Opt For Socialism (1969)

Editorial from the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

May Day this year saw what the press claimed was "Britain’s largest and most sporadic political strike since 1926". The Communist Party congratulated "the hundreds of thousands of workers" who were downing tools and Socialist Worker (IS) was so confident that "this May Day’s political strike confirms a willingness to struggle" that they wanted it to "mark the start of the fight for workers’ power”. But the Revolutionary Socialist Students’ Federation didn’t think it was as simple as that; first we had to decide whether we were witnessing merely "a massive rise of Trade Union consciousness" or was there instead "some glimmer of systematic revolutionary politics emerging from the militancy”?

Reading this sort of comment you could have been forgiven for not noticing that, at a time when trade unions and the right to strike are being openly threatened by the Labour government, less than one per cent of the labour force was prepared to stop work for a single day. Even in those areas where a relatively high proportion of workers turned out (Sheffield, for example, with 10,000 or 4 per cent of the work force on strike) the marches and demonstrations were poorly attended. In Sheffield 500 men and women gathered at the City Hall to listen to Labour MP Norman Atkinson calling for different policies from the government; in Manchester perhaps a similar number marched to the Labour Party’s headquarters; in Hull (with 3,000 dockers out) about 20 made the effort to demonstrate.

The facts, then, argue quite plainly that—such is the lack of even trade union consciousness among the vast majority of workers—they will accept some form of Industrial Relations BiU. In fact, Labour and Tories both recognise anti-strike legislation as a vote winner with the working class and vie with each other in portraying strikers as bloody-minded wreckers intent on sabotaging industrial output.

No delusions

Faced with this situation socialists do not take refuge in the sort of romantic delusion which the Left comforts itself with (“. . . the working class begins to move decisively onto the political scene .. .’’ writes the May Day edition of the Newsletter (SLL)). Members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in the industries involved were, of course, on strike on May Day. This is because, as workers ourselves, we support efforts by groups of working men and women to defend their wages and working conditions. We also support actions such as that taken by the employees at the Broadheath industrial estate near Manchester who passed a resolution at their May Day meeting calling on the AEF executive to conduct a ballot on the withdrawal of financial support from the Labour Party. Socialists have always refused to pay the political levy and have consistently advised other workers to do the same. And at our union branch meetings socialists put forward the sort of arguments which expose the government’s lies. So when Barbara Castle’s white paper In Place of Strife suggests that the class struggle can be eliminated from capitalism we show that the measures she proposes are futile. In America, for example, where the president can impose much longer ’cooling- off periods’ than Castle's 28 days, the average worker loses over four times as many days through strikes as in Britain; while in Australia, where strikes are virtually illegal, there are still many more stoppages per worker than in Britain.

But what distinguishes the Socialist Party from all other organisations is that our members constantly pose the socialist alternative to capitalism at their workplaces, at their trade union meetings, in bus queues—in fact, whenever and wherever we come in contact with other workers. We point out that far more than trade union activity or political reforms are needed to achieve a decent world; one without money or a wages system where the means of production will be owned by society and can therefore be used to satisfy people’s needs instead of being cramped by the dictates of the market.

Majority needed

Now the new call is for a work stoppage when the TUC meets on June 5. Groups like the Socialist Labour League are calling on the TUC at that meeting to organise a general strike in order to "halt Wilson". They write:

  But our cowardly critics will ask — ‘would a general strike be successful?’
  This is not the question (!). The task of revolutionary leadership is to provide the type of political leadership which is necessary in order to prepare the working class for what lies ahead. Since only a general strike would halt Wilson the task of all trade unionists and Marxists is to fight for it.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain argues that what is needed is not merely to "halt Wilson" but to "halt capitalism". This will not be achieved by any amount of loud-mouthed adventurism or super-revolutionary leadership. What is needed for such a social revolution is a majority of working men and women understanding what Socialism entails and determined to establish such a system. This understanding will grow (is growing) out of the collective experience of workers under capitalism —a process which socialists attempt to encourage by their propaganda activities. So even while socialists are engaged in the struggle over wages and working conditions, they never cease putting forward Socialism as an immediate demand. Far from standing back from the day-to-day struggles of the working class, socialists are involved in these efforts —and complement them with a socialist perspective. On the other hand, it is the Left which opts out of the basic task confronting the working class —by failing ever to put forward socialist ideas. We opt for Socialism.

1929: Labour's Cruel Memory (1969)

From the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Forty years ago this month—on June 5 1929—the second Labour government in British history came into office. They had, in fact, won the election with about 300,000 votes less than the Conservatives but the electoral system had given them 27 more seats. They relied for their majority in Parliament on support from the 59 Liberal MPs—support which, in their previous attempt at government in 1924, had let them down. The Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, was quite firm that there would be no repetition of that; “I am,” he said, “going to stand no monkeying.”

The Labour governments which have been elected since 1929—Attlee’s in 1945 and Wilson’s in 1964—faced problems similar to those which savaged MacDonald’s between 1929 and its collapse in 1931. All of them have struggled to defend sterling as an international trading currency and to energise a drive to capture export markets. But the 1929 government also had on their hands the effects of a world depression and chronic unemployment which was responsible for what the economist Pigou called “the intractable million”—the figure below which the number of unemployed in Britain could not be reduced.

When Labour took office in 1929, a great investment boom was under way on Wall Street and there had indeed been considerable optimism expressed about the chances of beating the depression. As the year opened Philip Snowden, who was to be Labour’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote in the Daily Express:

  There are some grounds for hope that trade will improve in the year on which we are now entering . . .  On the whole I think the outlook for 1929 is better than at the opening of any New Year since 1922 . . .

In truth, there was little cause for optimism among the British capitalist class or their administrators in 1929. By that time it was clear that they had little chance of regaining their pre-1914 dominance. Many of their investments abroad had had to be sold to pay for the war and the basic British industries had lost many important export markets. Some hope was put in schemes to re-organise old industries and to develop new ones but this needed substantial injections of capital, and after the years of bad trade there was little confidence or incentive for that.

For some time before the first world war, the British capitalist class had enjoyed a position which depended extensively upon the dominance of their coal, textiles, and heavy engineering. In 1913 coal and textiles contributed 55 per cent of British exports and cotton alone provided a quarter of the value of total exports. Before 1914 unemployment had fluctuated; it was between 3 and 4 per cent in good years and rose to 10 per cent in bad. But after the war it soon became apparent that the basic industries had suffered a setback. The coal mines were affected by the development of new forms of power and by the more economical use of coal in power stations. More serious was the loss of export trade, of the markets in Russia, Poland, and the Baltic countries and the competition from increased exports from Germany, some of which went out as war reparations. This decline was the background to the bitter struggle between the miners and the owners over wages and hours, which reached its peak in 1926.

