Would You Die For Them ? (1975)

From the April 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

So runs the caption on a full page advertisement of the Ministry of Defence in the national dailies.

Above the banner headlines are a series of illustrations. A ballot box (the right to vote), a cartoon (the right to lampoon the government), hands in prayer (the right to worship), the figure of the Old Bailey (the right to justice), a group of strikers (the right to strike), and yes! unmistakably the platform of the SPGB (carefully taken from the back to obscure the name on the front) with one of the Party’s best-known speakers in full flight on the box (the right to speak your mind) in Hyde Park. Who or what the “them” you are asked if you will die for is not very clear — the “rights”, the strikers or the SPGB speaker’s (although at face value it would appear to be the speaker’s).

First let us repeat as explicitly, categorically, as plain as can be, what we said consistently when the last war was on.

Anybody who has, without asking first, foolishly undertaken or elected to “fight” for us has our official written permission herewith to stop now.

We have never asked, nor ever invited anybody, any political party, group or even individual, to “fight for us”. Reference to our Declaration of Principles will verify that we are hostile to every other political party, including the Labour Party responsible for these ridiculous recruiting advertisements.

During the last war, when our platform was the only one in Hyde Park, on September 3rd 1939, we proclaimed:

Don’t die for capitalism, live to fight Socialism.

It appears that Mr. Roy Mason, the Labour Party’s chief warmonger, is anxious to recruit young army- officer cadets for Sandhurst. (What has happened to the Labour Party’s tripe about equal educational opportunity for all?) Who will be “reasonable, good humoured and brave [because] it is perilous to be a member of a peace-loving force”? On this comical line of reasoning it might be better to form one of the old fashioned war-making armies if (vide the Minister of Defence) “peace keeping” is so perilous.

“How would you feel if you were handed a voting paper with just one name on it?” he asks. Just like we do now when we are given two and a quarter minutes on the BBC to state our case.

“What would you say if your dad was bundled into a truck and sent to a labour camp in some remote part of Europe?” he whines. About the same as people in Northern Ireland, or Brixton probably.

Would you risk your life to stop one of the poets being sent to an asylum for “knocking the system”? he wants to know.

There is something fishy here.

1. Become an army officer to be a member of a peace-keeping force.
2. Risk your life for the “basic human rights” you could be asked to fight for.

How can you get killed in a fight — if it’s not war — but peace?

One thing has got to be made clear, whatever goes on in Russia. East Germany, Cuba or China has the tacit consent of a majority. In all industrial countries, where workers are the majority, they have the potential should they wish, to make constitutional changes.

It suits the capitalists of the industrial countries to run a system of parliamentary democracy. In modern times, this is the most efficient, cheapest form of capitalist administration. Dictatorships are extremely destructive and wasteful.

Democracy assures deluded working-class support. The very tone of these advertisements, and the militaristic propaganda of the Labour Party is itself evidence that the support of the working class is required against Russian capitalism.

It seems more honest 

says the advert

than showing pictures of cheery young men water-skiing or tinkering with advanced electronics to stress the dangers.

So the previous army advertisements were admittedly “less honest”! We are glad the Minister of Defence has emphasized his honesty; otherwise we could have been tempted to think that the whole lot of it was a blatant outrageous perversion of the truth, which is that the Socialist Party propagate the establishment of Socialism by democratic, non-violent methods.

Let no-one be under any misapprehension, the SPGB in peace or war-time will denounce and expose the bloody crime of capitalism called war which is fought to increase profits and guard possessions.

It has as much to do with basic "civil rights” as a sewing machine with fried eggs. It’s almost like joining the Bookmakers’ Protection Society to stop betting. As for using photographs of our speakers on our platform to recruit army officers most readers will more likely die laughing than fighting.

Horatio.

Mason’s ‘Marxists’ (1979)

From the July 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

13th March 1979

Dear Mr. Mason,

My attention has been drawn to the fact that in the Panorama programme on 12th February 1979 you made the statement that the Provisional IRA are ‘Marxist based’.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is opposed to all other political organisations, including the IRA, and would claim to be Marxist based. However, we are also opposed to violence as a political means, and take the view that a transformation to a socialist system of society can be made only by democratic means, when a majority sees the need for it and is prepared to run such a society. We are prepared to defend this position in public debate, and find it regrettable that you should have made the erroneous statement which you did, at a time when our comrades in our Irish companion party are doing all they can to dissociate themselves from the terrorism and senseless violence which are the stock-in-trade of the IRA.

