Jottings. (1911)

The Jottings Column from the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is culled from the front page of that ultra-respectable journal, the “Labour Leader” :

”LET LIARS PERISH

and prove the truth that Socialism is not Atheism by helping me with

10,000 Socialist Shillings.

Cheques or Bank Notes to help pay off debt of £800 on my New Church. . . Rev. W. Schoneld, Manchester. Thy will be done on Earth, United we stand.”

This from the Church that deadly foe of all intellectual progress, the enemy of Science and the upholder of slavery. Could barefaced cheek go farther ?

* * *

This same gentleman at the last General Election, speaking at a meeting in support of Mr. John Hodge, Labour candidate for the Gorton Division, stated that “he was not a Liberal, in fact he hadn’t a vote at all, but he recognised very clearly that Liberalism and Labourism were identical, and the Liberal workingmen in the audience would be noodles indeed to waste their votes when they could achieve the same object by voting for the Labour man” (cheers). That “object” was the veto of the House of Lords. After appealing for Liberal votes for a “Labour” candidate, he now appeals for “Socialist shillings” for the purpose of still further prolonging the process whereby the workers are reduced to a condition for being all the more easily exploited by the master class. I am fairly safe in affirming that he will not get one Socialist shilling.

* * *

Not only are the working class deluded into voting the parasites into power, they are even required to pay for the chloroforming process which keeps them in ignorance and upon which the capitalist sharks rely so much. These gentry profess to believe in a special Providence : why don’t they appeal in that direction ?

The fact is that when it comes to a question of £ s. d., they are as materialistic as the most brazen Atheist. They evidently believe in practising the (slightly altered) dictum, “you will be done on earth.” When will the workers get wise to this ?

* * *

Speaking at the Prince’s Theatre, Blackburn, on Jan. 22nd, under the auspices of the local I.L.P., Mr. Philip Snowden said :

“Socialism is nothing more than a scheme of industrial reorganisation for the reconciliation of Capital and Labour by placing the ownership of land and capital under democratic control. Out of all their theories they have now evolved that concrete idea.”

That’s all !

* * *

In his opening remarks Mr. Snowden said “He had felt for a long time that the I.L.P. had been so much engaged in mere political work that they had not paid the attention which was needed to the education of the people in the fundamental principles of Socialism.”

The reason is that they do not understand the fundamental principles of Socialism—excepting perhaps, those few who hold to the opinion that where it touches the pocket to tell the truth, it is the very height of folly to be wise. To speak of reconciling Capital and Labour under Socialism is an obvious attempt to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds—but it pays at the moment. Mr. Snowden professes to believe in a kind of harmony between Capital and Labour, but the only harmony I can conceive is that existing between the horse-leech and its victim. Besides, I was not aware that capital would exist at all under Socialism. The existence of capitalism, presupposes exploitation. But, of course, Mr. Snowden, being interested in the maintenance of capitalism, cannot be expected to shout that truth from the housetops.

* * *

This according to Liebknecht: “Whoever conceives of Socialism in the sense of a sentimental philanthropic striving after human equality, with no idea of the existence of the evils of capitalist society, is no Socialist in the sense of the class struggle, without which modern Socialism is unthinkable.”

The working class must learn that it need expect nothing from any political party that does not stand upon the basis of the class struggle. The S.P.G.B. is the only party that takes up this position, therefore it is the only party of the workers.

* * *

A remarkable letter penned by a suicide was read at an inquest held at Aldershot recently on the body of an unknown man who was found decapitated on the railway. The deceased wrote :

“Kindly free from censure the courageous driver of that train responsible for this, another tragedy. The cause of this tragedy is the unfair distribution of work. I have searched in vain, for the past three and a half months, for a situation.

“But I say the time is coming when a man who becomes really conscious of the real cause of this hellful drama, the unfair distribution of work, will not commit, as I have done, suicide; but will instantaneously arm himself with a revolver, and he will make a “B” line for the Prime Minister of the country and make him pay the penalty with his life.

“I have been to church—the manufactory of crime—and I am convinced that if people from the North, South, and East refrain from going to church after this day, there will be no recurrence of the Sidney-street affair.

“I do not believe in murder, nevertheless I warn the leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister of this country of the real and, as I believe, proper conviction that is growing….it cannot be stopped.

“Now I am afraid I shall have to close up as my train will be here presently.—Good-bye, BRITON.”

The jury returned a verdict of suicide whilst of unsound mind. Of course ! It would not do to say that this hellish system of capitalism had forced him to seek oblivion, would it ? It might enlighten the proletariat. And how near to the truth this poor devil got, to say that he was insane. If he had elected to kill someone else instead of himself would he have been found insane ? I venture to think not.

Tom Sala

Dynamite. (1908)

From the December 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

WAS GOING TO SMASH SOCIALISM

At a sitting, before Mr. Registrar Brougham, for the public examination of E. W. Mockler, of Hungerford Road, Holloway, works manager, it appeared that he had interested himself in politics, and that about June, 1907, he became treasurer of the Constitutional Speakers’ League, which was to send vans round the country and supply speakers at meetings to be held on the subject of tariff reform. In respect of that league the debtor stated that he had personally incurred sundry liabilities, and he estimated that, including money advanced to the chairman (about £300 now appearing as a bad debt) and other expenses, he had lost about £750 in connection therewith. The horses and vans were eventually seized and sold for the payment of keep and storage. To his losses and liabilities on behalf of the league the debtor attributed his failure,—”Morning Advertiser,” 7.11.08.

__________

LETTING THE CAT OUT

Sir,—I beg to assure you that there is nothing of revolt against the Government in my letter stating I would not again contest Walworth. I wish to give the Prime Minister, Mr. Burns, and Mr. Haldane every support. What I do revolt against is any pandering to Socialism by less experienced and less wise Ministers, and entirely because their doing so helps reaction and blocks the way of the urgent reforms to which I am pledged. REFORM AND SOCIALISM ARE LIKE WATER AND FIRE—MUTUALLY DESTRUCTIVE.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

C. J. O’Donnell,

House of Commons, Oct. 26.

—” Standard.”

__________

HOW ABOUT YOUR CHILDREN?

When you go back to the early years of the nineteenth century, and read the accounts of children’s sufferings due to the cruelty of slave-drivers, your hearts are apt to cry out in anguish. Just think of today. Think of today in these great United States, children five and six years old, working from six in the morning until six in the evening, and at the hardest and most trying kind of labour. These children are being ruined by thousands by the manufacturers. It is killing the whole white race of the South.

It may be surprising, but it is the absolute truth, that things just as bad are going on right here in New York City. Child slavery thrives here in greater proportion than in the South.

There are parts of this city where little children are driven to work early in the morning for two hours and then sent to our American schools, and after school are forced into sweatshops, where they are obliged to work from three in the afternoon until eleven o’clock at night.—William H. Maxwell, Superintendent of Schools of New York City.

—”St. Louis Labour,” Oct. 17, 1908.

Who said ” Tariff Reform” ?

__________

CANDOR

Asked at a mass meeting last January, “What do you advise a conscientious working man to do who is out of a job and whose family is starving because he can’t get work ?” Mr. Taft, who weighs over twenty stone, flung his hands above his head in a gesture of despair as he answered, “God knows, I don’t.”

That pregnant ejaculation has travelled from New York to San Francisco and its echo has been heard from New Orleans to Minnesota. It is characteristic of its author—as honest an American as the United States ever produced.

“Star,” 8.11.08.

