pedal cycles came in to try to take their share of the scooter and moped market.

Since then times have become hard. Lambretta recently had to cut their prices drastically in answer to their competitors’ reductions. Now Raleigh, who have already suffered in the slump in bicycle’ sales have announced that in March they will close their factory at Smethwick which turns out their scooters and mopeds. Fifteen hundred people will probably lose their jobs.

Perhaps this only amounts to a recession from which the stricken industries will soon recover. But there are enough of them in trouble now to cause fear that it is more serious than that.

Capitalism is still a system of ups and downs. Its spells of relative prosperity cannot have any permanent value. Workers should not wait until they are on the dole queue before they learn the truth of this.

Lib-Lab?

It is early days yet for the Labour Party seriously to consider an alliance with the Liberals. Mr. Gaitskell still has enough hope of becoming Prime Minister in his own right to explain his description of Mr. Woodrow Wyatt’s suggestion of a Lib.-Lab. link-up as “silly.”

It is safe to assume, though, that the suggestion finds rather more favour among the Labour Party members who arc getting sick of being on the losing side. If the Tories give them one or two more drubbings at the polls, anything could happen.

Nothing new in this, of course. The Labour governments of 1924 and 1929 blamed their alliance with the Liberals for their failure to run capitalism. They swore that they would never again allow their hands to be so tied.

But having the 1945 government to themselves made no difference—the Labour Party failed again. The best that some of them can now suggest is to revive the idea of a Liberal alliance— which they themselves told us was discredited by the events of 1924 and 1929.

There is nothing surprising in this. The Labour Party do not exist to propound political principles. Like any other capitalist party, they are out first of all for power.

This goes for the Liberals as well. They have made it plain that they would only consider an alliance which was worth their while in terms of Members of Parliament.

All good, clean, cynical fun this. May we be excused if we do not see anything to laugh at?

"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

Letter: Bicycle Thieves in Bennetts End (1992)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Editors,

Could it be that the Socialist concept of a society where the needs of the people are freely met is beginning to catch on. Going Places on Radio 4. on Friday 19th June, reported that in order to cut down on bicycle thefts the Police in Hemel Hempstead will be offering bicycles to the public free of charge. Apparently they have so many stolen ones that have not been reclaimed they will be making them freely available to the public.

George Pearson 

London SW20

Reply:

It’s true that there is no point in stealing what is freely available. Which is why this sort of crime will disappear in a socialist society—Editors.

Action Replay: From top to bottom (2024)

The Action Replay column from the August 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Being a successful sportsperson can obviously be very rewarding, in financial terms and also as a ‘celebrity’. But there can be a lot of stress involved in getting to, and staying at, the top. Those who are talented but are not among the élite often have to struggle to survive, let alone progress.

For instance, Billy Harris, now ranked fifth among British men’s tennis players, received a wildcard to play in this year’s Wimbledon championships, though he lost in the first round. But ten years ago he was travelling around Europe, from one tournament to the next, sleeping in his van and parking at McDonald’s. Each winning match earned him a couple of hundred euros, and in 2018 he was eventually able to get rid of the van and fly to destinations. But in comparative terms, he did quite well for, as a Lawn Tennis Association coach noted, ‘about 80% of his age group just faded away and stopped playing tennis.’ So perseverance and luck were about as essential as ability.

Writing in the Guardian (27 June), the former professional tennis player Conor Niland referred to the purgatory of playing in the lower tiers of the tour: ‘a liminal space that exists only to be got out of as quickly as possible’. Isolation and loneliness were constant features of travelling and touring, especially in small towns with little to do.

Back in the 1980s, professional golfer Chris Moody spoke to Danny Danziger for the latter’s All in a Day’s Work. It was, he said, a seven-day-a-week job, and one you had to work really hard at in order to make money. A tournament would occupy four days, and the rest of the week was taken up with travelling and practising. Being away so much meant it was ‘a very anti-social existence’, making personal relationships really difficult. And your brain tended to be dulled, as so much effort was put into planning and practising and watching your diet.

Moreover, getting to the top need not mean that everything will then go well. British cyclist Bradley Wiggins (famed for his sideburns) won the Tour de France in 2012 as well as Olympic medals. But he has now been declared bankrupt, with his company having massive debts. Wiggins had a troubled childhood, yet became a very successful cyclist. He retired in 2016, but then struggled to find a role in life. His marriage broke up, and he is reportedly sofa-surfing.

So sporting achievement can require a lot of work and often results in people falling by the wayside, and even success stories can lead to big problems.

Paul Bennett

Party Notes. (1907)

Party News from the March 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Third Annual Conference will be held on Good Friday and Saturday, March 29th and 30th respectively, at the Communist Club, commencing each day at 10 a.m.

* * *

On Good Friday evening a Social and Dance will be held. Admission by programme, to be obtained from branch secretaries or direct from Head Office.

* * *

Enquiries have been made as to whether membership of Clarion Cycling Clubs is compatible with membership of the S.P.G.B. Were the clubs merely social there would, of course, be no difficulty about the matter, but in point of fact one of the rules of the N.C.C.C. adopted last year at Warwick, specifies “The propagation of principles of Socialism as advocated by the CLARION.”

* * *

The “Principles of Socialism as advocated by the Clarion” are the principles of rate-saving municipal capitalism, and state industry on the lines of the Post Office; the transference of capital and the function of the capitalist from the individual to the Public Body.

* * *

A member of the S.P.G.B. would, then, clearly be wrong in joining a Clarion Cycling Club.

* * *

In some walks of life a man is compelled by economic necessity to become a member of an organisation which devotes a small portion of its funds to a political policy as a side line. But there are plenty of purely social clubs, and the member of the S.P.G.B. consequently finds that he need not support a club that is run to advertise a confusionist journal and to propagate an “ism” that is inimical to his class, while in so far as the cycle can be used as an auxiliary to political activity the S.P.G.B. wheelers fill the bill.

