Branch News (1962)

Party News from the March 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another of our Central London Rallies has been arranged for Wednesday, March 21st at Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, W.C.I. The title SOCIALISM OR CHAOS. Comrades H. Baldwin and M. Harris are the speakers. Doubtless as many Comrades as possible will attend this meeting and if everyone brings at least one non-member or sympathiser and tells as many people as they can about the meeting, there should be a large audience. The more people who can hear the Socialist case, the nearer we arc to Socialism. The Literature Committees will see that, there is a good supply of pamphlets and Socialist Standards so that after the spoken word the written word will be available to ensure that the case for Socialism is more readily understood.

Glasgow Branch has re-arranged their March series of lectures and titles and full details appear on page 48. They have passed the half-way mark in their series—’Problems of the Sixties’. The results show they have been successful. Thirteen different speakers have participated, three from London. Collections £31, and literature sales £8. Audiences have averaged 30, thirteen members attending regularly.

The first large indoor meeting was addressed by Comrade H. Baldwin, subject —“Demonstration for Socialism.” and the most recent large meeting was on ‘America —Land of Paradox’, Speaker, Comrade Gilmac. audience 126. Despite fogs! A social was held on Saturday, January 27th whilst Comrade Gilmac was there for the Sunday meeting. A very jolly evening was enjoyed by all.

The meetings are causing the Party to become known to an increasing number of workers. Things seem to be looking up for the Party in Glasgow and the activities of members are increasing. An article appeared in the Glasgow Herald after Comrade Gilmac’s meeting, as follows: —

“SOCIALIST PARTY TO CONTEST NORTH KELVIN. The Socialist Party of Great Britain intend to contest the North Kelvin Ward of Glasgow in the next Municipal Election, and they hope to contest, the Woodside Constituency in the Parliamentary election, an official said yesterday. The Glasgow Branch of the Party has about 40 members.”

also

“The Party must have the necessary members in the Constituency to fill in their candidate’s nomination paper. The Socialist Party enters these elections opposed to all other political parties, whether they are avowedly capitalist, or allegedly labour.”

When similar reports can be made from other towns in Great Britain, it is hoped that not only the British Isles, but many other parts of the world will have become familiar with the ideas of Socialism.

Swansea Branch now hold regular talks. Comrade Rollings recently gave an excellent talk on Crime and Society. Comrade Brain spoke on the ‘Russian Phenomenon’; and a series of talks by Party members have been arranged for the future.

At present the Branch is proceeding with arrangements for a debate with the Liberal Party in Swansea, when this is finalised it is hoped to get as much publicity as possible. Branch members still succeed in getting the Party case published in the Local Press and the Party is becoming well known in the district. A local bookshop has agreed to accept six copies of the SOCIALIST STANDARD for a trial period of three months.

Needless to say the local Labour Party and Communist Party (so called) show their customary opposition to Socialist ideas. It is hoped, when funds allow, to purchase a tape recorder so that talks can be recorded to build up a ‘tape library’ for propaganda purposes.

Phyllis Howard

SPGB Meetings (1984)

Party News from the December 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

The November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard carried details of the audio recording of one of the meetings which was part of the advertised Working For Socialism educational weekend. [See above.]

As an aside, the listing above also gives details of the SPGB's Bristol Group's meeting in December 1984 on the subject of Anarchism, where the speaker listed was Guildford Branch's Brian Rubin. On the SPGB's website, there is an audio recording of another meeting from the same year which was organised by Islington Branch, where the speaker was again Brian Rubin, and the topic under discussion was Anarchism. This meeting dates from earlier in the year. There is a strong chance there is an overlap in content in both meetings. Anyway, it's a cheap excuse to provide a link to the audio recording of the Islington Branch meeting from June of that year.

"The Welsh Republic" (1955)

Pamphlet Review from the November 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

"The Welsh Republic" (Published by the Welsh Republican Movement, Cardiff)

Some while ago the Socialist Standard printed an article exposing the policy of the Welsh Nationalist Party. Recently there has come to our notice a pamphlet printed by a group known as “The Welsh Republican Movement.” We find, on reading, yet again a somewhat familiar dressing for the same old wound—Capitalism—though dressed in somewhat different phraseology.

The pamphlet begins by criticising the Labour Party (emphasising the prefix ENGLISH Labour Party) and explains that whilst it began its growth on sound Socialist ideals including self-government for Wales, it has dropped its early Republicanism for Monarchy, the symbol of class society. This sounds very nice to the Welshman with a grievance (and who hasn’t?) but is really very naive to those who know something about the Labour Party. The Labour Party never was an ENGLISH party, being composed of representatives of the four nations of the British Isles. Its policy has never been Socialist whatever its ideals may have been.

To say that Wales is governed by “English Concepts” (page 3) asks us to enquire “What are English concepts?” Wales, like Scotland, England and Ireland, is governed by “Capitalist Concepts” which bear equally hard on the workers of these respective countries. Of course, there are spasmodic periods when the workers of one part of Britain are relatively better or worse off than those of another area, due to fluctuations of capital investment. At the moment, S. Wales is in the main “enjoying” a boom period in tinplate.

We are also told that England has imposed its Monarchist tradition on an “innately democratic people” (page 3). The Republicans have obviously written their own history book here. The Wales that was conquered and finally integrated with Monarchist England was herself the Wales of the Princes; indeed, to the patriotic Welshman, the finest chapter in Welsh history was the last great insurrection for independence led by Owain Glyndwr, prince of ancient lineage and doyen of the Welsh of his time.

The structure of Welsh society changed in the same manner and from the same causes as existed everywhere else. To talk about the “old classless society of the Welsh Nation” is utterly wrong. The Welsh Nation began on a class basis as did other nations.

With the revolt of the Roman Magnus Maximus and the disintegration of Roman Britain, leading families took over “trwy ganiatâd y Rhufeinig” (by permission of Rome) as the old historian Carnhuwanawe states in Hanes y Cymru. Maximus represents the figure from which flowed the river of the nobility by whom Wales was ruled until the Conquest. The transition to Feudalism of the English pattern was a relatively simple matter in a land where there had already existed for centuries a class society composed of Kings and Princes (Breninoedd a Tywysogion), lords and gentry (Arglwyddi a boneddwîr” and a slave class (caethion).

Not only are the Republicans wrong in appealing the Welsh as “an innately democratic people.” but they ignore the fact that in modern Wales the Caethion (slave class) is for the first time a Majority Class—as slaves to Capitalism.

What are the positive points in the Republican pamphlet? There aren’t any. There is a 12 point manifesto at the end containing generalities, obviously intended to tickle the patriotic palate, e.g., that the monarch of England shall have no jurisdiction over the Welsh Nation (point 2). The pamphlet contains nothing even mildly anti-Capitalist except for opening with a tirade against the Labour Party and closing with a condemnation of Toryism. This is, of course, merely criticism of the manner in which these parties have conducted the system.

The Welsh industrial worker, like his comrades all over the Capitalist world, has been forced from time to time to rebel against the insufferable conditions imposed by Capitalism. The history of the coalfield provides ample proof of this. It is to such people that we of the Socialist Party speak.

Wales can achieve, along with the workers of all countries, the victory which will end for all time the exploitation of man by man. The history of the future will tell of the final assault and triumph of humanity over slavery and humiliation and the world will be the inheritance of the people as a whole.

