By the Way. (1915)

The By The Way Column from the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a recent issue of the “Daily Dispatch” a writer deals at some length with the M.P.’s who had the temerity to vote against the National Registration Bill. He says :

“It was a motley group which challenged a division on the Registration Bill last night, and its composition furnishes an interesting indication of the character of the opposition which the National Government will have to meet. . . . There were gathered together ‘all who were discontented,’ and it was a quaint collection of disappointed ex-ministers, radical purists, cranks and anti-British Socialists.”

The writer goes on to describe this “motley group” as “Strange Bed-fellows,” and makes the mistake of calling these labour fakers Socialists. Moreover, this gentleman overlooks another contributor to the same paper, Mr. H. M. Hyndman—the “Revolutionary Socialist”—holding the same views as avowedly capitalist writers to the ‘”Dispatch.” And what of the Liberal and Tory coalition with a mingling of Labourites !

Perhaps it would not be amiss in the circumstances to take a peep at the division list to which the “Dispatch” scribbler refers. We find that the ‘”Socialists” spoken of includes Messrs. W. C. Anderson, C. W. Bowerman, J. F. Jowett, J. R. MacDonald, P. Snowden, and J. H. Thomas. The remainder of that hotch potch known as the Labour Party voted for the Bill ! If the “Dispatch” derives any satisfaction from their reference to these “strange bedfellows,” it at least gives us the opportunity of repudiating the claim of these latter to the title they usurp whenever and wherever it suits their purpose to do so—the claim that they are Socialists. A careful study of the antics of those gentry in and out of the House of Commons will suffice to prove their worthlessness to the working class.

* * *

Lord Kitchener, in big speech at the Guildhall on July 9th, made a passing reference to the object of the National Register. He delivered himself as follows :

“When registration was completed they ‘would be able to note men between nineteen and forty not required for munitions and other necessary purposes, and therefore available, if physically fit, for the firing line. Steps would then be taken to approach them with a view to enlistment, unmarried men to be preferred.” “Reynold’s,” 11.7.15.

* * *

Mr. H. M. Hyndman, the “father of English Socialism,” recently contributed an article to the “Daily Dispatch” (7.7,15) on the subject of “National Registration and National Liberty,” in which he endeavoured to show how the first will safeguard the last. Throughout the article we find him mouthing the usual capitalist prattle, such as “many valuable ships of war have been sunk, and our mercantile marine is suffering from systematic piracy.” A little admonition is dealt out to “our rulers, who for months on end refused to recognise that we “were face to face with relentless enemies organised for the purpose of crushing our allies and ourselves.” He goes on to say that “such organisation, prepared and matured during at least forty years, can only be successfully encountered and overcome by equal organisation voluntarily accepted,” and “whatever may be urged against certain clauses of the War Munitions Act, no such criticism can be fairly levelled at a measure whose object is to put directly at the national disposal the whole of the power of the nation as represented by its entire population for work or for war.”

Doubtless the phrase “national disposal” should read the disposal of the master class, in whose interest the war is being waged, as the working class were not consulted in the signing of any treaties beforehand or the reasons for entering the war. Not a word do we find about “secret diplomacy” which led to war and used to be his pet hobby horse.

Mr. Hyndman further informs us that “nothing for which the masses of our people have ever striven is more important than that they and all of us should win in this tremendous war against the ruthless military caste—happily the last left on the planet (!)—that menaces the rights and freedom of mankind.” And again: “If the Kaiser succeeds in his great endeavour to dominate Europe what chance have we English, or any other nationality, of working out freely and peaceably our own economic and social salvation ?” So Socialism depends upon the whim of the Kaiser, eh ? It depends not on economic circumstance but on dynastic circumstance—according to this blind leader of the blind.

In conclusion he adds that it is “our duty to marshal our entire forces … to ensure safety for ourselves and security for our allies. If for the purpose of achieving this result we are all obliged to submit ourselves to national discipline . . . then the temporary sacrifice of personal liberty will be well rewarded in the end.” Mr. Hyndman at the same time points out that ‘this suppression of our individual liberty” should be “duly safeguarded against bureaucratic tyranny.” But who can guarantee this ?

Doubtless these outpourings will obtain for this “oldest Social-Democrat in Great Britain” the “well done, thou good and faithful servant !” of the masters. (Italics mine.)

* * *

A series of questions were recently asked in the House of Commons touching the matter of whether it was not possible to grant the troops in the new armies facilities for visiting their homes for the purpose of bidding good-bye to their families. It was said that:

“The fare from Salisbury to Lancashire and Yorkshire was a sum beyond the means of many of these men to spare out of their pay ; and whether the Government would undertake that all who obtained leave before going abroad should be enabled to visit their homes free of cost ?”

And it was further asked :

“Whether the War Office would bear in mind that many of these men gave up remunerative posts in order to join the Army, and that their being prevented from seeing their relatives before going abroad through not being able to pay the fare would be a great hardship ?”

The official reply was that the question was being considered.

The remunerative nature of the positions that have been given up may be judged from the fact that those who have given them up have no reserve funds to pay their own railway fare home ; and on the other hand, what is to be said of the measliness of the country they are going to protect, that refuses to let them travel over the “Statized”‘ (temporarily) railways free ? Such paltry niggardness before the “happy warriors” have saved their masters’ bacon augurs well for the open-handed generosity of a traditionally “grateful country” when the maimed and battered remnants of “glorious humanity” are brought home after the struggle.

* * *

The Suffragettes are doing their best to keep their movement before the public. These people, who only a short time ago were busily engaged window smashing, church burning, and picture ripping, are now hailed as law-abiding citizens, whose services are to be used in order to free men from productive processes so that the latter may be driven into the trenches. These ladies, as they took very great care that all the world should know, recently organised a procession to send a deputation to Mr, Lloyd George to “demand the right to serve.” We are told that in the procession “peeresses walked shoulder to shoulder with shop girls and factory lasses.” The ulterior object is seen in the wording of a telegram received later by Mrs. Pankhurst from Mr. Hall Caine. It was given in the “Observer” (18.7.5) as follows :

“After to-day’s thrilling patriotic procession the Women’s Cause will triumph as surely as the sun will rise and the sea will flow.”

* * *

In all our (masters’) newspapers we are told to economise. Government organisations like the Parliamentary War Savings Committee take up the tale with all manner of blandishments. And now along comes Canon (I believe) H. D. Rawnsley pointing out that there is plenty of accommodation in the Lake District for holiday makers. He writes :

“It has come to my knowledge that some who were intending to come to the Lake District for their holiday have been put off by hearing that, in consequence of the war, the holiday makers who would otherwise have gone to the Continent or to the East Coast have thronged the district, and that accommodation is not to be had. I wish to give an emphatic contradiction to the rumour.”—(“Manchester Guardian,” 16.7.15.)

