Leicester—and after. (1913)

From the August 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month we dealt briefly with the position occasioned by the bye-election at Leicester, and pointed out to the workers generally, and to the workers of Leicester in particular, the necessity for understanding their class position in society. How necessary this is has been demonstrated by the fact that a very large number of workers voted for the Liberal candidate, believing that their interests would be best looked after by the Liberal Party, and that if they abstained from voting it might be taken as “a graceless disregard of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald’s position.”

The refusal of the National Executive of the Labour Party to endorse the candidature of the Leicester Labour Party’s candidate can only be taken as evidence of their adoption of the “one-and-one principle.”

The truth of our contention that the Labour Party is not independent and is mainly concerned in keeping the Liberal Party in office is amply confirmed in three recent issues of the “Labour Leader.” (It is worth while to remember in this connection that it was the Liberal Government who passed the Payment of Members Bill, and, of course, £400 a year is worthy of serious consideration.)

Since the declaration of the poll we have been treated in the capitalist daily Press, and especially in the “Weekly Journal of Socialism, Trade Unionism, and Politics,” to yards of explanation from the official Labour Party.

The “Labour Leader” (July 13) says: “We all want a clearer manifestation of our independence. We all want a more vigorous denunciation of the Government’s tyranny at home and abroad.” A letter from the secretary of the Bermondsey branch of the I.L.P. appears in the same issue, in which he states, among other things, that “the Leicester business has given us a staggering blow in Bermondsey. Our members are broken and crushed. They feel they can no longer face the enemy, as they know that the criticisms levied against the ‘independence’ of the Labour Party are justified after all, and that they can no longer honestly continue to repudiate the allegations. They are sick and tired of ‘explaining’ and ‘apologising’ for the Party, and the culminating business of Leicester can neither be explained nor apologised for. It can only be condemned.”

In another issue of the “Labour Leader” we find a special article by Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, in which he tells us : “Our Parliamentary policy is exactly that which the most revolutionary Socialist Party would adopt if it had 40 members in the House of Commons in the year of grace 1913.”

This is, indeed, nonsense. When the workers become class-conscious they will reject the Labour Party for the spurious body of rogues and fools that it is. Understanding what they want, and having sent 40 members of “the most revolutionary Socialist Party” to the House of Commons, it is certain these representatives would have to carry out the instructions of the workers who had sent them there. Knowing that they were sent with specific instructions they could not play a two-handed game, and we should not witness that, sorry spectacle which the Labour Party has treated us to—a “revolutionary” party voting against their own amendments in order to save the Government.

Last year there were several bye elections, and as a result of three cornered contests the Conservative candidates in some instances managed to secure the seats. This caused much discomfiture amongst the Liberal and Labour Parties.

Why the workers should be perturbed at the loss of Liberal seats the present writer cannot understand. Are not the Liberal Party ever ready to bring out the armed forces to maim and murder the workers with as little compunction as the Tory Party ? Belfast, Llanelly, Tonypandy prove that they are. Yet this is the brutal party that Mr. Ramsay MacDonald is prepared to “bargain” with. The following from “Reynolds’s Newspaper” (6.10.12) is pretty significant :—

“Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, in a speech on Wednesday last, stated that there would be no more three-cornered contests if the Liberal Party would recognise the right of the Labour Party to 80 members.”

“This would seem to indicate the readiness for a ‘deal’ on the part of the latter in view of the next election” is an editorial comment.

Independence, forsooth !

In the “Labour Leader” of July 17 appears an article by Mr. Ramsay MacDonald under the heading : “What is Independence ?” He says that his critics are “nothing more than anti-Liberal,” and asks : “If Lord Selborne had been in South Africa instead of Lord Gladstone what would have been the difference ?”

What this has to do with the “independence” of the Labour Party it is difficult to understand. The reference to Gladstone and Selborne is, of course, an admission of the truth of our contention that the Liberal and Tory parties are really one party, who are only concerned with the robbery of the working class. But if the working class are to derive any comfort from the fact that things would have been no different on the Rand had Lord Selborne been there instead of the Liberal butcher, they should find balm in the reflection that the miners would have been just as ruthlessly murdered had Mr. MacDonald been there instead of either.

A recently joined member of the I.L.P. said publicly : “After what you have done about Leicester, it seems to me that I might just as well have stayed in the Liberal Party for all the good we are doing” (“Labour Leader,” July 17.) Quite so.

Fellow workers, the only organisation worthy of your serious consideration is the Socialist Party of Great Britain, because it is the only party standing for Socialism.

S. W. T.

Action Replay: Downhill journey (2026)

Happier times.

The Action Replay column from the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Participatory sport is about enjoyment and exercise, but the professional version is about financial achievement and the glory of winning. The other side of success is of course failure, and there has been quite a lot of, not just not succeeding, but actually failing in recent weeks.

Leicester City won football’s Premier League in 2016 and the FA Cup in 2021, but they have just been relegated to League One, the third tier of English football. Frequent changes of manager have not helped (a common occurrence in such cases), nor has the death of owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha in a helicopter accident two years ago. The club has been losing money, and relegation is likely to exacerbate this.

Chelsea won last year’s Club World Cup, but lost six consecutive league games and are unlikely to qualify for next season’s Champions League. Their last manager lasted just 23 matches, after being given a six-year contract. Large transfer payments and UEFA financial regulations mean they will have trouble improving their squad of players. Supporters have questioned the competence and commitment of the owners.

Burnley have been relegated to the Championship after just one season in the Premier League. Loans to buy players have created further financial problems, and again the company that owns the club has become unpopular and seems to have little idea of how to turn things round.

It’s not just football. In cricket Middlesex have been embroiled in problems, including legal disputes with previous bosses and, again, several coaches in a season. They won the County Championship most recently in 2016, when they were unbeaten. They are now in the second division, and a group of former players have stated that the club is ‘drifting towards irrelevance’.

Sussex are also having difficulties. They overestimated potential income, and were deducted twelve points in this season’s Championship. With many players likely to leave at the end of the season, their future success is in doubt. Not being in the Hundred competition considerably reduces their income.

In golf, Saudi Arabia will withdraw their funding for the LIV tournaments next season, which means that LIV will be scrambling around looking for potential investors. The sizeable financial losses involved may make this hard, though. It was all sportswashing, of course, but this has not exactly worked out.

You do sometimes wonder how the capitalists that own and control big sporting organisations and so often run them into the ground have managed to make billions from other companies they own. Maybe sport is just even more unpredictable than ‘ordinary’ capitalist markets.

Paul Bennett

The case of Philip Snowden, M.P. (1908)

From the March 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour member for Blackburn, like others who came to the front at the general election, strives to add to his income, (a paltry £200 a year with an extra £25 now and again) by lecturing at high fees, and by writing articles to suit the purposes of the millionaire proprietors of the trustified Press.

In the course of his peregrinations he has run up against members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, and in our last number we briefly recorded that our Manchester comrades had forwarded to Mr. Snowden particulars of compacts made between I.L.P. candidates and Liberals, with special reference to Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and Mr. James Parker.

Mr. Philip Snowden replied as follows : 

(Copy). 

10, Baron’s Court Road,

West Kensington, W.

Jan. 23, ’08.

Dear Sir,—There is nothing at all in all you say which gives any proof of an alliance or understanding. Your extracts simply prove what everybody knows, namely, that in the absence of a second Liberal the Liberal electors voted against the Tory.—Yrs very truly,

(Signed) Philip Snowden.

Now what do we say ?

