Snowden’s Goodbye (1932)

From the November 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

On September 28th, Philip Snowden (now a noble Lord) wrote a letter to Mr. Ramsay MacDonald (not yet a noble Lord) giving his reasons for resigning from the National Government. Whether he proposes staging a “come-back” as leader of the Liberal Party, we do not, of course, know, but the possible future appearance at a general election of Ramsay MacDonald leading the Tories and the noble Lord leading the Liberals would certainly add to the gaiety of elections.

Lord Snowden’s long letter contains only one reference to the workers, that since the National Government has been in existence “unemployment has greatly increased.”

The following extracts from his letter (taken from the News-Chronicle, September 29th) give the basis of his reasons for leaving, and are an illuminating expression of his outlook and where his sympathies lie.

He writes: —

“But I can no longer, without loss of all self-respect, remain a member of a Government which is pursuing a policy which I believe is disastrous to the welfare of the country, which will lead to the disruption of the Empire, and which is fraught with great danger to our international relations.” (Italics ours.)

The main purpose for which the National Government was formed has been achieved. . . . The acute national emergency which then existed no longer exists. The Budget has been balanced: stern economies have been enforced; borrowing for the dole has been stopped; a great conversion scheme has been successfully carried through; and the threat to our national credit has been removed. (Italics ours.)

The Agreements (Ottawa) have surrendered our fiscal autonomy, and handed over to the Dominions the control of British trade policy, reducing this country below the status of a Dominion.

You cannot expect Free Traders to acquiesce, even passively in such a policy of national humiliation and bondage.”

How sad. How very sad ! Like the sea waves that always keep returning and telling the same old tale. After helping to enforce stern economies and stopping borrowing for the dole, to be faced with the disruption of the Empire and national humiliation. It is really too harrowing. Will it move to tears the three million unemployed and the workers who have had their wages reduced ?

Anyhow, the News-Chronicle for October 17th informs us that Lady Snowden (with portrait, as usual) is supporting the proposal of Sir Landon Ronald for the broadcast of an appropriate prelude to the Two Minutes’ Silence on Armistice Day. On the same page is a reference to a broadcast on disarmament by five Fellows of Oxford Colleges. The reference commences : —

“The writers outline the present alarming state of Europe and the growth of a situation containing the seeds of war, . . .”

However, although he has, for the moment, said goodbye to the Government, Lord Snowden is not out of the “news.” In a message to the National Association of Building Societies he is reported as delivering himself of the following: —

“By the help which this institution offers, about one-fourth of the houses in this country are now owned by their occupiers. The social significance of this fact is tremendous. It has given to this large part of the population a feeling of security and independence.”

Has the noble Lord any conception of the existence of these people who have tied a millstone around their necks for years ? The number who, through illness or unemployment, have had to give up their “own” houses and seen the small savings they had used thrown away after stinting themselves and struggling fruitlessly to meet the demands of the building societies and the expenses of their jerry-built houses ?

The value of an Englishman’s home and the reward of “thrift” is shown up in a significant manner by the following extract from the News-Chronicle of October 13th: —

“CARDIFF, Wednesday.

The Ministry of Labour are likely to become the owners of considerable house property in the mining towns of South Wales in the near future as the result of instructions recently sent to local public assistance committees.

This instruction, which is issued under the powers of the Poor Law (Public Assistance) Act of last year, requires that any applicant for relief who is an owner of property in any shape or form must first of all lodge the deeds of such property with the Public Assistance Committee.

A member of the Pontypridd Public Assistance Committee to whom I spoke to-day said the order had caused much resentment, particularly in view of the fact that hundreds of aged ex-miners, who had bought their cottage homes with their life’s savings, had, owing to the depression, come to the end of their resources and were now compelled to part with the last remaining link with prosperity and happy days.

UNABLE TO REPAY.

Doubtless, said the Member, the Ministry will compel us to hold these deeds until the loans from the Public Assistance Committee are repaid. As, however, there is little likelihood of many of the being ever in a position to do this the Government looks like acquiring a lot of cheap house property.”

From the above the “social significance of ownership” certainly does appear to be “tremendous” when it is a case of workers “owning” houses which they get if they live long enough, keep up the payments, and the houses are still standing at the end of the term.

Fellow workers, how much longer will you allow shallow self-seekers, like Snowden and his kind, to throw dust in your eyes and divert you from the only thing that matters—the control of your destinies by yourselves.

Gilmac.

Editorial: Sound and Fury. The Election and the Workers. (1931)

Editorial from the November 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

The general election has come and gone, and nothing fundamental has been changed. The workers were asked to give a mandate for the continuance of the social system that enslaves them, and in their blindness they have done so.

