Churchill in perspective (1965)

From the March 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sufficient time has passed since Churchill’s funeral for popular emotions to wane—but not sufficient yet to make it likely that his words and deeds will be subjected to any analysis for popular consumption. No doubt historians in the future will discover reasons to doubt his greatness, but there is no need to await the passage of time.

In what way can he be considered great? His actions concerning the working class, his military prowess, his flair for foreign affairs?

It was he who called out the troops during the Dock Strike in 1911. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the government which put on the statute book the 1927 Trades Disputes Act, prohibiting strikes by one group of workers in sympathy with another, curtailing the right of picketing, and preventing the Civil Service unions affiliating to the T.U.C.

He recognised the inability of economists to understand capitalism, and he admitted inadequacies in the system, particularly “the strange discordance between the producing and consuming power.” (Daily Telegraph, 20.6.30.)

The News Chronicle (10.11.43.) reported him as saying,

“I regard it as a definite part of the duty and responsibility of this National Government to have it set about a vast and practical scheme to make sure that in the years immediately following the war there will be food, work and homes for all.”

But by 1948, the war over and there not being the same need to urge workers to greater efforts, he was arguing against “precise elaborate programmes.” In 1952, back in office, he was stressing the need for three years to elapse before any improvement would show. He left the government in 1955 and today the old problems of “food, work and homes” are still with us.

Churchill the military man certainly had some grand concepts. Commenting on the expeditions to Antwerp and Gallipoli, the Encyclopaedia Britannica says:

“In both cases the strategic concept was brilliant, but the forces required for their success were not forthcoming, and Churchill’s own impatience contributed to their failure.”

It reports Churchill as describing the Dardanelles campaign as “a legitimate war gamble.” (The Encyclopaedia Americana records the British losses as over 33,000 killed, 78,000 wounded and 7,000 missing. Turkish and French casualties were also very high.) What sort of man can make a legitimate gamble of the lives of hundreds of thousands of men?

In the second volume of the Official British History of the Second World War by Major L. F. Ellis, it appears that in 1940, when Churchill was being built up as the great war leader, his telegrams and messages to Lord Gort, Commander in Chief of the British Expeditionary Force were, “not always relevant” and he “did not grasp the nature of the German threat to the B.E.F. as a whole, nor the weakness of the Belgian position.”

What is the basis for Churchill’s claim to greatness in the field of foreign affairs? It is said that he was one of the few who in the Thirties understood the ambitions of Nazi Germany. But his own words show that he was not opposed to dictatorship in principle.

After the 1914-18 War, he stated his policy as “Peace to the German people, war on the Bolshevik tyranny.” In 1927 he was “charmed, . . . , by Signer Mussolini’s gentle and simple bearing, and by his calm, detached poise in spite of many burdens and dangers.”

The Evening Standard (2.4.37.) reports Churchill as saying,

“It is certain that if Franco wins. he will be in no position to interfere with British and French interests in the Mediterranean. The Germans and Italians will have little or no influence upon Spanish policy once the firing stops.”

But by April 5th the same paper reports him as saying, “A thoroughly Nazified Spain, retaining its German nucleus, may well be a cause of profound anxiety to both France and Britain.”

Events were causing him to change his words, and not only towards Spain :

“We should not go cap in hand to Soviet Russia, but how improvidently foolish we should be. … to put needless barriers in the way of the general association of the great Russian mass with the resistance to an act of Nazi aggression (News Chronicle, 10.5.38.)

Compare this with his statement, reported in the Daily Telegraph, (7.11.38.); “I have always said that if Great Britain were defeated in war, I hope we should find a Hitler to lead us back to our rightful position among the nations.”

It cannot be more clear, Churchill was not oppose to the Fascist powers as long as they did not threaten British capitalist interests. He thought “great men” could secure Britain’s position in the world, but after the war he had to accept that Britain, compared with the USA and Russia, was a second-rate power. No Hitler or Churchill can do anything to change that.

What, then, has Churchill achieved? The economic, social and political problems remain broadly the same as 90 years ago — war, want, insecurity are as current now as when he was born. Perhaps there was some truth in the description of him by another, similarly unsuccessful and similarly revered, capitalist politician, Aneurin Bevan: “the mediocrity of his thinking is concealed by the majesty of his words.”

Churchill was a member of the British capitalist class and he served his class well. He maintained a constant anti-working class attitude throughout his life. In the military and foreign fields he was no more successful than other possible leaders. He became the spokesman for British capitalism during a period when its future was endangered, and used his gift for words to spur the working class to greater efforts for the benefit of their masters.

In death, as in life, he served our rulers well. The pomp and ceremony of his funeral was a circus for the diversion of the working class. The entire pulpit–religious, political, press and radio–have been loud in his praise. Here was a man, they said, for workers to look up to, to recognise as a leader, and in so doing to pay homage to future leaders and to the principle of leadership.

Here perhaps we may rephrase Bevan’s comment, and apply it to all leaders—The failure of their actions is concealed by the majesty of their promises.

Where did Churchill lead the workers? Where will any leaders take them? Workers have only to reflect on their experiences—not for Churchill and his class, but for those they dominate, is it a life of blood, sweat, toil and tears.

And it will remain so, until the same workers who are now deluded into an hysterical hero worship of men like Churchill, learn that their interests lie in dispensing with leaders and setting up a social system in which all men stand equally.

