Jarrow: the truth that was murdered (1986)

From the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Jarrow is a trigger word for the British labour movement, detonating emotions, prejudices and false reputations; for half a century it has given nourishment to the misconceptions of Labour politicians. Fifty years ago this month the Jarrow march (it called itself a crusade) set out to bring a petition to parliament from the stricken Tyneside town. It was, to be sure, a moving episode in working class history. now to be celebrated by another march which will climax with the presentation of another petition, worded just as it was in 1936. Most of those taking part will no doubt be sure that they are doing something significant about unemployment and poverty. The crucial question will evade them: why must it happen again, fifty years later?

Labour's propaganda victory of the 1940s was largely based on their asserting that prewar poverty and unemployment was the result of the policies of a heartless Tory government. In support of this, free use was made of photographs of events like the Jarrow march, with nostalgic references to the town's Labour MP, Ellen Wilkinson. In this way the Labour Party succeeded in identifying itself with the march and with the idea that, had they been in power at the time, there would have been no reason for it to happen. In fact the march was not a Labour Party demonstration; it was a protest on behalf of the whole town, the petition was carried jointly by the Conservative and Labour agents and at the time a truce was observed in the local elections. Even more: far from supporting the march the Labour Party and the TUC condemned it. At the Labour conference which took place while the march was on the road the NEC representative made a scathing attack on Ellen Wilkinson. The TUC advised all trades councils to ignore the march. Of course not all of them took this advice but when they did hospitality was often provided to the marchers by the local Conservative Party, or the Territorial Army, or businessmen.

Jarrow's established reputation for militancy comes from its mistaken association with the marches of the National Unemployed Workers' Movement, which happened regularly in the 1930s and which were larger, more demanding and often riotous. Jarrow was anything but riotous; it would be more accurate to describe it as a company town. As it developed during the second half of the 19th century its central industry — in effect its only one — was C. M. Palmer's shipyard, which took advantage of the change from wooden to iron ships to develop a screw-driven collier. Palmer's financial policies have been described, in retrospect, as "exuberant'. which implies that they were recklessly optimistic but at the time they could have had few critics. By 1860 the company was dominant among the iron ship builders of the Tyne. It had grown into a huge, integrated business with its own ironstone mines, its own port, its own coal mines and steel furnaces. Palmer's workforce included a large proportion of highly skilled men such as boilermakers and ship wrights. the kind who are sometimes referred to as an ''aristocracy of labour". Until 1921 Jarrow was, by working class standards, one of the better-off towns, where wages were relatively high. Its people were confident that things would stay that way.

This was reflected in the way Jarrow voted. Until the turn of the century it was a Liberal stronghold. Before 1907 the Unionists would not even contest the seat and one Labour MP grumbled that "There was never a more hopeless constituency for a Labour candidate to attack than Jarrow in the nineties. Sir Charles Mark Palmer, the sitting member, was the most popular man in the north of England". The secretary of the Jarrow march described the place as "more a Tory town than it is a Labour town". After Palmer's death in 1907 the Labour Party won the seat but it then changed between Labour and Liberal until 1929, when a Conservative won there, inflicting on Labour their second worst result in the North-East. When Ellen Wilkinson won the seat in 1935 the Tory vote was as high as 47 per cent. Wilkinson had been a member of the Communist Party, changing to Labour when the Labour Party made it impossible to be a member of both parties. She accumulated the familiar reputation for fearless militancy but — and this again is a familiar story — her career peaked when she became Minister of Education in the 1945 Labour government, which was continually at odds with the Communist Party over its policies both at home and abroad.

In many ways Jarrow represented the economic changes which were forced on British capitalism during the first half of the 20th century. By the 1930s it was accepted by all but the hardest of die-hards that British capitalism had lost for good many of the export markets which it had once dominated and on which so much of its wealth and power rested. As heavy industry and mining, located mainly in the North, went into decline capital was switched to lighter, consumer-orientated industries in the Midlands and South. Jarrow's dependence on Palmer's made it particularly vulnerable in any such movement; the First World War demand for shipping postponed the inevitable but by 1921 the brief post-war boom was at an end and shipbuilding was badly hit. In December that year 36 per cent of the industry's workforce were unemployed, by the following August in Jarrow 43 per cent were out of work. Palmer's were unable to take advantage of the partial recovery which followed and Jarrow might be said to have led the way into the slump of 1929. In July 1932 Palmer 's launched its last ship and in 1933 the yard was closed. By 1934 there were 67.8 per cent of the town's insured workers unemployed, by 1935 it was 72.9 per cent and by 1936 it had reached 80 per cent.

J. B. Priestley, in his English Journey, described Jarrow as he saw it in 1933: "Wherever we went there were men hanging about, not scores of them but hundreds and thousands of them". The town had long suffered a high incidence of tuberculosis — the result of bad housing, malnourishment and topography — in spite of its relative prosperity. In the 1930s the rate of TB rose to double the national average. In 1934, when the infant mortality rate was 47 for each thousand live births in the Home Counties, in Jarrow it was 114. So alarmed was the Board of Education at the malnutrition among Jarrow's schoolchildren that they sent a request to the council to increase free school meals.

