Our Election Manifesto and Leaflets (1945)

From the August 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

In our July issue we published our Election Manifesto. The Manifesto, three leaflets and a further statement on behalf of our candidate in North Paddington were all distributed to the voters in the constituency. We publish in this issue the three leaflets “Only Socialism will abolish War,” “Socialism and the Housing Problem,” and “Capitalism cannot cure Unemployment.”

North Paddington Election (1945)

Party News from the August 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Voting Figures were as follows: —

Mason MacFarlane (Labour)              . . .      16,638

Brendan Bracken (Conservative)        . . .      10,093

Groves (S.P.G.B.)                                . . .           472

How They Dealt with the Election Paper Ration (1945)

From the July 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the House of Commons on the 9th May the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply, in answer to a question, said :

“The Government have given instructions that paper …. is to be made available for the General Election at the rate of one ton for each candidate …. the quantity to be increased by one quarter for independent candidates. . . . The headquarters of the established parties will, in addition be allowed paper at the rate of one ton for each candidate run by the party. In the case of the small parties, an additional five tons will be licensed. . . .”—(Official Report, 9th May, 1945).

The party having already decided to run a candidate in Paddington North, an application had been made for additional supplies of paper prior to this date.

On the 22nd May we were informed by the Ministry of Supply that:

“. . . . The allocation for Party Headquarters is restricted to the recognised parties having representatives in the House and the Socialist Party of Great Britain as such is not therefore entitled to any allocation for this purpose. . . .”

In a further letter dated the 29th May, the Ministry of Supply said that if we decided to put up a candidate he would “be entitled to a quota on the basis allowed to Independents. . . .”

It is not the purpose of this article to complain at the treatment meted out to us by the parties of capitalism, who, in possession of governmental power, have always been prepared to use it to suppress wherever possible the views of their opponents. Knowing them, we do not expect them to do otherwise. We do, however, place on record the purposeful ambiguity of the statement in the House of Commons which, when subsequently amplified by the Ministry of Supply, excluded from the ranks of “established” parties an organisation which has been in continuous political existence longer than most of the political parties at present represented in the House of Commons.

The care which the large political parties of capitalism claim to have for democratic institutions becomes a mockery when they use their governmental power to withhold from a minority organisation a large part of the material which they themselves consider to be necessary for the presentation of their own points of view.

Finally we wrote to the Speaker of the House of Commons drawing attention to the facts set out above and received from the Speaker’s secretary, Mr. Ralph Verney, the following negative reply.

“Dear Sir,

The Speaker asks me to acknowledge your letter of the 2nd June.

The Speaker’s responsibility to give opportunity for the expression of the views of a Minority is confined to the House of Commons; he cannot interfere with the decision of a Government Department, such as the Ministry of Supply, as to whether the issue of any particular commodity can be extended.”

Readers of the Socialist Standard will appreciate from the foregoing statement the difficulties under which we labour in making known the Socialist case at this Election.

Executive Committee, S.P.G.B.

Parliamentary Fund (1945)

From the July 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Your Donations Needed

During the election campaign in North Paddington the Socialist case was made known at a very large number of meetings, indoor and outdoor, and through the printing of election addresses, posters and leaflets. This cost money and our Parliamentary Fund is now depleted. North Paddington was our first Parliamentary venture. It is only a beginning. We shall need money for further elections. Send your donations now to E. Lake, S.P.G.B., Rugby Chambers, 2, Rugby Street, London, W.C.I.

Greasy Pole: Good News For The Tories (2002)

The Greasy Pole column from the November 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Here is some good news for the Tories. All is not lost for them. It is true that, as their conference this year abundantly showed, they are at a very low ebb. Nowadays few people take them seriously – and they themselves are having a struggle doing just that. The term shadow ministers is particularly apt for their front bench because in the shadows is where they stay. Their leader, Iain Duncan Smith, shows every sign of growing more desperate by the day; as a climax to their conference he actually made a virtue of being a quiet man – a reputation a politician will usually try hard to avoid. They have rummaged out 25 policies to offer the voters but these are little more than tardy admissions that when they were last in power they were indeed the “nasty party” (as if there are any “nice” ones). An example of a party being nasty was in a letter written in 1996 by Ted Heath’s election agent, which warned him about the benefits we were all enjoying during those years of Tory rule:

“Younger, traditionally Conservative supporters have mostly had a very difficult time over the last 6 or 7 years . . . having had to face, in worse cases, redundancy, negative equity, failing businesses or even bankruptcy.”

A man with much to be quiet about

At this year’s conference we had the nauseating spectacle of David “Two Brains” Willetts, the shadow Work and Pensions Minister, declaring that “. . . the Tory war on lone parents is over”. It would, of course, have been better for those lone parents if he had said this at the time the war was being waged so enthusiastically by his party. One speaker after another rushed to the microphone to confess to past “mistakes” and to promise a brighter, more caring future as if the days had never been, when Tory conferences cheered and stamped their feet at Thatcher defiantly telling them that she -her policies – were “not for turning” and when she insisted, in the face of powerful opposition, that “there is no alternative”.

Then there is the matter of sleaze, which cost the Tories so many votes in 1997 and which they had fervently hoped had died the death. Any ideas they had on that score were brutally suppressed by Edwina Currie spilling the beans about her relationship with John Major. In this scandalous soil were nourished a thousand saloon bar jokes – it was David Mellor all over again but much worse. Smutty humour does not contribute to a political party being taken seriously.

Nineteen Forty Five

It has always been very difficult for the Tories to reconcile themselves to the fact that they are occasionally out of power; they regard such episodes as brief, insane interludes in the natural order of things. There was a time when this was perhaps a more valid attitude because, as in the Thatcher years, they seemed to be there for all time, to be the natural party of power. The difference now is that Labour’s majority has endured, and looks like continuing that way for some time. Voting Conservative is simply not fashionable at present, as if the natural order of things political has undergone a change. It means that Blair’s majority, founded on Labour’s success in making themselves almost indistinguishable from the Tories, must be chipped at because it is unlikely to quickly crumble away.

In some respects there was a parallel to this before 1945. The previous election to that, in November 1935, had produced a House of Commons with 425 Tories and allies against 180 opposition MPs, of which 154 were Labour. Had an election been possible in 1940, the Conservative majority may have been reduced but, on the evidence of past elections, it would have been very unlikely for it to have been overturned for some time. The crucial element in bringing about the change which produced the massive Labour majority in 1945 was, of course, the war. The working class had been promised that if they buckled down to the war effort – worked hard, coped with all the hardship, fear and grief, if they fought and died – they would be rewarded with a better world free of the mistakes of the past. It was seductive stuff, which benefited the Labour Party – and the working class were vulnerable to it, electing the Attlee government by an emphatic margin. Ted Heath, who had to rethink his plans to start a career in politics because of the size of that Labour majority, described the mood in a letter:

“. . . the average man who had been fully employed during the war thought of the unemployment he suffered before the war and decided he would not have the Tories again”.

Even so, for some people the result was a shock. “They have elected a Labour government” wailed a bejewelled woman in an exclusive London club, “ and the people will not stand for it”. The Tory MP Henry Channon – a rich, pampered, useless heir to a fortune who married into the Guinness family thus making himself even richer and enabling him to inherit the safe Tory seat of Southend which had been “represented” by one or other member of the family since 1918 – and which passed on to his son who was equally rich and useless – moaned that he was “. . . too ill and angry to reflect seriously on the disastrous Election results. I am stunned and shocked by the country’s treachery”. Within a fortnight there was some relief for his shock and anger because “the Stock Market has recovered and is actually soaring. Evidently it does not fear the Socialist [sic] Government”. With all this going on it was not entirely surprising that about a month later he came away from a meeting of the 1922 Committee “fearing that the Tory party was definitely dead”.

