Janet Carter

I just discovered via Spintcom, the SPGB discussion list, the incredibly sad news that Janet Carter has passed away. 

Janet originally joined the Socialist Party in the 1960s, and was an active party member during all her years of membership. I originally met Janet in the late 1980s when she was the secretary of Central Branch and, as a young Central Branch member, I remember her kindness and encouragement. She later served as the General Secretary of the Party for a number of years and, to the very end, Janet was an regular participant in the Socialist Party Friday night zoom meetings. She was predeceased by her husband, Joe Carter, eight years ago, who was also a very active member of the SPGB.

I am sure an obituary for Janet will appear in a future Socialist Standard, but I just wanted to mark her passing on the blog. Socialists like Janet are the backbone of the SPGB, and she will be sorely missed by all who knew her.

On the thread on Spintcom, Mike Foster posted the text of an interview that Janet gave as part of the programme for the Socialist Party's 2019 Summer School. I think it's worthwhile reposting the text of that interview here:

Mike Foster wrote:

"In 2019, Janet kindly agreed to be interviewed for an article in that year's Summer School publication, which had the theme of 'being a socialist in a capitalist world'. Carla Dee put together some questions and wrote up Janet's replies about her life as a socialist and the people she met. Here's the text of the interview":

Carla: How did you first come across the Socialist Party?

Janet: I went up to Trafalgar Square during the Vietnam demonstrations in 1968 and I was wandering around collecting various leaflets from people and came across this older man looking rather dishevelled, standing in front of me holding a bundle of Socialist Standards; Jim Doherty, I think it was. There was one copy that took my eye with a cover slogan of ‘Who Needs Leaders?’ and that rang a bell with me so I bought it.

I had been investigating left wing politics and was starting to get political, but under my own instigation, for which I pride myself because there was no-one in my family or no-one that I knew who was political - no conversations at home or anything like that. I was going to the library and reading various left wing articles on Marxism and it all seemed to make sense, but there was no-one really to talk to, so I suppose I must have been a thinker. I’d already discarded religion in my teens.  

The Aberfan disaster in 1966 really affected me, and I saw how nothing had been done to avert a disaster in the name of profit and that propelled me towards the party too.

When did you join the SPGB and which branch?

I joined the party in 1969ish at the old Wood Green branch, which held meetings at a kind of evening class place in a community hall, I think. I remember the application interview as if it was yesterday. There was Jack Bradley, a leading member of that branch at the time; I was very fond of Jack though I didn’t know him very well then. John Lee, Ken Leggett and another chap whose name I can’t remember were there too. I can tell you I got a bit sweaty under the collar because it felt like a bit of an inquisition.

Were there any women in the branch?

No there wasn’t. It seemed like I was always the only woman in the branch.

How did your family react when you joined the party?

They would say “oh she’s getting on her soap box again”. I was getting the Standard delivered, reading it and giving it to everyone I knew, but there was no sympathy or interest, which I found frustrating but I was never a chatterer so I tended not to bring up the subject of socialism. I regret that, and I wish I had been more forthright, more combative.

How were you affected by the party case?

Absolutely delighted when the penny dropped! At last I thought I was sane and it was others that were mad, whereas it was the other way around before. I felt enlightened, if I hadn’t found the party I think I would have gone on thinking that I was a little bit mad. 

I was attending meetings and studying on my own. Well, I had the time as I didn’t have any children in my twenties, and I can’t imagine being able to be so active if I had children to attend to and clinics to go to.

When did you meet husband and fellow socialist Joe Carter?

I met Joe at Wood Green branch; he had been a member for about three years. He was very active and I had been to a couple of outdoor meetings where Joe was speaking and was quite impressed by him. We also shared a great enjoyment in long distance walking and wish we had done more of it.

You said there were no women in your branch but there were quite a few women in the party 

Yes. Though I can’t recall any women outdoor speakers there were some very impressive women like Eva Goodman and Florrie Evans - who was general secretary during the war - and Phyllis Lawrence and a woman called Helen whose surname I can’t remember. She was married to a bus driver; they were quite an impressive couple.

Funnily enough when we attended general meetings you would see a lot of the women knitting. I think it must have been a throwback from the days when women couldn’t be seen doing nothing. It was also considered to be saving money by making your own woollens. It was very fashionable, and I even started knitting myself.

Looking at the world now through ‘socialist eyes’ what are your thoughts?

I’m exasperated, sad and disappointed.  When I first joined the branch, Joe and I used to get the bus from Muswell Hill where we lived down the hill to Wood Green, and I would look around the bus with such optimism and think that very soon all the people on the bus would be socialists. Society is in such a mess and so many horrendous things are happening that it’s no wonder people are suffering from depression and anxiety. I don’t believe in hell of course but it seems that society is going to hell in a handcart.

Why do you think socialist ideas don’t seem to have been more popular?

The party has worked so hard. We must have tried everything to get our ideas across. But the party case is not easy, contrary to what some members say, especially the economics side: the explanation of surplus value for instance and the idea that the working class do not pay taxes. People have got distracted by single issues, charities and identity politics and blaming individuals for the mess. I don’t blame people for being exasperated with politicians.

But I have no regrets and cannot ever imagine not being a socialist - it’s who you are, isn’t it?

50 Years Ago: What should Women do to be Free? (1994)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

An organisation called “Women for Westminster” has recently been born. It has a self-explanatory name and object. What a waste of time and energy such an organisation causes, and what future disillusionment must there be among its adherents ! Supposing they were to have a measure of success according to their aims, and get a predominance of women in the House of Commons. They would find that women, merely as women, can run capitalism no better than can the Labour or Tory Parties.

The Suffragettes have been appalled by the lack of enthusiasm for the vote, following their desperate efforts to gain it. Their lack of knowledge of the make-up of society is the reason for their indignation. Despite the constant propaganda of the press, screen and radio, woman as well as man is sceptical, often unconsciously so, regarding electioneering programmes, which cater for all tastes. Speaking generally, members of the working class are apathetic and not politically conscious. Many, unfortunately, are led away by reform parties, by idolaters of Russia, or by mushroom growths such as Commonwealth. (. . . )

Whilst capitalism lasts, women will remain, like men, in a subject position, no matter how far progress is made towards equality with men. The interests of women are therefore identical with men in struggling for the overthrow of the present system, as it is only under Socialism that both will find real emancipation.

[From and article by W. P. in the Socialist Standard, November 1944]

Coping with losing (2026)

Book Review from the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Burnout: the Emotional Experience of Political Defeat. By Hannah Proctor. Verso £14.99.

In May 1871 the Paris Commune was brutally repressed, with many people executed and over four thousand of its supporters exiled to New Caledonia, a French territory in the Pacific Ocean, 750 miles east of Australia. Unsurprisingly, many of those exiled experienced feelings of hopelessness and despair. These were examples of what the author terms ‘pathological nostalgia’, which she contrasts with ‘political nostalgia’, which ‘looks to the future rather than the past’.

Nostalgia is one example of the different emotions identified here, the others being melancholia, depression, burnout, exhaustion, bitterness, trauma and mourning, though the distinctions among these are not always clear. The focus is on left-wing movements, where prolonged activity, with little achieved, can lead to exhaustion and disillusion. One woman, who had campaigned in the US on abortion issues, found herself in the 1980s with no partner, children or secure job, and wondered if it had all been a waste of time. On the other hand, many women who played an active role in supporting the UK miners’ strike felt really changed by it, meeting new people and becoming aware of the unjust nature of the British state. One woman (wife and mother of miners) found that contributing at the local soup kitchen helped combat her agoraphobia, saying, ‘I know that I’ve got to keep active after the strike.’