* * *

The economic and speakers’ classes meet every Thursday evening at the Head Office.

* * *

Our comrades, “the two revolutionaries,” are pushing the sale of the Party Organ in the Northern industrial centres, thus performing services to the organisation that will, no doubt, be of material service to us in our endeavour to enlarge the scope of our political activities.

_____________

Now that the propaganda season is upon us comrades should throw redoubled vigour into the work of pushing the sale of the Party Organ and other Party literature. No more effective work can be performed for Socialism.

Action Replay: Best foot forward (2024)

The Action Replay column from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In May the professional cyclist Lizzy Banks decided to retire from the sport, although UK Anti-Doping found that she was in no way responsible for the traces of banned substances found in a positive doping test. However, her life had been ‘torn apart’ after she was suspended for ten months, during which the prospect of a two-year ban hung over her, even though nobody claimed that she had knowingly taken the drugs. The ordeal had cost her around £40,000, quite apart from the mental stress.

Drugs are banned in sport, precisely because they work and can improve performance, sometimes markedly so. An endurance sport such as cycling is particularly prone to doping. As the Banks case shows, athletes are susceptible to being charged even though innocent. They may have to be very careful about what they order at a restaurant or coffee shop in order to avoid ingesting something that’s banned, and have to set aside an hour each day when they may be randomly tested.

And there is a backlash, with proposals for a so-called Enhanced Games to take place sometime, somewhere, with no rules against doping in place. This is intended as a kind of rival to the Olympics, though it is not clear if it will ever get off the ground. The website enhanced.org describes it as ‘the Olympics of the future’, and claims that sport is safer without drug testing.

Of course, all sportspeople go to lengths to improve their performance, from becoming fitter to adopting better techniques of whatever kind. They may also use better equipment, but this can lead to problems too. In 2020 World Athletics banned the Alphafly running shoes produced by Nike, which had carbon plates and sizeable midsoles and were claimed to increase speed (eg, in marathon running) by 3 percent. Athletes wearing them had dominated medal-winning at some events.

Such kit is sometimes described as ‘technological doping’, and the World Anti-Doping Agency can ban items considered to be ‘against the spirit of the sport’. For instance, a swimsuit that increased buoyancy was banned in 2009 by swimming’s governing body. Nike has since created a revised Vaporfly shoe that seems to have gained official acceptance; it costs £200 or more. Tennis rackets may be claimed to be ‘the best’, and the interpretation of this will vary depending on a player’s ability.

Sportswear companies of course compete against each other to produce and sell the most supposedly efficient shoes and so on. Competition in the capitalist marketplace echoes that in the sports arena. Sometimes the line between what is deemed acceptable and what is not can be very uncertain and maybe arbitrary.

Paul Bennett

Party News. (1928)

Party News from the June 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

To Cyclist Members. 

All cyclists in the Party are asked to communicate with Com. lies at Head Office, with a view to the formation of a Cycling Section for propaganda purposes.

Economics Class.

The above class is held at Head Office, 17, Mount Pleasant, W.C., every Saturday, at 8 p.m. All welcome.

Southwark and Lambeth. 

All sympathisers agreeing with the Party are invited to communicate with the General Secretary at Head Office with a view to formation of a branch.

Derby.

Readers and sympathisers in Derby and district are asked to write to Gen. Secretary in order to further the activities of the Party there, and to form a branch.

From the “Socialist Standard,” Sept. and Oct. 1904 (1941)

From the October 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Standard is now in its 38th year of publication, the first issue being published in September, 1904. That is a long time in the history of the Socialist movement, long enough for many popular and instructive movements and events to have been forgotten. For the information of our readers and in order to encourage an interest in these forgotten events it is proposed each month to publish brief extracts from early issues of the Socialist Standard. The extracts below are taken from the two issues, September, 1904, and October, 1904: —

1. From our first editorial: —

“In dealing with all questions affecting the welfare of the working-class our standpoint will be frankly revolutionary. We shall show that the misery, the poverty, and the degradation caused by capitalism grows far more rapidly than does the enacting of palliative legislation for its removal. The adequate alleviation of these ills can be brought about only by a political party having Socialism for its object. So long as the powers of administration are controlled by the capitalist class so long can that class render nugatory any legislation they consider to unduly favour the workers.”—(S.S., September, 1904.)

2. “Coventry Cycle Trade: Female Wage-Slaves Oust Males.”

“More men are out of work in Coventry at present than for many years past, having been displaced by female employees, who have even been set to work upon small capstan lathes and wheel building. . . . The amount of unskilled male labour in the cycle trade has been reduced to a few hands. The skilled mechanics are now feeling the pinch, many having been out of work all this year. . . Girl’s average wage is 15s., and as the watch and silk trades have greatly fallen off, girls are plentiful.” (From a newspaper, August 31st, 1904, reproduced in S.S., September, 1904.)

3. “The Bogey of the Taxes.”

“Whether he is living in a country whose fiscal policy is based on Free Trade or in one in which it is based on Protection; whether the country is highly taxed or otherwise; whether the district he lives in is highly rated or the reverse, makes little difference; the worker finds that whatever of the above conditions he may be under, a subsistence is all that upon an average he obtains.” (S.S., October, 1904.)

4. “The Futility of Reform.”

“We have, therefore, to recognise all the time that it is only possible to secure any real benefit for the people when the people themselves become class conscious, when behind the Socialists in Parliament and on other bodies there stands a solid phalanx of men clear in their knowledge of Socialism and clear in their knowledge that the only way to secure the Socialist Commonwealth of the future is to depend only upon the efforts of themselves and those who have the same class conscious opinions. Therefore we have no palliative programme. The only palliative we shall ever secure is the Socialist society of the future gained by fighting uncompromisingly at all times and in every season.”—(S.S., October, 1904.)

