A Socialist Survey. (1914)

From the July 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent writing to the “Daily Citizen” (4.6.14), gives information of a singular occurrence in a signal box on one of the main railways. The box was visited by a company of soldiers, who were admitted in batches of nine. They were accompanied by the district inspector and a plain clothes officer, who instructed them in the art of railway signalling and block working, much to the surprise and discomfort of the signalmen on duty.

Yet the “Daily Citizen” and its supporters are always howling for the nationalisation of the railways !

* * *

When the “Storstad” arrived at Montreal after her disastrous collision with the “Empress of Ireland,” she was at once seized by the sheriff and placed under arrest. When the writ was nailed to the mast Captain Andersen demanded to know: “By what authority do you board my vessel and arrest her?” The sheriff replied (probably because the “Storstad” was a “foreigner”) that his authority was “the authority of the British Empire.”

Under that authority, of course, anything could be “pinched.” That’s how Eugland became “great.”

* * *

Keir Hardie appears to believe that the emancipation of the workers is but of secondary importance. Capitalist measures should receive prior attention. He told his audience at a labour demonstration at Lesmahagow (Lanark) that the Labour Party were out to unite the working “classes,” but before this could be done the Home Rule question had to be got out of the way.

The Socialist Party, I might point out, are also out to unite the workers, but with this difference—they are out to unite them for Socialism. And of the various obstacles in the way of this unification they have had to encounter, one of the biggest is, not Home Rule, but—the Labour Party !

* * *

At a recent meeting of the Blackburn Board of Guardians it was stated that the sum spent in out-relief during 1913 was £2,000 less than that paid in respect of officials’ salaries. I am beginning to see why there is such a rush for these jobs.

* * *

Mr. Rockefeller’s millions appear to bring him endless trouble. He is now expecting to be called to give evidence before the Inter-State Commission which is investigating the affairs of the Newhaven Railroad, U.S.A. In one portion of the evidence a Mr. Millen, ex-president of this concern, said that enormous losses were made through financial trickery. He alleged that over £2,000,000 were juggled away by the late Mr. Pierpont Morgan.

We often read, in stories of the old buccaneering days of the Spanish Main, where pirates used to cheat each other out of their share of the plunder, and which invariably ended up in a fight and a lot of blood-spilling.

Similarly, to-day, the industrial pirates quarrel over their share of the booty. Whilst agreed that the manner of acquiring it is satisfactory (to them), yet, as soon as they begin to handle the loot they cheat each other mercilessly, and invariably wind up in a fight—not a bloody fight, but a legal one.

In this case blood is spilled in order to get the booty—not the blood of the pirates, but that of the toiling millions who are bludgeoned and battered into turning it over to them.

* * *

Many meetings have been held of late to protest against the employment of Chinese and other “foreigners” as seamen on board British ships. Yet one thing seems to have been left out of account. That is that “Sea Scouts” are now being shipped as deck hands on board British vessels. Possibly it is only to gain experience—but experience of what ? Is it the same experience that Boy Scouts are undergoing in connection with the military forces ?—experience that may be turned to account “should any danger threaten the Empire” from within or without ?

The scout law says : “A Scout must be loyal to his King, and to his officers, and to his parents, his country, and his employers. He must stick to them through thick and thin against anyone who is their enemy, or who even talks badly of them.” In other words the “Scouts” are there to be used as the tools of capitalism against the workers. That fact is obvious enough, at any rate. They are well organised on land ; now they are turning their attention to the sea, and the introduction of a few Scouts on board merchant ships also marks the introduction of the thin end of the wedge. Of course, there may be nothing in it, but I “hae ma doots.” It opens up possibilities.

* * *

The Rev. A. G. Waldron tells the “Daily Sketch” (12.6.14) that : “Modern Socialistic philosophy has had a bad effect on many people. They want everything done for them.” Which causes one to wonder what the reverend gent does for a living, that he can afford to talk like that. My experience of these professional medicine men is that they don’t do anything for a living. They live on the product of other people’s toil. To use this pulpit thumper’s own words, they “want everything done for them”—and thanks to the unmitigated foolishness of those workers whom “modern Socialistic philosophy” has not yet “spoiled,” they get “every­ thing done for them.”

Waldron also said that he had “tried the experiment of allowing questions to be asked after the sermon, but it was a failure. Only the fools asked questions in church.” I suppose every person who asked a question was considered a fool. Well, perhaps he was. Only fools and rogues are to be found in churches, and it is the height of a fool’s folly to question a rogue concerning his roguery.

* * *

How is this ? Have the workers of Tonypandy already forgotten the treatment they got at the hands of the capitalists’ butchers ? It would appear so, judging from a picture which was published in a recent issue of the “Daily News and Leader.”

It seems that the Prince and Princess of Teck had paid a visit to Tonypandy. Of course, they went about the mines, where their presence created great enthusiasm (which, by the way, is a very useful element, and quite necessary now-a-days to the capitalists’ game of bleeding the workers), so much so that, instead of going home, they lined up at the pit-mouth, all in their dirt and grime, just as they had come up out of the bowels of the earth, and sang with feeling and gusto, “Land of my Fathers.” This is distinctly good, only the wording of the hymn appeared to me to be inappropriate. It should have been “Land of my Masters.”