Pessimism

But that was too pessimistic from the Tory point of view because the party quickly got down to the arduous process of recasting itself in policies and attitudes designed to answer the doubts of Heath’s “average man”. In this they had some political talent to call on – like Heath himself, Enoch Powell, Iain Macleod – whose abilities in the murky world of politics helped them later to become high profile leaders of the party. These people, along with those who had been hardened by their time as ministers in the wartime government, were skilled at touching on the most sensitive nerves of the Attlee government, who were themselves exhausted by the stress of being in that government and then re-building British capitalism after the war. And all that Tory effort bore fruit when, at the next election in 1950, they came within a whisker of success.

In the aftermath of 1945 and later during the late 1960s, the Tories showed great ability in asserting themselves as the supremely natural party of government over British capitalism. So they can take comfort from the memory of that recovery, in the knowledge that although they have been out of power before they have not lost their talent to dupe the working class and can do it again. This opens the all important question of whether it matters. Capitalism is too vast, too powerful, too intrusive, to be affected to any significant degree by which party holds the job of trying to control it. Whoever sits in power over it capitalism continues to impoverish and repress most of its people. There are many symptoms of poverty – none of which ever troubled the likes of Henry Channon. For example the Institute for Public Policy Research recently found that children living in the more deprived neighbourhoods are three times more likely to be knocked down in a road accident than those who live in richer areas. This is not because poorer children don’t understand how to cross the road safely but because they lack access to safe playing areas like good gardens or playgrounds. Their playground is the street, where they socialise without safe adult supervision and sometimes – too often – get knocked down. So poverty – capitalism – is unsafe, it frightens and it injures and it kills. That is what being vulnerable – to use one of the Tories’ favourite buzz words – really means.

Ivan

Caught In The Act: One of us (1990)

The Caught In The Act Column from the September 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of us

One of Parliament's discarded traditions was that the Labour benches should be thickly strewn with men whose roughened hands and accents betrayed their antecedents as coal miners, dockers, steel workers and the like.

Some of these Honourable Members were so uncouth as to make caustic speeches about the archaic rituals, the ambitious toadying and the cross party amity which seemed so necessary to life in the Commons and to wonder how these things could be endured by a party which was supposed to stand for social revolution. Others were so struck by what they saw that they could hardly wait to kit themselves and their wives in the finery needed to participate in revolutionary activities like Buckingham Palace garden parties.

Among these vacillating members were some points of stability — people whose wealth and heritage gave them an immunity against the rampant naivety. These were the MPs who tried to deceive themselves that they were impelled by their consciences onto the side of tho class whose exploitation provided their exalted status, who tried to avert any accusations of patronising their less wealthy Labour colleagues by outdoing them in outrageous left-winging — or rather eccentricity.

One frequent outcome of this was promotion into government rank, which quickly emphasised to them that they were in Parliament to protect the interests of the ruling class and not to sympathise with a sentimental jumble of misconceived substitutes for political principles.

Electioneering

In the first Cabinet of the 1945 Labour government there were five ex-public schoolboys (including two Old Etonians) amongst them Hugh Dalton and Stafford Cripps, whose opinions and work as managers of the finances of British capitalism disqualified them from any claim to be socialists. Both were enthusiastic propagators of the ruling class message to the British workers, that they had to work harder and receive less so that their exploiters could win back their place in the world economy of capitalism.

If at times rich people sat uneasily alongside ex-miners and dockers it was because they were not considered to be One of Us. They winced as they kissed voter's babies (employing a nanny to bring up their own children, they could never be sure they were holding the child the right way up); supping obligatory pints of mild in the constituency working men's club was little short of agony to a sensitive soul longing for the sanctuary of evening sherry among elegant friends who did not speak with those dreadful accents.

That, at least, is one agony that time and political developments have eased, for as Labour has established itself as the alternative government for British capitalism its MPs are more likely to be economists, barristers, doctors or journalists than toilers by hand. The eccentrics are now members like Dennis Skinner, who performs the intellectual juggling act of supporting capitalism by being a member of the Labour Party while having a reputation for making irreverent and penetrating comments on the essential hypocrisy of the system

Tory trade unionists

The Tories have not been free of such problems After their defeat in 1945 party chairman Lord Woolton decided that the way back to power lay in getting out among the people All over the country the Tories took to the streets at outdoor meetings 

Among their London speakers was Bob Bullbrook, a thick-set man (which could also be said of his brain) with a voice like an injured buffalo. Because he was a trade unionist (he liked to introduce himself to his audiences as a gas worker, which was not liable to pacify them) Bullbrook was something of a protected species in the Tory Party so they adopted him as their candidate in some constituency where Labour sat on an Everest-like majority. Of course he failed to scale it and. unlike other Tory hopefuls, he was not rewarded with the candidacy of progressively winnable seats. When the Conservatives came back to power their interest in outdoor propaganda faded and with it Bob Bullbrook. In spite of his energy and misguided commitment Bullbrook was not One of Us.

But one example of the threatened species did survive, at least for a while, Ray Mawby was more or less forced onto the Tories in his constituency Totnes — by the party hierarchy in their eagerness to reassure all trade unionists that their interests were close to the hearts of Conservatives in even the poshest, most secure of parliamentary seats.

Educated at a council school and trained as an electrician, Mawby's dour and unappealing personality grated on the Old Etonians and ex-officers who sat alongside him. He lacked what are politely called the social graces, speaking like an electrician who has just had a nasty shock from a wrongly wired up plug and probably shovelling his peas in with his knife. His fellow Tory MPs. on the assumption that so charmless a bounder must be Labour, would sometimes ask him to pair with them (what Mawby replied was not recorded and in any case was probably not suitable for a publication intended for family reading) This treatment did not reduce his ardour for capitalism nor for corporal and capital punishment for those who offended against the system's law and order

After holding a couple of minor jobs under the Postmaster General (which hardly helped to sustain the propaganda about the welcome awaiting trade unionists in the Tory Party) Mawby was contemptuously and relievedly deselected by the Totnes Tories and, no doubt to the satisfaction of a lot of trade unionists, he was then forced to sign on the dole. It was as much as he could expect he was. after all. not One of Us.

Madness

A lot of energy is expanded in analysing the collusive aspects of capitalist politics and the effect this has on the way the system is organised and governed. Bitter, rejected people like Mawby are prone to develop ideas about how much moro efficient — more repressive, predictable, exploiting — capitalism would be were it not for irrelevant prejudices that power should be wielded by those who went to the 'right' school and university or who wore in a ’good' regiment — or active in an ideologically right trade union. That neat, simple theory has led the outraged sensibilities of many a political reject. The snag is that it does not match with reality.

Whoever has been in charge of capitalism, and whatever their origins, the effects on the system and on the working class whose exploitation nurtures the entire set-up, has been unnoticeable. At one time it may be a languid. superior Trollope-addict like Macmillan: at another a professed meritocrat like Wilson or Heath: at another a philistinic small town grocer like Thatcher

These leaders offer material enough to assuage the appetite of the hungriest sociologist searching for an illusory insight and solution for capitalism's desperate problems. One vital fact fails to engage their attention: by its nature this social system cannot satisfy human needs, it must produce schisms.

