Editorial: The strike and its leaders. (1911)

Editorial from the July 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who has not read the Liberal rejoicings over the tremendous increase in the shipping returns? The Tariff Reformer has been continually confounded by the Liberal’s references to the progress of the shipping trade. The Free Traders have told us that British capital controls more than half the carrying trade of the world. But our good Liberal Press has changed its tune very remarkably during the past few weeks. The great majority of the shipowners are members of our Liberal party, and the ferment among the seamen they employ has met with their most vehement opposition. No longer are told about the wealthy and ever-rising shipping industry ! But we are met with the lying plea that there is depression in the trade and the granting of better terms to the men will ruin the industry.

The men are fighting one of the most brutal unions of employers that capitalism has ever known. Besides a strong organisation with great financial resources sufficient to indemnify their members for any decline in profits, the Liberal shipowners have driven the once sacred and hallowed “competition” out of their business. Line after line has amalgamated with its rivals, and alliances and agreements have made “cutting” a thing of the past, and strengthened the position of the masters against the workers.

At a time when the Liberals are claiming to be the only true friends of the working class, it is useful to notice the actual composition of this party. What are the prominent names in the shipping trade ? Russell Rea, M.P., the Cobden Club champion ; Lord Furness, the director of twenty companies ; Mark Palmer, the lord of Yarrow; the great Wilson family of Hull ; the Runciman family of immortal memory ; the Pirries ; the Phillips ; the Peases : Liberal shipowners all. They are they who pay that £5 per month for skilled men working in the modern moving infernos is outrageous.

The hypocrisy of these supporters of “the greatest democratic government of our time” is glaring. Lord Furness was one of the most prominent “opponents” of (that terminological inexactitude) “Chinese Slavery.” His protests were pathetic, and his tearful denunciation of “the greatest blot on England’s fair fame” will be remembered even when other Furnesses sit in that ever-extending chamber of horrors. But Furness & Co. believe that sentiment “in business” does not pay. That explains why the “Persiana,” of the Furness line, lying in Barry Dock, engaged Chinese firemen at £3 10s. per month in preference to firemen of other nationalities at £4 10s. An unconsidered trifle is the fact that it costs 1s. 3d. per day to keep an European, but 6d. covers the cost in the case of the celestial.

It is enlightening to learn that the seamen’s leader, Mr. J. Havelock Wilson, is a staunch supporter of the Liberal party. It is something of which a workmen’s leader should be proud. He was elected for Middlesborough in the Liberal interest, and the great foes of the workers—the Liberal shipowners—have always been pleased to contribute to his election fund. At the bye-election at Jarrow in 1910 he withdrew as seamen’s candidate because “he did not contend that Mr. Russell Rea would not make as good a representative as he would,” and “he did not want, under the circumstances, to let the Conservative in.” Of course, Mr. Wilson has been amply repaid for his help to our masters, by the presence of the mighty ones on his election platforms.

What reason can a seamen’s representative have for supporting the Liberal party ? One of the first things the beloved Lloyd George did after his appointment in 1906 was to bring in a Merchant Shipping Bill, by which he raised the load line of British vessels. Havelock Wilson knows this, for did he not tell the unemployed seamen of Jarrow (vide Manchester Guardian) that “thousands of you are so unemployed to-day because of that very alteration of the load line, for at one stroke of the pen, by the alteration of the freeboard of ships, we have added to the tonnage of our vessels nearly one million tons of shipping.”

Thus cunningly and silently did the shipowners’ champion, Lloyd George, undo the work of Samuel Plimsoll. The latter carried on an agitation in the House of Commons in the early seventies, but met with the determined opposition of Gladstone & Co. For correctly describing the Liberal shipowners as “cold-blooded murderers” they had him brutally ejected from the House. How well the Liberals display the continuity in their brutality ! When the great Liberal shipowner, Wilson, tried to break the Hull Dock Strike in 1894, by importing blacklegs, the Liberal Government despatched gun-boats to protect Wilson’s property and guard the strike-breakers.

It is to Hull that the Liberals have again sent the forces of the State. The London policemen, fresh from performing the capitalists’ coronation celebrations, have been called upon to discard their medals, white gloves, etc., and to proceed to Hull, armed with strong batons, for the purpose of enabling the Liberal shipowners to run their brutal business.

The police have already tried their practised hands on the strikers and the hospitals are busy. We may expect the soldiers to be utilised shortly, for has not Mr. Winston Churchill told us in the House of Commons (June 26) that “when a local authority borrowed police it had to pay for them, but could obtain soldiers without paying anything at all. Consequently there was an incentive to use soldiers instead of police.”

