Socialist Forum: A Question about Zionism. (1932)

Letter to the Editors from the June 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

March 7th, 1932.

The Editorial Committee,

Socialist Standard.

Dear Comrades,

As a young Jewish worker, I accept the general principles of the S.P.G.B. But, as I am Jewish I have to bear a double load; both the load of exploitation and the load of anti-semitism. Not only do I have to work and sell my labour-power, but I am forced to have many disadvantages which non-Jewish comrades do not experience. What are the Jews to do? Persecuted as they are, and with the prospect of Socialism being very remote, is it not wise of Jewry all over the world to set up a “National Home” in Palestine.

True it is that I will be exploited in Palestine just as well as in England. But in Palestine I could escape anti-Jewish persecution. The German Jews, now threatened by Hitler, would have nothing to fear from him. The Jew-baiting in Polish Universities would cease. Thus, in my opinion, it is essential for the Jews to have a National Home, under Capitalism.

I trust that you will answer my statements in the next issue of the SOCIALIST STANDARD, as this is a serious problem. Perhaps you could explain the causes of anti-semitism.

Yours fraternally,

“JEWISH WORKER.”

Reply

Our correspondent says that he accepts the general principles of the S.P.G.B., but his letter shows that this is not correct. The argument, “Socialism being very remote, therefore let us work for something else,” is the excuse used by every reformist opponent of Socialism and is a repudiation of S.P.G.B. principles. Socialism will only cease to be remote to the extent that the workers strive for Socialism instead of supporting Zionism and other movements which leave capitalism intact.

A basic principle of the S.P.G.B. is that the abolition of capitalism is the only means of solving the social problem that is common to all workers. Acceptance of our principles carries with it a willingness to concentrate on the basic cause and to push into the background the minor and sectional problems.

The hostility shown by some non-Jews towards some Jews is one of many such minor and sectional problems. It is a continuation of traditional hostility based mainly upon economic causes. Non-Jewish traders found themselves in competition with Jews often more successful than themselves. Christians were for long prevented by the Church from practising usury. Consequently their antagonism towards Jewish traders and moneylenders tended to take the form of antagonism towards Jewish people in general. In some countries, especially where non-Jewish peasants still find themselves forced to incur debts to moneylenders, some of whom are Jewish, this antagonism still continues. It is sometimes deliberately fostered by interested parties in order to cloud the main issue.

But, speaking generally, it is not true that Jews, as such, are subject to any material disability. Can it be said in any real sense that the Readings, Monds, Rothschilds and others of their social position need a “National Home” in Palestine? So little is that the case, that they take good care not to go there.

Our correspondent does not say what are the “many disadvantages” from which Jews suffer and from which non-Jewish workers are free. The illusions of Zionists on the one side are balanced on the other by the fixed belief held by many non-Jewish workers that the world is in pawn to the Jews. The complaints of some Jews that they are at a disadvantage compared with non-Jews are echoed by the Arabs in Palestine, but in their eyes it is the Jew who is the privileged and favoured interloper, and the Arab is the bearer of the “double burden.” Similar complaints are heard about the favour shown to Freemasons, to members of various Christian sects, and to adherents of certain political parties. Then there are the complaints of the national minorities—the Austrians in Italy, the Germans in Poland and Belgium, the Flemish in Belgium, the negroes in U.S.A., and the Scots and Welsh in Great Britain..

There is a certain amount of substance in all such grievances voiced by individuals and groups of workers, but they pale into insignificance by comparison with the subject position of the working class in their relationship with the capitalist class.

While all of these groups fight each other and work for their separate minor aims, the capitalist system will remain secure.

There are many weaknesses in the Zionist case. It is an impossibility for all the Jews of the world to settle in Palestine even if they wish to do so. The existence of the Jewish State raises another grievance which takes a racial and religious form—that of the Arabs and Palestine Christians.

The reference to the persecution of Jews by the German Hitlerites shows up another flaw in the argument, for the Hitler movement has developed since the setting up of the Jewish State in Palestine.

Ed. Comm.

The Future of Palestine - Part 2 (1935)

From the August 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

The Union of Zionist Revisionists make clear their capitalist aims for Palestine. They have planned an economic policy which, they say, is the best way of building a Jewish State in Palestine. In their pamphlet, entitled "Basic Principles of Revisionism," we read the following

The constructive period in the life of a State knows only one social commandment—the interests of the constructive work itself to which all other interests—whether of persons, groups or classes—must be subordinated—every class in society must be regarded as a cog in the constructional machine: their class interests must be satisfied when they benefit the State, but repudiated when they hinder the work of upbuilding the State . . .

Shades of Hitler and Mussolini! Are the revisionists ignorant of the State, its history and its functions ? Is the State a mystical entity, above classes, and to which all classes are subordinated? Later on the Revisionists let the cat out of the bag when they tell us what the State is to do in the upbuilding of the new Jewish Society.

Similarly Jewish private capital, and State upbuilding are synonymous; but the payment of interest on private capital is the sine qua non of a supply of capital, hence any resistance to the payment of a legitimate interest on private capital is clearly in opposition to the State . . . 

So here we see that the State is not absolutely divorced from classes and class interest. Obviously, if Jewish capital is synonymous with State upbuilding then it naturally follows that working-class interests are not going to be served by the State. The organised industrial activities of the working class must conflict with capitalist interests, and it will therefore be the function of the State machine, under the control of the Revisionists, to suppress the workers.

Other Revisionist writers make plain their intention to enforce subjection on the Palestine workers in the interest of Jewish capitalists.

Mr. A. Abrahams, in his pamphlet, “What Revisionism Stands For," remarks thus: —

It should be realised that only by assuring investors of the possibilities of profit can capital be attracted. Profitable industry can in no circumstances be associated with philanthropy, but must be in a position to make its way against ordinary competition in the world’s markets. . . .

Further, in their “Blue-White Papers," 1935, the Revisionists emphasise their attitude towards the class struggle.

Conflicts of interests between employers and labour should be settled by “obligatory national arbitration.” By “national” arbitration we mean a permanent board of arbitrators (their italics) nationally and formally elected, and composed of persons known to have no partisan idiosyncrasies (our italics) . . . its verdicts should be final; and both strikes and lock-outs (as well as the boycott of Jewish labour) should be declared treasonable to the interests of Zionism, and repressed by every legal and moral means at the disposal of the nation. . . .

In regard to the “boycott” of Jewish labour, we can be sure that the Jewish capitalists in Palestine will employ the cheapest labour suitable for their requirements, and will give preference to Arab labour if it is cheapest and as efficient.

The Jewish Daily Post (14/5/35) published the following report from Jerusalem: —

According to the Hebrew daily Haaretz, Mr. Smilansky has issued a circular to the Farmers’ Federation, urging them not to purchase shekolim as a protest against the resolution passed at the recent session of the Actions Committee that employment of Arab labour disqualifies a land owner from membership of the Zionist Organisation.

It is clear enough that for the workers Palestine—as far as the intentions of the Revisionists are concerned—is not to differ from other capitalist countries.

Poverty is not a Racial Question

The problem of Jewish poverty in Poland, Germany, England and elsewhere will not be solved by transferring them to Palestine, nor will it be solved by the charity of the Rothschilds and the Melchetts. Poverty is not a racial problem. It is a disability suffered by members of the working class in all parts of the world where capitalism exists, and it will only be removed by the establishment of Socialism.

It has been argued by the exponents of Zionism that the Jewish worker carries two burdens—the burden of exploitation and the burden of persecution. Zionism, it is claimed, will at least remove the burden of persecution. The whole argument is a fallacy. The greatest persecutions experienced by Jewish workers are the persecutions of capitalism. Many Jewish workers in Germany knew the terrors of unemployment long before the coming of Hitler. There are thousands of unemployed Jewish workers in this democratic country and many more thousands almost destitute in America and Poland. In Germany the Jews suffering from the Nazi regime are mainly doctors, lawyers, barristers, teachers, journalists, and those Jews who held prominent positions in the Civil Service. If there are any Jewish workers who dread losing their jobs under a Fascist Government they may be interested to read the following which appeared in a letter from a Manchester correspondent, and was published in a recent issue of the Jewish Chronicle. It refers to Poland.