The National Government supporters just prior to the election numbered 327. They return to office with about 560 supporters, of whom 170 are Conservatives; 70 are Liberals; and 13 are members of the MacDonald Labour Group. The opposition consists of 52 Labour and I.L.P. M.P.s and four Lloyd George Liberals. The total is made up by a few Independents and Irish Nationalists. The Labour Party is now reduced in size approximately to the number elected in 1918.

At the last election, in 1929, the Conservatives polled 8,656,173 votes and won 260 seats. This time they have polled 12,000,000 votes. The Labour vote in 1929 was 8,389,512, and they won 289 seats, many of them on minority votes. The Liberals, in 1929 won only 58 seats, although their vote was 5,308,510. This time the Labour vote has fallen to about 6,650,000, while their seats have dropped far more. They are now less numerous than the Liberals, although the Liberal vote on this occasion is less than 2,500,000. The MacDonald Labour M.P.s polled only 338,000. In the 1929 Parliament there were over 200 Labour M.P.s who, although elected as Labour candidates, were also members of the I.L.P. There were no Communists in the last Parliament, nor are there any in the new one. The Mosley candidates all failed.

Since 1929 the electorate has grown from 28,850,000 to 30,159,000. The number of electors who did not vote for any candidate increased considerably. So much for the figures.

What were they fighting for?

Many observers, both at home and abroad, some of whom ought to have known better, accepted the rash claim, made for electioneering purposes, that the election was a clear-cut struggle between Capitalism and Socialism. This is a grotesque misreading of the situation. On the one side the Government parties under MacDonald were asking for “a free hand, nothing ruled out,” although most of their candidates construed “nothing ruled out” as meaning “tariffs ruled in” ; in spite of the fact that by far their most formidable standard bearer in the fight was Mr. Snowden, who is a staunch free-trader.

On the other side were the Labour Party and the group of free-trade Liberals under Mr. Lloyd George. The Labour programme gave prominence to free-trade, to the restoration of the cuts in wages and unemployment pay, and to the nationalisation of the banks. Mr. Lloyd George told his followers that the last of the three chief Labour aims need not be taken seriously, and that Liberals ought to vote for the free-trade Labour candidates. Mr. Snowden, until recently an advocate of bank nationalisation, now opposed it. He also pointed out that the Labour leaders’ enthusiasm for free trade was as suspect as their repudiation of the cuts they had approved when in office. In a letter to the Press (see “Daily Telegraph,” 22nd October) he made the following illuminating and unanswered statement about his late colleagues in the Labour Government :

“Mr. Graham put the case for the tariff. He told us a tax of 10 per cent. on imported manufactured and semi-manufactured goods would raise £25,000,000 a year, and a tax on all imports £60,000,000 a year.

We took two votes. The first was whether we should adopt the proposal of a 10 per cent. tax on manufactured and semi-manufactured imports. Fifteen members, including Mr. Graham, voted for that, and five against. Then the question of a duty on all imports was put, including food and raw materials. Mr. Graham and four others voted for that, and fifteen against.

It was only after these votes, when it was seen that we could not get unanimity, that the proposal was dropped, because, as Mr. Henderson put it, if it had been persisted with it would have broken up the Cabinet.”

This discussion in the Labour Cabinet took place towards the end of August, and was reported in the “Daily Herald” at the time. On August 20th the Herald had a bold headline across the front page—”Tariffs in the balance.” The report goes on to say that in the Cabinet :

“There was a tense debate on the proposal for a revenue tariff on imports.”

The day before the “Herald” had said :

“the proposal for a revenue tariff will receive support from ministers who have hitherto been rigid free-traders.”

On August 22nd the “Herald” brought the Trades Union Congress into the picture :

“There is keen division in the T.U.C. on the subject of a tariff for revenue purposes, but the majority would be in favour of such a proposal as an alternative to any cuts in unemployment benefit.”

But, it may be asked, if the Labour Party leaders were prepared, even reluctantly, to support the economies and a revenue tariff, why did they oppose the National Government, most of whose members also wanted those things? The answer is, of course, that the party leaders on both sides were doling what they and their predecessors have always done; they were fighting for office. Faced with the National Coalition, the Labour Party grabbed for the Liberal free-trade vote. Mr. Henderson (a few days later than Mr. MacDonald) journeyed to see the Liberal leader, Mr. Lloyd George, on his sick bed. They had a “cordial” but secret talk. The local Labour Parties withdrew their candidates who were opposing Lloyd George and his son and daughter. He, in his broadcast, and in an interview given to the “Daily Herald,” and the “Manchester Guardian,” and other Liberal papers in their editorials, gave a plain lead to the Liberal voters to vote Labour. During the week before polling day the “Herald” printed column after column of reports of Liberal speakers, Liberal money, and Liberal Party machinery being placed at the disposal of the Labour candidates. All the past bitter condemnation of Lloyd George and his party was forgotten in the twinkling of an eye when the chance of office and the security of seats were at stake. Forgotten was the admission, so frequent in recent years from Labour leaders, that the issue of free-trade versus protection was of no importance to the workers. No longer was Lloyd George the “coiner of purple phrases and breaker of promises,” as the Herald had so happily described him in their special “Lloyd George Number” of December 1st, 1923. No longer was he to be shunned as the man who always wreaks “incredible destruction,” the “shoddy salesman” of politics, the “two-faced” politician who “tricked the miners with Sankey Commissions, Duckham Reports, and so on, until the coal-owners had all ready for their bitter attack on the Federation.” Then “A vote for Lloyd George is a vote for the enemies of the workers and the foes of democracy”; now Lloyd George Liberals and Labourites were all together, fighting the battle of “progress” !