* * *

How terrifying is that oft-maligned and much misunderstood phrase, “the class war” ! How soon it will disturb the even temperament of a respectable congress ! For instance, the International Textile Workers held their congress during the second week in June at Blackpool. The congress was asked by the foreign delegates to say that the International Congress would only accept those unions for membership which stood by the principle of the class war. The English section, however, did not like the phrase, “because in England it had rather a bad repute, and was only connected with one small part of the Labour movement.” (This is where the Labour Party chuckles.)

In face of this refusal the Continental delegates were compelled to seek another expression, so they hit upon the phrase “organisations that combat the present capitalistic state of things.” This was accepted.

What surprised the Continental delegates, said one of them, was that, far from looking down upon the workmen, the English employers treated them on a fraternal footing, and with the ordinary politeness of human intercourse. That will explain the repugnance of the English section to the introduction of the class war principle. Naturally, if they are so pally with the bosses, the class war won’t exist for them.

Tom Sala

From Orange Law to Whitelaw (1972)

From the May 1972 issue of the Socialist Standard

March 22nd. Mr. Brian Faulkner in London being talked to by his Tory overlord, Heath. Press says talks “crucial”. Ten hours talking . . . Brian walks out peeved. Brian comes back . . . talk . . . talk. 

March 23rd. Faulkner is back in Belfast giving the bad news to the rest of the gang at Stormont. Northern Ireland tense . . . waiting. Dark clouds over Stormont. Faulkner goes back to London. 

March 24th. The news is out! Stormont is “prorogued”, the semantics of anti-“backlash” strategy. Everybody knows that Westminster is not only the assassin but the undertaker! Orange law is dead; Wullie Whitelaw, Heath’s Ulster hatchetman, takes its place with near-absolute powers. Real change is alleged. 

Trauma . . . anger . . . suspicion . . . fear . . . bitterness . . . hope — all are elements in the emotional shock-wave that hits Northern Ireland. What does it all mean? Whitelaw or Orange law? We say there has been no change: capitalism still rules.

So often over the past few years in Northern Ireland have we seen the unexpected occur in a continual succession of nine-day wonders that have knocked many of the sacred cows from their sacrosanct pedestals . . . so many of the things which the cynics said “will not happen in our time” have happened.

The lessons are many but, primarily, they show two things: they show the speed with which political change can occur and the ability of the great majority of people to reconcile themselves to that change and they also show that whatever amount of apparent change occurs in the administrative organs of the system, they leave, wholly and totally, the real problems that affect the working class intact and undisturbed.

If, like the “Left” the Communists, Labourites, P.D., official I.R.A., etc — we were sufficiently ignorant of the real nature of capitalism, and the alternative to that system, Socialism, to take sides in the major dispute in Ireland concerning how capitalism should be organised or by whom, then we could take either side — almost with equal “justice” — and have an excellent case for rapping our opponents: But we are not “Leftists”, concerned with administering social aspirin to a society suffering the horrible economic cancer of capitalism. We are Socialists, holding to the demonstrable fact that only the surgery of social revolution, carried through with the weapons of democracy and Socialist knowledge, can bring about real change. As such we are not concerned with taking any “side” in the political struggle in Ireland (or elsewhere), a political struggle that has emerged from, and was caused by, the earlier internecine struggle within the country’s propertied class, and are, thus, absolved from the hypocrisy, the lies, the contradictions, the prejudices as well as the deliberate exploitation of working class blood and tears for the accomplishment of purposes that bear no relevance to working class interests.

We have seen anglophobic Irish nationalists demanding “British standards of justice”, sometimes even when the military stalwarts of that “justice” were engaged in the crassest brutality against them. We have seen “Loyalists” of the Unionist Party, and its fringe lunacies, denounce those same British standards while boasting their loyalty to Britain. We have seen the “Protestant Parliament for a Protestant people” take in a tame Catholic to its ranks in a lame attempt to convince the world that it was not a Protestant Parliament. And we have seen the British Tory Government sack the local Tory bigots, with all the implications of disgrace, and establish a dictatorial overlord to implement the aforementioned “British standards”!

And we could go on . . . and on . . . but, why? Nothing really has changed. Nothing, that is, that really affects the life of Paddy Murphy, Catholic, workingman or Jimmy Brown, Protestant, workingman. The regime of the alarm clock, the job, the dole, the poverty, the slums, even, the violence — real and intended — goes on and all the happy slogans of reform are turned on their head as their diametrical opposite draws the cheers of the leaders who first taught you the slogans of reform. “One man — One vote”? No! Now we have Whitelaw — and no votes! Abolition of the Special Powers Act? Now we have the infamous Act administered by the British Army with a repressive ruthlessness that sometimes makes even the RUC appear playful! Jobs? Homes? These are now the governmental preserve of the Heath administration and its wanton failure in both fields in Britain can hardly inspire confidence!