“Mr. Ramsay MacDonald was adopted as the Labour candidate for Leicester, at a meeting held at the Temperance Hall on Jan. 5th, 1906. In the course of his speech he said that the trade union section, and that practically comprehended the whole of the movement, said that in connection with this election they must vote so that all votes in the House of Commons they could influence would be cast in favour of the upsetting of the Taff Vale judgment. They said the danger of Protection to the wage earners was so great and so pressing that they must fight and kill Protection, and so, after full discussion, their local Labour Representation Committee came to the decision, and he was empowered to communicate it to them that night, that on no account was it going to ask them to plump on Monday week (cheers), and their Trades Council came to the decision the other night to advise every working man, and everybody who was influenced by the Labour movement, to use both their votes, to give one to Mr. Broadhurst and the other to himself (loud cheers).

Councillor Hill proposed the resolution in support and asked every Progressive elector to use his two votes solid for progress and the advancement of Labour.

Alderman Wood, president of the Liberal Association, seconded. He said that his friends had decided not only to run one candidate, but they were going to take off their coats and work not only for the return of their candidate, but also of their good friend, Mr. MacDonald. Let them all work hard and vote for both the Progressive candidates, and then he should be confident of the result.”

Mr. Snowden may find a full report of this meeting in the Leicester Daily Post of January 6th, 1906, headed—

THE BOROUGH ELECTION.

LABOUR CAMPAIGN OPEN.

BRILLIANT SPEECH BY MR. J. R. MACDONALD.

UNITY WITH THE LIBERAL PARTY.

PROTECTION MUST BE KILLED.

Undoubtedly it was a brilliant speech, from a Liberal point of view.

The Leicester correspondent of the London Daily News, on January 15th, 1906, said, “Mr. Broadhurst and Mr. MacDonald, although on separate platforms, are urging that electors should not plump, but allocate their votes to the two Progressives.” Only by accident, of course, Mr. Snowden, there was no “understanding.”

In the Leicester Daily Post for January 16th, 1906, further speeches may be found. The polling took place on the previous day. The following is a reprint from the article “Labour at the Polls” which appeared in the Socialist Standard, March, 1906 :—

“After the poll was declared a meeting was held at the Liberal Club, at which Ald. Wood congratulated them upon their magnificent victory. He was proud of the Liberals of Leicester, proud of the Labour Party of Leicester and of the unity of action which had brought about that great triumph. Mr. Henry Broadhurst said that Labour and Liberalism had known no difference, as shown by the extraordinary equality of votes between Mr. MacDonald and himself. That is what they did when they had trust in each other. There was one man who had made that grand result possible, and that was Alderman Wood, but for whose years of devotion to unity they might have been a divided people again. Three cheers were given for Ald. Wood.

At the same time a meeting was being held by the Labour Party. Councillor Banton, in opening, said the Liberals had polled with them (cheers) and they reciprocated the fight side by side (loud cheers). Mr. MacDonald said there had been one very significant fact about the contest. Practically every voter of the 14,000 had polled Broadhurst and MacDonald (cheers). The plumping had been insignificant, and consequently—(Voices: “Three cheers for MacDonald and Broadhurst.”)—he wanted to read the following message to them : “I wish you to give my hearty congratulations to the Labour Party on the Progressive victory at Leicester to-day. (Signed) Ald. Wood,” (Voices: “Three cheers for Ald. Wood,” which were heartily given). The Alderman had told him that he would be 67 years of age to-morrow. They had given him a magnificent birthday present (cheers). Let them be perfectly clear. The Mercury had said that the two parties— Liberal and Labour—had been occupying quite independent positions during the whole of the contest, but owing to the great crises that the late government had brought upon this country—the crisis to Trade Unionism and the crisis to Industry—they had, upon those specific and definite points, cooperated for the purpose of killing the late government, and preventing things going from bad to worse.”

If no alliance existed, no “understanding” was arrived at, when these two parties—Liberal and Labour—”co-operated for the purpose of killing the late Government,” we have yet to learn what an alliance or “understanding” is.

With regard to Halifax, we said in March 1906:—

“At Halifax Mr. Parker openly advised his supporters to give one vote to the Liberal. The defeat of the Tory, said the Halifax Guardian, was entirely due to the alliance between the Liberal and Socialist Parties, which had occurred for the first time in the political history of Halifax. The figures showed unmistakably that the combination had held good, that Liberal votes by the thousand went for Socialism, and that Socialism reciprocated this support to the fullest extent of its power.

The Guardian, however, is a bit out in calling it a victory for Socialism. Even Mr. Parker only claimed “that the result had shown that Halifax at heart was in favour of progress.” At the Oddfellows’ Hall Mr. M. J. Blatchford said, after speeches from Mr. Parker and others, the result showed that the arrangement made by the Liberals had been honestly carried out by both parties. It had been a magnificent display of confidence. Nothing could be more splendid than the confidence each party had shown in the other. He was entirely satisfied that the Labour Party and the Liberal Party had done what they had undertaken to do and he thought both sides might be proud of it (cheers).”

And Mr. Snowden says that Mr. M. J. Blatchford’s words do not prove the existence of any alliance or undertaking ! What would prove it to Mr. Snowden?

In November last we referred to Mr. Parker as having “made a compact with the Liberal Party to secure election,” and Mr. Parker wrote to us to dispute a certain statement made concerning him in the same article, but did not deny the truth of this particular one. But Mr. Snowden rushes in where Mr. Parker feared to tread.

The member for Blackburn says that what happened was that, in the absence of a second Liberal, the Liberal electors voted against the Tory ! But if the votes polled were merely anti-Tory votes, what becomes of Mr. Bruce Glasier’s arithmetic in the Labour Leader of April 26th last ?

In the Smethwick Telephone for February 8th, appeared a column, which doubtless also saw the light in many another local journal, headed: “From Labour’s Standpoint, by Philip Snowden, M.P.,” in the course of which he says:—

“There is one great omission in the King’s Speech. There is no reference to the question of unemployment. It is amazing that a Government professing the zeal for Social Reform which carried this Government into power should ignore the acuteness and urgency of this matter. . . . The appointment of Mr. John Burns to the control of the department responsible for this work, a man who had himself known the want of food through unemployment, strengthened the hope that a sympathetic treatment of the problem would be adopted.”

Is Mr. Snowden simple or is he merely playing the game ? We must incline to the latter view. What Socialist could expect a capitalist Government to recognise “the acuteness and urgency of the matter of unemployment” from the viewpoint of the unemployed ? A reserve army of labour is necessary to capitalism ; the problem therefore will only become acute and urgent when that reserve army, assisted by those in employment, becomes dangerous, and that period, thanks largely to the tactics of Mr. Snowden and his friends, is a long way off. What Socialist regarded the appointment of Mr. John Burns as any promise of sympathetic treatment of the problem ? His appointment was a clever, very clever move of the Liberals. Burns understands Socialism, and was appointed as a foil. The Labour members are either envious of Burns or afraid of him,—probably both. He knows that their precious Unemployment Bill is a fraud, and has probably told them so, has sneeringly pointed out to them, say behind the Speaker’s chair, that if they are Socialists they cannot support their own Bill, with its monstrosity of a penal clause. Mr. Snowden complains that in the debate on the Labour Party’s amendment to the Address, John Burns—

“adopted an offensive attitude from the first. He had no justification for such a course. He followed almost immediately after myself and I had taken special pains to be friendly and sympathetic, and to recognise and admit the difficulties of his position.”

As if John Burns wants the sympathy of Mr. Snowden and his friends ! Of course his attitude was offensive, and it will be until the Labour Party make up their mind (if they have one) to fight him and the master class whose interests he so ably serves. Mr. Snowden continued :—

“A Labour Party in Parliament which remained quiet while men and women and children were starving outside would merit the condemnation of the country.”