There is an interesting if somewhat unclear discussion of the impact of the Bolshevik takeover of 1917 (about which Proctor says ‘the October Revolution was not defeated’). The ensuing civil war, coupled with pre-1917 events, meant years of violence and famine, which ‘took a heavy physical and mental toll’. Many former activists became exhausted, in some cases this was due to ‘despair over the course the new society was taking’ (some more detail here would have been helpful). In 1921–2 over fourteen thousand people voluntarily left the Bolshevik party, and ‘there was a spate of suicides among the membership.’

Some left-wing groups go in for abuse and bullying (sometimes of close friends), while criticism and self-criticism sessions among the Weathermen in the US in the 1960s and 70s could inflict serious psychological damage on members. In the US ‘Communist’ Party, those who left could find themselves simply ignored in the street by those who had stayed on.

Proctor quotes Rosa Luxemburg as saying that revolutionary struggle involves thunderous defeats but will lead inexorably to final victory. Perhaps more realistic is her comment on the famous last words of Joe Hill: better to both mourn and organise.

Paul Bennett

They said it . . . (1992)

From the September 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

We had women on every platform daring the election, hat the party used them like decorative potted plants—Labour MP Ann Clwyd on women and the Labour Party.

#    #    #    #

I did it because they were going to repossess my Sky dish—David Kernaghan, explaining the armed robbery which brought him a seven-year gaol sentence.

#    #    #    #

You should not believe everything you read in the newspapers—Robert Clark, chairman of Mirror Group Newspapers. 

#    #    #    #

It is quite a work to dredge out of the English language pejoratives strong enough to describe their vulgarity, brutishness and maladroitness—Former Tory Minister Alan Clark on the royal family.

#    #    #    #

Nobody was going to throw the first brick because there were too many people living in glass houses—Norman Tebbit on the Mellor scandal.

#    #    #    #

With low coffee prices a symptom of stocks rather than supply, a stock destruction plan by producers would have a greater effect on the world market price than anything else— Lawrence Eagles, commodity analyst.

Letter: Women's Movements (1974)

Letter to the Editors from the August 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

Women's Movements

It is seldom that the Socialist Standard gives cause for complaint on factual grounds, and also it seems rather churlish to quibble at anything in the lavish, and extremely interesting, 70th anniversary issue.

But in The First and Only Liberationists I read that “the idea that (women) might need a wider horizon than could be provided by a home and family had scarcely dawned”. And the writer also asks, “Who else (other than the founders of the Socialist Party) in 1904 was interested in the freedom of women?”

The answer is, women. The modern assumption that the women’s movement only started up recently is false. The evidence is that there have been women demanding “emancipation” or “equal rights”, as a sex, since the Eighteenth century. In America the First Woman’s Rights Convention was held in Seneca Falls in 1848 and resolved “that the equality of human rights results necessarily from the fact of the identity of the race in capabilities and responsibilities”.

Other national conventions were held annually in America right through the nineteenth century and the Washington Convention in 1900 was dominated by the question of working class women and women’s position as wage-earners—“without political expression woman’s economic value is at the bottom of the scale . . . She must do better work than men for equal pay or equal work for less pay”. (Voices from Women’s Liberation) That such a situation still prevails today is proof of our Party’s contention that it is nothing to have a vote if you don’t use it properly.

If I can add something personal on this question, it is that as a women I am proud to be a member of this Party which has never treated me as a (mere) women, has never pigeon-holed me into some specifically “woman’s” work, but has always treated all members, white or black, male or female, as comrades in a common struggle.

C. Sultan 

Woking

Reply:

Thanks for the compliments, which are among very many received, on the Anniversary Issue.

In the context of that article it was not possible to enlarge on the point but “scarcely dawned” was not meant to imply that no one had questioned the  rôle of women in society. Rather that this questioning was not widespread. It is of course true that some women, and a few men, had been actively involved in campaigns for women’s rights over many years. For example the first leaflet on female suffrage had been issued in 1847. The vote was originally seen as a way of obtaining “social justice”. To the sometime scorn of the modern women’s movement its attainment became an end in itself.

The question “who else” was, at that time, interested in women was about political parties. Here the position taken by the SPGB at its formation, in 1904, was unique.

Editors.

Suffragette Humbug. (1908)

From the June 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not long ago the hoardings of London startled the man in the street with ugly black and white posters asserting that women were poor, that women were sweated, that women walked the streets, and that misery and vice stalked in our midst, all because women had not the vote. Those statements, issued by the Suffragettes, were and are unblushing falsehoods, unsustained and unsustainable by any shred of evidence.

The Socialist is in no quandary as to why the many are poor. It is not because propertied women have not the vote, nor even because women in general are not electors—it is because the many are robbed. And the stopping of this robbery depends not upon a mere all round increase in the number of votes, but upon the intelligence of the workers and the correct use of the vote in their hands.

Democracy is not an end in itself, but a means to an end; and for us that end is Socialism. And were the workers to understand rightly their position and their policy, the political freedom they now possess would enable them to achieve their emancipation irrespective of sex. 

It is, moreover, not a sex war that  exists in Society but a class war, but the Suffragettes endeavour to blur this class issue by screeching qualifications.

What are the facts regarding the Suffragettes? Under the pretence of sex equality they are buttressing class privilege. Under the guise of democracy they are endeavouring to strengthen the political power of property. They plausibly propose that women be admitted to the franchise on the same terms as men, and since all Socialists want sex equality this looks attractive. But wait. What does it really mean? Men vote at present under the £10 franchise. The suffrage is thus upon a property basis with plural voting for the wealthy. Therefore, according to the proposals of the women Suffragists, only those women having the necessary property qualifications are to be allowed to vote. This excludes not only all those single working women unable to qualify because of their poverty, but it also bars practically the whole of the married women of the working class who have no property qualifications apart from their husbands’. Further, it increases enormously the voting power of the well-to-do, since the head of the wealthy household can always impart the necessary qualifications to all the women of his house, while the working-man, through his poverty, is entirely unable to do so.

The limited suffrage movement is consequently only a means of providing votes for the propertied women of the middle class, and faggot votes for the wealthy; possibly tipping the balance of votes against the workers—men and women. Yet the Suffragettes pretend that this is a movement for the benefit of working women! The huge sums spent in this agitation prove that it is not a workers’ movement. It is a movement by women of the wealthy and middle class to open up for themselves more fully careers of exploitation, and to share in the flesh-pots of political office, to get sinecures, position and emoluments among the governing caste.

In their cry for “equality” do not their methods betray them? Every move on their part is an appeal not to sex equality but to sex fetishism. Their tactics rely upon and appeal to the worship of sex. They know that their sex gives them privileges before the magistrate and protects them from the usual police brutality, and that any strong measures against them would immediately raise a storm in their favour amongst the sex worshippers. Hence their peculiar tactics, which have no other explanation. Let anyone compare mentally the treatment that would be meted out to working men did they pursue a similar policy to these Suffragettes. Let them compare the way the suffragist invasions of Downing Street or the House of Commons were dealt with, with that which would follow persistent forcible entries of the Commons by bands of unemployed. Broken heads, bullets, and long terms of imprisonment—and not in the second division—would be their lot, and instead of hysteric sympathy being created for the ill-treated unemployed, horror at their audacity and a determination to repress them brutally would take its place. And the middle class examples of sex arrogance rely upon this very woman worship and sex inequality to further their demands.

The Suffragette movement is upon all counts but a bulwark of capitalism. It is directly opposed to the interests of the working class—women as well as men, and the Independent Labour Party shows its capitalistic nature when it supports that movement in strengthening the political power of the propertied against the propertyless.