Little wonder that Jarrow should feel, in its desperate plight, that an especially harsh discrimination was being applied to it. If, as the title of the famous book has it, it was The Town That Was Murdered who., or what, did the killing? During the recessions of the 1920s and the 1930s some industries attempted to defend themselves by forming cartels with the object of restricting (they called it "co-ordinating" or "rationalising") production and marketing, in the hope that this would enable part of the industry to survive in profitability. Much the same thing happens now in. for example, the oil industry. The steel industry organised the British Iron and Steel Federation, which set itself to oppose any efforts by non-members to open up production. It was opposition from the BISF which caused the abandonment of a plan for an integrated steel plant in Jarrow — the event which sparked off the march.

The shipbuilders' cartel was National Shipbuilders Security Ltd. set up in 1930 with most of the industry and the big banks as shareholders. The NSS was financed through a levy on its members and its object was to buy up shipyards and then "sterilise” them. By 1934, in this way, it had finished off 137 berths, or two-fifths of the British industry. with a production capacity over a million tons. Among them was Palmer s yard at Jarrow, which went into receivership in 1933 and was sold — delivered up to — the NSS in 1934.

With their dreams and their confidence in tatters, it was tempting for desperate, starving workers to think of Jarrow as being murdered. cut off in its prime, by a small group of greedy capitalists supported by a pitiless government. This is a common enough reaction to unemployment; it goes with the theory that capitalism's problems — its disorder, its crises, its inadequacies — are abnormal and could be avoided by running the system differently. Jarrow, it was said, was the victim of a monstrous crime and crime is. or should be. abnormal.

By the standards under which capitalism must operate, what happened to Jarrow was perfectly normal and reasonable. This society does not produce wealth to meet people's needs, or employ them so that they can be healthy and happy. Its wealth is produced for sale on the market, intended to yield a profit to the minority who possess the means of production and distribution, including things like steel works, mines, shipyards and ships. Workers are employed, that is to say their labour power is bought by the capitalists, in order to turn out that wealth. But it is impossible to predict how the market will behave, to control it. to guarantee that it will always absorb what has been produced. That is why every so often there is a "surplus" of some sorts of goods, however much people may need them. When sales are high, in a boom, "exuberant" investment policies are praised as divine wisdom; in a recession they are condemned as blindly irresponsible. So it was with Palmer's; had things turned differently the company would have been a favourite among the economic experts and the apologists for capitalism as a masterpiece of financial and industrial genius.

Jarrow was badly hit in the slumps of the 1920s and 1930s but it was not alone for the entire shipbuilding industry was in decline. In 1920 British yards turned out over 2 million tons but by 1933 this had fallen to 133.000 tons. In 1932 the industry had nearly 60 per cent unemployment; that was the year when, according to the Home Office, two unemployed men committed suicide every day. There was a similar story in towns which had depended on other branches of heavy industry; Dowlais. Brynmawr and Motherwell, for example, all had unemployment at about 75 per cent in 1934.

Some of this must have been in the minds of the Jarrow marchers, as they assembled for their trek to London. This was one of the smaller of the many protest marches of that time — 200 selected men compared to the thousands who would take part in the demonstrations organised by the NUWM. It did not demand better benefits or more humane treatment for the unemployed; its object was to persuade the government to direct investment into the town. The marchers were generally regarded benignly by the police (Special Branch kept close observation on all demonstrations by the unemployed for no matter how desperate working class poverty may be it could be permitted to arouse only the best-mannered of protests), the press and the government — in contrast to the NUWM marches which were battered with relentless sneers and criticism and, by the police, with unprovoked assaults.

As the Jarrow men made their way to London The Times congratulated them on their stoicism and sympathetically reported their blistered feet and their fatigue. They enthusiastically cheered King Edward VIII. who happened to be passing by in The Mall. The Home Office agreed that, as ". . . the marchers show every sign of being orderly, it would be a good way of encouraging them and placating them" to allow them to be entertained in the Houses of Parliament. Taking tea with the MPs was hardly the way to bring down capitalism, or even to change its course. Even more, friendly Members took them on a boat trip down the Thames, which caused them to be absent from the climax of the march — the presentation of their petition. They also missed the government's response, which was bluntly translated for them by a Jarrow councillor: "It means you have drawn a blank". The next day the Jarrow men caught the train back home, to the end "well disciplined . . . conduct was exemplary" in the words of the police report.

Apart from putting the town's name and that of its MP — into the history books and the laying out of one small public park, there was nothing to show for the Jarrow march. Its objectives were restricted and short term but even at that they were beyond its reach. No government can change the nature of capitalism or divert it from its natural course and that was why they had to refuse to do anything to revive industry in Jarrow. They even stopped the marchers' unemployment pay, on the grounds that they were not available for work for the period of the march (there was, of course, no work in Jarrow for them to be available for. but never mind). Capitalism continued on its troubled way; while Jarrow agonised the excessively rich Tory MP Henry Channon set out in his diary some of the difficulties his class were experiencing in early 1937:

[I] had a large dinner party . dinner was magnificent. Lady Granard could hardly walk for jewels.

And later that

I find a new, unexpected joy at the age of nearly forty, in accumulating money and watching it grow.