I am therefore writing to challenge you to a public debate on these issues with a member of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, at a time and place to be agreed. I am sure you would not wish to evade the responsibility you incur in making statements of the kind you did in the programme in question.

Bill Valinas 

(General Secretary)

Reply:

29 March 1979

Dear Mr. Valinas,

Thank you for your letter of 13 March to the Secretary of State (your reference 76/10/2.4). Mr. Mason has asked me to reply on his behalf.

Mr. Mason notes that you object to a remark made in a recent Panorama programme to the effect that the Provisional IRA was ‘Marxist based'. He is sorry that you are concerned about this but he would not agree that this description is either inaccurate or other than fair comment. The Provisional Movement’s own newspapers frequently attempt to describe the violent campaign in Northern Ireland in terms of a Marxist class struggle. And remarks in a sense similar to his own have also appeared in print in England. To take only one example, Mr. Jeremy Paxman, writing in The Listener of 15 December 1977, said:

  “Although the Provisionals were founded by military-minded veterans of previous IRA campaigns they now include in their ranks a growing corps of battle-hardened young men who owe their allegiance as much to Marx as to the traditional concept of a united Ireland. Tensions between the two groups are strong, but they are united in a belief in the legitimacy of violence.”

I have also been asked to say that Mr. Mason entirely accepts the statement in your letter that both the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion party in Ireland are committed to the democratic transformation of society to a socialist system; and that both parties have been outspoken in their condemnation of terrorism such as that perpetrated by the Provisional IRA. In describing the Provisionals as ‘Marxist based’ it was never his intention to suggest that other Marxist based parties necessarily supported their aims or methods, and he does not believe that his remark would have been generally understood in that sense.

J G Pilling

Reply:

If an organisation calling itself the Society for the Elimination of Suffering consistently advanced a policy of genocide, no doubt Mr. Mason would feel justified in describing it as humanitarian. Where is his evidence that the IRA adheres to the theoretical system of Karl Marx? Apparently, it is that ‘if the Provisionals and the BBC says so, it must be true'. So much for political argument.

Editorial Committee

Blogger's Note:

See also April 1979 Socialist Standard, Belfast Diary: Mason's 'Marxists' .

Labour's role in Northern Ireland (1979)

From the February 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Immigrant Irish workers played no small part in the formation of the British Labour Party in 1906. Labour was hope; hope for the future in the land of their adoption; hope, too, for their loved ones, back on the 'oul sod'. Was not Labour a party of principle? Did not its spokesmen, especially when canvassing the ‘Irish vote’, speak emotionally of the ‘ancient wrongs’ and promise ‘freedom and friendship’ to Ireland?

In the years since 1906, the Labour Party has become a political obscenity that has jettisoned all the lofty principles that attended its birth. Those ‘principles’, begotten of ignorance of the nature of capitalism and the crassest political opportunism, have failed to fight even a rear guard action against the forces Labour claimed it could overwhelm and vanquish. Ironically, the excuses for Labour’s failures, for its total abandonment of principle, are logical only in terms of its continued existence; given its basic premise—that capitalism can operate in the interests of its exploited class—adherence to principle would have cost it its life.

To use the parlance of capitalism, there is no crime against the workers that Labour has not committed; indeed, because of its unholy alliance with the unions, it has often proved a more successful instrument against working class interests than have the Tories. Strike-breaking, racism, assaults on working-class living standards, propping up foreign dictatorships, military murder of defenceless peoples, nuclear weapon proliferation, presiding over poverty, homelessness and unemployment and taking active steps in the interests of the propertied class to extend these miseries. These are some of the crimes of the British Labour Party.

This is the other face of Callaghan, the plump, stooping ‘father figure', the disgusting paragon of capitalist respectability who pokes gentle jibes at his stage-managed counterpart on the ‘opposition’ benches to the accompaniment of the moronic caterwauling of ‘the House’.