Both sexes of the workers are exploited and suffer. Both are  victims of those who live by the ownership of the means of life. Therefore the salvation of working class women lies in the emancipation of their class from this wage-slavery. Their interests are identical with those of working men, and the women of the middle class do but attempt to lure them with false phrases to desert their fellows and to aid the propertied enemies of their class.

The duty of working women is to refuse to allow themselves to be used as catspaws of the wealthy, and to join with their fellows in The Socialist Party, the organisation of their class; thus working for the emancipation of the toilers as a whole, irrespective of sex. Sex-equality cannot be the fruit of the Suffragette humbug, it can only come through economic equality—and economic equality is impossible except through Socialism.

F. C. Watts

Suffragette mangled. (1911)

Party News from the July 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another serious blow has been dealt the “time wasters” and “confusion mongers.” This time the deed was done in the ancient borough of Gravesend, which is far-famed for its shrimps and its cesspools. The recipients of this latest trouncing were the Women’s Social and Political Union, and their champion was “Organiser” Miss Laura Ainsworth.

The debate took place at the “Clock Tower” on Saturday, June 3. Even before the debate commenced the lady flew the white flag by desiring that the wording of the proposition should be altered, to which ye gallant knight, Anderson., with his usual courtesy, agreed. Then the lady, who should have opened by affirming “That Women’s Suffrage is essential for the betterment of the Working Class,” with that true understanding of “Women’s Rights” which might be expected of her, refused to speak first, thus putting Anderson in the curious position of having to confirm a negative. However, our comrade’s first speech made it evident to the large audience that the lady’s case was hopeless. Miss Ainsworth’s first effort made it still more so; and the second speech of Anderson so reduced the supporter of votes for wealthy women that the debate became almost a farce.

The poor girl tried again, but could not last out her appointed time, and left us about 9.20 in a hurry to catch one of those convenient trains.

Anderson then spent the rest of the time up till 10 p.m. answering questions and putting the Socialist position, and so effectively did he do this that the members of the I.L.P. who were present had dismay writ large on their faces.

It was a splendid meeting. Good propaganda was done and some of the humbug of the pseudo-Socialists ably exposed. Everyone present was supplied with leaflets, and the Independent Labour Party were once more publicly challenged to support in debate their claim to the title of Socialists.

W. G. Wragg

[Comments]. (1907)

From the October 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

Riotous living for sailors.

Another great reform has been carried out by the Liberal Government. In future the value of the total messing allowance for sailors will remain at 10d., but they will have a smaller ration, equivalent to 6d., and will be allowed to spend the remaining 4d. in luxuries as they please. We may now expect them to participate in banquets at frequent intervals, just as if they were “Labour” M.P’s.

___________

How Will Thorne fought. 

Addressing the Forest Gate Ratepayers’ Association on September 2nd, Councillor Duncan Best, of West Ham, declared that Mr. Will Thorne, “in order to obtain the salary given by the L.R.C., was quite willing at the general election to furl the red flag—quite willing to tuck it away and appear purely as Labour man.” But Councillor Best is late—we pointed this out long ago.

___________

Labour members sold again.

An example of the extent to which the Government is being “forced” by the existence of a ”powerful Labour party” may be gleaned from some notes by J. Ramsay MacDonald in the Belper News of August 23rd. He claims that the Fair Wages Committee was appointed on the initiative of the Labour party. After many months “pressing” the Government and “negotiating” with them, a Committee was appointed consisting of those officials whom the Labour party had accused of making the Fair Wages Clause a dead letter.

What else could he expect ? When the Labour members fight the Government instead of being so anxious to dine and drink expensive wines with its members something different may happen.

___________

Birds of a Feather.

The first number of The Woman Worker has appeared. It contains letters wishing success from many Labour M.P.s, and also from H. G. Wells, George Cadbury, Chiozza Money, H. Quelch, Herbert Gladstone and other reformers.

Liberating Women's Lib (1979)

From the December 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

The fact of women's oppression in many eras and in many places is undeniable; the determination of the ‘women’s movement’ to end this oppression is understandable; but their specific aims are much more dubious. They make their views known in many spheres with various demands: 24-hour nurseries, abortion on demand, wages for housework, freedom for women to work in manual trades, to name a few. None of these reforms is worth fighting for within the framework of capitalism, for even if they are achieved they could not radically alter the position of women as members of the working class, any more than reformist action will genuinely improve the position of any other oppressed group. Black people, children, the disabled, the old, for example, all have pressure groups devoting their energies to reforms which will supposedly alleviate their particular problems.

The futility of such reformist aims can be demonstrated by taking a look at some recent examples of women’s liberation campaigns taken to their logical conclusions. One such is the question of prostitution. Recently, at a well-attended meeting at Central Hall, Westminster, baronesses, MPs, and leading figures in the women’s movement shared a platform with prostitutes fighting for recognition of their right to sell their bodies freely without harassment from the police. This was followed by the first national meeting of PROS, which is campaigning to end the imprisonment of prostitutes, to abolish the offences of loitering and soliciting for the purpose of prostitution and to stop the use of the term ‘common prostitute’ in legal proceedings. They also want to “get more street women involved on a regular basis so that they are taking the initiatives and finding a voice for themselves. That is where real change will come from" (our italics) (Guardian, October 9, 1979). Just how such reforms could make any appreciable difference to the life of a prostitute is hard to imagine. Nearly all prostitutes are driven into their trade by poverty and no matter how many reforms are enacted this will not change. Yet we have the spectacle of ‘liberated’ women seriously suggesting that removing a few restrictions and harassments will enable prostitutes to ply their trade with dignity and honour.

Another example of the absurdity of certain women’s campaigns relates to the ‘inferior’ position of women in the armed forces. Here we are expected to struggle for equal “rights” of women to fight and kill alongside men, and unfavourable comparison is made between the British armed forces, where women may only perform auxiliary duties, and the armed forces of Israel and the USA, where they are entitled to undertake full combat duty. In other words “liberated” women should be calling for the right to kill their fellow workers (men and women alike) in other countries an example of emancipation at which the mind can only reel.

Similarly, the fact that only one per cent of bank managers and two per cent of chartered accountants are women (Observer, 23 September 1979) must reflect the subordinate position of women. But are we to demand that these professions, which exist merely to service capitalism, should henceforth employ equal numbers of men and women? If, overnight, 50 per cent of bank managers and accountants were women, capitalism would be exactly the same and socialism no nearer. Even with total equality in the labour market women will remain wage-slaves, like men.

It is mistaken to assume that men, because their pay is generally higher, and because hitherto they have done some jobs to the exclusion of women, and because they usually go out to work for most of their adult lives, therefore have something that is worth striving for. The serried rows of clerks, factory hands, salesmen, plumbers no more have jobs which are intrinsically satisfying than housework and childcare are intrinsically stultifying. This is not to say that women are better off staying at home but it is a warning that exchanging one situation for another is not an act of liberation. The main, if not only reason most members of the working class—male and female—go out to work is for the small brown envelope they receive on Fridays; and it confers not dignity but humiliation that their worth as human beings should be so narrowly defined. The fact that many men have misconceptions about their role in society and their relationship with women does not warrant either wholesale hostility to them nor the belief that equality with men within capitalism will lead to emancipation.

Another example of women tying themselves in knots in furtherance of their cause is the support given by some sections of the women's movement to Margaret Thatcher: simply by virtue of her sex we were encouraged to vote for her, what she might or might not do in power being apparently of secondary importance. Although some of those who took up this position before the election have now repented, there are those even now who cling to this absurd notion; the writer of a letter to Spare Rib (July 1979), although abhorring the Tory Party, writes, “But when I read or hear the words ‘the Prime Minister was present. She said . . . ’ I am filled with a deep, half-incredulous satisfaction”. Another example of equal irrelevance to women’s real interests, is the decision by the Swedish Parliament to make “the monarch’s first-born child rather than the first male child heir to the throne” (Guardian, 8 November 1979), thus disinheriting the young prince in favour of his elder sister. Big deal.