With Mr. Asquith, Mr. Lloyd George, and other great patriots urging Plunger Sniff the dustman and Sooty Sam the chimney sweep to economy, it is surely doing a disservice to the State on the part of Mr. Rawnsley to try to tempt them to find in the English Lake District a substitute for the lost charms of the Riviera and the pleasures of shove-ha’penny at Monte Carlo. For shame, sir ! You will not let our corduroy prodigals come to the rescue of their bleeding country through “retrenchment and reform” even when they want to.

* * *

At a time like the present, when we are hearing so much about our “liberty,” perhaps a few “rules” from a certain motor works would not come amiss. After having affixed his number and name on the front page the new wage-slave is informed that :

“Each employee must personally register in the time clock when he commences and ceases work.

“Employees ringing in late will be paid from the nearest half hour following the time rung in, and must begin work at once on entering the shop.

“The bell will ring in the morning, and after the luncheon hour two minutes before the time to commence work, so that all employees may have a chance to reach their respective places before the starting bell rings, when everyone must be in his place with his overalls on ready for work. Just entering the building on starting time will not be satisfactory.

“Receiving visitors, lunching, eating or reading is not permitted during working hours,

“Smoking or lighting cigars, pipes, etc., is absolutely prohibited.”

I will not not extend the list any further, sufficient being quoted to discover the need for a microscope to reveal our much-vaunted liberty.

The Scout.

Editorial: Atrocious Argument. (1917)

Editorial from the August 1917 issue of the Socialist Standard

Those German atrocities ! The last raid on London gave opportunity for an almost unprecedented flood of feeling, mostly cant. It is not the agony of the parents who have lost little ones, the wives who have lost husbands, the husbands whose mates have been cruelly butchered, the mutilated remnants moaning in the hospitals, that finds expression in the horrified Press. No. They are horrified to order, and with a set purpose, and that purpose is not to deter the Ge­rmans from making such raids, but simply to inflame popular feeling against the “enemy.”

Those who want the war, and shout for it, and shove other people into it, and exhibit so much aptitude for bloodshed in the smashing up of pacifist meetings as one would hardly expect to find outside the trenches or the House of Commons, try to blind themselves to the true facts of the case. War is a serious business—a much more serious business than one would imagine from a perusal of the report of the Mesopotamia muddle. People wilfully entering upon war, in order to take that calm view of it that is essential to its prosecution to the “last man and the last shilling,” should themselves be above military age, or at least sure of a staff job, well behind the firing line, and not too adjacent to the miseries of the trenches—and they mostly are. But having embarked on war; having consented to this most serious business in life, having adventured thousands, and perhaps millions, of human lives in the trial by brute strength, it is folly to talk of putting any limit on the appeal to brute strength. Such talk is usually mere cant and humbug, and where it is not it arises from a boss-eyed sort of view of things.

Much has been made of the fact that women and children have been numbered among the victims of the German air raids. But it is no worse to kill a woman or a child than it is to kill a man, notwithstanding all the sloppy nonsense that has been written on the subject. As a matter of fact the mental torture of a man dying in consciousness is probably far greater than that of a child similarly placed, while as for women, the fact that they find themselves brought within the range of actual hostilities may help them to realise their responsibility for the war—and it is not a little.

A harsh judgment this may seem to be, but then every phase of war must be judged by harsh standards, and the only ones who have any grounds for complaint are those who are opposed to the conflict, or at all events are no consenting parties to it.

It is stated that the Germans can have no military object in these raids, but this is sheer rubbish. They may have several perfectly legitimate military objects. In the first place there is the popular clamour for protection. This, of course, cannot be ignored, but it admittedly can only be satisfied by weakening the striking forces on the British front. Those living a few miles out on the Eastern side of the metropolis may from their own observation gather some idea of the effectiveness of the raids in this particular.

It is also common knowledge that there are in and about London numerous munition works even the temporary disturbance of which, to say nothing of a lucky hit with a bomb or two, is a distinct advantage to the Germans, while it was openly stated in the Press a few days back that the wrecking of the War Office might be a bigger disaster to the Allied cause than the loss of an army corps. And finally, if only the Hun airmen could find the House of Commons with a fat bomb, dropped plump through one of the ventilators onto the table while Lloyd George stood there with his mouth open ! Ah, if only they could !

By the Way: Women’s Sickness in Wartime (1945)

The By The Way Column from the July 1945 issue of the Socialist Standard

Women’s Sickness in Wartime

A committee headed by Mr. S. Wyatt, D.Sc., working under the Industrial Health Research Board of the Medical Research Council, have made a study of certified sickness absence among 20,000 women in industry. They concluded that: —

“Psychological disorders were most frequent and severe among married women with family responsibilities and among those employed since early in the war. . . . Leaves granted every three months to soldiers stationed in Britain eased the strain for some women, and many remarked that they had never had so many holidays, and doubted whether they could carry on without them.”—(Evening Standard, March 16th.)

They may confidently anticipate a very long holiday very shortly. As their trouble, according to the committee, is largely “psychological” (blessed word), they won’t mind themselves, or their soldier husbands, being on the dole.

“Freedom from Want” (40 per cent. Freedom)

Profits of the Dunlop Rubber Co. for 1944 amounted to £2,615,700.

The dividend on Ordinary stock is maintained at 8 per cent. The profit for 1943 was £2,765,797.

Ever-Ready Co. Net profit £588,935. Final ordinary dividend of 25 per cent. again makes 40 per cent.

Pressed Steel Earnings : after £420,000 for tax net profits up from £180,390 to £195,005. Ordinary dividend maintained at 27½ per cent. by final payment of 17½ per cent.—(Glasgow Evening News, May 16th, 1945).

Another Atrocity Camp

Under the heading “Objectors Camp found” the Evening Standard (April 28th), reports as follows : —

“American troops clearing out a pocket near the city of Wewelburg, miles behind the front, discovered a military installation no one dreamed existed in Nazi Germany—a camp for conscientious objectors.

How many people inhabited the camp is still unknown, for only 41 men survived at the time it was discovered. It was operated by S.S. troops, and also served as a concentration camp and crematorium.”

“Single Out—and Destroy”

A document has come into your correspondent’s hands which could not have been adversely commented on two weeks ago (May 17th). It is Montgomery’s letter to all officers and men in 21st Army Group on non-fraternisation.