Because, so often, we saw the viciously-contorting face of Brian Faulkner vomit its blood-curdling hatred at those whom he opposed; because we lived with his lies and hypocrisy and his leadership of a group of self-seeking political gangsters prepared to stop at nothing to maintain their power and privilege, we may see in the ignominous dismissal of the foul Unionist coterie some victory. But there is no real victory for the working class, even in the satisfaction that some of them may see in the political demise of Faulkner and his cohorts. For these people, like Heath, Wilson and Lynch, or, if they achieved political power, the leaders of the IRA, the Ulster Vanguard or the professional “moderates” of the Alliance Party, are the mere political servants of capitalism.

It was to maintain capitalism in such a manner as would make most effective its exploitation of the working class that Unionism and Nationalism became political forces in Ireland. It was the immediate needs of capitalism in the nearly part of this century that exploited the divisive influences historically bound-up with class society in the country and brought forth the slogans of bigotry and patriotism, hatred and prejudice — the inane Orange battle-cries and the futile Nationalist shibboleths. The poison of sectarianism and nationalism was used by the contending factions within capitalism to rally the working class in the North behind the continuance of union with Britain, in order that the Northern capitalists could maintain their free access to the British markets, and the working class in the South behind the demand for “freedom” from British rule, so that the political servants of the developing capitalist class in the South could take legislative steps to protect a weak native capitalism from the competition of foreign, mainly British, capitalism.

With the changing of conditions affecting capitalism in both parts of the country the old friction of interest between the Northern and Southern capitalists largely declined. It was this decline and the closer economic integration of the UK-Irish economy, endorsed in the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement, that led to the closer co-operation of Northern and Southern politicians in the latter part of the Sixties and paved the way for the O’Neill-Lemass bun-worry at Stormont in 1965. Capitalism in Ireland no longer needed the unpleasant levels of bigotry and hatred that had been necessary to promote both parts of its divided interests nearly fifty years before. With as little scruple as had been employed when the weapons of hate and division had been first used, the political servants of capitalism attempted to throw them aside, and, in the process, to take credit for their integrity and political perspicacity! But, in Northern Ireland, the poison had been injected deep into the vein of working class life and the sheep baulked at following their leaders through the pens of hypocrisy to a tolerance based on the new needs of capitalism.

The rest is the history of the last four years: the story of murder, arson, brutality, torture and increased hatred and division when the working class paid with its lives, its freedom and endured privation and repression beyond the norm and the capitalist class saw its profits endangered and its lives discomfited. This was the background to Heath and his gang bestowing on Faulkner and his mob the old order of the boot!

Faulkner and his Tory hate-mongers were kicked out by their erstwhile friends of the British Tory party not because they were the Party that generated hatred and bitterness nor because they had set up an authoritarian statelet in which lies and deceit imposed the same miseries on propertyless Protestants as did hate policies and political coercion on propertyless Catholics. If these crimes had represented the indictment against Unionism, Unionist politicians would never have been allowed to relax their privileged backsides in the plushed splendor of Stormont. No, Teddy and his friends did not abandon Brian and his boys simply because the latter had been found out nor did the Leader of that other great act in capitalism’s political circus, the Labour Party, recommend dismissal on such grounds. Faulkner and his party had to go because they could no longer deliver the goods to the capitalist class in the form of a reasonably peaceful, docile, hard-grafting working class churning out goods for sale and profit without the expenditure of too much in the way of overheads for maintaining “law and order”.

A few points are worthy of note; the Party of acknowledged political gangsters whom Westminster have seen fit to dismiss are the same Party who were given power by Liberal Lloyd George’s Government of Ireland Act of 1920; the same Party that enjoyed the confidence and support of successive Tory governments up to the present Heath administration; the same Party whose political foulness was strengthened by the Labour government’s Amendments to the Governments of Ireland Act, in 1948 and whose corruption was beneath the cognizance of Harold Wilson until it became an expensive embarrassment in 1969.

And the alternatives for the future? Again it is worthy of note that Harold Wilson—who can doubt with the foreknowledge and connivance of Heath? — sat in counsel with “the gunmen and murderers” of the IRA in Dublin. It is worthy of note because capitalism will employ, and has employed, any trick, any hypocrisy, any instrument that guarantees its untroubled exploitation of the working class. And none of the contenders for power are any worse than those presiding over capitalism’s system of theft at present.

And the future for the working class? This we can predict with easy confidence. The continuation of poverty, insecurity, of going without . . . living in slums or letting the larder pay the rent or the mortgage . . . division . . . violence. In a word, no change! But, then, the working class knows its miseries and, ironically, while it seeks assuagement of political or religious problems it does not expect relief from its class miseries. Nor will it get it before it jettisons its inculcated nationalistic and religious prejudices and its notions that a society in which a minority class owns society’s means of living can provide the material basis of a peaceful, a full and a happy life for everybody.

