Letter: It is robbery ? (1975)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is robbery ?

Why does the Socialist Party of Great Britain claim that man’s activity, society’s activity, centres around Speakers’ Corner, Marble Arch, where the SPGB speaks?

How vast and worldly and adventurous is the activity of socialists outside party activity? Socialists claim that they aim to obtain Socialism democratically (the only way). To act democratically means also that you must act legally in all of your activity in and outside party activity. How is this possible when the economic system, capitalism is NOT democratic? There is no democracy in the economic and industrial jungle of capitalism, and it is extremely difficult to remain legal (democratic) in this field.

Socialists say the capitalist class "rob” the workers by denying them the full fruits of their labour. So what’s to stop us robbing them, the capitalists?

J. W. Spencer 

London W.2.

Reply:

The opening of your letter is unoriginal; for a reply to that, see page 157 of this issue. Your second question is why Socialists should act legally, either in their political party or as individuals, in an undemocratic society. The answer on the Party account is that capitalism requires the consent of the ruled-over and so provides a sufficient democratic apparatus for Socialists to use. Your concern about democracy should show you that the attempting of illegal means implies conspiracy, i.e. action by a minority. As individuals, most of us would say that there are enough problems for working people without adding to them by going in for crime.

However, your last paragraph shows a serious misconception at the bottom of your argument. The working class sells its labour-power, its only possession, to the owners of the means of production and distribution, who lay claim to the consequent products. The workers are not robbed — indeed, it is impossible to be robbed of what one has never owned; they are exploited. To argue that it is robbery just the same implies (a) that the Socialist case is about “right” and “justice” — it is not; and (b) that the aim of Socialism is to snatch back the product. Of course our aim is that the working class shall obtain the full fruits of its labour, but the target has to be not the product in itself but the ownership of the means of production. That is what the struggle is about.

Editors.

A reasonable journey (2025)

From the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Richard Headicar describes how his socialist viewpoint on the world developed, and some of the people he met along the way.

Few, if any, of the guests at my 21st birthday party in 1954 would ever have imagined that their cheerful host – then a chauvinistic, Tory-supporting Christian monarchist – might someday become a member of the SPGB. Indeed, I would myself have dismissed such a proposition as utterly delusional. Yet while some may consider such a comprehensive transition remarkable, I simply regard it as nothing more than the consequence of a number of eminently reasonable decisions taken in the light of changing circumstances.

In fact, although I was blissfully unaware of it, the first seed of change had already been planted. It had been surreptitiously sown a week previously by Dr Donald Soper on my very first visit to Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park. Soper was one of three brilliant Methodist preachers who had held me spellbound from the age of 14 by their outstanding oratory (the others were Dr Leslie Weatherhead and Dr William Sangster, then the doyen of Westminster Central Hall and the grandmaster of the craft of homiletics). What Donald Soper said that day about the use of atomic bombs against Japan completely shocked me. He cast doubt upon the official version of events offered in justification: that doing so averted the need for an invasion, thereby saving millions of lives. So profound was my disbelief that I departed the park firmly resolved to prove him mistaken. Surely, I thought, governments – well, Western governments anyway – would never countenance such an extreme act without incontrovertible reasons. My shock was much greater, however, on discovering that not only was everything Soper said absolutely true, but there was so much more that he had omitted to say. For several years I became immersed in trying to learn all that I could about the real situation, following a trail from Gottingen (where research into nuclear physics had been carried out) to Los Alamos (in California where the first atomic bombs were developed) through to the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Needless to say, I had not the faintest notion of where this newly-acquired knowledge would lead me, never for a moment thinking that it would affect my political allegiance. Very soon, however, a series of events occurred that were to have a significant impact in that respect.

The first of these was the Suez crisis in 1956. Out of curiosity, I joined a march from Speakers’ Corner to Trafalgar Square where a massive anti-war rally was taking place. All I knew about Egypt was that it had pyramids and that according to headlines dominating the popular press, a scheming Egyptian politician named Nasser was causing trouble. Also that the British Prime Minister, Sir Anthony Eden, seemed to be changing his mind every week about what he should do. But, once again, my political complacency was challenged when I learned of the dubious motives of the Western powers, centred on the protection of their substantial economic interests in the Middle East. One of the speakers that day was Anuerin Bevan, another compelling orator, and the passionate humanity of his words persuaded me that perhaps the Labour Party was the place to be in order to restore my faith in our political leaders…

Over the ensuing years, as a result of my ongoing investigations into the labyrinthine deceptions surrounding the manufacture and use of the first atomic bombs, I developed a particular concern regarding the rapid escalation of the arms race, especially in relation to nuclear weapons. My next reasonable step seemed only logical: on 7 February 1958, I attended the inaugural public meeting of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). Appropriately enough, given my wavering but just about extant Methodist beliefs, the meeting was convened at Westminster Central Hall.

The promising news that over 70 Labour MPs had pledged their support to the cause provided precisely the nudge I needed to join the Labour Party. At its 1960 conference in Scarborough, a unilateralist motion proposed by Frank Cousins, the leader of the Transport and General Workers Union (T&GWU) succeeded in winning a narrow majority. It was countered immediately by Labour Party leader Hugh Gaitskell with his oft-quoted, highly emotional avowal to ‘fight and fight and fight again to save the party we love’. Amazingly, it was at this point in the Labour Party’s long history that a group of MPs came to the realisation that the use of the ‘block vote’ was ‘undemocratic’. This was something the left-wing minority had been pointing out for many years, but obviously such a belated recognition of their previously disregarded submission was in no way related to the fact that, on this occasion, it had worked against the Executive Committee. Bill Rodgers, aided and abetted by four other ‘moderate’ MPs – Dick Taverne, Anthony Crosland, Douglas Jay and Roy Jenkins – wasted little time in forming the Campaign for Democratic Socialism (CDS). These fervent supporters of democracy, however, appeared determined to devote most of their energy in a concerted effort to portray CND as a haven for ‘communists’.

A deliciously ironic confirmation that my initial optimism about the Labour Party might have been misplaced occurred on the publication of the Tory government’s 1961 Statement on the Defence Estimates about military budgets. Five Labour Party MPs, including future leader Michael Foot, had the whip withdrawn (basically, expelled) for voting against the government. I was not altogether surprised, therefore, when at Labour’s Blackpool conference, the combination of a dodgy ‘compromise’ proposal, more skulduggery and blatant vote fiddling, by which certain Unions were permitted to reverse their original mandate, ensured that the 1960 unilateralist resolution was duly overturned. In his excellent pamphlet Nuclear Disarmament and the Labour Party, Tony Southall comments ‘one important effect of the new events in 1960-1 was that a whole generation of CND activists shunned the party’.

So far as I was concerned, fully awakened at least to the routine misappropriation of the word ‘democracy’ in pursuit of political expediency, I left the Labour Party, never to return. It was a disappointment to me that so many of my unilateralist comrades chose to remain. By now thoroughly despairing of party politics and sadly disillusioned with the efficacy of ‘democracy’, I was increasingly drawn to the philosophy of anarchism. Nevertheless, I remained firmly wedded to the unilateralist cause while undergoing a number of shifts and slides in my personal evaluation of the official CND position. I found it too narrow and confining and much preferred the intellectually stimulating atmosphere of the divergent attitudes I encountered in the Committee of 100 direct action group. Although broadly supportive of CND’s work, it remained absolutely independent and welcomed other speakers who presented the anti-war case in varying styles and from an individual perspective.