Apart from repeating the current fairy story that World War II. broke out because the Peace Conference, after World War I., was “soft,” and the troops of the Armies of Occupation in 1919 were simpletons (“many soldiers were adopted in German households”): it goes on “There are Allied organisations whose work it is to single out, separate and destroy the dangerous elements in German life.” This is almost word for word the formula for the Gestapo, the Ovra, in Italy and the Ogpu in Russia. In other words, it is the time-honoured task of that hated institution—the secret, police. Thus the Ogpu was proclaimed “The Flaming Sword of the Revolution, to destroy its enemies.”

The convenient thing for the secret police which are called the “Security Police” in the British Army is, that they very largely decide who is the “dangerous element.” God help any poor devil with a funny nose, cross eye, crippled leg or some other abnormality which makes him conspicuous—as Marx indicated quoting the reports of British correspondents after the crushing of the Commune of Paris, 1871, unless he has wealthy or high-born German friends.

Thus the British Army has removed the “Gestapo”—and replaced it by the “Fiesepo”—Field Security Police.

Horatio.

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.

By The Way: Of Mice and Men—or Rich Tabby (1944)

The By The Way Column from the September 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard

Of Mice and Men—or Rich Tabby

A Boston lawyer has left $100,000 for the maintenance of his pet cat. He has also cancelled seven bequests of $20,000 each to seven relatives “because of their contemptuous attitude and cruelty towards my cat.” (Daily Mail, August 5th, 1944.)

He left $40,000 to his housekeeper, to ensure that she is in a position to maintain “Tabby.” This reminds us of the Pekinese dog that was left a few thousand shares in a British company some years back.

The workers in the concerns where the $140,000 is invested may now have the pleasure of slaving to maintain the governor’s pet in luxury, after the bloke himself has snuffed it. This is only a difference of degree; we doubt not that the cat has far more intelligence and is much more useful than some of the “film-stars” (? !), chorines, dancers, and others whom wealthy men frequently marry, especially when one dies, leaving the producers of their wealth, the workers, to maintain and fawn upon them in ridiculous opulence. The bequeathing of large chunks of labour productivity to animals and “pets” is the final epitome of the irrational and obsolete capitalist system, where the best portion of society toils unnecessarily for a few largely idiotic parasites, to the detriment of both.

* * *

One of the Four Freedoms

From the Daily Mail of August 15th we learn that the Registrar-General announces that a complete scheme of National Registration is in preparation for use after the war.

“Under a peace-time National Register everyone throughout life would have, in addition to a name, a code number.”

This, he thinks, would abolish bigamy and be necessary for operating the new social services.

We have had occasion to point out previously, and it is no discovery of the Socialist Party, that this sort of “temporary” war-time legislation is always much more difficult to get off the Statute Book than to put on.

As capitalism is allowed by politically ignorant workers to develop further in the direction of State centralisation, it becomes more obvious that we are approaching the conditions described by Mr. Hilaire Belloc in his book “The Servile State.”

This was a state of affairs where every citizen was numbered and docketed like a parcel, and every intimate personal action supervised by a board of State bureaucrats, with endless cards, numbers, permits, etc.

This is not Socialism. A genius like Oscar Wilde was much nearer the mark when he wrote in his “Soul of Man under Socialism” that only “with Socialism could we reach real individualism.” Wm. Morris expressed the same idea.

In the early days of the working-class movement nothing in Continental despotism was so roundly denounced as the reactionary passport system. The yellow spot of the Jew was a similar measure. Labour Liberals of two decades back poured the bitterest invective on the reactionary oppression of the Tsar’s secret police, with its individual passport system. It has taken a war for the Four Freedoms to shackle the working class with the National Service officer and a code number, like a convict, for life. Socialism will not be servile neither will it be a State.

The State is a private property institution which under Socialism will wither away. Freedom will be inevitable because economic equality of all will be the basis of society.

* * *

German Women to Work Harder

From the Times, July 29th, 1944 : —

“It is announced from Berlin that as a part of Goebbels’s efforts to secure total mobilisation women and adolescents will be directed into war work to the fullest extent. Curiously enough, the German press points out that while Russian women and children served unstintingly in Leningrad during the siege, and British women work as dock labourers and in all sorts of arms production, German women have hitherto contributed far less to the war effort. Why should they be exempt, the newspapers ask, now that the German homeland is being besieged ?

One of the first changes is that women will release men for the forces by becoming motor drivers.

Goebbels issued his first total mobilisation decree yesterday. According to an announcement by the German wireless last night, the decree is aimed "at all persons liable for work who have fulfilled their labour duties in appearance only, persons who through family or other connection have obtained a labour contract enabling them to lead an easy life far away from the nation’s common strain of war’.”—Reuter.

After a terrific fanfare of the usual boloney, Goebbels is now announcing the measures to be introduced to find more men for the shambles. British readers will probably be somewhat surprised to read that one of the drastic “total” totalitarian war schemes is that women are to release men by becoming motor-drivers. Really ! Dr. Goebbels ! the poor old, worn out, effete democracies did this years ago. Apparently Mr. Bevin can give the Nazis ten yards start in a hundred at this game, and beat them any time. The stories the British Ministry of Information told us about “Hitler’s slaves” don’t sound so good any more either, if it has taken all this time for them to check up on “dodgers” (who seem to manage pretty well in England, too, if they’ve enough money), and tell the women to start driving motors.

* * *

New Curtains, Fruits of Victory

There is probably no clearer indication of the real frame of mind of the capitalist class than the advertisements which the directors of various large firms are publishing just now. All sorts of concerns are stating their post-war intentions. Motor manufacturers advertise the advent of a world with wide motor roads and better “So and so’s” cars. The I.C.I. state that their view is that the post-war world must be international. Makers of toffees and wireless sets, building societies, brewers, tobacco manufacturers, textile firms—all strike the same note.

“Bigger and Better” this, or that, is what it practically amounts to. One of the most fantastic actually says : —

My Peace Terms.

“Freedom for the oppressed people of Europe. . . . New curtains in the sitting room . . . and back to fresh butter, honey, and lovely—Cream Crackers! (Daily Telegraph, July 26th, 1944.)

One can only conclude that people who can write of “Freedom for the people of Europe” in the same breath as curtains for the sitting room have been rather seriously affected by the buzz-bomb.

The hollow mockery and revolting hypocrisy of this mentality is the strongest possible proof of the real aims of the Capitalist Government in war. They have no more concern for the people of Europe than those of anywhere else. Their idea of Freedom is a new pair of curtains.