During the last few years more and more clothing and weatherproof factories have been opened by Jews. Competition has become keener; prices have been cut to the very bone; and naturally the Jewish working man has suffered most. His wages have been reduced to the lowest level. He cannot exist on the meagre wage (often less than he would receive at the Labour Exchange) that he receives at these shops. Not only this, the Jewish-owned workshops have been flooded by Gentile labour from the closed cotton mills. The latter now receive preference in that the workshops are open on Saturdays and Jewish holy days, instead of, as previously, on Sundays. The key positions, too, the managerships and the majority of clerical posts are entirely in the hands of non-Jews (Jews in the office might learn too much of the business!) and an orthodox Jew who refuses to work on Saturday often finds a notice of dismissal in his pay envelope at the end of the week. Many of the owners of these workshops hold treasurer ships and other high offices in our communal institutions. . . . 

Comment would be superfluous. We can only point out to the Jewish workers that nothing better awaits them in Palestine. Capitalism in England has given the workers of this country poverty, and the development of the system in Palestine will bring the same problems for the Jewish workers to solve. As in every other capitalist country, the production of goods will be limited by market requirements, and unemployment is inevitable. The Revisionists can give no guarantee of working class security and well-being.

The advantages of the Jewish workers in Palestine boil down to this. Instead of lining up outside a Labour Exchange in England, they will ask for a “dole” in a Palestinian Labour Exchange. Instead of being exploited in England, they will be exploited in Palestine. No longer will they run the risk of being beaten up by a Nazi hooligan, but they will have the proud privilege of knowing that they are being beaten by Jews in Brownshirts, members of the Union of Zionist Revisionists. (The Jewish Daily Post, 10/5/35, reports an occurrence in Vienna, when Revisionists smashed the furniture and destroyed the papers in the offices of a Jewish youth organisation with general Zionist sympathies, leaving behind them photographs of Dr. Weitzmann and Mr. Ben Gurion—Jewish Labour Leader—with the inscription “Weitzmann and Ben Gurion must hang.”) 

What, then, is to be the solution of the problems of the Jewish workers? We have already said that, in the main, these problems are the normal features of working-class life, poverty, insecurity, and premature death. While capitalism remains these vicious effects cannot be eliminated. Only the establishment of Socialism will remove them, and it will also remove anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitic agitation is used whenever it serves the interest of certain sections of the ruling class, just as anti-negro agitation is used in U.S.A.

Anti-Semitism is particularly severe in countries where there is still an ignorant and superstitious peasantry, but in the more developed capitalist countries conditions are not so favourable for the growth of anti-Semitic propaganda. The joint control of huge undertakings by Jewish and non-Jewish capitalists, the more experienced minds of the working class, all tend to weaken racial prejudice. There is also a larger proportion of Jewish workers in countries like England and America than there are in Germany. Even the final card of the Zionists, that a Jewish State in Palestine would afford the Jews security from pogroms can be answered. There is little danger from pogroms in advanced capitalist countries. Capitalism frowns upon civil violence. Anything in the nature of riot and bloodshed upsets the delicate mechanism of capitalist trade and finance. It also disturbs confidence in the ability of the Government to keep order. For example, in a city like London, with its immense population, an anti- Jew riot might easily lead to the destruction of valuable property in which many non-Jewish capitalists are interested, and it would also be extremely difficult for the police to keep such a mob in hand. Even in Germany, at the height of the Nazi triumph, there were no pogroms of a Czarist Russian character.

In conclusion we must emphasise that the problem of the Jewish workers is not the illusory one of preserving their identity as a race, but to protect their interests as members of the working class, in whatever part of the world they find themselves.

Our message to the Jewish workers is no different to our message to any other national or racial section of the working class. We say to them that they should unite with us in the overthrowing of the capitalist system and the building of a new society, wherein they will be allowed to live freely, and in equality.

Kaye and Scrutator.

[Concluded.]

The Immigration Question (1976)

From the July 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Migration is described in the Encyclopaedia Britannica as “an outstanding feature of human life”. That spells misfortune for it, for there are no features of human life that are not exploited and mangled under capitalism. In mid-1974 there were 1,673,000, or 3.2 per cent, of the population, in Britain who were “of New Commonwealth and Pakistani ethnic origin” — that is, black. The figure for 1967 was 1,016,000, or 2.1 per cent, (figures from Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, quoted in The Times, 27th May 1976). An estimate for 1954, given in The Colour Problem by Anthony H. Richmond (Pelican 1955) was 100,000.

Not all immigrants to Britain are black, of course. Approximately 4 million people left Ireland for various countries, including Britain, between 1850 and 1900. and nearly half a million again between 1951 and 1961. In 1931-38, 150,000 people entered Britain from Eire together with 350,000 from European countries. However, in contemporary usage “immigrant” means black. The freshly-coined official term “New Commonwealth” means this, and excludes immigrants from Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In that frame of mind Indians, Pakistanis and Africans are made to appear as menacing invaders.

The latest phases in this alleged problem are claims that every Asian has a tribe of probably-bogus relatives claiming entitlement to join him, and unrest which has included four apparently indiscriminate racial murders. There is now widespread agreement that something must be done to control immigration. The secretary of the Punjabee Society of the British Isles wrote to The Times on 29th May: “Enough is enough.” Bob Mellish MP, former Labour Chief Whip, in the News of the World on 30th May: “Controls must be stricter. Numbers must get fewer and fewer until we arrive at a complete stop.” And there are the National Front and Enoch Powell, neither of them funny. The former deal in fear and ignorance, as did the Nazis whom they admire; the latter has talked repeatedly of racial carnage in a manner which, to quote Bernard Levin, “is making it more likely that his predictions will come true”.

The Myths

The argument put by Mellish and others is that the number of immigrants is too great for resources inside Britain.

Is there anything that can be done to control the number of newcomers in any one year to take account of the problems of employment, housing, schools and social services?

(C. Legum and A. Raphael, The Observer, 30th May)

Mature and sober as this sounds, it is only a nicely-stated confirmation of what largely underlies racial tension: “If I blacked my face I might get a council house . . . The teacher’s too busy looking after the black kids who can’t speak English . . . They get endless Social Security, but if we went we wouldn’t . . . etc.” Either it is true that black immigrants rob the natives of jobs, houses and services, or it is not. Some recent facts are as follows.

The 1971 General Household Survey showed that 35.5 per cent, of the black population in Britain are skilled manual workers, and 30 per cent, semiskilled or unskilled; 17 per cent, have non-manual jobs, and 10.5 per cent, are “managerial and professional’.’ In The Economic Impact of Commonwealth Immigration by Jones and Smith (Cambridge 1970) the average benefits received per black head from Social Security totalled £16.30 a year, as against £28.30 for the “home” population; for Health and Welfare £18.30 as against £18.60; in Local Authority housing £0.90 as against £3.00. The General Household Survey showed also that 23 per cent. of black households were overcrowded (insufficient bedrooms) as against 6.2 per cent. white ones, and 33 per cent. lacked the use of a bath as against 12 per cent.

If it is argued that the presence of immigrants nevertheless exacerbates existing problems, that simply is not true. The housing problem has been acute throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, yet at all times sufficient houses have existed. A report in The Times on 22nd April 1976 said: : "There is a surplus of about 850,000 houses in the United Kingdom, according to the Nationwide Building Society, which yesterday published its latest survey on housing trends.” At the same time, in 1972 there were 13,000 homeless persons in London (Shelter, Paper 4) and in 1966 60-70,000 overcrowded households in London (Census). The “shortage”, as always, is because housing is beyond the reach of those who need it, not because of any absolute scarcity. What on earth has that to do with immigration or alleged differences between black and white?