The voice of the Socialists in Wales is a small but a constant one. All parties are in opposition to it but it persists. It will continue to expose those who, under the guise of liberators, continue to mislead the working class, included in this category being the Republican Movement.

W. Brain

Holes—particular and general (1956)

A Short Story from the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Evan was a cripple who looked after holes, or perhaps it would be truer to say he protected the public from holes. Before the war be had been a "digger of holes,” but having lost a leg in a hole on the Normandy beach, the local council had taken him back as a "hole minder.” During 25 years employment he had become thoroughly conversant with holes of various dimensions and purposes.

There had been occasions during a particularly lean period (due to Government economy) when there were no holes to hand out and Evan, divorced from a job, would complain bitterly. On such occasions be would say—when the Government was in a hole they pinched his. Of course, if he had given the matter more thought he would have realised that in work or out of it, holes and himself were inseparably bound together.

Like most specialists, Evan was an authority on the particular rather than the general. Taking any given hole, he could analyse it from a number of standpoints; its shape, cost, suitability, etc., etc., and more important than all, how long it was likely to remain (the “ life ” of a hole was especially important as his job depended on it). What he failed to see was the unending vista of “ holes ” with which society was riddled, each filled with countless millions of his class striving to clamber out of them. Evan was a strictly "practical” man not given to theorising and only concerned with the “ immediate hole.”

Having told you something of Evan’s difficulties, perhaps it would be advantageous to consider the question of “ holes ” more closely. The term “ hole ” is, of course, widely used in popular parlance to describe “ a condition of things,” so that when people talk of being “ in a hole ” we know what they mean.

The trouble is, that usually, they don’t know that the particular “hole” they have in mind is circumscribed by a much wider and deeper “ hole "—Capitalist Society, and that however much they strive, the workers never succeed in getting out of a “hole ” permanently.

Holes, big and small, that exist everywhere in Capitalist Society, are called by Economists, Government officials, and such like "experts,” "Crises” and no sooner is one filled in than another is created. Sometimes, despite the waste and time involved, crises do afford a short lived measure of sustenance for some but invariably it is at the expense of others. Eventually a “hole” comes along into which thousands tumble with wide spread ruin and loss of life such as when Capitalism goes to war.

And so we say, study the "hole” you are in together with the rest of society of which you are a part, get to understand the nature of “holes," “crises.” and other impedimenta of Capitalism that frustrate, keeps you poor, and occasionally demands your life and limb. Having understood, take steps to fill them in. The tool for the job is waiting, it is labelled "Socialism.”

W. Brain

SPGB Meetings (1965)

Party News from the April 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Letters: Taxes and the self-employed (2010)

Letters to the Editors from the May 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

Taxes and the self-employed

Dear Editors,

There’s usually something interesting in your magazine and February was no exception, with the article ‘Who Bailed Out the Bankers?’.  If I understood it, it was suggesting that taxes fall on the employers and not the workers. We never see the money which is deducted from our gross pay and it was never really ours. I was wondering how self-employed people would fit into this. The woman who cuts my hair is self employed and she certainly has to find the money to pay her taxes. Is she exploited? But who by, when she employs herself and no one else employs her. But is she then an exploiter? How could she be when she doesn’t employ anyone? There are quite a lot of self employed people around and I’m not sure how they fit into your ‘them and us’ picture. What do you think?

Tony Trafford (via e-mail)

Reply: 
We take the view that ultimately taxes come out of profits rather than wages and salaries. This is because wages and salaries are the price received by workers for selling our mental and physical capacities and like other commodities the price of our ability to work is determined by the amount needed to produce and reproduce it (for instance, the training received by an engineer helps to explain why an engineer’s salary is invariably higher after qualifying than that of an unskilled worker).

This is not to imply that wage rates are set in stone, but to say as we did in the article that at any point in history they gravitate around a point influenced by such factors and, of course, by trade union action too to ensure they don’t sink below even these levels. In effect, this means that while some taxes are paid by workers (such as VAT) the burden of taxation must ultimately fall on profits,  which is one of the reasons the owning class – and the various factions within it – find it of such interest and importance. This is what we explained in the article, and if you are interested in exploring this particular issue, how the burden of taxation falls on the owning class in practice is also discussed in the relevant chapter of our pamphlet The Market System Must Go – Why Reformism Doesn’t Work.

The ‘self-employed’ are a slightly different case, as you imply, because they do not receive a wage or a salary resulting from a contract of employment. The self-employed (such as the small shopkeepers, etc) were technically part of the capital-owning class but who, as Marx pointed out, were forever being reduced towards the living standards of the working class through competition from the more successful capitalists and conglomerates. As such, their position has historically been one of the most vulnerable in capitalist society. Indeed, over time, the ranks of the self-employed shrank significantly due to this process of the concentration of capital into ever fewer hands, with smaller firms and the self-employed getting taken over or pushed out in the competitive struggle for profits.

In recent years though, there has been something of a turnaround in the numbers of those who call themselves self-employed. Not in the sense that the types of economic activities traditionally carried out by the self-employed have expanded much (in the main they’ve continued to shrink) but because a new layer of workers have had their pay and conditions de-regularised or ‘contracted out’ either by the state sector or by the corporations. This has been done as a way of stimulating efficiency (getting the self-employed to work from home for fees is usually cheaper for businesses than when they were formally employing the same people on salaries, with national insurance and pensions, etc to do the same work ‘in-house’).

So we have a situation whereby in reality, unless the self-employed are also employing others then they cannot be exploiters, and they are usually living on little more (sometimes less) than the average wage themselves, due to the pressures of commercial competition. They typically pay taxes nominally like workers do, and are, despite their ‘self-employed’ status, in an economic situation that is little different in most respects to wage and salary earners with contracts of employment.

Editors 

Cultural diversity

Dear Editors

In my opinion, the obituary written for Vic Brain was well written (Socialist Standard, April). I have always thought that people who are enthusiasts of things like the Welsh language, Scottish Gaelic, the Scots language, Irish Gaelic, Cornish language etc, are doing something which even under the uniforming pressures of capitalism is contributing to “cultural diversity” (as described in Vic’s obituary). Some might argue, I suppose, that our class position as wage slaves should mean that all other enthusiasms and identities should be subordinated or rubbished. I was glad to see your obituary writer was a bit more generous and thoughtful. I see no contradiction, for example, in having a Scottish identity related to your geographic roots, being interested in the Scots language and history etc , and also seeing a logical case for a world based on voluntary cooperation.

What are you thoughts on the subject of “cultural diversity”?

J. Russell, 

Glasgow, Scotland

Reply:
We have no objection to “cultural diversity”. Differences of language, food, music and the like will continue to exist in a united socialist world; indeed would no longer be subjected to “Mcdonaldisation” as today under capitalism. We would add that different cultures can exist in the same geographical area and that individuals can partake of elements of different cultures (you don‘t have to come from Scotland to enjoy the bagpipes or from China to enjoy Chinese food). Our objection is to the exploitation of cultural differences for political ends, as for instance to set up or maintain a state or as the basis for a political party.

Editors

What is Class? (1966)

From the July 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

Whilst class consciousness often shows up in some form or other in the class struggle, the class struggle, in the main, is singularly lacking in class consciousness. This being so, one sees its aims limited to demands for increased wages or even a voluntary relinquishing of the struggle by an acceptance of “speed up“ methods at the expense of health and safety. A recent example of this was stated by T. Hopkins, Mines Safety Inspector, in an address to the South Wales Miners Union. In his speech Hopkins was emphatic that miners faced with the threat of pit closures were ignoring safety and health regulations in order to reach the norm set by the National Coal Board.