Richard Montague

Labour and Land. (1921)

From the May 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is often difficult enough to discover what really is the attitude of the Labour Party to ward any particular problem; although its general policy of assisting the capitalists to govern, while endeavouring to win the "New Jerusalem" a brick at a time is perfectly plain —and perfectly fatuous. Not recognising the existence of the conflict of interests between the two classes of modern society, it wholly lacks a guiding principle. It is in effect, as also in the intention of many of its leaders, merely the "official Opposition," waiting to get into power, but without the least idea of interfering with the system which will have enabled its prominent men to reach positions of eminence. As in order to obtain this end, it is prepared to adopt any programme circumstances may suggest from time to time, it has succeeded in bringing together a remarkable assortment of political odds and ends. Any decided line of action would be certain to offend some element of the party, so the safest course for its spokesmen is to say what they must say as vaguely as possible, and leave it to friends and enemies to interpret as they choose.

The least ambiguous, as the most shameful, action ever taken by the Labour Party was its enthusiastic support of Capital's crowning glory, the war ; but even Mr. Patrick Lawrence could say when challenged to defend that attitude "but they didn't all support it."

It was not until after the Liberals had issued their manifesto on Ireland that Mr. Henderson defined the Labour Party's position; and what was it ? The two were as like as a common purpose—vote catching—would lead one to expect, and as different in appearance as studied indefiniteness could make them.

At that time criticism of the Government's activities in Ireland had become sufficiently popular to make this a sound plank for every bye-election platform of both parties. The decision not to oppose the Second Reading of the Reparation Bill, followed by a vote against the Government on the Third Reading is another case in point.

This lack of clearness, of which numerous instances can readily be found, extends to what is called the "agricultural problem," but in the March issue of the "Nineteenth Century" is an article by Mr. W. R. Smith, M.P., President of the National Union of Agricultural Workers, which is an important suggestion, if not an official statement, of the party's policy.

It is prefaced by a very naive editorial comment which is too good to be passed over. "People who have lived on the land and made a dispassionate and disinterested study of conditions there, are convinced that it (the abolition of private ownership) would throw the countryside into confusion and ultimate ruin."

Notice the "disinterestedness"! Just as a professional crook might make a "dispassionate" examination of a proposal to increase the number of policemen and be "convinced" that it would be bad for business and an imposition on the ratepayer !

Mr. Smith admits the confusion of ideas, for, after mentioning various schemes which find favour with different sections, "confiscation," "land bonds," "taxation of land values," etc., he writes "we do not see anything to regret in the existence of considerable diversity among members of the Labour Party." He claims, whoever, two fundamental objects :

1. To get a big agricultural population, and
2. To grow as much food in these Islands as possible.

He admits the second quite frankly to be a war measure, and wonders whether Labour should concern itself with such a question, knowing "that preparation for war produces an atmosphere in which fear and greed are easily manipulated to cause an outbreak".

Apart from the fact that war springs from capitalism itself and not from the fear and greed of the workers, which are themselves only the manifestation of the state of anarchy and ignorance in which the system keeps them, has Mr. Smith forgotten the part played by his party in the last war ? Mr. Smith may, as an individual, have retained his sanity in 1914, but can he deny that the Labour Party did, cheerfully and whole-heartedly, not only support the war, but condone every act of suppression the Government chose to introduce under the cover of military necessity ?

Further, in case you should think that bye-gones should be bye-gones, and that the Labour Party will act differently in the next war, just consider this from the same article : "and the Labour Party’s policy will certainly be to aim at as much progress in the agricultural industry as possible, such progress being socially necessary and desirable as a means of securing the nation against serious difficulty in times of crisis through war or world shortage." Substitute "capitalist" for "nation" and you have the real attitude of the Labour Party.

As for the first point he contends that "a strong, happy population on the countryside is socially necessary, and that no system of national life can continue to exist and develope which is not founded on such a population."

If this means that our present social system cannot work without a healthy and contented population I simply don’t believe it. Farmers have never been so prosperous as during and immediately after the war, and he himself admits that this has been accompanied by a further decrease in the number of agricultural workers. He goes on, "we recognise the necessity for a prosperous industry and cannot therefore be opposed to whatever steps will make for prosperity." Our criticism is simply this, that on one hand the prosperity of the nation, which means, of course, the employers, is most decidedly not dependent on the well-being of the workers; and on the other hand that the employers can usually be trusted to look after their own prosperity, and if to do so involves attempts to lower still further the workers' standard of life, the Labour Party has not the power, if it had the will, effectively to resist.

Again, he says he welcomes the increased use of machinery, and the possibilities it offers of an outlet for ambitious workers. He welcomes it because he cannot prevent it; but can it be denied that every mechanical improvement under present conditions only adds to the insecurity of the workers ?

