Pillars of the State, (1931)

From the December 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

or

We all go the same way home.

During the great fight to secure seats in the House of Commons, the superficial observer might have been misled into thinking that a tremendous gulf separated the rival factions. Upon closer examination the differences are seen to be of quite minor proportions and mainly concerning details, but there exists a curious unanimity of purpose. Whilst the National crowd claim to have a monopoly of patriotism and national interests, and predicted dire results in the event of a Labour Government being returned, this was hotly disputed by the Labour Party, who themselves claim to be just as patriotic and considerate of National Interests as their opponents.

The victory rested with those who had the most megaphones, and made the strongest appeal to working-class political inexperience.

The Church (of course) was on the side of Sanity, and the Bishop of London (a follower of the Prince of Peace, who urged the workers to shed their blood in the masters’ interests in the shambles of 1914 to 1918) again did his little bit for his masters when addressing his Diocesan Conference, predicting as a “solemn truth” that “If the verdict of the country goes wrong the pound will fall to five shilling’s in twenty-four hours, one shilling within a week, and one penny in a month.” Note the dogmatic exactness with which he prophesies the decline.

Cardinal Bourne, whilst differing from the Bishop of London on questions of Theology is on the same side when it comes to a question of serving the masters’ interests. Speaking at a meeting at the Victoria Palace, London, he said,

“It was the duty of Catholics to promote national peace, and most of them rejoiced that for the time being there was a weakening in the country of that rigid adherence to party which had been the cause of so many evils in the past. It was part of their duty to exorcise all that was evil in party spirit, and make its service as much as possible for the good of the nation. They had also to work for social peace. Nothing in the nature of class war might be fostered or encouraged by Catholics.” (“Eccles Journal,” October 30th.)

Dear, dear ! Whether they were really perturbed at the possibility of the return of a Labour Government we don’t know; but they needn’t have been alarmed.

Let us call the spokesmen of the Labour Party to give evidence against themselves. In an interview with the “Manchester Evening Chronicle” (Oct. 28-31), Mr. Clynes said,

“My conviction is that the Labour Party has stood as the most effective bulwark between revolution and a deep underlying discontent with economic and industrial conditions. The destruction for the time being of the Parliamentary Labour Party may well release forces for dissatisfaction which may assume the most ugly forms in the absence of the political power which the Labour Party welded.”

While Mr. Henderson in the “Daily Herald” (Oct. 29-31) referred to “Labour as the only bulwark against reaction and revolution.”

These are not merely individual views but are representative of the official party attitude as is shown by the “Daily Herald” leader (Oct. 30th),

“The Labour Party in Opposition, as in office, will do its duty to the Nation. The Government’s proposals will be carefully considered and judged purely and simply on their merits. Where they are considered to be wise, just, and designed for the advantage of the Nation they will be cordially approved, and every aid will be given in carrying them out.”

The term “National Interests” is generally construed as meaning the interests of the whole of the people. Let us see. In society as at present constituted there is a class which owns the means of wealth production and distribution, and draw their incomes simply because of this ownership.

On the other hand there is another class which constitutes the majority, who, because of the fact that they do not own the means of wealth production are compelled to work for those who do, on terms dictated by the owners. Between these two classes there is a diametrical opposition of interests, so that there can exist no national interests in the generally understood sense. National interests, upon examination, are found to be ruling class interests, and all parties standing for national interests are obviously supporters of the existing order no matter what labels they impudently give themselves. To quote the “Daily Herald” again (Nov. 3rd), while claiming that their object is Socialism, they define it as “a common-sense plan for the rationalisation of the system in which we live.”

The Socialist Party of Great Britain represents the interests of the working class, as opposed to the interests of the capitalist class, and does not pander to popular prejudice in order to secure seats in Parliament, or to get a following. Its constant aim is to get the workers to realise the necessity of a revolutionary change in the basis of Society and ending the present “system in which we live.”

