No More Family Life. (1908)

From the January 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

This is the awful pronouncement which greeted readers of the Daily Distress one morning in October. Said the Editor:—

“We have proved from the writings of Socialist leaders that atheism is one of their principal creeds, and that the marriage ties are not considered to be of any importance. But our exposures have caused consternation at the Socialist headquarters, and every effort is being made to deny our charges in order to allay the fears of those who have succumbed to the blandishments of the smooth-tongued street-corner orators. Socialism cannot endure exposure. It flourishes in the dark.”

Socialism flourishes in the dark, you see. Only a day or so previously a leading article in the same veracious journal impressed upon its intelligent clientele that “the greatest mistake we can make in dealing with the Socialists is to debate with them. It is just what they want.” It is painfully evident that we Socialists don’t know when we are well off. After all, why should we seek the light of debate when, so the Express says, we “flourish in the dark” ? To us, our hundreds of meetings in the open air, in parks, at street corners, at factory gates, have savoured of extreme publicity, and the invariable presence of the police would appear to warrant the assumption. We have nurtured a phantom. On the authority of the Express we have been in Stygian blackness the whole time. Hence our flourishing condition. This, of course, is Express reasoning. If the editorial tongue were not so plainly visible within the editorial cheek, a plain man might be tempted to style it twaddle. Mr. Pearson further informs us that:

“Under advanced Socialism every child is to belong to the “State.” Parental responsibility in every shape is to be ended. Feeding, clothing, training, educating—the State is to do it all. One stands aghast, and wonders whether the result would be more disastrous to the parent than to the child,”

but on page 4 of the same issue a Mr. Claude Lowther “dealing” with the “Canker of Socialism” says “of course we recognise that the child belongs to the community and that the health of the child is the well-being of the State.” So it would appear that Socialism has stolen a march upon us and is here in all its hideous nakedness. And the mother don’t seem to mind. Or shall we say that Mr. Lowther would be well advised if in future he compared notes with the Editor before rushing into type ? There is a possibility of a glimmer of sense creeping in by accident whilst the present haphazard arrangement lasts. Don’t risk it, Claude.

Education again, we always understood, was the particular concern of the State. But read this first :

BARRACK NURSERIES

And what about character ? What about individual care ? What about family life and that affection which makes childhood’s days so sweet in the remembering ? Because many homes are unhappy; because many poor little children cry for food in the slums ; because some parents are without love and kindness, are all children to be without parents and to have a barrack for a nursery and a soulless “State” for a mother’s care ?

THE HOME IS TO GO. FAMILY LIFE HAS TO GO. Let the little ones wake in the night and cry for their parents — Let the mother stretch out for the child.

It is not hers at all. It is the State’s !

Socialism has no care for empty arms and wistful mothers. The child is the State’s, and mothers must go desolate. The little shoes, the little baby clothes—the kind “State” will provide those, and they will be all of a pattern and all alike.

Under Socialism every child will be a workhouse child. If the mothers dressed them, one would be prettier than another—and that would not be Socialism.”

Let me emphasise the fact that the article here quoted appeared in the Daily Express, Oct. 8th, not in Punch as perhaps might be imagined.

Only one thing is lacking to complete the harrowing picture. Why not prevail upon the talented artist who enlivened the last L.C.C. election with his beautiful and soulful conceptions to endeavour to depict the interior of a “barrack nursery.” Nothing appeals to the masses like a picture, and one such of a very long room, tall and broad, filled with hundreds of squalling infants, each seated before a “soulless” half yard of indiarubber pipe, through which the State pumped nutriment, would carry conviction. I present the idea to the Daily Express for what it is worth.

But coming down to hard facts and above all, those of present-day life, how does this strike the Editor of the Daily Distress and those who think with him that human society has reached its highest possible expression in that of to-day, so completely does it meet the individual wants of its components ? This is from the Boston American, July 28th :—

”MINOR EMPLOYES OF STEEL TRUST SOLD BODY AND SOUL.

Parents Are Compelled to Sign Release Deed Before Work is Secured.

Hundreds Execute It.

Worcester, July 27.—The American Steel and Wire Trust is buying children in Worcester for one dollar a head.

Several hundred have already been sold to slave in the three huge mills of the trust in this city, and the sale of hundreds of others will soon be consummated it the State authorities do not interfere.

Many parents have refused to sell their children into slavery, and it is expected that they will soon have to find employment elsewhere than in the trust mills for their boys and girls.

The Steel and Wire Trust is determined that it shall own its employes body and soul.

To secure absolute control of the children the trust recently demanded that their parents sign “A MINOR’S RELEASE.”

Each parent who signs this receives one dollar, and for that dollar he or she waives forever all control over the child: all right to collect his or her pay and all legal rights, in the opinion of the trust’s attorney, to collect damages should the child be killed or maimed in the mills.

Here is a copy of the “minor’s release,” by which the parent makes his child a slave for a mite of the trust’s gold:

MINOR’S RELEASE. 

Know all men by these presents, That, in consideration of the sum of One Dollar and other good and valuable considerations, to me in hand paid, I ………. of …….. have emancipated and do hereby emancipate …… of …… my son, of and from any and all liability to render or account for his services to me, and all obligations to me of whatsoever kind or nature, and do hereby release and forever waive any and all right which I may have in and to his services, or any wages or salary earned by him; and do hereby authorize any and all persons whomsoever to contract with my said son without any liability to me, and to pay him his wages, and to do any and all things and make any and all contracts, with said son, without any liability to me ; and authorize the said son to appropriate and receive, for his own use and benefit, without any liability to me, his services, and pay and all proceeds or avails thereof.

In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and seal at …… this …… day of 190…

Witness : ……………………………………………………………………

(Seal)”

Comment is almost needless. The Socialist is simply charged with certain proposals : here is an actuality. What of family life ? “Let the little ones wake in the night and cry for their parents—let the mother stretch out for her child.”

It is not hers at all. It is the Trusts !

“And what about character? What about individual care? What about family life and that affection which makes childhood’s days so sweet in the remembering ?”

How awkward for the Express that we here can speak in the present tense. THE HOME HAS GONE. FAMILY LIFE AS WELL.

And the American Socialists have denounced it. And the American prototypes of the Express have denounced the Socialists.

We need not travel so far as Tariff-protected America for indications of the ineffable state of bliss, marital and otherwise, in which the working class exists. We are indebted to capitalist sources almost exclusively for our best and most illuminating arguments and statistics.

The census returns show about 43 millions of human beings as inhabiting the British Isles. Of these 38 millions take just over half the national yearly production of wealth, the other 5 millions taking the remainder. The average income of the larger division is less than £160 per head. Thirteen millions are perpetually on or below the poverty line, and nearly a million receive Poor Law relief. What a bed of roses ! What possibilities for the formation of character and that affection which makes childhood’s day’s etc., ad nauseum. Beautiful language the Express people pour forth. “Because many homes are unhappy; because many poor little children cry for food in the slums ; because some parents are without love and kindness; are all children to be without parents and to have a barrack for a nursery and a soulless “State” for a mother’s care? ”

I reply : Because a paltry, parasitic, useless, one-ninth of the population absorbs nearly 50 per cent. of the national income and own seven-eighths of the whole wealth of the country; because less than one-thousandth per cent. of the population owns more than 50 per cent. of the total area of land ; because 5 millions of the lazy plunder 38 millions of the industrious; because of these and scores of similar facts, are 13 millions of wealth producers to be perpetually on the brink of starvation ? Are nearly 90,000 human beings to die in workhouses, lunatic asylums and similar institutions annually ? Are 120,000 workers, the only people who matter, to be robbed of life or limb every year, whilst creating wealth they never enjoy ? Are nearly a million fellow-creatures to be so reduced by privation that they are compelled to claim public assistance and become, despite the repressive measures adopted by “sweet charity,” paupers, in the midst of colossal wealth?

