S.P.G.B. Lecture List For December. (London District.) (1912)

Party News from the December 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

Once again, I don't have enough room in the label section to include all the listed speakers, so some brief information on some of the speakers missing from the sidebar.

• C. Elliott was a member of the Tooting Branch, originally joining the SPGB in September 1909. There is no record of when they lapsed their membership.
• F. J. Rourke was a member of the Tottenham Branch, originally joining the SPGB in June 1909. Their membership was lapsed in February 1914. ("Moved away".)
• F. Stearn was a member of the Tottenham Branch. There were actually two 'F. Stearn's in the branch at the time - possibly father and son - so I don't know which one was a listed speaker for this month.
• H. Joy was a member of the Tooting Branch.
• William Lewington was a member of the Tottenham Branch, originally joining the SPGB in March 1907. He resigned from the SPGB but no date is given for his resignation.
• J.M. Wray was a member of the Wood Green Branch, originally joining the SPGB in May 1909. He resigned from the SPGB in June 1924.

A few of the names featured in the lecture list are not listed in the early membership records, This could be explained away in two ways: 1) Further confirmation that the membership records to hand are incomplete. 2) A number of SPGB members were operating under pseudonyms in their visible party activity because of the threat of blacklisting.

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For August. (1914)

Party News from the August 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

S.P.G.B. Lecture List, For July. (1914)

Party News from the July 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For December. (1914)

Party News from the December 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For November. (1914)

Party News from the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Notes:

'F. Vickers' was Frank Vickers. Harry Young ('Horatio') mentions him in a February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard. Vickers was one of a handful of SPGBers who went directly over to the Communist Party after the war. 'B. Young' was Byron Young. From a family of SPGBers, his father had been a member of the SDF.  His brother, Percy, was also a longstanding SPGBer. (His parents must have loved their poetry.) A prolific outdoor speaker for the Party, he emigrated to Australia after WW1. He is mentioned briefly in the Socialist Standard in his brother's obituary and his nephew's obituary.

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For October. (1914)

Party News from the October 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

The S.P.G.B. Lecture List September. (1914)

Party News from the September 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For June. (1912)

Party News from the June 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For June. (1914)

Party News from the June 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For July (1912)

Party News from the July 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

S.P.G.B. Lecture List For February. (1912)

Party News from the February 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Click to enlarge.

Attention ! (1912)

Party News from the February 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are asked to announce that a Public Meeting will be held under the auspices of our Battersea Branch, in the Large Hall of the Latchmere Baths, Latchmere Road, Battersea, on Sunday night, February 11th at 8. Doors open at 7.30.

Speaker: F. Vickers. Subject: "Why We Oppose All Other Parties."

Admission and all seats free. Questions and discussion invited.

The Latest Railway Treachery. (1913)

From the January 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

After repeated unsuccessful efforts to gain redress for some of their grievances, the Railwaymen, sick of the fraudulent Conciliation Boards, have, as a gage of defiance to the unholy crew who boss the N. Eastern system, once more resorted to the weapon of the strike.

The ostensible cause of the trouble was the insolent attempt of the masters to victimise a man against whom they had a grudge, but the real cause was a bitter resentment against the sinister attempt of the capitalists to regulate the leisure, as well as the working hours, of their men.

As is always the case when the working man chafes against the chains of his slavery, the paid liars of the Liberal and Tory Press have indulged in an orgy of insinuation and vituperation. The "Standard," shrieking in simulated indignation, declared it “a strike for the right to get drunk”; the "Pall Mall Gazette," anxious to contribute its quota of dirt, purloined the war whoop of the "Standard” ; the “Daily Mirror’’ mirrored its own dirty soul in a filthy cartoon; the "Daily Mail," aping the characteristics of its lord and master, asked in a tone of unctuous hypocrisy, "Do the trade unions of this country stand up for the right to get drunk ? "

The Liberal Press, not to be outdone in the use of the muck-rake, rose equally to the occasion, asserting that the strikers were “practically fighting for the right of the railway workers to endanger the safety of the public," and so on.

In every case the suggestion was that the men were blatantly in the wrong; that they knew they were wrong, and were simply trying to bluff through it; that an irresponsible mob were determined to upset everything until the right to get drunk was conceded; and that they had chosen one of the busiest times of the year to irritate and annoy a long-suffering public as much as possible.