It can be seen from a survey of industrial agitation that the motivation, in many cases, is as much a question of job preservation as demands for increased wages.

The question of class consciousness, then, so distinct from class struggle is one that requires to be looked at from time to time—this is, if we are to remind ourselves that the only form of class struggle which will ultimately bring about the downfall of capitalism is the struggle arising out of the workers’ place in society.

It is no longer "fashionable” to use terms like "class struggle” and "class consciousness” in modern political writing. On the few occasions when they are mentioned they are given a totally false meaning. We can only assume that such falseness is rather the result of design than ignorance on the part of those who pride themselves with a sound knowledge of social and economic affairs. There is a conspiracy shared by Tories and Labour alike to delude the working class that they are different from what they were in the past, and will be different again in the future from what they are now. Behind this lies the implication that capitalism (another unmentionable word) can go on functioning, indefinitely, to the advantage of society as a whole. There can be no reason, other than this for Labour’s Prices and Incomes Board, the Tories' proposed legislation for bringing Trade Union Law "In line with the 20th century” or the idea of nationalisation which the Tory Party does not condemn out of hand.

These false political and economic pundits are, of course, using an old trick; having established their false promise — one that is accepted due to prevailing ignorance and apathy — the rest is easy. So it is that the workers are carried along the highways of duplicity, nodding their heads in assent like automated marionettes.

Sooner or later in any discussion on "class” the business of class snobbery crops up. Our advocatees of the "diminishing class struggle” find it necessary to bring it forward in order to hide the real nature of the class struggle together with the fact that it exists. They say, that with the continual "levelling off” going on, the workers themselves are now responsible for delaying the march towards the "egalitarian society” by throwing up attitudes of personal and group snobbery. This, they point out, is shown in the frantic race for a bigger car than the neighbours; the intense struggle to pay for a house in a desirable area (the exodus from the council ghetto as one writer puts it).

It does appear strange that though we are told class society is practically extinct there still remains a "middle class”. One presumes from this that it is a "class” though “In the middle” has no defined class either side of it—or perhaps it has, though both the two "end classes" are in a semi-dissolved state. What nonsense all this is!

What the spokesmen of capitalism are doing, of course, is playing up to that section of the working class who by reason of their relatively higher "status” in the capitalist scheme of things, aided and abetted by a certain amount of pettiness and snobbery, are mistakenly led to the belief that they no longer belong to the working class.

One can see where all this leads. One is asked to believe a that capitalist society is really composed of one class sub-divided into well off, middling well off and not so well off. The latter section, they are forced to admit with the proviso that they can, if they work hard enough, climb into the "middle” or even "upper” class.

Socialists, of course, realise that classes (and there are only two) are divided in a horizontal manner. Membership either side of the line is determined by one’s economic status. No arguments—and there are many strange ones such as educational background, mannerisms of dress and accent and even residential qualifications—can overcome this bald economic fact

The term "class struggle” indeed is one that needs to be placed before the working class continually. This will never be done by the agents of capitalism. It is a job that can— and is being done by socialists. It is because the Socialist Party is adamant in reminding the working class of their historic struggle with their annoying phraseology of capitalism "class war", "wage slaves”, etc., we are dispensed with as archaic.

The term "class struggle” was coined by socialists to denote a social and economic fact that has been with us since the advent of class society. This struggle has, at different times, taken on a varying degree of consciousness. Sometimes workers have been more conscious than at other times (the act of joining the socialist movement is a case of class consciousness). At no time up to the present have the working class as a whole fully realised the true nature of class society. Nevertheless, such are the economic consequences of class divided society that, whatever governments may do workers will continue to demonstrate the existence of the class struggle (as they have under the recent Labour Government). This struggle in its highest conscious aspect is carried on in the political field by the Socialist Party in Great Britain and elsewhere.

Socialists cannot but draw attention and participate the class struggle until such time as capitalism is defeated Then, and only then, will the term become "archaic” as classes themselves will cease to exist.

W. Brain

Street Lamps and Desire (1956)

A Short Story from the December 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are two kinds of “leader,” one “born to lead” and coached in the proper schools, the other, risen from humble beginnings and arriving the hard way. What they have in common is the desire to remain “on top" having got there. Dai falls into the latter category. His status in the hierarchy of leaders was quite a minor one, nevertheless very important to Dai—and to those bigger leaders whom he served. Dai is a “leader” in Local Government, grown wise in the running of the affairs of “Fiddlesborough.”

After enjoying the ordinary education afforded to the average working-class child, he went to work in the mines, and his career can be said to have begun. Dai realised quite early that the average miner took little interest in union activity, apart from dues paying and occasional grousing, and less interest in political activity apart from occasionally casting a vote. He soon realised that workers were content to let others act on their behalf, and so he offered himself accordingly. He became Lodge Secretary, adding in the course of time official posts on various committees, including the Hospital Board, Y.M.C.A., and the local Civil Defence organisation.

His ultimate election to the Council was a sinecure. “Fiddlesborough” was an expanding community. New factories (manned by silicotic miners) were going up; houses being built; the social amenities needed looking into. Dai looked into them—at least he said he would, and leaders after all must lead somewhere. Dai chose street lighting as his battle cry (along with a variety of other things): he had read (on his way up) something about Lenin saying that Socialism meant the expansion of Electrical Power. What was right for a country was right for “ Fiddlesborough.” So Dai challenged the forces of Darkness and ignorance with the demand for more street lamps and power plugs in the home.

He “got in.” This was some time ago. Looking back from the modest demands of those days to the “Fiddlesborough" of today, with its 10,000 T.V. masts, 40,000 electric cleaners, not to mention the most streamlined automatic strip-steel mill in Britain, makes one gasp at the vast changes that have taken place—and all under the guidance of a town council predominantly Labour, in itself led by the powerful personality of our Dai, now Alderman David Jones, J.P., whose portrait in oils can be viewed every Wednesday and Friday in the Council Chamber at the Town Hall.

All this goes to show that the prizes offered for unstinted service are worth the effort. The workers are notoriously generous in their recognition of able leadership. Alderman Jones would perhaps agree that success, the achievement of one’s desire, can only come about by a close study of a situation. It is necessary to “hit on something,” in his case street lamps; from this one develops; one soon becomes accomplished in knowing what the workers want next, and so it is seen that happily the workers’ needs afford fresh “talking points” and increased status to the leader.

It is quite true that workers should have better street lighting, home comforts, good roads and services. It is also true that these amenities do not touch on the real problem of their lives—poverty and insecurity. Socialists continue to point out the need for the greater illumination that will expose the evils of Capitalism that actually condemn millions of people in millions of "Fiddlesboroughs” to want and starvation. A needy person’s wants are no more satisfied by walking on a well engineered highway than if he wallowed in a swamp. The world is full of leaders and would-be leaders of various stature, all busily engaged in “getting on” or trying to “stay there.”

Are you content to dribble your life away for a wage that merely keeps you in existence as a producer of wealth that you will never own for the privilege of sending your sons to any part of the world where Capitalist interests are threatened? Are you prepared to continue groping your way through the half-light of Capitalism street lamps withal ignoring the light that comes with the dawn of a Socialist World? If you are, then forget your dignity as human beings. Follow your leaders, and when the next holocaust comes along, give of your vast reservoir the sacrificial streams demanded for your leaders’ protection.

