Who is the alien? The working-class view of the burning question. (1911)

From the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Opportunity is a Fine Thing.

The recent world-stirring East End melodrama (in which provoking police agents seem to have pulled the strings) has afforded another opportunity to the capitalist platform, pulpit and Press to thunder against the “alien”. The pseudo-Socialist organisations and Press have, in their fear of losing supporters through this business, been profuse in their repudiation and condemnation of the “crime”, and in their praise of the armed forces in dealing with it. It is, as usual, left to the Socialist Party to point out the Socialist lesson, both with regard to the “crime” and the anti-alien agitation which it served to stir up.

On contemplating all the facts of this “mysterious anarchistic” display, the question rises uppermost in our minds: “Who are the alien impostors and criminals?” And the Socialist answer is – “the capitalist class”.

Why, the attempt to obtain property without labour is contrary to the very principles of Socialism, which insist upon labour for all and subsistence for all. But those who to-day are endeavouring to obtain wealth by filching – and with the aid of armed force into the bargain – are only carrying out the basic principle of capitalism to its logical conclusion.

Who is more honoured to-day than the successful thief, who filched millions from the product of other people’s toil? For his operations capitalist economists find such high-sounding names as “industry”, “foresight”, and “thrift”. And who is more despised and down-trodden than the worker, whose labour produces all wealth? His outrage and robbery, so long as it is carried on in the orthodox way (which converts the plunder into “rent, interest, and profit), is “legalised” by the robbers and supported by giant instruments of murder, while his aspiration to keep for himself the produce of his own toil, draws upon him every term of reproach and contempt.

Let us look back upon the record of the British Government for the last twenty years, and we shall see that the armed forces of capitalist society have been used again and again against unarmed, defenceless workers – men, women and children. In contrast to this, the modern burglar is up against the whole forces of the State, armed to the very teeth.

A Little Bit of History.

In September 1893, the Liberal Government, with Mr. Asquith as Home Secretary, sent soldiers to Featherstone, and striking miners were fired upon, some being killed and others wounded. (See Hansard, vol 17, pp. 1725-1726.) In 1894 the same Government sent a gunboat to Hull to help quell the dockers on strike in that town. In 1907 a Liberal Government again sent military with Maxim guns to Belfast, where a lock-out of dockers had taken place, and the police had gone on strike out of sympathy. In that instance again unarmed workers were maimed and murdered. And recently during a lock-out of Welsh miners, troops and police were sent to fight the masters’ battle for them, and once more wounds and death were dealt out to defenceless workers who wanted to enjoy a little more of the fruits of their toil.

Now if it can be shown that the capitalist class have obtained their possessions by robbery, that in the process of robbery thousands of workers’ lives have been sacrificed, and that in their effort to protect their ill-gotten gains they employ the armed forces of the State to butcher the workers, then it is proved to the hilt that it is the master class, and not the foreign workmen, who are the real aliens, the race apart from and antagonistic to, the people.

The last point has been sufficiently proved by the preceding descriptions of the British Government’s action during certain strikes and lock-outs. The first point is most fully and effectively established by Karl Marx, in his great work Capital, particularly in the historic chapters, which are based on documentary evidence in the British Museum. The second point, however, still requires substantiation.

And a Few Eloquent Facts.

Now according to Government statistics about 2¼ million members of the working class are annually in receipt of poor relief. That means that they are, to all intents and purposes, on the very verge of destitution. Over 200,000 workers annually meet with accidents (over 5,000 fatal) in the course of their employment, and most of these accidents can be traced to the want of life-protecting contrivances – which are not adopted by the master class because their cost would lessen profits.

In addition to this, many thousands gradually starve to death, for not all unemployed and destitute workers apply for poor relief. Thousands, too, die through over-work, bad housing, and insanitary conditions, or are driven insane by the awful economic stress of the present system of society.

So the Socialist allegation that capitalism spells the robbery and murder of the workers by an alien class is fully justified. And the workers in the East End, against whom the master class direct their epithets of “undesirable aliens”, dirty “foreigners”, and the like, and against whom they assiduously try to foster popular hatred, these workers form part of the army of the exploited. And as such they are received with open arms by the very class which, in order to cover their own plundering, attempt to direct popular anger and scorn against them, as the authors of working-class poverty.

Pocket Patriots.

When in 1905, during the debate on the Alien Bill in Parliament, an amendment was moved to keep the foreign workers out during strikes and lock-outs, the great mass of the members of Parliament, representing the vested interests of the capitalists, – the robbers living upon rent, interest, and profit – of course rejected the amendment.

The patriotism of the master class, like their professions of kindness, generosity, and magnanimity, is sheer hypocrisy. In the quest for profits all barriers are broken down, and the capitalist’s love of his country withers before a fraction percent on the yield of his capital. He has no scruples in the matter of displacing the native worker with the “alien”, provided that it pays him – any more than he hesitates to displace either with machinery, directly he can save wages by so doing.

We do not stand alone when we allege that the “alien” workers of the East End are even more completely robbed and worse treated, if that were possible, than the native workers. The Rev. Canon Barnett, of Toynbee Hall fame, writing in the Daily News of January 10th last on the “Sidney Street Lesson”, made the following statements:

“The great need in East London is that the people by receiving more respect should gain self-respect. They do not receive such treatment. The streets in which they live are not lighted or cleansed according to the standard which respectability demands. The second or third best in buildings or in entertainment are good enough for the East End, and Police Court humour and Police Court law, which most vividly represent the attitude of society, are often insulting. I doubt if it would have been possible for the police to have adopted in a West London Square, the methods they adopted in Sidney Street. Respect for the neighbours and neighbourhood would have prevented them from setting men to fire at and to burn two criminals in the open streets.”

A “Socialist” Adviser.

And what has Robert Blatchford, the jingo cat’s paw of gutter-press journalism, to say on that question? The following are from his article in the Weekly Dispatch of January 8th.

“Our wise and kindly British law was not made to deal with foreign Thugs of the twentieth century type . . . I am not discussing the existing law. I am only suggesting that the police should be legally empowered to deal with undesirable aliens immediately on their arrival at any British port. In all such cases as this, where the foreign police have warned our police against an immigrant, that immigrant should be sent to the right about turn at once. In cases of suspicion the immigrant should be detained and, failing a satisfactory explanation, should be deported.”

The above is not quote with a view to proving Mr. Blatchford to be an anti-Socialist of the worst type. His actions have fully exposed him, and very few people indeed can still believe him to be out for Socialism. His German war scare, his glorification of the Army and Navy, and lastly his present attitude on the “alien” question, show distinctly enough that Mr. Blatchford is ignorant of the very rudiments of Socialism. And that is not the most annoying feature. That which Socialists most resent is that the capitalist class should obtain from professing Socialists, advice as to measures of repression and persecution against members of the working class.

The whole Houndsditch spectacle looks as if it had been instigated by Russian police agents in order to create a popular clamour for legislation against “criminal” aliens, to the end that political offenders (especially Socialists) might have cut off their last means of escape from the savage vengeance of the knout and the appalling horrors of Siberia.

The capitalist press, pulpit and platform continually gloat over the apathy and indifference of the workers hailing from other countries to their own utter poverty, misery, and degradation, and whenever the dominant class make an attack upon the Socialists it suits their purpose to praise these “aliens” to the skies as splendid examples of “peaceable and law-abiding citizens”, On the other hand the master class, when it suits their purpose, ascribe the poverty of the native workers to the presence of “alien workers” in this country, or to the importation of labour products from abroad.

