Notes by the Way: The Progress of Mr. Middleton Murry (1948)

The Notes by the Way Column from the April 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Progress of Mr. Middleton Murry

Mr. Middleton Murry, who at one time claimed to be a Marxist, though his understanding of it was obviously limited, and who was in the I.L.P. before throwing himself whole-heartedly into Pacifism, has moved forward (or backward). The following is an extract from a review by Mr. Charles Davy of Murry’s “The Free Society” (Observer, March 7th, 1948):—

Many people dislike Mr. Murry’s way of displaying his inner struggles by hastening into print whenever he loses or finds a faith, and certainly this has happened rather often. But it is fair to add that his struggles are about live issues, and one reason why he embarrasses readers is that he stirs up their own doubts and conflicts.

In his new book the issue concerns democracy, Communism and war. He declares himself no longer a Pacifist, for he now believes that the “free society” will not survive unless, an international Atomic Authority is set up, and Russia must be somehow compelled, if necessary by war—the "one just war”—to accept this and come in. Otherwise an ordinary war between Russia and the free societies is sooner or later inevitable.

The Russian Workers' Standard of Living

Comparisons of the workers’ standards of living in different countries are difficult to make, particularly when, as now, the prices of some articles are controlled while other prices (in the black market or the Russian "free market”) are very high indeed. It is therefore interesting to observe that Mr. K. Zilliacus, M.P., who is certainly not prejudiced against the Russian regime, shares the view of a Times correspondent that the Russian standard is lower than that in the West. In a letter to "Forward” (March 13th, 1948) he refers to the Times article and says:—

The article goes on to point out that the Soviet leaders are fully aware that they have not yet succeeded in raising standards of living of the Soviet population to a level comparable with that of the West; that the achievements of the Soviet Union cannot be made the basis for any really European-wide "revolutionary offensive” ; and that neither a war nor an economic depression would be of advantage to the Soviet Union—on the contrary.

Having spent most of my life in studying Soviet conditions, first as Intelligence Officer with the British Military Mission in Siberia for the two years, of intervention in Russia and then as a member of the Information Section of the League of Nations Secretariat for nineteen years, charged with keeping in touch with Soviet conditions and developments, I say the Times is right.

Lord Wavell on Political Education

"The ideal is that the people shall have reached such a standard of education that it will he useless and unprofitable to lie to them at elections. We have still a long way to go to reach this ideal.”

("The Triangle of Forces in Civil Leadership.” By Field-Marshal Earl Wavell.)

 

Mr. Herbert Morrison on the New War for Democracy

In a speech at Birmingham on March 13th Mr. Herbert Morrison announced the opening of a further struggle for democracy, this time against the Russian Government and its followers: —

"Jan Masaryk’s name will live in history as the inspiration of a new resistance movement against the enslavers. Do not doubt that this movement will in time sweep across Europe.”

"I hope that as resistance develops, with the same resources and initiative and sacrifice as in the war against Hitler, a new resistance will rise against tyranny, whatever the colour of its shirt may be.”

"On top of all our economic troubles we find ourselves back in the same sort of nightmare of aggression we thought we had banished by disposing of Hitler.” (Observer, March 14th, 1948.)

It is all very well for Mr. Morrison just to make a passing reference to what he mistakenly thought would be the result of the second world war, but as he was so utterly wrong he surely ought to re-examine the notions that led him to his error. After World War I (which he opposed) he declared he would never in any circumstances support war and rejected the idea that democracy could be safeguarded by war. Has the thought never crossed his mind that perhaps he was nearer the truth then than he has been since?

He was certainly on sounder lines in his speech when he went on to say that "if we can, here in Britain, demonstrate a working model of a healthy democracy based on a healthy economic, social, and political system, the overwhelming majority of mankind will do their utmost to imitate us,” but what hope has he of achieving that result while retaining capitalism? The Labour Government will never succeed in making capitalism healthy for the workers.

Knock, Knock

In the same speech Mr. Morrison gave some advice to the workers. "The modern worker is, or should be, a responsible partner in industry and he should be knocking at the manager’s door with ideas and suggestions It is management’s job to manage and to manage better every day. But every worker as his own responsibility for pushing up production.”

The workers have already been knocking at the door, but they get only a negative reply. They want the wage increases the Labour Party led them to expect under Labour Government; but the management and Mr. Morrison say no. They say that wages must be stabilized at their present level unless there is some special reason for an increase in certain industries. Workers receiving wages far too low to enable them to live decently (like the boiler stokers, liftmen and others employed in the Houses of Parliament who had to strike to get increases in their pay which is 97/- or 91/-) are apt to be cynical when they observe the standard of living the rich shareholders, enjoy, not to mention the fat salaries paid to members of the new nationalisation boards. In the House of Commons on February 17th the Prime Minister gave a list of these. Among the receivers of £8,500, £5,000, £3,500, etc., salaries are numbers of ex-trade union officials. The issue of Hansard for that day is well worth studying. Labour Party supporters must find it hard to square with the past propaganda of their Party against inequality, and with the Government’s frenzied statements about the crisis and the need to avoid increasing personal incomes.

Nationalised Industries and Profit Making

In the Daily Mail (February 18th, 1948) Sir Eustace Missenden, the new £7,000 a year chairman of The Railway Executive, had a word to say about the running of the railways under nationalisation: —

“We intend to show that we are not going to take money out of the taxpayers' pockets. We intend to run at a profit."

