Notes by the Way: Do You Trust Colonel Nasser? (1956)

The Notes by the Way Column from the October 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Do You Trust Colonel Nasser?

Much of the propaganda about the Suez dispute has been concerned with whether Colonel Nasser is to be be trusted. Sir Anthony Eden says no; and the Colonel says he doesn’t trust the Western Powers. Many of the Labourites who oppose the Government’s policy affect to believe that British Capitalism can rest content with the Colonel’s promise not to interfere with the unfettered passage of the Canal.

Which of them is right? The answer is that they are all wrong. History is littered with binding treaties which turned out to be scraps of paper; with treacheries and forsworn promises even when the signatories, at the time they pledged their word; had every intention of keeping it.

The truth is that where vital economic and military interests are concerned it is so easy for the party to the agreement, who finds it becoming an obstacle, to convince himself that altered circumstances justify him in repudiating his obligations. (There is a lot to be said for the attitude of those Quakers who, on moral grounds, refuse to pledge their future conduct lest this should happen).

It was British governments which occupied Egypt "temporarily" and stayed there for over half a century and British governments which have not paid off the hundreds of millions of pounds they pledged themselves after her World War I to repay to America.

All governments, when they find it highly convenient to do so, and provided they can get away with it, break their promises. They do it, too, in home politics with election pledges and it is the height of simplicity or hypocrisy for Labour opponents of Eden to pretend that we all ought to trust one another. They are indeed “all honourable men.” but does the Labour Party trust Eden when he makes election pledges? or does he trust them?

About that High Dam and American Cotton

It happens that Egyptian plans for a new dam on the Nile provide an example of how promises come to be broken. What sparked off the Suez dispute was the action of Mr. Dulles in suddenly withdrawing the promise he had made to supply millions of American dollars to help Egypt meet the estimated £120 million cost of the new high dam at Aswan. The excuse given by Dulles was that the American Government believed Egypt's own financial resources to be insufficient to meet the rest of the cost, particularly since Egypt had been mortgaging its resources to buy costly arms from Russia. The British Government followed Dulles’ lead in withdrawing an offer of aid.

But an American reader of the Manchester Guardian, writing from San Francisco, gives a different reason. Mr. Dulles’ Republican Party, needs every vote it can in the forthcoming Presidential election, including the votes of American cotton growers, already worried about large unsold stocks of cotton, they do not like the idea of an Egyptian dam which will greatly extend the irrigated area on which Egyptian cotton can be grown and put on the world market in competition with American cotton. The San Francisco reader writes:—

"The reason given by Mr. Dulles for the last-minute refusal was that Egypt was not able to fulfil its part of the contract. Whether Egypt was able or not, I do not know, but the more likely reason is that the State Department heard protests from the cotton growers of Louisiana and Mississippi. This is the year of a Presidential election, and in election years American foreign policy is always uncertain." !

(Manchester Guardian, 29/8/56.) 

The same writer also dismissed any notion that Mr. Dulles has developed scruples about using force in international disputes, and 'that this explains his caution over Suez:—

"When American canal interests were endangered by a recent revolution in Guatemala, America acted not with caution but with decision, and the revolt was quickly put down."

And what about Colonel Nasser’s pretence that it is only the Western Powers whom he cannot trust and that the African Powers are full of mutual love and confidence? Does the Colonel trust his fellow religionists in the Sudan or his fellow Africans in Ethiopia? Not on your life! The Government of the Sudan does not like the Egyptian plan and can advance seemingly weighty technical reasons. They would prefer dams and irrigation schemes higher up the Nile and its tributaries, under a joint operation in which Ethiopia, Uganda, the Belgian Congo, would join with the Sudan and Egypt. But the Colonel does not trust them any more than British Capitalism trusts the Colonel. He fears quite reasonably, that if Egypt puts up a lot of money to build dams not inside Egyptian frontiers, his Sudanese brothers may be tempted to take advantage of it. Mr. C. L. Hartnoll, wrote on the subject in The Arab World, which is the organ of the Anglo-Arab Association and sympathetic to the Egyptian point of view, with the Egyptian Ambassador as one of its patrons. The article, written before the Suez dispute blew up. contains the following:—

“The most probable explanation of Egypt’s insistence on the superior merits of the High Dam is, therefore, most probably a political one. No doubt she feels that if she has to put up the money anyway, she might as well have full control of the whole undertakings on Egyptian territory rather than disperse control by foreign engineers at various points in the Sudan, Ethiopia Uganda and the Belgian Congo. Strategically she has always felt at the mercy of any power controlling the upper waters of the Nile but at least at Aswan she would have the control in her own hands. Also, of course, the prestige value of the High Dam to the Revolution and its leaders is not without its attraction." (The Arab World, July, 1956.)

For while Egyptian Capitalism masks its financial interests under a high falutin imperialist principle called “the natural unity of the Nile Valley,” which includes the ambition of Egyptian control of territories all the way up the River, some of the equally ambitious Sudanese have dreams of achieving this “natural unity” at Egypt’s expense.

The Sudanese do not like the idea of Nile control, vital to themselves, being in Egyptian hands at Aswan. And the Colonel for his part may reasonably fear that if Egypt puts up money for dams higher up the Nile the Sudan or Ethiopia might “do a Nasser on him.” This is what Capitalism does to human relations.

Unearthly Socialism

In Labour Party journals and on their platforms, lots of pens and voices are calling for means to recapture the “lost spirit of the movement.” One lifelong supporter knows an unexpected direction in which to look. Writing in The People (April 8, 19.56), Mr. Hannen Swaffer had this:—

“I am, in religion, a Spiritualist and a Socialist. To me both these words mean the same thing. By this I mean that I have learned from the Spirit world to understand something of the creative force which is behind all creation, and that, knowing it to be my duty to try to carry out. during my earth life, the furthering of that creative principle in this world, I can see only in the adoption of Socialist principles the means."

He went on to affirm his belief that “Spiritualism and Socialism, when joined in the practice of the lives of all of us, will abolish all creedal differences, and all class and caste hatreds, join us all in one great human family. . . ”

We can accept that Mr. Swaffer assiduously plugs Spiritualism and mixes it in with his already muddled notions of Socialism because it is the thing he really relieves it, but the same excuse cannot be made for the Daily Herald's recent addition of horoscopes to its columns. The worried workers, seeking respite from the daily harassments of the Welfare State, can now consult “Your Lucky Stars” as interpreted by Diana. Another recent addition to the horoscope Press is the News Chronicle (“Seeing Stars,” with the help of Leon Petulengro)..

If they change to the Express, the Mail, or the two morning picture papers, their needs are likewise cared for and almost all of the cheaper Sunday papers are in the heavenly swim. But why no horoscopes in the evening papers?

Before the war the Beaverbrook Press, high mindedly and with a loud banging of trumpets, announced that it would ,no longer pander to this “ignorant superstition but after a lapse of time the horoscopes crept back again.

The purpose, of course, is to whip up circulation and the publicity experts are clearly convinced that you can’t get into the big circulation without horoscopes.

The Reverend Donald Soper on Nasser

Among his admirers the Reverend Donald Soper is credited with understanding Socialism and being a Socialist. A speech delivered by him at Caxton Hall on August 14th, 1956, shows how little there is in the claim (speech published in the Arab News Letter Arab Students Union, September, 1956)).