In short, it is the business of the capitalists to set one section of the working class against another in order to prevent them perceiving who are their real enemies. Hence the outcry against the “alien” which has followed upon the recent affray. But the development of the present murderous system is gradually revealing to the workers of all countries, that between worker and worker there can be no alienism, because there can be no alienation. They are bound together by the common ties of their class position – a common class interest. On the other hand, they have nothing in common with the master class, whose interests are everywhere opposed to theirs. Therefore it is the master class who are the aliens.

H. J. Neumann

The Emergency Regulations in the Dock Dispute (1949)

From the August 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

By proclamation under the Emergency Powers Act, 1920, the Labour Government on 11th July issued Emergency Regulations dealing with the dock dispute. The 1920 Act authorising the use of emergency powers was parsed by the Lloyd George Coalition Government against the fierce opposition of the Labour Party and Trades Union Congress. Its repeal was demanded by the Labour Party Conference in 1921, the resolution being moved by a docker. The Act was used by the Tories against the General Strike in 1926 and the T.U.C. that year carried a resolution which held that at no time during the strike need the Act have been used.

Yet this is the Act now used by a Labour Government in a dispute that is of negligible proportions compared with the 1926 General Strike.

The sixteen Emergency regulations give the Government sweeping powers over the working of the docks and over any attempt to interfere with the carrying on of work. The Daily Herald (12/7/49) published a summary of all sixteen regulations from which the following are quoted:

“Regulation 3. This concerns acts of sabotage and declares:

” ‘No person shall do any act with intent to impair the efficiency or impede the working or movement of any vessel, aircraft, vehicle, machinery, apparatus or other thing used or intended to be used in the performance of essential services.’

“Regulation 4. Deals with trespassing and loitering on any premises taken over for the maintenance of essential services.

”Mere presence in or near such premises is sufficient for conviction, if it can be shown that the person’s character suggest a purpose prejudicial to public safety’

“Regulation 5. Covers acts of violence endangering, obstructing or interfering with troops, police and others engaged in essential services.

“Regulation 6. Makes it an offence to induce any troops or police to commit breaches of discipline. Possession or distribution of leaflets or other documents likely to cause disaffection comes under this heading.

“Regulation 7. Authorises the Home Secretary to employ police from outside the area for the maintenance of public order.

“Regulation 8. Gives powers for billeting of soldiers, sailors and airmen.

“Regulation 9. The Postmaster-General is authorised to hold up the delivery of packages and refuse the use of telephone and telegraph services as he thinks fit.

“Regulation 11. Gives police power to stop any vehicle if it is suspected that an offence is being committed against the Regulations. A constable may seize any incriminating evidence he finds.

“Regulation 12. Gives to any constable power of arrest of suspects without obtaining a warrant.

“Regulation 13. Makes it an offence to incite any person to commit offences against the Regulations.

“Regulation 14. Directors, general managers or secretaries of companies or corporations offending against the Regulations will be liable unless they can show that the offence was committed without their knowledge or connivance.

“Regulation 15. Provides that persons convicted shall be liable to three months jail or a fine of up to £100 or both.

“Taking part in, or peacefully persuading a person or persons to take part in a strike is not an offence.

“Regulation 16. Enables the authorities to seize any articles believed to provide evidence of an offence.”

The use of troops and of civilian workers brought into the docks from outside is governed by Regulation 2.

In spite of the long years of Labour Party denunciation of the Emergency Powers Act the Emergency Regulations received the sweeping support of Labour M.P’s. Not one Labour M.P. voted against.

Blogger's Note:

This issue of the Socialist Standard also carried two other pieces on the Dockers' dispute:

• Editorial: The attitude of the London Dockers
• The Dispute at the London Docks

Editorial: The Dock Strike and the Emergency Powers Act (1948)

Editorial from the August 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

After the unofficial strike of London dockers had lasted several weeks and sympathetic strikes were taking place at other docks the Labour Government on 28th June declared a state of emergency under the Emergency Powers Act, 1920. The Daily Herald the next day reported this as follows:

“Armed with full powers under the State of Emergency plroclamation signed by the King, the Cabinet last night prepared regulations to meet any possible crisis arising from the dock strikes.”

“The government, with its emergency powers, will, if necessary, requisition accommodation in and near the London docks for troops and other labour, and seize warehouses for storage. It is also expected to take powers for the control of all arrangements at ports, including the turn-round of ships, and for dealing with acts of sabotage or attempts to dissuade troops from carrying out their duties.” (Daily Herald, 29/6/48).

The Prime Minister swiftly followed up the proclamation with a broadcast appeal to the men on strike and the next day the strike was called off. Whether the strikers were more influenced by the appeal, or by the threat, is a matter of opinion, but there is no doubt what would have been the outcome had the strike continued. The prestige and continuance in office of the Labour Government were at stake and it would have been a fight to a finish.

Labour M.Ps. and supporters saw in the incident a personal triumph for the Prime Minister’s eloquence and sincerity. The Opposition had a double target to attack. They abused the Ministers, for dilatoriness and lack of courage, especially Mr. Isaacs. Minister of Labour, who, they gleefully pointed out, had not only flown off to America to attend an I.L.O. Conference but had actually done so in an American plane. They also laid the blame at the doors of the mammoth Transport and General Workers Union, which, they said, must be badly managed and quite incapable of serving its members properly since the latter repeatedly show their discontent by ignoring the Union and striking against its advice. Others saw in the whole affair a Moscow-inspired Communist plot to upset the Labour Government and sow dissension between workers and their anti-Communist officials.

Mr. Arthur Deakin, General Secretary of the Transport Workers Union, indignantly defended himself and his Executive against all the charges levelled at the Union. Writing in the Record (July) he made what is on paper a good case. Its fatal fault is that it is too good since it claims to demonstrate that the men had nothing to strike about. Thousands of men do not stop work, remain out for weeks on end without strike pay, bitterly denounce their officials and shout down speeches urging a return to work if, as Mr. Deakin writes, “there was no reason for the strike to start.” Mr. Deakin’s account is as follows : The dispute arose about the piece-work rate for unloading zinc oxide and on several occasions the men refused to complete the job. For this breach of discipline they were punished with suspension for one week and disentitlement to attendance money (i.e. their minimum guaranteed pay) for 13 weeks. They appealed but came out on strike before the appeal was heard. Subsequently after an appeal tribunal had failed to agree a new tribunal was set up under an independent chairman and reduced the disentitlement to two weeks. Mr. Deakin makes much of the fact that the bodies which imposed the penalty and heard the appeal are joint bodies on which the Union is represented, and also of the point that because the strike was a breach of agreements entered into by the Union “it had no alternative but to honour its obligations and order a return to work.” He maintains that the agreements had been “at every stage approved by constitutionally elected lay committees of rank and file members” and concludes therefore that “there was no reason for the strike to start, and every reason why work should have been resumed immediately the appeal tribunal gave its decision.”

To all of this, as has already been indicated, the existence of bitter discontent in the minds of the men is a complete answer. They belong to and pay into the Union in order to be protected in disputes with the employer. They are entitled to get it even though their officials may think and tell them that the action they propose to take is unreasonable, unwise and unnecessary. They are, after all, likely to he the best judges of where the shoe pinches.