Heavens! think of it ! All the time that there has been a Labour Party in the House, men, women, and children have been starving outside. And the Labour Party has been quiet, damnably quiet. It has boasted of its “sensibility, respectability, and adaptability” ; its fighting men have taken a turn on the terrace when they wanted to say that wicked word “damn” ; it has moved the adjournment of the House to draw attention to the shooting of natives in Natal, but behaved with Christlike meekness over the shooting of workers at Belfast; it has boasted of its connection with the Nonconformist humbugs and canted in P.S.A. pulpits, appealing for charity for the Hemsworth colliers (who have now been locked out for 171 weeks) when it should have been denouncing these people for supporting a system and a government which make such things possible ; it has expressed its gratification at the references in the King’s Speech to the Congo and Macedonia when it should have been raising hell over the condition of the people here at home; it has attended Royal Garden Parties and told funny tales concerning the working “classes” to “Docks” when it should have been organising the workers for the Social Revolution.

The Labour Party does “merit the condemnation of the country” !

Jack Kent

Provincial Tour. (1907)

Party News from the August 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

D.V., W.P., etc., F. E. Dawkins, J. Kent and R. H. Kent will hold meetings as follows: August 18, Oxford; 19, Coventry; 20, Rugby; 21, Leicester; 22, Burton; 23, Derby; 24, Nottingham; 25, Manchester. Other comrades are invited to join.

Proper Gander: Fashion Victims (2023)

The Proper Gander column from the December 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Online clothes retailer Boohoo has found its niche as a go-to site for image-conscious teenagers and twenty-somethings looking for a bargain. Its business model is that of ‘fast fashion’: producing versions of the newest clothing trends and getting them on sale cheaply and quickly while the style is still the latest and demand is at its highest. The working practices Boohoo has adopted to achieve a speedy turnaround have attracted complaints which prompted an official review of the company and its supply chain. Published in early 2021, this found that the allegations of poor working conditions were largely true. Boohoo responded by vowing to overhaul its methods, and detailed how in its ‘Agenda For Change’ plan. An edition of BBC One’s Panorama: Boohoo’s Broken Promises aimed to show that the agenda hasn’t been followed and not much has changed.

Reporter Emma Lowther goes undercover at Boohoo’s head office in Manchester by getting a job as an admin assistant. Her colleagues’ roles are to negotiate deals with smaller companies which make and supply the togs which Boohoo flogs. She uses her hidden camera to film other staff saying they lie to suppliers about invented rival offers in order to secure the cheapest deal. And even after a contract has been agreed, Boohoo staff have later imposed further reductions to the price.

The starting point for a deal would be low anyway. Boohoo’s clothes are often made in factories across Asia where workers’ pay is lower, conditions are shoddier and methods are more polluting than usually found in Western countries. Reports of workers making clothes for Boohoo in dismal circumstances haven’t only come from outside the UK, though. Boohoo and other traders use dozens of suppliers in Leicester, whose staff have held protests for more job security and higher wages. Another undercover reporter gets a job at one supplier, MM Leicester Clothing Limited. He covertly films people being shouted at by a manager who demands that they work late on an order. The rush is due to Boohoo wanting the ‘lead’ time between when it orders its stock and when it receives it to be as short as possible.

In January 2022, Boohoo opened its own flagship factory at Thurmaston Lane in Leicester, supposedly to demonstrate the reformed practices of its ‘Agenda For Change’. Panorama suggests that Thurmaston Lane is more like a PR-friendly front, distracting from how Boohoo still favours different sources for its stock. The ‘centre of excellence’ which is Thurmaston Lane only makes 1 percent of garments sold by Boohoo, and hundreds of orders contracted from there were really made in other factories in Leicester and Morocco with lower costs and standards. Boohoo says that this doesn’t break any rules as although it has banned subcontracting within the UK since 2021, it allows contracting, which it claims is what it’s doing, as Thurmaston Lane is part of Boohoo and can therefore contract out.

Boohoo’s various tactics for securing cut-price deals from its suppliers mean that one of the brand’s dresses costs the company £4.25 each to buy in from a UK supplier. This is then sold on to consumers for £15, making a hefty profit for Boohoo’s owners. The documentary features Peter McAllister and Chris Grayer, specialists in the field of ‘ethical trading’. McAllister describes this margin as ‘completely bonkers’, while Grayer calculates that a ‘fair’ amount for Boohoo to buy each dress for would be £7.23, allowing the supplier to make 10 percent profit. Boohoo’s lawyers’ justification for the big mark-up in the cost of the dress is that its suppliers still make a profit and their staff are paid at least the minimum wage.

Boohoo’s approach has been pushed by its multi-millionaire co-founder and Executive Chairman Mahmud Khamani. Following the review of Boohoo’s practices which preceded its ‘Agenda For Change’ programme, he has meant to be getting less involved in the company’s day-to-day running. But he still has an ‘iron grip’ by sending out arrogant motivational videos to staff and personally approving all deals with suppliers. He and the other senior staff featured in the documentary share the same sad motivation: to make money by maximising the exploitation of those lower down the chain.

Lowther lasts ten weeks working in Boohoo HQ before getting sacked for making mistakes, and she’s even less likely to get a good reference now they know she’s a journalist. McAllister and Grayer say that what her footage and research has revealed is ‘unacceptable’ and ‘unethical’, flouting multiple rules and guidelines about how companies are meant to function. Regulators, along with professionals like McAllister and Grayer, want Boohoo (and, by extension, capitalism) to be run in a ‘fair’ way: decent working conditions, sufficient wages, honest trading. This utopian aim doesn’t take into account how legislation can only ever try to make exploitation less unpleasant, nor how strong the drive to cut costs and corners to maximise profits is. Boohoo has gone further than other companies with how exploitative its methods are. Its approach has worked, if measured by how in 2022 it had sales of £1.7 billion from 18 million customers. Panorama’s investigation illustrated some of the objectionable aspects of the fast fashion industry: misleading deals, appalling workplaces, forced overtime, low wages, which together enable high profits for the few. But the documentary’s findings didn’t damage Boohoo’s standing. Its share price rose a little in the days after first broadcast, suggesting that its tawdry practices fit in well with how the market operates.

Mike Foster

Labour Party Politics: A Confused Jumble. (1907)

From the June 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P., Chairman of the Independent Labour Party, Secretary of the Labour Party in the House of Commons, writer on capitalist politics in capitalist newspapers, has, according to the Morning Post of May 8th, written to the Leicester branch of the Church Socialist League as follows :—

 “I give my episcopal blessing with much pleasure. The Church Socialist League ought to flourish, for upon what more congenial soil can Socialism grow than the ethics of the Gospel and the maxims of the Fathers? Moreover, I think, when we know each other better, it will be found that the materialism which the Church is always saying that she is warring against is precisely the thing that we Socialists are warring against. The dross of life is oppressing us. It is in our eyes and we see not ; it is in our mouths, and we cannot speak the truth ; it is in our hearts, and we cannot worship what it is meet that we should worship. We are striving for all sorts of rights—the right to hold acres and to enjoy incomes which we have never earned ; the right to have drink on Sunday; the right to be fleeced by bookmakers; the right to starve our children ; and we do not seem to have the faculty to discriminate which of these are of God and which of the Devil. So our politics are a confused jumble of futilities at their worst and an ineffective striving after vague desires at their best. We have to discover the qualitative things of life, and it is because your Church Socialist League is going to strive to do that that I readily respond to your request to bless you.”

