By The Way: Of Mice and Men—or Rich Tabby (1944)

The By The Way Column from the September 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of Mice and Men—or Rich Tabby

A Boston lawyer has left $100,000 for the maintenance of his pet cat. He has also cancelled seven bequests of $20,000 each to seven relatives “because of their contemptuous attitude and cruelty towards my cat.” (Daily Mail, August 5th, 1944.)

He left $40,000 to his housekeeper, to ensure that she is in a position to maintain “Tabby.” This reminds us of the Pekinese dog that was left a few thousand shares in a British company some years back.

The workers in the concerns where the $140,000 is invested may now have the pleasure of slaving to maintain the governor’s pet in luxury, after the bloke himself has snuffed it. This is only a difference of degree; we doubt not that the cat has far more intelligence and is much more useful than some of the “film-stars” (? !), chorines, dancers, and others whom wealthy men frequently marry, especially when one dies, leaving the producers of their wealth, the workers, to maintain and fawn upon them in ridiculous opulence. The bequeathing of large chunks of labour productivity to animals and “pets” is the final epitome of the irrational and obsolete capitalist system, where the best portion of society toils unnecessarily for a few largely idiotic parasites, to the detriment of both.

* * *

One of the Four Freedoms

From the Daily Mail of August 15th we learn that the Registrar-General announces that a complete scheme of National Registration is in preparation for use after the war.

“Under a peace-time National Register everyone throughout life would have, in addition to a name, a code number.”

This, he thinks, would abolish bigamy and be necessary for operating the new social services.

We have had occasion to point out previously, and it is no discovery of the Socialist Party, that this sort of “temporary” war-time legislation is always much more difficult to get off the Statute Book than to put on.

As capitalism is allowed by politically ignorant workers to develop further in the direction of State centralisation, it becomes more obvious that we are approaching the conditions described by Mr. Hilaire Belloc in his book “The Servile State.”

This was a state of affairs where every citizen was numbered and docketed like a parcel, and every intimate personal action supervised by a board of State bureaucrats, with endless cards, numbers, permits, etc.

This is not Socialism. A genius like Oscar Wilde was much nearer the mark when he wrote in his “Soul of Man under Socialism” that only “with Socialism could we reach real individualism.” Wm. Morris expressed the same idea.

In the early days of the working-class movement nothing in Continental despotism was so roundly denounced as the reactionary passport system. The yellow spot of the Jew was a similar measure. Labour Liberals of two decades back poured the bitterest invective on the reactionary oppression of the Tsar’s secret police, with its individual passport system. It has taken a war for the Four Freedoms to shackle the working class with the National Service officer and a code number, like a convict, for life. Socialism will not be servile neither will it be a State.

The State is a private property institution which under Socialism will wither away. Freedom will be inevitable because economic equality of all will be the basis of society.

* * *

German Women to Work Harder

From the Times, July 29th, 1944 : —

“It is announced from Berlin that as a part of Goebbels’s efforts to secure total mobilisation women and adolescents will be directed into war work to the fullest extent. Curiously enough, the German press points out that while Russian women and children served unstintingly in Leningrad during the siege, and British women work as dock labourers and in all sorts of arms production, German women have hitherto contributed far less to the war effort. Why should they be exempt, the newspapers ask, now that the German homeland is being besieged ?

One of the first changes is that women will release men for the forces by becoming motor drivers.

Goebbels issued his first total mobilisation decree yesterday. According to an announcement by the German wireless last night, the decree is aimed "at all persons liable for work who have fulfilled their labour duties in appearance only, persons who through family or other connection have obtained a labour contract enabling them to lead an easy life far away from the nation’s common strain of war’.”—Reuter.

After a terrific fanfare of the usual boloney, Goebbels is now announcing the measures to be introduced to find more men for the shambles. British readers will probably be somewhat surprised to read that one of the drastic “total” totalitarian war schemes is that women are to release men by becoming motor-drivers. Really ! Dr. Goebbels ! the poor old, worn out, effete democracies did this years ago. Apparently Mr. Bevin can give the Nazis ten yards start in a hundred at this game, and beat them any time. The stories the British Ministry of Information told us about “Hitler’s slaves” don’t sound so good any more either, if it has taken all this time for them to check up on “dodgers” (who seem to manage pretty well in England, too, if they’ve enough money), and tell the women to start driving motors.

* * *

New Curtains, Fruits of Victory

There is probably no clearer indication of the real frame of mind of the capitalist class than the advertisements which the directors of various large firms are publishing just now. All sorts of concerns are stating their post-war intentions. Motor manufacturers advertise the advent of a world with wide motor roads and better “So and so’s” cars. The I.C.I. state that their view is that the post-war world must be international. Makers of toffees and wireless sets, building societies, brewers, tobacco manufacturers, textile firms—all strike the same note.

“Bigger and Better” this, or that, is what it practically amounts to. One of the most fantastic actually says : —

My Peace Terms.

“Freedom for the oppressed people of Europe. . . . New curtains in the sitting room . . . and back to fresh butter, honey, and lovely—Cream Crackers! (Daily Telegraph, July 26th, 1944.)

One can only conclude that people who can write of “Freedom for the people of Europe” in the same breath as curtains for the sitting room have been rather seriously affected by the buzz-bomb.

The hollow mockery and revolting hypocrisy of this mentality is the strongest possible proof of the real aims of the Capitalist Government in war. They have no more concern for the people of Europe than those of anywhere else. Their idea of Freedom is a new pair of curtains.

That’s all right—as far as it goes—but when they want us to believe it’s for freedom for the oppressed people of Europe or somewhere—Well, Donald Duck has a word for it’

* * * 

“Pay Them Well”

Thus the Daily Mail for August 4th, 1944. They refer to the fighting Services. Lord Rothermere and friends are quite indignant with the Pensions Minister and the Cabinet for being niggardly with Services pay and “huckstering” about pensions and allowances.

That it is utterly outrageous that the wife of a soldier killed in battle should get less than the wife of a soldier still lucky enough to survive, the Socialist is the last to deny !

But, says the Mail with lordly (“Press-Lordly”) disdain, “A copper or two granted here, a readjustment made there is considered sufficient.”

“The costly policies initiated by the Government (free public schools, public health services, social security) are the hall-marks of the twentieth century.”

The “pay per day” method is a relic of the times when soldiers were mercenaries—mere casual labourers of the battlefields. It should be abolished, just as it has been abolished in the docks. The modern fighting man is a highly trained combatant and a skilled technician. He should be paid a salary and a good one.” (Italics ours.) (Daily Mail, August 8th.)

What the Mail calls a “good salary” for soldiers it carefully refrains from saying. We know men who would not do it for all the tea in China. Certain it is that, like working for the Socialist Party, nobody does it for what he gets in money—which is a joke, even for the officers.

Two things about the Daily Mail’s viewpoint interest us as Socialists, apart from the fact that the British capitalists, having raked in big profits during the war, feel at the moment—but only at the moment—like a man at the last course of a magnificent banquet—(“Gentlemen, you may smoke”), and are ready to chuck a pound in the plate for the waiter.

One is the statement that the “costly policies of the Government are the hall-marks of the twentieth century.” In other words, it is the considered policy of the capitalists to-day to give up a little, in the shape of reforms for the workers, to try to avoid having to surrender the lot to a discontented, Socialist, working class. As Socialist knowledge spreads among workers, and Labour leaders find it more difficult to convince them that reform of capitalism is “instalments” of Socialism, Lord Rothermere, Sir Samuel Courtauld, Lords Mcgowan and Nuffield will shower reforms, like the Beveridge Plan and More Pay, upon them to keep them occupied—and quiet. Even if it is reforms you want—which we Socialists do not—it is better to plump for Socialism.

But more important than this—the Mail points out that the one-time mercenaries who sold themselves for the King’s shilling—the “scum of the earth” of Rudyard Kipling and Billy Bennett—the old beer-swilling sweats—the “poor bloody infantry” of the past—like their civilian counterparts, the unskilled labourer, have become “highly trained skilled technicians.”

Modern fighting men, unlike their predecessors in history, are simply modern working-men put into uniform for organised scientific technical mass killing.

