The Jews and Racial Purity (1935)

From the September 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the past month there has been another orgiastic outbreak of Jew-baiting in Germany; and a Manchester slum child has received front-page publicity for a childish essay maintaining that “England is the best country in the world." Is there any connection between these two facts, the one so brutal, the other so smugly conventional? Decidedly. The members of the National Government have, in their well-bred, take-it-for-granted, true-blue-British way, been comfortably preening themselves on an unchallengeable “racial superiority," just as confidently, and just as unwarrantably, as have their crudely blustering Nazional fellows in Germany. 

Superstitions on the subject of race, of racial differences and superiorities, are so rife even today that we can well afford to examine the subject.

In its usual everyday acceptance the term “race" is loosely used to equate with “nationality." There is a widespread belief that there are inherent and immutable differences between “races" (meaning nationalities), and that one’s own is vastly preferable to all others.

Such beliefs are amply demonstrated in anti-Semitic movements, in the position of negroes in the U.S.A., in the Australian Yellow-Peril phobia, in the “colour problem" generally. The growth and consolidation of the British Empire has particularly fostered these theories in every quarter of the world—always, of course, in favour of the British “race." Shaw speaks ironically of “England’s legitimate conquests, given to her by God because of her peculiar fitness to rule over less favoured races for their own good," but there are large numbers of people who hold that view in all seriousness.

Such beliefs are dangerously reactionary. They very conveniently serve to conceal, to justify, or to help intensify the exploitation of one section of the world by another. They represent, however, a slapdash, rule-of-thumb sociology which is by no means founded on fact.

Properly speaking, the word “race" is used for a purely physical, scientific classification of human beings, just as horses or dogs are classified. A race, anthropologically, is “a group of people possessing similar physical characteristics." The primary determining factors are the shape of the head, the height and the colour of the skin, all three being taken into consideration. Mankind is divisible, on these lines, into three races: the fair, the dark, the yellow. Each can be further sub-divided, but for the purpose of this article the sub-divisions of the fair race are all that need be noted; they are Alpine (short, dark, round-headed), Mediterranean (short, dark, long-headed), and Nordic (tall, fair, long-headed). But, in the world to-day, practically no pure races exist.

Only two remote sections of humanity, the Eskimos and the Pigmies, have any real claim to racial purity, and they are dying out. All the rest of the world is racially thoroughly mixed, and only in occasional, isolated, individual cases is a pure racial type to be found. Race overrides both national and linguistic frontiers; people of similar race speak entirely different languages and live in different countries, and, at the same time, people of divergent race speak the same language and live in the same country.

Many so-called races are nothing of the kind; for example, “Celtic" “Latin" and “Aryan" are all language divisions and by no means racial. Latin (or Romance) languages are spoken by people who differ widely from each other racially—Bretons and Roumanians, Spaniards and Walloons, for example. As for Aryan, not only is it not a racial division, but even as a language division it is no more than an assumption. There is a large group of languages called “Indo-Aryan" but the root derivation of them all has never been discovered. Hitler uses the word Aryan to describe a type which would correctly be called “Nordic"—but we may note that a very small minority of those speaking Aryan languages are of Nordic stock. Most Germans, for example, are of alpine type. So are the Jews, who are a religious and not a racial group. They are no more a race than are the Christians. Racially they are very mixed, but predominantly Alpine and Mediterranean, though with a fair admixture of Nordic stock. Only about thirty per cent. of the Jews have the so-called “Jewish nose"—which is actually a characteristic of the East Alpine group, irrespective of religion. From an anthropological point of view the Hitler doctrines and policy are comic to the point of absurdity; logically, to exclude all but the Nordics, he would have to dispense with some two-thirds of the population of Germany—while if he countenanced the Alpine stocks of which most Germans come, he would have to include most of the Jews, too. He is not, however, concerned with logic: an anti-Jew campaign helps to lessen the unemployment problem of non-Jews and distracts attention from other social problems; and foggy ideas about race foster the prejudices which encourage his campaigns.