There are many other areas where women seek to remove petty restrictions and barriers which make no real difference at all, and yet they are hailed as some kind of achievement. We learn, for example, that American Catholics may remove ‘sexist language’ from prayers; apparently sexist “language in liturgy has been a target of feminist groups”, so now a revised prayer instead of reading Christ’s blood is “shed for you and for all men” would read “shed for you and for all” (Guardian. 25 October 1979). Now there's something to make us feel better.

Women are rightly disgusted by blatantly sexual advertisements which display their bodies to sell products, but although putting stickers on these posters to express their outrage will make some women feel better, it will have little effect. The capitalists must sell their products in order to realise their profits, and they will use whatever means they find most effective to do so. Furthermore, men are just as degraded by the macho, he-men advertisements also used to sell products, or the “It’s a Man’s Life in the Army” type of approach used to incite workers to kill other workers on behalf of their masters. But what about the television advertisements which, in the pre-Christmas period, aim to inspire in children a crazy lust for worthless toys? Even if an organisation such as Affirm—"a feminist alliance against ads, articles and images that exploit women” were to succeed in its aims “to abolish all sexism in the media” (Spare Rib. July 1978), where would that leave us? Advertising would still be there, capitalism would be intact. Protesting about any of these advertisements is useless without tackling the underlying cause.

The most positive thing to emerge from the women’s movement will be the active involvement of large numbers women in questioning their role in society. Let us hope it is not too long before they turn their attention to a more constructive approach to the problems which face us all, men and women.

J.

What should Women do to be Free? (1944)

From the November 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Looking through an old copy of the Socialist Standard, the writer came across a series of articles based on lectures on that seemingly eternal subject, “The Women’s Question.” Like unemployment, it is always with us, and will remain so until the inception of Socialism.

Woman cannot expect emancipation, any more than can her fellow-worker, man, under the existing system, capitalism. The amount enjoyed now by the male is merely a question of degree, conditioned mainly by his class position ; if of the working class, he is at liberty to sell his labour power or to starve.

Morgan, in his great work “Ancient Society,” shows clearly that the subjugation of woman did not come about to any great extent until the importance of private property was realised. Woman then became part of it; she was as important as flocks and herds, because she was reproductive, and she had no more freedom. Companionship and affection between the male and female had not yet been realised, and could not enter into the contract. The husband punished infidelity with severity, whilst reserving for himself the right of promiscuity. A section of women became courtesans, thus filling the needs of man for enjoyment outside his own home. These were found in the early civilisations of Rome and Greece, where the married women had no rights or freedom. Man then became the head of the family, over which he exercised power of life or death; property descended through the male line instead of the female, as heretofore, and the female lost all right of expressing herself and putting her point of view as she had been accustomed to so doing in the savage tribes. Her place became the home, whilst the man developed for himself a life outside it and generally had some voice in public affairs. Thus began the possibility of the charge so often still levelled against woman, that her mind can only appreciate trivialities. Small wonder, she was for so long debarred from all else, and the education available for her brothers was denied her.

Time, coupled with the progress of capitalism, has modified her position somewhat. To the capitalist she has appeared in the guise of a worker who will accept less wages than the male. Her centuries of subjugation were exploited to their fullest extent during the Industrial Revolution. Marx, in “Capital” (Vol. I.), gives a telling quotation from Lord Ashley’s speech on the 10-hours Bill. “Mr. E., a manufacturer, informed me that he employed females exclusively at his power looms . . . gives a decided preference to married females, especially those who have families at home dependent on them for support; they are attentive, docile, more so than unmarried females, and are compelled to use their utmost exertions to procure the necessaries of life. Thus are the virtues, the peculiar virtues of the female character, to be perverted to her injury; thus all that is most dutiful and tender in her nature is made a means of her bondage and suffering.” (Page 100, Glaisher edition.)

During the present war the calling up of men for the armed forces, and the subsequent conscription of women for industry, has once again given the capitalist a golden opportunity for getting more surplus value from his workers. Army pay has been so low, has borne so little relation to the needs of life, that women with small children have been compelled to go into the factory. That it has been the design of the representatives of the capitalist class, the Government, is evident by their provision of war-time nurseries. They are learning how better to enslave their workers from their co-belligerent Russia, who provides factory creches for war workers’ babies, so getting their cheap labour without damaging the next generation of wage slaves. Britain has hitherto been too crude in her methods to make such provision. Mothers have gone out to work and left their children under little or no supervision, which has been one of the causes of infant mortality and disease.

Woman has awakened sufficiently at this time to strive for “equal pay for equal work,” but not enough to demand the abolition of the wages system. She, like her male fellow worker, does not realise the theft that is being perpetrated upon her when she becomes employed. Such slogans tend to increase any antagonism that may exist between the sexes, instead of uniting them against the common enemy, the master class. The possibility of further antagonism may be manifested after this war, when men return from the Army to find, as after the last world war, that the women ensconced in their seats are unwilling to get down, and it will doubtless be exploited by Governments when unemployment once again becomes rife—as indeed it must, despite all “reconstruction schemes.”

An organisation called “Women for Westminster” has recently been born. It has a self-explanatory name and object. What a waste of time and energy such an organisation causes, and what future disillusionment must there be among its adherents ! Supposing they were to have a measure of success according to their aims, and get a predominance of women in the House of Commons. They would find that women, merely as women, can run capitalism no better than can the Labour or Tory Parties.

The Suffragettes have been appalled by the lack of enthusiasm for the vote, following their desperate efforts to gain it. Their lack of knowledge of the make-up of society is the reason for their indignation. Despite the constant propaganda of the press, screen and radio, woman as well as man is sceptical, often unconsciously so, regarding electioneering programmes, which cater for all tastes. Speaking generally, members of the working class are apathetic and not politically conscious. Many, unfortunately, are led away by reform parties, by idolaters of Russia, or by mushroom growths such as Commonwealth.

Many of the reforms regarding women have been implemented since Mary Woolstonecraft wrote her book “The Rights of Women.” These may, in the main, be attributed to the rise of capitalism, which has made it necessary for woman to take her place as part of the industrial army. In countries such as Turkey, for example, where after years of seclusion woman has removed her veil and gone out to work in the factory, it does not merely indicate that opinion there is becoming more liberal, but that the forces of industrial capital are at work looking out for cheap labour. The benefits woman has received in the field of education have been essential for her to take her place in the professional groups, and whilst giving her some individual freedom, have exchanged her quiet home life for that of a competitive existence.

Many women intent on emancipation have sublimated their natural instincts. This is undoubtedly possible for the possessor of an interesting and absorbing job, but as most work has been reduced to routine by the division of labour, characteristic of capitalist organisations, little permanent satisfaction is obtained thereby. With the present knowledge of birth control, the modern working woman denies herself the pleasure of children rather than bring them into a world, for them, of abject poverty. Frustration is thus found on all sides; denied an interesting and creative job, denied the rightful expression of her normal instincts, woman becomes, like the male worker, another machine for productivity and exploitation by the capitalist.

Whilst capitalism lasts, women will remain, like men, in a subject position, no matter how far progress is made towards equality with men. The interests of women are therefore identical with men in struggling for the overthrow of the present system, as it is only under Socialism that both will find real emancipation.

W. P.

Greasy Pole: New wives’ tales (1996)

The Greasy Pole column from the October 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

Spare a thought, if you will, for the spin doctors. These shadowy figures labour without pause, shovelling up their platitudes, evasions and lies to divert our attention from the truth about the politicians they spin for. On one side they tell us that John Major is doing a marvellous job of running British capitalism and making us all healthier, richer and happier. Those who are enough in touch with reality to doubt that this is true may be unimpressed by the spin doctors on the other side, who want to convince us that Tony Blair is the man we can trust to clean up the mess which John Major is making— except that anyone who believes that is obviously not as much in touch with reality as they should be.