Whatever the merits of these two points of policy Mr. Smith does not think they can be achieved under the present system of land ownership. He points out that only 5,000 landowners own 1,000 acres, and between them they possess half England, the whole being in the hands of about 1,000,000 people. To remedy this outrageous state of affairs he would nationalise the land. Not, however, "because it will mean the entire emancipation of the working-class, but because it is necessary in the interest of efficiency." Naturally, no one who knows the Labour Party would accuse it of desiring the emancipation of the workers: they have a better reason than this. "Farmers should be able to expect a fair return, whatever be the nature of their land . ." I am not misreporting him—he is perfectly frank. "We have already seen how, in other industries it (nationalization) is being advocated by Capitalists and their newspapers . . clearly showing (if indeed anyone seriously doubted it) that nationalization can be, and is, advocated as part of a better organisation of Capitalism itself." May I ask why, if Mr. Smith doesn't seriously doubt it, he remains in the party which "stands pledged" to nationalization? "We do not reject it on this account, but we recognise it for what it truly is." Could any opponent of the Labour Party invent anything more damning than this ?

"For the immediate future, however, practical politics are more likely to be concerned with questions of nationalization, to which, in the interests of efficiency, we are certainly not opposed." We challenge Mr. Smith to show efficiency is of benefit to the workers. Increased efficiency simply means the more intensive exploitation of the wage earners by the class which lives on their labour.

He mentions the desirability of doing away with the hordes of middlemen who stand between farmers and the consumers of their produce, and confidently looks to nationalization to achieve it The advantage of this to the farmers is fairly obvious, but again, how can this improve the workers' lot, involving, as it must, the unemployment of the thousands of employees of these middlemen ?

Mr. Smith considers a "moderate" Labour Government may follow the present one, and will introduce a Bill for the nationalisation of the land.

  "In that case we should be compelled to support such a Bill, always keeping in view its limited value and watching to see that nothing was done towards manufacturing fresh obstacles to real sweeping measures." 

I do not exactly know who that "we" is intended to represent, but whoever they are it is obvious from their being "obliged" to support the Government, and from the fact that the "real sweeping measures" are admittedly out of the question for the time being, that they are only a minority. That being so they are quite evidently not in a position to prevent the "manufacturing of fresh obstacles." Means have yet to be discovered of holding up the machinery of government merely by "watching and seeing," and a little thought would probably show that the "limited value" of the Bill in question would really be, for the workers, a positive evil. Even such an apparently harmless proposal as the "reform of weights and measures" is open to criticism, as a recent experience showed. A successful agitation by a worker's organisation to get corn sacks reduced in size was followed by a move to employ boys in the place of men !

Mr. Smith cannot see that there is any necessary antagonism between farmers and the labourers they exploit. "Convinced then that any forward policy such as outlined above must be for the benefit of agriculture as a whole, the Labour Party's policy will be to aim at as much progress in the agricultural industry as possible." He has a grudge against the landlords. "None of us want to give the landlords more, since 'living by owning' is not a profession the Labour Party can recognise."

Why not? As both farmers and landlords live on the surplus value taken from the workers why discriminate between them ?

''Undoubtedly under a Labour Government, even if there were no general attempt at Socialisation, our system of taxation would undergo great reforms . . much to the benefit of the farmers." Does Mr. Smith really think Socialism merely a glorified re-adjustment of the "system of rating and taxation" ?
He concludes with a quite unnecessary assurance to "good farmers" that they have nothing to fear from a Labour Government. No, the Labour Party will defend the present order and when, to quote his words, "the proletariat develops sufficient social consciousness to bring about the complete overthrow of capitalism," the Labour Party will be involved in the overthrow.

May I add one word of advice to those, including the I.L.P. and the Communist Party, who will insist on creating an agricultural problem in this country out of the alleged but unexplained difference between the relations of the workers and employers in towns and the labourers and farmers in the country. There simply isn't any difference. All we have here is part of the general task of emancipating the workers from wage slavery. The solution of the Land problem is the recognition that for the workers there isn't any real problem.

P.J.L.

Ireland, the Labour Party and the Empire (1921)

From the December 1921 issue of the Socialist Standard

After a long and bitter struggle, there is at last the prospect of peace in Ireland. The workers of Ulster and the South have fought with a fervour only equalled by the frenzy of the late world war, and are now to be able to see what it really was they fought for. If they hope for anything better than the fate common to ex-soldiers in all the countries of Europe—victors and vanquished alike—then disappointment awaits them.

Sinn Fein, behind a screen of fine-sounding no-surrender proclamations, appears to be preparing to forego the demand for full recognition of Ireland’s status as an independent Republic; while the English Government, under the pressure of a variety of political and financial factors, considers the cost of continued refusal of concessions prohibitive, and offers a form of Dominion Home Rule.

The chief, the economic, causes of the dispute are not far to seek. The northern Capitalists, whose prosperity lies in their easy access to markets within or protected by the British Empire, could never submit to being cut off from the source of their wealth. Similarly, the numerically strong body of farmers and traders in the South, plundered and thwarted for centuries by successive English Governments, and seeing themselves, for the benefit of their competitors, denied the right of freely developing commercial relations abroad, looked to the victory of Sinn Fein as the precursor of a new era of expansion for their trade. Add to this the hopes of the younger generation for satisfaction of their hunger for land, hitherto inaccessible to them owing to foreign ownership and profitable use for non-agricultural purposes, and we have some idea of the material basis for the Irish war.