Meanwhile the men’s leaders are playing the masters’ game very well. The Union Castle and the Royal Mail lines had arranged for ships to take the plutocratic parasites to see the Naval review at Spithead. According to the Manchester Guardian of June 22, “In the morning Mr. Havelock Wilson stated in an interview that he was going to send a telegram to the owners of the Coronation ships that the Union were willing to enter into negotiations to supply crews, without any regard to other matters under dispute, in order that the coronation guests might not be inconvenienced.”

This is the strain that might be expected from a man who, in the contest in which the Labour, Liberal, and Tory parties were represented, shocked the Labourites by supporting the Liberal, who was a well known South Wales shipowner (Mr. S. H. Radcliffe).

The Union leaders are advising the men to accept terms which mean a miserable struggle to exist in the future as in the past. “Now I find,” says Havelock Wilson, “that in one or two instances where companies have recognised the Union and I have ordered a compromise, there has been reluctance to carry out my instructions.”

Mr. Wilson is far more anxious for the recognition, of the Union, in other words of the leaders, than for securing the workers a better position. He wants to become a power, and if any workman fails to do his bidding—he threatens to resign.

In the manifesto quoted above Mr. Wilson says also :

“Before war was declared a conference of the representatives of the seamen was held, and after discussing the whole of our policy it was unanimously decided that I should have full and absolute control of the movement right through the United Kingdom, with full power to modify terms and insist upon higher ones, just as the movement presented itself to me.”

So bad are the conditions of life for the dockers at Liverpool that this same leading Liberal paper (June 29) says :

“Non-union men are forcing the pace for the Union. It was non-union men who declined to unload the Glasgow boat which came in with a non-union crew, and non-union dockers, not disciplined to await a signal from recognised and authorised leaders, have been coming out elsewhere as the days have elapsed.”

And they further state that “it has been impossible to distinguish the non-union from the Union man, unless it has been that the non-union man has been the more ready to give up his job.”

Our sympathy is extended to the struggling seamen in their fight, but we would counsel them to be wary of the wiles of their leaders. They may get a concession from time to time to suit the convenience of their masters, but the battle they fight to-day will have to be continually fought, and when these battles are over they are wage-slaves still, with all the horrors of capitalism still to face.

Great changes in the ways of navigation also portend trouble for the toilers. The adoption of oil fuel instead of coal is considered a great saving by the masters. When this is more widely used the fireman will have their unemployed ranks increased.

The dockers who are striking have had lessons in this direction. Ever since the concession of the “tanner” an hour in 1889, speeding-up and hustling is a marked feature of dock life. Working with fewer men in a gang to do the work ; the use of cup and suction elevators ; the adoption of improved cranes : these are the weapons with which the dock labourers are faced, and that have resulted in so much casual employment amongst them.

The leaders of the Dockers’ Union are equally reprehensible with those of the seamen. Ben Tillett, the man who has gone up and down the country, at Trade Union Congresses, and in Liberal rags, advocating “Compulsory Arbitration”—the employers’ panacea. Tom Mann, who is trying to side-track the workers into wasting their powers in a futile chasing of “a kind of unionism known as industrial unionism.”

These are your leaders, toilers of land and sea !

Blogger's Note:

The 1910 bye-election where J. Havelock Wilson withdrew his candidacy was not Jarrow; it was South Shields.

50 Years Ago: Vice - 1913 Version (1963)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

In February of this year—within three months of the White Slave Bill being passed—Hull was excited about the arrest of “a leading citizen,” named Edward Buckton Cargill. He was the Chairman of the Hull Steam Trawlers Owners Company, of the Humber Conservancy Board, was chosen by the shipowners of Hull as a representative of the fishing trade of the port, and was appointed by the Board of Trade on the North Sea Fisheries Committee, besides holding many other leading positions in the property owning world.

He was charged with offences against several girls under 16 years of age. He obtained the services of several noted K.C.S and other lawyers and detectives to help him, and they scoured the cities to try and get matter whereby the girls could be seen in the worst light—morally. Needless to state, the girls belonged to the working class.

When the judge ordered him nine months hard labour the poor dupes of Liberalism and Toryism thought it showed the sincerity, and wisdom of our governors—But—wait and see!

He was sentenced at the end of February. At the beginning of May, or shortly after two months had elapsed, the Hull Press announced the release of Cargill on the ground of indisposition. He was removed to his home, prison life not agreeing with this tender plant. And a member of the town council ventured the opinion that if he had been a poor man he would have been in prison yet.