We are not concerned here as to whether a man may get drunk or not. What we are concerned with is, first the sham pretence of safe-guarding the interests of the public offered by the railway company, as an excuse for their summary action in regard to Knox, and secondly the lesson to be learned from this latest manifestation of industrial unrest.

We are always told, on the occasion of a big strike, that the "public" must be considered. In the railway strike of ’11, in the Transport Workers’ strikes and during the Miners' strike, the capitalist Press at once struck this note, and used it to smash the men. It is always the "public" that have to be considered, and never the men on strike; and if one thinks for a moment one will find it a pretence reeking with hypocrisy. and deadly dangerous to the working class.

Why should we consider the “public" ? When have they ever considered us? When we were bullied and browbeaten, when we toiled in dangerous occupations, suffering daily loss of life and limb, when we sold the last stick and our little ones cried to us for bread, did the "public" help us? Did they think of us? Did they try ever so little to visualise for themselves our daily lives, or weigh in impartial scales our statements and our demands? Did they not, on the contrary, prejudge us from the statements of our enemies, and lose no opportunity to sneer at our attempts to improve our position? Why, then, should we consider the public about which the unclean Press is so deeply concerned, and which is in reality the master class itself, with its myriad soulless, toadying legal, political, and clerical hacks.

The real public, the 15 millions of workers, are never considered at all. If it is true that the railway magnates are so deeply concerned with safeguarding the interest of the real (as distinct from the newspaper) public, why don't they make a start with their own employees? One can see how little the railway capitalists are concerned to safeguard the interest of that large section of the real public it has under its immediate control, when one considers the number of preventable "accidents" which occur amongst railway employees. These have averaged nearly 500 (fatal) per annum during the last ten years, while the number of non-fatal "accidents" increased from 13,642 in 1902 to 27,848 in 1911.

It is common knowledge that this increase is due to the worsening of the conditions under which this dangerous occupation is carried on, and the murderous method of coupling and uncoupling. For over twenty years the railway companies have had at their disposal an automatic coupling which would reduce almost to zero the accidents under this heading, but they prefer to murder men wholesale rather than minimise their blood-stained profits.

Again, the net profits of the railway companies during 1910 were £47,356,000, and in 1911 they increased by another 1½ millions. During the time the wages paid by the fifteen principle companies to all their employees was £23,425,000 annually, so that while they publish figures showing that they can only pay a dividend of some 3½ per cent. (omitting the fact that this is on inflated capital), yet the actual rate at which the workers are robbed in this industry is 200 per cent. And yet when the men kick against the pricks the liars of modern journalism denounce them and use every weapon they can invent for the purpose of injuring their cause.

Another aspect of this matter is that, in spite of the spirit of comradeship and determination, the men have lost. They lost because. not having gained the knowledge they should have gained from the experiences of 1907 and 1911, they allowed the bosses of Unity House, the "leaders" who always lead to disaster, to take the conduct of affairs out of their heads. These “leaders,” annoyed that their requests had not been complied with, declared to the capitalist Press that the strike was "unauthorised and unrecognised," and while giving this information to the men's enemies (who naturally at once used it) they and their local understudies met in solemn conclave, and refused to give the men any information until the "settlement" was reached, when once again it was found that the men had been handed over to the masters bound and helpless.

True there was a Pyrrhic victory over the reinstatement of Knot, but that the men were thus justified in their action only completed the victory of the masters.

Let us look at the strange document the men's "leaders" have bound them to observe.

Clause 3 binds the men "to work amicably with and not molest non-strikers." Here you have officials paid to defend the principles of Trade Unionism, deliberately betraying them by insisting upon amicable working relations with the very men who render futile the efforts of other men to improve their position.

Clause 4 is even more dastardly. In this the "leaders" have deliberately agreed, without the slightest reference to the men themselves, to allow the company to penalise the men a week's pay for defending a cause that was admittedly just. Moreover, not content with this, they actually proceed to insult the men, telling then that they should not strike without giving legal notice to the company, refusing strike pay for the period of the struggle, and giving their personal undertaking that they will use their influence to prevent the men from striking. In a word, they agreed to every insult formulated by the masters, mindful of nothing else than humbling those who had dared to strike without their permission. If this is not one of the foulest betrayals in the history of Trade Unionism, then words have no meaning.

