Hyndman as confusionist. (1908)

A Short Story from the October 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

He of this sketch was a fine specimen of the men from Erin’s Isle. He had the physique of a Fitzsimmons and the latent brain capacity of a Mirabeau. As you looked at the great eye-orbits, big forehead, and strong chin, you found yourself speculating as to the big things a man like this will do in a community that lays itself out to grow men, instead of mere labour-commodities for capitalist profit.

“Oi’ve listened to Hyndman,” he said in his fine Irish brogue, “from that No. 3 platform yonder, and I’m jiggered if oi aint quite flabbergasted. Hyndman, look you, on the platform with that strange mixture. Bless me if ’tisn’t enough to confuse a St. Patrick.”

“Indeed,” I said.

“You see,” he proceeded, “according to Hyndman’s point of view (if I understand him aright, and I think I do), it’s no more use to go on talking against drink and gambling and sweating, and low wages and high prices, and pauperism and lunacy, and physical deterioration and starving children, than it is to go on picking maggots off a piece of rotten meat or killing-cockroaches in a damp cellar. As soon as you’ve done for one lot of maggots you’ve got another, and as soon as you’ve settled one lot of cockroaches there’s another arrived. It’s the meat that’s wrong. It’s the damp cellar that’s wrong. And so Hyndman says it’s capitalism that’s wrong, and so long as you have capitalism you must have drink and gambling and sweating, and lunatics and starving children, and slums and unimployed- and more on ’em every day ! ‘

“Well, I’ll leave it to you,” I said, “as to how nearly that describes Hyndman’s position. But, anyhow, I think it’s the truth, don’t you ? ”

“Yes. And Hyndman thinks that too. For instance, he says he spoke in this town twenty-five years ago, and they were then demanding the same little pottering political reforms that they are demanding still, and they are further off from getting them than ever. And the capitalists are taking more of the wealth every year. And the conditions of the workers are going worse every year. And the unemployed are increasing every year. And long spells of bad trade follow short spells of good trade quicker and quicker, so that for sure you may correctly say ’tis bad trade all the time. That’s what Hyndman says ! ”

“Well?” “So that it means that things for the workers go from bad to worse, and that so long as there’s these capitalists on your back, and they sucking like leeches by what they call their capital, there can’t be no improvement for the worker—no progress—no reform.”

“It looks like it, doesn’t it ?”

“Sure, it does. Because, as these capitalists get more capital, they must suck Labour more, and there’s no preventing them, so long’s there’s the system. They can laugh at all your reforms. And so long as they’ve their system they’ll have their full pound of flesh. And that’s what oi’ve heard Hyndman say.” .

“Well, what’s your difficulty ?”

“Just this : If Hyndman believes that before we can have any betterment we must organise ourselves, and go for the overthrow of the system, what does he want to be on the platform with these Labour fellows, who are simply helping the capitalists to mend the system., They don’t mean abolishing capitalism; they simply mean making it a little better. They’ve never examined the system—devil a bit have they. There was one fellow there who talked a lot about temperance, and he seemed to think all you’ve got to do is to make the people teetotal, as if that’s any good so long as there’s capitalism. Then he was followed by a woman who seemed possessed with the holy desire to get the half-time kiddies out of the factory, though how that would advantage the kiddies if they had to come home to an empty table, and how the capitalist was to be made to keep the table full, were matters she was not very clear about. Then another suggested that the capitalist might feed the children through the capitalist State. But if the capitalist does anything for us through his State, I reckon he’ll secure his pound of flesh by buying our labour-power cheaper in return. Then there were other pills for earthquakes. One man seemed to think that an eight-hour day would absorb the unemployed. Another was big on municipal and state capitalism, and he seemed to think that if you could only get the capitalist to rob the worker in a collective way, through the municipality and the capitalist state, instead of in the old way, through his private, factory, that this was going to advantage the worker. The fool ! The post-office here, and the state railways elsewhere, ought to teach him that these things can make no difference to the wage-worker. In fact, so long as the worker is a wage-worker, and the capitalist buys him as he buys anything else, and so long as there’s plenty of unemployed making his price his mere living, whether the state buys him or the master buys him it’ll be all the same.”

“Yes,” I replied, “if you get anything in the way of reform for the worker, so long as there’s capitalism, you simply make him a cheaper commodity for the capitalist, and the capitalist sucks it back again.”

“That’s so,” said my Irishman, “and Hyndman sees that. And I want to know what he wants on the platform with these reforming Johnnies. If Hyndman believes that the system is wrong, then why doesn’t he help you chaps to draw the working class away from all this political reform-mongering which, mind your he himself admits has brought us nothing during the last twenty-five years ? Why doesn’t he educate and organise the working class, to prepare for the overthrow of capitalism, and leave the capitalists and these reform fools to mend their system—if they can ?”

“Looks like a new form of the great game of how not to do it, don’t you think so ?” I said.

“How ? Which way ?” he demanded.