But spare a thought for the spin doctors, whose work is so often exposed and despised. For example, at the moment the Tones' campaign to convince us that Tony Blair, who was once derided as Bambi, is not a wimpish fawn but an evil-eyed devil, is not having the effect they hoped. Labour’s spin doctors are struggling with the confusion over the party's plans for devolution in Scotland. These things, they may reflect, are sent to try them. It never seems to occur to them to give it all up and begin dealing in facts and the real experience of an inhuman social system. Instead they go on shovelling, in the hope that they will throw up a positive nugget of deception.

Wives

An example of this may be the current contest over Norma Major and Cherie Blair, and its connection with Hilary Clinton. The American President’s wife is not known as the First Lady for nothing because she is a very powerful person who knows how to mix it politically. The Republicans have seized on this to promote the suspicion that Hilary Clinton is really the President, the person who actually decides all sorts of important issues like whether to press the button and blow the world to pieces. In making this propaganda the Republicans are obviously hoping that the American voters have forgotten all about Nancy Reagan and how she interfered in her husband’s presidency.

The wives of British prime ministers are not supposed to behave like Hilary Clinton and Nancy Reagan; their profile is supposed to be kept much lower. They can be their husband’s long-suffering and openly disapproving chauffeur, like Attlee’s wife. They can be background supports like Clemendine Churchill and Dorothy Macmillan. They can write insomnia-curing poetry like Mary Wilson. They can tell all to the women’s magazines about the prime minister’s dietary preferences. That is as far as they have been expected to go.

But none of that fits in with Cherie Blair, who overcame whatever problems may have stemmed from a wayward father who was famously the Liverpudlian butt of Alf Garnett’s abuse in Till Death Us Do Part to become a highly-paid barrister and a QC. Now she is starting to practice as a judge, overpowering the lives of people who transgress against capitalism’s laws. She once had ambitions to be a parliamentary candidate.

Cherie and Norma 

The sort of woman, in other words, to make her parents proud. And it may have stayed like that had the man she married not had ambitions to be prime minister. A clever and ruthless election- winning machine like the Conservative Party could not have overlooked the obvious comparison with Hilary Clinton. What if, their spin doctors asked themselves, the voters of both sexes were uneasy about powerful women? What if they had doubts about a female with Cherie Blair’s abilities and qualifications being so near the seat of power? Of course a campaign to undermine Cherie Blair would rely on the voters forgetting all about Margaret Thatcher, who was also a barrister and a lawyer as well as female, but no self-respecting spin doctor would allow so minor a detail to put them off.

So the work began—like the appeal by a Daily Express journalist for details of any embarrassingly radical political stances in Cherie Blair’s past. At the same time there has been an effort to put a little colour into the image of Major’s wife, Norma, who so far has been shoved into the background as an everyday housewife and mother who just happens to be married to the man in Number Ten and who may even have been happier if he had not failed, long ago. that test to be a bus conductor.

We have been allowed to know such fascinating details about Norma as to make any discerning voter desperate to get out and vote for her husband. She got A-levels in English and needlework. She prudently grates and freezes odd bits of cheese and uses tea bags more than once. She wears clothes that are comfy, perhaps because she does not think of herself as attractive. Anyone who thinks this is boring enough to be voter unfriendly is missing the point. Norma’s " . . . very ordinariness", said the Daily Telegraph, “makes her a huge electoral asset".

Fatuous

We don’t know what Cherie Blair thinks about all this except that she has made some sort of an effort at imitation. While Norma has been completing a book on Chequers, which may or may not include chapters on frozen cheese and second-hand tea bags, Cherie has been invited to the more glamorous job of guest editor for an edition of the magazine Prima. She took this opportunity to, apart from anything else, reassure us that she is almost as ordinary as Norma, whose A-level in needlework she can match by being keen on knitting. Norma and her tea bags? Cherie concerns herself with the techniques of producing interesting and nutritious meals in a short time.

Fatuous guff though this is it should be taken seriously because it reveals how the political parties regard the people who vote them into power. It illustrates the parties' contemptuous confidence that no matter how badly capitalism treats us, no matter how obvious their failure to control the system, they will be supported by millions of people on election day, with votes based on nothing more considerable than Norma Major's tea bags and Cherie Blair's knitting. That kind of propaganda may be sickening but it is no more fatuous and meaningless than the other kind, which is supposed to be weightier. Like Tony Blair, spouting his platitudes in Southwark Cathedral last January:

"To recover national purpose we need to start thinking and acting as one nation, one community again . . . Above all, we must create a society based on a notion of mutual rights and responsibilities."

And so on. And so on.

Ivan

Aspects of the “Woman Question.” (Part 5) (1929)

From the November 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 4.

(Based on Notes of a series of Lectures on "The Sexes in Evolution.”)

Many have contended that the work of propaganda among women requires essentially different methods than are used among men. Woman is dependent upon man—yes, that is true, at least of the majority. But what is man dependent on? A wage, which in turn depends on a job. Who owns the job ? Not always the man who does it. So that woman’s dependence and man’s dependence are all of a piece— it is all part of the same problem. Where women have gone into industry they have shifted, to some extent, their economic dependence from husband or father, to that of an employer. But even so, it has only made her problem more identical with that of the working man.

I am unable at the moment to give the latest figures of the number of women employed, but this is relatively unimportant. Their actual industrial position is reflected by the amount of wages received by them. Here again actual figures are lacking, but the crucial point is this—the Capitalist system finds in the huge body of unemployed a source of strength in that they compete with each other in the labour market. Women further intensify this competition by the fact that they can be compelled to accept a lower wage than a man. The minimum wage of all labour being determined by the amount on which a man can live, it is taken for granted that this must be higher for a man than for a woman. Woman, whether true or not, is looked upon as having no dependents, and her known ability to live more cheaply than man is undoubtedly taken into account.

The same laws of competition, over-supply, etc., hold with the labourer, whether man or woman. There is no difference whatever in the way in which Capitalism exploits men and women. In the economic fight it has been the one who endeavoured to maintain life on the barest necessities, and who possessed at the same time the least power of resistance, who has been pushed to the wall—whether man or woman. As pointed out by J. A. Hobson —”It is not the difference of sex which is the chief factor in determining the industrial position of woman. Machinery knows neither age nor sex, but chooses the labour embodied in man, woman or child which is the cheapest in relation to the degree of its efficiency.”

Women, also, are badly organised—they are not good trade unionists. Possibly this is partly because she is by training domestic, and that such things as trade unions, politics, etc., have not come within her purview. Partly too, because she hopes that her entry into industry will not be permanent. . . .

As regards home and family life, even the most superficial observer will agree that the prevailing system exerts a harmful effect.

Take the case of marriage. It is a prevailing impression that marriages are based on the love and mutual respect of two persons for each other. So they are in many cases, but often with consequences of economic disaster. In a large number of cases, however, there is not the slightest doubt that girls enter into marriage for the express purpose of escaping from a life of toil in the office or factory. The marriages and social affairs of the idle rich we can leave out of account—their carryings-on would take volumes to describe. So that from this standpoint alone we can see that it is not remarkable that when economic trouble arises domestic life is directly affected. A good deal of the existing unhappiness in working-class homes is traceable to this source. We all know of the misery entailed through couples being unable either to furnish or buy a house. Either there is a shortage of houses to let or a shortage of money to buy one. After so influencing the structure of family life as to make it conform to its requirements, and then helping to undermine the very foundations of this structure by its degrading conditions, Capitalism goes yet further and displays complete indifference to the fact that for thousands there are no homes at all ! So cheaply is human life regarded. And yet if any lapse from the path of moral rectitude occurs, we are taught to look on it as a shame or a disgrace—that is unless one belongs to the upper ten. The more we look into it, the more do we see the necessity for the closer co-operation of men and women in the fight for the conquest of political power. Many advocates of women suffrage have only sought and worked for sex emancipation, quite failing to realise that its full significance lies in a full social and political education for both sexes before its value can be fully utilized.