These are the depths to which the reformers have dragged the name Socialism. On the one side MacDonald with his, “I am still a Socialist,” leading the Tory army in their fight for tariffs, and on the other side Henderson and Labour Party, attaching the word socialism to their programme of reforms behind which Lloyd George could muster his free-trade capitalist “enemies of the workers.”

The utter shamelessness of the Labour leaders can be seen from their plea that they were fighting to defend the workers against the high prices which would follow tariffs. In all the years up to 1929 they had proclaimed themselves the party of low prices. Suddenly, when they came into office in that year they discovered that prices were falling heavily, the thing they had promised to bring about. Promptly they swallowed their low-price theory, and told their disappointed followers that falling prices were the cause of all the trouble. The “Daily Herald,” now so strong for cheapness, then carried on for months a campaign for inflation and higher prices. The following is from the “Herald” editorial on July 14th, 1931 :—

“It is urgent—imperatively urgent—that without delay the necessary steps be taken so to regulate currency and credit as first to raise and then stabilise prices…..Inflation—and it is folly to be frightened by a word—is the only possible remedy.”

Three months later, when it was “imperatively urgent” to catch the Liberal free-trade vote, they were back on their old platform of low prices.

The I.L.P. and the Communists.

In this election, for the first time, the I.L.P. ran its own candidates without the endorsement of the Labour Party, the endorsement being withheld because the I.L.P. would not undertake always to vote with the Labour Party. In two of the nineteen constituencies which the I.L.P. fought (Peckham and Shettleston) there was also an official Labour Party candidate, while in Stockport (a double member constituency) where the Labour man has hitherto run in double harness with a Liberal, the Labour Party refused to back the I.L.P. interloper who threatened to spoil the arrangement with the Liberals.

The result is interesting. In 1929 the total Labour vote in these nineteen constituencies was 332,413, and they won thirteen seats. This time the I.L.P. polled 260,344 and gained only three seats. They held Shettleston against the official Labour man, and in Peckham their candidate received many times the vote of his official Labour opponent. In Peckham, the official Labour man and the MacDonald Labour man both forfeited their deposits.

The I.L.P. parliamentary group is now, therefore, reduced to three members, and their chairman is outside the House.

Just before the election, their chairman, Mr. Fenner Brockway, writing in the “New Leader” (2nd October), confessed the uselessness of reforms which have been the I.L.P.’s sole stock-in-trade for nearly forty years :

“The system of capitalism is failing so obviously that the policy of reforms within capitalism must be rejected. We must concentrate on winning power of such nature that we can proceed boldly with the transition to socialism all along the line.”

In spite of which the I.L.P. candidates fought as usual on a programme of reforms. Three years ago Mr. Maxton described the Labour Party programme, “Labour and the Nation,” as a programme of capitalism. The 1931 programme, was, he said, “even more reactionary” (“Evening Standard,” 1st October). Yet the I.L.P. allowed a large number of its members to fight as official Labour Party candidates, and endorsed Mr. J. Beckett, as I.L.P. candidate at Peckham after he had declared his “whole-hearted support” of the Labour election programme (South London Press, 9th October). The I.L.P., although much reduced in size, has not altered in its quality. It is still the same body of vote-catching reformists, maintaining a precarious existence on the backs of the trade unions and the Labour Party.

The Communists ran 25 candidates, the same number as in 1920. In 1929 they obtained their aggregate vote of 50,617. This time, on a somewhat larger electorate, their aggregate vote was 70,844. In the ten constituencies which they fought on both occasions their vote was, in 1929, 39,283, and in 1931 48,612. They did best where they were fighting only one candidate, a Labour Party candidate.

They, too, fought on a reform programme of about twenty “demands” (“Daily Worker,” 14th October). In practise their policy is always determined by the actions of the other reformist parties. They run yapping at the heels of the Labour Party, and where the Labour Party goes they go, too. As the Labour Party, at the eleventh hour decided to be a free-trade party, the Communists had to follow suit. So one of their “demands” was “No taxes or tariffs which raise the price of food and clothing for the workers.” On Sunday, October 11th, a Communist Party demonstration in Hyde Park marched behind a banner with the “revolutionary” slogan, “No Taxes on the People’s Food.”