And this is the thing called a "settlement." No wonder the General Secretary of the A.S.R.S. expressed himself "greatly satisfied"! No wonder the men declared they were "sold again"!

How long are the men going to stand it? Are they going to take this kind of thing lying down? We hope and believe not. But while this is our hope, while we welcome every manifestation of antagonism by the workers against those who exploit them, yet we would ask them to remember that decisive victory does not lie in the direction of strikes, whether sectional, spasmodic, or general—the masters are for too powerful for that. For the forces placed in their hands by industrial development, the terrible army of the unemployed, the power of a menial Press, and the whole might of the armed State, always at their disposal if required, places strict limits upon the success of the strike. The weapon of the strike may gain a concession here and there, but not only is the advantage soon counteracted by the operation of economic development, but the strike itself never seriously jeopardises for one moment the system of exploitation, tyranny, slavery, and oppression pressing so heavily on the world’s workers to-day.

What, therefore, the railwaymen and all other workers must do if they hope for freedom, is to understand their position, to obtain a clear knowledge of the forces that keep them in slavery. When they understand this, when to this knowledge there is allied the determination to wrest from the hands of the masters the power which alone enables them to rule and mould men's lives to their own unholy purpose—the political power—then will the necessity for the strike cease, for the cause will have vanished.

And that cause, against which the workers must show a united purpose and a pitiless determination, is the domination of one class, an idle, useless, and vicious class, and the consequent degradation, poverty, and servitude of the useful workers.

Frank Vickers

Lyddite For The Fray. (1914)

From the December 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

How the Masters Lovingly Treat the Police in Times of Strike.

"One of the elective auditors of the City of Leeds, who has been dealing with the expenditure of £30,000 on police and volunteer workers during the great municipal strike of last winter, has made public some details of the accounts. The maintenance of some 600 special police alone cost £22,000 including payments of £10,000 to various watch committees. Forty casks of beer, each containing 36 gallons, went into the New Wortley Gas Works alone and other orders given by the Gas Department were for 25,700 bottles of mineral waters. The total number of pints of beer ordered for the police was 4,954. A vast quantity of tobacco was consumed, the orders being for 141 lbs of tobacco, 134½lbs of twist and Rotunda mixture; 151 lbs twist, Union Jack and Redbreast, 166 lbs of tobacco, 190 lbs Bond of Union. The cigarettes consumed ran into hundreds of thousands and over 1,100 cigars were supplied. A large number of luncheons were charged at 2s. each, and all sandwiches were paid for at 4d. each. Among the food orders are 13,475 lbs of roast beef at 1s. per lb. The games and recreations provided for the men behind barricades and police guards included footballs, darts, draughts and draught boards,, cards, dominoes, and a gramophone. One account for towels, blankets, mattresses and other items is £444 14s. 6d., while 493 overalls and bed jackets cost £130. New suits of clothes were claimed by 141 men at a cost of £200.”

*    *    *    *

Voluntary (!) Enlistment.

“It would be an admirable thing if all unmarried men between 18 and 30 without the manhood to offer themselves, were forcibly pressed into the Army and put into battalions where the kicks should be far more than the ha’pence." - “Daily Express,” Aug. 20th, 1914.

*    *    *    *

The Men are Called to Fight for their Country.

“How precarious is the life of the London docker may be illustrated by the figures of the weekly earnings of a casual docker, which I take from that invaluable study, ‘West Ham,’ by E. Howarth and Mona Wilson. 9s. 11d , 18s. 8d., 5s. 10d, 33s. 9d., 30s 4d., nil, nil, nil, 5s. 9d., 28s., nil (the net weekly average being 12s. 0¼ d ) On an average day at the London docks, you will find a SURPLUS of at least 10,000 labourers. The scenes which are taking place every day of the week are only the symbol of the miseries that afflict these wretched victims of the industrial machine, of the degradation of character and of the waste of human life.”— “Daily News,” May 23rd, 1914

*    *    *    *

The Three Different Faces of Ben Tillet. Labour “Leader” and Friend of the Poor.

