Greasy Pole: Ouch! What A Lovely War (2014)

The Greasy Pole column from the February 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Among the pitiless military killers of World War One there was reputed to be a German General who named one of his problems as the determination of British soldiers to 'fight like lions'. But then – 'lions led by donkeys'. More recently there has been a Minister of Education in a British government who scorned anyone who sympathised with that German assessment: '...an unhappy compulsion ...to denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour and courage', regarding the war '... through the fictional prism of drama such as Oh! What A Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder, as a misbegotten shambles – a series of catastrophic mistakes perpetrated by an out-of-touch elite. Even to this day there are Left-wing academics all too happy to feed those myths'.

Centenary

To put the matter into perspective – Michael Gove is the MP for the rock-solid Tory seat of Surrey Heath and the Secretary of State for Education. As a key member of the Cameron government – and of the Notting Hill Set – he has lived up to his reputation for managing education not as some kind of personal encouragement to develop but as formal discipline towards a designed conclusion. In this way Gove has provoked the anger and despair of committed teachers but has recommended himself to his leader. After Cameron recently announced that the centenary of the start of the War would be distorted into a celebration of allegedly unique British courage and humanity, Gove was quick to approve: 'The ruthless Social Darwinism of the German elites, the pitiless approach they took to occupation, their aggressively expansionist war aims and their scorn for the international order all made resistance more than justified'.

Errors

But this misbegotten view of an historical event which cost the lives of tens of millions and left the world even less secure than before contains some crucial errors. The persistent denunciation of the war, of its bungling leaders and swamps of casualties, is by no means exclusively the work of 'Left wing academics'. Among the most publicised of critics was the late Alan Clark, whose book The Donkeys was a bitter exposure of the generals who ordered the British Army into so many historical calamities. But Clark would have been contemptuously amused by the idea that he was 'left-wing'. He inherited, apart from much else, the mediaeval Saltwood Castle in Sussex. At first he was rejected by Conservative Central Office as too 'right wing' but he eventually became a Tory MP, at first for Plymouth Sutton and then Kensington and Chelsea. He was a keen admirer of both Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher.

Diplomacy

Another example which undermines Gove's slapdash thinking is Niall Ferguson, whose opinions on the War were markedly controversial – for example he argued that in 1914 Germany was forced into a preventive war by the pressures of British diplomacy which encouraged a regional war to develop into a world conflict. In detail Ferguson has many differences with Gove's crude acceptance of the official Tory line but he is far from a 'left-winger' for he consistently describes himself as 'a Thatcherite'. It is useful also to mention a man who actually endured the trenches and all that followed. Harry Patch died in July 2009. He was known as 'The Last Fighting Tommy' – a lone survivor of the war during which he endured, apart from others, the Battle of Passchendaele. A patriotic Tory, his opinions on his time in the trenches are all too clear: the war was 'not worth one life'; the generals and politicians were 'organising nothing better than mass murder'.

Battlefields

Among the events to mark the centenary will be organised visits by school parties to the battlefields, to see where the trenches were, clamber into the dug-outs, stand in the graveyards, look up at the massive memorials ...There has to be some interest, accentuated by Gove's speech, about these visits. Will the children be free to make their own judgements about what they see, about the war and what came out of it? There is nothing in Gove's record to encourage any confidence that the visits will not be heavily stage-managed to ensure the right – from the point of view of the government – outcome. Consider that one of the first actions of the Ministry of Education when Gove took over was to provide every school with a copy of the King James bible inscribed with the message 'Presented by the Secretary of State for Education'. Before that he had unwisely trumpeted his version of the outcome of the war in Iraq: 'The liberation of Iraq has actually been that rarest of things – a proper British foreign policy success... now a fully functioning democracy with a free press, properly contested elections and an independent judiciary'.

Adoption

When he was still a baby Gove was adopted after his mother could not cope, in the stresses typical of the year 1967, with the demands of looking after a child. Gove's adoptive parents were caring and supportive but he admits to always being 'noisy by nature'; he later wrote to some of his school teachers to apologise for his disruptive behaviour. Importantly, Gove's adoption was rated as a success, enabling him to attend private school, to graduate at Oxford and to hold down jobs as a journalist with The Times, followed by his first steps up the parliamentary Greasy Pole. But his progress has been notable for a succession of manufactured crises. In February 2011 a judge ruled that his decision to abolish the Building Schools For The Future programme amounted to 'an abuse of power'. In March 2012 he and his staff were said to have destroyed email correspondence to frustrate Freedom Of Information requests. In addition to such examples Gove has been the subject of an extraordinary number of protests of No Confidence from various teachers' organisations including one in May last which drew complaints about systematic bullying, fear and intimidation - and this by the Minister responsible for overlooking children's education. But there is nothing to indicate that there is likely to be any change. Gove's response to it all – and to the appalling misery and bloodshed of the First World War – means that the only proper response to him and his kind is, in a word which every teacher will understand – exclusion.