The Labour Party is lined up along with the Liberals and Tories in defence of capitalism, and is an obstruction in the path of the workers in their struggle for emancipation ; an obstruction to be kicked out of the way. The I.L.P. members in a belated attempt to justify their title have decided not to sit with the Labour members on the grounds that: “Our experience with the Labour Party and the Labour Movement in recent years, has been such that we cannot possibly put our political actions under their control until we have some evidence that there is a general return to Socialist principles.” (“Daily Herald,” Nov. 4th). It would be interesting to know what were the Socialist principles once held by the Labour Party, and at what date Maxton’s peculiar crowd think they deserted them.

The I.L.P.s claim to be Socialist is just as impertinent as that of the Labour Party, and its principal achievement is that it gave to the Labour Party, Ramsay MacDonald and Philip Snowden.

Out of the election results, one thing is made evident. If, in the event of another war, the workers are stampeded into support of it, the Labour leaders will again do their bit for their masters as recruiting sergeants.

Fellow-workers, why dally longer with these cheap-jack vendors of political shoddy; with reforms that do not reform ; with palliatives that do not palliate? Why support parties that are bulwarks of the present system when that system can only exist by keeping you in a subject position? Why follow leaders who are hoping to receive decorations from the enemy for services rendered—to the enemy?

The three “traitors” are no more and no less subservient to capitalism than the present leader has in the past proved himself to be. Organise along with us in the Socialist Party for the purpose of establishing Socialism, and leave these leaders without a following, when they can no longer be a danger to you nor useful to the capitalist class.

J. L.

General Election, 1931. (1931)

From the November 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

[The announcement that the General Election was to be held came too late for us to publish a statement of our views in the October issue. For the information of new readers and for purposes of record we reproduce below the leaflet which we distributed during the election.]

You are baffled and confused. You are asked to vote, but you do not know what to do. You have voted before and have waited in vain for results. You had faith in your leaders, and you believed them when they told you that you were on the eve of better days. You have been deceived, not once but many times. Government after government has come and gone, but they have failed to improve our conditions. Again and again you have been assured that the remedies were being applied, but all to no purpose. Your pressing problems are still unsolved. When you are in work your health and vitality are sapped by overstrain, the happiness of your dependants is marred by poverty. Your peace of mind is fretted away by the fear that you will be the next to lose your job. You had faith in the integrity of Baldwin, the ability of Lloyd George, or the loyalty of MacDonald. But experience has taught you that none of them can give you what you seek. In the days before the War the Liberals failed utterly to keep their promise to abolish want from this land of plenty. You have had years of suffering under Tory governments. But you reaped your most bitter disillusionment when the Labour Government, instead of easing, aggravated your distress. You then realised that the Labour leaders and the Labour Party are no better than their predecessors. Now you are getting mistrustful of parties and politicians. In your disappointment you ask whether there is any road left that is worth travelling.

The Problem Stated.

There is no lack of statesmen, journalists, and business men telling you the cause of your troubles. But their explanations do not ring true. They tell you things that in your own knowledge and observation you recognise to be false. You have lived under Free Trade and you know that it does not mean “peace and plenty.” You or your parents can recall the pitiable poverty of the years before the War. You can assert, therefore, that the workers’ troubles did not begin with the War and the War debt. You have read of the huge armies of unemployed in the tariff countries such as Germany and the United States. You have been told that industrial efficiency and rationalisation are the cure for unemployment and low wages ; but your own experience teaches you that “labour-saving” machinery does not give you ease and prosperity. Again, during recent weeks, you have been asked to believe that “going off the gold standard” will bring you relief. But when you recall the wage-reductions, the trade disputes, and the heavy unemployment of the years between the Armistice and 1925—years when, we are told, we were “off the gold standard”—you will see through that deception. You must go more deeply into the question if you wish to understand what is wrong. There is something rotten at the root of things. It is that the greater number of us have no “stake in the land of our birth.” In this country that we call ours, the fields, the factories and work shops in which we toil, the railways and steamships, even the places of amusement and recreation, are not ours at all. They do not belong to the workers who constructed them and work them. Nor do they belong to society as a whole. They are—stop and consider the importance of this—they are private property under the private control of a small class of people. Because of that our lives are not our own. We produce wealth for others. We produce it in abundance so that the world groans under the burden of what is called overproduction. But all that we get out of industry is a wage just sufficient to provide a working-class family with the cheapest food, cramped quarters, and the least attractive clothes. After paying all the expenses of production, the goods left in the hands of the propertied class are in quantities so vast that they can not all be disposed of at a profit. The workers have not the money to buy more than a modest amount, and the rich, living in luxury, yet spend only part of their enormous incomes. The result is stagnant trade, closed factories, idle shipping, abandoned mines, neglected farms, and everywhere strife and instability. For millions the consequence is semi-starvation and unemployment.