The Truths

The provision and extent of welfare services and education is a matter of government policy at any given time. However, if the concern really were about population pressures on “a tiny nation of over 50 million” (Mellish) the official figures for both-ways migration should allay it. For several years the numbers entering Britain have been substantially fewer than those leaving. In 1974 the net “loss” was 85,300; from 1969 to June 1975 it was 368,100. This has practically always been the case; the sole exception was the 1931-38 period, when the world depression at the beginning caused a fall in emigration and an inward balance of 23,821. It is stated also, in the annual report On the State of the Public Health published by the DOHSS on 28th March, that in 1974 Britain had “an unprecedented low birth rate of 13 a thousand” and “The population rose by only 55,173, the smallest increase ever recorded in peacetime”.

Were immigrants to respond to declarations of the capacities and needs of “host” nations, they would be scurrying about the world everlastingly. In 1948 the Royal Commission on Population recommended a policy of “combining encouragement of emigration with with a policy of selective immigration to make good any shortage that might arise in Great Britain”. During the 1939-45 war a number of West Indians were imported to work in factories in the north of England, while the United States repealed its sixty-one-year-old policy against Chinese immigration. On 2nd June 1976 the Australian Minister for Immigration announced that workers from anywhere were wanted, mentioning "East Timor, Indochina, Chile and many other places” (The Times, 3rd June).

Since the “bread-and-butter” argument against immigration is false from beginning to end, what we are left with is racial prejudice. Moreover, it is racism of a particularly dishonest kind which knows that in the open it has not a leg to stand on, and so hides behind plausible-sounding theories of population pressure and injustice to the home population. Over twenty years ago Dr. Roger Pilkington, the geneticist and anthropologist, wrote in the British Medical Association’s magazine Family Doctor:

Leading experts had declared that available scientific knowledge provided no basis for believing that the groups of mankind differed in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development. “Given the same opportunities of education and environment the performance and ability of individuals does not differ appreciably from one race to another.”

(The Guardian 28th April 1955)

Profit and Prejudice

The capitalist class are too well aware of their interests to practise racism. They may have individual private sentiments, and they are pleased to see it dividing the working class. But while Enoch Powell sees immigration “foaming with much blood” (April 1968) and producing “firearms and explosives” (May 1976), the capitalist’s vision of it is a lather of surplus-value and fizzing with interest-rates and profit. The Times on 9th June carried a report on Southall, the London industrial suburb where 20-30,000 of a population of 70,000 are immigrants, mostly Indian, and where disturbances have taken place recently.

According to the report, Indians first went to Southall in the early nineteen-fifties to work in a rubber factory. It continued: “Today there is still plenty of work, mainly unskilled, available in the district. Heathrow [London airport], especially after dark, seems to be entirely serviced by Punjabis in their bright turbans and saris. There is a fair amount of light engineering and there are some food-processing plants. The engineers in the local coach-works are Indian, and many of their coaches are on hire to the town hall to take Indian children out of Southall to integrate them and to improve their English.”

Therein is the whole position. Immigrants are wage-workers, or peasants who think they will improve their condition by becoming wage-earners. Coming to Britain or any other country, they are not instituting a separate fraternity; on the contrary, they are joining one massive group in a common situation — the industrial working class. Don’t be mistaken about this. The working class are all those who own nothing but their ability to work and so have to sell that, week by week or month by month, for a price called a wage. The resultant problems of being hard-up, badly housed, uncertain of employment and generally short of the essentials for a decent life, are universal in that situation. Real or fancied differences are unimportant beside it: this is what everyone in Southall, and nine-tenths of the population of the capitalist world, has in common.

The idea of a national identity which becomes a personal one and makes the others “foreigners” is a direct product of the nation-state which is the political unit of capitalism. Thus, each nation has its own history studded with its own partisan myths, and each represents its traditions and customs as the acme of civilization. The legends about immigrants all reflect this, which is why they repeat themselves indiscriminately. Everything said about Indians and Africans now was said about Jews, Irish, Poles, Italians, Chinese etc. in the past (the contemporary story that black people eat tinned cat-food was preceded by one, in the nineteen-thirties, that Italian immigrants ate cats). Its counterparts the world over are the same: for example, in France all murder, rape and offensive conduct is attributed to Arabs. This nonsense is easily disposed of; what is more important is to see whence and why it arises.

What to Do !

“Liberal attitudes” and anti-discrimination laws are no answer. Are we really to believe that having black policemen and magistrates and enabling Indians to join golf clubs is the road to social harmony? The obvious outcome of these policies will be divisions and rancour among the immigrants themselves, and that is already happening. On 30th May The Observer reported an interview with a Mrs. Singh, who is a young BSC from Calcutta and lives in “a pretty suburban house in Hounslow”. Her opinions were that illiterate Indians should not be allowed in, and It was regrettable that “lower class, illiterate Indians collect together in places like Southall and Bradford”. Liberal legislation may be handy for Mrs. Singh and her like, but whose interests are served by trying to persuade people to live contentedly together in districts from which they would like to escape but can’t?

The solution to the problem is not “integration” or fresh restrictions, but recognition by all workers that they are in the same boat. The working class have no country: only their class identity. Those who enter Britain and those who emigrate from it — and the position is the same for other countries — are on the whole leaving adverse economic or political conditions, hoping for something better and influenced by a possibility for reaching it. Inevitably, in huge numbers they are disappointed and made the objects of the frustration of people already on the other side of the fence where the grass is not greener after all. For all of them there is a practical alternative, the establishment of a classless society without frontiers. Stop listening to the rabble-rousers and the liberalizers, and find out about Socialism.

Robert Barltrop

This Superiority Notion (1963)

From the June 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

It should be obvious, really. Whenever they test another H bomb, or run into another economic crisis, or whenever a politician opens his mouth and puts his foot in it, or whenever we think about the strain and ugliness which are the modern substitute for living, it should be obvious. Capitalism, is not a desirable or a sensible method of running human affairs.

But instead of being obvious it is infuriating. There are the facts, there is the mass of evidence, all screaming for attention. Yet the message gets through, if at all, only slowly. For one reason or another the working class still like capitalism. This is not to say that they like war, or any other problem that capitalism brings with it. They think of these things almost as elements outside human control, like the weather. But capitalism they do like, they support the system which leaves the ownership of the means of life to a very few of the world’s people. They support the system of rich and poor, of palaces and prefabs, of ripe pheasant and Spam.

If at any time the workers have to think about why they like capitalism they may say that it gives everyone his chance and that it is our own fault if we are not all like Paul Getty or King Saud. Or perhaps they will offer some equally inane reason. But mostly the working class do not think about why they support capitalism. They absorb the ideas of the system effortlessly. As if by instinct they build up a wall of ignorant, indefensible ideas which all play their part in sustaining1 the social system of destruction and insecurity. And that can be very infuriating.

It would take up many issues of the Socialist Standard to enumerate every one of these ideas. In any case, they have all been dealt with at some time in the past. Let us now take a look at just one of the strange notions with which capitalism is supported on its pedestal of ignorance. This idea is a popular one among the working class. It is also, in some ways, a surprising idea. Let us call it the Superiority Notion. It is, simply, the conviction which many workers hold that they are in some way better than anybody who comes from another working class group.

