Obituary: Dick Cotton (1953)

Obituary from the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many members of Ealing Branch will already have heard with sorrow of the sudden death of Comrade “Dick” Cotton. He died on 31st July of a brain haemorrhage, at the tragically early age of 32. Although we all knew that his health was poor, requiring him to make frequent visits to hospital and to undergo several operations, it is clear only now, when all is over, how serious his illness really was. The fact that he himself never complained of his afflictions no doubt contributed to this.

Dick Cotton was not a “prominent” member of the Party. He was not a speaker or writer. Outside the Branch his name is probably hardly known. He was one of those comrades, however, without whose enthusiasm, labour, and support—consistently given— the Party would soon cease to exist. By his death the Party has lost a keen and active worker for Socialism, and we in Ealing Branch have lost a staunch comrade and a good friend.

We extend our deepest sympathy to his mother and family in their sad loss.

Stan Hampson

Who are the Victors in Korea? (1953)

From the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Korean Armistice

AFTER three years of war—the last two years of it accompanied by bargaining between the leaders of the two sides—an armistice has been signed in Korea. As the smoke drifts away from the last shell and the last bomb, as the last wounded are taken to hospital and the last dead are buried, the conflict is continued in the statements put out by each side. The boastfulness of the United Nations leaders claiming that the war has ended in a victory for them is equalled only by the boastfulness of the Russian and Chinese Governments claiming the same thing. But what are the real results of the war? Who has gained, and who has lost?

The Balance Sheet
On the Soviet side the war was fought by the soldiers of China and North Korea. On the United Nations side, the troops were supplied by South Korea, the United States, and sixteen other nations. One has only to read the casualty-lists to know that the peoples of these countries, at any rate, lost by the war. The Commonwealth countries lost one thousand dead and five times that number wounded and prisoners. The Americans had twenty-three thousand dead, and more than a hundred thousand wounded. The casualties of the Chinese and North Korean armies have been estimated at two million (The Times, 28-7-53; references which follow are also to The Times unless otherwise indicated). As for the North Korean people, they were subjected to one of the heaviest bombardments of modern times by American planes; and of the ten million North Koreans at the beginning of the war, John Foster Dulles, the U.S. Secretary of State, now calculates that one in three have died as a result of the war (28-7-53). It is difficult to find an estimate of the South Korean casualties, but they can scarcely be low, since the original South Korean Army was largely destroyed in the first North Korean advance; and towards the end of the war the South Korean Army, reconstituted by the Americans, was holding three-quarters of the line and was bearing the brunt of repeated Chinese attacks. Altogether, some five million people, at the very least, must have died in the Korean peninsula as the result of the war.

Not tomb enough

After three years of modern war, what is the gain and loss of territory? On the eastern side of the peninsula, the South Korean border has been pushed northwards to include about two thousand five hundred square miles of former North Korean land; on the western side, the Communists have gained about a thousand square miles. On balance, file United Nations have gained some fifteen hundred square miles—less than two per cent, of the area of Korea. It works out at more than three thousand people killed for each square mile of territory won. The net gain of territory is hardly enough to bury the dead. This is indeed

                                 a plot.
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause.
which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain.

Price per yew: Three thousand million dollars

The position in Korea now was outlined by an appeal on behalf of the United Nations Association Relief Fund (29-7-53). Of the people of Korea, it said, “Two and three-quarter million are refugees. Four million are destitute. Their homes and industries have been wrecked. Seventy per cent. of their agricultural implements have been destroyed, and over half the country’s rice-growing lands lie idle.” These figures are tragically significant especially when it is remembered that at the beginning of the war the total population of Korea was only about twenty millions. No less than three thousand million dollars’ worth of ammunition was used every year in the Korean fighting—and this means that factories and manpower were devoted to producing this vast quantity of bombs and shells instead of producing goods which the people of the world need. In a reasonable economic system this amount of productive capacity could have been devoted to consumer goods. But the facts remind us of the tremendous productive potentialities which must either remain latent or be used for destructive purposes under the capitalist system of society; we can only use the world’s productive power fully for our benefit under Socialism.