Some historians declare that the hired mercenaries of the Middle Ages fixed up representative conferences the night before “battle commenced” to arrange terms, and that sometimes battles did not start until the generals had agreed to “the rate for the job.” On other occasions armies just transferred during battle to the other side for more money.

But modern complicated capitalism, handling immense armies of millions at war, with colossal modern scientific equipment, can no more work on these methods than a man can pilot a plane without instruments.

Modern soldiers, or workers, in the world of 1944 are becoming highly trained skilled technicians; they are rapidly becoming producers of modern super-abundance in control of mighty complex engines which subdue and transform the forces and resources of nature—in other words, the result of the development of capitalism—is to make the working man of to-day a potential Socialist. But only potential; the ground is getting richer for the reception of the seed; the job of the Socialist Party is to implant it, deeply and firmly— it is certain to grow and multiply.

As workers and soldiers become still more highly educated, they will more easily grasp the futility of illusory scrambles for pennies or shillings extra, and fix their eyes on the real goal—abolition of private ownership—not large salaries, but what they produce. Lord Rothermere can pay as well as he likes. It will avail him nothing.

Horatio.

The Rise and Fall of Mussolini (1943)

From the August 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most of the accounts of Mussolini, by himself, by his friends, and by his enemies are a compound of myth and misrepresentation. Many of those who now denounce him as a monster of cruelty and treachery used not to regard him in that light.

Mr. Churchill was reported to have said in 1927 : —

“If I had been an Italian, I am sure that I should have been wholeheartedly with you from start to finish in your triumphant struggle against the bestial appetites and passions of Leninism.” (Times, January 21st, 1927.)

And did not the late Mr. Neville Chamberlain say in the House of Commons (May 2nd, 1938) : —

“To-day there is a new Italy, an Italy which, under the stimulus of the personality of Signor Mussolini, is showing new vigour, in which there is apparent new vision and new efficiency in administration and in the measures which they are taking to improve the conditions of their people.”

We may also recall the, unbounded enthusiasm for Mussolini and Hitler displayed by Lord Rothermere in his Daily Mail when he was backing Mosley’s Blackshirts and urging young British men and women to emulate the “spirit of patriotic pride and service which has transformed Germany and Italy.” (Daily Mail, January 15th, 1934).

Even the New Leader, organ of the I.L.P., was not quite sure in 1922 whether the workers should support Mussolini or not. In the issue dated November 10th, 1922, an article from an Italian correspondent was published urging cooperation with the Fascists in the national reconstruction of Italy. The Editor, while not associating himself with the idea, did not feel able to reject it out of hand. He doubted the feasibility of the idea, but said:

“Only events can test our correspondent’s optimistic reading of its (Fascism’s) new spirit.”

It is only necessary to recall these now-forgotten enthusiasms and aberrations to perceive the fallacy of the argument that those German and Italian workers who swallowed the absurd and brutal doctrines of their leaders must be punished and kept under, in order to save the world from further dictatorships and aggressions. If it is a crime for the workers to be taken in by the demagogy of a Hitler or a Mussolini, what of the illustrious statesmen and public men who were taken in too?

One myth about Mussolini, still held by many who denounce him, is that he was the creator of modern Italy, the inspired and dynamic leader who moulded events to his will and took power by a brilliant and forcible “march on Rome” in October, 1922. Mr. Bernard Shaw is an outstanding believer in the “great man” myth. If it were true that the great man could so mould events to his will, why the undignified and craven exit from power? Mussolini’s path to power was not through any bold and godlike master-stroke, but through the connivance and desire of those who had control of the political machine, in Italy in 1922. Is it not related how General Badoglio offered at the time to “scatter this Blackshirt rabble with a whiff of grapeshot,” only to be ordered by the King of Italy to let the rabble take office. Mussolini’s exit has been like his entry, for, according to the Daily Telegraph (July 27th, 1943), this giant among men resigned because, after a meeting of the Fascist Grand Council lasting ten hours he was voted down by 19 voles to 7!

The truth is that Mussolini and his Fascist Party had outlived its popularity under the stress of economic hardship and military defeat, and could no longer fulfil the prime function of those who take on the job of harnessing the exploited working class to the capitalist State in the interest of the exploiting class. Discontent had grown and the workers would not go on believing and obeying the leaders in whom they had once placed their trust. Long ago it was admitted by leading Fascist journals that things were in a bad way. The Fascist Party, which they admitted had “become an enormous, top-heavy organisation with a rigid bureaucracy” (Manchester Guardian, September 3rd, 1941), was no longer able to serve its purpose. Mussolini and his Fascists did not mould events, but were the astute exploiters of events which moulded them. In particular, they gained their opportunity to rise to office (and to the luscious fruits of office) because capitalism in Italy after the last war could not solve its own problems or satisfy the mass of the population. Their later policies were similarly dictated by the contradictions of capitalism. As Sir George Paish, the economist, pointed, out, it was the world-crisis of capitalism which determined Italy’s aggressive foreign policy. Writing in 1935. he said:

“If the difficulty between Italy and Abyssinia is to be settled, is it not essential to discover its real cause and remove it? Clearly its cause is similar to that which induced Italy to attack Abyssinia in 1896. At that time the world was suffering from a severe economic and financial crisis, and the distress of Italy caused her statesmen to seek relief in a policy of conquest. The world to-day is suffering from a crisis more severe than 40 years ago, and Italy is in even greater distress than she was then. In consequence, Italy desires a colony to give her a market for her products, to which her people can emigrate, and from which she can obtain food, raw material and gold.” (Times, August 31st. 1935.)

Crises, wars and dictatorships are possible only because of the lasting inability of capitalism to meet the needs of the population of the world. The remedy is not to seek new inspired leaders or new ways of managing capitalism. but to abolish the capitalist system from the face of the earth.

Notes by the Way: The Italian Fascists and Their Former Apologists. (1941)

The Notes by the Way Column from the May 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Italian Fascists and Their Former Apologists.

Before the war our newspapers and public men told us remarkably little about the real nature of the Fascist racket led by Mussolini, they were chiefly interested in telling us that it couldn’t be so bad because under Fascism the hotels were improved and the trains were running to time and Mussolini had preserved ancient monuments and built splendid motor roads—a typical tourist view of things. They forgot that 40 million Italians don’t spend their day visiting the sights and living in expensive hotels or touring about on motor roads. Mr. Bernard Shaw shows the same kind of mental blindness when he gives as a reason why Rome should not be bombed, our common interest in that city’s ancient glories. “In Rome,” he writes, “no one is a stranger and a foreigner; we all feel when we first go there that we are revisiting the scene of a former existence.” (Times, April 28th, 1941.) Mr. Shaw forgets that 40 million British workers, under this beneficent capitalist system, never had the time or money to go to see their ancient heritage.

Amongst the steadfast admirers of Mussolini was the late Lord Rothermere, who wrote in the Daily Mail (July 10th, 1933) dismissing the brutalities of Italian Fascism as mere “incidental extravagances” and glorifying the Fascist and Nazi regimes.

“Now that Italy has been for ten years not only peaceful and progressive, but, by comparison with other lands, even prosperous, the incidental extravagances of the early days of Fascism are forgotten. In the same way the minor misdeeds of individual Nazis will be submerged by the immense benefits that the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany.”

It was only after the war broke out that the Daily Mail and some other newspapers could discover the brutalities of both regimes. Similarly with regard to the qualities of their leaders. In the article quoted above, Lord Rothermere was full of praise for the virile youthful Mussolini. It was only in 1940 (Daily Mail, May 9th) that the Daily Mail could relate that Mussolini’s more middle-aged virility took the form that when he addressed a meeting of Italian industrialists about the British blockade, “he leant over the table and literally foamed at the mouth.” Hitler’s hysterical outbursts are by now well-known, but Lord Rothermere was able only eight years ago to describe him as a man who “will stand out in history” as one of the three “founders of a new Germany,” “The world’s greatest need to-day,” said Lord Rothermere (Daily Mail, July 10th, 1933), “is realism. Hitler is a realist.” (Lord Rothermere’s two other youthful heroes were the senile Hindenburg and the German Crown Prince.) If the world needed Hitler the world has certainly got him, in full measure, and it is worth bearing always in mind how large a part in getting the world to accept Hitler was played by men and newspapers like Lord Rothermere and the Daily Mail.