The theory of inherent differences of temperament or outlook between racial groups is entirely baseless. It springs not from fact but from national prejudice. The only innate differences between races are the purely external physical ones of skin-colour, height and shape of head. These superficial distinctions have no influence whatever either upon temperament or intelligence. Intelligence is determined by quickness of sense perceptions, especially sight and hearing; it is conditioned—warped or encouraged—according to social environment. “Intelligence tests carried out in Australia and South Africa have shown that black children are not inferior in intelligence to white children. These results have caused some surprise, but there is no real reason why they should. Intelligence in children is the result of quick sight and good hearing. Every child born with good eyes and ears is born intelligent, though in most cases it is soon made stupid by disease, dull surroundings and dogmatic teaching. So-called racial differences, so far as our evidence goes, are merely differences in upbringing. Nationalism exists and thrives on the entirely false belief that these artificial, and often indeed non-existent, differences are innate and unalterable." (Lord Raglan, in the Listener, October 3rd, 1934.) The social circumstances, the sum total of manifold social influences, are what determine such differences as do exist between people of different nations.

But in class society the paramount social factor, overriding and often obliterating all others, is class. Class distinctions are stronger and more apparent than national or racial ones. There is an infinitely greater resemblance between two workers of different race, than between a worker and a capitalist of the same race. Except for the language barrier, a white miner and a yellow one would find far more in common with each other than either would with a mineowner of his own colour. It is easier to mistake a Pole for an Englishman or a Dane for a Frenchman, than to mistake Mr. Selfridge for a navvy or an archbishop for a 'bus conductor.

What are the uses of this race superstition? It both springs from and foments social prejudice: it assists political domination, that is, economic exploitation, as in India and Africa; it assists capitalist sections by encouraging jingoism and war-mongering, as in Abyssinia; above all, it is invaluable in obscuring the class issue: by setting up barriers of superstition and prejudice among them, it prevents the workers all over the world from realising their common cause. Actually, the world is divided into two opposing classes, buyers and sellers of labour power, whose interests cannot be reconciled under capitalism. But the race superstition makes it appear that there are numbers of “races" (corresponding with political divisions) whose characteristics and whose interests are fundamentally and inherently at variance. That is mere nonsense; but the capitalists would rather the workers' heads were filled with such nonsense than with sense about the class struggle and how to end it. This particular nonsense is a useful spur to patriotism when national sections of the capitalist class come into conflict, and want the workers to do the fighting for them.

There is only one way to end all this confusion of thought, this muddle of prejudices: remove the ignorance on which the exploiters trade. Do not allow the real nature of present-day society to be shrouded in these webs of misconception and falsification. By clearing away such fancies we lay bare the class issue which is the crux of the world problem. The workers must understand, plainly and unequivocally, that society to-day stands on a basis, not of nationality or of race, but of private ownership of the means of life; that it is organised not for “progress" or for "enlightenment," but simply and only for profit. The sooner the workers grasp these simple facts and their implications, the sooner will they sweep away the present organisation of society and all its superstitions, and bring into being a state of things organised to produce not for profit but only for use.

Not until the means of production are collectively owned and controlled by the whole community can class distinctions vanish. Not until then will the idea of race be wholly freed from these false associations that are bound to cling to it in capitalist society, which depends for its very existence on the exploitation of man by man.

Stella Stewart

Straws: Drifting Whither? (1935)

The Straws Column from the September 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

Drifting Whither?

Maxton’s deterioration goes on apace. For sheer sloppiness, the following (part of speech at recent I.L.P. Summer School, reported in New Leader, August 9th, 1935) would be hard to beat: “Those who best lead the people are those who most humbly watch the people, try to understand them, get . . .  into the real hearts of the people.”

Vote-Catchers’ Reward

He attributed the “tremendous success” of the I.L.P. to the fact that “it has never tried to set itself above the people.” ‘‘Tremendous success” in angling for votes from a politically inexperienced working class has not prevented the Party which claimed to ‘‘overwhelmingly” dominate the Labour Government of 1924 (see our "Questions of the Day,” page 36) from dwindling to an insignificant reformist rump of three M.P.s.

Socialism and Religion

Middleton Murry, high priest of the I.L.P. breakaway (“Independent Socialist Party”) shows his knowledge of Socialism by endorsing the opinion that ‘‘Long ago Socialists claimed that Socialism was a religion, a spiritual experience ” (Northern Voice, October, 1934). Readers are recommended to study our pamphlet “Socialism and Religion.”

Labour Party and Teachers

The London Teacher reminds its readers (July 12th, 1935) that Mr. Charles Latham, Labour chairman of the L.C.C. Finance Committee, and Mr. (Sir) Arthur Pugh, one time chairman of the Trade Union Congress, jointly signed a minority report “recommending an adjustment of teachers’ salaries in the neighbourhood of 12½ per cent.” This they did as members of the famous “May Committee,” which led to the formation of the “ National Government.”