For the first time a mountain in travail has brought forth something that may pass for the truth. Taft may know God knows what a starving man should do, but certainly Taft, the capitalist doesn’t.

__________

WHAT DO THEY KNOW?

Much amusement was caused in the Lobby of the House of Commons last night by the circulation of a portrait in a New York newspaper. The words underneath were “England’s Bulwark Against Socialism—Mr. John Burns,” but the portrait, by some mischance, was that of Mr. Keir Hardie.

—” Daily Mail,” Guy Fawkes Day.

__________

No one, surely, can be so unkind to John Burns as his friends.

“Mr. Burns has seen one relevant fact of great importance. He has realised that if municipalities distribute their work with more regularity over the year and give out as much of it as possible during the winter months a good deal of unemployment can be prevented, and for some of it a resource will always be available.” “Daily News,” 26.10.08.

How can unemployment be affected by starving men in summer to feed them in winter ?

__________

We do get the truth, sometimes.

“The pretence that the existing distress is merely a transient phase due to financial disturbance in the United States and so forth is absurd.”—”Standard,” 26.10.08.

__________

This is interesting.

“One remedy for unemployment would be to double the wages of every working man. If that could be done to-morrow the spending power of the people would be doubled, and work would be provided, for every man and woman in Great Britain in providing for their needs.”-(Keir Hardie at Merthyr, 24,10.08.)

It is as difficult to mitigate unemployment by doubling wages as it would be to remove unemployment by abolishing wages.

__________

What d’ye say, Henderson ? What’s the good of it if it don’t find work for every child as well ?

__________

Oh ! these “Socialists.” Here is another specimen. Author, Philip Snowden.

“He wanted to assure all temperance workers of his sympathy and of the sympathy of his colleagues, who were working in other fields of reform—reforms which were no less temperance reforms … As one who deeply appreciates the very great injury and the very great obstacle which the drinking habits of the people present to the progress of every movement of a social reform character, I want to assure you that we are heart and soul with you, and we wish you God-speed. … In connection with the Trade Unions Congress there was always held a temperance fellowship meeting. Mr. Steadman, M.P., the secretary, had told him that he could remember the time when a temperance resolution was struck out of the agenda on the ground that temperance had nothing to do with labour. 

“There was at the present moment another question besides that of temperance touching the hearts of the people—the wide-spread suffering and privation from want of employment.”—(“Manchester Guardian,” 10.10.08.)

The quotations are quite in their proper order. Observe the great question of “temperance reform” comes first, then the secondary matter of “unemployment,” while as for Socialism, that seems to have been “struck out of the agenda on the ground that it has nothing to do with labour.”

Naked and unashamed. (1911)

From the August 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is an old adage running somewhat to the effect that when men of doubtful honesty have a difference of opinion, then is the time for honest men to come by their own. The Labour Party, through its prominent members, who appear at the moment to be very much at variance, enables us, by means of its internal squabbles, to give further proof of our contention as to its utterly incompetent and fraudulent methods ; enables us to show, once again, how much—or rather, how little—reliance can be placed in its vaunted independence of the Liberal party and policy.

As is well known, for years past, in and out of Parliament, the members of the Labour Party have vehemently protested their independence, have repudiated with indignation and scorn any suggestion of a coalition between them and the Liberals. Now, however, it would seem that the object for which they have been striving and intriguing is near enough to accomplishment to render any further disguise on their part unnecessary. They stand condemned, not from the words of the S.P.G.B., but out of the mouth of one of their most prominent leaders, who, for reasons of his own, wishes still to pose as an incorruptible.

Mr. Philip Snowden, writing in the “Labour Leader” of June 14, referring to the vote of the Labour Party the previous Thursday on the Financial Resolution of the Insurance Bill, says :

“Six members of the Labour Party voted against that resolution ; the majority supported the Government.

“The Labour Party had amendments down to raise the contribution of the State from 2d. to 3d. They had others which proposed to increase the benefits. The Financial Resolution submitted by the Government was designed, as Mr. Lloyd George frankly said, to rule out every amendment which would increase the State’s contribution.

“In answer to a question the Chairman said that if the Resolution was passed it would not be permissible to move the Labour Party’s amendments. Yet in the face of this the official spokesman of the Labour Party, after joining with the Unionist speaker in condemning the resolution, and after condemning the State’s ‘inadequate contribution,’ announced, not that the Labour Party would vote against it, or abstain, but that they would support the resolution which killed every one of their amendments worth trying to get !

“If the I.L.P. will stand this it will stand anything. If it submits to this it is time to go into voluntary liquidation as a preliminary to affiliating with the National Liberal Federation. The official Labour Party is now indistinguishable from the official Liberals. The Labour Whip was put on to send the Labour Members into the lobby to destroy their own amendment.”

Further, in “The Christian Commonwealth,” July 12, he writes with reference to this same amendments :

“There was never a clearer case of men deliberately putting an halter round their necks. … The Labour Party was instructed by the Conference which met three weeks ago to proceed with that amendment.

“But when the test of its independence came, when it was called upon to choose between obeying the instructions of its own conference and supporting the Liberal Government on an occasion when the Tories were not voting, the Labour Members, with about half-a dozen dissentients, showed that they were more anxious to follow the Liberal Whip than to obey the authority from which they profess to derive their mandate. This action on the part of the official Labour Party finally completes their identity with official Liberalism.”

This righteous indignation on the part of Mr. Snowden is rather amusing when one considers that it emanates from the man who, but a short time ago, was eulogising the honesty of Mr. Asquith, defending the action of the Liberals in sending the military to shoot down the workers at Belfast and Featherstone, and who was only returned to Parliament with the aid of Lord Morley and by Liberal votes.

If further evidence is needed of the betrayal of their followers by these leaders of “Labour,” it can be found in a recital of their doings during the recent Coronation festivities. As was pointed out at the recent I.L.P. conference, a Labour Party representative was allowed to serve on the Committee which sat in connection with the Coronation celebration. At the Coronation ceremony itself Messrs. Mullin and Davis attended on behalf of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trades Union Congress ; Mr. Ramsay MacDonald, “in faultless morning dress, disquietingly like a labour leader” (“Christian Commonwealth”), also graced the ceremony with his presence.

The sycophantic attitude of the Labour Party to Royalty is still further illustrated by the appearance of the Chairman of the Labour Party at the luncheon party given by the Secretary of State for War in honour of William II. of Germany. Mr. MacDonald went to the luncheon with the consent of the Labour Party, thus becoming its official representative. It might well be asked what a member of the Independent Labour Party, which a few months previously had been indulging in what was called “a great anti war campaign,” and who himself had taken a prominent part in the campaign, was doing in such a galley. He had as fellow-guests, such lovers and advocates of peace as the war-lord of Germany himself, Count Matternich, Gen. von Plessen, Admiral von Mülller, Lord Kitchener, and numerous others. Did the Kaiser and the Labour leader discuss, during their long conversation, the brutal repressive measures that have been taken in Germany, even in recent years ? Did Mr. MacDonald mention, for example, the ruthless manner in which the police shot down men, women, and children at the end of September last year during the strikes in Berlin ? Possibly, however, these small troubles of the working class slipped his memory—the memories of Labour leaders are conveniently short upon occasions.