In this general election for the first time the official communist advice to the voters did not, so far as our knowledge goes, include a recommendation to vote for all or even some of the Labour Party candidates.

The Future.

The election changes nothing except the persons who shall occupy office, and some questions of capitalist trade and finance, of interest to sections of the capitalists in their mutual antagonisms. Capitalism is now sunk in one of its periodic crises of overproduction. In due course it will stagger back to “normal,” before falling again into yet other crises. This process will continue until the workers understand socialism and organise in the Socialist Party to achieve it. The votes for the Tory-Labour-Liberal Party under MacDonald, and for the Labour-Liberal Party under Henderson and Lloyd George, are votes for capitalism and reforms of one kind and another. They are not votes for socialism. This is proved by the alternating fortunes of the parties at succeeding elections. We are not prophets, but one thing seems certain—that the Labour Party will never obtain, and do not really want, an independent majority. They may, perhaps, again reach office, but only with Liberal support in the House and in the constituencies. The Leaders understand this, hence the efforts they made at the Labour Party Conference in October to secure the rejectIon of a resolution which, if it had been passed, would have committed them never to accept office as a minority. What we have long pointed out is now becoming clear for all to see. It is impossible to unite the workers on reform programmes. Each reform antagonises as many workers as it attracts. Reform programmes, as we can see before our eyes, split the workers into half a dozen warring sections. Another illusion has also been dispelled. We were told that after voting Labour workers would then vote for Socialism ; instead of which, as we foretold, they have returned to Conservatism. Only the simple demand for socialism will eventually hold the workers.

Those who have patiently waited, bearing all disappointments, but trusting in the Labour Party until such time as it had an independent majority will do well to ponder the prospect of a “Labour” Party tied permanently to Liberal votes, and limited to a programme approved by Mr. Lloyd George and his capitalist free-trade backers.

Editorial: The Gold Standard and the Workers. (1931)

Editorial from the October 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the formation of the National Government its partisans gave such a gloomy picture of the financial condition of the country that foreign holders of English securities got the wind up and increased their selling. As so much English money is tied up in foreign investments not easily realisable (particularly in Germany), the drawing of gold from the Bank of England to meet the situation increased. This gave the industrialists their opportunity, and on Monday, September 21st, vivid placards announced that the free export of gold had been suspended. This represents a victory of the industrialist section of the capitalists over the banking section, and it is curious to notice that preparations for abandoning the gold standard had already been prepared several days before.

The comments of the Daily Herald for September 21st are fitting expressions for the mouthpiece of the industrialists. In the Editorial they make the following statement :

“Not only during the War, but for seven years after the War, we were off the gold standard, and the pound was at a discount against the dollar.

There were no disastrous consequences. We were, indeed, far more prosperous then than now. And it was in very large measure the forcing of the pound back to parity that crippled our export trade and created the heavy problem of unemployment.”

Thus does the Daily Herald help to hoodwink the workers by blaming economic troubles upon gold. The “prosperity” of the early post-war period is apparent from the following unemployment figures, 1921 to 1925 :—

The City Editor of the Daily Herald, under the heading, “More Reforms,” makes remarks that show how their real concern is for the investors :—

“Now let us turn for a moment from contemplation of the Stock Exchange as a factor in an absorbing international situation, to consider how this re-opening on Saturday will affect the ordinary British investor.

It gives him an advantage in that he can buy and sell shares on six days of the week instead of five.  (….)

It is but one reform out of many which must be accomplished before the Stock Exchange can really claim to provide an adequate service for the ordinary investor, or can take the place it should in national life as a great institution, assisting sound industrial enterprises to obtain capital and to develop along lines which will improve our trade and set to work the millions of unemployed who can find no demand for their services.”

The above “Reform” is surely a treasure, and the workers who have received wage cuts and those who will be thrown out by the economy programme agreed to by the Labour Cabinet, backed by the Herald, will know what to do with their surplus cash !

As we are preparing this issue for the press, we see that Mr. Henderson offered no opposition to the passage of the Gold Standard Bill and that there is a prospect of the Labour Party joining the National Government—possibly their hearts are aching for the lost prestige and positions,

However, to return to the Gold Standard. According to the Daily Express on Monday, September 21st,

“Nothing more heartening has happened for years.  (…) 

The fact remains that at last we are rid of the gold standard—rid of it for good and all.  (…)  

It is the end of the gold standard and the beginning of real recovery.”

The Evening Standard for the same day echoes these sentiments :—

“We are now free of the yoke of France and America. We are not tied to an illusory symbol of wealth ; we stand firmly in the fundamental strength of our position as a great trading and manufacturing nation. And we look confidently to the future.