There is only one remedy for this chaotic and avoidable state of affairs. The means by which we all live must belong to society as a whole; to be used and controlled democratically for the common good. Production for use, not for the profit of a propertied class.

The Labour Party is not a Socialist Party.

One popular error must be corrected at this point. Nationalisation, or State-controlled capitalism is not Socialism. The Labour Party is not a Socialist Party. Whether in this country or abroad Labour Governments have always and everywhere failed to justify themselves. In the 1929 General Election the Labour Party roused your hopes with promises of better times. In office they did not redeem their promise. On the contrary they brought ridicule upon themselves and destroyed the enthusiasm of their supporters. Propped up on Liberal votes in the House of Commons, for two years they staggered from one political crisis to another. Reluctant to give up office they prolonged the miserable life of their Ministry by secret bargaining with the Liberal Party. Instead of using Parliament as an arena in which to wage a fight for the workers, they earned by their spineless conduct the contemptuous sneer of Winston Churchill that there was “no fight” in progress, “only a lot of politicians leaning up against each other.”

In the present election the Labour Party have the support of the notorious anti-socialist, Mr. Lloyd George ; again showing that they do not intend any fundamental social change. Mr. Henderson had a private meeting with the Liberal leader on Saturday, October 10th (“Reynolds’s,” October 11th), and the Carnarvon Boroughs Labour Party has decided not to oppose his candidature.

The “Daily Herald” (October 10th) says :—

“Mr. Lloyd George’s manifesto gives a lead to Liberals to vote Labour.”

The Labour Government failed to stop wage reductions in the textile mills, on the railways and farms, and in the co-operative stores. They reduced still further the miserable pittance of their own lower-grade post office and other employees. While they were in control unemployment rose to a record figure. Finally, when there developed one of the periodic crises which are the inevitable outcome of our present social system, they rushed into the economy campaign which the National Government has carried on. Except for the 10 per cent. reduction in unemployment pay, against which a minority of the Labour Cabinet made a belated stand, the whole of the National Government’s economy programme had been agreed to “provisionally” by the Labour Government. In 1929 they promised the workers improved social services; in 1931 they were demanding “sacrifices.”

That ignominious collapse was not merely the failure of individuals. It was the Labour Party and its programme which had been tried and found wanting. They claimed to make capitalism run smoothly and in the interests of the workers; but capitalism can not be made to run smoothly. Socialist policy is the direct opposite. The Socialist Party of Great Britain stands for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. Not to patch or prop up capitalism, but to abolish it.

The National Parties—Defenders of Capitalism.

The parties led by Mr. MacDonald stand frankly as defenders of capitalism. They say that they represent the forces of order and stability, and Mr. Snowden has inferred that all those who oppose the National Government are parties of destruction and disorder. That is not true of the Socialist Party. Just as the capitalist parties claim to stand for capitalism, conducted as well as they know how, so the Socialist Party stands for a speedy but ordered change-over to a new system on the basis of common ownership. Mr. MacDonald is asking for a free hand for any measures, including tariffs, that the National Government may decide are necessary. But there are no measures that can solve the problem of the workers except measures to establish Socialism. Do you suppose that the politicians and parties which separately have let you down will serve you better in combination?

The Road to Socialism.

There can be no Socialism until a majority of the electors have been won over. The workers form the great majority of the population. Organised in the Socialist Party they have but to use their votes in order to place themselves in control of the machinery of government and of the armed forces by which society is dominated. The urgent task of to-day is to spread knowledge of Socialist principles so that the workers may fit themselves for the winning of power and for Socialism. There is no other way. The Labour Party has preached the policy of pleading for social reforms as steps towards Socialism. But recent events have shown that that road leads only to failure and despair.