Again, at the recent investiture .of the Prince of Wales, it might reasonably have been supposed that the official representatives of Labour would have no part. At the time this investiture was taking place, on the hillsides and in the valleys of South Wales were thousands of locked out and striking miners, fighting what must, unfortunately, be a losing fight with the powers of capitalism. The distress prevalent among these men and those immediately dependent upon them was appalling in its intensity. One would have thought that in common decency the least the Labour representatives could have done would have been to refrain from identifying themselves with the symbols and regalia of the flaunting wealth of capitalism. But no ! In the procession formed to do honour to the boy Edward, among other Welsh M.P.s, walked Mr. Keir Hardie, the Rt. Hon. W. Abraham, Mr. William Brace, Mr. J. Williams, and Mr. T. Richards. So glad were these men to be allowed the opportunity of licking the boots of Royalty, so eager were they to be acclaimed loyal subjects, that less than nothing to them were the starving men and women whom they have the audacity to claim to represent. The insult contained in this wanton callousness could not very well be greater.

The Labour Party appear to have thrown off all disguise. What does this kow-towing to kings and princes, this servile waiting upon the Liberal party, portend ? Perhaps the following paragraph, which appeared in the “Daily Chronicle” of 19 July, may throw some further light on the subject.

“The Ministry of Labour Bill, the text of which was issued yesterday, has for its object ‘to establish a Ministry of Labour for the better organisation of the labour market, for the prevention of unemployment, to regulate and in certain cases prohibit child labour, and to establish a general minimum wage for adult workers.’

“The salary of the Minister is placed at £5,000 a year, ‘and to the secretary, assistant secretary, officials and servants such salaries as the Treasury may from time to time determine.’

“The Bill, which is presented by Mr. Lansbury, is supported by Mr. Keir Hardie, Mr. Barnes, Mr. Jowett and Mr. Snowden.”

The vultures are gathering together about the carcase and have already started fighting among themselves for the choicest tit-bits. They are welcome to the spoil. The present writer, however, for one, finds that even the thought of its putridity is almost too nauseating for his mental digestion. Would that the whole working class could say the same.

F. J. Webb

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

From the March 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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

Mr. Philip Snowden replied as follows : 

(Copy). 

10, Baron’s Court Road,

West Kensington, W.

Jan. 23, ’08.

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

(Signed) Philip Snowden.

Now what do we say ?

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

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

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

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

THE BOROUGH ELECTION.

LABOUR CAMPAIGN OPEN.

BRILLIANT SPEECH BY MR. J. R. MACDONALD.

UNITY WITH THE LIBERAL PARTY.

PROTECTION MUST BE KILLED.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jack Kent

How Kirkdale was Fought. (1907)

From the November 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

They were not responsible for the Kirkdale contest being fought upon Socialism, said Philip Snowden, M.P., at Smethwick on September 28, at an I.L.P. demonstration. No one can accuse the I.L.P. of a desire to fight upon Socialism. And the speeches delivered by Mr. Hill’s supporters prove that every effort was made on their side to turn the contest on anything and everything but Socialism. Mr. McPherson, M.P. (Preston), claimed that the Labour men in the House of Commons contained an exceptional proportion of P.S.A. workers and teetotalers. Mr. Stephen Walsh, M.P., asserted that they “would not confiscate the land or rob the landlords, but they would soon be in a position to say to the privileged classes ‘So far and no farther,'” a sentiment which met with loud applause. Mr. Will Crooks, M.P., appealed to them as “Ye Christian Men !” and asked them to vote for Mr. Hill because “Christ died to adjust social inequalities.” Mr. J. Seddon, M.P., referred to “the notorious fact that almost every member of the Labour Party belonged either to the Established Church or to one of the great bodies of nonconformity.” Mr. Arthur Henderson, M.P., stated that the Labour Party contained more religiously inclined persons, and took the pulpit oftener on Sunday than any other section of politicians. What was the real issue, he asked, involved in the contest ? It was this: that the electors would declare whether there was endorsement on all of the substantial points of the Government policy. A victory for Labour would show how the people stood, for this Government or against it. The conclusion arrived at would be, that if the Labour Party were defeated it would prove that there was a weakening of the Liberal trend. The Rev. E. F. Forrest (vicar of Pemberton) of the Church Socialist League, wanted Society shaken to its foundations so that “employers and employed might fraternise and class distinctions be abolished.” Mr. Philip Snowden, M.P., declared that Tariff Reform was the real crux of the election, and that its adoption would bring about the ruin of the port of Liverpool. Mr. T. F. Richards, M.P., eulogised John Burns. It was just like some working men, he said, to haul down one of their own class. If it was possible for an engineer to be President of the L.G.B., why should not the democracy fill other high offices of State? (Which of the “high offices” is Richards after ?) Mrs. Cobden Sanderson (daughter of Richard Cobden), said if her father were alive he would be with her upon that platform. She pleaded for a Free Trade policy and accepted every word of the address of John Hill, “as the aspiration of a true Liberal !” And Mr. J. Ramsay MacDonald explained that the Labour Party did not make Socialism a test for its candidates. We can, therefore, quite agree with Mr. Snowden that they were not responsible for the Kirkdale election being fought upon Socialism.

Jack Kent

Our shifty paymasters. (1915)

From the November 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

The debate on the Finance Bill in the House of Commons on October 13th was a typical expression of the shuffling methods of our masters. Those who call the tune were quarrelling over the payment of the piper.

The course of this debate exhibited, as usual, the truth of the Socialist’s contention that economic interests are the prime factors in all historical movements, no matter how much idealistic puff is put into the movements. The attitude of the international money-bags has shown the mercenary motives at the bottom of the present war, in spite of the “sanctity of small nations” twaddle.

Here, in this debate on the distribution of the expenses of the war, we have the clashing interests of all sections of the capitalist class.

The business was opened by a certain Mr. Lough, whose main bone of contention appeared to be the Excess Profits Tax, and he proceeded to set forth the views of our masters on business generally, which views are very enlightening ! “Profits in business,” says he, “seem to me the same thing as victories in war.” The noble gentleman was not far wide of the mark that time, and he evidently adheres to our position that the profits of the masters are made out of the blood of the workers. Further on he says : “It is a serious thing to plunge into the question of measuring too closely with a 12 inch rule the exact profits that have been made during the few months since the commencement of the war.” We should say not ! It might, perhaps, awaken some suspicion in the minds of those who are giving their blood—for what ? “Trading Companies are generally collections of poor people” ! ! Such as the Northcliffs, the Liptons, the Brunner Monds, etc., etc. !

Further on he says, tearfully: “It has been suggested that the bloated people in the trading concerns of the country are not doing their duty in the war. I repudiate the suggestion altogether. As far as I know, every one of the great trading concerns has its Roll of Honour. A large percentage of their men have gone to the front, and many of them have paid the penalty.” How truly blind the trading community really is. They have sent their men (their wage-slaves) out to die.

Here is another gem: “Profits are the wages of our class and wages are the dividends of another class.” There is one difference—wages are on an average the smallest sum that will suffice to keep together the body and soul of a worker and reproduce the necessary working-power, while dividends are anything up to millions of pounds. One is the price of a worker’s labour-power, and often of his life ; the other is the idler’s revenue.

“Do not take a weapon that will damage interests of the greatest importance,” he wailed, but not a word of regret as to the damaging of human flesh and blood.

The sycophantic Philip Snowden then rose and delivered a long address, taking great care not to tread on anybody’s corns; in fact, he comported himself as a “thorough gentleman.” In the course of his remarks this professional toady said: “I am very glad to be able to join in what is the universal testimony and tribute of this country to the sacrifice of life which both the middle and aristocratic classes have made, but in the matter of wealth they are not paying their fair share of the cost of the war.” Fancy thanking our masters for the paltry few who have risked anything in their war in comparison with the myriads of wage slaves ! This is the man deluded workers once called a “Socialist” !