A million married women are compelled to work for wages. What of home life ? And childhood’s days so sweet in the remembering? Nearly 140 in every 1,000 never have any childhood’s days to remember, for they die before their first year of “life” is completed. And family life too ! What of that ? Yes, what of family life ? The average age of the worker is 29 years. The lunacy figures have doubled during the last 40 years. The unemployed problem becomes ever more intense. The worker’s wife and children have now to turn out on the labour market and help to keep a roof over their heads until the arrival of the undertaker—at the age of 29 or thereabouts.

“The home is to go” wails the Express. “Family life too” it sobs. Pass on ! it makes one peevish.

And now what of the Socialist proposals. Of course volumes could be written and have been written upon the institutions of religion and marriage. But briefly, very briefly, the position occupied by the Socialist in viewing the institutions named is very simple and readily understood. It is this.

Before man can formulate a religion, or a social custom like marriage, it is fairly apparent that he must be living in a community, and that the nature of that community will depend largely upon the methods by which the material wants, primarily food, are supplied. For instance, where animal or vegetable food is difficult of access, there, as history shows, one can confidently expect to find cannibalism. The social customs of that community will be an exact reflex of the way they are compelled to get their living. Their god will be as partial to human flesh as they. Their frailties, passions and virtues will find a truthful mirror in their deity. This is so historically and logically true that the wonder is that any person is to be found who, having given a very moderate amount of study to the question, can for a moment doubt it. Take the ancient Norsemen : men of pillage, rapine and plunder ; wild, restless, roving pirates, as fond of wine as they were of war. Their gods, Thor, Wodin, etc., were glorified counterparts of themselves. Higher in the scale the Greeks, a people who had brought the arts to a marvellous pitch of perfection, personified the arts and graces, that is, they made their gods and goddesses after their own image, and then deified and worshipped them. With the decay of the Greek civilisation, their deities died of the same complaint. So that as regards religion the Socialist position should be fairly clear. Change the economic condition of a people and their god or gods obediently dance to the altered tune. A moment’s reflection should make this abundantly clear. Even in the case of Christianity it is continually changing as the minds of its adherents change. “It is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdon of Heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle” said Christianity’s great expositor 2,000 years ago. But a system of society has arisen in which the rich capitalist is looked upon as the mainspring by which Society is enabled to move: a society in which the followers of the humble Nazarene become the possessors of enormous wealth. And—mark what happens. Dr. Akeds arise in scores to prove that Christ did not really mean it. Theologians go to extreme pains to prove that the eye of a needle was something entirely different to our domestic implement. The camel’s task was really very easy : only a bit of a squeeze and he was through. Same with the rich man, and so on.

And now regarding the custom of marriage. There is something decidedly humorous in the spectacle of the introducers of the Divorce Courts reproaching anyone with sinister designs upon the “sacred contract.” The severing of the marriage tie by means of divorce is a measure that surely no one will lay to the door of the Socialists. And who is it that fills the Divorce Court ? The very people who are now accusing the Socialist of designs upon the purity and sanctity of home life. Who are the greatest patrons of the horrible social ulcer known as prostitution ? The question is almost automatically answered. Regent Strest and Piccadilly are not working-class quarters; they are not even, remotely “tainted” with the “canker of Socialism.” Yet the bare names of these thoroughfares have become synonymous for the vice which flourishes, unashamed and practically unchecked, upon them. The average man (who is not a Socialist) will tell you that prostitution is a necessary evil, and that the unfortunates who are its victims should receive State recognition and be licensed, as on the Continent. The upholders of the present system cannot conceive of human society without it. “It always has been and always will be” sums up the whole of their philosophy.

The true Socialist position is that the present marriage contract is by no means the last word to be said upon the subject. History shows that as the economic basis of human society has changed, so the customs of that society have altered, including, necessarily, marriage. The present social system is based upon the ownership of private property, and the marriage contract is in essence a property contract. The single sentence from the Marriage Service, “with all my worldly goods I thee endow” is indicative of this, especially as the recipient of this cornucopean shower immediately surrenders all control over it by promising to “love, honour and obey” the benevolent “bestower.” The Married Women’s Property Act legalises the holding of property by married women, but even this becomes an expedient by means of which the bankrupt can secure some of his “hard-earned” plunder against the inroads of his swindled creditors, provided he has sufficient foresight.

It should be clear, then, that present-day society is organised upon a basis of private property in the means whereby the wealth creators live and that necessarily the customs of Society will partake of the general structure. With the change in the basis, necessarily the superstructure must follow suit. Abolish a system where the mainspring of all effort is the glorification, and aggrandisement of the individual at the expense of the community ; where the ideal is tersely expressed as “every man for himself and devil take the hindmost,” and substitute a community whose driving factor shall be collective effort for the mental and material well-being of all, and whose chief concern shall he the free and unfettered development of all its component units ; abolish the one, we say, and substitute the other and the way is easy for a marriage based upon mutual esteem; upon Love in actuality and not as at present, merely as an accessory after the fact—the fact of the possession of a “decent berth” or a banking account.

One thing the Express and those of its kidney appear to overlook is this. In any society where woman were the social equal of man, is it to be imagined for one moment that she would acquiesce in anything the Express portion of the population cared to suggest? No ! Capitalist morals, bourgeois ethics, would follow the Express into the oblivion of a hideous past. Under Socialism there will be no sex barrier. Elementary logic would appear to show that the individuals most interested, or rather more affected, by social changes, should at least be among the first to be consulted. It does not seem to have occurred to the Express that woman would have a voice in the ordering of her sex-relationship. Need her answer be anticipated ? Think it over !

W. T. Hopley

Hard Times in the Peerage (1933)

From the April 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spare a tear for the Duke. Even Dukes have their worries. Remove the envious leer from your countenance for a moment and listen to the sordid tale of struggle and penury unfolded by the Daily Express (March 9th, 1933). How often is it said, one half the world does not know how the other half lives? What a debt we owe to the intrepid representative of that public-spirited journal, who dared everything, even the Hall Porter of the Savoy Hotel, that we might know—and understand. He found the Duke of Manchester struggling to put a bold face upon his poverty, in a luxurious suite of rooms, and absently smoking fat Turkish cigarettes “specially made to his order, with a coronet on the tip.” Whilst his valet served whiskies and sodas he unfolded the heartrending tale of his fifty-seven years of vicissitudes. “I have been so broke,” he said, “ at one time or another that I have only just been able to pay for my valet's meals . . ."

Those of our readers who have been reduced to this extremity will know what it means and sympathise. However, dry your eyes, for you will be relieved to learn that his income "is sufficient, normally, to buy a couple of meals a day and to provide the reasonable comforts of life . . ." We had better pause there, in the middle of his sentence, so that the continuation may be savoured in all its dire significance. Draw forth your handkerchiefs again and learn ". . . but it has been reduced by £50 a week on account of depression, and £50 a week is a considerable slice out of most people’s incomes.”

It is; it most emphatically is. Millions of hearts will throb responsively when they realise this great home-truth. The Duke, with a penetration as creditable as it is rare, has made a profound discovery. Fifty pounds a week, docked from your income, does make a difference. We cannot recall a single economist, publicist or statesman who has publicly called attention to this devastating fact. And why not? You will see that a duke is just as seriously affected as a plumber, or a baked-potato man.

The Duke of Manchester is a genius, doomed, unfortunately, to the fate that mankind has so often reserved for its greatest benefactors. Hitherto, genius has been left to die in garrets; now we let them eke out a precarious existence in a suite of rooms at the Savoy. What could this brain have done, if not doomed to a dukedom?" The same thought has occurred to the Duke.

"My one regret in life is that I was never allowed to go into business when I was a boy. It was considered infra dig in those days for a duke to do anything of the sort. I never was able to go into business until I was forty-two years of age, otherwise I might have been in a much better position now.

"I go in for a little private business now. I can't say what it is. Of course, my name must not figure in the schemes, and I can’t put any money into them, but I supply the ideas. I think my head is screwed on the right way, and I should have been sitting pretty if the depression had not come along. Why, even to-day, I have £270,000 j tied up in commodities, but, for one reason and another, I can't touch a penny—not a penny."