“Well, hearing Hyndman keeps them from understanding what the other chaps mean ; and then hearing the other chaps keeps them from understanding what Hyndman means, and so at the end it keeps them much where they were, Hyndman’s presence and talk makes the great British Public believe that this trade union and Labour gang are a very revolutionary lot, and the presence of the good, solid, practical, level-headed gentlemen on the same platform with Hyndman, makes the same B. P. believe that Hyndman and the S.D.P. are quite judicious politicians, after all.”

“Well, but all this is confusing the workers!” roared my friend.

“Or educating them,” I suggested.

“Educating, be d——d (his language got very strong). I say it’s confusing them !”

“Well, well,” I said, “both words mean much. the same thing applied to the wage-slaves. The educated of the other class don’t lecture the working class to stimulate and enlighten them, but to chloroform and confuse them.”

“Be gorra, and it seems so,” he said. Then after a short silence, still meditating on the issue, he exclaimed—

“Can a man be both a reformer and a revolutionist ? ”

“No.” I said, “But he can pose as both until the people find him out and force him into one camp or the other.”

“And is Hyndman posing as both ?”

“Well, there are the facts. What do they say ? ”

“They say he is. He’s preaching revolution, and he’s on a reform platform. But what is he at heart ? Is he a revolutionist ? ”

“No, I don’t think so. Hyndman’s desire has always been to be the big man, with the big following, who could show the capitalists how to run their system in a proper, up-to-date, scientific way, don’t you know.”

“It looks like it.”

“Well, take the facts. Lately, Hyndman has been pointing out to the British capitalists, their danger of having a war with the German capitalists. Now what revolutionist cares a tinker’s anathema about who the British capitalist goes to war with. Certainly, if the German capitalists invaded England tomorrow they might lay rough hands on the property of the English capitalists, but they could take nothing from the English wage-slaves, seeing that the English capitalists have cleaned them out too well already. So that no evil can happen to the workers from any invasion, and no capitalist war is worth their thought. And yet here is Hyndman writing yards of this stuff in conjunction with that other fool, Blatchford, in working-class papers, and trying to get the workers interested in it. Then again, Hyndman has written a lot in Justice lately about “Capitalist Secret Diplomacy.” Now why should the worker waste one thought upon “Capitalist Secret Diplomacy” ? Surely our business ought to he to cultivate opportunities to oust the capitalist.”

“No, it’s no use our watching the capitalists, how they play the game to filch the wealth they first steal from us, from each other; we must organise ourselves to stop the robbery at the root.”

“I say, old man, when are you going to join the Socialist Party of Great Britain ?”

“Oi’m watching you,” he replied, “but oi must be careful. Life is short, and oi can’t afford to waste any more of mine with reformers.”

“Well,” I said, “if you think there’s danger, come in and help to keep us straight.”

“That’s a thought oi have,” he replied, “oi attend your meetings, buy your STANDARD, and drop my penny in the hat.”

John Tamlyn

Answers to Correspondents. (1908)

Letters to the Editors from the August 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Walter Hearn (New Maiden) writes complaining that in our criticism of the replies given to a questioner by Joseph Burgess at Dundee, we did not say “what Comrade Joseph Burgess ought to have replied if he had been an Equal Dividuigist instead of a Socialist.”—Why complain to us. We don’t know what reply an “Equal Dividuigist” should make. What is an “Equal Dividuigist” ? We can only suggest the reply a Socialist should make. Joseph Burgess didn’t make the Socialist reply—which is understandable because he is not a Socialist and probably knew nothing about it.

John Tamlyn (Burnley).—Thanks. Will use at the earliest opportunity. As you say, Justice is very dull. For the rest we entirely agree.

Fred H. (Biggleswade).—We shall reach Hitchin some day. Meanwhile “go for” the local confusionists to the best of your power. You may make an effective John the Baptist for the Party.

F. W. Sanderson (Brighton).—We probably agree, but as your card is indecipherable we are not sure.

Letter: The Fall of Keir Hardie. (1908)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sir, I have stood by Hardie through the years. I have held him to be a man apart from the motley group of members and fakers of capitalism, to whom he has given political existence, and that he calls his Labour Party. I at one time allowed him to nominate me for membership of the National Branch, deciding that if his party was good enough for Hardie it should be good enough for me, and that if Hardie could do something with such elements I might. So I allowed myself to become a member of the Independent Labour Party, and have remained one up to within a week. I have hit out against the policy and tactics of the Party whenever I have occupied its platform, but I retained my membership simply because of my reverence for Hardie. Again and again I have contended with S.D.F. men: "Hardie is something bigger than these reform fellows. He means more than reform. He is a revolutionist—a kind of eagle among carrion crows." But since last week I admit myself beaten. I have been sold. Most of the workers are sold many times. You knock down their idol and they instantly get another. I have not been sold many times, but I admit I have been once—in Hardie.

Edward VII by the grace of the god Capital, and, in obedience to its will, that he might secure for it some sort of a basis to contract a further loan with Russia, was deputed to go and kow-tow with the bloody Czar.