Another aspect of the Fascist racket, which answers Lord Rothermere’s argument that Fascism and Nazism rooted out corruption, is given by the Evening Standard (April 22nd, 1941). It discloses that Count Ciano, the husband of Mussolini’s daughter, Edda, “prevailed on the Banco di Santo Spirito, of Rome, to sell him building sites between the Lower Aventine and Ostia, port of Rome, at half a farthing a square yard. He resold the land to the Committee for the ‘Rome Exhibition of 1942,’ at 12s. 6d. a square yard.”

Rome may be, as Bernard Shaw says, the heritage of the whole world, but it looks as if the more immediate landlord gets the biggest rake-off. Note by the way the name of the bank which put the deal in Ciano’s way.

Incidentally, there has been much complaint in the Press recently about land speculators in this country.

Another interesting story about the supporters of Fascism appeared in the diary of the late William Dodd, who was American Ambassador in Germany. The following extract was reproduced in the Sunday Dispatch (March 9th, 1941): —

“In 1924 Hearst, who had been violently opposed to the Mussolini dictatorship, sent a man to Rome to negotiate a deal with Mussolini by which he would be paid a dollar a word for anything he would dictate for the Hearst Press.

It was widely known that Gianini, president of the Bank of America in California and an ardent Mussolini supporter, had loaned Hearst some millions of dollars.

Thereafter, Hearst’s newspapers praised the Italian dictatorship and Mussolini received large sums of money.

From 1924 until now Hearst has supported the dictatorship in Italy.”

* * * *

The Sunday Opening of Theatres

The Sabbatarians’ itch to interfere with other people’s lives always finds support among the Clergy and others whose living is bound up with the churches from the purely business point of view. For them the Sunday cinemas, theatres and public-houses are rival commercial establishments and curbing them is legitimate business practice. One novelty about the recent campaign which stopped the opening of theatres on Sundays was that the brewers were siding with the parsons, for them it is better that workers should not have opened up an additional Sunday entertainment which might affect the takings of the public houses as well as the revenue of the churches. Now, however, emboldened by their success, it looks as if the Sabbatarians are going to have a shot at closing the public houses as well, for the duration of the war. Thus ends another short-lived eternal pact of non-aggression.

One pained complaint comes from Mr. R. Wilson Black, President of the Baptist Union, this time directed against the Radio. “The Radio was made by many an excuse for remaining at home, where they could listen to just as much or as little of the broadcast service as they chose.” —(The Times, April 29th.)

It looks as if Mr. Black’s problem will only be solved by a law making it compulsory for everyone to attend Church services and to listen in silence to the whole of the sermon whether they like it or not.

The Manchester Guardian (April 24th, 1941) tells an entertaining story from U.S.A. The State of Delaware has on its Statute Book a law passed in 1740 prohibiting all “worldly” activities on Sunday. The Delaware Senate recently passed an amendment to permit each community to decide for itself the extent of Sabbath observance, but the House of Representatives refused to agree to the amendment. At this point the Attorney General comes on the scene. He thinks the 1740 law is all nonsense and he decided that the best way to prove it to its defenders was to enforce it to the full, and he did !

“So the police went out and arrested bus-drivers, tram-drivers, taxi-drivers, newsboys, restaurant-owners, milkmen, drug-store clerks, sweet-shop proprietors, garage hands, and even a strike picket and a man shovelling snow from the pavement. The manager of a radio station was taken up, and a Sabbatarian parson whose sermon had been broadcast was warned that he had become an accomplice in law-breaking. The next morning hundreds of people appeared in the courts. The House of Representatives became alarmed and protested but declared that it would not be coerced into repeal. The Attorney-General replied that “each Sunday will grow worse until the laws are amended.” Within four days the law was repealed.”

* * * *

Stalin Meets Matsuoka

We have had Hitler sending birthday greetings to Stalin, Stalin being photographed in a friendly party with Ribbentrop, Molotov all smiles with General Goering, now comes Stalin and Matsuoka, the Japanese Foreign Minister, who was in Moscow late in April. Here is the story from the Evening Standard of what is reported to have occurred when Stalin saw Matsuoka off on the train : —

“According to Mr. Hasegawa, the two statesmen were then apparently overcome with emotion and embraced one another to the amazement of the foreign diplomatic representatives present. —(Evening Standard, April 28th, 1941.)

It sounds too touching to be true, but, no doubt “dialectically considered,” as the Communists would say, it is a further piece of Socialist propaganda designed to clarify the ideas of the world’s workers and show them which of the representatives of capitalism are their true friends.

Those who still imagine that the Russian Government’s foreign policy is governed by internationalism should note the following, reproduced from the Bolshevik journal Pravda:—

“The foreign policy of the U.S.S.R. is guided exclusively by the interests of the U.S.S.R., exclusively by the interests of the peoples of the U.S.S.R. This policy dictates to the U.S.S.R. the desire to develop as widely as possible trade and economic relations with those of its neighbours who correctly appraise the importance of these connections with the U.S.S.R. for their own interests. The Soviet-German Treaty and Agreements of 1941 confirm with perfect clarity the absolute truth of this proposition—(Reproduced in the Anglo-Russia News Bulletin, January: 18th, 1941.)

Edgar Hardcastle

Notes by the Way: No Labour or Materials for Deep Bomb-Proof Shelters (1940)

The Notes by the Way Column from the October 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

No Labour or Materials for Deep Bomb-Proof Shelters

Long before the war was entered into Professor Haldane and others were warning the Government that air raids on the scale witnessed in Abyssinia and Spain would necessitate deep bomb-proof shelters being built. On various grounds those whose job it was supposed to be to provide protection rejected the demand. Now that the raids are here and people who can find no safety or sleep aboveground are crowding into the underground railways at night the Government finds that in any event “we have not the materials or labour for effectual burrowing.”—(Manchester Guardian, September 24th, 1940.)

Some pertinent comments have been made on this belated discovery, one by Mr. Lloyd George and others by the City Editor of the Daily Herald, and Mr. R. R. Stokes, Labour M.P. for Ipswich : —

“In a newspaper article to-day Mr. Lloyd George describes as “sheer nonsense” the Government view that deep shelters cannot be provided at present. He points out that the Spaniards dug their deep shelters at the time when they were actually being bombed, that we have 800,000 unemployed to meet the labour problem, and that we have enough material to make the roofs of the shelters able to bear the pressure upon them. Mr. Lloyd George is too old a campaigner to make such statements without sound evidence up his sleeve.

Nor is he the only one. Mr. R. R. Stokes, the Labour member for Ipswich, himself an engineer, is to ask Sir John Anderson whether he is aware that competent engineers believe we could dig deep bombproof tunnels for the whole of London’s population at a cost of £120,000,000. If such statements can be substantiated, and particularly if it can be shown that we have enough materials, the Government will find itself in a weak position, for it has already abandoned by implication its view that the principle of deep shelters is wrong. It did that when it countenanced the closing of the Holborn-Aldwych Underground line, which ran its last train last night. If it is right to turn this tunnel over to the public as a deep shelter, why not make others ?”—(Manchester Guardian, September 23rd.)

This is what the City Editor of the Daily Herald has to say about the scarcity of cement: —

“One of the authorities’ professed reasons for not supplying London with more underground shelters is an alleged shortage of building materials, particularly cement.

To tell the public flatly that cement supplies cannot be obtained is highly misleading. Our cement output is large, and the Government itself can and does decide how much should be used for what purpose.

If it wished to use a certain quota for shelters, it could do so.

Secondly, the public should realise that our cement manufacturing capacity has been restricted for years past by the Cement Ring—which includes the great combine, Associated Portland Cement. The Chamberlain Government allowed this ring persistently to limit our output capacity in the interests of high prices and profits.

For instance, in the summer of 1939 Associated Portland Cement bought a cement factory at Hartlepool and closed it down on the ground that its capacity was “redundant.”

In the previous November Lord Wolmer, chairman of the Cement Makers’ Federation, made a speech loudly lamenting the “surplus capacity” in the industry, and the “influx of newcomers.” This speech was believed to have succeeded in preventing a big new cement plant being put up.

