All “Socialists” Now. (1907)

From the February 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the last issue I gave a few examples of the many brands of “Socialism” made up to suit the political complexions of the various class (and no class) organisations whose members are anxious not to be out of touch with the fashion. As indicative of the growth of the fashion, I notice that in addition to Shaw’s “Socialist” plays at the Court Theatre, the Stage Society recently put on that “Socialist” drama, “The Weavers” ; also Nelly Neil, the principal character in the musical comedy of that name, is a “Socialist.” At the Haymarket in the curtain raiser “Her Grace the Reformer” we have another “Socialist” as the leading part. That well-known “Socialist” mummer, Mr. Jas. Welch is shortly to appear in a new role, while a “Socialist” lady sustains the chief feminine interest in “The Bondman,” the author of which is that well-known “Socialist,” Mr. Hall Caine.

o o o

In good truth we are all “Socialists” now and we, who for so many years were as voices crying in the wilderness, ought to be overjoyed to know that we are now “the thing don’t you know.” We have been “taken up.” We bask in the smiles of the queens of “Society” and count the peerage and the stage (which perhaps are not quite the same thing—yet) among our “comrades.” In such circumstances it ill becomes a man to cavil. And yet it seems somewhat incumbent upon me to suggest that there is some little possibility of the undiscriminative failing to locate the wood for the obscuring trees. There are so many “Socialists” to contend with that the wayfaring man is in imminent danger of missing the Socialism he is searching for.

o o o

And probably that is one at least of the ideas lying behind some of this seeming enthusiasm for the “Socialist” cult. With so many brands of “Socialism” on the market and so many “Socialist” connoisseurs of those brands, it is no easy matter for the common workman to distinguish between the true and the false. The effect upon his mind must be of a confusion worse confounded. And it becomes an increasingly difficult thing to keep the class line clearly defined while there is, apparently, so much sympathy for working-class ideals existing among the representatives of the class whose interests (according to the exponents of the class struggle) are in such diametrical opposition to the interests of the workers.

o o o

There may easily, therefore, be more in this matter than meets the eye. Undoubtedly it is a concern for one’s own material interests that lies at the root of all our actions, however unconscious we may be of it. And with the pressure of economic conditions ever tending to impel the working class toward action in their own protection, it becomes obvious to the capitalist class that the workers, upon whose labour they maintain their useless and luxurious lives, must soon awaken to the real causes of poverty. With this awakening must surely come the downfall of capitalism. Wherefore—the dust of a simulated sympathy is stirred into a cloud in the hope that the attention of the workers may be diverted from the real issue.

o o o

The more reason for us to renew our efforts to combat the work and influence of the agents of capitalism in whatever guise they come. The more reason for us to shout our message from the house-tops; to persistently give emphatic voice to our warnings ; to stand always pointing the way along which our class must march to their emancipation. Of one thing we are certain : economic development cannot be retarded. And because that is so the confusing work of the representatives of capitalism, however successful it may be to-day, cannot endure. Sooner or later capitalism must definitely and irrevocably take its stand in naked antagonism to the workers. It is our business to do that which other organisations professing Socialism have not done, viz., to insist upon Socialism as the only hope of our class ; to show in what Socialism essentially consists ; to make clear and keep clear the class division; to demonstrate the real meaning of most of the sympathetic protestations of what are actually anti-working class bodies; in fine, to make of our education work an insistence upon essentials and the clearance of non-essentials to the end that the time may be hastened when capitalism shall shed its pretences and stand out for what it is. It will do that when it finds itself without the power to hoodwink or cajole, when its Carnegies and Burnses can no longer be relied upon to deceive or delude—when, that is, the working class have understood their position and their power. And just as surely as capitalism finds itself in that condition and is obliged to decide that the time has come when it must organise its forces openly and avowedly against the army of the workers, will the workers be on the eve of their emancipation. There is no doubt of the issue of the contest.. Nothing can prevent the defeat and extermination of capitalism; nothing can prevent the victory and development of Labour. We may hasten or retard the day of final struggle but we cannot affect the result, just as we cannot prevent the ultimate dawn of the day itself. But because we can hasten it by marching straight and speaking true and calling things by their right names we have come together to do it. Wherefore The Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Alegra.

Greasy Pole: Looking forward to 2004 – in 1904 (2004)

The Greasy Pole column from the September 2004 issue of the Socialist Standard

Almost nine years have passed since Oscar Wilde was sent to prison at the Old Bailey for the offence of sodomy. He and his friends were not alone in their disappointment at the sentence because the judge, before waving the famous dramatist down to the Court cells, gave voice to his frustration that he was restricted to a sentence of only two years hard labour which was, he snarled, “totally inadequate” for “the worst case I have ever tried . . . a circle of extensive corruption of the most hideous kind among young men”.

    

The judge did not bother himself that to criminalise homosexuality as “hideous corruption” is a symptom of capitalism’s inhumanity. Nor did he muse on the corruption that was partly responsible for Wilde being in the dock before him. The dismay among Wilde’s supporters at his sentence was aggravated by the well-founded suspicion that he had been sacrificed – arrested, charged, tried, sentenced – to divert attention from somebody  else. It was obvious that the beneficiary must have been someone the authorities were anxious to protect from exposure. Among what was then known as the uranian community it was an open secret that Lord Rosebery was as active a homosexual as Wilde. In fact the Marquess of Queensbury, who had obsessively persecuted Wilde in retaliation for his relationship with his son, had made it quite clear that if Wilde was not prosecuted he, Queensbury, would ruin Rosebery by denouncing him as another sodomite.

Suicidal

The nub of the problem was that Rosebery was not just a peer of the realm and therefore an aristocrat who was supposed nobly to set an example to the rest of us, but the Prime Minister in the Liberal government. Before Wilde’s trial the blackmailing pressure from Queensbury was so fierce that Rosebery – said to be brilliant, erratic and unpredictable but obviously also a mite fragile – was fearful and depressed to the point of being suicidal. Soon after Wilde was safely behind the cell door at Pentonville and Queensbury’s fire had been quenched, Rosebery’s health miraculously improved and, benefiting from the corruption endemic in capitalist politics, he could continue contentedly being Prime Minister along with his other distractions. It was his bad luck that he did not enjoy coincidental good health and high office for long because a month after Wilde’s trial the Liberal government was out of power.

    

There would not have been the same concerns about the man who – a couple of years ago – succeeded to the job of Prime Minister, once held so tenuously by Rosebery. Arthur Balfour is another with a reputation for unusual brilliance but he has never shown the slightest interest in attaching himself to a female or a male. So on that score, if not on others which should be of more interest to the working class, he is safe.  Balfour is known as an aloof, self-satisfied man who is more comfortable in discussion of remote philosophical and religious abstractions – the less relevant the better – than in confronting the real world of poverty, disease, international conflicts. At Cambridge he spent what was called a “scandalous” amount of time watching or playing tennis and industriously built a reputation for idleness and for intolerance of anything he assessed as ignorance – but which may have been the very reality which he protected himself from.