In one of its most easily identifiable forms, the Superiority Notion is. race prejudice. White workers think that they are better than coloured workers; even if they do not want to discriminate against Negroes they often feel sorry for them, just as they would for someone who had cancer. Colour prejudice is so widespread partly because its victims are most easily recognised. Race prejudice itself extends beyond mere white-against-black antipathy, reaching out to embrace anyone who is “foreign” It is almost a tradition among English workers, for example, to distrust some types of foreign workers. (Some, on the other hand, they may trust; many English workers think that Chinese people are naturally honest.) They are content at one time to blame the troubles of the world onto French temperament, at another onto German belligerence, at another onto American irresponsibility. (Although we should notice that this particular fallacy has its fashions. Young workers nowadays think it glamorous to be Italian, but that is not what their fathers, in 1941, thought.) In England, in other words, many workers think that the only person who can be trusted, the only person who makes a desirable neighbour or workmate, is English, while and gentile. In other countries they have their own version of this particular prejudice. A popular idea on the Continent is that everyone in England is a horsey fop.

The Superiority Notion does not end at race prejudice. It is common for workers in one part of a country to think that they are better than those in another part. In Southern England they think of the North as an endless slag heap, with flat-capped dinosaur-brained inhabitants to match. In the North they think the South a cissy lot, a pretentious bunch who sound their aitches alright but are strangers to a good day’s work. This feeling can even extend to different parts of the same town. There is at least one dilapidated area in London, dissected by a dirty canal, in which the slum-dwellers on one bank think themselves better than those on the other. These examples could go on for a long time.

The basic ingredient of the Superiority Notion is that, no matter how depressed a worker may be, he can always look down upon somebody else. Even those who are themselves the victims of widespread prejudice have their own Notion. Some Negroes look down upon other coloured people: some Jewish workers regard Negroes as inferior, and so on. And if we ask why the Notion is so popular, is the answer that the working class occupy such an inferior situation in society, and eke out such restricted lives, that it is practically essential to their peace of mind to be able to console themselves with the idea that somebody, somewhere, is lower than they are?

The Superiority Notion is booming, for example, in Southall in Middlesex. Southall has a rubber factory, a massive lorry works, a cereal factory, a canal, a gas works and a ten pin bowling alley. It also has a large Indian and Pakistani population, who have taken some of the jobs at the rubber factory and the gas works for which it is now difficult to get white workers. So Southall also has a race ignorance problem because, apart from any personal objections there may be to the immigrants, there is also the usual deep-rooted opposition to strange men whose skin is a different colour and who speak a language which sounds incomprehensible.

So the Southall workers feel superior. Yet a walk around the place quickly puts their Notion into perspective. Street' upon street, the dingy houses stretch away. Sometimes they are houses which were built in the 18th. Century; sometimes those which were built since 1900. Some are even post-war. But the drab sameness, the cheapness and the restrictions, are all there. These houses, standing in the richly combining vapours of the molten rubber, the exhaling gas works, the oozing canal and the roasting cereals, each day feed the local industry with its supply of human ability. To be blunt, Southall is one of the dreariest imaginable working class areas. It is a problem to appreciate how anybody who lives there could keep up the pretence that he is better than anyone else. But the Southall workers manage it.

There is only one way to deal with this ridiculous situation and that is to cut right through the middle of it with the facts. Socially, there are only two types of people living under capitalism. One type is the capitalist who can live without going to work because he owns places like the gas works and the canal and he gets the profits from them. The other type is the worker who does not own any factories or anything like them and who can only live by working for a wage. For the worker, capitalism is an unpleasant system. It brings him problems like war and insecurity and the ever present strain of balancing his budget. It puts him to live in places like Southall.

But capitalism does something else. It separates and illuminates the fact that all workers all over the world, whatever language they speak and whatever the colour of their skin, are suffering the same sort of problems. The capitalist world has innumerable Southalls—and many worse places besides. Thus capitalism makes it plain that the interests of workers everywhere are the same; to get rid of their problems, to get rid of capitalism. To do this, they must get rid of their Superiority Notion, in all its forms, and of the other baseless, ignorant ideas which keep capitalism going. Capitalism itself, day by day, piles up the evidence in favour of its own abolition. It stares the working class in the face.

It should be obvious really . . . But this is where we came in.

Ivan.

Transgender issues and capitalism (2022)

From the December 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

There’s an issue causing much aggravation in the UK, the ‘issue’ of transgender people. You will find it in parliament and being talked about in all corners of the country. So, what do transgender people and their supporters argue? Many put a soft-left liberal case against discrimination and for tolerance but there is also a ‘gender socialist’ theory, based on a part of Marx’s analysis of society. This part of Marx’s theory to is found in the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, where Marx divided society into two parts, the base and superstructure; the base is the economic mode of production that creates and informs the superstructure of a society, while the latter is the social, legal and political apparatus that reinforces the mode of production while also influencing it; the base makes and changes the superstructure but the superstructure can also react on the base.

Analysis of prior modes of production and the many superstructural features arising from them implies that Marx’s theory was correct: settled agriculture created patriarchy, feudalism created the divine right of kings and capitalism created individualism. None of those societies existed in isolation from one another, and every mode of production so far has retained elements of the society that it displaced. These may be primarily cosmetic features, such as the UK’s constitutional monarchy, or they may be more deeply systemic, such as patriarchy. Capitalism too has incorporated superstructural features from prior societies, and just like all prior societies, it may be incapable of ending these features, indeed it may intensify them. Patriarchy has retained its power under capitalism with 88 percent of billionaires being men and 19 CEOs being men for every 1 woman; this isn’t said to beg for female representation under capitalism but rather to show that capitalism perpetuates male-dominated societies just as the systems before it did.

Gender Theory

Patriarchy is not the only legacy that capitalism retains. Gender is one such legacy, an ancient and foundational idea which we’ve built cultural concepts on and around. Placing these concepts on top of sex started before we can even remember. And capitalist institutions continue this extended delusion because they significantly rely on, and so encourage, gender’s continued existence for the sake of economic sustainability. Under capitalism, gender is informed by the roles we undertake to produce the next generation of workers, this is called reproductive labour. These roles can be anything from the actual act of reproduction to childcare and education; femininity under capitalism has historically been defined by the performance of the role of the primary caregiver to children, while masculinity has been defined by performing the role of both provider and protector. Capitalist gender lazily assigns people these gender roles in part due to its own apathy towards ending these prejudices but also to make working-class people enforce their own oppression under the threat of being considered unfeminine or unmasculine and thus being rejected by the mainstream culture of capitalist society. The effect of this is two-fold, to provide identity and to create the next generation of workers for the capitalist machine. Gender forces an identity on every person, which it attempts to justify by basing itself upon biological sex while imposing cultural roles and expectations that have nothing to do with genitals, chromosomes or anything remotely biological. Gender is based rather loosely on semi-plausible and simplified abstractions, i.e, men are the providers because they are stronger and women stay at home because they are less strong. This is inaccurate for several reasons: some women are stronger than some men, not all work is based on strength especially in the modern world, there’s no evidence that women are naturally more able than men to raise children but rather that they’re schooled into parenthood, and many more beyond those. Most gender roles are learned, forced onto young children so that they’re efficient at producing and being members of the workforce. It would be more logical, efficient and empathetic to the human race as a whole to liberate ourselves from these roles and simply fulfil the roles which we wish to.

Transgender people revolt

Many binary transgender people (those who transition from male to female or vice versa) often seem to not challenge capitalist gender at all but rather perform its stereotypical features aggressively to make themselves the gender they identify as. While on the surface this seems correct, trans people don’t perform gender stereotypes to become the gender they identify as (no trans man believes that trousers make them a boy); rather they perform the stereotypes in order to be seen by capitalist society as the gender they identify as and to protect themselves from the discrimination and violence they might face if they don’t fully ‘pass’ (succeed in being perceived) as that gender. A person who is willing to cross the lines of socially-conditioned gender, regardless of reproductive ability and conditioning into parenthood, is revolting against ideas of womanhood and manhood as defined by involvement in reproductive labour; the transgender person undertakes the same act of revolt as the lesbians and gays of the 1960s who refused to participate in traditional reproductive labour and the women’s liberation movements who refused to define themselves by their ability to reproduce.

