Party News Briefs (1949)

Party News from the August 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Week-end Summer School has been arranged to be held on Saturday and Sunday, September 17th and 18th. The school will be at Tree Tops Holiday Camp, Farley Green, near Guildford in Surrey. Those who know this area will be aware that it is as pleasant a district as one can find in the county.

Arrangements are also in hand for private coach transport between London and the camp. The charge for accommodation and meals at the camp will be 18s. a head, the coach transport will be extra. The camp offers pleasant accommodation in chalets, individual, double and triple and it has a variety of attractions such as a swimming pool, tennis courts, pleasant walks, etc.

It is intended to arrange for a two o’clock departure from London on the Saturday afternoon. There will be no lectures on the Saturday, but a social evening is being organised. Two lectures are arranged for the Sunday, and it is hoped to be able to hold them outdoors on the lawns. The school will disband after supper on Sunday evening. Accommodation is very limited so those who are anxious to attend should get in touch with the Social Committee or the Central Organiser at once. In order to be assured of accommodation we suggest that intending visitors should send a cash deposit. It will help the organiser to conclude the arrangements.

St. Pancras Branch is holding some very successful meetings at mid-day on Sundays on the Broad Walk in Regents Park, London. On Whit Monday the branch held a marathon meeting at this spot, lasting from noon until 9.30 p.m. It has been decided to continue these marathons, with relays of speakers on Sundays throughout the season. Members can enjoy the amenities of the park whilst engaged in Socialist activity.

Lunch Hour Meetings in London are encouraging. Meetings at Lincoln's Inn Fields on Tuesdays and Fridays are always a well attended success. Tower Hill on Thursday and Finsbury Pavement on Wednesday are now on an organised footing. The propaganda committee has obtained the services of two additional speakers for mid-day meetings and is trying to work the meetings on a rota basis. It is intended, if possible, to extend the activity to include other places, such as, we believe, Leather Lane on Mondays.

Provincial Propaganda is being extended. The central organiser with the propaganda committee are arranging for speakers to visit various provincial towns, where a branch or a group of members can render assistance, throughout the summer season.

Central Branch Representation at Annual Conferences has been engaging the attention of the Executive Committee. Acting on a resolution passed at the last Annual Conference, the E.C. has agreed to a scheme whereby Central Branch members will each receive, before the Annual Conference, a ballot paper bearing all the resolutions and amendments that are embodied in the Conference Final Agenda. They can then vote “for” or “against” each item and the voting at the Conference will be on the basis of one vote for each ten, or part of ten, votes cast either “for” or “against.” Thus, if 68 Central branch members vote in favour of a certain resolution and 33 vote against it, the voting accepted on behalf of Central Branch at the Conference will be seven votes “for” and four votes “against.” This proposal will be placed before the Autumn delegate meeting.

Dublin Branch of the S.P. of Ireland has commenced a series of outdoor meetings in that city. At the first meeting, a comrade who had never mounted an outdoor platform before, a Dublin busman, spoke for 25 minutes and attracted an audience of between 400 and 500 workers. Despite interruptions about Cardinal Mindszentsy and Moscow he spoke for much longer than his colleagues anticipated. When the official speaker mounted the platform, the heckling became more persistent. Those in front of the platform who had been interrupting on the religious angle now made it apparent that they were carrying out an organised attempt to break up the meeting. They kept up a continual shout about religion and Moscow until our comrades had to appeal to the one of the two “guards” who were present. But the police merely smiled and shrugged their shoulders. This gave the interrupters encouragement and the cries became louder. The speaker continued in a good voice and a number of supporters and members of radical organisations who were present voiced their protests at the interruptions. The meeting had, by this time, grown in numbers to between 600 and 700 and, one of our Dublin comrades writes, “by now the atmosphere was like that of a Fascist meeting down at Ridley Road—only worse.” The Catholic Actionists, who were the instigators of the disturbance, then started to sing their well known hymn, “Faith of my Fathers.” This is the hymn that they sang a year ago when they attacked the headquarters of the Communist Party of Ireland. “But this time it didn’t have the desired effect the singers thought—nobody joined in.” As the police still took no notice the Catholic Actionists became bolder and threatened the speaker, making a move towards the platform. The speaker defied them and nobody accepted his challenge to try to put him off the platform. But at this point the police decided that the meeting should close as a breach of the peace was being committed. The police said that they knew that the meeting had been reported to Police Headquarters and that it was within constitutional rights, but if they left for re-inforcements the platform might be rushed and considerable trouble caused. So the meeting closed. Our Irish comrades are taking steps to try to prevent a recurrence of the disturbances, but they are determined not to surrender their meetings to the religious fanatics. One thing pleases them considerably. That is, that the organised interrupters got no support from the rest of the audience. They anticipate that more than 90 per cent. of the audience disagreed with the Socialist case, “but they wanted to listen to the speaker.” A letter just arrived from the Dublin Branch literature secretary orders an additional quantity of Socialist Standards in preparation for the next outdoor meeting.

All members of the Socialist Party of Ireland wish to convey their thanks to the S.P.G.B. for the valuable assistance given them, “without which the task of forming our Party would have been much more difficult.” “We would like workers everywhere to learn of this splendid example of Socialist co-operation.”

The S.P.I, is preparing a manifesto. It will be completed in the very near future.

The Socialist Party of Canada writes: “Though the Dominion Elections are due this month (June) we find ourselves unable to conduct an extensive campaign and as a result of financial deficiencies we are issuing only 5,000 copies of a leaflet.”

Visits from Overseas Comrades—During July and August we are anticipating meeting a number of comrades and friends who will be visiting this country from Africa, America, Canada and different parts of Europe. We extend a comradely welcome to them all.

W. Waters

The Dublin lockout of 1913 (2002)

Book Review from the February 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Dublin lockout is an important part of working class history, but there are few accessible sources of information. We review a new book which puts this right

Perhaps only those who have taken a particular interest in the history of the workers’ movement in Britain will have heard of the Dublin lockout of 1913 and then maybe will only know what happened in general terms, for instance that the workers’ leader was called Larkin and that mobs led by Catholic priests prevented workers sending their children to the rest of Britain for the duration of the dispute. Up to now the most accessible source of information about it has been James Plunkett’s 1969 novel Strumpet City but that was a novel. Now Irish Times journalist Padraig Yeates has produced a 600-page account, based on original contemporary sources, called simply Lockout: Dublin 1913 (Gill and Macmillan, Dublin, 19.04 euro). It is an important contribution to working class history, especially as the events in Dublin in 1913 and 1914 raise general issues concerning trade unionism, nationalism, and the role of religion.

Ireland in 1913 was in the midst of yet another Home Rule crisis. A Liberal government was trying for a third time to bring in Home Rule for Ireland in the form of a parliament which would have certain powers within the United Kingdom and the British Empire. The Unionists in Ulster, supported and egged on by the Tory opposition, were mobilising to resist coming under the control of a Home Rule parliament in Dublin.