1st Face.—Writing in “Justice,” June 15th, 1912, while the Transport Workers were on strike:
    “The governing classes . . . have the habit of thinking of the worker as a slave and are prepared to kill him with bludgeon and soldiery if he dares to struggle with his chains . . . 300,000 children are wanting food and protection; 100,000 women are wanting support; 100,000 men are fighting for dear life and principle. Our fight is against the capitalists, who not only want to destroy our liberties, making slaves of us, but they would destroy our home and home life as they have done and are doing to the vicious beat of their malignant hate.”

2nd Face — Writing in “Daily Herald,” Sept. 5th, 1914:
  “Every able-bodied man must either fight or be ready to defend his country . . . The objection taken by very many intelligent workers is that . . . there are at least 5 to 10 millions of working-class folk in slum and starvation who could not be worse off by a German invasion or the Government of the most brutal savages  . . . These contentions are true, but nevertheless there is need now to protect the United Kingdom against invasion."

3rd Face — Writing in "John Bull," October 10th, 1914:
   “We must fight because the British worker has more of constitutional and democratic freedom together with social opportunity to guard than the enemies enjoy.”

Comment would spoil the beauty of these three extracts.

*    *    *    *

The Cause of the Workers' Diseases.

“Professor Metchnikoff, the prophet of the microbe or germ theory on whom the mantle of Pasteur has fallen, recently lectured at the Royal Society of Medicine on ’Warfare on Tubercle,’ in which he said that no remedy for tubercle had been discovered. Doctors know however, that the TRUE cause of tubercle is living in slums, unhygienic surroundings, sweated wages and the accompanying starvation.”—Dr. Boyd Known, M.R.C.S., LR.C.F., in “Daily Herald,” January 28th, 1913.

*    *    *    *

The Cowardly Rich.
 

 “Paris is bearing up. Most of the shops and very many of the houses are closed and shattered. The rich man has packed up his traps and with his menservants and maidservants, his oxen and his asses, the wife of his bosom and the children that are his, has slipped away, either southward, whither the Government has sped, or to the more peaceful watering places in the South Coast of England.”—“Daily News,” Sept. 9th, 1914.

*    *    *    *

Breaking of Treaties.
   

“Russia has broken treaties in the past, so has England . . . There is not an important treaty of modem Europe but has been partially denounced, revoked or altered in times of peace. The treaty of Utrecht 1713, of Vienna 1814, of Paris 1850, of Prague 1866, of Berlin 1878, have in part or in whole been denounced. The Black Sea clause of the Treaty of Paris and the Batoum clause of the Treaty of Berlin were openly and frankly denounced and repudiated by Russia in her own sole interest. Let us all admit that Europe accepted the Russian denunciation.”—Arnold White in the “Sunday Chronicle,” Oct. 14th, 1914.

*    *    *    *

Atrocities.
  

“In the course of his letter of resignation, General Beyers made a bitter attack upon the British Government. It is said, he wrote, that war is being waged against the barbarity of the German. I have forgiven but not forgotten all the barbarities in this our own country during the South African war. With very few exceptions, all farms, not to mention many towns, were so many Louvains of which we now hear so much.—“Daily News,” Sept. 22nd, 1914.

  “Here is an idea for Lord Kitchener. Why not arrange to have all German prisoners whom we capture during the war sent over to England via the North Sea, in barges propelled from behind by tugs over the mine strewn area.”— “John Bull,” Sept. 5th, 1914.

  “The British left wing have again covered themselves with glory . . . The forests of Chantilly should rank with the plains of Waterloo. The sterling work done in the shadow of these ancient trees will go down to history. Despite sentimental French advices they FIRED a part of the wood and slew the Germans concealed therein like rats as they scuttled forth.”— “Pall Mall Gazette,” Sept. 10th, 1914.

   “The Zouaves and Chasseurs d’Afrique arrived in hundreds of taxi-cabs . . . You will hear with less revolt of the horror I passed earlier in the day, some 240 Prussians dead in one farm together, black and unburied. They were killed by shell fumes possibly, but had been bayoneted for double security.” “Weekly Despatch,” Sept. 20th, 1914.

*    *    *    *

Liberality of the Liberals.
  