Those appallingly smug words illuminate the real social and political issue, in the 1930s and now — the class division of society based on the private ownership of the means of life. As Channon wrote, one per cent of the population owned 56 per cent of the wealth in private hands. The situation is very little different today. The social system which exploits and impoverishes the majority, which forced the men of Jarrow to that moving, fruitless crusade, remains in being. Now. after another post-war boom, we are in another recession which again has affected the shipyards of the Tyne. Unemployment in the area is at 25.6 per cent. This is what brings the people of Jarrow to London once more, to set down their protest at the effects of capitalism but giving no thought to abolishing the system. That the famous march must happen again, fifty years on. is no cause for celebration for it demonstrates how futile it was in 1936 — and how futile today.

Ivan

50 Years Ago: Demonstrations against Unemployment (1982)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

While it is desirable that the unemployed should be aggressive, yet if they get some concession (sometimes even if they get nothing but cracked heads) these movements, based on the uninstructed discontent of non-Socialists, simply peter out and leave nothing permanent behind. What happens is that if the discontent is sufficiently great the capitalist parties rush in and lead it into safe channels or buy the gratitude of the discontented with small concessions. As soon as conditions look more favourable to them, the capitalists—always seeking to keep down the burden of taxes—cut the concession to whatever limit they and their political agents consider safe.

[From an editorial The Steam and the Safety Valve, Socialist Standard, November 1932]

Pro-Palestine or Anti-War? (2023)

From the December 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Every weekend there have been protests and demonstrations about what is happening to the population of Gaza. Water, electricity and fuel are cut off. Hospitals, schools and residential buildings are bombed. Hundreds are killed every day and many more injured. Over a million have been displaced.

Naturally people are horrified by what they see on their television screens is happening and, equally naturally, want it to stop. So do we. Despite this, most politicians will only go as far as asking for a ‘humanitarian pause’ — after which the siege, the bombings, the killings, and the destruction can continue as before.

Some of the demonstrators are openly pro-Hamas chanting ‘from the river to the sea.’ Maybe some are doing it as an act of defiance as the government and the media have called for the police to ban it. But do they realise the implications of what, literally, they calling for — an Islamic state in the whole of Palestine including what is now Israel? How could that be achieved without further massacres and misery, if only because as much 40 percent of those living there are not Muslims but Jews and Christians who are likely to resist it? In any event, it doesn’t reflect the just-stop-the- killings sentiment of most people and even most demonstrators.

Others are calling for a ‘free Palestine’, by which they mean an independent state either alongside or incorporating Israel. That might reduce the added oppression which the population of the West Bank and Gaza now suffer but it would not solve the basic problem facing workers there of being excluded from the means of living and forced by economic necessity to work for those who own them on condition of producing profits for them. Nationalism is no solution; in fact, whether it is Jewish or Palestinian, it’s part of the problem.

The protests are unobjectionable as a simple protest against the horrors of war and a simple cry that the suffering caused by an ongoing war should just stop, naive as this may be. Given capitalism and the clash of interests between the profit-taking few that is built into it, no side in a war is going to stop just because innocent people are being killed, injured, displaced or otherwise ‘collateral damage’. States fight wars to win and will always do what it takes to achieve this, despite Geneva Conventions and so-called international humanitarian law.

As socialists we object not just to particular wars but to all wars and not just to all wars but to the system that breeds them — the worldwide capitalist system of competition for profits between rival capitalist groupings and the states that protect them which brings them into conflict over sources of raw materials, trade routes, markets and investment outlets. In the present war the greater issue is who controls the oilfields in the Persian Gulf and the trade route out of it, with Israel being supported by the West to counter the threat there from Iran and Iran promoting militant Islamism to undermine Israel.

The solution in Palestine is not to establish a Palestine state nor to demolish the state of Israel. It’s not a one-state solution or a two-state solution or any sort of re-arrangement of frontiers and areas of political control. That would still leave the underlying economic system the same. It’s a worldwide system, without borders, where the Earth’s resources will have become the common heritage of all humanity and used to produce what people need rather than to make profits for the few who currently own and control them. That’s the only way to lasting peace not just in Palestine but throughout the world.

Adam Buick

Editorial: The Steam and the Safety Valve. Limits of Unemployed Demonstrations (1932)

Editorial from the November 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a saying that history repeats itself, first as a tragedy then as a farce. It might be added that once the farce has begun apparently nothing on earth will prevent some of the actors in it from repeating it indefinitely. Not all the experience of generations will teach the I.L.P. and Communist Party that unemployed riots and demonstrations, whatever else they may achieve, do not lead to Socialism. Still, they repeat their parrot piece that once the workers can be got to kick about any one grievance the conflict with the authorities will intensify until the whole working class is involved and capitalism overthrown. So the unemployed riots in Croydon and Belfast are hailed as the beginning of revolution. What is it to Mr. Maxton that the unemployed in Croydon flared up and rushed the Council Chamber exactly 30 years ago, and that troops were brought out on the streets of Belfast in 1907; that the authorities have never in the 50 years since that period been scared as they were at the unemployed riots in the ‘eighties; and that the miserable exploitation of unemployed hunger marchers was tried out with little result in the pre-War depressions and the panicky days of 1921 ? While it is desirable that the unemployed should be aggressive, yet if they get some concession (sometimes even if they get nothing but cracked heads) these movements, based on the uninstructed discontent of non-Socialists, simply peter out and leave nothing permanent behind. What happens is that if the discontent is sufficiently great the capitalist parties rush in and lead it into safe channels or buy the gratitude of the discontented with small concessions. As soon as conditions look more favourable to them, the capitalists—always seeking to keep down the burden of taxes—cut the concession to whatever limit they and their political agents consider safe.