And now the people are told that there is not enough cement for proper shelters.

Apologists for the ring, though admitting its restriction policy, argue that the industry would have greatly increased its capacity before the war if Mr. Chamberlain and Sir John Anderson had been willing to place firm long-term contracts for cement to be used for shelter purposes. Even this our pre-war Government refused to do.”—(Daily Herald, September 24th, 1940.)

* * *

The Land of “Socialism”— Russia

“The first sentences under the recent decree making directors, engineers and others liable to imprisonment for defective production were announced here to-day. Three men were sentenced to five, six and eight years respectively on charges of producing faulty condensers.

A decree provides that persons charged with loafing or leaving work will be tried by a judge alone, not, as hitherto, by a judge and a factory delegate.”— Reuter.—(News Chronicle, August 17th, 1940.)

* * *

“Intelligent Life”

From an interview with the Astronomer Royal:

“The Astronomer Royal declares that vegetation exists on Mars. He affirms that intelligent life may have been there in the past, but there is no indication of it now.

So the conclusion of the Astronomer Royal is this. Conditions in which intelligent life was possible have existed on Mars. They will exist in Venus. But in all our planetary system at this moment, the Earth is the only place where we can be sure intelligent life does exist”.—(Sunday Express, September, 1940.)

* * *

Two Views of “Hospitality”

From the London Correspondent of the Manchester Guardian : —

“Meanwhile Londoners continue to use the Underground stations as shelters in spite of official discouragement. There is really strong feeling behind this, and not only in East London, where the lack of deep public shelters is most felt. Everybody with whom I discuss the matter is filled with admiration and pity for the people who come so far and endure such discomfort to sleep in peace.

I cannot remember any time for years when there has been among the luckier section of the population here such a vivid realisation of the social injustice which gives the less lucky section rickety houses in which no safety can be found and rickety incomes which give them no hope of escape to something safer. Middle-class indifference to working-class hardship has always been mostly a matter of ignorance, but there is no ignorance in this case. All of us know now what it feels like to be lonely and exposed in air raids. The demand for deep shelters and decent shelters comes from us all.”— (Manchester Guardian, September 23rd.)

From a letter to the News Chronicle: —

“On Wednesday at 2 a.m., with a party of about 30 people, mostly women residents and servants from a neighbouring street, I was evacuated at a moment’s notice to a luxury hotel in Park Lane. Many of us were in night clothes ; all of us had had a shock. The hotel lounge was crowded with people in evening dress, smoking, eating and drinking. No one took the slightest notice of us except a hall porter who, when approached, told us to sit on the staircase. No comfort or refreshment of any kind was offered, and it was with difficulty, after half an hour’s insistence, that I was able to buy some cigarettes.

What would have been our reception in an East End home ?

Mary Glasgow. S.W.3.

P.S.—I was wrong in saying “no comfort or refreshment was offered.” At one point a gentle elderly lady came with a bag of dog biscuits asking whether there was any animal with us.

—(News Chronicle, September 23rd.)

* * *

Dean Inge on Hitler and Napoleon

“There is a delicious story in John Bailey’s Diaries. An old don was presented to Napoleon during the Peace of Amiens. On his return his friends asked him what he thought of the Emperor.

“Oh,” he replied, “you could see that he is not a University man!” That was the donnish way of saying that he was not a gentleman ; Wellington said the same.

Napoleon, though a genius, was certainly a cad. He was utterly unscrupulous and immoral. His soldiers admired him, but he never made a friend. The two men with whom he could not dispense, Talleyrand and Fouché, both betrayed him, as he knew they would. His two wives were as unfaithful to him as he was to them. He left a legacy to a man who tried to kill Wellington. “A shabby thing to do,” said the Duke.

Nevertheless, he never descended to such depths of villainy as Hitler. For he was Emperor of the French, and the French, though they have their faults like other people, are not savages.

Hitler, whose real name, if he has a name, for his father was a bastard, is Schicklgruber, is a criminal of a rather uncommon type.

He is an absolutely shameless liar, but he is also a wholesale murderer. On June 30th, 1934, he organised a massacre of inconvenient friends, who had raised him to power. It is believed that about 700 were killed. Since then, he is responsible for the deaths of innumerable Jews, Communists, Poles, and others. He is the perfect criminal.”

— (Evening Standard, September 23rd, 1940.)

Napoleon, we notice, was immoral. The Dean curiously does not mention Napoleon’s conqueror, Nelson, in this connection. Incidentally, it may be observed that it has pleased various prominent men in recent times to gloss over the vices of Hitler and his ally, Mussolini. Lord Rothermere, for example, was for years an admirer of and apologist for Hitler. In 1933 (Daily Mail, July 10th, 1933), Rothermere was saying : —

“The world’s greatest need to-day is realism. Hitler is a realist. He has saved his country from the ineffectual leadership of hesitating, half-hearted politicians. He has infused into its national life the unconquerable spirit of triumphant youth.”

Six months later when he was running his “Hurrah! for the Blackshirts” campaign, and telling Daily Mail readers to join Mosley’s organisation (Daily Mail, January 15th, 1934), Germany and Italy were held out as models to be followed.

* * *

Pointed Remarks about Lord Rothermere

A correspondent, writing to the News Chronicle (September 20th, 1940), makes some telling observations : —

“In view of the fuss raised about Gracie Fields one notes with interest the fact that Viscount Rothermere is residing quietly in America. Was it not this reactionary who proclaimed not so long ago that Hitler was “no ogre” but, on the contrary, “exuded good fellowship,” and oh that there was “no man in Europe in whose judgment he (Rothermere) would sooner trust ?”

Did not his Lordship, on one famous occasion instruct his readers to vote for Mosley ? Funny, that the noble Viscount should not happen to be in England in these exhilarating days !

* * *

Constructive Franco and Generous Balbo

This game of praising the dictators still goes on. When Marshal Balbo died in an air battle in Lybia (or was got out of the way by Mussolini as other reports have it) Mr. Ward Price, in the Daily Mail (July 1st, 1940), ended a flattering article on him with the words: —

“A frank, generous spirit, who lived dangerously, Marshal Italo Balbo was an adversary of the kind that Britons instinctively respect.”

and the Times (September 25th, 1940), could write about Franco’s “wise policy of reconstruction” in Spain.

The Manchester Guardian (July 1st, 1940), had this comment to make about “chivalrous” Balbo : —

“He was, in fact, one of those Fascist Rases, or “bosses,” who in the period of the “March to Rome” fought for Fascism and carried it to success by the most brutal and unscrupulous means against its political opponents. Cesare Rossi and Finzi said that Balbo organised the bludgeoning of the dissident Fascist deputy Misuri when he tried to expose abuses in the Fascist party. Certainly it was Balbo, the Ras of Ferrara and head of the Fascist Militia, who in August, 1923, sent the notorious order to the Fascist Secretary of his city about how to deal with some Socialists who had been acquitted after being kept in prison without trial for two and a half years. They were to be got out of Ferrara, but if they persist in remaining, thus causing unrest, they must be bludgeoned, not to excess, but methodically, until they make up their minds to go. . . . The police will do well to persecute them by frequent arrests, every week at least, … if there should be any beatings (which will be conducted “in style”) there is no desire to see prosecutions instituted.”

As for Franco’s wise policy of reconstruction in Spain, Mr. William Munday, for many years Daily Mail correspondent in Spain, writes as follows : —

“It is dangerous to think aloud in the cafés, and Franco has carried out a big political clean-up. Spies are everywhere, ready to inform on the indiscreet. There is no room in the gaols for all the political prisoners, so they are left at large and collected as wanted.

All roads out of Madrid are well policed, and travellers are closely scrutinised by keen-eyed Civil Guards, who stop cars and demand papers. Railway tickets are only sold against safe conduct permits.

The result of all this is that Madrid is a vast rabbit warren in which are hidden hundreds of enemies of the regime, unable to escape. The police drag-net makes its daily haul.

That is Spain to-day. Spaniard against Spaniard. Families split up.”—(Daily Mail, August 6th, 1940.)

If Franco is trying to improve this desperate situation in Spain he certainly ought to; he waged civil war, and was largely responsible for causing it.