Hardie had an opportunity to bring home to the House of Commons the horrors of Russia, and to fix them upon the Czar, backed by his "black hundred."

And Hardie got up his case well. Oh, yes, the facts were all right and the rhetoric also. Not for one moment do I think that I could have marshalled the facts as well, or have painted the pictures as vividly. He gave them the thousands that have rotted in Russian prisons during the last two years; he gave them the thousands that have been butchered by the emissaries of the "black hundred." And he brought the whole of the atrocities hone to the Czar telling the "House" how the Czar had thanked the "black hundred" for murdering wholesale the people of Russia, under the cry that they were Jews, and adorning himself and his child with the badge of their order as a token of his appreciation of their services to Russia. Then Hardie was called upon by the Deputy-Speaker to withdraw.

Well, with such a case, with such an array of facts, themselves completely pointing the charge, one would have thought that the mere human instrument, called upon to belie himself and deny them would have refused with quiet scorn, and have surrendered himself to any consequences.

But Hardie did not do this. He lost touch with the murdered in Russia, and the thousands groaning in its prisons. He commenced melodramatic word-play with the politician, Emmett. He ducked and edged and quibbled, and allowed horrible facts to be smothered in a play of words between himself and the Deputy-Speaker. And then when the latter insisted that the charge be withdrawn, Hardie withdrew the charge so far as it referred to the Czar and his Government.

Like Dan 'Connell, like Fergus O'Connor, like John Burns and a host of others—spouters, orators, fine rhetoricians, but not fighters, not revolutionists—so Hardie, when an opportunity arrived demanding that he should translate his speech into a bit of action, failed.

So Hardie has gone with the rest of them. The Socialist Movement has learnt that it must never trust him to use any great opportunity. Some of the papers had it that after "Artful Dodger" Asquith decided that he had bottled Hardie, he turned his face to his followers with a sardonic smile which said, "How's that for diplomacy?"

But had Asquith's man meant business, he might have retrieved his position even here, and the Whig lawyer might have had another unpleasant illustration of the fact that he who laughs last laughs best.

Had Hardie meant business, he might have proceeded with his speech, after the passage-at-arms with the Deputy-Speaker, he might have filled the ears of the "House" with the horrors of Russia; he might have piled fact upon fact proving what he had said, and then concluded: "the Russian Government is an autocracy, the Czar is a despot, and with these facts before me I say that the monstrous activities that I have laid before the "House" are the direct expression of the will of the Czar and his infamous Councillors, that he alone is responsible, being autocrat and despot, and I refuse to withdraw the charge." Then "Artful Dodger" Asquith would have smiled quite another smile.

But Hardie didn't mean business—and why? Was it his Parliamentary screw; or fear of not getting a seat in another Parliament, or fear of disrupting further that strange motley he calls the Labour Party, or what? It matters not. Once more some little political mote got into the popular leader's eye and blurred his vision as to the great matter for which he was pleading.

Then there was Grayson. He tells the people he wanted to say something. Why didn't he say it? Some of the papers say he was upon his feet before Henderson. Some of them say that the Deputy-Speaker called Grayson. Anyway, the pair got the floor pretty much together. Why did not Grayson proceed without it in the least recognising the existence of the man who had a compact with the Liberals to shut up the debate at a given time, or of it became in any way dangerous? Grayson may tell the mob outside, who have never been into the House of Commons, that he was prevented, but this will not go down with any man who has been into the Commons, and who knows that it requires a combination of circumstances rather more forceful than the ones of this debate to prevent a man in dead earnest from having his say in a hole like the House of Commons.

Anyhow, the debate upon the King's visit to Russia has been fruitful of much good to the English workers. It has smashed some more idols for some of us. It has shown us that the Labour Party is not independent at all, that it does make alliances with the Liberal Party to shut up debates when they become over verile. All this is education.

If the English Government would only try Russian methods on our spouters ever so little it would still further educate. But British capitalists are too wise for this. You mustn't frighten the popular idols of the people. Prospects of prison, disability, or banishment would turn most of these swans to geese. This would let people see too much. Disillusionment would set in fast. Therefore our Edward by the grace of Grab, going to one of Russia may say: "Behold I show thee a more excellent way to rule thy people. Do not murder and torture and crush in that old-fashioned way. Bamboozle thy people instead. Let them spout and have offices, and generally play the game, and soon you will find them so docile that, should any of their strong words annoy, you shall but threaten them with the least of these other things, so find them eager to withdraw.  Tut, tut, man, the father who has a child well broken in doesn't require to be always using the stick. He only requires now and then to show it, and this is more than sufficient."

But they do tell me that in Russia the people have gone beyond this spouting and office-holding and political game-playing, and refuse to have it at any price. They say that they have sighted the slavery underneath it all, and prefer prison banishment and death to it. And if this is so I don't know what Edward can say to Nicholas that will matter much. It seems to me that the same game played by both, with a people of this sort, must be nearly up. There are men and women in Russia of another sort than our Graysons and Hardies.

Yours, etc.,

John Tamlyn