If you are no longer prepared to do these things, get down to it now. You can change "Fiddlesborough." You can change all the Fiddlesboroughs of this world.

W. Brain

Nationalism in Two Hemispheres (1956)

From the December 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

It's a long way from Pontardulais to Pretoria: the latter, though way down in the Southern Hemisphere, is quite well known as the administrative centre of South Africa, while the former, though only within a few hours’ journey from any part of the British Isles, is relatively unknown to people outside South Wales, being a sombre little township on the western edge of the coalfield. Yet anyone living in South Wales who has followed events in South Africa during the last few years can appreciate certain trends taking place that are common to both.

It has always been the contention of Socialists that (1) Capitalism, wherever it operates, despite differences in climate, language and culture, produces the same set of conditions from which inevitably flow the same problems. This is not to say that conditions are everywhere identical under Capitalism; different areas are often undergoing different stages of Capitalist evolution, depending on historical background. However, when Industrialism comes, late or early, Capitalism comes with it: they are bound up in each other.

(2) Capitalism, desiring always a submissive working class, seeks everywhere to condition the people: through the Church, universities, schools, newspapers, radio and other media of disseminating thought and ideas.

(3) Despite the constant effort in this direction, there exists, invariably in Capitalist society, groupings that contradict and are in opposition to Capitalist society (where it hurts them) and towards one another.

If the above is a true description of Capitalist society everywhere, it is not surprising that similarities should exist in the framework of everyday life as it affects the workers in two places as different in other respects as South Wales and South Africa.

Taking No. 1 first: Industrialism in South Wales and South Africa are in different stages of historic development, whilst in Africa we witness the virtual imprisonment of native labour, divorced from their tribal way of life and packed into industrial compounds. South Wales has long since passed the coarseness and brutality practised in the early days of her industrial revolution.

(2) The educational movements which started in Wales as philanthropic ventures, inducing the workers to accept earthly woes in the hope of heavenly reward, have long since been replaced by government authority when it became realised that industrial Capitalism, for its own sake, must take a real interest in the education of its future wage slaves. In South Africa the missionary school is coming towards the end of its reign; here, too, the government is concerning itself more and more with education. The latest step in this direction—the infamous Bantu Education Act, though causing concern and minor unrest in Church circles and among other well-meaning people, is but a logical step in the “progress” of Capitalism in Africa—especially Capitalism with a strong Nationalist party in power; which brings us to:

(3) The increase in Nationalist power in South Africa, with its increasing pressure on the native population, has evoked strong protests from groupings of all kinds among the white section of the community. Women’s leagues are forming in battle array against Styrdom, intellectuals are speaking on behalf of the downtrod native, novelists like Alan Paton and parsons like Michael Scott and Trevor Huddleston, proclaim the indignities imposed on their “black-brethren.” Whilst many of these people are sincere in their endeavours, they cannot see that “colour bar” Apartheid disease and all the other injustices are not a Cause in themselves, but an Effect. The cause is the system of Capitalism.

Nationalism is quite popular these days in South Wales. It has not committed any atrocities here as yet for many reasons; first, it is not yet unified (there are two Nationalist groups), and secondly, and most important, not being in power it cannot legislate. Nevertheless, true to the conflicting picture that Capitalist society presents, it has its supporters and its influence. History is, of course, invoked and the injustices of the past imposed on Wales are cleverly used by the Welsh Nationalist press. Nationalist influence is capturing the minds of many who are disillusioned with the Labour Party. Local education policy is setting up more and more Welsh schools (a form of child segregation by language qualification); teaching posts are more and more subject to language qualifications; certain newspapers are playing up to the revival in Nationalism, and the Welsh League of Youth is spreading its membership into more and more schools and villages. On the surface much of this activity does not appear as Nationalism, some of it is really funny, like the situation mentioned in a South Wales town where women are driving non-Welsh speaking children away from their Welsh speaking playmates. (See Western Mail, 5/9/56).

No compounds yet; hardly as bad as South Africa, where a coloured person is not allowed on the streets without a pass after curfew, but still an unhappy state of affairs and pregnant with possibilities.
In South Africa, despite the segregation policy of the government (backed, in the main, by the Boer farmers), the Industrial Capitalists are not altogether happy. They know that a growing industrialism cannot afford segregation to the point required by the Nationalists. Capitalism does not care two hoots about national cultures, languages, or even pigmentation. It is interested in manpower (especially where human energy is cheap); we can, therefore, envisage better treatment for the native forced upon the government by the Industrialists—in the interest of Capitalism.

In Wales, strive as they may, deplore as some may, the passing away of native culture and perhaps the language too, is inevitable if Capitalism is to remain. Industry demands it. If the Welsh really want to preserve their language and culture (and it is well worth preserving), they must get rid of Capitalism. Socialists in Wales, who at no time conceal their Celtic tongue (often using it to explain Socialism), fight for one world, rich with its infinite variety of culture, utilised and enjoyed by alL Until such time our message to both the Welsh wage slaves and the Bantu herded in the compounds on the Rand, is: “You have more in common with each other than you have with your respective masters, be they Nationalists or Nationalizers or just plain Private Enterprize Capitalists.”

W. Brain

Branch News (1963)

Party News from the December 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

As in the past, we are making an urgent appeal to Members and sympathisers, to ensure that as many people as possible obtain and read the Socialist Standard. This special appeal is made each December and the subscription form in this issue is a simple way in which to fill in names and addresses, and send off to Head Office with the appropriate postal order. Many of us have saved a few extra shillings to spend, as most workers have some days off at the end of the month. Why not spend some of the savings by sending somebody a years supply of the Standard? It is hoped that new readers will not only pass on their copy, but will order copies to be sent elsewhere. It is well worth trying.

Mid-Herts Group are holding two meetings—one on Thursday, December 5 and Thursday, January 2. Details with Meeting Notices. Recently the Group held a meeting attended by the Central Organiser. It was decided not to form a branch at present, and to attempt to increase activities, e.g., fortnightly meetings (instead of monthly), alternating between Stevenage and Welwyn Garden City, perhaps with the assistance of Wembley Branch members.

Belfast Branch (WSP) has agreed to contest at least five seats in the Municipal Elections to be held next May. Candidates have been selected for three wards—Duncairn, Shankhill and Pothinger. Two other Wards are under consideration. Shankhill and Duncairn have been contested by the Party before, but this will be the first attempt at Pothinger—a Ward where a lot of effort has been concentrated and where Socialist Standard sales are very good. There will be Labour, Unionist and Communist opponents and the Party will take the opportunity of putting the Socialist alternative to all the reformist groups. The campaign has already started with literature sales drives and the distribution of leaflets.

Open-air meetings in Customs House Square are well established with audiences averaging 50 each Sunday. Questions are good and the meetings continue until dark. This behoves well for the Spring and Summer when the party hopes to hold week-night meetings there. The Sunday meetings now commence at 3.30 p.m. Despite weekly challenges, none have been accepted by the Labour or Communist Parties. The local organiser of the N.C.L.C., Mr. Andrew Boyd, has agreed to a Public Debate in the New Year-- "Which Way to Socialism? " Further details in January.