It should be remembered that in order to pay their way the State railways have to make a surplus of £30 million a year to pay the 3 per cent. on the £1,000 million of Transport Stock paid to the bought-out railway stockholders.

In the same issue of the Daily Mail (February 18th, 1948) was a report that the National Coal Board was closing down the Maindy Colliery because

“it would be failing in its duty if it did not close the colliery. In December there was a loss of £1 4s. 8d. a ton."

Communist Election Tactics

After losing their deposit at Wigan, where they ran against the Labour Party candidate, the Communists hurried down to North Croydon to tell the workers they should vote for the Labour candidate. The News Chronicle (March 9th, 1948) reported the following:— 

The funniest incident so far in the North Croydon by-election was the visit of Mr. Gallacher, one of the two Communist M.P.s, in order to give a back-handed blessing to the Labour cause and instruct the local Communists (if there are any) to vote for Mr. Harold Nicolson, whom he nevertheless described with characteristic politeness as "a sap."

For political ineptitude combined with political hypocrisy this would be hard to beat. No wonder the Labour agent told Mr. Gallacher to get off the bus. Nothing could do Nioolson greater harm than the crude attentions on the spot of a few vocal Communists and “cryptos.”

It recalls their antics during the war when they supported Tory candidates, as at Lancaster in October, 1941.

“War makes strange bedfellows. A Communist deputation visited the Conservative campaign headquarters in Lancaster this afternoon and offered to work for the return of Mr. MacLean, the National Government candidate." (Daily Telegraph, October 14th, 1941.)

On that occassion they opposed the I.L.P. candidate, Mr. Fenner Brockway.

It must give the Communists great satisfaction to know that their Tory candidate, now Brigadier F. H. R. MacLean, still holds the seat!

Nationalisation in Bulgaria

While the Communist Party of Great Britain has on some occasions demanded nationalisation without compensation, Communist controlled Bulgaria, under a recent nationalisation decree, affecting all industry, is providing for some compensation. According to the Times (January 26th, 1948) "compensation is to be paid in interest-bearing State bonds, the rate of compensation diminishing as the value of the assets taken over rises."

The Roast Beef of Old England

For a long time the bulk of meat eaten in Britain has been imported. Now a new development has taken place, for the Argentine Government has entered the business of distribution here.

According to the Evening Standard (February 10th, 1948) the majority of shares of the Smithfield and Argentine Meat Co. were recently bought by the Government-controlled Buenos Aires firm, C.A.P. (Corporation Argentina de Productores de Came).

The Standard adds;—

“Since the Smithfield and Argentine organisation in this country will carry on trading in Argentine meat as before, we shall have the piquant spectacle of the Argentines drawing profits from trading in Britain— from distributing your rations, in fact."

Edgar Hardcastle

Notes by the Way: Mr. Bevan being Statesmanlike (1956)

The Notes by the Way Column from the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Bevan being Statesmanlike

When he is not calling other supporters of capitalism vermin the Rt. Hon. Aneurin Bevan sometimes writes sober, statesmanlike articles for the Capitalist Press as in the Sunday Express (5 August, 1956). His subject was "Why I want Ike to Lose.” Although Bevan is not a Socialist he likes to parade himself as one on the strength of his continuing support for State Capitalism (nationalisation), and one would have expected the article to be a trumpet blast for setting up an English-model “Welfare State" in U.SA and a repudiation of Eisenhower because he and his party are not likely to do it. But not at all. The article said nothing about America's need for Bevan’s State Capitalist schemes (and naturally nothing about Socialism). It said hardly anything about any policy, beyond a tepid preference for Adlai Stevenson on the ground that be would change the American attitude towards Chiang-Kai-Shek, and might finally end McCarthyism. All he could say about Stevenson was that “his views are not particularly advanced, judged by Europe's standards, and there are even some Conservatives who might not think him sufficiently progressive."

No, Mr. Bevan’s main and almost his only theme was that Eisenhower is sick and consequently liable to reactionary pressure—as if the course of American capitalism is going to be determined by Eisenhower, well or ill. But Mr. Bevan evidently thinks it is:—

“I find the project depressing in the extreme. The President is obviously a sick man and by all the evidence he is likely to become more and not less sick. We shall therefore have less than half a man failing to do what is by general consent a job more than enough for a man in full possession of robust health. The most important political office in the world will be in feeble, fumbling and wavering hands, and it is little consolation that it may be done by the democratic choice of the American people themselves."

So Mr. Bevan can pass by without comment the fact that the American people by democratic choice are about to rivet themselves to capitalism again; this be does not think worth notice; but he is very depressed because American capitalism may be in the hands of a semi-invalid. As if by comparison with the real issue it had any importance at all, except for Mr. Eisenhower.

•  •  •

Bevan Looking in the Mirror

This attitude towards politics does explain why Mr. Bevan got so angry with Attlee and now dislikes Attlee's successor, Gaitskell. When Bevan looks in the mirror be sees a whole man, in robust health; obviously better fitted to lead the Labour Party and become Prime Minister than these fumbling half men.