5. The Increase of Lunacy.

“According to the Daily Express, it is an unpleasant and appalling fact that lunacy is steadily increasing in England and Wales, and it is startling to find that whereas one person in every 327 was certified as insane in 1894, the figures for 1904 are one in 288. But to the Socialist there is nothing startling in the fact. As the struggle for existence becomes more intense, as we speed up, as the raging, tearing, hurrying and scurrying possess us, and as the position of the worker becomes more precarious, we must expect that the mental equilibrium will be disturbed.”—(S.S., October, 1904.)

(The position appears to have worsened since 1904. According to the Statistical Abstract, 1939, the number of persons registered as insane in England and Wales in 1938 was 157,353, equivalent to one person in every 263. Expressing the figures in another way, out of every 10,000 of the population the number registered as insane was 33 in 1894, 35 in 1905, 37 in 1914. In 1920 it had declined to 31, but since then it has steadily risen until in 1938 it was 38 in every 10,000 of the population.)

Pedalling in Ever-decreasing Circles (2011)

From the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

Cycling is popular again but what happened to the old Clarion Cycling Club?

The metamorphosis of the precarious Ordinary – “Penny Farthing” – into its essentially present-day “Safety” format in the 1880s and a steady reduction in manufacturing costs, saw the bicycle by the following decade fast-becoming the main means of personal working class transport. Villagers and townies, hitherto isolated, could now venture healthily afield, widening geographical and social horizons, seeking erudition and enlightenment, diversifying and enriching the gene pool.

Devastating as it undoubtedly was for “High Wheeling” aristocrats and toffs to find their pastime suddenly infested with hoi polloi, salvation, at least for the seriously affluent, was nigh: the internal combustion engine was already spluttering into life.

The latter decades of the century had seen also a renewed interest in the radical ideas that had faded somewhat in the wake of the Chartist Movement of the 1850s. In particular, Hyndman’s Democratic Federation, established in 1881, swiftly proclaimed its socialist tendency, renaming itself Social Democratic Federation by 1883. Ever an uneasy coalition, it suffered breakaway the following year when a revolutionary group that included Eleanor Marx, Belford Bax and William Morris left a fundamentally reformist organisation to found the Socialist League.

Around this same time, Sunday Chronicle journalist, Robert Blatchford – “Nunquam” – was winning acclaim with an impassioned weekly exposé of conditions in the slums of Manchester. Openly declaring for socialism however, proved just too much for a nervous proprietor and following an enforced resignation in 1891, he set up his own penny weekly, The Clarion. On relocating south to Fleet Street some four years later, circulation rose steadily eventually, by 1908, doubling to 80,000.

The Clarion’s ideals were indeed lofty: to “make socialists” by writing fearlessly and honestly about injustice and inequality, to do so unpretentiously and humorously avoiding dogma and theory and to provide a forum for divergent viewpoints. This was its mission statement and – as time would ultimately prove – its suicide note.

Perhaps inevitably, cycling men and women, enthused by these ideas, would see the obvious advantages of the bicycle in spreading the message and at an 1894 meeting convened by young Brummie Tom Groom, a “socialist Cycling Club” was created; its name promptly amended to “Clarion” in honour of the journal. Reports of the club’s early activities – joyful, propagandising excursions requiring “boozometers rather than speedometers” – led swiftly to the formation of Clarion clubs elsewhere and an Easter Meet was arranged at Ashbourne in Derbyshire the following year to organise a national body.

The inaugural conference held there was an unpromising, damp, outdoor affair and the accompanying public rally fared little better; speakers harangued throughout by a “beery person”: “Aw don’t know nowt and Aw don’t want to know nowt.” Conference duly obliged by delivering…er, nowt. Notwithstanding agreement on a set of rules and adoption of a national badge and slogan – “Fellowship is Life; Lack of Fellowship is Death” from Morris’s A Dream of John Ball – no attempt was made to actually define socialism other than in the vaguest of “caring-sharing”, “happy-clappy”, “ethical” terms. Contentiously too, membership was opened to professed non-socialists, Groom strongly maintaining that “Clarion reasoning and comradeship” coupled with “physical exercise and glorious countryside” would effect speedy conversion.

The rest, as they say, is history. Whilst number-wise at least, the Club blossomed – membership nudging 7,000 in 1913 – and did despite Blatchford’s hankerings for informality, bring some order to its administrative procedures, this collective failure to achieve understanding and consensus over the actual meaning of the term “socialism” and how it might be implemented, rendered it politically impotent; tyres well and truly punctured at the bikeshed door. Ironic indeed since by 1914, the Club badge now also incorporated a proud “Socialism the Hope of the World”.

And as for the redoubtable Blatchford, it was terminal decline; his initial demand for “common ownership” and boast of “converting England to Socialism in seven years”, soon becoming a plea for “brotherly love and respect”, before plummeting to an outrageous exhortation for young Clarionettes to both shed and spill their working class blood in the Imperialist Cause, firstly in Transvaal and subsequently Flanders. In later life, embittered and disillusioned – “The Working Class is not yet ready for Socialism” – he embraced Conservatism, supporting Stanley Baldwin, “the finest British politician”, in the 1924 General Election.

The Clarion remained popular until 1914 but its jingoistic stance, abhorrent to so many, saw circulation collapse from sixty to ten thousand. Hostilities ended, it emerged as a smaller threepenny weekly but readership continued to haemorrhage in the wake of the 1917 Russian Revolution and the seductive pull of the new-born Communist Party of Great Britain. Repackaged in 1927 as a sixpenny monthly, life became increasingly difficult for a self-styled “independent Socialist review” supporting a Labour movement “as opposed to Bolshevism as it is to Fascism” and after a last brief tango as The New Clarion, it disappeared in 1934.

Oddly, the journal’s demise coincided with an upturn in Club numbers. Despite serious economic recession, bicycle ownership was increasing and on the back of the 1930s “outdoors/fitness” craze, membership soared to an all-time high of 8,300. To what extent the Club’s politics contributed is, of course, debatable: other pastimes, rambling and hiking for example also flourished and besides, activism within the ranks, by no means universal from inception, had continued to diminish. For that minority who remained otherwise, there was little evidence of improvement in the calibre of that activism.

