50 Years Ago: Atrocities in war (1964)

The 50 Years Ago column from the October 1964 issue of the Socialist Standard

One of the most laughable spectacles of the day is the universal outcry about what our innocent masters and their saintly hirelings of the Press and pulpit are pleased to call the “atrocities of the Huns.” Mark ! it is not here denied that there have been appalling outrages committed by the Kaiser’s hosts. That is not the question with which we are at the moment concerned. It is the capitalist hands upheld in horror, and the round-eyed astonishment of our good, kind masters, that engage our amused attention.

. . .

On the West Coast of Africa is a large tract of country called the Congo Free State. Unfortunately for the inhabitants of that country it was found that in the great forests of the region there grew abundantly the trees from which rubber is obtained. As usually happens when white men discover defenceless natives in a country whose virgin forests are rich in rubber trees, the aborigines were enslaved and compelled to gather the rubber for their white masters.

The particular case of the Congo Free State formed the subject of a British enquiry by Commissioner Casement, whose report disclosed atrocities more villainous, if that were possible, than anything which has yet been charged against the Germans in Belgium.

The sickening details it is not necessary to more than touch upon. Terrorism was the foundation of the Congo system of exploitation. How the feet of natives were cut off because the amount of rubber they collected did not (as indeed, it never could) satisfy the greed of their masters; how the unfortunate blacks were suspended over slow fires and roasted to death; how a country was devastated in order to pile up wealth for foreign invaders: all this can be read elsewhere by those whose memories need refreshing.

To pile up wealth for whom? For Germans? Oh no! for Belgians. If the German “culture” found its expression in the stark outrages of the smiling plains of Belgium, Belgian “culture” asserted itself in the blood-reeking shambles of the Congo rubber fields. 

. . .

It is not only the Belgians, however, who have proved themselves to be quite the equals of the Germans in the matter of perpetrating outrages that “stagger humanity.” In this respect Russia is so notorious that it is hardly necessary to do more than whisper the name. How the Press of the world rang, a decade or so ago, with the infamies that made the names of the Tzar and his Cossacks stink in the nostrils of men!

. . .

France, also—democratic, chivalric France—has her gobbeted pages of history. The Massacre of S. Bartholomew is a classic example of foul treachery and degraded brutality that will stand so long as dastardly human deeds find a recorder at all. The history of Paris, however, bristles with shameful atrocities, among which it is sufficient to instance—not the suppression, don't think it was that — but the bloody vengeance wreaked upon the workers of Paris for the Commune of 1871. After the fighting ceased 30,000 working men, women, and children of Paris were butchered in cold blood, while the conditions under which those were interned who were to be transported to New Caledonia are too revolting to be printed here.

. . .

Nor is Britain herself above the perpetration of atrocious outrage, both at home and abroad. The Boer War furnished examples enough, in spite of official whitewash. The Boer general, Beyers, has just stated that every Boer farmer’s house was a Louvain, and Smuts, with all his fervent turn-coat patriotism, could not deny the statement he could only endeavour to draw the curtain over it

The history of the British rule in India, where famine has succeeded famine, and multitudes have sunk down in their wretched hovels and die of starvation whilst their white masters were exporting the grain Indian people had grown, puts Britain on a level with any Huns, ancient or modern.

[From the article, The Socialist View of the German Atrocities, by A. E. Jacomb, published in the Socialist Standard, October 1914.]

Independence for All. (1916)

From the October 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the report of an interview with a Mr. R. M. Kindersley, which appeared in the “Daily Chronicle” of July 13th under the title of “The New Habit,” is about as much piffle as it is possible to get into two columns of that paper. The writer, Mr. Arnold Bennett, praises the subject of the interview for the part he is playing in getting other people to economise and save during the war, by the use of the bait of, not 9d. for 4d. this time, but £1 for 15s. 6d.— we are dealing with “high finance,” don’tcher-know.

Now, you 223,000 railway workers who, according to your “leaders” (“Daily Telegraph,” 21.8.16.) are getting less than 25s. a week, and you other workers who are getting less than a pound, have you read the scheme ? It shows you how to get rich without work ! Buy War Loan certificates. You will see you are on a good thing if I quote from the article. Mr. Kindersley is speaking.

“The proposition is the £1 for 15s. 6d. War Savings certificate. It means an unsurpassed security, the security of the British nation, and principle paid back at the end of a short term, together with compound interest at the rate of £5 4s, 7d. per cent. And no income tax ! And you can cash it at any time on three days notice. This form of saving presents every advantage.

There is simply nothing else to touch it anywhere on earth. Most people, old and young, have a foundation of common sense, and they only need to understand the advantages of the 15s. 6d. certificate in order to buy it.”

Stick a pin there—nothing to pay for the tip. This statement, of course, is wrong. You need more than to understand in order to buy a certificate : you need money. But still they have made it easy to quote again.

“Members need not wait until they have the 15s. 6d. in hand. They can begin to save at once with as small a sum as 6d. . . There is no limit except that no single human being can buy more than 500 certificates.”

This scheme is easy ; indeed there is nothing like it ; it gives everybody a chance. Mr. Kindersley has said so and he ought to know, as this article will show later. Let us see where the chance comes in for a person getting 25s. a week with a wife and four children to keep. He will probably have to pay out for

After providing for these items he has 11s. per week for food for six persons.

In order that at least one of the six can produce a profit for a boss he must be more or less fit and unfortunately (for the boss) he must eat a little. Consequently we will allow him, with things at present prices, 1s. a day, to be allotted as follows :

Now, Mr. Kindersley, after allotting the man a diet the cost of which would starve you, there are still five persons to feed on the princely sum of 4s. a week. How is it done? Do you feed one of your children at that cost ? Not much ! It is quite clear that there is nothing to spare for beer and tobacco, or holidays, or motor-car tours, or for governesses, toys, or pets for the kids. There is nothing for luxuries of any kind, or even to meet the expenses of illness.

Now, Mr. Kindersley, show us where it is easier to effect a saving—but I forgot, you are not doing that ; this side is left to the wives and maiden ladies of your class.

To turn to the interview again, Mr. Arnold Bennett asked, “And what are you persuading the women to do?” To this Mr. Kindersley replied: “We are persuading them to undertake house-to-house propaganda among women and to serve as honorary secretaries of associations, and to arrange for war economy exhibitions, competitions, cookery demonstrations, and all that sort of thing.” “But,” said Arnold Bennett, “this means heavy work for them.” “It does,” agreed Mr. Kindersley. “But the women will do it. They are doing it. They know, as a sex, the value of economy.”

Is it possible for impudence to go further ? For women who have as much in one week to keep a house on as the worker’s wife has in a whole year, to go and preach economy to these same workers’ wives is extreme irony. I should like to hear how they are received when they suggest cutting down the bill of fare in order to buy War Loan certificates.

“Don’t you want to hear about our advertising department ?” asked Mr. Kindersley. “Don’t you want to hear about, our travelling speakers ? And about our film ‘For the Empire’ ?” One of these talking machines or so-called speakers, has been found out by a section of the workers. He was billed to speak twice at an aircraft factory during dinner hours, bat his reception was such, and the heckling and questions were so much to the point, that only one meeting was held, and that of but 15 minutes duration.

Let me quote Mr. Kindersley again :

“But the most important reason is that we are showing members of the Association how to help the country, and this is what they want above all to do. They like to feel they have a stake in the country, and are helping it as well as saving. This combination is a new and delicious sensation to many of them.”

Until they wake up, when they discover it was only sensation.