But capitalism, as always, sets people against each other rather than acts for the good of humanity. We can see the backlash against the increased awareness of socially-constructed gender through the October 2021 BBC article ‘We’re being pressured into sex by some trans women’ by Catherine Lowbridge. This article was an attack on trans women, claiming that the alleged actions of a few trans women could be seen as representative of all trans women, based on a study conducted by a dubious group with only 80 online participants (Get the L out, Lesbians at Ground Zero), providing merely anecdotal evidence and including the opinions of Lily Cade, an accused rapist, who would go on to use the attention she got from the article to publish a manifesto calling for the lynching of trans women (www.them.us/story/lily-cade-violence-terfs-bbc). In the article (which the BBC has since changed) the writer cited Lily Cade without mentioning that she is an accused rapist (despite being told this by a transgender activist), skims over the unreliable nature of the study and claims not to have talked to a transgender person for an alternative viewpoint. This biased piece of propaganda from the BBC betrays the prejudice in capitalist society against those who attempt to change its superstructure in this way and the fear that this may disrupt and change capitalism.

Every socialist who understands the composition of society should expose and oppose such prejudice, armed with the knowledge that changing just the superstructure would merely be soft-left liberalism, and that changing just the base, without disrupting prior ways of thinking, would not work; a socialist society with a capitalist mindset would collapse in on itself. Socialists are liberationists, liberationists from capitalist ideas of race, gender and sexuality because liberation is incompatible with capitalism as a system and, of course, liberationists should be socialists, to free themselves from wage slavery, gender prejudices and state power.

SHERIFF

Sheharazad's thousand and second tale or would you let your daughter marry a green hair? (1964)

A Short Story from the November 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Know then, oh glorious king! that in days of yore and in times and tides long since gone there existed a strange and wonderful land known as Vespucci. The inhabitants of that country, as was universally the case even in those days, were divided into rich and poor, but this fact was not that which made Vespucci a strange and wonderful land. There was a different sort of division among the people that cut across economic status and which, confusing as it may seem to us, was the cause of much more confusion than it is easy for us to imagine. For the Vespuccians were also divided according to the colour of their hair.

Not that they had as many divisions as there are colours! No! There were but two general divisions—those with green hair (the minority) and all the others regardless of colour and combination of colour. A Vespuccian might have but a faint tint of green in his hair against a background of any other colour or combination of colours, but the green tinge officially stamped him as a Green Hair. He might have no green hair visible whatsoever yet he was classified as a Green Hair if both or either of his parents were officially Green Hairs. Only if he chose to hide the fact that there were Green Hairs in his background could he pass as a Normal Hair when, of course, the green in his hair was not visible. There were a few of the Green Hairs who disappeared from the census each year but by and large the divisions were constant.

Vespucci was also divided geographically into Upper Vespucci and Lower Vespucci and although there was a common law for all citizens which was inscribed in a book and interpreted, from time to time, by a group of nine old Cadis in the capital city—a town named Dryington— the separate sections of the country also had sectional laws pertaining to Green Hairs, written laws in Lower Vespucci, unwritten laws in Upper Vespucci. In Upper Vespucci the Green Hairs were, for the most part, segregated in housing and schools in a de facto manner while in Lower Vespucci the segregation was maintained as a matter of law. And this arrangement lasted for many generations with segregation carried out fairly generally and even in the armed forces and the prisons.

But certain developments began to take place in the economic life of the nation, developments which caused a great stir throughout the length and breadth of Vespucci. On the one hand a growing number of Green Hairs began to earn more money than had been the case hitherto and, at the same time, to get more education. On the other hand the larger manufacturers and merchants of the land found it expedient to expand into the more backward areas where more underprivileged Green Hairs were to be found and these big moneyed interests felt that a greater degree of stability among the working population (Green Hairs and Normal Hairs alike) was in order.

The wealthy Vespuccians, like the rich of our own times, were altruistic and never had other than the general welfare at heart. And so the group of top-ranking Cadis decreed in their wisdom that the arrangement that had, up until now, been legal was no longer legal and that all Vespuccians regardless of the colour of their hair were equal under the law, the only inequality , henceforth, to be that which is natural and normal and fitting—the inequality caused by the possession or non-possession of money in large quantities.

There was no great rush, however, to obey the new law on the part of the Lower Vespuccians and several years passed with no more than a token breakdown in the segregation pattern and even this in a restricted area of the Lower section. So great discontent became generated among the Green Hairs of Lower Vespucci while, in the other part of the nation, their fellow Green Hairs decided that de facto segregation would also have to go. They felt that their children were getting an unequal education and they resented the social inequality which was their lot despite there being no written laws on the matter in their area. And so they, too, began to demonstrate and to demand rights.

As of now, Your Highness, the affair should not seem to be too confusing. The Green Hairs were discriminated against in every manner and they were organizing to do something about it with the help, let me add hastily, of a number of Normal Hairs. They demonstrated in the streets, they picketed places of employment, they argued with school boards and with politicians, they boycotted stores, and many of them were subjected to various degrees of brutality by the forces of law and order. All of this is understandable. The Green Hairs wanted “Freedom” and they shouted to the rooftops that they wanted it now. But despite the fact that everything seems to have been quite in order, a certain confusion begins to develop in the story and seems to hinge around the meaning of the word Freedom, and also of the word Equality.

The Green Hairs were by no means united in their fight for Civil Rights. There were a number of organizations which represented them and which ran, in attitudes, all the way from conservative advocates of passive resistance—meek and humble followers of Christianity in its meek and humble forms, down through the more militant sects of that Infidel Religion, and even to the followers of the one, true, faith, the Muslims (Green Hair Muslims). And even the chosen of Allah were to become divided on the basis of militancy and action between the followers of the old leader, Mustapha Prophet, and the adherents of a younger and more fiery leader, Roderick Zee. But despite the divisions and differing attitudes there seemed to be one thing in common among the organizations of the Green Hairs and that was their universal agreement in a “practical” interpretation of the meaning of the terms Freedom and Equality. And this will best be explained by recounting the following adventure of a colour-blind Vespuccian who spent much time among the Green Hairs.

Our hero, who we will call Ali McKhan, chanced one day to step into the office of the largest of the Civil Rights groups, the National Brotherhood for the Aid of Green Hairs. He felt impelled to have a look at some of the literature of this organization and he entered into conversation with an official named Emmanuel Prince. “ Right at this moment,” he was told, “ Our main concern is in breaking down discrimination in housing. We are attempting to compel landlords in all neighbourhoods to rent to Green Hairs, and real-estate brokers to sell to them regardless of how snooty the neighbourhood.”—“ Very interesting,” remarked McKhan, “but tell me something. I know a lot of Green Hairs in the Ghetto and I'm certain that most of those I know can't afford to pay the rents in the better neighbourhoods and certainly don't have enough money saved for a down payment on a house in the swank sections. What about them? ”

Prince waved a deprecating hand, “ We can't be concerned with those people. The trouble with a lot of my fellow Green Hairs is that they just don't have the initiative to better themselves. Let them stay where they are.”

“ But,” argued McKhan, “ It is my understanding that there are some new and wonderful machines on the scene today that make it possible to produce an abundance of food, and clothing, and houses, and everything else. Don't you think it would be better if your organization tried to get all Vespuccians, regardless of colour, to see that it is now easy to produce enough for everybody and that something should be done to change the present basis of production for sale — change it to a system where everybody can have free access to their needs? Don't you think that nobody would pay any attention to colour of hair under such conditions? That all Vespuccians would become colour blind? ”

“My dear fellow,” snapped Prince, “ You arc obviously some sort of Red. What we want is freedom and equality. The freedom to rise on the economic ladder and an equal chance with Normal Hairs to compete for his freedom. How can you have freedom if you do away with poverty? And we don't want everyone to become colour-blind. We’re proud of our colour. We are a rich mixture of great ancestors and we have a glorious history. Furthermore, we are loyal Vespuccians and we demand nothing more than our rights under the Constitution of our glorious nation.”