The textile industry was hit because many countries which had once been ready markets for British produce had built up their own production — often with plant imported from Britain. In India, for example, cotton output trebled between 1913 and 1929 and the Indian government imposed protection against British goods. By 1929 Japan had captured 19 per cent of the world’s trade in cotton, after starting from virtually nothing in 1913. It was a similar story in iron and steel; between 1913 and 1923 British exports to Italy fell by 38 per cent, to Japan (which started importing from India and China) by 87 per cent, and to France (which had turned to local production after the accession of Alsace-Lorraine) by 63 per cent.

Dole queues grew
The war was followed by a mild boom in Britain and the post-war governments were reluctant to upset this by returning to the gold standard which, they thought, would hinder industrial renewal and development. This policy was changed with the serious inflation of the European currencies and in 1925 the pound became once again convertible into gold, at the pre-war parity—a measure which, the unemployed were doubtless overjoyed to hear, was "making the pound look the dollar in the face”. As usual, there was a division of opinion among the experts over the wisdom of this attempt to re-establish pre-war monetary and trading conditions; in the Labour Party Snowden was in favour and Pethwick-Lawrence against, although by 1931. when the gold standard was abandoned, Pethwick-Lawrence had changed his mind.

But no amount of financial juggling could save the leading British export industries. From 1925 onwards, with hardly a break, the dole queues grew longer. As American investments were drawn into the Wall Street bonanza, and as the French government adopted a policy of building up their gold reserves in preference to investing abroad, British financiers were left alone trying to make the gold standard work and virtually financing the depression themselves.

This was the situation when Labour took office in 1929. The gravity of unemployment had made it the main issue of the election and one of MacDonald’s first acts as Prime Minister was to appoint a special, high ranking committee of Ministers to study the problem and suggest remedies. Of course this went down very well with the men lining up at the labour exchanges, who had too much to think about to remember that ever since it came on the scene unemployment had been studied and probed and had been the subject of countless nostrums.

The committee—George Lansbury, Tom Johnston, Oswald Mosley, and J. H. Thomas —was not one of the happiest episodes in the history of Labour government. Lansbury and Johnston did little to distinguish themselves, and Mosley, who was sold on Keynesian theories and who produced masses of memoranda, resigned when the frustrations of the job became too apparent to him.

Nothing but promises

But the most remarkable figure on the committee—perhaps in the entire government—was Thomas. He had come up through the trade unions—he was once secretary of the NUR—and obligingly conformed to all the music-hall conceptions of the cloth-cap worker turned foreman. He dropped aitches here and stuck them back there; he loved dressing up and mixing in high society; at the Lord Mayor's banquet he ended up slumped drunkenly across the table. Beatrice Webb described him in her diaries: “. . . a boozer, his language is foul, he is a Stock Exchange gambler, he is also a social climber.”

Yet Thomas was no joke. Millions of workers were desperately relying on him to relieve unemployment and he was not above cruelly raising their hopes. In August 1929, for example, he went to Canada with the accepted mission of arranging markets for British products. In fact there was never much reason to think that Thomas would succeed; nevertheless he carried the hopes of all those men in the dole queues. On the way back he cabled: "Satisfied in my mission and certain that work for the unemployed will result.” On his return he would not be drawn further, except to hint: "I have a lot of things up my sleeve.” A few days later he was more specific: “I have a complete cure. There are a few people who won’t work and we can’t do anything for them. But for all ordinary forms of employment, yes.” But it soon became clear that Thomas had brought back nothing more than promises — there were no orders for coal, or textile goods, or for ships to carry them. Very quickly Thomas’s mission faded into memory.

Arthur Henderson (who was a political rival) said that Thomas was “. . . completely rattled and in such a state of panic that he is bordering on lunacy . . .” and perhaps, to be charitable, that explains the lies which continued to come from him. All along he kept assuring the unemployed that things were about to improve (and in this he was not alone):

November 4 1929: ‘‘I have no hesitation in saying there is a trade improvement.”
February 12 1930: “I think the bottom has been reached.”
March 12 1930: “Thinks could only improve.’’
March 20 1930: “The worst is past.”

But by August 1930, after he had lost his job at the head of the special committee, Thomas dropped his mask and made this callous remark which presumably was supposed to be funny:

Do not be too keen about this humbug of breaking records. I broke all records in the number of the unemployed.

After Thomas and his blather had been dismissed to the Dominions Office, unemployment kept on rising while the economists and the politicians looked on helplessly. Some of the experts were sure that an energetic programme of public works — road building, land reclamation and so on—was the answer. They were, if anything, farther from the real world of capitalism than were men like Thomas, who at least had to face the fact that a slump, most of all, is the time when capital cannot be directed at the stroke of a pen and that in any case public works could offer employment for only a fraction of the out-of-work and then not at once. A road, for example, cannot be built by assembling all the necessary labour and materials at one go—this must be a gradual process, in time with the progress of the work. Any public works programme, supposing it were economically possible and supposing it had any noticeable effect, would have taken about two years to make itself felt through the economy.

In the autumn of 1929 the great boom on Wall Street collapsed and the downward slide became an avalanche. In America, bankrupt capitalists, who had always preached the virtues of hard work to their employees, committed suicide when they became confronted with the possibility of having to do some themselves for a living. On March 28 1930 Margaret Bondfield, Minister of Labour, described the government’s bewilderment at the events which had overtaken them:

  Nothing in the case of the live register before Christmas gave any inkling of the phenomenal rise (in unemployment) which has taken place since the turn of the year.

Thenceforward, Labour was caught in what MacDonald later called an ’economic blizzard’—just as if it had not always been their boast that they could control the winds and the weather of capitalism. '

MacDonald’s advice

This is not the place to tell the rest of the sorry story of that government—the story of millions of underfed people existing alongside ’surpluses’ of food, of Labour’s desperate search for economies to reassure the international financiers and of their final collapse into the National government of 1931. Nor is this the place to tell how that National government, which was formed specifically to deal with the emergency, also failed. Let it be enough to say that when MacDonald's men took over at Westminster, pledged to cure unemployment, there were 1,163,000 out of work. When Parliament broke up on July 31 1931 for the last time under Labour—there were 2,713,000.

The final surprise was that the Labour Party survived. When MacDonald called his junior Ministers together to tell them that he was going to lead a National government, he advised them, as ambitious men (no word about principle, or Socialism, or even softening capitalism) not to follow him; they should, he urged them, consider their future careers; it would in the end be more profitable for them to dissociate themselves from him and the National government and to join the Labour opposition. They took his advice—men like Attlee, Morrison, Dalton. The Labour Party lived—just—to fight another day and although it took time, in the end they managed to blame for that debacle of 1929-31 a combination of a 'bankers’ ramp’, the ignorance of the economists, and MacDonald’s treachery.

By 1945 the British working class had all but forgotten the experiences of 1929 and they were ready again to trust Labour as the party with a heart. In fact there are many parallels between the Attlee and Wilson governments and that of MacDonald — and we can all think of Labour Ministers of 1945 and 1964 who are counterparts of men like Thomas and Snowden. Labour, like any other party of capitalism, does not change. It is all up to the workers with the votes; when, we may ask, will they ever learn?