But how does Bevan work out, in wider spheres, his policy of supporting the robust and opposing the weak? In the same issue of the Sunday Express “Cross Bencher" reported that Mr. R. A. Butler is a robust man, too: “His cheeks glow. His step is light. And he is only 53.“

And what about Colonel Nasser, who is described as  “a tall, strongly built man, with great physical stamina? "

•  •  •

Nationalisation and the Arab Workers

The Arab workers' trade unions in Egypt and other Middle-Eastern countries, have given delighted support to the act of nationalising the Suez Canal and the threatened nationalisation of oil plants and oil pipe-lines. They think their troubles will be over when “their country owns their oil and their canal." They have a rude awakening in store when they find that the beneficiaries will be their exploiters, the local Capitalist class. But what a pity they could not learn from the experience of workers in Britain, Russia and other countries about the illusory benefits of State Capitalism. The people who ought to have told them are the British and other trade union leaders who have international contacts, but they, of course, still cherish the same illusions themselves.

Colonel Nasser has used against the Western Powers the argument that as Egyptian workers built the Canal “Egypt" should own it. But the same can be said of all the accumulated wealth of Egypt and all other countries; the workers produced it but somebody else owns it. The Colonel very well knows that nationalisation is not going to take the wealth of Egypt out of the hands of the rich who own it. If he had any such dangerous thoughts and suggested applying them he would soon be got rid of.

•  •  •

U.N.-The Dream Fades

Except as a face-saver and rubber stamp organisation for the big Powers, nobody seriously considered United Nations as a body to provide a solution for the Suez Canal dispute. A correspondent of the Manchester Guardian at Geneva comments on the parallel disillusioning with one of U.N..'s subsidiaries the United Nations Economic and Social Council. He comments on the failure of this council in the fields of world trade and economic development and goes on:—

“What is considered even more serious, however, is the growing impression among the delegates that, just as in the field of effective world security, the United Nations is becoming almost impotent in the economic and social fields as well. It seems as if there were an unspoken agreement among the industrial as well as the less developed countries that the United Nations has been reduced to a forum where lip-service has to be paid to ideals which no longer apply to the level of sophistication which has now been universally reached. Articles of the United Nations Charter seem to serve as no more than good debating points."—(Manchester Guardian, 9th August, 1956.)

•  •  • 

The Results of Keir Hardie

On the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Keir Hardie he has been acclaimed by both wings of the Labour Party and by the Communist Daily Worker. He is not acclaimed by the S.P.G.B. any more than he was when he was alive; though we must in fairness admit that when we contemplate the low level of the present Labour Party notabilities it does add a certain relative lustre to Keir Hardie. And this, of course, pin-points our "attitude towards his reformist activities and his masterpiece the formation of the Labour Party. His admirers tell us what fine and enduring work he did but they are vague about what it was and why it should be admired. Surely the test to be applied to a man who believed that the way to get Socialism was to build up a trade union-political, refformist Labour Party, is to examine his success in achieving what, he said, it would achieve.

 

Mr. Bevan, in an article “The man who still points the Way ” (Reynolds News, 12 August, 1956), has this to say:—

“We are not yet even within sight of the 'just society' that Keir Hardie dreamed about The society we belong to is not only still unjust it is also unstable. We lurch unsteadily from one crisis to another with the sole satisfaction that our feet are better shod than they were in Hardie's day."

Mr. Bevan puts it very well, but what becomes of the claim of Hardie and the other reformists about the superior wisdom of reformism? And incidentally what were Mr. Bevan and the other members of the Labour Governments doing to leave society in such a mess?

One of Keir Hardie's mistaken beliefs was that the problem of war could be dealt with under capitalism. Now, half a century later, Mr. Bevan tells us in effect, that if we disappear in an H.-Bomb war it will be nice to know that our feet are dry.

•  •  •

Zilliacus Egypt and Israel

Mr. Zilliacus, Labour M.P., for Gorton, is one of the Labour Party M.P.'s who do not approve of Eden's policy towards Egypt, or of his own leader’s policy. He wrote to the Manchester Guardian (6 August, 1956), to put his point of view. He attacked Mr. Gaitskell's statement that the Suez episode “Must be recognised as part of the struggle for the mastery of the Middle East" and declared that “to contemplate going to war is madness," this because Nasser has behind him the whole of the Arab world as well as support from outside.

But point four of his four point explanation of his position included “as an immediate emergency measure, the arming of Israel . . ."

One wonders therefore just what Mr. Zilliacus does think. Against whom is Israel to be armed if not against Egypt and the Arab countries? And since this involves the possibility of war what happens to the view that contemplating going to war is madness, especially as he also wants “the guaranteeing of peace between Israel and the Arab States?"  “Guaranteeing" frontiers means being prepared to go to war.

•  •  •

They’re Fascists !

Trying to interpret events in the international dogfight in terms of how much you like the politicians and how friendly you think they are becomes confusing because the actors keep on changing places and changing colours.

Sir Anthony Eden likens Nasser to Hitler (to which the Colonel with more politeness seems to have made no retort in kind), but similarity to the late Nazi leader and his crimes is just what the Greeks have been seeing in Eden because of Cyprus.

The Communists have had the same trouble. Some readers of the Daily Worker have objected to the Communist Party’s support for dictator Nasser’s policy on the ground that Nasser is anti-Israel, while Communists in Stepney “are pro-Israel." To which another Daily Worker reader retorts that the manner in which the rulers of Israel treat the Arab minority is “fascist-like." (Daily Worker, 8 August).

But a well-known “expert" on world affairs, Mr. Stephen King-Hall thinks that the British Government should use their trump card, the existence of Israel which he describes as “the only, democratic State in the Middle East." (Manchester Guardian, 8 August).