Ray Mawby once said it would need a psychiatrist to discover why he went Conservative. Well yes — that goes for them all: it is not absolutely necessary to be mad to support capitalism but it helps 

Ivan

50 Years Ago: The 1945 Election (1995)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Election Campaign is over and the votes have been cast. For the first time in the history of this country a party of working men and women has put forward a delegate for parliament on one issue alone—to capture the powers of government for the sole purpose of dispossessing the capitalist class of their ownership of the means of production and establishing Socialism in place of the present social order. At our meetings we stressed the fact that voters who were not in favour of this sweeping revolution should not vote for our delegate. We also stressed our opposition to reform policies and pointed out that we could do nothing for the workers; that Socialism was something the workers must accomplish themselves, understanding what they were after and using the Socialist Party as their instrument for this purpose. Our opponents at North Paddington were the Tory and Labour parties.

North Paddington Election

The Voting Figures were as follows:- 

Macfarlane (Labour)      16,638 

Bracken (Conservative) 10,093 

Groves (S.P.G.B.)               472

(From an article in Socialist Standard,
 August 1945)

50 Years Ago: This Phoney Election (1995)

The 50 Years Ago column from the July 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

Voters who try to interpret the issues in the election by studying the more flamboyant utterances of the Party leaders may well wonder what it is all about.

Mr. Churchill declares that the election is a fight between individualism and Socialism and between his own Party and the "Socialist Party”. By individualism he means capitalism, which has, however, long since got past the stage of a competitive struggle between independent small capitalists and gone over increasingly to giant monopolies.

The Labour Party, equally anxious to misrepresent the situation, accepts Mr. Churchill's “terminological inexactitude" that they are a socialist party and declare in its Election Declaration (“Let us Face the Future”), “The Labour Party is a Socialist Party and proud of it"—and then proceeds to give us a blue-print of the State Capitalism that they propose to retain and develop.

We confidently make one electoral prophecy. Whatever the result capitalism will be safe because the majority of the working class are not yet Socialists.

(From editorial in Socialist Standard, July 1945)

The “Victory” Election & Our Parliamentary Campaign (1945)

Party News from the June 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a very short time Parliament will be dissolved and the country thrown into the excitement of a general election for the first time for nearly ten years. The first shots have been fired. The leaders of the Parties forming the National Government have made their opening speeches. Each of the Parties is manoeuvring for position and advantage. Each warns the voter of the dire consequences for the country should either of the other Parties succeed in becoming the government of the day. Before the election is over it might well seem, if the accusations and mutual recriminations be believed that the menace they have been fighting for nearly six years is the lesser evil. Licence takes giant strides, and what in other spheres would be considered libel, is accepted as part of the game. That is the way of English politics, and for that matter, the way of politics in many other parts of the world.

The Old Sad Story.

Whichever of the Parties win and becomes the government the affairs of the country will be administered in much the same way as in the past. There will be no fundamental changes. The workers will work for small wages when in work and receive smaller doles when out of work. True there will be the insurance scheme which all Parties seem to be supporting. Under the scheme a meagre unemployment benefit is allowed, though Sir William Beveridge, the author of the scheme, points out that its success depends upon full employment!

It is quite certain that there will be no fundamental changes. There will be, and must be, aggravation of all the old problems of capitalism. Competition between the capitalist both at home and abroad will be fiercer, competition for jobs between the workers will be keener and insecurity more threatening. The Party in control of the machinery of Government will attempt to meet these problems in the same way that they have been dealt with for the past 150 years, by doles and social reforms.

Failure to Remove the Cause of Poverty.

As surely as these means have failed to remove working-class poverty and insecurity for a century and more so they will fail again. They must fail because they do not get at the basic cause of poverty and insecurity—the private ownership of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth, the mines, factories, railways, and etc.

We Challenge Private Ownership.

The Socialist Party is entering the contest and will nominate a candidate in a London constituency. Paddington North. This is the beginning of a wider electoral activity to be pursued in the years after the war is over. We shall challenge private ownership of the means of production. and proclaim the indisputable case that only by its abolition and the establishment of Socialism can working-class problems be solved and the world freed from future wars.

Our Case is Indisputable—Socialism will Emancipate all Mankind.

The issue for us is simple. We stand for Socialism. All others, under whatever label they fight, stand for capitalism and the retention of the present order of things.

Now is The Time.

Time is short. We need your help and assistance. Members branches and supporters should send offers of help and donations without delay. Any odd hour or so which can be given in assisting in routine election work at the committee rooms will be welcome.

SEND YOUR DONATIONS NOW.—E. Lake, S.P.G.B.. Rugby Chambers, Rugby Street, W.C.l.

P.O.s, cheques, etc. must be crossed and made payable to S.P.O.B. Send Your offers of help now.

The Parliamentary Committee.

Greasy Pole: On tactical voting (2005)

The Greasy Pole Column from the April 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Here is something else for all those bewildered and dispirited Labour supporters to blame on Blair and his government. In their glory days of 1997 and 2001 voting was a happily uncomplicated business, requiring them only to go to their local polling station and plonk their cross against the name of their New Labour candidate, then go home congratulating themselves on participating in the drive to raise living standards, make everyone healthier and more secure, tackle global poverty and climate change.

But since then it has been borne in on the most starry-eyed Labourite that their party is not only unable to make good on its promises but has carried through other, unpromised and unwelcome, policies like cutting single parent benefit and hounding those on incapacity benefit, imposing student tuition fees, introducing the market into the NHS and other public services, taking part in the invasion of Iraq. All of this makes voting, for many a Labour supporter, a matter fraught with indecision. There has been an anguished debate from which has emerged – or rather re-emerged – the concept of tactical voting. This means voting for a second choice candidate – like a Liberal Democrat – in the hope that this will influence the Labour government to change its policies. This is a sight more complex than simply opting for their first choice candidate.

A jolt

The case for tactical voting has recently been stated by John Harris in his book So Now Who Do We Vote For?, in which a Labour ex-minister outlines his dilemma:

  “And why don’t we like Michael Howard? Partly because of his right wing record when he was home secretary. But we’re more right wing than Michael Howard was. I’m not saying I want the Tories, but how bad would it be? The thing is, the Labour party needs a fright.”

Harris concludes that in Labour heartlands like Scotland, Wales, South Yorkshire and London “the Blairites need a jolt”. He discusses some of the other parties – the SNP, Plaid Cymru, Green, Respect – which, if they amassed a considerable vote, would administer that jolt. This line of reasoning does not recognise the futility of voting for one unsatisfactory party in order to disturb another. After all it is not so long ago that voting Labour was sometimes used to give a Tory government a jolt. There must be another, more hopeful, more enduring method.

A rather desperate-sounding parliamentary group under the name of “Impeach Blair” has campaigned to get Blair on trial for his part in the Iraq war and the deceptions he practised in that cause. The idea made very little progress, which is probably just as well because Blair may have been able to defend himself successfully on the grounds that he was only following precedent. For example there was Neville Chamberlain who in 1938 came back from Munich holding a piece of paper which, he claimed, was a guarantee of peace in our time, although even as he spoke this country – and quite a few others – were busily preparing for war. Then there was Anthony Eden, who in 1956 lied to the House of Commons when he denied that, in order to justify the attack on Suez, there had been a conspiracy between Israel, France and Britain to collude in the Israeli invasion of Egypt. Blair might point out that Eden, far from being prosecuted, was elevated into being Lord Avon. An acquittal would undoubtedly follow.