The workers of this country, like the workers of other countries, have no stake in the country they happen to be born in. Out of the hundreds of thousands of members of the working class that have been killed in the present bloody war, how many have left wealth sufficient to have to pay death duty on, although the amount is only £100 ? Read the list of wills and you will see how seldom the working-class soldier has anything to bequeath. The butchered wage-slave has given all he had—life. And even that was not his. All there is in and on this country belongs to the capitalist class. Not only have the workers no stake in the country, they have no right in the country except at the bidding of the master class. This class has set up its tribunals to decide whether you shall work, where you shall work, and what work you shall do—or whether their interests would be better served by making a fighting unit of you, to go and murder other workers who are cajoled and coerced by masters in the same way that you are.

What rights have you ? For all the boasted “freedom” of the British race you have the right of slaves—the right to obey your masters. Anything you do in your own interests which is against the interests of your masters, as it must be since the interests of masters and slaves are opposite, is met with imprisonment, banishment, the ignominy of being strapped to a gun wheel, of even death by shooting or hanging.

Don’t blame the master class for what they are doing. Every class acts in its own interests as it understands them. Therefore as this country is owned by the capitalists who live in it it is to their interest to see that it is not endangered by the capitalists of another land, hence their present actions.

Just another quotation from the report in question ; it is a warning of what is likely to happen to all who don’t save. Says Mr. Kindersley :

“My belief is that these Associations are doing more than help the war—they are changing the nation. I foresee the day when the man, woman, or child who does not possess savings in the shape of a national security will be a marked man, women, or child.”

There’s a timely warning. Take heed, otherwise you will be marked “Cain” because you weren’t “Abel,” and the crime will not be on Mr. Kindersley’s shoulders.

Has it ever dawned on you why these people want you to save ? Some of the least astute of the capitalist class have partly told us, though we knew previously. Lord Clarendon, presiding over a War Savings committee meeting at Watford a few weeks ago said : “This saving scheme will not only help us now, but it will help to tide over the industrial depression which must follow the war.” There you are, fellow-workers, though these be lean years there are leaner ones to follow, and if you can be kidded to take up your belt another hole now and live on a bit less you will either be used to it or dead by the time the leaner years come. In either case you will not want poor relief. Should you fail to save in these times of “plenty” and dare to seek relief in the lean period, look out, for Mr. Kindersley has said you will be “a marked man, woman, or child.”

Perhaps the workers who exist in the small village in Herts where Mr. Kindersley’s large residence is situated will wonder what is going to happen to them seeing that their wages are well below 25s. per week. This apostle of working-class economy had the damned cheek to lecture these opulent villagers on the interesting subject of economy a few weeks before he took his family for a month’s holiday to Bangor. A staff of servants, averaging more than two to each member of the family, was sent on by rail, whilst the family followed by road in a Rolls Royce motor car and a cheap £750 knockabout Wolsely car (purchased to run one of the kids to and from school at Eton).

That is economy as practiced by a director of the Bank of England and a governor of the Hudson Bay Company. It is typical of the capitalist class as a whole. In peace time they rob you, the workers, of two-thirds of the wealth that you produce, and now when it is harder to live than any living person can remember, they tell you to save while they themselves spend more on their private billiard room than the average worker gets in wages all his life.

How do they manage it ? They are few compared with the working class, yet they control the lives of the latter. It happens this way.

The capitalists own the country and all on it. The business of the country is carried on through a political machine called Parliament. Control of this machine gives control over the Army, Navy, Police, magistrates, and all the judicial machinery of the country. All laws that matter are passed by and in the interest of those in control of Parliament, and are forced upon the people by the Army, Navy, Police, etc., who act according to instructions from Parliament. Any worker or body of workers who attempt to do anything against the interests of the capitalist class, who at present control Parliament, can at any time be punished or brought back to capitalist law and order by the coercive forces. How do the capitalists get control of Parliament and keep it ? It is quite simple. Every few years an election takes place, whereat there usually come before the people two persons, one calling himself a Liberal and the other a Conservative. Sometimes a Judas from the working class is allowed to take the place of the Liberal, but in the main it is Liberal v. Conservative. Now you know how they call each other names in order to get you to vote for them. Both are representatives of the class who own the country, and in the fight for the seat whichever gets elected makes no difference to the workers.

Millions of pounds of the masters’ money are spent on elections, and it pays because it gives them political control. They dangle before your eyes on posters big loaves and little loaves. “The foreigner has got your job !” they tell you on other posters. “Vote for Have’em and work for all,” they implore; “Vote for Kidem and cheap food,” they wail.

All this goes on because the working class have the power in their hands to give or withhold control of Parliament. That is, they possess the majority of votes. Consequently they have the power to take the control of Parliament from the capitalist class and use it in their own interests. But while they continue to vote for the representatives of the capitalist class, thereby giving them power, they must expect that power to be used in the interest of the class who, for the time being, possess it.

The way out of the trouble is to organise for the capture of the political machine. Organise on the basis of your class interests ; that is, organise as a class who produce all the wealth and own none of it, but who has for its object the social control and ownership of all the means and instruments for producing wealth, and the wealth when produced.

In this way and in no other will you prevent an idle class robbing you of 13s. in the £, and be able yourselves to live a free and full life.

SNOOKEY

Other “Huns” and Other Louvains. (1914)

From the December 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

I.—The Belgians on the Congo.

The two faces of the capitalist have been exposed in these pages times out of number, and in various forms. Once again this dual personage has become clearly visible to the merest observer under another set of circumstances.

We have of late heard the squalling of the Belgian capitalists and the officials of the Belgian State. So shocked and horrified were these tender people at the way in which the “brutal Germans” trod upon their sacred soil and destroyed some of their towns, that a deputation was sent to proclaim this sacrilege to the world, with a view to persuading the neutral powers to come to their assistance.

But the Socialist remembers that these capitalists wailing over their wrecked property and pretending to be so concerned about the poor Belgian workers who are being driven from their homes, are the same capitalists who, through their agents, ransacked scores of villages and towns, shot and killed thousands of men, women, and children who had never raised even a finger against them.

Before describing these barbarities it would perhaps be as well to briefly sketch the events that led up to them. If the reader wishes them elaborated he should read “Red Rubber,” by E. D. Morel, to which book, together with White Paper, Africa, No. 1, 1904 (Cd 1933, 8½d.), the writer is indebted for the following information.

In the sixties and seventies of last century the great commercial countries saw enormous possibilities in the creation of new markets, arising out of notable discoveries by explorers in Central Africa, and each wished to acquire as large an outlet as possible for their own manufactures. The scramble commenced.

The discovery of the Congo Basin by Stanley was the most significant of all, and in this direction the late King Leopold II turned his attention. Having previously juggled successfully with Suez Canal and other shares, he had amassed a considerable fortune. He sent several investigating expeditions, consisting mostly of Englishmen and Germans (how strange !) assuring the world that his intentions were purely scientific and severely disinterested. To carry on this work Leopold formed a company styled “The International African Association.”

This bloody and astute king capitalist played his cards like an expert. He became a member of the Aborigines Protection Society, and promised to support lavishly the missionary societies of England and America. He captured the British Chambers of Commerce by declaring that if the commercial communities supported his proposals the Congo trade would be open to them and would be exempt from all fiscal restrictions.

After a time the various powers became uneasy and jealous as to who should control this vast and rich land. Certain suggestions were considered with a view to placing it under international control. Then on the suggestion of the Portuguese it was decided to recognise the sovereignty of Portugal on both banks of the river up to a certain limit inland, to declare the river open to the world, and to place it under an Anglo Portuguese Navigation Commission to which the accession of the other Great Powers would be welcome. After introducing clauses protecting traders against exaggerated tariffs, and for the protection of the natives (!), etc., the treaty was signed.