This letter is such a “confused jumble” that one has a difficulty in understanding it, but we will try. “We Socialists” of course refers to Mr. MacDonald and his fellow members and supporters of the Labour Party, Independent or otherwise. These cannot speak the truth because the dross of life is in their mouths and is oppressing them. It was not known before that this was the reason, but a note can now be made of their excuse. It is hoped they will succeed in their attempt to secure the right to drink on Sunday. To do so is very refreshing especially after an hour or so’s open-air speaking. When they have secured this right may they be oppressed by sufficient of the dross of life to exercise it—to afford a decent drink and plenty of it. It may interest them to know that a prominent Liberal Statesman, now deceased, is credited with having declared that “bitter beer is the finest drink that has been invented since the nectar of the gods went out of fashion.” Be that as it may, they are of course at liberty to select their own “pizen” from the various kinds on tap.

Undoubtedly their politics are a confused jumble at their worst, and one may go farther and declare that they are usually at their worst.

They may think this is due to the seeming absence of the faculty to discriminate which of these rights are of God and which of the Devil, others think it is due, in some cases, to their ignorance of the working-class position, and in other cases to their desire for political aggrandisement.

In the columns of the Socialist Standard, month by month, have been given evidence of this confused jumble. The writers have not got the dross of life in their eyes and can see.

The Independent Labour Party, of which Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P., is chairman, claim to be the proud parent of the (Parliamentary) Labour Party, of which Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, M.P., is Secretary. The electoral policy of the two parties is, on paper, identical. It is also identical in practice, but whilst on paper it is understandable, in practice it is a “confused jumble.” The paper policy is summed up in the following clause of the Declaration of the Labour Party : “To abstain strictly from identifying themselves with or promoting the interests of any section of the Liberal or Conservative Parties.”

Although subscribing to this policy several members of the Labour Party threw it over at the General Election, when they saw that by adhering to it they would fail to secure election. Amongst them were Mr. Ramsay MacDonald at Leicester, Mr. Parker at Halifax, Mr. T. F. Richards at Wolverhampton, and Mr. Stuart at York. Details of the compacts made with the Liberals will be found in the Socialist Standard for March and July, 1906.

Mr. W. Crooks, M.P., has signed the Declaration, but that did not prevent him attending the Banquet to Mr. S. L. Hughes at the Trocadero Restaurant on April 7th, 1906, organised by “some of the best known names in Liberal politics” because “the great Radical victory which had just been won was due to men like Mr. Hughes.”

Mr. W. Thorne, M.P., has signed the Declaration but yet supported Mr. Percy Alden, Liberal member for Tottenham, at the General Election in company with Messrs. Will Crooks, John Burns, H. H. Asquith, Herbert Gladstone, and others.

Messrs. C. W. Bowerman, M.P. and John Hodge, M.P., have signed the Declaration, but identified themselves with the Liberals (masquerading as Progressives) at the last London County Council Election. Mr. Bowerman was advertised to speak at Risiughill Street Schools, Pentonville, and Mr. Hodge was announced to take the chair at Maryon Park Schools, Charlton.

On April 21st last, Mr. A. Henderson, Whip of the Labour Party, was one of the chief speakers at Ilford Town Hall, at a “Temperance” meeting. Every student knows that this “Temperance” brigade is a wing of the Liberal Party. Mr. Henderson declared that they did not intend that the Government should put off “Temperance” reform in favour of Land Reform, or Home Rule or anything else. They must tell the Government straight that “Temperance” must be first.

When the Stepney Bye Election took place last month Mr. Ben Cooper was adopted as the official Liberal Candidate. He declared the issue was simply Free Trade versus Tariff Reform. According to the Daily Chronicle Mr. Bowerman was one of the first to write and offer his services in support of the Liberal nominee. The Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union Congress endorsed his candidature. Messrs. Shackleton, Gill, Barnes, Bowerman, Wilkie and Thorne, all Labour M.P.’s who have signed the Declaration of the Labour Party are members of the Parliamentary Committee.

Mrs. Philip Snowden was a delegate to the Annual Conference of the Independent Labour Party at Derby this year. During the Wimbledon bye-election last month she was one of the hardest workers for the Liberal candidate, the Hon. Bertrand Russell, who “supported tie Liberal Government in everything excepting its attitude on the question of Women’s Suffrage.”

In view of these facts there can be no question that the politics of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald and his Labour Party friends are a “confused jumble of futilities.” Mr. MacDonald’s phrase “touches the spot.”

Jack Kent

Letter: The Franchise. (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the October 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Rimington writes again criticising the reply to an earlier letter printed in our July issue.

To the Ed. Com.

It is not that I have any fresh evidence to bear upon the subject above, as your wilful misinterpretation of that already submitted, that I write again.

You quote a string of figures from official sources, and because I do not enter into numerals, you imagine that I have discovered a “mare’s nest.”

Whatever may be said of the Capitalist Class as a Class, they are pretty astute, otherwise they would cease to be Capitalists, and I think that your assumption that they are a lot of “duds,” sheer self-complacency.

It may appear to be clever to say, as you do, “If those anomalies were abolished to-morrow, the great mass of the working class would still vote Capitalist candidates into Parliament.” Fortunately, you limit your prognostication to the next twelve hours; but it is a nasty get-out. By abusing the working class you shirk your responsibilities to safeguard and extend their powers of political expression. Because I do not give the name and address, etc., of my informant re the flaw in the Act, you refer to it as nebulous stuff. Why not investigate for yourselves and prove your statement?

You say that “the reference to the Proxy vote and the dead you do not understand,” and I would refer you to your reply, May, 1927, where you state that only those persons may vote by proxy who (a) are already on the absent voters’ list. Now persons who are already on the absent voters’ list are not exactly imperishable, and it follows that, unless they are replaced by others, ultimately there ceases to be anyone on the absent voters’ list. You may say that this is a quibble; nevertheless, without this explanation, it is obvious that absent voters must be a diminishing quantity. Of course, if the desire to strengthen the arm of working class political representation is opposed to your ideas of Socialist propaganda, it would be a pity to suspend it. Taking your own figures, which do not include the wives and families of the men registered for business qualification, I submit that, as a whole, they constitute sufficient in many cases to turn the scale at an election, for many candidates are returned by a few hundred or less. I wish particularly to draw your attention to the working of the Redistribution Act of 1918, taking Leicester as an example. Prior to this Act, Leicester was one Parliamentary area returning two members. It was then divided into three separate divisions, returning one member each. In most cases the owners of business premises live in another part of the town, so automatically they qualified for extra votes. That the issue is not so negligible as you imagine is, I contend, worthy of searching investigation, and in these days when the democratic principle is being attacked so frequently in the Press and on the platform, it is up to us to contest every plutocratic privilege. I enclose cutting from to-day’s Observer, which shews that the Divines are at it too, but these are quite mild to articles I have read by Gilbert Frankau and others.

In the words of Joseph Dietzgen, “Take care of the principles and the details will take care of themselves.”

Yours fraternally,

F. L. Rimington.

Reply.

Mr. Rimington admits that he has no “fresh evidence.” I propose, therefore, not to follow him again into numerous side-issues, but would refer him to the reply to his first letter. He still does not attempt to disprove the figures which showed that the plural voting anomaly is of negligible extent. While there is a single person with a plural vote an anomaly can be said to exist, but we decline to interest ourselves in anomalies which are unimportant and do not debar the working class from achieving Socialism. Let us repeat the main point, in 1925 there were in England and Wales 19,167,275 persons registered as voters (Statistical Review, 1925, p. 81. H.M.S.O.). Of these 51,357 had University votes and 217,509 had business premises votes. Thus out of every 200 voters three persons had two votes which they could use at a general election. Of the 200 voters 170 (85 per cent.) were members of the working class (see May ”S.S.”). Thus the distribution of votes as between workers and Capitalists in about 170 to 43. Mr. Rimington asks us to get into a sweat about those three votes, and we reply that it is much more important to convert the 170 workers to Socialism. Incidentally, if Mr. Rimington is so anxious to break a lance, why not advocate the disfranchisement of all Capitalists? It would not be very much more difficult to achieve, and when it was done he would still have the great majority of the 170 working class voters supporting capitalism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Letter: Is the franchise a fraud? (1927)

Letter to the Editors from the May 1927 issue of the Socialist Standard

Below we print a letter from a correspondent. The points contained in it are dealt with in our reply which follows. For convenience we have numbered the different sections of the letter.