On the superficial things such as the hypocrisy of the British Government; the failure of the Labour Party (of which he is a supporter) to see the real issues; the non-existence of the “international law” to which the Government appeals; and the failure of the Church to seek “peace on earth and goodwill among men,” on these he was plausible enough, but when it came to putting a Socialist point of view he was silent. He had absolutely nothing to say about world-wide Capitalism and the forces that drive all the nations into conflict. The nearest he got to reality—and this was seeing symptoms instead of causes—was to see evil in the existence of “nation states.” But his remedy for this is “world government” and United Nations; much as if to say that as banditry is bad let us hope that the bandits can unite into one central bandit and in the meantime let us make rules of conduct for the bandits. So he demanded that while these “nation states” endure “there must not be privileges for some and rejections of these privileges for others.” . In other words “Fair play for ail the bandits.”

He dwelt on the slums and poverty alongside great wealth in Cairo and, quite fairly, marked this up against the former British rulers of Egypt; but is he really so naive as to suppose that the ruling class behind dictator Nasser are taking the Canal for the sake of the Egyptian workers they exploit? Apparently he is that naive or had his tongue in his cheek, for he called on the Church to support Nasser.

“I want to say in the name of Christianity that this Nasser ought to be encouraged and not be repressed, because I believe the root of the matter in him is good, and because it is good, it is our business to evoke it by corresponding good, and not to repress it by threats of violence.”

What evidence can Mr. Soper bring forward for his implication that when a home grown ruling class runs Capitalism itself after ousting foreigners that their aim is any less the perpetuation of exploitation and the resulting poverty of the masses? British Capitalism has been run by home-grown rulers (including years of the Labour Party that Soper supports) and it hasn’t touched the class ownership of accumulated wealth. And Mr. Soper shouldn’t have far to look in his own neighbourhood to find some of the million slum dwellings.

He ended his speech with a call to throw out the Tory Government. His solitary piece of lip service to what he supposes is Socialism, being a plea for the introduction of “a truly Socialist Government.”

Embarrassed by his difficulty in fully endorsing the Labour Party he declared that “by the grace of God, even the Labour Party can become a Socialist Government which surely is hardly flattering to his God. Why must God (whose “will,” incidentally Mr. Soper claimed that he knows!) have to act in this roundabout fashion? Why can’t the “grace of God” turn the Tory Party into a “Socialist Government?” It shouldn’t be any more difficult.

Of course Mr. Soper knows that “divine grace” isn’t going to solve the problem. He also knows that delivering Socialist truths would help. What, then, is his excuse, as a self-styled Socialist, for not delivering them at that meeting?

Automation, 1830

The rich have always been able cheerfully and patiently to bear the hardship of the poor and urge them to be equally patient. We now have the politicians and economists telling the workers who may lose their jobs through “automation” to reflect that in the long run it will all be for the best, and anyway it is inevitable. In 1830 the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge published an Address to the Labourers on the subject of Destroying Machinery. Here is a typical passage: —

“It is undoubtedly true that all machinery which spares human labour, unavoidably, on its first invention and on beginning of its work, throws some persons out of the employment in which they had been engaged, and they must seek their means of support in some other way; this is the necessary consequence of the introduction into use of the most simple instrument, and of all improvements in art. But, on the whole, the public, and every individual in it, are in the end infinitely the gainers.”

A caustic cartoon, also published in 1830, and believed to have been the work of the brother of the better-known Cruikshank, dealt with the unemployment caused by the incoming machinery as one of a series called “Living Made Easy,” The “machines” it portrayed were “Charity tubes to convey the smell from the tables of the rich, for the benefit of poor operatives.”

It showed humble bare-headed workers permitted by a livened flunkey to stand over the open ends of iron tubes which conveyed the smell of food into the courtyard of some palatial mansion. It was “particularly recommended to the philanthropy of those who have made large fortunes by machinery.”

Mr. MacMillan on Paper Pounds

In a speech on inflation in which he warned that if wage increases went on the Government might devalue the pound again as did the Labour Government in 1949. He asked the trade unions

"Do you want more paper money to handle or more goods and services to enjoy? ”

(Daily Mail, August 30, 1956.)

This is indeed a classic example of the devil rebuking sin. It is not the trade unions but Mr. Macmillan and other Chancellors of the Exchequer who determine the amount of the note issue. And what is their record at setting the printing press at work making more and more paper money? In 1938 the amount in issue was £529 million and in 1945 £1,311 million. The Labour Government stepped it up to £1,383 million and the Tories since they came in in 1951 have added another £300 million, making the present total £1,662 million.

Not, of course, that it makes any material difference to the workers position under Capitalism. They were just as poor and just as much exploited in 1938 with pounds fewer and wages lower, as they are now with wages trebled and each pound buying about one third of what it then bought.

They Cant Afford a Holiday

The British Travel and Holidays Association in a survey of the holidays of Britain’s population tell us that “about half the population of Britain took no holiday away from home in 1955. Of those who did travel, only 8 per cent. went abroad: 77 per cent. of the population has never been outside Britain” (Manchester Guardian, August 31, 1956).

“Expense was given as the main reason why people stayed at home during their holidays.”

What Nina did not say

Nina, the Russian athlete, who was alleged to have taken hats worth 32s. 11d., missed a fine opportunity by not appearing in court. Why did she not get up and tell the British workers that under Socialism in Russia you just go along and take what hats you need without this Capitalist nonsense of paying for them?

The answer, in case anyone is in doubt, is of course that there isn’t any Socialism in Russia, the claim that there is being one of the lies of the Communists.

Mr. Nehru Again

In his attitude on the use of military force to crush the Naga independence movement in India Mr. Nehru gets more and more like Sir John Harding in Cyprus.

A Naga M.P. in the India Parliament made a long statement on the suppression of the Nagas.

“As a result of military operations, Mr. Keishang said, 2,000 people were forced to stay in the jungles. Most of the villages of the Mokukchang area had been burnt by the army, between 30 and 50 villages had been burnt in the Megkukchange area, and four-fifths of the villages in other areas had been burnt. He said that 397 Nagas had been killed, and troops had also killed Dr. N. Haralu, a respected doctor of Kohima, who had been “ hunted in the streets of Kohima and shot down.

“More than five hundred Nagas are in prison, including students and children aged between 1 and 13. The Army tries to terrorise the Nagas by carrying a naked corpse, bound hand and foot, through the streets of Kohima, and bodies are burnt in spite of the fact that the Nagas never burn bodies. Is this behaviour of the Government better than that shown by the Nagas ? . .. The spirit of revenge will persist for generations, even if the Nagas are defeated.” (Manchester Guardian, August 24, 1956.)

Mr. Keishang chided Mr. Nehru with failing to show at home the “spirit of peaceful negotiation” he is always recommending to other governments. But Mr. Nehru was not to be moved. He won’t even discuss the matter.

“Mr. Nehru, winding up the debate, admitted that some mistakes had been made, but said that the attitude towards the Nagas had been human and not completely a military one. He repeated that the Government could not talk with the Nagas until they gave up their demand for an independent state.

“There is no question of prestige. India is far too big for her prestige to suffer in such dealings. We are not prepared to talk independence, and we demand that the Nagas must give up violence."