Codlin and Short

The London Teacher's moral is: “Join the National Union of Teachers” (and to those in the know, “Let the rival men’s association, the National Association of Teachers, where members are pledged not to work under a woman 'head,’ alone ”). Codlin’s the friend, not Short.

Pedagogic Ice Cream

The Daily Herald, however (July 4th, 1935), reports: “Teacher turns ice cream vendor,” and quotes the vice-chairman of the “Supply Teachers’ Association” as stating that men, “some possessing honours degrees,” are “almost on the verge of starvation.” . . .  Said teachers urged to “bring pressure on the Board of Education” to introduce their “untrained” colleagues to the amenities of the ice cream barrow by incontinently firing them.

“Captains and Guides of the Democracy” (Rosebery)

Twenty-seven years ago, a young recruit to the S.P.G.B. wrote (Socialist Standard, June, 1906): “ The declared reason for the existence of the N.U.T. is the furtherance of the interests of the child. Is there not a danger that it may become the happy hunting ground of the eloquent Party-man in a hurry to round his own life into a success? ”

G.L.

“Labour will not sanction war in any circumstances” (George Lansbury at meeting in Wales, June 12th, 1935).

Southport Conference

Now perpend: “There might be circumstances under which the Government of Great Britain might have to use its military and naval forces in support of the League in restraining an aggressor nation . . . etc.” (Southport Labour Conference, Report, page 244).

Head and Tail

“Four legs and two voices.” Take your choice, which is the brute Caliban, and which the foolish Trinculo. Evasiveness produced the “It is necessary to define what is meant by war,” which appears also on page 224.


Soviet Testimonial

Lord Passfield (reported Daily Herald, August 4th, 1932) says: "Russian working class families . . . are better off than the lowest grade of our population." The erstwhile Mr. Sidney Webb opines that "the country is relatively prosperous." Now we know something definite about "building Socialism." One is reminded of the famous testimonial in "Alice in Wonderland":

"She gave me a good character,
But said I could not swim."

Augustus Snellgrove

The Present Condition of Italy (1935)

From the September 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

 This article, which we publish for the information of readers interested in the attitude of Italian workers towards their rulers, is taken from the Indian Labour Journal, July 28th, where it appeared under the title, “Through Italy." It was supplied by the International Transport Workers' Federation and was written by a former resident in Italy who recently had the opportunity of making a tour of investigation. For reasons of space it has been necessary to shorten the article. While offering it for information, we do not share the writer's point of view on all points.—Editorial Committee

Grotesque as it may sound, Italy is at present a Fascist state in which there are no longer any Fascists. This is the astounding result of the observations I have made during a tour of several weeks through the entire country, a tour which enabled me to come into touch with all classes of the population and to learn what their disposition was. Clear distinctions must be made between appearances and reality. As far as appearances go, the Fascist spirit is still trumps. Fascist uniforms and badges are still being worn, and the Roman salute is given. But I have found that people who are outwardly out-and-out Fascists confess, in confidential chats, to being the most downright anti-Fascists. That this is not due to a concatenation of coincidences but represents the general situation is shown by a saying now current in Italy, which runs as follows:

Three Italians together—three Fascists; two Italians together—two friends; one Italian alone— one anti-Fascist!

The estrangement from Fascism is equally marked in all classes of the population. Workers are anti- Fascists, the farmers are anti-Fascists, the middle-class people are anti-Fascists, the capitalists are anti-Fascists. Some are so because, besides taking away their liberty, Fascism has also robbed them of their scanty livings, others because they tremble to observe that Fascism is steering more and more towards an economic disaster. Those basing their judgment on appearances alone and not getting into closer touch with the people, will have no inkling of such a disposition of the people in Italy. Again and again tourists in Italy have recounted to me in the most enthusiastic terms the great and far-reaching changes that have taken place under Mussolini. Fascism, according to them, has extracted Italy from its former position of backwardness, and raised it within hardly thirteen years to the level of the big European industrial states. In proof of this they point to the up-to-date arterial roads met with all over the country, one of which actually leads up Mount Etna to a height of 2,000 metres; to the work of modernisation, the signs of which are to be seen in any of the larger towns; to the progress of traffic facilities, etc., etc.; not forgetting, of course, the construction of new towns like Littoria and Sabauda, which announce their existence to the tourist from afar, being bathed in seas of light such as are elsewhere only to be met with in a metropolis.