The gainers

Who then gains from the Korean war? The Chinese and the American ruling classes have both gained to some extent. Neither has conquered and brought within its own sphere of influence the other half of Korea; but each has saved its own share for itself. In a future war China could use its Korean foothold to attack Japan, and America has kept South Korea as a base for any future assault on China. And each side has kept part of the valuable Korean mineral supply—gold, copper, coal, iron, mica and bauxite are all found in the peninsula. We have recently had a powerful reminder that the need for such raw materials, and the need for markets, does motivate foreign policy, in a speech delivered in America:—

   A total struggle—let us never forget it—calls for a total defence . . .  Again and again, we must remind ourselves that this is a matter not only of political principle but of economic necessity. It involves our need for markets for our agricultural and industrial products, our need to seek in return from the rest of the world such essentials as manganese and cobalt, tin and tungsten (11/6/53).

The speaker was President Eisenhower, who should know.

The Socialist attitude

To Socialists, Korea is a demonstration of the brutality of capitalist states struggling among themselves; a reminder that war is the only final arbiter of the differences which are inevitable under capitalism; and a foretaste of what is in store if the rulers of each side decide on another “big” war.

Alwyn Edgar

Strike-Smashing in New Zealand (1953)

From the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

From New Zealand comes a book that will boil the blood of every class-conscious worker. Even workers who have not yet recognised their class status will feel their gorge rise when they read in this book of the trickery, the double dealing, the brutality and the callous bludgeoning of their fellows.

“151 Days” by Dick Scott is the official history of the great waterfront lockout and the supporting strikes in New Zealand from February 15th to July 15th, 1951. The book is published by the now deregistered New Zealand Waterside Workers' Union and has been made possible by the advance orders of hundreds of trade unionists.

If there is any man in doubt about the role of a capitalist government in a major industrial dispute—let him read this book. If there is any man who doubts which way a Labour Party will line up in a major industrial dispute—this is the book for him. If there is any man who thinks that the days of brutal treatment of workers are past—he also must read this history. If there is any man who needs evidence of the class struggle—here it is, right up-to-date. If any man can read this book without his emotions being stirred—then he is lacking in elementary human feeling.

As in Britain, living costs in New Zealand have risen sharply during the past few years and workers’ wages have lagged a long way behind. Also, as in Britain, many New Zealand workers had to work long hours in order to get overtime pay and a pay packet that would give them and their families a decent living. The waterside workers applied for a pay increase and received an award from an arbitration court. But the ship owners tricked them and refused to pay the full amount of the award, so the watersiders said they would work no more overtime till they got their due pay increase. The ship owners were after a show-down. The waterside workers' Union was too truculent; it must be brought to heel and its members rendered docile. When the waterside workers showed up for work on Wednesday, February 15th, the Port Employers confronted them with an alternative to either work overtime or get the sack. They said “no overtime"—and were locked out

Within a few days the Government stepped in with a set of emergency regulations that made the British Trades Disputes Act and the American Taft-Hartley laws look like Sunday School picnics. The government declared a state of emergency because it claimed that the watersiders, by refusing to unload ships, were depriving a large proportion of the people of New Zealand of the necessities of life, despite the fact that the men were at the dock gates everyday offering to work a forty hour week.

When the harsh regulations were imposed, miners, seamen and others came out on strike. From then on the government, employers, top-layer trade union officials, press, police, pulpit and every job-mongering, back-crawling lickspittle turned his attention and spite towards breaking the solidarity of the workers effort and getting them back to work on the employers terms.

We haven’t space to detail all the events and legal crimes of those six months. The book sets them out with documentary evidence and ample illustrations. We will give just one sample.

Amongst those who suffered most were the miners in the small inland mining towns. On a bleak plateau, seventy miles by a rough bush road from the nearest coastal town, was the tiny mining community of Ohura.

   “500 people . . .  a hard working peaceful community where tar-sealing the main street and building a new social hall were more urgent matters than 'Wrecking,' 'intimidation' or 'violence' and where the policeman's house stood empty and no one felt insecure." Page 83.

When the 100 or so miners in this town heard the truth of the situation after receiving misleading telegrams from their Union national headquarters, they downed tools. Then the police moved in.

At their first meeting the police entered, took the names of all present and ordered them to their homes. Local Union officers were placed under house arrest. Police broke their way into private houses where miners were meeting together and ordered them to their respective homes. One man was arrested and charged for talking to some miners who were working. Members of a miners’ committee travelled a dangerous 55 miles across the bush to meet in another town, only to have the police again close their meeting. The police blocked the roads to prevent miners or other strikers from entering Ohura and chased suspects in squad cars. Groups of men on the streets were broken up and ordered to their homes.