But Leopold had not been playing to the gallery for nothing, and immediately the treaty was denounced by the British Chambers of Commerce and the philanthropic societies. The British Government was accused of betraying national interests, and the Portuguese Government was accused by its bosses of a similar crime. France, encouraged by the clamour, became resolutely hostile, and Bismarck, on behalf of Germany, kicked. Belgium was now in an unique position, and received the reluctant support of the British Government, with a proviso to secure freedom of trade, etc. Bismarck’s proposal of an International Conference was assented to, and was opened “in the name of God,” on Nov. 25, 1884.

Fourteen powers were represented, and their first consideration was for the welfare of the natives ! Such was the slimy cant and hypocrisy that we are told “the delegates, figuratively speaking, fell upon each other’s necks and wept with emotion.” They placed the Congo Basin in the hands of Leopold’s company. Articles were signed to ensure the utmost freedom to all capitalists, and for the preservation of the natives, the suppression of slavery and the slave trade, and “the protection of all . . . institutions which aim at instructing the natives and bringing home to them the blessings of civilisation.” We shall see, presently, what these “blessings of civilisation” were.

On August 1st, 1885, Leopold notified the signatory Powers that the International African Association would henceforth be known as the Congo Free State, with himself as sovereign of that “State.” Almost immediately followed a decree claiming all vacant lands as the property of the State. Another decree limited the rights of the native to the area upon which his hut was built, whilst another prohibited the hunting of the elephant “throughout the whole of the State’s territory” (three-fourths of which had never been trodden by a white man). Then they commenced recruiting an army of the most savage tribes. These natives could either volunteer or were taken in raids. For every recruit of the latter order the State officer obtained a bonus according to the physical fitness of his captive. Male children were also taken and drafted to military instruction camps to be made soldiers in due course. Having secured and trained sufficient recruits they set out with a mandate from Christendom to exterminate the Arabs, who had up to then been trading with the natives. Their object was to obtain the vast stores of ivory and rubber in the Arabs’ possession and to capture their markets. This accomplished, everything was clear for Leopold and his thieves’ gang to commence business.

On Sept. 21st 1891 a secret decree was issued to the State officials in Africa, stating that it was the paramount duty of the Congo Free State to raise revenue, and “to take urgent and necessary measures to secure for the State the dominal fruits, notably ivory and rubber.” Other regulations followed, which forbade the natives selling rubber or ivory to European merchants, and threatened the latter with prosecution if they bought these articles from the natives.

The merchants protested, and Leopold defined the position. Everything, he told them, belonged to the State—the land and the produce thereof. The natives were tenants upon State property. If they interfered with that property they were poachers ; and whoever abetted them were poachers, receivers of stolen goods, and violators of the law. How simple and concise !

Other secret documents were dispatched to the Governor-General baiting him to do his utmost to obtain the produce from the natives, “sparing no means.” A sliding scale was fixed by which officials were paid. The less it cost to obtain the goods the greater the bonus ; the more it cost to get the goods the less for the official. In other words, the less the native got for his ivory and rubber the larger the official’s commission and the more for the thieves on top !

One can pretty well guess the nature of the orders of tha Governor to his subordinates, and of the subordinates to their subordinates. Here is a typical one from Commandant Verstracten to the officials in charge of stations in the Rubi Welle district :

“I have the honour to inform you that from Jan. 1st 1899, you must succeed in furnishing 4,000 Kilos of rubber every month. To this effect I give you carte blanche. You have, therefore, two months in which to work your people. Employ gentleness at first, and if they persist in not accepting the imposition of the State, employ force of arms.”

Here is an extract from another :

“Decidedly these people of Inoryo are a bad lot. They have just cut some rubber vines at Huli. We must fight them until their absolute submission is obtained, or their complete extermination.”

Under this system £13,715,664 worth of raw produce was forced out of the Congo natives during the seven years preceding 1906 by the hirelings of this royal member of the Aborigines Protection Society and his confederates.

Let us now see how the rubber was acquired under the stimulus of bonuses and force. The information is furnished by Belgian and French, traders (who, no doubt, felt sore at being outdone by the State monopoly), and travellers and missionaries. The most brutal act of the “German Huns” sinks into insignificance compared with some of them.

The procedure was by levying a tax on the villages and towns payable in kind, and State soldiers would be sent to demand payment—so much ivory or rubber as well as food stuffs—every week or month as the case might be. But let the eye witness describe. The following is au extract from a letter written as early as 1892 by a resident of Likini.

“The frequent wars upon the natives undertaken without any cause by the State soldiers sent, out to get rubber and ivory, are depopulating the country. The soldiers find that the quickest and cheapest method is to raid villages, seize prisoners, and have them redeemed against ivory, etc. . . . Each agent of the State receives 1,000 fr. commission per] ton of ivory, and 175 fr. per ton of rubber.”

This, the reader will notice, was about a year after the decree urging the officials to secure the “dominal fruits.” The bloody events that followed have never been surpassed. The following is from the diary of E. J. Glave, an “independent English traveller” who crossed the Congo in 1894-5. It appeared in the “Century Magazine” in 1896.

“Up the Ikelemba away to Lake Mantumba the State is perpetrating its fiendish policy in order to obtain profit. War has been waged all through the district of the Equator, and thousands of people have been killed. Many women and children were taken, and twenty-one heads were brought to Stanley Falls, and have been used by Captain Rom as a decoration round a flower bed in front of his house.”

The following piece of information was given to the British Consul, Roger Casement, and is quoted in his report (p. 43.)

“Each time the corporal goes out to get rubber, cartridges are given to him. He must bring back all not used ; and for every one used he must bring back a right hand. . . . Sometimes they shot a cartridge at an animal in hunting ; they then cut off a hand from a living man. … In six months, on the Momboyo River they had used 6,000 cartridges, which means that 6,000 people are killed or mutilated. It means more than 6,000, for the soldiers kill children with the butt of their guns.”

If a soldier returned to his station without a sufficient number of hands to make up for the rubber he had not brought, he was shot by his superiors. A native corporal described how in one day he had brought 160 hands home to his officer and they were thrown into the river. Another individual testifies to a village (Katoro) being attacked. Many were killed, including women and children. The heads were cut off and taken to the officer in charge, who sent men back for the hands also, and these were pierced and strung and dried over the camp fire. On another occasion a large town was attacked ; hands and heads cut off and taken to the officer. The witness said : “I shall never forget the sickening sight of deep baskets of human heads.”

According to Roger Casement many had their ears cut off ; also the native soldier, after being told “You kill only women ; you cannot kill men,” would mutilate the bodies and carry the sexual organs to the officer. In fact, in the Mongalla massacre of 1899 the agents confessed to ordering sexual mutilation. Consul Casement says that “this was not a native practice, but the deliberate act of soldiers of an European administration . . . and that in committing these acts they were but obeying the positive orders of their superiors.”

In some cases when protests were made to the Congo Courts a mock trial ensued. Lacroix, one of the agents in the Mongalla region was thus held up, and he confessed to having been instructed by his superiors to attack a certain village for shortage of rubber, and to having killed in his raid many women and children. He said:

“I am going to appear before the judge for having killed 160 men, cut off 60 hands ; for having crucified women and children, for having mutilated many men and hung their sexual remains on the village fence.”

Terms of imprisonment were inflicted, but were never served. Why ? Because “they had acted on instruction.”

The Congo Free State is split up into several “Companies” or “Trusts,” each occupying a specific area. One named “The King” was worked in the interest of Leopold’s private purse. Other portions were handed over for stewardship to financiers, “personal friends and officials of his European Court,” etc. In the “Companies” the King or the State usually held half the shares. One is named the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company. In six years this company, with the aid of the State soldiers, made a nett profit of £720,000 out of the rubber slave trade on a paid-up capital of £9,280 ! Thus each share of a paid up value of £4 6s. 6d. has received £335 in the same time. King Leopold held 1,000 of these shares.