They were going to deal with “the great traffickers in human beings.” They were going to strike at “the international ring of procurers.” Ah, yes! a story of going to do. When, owing to an oversight, no doubt, a sumptuous flat in Piccadilly was raided, the flat keeper, calling herself Queenie Gerald, was charged with procuring girls. In the course of the evidence at Marlboro' Street, however, it transpired that prominent men were associated with the business—and the usual thing took place.

The case came on at the sessions watered down to one of "exercising influence over the movements of prostitutes for the purpose of gain.” At the police court she had pleaded not guilty, but now she answered: "Guilty!” the result being that no evidence was taken against her on the charges made, the jury were not sworn, all in spite of the fact that Mr. Travers Humphrey, the prosecuting counsel had at the Police Court stated that (vide "Daily Telegraph,” June 21st) “There were a large number of letters which made it quite clear that, apart from the prisoner's earnings herself, and apart from what she received from the girls, she was carrying on the trade of a procuress.”

The public were excluded from the Court and the Press representatives were told they were only there as a privilege, and were to report no names and be careful not to let much leak out. They were ordered not to divulge the real name of Queenie Gerald—and all for what reason!

BECAUSE LEADING MEMBERS OF MODERN SOCIETY WERE PATRONS OF THIS PICCADILLY FLAT.

Conclusive evidence of procuring was given earlier at the Police Court proceedings, but that didn't stop the charge being dropped at the Quarter Sessions. One of the letters written to “a gentleman at the Ritz Hotel” ran as follows:

“Your friend wishing to meet a few society ladies. I can arrange for three on Sunday. They are the real thing and frightfully expensive. Will you ask the Prince what he is prepared to give.”

From the Socialist Standard, September, 1913.

I was there in '68 (1988)

From the May 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

I was studying for my finals exams at Hull University when it started to happen. Thousands of students on the streets of Paris — then the workers on strike too. Law and order was breaking down. That's what the newspapers and the radio told us, and we saw bits of it on our black and white TV screens.

Then it came over here. Or sort of. Demonstrations and sit-ins at colleges and universities all over the country. What sparked the one at Hull — if it wasn't just the Paris events — was the authorities dragging their feet over student representation on university committees. Before most of us knew it, general meetings were being called and resolutions passed. The administration building was occupied.

A hundred students sat in. Then two hundred, then five or six hundred. The administration was at a standstill. I was involved too. I'd never been a "militant", but I'd always supported the Labour Party and had a gut feeling for the underdog. What actually drove me in there more than anything else was seeing a silly detestable bugger of a student on my course standing outside the administration block wearing a large badge with the words "I'm backing Brynmor" (Brynmor Jones was the university's vice- chancellor). I called him a rat and walked into the occupation.

Once you were in there, you became more and more convinced your cause was a just one. Student "leaders" addressed meetings. and spoke persuasively. We were determined to see it through. There was an atmosphere of . . . what was it? — freedom? . . . community? that made you heady. It was what the activists called "radicalisation" and you put your case with conviction and enthusiasm to other students you met outside.

How long was it going to last? On campus there were rumours about goings-on in the sit-in. The local press picked it up. Offices were being vandalised, so they said, student records carried away, orgies held. I never saw any of it — and at the time wondered what I'd missed. But I did see people's resolve gradually slipping away and the sitters-in become fewer and fewer until only a few die-hards were left. The University weren't using a heavy hand. They were playing a waiting game, which they knew they would eventually win. And as they played the game, a group of "moderate" students used the students' union constitution to call an emergency general meeting with the proposition that the occupation cease forthwith.

It was the biggest gathering of students I'd ever seen — about 1.200. Those in favour of the motion spoke first and were frankly pathetic. The speakers on our side were cool and logical, and some of them brilliant. If there was any justice, we should have won. But we didn't. The vice-chancellor was allowed to address the students and showed himself, contrary to reputation, to be an extremely clever man. He was conciliatory. He said he sympathised with the demands for change, promised that reforms would be made to give the students more say in the running of the university but that in the meantime, in the name of moderation and responsibility, we should go back to our books so that the reforms could start to be discussed. We filed through division doors. Our side had 400 votes. The opposition had 700 plus. We'd lost. Or had we? For procedural reasons another vote was needed to finalise the matter. The left-wing "agitators" whom many people said had fomented the whole thing in the first place — maybe they had — tried to prolong the debate as much as possible in the hope that enough "moderates" would drift off for the vote to swing the other way. But. though a few people left, when the final vote was taken at six o'clock, there was still a decisive majority against the occupation.

