The Trades Union Congress (1936)

From the October 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

The sixty-eighth annual Trades Union Congress was held at Plymouth in September, under the presidency of Mr. A. A. H. Findlay, General Secretary of the United Pattern-Makers' Union.

It is an indication of the trend of trade unionism in this country that, in recent years, the time of Congress has been taken up, to an increasingly larger extent, in debate and discussion on political affairs and international questions. This year’s conference was similarly occupied. The dominant issues were Spain, national defence, dictatorship, and the Communist demand for a united front.

The Spanish Civil War

The President, in his opening speech, referred to the present struggle in Spain, and said: —

“Our hearts,” he continued, “ go out in honour and respect to our comrades in Spain, who are making their magnificent fight in defence of constitutional government.”— (Manchester Guardian, August 9th, 1936.)

A telegram, approved by Congress, and sent to the Spanish Premier, read: —

This congress, representing the organised workers of Great Britain, profoundly moved by the heroic struggle of the Spanish people for the maintenance of freedom and democracy . . . In the confident assurance that they embody the unconquerable will of the Spanish nation to defeat the forces of Fascism and tyranny, we pledge afresh our utmost support to the Spanish people.

Such is the sentiment. But when it came to a showdown, to a question of translating sentimental platitudes into practical assistance, Congress showed its helplessness and complete inability to give any

material help to the Spanish workers. What the Spanish Government needs is arms, in the shape of battleships, aeroplanes and guns, with which to fight the rebel military forces. Congress could not provide these. However, to be consistent with its resolution of “utmost support," it might have adopted a policy of supporting the demand that the British Government supply arms to the Government in Spain. It did not do so, but carried, by 595 votes to 7, a resolution supporting the Government’s policy of neutrality, that is, of withholding the supply of arms. An amendment favouring a policy of intervention was defeated on a card vote by 3,029,000 votes to 51,000. Intervention here meant supplying the Spanish Government with arms.

In the discussion that followed, Sir Walter Citrine said that the great need of the Spanish Government was to be supplied as rapidly as possible with war material to which it was entitled under international law. That it was felt that action should be taken to restrain Italy and Germany from supplying munitions to the Spanish military rebels. This could only be effected by placing a naval blockade round the coast of Spain. He continued : “ . . . I could not say ‘yes' to that.” (Daily Herald, September 11th, 1936.) Nevertheless, Sir Walter did say “yes" to the stupid telegram which pledged “utmost support" to the Spanish people, and which could only be dangerously misleading to the Spanish workers and Government. He also stated that the policy of neutrality was initiated by the Popular Front Government of France, and that the French Government had had a long-standing agreement with the Spanish Government to supply munitions, yet on July 25th (which was only one week after the civil war broke out) it decided it could no longer do so. He expressed the view that the overriding motive was clearly that the French Government was convinced that if it went on supplying Spain in the emergency with the munitions that the Spanish Government needed, there would in all probability be an outbreak of war in Europe.

Certain aspects of the question had apparently escaped Sir Walter Citrine’s notice. Were Congress or the “neutral” powers able to exert sufficient pressure to compel the Fascist powers to observe neutrality, then that pressure could have been exerted to have prevented them from supplying arms to the rebels in the first place. There was, in fact, no essential difference in the policy of neutrality embodied in the resolution which he supported and the policy of intervention in the amendment which he opposed. There would be as much “danger to the peace of Europe" if the policy of neutrality had to be made effective as there would be in the policy of intervention. The neutral powers, Great Britain and France, are not willing to risk war whilst there is “no direct threat to their interests. The enormous cost of war and the possibility of loss in markets and colonies induce an attitude of caution in international affairs and an anxiety to avoid doing anything that would provoke war. Which is quite unlike the swashbuckling sentiment of the British Governments when Empire building was in its heyday. Germany and Italy have less to lose and can afford to take advantage of the weakness, temporary or otherwise, of the other great powers, and with less fear of retaliation. Nobody believes that if Germany and Italy accepted the neutrality agreement that they would keep it. It is doubtful whether Sir Walter Citrine does.

A Recruiting Speech

In the debate Mr. Bevin scored as a jingo. “We are satisfied,” he said, “ that we are not going to meet the Fascist menace by mere resolutions. . . . We are not going to meet it by pure Pacifism . . . the whole of the democratic powers had to say to Hitler and Mussolini * Don’t take us too cheaply.’ ”

And during the discussion on foreign affairs he said: —

“We have been on the retreat as democratic powers.

“We have weakened our prestige. There has been an assumption that we would never defend ourselves.

“ That is not true. 

“ Fascism is not going to saddle itself on the whole earth, either by intrigue or the methods employed in Spain.”—(Daily Herald, 11.9.36.)

The Government has probably noted that speech for use in future recruiting literature.

The Communists and Spain

Other interesting facts which came out were: That the British Communist Party had not raised its voice to demand that Russia should send munitions to Spain. That the fact that the Russian Government had accepted the neutrality agreement and had operated it had never been mentioned by the French Communist Party. That the Russian trade unions had ceased collections for the Spanish workers on the instructions of the Russian Government. That the international fund for relief amounted to £45,000, of which £13,381 came from Britain. This represents a fraction of a penny per head of the trade union membership of Great Britain. (Daily Herald, September 11th, 1936.)

Future Labour Government. Mr. Bevin’s Boast

Resolutions favouring the abolition of the means test, the forty-hour week, the raising of the school-leaving age to sixteen, the abolition of the six-day waiting period for unemployed workers applying for insurance benefit, were approved. Congress knew that the passing of these, resolutions anticipated the policy of a possible future Labour Government. In fact, speaking to the resolution in favour of a forty-hour week, Mr. Bevin said: —

“The resolution did imply that if after the next election they secured the return of a Labour Government they would expect that Government to introduce the 40-hour week.”—(Daily Herald, 10.9.36.) 

And later: —

“ Never again must a Labour Minister be sent into office without all his plans prepared.”

The latter statement is in the nature of an ultimatum or a threat. As Mr. Bevin gave it as his opinion that the Labour Party lacks the virility of the trade unions, perhaps he considered the threat necessary. The statement certainly gives ammunition to the opponents of the Labour Party, who maintain that it was the Trade Union "caucus” who insisted upon the Labour Party not entering the National Government in 1931, against that party’s own wishes.

It is to be hoped that workers will remember Mr. Bevin’s words when the next Labour Government is elected—particularly if he is in the Cabinet. The last Labour Government found its pledges embarrassing, and said so, and asked the workers not to press their claims. The bill to raise the school-leaving age, which was introduced by the last Labour Government, particularly showed that lack of “virility” to which Mr. Bevin referred. It was wrecked because of the dissensions between the rival religious factions within the Parliamentary Labour Party. The waiting period for the unemployed worker and the means test were then in operation and were justified by Labour Government spokesmen. Mr. Lansbury stated that he was not in favour of an unemployed man having assistance unless some kind of means test were applied.

Trade Union Soul-Saving

However, the fear of losing its members, votes, and trade union financial backing, might induce an effort in a future Labour Government to attempt to carry out its pledges. In the opinion of Sir Walter Citrine, the trade union movement “saved the soul of the.Labour movement in 1931,” when the Labour Government fell. However, having said it, it is to be hoped that Sir Walter will be as successful in keeping it unsullied in the future. Incidentally, his statement is a tacit admission that members of the Labour Government were in favour of entering the National Government in 1931, and only refrained from doing so because of pressure from the trade unions.

Trade Union and Co-Operative Societies

Discussion, on the General Council’s report dealing with employment of trade union labour by co-operative societies and firms working on cooperative society contracts was interesting. Some of the discussion, as reported by the Manchester Guardian (September 11th, 1936), is as follows: —

Mr. A. G. Tomkins, of the Furnishing Trades’ Association, said it was not correct to say that with the exception of a few small societies the goods sold were made under fair conditions; it would be more correct to say that the larger the co-operative society the bigger difficulty they nad in preventing “ rat ” furniture from being sold.

Mr. W. Birch, of the Distributive and Allied Workers, Hyde, urged the General Council to take an active part in negotiations for conciliation machinery between the C.W.S. and the unions having members employed by it. It would be a great achievement if they could establish a fifty-shilling minimum for the men concerned. 