Here is a story of human anguish. One can savour the bitterness behind that cry: “Not a penny"; behind that tale of thwarted ambition. Who can doubt that had fate been kinder the Duke, in business, would have been just as capable of introducing a ten per cent. cut as any great captain of industry. The hearts of all our unemployed, especially those who have appeared before the Public Assistance Committee, will warm to this engaging figure. One sees him condemned to occupy a luxurious suite in the Savoy Hotel, to smoke innumerable fat Turkish cigarettes, to drink incessant whiskies and sodas, to be attended by his faithful valet, and dream of the time when he was a young man.

"When I was a young man and I found I had not enough money to live as I liked, I used to go away on world cruises, spent next to nothing for eleven months of the year, and come home and spend nearly a full year’s income in the other month." .

Here the Duke, with prodigal generosity, seems to have given the world one of his great ideas. Why do not the unemployed utilise their enforced leisure in this way?

Mr. Chamberlain has cheered us all up by seeing no definite improvement ahead for the next ten years. Why not go for world cruises—so much advertised just now—and “ spend next to nothing for eleven months"? All of us have “next to nothing," so there should be no difficulty on that score.

Quite a lovable creature, the Duke, don’t you think? And so full of ideas. “Say I am a philosopher," he said to the newspaper man. How different from those misguided unemployed, who supply the newspapers with particulars of their domestic budgets, and complain of the difficulty of living on the “dole." It is safe to say that few of them have had their income reduced by £50 per week, and fewer still are philosophising in their own suites at the Savoy. Spare a tear for the Duke.

W. T. Hopley

Can the workers understand Socialism? (1930)

From the November 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is the working class a wash-out?—that is the question. A correspondent, in a very interesting letter, has put it this way. Socialism is a highly intellectual conception, and its acceptance involves a critical examination of the whole of one’s ideas and beliefs. Now most people we meet are not highly intelligent, not critical, not very imaginative, and not even interested. Their conception of a better world is limited to the possibility of another pound a week in the present one. Sport and the daily newspaper give them all the romance they want. And yet, says the questioner, it is just these average, humdrum’ people who must be convinced that Socialism is both practicable and necessary. That is the poser.

If a recent lecturer on psychology is to be believed, the case is even worse. He said that just as physical growth slackens down at about the age of puberty, and shortly after ceases altogether, so does the intelligence slacken down and cease to develop at about the same age. After that, a person can acquire knowledge, but no more intelligence. It may be worth quoting his exact words:

“But with the average child, tests of innate intelligence show little appreciable improvement after the age of fourteen.

“During the war, tests of intelligence were applied to nearly 2,000,000 recruits for the American Army; it was then discovered that the average mental age of adults in the United States was barely fourteen.” (Dr. Cyril Burt.)

This is rather staggering. Are you and I no more intelligent than our boys just leaving school? Are our apprentices, messengers and office boys to put us to shame and confusion by claiming intellectual equality? The eminent professor comes to our rescue, for he says:—

“The paradox, however, may be easily explained away. The puzzle arises from confusing inborn or natural ability with acquired knowledge and attainments. The former ceases to improve; the latter may continue improving to the end of our days.”

We breathe again. We shall not be a mockery for schoolboys. But if the professor is right, there seems to emerge a very important truth. If the intelligence does not grow after the age of 14, just as the body ceases a year or so later, surely we are all on an average level again. We are all mentally 14, mathematicians and knife-grinders, university lecturers and booking-clerks. The great difference lies in “acquired knowledge and attainments.” So that the argument that Socialism is a system of thought that is only comprehensible by the highly intelligent, followed by the statement that the working-class is not more than five per cent. intelligent, is not in accord with facts.

It is not a lack of intelligence that is the stumbling block, it is something else. Consider these facts. This journal you are now perusing has a fairly steady circulation. Its very steadiness argues that the same people read it pretty regularly year after year. We can agree that the contents and character of this journal are such as to appeal to none but intelligent people. And yet the membership of the party is only about a tenth of the circulation. Surely intelligent people should take intelligent action, and if; as our questioner insisted, intelligence is to be the touchstone, the outlook is indeed gloomy. Fortunately, there appears to us to be other avenues of hope. First, there is the information given by Dr. Burt, quoted above: “acquired knowledge . . . may continue improving to the end of our days.” It should be the function of a Socialist movement to see that the working class acquires a knowledge of its position in society, its evolution, its problems and its destiny. This knowledge can only be propagated by the spoken or written word, possibly supplemented by the cinematograph.

The case for Socialism can be put, and has been put, in language easily comprehensible by a normal boy of 14. It is possibly more easily apprehended then, for use and wont have not dulled the mind into the ruts of habit. According to the professor, he is as intelligent then as he will ever be. It is in acquired knowledge that he will progress if at all. It should be the peculiar task of our movement to provide that knowledge, not in the form of a small journal appearing at intervals of a calendar month, but in every form the genius of man can devise. Capitalists who sell wares have discovered that man is a lazy animal, who moves when prodded often enough, who is most responsive to massed attack, and when subjected to a continuous reiteration of the same story. They have found that the mere appearance of one word, like “Bovril,” on every railway station, every hoarding, and in every important periodical in the country, has a powerful psychological effect It becomes by sheer familiarity and persistence, part of the “acquired knowledge” encountered by the questing human mind. When we see every railway station in the country, every hoarding in the towns, every vehicle that carries advertisements, plastered with the word “Socialism”; when every bookstall and every bookshop is sprinkled with Socialist books and pamphlets; when Socialism is mentioned by every newspaper (even in detestation, as we should expect) every day, every week, every month, when the average man has Socialism thrust upon him, rammed at him, rained on him, insistently and persistently, in season and out of season, things will begin to move.

His intelligence may have ceased to grow at 14, but it will be sufficient We must take care of his acquired knowledge. He will be helped—if it is suitably drummed into him—by the obvious increasing bankruptcy of Capitalism, and the incessant attacks on the workers’ standard of living. To take the course suggested lays a heavy burden upon the pioneers of a movement such as ours. That is the essential problem of the immediate present. How can the handful of enthusiasts who initiate the movement, get together sufficient funds to drench the working-class with its literature, to make its presence not only felt, but inescapable, to so familiarise them with its propaganda that misrepresentation becomes ludicrous? How can they, out of their poverty, engender this avalanche of publicity that is to overcome the workers’ normal and natural inertia, and get them definitely on the move? Let every intelligent man, who has added to his stock of acquired knowledge by reading this article, answer for himself. Every reader a member, and every member a party worker, that is our object. We shall move in proportion to our effort.

W. T. Hopley

Class-Consciousness. (1905)

From the December 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Class-consciousness is a term widely quoted and almost equally widely misunderstood. A thorough knowledge of all that it implies is essential if we want to understand why our Declaration of Principles lays it down that we are absolutely opposed to all other political parties. We are in. opposition because they are not class-conscious. They do not recognise the existence of the class struggle, the social war in which we all, willy-nilly, are engaged. Many of their actions, professedly designed to benefit the working-class, have, as a matter of fact, a directly opposite effect. We have so-called Socialist parties in existence, whose programme no Radical would hesitate to endorse. The palliatives which they put. forward as necessary steps in the evolution of the Socialism that is “coming as a thief in the night,” have in a number of cases, already a place on the statute books of capitalist governments. Where is it found that they have been of appreciable benefit to the working-class ? An instance has yet to be found. And yet these parties continue to chase their immaterial Will-o’-the-Wisps, leaving the question of the emancipation of their class untouched, which, after all, is but natural. They are not class-conscious, and until they are the chances are all in favour of them being on the wrong road rather than the right.

This is seen more clearly when specific instances are taken, instances which afford much food for reflection. If it were not so indicative of pitiable ignorance, what could be more amusing than the exhibition of class-unconsciousness presented by the engineers, when they voted for the political return of their employer whilst they were at the same time engaged in an industrial battle with him. Tired of him as a sergeant, they made him a field-marshal, putting him in charge of the police, the military, and all other clubs that are used to batter in the heads of the recalcitrant workers.