Discord reigned between the pro- and anti-war camps, whilst both the Workers’ Sports Movement and Esperanto language were lauded as the keys to “developing solidarity”, “dismantling international prejudices” and “eradicating misunderstanding”. Never, throughout decades of fresh air, camaraderie and carousing, did there ever appear to have entered into the broad Clarion psyche, a recognition of the single global root cause of Humanity’s multiple socio-economic problems and therefore of the single global remedy required. It really was, and is, that straightforward.

Post-war, a brief membership boom was followed by serious decline as growing affluence brought with it mass car-ownership and in the prevailing Cold War environment, there began an inexorable process of airbrushing out its political roots. The Constitutional “propagation of the principles of Socialism” clause became “support for…” and office bearers, once required to actually belong to “an approved Socialist organisation”, could now be simply avowed socialists. And so it continued.

These days, the Clarion Cycling Club survives as a 600-strong rump and – lest it deter potential sponsors – presents itself as “The Club for Wise Cyclists”. May it prosper: pro-Human sentiments are, after all, preferable to none. It is tragic, nevertheless, that so much benevolence, enthusiasm and integrity should, for want of a bit of clarity and direction, have gone to waste; doubly so because in terms of its sloganeering at least, the Club had it pretty-well nailed all along.

And since the Socialist Party remains – on several levels – untroubled by commercial considerations, we are pleased on behalf of countless long-departed and intrepid wayfarers to brandish the muddied Clarion banner one final time: “Fellowship is Life” and “Socialism” – properly defined and understood, is indeed – “the Hope of the World”.

Andrew Armitage

Coventry Cycle Trade: Female Wage-Slaves Oust Males. (1904)

From the September 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those who know Marx’s assertion that improved machinery leads to the employment of an ever lower strata of labour, will read the following from a Capitalist paper of Aug. 31, with interest :

  “More men are out of work in Coventry at present than for many years past, having been displaced by female employees, who have even been set to work upon small capstan lathes and wheel building. The greatly extended use of automatic machinery and the standardisation of patterns has simplified much of the detail of cycle manufacturing, and the prices cf piecework have fallen accordingly. The amount of unskilled male labour in the cycle trade has been reduced to a few hands. The skilled mechanics are now feeling the pinch, many having been out of work all this year.
  “The price-cutting war has made it absolutely necessary to reduce the cost of production.
  “Girl’s average wage is 15s., and as the watch and silk trades have greatly fallen off, girls are plentiful.
  "A local manager says extended female employment gives satisfactory results and will be further developed, there being a number of parts upon which they can be profitably engaged. For male labour the outlook is very gloomy.”

The Pace That Kills. (1913)

From the January 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Modern Street Traffic Problem Discussed.

A Philosophy in a Nutshell
“Hurry on, please!” is the catch phrase of the day. It expresses the salient characteristic—with or without the please of every modern industrial centre, just as “Get on or get out!” sums up its brutal philosophy. In the roaring traffic of the highway, indeed, we have a vivid yet typical example of this “non-stop” age.

Take modern road traffic, then, as a case in point. It illustrates the rapid yet enormous changes forced upon society by economic development, and it shows unmistakably how little the hireling worker profits by the wonderful mechanical progress his physical and mental labour has made possible. The ubiquitous motor has made the dweller in the most distant hamlet familiar with its dust and dangers, but in London’s streets the “motor peril” now reaches its apotheosis.

Truly the motor is everywhere, but on the crowded roads of the metropolis its presence and speed have raised a problem for which the multitudinous highway authorities seek in vain a solution.

The streets are turned into slaughter yards, and it is no crime in the eyes of those who administer the law, for the motorist to slay the harmless passer-by. It is by far the cheapest form of murder, for it is scarcely too strong a statement to say that the motorist has practically been granted the right to slaughter any who dare to cross his path.

At inquests the motorist is almost always exonerated from blame—particularly if it is pointed out that he was sober. And even in those rare cases where this does not happen the penalty is a puerile censure, or a punishment ludicrously disproportionate to that which is inflicted when the murder is done other than with the aid of a motor.

Way for the Road Hog!
Above all the conflicting and hysterical statements anent the modern highways problem one thing is clear: that high speed is the chief bugbear. “It’s the pace that kills.” Exceeding the speed that is safe in the particular circumstances is the cause of most of the maiming and slaughter. Indeed, the law, ass though it is, nominally establishes a speed limit. Yet motorists habitually exceed that limit. In fact, travelling at the legal limit is stigmatised as a “mere crawl”. Moreover, it is not for the safety of the public that corners are rounded and roads widened and strengthened, but simply to allow greater speeds to be attained—with the inevitable consequence of a longer casualty list.

It is, further, an understood thing that the police never prosecute for exceeding the speed limit unless it is exceeded by over five miles, and very rarely even then. The car owner’s most frequent boast is of the speed at which his motor travels, and the rare fine is regarded as a certificate to the quality of his engine, and is a tribute to his childish vanity.

Despite the fact that most of those killed and maimed on the highways would still be safe and sound if a rational speed in the circumstances had been adhered to, representatives of motor associations fatuously assert that not high, but “low” speeds, are the concomitants of accident! And as though to support this risible doctrine, almost every motorist in the courts, contemptuous of the law relating to perjury, states his speed to have been at the time of the smash, between five and twelve miles an hour! That is the homage that vice pays to virtue!

Motoring magistrates are ever ready to condone the recklessness of the motorist, and sometimes even lecture pedestrians and cyclists on the nuisance and danger their existence on the road presents for the man behind the “petrol gun”! They reserve the vials of their wrath, however, for the urchin on a bicycle, whose crime was in enjoying an innocent “coast” down an incline at little more than half the legal speed limit for motors!