Contemptuous

To behave like that it helps to be an aristocrat with the proper blue-blooded connections. Balfour went to Eton, his father and his grandfather were Conservative MPs and, even more to the point, he was the nephew of the late Lord Salisbury, who succeeded to the Prime Ministership when Rosebery’s Liberal government was defeated in 1895. Some years before that Salisbury, while taking an avuncular lunch with Balfour, broached the subject of politics as a career for him along with watching tennis and taking part in pointless arguments. At the time it just so happened that there was a vacancy at Hertford, a parliamentary constituency where the selection of the MP was controlled by Salisbury because he owned the place. Balfour regards politics as a kind of amusing game – clearly overlooking the unamusing, devastating effect which political decisions can have on the lives of the useful, non-aristocratic, working people in society. He was sure he could fit in attending the Commons with his other strenuous activities so yes, he would give it a try. In due course he was elected as the Honourable Member for Hertford. Thus Balfour was another who has reason to be grateful for the power of political corruption.

    

That when it comes to the ruling class blood is thicker than water was demonstrated in 1878 when Salisbury, who was then Foreign Secretary, made Balfour his private secretary. In 1885 Balfour was elected as MP for East Manchester; a week spent among his supporters there he described as “loathsome but necessary”, which perhaps meant that he had to spend some time in the slums of Ancoats or Salford. This contemptuous attitude, which he usually managed to hide beneath a mask of elaborate courtesy, surfaced again when he sneered at the rising suburban and provincial Tories “with their vineries and pineries” and in his comment that an industrialist who had what he considered “civilised” tastes was “a rare avis”.  All of this has been ammunition for those critics of Balfour who see him as a pretend politician who makes elegant speeches which do not contribute much to the question at issue – not that it mattered if they did. It fits in with the impression that he is an MP simply because it was the thing for a blue-blooded Old Etonian to do.

Poverty

But in spite of his affected langour and detachment Balfour has handled some weighty ministries, so that not too many of his Conservative colleagues were offended when, as his uncle Salisbury ceased to be Prime Minister in 1902, Balfour moved smoothly into the job. It will not be the last time a politician has cloaked their rampant ambition beneath a show of disinterest. Edward VII had just been crowned and the South African War, with its nasty shocks for the British military, was at an end. In some senses it was an abrasive conjunction of events as the crowning of a new king encouraged some of the customarily stupid jingoism at a time when the Boer farmers had uncovered evidence suggestive that the global power of the British ruling class is in decline. On the Continent Germany is overtaking Britain, for example accounting for about 22 percent of world production of steel compared to Britain’s 15 percent. In manufacture the respective shares are 17 percent and 19 percent. How long will it be, before British capitalism regards Germany as a competitor too threatening to be assuaged by mere diplomacy?  We are told that the Entente Cordiale, settled in April this year, is an instrument for peace as it re-assures France that there is a buffer against the ambitions of Germany. Another way of putting this is that the treaty lays out some of the issues over which the next war will be fought.

    

At home the work of Rowntree and Booth has illuminated the fact that the workers who cheered the coronation of the new king often did so from the depths of poverty. Booth’s study of the people in the East End of London found about 30 percent of them living below what he set as a ‘poverty line’. These are people whose means are barely sufficient for a decent independent life or, even worse, are actually insufficient for that life. Rowntree’s report on the people of York came to much the same conclusion; nearly ten percent of the people were found to be in ‘primary poverty’, with means insufficient to maintain merely physical efficiency, and another 18 percent are in the slightly more manageable ‘secondary poverty’. Unemployment, which is an aggravating factor in poverty, stands at ten percent of the working population.  These problems, with the suffering they cause to the class who produce everything but own nothing of any consequence, are the very stuff of capitalism and Balfour, for all his supposed effortless intellectualism, has been powerless to affect them.

    

How long will capitalism endure? If it is still here in a hundred years, what will the socialists of the year 2004 look back on? They will review a century in which millions will have died in wars or through hunger or avoidable diseases. A century in which the contrasts of riches and impoverishment remain as stark as ever. Whatever progress will be made in the technologies of communication and production will have gone to further enrich the ruling class while merely reshaping the poverty of the workers. And all of this will have been governed by political leaders notable in history for only their corruption, deceit and impotence.

Ivan

Fifty years of “Progress”! The economic position of the workers. (1925)

From the November 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have been asked to make a comparison between the present economic position of the working class and their position fifty years ago. Many considerations besides that of space compel us to confine the comparison within fairly narrow limits, and the complexity of the subject, added to the difficulty of obtaining sufficient authoritative statistics, makes it inevitable that the treatment shall be inadequate in many directions for more than a rough approximation to the actual facts. We shall be concerned mainly with the position of workers in this country except where light can be thrown on the general tendencies of advanced capitalism by bringing in illustrations from countries other than Great Britain. It will be desirable at the outset to indicate the numerous difficulties in the way of a full presentation. Statistics are necessarily incomplete even where they do exist, while large parts of our subject are not covered by reliable figures at all. Apart from this it is by no means easy to find even a satisfactory basis of comparison.

WHAT YOUR WAGES WILL BUY.

Mere changes in money wages mean little indeed. Correction must be made for changing prices, for increases or decreases in hours of work and holidays, for changing customs as to payment for wet weather and for “walking time,” and as to special bonuses like “harvest money” and allowances in kind, and above all, for the increasing intensity of work. It is plainly not sufficient to say that the American workers get higher real wages than those in Europe, unless allowance is made for the fact that the former have often to work much harder than the latter.

We have to allow also for the effect of increasing unemployment on the worker’s standard of living; the hourly rate of wages may show a marked increase, which is, however, more than offset by a reduction in the time of work owing to unemployment. Again, the habits prevalent in 1870 differ considerably from those of 1925. Foods, clothing, recreations have all altered, travelling expenses have to be added to the budget of most wage earners, deductions for health and unemployment insurance need to be reckoned; these and innumerable other favourable or unfavourable changes, some small and some great, have all to be taken into account in any comparison between one period and another nearly two generations later.

DIFFERENT STANDARDS OF COMPARISON.

There is a further cause of confusion which has to be kept clearly in mind. This has to do with the object of the comparison and the deliberate choice of factors on which to base it. We can say, for instance, that the workers in 1925 are able to purchase with their wages smaller quantities of food, clothing, etc., than they could in 1920, and that they are therefore worse off. This is one way of making a comparison, or we could say that out of the total wealth produced in one year the workers received a smaller proportion than in some previous year. Again, in this instance, we should be correct in describing the workers as worse off, but it should be noted that this means something essentially different from the first statement. It might take place in spite of the fact that real wages were rising; it is a comparison of the position of the workers with that of the non-workers.