Mr. Nehru is another of the reformists to demonstrate that there aren’t any different ways of running Capitalism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Blogger's Note:

I believe that the 1830 cartoon that Hardcastle is referring to in his column is the one posted below. The only sticking point is that he mentions it was by Isaac Robert Cruikshank but the internet is telling me that it was by Thomas Mclean .

A reasonable journey (2025)

From the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Richard Headicar describes how his socialist viewpoint on the world developed, and some of the people he met along the way.

Few, if any, of the guests at my 21st birthday party in 1954 would ever have imagined that their cheerful host – then a chauvinistic, Tory-supporting Christian monarchist – might someday become a member of the SPGB. Indeed, I would myself have dismissed such a proposition as utterly delusional. Yet while some may consider such a comprehensive transition remarkable, I simply regard it as nothing more than the consequence of a number of eminently reasonable decisions taken in the light of changing circumstances.

In fact, although I was blissfully unaware of it, the first seed of change had already been planted. It had been surreptitiously sown a week previously by Dr Donald Soper on my very first visit to Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park. Soper was one of three brilliant Methodist preachers who had held me spellbound from the age of 14 by their outstanding oratory (the others were Dr Leslie Weatherhead and Dr William Sangster, then the doyen of Westminster Central Hall and the grandmaster of the craft of homiletics). What Donald Soper said that day about the use of atomic bombs against Japan completely shocked me. He cast doubt upon the official version of events offered in justification: that doing so averted the need for an invasion, thereby saving millions of lives. So profound was my disbelief that I departed the park firmly resolved to prove him mistaken. Surely, I thought, governments – well, Western governments anyway – would never countenance such an extreme act without incontrovertible reasons. My shock was much greater, however, on discovering that not only was everything Soper said absolutely true, but there was so much more that he had omitted to say. For several years I became immersed in trying to learn all that I could about the real situation, following a trail from Gottingen (where research into nuclear physics had been carried out) to Los Alamos (in California where the first atomic bombs were developed) through to the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Needless to say, I had not the faintest notion of where this newly-acquired knowledge would lead me, never for a moment thinking that it would affect my political allegiance. Very soon, however, a series of events occurred that were to have a significant impact in that respect.

The first of these was the Suez crisis in 1956. Out of curiosity, I joined a march from Speakers’ Corner to Trafalgar Square where a massive anti-war rally was taking place. All I knew about Egypt was that it had pyramids and that according to headlines dominating the popular press, a scheming Egyptian politician named Nasser was causing trouble. Also that the British Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, seemed to be changing his mind every week about what he should do. But, once again, my political complacency was challenged when I learned of the dubious motives of the Western powers, centred on the protection of their substantial economic interests in the Middle East. One of the speakers that day was Anuerin Bevan, another compelling orator, and the passionate humanity of his words persuaded me that perhaps the Labour Party was the place to be in order to restore my faith in our political leaders…

Over the ensuing years, as a result of my ongoing investigations into the labyrinthine deceptions surrounding the manufacture and use of the first atomic bombs, I developed a particular concern regarding the rapid escalation of the arms race, especially in relation to nuclear weapons. My next reasonable step seemed only logical: on 7 February 1958, I attended the inaugural public meeting of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Appropriately enough, given my wavering but just about extant Methodist beliefs, the meeting was convened at Westminster Central Hall.

The promising news that over 70 Labour MPs had pledged their support to the cause provided precisely the nudge I needed to join the Labour Party. At its 1960 conference in Scarborough, a unilateralist motion proposed by Frank Cousins, the leader of the Transport and General Workers Union (T&GWU) succeeded in winning a narrow majority. It was countered immediately by Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell with his oft-quoted, highly emotional avowal to ‘fight and fight and fight again to save the party we love’. Amazingly, it was at this point in the Labour Party’s long history that a group of MPs came to the realisation that the use of the ‘block vote’ was ‘undemocratic’. This was something the left-wing minority had been pointing out for many years, but obviously such a belated recognition of their previously disregarded submission was in no way related to the fact that, on this occasion, it had worked against the Executive Committee. Bill Rodgers, aided and abetted by four other ‘moderate’ MPs – Dick Taverne, Anthony Crosland, Douglas Jay and Roy Jenkins – wasted little time in forming the Campaign for Democratic Socialism (CDS). These fervent supporters of democracy, however, appeared determined to devote most of their energy in a concerted effort to portray CND as a haven for ‘communists’.

A deliciously ironic confirmation that my initial optimism about the Labour Party might have been misplaced occurred on the publication of the Tory government’s 1961 Statement on the Defence Estimates about military budgets. Five Labour Party MPs, including future leader Michael Foot, had the whip withdrawn (basically, expelled) for voting against the government. I was not altogether surprised, therefore, when at Labour’s Blackpool conference, the combination of a dodgy ‘compromise’ proposal, more skulduggery and blatant vote fiddling, by which certain Unions were permitted to reverse their original mandate, ensured that the 1960 unilateralist resolution was duly overturned. In his excellent pamphlet Nuclear Disarmament and the Labour Party, Tony Southall comments ‘one important effect of the new events in 1960-1 was that a whole generation of CND activists shunned the party’.

So far as I was concerned, fully awakened at least to the routine misappropriation of the word ‘democracy’ in pursuit of political expediency, I left the Labour Party, never to return. It was a disappointment to me that so many of my unilateralist comrades chose to remain. By now thoroughly despairing of party politics and sadly disillusioned with the efficacy of ‘democracy’, I was increasingly drawn to the philosophy of anarchism. Nevertheless, I remained firmly wedded to the unilateralist cause while undergoing a number of shifts and slides in my personal evaluation of the official CND position. I found it too narrow and confining and much preferred the intellectually stimulating atmosphere of the divergent attitudes I encountered in the Committee of 100 direct action group. Although broadly supportive of CND’s work, it remained absolutely independent and welcomed other speakers who presented the anti-war case in varying styles and from an individual perspective.

For some time I had been running a platform every Saturday and Sunday at Speakers’ Corner centred around CND. I also participated regularly in acts of civil disobedience and eventually ended up in jail for protesting at the Soviet embassy. I was sentenced in October 1961, a day or so after the Labour Party’s infamous Blackpool conference. Coincidentally, I was due to take part in a much-anticipated debate with an eloquent SPGB representative, Melvin Harris, but was prevented from doing so at Her Majesty’s pleasure. I often wonder whether had I not been so inconsiderately detained, my SPGB membership would have been more expeditious? A much-missed friend and comrade, Edmund ‘Eddie’ Grant, relished relating his own version of my non-appearance, that I simply got cold feet at the last moment and deliberately chose prison as a means of avoiding the superior reasoning of the SPGB.

During the years I spent speaking in Hyde Park on behalf of CND, I’m afraid that I regarded the SPGB as an arrogant bunch who found it almost impossible to see merit in anyone but themselves. In relation to CND, although the SPGB’s criticism of it was correct, the unengaging, predominantly negative manner in which it was presented was decidedly counter-productive. Eddie Grant was one of only three members with whom I enjoyed regular dialogue in a friendly and non-judgemental manner then. Eddie, especially, was a welcome visitor to my platform and in his deceptively disarming way invariably raised thought-provoking questions.