Standing in Sedgefield

As a result the group turned its attention to an idea dreamed up by Adam Price, a Plaid Cymru MP who is threateningly rumoured to be a brainy maverick, to persuade someone to stand against Blair in his Sedgefield constituency. This person would need to be – rather like Martin Bell in Tatton in 1997 and Blair in his younger days – of impeccable character and antecedents and to be allowed a clear run by the other parties, to focus the anger against Blair effectively enough to unseat him. As we write nobody has been found to take this on. Sedgefield has been rock-solid Labour for over 90 years; the people there are apt to refer to Blair as “our Tony” (perhaps as the people of Tatton called Neil Hamilton “our Neil” before they threw him out in 1997) and in 2001 they gave him a majority close on 18,000.

It would be highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for a sitting prime minister to be opposed at an election by a single candidate. This did happen in 1945, when Winston Churchill’s seat at Epping was contested by Alexander Hancock. The other parties had agreed not to stand in Epping, as a “mark of respect” for Churchill, but there were unacknowledged advantages for them in allowing “the man who won the war” to have a free ride to Westminster. However there were people who did not accept this; most prominent among them was William Douglas-Home whose brother, then Lord Dunglass, was Chamberlain’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, closely involved in the Munich negotiations which effectively handed Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany. Douglas-Home was an ardent fan of Chamberlain and a bitter critic of Churchill; during his time in the Army in the war he fought three by-elections in opposition to the manner in which the war was being conducted. In September 1944 he refused an order to participate in the “mopping up” of the German army in Le Havre, on the grounds that this would result in heavy civilian casualties – which, when the attack came, did happen. Douglas-Home was court martialled, discharged from the Army and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment with hard labour.

Contest in Epping

With this background Douglas-Home was an obvious possibility to ignore the party truce and stand against Churchill at Epping. He did at first intend to do this but then withdrew, which allowed Arthur Yates, another soldier (although not one who disobeyed orders; the Daily Mail affectionately described him as “an earnest, hardened and freckled young man”) to stand in his stead. The Army flew Yates over from Austria for his nomination but he arrived too late, which left the field to Alexander Hancock, who got his name on the ballot papers as an Independent. Hancock was a local farmer; Churchill dismissed him as “somewhat crackpot” and it is true that he did have an unusual approach to politics.

To begin with he confessed not to have any desire to become an MP or to deny that to Churchill. When he was asked about his chances of defeating Churchill he shrugged “could anyone?” His principal objective was to publicise his “philosophical plan” under which “able bodied” people would do about an hour’s compulsory work each day to provide the essentials of life and spend the rest of the time producing non-essentials. It might have occurred to the more reflective voters in Epping that the plans put forward by the other parties for trying to control British capitalism had little more than did Hancock’s to commend them in terms of relevance and effectiveness. At all events over 10,000 of them voted for Hancock, or perhaps that was, in fact, tactically against Churchill, who survived with a majority of around 17,000.

Sadism and masochism

If someone is willing to offer themselves as another Alexander Hancock it will be in response to the widespread anger and disgust at Blair and the fact that his party’s record in government has led to many ex-supporters feeling they are disenfranchised. Labour’s election manipulators are already worried about the possibility that they will lose some seats by default because a lot of its supporters will be unable to summon up enough enthusiasm even to vote. To such people the prospect of a candidate taking on Blair one-to-one in his own territory has its attractions. If the unthinkable happened sadists might find pleasure in the downfall of a politician as plausible, dishonest and obsessive as Blair. But what then? Blair was after all once the great young hope of the Labour Party and of millions of people outside the party. What reason is there to suppose that a successor would be any different, any more acceptable? Why should we believe that another party, brought to power through tactical voting, would be any more successful? What hope is there that it would be useful to concentrate on one problem, one leader, one election? The working class persist in choosing between different versions of the same weary, discredited palliatives for capitalism’s problems. This is not sadism; it is masochism and it will be a massive relief when it stops.

Ivan

In the Sweet Bye and Bye (1947)

From the December 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the workers first won the franchise many of them voted for their masters out of a sort of feudal loyalty, and others were cheaply woo’d with flattery and petty bribes: only a few then saw that they had in their grasp the instrument to gain their emancipation. Then began a slow growth to political maturity. In the first stage workers went to the Liberal and Tory candidates seeking pledges of support for this or that measure, offering in return to give their vote to the candidate who promised most. Only slowly did the workers learn that a government that wishes to do so can discover numerous ways of evading an election pledge without having to make the candid admission that it was given merely to catch votes; and even when pledges were honoured the results were singularly below the expectation. Becoming more wary, the electors eventually ceased to believe in quick, easy remedies, and came to expect from the parties long, detailed and ponderous programmes promising painful reconstruction operations extending over several years, to be followed, some day, by a very nice time for all. Politically it might be called the Bog of the Sweet Bye and Bye, and we are up to our necks in it now. Behind it all is the way the world organises the production and distribution of wealth – the social system called capitalism.

Capitalism never did give security and prosperity to the workers and never did run smoothly; but now, when powers of production (and destruction) have so enormously increased capitalism is in ceaseless difficulties. Let any man or woman old enough to remember 1914 ask whether he or she ever knew as much as one three-year spell which did not include one or other of a major war, a post-war “work harder and eat less” crisis, or an “overproduction” crisis with millions unemployed. We are still in the bog of capitalism and shall be so until a majority can be won over from Labourism and Toryism to Socialism.

In 1945 millions of workers thought a Labour-Government would find the way out. The number who think so is much smaller now as was shown by the heavy swingover of votes from Labour to Tory in the recent local council elections. At the General Election in 1945 the Labour Party statement “Let us Face the Future,” said:

   “The Labour Party makes no baseless promises. The future will not be easy. But this time the peace must be won. The Labour Party offers the nation a plan which will win the Peace for the People.”

That was two-and-a-half years ago. How fare the people now? Working harder, eating less, getting day by day shabbier, they face cheerless austerity with nothing more inspiring than still more plans to replace those already scrapped, more promises about the good time coming, and more nauseating sermons from Sir Stafford Cripps about the beauty of spiritual things.

What has caused the crisis, the disillusionment, the decline of the Government’s popularity? There is no difficulty about finding the answer. This is always and everywhere the fate of Labour Governments, with their well-meant but futile policy of trying to make capitalism work. The loss of Labour votes at the council elections in Britain coincided with the smashing defeat of the Labour Government in the State of Victoria, Australia. There the issue which reduced their seats from 32 to 16 and turned them out of office was the plan of the Federal Labour Government to nationalise the commercial banks. Having at first thought that nationalisation is a better way of running-capitalism, some years of trying it convinced them – as it will convince voters in Britain – that nationalisation makes no difference; so they voted against more nationalisation. There are no “better ways” of running capitalism.

Trying to run capitalism, forces a Labour Government to do all sorts of obnoxious things that they condemned Tory Governments for doing. The Labour Government retains military conscription in peacetime, reintroduces industrial conscription in the form of direction of workers to essential industries, lets the price of necessities rise while opposing wage increases, demands harder work and more austerity, uses troops in strikes, keeps an army of occupation in Germany and stores up hatred by keeping German prisoners of war here as slave labour. Opposition to all of these evils is now left to Tories, Liberals and a handful of rebel Labour M.P.s. As the Salvation Army used to say about Church hymns, the Labour Party evangelist now has the mortification of hearing all the best tunes sung by the Tory devil.