Ken Knight

50 Years Ago: Did the Socialist Movement fail in 1914 (1965)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard 

We are now at the root of the whole matter of the failure of the “European Socialist Movement” to take up and maintain the Socialist position in the recent crisis. These gigantic political organisations which disposed of so many millions of votes were not Socialist organisations. They were not founded upon the principle of the class struggle. They had not done the work of politically educating their supporters. They had not built up their strength upon an electorate understanding the working-class position and desiring revolution. These millions of so-called Socialist voters did not understand the class division in society, and did not, therefore, realise the unity of interest of the workers the world over, and the clash between the interests of the working class and the master class, at every point, nationally and internationally. Their votes had been attracted by all manner of nostrums and side-issues, and simply expressed opinions thereon, and not on the vital matter of working-class emancipation.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain calls the attention of the workers of this and other lands to the fact that, founded as a political organisation upon Socialist principles, it has maintained the true working-class position in relation to the war without difficulty. We cannot boast of the support of millions of voters at the polls, but no one can point to a single word or deed of ours, in this time of crisis, which has been a betrayal of the cause of the proletariat. Well for Socialism, well for the stricken workers, well for the great cause of humanity, if, when the present riot of anarchy is over, and those who have to pay for it in blood and tears come to count the cost and apportion the blame, they realise that the political party of Socialism, weak though it was in numbers, was strong enough to denounce the war on all sides, strong enough to expose the misleaders of Labour and their purchased “patriotism”, strong enough to avow and maintain, in the face of a frenzy of insane nationalism, the unity of interest of the workers of all countries, strong enough to remain Socialists and keep the flag of Socialism flying.

[From the editorial,  'A Blow for Socialism', Socialist Standard, March 1915.]

50 Years Ago: The War Office and the Socialist Standard (1966)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1966 issue of the Socialist Standard

When those in authority over us determined that no newspaper or books should be sent out of the country without the permission of the War Office, we made application to mail this journal to the Colonies and neutral countries. We have now been favoured with a reply the tenor of which b that the War Office has been compelled to stop our organ on some occasions in the past for the reason that a portion of its contents might be used by the enemy powers for “their propaganda". And we are further informed that, in consequence of this, instructions have been issued to stop in future all copies of the Socialist Standard addressed to places outside the United Kingdom.

Nothing that we publish can be used by our masters' enemies without being stripped from its context, for the simple reason that our criticism applies with just as much force to the German and Austrian capitalists as to British.  Our internationalism is so real a thing that we refuse to set national bounds even to our enemies. Not British capitalists or German capitalists are the foe, but capitalism and the capitalist class of the world.

[From the Socialist Standard, November, 1916].

Letter: Airbrushed (2014)

Letter to the Editors from the October 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

Airbrushed

Dear Editors

On 12th July at Sheffield Anarchist Bookfair the Communist Workers Organisation (CWO) held a meeting titled ‘The only war which is worth fighting is the class war’. The subject was the First World War and at 8 minutes 21 seconds in, the speaker representing the CWO stated ‘I won’t go into the various British ones today but the only group – and it was a group rather than an organisation – that can claim to have had any real anti-war policy completely was the Socialist Labour Party’.

In Revolutionary Perspectives issue 4 (Journal of the CWO) dated Summer 2014, the article ‘Social Democracy, the First World War and the Working-class in Britain’ starting on page 14 discusses ‘The Response of Socialists in Britain’ even discussing the Socialist Labour Party (De Leonist) on page 18.

For all the CWO airbrushing of consistent SPGB opposition to the First World War, it is ironic the same CWO speaker once debated the SPGB accusing the SPGB of being ‘schooled in Stalinism’.

Jon D. White 

(by email)

Reply:

Strange indeed, and for two reasons. The first being the clear and principled opposition to the war from the SPGB (on the basis that it was a capitalist war and not in the slightest about the interests of the working class).  Second, the SLP was split into two factions, one pro-war, the other anti-war (with articles in their paper The Socialist reflecting this division at the start of the conflict). It was only some months into the war that the anti-war faction won out and the SLP clearly stated its opposition to the slaughter. We know that the CWO as ‘left communists’ venerate the SLP because after the conflict the majority of its membership left to join the pro-Bolshevik Communist Party of Great Britain at its foundation, but the SLP’s attitude to the war has been well documented and there is no excuse for such shoddy historical revisionism. – Editors.

Fools learn by experience. And so do other people. (1915)

From the October 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

What We Have Left Behind.

It was the custom, but a short while ago, to attribute to savage life a setting of perennial violence and promiscuous murder. It was the custom, in days yet no further from us than their rose-scents endure, and their laurels keep their freshness, to acclaim our exalted civilisation, and to gasp at the completeness of our conquest of ourselves by ourselves, and our triumph over external conditions—with the aid of God, and of parson, and of men like Mr, Lloyd George, and Lord Kitchener, and Mr. Berry, the celebrated hangman, of course. It was the custom to search the world for the Molochs of other worships and the Juggernaut cars of other civilisations, and to use them as pin-flags to mark the course we have followed and the giddy heights we have achieved above them.

Who does not remember for what bloody butcheries and devastating conquests excuse has been found in the tyranny of native rulers and insecurity of native life ? The “poor black” could never be sure, when he put his head out of his kraal in search of his morning paper, that some earlybird with a highly developed sense of humour and a capacious knife was not going to tumble that head into the milk-can. And it was suspected that, hidden away in the fastnesses of primitive forests, woolly-headed, dusky Camp­bells and Booths and other bogey-men were mixing up the trade of restaurateur with that of juggler, and administering the Communion with such grim realism as rendered superfluous the pronouncement “This is His flesh.” Such offences against the nostrils of “our common humanity” invariably called aloud for expeditions composed mainly, after its human components, of those well-known civilising agents, bullets, bibles, and booze (three out of the famous “Four B’s” of Christian pioneering—the missionary was the fourth).

Love’s Labour Lost.

Many an expedition, armed to the teeth for butchery, has left our shores on the pretext that the barbarities of little-known people shock the world and are a danger to civilisation ; many an expedition, reddened to the ears with butchery, has justified its orgy of rape and murder by grim tales of mountains of skulls discovered in some dusky potentate’s backyard. Civilised ruling classes have been touched to the tenderest cores of their tender hearts by savage brutality, and have expended much blood and treasure to correct the idiosyncrisi.es of the Mahdis, and clear up the messes of the King Coffees,

And now what a spectacle the Christian rulers of Christian lands present to the astonished eyes of savagedom !