“Let us bear in mind what this war will do for tens of thousands of young women is to rob them of their husbands, to create a loss which in many cases can never be filled, to alter utterly the meaning and the value of life for many of the bereaved. This is something we cannot pay for and no possible pension that we can devise can touch this main point. . . . Is 7s. 6d. what a great and rich nation should offer to . . . its women who will bear the real burden of the war? It seems to me that to ask this question is to answer it. I have not yet found a single person who attempts to justify the 7s. 6d.”— “Daily News,” Nov. 11th, 1914. (Article by C. Money.)

*    *    *    *

The Alliance of Labour and Liberalism.

 

 “On what outstanding feature of domestic policy during that time (i.e., the last 8 years) has the feeling of the Labour Party been with the Opposition and against the Government? Was it so in the Trades Disputes Bill, Old Age Pensions, the Coal Strike, the Insurance Act, the Labour Exchanges, the Budget of 1909 or the Parliament Act? Is it so in the case of the Home Rule Bill, Plural Voting or Welsh Disestablishment? The fact of course is, that on every fundamental question of home politics, the Government has had no more constant supporters than the Labour Party.—“Daily News,” Jan 28th, 1914.

   “They must recognise that the Labour Party was not a Socialist party. Many of its members had been driven into its ranks and still continued to maintain the closest possible connection with the Liberal organisations in their constituencies . . . The policy of the Labour Party has been deliberately to keep the Liberal Party in office.”—“Labour Leader,” April 16th, 1914 (reporting speech of Philip Snowden).

*    *    *    *

THE Casualties of Peace and the Casualties of War. 

  

"Peace hath her casualties no lees saddening than war. There were for example, no fewer than 476,920 cases of disablement, and 3,748 men killed in seven of the principal industries of Great Britain during the year 1913.

  “These figures are contained in the official statistics issued on Saturday of the working of the Workmen’s Compensation and Employers' Liability Acts for last year. They may be compared with the British casualties during three months of the present war of approximately 60,000.

   “The industries to which these figures apply were those connected with mines, quarries, railways, factories, harbours, docks, constructional works and shipping, and the army of workers in them number 7,509,353.”—“Daily Citizen,” Nov. 16th, 1914.

*    *    *    *

The War and the Financiers. 

  

 “This morning the public has before it the biggest and best loan ever offered for subscription. The British people are invited to find the money to the amount of £350,000,000. The finding of the money requires no sacrifice whatever . . . The return offered to the subscriber is exceedingly handsome . . . the yield being as high as 4 per cent. . . . offered on the best security in the world. . . . The war has brought the investor good. . . . From both the patriotic and the financial point of view it is a magnificent in vestment. — “ Daily Mail," Nov. 18th, 1914.

Frank Vickers

Party Notes. (1912)

Party News from the March 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Eighth Annual Conference of the Party will be held on Friday, 5th and Saturday, 6th of April, 1912, commencing at 10 a.m , at the Fairfax Halls, Portland Gardens, London, N. Resolutions for the Agenda and nominations for the Executive Committee and the Party Officials should now be sent to the Head Office.

The Annual Social will be held on Good Friday evening, and will commence at 7.30 prompt. Same address.

*     *     *

Meetings in celebration of the Commune of Paris are being arranged in North and South London. The Tottenham Municipal Hall has been secured for the 18th March. and the Graveney Schools, Tooting, for the 23rd.

*     *     *

Our pamphlet, “Socialism and Religion,” continues its glorious career, and as we go to press (Feb. 28th) our comrade Vickers is meeting the Rev G. Poole. Vicar of Gravesend, in public debate on the merits of Socialism and Christianity. On March 26th Comrade Vickers will meet Mr. Moise, of the Christian Evidence League, at the Caledonian Road Baths, Holloway, N.

*     *     *

Propaganda work in Hyde Park is meeting with great success and all desirous of aiding in forming the Marylebone Branch of the Socialist Party should communicate at once with A. Kohn, 24, Carburton Street. W.

O.

A FIFTH EDITION.

We have to announce the publication of the Fifth Edition of the Party Manifesto. Tbs Manifesto itself remains unchanged, but the preface has been brought up to date, necessitating the enlargement of the brochure to 24 pages. Tho price is still 1d., post free 1½d.

Debate at Caledonian Rd. Baths. (1912)

Party News from the April 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most successful was the debate organised by our Islington comrades between Mr. A E. Moise, of the North London Christian Evidence League, and F. Vickers, as champion of the S.P.G.B.