The odd thing is that they all now use “Fascist” and "Nazi” as terms expressing abhorrence, forgetting how all of them have been willing to do a deal with Mussolini, Hitler or anyone else when in need of allies.

Which prompts a further note on the use of language. Why has not “you're like Stalin,” come into common use as term of abuse? What did Adolf have that Josef hadn't got?

•  •  •

Profits from “Welfare” work

“Industrial Relations News” of New York announce publication of a book called “The Dollars and Sense of Human Relations in Industry.” It sets out to answer the question “Do Human relations programmes pay their own way?”

The publicity leaflet notes that “companies to-day are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on human relations courses for supervisors, house organs for employees, recreation facilities, attitude surveys, and many other types of human relations programmes”

It’s their money and they want to know what they get for it in addition to a nice warm feeling.

So the editors “investigate the many areas in which good human relations can result in definite dollars-and-cents contributions to company success.”

This sort of thing must be a bit of a problem to honest christians who have been brought up to believe that they have to choose between wealth and goodness and can't have both. Under this enlightened, modern capitalism christian Capitalists have to have both whether they like it or not. They seek goodness by providing welfare for their wage-slaves and the only result is to give them more dollars and cents than ever.

Another line on “human relations” concerns protective clothing worn in factories and warehouses, dealt with in an article “How Clothing Can Help Production" (“Furniture Record,” 13 July, 1956). The writer, Mr. F. S. Winfield, Managing Director of Raynor, Webber and Stiles Ltd., claims that much study is given to the advantages of such clothing apart from its function as protective against accidents and against damage to ordinary dress.

Putting women workers into smart uniform, working garments prevents envy from interfering with concentration oft work:—

“The modish new spring skirt of a young unmarried operative cannot, for instance, be the object of rueful contrast during working hours with, say, the sad-looking frock that middle-aged widow has had to make do for with a couple of years."

It has been found, the writer says, that “identification of rank by colour differentiation has a marked effect on discipline and bearing . . . ” 

And when one firm decided to put all its men into clean overalls, washed each week by the firm, the result, within a week, was “an appreciable improvement in the tidiness and appearance of the machine shop.”

The article ends:—

"As more and more firms undertake to issue their workers with protective clothing, it becomes increasingly clear that the American conception of the provision of these facilities as an investment certain to show profitable returns in extra smartness and extra enthusiasm is a correct one."

The personnel experts call their study of how to get profitable reactions from the workers “human relations.” It is about as human as the preparation of thousands of pay sheets by an electronic computer.

Edgar Hardcastle

Notes by the Way: So they couldn’t kid Mikardo! (1956)

The Notes by the Way column from the December 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

So they couldn’t kid Mikardo!

Mr. Mikardo is Labour M.P. for Reading. Two years ago he visited Hungary and wrote about it in Tribune (17/9/54) under the title: “There’s very little poverty in Red Hungary,” though he thought their standard of living was 30 per cent below that of British workers. The declared intention of the article was to expose as fairy tales and “imaginative fiction” all the stories he had heard about poverty and discontent, surveillance by secret police, subjection to the Russian army settled in the country, etc. On the contrary, wrote Mr. Mikardo, he was allowed to see what he wanted, was able to talk freely and found people who “didn't hesitate to criticise the regime.” He saw only few Russian soldiers and only one person wearing a Communist Party badge. He ended with the cocky avowal: “Old Mikardo isn't an easy guy to kid at any time anyway.”

It looks as if Mr. Mikardo owes some explanation to the readers of Tribune.

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Pause for Humbug

  “It was one of those incredible situations that could only happen in London—Sir Anthony Eden and Russian Ambassador Jacob Malik sipping from the same loving cup. It happened last night amid the splendour of the Lord Mayor’s banquet in cathedral-like Guildhall.”—(Daily Sketch. 10/11/56.) 

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Pollitt and the Red Army

Three years ago Mr. Harry Pollitt sent “greetings to the Soviet Army.” (Daily Worker, 23/2/1953). Along with the usual thanks for the debt “we” owe to the Russian branch of capitalism’s greatest industry, that for destruction, Mr. Pollitt said:

  “We know the Soviet Armed Forces will never be used for aggression, but are on guard for peace.”

The Communist Party should send him to Budapest to tell this to the Hungarian workers—but make sure that he does so under the protection of some Russian tanks and the secret police.

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The War that saved the Peace

On Saturday, November 17th, a week after the day set aside in remembrance of two world wars “ for peace,” two men were justifying two recent wars. One was Sir Anthony Eden, about the invasion of Egypt:

  “The truth is that we have checked a drift which would have ended in the loss of countless lives and more other evils than we can ever estimate.”—(Evening Standard, 17/11/56.)

The same day Mr. J. R. Campbell, in the Daily Worker, was justifying the Russian onslaught in Hungary under the tide: “The choice that saved Peace.” He claimed that it prevented “a possible prolonged civil war. This would have been pregnant with the terrible danger of a third world war.”

Eden and Campbell did not get together to concoct their joint story beforehand. It just happens that they are in the same line of business, that of justifying the brutality of their respective capitalist groups.

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Mr. Zilliacus and arms for Israel

Writing to the Manchester Guardian (6/8/56), Mr. Zilliacus, Labour M.P. for Gorton, explained his policy for preserving peace in the Middle East. One point was, as an immediate emergency measure, the provision of arms for Israel. We wonder what he thinks of his policy now. Perhaps he can get comfort from the fact that Israel got its arms—by capturing Russian and British tanks from the Egyptian army. We await, with all due reverence, Mr. Zilliacus's new pontifical pronouncement on how to prevent capitalism causing wars.