* * *

Russian Oil and German Bombers

Although it is reported (News Chronicle, September 4th, 1940) that Russian shipyards are building numerous tankers for transporting Russian oil from Black Sea ports into Germany, it may be that so far comparatively little Russian oil has been supplied to Germany. On the other hand, the Russo-German Pact was partly designed to increase the supply of materials to Germany, and it was said that on the anniversary of the Pact the Russian Press emphasised the value of the Pact “as a weapon against Britain’s blockade.”-(Daily Herald, August 24th, 1940.)

While this is going on the Communists indignantly protest when British oil firms go on supplying oil to Japan to be used in the war against China. The principle is the same in both cases, the sordid capitalist principle that all trade, including trade in means of destruction, is legitimate. This is not a principle that Socialists have ever adopted or condoned.

* * *

The Future of Gold

The Nazi Minister of National Economy, Funk, in a recent speech in Berlin, boasted that “gold will play no role in future as a basis for European currencies,” and again “a currency does not depend on its gold cover, but on the value which the State gives it,” but the Nazi Government’s actions show how little it believes in Funk’s doctrine, for Gerrmany has gone to extreme lengths in the past year to seize gold in all the occupied countries.

Similarly the Russian Government is now disputing with the British and American Governments the possession of gold held in London and New York on behalf of the Baltic countries overrun by Russia. Molotov, in a recent speech, addressed angry words to both Governments about “these illegal acts.”— (Daily Worker, August 2nd, 1940.)

It all shows how little the Russian and German Governments believe in the possibility of capitalism being overthrown as a result of the war, and how little they believe even in the likelihood that a better basis can be found for capitalist trade than the gold basis.

* * *

Further Progress of the Red Army

“Marshals of the Red Army are in future to wear a five-pointed star consisting of 31 diamonds in a gold and platinum mounting. The largest of the diamonds will be one of 2.62 carats.”—Reuter.—(Manchester Guardian, September 4th, 1940.)

* * *

From a Communist Manifesto Secretly Circulated in Italy

The Daily Worker (July 8th, 1940), published a manifesto of the Italian Communists. It is interesting to see that they at least have not been taken in by Nazi-Fascist talk of the need for “Lebensraum.”

“The Fascist potentates declare that we must win supremacy in the Mediterranean, that we must defeat British plutocracy so as to put an end to our poverty and tribulations. What a brazen lie ! Our country possesses sufficient natural riches to satisfy the lives of our people.

The overthrow of British plutocracy is the job of the British people. Our job is to overthrow the Italian Fascist plutocracy who, like vampires, suck the blood of our people.”

The manifesto does not contain any of the specious doctrines by which the Communists here and in Russia justified the invasion of Finland and the Baltic States.

* * *

What is Happening in France? A Question to the Communists

The Communist Party is in rather a dilemma about happenings in France. On the one side the Communists declare that the Communist movement in unoccupied France is strong and popular, and on the other that the Petain Government is very weak. Why then do not the French Communists put their “mass movement” theories into practice and seize power ? Who is there to stop them? Not Petain, for “the Petain Government’s authority is extremely weak” (World News and Views, August 24th, 1940), while “there is widespread opposition to the Petain regime, especially among the industrial workers, demobilised soldiers and unemployed, in those areas where the Communist Party’s influence was strong before the war, e.g., Toulouse, Lyons and Marseilles.”

Similar information of “serious and widespread popular unrest” is reported in the Daily Worker (August 16th, 1940).

If, then, Petain could not stop such widespread unrest, who is stopping it ? Who is preventing the Communists from carrying out their usual plan of taking over the Government. Can it be Stalin or Stalin’s friend, Hitler?

Truly a curious situation.

Edgar Hardcastle

Atrocities—Cynical Ruling Class Attitude (1945)

From the June 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

For weeks on end the British Press carried horrifying accounts and pictures of atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps; mass starvation, brutality, sadistic cruelties perpetrated by degenerate guards on helpless men, women and children, prisoners buried alive, tortured by solitary confinement and so on. Some of the worsened conditions of recent months may have been due, as one of the German guards said, to transport difficulties—the stupendous Allied bombing of roads and railways can hardly have failed to produce disorganisation—but this does not affect the main facts of appalling brutalities over a long period. But if the facts are substantially agreed this is certainly not true of the conclusions that can be drawn from them. Far from accepting the views of many newspapers and capitalist politicians we deny their right to raise hands in holy horror; or to attempt to fasten the responsibility on the German workers. On several counts the British ruling class and their spokesmen have not the slightest justification for the attitude they adopt.

Mr. John Gordon in the Sunday Express (April 22nd). recalls that this is not a new story. “It has been going on in Germany for something like 15 years," and the Sunday Times correspondent who visited the Belsen camp writes: “It is a thing you read about and refused to believe in from 1933 onwards."—(Sunday Times, April 22nd). A News-Chronicle correspondent, under the heading “Guilty Germans" makes a specific charge against the German workers that their guilt was that of “supine surrender" to the Nazis and that their slavishness was brought on themselves “when they failed to seize their chance in 1918." (News-Chronicle, April 24th). It is all very well for these charges to be made, but what were the newspapers and politicians (with a very few exceptions) saying and doing in 1933 when Nazi atrocities began, or to go further back, in the years from 1922 when Italian Fascist atrocities began? Some, like the late Lord Rothermere were carrying on active propaganda in support of the Nazis and Fascists. They knew all the facts about atrocities (at that time perpetrated against German and Italian workers), but they either denied the truth or glossed it over, or maintained that it was a purely internal affair of the German and Italian Governments. Here was the late Lord Rothermere's declaration : — 

  These ranters . . .  have started a clamorous campaign of denunciation against what they call 'Nazi atrocities' which, as anyone who visits Germany quickly discovers for himself, consist merely of a few isolated acts of violence, such as are inevitable among a nation half as big again as ours, but which have been generalised, multiplied, and exaggerated to give the impression that Nazi rule is a bloodthirsty tyranny. If one turns to the English newspapers of the years 1921 and 1922, one finds that the old women of both sexes in our country were just as hysterical then about alleged Fascist ‘outrages' in Italy. . . . the minor misdeeds of individual Nazis will be submerged by the immense benefits that the new regime is already bestowing upon Germany."—(Daily Mail,  July 10th, 1933).

It suited British capitalist policy in those years to give support to Mussolini and Hitler so there was no protest about concentration camp horrors and no attempt to hold those two individuals responsible. Instead we had stuff like Mr. Churchill's account of his interview with Mussolini, reported in the Times (January 21st, 1927):—

 "I could not help being charmed, like so many other people have been by Signor Mussolini's gentle and simple bearing and by his calm, detached poise in spite of so many burdens and dangers." 

Lord Rothermere was similarly affected by Hitler :

  "He exudes good fellowship. He is simple, unaffected, and obviously sincere. . . . His courtesy is beyond words, and men and woman alike are captivated by his ready and disarming smile. He is a man of rare culture:.”—(Daily Mail, May, 1938, quoted In “Socialism Can Defeat Nazism."—I.L.P.).

Others, like the Beaverbrook Press, and many Conservative politicians, were preaching for British capitalism the line of cutting off from all Continental entanglements (meaning in effect let Germany and Russia fight it out), so they were against any interference in Germany's internal affairs, and German concentration camps were an internal affair. It was only when capitalist interests were involved in the struggle with German capitalism that these gentlemen discovered that Nazi brutalities were horrifying. When it was only working class organisations that were being crushed in Italy and Germany, British capitalism did nothing, made no protest, and was utterly indifferent; in some quarters actively approving.

Russia, too, was following the same line, just after the Nazis came to power Russia renewed her agreements, with Germany, and Litvinov for the Russiau Government had this to say in shamefaced defence of Russian policy :—

  ‘‘We, of course, are sensitive to the sufferings of our German comrades, but we Marxists can be reproached least of all for permitting our feelings to dominate our policy. . . . We do not interfere in the internal affairs of Germany, just as in those of other countries, and our relations with her are determined not by her internal, but her foreign policy. We want to have the best relations with Germany, as with other states."—(Moscow News, January 6, 1934).