“ Rat ” furniture is furniture made under sweated conditions of labour. In this case in workshops which contract for the co-operative societies. The Daily Herald reported Mr. Tomkins as having spoken on the General Council’s report, but completely omitted the statements reproduced from the Manchester Guardian's report above. The Herald also omitted from its report of Mr. Birch’s speech the statement that “it would be a great achievement if they could establish a fifty-shilling minimum for the men concerned.”

Communists and the United Front

When Congress discussed the General Council’s report opposing a united front with the Communists, Sir Walter Citrine made a scathing speech. He said that one of the most amusing spectacles which contemporary political history would reveal was the attempt made by the Communist movement to ingratiate itself with the Trades Union Congress and Labour Party.

“After years of derision of the principles of the Labour movement, after using gallons of ink in denunciation of Labour’s leaders, after abuse of its unions as pillars of capitalism and reformist organisations, after denouncing its puny attempts to capture Parliament—regarded by the Communists as entirely ineffective as a means of emancipation of the people—after all the years that we have experienced since 1925, now we have the curiously incongruous spectacle of the Communist organisations wanting to come into our midst and be part of the movement they have so derided.

“The Communist party in Great Britain, as in every other country in Europe, is the mouthpiece of the Soviet Government. Everything that the Soviet Government decides will be repeated, parrot-like, by the Communists.

" . . . And when they speak here they are expressing the Russian Government’s point of view.”

Membership

The Council’s report showed an increase in trade union membership by approximately 300,000, but London, while it has 2,500,000 industrial workers, has only 350,000 trade unionists.

One last thing about the Congress. No Socialist voice was heard to penetrate the confused ideas and oratory, shedding light with the Socialist explanation of events. 

Harry Waite

The Catholic Church and the Spanish Workers (1936)

From the October 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the civil war drags on through its third month, many things stand out even more clearly than at the beginning. The rebels lack popular support in most parts of Spain but the outcome does not depend on popular support. It is fighting strength that counts. Correspondents of several British newspapers, including the Times (August 26th and September 4th), have reported that a majority of the conscript soldiers in the rebel armies, and the mass of workers and peasants behind the rebel lines would be . disposed to desert to the Government side if given the opportunity. The rebel commanders, however, take care not to let the opportunity arise and when, as happened in the Alcazar at Toledo, rebel men, women and children tried to give themselves up, the rebel commanders did not hesitate to slaughter them, women and children as well as men—“a fusillade from the insurgents cut them down”—so wrote an eyewitness, Mr. Harold Pemberton, correspondent of the Daily Express (September 21st). The rebels dare not rely on conscripts but they can rely on their mercenary Moorish troops for as long as the money lasts. The position, therefore, is that the Government forces are being slowly strangled under the combined pressure of foreign Governments, mercenary troops, and lavish supplies of money and munitions. If the money and the munitions continue then the rebels will prove, as has been proved before, that a military force can, for a time at least, dragoon a hostile civil population by sheer ruthlessness. How ruthless the Military-Catholic rebels are has been exposed in an earlier despatch from Harold Pemberton, published in the Daily Express on August 27th.

Basing his statements on what he had actually seen with the rebel armies, he wrote: —

While the Communists are committing atrocities, the rebels are killing wholesale, mathematically and methodically—as a military expedient. No one must be left alive as a possible threat to the rear of their motorised columns. There is no attempt at a trial. Killings in Seville average 30 to 40 a day. After Merida was captured 1,000 were killed. Village killings average 10 to 15 a day—until the supply of victims is exhausted. It is estimated that there will be half a million deaths before peace comes . . . On leaving Merida with Photographer Tovey we were offered “Communist ears” as souvenirs.

It is no wonder that the rebels in due course expelled a number of British journalists, including the correspondents of the Times, Morning Post and Daily Express. They were anxious that the world should not know how they carried on their fight for “ patriotism and religion.”

It is well that workers should take notice of this further example of the ruthlessness of a propertied class fighting to retain its privileged position. The lesson to be learned from it is not that workers should try to emulate their savagery but that we should realise that while power is in the hands of a panic-stricken ruling class they will stop at no atrocity to gain their ends.

The Catholic Church Commits Suicide

Forefront among those who glory in the rebellion, justify the rebel atrocities, or seek to blacken the Government with misrepresentations are the Catholic Church in Spain, the Pope, and the bulk of the prominent Catholics in England along with their Press. The Universe has vied with the Daily Mail in gutter journalism. The Catholic Bishops, like Bishop Amigo of Southwark, have assisted in a widespread campaign to whitewash the rebels. Bishop Amigo was able to discover that they and their Moorish mercenaries “are fighting for God and their country” to prevent its “total destruction" (Manchester Guardian, September 4th). The Catholic Tablet, wholeheartedly on the side of the rebels but above the disreputable behaviour of such papers as the Universe, was nearer the truth when it admitted (August 1st) that the rebellion was begun by the rebels for “economic and class reasons ” and could be broadly described “as a class war.” The Tablet, however, was more far-seeing than Bishop Amigo, and has backed the rebels with a certain amount of misgiving: fortunately, a well-founded misgiving, for the civil war is going to do the Catholic Church in Spain more harm than 30 years of propaganda. Whether the rebels win or lose there are millions of Spanish workers and peasants who will never forget that when they tried to climb out of hideous poverty the Catholic Church helped the landowners and military leaders to grind them down again, by force of arms and with the aid of Moorish troops and every device of modern warfare. For every Spanish worker who hated the Catholic Church before the rebellion for its century-long exploitation of the poor and defence of oppression, there will be ten in future.

One Catholic and Protestant lie needs to be nailed down, that is that the Government forces wantonly organised attacks on non-combatant Priests and Nuns. The Catholic Church right from the beginning openly sided with the rebels and gave them every material and other support in its power. Does the Catholic Church, in face of that, really expect to enjoy the rights of a neutral? And having taken the side of the rebels against the Government and its working-class supporters, does the Catholic Church expect to be received everywhere with open arms? Nevertheless there has not been a scrap of published evidence that the Spanish Government encouraged or condoned any such attacks. Where attacks were made they were the actions of individuals or groups, blindly hitting out at those whom they regarded as their enemies.

One argument used by the defenders of the Pope is that he protests always and everywhere against attacks on Priests. It is only a pretence, as can be shown from very recent history. Where and when did the Pope ever protest against the killing of Abyssinian Christian Priests by the Pope’s friends, the Government of Italy? It was reported in the Daily Telegraph on September 2nd that the Bishop of Dessie “has been shot by a firing squad on the market-place, the chief square of Addis Ababa.” His crime was precisely that of many Spanish Priests, “inciting a group of Abyssinian warriors ” to resist the Italians. When and where did the Pope protest? Or the Universe? Or the Daily Mail?

Before leaving the subject of the Catholic Church it must be said that a minority of Catholics in this country who saw the economic and class character of the Spanish conflict have resisted the mass pressure of the Catholic authorities and have continued to stand on the side of the republicans. In view of the difficulties of their position the fact that they stood their ground deserves recognition.

A wider problem, of which the reactionary nature of the Catholic Church is only a part, is the power of the capitalist Press and political parties to stampede large numbers of workers whenever an issue affecting property rights arises.. The trade unions which voted money for the relief of the victims of the rebellion were immediately faced with opposition from members misled by the Rothermere newspapers and others of like character. In passing, it is important to notice that condemnation of the Daily Mail did not come only from sources sympathetic to the Spanish Government but also from the Conservative Spectator, which charged the Mail with exhibiting ”a colour-blindness which leaves atrocities invisible except when Reds commit them.”

There is only one remedy for the evil of lying, propaganda. Changing the policy of those who control the Press is out of the question. All that can be done is the slow work of enlightening the workers, teaching them to discriminate and apply their own critical judgment to everything presented to them. Only when the workers are immune to the effects of lying propaganda—and not before— will the evil cease.