The Hog’s Grunt Translated.
To such a pass have things come that the attitude of the average motorist is practically that the roads are his property, and that all others are trespassers, to be hooted off. “Get off the earth or I’ll push you off!” is the sentiment expressed in the imperious howl of the motor syren.

Besides being the capitalist’s instrument of profit, the motor is now his chief toy—or at least it runs his “blonde” or his “brune” very close for pride of place in this connection—and to the arrogance engendered by the possession of the most powerful and speedy thing on the road is added the arrogance of wealth and class. The result is a growing contempt and intolerance on the part of the motorist toward the weaker users of the road, mitigated only faintly by spasmodic reprisals and agitations on the part of the latter.

But why go on? It is neither necessary nor advisable to recount at length the manifold abuses of the motor vehicle—the simplest statement of fact suffices.

Yet the petrol engine is a marvellously efficient instrument, and in its further development its possibilities are great for humanity. The simple question to be emphasised then arises—why should an undoubted mechanical advance spell greater discomfort, toil, and danger to the workers? It would be quixotic, or worse, to attempt to stop the development of motor traffic, and it would be equally futile to drag the red-herring of the individual “reckless driver” and the exceptional “road hog” across the trail. The trouble has deeper roots.

The chauffeur, for example, must obey his master or be supplanted by a more obedient servant. The taxi-driver must keep up the earnings of his cab or lose his livelihood. The employee of the motor-bus trust must keep carefully to his schedule times and maintain the earnings of his vehicle—indeed his wage depends on the number of miles he can run. Thus it is that other road users suffer who are too weak to cope with the powerful motor.

Inciting to Murder.
Among the weakest of road users is the cyclist, and, it so happens that the cycle is, above all others, the workers’ vehicle; and those who employ it as a means of getting to and from their daily toil, know full well how the danger grows. But the bus driver, held by the trust to an inelastic time table, with his livelihood endangered if the takings of his vehicle and its daily mileage fall, is economically compelled to make unscrupulous use of the power his motor gives him, to the detriment of others. Self-preservation makes him regard the slowly moving cyclist and pedestrian as obstacles to his livelihood, hindrances to the keeping of his time schedule, impediments to his speed in getting first to paying points on the route.

The type of mind engendered by such an economic position may be gauged from the complaint of a motor bus-driver, at a South London inquest on a victim, with regard to cyclists, that “he frequently had to give way to them”.

Not always, evidently. Indeed, when pedestrian or cyclist is killed, well, “accidents will happen”, and there is an obstacle less on the road, while after all, coroners are indulgent. If a cyclist is scared off, he becomes a passenger the more for the bus, and another source of profit for the trust—a trust which, by the way, has the sublime effrontery to pose, in an official letter to the Press, as jealous of its “reputation as the guardian of the public safety”. Gordelpus!

Of course, if every human being killed or injured by their agency was made to cause such a heavy monetary loss to the transport companies that it outweighed the profitableness of high speed and reckless driving, then the massacre would cease. But is anyone so simple as to believe this will be done? Can thugs be relied upon to prohibit murder? It is motor owners who legislate. What avails human life when put into the scales against dividends. Indeed, the attempt to make human life of more account than profits would be howled down as a dastardly, senseless, revolutionary attack upon the sacred rights of property.

A Profitable “Remedy”.
No. Whatever “reforms” may be inaugurated will not diminish, but may increase, profits. A limitation of further bus licences is already semi-officially foreshadowed, and worked for. This would mean the granting of a permanent monopoly against the public to the existing trust, and the exclusion of fresh competition, without any guarantee for public safety or convenience.

But is this question of the killing and maiming by motors the only one, or even the most important? Obviously it is not; and it is only dealt with here because it is but a symptom. It is true that nearly 150 persons have been killed outright by the motor-bus trust in the metropolitan area alone during the past year. That is terrible enough; but have not equal numbers of workers being sacrificed at one fell swoop in preventable colliery disasters—not this year alone but every year? And should we have heard so much about the motor-bus slaughter had it not suited the purpose of a set of officehunters to make political capital out of it, on behalf of that cheerless piece of humbug, “the people’s trams”?

There is, however, no need to belittle in any way the facts relating to the motor peril. They are appalling. But the rest is more terrible still. The one is but the manifestation of the greater evil, for the sinister result of modern traffic conditions has a deeper meaning than is realised or expressed by commentators in the Press. It signifies the growing pace and intensity of industrial life, the universal acceleration of production, and the decreasing value of the life of the worker when put in the balance against the pleasure or the profit of the class that owns the country. The huge and increasing size of industrial centres, and the greater distances between the workers’ home and the factory, the need for more quickly transferring labour, the greed of the rack-renter of the central districts, the knowledge that the workers’ “time is money” to the capitalist, the rush for profits of a transport trust, and the all-pervading atmosphere of hustle, recklessness, and speed that is engendered by capitalist greed and the ever-increasing world-wide competition—all these are symptoms of the deep-lying social malady.

It is not very long ago that miners were entombed in a burning mine by bricking up the mouth of the pit in order to save the property! No! the sacrifice of human life on the road is not an isolated phenomenon. The drowning of seamen for the sake of a few extra tons of cargo consequent on the raising of the load-line by a Liberal Board of Trade; the killing and maiming of an enormous and increasing number of workers in mine and factory for the sake of extra output and extra profit; and the toll of life taken on the highways for the sake of the profit or pleasure of accelerated transport, are all phases of the same fact. Men are the slaves of the machines they have created.