An excellent example of Eddie’s method of patient, albeit politely persistent interpolation is the imaginative ruse he employed to breach my unyielding refusal to entertain the possibility of a society devoid of money or markets. The apparent immutability of both had been deeply ingrained in my psyche from a very early age. Following the publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson’s pioneering book Silent Spring, Eddie had listened to me orating passionately on the disastrous effect on the environment resulting from military activity and developments. On the next occasion we met he presented me with a piece of paper on which he had copied a quote from William Morris:

‘Is there money to be gathered? Cut down the pleasant trees among the houses, pull down the ancient and venerable buildings for the money that a few square yards of London dirt will fetch; blacken rivers, hide the sun and poison the air with smoke or worse, and it’s nobody’s business to see it or mend it: that is all that modern commerce, the counting house forgetful of the workshop, will do for us herein’ (The Lesser Arts) .

He also recommended two books: Morris’s News From Nowhere and Robert Tressell’s The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. Unfortunately, my reading at the time continued to be dominated by the tedious and complex tomes concerned with weapons and ‘defence’ strategies. I was also becoming increasingly interested in the ideas propounded by various philosophers. Consequently, some 20 years elapsed before I finally read Robert Tressell’s heart-breaking but inspiring masterpiece and grasped that the rational implications of the William Morris quotation spoke of the necessity for a change far more fundamental than environmental intervention. It was only many years after I joined the SPGB that I finally got round to reading News From Nowhere, prior to a talk I gave at Fircroft on ‘The Stateless Society’. With Eddie very much in mind, I included the quote he had handed me all those years previously.

It was at Speakers’ Corner also that I met the Hungarian philosopher Alfred Reynolds (Reinhold), who was to prove by far the greatest influence in my life. He somehow managed to transform my thinking and attitudes without once telling me I was ‘wrong’ but instead patiently explaining his points of disagreement without once claiming they were ‘right’. Two areas in which he shared valuable insights were the danger of ‘group thinking’ and the ‘nature of truth’. He held much respect, even affinity, for the SPGB and claimed that at some point in the 1930s he was briefly a member, though for reasons that I recount in a brief biography I have just completed, it would have been under an assumed name that he joined.

In the mid-1980s, when I gave a talk for the Islington branch of the SPGB (prior to becoming a member myself), a telling contribution from Eddie Grant, challenging my rejection of the democratic process, removed the final obstacle to SPGB membership. I became a member of the Party in 1988 and Eddie’s lucid rebuttal of my contention that the right to vote was meaningless was instrumental in that decision. Given my many conversations with him during the preceding years, my protracted journey to membership should have been much shorter. Alas, I had been too preoccupied with saving the world from perceived nuclear annihilation to pay proper attention to his wise illuminations.

In the process of change, interspersed with landmark episodes, there are countless subtle and often subconscious influences too complex and personal to properly record, and some are perhaps destined to remain unfathomable. I frequently ponder upon my own readiness to take the reasonable steps that led me to my eventual destination.

Was I born with a predisposition to more readily embrace ‘logical’ development? How much importance should be given to the impact the Methodist preachers had and the early lessons they conveyed to me about listening, constructing and delivering an argument and the use of humour? Would I ever have moved on at all if I had not been confronted with those dramatic political events? How much does the chance of circumstance play? Meeting with such exceptional individuals as Eddie and Alfred was most assuredly not pre-ordained.

Are we simply the products of our personal, social and political environments? If this is so, why are we not ‘behaviourists’ like B F Skinner? Is becoming a socialist the result of a conscious choice, and what do we mean by this? If choice is assumed, can we ever be sure it is not merely the result of circumstance? In presenting the case for socialism, should more consideration than at present be given to the philosophical and psychological implications?

Richard Headicar

Blogger's Note:

Richard's obituary appeared in the same issue of the Socialist Standard.

Communism, Religion and the USSR (1976)

From the August 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lord Donald Soper, the Methodist leader, has acquired the reputation of being a great orator. Those of us who have heard him speaking at Tower Hill and Hyde Park are always impressed by the flow of fine phrases, but on closer examination these turn out to mean precisely nothing. There is no doubt whatever as to his great entertainment value. However his virtues else, be they as pure as grace, when it comes to making a contribution to political thought Lord Donald has been decidedly unsuccessful. Good Labourite that he is, he has been a regular contributor to Tribune, the left-wing journal of utopian reformers who want to retain capitalism on working-class terms. Consequently his writings, tailored as they must be to the needs of this clearing house for malcontents, have little to offer by way of a solution to the problems of the real world of capitalism. How could they, when the ultimate authority which lies behind all Lord Soper’s prognostications on the state of the world is God and religion?

It is this type of religious rubbish which gives the name “Christian Socialist” to religious critics of capitalism, and encourages them to make the nonsensical claim that Socialism and religion are quite compatible, and that Jesus Christ was a Socialist. The Labour Party and the Trade Union movement is full of these “Christian Socialists”, Baptists, Methodists, lay preachers, Salvationists, lesson-readers, and all the other dreary joyless characters who provide religion on the cheap for the godless industrial masses. As long as there are votes to be had from those workers who hold religious ideas no capitalist party, and here we include the Communist Party, will repudiate religion, the churches and other forms of religious organization. Most workers are easy-going on the subject of religion and its social importance has receded but has not yet vanished. The capitalist class can still find a role for religion to play in support of the system when the occasion arises.

True to form, Lord Soper has just made a fresh statement which is as stupid as it is incorrect. Addressing the Annual Methodist Conference at Preston during a discussion on religious education in schools, he claimed that Communism is a religion:

It is unquestionably a religious faith. We shall get into trouble if we try and distinguish between what we call religion and ideology.

(Daily Telegraph, 1st July 1976)

We certainly shall if we don’t. Religion deals with fiction and Communism, or Socialism, deals with facts. All religions are united on the principle of supernatural phenomena and life after death in a spiritual world — Hell or Heaven, as the case merits. Socialism, or Communism, is based on materialism, which means that we can know nothing outside of the senses, and that all natural and social phenomena must be interpreted through the human agency without divine intervention. Materialism also means that men are in command of society and science, and “acts of God” are nothing more than a term used on insurance policies for material reasons.

Perhaps Lord Soper was getting a bit confused over the term “Communism”. He obviously meant the system prevailing in the Soviet Union, but which bears no resemblance to communism. There, undoubtedly, religious attitudes are indoctrinated but with the difference that the state and the leadership replace the God and saints of the old Russian Orthodox Church — but not quite. There is certainly very little to choose between the religion of the old world and its uncritical adulation of God, and the claim of infallibility of the Communist Party leadership, based as it is on the exploitation of superstition and ignorance of the Russian masses. That type of communist superstition, coupled with the myth that common ownership exists and the worship of the god of productivity, is certainly taught in the Russian schools, but this is the worship of capital, albeit state capital. The Soviet Union has proved that you can have religion with or without God — a belief in the supernatural has various applications. It is not subject to any laws of logic, reason or science — the world of fantasy is a great place for those who can live on dreams for the future which never arrives, or has not arrived after sixty years.