The hall was crowded to its utmost capacity, so that the doors had at length to be shut. Fully 1,000 were present. The collection realised £4 7s. 0d. and the sale of literature 13s. 6d.

Mr. Moise made the best of a bad case, but Comrade Vickers simply wiped his every contention away.

Sidney Hammond, Sec. Islington Branch.

Why I Joined the SPGB (1976)

From the February 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was, of course, not the only one to leave the Communist Party. My main claim to distinction is that I was for many years a national official of the Young Communist League—its National Organizer, in fact. During most of the 'twenties I was the official representative of the YCL in Moscow, and subsequently, a member of the five-man secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Communist Youth International, the "Sanctum Sanctorum".

The manner of this was (as always) mainly the result of outside circumstances. You see, my older cousin, Fred Peet, was the acting General Secretary of the newly formed Communist Party in 1920, while Inkpin (the Secretary) was doing twelve months for publishing the Theses of the Third Congress of the Communist International.

Even as a fourteen-year-old kid I was a regular listener to the numerous meetings at Highbury Corner, near my dad's bicycle shop. There I heard Alex Anderson and Adolph Kohn—though the man who impressed me most of all of them was Charlie Lestor: he burst in on the London scene like a Canadian bison.

After mucking about in the Herald League for a bit I joined the CP in 1920, and was offered a job in the bookshop at 16 King Street. The Communist International was anxious to get a Communist youth movement going in Britain, and sent someone over to jog the CP into doing it. The procedure was quite simple. All CP branches were instructed to send delegates to a convening conference. This took place at the old International Socialist Club in East Road, City Road, in 1921. To my considerable astonishment, I was elected chairman. An Executive was elected, which at once appointed me National Organizer.

I should add here that despite (or more likely because of) my youth I had already taken to the outdoor platform, and made the grade as a Communist Party rabble-rouser. There were occasions when speakers didn't turn up (like now), or organized groups tried to break up the meetings. Up I jumped, and repeated most of what Charlie Lestor had said the last time I heard him. What was lacking in knowledge was covered by youthful enthusiasm; and at a comparatively early age I was in demand for meetings with the best of them.

I tried to look unconcerned when Zigi Bamattre (the Swiss CYI representative) announced: "You are coming back to Moscow with me." The gigantic upheaval in Russia had stretched out its mighty arms to Islington! In November 1922 I pinched myself to ensure that it really was me listening to Lenin and Trotsky in the marble and gold halls of the fabulous Kremlin in Moscow.

Rushed back to England, I did a speaking tour from Penzance to Aberdeen for six months, forming YCL branches (it was all done on one Tourist ticket costing £5). Back again to Moscow, to take part in the first major crisis for the British CP: the sacking of Inkpin and MacManus to replaced by Pollitt and Dutt.

So it went on for six years. Of course I knew the SPGB—hadn't I encountered those over-logical pests at many a meeting? At the Communists' 5th Congress there was an almost unique specimen—an SPGB-er who had joined the Communist Party, Frank Vickers from Tooting. I recall many times when members of the SPGB debunked my oratory: at Wood Green Corner, Tottenham, a little bloke murmured in my left ear "If they won't vote for it, they won't fight for it!"

A disturbing thought—but I was too busy predicting the imminent collapse of capitalism. In Moscow we were privileged members of the famous Dynamo sports club, with the best instructors and equipment: we were the golden boys, the Youth of the Revolution, destined to take over the world. Among them were Jacques Doriot, to become founder of the French Blackshirts; Liebknecht's son; and Naygen Ali Ivak, later known as Ho Chi Minh. In naval uniforms we lined up outside the Comintern building and marched back to the Lux Hotel singing "We are the Young Guard of the Proletariat".

Yet the writing was on the Kremlin's wall. 1925: struggle between Stalin and Trotsky. 1926: Trotsky's expulsion. 1928, and I resolved to return to England and refuse to accept any more paid employment in the CP. I did—I remember Eddie Fitzgerald, the translator of Mehring's "Life of Marx" saying to me "You must be mad! What job will a Communist agitator get in England?" I found a job as a foreign language telephonist (to be demoted by the Post Office when they found out).