Sir G. Younger also objected to the Excess Profits Tax on the ground that it would put English firms who are now on war work in a disadvantageous position with American firms at the end of the war.

T. M. Healy, in the course of his remarks, made the following enlightening statement with reference to the Income Tax: “You are charging those unfortunate professional men, clerks and others, with incomes of £2 and £3 per week. The Government are going to call upon them for £2, £3, and £5, out of their incomes, and all in connection with a war from which they gain no practical benefit, and these people in Ireland belong to the very classes who have given their sons and brothers to fight.” Tim had better be careful as he is sailing very close to the wind in his excitement. Healy makes use of the above to appeal for a fair share of munition work on behalf of the Irish manufacturers, who, he is afraid, are likely to lose in competition with the English. What he is really out for, of course, is cheap labour, being of opinion that increased taxation will mean higher wages.

Sir Alexander Henderson let out a wail of woe on behalf of the poor devil who, through the proposed tax, would be compelled to exist on the paltry sum of £1,800 per year ! Listen, O ye slaves, to this tale of woe ! “The man that has £4,812 a year would find it, and does find it, very difficult to reduce his expenditure down to the reduced amount of £3,600. If he is only to spend half of that and his expenditure, which was £4,812, is to be reduced to £1,800, take the figure of £5,000 as an example to us how impossible is the suggestion. All a man’s plans in life are more or less made up and fixed according to the income he has had for many years, and to suggest that an expenditure of £4,800 can be reduced to £1,800 is a practical impossibility.” Of course it is ! The idea is simply absurd. Now you starvelings of the workshop and factory who are only called upon to give your life blood in the business, surely you will have pity on the noble lord in his dilemma ! £3,000 a year to be chucked overboard ! Why, it’s preposterous.

After Sir Arthur Markham (shareholder in mines) had suggested that all working men ought to be taxed during the war (their lives are not enough !) in accordance with their ability to pay, urging that “there are many working men earning very high wages who can well afford to make a contribution towards the expenses of the war,” (think of the poor, poverty-stricken £1,800 a year merchant, and weep !) our old friend, Mr. Samuel Samuel, rose on behalf of the trading section. “We are the wealthiest country in the world,” says he, and a little further on, “I am sure the Chancellor of the Exchequer will appreciate that the wealth of the nation is in the main the wealth of the individuals who make up the nation,” (what marvellous insight and subtlety !) “those people who spend their lives in business (Lipton, Rothschild, Duke of Devonshire, Duke of Sutherland, etc.) and who by their industry give employment to the millions of working people..” Dear, kind, benevolent souls ! Further on he says: “If you take away not only the surplus profits during the period of the war, but impose large taxes besides, then, when the time comes and we have to enter the markets of the world in competition with other countries, the industrial and commercial classes will be unable to meet that competition with any prospect of success.”

It is strange what things leak out when the thieves are squabbling. Lough pointed out that the Cabinet were not taxing themselves under the excess profits tax, and Sir Alfred Mond drew attention to the “fact that a deputation of a certain number of English motor-car manufacturers waited upon the officials at the Treasury in order to press for a Protective Tariff,” and asks if the new motor tax is the result. Lough also said: “We know that motor-cars are being taxed because of a certain motor-car which is imported into this country from America, with which at the present time English motor-car manufacturers are not able to compete, and consequently British manufacturers require protection against that import until the time comes that they will once more be able to compete with it.” (What is the difference between Free Traders and Protectionists ?) He also pointed out that the “Evening News” had vigorously defended the tax on films imported into this country and pointed out that one of the Directors of the Association that owns the “Evening News”—Mr. Tod Anderson has 3,000 shares in Regal Films Ltd. This is letting the cat out of the bag with a vengeance.

(All the above quotations are taken from “Parliamentary Debates.” Vol. 74, No. 101.)

Thus the debate went on. Each interest squabbling sordidly as to who shall bear the least part of the expenses of the war—each trying to shift the burden on to other shoulders. If space would permit and the patience of the readers held out I could quote enough to fill columns showing the cold-blooded, mercenary spirit of the masters throughout this debate. While they are spending hours shifting the burden of payment, the latest returns show, according to Mr. Outhwaite (Parliamentary De­bates. Vol. 74, No. 103, p. 1571) that British casualties up to 10th Oct. in the Dardenelles alone amount to 96,899 !

Such are the men who run “our” Empire; and such are the exalted views that guide them !

Now, fellow slaves, what are you fighting for ? Think !

M. G.

Buy ’em out. (1910)

From the August 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

The text for this article is the following abstract from a speech delivered by Mr. P. Snowden in the House of Commons, July 4th, 1910.

“Mr. P. Snowden (Lab. Blackburn), speaking as a representative of Socialism, said he was not appalled by the figures of the Budget ; on the contrary, he hoped to see the day when the Chancellor of the Exchequer would bring in a Budget for 3 or 4 hundred millions . . . The Labour Party supported last year’s Budget because it was a good beginning. He would not tax landlords out of existence, but would buy them out.

A Unionist Member: Where would you get the money ?

Mr. Snowden : That is a question often put by ignorant men at open meetings. (Laughter.) If they tried to float all the public-houses of the country as a trust with assurance that they would be free from increased taxation there would be no difficulty in obtaining the money. (Labour cheers.)” Daily Chronicle, 5.7.10.

Mr. Snowden’s claim to be a Socialist representative is soon disposed of. His election address and speeches at the last General Election, to say nothing of an analysis of the votes cast for him, amply disprove that claim. Goaded, possibly, by the disaffection in the ranks of the I.L.P., he blossoms out, on occasion, as a ‘”Socialist representative.” This is part and parcel of the political game he and his colleagues are playing.

But I wish to deal with his piffle about buying up the land.

How Mr. Snowden and his like can rave to an I.L.P. audience about the robber landlords whose ancestors filched the land from the people, etc., etc. Of course he knows his audience. He has to tickle their political palates in order to earn his lecturing fee, with one eye on a return engagement. But to a more “respectable” audience, such as the House of Commons, he adopts another tone. He appears to be quite unconcerned as to the lack of consistency (I had almost said lack of honesty) in raving at one time against the robbers and parasites on the body politic, and at another time admitting the claim and title to their monopoly by talking about “buying them out.” If this is not confusion, what is it ? To the Socialist, with regard to the land and ALL other means of capitalist exploitation, there is no question either of “compensation” or “confiscation,” but simply RESTITUTION.

Again, taking Mr. Snowden’s remarks on the level of his own verbosity, which is not the Socialist level by any means, we observe his smart wangle in reply to an interjector who asked “Where would he get the money from ?” Possibly the writer is equally ignorant; anyway, I repeat “Where would he get the money from” to buy out the landlords ? Obviously such a transaction could not be concluded in the coin of the realm, as there is not sufficient coinage minted in this country with which to do it, and moneymanias will doubtless tell us that if such an enormous sum was specially minted for the purpose, when put into circulation it would swamp the money market, etc., so as to make it just about valueless. Therefore it would have to be done with scrip, treasury bonds, and the like, and to be of any value these bonds would have to be interest-bearing.

So, here you will see the drift. Here, with very little imagination to fill in the gaps, we can foresee the birth and result of a new side-tracking agitation for another “drastic reform.” Shout it from the housetops; sing it in the music halls. “Land Purchase.” “The Land for the People.”