However, it seems quite clear that, although the Belgian capitalists, backed by the arms of the State, had a big hand in this dirty business, there was along with them the international gang of plunderers. If this were not so, why was it that, although the evidence of these devilish horrors was before the Governments of America, Italy, France, Portugal, Germany, and the rest of them for years, they did not move to stop them ? Why was it that for six years the British Government was continually having reports of atrocious maladministration on the Congo and yet refused to move ? Why, indeed, did it absolutely suppress these reports—which it has never yet made public? Sir Henry Johnston, who has travelled a good deal in that direction, is evidently in the know. He says : “If there have been bad Belgians on the Congo, there have been bad Englishmen, ruthless Frenchmen, pitiless Swedes, cruel Danes, unscrupulous Italians.” (See preface to Morel’s “Red Rubber,”)

At any rate, how do these brutalities practised by Belgian bullies upon a defenceless people whose country they had invaded compare with the German atrocities of to-day ?

I am not attempting to defend German autocrats, but merely to make it plain that it is nothing but sheer hypocrisy for the Allies to point an accusing finger at Germany, for there is not one of them but has been guilty of deeds of brutality every whit as appalling as has been charged, not to say proved, against the German butchers. With the Belgian workers the sympathy of all Socialists must lie, but suffering is no new thing to them, any more than it is to the workers of other countries. And if their pains and travail contribute to their political enlightenment, then they will not have suffered in vain.

J. W. Pyle

50 Years Ago: Atrocities—Cynical Ruling Class Attitude (1995)

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

For weeks on end the British Press carried horrifying accounts and pictures of atrocities committed in Nazi concentration camps; mass starvation, brutality, sadistic cruelties perpetrated by degenerate guards on helpless men, women and children, prisoners buried alive, tortured by solitary confinement and so on. Some of the worsened conditions of recent months may have been due, as one of the German guards said, to transport difficulties—the stupendous Allied bombing of roads and railways can hardly have failed to produce disorganisation—but this does not affect the main facts of appalling brutalities over a long period. But if the facts are substantially agreed this is certainly not true of the conclusions that can be drawn from them. Far from accepting the views of many newspapers and capitalist politicians we deny their right to raise hands in holy horror; or to attempt to fasten the responsibility on the German workers. On several counts the British ruling class and their spokesmen have not the slightest justification for the attitude they adopt. (. . .)

By all means we protest against atrocities and brutality, but we do so not as an expedient according to circumstances but against atrocities and brutality wherever and whenever they occur.

It is for the working class of the whole world to see as it really is the cynical and hypocritical use made, by the capitalist class of atrocities, and not to let themselves be divided by capitalist propaganda directed against first one and then another foreign nation. It is capitalism itself that produces the worst atrocity of all—war, and which everywhere has a record of brutality towards the working class and colonial peoples in peace or in war.

Only Socialism can end it and only world working class unity can achieve that end.

[From an article in the Socialist Standard, June 1945.]

Dad Tells Sonny. The Tale of the Twelve, (1917)

A Short Story from the June 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

“An inquisitive child soon demonstrates the shallowness of a parent’s knowledge.”

– Someone or other.

“What, are you reading, Dad?”

“Just a pamphlet some kind-hearted, benevolent soul has left for my enlightenment, my son.”

“And what does the design at the top mean with the two large letters N.S. either side?”

“The lady with the angel’s wings and the tea tray represents Victory, and the two mystic letters represent quite a number of things.”

“Such as—”

“Nettleford’s Screws, Never Sweat, Noodles Swindled — ”

“Yes, but, Dad, be serious. What do they say the letters stand for ?”

“The heading is National Service, my son.”

“And what does that mean ?”

“It means, mon enfant, that in punishing the wicked and unspeakable Hun for the unpardonable crime of getting his wack in first, thousands upon thousands of Englishmen have been battered into pulp. Further thousands are required to undergo the same delicate process, the idea being that in the human pulping competition, we can just about lick the horrid Hun. The residue will be an ‘After the War Problem.’ Now then, these potential thousands of sacrifices are at present shivering, with glassy eyes and clammy hands, in whatever shoes they have managed to get into, hoping against hope that Murder will overlook them. This is where N.S. comes in. N.S. will say to the Man in a Small Way, ‘put up the shutters, you’re unessential.’ The Man in a Small Way will say, ‘but what about my busi­ness ? It’s essential to me, anyhow.’ To which N.S. will answer, ‘No Sauce, and No Shirking. Your business, if there’s any left after the National Sweatshops, Ltd. have done with it, will be an After the War Problem. Then he and his porter, his ox and his ass, his manservant and his maidservant, are pushed into the service of some big fat brother, possibly a competitor ; or into ploughing, aeroplane construction, quarrying, or other similar soft jobs, for which they are as suitable as a pickaxe is for painting landscapes, the result being that more of the country’s youth is made available for gory pulp. See ?”

“Yes, Dad. But surely they don’t put it like that, do they? ”

“Listen ! ‘Twelve good reasons why every able-bodied man should enrol for National Service.’ And then in brackets, ‘Read these reasons carefully and see if you can deny any one of them.’ So you see, my son, they explicitly invite my opinion. They ask me if I can deny any one of them.”

“And can you, Dad ?”

“I can, but I’m not going through the whole dozen for you or anybody else. For one thing life’s too precious, and for another it’s past your bedtime.”

“Oh, come, Dad, don’t be mean. Have a go at some of them at any rate.”

“Well, number one says the war is reaching its climax. Right ! Leave it at that. Number two says victory will mean the preservation of of our homes, our lives, our liberties, and all we hold dear, while defeat means the opposite. Now, son, where is Jones the greengrocer’s son ? ”

“You know he was killed at Festubert, Dad.”

“And did he join the British Army as a free man ?”

“No, Dad ! As a conscript. He loathed the Army.”

“And what has become of his home ?”

“Why, his wife had to sell most of it and go and live with her mother.”

“So that his liberty was the first thing to go, his life next, followed by his home and all he held dear.”

“Yes, Dad. But supposing the Germans had got over here ?”

“Well, son, could much worse have happened to him ? And further, mine infant, do you have to deprive a person of liberty before he will fight for it ? Take an illustration. Do I first have to undress you in order to make you clothe yourself ? Silly, isn’t it ? Now, son, I could say much more to you under the heading of liberty, but one of the present British liberties is that I mustn’t say it. Now for number three. This starts thusly :

“‘Because—having passed laws to compel men of certain ages to fight—it is the bounden duty … of every man to see that the Army and the Navy are provided with every­thing they need to secure Victory.’

“Notice, my little sonlet, there is still some little honour amongst politicians. ‘Having passed laws.’ Not ‘The nation having passed laws,’ or ‘The Forces of Fat having passed laws,’ or you ‘The Government having, etc.” So, for ought that appears to the contrary, we might say, ‘Mrs. Northcliffe having passed laws,’ or ‘The Forces of Fat having passed laws, it is the bounden duty of every man to do as he is told.’ Yours not to reason why ; yours but to do or die. In happier times we might permit ourselves to style this brazen effrontery, or we might give the faculty of wonder an airing by trying to reconcile the bringing of compulsion into a community revelling in liberty. But, my child, liberty is what you will know when you get older as an abstraction ; that is, it has no separate existence. That’s why it’s so popular in England, where the worship of the non-existent is as old as the hills.”

“That is a bit beyond me, Dad, but I suppose it’s all right. Now for the number four, old chap.”

“I told you before I’m not going to waste time on twelve chunks of fatuity when I might be reading Anatole France or sowing parsnip seed.”

“What does Anatole France say, Dad?”

“Oh, lots of things. For instance : ‘Wars are a hereditary evil and a lascivious return to savage life ; they are a criminal puerility.’ ‘Even now the white races communicate with the black and yellow ones only with the intention of subjecting or massacring them.’ ”

“He doesn’t flatter us, Dad, does he ?”