One revealing aspect of Yeates’s book is how the socialist analysis of the Irish Home Rule crises has now become the standard view. We have always attributed the conflict in Ireland between Nationalists and Unionists to a split between two sections of the capitalist class there whose vital interests differred: the developed industrial capitalists of the North who were an integral part of the overall British capitalist class and who wanted to remain a full part of the UK so as to have continued free access to the markets of Britain and its Empire, and the fledgling capitalists of the rest of Ireland who wanted protection from the competition of British products behind a tariff wall. To win popular support for their respective positions the Northern capitalists played the Orange card while the other side played the Catholic card. Hence what was essentially a split in the capitalist class in Ireland appeared as a religious conflict between protestants and catholics.

Yeates takes this for granted and accepts that Irish nationalism was essentially the nationalism of the rising Catholic “middle class” (in the 19th century sense of small business and professional people). One of these was the leading Irish businessman, William Martin Murphy, who was a central figure in the Dublin lockout. The chairman of the company that ran the Dublin trams and owner of the Irish Independent, the Sunday Independent and the Evening Herald, he had been an Irish Party MP on the anti-Parnellite wing, i.e., the wing that was particularly influenced by the Catholic Church which had enjoined the Irish Party MPs to disown Parnell because on his affair with a married woman.

Murphy, Yeates tells us, “saw home rule less as an opportunity to seize the levers of state power and patronage than as a chance to develop Irish industry. His increasing criticism of Redmond’s leadership of the Irish Party had less to do with the fact that Redmond had been a Parnellite than with his inability to gain greater fiscal powers from the Liberals for the proposed home rule parliament” (pp. 4-5).

However, it was not in his capacity as a Nationalist politician that Murphy has earned his notoriety in British and Irish working-class history. It was as the leader of the Dublin employers (most of the bigger ones in fact were not Nationalists but protestants and Unionists). But it did show that workers in Ireland could expect no charge in their condition from a Home Rule – or even an independent – government.

Syndicalism

The whole affair started in July when James Larkin, leader of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union (and he was a leader with followers, even if he could still be described as a working-class fighter), decided to organise the Dublin tramway workers. Murphy replied by sacking members of the union. The union then got its other members to black the Dublin tram company. It also organised a big protest demonstration in the centre of Dublin on 31 August, which the government banned and which turned into a police riot in which many passers-by were beaten up – yet another bloody Sunday. Murphy’s next move was to get the Dublin employers to agree to require their workers to sign a form stating that they would have nothing to do with the ITGWU; those who refused were sacked, in effect locked out.

Larkin was what was called at the time a “syndicalist”, which meant someone who believed that the way forward for workers was combined industrial action on the basis of “an injury to one is an injury to all”. In practice it meant that other workers – ideally, all other workers – should take action in support of any group of workers on strike by blacking goods produced by or supplied to their employers – the “sympathetic strike”.

People who call themselves syndicalists today tend to be doctrinaire anarcho-syndicalists who repudiate any form of political action and rely on strikes only, including one big final general strike to overthrow capitalism. Larkin and the others were not so doctrinaire; in fact Larkin himself had been elected as a Labour councillor to Dublin City Council in 1910 (but had been disqualified because of a previous criminal conviction). Their position was well summed up by Tom Mann, the most prominent English syndicalist of the time (and former member of the Socialist League and future member of the Communist Party) in a speech he gave to the locked-out workers in Dublin on 27 January 1914, as written up by Yeates quoting a contemporary report:

“‘trades unionism is syndicalism’. His object was ‘to combine all workers in each industry, to raise them all nationally and internationally, so as to take over control of the whole economic system.’ In that way the proletariat ‘could fix the number of working days, the abolition of employers, capitalists and government–which latter is only a functionary of the employers.’ The ‘ideal of the co-operative commonwealth will be realised'” (p. 531).

This was all very well in theory but to be effective it would require a very high degree of class consciousness, so high in fact that, if it existed, workers would be in a position to take direct political action to end capitalism. The syndicalists, however, advocated the use of this tactic by workers who were not fully class-conscious, i. e., not socialist-minded and who still thought in sectional rather than class terms, and while leaving the state in the hands of the representatives of the capitalist class. Another factor working against its success was that under capitalism the employers always have the whiphand. If they so choose they can, because they own so much wealth, always break any strike by starving the workers back to work. This was in fact the choice of the Dublin employers in 1913. Murphy had already insolently, but unfortunately pertinently, reminded his workers of this when he addressed them in July right at the beginning of the dispute:

“Murphy told the tramway men that the company’s shareholders ‘will have three meals a day’, whether the strike succeeded or not. ‘I don’t know if the men who go out can count on this'” (p. 7).

Faced with this tactic by the employers of trying to starve into submission the workers in the ITGWU and those in other unions that had taken action to support them, a sympathetic strike by British transport workers (seamen, railwaymen, dockers) was one option. This was what Larkin favoured. Another option was to enable the workers to hold out longer by providing them with food and/or money. This was the option the TUC chose, and unions and union members contributed considerable amounts of food (carried to Dublin in specially freighted ships) and money. Yeates estimates this at the equivalent today of 10 million Irish pounds (12.5 million euro or £8 million sterling), an impressive display of working-class solidarity, and it did allow the workers to hold out until the end of January 1914.

The Catholic Church

Another initiative in this sense, not from the TUC but from individuals sympathetic to the Dublin workers, was to lodge Dublin workers’ children with sympathisers in England and Scotland while the dispute lasted. This seemed a reasonable tactic, but when they heard of it the Catholic Church went ape. The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr William Walsh (who was an Irish Nationalist and had also been one of those who had instigated the campaign to topple Parnell) immediately issued a statement condemning this as a danger to the children’s souls. This was the green light for the most outrageous actions by his priests. Screaming mobs led by priests stopped the children going. The Irish Catholic wrote about protecting “the children whom degraded and dissolute parents would fain surrender to Socialism or to any other Satanic influence” (p. 321).

One of the few to denounce the Catholic Church’s stance on this issue was the poet W. B. Yeats who declared at a public meeting “some day we will have to reckon with those who have fomented fanaticism in Dublin to break up the organisation of the workers” (p. 297).

Both Larkin and James Connolly, the IGTWU’s Belfast organiser who had been called to Dublin to help, were practising Catholics who claimed, contrary to all the evidence, that Socialism and Catholicism were not incompatible. Yeates quotes from a sermon given on 12 September by Father John Condon, a leading Dublin theologian of the time, which raises the intriguing question of what Larkin and Connolly were told when they went to confession:

“I have to tell you, beloved brethren, that the word Socialism connotes a body of doctrine which no Catholic who values his faith can accept; and I say further, that the Catholic who, with his eyes open, gives his sympathy and support to the methods and aims of Socialism is a recreant to his creed” (p. 157).

Archbishop Walsh, addressing a meeting of the St Vincent de Paul Society on 27 October, took up an even worse position preaching that only faith in God providing a better life in heaven could make the poor happy (“pie in the sky when you die”), a reminder of one important reason why socialists oppose religion:

“he dismissed outright the belief of Larkin and his fellow-socialists that the poor could save themselves by some form of social revolution. He believed that happiness was possible in this urban hell only for those willing to accept their lot; ‘holidays’ in England would make the attainment of that spiritual goal far more difficult” (p. 313).