It was the same story up and down the country. The various demonstrations and sit-ins came to an end. It was the same in France too. When the agitators died away. De Gaulle called an election and won hands-down. As for Hull. I left that year so I don't know whether they ever got the reforms.

I never really understood at the time what had gone on — either here or in France. People said that we'd been close to a socialist revolution. I only started to understand two or three years later when I came into contact with The Socialist Party. I asked the members I met what they thought of the events of '68 and was shown a copy of the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard with the cover "How close was France to a socialist revolution?". The answer it gave was a revelation to me and. if you can still get hold of a copy, it's just as much worth reading now as it was then.

Howard Moss

Letters: Work and leisure (2008)

Letters to the Editors from the March 2008 issue of the Socialist Standard

Work and leisure

Dear Editors

Although I agree with much of what the editors write in reply to the letter by N.B. (February Socialist Standard), I think there is more to say about work and leisure in a socialist world.

N.B. writes “People need a contrast between work and leisure in order to appreciate and enjoy their leisure time.” The editors comment on this: “Of course, there will still be a distinction in socialism between organised work to be done during set hours, even if enjoyable, and recreational activities carried out at the individual’s discretion.”

Both N.B. and the editors assume that the line commonly drawn between work and leisure by people in capitalism will also be drawn by people in socialism. I question this. A few people today—some retired workers and some capitalists who are more than non-employed parasites—are able to live productive and enjoyable lives which they don’t divide into work and leisure segments. In socialism I expect many more such people and society will be the better for having them.

In capitalism it is understandable that workers do divide their lives into work (paid employment) and leisure (mostly as customers of the leisure industry). In socialism there won’t be employment or the leisure industry. Instead there is likely to be a division (though not a hard and fast one) between socially committed activities and individually chosen activities. Both types of activity will straddle what we today call work and leisure.

Most of us will commit some of our time to being, for example, train drivers, classroom teachers, members of orchestras or football teams. Most of us will also spend some of our time doing things that don’t require being with other people at a specified time and place—for example, handicrafts and individual sports.

Michael Schauerte (in the same issue) writes of the socialist revolution: “The first change that seems likely, for a number of reasons, is a major reduction in the length of the working day.” Michael shows too little creative imagination about what work will mean for us in socialism.

Certainly we won’t want to spend more time than we have to on activities or in circumstances that we find unpleasant, boring or damaging. But why should we be concerned with “the length of the working day”? Some activities and interests—socially committed or individual chosen—may be so absorbing, thrilling or delightful that it wouldn’t make sense to long to reduce time spend on them.

People will have much more choice about their lifestyle than they do now. Some may choose Marxian multi-tasking: hunter, farmer, critic, philosopher, blogger, all in one day. Others may devote their whole lives to one interest or activity, bordering on the obsessive. I guess most of us will be somewhere between these two extremes.

Stan Parker, 

London NW3.

Northern Rock

Dear Editors

The Tories have always presented themselves as the party of low taxation, and with another ‘former left’ turned New Labour Cabinet Minister carcass for them to succulently devour (Peter Hain over allegations of sleaze), are naturally revelling in the government’s current dilemma over whether to either nationalise completely Northern Rock or initiate a cobbled up tax funded financial scheme that acts as a veneer for doing something.

The principal question therefore for a party which is allegedly in opposition and whose fundamental tenet of ideology is low taxation to promote free enterprise (albeit also rigidly upheld by New Labour) is why don’t they let this tenet do the talking, by insisting that Northern Rock is an unequivocal market failure and should, like other failed firms, go into liquidation to save the billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money necessary to prop it up?

The reality is, despite all the hype and bluster between both, neither they or New Labour could possibly allow this to happen because if a financial institution of this magnitude were allowed to collapse it would expose to the voting public at large the underlying fragility of the entire capitalist system. Hence this is why most mainstream financial commentators seem reluctant to emphasise that Northern Rock is the first obvious symptom in the UK of a far greater endemic problem of the global financial system where borrowing and speculation has basically outweighed actual economic growth. Indeed the term ‘credit crunch’ is simply a useful euphemism that conveys the myth that it was all down to politicians or financial gurus failing to exercise foresight beforehand. In fact the majority of mainstream politicians in parliament today simply oversee these inept ‘fat cat’ policies as a formality, regardless of the detrimental effects they have on the livelihoods of millions of their constituents particularly if they are working class or homeowners with mortgages.

So for the Tories, as long as New Labour carries the can for this Northern Rock debacle the better. However for the average voter, where the whole fiasco and the billions that are conveniently found to save it should be precipitating a public revival in socialist thinking in some shape or form, the chronic ideological vacuum that exists in British politics today is comprehensively exposed.