For what does this mean ? It means a decline in imports and a corresponding boom in the great exporting trades, such as cotton and iron and steel.”

When the workers commence to pay higher prices for food with lower wages, they will not share this view. For, like other attempted solutions for economic troubles, it is a move in favour of a section of the capitalists, leaving the workers where they were before—in a condition that is steadily worsening. Taking the situation at its best, according to the advocates of abandoning the Gold Standard, the increase in exports will be offset by an increase in the prices of imports and home products, thus leaving matters where they were, but re-shuffling the positions of commercial concerns.

It will be remembered by those who read it, that the Macmillan Report on Finance and Industry recommended raising prices approximately to the 1928 level as an alternative to the lowering of wages. Mr. Bevin, a member of the Committee, agreed with this policy.

The illusion that lack of gold has anything to do with the main problems is easily dispelled. America has nearly a thousand million pounds in gold in its reserves and is the great creditor nation, Yet America has been, and still is, suffering severly from economic crises, and has an unemployed army in the neighbourhood of ten millions. France has a gold reserve of nearly five hundred millions, a regular revenue, in gold or gold marks of 50 millions from Germany, and a flourishing export trade. Yet France is already in the midst of a crisis and has an unemployed army well over a million, and the numbers are rapidly growing.

These facts prove that a gold reserve is no guarantee of internal harmony or increasing employment for workers ; and that, with or without a gold reserve, on or off the Gold Standard, the workers are, in the long run, no better off.

Labour's past (1983)

From the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every sensible delegate to this year's Labour Party conference will include in their luggage some long, sharp knives so that they can participate in a not-very-fraternal bout of blood-letting known as Taking Stock. In fact, stock is something the Labour Party need to take all too often for their own comfort but in 1983 they are under unusual pressure. No delegate can be in any doubt about the gravity of their situation and just in case there are any lingering optimists making their way to Brighton next month the leaders of the party are writing warnings like this, from Roy Hattersley:

For the Labour Party to succeed (perhaps even to survive as a major party of government) the long hard climb back to popularity and power has to begin at once . . . . Unless we swiftly demonstrate both our will and power to win in 1988, the Liberal-Social Democrat Alliance will successfully pose as the real alternative to Thatcherite Conservatism (Guardian 8 August 1983).

Everyone knows that people like Hattersley are gloomy about Labour’s crushing defeat in June, which diminished his ambition from Prime Minister to a columnist in Punch. Groggily, his party now contemplate the fact that they have not lost so conclusively since 1931, when MacDonald’s National government was returned with a majority of over 7 million votes, sweeping almost every former Labour minister out of Parliament. Since those (for them) calamitous days the Labour Party have worked hard to convince themselves that it could not happen again.

Michael Foot has paid the penalty for losing the election, hustled into retirement and likely to disappear almost without trace. If he had won it would have been very different; he would have been Labour’s hero and apart from anything else would have had a number of desirable jobs to distribute among faithful friends and followers. Now, his role in Labour’s future seems to be to make appearances at those empty emotional rallies of the faithful where the reality of both past and present is so distorted that eventually the same misguided view can be taken of the future. At such events, almost anything is possible; Foot may well become, like many a Labour politician since 1931, an aged conscience of the party to help them both forget what has happened and to believe that it will not happen again. Much hope is being invested in Foot’s successor as leader, whoever he may be, and in the prospect of a “dream ticket" — a leader and a deputy whose reputations and talents are such that between them they are able to assuage the prejudices and frustrations of all sections of the party. So that if one can’t pull off a particular deception, the other can.

It will be quite unprecedented, if Labour’s stock-taking is anything other than the familiar exercise in evasion and reassurance. There may be some criticism of their election manifesto, either on the grounds that it was not attractive enough or that it was too antagonistic. The party leadership might have expected a battering except that Foot and Healey have prudently taken their leave. A lot of hard things will be spoken about Labour’s organisation and their election machine, much of it in the conviction that it was nothing more than a matter of bad communication which left the voters in ignorance of the delights of living under another Labour government. Saatchi and Saatchi may prick up their ears at resolutions like this, from Oldham: "The Labour Party is sadly lacking in the modern techniques of organisation, administration, communication, advertising and public relations and even within a very limited budget much more effective action could be taken in the business of winning votes”.

It will not, then, be an enquiry into Labour’s basic nature as a party of capitalism, its appalling history and its dismal prospects but into why they lost the election — why didn’t they get their turn at trying to run the affairs of the British capitalist class? Some of the brainier delegates may agree with New Society (26 May 1983) which thought that the “skilled" workers who are buying council houses and installing central heating and video machines have decided that a Labour government could not be trusted to defend what they think of as their affluence. It is, of course, not only “skilled” workers who get it wrong about their class position under capitalism; sometimes they are compelled to get it rather nearer correct, when they take part in unpopular strikes which get some scathing publicity. If Labour’s enquiry comes up with some sort of an answer their next step will be to fashion a programme to attract the disaffected voters back. It won’t particularly matter what is in the programme: in any case it can all be forgotten soon after the election. The important question is — will it help in that “business of winning votes"?