Swansea Branch is active, more so now that several members are settling in the vicinity which makes it easier for the work to be done. Comrade Harris recently gave a talk to the Students of Swansea University College on "Why Socialists should Oppose the Labour Party.” Several articles have appeared in students magazines, written by Party members. Comrades Mellor and Brain recently attended an open-air meeting of the Nazi-Panzer Group and distributed Socialist Party literature. It is hoped, in the near future, to combine a talk in the University with a public meeting in the town. All in all the Comrades in Swansea are optimistic and looking forward to much future activity.

Phyllis Howard

News From Wales (1958)

From the November 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

The principality once again, after a lapse of years, has been given a Prince of its own, though the traditional investiture is yet to come. This recognition of Wales’ historic status has been welcomed by some, deplored— though in a genteel way—by others, especially the Nationalists. But on the whole the news has been met with an indifference by the majority. The fact is that Wales, despite a certain air of “glamour" that has enveloped it during the past months, is rather depressed.

Unemployment is high especially among the steel and tinplate workers of Glamorgan, due to the recent concentration of the industry into fewer factories where Automation, and other streamlined techniques, have resulted in the need for less personnel. Trade Unions and local Government bodies are now exerting as much pressure as they can to bring the Government along to the idea of building another, and the biggest ever, Strip Steel Mill, on a site in South Wales. No one, it seems, can see that even if they built a dozen mills, the evils of Capitalism would remain.

The situation in the agricultural areas is also far from bright. Attempts are to be made to “revitalise” the country-side and “stop the drift” by afforestation and other schemes.

Perhaps the biggest shock of all has been the recent exposure of the danger of radiation due to “fall-out.” It is said that Wales has the highest rate of “fall-out” in Britain; that the Strontium 90 content in the bones of Welsh children is higher than elsewhere in the British Isles. This, it is claimed, is due to a combination of high rainfall and high ground. Of course, here again no one has said that it is really due to Capitalism, and that it would be far easier to remove Capitalism than to level the mountain ranges or shift the direction of the prevailing winds. Speaking in such vein may seem ridiculously futile, but it is a fact that a serious suggestion has been made that Wales should be covered with LIME in order to offset the radiation effects! We presume this is an attempt by Capitalism to whitewash its activities!

We, for our part, can only continue to point out the remedy, in the meantime hoping that we won’t be recruited into a lime-spreading Brigade or spend the coming winter preparing the bleak Welsh mountains for pine forests.

As if it were not enough that the workers should be haunted by the fore-runners of things to come; as well as the difficulties of the moment, the scene is made ridiculously nauseating by a violent quarrel over religion, reminding one of the Religious Persecutions of the past (though in those times people did not have to contend with the added evils of Capitalism).

Recently, a young Swansea soldier died a hero’s death (according to some) in Morriston Hospital. He had been present at a bomb test on Christmas Island and was sent home with Blood Leukemia, brought about, says the British Legion and others, direct participation in the tests. This has created quite a stir. It seems that in future it will be a waste of time sending boys abroad for a radiation “dose.” It will be delivered in larger and larger doses every morning with the milk on our doorsteps.

The report as a whole makes gloomy reading we admit, but it is really difficult to brighten it up in any way unless we add the following:—

The National Eisteddfod was a thumping success; reams of poetry; days of singing: culture writ large across the face of Wales. The British Commonwealth Games held in Cardiff (now given the dignity of a Capital City) paid off well. Welsh footballers brought fame and glory to “Yr Hen Wlad ” (The Old Country) by virtue of their performance during the World Cup Series. The Welsh Nationalists have turned out another pamphlet and the miners have been offered a couple of bob more (if they agree to work on Saturdays).

We must add that in our estimation the overall picture as reported above is a grim one, especially exasperating to Socialists in Wales who are eager to end it all.

This, then, concludes our report from Wales—Land of Festivals and “ Fall-Out.” We are hoping that more of our fellow workers will decide to “fall in” in the near future—not to spread lime, but to spread Socialism, not to kick footballs, but to kick the system out of existence. We feel that the future will then enable us to create monuments of culture such as will dwarf those grim old sentinels—the Cambrian Hills. Wales, will, for the first time, be in the position to give a real welcome to the world’s visitors—with no charge made!

W. Brain

"Prols" and Plutocrats (1958)

A Short Story from the August 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

"They toil not neither do they spin,Yet Solomon in all his glory Was not arrayed like one of these.” 

Sir Brian Bagalot was one of the select minority whose possessions enabled him to enjoy most of what this world has to give. He had a town and country residence both sumptuously equipped and staffed, a villa on the French Riviera, an odd farm or two whose stock were prized in agricultural circles, and a cruising yacht which he found handy when land-bound pleasures became boring. Lest it may be thought that- his whole time was spent in gay abandonment, we must add that he was chairman of 10 industrial concerns as well as sitting on the board of directorship of 15 others.

He was, in fact, typical of the strong: “terror when roused” English business men to whom society doffs its cap.

Despite this, he was a sporty, trusting kind of chap and not above discussing the prospects of the vegetable crop with his head gardener or the racing news with the butler. In fact, though he did not give it much conscious thought he had great trust in everyone—from his immediate subordinates to that vast army of men and women employed in his Industrial Empire—an army which stretched far into the vague shadow-world that lay beyond his own comfortable, sunny highway.

He shared his joys and woes with his wife, Lady Bagalot who apart from fulfilling a biological function in his life, served as a kind of walking advertisement of the Bagalot Enterprises. It was precisely because Sir Brian had recently added another “bauble” to the already well embellished Lady Bagalot. in the shape of a diamond tiara, that our second character enters the hall.

Joe was most unlike Sir Brian; quite commonplace; belonging to what has been called "the Great Unwashed” and many other things. i.e., he was one who possessed nothing that Sir Brian and his friends wanted, except his labour power. Joe belonged to the working class indeed, though he did not “slave” to run the affairs of 25 industrial concerns. He knew little about prize live stock, or yachts, and could see nothing in bridge. Obviously NOT the typical, time-honoured, tenacious Englishman who “bestrides the narrow world like a Colossus” that one reads about in novels. Whilst Sir Brian had expanded himself on the playing fields at Eton, Joe had experienced the mental and physical cramp peculiar to a large Council School, where some poor cuss of a teacher had struggled to fit him out as a decent, law-abiding citizen. Whilst Sir Brian had absorbed the “nobling influence” of the broad green acres of his estates and the exhilaration of a "true Britisher” as he stood yachting cap at an angle, on the bridge of his cruiser, Joe, when he looked around his colourless, lustreless environment, felt as inspired as a bulldog forced to eat a bowl of lettuce.

So he changed it—or he thought he would. He scrapped the “Honesty is the best policy, God's in his heaven, all’s well with the world” philosophy taught him at school, and decided that Society and he were henceforth enemies.. From now on it was Joe first, and all the time. He had, you see, acquired a kind of queer sense of justice that is, alas, all too common among the world’s poor. He believed that be could rectify and otherwise improve his status through his own efforts—a kind of “one man concern.” He obviously hadn’t studied Sir Brian’s life history, otherwise he would have known that “real" wealth, can, and is, only created by the combined effort of many. Still, Joe was not so much concerned with making rather than taking. To use his own phrase, he was engaged in the business of “Redistribution of Wealth” by the simple means of breaking and entering.

