Obituary: Bill Ross (2006)

Obituary from the December 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Glasgow branch are sad to report the death of our comrade Bill Ross. Bill came across the Socialist Party at an outdoor meeting at the Mound in Edinburgh in the summer of 1965. Within months he had joined Glasgow branch. He was a larger than life figure who had left school at 15 years of age and had been a merchant seaman for many years. When he came in contact with the party he had graduated from Drama College and was already appearing on stage at the Edinburgh Festival. Within a short time Bill was himself speaking for the party both indoors and outdoors including a spell in London when he was working there. Later on when he found the stage too precarious an occupation he worked for many years for the Glasgow Parks Department where he was very active in trade union affairs. Bill was a voracious reader and was especially interested in scientific subjects. He was a good example of the self-taught worker, although having had a very basic academic career he had a wide knowledge of astro-physics and evolution, often giving branch talks on such subjects. He was a warm, friendly human being with a good sense of humour and his speciality was in taking popular songs and re-writing parodies. Thus The Lady is a Tramp became That’s Why the Worker is a Slave and the words of Who Wants to be a Millionaire became – “Have you heard of the SPGB. We want a world without poverty. Well, did you ever. What a swell party this is.” This is a sad time for all his Glasgow comrades but especially so for his wife and beloved comrade Terry. He will be greatly missed.

RD

Letter: Edinburgh – then and now (2024)

Letter to the Editors from the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the late twentieth century I moved from Rome to Edinburgh. It was a spur of the moment life-changing decision. I was worried that, after having loved living in the eternal city and being amazed daily at the beauty surrounding me, I might just be a little disappointed in my new surroundings.

But coming out of Waverley station on a cold bright November morning, my breath was taken away, not just by the cold but by the beauty of what confronted me. To my left was the splendid castle on the hill and looking down away from me the most spectacular skyline I had ever seen. It was a mixture of medieval, Gothic, Georgian splendour arranged in a harmonious descent from the castle to Holyrood – the Royal Mile. In the almost 10 years I was then to spend in Edinburgh I came to know the city intimately. I had no car and every day discovered more architectural beauty. This had truly to be one of the most beautiful cities ever.

In mid-November this year, I visited Edinburgh again for the first time since. I went for the day with my partner to see an art exhibition we had looked forward to for some time. I eagerly described to him the visual pleasure he would enjoy on emerging from the station.

What I found when we did emerge shocked me profoundly. It’s something I found hard to take in. The gardens which divided Princes Street from the Royal Mile had all but disappeared under an avalanche of commercial tat. The view of the castle was practically obliterated by a huge Ferris wheel, a ghastly ‘fun fair’ with all the attendant noise and clatter. And then, my own personal nightmare, a ‘Christmas market’. And so many retail outlets, cafes, bars with all the familiar names. I remembered spending time in what had been a beautiful urban space hand-feeding squirrels.

And then it came to me again, as it so often does, how capitalism will stop at nothing, will, for profit-making reasons, defile and ruin the most beautiful and precious of what makes us rejoice as humans. Yet how much real profit has been gained from this desecration compared to the pleasure and respite this beautiful place gave to residents and visitors to Edinburgh alike? The exhibition was fantastic but my heart was so very sad.

Joy Baszucki

Sting in the Tail: Good news, bad news (1995)

The Sting in the Tail column from the December 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Good news, bad news

The publication of a 400-page Genome Directory as a supplement to Nature Magazine should be really good news. It is an attempt to provide a map of a large portion of the 100,000 or so human genes. Medical experts believe it could be a step on the road to finding the genetic causes, and eventually the cure, of many killer diseases.

But we live in capitalism, so this good news has a major downside to it. In America where many companies provide their workers with health care insurance as part of their wage, we learn how such advances are being used to cut the capitalists' health care liabilities:

“To avoid hiring people with ‘disease genes' some companies ask job applicants about their family medical histories or ask for samples of blood or cell tissue without revealing that they will be used for genetic tests " (Herald. 19 October).

Job losses inevitable

That proposed merger of Lloyd's bank and the TSB has once again had banking unions complaining about likely job losses. They pointed to the increased profits of the Big Four last year—up £1.5 billion to £5 billion, and Ed Sweeney of BIFU argued that:

“The shareholder will do very nicely and top executives will get fatter pay cheques. The least they can do is ensure staff there will be no sackings ” (Guardian, 11 October).