The workers were called upon to take up arms for objects far enough removed from these, “Protestantism and the Flag” or “Catholicism and Liberty,” as geographical accident ordained: it was always the trade of the politician to provide plausible excuses. They responded with the usual disastrous results for themselves. Under the pretext of the necessity for presenting a united front to the external enemy, robbed and robbers, workers and employers, closed up their ranks to the manifest advantage of the latter.

Trade Union organisation was wrecked by internal dissension, or rendered innocuous in the larger interest of patriotism, that is, of the employers, whether Belfast shipbuilders or Southern farmers. Now, with the coming of peace, the class struggle will once more be forced to the front, and whether the wage-earners are in a position to resist attempts to lower their standard of living or not, they can at least learn the lesson of their recent folly. In Erin, no more than in this or any other Capitalist country, do war slogans or the sentiments of national brotherhood weight heavily where they conflict with profit-making.

The cessation of guerrilla warfare and the raising of martial law will provide a welcome removal of political and mental obstacles to our propaganda, but it must always be remembered that the form, the time, and the terms of the peace are in the hands of the Ruling Class. Theirs is the political control, and the accompanying military power enables them to give or withhold, and to bargain as they think fit. On neither side have the workers the deciding voice.

As might be expected, the Labour Party, which has long put at the forefront of its programme the solution of the Irish problem, has something to say at this juncture which incidentally is of interest to us. The Labour Party, as also might have been expected by those who know that body, puts the case for the English Capitalist Class.

At the height of the conflict, when there was no sign of a weakening on either side, of or any kind of rapprochement, the Labour Party, somewhat vaguely it is true, stood for Ireland’s right to Independence with but two qualifications: guarantees for the protection of minorities and against the possibility of future military or naval menace to this country. Now, however, that changed circumstances or changed feeling in the constituencies lead the Government to negotiate, the Labour Party withdraws from the attitude it had taken up. When war is the order of the day, it is useful but harmless in bye-election tactics to promise Independence, but when Capital decides to have peace and the actual terms are to be settled, the Labour Party is called to heel and must follow its masters.

Thus we have Mr. J. H. Thomas declaring (Daily Herald, September 2nd) that “no political party in England can hold out any hope of an Irish Republic.” The Herald, commented adversely on this “astounding” remark, and dismissed it as a private opinion only, not representative of the Labour Party.

Curiously enough, a week before H. N. Brailsford has written in the Herald, under the title “Ireland and Sea-Power,” expressing the same opinion in even more vigorous language, and it is with this that I propose to deal. The Daily Herald, did not comment on Brailsford’s article!

Brailsford is a Labour candidate, and in the Labour Daily which in this instance claims that it represents the real attitude of the Labour Party, he writes as follows (August 30th):

  The British Government (with the nation behind it) is, I believe, sincere in its readiness to yield everything except naval control . . . In plain words the issue for the British people is our world power. That is the only issue for which we ever fight . . . but it is an issue for which we always fight, and will fight. It was the issue in the world war; first, because the German navy challenged ours, and, secondly, because a German occupation of the Belgian coast must have interfered with our control of Dover Straits . . . For sea-power is the instrument of our economic expansion. Upon it rests our possession of half Africa and all India, and our ability to expand at will in China or elsewhere.

This is somewhat staggering, and one cannot help wondering whether the hundreds of thousands of out-of-work ex-soldiers are fully appreciative of the advantages that accrue to the through their “possession” of “half Africa and all India.” To continue with the quotation:

   No instinct is so deeply rooted in us all (the exceptions are negligible) as the instinct which teaches us without talk or exhortation, or reflection, to guard our naval ascendancy against any risk. None even of the sincerest advocates of the League of Nations (not even Lord Robert Cecil) had a word to say in support of Mr. Wilson’s proposals for the freedom of the seas. No one criticises (I except the eccentrics) the virtual British seizure of Constantinople.
  One may feel sure in advance that while we may accept, or even propose at Washington, a limitation in shipbuilding, we shall not agree to abate by a single vital concession our unlimited and uncontrolled right to blockade.

Incidentally this throws an interesting light on the bona-fides of the League of Nations and on the use to the workers of it and its Labour Party backers. We notice, too, that the “eccentrics” are excluded from those Labour Party claims to represent. For my part, I must confess to being one of them: the deep-rooted instinct of guarding “our naval ascendancy” seems to have passed me by, and I simply never froth at the mouth at the mention of this bloody old Empire.

  We are ready to concede much . . . , but we will no more give up our naval stations on the Irish coast than we will give up Gibraltar or Malta or the Suez Canal. To do so would be to begin to give up world-power.
   On the ordinary level of thought (Tolstoyans, Quakers and Communists are the only exceptions) we are acting rationally. An independent Ireland would be a danger. Our next enemy at sea would assuredly occupy, or try to occupy, it. Belgium was not the only violated neutral in the last war. China, Greece, Persia and Albania were all used or over run. There will be no yielding here . . . and Irishmen who expect us to yield eventually will have to wait till our Empire is overthrown and our sea-power vanished like Germany’s.