Tom Sala

(To be continued)

Aspects of the “Woman Question.” (Part 3) (1929)

From the September 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 2.

(Based on Notes of a series of Lectures on “The Sexes in Evolution.”)

It is not surprising, perhaps, that during the ages when no scientific knowledge existed, when nothing was known regarding the development of life on the earth, that man should have regarded himself as an infininitely superior being, possessing mental and physical qualities which were peculiarly “masculine.” Neither is it remarkable that woman, who was supposed to have appeared later on the scene as the result of a surgical operation performed upon him, should have been regarded simply as an adjunct, a being created to satisfy the requirements of the masculine nature. But when the scientific age dawned, when it became possible to trace through the ages the evolutionary development of the human race, it might be thought, especially in the light of modern knowledge, that these antiquated prepossessions would disappear. This is by no means the case.

When man was compelled to turn his attention to the crude agricultural pursuits which woman first of all developed, the so-called superior qualities which he possessed —acquisitions of war and the hunt—enabled him gradually to improve on these rudiments. The changeover from matriarchal to patriarchal forms necessarily involved changed conceptions of relations, both sexual and political, and man’s power over woman received the necessary sanction of custom and law. And there it has stood, with slight variations, ever since, with the blessing of the Church behind it. Even when we turn to the most advanced scientific writings we find that the old prejudices are by no means eradicated, and any discussion of the sex question still reveals traces of the old prepossession of man’s superiority over woman. Scientists have even, on occasion, gone out of their way to justify the subjection of women

Now that suffrage is practically universal, there are those who deplore the extension of the franchise to women on the grounds that as women outnumber men they may sweep the board at any and every election in the Labour interest, since the majority of women belong to the working-class. On the other hand, Labour politicians are jubilant, believing it to be a likely consummation. Strangely enough, the Conservative Government, which conceded this “power” to the women, depended upon them to support their class out of gratitude for the concession. At the time they pointed out that they were democratic enough to recognise and appreciate what the women had done for the country. Since women worked and suffered and paid exactly as the men did, it was only right and proper that the same rights and privileges should be extended to them. Selah ! In other words— women had proved their worth as citizens, which, by the way, apparently implies that up to that point they hadn’t.

In presenting what is, after all, merely a rough outline of the position of the sexes in society, the interpretation can, of necessity, only be a sketchy one. In the opinion of the Socialist the hopes and fears engendered by the extension of the franchise to women are by no means justified. The Liberal and Conservative Parties seek the support of the women, because they believe they can be bluffed. The Labour Party counts on the women’s support also, believing they now possess what the men have long possessed—political liberty—and that the moment has now come when woman will assert herself and strike a blow for social freedom. It is quite true, of course, that the employing class has always opposed any “rights” for women, probably actuated by fear that the labour market might suffer, and that, by and by, through a possible extended organisation on the part of men and women an end would come to class rule. Though their fears, at the present stage of working-class political education, are groundless, it was probably this aspect that the Liberal and Conservative Parties had in mind when they solicited the support of the enfranchised women. The mistake made by the Labour Party has been to assume that women were politically intelligent to a certain degree. They are not— for how can women be expected to attain a condition which men have not yet reached after years and years of agitation and education? The sad fact remains—the majority of men and women of the working-class are positively indifferent to the political an industrial welfare of their own class. Many there are—men and women—who have fought for years to improve the conditions under which workers live, and have given of their best to the end, that some day the workers would wake up and take what was rightly theirs. But ask them—has the task been an easy one? Have they perceived any tangible change in the workers’ attitude ? Have they received any encouragement even?

It might be asked—did the Socialist not see any usefulness in the extension of the franchise, since the vote is the only sensible weapon with which the working-class can emancipate itself? To which the Socialist might retort—the franchise for a great many years gave the males the power to effect any purpose, but so far it has been utilised to maintain their masters in political power. That means that workers have used their votes against their own interests. Why? Because of political ignorance. The vote is a mighty weapon, used intelligently. But in some respects it is like a razor—one can shave or cut one’s throat with it. So that the importance of the vote lies not in the securing of the vote itself, it is in the way it is used. What matters most is the recognition, by men and women alike, of their class position. That can come only by education and study along Socialist lines.

Much of the credit for the women’s “victory” has been claimed by those who support what is euphemistically termed the “women’s movement.” But a more obvious factor was a Government facing disaster. And when a Government, facing the probability of defeat, introduces complete enfranchisement, it can only be because they count on swelling the total number of votes to such an extent as to increase their chances of victory, knowing, as they do, that the already existing electorate is anything but politically wise.

It has been called “The Awakening of Women.” If that is true, then God help the men !

Tom Sala

(To be continued.)

Putin, power and women (2022)

From the August 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the media frenzy concerning another spectacular but predictable demise of a British Prime Minister begins to subside there will be those who will try to divine a meaning in all of the populist bluster of the last few years. Like Trump in the USA his attempt to bypass and disregard the political establishment was a resounding failure. The most powerful office of state seems, in the end, to emphasise its weakness when confronted by the real power of the ruling elite. All of the millions who were conned into thinking that voting for populist candidates like Boris Johnson would change anything are forced to the realisation that their votes are meaningless if they attempt to thwart the ruling class and their need for ‘business as usual’. Perhaps Johnson was surprised at just how little power the office of PM brings with it.

A vision of him holed up in a fortified No. 10 defended by the hordes of his northern ‘red wall’ supporters paralleling the Trump militia’s storming of the Capitol building is both comical and disturbing. That the man had no moral compass or political integrity is no surprise to socialists but what we do find unforgivable is his warmongering activities on behalf of NATO in the name of the Ukrainian people. One of his more incoherent statements concerned his assertion that if Putin was a woman he would not have invaded Ukraine. Does he have no memory of the Tory heroine Thatcher glorying in the Falklands War? She may not have instigated the invasion but she loved every moment of it. Indeed many feminists at the time seriously asserted that she was not really a woman at all. So what is the real nature of political power and are female leaders instinctively more benign and less belligerent than their male counterparts?

A friend once insisted that she had no interest in history because it was merely a record of ‘boys’ power games’. Whilst it is true that the nature of the evolution of private property societies and their warrior ethos has promoted patriarchy there have been examples of powerful and belligerent female leaders. From Boudicca and Cleopatra in the ancient world to queens of England including Matilda, Bloody Mary and Elizabeth I. There is no record of Queen Victoria objecting to her other title as ‘Empress of India’. Benazir Bhutto, Golda Meir, Tansu Ciller and Chandrika Kumaratunga are all female leaders of the modern era who could hardly be called pacifists. Condoleeza Rice in her role of National Security Advisor in the US played a significant role in prosecuting the illegal war in Iraq and the instigation of the use of torture. The characteristics needed to be a successful politician within the capitalist context are the same for both men and women and gender seems to make no significant difference. Like leading men within the mainstream political parties their primary role is to protect the power and wealth of the parasitic elite. If war is needed to do this they will have no hesitation in beating the drum.