Despite this isolation and police rule the Ohura miners held out. They could collect no relief, their womenfolk could not go out to work, their savings vanished, their possessions were sold, debts mounted, the hardships of winter were great, but after over four months they remained solid. When the strike was over and the Ohura miners received a grant of £59 10s. from the Australian miners' £6,700 New Zealand relief fund, they voted unanimously to give it to the Auckland watersiders.

You should read this history of the workers of New Zealand where.

     “Government was reduced to a thing of helmets and uniforms, cells and batons, where the highest civic duty could be measured in terms of a willingness to arrest one's parents for a crime against private property." Page 129.

We in Britain who, apart from letters from our Socialist comrades in Wellington, have only had the press accounts of the happenings of those 151 days, thank and congratulate Mr. Scott and all others concerned, for this detailed and stirring history.

W. Waters

Backwaters of History (1953)

From the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

The five men were silhouetted against the bright, grey, morning sky as they walked steadily, in single file, with spades and shovels on their shoulders, up the gentle slope of the hillside. They halted and gathered in the group, talking, gesticulating, looking around and pointing. Then they walked away in a different direction and were lost to sight behind the hill.

It was the first day of April in the year 1649. The five men were quite ordinary humble artisans or labourers, living in the village of Cobham, in Surrey. Only one of them had any reputation outside the locality in which they lived; William Everard had been cashiered from the army—from Oliver Cromwell's army—and was known for his religious zeal. Stewer and Colten were well known locally but the other two had so little fame that their names have not been handed down to us. 

On the lower slopes of St. George's Hill, on the side by Camp Close, the men spent the day digging, breaking the soil into a fine tilth and sowing parsnips, carrots and beans, When their work was finished they gathered  up their tools and made their way back to their homes. That simple day's work had far-reaching results and qualified the five men for honourable mention in every worth-while history of the working class.

The following Monday they were back at their digging in the same place, accompanied by nine or ten new recruits. By Friday the group was over thirty strong. On Saturday they went to Kingston-on-Thames to furnish themselves with seed corn and they arranged to have ploughs for their future work.

On the 16th of April, Henry Sanders of Walton-on-Thames, a local landowner, reported these doings to the Council of State. The Council of State instructed the commander-in-chief of the army, General Fairfax, to send a force of horse troops to Cobham to dispel this "Disorderly and tumultuous" assembly whilst it was still a beginning and before more dangerous consequences grew.

The men of Cobham, together with others who had followed their example at near-by Walton-on-Thames, offered no resistance to the soldiers. They were pacifists. They were arrested and the leaders, Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard, were taken before Cromwell and Fairfax at Whitehall. They stood before the Lord General with their hats on, claiming that he was but their fellow man.

They stated that for many years the people had lived under oppression and tyranny. The remedy was to cultivate the wastelands, the common land and the parks, everyone working and living communally. They did not intend to touch any private land or to break any fence or enclosure, only to till the common and untilled land.

Another local landowner, a Mr. Drake, summonsed them and they were tried by a jury of local wealthy freeholders at Kingston Court in August, 1649. They were not allowed to defend themselves and were all fined £10 each. Their cattle were injured by hired ruffians. A Puritan preacher was sent to Cobham to stir the local population against them. The few huts that they had erected were pulled down, their spades and hoes were cut to pieces, the land they had dug and sown was torn and trampled so that no corn could grow, the men themselves were maltreated.

For over a year the settlement at Cobham persisted. Propagandists were sent out to other parts of the country and another settlement was commenced at Wellingborough and some support was found in Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire. But the support was slight and after a year of digging and a year of persecution the movement died out in early 1651.

The members of this movement called themselves the "True Levellers" but because of their experiment at Cobham and elsewhere they became better known as "The Diggers." The prime motivator of the movement, Gerrard Winstanley, was a cloth manufacturer. He continued his activities after the Digger movement had faded out and during the last years of his life he was a member of 'The Society of Friends," better known as "The Quakers," which had been founded by George Fox in 1652. A number of other members of the Digger movement likewise joined the Quakers, and continued to suffer for their beliefs.

During the 16th century and the early part of the 17th the early merchant capitalists in England had been gaining in numbers, wealth and political power. Their struggle against their feudal class enemies culminated in open hostilities between themselves, entrenched in the Parliament, and the Feudal Aristocracy lined up behind the Monarchy. Both sides resorted to armed force, and the Parliamentary troops under Oliver Cromwell, Thomas Fairfax and Henry Ireton finally triumphed over the Royal forces under King Charles I and Prince Rupert. The king was beheaded without having abdicated, as evidence that it was the monarchy and all it stood for that was defeated and not merely the king.