Ivan

Joining the killing machine (2009)

From the November 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The campaign to win the young to war has come a long way from the ‘Your Country Needs You’ poster with the pointing finger of Kitchener used in the ‘First Great War’.

As is usual at this time of the year, we are called upon to remember the dead, the fallen of wars; not only two ‘World Wars’ but of recent continuing wars in far away places. Poppies sold, a festival of remembrance held and televised, boy-scouts, girl-guides, sea, air and army cadets, new and old soldiers march down to the local war memorial to repeat that yearly ritual, customary observance and practice.

The main event is held at the Cenotaph, the monument built to honour people whose remains are interred elsewhere or whose remains cannot be recovered and lie scattered across the fields and arable land of France; as was and still is the case for many casualties of that First Great War. The Cenotaph is in London’s Whitehall, a stones throw from Downing Street where all decisions of war have been taken and plotted particularly in the last and current century. This year’s remembrance falls in the year that marks the 70th anniversary and outbreak of the Second World War and as usual the Queen and her Royal Family dressed-up as Fleet Admirals, Air Marshals and Field Marshals with medals and self-awarded honours, will join our political leaders in honouring by this act of remembrance the war dead who, we are told time and again, gave their lives for the freedoms that we (supposedly) enjoy today.

During the summer with its cricket field, pubs and a centuries-old church Wootton Bassett became the focuses of international media attention, not unfortunately because of its idyllic picturesque village qualities; typical of an old English town in all respects but one: every corpse that returns from Britain's wars abroad passes through it. In what has become a public show of respect? Wootton Bassett is near Royal Air Force Lyneham, the base to which the country's war dead are returned. Commencing about two years ago, townspeople began gathering for the processions of each soldier as the body, in a flag-draped casket, was moved from Lyneham to a coroner's office in Oxford. The inaugural processions were attended by just a dozen saluting war veterans at first. Crowds then swelled to the thousands when the repetition of these sad processions became commonplace as the convoy of coffins through Wootton Bassett turned from a trickle to a stream.

Newspapers carried front page coverage that included pictures of mothers, fathers, wives, children and in some cases distraught girlfriends of the fallen. Anyone who picks up a newspaper or owns a television set cannot have failed to miss the risks that are involved and taken by the young in the modern wars that are Afghanistan and Iraq and have proven to be oh so deadly.

Every now and again, Brown and Cameron, before the exchange of insults during questions to the Prime Minister, will pay a tribute of hollow words acknowledging deceased military personnel. But with the public witnessing the return of young military casualties the pendulum of public opinion began to stick and stay put on questioning or opposing the military mission. The government during the summer, sensing the public perception, gave support to the first ever armed forces’ day, the idea being that parades and ceremonies would be held in every community around the war memorial to honour the role and function of armed forces personnel past and present – to use government language – honouring their commitment. This year's main national celebration was held at the Historic Dockyard in Chatham, Kent. The official party included Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, and the Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup.

Brown said: "The people that have come here today have shown the high esteem and regard in which they hold the Armed Forces of our country. The Armed Forces who do so much, the families who make such sacrifices. I don't think we say thank you enough, today is our chance to say it and say it with one voice, thank you very much to our Armed Forces."

Brown’s comments, were, if nothing else, very telling about government and military strategists’ concerns and about having public opinion on side. If opinion is off side, then one thing is for sure and that’s that it’s not directed against service personnel who are merely uniformed workers, working like any other workers under instructions. The British armed forces have some of the most difficult and far-flung commitments to maintain. Major commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq co-exist with others from peacekeeping in Cyprus to patrolling the Falkland Islands. To meet these commitments, an estimate is made of the required number of trained full-time personnel, known as the ‘trained requirement’. The actual number of trained personnel, known as the ‘trained strength’, is usually slightly less than requirement. The trained requirement in 2007 stood at 183,610; the trained strength stood at 177,760, of which 99,280 were in the army, 34,940 in the navy and 43,550 in the air force.