Modern machines, in their marvellous precision, complexity, and swiftness, bring with them the possibility, the material groundwork, of greater leisure, and the provision of the good things of life in ever-increasing abundance. Yet the only reward of those who toil is more intense labour, a less secure position, greater hardships and dangers, and a shortened life. Out of good cometh evil? Why? Because those who work are hirelings, while those who toil not own. The machine supplants the hireling, makes him redundant, and starves him instead of feeding him. The new machines and higher speeds only increase the wealth of the parasitic owner, enabling him to discharge more wage-labourers, reduce wages, and intensify toil. Thus it is that instruments capable of dispensing wealth and leisure to all, impoverish and overwork the many. Thus it is that the triumphant advance of technology has only carried our class on to ever more painful labours. We are victims of the machine only because we are the hirelings of the class that owns it. The evolution of industry leads us on, and we struggle painfully to adapt ourselves to its steps. Hitherto the workers have neglected the one needful step—the democratic ownership and control of all industrial machinery.

Speed and concentration are the order of the day. But the London transport trust, while it provides the example of the disease, hints at the only remedy. Industry after industry has developed to the trust stage, and has shown us plainly that since those who produce now run the machinery and organise industry—for absentee shareholders—they are demonstrably capable of running production for themselves! Surely the time when they will do so is near at hand! The need, the possibility, and the economic foundation of Socialism are manifestly present.

Industrial advance places the means of socialised production within the workers’ reach, and their daily trials and difficulties must open their eyes to the supreme need of realising that possibility, and of wresting the power to control from those who now usurp it. Then they will resume control of their means of life, becoming the masters of the tool of production instead of remaining enslaved; and will for the first time be able to utilise technical progress humanly and intelligently, to provide more leisure and a completer life for all.

But so long as class ownership remains, for just so long will the long list of killed and maimed continue to grow, and all remediable measures fail to keep pace with the break-neck speeding up of our daily tasks. Already we are becoming inured to the motor murders as to the butchery in other spheres of industry. The sudden development of the road motor “within the memory of a schoolboy” has struck the popular imagination, leaving scarce heeded other and more deadly fields. But soon this too will pall, and the great problem as a whole will only press more surely for solution.

Hustle and worry, then, will continue to be the worker’s lot; danger, suffering, and want dog his footsteps ever more closely, until, in the fullness of time, the scales shall fall from his eyes and he shall see how frail his fetters are. And when he feels his mighty strength, and at long last sees its obvious use, woe betide the parasites who have battened on his sweat and blood in the long night of his blindness and ignorance!

F. C. Watts

Action Replay: Pressure to Compete (2012)

The Action Replay column from the October 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lance Armstrong was never actually caught taking performance-enhancing drugs. Rather, the cyclist simply gave up fighting the allegations that he had done so. Regardless of the truth of the situation, this latest development is a reminder of the role of drug-taking in many sports.

There were plenty of earlier examples, but large-scale taking of drugs to improve performance probably goes back at least to WWII, when many soldiers took amphetamines and anabolic steroids to boost their alertness and aggression. It did not really become an issue in sport until 1967, when the International Olympic Committee began to ban drugs, though full-scale testing only started in 1972. In the former state capitalist countries of Eastern Europe, doping had become a kind of standard procedure.

Of course, you might well ask the question, what is wrong with doping? And how does it differ from following an appropriate diet, consuming energy drinks, using the very latest kit and clothing that are intended to make you run faster, and so on? The official answer is that, quite apart from wanting sport to look ‘clean’ for spectators, many drugs are dangerous. Cycling, which as an extreme endurance sport is particularly open to doping, has seen a number of deaths from taking erythropoietin, which increases the red blood cell count. Anabolic steroids can have side effects such as acne and impotence in men, and hair loss in women. Some Paralympic athletes actually give themselves electric shocks to boost their blood pressure. However, even legal gym supplements that boost your protein may lead to kidney damage.

As for why athletes risk their health and even their lives by taking drugs, the answer lies in the money and the fame, not to mention the pressure from coaches and national associations. There is an ongoing race between those who organise doping and those who devise new testing procedures, with neither side able or willing to stand still. The priorities of a system based on competition speak for themselves. And, as so often, human intelligence and ingenuity are put to ultimately pointless uses.

Paul Bennett

Brief Reports (2012)

From the November 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nick Clegg has urged the Liberal Democrats to show “courage and vision” by not sacking him. The call comes after his apology for failing to fulfil his pre-election promise to fight any increase in university tuition fees. Mr Clegg also said there could be “no question” of further lowering the top income tax rate of 45%, which will come into force next April, “and you can take my word for it”. A spokesman for the CBI, the bosses’ union, reported that his members were ‘jubilant’ at the news, and many were already splashing out on extra yachts in anticipation of the further tax cuts.

************************************************************

Ministers need to choose their special advisers carefully or they may end up in situations worthy of the BBC satire The Thick of It, MPs have said. The TV series, which is basically Yes Minister! with swearing, highlights the role of dodgy special advisors or Spads, temporary government employees who are not bound by the same rules of impartiality as civil servants and who may be following their own agenda. Recent scandals have shown spads to be deceitful, venal, corrupt and incompetent. Labour leader Ed Miliband and Prime Minister David Cameron are both former special advisers.

************************************************************

In the wake of the Lance Armstrong drug scandal, the company Peddle-It.com has launched a new performance enhancer called Placebonite, which it says is guaranteed to be a top seller: ‘The industry dilemma is that none of the legal products work, while all the ones that do work are illegal. In fact, for a product to work would necessarily make it illegal. You can’t stop athletes pumping themselves with something, so we’re giving them the perfect product. It’s legal, and they think it works, so it does!’ Economics analysts are studying sales, with a view to applying the rationale to other areas, like economics.

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Unemployment fell by 50,000 to 2.53 million between June and August, official figures show, as more people died, left the country or went off benefit to become burglars. “It’s proof that the government’s policy is working’, said a spokesman for the DWP, “People would rather turn to crime than endure the abuse we dish out in the Work Programme.’ The figures follow the announcement of a new government scheme to employ disabled people as motorway bollards.