The I.L.P. openly deny the class struggle. Of course, they are willing to modify this view—when they wish for representation at the Amsterdam Congress. But ordinarily they designate the man who preaches the class-war as visionary, firebrand, disrupter, etc. Their conduct is a fairly plain guide as to how far they are class-conscious. In Willesden at the present time they are pointing out the advantages of extended municipal control. Curiously enough the municipal employees do not appear to be enthusiastic over the advantages. They turn out in a miserable drizzle to demonstrate with band and banner for a living wage. The S.D.F. is a body admitting the class-struggle in word but repudiating it in act. How the party with such a record of intrigue and compromise can reconcile their action with the class-war doctrine at first sight appears, incomprehensible. It can only be explained on the ground that they have no clear conception of what the class-struggle is, or that they are prepared to deliberately sell working-class interests.

No class-unconscious party can be representative of the interests of the working-class. The capitalist-class is essentially class-conscious. They recognise that their position as rulers is purely relative to and dependent upon the existence of a class subservient to them. Just so soon as the workers realise that they are the subservient class ; that they are the producers of the sustenance which is greedily grabbed by the parasitical shirkers who rule them: just so soon shall we begin to see things. “The great are great to us because we are on our knees. Let us therefore rise.” We call upon every man who is conscious that the working-class and the capitalist-class have interests mutually antagonistic, to join The Socialist Party of Great Britain, to drop his shackles and stand erect. Mr. Balfour has just shown how to be class-conscious. “We can do nothing for you,” he says, and he is quite right. The only surprising thing about the utterance is that the meaning is so clear. It makes the alternative equally clear. Workers of England, don’t plaintively appeal to the enemy for assistance. Don’t ask them if they would be so good as to stop plundering you for a time. You have their answer: ”we can do nothing for you.” Organise in a class-conscious party, The Socialist Party of Great Britain, and do something for ourselves.

W. T. Hopley

A Little Talk About Our Innards. (1932)

From the October 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard

How often has it been said, “The Hour brings forth the Man.” This vivid truism, exemplified equally in the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the productions of Laurel and Hardy, is again given point by recent world happenings. Out of a maelstrom of chaos, out of the cataclysmic roar of a world falling to ruin comes a firm, strong voice. It is the voice, calm, clear and courageous, of one who peers through the surging mists of doom, and discerns with supernatural clarity—the Way Out. Students of political science will have gathered by now, that all indications point to Mr. George Lansbury. They are quite right. The Hour has produced the Man. How wonderful are the ways of Providence !

A short while ago, we, in our ignorance, informed a long-suffering world that “Capitalism will not Collapse.” We charged a penny for some 16 pages of our reasons. We might have saved our energy. In the columns of the August Bow and Bromley Citizen, Mr. Lansbury says Capitalism is at the end of its tether. Civilisation is dying, he said. The economic plight of Central Europe, the upheaval in Germany, the failure of the Disarmament Conference, the tariff war against the Irish Free State in the cause of what is known as punctilio, and the persecution in India, cause him to despair. He asks us to “couple” with these, unemployment at home, the mean Means Test inflicted by the Tory Government (but, George, you forget to say that it is the same test as that applied by the Labour Government for Poor Law purposes), and the driving down into the pit of destitution of myriads of aged and infirm. And then we come to the prophetic utterance:

“Men and women in every walk of life are asking what can be done. I reply, not in the words of economists or Socialists, but in the words of Him who spoke as never man spoke before :—

‘Let him who is greatest be the least. Seek the Kingdom of God which is within you. Seek not your own, learn of Him that the law of life is service, and that it is not the will of the Father that the least of His little ones should perish.’

And learn, also, that on one occasion when He was angry, He took whips and thrashed the money lords, the usurers, the devourer of widows’ houses, out of the Temple.”

So there you are; everyone now knows what to do. As George so truly says: men and women are asking what can be done.

We of the Socialist Party of Great Britain have answered “capture political power, so that you can own your means of living.” The Labour Party, whose leader is Mr. Lansbury, answered, “the most important thing is to get something now.” After a quarter of a century’s getting something now, Mr. Lansbury now replies with: Seek not your own … “Seek the Kingdom of God, which is within you.”

It is really too brilliant. What balm, after more than two years of Labour Government: “Seek not your own. Seek the Kingdom of God. It’s inside you.” Most of the unemployed would swap it for a steak and kidney pudding, any time.

The bit about the whipping of the usurers and money lords is interesting. Mr. Lansbury has not always been in favour of giving the usurers a walloping. When the usurers who had invested in War Loan engaged in the operation known as Conversion, two months back, Mr. Lansbury gladly lent them a hand. On that occasion the readers of the Bow and Bromley Citizen were spared the tripe and treacle of our Right Hon. friend. On July 14th he was accorded the publicity of the B.B.C., and millions of listeners heard him say:

“I am speaking to you on behalf of my colleagues in the House of Commons and myself. . . . We are glad to be able to give our support to the War Loan Conversion scheme recently launched by the Government.”

Then came the usual bowl of greasy platitudes, followed by George’s inevitable appeal to:

“turn once again to Him who taught as no other man has taught, and start individually and nationally ordering our lives on His appeal, and seek first the Kingdom of God, which He also said is within you.”

George seems somewhat muddled, but doubtless he could explain himself. Seek first the Kingdom of God, and to save a protracted search he indicates its precise position—within you. Then, keeping in mind what Christ thought of usurers on a former occasion, carefully order your usurious investments in War Loan—the price of slaughter—so that you will continue to draw interest, or money for nothing.

Pretty dreadful, isn’t it ! The Listener of July 20th reprinted his wonderful effort, so that posterity may better know the kind of Man whom Fate threw up at this great hour of crisis.

W. T. Hopley

The Great Lie. (1930)

Book Review from the September 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

Falsehood in War-time, Containing an Assortment of Lies Circulated Throughout the Nations During the Great War by Arthur Ponsonby (Allen & Unwin.)

We still speak familiarly of the War, as though it were something that only occurred the other day. It is curious to reflect that our boys of sixteen were babies in arms, and our young men now coming of age were toddling infants when red ruin was let loose on an unsuspecting world. Each year it is customary on the anniversary of the catastrophe, for the tawdry minds of Fleet Street to reassure a doubtful world that the slaughter was not in vain. Its hideous futility and long-drawn-out horror, are concealed in flatulent phrases about our National Honour, our concern for International Rights, the Sacredness of our Pledged Word, our Regard for the Rights of Small Nations, and other eyewash. Should there be any who still allow these illusions to drift about their consciousness, they might do much worse than spend half-a-crown on Mr. Ponsonby’s “Falsehood in Wartime.” August 4th this year again fell on Bank Holiday, exactly as it did sixteen years ago, and it seemed fitting to celebrate the anniversary by reading how our Christian rulers lied the people into massacre, lied them through it, and lied them back to peace and unemployment again. As Mr. Ponsonby says : “There must have been more deliberate lying in the world from 1914 to 1918 than in any other period of the world’s history.”

Those who were too young for the shambles last time, would do well to examine the bait that caught their fathers and their elder brothers. The collection is not exhaustive. It is only an exposure of a few samples, and is intended as a warning. The nation was assured that it was not committed to France in any way. It was a lie. “All preparations, down to the last detail, had been made, as shown by the prompt, secret and well-organised despatch of the Expeditionary Force.” The German invasion of Belgium was given as the cause of Great Britain’s entry into the war. It was a lie. Mr. Ponsonby gives the evidence. Germany, of course, we know was solely responsible for the war ! Mr. Asquith said so : “One Power, and one Power only, and that Power is Germany.” Lloyd George referred to it as the “most dangerous conspiracy ever plotted against the liberty of nations. …” (August 4th, 1917.) Three years later the Welsh Wizard realized “that no one at the head of affairs quite meant war at that stage (August 1st, 1914) . . , and a discussion, I have no doubt, would have averted it.” Four years of the bloodiest horror the human race has experienced, “and a discussion, I have no doubt, would have averted it.” What a thought for Bank Holiday. If the twenty million dead could only read that.