Officially the Soviet Union is godless, but millions of people still have religious views and take part in the ceremonies and ritual of the Russian Orthodox Church. The main religious festival is Easter; Good Friday and Saturday being the big market days. “At Moscow Yelokhovsky Cathedral, Pimen, Patriarch of all the Russians, officiated . . . the packed congregation included a sizeable number of foreign diplomats admitted through a side door to avoid the crush. Others drove 40 miles to the Sergei Trinity Abbey, one of Russia’s holiest places. All day there were long lines, mostly of women, outside churches each with Easter cake slung in a napkin waiting to have it blessed”. (The Times, 26th April 1976.)

Lenin and the old Bolsheviks denounced religious institutions because the Russian Orthodox Church was a pillar of the Czarist regime. They claimed they would abolish religious influences by separating the church and the state, and making religious societies and institutions dependent on those who adhered to the faith. However, Lenin was astute enough to realize that you cannot abolish religion by decree, as was attempted in the French Revolution. He knew that he was dealing with masses of superstitious and ignorant peasants, and he wanted their support. Consequently, the “socialist atheism” of the Bolsheviks was played down in favour of “religious freedom”. “Everyone must be absolutely free to profess whatever religion he likes, or to profess no religion; i.e. be an atheist as every socialist usually is.” (p. 12, Lenin on Religion, Martin Lawrence.) This was not opposition to religion but pandering to it.

One thing is certain and that is that Socialism is not compatible with religious ideas. The Communist Parties of Europe, including the British party, have faithfully taken up a high-sounding attitude of religious freedom. Consider how much support the Communist parties in Italy and France would get were they to attack religion. In any case, the Soviet Union are no longer interested in abolishing religion, particularly as the church is now under the thumb of the Communist Party. When it suits them they will use religion in its customary rôle to maintain their position by befuddling the workers.

The Sunday Times of 27th April 1975 reported that Russia was using priests as emissaries to Israel to discuss certain property questions. “Two Moscow churchmen visited Israel at the end of last month officially for talks on a legal dispute over Russian Church property . . . Further talks are expected in May when Metropolitan Nicodemus, foreign relations secretary of the Moscow Patriarchate visits Jerusalem as a pilgrim to the Orthodox Churches Easter ceremonies. The Patriarch of Soviet Armenia is also due . . .”. No doubt the Russian capitalist class wants the priests and bishops to work for their keep, and for that very reason they will keep the religious institutions going by recognizing their use value. The fact that Church property still exists contradicts the claim made repeatedly that the communists would confiscate the property.

The Communist Party in Russia is a capitalist party and has the responsibility of running capitalism in that country. Fundamentally there is little difference between Russian capitalism and Western capitalism. The dominant relations of production are wage-labour and capital, and the prevailing ideology is one of support for the institution of private property, with all the trimmings of religion, mock-morality and hypocrisy. A Communist society cannot exist where one section of the population is exploited by another, and the term “Russian Communism” is the ignorant man’s way of describing state capitalism.

Jim D'Arcy

Notes by the Way: £3 10s. 5½d. a week (1958)

The Notes by the Way Column from the April 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

£3 10s. 5½d. a week

Miss Schulz, of the Oxford Institute of Statistics, worked out that it would be possible to feed a family of five on £3 10s. 5½d. a week on a diet corresponding to the pre-war “Rowntree” diet which in 1936 cost 21s. 7d. Readers of newspapers who heard about it were for the most part very indignant and blamed Miss Schulz.

Miss Schulz, like the late Seebohn Rowntree, was dealing with the cost of a “minimum" diet for a “working class” family.

The angry critics should be aiming at a larger target. They should be asking themselves what justification there is for a system of society which accepts the double standard of "working class" as distinct from human beings, and which concerns itself with calculating a minimum diet at a time when half the world is slipping into depression because it cannot sell its excess supplies of foodstuffs. They should ask why there should be people who can afford only £3 10s. 5½d. (or less) while other people can toss this away on a little dinner party for two or three.

Donald's Good Man Goes Wrong

From time to time the long-suffering workers have to put up with a special brand of confusion spreaders, the "progressive" clergy. One of them is the Reverend Donald Soper, idol of non-conformity, supporter of the Labour Party, regular contributor to the Tribune, self-styled Socialist and professed pacifist. His idea of Socialism is State capitalism. Hence, for example, his declared objective of “the preservation and extension of the Welfare State, so that those who are unavoidably out of work, will still belong to the community and will not be left to rot in the 'freedom and flexibility' of idleness" (Tribune, 7th March, 1958).

He spends much of his time criticising the aims and activities of his own party and clearly sees no inconsistency in supporting the war-making, capitalism supporting Labour Party while preaching pacifism and, in words, denouncing capitalism and supporting Socialism.

In line with his professional preoccupation with "sin" one of his contributions to confusion is to see the different capitalist national groups in terms of good and bad men. He evidently sees the “older and fatter" bandits of capitalism as “bad” and the up and coming, but as yet leaner bandits as “good.” It was inevitable therefore that his heart should go out to dictator Nasser and the other representatives of the exploiting class in Egypt. When the British and French governments started war over Suez he addressed a protest meeting at Caxton Hall (14th August 1956). He claimed to speak as a Socialist and pacifist and progressive Christian. But instead of putting the Socialist case against capitalism as the cause of war and as an exploiting system, all he could do was to condemn the aggressor capitalist groups and praise the defending capitalist group. Instead of calling on the workers to oppose capitalism (and its wars) he called for encouragement of the Egyptian capitalist figure-head, Nasser.

“I wanted to say in the name of Christianity that this Nasser ought to be encouraged and not be repressed, because I believe the root of the matter in him is good, and because it is good it is our business to evoke it by corresponding good and not to repress it by threats of violence."

But those who take sides between “good” and "bad” representatives of capitalism are asking for trouble. Just lately the good Colonel has been putting the imperialist squeeze on Sudan. Here was a chance for Soper to make an indignant protest. But we looked in Tribune in vain. Instead of loud protests there was a deafening silence.

Tribune had been rallying round Bourguiba of Tunisia, another “good" man, under attack from the “bad” French. Now Bourguiba threatens to break off diplomatic relations with Nasser, because, so he alleges, Nasser’s government has been conniving at a plot to assassinate him (Manchester Guardian, 7th March, 1958).

Apart from praying, what is Soper going to do about it?

Blood is not as thick as oil

While we are on the subject of assassination plots we should not overlook the fact that Nasser is said to be on the receiving end as well as being an instigator, for the Syrian partners in the newly united Egypt-Syria claim to have evidence that Saudi Arabia’s ruler paid £2 million to have Nasser bumped off (or was it only £1 million?). This should be a lesson to those who, rejecting the Socialist explanation of international groupings and rivalries, interpreted the evolution of Middle-East capitalism in terms of the blood bond and Moslem faith of Arab peoples. We now have Egypt and Syria facing Iraq and Jordan, with Saudi Arabia maintaining hostile aloofness. Oil and pipe-lines are the key to the situation, not race and religion or a supposed common hostility to imperialism.

The centre of interest is now moving westwards along the North African coast owing to the first developments of reportedly enormous quantities of oil under the French Sahara; with the Algerian armed rebels standing across the outlets to the Mediterranean. That is what keeps a French army of hundreds of thousands desperately trying to make the oil safe for French capitalism and for the British and other oil interests that have a hand in it.

