The Odd Men! (1907)

From the December 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr Lloyd George, the “statesman of the day,” the man of “dogged determination,” “marvellous tact,” etc., etc., as all the Tory and Liberal papers and politicians have hailed him since he induced Mr. R. Bell and his friends to sign that historical document which is dealt with elsewhere in this issue, has been making remarks about the Labour members. Speaking at Madeley, Salop, on November 1st, he said : —

“There were only five or six Socialists in the House of Commons. Five out of 600 ! Well, what were five among so many ? The Labour people were not Socialists. In the House of Commons they assisted the Liberal Party to carry practical measures, and even the Socialists, though some of them might make very wild speeches outside, in the House of Commons were thoroughly tame. (Laughter). He had never heard them propose a resolution in favour of upsetting Society ; he had never heard a revolutionary statement emerging from them. There they were, amending the Trade Disputes Bill, or tinkering up some other Bills, and doing some odd jobs of that kind in the Liberal workshop —(laughter and cheers)—in fact earning their living in an honest way in the great party factory.”

Similar statements have been made from time to time in the columns of this paper, but Mr. Lloyd George has an advantage over the members of the working class who, during the brief respite from toil permitted to them by capitalism, write, without fee or hope of reward, the articles for the Socialist Standard. He can speak from an inside knowledge of the sayings and doings of the Labour members, whilst the writers in this paper must mainly rely upon what is reported concerning them. The similarity of views is interesting. Can it be that Mr. Lloyd George, like other prominent members of the Government, is a regular reader of our journal ?

Undoubtedly, some folks expected great things when twenty-nine Labour candidates were returned to the House of Commons, especially as that number included several who, being members of the S.D.F. and the I.L.P., were supposed to be Socialists. But we of The Socialist Party of Great Britain had no false ideas on the matter. Long before the election, in our Manifesto, we had dealt with that fraud, the L.R.C. When the election was over we showed conclusively that the result was neither a victory for Socialism nor for Labour but for Confusion. We explained why we expected nothing from the victors and we have not been disappointed but justified. They could only do odd jobs in the Liberal workshop because they were only elected to do them. Had they been elected as Socialists by Socialists, Mr. Lloyd George would be telling a different tale to-day, but knowing all the circumstances he can no longer restrict himself to laughing up his sleeve, but must laugh aloud at the suggestion that these “respectable, adaptable, and sensible” Labour members are dangerous to the exploiting class.

A Look Round. (1907)

From the July 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Trades Dispute Act, passed by a Government “having something of a Labour Party force behind it” as one jubilant Trade Unionist has expressed it, legalised peaceful picketing. That is to say it made it quite lawful for “one or more persons acting on their own behalf or on behalf of a Trade Union or of an individual employer or firm in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute to attend at or near a house or place where a person resides or works or carries on business or happens to be if they so attend merely for the purpose of peacefully obtaining or communicating information or of peacefully persuading any person to work or abstain from working.”

* * *

But the question of what is peaceful picketing is of course one for the Magistrates and the Judges. In the course of a strike or lock-out, it is hardly to be expected that strikers or locked-out workers will be able to control their feelings altogether when they see their places being taken by others. The moment they get excited they can be charged under the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act, 1875, as was the case at the Old Street Police Court on June 6th, when two men were each fined £10 and ordered to pay six guineas costs between them.

* * *

Another Act of the present Government, the Workmen’s Compensation Act, 1906, comes into force on July 1st. If a workman, after that date, meet with a fatal accident, and his relatives can afford to employ lawyers, or make a bargain with them on the “no win, no pay” system, they may get a verdict of £300 against the employer. And if the latter has not insured and cannot pay, he can make himself a bankrupt, and clear himself of all obligations. No wonder the Act has been described as one for the benefit of insurance companies and lawyers more than for workmen.

* * *

Probably many of the smaller employers will regard a fatal accident to one of their workmen as a blessing in disguise if it enables them, by means of the Bankruptcy Court, to disentangle themselves from the difficult position in which they have been forced under this competitive system.

