Meetings, Lectures, etc. (1939)

Party News from the January 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

General Open Air Propaganda (October) (1938)

Party News from the October 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

The SPGB had every intention in contesting a seat in East Ham at the next General Election, but war intervened.

SPGB Outdoor Meetings (1936)

 Party News from the August 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

Open Air Propaganda (July) (1937)

Party News from the July 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

A bit of a mystery here. A Party speaker with the surname of 'Otto' is listed four times in the Speakers' List for July. There is no record of an 'Otto' in the Party membership list. This member was obviously well regarded as a speaker 'cos they secured one of the marquee spots speaking at Hyde Park on a Sunday alongside the likes of Sammy Cash and Tony Turner. So, it's either a case of another example of the incomplete membership records or, more likely, that 'Otto' was a pseudonym for a Party member whose name couldn't appear in the Party press.

Also interesting to note that both Adolph Kohn and Eric Boden are listed as speaking. I didn't know they were still doing outdoor speaking this late in their Party lives. 

East Ham Parliamentary Campaign (1938)

Party News from the July 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings, Lectures, etc. (1939)

Party News from the July 1939 issue of the Socialist Standard

SPGB Meetings (1938)

Party News from the September 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

East Ham Parliamentary Area (1938)

Party News from the August 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

In the late 1930s, it was the intention of the East Ham branch of the SPGB to contest the East Ham North parliamentary constituency at the forthcoming General Election and, as evidenced above, serious and systematic activity was undertaken to target the area with socialist propaganda. Frank Grainger was selected as a  Party candidate - only to be replaced later by Clifford Groves when he dropped out of Party activity - and a General Election would have been held in 1940 at the latest. However, war intervened and the next General Election did not take place until 1945, by which time the SPGB had switched their attentions to Paddington North in West London, where Clifford Groves had the honour of being the first SPGB parliamentary candidate.

The SPGB did eventually contest the East Ham South parliamentary constituency when Harry Young was the  party's candidate at the 1950 General Election.

General Open Air Propaganda, August. (1938)

Party News from the August 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

Robert Owen's place in history (1989)

Robert Owen (1771-1858)

From the October 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Manufacturer Robert Owen, a man of deep-rooted convictions, a reformer, an advocate of Utopian Socialism and of the materialist philosophy that people's characters are made for them by heredity and environment earned the respect of many of his contemporaries, including Friedrich Engels. Owen was a critic of religion, marriage and private property and a founder in 1834 of the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union of Great Britain and Ireland (numbering between half a million and a million members). In April 1834 he supported the mammoth procession to present a petition to the Home Office against the conviction of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. He also championed the National Equitable Labour Exchange (opened in September 1832) in its attempt to dispense with money and opposed the cruel and ruthless treatment of children under the factory system.

Shop assistant to capitalist
His birth and death (1771-1858) were in Newton, Montgomeryshire, where his father combined the occupations of postmaster, ironmonger and sadler. By the time Owen was seven, he had assimilated all that his school could teach him and in the two years thereafter acted as assistant teacher. At the age of nine, he became a shop assistant in his home town, and at ten entered the service of a Stamford linen draper in Lincolnshire. A few years later, he was employed in a Ludgate Hill shop in London, where he endured a crucifying workload. At 18, and with a small loan from his brother William, he set up in business with a man named Jones, making and selling cotton-spinning mules (then displacing the spinning jenny and the water frame). But Owen was soon required to sell back his share of the business to Jones — a transaction which left Owen, at the age of 19, in possession of three mules. He then rented a building, employed three men, and started a small-scale business on his own account. Soon after, he learned that one Drinkwater, a rich Manchester cotton manufacturer, had advertised for a manager. Owen successfully applied for the position and within a short time was offered, and accepted, a partnership in the business. He resigned in 1795 and became one of the managing directors of another large concern, the Chorlton Twist Company. In 1797 Owen had accumulated enough capital to enable him and some wealthy partners to purchase the New Lanark Cotton Mills from the philanthropist David Dale. He married Dale’s daughter and settled in New Lanark as manager and part owner; in 1800 he was vested with sole management.