Those are all incontrovertible facts. Those visiting Italy to-day, and remembering the state of the country ten or twenty years back, got the impression that a fresh state on a gigantic scale has been made in the direction of progress. But this impression rapidly fades on deviating even a few kilometres from the main roads of the tourist traffic in Italy. There the order of the day is not construction but dilapidation. The houses and alleys are dirtier than ever before. Nowhere is a new building, or even so much as a scaffolding, to be seen. The people are badly dressed and badly nourished. The tourist witnesses a scene of indescribable squalor. In Messina, for example, slums dating from the time of the earthquake are to be seen, generating pestilential smells. Usually—at least in the south—electric light extends no farther than a few kilometres from the towns, and even the railway stations have to carry on with oil lamps for illumination. In many cases drinking water has to be conveyed in big tank trains to places where there are no springs, not to mention water mains. Sicily, once the granary of Rome, is even now still withered and dried up in summer over two-thirds of its area, because Fascism, too, has failed to provide the necessary irrigation works, the construction of luxurious, and consequently uneconomic, arterial roads evidently seeming to Fascism to be of greater moment and thus more urgent.

It will be readily understood that the Italian country people are not exactly rapturous about the arterial roads. They are shrewd enough to know not only that they only swallow up the money needed for the construction of irrigation works and the better maintenance of their own roads, but also that their own increasing poverty is somehow connected with the luxury constructions of Mussolini. The country people, they say, must fare worse, so that the townspeople may fare all the more luxuriously.

Campaign against Abyssinia

What distinguishes Italy nowadays very markedly from what it was in former times is the dominance of the uniform in street scenes. Many towns give the tourist at once the impression of just having wandered into a big barrack. It is as if the entire Italian nation had exchanged the mandoline for the rifle and as if Mussolini cherished ambitions—besides those of being a maker of roads and builder of cities—to make Italy the Prussia of the Mediterranean.

In the south, uniforms are much more plentiful than in the north. Anyone travelling from Messina to Milan might get the idea that he was travelling, through two different countries, one at war, the other at peace. Militia especially are rarely to be seen in the streets of northern towns. In Milan I could go about for hours in the busiest parts of the town without coming across a single militia uniform. Fascist badges are also less plentiful in the north, while the Roman salute is conspicuous only by its absence.

These distinctions are not confined to appearances, either. The people of the north have not managed to get up any real enthusiasm for Fascism. They consider it as a fruit of the south and, above all, a costly one.

That antipathy to Fascism is stronger and less covert in the north, could be inferred from the short-livedness of the Fascist placards. Stuck up overnight they were torn up by the next day, in the hub of the town as well as on the outskirts. I was told that this has been quite a common occurrence for a long time past. Typical Fascist papers, too, are read in the north to a much less degree than in the south. Mussolini’s Popolo d'Italia, which is published at Milan, was indeed vociferously hawked about the streets, but hardly any were being sold.

Is this land of uniforms also indeed a militarised land? This question interested me keenly. During a long stay in the country previously I had come to regard the Italians as a peace-loving people, to whom militarism and war were abhorrent. It was just when more than two decades back I stood for the first time in the square fronting the cathedral of Milan, that I found myself surrounded by crowds of people taking part in a mass demonstration against the Lybian war. Had Mussolini succeeded in so completely reversing the character of a nation as to cause it now to greet a similar enterprise with jubilation?

In order to satisfy myself on this point I have taken great pains, making observations throughout the country as to how the nation is reacting to the Abyssinian conflict. And I have discovered no trace of any such enthusiasm as the Italian newspapers would like to make out as existing, for the sake of opinion abroad and even at home. The attitude of the people is one of earnest reticence, and in intimate chats I was able to elicit surprising opinions, lending a somewhat sinister aspect to the present state of affairs in Italy. A former Communist, now to all appearances a strict Fascist, explained to me that Mussolini’s assault on Abysinia was the most palpable proof that he was at the end of his resources. It had not been forgotten in Italy, he said, that former regimes had always begun an African campaign when they got into difficulties; and Mussolini was pursuing the same method. He should not be restrained, however, in this enterprise, but rather urged on. On the rock-bound plains of Abyssinia grew no laurels for him to pluck. He would merely be running his head against that rocky wall as so many others had done before him, not least the Italians.