“No, son. This sounds prophetic, doesn’t it ? ‘The peace conference of the Hague, con­vened in the very midst of barbarism, contributed but little towards the maintenance of peace.’ ”

“When was that written ?” 

“I don’t know, but the volume in which I have it is five years old.”

“Hm ! I suppose ‘in the midst of barbarism ‘menus civilisation as we know it.”

“Got it. He says in another place: ‘what we call civilisation is nothing else than the present state of our customs and what we call barbarism is the state of the past.’ ”

“Dad, why are parsons exempted from Army Service ?”

“That’s nothing to do with Anatole France.”

“But doesn’t he say something that fits in anywhere ? ”

(After a search) “Well I’m jiggered ! Listen to this. ‘In telling the nations that one must suffer in this world in order to be happy in the next, religious tradition has obtained from them that pitiful resignation to all oppressions and iniquities.’ ”

“That seems to score a bull’s-eye, Dad.”

“Yes, pitiful resignation seems to fill the bill, exactly. Remember how the people took Conscription. Now the parsons are booming National Servitude.”

“I wonder what Anatole France would say if he had read the ‘Twelve Reasons.’ “

“I don’t know. Possibly, ‘it is his reasonable conversation which mostly frightens us in a madman.’ ”

“Dad, why did you say N.S. stood for Nettlefold’s Screws ?”

“Simply a passing fancy of mine, son. Nettlefold’s Screws are useful little articles and have provided several politicians with enough to keep them out of the Union.”

“What are they used for, Dad ? ”

“Oh, lots of purposes. But one use they have invariably.”

“And that is?”

“Screwing down corpses.”

“Good night, Dad !”

“Good night, son ! ”

Prospero.

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

News from the Madhouse (2003)

From the August 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Statistics

The United States, as the most powerful country in the world, must be the world’s leading producer of statistics. But for some reason the US has been very coy about producing any estimate of the numbers of Iraqis killed during the American attack. However, others outside officialdom are less reticent, and according to a Times (10 July) report on Iraq, “a group of British and US academics said that the civilian death toll from the war was at least 6000.” But the lack of official American figures does mean that all that suffering can be brushed under the carpet. An American writer in the Times (3 June) said that the Iraqi war was “pretty-close-to-bloodless”. The 2800 people killed in the 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre are fewer than half the probable figure of Iraqi civilian deaths. No American writer would ever describe the 11 September attack as “pretty-close-to-bloodless”. Of course, the twin towers attacks killed mainly Americans, while in Iraq it was mainly Iraqis who died. Perhaps that makes a difference.

Solitary confinement

But if you call your dead “victims”, instead of “heroes”, you may find people asking what is the point of supporting a system which results in so many dead victims. Describing them as “heroes”, or so the authorities hope, is a good way of getting people to rally behind the flag, and continue the merciless carnage which is part of capitalism. Private Jessica Lynch, for example, an American maintenance soldier, was in a vehicle at the back-end of an American convoy in Iraq, which lost its way and blundered into enemy territory. In an exchange of fire, she was badly injured, and captured by the Iraqis. She was taken to a nearby hospital in Nasiriyah, and her crushed arms and legs were put in plaster. The Americans discovered she was there, and decided the chance of rescuing a young, good-looking blonde was too good to miss. By that time Iraqi resistance was crumbling, but the desire for a propaganda coup was too strong. So special forces in helicopters, guns firing, stormed the hospital, capturing all the doctors and nurses and not really helping the patients, and triumphantly carried off Private Lynch.

According to the Times (21 June), the press was fed reports about her heroic resistance, fighting and killing Iraqis before being wounded several times herself. There are plans to make films about this exciting story. In fact, it seems, her gun jammed so she didn’t fire at all. Unfortunately, Private Lynch “has been unable to remember anything about the events which have propelled her into the public eye”, and, said the Times reporter, she is now “living in solitary confinement in the Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington. Outside her door stands a military guard who prevents anyone except her medical helpers and her immediate family from seeing her. Each lunchtime Private Lynch goes to physiotherapy and works out alone.Other patients are banished from the gym for fear that the press will use them as a way to get to her.” A “hero”, kept in solitary confinement! It makes you wonder if they are helping her to remember what she has forgotten, i.e. all about her heroism. As the report said, “She is deliberately and falsely being portrayed as a hero in a war with few genuine heroes because the Americans would like to feel good about a war that has an ambiguous ending, and the entertainment industry needs to please them.”

Fishy story

In legal circles, there is a well-known story about a barrister, appearing for the defendant, who listened to the other side’s allegations, and wondered how on earth he was going to reply to them. At length his solicitor passed him a note: “No case; attack the plaintiff’s attorney.”

Ten Downing Street is acting on exactly the same principle in the aftermath of the Iraqi war. Much of the media—newspapers, radio, television—has been questioning some of the stories the government put out to justify their action in invading Iraq along with the Americans. Not having a convincing reply to many of these questions, Alastair Campbell (the Prime Minister’s main public relations adviser) decided to seize on one allegation broadcast on BBC television, to the effect that he had “sexed up” some of the information the government got from its so-called “intelligence services”, before issuing it as part of the government’s propaganda drive to persuade people of the necessity of war.

Whether this or that claim is one hundred per cent justified is of minor importance besides the government’s efforts to obscure the basic facts of the matter. America attacked and overthrew the Saddam Hussein regime because it needs to import a great deal of oil to keep its productive and distributive industries functioning. Saudi Arabia, with the world’s largest reserves of oil, is already firmly within the American sphere of influence; Iraq, with the world’s second largest reserves, was hostile to the United States, so had to be brought into line. Britain, and a few other countries, supported the United States because it is by a long way the most powerful country in the world. Some European countries have reacted to this enormous American power by stepping up their attempt to build a capitalist European federation which might in the future hope to rival the United States, and share in world leadership. Others, including Britain, think that a better bet is to go with the country which now has the leadership: in the jungle of world capitalism, the British rulers think, perhaps safety and prosperity lie in cosying up to the most ferocious predator.

Each group of capitalists, ruling in a particular country, does whatever it thinks is best for its own interests. Lots of advice is given, but the decision rests with each country’s ruling class. In Britain, there was a lot of feeling against going to war. Tony Blair, in his present role as right-hand man to the British ruling class, and administrator of British capitalism, ignored the widespread anti-war feeling, and did what he thought the British capitalist class would want him to do. So he went along with the American rulers, hoping that it would help to ensure the oil supplies which British industry needs and will need in the foreseeable future.

Whenever anyone makes an open, honest decision, he adds up all the possible reasons for and against, and arrives at a conclusion. When anyone reaches his conclusion first, and then has to make up his reasons afterwards, there are often a lot of problems. Tony Blair couldn’t announce that he was going to send British soldiers to fight in Iraq, which would involve killing and injuring Iraqi soldiers and civilians, as well as deaths and injuries among the British invading force, simply because he thought it was safer in the modern world for the British ruling class to ally with the single world superpower, and at the same time make sure British capitalism didn’t run out of oil. So reasons had to be made up afterwards. Hence the sudden discovery that Saddam Hussein is a nasty man, running a barbarous regime. Quite true, of course, but not enough to excuse a war which was almost impossible to square with capitalism’s own “international law”. The problems were, firstly, that the British government has supported and traded with this barbarous regime in the past, and, secondly, if that was the reason behind the war, Britain would have to attack many countries round the world, which have regimes just as tyrannical and murderous as Saddam’s. If only the “enemy” country would attack first, then the excuse for war would be obvious—resistance to aggression, which was trumpeted as a complete justification throughout the Second World War. But that wouldn’t do in this case, since America and Britain were going to be the ones committing the aggression. And it wouldn’t be very convincing to claim that Iraq, economically feeble after the Gulf War and the years of sanctions since then, was somehow going to get powerful enough to send an invasion fleet down the Persian Gulf and round the Arabian Sea, up the Red Sea and through the Suez Canal, then through the Mediterranean and past Gibraltar, and across the Bay of Biscay before finally invading Cornwall.