Thirdly, we might introduce into our enquiry the development of the powers of production in a somewhat different way. It is, for instance, undeniable that our powers of production in 1925 are enormously greater than in 1875, yet pauperism due to unemployment has also grown. The productive powers are in fact not being used owing to the defective organisation which accompanies capitalism. Here, again, and in a third distinct sense, it could be said that the workers were worse off because of their greater degradation and dependence on the propertied class.

As we are to take as our starting point the years between 1870 and 1880, let us first consider what was the position then.

THE POSITION IN 1870.

It just happens that about that year the workers in this country were in a comparatively favourable situation. From 1846 to 1873 there was a phenomenal expansion of production and of foreign trade. Although prices were rising, the demand for labour caused wages to rise even faster. British exports which in 1855-59 averaged only £116,000,000, had by 1873 risen to £266,000,000; and between those dates the improvement in the worker’s standard of living was considerable, and more or less continuous. (See A. L. Bowley, appendix to “Dictionary of Political Economy,” p. 801). Sir William Beveridge (“Economic Journal,” December, 1923), estimates the increase in “real” wages in the ten years preceding 1870 to be no less than 12 per cent.

At the same time unemployment was at a very low level. While the ten-yearly average of unemployment among trade unionists was 5.2 from 1851 to 1870, the average for the next decade fell to 3.8, while in 1872 it was only 0.9 per cent., which is the lowest point it touched during the century (Bowley Elementary Manual of Statistics, p. 156).

On the other hand, the number of persons in receipt of poor-law relief averaged 31 per 1,000 for the years 1871-1879, a high level not reached again until quite recently (The Poor Laws : J. J. Clarke, p. 139.)

There is therefore no reasonable ground to doubt that, on the whole, the workers were much better off in 1870 than they had been during the prolonged depression after 1815 or in the ‘forties.

THE MOVEMENT OF WAGES BETWEEN 1870 AND 1900.

In 1873 a great change came over the scene. Trade depression set in, prices fell, business failures mounted rapidly and unemployment rose continuously year by year until in 1879 it reached 11.4 per cent. It declined to 2.3 per cent. in 1882, rose again to 10.2 per cent. in 1886, and averaged 5.6 per cent. during the ‘eighties, and 4.4 per cent. during the ‘nineties (Bowley : Manual, p. 156). Although prices were, with slight fluctuations, falling from 1873 right up to 1897, wages fell too, owing to the pressure of unemployment. Nevertheless, those workers who had more or less regular employment (after a period of 6 years to 1879 during which “real” wages were nearly stationary), again enjoyed a long period of general improvement which lasted to 1900 (“Manual,” 148).

Sir William Beveridge (Economic Journal, December, 1923) estimates the percentage increase of “real” wages over the thirty years from 1870 to 1900 at approximately 50 per cent. From 1897 the downward movement of prices was reversed, and factors causing prices to rise have been continuous right up to date. During the war years and immediately afterwards, abnormal conditions led to a great acceleration of the upward movement, but while these conditions have now practically ceased to operate, the more permanent movement has continued, and presumably would have had its effect had there been no war. Wages, as is usual during such periods, did not keep pace with prices. Bowley considers that the purchasing power of wages was declining from 1900-1910, and possibly stationary from 1910 to the outbreak of war. Sir William Beveridge estimates “real” wages to have been at best stationary over the period. According to the Board of Trade “Report on Changes in Rates of Wages, etc.” (1913, Cd. 7080) prices rose by 13.7 per cent. from 1905 to 1912, whereas wages rose only between 2 per cent. and 5½ per cent. Leaving aside the period of the war when other complicated factors make comparison still more difficult, we come to the present year. It is worth while noting here that it is habitual to compare the position now with what it was in 1914. Thus, the International Labour Office (see Ministry of Labour Gazette, June, 1925, p. 217) describes the present “real” wages of the British worker as being just a shade (1 per cent.) better than in 1914. This, however, obscures the important fact that wages in 1914 were at a level reached after 14 years more or less steady decline. A comparison with 1900 would give an opposite and materially different result.

Sir Leo Chiozza Money (People’s Year Book, 1924) writes as follows :—

“In the middle of 1923 it is probably true that a considerable proportion of wage earners are earning less, money’s worth for money’s worth, than they did in 1913.”

This guarded statement serves to correct the optimism of the International Labour Office, for they found that “real” wages have not risen but have slightly fallen since 1923.

UNEMPLOYMENT SINCE 1900.

The degree of unemployment is sufficiently illustrated by the following yearly average percentages among trade unionists. The years selected are the series of highest and lowest years from 1900—

1900 2.5 per cent.

1904 6.0

1906 3.6

1908 7.8

1913 2.1

1914 3.3

1916 0.4

1922 15.4

At present the percentage is about 11. Since 1920 the degree of unemployment has been greater than at any time before the war, and the depression has lingered without any signs of lifting ; as has been candidly admitted by Dr. Macnamara, M.P. (“The Times,” September 11th, 1923) the permanent unemployed army in this country can be anticipated to remain at a level

“three or four times as big as in pre-war times. … In those days … in times of trade prosperity, there were always, at best, round about 200,000 persons out of regular employment. ”

The effect of this unemployment on the workers’ standard of living must not be overlooked. As was pointed out above, it is one thing to say that the rate of wages in 1925 for an employed man is equal to that in 1914; it is quite another thing to say that the workers as a whole receive during a year a “real” wage as large as before. If the loss of time due to unemployment is equal to three months each year, then the “rate” of wages requires to be reduced by 25 per cent. to show the real position. A useful attempt in this direction has been made by the Labour Research Department (L.R.D. Monthly Circular, October, 1925. Their conclusions are published in pamphlet form.)

THE POSITION IN 1925.

By combining the yearly figures of rates of wages with the percentages of unemployment, and making a correction on account of the movement of retail prices of food (full cost of living figures are unobtainable for pre-war years) a result is obtained which shows approximately what “real” wages were worth from year to year after allowing for loss of time through unemployment. The table is given in full for the 23 years to 1923, accepting 1900 as a base year represented by 100 :—

1900 100 1908 89.8 1916 69.9

1901 97.8 1909 88.2 1917 62.0

1902 95.3 1910 88.2 1918 78.2

1903 92.5 1911 91.8 1919 93.2

1904 91.3 1912 89.7 1920 92.4

1905 92.1 1913 93.1 1921 94.6

1906 95.7 1914 90.7 1922 81.2

1907 95.1 1915 82.1 1923 81.3

It will be seen from this that the decline over the period of a quarter of a century to this year is nearly 20 per cent. There is, of course, one other small factor to be allowed for in recent years, that is, the effect of unemployment insurance. According to the L.R. Dept., however, the total amount paid out between November, 1920, and June, 1922 (less the workers’ own contributions) averaged less than 1/2 per week for insured persons.