Attitudes to the H-Bomb

As the gradations of opposition, half-opposition, half support and full support to the H bomb come to expression in the multiplicity of new organisations and declarations, it becomes a major task to know where they all stand. At one end there are the ”rely on the H bomb” lunatics; then the make but don't use or test, the make but don't test, the test, but don't use, the have but not in American planes, the keep but suspend work on, the do this now and the do it after Summit talks, the rely on good old conventional weapons, etc., etc.

The arguments between them are particularly sterile because of the tacit acceptance by all the contestants of the capitalist system of society. They can all knock the other man’s case to pieces, but none of them put up a Socialist alternative. Mr. J. B. Priestley is a case in point. In an article “H-Bomb Hotchpotch ” in the Daily Herald (5th March, 1958) he makes mincemeat of his opponents, but comes down to this in the end:—

“If this country walked out of the nuclear arms race and declared that it would defend itself if necessary with anything a man could lay his hands on, from shot-guns to bombs made out of corned beef tins, it would be a safer place than it is to-day; and certainly safer than Mr. Sandys and friends—who are gambling everything on the belief that nothing can happen . —can make it to-morrow."

Brave words, but it is a safe bet that if it happened, Mr. Priestley would be calling on us to die gloriously with our shot-guns against all the modern armoury of weapons (and probably denouncing the government of the day for not having provided better armaments) with never a thought that war because of capitalism is just as senseless whatever the arms and whichever capitalist group came out victorious.

If Priestley were a Socialist, adding his voice to the international Socialist stand against capitalism everywhere, in opposition to every capitalist government and party, he would be doing something really useful on behalf of humanity.

Labour Government and Strikes

Workers who support the Labour Party and have expectations that the next Labour Government will be different from the last should take note of the speech by Mr. Alfred Robens, who is tipped off to be their Minister of Labour. The following report appeared in the Daily Herald (21st February, 1958):—

"Originally, when private ownership of industry was widespread, a strike was intended to damage the profitability of a company and the private pocket of the owner.

“But times have changed.” Mr. Robens told a London meeting of the Industrial Co-partnership Association.

“We have moved into a managerial society in which shareholders are quite remote from actual management.

“Therefore the strike today does not affect the individuals who are managing in the way which it may have affected those individuals 50 years ago. The managing director’s salary goes on as before.”

"But it did hold up orders and caused people to be chary of investing in an industry with a black record of stoppages.

“The result is that the strike has a long-term boomerang effect of holding up investment in an industry, and so not enabling it to become more modern and reducing its profitability,” added Mr. Robens.

“It. disturbs the confidence of the customer, and it can have nothing but a harmful effect not only on the company, but on all those employed by it.”

Capitalist Culture comes to Florida

In the Manchester Guardian (1st March, 1958) Mr. Alistair Cooke told the sad story of American “progress.” 

"Until the great prosperity came along many of the smaller keys were ravishing; quiet tropical refuges of hardwood and limes and wild flowers and herons, brief reminders of the natural luxury that limestone and warm winds can breed in the middle of an aquamarine ocean. But the "developers” have been here as everywhere, and here, too—on the once lovely Marathon Key, for example—suburban Los Angeles seems to set the universal pattern : trailer camps, hot-dog stands, Joe’s Miracle Bargains in second-hand cars flaunting their strings of bulbs against the indigo night sky.

The harbour at Key West is much the same, and a town that once looked like the perfect setting for a romance by Tennessee Williams or a small domestic tragedy by William March is now the garish frowzy camp of souvenir pedlars and chrome motels and neon-lit saloons. Sometimes the sky darkens over and God pours out a deluge of punishing rain. The streets swirl and the sewers gurgle for a while in running floods. Then, after lunch, the sky is cloudless again. It is 80 degrees, and either by sea or sky the horizon is the gate of Paradise. But the aeroplane coach service and the real estate men together have converted one of the last and beautiful relics of the Spanish Empire into a Coney Island. There is no hiding place down here.”

Edgar Hardcastle

Speaking Out (2023)

Book Review from the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Speakers’ Corner Anthology. Edited by Jim Huggon. Union of Egoists. 2022.

This is a republication (with a new, additional Foreword) of an anthology first published in 1977. It is a collection of excerpts and other written material connected to Hyde Park’s Speakers’ Corner and there are several references to the SPGB scattered throughout. Jim Huggon is an anarchist who spoke regularly there from 1965 to 1983. He refers to a review by the Socialist Standard of the original version which has slightly puzzled us as it appears that no such review was ever published.

The collection also includes a knockabout piece by Harry Young (Horatio) called ‘On the Platform’ and originally published in the Seventieth Anniversary edition of the Standard in June 1974. There are excerpts too from famous Speakers’ Corner regular Bonar Thompson’s book, Hyde Park Orator, which has also recently been republished with added illustrations.

In addition, there is an interesting if rather pious excerpt from a piece by Lord Donald Soper about his time as an outdoor orator (more focused on Tower Hill than Hyde Park). This is interesting as he tells of encounters with a variety of other regular speakers and his relationship with them, without actually naming them. In particular, he writes of his conversations with a well-known Tower Hill personality and that this man was a scientific socialist, ‘breathing fire and slaughter against all religion, sneering at morality [and] despising the consolations of faith’ who turned out to be much warmer privately than his public persona had initially indicated. Given Soper’s detailed description of him it is highly likely that this was Harry Martin, a regular speaker at Tower Hill and who had left the SPGB in 1911 to found the Socialist Propaganda League (see ‘Getting Splinters’, in the June 2004 Centenary Edition of the Socialist Standard).

Tower Hill no longer exists as a speaking station and Speakers’ Corner at Hyde Park is a shadow of its former self, these days a veritable bear garden aimed at tourists with very few serious speakers. This anthology helps capture the spirit of an earlier age.

DAP.

Blogger's Note:

There's a wee mistake in the review. The original edition of this book was reviewed by Robert Barltrop in the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Party News Briefs (1948)

Party News from the March 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our 44th Annual Conference is being held at the Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London, W.C.1, on Good Friday, Saturday and Sunday the 26th, 27th and 28th March, commencing at 11 o’clock on each morning. All of the proceedings are open to any member of the working-class who wishes to come along. We have no private sessions like nearly all other organisations who ask the working-class to support them. The last paragraph of the ‘‘Communist Manifesto” states that “Communists scorn to hide their views and aims” and we preserve this democratic principle intact. The main work of the conference will be to review the results of 1947 and prepare our programme for the future. The report of the 44th Executive Committee will be in the hands of branches about four weeks before the conference, and delegates will come mandated with their branches’ instructions. Here are some features from the report. Our membership at the end of 1947 was 979, an increase of 58 during the year. The total number of propaganda meetings reported during the year was 835, of which there were 678 outdoor meetings, 135 indoor meetings, 8 debates and 14 addresses to other organisations. The number of outdoor meetings is the highest of which we have records. Even these figures are not comprehensive, as a number of branches have failed to report all of their meetings to Head Office. It has been a difficult year financially. During the war years we built up a fairly substantial balance, but this has been absorbed by widened activity. Now we have to finance our activities as we go, and our expenditure (particularly on party publications) cannot be curtailed without reducing the scope of our work. This is the last thing we wish to do. A number of branches, are supporting an amendment to party rules which will raise member’s weekly subscriptions from 3d. to 6d. If this amendment is carried the branches supporting it think that it will go some way to ease our financial burdens. One effect of financial restrictions has been that the Executive Committee have had to postpone action in filling the vacant positions of full-time organisers. Two new branches at Kingston-on-Thames and Croydon were formed during the year, and the Dagenham and Romford branch was dissolved. The sales of the Socialist Standard fell off towards the end of the year, and the delegates may well consider ways and means of building up the circulation. Pamphlet sales will undoubtedly shoot up now that the ‘‘Racial Problem” is on sale and our own edition of the "Communist Manifesto” is practically ready from the printers. The first session of our Tutorial Class was a great success, and promises to play a big part in providing the party with a competent body of tutors for future educational classes. As well as the conference there will be our usual dance and reunion on the Saturday evening, and the Mass Rally on the Sunday evening—both at the Conway Hall.