In terms of personnel, the UK regular armed forces are the third-largest in Europe after Germany and France. Britain is the world’s largest military spender after of course the US, and its armed forces being the most stretched in the world, over £2 billion is spent each year on recruiting and training 20,000 new personnel to replace those who either leave or are killed on active duty. The armed forces, as the statistics show, draw their non-officer recruits mainly from among young people with low educational accomplishment living in poor communities. A large proportion joining for disadvantaged reasons, including the lack of civilian career choices; a survey in the Cardiff area in 2004 found that 40 percent of army recruits were joining as a last resort and the army revealed in 2004 that while roughly 45 percent of all young people leave school with 5 GCSE subjects graded A-C only, 17 percent of all Army recruits in 2003–04 had English at A-C level, with the figure for Maths at about 10 percent. On average Army recruits have 0.9 of a GCSE at grade A-C. ... Records also show that 24 percent of all Army applicants in 2003–04 were unemployed for a significant period before applying.

The killing locomotive that is the army always needs fuel to feed into its boiler, so tens of thousands of pounds are spent on newspapers and the media convincing youngsters to sign away (no apology) their lives. On the way back from visiting a friend, I found one of those free newspapers that are handed out every evening at tube stations in London and lying on the seat next to me on the train on which I was travelling, what caught my eye was a double-page spread advertisement placed in the London Metro by the army and, I assume, acting on instructions from the Ministry of Defence and the government. The advertisement carried the image of a beautiful young woman in combat fatigues. I have no reason to believe that this young person isn’t a serving member of the armed forces and with the looks of a model.
The advert had a personal testimony of army life given by Major Laura Blair, 31, (can you believe that name) who is a member of the Adjutant General’s Corps; they apparently specialise in HR Personnel. Laura, if she does exist, says wonderful things about army life and ends by advising anyone who may be interested in an army career to either pop into one of the Army Careers Offices dotted around London or visit the Army Show Rooms in Hounslow or Dalston to find out just what life in uniform could offer them.

Recruitment literature for army careers emphasises potential benefits: career interest and challenge, comradeship, the active lifestyle, travel and training opportunities. It omits to mention or obscures even blots out: the radical change from a civilian to a military lifestyle, ethical issues involved in killing, risks to physical and mental health, the legal obligations of enlistment, the state’s legal and moral obligations to its armed forces personnel, and the right of conscientious objection. By suggesting that soldiers are highly satisfied with army life, the literature also glosses over the ambivalent attitudes of the majority. The omissions conspire against the potential recruit’s right and responsibility to make an informed choice about whether to enlist. The literature also does little to enable parents to ask searching questions of their children and of recruiters in order to assure their children’s best interests.

One thing that remains the same about war is that workers fight it and die in it, and that’s best summed-up by the last surviving soldier to have fought in the trenches of the First World War who died earlier this year: Henry John “Harry” Patch (17 June 1898 – 25 July 2009) – known as ‘the Last Tommy’. Harry, apparently, hated war, and called it “organised murder, and nothing less.”

NL

Harry Patch and the First World Slaughter (2009)

From the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

""War is organised murder and nothing else” . . . “It was not worth it, it was not worth one let alone all the millions” (Harry Patch)

Two of the last known surviving combatants of the first World Slaughter died in July. Both were over a hundred-years old. The second of the two, Harry Patch, had some very enlightening views on the subject of the slaughter. Not surprisingly some sections of the media, not wanting to upset the military and other dealers in death, were not inclined to give some of his views the prominence which they deserved.

The “Great War” (great for whom? Undertakers? Arms salesmen?) was supposed to be the war to end all wars. Given that there has not been a single day since 11 November 1918 when there has not been some armed conflict going on, it can only be said to be a failure in this respect. This can hardy be a surprise to anyone with even the slightest grasp of socialist principles.

In 1914 many people were led by propaganda to think of themselves as belonging to the same “nation state” as their so-called “betters”. Kitchener’s famous poster of “Your Country Needs You!” is simply put down by the socialist maxim that the workers of the world have no country. Alas, countless thousands were intimidated, bullied, coerced or simply blindly led to the slaughter. Those who have chuckled at the antics of Rowan Atkinson as captain Blackadder might like to reflect that behind the humour there is more than a grain of truth in these episodes.

This article is not written to dwell on the horrors of trench warfare, the introduction of gas and tanks or the futility of the mass bloodshed to gain a few yards of Belgian mud. There are countless other articles doing this. Suffice it to say that even though the trenches were an insult to humanity most troops actually gained weight whilst in the army, not that army rations were so good, just food at home was so poor or non-existent. Others covered also the horrors of conscripts, many who had lied about their age to enlist and who should have been back at school, being shot at dawn for cowardice.
Harry Patch’s point was that the war was simply a family squabble which was not worth the shedding of one single drop of (working class) blood for. In that most of the (unelected) royal houses of Europe were related by marriage and blood, he was correct in this respect. Not without good reason were the Empress Maria Theresa and later Queen Victoria known as the Grandmothers of Europe, their children and grandchildren having married into Europe royal houses.