Ivan

The Myth of Man as a Killer (1969)

From the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of all the vulgar modes of escaping from the consideration of the effect of social and moral influence on the human mind, the most vulgar is that of attributing the diversities of conduct and character to inherent natural differences.

John Stuart Mill

Mankind today has greater wealth and knowledge than at any other time in history. Yet today mankind seems more cruel, more aimless, more insane than ever before. It appears to many observed that man has the chance of an earthly paradise, but has chosen an earthly hell. If an individual must be mad to commit suicide, then perhaps the human species as a whole must be mad, for it is quite possible that humanity will exterminate itself.

How baffling this situation appears to so many well-meaning people! They look around and scratch their puzzled heads—if only they could discover the cause of all this lunacy! One of these sincere and disturbed individuals is Konrad Lorenz. However, he actually has managed to find the cause, or so he supposes.

Gazing at all the wars and other atrocities in human society, it occurred to Mr Lorenz that "we are all so accustomed to these phenomena that most of us fail to realise how abjectly stupid and undesirable the historical mass behaviour of humanity actually is.” He began to ponder why "reasonable beings behave so unreasonably.” Lorenz happens to be one of the leading experts on the behaviour of animals. It didn't take him long to decide that the reasons some animals fight each other were basically the same as the reasons some human animals fight each other. Of course he realised that a simple theory like that wouldn't do at all, because non-human animals never display anything on the scale of wars and massacres. So an ingenious twist was added.

With most varieties of birds and animals, fights sometimes occur between members of the same species. But if these fights became too vicious or too frequent, they would be very bad for the species as a whole, which would soon become extinct. So as these animals have evolved, natural selection has bred into them inhibitions. For instance, if two alsatians are fighting, one of them has only to stand in a certain submissive posture, and the other dog will automatically stop attacking. These inhibitions are adapted to the killing ability of the species. An animal which can very easily kill with one bite or blow will usually have strong inhibitions against doing so. If an animal can’t kill quickly, or if his intended victim can get away easily, there will be no need for inhibitions. But if the living conditions of these species are altered, so that they can easily kill their fellows, they will do so without hesitation or remorse. And Lorenz emotionally describes how a dove (the symbol of peace!) will slowly and cruelly torture another dove to death, when they are in captivity.

Applying this to man, Lorenz says that men find it comparatively difficult to kill each other with their bare hands, but as soon as they invent weapons—clubs, spears, atom bombs—their killing ability is vastly increased. Their innate inhibitions against killing, however, remain slight. So they are liable to go around slaughtering each other in a big way.

Having thought up this modem Just-so story, Lorenz leapt into print with his book On Aggression, which has had a huge sale in the German and English-speaking worlds. In this volume he gleefully expands his theory to explain nearly everything about human society, taking in his stride juvenile delinquency, space flight, Kantian moral philosophy, sport, the generation gap, and so forth. Some of it is not exactly new ("The romantic veneration of national values . . . can do nothing but damage.” “We should love all our human brothers indiscriminately.”) But underneath it all is Lorenz’s space-age version of original sin.

Meanwhile someone else was having the same worries. This was Mr Robert Ardrey, who in the 30s was involved with writing plays about social problems. In those days he attributed suffering and poverty to economic and social causes. But how innocent that was! Since then we have had the ‘affluent society’ which has given everyone marvellous economic and social environments, yet the same old problems remain. Perhaps Ardrey's affluence has increased a bit more than most people’s. After all, there is a tendency for those who have moved up in the world to imagine that the world has moved with them, And Ardrey did get the backing of a wealthy capitalist foundation to write his book The Territorial Imperative. This is how he sees the problem:

  How could we know that in the end there would come a changed environment and a prosperity such as no man had ever seen? And that such an age of affluence and material security would witness a level and degree of juvenile delinquency that did not exist in the depression years; racial conflict and bitterness that we had never known; and a crime rate beyond our most monstrous imaginings . . . A changed environment demonstrated that our environmentalist conclusions were inadequate.

. . .  Or perhaps, that a television set and a car aren’t the only requisites of a healthy environment. But to continue with Ardrey’s life story: when he heard of the bombing of Pearl Harbour:

  I ached with my love for my country, I ached with horror at the Japanese deception, I ached with sickness for the American loss I had encountered, slam-bang, for the first time in my experience, the territorial release.

So Ardrey concluded that not only his own reaction, but the actual entry of America into the war, were caused by instincts. He pooh-poohs the suggestion that he had been indoctrinated with patriotic values by pointing out that there were a lot of cynics, sceptics and leftists about in America during his childhood, and he doesn’t remember taking patriotism very seriously.

Although Ardrey is not a scientist, he, like Lorenz, is constantly at pains to state that his opinions are in keeping with the latest scientific findings. His two books, African Genesis and Territorial Imperative, are best-sellers, and together with Lorenz’s propaganda, other popular works like The Naked Ape, and most of all the novel Lord of the Flies, give many folk the impression that the view of man as inherently aggressive and possessive is well substantiated, whereas in fact it is the wildest fantasy, a superstition totally lacking in evidence and utterly rejected by all scientists specialising in this field.

Ashley Montagu has put together an anthology of articles, Man And Aggression (Oxford University Press) mostly written by leading scientists who have been appalled at the epidemic of falsehoods spread by Lorenz and Ardrey. This volume shows, not only how the reasoning of these two writers is mistaken, but also how, time after time, they have simply got their facts wrong. We can recommend any worker bothered by the fairy tales of Human Nature, Killer Instincts, or Territorial Drives, to read Montague’s book. As Montagu makes clear, man has no instincts. Man’s behaviour is learned behaviour, and varies immensely with different upbringing and living conditions.

Most of the Lorenz/Ardrey arguments are developed by assuming that what is true for some animals and birds is true for man. But arguments drawn from birds are strictly for the birds. Furthermore, man’s closest relatives, the primate apes, are especially unaggressive:

  Primates are not usually belligerent unless provoked, and the more carefully they are observed the more remarkably revealing do their unquarrelsomeness and co-operativeness become' . . . if, as is evident, man’s nearer collateral relatives are wanting in anything resembling an inborn territorial drive, it is highly improbable that any form of man was ever characterised by such a drive.

And J. H. Crook adds:

  Perhaps the most striking feature of those nonhuman primates the behaviour of which is most relevant to man is precisely their lack of easily defined territorial behaviour.

In view of the indisputable fact that man’s closest living relatives are notable for their lack of aggression and territory, it would seem that all the arguments in the world about coral fish and greylag goslings must fail to prove that man is naturally a killer or a nationalist.

One of the strange things about Ardrey and Lorenz is that, with their theories of innate depravity, they try to present themselves as courageous seekers after truth, ready to spurn comfortable illusions and face the harsh reality that men are naturally nasty! But the reverse is the case.