What could be done? So in comes the killer excuse—Saddam has weapons of mass destruction: nuclear or chemical or biological weapons which could be sent on a rocket across Europe to land on Basingstoke or thereabouts—and which would be ready for action in only forty-five minutes! (Exactly forty-five, apparently—not forty-four or forty-six minutes: or, as W. S. Gilbert put it, “corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative”.) All this is jazzed up in two official-sounding dossiers, which seek to prove the imminent danger. In due course awkward facts start to emerge—some of the material was taken from an ancient thesis which a student had submitted for his degree (and put on the internet), borrowed without acknowledgement and improved to make it more exciting; and allegations about Saddam trying to import uranium from the Niger republic in West Africa, which turn out to have been based mainly on forged documents.

When all this comes out in the newspapers and the media generally, no wonder Ten Downing Street try to defend themselves by picking out some uncertain bits of the criticism and demanding apologies. But since the Labour Party convinced millions of voters at the last two elections of the gigantic lie that they could run the capitalist system for the benefit of the working class—the great majority of ordinary people—then perhaps these other terminological inexactitudes seem to be very small beer.

Alwyn Edgar

Those war books! (1952)

From the August 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

If one studies the large illustrated histories of the first and second World Wars, it becomes obvious that there are many differences in the propaganda, ideas and methods of the various capitalist governments. These changes in putting out their “War Propaganda" probably took origin in the fact that the working class had in the meantime learnt a thing or two.

If we refer to the well known “ Illustrated ” of the First World War (the Great War as it was called), edited by H. W. Wilson, who incidentally also edited “Japan Fights for Freedom,” and “ Following the Flag to Pretoria,” the recognised histories of the Russo-Japanese and Boer Wars respectively, we find that flag waving was a dominant factor, with God, King, and Country closely wrapped up with the flags. Apparently these things made a far greater impression on the people than during the Second World War, for in Sir John Hammerton’s "History of the Second World War", this flag waving type of propaganda is given little scope, and God scarcely gets a mention. Even the Germans thought fit to drop their famous motto of the First War “ Gott mit uns ” after the Almighty had so badly let them down in the first round.

The German propaganda differed little in the two wars so far as flag waving intensity was concerned, while the Russian propaganda stuff merely had to replace the "Divine Little Father” by Infallible Uncle Joe!

The dominant idea in these history books of the First War, was that the Kaiser was ambitious, and at a later stage that he was mad. Many photos of him had the caption that he was looking obviously old and tired and suffering from war strain. Such words occurred early in 1915. The awkward point which the ruling class had to skirt around was that our own Royalty were German in origin and close blood relations with the Kaiser, who incidentally was born in Buckingham Palace and narrowly missed becoming King of England. This ticklish point did not arise in the Second War and it was easy to get at Hitler because he was, like so many members of the working class, once a corporal. Indeed such propaganda was slung at Napoleon by the bucketful. But don’t worry there is plenty of time for the ruling class to discover one day that Stalin was once a bank robber, not to mention the murderer of the "Old Guard.”

In the first World War Books, great play was made on the “devilish zeppelin raids,” for deliberately dropping bombs on women and children—an innovation in those days, whilst in the Second War, raids on civilians and towns, although met with by an outcry at first (Rotterdam, Coventry, etc.), were soon taken as a matter of course, and dealt with by “If you bomb our towns, we will bomb yours.” This principle followed along the lines of Baldwin when he declared (about 1935), that there was no defence against the bombing aeroplane, so the only thing to do was to bomb as many of the enemy’s towns as he did of yours. In other words, to concentrate on attack and destruction at all costs, and to justify your actions afterwards.

When both wars were over we learnt through these semi-official books the experiences of different countries in getting men to fight, and how nearly each side came to open revolt. In the spring of 1918 there were big revolts among the French troops during the critical German offensive, and British troops had to take over to check what would have an immediate disaster to the allies. In the second war Rumanian troops under German leadership were thrust mercilessly against the Russians with such enormous losses, causing sporadic revolts, that their use had to be discontinued because the Nazis had to devote so much time to driving them on that it was not worth it. It was the Rumanians who put down Soviet Hungary under Bela Kun, and Czech armies who marched right across Russia and had to be helped out by allied forces in Vladivostock.

The horrors of gas warfare were made the object of great play in the First War books, but in those of the Second, received only a casual mention in comparison. True in this case preparation beforehand did what was required.

One obvious difference in die two wars was due to the introduction of the Radio. Each nation poured out its stuff in as many languages as it could. The B.B.C. was in some respects well up to all the tricks, and not only encouraged listening to German stations, but actually on one occasion at least, re-broadcast one of Hitler's speeches while it was going on, doubtlessly without his permission. True, very few could understand a word of it, except the thousands of refugees, but it probably had its intended influence on the “democratic propaganda” on which the B.B.C. prided itself.

The Germans were confronted with many difficulties in the radio direction and had told so many lies about events abroad that they had to make it a punishable offence if foreign broadcasts were listened to. But the B.B.C. were well in advance of this by a special station “Atlantic” that broadcast news and views along with gramophone records and "letters from home," to German soldiers at the fronts. The news bulletins were such that they showed that a few more German planes were lost and a few more prisoners captured than Allied, while the pretence to be a German station was kept up very successfully.

The Russfcui rulers were even more scared than were those of the Germans, and went so far as to call in all the radio sets (Kravchencko “I chose Freedom”) thereby permitting only the massive state and factory sets for workers to listen to their beloved leaders.

The B.B.Cs. motto, “When nations can speak to one another there will be no wars," seems to have fallen into disuse. Perhaps it is because there are other causes of war than those arising from being unable to speak to one another.

Those cruder methods of working up hatred such as the “ Corpse factory," Babies being stuck on the end of bayonets" “Women with their breasts cut off,” “ Crucified Canadians,” or even the “ Angel of Mons ” all of First War origin, made no appearance in the Second War, although similar things are alleged to have been put out on the German side in both wars. In the Second war no Russians were seen arriving in England with snow on their boots. Bolsheviks and Commu-Nazis became over night heroes and before the last shots of the Second War were fired, the Soviet heroes became once again Bolsheviks and Commu-Nazis, Red Fascists, and with the same ruthless dictatorship regime with all its spying, secret police and rigid propaganda as that formerly existing in Germany. In other words we had an ally whose political system consisted of those very evils which Chamberlain told us we were fighting against.

Do the workers notice all these things, or some of them ? Naturally it doesn’t all stick, if it did our mission would be largely fulfilled. The fact that the ruling class was compelled to modify its propaganda to the extent in which it did in the Second War, is sufficient indication that they are not too sure of themselves and of how the workers are going to take it all. In the event of another world war they will have an even more difficult task to deal with, that of having to live down two world wars, and finding fresh excuses for why they can't get their system to work harmoniously.

Horace Jarvis.

Mr. Priestley does not understand (1943)

From the December 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr Priestley of Postscript fame, has discovered a conspiracy. Not in the Argentine to prevent certain British capital to exploit the production of Argentine workers, or in one of the Balkan States where Kings and Presidents add the prefix ex- quite often, but here in England.

“When the war situation was bad a great many gentlemen and their newspapers suddenly developed an acute social conscience. ‘Yes, yes,’ they cried, to our astonishment and delight. ‘a new Britain after the war … no more unemployment, low wages, bad housing . . . Beveridge …. Equal opportunities. Couldn’t agree with you more.'” (Reynolds, 20th October, 1943.)