There is another and equally vital aspect of the dispute. The Labour Party does not believe that strikes are an inevitable outcome of the class-struggle which underlies the capitalist system. They have told us so often how a Labour Government would avoid strikes; by a policy of high wages and low prices, by arbitration and conciliation, by nationalisation which would “eliminate the profit motive,” by a wise and humane administration of industry including trade union representation on disciplinary bodies. These and other things were offered as an alternative to the Socialist remedy of abolishing capitalism and with it the wages system. Yet what happens in practice? Not high wages but “wage-freezing,” not lower prices but rising prices. Not the cessation of strikes, but over 600,000 workers involved in strikes (mostly unofficial) in 1947. Not industrial harmony but the invoking of the much-hated Emergency Powers Act. This is an Act that was passed under Lloyd George’s Tory-Liberal Coalition Government, in 1920. It was opposed at the time by the Trade Unions and the Labour Party. At the 1921 Labour Party Conference a resolution demading its repeal was carried. (It was moved by a delegate of the Dock Workers’ Union.) The Act was used by the Baldwin Tory Government against the General Strike in 1926. At the T.U.C. that year a resolution of condemnation was carried which held that at no time during the General Strike was it necessary to apply the Act.

Yet this is the Act invoked by a Labour Government in a relatively small dispute.

Of course they have their excuses ready: we live in critical times which necessitate wage-freezing; the people must be fed even if it means using troops and in effect smashing a strike; if you have capitalism and the wages system the Government cannot tolerate failure to keep agreements between workers and employers; and finally the Government administering capitalism must govern in such a way as to keep the system functioning. It is not worth while arguing about these various points. All they add up to is that the way to working class emancipation does not lie through Labour Government. No matter how much Labour Ministers may hope and strive through humane administration to “decapitalise” capitalism their actions are broadly determined by the necessities of that system. The road to crisis, class conflict and war is paved with the good intentions of Labour Governments.

How Labour governed (2025)

From the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Eighty years ago this month, the Labour Party won a landslide victory in the General Election held on 5 July 1945. Clement Attlee became the Prime Minister of the first Labour government to have had a parliamentary majority.

Labour hadn’t fought the election on a socialist programme, but its manifesto did declare — in words that would cause ministers in the present Labour government to throw up their hands in horror — that ‘The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it. Its ultimate purpose at home is the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth of Great Britain’. By ‘socialism’ was meant the nationalisation of the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy — coal, steel, railways, electricity, gas, and water.

On this they were as good as their word. The coal mines, the steel plants, the railways and the utilities were nationalised, as was the Bank of England. The previous owners were given generous compensation, with the shares they had held being transformed into interest-bearing bonds. The workers in these industries remained wage-workers and the interest paid to the bond-holders came out of the surplus value they produced. This was state capitalism, not socialism.

That the Attlee government governed in the interest of the working class is a myth.

It did establish the National Health Service with free treatment and free prescriptions. Although this was introduced in the capitalist interest to provide a fit workforce, it would be churlish not to recognise that not having to pay for medical treatment and medicines was of benefit to workers. Other measures that could be so regarded were the repeal of the anti-trade union laws introduced after the capitalist class victory in the 1926 General Strike, and a democratisation of the franchise.

But it was still a government of capitalism and, as capitalism cannot run in the interests of the working class, the Attlee government inevitably came into conflict with the workers. A leaflet we distributed in a local election in Northern Ireland in 1963 recalled a number of the actions it took as ‘part of Labour’s black record when it waged war against the workers in the interests of British capitalism between the years 1945 and 1951’:

(1) Used CONSCRIPT TROOPS to BREAK strikes.

(2) Imposed a ‘PAY PAUSE’ and ‘INDUSTRIAL CONSCRIPTION’.

(3) Used (in peace time) a wartime Order, 1305, in an effort to have striking trade unionists JAILED.

(4) Had workers RESISTING BLACK-LEG LABOUR sentenced to IMPRISONMENT and FINES under old PROPERTY-PROTECTION ACTS of 1875.

The Attlee government itself first introduced charges for some health services. It also developed the atomic bomb.

It is not just the present Labour government that is governing in the interest of the capitalist class. The Attlee government, despite its socialist pretensions, had to as well since that is what has to happen if you take on responsibility for running the political side of capitalism. You have to apply its economic laws that prioritise profit-making. It doesn’t matter how able, sincere or sympathetic you might be. Capitalism simply cannot be run in the interest of the working class.

Blogger's Note:

The July 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard carried a number of pieces on, what was then, the seventieth anniversary of the 1945 Labour Government. Articles included:

• Editorial: Labour's Strange 'Revolution'
• Labour Government Wasn’t the Way to Socialism 
• 50 Years Ago: 9 Months of Labour Rule

By The Way: The Labour Government’s Communist Friends (1945)

The By The Way Column from the November 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour Government’s Communist Friends

The Communist Party helped Labour M.P.s everywhere at the July elections, rejoiced in their success and is backing the Labour Government. Now read what choice epithets they applied to the last Labour Government.

“It shoots down the workers and peasants in India; it imprisons such gallant workers as the Meerut prisoners, who have fought for the economic and political freedom of the Indian workers and peasants; it sends warships to intimidate the Egyptians; warships and soldiers to China. The Labour Government is the most open and blatant tool of imperialism, both in its attacks on the workers at home and in its policy of bloodshed and violence abroad.”—(Mr. Harry Pollitt in “The Workers' Charter,” published in 1930, by the National Minority Movement).

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Communists Denounced Nationalisation and Now Support it

The Communists now approve of the Labour Government's nationalisation schemes, but read what the Communists said about the schemes when they were drawn op.

“The Labour Party and the trade union leaders try to hide their policy of surrendering the workers’ daily interests to the capitalists, by using socialist phrases, so called Socialist schemes, such as were adopted at the Leicester and Newcastle Conferences.

“All their schemes for the 'control of banking system,’ 'public control of industry land trade,’ 'transport boards’ are schemes of capitalist reorganisation, designed to strengthen capitalist monopoly at the expense of the working class.” 

(From “Resolutions adopted by the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Great Britain.”—Published by the C.P.G.B., 1932. Pago 6)

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“A Third Labour Government Will be Even Worse than the Second ”

After the collapse of the second Labour Government, when MacDonald had joined the National Government and the 1931 Election was in progress the Communist Party published “The Workers’ Answer to the Crisis,” by R. P. Dutt.

Here are some extracts: —

“But the policy of the Labour Party was and remains the policy of maintaining capitalism, of attempting reforms within the framework of capitalism, of taking over the capitalist state, of administering capitalism, of denial of the class struggle, of unity with capitalism. . . . The outcome for the workers who trust the Labour Party is disaster. The talk of socialism and reforms becomes only deceiving the workers, because the practice is capitalism.

“This is the lesson of the two Labour Governments.” And again:—

“Will a Third Labour Government be any better than the second Labour Government? Will a Henderson Labour Government be any better than a MacDonald Labour Government?

No, a third Labour Government will be even worse than the second Labour Government, because of the greater intensity of the crisis of capitalism, will deal even heavier blows against the workers, will lead to worsening of the crisis and end in intensified capitalist dictatorship. . . .

What are the promises of the Labour Party worth ? Nothing, as experience has abundantly shown. The Labour Party speak of ’socialism,’ of ’Nationalisation of the banks/ of ' public ownership and control ’ of the key industries. This is a paper programme of promises to deceive the workers. . . . It is meaningless deception so long as the capitalist exploiters are in fact to be left secure.”

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Less Compensation for Coal owners

“After the discovery of atomic energy we are unlikely to want coal as a source of power 20 years hence. If the mines stayed in private ownership, their value would be small. When they are nationalised it would be ridiculous to compensate the shareholders at anything like the present Stock Exchange prices. The railways will probably be obsolete in another 30 years, so the same applies to them.” —Prof. J. B. S. Haldane in Daily Worker, 2.8.45.