The great majority of people today believe in a greedy, lazy and warlike 'human nature'. This is a popular myth which discourages investigation of the real, social causes of man’s inhumanity to man. That man cannot help himself, that he is born cruel and selfish, is just what most people want to be told. This myth enables them to accept without question their most cherished institutions of property and patriotism as 'natural'.

Born and brought up in a specific society, we learn the values of that society just as we learn the laws of nature, and we confuse the two, supposing that private ownership, or governments, or romantic love, are eternal and instinctive, when they are really artificial and indoctrinated. Yet while Ardrey and Lorenz tell the world what the world dearly wants to hear, they pose as bold overthrowers of customary ideas. And the dust jacket of Ardrey’s second book proclaims that he, "threatens even more forcefully some of our most precious assumptions. Mr. Ardrey’s conclusions ... will undoubtedly raise an even greater storm.” Reading that, you will hardly guess that most of his reader- ship are having their most precious assumptions confirmed, and that most of the 'storm' raised by Ardrey’s books has come from scientists who know something about the subjects he dabbles in.

The importance of all this to socialists is clear. We want to remove capitalism—the cause of wars, poverty, nationalism, and exploitation, and of the frustrations which provoke much aggressive behaviour. The lie of innate depravity is a weapon in the hands of the capitalist class: it prevents criticism of capitalism, since there is supposed to be no possible alternative. Ardrey’s theories are the direct offspring of the Christian bogey of original sin. He betrays this quite clearly when he assumes that those who disagree with him think that man is innately ‘good’. Of course, innate goodness is just as much a myth as innate wickedness. Ardrey has consciously set out to rehabilitate the discredited concept of original sin, just as Golding did when he produced Lord of the Flies.

Even the contributors to Montagu’s book, who are no Socialists, have tumbled to the political implications of the Ardrey/Lorenz thesis. K. E. Boulding comments:

 A line of argument like that of Ardrey’s, therefore, seems to legitimate our present morality, in regarding the threat system as dominant at all costs, by reference to our biological ancestors. If the names of both antiquity and of science can be drawn upon to legitimate our behaviour, the moral uneasiness about napalm and the massacre of the innocent in Vietnam may be assuaged.

And Ralph Holloway says of Ardrey’s work:

  In short, this book is an apology and rationalisation for Imperialism, Pax Americana, Laissez-Faire, Social Darwinism, and that greatest of all evolutionary developments, Capitalism.

While Montague concludes:

  What, in fact, such writers do, in addition to perpetrating their wholly erroneous interpretation of human nature, is to divert attention from the real sources of man’s aggression and destructiveness, namely; the many false and contradictory values by which, in an overcrowded, highly competitive world, he so disoperatively attempts to live. It is not man’s nature, but his nurture, in such a world, that requires our attention.

Socialists can only regret that Montagu’s book (at 42s) is unlikely to reach the same massive working-class market open to the capitalist apologetics of Ardrey, Lorenz, Desmond Morris, and William Golding. It is a drop in the ocean compared with the intense brainwashing with ideas of innate depravity which workers receive an the time.

Steele.

Immunisation or Pain-killers? (1969)

From the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The difference between the aims of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and all other political parties (except our companion parties) is somewhat comparable to the difference between immunisation and treatment in medicine.

The Socialist Party strives after the creation of a new kind of society—Socialism—in which such problems as famine, poverty, war, and inequality could not conceivably arise, Socialism is a way of life based on, as our object says, “the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole community”. This is to be taken literally, not as meaning nationalisation, or any other such phoney system, which has been amply proved in places such as Russia and here in Britain to be as offensive to the workers’ interests as open private ownership.

The Socialist Party seeks the removal of class society where the minority capitalist class exploits the majority working class and which has brought about the conflicts and problems we have listed. The other parties, however, do not seek to remove the cause of these problems, which is capitalism, and therefore cannot succeed in removing them. Instead, they accept the present capitalist system and try, allegedly, to make these problems felt less acutely Barbara Castle in her notorious White Paper on industrial relations recognised that there had to be conflicts in this society: ''The object of our industrial relations system, granted that there are necessarily conflicts of interest, should be to direct the forces producing conflict towards constructive ends” (emphasis added). But how she hopes to make the robbed work hand in hand with those who are robbing them is beyond comprehension.

Her attitude is similar to that of all other political parties : what they are doing is trying to patch up capitalism to make it less brutal and painful to many people. The failure of successive governments of various political colourings to make any appreciable impact on such problems as poverty and hunger should demonstrate clearly enough that it is time to start tackling such problems from their roots instead of smothering them with meaningless statements and promises.

The policies of the Socialist Party of Great Britain offer immunisation against these problems arising in the first instance whereas all the other political parties offer mere pain-killers—and not very good ones at that.

R.A.S.

Part 2: Labour in Panic (1969)

From the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

The Conservative victory at Smethwick in the 1964 election was not unexpected. For some time before, they had been running a skilful racist campaign which won a seat on the local council for, among others, Don Finney, who had been chairman of the local branch of the Birmingham Immigration Control Association and who was the originator of many inflammatory statements about coloured immigrants. In the May preceding the general election, the Tories won control of the council

They kept up the pressure during the general election campaign, in which they effectively cashed in on — if they did not originate—the slogan “If you want a nigger neighbour, vote Labour”. The Labour candidate, Patrick Gordon Walker, suffered under this pressure which drove him to try to blame the Tories for immigration, saying in his election address that “. . . . the main flow of immigration happened to come in the thirteen years during which the Conservatives were in office.” This desperate counter-attack did not help him and Smethwick swung 10.4 per cent against the national trend to Labour.

It was this national swing which gave us the Wilson government and as soon the new Prime Minister could spare time from saving the pound sterling and attacking workers' living standards he turned his attention to immigration. Results like Smethwick had proved that something more than Labour’s change of mind on the Commonwealth Immigrants Act would have to be done to erase the memory of their original opposition to control. In February 1965 Wilson complained that the Act was being “almost fatally eroded” by evasion. It was the job of the man who was the Home Secretary—Frank Soskice, whose father was an immigrant from Russia—to announce the new measures which did not abolish or liberalise the Act attacked by Gaitskell as “shameful” but made it tighter and harsher.

Naturally most of the Tories were delighted at Labour’s conversion to their way of thinking. Geoffrey Lloyd, one of the Conservative campaigners for tighter controls, was aglow about “this very realistic approach by the government.” On March 29 the government showed that they did not mind this approval from the benches opposite; Herbert Bowden, as he then was, announced that the Ministry of Labour was urgently reviewing the whole question of work vouchers for Commonwealth immigrants.

In November 1967 Roy Jenkins, who was then winning a lot of applause as a ’liberal' Home Secretary, told the House of Commons how much more successful Labour had been in applying racist laws than the Tories. As a result of the 1965 measures, he said, the number of voucher holders coming to Britain had dropped to 5,461 in 1966 compared with 12,880 for 1965 and 14,705 for 1964. This downward trend, said Jenkins, was continuing. So there the matter seemed settled; Britain under Labour was a tight, satisfied racist state and the politicians could get on with the job of trying to run British capitalism.