That the Tories are even worse that Labour appears to be the prevailing attitude among the ‘Irish Vote’ in Britain and of the majority of workers in Ireland. No intelligent defence of Labour is offered but, ‘on the Irish Question . . .’ a more sympathetic understanding from the Labour Party than from the Tories is expected. After all, did not the Tories, callously exploit the ‘Irish Question’ and the ‘Orange Card’ to suit their political fortunes? Are they not the true architects of the situation now being paid for with working class lives in Ireland? Might they not, if they came to power, give the governorship role to the dreaded Airey Neave whose ignorant vapourings and sanguine aspirations threaten the Province with lakes of blood? On the other hand, didn’t Harold and Jim and many of their political ilk make speeches and write books acknowledging Britain’s part in the Irish tragedy and holding out the promise of unity and reconciliation?

Contrary to its alleged principles, however, Labour has over the last ten years used the full measure of its governmental authority to enact viciously repressive legislation. aimed at the most impoverished section of the working class in Northern Ireland. It has filled the jails with people who have ‘confessed’ to State torturers, allowed sporting military gentlemen to bludgeon or kill without fear of legal constraint and, finally, set in train the armament of the majority side in the conflict.

After Belsen, Dresden. Hiroshima, Vietnam and all the other horrors of capitalism it is a contemptuous hypocrisy on the part of those who accept this system to condemn the Provisional IRA for using violence. Indeed, were it not so disgusting, the sight of Roy Mason, Labour’s Gauleiter in Northern Ireland, condemning the viciousness of the IRA, would be comic. Mason’s last job was associated with preparations for the destruction of life and property with weapons that make those of the IRA look like toys.

Mason and his fraternity respond to criticism of military murder, torture and violence against the person by the forces of State thuggery, with the argument that those concerned or appalled by such practices are giving aid and comfort to terrorists. It was an argument used by some of those who were charged at Nuremberg in 1946 with ‘crimes against humanity’.

Throughout all its periods of office, the Labour Party countenanced, assisted and, in 1949, reinforced the despotic authority of Ulster Unionism. Only in 1968, when British capitalism’s investment in Northern Ireland was placed in jeopardy and the stench of events here was getting a bit much for the sensitive political nostrils of the ‘free world’, did British Labour act.

It sent in the British Army, literally to hold the fort against the downtrodden who, in a backlash of anger, threatened the future of the politicians with whom Labour had always had ‘amicable’ relations. After the Army, Callaghan, the ‘Irish expert’ arrived and offered the populace his wisdom and expertise: everybody should stop fighting because we were really such a marvellous people and, besides, we knew it made sense!

Subsequently, through Labour pressure to create the illusion of change, the guns were temporarily removed from the largely politically-Protestant police force and the exclusively Protestant ‘B‘ Specials were disbanded. But Ulster Unionism was going to be defended by a fitter and more efficient groups of gunslingers; Callaghan announced the establishment of a new, locally based and recruited. regiment to be known as the Ulster Defence Regiment and, also, established a reserve for the infamous Royal Ulster Constabulary. Both—one by association and the other in its choice of name and intention—were immediately anathema to the non-unionist population and, predictably, became almost exclusively Protestant in their membership. It did not require the ‘expertise’ of a Callaghan to appreciate that this would happen, nor to realise that, in the political climate of the times, both organisations would attract the type of recruits that would distinguish themselves in the practice of bigotry—and worse.

Labour was, of course, only doing what is required of those who offer their services to capitalism. But even with their considerable experience of slopping up capitalism’s messes, the task of backing up the oldest of Europe’s repressive regimes could hardly have been conducive to untroubled sleep. True, Labour only laid the foundations of the new phase of Irish troubles before they were kicked out of office in 1970. The Tories, who replaced them, allowed murder and torture and. finally, took over the management of the whole show. In many respects the thuggery of the Tories was carried on with a little less hypocrisy than Labour had shown, and certainly Whitelaw seemed to enjoy the function of Gauleiter less than the present Labour incumbent.

The Labour Party’s ‘conscience’ must be a very sick joke, to those members of the working class in Northern Ireland who find themselves interned, beaten senseless or made to ‘confess’ to murder or other terrorist offences. Or to those who have their homes broken up and their relatives arrested for hours or days, TWO OR THREE TIMES EVERY WEEK, and even summarily executed by ‘‘security forces” whose assertion that their victims were ‘gunmen’ often proves so untenable that the State eventually pays ‘conscience’ money to the next-of-kin— even if it never manages to identify and punish the murderers.