Nick Vinehill, 

Snettisham, Norfolk

Reply: 

Good point. The ideological supporters of capitalism like to preach the virtues of competition eliminating lame ducks, but the government – guardian of the interests of a national capitalist class as a whole – doesn’t always let this happen, especially not in a case like Northern Rock which could have a domino effect and even if this costs “the taxpayers” (i.e., the rest of the capitalist class) money. 

Editors.

 

The Hull Floods

Dear Editors

Last year’s floods were the widest spread, if not the worst on record, in Britain. Great swathes of the country were affected including the West Country and Yorkshire. Worst affected, however, was Hull, my home town. Local events did not attract much attention in the national media. Hull is a visually uninteresting town, off the beaten track, with few rich people to make a noise (it is the ninth most deprived area in England). The death toll was low, with only one person killed, and, unlike in Gloucester, the floods did not generate any stunning aerial views. However in terms of human impact the northern port was certainly in the front line as can be seen in the recent “The June 2007 Floods in Hull: Final Report by the Independent Review Body”.

Stated simply the rainfall on the 25 June was exceptionally heavy and followed in the wake of another heavy storm ten days earlier. The soil was already completely saturated and the drains filled to capacity. There was just nowhere for the water to go. This is a matter of some concern for the area is completely flat with much of the built up area below sea level. Nearly 9,000 homes and 1,300 businesses were affected and 91 of 99 schools in the area damaged, 43 severely so. Institutions affected included the University, where the library (once run by poet Philip Larkin) was badly damaged. As might be expected, the poorer areas, including Bransholme (said to be one of the worst estates in Britain), suffered most. Some 6,300 people had to seek temporary accommodation; around 1,000 are still living in caravans, upstairs or in lodgings.  The trauma of being flooded out has been considerable and, with repairs badly backlogged, long lasting.

Immediately after the event great play was made in local papers over the state of the roadside drains. Undoubtedly in some cases these were blocked due to reductions in street cleaning budgets. However the official report largely negated claims of any major impact. The Independent Review Body did find there were “serious issues” with the drainage facilities, specifically a failed pumping station on Bransholme, and commented “detailed information about the performance and operation of water utilities’ drainage systems should be in the public domain”, a clear condemnation of the damaging privatisation undertaken over the past quarter century. It also picked up on insurance problems faced by many, recommending that the state underwrite flood risks.

Ironically given these proposals of intervention by the state (which clearly isn’t interested), it was the community response which provided back up to most people: “The people of Hull showed extraordinary levels of goodwill, comradeship and willingness to help neighbours during the floods”. So much for selfish human nature.

Keith Scholey,

Hull

West Hull Election Notes. (1908)

From the January 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Jas. Holmes, the “Labour” candidate, did his best to let folks know he was not a Socialist. He had never disguised the fact, he said.

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And yet he was supported, not only by the I.L.P., which openly advocates such a course of action, but also by the S.D.F., which claims to be “uncompromisingly revolutionary.”

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At the candidate’s meeting at the Beverley Road Baths on November 23rd, the chair was taken by Dr. J. Nelson, S.D.F.

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Mr. Holmes’ election address was like any other Radical’s. He believes that the national ownership of our rail ways, the taxing of unearned increment, the abolition of royalties on our mineral wealth, the re-assessment of the land tax, the freeing of the land from monopoly together with leasehold enfranchisement, are “ the real remedies against poverty and unemployment."

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“What Labour Leaders really think of the Liberal Party” was the frontispiece of a card issued by the Liberals. It contained the following five pars.

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1. Mr. Keir Hardie, M. P., says: (Labour Leader, Jan. 1907.) I have a profound distrust of party newspapers eulogies of Ministers on coming men, but in common fairness I must say that Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman has earned and fully deserves all the praise which is being heaped upon him.
2. Mr. David Shackleton M.P. says (Oldham. Oct. 1st., 1907.) The Labour Party has had experience of two Governments and I must say that the atmosphere of the House of Commons has changed. To-day we find ourselves, with very rare exceptions, supporting the measures brought in by the Government which are in the right direction.
3. Mr. A. Henderson, M.P. says : (July, 1907.) In spite of the House of Lords there remains to the credit of the Government an output of legislation benefitting the condition of the millions they represent, greater than ever had been accomplished by any session of parliament.
4.  If these things are true, why should Mr. Holmes split the Progressive vote? Don't be the catspaw of the Tory party.
5. Mr. A. H. Gill, M.P., President of the Trade Union Congress, in his Presidential Address, on September 3rd. 1907, made allusion to the legislative output. He said that the Act safeguarding Trade Union Funds and the Workmen's Compensation Act, were thorough and splendid pieces of constructive legislation. He thought the thanks of the workers were due to the Government for this valuable legislation.