The results of the next election, in March 1966, might have convinced many people that racism in Britain was firmly in check under Wilson’s control. Gordon Walker came back to Parliament; Labour regained Eton and Slough and Perry Barr. But sweetest of all to them was their victory at Smethwick where bearded, flamboyant television actor Andrew Faulds beat both the Tory Peter Griffiths and an openly Fascist candidate from the British National Party.

Delusions shattered

But any delusions about racism, and about the Labour Party’s attitude on it, were soon shattered. On December 1 1967 new immigration restrictions came into force in Kenya, which also applied to about 200,000 Asians who were living in that country but who had not taken out Kenyan citizenship. Under the Keynan independence agreement, negotiated by the Tory government, these Asians had the right to opt for British citizenship, which gave them a British passport and so the right to come freely into this country.

The man who had signed this agreement for the British government was Duncan Sandys, who had been Colonial Secretary when it was negotiated. This did not prevent Sandys raising an immediate scare about floods of Asian immigrants pouring into Britain. This scare was also worked up by prominent racists like Cyril Osborne and by one who was only just climbing onto the bandwagon but who was soon to be in the driver’s seat—Enoch Powell.

In face of this rising hysteria and prejudice the government might have remembered that they claimed to be men of principle, and stood firm. But they had learned their lesson, and although the evidence indicated that nothing like the rumoured quarter of a million Asians wanted to come to Britain from Kenya, they rushed through yet another Commonwealth Immigrants Act to deal with the situation. This new Act, apart from further tightening the controls in the 1962 Act, introduced the novel principle that holding a British passport no longer guaranteed free entry into this country.

To get round this problem, the Act provided for the application of immigration control to citizens of the United Kingdom and the colonies who, although they held British passports, had “no substantial connexion” with Britain. This vague, but ingeniously dishonest, qualification notwithstanding, the government denied that they were in a panic — and then went on to push the Bill through Parliament in a week. At any rate they could once again be consoled by the support for them from the other side. Sandys backed them and amid this approval yet another piece of racist legislation was added to the Statute Book which, just a few years before, had been clean of it.

This was the atmosphere into which, a couple of months later, Enoch Powell launched his Wolverhampton speech. At that time there was nothing more the government could conveniently legislate upon and their spokesmen tried, with some embarrassment, to make some political capital out of Powell's dramatic and inflammatory words. The embarrassment came from the fact that it was in Labour's traditional strongholds — places like Stepney and Smithfield — that the support for Powell was most emphatic and most violent. It was a danger signal, and not only for the Labour Party.

Defenders of the Wilson government point to legislation like the Race Relations Act as evidence of Labour’s determination to stamp out racism. In fact, such laws are merely perfunctory gestures and do nothing to disprove the old truism that no government can legislate ideas out of existence. The law now gives, in theory, legal protection to the immigrants in parts of the fields of employment and housing. In fact, discrimination carries on almost untouched; ‘No Coloureds' no longer appears on the newsagents’ advertisement boards but all too often a West Indian or an Indian applying for accommodation finds that it has been taken. The same thing happens over employment. In some ways the laws actually stirred up racism; a popular argument, at the time of Powell’s speech, was that the anti-discrimination law made a privileged class out of coloured immigrants. And when all is said and done there is the hard, practical case of Anne Dummet, who has left her job in race relations because it is impossible in face of enormous obstacles.

Neurotic resentment

What do the Labour Party, and all the other parties of capitalism, offer as a solution? Racism cannot be separated from all the other delusions and misconceptions which are current; it cannot, in other words, be separated from the capitalist social system and all the strange, pernicious ideas which divide the working class and help to keep the system in existence. The first need, for those who want to fight racism, is to speak out loud and clear among the confusion.

Capitalism does little to unite human beings; at most times it works actively to divide them—as it is working now, for example, to divide the people of Russian and China. This often means that capitalism actually fosters nationalism and racism; during the last war British workers were encouraged to believe that the only good German was a dead one and it is only a short step from there to being told, if the interests of a ruling class demand it, that the only good Negro is a dead one.

At the same time capitalism is working a particularly pernicious trick upon the working class. As a system of privilege, it must promote the idea that acquisitiveness is a high virtue, but at the same time it cannot provide security. Thus there are millions of workers in this country, reading of the glorious exploits of their masters in the press and trying to hold at bay the ravages which industrial capitalism is wreaking on their mortgaged homes, who are desperately dependent on their jobs, their masters.

The contradiction between capitalism’s encouragement of acquisitiveness and its undermining of security has produced what can only be called a neurosis among the working class. This works in many ways. Workers who are struggling to buy a home on a mortgage often resent the existence of council houses near them, and think of council tenants as dirty and unprincipled spongers. This sort of neurotic resentment is all too easily transferred to immigrants, especially when they have a different cultural background and when they are easily distinguished by the colour of their skin.

Surge of hysteria

The result of this is that there is a vast reservoir of prejudice and fear which extreme conditions can cause to burst its banks, as happened in Germany before the war and as threatens to happen in America now. The British political parties who are pandering to these prejudices, and who think they can control the flood if it comes, are not paying enough attention to their precedents. In Germany the Nationalists also went along with racism—of the most extreme kind — thinking that if they could get a toehold on power in a coalition with the Nazis they could control the situation and eventually become its masters.

Their disillusionment came all too quickly and brutally. The Nazis rode into power on an irresistible surge of hysteria, which the crisis of German capitalism had provoked among the workers; the Nationalists were among the first to be purged. How much more would it need for the British working class to reach the same conclusions as the Germans in the 30s? And if that happened, how far would the traditional parties of capitalism be prepared to go along with it, in their efforts to cling to power? They have already shown that they are willing to compromise; where will they end up, if their attempts at appeasing racism fail?

Before we get to this there is time, and need, to assess the situation. The history of racism exposes the futility of trying to reform capitalism and how too often those who set out to reform end up worse than what they set out to reform. It shows that the only way to attack the problems of capitalism is at their root—and, as so often is the case,, this means the apathy, ignorance, and deception which are nurtured among the working class by the parties of capitalism.

Finally it emphasises that in modern capitalism the alternatives really are sanity or savagery, harmony or hatred —which means Socialism or chaos.

Ivan

To the Delegates to the 'Second International Congress' (1969)

From the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 'Socialist International’, which likes to trace back its roots to the body which was formed with the backing of Frederick Engels in 1889, is holding its three-yearly congress at Eastbourne this month. Over 50 parties are represented, from mass organisations like the British Labour party and the Scandinavian social democratic parties to tiny groups of exiles from Eastern Europe — all that remains of once powerful movements.