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The Emotions of the “New Statesman”

The New Statesman, which tirelessly zig-zags about in its search for new ways of improving capitalism, has sadly admitted, in an editorial (3rd November, 1956) that it was wrong about Israel.

  “Most British Socialists felt emotionally involved in the well-being of Israel, and ever since 1945 this journal has supported the Israelis through good times and bad. But we cannot support Israel in her present action, or rejoice when we try to estimate its long-term consequences.”

Of course, the New Statesman does not speak for Socialists, and Socialists do not decide their attitude by emotional preferences for one capitalist government against another. The New Statesman sees Israel as a group of homeless, persecuted Jewish refugees, refusing to recognise that the State of Israel is something quite different. It is a new, expanding capitalist state, backed by finance and arms from overseas, trying to establish itself in opposition to the existing Middle East states, each with its own interests and aims.

#    #    #    #

Now Nasser’s the Pin-up Boy

Disillusionment with the failure of its fatuous policy which favoured Israeli capitalism, the New Statesman will probably spend a few years admiring another capitalist figure-head, Colonel Nasser, until he, too, “lets them down.” Mr. Shinwell, formerly War Minister and Minister of Defence, in the Labour Government, has been unable to make the New Statesman's quick somersault, and is very critical of the Labour Party’s attitude to Eden’s action. He says that “Now it seems there are many people in the Labour Party who regard Nasser as a hero.” (Daily Sketch, 3/11/56).

But Mr. Shinwell is like the New Statesman in letting his emotions decide his attitude—only his emotions are still stirred by Israel, not Egypt:

  “I glory—I repeat glory— in the fact that the Israelis have had the courage to defend themselves.”

What a pity all these emotions cannot be lavished on the working class in their struggle against capitalism.

#    #    #    #

Abadan and Egypt

The dress rehearsal for the Eden invasion of Egypt was Abadan in 1951, staged not by Tories, but by the Labour Government. When Persia nationalised the Abadan oil refinery, the Labour Government was outraged, and though they had not even the fig-leaf pretence that this was an issue affecting all countries (the Eden argument about the Suez Canal), the Government immediately started using force to intimidate the Persian Government, which duly protested to the world at large and to the American President in particular. Mr. Shinwell discloses his part in the business:

   “When the Abadan situation emerged, as Minister of Defence, I alerted a brigade and sent them out by air to the Middle East—with the full consent of the Labour Cabinet.” -(Daily Sketch, 3/11/56.)

The Sketch adds this comment:

  “The 16th Independent Parachute Brigade Group was sent to Cyprus, and British warships to the Abadan area. But Mr. Attlee ordered the evacuation of the refinery.” 

War was avoided, and the dispute was “settled” on a basis which enabled American oil companies to get a big foothold in Persian oil, a setback for British oil interests and the British Government that has rankled with them ever since.

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Movement for the Improvement of the Secret Police

The Secret Police and You is a pamphlet issued by the “Campaign for the Limitation of Secret Police Powers.” It is signed by the usual mixed bag of “ progressives,” including Labour and Liberal M.P.s, Aneurin Bevan, the Rev. Donald Soper, Kingsley Martin, etc., etc. Alarmed by such cases as that in which Mr. John Lang lost his job with I.C.I., apparently because his wife had been a Communist and he was, therefore, regarded as a “security risk,” the Campaign Council wants the procedure for vetting potential unreliables regularised and provided with safeguards for the innocent, while ferreting out the “guilty.” It has drafted a five-point code which “would impose a legal restraint on the arbitrary power of the executive and set standards both of fairness and of efficiency for the security services by obliging them to bring forward really convincing evidence.”

It thinks M.I.5 is not very efficient, and wants the job of identifying potential spies to be done by "experts.” since it is “a highly skilled business.” (Page 12).

They warn us that present procedure makes a mockery of “ all the legal safeguards of which England has boasted since the 17th century.”

On the face of it there seems to be no reason why the Campaign should not achieve some success with its proposals, especially if they can convince the Government that its M.I.5 could and should be made more efficient.

The one thing for which the Socialist searches in vain is any explanation why the working class should need a secret police. Judging from Hungary, where, at the first opportunity, the workers lynched all they could get hold of, there is at least some reason to suppose that workers don’t want a secret police at all. But here they are up against the Campaign Council.

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Professor Gilbert Murray’s support for war

Believers in the United Nations who have for years regarded Professor Gilbert Murray as a stalwart for that cause have been dismayed to learn that he defends Eden. His reasons were given in a letter to Time and Tide (10th November) in the course of which he wrote:

  “The real danger was that, if the Nasser movement bad been allowed to progress unchecked, we should have been faced by a coalition of all Arab, Muslim, Asiatic and Anti-Western States, led nominally by Egypt, but really by Russia; that is, a division of the world in which the enemies of civilization are stronger than its supporters. Such a danger, the Prime Minister saw, must be stopped instantly and since the UN has no instrument, it must be stopped, however irregularly, by those Nations who can act at once.” 

His new hope is that the U.N. will create its own permanent “Police Force.”