That’s all right—as far as it goes—but when they want us to believe it’s for freedom for the oppressed people of Europe or somewhere—Well, Donald Duck has a word for it’

* * * 

“Pay Them Well”

Thus the Daily Mail for August 4th, 1944. They refer to the fighting Services. Lord Rothermere and friends are quite indignant with the Pensions Minister and the Cabinet for being niggardly with Services pay and “huckstering” about pensions and allowances.

That it is utterly outrageous that the wife of a soldier killed in battle should get less than the wife of a soldier still lucky enough to survive, the Socialist is the last to deny !

But, says the Mail with lordly (“Press-Lordly”) disdain, “A copper or two granted here, a readjustment made there is considered sufficient.”

“The costly policies initiated by the Government (free public schools, public health services, social security) are the hall-marks of the twentieth century.”

The “pay per day” method is a relic of the times when soldiers were mercenaries—mere casual labourers of the battlefields. It should be abolished, just as it has been abolished in the docks. The modern fighting man is a highly trained combatant and a skilled technician. He should be paid a salary and a good one.” (Italics ours.) (Daily Mail, August 8th.)

What the Mail calls a “good salary” for soldiers it carefully refrains from saying. We know men who would not do it for all the tea in China. Certain it is that, like working for the Socialist Party, nobody does it for what he gets in money—which is a joke, even for the officers.

Two things about the Daily Mail’s viewpoint interest us as Socialists, apart from the fact that the British capitalists, having raked in big profits during the war, feel at the moment—but only at the moment—like a man at the last course of a magnificent banquet—(“Gentlemen, you may smoke”), and are ready to chuck a pound in the plate for the waiter.

One is the statement that the “costly policies of the Government are the hall-marks of the twentieth century.” In other words, it is the considered policy of the capitalists to-day to give up a little, in the shape of reforms for the workers, to try to avoid having to surrender the lot to a discontented, Socialist, working class. As Socialist knowledge spreads among workers, and Labour leaders find it more difficult to convince them that reform of capitalism is “instalments” of Socialism, Lord Rothermere, Sir Samuel Courtauld, Lords Mcgowan and Nuffield will shower reforms, like the Beveridge Plan and More Pay, upon them to keep them occupied—and quiet. Even if it is reforms you want—which we Socialists do not—it is better to plump for Socialism.

But more important than this—the Mail points out that the one-time mercenaries who sold themselves for the King’s shilling—the “scum of the earth” of Rudyard Kipling and Billy Bennett—the old beer-swilling sweats—the “poor bloody infantry” of the past—like their civilian counterparts, the unskilled labourer, have become “highly trained skilled technicians.”

Modern fighting men, unlike their predecessors in history, are simply modern working-men put into uniform for organised scientific technical mass killing.

Some historians declare that the hired mercenaries of the Middle Ages fixed up representative conferences the night before “battle commenced” to arrange terms, and that sometimes battles did not start until the generals had agreed to “the rate for the job.” On other occasions armies just transferred during battle to the other side for more money.

But modern complicated capitalism, handling immense armies of millions at war, with colossal modern scientific equipment, can no more work on these methods than a man can pilot a plane without instruments.

Modern soldiers, or workers, in the world of 1944 are becoming highly trained skilled technicians; they are rapidly becoming producers of modern super-abundance in control of mighty complex engines which subdue and transform the forces and resources of nature—in other words, the result of the development of capitalism—is to make the working man of to-day a potential Socialist. But only potential; the ground is getting richer for the reception of the seed; the job of the Socialist Party is to implant it, deeply and firmly— it is certain to grow and multiply.

As workers and soldiers become still more highly educated, they will more easily grasp the futility of illusory scrambles for pennies or shillings extra, and fix their eyes on the real goal—abolition of private ownership—not large salaries, but what they produce. Lord Rothermere can pay as well as he likes. It will avail him nothing.

Horatio.

Between the Lines: From the people who brought you John Wayne (1990)

The Between the Lines column from the September 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the people who brought you John Wayne

When all that stands between us and the mass annihilation of a third world war are a few hours on the clock, who will we have to turn to and find out what is going on? Who will be telling us that it is right to fight? Who will say that the enemy is satanic and must be defeated at all costs7 Who will insist that the wasted lives of war are heroic gestures? Who will scream at us from morning to night that war is noble, that 'our side' has god on its side, that 'they' will never win. even if most of us must die to stop them?

It is one of the sickest ironies of capitalism that if there is a third world war, fought over the interests of the competing millionaires and billionaires, it will be the media, which is largely paid for and almost totally ideologically obedient to those billionaires and millionaires, that will have the monopoly on explaining what is going on. The capitalists not only possess the power to blow us up, but they have the power to con us into believing that it is right and necessary that we should be blown up.

The power of the media is never more dangerous than in time of war. It is then that the lies become bigger, the audacious assaults upon our intelligence greater, the resorts to half-truths and historical distortions grosser. If the news broadcasts are always but an echo of the interests of our masters in their world affairs, in war time the news becomes a blasting verbal cannon-fire of propaganda

In this war in the Middle East the TV newsreaders have done everything but put on uniforms. They have been recruited to the task of justifying the military force of 'our side' and attacking without explanation the 'madness' of the newfound enemy, to whom Britain used to be a major arms supplier. It is like Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four: four years ago Saddam was the friendly dictator who could be relied upon to kill the Iranians: now that he is the official enemy people who have never even heard of him before must be taught to hate him with a passion that only the media can whip up.

Who will the next hate figure be? What further methods will the media use to brutalise us into screaming that we want war? It is a dangerous box which workers have invited into the corners of their living rooms: it emits the poison gas of pro-war propaganda. Never mind all the reports of on links between TV violence and real violence — what about the link between news reporters who glorify war and tho widespread support for the indiscriminate slaughter of warfare which that generates? Or is that a legitimate use of TV to corrupt the minds of tho vulnerable7

Turning women into thugs

Speaking of corrupted minds and also of war — the two are closely linked — Channel Four showed a truly frightening documentary called Soldier Girls (16 August, 11pm). It was directed by Nicholas Broomfield and Joan Churchill. (Broomfield must be one of the most powerful and perceptive makers of documentaries depicting the lunacy of nationalism and militarism) The documentary was about the training of women to become soldiers in the US army. There are few things more disgusting to see than rows and rows of women, capable of producing life, lined up with guns and idiot's uniforms, learning how to destroy life. The documentary showed with awesome clarity just how these trainee thugs are brutalised, their sense of dignity and decency is forced out of them as they learn to become nothing but unfeeling cogs in the killing machine. Those who do not conform are punished by crazed officers whom the Iraqi army could only hope to match for madness.