Those increased profits are mainly due to fewer bad debts and not to any growth in banking activity. Then there is fierce competition for business from building societies and now the insurance companies are entering into banking. Also, new technology means that banks simply don’t need as many workers now, so the pressure is on to cut costs.

Fair enough, unions must protest at job losses, but oh for even a glimmer of recognition from them that their real enemy is capitalism and not mere mergers, executives or shareholders.

Of cops and hookers

Members of the working class have to sell their abilities to work for wages and salaries. Some even have to sell their bodies.

“Prostitution is not legalised, yet in genteel Edinburgh there are about 400 women at work in saunas or massage parlours, earning £2,000 per month, according to a recent survey.

"Trying to stop prostitution is like trying to compress water: all you do is displace it. It will come squeezing out of the sides somewhere else, ’ says Tom Wood, assistant Chief Constable of Lothian and Borders police." (Independent, 26 September).

If the assistant Chief Constable had prefaced his remark with “Inside a buying and selling system like capitalism . . ." no-one could have disagreed. But he didn’t, so let us be quite plain about this matter.

The only way to stop prostitution is the establishment of the classless, private property-less society. Inside that system the 400 hookers and the even more numerous policemen can start doing worthwhile and dignified work for the first time.

Hell drivers

Ever felt a little queasy on the motorway as you passed one of those mammoth heavy lorries and wondered if it was swaying a bit on the road? Well start feeling really queasy for a report in the Observer (22 October) makes frightening reading:

“Lorry drivers forced to work illegal hours by unscrupulous employers are to blame for up to 200 road deaths a year. Haulage firms, prompted by the recession to cut costs to the minimum, are pushing drivers to break the law or face dismissal."

When you read that between 600 and 1,000 people die in accidents involving HGVs every year in Britain; that 20 percent of these are caused by lorry driver fatigue and that up to 40 percent of the drivers have been asked to exceed the legal limit of 10 hours a day, you may come to the conclusion that the sway you detected was because the driver was half-asleep at the wheel.

It is just another example of capitalism lowering costs to boost profits and to hell with people’s lives.

“Support” — Tory style

Last November we mentioned on this page that the Young Conservatives were “set for the chop” because they had become an embarrassment to the Tory Party. This provoked an indignant letter in the January issue from a YC who told us:

“The Young Conservatives are not for the chop; both the Prime Minister and the Party Chairman have pledged their support for the organisation. ”

What this “support” amounts to was revealed in the Guardian (13 October). Tory’ Central Office has closed its youth department and the YCs now have to share the services of “one tenth of a person” at Central Office with Conservative Students.

Often, when the Tories have wanted to kill off some state benefit or allowance but without causing a row, they have left it to, in their own words, “wither on the vine”. The YCs are looking like a bunch of mouldy grapes to us.

S.P.G.B. Propaganda Meetings. (1930)

Party News from the July 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings and Notices. (1930)

Party News from the June 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Edinburgh. (1930)

Party News from the August 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Edinburgh Comrades are holding good meetings at the Mound several nights a week. A large part of the time is devoted to answering questions on Socialist policy, in view of the confusion spread here by the I.L.P. and Communist organisations, as well as direct action elements. The decline of Communists is seen in the poorly attended meetings conducted by them in this town, where once they had a large following.

Good sales of literature are being made, considering the uphill work of pushing scientific literature against the sensational and so-called practical rubbish which passes for working class education. All those interested in our work should attend our meetings.

Party News (1981)

Party News from the January 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the first week of December two London members went on a propaganda tour of over a thousand miles. Steve Coleman addressed about twenty people in the King George Hotel at Doncaster on “Unemployment - the socialist solution”. He described the terrible effects of unemployment on the working class and went on to show how the problem is an integral part of the system of profits and wages. It is likely that a discussion group will soon be formed in Doncaster. The following day the reformist campaigners who wish to mop up capitalism’s problems without establishing socialism were dealt with in a lunch-time meeting in Edinburgh University entitled “The left wing officers looking for infantry”. A meeting at Strathclyde University was poorly attended: evidently the students there are too busy studying the world (to give them the benefit of the doubt) to change it. Finally on December 5 Steve Coleman and Clifford Slapper spoke at Swansea AEUW Room on “Is a Third World War Inevitable?” Twenty-five people turned up and most agreed with our proposition that although world capitalism has produced, is producing and will produce war, neither capitalism nor war are inevitable. A world war can be averted only by the working class organising politically to remove the system of commercial and military conflict and replacing it with a classless world society.