Surely, if Mr. Priestley has any memory, he shouldn’t have been astonished and delighted by such an old and well-tried chicanery as this. Does he not know that at all crises developed by Capitalist production, when its continued existence was threatened and could only be saved by the efforts of the working class, that lavish promises of a better life were made? To be forgotten directly the immediate danger was past and when the workers might have been expected to claim the rewards due to them. When they did so they could be assured of plausible reasons for the non-fulfilment of the promises. Sometimes it has been deemed better to frighten the workers and terrible bogeys like inflation are used to encourage them to adjust themselves to the new conditions.

The success of these methods is possible because a proper understanding of the social system, of which the workers are victims, is lacking.

Mr. Priestley continues :

“But since we have begun to win battles and complete victory in Europe is almost within sight, these gentlemen and their newspapers have changed their tune. We hear very little from them now about that new Britain. Their reforming zeal appears to have vanished.”

The tune is the same, Mr. Priestley, it is just a variation. It is occasioned by the new conditions that loom up from the darkness and havoc of the war. Industry will no longer have to curb its activities for the purpose of war. There are world markets to gain and the domestic requirements of the people to supply. These peace-time projects are at present hedged around with controls and orders that disturb some capitalists.

But the workers have plenty of experience of the discomforts of short supply. In fact they are quite used to it. Even when there was an abundance of these things many workers went without, and as long as Capitalism, and its motive of production for profit remain they will continue to do so.

Certain sections of Big Business have to capture the ears of the workers. They have to gain their support in order to legislate for the purpose of giving full reign to their profit-seeking activities. The workers may be told that labour restrictions are the cause of their bad conditions, that the Essential Work order is not democratic, and that they are entitled to the freedom that has been fought for. Thus exploiting the lack of political knowledge of many sections of workers.

When industry seeks its profits once more in peacetime production there will no longer be need for Essential Work orders. Once more the threat of unemployment will take the place of the fine and imprisonment. If anyone doubts the possibility of unemployment then the controversy on demobilisation should dispel any illusions on that matter. Many times has that fear been expressed in leader columns and letters to the Press, that those who have fought and served the longest will return to find all the jobs have been snapped up.

In the same article Mr. Priestley relates the inconveniences of form filling and their like to those other rather permanent features of working-class life, unemployment and undernourishment. He sums it up with—

“Too much red tape is bad, but better red tape than chains.”

Socialists know that the wage system is the basis of Capitalism and the wage-packet the link in the chains of the worker. All our well-meaning reformers see as their greatest achievement the provision of a wage-packet for all, and so the chains are complete. We who understand the nature of Capitalism know why this is impossible, and makes the provision of the dole necessary to fill in the gaps and to keep the workers from utter destitution.

The controls that have been introduced in war time, and which many of our well-known politicians of the Left find so attractive, have been introduced by the representatives of the owning class, and when they have served their purpose they will go and other methods adopted to secure the functioning of capital. Workers will strain in vain to cage or curb it. Capitalism has its own way of working, and never to the advantage of the workers. The workers’ task is to abolish it and the evils and poverty it entails.

The socialist message is the same to workers of all lands.

The abolition of Capitalism and its wages system, and its replacement by the common ownership of the means of life with the distribution of goods solely for use according to our needs.

S. K.

The Enemies in our Midst (1944)

From the August 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Or “Mind You Don’t Break the Milk Bottle.”

“Defeat the enemies in our midst,” said the official notice; and this correspondent, hurrying past, thought, “Ah! Yes! the Quislings.” But, no! closer inspection of the illustration showed, not Oswald Mosley or “Trotskyites,” but the common bed bug. Other pictures indicate crevices where bed bugs breed, while the caption reads “Don’t keep it dark: Report the presence of bugs to the Town Hall.”

Thus the Ministry of Information, on behalf of the Health Ministry. The housewife is urged to fight the bed bug with plenty of soap (strictly rationed) and water, which other advertisements tell her not to use. We wonder if there is one reader of the Standard who does not know a street of stinking slums where little short of total demolition will get rid of the bugs. Workers who are employed in local borough council offices know quite well that their elimination from terraced houses, not to speak of tenement dwellings, is a sheer impossibility. What regularly happens is that they are chased from one end of the street to the other, house by house. Bugs, like other vermin, are a direct result of overcrowding, and were unknown to the savage—they are one of the “benefit ” of capitalist civilisation, and scientists specialising in them know that they are completely superfluous, if the conditions producing them could be removed.

Pathetically enough, the very people who can least afford it—poverty-stricken (therefore overcrowded) workers—have to fork out hard-earned, ill-spared shillings for bottles of “Pine Fluid,” insect powders, etc., to keep them within reasonable limits.

Posters appear outside the “oilshop” on the same day as the heat wave—”Insect Killer,” 1s. a bottle. One slight advantage of the air raid shelter is that it allows the harrassed slum dweller to clear out during the night—but eventually our old friend the enemy, humming his theme song (“I don’t want to live without you, baby”) turns up once more, as witness the elaborate insecticide precautions regularly carried out every morning in every tube station and large shelter.

These precautions, like reforms of the capitalist system, do not remove the evil, because they do not remove overcrowding—they mitigate it.

We know, of course, of those stupid wiseacres who hold that certain people are born inherently verminous. “Put them in a palace and they’d still have bugs,” they say. Let scientists, like Hans Zinnsner, in his “Rats, Lice and History,” point out, for example, that—

“Soldiers in the trenches on this front were as universally lousy as soldiers have always been” (p. 299).

Therefore showing that everybody who went into the Army in 1914 was constitutionally lousy—we suppose !—according to some stupid critics. Now we are told that in this war troops have been issued with shirts impregnated with a new chemical, and lice are unknown. Lice, like bugs, come with clothes; they breed, according to epidemicologists like Zinnsner, in the loose fibres of undergarments, not in the human body itself.

Now the bugs are actually “helping Hitler” they say. So are the rats—”Don’t let them” eat your food; they are doing Hitler’s work for him,” says another poster of the Minister of Information,. Another says that “Accidents are helping Hitler,” “Bad Motor Driving Helps the Enemy.” Still another says “Absenteeism helps Hitler,” showing a row of workers at machines with one place empty; in the corner is a poor devil lying injured in the road, having been knocked off his bike—this, it appears, is unimportant; essential is that the idle machine helps Hitler.

Finally, the Ministry of Information has some special advice about broken glass : —

“WHAT DO I DO . . . ?

I keep a special watch on the road outside my house.

If I see any broken glass there I sweep it up and put it in the dustbin.

I put out milk bottles in a safe, steady position where they will not easily be knocked over.

I tell my children that they must never break glass in the streets—and I tell them why.

Issued by the Ministry of Information.

Space presented to the Nation by the Brewers’ Society“—(Sunday Dispatch, April 21, 1944.)

The bewildered housewife, rushing round distractedly from the food queue to the scrubbing bucket, protecting the food from the rats, the bed from the bugs, and slipping outside (in her spare time) to sweep up the broken glass AND put it in the dustbin (if any), must sometimes wonder why they don’t do something to get a few bugs, rats, bad drivers, and milk bottle breakers on HER side as well as Hitler’s. Of course, it may well be that they have. The present writer can testify from personal experience that there used to be plenty of bed bugs in Berlin. In fact, the largest collection he has ever seen was in a common bawdy —(ahem ! sorry)—boarding-house in that once fair city. He only realised that the curtains were not brown when parts of them moved. But, then, perhaps Hitler has organised and disciplined them since then, and sent them against England. People like George Orwell (“Down and Out in Paris and London”) have described how fat and numerous they are in the slums of Paris; maybe they are divided there, for and against Vichy, with a “Resistance Movement” (underground).