Was it not Professor Blackett who said on the wireless in 1935 in discussion on Science with Julian Huxley that “scientists, if in the position of politicians, would act like politicians”? So a man of Haldane’s unquestionable scientific ability—because harnessed to the C.P.-Labour Party policy of compensation for poor capitalists—can see nothing more in the supercession of the old forms of production and transport by atomic energy than a haggling point to pay less compensation.

The Communist Party, which started by “taking the Labour Party by the throat,” now pleads for lest compensation.

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Too Unreliable

Gangsters for Commandos.

Proposal Was Dropped.

“Among recruiting suggestions considered in the early days of the commandos was whether it would be better to use real toughs or gangsters either from the United States or British cities rather than soldiers. The view taken, it is revealed in 'Soldier,' the British Army magazine, by Brig. Dudley W. Clarke, who recruited the first commandos, was that the gangster was too unreliable. The idea was dropped.

“So, too, was a proposal from a convict who offered to form a commando of convicts And warders.”—Sunday Times, August 12, 1945.

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Liberation

German charges that Moroccans attacked Girls. 

“Rumours arising out of German allegations that more than 1,000 women were raped by Moroccan troops during the first few days of the French occupation are still growing in the German city of Stuttgart. Hundreds of girls in the city were Poles or Russians brought there by the Germans as slave labour.

“The German police chief in the new administration working under U.S. occupation, Karl Weber, said most of the women were attacked in their own homes by the dark-skinned, turbaned Moroccan troops, who broke down doors in looting forays.

“The official German police report lists 1,198 rape cases involving women whose ages ranged from 14 to 74. Weber claims that each case has been verified and estimates that twice that number of women were attacked but were ashamed to report.—Sunday Express, August 12, 1945.

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Reluctant “Comrades"

A correspondent of the Manchester Guardian reports the extremely difficult problems which repatriation of Russian “displaced persons” involves. First, he points out that by the Yalta agreement the Soviet authorities do not recognise “ non-repatriables” like the other powers—i.e., they insist on the handing over of all Russian citizens. 

Secondly, and more importantly,

“Apart, however, from certain questions of principle involved, there are practical difficulties about doing this, as some are prepared to fight rather than be arrested. Individuals or groups may well have arms, and there is an obvious reluctance to risk the lives of British or American soldiers for what is essentially a matter of internal Russian policy.”—Manchester Guardian, August 31, 1945.

So what does emerge is that thousands of former Russian citizens, having escaped the “Socialist Fatherland” during the war, are prepared to risk their lives fighting to avoid repatriation to the Soviet Utopia.

We have a splendid solution! Let all those hysterical and vociferous Communists who haunt Socialist Party meetings volunteer to go back to Russia in place of the missing Russian nationals in Germany, who will remain where they prefer. A good time will then be had by all! We wonder!

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Strikers Shout Down Officials!

The Telegraph for July 30th reports that officials were shouted down at a railway strikers’ meeting. Delegates called for nationalisation of the railways.

A Birkenhead representative declared: “If we continue our present (strike) action the new Government will be able to turn to the companies and tell them they cannot manage their business. It would then be an easy step towards nationalisation. ’'

He got his answer on July 31st, one day later, when “three hundred soldiers swept in through the Surrey Commercial Docks at 1 p.m. to-day in lorries to take over loading and unloading of ships which had been at a standstill because of the dockers 'go slow.’ ”—Evening News, July 31.)

Strike action of itself will never achieve nationalisation of the railways or any other industry—even if nationalisation were in the interests of the workers. Only political power can do that, because it involves the State. The Labour Government will “nationalise” certain industries because it has a mandate (power) from the electorate to do so. It has persuaded working-class electors that it does so in their interests—though it is actually the policy of some of the industrial capitalists. Strike action against the State-brings the Army in to do the job, and breaks the strike.

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Bombs and Trade

“Post-war trade relations in the Far East are being rewritten by B.29 Super Fortresses and India’s Industrial future—particularly in textiles—looks extremely rosy in the glow of firebombs on Japan, 'Every time the Superforts hit Osaka’ said a leading Indian textile operator, ' I say to myself: There’s another year free of Jap competition in the Indian textile market.’ ”—(New York Herald Tribune, June 13th, 1945. Quoted in Plebs, September, 1945).

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That Odd Bird the Labour Party

Mr. Laski is reported to have said: “The bright bird of Socialism needs two wings—it can’t fly on a right wing only, or a left wing only.”—(Daily Mail, September 4th).

If Mr. Laski had stopped to consider the kind of progress made by a bird with oddly assorted wings, one pushing forward and the other pulling back, he would have realised that his analogy is very apt though not in the sense he intended.

Horatio.

50 Years Ago: Some Facts About the Dock Strike - Hypocritical Attitude of Labour Spokesmen (1995)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 1995 issue of the Socialist Standard

A great deal of cant has been spoken and written about the dockers’ “unofficial" strike which ended on November 5th, but with the threat that they will come out again if the negotiations now resumed do not give them satisfaction. The line taken by the daily Press and by the spokesmen of the Labour Government has been that there can be no recognition of “unofficial” action not endorsed by the central executives of the Transport and General Workers’ Union and the other unions involved. The pious attitude of the newspapers would be more convincing if there was the slightest reason to believe that they would have given their support if the strike had been official—but experience shows that if it had they would have opposed it just the same . . .

Those who fancy that employment by the State or by a public utility corporation is the solution of the workers’ problems should think over the action of the P.L.A. when its workers came out on strike. “A notice warning Port of London permanent labourers that they would be ‘deemed to have left the service of the Authority without notice' if they did not return to work . . . was posted outside the Royal Albert Dock yesterday.” —(Daily Herald, 13th October, 1945.)

Capitalism runs true to form even if a Labour Government chooses to pretend that it is different because it now runs under different colours!

[From editorial in Socialist Standard, December 1945]

Briefing: What is Capitalism? (1984)

The Briefing Column from the October 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Money trick

All wealth is the product of labour. Every house, car, loaf of bread, everything that we use is brought into being by men and women applying their energies to the resources that other men and women have extracted from the environment. It is one of the contradictions of the class system, though, that the great majority of people — the wealth-producing class — consume and enjoy only the crumbs of the wealth they produce. The construction workers who build the palaces and the mansions return at the end of a hard day’s work to live in council hovels or at best an up-market suburban slum. The wealth producers are trapped in poverty because of the wages- system of legalised robbery. The factories, farms, mines, offices, communications systems — in fact, the means of life — are owned and controlled by a small minority of the world's population. The wages or salaries with which the wealth producers are fobbed off are worth less than the value of what has been produced, so that the boss receives a value from the efforts of the worker over and above what is paid for. The surplus value kept by the owners of industry becomes profit when the goods are sold on the market.

When the social system is looked at from this point of view, a couple of important points become apparent: first, that whether wages are “high” or "low" the people working for them are being exploited; and second, that it is the system of producing goods and services for a profit which condemns the majority to live lives of unnecessary poverty. Occasionally, the absurdity of the class system exhibits itself in stark madness. A couple of years ago the workers who produced the engines for the Concorde aeroplane were given a special concession by their bosses. The workers who, although they were responsible for making the plane would never be able to afford to travel in it. were permitted to take their families on a tour of their work for a price of 50p. The tours would need to be brisk as they could not keep the wealthy ticket holders hanging about drinking champagne in the departure lounges for too long.

Rolls Royce is now trying the same sort of thing:

A big pools win would be the only way most workers could get to own a Rolls Royce. but 3.800 employees at the firm's works in Crewe. Cheshire, now get a 90-minute taste of high life. (Daily Telegraph, 8 August 1984)

The scheme will operate for about 18 months while all the workers whose efforts actually produce the cars will be able to cruise about the countryside for an hour in a £56,000 ice-green Silver Spirit. The chief executive of Rolls Royce, Richard Perry, observed that: "People have worked here for forty years and have said afterwards that this had been their first chance to sit in one of the cars".