Churchill on poverty (1959)

Quote from the December 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

  "I have often asked myself whether our splendid civilisation really conferred blessings on all classes. Is it really true to say that the poorest man in Scotland is not any happier than the present Hottentot or the poorest Eskimo? I am inclined to think that he is not any happier, but perhaps more unsociable. He is homeless in the heart of great cities; he is hungry in the midst of plenty such as was never seen on earth before and he suffers the privations of the savage with the nerves of civilised man. . . .  To compare the life and lot of the African aboriginal—secure in his abyss of contented degradation, rich in that he lacks everything and wants nothing—with the long nightmare of worry and privation, of dirt and gloom and squalor, lit only by gleams of torturing knowledge and tantalizing hope, which constitutes the lives of so many poor people in England and Scotland, is to feel the grand tremble underfoot.”

Winston Churchill in a speech at Edinburgh
—1910.

"An old prevaricator of the truth . . . " (1927)

From the July 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

 The Police-aided scheme for destitute children in Edinboro' has had to provide boots for 4,600 children during the past winter as compared with 2,500 a year ago. (Daily Herald, 30/4/27.)

This is the sort of “progress” that will cheer that brand of optimist who finds the workers’ conditions improving, because, in addition to the small fraction of their total output returned as wages, necessity compels sections to accept insurance benefits, pensions, relief, etc. Reasoning from such mental shallowness, it would appear that the more we need such things, the happier we shall be.

#    #    #    #

 I am an old Socialist and I have done more for the British Worker than any Red-flag-waving churl in the kingdom. (Robert Blatchford, Sunday News, 8/5/27.)

For “British Worker” read Robert Blatchford. Those who remember this gentleman’s boasting of Tariff Reform, big navalism, conscription, municipal bakeries and milkshops, everything on earth to Spiritualism in the clouds, will appreciate this modest claim. In the opinion of R. B. he is an old Socialist. Our evidence from the past shows him to be an old prevaricator of the truth.

Mac.

Party News (1930)

Party News from the January 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sheffield.

A meeting of members and sympathisers will be held at the A.E.U. Institute (Library) on Tuesday, January 21st, at 7.30 p.m. with a view to forming a branch in Sheffield.

Edinburgh.

A meeting was held on the Mound, Edinburgh, on December 8th and a large number of questions were asked and answered relative to the Party’s position, especially on Russia and the Labour Party. An apologist for the Labour Party opposed and was dealt with. Literature is now available most fine evenings on the Mound and those wishing to reorganise a Branch should communicate with D. Lamond, 15, Barclay Place.

Notes By The Way: Should Women Have Equal Pay with Men? (1941)

The Notes By The Way column from the December 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

Should Women Have Equal Pay with Men?

The propaganda of the organisations which favour equal pay for men and women doing the same job has made much progress recently and a poll organised by the British Institute of Public Opinion showed a majority of over two-thirds in favour. (News-Chronicle, November 17th, 1941.)

The main reason for the change of attitude this poll indicates is, however, not propaganda, but the fact that under war conditions there is a limitless demand for women’s labour. As the Economist says: “. . . temporarily, at any rate, the war has done the reformers’ work for them. The demand for women workers has increased; and the number of occupations into which they are eagerly admitted is growing. But in spite of the greatly increased number of women coming forward, there is still a shortage . . .”—(Economist, November 29th, 1941.)