One trainee, Private Johnson, made it clear from the start that the lunacy of army life was not for her. The officers tried everything to push her into line. What angered them most was that she kept on smiling as they shouted at her. Soldiers are not meant to smile. They punished her, they lectured her, they verbally assaulted her, and still she smiled when she should not have done. In one part of the documentary Johnson is taken into a room by two officers for what is laughably called 'counselling'.

A uniformed female officer and a male nutcase scream and shout at her The latter tells her: "Every time I look at you, Johnson, you got that same smart-arse look on your face, that same silly little smile. And then you got the gall to tell the lieutenant that you want to stay in my goddam army — and not do a damn thing for it. That's what irks me, Johnson You don't give a damn. The troops can't stand you. I mean, even our worst troops out there can't stand you. They don't even want to be around you. You are the type that irritates people just by your presence, without oven opening your mouth. Haven't you realised, Johnson, that you have that capacity to piss someone off just by standing there? Just the way you stand radiates total apathy, complete uncaring about god, man, animal, life water . . ." Incidentally. Johnson was black and the two officers were white. At the end of the documentary Johnson is seen leaving the army; if there are medals for smiling in the face of military madness. Johnson should receive one.

The only difference between training US killers and training Iraqi ones is that the latter are more likely to be killed. Perhaps the Middle East lunatics talk more about the god who is not there; the American screwballs talk about red. white and blue rags on poles which they would die for. It is all crazy — and those who deliver its messages are crazier still.

Steve Coleman

Babies on the Assembly Line (1943)

From the July 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is from the Daily Mirror, April 29th, 1943:

“New York, Wednesday.

“Babies on the assembly line—washed, given a clean nappie, dressed, doctored, and fed at speed as they pass in an ever-moving, never-ending procession through a £250,000 streamlined nursery—this is the newest plan of Henry J. Kaiser, record-breaking shipbuilder.

Kaiser and his lieutenants were to-day poring over blueprints of this gigantic “Kaiser Victory Nursery,” which is being built to care for the babies of the mothers employed in his shipyards at Portland, Oregon.

He expects that the nursery will be completed within fifty-nine days and ready for occupation by 1,500 babies.”

“In addition to being the biggest nursery in the world,” Kaiser said to-day, “it will be run as efficiently as my ship-assembly centres.”

Pass Along, Please !

“A mother will dump her baby in the reception hall on the way to work. Baby will then be wheeled past a line of experts, who will examine his mouth and eyes, wash, him, change his napkin and so on, without a moment’s interruption. Baby will then pass into the restaurant for feeding, on to a room for play, and then into a cot for his nap.”

Kaiser visualises babies passing through the departments in an endless stream day and night, for the nursery will care also for the children of many women night workers.”

At last ! after everything else has been successfully mechanised; only domestic industry remained in the same position it has been for a thousand years.

Now the children of the workers (not those of the capitalists), tiny tots, are placed on the conveyor belt for highspeed “attention.” This is the sort of “security” and “improvement” offered by those who hold that capitalism can be reformed into something better. Where are those Conservative speakers of yesteryear who brought tears to the eyes of their hearers by their mournful dirges on the break-up of family life under Socialism?

Horatio.

Notes by the Way: We Live in Strange Times (1941)

The Notes by the Way Column from the November 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard 

We Live in Strange Times

War is notoriously disrespectful to ancient prejudices and the present war seems to have produced more startling reverses of position than any. Who would have thought, a few years ago, that the time would come when M. Maisky, Bolshevist Ambassador, would be touring British factories urging the workers to work harder, while Lord Beaverbrook, on a visit to Moscow, promises that every tank produced in the week should go straight to the aid of the Russian army ?

The Daily Express (September 23rd, 1941) had the following two news items : —

“After M. Maisky had told workers at a tank factory yesterday, “We will go on fighting to the end until our enemy is crushed for ever,” the works manager mounted a tank and asked the men, “What is your answer?”

“More tanks,” they chorused. 

“Then go to it,” he replied, and they immediately swarmed back to their jobs.

An “Aid Russia” plea helped to settle a strike in Glasgow yesterday. Several hundred men at an engineering works, who came out on Saturday, listened to an appeal to return to work immediately to get aid-for-Russia production into full swing, and agreed to do so.”

The correspondent of the Daily Telegraph who visited the factory with M. Maisky reports that “in the factory he saw tanks chalked with slogans such as ‘Another for Joe,’ or with names like Marx, Lenin and Timoshenko,” while at the station when the official party arrived it inspected two tanks, “one flying the Union Jack and the other the Red Flag.”—(Daily Telegraph, September 23rd, 1941.)

Then a few months earlier there had been the little matter of playing the “Internationale” in B.B.C. broadcasts, neatly sidestepped by stopping all such broadcasts. While the argument was in progress the Times, in an editorial, committed itself and said “it was right and reasonable to expect that before long the appropriate addition would be made to the ceremonial array of national anthems.” —(Times, July 11th, 1941.)

* * * *

Religious Items from Moscow and elsewhere

Equally startling has been the news about religion from Moscow. Here are a few items:

A call to all Christians, Protestant and Catholic, to unite in a Holy Crusade against the anti-Christ, Hitler, was broadcast by Moscow last night.

Hitler has launched war against Christian civilisation, said the appeal. He has twisted the Holy Cross into an unholy crooked cross.

The call for a crusade was made particularly to the Christian peoples of Germany and the occupied territories.

“We appeal to all German Christians to fight the Godless regime of Nazism and Hitlerism,” said the announcer.

”That criminal Hitler is urging war against the hundreds of millions of Slav people, the people of those nations which have given the world great writers, thinkers, scientists, and religious martyrs.”-(Sunday Dispatch, August 17th, 1941.)

“The Moscow anti-religious paper, Besbozhnik, has ceased publication. A number of trade papers have been temporarily suspended owing to war conditions. —Reuter. (Manchester Guardian, September 11th, 1941.)

An appeal to the entire Islamic world to rise in the name of Islam “to defend the Moslems and the peoples of Russia, their peaceful life and religion, from the devastation of Fascism,” was made to-day by the head of the Central Mohammedan Administration, the Mufti Abdur Akhman Rasulev.—Associated Press. (Manchester Guardian, September 20th, 1941.)

Religious misgivings over the British-Soviet Alliance are misplaced, writes the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Canterbury Diocesan Gazette.

The Primate gives reasons why Christians should wish “every success to the valiant Russian armies and people.”

Our essential aim is to overthrow the tyranny of evil embodied in the rulers of Germany.