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As Mr. Holmes, in some of his literature, even dropped "Labour” and asked the electors to "Vote for Holmes, the real Progressive," Mr. Wilson’s reference to the splitting of the Progressive vote was not out of place.

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Sir George Bartley, the Tory candidate, issued a poster upon which he stated that from 1898 to 1906 the Navvies’ Union paid John Ward and other officials £5.267 16s. 9d. in salaries and expenses and £6,180 3s. 0d. in benefits to members. Also that during 1892-3-4 the salaries of the officials of the Eastern Counties Labourers’ Federation amounted to £2,805 1s. 9d. and the members' benefits to £657 10s. 14d.

Blogger's Note:

1907 Kingston upon Hull West by-election wiki page

Jesus Christ! (1972)

From the August 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Saturday, while standing by Queen Victoria pointing with her sceptre in the customary direction, I witnessed a disturbing spectacle. A Salvation Army band was marching round the statue playing Onward Christian Soldiers while the latter indulged in cries of “Jesus” and “Hallelujah”.

No, it wasn’t the Black and White Minstrels. It was the so-called Hull and East Riding Festival of Light aiming to promote love, purity and family life. About 250 people attended which must have disappointed the organisers who expected a growing movement following the London version. Most of the crowd were young and somewhat hairy in contrast to a later meeting in which the middle aged and self-styled middle class sang hymns and loved each other with cold, aloof, even frigid passion.

The well rehearsed vocal responses of the younger section suggested that they might have been imported by coach from various communes of Jesus People to make up the numbers. The citizens of Hull were no doubt engaged in such selfish pursuits as scouring the market to spread out their dole and Social Security money or cleaning up the fallen ceilings of their slums. They might even have been making love!

The reader will probably have noticed many parallels between the Salvation Army and their political counterparts, the Socialist Labour League. But some other interesting comparisons suggest themselves. The Jesus Freaks who demand the Jesus revolution now are surely none other than the elusive third wing of the Situationists.

From a distance the ritual spelling out of “Jesus” (Give us a J! etc.) and “Who’s alive?. . Jesus!” gave one the impression that the childishly intended and executed swastikas on the festival’s posters were not so inappropriate after all. In contrast, something analagous to political vanguardism also seemed to be present in the march behind the band and the great crusade for liberty fearlessly waged by Mrs. Whitehouse and her small but dedicated élite of television addicts who know what’s best for us better than we know ourselves.

A petition was available aimed at forcing the government to put through the transitional demands of television censorship and book burning. At the evening meeting the well known right wing Tory Patrick Wall M.P. spoke in support. A socialist asked if questions were permitted, to put other points of view. On being told that the people had only come to hear the speakers, several opponents left the meeting pursued by an embarrassed and apologetic methodist.

But the Festival’s supporters had the last word from the top of the City Hall steps. Our friends who did not have their questions answered have the consolation of knowing that they will be prayed for. Meanwhile Mrs. Whitehouse spoke of the enemy within and forces working for the overthrow of our society; and some Labour M.P.s sent their support for the Festival.

Consider love, purity and family life. “Love” is simple enough, being a feeling of general benevolence for everybody but especially one’s enemies. Any physical relationship must remain in strict bureaucratic limits. The Jesus Communes hold everything in common except each other.

“Purity” means that certain biological facts can be mentioned while others cannot, especially when children are waiting around to be corrupted or frightened out of their wits. When Christians advocate family life they are at their most naive. Can they say that the family structure of western civilisation, or that of 2,000 years ago from which their dogmatic rules which control it derive, are in all or even most cases satisfactory?

Of course a “perfect” family life with unbounded happiness would be great as would "perfect” feudalism or “perfect” slavery. They say that failures and stresses in family life are due to the faults of people; their ungodliness; their lustful desires and their failure to appreciate the fact that family life must be the best possible system because that is what it says in the bible.

The usual reasoning prevails of accepting the dogma and twisting the facts to fit it, just as much now in this mini-revival as in the ancient Catholic church which fiddled a second marriage for Joseph to explain away Jesus’s brothers while preserving Mary’s virginity for her crowning in heaven.

And it is this attitude that makes nonsense of the Jesus People’s claim to be a revolutionary force. True, they claim to be for democratic action. Two of their banners showed ballot papers with the choice: Jesus—Satan and Porno—Purity. The communes are just self multiplying bisexual monasteries with regular biblical readings and rhythmical incantations.