Have you grasped the full import of this frank statement of what the Labour Party stands for? The class privileges of the Capitalists are in question, and the Labour Party is forced into the open to defend them.

Of course, the Ruling Class will not allow the Empire to be endangered by an independent Ireland. The Empire is theirs, and they won’t see their private property damaged, unless superior force compels. That is simple enough. They have the power, and use it to protect and further their interests against opposition from workers and other States alike. But what is the Labour Party doing in this?

They offer themselves as an alternative to the Coalition and are in great hopes of early success. We consider them worthy of condemnation for their past record alone, but are told we should give them a chance, and wait and judge by results. Well, here is their own promise of their intentions. The fulfilment may be worse; it can hardly be better. Not only Ireland is touched upon:

  The (Washington) Conference may then be futile, and, over the issue of Imperialist exploitation in the Far East, the naval rivalry will begin in earnest, and ultimately we may find ourselves involved even in war.

What does this mean in brief? Just this: The wealth of the Empire, built up by the toil and sacrifice of generations of British workers, is to remain what it now is, the exclusive possession of our exploiters, and for their acquiescence in this the Labour Party is to be graciously permitted to take over the Government. Only nominally in power, they will be, in reality, as helpless as the Labour Governments in Australia, and will serve, as they are intended to serve, as the last defence of the Capitalist system.

Hoodwinked by a repetition from the mouths of their leaders, of the old fiction of the alleged community of interest between themselves and the employers, the workers are again to be privileged to defend the country they do not own, against all comers, from the Capitalists of USA to the Irish Republicans. Their reward will be the reward the unemployed are reaping now.

Did the last war concern the workers, or will the next? Does it matter to them that “our” naval supremacy should remain intact, any more than it matters whether Sinn Fein colours or the Union Jack fly over Dublin, or whether the German Black, Red and Gold, or the flag of Poland mocks their poverty in Silesia?

While the Capitalist Class dominates the civilised world, and owns and controls all the means of wealth production, the disposal of nations in this or that empire or sphere of economic interest is not the business of the Working Class. If you think the choice of war ministers as between, say, Churchill and Col. Will Thorne, to direct you to the slaughter-house, is worthy worrying about, then, of course, you will select your respective champions in the Coalition or the Labour Party.

If you don’t, and if you consider it time that any fighting the workers may have to do, be done for their own emancipation from the system which makes wars inevitable, you will be well repaid for the devotion of a few hours to the study of Socialism. There is urgent need for you inside The Socialist Party.

Edgar Hardcastle

Open letter to Ken Livingstone (1983)

From the November 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Dear Ken,

Your regular comments on the subject of Ireland, together with your recent entertainment by the Sin Fein leadership in west Belfast and your reciprocation of their political hospitality in London, has made you both a devil and an angel in Ireland. You have pleased immensely Sinn Fein and its followers and, in the measure of your pleasing them, earned the anger and hatred of the Ulster loyalists. Of course, the mass of the followers of both elements are members of the working class; both largely conservative and tribally religious; both anti-socialist — despite the misuse of the word "socialist" by Sinn Fein and its occasional application to loyalist paramilitaries by equally ignorant journalists and media commentators.

It is a dangerous game you are playing, Ken — this support for the viewpoint of one essentially sectarian, conservative and anti-socialist faction against another. Certainly it is not a tactic calculated to assist in helping the working class in Ireland to realise that nationalism and unionism are two sides of the same coin. Notwithstanding the "revolutionary” blathering of both sides — and, especially, the side you support — what they kill and maim their fellow-workers for is the same old, failed system of capitalism in which workers produce wealth for their masters in return for a wage that guarantees the continuation of their working-class status: their mere poverty on the job or dire poverty on the dole; their slums and second-rate homes, their mean, restricted lives — even the continuation of the very material conditions out of which the present "troubles” emerged.

It is possible, of course, that Sinn Fein has convinced you that they have a plan to eliminate these things and create, in a united Ireland, an oasis of social sanity where poverty in all its facets is banished. Indeed, even a dramatic reduction of poverty would probably be as acceptable to the great mass of Protestant loyalists in Northern Ireland as it would be to the majority of impoverished Catholics in the north and in the Republic.

Would it not be cleverer, more humane and less divisive for Sinn Fein to demonstrate openly to their friends and opponents how they can solve, or dramatically ease, the problems of capitalism than to continue killing and maiming and succeeding only in providing opportunities for working-class kids to spend miserable lives in prison.

It is true that in the past Sinn Fein had few opportunities in the media to present its arguments. But it did get opportunities and it did have, and still has, a weekly newspaper which is widely read in Nationalist areas of the North and is doubtless sent to you. Now, of course, its electoral success has opened the door to full media exposure and the Sinn Fein leadership are given star treatment with ample time and opportunity to state their views. And they do: they talk about the poverty features of capitalism. About the poverty of the poor, bad housing, lack of jobs. Generally, when they mention these effects of capitalism one could be forgiven for thinking that they only afflict those members of the working class who are Catholics; always, unfailingly, Sinn Fein spokespersons ascribe the evils of capitalism to British rule in Ireland.