In uttering these sentiments the Communist was only voicing the thoughts of many an Italian as to Mussolini’s Abyssinian venture. Similar expectations were expressed by the Italians in most of the conversations I had with them, and simple workers more than once remarked: “We need the guns to put an end to the famine.’’ And when, with feigned astonishment, I inquired whether by “famine” they really meant Fascism, the answer was in the affirmative every time.

A Hunger-Stricken Land

It made a great impression on me that the workers had hardly let themselves be infected by Fascism at all. Of one accord, north and south, they reject it; and this observation of mine has frequently been confirmed by remarks I have heard in bourgeois circles. This contrasts markedly with Hitler’s national socialism which, by means of the so-called “Battle of Labour,” has succeeded in sweeping a considerable portion of the workers off their feet.

I seek the explanation in the fact Mussolini had no such hard and unfortunately effective predecessors in wage-cutting as Hitler had later in Brüning and Von Papen. He had to make the cuts himself and consequently to unmask himself before the workers from the very outset. Besides this, the severe unemployment prevailing in Italy to-day first came into the country under Fascism, so that Mussolini was not able, either, to lay the blame for it on to his predecessors in the Government; nor could he make “Marxism” the scapegoat, for its organisations had never obtained representation in the Government. The relief work provided by Mussolini in the shape of the construction of arterial roads, harbour works, public buildings, etc., did not succeed in making the desired impression on the Italian workers, who, in contrast to the Germans, are not satisfied merely with working, but want to make a living by it, too. And Fascism has failed to enable them to do so. The thirteen years of Mussolini’s dictatorship have proved to the workers to be thirteen years of continual robbery of their wages and thus of their subsistence.

The most deplorable conditions in this respect I have come across in the south. Here the average daily wages amount to a mere seven lire, equivalent to about 2s. 4d. Only in quite exceptional cases is this level exceeded in the south. A wage of twelve lire is regarded there as quite a big income. In Central Italy and, above all, in the north, the level is, generally speaking, higher, and would be, for the broad masses in the region of 18 lire. Skilled tradesmen may occasionally be found earning more, in exceptional cases perhaps as much as 30 lire, but this is exceptional indeed. The elite of the manual and brain workers is considered to be the civil servants, whose monthly incomes vary for the most part from 400 to 700 lire. All the figures given represent gross earnings which, in practice, suffer considerable reductions in the shape of compulsory contributions to Fascist organisations, etc.

But it should by no means be inferred that this low level of wages carries with it a correspondingly low level of prices. Italy is rather to be classed among the dear countries than among the cheap ones.

Another rock menacing Mussolini is his increasing isolation in the midst of the Italian people. It has already led to a fundamental alteration in the character of the Fascist dictatorship. Able, formerly, to rely on the support of certain sections of the bourgeoisie, it has now no other backing than that provided by the Fascist militia. For the alienation of the bourgeoisie from Fascism has been accompanied by an increasing loss of hold on the regular forces, the officers of which practically reflect the opinions and ideas in vogue among the bourgeoisie. The higher officers’ circles were never particularly attached to Fascism. The generals had compounded with it because they were in need of its services, and because they had their orders from the King. Now the old discrepancies have cropped up again, and on the part of the officers, at any rate, little effort is made to conceal them from the public. Yet Mussolini need have no immediate fears on this score. A military dictatorship would be compromised in Italy to-day just as much as the present dictatorship of the militia is, and at all events the fall of Mussolini would, to the masses of the workers, be the signal for a storm such as no military sabres could hope to arrest. This is indeed the sole reason why the bourgeoisie find it expedient to fold their hands and let things take their natural course. Fearing the consequences of Mussolini’s policy as they do, they fear even more the unknown things that may lurk behind Fascism to emerge when it has fallen.

Nor need Mussolini fear as yet the hostility of the agricultural and industrial workers. Their limbs are paralysed by the terror of dictatorship, and they lack, too, the organisational connections and political conceptions needful to enable them to carry out a really menacing movement against the dictatorial system.