And then there was the notorious lie of the passage of hordes of Russian troops through Great Britain, en route for France. In less than a month the atrocity stories commenced. There was the nurse whose breast had been mutilated, the Belgian baby whose hands had been hacked off, the Canadian who was crucified, the tale of the prisoner whose tongue had been torn out, the tattooed man, and so on. All lies, utter downright lies. Everyone remembers the German corpse factory yarn. Who believes it now? And so we go on. Lists of atrocities that never happened, photographs that were faked, official documents that were doctored ; lies by the cubic ton, lies by the square mile, lies by the great gross, and all to secure the killing of men and the starving of women and children. The British established a truth manipulating factory at Crewe House, under the appropriate leadership of Lord Northcliffe, founder of the “Daily Mail.” He’d had some experience.

Mr. Ponsonby is candid. He says in his introduction : “This is no plea that lies should not be used in war-time, but a demonstration of how lies must be used in war-time. If the truth were told from the outset, there would be no reason, and no will to war.”

He calls attention to the new and far more efficient instrument of propaganda which has appeared since the last war—the Government control of broadcasting. He concludes : “None of the heroes prepared for suffering and sacrifice, none of the common herd ready for service and obedience, will be inclined to listen to the call of their country once they discover the polluted sources from whence that call proceeds and recognise the monstrous finger of falsehood which beckons them to the battlefield.”

We agree. We were saying that ten years before the war. It is important to realise, however, that the pollution is not confined to war-time.

W. T. Hopley

Answers to Correspondents: Is Christianity “fizzing out”? (1930)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received from a reader the letter which is printed below :—

Clapton, E.5. 31/5/30.

To the Editor.

Dear Sir,

I am a regular reader of the Standard, and admire the good sense in most of the articles, but I should like to know if the writer of the article on religion in the April issue includes the Christian religion ; if he did, I should think he requires a dose of logic. If the circulation of a party’s organ is any criterion to go by, there is no evidence at present of a “fizzing out” of the Christian religion. Last year’s world sale of the Bible was 42,000,000. Compare this with 30 years ago and you will find a good increase. I am sure he must be at sea a little.

All modern movements for the uplifting of the worker received their impulse from the religion of Christ, and probably the writer of “fizzing out” would not have the ability to write if it was not for our religion.

In conclusion, I should advise you to improve your articles on religion if you wish to maintain your good reputation.

God Bless You.

Yours very sincerely,

H. F. Roberts.

P.S.—I should be glad if you would let me know if the religion of Jesus helped Amy Johnson.

Our Reply.

It is good to hear that Mr. Roberts is a regular reader of our paper. Long may he remain so. We are always glad to hear from our readers, either in criticism or in approval. Anything is better than a devastating silence. It is heartening to feel that the thoughts one hatches and commits to paper, find a response somewhere; that someone is moved to throwing either bouquets or bricks. The article to which Mr. Roberts takes exception was largely composed of the thoughts of others. First, an extract from the “Daily News” described the “unholy scramble for jobs” amongst the professional Christians. Then an extract from Robert Graves’ “Good-bye to All That,” in which he stated that under the test of war, the professional Christian was often a contemptible creature. Finally, there was a series of extracts from Haldane’s “Possible Worlds,” confirming Graves’ observations, and adding that the modern clergy are recruited from the dregs of the universities and that their income is diminishing and not likely to increase. Our restrained comment was, “Knowledge and correct action will kill capitalism ; religion will flicker out.”

Mr. Roberts disagrees. He thinks we require a “dose of logic” ; that we are at sea a little. As for logic—well, what are we to gather from the mention of 42,000,000 Bibles? Does Mr, Roberts believe there will be 42,000,000 more Christians than before? And will they differ materially from the Christians we meet every day? And will they behave any differently in the next war from that described by Graves and Haldane? 42,000,000 Bibles in one year is certainly a staggering figure, but what is quite as staggering is the futility of it all. What becomes of them? Where do they go? Crossword puzzlers must account for quite a lot, and in the tropics white ants must make a difference. The armies that have sprung up consequent upon the Christian treaties following the war would also affect the Bible market. You don’t see the connection?

Then you must have another quotation, this time from Brigadier-General Crozier’s “A Brass Hat in No Man’s Land.” He describes the use which the military authorities made of the Chaplains and their religious ceremonies and beliefs, in the following pointed phrase :—”The Christian Churches are the finest blood-lust creators which we have, and of them we made free use.”

However, we need not labour the point. The final enquiry of Mr. Roberts as to whether the religion of Jesus helped Amy Johnson, is one upon which, up to the time of writing, we have no exact knowledge. Our only source of information, the daily newspaper, has only mentioned petrol so far, and this appears to have been sufficient. We have never heard of the religion of Jesus being used in the way suggested, or undoubtedly Major Segrave would have availed himself of it in his similar desperate enterprise.

W. T. Hopley

* * *

There is rather an amusing commentary on the wide circulation of Bibles in that very religious country—the U.S.A.

The Gideon Bible Society—sometimes called the Giddy ones—collect funds from the rich to supply a Bible free to every room in every hotel, so that commercial travellers may have some spiritual consolation for lack of orders. It has often been noted that whilst articles of any value whatever are constantly stolen—the Bible is always left behind. And the only evidence of its nice, clean pages being disturbed, is the rude remarks scribbled in the margins.

Editorial Committee.

A Knight out. (1930)

From the June 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

I must admit I find the wireless lectures very stimulating. The lecturer has prepared his subject, there are no interruptions, no interjections, no bronchial whoopings, no scuffling feet, no late-comers or early-goers; in short, there is perfection—nearly. I say nearly, because one feels sometimes that the speaker has prepared his paper in some far-distant country, a good many years ago, and has just walked off the steamer into the studio. Unsuspectingly, he says his little piece, and favoured by the absence of a visible audience, delivers himself of some “truth” that had better remained in its coffin. Now perfection would provide for the lecturer being reminded that his data were slightly mildewed ; that possibly in picking up his notes for the lecture on “The Sex Life of Slugs,” be had inadvertently added a leaf from the lecture on “Stamp Collecting in the Stone Age.”

Something of this sort must have happened to Sir James Jeans, for in his “Point of View, ” broadcast on February 24th, be made an astonishing mix-up. It is only charitable to assume some such accident, for no scientist since 1880 would have included such matter in a serious lecture. At a birthday party perhaps, or a Fleet Street “smoker,” but not in any place where the bracing-wind of science can reach.

“Quite frankly,” he commenced, “my point of view is that of a scientist—an astronomer.” He will not need me to remind him that a scientist frames and tests theories based on verifiable data.

We may take it that when Sir James Jeans says, “We believe that the earth is merely a tiny fragment of the sun, which got splashed off, almost by accident, something like 2,000 million years ago,” he could produce some sort of evidence. When he tells the listening world that the earth is millions of years old; that it remained uninhabited for millions of years; that life arrived and passed through the forms of protozoa, fishes, reptiles, and mammals culminating; in man, we may assume he is dealing in facts; that volumes of ordered knowledge bolster up his statements, and that scores of eminent colleagues agree with him. And yet, would you believe a scientist would commit himself, before an audience of millions, to the following fragment of ordered knowledge.

“Our socialist orators tell us much in glowing terms about the hypothetical socialist future. Why do they tell us so little about the socialist and communist experiments of the past, in which their theories were really tested? It is, I think, because those experiments all ended in failure. The truth seems to be that no socialist state ever endures for long—as such. ”

That, of course, is where his manuscript must have got mixed up with the lining of his lunch bag, and he found himself reading a pre-war page from the Swamp Herald or Daily Express. Unfortunately his attention has not been drawn to the happening, and the statement has received the publicity of print in the Listener of March 5th. However, as there may be some few people who think he really meant what he said, I am prepared to make a public confession. I also have wondered in the past why our Socialist orators have told us so little about the Socialist and Communist experiments in which their theories have been tested. I candidly admit my heart gave a great bound, when I heard him raise this question. I thought I was going to satisfy the hope of a lifetime, and hear the names of the Socialist states referred to. Sir James was strangely reluctant to mention them. He himself deplores the reluctance of our Socialist orators to do likewise. I am keenly disappointed, and it looks as though the truth is where I have long suspected. Failing some scientific evidence from Sir James Jeans, I shall be compelled to affirm that he does not know of such a state ; that there never was such a state and that Socialist theories have never been tested “really” or in any way. Both his reluctance, and that of our Socialist orators are founded in the same fog-bank. There never was such a Socialist state. The noble knight must have mixed his notes.