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The “worst may still be ahead” for the banking system, the Bank of England’s deputy governor has told a gathering of leading bankers. Paul Tucker said reserves held by banks were still not calibrated for the “end-of-the-world risks” that remained a possibility: ‘If you’re buying that yacht, now might be a good moment to fit it out for a long sea voyage. There are lots of islands going cheap in the Caribbean.’

Propaganda in the Provinces: A Cycling Diary (1906)

From the November 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

When I arranged to spend a week of my fortnight holiday in pushing the interests of the S.P.G.B. I expected to have either the redoubtable J. Kay or some other valiant and experienced comrade as a companion for my cycling tour, commencing August 11th; but some unkind strokes of Fate prevented that expectation being realised, and I had to sally forth alone.

I am asked to write an account of my tour, and to do it briefly, so in order to fulfill this condition, I am putting my experiences in diary form.

Saturday. Aug. 11. Had my first day's riding — 53 miles against a stiff wind. Reached Bedford at noon. Was unable to hold meeting here, no pitch being available tried to secure stall in the market for sale of literature but failed, so had to be content with looking up a few old friends  and disposing of a Manifesto or STANDARD where I could.

Sunday. Aug. 12. Reached Northampton at 11 a.m. and proceeded to the market Square. The local branch of the S.D.F. presently put in an appearance and started their meeting, during which I got amongst the audience with the literature, the result being that the people had parted with their spare coppers before Justice came on the scene, The speaker urged his hearers never to support Liberal or Tory candidates, and when question time came I asked him why the S.D.F. branches had frequently supported Liberal candidates and also why they had done it in Northampton. After a brief consultation the chairman dealt with the question, or rather made a long rambling statement in which he admitted that the S.D.F. in Northampton made a grave mistake, but defended the action taken in support of Naoroji in Lambeth and generally defended the go-as-you-please policy which has characterised the actions of his organisation during the last few years. The meeting was then closed (although I had intimated my intention of offering opposition) but fortunately the crowd remained, and I dealt as fully as time allowed with the differences between the S.D.F. and the S.P.G.B. Literature sales: — Manifestoes 13, Standards 25.

Monday. Aug. 13. After a delightful ride to Leicester, and an equally delightful rest when I arrived there, I opened out in the market-place at 7.45 under rather trying circumstances. I had a very vigorous evangelist in close proximity to my meeting, and a band playing sufficiently near to draw the usual market-place crowd. Socialist propaganda is badly needed here, in fact there did not seem to be any one present among my questioners who had got much further than Labourism (dependent or independent according to circumstances). One friend—whom I judged to be an I.L.P. man—seemed very wroth at my attack on the L.R.C. and his idol Ramsay MacDonald, and whilst we were engaged in a little argument as to whether J. R. M. is, or is not a Socialist, an incident occurred in which made myself and every one in the crowd (except my opponent) laugh very heartily. Along comes a young man who has not heard the discussion, but hears me use the sentence, "the only hope of the people lies in a social revolution"; working his way to the front of the meeting, he shouts, "We don't want you Socialists down here, we've got MacDonald!" After this I did not think it necessary to follow the matter further as it seemed that, whatever the local Labour party may claim, the "man in the street" does not look upon Mr. MacDonald as a representative of Socialism.

Several other questions were asked and answered mostly from the reform point of view and a fairly good meeting was brought to a close at 9.30. Literature sales: — Manifestoes 14; Standards 25.

Tuesday. Aug. 14. This was a blank day so far as propaganda was concerned, owing to the fact the my bag, which had been sent on, had not arrived at Loughborough where I had intended holding a meeting. No literature, no meeting.

Wednesday. Aug. 15. This was the first wet day of my tour, but the weather was fair when I reached Derby and hoisted my poster on to the statue railings in the market place. Here I met the Secretary of the Woolwich I.L.P., who was holiday-making like myself and also a prominent member of the local Socialist Party. Whilst in argument with them preparatory to commencing the meeting, the rain began to fall in torrents and continued for about twenty minutes. When it was fine enough to venture forth from shelter I found that someone had commandeered the box which I had at much difficulty secured as my platform, also at the same time, some papers which the box contained. This and the prospect of further rain made me decide to give up the meeting. Sales: — Manifestoes 6; Standards 3.

Thursday. Aug 16. Nottingham. Here the weather looked very threatening but about 7.30 it cleared up and was beautifully fine. I consulted a policeman as to the best place for holding my meeting, the market-place being quite covered with stalls. Robert was very polite and indicated the bottom of Derby Road as the best pitch. but added that I had better be careful as to what I said, as he had seen many a speaker upset the crowd and be glad to escape by hopping on to a tramcar. However, I held a meeting from 7.45 until 10.20. an hour being taken up with answering questions which were very numerous and varied in character, but fortunately were asked at the proper time and in decent order. This was one of the best audiences it has ever been my pleasure to address, and I am hoping to visit Nottingham again shortly (with a companion for preference). Literature sales: — Manifestoes 27; Standards 42.

Friday. Aug. 17th. I had promised to hold another meeting in Nottingham: but it rained hard the whole evening.

Saturday. Aug. 18th. Kettering. Weather improving, and had a delightful ride here from Nottingham. My experience here was not very gratifying, as I made two attempts to get a decent meeting in the market-place, but without success. The first time, the Band came along and effectually silenced me: on the second occasion, a smart glee-party came along and captured my crowd. I had one rather rude young fellow who several times interrupted me and who at length shouted, "You think you're clever, mister, but you only evolved from a monkey!" When I replied by asking him if he could give me any idea as to when the process of evolution from monkeyhood would commence in his case, he sobered down somewhat, and, in a few minutes, disappeared. Literature sales: — Manifestoes 6; Standards 7.

Sunday. Aug. 19th. Rode to Luton with the intention of holding a meeting at night; but literature had not turned up and two bands were busy in the town so the idea had to be given up.

From which it seems
The best laid schemes
Of F. E. D.
Oft gang agley.

My tour concluded with a delightful ride home via Hatfield, Hertford, Waltham, High Beech and Woodford.