For some time I had been running a platform every Saturday and Sunday at Speakers’ Corner centred around CND. I also participated regularly in acts of civil disobedience and eventually ended up in jail for protesting at the Soviet embassy. I was sentenced in October 1961, a day or so after the Labour Party’s infamous Blackpool conference. Coincidentally, I was due to take part in a much-anticipated debate with an eloquent SPGB representative, Melvin Harris, but was prevented from doing so at Her Majesty’s pleasure. I often wonder whether had I not been so inconsiderately detained, my SPGB membership would have been more expeditious? A much-missed friend and comrade, Edmund ‘Eddie’ Grant, relished relating his own version of my non-appearance, that I simply got cold feet at the last moment and deliberately chose prison as a means of avoiding the superior reasoning of the SPGB.

During the years I spent speaking in Hyde Park on behalf of CND, I’m afraid that I regarded the SPGB as an arrogant bunch who found it almost impossible to see merit in anyone but themselves. In relation to CND, although the SPGB’s criticism of it was correct, the unengaging, predominantly negative manner in which it was presented was decidedly counter-productive. Eddie Grant was one of only three members with whom I enjoyed regular dialogue in a friendly and non-judgemental manner then. Eddie, especially, was a welcome visitor to my platform and in his deceptively disarming way invariably raised thought-provoking questions.

An excellent example of Eddie’s method of patient, albeit politely persistent interpolation is the imaginative ruse he employed to breach my unyielding refusal to entertain the possibility of a society devoid of money or markets. The apparent immutability of both had been deeply ingrained in my psyche from a very early age. Following the publication in 1962 of Rachel Carson’s pioneering book Silent Spring, Eddie had listened to me orating passionately on the disastrous effect on the environment resulting from military activity and developments. On the next occasion we met he presented me with a piece of paper on which he had copied a quote from William Morris:

‘Is there money to be gathered? Cut down the pleasant trees among the houses, pull down the ancient and venerable buildings for the money that a few square yards of London dirt will fetch; blacken rivers, hide the sun and poison the air with smoke or worse, and it’s nobody’s business to see it or mend it: that is all that modern commerce, the counting house forgetful of the workshop, will do for us herein’ (The Lesser Arts) .

He also recommended two books: Morris’s News From Nowhere and Robert Tressell’s The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists. Unfortunately, my reading at the time continued to be dominated by the tedious and complex tomes concerned with weapons and ‘defence’ strategies. I was also becoming increasingly interested in the ideas propounded by various philosophers. Consequently, some 20 years elapsed before I finally read Robert Tressell’s heart-breaking but inspiring masterpiece and grasped that the rational implications of the William Morris quotation spoke of the necessity for a change far more fundamental than environmental intervention. It was only many years after I joined the SPGB that I finally got round to reading News From Nowhere, prior to a talk I gave at Fircroft on ‘The Stateless Society’. With Eddie very much in mind, I included the quote he had handed me all those years previously.

It was at Speakers’ Corner also that I met the Hungarian philosopher Alfred Reynolds (Reinhold), who was to prove by far the greatest influence in my life. He somehow managed to transform my thinking and attitudes without once telling me I was ‘wrong’ but instead patiently explaining his points of disagreement without once claiming they were ‘right’. Two areas in which he shared valuable insights were the danger of ‘group thinking’ and the ‘nature of truth’. He held much respect, even affinity, for the SPGB and claimed that at some point in the 1930s he was briefly a member, though for reasons that I recount in a brief biography I have just completed, it would have been under an assumed name that he joined.

In the mid-1980s, when I gave a talk for the Islington branch of the SPGB (prior to becoming a member myself), a telling contribution from Eddie Grant, challenging my rejection of the democratic process, removed the final obstacle to SPGB membership. I became a member of the Party in 1988 and Eddie’s lucid rebuttal of my contention that the right to vote was meaningless was instrumental in that decision. Given my many conversations with him during the preceding years, my protracted journey to membership should have been much shorter. Alas, I had been too preoccupied with saving the world from perceived nuclear annihilation to pay proper attention to his wise illuminations.

In the process of change, interspersed with landmark episodes, there are countless subtle and often subconscious influences too complex and personal to properly record, and some are perhaps destined to remain unfathomable. I frequently ponder upon my own readiness to take the reasonable steps that led me to my eventual destination.

Was I born with a predisposition to more readily embrace ‘logical’ development? How much importance should be given to the impact the Methodist preachers had and the early lessons they conveyed to me about listening, constructing and delivering an argument and the use of humour? Would I ever have moved on at all if I had not been confronted with those dramatic political events? How much does the chance of circumstance play? Meeting with such exceptional individuals as Eddie and Alfred was most assuredly not pre-ordained.

Are we simply the products of our personal, social and political environments? If this is so, why are we not ‘behaviourists’ like B F Skinner? Is becoming a socialist the result of a conscious choice, and what do we mean by this? If choice is assumed, can we ever be sure it is not merely the result of circumstance? In presenting the case for socialism, should more consideration than at present be given to the philosophical and psychological implications?

Richard Headicar

Blogger's Note:

Richard's obituary appeared in the same issue of the Socialist Standard.

Obituary: Richard Headicar (2025)

Obituary from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In January, we received the sad news that our very popular, long-standing member, Richard Headicar had died shortly after Christmas, aged 91, having been in ill-health for some time. Years ago, he had been diagnosed with throat cancer. After treatment, his voice was considerably weaker, which unfortunately curtailed his public speaking activities that he performed so well. Nevertheless, he remained cheerful and positive, as always.

I first met Richard in the mid-1980s when he gave a talk as a non-member at a public meeting of the old Islington Branch. At that meeting, although he spoke as a critical visitor, he continued the friendly and non-judgemental dialogue with several members at his regular platform at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. Richard continued to attend our meetings to discuss his evolving political ideas and he joined the Party in 1988. He subsequently represented us with great oratorical skill, passion and humour at many indoor and outdoor meetings. He was particularly experienced and adept at dealing with hecklers at public meetings. He was a regular and committed attendee of Islington Branch and stood as the Party’s candidate in the Holborn & St Pancras constituency for the 1992 General Election. His friendly and engaging manner and persuasive ability helped the branch thrive in terms of making new members, talks, debates and social events. He was very sociable and always keen to continue the discussion/debate in the pub after meetings. At Head Office, he served on the Executive Committee for a few years and ran classes for new speakers, passing on to members the benefit of his long and valuable experience.

Speaking at Hyde Park in the 1980s.

Richard and I soon discovered that we shared an interest in football and tennis. This led to regular games of tennis, and we were often joined on court by a number of members and friends. With his wicked sense of humour, he loved to wind people up on various subjects. Knowing that I dislike and don’t celebrate Christmas because of its awful mix of intense commercialism, nonsensical religion and tiresome clichés, he would gleefully wind me up by sending me ghastly Christmas cards every year with a personal message cheekily explaining that he’d deliberately chosen the worst-taste card he could find, with a picture of angels, a snowy scene with Santa Claus or maybe a cute-looking robin.

