Birmingham, Alabama
Alabama had to have its turn, sooner or later. Now that it has come, ignorance and violence seem to be taking command.
Ignorance because the ugly scenes in Birmingham have been caused by the assertion of the simple fact that differing skin colours is no reason why people should not share buses, restaurants, schools, and so on.
Violence because we live in a violent world, in which an indefensible idea can often be asserted by the breaking of heads—and worse.
And, as far as racial theories go, Alabama is the very pit of ignorance. That is the one state to have held out completely against the federally decreed desegregation of schools. That is the state where they still salute the Confederate flag, where they wish that the Civil War was being fought all over again. That is the state described by Attorney-General Robert Kennedy as like a foreign country.
It is no surprise that the Negroes have developed their own counterpart of Southern repression. The Black Muslims talk in the same terms as the most extreme segregationists, except that their policy is for black people to discriminate against white. Once again, the inevitable result of ignorance and violence has been to breed yet more of its kind.
Is there no glimmer of hope? As American industry expands into Dixieland, it takes with it no nonsense about segregation. It wants to exploit them all, white and black.
This development is likely to give the Negroes the weapon they lack at the moment—the vote. When they have that (as President Kennedy acknowledged so blatantly in his 1960 campaign) they will be a political factor to reckon with. We shall probably see a lot of Southern Congressmen hurriedly changing their tune.
That still seems a long way off. At the moment the South presents a doleful picture, especially for Socialists, who know that the future of the world depends upon how long it takes the international working class to throw off its manifold ignorances and to unite for the establishment of a sane, humane society.
Spies for peace
It is in the nature of the misuse of words which characterises capitalist organisations that the Spies for Peace were not spying and that they were doing nothing for peace.
The existence of the Regional Seats of Government was a very loosely kept secret, one which was divulged to plenty of everyday Civil Defence volunteers. In any case, anyone who was not actually in the know need not have been a Sherlock Holmes to have deduced that such places existed. The capitalist class will obviously make their preparations to re-establish the government of property society after a nuclear holocaust.
What will the Spies for Peace achieve? They are unlikely to get hold of any secrets which really matter to British capitalism. If they do, it will hardly safeguard peace to reveal them to other capitalist powers, who will doubtless use them to bolster their own military machines.
All that the Spies can do for themselves is to fall foul of the law (which they all, by implication, support) and to stir up the irritation of the masses of workers who so ardently defend their masters' interests.
And when we have said that we are only just beginning.
What is so wearying about the Spies for Peace—and about the Committee of 100, and the March Must Decide brigade, and the CND itself—is that they are yet another group who steadfastly ignore the obvious.
Wars, and their weapons, are part of capitalist society. The only way to abolish all of them is to get rid of capitalism. Some unilateralists, in fact, would say that they agree with this.
Nevertheless, they continue with their antics and as each of the stunts fails to have any effect upon the build up of the world’s nuclear arsenals they carry on to other, sometimes sillier, escapades.
Anything, in fact, rather than work for Socialism.
As we said, it is very wearying.
Hunger and profit
We are now, in case you have not had a collecting box stuck under your nose, or have missed the big spread adverts, in the middle of another campaign, the Freedom from Hunger Campaign.
Hunger is certainly a massive, depressing problem. The third World Food Survey, published last April by the F.A.O., reported that between ten and fifteen per cent. of the world’s population is undernourished and up to one-half suffer from hunger or malnutrition. There are plenty of other eminently quotable statistics which all add up to the fact that a large chunk of the people on the earth simply do not get enough to eat.
Some people regard this as a problem of overpopulation, of the world’s resources being outstripped by human breeding powers. Others think that it is a problem of getting enough money to send a tractor here, or a shipload of fertiliser there. In fact, this is only playing with the problem.
Capitalism is the barrier between man and the solution of hunger. The physical difficulties of society will never be tackled sensibly as long as capitalism lasts. Take, for example, the case of the Dutch milk. Reported The Sunday Telegraph on May 12th last:
A plan to fine farmers who produce too much milk is being considered in Holland by Mr. V. G. M. Marynen, Minister of Agriculture.The object is to cut production by four per cent. The scheme has been agreed with provisionally by the farmers and workers unions.Mr. B. Van Dam, director of the Netherlands Milk Marketing Board, said: “ The time has come to set a new course for our milk producers. It is no use going on increasing production in view of the present state of the market.”
It is typical of the enduring stupidities of property society that millions of people starve in one part of the world while in another people are penalised for producing food. For capitalism, human suffering does not matter; the "state of the market” is what brings in the dividend cheques, and so that is what counts.
The Freedom from Hunger Campaign has recruited a great many sincere helpers. This sort of campaign usually does. The deeper their sincerity, the greater the tragedy that their efforts are always so wide of the mark.
The Labour Party itching for power
The Labour Party, itching for power, is like a man listening to the last few football results with seven draws on his pools coupon.
They suffer. They perspire. They are fearful lest a wrong word should shatter their glorious dream.
That was why the Labour Party was so worried about the railway strike which never got started. Perhaps the strike was something of a forlorn hope. But, after all, strikes are the only weapon workers have in their disputes with their employers.
The Labour Party, let it be recorded, did not oppose the strike for any reason connected with the welfare of the railway workers. They opposed it because they judged that it may have damaged their chance of winning the next election; it might have upset their Treble Chance. For Labour, as for other capitalist parties, votes are tremendously important.
Mr. Wilson is doing his best to gather as many of them as he can. He celebrated May Day, for example, by propounding a plan to “. . . make a reality of the Commonwealth . . .” (although there was nothing very new in what he said—just some more mucking about with Imperial Preferences).
He also threw in his now customary make weight about the Labour Party not being prepared to see Britain as a second rate power.
Now all this may have been palatable to retired colonels in Bournemouth and to the floating, drifting voters whom the Labour Party has wooed so coyly for so long. But it has absolutely nothing to do with the Socialism which Mr. Wilson protests he stands for, nor with the working class interests he professes to defend.
There must still be some members of the Labour Party who can remember the days when strikers were people to support and when patriotism was something of a dirty word. What do they think of their party, as they watch it take its inevitable path to the status of a fully fledged party of capitalism, with power as the one and only object of its miserable life?