The wealthy capitalists raised their troops from amongst the small merchants and artisans of the towns and from the ranks of the small working class of those days. To ensure support from these social elements they were fed on propaganda for religious and political freedom. In the Parliamentary army, amongst the small merchant and artisan element, there grew up a movement known as "The Levellers" which demanded a political freedom in excess of what the wealthier capitalists were prepared to admit. An extreme section of the Leveller movement, supported mainly by agricultural workers and calling itself the "True Levellers" demanded a form of utopian communism. The digging experiment was an attempt at propaganda-by-deed by this extreme element.

In an age of pamphleteering, Winstanley and other diggers supplied many pamphlets. Their writings are cloaked in religious phrases for it was a time of religious fervour. Yet they saw clearly that there could be no real freedom whilst there was private property.

"True freedom lies where a man receives his nourishment and preservation, and that is in the use of the earth  . . . A man had better to have no body than to have no food for it . . . True freedom lies in the free enjoyment of the earth."

(Winstanley. The Law of Freedom.)

They recognised the real function of religion as propounded by the church.

"While men are gazing up to heaven, imagining after a happiness or fearing a hell after they are dead, their eyes are put out, that they see not what is their birthrights, and what is to be done by them here on earth while they are living . . . And indeed the subtle clergy do know that if they can but charm the people . . . to look after riches, heaven and glory when they are dead, that then they shall easily be the inheritors of the earth and have the deceived people to be their servants. This . . . was not the doctrine of Christ."

(Winstanley. The Law of Freedom.) 

They saw the real cause of war and, vaguely, of class struggles.

"property and single interest divides the people of a land and the whole world into parties, and is the cause of all wars and bloodshed and contention everywhere."

(Winstanley. The True Levellers' Standard Advanced).

". . . Rich men receive all they have from the labourer's hand and what they give, they give away other men's labours, not their own"

(Winstanley. The Law of Freedom.)

There are many writings to show the kind of society the Diggers aimed to establish. Just one quotation will suffice.

"Shall we have lawyers?
"There is no need for them, for there is to be no buying and selling; neither any need to expound laws; for the bare letter of the law shall be both judge and lawyer, trying every man's actions. And seeing we shall have successive Parliaments every year, there will be rules made for every action a man can do."

(Winstanley. The Law of Freedom.) 

Four of the Diggers' foremost persecutors were Members of Parliament who had been expelled by Cromwell for their Royalist sympathies. But they were still secure in their land ownership and were back in Parliament. Cromwell and those he represented were showing that, as far as they were concerned, the revolution had gone far enough. They held political power and they were prepared to use it to suppress their erstwhile supporters more ruthlessly than they had suppressed their former class enemies. In fact, they were prepared to compromise and ally with their former enemies to subdue the aspirations of their extremist followers.

Winstanley expresses the situation well:

"While this kingly power reigned in one man called Charles, all sorts of people complained of oppression . . . Thereupon you that were the gentry, when you were assembled in Parliament, you called upon the poor common people to come and help you . . . That top bough is lopped off the tree of Tyranny, and the kingly power in that one particular is cast out. But alas, oppression is a great tree still, and keeps off the sun of freedom from the poor commons still."
(Winstanley. A New Year's Gift for the Parliament and Army.)

Winstanley, in his writings, as in the few writings of other Diggers, realises the need to propagate his ideas and to gain support for them from a majority of the people. But none of them challenged the political supremacy of the wealthy capitalists. Instead they appealed for a change of heart. The more wily of the capitalists recognised at the outset the need to capture and hold political power to ensure the domination of their class over society. With the political machine in their hands their opponents on all sides were powerless.

The capitalist class still recognises that, and clings to political power tenaciously. It will continue to impose its will on society until the working class deprives it of that power and proceeds to remodel society in keeping with working class interests.

W. Waters.

Recommended books for students: -

M. Beer. A History of British Socialism. Part I Section 5.

C. Hill and E. Dell. The Good Old Cause. Part 12.

M. James. Materialist Interpretations. Essay in "The English Revolution," Edited by C. Hill.

H. Holorenshaw. The Levellers and the English Revolution.

E. Dell. Gerrard Winstanley and the Diggers. Essay in "The Modern Quarterly," Spring 1949.

E. Bernstein. Cromwell and Communism.

Berens. The Digger Movement in the Days of Commonwealth.