* * *

The Stringertype is the name of a new matrix composing and casting machine recently invented by Mr. H. J. S. Culbert-Stringer. After a close inspection by a number of experts, the machine has been found to thoroughly justify the many important advantages claimed for it by the inventor.

* * *

Another factor in the problem of men v. machinery !

* * *

The chairman of Barclay, Perkins & Company, Ltd., is much afraid that “after legislation has finished with the Breweries,” the “Socialists” would turn their attention to other so-called monopolies, and the property of the Church itself will be in danger ! This twaddle about the wicked Socialists who would destroy property is part of the game played by the capitalist class. But Barclay, Perkins’ “property,” like that of other sections of the master class, may be depreciated and even destroyed in the ordinary course of capitalist development, without any “Socialist” agitation or action.

* * *

Thus at the meeting of William Cory & Son, Ltd., held on June 11th, Sir Francis Cory-Wright said they ought to put large sums to depreciation and reserve, because they could not say what in the future might take the place of coal, and render much of their assets valueless.

* * *

He went on to refer to the new invention “Coalite,” to exploit which a new company was being formed. Mr. Parker, of Wolverhampton, claimed that it was absolutely smokeless, and that its use would put an end to thick fogs, which were solely due to the smoke emitted from domestic and factory chimneys. There were good grounds for this claim, and if “Coalite” proved successful it would have a great future.

* * *

As I understand it, “Coalite” is obtained by treating ordinary coal in a particular manner. But surely it is within the region of possibility that a fuel may one day be discovered superior to coal in every respect, which would at once depreciate the value of coal mines and allied industries. Then the coal mine owners would agitate for the nationalisation of coal mines and some alleged Socialists would be jubilant at the rate of progress of their ideas.

* * *

On June 12th Mr. Bicknell presided at the meeting of J. C. & J. Field, Ltd., Soap and Candle Manufacturers. He said the year had been a disappointing one. For some years the profits had been steadily growing less, owing to heavy taxation, the increased price of raw materials, in addition to excessive competition.

* * *

When the Soap Trust was operating here, Field's was one of the firms which remained outside. And when the retailers talked of forming a co-operative concern to manufacture soap against the Trust, Field’s advised them not to erect a factory or to put down new plant, but, if they would subscribe £50,000 Capital, Field’s plant could be utilised, etc. All this, of course, was disinterested. Field’s sole desire, as everybody knew, was to help the people fight the awful Trust.

* * *

It is stated that the cause of the trouble at Vickers, Sons & Maxim’s Engineering Works at Erith, was primarily the introduction of a premium bonus system, similar in many respects to the “Rowan” system. In this connection the following extract from The Engineer-in-Charge and Works Manager for May will be interesting to readers.

* * *

Piecework.—Each engineer must decide for himself as to whether any of the work undertaken in his department can be more cheaply turned out on a piecework basis. Many engineers have to manufacture spare parts in considerable quantities, and in these cases the work can often be done more cheaply by the piece; the workman possibly earns more money, but the total cost will be less when establishment charges have been added.

The chief objection to piecework is the difficulty of fixing a fair rate ; if too high, the workman earns very large wages and the rate has to be cut down, with the result that next time a man is given a job at a high rate he takes care not to work too quickly. To avoid this system the premium system has been introduced, which has the effect of giving part of the additional earnings to the employer and part to the workmen. The method introduced by the late Mr. James Rowan has been more used than perhaps any other : by this system a man is allowed, say eight hours in which to do a certain job, and his rate is 8d. per hour ; if he does the work in six hours he will be paid his ordinary rate plus 2-8ths—2d.; therefore, in this case he will get 10d. per hour. It is obviously impossible, with this method, for a man to be paid double his ordinary rate, and the effect is to increase the man’s bonus for small savings in time and to decrease it for large, that is compared with ordinary piecework ; hence, it is unnecessary ever to cut the rate after it has once been fixed, and this system is undoubtedly useful for work for which the rate is difficult to compute.

* * *

There are no flies on the employers who adopt this system !