New Lanark
Owen now had an opportunity for social experiment. Rejecting the Christian doctrine of original sin, he implemented his theory that people are creatures of pre-natal and post-natal circumstances. The environmental improvements he brought about at New Lanark saw the disappearance of vice, crime and drunkenness, and in their place a model village. He worked tirelessly to set up infant schools and to stop recruitment of children from the Edinburgh and Glasgow workhouses. He also reduced the New Lanark working day to ten-and-a-half hours — unlike his competitors who employed their workers fourteen hours a day. He ensured that medical attendance was denied to no-one in his community, and that a sick fund was created for the purpose. All these welfare and educational measures led to the founding in January 1816 of the Institution for the Formation of Character, a centre of communal life marked by a spirit of harmony and co-operation. Visitors were deeply impressed by the temper of the children and Friedrich Engels, in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, remarked:

  At the age of two the children came to school where they enjoyed themselves so much that they could scarcely be got home again . . .

Fall from grace
Gradually New Lanark's fame spread throughout Europe and it became a centre of pilgrimage, visited by bishops, economists, philanthropists, royalties, statesmen and diverse celebrities. Nicholas 1, Czar of Russia, was a pilgrim in 1816 and even Napoleon, in exile on the Island of Elba, knew of the New Lanark experiment. Owen at this time was at the height of his fame, but as soon as he proclaimed what were considered outrageous views, he fell from grace. As Engels explains:

  . . . As long as he was simply a philanthropist, he was rewarded with nothing but wealth, applause, honour, and glory. He was the most popular man in Europe. Not only men of his own class, but statesmen and princes listened to him approvingly. But when he came out with his communist theories that was quite another thing. Three great obstacles seemed to him especially to block the path to social reform: property, religion, the present form of marriage. He knew what confronted him if he attacked these — outlawry. Excommunication from official society, the loss of his whole social position. But nothing of this prevented him from attacking them without fear of the consequences, and what he had foreseen happened. Banished from official society, with a conspiracy of silence against him in the press, ruined by his unsuccessful Communist experiments in America, in which he sacrificed all his fortune, he turned directly to the working class and continued working in their midst for thirty years . . . 

Instances of Owen's courageous dedication and financial sacrifice are legion. In 1806, when the American embargo on cotton nearly brought business at New Lanark to a halt, he prevailed upon his capitalist partners — whose priorities were profit rather than welfare — to pay the workers their full wages throughout the four-month embargo. Following disagreements with his partners, Owen offered to buy the New Lanark undertaking, but on their refusal of his offer he resigned as managing director. However, in December 1813 New Lanark was auctioned to Owen at £114,100, then a vast capital sum.

Yet for all Owen's benevolence, he could not put his social theories into practice other than by means of capital, wages and their corollary money, which ultimately determined the success or otherwise of his New Lanark and other co-operative communities. Nevertheless he did conceive of purely communistic societies that went far beyond limited reform of capitalism. In these societies the workers would labour in a community of common interests and enjoy free access to the necessaries and comforts of life. No disputes would arise over divisions of property and the desire to accumulate goods would disappear. Such was his vision. But because of the inescapable logic of capitalism, he could not but depart from the simplicity of his aims.

Defeated by economic laws
In other words, Owen was defeated by the economic laws of capitalism. His collapsed experiments at New Harmony in Indiana, at Orbiston near Glasgow, and at Tytherly in Hampshire, are enough to show that these laws cannot be suspended or overridden. Invested capital must yield rent, interest and profit and welfare must play second fiddle. This reality applied to Owen's model villages, which were anyway inextricably tied to the outside market economy. Village land, buildings and machinery represented capital, and where Owen was not the sole proprietor the economic pressures were even greater, for his shareholding partners expected a return on capital. ‘‘Excessive" wage and welfare costs which eroded profits and threatened bankruptcy were not viewed by them with favour.