There were the Great Depression and the National Government. Mosley's Blackshirts: Pollitt issued his call to break up opponents' meetings, and the CP formed the Workers' Defence Force, drilling with broomsticks in Epping Forest. I declared it ridiculous, and by 1934 was in active opposition to the Central Committee. I was summoned to a disciplinary court of the CP, to which the officials never turned up.

During this time I was still editor of the English-language edition of the CI's official monthly, the Communist International. When the Spanish Civil War started, Harry Pollitt asked me to go and see him: Would I proceed to Spain immediately as interpreter to the British battalion of the International Brigade? It dawned on me that all those in opposition to the CP's Central Committee were being cleared off to Spain, like my bosom pal Wally Tapsell who was shot in Galicia. It was to be a political execution. This was the end. To hell with you!

I obtained employment with the Workers' Travel Association as a courier, spending most of my time until the war in 1939 in Switzerland, Italy and France. Then, one balmy evening, I strolled in Hyde Park with a girl friend. We listened to Groves, Turner and Rubin on the SPGB platform destroying all the pretensions of the CP. This was it! I joined the Party the following week, and soon after that took the platform myself for the first time, One result of my advent was the discomfiture of the Communists who used to bawl at Party speakers: "Have you been in Russia?"

"Have I been in Russia?" I used to answer. "Listen, mate, I grew up there!"

Horatio

The Call of the Patriot. (1914)

From the November 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fellow Workers — During the last three months there has been staring at you from every hoarding, from trams, 'buses, and stations, from vans, warehouse walls, and notice boards on churches, from the pages of the newspapers and every other available space, the statement that: "YOUR KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU."

This statement, showing, if you will but think, how important and vitally necessary you are to the ruling class, has been re-iterated again and again, with innumerable variations, from countless pulpits and platforms up and down the country. Urgent appeals by the hundred thousand have been made to all " fit" men to enlist; every device and every weapon that the "liberty-loving" masters could invent, from the call of a sham patriotism to the wholesale backing of employers; from lying to bribery; from silent coercion to the insults of the white feather brigade, and from this to the deliberate suppression of hostile opinion, have been used either to entice or drive you into the ranks. For you, fellow workers, are today, as you always are, indispensable to the bosses, both for the production of profits in the "piping times of peace" (!) and for cannon fodder and the slaughter of the "enemy" in times of war.

Without you the masters are helpless; without you the State collapses and the rulers of the one country cannot hope to win in their struggle against the rulers of another country; and knowing this, and recognising YOUR supreme importance, the bosses have been moving heaven and earth, spending money like water, lying like Christians, combining cajolery with economic pressure, and ringing the changes on every form of cant, from "stirring" appeals to your manhood to virulent denunciation of your indifference or backwardness, in order to make YOU go and fight battles from which you will receive the usual rewards of empty honour, broken health, wounded bodies, or the eternal silence of the grave.

The reasons advanced why you and the working men of Europe should fight each other have been many, and we could fill a column with the contradictions of the politicians, the black coats, and the "intellectuals" on this matter. Any excuse has been good enough as long as it has had the effect of making you and the German working men defend your respective masters. From the violation of treaties by Germany to deliberate provocation on the part of England; from Russian court intrigue to the capture of international trade; from the rottenness of secret diplomacy to the enthronement of Atheism; from the policy of "blood and iron" to the jealousy and hatred of the Allies: each and every excuse in its turn, according to whether the apologist was pro-British or pro-German, has been offered as justification for the infamy now going on, and as a reason why you should take part in it.

In England it is declared to be a war for "liberty, righteousness, democracy," and other bunkumalthough the bosses occasionally give the game away by stating, as the "Sunday Chronicle" of August 30th, that "the men in the trenches are fighting on behalf of the manufacturer, the millowner, and the shopkeeper." In Germany it is declared to be a conflict in which the ruling class of England, Russia, and Japan have combined to reduce her to the level of a fifth-rate power, and to render her politically, militarily, and above all economically, impotent for ever. And each aide, using every possible device, has dragged you and your fellow-workers abroad into the arena.

You had neither lot, voice, nor counsel in the events leading to the conflict; YOUR place while it lasts is that of automata, conscious only to obey blindly and, if need be, to suffer; and your lot after it is over will be the usual lot of your class, the lot of the poor, the down-trodden and the oppressed everywhere.