* * *

In the current issue of The Contemporary Review, Mr. L. G. Chiozza Money, M.P., deals with the Investments of the Masses. He estimates the total wealth of the United Kingdom at £11,500,000,000, of which £10,900,000,00 is owned by 5,000,000 people, and £600,000,000 by 39,000,000 of the population. Thus about 95 per cent. of the entire wealth of the United Kingdom is owned by about one-ninth of its population. It could easily be shown, he added, that of the 5,000,000 of people above the income tax line a small proportion, about one-fifth or say, 1,000,000 people (about 200,000 or 250,000 families) own nearly the whole of the accumulated wealth of the Kingdom, and that this small group exercise the effective government of the nation by its control of the means of production. “THOSE RULE WHO OWN.”

* * *

Those rule who own. That is the position. Whatever political reforms may be secured will be useless so long as the means of wealth production are private property. Therefore the efforts of the workers for political supremacy must be directed with the object of using the power thus obtained to effect the social revolution. Private ownership of the means of wealth production must give place to social ownership.

* * *

Some societies of working men have been led into supporting the Workers’ Educational Association, which exists for the purpose of encouraging boys and girls to continue their education (of a kind agreeable to their masters) by attendance at evening schools after they have commenced to work. Last month a Conference took place between the Association and employers of labour at Birmingham, at which a committee, with the Lord Mayor as chairman, was appointed to carry out the work. The true inwardness of the movement may be gathered from the Press reports of this meeting, which conclude thus : “It was stated that the decay of the apprenticeship system had caused employers to lose that control of young people which they formerly possessed.” And, of course, by the help of Mr. Albert Mansbridge and his W.E.A., they hope to get it back.

* * *

An instance of the fallacy that only unskilled workers need lack employment in this happy land arose at the City Coroner’s Court on June 6th, when an inquest was held concerning the death of Harry G. Burrell, aged 59, a brass finisher, who dropped dead the previous Sunday evening in Whitecross-st. It was stated that the deceased was a capital workman, but had been unable to find regular employment for the past five years. One witness stated that he had known deceased since January and frequently during the bitter nights of February and March they would lie sodden with rain on one of the seats of the Embankment, only to be moved on and made to walk by the first constable who came across them. Between two and three thousand homeless “heirs to glory” went to the Embankment at night.

* * *

Of course, the jury, being “practical” men, passed the usual verdict: “Death from natural causes.” It is quite recognised by the capitalist class that it is perfectly “natural” for men, able and willing to work, to die of starvation in the midst of plenty.

J. Kay.

Editorial: Joy Unspeakable. (1906)

Editorial from the December 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

And so the Trade Disputes Bill has passed the faithful Commons and has every prospect of getting through the Lords unimpaired. And there is merry-making in the camp of Progress. The independent existence of the “Labour” Group is justified—the bill could never have passed had the Government not been whipped from the outside. The existence of the Liberal Labour Group is justified—the bill would have never had a chance if they had not been with in the councils of the Government to inspire them. The Liberal Government is justified—the bill would never have been introduced at all if it had not been for the well known sympathies of Liberalism with the aspirations—the genuine aspirations of Labourism. The Tory Party is justified—with astonishing magnanimity they withdrew their opposition at the last moment and their leader endorsed the bill with a blessing. Everybody satisfied. Everybody happy. And the lion is at rest beside the lamb.

Suspicious Unanimity.

Which, when one comes to think of it, is rather suspicious. Why this unanimity ? Why is it that Capital is giving Labour what Labour is asking for and that almost without a murmur ? The question permits of two answers. (1) Capital’s hands have been forced and it is therefore making what virtue it can of a necessity. (2) The bill isn’t material and doesn’t affect capitalist interests. The “Labour” Party, of course, accept the first view and they have some ground for their belief. But while not concerned to deny that for their own purposes the capitalist Liberal Party have preferred to accept with good grace rather than oppose the measure forced upon them (and in so doing have attached to themselves some sympathy and votes which would probably have been diverted from them had they refused to deal with the matter), this at any rate is beyond question—the bill does not hit their interests hard; it is not material. Had it been otherwise; had there been any vital matter at stake, not all the “Labour” Party horses nor all the “Labour” Party men—what there is of them.—could have compelled them to capitulate as they have done in the case under notice without a struggle and probably a bloody struggle at that.