It may well be that Russia’s defence of its own land may lead to religious tolerance by the Soviet Government and a new resurgence of religion always deep-seated in the hearts of the Russians.—(Daily Express, July 24th, 1941.

But while the Bolshevists are able at a gulp to swallow Protestantism, Catholicism, and Moslemism, and the Archbishop is able to remove misgivings about the Bolshevists, the British non-conformists are made of sterner stuff, and still won’t mix with other brands of Christianity: —

“After the lapse of three years the Free Churches have decided against the outline of a scheme for reunion with the Church of England. . . . Episcopacy is still a serious stumbling block . . . and even should an episcopate be agreed to as one organ of a United Church, the Free Churches definitely reject the doctrine of apostolic succession.”—(News-Chronicle, September 23th, 1941.)

* * * *

Men and Women Air-Raid Victims

The Old Technique of “Divide and Rule”

On Saturday, September 20th, a demonstration was held in Trafalgar Square to protest against the Government’s refusal to pay women injured in air-raids the same amount as men. One young woman was there who had lost the sight of both eyes and suffered other serious permanent injuries. She receives 24s. 2d. a week. Had she been a man the amount would have been 34s. 2d.

The demonstration was supported by Labour M.P.s, including Dr. Edith Summerskill, as well as by that persistent defender of capitalism, Lady Astor, M.P. According to the News-Chronicle, the latter said that the Minister of Pensions had expressed the hope that women would “not make this a sex war.” Lady Astor added: —

“We have not done that, but the trade unions and the employers’ organisations have, by giving us unequal compensation”.—(News-Chronicle, September 22nd.)

Mr. A. J. Cummings, writing in the News-Chronicle, backed up the demonstrators: —

“Widespread indignation has been aroused by this strange new injustice, by which the worth of a woman’s body is rated so much lower than that of a man’s.”—(News-Chronicle, September 19th, 1941.)

Before giving the matter any thought most people will allow their natural sympathy with the victims of air-raid injuries to sway them into approval of the sentiments expressed, but it is worth while looking more closely into it. It will be noticed that there was no protest against paying a disabled and blinded man the niggardly amount of 34s. 2d. a week. Common-sense would suggest that if the promoters of the demonstration really wanted to avoid a “sex war” they would have based their claim simply on the fact that the amounts in question are paltry either for a man or a woman and that no approach to a decent living is possible on them. Why was this not done ? Why did not the leading lights get together and decide what larger amount should be aimed at both for men and women ? Doubtless the answer would be that if they had they would have found a cold lack of interest on the part of some of the defenders of capitalism who were willing enough to lend themselves to a “sex war.”

Notice, too, how the wealthy Lady Astor associates herself with her working-class sisters when she condemns those alleged to be responsible for giving “us” unequal compensation. If she were to become a victim does anyone suppose that she would be expected to live on 24s. 2d. a week or 34s. 2d. a week? But then she sees no “injustice” in a system that enables a small number of men and women to have incomes hundreds of times as large as those of the great majority of both sexes.

Then Mr. Cummings is moved by the injustice which rates “the worth of a woman’s body” 10s. a week less than a man’s, but he too is more concerned with this than with the fact that a man’s is rated at only 34s. 2d.

Some of those who use this technique of setting one body of worker against another know exactly what they are doing. They know that capitalism will be safe enough while workers can be divided by nationality, colour, religion, sex, skill, craft or any other side-tracking characteristic. Others are the muddle-headed dupes who cannot see the use that is being made of them. They might start by asking themselves exactly what is the principle they think should underlie the claim they make. Is it the principle of equality for all? If so, they will find Lady Astor and others their bitter enemies. Or is it the principle that while it is most important to have equality between disabled men and disabled women, between men wage-earners and women wage-earners, between men surtax payers and women surtax payers, there is nothing wrong with a system which breeds vast inequality between the classes, between the wealthy property owners and the poverty-stricken workers !

* * * *

What is a Doctor?

Under a sanely ordered social system goods would be produced solely for use and transport and medical and other services would be organised to meet the needs of the population. Not so under capitalism. At least half the energies of those who work are demoted to financial and other activities, the purpose if which is to look after the interests of the propertied class. ‘Bus conductors are not employed primarily to help the passengers but in order to prevent them from travelling without paying fares. Postmen and sorters are largely engaged in preventing evasion of postage and in carrying bills, receipts, cheques, etc., instead of facilitating useful communication. So also with doctors, who are less and less engaged in a disinterested care for health. The following is taken from a report of a recent conference of the British Medical Association: —

“British doctors are to approach the Government with an urgent demand to “cut all the red tape and let us get on with the job.” They complain that they are being overwhelmed by the present system of industrial certification, and are being asked to give certificates outside the scope of their professional duties.

Complaints were fully aired at the British Medical Association Conference yesterday, when nine motions were tabled protesting against the system. The case made out by the doctors is as follows : —

1. Demands for certificates are growing every week. Certificates for munition workers saying that they are unfit for work; certificates entitling expectant mothers to obtain special food; certificates, as one doctor put it, “for everything under the sun, from corsets to oranges and lemons.”

2. Doctors spend so much time signing certificates that they have no time to attend to their ordinary practice.

3. Apart from recognised certificates, employers are inventing their own certificates for their work people “further to harry the overworked general practitioner.”—(Daily Mail, September 13th, 1941.)

* * * *

Have we seen the last Millionaire?

In a broadcast talk on September 7th, 1941, Professor T. Jones spoke of the high rate of taxation now imposed on large incomes and prophesied that “we are almost in sight of the last millionaire.” The professor is being unduly optimistic and perhaps he has not very clear ideas of the way in which millionaires are made. The big fish devour the little ones and each other, and always there is fresh accumulation from the exploitation of the workers. Even if under war conditions large incomes are heavily reduced, war, and the post-war ups and downs of industry lay the foundations for new fortunes and for the increase of old ones. While during the war the prices of shares on the Stock Exchange have generally fallen this has been accompanied by a big rise in the wealth of landowners. According to the agricultural reporter of the Daily Express (September 1st) since the war started there has been a 25 per cent. increase in prices of land. He mentioned a public auction in South Lincs, at which agricultural land was sold at £140 an acre and quoted an estate agent who said that he had a long list of people anxious to buy land “even if the places do not show a profit on the investment.” “All they want to do is to safeguard their capital, and they believe there is less risk attached to land than to any other form of investment.”