Capitalism commits a continuing con-trick on the working class every moment that it is allowed to carry on. It is only fallacy and prejudice that obstruct the path to a classless society.

False Images

From the time when we are first shown an atlas or a globe we are given a false image of the world. The map is divided into over 150 separate countries and we are indoctrinated with the idea that is is only right and proper to develop an allegiance to "our" country. We are taught that we should use possessive vocabulary in relation to the country although we own nothing of it. We are taught to have respect and admiration for a sterile, stately-home culture of which we have no part and most importantly we are taught to accept the possibility that one day we might be called on to fight and kill strangers (who will have been similarly misled) in furthering the cause of our bosses if economic rivalry is extended from the conference table to the battlefield.

There is one working class comprised of men and women all over the globe who share an economic condition: we own nothing except our mental and physical energies and we need to try to sell these on a weekly or monthly basis, to a boss, in order to make a living. We may have different languages and different cultures but what we have in common is much greater and more significant than how we differ. A print worker in England will share more experiences and problems with a French print worker than he will with an English Press tycoon. There are other illusions flowing from an image of the world as lots of independent nations. The world now has a highly integrated industry. The labour which goes into producing most articles is divided among many men and women performing specialised jobs. This fact, taken with the restriction of certain products to particular global regions and climates, means that the energies which go to produce a particular item can come from all over the world.

Take the example of a typewriter and consider what was needed to make it: the different types of metal, the plastic, the rubber and the technology of its design. Each of these could trace its origins to a different place and then the same analysis could be applied to the ships and aeroplanes which were used to transport the various materials and components around the world. Because of the way commerce and world trade operate, countries with apparently opposed political ideologies in fact are engaged in trade. American farm owners sell wheat to the Russian ruling class; the Russian ruling class colludes with its counterpart in South Africa to fix the price of diamonds on the world market and the Russian Empire even helps to arm American missiles by playing a part in manufacturing plutonium which is later used for American warheads. Western governments. including Britain, have been shipping uranium to Russia for enrichment (of the government as well as the uranium) knowing it was for nuclear warheads.

The Left Wing of Capitalism

"Yes. I agree that a classless society is a good idea but the reason I support the Labour Party is that while we have got capitalism things are marginally better if there is a Labour government.”

Socialists firmly reject this sort of argument. The profit system is a way of running society which is against the interests of the working class, the majority of people. It works on the basis of producing wealth only if there is the prospect of selling it for a profit on the market, not simply because there is a need for it. So if you have a need which you cannot afford to have satisfied then your need will continue. In this system there is a constant antagonism of interest between master and servant, or to use the more decorous expression for the same relationship, between employer and employee. The bosses strive to get as much as possible from the workers while paying them as little as they can get away with whereas the workers seek to reduce the extent to which they are exploited.

The Labour Party has never sought to do anything but run capitalism and consequently when it has formed the government (as has happened seven times) it has found itself doing all the anti-working-class things which it vehemently opposes when they are carried out by Conservative governments. Apart from supporting wars, introducing the atomic bomb in Britain and establishing the Special Patrol Group (SPG), the Labour Party does not enjoy a proud record on the industrial front. Labour supporters who are rightly sickened by the sort of problems being faced by the miners and the dockers would do well to look at their party’s record on these issues. The National Coal Board has plans to shut unprofitable or “uneconomic” pits for the same reasons that pits were shut before 1945 by private capitalist owners and for the same reasons that 48 Welsh pits were closed and 50,000 miners made redundant under the Labour government between 1964 and 1970.

Then consider the struggle of the dockers. The last time troops were used to break a dockers' strike anil unload ships was under a labour government during a spate of dock strikes in 1949-50. In May 1949, after an outbreak of unofficial strikes in support of Canadian dockers, the Labour government invoked Defence Regulation 1304 and used troops to unload fruit and refrigerated food at Avonmouth. The use of troops caused the strikes to spread. By July 8 10,000 men were on strike and the government announced that unless wage-slavery was resumed a state of emergency would be declared. The Labour government invited the King to sign such a declaration three days later.

Despite this, the number of men on strike rose to 15,000. Prime Minister Attlee became angry. Who did these workers think they were, telling the bosses they were not satisfied! Attlee proclaimed that he was prepared to send 35,000 troops into the docks and the strike collapsed within two weeks. Troops were used again by the Labour government in April 1950 when another strike was thwarted in the Port of London. Troops have been used by governments since then during strikes, for instance in the emergency services, but never for wholesale strike breaking. During the firemen's strike 1977-78 the Labour government again sent in the troops with the Green Goddess fire engines to undermine the industrial action of members of the working class struggling to stop their standard of poverty becoming even worse. The economic hardships of this society have not been personally engineered by Margaret Thatcher and cannot be talked away by Neil Kinnock. These problems are an intrinsic part of a class-divided society.

Inhuman priorities

As this social system grinds on the contradiction between a society potentially geared to abundant production and a society poised on self-destruction becomes more stark. We could produce so much. We could meet all the needs of the population of the world. But we continue in artificial scarcity and to add further horror to the nightmare we continue to amass the means of destruction.

According to Oxfam. (Guardian, 5 August 1981) over 30,000,000 people die of hunger every year, more than half of them children under five. Every year 780.000.000 people are suffering from hunger and malnutrition. At the current rate these figures will have doubled by the end of this decade. In the last hour about 1,700 children have died unnecessarily, victims of malnutrition, disease and war. Figures are often formulated to express the grotesque priorities of the profit system by contrasting the expenditures on the industry of health and the industry of death: the Defence Research and Development programme of £1.8 billion is 16 times greater than that given to the Medical Research Council; one Army General is paid more than five State Enrolled Nurses; the upkeep of one nuclear submarine is greater than the annual cost of local authority libraries and UNICEF working in 112 countries has a total income of under £200 million which is the equivalent of what the world spends on military ventures every four hours.

These facts exemplify the priorities of capitalism. What should be done about this? Socialists do not advocate that more money be spent on welfare as a solution to the problem. Capitalism, based on producing for profit not need, creates these tragic disasters as a matter of course. Trying to solve them with charity or adjustments in spending cannot work, despite all the energy and drive which has been contributed by the people who work for the various voluntary and charity organisations. The way to solve these problems is to establish a society which will work on the principle of “from each according to ability to each according to need", a society in which our productive forces will be used directly to satisfy our needs.

Gary Jay

Six Years' Hard Labour (1951)

From the August 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Britain has now been ruled continuously by a Labour Government for the past six years. In June, 1945, with high hopes and great expectations, the working class of this country voted the British Labour Party into power. A smaller number of workers repeated the action in 1950. The smallness of the Labour Party’s majority at the 1950 election has caused most people to anticipate a further general election almost any day since the result of the last one was known. It is a suitable time to take a brief look back over those past six years.

It is not our intention to delve into details of the various enactments that have resulted from Labour legislation. That we have done in the columns of this paper at intervals since 1945. We are not being wise after the event; the criticisms that we make now we were making many years before a Labour Government took office. Neither do we wish to preen ourselves and adopt an “ I-told-you-so ” attitude. We want to emphasise that, with an elementary understanding of Capitalism and a little Socialist knowledge, the workers can tell in advance whether a political party is worthy of their support or deserves their opposition.