Larkin, to give him his due, told the priests not to interfere. Connolly, too, had replied, in his pamphlet Labour, Nationality and Religion, to an attack on socialism by a Jesuit priest, Father Kane, in his 1910 “Lenten Discourses”. Father Kane, incidentally, had evidently read some SPGB publication as Connolly quotes him as saying at one point: “Now, as to the Socialist system. In the official declaration of the English Socialists we read – the object of Socialism is ‘the establishment of a system of society, based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by, and in the interests of the whole community'”.

The Irish Nationalists

The Irish Nationalists and Home Rulers were no more favourable to the workers. Some denounced the aid given by the TUC as “English charity” and even hinted that it was intended to further disadvantage Irish industry by raising wages so as to make it less competitive with English industry. One of these was Arthur Griffith, the narrow-minded founding member and theoretician of Sinn Fein, who, records Yeates, felt that “British trade unionists were exploiting the lockout to undermine Irish business” (p. 353). He also attacked in article in Sinn Fein on 25 October the view that “Capitalism not England is the enemy” by claiming:

“Not Capitalism, but the abuse of Capitalism oppresses Labour . . . Not in the destruction of the Capitalist, but in his subjection to the law of the State, interpreting the conscience and the interests of the Nation, will Labour be delivered from its oppression and restored to all its rights. I affirm that the evils of the social system, as they exist in this country and in Great Britain, are wholly due to English policy and Government . . .” (p. 354).

Fellow narrow nationalist and later Irish Republican hero and martyr, Patrick Pearse, took up a similar position, stating that he believed that “the root of the matter [dire and desperate poverty] lies in foreign domination” (p. 221).

In fact, there weren’t many who were actually saying (correctly) that “Capitalism not England is the enemy”. Connolly, who by now was well on the way to becoming a physical force republican (and, like Pearse, a future republican hero and martyr), argued in effect that “Capitalism and England are the enemy”. Larkin wouldn’t have disagreed but his approach was more down-to-earth: “Home Rule does not put a loaf in anybody’s pocket” (p. 181); Redmond (leader of the Irish Party) and Carson (leader of the Ulster Unionists) were “both simply the mouthpieces of the capitalist class” (p. 254); “Home rule would ‘clear the decks for the workers'” (p. 272).

That’s about all it did. In 1921 Ireland – or 26 of its 32 counties – did get an independence of sorts but capitalism remained—and so, as predicted by socialists, did its problems. The facts themselves – the continuing dire and desperate poverty, unemployment, emigration, slums, and ill-health – were to confirm that it was indeed not “English rule” or “foreign domination”, but capitalism, that had been the cause of the problems the workers in Ireland had had to face in 1913, 1914 and before.

The sympathetic strike – or rather the resistance to the lockout – ended in failure at the end of January in face of the intransigence of the employers and after the TUC had decided it could no longer afford to continue sending food and money. Larkin advised his members to go back while still refusing to sign the anti-union form. The employers took most but by no means all of them back but didn’t insist they sign the form.

Larkin blamed the TUC for not having called a general sympathetic strike of transport workers in Britain. Maybe this would have made the employers bend a little, by perhaps getting them to offer a “no victimisation” clause, i. e., the restoration of the status quo before the dispute. Which could hardly be called a victory. Basically, however, the reason for the failure was that the “syndicalist” tactic wasn’t as effective as its advocates imagined.

Adam Buick

Lansbury and the “Daily Herald”. A forgotten incident. (1925)

From the February 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

We see from the Daily Herald of January 19th, that Mr. George Lansbury is publishing a history of the Herald. Lest Mr. Lansbury should omit to record the treatment meted out to Charles Lapworth, a former Editor, for the offence of assuming that the duty of a workers’ paper is to fight for the working class, we reprint the letter Lapworth wrote when his connection with the Herald came to an end. A lesson is also to be learned about the futility of trying to build up a workers’ movement except on the basis of solid understanding. The wealthy and “disinterested” friends are likely to prove disappointing supports in time of trouble. Those who pay the piper call the tune !

Lapworth’s letter appeared in the New Age on December 18th, 1913, after the Herald had refused to publish it !

* * *

“Daily Herald” and Chas. Lapworth.

A letter from Chas. Lapworth to the “New Age” (18/12/1913).

Sir,

I sent the enclosed statement to the Daily Herald. The management declined to publish it. Will you be good enough to give it a space in the New Age?

(Signed) Chas. Lapworth.

“Why I Left the “Daily Herald”

After a fortnight’s delay, an announcement has been made in the Daily Herald of the fact that Mr. G. Lansbury has been appointed Editor in my place and it has been necessary to say that “there will be no change of policy.” I think it is due to these enquiries, and certainly in view of events subsequent to what I am about to relate, it is due to me personally that my explanation of what happened should be published. The notice in to-day’s “paper” states merely that I had resigned, and many may wonder why I should desert my post at such a crisis in the industrial war as the week before the “Dublin Conference.” The statement, if it had given the full truth, would have said “that I had been forced out of the editorship against my will.” Most readers know something of the romantic career of our little paper, and will remember that in June last the “Daily Herald Co.” was forced into liquidation through no fault of its own. “The Limit Printing and Publishing Co.” was then formed, consisting of Mr. G. Lansbury and myself, and we acquired the paper. By this time the expenditure had been cut down to £500 per week, as against £1,100 per week of a year previous, and the weekly loss reduced to about £200 per week, which several anonymous rich friends of Mr. G. Lansbury agreed to make good. Later Mr. Francis Meynell, as representing these friends, was added to the Board of Directors, making the maximum of three allowed by the “Articles of Association.” The only other shareholder besides the Directors is Mr. Robert Williams.

Mr. Lansbury is Chairman and I am Secretary of the Company. On Sunday, December 1st, 1913, I received a summons to a meeting of the Company, signed by Mr. G. Lansbury and called for the following Monday morning. Mr. Lansbury, Mr. Meynell, and myself were present, and the meeting was opened by the Chairman without any preamble addressing me: “We have come to ask you to resign the Editorship. Either you go out or I shall refuse to have anything more to do with the paper.” And he went on to say that he must refuse to enter into any argument or give any other reason than that there was a fundamental difference between his own frame of mind, his own outlook and mine, which difference made the position absolutely hopeless so far as the future of the paper was concerned. Naturally, I urged that, even admitting this “fundamental difference,” it was not serious enough ground for me to resign my position, and that with all respect I must ask for something more specific. Placing a copy of the Daily Herald on the table, I said that was what the staff and myself stood for, obviously, or we would not have been working as conscientious journalists, and that being so, the request for my resignation necessarily implied a departure in policy. Mr. Lansbury denied that it did. I answered that a mere negative did not help me to understand, and I asked for particular criticism of the conduct of the paper. The Chairman objected to what he called my cross-examination of himself, but conceded that as I have been honest and conscientious in my editorial work, I was only doing the right thing from my point of view in fighting for the status quo. He also agreed there was no personal feeling in the matter, but we disagreed about a principle. Mr. Lansbury repeated that so far as he was concerned the position was hopeless if I remained Editor. I pressed for reasons. Mr. Meynell then proffered this : “We want the paper to represent Mr. Lansbury’s ideas, and we propose that Mr. Lansbury be Editor.” I suggested that the change of Editor and mention of “ideas,” seeing that Mr. Lansbury had stated his ideas coincided with mine, did warrant my assumption that change of policy was intended. To which Mr. Meynell replied: “We are against the gospel of hatred you preach. I pointed out that the paper stood for the class war, without modification, and Mr. Lansbury interposed that “it would continue to stand for the class war, but not class hatred and attacks on persons of another class.” “Hatred of conditions, by all means, but not of persons,” I think were his words, and Mr. Meynell said something about the absence of the spirit of brotherhood in the paper. Incidentally Mr. Lansbury strongly condemned some public remark of Wm. D. Heywood about middle-class people. Readers will have to put their own construction on the foregoing. My construction was that the paper was to be allowed to retain its “kick,” but that it was to have a feather bed tied round its foot. Both Mr. Meynell and Mr. G. Lansbury insisted that their complaint was against the tone and not the policy of the paper. Mr. Meynell said that almost every day his father or somebody else complained of something offensive. My reply was that the Daily Herald was not written for rich people, but by workers for workers, and so far the latter had not made manifest any objection to the tone. In response to further pressure, I got one or two items mentioned about which there was complaint. It is hardly believable, but I, Editor of a militant working-class paper, was taken to task for uncomplimentary reference to a duchess, to a bishop, to a prominent Fabian, and for a cartoon of a certain Labour Member of Parliament.