It should not be imagined that the propaganda for equal pay is new. It was in full swing 40 years ago and was, for example, commented on in The Socialist Standard for December, 1904. Apart from the war-time demand for women workers the problem has only changed in the past 40 years in one respect, that there are now a larger number of occupations in which it is normal for women to be employed. The claim that the job should carry the same pay whether done by a man or a woman is still a mere tinkering with the real problem of the working class, both men and women. Short of getting rid of the wages system and the employing class, as under Socialism, the whip-hand is always that of the employing class. They will always seek what is for their particular concern the cheapest labour and will always use unemployment as a lever to force down wages towards the minimum of subsistence. The advocates of equal pay who imagine that the acceptances of the principle by the employers will make any material change are overlooking the easy loophole it provides. If an employer accepts the principle of equal pay for a certain grade of work and then finds that there are plenty of unemployed women able and willing to do the job for a lower wage, all he has to do is to take all the men off that work. The work then becomes a purely woman’s job, and the principle of equal pay ceases to have any application.

Douglasites Repudiate Douglas

The following paragraph appeared in the Daily Telegraph (November 17th, 1941): —

   Three persons have been excommunicated this weekend by the Green Shirts. They are Major C. H. Douglas, who invented Social Credit, the Dean of Canterbury and the Duke of Bedford.
  This information I obtain from The Message from Hargrave, the weekly sheet of foolscap expounding the views of the “Social Credit Party of Great Britain,” which I have been receiving since I announced, last July, that Mr. Augustus John had become a Green Shirt.
   I read that the Social Credit Party repudiated the "authority and directives” of Major Douglas in July, 1938. He is now once more repudiated for “confusing his own economic logic by developing an anti-Semitic propaganda.”
   Dr. Hewlett Johnson’s excommunication is for becoming that “quite ridiculous thing—a Christian Bolshevik.” The Duke of Bedford, who, as I read, is even better known than the dean for his advocacy of Social Credit, is placed under the ban for his out-and-out advocacy of the views he holds on the war.

Under-Feeding Among Edinburgh Workers

The Weekly Scotsman (July 5th, 1941) summarises the result of a recent inquiry into the income and expenditure of a number of families on the ”unskilled labourer" level of income.

  Out of 75 families whose food bill was investigated, only 8 were spending enough to buy an adequate diet. From various causes none of the families was in fact getting a diet adequate in every respect. There are figures of the large slice of their income which some families spend on hire purchase or sickness and burial insurance. Over half the families were living beyond their incomes and running into debt; in particular, “it was found that a high percentage of Service families were in part dependent upon hospitality from relations.”

Restrictions on Political Propaganda

On November 27th, 1941, the News-Chronicle published the following: —

                                                        POLITICS BANNED.

   While the war is on, politics are to be banned in the factories (writes the Labour Correspondent).

   The T.U.C. has agreed with the Government that political parties shall not be allowed to propagate their policies inside the establishments of private firms, as well as Government factories and dockyards.

    This does not apply to trade union meetings.

Probably, though it is not stated, the justification offered for this ban is that political discussions interfere with output.

A Question to Federal Unionists

Reviewing a book (“Scum of the Earth," by Arthur Koestler), Mr. A. J. P. Taylor, writing in the Manchester Guardian, puts a pertinent question to supporters of Federal Union. Koestler, who supports Federal Union, had recounted some of the brutalities he witnessed in French and Spanish jails. Mr. Taylor asks: —

   "Koestler believes in European Union. Why should the police of the Union be any improvement on Koestler’s French or Spanish gaolers . . . ? In short, why should European Union—even if it ended wars—end man’s inhumanity to man?”

It is a good point because it brings out one of the fallacies of Federal Union. Is the world out of joint because of the way frontiers are drawn or because of the existence of a class-divided society, with oppression of one class by another, behind each frontier?

Socialists carry Mr. Taylor’s question further and ask whether Federal Union will end wars or only alter and enlarge the frontiers of the warring powers.

Echoes of the People’s Convention

It is an old saying that new converts are more zealous than old believers. The People’s Convention since its overnight conversion to war on the night of June 22nd is now a whole-hogger.

   The Peoples Convention, which in January wanted immediate peace and an appeal to the German people over Hitler’s head, now presses for intensified war effort and. the creation of a second front.
    At an Anglo-Soviet rally in Friends' House, Euston Road, London, yesterday, every utterance in favour of our more active participation in the war was loudly cheered.
    “We are letting the golden days go past,” said Dr. Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury.
   “If we had invaded the Continent in June the Dneiper Dam would still be working and Russia would have retained most of her lost industries. We have lengthened the war immeasurably.”—(“Sunday Express,” November 2nd, 1941.)