One lesson taught again by the events in Spain, that can never be emphasised too strongly, is the danger of going ahead in advance of what is justified by the degree of understanding and unity achieved by the mass of the population. The Spanish workers were, and still are, divided by their outlook, and by their allegiance to rival organisations. This encouraged the rebels to begin the rebellion and now, day by day, it enables them to win battles owing to the terrible lack of co-ordination among the Government militias, born of mutual mistrust as well as of inexperience. One ominous feature is that the Spanish Fascists are now setting out to win over the Syndicalists to their side. Imitating Mussolini, who successfully won over thousands of Syndicalists to the Fascist ranks in Italy, the Spanish Fascists are calling their Movement a National Syndicalist one, and giving it aims such as those Hitler used with big effect to gain working-class support in Germany. They appeal, particularly, to the Syndicalists’ traditional opposition to Parliament and political action. Should this succeed, Spain may sooner or later go Fascist with the backing of large numbers of workers, as did Italy and Germany. Here, again, the only remedy is the slow one of Socialist education, and until the necessary preparatory work has been performed any attempt to force the pace spells reaction—on top of failure—from which it may take years to recover.

Edgar Hardcastle

Spain (2026)

Book Review from the September 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

What Have You Done For Victory? A Cultural History of the Spanish Civil War. By Jo Labanyi. Reaktion books. October 2026. 490 pages.

This year is the 90th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War when a part of the armed forces under General Franco revolted against the Popular Front government elected earlier in the year. It ended three years later with 600,000 dead and victory for Franco and the rebels.

This anniversary has seen the publication of a number of books on the subject including this, a detailed blow-by-blow account of the culture wars that preceded, accompanied and followed the war. It has a useful introductory chapter setting out the events leading up to and the course and outcome of the war.

The Franco side rested largely on the big landowners and the Church, both of which saw their privileges threatened by the Popular Front government, one of whose declared intentions was to break the landowners’ stranglehold on the countryside. The rebellion was not supported by the capitalists; they also saw the landowners as their enemy. Openly capitalist parties, ‘radicals’, ‘republicans’ and ‘progressives’, were part of the Popular Front.

The government said it wanted a ‘parliamentary democracy’. The ‘Communist’ Party said that that was their aim too but, as supporters of the Stalin dictatorship in Russia, what they were really favouring was state-capitalist Russia’s foreign policy of trying to prevent Germany gaining a foothold in Spain.

The anarchists and the syndicalist trade unions were opposed both to ‘parliamentary democracy’ and to the Stalinists. Their aim was a revolution to destroy the state. Their attempts to organise production without capitalists or money confirmed that this could be done but were never going to last whichever side won.

There never was working-class unity for ‘parliamentary democracy’ and the course of the war brought the bitter antagonism of the rival factions to the surface with mutual charges of murder and betrayal.

In the end the working class lost everything they had before. Franco’s victory ushered in thirty-six years of savage repression of the working class, deprived of elementary political and trade-union rights.

Notes by the Way: Indian workers beginning to see through the Nationalist Movement (1939)

The Notes by the Way Column from the January 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

Indian workers beginning to see through the Nationalist Movement

An interesting situation has arisen in Bombay, where there is a Congress (i.e., Indian Nationalist) Government. The Government, which has the support of the so-called Congress Socialist Party of Bombay, introduced a Trade Disputes Bill, whereupon the trade unions denounced it and called a one-day general strike as a protest. In the disturbances that ensued the police fired, and 75 persons were wounded, one of whom died.

The Indian Labour Journal (October 23rd. 1938) reports that the Labour group in the Legislative Assembly opposed the Bill, “The Government, however, is adamant, and is bearing down all opposition with their overwhelming majority, consisting not only of Congress members but also of representatives of the interests of capitalism. The Bill has been welcomed by the latter.”

According to Dr. Ambedkar, “The Bill takes away the legitimate, constitutional and powerful weapon of the workers, namely, the strike, by declaring it illegal, and therefore punishable in a large number of cases.” (Labour Journal, October 23rd.)

Other critics allege that the Bill will encourage the formation of “company unions” at the expense of genuine trade unions.

This and other inevitable conflicts between Indian workers and Indian capitalism will in time teach the workers that Nationalism, to the capitalist, is only a means to an end. As the Indian Labour Journal sadly recorded on July 17th, 1938, when Congress Governments replaced the former Governments capitalist interests behaved just as they did before, “everywhere the attitude of the employers remains the same.”

* * * *

Corsica, Nice and Tunis

Mr. W. N. Ewer, in an article in the Daily Herald (December 12th, 1938), did a useful service by recalling the history of the Italian demand for various French territories. In the first place, the demand did not originate with Mussolini: —

“Signer Mussolini has his own purposes in the organisation of these ‘spontaneous demonstrations.’ But Italian patriots were shouting for Corsica and Nice and Tunis before he or Fascismo was born.

The cry for Corsica goes back to the great days of the struggle for Italian unity. For Mazzini it was Divine will that all the Italian peoples should be joined in one Italian state. Garibaldi called himself an atheist : but he felt much the same.”

France got Nice and Savoy in 1860 as part of a bargain by which Napoleon III of France promised to help turn the Austrians out of Northern Italy and thus help the movement for Italian unity. The Italians complained bitterly that Napoleon only half fufilled his promise, but he got his price, the transfer of territory being covered by a fake plebiscite on the most up-to-date lines. “In the town of Nice only eleven votes were cast against annexation.”

Tunis has an equally interesting history. Except that the chief brigands arc different, it reads like a dress rehearsal for the imperialisms of our own day: —

“Italy began to look on Tunis as her predestined share in the coming partition of Northern Africa. And so it might have been. But at the Berlin (Peace with Honour) Congress, Salisbury, to get French assent to his taking of Cyprus, suggested that France might find ‘compensation’ in Tunis.

Bismarck, for his own ends, cordially backed the suggestion. All this, of course, in deadest secret.

Italy’s suspicions were aroused. She asked and got assurances from France : took them at face value : waited too long. In ’81 there was an incident on the Tunis-Algiers border. The French troops were ready. Within a few weeks Tunis was a French protectorate.

Great Britain, tongue in cheek, solemnly protested against the aggression she had suggested. Italy raged furiously : and has been angry ever since. For nearly sixty years the ‘Tunisian question’ has troubled Franco-Italian relations.”

* * * *

Cyprus under the Heel

As Mr. Ewer points out, the British Government encouraged France to seize Tunis while England took Cyprus. The apologists for British Imperialism will say, of course, “how lucky for the Cypriots to be under British rule.” But the Cypriots think otherwise, they want to join Greece, so Cyprus is now under rigid suppression following an outbreak in 1931. The Manchester Guardian summarises the present position as follows : —

“. . . repression is still the manner of rule. The former representative system of government remains suspended: close restrictions are kept on public meetings ; trade unions are discouraged the Press is suppressed or censored on the flimsiest of pretexts at the will of the Administration.” (Manchester Guardian, October 13, 1938.)

* * * *

Was J. R. MacDonald a Fraud? 

Mr. L. MacNeill Weir, M.P., was Parliamentary Secretary to the late J. R. MacDonald for eight years, from 1924 to 1931. Naturally, when he published his “The Tragedy of Ramsay MacDonald” (Seeker & Warburg, 15s.), and roundly condemned the character and conduct of his former hero, he placed himself under the obligation of explaining his own conduct. If he knew long before 1931, why did he not resign and tell what he knew? If he did not know until the end, that, too, wants explaining. When Mr. Weir’s position is examined he, and the Labour Party, come out in a very bad light. So do the other leaders of the Labour Party.

Mr. MacNeill Weir, replying to letters of criticism published in The Times, wrote, on December 3rd, 1938, defending himself. Here is a remarkable passage in his letter : —

“I am blamed for taking the post of Parliamentary Private Secretary in 1924 when I believed all the charges I have made against MacDonald in the book. In 1922 I was one of the Scots contingent who voted to make MacDonald leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party. We never believed Snowden’s repeated assertion at that time that MacDonald would sooner or later let the Party down.

It was not until the beginning of 1931 that suspicion of MacDonald’s bona fides arose, and suggestions began to be made of a change of leadership. All sorts of rumours, canards and defamatory aspersions circulate around public men—especially politicians. The fact is that MacDonald was a man of mystery, a human enigma, his real character only revealed in the passing of the years. We can be blamed for our unswerving loyalty to Dr. Jekyll during these years, but surely we are not to be condemned for not believing in the existence of Mr. Hyde.”