The incompatibility of Owen's Utopian benevolence and capitalism's laws was manifest at Orbiston, which in the late autumn of 1827 was close to collapse; the land, buildings and standing crops were sold by public auction because of pressure by the mortgagees to recoup the £16,000 security they had advanced on the property. No less disastrous was the agricultural experiment at Tytherly which may be said to have ceased in the summer of 1845 — Owen having spent enormous sums on projects which were never completed and the enlargement of farm buildings, none of which was worked at a profit. Small wonder, then, that these losses and those at New Harmony left Owen a comparatively poor man. Such was the sacrifice he had made in a life-time of sincere endeavours to eliminate poverty and misery from workers' lives.

Owen has an honourable and lasting place in working-class history. Since his death in 1858 socialists have had not only the benefit of the work of Marx and Engels, but also more than one hundred years' political experience.

Vic Berry

Socialism and Snob Values (1940)

From the February 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Socialist Party of Great Britain’s task of Socialist education necessitates destructive criticism of ideas prejudicial to the ready acceptance by the workers of the Socialist case; and in this regard a few words might be profitably said upon snobbery, which is very prevalent among the black-coated sections of the working class.

It can easily be understood that those workers who are snobbish and who value differences in economic status are not eager to undertake an unbiassed examination of the Socialist case, because they find the principle of equality, implicit in Socialism, repugnant to the differences they cherish in class and rank.

In relation to unemployment, the snobbish outlook of to-day bears an interesting parallel to the outlook of the Puritan moralist of the Reformation period. Just as the Puritan harshly condemned unfortunate vagrants as idle, worthless fellows, and deprecated the relief afforded to them by alms-givers, so to-day the snobbish black-coated worker despises the unemployed. Already penalised by being unable to find buyers for their labour-power, the unemployed suffer an additional penalty by being stigmatised at the hands of their snobbish fellow-workers. 

In his belief in snob values, the black-coated worker fails to recognise that workers are displaced from industry by machinery and other economic forces, and he is loath to discard the fatuous notion that unemployment is attributable to laziness and personal deficiencies.

Similarly, the snobbish “intellectual” worker, warped in his judgments by excessive self-esteem, entirely disregards the important economic functions performed by manual workers, and looks down upon them as his “inferiors.” The distinctions he draws between “brain” and manual workers are purely arbitrary, as no clearly-defined line of demarcation exists between the expenditure of mental energy and that of physical energy. He overlooks the fact that the relative differences in the extent to which skilled and unskilled workers expend their mental and physical capacities are differences of degree and not of kind.

To regard productive occupations, without which society would perish, as occupations to be ashamed of is the height of absurdity. Opprobrium which the “refeened” attach to working in a factory or in a mine arises from a ridiculous scale of values. When analysed, such values are revealed to be based upon a fawning adulation of conceptions held by the ruling class. Bearing upon this point, let us consider for a moment the capitalist’s opinion of the workers.

The wealthy capitalist, in his arrogance and in his ignorance of social science, regards the bricklayer, the carpenter, the plumber, and, in fact, all workers, as unquestionably his natural inferiors; and snobbish black-coated workers, in ape-like imitation of their capitalist masters, assume accents, cultivate manners, and adopt fashions in dress, all for the purpose of marking themselves off from the “workers,” the assumption being that they (the snobs) do not belong to the working class.

The way a person obtains his or her living determines to what class he or she belongs; and all those who, by virtue of having no part in the ownership of the means of production, are compelled to sell their labour-power to obtain the means of sustenance are members of the working class.

By the same standards of judgment to which we have referred, personal worth is measured in monetary terms. Personal merits—physical, mental, or moral—even if they are not discounted, when viewed in the light of snob values, are of secondary importance. What is of primary importance is a person’s bank balance and social position: his qualifications are merely incidental; and this kind of evaluation is in complete accord with a social system in which inequalities are viewed as the eternal order of things.

Mean subservience to wealth and social position is characteristic of that kind of mentality we have been discussing. Those possessing this type of mind classify society according to income into a multitude of classes. They think that a worker earning £6 per week is twice as good as another earning £3, and the one receiving £3 is, in turn, thought to be better than one in receipt of 30s.