To the Editorial Committee :

(1) While as yet my investigations are incomplete, I have established the fact that a person can exercise two Parliamentary votes provided that he or she possesses property in two divisions or holds a University degree or rank in the army or navy.

(2) Evidence points in the direction that the privilege goes beyond two votes, taking into consideration the multiplicity of the headings which qualify the capitalist class to exercise the vote and the many disqualifications that attend that of the working class, it is exceedingly doubtful if a candidate could be returned in any division to whom the Capitalist Class seriously objected. The object of this letter is to make the above public knowledge, as I have found that the common impression is that we have a franchise based upon one man one vote. The issue at stake vitally affects working class representation, and I am raising the question for discussion.

(3) I forgot to add that a person may vote by proxy, another revelation. These things make our Electoral system smell. Just imagine to yourself a large concern with multiple shops, etc., and the chance to put in votes for each one by proxy, provided that they are in separate divisions. A handful of Directors with their dependents, could exercise thousands of votes under such circumstances.

4) I know one local instance of a family in Leicester who qualify in the three Leicester divisions for twelve votes. Now I see the reason for the Redistribution Act of 1918.

F. L. Rimington

—————–

Our correspondent has raised again a matter which has been dealt with in these columns before. It is important, not because of any so-called “democratic principle” it involves, but because of its bearing on the question of the use of the vote in order to obtain working class political control. There are anomalies in the existing franchise, but we are not concerned with them as such. We are not busybodies nobly searching for “injustices” to put right. We want Socialism and are interested in the franchise as a means to that end. If the anomalies prevent or materially hinder the workers in gaining power, then it is necessary to expose them and work for their removal. If, on the other hand, the anomalies have no practical importance, it is contrary to working class interests to waste time on them and divert valuable energy which might more profitably be given to Socialist propaganda.

(1) Taking Mr. Rimington’s first paragraph, we find that his information is not quite correct. The position is that a man, 21 years of age, may be registered as a voter on three grounds (a) 6 months’ residence in a constituency whether as householder or lodger ; (b) 6 months’ occupation of business premises or land of which the annual value is not less than £10; (c) possession of a university degree.

A woman of 30 may be registered (a) by virtue of her husband’s qualification; or (b) by 6 months’ residence as a householder; or (c) by 6 months’ occupation of a shop or workroom or other business premises of not less than £5 annual value ; or (d) by possession of a university qualification.

In a general election a man may vote in two, but not more than two constituencies. If he is registered in more than two constituencies he may vote in all of them in bye-elections. A woman can only have two votes in a general election, if one of them is a university vote. In bye-elections she can vote wherever registered. Rank in the army or navy does not give two votes. It enables the voter, however, to vote once only by post as an “absent voter.”

(2) Mr. Rimington says that “evidence points in the direction that the privilege goes beyond two votes …” This is true only of bye-elections, as shown above. He speaks of the “many disqualifications that attend . . . the working class,” but does not specify these many disqualifications, or show their importance. As will be illustrated below, the overwhelming majority of the workers are, in fact, not disqualified from voting. His further surmise that a candidate could be prevented from being returned as a result of these “disqualifications” is incompatible with the facts. This also is dealt with below.

(3) Mr. Rimington evidently misunderstands the proxy vote. Only those persons may vote by proxy who (a) are already on the absent voters’ list and (b) make a statement in the prescribed form that they will be at sea or out of the United Kingdom at the time of the election. The proxy must be named in the statement. The provisions for the absent voter and for proxy voting enable seamen and other persons whose work compels them to be away from home, to register their votes. Mr. Rimington’s hypothesis of “the handful of directors and their dependents” is nonsense. The proxy would enable a director, if he had two votes, to use both of them in a general election, but, as he could vote twice in any event, the position is not changed by that special provision for absent voters.

(4) Mr. Rimington instances a family who qualify for 12 votes in the three Leicester divisions. Unfortunately he does not say how many members there are in the family, but, as I have already pointed out, each could only vote at most twice in a general election, and at most three times in the unlikely event of three successive bye-elections in the three divisions.

Let us now examine the actual figures and see what these anomalies amount to.

In 1921 the number of males of 21 and over in England and Wales was approximately 10,500,000, and the number of females of 30 and over was 9,500,000. (See statistical abstract of Board of Trade, 69th number, 1926. Page 244). This gives a total of roughly 20,000,000 persons entitled to qualify in respect of age. To obtain a similar figure for 1925 it is necessary to add l/40th, which represents the approximate estimated increase in population during the interval. (See Registrar General’s Statistical Review, 1925. Page 80.) The total for 1925 is then 20,500,000.

In 1925, the total number of voters registered in England and Wales, excluding university voters and voters with the business premises qualification, was 18,898,409. Thus we find that including inmates of prisons, lunatic asylums, workhouses, etc., and those persons omitted from the voters’ list, and those who fail to qualify for any other reason, only a little over 1,500,000 persons out of the 20,500,000 of qualifying age are not registered as voters. The bulk are women who fail to qualify as householders. This disposes of the greater part of Mr. Rimington’s case.

We next come to the question of university votes and business premises votes. The total of men registered for business premises qualification in 1925 was only 217,509 for the whole of England and Wales (Registrar General Statistical Review, Page 81), and the number of university voters, men and women, only 51,357.

Our correspondent mentioned the three Leicester Divisions. Out of a total for the three of 120,596 voters, there are only 1,995 men registered on the business premises qualification (Page 86).

We have thus shown that the anomalies are of quite negligible effect. Only in a handful of exceptional areas like the City of London, is the business premises vote considerable. (22,769 out of 43,891).

We now come to the much more important question of the distribution of votes between members of the capitalist class and the working class respectively.

The population of voting age amounts to 20,500,000. How many of these are members of the capitalist class? It is impossible to obtain any very precise estimate, but an approximate idea can be obtained in a slightly roundabout way.

In “Fabian Tract,” number 5 (13th Edition, 1926. Page 18), it is estimated that the proportion of the population with incomes over £250 per annum, together with their dependents, amounts to about 13 ⅓ per cent. of the whole population. (This estimate is adapted and brought up to date from that made by Chiozza Money in “Riches and Poverty.”)

It is true that below the £250 line are many shopkeepers and small property owners, but against these may be set many persons in the better paid technical and managerial positions, who earn more than £250, but are none the less members of the working class, in that they must sell their services to an employer and are wholly or mainly dependent on their earnings.

Let us further assume, in order to be on the safe side, that all members of the capitalist class of voting age are actually registered, and that all of the persons of voting age without votes are workers.

13⅓ per cent. of 20,500,000 gives us 2,730,000, add to 2,730,000 capitalist voters, 270,000 business premises and university votes. This gives us approximately 3,000,000 capitalist votes in England and Wales, out of the total of 19,167,275 on the voters’ list in 1925. We find then that there are more than 16,000,000 working class votes to 3,000,000 capitalist votes in England and Wales. We can afford to make ample allowance for any possible margin of error in the assumptions on which we have worked, and yet be certain that the working class have an overwhelming majority of the votes in this country. They are not prevented from registering their wishes by electoral anomalies. When they want Socialism they can vote for it. If at present defenders of capitalism are returned it is due only to the fact that the mass of the workers want capitalism and either vote for capitalist candidates or do not use their votes at all.