THE GROWTH OF PAUPERISM.

The result of lower “real” wages and greater unemployment is a striking increase in pauperism. Unable to accumulate savings the worker is forced to go to the Poor Law authorities for meagre protection against one of the effects of capitalist owner¬ ship and production.

The number and percentage (in relation to growing population) had been declining from 1870 to about 1890, but an increase then began. According to the 12th Abstract of Labour Statistics (Board of Trade)—

“On every day throughout the year 1892 the average number of persons in receipt of Poor Relief was 953,719, this number rising steadily each year with but slight fluctuations to 1,103,724 in 1906, being an increase not only in the number but also relatively to the increase of population.”

It was this state of affairs which led Mr. Lloyd George to assert in a speech in Park Hail, Cardiff (December 29th, 1911), that

“To-day you have greater poverty in the aggregate in the land than you have ever had. . . . You have a more severe economic bondage than you probably ever had . . . that condition of things was foreign to the barbaric regime of the darker ages.”

Yet, despite the Old Age Pension scheme designed by Mr. George with the object of relieving the pressure on the Poor Law institutions and finances, it was not until the exceptional conditions of the war that the number of persons relieved (which was 694,036 in 1883) fell below 600,000. At June 30th, 1921, the number was 1,299,086, and in 1922 1,769,387, representing more than 45 per 1,000 of the population, as against 31 between 1871 and 1879.

“In October (1921) returns show the highest number of persons dependent on Poor Law relief since records were kept, namely, a period of 72 years. . . . The growth of expenditure . . . reaching in 1920 by far the highest level in our history. —(“British Trades Union Review,” January, 1922.)

In August, 1925, the number was 41 per 1,000 (see Ministry of Health Quarterly Report on Poor Law Relief).

Edgar Hardcastle

(To be continued.)

Early Socialist Standards online (2022)

Party News from the January 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialist Standard September 1904 to December 1909 at [the following link.]

When the Socialist Party of Great Britain was founded in June 1904 there was a Tory government, under Arthur Balfour, in office. The Second Boer War had only ended two years previously. The main issues of concern to workers were unemployment and worker representation in parliament. Propertied women were beginning to step up the campaign to give women the vote on the same restricted terms as men.

The general election at the start of 1906 gave the Liberals a landslide victory and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman took over as Prime Minister. Twenty-nine members of the Labour Representation Committee were elected and formed themselves into the Parliamentary Labour Party. Most of them had been elected as a result of a deal, not revealed at the time, between Ramsay MacDonald and Herbert Gladstone, the Liberals’ national agent. Under the deal, in selected two-member constituencies, where the electors had two votes, the Liberals and Labour only fielded one each, urging their supporters to vote for both. That there must have been such a deal was obvious and an article in the March 1906 issue provided the detailed evidence for this. This policy was defended by Keir Hardie as well as MacDonald and implemented in by-elections too. The early Labour Party was just the tail-end of the Liberal Party.

The Socialist Standard was all for working class representation in parliament but only as socialist delegates elected by socialist votes, not working men elected through deals with the Liberals or even independently of them on a programme of ‘palliatives’ as reforms within capitalism were then called.

The ‘competition’ was the SDF (which became the SDP in 1908), the ILP and Robert Blatchford’s Clarion which had a circulation in tens of thousands. The LRC did not claim to be socialist but were, most of them, working class Liberals or ‘Lib-Labs’. Readers will get a good idea of what these organisations were really like as opposed to the myths that have grown up about them since.

Internal debates on trade unions and the materialist conception of history are also recorded as were debates against other political organisations, ‘whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist’.

International affairs were also covered such as the 1905 Russian revolution and Rosa Luxemburg’s trial in December 1906 for incitement to violence. During this period the Party considered itself a part of the anti-revisionist wing of international Social Democracy and the Socialist Standard carried translations from French and German. This did not stop it taking Bebel and Lafargue to task for congratulating the Labour Party on its success in the 1906 elections.

Essential reading, then, not only for its presentation of the unchanging case for socialism, but also as a contemporary source of information on politics, particularly working-class politics, in the Edwardian period.

Adam Buick

Pedalling in Ever-decreasing Circles (2011)

From the July 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew Armitage

50 Years Ago: Vast Army on Poor Relief (1958)

The 50 Years Ago column from the January 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “There is a vast army of men and women wretchedly poor, living under abject and squalid conditions, and existing on a pittance eked out by the poor rate and private charity.” (Statement by Home Secretary, quoted in Socialist Standard, January, 1908.)

Vast Army on National Assistance (1958)

  “We make a lot of silly statements about our so- called Welfare State, in which poverty has been abolished and provision made for everyone. But the number of people on Poor Relief (we now call it National Assistance, but this is only a change of name) now number 1,700,000, nearly as high as the figure for the worst depression years, and very much higher than it was in the years before 1914. when practically none of our present social services were in existence.”

[The economist, Colin Clark, in The Cost of Living, p. 7.]

50 Years Ago: Retrospect (2014)

First issue of the Socialist Standard.

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

In this special issue we commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of the first Socialist Standard.

In all that time it has never missed an issue. Through the vicissitudes of two world wars, when we often wondered whether we would be able to carry on at all, to economic slump when we were able to continue publication only through the goodwill of our printers, who carried us in debt for years, the Socialist Standard has carried on.

Now, we look back on those years, sixty years which have seen so many changes and many terrible events.

Opposite this page we publish the front cover of the first Socialist Standard. It takes us back into another world, September, 1904—when the motor-car was still a dangerous novelty; when Orville Wright had only a few months before flown the first aeroplane, for just 12 seconds. Fleming had recently invented the thermionic valve, but radio was still in the distant future; and Rutherford had just begun his researches into the structure of the atom which were to result, forty years later, in the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

War in those days was something associated with petty campaigns to subdue the native populations of Africa and Asia, although the Boer War had given a foretaste of more serious things to come. The Entente Cordiale between Britain and France had been signed a year earlier as a defence against German capitalism, a grimmer warning of the holocaust in the future. And the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War a few months earlier presaged both the rise of Japanese capitalism and the Russian Revolution of 1917.

In the world of politics there was a lot of talk about Socialism, but it was really reformism that was making the running. The formation of the Labour Party had still to wait two years, but parties like the Social Democratic Federation, the Fabians, and the I.L.P., were already busily paving the way for it. The German Social Democratic Party enjoyed the support of millions and there were similar and strong parties in France, Austria, Italy, and other countries, all claiming to be Socialist.