Miles of fulminations and perorations on the platform and in the Press over a course of years, perhaps generations, would induce the landowning section of the capitalist class to “reluctantly” give way (with their tongues in their blasted cheeks), and accept in exchange for their rent rolls, treasury bonds bearing perpetual interest of certainly not less amount than their present incomes—the dominant political power, the capitalist class, will see to that. And the result to the gullible members of the working class who had been bluffed by the afore-mentioned perorations ? Simply, as you were. They would still have to provide the luxuries for the parasites, the only difference being that they would be called “interest” now.

Let us suppose that “hand” John Smith’s wildest dream is realised and in consequence of this very revolutionary change he lives “rent free,” what happens ?

“Times are bad,” says the employer to John, “Business is rotten, and I really cannot keep this place going in face of the foreign competition unless you accept less wages. You can easily do this: you have NO RENT TO PAY now; therefore I must dock your wages 10s. per week.”

“But,” protests John, “my rent was only 5s. per week.”

“Indeed,” retorts the boss. “Then let us compromise and call it 7s. 6d.”

Of course John will fight, but after tightening his belt daily for a few weeks and watching his wife and kiddies starve while he is on strike, he will return to work at 5s. per week less than formerly ; meanwhile his boss has got rid of his surplus stock at enhanced prices and treats himself to a new aeroplane. John soon forgets, in his anxiety to get a living, all the balderdash he swallowed during the “drastic reform” agitation (unless the wicked Socialist is there to jog his memory). He has got the reform all right, but he has yet to learn that he and his class will never, while capitalism lasts, receive more on the average, than a bare subsistence.

Poor John ! Is it any wonder that some people think that he only get his deserts ? Well, he must thank, amongst others, Messrs. Snowden & Co. for the condition in which he finds himself, and in which he will remain until he learns the one grand lesson—that Socialism is the only remedy.

W. E.

Random Notes. (1907)

From the February 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The “Right to Live Council” which, I am authoritatively informed, has no connection with the “Right to Work” Council, nor with any other of the countless myriads of organisations all existing to affirm the right of somebody to do something (or someone) has issued a Declaration of Principles of an exceedingly noteworthy Character. I do not know the author but if I had the pleasure of his acquaintance I should certainly felicitate him upon the very scholarly way he has followed paragraph by paragraph, line by line and word for word, the Declaration of Principles which The Socialist Party of Great Britain drew up at its inception and which appears in every issue of this journal.

o o o

I do not accept the suggestion of unblushing plagiarism which accompanied the manifesto when it reached me, preferring to regard it as a remarkable manifestation of the working of imitative subconsciousness which, as is well known, frequently erupts in a manner calculated to induce the belief (in the uncultured only) that the medium had (if it is a literary “case”) lifted his matter “entire.” That this was not so in the instance of the “Right to Live Council” will be at once apparent to the discriminative from the fact that here and there, subconscious coherency seems to desert the medium, and, flung back upon his own resources, he is forced to fill in the breaks with transparently original matter. It is unfortunate perhaps that the original matter makes hash (colloquially, I believe, “Pork” or “Tripe”) of the whole document, but as we are not considering it as a contribution to the intellectual wealth of nations, but rather as a curious psychological study, that point need not be greatly laboured. “The Right to Live Council” (at one shilling per councillor) has arrived, and if it only plays the triangle in the “Labour” Band it is, I suppose, doing as well as the pianist who constituted the orchestra of a certain mining camp theatre and who was protected by a large placarded appeal to the chivalry of the audience in these terms—”Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best” !

o o o

“The object of Socialism was to harmonise these conflicting interests of Capital and Labour.” Of course. If there is no class war these interests can be harmonised—easily. But as there is a class war, as witness the "conflicting interests” of Capital and Labour,” the “silver-tongued orator” of the I.L.P. is talking nonsense. If I.L.P. speakers paid less attention to the thing they speak with and more attention to the things they speak, there would not be so much occasion to deride the stupidity of their utterances as at present there is. I must add that the orator in this case was Philip Snowden, M.P., speaking at the Earlsmead Council’s School as reported in the Tottenham Wednesday Herald for November 28th, 1906.

o o o

“Municipal Socialism.” The Bushey Urban District Council has unanimously decided to increase the wages of their scavengers from 11/- to 14/- per week. This rise from comparative comfort to absolute luxury may well be regarded by all real friends of progress with profound misapprehension. It is notorious that a sudden access of wealth invariably has demoralising effects which find expression too often in riotous debauchery and this fact coupled with the knowledge that it is the ratepayers’ money which the Bushey Council are pouring out with such a lavish hand, will, we fear, place a weapon at the disposal of the enemies of municipalism which they may use to the disadvantage of the revolutionary spirits on this revolutionary public authority. The Bushey Council should proceed with greater circumspection so that they may escape the charge of extravagance and the opprobrium that attaches to action possibly product of licentiousness and thriftlessness in the scavengers as well as dissatisfaction and unrest among those whose lot has not been cast in such easy places.

Blogger's Notes:

• An unsigned article but, if I was to hazard a guess, I would suggest this piece was written by A. J. M. Gray. It's very reminiscent of his style.
• Some details about the “Right to Live Council” can be found at the following link.
• One of the reasons I think Gray is the unsigned author of this article is because he was a member of the Watford Branch of the SPGB, and the Bushey mentioned in the piece is only two or three miles from Watford.

Editorial: The Labour Party’s Budget. (1931)

Editorial from the June 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is the Land Tax Socialism ?

When the Countess of Iveagh, a Conservative M.P., told a meeting of her party, as reported in the Southend Standard on May 21st, that she could see behind the Budget, and particularly behind the proposed Land Tax, “the pure Socialistic principle that private ownership should cease,” she was putting a point of view that finds expression alike in The Times and the Daily Herald. Have we not been assured for many years by the Labour Party leaders that their Budgets would be instruments for procuring bold social changes, and would, for that reason, be strikingly different from the unimaginative and orthodox financial measures of the Churchills and Lloyd Georges ?

Is there, then, ground for the fears of the Countess? Are we about to witness a great frontal attack upon the existing social system? The Government professes to attach great importance to the Land Tax, and even one of their harshest critics, Sir Charles Trevelyan, who recently resigned his ministerial post as a protest against their inertia, is enthusiastic for this one measure. His enthusiasm is inspired by the example of Vienna, where a Land Tax has been used by the Municipality to subsidise the building of working-class houses.

Nevertheless, these hopes and fears, so far as they relate to the wage earners, are groundless. The Land Tax is capitalist in origin and in effect, and has nothing whatever to do with Socialism. Sir Charles Trevelyan, forced to admit that it was a Liberal proposal, brought forward by Mr. Lloyd George 25 years ago, lamely seeks to gloss it over by describing the pre-war Liberals who were pushing the proposal as “Socialist-Liberals”—whatever that, may mean (New Leader, May 15th). He could have chosen no better example than Vienna to show the uselessness of the Land Tax to the workers. It is true that the Vienna Municipality taxed the land owners to build houses for workers at very low rents, but the effect of thus reducing the workers’ cost of living has been to facilitate a reduction, in their wages by a corresponding amount. The land owners have been taxed, not for the benefit of the workers, but of the employers. Here, as in Austria and elsewhere, in order to carry on the administration of capitalism, the Government needs revenue. Taxation, in the last resort, can be paid only by those who have property, and the controversies about the kind and amount of taxes are disputes between the sections of the propertied class as to which of them shall foot the bill. If this is a correct view of the situation, we would expect to find the Land Tax welcomed by certain sections of the capitalist class who stand to gain thereby; and, indeed, we find this to be the case. The following are comments from various capitalist newspapers, politicians, and business men.