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: Zilliacus (2017)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Konni Zilliacus, who died last month, was the Left winger to end all Left wingers. The only man who was in step; the persistent thorn in his leaders’ sides; Labour’s unsleeping conscience. So they said.

Zilliacus had many disagreements with his party, especially on its foreign policy. He was one of those Labour M.P.s who found to their astonishment after the victory in 1945 that Bevin handled foreign affairs very much as they had expected a Tory Foreign Secretary to.

He was in almost all the rebel movements and eventually he paid for this, with expulsion. What Wilson has called “dog licences” were as necessary then as they are now; Zilliacus could not get back into Parliament until he had given the Labour leadership the necessary assurances about his future conduct, and they had accepted him into the fold once more.

Zilliacus was a prime example of what are called honest politicians. Perhaps we can accept this—although he never took his disagreements with Labour to the extent of resigning, nor did he come back on his own terms—but the fact is that such men are dangerous.

The so-called Left wingers encourage the idea that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the Labour Party, that its only fault is a temporary deviation from the straight and narrow path, that a change of leadership is all that is needed to put everything right again.

No one will ever know how many futile votes this idea has won for Labour. No one will ever know the extent of the confusion and the cynicism it has caused.

What we do know is that the problems of capitalism are as acute as ever and that the political ignorance and apathy which supports the system is still there, encouraged by the Labour Party, by its members honest and dishonest, its leaders and its rebels.

[from ‘Review’, Socialist Standard, August 1967]

The Review Column: Peace (1967)

The News in Review column from the August 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peace

This, let us remind ourselves, is peacetime. At the time of writing no two countries are at war, in the sense of a formal declaration of hostilities.

Yet these are some of the events reported in just one day’s newspaper last month:

• Riots in Hong Kong; four people killed. Gurkha troops take up position on the frontier with China.
• Israel and Egypt exchange accusations over which side started the last bout of fighting in the Suez Canal area.
• Rebellion in the Congo. Three United States transport: aircraft sent to give long range support for the government: forces.
• Civil War in Nigeria. Government troops reported advancing rapidly southwards through secessionist Biafra.
• American Defence Secretary McNamara admits that United States Marines suffered heavy losses in recent fighting along the southern edge of the demilitarised zone in Vietnam.
• Mr. Kosygin, Russia’s Prime Minister, describes the world situation as “very grave.”

If some of these conflicts are complicated, this is only a symptom of the fact that capitalism is a mass of tortuous interests, treachery and coercion.

If they are persistent, this is an indication that capitalism continually produces unrest and insecurity, that it is a society which cannot be at peace.

And if there are statesmen whose only contribution is to tell us the obvious—that reveals the impotence of the men who say they can control capitalism, can tame its terrors.

There is, of course, a lesson in all this, about the future of the world and the welfare of the human race. But it will not be found in the morning newspapers.

Promises

Two of the most persistent of working class dreams are better and more plentiful housing and lower prices. It follows from this that these two issues are the subject of many promises, from politicians and others, and that much nonsense is talked about them.

Take housing. Tory Shadow Minister Sir Keith Joseph recently said that, provided everyone accepted a few brilliant ideas he had just happened to think up, the housing shortage in England and Wales could be over in five years.

This probably sounded quite plausible to anyone in need of a house, or to anyone who had forgotten that politicians are in the habit of promising to solve the housing problem, and that for a very long time they have been telling us that the solution to it was only a few years away.

Perhaps those same people have forgotten that Joseph was himself Minister of Housing when the Tories were in power; that he failed to abolish the housing shortage and failed even to produce any clear or original ideas about how it was to be tackled.

Now take prices. Take an article written in the Lloyds Bank Review last month, in which Sir Ronald Edwards, chairman of the Electricity Council, thought that “the average price per unit of electricity should be significantly lower at the end of 1977 than at the end of 1967 ”

This sounds as though the Electricity Council has found a secret denied to all other industries. But Edwards would be more convincing if he had not written his article at the very time when electricity prices are about to go up all over the country by about ten per cent. He would carry more conviction if his promise were not hedged about with all sorts of risky assumptions on future economic trends, which Edwards must know could easily upset his calculations.

He himself destroyed the whole thing with the obvious comment: “Only a fool or a prophet would stake his reputation on a firm forecast of electricity prices a decade from now.”

Capitalism is full of problems, and of smooth-talkers who say they can solve them. The tragedy is that so many people believe the promises, and fail to see the nonsense for what it is.

Zilliacus

Konni Zilliacus, who died last month, was the Left winger to end all Left wingers. The only man who was in step; the persistent thorn in his leaders’ sides; Labour’s unsleeping conscience. So they said.

Zilliacus had many disagreements with his party, especially on its foreign policy. He was one of those Labour M.P.s who found to their astonishment after the victory in 1945 that Bevin handled foreign affairs very much as they had expected a Tory Foreign Secretary to.

He was in almost all the rebel movements and eventually he paid for this, with expulsion. What Wilson has called “dog licences” were as necessary then as they are now; Zilliacus could not get back into Parliament until he had given the Labour leadership the necessary assurances about his future conduct, and they had accepted him into the fold once more.

Zilliacus was a prime example of what are called honest politicians. Perhaps we can accept this—although he never took his disagreements with Labour to the extent of resigning, nor did he come back on his own terms—but the fact is that such men are dangerous.

The so-called Left wingers encourage the idea that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the Labour Party, that its only fault is a temporary deviation from the straight and narrow path, that a change of leadership is all that is needed to put everything right again.