Vladimir Putin has become demonised in the West as a maniacal imperialist despot. But the truth is that his actions would be duplicated by many other capitalist leaders if they felt they had been systematically lied to and threatened by a rival and enemy. Putin represents the pride that Russia once felt in its supposed imperial heyday as the ‘Soviet Union’. Promises undertaken by the US not to expand their empire (NATO) any further east have been broken and rightly or wrongly the Russian elite feel they have been betrayed and insulted. They proclaim that Ukraine was the gateway to the invasion of their country by Napoleon, the Kaiser and Hitler and that they will never allow this to happen again. Meanwhile members of the working class on both sides continue to murder each other in the name of their respective national oligarchs. The idea that this is simply ‘Putin’s War’ rather than an inevitable result of national rivalries and the economic objectives that they serve is just tabloid propaganda.

An unlikely candidate for the role of female peacemaker came in the form of German leader Angela Merkel who, apparently, begged George Bush Jnr. not to continue to pressure Ukraine to join NATO since she plainly foresaw the conflict that this would unleash. The momentum of history has little regard for the illusion of power that leaders try to project. As Merkel’s ‘illustrious’ predecessor Otto von Bismarck once remarked with unusual humility: ‘The statesman’s task is to hear God’s footsteps marching through history, and to try and catch on to his coattails as he marches past.’ If we substitute the word ‘progress’ for the reference to God this has an almost Marxian quality to it. Bismarck also knew that a united Germany was inevitable and that his efforts to maintain Prussian hegemony were doomed – it seems that those who are most successful as statesmen/women recognise how limited their power really is.

An analysis of the power of individuals and groups through history leads socialists to believe that leaders are a political anachronism that have no place in the modern world. The global working class must act as a united political force to finally eliminate the mythology of ‘great men and leaders’ and the tribal interests that they represent. Only then can humankind’s true historical destiny be fulfilled.

Wez.

Mary Gray and Eleanor Marx (1999)

Eleanor Marx

From the July 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

A number of papers of Mary Gray (1854-1941), an active member of the Social Democratic Federation before the First World War, have been donated to us. They contain some interesting material, including two previously unpublished letters from Marx’s daughter Eleanor.

The SDF had been founded in 1881, mainly on the initiative of H. M. Hyndman, as the Democratic Federation, a federation of London Radical (i.e. leftwing Liberal) clubs. In 1883 it proclaimed Socialism as its aim and changed its name to Social Democratic Federation. However, it kept its programme of “advanced” reforms to be achieved within capitalism, or what its 1892 Programme and Rules (which are amongst these papers) described as “measures called for to palliate the evils of our existing society”. In 1884, over this issue of retaining a reform programme as well as over the authoritarian behaviour of Hyndman, part of the membership (including William Morris) broke away to form the Socialist League. However, the SDF survived, and was always the bigger organisation.

After the demise of the Socialist League following its take-over by bomb-throwing anarchists, the SDF was the only organisation in Britain propagating the ideas of Marxian Socialism. Most of the early members of the SPGB had been members of the SDF, the Socialist Party being a breakaway from the SDF in 1904 for the same reasons that had led to the SL breakaway 20 years earlier.

Mary Gray joined the SDF in 1890. She had been born Mary Rogers near Wokingham in Berkshire, the daughter of a baker, in January 1854; in 1876 she married Willie Gray, a stonemason, and lived in Reading where their daughter, Florence, was born in 1879. Later the family moved to Battersea in London.

Mary Gray became a very active member of the SDF. In 1895 she stood as an SDF candidate, and was elected, as a member of the Battersea Board of Poor Law Guardians. She was a speaker and lecturer for them, and not just in London. Amongst the papers is a handbill advertising two meetings by her in Coventry in November 1896, one on “Socialism, The Only Hope of the Worker” and the other on “The Economic Position of Women”. There is also a press cutting from an Ilkeston paper of an outdoor meeting she addressed in the market square there in July 1897 on “Society As It Is”. For a time she was on the Executive Committee of the SDF.

As the title of the second lecture in Coventry shows, Mary Gray was interested in what was then called “The Woman Question”, not just votes for women but also the economic position of women generally under capitalism. She was on friendly terms with two other prominent women members of the SDF, Marx’s daughter Eleanor and Edith Lanchester.

Eleanor Marx lived with fellow Socialist Edward Aveling without getting formally married. This was a daring thing to do in the 1890s as Edith Lanchester found to her cost. A schoolteacher who at the time lodged with Mary Gray, she stood as SDF candidate in West Lambeth for the London School Board elections in 1894. The next year, when she decided to follow Eleanor Marx’s example and live with a man without getting married, her family found a doctor to certify her and she was locked up in a private mental asylum. As a result of the outcry and campaigning that followed she was released after three days. Various items in connection with this campaign are included in the papers.

The papers also contain two letters from Eleanor Marx, or Eleanor Marx Aveling as she called herself. Eleanor Marx was not simply Karl Marx’s daughter but an active Socialist in her own right. She had been amongst those who had left the SDF in 1884 to found the Socialist League but had resigned a few years later because she disagreed with the anti-parliamentary position it eventually took up. She rejoined the SDF in 1896 and was a frequent attender at the classes at the SDF offices at 337 The Strand, where Aveling lectured on economics.

Eleanor Marx’s letters to Mary Gray are not political but we reproduce them as they have not been published before. The first, dated 25 September 1896, is a short note which reads:

Dear Mrs Gray,

As you cant come Wedy you + Florrie must fix some other day. But try & come tomorrow night to 337. First because of classes, but also to fix up an evening to come here.

Yours

Eleanor Marx Aveling.

Florrie was Mary Gray’s daughter, who was then aged 17, and “here” was The Den, Jews Walk, Sydenham, London, where Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling lived.

The second letter, dated 24 January 1898, is longer:

My dear Mrs Gray,

I had a letter from Edith on Saturday — + if you have any news of her please let me know. I’ve written to Sullivan to ask if I cd see Edith. Is n’t her boy lovely? I am quite in love with this delightful little man.

I shd have been to see you — but as you know, Edward has been dangerously ill. He is now at Hastings, but though the lung trouble seems better, it seems certain that he must soon — in a week or so — undergo a most dangerous operation for the abcess he has so long suffered from. The operation is so serious that there is the utmost danger. But without operation there seems no hope at all.

So you will see, dear Mrs Gray, that I have very great trouble. Of course, I have not said anything to Edith in my letter of this — it wd be unwise for her, but I tell you, as I am so sure of your kindly sympathy.

Hearty greeting to Mr Gray + Florrie + you, + a big kiss to the sweet little man.

Yours

Eleanor Marx Aveling.

“Edith” is Edith Lanchester and “Sullivan” is James Sullivan, the man she lived with and the father of the baby boy mentioned in the letter. What is poignant about this letter is that within two months Eleanor Marx was dead. While he was on the South Coast, Aveling—who had never been highly regarded in the Socialist movement for his personal integrity—married an actress he knew. Eleanor felt she had no alternative but to commit suicide, at the age of 41. Those who believe in some form of immanent justice will be reinforced in their belief by the fact that Aveling did not survive the year.

Mary Gray is credited with founding the first Socialist Sunday School, in Battersea in 1892. Battersea happened to be one of the SDF branches which contained many of the founding members of the SPGB—the protest meeting which eventually led on the founding of the Socialist Party was held in Battersea Town Hall—and it is interesting to note that the Battersea branch of the SPGB continued the Socialist Sunday School tradition, a report from the branch in the Socialist Standard for November 1904 reading: “A Sunday School class for the children is held every Sunday afternoon, and is well attended, and after the school a communal tea is provided to which all comrades are most heartily invited”.