More important to my mind at present, therefore, appears the rock which may loom up in Mussolini’s path in the shape of his own militia. It is no uncommon thing for the good understanding between dictators and their militia to be of short duration. We have a bloody case in point in the events of June 30th, 1934. Such St. Bartholomew’s Eves among friends Mussolini has not been obliged to exhibit to the world, only because, being a better student of history than Hitler, he had thoroughly purged his militia long before the fabled “March on Rome,” and thenceforward subjected it to continual siftings. Only just during the last few weeks he seems to have resumed his activities in this direction, for the dispatchment of strong contingents of militia to Africa is generally attributed to difficulties that Mussolini has experienced out of the ranks of his own troops. Everything points to the fact that this time he is carrying out the most drastic purge that ever the Fascist militia in Italy have experienced. But cauterise the existing sores as he may, the virus, uneliminated, is sure to break out again in fresh places, and the more evident the isolation of his dictatorship becomes to the public, the more and the worse these sores will grow.

I have not been in sufficiently close touch with the internal affairs of the Fascist militia to be able to determine with any degree of exactitude the extent and the reasons of the conflicts that have arisen within its ranks. But the looming shapes of these rocks are becoming more and more clearly outlined. Will Mussolini be able to steer clear of these, too? Just now it rather seems as if he will run straight on to them at headlong speed, if he does not run up against the financial or the Abyssinian rocks first.

Editorial: The Class Struggle (1935)

Editorial from the September 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Timely Reminder

There are so many people who do not understand what is the nature of the class-struggle of which Socialists speak, and so many others who choose to misrepresent it, that the essential facts cannot be repeated too often. The class-struggle is something which exists owing to capitalism. It is not an idea invented by Socialists. It existed before there was any Socialist Movement. The existing class-struggle is a fact arising from the division of human beings into two social classes. They are not divided into classes by Socialists, or by their own ideas and outlook, but by their possession or non-possession of property. The capitalist class are those who own sufficient property to be able to live on the income which flows to them through their ownership. They are the receivers of rent, interest or profit. The working class are those who, because they do not own sufficient property to be able to live on property income, must work for their living. They must sell their physical and mental energies, their labour-power, to the capitalist class and the agents of the capitalist class. In return, they receive wages or salary. The working class includes those who perform practically all of the work necessary for the production and distribution of wealth, from the making of bricks to the task of organising and directing. They are all workers, working to order, producing wealth for the capitalists to own. These are facts, and it is remarkable how rarely the defenders of capitalism even attempt to dispute them. Given this private ownership of the world’s means of producing and distributing wealth, a class struggle is the necessary consequence, expressing itself as a struggle by the propertyless to gain control of property, or as a struggle over the division of the product of industry—strikes, lockouts, etc.

The part played by Socialists is not that they have created this struggle, but that they point it out, explain it, and show how it can be abolished by the abolition of classes.

The part played by some of the defenders of capitalism is to pretend that the struggle has no basis in material conditions but exists only because certain people hold and preach views regarding it. Thus The Times, in an editorial, on August 21st, takes the Trades Union Congress to task for not rejecting the class-struggle theories it is supposed to hold. The T.U.C. is invited to observe that employers, far from seeking to reduce wages during the crisis, “have had for their object that maintenance of the general standard of living which has also been . . .  the anxious concern of the Unions,” and to observe further that in the newer industrial areas, where workers are employed “in agreeable surroundings” and have “welfare amenities,” the “conflict of interests between employers and workpeople . . . has scarcely arisen.”

The phrasing of this betrays at once that The Times writer does not understand what conflict of interests means. It is not something which may or may not arise, but something which exists in the nature of capitalism. To him, the absence of trade union organisation in some of the newer industrial areas, particularly round London, shows that there is no conflict of interest. It shows nothing of the kind. The absence of trade union organisation may be due to the employers being able to forbid trade union membership, or to the fact that the workers are not yet aware of the value of organisation. Conflict of interest does not have to show itself in one form only, that of trade unions and strikes. Each individual worker when he weighs up the amount of pay offered to him, and his chance of standing out for more in face of the competition of the unemployed is taking part in the struggle, and is more or less dearly conscious of the conflict of interest between him and his employer. The very relationship of employer giving orders and employee having to take orders is a distinguishing mark of the class-struggle. Again, if The Times writer were familiar with one of the most outstanding examples of modem capitalist organisations in which trade unions are as far as possible prohibited—Ford's— he would recall that only two or three years ago a savage conflict occurred at the Detroit works in which lives were lost and many workers and police were injured. Moreover, in 1933, there were strikes at Ford's Dagenham Works, and at those of his subsidiary, Brigg's Bodies. During August of this year a wages dispute occurred at Ford's Dagenham works and led to the defeat and dismissal of strikers.