In these circumstances, there is no need to waste time on red-herrings like the demand for proportional representation, or the abolition of electoral anomalies. The work of getting Socialism is impeded only by the lack of Socialists, not by the existence of a handful of double votes.

It is interesting to notice in passing that the present Government has pledged itself to give the vote to women of 21 and to remove the chief barriers which at present debar many women over 30 from possessing votes. It is estimated that the proposed measure will add 5,000,000 women voters to the electoral register of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. (Note that the calculations given earlier in this article refer to England and Wales only.) Of these 5,000,000 it is stated that about 2,000,000 will be women of 30 and over at present unable to qualify. The great majority of the 5,000,000 will be members of the working class, although, of course, they may be expected, like their brothers and husbands, to vote for some form of capitalism.

Edgar Hardcastle

‘Made in Leicester’ (2020)

From the September 2020 issue of the Socialist Standard

People often associate sweatshop conditions in the clothing industry with Bangladesh or Cambodia but one consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic has been to reveal garment factories in Leicester which can very easily be described as sweatshops.

‘Labour abuses’ (breaches of labour laws) and sweatshop conditions are occurring across the UK’s garment manufacturing industries, campaigners warn. In the factories of Leicester, there are as many as 10,000 mostly immigrant workers who are reportedly paid as little as £3 an hour. During the pandemic many have been forced to work with no protective equipment, and it is said to have contributed to a spike in coronavirus cases that resulted in a second lock-down in the city.

Human rights barrister and leading expert on human trafficking, Parosha Chandran, said, ‘I think this is an example of the type of exploitation that has been going on up and down the country during Covid. If that’s the estimate of what’s happening in Leicester, then what’s happening in Birmingham? Or Nottinghamshire? Or Manchester? Or London? Modern slavery is not just confined to one place in the Midlands. It’s going on everywhere…’

A 2018 report found breaches of labour laws similar to those uncovered in Leicester in garment factories across Greater Manchester. Machinists reported being paid £4 an hour and said their payslips were doctored to make it look like they had worked fewer hours than they had actually put in. ‘The way the market is at the minute, it’s the person who produces the good cheapest who gets the order,’ one said.

‘Exactly the same labour abuses that the government and brands are professing shock and horror over in Leicester are happening at scale across the country,’ said Emily Kenway, an adviser at Focus on Labour Exploitation.

‘Again and again we see the same coercive practices impacting on the most vulnerable workers who have no way of getting their voices heard and who are forced to accept whatever conditions are pushed on them by their employers, who have little to fear from the authorities,’ said Thulsi Narayanasamy, a labour rights researcher.

The number of health and safety inspectors employed by the Health and Safety Executive has dropped by a third from 1,495 in 2009 to 978 in 2017, with funding reduced from £239m to £139m over the same period.

‘If employers know that they won’t be inspected, face penalties and lose business then you’re creating conditions for abuse,’ said Dominique Muller, senior campaigner at Labour Behind the Label.

Downward pressure

There exists a relentless downward pressure exerted by the global fashion industry on the workers at the bottom of the supply chain. The resulting falling price paid to suppliers has led to a substantial decline in pay rates and working conditions over the past 10 years. Garment workers have been kept working in unsafe conditions for low pay by a fashion industry seeking to maximise its own profits. The buying practices of fast fashion include turning a blind eye to sub-contracting and allowing forced and unpaid overtime. These practices have encouraged the erosion of garment worker rights by employers.

The fashion industry profits from these breaches of labour law by their suppliers. Despite decades of government regulation and ‘fair trade’ policies, sweatshops have continued to prevail because of the introduction of a marketing model called ‘fast fashion’, constantly changing clothes styles, designed for one night-out, destined for the charity shops the following morning. Consumers are buying more clothes and discarding them faster than ever. Clothes have become disposable throwaway products. Shoppers look for the lowest priced clothes and retail outlets look for larger profit margins. The knock-on effects of this in the supply chains are either accepted by consumers or obscured by marketing campaigns peddling ‘ethical’ sourcing.

Anna Bryher, advocacy director for the campaign group Labour Behind the Label, said: ‘Women at the bottom of supply chains bear the brunt of fashion’s unrelenting push to be fast and cheap…It’s obscene.’ She added: ‘Women making our clothes in Bangladesh are routinely and systematically abused and harassed.’

A recent report by a US Senate committee found Bangladesh was backsliding on garment workers’ rights. Union leaders faced intimidation, hampering their ability to investigate claims of threats and abuse, mostly of female workers.

The pressure for brands to get fashions from catwalks on to shoppers’ backs and deliver profits for investors, can lead to a rivalry to secure the cheapest source – a phenomenon referred to as ‘chasing the needle.’ If wages rise and conditions improve in one region, companies look elsewhere to keep costs down. In Ethiopia, for example, wages are much lower than the rates paid in Bangladesh and it has led to the Ethiopian government making almost a virtue out of its low labour costs.

Worker organisation

As shoppers have become more aware of labour abuses, companies have been forced to scrutinise labour practices at the various factories involved in manufacturing their products and committing themselves to addressing problems from fear of consumer boycotts. Such approaches obscure the importance of building worker power to counteract sweatshop conditions. Consumer campaigns are limited in their ability to lessen sweatshop conditions and non-respect of labour laws. Some boycotts have led companies to cancel contracts, leaving workers in a worse position, facing unemployment.

Prioritising projects that promote workers’ ability to organise collectively is crucial for securing better conditions. Worker-led efforts, rather than corporate- or consumer-led ones, shift the focus to the ideas, needs and collective action of the workers themselves. Workers self-organising, both inside or alongside trade unions, is critical to achieving freedom of association and collective bargaining. Instead of relying upon governments, corporations and consumers, worker organisation challenges the relationships of power and authority and lessens the risk of labour abuse.

Rubaiyat Hossain in her film, ‘Made in Bangladesh’ tells the story of Shimu Akhtar, a young woman making clothes for Western clothing companies whose indignation at the working conditions she is forced to endure leads her to try to unionise the factory. Hossain says she wanted to go against the stereotype of the poor, exploited factory worker.

  ‘I wanted to show that these women are active agents, fighting for their rights and demanding to be heard,’ she says. ‘Too many people think of Bangladeshi women as victims sitting behind a sewing machine, but it is thanks to female garment workers that Bangladesh is now a middle-income country. And these young women are not victims, they are often feisty, young, spirited women who are fearless and brave…’

ALJO

News in Review: South African martyr (1966)

The  News in Review from the June 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

South African martyr

Mr. Abram Fischer, who was sentenced last month to life imprisonment on charges of conspiracy to commit sabotage and of being a member of the Communist Party, is the latest of South Africa's martyrs.

The South African Government have been gunning for Mr. Fischer for a long time. He defended Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu at the Rivonia trial in 1964 and, having broken his bail, has been on the run for over a year.

Now that the evil dictatorship has caught up with him he is likely to spend the rest of his life in gaol, for there is no remission in South Africa for political sentences.

Mr. Fischer made no secret of his membership of the Communist Party and gave his reasons at his trial:

  . . . one is the glaring injustice which exists and has existed for a long time in South African society, the other, a gradual realisation . . . that it was always members of the Communist Party who seemed prepared, regardless of cost, to sacrifice most; to give of their best, to face the greatest dangers in the struggle against poverty and discrimination.