A Great Victory—Investigated

What, after all, does the great victory amount to? It amounts in effect to practically no more than a reversion to the condition that Labour Unionism thought it was in up to the Farwell decision. It is a case of as you were—no more than that. Indeed, it is a famous victory. The working class can now, if they like, strike. They can peacefully persuade others to join with them. And the funds of the Union are not liable for unauthorised acts of Union members. But the strike is a feeble weapon and in the hands of class-unconscious workers, as most of those who use it are, absolutely useless except on very rare occasions. In a strike the capitalist class, because they own the means of living and control the wealth, can sit tight and smile. The striking workman consumes almost immediately what few resources he has and, with starvation glaring at him, submits or—goes under. Well. The bill permits him to keep on doing that; it permits the capitalist class to keep on starving the worker out. It simply doesn’t touch the economic interest of the exploiter and only in the remotest and infinitesimal way benefits the exploited. But it is a famous victory. Hooray !

Editorial: Socialism & the Agitation for Freedom of Speech & Organisation (1944)

Editorial from the June 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Executive Committee of the S.P.G.B. received from Mr. V. Sastry, Secretary of the Federation of Indian Associations, a letter inviting us to co-operate in the formation of a Defence Committee with the objects of providing legal aid to persons recently arrested for offences against the Trade Disputes Act, 1927, and of conducting a campaign against that and other restrictive legislation. Subsequently the “Anti-Labour Law’s Victims Defence Committee” was established, with Mr. Sastry as Secretary, and with the active backing of various individuals, including one or two Labour M.P.s, and the following: J. Maxton, J. McGovern, Fenner Brockway, and Walter Padley (I.L.P.); Ted Grant (Revolutionary Communist Party); and M. Kavanagh (Freedom Press). The newly formed Committee appealed to us for a donation.

While the S.P.G.B. sympathises with the Committee’s declared object of resisting capitalist encroachments on the activities of workers and their organisations, we declined to associate with this committee or to contribute to it, just as in the past we have refused to associate with numerous other such bodies set up with similar objects. The S.P.G.B. does not consider it desirable to associate with other political organisations and individuals, the aims and methods of which we oppose, in order to further the specific object of agitating against a particular Act of Parliament or action of the police or the Government. Since our own Socialist aim and the democratic principles on which we work compel us to oppose organisations that are not working for Socialism, or that are advocating methods which will not achieve that aim, only confusion would be caused in the minds of the workers if we abandoned our basic opposition and allied ourselves with the organisations in question.

Even on the particular question of interference with working-class activities, experience has abundantly shown what confusion exists in the minds of the self-styled advocates of free speech and freedom of organisation. Normally the Labour Party and the Trades Union Congress rank themselves, along with the Liberal Party and the Liberal Press and the Communist Party, as the natural guardians of working class rights. Yet we have recently seen the first two bodies defending the new anti-strike Regulation against which, among other measures, the newly-formed Defence Committee is protesting. Although at present the Liberals and the Liberal Manchester Guardian are inclined to oppose the Regulation, we recall that at the time of the suppression of the Dally Worker, the Guardian and other Liberal papers supported the suppression, though disagreeing with the method. As for the Communist Party, their Daily Worker (now allowed to appear again) has been asking the same authorities which suppressed the Daily Worker to take action against the Trotskyists, to which group belong the four people the present Defence Committee seeks to protect. Recently the Socialist Appeal (Mid-October, 1943), an organ of the Trotskyists, was protesting that the Communist organisation, Central Books, had refused to handle an Indian pamphlet about the famine. Socialist Appeal said : “Such is the love of the principle of ‘freedom of the press’ by these revolutionary gentlemen.” We, however, recall that the Trotskyist attitude in the past has been no better than that of the Communist Party. Trotsky and Lenin (before Trotsky’s exile from Russia) were united in their advocacy of suppressing the press and organisations of their opponents, including, of course, working-class organisations with which they did not happen to agree.