All former hates and blood-lusts pale into insignificance compared with the consuming passions that run riot through the breasts of “civilised” men ; all former wars become mere local disturbances by comparison with this ghastly struggle which is turning countries into cemeteries and civilisation into an instrument of bloodshed; all former barbarities, whether of African despot or Asiatic ravager or European money-hunter, are eclipsed by the callous brutality of the means by which all the combatants alike seek to put out the lifespark of men in this last great crime which reveals the true visage of capitalism.

What irony survives the shock of events ! It was the complaint of multitudes, when we Socialists delivered the Socialist message in the pre-war days, that any attempt to establish society upon a basis of common ownership must lead to bloodshed. The fear of such a contingency has closed to our message the ears of many whose logical faculties could permit no other escape from the general truth of our conclusions, but who had not yet appreciated the veracity of Mr. Churchill’s dictum : “There are worse things than bloodshed.”

If Blood be the Price—

But to those who feared so much the giant figure behind the Socialist banner what has capitalism presented—and what has it yet to present ? In the first year of war about 85,000 British lost their lives in operations by land and sea, and a month later a military member of the House of Commons told us that “we have hardly yet wet our shoes.” A Paris journal. “L’Oeuvre,” in an estimate widely quoted by the Press of this country, states that up to the end of last February, that is when the war had been in continuance only half the time that it has now. France had lost in killed alone 304,000 men, Russia 850,000, Germany 975,000. Austria 1,400,000, while the total losses in killed of all the belligerents exclusive of Turkey were 3,689,000.

If we had not wet our shoes in September we had not even soiled them in February. Since then there has been colossal fighting on the eastern front and terrible work and suffering in Gallipoli ; since then there has been a costly attack and advance in France, while in addition Italy has entered the arena and made some progress in running up a tragic bill. What, then, must be the appalling death-roll now, with this second seven month’s lighting added to the first ?

Nor is it only in this direction that the war is robbing Socialism of its terrors. Many people in the past have stumbled over the idea that it is only the free play of capitalist competition that makes the world go round, and that without this stimulus to endeavour the means of production, wonderful as they are, would not suffice to support the race, and chaos and ruin would at once overtake us. But what do we find ; where does the war demonstrate the truth to be ?

It is revealed in practice that military strength —which to-day more than ever resolves itself into the largest, and therefore the most econo­mical output of wealth—is in inverse ratio to the free play of capitalist competition. It is seen that, so far from true is it that the ordinary private enterprise of interested capitalists, spurred on as it is by an unparalleled opportunity for gain, means efficiency, that it means, on the contrary, misdirection, waste, and chaos which must prove fatal to those foolish enough to rely upon it.

The Failure of Private Enterprise.

It is here that the scientific German has scored heavily over the short-sighted fools who have fondly imagined that private enterprise under the stimulus of competition would suffice for nearly all things in peace and in war. For years the German rulers have had arrangements made for a wide abandonment of the competitive processes of production in event of war. At the annual military manoeuvres a large number of German factories have been put under State control and run for a fortnight under war conditions. Whatever miscalculations the Germans made as to the requirements of modem warfare, they may, at all events, take credit for recognising from the first, and long before the outbreak of hostilities, the truth of the Socialist contention that the boasted private enterprise, under the stimulus of the competition generated by the lust for profit, is a drag upon production and a fertile source of chaos and inefficiency.

Germany acted upon this knowledge, and as a result our masters are forced to confess that, other things being equal, the only effective reply is to themselves abandon private enterprise for the time. In other words, they are forced to admit that capitalist production by private enterprise is a failure, and that only production organised on a basis from which the attributes of private enterprise are eliminated can enable them effectually to deal with a situation of their own making. To this extent, therefore, the evidence of the war is a triumph for Socialist theory which we shall know how to make good use of when the war has run its course.

Some further lessons.

But another aspect of the same question provides a useful lesson and further vindication of Socialist claims. When the war broke, out the financiers and capitalist economists showed that it could not last longer than a year. The upheaval of finance, the disturbance of trade, the disruption of production—these potent factors were to cool the ardour of the most warlike in a matter of nine to twelve months, and bring peace because the resources of mankind could not support war on the colossal scale for a longer time. By all the calculations of capitalist economists, based upon the soundest of capitalist theories, the Teutonic allies, with so much of their own manhood removed from the production of the necessaries of life, with their imports and exports almost completely cut off, should have reached bankruptcy and starvation and military paralysis long before this. Yet the prognostications of the wise men, who have imagined that the only possible basis for the activities of civilised man is money, and therefore solvency, and who have stoutly denied the Socialist assertion that an enormous proportion of the human energy under capitalism is run to waste these prognostications are pulverised by the peculiarly healthy vigour of the Austro-German entity.

Of course, the seers did not realise that a country organised for war could eliminate private enterprise and profit-hunting to any extent that its government thought necessary and its capitalist element was prepared to submit to, and thus organised on a temporary basis foreign and even antagonistic to capitalism, could go on with the war in defiance of financial dictums and capitalist economic theories, to the first of which the capitalists of that country are answerable only when the normal conditions of capitalism return, and the last of which they blast for ever.

But so it has been. The rulers of the German nation have found it possible to engage over ten millions of their seventy millions population in the direct prosecution of the war in the actual fighting forces, and in the production and transport of munitions and other requisites of war. We may put the ordinary working strength of Germany—the number, that is, following any occupation (the housewife’s duties excepted)—at from eighteen to twenty millions. We find, therefore, the remarkable spectacle in a capitalist country “organised for war,” of more than one half the working population (and the most physically efficient half at that) engaged in providing the forces and means for carrying on the conflict.

It is just this that has upset the calculations of the prophets. Plain soldiers, unhampered by economic theories and financial superstitions, knew that of the conditions essential to the carrying on of war, solvency was not one. Hence they made preparations “for three years or for the period of the war.” But the theorists have had a rude awakening. It comes as a surprise to them to find that while the ordinary processes of capitalism were suspended, and to the extent that they were suspended, bankruptcy was a word without significance. It comes as a shock to them to find that the country best organised for war is forced, when up against the military resources of the greater part of capitalist civilisation. can gain additional strength only by the wider abandonment of the principles of private enterprise, and the substitution therefor of organisation on a basis which, while far as the poles asunder from Socialism, contain this element in common with Socialism, that production for profit, with its wasteful competition, gives place to production for use, with its concomitant economical co-operation.