Get the Brits out! Let Sinn Fein/IRA have control of production and distribution of wealth and they will run the system of wage labour and commodity production in such a way as will solve Ireland's problems. They will succeed where all governments, everywhere, have so far failed: they will run a system based on the exploitation of the working class in the interests of the working class.

Now Ken. we both know that your Labour Party has failed to make any basic change in capitalism and that there is nothing that the Tories have done, or are doing, against the working class that your Labour Party have not also done during its different periods of office. Now it is claimed in the media that you have suggested that Sinn Fein's economic policies are similar to those of the Labour Party. Sinn Fein have claimed to have a social policy based on Christian principles that would involve a synthesis of western "individual” capitalism and Russian-style state capitalism. You might wonder why, given such nonsense, they claim to be socialist except that if you can accept the Labour Party claim to be socialist, it is hardly possible for you to be more confused. But your assertion, Ken, presumably made against the background of some knowledge of the policies and attitudes of Sinn Fein, confuses me — and leaves me worried.

You see Labour policies have been tried in Northern Ireland. Ober-fuhrcr Mason and his equally hypocritical colleague Merlyn Rees, both prominent Labourites, ran affairs in Northern Ireland with all the powers of colonial governors. Despite the fact that they were at various times abetted by "left wingers” like Stanley Orme they failed as miserably as Whitelaw and Prior to remove even one of the social evils on which violence here flourishes.

Being a practical man concerned only with facts you will no doubt appreciate why I am confused by your thinking that Sinn Fein's Labour-style policies will be helpful. On the other hand, I had left out of my reckoning the fact that Labour's traditional excuse for failure is that they had the wrong leaders. Given new leadership . . . It squares admirably with the simplistic ideas of Sinn Fein, who also emphasise leadership as opposed to socialist principles.

What worries me is your recognition that Sinn Fein have nothing more to contribute to the problems of Ireland than a new rag for the masthead of deception and Labour policies. I say “worries me” because, while I am prepared to accept that Sinn Fein share the nonsense of the Labour Party, there is something they do not share with the latter: an acknowledgement of the decision of the ballot box.

As I have observed. Labour governments come and go in Britain. They get elected to office when the non-socialist working class there think they might be able to run capitalism less badly than the Tories. They get kicked out again when they demonstrate that they can not. Always, the Labour Party accepts the democratic decision of the electorate to alternate the political administration of capitalism.

This, at least, helps to ensure that the democratic process is maintained; that a genuine Socialist Party offering a real alternative to capitalism is allowed to function, to define and propagate socialism and, ultimately, to achieve a revolutionary majority for the democratic establishment of socialism.

Sinn Fein and the IRA have no democratic tradition; they have an utter contempt for democracy. Their bogus claim to be heirs to the mandate given to Sinn Fein at the last all-Ireland elections in 1918 is exposed by their leftist vapourings. The ultra-conservative, Catholic majority that voted for Sinn Fein candidates in 1918 were voting for the policies of a party dedicated to Irish independence for the purpose of legislating policies of free trade for a fledgling capitalism in southern Ireland. They would have rejected, and subsequently did reject, even the slightly pinkish policies of social reform offered by the wholly respectable. church-imprimatured, Irish Labour Party.

The Provisional IRA and its political partner, Sinn Fein, were born out of the union of Orange violence and British government indifference. The midwife that attended on the birth of this political mutation was the RUC and the British Army; its swaddling clothes were provided by elements in southern capitalism who feared what they thought (mistakenly) was the growth of socialist ideas in the “official” IRA. The boasted Provo strategy of “an Armalite in one hand and a ballot paper in the other" sums up their contempt for democracy.

There is little hope of them achieving the victory you apparently wish them but. in the unlikely event of them emerging bloody but victorious — could you, Ken. see the collection of unscrupulous, self- mandated. anti-democratic war-lords that are the Sinn Fein leadership, yield to the response of the ballot box when their Labour-style policies had failed as signally in Ireland as they have repeatedly in Britain?

You have given credibility to an organisation which has become a major barrier to the establishment of such conditions as would presage the growth of socialist ideas in Ireland. I think it reasonable to ask you, Ken, to provide facilities for those who advocate socialism as an answer to the problems of world capitalism — including the so-called “Irish problem”. A member, or members, of The World Socialist Party of Ireland will be delighted with an invitation from you to state our case for socialism and against capitalism as favoured by your own party or Provisional Sinn Fein.

Come to that. Ken. it might make the discussion even more interesting if you and a member of Sinn Fein (without the Armalite) were to publicly defend your views in a debate with the World Socialist Movement — either the World Socialist Party of Ireland or the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

Looking forward to your early response,

Richard Montague

Belfast