We know nothing of the Federation of Indian Associations which is sponsoring the Defence Committee to protect the Trotskyists, but in view of the known sympathy of some of the Committee’s supporters with the Congress Party in India, it is relevant to recall that the Indian advocates of independence from British rule are no different from the British capitalists in their attitude to working-class organisations. When the Indian Congress Party was in office in Bombay they introduced a Trade Disputes Bill modelled on the British Act. As the Indian Labour Journal (October 23, 1938) remarked, the bill “takes away the legitimate constitutional and powerful weapon of the workers, namely the strike, by declaring it illegal and therefore punishable in a large number of cases.”

The S.P.G.B. is in favour of allowing all groups and individuals unfettered rights of expressing their point of view, but we also recognise the very important fact that while capitalism lasts, the capitalists who control the machinery of government will always be able to use their power to suppress minority groups if they so desire. It is in the interests of the working class to resist such efforts so far as they are able, but working-class opinion needs much clarification before it recognises that working-class interests are not served by the suppression of any point of view, and, further, recognises that the suppression of working-class minorities will not end until the working class achieves democratic control of the machinery of government for the purpose of introducing Socialism.

Editorial: The Post Office Workers and the Trade Disputes Act (1943)

Editorial from the September 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

By the time these words are in print the question of the affiliation of the Post Office Workers’ Union to the Trades Union Congress will probably have been settled temporarily—by being shelved; but the consequences of the campaign will not end there. The Post Office workers have done good work by bringing the issue to the fore, and have made it certain that the whole question of the 1927 Trade Disputes Act will be a live issue after the war, even if, in the meantime, the Government makes or promises to make some concession over the single issue of the affiliation of lower grade Civil Service unions to the T.U.C.

The 1927 Act was ostensibly introduced because in 1920 some millions of workers came out on strike to help the miners. Actually its causes went much further back than that. The employing class were badly frightened by what happened in 1926, but some at least of them realised that that spontaneous demonstration was a symptom of a slow change that was taking place in the outlook of the workers. The workers were gradually becoming more conscious of the fact that as a class, irrespective of occupation, they have a common interest, to be expressed politically as well as industrially, against the employing class. Mr. Churchill, at that time Chancellor of the Exchequer, put it as follows :

“The development of trade unionism, particularly in the present century and particularly in the last decade, has produced a very great change in the situation. We have seen the trade unions become great political factors, actively engaged in party politics, in endeavouring to secure the return to Parliament or to office of one particular set of politicians, and to oppose the interests of the others.” (Quoted in Parliamentary Report May 30, 1927, col. 55.)

The 1927 Act sought to hinder or undo this development by making any strike (or lock-out) illegal “if it has any object other than or in addition to the furtherance of a trade dispute within the trade or industry in which the strikers are engaged, and is a strike designed or calculated to coerce the Government either directly or by inflicting hardship upon the community.”

The Act curtailed the legal right of picketing, made it necessary for trade unionists to give individual consent, in writing, before contributions to the political fund could be collected from them, forbad Local Authorities to make compulsory Union membership a condition of employment, and forbad Civil Service Unions to have outside trade union or political affiliations or to have political objects.

While the employing class and their instrument, the Tory Party, may be induced to make some concession to Civil Service Unions, they will do so with understandable reluctance. They know quite well that to concede something now on one clause of the Act will only be followed by demands for concessions on other clauses, and if they have to give way on the whole Act, that will be a definite set-back for them. Actually Civil Service unions in this country are more restricted than in the U.S.A. or the British Dominions. Generally speaking, the unions there can and do affiliate with outside trade unions, support political parties and affiliate with the International Postal Workers’ trade union movement, so that the Tories cannot argue that concession to the Civil Service unions is impracticable in itself.

The Sanctity of the Law

The campaign has had its interesting features. For 16 years the Civil Service Unions and the T.U.C. have protested against the 1927 Act, but nobody took any notice. All they got from the late Mr. Neville Chamberlain early in the war was a sort of promise that if they behaved themselves the matter might be considered after victory. Then the Post Office workers decided to carry on in defiance of the law. With startling suddenness the Press and the politicians woke up and broke into an almost unanimous chorus of protest. “Perhaps there is a case for changing the law,” they said— though they had usually been silent about it hitherto—”but no Government can ignore, or act under, a threat of law-breaking. This is Fascism, not democracy.”