Mr. Pollitt, in his new role, writes as follows : —

   Russia is working, fighting and dying in a manner unknown in world history. So must we in Britain. So we can in Britain if the Government sets out to command the unstinted support of the people by proving by every one of its actions that Russia and Britain are in a real alliance, in which we take our full share and make the same sacrifices that the victory over Hitler is demanding. —(“Workers’ News.”)

Communists Support for Conservative Candidates

The Communists have a simple faith : Whatever the Russian Government does is right, whether it be Pacts with Hitler or war with Hitler. Whatever helps the Russian Government is right, whether it be denouncing the Labour Party for associating with Conservatives or voting for Conservatives.

Viewed thus there is no inconstancy in the recent Communist support for Conservative candidates at Lancaster and Hampstead. At Lancaster, where the National Conservative candidate was opposed by an Independent Liberal and by Mr. Fenner Brockway of the I.L.P., "a Communist deputation visited the Conservative campaign headquarters in Lancaster this afternoon and offered to work for the return of Mr. Maclean, the National Government candidate."—(Daily Telegraph, October 14th, 1941.)

At Hampstead there were four candidates, all with the same policy, vigorous prosecution of the war and aid for Russia. The Communists supported the official Conservative candidate, Flying Officer Charles Challen, who won the seat.

An interesting sidelight on the Lancaster election was the statement made by the I.L.P. candidate to the Manchester Guardian : —

   Mr. Brockway himself told the writer that a number of Labour voters who did not wholly accept his views about the war had told him they would vote for him for “old acquaintance sake ” and as a protest against “too much Toryism in the House of Commons."

Edgar Hardcastle

Obituary: A. Hollingshead (1959)

Obituary from the August 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mrs. Agnes Hollingshead died in Edinburgh at the age of 91 years. This old Comrade was, for many years, active in the old Socialist Party of Canada. When a younger woman, she spoke in Calgary and Toronto. Last year, in a recorded message to the World Socialist Party Conference at Boston, U.S.A., she said it was still her ambition at the age of 90 to go on the Soap-box.

Mrs. Hollingshead was a very talented woman. She ran a business college in Calgary, and on her return to the “Old Country” in the 1920’s taught languages, shorthand-typing, and music. Her home in Edinburgh was made freely available to any member and sympathiser. She was the Edinburgh Group secretary up to within a few months of her death. Her keenness and enthusiasm for Socialist propaganda in her sprightly old age is an object lesson to young members. If anything, she became more active as she became older.

Mrs. Hollingshead was very generous to the S.P.G.B. When funds were lower than usual a few years ago she came to the rescue with a substantial donation. Members affectionately referred to her as “the old lady from Edinburgh”—a kind of Socialist institution. Comrades from Overseas always made their way to her home, and she had a warm welcome for everyone. Her greatest difficulty in recent years was her inability to get to the Mound where the outdoor meetings were held by members from Glasgow.

Socialism kept Mrs. Hollingshead young in heart. She looked to the future with that irrepressible optimism possessed only by Socialists. Hers was a useful life.

Letter from Edinburgh (1962)

From the July 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Edinburgh is a city with a population of about half a million. A few of these are very rich but. just like in all other cities in the Capitalist world, most of them are poor.

Edinburgh attracts many visitors from all over the world. They stroll along the mile-long Princes Street, staring at its famous buildings, gardens and floral clock. There, too, stands the Walter Scott monument. Looming over it all is the Castle, from which the visitor can admire the surrounding hills, can look over the Firth of Forth and can see the art galleries on the Mound which have given Edinburgh the name of the Modern Athens.

There is a great tradition of learning and letters in the city. In 1727 Alexander Munro was installed as Edinburgh's first professor of anatomy and laid the foundations for what is now a thriving university. Alan Ramsay the elder (1686-1758). whose monument overlooks the floral clock, was the pioneer of the revival of literature in Scotland. Ramsay was a wigmaker in the High Street; he joined the Jacobite Essay Club and became its Post Laureate about 1717. Desiring to render service to the inside of his customers' heads as well as the outside, he converted his wig-shop into a bookstall. Both Walter Scott and Robert Bums acknowledged the fact that they owed a lot to Ramsay, whom they had taken as their model.