The S.P.G.B. opposed MacDonald always, i.e., onwards from 1904, when the S.P.G.B. was founded, but nothing we said of MacDonald ever stated such a strong case against leadership in general. We said that the popular theory of leadership of political parties included glorifying the party leader in order to make him an impressive and romantic figure in the eyes of the rank and file. There has to be a kind of conspiracy among the lesser leaders to deify the great ones in order to make the members loyal. What we did not contemplate was that the lesser leaders would fall for the same clap-trap themselves. Yet Mr. MacNeill Weir asks us to believe that, right up to 1931, he was being cruelly deceived by the man he knew intimately.

There is one thing Mr. Weir cannot get over. MacDonald’s speeches and writings were always empty of sound Socialist knowledge and principle, why did Mr. Weir not see through them? Another Labour M.P., Mr. Hugh Dalton, writing in the Daily Herald (November 18th, 1938), says that when he re-reads MacDonald’s old speeches now they give him “a sense almost of physical discomfort.” The answer is, and must be, that Mr. Weir and Mr. Dalton, and all their followers, did not know the difference between Socialist teaching, which endures, and social reformism, which depends for appeal on the trivial issue or the emotion of the moment.

The real tragedy is not the conduct of MacDonald, who, after all, was not a bit worse than his rival Labour leaders, but the admission made by Mr. Dalton that MacDonald’s empty rhetoric captivated his followers. After saying that the speeches were valueless, Mr. Dalton has to add, “But how his audiences loved them! It is a terrifying memory.”

Of course, Messrs. Weir and Dalton think that the Labour Party is healthier now. Perhaps it is. Perhaps experience has taught the rank and file a few things about the dangers of leadership. But if so, they owe little to Mr. Weir and Mr. Dalton, for both of these gentlemen are of opinion that the Labour Party “backed the wrong horse in 1922, when it made him (MacDonald) leader in place of Clynes.” As if the member of a war-time Coalition Government, who himself in 1931 was in favour of some kind of three-party Cabinet, was any more of a Socialist than MacDonald !

Before leaving the subject, it is worth while placing on record the claim made by a Communist, Mr. Idris Cox, in the Daily Worker (November 18th, 1938). He says that “MacDonald’s political record and ruinous policy was exposed by the Communists for 15 years before his death.”

This puts the Communists in a worse position than Mr. Weir. He says he sinned in ignorance. The Communists say they were well aware what MacDonald was, at least as early as 1922. Why, then, were the Communists, in 1922 and afterwards, urging the workers to vote for MacDonald?

* * * *

Mr. Middleton Murry to be a Church of England Clergyman

Six years ago, when Mr. J. Middleton Murry, the well-known critic and author, became active in “left-wing” politics, it was suggested in THE SOCIALIST STANDARD (September, 1932) that, unless he succeeded in overcoming his obvious failure to understand the principles of Socialism, he would, in due course, drift out again, disappointed. It is now announced that he is training as candidate for the Church of England priesthood. From an interview published in the Sunday Express (December 11th, 1938), it appears that the turning point for Mr. Murry was when he listened to a Hitler broadcast in June, 1934: “You may think me fantastic, but I said to myself : This is what the Bible meant by anti-Christ.”

One thing that can be said of Mr. Murry’s incursion into politics is that the freshness of his writings on Marxism and current problems must have given many people an interest which they would otherwise not have had. Along with some serious misunderstandings he wrote many things that were worth while.

* * * *

Admissions about Spain

At the beginning of the Spanish civil war, now become more and more a war with Italy and Germany, the British Government and the supporters of Franco vied with each other in suppressing important facts. It will be recalled how the authorities, month after month, disclaimed knowledge of German and Italian intervention, until the truth was too well known to be hidden. Now, late in the day, we have Mr. R. S. Hudson, Secretary, Overseas Trade Department, saying, in the House of Commons on December 1st, 1938, that “clearly one of the main reasons” why there are more German than British ships going to Franco territory “is the large quantity of munitions that the German Government are sending to Franco.”

Another recent admission was in the Evening Standard (December 2nd, 1938), where Mr. Aylmer Vallance showed that the assassination of the Conservative-Monarchist leader, Sotelo (often represented as the excuse for the rebellion), was not the only act of its kind. It was itself an act of vengeance for the assassination some days earlier of Lt. Castillo, a police officer, who was a member of the Socialist Youth League.

The Times, too, has several times admitted that air raids on Republican Spain are carried out from Italy. On July 23rd, 1938, for example, their correspondent at the Spanish frontier said:

“Some of the Italian airmen start out from Italy, rest at Majorca, then raid the Mediterranean coast, and return to Majorca for a few hours en route to their aerodromes in Italy.”

Among recent interesting features of the Spanish war was the promise made by Franco to Britain and France during the recent crisis, that he would remain neutral in the event of war (Manchester Guardian, December 1st, 1938). This may help to explain the continued pro-Franco attitude of British and French circles, which might have been expected to fear a Franco victory, lest it strengthen Italy and Germany in the Mediterranean.

* * * *

The Duchess of Atholl and her Supporters

The Conservative Duchess of Atholl fought West Perthshire against the Conservative Party because she wants the Government to take a strong line against Germany, Italy and Franco. Forward (December 10th) asked a number of well-known people how they would vote if they were in the constituency. Among those who said they would vote for her were Alfred Barnes, M.P. (of the Co-operative Party), Ellen Wilkinson, Tom Johnson, J. F. Horrabin, and H. N. Brailsford. They all gave much the same reason, approval of the Duchess’s foreign policy.

Among those who said “no” were Ethel Mannin, of the I.L.P. She said that, “as a revolutionary Socialist . . . I should not vote at all, my attitude being ‘a plague on both your houses.'”

Lord Elton (“National Labour“) said he would vote against her because “Chamberlain saved civilisation at Munich.”

Cecil Wilson, M.P., “Pacifist,” said he would write on his ballot paper, “War and all preparation for war is wrong.” “I stand for Peace, Freedom and the Brotherhood of Man.”

Lord Sanderson, “Pacifist and Socialist,” said he would vote for the Chamberlain candidate.

The Sunday Express (December 4th), has the following comment about the Duchess: —

“She makes a terrible howl about the troubles of the little children in Barcelona. But she is not so anxious about her own little children in Britain. She took the view, when the question of raising the school-leaving age came up, that children must be set to work at fourteen.”

* * * *

President Roosevelt Believes in Capitalism and Scrambled Eggs

“Actually, I am an exceedingly mild-mannered person, a practitioner of peace, a believer in the capitalistic system, and for my breakfast I am a devotee of scrambled eggs.” (Daily Mail, December 6th, 1938.)

* * * *

The Communists and Daladier

Since Daladier used Conscription and the armed forces to defeat the General Strike, the Communists are heaping abuse on him. The Daily Worker (November 28th) quotes, with approval, the statement that, in Berlin, Daladier, ever since Munich, has been regarded as a “Hitler man,” and says that the Daladier Government “represents the interests of the big monopoly capitalists, among whom are the closest friends of Hitler.” On December 8th, in the French Chamber of Deputies, a Communist, pointing at Daladier, said : “We, the Communists, are telling you to get out.” (Daily Express, December 9th.)

Who, then, is this Daladier? He is a leader of the Liberals (known as “Radical Socialists”), who formed part of the Popular Front along with the French Labourites and Communists. He was Minister of National Defence and War in Blum’s first Popular Front Government in 1936, and, as recently as April 13th, 1938, when, as Premier, he asked for a vote of confidence and for certain special powers, he obtained 570 votes to five; The Communists were with the majority and acclaimed Daladicr enthusiastically.

After the 1936 General Election, the French Communist Party expressly claimed that the Popular Front had not only helped their own and the Labour candidates, but had also helped to prevent Daladier’s party from losing seats.

So much for “Popular Frontism”!

* * * *

Prayers to Fill Empty Stomachs

The following appeared in the Daily Sketch (December 5th, : 1938): —

“Mayfair churchgoers, many in fur coats, prayed in the fashionable St. James’s Church, Piccadilly, W., yesterday, for the poor of the East End. They lowered their gaze as the Bishop of Stepney (the Rt. Rev. Hamilton Moberly) told them what life was like with the dole and faint hope of a job. He told of the “constant state of poverty, never enough money coming in to keep a family in decency—wives going out to work and becoming the main support of the family.”