As for the charge that the German workers were supine and that they ought to have seized their chance in 1918, does the News-Chronicle recall the attitude of the British ruling class towards those German workers who were not supine? The Daily Mail was urging that Karl Liebknecht should be shot “like a mad dog,” and the Allied authorities, put pressure on Germany by threatening to withhold essential supplies of food and other materials unless the authorities suppressed the insurgent German workers.

Ruling class sensitiveness to atrocities is not based on sentiments of humanity, but is merely a weapon in the struggle to protect capitalist interests against rival capitalist States. Their horror consequently changes direction along with foreign policy, it is worked up or allowed to subside according to the needs of the moment. At one period it is directed against Turkey or the Boers, at another against Russia or France. It is always on tap, ready to be turned on or off as interests dictate.

It was, of course, not the British Government, but mainly working class organisations that protested against the sufferings of Boer women and children in the Concentration camps established by the British authorities in South Africa during the War with the Boer Republics.

A British historian: G. M. Trevelyan has this smug account of it. “Finally, to catch the farmers in these vast spaces where the scattered population was on their side, it was found that no method would answer but to destroy their farms and concentrate their families in camps. Unfortunately many of the children died there." (British History in the Nineteenth Century," 1922 (p. 422).

Michael Davitt in his “Boer Fight for Freedom," (1902, p. 587), says that there were 45,000 women and 50.000 children “inside of barbed wire fences surrounded by British soldiers, arms in hand," and that “14,000 of these children have died already of sickness induced by the cold and the privations inflicted upon them in one year.”

In the first World War much was made of German atrocities, including the fictitious, but very effective propaganda story of the Corpse Factories in which German dead were supposed to he boiled down for oils and fats, etc. It was not until 1925, when British policy had veered against France and towards Germany, that the story was dropped. Only then did Sir Austin Chamberlain announce in the House of Commons that “The Chancellor of the German Reich has authorised me to say, on the authority of the German Government, that there never was any foundation for it. I need scarcely add, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government, I accept this denial, and I trust that this false report will not again he revived.’’ (Hansard, 2nd December. 1925). The German Government, by the way. had been denying the story for eight years and it was the British Government in the first place which had circulated the false report

Memories are short or the use made by the capitalists of atrocities would be realised. In 1927 when Mr. Churchill found Mussolini such a charming man, Russia was still a main worry of the British Foreign Office, and Churchill was therefore not concerned to denounce the “bestial appetites and passion” of Italian Fascism, but applied those words to what he called “Leninism.”

In 1919 Mr. Churchill, as Minister for War, had told the House of Commons that he had been looking at photographs of Bolshevik atrocities and found them “of a very painful nature."—(Hansard, November 20th, 1919). That year the Foreign Office published a White Book dealing with alleged Bolshevik atrocities and some of the contents of the book were recounted by Mr. Clement Edwards, M.P., in the House of Commons, on April 2nd, 1919. In Mr. Edwards' view they showed that the Lenin regime was synonymous with “mad anarchy” and “wicked cruelty beyond any possible conception of any British mind at least.” Among the cases cited was that of 12 labourers who were alleged to have been cast alive into a hole in which were hot slag deposits; naval officers burnt alive on planks which were slowly pushed into furnaces inches at a time; others tortured with jets of scalding steam followed by exposure to freezing air; men bound, put into barges and the barges sunk.

Another alleged Bolshevik atrocity was the employment of Chinese executioners, “who were sawing prisoners into pieces.”—(Hansard, April 16th, 1919 (col. 2,978). About this last story Colonel Wedgwood pointed out that it was based on what an anonymous Englishman was told at Stockholm by an anonymous Estonian—nevertheless it was good enough for our Foreign Office. He also pointed out that the stories about the Bolsheviks were “worse than any atrocity stories we have seen during the war against Germany." He should not have been surprised. Capitalist Governments are not concerned with atrocities as such, but with the use that may be made of reports, true or false, proved or merely rumoured, against the enemy of the moment.

In “The Russian Soviet Republic,” by E. A. Ross, Professor of Sociology, Wisconsin University (Allen & Unwin, 1923), there are further particulars of alleged atrocities reported in the British and American press, including such incidents as 38,000 Russian soldiers, returned from imprisonment in Germany being starved to death in a Russian Concentration Camp (New York Times, 24th February, 1919). The newspaper's correspondent passed on the statement of his informant who “saw train load after train load of corpses being transferred from the camp to the municipal refuse destruction furnaces." (p. 280).

In the same issue was a report of “impalement on wooden stakes, torture by flame, and mutilations too hideous to relate."

Just as Germany was the target from 1914 for many years until it was finally dropped in 1925, and is again the target now, so also Russia was alleged to be the worst offender for many years after 1919. All attacks on Russia stopped in 1941, but does any one doubt that with some future change of policy that tap may be turned on again in full force. Then we shall be told about existing concentration camps in Russia, not to mention the material already used only a few months ago against the Greek E.LA.S., and its Communist supporters.

Those with long memories will recall how, for a space in the early nineteen twenties, France was singled out on account of the French occupation of the German Ruhr by black troops: British foreign policy had by then diverged from close association with France.

An important aspect of the recent German atrocities is the conclusion drawn by many people that they prove the brutality and degeneracy of the German people as a whole. If they do then the world is peopled with degenerates—no nation escapes the indictment. Who invented concentration camps? The British in South Africa; and many foreign countries affected to be horrified. Were Churchill and the British Government, in 1919, right about Bolshevist atrocities? are then the Russians, as a Nation also brutal and degenerate? What of the Belgians in the Congo slaughtering or maiming native men, women and children by the thousand because they failed to bring in sufficient tribute of rubber? Or the French in their neighbouring African colony, with a like brutal record. What of the atrocities alleged against the Boers in the Boer War; against the British Black and Tans in Ireland; the Chinese in the Boxer rising and their counter charges against the occupying white troops?

The charge against whole nations will not hold. Every nation can show u certain number of people brutalised by the conditions under which they live, but the responsibility rests in every case with the authorities who deliberately train and use such people as part of the state machinery of suppression.

During the last War the British Government appointed a committee to consider and report on the evidence of outrages committed by German troops. It was presided over by the late Lord Bryce and among its members was the late H. A. L. Fisher. Mr. Francis Hirst writing to the Times (May 3, 1945), quotes from Fisher’s life of Bryce the following observation:—

  “Bryce knew far too much to draw an indictment against the whole German nation. He knew that in every country there are a certain proportion of savage natures, in some countries more than in others, and that in the excitement and demoralization of war such temperaments find a free vent."

As far as the recent Nazi atrocities are concerned we should remember that when there were in existence working class organisations opposed to the Nazi regime (and eventually suppressed by it), the ruling class in countries outside Germany who could have helped did nothing to protect them or aid them. Later on individual Germans opposed to Nazi brutalities were helpless. As a contributor writing to the Times reminds its readers (April 23rd), the large majority of the prisoners in the Nazi camp at Buchenwald, Belsen and elsewhere were Germans, and the Observer's correspondent who interviewed a German Pastor in a village near Belsen received from him a convincing answer to his question why did the Pastor not make a protest.

  “But what could they do said the little man. Preach against it? If he preached against it once his wife and children would be taken to a concentration camp."—(Observer, April 22).

   The Pastor went on to remind the correspondent that he had himself just seen what the camp was like, and asked the correspondent if he would have done anything to send his own wife and children to such a fate.

Of course the German people were responsible for voting, in large numbers, to put the Nazis into power, but the Germans can hardly be distinguished from voters of other nations in respect of credulously swallowing the extravagant and high sounding promises made by vote-catching politicians and discovering their mistake only by experience.

Moreover, there is evidence that at least some German workers were opposed to the Nazis and their methods and did what little they could. The News-Chronicle (April 21st), reports an interview with a French Army Officer who had been a prisoner in Germany. He said:—

  “There was considerable anti-Nazi sentiment in the Ruhr among the workers. They have been opposed to the War I think since the start, and many of them have been cruelly punished by the Nazi for their views." The News-Chronicle correspondent adds this;—

    “I came across concrete instances of how some German workers helped the victims of the Nazis.

    One working-class family in a Duesseldorf suburb has for two years hidden two Jews, feeding them out of their own rations, to save them from the Nazis.