The promises, statements and actions of the leaders of the Labour Party show that they, too, are ignorant of the economics of Capitalism, and that, despite their claim to be Socialists, they have not the slightest grasp of the very first principles of Socialism. They have not even tackled the job of managing Capitalism with a determination that might have won them some respect, if not praise, from their 1945 supporters. Mr. E. S. Sachs, secretary of a South African garment workers' union, writing in “The Garment Worker," January/February, 1951, gives his view of British labour leaders. Examining them from that distance gives Mr. Sachs an objective view which is a great advantage. He says:

“Very few British Labour Leaders are free from the faults of their ruling class. Their common characteristics are snobbishness, kow-towing to the rich and mighty and a feeling of superiority more especially in respect of colonial peoples. They become dizzy with success and despondent in defeat. Their ego and self-importance increase as they become better known. Few seek to raise their cultural level, and devote all their energies to their particular job. Their outlook is insular and the affairs of the world are to them “ Foreign affairs." (Page 3.)

The Labour Party’s declaration of policy, on which it fought the 1945 general election, was contained in a pamphlet entitled, “Let us face the future.” On page 11 is the claim that,

“No domestic policy, however wisely framed and courageously applied, can succeed in a world still threatened by war.”

Yet from 1945 to 1951, the Labour Party’s administration of Capitalism has kept the threat of another and greater war continuously over our heads. The Labour Government’s concern to be prepared for another war is now their excuse for curtailing some of their social insurance schemes, imposing more austerity on the workers and calling for more work.

The application of the social service plans may have removed the threat of the most abject poverty from sections of the working class, but it has not improved the lot of the working class as a whole. Its effect has been to redistribute the poverty of the working class and spread it more evenly over the entire class. The poorer paid workers and those with large families have received increased incomes, while the better paid and the childless or unmarried ones, through the medium of family allowances, income tax allowances and the arrangement of purchase tax. on particular lines of commodities, have come off particularly badly. Now, in the interests of a huge armament expenditure in preparation for the next war, some of the social services are reduced or curtailed.

We were told in 1945 that 

"Housing will be one of the greatest and one of the earliest tests of the Government’s real determination to put the nation first.” (“ Let us face the future," p. 8.)

As the housing problem is essentially a working-class problem, that statement could only be interpreted as a promise to the workers. But the Labour Government’s efforts to solve this generations-old problem have shown little determination and less success. Again, the threat of war has offered an excuse to curtail certain building operations.

"... a high and constant purchasing power can be maintained through good wages. ... But everybody knows that money and savings lose their value if prices rise, so rents and the prices of the necessities of life will be controlled." (“ Let us face the future," p. 5.)

The perpetual struggle of the workers to bring their wages up to the ever soaring cost of living level is evidence of the failure of the Labour Government to maintain the level of wages.

In the early days of the Labour Party its policy was known as “gradualism.” The idea was, that by reforming Capitalism piecemeal, a little at a time, it would gradually be reformed out of existence and in its place would stand Socialism. A different kind of gradualism has resulted since the Labour Party took office in 1945. The slashing attacks on many of the actions of previous governments have gradually been diluted, then abated, and finally the very same actions performed by the Labour Government.

Workers will remember the indignation of Labour leaders when Tory or Liberal Governments used troops during a strike. Yet, within a few months of occupying the Government benches in Westminster, the Labour ministers did the very same thing. They have done it a number of times during the six years. They have even prosecuted workers for striking.

Conscription was another issue which brought forth heated opposition from prominent Labourites in their pre-office days. Now they can find a host of arguments to justify it.

"Soak the rich, tax them out of existence,” was another old-time battle cry of Labour politicians. Successive Labour chancellors altered the tune and now say that this is not a good policy and that it will not work.

In what stirring words the Labour speakers and writers used to tell us that overproduction meant unemployment. But in 1948 they were telling us that, 

”. . . The danger to full employment is not producing too much, but producing too little—and too dear.” (Government-issued poster, 1948.)

Another poster about that time told us that “More from each means more for all,” and Mr. Attlee appealed to us for an increase of 10 per cent. in production to 'solve our problems. Since that time industrial production has increased by 25 per cent., but the workers are still waiting for the “more for all,” and the problems seem to have multiplied.

Nationalisation has, of course, been the “ top-of- the-bill ” turn for the Labour Government. It was to be a means of removing the capitalists from the control of industry and of buying them out. It was the Labour man’s idea of Socialism. The State serves Capitalism and when it takes over an industry it does so in the interests of Capitalism. It becomes the employer on behalf of the capitalist class. The control of industry by the State does not alter the capitalist nature of production. The Labour Government has introduced State Capitalism in some industries, but not Socialism.

The benefit of State ownership to the workers is nil and they are realising it. Mr. Deakin, General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, speaking at his union’s biennial conference at Whitley Bay on July 11th of this year, found it advisable to utter a warning,

" If, in October, Labour appeals to the country and there is any considerable extension of the principle of nationalisation, we should get the biggest whacking we have ever had in our history." (Evening News, 11.7.1951.) 

This year's Annual Report of the British Transport Commission shows that the surplus of income over working expenses was about £40 million. Interest to the former owners, administration, redemption and special items amount to over £54 million thus making a deficit of over £14 million. To the worker striving for a few extra shillings in his wage packet, this is no different to pre-nationalisation days.

So, at the end of this six years of Labour Government we are in very much the same position as we were in 1938. Another war in the offing, wage increases lagging a long way behind price increases, threats of austerity and demands for more work, insufficient houses, peace-time military service—all the sores and symptoms of Capitalism unabated.

We do not hold the Labour Government to blame for this. It is not its fault. It does not determine the course of Capitalism. We know the Labour Party to be a party of capitalist reform and we knew that its efforts to make Capitalism more endurable were doomed to failure. We are opposed to the Labour Party as we are opposed to all reformist parties and our opposition gets more pointed when it passes off its quack reforms under a Socialist label.

The Labour Government has not attempted to end the exploitation of the workers for profit. It has, instead, worked hard to save Capitalism and to assure the capitalist class of its profits, its interest and its rents. At the next election it may lose the support of the workers and be back again on the opposition benches.

Unfortunately, most workers, not understanding Socialism, will turn to the Conservative Party as the only alternative. The Labour Party must take a lot of the responsibility for this political muddle-headedness on the part of the workers. It has made confusion worse confounded by its claim to be a Socialist party.

Mr. Bevan and the other rebels in the Labour Party ranks have nothing better to offer. They have no fundamental quarrel with their party. There have been other rebels, like Cripps and, later, Zilliacus and Co. They flare into prominence for a while then simmer down again, and the Labour Party goes steadily

on beguiling the workers with one illusion after another.

Socialism means more than a hotch-potch of capitalist reforms. It means the ending of the capitalist relationships—employer and employed, buyer and seller, borrower and lender. It means that industry will be owned by the community, not by the State, that wealth will be produced for people to use, not for the making of profit for a few. It means the end of buying and selling and of the wages system.

That requires a social revolution which necessitates conscious political action by the workers. Capitalism cannot be gradually rubbed away, it must be decisively abolished. The capitalist class cannot be bought out, it must be kicked out

W. Waters.

Letter: Censorship or conformity? (1999)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

Censorship or conformity?

Dear Editors,

1. Michael Gill’s experience (May Socialist Standard) in having his invitation to participate as a Socialist Party representative on Kilroy withdrawn on the researcher learning of his political views, will surprise only those who thought that audience participation involved no pressure from the production team.

Whilst dissent is acceptable with the framework of conventional left-right politics, that is, over which party can run capitalism better, pressure to conform exists at all levels of broadcasting. That this happens at the highest level is made quite clear by the original 1927 BBC Charter. This state “Government has the last word . . . an absolute power of veto over BBC programmes”, and it can also instruct the Corporation to withdraw programme material even before it is sent.