So McKhan sadly bowed his way out and went down the street in the direction of the Green Hairs Freedom Now Society. “They’re a militant bunch, not like that other gang of phonies,” he muttered. But on the way he suddenly noticed a bright sign with a star and crescent over the doorway of a building. He straightened his shoulders and pounded fist in palm. “ The devil with the rest of them. This is the real McKhoy, the headquarters of Roderick Zee, the New Muslim Leader. (The name was formerly Zed, but the new arrangement called for a revolutionary change.) This bunch will really understand what freedom and equality mean.” And he went in.

Fortunately for McKhan, Roderick Zee had overcome the old dislike of being friendly with Normal Hairs and he found the young Green Hair Muslim to be not only enthusiastic but affable. “ \Yes, my friend. What we Green Hairs need in order to attain freedom is a country of our own. We demand that the Vespuccian Government give us an area where we can set up our own government and produce and distribute for ourselves. We want Separation, and we want it now, even if we have to organize rifle clubs among the Green Hairs "

McKhan was dubious about the separation bit and even more dubious about the rifle clubs. “Seems to me," he interposed, “ that it will take more than rifles to offset the weapons of the Vespuccian Government. And what's this business about separation into your own country? I like the idea of producing and distributing for yourselves, but why restrict this to Green Hairs? Don't you think it is possible to produce enough for everybody, regardless of colour of hair, to have all they want if we stop holding back the machinery and produce for use?  Of course, we would have to abolish private property universally, though, and not just for Green Hairs"

Roderick Zee's eyes bulged in horror. “ Get rid of private property? ” he screamed. “ What in the devil are you talking about? ” Didn’t you hear me say we want Freedom Now? How can we have freedom if we don’t have the freedom to own private property and hire other people to work for us - Green Hairs, of course. We don’t want any Normal Hairs in our factories.”

“But,” argued McKhan, “why would anybody want to work for you if they were producing for themselves? I thought people worked for other people just because they have to in order to eat, because they don’t own the means for producing things. And you say they—all of the Green Hairs—will own their own factories and workshops and still most of them will go to work for some of them? Its all quite confusing.” He was still mumbling as he was led out the door.

And so you see. Oh Illustrious King, that the Vespuccians, regardless of the colour of their hair and regardless of the animosities between the Green Hairs and the Normal Hairs, did have a common belief in the meaning of freedom and equality. They understood that unless one could rise above his fellows, climb over the bodies that form the broad base on the bottom of the economic pyramid toward the narrow apex at the top, there can be no freedom. This was the basis of Vespuccian Ethics and Vespuccian Religion and Vespuccian Morality and Vespuccian Law, and it was written in a big book in the capital city of Dryington and interpreted, from time to time, by nine old Cadis.

H. Morrison.

The Politics of Hate (1959)

From the July 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger' Note:

A bit of context for this cartoon . . . especially as the language employed in the final panel is so jarring. In the printed edition of the July 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard, this cartoon — which may have been drawn by Alwyn Edgar — immediately followed the front page article, Race & Violence, which was about the recent 'race riots' in Notting Hill.

Not Just Festivals (2022)

Book Review from the July 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Afropean: Notes from Black Europe. By Johny Pitts. Penguin £10.99.

Pitts was born in Sheffield, to a white mother and black father, but he is not keen on the term ‘mixed race’, on the grounds that everyone is a mixture and there are no ‘pure’ races. Here he reports on a tour around some of Europe’s cities, Stockholm to Marseilles, Moscow to Lisbon, in search of ‘the banal humanity of everyday life’, rather than just street festivals and carnivals. Among other topics, he also discusses the history of Portuguese colonialism and the life and ideas of Frantz Fanon (for more information and background, see afropean.com and johnypitts.com).

In France many poor people, especially immigrants, have been shunted out to the suburbs, away from city centres. Pitts visited Clichy-sous-Bois, an area of Paris not served by trains or the Métro, and which is far worse than any deprived estate in Britain. For instance, the unemployment rate there is almost one-third, much higher than the national average. Some people live in dilapidated tower blocks where many of the windows have no glass in them. Second-generation black immigrants are angry as they are treated as foreigners, despite being taught to believe they are French.

The largest ethnic community in the Netherlands is Surinamese, the descendants of people brought by Dutch slave ships from West Africa to the north coast of South America. Many live on the Bijlmer estate near Amsterdam, where they squatted because few others wanted to live there. When black people complain about Dutch racism, some of the rest of society feel victimised, since the Netherlands is of course not a racist country.

Berliners pride themselves on living in a ‘super-open society’. But carnivals seemed to be more about young people having fun, while genuine resistance by black people had a more dangerous hue to it. The city does have an Afropean area, with lots of different kinds of restaurants and music.

There are many African and Asian students in Russia, carrying on a tradition from the USSR. But in Moscow they may be spat at or attacked, are reluctant to be seen out with white friends, and prefer to stay in at night. (As a girlfriend later reminds Pitts, solo female travellers generally also have to be careful where they go and to look out for unwanted attention.)

The worst behaviour that he encountered was from British men, such as stag-dos in Amsterdam and drunken football supporters on a train in the south of France (he was addressed as ‘Mr Afro-man’). His book provides a personal and depressing picture of the lives of so many black workers in Europe.

Paul Bennett

The Roots of Race Prejudice (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is all too easy to discover examples of man clinging passionately to ideas which have no basis in fact. One of the most widespread of these ideas at the moment is racial prejudice, a term which conceals a multitude of aberrations all of them based on the notion that some people, in some way, are innately inferior to others.

This comes in different forms at different times. Before the war, when the Nazis were at their work, it took the form of intense anti-Semitism. This was then one of the most prevalent types of racial prejudice, and it was fearfully simple. The Nazis decided that the Jews were less than human and were, therefore, proper subjects for bestial experiments and finally mass extermination. Himmler, for example, put it like this to a gathering of his S.S. generals at Posen in 1943:

Anti-Semitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology, it a matter of cleanliness. In just this same way anti-Semitism for us has not been a question of ideology but a matter of cleanliness.

No evidence worthy of the name was ever produced to support statements like that, any more than any was ever produced to support their corollary, that there was an innately superior type of person—a fair haired, blue eyed so-called Aryan—who was destined to rule the world. (Only one or two of the top Nazi leaders bore the faintest resemblance to their own idea of racial perfection:) But the gas chambers did not need evidence and rational thought to feed them; they lived on the evil fruits of barbarous prejudices.

In the same way, there is no proper evidence to support the racial theory which is now most prevalent—colour prejudice. Not so long ago, people in this country thought that violent colour discrimination was confined to places like South Africa and the United States, and could not happen here. The influx of coloured immigrants over the past twelve years or so, working its own type of aggravation on the problems of housing, employment and so on, has shown how false was this comfortable notion.

This is not to say that Smethwick is the same as, or indeed anything like, Selma. Nowhere in this country is there a tradition of militancy to compare with that of the American South. People in, for example, Alabama and Mississippi assert their prejudices in defiance of the law, yet they escape the law’s reprisals, which is something yet to happen in Great Britain. The conspiracy in the South is to all intents and purposes complete; it often includes the very people who are supposed to enforce the law. It includes the sheriffs and their deputies and the legal officers of the states.

In a letter to The Guardian of April 14th, 1960, a Judge Jones of Burke County, Georgia, revealed his thinking on the colour question:

Freely admitting that the number of our Negro voters is relatively small, we believe that this is due to the ignorance and indifference of the Negroes themselves rather than to any present policy of disfranchisement. 

Judge Jones described himself as “a friend sympathetic to the Negroes ”: it would be interesting to know whether he now thought the obstacles put in the way of the Negroes who tried to register to vote in Selma amount to a “ policy of disfranchisement ” or not.