His successes were many and not without their measure of excitement. Joe was indeed enjoying a more varied and eventful life as an “anti-social” member of society than ever he did during his law-abiding days. Just as Sir Brian felt akin to Lord Nelson when cruising, or an affinity with John Peel and his company of country squires when riding to hounds over the Bagalot Estate, so Joe felt himself a kind of Dick Turpin or Robin Hood both of whom are thought of as heroes to members of the working class whose education has been that where-in-history and romance are confused.

Joe’s end came; sudden and dramatic. He was caught in the act of burgling Lady Bagalot's “blazers” (including the diamond tiara)). After the Law had worked on him, supported by 12 moral jurymen, he was "sent down” for a long time and ceased to count as a member of society at all. Joe may have had the best of motives for his activities, but unfortunately his methods were wrong.

This ends our little story, but perhaps we could wrap it up in a moral.

The “Joe’s” can be multiplied in their millions; workers who congratulate themselves on "getting away” with odd bits and pieces—a minute quantity of the world’s wealth—usually just about enough to keep them “ticking" till such time as they are “sent down” (with the aid of a shovel) and are no longer a part of living society. Many have in various ways, attempted to balance the one-sidedness of wealth-ownership, by the wrong method. They still continue to think in terms of “getting a bit more ” without realising the possibilities of getting the lot.

The job must be done properly; not by negative attitudes to existing laws, but by a positive move to create our own law. We can only do this by "thinking big"; having big ideas."

As for Joe:—

“The Law doth punish Man or Woman
Who steals the goose from off the Common
But turns the greater villain loose
Who steals the Common from the goose.”
                               [Old Peasant Rhyme, 14th Century.] 

And so whilst Joe was “put away" Sir Brian embarked on—yet another of his sea cruises.

W. Brain

Brewers & Preachers (1968)

From the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

The pro-and anti-Sunday drinking referendum that has recently taken place in Wales has been fought, on the one hand, under the guise of democracy and the freedom of the individual and. on the other, as a struggle to maintain a tradition in the face of a decline in standards and morals. One was an attempt by the brewers and those who, consciously or otherwise, supported them to change existing social habits, and the other an attempt by religious organisations (mainly Nonconformist) to maintain a way of life that has been peculiar to Wales for generations.

The sponsors of Sunday opening were without doubt headed by the brewery interests and other allied organisations. One found strange members in their camp — even religious people who claim to be supporters not only because of the 'freedom’ involved but because they could not find any scriptural command in the list of “Thou Shalt Nots" which was anti-drink. The Rev. Cannon R. Williams of Haverford West (the Brewers’ Chaplain) was a case in point. The public hoarding adverts and nation-wide door-to-door distribution of pamphlets must have cost the brewers a fortune — a fortune they hope to recoup in the years ahead.

Another reverend spokesman stated in the Western Mail that “the nation that loses its Sunday loses its soul”. But it is only fair to say that other, non-religious organisation have added their weight against the Sunday extension, for instance. National Life-Line (a movement similar to the Good Samaritans though primarily confined to industry) stated:

  Alcoholism is costing industry £75 millions annually . . . 250,000 men failed to turn up for work because of that ‘Monday morning feeling’.

Well, what is to the advantage of the brewing industy can be to the disadvantage of other industrialists—that’s capitalism.

It is indeed a comment on democracy in Britain that it grants ten minutes broadcasting time to the “Communist” Party, five minutes to the Welsh Nationalists and none whatsoever to the Socialist Party of Great Britain in Wales, but can spend a huge sum of money to build up a national campaign, including television and sound broadcasts, on the benefits of a Sunday pint of beer.

W. Brain

Where Are You Going (1958)

From the February 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

By this time, you the reader, will once again have embarked on another year’s effort, which like all previous efforts, is a two-fold one—to maintain some kind of a living, the best you can get under the circumstances, whilst continuing to be the wealth producing agent for the minority who control your destiny; not a very dignified position to be in you will agree but one that you have accepted far too long.

You had your Christmas respite and indulged in the traditional manner. Throughout the holiday you strove to foster the spirit of good will; the “live and let live” idea. Now, it is once again all over and you must face up to the stern reality of life under Capitalism without the cap and bells. In fact you are expected, those of you who have one, to get back on “the job.”

It is at this juncture that we in the Socialist Party without wishing to be impertinent, ask the question “Where are you going this year?” Naturally we arc not referring to the spate of advertisements already filling the press, extolling the joys of wintering in the Bahamas, and other exotic places. We mean “What are your plans for improving your lot in 1958 ?” You will agree that 1957 took more out of you than you received in return. This situation is what industrialists would call “bad business.” and bad business indeed it was for the working class. This was true also for your fellow workers in the U.S.A., Russia and everywhere else. Everywhere, the sum total of dividends accruing to the world's workers in 1957 after payment of “overhead expenses” (food, clothes, shelter and an occasional “ break ”) was merely an increase in strain and stress; an increase in genuine, all-round fear. 1958 it now appears is already given over to an increase in the scientific armament race with all the above-mentioned evils attached and perhaps more.

The writer, has, for some time past, been in the habit of reading (in the same way as many renew the acquaintance with Dickens’ Christmas Carol) at the commencement of the New Year, some of the curious reasons and antidotes for the phenomena of poverty. He finds that the reasons are extremely varied and in most cases amusing. Economists and philanthropists together with our old friends the politicians and clergy offer all kinds of excuses including “sun-spots” which affect the weather and crops, mysterious psychological brain disturbances which affect the business acumen of industrial magnates and so on not forgetting the theory of the inherent wickedness of Man’s heart.

So you see, we are told to be patient, virtuous and hard working in the hope that, Micawber like, somehow, things will turn out all right.

In the light of all this, you may of course decide to run for the nearest hatchet, believing that humanity will not free itself “till the last Capitalist is hanged by the entrails of the last priest.” We don't think, however, that you are so foolishly energetic. Rather, you are more likely to put away your bells and lanterns, place the frost fairy back into her cardboard box and live in hope that you will be in a position to reverse the process next Christmas.

Readers of the Socialist Standard will know that it is not our custom to mouth empty platitudes and perhaps the phrase “Happy New Year” has fallen into nothing more than a platitude these days but what we do urge is that you take upon yourselves the business of seeing this year—1958 as the year in which you commenced to do something about putting things right You can best do this by supporting the Socialist movement which in your case is the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Better still send us a real New Year’s card—an application for membership.

W. Brain

Letter from Wales (1959)

From the July 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some while ago, the writer had occasion to examine an old Welsh bible. The only thing peculiar to this bible was that it had been used for religious services underground. It was the custom of the earlier generations of miners to commence their “stint” with prayers and hymn-singing. This bible still remains to remind one of the traditional Welsh attitude to religion, which has permeated the social and political history of the people of Wales. It is a long and interesting story which English historians, due mostly to tack of knowledge of the vernacular, have not been able to give much attention to; nevertheless, it can be accepted that just as druidism was the dominant religion of tribal Wales, Catholicism—followed by the Reformed Church—the faith of the Mediaeval peasant;—so Nonconformism became a strong influence upon the industrial workers in the new era of Capitalism. Today, the roots of political and trade union life in Wales still draw considerable sustenance from religion. Tradition dies hard and men like Mabon and K. Hardie (who though a Scot was “taken into the bosom” of the Welsh people) are to this day looked upon with reverence as outstanding “Christian Socialists.”