But censorship such as Michael Gill experienced may result not from government instruction, but from either the personal bias, conscious or otherwise, of the production staff, or, as probably in this case, the sheer pressure on staff themselves to keep within the bounds of political conformity. They too, are workers afraid to step out of line and dare not risk being accused of introducing either irrelevant or contentious material.

The sympathetic presentation of Kilroy tends to obscure the fact that many personal issues touched upon are trivialised by not relating them to a deeper social causation. But then, if it were to do this, every such programme would point the finger at the wider audience’s acceptance of capitalism as the cause, and the closing catchphrase, “Take care of yourselves” would take on a wider significance. The banal might even give way to the exciting and adventurous.

But does the Socialist Party really expect the government media to provide a free unbiased platform for their views? I am not optimistic. Despite a number of Broadcasting Reports recommending that broadcasting provide an outlet for minority political views, I feel that the Socialist Party must rely on its own slender material resources for this.

2. Stewart King’s letter (May Socialist Standard) on the anti-working class activities of the Labour government evoked many memories for me. As one of the conscripts he mentions, dragooned into the army by that government, I refused their order to help break a London dock strike—one of the eleven occasions that government had used troops in industrial disputes. I was of course punished. In a perverse way, the 1945 Labour government helped make me a socialist.

But the history of politics is shrouded in myth, especially where the “social welfare” legislation of the post-war government is concerned, and I hope I may correct the misconception in Stewart King’s letter ascribing child benefit to them. The principle of Family Allowances had received general cross-party support in the wartime coalition government, but the Family Allowance Act was, in fact, given Royal Assent on 16 June 1945, the operational date being set for August 1946, to be implemented by whichever party was then in power. The government on 16 June was a Conservative-led caretaker government and the legislation was put forward by Hore-Belisha, a Conservative minister.

The Family Allowance Bill was therefore enacted some six weeks before the General Election put Labour in power on 26 July 1945. For obvious reasons neither Labour nor Conservative parties are keen to publicise this fact.

W. Robertson, 

Hove, Sussex 

The New Zealand docks dispute (1951)

From the September 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

For five months since the 17th of February, 1951, New Zealand was in the throes of one of the longest and bitterest Trade Union struggles in its history. The struggle commenced with the lock-out of the Waterside Workers (Dockers) and the imposing of the “Waterfront Strike Emergency Regulations” and their amendments, 1951.

The miners, the Wellington freezing workers, the New Zealand Federated Seamen’s Union struck as a protest against the Emergency Regulations. The miners, freezing workers and the federated seamen had no wage dispute and they ignored the advice of their Union National Officers to remain at work.

On February 8th the employers of waterfront labour offered 4½d. an hour wage rise following the Arbitration Court award of a 15 per cent increase. On February 10th watersiders at Wellington and at New Plymouth ceased working overtime as a protest against the employers’ offer. The workers claimed that 4½d an hour was only 9 per cent increase in a forty-hour week and that their ability to work overtime had been included when the wage rise was computed. The employers argued that the rise offered was exactly in line with the 15 per cent Arbitration Court award.

The employers began dismissing men on the 15th of February for refusing to work overtime. Workers alleged that they had been locked out and stated that they were willing to work the forty-hour week. Employers replied that refusal to work overtime was a breach of the agreement.

On February 19th the Government issued an ultimatum calling on the watersiders to resume normal work including overtime and to place their wage claim before the Waterfront Authority, failing that, the Waterfront Commission would be suspended. The same day, the waterside workers saw displayed on the engagement boards a notice to the effect that if they were not prepared to work overtime they were not to lift their discs (sign on for work). Meetings of watersiders at all ports on that day rejected the Government ultimatum.

The workers claimed that the position was an “open lock-out by the employers” and a “calculated attack” on Trade Unionism and the forty-hour week. The Prime Minister of New Zealand declared a state of emergency on February 22nd.

The Government issued sweeping emergency regulations on February 23rd, giving power to suspend all awards, use members of the armed forces on the waterfront, extend the powers of the police, deal with any person who incited or aided the continuance of the dispute, place all union funds in the hands of the receiver, etc. A Waterfront Strike Notice was issued ordering all watersiders back to work on Monday, February 26th, or to suffer a “declared strike” under the regulations.

On that Monday, meetings of watersiders in all ports rejected this ultimatum. The following day the Government ordered servicemen on to the waterfront at Wellington and Auckland, and the New Zealand coast seamen walked off all ships being worked by servicemen. Some Wellington Harbour Board employees were suspended for refusing to assist the servicemen, and meetings of seamen, drivers and others were held everywhere.

The Trade Union Congress called on the Government to resign. The Federation of Labour affiliations recommended the calling of a compulsory conference between the disputing parties. Over a thousand workers employed on hydro-electric plants at Waikato ceased work. All Waikato underground mines and some West coast mines were idle. The Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants instructed all branches not to handle any material on the waterfront that was normally handled by the watersiders. Freezing workers at Ngahauranga, the Gear Meat Workers at Petone and at several other centres stopped work. The Golden Bay Cement Works closed down.

The Government de-registered the New Zealand Waterside Workers’ Union on February 28th, and the Parliamentary Labour Party called on the Government to arrange a compulsory conference between the parties.

On March 1st receivers moved into the Waterside Workers’ Union offices throughout the country. Bank accounts amounting to £20,000 were taken over. The Federation of Labour announced that it had done “everything that it could be expected to do within reason”, the Union could only blame itself for its position.

On March 5th all mines in the Greymouth district had come to a standstill. The Wellington Drivers’ Union took a ballot and decided not to work with the troops at the waterfront.

By April 10th the Government had used everything in the bag to force the watersiders back to work. Emergency Regulations, all the Anti-Trade Union legislation brought down by the Labour Government with a few embellishments by the present Nationalist Government. It was made an offence to discuss the Emergency Regulations at any meeting, even the leader of the opposition was refused permission to do so. But the watersiders, the miners, the freezing workers and the seamen stood firm.

On two occasions members of the Watersiders’ Union were sent cards to sign if they wished to return to work under the new conditions and as members of new Unions that had been registered, but very few took advantage of the offer. The majority showed remarkable determination to preserve their Union and to support their elected representatives. The Government refused to negotiate on any grounds that would enable the old Union to return on a National basis or to negotiate with any deputation that included the old Union’s president and secretary, H. Barnes and T. Hill. If the workers had been prepared to sacrifice these two, a settlement might have been brought about. These two men were branded as the trouble makers and the old Communist bogey was thrashed until it became a joke. It was a Communist plan, cried the Government, and the watersiders were dupes. Seventy-five per cent of the members of the old Union were ex-servicemen from the 1914-18 and 1939-45 wars and it is ironical that these men, who supposedly went away to destroy the Nazi monster in the last war, should return to face another one with similar earmarks as soon as they demanded a little more of the wealth that the working class produces, in order to maintain their already miserable living standard, or a little of the “new order” that they were promised whilst they were fighting their masters’ enemies. They have the new order, but it is worse than the old one. Socialists have maintained through both wars that the common enemy of the workers in every land is Capitalism and not their fellow workers of a different nationality.