He had become a vegetarian in 1960, when there were very few veggie restaurants in London. He enjoyed good food, beer and wine (especially a good Rioja) and often invited friends and comrades to his philosophy-focused dinner parties. His wide-ranging interests included philosophy, environmentalism, music, sport, politics, literature, music and perhaps more bizarrely, watching ‘B’ movies; he was also fond of board and other games, e.g the classic table football game Subbuteo (way back, he’d taken on the inventor, P.A. Adolph, and proudly told me he’d only narrowly lost 2-1).

He was a bit of a technophobe and a critical observer of certain modern social trends, particularly the growing obsession with computers and mobile phones. We had a good laugh when he told me about several cities introducing a ’texting lane’ on pavements in an attempt to prevent collisions between pedestrians.

Later in life, he retired to Hethersett near Norwich where he lived in a sheltered housing complex. Ever the activist, and as a champion of social housing, he worked hard to support the residents and further their interests. He also participated in diverse village groups such as dementia support, pensioners’ rights, bereavement and bowls.

Across his life Richard had been greatly influenced by the Hungarian philosopher Alfred Reynolds, so much so that in recent years he wrote a biography of him that was reviewed in the March 2024 Socialist Standard. Without doubt, all those who met him will recognise that Richard was a real character and he will be greatly missed by the party and all who knew him. Our condolences go to his family and friends.

Chris Dufton

Blogger's Note:

The accompanying pictures of Richard are not from this month's Socialist Standard but are from this piece on Richard from the Sounds of the Park website. (Credit to Sophie Polyviou for the more recent picture.)

I had the good fortune to be in the same London branch as Richard in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and I can only echo Chris's fine sentiments in his obituary. An engaging and kind comrade, Richard had time for everyone, and had a particular skill in conveying socialist ideas in a unique manner. (None of my blood and thunder class war cliches.) The SPGB were lucky to have him in our ranks.

A Search for Truth (2024)

Book Review from the March 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Alfred Reynolds / Reinhold Alfred. By Richard Headicar. 2023. ISBN 978-1-3999-6772-3

Alfred Reynolds was a philosopher and poet from Hungary who fled to Britain in 1937 after being arrested for allegedly subversive political activities. A Social Democrat and former ‘Communist’ who was at one point accused of Trotskyism there, he was a radical who was a long-term critic of totalitarian political formations, both Fascist and Leninist.

Because of his linguistic abilities he worked as an interpreter for a time in Britain including for German prisoners of war at the Kempton Park prison camp, before creating a de-Nazification programme that he pioneered at Slemdal Prison Camp in Norway. He received recognition and support from the Labour MP Philip Noel-Baker and after a time with the International Refugee Council eventually became a middle-ranking UK civil servant in London, but it is not that for which he is perhaps most well-known.

After the war, Reynolds created a weekly discussion group that mirrored to some extent one that he had developed in Hungary and another, later, circle of Germans who had been influenced by his tutelage. It was called the ‘Bridge Circle’ and out of this emanated a monthly journal called the London Letter. This had a low circulation but an influence that was disproportionate to its size: over time Martin Buber, J.B. Priestley, TUC leader George Woodcock, Albert Schweitzer and Sir Herbert Read were all contributors. Jomo Kenyatta was another who orbited in this milieu, as was Colin Wilson who described Reynolds as ‘one of the most original minds of the modern world’.

Reynolds went on to found an English Language School in central London, but it is for the Bridge Circle and London Letter that he is probably best known. His philosophy counselled strongly against ‘group think’ and in favour of the search for ‘personal truth’ and arguably veered between liberalism and anarchism (with added influences from the saner writings of Nietzsche among others). In 1982 a number of Reynolds’s articles were published in a volume called Pilate’s Question. This title referred to the eternal conundrum of ‘what is truth?’, though Reynolds was a little frustrated that this was interpreted by some onlookers as being a possible religious tract when it was anything but.

Reynolds was for decades one of London’s characters and it was at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park that he met Richard Headicar in the 1950s, the author of this biography. Headicar was at the time an anti-nuclear speaker with anarchist leanings and who broadly supported CND. He became heavily influenced by Reynolds who converted from being his critic to mentor, and was a regular attender at the Bridge Circle (later carrying on a similar informal philosophy group in London, including after Reynolds’s death in 1993). Headicar writes:

‘Fittingly the last time I saw Alfred was at Speakers’ Corner. Coincidentally I was speaking for the SPGB of which he claimed he was once a member. I think he may have joined using another of his noms de plume. Spotting him in my crowd I was once more fleetingly visited by trepidation, wondering if he would be disappointed by my new affiliation. When I alighted from the platform he at once approached me, smiled, put his arm around my shoulder and said “Richard, that was pure Bridge”.’

The book is beautifully produced and includes many copies of letters, photos and other artefacts. It also details the more recent resurgence of interest in him in his home country of Hungary, including for his early work Alfred Reinhold’s First and Last Volume of Lyric Poetry. There is a useful chapter on Bridge philosophy too and its relationship with Marx, Nietzsche, the power of human consciousness, technology and creativity among other things. And while Reynolds was sceptical of the ‘group think’ of Marxism, he clearly recognised in the SPGB a more independent and critical spirit than is typical on the self-styled Left – as of course, did Richard Headicar himself, a Party member to this day.

Dave Perrin

Speaking Out (2023)

Book Review from the August 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

Speakers’ Corner Anthology. Edited by Jim Huggon. Union of Egoists. 2022.

This is a republication (with a new, additional Foreword) of an anthology first published in 1977. It is a collection of excerpts and other written material connected to Hyde Park’s Speakers’ Corner and there are several references to the SPGB scattered throughout. Jim Huggon is an anarchist who spoke regularly there from 1965 to 1983. He refers to a review by the Socialist Standard of the original version which has slightly puzzled us as it appears that no such review was ever published.

The collection also includes a knockabout piece by Harry Young (Horatio) called ‘On the Platform’ and originally published in the Seventieth Anniversary edition of the Standard in June 1974. There are excerpts too from famous Speakers’ Corner regular Bonar Thompson’s book, Hyde Park Orator, which has also recently been republished with added illustrations.

In addition, there is an interesting if rather pious excerpt from a piece by Lord Donald Soper about his time as an outdoor orator (more focused on Tower Hill than Hyde Park). This is interesting as he tells of encounters with a variety of other regular speakers and his relationship with them, without actually naming them. In particular, he writes of his conversations with a well-known Tower Hill personality and that this man was a scientific socialist, ‘breathing fire and slaughter against all religion, sneering at morality [and] despising the consolations of faith’ who turned out to be much warmer privately than his public persona had initially indicated. Given Soper’s detailed description of him it is highly likely that this was Harry Martin, a regular speaker at Tower Hill and who had left the SPGB in 1911 to found the Socialist Propaganda League (see ‘Getting Splinters’, in the June 2004 Centenary Edition of the Socialist Standard).