The Daily Mail (April 29th), in its editorial, puts the Conservative point of view : —

“The new duty on land values will be received with favour even in the Conservative party, subject, of course, to the terms of the measure when they are made known.

For some unexplained reason urban land has hitherto escaped its fair share of taxation in this country. The position is very different in the United States, where land values in the great cities have long been subjected to taxation for State and municipal purposes, and at a rate much higher than Mr. Snowden proposes. In Mr. Snowden’s scheme agricultural land is to be exempted, so that the new duties will not affect farmers and small holders.

Such being the circumstances, it may be difficult for the Conservative leaders to prove that the proposed land tax is unreasonable, when it is regarded by the majority of voters as overdue. There could be no worse point upon which to fight an election when the next dissolution comes. The now scheme should then not be condemned out of hand.”

The Daily Herald’s Lobby Correspondent confirmed this :—

“Now the Conservatives realise that the taxes on urban land will be popular in most quarters, especially among business men, and that it would be bad ground to fight on.”—(Daily Herald, April 30th.)

The Daily Express’s Lobby Correspondent reported similarly : —

“The Conservatives, acquiescing in the principle of Mr. Snowden’s plan, will concentrate their attack on the details.”—(Daily Express, May 4th.)

Sir John Corcoran, director of the National Union of Manufacturers, gave his opinion, and presumably the opinion of his Association, to the Daily Herald (April 28th) :—

“If Mr. Snowden can levy the land tax without too much cost and in such a way that it will not have the effect of withholding development, the scheme may be practicable.”

Lord Melchett, director of coal, oil, and chemical concerns, also gave qualified approval (Daily Herald, April 28th).

What is true of the Land Tax is true of the Budget as a whole. It embodies no principle of any significance whatever to the workers. It makes no inroads into the power of the capitalists, and is, in fact, hardly distinguishable from former Tory Budgets. Mr. Churchill, the last Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer, put the point neatly in the debate in the House of Commons on April 29th : —

“I shall deal with the general question of the Budget, and the House will naturally not be astonished if I say that I listened to the Budget speech with amusement, which almost rose into hilarity. (Laughter.) I could hardly believe my ears as I heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer unfold a long series of proposals which were virtually an acceptance in fact and in form of the financial measures and expedients which I devised and practised, and which he derided and condemned. (Laughter.) As one by one those familiar shades arose from that side of the table, and as I recall to memory all the criticisms and scathing censures he had lavished upon each of them, I wondered whether I had not perhaps left behind some of my old Budget notes and that one of his able secretaries had, by mistake, put them into the Chancellors’ famous red box.”—(Times, April 30th.)

The I.L.P. is, as usual, divided in its attitude, but will, of course, go to the aid of the Government if there is danger of a defeat, no matter what the Government does and no matter what opinion the I.L.P. may decide to express about the merits of the Government’s measures. While Sir Charles Trevelyan supports the Land Tax, another I.L.P. Member of Parliament, described as a “leading member of the I.L.P. Group,” is quoted by the New Leader (May 1st) as saying of the Budget :

“Until Land Values were mentioned, it was a Tory statement. Then it became Liberal. Of Socialism, not a comma ! In other words, it is to be Toryism this year. Liberalism in two years’ time, and Socialism in the year X.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Brailsford, also of the I.L.P., writing in the New Leader on May10th, laments the Land Tax because it will encourage the use of land for commercial purposes and so disfigure the landscape. In the past, other members of the I.L.P. have advocated the Land Tax precisely for the purpose of promoting commercial development.

On the subject of the social reforms promised by the Labour Party, it is interesting to have Mr. Snowden’s admission that his views coincide with those of Gladstone—this from the party that regards Marx as out-of-date !

“I have always agreed with Mr. Gladstone’s rule that in times of industrial depression it is better to use our resources to stimulate trade than to make undue sacrifices. It is in times of prosperity that we can afford to lessen the intolerable burden of debt and so liberate resources for schemes of economic and social reform.”—(Daily Herald, April 28th.)

Any workers who are disappointed with the Labour Party’s Budget may derive some comfort from the announcement by the City Editor of the Daily Express (April 28th) that—

“The Budget was favourably received in the City.”

We can now point out to the Countess of Iveagh that behind the Land Tax proposals and the Budget generally we see, not Socialist theory, but a motley band of Liberal, Labour, and Conservative newspapers, politicians and business men, differing among themselves only on the question of the best method of administering the capitalist system.

En passant. (1914)

From the June 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

An editorial in the “Daily Sketch” of May 7th runs as follows: “But a more dangerous sort of interference with parental authority will be confirmed by the passing of the Defective and Epileptic Children Bill. Defective children (of the poor people) are to be sent to residential schools, and Mr. Josiah Wedgwood moved an amendment for the purpose of making it clear that such children should not be removed from their homes without the consent of their parents. The amendment was negatived by a decisive vote.”

Leaflet No. 45 of the Anti-Socialist Union bears the following bright gem :

Infant Gatherer [who is the State Nurse existing under an impossible Socialist State]: “I’ve called to take your baby to the State Children’s Home.”

Mother : “But you will let him say ‘good-bye’ to his father ? ”

Infant Gatherer : “Father! There are no fathers now. The State’s his father.”

It has often been pointed out to the intellectuals of the Anti-Socialist Union that the bogey they attack is not Socialism but State capitalism. But it is easy to apologise for not hearing after you have stuffed your ears.

Today, under capitalism—”the best of all possible systems in the best of all possible worlds”—you must not be born without the State knowing; you must not “shuffle off this mortal coil” without the State being informed of the fact; if you are on the panel you cannot be ill without the State being aware of your malady. Under tyrannical Socialism the only added danger could be that the privacy of the bath-room might be invaded.

* * *

To turn from the Anti-Socialist Union to members of an Anti-Socialist Party, the appended statements are enlightening.

Mr. Philip Snowden, in the “Labour Leader” of April 30th: “If we take the Liberal Party at its best to-day and accept its professions at their apparent value, and if we compare its programme with that of a labour party which is not Socialist, then there is no doubt that Mr. Asquith’s statement that the differences are trivial and unimportant represents the actual facts.”

Mr. Jowett, in the “Labour Leader,” April 16th : “On one occasion the Labour Party had declined to introduce an Unemployment motion because the Government had to be kept in office, and often it had been difficult to defend the votes which the Labour members had given.”

Two minds with but a single thought; two mouths that bleat as one.

These extracts may be used as supporting an argument in re Philip sober. P. Snowden, “Labour Leader” 30.4.14.: “The irony of Social Reform within the present economic order is that every reform which improves the health and intelligence of the workers benefits the capitalist still more.”

The same Snowden—the summit of conceit— in the House of Commons (7.5 14), on Mr. L. George’s Budget: “The taxes on the rich provided revenue to be used for social reform purposes and must economically benefit the landlord and the employing class.”

Yet again, the same Philip, in the same speech: “If the Chancellor of the Exchequer was prepared to continue to use taxation not merely as a means of raising revenue but as a potent, if incomplete, method of social reform, he would be prepared to give him support.”

There, what base knave dare deny that one Philip, of Blackburn, is a Socialist. To all anti-Socialists he is a revolutionary of the most rabid type, because they do not understand Socialism.