Throughout the struggle the Parliamentary Labour Party in New Zealand sat on the fence, and the Labour politicians were subtle as usual.. At first they made no complaint against the Emergency Regulations or anti-Trade-Union regulations which their own party had used when it was the Government. Mr. Nash, the leader of the Opposition, said at a meeting in Hamilton that “he was in favour of applying regulations in any easy and not in a rigorous way as long as this did not tend to prolong the strike”, and that the Labour Party “would have had no hesitation in using its powers to ensure that essential supplies were delivered to hospitals and homes”. He said that he did not like to see freedom of speech curtailed or officials given the right to open private correspondence. Neither could he agree to the clause in the regulation which made it an offence to give food to assist watersiders’ wives and children. (Evening Post, Wellington, 30.3.1951.)

The Labour politicians claimed that they were neither for nor against the locked-out and striking Unions, but with the unflagging determination of these Unions to continue the struggle, the Labour men took the opportunity to get in and reap the spoils of the workers’ fight. The Import Supply Bill was debated in the House of Representatives, 26.6.1951, and the Labour Party politicians used the chance to debate the industrial situation generally. They expressed concern at the state of the country, urged a settlement of the strife and, with an eye to the future, they put in a good case for themselves.

The Government speaker, in reply, quoted from a pamphlet entitled “Statements concerning recent disputes affecting waterfront work” issued by the Minister of Labour in the past Labour Government. Therein the cause of the waterfront disputes was attributed to the attitude of “Barnes and Hill” on the various waterfront Commissions, and to the machinations of the Communists. This dispute gives the Labour Party a good weapon with which to fight the next election. It will be able to adopt the attitude of “we told you so” and to blame the Nationalist Government for all the workers’ problems.

The Federation of Labour played a vile part in the dispute, giving the Nationalist Government every aid to crush the watersiders and their allies. Even the Labour Party had to snub them. Thus is demonstrated the futility of compulsory unionism to the workers.

When the National Government brought in its Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Amendment Act, there was in it a threat to compulsory unionism. The officials of the Federation of Labour immediately dashed to the rescue and convinced Mr. Holland of the value of compulsory unionism, pointing out that “the Federation has yet to find any sections of the employers who object to its continuance” (Southern Cross, 3.11.1950). Without compulsory unionism the officials would lose their mainstay and the power they wield. They have now proved its value to the Government. Lack of knowledge and apathy of the members is of great assistance to these leaders of the Federation, as it is to all leaders.

The promise of support from the railwaymen seems to have been lost in transit and the strikers have rather a poor opinion of their brothers on the railways who failed to comply with the resolve “not to handle any material on the waterfront normally handled by watersiders”.

The Government precipitated this struggle at a bad time for the employing class in New Zealand. It was at the height of the exporting season, thereby costing them an immense sum. The determination of the men, the active part played by the young members who were getting their first taste of such a struggle, and the support of wives who went out to work to help their menfolk continue the fight, are deserving of the applause of workers everywhere.

On July 11th the seamen, cooks and stewards who had been on strike in sympathy with the watersiders, returned to work and the National Council of the Waterside Workers’ Union recommended branches in all ports to return to work. The New Zealand Government is to seek an early dissolution of Parliament to test public opinion on its handling of the dispute. The leader of the opposition has charged the Government with fascism, dictatorship, opening mails, tapping telephones, suppression of free speech and freedom of assembly and other actions foreign to democratic government. This is denied by the Prime Minister (Manchester Guardian, 12.7.1951).

The outstanding lesson to be learned from this working-class struggle in New Zealand is that working conditions bitterly fought for and won through struggle on the industrial battlefield over the years can be wiped out, comparatively speaking, in a few minutes by those who control the political machinery. The political weapon is the dominant one and whilst it remains in the hands of the capitalist class no amount of struggle will free the workers from the yoke of capital. The same determined and heroic effort as our New Zealand fellow workers have recently waged, if directed towards gaining control of the political machine with a view to ending the wages system would solve all their economic problems. If only they would raise the cry, “Abolish the wages system” instead of making a modest demand for a tiny wage increase, then they would be heading towards a system free from lock-outs, strikes, poverty, atomic wars, ill housing, dictatorship, over-work and the host of other evils which beset them.

(This account of the recent New Zealand struggle has been compiled from information and material supplied by Comrade R. Everson of the Socialist Party of New Zealand.)

Overseas Secretary, SPGB

Jottings. (1922)

The Jottings Column from the October 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Quite recently an application was made on behalf of the Secretary for War, at Lambeth County Court, for an ejectment order against James Leach, an ex-soldier, from rooms occupied by him and his family in married men’s quarters.

The following interesting conversation took place in Court :—

Judge Parry asked “Can the court eject a man from barracks?”

Mr. C. Davies (for the application) : “It has always been done.”

Judge Parry : “Are the authorities not capable of turning this man out?”

Mr. C. Davie : “The Secretary for War does not want to use Prussian methods.”

Judge Parry : “He brings to this Court a nasty job which he can do himself.”

Judge Parry made an order by consent for possession in a month, and gave judgement for £6 18s. rent, with costs.—Daily Mail, April 26th, 1922.

What a piece of hypocrisy ! A puzzle !

What is the difference between the “Prussian” methods of ejectment by the Secretary for War and the ejectment order of Judge Parry?

Any reader correctly answering same will be asked to contribute to the £1,000 Fund.

* * *

The first week in September a postal strike was declared in Ireland against a proposed reduction in wages.

The Irish Government showed themselves to be the same as all other capitalist governments when their interests are threatened.

The following was culled from the Evening News, September 11th, 1922 :—

  "Free State troops to-day dispersed strike pickets outside postal offices in Dublin by firing over their heads. This is in accordance with the Government’s announcement that the postal strike, which began at 6 yesterday evening, is illegal and that picketing will be suppressed. The strike is against a proposed ‘cut ‘ in wages.”

The workers in Ireland have the same lesson to learn as the workers of all countries, i.e. : That not until they recognise there is a class-struggle in Society born of the private ownership of the means of life, and that Socialism is their hope, can there be any improvement in their wretched conditions.

* * *

  “Our bitter experience has proved that it is not Germany that is paying. It is the British working man who is paying at this moment. “

This statement, made by J. H. Thomas, M.P., was loudly cheered at the Trade Union Congress at Southport to-day.—Evening News, September 5th, 1922.

How often have readers of the S.S. heard the above statement made from the platforms of the pseudo-socialist parties and met it in their press? By a mere superficial examination of the above, it undoubtedly appears to be correct. But when a thinking worker analyses the assertion, he will quite easily see how unsound J.H.T.’s economics really are. Doubtless, Thomas, like many thousands of workers, think that because the workers are the wealth producers of the world, they must of necessity pay for everything. That only shows “loose” thinking, a failure to understand correctly capitalist wealth production.

* * *

One statement in the election address of the “revolutionary” Mayor of Bethnal Green during the last L.C.C. election was as follows :—

  “We maintain that unemployment is a NATIONAL, and not a local problem, and if returned to the L.C.C. will do all in our power to force the Government to provide work or accept financial responsibility for unemployment. Further, we pledge ourselves to do all in our power to push forward the L.C.C.’s own schemes of. work so as to absorb the unemployed. If you want the opportunity to work : Vote for Valentine and Vaughan.”

Could anyone but a place-hunter spread broadcast such rubbish and still claim to be a Socialist? Sorry, Mr. Printer, he’s a Communist ! Every line in the above statement is sheer bunkum. Quite apart from the fact that unemployment is not a national problem, even if Vaughan and his clique were in the majority on the L.C.C. it would not be possible for them to provide schemes to absorb the unemployed.

Not all the schemes, plans and efforts of all the reformers can remove the canker, of unemployment and its concomitant evils; not until the workers are fully conscious of the fact that the private property basis of society must be swept aside, to make way for the common ownership and democratic control of the means of living.

 'The Settler'