Prior to this particular meeting, complaint bad been made about neglect of the woman’s movement and “Too much Dublin.” In reference to this, I contended that it was not fair to blame the paper for the past few months’ apparent slump in militant suffrage methods, and that if my editorial judgment was wrong in attributing to Dublin the greatest importance in the industrial war, then I must certainly accept the blame for devoting to it so much of our eight small pages. Finally I said I had diligently assembled all the—to me—little molehills to which exception had been taken, and for the life of me I could not build a big enough mountain of reason why I should desert my post, and I refused to resign. Mr. Meynell then moved : “That Mr. G. Lansbury be Editor in place of Mr. Lapworth.” I voted against the proposition. Mr. Lansbury as Chairman used his casting vote and declared himself appointed Editor. Subsequently, as a graceful concession to Mr. Lansbury, I formally resigned and duly entered on the minute book the new Editor, and that was all, except—at the evident desire of Mr. Lansbury—I left the office at once. I also proffered the undertaking that I would not speak to any of the staff, who would naturally want some explanation of the extraordinary turn of events, until Mr. Lansbury had had an opportunity of giving his own explanation.

Mr. Lansbury objected to me taking notes of the discussion, but I think I have reported fairly correctly what took place. Mr. Lansbury also intimated that he would allow no discussion in the Daily Herald, so I don’t know whether this statement will be permitted to appear in the paper, which has hitherto made a boast of its “free and open platform,” but it is in view of events subsequent to the above meeting that I am obliged to press for publication.

I have since been criticised for allowing myself to be forced out of the Editorship. My answer is that the proposition came upon me so suddenly that it did not occur to me that I could alone shoulder the responsibility of stopping the £200 a week subsidy, as I was made to feel was inevitable if I proved obdurate. The money had always been put up solely on account of Mr. Lanhbury’s personality, and his withdrawal meant the withdrawal of the cash.

(Signed) Chas. Lapworth.

December 12th, 1913.

(Italics ours.—Ed. Com., “ S.S.”)

Socialism and the Labour Movement. (1924)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1924 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Critic Answered.

15, Grenville Street,

Dublin.

Dear Comrade,

As a member of the working class, I am very interested in your party and the Socialist Standard. Some months ago a member of your party was in this town and he left a few of us thinking. For myself I must say that the Socialist Party of Great Britain has very little chance of ever making the working-class Socialists. First, because they do not definitely take their place among the workers and engage in the struggle between the workers and the capitalist class which is unceasing, rather do they preach that nothing except the political battle matter, forgetting that without the economic and the defence forces of the working class movement parliaments, or political institutions are valueless as the capitalist could afford to laugh at the attempts of a band of politicians trying to control the implements that are in his hands. The only hope that Socialism may be achieved is in a combination of all the industrial workers organised as a class together with the defence forces that it will have to fashion in its own defence, and lastly the use, if necessary, as a supplement political action. Propaganda for political action will be helped as the struggle of the class conscious and organised workers goes on.

My chief idea in writing was to urge that sectarianism inside the working class should cease and that small bodies like the S.P.G.B. ought to get into the Labour movement and put their influence on the side of unity, otherwise there will be doubts as to their sincerity. In this town the S.P.G.B. has one individual as a member, and there are intelligent young men calling themselves Communists. He and they are a group who unite in their refusal to assist the mass of the workers who are out for the Workers’ Republic. Why do such people, Communists and Socialists, anger the working class by their hair-splitting differences? Why is it that capitalists whom we are trying to down manage to keep united while we are divided, yet we are all out for working class control of the means and instruments of production and distribution? Therefore I would urge that inside the working class is your place.

Yours fraternally,

P. Cunningham.

Reply to P. Cunningham.

Your letter has been passed on to me for reply, but I find reply difficult because your letter contains only baseless assertions and muddled ideas.

In the first place, capitalist conditions make socialists; we only assist the educational work of conditions.

You say that we do not take our place among the workers in the struggle. I don’t know where you get your information from, but you are evidently badly misinformed. The members of the S.P.G.B. are working men and working women. They work in factories, mills and workshops, and take part with their fellow workers in the daily and weekly struggle for the best conditions of labour that can be obtained. But while doing so they point out the limits of this struggle and the impossibility of overthrowing capitalism by industrial methods. They therefore agitate among their fellows for political action. In the S.P.G.B. they are organised for the political struggle; class-conscious revolutionary action for the establishment of Socialism.

What do you mean by “the economic and the defence forces of the working-class movement”? There is only one force that is worthy of a moment’s consideration—the force that operates as powder and shot, bombs, poison gas, and so forth; the force that is bottled up in aeroplanes, battleships, and tanks; the murderous force that can blow thousands of us to bits and spread ruin and desolation over large territories in the wink of an eye. Have the experiences of war, of strikes, and of battering of native populations taught you nothing? And this mighty death-dealing machine is operated from parliament—in Britain, from the House of Commons. They can crush any working-class uprising almost before the workers have begun to move, as many a man, eating his heart out in prison, has learnt to his sorrow.

Now what can the workers bring to combat this political machine? Nothing but empty stomachs and brickbats. Their wages are not sufficient to enable them to purchase anything beyond a few rifles, and any attempt to manufacture munitions (which could only be done on such a small scale as to be valueless) or to tamper with the soldiers or sailors would, and has been, rapidly met with a term of imprisonment. Up against the political machinery the workers are helpless, and yet, the irony of it, they can obtain control of this machinery as soon as they wish.

On the industrial field the workers are faced with the misery and demoralisation produced by repeated failures. On the political field they are faced with complete success as soon as they are clear about the objective and the way to obtain it. It is easier to organise workers effectively for sound political action than it is to organise them for industrial action alone, because in the one direction complete success is within their grasp, whilst in the other ultimate defeat is certain. The two positions can easily be demonstrated by illustrations that will satisfy the average worker, who is not either a blind worshipper of idols or empty phrases, or whose head is not filled with the fatal delusions of the communist.