The fact of the statement having also been printed rather complicates matters, and perhaps some little explanation may put things right. The ground has been covered many, many times in this journal, and there is not room in this article to cover it again. But this may be said. As a scientist Sir James Jeans will have heard of evolution. It is the name we apply to the process of development by which life, the earth, and the universe, have changed from simple beginnings to their present state. Nothing is stationary; nothing stagnant—all is ceaseless change. The very Alps were once liquid mud; the mighty oceans were thin gases; the whole earth a boiling globe, incapable of any form of life as we know it. Scientists have described for us the whole wonderful pageant of change, which through millions of centuries, slowly paved the way for the coming of man ; and man is fond of regarding himself as the crown of evolution. Anyway, crown or not, he appeared very late upon the scene and has still a lot of development before him. Like everything in the universe, he has evolved. Although h likes to regard himself as something distinct from what he calls Nature, his links with animal ancestors are beyond dispute. Every baby, born into the world, recapitulates in embryo stages of his journey.

Apparently man has always been a gregarious animal, that is, he liked living in company. Other forms of life do, too, baboons, elephants, whales, birds, etc. This custom has clung to man, ever since he was man. And no matter how his mode of life has changed — hunter, pastoralist, or civilised—he has ever been found in communities. These communities have in turn been the subject of change—in a word, have evolved, and scientists can tell us why one form of human society gave place to another, and how our own form stands at the end of a chain. This will suggest, of course, to the intelligent reader, that there is no reason why this should be the end of the chain. But before we consider that, there is one important point to make. Evolution is only a name we apply for convenience sake to a process. It is not like the word God, which we spell with a capital letter, and use as a convenient cover for all we do not know. Evolution is simply a word for the process of development. It does not imply purpose, or intention. For instance, the Mauretania has evolved from the dug-out canoe, but the prehistoric contrivers of the dug-out had not the remotest conception of the liner. The words you are reading are connected with the marks on the clay bricks of Babylon, but neither Nebuchadnezzar nor his dusky subjects could have seen the printing press in futurity. The Rolls-Royce has evolved from the ox-cart, the tractor-plough from the digging stick, the sky-scraper from the mud-hut, but none of those at the dawn of things had the fragment of an idea of latter-day developments. It was not until comparatively recently that evolution became a mental concept and that mankind realised its possibilities.

The working of evolution has been blind. In mankind Nature becomes conscious and aware of the forces of development. Man applies the methods of science to his own development and the development of his Institution. No longer is he at the mercy of blind forces. He is learning to tame them and use them for his own definite advancement. Wild beasts, famine and pestilence do not play the part they did in human affairs. Every year sees them more under control. The greatest problems man has to face are those arising from his living in huge communities. These communities have arisen in traceable progression, from the collection of mud-huts on the banks of a river to the intricate community of a hundred thousand towns and a hundred million people. But the allied questions of feeding, clothing and sheltering humanity have been treated in a haphazard fashion under civilisations dependent upon trading. Being fortuitous and haphazard, it has had the unscientific results one would expect. In one section of the community too many clothes, in another too few; one section glutted with food to satiety, another on the brink of starvation or living on inferior food and substitutes ; one section with huge houses, well built, well lighted and well furnished ; the other with inadequate shelters, poorly built, meagrely lighted and furnished with rubbish. At one place you will find thousands of hungry people, whilst food is being wilfully destroyed at another. You will find thousands of people contracting rheumatism through lack of proper foot covering, whilst makers of boots are unable to make them; because—crowning absurdity—because they have made too many for the market.

The needs of the community are neither ascertained nor met in any really scientific way. One ruling principle dominates society—the making of profit. When everybody wants something, that is called demand. Numbers of individuals in the hope of making a profit, rush forward with their goods; that is called supply. The rival suppliers try to overreach and ruin each other; they try to monopolise as much of the demand as they can; they waste huge sums in what is called advertising; they drive their workers to produce the greatest possible wealth, in the shortest possible time. Then suddenly it is found that they have produced too much, and those who have made the wealth are rewarded with unemployment and semi-starvation.

There are people who say this method of feeding, clothing and sheltering ourselves, this hapless, planless, mad scramble to make need and supply balance, is the best humanity has discovered. You will usually find such people occupy a fortunate position in society. It would be odd to find them decrying a system which yielded them a very happy life. But there are others who say that now mankind has achieved an understanding of evolution, he can organise his community upon a scientific basis, and one wherein poverty can be unknown. He has no need to leave his present community and proceed to some desolate, primitive country and start building huge machines in the wilderness. Nothing would result from that, but a heap of rust and a few skeletons. No ! he is to take the civilization he has built, and reorganize it upon a basis of communal ownership. He is to abolish the out-of-date cumbrous and unscientific custom of individuals or groups owning communal necessities. Without food we starve; without clothing we shiver; without shelter we become diseased and die; and yet there are people who say these human essentials are best provided by those whose sole motive is their own enrichment. Sounds a bit mad, doesn’t it! How future schoolchildren will smile, and wonder if it was really true. It will seem so obvious to them that the communal necessities should be communally owned. And to think that we can do it, whenever we like; whenever, that is, the working class organises itself to consciously .remould human society on the lines described in our Object.

W. T. Hopley

The Decay of Religion. (1930)

From the April 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

With institutions there are degrees, even of deadness. Religion, for instance, may be deader than we think. The following extract from the religious notes in the Daily News of March 5th is quite illuminating : —

“Unholy Scramble.”

“An Anglican clergyman has described to me what he alleges to be the ‘unholy scramble’ that goes on behind the scenes for clerical appointments in the patronage of the Crown. He states that every possible string is pulled, not of course by the clergyman himself, but by his friends (with his knowledge). No avenue of approach is refused and a political caucus could not behave with greater skill and discrimination. While the friends of one man are at work he knows full well that several other clergymen are being pushed forward in a similar manner. Everyone concerned hates the system. But, as my informant says : ‘What can be done to improve it and place such patronage upon a more dignified basis?'”

This we might usefully follow with the following extract from Robert Graves’ “Good-bye to All That.”

“It was said that not one soldier in a hundred was inspired by religious feeling of even the crudest kind. 

For the regimental chaplains as a body we had no respect. If the regimental chaplains had shown one-tenth the courage, endurance and other human qualities that the regimental doctors showed, we agreed the B.E.F. might well have started a religious revival. But they had not. The fact is that they were under orders not to get mixed up with the fighting, to stay behind with the transport, and not to risk their lives. No soldier could have any respect for a chaplain who obeyed these orders, and yet there was not in our experience, one chaplain in fifty who was not glad to obey them. Occasionally on a quiet day, in a quiet section, the chaplain would make a daring afternoon visit to the support line, and distribute a few cigarettes, and that was all. But he was always in evidence back in rest-billets. Sometimes the colonel would summon him to come up with the rations and bury the day’s dead, and he would arrive, speak his lines and hastily retire.”

There you have two pictures of the value of superstition as a guide to living. There is a “holy scramble” for jobs in the world of witch-doctors when what is called peace is the order of things. When war presents the opportunity of a quick acquaintance with the joys of heaven, the self-appointed guides show a strange reluctance to leave the solid earth. Whether Robert Graves knew Prof. J. B. S. Haldane or not is not known to the writer, but it is remarkable how similar are their observations.

In an essay called “Mercy” in his “Possible Worlds,” Prof. Haldane says:

“I should be the last to suggest that the late war was a good thing, but there is no doubt it furnished a rough test of character. It will therefore be interesting to analyse the conduct of ministers of religion during its course.”

He proceeds, in the course of the essay, to do so. The following are fair extracts :

“A large number of the younger clergy became army chaplains. In this way they at once obtained the very satisfactory status of commissioned officers. With other officers that status was on the whole a fair return for the very grave dangers which they ran. The army chaplains generally ran the irreducible minimum of risk. Most of them kept well behind the line. In my war experience I never saw a chaplain display courage.”

Another extract.