As soon as investors believe that the end of the war is in sight with a defeat of Germany the prices of shares on the Stock Exchange will leap ahead and new millionaires will be in process of creation. Already it only needs reports of moderate Russian successes to send up prices. Marshal Budenny’s successful withdrawal of his armies from Kiev was sufficient to send prices “sharply ahead.” (Daily Express, September 24th.)

It is only necessary to recall how vast fortunes were made in shipping, textiles and other industries after the last war. Yet then, too, there were people like Professor Jones who looked only at a high wartime taxation and consequently missed what was happening. Below, for example, is an extract from a speech by Lord Emmott on July 7th, 1920: —

“I will take next the large capitalist who, in many cases, is a benefactor and not an enemy of the nation. Mr. Chamberlain has stated during the course of the Budget debates that putting excess profits duty, income tax, sugar tax, and provision for death duties all together, the wealthy man to-day is taxed at the rate of 16s. for every £ which he receives in income. Taxation at that level is dangerous to the community at large, and again I say, particularly to the working classes. . . .”—(Liberal Magazine, August, 1920.)

But Lord Emmott’s fears for the workers were groundless, and there were, ten years later, 540 millionaires in the country.—(Daily Mail Year Book, 1933.)

* * * *

” War-time Socialism ” that is not Socialism

A writer who signs himself “Landor,” writing in the London News, organ of the London Labour Party, discusses those of his colleagues who think that war-time Government control is Socialistic. He himself thinks they can properly be described as “steps towards Socialism” (which they cannot), but he has learned something from the last war: —

“But history is full of steps towards goals which were never reached. We had a lot of Government control in the last war, followed by books explaining that this was a step towards Socialism, but we never got the socialism. What we did get was a lot of trade associations, and quite a number of commercial combines and one or two monopolies. That is where the steps and the tendencies led us.

The slow application of state control over industrial activity in the last war, and its more rapid application, on the whole, in this war merely proves that it is generally accepted by the country at large that some measure of collectivism is necessary at a time when there is simultaneously scarcity and danger. It is nonsense to think that because people want more state control now they will want state control when the happy days of peace are here again. Most people associate Government regulation and rationing with danger and scarcity, and in consequence they associate derationing and decontrol with plenty and safety.”

* * * *

Money for Nothing

A writer in the Daily Mail (September 13th, 1941) was shocked to discover some workers in a West of England factory who demanded pay for the time they had to spend travelling forty miles between their homes and the new site to which their factory had been moved on Government instructions. He worked it out and found that “the skilled man travelling two hours every day between the two factories would be paid a guinea a week for producing nothing.”

He did not make a comparison between these workers and their well-to-do betters who in peace time can afford to go on world tours and other lengthy pleasure-seeking journeys, but the injustice is glaring. Why should workers be paid for the pleasure of travelling when the rich have to pay for their own ?

Another case nearly as bad was reported in the Daily Express (September 25th). “Boys of 15,” it said, “are earning £3 a week for making tea.” But in the adjoining City column is another report that the discovery of oil in Venezuela had sent up the 10s. shares of an oil company from 18s., which was the price a fortnight earlier, to 24s., and then, in one day, to 27s. This latter news item is published without comment or criticism. It will, however, be noticed that an investor who had, say, 20,000 of those 10s. shares, would have been enriched by £9,000 in 14 days. This is at the highly satisfactory rate of £4,500 a week. Making whoopee on the Stock Exchange can often be more profitable than making tea on a building job. If the Express and Mail object to money without work they might turn their attention to the whole capitalist system which is based on incomes from rent, interest and profit for the privileged few; including the many thousands of people with incomes of over £200 a week, all for nothing.

Edgar Hardcastle

Socialism Will Forge Ahead (1941)

From the September 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is obvious to the students of Socialism that the material conditions engendered by the war will have much to do with advancing or retarding the well-being of mankind. The situation in which the various nations will find themselves at the cessation of hostilities cannot now be gauged with any degree of accuracy, and, therefore, it is only within certain limits that we may venture to speak of the future.

In the piping times of peace the forces of mass production are throttled by narrowing markets, and therefore do not produce to their capacity, but when the dogs of war are at their heels the flood-gates are opened and in certain branches of capitalism everything is accelerated.

The discovery and utilisation of more and better means of producing commodities simply means, other things remaining the same, that we shall, at the end of the war, have unemployment on a larger scale than we had before. So long as the system of ownership and control is not changed nothing accrues to the advantage of the working class, and our masters have not the slightest intention of renouncing their class privileges or foregoing their right to exploit those who are dispossessed.

There is, however, one thing that our rulers will be unable to prevent, and that is the enlightenment of their victims as to the cause of their sufferings. The exigencies of the conflict will help to bring into the open, clear of all camouflage, the basic cause of class antagonisms and convey both to the working class and the capitalist class a full understanding of what the situation demands: both sides will then know what to do.

Enrico Ferri, in his book “Socialism and Positive Science,” can be quoted here: —

 “Political life will have no fresh birth except through the development of the Socialist Party, because when the historical figures of the patriots and the personal reasons for differences between the representatives of the various political shades have disappeared from the political arena, the formation of a single individualist party will become necessary. The historical duel will then be fought and the class struggle will then unfold on the political arena all its beneficient influences, not in the paltry sense of of pugilism and outrages, malice and personal violence, but in the grand meaning of social drama. With all my soul I desire that this conflict may be solved for the sake of the progress of civilisation without bloody convulsions; but historical fatality has initiated it, and it is given neither to us nor to others to avoid or retard it.

  “As a result of all we have just said, these ideas of political Socialism, because they are scientific, dispose to personal tolerance at the same time as to theoretical disagreement. That is also a conclusion of scientific psychology in the philosophical domain. Whatever may be our personal sympathies for such or such representative of the radical fraction of the individualist party (as also for every honest and sincere representative, of no matter what scientific, religious or political opinion), we ought to recognise that there is not by the side of Socialism any party organically connected with it. We must be on one side or the other—individualist or socialist. There is no intermediate situation, and I am more and more persuaded that the only useful tactic for the formation of a Socialist Party that will live, is precisely this theoretical independence and the refusal of every ‘alliance’ with the partiti affini, who only constitute for Socialism a ‘false placenta’ for a foetus unlikely to live.”—(Page 148.)

The political truce between the Labour Party and the Government is likely to meet with increasing opposition from the rank and file of the former. Many of the Labour Leaders will be discredited because of the actions they are compelled to do owing to the circumstances in which they find themselves. A Socialist policy is called for, but they cannot deliver the goods.

Read the following from the Daily Express, of June 12th : —

CALL-UP GIRLS SACKED.

From Hilde Marchant.