* * *

This extract is not from an old file of the “Socialist Standard.” Mr. Arnold White writes a weekly article for the “Daily Express” entitled “Looking Round.” Sometimes he squints and sees “wisions,” yet on other occasions he sees things in their true perspective. In the issue of that organ of mal-education for 11 5.14, he says “Mr. Lloyd George’s scheme to provide aid from taxation for the feeding of necessitous school children appeals to warm hearts and soft heads. The plan is as old as Rome. To make the community help manufacturers to pay wages necessarily implied reduction of wages the limit to the fall of wages is automatically determined by the cost of bare maintenance of the labourer and his family. If the average subsistence rate of the lowest form of slum worker is £1 a week, and the average number of children is three, the labourer must be paid a pound a week, since he cannot exist on less. If, on the the other hand, the State steps in and helps to feed the children of unorganised labourers, the cost of subsistence will be less. Being subjected to unrestricted competition, the labourer, if he can live on less than £l a week, will take less.'” A Socialist could improve that very little.

Some people have heard of the London City Mission, a body, presumably of human beings, which held its 79th Annual Meeting on May 8th. During the course of the meeting, the Rev. T. S. Hutchison, M.A., must have felt relieved when he got the following off his chest: “Socialism, of a godless type, was said to be spreading rapidly among the working men, even to some extent among employees where the cooperative system had long existed, and where, but for the agitators, the men would be happy and contented. The result was the growth of discontent and unrest.” Dear readers, please shudder to oblige our dearly beloved vicar. Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the columns of the “Times,” that we, the feeble band, the few, are the cause of the great totality of wretchedness and discontent at present existent. Sir George Askwith is wrong when he attempts to settle strikes (in the masters’ interest) by haggling over wages and hours of labour. How much could he not learn, would he only sit at the feet of this far seeing disciple of the Prince of Peace ?

* * *

You have a working man earning a quid a week, and he is satisfied. His town house in Stepney and his country seat in Victoria Park provide delightful changes of scenery and atmosphere, guaranteed to revitalise any constitution accidentally undermined by the pure air of the sweat shop. So I could continue to describe the idyllic existence of the working man. To suggest any improvement would be to attempt to paint the lily. But stay, into the picture of contentment, slyly creeps the strife stirring Socialist. Without him all would be well. He can even surmount the protective barriers of co-operation and co-partnership. He seems all-powerful and he is of the godless type. If he believed in a god or worshipped a tram-ticket he might be tolerated. As he is, he is anathema.

Christian, Ragtime “Reynolds” here comes in useful. In its issue for 1.2.14 it said : “We should have thought that no man capable of two consecutive minutes’ thought still held the antiquated notion that strikes are due to the ‘agitator.’ The whole of the British unrest of the past three years has shown that the agitator is powerless where men have not genuine grievances.”

The missioner’s speech prompts me to ask, what was the cause of discontent before the godless Socialism existed? I could continue with questions, but the harrowing of Hutchison is too pitiful to contemplate. Besides, I might trouble him and make him discontented. And, I am a godless Socialist. Grrrh !

* * *

The manufacturer threw a belligerent chest. “arrest ’em,” he said. “If I had my way, I’d arrest every blighted Labour agitator.”

A gaunt figure, with a skull in place of the head, rose exultantly. “Then arrest me,” it cackled, capering. “I am the original stirrer up of those who do hard labour. I am the ancient breeder of discontent, the father of Socialists, the agitator of agitators. Arrest me.”

“But who are you?”

“I am Hunger.”

“Tut! tut!” said the manufacturer pleasantly, “Why should I arrest my best and chiefest Labour agent?”

Poor Hutch!

A. L. Cox.

Land Nationalisation. (1906)

From the June 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the 25th Annual Meeting of the Land Nationalisation Society held last month, Mr. Philip Snowden, M.P., said he had fought his own election almost entirely on the land question. Mr. Will Crooks also spoke as did Mr. Franklin Thomasson, Mr. A. H. Scott and other Liberal M.P’s.

Notes by the Way: “Financial Sacrifices from Both Sides” (1932)

The Notes by the Way Column from the December 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Financial Sacrifices from Both Sides”

United Dairies, Ltd., is a very prosperous concern. The Directors’ report for the year 1931-32 stated that “the business of the Company continues to expand.” Net profit rose from £518,000 in 1929-30 to £549,000 in 1930-31, and to £592,000 in 1931-32 ; which is not too bad in these hard times. The rate of dividend on ordinary shares rose from 10 per cent. in 1929-30 to 11 per cent. in 1930-31 and to 12½ per cent. in 1931-32. So much for the shareholders. What about the workers ? During the past year, after considering the matter for several years, the firm decided to extend to the milk distributing stall a six-day week, hitherto confined to the bottling stalls. Doubtless it was, as the Chairman said, of benefit to the “health and happiness” of the workers not to have to work seven days a week. He also stated (Times, October 29th, 1932) that. “the efficiency of the service has been maintained and increased,” but the change-over to a six-day week “involved certain financial sacrifices from both sides.”

Now we are able to see what is meant by “sacrifices on both sides.” The workers make financial sacrifices and get a six-day week, while the shareholders get increased efficiency, plus the “sacrifice” of seeing their dividend raised from 11 per cent. to 12½ per cent.

Death from the Air

Mr. Baldwin, in a speech on war, in the House of Commons on November 10th, reminded us of the way in which we shall be bombed to pieces in any future war. He said: —

“I think it is well, also, for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him. The bomber will always get through. …. The only defence is in offence, which means that you have got to kill more women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves….. How have the nations tried to deal with this terror of the air ? I confess that the more I have studied this question the more depressed I have been at the perfectly futile attempts that have been made to deal with this problem. The amount of time that has been wasted at Geneva in discussing questions such as the reductions of the size of aeroplanes, the prohibition of bombardment of the civil population, the prohibition of bombing, has really reduced me lo despair.” (Times, November 11th, 1932.)

In the meantime, attention was drawn by the Daily Express to the fact that British armament manufacturers advertise in German and other newspapers their willingness to supply tanks, bombing ‘planes, etc., to foreign Governments. Mr. T. O. M. Sopwith, the aircraft designer and manufacturer of the Hawker “bomber,” defended this. He said (Daily Express, November 12th, 1932) that aeroplanes of recent design are not allowed to leave the country, but that he sells Hawker bombers both to the Air Ministry and to foreign Governments because “no foreign Government will buy British machines unless they are identical with those sold to the Air Ministry.”

If another war comes, and, in Mr. Baldwin’s words, “European civilisation is wiped out,” it will be cheering to know that the bombers on both sides are of identical make and the product of a home industry !

Lenin and Trade Unionism: A Correction

In the November Socialist Standard, under the heading “Tall Stories from Russia,” the statement was made that Lenin advocated “lying and subterfuge” as a means of gaining control of the trade unions.

Although the words used by Lenin in this connection make it quite clear that he recommended using all kinds of deception, he did not actually use the word “lying.” His words (reproduced in the Australian Communist, (April 22nd, 1921) were:

“It is necessary to be able to withstand all this (i.e., expulsion) and to go the whole length of sacrifice if need be, to resort to strategy and adroitness, illegal proceedings, reticence and subterfuge, to anything in order to penetrate into Trade Unions, remain in them and carry out communist work within them at any cost.”

The utter failure of the Communists to gain tangible results by this policy shows how unsound it is.