(from editorial, Socialist Standard, September 1964)

Editorial: Camping Out (1906)

Editorial from the September 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

It has been popular with a section of the unemployed this summer to try the simple life by camping out on vacant land, and, though the rôle of leaders of fashion goes oddly with the desperate efforts of the unemployed to avoid starvation, who knows but that their action may have some connection with the fact that (according to a contemporary) “Society”—another section of the unemployed—is going into camp next summer, and would this year were not the season so far advanced ? However that may be, it is certain that the unfortunate unemployed have had more serious business in hand, for, in addition to calling public attention to their existence and exciting the sympathy of the charitably disposed, they have been led to believe that it was only necessary to tickle the surface of the land to bring forth abundance. Unfortunately for them, eviction has followed eviction, and the sickly lettuce and despondent cabbage have been left to their fate as camp after camp has “fizzled out.”

It has been said that, although the camps have not been of long duration, nevertheless they have achieved their purpose of calling the attention of the public to the problem which awaits solution. We would point out that whatever truth or worth there may be in this is entirely discounted by the fact that these camps of unemployed call into notice at the same time a manner of dealing with unemployment that is utterly futile and indeed even harmful to the workers themselves. To seize upon land which has been left waste (precisely because it does not under present conditions pay for cultivation) and to endeavour with unskilled labour and without the machinery and stock which are essential to success, to inaugurate a “back to the land” crusade by precept and practice, is surely the height of folly. Even without the interference of the powers that be the camps could not possibly have lived.

It is, perhaps, a pity that the camps were not allowed to die a natural death, so that the “back to the land” pill for the disease of unemployment may have been used by the unemployed on such a scale that even its pseudo-Socialist advocates were forced to recognise that the only remedy for the unemployed evil is the abolition of capitalism.

"Verily, 'tis a great country." (1905)

Snippet from the July 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Major Roper W. Caldbeck, delivering an address before the Army League, said that every year 8,869 men were invalided, 7,162 deserted, 2,903 were discharged for misconduct, 1.563 were discharged as not likely to become efficient, and 21,943 were committed to Military Prisons (excluding India), and and the Army Estimates for 1905-6 provided an extra sum of £95,000 for “additional prison accommodation." Verily, 'tis a great country.

50 Years Ago: That Elusive Property (1978)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was listening to  Miss Sackville-West the other evening lecturing on Modern English Poetry. Very charming, very entertaining, but marred at the outset by a slight inaccuracy. It is a pity when one sits down to be charmed that one should get a half-brick in the car for a start, but so it was. Miss Sackville-West asked us to commence what she called the Georgian period with 1900. She gave as her reasons for choosing that year as a starting point, "the South African war is over, the world is at peace, we are surrounded by the large air of material prosperity . . ."

Now that is where one gets the nasty jar. I happen to have been alive, and taking keen notice of my surroundings in the year 1900. "The large air of material prosperity". I like that! One remembers it so well. Only 28 years ago and it comes back like a beautiful dream. Speaking from memory, according to a tract issued about that time the average wage of the working class was about 25s per week, and one worker in every three died either in the workhouse, hospital or lunatic asylum. The twelve-hour day was normal in scores of industries. And the unemployed! There is a touchstone for the large air of material prosperity. Who that is old enough does not remember the shabby processions of half-desperate men chanting their grubby war-cry. "we want work?” . .  . There were half-a million men out of work. Among other disturbances the Town council of Croydon was stormed by the unemployed.

For one thing, it is interesting to note and dwell upon the fact that one has lived during a period to which the term "prosperity” is applied, lip till now, during my short lifetime, no one has ever discovered prosperity in the present tense. Years ago. or years ahead, yes! Today, never! A case of jam yesterday, or jam tomorrow, but never jam today.

From an article "The great pre-war prosperity” by W. T. Hopley. Socialist Standard, December 1928.

The Great Pre-War Prosperity! (1928)

From the December 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the inevitable drawbacks of broadcasting is that you cannot answer back. It is inevitable, or rather unavoidable, for the reason that heckling or questioning from an audience, possibly of millions, presents obvious difficulties. Of course, the absence of this possibility should make no difference to a lecturer with any conscience or honesty, but to politicians, and on certain occasions —such as the General Strike—this feature is a god-send. Here is a theme for a valuable digression on why broadcasting is a Government monopoly. But not to labour a separate point and to get to the matter in hand, I was listening to Miss Sackville-West the other evening lecturing on “Modern English Poetry.” Very charming, very entertaining, but marred at the very outset by a slight inaccuracy. It is a pity when one sits down to be charmed, that one should get a half-brick in the ear for a start, but so it was. Miss Sackville-West asked us to commence what she called the Georgian period with 1900. She gave as her reasons for choosing that year as a starting point, “ the South African War is over, the world is at peace, we are surrounded by the large air of material prosperity.   .   .   .” Now that is where one gets the nasty jar. I happen to have been alive, and taking keen notice of my surroundings in the year 1900.

“ The large air of material prosperity." I like that! One remembers it so well. Only twenty-eight years ago, and it comes back like a beautiful dream. Speaking from memory, according to a tract issued about that time, the average wage of the working class was about 25s. per week, and one worker in every three died either in the workhouse, hospital, or lunatic asylum. The twelve-hour day was normal in scores of industries. And the unemployed! There is a touchstone for the large air of material prosperity. Who that is old enough does not remember the shabby processions of half-desperate men chanting their grubby war-cry, “We want work”? For how many years were not all efforts to get what was called a living wage fobbed off with the plea that “things were always like this after a war"? According to the official figures for December, 1902, before the Insurance Acts had made greater accuracy possible, there were half a million men out of work. Among other disturbances, the Town Council of Croydon was stormed by the unemployed.

So that you see how a charming lecture on poetry can become the vehicle of a patent inaccuracy. Probably the hundreds of thousands of other listeners will have allowed the phrase to pass uninterruptedly in at one ear and out at the other, and little harm done, but it is worth retrieving from oblivion for several reasons. For one thing, it is interesting to note and dwell upon the fact that one has lived during a period to which the term "prosperity” is applied. Up till now, during my short lifetime, no one has ever discovered prosperity in the present tense. Years ago, or years ahead, yes ! To-day, never ! A case of jam yesterday, and jam to-morrow, but never jam to-day. At the moment, politicians call upon the unreflecting to consider the happy state of things "before the War,” and propose, if you favour them with your votes, to lead you "back to prosperity.” This happy phenomenon has the objectionable habit of disappearing as soon as you look at it. It is afflicted with a kind of polarity, which makes the people of England gaze longingly at the prosperity of America and the Colonies. And the colonists doubtless speak of the prosperity of the Old Country, whilst America is big enough to let the population on one side envy the prosperity they read about on the other.