At the present moment, when the discontent of the unemployed has become manifest through sporadic rioting and demonstrations, the capitalist politicians are falling over themselves to gain or keep the support of these groups. So, suddenly half the London newspapers have taken up the grievances. Sir Herbert Samuel, the Liberal leader, having already collared the Communist slogan of “more trade with Russia,” now takes their other strong plank and demands that something be done about the means test. Then the Prime Minister promises that the Government will immediately look into the matter. All of which means that the 10 per cent. cut last autumn and the imposition of the Poor Law test may have gone just a little beyond the limit deemed safe for electoral purposes. Steam pressure is rising, and the safety valve must be eased a little.

An illustration of the way in which this has been done in the past is given by the changes in the amount of unemployment pay, sometimes going up when discontent is rife, then being reduced when the capitalists think that a reduction can be put over without disturbing the workers’ loyalty to capitalism and capitalist parties.

Before the War unemployment insurance applied to only a few workers, and the amount of benefit was 7s. a week. This was a contributory scheme.

At the end of the War, when the difficult problem of demobilisation had to be faced, the Government gave a “donation” to ex-soldiers of 24s. a week for 26 weeks (see Ministry of Labour Gazette, November, 1918, p. 436). Civil workers received the same amount, but for 13 weeks only. Dependent children under both scales were allowed 6s. for the first child and 3s. for others.

On December 12th, 1918, the rates were raised to 29s. for a man and 25s. for a woman (see Gazette, September, 1919).

After the 26 or 13 weeks’ period the pay was on a lower scale of 20s. for a man and 15s. for a woman.

Then, under the 1920 Act (with prices rising, but the Government less panicky) the amounts were reduced to 15s. and 12s., with no allowance for dependents, and the scheme was now put on a contributory basis.

In 1921, when unemployment had reached large dimensions and unrest was widespread, dependents were admitted to benefit (5s. for a wife and 1s. for each child).

In 1924 the man’s benefit was raised to 18s. And the woman’s to 15s., with 5s. for a wife and 2s. for each child.

In 1928 the man’s allowance was reduced to 17s., the woman’s was left unchanged at 15s., but the wife’s allowance was raised to 7s.

In March, 1930, the wife’s allowance was raised again to 9s. (All the above information is given in the 20th Abstract of Labour Statistics, pages 62-67).

Finally, under the influence of the crisis last autumn, the rates were cut by about 10 per cent., a man receiving 15s. 3d., a wife 8s., and a single woman 13s. 6d. The children’s allowances were left at 2s.

So the I.L.P. and the Communists who believe in the theory of leading discontented non-Socialists on and on to Socialism, are now fighting to get back the 1s. 9d. which was deducted last year. After which they will still have another 12s. to go before they progress back to the unemployed pay of the demobilised soldier in 1919.

The Jarrow March (1996)

From the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Criticising the Jarrow March of the 1930s is considered almost a crime amongst left-wingers yet the facts are that working class men tramped hundreds of miles simply to beg with the political representatives of the capitalist class that something be done about unemployment in a particular area (an impossibility anyway) only to be treated with contempt by them

The economic slump that plunged Britain and many other countries into depression in the 1930s was felt in few places harder than in Jarrow', where unemployment soared above 80 percent, where people lived in overcrowded and vermin-infested houses and where poverty was unimaginable.

In 1933 J. B. Priestley, having visited Jarrow, wrote about the town in his book English Journey.

"Wherever we went there were men hanging about, not scores of them but hundreds and thousands of them. The whole town looked as if it had entered a perpetual penniless bleak sabbath. The men wore the masks of prisoners of war. A stranger from a distant civilisation, observing the condition of the place and its people, would have arrived at once at the conclusion that Jarrow had deeply offended some celestial emperor of the island and was now being punished. He would never believe us if we told him that in theory this town was as good as any other and that its inhabitants were not criminals, but citizens with a vote. ”

Not long after the publication of English Journey, in January 1934, a delegation of 300 people from Jarrow, Hebburn and Felling travelled to Seaham to argue their case with the town’s MP and leader of a largely Conservative National government, Ramsay MacDonald.

Leading the delegation was “Red” Ellen Wilkinson, Labour MP for Jarrow, hoping to impress upon the PM the plight of the people along the Tyne and their desperation for work.

No doubt MacDonald was all too aware of the pathos of the situation and the inevitability of the 1930s’ slump and capitalism’s inability to solve it. The advice he gave the member from Jarrow was later described by her as “sham sympathy”:

"Ellen, why don't you go and preach socialism, which is the only remedy for this?”

This reply from a supporter of capitalism was as cold and smacked of the same indifference as a similar delegation received when they visited Walter Runciman, President of the Board of Trade, regarding the opening of a steelworks in Jarrow. Said Runciman: “Jarrow must work out its own problems”.

Jarrow, it seemed, was indeed left to sort out its own problems. To a town whose ship industry had closed down and whose much-anticipated steelworks had failed to materialise, Runciman’s words were received as icily as they had been uttered and sent a shiver down the collective spine of the borough.

Distressed area

At a time when the entire country seemed to be taking part in hunger marches and protest rallies, Councillor David Riley’s suggestion in July 1936 that the unemployed of Jarrow should march to London hardly seemed original or serious in light of the fact that many previous marches had been dismissed as “communist demonstrations”.