Tower Hill no longer exists as a speaking station and Speakers’ Corner at Hyde Park is a shadow of its former self, these days a veritable bear garden aimed at tourists with very few serious speakers. This anthology helps capture the spirit of an earlier age.

DAP.

Blogger's Note:

There's a wee mistake in the review. The original edition of this book was reviewed by Robert Barltrop in the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Obituary: Comrade W. Veal (1940)

Obituary from the March 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

With deep regret we announce the death of Comrade W. Veal, of the Paddington Branch, at the early age of forty-nine. He was a familiar figure to the thousands who frequent our Hyde Park meetings, for he was our most consistent literature seller outside the Hyde Park gates.

For years—whatever the weather—he stood at his post for hours on end every Saturday and Sunday and so helped by his reliability and cheerful willingness to build up the very large literature sales we now command at that Propaganda station. We can ill afford to lose such a splendid worker for the Socialist Cause.

We extend our deepest sympathy to his bereaved wife and family.

For the Propaganda Committee, 

A. Turner.

SPGB Meetings (1984)

Party News from the September 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Proletaires—Unissez-Vous! (1976)

Party News from the May 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

What happened the other Sunday morning had to be heard to be believed. Our man in Hyde Park was patiently explaining the mechanics of inflation to a fair crowd when a French television crew arrived (TFI, no less) with a polite request to interview the Party. This was an offer we couldn’t refuse, and off we went, s’il vous plait.

First question: “‘Est le Parti Socialiste de Grande Bretagne (yes, they got it right!) contre la Monarchie?” Now, it so happened by some quirk of Fate that our bloke on the platform, at that moment, had a smattering of French (apparently picked up in the more sleazy joints behind the Pigalle). The word rapidly shot round: they came running from all quarters to enjoy the fun.

Deuxième question (Second Question, to you): ‘‘Est le Parti Socialiste contre l’Aristocratie?” Réponse: “Oui. Socialisme will abolish all titles, ranks and privileges, Lords, Dukes and Queens as the French bourgeois did in 1794. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité — remember? But they replaced aristocracy with plutocracy. Socialism is social equality.”

By this time our bloke’s slender stock of French was rapidly running out. Third question: “What do the British people think of Princess Margaret and her affairs?” This was a question for the British people, not the Socialist Party, and the speaker therefore translated to the audience. ". . . !” shouted a large man at the front. ". . .? Qu’est-ce que e’est . . .?” said the TV producer. So they had to be content with “Rien” — nothing. “We don’t think about Princess Margaret at all. Nothing.”

“Nothing?” “Don’t you understand any English at all?” roared the exasperated speaker. “Mais oui” responded the TV man. The speaker then proceeded, as we usually do, to interview the interviewer. “May I ask if you are a member of the French working class?” The TV man gave a typically Sacha Distel shrug: “Je ne sais pas: I don’t know!”

“Well, we do,” said the Socialist party speaker. He turned to the audience: “Come on, somebody — ‘wage-slave’ in French?” And from the inexhaustible resources of working-class knowhow, back the answer came — in a piercing girlish treble from a pretty mademoiselle in the audience: “l’esclave salaire”.

“That’s it! You are an ‘esclave salaire’. And what’s more, you’re working on Sunday while we’re all enjoying ourselves discussing Socialism.” By this time, the the interviewer was in the van amid mutual “Au revoirs”, “Venez chez nous encore” and “Merci beaucoup”. Cheers! handshakes! Formidable, magnifique, etc.

So now we need linguists. All Party speakers must learn at least two foreign languages. Anyone who knows French, Swahili, Arabic, Spanish, Chinese or Urdu should come along to Hyde Park and help the Workers of the World unite.

Horatio

Letter: Are We Normal? (1978)

Letter to the Editors from the January 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Are We Normal?

At speakers’ corner the other Sunday your speaker said ‘‘We have no geniuses in our party, we are ordinary members of the working class”. Who are you trying to kid? Perhaps yourselves?

How can you be ordinary members of the working class when you belong to an extraordinary organization? Perhaps you mean your members represent a cross-section of the working class in intelligence. That in itself is debatable, but it has nothing to do with normality.

Ordinary people on hearing the socialist case do not become socialists, only those made aware by exceptional circumstances. In other words, the Socialist Party acts as a catalyst in developing ideas that are themselves fairly advanced. The group of people you aim at are in this situation of advancement.

How then you will ever communicate the socialist idea to the majority of people who, whilst having the intellectual capacity to understand, have not the learning (through no fault of their own) to understand at the level you persist in speaking at, is beyond me. No matter what you think of yourselves, you appear alien. This is no way to go about working-class emancipation; you are supposed to enlighten, not frighten.

I commented in a previous letter at your ‘‘angry” approach. The left in Britain, the Socialist Standard says, has not had an increase in support in 50 years—but then have you? Reach out to the people. It’s all very well having high-powered debates and discussions, it may be great fun, but who are you going to convince? A few trade unionists and university students, perhaps. But the average man in the street? I think not.

Sell yourselves. You have to (initially) speak and work in language that is not alien to the vast majority. I realize that your resources are low, your membership small, and the media is hostile to your cause. But you squander what little resources you have.

I am a person outside of the Party. I am commenting on how the Party might appear to the average person who has heard of it. By the way, the average person cares very little about the starving millions in Bangladesh. Bring the arguments down from the heavens to the earth, commenting on how Socialism will affect us as individuals in our own special environment.

David Waite

Imperial College

Reply:

Maybe socialists are extraordinary! Most of them, however, are not geniuses. Moreover, even if one were, for example, highly adept at mathematics, that would not help one to understand Socialism.

You are angry. You suggest that we ‘‘sell ourselves”. Do you have any suggestions as to how we should do this? You say we are unlikely to convince anyone but a “few university students and trade unionists”. Well, a very wide section of the working class belongs to some trade union or other; firemen do and so do civil servants. What differentiates the trade-union member from the rest of the working class?

The average person may feel unable to do much about the starving peoples in Bangladesh, but one of our aims is to get the “man on the Clapham omnibus” to question everything which happens in the world. When someone realizes why butter mountains, wine lakes etc. exist alongside starving millions, he is on the way towards understanding capitalism. Once the “average man” (or woman) understands how capitalism works, he (or she) will want to set about trying to replace it. And in working out what to replace it with, people will see the necessity of Socialism.

Editors.

What is a Capitalist? (1976)

From the December 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nature in the raw — in fact, on Sunday mornings in Hyde Park. Real-life questions asked at actual meetings by genuine people; nothing added or taken away; nothing invented or simulated.

Question: Am I a capitalist? I run a hairdressing saloon. I am a taxi-driver with my own cab. I run a greengrocer’s shop. I am a jobbing builder. I have an accountant’s office. I am a free-lance photographer, journalist, general practitioner . . . and so on. Short, clear, firm, definite answer: No, you are not!

The long answer is the explanation. Why not?

*

It is a popular fallacy that, since capitalists are obviously rich, all Socialists (who oppose the capitalist system) must be poor. Many people have a hazy notion that all poor people are Socialists and all rich ones anti-Socialists. In other words, they do not know the difference between actual objective conditions and ideas about them.