To achieve Socialism, elections must be fought, not on a programme of reforms to catch non-socialist votes, as is the practice of the Labour Party, the I.L.P., and Communists, but on the simple, straightforward issue of Socialism versus Capitalism. Beware, then, of those, like Mr. Maxton, who condemn the Labour Party and its programme of reforms of capitalism, but who for years have told you to put your faith in the Labour Party candidates. They told you to trust MacDonald. Now they advise you to trust Mr. Henderson, one of the men who betrayed the workers’ interests in the Great War. They are asking you to enter on a further period of wasted effort and lost time, leading surely to yet another betrayal.

Dangerous advice is given by the Communists. They contest elections but tell you that Parliament is futile. They preach disorder and advocate, armed revolt, thus playing into the hands of the most reactionary section of the ruling class. For their own ends they exploit the miseries of the unemployed. Yet eight years ago they were compelled to admit the ineffectiveness of their mass demonstrations. The “Workers’ Weekly,” the official organ of the Communist Party, wrote as follows in 1923 :—

“The unemployed have done all they can, and the Government know it. They have tramped through the rain in endless processions. They have gone in mass deputations to the Guardians. They have attended innumerable meetings and have been told to be ‘solid.’ They have marched to London, enduring terrific hardships . . .

“All this has led nowhere.“

—”Workers’ Weekly,” February 10th, 1923. (Italics ours.)

Remember that it is only a few years since the Communists, too, were telling you to vote for MacDonald !

What to do with your vote.

If you support one or other of the parties of capitalism, including those parties of reform, the Labour Party, the I.L.P., and the Communists, you will help to prolong your troubles. If you are convinced of the truth of the Socialist case you will not vote for any of these parties. You will realise that the SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN is the only party in this country that works on sound lines for the emancipation of the workers. Consistently since its formation in 1904, the Socialist Party has maintained the straight fight for Socialism, at all times giving our present warning that the parties of reform block the road to Socialism.

Unfortunately there are not yet a sufficient number of the working class who desire Socialism, to make it possible for us to run candidates in this election. We call, therefore, upon all those who want Socialism to express their determination by going to the poll and writing “Socialism” across the voting paper. Among other things this will help to advertise the number of those who have made the final decision to have done with capitalism and its defenders. The use of the vote to support any of the candidates in the present election is a vote for capitalism.

Study Socialism. Become Socialists. Resolve that you will help to make the Socialist Party strong enough to run candidates at the next election.

The Executive Committee,

The Socialist Party of Great Britain,

42 Great Dover Street, London, S.E.1.

October, 1931.

Editorial: Sound and Fury. The Election and the Workers. (1931)

Editorial from the November 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

The general election has come and gone, and nothing fundamental has been changed. The workers were asked to give a mandate for the continuance of the social system that enslaves them, and in their blindness they have done so.

The National Government supporters just prior to the election numbered 327. They return to office with about 560 supporters, of whom 170 are Conservatives; 70 are Liberals; and 13 are members of the MacDonald Labour Group. The opposition consists of 52 Labour and I.L.P. M.P.s and four Lloyd George Liberals. The total is made up by a few Independents and Irish Nationalists. The Labour Party is now reduced in size approximately to the number elected in 1918.

At the last election, in 1929, the Conservatives polled 8,656,173 votes and won 260 seats. This time they have polled 12,000,000 votes. The Labour vote in 1929 was 8,389,512, and they won 289 seats, many of them on minority votes. The Liberals, in 1929 won only 58 seats, although their vote was 5,308,510. This time the Labour vote has fallen to about 6,650,000, while their seats have dropped far more. They are now less numerous than the Liberals, although the Liberal vote on this occasion is less than 2,500,000. The MacDonald Labour M.P.s polled only 338,000. In the 1929 Parliament there were over 200 Labour M.P.s who, although elected as Labour candidates, were also members of the I.L.P. There were no Communists in the last Parliament, nor are there any in the new one. The Mosley candidates all failed.