We shall have to endure again the spectacle of those boring irrelevancies — the left wing and the right — parading their differences as if these are matters fundamental to working class interests. The left are already blaming the defeat on defective leadership. "The only hope", shrieked Tribune “is that in the autumn elections for the National Executive Committee and the Shadow Cabinet, the tired, ideologically impoverished, obsessive men and women who have led the Labour Party to the brink of ruin will be swept away for ever”. The right are less optimistic; they don’t think in terms of Labour’s problems being solved "for ever”, nor that they need ideologically wealthy people in the leadership. What they are sure about is that the party have lately been showing suicidal tendencies, like conference opting for unilateralism, like the confusion over Militant, like the hungrily-publicised blunders of Ken Livingstone.

But left and right are agreed on one thing; there is nothing fundamentally at fault with the Labour Party. Both wings think that it is possible to control capitalism and to make the system work in the interests of the majority and that Labour is the party best fitted to do this, even if they call it socialism. They both think that capitalism produces war, famine, poverty, by accident; it could be a benign, peaceful, abundant society provided there are one or two adjustments to the personalities and the programmes of the Labour Party. So at the election, when the working class might have voted for socialism. Labour’s left and right wings were hard at work inviting them to vote as if they were brainless, forgetting Labour’s wretched history, ignoring those ideologically impoverished leaders. In this cause Neil Kinnock nearly lost his famous Welsh voice and Denis Healey cheerfully allowed his equally famous, luxuriant eyebrows to be experimentally tugged at by children whose parents, he hoped, would thereby be persuaded to vote for the party of Ken Livingstone.

These unsavoury antics are what is actually meant by “the business of winning votes” and the Labour Party know all about it because they have been at it for a very long time. At their 1930 conference — the year when unemployment averaged 16 per cent of the total employees, almost 2 million people — Prime Minister MacDonald assured the delegates that they were ". . . moving, as it were, in a great eternal ocean of surge towards righteousness, towards fair play, towards honesty . . ." A year later MacDonald’s own personal surge had carried him into leadership of a coalition government with the Liberals and the hated Tories. This government moved promptly in the direction of fair play by protecting the interests of the British ruling class by cutting unemployment benefit below its already miserly level. The Liberal leader, Herbert Samuel, particularly wanted MacDonald to be Prime Minister; the workers, he thought, could more easily be persuaded to accept unpalatable measures from a Labour government. There was little difficulty in getting MacDonald to agree that he was the man for the job: "Tomorrow." he cheerfully assured the Tebbit-like Philip Snowden. “Every duchess in London will be wanting to kiss me".

These were the events which led to the Labour Party being annihilated at the 1931 election and to them taking stock at their conference the following year. They quickly decided that there was nothing basically amiss with their party: “The events of last year,” said Charles Trevelyan, who had been MacDonald's Minister of Education, "Were a great shock to this party in its confidence in men. but there is no shock to its confidence in itself . . .’’ The problem was that too much power had been given to too few men — in particular to one man. the hated (although not by duchesses) MacDonald. The delegates were properly impressed and passed a resolution moved by Trevelyan that a future Labour government should immediately promulgate “. . . definite socialist legislation . . .” and should “. . . stand or fall in the House of Commons on the principles in which it has faith”.

At the 1933 conference another critic of MacDonald emerged into prominence, in the diminutive and reticent figure of J.R. Clynes, who had been Home Secretary and who again was quite clear on the reasons for the 1929/31 Labour government’s dismal collapse: "Never again should any one leader of the party be empowered singly to use his personal authority, and himself alone choose his cabinet or appoint his ministers”. Clynes was recommending a proposal by Labour’s NEC that a future Labour Prime Minister should select ministers only after consulting and acting in conjunction with the other party leaders. The delegates were predictably in favour of this; they seemed to be unaware that this was in fact the method used by MacDonald and Clynes did not tell them, although he himself had come to be Home Secretary in this way. Under the impression that they were making some triumphant, significant change, the conference left things as they were. The next time Labour came to office. in 1945, Attlee simply ignored the whole thing and chose the ministers he wanted.