Thus is proved the Socialist contention that capitalist production, on normal capitalist lines, notwithstanding that such vast wealth results, is an insanely wasteful process. The very fact that the capitalists themselves are compelled at a time of stress to reject it in fields essential to the prosecution of the war speaks volumes. In this, when the war is finished, Socialist propagandists will find a powerful object-lesson to put before their fellow-workers.

It is more than possible that the war will provide even more important lessons for the working class than any here outlined so far. We all know how much the governments of the “quadruple entente” are building upon a revolt among the working class of the “enemy” countries. The contingency is not by any means remote, since it might suit the book of the Teuton mili­tarists, should they be unable to stave off defeat in the field, as well as it would suit the purpose of our own masters and their allies. We should then probably see the erstwhile capitalist foes united in a bloody suppression having for its object the striking with terror anew the working class of the world.

But for the moment the lessons of the war are these: Firstly, that the evolution of capitalism, so far from freeing us from the bloody violence alleged to attach to savage existence, tends to make wars more colossal as the improvement in the means of production sets free a larger proportion of the workers for war, and more cruel as the conquests of science place new means of butchery at the disposal of our respective masters. Secondly, the war demonstrates how small a proportion of the energy of any community, with modern instrument of labour, suffices to supply the necessaries of life for the whole. Thirdly, the war reveals that private enterprise and production for profit, so long and so sternly condemned by all Socialists, is not good enough even for the capitalists when the exigencies of a vital war make it imperative for them to make the most of their resources.

These lessons of the war will go far in the hands of those who have taken up the Socialist position, when the butchers shall have decided their quarrel by the old test seeing who can pour out working-class blood the longest. They will, added to the grudging return which the capitalists of this country are already preparing for their disabled warriors, open eyes even that German bullets have rendered sightless forever. Then, with the utter wantonness of this colossal destruction of life revealed in the worsened conditions of those who are everywhere bearing the brunt of the fighting and the bulk of the suffering the working class—and with the many false friends of labour exposed and discredited for all time by their attitude during this crisis, the cause of the working class will flourish with vigour that will relieve and compensate for this dark and savage outrage upon our class.

A. E. Jacomb

Jottings. (1915)

The Jottings Column from the October issue of the Socialist Standard

It must not be thought that because the “Daily Herald” failed, mainly because it did not know or understand the working-class position, that George Lansbury has given up. Oh, no ! Within the pages of its successor, “The Herald,” he still advances a strange and mysterious dogma. Listen to this :

“Last week I said I wished Arthur Henderson would come out of the Government and against the conscriptionists, set the true ideal of national service by all for the good of all . . . . Whether or no Henderson comes into the wilderness and puts himself at the head of the working class in their march toward the promised land that march will go forward, for out of this present time of trouble and difficulty it is the only road which will lead the nations of the world to safety.”

The pure insolence of young Arthur putting himself at the head of the working-class army is rather in the nature of “coming it.” You must really wait, Arthur, my boy, until we’ve selected you. We must kick a bit about the reference, too, to “the promised land.” We seem to have heard the phrase before. But let Georgie make it clear. In the course of the same discourse he says:

“We need at this moment a spiritual awakening, bidding us all cease our strife for money, for fame, or for power.”

There, there, now ! That’s good, for is it not “light in our darkness,” and does it not prove that “Capital” will probably be forestalled by — the Holy Bible.

* * *

“Profit” Sharing

On Sept. 16th, 1915, the following letter appeared in the columns of the “Daily Express,” written presumably by a City business man. We must compliment this good gentleman on his very correct deduction at the outset, but crave his indulgence at having to severely “strafe'” him regarding his remedy.

A Challenge.

To the Editor of the “Daily Express.”

Sir,—More than a year of the greatest trial and danger that Britain has ever known has not only failed to still the strife between capital and labour, but would even appear, on the contrary, to have widened the breach between them, and if this eternal question is not promptly, carefully, and cleverly handled it is hound to affect disastrously the improved social conditions to which we all look forward when the victory of the Allies shall have brought the great war to an end. 

With a view, therefore, to making an effort towards grappling with this question in a practical manner, may I be allowed to use the medium of the widely read columns of your newspaper to issue this challenge to all or any of the responsible representatives of both capital and labour to state as frankly, briefly, and definitely as possible, through this same medium, their objections to the introduction of a system of profit-sharing into every trade, business, or industry in which it can possibly be instituted.

E. Gordon Bigginson. 

Copthall-buildings, E..C.

I suppose we scarcely come within the gentleman's description of the “responsible representatives of labour,” but anyhow, we’ll have a shot at dispelling his acrobatic remedial notion. Briefly, we object to co-partnership because it is a complete snare and altogether useless as a means of “stilling strife.” Co-partnership or any other form of so-called profit-sharing in almost every instance means extra profit for the “boss.” As anything extra in wages earned by the co-partners is purely money paid for extra work done, it becomes quite obvious that the master class does not share his profits with his co-partners. As the basis of all “profit”-sharing schemes is the intensification of labour’s production—as witness the introduction of professional “sloggers” as instructors—does the gentleman still miss the objective, i.e., that the displacing of many workers owing to the increased output means increased dividends for the ordinary shareholders ? If the remaining workers earn, say, an average of two shillings more per week, who pockets the wages of the labourers displaced, save for the little that is necessary to woo those who, by doing their work, force them out of employment ? Thus while the workmen still engaged receive a wee bit extra in return for a big bit extra, the big balance always, by some wise dispensation of providence, finds its way into the master’s pocket. Will the writer of the letter see how the scheme works at Port Sunlight, The South Metropolitan Gas Co., and many other such works and engage the confidence of the “heads” there. The remedy for an evil will certainly never be gained by increasisg the evil. Understand this, my boy, there are ten thousand ways of missing the bulls-eye but only one way to hit it.