Since 1929 the electorate has grown from 28,850,000 to 30,159,000. The number of electors who did not vote for any candidate increased considerably. So much for the figures.

What were they fighting for?

Many observers, both at home and abroad, some of whom ought to have known better, accepted the rash claim, made for electioneering purposes, that the election was a clear-cut struggle between Capitalism and Socialism. This is a grotesque misreading of the situation. On the one side the Government parties under MacDonald were asking for “a free hand, nothing ruled out,” although most of their candidates construed “nothing ruled out” as meaning “tariffs ruled in” ; in spite of the fact that by far their most formidable standard bearer in the fight was Mr. Snowden, who is a staunch free-trader.

On the other side were the Labour Party and the group of free-trade Liberals under Mr. Lloyd George. The Labour programme gave prominence to free-trade, to the restoration of the cuts in wages and unemployment pay, and to the nationalisation of the banks. Mr. Lloyd George told his followers that the last of the three chief Labour aims need not be taken seriously, and that Liberals ought to vote for the free-trade Labour candidates. Mr. Snowden, until recently an advocate of bank nationalisation, now opposed it. He also pointed out that the Labour leaders’ enthusiasm for free trade was as suspect as their repudiation of the cuts they had approved when in office. In a letter to the Press (see “Daily Telegraph,” 22nd October) he made the following illuminating and unanswered statement about his late colleagues in the Labour Government :

“Mr. Graham put the case for the tariff. He told us a tax of 10 per cent. on imported manufactured and semi-manufactured goods would raise £25,000,000 a year, and a tax on all imports £60,000,000 a year.

We took two votes. The first was whether we should adopt the proposal of a 10 per cent. tax on manufactured and semi-manufactured imports. Fifteen members, including Mr. Graham, voted for that, and five against. Then the question of a duty on all imports was put, including food and raw materials. Mr. Graham and four others voted for that, and fifteen against.

It was only after these votes, when it was seen that we could not get unanimity, that the proposal was dropped, because, as Mr. Henderson put it, if it had been persisted with it would have broken up the Cabinet.”

This discussion in the Labour Cabinet took place towards the end of August, and was reported in the “Daily Herald” at the time. On August 20th the Herald had a bold headline across the front page—”Tariffs in the balance.” The report goes on to say that in the Cabinet :

“There was a tense debate on the proposal for a revenue tariff on imports.”

The day before the “Herald” had said :

“the proposal for a revenue tariff will receive support from ministers who have hitherto been rigid free-traders.”

On August 22nd the “Herald” brought the Trades Union Congress into the picture :

“There is keen division in the T.U.C. on the subject of a tariff for revenue purposes, but the majority would be in favour of such a proposal as an alternative to any cuts in unemployment benefit.”

But, it may be asked, if the Labour Party leaders were prepared, even reluctantly, to support the economies and a revenue tariff, why did they oppose the National Government, most of whose members also wanted those things? The answer is, of course, that the party leaders on both sides were doling what they and their predecessors have always done; they were fighting for office. Faced with the National Coalition, the Labour Party grabbed for the Liberal free-trade vote. Mr. Henderson (a few days later than Mr. MacDonald) journeyed to see the Liberal leader, Mr. Lloyd George, on his sick bed. They had a “cordial” but secret talk. The local Labour Parties withdrew their candidates who were opposing Lloyd George and his son and daughter. He, in his broadcast, and in an interview given to the “Daily Herald,” and the “Manchester Guardian,” and other Liberal papers in their editorials, gave a plain lead to the Liberal voters to vote Labour. During the week before polling day the “Herald” printed column after column of reports of Liberal speakers, Liberal money, and Liberal Party machinery being placed at the disposal of the Labour candidates. All the past bitter condemnation of Lloyd George and his party was forgotten in the twinkling of an eye when the chance of office and the security of seats were at stake. Forgotten was the admission, so frequent in recent years from Labour leaders, that the issue of free-trade versus protection was of no importance to the workers. No longer was Lloyd George the “coiner of purple phrases and breaker of promises,” as the Herald had so happily described him in their special “Lloyd George Number” of December 1st, 1923. No longer was he to be shunned as the man who always wreaks “incredible destruction,” the “shoddy salesman” of politics, the “two-faced” politician who “tricked the miners with Sankey Commissions, Duckham Reports, and so on, until the coal-owners had all ready for their bitter attack on the Federation.” Then “A vote for Lloyd George is a vote for the enemies of the workers and the foes of democracy”; now Lloyd George Liberals and Labourites were all together, fighting the battle of “progress” !