There is no reason to believe, in 1983, that Labour Party members are any likelier to grasp reality than were those who were so readily deceived by Trevelyan and Clynes. The plain fact is that, such is Labour’s recent record and present condition. the working class are unlikely to consider them a possible administration of British capitalism. It is not permissible for the Labour Party to avoid all responsibility for this. They cannot blame it all onto poor, bookish, bumbling Foot or the reptiles of Fleet Street or the diabolical smoothies Saatchi and Saatchi. They have persistently argued, in opposition to the case for socialism, that there is no need to campaign for workers to understand and consciously oppose capitalism; for them the important thing has been to win votes by whatever method. This has left untouched — indeed it has usually stimulated — the support which the working class give to the capitalist social system; the Labour Party have overlooked the fact that workers who are so ignorant of their class interests that they will vote for capitalism under a Labour government will at other times opt for capitalism under the Tories, unemployment and the Falklands notwithstanding.

A useful enquiry into the Labour Party would expose its ideological poverty. It would denounce Labour's theory, held to so stubbornly through all the evidence of history, that by a policy of opportunism and duplicity capitalism can be reformed out of its essential character. The facts speak for themselves, through the fog of self-delusion which will be the Labour Party conference. After decades of compromise and deceit, of cynical grubbing in the business of winning votes, the Labour Party has made such progress that the Tories are back stronger than ever and Labour are back at 1931.

Ivan

50 Years Ago: Sidelights on Capitalist Rule (2002)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the themes of Mr. Harold Nicolson’s biography of the late King George V is that he showed a good grasp of problems of government and, indeed, the examples quoted do seem to indicate that he often displayed more insight and level-headedness than some of the leading politicians. But what is the major problem of the governments of capitalism? It is of course to keep the working class as far as possible satisfied with the system under which they are exploited, and if they can’t be kept satisfied, at least to keep them quiet. One example selected by a Manchester Guardian reviewer is George V’s handling of the political crisis which brought down MacDonald’s Labour Government in 1931 and led to the formation of a “national” three party government with MacDonald as Prime Minister.

During the crisis the King interviewed the leader of the Liberals Sir Herbert Samuel and according to Mr. Nicolson’s account this is what was said:-

“Sir Herbert ‘told the King that, in view of the fact that the necessary economies would prove most unpalatable to the working-class, it would be to the general interest if they could be imposed by a Labour Government. The best solution would be if Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, either with his present or with a reconstituted Labour Cabinet, could propose the economies required. If he failed to secure the support of a sufficient number of his colleagues, then the best alternative would be a National Government composed of members of the three parties.’”

Further information was given by Sir Oliver Wigram in his record of a later discussion with the King. He says that the King found:-

“Sir Herbert Samuel the clearest-minded of the three and said he had put the case for a National Government much clearer than either of the others. It was after the King’s interview with Sir Herbert Samuel that His Majesty became convinced of the necessity for the National Government.”

When MacDonald went to see the King to tell him that “all was up” with the Labour Government, the King impressed on him “that he was the only man to lead the country through this crisis and he hoped he would reconsider the situation.”

It would certainly seem that Sir Herbert Samuel (now Viscount Samuel) had a very shrewd idea of the part a Labour Government can play in keeping capitalism on an even keel.

(From Socialist Standard , September 1952)

The Passing of Snowden (1937)

From the June 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bitter Truths For Labour Voters

Philip Snowden had some praiseworthy qualities. He was determined, uncompromising according to his lights, and largely indifferent to what he regarded as the fickle moods of the crowd. He fought hard and disinterestedly for many of the causes to which he was attached. Yet his career, early and late, is, to Socialists, not an example, but a warning, a warning of the sterility of reformism. Indeed, the Socialist might well sum up Snowden’s life by saying that it is a pity such gifts as he had were never at any time devoted to Socialism. The Socialist Party, unlike Snowden’s lifelong admirers and associates, did not discover him to be wrong only in 1931. At the first, and unceasingly thereafter, the S.P.G.B. denounced Snowden’s theories and activities as being harmful to the Socialist movement, Never at any time did we join the misguided or dishonest band who called on the workers to put their trust in the Snowdens and MacDonalds of the I.L.P. and Labour Party. Only now, nearly 40 years too late to be of any use, do some of his erstwhile worshippers discover what Socialists knew from the beginning, that reformist organisation and effort does not lead to Socialism.

From its first issue in 1904 the Socialist Standard pointed out that Snowden was not a Socialist, but a Radical, concerned not with the abolition of capitalism but with the useless task of reforming it. Only now when Snowden is dead does everyone else perceive this. The Rt. Hon. Winston Churchill writes (Sunday Express, May 16th, 1937): —

  Was he really a Socialist? Personally I doubt it.
   I do not believe the Marxian aberration ever obsessed his keen intelligence.
  He was a green-eyed, savage Victorian Radical, a later and more sharply defined edition of John Morley, with a double dose of what Mr. Bonar Law once aptly expressed as “Sympathy for the underdog.” In finance he was a Gladstonian purist—Free Trade, Gold Standard, Strict Discharge of State Obligations to Creditors, Frugality and Cheeseparing in Public Expenditure.