No one will ever know how many futile votes this idea has won for Labour. No one will ever know the extent of the confusion and the cynicism it has caused.

What we do know is that the problems of capitalism are as acute as ever and that the political ignorance and apathy which supports the system is still there, encouraged by the Labour Party, by its members honest and dishonest, its leaders and its rebels.

More Light On The Stalin-Tito Quarrel (1950)

From the August 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

A recent broadcast by Konni Zilliacus, reported in the “Listener” of May 11th, throws some interesting light on the dispute between Russia and Yugoslavia. It is also revealing in the matter of Zilliacus’ own position as a fellow-traveller of late, and as the broadcast was certainly sympathetic to the Tito regime he must be in grave danger of being branded as a Trotskyist-Titoist-Fascist.

The theme of the broadcast was that if the conflict between these two “Communist” countries could be settled then it might even be possible to “discover the answer to the most important question in the world— that is how to end the arms race and turn the cold war into at least tepid peace between the capitalist and communist world.” (Conclusion of his article.)

Ignoring this somewhat naive assumption regarding the problem of maintaining even a “tepid peace” in the present state of Capitalist Society, having given in his broadcast only a few examples of Soviet methods and duplicity when confronted with a recalcitrant satellite, it is incredible that Zilliacus could believe that Stalin would even come to regard an independent Yugoslavia as anything but a menace to an internally troubled Russia.

Zilliacus says for instance

  “While I was in Belgrade Moshe Pijade, a leading member of the Politburo of the Yugoslav Communist Party, published an account of the relations between Yugoslav Partisans and the Soviet Government during the war. It was backed by the actual text of telegrams and messages. It showed quite clearly that the Russians refused all help for a long time, on the ground that it was technically impossible, but really because they were trying to bring about some kind of arrangement between Draža Mihailović, representing the émigré Royalist Government in London supported by the Western Allies, and Tito’s Partisans. Moshe Pijade also related how, when he was in Moscow during the conference between the Russians and their Western Allies in 1944, Molotov in reply to his question patted him on the shoulder and said: 'The position as regards Yugoslavia is excellent.' It was only later that the Yugoslavs discovered, according to their account, that what was really discussed was dividing their country into Russian and British spheres of influence on a fifty-fifty basis.”

Further, after the breaking point between the two countries had been reached when the Soviet military and civilian advisers were withdrawn, the dispute went beyond a mere exchange of letters and an economic boycott was applied by Russia which was accompanied by “notes couched in threatening language, troop movements and frontier incidents, and a tornado of propaganda inciting the people to rebellion.”

The attempt to wreck Yugoslavia failed however, and now according to Zilliacus, “The people and the government are united and on their mettle.” He goes on to list the great changes which he claims are taking place, including the freeing of literature, science and art from political controls; economic decentralization and a vigorous campaign against bureaucracy; experiments in workers’ control. The sting however is in the tail: —

   “At the same time Yugoslav leaders are candid about how much remains to be done. One of the chief of them said to me, ‘We must admit that in the Socialist States we have not yet solved the problem of freedom.’"

One finds it difficult to reconcile “a united government and people” with the unsolved “problem of freedom.” The latter expression is reminiscent of the problem of maintaining law and order which so frequently occurs in bourgeois society.

J. L.

Previous convictions (1985)

A Short Story from the Spring 1985 issue of the World Socialist

I was fifteen before it dawned on me that the pain I had been getting between the eyes was not a malignant tumour which would quickly grow to the size of a melon, invading every lobe, capillary and ventricle of my brain until I was blind, deaf and dumb and reducing me to a dribbling, mewling vegetable until I died in excruciating agony - but only a bad case of boredom with school.

I cut down at once on my aspirin intake and my sense of recovery was complete when I realised that my boredom was not entirely due to my being a loutish, spotty adolescent but was also something to do with how I was treated in the classroom. My school masters were bringing me to a state bordering on sensory deprivation by "teaching" me stuff which was patently incorrect. It was too much, to expect them to make it interesting.

In any case I was feeling dissatisfied with society at large - although pretty satisfied with myself - because of my recent addiction to politics. My theories were startlingly simple and illuminating false. Before 1939 there had been all sorts of problems - slump, unemployment, extreme poverty, strikes, culminating in the war itself. The governing party for those years had been the Conservatives. Therefore, those problems had been preconceived, designed and implemented by the Tories. Therefore, the way to a happier, abundant, peaceful society was through ditching the Tories and electing a Labour government.

I was in favour of nationalising everything; the state machine was potentially the overall benefactor of us all and must be given the chance to operate in this way. I propounded this idea with an arrogance which bewildered my parents and irritated my schoolmates. Any event in the entire history of the human race could be quickly explained by me in a few illuminating words, leading to the conclusion that Clement Attlee should be Prime Minister. This made things rather difficult for me at school but I was saved from the inevitable crisis confrontation by a bout of food poisoning, the symptoms of which lingered for months, until I could reproduce them almost at will. Eventually, a kindly but gullible doctor diagnosed me as a case of neurasthenia and in need of a long rest. I had, he surmised, suffered emotional damage through the stresses of the war - the air raids, the rationing, the worry of the king having to be evacuated to Balmoral when a stray German bomb fell in the capacious grounds of Buckingham Palace. The timing of this diagnosis was lucky for me; with suspicious speed the school accepted the suggestion that I leave early and I was allowed to step through the gates for the last time, into an agreeable year of reading, dreaming and political activity.