Nothing is, unfortunately, farther from the truth. The poorer people are, frequently, the more devoted to capitalism. Who has not met the destitute wretch, subsisting by cadging hand-outs, who runs round shrieking nationalistic or religious rubbish (often a psychiatric case through sheer physical deprivation)?

Conversely, nothing is more fallacious than the notion that all rich people are (or were) anti-Socialists. Many rich men and women have been most creditable Socialist thinkers and writers — some outstandingly so. Frederick Engels immediately springs to mind: a successful manager of his father’s cotton mill. In fact, his financial aid made the production of Marx’s Capital possible.

But he was only one of many who contributed, or thought they were contributing, to bringing down capitalism. H. M. Hyndman spent much of his large fortune in publishing Justice and financing the Social Democratic Federation from which the SPGB emerged. Sergei Morosov, the Russian sugar millionaire, financed the Bolsheviks. Ferdinand Lassalle, a founder of the German trades unions, was supported by the fabulously wealthy Countess Hatzfeld. This writer was informed by Max Eastman that Charles Chaplin, when he was running a profitable film venture, regularly supported Eastman’s American radical magazine The Liberator.

It is true that capitalists do not need to work, untrue that no capitalist ever works. They are not all nitwits dedicated to gambling, boozing, etc. The late Lord Rothschild was a biologist of world repute, an acknowledged authority on fleas (though as in other subjects, especially science, this sort of research is not as altruistic as it may seem: nobody wants lousy workers — not only capitalists, but other workers). Other wealthy men and women have spent fortunes on the arts and actually participated in archaeology, exploration and science.

What makes a person a capitalist is not what he thinks, but what he has: his bank balance, not his mental balance. This is the crux of the question. A capitalist is a possessor of capital.

And what is capital? It is wealth invested to produce profit. That is why the Great Train Robbers immediately after their successful “job” were not capitalists. Their problem was to “get rid of it”, i.e. invest it, integrate it with social production. The trinkets and diamonds in the safe-deposits of the French banks robbed recently are wealth, but not capital; they play no part in production, make no profit. They are “hoards”.

This brings us to the mathematics. “Mr. Speaker, am I a capitalist?” Yes — if you have at least £250,000 in readily realizable assets (so-called “liquid funds”) in a bank, company, property or bonds. £250,000 at 10 per cent. (you’ll be lucky!) would perhaps realize £25,000 annually. £25,000 should net a little under £500 a week. Tax deduction (assuming no Capital Gains) at least £200 weekly. Net balance: £300 weekly (approx.).

Not too much, really — because, unless you choose to become a hermit living on raw onions in a shed (as one or two capitalists have done) you’ve got to be like the other capitalists. Not much for the wife’s mink. You could hardly park the Rolls or Merc outside the high-rise blocks in Brixton or Paddington : the neighbours would be ringing the police, and the kids smashing it up. Even the gardener or chauffeur would want about £50 a week.

For a real 1980 capitalist, a quarter of a million is peanuts. As Paul Getty remarked acidly, “How can you call yourself rich if you know how much you’ve got?” Another tycoon, asked by an ingenuous young admirer how much his fabulous yacht cost, said: “Listen, son — when you start counting the cost, you don’t buy one of these boats.”

Howard Hughes paid £500 a night (without Security, which was extra) for his modest pad at “The Inn on the Park”. Statisticians have calculated that if a common soldier landing with William the Conqueror had worked incessantly and frugally from then to now he would still not own as much as Sir John Ellerman in 1976.

No, you are not a capitalist, and you are even less likely to become one. But once you realize what the capitalist system is and how it works — you can become a Socialist.

Next question!

Horatio

Party News (1981)

Party News from the December 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

Debating the Fascists 

The debate between the Socialist Party of Great Britain and Martin Webster of the National Front, which was to have taken place at the Cambridge Union on 12 October (see October Socialist Standard) was cancelled on the advice of the Cambridge police as a result of threats from the Socialist Workers’ Party and the British Movement. A letter from the Cambridge Community Relations Council warned us that if we participated in the debate we would "discredit the Socialist Party of Great Britain and will only do damage to both your cause and the cause of positive race relations’’.

In the course of the same letter, Judith Kibblewhite stated that "we believe that fascist arguments and propaganda must be countered at every opportunity”. If this is so, why does she urge the SPGB not to counter such arguments in open, democratic debate? Is exposing the stupidity of racist arguments damaging to “positive race relations”? If the Cambridge CRC is worried about damage being done to the socialist cause why were they in the forefront of a campaign to deny the SPGB the opportunity to state our ease in public?

The truth of the matter is that there are certain organisations, including the Cambridge CRC, the SWP and the British Movement, which believe in winning arguments by force or censorship. The National Front, thanks to the undemocratic actions of their opponents, is now able to pose as a defender of democracy. The ultimate result is that the NF has been saved from public exposure by socialist speakers and the SPGB has been denied a useful propaganda activity. Needless to say, we are waiting for the next opportunity to accept an invitation to debate with the defenders of capitalism.

CND Demonstration

The Party was well represented at the CND demonstration in Hyde Park on Saturday, 24 October. Two thousand leaflets were distributed, putting the case against the reformist opposition to war. Copies of the leaflet are available from Head Office. Several dozen copies of the October Socialist Standard were sold.

Boxing Day Propaganda 

Readers likely to be bored out of their minds with the Christmas ritual may wish to attend the public meeting which is being organised in Hyde Park on Boxing Day from 11 am until 4 pm. What we have to say will be better than the Queen’s Speech and rather less dull than Gone With The Wind.

Steve Coleman

It can be done! (1977)

Party News from the March 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the Westminster Branch social just before Christmas, the voice of the secretary boomed out above the convivial din: “A madman among us, finding we have Socialist Standards unsold this month, is going to put up the platform in Hyde Park on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and the day after, and has dragooned his two young sons as sellers”.

George II (not present at the social): “Mad, is he? I wish he would bite mein other generals”. Comrades, two young non-members sold 200 Socialist Standards. Food for thought?

L. E. Weidberg

“Hyde Park Orator” (1934)

Book Review from the April 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

In his “Hyde Park Orator" (Jarrolds, 287 pages, 10s. 6d.), Mr. Bonar Thompson has written a somewhat irritating but entertaining book. He tells us about his early life in Northern Ireland, his introduction to working-class life in English industrial areas, his contacts with trade unions and labour organisations, and his strenuous and not always very successful efforts to earn his living as cheap-jack in the market-place, and as platform speaker and entertainer.

He has done and seen many things, and has learned how to describe them vividly enough—this, in spite of Sean O'Casey's criticism in the Preface —and many of the things he says are worth saying. He cuts through a great deal of humbug and pretentiousness, and shows up many of the weaknesses of working-class organisations. While his criticisms of men and movements are often one-sided and malicious (he has a savage paragraph on the S.P.G.B.), it does no organisation any harm to hear what it looks like to a keen, even if prejudiced, onlooker.