However, the idea was discussed at length with the town’s MP and the Jarrow Labour Party executive. Eventually it was decided that any march should be the town’s march, only to go ahead with the full support of the citizens. The town council sanctioned the march and above the signature of the mayor went appeals for support. This was followed by the sending-out of letters requesting the use of services and halls in towns along the proposed route to London. As the pace of events hotted up the organisation of the march was done from the town hall and under the supervision of the town clerk. At the same time, men were also marching to London from South Wales, Cumberland, Durham and Yorkshire, all bent on expressing their grievances against the means test and the Unemployment Assistance Board regulations, which was for the Jarrow men "a welcome sign that other men felt the same as they did and were kicking, too” (Wilkinson, The Town that was Murdered, 1939).

So on a cold morning, Monday 5 October 1936, 200 marchers set out from Jarrow, ahead of them representatives from the Labour and Conservative parties to arrange meetings en route to London. Even the Inter-Hospital Socialist Society came to their assistance, sending out relays of helpers performing dentistry and medical necessities.

The marchers had hardly time to get blistered feet when their organisers were condemned by a Labour Party meeting in Edinburgh for “sending hungry' and ill-clad men across the country on a march to London”. Incensed, Ellen Wilkinson left the marchers and travelled to the Conference in Edinburgh in an attempt to rally support. Her efforts were in vain for the conference had more important matters to discuss, such as their attitude to the Spanish question and the re-armament issue—a time-honoured and typical response from the Labour Party to requests for help from the working class. Neither was support to be found with the TUC, who similarly blacked the march and advised trade councils against giving help. Wilkinson had this to say: “I went from the warm comradeship of the road to an atmosphere of official disapproval . . . Had the Labour Party put its power behind the marchers, sent out the call for solidarity with them, then by the time these men reached London, not only from Jarrow, but from all parts of the country', the support that would have been aroused . . . would have been enough to shake the complacency of the Baldwin government” (The Town that was Murdered, p. 204-5). There was, however, no shortage of support for and working-class approval, of the march After all, 47 percent of the industrial population of the country at that time resided in areas scheduled as “distressed” or in need

of being so scheduled.

The brainwashed Trades and Labour Council at Chesterfield might have obeyed the TUC circular denouncing the march, but this did not stop the local Conservative Party from rallying to the aid of the marchers, providing hot meals and a place to sleep. The Labour Party rationalised their apathy by asserting that if they gave support to one march, then support would have been demanded of them all. This from an allegedly working-class party!

Along the route to London, members of the working class, and indeed the capitalist class, were all too ready to support the march. By the time the marchers reached Leicester their boots were falling apart. In response, the Co-operative Society’s own cobblers took it upon themselves to work all through the night without pay to repair the boots of the Jarrow men, the Co-op donating the necessary material free.

One cobbler almost anticipated socialism, saying:

“It seems sort of queer, doing your own job just because you want to do it, and for something you want to help, instead of doing it because you’d starve if you didn't. ” (p. 207).

Elsewhere, at Leeds, a newspaper proprietor laid on free food and beer (no doubt providing his own newspaper with a story) and at Barnsley, Joe Jones, a miners’ leader had the municipal baths specially opened and heated in time for the arrival of the marchers. A group of journalists, following the march, even clubbed together and purchased a dozen mouth organs in an attempt to boost the morale of the marchers.

The march continued and gained support and sympathy the entire 291 miles of its journey. The men marched between 10 and 21 miles every' day and held meetings every night. After three-and-a-half weeks on the road, they reached Marble Arch tired and rain-soaked, perturbed that only a small crowd had braved the October weather to greet them.

The following day they were given permission to hold a meeting at Hyde Park. The Communist Party was already there, holding a mass demonstration to protest against unemployment. Realising the Jarrow men were in the area, they suspended their rally for an hour and asked their audience to swell the Jarrow Crusade meeting.

Humble petitioners

When Parliament re-assembled two days later, the men marched to the Houses of Parliament and handed in two petitions, one containing 68,500 signatures from towns along the Tyne. The petition presented the case for Jarrow in simple language, pointing out how Jarrow was experiencing a stage of industrial depression unprecedented in the town’s history. Shipyards had closed and the steelworks had been denied a lifeline. Once 8,000 workers were in employment. Now the figure stood at 100 with others on temporary schemes. The petition continued:

“The Town cannot be left derelict, and therefore your petitioners humbly pray that His Majesty's Government and this honourable House will realise the urgent need that work should be provided without delay. ”

But there was no debate. As Wilkinson points out: “A few questions were asked .. . and the house passed on to consideration of other things.”

The marchers took it all in their stride. Wilkinson describes them as being “rather sporting about it” and how they were afterwards entertained to tea in the House. Demoralised to the point that they could not care less would have been a more fitting description of the marchers’ sentiments—men pushed and crushed until they could only accept their lot.

When the marchers arrived home they did so to a hero’s welcome. Tens of thousands turned out to greet them and bonfires burned long into the night. For many they had achieved something, even if it meant no change to their meagre existence.