The Publicity Committee is planning some attractive advertisements for the pamphlet on “The Racial Problem.” The E.C. allocates regular sums to this committee to be spent on advertising, but advertising is expensive, and the money in any case has to come out of the General Fund. So please step up your donations so that wider and ever wider circles may get to know of the Party and its policy.

Hackney Branch have sent in some interesting correspondence they had had with various “notabilities” they have approached with a view to public debate. Some letters they receive are long, and some short, but they all add up to the same thing. These “friends” of the working-class won’t have it! Their reluctance to face our speakers is matched only by their eagerness to get into the limelight under what they consider to be favourable conditions. Michael Foot, M.P., is “absolutely full u ” for the next few months (according to Hackney they have had this same reply from him for over two years). Donald Soper, M.A., of Kingsway Hall and Tower Hill finds that his ‘‘diary is fully booked right away through into 1949.” P. Piratin, M.P., regrets being unable to accept our invitation (no reasons given, let’s guess). Richard Acland, M.P., says that he has met members of our organisation and he has to state quite objectively that our processes of thought and of reasoning are so utterly other than his own that he has never believed that there is any effective point of contact between him and us. For this reason he believes that a debate would be an entire waste of our time and his. Mr. Acland seems to have forgotten the audience for whose benefit debates are really organised. Why not, Mr. Acland, let them judge the validity of your processes of thought and reasoning? Or are you just finding a roundabout way of saying that you don’t fancy your chances up against an S.P.G.B.’er in debate?

Radio Luxembourg costs £70 for a 15 minutes broadcast. Some members and sympathisers think a lot of this form of propaganda, but we shall need a lot more money before we can even consider it.

The Assistant Treasurer elected as a result of the second ballot is Kathleen Curzon of Paddington branch.

An E.C. by-election is in process and ballot papers have been issued to all branch secretaries. The nominations received are F. C. Adams (Palmers Green). G. Clark (Islington), H. Collins (Croydon), R. Coster (Leyton), J. P. Edmonds and H. Russell (Lewisham), G. Kerr (West Ham), and J. Read and S. Ross (Hackney). There is one vacancy on the Executive Committee.

Clifford Groves,

General Secretary.

A Tale of Two Simpletons: Good man gone wrong (1962)

From the September 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nothing so sharply divides the Socialist from the non-Socialist as the recognition that the world needs a different social structure—not just different men or different political parties to administer capitalism, but deliberate understanding action by the working class to replace the existing social system by a Socialist one. The extent to which this is appreciated is a measure of political maturity. Those who are politically quite immature believe the opposite. They believe that if they have “good” men to lead them these men can purify capitalism, solve its insoluble problems, rid it of unemployment, poverty and war. etc. Experience proves this to be unfounded. Politicians with no mandate to establish Socialism do not, when they become the government, have the power to impose their good intentions on capitalism. Instead, they are in its clutches; of necessity the Labour Government which had preached disarmament, peace and high wages in practice rearmed, supported war and tried to impose a wage-freeze. They end by being hardly distinguishable from the avowed. supporters of capitalism.

A curious by-product of this situation is the emergence of critics of the Labour Party, many of them claiming to be pacifists. who take a dim view of British capitalism and its supporters but fancy that foreign representatives of capitalism are somehow different; the Reverend Donald Soper, for example. He sees the world of politics, at least outside of this country, in terms of good men and bad men. and is blind to the fact that capitalism takes no notice of such distinctions. But time digs its pitfalls for the Sopers of this world: the “good" men turn out to be “bad” after all.

Soper in his weekly article in Tribune dealt on July. 27th with “Mosley, Nasser and the Jews." His argument was that anti-Jewish propaganda in this country is of little significance compared with the menace of Colonel Nasser, Egypt's dictator:

   What is much more threatening and unmanageable is the anti-Semitism contained in Nasser's speeches last week-end in Cairo—particularly as this outburst in words coincides with the launching of Egyptian rockets for the first time. I find the following quotations almost appalling. He pledged himself to liberate Palestine from Israel. This is frightening enough in all conscience, but at least he has been saying this all along. He went on to hint that Egypt's rocket arsenal was being built up for this express purpose.

Soper fears that Nasser is bent on a war of conquest with his new rockets, and Soper wants him to be stopped. It would be too much to expect Soper to see that only the abolition of capitalism will stop Egypt, Israel, America, Nasser, Britain and the rest of the capitalist powers from waging war; instead, he puts his trust in the farcical notion of “a system of international law which could restrain men like Nasser."

But to come back to the question of Soper's childish politics, why on earth should Soper want Nasser to be stopped, for we have it on the authority of Soper that Nasser is a “good” man, one who ought to be encouraged.

Speaking at Caxton Hall on August 14th, 1956, Soper had this to say:

   The third and last thing I want to say, because it is my purpose tonight rather to testify from the Christian standpoint, and to say something on behalf, I am sure, of thousands of Christian people who are inarticulate, whatever the other dignitaries of the church may or may not say—I want to say in the name of Christianity that this Nasser ought to be encouraged and not be repressed, because I believe the root of the matter in him is good and, because it is good, it is our business to evoke it by corresponding good and not to repress it by threats of violence.

This ought to cure Soper, but it probably won't, and readers who may take comfort in the belief that there cannot be more than one person with Soper's naive approach to the world have to learn that the same week produced another. While Soper is a pacifist who wanted to encourage the Egyptian warlord but has changed his mind and wants him restrained, another sometime supporter of the Labour Party, Ethel Mannin, who describes herself as an "unrepentant pacifist," thinks Nasser should still be encouraged. In a letter to the Daily Telegraph (July 26th), she said she was worried about some things, “notably the indoctrination of the children in a school I visited and which seemed to me Hitlerism,” but "for your information, Sir, my attitude to Nasser's Egypt is one of the utmost goodwill, tempered with anxiety. . . .  But whatever criticisms may be made of President Nasser’s interpretation of Socialism, and his methods of implementing his ideas and ideals, of his sincerity there can be no doubt."

Ethel Mannin describes herself in her letter as “an old campaigner": she. like Soper, appears to be as simple as when she started.

Edgar Hardcastle

Socialism and Religion (1947)

From the March 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Sunday in Christmas week the Rev. Donald Soper unloosed himself on the air. He claimed that the Bethlehem Boy-God, “Very God of Very God,” was an established historical fact, and that basing himself on this “fact” the Christian can cease to plague himself with anxieties arising from a grim present reality and a desperately bad Future Outlook.