The Inequalities of Pay in Russia

Nowadays the Soviet Government and the Communists pretend that their policy of increasing inequality of pay as between one individual and. another according to output at the same work, or according to the grading of the work, is in line with Marxian teaching and is compatible with Socialism. Socialists recognise that these inequalities are features of capitalism and can have no place under Socialism, which involves the abolition of the wages system altogether. It is interesting to recall that Lenin shared our view and did not put forward the arguments now used by the Communists. In “The Soviets at Work,” an address delivered in April, 1918, Lenin admitted that the need to attract specialists at high rate’s of pay was a sign of Russia’s backwardness and was accepted only under necessity. He said:—

“Furthermore, it is clear that such a measure is not merely a halt in a certain part and to a certain degree of the offensive against Capitalism …. but also a step backward by our Socialist Soviet State, which has from the very beginning proclaimed and carried on a policy of reducing high salaries to the standard of wages of the average worker. . . . Of course there is another side to this question. The corrupting influence of high salaries is beyond dispute–both on the Soviets . . . and on the mass of the workers.”

He also said: –

“We were forced now to make use of the old bourgeois method and agreed to a very high remuneration for the services of the biggest of the bourgeois specialists. All those who are acquainted with the facts understand this, but not all give sufficient thought to the significance of such a measure on the part of the proletarian state. It is clear that such a measure is a compromise, that it is a deflection from the principles of the Paris Commune and of any proletarian rule, which demand the reduction of salaries to the standard of remuneration of the average worker—principles which demand that career-hunting; be fought by deeds not by words.”

(The quotations above are from pages 17, 18 and 19 of the edition published in 1919 by the Socialist Information and Research Bureau, Glasgow.)

Now, when the inequality is rapidly increasing, the Russian rulers pretend that it is a feature of Socialism. Lenin, however, said, “To pay unequal salaries is really a step backward; we will not cheat the people by pretending otherwise.”

Viscount Snowden on the Labour Programme

Rather late in the day, Viscount Snowden tells his former Labour Party associates something which the S.P.G.B. told them (and Snowden) many years ago. In an article in the Sunday Express (October 16th) he wrote as follows of the Labour Party:-—

“It gained its former political strength neither from its Socialist idealism nor its election programme. It was an electoral refuge for a vague discontent.

The old political parties had failed. Here was a new party which made the social condition of the people its claim to popular support.

. . . . . .

Millions of men and women who know nothing about Socialism, and who have never read the Labour programme, vote for Labour candidates because they believe that this is a party which is going to do something—they don’t know what-—to improve their condition.

. . . . . .

I have been in this programme-making business for forty years. I have always realised its futility. Every programme in which I have had a hand I have seen discarded and another put in its place, later to share the fate of its predecessor.”

He finished the article with a very cruel blow, he told the Labour Party, which has always rejected Socialism in favour of “something now,” that it ought, to drop its silly promises to establish the millennium by Acts of Parliament immediately, and find “a practical policy.”

Mr. Cole Scores 30

The following is from the Star (October 18th, 1932) and refers to Mr. G. D. H. Cole:–

“A leading Socialist who has been busily counting up the number of organisations Mr. G. D. H. Cole has had a hand in starting tells me he has checked off thirty !

‘The latest he is connected with is the Socialist League,’ he said ‘and some of us are wondering how long it will hold Mr. Cole’s affection before another body is created’.”

Mr. Cole’s past loves have included the Fabian Society, the I.L.P., the National Guilds League, and, of course, the Labour Party. Recently he shared in the formation of the Society for Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda, which, after only 18 months, has been wound up alter a conference had failed to give a sufficient majority for merging with the Socialist League.

Mr. Cole is an example of the so-called “intellectuals” who have invaded the working-class movement in recent years, much to their own pecuniary benefit and to the detriment of the working-class movement. Surrounded by worshipping students and trade unionists, Mr. Cole reaps the double reward of adulation and large sales for his books, a new one appearing at frequent intervals each time he changes his mind and takes up another unsound theory.

Mr. Cole is a bad judge of political parties. It is interesting to recall what he wrote about the S.P.G.B. and about his own organisation, the National Guilds League, in the “Encyclopaedia Britanmca” (Twelfth Edition, 1922, Vol. XXXI, page 324, and Vol. XXXII, page 507).

Of the S.P.G.B. he wrote: —

“The Socialist Party of Great Britain is a very small and unimportant body of rigid Marxians of the extreme left wing.” (Vol. XXXII., p. 507.)

At that time he was full of the idea of Guild Capitalism (miscalled Guild Socialism), and recorded with gusto the growth of the Guild Movement and the formation of Guilds like the Building Guild.

Within a year or so, the Building Guild was hopelessly bankrupt, and the mushroom crop of Guilds which had sprung up in many other industries had completely disappeared. The National Guilds League, like many other of Mr. Cole’s enthusiasms, is now as dead as the Dodo, and even when it was alive its organ (The Guild Socialist) had a much smaller circulation than the organ of the S.P.G.B.

The Labour Leaders and the “Intellectuals”

Just at the moment, Mr. Cole, in his foreword to the new edition of his “British Working Class Movement,” is telling the trade unions that their policy and methods of organisation should be changed. We agree; but Mr. Cole is one of the least likely persons to have any sound ideas on the subject. Although never constant for long to any idea, he shows no sign of having learned from his past mistakes.

It is popularly believed that the workers gain through having the so-called intellectuals available to advise the Labour Leaders how to lead. What actually happens is rather like this. The trade union official, who is generally far better able to form sound opinions on trade union policy than are the academic Coles and Laskis, observes a stirring among his members in the form of interest in some new or resuscitated theory. Mistrusting his own judgment, he dashes off to seek the guidance of the “intellectuals.” The “intellectuals,” who are equally hesitant about putting forward definite suggestions, lest they should clash with the prevailing sentiment among the workers (and thus spoil their popularity and book sales), promptly set about discovering which way the wind is blowing and how strong it is likely to be. Having made up their minds on this, they then offer their advice, suitably tricked out in university jargon, the advice consisting of whatever theory they believe the workers are beginning to take up. The trade union official and the “intellectual” then feel mutually reinforced and comforted in their beliefs, and jointly offer their new wisdom to their members, the members being under the two-fold illusion that they are being given a lead and that the lead is the outcome of some solid thought by a reliable guide.

A Confusion of Parties

A few years ago the final argument of the Labour Party supporter who could not make headway against the case of the S.P.G.B. was a complaint that our separate existence confused the seeker after Socialist knowledge. “Why could we not all get together inside one big party?” The answer is that it would be fatal and absurd for a Socialist Party to lose its identity inside a conglomeration of reformists like the Labour Party. And it is curious to notice how loath are even the reformist groups to give up their separate existence in the great family party. In addition to the I.L.P. (Maxton), which left the Labour Party over the matter of Standing Orders, and the Communist Party, which wanted to get in the Labour Party but was rejected, there are now the following competing bodies all under the Labour umbrella: The Social Democratic Federation, the Fabian Society, the Socialist League (formerly the affiliationist wing of the I.L.P.), the Society for Socialist Inquiry and Propaganda (now dissolved after a short life), the Scottish Socialist Party (the Scottish wing of the League), the Clarion Fellowship, and the Co-operative Party.

And in face of this medley the reformists still have the impudence to tell us that the way to unite the workers is on reform programmes !

Incidentally, how William Morris, of the old Socialist League, with its fierce opposition to reforms and to Parliamentary action, would snort if he could hear the new Leaguers claiming that they have inherited the spirit of Morris.

Edgar Hardcastle