Wilkinson writes of the marchers: “Many were politically educated men, who through the long, bitter struggles, knew who and what was the real enemy.” But to be honest, and not to disparage such a monumental event in working-class history', did they? Were they so educated as to think marching could better their lot and did they really think it possible that capitalism can be bargained with? Did they realise that, in truth, they were marching for the right to be exploited by a system that cared not a jot had the marchers perished to a man en route to London?

Three years later, work did come to Jarrow (more would follow as the capitalist war machine revved up) in the form of a new rolling mill. Walking through the site when the men were laying the concrete foundations, Wilkinson was greeted with: “This is what we marched to get.”

Wilkinson could only find a strange pathos in the statement. She commented:

“The grim thing is that the workers have no share in these mills. When the works are built they will still be subject to the toll of profit, the exigencies of a system where they can be closed at the will of people far away to suit a financial policy. "

Seemingly, as with the cobbler at Leicester, the stark reality of the madness, the insane logic of capitalism, had become apparent to the future Labour Cabinet Minister. But did she actually realise that the internal mechanisms of capitalism run on with a will of their own, oblivious of logic and men with Geordie accents and sore feet?

John Bissett

". . . far too respectable." (1905)

From the July 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

We commend to the chastened reflection of Mr. Gribble and the members of the S.D.F. in Northampton the fact that the gentleman who was largely responsible for preventing the case of the Raunds strikers coming before the House of Commons was precisely that gentleman whose democratic sympathies they expressed their appreciation of by assisting into Parliament. It was Mr. Labouchere’s inordinate and intentionally prolonged remarks on the Women’s Suffrage Bill, which he was frankly concerned to talk out, that robbed those who professed to be anxious to bring the matter forward of the opportunity to do so. Of course it might have been done in a disorderly way by breaking down a few of the forms of the House, but the “Labour” members are far too respectable to do that. Besides, it might jeopardize the esteem in which they are so proud to be held by their fellow members of the capitalist-class !

What May-Day Means to Us. (1938)

From the May 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Position

For many years past thousands of working-class men and women throughout the world have claimed May-day as their own. They march in procession with flying banners, announcing Labour's rights and aspirations. In some ways this is as it should be; movement means life. Here in London, the chief site in world capitalism, the famous Hyde Park is the stage always set for their declaration of political faith. It is not without social and political significance that the richest city in the world should give rise to these May-day meetings. It provides abundant evidence of the underlying material realities which vitalise such mass demonstrations of our class.

The great contrast in riches and poverty, the immense class division, is here exhibited with almost naked brutality. It may go without saying that, just as there can be no mistake about the fabulously wealthy parts of London through which we march, so there can be no mistake about the class to which those who participate in these demonstrations belong. Any onlooker could hardly fail to understand that those who see fit to thus parade their political convictions reveal that the colossal wealth of modern times neither lines their pockets nor fills their stomachs.

But these May-days come as a happy counter-blast to all this. They mean something of immense and vital importance to men and women who are forced to work for what is little more than bread and butter. They signify a spirit of revolt against things as they are, the sentiments of a class aiming to emerge from the conditions of an age-long subjection.

This is the emotional, instinctive and intellectual yearning behind these working-class assemblies; we say this despite all their confusion of political tongues.

But why do these demonstrations have to take place? Is there no way out for the class which labours to confer riches, rights and privileges upon others, only to leave themselves in the subordinate position of publicly announcing the “wrongs" of the class to which they belong? If there is a way out where or what is it?

We of the Socialist Party of Great Britain are men and women who belong to the working class; we share the same experiences of exploitation and fear of economic insecurity; we know what all this means because we live the part. But we claim to have studied the problems of the workers' lives at their foundation. As a result we are able to declare unhesitatingly that the solution has been found. We know, and can prove our case, that the wealth of the world is produced by the workers. We know, and can prove it, that what the workers can do so efficiently for the capitalist class they can do even more effectively for themselves.

To extract from nature the food, clothing, shelter, and all other things which serve to make life worth while only two elements are essential. These we have at our disposal, namely, Mother Earth and our mental and physical capabilities. How often have we Socialists illustrated this point of view by asking whether any sane man or woman would expect coal to work itself up from the depths of the earth by merely placing money, or what is called “capital," at the top of a coal-mine. Would any of the things, apart from natural conditions that minister to human wants, exist but for the hand of labour? Can there be more than one serious answer to these questions? Yet there are many millions of our class who still cling to the belief that we cannot do without capital or the capitalist; that we cannot dispense with the power of money. Because workers living to-day have not experienced the production of goods without capital or money the really vital elements indispensable to all human existence are forgotten. That the workers are blind as to the actual truth of the position is, of course, not to be wondered at. The modern workers, the wage- slaves of civilisation, are much like the feudal serfs of the Middle Ages and the bond-slaves of old. They are largely dependent upon those who benefit from the proceeds of their exploitation for their knowledge of things. They have been taught and trained to look up to their masters as though these people owed their social position to some divine right or to some special endowment of nature. What has passed under the name of education has been in effect little more than propaganda aiming to secure the continuance of capitalist-class control of the means of life. But we Socialists have revealed the fallacy of the ideas which helped to keep capitalism going. Class domination has its roots in the possession of the ownership and control of such things as the land, mines, mills, factories, ships, railways, in fact, in all those means of producing and distributing the essentials of life. That is the basis of the class division and not any superior mental or physical power on the part of the ruling class. This class possesses money or capital to-day through the operation of historical, economic and social causes. The vast possessions of the modern capitalist class have behind them a record that is largely associated with past murder, piracy, spoliation and robbery, rather than with any mark of superior intellectual ability. In fact, the history of class divisions from very early times is directly connected with conquest, plunder and enslavement. Read its history and it will reveal the facts only too tragically.