The Times writer betrays himself again when he admits that “the conflict of interests between employer and workpeople" has in the past been the “raison d'étre of the Unions." He mentions a certain gilding of the chains of wage-slavery in the form of “welfare amenities" but apart from this he nowhere shows that the conditions in the newer industries are more than superficially different from those in the older ones. And again, how, on his supposition, does he accounts for the persistence of the unions and their 100,000 increase of membership in the past 12 months?

Before leaving this topic we would like to refer The Times writer to an earlier editorial which appeared on June 22nd of this year. In it we are given some interesting facts about the ownership of wealth in America. First, a quotation from a speech by President Roosevelt, in which the President declared that for three generations there had been “a constantly increasing concentration of wealth and power in fewer hands," and secondly, a statement by Mr.. Ickes, United States Secretary of the Interior, to the effect that 80 per cent. of the wealth of the country had accumulated in the hands of 2 per cent, of the population. Let us put a question to The Times editor. He denies that class-struggle and class-conflict have any necessary existence outside propaganda. Knowing that wealth in America (and also in England) is concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority of the population, will he deny the existence of a propertied class and propertyless class, and will he affirm that conflict of interests need not exist between those who own the means of life of the whole of society and those who do not own?

The Passing of Another Old Member (1935)

Obituary from the September 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

Old members of the Party and numerous sympathisers will be sorry to learn that Comrade J. S. Bird, of Southend, passed out on May 26th last.

For about 20 years he was Secretary of the Southend branch, helping to run the pre-war propaganda meetings and keeping the Branch together during difficult times, particularly during the war years. Those who knew his sturdy cheerful figure in those days will be surprised to hear of his early death. Until recent years he regularly attended Party headquarters on behalf of the Branch, fetching THE SOCIALIST STANDARDS and dealing with other matters that are essential but are out of the limelight. A few years ago he had a serious accident that permanently crippled him and compelled him to give up active Party work, although he still did anything he could to help spread the Socialist message.

Comrade Bird was a member the Party can ill afford to lose. He is another one of those we will sadly miss. He was quiet, dependable, and an enthusiastic worker—one of the type that is the backbone of any organisation. We deeply regret his loss, and his relatives have our sincere sympathy.

Gilmac.

The Green Line Strike (1935)

From the September 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Thursday, July 25th, employees of the London Passenger Transport Board's Green Line coaches at Windsor and Slough agreed to strike in protest against speed-up schedules of duty and against too much discrimination in wages between Green Line conductors and the 'bus conductors on the same routes.

The Transport Board replied that they would have to wait to have the matter considered until September, when the directors of the Board returned from their holidays.

On the following Saturday morning many other garages joined the strike, bringing the number of strikers up to nearly three thousand. The strike was still, however, quite unofficial, and the Transport and General Workers' Union took up a definitely hostile attitude, advising the men to resume work and let their grievances be settled by means of the existing machinery. Later that day the Board announced that if the men had not returned to work by Monday they could consider themselves dismissed. By Monday morning the men were back at work.

A controversy arose, in which Mr. Bevin criticised not only the minority movement for interfering with the running of union matters, but also Herbert Morrison, the Labour Party's ardent advocate of Public Utility Boards such as London Transport. At the time when Mr. Morrison was making his stand in the House of Commons we maintained that the rationalisation of transport in London would by no means improve the position of the transport workers. But Mr. Morrison, turning a blind eye on the class struggle, continued to urge legislation which could—and did—result only in the bringing together of the transport owners in one united force opposed to the transport workers.

During the last few weeks a spate of strikes among the 'bus and coach workers against rigid discipline, speeding up and low wages, has amply vindicated our claim that the Public Utility Boards, which the Labour Party holds up to admiration as measures of "Socialism," are no more than tools to intensify and to mask capitalist exploitation.

The attitude of the Union was unheroic; apparently the leaders wish at all costs to avoid trouble; they expressed no sympathy with the workers in their bad conditions, but merely begged them to return to work and "let things be done decently and in order." However necessary discipline may be in a union, and however "illegal" a lightning transport strike may be, an organisation which claims to fight the workers' battles can rightly be expected to manifest sympathy with, and understanding of, such expressions of the class struggle. In the recent strike, however, the Union simply played into the hands of the bosses.

Modern Trade Union leaders show no inclination to emulate the Tolpuddle Martyrs. No doubt Mr. Morrison will offer to the workers at the next election a programme teeming with Public Utility Boards.

D. S.