Nevertheless, the whole book is made needlessly irritating by Mr. Thompson's efforts to pose as the hard-bitten, work-shy cynic, who was never himself a believer in the principles to which he professed adherence. In adopting this pose he has been preceded by Mr. Walton Newbold, and in neither case is the claim true. Mr. Thompson’s pose ought to deceive nobody. He himself remarks on a sensitiveness to ridicule which he says he finds highly developed in the working-class movement. It is no doubt partly this sensitiveness in him which makes him so anxious to disclaim ever having shared the illusions of those around him. At an early age he acquired a dislike for the kind of work and working conditions which alone were open to him. This was only natural, but his pretence that he has spent a lifetime dodging work is ludicrous. In spite of his claim he has had to work very hard indeed to maintain a precarious existence. Workers cannot escape the evils of working-class life by adopting poses or practising self-deception.

Needless to say, Mr. Thompson often forgets his pose. He boasts of having lived by deception of the workers, but gets very indignant regarding Labour Leaders who, according to his account, are working a “racket" no worse than his. He sneers at the workers for being so credulous and sheep-like, but turns and calls them ungrateful when they do not give him generous collections. After all, according to Mr. Thompson’s philosophy, why should the workers pay him for his strenuous orations if they can hear them for nothing? If for reasons of inexperience, necessity, or sentiment, Mr. Thompson offers the wrong wares for sale, or offers them in the wrong place, he should be the last to complain. And although he chides the workers for their credulousness, he is furiously angry with the S.P.G.B., which at least never shared his and the Labour Party's illusions about leadership, the value of emotional appeals, the impending collapse of capitalism, etc.

It is a pity that a man with Mr. Thompson’s experience, who has unlearned many false lessons, should have allowed bitterness to stand in the way of recognising that the failure of so many reformist activities does not in the least touch the solid basis on which the case for Socialism really rests.

Edgar Hardcastle

John Berger (1964)

Book Review from the June 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

Corker's Freedom by John Berger. Methuen 21/-

In the post-war world we have become accustomed to the oft-repeated story of working class prosperity. The term "the Affluent Society" has now become an overworked joke, but not so very long ago it was taken most seriously. Cosy articles in newspapers and magazines, and cynical adverts on the television screen, have painted a picture of workers leading lives of unparalleled richness and variety.

Even the outbursts of brutish stupidity and violence which have hit the headlines from time to time, far from destroying this image, are presented as offshoots of this same prosperity. Pleasant indeed us the lot of the fortunate worker in this charming dream world. It is therefore refreshing in the extreme to read descriptions of life as it is really lived by the vast mass of the people. Description that we know, only too well, to be true.

John Berger, who is well known as an art critic with the New Statesman, and for his excellent book of essays Permanent Red, is a writer with the ability to sum of the contemporary scene with a crisp economy of words. Berger claims to be a Marxist, although nothing very much appears in his works to justify such a claim. He is also described on the dustjacket of one of his books as a Revolutionary Moralist, whatever that may mean. There is however no doubt about his ability to put a mirror up to the world in which he lives.

His latest novel, Corker's Freedom, describes a day on the lives of two people who run a dingy employment bureau in South London. They are the elderly proprietor—the Corker of the title—and his youthful assistant, and linked with their story are the people who come to see them.

The novel is a short one, and many of the scenes are amusing, but the overall picture is one of drabness and futility. Even the crooks are small-time and poor, like so many of the lesser criminals. The stakes for which they play seem hardly worth the trouble. But it is in its description that the book really comes to life, as in the description of Clapham seen through the eyes of a man fresh from the country.

Outside the window it is the acres of roofs that interest him. The hundreds of chimneys, serving old fireplaces with black grates and rook for only three lumps of coal, are like stumps of trees in a forest long since cut down. He is able to see end to it. He is in London.

The final scene, of a speaker in Hyde Park subjected to moronic interruptions, is one which will appeal to anyone with a knowledge of Speaker's Corner.

Les Dale

Six Days Shalt Thou Labour, and on the Seventh … (2015)

From the August 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Workers in the retail industry will be relieved that George Osborne’s recent budget plan allowing shops to increase Sunday trading hours is being hampered by the fact that there are only 24 hours in a Sunday in which it is possible to make them work.

Ever since the 1950 Shops Act, which gave retail workers specified meal breaks, a half-day holiday each week and time off in lieu of Sunday work, there have, of course, been numerous attacks on their working hours and conditions, including Thatcher’s 1986 Shops Bill, though this was defeated when rebel Tory and Labour MPs joined forces and were backed by the Church of England and a religious campaign group.

But governments have not always taken the same view of Sunday trading. In 1855, after complaints in the House of Lords that five million people had become estranged not only from the Church but from Christianity, Lord Robert Grosvenor’s ‘Sunday Trading Bill’ was introduced in an attempt to herd them back into church.

It failed, and it kicked off a series of protests which led, eventually, to the establishment of Speakers’ Corner in London as a place of Sunday working class discussion and debate.

The Bill was designed to prevent small traders on whom the poor were totally dependent from doing business on Sundays. Large shops remained closed anyway, and since the normal working week was six days with wages being paid late on Saturday, the Bill would be irrelevant to the rich but cause real hardship to the poor. When this was pointed out Grosvenor’s response was that ‘the aristocracy are largely refraining from employing its servants and horses on Sundays’.

The timing of his Bill was not good. ‘Bread riots’ protesting at widespread poverty had recently taken place in Liverpool and London, and the ‘Beer Bill’ restricting Sunday trading hours in the places where workers met to socialise had just been passed.

Notices drawn up by the Chartists soon appeared around London announcing that a public meeting was to be held in Hyde Park on the following Sunday:

‘New Sunday Bill prohibiting newspapers, shaving, smoking, eating and drinking and all kinds of recreation and nourishment, both corporal and spiritual, which the poor people still enjoy at the present time.  An open-air meeting of artisans, workers and ‘the lower orders’ generally of the capital will take place in Hyde Park on Sunday afternoon to see how religiously the aristocracy is observing the Sabbath, and how anxious it is not to employ its servants and horses on that day, as Lord Robert Grosvenor said in his speech. The meeting is called for three o’clock on the right bank of the Serpentine on the side towards Kensington Gardens. Come and bring your wives and children in order that they may profit by the example their ‘betters’ set them!’

Hyde Park, on a Sunday afternoon in June, would have been swarming with London’s high society parading their horses, carriages and uniformed flunkeys. But on this occasion, as witnessed by Karl Marx who was in attendance:

‘At three o’clock approximately 50,000 people had gathered… Gradually the assembled multitude swelled to a total of at least 200,000… The police who were present in force were obviously endeavouring to deprive the organisers of the meeting of what Archimedes had asked for to move the earth, namely, a place to stand upon. Finally a rather large crowd made a firm stand and Bligh, the Chartist, constituted himself chairman on a small eminence in the midst of the throng.

No sooner had he began his harangue than Police Inspector Banks at the head of 40 truncheon-swinging constables explained to him that the Park was the private property of the Crown and that no meeting might be held in it. After some pourparlers in which Bligh sought to demonstrate to him that parks were public property and in which Banks rejoined he had strict orders to arrest him if he should insist on carrying out his intention, Bligh shouted amidst the bellowing of the masses surrounding him, ‘Her Majesty’s police declare that Hyde Park is private property of the Crown and that her Majesty is unwilling to let her land be used by the people for their meetings’.