To take another of your points. The implements of production are in the possession of the capitalist because he can resist by force any attempt made by the workers to take them. That is why the capitalist laughs. But when the workers, through delegates they control, take possession of the force the laugh will disappear, as it disappeared from the faces of the people composing each class that in the past lost political power and with it economic ownership. Space is too limited for me to give illustrations of this fact here, but you have only to ask and you will receive plenty of illustrations in a future number of this paper.

You ask us to unite with others in “the Labour movement.” But for what are we to unite? Mere unity is meaningless by itself. Are we to unite with the Labour Party to help the capitalists to obtain more profits and the workers to become more docile slaves? Are we to unite with people like J. R. Clynes? He is president of the League of the British Commonwealth that has issued a leaflet stating :

   “The ‘League of the British Commonwealth’ demands, therefore, the nationalisation of our principal banks as the only permanent remedy for unemployment ; but this does not imply or involve the nationalisation of land, industry, or anything else.”

Masses of workers are Liberals, masses are Conservatives; do you want us to unite with either or both of these? You see, unity depends upon the objective and the means to obtain the objective. But I am forgetting, you consider political action to be useless, therefore I presume you are not in favour of uniting with bodies that urge the workers to action you consider useless?

If this is so, take care you are not throwing a boomerang. Take care some members of the Labour Party may not be accusing you of “splitting the ranks.”

From your letter it would appear that the fraction you favour is that rapidly diminishing quantity going under the name of Communist. But it is difficult to find out on what policy one could unite with the Communists, except on the policy of finding out that one is constantly making mistakes and must start again with a new shibboleth—rather a barren outlook you must admit.

You say the mass of the workers are out for the Workers’ Republic. Wake up, friend, your blissful dreams are far, far away from the truth. The mass of the workers are, alas, supporters of capitalism, and your foolish statement suggests to me that you mix very little with your fellow workers. Come down from your attic ot dreams and learn the realities of life before tendering advice to those who are engaged in the struggle for Socialism.

You wind up with the absurd statement that “we are all out for working-class control of the means and instruments of production and distribution.” If this is so, why all the fuss and propaganda? And why, above all, isn’t Socialism here now? Anyhow who are the “we” to whom you refer?

Finally people may be “out for” many things but the point is are they acting in a way that will obtain for them the object of their desires? I might be “out” to visit France but if I started from the North of England to swim there via Greenland there would not be much likelihood of my arrival. The means cannot be separated from the end. There are many people who claim to be “out for” Socialism, but their actions give the lie to the claim and push farther into the future the wished-for objective. The Labour Party, for instance, who urged the workers to take part in the late war, and who engage the attention of workers upon a multitude of questions that are of no value. Then there are also the Communists, who change their minds every few weeks; continually find out that they have been making mistakes; ask the workers to trust them completely, and then work might and main to drive the workers into the shambles.

We are of the working class, inside the working class, and working our hardest to assist our fellow workers to understand that in Socialism lies their only salvation; and that the only way to obtain Socialism, once understanding and desiring it, is to capture the political machinery from the capitalist so that we can dispossess them of the power they wield and the wealth they have stolen.

Gilmac.

Branch News (1962)

Party News from the April 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

This month is going to be an exceptionally busy one for the Party. The Annual Conference, Rally and Social (April 20th, 21st and 22nd); planning for May Day Meetings; and in Glasgow, our comrades are preparing for the hustings in May, when they are contesting Kelvin Ward in the Municipal Elections. Their Election Address is re-printed on page 64.

The Party in London is departing from its recent practice of holding an evening meeting following the Sunday afternoon May Day Rally, instead an indoor meeting is being held at Caxton Hall, on Tuesday May 1st. Details are given elsewhere in this issue. Sunday, May 6th in Hyde Park from 3 pm will be the Outdoor Rally. Our speakers will be putting the Socialist case from a decorated stand. There should be a good audience in the Park, but we will need every available member there to assist and especially to help sell Party Literature.

Camberwell Branch continues to maintain a high level of activity. In addition to the regular work of running two outdoor meetings and canvassing the Socialist Standard, the Branch has been well represented on the propaganda trips to Coventry as well as other London indoor meetings and literature drives. The Branch is now holding a series of discussion meetings. One on ‘Trade Unions' proved very interesting as did the following discussions on the 'Hidden Persuaders' and ‘Workers and Politics ’. Branch members also had the pleasure of hearing Comrade Gilmac talk on his tour of America and Canada.

In spite of the severe weather at the beginning of the year, Wembley Branch persisted with its canvassing efforts. The small band of comrades turned out in biting winds and flurries of snow, to play their part in expanding sales of the “S.S. At the end of April, it is hoped to go further afield and try a canvass in the Maidstone area. The branch lectures were continued throughout the winter months. At the time of writing, a talk on Trade Unions was scheduled for March 19th. Wembley has been particularly active with two indoor public meetings and a film show on the programme. With the approach of Spring and Summer, we look forward to a successful outdoor propaganda season.

It seems to be more than a coincidence that political and religious bigotry are so often found in the same place. However, it is encouraging to hear how some of our friends manage to overcome these difficulties. In Grenada, in spite of the very strong influence of the Church, we have one isolated Socialist (whose nearest fellow Socialist is in Trinidad). In spite of the fact that he has been visited by the local Priests and threatened (not only with hell fire!), he holds regular discussions at his home and distributes our literature.

Much nearer home, in Dublin in fact, another lone Socialist has found a novel way of making our case known. As well as distributing literature in more usual ways, she has been cutting out selected articles from the Socialist Standard, pasted them on large sheets of paper, and then bill-posted them on hoardings and other advertising sites. She tells us that some of these homemade posters have been up for several weeks and. as they carry the Party address, she hopes we may make some new contacts. Her only complaint is that, for her purposes, she would prefer the size of the print to be larger!

Phyllis Howard

Striking Back (2019)

Book Review from the February 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

On the morning of 19 July 1984, a large number of shop workers at the Henry Street branch of Dunnes Stores in Dublin refused to register the sale of South African fruit. They were immediately suspended by the management and so walked out and took up positions outside the main entrance. However during the day, with the realisation that their actions might lead to the loss of their jobs, many drifted back to work so by the evening only nine remained; eight women and one man. So began an industrial action that would last for over two years, become a cause célèbre amongst the Irish Left (I can personally recall the pickets and solidarity demonstrations outside the store) and garner much international recognition and sympathy. From a socialist perspective it revealed the aggressive and uncompromising nature of certain individual capitalists to maximise profit and the weak and ineffectual response of government; torn between wanting to do what was ‘right’ and indeed popular with the public and the hard-nosed need not to disrupt the operation of capitalism. This story is told in a memoir, Striking Back, published last year by one of the leading strike members, Mary Manning.