(It may be remarked here that the Post Office workers did not take the only possible line. They could have tried quietly encroaching on the Act on the assumption that the Government, being fully occupied with the war, might ignore it.)

The Government, which includes three Labour Members, Messrs. Bevin, Attlee and Morrison, then issued a pompous warning to Post Office workers that if they persisted they would cease to be eligible for employment as established (i.e., permanent and pensionable) Civil Servants.

This talk about democracy and law-breaking sounds rather unconvincing in the light of certain facts. First, it is worth remembering that it was in 1927, when the Act was passed, that Mr. Churchill was praising Italian Fascism, and leading Fascist newspapers were returning the compliment by claiming that the Act was on Fascist lines. It should also be recalled that some of the leading members of the 1927 Tory Government had themselves in the past been active preachers and organisers of defiance against the Government. Lord Birkenhead and Sir William Joynson-Hicks were among those responsible for the 1927 Act, who had distinguished themselves by backing the Ulster preparations for rebellion (with German arms) against the Liberal Government of 1912-14 on the issue of Irish Home Rule. It was Lord Birkenhead who had said (January 22, 1912, at Liverpool) : “There is no length to which Ulster will not be entitled to go—however desperate or unconstitutional—in carrying the quarrel,” and again (at Ballyclare on September 20, 1913), “we shall stand side by side with you, refusing to recognise any law, and prepared with you to risk the collapse of the whole body politic to prevent this monstrous crime.”

The above quotations are taken from a leaflet issued by the Labour Party and T.U.C. in 1927. At that time Mr. Ernest Bevin was even talking of defying the law himself. In a speech at a Trade Union Conference called to oppose the 1927 Bill he touched on the possibility of members of his Union being ordered by the Courts to work with blacklegs, and said, “I am afraid that all the illegality and all the decisions would not influence us very much.”

Just as the poachers of 1912 turned into gamekeepers in 1927, so it seems that Messrs. Bevin, Attlee and Morrison have had their heads turned in 1943. The curious feature about this is that Mr. Attlee long ago knew and wrote about what happens in such a situation as the present one. His present plea is that he and the other Labour members are in the Government to fight foreign Fascism and must stand by the Government and see the law is enforced. In 1937, in “The Labour Party in Perspective,” he discussed what the Labour Party ought to do about coalitions to fight Fascism, and strongly urged that the Labour Party ought not to support Capitalist Governments. This is what he wrote :

“There are those who, realising the danger of menace of the Fascist Powers, tend to take up an attitude of supporting a Capitalist Government at home as the least of two evils. They tend to under-estimate the reality of the struggle between Capitalism and Socialism, and to magnify the differences between democratic Capitalist States and Fascist States. The danger of this attitude is that in fighting foreign Fascism they may encourage the subtle introduction of Fascism at home. (Labour Party in Perspective, p. 220.)

When the Labour members entered the Government in 1940, Mr. Attlee gave as one of the reasons, “To maintain the unity of the nation.” It should by now be apparent to Mr. Attlee that by taking on joint responsibility with Tories and Liberals for running Capitalism at war he has put himself in the position of directly opposing a. demand made by the Trade Unions and hitherto supported by himself. In other words, he is dividing himself from the trade union movement in the name of “national unity.” Thus does the reality of the class struggle break through. All of which points unmistakeably to the acute struggles which will up on the home front after the war ends, when the capitalist politicians—now stridently calling for liberty in foreign parts—will return to the old job of keeping the workers in subjection at home. Even members of the Labour Party who favoured the entry of their leaders into the National Government in 1940 may wonder why they did not have the foresight to insist beforehand on explicit concessions from the Tories, including legislation to amend the 1927 Act.

One lesson the incident drives home once more is the certainty that those who control the political machinery, the Government, can withstand and suppress efforts by trade unions or others to force their hand. The road to emancipation for the workers lies through gaining control of the political machinery.