…Suddenly shouts could be heard on all sides: ‘Let‘s go to the road, to the carriages!’. The heaping of insults upon horse riders and occupants of carriages had meanwhile already begun…The procession of elegant ladies and gentlemen; ‘commoners and Lords’, in their high coaches-and-four with liveried lackeys in front and behind, joined, to be sure, by a few mounted venerables slightly under the weather from the effects of wine, did not this time pass by in review but played the role of Oder-Zeitung involuntary actors who were made to run the gauntlet. A babel of jeering, taunting, discordant ejaculations, in which no language is as rich as English, soon bore down on them from both sides… To this must be added outbursts of genuine old-English humour peculiarly mixed with long-contained seething wrath. ‘Go to church!’ were the only articulate sounds that could be distinguished. One lady soothingly offered a prayer-book in Orthodox binding from her carriage in her outstretched hand. ‘Give it to your horses to read!’ came the thundering reply, echoing a thousand voices…The spectacle lasted three hours’ (‘Anti-Church Movement’, Neue Oder-Zeitung. 28 June 1855).

The following day’s Morning Post reported the events: ‘A spectacle both disgraceful and dangerous in the extreme has taken place in Hyde Park, an open violation of law and decency… an illegal interference by physical force in the free action of the Legislature… This scene must not be allowed to be repeated’. It added however, that the ‘fanatical’ Lord Grosvenor was solely responsible for provoking the ‘just indignation of the people’.

Lord Grosvenor, however, not only refused to withdraw the Bill but re-stated his determination to press it through. The chartists responded with a handbill for another meeting the following Sunday.

‘Lord Robert Grosvenor wishes to drive us all to church! Let us go to church with Lord Grosvenor next Sunday morning! We can attend on his Lordship at Park Lane at half-past ten: ‘go to church’ with him, then go home to dinner, and be back in time to see ‘our friends’ in Hyde Park. Come in your best clothes, as his lordship is very particular’.

On Sunday a notice banning the meeting, signed by Sir Richard Mayne, the Commissioner of Police, was attached to The Park gates. The crowds, however, poured in. According to the following morning’s Times ‘By half-past two o’clock there must have been nearly 150,000 men, women and children present.…The proceedings began by the usual stump oratory, which continued for some time, until a cry of ‘the Police’ being raised put an abrupt termination to it’.

‘The police’ had arrived in the form of Sir Richard Mayne on horseback, plus approximately 800 truncheon-wielding officers determined to enforce the ban. With the meeting abandoned, the assembly again turned their attention to the spectacle of the wealthy parading up and down in their carriages. This time the police charged the crowd. Over 100 arrests were made and dozens were injured, one fatally.

The following day Lord Grosvenor withdrew the Bill and confessed to being in ‘rather an awkward predicament’. The intention of his Bill, he said, had been merely to increase the amount of holidays to the ‘overtaxed thousands of the Metropolis’

For several weeks things were fairly calm with a few sporadic meetings held at which the police kept a low profile. After a while, however, police renewed their intervention. Eventually a notice was issued, signed by the Commissioner of Police banning public meeting from all London Parks. It warned, ‘All necessary measures will be adopted to prevent any such meeting, or assemblage’.

No more meetings were held for several years. In 1866, however, the Reform League announced that a meeting was to be held in Hyde Park on 2 July.

Mayne at first announced that the ban would be enforced, but at the last minute relented and the meeting, attended by about 50,000, went ahead. A further, evening meeting was announced. This time Mayne was determined to prevent it. The ban was reissued and promptly declared invalid by Edmond Beales, a barrister and President of the Reform League claiming the Park was the ‘property of the nation’.

On the evening of the meeting the arriving crowd was met by about 1,700 police officers mounted and on foot, and the gates locked. A large crowd had already assembled inside and were unable to leave. When Beales and other leaders of the Reform League arrived the crowd attempted to force open the gates and enter, and the police, according to the Times ‘used their staves freely to defeat this attempt’.

It was suggested that the meeting be transferred to Trafalgar Square, and Beales and the leadership set off in their cabs. The vast majority of the crowd however, some who had walked miles to be there, were in no mood for this and determined to hold a meeting, proceeded to pull down the railings and enter the Park.

The first breach was made in Bayswater Road, followed by several more along Park Lane. And, according to the Times, ‘The police brought their truncheons into active use, and a number of the roughs were somewhat severely handled’. The Morning Star reported that the police had used their truncheons ‘like savages who, having been under temporary control, were now at full liberty to break heads and cut open faces to their hearts content’. But despite numerous and severe injuries, and dozens of arrests, the crowd flooded in.

The Grenadier Guards and the Life Guards were rushed in to back up the police, but were ineffective. The meetings and speeches were in full swing and could not be prevented.

The Reform League then called a meeting for 6 May 1867. Walpole, the Home Secretary, immediately announced a ban, to be backed up with the appointment of 12,000 special constables, together with whatever regular police and military force necessary. It was obvious though, and Walpole realised it, that the ban would be ignored. At the last moment it was lifted.

Over 150,000 people marched into Hyde Park on 6 May. The police and troops stood by and watched as the massive rally took place - peacefully and calmly. The following morning Walpole resigned.

Finally, in 1872, in an attempt to dress up their defeat as an act of benevolence, the ‘Royal Parks and Gardens Act’ was announced, which they claimed,  and still claim to this day, gave the right to hold meetings in the public parks.

In fact, this right was never given. The government used everything in its power (including the use of the army) to prevent the public meeting to discuss their concerns. The right to free speech in the public parks had to be taken. And paid for with working class blood.

Nick White

Sour milk (1986)

Book Review from the May 1986 issue of the Socialist Standard

Loyalists and Loners, Michael Foot (Collins, £15.00)

Those who were on the left wing of the Labour Party during the Attlee governments of 1945/51 will remember Michael Foot as an heroic but tragically neglected saviour from the rigours of Crippsian austerity. Bevin's Cold War belligerence, Morrison's careerism. If only Foot could be Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer—preferably all at once—it would herald the dawn of socialism in Britain. The British ruling class would be in open alliance with Stalin, pensioners would be elevated into a new privileged class, Harley Street would be jammed with the proletarian sick. But it could never, wailed the left, happen. Foot was too honest, too radical, too fiery to be allowed into government.

By this time those delusions, usually misnamed idealism, had crusted over Foot had made it into a Labour cabinet, with instruction to buy off the 1973/4 coal strike and end the Three Day Week. In time, with what seemed a spasm of desperation, Labour elected him as their leader, which meant that the doorway of Number Ten was in his sights. What happened during those days of power and influence was that Foot proved to be as tamely conventional as the rest—with the difference that he could rely on his reputation for fiery honesty and radicalism to put over such policies as supporting Thatcher's Falklands war. Faced with an embarrassing, probably a vote-losing conference decision for unilateral nuclear disarmament, he fudged the issue. The orderly administration of British capitalism and the profitable exploitation of its working class were as much a priority for him as for any right-winger, any Tory. In the 1983 general election it was clear that Foot's reputation as an intellectually fastidious, but otherwise dishevelled eccentric was a liability. He cynically submitted himself to the party's image-builders, trying desperately to appear like a man you would gladly buy a second-hand election promise from.