The Keir Hardie Myth 

In 1936, the S.P.G.B., in a pamphlet War and the Working Class, drew attention to the attitude which Keir Hardie actually adopted to the First World War. This must have offended many of Hardie’s admirers and in 1953 a South Wales newspaper, under a headline of half-inch capitals, published a defence of him. This was largely directed against the S.P.G.B., whose exposure of Hardie was described as a “nauseating attack,” a “smear campaign” against the “character and honour” of Hardie. The S.P.G.B., said the writer, was “ turning and twisting ” but our argument would be “torn asunder” by “indisputable facts” which he possessed “in abundance.”

Strong words. They sparked off a lively debate in the newspaper, in which the S.P.G.B. members reminded the readers of Hardie’s boast that he had helped to recruit more men to the colours than had his Liberal opponent. This, said our adversary, was a falsification of history; but when we offered him the opportunity to expose it in public debate, he refused. By this time, the Welsh members had their teeth into it; we obtained photostat copies of some 1914 issues of the Merthyr Pioneer which proved conclusively the correctness of our assertions. Need we say that, in face of this, our opponent pleaded lack of sufficient time to continue the argument and asked us to drop the matter? As our final word, we shall arrange a public challenge meeting on the matter.

It is as well to place some of Hardie’s attitudes on record. He advised against pacifist agitation, advocated national unity in wartime and resistance to an aggressor “to the last drop of blood.” Thus he was no better (and no worse) than the other Labour Party and I.LP. leaders who have given their support to the war efforts of British capitalism; Henderson, MacDonald, Attlee, Bevin and Morrison all followed him, playing the same terrible game. There is no doubt about their support of war. We can only hope that our efforts will help to show that the revered Keir Hardie was no different.

Elections and the Chapels

The local elections in Wales often resolve themselves into a contest between religious communities—“bethel” versus “Moriah", or Baptist versus Methodist with the Salvation Army thrown in as dark horses. The fact that one is a Chapel member counts a great deal in Welsh politics, local and national—not forgetting the Trade Unions. Political careerists are aware of this and even so-called communists are careful to assert their attachment to religious principles. The other day a local “Commie” indignantly challenged a Tory who dared to state that Religion and Communism were incompatible! A leading member of the Welsh Nationalist Party has recently been elevated from mere chapel membership to that of Vice-President of the Baptist Union of Wales. At the same time, his party, to prove their rebellious convictions, are indulging in pirate radio broadcasts on the B.B.C. television wave-lengths under the title Voice of Wales.

As can be seen, the few Socialists in Wales have a hard task in hand. But we shall continue the struggle.

W. Brain

The Welsh Scene (1976)

From the June 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent unrest in the steel industry was inevitable to anyone with just a little knowledge of the nature of capitalist economy. In Wales, as elsewhere, workers have been rudely awakened from their dream that full employment would last. The logic of the message that the Socialist movement has propagated over the years is once again amply demonstrated. Unfortunately it is not at all palatable to workers who, for a considerable period, have depended on the unstable structure of additional pay from overtime and shift work.

Now the employers have had to shed many thousands of their work-force as well as cutting out the various forms of overtime. At a recent press conference in Cardiff the British Steel Corporation’s chief executive, Bob Scholey, said: “We do not think the funding of this luxury at public expense is fair.” Apparently he was serious about the world “luxury”: he was referring to the workers’ demand for work in an industry which, from the bosses’ point of view, is overmanned. A new blast furnace capable of increased output but requiring fewer men has been accepted by the unions on condition that the wages for manning it are increased, and this has been agreed to by the employers. So a section of the workers will be seen as retaining their jobs at the expense of the others—a hint of “divide and rule”.

It is indeed a sorry pass to which the workers have come, to be told that working longer hours is a “luxury”—that it is in some way associated with the quality of one’s life. Overtime has been the provider of holidays abroad and the host of knick-knacks which workers have been led to believe are indispensable for the good life. It is not that we are against the acquisition of more and better artifacts. We may condemn the shoddy and inferior things foisted on the workers; but even that supply can be diminished at any time when the capitalist system can no longer allow the means to enjoying them.

Some steel workers are attending the job despite being told there is no work. The masters claim it is unreasonable to demand work when it is unprofitable to employ them; they own the factories and they know the situation. It is the workers whose thinking is wrong, in imagining there is some divine law which entitles them to jobs. When are they going to wake up to the fact that all they have is their labour-power—and when that is not wanted they have to take it elsewhere if they can? The steel industry, like any other, exists to make profits.

There is no logic in workers’ giving their masters the legal authority to exploit them, and then kicking at the results. The constantly repeated crises of capitalism can only be overcome in one way, and that is for the working class to take—legitimately — the ownership of the means of living. This relatively simple, democratic measure will put and end to the sit-ins, strikes and the other acts which manifest the miseries of the present system. Society can be transformed into a structure wherein its resources will be utilized solely for human needs. This can happen when men desire it. The task of Socialists is to urge the working class to be conscious of itself and its potentialities.

W. Brain

Leaders and Led (1954)

From the July 1954 issue of the Socialist Standard

In capitalist society the workers may find themselves short of many things but they are never short of “leaders.” The business of becoming a leader is an art which is followed by many for reasons which range from a mistaken sense of service and guidance to those who desire power solely and consciously in their own interest. Whichever the category to which the prospective leader belongs, his actions have the same result as far as the working class is concerned. The quest for places in professional leadership circles is a cunning and often ruthless task, the accent being on the cunning and ruthless method in countries openly dictatorial in form, while in the more democratic countries the method is more varied and subtle but none the less successful. In any case, we get our leaders either born great, having achieved greatness, or having greatness thrust upon them.

Our educational system is a vital part of the machinery for maintaining the idea of the desirability of leadership. The recent conference of the National Association of Head Teachers was treated to an address by its president. Miss Armstrong, in which she waxed eloquent on the leadership idea. She states that leaders are chosen for their “ability to lead” and she extolls democracy as being a situation that opens a way for the “humblest born to attain high prominence in the State as leaders.” We cannot but deplore and condemn such a view on democracy.

Miss Armstrong believes that one of the duties of teachers is to produce leaders though she does qualify this by saying that some teachers may disagree with this view. She, however, is full of hope that “brilliant children in Grammar Schools should be educated for leadership.”

In conformity with her leadership views she clinches her argument with reference to the teaching of religion in schools and its importance in bringing about the kind of society she wants to see (obviously, the leaders and the led). In this context she does not mention those teachers who disagree.
While on the subject of leadership in the religious sense, one finds that it has gone to extraordinary lengths in that home of strange causes, the U.S.A. where, we are told, the 1936 Convention of the followers of a Mr. George Baker, alias “Father Divine,” established by unanimous vote, that he (George Baker) was God Incarnate. Since 1936 this particular God enterprise has gone on from strength to strength and is now a full scale profit making enterprise. Perhaps “Father Divine” had the good fortune to have been educated by one of Miss Armstrong’s “teachers of faith and sound conviction" ?

Finally, to come to a more “earthly” kind of conference—that of the British Legion, held recently, where once more the question of pensions arose.

Disabled ex-servicemen know more about leaders and leadership than most; they have their medals and their disablement to prove it. Sir Ian Fraser, Tory leader of the disabled, as usual raises his voice on their behalf, supported by other “lesser leaders" of Churches, T.U. branches, Co-ops’, etc.