Richard Montague (Belfast)

Belfast Diary: Mason's 'Marxists' (1979)

From the April 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

In some parts of Northern Ireland, especially those areas that have suffered the full savagery of State violence, the graffiti on the walls refers to Roy Mason, Labour's Provincial Gauleiter, as ‘The Mad Midget’.

We, of course, are concerned with the man’s mental stature and, while his crass ignorance and symptoms of personal power mania must cause many in the Province to share our concern, his recent utterings, if we allow that they are presented with more honesty than is usual, certainly do bring into question the validity of the graffiti writers’ adjective.

It was during a television interview in December last: Little Mason was spluttering out personal pronouns relative to his winning his war against the Provisional IRA. Everyone in Ireland who did not agree with him was wrong; a full package of civil rights was now being enjoyed by everyone in the Province (!); he was prepared to allow devolution . . .

It was Mason’s usual vapourings, consequential only in so far as they sometimes provoke a death-dealing response from his opposites in violence, the Provos. This time, however, having exhausted his reserves of standard condemnations of the IRA, Mason delivered the ultimate castigation—the Provisional IRA are ‘Marxist based’.

Ironically, Mason was merely repeating what we had already heard a few weeks earlier from another exponent of State thuggery, the Prime Minister of South Africa.

Now, if our imagination stretches to the possibility of Mason’s knowledge qualifying him to make such an assertion, we, as Marxists, would claim the right of reply. Since the etiquette of debate proscribes the assumption of lunacy in our opponent, we must claim that Mason’s statement is a contemptible lie. Unlike him however, we arc prepared to substantiate our claim and, indeed, provide him with a forum if he has the courage to accept our challenge.

The political objective of the IRA is to set up an independent state in Ireland administered by a federal government drawn from the representatives of the four provinces in the country, each of which would have its own assembly with legislative authority in respect of matters affecting it. The system of economic organisation would be capitalism (and it could not be otherwise), though the Republicans envisage large scale nationalisation and cooperatives—and, like Mason’s Labour Party, imagine that this has something to do with socialism. In victory, the Provos would have their own State  institutions with, doubtless, someone like Mason to use the full vigour of State violence to stamp out any manifestations of militant discontent that might arise from the continuation of capitalism’s miseries.

In fact, in matters of political and economic doctrine, there is only a difference of emphasis between the proclaimed policies of the Provisional IRA and the British Labour  Party. Even on the question of means, there is a basic similarity between the Labour Party as a British Administration in Ireland, and the Provos; both subscribe to violence. In the case of the Provos, this is to win, and in the case of Mason’s administration to retain, power undemocratically.

We in the world socialist movement base our political and economic philosophy on the writings and teachings of Marx and the implications of those teachings in twentieth century capitalism. Marx discovered the laws of motion of human society and formalised these in the Materialist Conception of History; he showed the beginnings and development of class conflict and the role it would play in the future development of society; he dissected the nature of commodity production and demonstrated that, as long as the wages/money system continues to exist, there will be an enslaved class condemned to want, or dire misery.

Marx amply demonstrated that among the hallmarks of capitalism is the existence of a working class divorced from ownership of, and control over, their means of life; a class obliged to sell their mental or physical abilities for a wage or salary. The amount of wages, existing or achievable, were not his direct concern: he was concerned with the fact of wage slavery and not the temporary condition of the slave—thus, his advice to workers, in opposition to the ignorance conjured up in the slogan ‘A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work’ was to inscribe on their banner ‘Abolition of the wages system!’

This entails the conscious and democratic establishment of a world-wide system of common ownership and production for use. in which all humankind would have free and equal access to the bountiful potential of the earth. It entails a world free from capitalism’s wages/money system; a world where the material basis for conflict and violence could not exist; a free, frontierless world where the complex and despotic government of people will give way to the simple administration of things.

Abolition of the wages system! That’s what Marxism is about! That simple, straightforward statement of aims, exposes Mason and his political ilk for the liars, or fools, they so obviously are.

Richard Montague (Belfast)

World Socialist Party of Ireland