In spite of all this, left wing prejudice ensures that Foot's reputation remains unsullied. He has progressed from radical firebrand to elder, ambitionless statesman; clearly in the tradition of political has-beens, it was time for him to get out a book. Perhaps this was not wise: Loyalists and Loners exposes Foot as an intensely patriotic man, a person who is so confused — and confusing — about capitalism's class society that he writes in these crudely ignorant terms: " . . . for the bulk of the British adult population, the moment which must stand out most proudly in their collective memory was 1940" (written in 1965): " . . . the British people were not going to give in to Hitler and Hitlerism . . . (1983).

This collection of essays, book reviews and other miscellania — which Foot audaciously offers as serious analysis — includes many pieces which deny the author's reputation for tireless affability. Tony Benn's abrupt changes in style and attitudes are described as a deliberate ploy to hijack the Labour leadership (if so it as particularly stupid and short-sighted); for David Owen, "The sweets of office seemed to soften even the harsh Owenite accents"; of poor old George Brown, "Some of his judgements were so topsy-turvy, so much in defiance of the common sense view, that the astonishing fact is how long his other qualities enabled him to survive at all". Another "astonishing fact" might be how Foot excuses his own involvement in a party peopled by such monstrosities. Or why he should attack these tricksters ("I called him [Tony Benn] a liar and he got up and left") while he admires others, such as Bevan and Enoch Powell, who are equally guilty. In fact, Powell is treated with all the nauseating chumminess on which capitalist politicians are so copiously nurtured. Powell had a "passion for truth . . . " he was " . . . stating the case against the nuclear deterrent with a crystal logic no one else could equal . . . " the fact that Powell never became Prime Minister " . . . was a tragedy for Enoch, and a tragedy for the rest of us too".

Politics is not a subject for dilettantes. It is all about the power of the working class to revolutionise a decadent, repressive, murdering social system into history. This vital issue finds no mention in Foot's pretentious exercises in irrelevance. Is this the best this reputedly cultured man can do? For sure, Foot knows about the Socialist Party and he lays claim to understand socialism, as witnessed in his contemptible sneer in Debts of Honour:

I naturally went to Hyde Park to hear the orators, the best of the many free entertainments on offer in the capital. I heard the purest milk of the word flowing, then as now, from the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Little wonder, with such lack of insight, that Foot is capable of producing so flimsy, unilluminating and boring a book as this.

Ivan 

Obituary: Tony Turner (1992)

Turner speaking at Hyde Park.

Obituary from the April 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

News of the death of A. W. L. (Tony) Turner in a Cape Town hospital in February at the age of 83 will awaken memories in many older readers. He joined the Party in 1931 and resigned in 1955 after a series of acrimonious disputes.

Tony was accused of an anarchism that was incompatible with Marx. He had taken up a completely pacifist view together with Tolstoyan ideas about the socialist future—small-scale, a vastly simple society, that anticipated subsequent thinking amongst people like Ivan Illich, Fritz Schumacher and Edward Goldsmith.

Many members felt the difference should have been containable in a party seeking world revoution. If market society was replaced with production for need it was inconceivable that the result would take the same form everywhere.

Tony Turner began life before World War I in the slums of Walworth, the child of an Irish-cockney woman and a Maori father whom he never saw. He enlisted in the Navy as a boy sailor and saw service in the Far East. He took up boxing because, he told me, he was being constantly teased for persistent bedwetting, an affliction which eventually got him discharged from the Service, Before this happened he won the Combined Services Championship in one of the light divisions.

He returned to Walworth in time for the Slump. With other unemployed men in a similar position he developed stratagems of survival, including taking the long view by joining the Party. The Walworth—Elephant & Castle contingent in the Party formed an axis with Jewish lads from Bethnal Green and the whole lot must have looked as if they had looted a theatrical costumiers. These were the days of reach-me-downs. This was none of your middle-class shopping for accessories in Oxfam. Turner, according to contemporaries, sported patent leather dancing pumps and a Magyar blouse.

When this band of Bisto kids didn't have money for a cup of tea at the caff they hung around the Public Library which was warm and dry. Many became bookish and took elocution lessons. They went and sat in the gods at the Old Vic when they could raise fourpence or knew the doorman, and used their leisure like gentlemen, learning dancing, fencing, chess, bridge—anything that was free to the unemployed, and taught each other poker and other disreputable activities.

During his time in the Party Turner was a remarkably active and successful advocate of the SPGB point of view, so much so that the Party was sometimes referred to as Tony Turner's Party, to the irritation of older, less ebullient members. For people who heard him on the platform in Hyde Park or debating public figures in the years during and after the war, his performances were hypnotising in the first arena and devastating in the second—as many politicians found to their cost and chagrin.

He appeared at the Fulham Conscientious Objectors Tribunal during conscription as an amicus curiae to plead the case of many members before Justice Hargreaves. The Judge very early on became satisfied simply with an assurance from Tony that the person was a bona fide member for their exemption to be granted. The Services didn't really want socialists upsetting the rest of the lads.

He joined the Hampstead Labour Party after leaving the SPGB but left after three weeks. He emigrated to Kenya where he built up a substantial book business but continued to visit Britain frequently. In recent years he renewed acquaintance with the Party, visiting branches and taking part in discussions. He clearly enjoyed the greater spirit of tolerance that he found.

Ken Smith

  

Holding Forth (1977)

Book Review from the June 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Speakers' Corner: An Anthology. Kropotkin's Lighthouse Publications, £1.75. Illus.

The most remarkable thing about Hyde Park is that meetings and speakers still proliferate there. Up to the traffic and television explosions of the early nineteen-fifties, crowds went to parks and listened every Sunday. Finsbury Park, Victoria Park, Clapham Common, Platt Fields in Manchester and numerous others where audiences can no longer be found; but Hyde Park, despite surgery fifteen years ago, carries on. Tourists flock there, Londoners go - largely because, as is not the case with most of the so-called "means of communication", communication actually takes place.

The speakers today are alleged to be not so good as in the past, and it is probably true. Proficiency at outdoor speaking requires much practice, and that is harder to get than it was twenty-five years ago and more. Yet opportunities are arising afresh now, with the creation of shopping precincts and traffic-free areas in cities. The next decade may see a new generation of speakers to rival some of those mentioned in this book.

It is a collection of pieces about Hyde Park. Items from the history of assemblies there; the park regulations; extracts from writings by Bonar Thompson, a professional speaker who entertained audiences for many years; piousness by Lord Soper; and an article from the 70th anniversary of the SOCIALIST STANDARD. The compiler, Jim Huggon, is an anarchist speaker in Hyde Park and the foreword is by one of his predecessors, Philip Sansom. It is not the former's fault that the latter is an essay in dreadful self-esteem.

For habitués of the park this is an interesting wide-ranging book which does not attempt to analyze but communicates the feeling of the place.

Robert Barltrop