The strike took place in an Ireland that was quite different from that of today. It would be hard to underestimate the political power that the Dunnes Stores organisation, headed up by the pugnacious Ben Dunne, wielded at the time. They were by far the dominant retail organisation in the country facing little real competition from any major rival (this was long before Lidl, Aldi, Tesco etc. entered the Irish market in a serious way). The Dunne family cultivated strong links with the upper echelons of both centre-right parties in Ireland, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael. Subsequent tribunals of enquiry (prompted by other public matters) revealed how nakedly and directly this influence was wielded in terms of payments to parties and politicians in return for favours or ‘considerations’. For workers, Dunnes had a well-deserved reputation for being an extremely hierarchical, top-down organisation where successful shop managers were judged by higher management as to how efficiently they worked those at the shop floor. Furthermore Ireland was a much poorer country then than it is now and full-time jobs were very scarce so employment in any large company, even in a firm with a reputation of Dunnes Stores, would have been very desirable. It took tremendous courage for Mary and her colleagues to go out on strike and then to persevere for so long. As she says, they were all working class women with no higher education qualifications and limited employment possibilities.

Trade unions
The origins of the strike are interesting and explain many of the difficulties that the strikers experienced. The retail workers were members of the IDATU trade union (which has subsequently become part of the MANDATE trade union). Historically it was very much one of those small ‘bread and butter issues’ organisations solely focussing on the day to day employment of its members without any real interest in the broader interests of the working class in society. Then a young, radical individual, John Mitchell, who had been involved in the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement, became General Secretary and persuaded the union to endorse resolutions condemning apartheid and specifically directing its members not to handle South African products in their places of employment. His fellow members of the union Executive went along with this, content that this support was meant to be solely rhetorical and probably in their minds indulging his whimsies. Once the strike started and then continued for such a prolonged period, they became more reluctant to authorise the £21 per week strike pay. To be fair, they were probably more representative of the wider membership of the union. The book discusses how in fact only a small number of the union members in the particular shop on Henry Street went out on strike in line with official union policy and none of the union members in all the other stores throughout Ireland joined them until near the very end. Understandably for many of them, the issues in South Africa must have appeared remote and the personal costs of striking disproportionate to any small improvements that might have resulted to the lives of black South Africans. In fact not only were many Dunnes workers indifferent to the cause of the strikers, but as Mary discusses candidly, what she found upsetting was the hostility they experienced from some of their fellow workers who remained inside.

In addition to the union, the strike proved something of a quandary for the Irish Labour Party. As with many organisations that identified with the ‘Left’ they claimed to abhor apartheid and indeed the vast majority of their members surely did. The party formed part of the Irish government at the time and so theoretically at least could have aided the strikers in a meaningful fashion. Some of the senior Labour figures holding full cabinet positions were outspoken in their opposition to apartheid. However, their party was the junior partner with the much larger and more conservative Fine Gael party. Government ministers of that party felt they could not intervene in the action. Their opposition to intervention was either for the ideological reasons of not interfering in the operation of the ‘free market’ or for more pragmatic reasons of trade and employment. Ireland exported more to South Africa than it imported and South Africa had invested in some industrial plants in Ireland. The government was afraid of retaliatory action from Pretoria if they became involved and the harm the loss of trade with South Africa would do to an already fragile economy here. So Labour ended up being sympathetic to the strike while simultaneously being embarrassed by it because of their inaction. It’s another small example of how reformist parties find it difficult to deliver even minor actions when in a capitalist government.

Catholic church
The striking women also sought the support of the Catholic Church, still a powerful institution at that time, in their quest to obtain a successful outcome to their struggle. They wrote to Bishop Eamonn Casey who by the standards of the time was regarded as a liberal, people-oriented, member of the Catholic hierarchy with a particular interest (and to be fair a decent track record) in issues of overseas justice.  His (private) response proved a particular disappointment where he described their request for his support as ‘impertinent’ and their actions as potentially damaging to black South Africans. Probably the main reason for his dismissal of their cause was that while the Church liked to be involved with progressive issues, it was only when they were in control and when the Church itself would be the ultimate beneficiary of any campaigning action. Most curiously the book also highlights the ambivalent attitude of the Irish Anti-Apartheid Movement itself to the strike. Initially they gave it their full support but then their leader Kadar Asmal (later a minister in the first post-apartheid government) privately withdrew his support for reasons not clarified in the book. It is suggested that the Movement was becoming alarmed at the radical nature of the protest and how they were afraid it might damage their coalition-building efforts with more mainstream politicians and governments against apartheid. The strikers did receive wholehearted support from Bishop Desmond Tutu who invited them to South Africa to witness the plight of the population first hand although when their plane arrived at Johannesburg, they were refused entry and after a short detention sent home.

The strike at the store lasted for over two years primarily down to the stubbornness of Ben Dunne in refusing any sort of meaningful compromise and insisting to the end that workers in his stores ‘do as they were told’ without any question or debate. He claimed it was management’s sole right to decide what the store did or didn’t stock and made it a principle not to yield to the workers’ ethical reservations. At the time, the other supermarket shops and outlets in Ireland also stocked South African produce but usually the issue was finessed at a local level by allowing staff not to handle the goods if they had moral scruples about it. The strike formally ended towards the end of 1986 in a rather messy fashion though with the strikers ultimately vindicated. Embarrassed by the international publicity and support the strike was garnering, the Irish government finally stepped in and banned the importation and sale of all South African goods from 1987 onwards (one of the first countries to do so). In principle the strikers were free to return to work at Dunnes Stores. Clearly the company didn’t want them back, considering them as troublemakers but they were legally obliged to take them. Some of the strikers did not go back knowing full well the poisonous atmosphere that would await. Some did, including Mary herself, but the company resorted to underhand low-level intimidation in a bid to force them to resign. Within a year Mary felt she had to leave and feeling that her prospects in Dublin would be very limited due to her profile as an ‘agitator’ she decided to emigrate to Australia for a number of years.

As an epilogue, the strikers finally managed to collectively visit South Africa in 2013 for Nelson Mandela’s official funeral which on a personal level was a thrilling emotional experience, though Mary is realistic enough to comment that for many South Africans living in the townships very little substantial change has taken place since the fall of apartheid. Overall this is an interesting account of genuine working-class history conveying the complexity that is involved when individuals become politicised while simultaneously dealing with the threads of family life, personal relationships and hopes for the future. The book highlights the heavy price that workers can pay when taking political action against powerful interests. It also demonstrates the relatively weak position of a small group of people taking political action without broad support showing that real and substantial changes do need the committed involvement of the majority of the population.

Kevin Cronin

South Africa and Ireland: Lessons for the Misguided. (1914)

From the February 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

South Africa is in strike turmoil that has set the Union Government in such a panic that, in addition to the most elaborate military precautions, it is described as a revolution more than a labour quarrel. Yet the demand of the strikers is for the reinstatement of the men displaced by the economies effected in the railway service by a policy of retrenchment!

The Capitalists’ Risks

Making full allowance for the fact that any will do to hang a quarrel on when a quarrel is brewing, it is difficult to imagine a revolution in any way connected with what the red flag, that decorated the streets of Johannesburg, is supposed to indicate, being dependent upon a question of capitalist administration.

On the other hand, the Government in South Africa have expressed the opinion that the present trouble arises from the presence of “agitators,” and that when these are successfully deported the trouble will cease. This is flattering to the agitators, but very doubtfully true to facts.