* * *

The following is from the Bristol Congress and is worthy of a place in anybody’s cutting-book :

“To a resolution expressing approval of the Labour Party’s action in assisting recruiting, the National Union of Clerks tabled an amendment regretting that they had not first secured from the Government guarantees of adequate provision for disabled soldiers. This “huckstering” spirit was hotly denounced by several speakers.” – Daily Mail,” 10.9.15.

The report that the assembled Congress received a telegram from the disabled trade unionists offering profuse thanks for services rendered is grossly exaggerated. Some people have all the luck while gratitude pays all our debts. Needless to add the amendment was lost.

* * *

The attached cutting was something in the nature of a smack in the eye for the dear Congress delegates. It reads :

A SOCIALIST MANIFESTO

.

The Socialist National Defence Committee, the members of which include Mr. H. G. Wells, Mr. Robert Blatchford, Mr. John Hodge, M.P., the acting Chairman of the Labour Party, and Mr. Charles Duncan, M.P., has issued a manifesto to the members of the congress. In it they say :

“In this hour of supreme national peril, when the independence of the people is brutally and the established public law and liberties of Europe are ruthlessly violated, a handful of PSEUDO-SOCIALISTS in this country are breaking the national solidarity and weakening the national efforts in face of the enemy ; it has become a duty for TRUE BRITISH SOCIALISTS to expose and repudiate the errors of these dreamers.”

Having explained so lucidly what is the duly of “true British Socialists,” the “true British Socialists” proceed to perform that duty. They accomplish the painful task of exposure and repudiation with surprising cheerfulness, proceeding upon the true British lines of the true British bulldog. They say :

“Some of them are extreme pacifists, some are aliens by both blood or sentiment, and ALL OF THEM ARE CONSCIOUSLY OR UNCONSCIOUSLY THE AGENTS OF GERMAN KAISERDOM, and traitors to the IMPERISHABLE IDEALS OK LIBERTY AND DEMOCRACY which have united free Britain, independent Belgium, and Republican France in an indissoluble and glorious alliance.”

One seems to see in that hooligan jibe “alien” the moving finger of Blatchford, the “true British Socialist who once publicly announced (in the “Clarion”) his antipathy toward Spaniards. Could any other hand so carefully have drawn that fine distinction between “German.” Kaiserdom and all other kinds of Kaiserdom ? or so cunningly have obscured the fact that, even he could not find a term that would serve to bring autocratic Russia into that “indissoluble and glorious alliance” which had been created by the “imperishable ideals of liberty and democracy” ? Yet it was easy enough. What was wrong with “Holy” Russia ? That should have appealed to the author of “God and My Neighbour,” and in the matter of veracity it would have matched the rest. And “lest we forget,” congratulations are due to two such eminent literateurs as Wells and Blatchford on the production of that gem, “aliens by both blood or sentiment.” And then again the reference to “pseudo-Socialists” and “true British Socialists” is indeed delightful. Fancy referring to Ben Tillett as an agent of German Kaiserdom, after all he has done, too. This is too bad, and the Tower Hiller has our deepest sympathy. Never mind, the truth about some men is never known until after they are dead, and even then you cannot find it on their tombstones. All the signatories to the manifesto are expected to figure in the next Birthday honours lists.

B. B. B.

Twenty-One Years Ago (1935)

From the August 1935 issue of the Socialist Standard

Twenty-one years ago commenced a war, in which millions of the working class suffered death and mutilation for the greater glory and profit of their capitalist masters. Not that the issue was presented quite so bluntly; the supreme aim, the British working class was told, was to make the recurrence of war forever impossible. And now, twenty-one years after the “War to end War,” the phrase, “the next war,” is beginning to become a commonplace; world expenditure on armaments has reached astronomical figures, and paternal governments seek to instruct civil populations how best to conduct themselves when subjected to poison-gas attacks.

Although ”to end war” was the supreme aim, there were also lesser, subordinate, aims. The ”World was to be made safe for Democracy,” we were told. It was made so safe that most of the post-war democratic constitutions have already given place to dictatorship in one form or another, and where democratic forms of government still survive, ”defence of democracy” continues to provide a basis for solemn pronunciamento and flaming appeals.

Twenty-one years ago Prussian militarism was presented as the implacable enemy of civilisation. To-day, for the time being, the friendliest relations exist between our capitalist masters and the Nazi dictatorship in Germany, dictatorship which, in its laudation of militarism, its cynical disregard of, and contempt for, all that civilisation is supposed to represent, would make a Prussian Junker of the old school blush with embarrassment.

We were also assured that the rights of small nations, of racial and national minorities, were to be safeguarded; to-day Jew-baiting is becoming increasingly popular, the persecution of national minorities goes on apace, while Imperialist Japan plunders a stricken China, and Mussolini prepares to “civilise” Abyssinia.

Twenty-one years ago, at the outbreak of the war, either the utmost confusion prevailed among those parties claiming to represent working-class interests, or, as in the case of the British Labour Party, they openly placed their services at the disposal of the capitalist class. Only the Socialist Party of Great Britain openly proclaimed its firm adherence to the principles of international working class solidarity, and urged the British working class to oppose its own class interests to that of the capitalists by organising together with the workers of all countries for the overthrow of capitalism, here and elsewhere.

To-day, there is every indication that the same people who deluded the workers then, are prepared to do the same again. The Labour Party talks about the need for defending “collective security,” “democracy,” and the League of Nations. Bolshevik Russia proclaims the “indivisibility of peace,” and hastens to recognise the justification of capitalist armed forces to maintain that peace—providing, of course, that the capitalist Power concerned is well disposed towards Russia.

To-day, just as twenty-one years ago, the Socialist Party asserts that as long as capitalism exists, so does the danger of war, and that the only way to abolish war is to abolish the cause of war— a social system based upon the private ownership of the means of wealth production. To that end the Socialist Party appeals to the workers to organise consciously for the overthrow of capitalism, by winning political power for the establishment of Socialism.

Arthur Mertons

By the Way. (1916)

The By The Way Column from the August 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

The continued absorption of the men of military age has had the effect of bringing in its train a greater demand for children and women to take the place of those workers who are thus removed from agricultural and industrial pursuits, in order that the latter may be trained in the art of scientific slaughter.