Now the reverend gentleman acquired somewhere the imposing degree of a “Doctor of Divinity.” One might assume that his course of studies included a nodding acquaintance with the views of an ever-growing number of his more or less loving fellow-Christians (including a formidable array of D.D.’s) views which definitely point to grave doubts, to say the least, about his undoubted “historical fact.”

Outside the Bible, evidence is limited to the sorriest ha-porth of Tacitus and Josephus for establishment of the monstrous “fact” of the very existence of the New Testament "Jesus."

In “The Christian" Faith” (Religious Book Club) Canon Mosley writes regarding the Bible, “Its nature as the Word of God is not open to demonstration.” Our Kingsway hot-gospeller bases his assertion almost solely on the “Word of God,” playing the game of “open your mouth and shut your eyes and see what God will send you,” which we enjoyed in our early youth.

The “Encyclopedia Biblica” is not encouraging. Professor Bruce (D.D.) accords to the Synoptic Gospels "a considerable measure of historical worth,” and his estimate of Jesus is not enthusiastic: “The words of Jesus concerning the future show limitation of vision.” Tut, tut! After millions of Christians have chanted in unison, “ Light of Light,” “Very God of Very God.”

But for something more up to date than the E.B.: An imposing array of learned members of the Church of England spent, on and off, 15 years in an attempt to reach some degree of common assent to doctrine. The results of their labour were published in 1938. (Curious to reflect that at the same time Neville Chamberlain was making futile efforts to find common ground for peace conditions in the political field among states insecurely anchored to the treacherous sands of capitalist contradictions.)

“Doctrine in the Church of England ” (S.P.C.K., 2s. 6d. pre-war) is a remarkable document which all Socialist writers and speakers might well study. The introduction, by William Temple, late Archbishop of Canterbury, is a masterpiece of vague verbiage. “We have interpreted our function as solely theological and not in any sense judicial” is a typical utterance.

On page 82 we read, "The subject (Virgin Birth) is one on which the historical evidence by itself cannot be other than inconclusive.” Indeed, “There are some among us who hold . . .  that our Lord's birth took place under the normal conditions of human generation." One of the mighty pillars of the Church, St. Augustine, would have supported sentence of death against “some among us” for this clear denial of Creeds and Catechism. We draw the Reverend Soper’s attention to a deliciously naive remark of Canon Mosley’s (E.B.), “There are two independent traditions, Luke’s may be said to represent Mary’s point of view, Matthew’s that of Joseph.” In short, a choice between “ Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” and “ Poor Old Joe."

These Christian apologists leave about as much of the Christmas Carol Babe as Lewis Carroll left of the Cheshire Cat.

Now as to the second claim of Soper, that the Christian can bury all anxiety, present and future, in the deep cup of Faith. What does it practically amount to? The smug, self-satisfied sentiments of a priest finding refuge in escapism. It may be “unphilosophical,” but it is infuriating to contemplate that this stuff is shed over a comfortable Kingsway congregation, is in a more or lees degree retailed to school children, full-proof in “Church” schools, considerably under-proof in the “Undenominational” school; it is melancholy to reflect that but a comparative handful of teachers have contracted out of partaking in the “Act of Public Worship” forced on to children.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has never made the attacking of religion a main objective. Our opposition to capitalism covers the ground. Our Party is the only political body which has issued a reasoned case against religion, “Socialism or Religion” (incidentally, probably our best seller, though now unfortunately out of print).

Only in the new world of Socialism, untroubled by the terrors of religion, will the poet’s dream of childhood “laughing as it goes,” be realised in actual fact.

Reginald.

Letter: Christianity, again! (1980)

Letters to the Editors from the May 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

To the Editors

The article ‘Christianity Confidence Trick’ (March Socialist Standard) is an ignorant parody of Christianity. I am a Christian and a socialist. I am also a member of the ‘Christian Socialists’, who are proud to include in their number Donald Soper, who has endured years of opposition to his socialist views in his church, and some support. Similarly, a host of priests like Camillo Torres have led the opposition to repressive governments. It is so easy for the Socialist Standard to flaunt its white sheet, while remaining comparatively aloof from the dirty world of political life.

I don’t believe in the literal truth of myths like the Virgin birth, or of the gross parody of Genesis presented in ‘Confidence Trick’. Has the Standard never heard of poetic truth? I suggest that the author of the article does some research into the involvement of chapels in the fight for better conditions of work, and the continuing fight to ensure that men, of no matter what colour or nationality they may be, are treated with the dignity and respect that is their due, as brothers in Christ.

David Fraser, BA 

Newton, 

Rugby 

REPLY

David Fraser searches desperately for some way of linking his Christian superstition with a commitment to Socialism. Donald Soper (who was given a peerage as a reward for his efforts in the service of distorting socialist ideas) is cited as a ‘Christian Socialist’, and so is Camillo Torres. All that these Christians have done is to have adapted their religious twaddle to fit in with the popular liberal sentiments of their day. Religious leaders have usually been forced to re-interpret their dogmas as conditions have changed, but Christianity has only been accepted by the establishment because it serves to defend. the status quo, even if some Christians might favour a reform or two. If Lord Soper is a socialist why is he a member of the Labour Party, which has always been committed to the continuation of the capitalist system?

Mr. Fraser does not believe that ‘myths like the virgin birth’ are literally true, but that they have something to do with ‘poetic truth’. If he means by this that they are stories which are symbolic of some deeper meaning he ought to tell us what the deeper meaning is (and how he knows what it is) — and while he's about it he had better inform the millions of gullible people who have been taught by churches, schools and missionaries that the Bible contains the words of unquestionable truth. We note that Mr. Fraser has failed to dispute the three criticisms of Christianity which were contained in the article, ‘Confidence Trick’: that there is no such thing as human nature; that supernatural forces (gods) should not be believed in; that the legendary character of Jesus Christ was an unattractive one.

Editors.

Holding Forth (1977)

Book Review from the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Speakers' Corner: An Anthology. Kropotkin's Lighthouse Publications, £1.75. Illus.

The most remarkable thing about Hyde Park is that meetings and speakers still proliferate there. Up to the traffic and television explosions of the early nineteen-fifties, crowds went to parks and listened every Sunday. Finsbury Park, Victoria Park, Clapham Common, Platt Fields in Manchester and numerous others where audiences can no longer be found; but Hyde Park, despite surgery fifteen years ago, carries on. Tourists flock there, Londoners go - largely because, as is not the case with most of the so-called "means of communication", communication actually takes place.

The speakers today are alleged to be not so good as in the past, and it is probably true. Proficiency at outdoor speaking requires much practice, and that is harder to get than it was twenty-five years ago and more. Yet opportunities are arising afresh now, with the creation of shopping precincts and traffic-free areas in cities. The next decade may see a new generation of speakers to rival some of those mentioned in this book.

It is a collection of pieces about Hyde Park. Items from the history of assemblies there; the park regulations; extracts from writings by Bonar Thompson, a professional speaker who entertained audiences for many years; piousness by Lord Soper; and an article from the 70th anniversary of the SOCIALIST STANDARD. The compiler, Jim Huggon, is an anarchist speaker in Hyde Park and the foreword is by one of his predecessors, Philip Sansom. It is not the former's fault that the latter is an essay in dreadful self-esteem.

For habitués of the park this is an interesting wide-ranging book which does not attempt to analyze but communicates the feeling of the place.

Robert Barltrop