I blush now to recall what that activity amounted to. I had spent much of that early summer working frenziedly for the return of the 1945 Labour government. Each evening, instead of crouching over my homework, I had gone to the local Labour committee rooms, gathered up literature and canvassing cards and sallied out to harangue countless bemused voters on the evils of pre-war Toryism. My special devils were Baldwin and Chamberlain; if anyone was unkind enough to remind me of Macdonald and Snowden I contemptuously dismissed them as under-cover Tories who had been exposed just in time to save the soul of the Labour Party, which was now safe with Attlee, Bevin, Morrison . . . 

The constituency I campaigned in had been traditionally a safe Conservative seat, which a blue-rosetted monkey could have won but which was held by a titled fop who could hardly put together a coherent speech and who had insurmountable problems in answering the simplest of questions. At his public meetings my seething outrage would erupt into shrill schoolboy heckling. Even worse to me, the MP had been an admirer of the Third Reich and had posed for photographs beside Hitler at big Nazi rallies. In the 1945 delusions about Labour's brave new world that was the sort of constituency which fell in droves to the Labour Party but in this case the fop held on by his manicured finger nails, keeping a little patch of blue on the constituency map amid an ocean of red. My chagrin at our failure to humiliate the Nazi baronet was mollified by my pleasure at the overwhelming return of the Labour government. As the committee rooms shut down I began to spend my time at numerous ward, committee and Labour League of Youth meetings. I now had the party members to harass instead of the voters on their doorsteps and I was not overwhelmingly popular but I justified it by saying that there was a lot to prepare for; the workers of Britain, after almost fifty years of travail, was about to arrive at the Promised Land.

The rest is a history which did not reassure me in the making. Right at the beginning, Clement Attlee went to Buckingham Palace not, as I had dreamed, to inform the king that the revolution had come and that henceforth the royal homes would be taken over as shelter for homeless workers who, after all, had won the war and then put Labour in power. Instead, he went to kiss hands, swear loyalty and agree to form a government which would keep the class represented by the royals secure in their wealth and privilege. Then the Russian workers became abruptly transformed from our staunch allies in the fight against fascism into our mortal enemies. We could not, it seemed, expect to arrive at the Promised Land until we had dealt with the threat from Moscow and with other enemies as well - unofficial strikes, the Greek Communists, the Communist Party over here, the East Germans, the North Koreans, the Chinese. The list seemed endless; it even included the Americans, whose dominant economy had undermined the Imperial Preference system, which was supposed to bring such benefits to us from the British Empire. It was all very confusing and frustrating to a recent survivor of brain cancer and adolescent acne and I resolved to look elsewhere for the soul of true socialism.

I began, daringly, to attend public meetings addressed by dissident Labour MPs like Konni Zilliacus and John Platt-Mills who, in spite of their membership of the party, seemed to oppose almost everything the government did. In particular they were clear that the Russian ruling class, headed by the remote and sinister Joseph Stalin, was devoted to PEACE while the American rulers, represented by bland, diminutive Harry Truman, was intent on WAR. These dupes of the Communist Party - which itself was a collection of unwavering dupes of Russian capitalism - appealed to my sense of outrage and bewilderment at the compliance of the Attlee government with so many of the things I wanted to see abolished from human society. The Communist Party began to look very attractive to me. Of course there were a few problems in arguing away a great deal of recent history and experience -  the show trials of the '30s, the Russo-German pact, the murders and repressions of Stalin's pitiless rule - but I managed it. My time in the Labour Party had obviously taught me something.

And that is about when I met Charlie who, wherever he is now, is probably unaware of his vital, unintentional, formative influence on my political ideas. Charlie was an old friend of the family; in the army during the war he had been through some nasty battles and had been demobilised to a homeless wife and child. He at once joined the local squatters movement, which was taking over disused military buildings under the encouragement of the Communist Party. Once his family was housed, Charlie joined the CP; he also got himself a job as a bus conductor and it was on his bus that I met him again, one morning in the dreadful winter of 1946/7, as I hunched miserably against the cold in a workbound trolley-bus. I was startled to feel my proffered fare pressed firmly back into my hand and looked up as Charlie grinned an invitation to "have this ride for nothing, Comrade".

I began to see a lot of Charlie after that and we always argued about politics, with me too ready to accept his Stalinist chop-logic, if only because it always led me to the conclusion that what really mattered was the "education of the workers" - with people like us, of course, as the educators. This encouraged Charlie to believe that he had persuaded me into joining the CP and indeed that may have come about, had we not arranged to meet one Saturday evening at the local common, where all sorts of political and religious groups held outdoor meetings. I really went along in the hope of getting in a bit of Tory-bashing (in spite of all my doubts and confusion, they were still the final enemy). I moved from one platform to another until I came to one where a young guy with daringly long hair was speaking about a world without classes, money, war.

A few weeks later, trembling with anxiety, I applied to join my local Socialist Party of Great Britain branch. Charlie was furious: "Armchair bleeding theorists," he snarled, "Better than actually doing anything though, ennit?" He just did not know what a relief it was to be free of those political agonies of my schooldays, not to have to chop and twist in order to survive in a discussion, to have an explanation of society and an arguable reason, instead of an emotional spasm, as the basis of working for a new world order. It still worried my parents but with my previous convictions in the past, I became a reformed character.

Ivan. (Britain)