During the past month or so much has been said and written with regard to the employment of children and the question of education. Just recently, in the House of Commons, Mr. Arthur Henderson (Labour [!] M.P.), speaking as President of the Board of Education on the Education Vote, let fall the following remarks :

“The question of child-labour had excited much apprehension. . . . The Board had impressed local authorities to make full inquiries into the cases of children employed in agriculture. The Board would regard it as a very grave misfortune if large numbers of children were employed at an early age.

He expressed his gratitude to the Board of Agriculture for their co-operation with the Board of Education, yet in spite of their efforts the number of children engaged in agriculture had nearly doubled. It showed that by-laws were being relaxed without proper care and enquiry.”—”Daily Chronicle,” July 19, 1916.

If one was able to shut one’s eyes to the fact that the speaker was a Labour Member (and consequently was in the House of Commons supposedly in the interest of the working-class) it would be very easy to view the observations recorded above as an apology by an ordinary capitalist politician for jeopardising the education of this country’s future wage-slaves. But stay a moment ! Is not this hon. gentleman identified with the party who used to advocate “the raising of the age of child labour with a view to its ultimate extinction” ?

Another speaker who joined in the discussion said that he believes the President’s estimate of the number of children of school age employed in agriculture was far below the mark, and further suggested that the grant, or a large part of it, should be withdrawn from local authorities if they yielded to popular clamour and for the benefit of farmers robbed the children of their “birthright.”

* * *

We of the Socialist Party have, in season and out of season, insisted that the question of education is one which primarily concerns our masters. They do not educate the children because they desire them to become more intelligent, but because of the increasing development in the modern means of production and the higher education of the wage-slaves of other lands. This point has been referred to on many occasions by Lord Haldane, and even quite recently he emphasised the need of a far higher system of technical education. Therefore, if our masters desire to retain their supremacy as a commercial nation, they will see to it that the future wage-slaves shall be trained accordingly, and hence the grave concern of a small but intelligent section of the capitalist class at the invasion that is taking place in the ranks of the children of school age. Further confirmation of this is to be found also in Mr. Henderson’s speech, wherein he stated that

“The war has also brought home to us that our national prosperity and security demanded greater concentration of intelligence on problems of industry, commerce and public administration. He was glad to say that the Department had not failed to prepare for a re-conquest of the ground they had lost, but had taken steps to go much further than before after the war was over.”

* * *

Whilst I am on this topic there is one item which, perhaps, would not be amiss. It was recently stated in the Press that there were “cases of children attending school who were too sleepy to be taught owing to working early and late.” This was mentioned at the Frome (Somerset) School Attendance Sub-Committee meeting. The report continues :

“One boy of 11 milked seven cows night and morning and then went to school. He started work at five o’clock and had reached Standard II. The Chairman said he knew of a case where the teachers complained that children engaged on farm work were too tired to do anything when they got to school.”—”Daily News,” June 27, 1916.

One can understand the position of the teacher who has to impart information and instruction to children whose mental and physical energies have been sapped ere they reach the classroom. This evil is, of course, not confined to war time only ; it is an inevitable consequence of capitalist society, but to-day it is more pronounced. Here is a glorious opportunity for the idlers of modern society those who heretofore have never done anything useful in the community to do what they are so fond of prating about, work of “national importance.” Will THEY do it ?

To the teachers, parents, and members of the working class we send out our gospel of salvation. Study the position of your class ; realize that you are many and the drones are few ; help to speed the day when the exploitation of yourselves and your children shall be relegated to the past ; and join with us of the Socialist Party to assist the ushering in of a new society, wherein “poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom.”

* * *

For some time past we have heard a lot of talk about what our patriotic bosses are doing for those who hare “done their bit.” We have grown accustomed to hearing that after this war “our heroes” are not to sell matches and bananas for a living, but at long last they are going to receive recognition of tasks achieved and duty done. Without here touching on the subject of pensions (which, is engaging a large amount of attention in the Press), I will pass on to an advertisement which caught my eye in the “Daily Chronicle” of July 21st. Here it is :

Army or Navy men wanted who have done their bitt; bring discharge papers; salary 28s. per week to start with . . .

There’s generosity for you ; 28s. a week for those who have “done their bit.” The Lord only knows what the remuneration would be for those outside the condition above stipulated.”

* * *

Our right reverend father in God the Archbishop of Canterbury, recently wrote to the Prime Minister with regard to the plea of the World’s Evangelical Alliance that the second anniversary of the outbreak of war be made a national day of prayer by Order in Council. The reply of Mr. Asquith was a materialistic one, for he and many others, though giving lip-service to orthodox religion, place more reliance in shot and shell than in the efficacy of a day devoted to national prayer. Which reminds one that another gentleman in days gone by was once alleged to have said: “You may pray to God, but keep your powder dry.” However, let me quote :

“I have received your letter. … I am not prepared to recommend that Friday, August 4, be proclaimed a day of national penitence and prayer. I must point out that Monday and Tuesday, August 7 and 8, are declared Bank Holidays.

The suggested Proclamation would enforce a stoppage of work throughout the country on the previous Friday, and would not, I think, conduce to the result which is desired.

I think that the community will readily respond to the proposal that services should be held on that day in churches of all denominations throughout the country, and I believe it to be more in accordance with general thought and feeling that the State should not intervene in the manner suggested.”

—”Daily Chronicle,” July 1, 1916.

* * *

We have from time to time commented upon the £. s. d. point of view of obtaining recruits for the Army. The following is decidedly frank and honest:

“In granting exemption to a farm hand, aged 30, with nine children, the Ramsbury (Wilts.) Tribunal expressed the opinion that it would be cheaper to keep him at home.”—”Daily Mail,” June 34, 1916.