An organisation which bases itself on divine revelation can hardly be expected to be able to analyse the modern system and thereby find serious ways to change it. However, the movement is not catching on; if it did, it would be one more force against the free thought and free discussion and the build up of revolutionary consciousness.

ALF.

White Slavers in Parliament. (1913)

From the August 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The Parliament of Man — the Federation of the World.” Thus sang the poet but it is not yet. The Parliament of our time is an assembly of traffickers in slaves of all colours but mostly white —of both sexes but of women increasingly.

During the past month the dockers of those busy ports, Hull, Leith, etc., have struck against the tyranny of the slave-owners. These most helpless of casual labourers, the men who congregate round dock gates for hours in the hope of obtaining a few hours slavery, found themselves faced by the majesty of the law — the law made by robbers to sanction robbery.

The representatives of mighty moneyed interests made demands for police and military, and the Liberal Home Secretary promptly ordered troops to the seat of struggle. "Reynolds’” (20.7.13) announced “Warships Ready,” not to fight the Germans, but the white slaves of the black international. This Liberal paper says: “Six gunboats of the mine-laying class have arrived at the port with several hundred men ready to be landed to protect life and property." The lives and property of the traders in flesh and blood. “The military and naval authorities are now acting conjointly in the matter’’—all in the interests of the shipowners and merchants who use Parliament so well to further their own ends.

The dockers at Hull and elsewhere will see these things repeated while they vote into power Liberals and their Labour and Tory allies, what time they rely upon an inefficient and out-of-date trade union to prosecute their economic struggles.

The Wilson family of Liberal shipowners boast of a generation's representation of Hull; of such is the blindness of Labour!

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For many weeks the white slaves of the Black Country have been fighting for 23s. per week for wearing out their lives before furnaces and kilns and making wealthy the shining lights of the Liberal and Tory parties. After a sad and foredoomed struggle they have gone back to work on a compromise of 22s. per week.

Recently it was the girls and women of the adjacent towns and Cradley Heath who were driven to strike. These women, making chains of iron for those who hold them bound in chains more cruel than can be forged out of any metal, stayed out some weeks, until the Board of Trade; (in white slaves) settled the matter by ordering employers to pay "all workers except learners” the starvation rate of 2½d. per hour. When the lace workers of Nottingham rose against their death-dealing wage the same Trade Boards Act passed by the parasites’ Parliament fixed their ; wages at 2¾d. per hour for “all workers except ’ learners.” The tailoresses in the bespoke (better class) branch of the male garment trade were next treated to Christian charity in the shape of 3¼ d. per hour for ‘‘all workers except learners.”

It may, indeed, be truly said that the Trade Boards were used to make coffins for the toilers.

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This same Parliament decided that 5d. per hour was a "fair wage” for the navvies building a new naval base at Rosyth The men struck for 6d., which was the local rate, whereupon the manager of the local labour Exchange proceeded to Dublin to hire the sous of Erin at 5½d per hour. Meanwhile the Irish Party of hungry politicians voted with the Government against enforcing any higher wage than 5d. To add to the irony of the situation, the men building the new naval base found the harbour held by gunboats sent by the plutocrats’ Parliament to shoot them if they deemed it desirable.

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Space fills and time flies. I had intended to deal with the latest developments of what is sanctimoniously called "The White Slave Traffic,” the last hope of the beaten and broken derelicts of murderous industrialism. Another phase of the trade in white slaves arranged by Parliament—I refer to the white slaves of insurance—also demands attention, but both these must await a future issue.

Adolph Kohn

Mixed Media: Hull Ferens Art Gallery (2014)

The Mixed Media column from the February 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Hull Ferens Art Gallery

The Ferens Art Gallery in Hull which opened in 1927 is a great example of how impressive a municipal art collection can be outside the metropolis. In fact this gallery has A View on the Grand Canal (1728) by 'Venetia Vedutista' Canaletto, one of many ‘views’ which were once in demand by the aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie as souvenirs of the Grand Tour, and one of the few in an English municipal collection.

Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech-ring (1943)

Impressionist Laura Knight's evocative Dressing the Children (1906) portrays a woman dressing children by firelight in a kitchen with a cat in the centre of the picture. It was painted in the cottage of an ironstone miner and his family in the fishing village of Staithes on the Yorkshire coast where Knight lived in an artists’ colony. Knight records in her autobiography how she saw in the cottage 'greater poverty and misery than it seemed possible for anyone to bear.' The family relied heavily on Knight's income, and eventually she and her husband gave the family five pounds to buy a horse and cart and to set up a fish selling business. Only part of the loan was repaid, the remainder was offered as a gift. In the Second World War Knight was a 'War Artist' and painted the iconic feminist Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech-ring.