It may or may not be true that Victoria thought submarines were unsporting and ungentlemanly and shouldn’t be used or that her grandson Kaiser Wilhelm was being a naughty boy. It may also be true that the monarchy and their hangers-on had more influence then but the war was simply a continuation of business by other means.

Wars would not be fought unless the profits of some important section of business was under severe threat. The capitalist (ruling) classes are not daft enough to allow their workers to be killed without good reason. And, taking a lesson from the slave owners, they did not expect soldiers to fight well if their stomachs are empty. No access for business to markets, resources or investment outlets = no profits = war. That is the simple logic which condemned so many men and women to death. A fight with other workers who in most cases did not even have a common language, let alone a quarrel with them. Workers who on both sides would rather have been with their families or going about their everyday (peacetime) tasks. Almost 100 years later nothing has changed.

The profit motive shows its head even further. In the current events in Afghanistan troops have been killed because allegedly their equipment was not sturdy enough or up to scratch. Should we or they be surprised? Of course not. The ruling classes want to win their wars as quickly and cheaply as possible and if that means a few more casualties so be it. (Arms manufacturers of course want the war to be as long and expensive as possible).

Harry Patch’s bravery was a type that some might not recognise. His gunnery team made a pledge not to shoot at the “enemy” (with whom they had no personal quarrel or animosity) unless absolutely necessary and then only shoot at their legs to wound them and not kill them. (In subsequent wars weaponry has been designed not to kill but to cripple; wounded combatants coming home minus limbs is bad for moral – ask Thatcher why the wounded of the Falkland’s were not allowed to appear at the “victory” parade – and tending the wounded when they are back home “wastes” valuable resources which could be preparing to kill or maim more people).

Harry Patch described war as “organised murder”. I would go a stage further and call it “legalised organised murder”. When opponents of socialism cite objections to socialism by way of what would we do about murders and robbers, point out to them that capitalism by its very nature is a system based on legalised murder and legalised robbery.

Harry Patch may not have been a socialist but we should salute his courage and conviction in telling the truth, so embarrassing that may have been to the authorities.

JFB

Editorial: Capitalism and the two world wars (2009)

Editorial from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

The two world wars that disgraced human history in the 20th century were essentially wars to change or preserve an existing carve-up of the world between the leading capitalist states.

In the first world war Imperial Germany attempted to upset, by force of arms, the then existing imperialist division of the world which benefited in particular Britain and France. The second world war too – which broke out seventy years ago this month – was the result of Germany and Japan throwing off unfavourable treaties, territorial divisions and trading arrangements imposed by Britain, France and the United States. From this, historical perspective, it was a continuation of the first world war.

In such wars it is the challenging powers that have to take the initiative and so appear as the "aggressors", but only those completely taken in by the propaganda of the victorious powers (and of course the winners also win the right to impose their version of history) will believe that it was just Germany that was responsible for the first and second world wars. An objective examination of the situation shows that, apart from their "business war" aspects (over markets, raw materials and investment outlets), the two world wars were wars (on the one side) to try to change the existing imperialist carve-up of the world and (on the other side) to preserve it. What was responsible for these wars was the whole world system of capitalism with its competitive struggle for profits and its collection of competing armed states. No one state, or politician, or people can be blamed for them; they were the result of the "normal" functioning of the capitalist world system.

As socialism had been historically possible since the end of the 19th century humanity could have avoided them. Neither of them justified "the shedding of a single drop of working class blood", as we declared in our anti-war manifesto in 1914, or as Harry Patch, one of the last survivors to have fought in that war, who died in July, put it, it was "not worth one death let alone all the millions".

The “War to end all wars” did no such thing. Nor did its even bloodier sequel, World War Nº 2, which resulted in the division of the world into two imperialist spheres of influence, the US sphere and the Russian sphere, with a continuous series of local wars at the boundaries between the two, which lasted until the collapse of the Russian Empire twenty years ago this autumn. This collapse was hailed "the end of history" and there was talk of a "peace dividend". Tony Blair of all people even declared shortly after becoming Prime Minister in May 1997: "Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war".. Empty rhetoric from a capitalist politician who was later to send British troops to kill and be killed in Iraq and Afghanistan to protect oil supplies and prevent another challenge to the powers currently dominating the world.

There will be wars, the threat of wars and the waste of preparing for wars as long as capitalism lasts. The only end to war is the end of capitalism – the socialist revolution.