Examples, given in the press, of the budgets of some of our disabled, are indeed heart rending. It is more so to the Socialist who finds the aim of the “great attack" against a niggardly government is to increase the present miserable amount of pension to something only a little less miserable. Our view, of course, is that workers, fit and unfit, would be better employed in struggling for a world where everyone—barring accident and natural causes—will be able to keep his health and limbs intact during his natural span of life.

To sum up: Socialists have no use for leaders; leaders imply the led. Socialists are people capable of doing their own thinking. Thinking people will not require leaders rather than administrators. Just as at the moment sons and daughters of the workers are bought and employed as administrators for Capitalist enterprises both State and privately run. This is the meaning of the Head Teachers’ leader’s plea for education in leadership—to perpetuate the prevailing system. Socialists want to change the prevailing system.

The chief reason for people supporting the continuation of Capital, even whilst grumbling at its deficiencies (as the Disabled Men’s Organizations are doing) is because they are led to believe that there is no alternative. Socialists know otherwise and want others to know too.

W. Brain

Are The Teachers Learning? (1956)

From the February 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the time of writing the school teachers are claiming some measure of public interest over their attitude to the Government's Superannuation policy.

The general public have, of course, always known of the existence of teachers: all of them, to a greater or lesser degree have at some time come under their influence while many are hoping that their son or daughter will eventually step into the profession. Nevertheless, perhaps the vast majority of teachers are a “race apart" and when the subject of schools and schoolteachers comes up during a conversation at the “local" or at the factory it is generally held that teachers have nothing to grumble about, being well paid and having more leisure time than the average worker in industry.

Perhaps therefore we should enquire into the business of teachers and teaching more closely before coming to over hasty opinions.

The first thing we would discover would be that every form of society had its teachers; secondly, the pedagogue was invariably an important (perhaps the most important) servant of the ruling class in any given society. This is not at all difficult to realise when we follow the role of the teacher back through history. Without bothering to go abroad or even back to the pre-mediaeval times when the teacher included in his “bag of tools" such attributes as doctor, priest, musician and prophet, we can glean sufficient, merely from a study of teaching craft from the time of the Norman Conquest.

The early teachers were the monks of the church, the school buildings, the Monastic houses, the curriculum one that fitted its pupils to become wise in the affairs of State and Church and also to teach the peasantry the humility necessary for the preservation of their lords spiritually and earthly.

With the growth of trade, through colonization, the teacher was again necessary to instill sufficient skill into the heads of those who served in the business houses and later the factories which were the new forms of wealth production for the ruling class. The “Industrial Revolution" gave a boost to the spread of so-called popular, universal education. So much so that one, Robert Lowe., expressed on behalf of many of his friends, that there was a danger that they may be “educating their future masters!" This, of course, has not materialized.

Now-a-days, education is more important than ever; in a world with its science and pseudo-science, a world wherein newspapers count their copies in millions; in which bureaucracy requires the filling-in of forms and documents by the tens of millions, the worker must be provided with at least the minimum education. Educationists, of course, have not wholly agreed on the purpose and aim of education. Some claim that it should be vocational, others that it is the creation of the aesthetic, others that its aim is to instill a sense of citizenship and to create “harmonious development."

The teacher has to serve as ever. His job is to turn out the product required whether as hewers of wood and drawers of water or nuclear physicists. Both are vitally necessary to the profit system.

At the moment teachers, a long suffering rather servile group, are stirring. Their present living standards are threatened. They, like most others, see this as an injustice and so it is. When will they learn from history the plain fact that in serving their lords and masters as they have for centuries, they have always been servile! Perhaps more so, since they have been more blind than many to the true nature of their position. They have traditionally thought of themselves as being members of a mythical Middle Class; a kind of élite and have tended to weave a cocoon of academic aloofness around themselves. They are still monastic-minded. When they realise that there as just two classes in society, an owning class and a class that lives by the sale of its labour power, and that they belong to the latter, then perhaps they will draw closer to the broader working class. They may, in time, reach the stage when they will attain the education that Squire Brown spoke of—"that which is learned after you have forgotten what you learned at school.” They may begin to realise that Socialism which can only come about by the joint effort of all sections of the working class, is the only way out of wars and crises. Those who have so dutifully, so well, and for so long, taught others, will have educated themselves.

W. Brain

The Complex Loaf of Bread (1956)

From the April 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bread is in the news again. Britain has increased the price of the loaf. Meantime here is an item of news from America. 

"If you loaded America’s surplus wheat on to a train it would stretch for 4,200 miles—from San Francisco to New York and back again to Kansas City.” (South Wales News, February, 1956.). This fact concerning the most basic food stuff in the world is a sure testimony to the productive ability of Capitalist society.

Wheat is going to be costlier in Britain whilst there is a tremendous surplus in America. Unfortunately America’s surplus wheat is not really available to the world’s people, vast numbers of whom are starving.

Of the many crimes one may level at the insane system known as Capitalism, this capacity to deny man the fruits of his labour is one that even the least class-conscious worker knows to be wrong. Mankind appears to be faced with a complex situation. Such complexities as seem to demand complex plans for alleviation; complex conferences—and occasionally—complex wars to try and rectify things. Such is the situation today and “worthy” bodies from U.N.E.S.C.O. to the Salvation Army, are busy tackling the intriguing problem of how to shift surplus wheat into waiting bellies. All the while they fail to do so or do it inadequately.

Here at home things are not quite as bad as they are in some parts of the world. There is full employment; people, in the main, get what bread they need and other things besides. The workers, according to our political and Trade Union leaders, have a lot to be thankful for. What, may we ask, is this “prosperity” dependent upon? Your masters give you your answer every day— upon production—which to you simply means that your day to day living standards depend upon whether your masters can sell the commodities you produce in this or other countries, at the “right” price. 

The production and selling costs are enormous; they include price of raw materials, machinery, wages and marketing costs, which include transport, together with the huge expense involved in maintaining spheres of influence and world sources of marketing and supply, by means of military power in terms of men and armaments. Quite a complex bit of organization again, you see, but unfortunately necessary under their system.

An unknown author once put it this way:—“Man can circle the earth without touching the ground; kill each other when miles apart; weigh the stars; print a million newspapers in an hour; breed the seeds out of an orange; persuade dogs to smoke pipes and cats to play guitars. Man, is indeed, an ingenious animal. But when confronted with one problem, he retires defeated. Show him six men without money and six loaves of bread and ask him “how the six hungry men can obtain the six loaves.”" It is possible that you, the reader, can provide the answer. The Capitalist system cannot.

It is precisely because money is the fulcrum on which Capitalism pivots and to which all things are subject, that we are in our present predicament. Everything created is made to be sold at a profit. If you can pay the price, then brother you can eat ’till you die. When you die, someone—your relatives, friends, or the State—must pay the expense for ridding society of your carcass.

To go back to our six men and the loaves. Mankind looks at the problem—then retires “leaving in the shivering twilight, the tableaux of six hungry men and the six unapproachable loaves.”

Socialists want to bring the men and the loaves together. The problem, once understood, is not at all a complex one. By studying the case for Socialism, you, reader, may feel desirous to help.

It is plain enough to see, no one is going to give you your daily bread; they can only sell it to you when conditions are right. When the machine breaks down they cannot sell or give it away. You can, however, take it as a natural right, but first we must have Socialism.

W. Brain