These are the depths to which the reformers have dragged the name Socialism. On the one side MacDonald with his, “I am still a Socialist,” leading the Tory army in their fight for tariffs, and on the other side Henderson and Labour Party, attaching the word socialism to their programme of reforms behind which Lloyd George could muster his free-trade capitalist “enemies of the workers.”

The utter shamelessness of the Labour leaders can be seen from their plea that they were fighting to defend the workers against the high prices which would follow tariffs. In all the years up to 1929 they had proclaimed themselves the party of low prices. Suddenly, when they came into office in that year they discovered that prices were falling heavily, the thing they had promised to bring about. Promptly they swallowed their low-price theory, and told their disappointed followers that falling prices were the cause of all the trouble. The “Daily Herald,” now so strong for cheapness, then carried on for months a campaign for inflation and higher prices. The following is from the “Herald” editorial on July 14th, 1931 :—

“It is urgent—imperatively urgent—that without delay the necessary steps be taken so to regulate currency and credit as first to raise and then stabilise prices…..Inflation—and it is folly to be frightened by a word—is the only possible remedy.”

Three months later, when it was “imperatively urgent” to catch the Liberal free-trade vote, they were back on their old platform of low prices.

The I.L.P. and the Communists.

In this election, for the first time, the I.L.P. ran its own candidates without the endorsement of the Labour Party, the endorsement being withheld because the I.L.P. would not undertake always to vote with the Labour Party. In two of the nineteen constituencies which the I.L.P. fought (Peckham and Shettleston) there was also an official Labour Party candidate, while in Stockport (a double member constituency) where the Labour man has hitherto run in double harness with a Liberal, the Labour Party refused to back the I.L.P. interloper who threatened to spoil the arrangement with the Liberals.

The result is interesting. In 1929 the total Labour vote in these nineteen constituencies was 332,413, and they won thirteen seats. This time the I.L.P. polled 260,344 and gained only three seats. They held Shettleston against the official Labour man, and in Peckham their candidate received many times the vote of his official Labour opponent. In Peckham, the official Labour man and the MacDonald Labour man both forfeited their deposits.

The I.L.P. parliamentary group is now, therefore, reduced to three members, and their chairman is outside the House.

Just before the election, their chairman, Mr. Fenner Brockway, writing in the “New Leader” (2nd October), confessed the uselessness of reforms which have been the I.L.P.’s sole stock-in-trade for nearly forty years :

“The system of capitalism is failing so obviously that the policy of reforms within capitalism must be rejected. We must concentrate on winning power of such nature that we can proceed boldly with the transition to socialism all along the line.”

In spite of which the I.L.P. candidates fought as usual on a programme of reforms. Three years ago Mr. Maxton described the Labour Party programme, “Labour and the Nation,” as a programme of capitalism. The 1931 programme, was, he said, “even more reactionary” (“Evening Standard,” 1st October). Yet the I.L.P. allowed a large number of its members to fight as official Labour Party candidates, and endorsed Mr. J. Beckett, as I.L.P. candidate at Peckham after he had declared his “whole-hearted support” of the Labour election programme (South London Press, 9th October). The I.L.P., although much reduced in size, has not altered in its quality. It is still the same body of vote-catching reformists, maintaining a precarious existence on the backs of the trade unions and the Labour Party.

The Communists ran 25 candidates, the same number as in 1920. In 1929 they obtained their aggregate vote of 50,617. This time, on a somewhat larger electorate, their aggregate vote was 70,844. In the ten constituencies which they fought on both occasions their vote was, in 1929, 39,283, and in 1931 48,612. They did best where they were fighting only one candidate, a Labour Party candidate.