He urged them to pray for the poor of the East End—’not just now and then’—but to make a habit of it. He felt that if only half a dozen people present were to support the Church’s work there by their prayers, something would be achieved. . . .”

* * * *

Ulster Democracy

From the Manchester Guardian (November 23rd, 1938: —

“Fourteen youths who were arrested when about forty Belfast police raided the McKelvey Recreation Club in a Nationalist area here recently were to-day transferred to Belfast Prison, where they are being held under Special Powers Act detention orders, which enable them to be held without trial for a prolonged period.”

* * * *

Jewish Employers and Sweating

Fascist propagandists make much of cases of sweating or non-payment of trade union rates when the employer is a Jew, and they are specially active among furniture trade workers. The reason, according to the Daily Herald (December 14th, 1938) is that not more than 10,000 London furniture workers receive the trade union rates and conditions, while 50,000 do not, and “the offending owners are practically all Jews.”

On the other hand, “the stigma does not apply to all Jews. There are about ten Jewish firms regarded by the unions as fair, and which have an honourable record.”

In the case of the furniture trade the whole industry is largely controlled by Jewish firms, but exactly the same kind of situation has arisen in numerous other trades, i.e., one group of firms paying trade union rates and another group underpaying. In the grocery and drapery trades the unions and the employers’ federations have jointly approached the Ministry of Labour to secure the enforcement of standard rates on the large number of employers not paying them. Yet nobody claims that the offending employers in those trades are mainly Jewish.

There are also Trade Boards in about forty industries, set up to prevent “sweating,” and it has been estimated that as many as twenty-five per cent. of agricultural workers are being paid less than the minimum wage legally applicable to them. It has never been suggested that twenty-five per cent. of the farmers are Jews.

Another point of more importance is that capitalism is an exploiting system, even when the trade union rates are paid. The employer who organises his concern on the basis of paying a relatively high wage does not do so from philanthropic motives. He takes good care to select the most skilful and bodily fit workers, and is able to do so because the higher wage attracts more applicants; and, being a capitalist, seeking profit, he, even more than his sweating colleague, introduces labour-displacing machinery and dismisses men when he no longer wants them.

Lord Nuffield is not a Jew, and he pays a relatively high wage, but on November 16th, 1938, he received a deputation representing 1,500 workless men formerly employed by him. (News Chronicle, November 17th, 1938.) “Many of the jobs were eliminated by the adoption of all-steel bodies.”

The most that Lord Nuffield could promise was to find work in other departments for men whose jobs are eliminated, and to re-engage the unemployed men as soon as possible. Some of the 1,500 have been out of work already for six months.

Capitalism is the enemy of the workers, and that will not be remedied by changing the nationality, religion, race, or politics of the capitalists.

Edgar Hardcastle

Letter: Marx and economics (2002)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Marx and economics

Dear Editors,

I purchased, and enjoyed, amongst others the pamphlet Marxism Revisited and Some Aspects of Marxian Economics. Now, thankfully, my understanding of economics isn’t all that strong, but I could just about follow what you were saying there. But could I just ask you to explain about socially necessary labour. I understand, that according to Marx, the value of a commodity is determined by the amount of socially necessary labour that is contained in it. But I always understood that this concept was no longer academically respectable. How can socialists still believe in this concept today?

In the Marxism Revisited pamphlet you talk of being opposed to all wars. Which is fine to take a principled stand but how could a socialist stand back and not take a stand in the Spanish Civil War or, in, what the Russians rightly call The Great Patriotic War, WWII. Surely socialists should have (did) support the Republic and should have been against fascism in WWII.

I just want to know how you could be opposed to the Republic fighting against Franco? Back then socialists should have urged Britain to join forces with the Spanish government instead of turning their backs and worse, by allowing the Italians and Germans to police the waters around Spain on the pretext to stop supplies to Franco. They damn well helped him!

That all said, I have enjoyed what I read, particularly the Market System Must Go. But there I detected a nostalgia for the Gold Standard, surely not!

Steven Johnston, 

Stockport

Reply:

Regarding socially necessary labour time (and the labour theory of value of which it is a key component) we do not really care whether it is academically respectable or not. Most concepts and theories which are academically respectable at some point – especially in the arts and social sciences – are not necessarily those which will stand the test of time. Indeed, academic respectability in these fields is largely a transient phenomenon which is far more reflective of ideological developments within capitalist society than it is of anything else.

Few disciplines demonstrate this more transparently than economics. Theories taken for granted thirty or forty years ago (the wholly beneficial effects of the Keynesian multiplier, the use of interest rates as a policy instrument for Balance of Payments control, the Phillips Curve, etc) are now oddities only to be found in textbooks of economic history. Much of monetarist theory (and even more recently, neo-classical theory) has been going the same way.

The ultimate test of any economic theory is whether it is able, over time, to accurately account for what happens in the real world. We contend that Marxian economics has been able to do this in a way none of the other theories have as the fashion for them has waxed and waned.

For over a century now, conventional economic theory has been unable to even remotely explain something as essential to the market economy as the prices at which various commodities sell. Demand and supply tells us why strawberries at local convenience stores are selling at £1.50 a punnet this week as opposed to £1.30 last week but it certainly doesn’t explain why a bicycle persistently costs more to buy than a strawberry, a car persistently costs many times more to buy than a bicycle and an oil tanker several more times again than a car. How could it?

Conventional demand and supply theory as found in modern economics textbooks certainly helps to explain short-term price movements for commodities, but to say that demand and supply determines commodity prices as a whole is like saying that the fluctuations of the waves on the sea determines the depths of the ocean.

The labour theory of value, with its concept of socially necessary labour time, is the only explanation that fits: commodities tend to exchange in certain value relationships because of the amount of labour time it takes to produce them from start to finish. It is around this value that prices tend to fluctuate, as influenced by demand and supply. You will no doubt have read in our pamphlets that because the labour theory of value also points to the fact that workers are exploited in capitalist society, giving unpaid labour (surplus value) to the capitalists when they produce commodities for them, it is a theory that the supporters of capitalism are happy to try and bury.

We might also add that it is through applying the labour theory of value that Marxian socialists have been able to explain the economic phenomenon of inflation which has beset the capitalist world since the Second World War. Our pamphlet The Market System Must Go – Why Reformism Doesn’t Work has more detail on this and other applications of Marxian economics, though we should add that we certainly have no nostalgia for the Gold Standard. While this had both advantages and disadvantages to the capitalists as an international trading system, we as revolutionary socialists are interested in the abolition of all the defining characteristics of the capitalist economy (wages, capital, prices, money, etc) including the paraphernalia of international trade.

Finally, you raise the issue of the Second World War and its precursor in Spain. The socialist position is that that worst thing the working class can do politically is put its class enemies in control of the machinery of government and the armed forces, as sooner or later they will be used against them. Both sides in the Spanish Civil War and both sides in the Second World War were pro-capitalist and anti-working class and socialists would not – and did not – support a capitalist government of either complexion. Socialists would of course prefer to operate under conditions of limited bourgeois political democracy than outright fascism and political dictatorship but history demonstrates that even elementary political democracy in capitalism cannot be defended through wars (for one thing, that is never their purpose – not in Iraq now, nor as in western Europe then).

If illustration of this is needed, how grateful the Spanish working class (including those elements struggling towards taking up socialist positions) must have been when the side of democracy won the war in 1945 . . . and then proceeded to protect and nurture the Franco dictatorship in Spain and the Salazar dictatorship in Portugal. They must have been almost as delirious as those freed from the yoke of the Nazi tyranny in Germany were when they were subsequently delivered into the hands of one of the worst police states in history (the mis-named German Democratic Republic) by those friends of the workers and arch-democrats themselves, F. D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin.

Editors.