What is it that causes these widely different parties still to pay lip service to a shadowy ‘International’, which has no real existence outside its periodic congresses? The answer they would give is that they are all 'democratic socialist' parties, as opposed to the ‘communist' parties. To which we could add that there are other features which they all display — a commitment to capitalism and a contempt for political theory.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain has something to say to the delegates to the congress — because we are part of an international organisation which is working to establish world socialism. But first let us make it clear whom we are addressing. Men like Harold Wilson and other leading members of the anti-working-class Labour government (and of other anti-working-class governments) will be in Eastbourne for part of the time. Naturally we are not wasting our breath on these characters. But we do think that among the delegations there will be some men with a sincere wish to go forward to a better world. It is to these we are talking.

We share your concern for democracy. We think that democracy is of vital importance to the working class and that only a democratic organisation can be used to establish Socialism. That is why our party is organised without leaders or hierarchy. But we also say that political democracy as it exists in Britain and elsewhere is not enough, since it is constantly threatened by the encroachments of the capitalist state and is maintained only by working class pressure. We want to see a social democracy—and this will be achieved only when society owns the means of production and operates them democratically. In other words, only Socialism can be a thoroughly democratic society.

The countries of Eastern Europe are dictatorships—not because of the ideologies of their ruling parties but because they are state capitalist and because the workers in this area (especially in Russia) have not yet strengthened themselves sufficiently to gain the democratic concessions which workers in the West have secured.

Since we are working for world Socialism we do not have a reform programme, unlike your parties. This is not because we are opposed to all reforms but because we say that the job of a socialist party is to get rid of capitalism and that it can do this only by recruiting members and seeking support for a socialist programme. This means that we advance slogans such as 'Abolition of the Wages System’ as our immediate demands.

We also think that Socialism must be world wide and that it can be set up only when a majority of working men and women (at least in the advanced industrial parts of the world) understand what is entailed, and are prepared to take conscious action, first to establish it and then to run it from top to bottom.

If you agree with these ideas we want to hear from you — so that we can help each other to strengthen the world movement for Socialism. But if you are a careerist or if you believe that capitalism can be made to work in the interests of the working class then perhaps you would be better off sticking with Harold Wilson.

50 Years Ago: Land Nationalisation and the Workers (1969)

The 50 Years Ago column from the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

A new organisation has been formed called ‘The Commonwealth League’, having for its object:

  The foundation of a Commonwealth based on the establishment of the common right of the land by the payment by each landholder of the economic rent, which is the commercial value of the site he holds.

The economic rent of any piece of land is the difference between the natural properties of that piece, either in fertility or situation, and that of the poorest piece in demand. How is the amount of this difference arrived at? By competition. To quote the words of one of the Commonwealth League’s leaflets, "He, (the landholder) will pay what another would be willing to pay for the privilege of using the piece of common property he holds’’. (The Vision and the Realisation).

We are told that this method "will throw the land open to all”. Quite true if we add "who are able to pay for it” as it will be the highest bidder who will hold the land, exactly as he does now.

But, it will be objected, at present this price goes into the pockets of private individuals, whereas under the League’s scheme it would go into the ‘common fund'. Yes, but what common fund? To this the answer is: the fund required to meet the social expenses of the community. But how are these met now? By the rates and taxes. Thus the final result of the appropriation of 'economic rent' or 'land values’ is to reduce the amount paid for rates and taxes from other sources.

As a class the workers are not concerned with taxation under capitalism. Out of the total wealth, which they produce by applying their labour power to the materials given by nature, they receive on an average about enough to keep them in the working condition that the masters’ interests demand. Obviously they have no margin left over out of which to pay either taxes or economic rent.

The method might not please the section of the master class who are solely, or mainly, landholders, but it would undoubtedly be beneficial to the industrial or commercial capitalists, and is really the ideal capitalist form of taxation.

[From an article ‘Nationalisation —its Futility Exposed' by J. Fitzgerald, Socialist Standard, June 1919].

Who Rules in Ulster? (1969)

From the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The landlords rule in Ulster, according to Bernadette Devlin, Mid-Ulster’s new Westminster MP. In her maiden speech in parliament on April 22 she spoke of “the ruling minority of landlords who, for generations, have claimed to represent one section of the people and, in order to maintain their claim, divide the people into two sections”.

"There is no place for us," she declared, "in the society of landlords because we are the ’have-nots' and they are the ’haves'”.

She attacked "the bigoted and sectarian Unionist Party, which uses a deliberate policy of dividing the people in order to keep the ruling minority in power and to keep the oppressed people of Ulster oppressed".

The rest of her speech had asides about "hyphenated names" and "a fine gentleman known among ordinary Irish people as the Squire of Ahoghill" (O'Neill) and vague talk about "social justice" and "the needs of the people".

This old-fashioned, radical speech seemed to go down well with the assembled MPs, but disclosed a certain confusion of thought. How her views came to be described as 'Marxist' is difficult to understand.

She is right to see class, rather than religion, as the important factor —only she has got the classes wrong. It is not true that those who own the land and live off the rent are the ruling class in Northern Ireland. The bulk of the population live and work under capitalist conditions. Excluded from owning the means of production, they have to sell their mental and physical energies for a wage to those who own the factories, the offices, the mills, and the docks and shipyards of Ulster.

Those who own the land, “by ancient Charter of Charles II” as Devlin put it, are now only a subordinate section of the ruling capitalist class. Indeed, now that they have turned their land-owning into a profit-making business they too are capitalists living off profit rather than rent. The capitalists, not the landlords, are the ruling minority in Northern Ireland.

To see the issue as ’the people versus the landlords' it to obscure the real class struggle between workers and capitalists. Historically this slogan, and the use of the word ‘people’ to include everybody save the land-owning nobility, was used by the rising middle class (which later became the ruling capitalist class). It has always served as a stand-by for unscrupulous demagogues like Cobden, Bright, Joseph Chamberlain, and Lloyd George to divert the workers' attention from capitalist exploitation.

Of course we are not suggesting that this is Bernadette Devlin’s aim too. Far from it —she obviously thinks that what she is doing and saying is right. We are just pointing out that her anti-landlordism is not only irrelevant to the real situation in Northern Ireland but could also be seriously misleading and dangerous to the interests of the working class.

Richard Montague

Down With Parasites! (1969)

From the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

It was the Major who brought the subject of parasites to our notice. The Major is, of course, Major James Dawson Chichester-Clark, the new Prime Minister. Nothing daunted by the fate of his cousin and predecessor in office, Terence O’Neill, the Major has been blathering away since he took office. Up to now he has been kind in bis utterances; not only is he going to give us all new houses and freedom to do what we're told, but he's also cutting the jail sentences that his judges imposed on those who entered into the spirit of the rumpus started by his colleague, the late Minister of Home Affair, Mr Craig, last October. It is because the Major has been showing such deferences to all shades of opinion in an effort to get us, in his own words, "back to business" and churning out a little profit that we looked twice at his ‘attack’ on ‘parasites' reported in the Belfast Telegraph of May 7.