There is a further reason why Miss Sackville-West’s gem of polished piffle should not sink unhonoured and unnoted into the pool of forgotten things. It indicates a certain definite attitude of mind the working class in general, and the unemployed in particular, would do well to note. To that view, the problem of worklessness is nearly related to worthlessness, and is a problem quite minor and marginal. The unemployed exist as a sort of untidy fringe on the outside edge of the working class, and are best fobbed off with doles and forgotten. In a word, they are normal. That is the view, and it is a dangerous one. The Daily News (July 24th) has already told the world "there are 200,000 mine workers definitely and irrecoverably surplus to the industry.” A writer in the Evening Standard of November 13th, A. A. B., speaking of present unemployment, made the following pregnant observations: "There were nearly a million unemployed in 1908, and the other two or three hundred thousand are accounted for by the women imported into the labour market since the War, and the miners. Allowing for the increase of population and the surplus colliers, the aggregate amount of unemployment is normal.”

There it is in a nut-shell. Unemployment. whether half a million in 1903, one million in 1908, or one and a half million in 1928, is normal, under Capitalism. In a few months’ time you will have an opportunity of voting for the continuance of Capitalism. Some of those who will appear before you will call themselves Tories or Unionists, others Liberals, and others again Labour men. Rest assured, all, if elected, will carry on Capitalism, with colossal unemployment as its normal condition. If you do not desire to continue to live under Capitalism you have but one single, simple alternative. You must read our pamphlet on Socialism, the cheapest piece of literature in existence, 48 pages for twopence. If you agree with it, you must join with us in the only party that is aiming at the abolition of Capitalism and the substitution of Socialism. In politics there are but two parties, and two only. The Capitalist Party, with Tory, Liberal or Labour labels, and the Socialist. Party, which needs no label.

W. T. Hopley

A Patriotic Swindler: Horatio Bottomley (1960)

From the March 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

March 23rd, 1960, marks the centenary of the birth of Horatio Bottomley, one of Britain’s most colourful and well-loved figures of the period 1890-1920. Yet this popular figure, who became almost synonymous with John Bull, was one of the greatest rogues alive, getting through in a day at the races more than many of his constituents in South Hackney earned in several years. And the money was always somebody else's; he was not even a Capitalist, he was a common swindler puffed up by his great flair for sensational journalism and by posing as John Bull, the Sporting Britisher's man.

The early part of Bottomley's career, the years 1890-1914. could well be called the Golden Age of British Capitalism. It was an age of great upper-class luxury; it was a flamboyant, opulent age. It was also an age of great optimism. Imperialism was at its height, the Sun never set on the Empire, all problems could be solved by the normal workings of Capitalism, Society was an unshakable rock. Men basked in the false sunshine of Prosperity—even those who were poor. Workers shared in the general optimism; if there was great poverty, there was also the great illusory promise of things to come. There were clouds drifting across the sun. the largest being the tremendous growth of Germany as an industrial, military and naval power, but these clouds scarcely disturbed the illusion of opulent serenity of Sporting Edward's reign.

Bottomley had many of the upper-class attributes of the time. He loved racing, champagne, pretty girls, money and power. And he displayed his likes in the arrogant, showy way so typical of the age. His long period of success can only be understood by seeing the man in his context. He was an important figure in finance, a great journalist, a clever lay lawyer, a tremendously effective orator, a man to whom the electors of South Hackney delighted to give their votes, and he was a leader of "Public Opinion." He was a patron of the poor, the friend of the rich and influential, a champion of the moral virtues and defender of the family, an incessant campaigner (through the pages of John Bull) against prudes, indecency, brutality and corruption. He was a “sport"; and he was the biggest liar and hypocrite in England. He was a man incapable of real generosity; a man who, to quote an old inhabitant of Hackney,  "would give a 5s. tip and pinch the bread-and-cheese out of your pocket.'' He appears a cardboard figure today, his actions all deliberate poses for the benefit of an admiring public. Yet he inspired real devotion in his assistants; perhaps in that age nothing succeeded so well as success, particularly success at large-scale swindle.

Bottomley lived during the great days of company flotation. The law was comparatively lax, and Bottomley infinitely audacious. He early acquired a taste for bankruptcy; a taste that harmed nothing except his political ambitions, for he lived as richly as when he was solvent. He floated many companies, and their funds stuck to his eternally sticky fingers in enormous quantity. He was prosecuted quite early in his career, and conducted his own defence in an able and witty manner. So well-liked was he that many of his victims still had faith in him and his enterprises, and even shared the jokes he made in Court at their expense. The Company schemes were difficult to unravel, the organisation chaotic, the book-keeping almost non-existent. His assistants could be relied on to be helpful in the most obstructive possible way when the Official Receiver and his agents were endeavouring to inspect the books. He was a ferret squeezing through every loophole in the Company laws.

Via Wiki: Front page of the Daily Mirror, 10 September 1915. 

Perhaps his greatest achievement was his building-up of John Bull into a best-seller among journals. This was one Bottomley venture which was quite safe from the law, for business and financial management was firmly in the hands of Odham's. Bottomley drew a large salary as managing Editor, a salary which was considerably augmented by the firms who paid not to appear in its pages, and by the lotteries, competitions and share-subscription schemes advertised in the journal! These schemes placed enormous sums in Bottomley's pocket. Through John Bull he not only raised money, he became an expert manipulator of Public opinion. His appeals to patriotism, his nauseating anti-Germanism during the first world war, his attempts to found a new political party, all pointed to the incipient demagogue. As he grew older, his love of power grew and his astuteness declined. After the war he hastily secured his discharge from bankruptcy (characteristically. with money not all of which was his own) in order that he could take part in the 1919 election. He finally came to grief over his share-subscription schemes, being prosecuted under the Larceny Act of 1915, an Act which was passed to prevent the depredations of Bottomley and others of his kind.

Bottomley was a liar, a thief, and a hypocrite. Yet for thirty years he remained an important, imposing figure in English life. His popularity with the many members of the upper class is easily explained. His depredations scarcely affected them, he was clever and a good conversationalist, he shared their tastes, and he was, as a “man of the people," a useful figure, particularly during the war. Their sympathy had lessened by the end of his career. His growing interest in politics was becoming an embarrassment: as a demagogue he might threaten their own privileged positions.

To many workers he was a “sport": they lived vicariously through his extravagances, and he posed as their champion. A reading public—unsophisticated, untrained in politics, crushed by poverty and eager for sensationalism—was provided for him and his kind by the Education Acts of the late 19th century.

After his imprisonment, he found he was unable to make a success of a new journal on the lines of the old John Bull. His popularity had vanished, his journalism had become out of date, his utterances old-hat and naive-sounding. He died in poverty, denied even the comfort of an old-age pension.

His greatest crime went unpunished, and was indeed applauded and highly-paid; he was one of Capitalism’s greatest Recruiting Sergeants.

F. R. Ivimey

1904-1964 (1964)

From the September 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

When our party was formed in June, 1904, the world was, in some ways, vastly different from what it is today.