* * *

During the period immediately following the passing of the Compulsory Military Service Bill for single men, there were many outbursts in the House with regard to the methods of roping in potential recruits. Reference was made to the destruction of medical certificates of rejection and those who held them were forced to undergo further examination. Such were the methods used then and ultimately condemned by Mr. Tennant when he could no longer maintain a policy of official ignorance on the matter. Despite all promises of reformation, and the period of time which has since elapsed, we find the following condemnation of the methods adopted by the military authorities :

“Improper treatment of men who have been sent to Warley for medical examination was made the subject of a strong protest to the War Office yesterday by the Ilford Tribunal.

It was stated that the men were asked by the medical authorities to sign a blank card which would be sealed up afterwards and sent to the military authorities. This the men refused to do, and they informed the Tribunal of the fact.

Mr. Middlemas, the military representative, took exception to the treatment of these men and said it was scandalous, and he himself had written a strong letter of protest.”—”Daily Chronicle,” July 21, 1916.

* * *

Much ink and paper has been used to present in lurid terms the “awful frightfulness” of the German. But lo and behold ! in due course come pen pictures of the “frightfulness” of the ruling class of Britain and her Dominions. We have in time of peace heard a great deal about the “master mind” and the “directive ability” of our bosses, and with microscope in hand we have set out to discover these qualities which it is alleged belong to our masters. I have in mind the “gamble” of the Dardanelles and the Meso­potamia campaign particularly at the moment, though numerous other items might be mentioned. That the question is a serious one may be gathered from the fact that the Lords, spiritual and temporal, appear to have been the first to publicly discuss it. Now for the indictment :

“The Duke of Somerset said he had an opportunity that morning of reading three or four very long letters from officers who had been serving in Meso­potamia. He could assure their lordships that the cruelties our men must have suffered through the utter incompetence of the authorities, both in India and at home, were simply disgraceful. They knew what the Belgians suffered and they knew also what our own men suffered when taken prisoners by the Germans at the beginning of the war. But our men were suffering very much worse than they had ever suffered through the brutality of the way in which things had been managed in Mesopotamia. What they had suffered was perfectly indescribable.

He would give one or two instances, in one case a thousand wounded were sent down in a ship with one medical officer and one orderly to look after the whole of them. They were all mixed up together—­officers, British soldiers, and native soldiers. There were men with dysentery and men with shattered limbs all in the same ship, and there was not a bit of morphia or a drop of chloroform. One officer who was sent down wounded never had his wound dressed from the time he was picked up until he got to Bombay.

‘Who is to blame God knows,’ he added. ‘There must be somebody to blame here, and, as for India, I think the officer in command of the troops there must be terribly to blame.'”—”Daily Telegraph,” July 14, 1916.

* * *

“Dardanelles Treaty. Russia promised both sides of the Straits,” are headlines which recently appeared in the “Daily Chronicle” (19.7.10) over a short announcement with regard to the return of the Russian Parliamentary delegates to Russia. The item of news goes on to state that “the most interesting statement was made by Professor Miliukoff, the former Liberal leader, who, according to the Russkoe Slovo, said :

“The most important question in which we were interested was the problem of the Dardanelles. An agreement has been made between Russia and her allies according to which we are promised both sides of the Straits.”

Who said we are fighting on behalf of Belgium ?

The Scout.

Editorial: Russia and the Straits. (1916)

Editorial from the August 1916 issue of the Socialist Standard

That element of comedy which relieves almost every tragic situation, appears at last in the ultra-tragic situation on the Continent. For generations the British policy of preserving the “balance of power” in Europe has led our chivalric masters to adopt an attitude of protection and support toward certain ”small nations,” which wet-nurse attitude has afforded fools and sycophants a splendid opportunity to erect and nurture a theory of British love of “right” and “justice” that has precious little foundation in actual fact. What monumental sacrifice was undertaken in our grandfathers’ time (and at our [the working class] grandfathers’ expense) to argue Russia into a right state of mind concerning the sacredness of Turkish soil, and what farce has since been played, over the reeking graves of butchered “small nations,” to maintain in his pestilential power the “sick man of Europe,” whose rotten carcass happened to bar the way of Russia to the Mediterranean ! And what British blood has deluged the plains of Flanders and the Low Countries to maintain their “inviolable rights” (in fiction) because (in fact) their acquisition meant a disturbance of power, military and commercial, that did not recommend itself to British chivalry !

And now Time, like the corner-men in the Nigger minstrel troupe, supplies the comic relief without which both the “Spanish onion” song and the high tragedy of international politics are insufferable. British policy is on the horns of a dilemma. Cherished traditions come in conflict. The Russians want the Straits of Gallipoli and the Germans want Belgium. It is deucedly awkward, don’t-ye-know, and if that wild scramble to the Peninsular had only succeeded the situation might have been saved. The Turks might have capitulated on terms that would still have left them masters of their fate, guardians of the “holy places,” benefactors of the Armenian and other poor devils who would be so much better off under the rule of the gentle Russian. But the Churchillian “gamble” fell through. The paeans which eulogised the marvellous way in which the British caught hold of the turkey at Gallipoli were outdone by the chants praising the clever way they let it go again, and the attempt to save the “sick man of Europe” from himself and the Russian bear collapsed. And now British chivalry has had to decide between Germany and Russia.

The problem was brought within reach of the minds of British statesmen by one or two existing facts. In the first place, Germany, the enemy of the moment by reason of her superior industrial development, had already gained such ascendency in Turkey as rendered her conquest eventually of the historic sea outlets a foregone conclusion—and better Russia than Germany. On the other hand opportunity was ripe for Russia, who found herself provided with both the excuse and the means to carry out her long-cherished aspirations. She had only to divert her strength to the purpose, leaving the other occupants of the cockpit largely to fight themselves to a standstill, and she would soon have accomplished what her great love for Christianity has impelled her to essay more than once before. The knowledge of these things, no doubt, helped to maintain that united front, that common effort on behalf of international freedon, those bonds woven out of love of honour and justice and the rest ; but that delegates should find it necessary to come from Russia in order to make bargains in the matter of plunder speaks volumes concerning the real nature of those bonds and the difficulty of keeping them intact.

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.