Next year I hope to do something rather more ambitious with the assistance of a good speaker. There is excellent scope for our propaganda in Leicester and Nottingham, and a "Party Outing" to Nottingham by one of the Sunday League trains is worth consideration from a propaganda point of view. Any members anxious to distinguish themselves in this way can at any time rely upon the presence and support of

F. E. Dawkins

Sport and the Spirit of Capitalism (2012)

From the November 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Today the scandal in professional cycling is doping: a hundred years ago it was racism.

Traditionally, things have tended to be difficult for the American athlete who happens also to be black. Jesse Owens, snubbed by his own President, had to travel to the 1936 Berlin Olympiad for the “warmest ovation of his life” – and a friendly wave from the Fuhrer himself – whilst a young Cassius Clay, disgusted by his homecoming reception some 24 years later, reportedly consigned his Rome Olympic Gold to the muddy depths of the Ohio. Practically unknown today, although in his time as famous as Owens or Clay, is cyclist Major Taylor. Why?

In the couple of decades straddling the turn of the twentieth century, cycling was as hugely popular in the USA as baseball or boxing. Before the arrival of the motor car and aeroplane, it was effectively the world’s fastest sport with its own galaxy of highly-paid superstars, drawn mainly from the ‘artisan classes’. However, as the century progressed this popularity steadily diminished until, by the outbreak of World War Two, it had sunk into almost total oblivion; its traditions and gladiators – particularly its black ones – forgotten.

Marshall‘Major’ Taylor – as a performing trick-cycling youngster, he sported a mock-military tunic – was born into rural Indianan poverty in 1878, his slave parents having crossed into freedom from Kentucky. Effectively adopted by a wealthy white family as companion to their only son, he spent several happy years during which he was treated, and encouraged to view himself, as racially equal. Taylor was, therefore, no Jim Crow-era ‘uppity nigger’, never having been a ‘downity’ one in the first place.

Such lifestyle gave him access to the unheard-of luxury of a bicycle, upon which machine, when he duly returned, aged thirteen, to his birth family, he displayed such prodigious competitive prowess that, allied with his acrobatic skills, he was able to turn professional some five years later.

World champion

His rise thereafter was meteoric. Within a couple of years he had won both national and world titles, broken and re-broken no fewer than seven world records – and all in the face of appalling racial hostility. With cycling’s then governing body, the League of American Wheelmen attempting an outright colour ban to supplement prevailing member antipathy, Taylor experienced frequent difficulty both entering events – and then exiting them in one piece. Under the noses of prejudiced officials, he was routinely fouled and assaulted, at best having to single-handedly overcome the combined efforts of the entire field. Spectators and journalists, however, loved this gutsy, stylish rider – “the few hissed: the many cheered” – and promoters, recognising his box office appeal, welcomed him.

A devout Baptist, Taylor’s refusal to compete on Sundays effectively precluded further world titles and when physically attacked his response, invariably, was to turn the other cheek – and simply pedal a bit faster. Over several years he was, unquestionably, the best short-distance cyclist on the planet, idolised throughout Europe and the Antipodes, practically unbeatable in fair competition.

Retiring in 1910, Taylor, like so many sportsmen, struggled with life-beyond-adrenalin. He entered the fledgling motor trade but proved a better cyclist than businessman. Ever-generous and charitable, his fortune slowly evaporated, his marriage foundered, his health collapsed and dying penniless in Chicago in 1932, his unclaimed corpse was accorded a segregated pauper’s burial.

So much for ‘sport’ within class-divided, socially fractured society. In truth, how could it be otherwise? With life for billions a constant struggle for basic economic subsistence or paltry reward – a rat race – its recreational elements must surely reflect this. Where winning, acquiring, surviving are the overriding imperatives, then cheating, shortcutting, colluding will inevitably follow. And anyway, the race itself is pretty well fixed – odds fiddled, running order predetermined, from boudoir (parked Bentley or park bench) to battleground (boardroom or building site).

When the rat race is over

What then, when humanity has finally transcended the rat race? With the world’s resources now the common heritage how will societal attitudes towards sport have altered and in what ways might the calibre of performance have been affected? Will there actually be competitive sport?

The great post-war Australian coach, Percy Cerutty once averred that the finest athletic displays he ever witnessed were in Aboriginal communities where, uncluttered with and unfettered by what he called “Western values” and religious hang-ups, participants deported themselves with a natural elegance and fleetness of foot, and could endure levels of pain and suffering well beyond those of their ‘civilized’ counterparts.

Replicating that in a concrete stadium would, however, have been problematic. Chucking a spear across an empty field, jumping in triplicate into a pit of sand, lumbering endlessly around a plastic track with neither tasty kangaroo up front nor hungry crocodile behind to stimulate the pace? And what use would a communistic tribesman have had for a gold medal except to dangle it on his didgeridoo?

Such issues will be, of course, for society’s members – locally, globally, varyingly – to settle. Many will doubtless see sport purely as a means of healthy exercise and recreation whether strenuous and vigorous or painstaking and skilful; others may prefer to merely spectate or do nothing.

Some competitive elements and means of recording may well of course linger: football retaining its goalposts and referees, athletics its measuring tapes and stopwatches, judo its belt and points systems, but gone surely will be the all-pervading need to defeat, vanquish and rout: the tackle above the ball, the punch below the belt, the bouncer, the beamer and the hypodermic. Imagine: the Corinthian Spirit restored; amateurism regaining its true meaning and status within sport – and beyond. Imagine: world festivals replacing international competitions; sport for sport’s sake. Imagine too: divisive national flags recycled into cleaning mops; chauvinistic anthems supplanted by…Imagine.

And if some future Major Taylor is observed swooping around a velodrome with a posse of somewhat paler gentlemen in his wake, there will be no question whatsoever of bullwhip or hood: he’ll simply be pedalling a wee bit faster.

Andrew Armitage