While it is true that in South Africa the Communist Party opposes apartheid—and suffers for it—it is impossible to think that Mr. Fischer does not realise that countries which are under Communist rule are in many ways similar to Dr. Verwoerd’s dictatorship.

These countries also suppress opposition. They also stage trumped-up trials under repressive laws. They also imprison and execute political opponents.

There is strong evidence of the existence of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. Sharpeville was a horrible affair, but there have been similar outrages in, for example, East Berlin and Budapest.

Dictatorship and racism are features of capitalist society. They cannot be removed by joining one capitalist party in preference to another.

Abram Fischer has proved his courage and his sincerity, but we cannot ignore the fact that he is a tragically misguided man.

Gromyko in the Vatican

Another visible sign of the Soviet Union’s edging closer to the West was Mr. Gromyko’s visit to the Pope at the end of April.

This was the first-ever official meeting between the Kremlin and the Vatican. To mark the event the Pope gave Mr. Gromyko two Russian copies of the Schema de Ecclesia, which sets out the constitution of the Roman Catholic Church.

Perhaps he will need it. Russia’s split from China grows ever wider, which probably means that in the near future Moscow will be exploring more and more ways of making contact with opinion in the West.

This is a typical development in capitalism’s mighty international power game.

In the process of this development—and again this is typical—statesmen on both sides will have to forget a lot of what they said in the past. The Soviet Government and the Roman Catholic Church will have to forget that they were once hostile to each other.

All over the world Communist Parties will have to forget the days when they said, with Karl Marx, that religion was the opiate of the people.

They have, in fact, always been ready to compromise on this issue; there has never been anything to prevent a Christian joining the Communist Party.

Only last March the Communist Party in this country were protesting at religious attacks on them on television, which, they said, “. . . can only have the object of dissuading Christians from voting Communist."

If the Kremlin and the Vatican become bedmates, we may be sure the sheets will have been well aired for them by their faithful acolytes all over the world.


Getting away from it all

How would you like to get away from it all? How would you like to escape from the worry, and scurry of everyday living and spend some time in blissful solitude?

One way of doing this is to imitate Mr. Leonard Matchan, who recently bought the island of Brechou, in the Channel Islands. “For me,” he said, “It is going to be a means of getting away from the maddening crowd.”

The one big difficulty about this method is that it is rather expensive. Mr. Matchan, who is chairman of Cope Allman International, paid about £80,000 for his hideaway.

There is a cheaper way of getting solitude—one that is familiar to a lot of people.

In Leeds, for example, the police last year investigated 166 calls from people who were worried about old neighbours whom they had not seen or heard of for some days.

Forty-eight of these old people were ill or injured and needed help. One hundred and one of them had died— silent, lonely, unwanted.

So you see there are two ways of getting away from it all. One costs you a lot of money. The other costs you a lifetime of servitude and poverty as a member of the working class.

We are often told by well-kept politicians that we now live in a classless, affluent society.

The next time we hear that let us remember Mr. Matchan and his costly, tranquil island and let us contrast this with all those friendless deaths in the troublous city.

Independence for Guyana

British Guiana, after a long and sometimes bloody struggle, is the latest colony to gain its independence from British rule.

The people there were promised a great deal about the supposed benefits of independence and, if they believed what their nationalist politicians told them, are now probably expecting some of these benefits to be coming their way.

They are obviously going to be disappointed.

In a speech on 8th May last the Prime Minister of Guyana, Mr. Forbes Burnham, summed up what independence will mean when he asked the people to sleep less (for six hours a day, he said), eat less and work more. His Government’s motto for progress will be “Work and harder work.”

Mr. Burnham also attacked what he called the “disgusting habit” which Guyanese workmen have of stopping work to shelter from the sun and the rain.

This is all reminiscent of the English Methodist protest, in 1764, that a theatre in Bristol would be “. . . peculiary hurtful to a trading city . . . and directly opposite to the spirit of industry and close application to business.”

In more ways than one, the emergent nations resemble England in the 18th century. If Guyana is to make its independent way in the world of capitalism its people will have to lose some of their leisurely habits.

Their lives will become more organised, more alienated and faster. They will be more intensely, more scientifically exploited. They will become, in other words, members of a modern working class.

In the name of freedom and progress they will have cast off one type of slavery and substituted another.

China's bomb

Good news for all lovers of militarism and destruction was that China detonated her third nuclear bomb—it may even have been a hydrogen one.

Good news, also, for all lovers of the distortion of words was that this latest test was described by Peking as "a great victory for the party’s general line of Socialist construction.”

Good news for all connoisseurs of hypocrisy was that the State Department condemned the test because of its effect on the atmosphere—as if the United States had never exploded nuclear weapons in the air, and as if they are not continuing to test the things underground.

The Chinese bomb is yet another lap in the desperate nuclear arms race which has been in progress since Hiroshima. As each new country joins the race it justifies its presence with lies about its concern for peace and world security.

And the countries who are already in the race always “deplore” and “condemn” and murmur about having a disarmament conference somewhere, sometime—because they are concerned about any threat to their dominant standing in the world.

China is a rising capitalist power, and she has paid for her entry in the race in the coin which all the others have used and which is the only one universally recognised—force.

If it were not so terrifying it would be laughable that this onward march to destruction should be called Socialism. We live now in a society of madness, in which the very words we use often lose all sense and meaning.

Happily, there is one band who work determinedly to keep the word Socialism sane and clean, and who will not have it confused with the terrorism and hypocrisy of capitalism.

Poor men in their castles

Who has not heard the lament, from mortgage-burdened worker or from high-climbing local politician, about the alleged opulence of the council house tenant? Wallowing in the luxury of a subsidised rent, polishing the Jaguar at the door, the man in the council house takes it easy while the rest are stripped bare to pay for it all.

Recently, however, The Sun gave a glimpse at another side of this popular story. In Leicester many workers have refused the offer of accommodation on a new £2 million estate because the rents are too high for them. These rents range from £4 18s. 0d. for a one-bedroom flat to £6 12s. 0d. for a three- bedroom house.

“It's fantastic,” said the chairman of the city’s housing committee. “This is one of the wealthiest cities in Europe with good wages and full employment.”

But this does not mean that Leicester’s workers are wealthy, nor that they do not suffer the poverty that their mortgaged brothers know too well.

In Paris a similar story. There, Government Social Security officials have found that families who have moved recently into new skyscraper blocks of flats are by no means living high. The new-found fascinations of a bathroom have led to heavy fuel bills to pay for a flood of baths.

This was bad enough, but even worse was the revelation that of two thousand women living in the fiats about one thousand were trying to pay the higher rents by putting in a bit of prostitution on the side.

The amenities of the skyscrapers may have cleansed a few Parisian bodies, but the difficulty of paying for them has stained some morals.

Editorial: Leicester and the Labour Party. (1913)

Editorial from the July 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the past week we have heard much talk in our masters' papers of the bye-election which, at the time of writing, will take place shortly at Leicester. Columns of matter have been specially written and printed in the “Daily Chronicle” and the “Daily News," pointing out that there is “no official Labour candidate," and advising the working men in the constituency to vote for the Liberal candidate. As recently as Sunday, June 22, “Reynolds's" drew their readers’ attention to the fact that Mr. Ramsay MacDonald holds his seat by an arrangement with the Liberal Party : “The second Liberal nominee, Sir Israel Hart, retired, and so gave a clear run to the present leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party." Such is the independence of the Labour Party!

The following from the “Daily News and Leader’’ (26.6.13) is exquisitely rich : “The action of the Leicester Labour Party is regarded as such a grave violation of national party discipline, and such a graceless disregard of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald’s position as will inevitably lead to a considerable disruption of the Labour Party forces, and must compel Mr. MacDonald to sever his connection with Leicester . . . Other constituencies are open to him."