The most successful labour agitator must have the conditions for his success present, and the discontent must arise from something material in addition to the appeals of the agitator. The following figures from an article which appeared in the "Daily Telegraph” (Jan. 15th, 1914) may help to explain the economic conditions on which the “agitator” had to work:

  In 1912 the Rand, as it, is colloquially known, produced in round figures, £37,000,000 of gold. Over £13,500,000 of that vast sum was paid in wages, £7,865,000 going to Europeans of whom 23,518 were employed on the mines, and £5,691,000 to South African natives, of whom 193,351 were employed. Stores and supplies consumed on the Rand cost nearly ten millions sterling; £5,800,000 was spent in development work, leaving a balance of about £8,000,000 to be distributed as dividends to investors who had furnished the necessary capital for the mining enterprises.

Why Safety cannot be Afforded

It is interesting to note that the “investors who had furnished the necessary capital” had already had that capital returned to them in dividends up to forty-four times over, drawing 12 per dividend.

The “Daily Telegraph” says further:

   Some of the Rand mining companies have made enormous returns to their shareholders. There are 115 companies on the Rand from which returns were received, and it is impossible to give details of all of them, but a few typical instances of high dividends may be mentioned. The Ferreira Company, since its flotation has paid 4,415 per cent, on its capital, and has distributed nearly four millions sterling in dividends. The Crown Reed has paid 2,404 per cent. ; the Johannesburg Pioneer 2,107½ per cent. ; the Emmer, 1,237 per cent. ; the Meyer and Charlton, 1,105 per cent, ; the Durban Roodeport, 1,100 per cent. ; the Crown Mines, 1,067½ per cent. ; the New Hereto, 992½ per cent. ; the New Primrose 817 ½ per cent. ; and there have been many distributions amounting in the aggregate to 200, 300, and 400 per cent, and upwards. The total sum paid in dividends by the Rand mines amounts to £88,159,489. If the whole of the Transvaal gold mines be included, the payments to shareholders reach the colossal total of £91,462,773 distributed between 1887 and 1912.

Then if we recall the articles that went the rounds of the Press last July on the occasion of the former strike on the Rand, which showed how short-lived the miner was on account of the mortality from a form of phthisis resulting from breathing the dust-laden atmosphere, we shall get a further glimpse of the motive force behind the agitator.

The Answers to Industrialists

Apart, however, from the actual conditions of labour for white workers in South Africa, which on the showing of the above figures represent a degree of exploitation seldom to be met with – and leaving out the industrial position occupied by the native blacks and the imported Indians, which is infinitely worse – the attitude of the Government is enlightening. There is a growing body of labour opinion in this country and elsewhere, that contemns and belittles the political forces which we Socialists pronounce of the very first importance. In South Africa a big strike is on, and a general strike is threatened, and the answer of the capitalist Government is the mailed fist—the mobilisation of all forms of the weaponed arm of the law. With it the capitalist Government can batter the working class into submission, whether it, be in Johannesburg or Dublin.

The same lesson was taught by the strike of French railway workers that was scotched in a similar way—by calling up the military reserve, many of whom were of the strikers.

That lesson was quite lost upon the Industrialists. They argue that a general strike will bring society to a standstill. Which may be true, but the working class are at a hungry standstill easily first. The workers cannot hope to starve the masters into surrender. In the starvation handicap the workers are half way along the course to start with. Nor can they fight the masters, while the latter control the fighting machinery. Nor can they lock the master out while he holds the keys. If and when they are ready to stop capitalist exploitation, and expropriate the master class, granting they will instinctively turn to direct and immediate force to express such a conviction, we ask as—How will they use the vote they already possess?

The Weapon of the Vote.

According to the attitude of the Syndicalist, he would not use it at all. To tell him that the vote is —or should be—the modern, civilised methods of registering the opinions of citizens leaves him cold. Historical explanations of the growth and significance of the vote merely cause his lips to curl. But the majority of votes controls the policy of government, and if you refuse the social expression of your opinion you leave the majority with the enemy; your case is lost by default.

To be ready to right against capitalism and to refuse to vote against it is to us sheer folly—folly in its own account, and rank madness when the voting is an essential preliminary to successful fighting, and may even render the lighting unnecessary. The “agitators,” therefore, in South Africa may be arch-Larkins, but they are not Socialists. For the Socialist always emphasises the importance of the political weapon. It is this very emphasis that has enabled the Labour members here to steal our thunder, and substitute the form for the substance. While we insist on the necessity of political representation for Socialism, they insist upon political representation only, with themselves as the representatives.

The colour or creed of the capitalist government does not matter in the least. When Larkin brought his fiery cross across the Irish Sea, in his first speech here, at the Albert Hall, he said it was important that the Dublin strike should be won, but it was a thousand times more important that the Home Rule Bill should go through. Which shows that Larkin doesn’t understand the working-class position. For does not the situation in South Africa show the Boer generals— Delarey, Botha, and the rest who were prepared to fight for independence for South Africa, hand in glove, shoulder to shoulder, with their erstwhile opponents against the working class?

What Larkin Does Not Know

And so in Ireland, the Home Rulers, with the passing of the Bill that Mr. Larkin thinks so important, would be found side by side with Carson, Law, Smith & Co. against the workers.

The incident in South Africa is a glaring instance of the fundamental nature of the class struggle, and a standing example of how it overshadows any sectional difference between the masters, which all Socialists know, and which Larkin does not.

The same thing is going on in Dublin. The authorities are inclined to blame the “agitators,” and made the mistake South Africa is copying of imprisoning them. The forces of law and order ran amok and battered people not wisely but too well. The official investigation that was to follow has provided an illuminating spectacle. The process of white-washing is so flagrant that a Liberal member of Parliament who saw the battering and was going to throw light on the investigation has been badly snubbed and is disgusted. It is to be hoped he makes a noise when Parliament meets, but it is to be feared he is too loyal a Liberal to have the heart to inconvenience an administration that is already up against difficulties enough. After his timely rescue of the Government last session when they were threatened with a minority on a snap division, surely he will not round on them now! They must explain things to him.

The conduct of the police, however, can only be considered from their point of view as indiscreetly over-zealous, and one can quite understand the displeasure of the legal luminaries engaged upon the difficult task of glossing over so rough a case, at an English M.P. “poking his nose in,” as they expressed it.

As the action of the police in Dublin was no different in kind, if it were in degree, from their action in Wales and in Cornwall, when a Commission does sit on the matter, it may as well include in its terms of reference those and other cases besides Dublin.

But the present writer is strongly of the opinion that if the working class do not want the police force, and the army, and the navy, and the bench, and the rest of the present social machinery, used against them, the only way is to grasp the power that wields these forces, which is to be had by the casting of a vote in the right way, with the consciousness and the intentions of the Socialist behind it. You must get behind the gun; you must guide the policeman’s baton from the centre of government. The capture of the political machinery is still the essential preliminary to a successful working-class revolution.

Dick Kent

Obituary: Margaret Morrissey (1976)

Obituary from the September 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Comrades in Dublin have reported the death a short time ago of Margaret Morrissey. She will be remembered as an indefatigable worker for Socialism. Against the heavy political odds in Ireland which most would have found overwhelming she consistently pitted the strength of her Socialist convictions. She distributed literature wherever she could and no conversation with her was possible without the Socialist viewpoint being put. A personal reminiscence is of a cycle tour some years ago which started with being met at Dublin Airport by Margaret on her ancient “sit-up-and-beg” gearless bike, on which she accompanied us back into town, and the Socialist soliloquy which started when we met and continued throughout the meal and the rest of our time together. In spite of failing health in later years, she was the mainstay of Comrades in Ireland. All Companion Parties will remember her generosity as every penny she could spare went to help the work for Socialism throughout the world. She will be sadly missed and long remembered by all who had the good fortune to know her.