In any case, it is this sort of stonewalling which helps to keep the Negroes deprived of their vote, their chance of employment on equal terms with the whites, the legal right to eat, or ride a bus. alongside a white person. And in the end, if the Negro refuses to accept an inferior social status, it sometimes deprives him of his life.

It is as well to say a word here about the laws, such as the Civil Rights Bill, which the Southerners defy. Many people think that these laws were inspired by humane motives. In fact, they were passed because American capitalism needs them. One of capitalism’s achievements was to make labour power free to move from one place of employment to another, as the prospects of profit require. But the archaic prejudices which are responsible for the Confederate flag being still flown above the Capital in Montgomery, Alabama want to enslave, and therefore restrict the freedom of, the labour power which is in coloured bodies.

Capitalism’s interests demand that it should not be concerned about skin colour; it wants to exploit all its workers at maximum intensity. At the same time, capitalism hates waste which depletes its profits—and having things like transport systems, hospitals and living areas divided into white and coloured is mightily wasteful. The Civil Rights, laws are designed to eliminate, or at least to lessen, all of this and to open up further fields of exploitation for American capitalism.

When the Southern racists defy United States law, then, they are ignoring the needs of the very social system they so ardently support. But capitalism is a ruthless system; it will not be denied by a crackpot minority who cling to the nostalgias of the Civil War and to the divisive theories of the Confederacy. It seems certain that the Klansmen will be forced into a sullen acceptance of integration. The Negroes will have the vote, and the other rights for which they are now demonstrating. But will they also develop their own delusions and prejudices, and at election times support, with the votes so clearly won, the system which exploits and degrades them? If they do, somebody is sure to call this progress.

Before that happens there is a long, hard road of brutality to be travelled. The Southern rebels are representing ideas sprung from the roots of an earlier social system, and such attitudes do not die easily. They will not quickly abandon their prejudices, especially as long as they can assert them in violence. (There is a chilling echo of Himmler’s words in this extract from Ku-Klux-Klan literature which was circulating in Mississippi last Summer: “Race mixing is more criminal than murder.”) 

The demonstrations, also, will continue; the Civil Rights workers have shown that they are not easily broken. These workers are doubtless confused, not to say ignorant, on many issues; they are certainly not Socialists; the end of their campaign will at best deliver the Negro from one type of suppression into another. It is easy enough to write this, in comfortable London. But it does not obscure the impressive courage of many of the Civil Rights workers—of the three young men who were murdered in Philadelphia, Miss., nor of those who were killed in the Selma marches, nor of the many others who have suffered in the Negro cause.

Compared to these people, the white racists are a poor lot. The novels of James Baldwin make the point that those who erect racial prejudices are themselves lowered by it. The many people who endured the concentration camps, and kept their dignity, were infinitely more mature and complete human beings than the insane brutes who tormented them.

The one hope in this is to be found in examining the reasons for racial prejudices. Capitalism rests upon the ignorance and the apathy of its people. It requires only a few to be sensitive and learned; the mass are expected and encouraged to absorb only as much knowledge as will fit them into their place in the routine of exploitation. Capitalism promotes a ruthless competitive urge, and all manner of conceits, It instils nationalism into the working class, and it sets its own example by living out its disputes in violence. Periodically, capitalism glorifies brutality—it makes heroes of military murderers, it ennobles the men who organise the mass killings of wartime.

In this situation, one type of ignorance begets another even one like racial prejudice, which capitalism generally finds a nuisance. But popular ignorance has its own momentum. The most recent example of this is the way in which the Labour Party has been forced to pander to electoral realities by imposing even stricter immigration controls than the Conservatives did. (It was, after all, Labour voters who changed their votes in Smethwick, on the issue of immigration control.) This has been done despite the bitter attacks which the Labour Party made on the original controls, and despite the fact that Mr. Wilson is still strongly condemning racial discrimination:

. . . we have a duty at home to show our deep loathing and to condemn by our words, and to outlaw by our deeds, racial intolerance, colour prejudice, anti-Semitism . . .

Those words were spoken at last November’s Lord Mayor’s banquet. Perhaps everybody there was too full of over-ripe pheasant to reflect that Mr. Wilson, like the other political leaders of capitalism, is after the votes of workers who are politically ignorant, and who are therefore easy prey to any rabble-rousing race maniac Mr. Wilson wants the support of people who, although they react against problems like bad

housing, unemployment, inadequate hospitals, have not the first idea of how to abolish them—and who cannot hope for enlightenment from Mr. Wilson's party. They are, therefore, liable to blame such problems onto anything or anybody. At the moment, many British workers are inclined to blame the influx of foreign, and especially coloured, immigrants. This, in its way, is no more foolish than the Labour Government blaming the financial crises of British captalism onto foreign financiers.

The roots of racial intolerance are now stirring in this country, and it is disturbing to reflect that they may yet blossom into the same sort of malignant growth as disfigured pre-war Germany, and which went on to transform the greater part of Europe into a paradise for sadistic thugs. Racial theories divide the working class and set them against each other. They deny the unity of workers’ interests, which overrides all barriers of nation, skin colour, language, and which joins all workers everywhere in the need for Socialism.

In some ways, the human race now resembles a blind, wounded beast, picking its way over a wilderness of smouldering ignorance. But human beings have eyes to see, and they are whole. There is massive hope in those who hang on and work for enlightenment, for the day when man ceases to wander like a tormented beast and starts to live like a man.

Ivan.

Smoulderings in Southall (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

“I used to drink at the Eight Bells but I gave it up when the Wogs started going there.” The sentiments were depressingly popular, the accent pure County Limerick—two facts which in Southall tell their own story.

For a long time, immigrants of one sort or another have trekked to this drab wedge of suburbia on the far west limb of London. Now established, their accents often flattened out, some of them speak bitterly of the Indians and Pakistanis who have travelled to Southall for the same reasons as they did.

A lot of people here came up from the West Country and Wales between the wars, driven by the slump to seek work in the factories which were attaching themselves to the Great Western Railway line like genes to a chromosome. The Irish too have come, in a slow, persistent stream.

There were few, if any, coloured immigrants until the middle fifties. Then some came to work in a rubber factory, whose hard and unpleasant work made it difficult to compete for labour with other firms. Vacancies in local industry increased the first brown trickle into a flood. Now the Indians and Pakistanis almost monopolise some districts in Southall.

So far there have been no open clashes— nothing to put Southall into the headlines. The local Teds did manage a feeble demonstration outside the rubber factory at the time of Notting Hill but this was easily dispersed. A Sikh temple has been defaced more than once. But on the whole the Southall population has settled into a brooding resentment. Only occasionally are there small eruptions.

There was one of these over education, when parents protested that their children’s schooling was being held up by the presence of immigrant children who could not speak English. Sir Edward Boyle, who was then Minister of Education, came down and smoothed the incident over.

There are continual complaints about the immigrants’ behaviour. Some of these seem to be justified; some are due to a misunderstanding of different social habits and some to downright malice. There are the usual grisly rumours—the Asians make a curry of the local cats, they throw all their rubbish into the garden next door.

Southall’s housing problem is no worse than any of its neighbours. It has no abject slums like Notting Hill or the Black Country. Perhaps the worst it offers are seedy Victorian terraces and tawdry, featureless council estates. The immigrants have therefore moved into, for them, comparatively genteel areas, some of which are inhabited by owner occupiers who worry about a “fall in the value of property” when coloured people move into their street.

Some of these owner-occupiers, not tied to the district by being a council tenant, have moved out of Southall into the similar wastelands of nearby Greenford or Hounslow. Some have gone farther afield, to the new estates which have sprung up in places like Reading and Camberley. Others have gone farther still, emigrating to Australia, whose official bar on coloured immigration they regard as sensible and progressive. It was one of these who explained on his application to emigrate that he wanted to go to Australia “because there are too many niggers in my street ”.