There existed a Socialist Sunday School Union, organised from Glasgow, though it seems to have been more of an ILP rather than an SDF movement, using progressive teaching methods and preaching a kind of “ethical socialism” but which was still recognisably socialist in general terms. For instance, a handbook published in 1923 which is amongst Mary Gray’s papers gave two definitions of socialism, one of which was:

Socialism is the co-operative ownership and control of the vital industries (connected with food, clothing, housing, transport, etc) and the means of education by all the adults of a national community, and it implies the abolition of rent, interest, profit and the wages system.

Also, a model lesson on “Money” ends as follows:

When the fields and factories, the trams and the houses, and all the material wealth of the world shall belong to all the people, and shall be used for the happiness and welfare of the people, no money will then be needed nor any millionaires.

At least this shows that socialism, as we have always defined it, is not our own invention but was once the more or less widely accepted definition.

Mary Gray was well-entrenched on the reformist wing of the SDF and wouldn’t have had any sympathy whatsoever for those who broke away from the SDF to set up the SPGB. The papers include a poem she wrote in 1903 on the first birthday of her grand-daughter which contains twelve excruciating lines describing an SDF meeting held to celebrate Hyndman’s recovery from an illness at which “the cheers that went up showed the love and reverence” of “his comrades and friends”.

The papers have nothing on her political views after 1903 but she remained in Battersea until at least 1935 before moving to Hampshire and then Wiltshire. She died in 1941.

Adam Buick

Greasy Pole: The Whip Who Cracked (2006)

The Greasy Pole column from the March 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

It can’t all be fun, being a Blair Babe. When Labour came to power in 1997 quite a few of those female MPs were spoken of as future Prime Ministers. With nice, expectant smiles they clustered around their leader, still aglow from his promise that “A new dawn has broken, has it not?” But since those intoxicated days a cruel reality has taken over as one Babe after another has slid down the greasy pole.

Ann Taylor was sacked from the job as Chief Whip, apparently because of her inept manner of telling Blair what to do and say – which would have been some way beyond the job of simply offering him advice. Estelle Morris dismissed herself from the Department of Education because it was all too much for her; she worried so cripplingly about decisions that in the end she disabled herself from taking any — apart from her resignation, that is. Beverley Hughes had to go from the Home Office after denying that she knew about fraudulent asylum applications from Romania and Bulgaria when there was conclusive evidence, which eventually washed her away, that she did know. Ruth Kelly’s hold on the job of Education Secretary looks increasingly fragile; apart from anything else, the fate of the latest clutch of changes in education looks more uncertain by the day.

And then there is the present Chief Whip, Hilary Armstrong, who has always been one of the more vociferous and combative Blair Babes, but who upset Blair when she lost a crucial House of Commons vote through her own misguided efforts. It happened when the Commons defeated the government on amendments to the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill. Armstrong miscounted the votes in favour of the unamended Bill and told Blair that it was safe for him to go home; in the event, with the aid of rebellious Labour MPs, the government lost – by just the one vote.

Aristocrat

Armstrong was a leading light in the 1997 Blair Babes, apparently looking forward to a bright future. It is different now, after eight years of New Labour’s version of controlling British capitalism. “A disaster where women are concerned,” was how one of her colleagues described her. “She has no respect in the parliamentary party… She is seen as someone who crawls to Downing Street and regards the parliamentary party with contempt,” was the opinion of one peeved MP. Such ratings probably don’t register with her; she is, after all, a kind of Labour Party aristocrat, inheriting her seat — Durham North West — from her father, who was also a Chief Whip in a Harold Wilson Government in the days before bouncy media types had titillated Labour’s women with a saucy brand name like Blair Babes. She has said that her father’s diaries informed her that a Whip leads a hard life, although her rise to the Cabinet was rather easier than it usually is for others; she was selected as the candidate for Durham North West at her first attempt and was appointed as Chief Whip after only a brief spell as a junior minister for local government in John Prescott’s cumbersome monster of a department covering Environment, Transport and the Regions. There are comforts in the patronage traditionally associated with an aristocracy and clearly Armstrong has taken advantage of them.

The office of the Whips came into its own with the polarisation of the parties consequent on the 1832 Reform Act. Before then parliamentary business had been the concern of the Speaker; the Whips, using a social network centred on exclusive London clubs like Brooks and Whites, were supposed to “give advice” to MPs on how they might think about voting. The pairing system, now an important part of the Whip’s work (as Armstrong, after her disastrous miscounting, must now know) was largely left for the MPs to arrange themselves. After the Act the Whips took on these duties, as well as developing links between MPs and the government. This was, they said, a matter of “continuity” – a word ominous rather than reassuring.

Heath

The late Ted Heath, who was Chief Whip in the Conservative governments between 1955 and 1959, described the work as “above all, to hold the parliamentary party together” and in more detail: “I was determined to get away from the generally held view . . . that the Whips were a gang of ignorant bullies, forcing Members of Parliament to vote in certain ways, all too often against their wishes.” There are, of course, other responsibilities. Heath recalled one, not untypical, early morning incident when he telephoned an absent MP whose vote was needed, to be told by the MP’s sleepy wife that he was, as usual, at the Commons. Such chance events, said Heath, helped the Whips keep an eye on Members with long-term matrimonial problems and so avoid a scandal. He did not also say that such wayward MPs might be effectively reminded of their obligations to vote as the party wished by a little prudent blackmail.

In his memoirs The Course of My Life, Heath gives some indication of what is implied by the phrase “to hold the parliamentary party together”. His time as Chief Whip coincided with the Suez invasion; he had serious reservations about this, in particular about the secret agreement between Britain, France and Israel which encouraged Israel to attack Egypt and so provide a spurious justification for the Anglo-French attack. But when a Tory MP who had abstained in the Commons vote on the war asked him outright if there had been such a secret plot, Heath “looked (him) straight in the eyes and said nothing. He understood completely”. But it seems that such adaptability of principles on Heath’s part was only achieved at some cost. Before he joined the Whip’s office Heath was known as a gregarious, convivial Member.

The years devoted to “holding the party together” — suppressing his own responses to events in order to stifle potential rebellion and to manage the government vote — had left its mark on him. He was on course to become Prime Minister but he had become an unbending, obsessive man with an apparent mission in life to be as rude and contemptuous to as many of the people he called his colleagues, as possible. Iain Macleod, who was one of his bitterest enemies in the Tory party, damned him as “totally unable to make a speech that anybody can listen to . . . no feeling for words at all, no feeling for the rhythm of language”.

Armstrong

Heath would have been appalled to the point of apoplexy at the confusion which led to Hilary Armstrong losing the vote on the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, and in such humiliating circumstances. Of course she has had what might be called her successes, which means she has wangled, or cajoled, or bullied, MPs into voting against their first inclinations and to support the government on issues like the attack on Iraq, with its loss of tens of thousands of lives. Such achievements in the cause of British capitalism have not softened the antagonism towards her. When she is full cry in the Commons she makes her points — if that is what she is doing — in a voice which has earned her the nickname of Squawker. When Michael Howard, then Tory leader, taunted Blair by reading extracts from Stephen Pollard’s highly embarrassing biography of David Blunkett, Armstrong’s contribution to the debate was to throw the book across the despatch box into the groin of a Tory front bencher (who reacted as if he had been shot there. Well, this was the House of Commons and not a school playground).

Armstrong’s blunder on this Bill was only one of a series of recent defeats for the government which, with other events such as the result of the by-election on Dunfermline and West Fife, seem to have persuaded many Labour MPs, up to now myopically loyal, that their best hope of survival at the next election lies in timely rebellion. In the face of this cynicism Armstrong has a desperate struggle to hold the parliamentary party together — a struggle in which she will employ as much cynicism as have the rebels. Of all the dirty jobs in politics that of the Chief Whip is among the dirtiest, most contaminating. And that goes for much of what capitalism demands, day in and day out, to hold it together.

Ivan