Eva Goodman

Gunmen, get lost! (1993)

From the May 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was the Saturday after St Patrick’s Day and roars went up in homes and pubs as Ireland thrashed England at rugby: the joyful, harmless chorus of the underdog. On that same afternoon there was another roar: the now familiar cry of anguish and confusion as workers doing their weekend shopping—this time in Warrington—became the victims of a carefully planted bomb. One of those shoppers, out with his father to buy a present for Mothers Day, was a little boy of less than four years of age. He was murdered—another "war victory” for the IRA. Another boy, aged twelve, out shopping for Everton football shorts, was so facially disfigured by the blast that his parents had to identify him by his watch. He died days later.

We live in a society that makes quite a habit of murdering children. Over two hundred have been killed as victims of the warfare in Ireland over the last quarter of a century. The youngest was six months old. The unspeakable thuggery of the paramilitaries—of both sides, regardless of religious or ideological labels: all of their gods are wanted for murder—is a shadow of the legally sanctioned bombings of children. in Vietnam, in Libya, in Iraq, in Afghanistan.

Those who bring violence on to our streets in the name of liberating us— liberating anybody—are our most profound enemies. Only the most dogmatically programmed Leninist, still clinging to the belief that those who blow up defenceless children arc heroic fighters for colonial liberation, and the most detached and ignorant Irish American Catholics, with their rosary in one hand and their contributory cheque to the NORAID murder machine in the other, can condone, defend or apologise for what has been done. And then, with the imaginative intelligence of lemmings, competing with their IRA rivals to commit ethical suicide, the UFF joined in within a week of the Warrington atrocity to murder five new victims, one of them a young man of only seventeen.

“Enough is too much”

Sitting in a Dublin cinema on a rainy afternoon watching the Oscar-winning film The Crying Game was an electrifying experience. The film itself (which must have one of the least predictable twists of any film ever; one which probably detracts from the poignancy of the unambiguous attack on terrorist violence) shows vividly the cold and callous and futile world of IRA violence. (In this it contrasts well with the pathetically idealised Sinn Fein innocence depicted in the American film Patriot Games.) But that afternoon the film was not the main event.

I had just come from a meeting at Trinity College Dublin (there were several of them in the week after Warrington) where person after person, representing many organisations and none, had voiced their contempt for the perpetrators—all of them—of the kind of hate-filled murder campaigns which small, undemocratic gangs have dared to initiate in their names. The overwhelming sentiment in Dublin during the days following Warrington was that violent action was pointless and reprehensible. On one page of one day’s edition of the Irish Times (26 March) the letters and editorial blasted responses to the bombs, which were significant not for their uniqueness but for the extent to which they were reflected by everyone I spoke to in Dublin. Wrote John Sullivan:

Last Saturday, while Ireland cheered on 15 heroes in green, a four-year old child was blown apart in the name of Irish freedom. No excuse, no "accident of war", no apportionment of blame for alleged unheeded warnings can hide the IRA’s murderous intent. It is incumbent upon ordinary Irish people everywhere, who reject the realisation of national aspirations through violence, to protest . . . against those in our community who offer even the most tacit support to any terrorist organisation.

"As a mother of a small boy I am writing to express my disgust and contempt at the murder in Warrington of a three-year old boy by the IRA” began the letter from Allison Collier. "Both killing sides are interchangeable—most of all in their politics of devastation and fear", declared the editorial. In every bar there was spontaneous rage. (It says much for a culture that the killing of children incites such feeling). Over 30,000 people signed a peace petition at Trinity College. When Susan McHugh, a Dublin housewife, called in to a TV phone-in programme to say that "enough is enough" and "ordinary people" must stand up and be counted against the violence she was surely voicing the view of the majority.

The four days which intervened between McHugh’s call and Sunday afternoon were filled with an energy it was impossible to miss. A demonstration was called to be held at 3pm in O’Connell Street (the widest central street in any European capital city). Political leaders were banned from taking the platform; they had done nothing to end the killings so far and their speeches would not be welcome at an event which belonged to the people. At one meeting I expressed the view that no nation and no government was worthy of the support of the wealth-producing majority; we had no countries to die for, only a world to live once it is our own. Several people cheered—it was a cheering atmosphere— but it was obvious that more than favoured sentiments would need to enter the minds of the millions before the death of nation and statehood could become a reality.

Peace rally

The O’Connell demonstration, held with noted irony outside the GPO which was the scene of the Easter Rising of 1916, was one of the most moving events that this writer can recall. Tears flowed openly and with no shame. The presence of thousands of people straining to unleash pent-up passions for human brother- and sister-hood might be dismissed by the cynics as empty moral gesturing, but to this socialist it was comforting proof that humans are happier striving for peace than conspiring for violence.

One recalls the ghastly and tasteless Falklands victory parade through London: certainly there was feeling there, but it was the contrived, regimented unmelodious patriotic phoney-feeling which is as fragile as the wooden sticks on which schoolboys were told to wave Union Jack idiot-symbols. The Dublin Peace Rally was workers showing that guns are not part of our nature.

Of course, little really changed. Still the paramilitary chiefs pursue the total-blindness policy of an eye for an eye; still those leaders are now mainly racketeers, living in personal luxury thanks to protection rackets and robberies carried out for the pointless “cause” by impoverished ghetto- dwellers; still there will be those who will try to argue tortuously that the murder of someone on "the other side” is somehow less of an atrocity than violence against their own. It is easy for those with good memories to think back to the Peace People in the 1970s who, after a short-lived peaceful campaign against sectarianism, withdrew into obscurity for reasons that are still a matter for historical interpretation. It is at least possible that this time the momentum will be kept up—the widespread desire for peacefulness and hatred of the murdering few might just be uncrushable.

Speakers from various religious denominations addressed the rally. For a socialist this was hard to take—the only consolation being that it is better to hear them imploring listeners to love their neighbours as themselves than their more typical business of blessing bombs which have state approval. It was good to see The Dubliners, whose repertoire of occasionally nationalist songs has left a sour taste in the mouth of many a socialist music-lover, stand up and denounce the murderers. It was pleasing to see that Sinead O'Connor made it to the rally and preceded her song by saying, in marked contrast to the God Squad, that we should not wait until we die to reach "The Kingdom of Heaven”, for it was within all of us to bring it about down here on Earth now. From someone who had advocated the abolition of the money system the meaning, if not the words, made much sense.

I was not the only one who left the mass rally after three hours of almost non-stop heavy rain with a sense of elation. That afternoon several thousands of us had played the crying game and realised that we could do more than weep; we could make peace our practical objective. But there will be no peace while the economic and political motives for killing are implanted within the very social order which dominates our lives. Peaceful capitalism is like non-combative mugging. Capitalism or peace—it must be one or the other.

Steve Coleman