In a recent speech Mr. Arthur Horner, Communist General Secretary of the Miners’ Union, looking at the present muddle, said he could not help thinking that perhaps Mr. Churchill at the General Election deliberately spoiled the Tory campaign so that the Labour Party would have to handle the post-war troubles and earn all the odium and loss of prestige inseparable from being the Government in power. If Churchill backed that horse he was on a sure thing. The S.P.G.B. could and did foretell that outcome long before the election. It is not difficult to foresee, once the nature of capitalism is understood; and after understanding the nature of capitalism follows, the determination to abolish it and introduce Socialism.

Before leaving Mr. Horner’s speculation about Mr. Churchill’s supposed plot a certain obvious comparison leaps to the eye. If Mr. Churchill did indeed plot a Labour triumph as the sure way to disruption of a Labour Party caught in the toils of capitalism, it provides an intriguing comparison with the well-known but now never admitted “fifth column” tactic hidden behind Mr. Horner’s own party’s professed friendship for the Labour Party. Socialists do not treacherously profess friendship but openly oppose the Labour Party, because the only way out for the working class is to establish Socialism. To reject Labourism in favour of setting up totalitarian State Capitalism on the Russian model would indeed be to jump from the frying pan into the fire.

Edgar Hardcastle

Our Election Manifesto (1945)

From the July 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

We are reprinting below our Manifesto on the General Election which, with the necessary addition of a direct reference to North Paddington and our Declaration of Principles, was issued as the address of our prospective candidate, Clifford Groves, in North Paddington.

1st June. 1945.

Fellow Workers,

Once again you are called upon to register your vote in a General Election. Before you vote this time think very seriously about what you are doing. Pay no attention to glib promises or airy phrases about a New World built out of the same sordid material as the old. The well intentioned, the knave and the fool can all give you promises. You must look behind promises to facts.

Our Class Position.

Why are you voting? Because you want an improvement in your conditions of life. You and your forbears have been voting for this purpose for a hundred years and how much better off are you? Apart from some niggardly and hard won reforms you are still as your fathers were, forced to work for a wage that at best does little more than keep you and your families on a poor standard of living. And all the time you are worried by the possibility of unemployment and a descent into the depths of misery. For many of you unemployment has been a constant feature of your lives since the end of the last war, which was also going to bring you a bright new world. When you are old most of you are forced to depend upon your children to keep you out of their meagre earnings as old age pensions don’t go far, when you get them.

The Hopelessness of Reforms.

Your grandfather can tell you the same story, and yet all the time politicians have come forward with the same threadbare promises and long lists of reforms. A leader of the Conservative Party gives support to this view. In the Evening Standard (11th May, 1945), Mr. Peter Thorneycroft, chairman of the Tory Reform Committee, wrote an article under the heading “My Creed for a Tory," In this he writes:

  “Social security is the chief bastion against misfortune in our homes. Great though his contribution to the problem, it is not the private preserve of Sir William Beveridge. One hundred and fifty years ago William Pitt was urging social reforms not dissimilar to those we discuss to-day.
  Other Tories—Disraeli, Shaftesbury and Lord Randolph Churchill—have led the struggle to improve the conditions of the people."

After a hundred and fifty years during which the Tories have exercised most of the governmental power you are still waiting for a real improvement in your conditions. Now they have given the bottle a new label, “Social Security/' but it still contains the same dirty water.

Tory, Liberal and “Labour” candidates have come and gone, each have had their turn as the government with all the opportunities that government gives, and still you remain where you were. Since the last war the Communist Party has bobbed up but they also have the old familiar list of reforms, no different in essentials from those of the other Parties. They also continually change and twist their party line to the needs of the tortuous foreign policy of Russia. In the course of the war the Communist Party changed its attitude towards the war four times.

The Commonwealth Party is a new arrival in politics but it also asks for votes on a policy of reform. If reforms could have helped you then you would not be where you are, because you have been deluged with reforms of all kinds.

The Fundamental Wrong.

There must be something fundamentally wrong somewhere. What is it? Let us examine a little closer your position in present day life.

In order to get your living you must get a job. It does not matter what work you do, whether you have to wear dungarees, a uniform, or a black coat and striped trousers, you must still get a job in order to live. To whom do you generally apply for a job? To a company, or a state concern. In working for companies and state concerns you are doing the work needed to feed, clothe and house the population. You are doing all this work as miners, mechanics, railwaymen, bakers, or anything else, including the relatively better paid jobs directing industry. That is why you are called the working class. You are the class that works, that depends for a living upon selling mental and physical energies for wages or salaries.

These are the facts. You know they are because you experience them. Let us go further.

All the time you are at work you are haunted by the fear that you may lose your job and maybe not get another for a long time, or even be thrown on the scrap heap of those whose working days are finished. On account of this you struggle with each other for jobs, try to beat the other man even though you think that he is a decent chap and has a wife and family dependent upon him. You humble yourself in ways that make you squirm and are respectful and subservient to those above you, and to the wealthy class in general, because you want to get or keep a job. You hurry to work in packed buses, trams and tubes fearful lest the hooter go or the line be drawn before you get there. What a Life for a “Free Born Briton” !

This is all true. You know it is however you may try to pretend to yourself that you belong to a higher type of worker. Now let us look at another part of the picture.

What are the companies and the state concerns to whom you apply for jobs? They are the owners of practically all the land, the factories, the machinery, the transport and everything else necessary to produce and distribute the things we need. But who in fact really owns these organisations? The people who invest money in them and direct their policies. That is to say they are owned by The Capitalists who invest money with a view to making a profit out of their investments. Very few of you ever have any money to spare with which to buy shares, and those who do can only buy so few that it is not worth talking about. But just as you live by selling your working power so the capitalist lives by the dividends he receives from the capital he has invested. This also applies to Municipal Undertakings which provide investors with interest on municipal stock they purchase.

How You Are Robbed.

From whence come the dividends upon which the capitalists live? From the results of the work you do. Let us illustrate this point by taking a particular instance. You and some of your fellow workers are employed by a certain company and that company pays you wages and salaries. Now if the company makes a profit they must make it out of employing you because your class does all the work of producing for the company. In other words you and your fellows produce a quantity of goods that sell at a value which is greater than the value of your wages plus all other expenses. There is a surplus and it is out of this surplus that the capitalists of this country, and the rest of the world, live luxuriously and amass fortunes.

The capitalists pay you as little as they possibly can and urge you to increase the amount of your production, because the more you produce and the less you take the more there is for them. They are helped in this process by the fact that you compete with each other for jobs and those who work most efficiently for the wages they get stand the best chance of getting and keeping a job. Efficiency does not necessarily mean doing the best job. You may be constructing jerry-built houses or doing similar shoddy work. Efficiency under capitalism means producing the greatest possible amount of profit for the capitalist which also involves working at high speeds. Sometimes, as in America, they pay higher wages because they have found they can get more out of you by doing so; that is by exploiting you more efficiently. But such higher paid workers are more rapidly exhausted, and, in the long run, are no better off than those on lower pay.

Another method adopted by the capitalists to increase what they can get out of you is the introduction of new Labour Saving Machinery and methods of production. This increases the amount of wealth each worker produces and reduces the number the capitalists need to employ—Puts many of you out of a job to swell the unemployed army. You will shortly feel the pressure of this more heavily than ever when the new machinery and methods developed during the war are applied to peace-time production.