They, too, fought on a reform programme of about twenty “demands” (“Daily Worker,” 14th October). In practise their policy is always determined by the actions of the other reformist parties. They run yapping at the heels of the Labour Party, and where the Labour Party goes they go, too. As the Labour Party, at the eleventh hour decided to be a free-trade party, the Communists had to follow suit. So one of their “demands” was “No taxes or tariffs which raise the price of food and clothing for the workers.” On Sunday, October 11th, a Communist Party demonstration in Hyde Park marched behind a banner with the “revolutionary” slogan, “No Taxes on the People’s Food.”

In this general election for the first time the official communist advice to the voters did not, so far as our knowledge goes, include a recommendation to vote for all or even some of the Labour Party candidates.

The Future.

The election changes nothing except the persons who shall occupy office, and some questions of capitalist trade and finance, of interest to sections of the capitalists in their mutual antagonisms. Capitalism is now sunk in one of its periodic crises of overproduction. In due course it will stagger back to “normal,” before falling again into yet other crises. This process will continue until the workers understand socialism and organise in the Socialist Party to achieve it. The votes for the Tory-Labour-Liberal Party under MacDonald, and for the Labour-Liberal Party under Henderson and Lloyd George, are votes for capitalism and reforms of one kind and another. They are not votes for socialism. This is proved by the alternating fortunes of the parties at succeeding elections. We are not prophets, but one thing seems certain—that the Labour Party will never obtain, and do not really want, an independent majority. They may, perhaps, again reach office, but only with Liberal support in the House and in the constituencies. The Leaders understand this, hence the efforts they made at the Labour Party Conference in October to secure the rejectIon of a resolution which, if it had been passed, would have committed them never to accept office as a minority. What we have long pointed out is now becoming clear for all to see. It is impossible to unite the workers on reform programmes. Each reform antagonises as many workers as it attracts. Reform programmes, as we can see before our eyes, split the workers into half a dozen warring sections. Another illusion has also been dispelled. We were told that after voting Labour workers would then vote for Socialism ; instead of which, as we foretold, they have returned to Conservatism. Only the simple demand for socialism will eventually hold the workers.

Those who have patiently waited, bearing all disappointments, but trusting in the Labour Party until such time as it had an independent majority will do well to ponder the prospect of a “Labour” Party tied permanently to Liberal votes, and limited to a programme approved by Mr. Lloyd George and his capitalist free-trade backers.

Our readers and the next General Election (1931)

Party News from the February 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are not prophesying an early General Election, but we want to be prepared for it whenever it may come. Will readers who would be willing to take S.P.G.B. election leaflets for free distribution at public meetings, Trade Union branches, among their friends, etc., let us have now their name and address, and an indication of the number of leaflets they think they could usefully dispose of? It is of importance that the Socialist Party’s case should be made as widely known as possible, in particular our opposition to the Labour Party and its affiliated parties. Your assistance will be of great value.

Write to the General Secretary at 42, Great Dover Street, London, S.E.l.

A Word To Sympathisers. (1931)

Party News from the November 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

During and immediately before the General Election we distributed free of charge 170,000 copies of two leaflets, one on the fall of the Labour Government, and the other on the election issues. To do so we used up the fund we had earmarked for that purpose and in addition we have incurred a heavy debt. Now we have to replace that money in order to be able to issue further leaflets as occasion arises, particularly bearing in mind that another General Election may not be long delayed. We need money for other purposes. We are out-of-stock of certain pamphlets, and we have in preparation a new pamphlet on the Socialist Party and its principles. If only half of the readers of the Socialist Standard would contribute one shilling a month to our funds we could quickly clear off our debt and would have in hand, before the end of the winter, a substantial part of the money needed for the new pamphlet. We address this appeal especially to non-members because we realise that there are many who sympathise with the Party’s position but are unable, for one reason or another, to join up or take an active part in propaganda. We ask you to remember that the Socialist Party, unlike other political parties, receives no financial support from the trade unions or from wealthy individuals. The burden on our members is, therefore, a heavy one.

Send your donations to the Treasurer, 42, Great Dover Street, London, S.E.1. Acknowledgment will be made by post and in these columns.