But this is no take-off of a gaudy travel brochure. The Socialist Party of Great Britain is in Edinburgh too, making its voice heard in this centre of learning. Many visitors from abroad listen to our speakers on the Mound and are impressed by the Socialist's scientific case. Here are expounded the theories of historical materialism and scientific Socialism which Karl Marx and Frederich Engels first formulated over a century ago.

Before man can pursue the studies of politics, philosophy, science and art for which Edinburgh is famous, he must first of all eat and drink and have clothing and shelter; he must, therefore, first of all work. It is with this fact and others—that our Socialist speakers are illuminating the minds of their listeners in the Modern Athens north of the Border.

David Lamond

"Penny Tenement" (1960)

From the January 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is the same old story! Despite the promises of one party after another, the housing problem is still with us. Frederick Engels was writing about it more than eighty years ago. In fact it is a problem about as old as Capitalism itself.

From the front page of The Guardian (23/11/59) we learn of a tenement in Edinburgh, which collapsed recently, injuring a two-year-old baby girl and her mother. Apparently the building had been known as the “penny tenement ” because its original owner attempted to sell it for one penny on being ordered to carry out repairs considered necessary for public safety. The place had been condemned twenty years ago as unfit for habitation.

The local Labour Party kicked up a fuss about the matter, of course, conveniently forgetting the dismal failure of the Labour Government to deal with such places during their six years of power. Yet, if we remember correctly, they were more extravagant than any other party in their 1945 election promises.

In another Scottish city, Labour-controlled Glasgow, the city architect had to admit a few months ago that . . .  there is housing which . . .  includes some of the worst buildings in Western Europe” (The Guardian, 9/2/59). Apparently, in the past six years or so, they have built 30,000 houses and flats in Glasgow and in that period, their “waiting list” has grown from 100,000 to 126,000 persons.

Do not let us underestimate this problem of Capitalism. In England last year, there were over a million houses totally unfit for habitation, whilst others were falling into decay at the rate of 100,000 per year. But great though the problem is, Capitalism won’t solve it— only the removal of Capitalism will do that. Unlike the “Penny Tenement,” however, this crazy set-up will not just collapse. It will have to be demolished.

Eddie Critchfield

Edinburgh: Working Class Housing (1961)

From the September 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

How many boxes of shortbread have caught the customer's eye with a gaudy picture of Edinburgh Castle? And very nice, too: they would not sell much shortbread by showing Edinburgh's slums, although there are enough of them.

Yes, Edinburgh has a slum problem, just like any other great city. Panorama went there a few months back, showing up the damp and rotting houses around Arthur Street, where the workers pay rent to live with the rats and broken sewer pipes.

And like a lot of other places, Edinburgh also has dwellings which are not classified as slums, but which are not much better; it has its prefabs. These, as the Edinburgh Evening Dispatch said recently, are " . . . the relics of the immediate post-war housing crisis . . . " which are " . . . still with us, although when they were built they were intended to be only temporary makeshifts."

Are the prefabs likely to come down soon? The Edinburgh City Council Housing Committee has said that, because the process of removing them is long, and because alternative housing has to be promised for the tenants before the sites can be cleared and new dwellings erected, the prefabs will be with us for some time yet.

Let nobody be deceived that as the slums come down new housing is bound to take their place. Sometimes the land on which they were built has what is called a high site value. In narrow Kirkgate and the surrounding streets a lot of tenements, some of which have been standing for a century or more, have been demolished. No new houses have gone up on the site; instead, a whiskey bond store is being built there and Woolworths are putting up another of their red and gold shops.

What is to the point in all this is that the working class, although they build the beautiful mansions and palaces, can only afford to live in the slum, or the prefab, or the council house, or the little semi-detached. And why is this? Simply because the workers have only one method of getting their living by selling their energies and skills to the capitalist class. These workers own little more than their ability to work. The great cities of Scotland are not theirs, nor are the Lochs and Highlands which they sing about. Sad Irish lads may dream of the Lakes of Killarney, but they are owned by an American capitalist, just as the song said they never could be. Proud Cockneys own nothing of London Town. The working class of the world, in fact, own no country, no city, no land—most of them do not even own the place where they live.