The Class Struggle

From what we have said you will realise that present day society is made up of two distinct and opposing classes—the capitalist class who, by their shareholding, own the means of production and the products, and the working class, who own only their power to work and must sell this working power to the capitalists in order to live. The capitalist aims at getting as much out of your labour as possible by getting you to work as hard as you can for as little payment as you can live upon, according to the standard of living in your particular kind of work. You aim at easier working conditions and as much pay as you can get for the work you do. The unemployed army is essential to capitalism otherwise you could demand a wage that would cut out the capitalists' profit. It is the fear of unemployment that limits your wage demands and your demands for better working conditions.

It is this class ownership of the means of production that is the root of your troubles. This is what is wrong with society to-day. This is why you suffer poverty and insecurity and all the misery associated with poverty and insecurity. No reforms put forward by any political party touch this class ownership of the means of production; at best they only aim at easing some of the worst evils. Even in this they are generally unsuccessful as you know from your own experience. No sooner is one evil eased than another, maybe worse, appears in its place. While you remain dependent on the capitalists giving you a job, in order that you may live, reforms cannot relieve you of poverty and insecurity. The capitalists dare not give you unemployment pay on which you could live adequately because, if they did, many of you would prefer remaining unemployed and at peace rather than slaving at arduous jobs which return you little more. You will find this out once again when new unemployment schemes are put into operation.

Small shopkeepers and the like are inclined to believe that their interests are the same as those of the capitalists, but they are mistaken. In the main small traders are just glorified salesmen for large capitalist concerns and they generally work harder and for longer hours than the higher paid sections of the working class. They are dogged by the perpetual fear of ruin, so often realised, and if they lose in the struggle to keep going they have, for various reasons, a poorer prospect of getting a job than the average worker.

When you organise into Trade Unions you do so to fight for better wages and better working conditions. This is good as far as it goes because you are trying to resist the pressure of capitalism upon you, but in the long run you can do little while the capitalists remain the owners of the means of production. Even when you strike they have vast resources that can outlast your meagre resources, as strikes of the past have shown. But why content yourselves with fighting the capitalists for higher wages? Why not abolish the wage system altogether?

Well, we have pointed out to you what your position is now and if you will give it a little thought you will find that we have done so accurately. What we have stated are the facts of your position as a member of the working class. Can you get out of this position? Yes, you can.

The Capitalists Are An Unnecessary Evil?

To-day you do all the work of society yourselves. The capitalist does nothing except draw his dividends. He tells you that you cannot get on without him because, according to him, nothing can be done without money and he has the money with which to pay your wages. But money does not make anything and people have made things where money was unknown. Even your ordinary history books tell you about people who made the things they needed without having to use money. It is only because goods are bought and sold that money is needed. If buying and selling were abolished money would lose its function. If you distributed to your, selves the goods you produce you would not need wages.

What is Socialism?

Just as you produce and distribute goods now at the behest of the capitalist, in return for wages, which only enable you to buy a portion of them back, you could distribute them freely to the whole of the Community, including yourselves, to-morrow, without the need for wages. If all the people who make up society take over the means of production and distribution and own them in common, the work of production would still go on. But instead of an idle class taking for their own enjoyment a large portion of the wealth produced, they would take part in the production of it, and it would be distributed according to the needs of each member of the Community. That is Socialism.

There are people who will tell you there will not be enough wealth to go round. The answer to that is simple. For six years of war workers on the whole have lived no worse than in peace times and the capitalists have lived well, they have had plenty of wine to drink and plenty of money to spare for other luxuries. Yet huge armies, navies and air forces have been fed, clothed and housed; an enormous amount of labour has been wasted on armaments of all kinds; and hosts of officials have been kept on jobs that have no influence on wealth production. If all these people were engaged in useful occupation under a system of production for use only and not for profit there would be far more than enough to fulfil the requirements of the whole population, and no one would go hungry, poorly clothed, or badly housed.

Nothing short of socialism can alter your condition of life for the better.

The Cause of War.

Not only does capitalism doom you to a life of poverty and insecurity but it also causes wars, like the one you have just passed through with all its suffering and horror.

As long as goods are privately produced for sale at a profit, markets have to be found in which to sell them. The fight for markets helps to cause war. Capitalists with money invested in armaments stir up trouble to help sell their engines of war. This also helps to cause war. Sections of the capitalists struggle with each other for sources of supply of raw materials, like oil, and for Trade Routes. You are already witnessing this struggle commencing over air lines and shipping. These struggles help to cause war. In fact it is the profit seeking nature of capitalism that is the sole cause of Modern Wars. Let us hear Mr. Thorneycroft on the subject m the article from which we have already quoted.

This is what he says:

    “Security against want is in the long run less important than security against war. No man could lay his hand upon his heart and swear that he could give the latter.
   “Let us tell the British people bluntly that if they want security in any form they must remain a nation in arms. Whether the United Nations succeed or fail in establishing an international organisation, arms are needed. Our foreign commitments must be balanced with our military power."

There you have the admission of a prominent member of the Tory Party that the same old source of military conflict will remain, in spite of all the soothing promises about the end of all wars. And he is quite right. As long as capitalism exists war is always on the horizon. The only way to abolish war is to abolish its cause—capitalism.

Socialism The Only Solution.

If you will give the facts we have put before you careful consideration you must agree with us that Socialism is the only solution to your problems. We Socialists are neither dreamers nor good natured idealists. We are working men and women like you are. We are faced with the same Problems as you are; our interests are the same as yours. We have found the only solution to our troubles and we want you to join us in helping to overthrow capitalism and establish Socialism.

The Road To Socialism.

How can this be accomplished? Here is the answer. Society is controlled through Parliament. Parliament makes and administers the laws. It does so at present on behalf of the capitalist. That is to say laws are made and administered on the basis of the private ownership of the means of production. The laws are made to protect this private ownership. But you and your fellow workers are the people who have voted the nominees of the capitalists, and others who support the continuation of the wages system, into power at each election. Therefore if you want to abolish capitalism you must vote into Parliament delegates whose sole business will be to abolish capitalism and introduce socialism. This they can do as soon as a majority of workers like yourselves become convinced that Socialism is the only remedy for social ills and vote a majority to Parliament to introduce it

This Election Your Opportunity.

In this election you in North Paddington will have an opportunity for the first time of putting into Parliament a delegate for the purpose of helping on the work of establishing Socialism. The Socialist Party of Great Britain are putting me forward as a candidate with this object and your vote will show how far you have progressed in understanding your position as wage slaves tied to the wheel of capital.

We Are Workers.

The position we have outlined above we have been propagating for many years, but like you we belong to the working class and consequently we are poor. Our poverty has limited the amount of propaganda we could do. Our Literature will show you how steadfastly we have adhered to the same position since we first formed our party. Our Funds come out of our own pockets and those of our sympathisers. We have not, and we do not want, any rich benefactors, who might try to influence our policy. Our party is ours and it can also be yours. Now at last we have gathered sufficient funds to begin the attack on the foundations of capitalism through Parliament and it rests with you how soon we will be successful.

Remember we are not going to do anything for you, and no "leader” can get you out of wage slavery. It is you who must do the job yourselves. It is the working class itself that must take charge of its own destiny and Build a new society worth living in.

Do you want to live under a free social system, owning your own means of production and using them for the equal benefit of all, or are you content to remain a human beast of burden, fettered to the insecurity of life as a wage worker?

The choice is before you and your vote will register it.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain

Clifford Groves is the officially appointed representative of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Here are some facts about the Socialist Party of Great Britain

The S.P.G.B. is an entirely independent party.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is an organization which was formed in 1904 because of dissatisfaction with existing organizations. It is an entirely independent organization, and only by recognizing this fact, and appreciating the reasons for it, will the party's case be understood. The S.P.G.B. is not affiliated to, or associated with, the Labour Party or any other organization in this country. Its only association is with identical parties in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the U.S.A.