But, to come back to our point about file meaning of capital! Those who insist that it is indispensable belie air past human history, besides actually distorting the real significance to the workers. The land and all other things, including money, which are used to-day as agents of wealth production are in themselves no more capital than the moon is green cheese. Capital is wealth, the result of past labour, used to obtain profit. This in turn is but the unpaid labour of the workers. The profit motive is behind all capitalist production. The bread we eat, the clothes we wear, the houses in which we live are not produced for their use, but for profit. Unless there is a profit, or the prospect of it, capitalist production ceases, in fact it would not be started. This will explain, apart from other considerations; why millions of our class are unemployed, are forced to a demoralising idleness: the capitalists can find no profitable use for even the goose that lays the golden eggs. Yet for thousands of years, for by far the greater part of human history, capital was unknown to the human race. Even the extensive use of the precious metals marks but a late stage in human development. The predominance of money as a factor in economic relationships is, in fact, not more than a few centuries old. The point we wish to emphasise is that there is nothing intrinsically indispensable about the great “god" money. The "yellow, glittering gold" of capitalism, apart from its various uses to the present system, is in reality of much less real use to human needs than many of the baser metals. In a really healthy and sanely-organised system of society, wherein profit was absent—could not exist, in fact—there would be no need of such things to facilitate the distribution of the products of labour. Therefore, we of the Socialist Party of Great Britain stand for the abolition of capital because we stand for the abolition of capitalism. The immense productive powers of to-day must be converted into the common property of the community; they must be democratically owned and controlled, through which they would be operated for use instead of for profit. There is no other way out for the working class. The capitalist class must be dispossessed of their control of the means of living, and this can only be done by divesting them of their political power. Those who represent the varied interests of the capitalist class in Parliament are elected there by the workers themselves. Under the guise of specious promises to effect this or that social reform the Conservative, Liberal and Labour Parties obtain the political support of the workers to administer capitalism. Not even the Labour Party proposes to abolish capitalism, despite its frequent use of the word “Socialism" ; it seeks to carry it on in the form of State ownership, with the capitalist receiving interest and compensation under the direction of the State. This is not Socialism, but State capitalism. Although backed by many workers, the Labour Party has proved itself in practice a supporter of the capitalist system. And this will help to explain the Labour Party’s wholehearted support of the War, 1914-1918, as well as its being pledged to support the next war. The workers must learn the fatal errors of their ways. They must get political power to smash capitalism. Until they do this there seems to be little alternative but for them to go on acclaiming resolutions, such as they usually do at these and other demonstrations, calling upon capitalist governments to do this, that, or the other thing for them; they will continue to seek the reform of their slavery and exploitation, where only its abolition will suffice.

The message of the Socialist Party of Great Britain is, therefore, that they must organise with us for Socialism. We stand for the working-class capture of political power by the only method available to-day, namely, through democratic election to Parliament to abolish capitalism and establish Socialism. This is the first and foremost plank in our programme; anything short of this will not do. We neither advocate nor ask capitalist governments for social reforms. Like millions of other workers, we would like to see the end of the means test, unemployment pay increased, schoolchildren well fed, and many other of the demands of the workers met, but the fact remains that, with things as they exist now, capitalism would still be with us, demanding removal. Working-class action must be revolutionary, not reformist. Political catch cries such as “Chamberlain must go," "Down with Hitler," and "Defend the British Empire against Fascism," are useless and dangerous to the real interests of the workers. If Chamberlain goes, who comes? Only somebody else representing the class interest to which Chamberlain belongs. The British Empire: the workers own none of it. Its existence marks the fact of their exploitation. The existence of the Hitlers and Mussolinis is largely the result of working-class inactivity and concentration on social reformist instead of Socialist revolutionary action. When the working class heeds our message it will not fail to take the necessary step to put an end, once and for all, to capitalism and all its Dictators. We picture a world free from exploitation and want, free from wars and the power of Dictators—in short, a world of our own making in which the guiding principle would be the common interest of “ associated humanity."

This is no wild Utopian dream. The material conditions of its realisation are here now, awaiting the understanding and action of the international working class.

Fellow-workers, the Socialist Party of Great Britain appeals to you to look to your own interests through Socialism.

Robert Reynolds

A day out in Cheltenham (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

An active member of the largest trade union in the country, I was recently asked by a colleague if 1 would attend a march and rally in support of trade union rights at GCHQ Cheltenham. The event was on our doorstep and it would look bad if so large a trade union did not attend the event.

I agreed to go only to find, on the day itself, just three of us there to show the district banner. But even that was not to be — not because we were unwilling but because our District Secretary would not release the banner for the day in case it got dirty or damaged. So the banner remained decorating the wall of his office.

We arrived early for the demonstration. It was bitterly cold and raining. The meeting place was the Pump Room, a huge building set in a park. After buying coffee from the refreshment stall we decided that shelter was needed and that everyone present must be a bit mad to be milling around outside the Pump Room instead of inside. At one end of the building we found double doors with the notice General Council Members Only. So we went around to the other end of the building only to find the same notice. So we went in.