The semi-abstract Keith Vaughan's Coastal Defences (Seaford, East Sussex) (c1959-62) is abstract assemblies of two dimensional geometrical shapes although Vaughan always rooted his paintings in observed reality, and was never completely abstract. There is a Henry Moore sculpture Working Model for Seated Woman (1980) which is a figure seated on a solid but low block base for support with her cloth-bound knees forced upwards by the pose.

Niccolò Renieri's baroque St Sebastian tended by the Holy Irene (1625) is in the style of the great Caravaggio with its strong lighting contrasts (chiaroscuro) and a preoccupation with the human body. A Roman warrior, the legend goes, Sebastian served in the private guard of the Emperor Diocletian, who sentenced him to be shot with arrows as punishment for his Christian faith, but as he lay dying and wounded he was found by the Holy Irene and nursed back to health. This painting is a very popular piece of work in the Ferens Art Gallery due to its striking nature and scale, it has been described as 'one of his most successful works, perhaps even his masterpiece.'

Steve Clayton

Lost hero (2000)

Book Review from the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dan Billany - Hull's Lost Hero by Valerie A Reeves & Valerie Showan. Kingston Press.

I have a confession to make before I start: this review is one of those tedious ". . . and the Socialist Party is briefly mentioned in line x of page x-ty x". Yes Billany was an ex-member - joining in 1931 and being expelled under foggy circumstances just two years later. But besides this, Reeves and Showan's biography is a fascinating study of the author of The Trap, which Ken Worpole, in his study of working class writing Dockers and Detectives, called the "finest novel to come out of the war".

Billany was born in 1913 in the terraces off Hull's famous Hessle Road, close by the western docks. Leaving school at 14 he was briefly an errand boy before starting an apprenticeship as an electrician with a local firm. As part of the training he had to attend evening classes and like many other working men found a new interest in learning. Before long he left the electrical works to become a full-time student first at the local Technical College and then at Hull University. By the outbreak of the Second World War he was an English teacher at Chiltern Street school in Hull and in the spring of 1940 he joined the army. It was at this point his writing career took off with the publication of The Opera House Murders, a rather run-of-the-mill thriller, and the acceptance of The Magic Door, based on his advanced teaching methods. In 1942 Second Lieutenant Billany was posted to North Africa, and not long after his arrival was captured at the fall of Tobruk. After months of appalling deprivation he was shipped to a POW camp in Italy. After the Armistice in September 1943 he was released by the Italian authorities but because Italy was occupied by the Germans was forced into hiding. In all probability he died of exposure in the Apennines near Rome a few months later. The Trap and The Cage, two novels relating to his wartime experiences, written while in captivity, were published posthumously.

Just for once the socialist ideas held by Billany are represented very accurately. That nationalisation is merely state capitalism (and this well before the late Tony Cliff appropriated the notion for his own sloganising purposes) and that "colonial freedom" really meant the substitution of a local boss for a white boss are both mentioned. The problems with this book lie elsewhere.

Firstly, the purpose of Reeves and Showan is to portray Billany as a repressed homosexual. This is tendentious. Billany was definitely interested in the idea of male homosexuality, as for instance in The Cage which is a rather tedious account of the obsession of one man for another in a POW camp. However the authors go too far in presenting fiction as dramatised fact. In relation to his early unpublished novel Paul they talk about Billany "fantasising" about being in love with a boy. This is practically accusing the fellow of being a child molester; an image of homosexuals not only old-fashioned but totally unjustified by facts.

Secondly, and rather more importantly, Reeves and Showan do not really address the crucial question of why Billany volunteered for service in 1940. Vaguely saying he wanted to prove himself really doesn't wash, because Billany was not politically ignorant. In The Trap he clearly refers to the cause of the war as diplomatic scrambles over "international credits, trade routes, and a steady five percent" and goes on to state that "I do not 'believe' in the war—in this or any other." Yet he was there, as an officer fighting for the cause of British capitalism. He was not forced to enlist, indeed with bright prospects as an author he had no personal reason to. The reason lies doubtless with Billany's attitude to fighting. This first crops up when, as a teacher, he inspires his class with the story of an old pupil who was a hero in the First World War, single-handedly taking a section of the enemy front line. Billany was a romantic with a romantic's desire for adventure. For heroism. And for this he went against what his logic and political background told him. This was to cost him dearly. He paid for it with his life.

KAZ