It follows therefore that the S.P.G.B is not in any way responsible for the actions or policies of the Labour Party or any other party in this country.

The reason for this principle of independence is that the S.P.G.B. takes a fundamentally different view of economic and political questions from that taken by various parties in this country which claim to be interested in Socialism. In our view the Labour Party and other organizations are not following a path which will lead to Socialism.

Editorial: This Phoney Election (1945)

Editorial from the July 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Voters who try to interpret the issues in the election by studying the more flamboyant utterances of the Party leaders may well wonder what it is all about. For five years the Labour leaders, endorsed by the overwhelming vote of their Party Conference, at the outset, have worked in the Government with the Tories in furtherance, as they claim, of the war for democracy. Then suddenly they part company and instantly Mr. Attlee finds that Churchill's proposed referendum on the continuance of the National Government is “alien to all our traditions," though it comes from the man who was claimed by the Labour Party to be the embodiment of the British tradition, and that it is a device “which has only too often been the instrument of Nazism and Fascism."

Then in his first election broadcast Mr. Churchill retorts that “ Socialism)” by which he means the (State Capitalism of the. Labour Party, threatens us with a “Gestapo in Britain." “Socialist policy" declared Mr. Churchill, “is abhorrent to the British ideas of freedom. It is inseparably interwoven with totalitarianism and the abject worship of the State."—( Daily Express, June 5, 1945).

From which the innocent looker on may deduce that the “war against totalitarianism" has been conducted by Tories who are in favour of it and by Labourites who are in favour of it, and that whichever wins the election totalitarianism—ended in Germany—will be firmly established here.

Another equally phoney issue of the election is the alleged gulf of principle between the Labour Party, which seeks some form of State Capitalist ownership or control of certain industries, and the Conservatives and Liberals who are supposed to be opposed to it. Yet the nationalisation of the postal, telegraph and telephone services and the formation of the London Passenger Transport Board . . .  and similar monopolies by Act of Parliament were the work of Liberal and Tory Governments; and it was Mr. Churchill who in 1918 declared in a speech at Dundee that the policy of the Government of which he was a member was the nationalisation of railways.—(Times, December 5, 1918.)

Mr. Churchill declares that the election is a fight between individualism and Socialism and between his own Party and the “Socialist Party." By individualism he means capitalism, which has, however, long since got past the stage of a competitive struggle between independent small capitalists and gone over increasingly to giant monopolies.

The Labour Party, equally anxious to misrepresent the situation, accepts Mr. Churchill’s "terminological inexactitude" that they are a socialist party and declares in its Election Declaration (“Let us Face the Future"), “The Labour Party is a Socialist Party and proud of it"—and then proceeds to give us a blue-print of the State Capitalism that they propose to retain and develop.

Lord Croft, Parliamentary Under Secretary for War, even more wildly inaccurate thau his leader, Mr. Churchill, discovered that the in fact always anti-Marxist Labour Party, “wish to impose upon the British people the crude ideas of the German Marx."—(Evening Standard, 24th May, 1945) and reached a peak of falsification in the further remark that Marxism is “not so very different" from Nazism. He quoted a declaration by a prominent Hitlerite that Nazism was “Socialism" but forgot to add Hitler’s own repeated claim that it was based on the total rejection of Marxism. Lord Croft might more accurately have said that in respect of rigid controls Nazism has not been far different from the controls imposed in this country during the war by the Tories, Liberals and Labourites in the National Government.

The Liberal Manchester Guardian accurately appraises the smallness of the differences between the three largest parties. Criticising Mr. Churchill, the Guardian says:— 

   “Because it (the Labour Party) proposes a relatively modest programme of public ownership he leaps to extravagance about totalitarianism and the Gestapo. He would be more convincing if he got to grips with things: if, for instance, he showed why Major Lloyd George's 'Central authority' for coal is likely to secure greater efficiency than Labour’s ‘National authority,' why Mr. Hudson’s plans for regulated food imports are better than Mr. Bevin's, why the Government's national insurance scheme is better than the Beveridge plan, why Mr. Lyttleton’s ideas on the curbing of monopoly are sounder than Mr. Dalton's. But that, as Mr. Churchill knows, would give the game away. Good rotund eloquence meaning nothing in particular is far safer.”—Manchester Guardian," June 5th, 1945.)

The I.L.P. which in recent years has boasted that it had for ever shed its old illusion, was back again where it started, pleading to be allowed into the Labour Party—a plea that was rejected.

The Communists, having temporarily pigeonholed their year-long claim that the Labour Party is “the third capitalist party" is backing that Party in most constituencies though at Rhondda East, Pollitt, the Communist candidate, is running against a Labour Party nominee who is backed by the S. Wales Miners Federation the President of which, Arthur Horner, is himself a leading Communist.

No doubt the real reason for the election is simply that since an election had to come sometime the Conservative Party wanted to get in quickly before the workers had had time to taste the bitter fruits of victorious peace. As caretakers of capitalism they need re-election to handle the difficult capitalist problems during the adjustment from military war to trade war and they count on gaining a majority.

Reading between the lines it seems likely that a Conservative victory will be received with relief at Labour Party headquarters since if the Labour Party happened to win no one would be more embarrassed than themselves.

We confidently make one electoral prophecy. Whatever the result capitalism will be safe because the majority of the working class are not yet Socialists. Whether capitalism has a little less state control with the Tories or a little more with the Labour Party is not an issue that ought to concern the working class. When they know their own class interests they will make the issue Socialism versus Capitalism as the Socialist Party is doing in North Paddington. Our campaign in North Paddington is the beginning of the real electoral fight for the emancipation of tho working class.

Notes On The Election (1945)

From the September 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Times change—politicians frequently fail to catch-up. Many candidates—Churchill the chief one—obviously banked on the old-time stuff of years ago which is hopelessly out of date with the modern electorate. The motor car tour of the country was exactly the same as when he contested the Abbey Division of Westminster twenty years ago—and according to Fenner Brockway, burst into tears, when he failed.

“ J.F.,” wrote in the Socialist Standard for April, 1924.

   “Mr. Churchill conducted his campaign as a “Show" or piece of buffoonery. Fighting men (boxers), jockeys, comedians, etc., were his principal speakers. Processions of highly decorated motor cars toured the streets, and the candidate joined in the procession at times. This gutter method cf conducting a campaign shows the shallow mind of the individual responsible for such a method. . . . 

One other fact emerged from this by-election. Practically all the capitalist press united in talking of 'Mr. Churchill’s brilliance,' his 'great gifts.' his remarkable abilities,' etc., but when one reads the carefully prepared speeches he gave, they turned out to contain nothing but stale and worn out platitudes. Any members of the working class, who wore led away by this praise of the press, will now be able to realise that Churchill is only a shallow-pa ed chameleon."

There were feeble attempts to put idiotic poems on posters—by the old time parties—thus, if a candidate had a name like Wright (Liberal), the electors were urged to do the "Wright ” thing (ugh!). A candidate called Noble (Conservative) inspired “Do your Noble deed on Tuesday” (?!) “Make Tuesday a Field day” (Labour), and so on; Rotherhithe was urged to send “Big-Ben” to Big Ben, as though a lot of candidate is desirable, which obviously disqualifies Miss Wilkinson, for example. In one London constituency the Conservative announced, in asking for votes that he was “Churchill’s man”; promptly came the answer of the Southwark Labour Party, “Vote for Naylor—Everybody’s Man.”