Of the forces now engaged not more than five per cent come from the ranks of the well-to do; YOU furnish the remaining ninety-five per cent. YOU have to bear the infinitely greater proportion of the deaths, the disease, the permanent injury and the awful strain, while those who goad you on with sweet words or threats, rest securely and comfortably in their easy chairs in club or office, killing the enemy every day with their mouths, but taking particular care, in the vast majority of instances, never to risk their precious carcases within a hundred miles of the actual conflict.

We Socialists would therefore ask you to put on your considering caps and think for yourselves, instead of allowing the capitalist Press, Tory, Liberal, and sham Labour, to think for you.

When the war is over, and you are tramping the country, as you will be in many cases; when you and those near and dear to you hunger and thirst; when you feel the whip of semi-starvation and the gaunt spectre of want is your daily companion, will your "King and Country" need you then? Does not your daily experience teach you that you have no country, that you are landless and propertyless? Does it not show you that here, as in Germany, the land and its fatness belong to the masters, your portion being a mean tenement in a mean street, with the bare means of existence, and then only if you are lucky enough to get work?

When the bosses ask you to fightto offer your lives for "democracy and liberty against militarism"; when they pose as the defenders of oppressed people, and express themselves deeply concerned to uphold justice, humanity, and right, ask them why it is that they have so long practised in Englandpractise to this day the tyranny and oppression they now denounce abroad.

The present British Government, the "champions of liberty," through their then Home Secretary, Churchill, prepared, previous to the railway workers going on strike, and turned out at the request of the railway magnates, no less than 58,000 troops, crushing by militarism the attempt of those workers to slightly improve their admittedly rotten conditions of existence.

This Government, "the apostle of humanity," during the last London Dock strikewhen the men merely asked that agreements previously entered into by the Government itself should be honouredplaced at the disposal of the capitalist Devonport and the gang around him, an unlimited supply of police and military, and deliberately starved the women and children, in some cases to death, in order to break the resistance of the men.

This Government, the "defender of freedom, the upholder of justice, and right," endorsed martial law, the denial of all liberty and the firing on defenceless crowds in S. Africa; it batoned 700 men in Dublin, turned out the military against YOU at Belfast, Llanelly, Leith, the Rhondda valley and elsewhere; it has callously refused to give underfed children sufficient food; it mocks with pretty words, but cynical, brutal inaction, the condition of the ever-growing army of unemployed; it has sanctioned wholesale imprisonment, exile and butchery, in India, Persia, Egypt, and the New Hebrides, and allied itself with the infamies perpetrated in Russia and Japan: in a word, it reeks with lying pretence and self-satisfied Pharisaism, for in very truth, it is the ever-willing tool of autocracy. Capitalism, and class rule and the deadly enemy of the working class everywhere.

Ask this or any capitalistic Government for their credentials, examine their records, and you will learn that, beyond all dispute, whether it be England or Russia, France or Belgium, Germany or Japan, there is, so far

as YOU are concerned, no difference between them whatever. They are all made in the same mould, filled with the same lust the lust of exploiting YOU. When it suits them they flatter you; but when you ask them for a little of the justice they now prate about, then they insult, imprison and often murder you. To-day they want you badly, for they are at war with each other and want YOU to do THEIR dirty work; but remember that whoever wins or loses, your lot will be the same; the politician will still soft-soap you ; the industrial machine will still grind you, and poverty and all that it means will still enchain you.

If, therefore, you are wise, if you are men, if you are really anxious for freedom from slavery, then look around you here, and you will soon learn the truth, that it is your class which is denied this freedom, and denied it by the very class who now call upon you to act. One law for the rich and one for the poor. Adulation, servility and the world's wealth for the rich; grinding toil, insecurity and eternal hardship for the poorthese are the commonplace of every day life. Is it not so?

Your duty, then, is to fight against this, and the only way you can fight successfully is by understanding your position in society, realising that wars and hate, malice and theft, oppression and greed, class rule and the travail of the workers the world over, are to-day born of capitalism. This it the root evil; it is this you have to war against if you would be free, for all else is futile; and when you do this, BUT NOT BEFORE, then liberty will be with you as your possession; there will be no oppressed peoples, for the might of the working class, organised consciously for the overthrow of the modern octopus, will have conquered, and the international commonwealth will be here.

Frank Vickers