Of course, seeing that Mr. MacDonald is a good Liberal, the Liberal Party would undoubtedly be prepared to run him, either as a Lib Lab, or as a Liberal candidate.

The discontent at Leicester is a welcome sign. The workers are at last beginning to see the fraud and hypocrisy of the “official" Labour Party. Possibly they desire in know how Mr. MacDonald is voicing the claims of Labour while he is shooting tigers in India. Perhaps they have been reading of the support he gave to the Sir John Brunner Education (amendment) Bill. And further, to come to more recent events, may be they wonder what that other member of the Labour Party. Mr. Parker (who sat on the Marconi Committee and proved by his actions that there is no difference between the so-called Labour Party and the Liberals) is doing in the interest of the workers.

Seven years have rolled by since the great “Labour" triumph, and notwithstanding the fact that the labour movement has bad about forty of its members in the House of Commons, what have they done? They have shouted about Insurance and Minimum Wages, but after all, have they done anything to bring greater security to the wage-slave ? No !

Fellow workers, the only remedy for your precarious and poverty-stricken condition is to be found in intelligent recognition of your class position. You must recognise that you are mere cogs in the industrial machine, that you are permitted to work only so long as there is profit to be derived from your labour. You must understand what you want and how to get it; then there will be no room for Labour "leaders." You would not need to be led. and you could not be misled. You must organise then inside the Socialist Party, and work consciously for that revolution which will replace poverty and misery for those who do the world's work with plenty for all.

Propaganda in the Provinces: A Cycling Diary (1906)

From the November 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

When I arranged to spend a week of my fortnight holiday in pushing the interests of the S.P.G.B. I expected to have either the redoubtable J. Kay or some other valiant and experienced comrade as a companion for my cycling tour, commencing August 11th; but some unkind strokes of Fate prevented that expectation being realised, and I had to sally forth alone.

I am asked to write an account of my tour, and to do it briefly, so in order to fulfill this condition, I am putting my experiences in diary form.

Saturday. Aug. 11. Had my first day's riding — 53 miles against a stiff wind. Reached Bedford at noon. Was unable to hold meeting here, no pitch being available tried to secure stall in the market for sale of literature but failed, so had to be content with looking up a few old friends  and disposing of a Manifesto or STANDARD where I could.

Sunday. Aug. 12. Reached Northampton at 11 a.m. and proceeded to the market Square. The local branch of the S.D.F. presently put in an appearance and started their meeting, during which I got amongst the audience with the literature, the result being that the people had parted with their spare coppers before Justice came on the scene, The speaker urged his hearers never to support Liberal or Tory candidates, and when question time came I asked him why the S.D.F. branches had frequently supported Liberal candidates and also why they had done it in Northampton. After a brief consultation the chairman dealt with the question, or rather made a long rambling statement in which he admitted that the S.D.F. in Northampton made a grave mistake, but defended the action taken in support of Naoroji in Lambeth and generally defended the go-as-you-please policy which has characterised the actions of his organisation during the last few years. The meeting was then closed (although I had intimated my intention of offering opposition) but fortunately the crowd remained, and I dealt as fully as time allowed with the differences between the S.D.F. and the S.P.G.B. Literature sales: — Manifestoes 13, Standards 25.

Monday. Aug. 13. After a delightful ride to Leicester, and an equally delightful rest when I arrived there, I opened out in the market-place at 7.45 under rather trying circumstances. I had a very vigorous evangelist in close proximity to my meeting, and a band playing sufficiently near to draw the usual market-place crowd. Socialist propaganda is badly needed here, in fact there did not seem to be any one present among my questioners who had got much further than Labourism (dependent or independent according to circumstances). One friend—whom I judged to be an I.L.P. man—seemed very wroth at my attack on the L.R.C. and his idol Ramsay MacDonald, and whilst we were engaged in a little argument as to whether J. R. M. is, or is not a Socialist, an incident occurred in which made myself and every one in the crowd (except my opponent) laugh very heartily. Along comes a young man who has not heard the discussion, but hears me use the sentence, "the only hope of the people lies in a social revolution"; working his way to the front of the meeting, he shouts, "We don't want you Socialists down here, we've got MacDonald!" After this I did not think it necessary to follow the matter further as it seemed that, whatever the local Labour party may claim, the "man in the street" does not look upon Mr. MacDonald as a representative of Socialism.

Several other questions were asked and answered mostly from the reform point of view and a fairly good meeting was brought to a close at 9.30. Literature sales: — Manifestoes 14; Standards 25.

Tuesday. Aug. 14. This was a blank day so far as propaganda was concerned, owing to the fact the my bag, which had been sent on, had not arrived at Loughborough where I had intended holding a meeting. No literature, no meeting.

Wednesday. Aug. 15. This was the first wet day of my tour, but the weather was fair when I reached Derby and hoisted my poster on to the statue railings in the market place. Here I met the Secretary of the Woolwich I.L.P., who was holiday-making like myself and also a prominent member of the local Socialist Party. Whilst in argument with them preparatory to commencing the meeting, the rain began to fall in torrents and continued for about twenty minutes. When it was fine enough to venture forth from shelter I found that someone had commandeered the box which I had at much difficulty secured as my platform, also at the same time, some papers which the box contained. This and the prospect of further rain made me decide to give up the meeting. Sales: — Manifestoes 6; Standards 3.

Thursday. Aug 16. Nottingham. Here the weather looked very threatening but about 7.30 it cleared up and was beautifully fine. I consulted a policeman as to the best place for holding my meeting, the market-place being quite covered with stalls. Robert was very polite and indicated the bottom of Derby Road as the best pitch. but added that I had better be careful as to what I said, as he had seen many a speaker upset the crowd and be glad to escape by hopping on to a tramcar. However, I held a meeting from 7.45 until 10.20. an hour being taken up with answering questions which were very numerous and varied in character, but fortunately were asked at the proper time and in decent order. This was one of the best audiences it has ever been my pleasure to address, and I am hoping to visit Nottingham again shortly (with a companion for preference). Literature sales: — Manifestoes 27; Standards 42.

Friday. Aug. 17th. I had promised to hold another meeting in Nottingham: but it rained hard the whole evening.

Saturday. Aug. 18th. Kettering. Weather improving, and had a delightful ride here from Nottingham. My experience here was not very gratifying, as I made two attempts to get a decent meeting in the market-place, but without success. The first time, the Band came along and effectually silenced me: on the second occasion, a smart glee-party came along and captured my crowd. I had one rather rude young fellow who several times interrupted me and who at length shouted, "You think you're clever, mister, but you only evolved from a monkey!" When I replied by asking him if he could give me any idea as to when the process of evolution from monkeyhood would commence in his case, he sobered down somewhat, and, in a few minutes, disappeared. Literature sales: — Manifestoes 6; Standards 7.

Sunday. Aug. 19th. Rode to Luton with the intention of holding a meeting at night; but literature had not turned up and two bands were busy in the town so the idea had to be given up.

From which it seems
The best laid schemes
Of F. E. D.
Oft gang agley.

My tour concluded with a delightful ride home via Hatfield, Hertford, Waltham, High Beech and Woodford.

Next year I hope to do something rather more ambitious with the assistance of a good speaker. There is excellent scope for our propaganda in Leicester and Nottingham, and a "Party Outing" to Nottingham by one of the Sunday League trains is worth consideration from a propaganda point of view. Any members anxious to distinguish themselves in this way can at any time rely upon the presence and support of

F. E. Dawkins