No use to approach that problem with just another slum clearance scheme. It needs a world in which society's first concern is for the security and happiness of the human race. 

The prefabs were supposed to be temporary, but they have been temporary too long. In a way, that applies to capitalism as well.

David Lamond.

Letter: 'Not Socialist enough' (1965)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Sirs,

Today I listened to a SPGB speaker at the Mound, Edinburgh's centre of informal political discussion. This speaker criticised and denounced the whole British Labour Party in politics as well as its whole organisation. Why? Because it is not Socialist enough, he argued.

Now, I gather from your aims, published in the Socialist Standard that you are for political as well as economic democracy. The only means of political democracy is an elective, representative house, and this means "politics" in its most common meaning.

This is the stumbling block—temporary though it is—to the progression of Socialism from the direction of the Labour Party. It is all very well for the SPGB to criticise the Labour Party but in our political democracy, Socialism must at times be suspended for reasons of political expediency. Otherwise Socialism in politics is crippled, and the day for which we struggle no nearer.

This is the reason for the Labour Party's slow, actual movement leftwards. In theory it is as Socialist as your Party, but for the fulfilment of and the progress towards the Socialist aim through the machinery of politics, its progression must be necessarily slow.

The SPGB does a great job. It must be constantly winning supporters if not members, of the Socialist cause. But it would be mistaken of you, I think, to challenge the Labour Party in politics. We must have a united British Socialist movement, for this is the quickest way to success. The SPGB's purpose should be to won members and supporters, and to influence the Labour Party policy in all its aspects. Political rivalry is the quickest, surest way to Socialist disunity—rather the quicker path of Socialist unity to our common goal.

Of course one can criticise Labour short term  and current policy, but your speaker implied that he and you disagreed with Labour's long term, overall plan. What are your views?

Fraser Grigor

Edinburgh, 10.

Reply:

Of course our speaker "criticised and denounced the whole British Labour Party". Why should he do otherwise? The Labour Party is more a Socialist organisation than the Conservatives or Liberals. It seeks votes on a programme (long term and otherwise) of administering and reforming capitalism and must therefore earn our condemnation as much as the others—including those leaning "leftwards" like the so-called "communists".

If our critic thinks we are being unjust, it is up to him to produce evidence that the Labour Party is Socialist; all we can say is that we have studied the Labour Party for the well-nigh sixty years of its existence, and it is obvious that the membership have not the foggiest idea of what the word Socialism means. Mr. Grigor thinks that Socialism must be suspended at times for reasons of political expediency, which is condemnation enough of the Labour Party's activities when it is remembered what over half a century of "suspension" has meant in terms of working class misery and the horror of two enormous wars (both Labour supported).

Incidentally, it amazes us how, even after only a short dose of the present Labour administration, our correspondent can think that they have the slightest interest in a classless, moneyless world of common ownership and democratic control. Imports and exports, wages and prices, god and dollar reserves, etc.—these are their obsessions. They are in fact up to their necks in the mire of capitalism.

We are told—and how many times have we heard it—that we should not challenge the Labour Party, but try to influence its policy instead. Presumably this means we should act as a ginger group, either boring from within or nibbling from without, but for what earthly purpose? As members, we would run the risk of expulsion and either way we would earn the hostility of the Labour rank and file. Certainly we would stand no chance of swinging the organisation over to Socialism—we might just as well try our luck with The Primrose League.

Our party learned this lesson from its inception, when some of our founder members were expelled from the old Social Democratic Federation for trying to preach Socialist ideas. We saw then that a Socialist Party must be completely independent of and hostile to all other parties, and must have Socialism as its sole aim. Only in this way have we been able to keep the idea alive—not an easy task and one which has not been made any lighter by the confusion and misunderstanding caused by the Labour Party.

Socialism is the only answer to the problems of the world today and we work ceaselessly for the time when the working class of the world will unite to achieve it. Far from agreeing that it should be shelved for any reason, the need for it grows more urgent with every passing day.

Editorial Committee.