50 Years Ago: The Catholic Church and the Spanish Workers (1986)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Forefront among those who glory in the rebellion, justify the rebel atrocities, or seek to blacken the Government with misrepresentations are the Catholic Church in Spain, the Pope, and the bulk of the prominent Catholics in England along with their Press. The Universe has vied with the Daily Mail in gutter journalism. The Catholic Bishops, like Bishop Amigo of Southwark, have assisted in a widespread campaign to whitewash the rebels. Bishop Amigo was able to discover that they and their Moorish mercenaries “are fighting for God and their country” to prevent its "total destruction" (Manchester Guardian, September 4th). The Catholic Tablet, wholeheartedly on the side of the rebels but above the disreputable behaviour of such papers as the Universe, was nearer the truth when it admitted (August 1st) that the rebellion was begun by the rebels for "economic and class reasons" and could be broadly described "as a class war." The Tablet, however, was more far-seeing than Bishop Amigo, and has backed the rebels with a certain amount of misgiving: fortunately, a well-founded misgiving, for the civil war is going to do the Catholic Church in Spain more harm than 30 years of propaganda. Whether the rebels win or lose there are millions of Spanish workers and peasants who will never forget that when they tried to climb out of hideous poverty the Catholic Church helped the landowners and military leaders to grind them down again, by force of arms and with the aid of Moorish troops and every device of modern warfare.

[From an article, "The Catholic Church and the Spanish Workers", published in the Socialist Standard, October 1936.]

What is Behind the Government's Spanish Policy? (1937)

From the August 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many people have been puzzled at the attitude of the British Government, the capitalist Press and the ruling class generally towards the civil war in Spain. It was natural that their class prejudices and their associations with Spanish Conservatives and the Catholic Church would make them sympathise with General Franco’s revolt and hope for its success. Yet it might have been expected that they would quickly see the force of the argument, put forward by the Naval correspondent of a Conservative newspaper, that from a strategic point of view the interests of the Empire are bound up with the defeat of Franco and his German-Italian backers. This correspondent pointed out that German-Italian dominance of Spain and Spanish Morocco, including the approaches to Gibraltar and the control of the Balearic Islands in the western Mediterranean, unquestionably threatens the British hold on the Mediterranean and seriously, hampers communications with East Africa, India and beyond. Mussolini’s military and naval experts have not troubled to keep secret the intention of turning the sea into an Italian lake; and their British counterparts have been compelled to recognise that the threat is not an idle one. The handling of the Abyssinian affair showed that the British Cabinet were not prepared at that time to risk an open clash with the Italian forces. What, then, is the explanation of the Government’s behaviour, apparently so little in keeping with their class and imperial interests ? The attempt to provide an answer must take into account many divergent factors.

Willing But Not Yet Ready For War

First, there is the aspect, referred to above, that the Government was not ready for a possible war with Italy. That was an important factor in 1935 when Italy invaded Abyssinia. It is less important now that British naval and air rearmament has got well under way. It will be noticed that the recent announcements about the building of new or reconditioning of old warships and about the completion of more and more up-to- date squadrons of aeroplanes coincide with a noticeably more aggressive policy towards encroachments on British capitalist interests in the Mediterranean. Where before there was comparative reticence we now have the Foreign Secretary, Mr. Eden, declaring in unmistakable terms that British disinterestedness in the Spanish conflict does not mean indifference where British interests are concerned “ on the land or the sea frontiers of Spain or the trade routes that pass her by ” (Report of speech in Parliament, The Times, July 20th, 1937). He and the Prime Minister issued a plain warning to German and Italian capitalists that the Mediterranean is for British capitalism “a main arterial route, and we intend to maintain our place on it.”

Mr. Eden further warned Italy that : —

It has always been, and it is to-day, a major British interest that no great Power should establish itself on the Eastern shore of the Red Sea.

That the German and Italian threat is a serious one is shown by the information about big guns overlooking Gibraltar erected in the past six months by Franco’s foreign friends. Even the most loyal of Franco’s Tory supporters began to choke at the idea of “The Rock” being dominated by German or Italian guns and, with unconscious humour, they now grow more enthusiastic for strong action to prevent the intervention of foreigners in Spain.

It escapes their notice that to a patriotic Spaniard the most outrageous of all intervention of foreigners on Spanish soil is the existence of this British fortress at Gibraltar.

Mr. Winston Churchill made a characteristic statement. Speaking at Wanstead on July 4th (Manchester Guardian, July 5th) he regretted Mussolini’s recent policy and said: —

If I had been an Italian I should have been on Mussolini’s side fifteen years ago when he rescued his country from the horrible fate of sinking into violent Communism. All the more do I regret some of the recent utterings of Signor Mussolini.

Happily, Mr. Churchill continued, the power and preponderance of the British navy is growing rapidly. It already far exceeds the preponderance we possessed over other European Powers at the outbreak of the Great War.

Spanish Mineral Wealth An Issue

Then, again, Spain for the rival powers is not only the arena of a conflict about democracy and dictatorship, but also and more importantly a country of great mineral wealth. The facts are well known. Frank C. Hanighen summarises them in an article in the New Statesman (April 24th, 1937): —

Spain constitutes a far richer preserve of the basic elements which nourish industry than either Ethiopia or the former German colonies. Iron, the principal staple in munitions making, which both Germany and Italy lack, exists in abundance near Oviedo, near Vigo, and in the beleaguered Basque provinces. The best copper mines in Europe lie in Huelva province. Not far from the mercury of Almaden, the famous Pefiarroya mine produces high-grade lead. Other essential minerals—coal, tin, tungsten, silver, molybdenum, salt, phosphates, pyrites, graphite and zinc—are scattered throughout the peninsula and, across the straits of Gibraltar, Spanish Morocco contains iron, lead and manganese. Under monarchy and republic, foreign interests and, to a lesser extent, Spanish capital developed only a part of these resources. Accordingly, when the republic faced serious civil strife, it was natural that the two most predatory Powers in Europe should look hungrily towards Spain.

Mr. Hanighen. shows how Germany began organising the shipment of iron ore from Spain in 1934, but for a considerable period the trade was interrupted owing to Germany’s financial difficulties. Then, in 1936, by arrangement with the rebels, shipment was resumed on the basis of exchanging ore for armaments. He quotes Edgar Mowrer, correspondent in Spain of the Chicago Daily News, as saying on December 22nd, 1936: “ An entire fleet of ships is engaged in bringing arms to Spain, returning loaded with iron ore for Germany,” and adds his own opinion that “it is not too much to say that the German adventure in Spain saved the German re-armament programme.” He contends that before the revolt occurred in July, 1936, the iron ore situation in Germany had become serious: “Britain had started to compete for Swedish ore, one of Germany’s best sources. The French Socialists, in power in France, had been talking of an embargo on Lorraine ores to Germany. Spanish iron ore for the past year had been unavailable because Spanish exporters could not obtain German import licences as a result of the German currency shortage.”

Here we have Germany’s interest. Italy was likewise concerned to gain control of the tungsten and vanadium deposits, the iron, lead, copper and sulphur near Cartagena, and the mercury mines of Almaden, north of Cordoba.

It is plain enough why German aeroplanes should bomb Guernica, in the north, on the way to Bilbao and Oviedo, and why Italian troops should be engaged in trying to capture Almaden in the south'. Indeed, Hitler and Mussolini have lately been quite candid about it.

Addressing a Nazi gathering at Wurzburg on June 27th, 1937 (News Chronicle, June 28th), Hitler said:

Germany needs ore. That is why we want a Nationalist Government in Spain—to be able to buy Spanish ore.

and Mussolini, in an article in Popolo d'Italia on June 26th, 1937 (The Times, June 28th), wrote: 

 Italy has not been neutral, but has fought, and victory will also be hers.

But while the policy of Italy and Germany has been easy to understand and has been complicated only by possible divergences of interest between the two powers, the situation, from the standpoint of British capitalism, has been more complex.

The private interests of British shareholders in companies working mines in Spain have had to be considered and these have not necessarily coincided with the interests of the British imperial exploiters as a whole.

The Choice for British Capitalists

First consider the difficulties of the situation facing the big and wealthy companies operating in Spain : the Rio Tinto Co., Ltd., which owns great copper and sulphur mines in the province of Huelva; the £2,000,000 Orconera Iron Ore Co., “in which the Consett Company and Guest Keen Baldwins Iron & Steel Co. hold investments of a nominal value of £800,000 each ” (Daily Express, July 20th, 1937); the Barcelona Traction Co. and many others.

The aim of the directors in such concerns is naturally that of protecting their properties and maintaining profit-earning capacities. Beyond that they would incline to hope for a Franco victory as more likely to give a “strong government," which would “stand no nonsense from trade unions,” particularly when they read the declarations of the aims of some of the Popular Front Government’s supporters. How, in fact, have British capitalist interests fared?