  The social parasites of the present day could make their noisy protests, in comparative comfort because other people provided them with a livelihood, said the Prime Minister, Major James D. Chichester-Clark, last night.
  Addressing the Mid-Ulster Scout Council in Cookstown, Major Chichester-Clark said the only reason a minority were able to ‘opt out’ of responsibility was that a majority continued to ‘opt in'.

Well, of course, there is nothing much in this statement that a socialist could quarrel with—after all, we have always said that there are two classes in society, a class that produces everything and owns nothing and a class that owns everything and produces nothing. And to encourage our readers to support the campaign against parasitism we will recount the history of a group typical in the species.

Some four hundred years ago James I, in acknowledgement of services rendered, gave his royal assent to one Sir Arthur Chichester, soldier of fortune, to steal vast parcels of land in the Irish province of Ulster. Sir Arthur helped himself to all the lands of Inishowen in Donegal, creating the property basis for the Royal title, Lord Donegall, and areas of County Derry and County Antrim including all that land on which Belfast, is now built.

The Chichesters never looked back, economically speaking, after this initial display of enterprise. Marital mergers and further services to the English monarchy continually increased the family fortunes. Charles II, with the usual generosity of monarchs for giving away what they do not own, gave the Chichesters ownership of the largest lake in the British Isles, Lough Neagh. The Clark name and property was absorbed and the estate and family name of the ancient O’Neills merged by an economically fortuitous marriage.

Lord Brookeborough’s son, Captain John Brooke, married into the clan, as did Dame Dehra Parker, one-time Minister of Education in Brookeborough’s government. She is credited with responsibility for persuading Brookeborough to bring cousin Terence O’Neill into the government in the late 40s. Terence, in turn, reciprocated the favour when he became Prime Minister by bringing Major James Dawson Chichester-Clark into the Cabinet. ’Jimmy’, now Prime Minister, repays by bringing Brookeborough’s son, the talentless Captain John Brooke, tipped by some political commentators as future PM. into the Government.

As we have said, Major James Dawson Chichester-Clark has talked a lot since he became PM. We might disagree with much of what be has said but we cannot challenge his qualifications to speak authoritatively on the subject of parasites.

Richard Montague

An Historical Coincidence (1969)

Pamphlet Review from the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Appeal for the International Re-organisation of the Revolutionary Marxist Movement 

‘Programme Communisté' 3s.

Those interested in historical coincidences will find intriguing this pamphlet produced by a group which broke away from the Communist International in the 20s. For, despite having a Bolshevik vision of the socialist revolution (contempt for political democracy, armed uprising, vanguard party, minority dictatorship, terror, and all), on many issues Programme Communisté has come, quite independently, to conclusions similar to ours.

First, they know clearly what Socialism (or Communism) is: a world society based on common ownership with no production for sale, money, buying and selling, prices, wages, or profit. But they still favour ‘labour-rime vouchers’ as a form of rationing in the early days of Socialism.

Second, they recognise the capitalist nature of the Russian economy (and call the ruling class there the capitalist class), with its commodity-production, wages system, and capital accumulation; though, as dissident Bolsheviks, they subscribe to a ’degeneration’ theory of state capitalism.

Third, they refuse to advocate reforms or join others in doing so. arguing that on the political field socialists should be aiming solely at the capture of power for Socialism.

Fourth, they add that this “does not apply to the immediate and specific demands which arise from the concrete antagonism of interests between wage-earners and employers in the economic sphere”. So, like us, they draw a distinction between ’reforms’ and the day-to-day economic demands of the workers.

Fifth, they regard the second world war as ’imperialist’ and refused not only to take sides but also to join in ’anti-fascist’ fronts, saying that the way to combat fascism was not to join with pro-democratic capitalist parties but to oppose them as well as the fascists on a straight class or socialist programme.

We point this out only to show that some of our ideas are held by workers in other countries. Not, we hasten to add, that we would urge workers in France and Italy to support Programme Communiste. Far from it; as Bolsheviks they are peddling dangerous nonsense and we are as opposed to them as to all others.

This pamphlet cannot be recommended since it is badly translated from the French and besides is written in the difficult style of the early ’theses’ of the Communist International.

Adam Buick

Letter: The Obstacle of Ignorance (1969)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

  A friend of the Party in Paris has sent us the following letter outlining part of the. case for Socialism:

What stands in the way of the advent of Socialism?

Certainly, it is the power of the State. So let us not be afraid to bring out in significance of the State. Let us advise the reading of The Origin of Private Property, the Family, and the State. Let us not hesitate to distribute this pamphlet among the workers.

It is also the ignorance of the majority of the exploited as to what Socialism, and even what capitalism, is. We must understand the cause of this ignorance and remedy it.

We must repeat that the economic system of production for profit is capitalism; that this system is inconceivable without the exploitation of man by man, without competition between individuals and between groups, without the robbery of; human labour by rich parasites. We must also admit that capitalism will continue to reign over the planet until it has been replaced by a more evolved, more human, economic system. The future system which Marx and Engels interchangeably called ‘socialism' and ’communism’ cannot be imposed by a group with any chance of success. It is essential that first it is wanted by the workers of the entire world and thus universally understood. This system in which there will be production to satisfy human needs is called Socialism.

There is no need for a conscious minority to lead the working class. That’s what we have already in Paris, in London, in Prague; in Moscow, in Peking, in Havana. That’s what we have already in Algiers, in Tel Aviv, in Washington, in Dakar, and at the Cape. The present-day ruling minority itself joined with the people at a given moment. Then it took advantage of being an 'élite' to impose its authority on the people. Revolution by an élite inevitably leads to government by an élite.

The change from private capitalism to state capitalism does not free the working class. Those who produce continue not to own the means of production. Property changes hands and the exploited remain exploited. To put an end to private property is to end the very existence of the State, whether it is capitalist or alleged communist. It is to organise society to provide for the satisfaction of the needs of mankind. It is to establish Socialism.

Georges Valentino

Nationalisation is Still Capitalism (1969)

From the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many trade unions had a warm regard for the apparently benevolent, paternal State Electricity Commission (SEC). Even its own employees did, believing that under its wing they had a snug, safe refuge from social confusion, insecurity, and discomfort. However, militancy is now becoming a noticeable feature of these state employees.

The onward rolling wheel of capitalist development and expansion is forever killing off illusions, and unionists, militant or otherwise, are continually having to face, on widening fronts and at increasing speeds, the nasty reality of the class struggle, even against their own illusions about 'Socialism’.

Increasingly during the past year the SEC, the main source of industrial and domestic electrification of the state of Victoria, has made no bones about assuming the traditional ’bad guy’ role of the master capitalist in its dealing with its employees.

Dr. Connolly, in an address to the Morwell Chamber of Commerce last October 31, directly lends us his aid in the task of exposing some of the "widely held misconceptions about the SEC.” Says he:

   On the capital side, we have the continuing problem of raising enough money in an increasingly competitive money market. We have also to service our capital expenditure and. pay interest on money borrowed, and this enters into our operating costs—it is perfectly obvious that the SEC cannot operate inefficiently simply to provide employment: nor build a new power station that is not economically justified simply for the purpose of making a job for contractors to maintain a high level of construction employment.