The TUC steward challenged us, then reluctantly agreed to our staying in the building since it was so cold outside. When we had stopped shivering we had a look around at the columns, arches, chandeliers, a decorated ceiling — and then we spotted the bar. We all immediately felt better for arriving early. However we were told that the bar was for providing free drinks for the General Council. Of course there was no need to worry about drinking and driving since they had luxury coach transportation. We left the building in disgust and braved the elements between the Pump Room and the nearest pub.

When we returned the march had just started. There were bands playing, hundreds of trade union banners and many thousands of dedicated trade unionists from all over the country. We spotted one of our banners from the largest union in the country and marched behind it. This district had gathered much more support — at least six people were present before we joined them.

We stayed with the march until it reached the town centre. By now, none of us were interested in attending the rally and listening to the hypocritical bleatings of the leader of the General Council of the TUC. So we sneaked off to a pub and then went home. For trade unionists it was not an inspiring day.

Mike Tavener

Editorial: The Raunds and Leicester Marches. (1905)

Editorial from the July 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The striking bootmakers of Raunds have marched into London and have marched out again, and, thanks to the fine weather experienced, the astuteness of the Liberal Party politicians en route (who tried, with considerable success, to make party hay while the sun shone) and the fact that the capitalist press had no other sensation to write up at the moment, they seem to have had a moderately good time.

Encouraged by their example, 500 unemployed workers set out from Leicester on a similar pilgrimage. But their time was not so happily chosen, and their numbers were unwieldy. So that they were reduced to sleeping on straw after marching in rain.

That the action of both parties enlisted a good deal of public sympathy at the moment is clear. But public sympathy butters few parsnips, and already the historic marches are among the faint memories of those districts that were covered, while outside of them they have faded from most recollections.

The Conditions of Successful Demonstrations

What good purpose, from the point of view of the working-class, was served, cannot be clearly seen. Had the men set out in the full knowledge that the capitalists of London had interests in no way differing from the capitalists of Raunds or Leicester; had they commenced with no delusions on the score of the reception they would get at the hands of the representatives of the master-class in the House of Commons and Buckingham and Lambeth Palaces; had they understood that their position was the inevitable result of the private ownership of the means of life; and had their march therefore been frankly a demonstration of class-conscious workers in revolt with the object of stirring their class to revolt also, good work would have been accomplished. But to set out ignorant of their class position, and under the impression that if they were very peaceful and law-abiding and abstemious, and sang their grace before meals with becoming reverence, the capitalist-class would help them, as they appear to have done, was a folly that will bear fruit of disappointment and despondency for themselves; while by accepting the interested and much advertised hospitality of their enemies of the Liberal Party, the Raunds men have contributed materially to the confusion of their class, whose discriminating powers may not unnaturally be unequal to the task of grappling with the problem of why the Liberal Party, who helped the workers of Raunds, are not the friends, but the enemies of the workers of Raunds.

Pioneers of Confusion

How far the Raunds leader, Mr. Gribble of the S.D.F. (whose action, by the way, the S.D.F. made many pathetic attempts to exploit for their own party purposes with equally pathetic results), understood the dangers of the movement to the working-class whose interests he ostensibly serves, we do not pretend to know. Having undertaken the task of organising the march he had, of course, to find lodgment and food for the men, but if he had the knowledge that is claimed to be in the possession of all members of the S.D.F., he must have known in the first place that the appeal to capitalism in London would be as profitless as the appeal to capitalism in Raunds had been, and he must have seen in the second place how inevitably the class struggle would be obscured by apparent fraternisation with the representatives of the capitalist-class in the Liberal Party.

The Leicester leader, Mr. Sherriff, of the I.L.P. (whose action, by the way, the I.L.P. also made pathetic attempts to exploit for their own party purposes), seems to have endeavoured to make his contingent's march a demonstration in support of the Government's "Unemployed" Bill, which Mr. Burns says, and for once says rightly, is not worth crossing the street for, let alone tramping a hundred miles to support.  And Mr. Sherriff should have known that under present conditions any “Unemployed" Bill must be a capitalist dodge to rid themselves of responsibility while endeavouring to convey the idea that they accepted it and were prepared to bear the burden of it.

The Position of the S.P.G.B. 

We are far from desirous of creating the impression that we are out of sympathy with class manifestations of the working-class. The Socialist Party of Great Britain is a working-class party; and is therefore concerned to do everything possible to arouse the class it represents from indifference into organised action against the present form of industrial organisation to which can be traced the evils under which the workers suffer to-day, But we well know that no working-dam manifestation can he effective, no successful conflict with capitalism can be entered into except it be based upon a clear understanding of the class position. Upon this basis alone can be built the fighting organisations, political and industrial, of the working-class which by concentrating upon the conquest of political power and the substitution of the common ownership and control of the means of life for the present private ownership thereof, shall achieve the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the Socialist Republic. And it is because we know, what apparently the Raunds and Leicester men did not know, that nothing short of Socialism can materially affect the condition of the workers, and because we know that all attempts to secure a betterment in working-class conditions that do not take full cognisance, and are not made in the full knowledge of this fact, are foredoomed to failure, and must tend to retard rather than to expedite the realization of Socialism, that we deprecate the actions of the persons responsible for the Raunds and Leicester marches.

A. J. M. Gray