The Anglo-Spanish Construction Co., which owns and operates the Santander-Mediterraneo Railway, say that everything has been satisfactory since General Franco took control of the area (The Times, July 9th, 1937).

From Government territory the Barcelona Traction Light & Power Co. tell a different story in a statement to shareholders (The Times, June 26th, 1937).

The company found so many difficulties in its relationships with the Workers' Committees that it withdrew its staff in September, 1936.

They state that since the date of the issue of the two circulars last year the general conditions in Spain have grown steadily worse and have, in fact, developed in such a way that it has been found impossible to obtain any reliable information as to the true position of the affairs of the enterprise in that country in which the Barcelona company is interested. The seizure effected by the Workers’ Committee in Barcelona covers all the properties, funds, and banking accounts of the enterprise.

Representations made through the British Foreign Office against the usurpation of the interests of the enterprise, and protests from time to time by the British Consul-General in Barcelona to the Catalonian Government, have produced no satisfactory results. The funds and cash have been removed from the banking accounts of the enterprise and appropriated by the Workers’ Committee. [Times, June 26th, 1937.) 

While firms in Franco territory have had to submit to financial losses and such inconveniences as the murder of hundreds of their workers (as happened with the Rio Tinto Co.), it is not to be wondered at if they prefer that to the seizure of their property and funds by Workers’ Committees.

It is therefore hardly surprising that Rio Tinto shares dropped from £22 to £13 following the electoral victory of the Popular Front Government in February, 1936, and rose sharply after the rebels captured Huelva in August, 1936 (New Statesman, April 24th).

About the Orconera Iron Ore Co. and its mines in Bilbao province the position is somewhat obscure. The Times City editor says (July 19th, 1937) that until about a month earlier there had been no interruption of shipments from these mines. Then there was a stoppage during the fighting round Bilbao, which resulted in Franco’s capture of that town. Franco then gave a verbal promise that ore supplies to Britain would not be interfered with. It was, however, reported from Berlin (News Chronicle, July 20th, 1937) that a German treaty with Franco provides that Germany’s much-needed iron ore for re-armament will be supplied from the Basque mines.

This may mean that Franco is acting against the interests of the British companies or it may mean that an agreement has been arrived at between the interested German, British and Spanish companies. The article in the New Statesman, quoted above, gives support to the latter view, although it deals with other companies than the Orconera Co.

While Germany and Italy quite openly fight battles for raw materials, international capital takes a stand which can only be construed as co-operation with these Powers. In the Riff, for instance, British and French mines receive no payments for the ore which is being sent to Germany (all payments, as it has been shown, are applied to Franco’s armament debt). Yet these companies show an odd diffidence about the matter. Not a single protest has been filed by these companies or their governments. On the contrary, the financial elements in London and Paris representative of these companies are known to be strongly pro- Franco.

Consider the extraordinary case of the Rio Tinto mines . . .According to the Manchester Guardian, the output of Rio Tinto is being requisitioned and sold to Germany, at a price of 42 pesestas to the pound, whereas the current rate is between 80 and 90 per pound. Has an international capitalist “understanding” been reached with Franco and his Fascist backers ?

“. . . . Why should not these British and French interests find in a Franco victory a solution of difficulties which have prevented them from being impartially (and prosperously) international ? Currency restrictions and the consequent inability of Germany and Italy to buy freely have kept many companies from profiting from the German and Italian armament booms. But with Franco in power, British and French capital might flow into a newly-organised Bank of Spain, Germany and Italy might borrow from this institution to pay for raw materials, and dividends in Penarroya, Almaden and the foreign companies in the Riff would be amply assured.”

What exactly these various British companies may be doing behind the scenes it is impossible to know, but it is certainly likely that they would seek some such solution as the one suggested by Mr. Hanighen. It must also be noticed that the controllers of these companies are exceedingly influential in British political as well as financial circles and would be able to exert great pressure on Government policy in a direction which would help them strike a good bargain with Franco and Franco’s friends.

There remains to be considered still one more aspect of the problem, that is the dependence of British re-armament on metals from Spain and elsewhere.

Ore For British Armaments

While British capitalists would have no objection whatever to making profit by selling materials to Germany or Italy for their armaments, the British Government, acting for the capitalists as a whole, cannot be indifferent to a stoppage of supplies needed for British arms. Already there is an acute shortage of steel and the loss of well over a million tons a year of Spanish ore (which cannot easily be replaced by poorer-quality ores from English or other mines) would be a serious matter for British capitalism. The Times City editor (July 19th, 1937) summarises the problem as follows (it will be noticed that, as regards Swedish ore, this statement rather conflicts with that made by Mr. Hanighen): —

If imports from Spain were to be cut off through ore being diverted to Germany or for any other reason, the task of making good the deficiency might present serious difficulties. Large deposits exist, it is true, in many parts of the world, but owing to the higher level of freight rates the cost of shipping ore from distant countries like India and Australia is apt to prove prohibitive. Of countries near at hand Sweden has probably the richest deposits, but exports are limited by the Swedish Government to about 10,000,000 tons annually, the bulk of which goes to Germany under contracts that have still several years to run. Except through a direct agreement with the Swedish Government, the scope for expanding supplies from this source is probably limited. In the first half of the current year imports from Algeria, Tunis, and especially Norway, were all higher, and should Germany contrive to satisfy a larger proportion of her requirements in Spain there is a possibility that still larger supplies in these countries would be available to Britain. Meanwhile, as the Import Duties Advisory Committee pointed out in its report, events are stimulating a movement towards the proportionately larger use of low-grade native ores, deposits of which, distributed through Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, and Northamptonshire, are estimated at not less than 3,000,000,000 tons, or sufficient for an annual output of 10,000,000 tons of steel for 100 years. Substitution of native low-grade ores for foreign ores with high metallic content could not, however, be effected wholesale without considerable modification of existing plant and, therefore, offers no immediate solution to the problem of the scarcity.

How the British capitalists try to solve their problems in Spain is, of course, their own affair, but it is necessary for Socialists to try to understand the main lines of their policy, if only in order to combat the notion, increasingly prevalent in Labour circles, that British capitalism can be trusted to pursue a peaceful, idealistic foreign policy free from the violent and sordid motives which underly the policies of the dictators.

British Government policy at the present time probably runs on the following lines: —

Determination to resist German and Italian control of Spanish territory. A desire to see a Spanish Government ultimately strong enough in armed force and popular support to prevent this. A desire not to see either side in the civil war overwhelmingly victorious, since such a Government would feel less dependent on British capital and British support. And a willingness—on terms—to do a deal with either side in the struggle, the terms to include safety for British investments and guarantees for the continued supply of ore.

Edgar Hardcastle

Here and There: The Church in Spain (1937)

The Here and There column from the August 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Church in Spain

Among a series of excellent articles on Spain in the Manchester Guardian one deals with the function of the Catholic Church in Spain and its attitude towards the Civil War. The correspondent, who spent a year in Spain, says: —

The burnings were often carried out by the villagers without any instructions from outside— indeed, they were often as spontaneous and, seemingly, as natural throughout Spain as the seizure of land was in the South of Spain. . . .

But, generally speaking, the war on the churches seems to have been a popular, spontaneous movement. And even when a gang arrived from outside the villagers, would, as a rule, stand round passively and look on while petrol was poured on the altar and set alight and the priest was dragged from his hiding- place.

In a country where the majority of the people have been, and still are, Catholics this indifference to the fate of the clergy needs some explaining. Read on: —

A Materialist Church.

Genuinely Christian priests have been killed. Much fine art has been destroyed and some of the finest music in the world been silenced. But the problem of the Church in Spain has another aspect. It was a Church more permeated by materialism than any other in Europe. It was largely—though by no means entirely—a commercial enterprise. It was the biggest landowner in a country of big landowners. It had a vast, and sometimes even a commanding, share in various industrial and commercial interests. A Church that identifies itself too closely with a temporal order is in danger of sharing the destiny of that order. And if a Church throws its weight on the side either of revolution or of counter-revolution, it will survive with the one or perish with the other.