Another Labour candidate informed his astonished electors that he had been married 26 years; yet another in the course of a political biography, wrote “and then I met Margaret” (?!!) while the Communist Party informed Glasgow electors that Mr. Peter Kerrigan had been, when young, captain of a local football team. The Labour candidate for Nottingham West offered the view that “no economic machinery, no defensive devices, no diplomatic arrangements can ensure peace unless People undergo a change of heart,” which makes us wonder why he wants them to change their member—if it's the heart of the electors that’s wrong.

There is evidence to show that the modern tendency is for electors to vote Party tickets—NOT personal biographies. The day of the stunt-merchant and demagogue i6 ending.

It’s last representative-—Churchill is finished—at future elections—backed by an increasing Socialist challenge—candidates will face an unanswerable barrage of inquisitive questions from intelligent electors.

Already one Tory candidate has been forced to undertake one week's (one whole week) work down the coal mine as a result of a miner electors challenge. Another actually lived on the dole in Gorbals, Glasgow, for a week, saying afterwards "It could he done for one week—he would not express any further opinion.” This sort of thing is likely to deter quite a number of jobseekers at future elections.

Finally all the reformist Parties published statements saying. "Vote Thus”! With the spread of Socialist knowledge among the electors this ridiculous inversion will be replaced right side up—on its feet. The electors will instruct the candidate “Vote Thus "—for Socialism.

Horatio.

A Shadow Falls Across the Capitalist World (1945)

From the August 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Election Campaign is over and the votes have been cast. For the first time in the history of this country a party of working men and women has put forward a delegate for parliament on one issue alone—to capture the powers of government for the sole purpose of dispossessing the capitalist class of their ownership of the means of production and establishing Socialism in place of the present social order. At our meetings we stressed the fact that voters who were not in favour of this sweeping revolution should not vote for our delegate. We also stressed our opposition to reform policies and pointed out that we could do nothing for the workers: that Socialism was something the workers must accomplish themselves, understanding what they were after and using the Socialist Party as their instrument; for this purpose. Our opponents at North Paddington were the Tory and Labour parties.

Over the years we have been told that if we wait until the workers understand Socialism we would have to wait hundreds of years. As workers we repudiated this sneer at the intelligence of our class. We were told we were armchair philosophers, and twitted with the phrase “The Small Party of Good Boys.” Our reply has always been that our case is clear, direct and simple and is the only one in the interests of the workers. Consequently the workers will listen to us when we have sufficient means at our disposal to make a concentrated attack to arouse the workers interest.

Events have shown how right we were. For many years members and sympathisers have been contributing to our election fund. As we are only working men and women it has been a slow and painful process. Our principal obstacle was the £150 deposit required; not even a mole hill to our opponents, with their rich supporters, but a veritable alpine wall across our path. Just before the war we had collected enough to venture on the campaign and we put forward a prospective candidate, but the outbreak of war deferred the general election. When we learnt that there was to be a general election this year we decided to take part. We appointed a Parliamentary Committee who planned and, with the assistance of the Propaganda and other Committees, carried through the campaign. We decided to contest North Paddington and nominated a delegate to go forward as our candidate. Then we rolled up our sleeves and waded in, throwing all the strength we had into the contest.

We had no “National figures,” with or without cigars, to dangle before the electors, nor had we any national newspapers to bamboozle them We wanted neither. Instead we had the best of all weapons, the only solution to working class poverty and misery, and working class brains, energy and enthusiasm with which to put it forward. In the few short weeks at our disposal a campaign was planned and carried through that our opponents, who had neither the conviction nor the sincerity that inspired us, were unable to equal.

We got out leaflets explaining our case in detail and members and sympathisers came straight from work (sometimes involving long journeys) to the committee rooms to spend hours writing  100,000 addresses, folding leaflets, printing posters and doing many other jobs. Others organised or spoke at the numerous meetings arranged in the constituency. Meetings were advertised by a loud speaker van, by sticking up 1,700 posters in every available spot and by chalking the roads at suitable places.

Our Manifesto and four other statements explaining the Socialist position were rent to the 34,000 voters in the constituency, and the manifesto to the 1,000 services voters. Men and women members and sympathisers were out every night canvassing and selling literature. They succeeded in covering over half the houses in the constituency spending much time discussing our ease. Every house in the constituency was visited four times by helpers to deliver leaflets or hand-bills. Everyone worked hard and took a joy in what they were doing. No one worried about whether the work was dirty or clean, for they were working for themselves, helping to clean out the dirty stable of capitalism.

And now, looking back, we have the satisfaction of knowing that the planning and the execution were well and truly done.

What response did we get to our efforts? There is only one word the present writer can think of that describes it—amazing! Our case was put forward everywhere without trimmings, just as we have put it forward for 41 years. We held two Sunday night-meetings at the Metropolitan Music Hall, Harrow Road. On each occasion the theatre was packed with two thousand people. These meetings lasted for over three hours during which interesting questions were put to our speakers by the audience. A weeknight meeting was held at the Porchester Hall which was attended by about 600 people.

One night Churchill turned up at the Prince of Wales, Paddington, to give his usual dose of opium. He did not get an enthusiastic reception. After he left our speakers held two large meetings. When it commenced to rain one of the speakers invited his audience to adjourn to the little Emmanuel Hall where about 300 of them packed it out and gave our speaker not only un attentive hearing, but an enthusiastic one as he answered their questions for nearly two hours.

At the beginning of the campaign our audiences were small but as they learnt more about our principles and policy they commenced to flock to the meetings.

The striking thing about all our meetings has been the orderliness and attentiveness of the audiences, and their genuine interest in Socialism as evidenced by the direct and interesting questions they asked.

Our audiences were composed of working men and woman of all kinds and yet they were sufficiently interested and appreciative of our case to contribute £55 to the collections at the first large meeting, £67 to the second, and £23 to the third. Collections have been taken up at indoor and outdoor meetings and a considerable amount of literature has been purchased. Those who came to the Emmanuel Hall meeting on the night of the Churchillian frost contributed nearly £7 to the collection.

Before each of the three large indoor meetings referred to above we put up posters inviting our two opponents to put their case from our platform in opposition to us, and repeated the invitation from the platform but neither of them turned up. They had the opportunity of speaking to 2,000 electors at the cost neither of effort nor expense, hut neither Mr. Brendan Bracken nor Lieut.-General Mason Macfarlane took advantage of this grand opportunity! Why? In our view because they funked it. They had not sufficient faith in their case, or in the response of the workers to it.

We started this election campaign with an election fund of £300. In the course of the campaign we have collected sufficient to enable us to spend another £300.

On the eve of polling day about 1,000 people were present at an outdoor meeting at the Prince of Wales, which lasted from 8 o'clock until after midnight.

All this shows that, whatever the size of the vote for Socialism this time, the workers are at last turning away from the sterile policies that have befogged them and left them in the ditch for so long, and are now willing to listen to the case for Socialism.

When one realises that this happened in the one little corner of England that our meagre resources enabled us to tackle it shows what a tremendous response there would be to our case if we could put in the same amount of work everywhere. But be it understood that this is only the beginning. Next time the volume of our challenge will be far greater.

Yes, the tide is beginning to turn at last. The workers are on the scent of the source of their slavery. Let the ruling class tremble at this portent of the coming flood which will sweep privilege and class rule from the earth for ever.

Gilmac.