Thus, in the holy name of ’problems and efficiency of capital’ invested in the SEC, he justifies the shutting down of briquette-coal-processing factories and removal of old plant from service, the closing down of camps or raising of accommodation rates, and the downgrading of workers to lower jobs with a corresponding fall in the hourly rate of wages.

Conditions of employment, accommodation, industrial and trade status, and wages fought for over many years and gained during periods of labour scarcity now are cut back as labour scarcity becomes changed into a glut as a direct result of rising productivity. Here again, state capitalism, on an impressive scale, exposes the once popular fiction that wages can be raised only as a result of rising productivity. On this Marxists have always been aware that increasing productivity has never been for the amiable purpose of raising wages, but for increasing profits and protecting capital. Ceaselessly we have exposed the fact that the workers' share of wealth produced constantly has to fall. In the present case, rising productivity leads directly not merely to a relative but also to an actual fall in living standards and a deterioration of working conditions.

How does this SEC treatment of its wage workers differ from that of the traditional capitalist? There is no difference. And why? Dr Connolly advises the Chamber of Commerce on the nature of State Capitalism and in doing so repeats what we have long been shouting from the rooftops. He says:

   We have the same problem, the same challenge as every other manufacturer in this competitive age;—we must hold down our unit cost of production and distribution. We must, in fact, strive by every means possible to reduce the cost of supplying a kilowatt hour of electricity to consumers.

C. P. Furey 

(Socialist Party of Australia) 

Labour's Irish Stew (1969)

From the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

While in Britain the Labour Party is now thoroughly discredited, in Ireland the Labour Party has high hopes for the coming general election on June 18. 

The Irish press are forecasting a defeat for the Fianna Fail government at the forthcoming general election. Loom-large in the running is the Labour Party.

The government lost the referendum last Autumn when the electorate decided to retain the proportional representation system of voting. The Labour Party played a large part in influencing this vote against the government. A constitutional change to the less democratic single-member constituency system, as in Britain, would have increased Fianna Fail’s chances of success in the election since the majority of Labour members of parliament acquired their seats on second preference votes. It now seems likely that Labour will hold the balance of power after the votes have been cast. The second major party, Fine Gael, were also opposed to the amendment to the constitution and hope that, should the situation arise. Labour will agree to form a coalition with them and end the eleven years of continuous Fianna Fail rule.

The Labour Party has put much effort into the scramble for power. It is the oldest political party in Eire but its prospects have never been so bright. It has, however, been the minority party in two previous but disastrous coalitions. Among its recent claims has been the promise that if it gets control of parliament "Ireland will be socialist in the 70s”. It has, so it says, committed itself to the ideas of James Connolly, but there is no party in Ireland claiming allegiance to socialist principles which adheres so little to the politics of Connolly as the Labour Party.

Recently, it published in its official journal Liberty a study of Connolly entitled *Orthodoxy and Unorthodoxy’. The author attempted to show that the remedy proposed by Marx and his adherents was worse than the evil it proposed to remedy, and copious extracts from papal encyclicals were used to illustrate the point. But if you refer to supporters of the Russian capitalist regime as adherents of Marx then you have the impossible task of substantiating the argument by showing where, in Marx's writings, state capitalism is proposed as a remedy to a ’private or mixed economy’. These articles, which were given editorial praise, illustrate Labour's misunderstanding of Socialism.

The economic answer put forward by Labour as a remedy for 'underpopulated' Ireland is a programme of nationalisation and control of capital investment. Farmlands will be handed over to those who are willing to exploit them fully by modern farming techniques. Labour has quite rightly pointed out that private enterprise has failed to answer the problems of underpopulation and mass unemployment.

The party has also expressed its abhorrence at the petty foreign industries which have sprung up all over the country and have been encouraged by the government. These firms, mostly German and American, find it economic to set up such petty industries because fixed costs are remarkably low and the excess labour supply keeps real wages permanently depressed. Also, the nature of these industries is such that cheap girl labour suffices; in one small western town several such firms employ mostly girls between sixteen and 21 with flat wages from £2 10s to £7.

Labour sees the solution to this exploitation in a State-controlled system and call this Socialism. There is little need to elaborate on the stupidity of this assertion.

Even if Labour could achieve these reforms of private enterprise, the lot of the Irish worker would not be much better. There were promises of a better Ireland, employment for all, and riddance of British imperialism earlier this century. Now, 48 years after the 26 counties were given autonomous powers, and with the British gone, not only is Ireland still economically backward but its population has since declined because of emigration. The Labour Party has at least tried to make people aware of these problems but it points to state capitalism, under the misnomer 'Socialism', as the solution.

How will Labour act if they come into power? Will they too fill their bank-accounts as the so-called revolutionaries of the 1916 to 1921 rebellion have done? Labour claim that they are, in political jargon, a party of the Left. This concept, however, evades all attempts to understand it.

Labour can offer only empty promises like their opponents. They have resolved not to enter a coalition with a capitalist party — implying Fine Gael — if neither of the two major parties acquires an overall majority. But there is a strong possibility that Labour will hold the balance of power after the votes have been cast. Should this situation arise, it will be interesting to see how they will react.

Fine Gael are determined to enter into a coalition with them and may make far-reaching concessions. If Labour find themselves in this dilemma the probability is that they will start bargaining with Fine Gael. The only other alternative is to let Fianna Fail continue its long rule, with Fine Gael’s support. It is extremely unlikely that Labour will allow this to happen — when they have an alternative. But whatever happens one thing is certain: capitalism will not be threatened.

Patrick Garvey

Party News (1969)

From the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite police 'protection' and a rival Paisleyite meeting, Belfast branch of the World Socialist Party of Ireland held their May Day meeting on Sunday May 4. The Paisleyites said they were holding a religious service nearby to protest about a political meeting on a Sunday, but their meeting turned out to be political too with attacks on Harold Wilson and talk of Ulster's 'great Protestant leader,' then in jail. Despite having loudspeaker equipment they gave up before the Socialist meeting closed.

The previous day, WSP members had distributed socialist literature at the Labour and trade union march. Among the other leaflets handed out was one from the People's Democracy headed Workers' Civil Rights which seemed to advocate the extension of contracting-out to trade unions in Northern Ireland, where (quite reasonably) those who want to pay the political levy to the Labour Party have to say:

The 1927 Trades Disputes Act was never repealed in Northern Ireland. This meant that Trade Union funds cannot be donated to the Labour Party unless a worker 'contracts in'. In Great Britain, Trade Union Funds can be used to affiliate to the Labour Party unless the worker 'contracts out'.

Perhaps the Northern Ireland Labour Party is short of cash and is using its members in PD to whitewash the undemocratic contracting-out swindle.