The Spanish clergy has used Catholic teaching to influence Spanish workers to assist in maintaining the landowning and capitalist interests of the Spanish Church. They have failed and millions of Spanish Catholics are now the bitter enemies of the Catholic Church. The Jesuit boast that Catholic teaching until the age of seven years immunises the mind for life from heretical influences is a patent myth. The dominating influence in class struggles is class interest. The class interest of the Spanish workers, or what appears to them to be their class interest, dominates the influence of religious superstition. In many thousands of cases the open struggle with the Catholic Church will be sufficient to destroy its influence entirely. The position surprises many people with exaggerated ideas about the power of religion. The attitude of the Spanish worker to the Catholic Church is no less a logical expression of material interest than the attitude of the angry Spanish peasant who hung the image of St. Anthony upside down in a well after a failure of his crops. (An instance quoted by the Guardian correspondent, which can be paralleled by many stories from countries where there is a large Catholic peasantry.)

The Catholic Church is lined up with the landowning class behind Franco in a desperate fight to retain its ownership and feudal privileges. That is its chief interest in the struggle; and its resources are at the disposal of Franco. Many churches have become arsenals and many priests have discarded the cassock for the rifle. It is a ruthless and bitter class struggle in which life and property inevitably are destroyed.

If Catholic priests were murdered by angry Spanish peasants they have the reactionary and callous attitude of the Catholic Church to thank.

Whatever the outcome of the immediate struggle in Spain the hypocrisy and charlatanry of the Catholic Church there has dealt a blow to its moral influence which will not be rebuilt so easily as the walls of its churches.

Civilising Spain

The Irish Brigade, raised by General O’ Duffy to fight on behalf of Franco in Spain, has returned to Ireland without having done much fighting. The Manchester Guardian (June 23rd, 1937) quotes from the Irish Times and the Irish Press an account by the volunteers of what they saw in Spain.

We saw General Franco’s army executing “Reds” each morning in massed groups. They machine-gunned the condemned people, beginning at their ankles and directing the fire up along their bodies. The “ Reds,” in their last moments, lifted their clenched fists in the Communist salute, snouting “Viva Madrid !” This was in Caceres. It was in this town that the brigade spent most of their time.

That “great gentleman” and Catholic, Franco, will find a place in history with those murderers of the Paris Communards, the French ruling class. 

Marx—by Mr. Woodburn

Mr. Arthur Woodburn, secretary of the Scottish Labour Party, N.C.L.C. lecturer, and exponent of finance and economics, arch-squarer of the circles in Labour Party policy, says in the June Plebs: —

When individuals deny the obvious and proved fact that the Labour Party is a Socialist Party there is no point in arguing with them. . . . No one can join the Labour Party without proclaiming himself a Socialist.

It is, perhaps, too much to expect an Oracle to argue, but does he need to? Surely an "obvious and proved fact” should speak for itself? The “obvious and proved fact” that prominent members of the Labour Party have openly repudiated being Socialists and that the Labour Party is a Socialist Party does, however, appear to require explanation. Would you oblige, Mr. Woodburn? And would you also mention where evidence can be found for the statement that Marx agreed that 

It was quite conceivable that the capitalists would be bought out if they were paid very well if (as an exception, and England at that time was an exception) circumstances so developed that the capitalist would be obliged to submit and proceed in a cultured and organised manner towards Socialism on terms of compensation, 

and where

Elsewhere Marx said that "Under certain conditions the workers will not by any means refuse to buy out the bourgeoisie.”

There may be “not much point in arguing,” but, really, Mr. Woodburn, we would like to know.


The "New Leader” and “ The Socialist Standard"

In an article, “A Communist Leader and the Right to Strike,” which appeared in the July The Socialist Standard, it was stated that: “No reference has appeared, or—to be pedantically correct—has been noticed,” in Labour and Communist newspapers to the Bedwas Agreement signed by Mr. Arthur Horner. We learn now that such reference had been made. John Alpin, industrial editor of the New Leader, writes to say that it carried a critical analysis of the agreement and that a reply to that analysis by a member of the South Wales Miners’ Federation was dealt with point by point. Rather disagreeably, he says that he “would have assumed that the S.P.G.B. . . . would have read the columns of the New Leader each week.” We make the correction suggested by Mr. Alpin, if such it can be called, gladly. The number of weekly and monthly journals published by working-class organisations is numerous, and when writing is a voluntary task and journals unobtainable through the usual channels it is quite easy to miss an issue of any particular journal. The New Leader could help to avoid the recurrence of such “errors.” We suggest it put us on its exchange list. We put this suggestion to several journals, including the New Leader, a few years ago. Many agreed, even where the price is much higher than The Socialist Standard and publication more frequent: the New Leader declined. Perhaps, Mr. Alpin, you would do something to adjust the matter?

The Indian Workers and their Exploiters

Congress, India’s Nationalist Party, has climbed down from its earlier attitude of refusing to form governments in the six Provinces where it obtained majorities in the recent elections. In the resolution embodying the decision to form Governments, the draft of which, according to the Daily Herald, is attributed to Gandhi, it is said: —

The proper description of the existing relationship between the British Government and the people of India is that of exploiter and exploited, and hence they have a different outlook upon almost everything of vital importance.

Having admitted that exploiters and exploited must have a different outlook, Mr. Gandhi ignores the obvious, that exploited Indians can have no harmony of outlook with the Nationalist exploiters of their own race. To say, as he has said, that the Indian princes, landowners and capitalists can be persuaded to be “trustees” for the Indian masses, dodges the issue. The British capitalists would claim “trusteeship” for millions of Colonial masses throughout the world with nothing more to support it than the pious hypocrisy which cloaks their real interests. The practice of capitalism does not reveal the capitalist class to be any less the robbers because the class they exploit happen to speak the same language. The Indian workers have yet a painful road to travel before they acquire the understanding necessary for their emancipation. 

More Russian Puzzles

The Russian Government’s purge of "Trotskyites,” “diversionists,” ”wreckers” and “spies” continues, apparently, unabated. As must obviously happen, no amount of bias or coloured phraseology can obscure the contradictions which obtrude through the evidence against the “traitors."

The Moscow correspondent of the Daily Herald (June 29th, T 937) gives the number executed for spying in the Far Eastern Province of Khabarovsk as 133 to the end of April, and quotes the Russian newspaper Izvestia, that “the spies were able to persuade railway workers’ to sell them uniforms." The reason why workers, who, according to Russian and Communist claims, are well paid, should want to sell their uniforms, is left to the imagination of the reader who is keen enough to notice the contradiction.

Another report from the same correspondent (July 3rd, 1937) states that a notorious spy, who had been run to earth, succeeded in organising "a gang of ex-priests, monks, kulaks and discontented young people'' (Our italics.) Perhaps a Communist friend could explain that “discontent" of young people.

Many of the “honourable Communists" who helped to draft the Constitution have since become victims of the purge, including Tukhachensky, Gamarnik, Uborevich, Yakir and Chervyakoff, who are dead, and Goloded and Postysheff, who are disgraced.

The Moscow correspondent of the Daily Telegraph (June 29th, 1937) refers to the purge among industrial leaders whose production figures have fallen, and quotes from Pravda an attack on the woman Communist President of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society, who. it is alleged, spent £600 on clothes suitable for her to wear to meet foreigners, when sent on an official trip abroad. The reward of Socialist competition?

Yet another report comments on the arrest of a “Trotskyist bandit,” Doletski, head of the Tass News Agency, which supplies the bulk of all news to Soviet papers. He is ”accused of having suppressed news about wreckers in industry and having over-emphasised news of successes." (Daily Herald, July 8th, 1937.)

Suppression of news inimical to its interests is inevitable where there is political dictatorship and a host of minor dictators in their own particular spheres. No regime claiming to represent working-class interests, which has a sound basis, need repress news or criticism. Socialist principles have nothing to lose and everything to gain from free and open discussion. Under dictatorship even the mildest criticism of the regime, or opposition on questions of policy, must result in intrigue against the Government and take insurrectionary forms.

Where there is dictatorship by a person or a clique, who decide what is right for the majority, it is inevitable that discontent and inequality arise. When discontent becomes widespread a scramble takes place to place culpability on the shoulders of others. Socialist interests can only thrive under the free and open conditions of democracy. 

Harry Waite