Beneath Southalls’ surface calm, then, potential violence smoulders on. The local branch of the British National Party blows hard on the embers; their propaganda is exceedingly crude but they got nearly three and a half thousand votes in the general election. Last October the Tories played the immigration issue comparatively cool; Labour hung on for dear life and George Pargiter came out with a reduced, now marginal, majority. That may be a clue to a grim future. If the Conservatives decide to plug a Smethwick line in Southall, they could start something which they do not know how to stop.

Some local organisations are doing their best to keep the fires damped down. There is the Indian Workers’ Association which, now that the Labour Government has announced its new tough line on immigration, may be questioning the wisdom of its support for Pargiter last October. There are other organisations which run well intentioned multi-racial outings, meant to prove that we are all brothers under our skins. These organisations are touching only the fringes of the problem; if racial trouble ever became really hot in Southall they would be consumed in the flames with the rest.

Southall is not a pleasant place. It has an ugly industrial sprawl, acres of cramped houses, cheapjack shops and supermarkets. It is near enough to London Airport to have the big jets often screaming over the rooftops. In many ways life here is hard, and it has bred hard working class attitudes, stifling restrictions and anomalies, formidable prejudices. This is an inflammable place and next time, perhaps, there will be the fire.

Ivan (Southall).

Black and white in Brixton (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is surprising how little we sometimes know about what goes on just down the road where we live. Capitalism, with its jungle law of every man for himself, tends to make social relationships impersonal and, even in overcrowded cities, to make people live in isolation. Unless there is an outbreak of violence the coloured people are left to go their own way. Although they live among us, they keep very much to themselves; they are not absorbed.

In the Borough of Lambeth (before GLC) the population at the last census was 223,763. There is no separate figure for immigrants but the Borough is estimated to have between ten and fifteen thousand coloured people. There has not been so much open hostility in Brixton as in some other areas, although many of the first immigrants came here, mainly to Somerleyton and Geneva Roads. It was here in the late 1940’s that the fascists started anti-coloured activities, which included the usual horror stories about the appalling conditions coloured people lived in. The fact that most of the places were slums long before any coloured man saw them didn’t matter, the insanitary and overcrowded conditions were easily blamed on to the immigrants.

Since those days, more coloured people have arrived and have slowly fanned out into neighbouring roads; most back streets in Brixton now have coloured families. Most of the housing is low standard but conforms to what the “white” working class have accepted for many years. In some of these roads, including Somerleyton and Geneva, the slums are as squalid as any in London. In conditions like these it is very difficult not to sink into despair and to lose the urge to struggle on. Perhaps the worst aspect of the situation is the resigned acceptance of it by its victims.

In a typical house in Geneva Road, one woman pays £5 5s. 0d. for two or three rooms; another pays £3 for one room. Electrical consumer durables have not made much headway in this district; a pile of washing goes from one plastic bowl to another and is “spun” dry by hand. A dozen or so coloured workers interviewed all said they were satisfied with their housing condition. There were the usual moans about money matters, but no apparent desire to do other than keep plodding.

Asked if they had been victims of prejudice because of their colour their answers were mainly negative. There had been cases of people sitting away from them on trains and buses but no trouble with neighbours and in the local pubs they mixed quite well.

Politics was a subject that brought frowns all round. Both Tory and Labour party met with equal indifference—alas, not the indifference of enlightened rejection.

Trade Unions were joined if they went with the job, which did not seem often. All in all, these coloured workers had attitudes which are pretty common among their “white” counterparts, and the added disadvantage that they lack the traditions and experience of working-class organisation. On the other side of the picture, if there are twenty people studying in the local library’s reference room, six at least will be coloured.

In Somerleyton Road, there is a huge wooden hut which stands on a bomb site. It is painted bright pink and is used as a church. From the doorway the ranting of the preacher can be heard ringing out in old revivalist style, while about 25 men, women and children listen unenthusiastically. A few minutes’ walk from this place, in a dilapidated basement of a house in Effia Road, there is another church. Their saviour here must be a jazz enthusiast—the singing is lead by a tambourine and has a distinct blues flavour. Prayer meetings are held on a street corner during the warm weather. It seems that in Brixton the coloured workers' preparations for the next life are well in hand, even if this one leaves a lot to be desired.

Harry Baldwin (Brixton).

Ashley Montagu quotes (1965)

From the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Race” Mixing

Those who deliver themselves of unfavorable judgments concerning “race crossing” are merely expressing their prejudices. . . . The truth seems to be that far from being deleterious to the resulting off-spring and the generations following them, interbreeding between different ethnic groups is from the biological and every other standpoint highly advantageous to mankind.. . . Indeed, if there were any truth in the suggestion that hybridization results in degeneration or decadence man should have died out long ago or else sunk to the level of a deformed idiot, for he is one of the most highly hybridized creatures on earth.

From “Man's Most Dangerous Myth” (Ashley Montagu).

“Race” and “Blood”

Scientists have for many years attempted to discover whether or not any differences exist in the blood of different peoples, but the results of such investigations have always been the same—no difference has been discovered, except in the statistical distribution of the traits which all human beings possess in common. In short, it cannot be too emphatically or too often repeated that in every respect the blood of all human groups is the same, varying only in the frequency with which certain of its chemical components are encountered in different populations. This similarity cuts across all lines of caste, class, group, nation, and ethnic group.

From “Man's Most Dangerous Myth” (Ashley Montagu).

The Passing Show: The Blame Game (1965)

The Passing Show Column from the June 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The ignorant will blame anyone or anything for a problem, without any worthwhile evidence. He will blame the weather for his corns and the moon for his madness. and the “blacks” for just about every social evil afflicting us today. The "blacks” have taken the place of the Jews. Irish and Welsh as a focus of the bigot's vehemence and hatred when he tries to account for problems which one government after another has failed to solve. At sometime or another in the past few years I have heard coloured workers blamed for: unemployment, bad housing, low wages, sexual depravity and very recently for the worsening traffic problem. Yes, one workmate even chucked that one into the pot for good measure.

The other scapegoat minorities of former days must be sighing with relief that for a change it is not their backs that are being beaten, but if the racialist ever gets through with hating coloured workers, we may be sure that some other minority will be in for it. The fascist-minded worker — let us not mince our words — clings to these spurious ideas from a twofold purpose. First of all, he can dismiss any social evil with a wave of his mental hand, by blaming the selected scapegoat. To blame is easy; it avoids the tedious job of hard thinking. Then again, spleen and anger are handy ways of working off the frustration which life under capitalism causes him, but which he has no idea how to tackle. To rant, snarl and blame are his stock-in-trade, to scratch under the surface and try to explain — never.

But how many outwardly calm and reasonable people fall for this sort of stuff? A good many I should say, if Smethwick is anything to go by, although perhaps they would shy off supporting an avowedly fascist party. The man who blamed darkies for the traffic congestion was one such as this. A very even- tempered, quietly spoken, even reticent chap, likeable in a dull and uninteresting way, but harbouring the same sort of misconception about capitalism’s problems as any fanatical hot-gospeller of race hatred.

It is anyway the same basic attitude—see a problem—think up a theory—and then try and make the facts fit it. Such is the stuff on which fanaticism and bigotry thrive. All capitalist politicians use this method to some extent at some time or another. The tragedy is that it goes down so well with the average audience.

Gaspers

 

"Give generously . . . He did" — Churchill Memorial Fund Slogan.

“The Minister for Economic Affairs drove home his point — that Labour wanted to create a Britain for which non-Socialists could be persuaded to vote"

(Guardian report 3.5.65).

“I will never so long as I am Minister of Defence be a party to putting British. soldiers, sailors and airmen into action without the tools of their job.” (Denis Healey, 2.5.65.)

“An incomes policy is part of the price we ought to be willing to pay to ensure that men and women are kept at work." (James Callaghan—Chancellor of the Exchequer. 2.5.65.)

Eddie Critchfield