It is, however, gratifying to Socialists to notice signs of interest being displayed by black-coated workers in social problems, and that gradually their snobbish notions are being discarded. The black-coated worker is induced by the economic distress he sees around him and by the insecurity, from which he himself is not immune, to direct his attention to the necessity of creating a new social order.

The advancement of professional and clerical workers towards the adoption of Socialism as the remedy for social evils is proportionate to the retreat of snobbishness and ideas that obstruct such advancement. Economic conditions will result in the dissolution of the conceptions of class distinction and conceptions of “betters” and “inferiors.” Unemployment, insecurity, bad housing, and undernourishment, must inevitably disillusion, not only black-coated workers, but all sections of the working class. Having cast off their illusions, the majority of workers will begin to think on rational lines about their economic status. Then, and only then, will it become glaringly apparent to the working class that Socialism is the only solution to the evils that afflict it. The deep-rooted inferiority complex possessed by many workers regarding their social status will also disappear with the growth of their political understanding.

To impregnate the minds of the workers with Socialist ideas is to engender in them a detestation of boot-licking and cap-touching. The Socialist exhorts them to admire pride and independence, as qualities so necessary in the struggle for emancipation. Grovelling and lickspittling are vices to be abhorred by a class struggling to free itself from the fetters of wage-slavery. And it is because capitalists demand a degree of subservience from black-coated workers, who tend to be sensitive to the indignities and superciliousness they endure at the hands of their masters, that they will revolt against capitalism and seek an alternative.

V. J. Berry

Obituaries: Harry Edwards; Phyllis Howard; Vic Berry; Neil Brodie (1990)

Obituaries from the March 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Harry Edwards

West London branch members were shocked by the death of Comrade Harry Edwards at their branch meeting on 1 February at the age of 67.

Harry Edwards had joined the old Paddington branch of the Party in 1947 after being demobbed from the army, later transferring to Ealing and then to West London. He worked for the old road transport division of the railways, a job which entitled him to travel cheaply all over Europe where he had many friends and contacts and from which he retired early. This gave him the time to pursue the things that really interested him, the local rowing and chess clubs (he had been a keen rower in his younger days, the captain of his club in fact) as well as socialist activity.

At the time of his death he was branch treasurer, acting Central Branch Secretary and member of the Standing Orders Committee preparing this year's Conference at Easter. A quiet reliable man who was always prepared to take on such essential if unglamorous tasks in a revolutionary organisation, he will be missed both by the Party and his family.

Phyllis Howard

Phyllis died peacefully on New Year's Day 1990 at the age of 83.

She joined the Party in 1934, together with her future husband, Arthur George. Both were members of Bloomsbury Branch (now Camden), and were tireless workers of the Party in the 30s and the difficult period during and immediately after the war.

Phyllis served on practically every Party committee, including several years on the Executive Committee. Her last official post was that of General Secretary. In addition, she was a candidate in a local election in the 60s.

For many years she was secretary of the Editorial Committee of the Socialist Standard and the committee met regularly at her home in North London. Phyllis never really recovered from Arthur's unexpected death in 1982, and her health deteriorated.

All who met her will remember her as a warm-hearted and gentle person. Her contribution to the SPGB will be remembered with appreciation.

Vic Berry

We regret to have to announce the death last November of our Comrade V. J. Berry. Vic Berry first joined the old Leyton branch of the Party in 1932 and before the war was a regular speaker at the Party's outdoor stations in Leyton, East Ham and Hackney. Like so many others, family commitments led to him dropping out of activity for a number of years, and it was only in 1963 that he rejoined, Camberwell branch. On his retirement he moved to Torquay from where he continued to propagate socialist ideas. His last article, on Robert Owen, appeared in the October Socialist Standard.

Neil Brodie

Neil Brodie, who died in early January, joined the old Chiswick Branch of the Party in 1938, and was a member of the later Ealing and West London branches, for which he was the Treasurer for 18 years. As a young man he had come to London from Scotland and worked as a civil servant at the Post Office. When the Post Office Savings Bank moved to Glasgow he took the opportunity to return to Scotland where he remained after his retirement.

We extend our sympathy to his wife and daughter.