The largest individual specimens in the world were in the Hotel Lux in Moscow, which used to be the dwelling quarters of the permanent officials of the Communist International; perhaps Stalin has had most of these “confess” and liquidated them.

It seems to us, if there aren’t any in Berlin, that it might be a good idea, instead of telling housewives in London to destroy the bugs, to ask them to collect them up with the broken glass, and then the Air Force could drop them on the Germans instead of bombs. It would be much better, because given conditions of working class poverty, the bugs would breed, whereas bombs go off and are finished.

Perhaps the numbers of the circulars got mixed up, and they really meant “Collect Bed Bugs” and “Destroy Broken Glass.”

It would be something like Silone’s story of dropping the Pope’s holy lice on the poor peasants in “Fontamara.”

Speaking as Socialists, we have a strong suspicion that there are bugs in poorer working-class quarters in Germany, and everywhere else. Although whether Doctor Goebbels is telling the Germans that “The Bed Bugs are Helping Churchill,” we can’t say.

The more we think about it, the more deeply are we convinced how much bed bugs are like capitalists. Like the capitalists, bugs are quite impartial. London, Paris, New York, Berlin—it’s all the same to them. Like capitalists, they like their hosts to be fat and well, with plenty of rich warm blood. In fact, we have it on the authority of the N.A.P.P.K.I. (National Amalgamated Association ol Peripatetic and Pediculous Parasites and Kindred Insects—nothing to do with jumping parasites, like the common flea) that they are unanimously in favour of the Beveridge Report and full employment—”Jobs, Homes and Security,” in fact—just like Sir Samuel Courtauld and my Lords Nuffield and Mcgowan. Like capitalists, they’ll do anything to improve the conditions of the workers (their food supply), except get off their backs. When the workers get wise to the uselessness of insect powder parties, like the Labour Parties, which chase the bugs from one room to another, they will grasp the machine which will destroy the vermin-trap, “workers’ houses” system, the Socialist Party, and build anew on the clean healthy foundations of Socialism.

Horatio.

The Reality Doesn’t Enthuse (1942)

From the May 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

The conflict now raging is unfolding many dramatic incidents, and most of us are so absorbed in observing what is transpiring in the theatre of war that we fail to note the signifiance of events taking place in other quarters. War is an industry. The means of production are now mainly utilised to produce the means of destruction: the wage slave is employed by his masters in producing and using the implements of war.

Capitalism is run for profit. War is embarked on by the capitalist class because it is considered by one capitalist group or another that this course of action is the only course open to them in the circumstances in which they find themselves. They calculate they can retain or obtain what they desire only by war.

Whilst a war is on the future is given much consideration by those who live on rent interest and profit; they try to discover a ways and means of repaying themselves for the trouble and inconvenience the war has entailed. The plans of the profit band are formulated with the above objects in view. It is well to note that neither in war nor peace does the exploiting class produce; labour applied to the natural resources of the earth brings into being all exchange values; this being the case, the recipients of profit do not give to the cost of the war anything more than they have previously wrung from the working class.

A portion of the income of the exploiter is advanced in the form of a loan to the government; during war-time profits are high in war industries, and no matter how glibly our masters may talk of the income tax ruining them, when the war is over they will be found to possess bonds, etc., worth thousands of millions of pounds, claims to the interest on vast amounts that did not exist at the beginning of hostilities. A brave new world for our masters if they can get away with it: the next generation of the working class mortgaged to capitalism. Certain patriotic gentlemen are very much disturbed by the lack of patriotic zeal shown in some circles of the wage earners. It is considered lamentable that working men should diverge from the path chosen by their masters for them to follow: they should not think of anything but striving to defeat the enemy. When the workers desire to know whether they are likely to have to go back in millions to the labour exchanges and the doles, when the lights of London shine again, the question is looked upon as bordering on sedition, but, like Banquo’s ghost, it will not down.

By means of the rationing system and the curtailment of consumption in one sphere after another, together with the contribution the wage slave is induced to make towards the war effort by means of an “income tax,” etc., the real wages of the working class are very low indeed, almost as low as they can be if efficiency is given full consideration. Real wages are food, clothing and shelter. If you live in a better house, wear better clothes, or have better and more regular food than formerly, your wages have risen; if the contrary is the case, they have fallen.

When a boy of eighteen is discovered doing a man’s work and in receipt of six or seven pounds a week, the attention of the public is drawn to the fact: it is inferred that this is wrong; it should not happen, althought the boy has earned the money; the profits of those that live by exploitation are not advertised in the same way; it is held they are morally entitled to them. The religious groups are busy trying to increase their business; the present period is considered to be a favourable one, but the working class are not responding; the parsons butt in on the radio, and are now also very much interested in getting at the children in the day schools; they profess to be very much concerned about the children’s moral welfare; the youngsters must not be allowed to grow up without any proper respect for the property rights of the master class. Moves of deep significance are taking place in the upper circle of those who wear the clerical garb; the stars who appear in the saintly show are being given new parts; Church interests must be safeguarded; they constitute the sacred property bulwark of the nation.

One of the alarming features in present day developments is the declining birth rate; our pastors and masters are agreed that the sellers of labour-power are selfish and consider only their own well being and pleasure, and fail to realise that they owe a duty to the country. A wage slave, a labourer, when questioned on this matter, answered tartly: “It doesn’t pay either the kids or us to breed ’em.” He knew what his own life had been, and he did not want to bring children into a world to undergo a like experience. It is now suggested in influential quarters that a bonus of 5s. per week should be given with each baby. How cheap we are !

The fact is that the war cannot be won for the Allies unless these receive the whole-hearted support of their working class; the working class do not display the enthusiasm the masters think they should because the wage slaves cannot see anything ahead that bids fair to improve the workers’ condition; the vision at present is a vision of what happened after the Armistice of 1918. The strange thing is that the capitalist class have nothing to offer. Capitalism has nothing within it for the working class, no matter what may be attempted, except a continuance of what it has produced heretofore.

In this extremity what will our masters do? Why, call in the Labour Leader, of course! If he is sincere, so much the better. They will advertise him, play him up, and he will make futile efforts to do the trick. So long as it is believed there is a possibility he may deliver the goods, he will bask in the sunshine of the smiles of those who count in the world of wealth and power, but when capitalism’s turn is served, or the workers fail to respond to the leader’s voice, he is likely to be cast into outer darkness. A ruling class knows how to choose and use. Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Mark Antony words which clearly express the idea: —

“And though we lay these honours on this man,

To ease ourselves of divers slanderous loads,

He shall but bear them as an ass bears gold,

To groan and sweat under the business,

Either led or driven as we point the way,

And having brought our treasure where we will,

Then take we down his load, and turn him off,

Like to the empty ass, to shake his ears,

And graze on commons.”

The fight can be won for true democracy but a brave new world can only come into being by making the means of life common property. This our masters will not do ; anything but that ; for such a move means their finish as a master class. This accounts to some extent for the psychological conflict now raging in the capitalist world. History says that we must go forward to the new social order. Our lords and masters are compelled by circumstances over which they have no control to liberate forces that move inexorably in the direction of common ownership.

After a few more years of war the peoples of the earth may look at capitalism with the eyes of understanding. As soon as the source of exploitation is made plain to the working class in general, it will be eliminated. Our task is to explain and keep in tune with the forces making for Socialism. The capitalist class are caught in the cleft of the class struggle. If they refuse to make the means of life common property and do not allow the establishment of a system of production solely for use, they will be ruthlessly thrust aside by the forces their own system has engendered. Society, in this respect resembling an organism, will struggle to maintain its existence. Society must eliminate capitalism or capitalism will eliminate society. Mankind is not going to perish—it is going forward. The working class are called upon to march in the van. Let us work unceasingly at our job until the working class declare for Socialism without equivocation and do away with the cause of war, poverty, slavery and the class struggle.

Charles Lestor