    A Polish slave worker hunted by the Gestapo for his underground activity was sheltered by a German girl who helped him in his work.”

By all means we protest against atrocities and brutality, but we do so not as an expedient according to circumstances but against atrocities and brutality wherever and whenever they occur.

It is for the working class of the whole world to see as it really is the cynical and hypocritical use made, by the capitalist class of atrocities, and not to let themselves be divided by capitalist propaganda directed against first one and then another foreign nation. It is capitalism itself that produces the worst atrocity of all—war, and which everywhere has a record of brutality towards the working class and colonial peoples in peace or in war.

Only Socialism can end it and only world working class unity can achieve that end.

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: A Red Herring (1981)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent election in St. George’s raises a few interesting questions.

In the first place, there seems little doubt that Tory, Labour and Liberals were allied in supporting the Conservative candidate against the Rothermere-Beaverbrook nominee. But the first question that strikes one is, Why all the bother and mud- slinging? What is behind the Rothermere-Beaverbrook attempt to run the Conservative Party? And, further, why the comparative unanimity between Conservatives, Liberals and Labour on the Indian Question? Is it all a game of bluff?

That Rothermere and Beaverbrook desire to wield the balance of power in the Conservative Party, and that. Winston Churchill (who up to the present seems always to have changed his political colours too late) desires the position of Prime Minister, may all be true, but yet not the main object behind the trouble.

Ireland was for decades a useful blind to keep the English workers from taking too close an interest in their own political circumstances. After Ireland had passed out of the picture, Russia stepped in, and now India is in the limelight. But in the meantime Liberal, Tory and Labour have been drawing closer together and the Labour Party have given ample evidence of their ability to steer accurately in the interests of capital. There is a danger of the workers getting restive and dissatisfied with the Labour Party’s meek acceptance of capitalist conditions. What better method then of heading off dangerous restiveness than by putting up a sham fight with a new brand of capitalist political parties. The hazier and more indefinite the object and programme, the larger the number of people likely to be attracted.

The way Gandhi has been manoeuvred into such a position that many of his followers are now repudiating him, suggests the nature of the bluff.

The Daily Mail and the Evening News have been publishing furious articles about the surrender to Gandhi, but Gandhi has now discovered that there are certain reservations relating to safeguards in the British Government’s agreement that were (purposely ?) not made clear to him at the time of signing.

In the meantime, mass protest meetings are being held in India by Hindus who threaten to withdraw their support from Gandhi if he agrees to certain demands of the Moslems. It looks very like the old game of “divide and conquer.”

To the worker the issues raised at St. George’s were of no concern, as the interests engaged were capitalist interests. Self-government for India, like self-government for Ireland, is only a question of which group of capitalists will rule. The dinners to Gandhi given by the rich Bombay mill-owners are suggestive of the meaning of Indian self-government to the mass of the population of India.

For over a century the population of India has been exploited for the benefit of European capitalists who broke up the old communal village system of production that had flourished there for ages. In the meantime, native capitalists have amassed wealth and own much of the recently developed instruments of modern production. The latter now want political domination in order to secure a greater share of the fruits of the labour of the Indian workers—hence the movement for self-government.

Indian working men and women are exploited in mills, mines and on the land, like their English brethren, and, like them also, their only salvation lies in the international movement for Socialism. In this movement no help is to be expected from Indian mill- owners nor from the parties in this country that are united in demanding the continuance of present conditions, whether they fly the colours of Tory, Liberal, Labour or United Empire Parties.

(Editorial from the April 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard.)

A Red Herring. (1931)

Editorial from the April 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent election in St. George's raises a few interesting questions.

In the first place, there seems little doubt that Tory, Labour and Liberals were allied in supporting the Conservative candidate against the Rothermere-Beaverbrook nominee. But the first question that strikes one is, Why all the bother and mud-slinging? What is behind the Rothermere-Beaverbrook attempt to run the Conservative Party? And, further, why the comparative unanimity between Conservatives, Liberals and Labour on the Indian Question? Is it all a game of bluff?

That Rothermere and Beaverbrook desire to wield the balance of power in the Conservative Party, and that Winston Churchill (who up to the present seems always to have changed his political colours too late) desires the position of Prime Minister, may all be true, but yet not the main object behind the trouble.

Ireland was for decades a useful blind to keep the English workers from taking too close an interest in their own political circumstances. After Ireland had passed out of the picture, Russia stepped in, and now India is in the limelight. But in the meantime Liberal, Tory and Labour have been drawing closer together and the Labour Party have given ample evidence of their ability to steer accurately in the interests of capital. There is a danger of the workers getting restive and dissatisfied with the Labour Party's meek acceptance of capitalist conditions. What better method then of heading off dangerous restiveness than by putting up a sham fight with a new brand of capitalist political parties. The hazier and more indefinite the object and programme, the larger the number of people likely to be attracted.

The way Gandhi has been manoeuvred into such a position that many of his followers are now repudiating him, suggests the nature of the bluff.

The Daily Mail and the Evening News have been publishing furious articles about the surrender to Gandhi, but Gandhi has now discovered that there are certain reservations relating to safeguards in the British Government's agreement that were (purposely?) not made clear to him at the time of signing.

In the meantime, mass protest meetings are being held in India by Hindus who threaten to withdraw their support from Gandhi if he agrees to certain demands of the Moslems. It looks very like the old game of “divide and conquer."

To the worker the issues raised at St. George's were of no concern, as the interests engaged were capitalist interests. Self-government for India, like self-government for Ireland, is only a question of which group of capitalists will rule. The dinners to Gandhi given by the rich Bombay mill-owners are suggestive of the meaning of Indian self-government to the mass of the population of India.

For over a century the population of India has been exploited for the benefit of European capitalists who broke up the old communal village system of production that had flourished there for ages. In the meantime, native capitalists have amassed wealth and own much of the recently developed instruments of modern production. The latter now want political domination in order to secure a greater share of the fruits of the labour of the Indian workers—hence the movement for self-government.

Indian working men and women are exploited in mills, mines and on the land, like their English brethren, and, like them also, their only salvation lies in the international movement for Socialism. In this movement no help is to be expected from Indian mill-owners nor from the parties in this country that are united in demanding the continuance of present conditions, whether they fly the colours of Tory, Liberal, Labour or United Empire Parties.

Editorial: Flaming Folly in the Saar (1935)

Editorial from the February 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an editorial entitled “Flaming Patriotism" one of the less vicious of Lord Rothermere’s newspapers, the Evening News, tells us (January 15th) what the Saarlanders have done, and why. Before considering his Lordship’s contribution to world hysteria, let us cast an eye over some other contributions. A great battle has been fought and won. A glorious triumph has been achieved by the enthusiasts for reunion with Germany. The small band of supporters of continued administration by the League of Nations, and the microscopic handful favourable to France are correspondingly depressed. But what are they fighting about, these Saarland workers? What would they gain by any of the three courses open to them? What did they stand to lose? The Communists gave one answer. The Communists, who in Russia suppress every independent trade union or political party, told the Saar workers that Hitler would suppress their independent trade unions and political parties. So little did the workers care about this that they voted in overwhelming numbers for Hitler. The I.L.P., which for years has advocated returning the Saar to Germany, and which denounces the League of Nations as an imperialist instrument, implored the Saarland workers on no account to return to Germany, but to remain under the League. The Liberals and Labourites all wept bitter tears over the awful fate which would befall the workers under Hitler, forgetful of the fact that large numbers, if not a majority of the workers already under Hitler apparently find life so little different from what it was under the German Labour Governments and Coalitions that they do not mind, or are even enthusiastic Nazis. But none of these parties, nor the legions of journalists and expert commentators who have overrun the Saar, have told us what there was at issue which merited the bitter campaign.