“It may be contended that I was unfortunate in my acquaintance among army chaplains, and biassed in my interpretation of their conduct. It is therefore important to examine the behaviour of the clergy as a body. When conscription was introduced in Britain the clergy of all denominations showed a unanimity without parallel since the Reformation. Conscription was not for them, and so great was clerical influence among the governing-classes that their exemption was taken as a matter of course. Now from a Christian point of view, it is perhaps arguable that ministers of religion should not fight. But there is absolutely no reason why the self-styled disciples of Jesus should not, as privates of the R.A.M.C., have tended the sick and wounded under conditions of moderate discomfort if relatively little danger.”

The final extract.

“Priests have always used their power to evade the moral obligations of the ordinary man ; and threatened him with fire here or hereafter, or with social or economic penalties if he referred to the fact. What is new in the situation is that the public is beginning to recognise the moral and intellectual inferiority of the clergy. Their income is diminishing, and it is not likely to increase. For whereas the clergy of sixty years and over are on the whole men of fair intelligence, those of to-day are being recruited from the dregs of the universities, whilst many have no higher education at all. Under these circumstances they are hardly likely to tap fresh sources of revenue.”

So there you are. Knowledge and correct action will kill capitalism ; religion will flicker out.

W. T. Hopley

Thoughts at the Pictures. (1929)

From the September 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

We thought our town was well supplied with cinemas, but three months ago another opened. This was really a grand affair, with everything right up to recent date. There was a beautiful copper dome, surmounting an artistic tiled front, and when all the lights were twinkling and reflected in the small lake before the building, it was like a dream palace. And then you walked through the polished doors and up the marble stairs,, helping yourself along with the heavy brass handrails until you came to the paybox. Here stood an ambassador (I am sure he was an ambassador, for he was covered in gold lace), who always made the same mistake. He always assumed that we were either American oil-kings or else ex-sergeant-majors, for he immediately called out, “Seats at 5/9, 3/6 and 2/4.” He never mentioned the 6d. and 1/- ones. He made us feel somewhat cheap, but we found he was paid to do that and thus increase his master’s takings, so we paid our shillings and went in. And inside ! What a vision ! To the great majority of people in our town, whose homes are furnished by Tallyman, Gombeen and Tick, Ltd , and decorated by Woolworth’s, the new cinema must appear the last thing in the palatial. Gilt and tinsel, plush and velvet, silken curtains and orange glow-lamps, all go to make the nearest approach to fairyland most of us have ever known. There was a cinema organ capable of making 591 different kinds of noise. I will not venture to express my own ill-balanced and highly prejudiced opinion of it, but will simply state that the majority of my fellow citizens were brought into a state of ecstasy by it. And then there was the orchestra of about twenty musicians. I mention this feature last, because we were assured that it was a highly efficient body under the baton of the well-known conductor, Mr. So-and-So. One must admit that when they played music they were a joy, a pure, unrestrained joy, but when they introduced those orgies of hoots, squeals and death-rattles that are miscalled dance music, they were not a joy.

However, I mention them last for another reason that will be presently apparent. I did not go to the cinema again, because I found that in spite of the fairy-like exterior, the beautiful interior, the organ, the orchestra and all the rest, there appeared upon the screen nothing but the slushiest of slush. One is not entertained by slush.

But there came a day when the owner of the luxurious building informed his “esteemed patrons” and the world at large that, true to the policy of keeping abreast with modern developments, and sparing no expense, he would inaugurate the newest scientific wonder, the talking picture.

So as soon after the opening night as possible, we again paid a visit to the hall of luxury. There were the shaded lights, the marble floor, the painted sky on the ceiling, the courteous attendants as before, and, as we entered, the organ was playing one of the Indian love lyrics. It was not until the great feature, the talking picture, came on, that we noticed a difference. The orchestra had disappeared. Where previously had sat some twenty men in dress suits, producing melody of charm and vigour, there was a boarded expanse, covered with coloured bunting and artificial flowers. Yes ! Gay bunting and paper roses. He had “spared no expense” with a vengeance. It was the tomb of the orchestra. All its members had been sacked. Instead of their merry fiddling, all the noises that are intruded to charm a cinema audience, proceeded from a machine situated in the orchestra’s tomb. I need not tell you what I thought of the film, or of the talkie device, which has obvious wonderful possibilities. But I could not keep my mind from reverting to a little argument I had had with a friend during the day on unemployment.

He had retailed the old, time-worn phrases as to its cause and cure that the Press provides each day for the satisfaction of its readers. He had admitted, willingly admitted, that the introduction of machinery displaced labour, but urged that effect was only temporary as, owing to the cheapening of costs, prices fell, leading to a bigger demand than ever, when the displaced workers were rapidly re-absorbed. I tried to apply this line of reasoning to the sacked orchestra but I am afraid it did not fit. And yet my friend was only saying what the Capitalist Press says. Another statement he retailed from the same source was that men displaced from an industry by the introduction of machinery, eventually found work in the making of that machinery. There seemed to be a flaw in this reasoning, too. I could not conceive of those twenty musicians selling their instruments in a glutted market, and setting out to find the place where the wonderful talkie machines are made, in the hope that their skill as makers of melody would avail them as makers of machines. Had they been so exceedingly simple as to act upon those lines, it is quite possible they would have been unable to get near the factory for crowds of other musicians similarly made redundant, and crowds of real engineers already seeking employment.

Another argument he used, or rather quoted, was that unemployment was caused by cheap foreign labour. And yet these machines were the product of highly-paid American labour. I heard later that a British talkie is now being marketed costing but a third of the American product. Even this information did not seem to me to be of great comfort to the starving musician. Whether the machine was made by labour aristocrats or sweated coolies, the effect on the musician seemed the same. However, thinking over these things interfered with my appreciation of the film, and as my friend was not there I could not ask him to explain his ingenious theories in the presence of the awkward facts. I must recommend him to make a little study of the case of the cinema musician and his sudden and dramatic displacement by the machine, and then go over his theories over again. Perhaps he will see that the reason the musicians are sent out to starve, whilst a machine does their work, is because the cinema is privately owned and it is to the interest of the proprietor to substitute a cheaper music maker if he can, for he thus enlarges the amount of his profit. It is nothing to him that the human musicians starve if they cannot find a hirer. He will tell them he is not a philanthropic institution. He is not in business for the good of his health or the good of his employees. If they are wise, they will take him at his word. He is not in business for their benefit. Then they must see that the private ownership of their means of livelihood is incompatible with their good. They will see further, that the whole of this society of ours is run upon the same basis, and that their unemployment is not to be distinguished from unemployment in general. Their problem is only part of the whole problem, and the whole problem can only be solved by a universal remedy. We say that the only remedy suggested, so far, that has stood every sort of criticism, is Socialism. All our means of livelihood are privately owned, and all of us workers are liable to be sent packing whenever our hirers can find a cheaper substitute. How long are we going to stand it? Why should we not own our own means of livelihood? Why should a relatively small and parasite class dictate to the vast mass of people when they shall work and when not? Let us take possession of the things that are vital to our very existence. We make them, we operate them, we repair them and renew them. We do everything but own them. Without us the whole of the machinery in the world, beautiful as it is, clever as it is, ingenious as it undoubtedly is, is so much junk. Let us make the land, the factories, the machines and the tools of production, common property, and then perhaps, instead of a machine making men into paupers, we shall welcome every machine that lightens labour, for it will bring us holidays and increased leisure. The system wherein the means whereby all live are commonly owned and administered, is called Socialism. That is what we are aiming at, and we want a million workers to say definitely they want it, and are prepared to help get it. Will you be one?

W. T. Hopley

All Quiet on the Parliamentary Front. (1929)

From the September 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the evenings draw in, it is more and more evident that Socialism will not be here by Christmas. This, we must agree, is disappointing. True, the Labour Government has done its best, but what with the lack of rain, and the holiday season coming on, one must not expect too much. Photographs of Uncle Arthur at Scheveningen, looking the reverse of revolutionary, have appeared in the papers; others of Ramsay in flying kit, so anxious to achieve Socialism in Our Time that he has to resort to the airplane ; others again of Snowden, scowling, sneering or smiling. Delightful little paragraphs have appeared depicting the charming home life and complete domestic harmlessness of the Labour Cabinet. Altogether they can be said to have had a good press. Even when they disguised Sidney Webb in the fustian of a Lord, the jeers were fairly restrained. And now, after three months of office, we find capital going further still and saying, “the whole Empire is behind Philip Snowden.” Here is a revolution indeed. Three months ago they were disrupters of the Empire ; to-day, Snowden talks of its prestige and its rightful foremost place in world affairs.