The British Empire was flourishing as one of the greatest empires the world had so far experienced, and radicals waxed eloquent on topics like “Home Rule for India.” This huge land mass was under British rule, and British capitalists were being enriched out of the exploitation of the Indian peasant. “Home Rule for Ireland” was also another favourite topic, plus the women’s suffrage question. Africa was split up amongst the Western Powers; Germany,- France, Belgium and Britain taking the lion’s share, and various measures were adopted to force the natives to be exploited in the mines, diamond fields and rubber plantations. Harrowing stories were told of the brutalities they suffered. Canada and Australia were being settled with a cynical disregard for the interests of the aboriginal inhabitants.

Russian peasants, in the vast ramshackle empire of the Czars, were steeped in almost hopeless misery to produce luxury for the Russian nobility. China was a hotch potch of conflicting war lords and petty peasant culture in which the Western powers were trying to force their trading interests. Japan was on the verge of emerging as a great power, whilst the United States was in a fever of internal industrial expansion that was building up huge fortunes for the Rockefellers, Astors, Carnegies, Morgans and other multi-millionaires.

Cutting across all the sectional interests was the cleavage between workers and capitalists, owners and non-owners of the means of production, and frequent strikes were a common result.

In Germany the adherents of the Social Democratic Party were numbered in hundreds of thousands. In other countries smaller Social Democratic Parties also carried on a great deal of propaganda. In America they had even reached a point where a member of one of the radical parties, Eugene V. Debs, was a candidate for the Presidency and received a large vote.

In Britain there were a variety of radical parties like the Social Democratic Party, the Independent Labour Party, the Fabian Society, Industrial Unionists, Land Reformists and a number of others, all with a variety of reformist proposals. Since those days these parties and groups have either gone out of existence or become moribund.

At the time our party came into existence men whose names figured prominently on the theoretical side of the working class movement were either still alive or not long since dead; men like Engels, Leibknecht, Lafargue, Kautzky, Plechanoff, Labriola, and others. Thus theoretical questions loomed large at meetings, particularly at indoor meetings. The early members of our party, who had broken away from the Social Democratic Party on account of its reformist and political trading attitude, were pioneers; enthusiastic, fanatical and uncompromising. To them the Socialist movement was all that really mattered, and many of them suffered economically for the position they took up.

The world the Party was born into was a much slower world than the world of today. There were no aeroplanes, wireless or huge ocean liners; no world wars, belt systems or traffic problems; no petrol buses, electric trains or tube systems; no cinemas, dog racing or jazz; no health or unemployment insurance, and one could travel widely without passports. Horse buses, hansom cabs, bicycles and steam trains were the means of locomotion. Hours of work were long but, in general, not as intense as today. Translations of foreign radical literature were scarce. Printing, premises and halls were relatively cheap. Outdoor meeting places were prolific and a platform could be set up almost anywhere. The outstanding questions of the time were religion, Home Rule, Reforms and the suffragette question—and the abolition of slums!

What vast changes, in some respects, have come over the world since those days. Russia and the United States have become the major capitalist empires, seeking to split the earth between them but threatened by a developing and populous China. India has secured its “freedom” without much advantage to its teeming and poverty stricken millions. The African natives are struggling to free themselves from the older bandits; some have developed independent states that have made little difference to the oppressed; they have simply exchanged exploiters.

All the territories of the world have come under the sway of international capital. Areas that were once undeveloped are rapidly being transformed, and the world is seething in a maelstrom of conflict and confusion such as has never been experienced before. Cutting across all sectional interests is the cleavage between capitalist and worker, owner and non-owner, privileged and unprivileged, dominant and subjected— just as in 1904. Progress has been in the accumulation of wealth for the privileged, frustration and nervous tension for the unprivileged. The class position of the working class has remained the same.

The root of the troubles that afflict the world today is the same as it was in 1904; the ownership of the means of production by one class, the capitalist class, whose members can lfve without the need to work, and the subjection of the working class, whose members must work in order to live.

Production under capitalism is carried on for the purpose of profit and, just as in the past, sections of the international capitalist class came into conflict over markets, sources of raw materials, routes to these markets and raw materials, and strategic bases for domination. The seeds of war are sown with a prodigal hand. Today even the sky above the earth has become an area for strategic manoeuvres. Nation faces nation full of suspicion, armed with more terrible means of destruction than mankind has ever contrived, and workers are forced into armed forces to slaughter each other.

Myriads of reformers, some with the best of intentions, have sought to relieve some of the worst aspects of social existence. In spite of decades of reformism their efforts have brought no material change. The main evils still flourish. Abolition of slums was on the programmes of the main political parties in 1904—it is still on the programmes of the main political parties today. The reformers failed to attack the source of the trouble, the capitalist ownership of the means of production. Planning against slumps and booms, peace movements, proposals to abolish poverty and slums, all break to pieces against the ramparts of capitalism.

The cynical degradation of labour; the exploitation of workers of all colours and creeds in all parts of the world to enhance the wealth of those in the position of power and privilege, is basic to the present system. What is produced is produced solely for the purpose of profit, regardless of the misery it involves. That is capitalism, and so it will always be while capitalism lasts.

Thus, in spite of the vast superficial changes in the world since 1904, it is still, fundamentally, the same old capitalist world, with its exploitation, misery and frustration for the mass of the population.

Gilmac.

High on Tressell (1970)

Book Review from the October 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

Robert Tressell and The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, by Jack Mitchell: Lawrence & Wishart, 45s.

Interest in the scope and background of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists has grown steadily since the publications, in 1951 and 1955 respectively, of F.C. Ball’s biography Tressell of Mugsborough and the full version of the book as Tressell—Robert Noonan -wrote it. Previously, little or nothing had been known about this most widely read of all books about working men since its appearance in 1914. Now, a further book on Tressell by Ball is promised: in 1967 The Times revealed that Tressell’s daughter Kathleen, thought to have been killed in an accident in 1919, was still alive: in August this year, The Guardian published details of surviving examples of Tressell’s decorative painting.

Mitchell’s book is an attempt at detailed critical analysis of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. It has an astonishingly patronising foreword by Raymond Williams, and its endeavour is to place the Philanthropists among the great works of literature. Mitchell takes a classification suggested by Arnold Kettle, in an article called "Dickens and the Popular Tradition”, in which the classical nineteenth-century novelists are divided as belonging to "bourgeois critical realism” or “popular critical realism”. The difference is in “sensibility”, or the writer’s class awareness. The height of popular critical realism is "proletarian humanism”, and Mitchell sees this as reaching its peak in Dickens in the nineteenth century and Tressell in the twentieth.