Let us, then, seek an answer from Lord Rothermere, for his organ is at least definite. It tells us that the Saarlanders were stirred by the call of race and language and blood. Seemingly this was so attractive that for it “they willingly face the chances of poverty and unemployment.” Mark those last words well. They contain the distilled wisdom of a great capitalist newspaper. They are a mark both of the impudence of the capitalist Press and of the simplicity of the non-Socialist mass of workers who read it. The Saarland workers, we are told, have voted for re-union with Germany, even though it means the “material hardship” of poverty and unemployment! Just think of it. We are asked to believe that members of the working class only suffer poverty and unemployment in Germany, and that if they remained under the League or joined France they would escape these things. The tragedy is that there are British workers, intelligent and experienced in many things, but not yet intelligent in politics, who will read the Evening News and believe what they read, though it flies in the face of all working-class experience everywhere. And there are Saarland workers subject to just the same paralysis of the mind, so that when they read the lying propaganda of their masters, or the stupid nonsense of their Labour and Communist leaders, they believe it. What are the facts of the situation? The Saar is capitalist. It has capitalism to the west of it and to the east of it, north of it and south of it. Everywhere the means of production and distribution are owned and controlled by the master-class. Everywhere the workers produce wealth for others to own. Everywhere poverty and the risk of unemployment are the normal features of working-class life. Yet, knowing this, so-called leaders and counsellers of the Saarland workers, at home and abroad, egged them on to take sides in this master-class dispute about the ownership of the Saar. Members of the working class were thus divided into two bitterly antagonistic groups about the momentous question whether the proceeds of their own exploitation should flow to capitalists under the French or German or League flags!

What was needed in the Saar and what would have happened had there been any organised Socialist (as distinct from reformist) movement, was a clear presentation of the Socialist case. The workers would have been shown that their interests were not at stake in this Capitalist bickering, and that the surface differences between French and German and League capitalism are not vital, and cannot be dealt with by the working up of national hatreds. The workers would have been shown that the prime need of the occasion, as of every occasion, was a demonstration that they could no longer be drawn into capitalist rivalries, but stood for the abolition of capitalism, without conditions and without delay. Even as a minority gesture an organised Socialist refusal to vote for either of the three forms of capitalist administration would have done more to proclaim the message of Socialism, and would have caused more consternation to the capitalists on both sides of the frontier than all the misdirected efforts of the anti-Hitler United Front. The organisers of that movement failed to seize the opportunity of putting the Socialist case because they do not know what the Socialist case is. They displayed their courage and energy in a worthless cause.

The result, in the absence of a Socialist movement among the Saarland workers, is that Hitler and Lord Rothermere, and the capitalists of all the countries in all the world are able to sit back, reassured that they and their system are still safe, safe behind the patriotic and capitalistic illusions of the working class.

The Fallacy of Empire Free Trade. (1930)

From the March 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook, who six months ago were waging a fierce ‘‘circulation war” in their rival group of newspapers, have buried the hatchet in order to launch the United Empire Party—the “Party of Prosperity.” The idea underlying the programme of the new party is simple enough. The British Empire is to become one unit for trade purposes against the rest of the world. Any article which can be grown or manufactured inside one or other of the Empire countries is to be grown there and freely imported into other Empire countries. Foreign productions are to be kept out by means of protective tariffs. America is to be the model, and prosperity is to be the result. Viscount Rothermere writing in the Sunday Despatch on February 23rd, tells us that five years after the achievement of Empire Free Trade “Great Britain will be as prosperous as the United States.” The party is described as “not political, but economic. It will include men and women of all political (views. Conservatives, Liberals, and Labourites alike will be welcome to it.” (Viscount Rothermere, in the Daily Mail, 19th February). This “non-political” party is, however, going to run a large number of candidates for Parliament, to secure the application of its programme. Lord Beaverbrook is the leader of the new party, and Viscount Rothermere his right hand man.

“All Sensible Persons.”
The U.E.P. has met with a heavy fire of criticism from the older parties, but almost all of the critics agree in endorsing the notion that “prosperity” would result from improved trade. They condemn the scheme only because they believe it. to be impracticable for the purpose it has in view. As the New Statesman puts it, “all sensible persons wish to see an expansion of trade between Empire countries.” A glance at the last general election programmes of the political parties will show that they all believe in improved trade. Mr. Baldwin backed “safeguarding” as the means of doing this. Mr. Lloyd George preferred the Trade Facilities Act, which gives “the support of the national credit to industrial enterprises.” The Labour Party shared Lloyd George’s view; “A Labour Government will set to work at once by using Export Credits and Trade Facilities Guarantees, to stimulate the depressed export trades.” Finally the Communists urged the development of trade with Russia. Only the Socialist Party dissents from the view of the New Statesman's “all sensible persons.” We do not want “free trade” or “protection” but Socialism, which means “no trade.” Trade, whether local trade, Empire trade or International trade, means the buying and selling of goods which are privately owned by the owners of the means of production. Socialism, which means the production of goods for use and not for sale, will end buying and selling.

That is a question of the organisation of production and distribution on a Socialist basis, and it may be asked what is our attitude to the problem of trade as it exists under capitalism. Our attitude on this too, is essentially different from that of the parties mentioned.

“Prosperity” For Whom?

We deny that improved trade offers any solution for the problems of the working class. Each of the parties of capitalism accepts the view that greater efficiency in British industry would enable British manufacturers to produce more cheaply and thus beat their foreign competitors. The argument is based on a childish fallacy which every elementary student of logic has met in the following little poser. In an examination set to a class of 30 boys, no boy was more than 5 marks from the boy above him on the list. Any boy would therefore be raised one place higher if he had 10 more marks. Is it then true to say that all the boys would be one place higher if they all had 10 more marks? The “improved trade” argument is just as silly. It is doubtless true that if “John Bull’s” manufactures were reduced in price he would capture some markets from “Uncle Sam” or "Old Fritz”—provided that “Uncle Sam” and “Old Fritz” and the rest of the capitalist world consent to stand still. But they don’t consent to stand still. In a competitive world an increase in the efficiency of each competitor leaves all the competitors where they were. A ten per cent. reduction in prices all over the world through the application of similar methods of rationalisation, leaves the least efficient capitalist nation still at the bottom of the class and still desperately trying to outstrip the others.

Viscount Rothermere tells us to copy America and then in five years we shall be “as prosperous” as America is. But how prosperous are the American workers? Has poverty been abolished in the U.S.A.? Viscount Rothermere’s newspaper, the Evening News, told us as recently as December 17th, 1929. that “the world has never been without poverty and that in the U.S.A. to-day, the richest nation in material wealth that the world has ever known, there is plenty of it—not relative poverty merely, but want and destitution.”

The Cause of “Bad Trade.”

Before joining the party of “want and destitution,” stop and consider why “bad trade” and unemployment exist; The newspaper Lords are looking for the cause at the furthest end of the Empire; Mr. J. H. Thomas recently went seeking it in Canada; the Labour Party and the Communists fancy they have found it (or part of it) in the failure to be on good trade relations with Moscow. The real cause lies nearer home, in the organisation of capitalism itself. In the U.S.A. there are over 33,000 people with incomes of 50,000 dollars or more, say upwards of £200 a week. In this country there are more than 9,000 people in the same happy position. They represent the wealthiest section of the capitalist class, but between them and the average worker with his wage of £2 or £3 per week (when he is in work), there are a few million wealthy people who between them get nearly half the total national income. Many of them have so much more than they need that they cannot and do not spend it. It must be as difficult to get through £200 a week as it was for the proverbial rich man in the Bible story to get into heaven, or the camel to get through the eye of a needle. The constant relative over-production of goods, the inability to find buyers, is due to the inequality of wealth which is part and parcel of Capitalism. So great is the wealth of the rich minority that all the stupendous and alluring advertising campaigns fail to induce them to spend up to the limit of their income or anything approaching the limit. The cost of building useless battleships, donations to charity, taxation to provide relief for the destitute, and pensions for the aged, all these forms of voluntary or obligatory expenditure leave the problem hardly touched. The wealth of the rich, their ownership and control of our means of life, this is the cause of poverty and unemployment. None of the “improved trade” parties can solve the problem. Workers who desert the Liberal, Tory, Labour and Communist Parties to join the new party are merely exchanging one illusory hope for another. Socialism will solve the problem of the poverty of the many by abolishing a system of society based upon the ownership of the means of production by the wealthy few; it will solve the problem of unemployment by abolishing the classes of employers and employed; it will solve the problems of competitive trade by abolishing trade.

Edgar Hardcastle