What has happened? It is very simple. There is no need to expend a great number of words in explaining. During the great European war, the Labour Party was on the side of Capital. In 1924, when they were “in office but not in power,” their most outstanding achievement was to threaten revolting workers with the Emergency Powers Act. In 1929 the first jobs they tackle are the safeguarding of capitalist rights in Egypt, the cheaper running of the Navy by arrangement with capitalist rivals, and the squabbling with European capitalists over the sharing of German reparations.

We submit those are not the actions of a party whose object is the overthrow of Capitalism. Briand, Stresemann and Snowden meet round the table as equals. They are equals. Each represents a separate capitalist entity. The workers will realise this as the months and years roll by and their lot remains the same. They will realise that to vote for a working man because he is a working man, and for no other reason, is the height of futility. Capitalism, administered by working men, differs in little from capitalism administered by capitalists. The workers must learn that it is not the individuals, it is the system that is at fault, They must grasp this fact and hold on to it, that changing the name and not the thing achieves nothing. They must cease to believe such tosh as that recently published in the New Leader, wherein the workers were urged to admire Socialism in practice at Bournemouth, Brighton and Blackpool. We hope to have many opportunities of commenting upon the career of foolishness that is now before the Labour Party. The problem is a simple one. The workers who produce all wealth are poor in the midst of plenty. A million of them cannot find a master. Their condition is acute. The remainder are poor, permanently poor. We shall see that the Labour Government has no remedy.

W. T. Hopley

Corrupt America and Pure England. (1928)

From the October 1928 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is one thing for which we, as Britishers, can never be sufficiently grateful, and that is the white-souled purity of our political institutions. In this, of course, we are unique among nations. In the U.S.A. politics and graft have long been interchangeable terms. France, it is well known, is a seething hotch-potch of franc speculators, anti-clericals, Bourbonists and a score of others. Italy is in the grip of a tyranny worse than Nero’s, and Spain is making revolution a habit. Germany—bah, you can’t trust these Junkers ; and Russia (pause, for snarl and baring of teeth) has changed the knout and Siberia for the Cheka and sudden death. Only we, the fortunate dwellers in this little isle, set in a silver sea, remain as we have ever been, pure, unspotted, a pattern for the world. Was it not we who invented that institution now known as the Mother of Parliaments? Very well, then. Let us remain as we have endured down the ages— pure, unsullied, immaculate, above reproach ; the envy of a world filled with foreigners; a secret and holy joy to ourselves.

And what is this man Baker doing? Surely he must know all this ! Surely he will have weighed the wild and whirling words with which he besmirches the reputation of our Parliament House ! And yet the painful fact must be faced. Hansard, we cannot permit ourselves to doubt, else follows chaos and confusion. And that patient record of our rulers’ murmurings recounts that, on August 2nd of this present year, Mr. Walter Baker rose in his place in the House of Commons and delivered himself of the following scandals. He said the Government was proposing to transfer its Beam system of telegraphy to a private firm, and that the circumstances leading up to that decision were disgraceful and scandalous. He reminded them that he had previously stated that the merger between the cable companies and the Marconi Company was a calculated attempt to force the hands of the Government, and that it was accompanied by a treacherous threat to let the cables go derelict. He mentioned the enormous cash reserves, £14,000,000, which, with the aid of Government subsidies, the cable companies had built up; and then he turned to Marconi’s. After referring to continued serious charges made against the methods of the directors of that firm, he made the remarkable statement that the Marconi Company had been engaged in selling shares in the Spanish and General Corporation for about 1½d. each, shares which were now worth 38s. 6d. He asserted the latter firm had no assets of any value, and the tremendous jump in price was attributable to pure manipulation. What he wished to learn was why a certain newspaper persistently quoted these shares as “Spanish Marconi,” when the company had nothing to do with wireless; why the Marconi Company had found it necessary to sell them at l½d. each; and why the shares had experienced the tremendous rise to 38s. 6d. whilst the firm had no assets of any value. He further mentioned how uncomfortable he felt at finding an M.P. (the junior Member for Norwich) as one of the new directors of the Spanish and General Corporation. As for the Marconi Company, he recalled to the House the fact that this company had recently written down its capital by about 50 per cent. As a result of a powerful circular to the shareholders, the reduction was agreed to, and the shares had a sensational fall to 12s. The circular was signed by Sir William Plender, Sir Robert Kindersley, the Hon. Charles White, Dr. E. Ofenheim and the Earl of Leicester. It was not disclosed to the shareholders, he said, that Sir William Plender, in addition to being auditor for the cable companies, was the cable companies’ negotiator in the transactions between them and Marconi. Further, at the date on which Sir Robert Kindersley signed the circular, he was not the registered holder of a single share. But through the Cushion Trust, a subsidiary of Lazard Bros., he was acquiring thousands of shares at a low price during March and April, 1927. By October 25th, 1927, those shares were quoted at 38s., and on March 14th, 1928, they had reached 67s. 6d.

Civil servants will be glad to hear of a process which will render them independent of wage cuts based on fluctuations in the cost of living. Railwaymen will gather new hope when they discover how to more than compensate themselves for relinquishing 2½ per cent, of their earnings. Listen to this.

Mr. Baker next recounted that on December 31st, 1925, the Marconi Company held 1,238,658 shares in the Canadian Marconi Company. The Marconi directors wrote down the value of those shares to 2s. 1d. a share, and then sold the shares to Sir Robert Kindersley, that is, to the Cushion Trust, at 4s. 2d. a share. To-day they are quoted at about 30s. The Cushion Trust, the nominee company of Lazard Bros., who held 5,485 shares in the Marconi Company at the end of November, 1927, had increased their holding at the beginning of 1928 to 51,800 shares.

Mr. Baker then dealt with a few of the personalities involved and their associations. There was the hon. and gallant member for Ripon (Major Hills), who on a previous occasion had expressed his concern at the danger of the Government losing the taxpayer’s money by continuing its control of Beam wireless. Besides “other interests,” he was discovered to be a director of the group which controls the most important financial papers in the City of London. There was Viscount Wolmer, who, after three years as Assistant Postmaster-General, made an attack on the Post Office as a State enterprise. This attack curiously enough coincided with this campaign, and, equally curiously, with the publication of the Hardman Lever Report, a report which went beyond the terms of reference of the Committee and attacked State management of the telegraph services. The Chairman of this Committee is a director of the Daily Mail Trust, and the Daily Mail has hopes of becoming the greatest newspaper in the world, through the medium of wireless. The father of Viscount Wolmer, Lord Selborne, is Chairman of the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, More than a third of the shares of this Company are owned by the Eastern and South African Telegraph Company and the Globe Telegraph and Trust Company, both members of the merger. Lord Selborne is a director of Lloyds Bank, which shares a director with the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, besides being a director of the Peninsular and Oriental Banking Corporation, another director of which sits on the board of the African Direct Telegraph Company and the Eastern Telegraph Company. Sir Robert Kindersley was formerly a director of the Eastern Telegraph Company. He is now one of the directors of the Bank of England and managing director of Lazard Bros., who purchased the shares of the Canadian Marconi Company.

With which interesting information we propose to close down just here and publish a further contribution next month. After all, the long winter evenings are approaching, and we hope we are performing a public service by providing something to fill the blank hour on Sundays when the sky pilots are groaning from 2LO. Perhaps some worker may be stirred into thinking that the forces of capital are by no means asleep; that they will not be fought by grudged shillings in a trade union box and occasional pence to a political party. Socialism, the alternative to Capitalism, will not ”come of itself.” Its achievement will require effort, hard unremitting effort. Sympathy is not enough. It is work that counts ; planned, disciplined work. Come in.

W. T. Hopley