In developing this theme, there are some interesting references to nineteenth-century working-class novels which are little known today. Mitchell says they failed because working-class sensibility was insufficiently developed before the last years of the century. Between 1889 and 1906, however: "The advent of imperialism revolutionised the situation.” The foundation of the Labour Party was a cultural as well as a political landmark: "It is not by chance that it precedes the break-through of the British working class in the narrower field of literary culture”— that is, the writing of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists—“by only five years”. The working class was about to wage fierce war. Mitchell writes: “By 1914 it was touch and go which would come first, world war or social revolution.’’ In this light, Tressell’s book is a vital self-criticism of the working class as it prepared for the struggle.

This is all dreadful nonsense. It throws into relief the weakness of Mitchell’s study of Tressell—that it is anything but critical. Starting thus from the belief that The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists was the expression of “a realisation that in the long run they (the working class) were destined to take over the cultural heritage and with it the human leadership of the nation”, Mitchell praises it on every count and in the highest terms. The comparisons in which it is eulogised are themselves breathtakingly uncritical at times. For example "The two greatest anti-capitalist writers in Britain at that time, Shaw and Tressell”—though later Mitchell speaks of Tressell’s implicit exposure of the Fabian propaganda whose popular exponent, in fact, was Shaw. And what of Dickens, to whom Mitchell continually returns as the genius of popular humanism before Tressell? George Orwell has pointed out that Dickens never penned a decent picture of a working man or woman; the case is strong that Dickens radicalism was rooted in fear of the mob.

All the same, there is a good deal which is interesting in Mitchell’s examination of the structure of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists. As he says, its central situation is the labour process. The characters are carefully arranged to show all the stages of a manual worker’s life, from the apprentice to the discarded old man. Attitudes to labour are crucial points in the book’s criticism of capitalism. The boss-figures are Anti-Man, in Mitchell’s phrase, precisely because they are destructive of men’s attachment to and satisfaction from labour. Influenced by William Morris, Tressell made art part of labour: and in this sense Owen’s decoration of the drawing-room in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is a symbolic victory.

One of Mitchell’s more telling comparisons is between Tressell’s work and that of the “Naturalist” writers of the late nineteenth century. At first glance, the insistent accumulation of detail—the minute descriptions of rooms, buildings. clothes—reminds one of, say, Zola. But Zola’s picture was always of a slice of life whereas Tressell, as Mitchell points out, aims to show life itself under capitalism. While Zola lifts stones to reveal the horrors under them, Tressell’s mass of detail points to “the abnormality of the normal”: the horror of the stones themselves. Mitchell draws attention too to the exclusion by Tressell of any human personal element which might admit the possibility of bridge-building between the classes. Tressell’s insistence always is on the capitalist system as the culprit; grotesque as his boss-characters are, they remain the system’s creations.

Those who are interested in The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists will, and ought to, read this book. Despite the parallels it draws with Fielding, Bunyan. Swift, Gorky, Hardy and others—besides Dickens—it does not succeed in its intention of giving the Philanthropists an exalted place in literature. Nor is there any reason really for seeking to do so. Tressell’s work is a gem in its field. If it were a literary masterpiece, perhaps we should not lay claim, as we all do, to innumerable copies given away and lent to people at work. Mitchell lays on his claims thickly, apparently high on enthusiasm for Tressell. One sees, however, the political malpositions from which the claims arise - and wonders whether such a structure of illusion would have been tolerable to Tressell himself.

Robert Barltrop

Edwardian Times (2004)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back book:

The first edition of the Socialist Standard appeared nearly three months after the formation of the Party, being dated “London, September, 1904” and costing one penny. Entitled the “Official Organ of The Socialist Party of Great Britain”, it was eight pages of dense type and small headlines (in that sense very much the style of the time) but noticeably larger than the current A4 page size. The first editorial promised “we shall give a fair hearing to all sides on any question, and trust that our correspondence columns will be freely used”, a promise that has been upheld ever since by both sides.

The first edition included an editorial outlining the Party’s hopes (in some ways over-optimistic) for the development of the Standard and the movement for socialism in general, but for reference we include in this section an article from this first issue simply entitled “The Socialist Party of Great Britain”. This is because it explains, from the standpoint of the founder members, the basic political positions of the SPGB in distinction to those held by the growing number other organisations claiming the title “socialist” at the time.

The Standard during this pre-First World War period mainly tended to comprise original articles from Party members on topical issues of the time plus theoretical articles expounding aspects of the Materialist Conception of History and Marxian Economics, some written by Party members themselves but many were reprints or translations of the writings of some of the “greats” of the Second International period like Kautsky, Bebel, Lafargue, Guesde and Morris. Perhaps belying the somewhat staid physical appearance of the Standard, the topical articles written by members tended to be lively and polemical, using rhetorical devices in a way the party’s outdoor orators often did. The article about the official appearance of the Labour Party on the British political scene in Westminster (The New ‘Force’ in Politics) is as good as an example of this an any, though some of the later articles we’ve included in this section certainly run it close for tightly-argued political invective.

Politically, the party nailed its colours to the mast on the “nation or class” issue at the outset and the article included here on the rise of Sinn Fein in Ireland is a stinging attack on the idea that “national liberation” movements against established imperialist powers are in some way progressive and worthy of working class support. The stark class division identified as being at the heart of capitalism’s social relations by the party’s Declaration of Principles was reflected in many other articles of the time too. Indeed, many modern readers may be surprised at the vehemence with which the early party opposed the Suffragette movement on class grounds, identifying the Suffragettes as – at best – an irrelevant movement of propertied women falsely claiming to represent the interests of female workers.

The naked working class anger at the iniquities of capitalism to be found in the pages of the Standard in its early years is understandable given the conditions of the time and it is exemplified no better than in the articles on the brutal suppression of the miners’ strike in South Wales by the Liberal government and the piece written on the sinking of the luxury liner, the Titanic. Both are fine examples of a particular style of political prose in the small revolutionary milieu in Britain at the beginning of the twentieth century and of the application of a class-based analysis to contemporary issues. But contrast these with the more elegant—even quaint—piece on the “motor car problem”, specifically as it affected post-Victorian London where the majority of SPGB members at the time were based.

Lest this particular piece lull any readers into labelling the Party “backward-looking” in its attitudes to developing social issues during this period, the article expounding “the Case For Free Love” should dispel any such myths. It manages to put an eloquent and considered case on the subject long before it was fashionable to do so in radical circles, let alone in the mainstream press.

• The Socialist Party of Great Britain (September 1904)
• The New 'Force' in Politics (February 1906)
• The Sinn Fein Policy (September 1907)
• Suffragette Humbug (June 1908)
• Remember Tonypandy! (December 1910)
• The Class Struggle Aboard the Titanic (May 1912)
• The Balkan Conspiracy (November 1912)
• The Pace That Kills (January 1913)
• The Case For Free Love: some capitalist hypocrisies exposed (December 1913)