Hundreds of girls between 20 and 21 who have registered for employment under the new order, have been sacked. Mr. Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour, describes this as “disgusting.”

The Ministry has sent inspectors to try to reinstate the girls, but they have no powers over employers who wish to get rid of them. 

“All we can do is appeal to their decency to keep these girls in jobs until they are needed,” an official said yesterday. 

Girls are already being called up on the first registration, but to spread them out smoothly, the call-up is slow. Each case has to be investigated. In the meantime, some are being sacked as “dead” labour. 

There was one case of a large lingerie factory. Most of the girls were within the registration age. 

They were given notice, for they were still learning their trade. Older women were brought in, but when clothes rationing was announced many of these were sacked. 

These are girls in clerical jobs who have been told they are under notice, and have to teach older women their jobs. The girls are sent on the dole, for it will be some time before they can be called up. 

The Ministry of Labour says it can do little but appeal to the patriotism of employers. Meantime, many hundreds of girls are being thrown on to a floating labour population, with no work to do.”

What I wish to call the attention of the reader to is the fact that Mr. Ernest Bevin is unable to do more than appeal to the patriotism of the exploiters of the working girls.

We will give him credit for the best intentions and say he would reinstate the girls if he could, but he can’t in face of the opposition of employers.

It is interesting to note how those who apparently think they are not of the working class consider the Government should act when some of the wage slaves take advantage of the fact that their services are at present in demand. The Daily Sketch had a letter in the other day which illustrates the point: —

  “Sir,—I see four men have been fined £5 each for gambling in an air-raid shelter when they should have been at work in a factory. All were of military age.

  I also see that Mr. Bevin is creating a flying squad of 100,000 men for the building trade—picked workers, exempt from military service, with a “guaranteed week,” one day’s holiday every six weeks and week-end leave with free rail passes every eight weeks.

  Is it not time this ridiculous squandering of public money was stopped?

  Remark heard in a public-house: “Oh, we go a bit slow during the day, as if we work too hard there would not be so much overtime pay.”

  Can nothing be done to bring the wage of the factory and munition worker more in keeping with that of the man in the Forces? Is it not time that we conscripted labour?

Sybil Tufnell 

Sunninghill.”

The lady evidently, unlike the Government, does not rely upon an appeal to patriotism; her wish is plain: she wants the Government to become dictatorial and conscript labour in order to compel the workers to work more cheaply. If someone asked the Government to conscript all employers and compel them to run their business for a soldier’s pay the request would be looked upon as absurd, but there are many members of the “middle class” who will no doubt agree with the lady and consider her letter worthy of the sincere attention of Mr. Bevin’s department.

While the war is going on the Government is assuming ever-increasing powers over the means of life: the ruling class are pooling their interests and heading for State capitalism.

In order to run State capitalism in their interests the ruling class will be tempted to curtail political democracy, because under State capitalism the intelligent section of the workers will in ever increasing numbers not only perceive more clearly how they are exploited, but also how it is possible to put an end to the exploiting process. We must stand ready to oppose any attempt to restrict present-day political privileges.

It is our duty as Socialists to continue our work of education, time and tide are with us from now on.

The encouragement we are now receiving is the logical outcome of present-day developments. Let us be worthy of the job we are called upon to accomplish and do our utmost to get those who incline a willing ear to understand that the only economic foundation of a peaceful world is Socialism.

Charles Lestor

Exhibition Review: Fashion and Fighting (2016)

Exhibition Review from the August 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

One First World War poster proclaimed that it was unpatriotic to dress extravagantly during wartime. This was mainly, if not exclusively, aimed at women, of course. Now an exhibition ‘Fashion and Freedom’ at Manchester Art Gallery looks at some of the ways that the war affected women’s clothes and other aspects of their lives.

As one and a half million women joined the industrial workforce, the need for looser clothing became clear, even though there had been plenty of women workers previously. The tight corsets of previous decades were hardly practical, though some changes along such lines were already taking place (and women cotton spinners had worn shifts at work anyway, because of the heat); the war accelerated these changes, rather than initiating them. By the 1920s more women were wearing make-up and sporting simpler dresses with hemlines up to the knee, as well as smoking cigarettes and being able to vote.

The exhibition consists of four sections. Examples of clothes from the first part of the last century are displayed, though one question not raised is whether most of these were the reserve of richer women. Some well-known modern women designers show pieces inspired by working women from the war period. A couple of these make use of the colour yellow, with reference to the way that working with chemicals such as TNT turned women’s skin yellow (the disease was known as toxic jaundice, and could be fatal). Also, some fashion students have produced designs of their own, and some short films reflect on changes brought about by the war.

A few miles away at Salford Quays, the Imperial War Museum North is staging a larger exhibition ‘Fashion on the Ration’, looking at the impact the Second World War had on fashion, primarily but not exclusively that for women. Many people on the home front, perhaps as many as ten million, wore uniforms, for instance for the Auxiliary Fire Service. In some cases these were the first set of new clothes they had ever had. The uniforms of sailors in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (the ‘Wrens’) were apparently seen as particularly smart, though it must be debatable whether this really served to attract more recruits, as is suggested.

To avoid price rises and the poor being unable to afford them, clothes were rationed from June 1941. ‘Make-Do and Mend’, with clothes being repeatedly repaired and re-used, became official policy in 1942, but had been in fact practised for a couple of years before. ‘Utility’ clothing was produced the same year, with leading designers employed to make these standardised garments rather more stylish. Clothes had to be largely unadorned, with men’s jackets limited to three pockets and three buttons, and no turn-ups on trousers. Elastic was in short supply, but could be used in women’s knickers, and silk stockings were particularly missed. No coupons were needed, though, for the clogs often worn by munitions workers.

Cosmetics continued to be produced, though in smaller quantities, as a way of keeping up morale. Manufacturers and retailers managed to cash in on new kinds of demand such as handbags with room to keep a gas mask, and white hats and shawls to make the wearer visible in the blackout. As in the First World War, clothing became more relaxed and informal, a trend continued after the war with the ‘New Look’ from Paris, though clothes rationing continued till 1949 and the Utility scheme till 1952. Both exhibitions make it clear that even in times of extreme austerity, people will do their best to maintain some self-expression and individuality.

Alongside her design at the Manchester Art Gallery display, Vivienne Westwood writes, ‘Our rotten financial system creates poverty for the many, riches for the few. We have a war economy. … We now know that this system – and the arms trade – helps create climate change – we are facing mass extinction. Fight the system and replace it with a green economy.’ Westwood’s politics might be politely described as confused, but this at least shows some attempt to see through the standard view.  

Paul Bennett