The Times (May 17th, 1937) remarks that Snowden’s conversion from Liberalism to Labourism “did not, in fact, deprive Radicalism of a devotee.” The Liberal Manchester Guardian, ever an admirer of Snowden, tells us that his Budget in 1924 was the bright spot in the first Labour Government’s record; "Liberals liked it because it was shaped on the most traditional of Liberal lines. The City liked it because it abolished the corporation profits tax, and was a model of sound finance.” (Manchester Guardian, May 17th, 1937.) Reynolds's News, the Co-operative journal, finds that that Budget ”was certainly not what might have been expected from a Socialist Finance Minister, and might quite well have emanated from the Liberal and Conservative benches.” (Reynolds's News, May 16th, 1937.) Professor Harold Laski, in a full-length article in the Daily Herald (May 17th) says: —

   In essence he was a Benthamite Radical whose association with the Labour Party was less because he was a Socialist in the full sense of the term than because he was a stout egalitarian who saw no defence for the present social order.
   Free trade, disarmament, social reform, control of the drink traffic, the rigorous taxation of those who could afford to pay—these were his political principles.

And again: —

He had not an atom of the revolutionary in him.

Why the Astonishment in 1931?

All of this is true, but why should Snowden’s associates suddenly turn and rend him because, in 1931, his lifelong Liberalism led him to support the National Government in order to prop up capitalism? Why should Laski denounce Snowden, in view of his own admission that Snowden’s attitude in 1931 was not a matter for surprise, but “was inherent in all that he was”? If there were any who supposed Snowden to be, not a Liberal but a Socialist, they never had any real ground for so doing. Snowden himself was comparatively frank and plain on the subject. Writing in the Manchester Guardian Commercial Reconstruction Supplement (October 26th, 1922) he said: —

   The British Labour Party is certainly not Socialist in the sense in which Socialism is understood upon the Continent. It is not based upon the recognition of the class struggle: it does not accept the teachings of Marx . . . .
    . . . .  The Socialism of the Labour Party is just a matter-of-fact practical aim for the extension of the already widely accepted principle of the democratic ownership and control of the essential public services.
    The nationalisation . . . .  of public services does not carry the Labour Party further than many Radicals, who would vigorously disclaim being Socialistic, are prepared to go.

This was one half of Snowden’s creed; the pathetic delusion that capitalism ceases to be an exploiting system when the State or a statutory board becomes the direct agent of exploitation. (Snowden’s death occurred in the midst of the busmen’s bitter strike protest against the Transport Board!) The second half was his notion that capitalism, administered by the Labour Party, can be humanised. He dreamed of transferring wealth from rich to poor while maintaining the capitalist system. What, then, is the true explanation of the 1931 crisis, and the collapse of the Labour Government? It was the final bankruptcy of the theories held by Snowden and his party. Hard experience was showing that capitalism can only be administered in a capitalist way. The Socialist contention was proved up to the hilt.

In an untenable situation Snowden took the line which was strictly logical for him and his radical-reformist party, but many of his associates withdrew at the eleventh hour. They who had entered office on Liberal support and were carrying on negotiations with the Liberals, they who had been part of the War-time Coalition Government, suddenly pretended to abhor contact with openly capitalist parties. It is hardly surprising that Snowden denounced them with force and venom.

Who Betrayed the Workers?

It is only natural that the present leaders of the Labour Party should try to clear their own bedraggled reputations by throwing mud at Snowden and MacDonald. Many of these men, Laski for one, and the I.L.P. and Communist Party leaders, will now say that they always knew what manner of men Snowden and MacDonald were; that they were never Socialists, but only Radicals. What, then, is their defence against the charge that they deliberately hoodwinked the working class year after year? Why did they not tell the truth about the Labour leaders and the Labour Party before 1931?

Why, after the first Labour Government (described by the I.L.P. New Leader as “to an overwhelming extent an I.L.P. Government,” New Leader, February 8th, 1924), did Mr. Maxton and the I.L.P. go on appealing to the workers to support Snowden and the Labour Party at elections ?

Why did not Professor Laski tell the world in 1921 what he suddenly blared forth in 1931?

The Communists are in the same mess as Maxton. After the Labour Party’s War-time antics, after the first Labour Government, after the “betrayal” of the General Strike in 1926, we still found the Communist Party telling the workers to vote for Snowden and MacDonald and the rest of them—“Ramsay Mac,” as the Workers' Weekly affectionately called him in 1923.

They are all in the dock with Snowden. If 1931 demonstrated the bankruptcy of his theories so it did of theirs.

Snowden’s life work was to help build up .the I.L.P. and Labour Party, and then, in his later years, to try to tear them down again. Work for Socialism brings no speedy apparent triumphs like the formation of Labour Governments, but it also avoids waste of effort like Snowden’s.

Edgar Hardcastle