“A Whiff of Grape.” (1915)

From the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

If the face of such a predicament as faces our lords and masters at the present moment the so-called labour problem assumes a visage that to the Socialist is both significant and humorous. The “patriotic” masters, in spite of the great need of the State for the good-will of their slaves, at least in the workshops, mines, factories and other and suchlike places where the slaves assume any importance at all, adhere with the tenacity of limpets to their old and natural policy of grinding the faces of those they have on the economic grindstone. However dire the need of the country that really, in substance and in fact, is theirs may be, their leech-like proclivities are only unleech-like in that they cannot gorge themselves to satiety.

The Welsh coal owners provide a typical example. In spite of the fact that, as Mr. Lloyd George says, “coal is everything for ‘us,’ and we want more of it to win victory.” “It bends, it moulds, it fills the weapons of war” ; in spite of the fact that their war fleet depends for its very life upon Welsh coal, the owners of the Welsh mines would not release in the smallest degree their clutch upon the throats of their wage-slaves. They could not realise, it seemed, that the whip which had driven the miners into the pits under the pre-war terms and conditions no longer had the power that it had in those days. The needs of the master class were too great and too urgent to permit of a resort to the old dodge of trying to starve the miners into submission. But the mine owners either were blind to this, or they counted upon the “patriotism” of the men to take the place of the whip of starvation. Anyhow, they drove the miners beyond the limits of patience before they abdicated, only showing their patriotism by placing themselves in the hands of the Government when they had lost the move.

This sort of thing has been going on all over the place. Everywhere the workers, faced with an increase of some fifty per cent. in the cost of living, have had to struggle bitterly to gain an advance of wages equal to but a fraction of the increased cost of living. And when they have been compelled to resort to the final step—the strike, what a howl of astonishment, indignation, and righteous (!) wrath has gone up from our masters’ Press !

Who does not remember what an “indelible stain” besmirched the “patriotism” of the Clyde shipyard men when they were guilty of refusing to let their masters have their labour-power on their own terms ? Who forgets what scoundrels the L.C.C. tramwaymen were for daring to put forward demands and taking the only action that counts for much in the way of supporting those demands ? And now it is the turn of the miners to be upheld as men who broke pledges—pledges which they had not given ; who had disobeyed their leaders—leaders whom the men pay to obey them ; who were murdering their comrades in the trenches—as if it were miners and not the masters who had sent them there.

Of course it could not be expected that the prostitute scribblers of the prostitute Press should remember that there are two sides to a disagreement as well as to an agreement. That the masters had deliberately chosen to sacrifice the efficiency of their own fleet and imperil their own forces in Flanders rather than relax a little the hard terms upon which their slaves could go down into the pits and tussel with Death for coal, was a facet of the position that the capitalist penmen would not be expected to have eyes for. Holders of any other commodity—any of the multitudinous products of labour—were to be permitted to push up the prices of their goods to the highest limit the unique situation gave them the opportunity to, and, no matter how necessary those commodities were, or how much misery their dearness brought upon immense numbers—of the people who don’t count, the working people—no word of stricture fell upon them. In the early days of the war, when it was claimed that only State control of the drink traffic could solve the problem of the shirker, the Government attempted to secure such control, but the brewers and distillers and other gentlemen of The Trade kicked up such a rumpus that the Asquithian courage oozed out and the project fell through—yet of all those newspapers who had shouted from the housetops that drink was lessening the output of munitions and killing the men in the trenches, not one ever applied to the brewers and distillers who refused to permit the drink to be placed beyond the reach of the “drinkers and shirkers” (and not, be it said, out of any love of the liberty of these latter) even the least of the filthy epithets they showered upon the men who had dared to claim a larger share of the wealth which they and they alone produced.

It was the sycophant claim of our masters’ Press that the miners should have continued to work while still negotiating ; but those who best know the master class in general and the mine-owners in particular, know very well that had they adopted this course they might have followed it to the end of the war—when the dispute would probably have been settled with the aid of policemen’s truncheons, as in the pre­-war days. But as a matter of fact the men had tried this plan of negotiating while continuing to work, like men who were afraid to fight for what they were demanding. They had had a bellyful. Their leaders had played into the masters’ hands and were treacherously advising the men to accept their exploiters’ terms. In any case where procrastination means that the the masters are escaping, even if only for the moment the heart-rending necessity of having to part with a share of their plunder, negotiation is the slowest coach upon the road ; but when the masters have get the men’s leaders on their side, then, indeed, the coach properly breaks down.

Those people who talk so glibly about negotiation seem to base their contention upon the pretention that all the employers want in order to induce them to meet the men’s demands is to have their ears tickled with sweet reasonable­ness. They know, however, that this is entirely false. They know that the only argument that ever touches the masters as such is the argument of force. There is no other effective appeal either to their reason or to their feeling. So long as they thought that the patriotic fervour of the men or the cajolery of the leaders would avert a strike negotiations brought the men no nearer the satisfaction of their demands. But look at the effect that was produced by the positive action of ceasing to work !

At once the Government, who showed a very mild interest in the terms and conditions under which coal came out of the mines so long as it did come out, was galvanised into the most acute interest and vigorous action ; at once the masters, finding themselves, in the absence of an army of blacklegs to fall back upon, utterly licked, retired from the contest, left the matter in tie hands of the Government, and expressed a very patriotic willingness to do whatever the Government told them. In a week the men were back at work again, in the enjoyment of the substance of pretty well all they demanded, if not the shadow, instead of the usual reward of negotiation, the capture of the shadow with the merest integument of the substance, or none.

This result was the fullest justification of the action the miners bad taken. This fact, however, did not save them from almost universal abuse, amongst which not the least venomous was that of their (so-called) leaders. These men, of course, who had struggled so hard to make them submit to the terms of the mine-owners, found that the victory, gained without their help, against their advice, in opposition, even, to their endeavours, placed them in a peculiar and unenviable position. That they fully appreciated this is amply shown by the utterances of one of their number, Mr. Vernon Hartshorn, as reported in “Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper” for July 25th. According to this report Mr. Hartshorn said :

“I am guilty of no exaggeration when I say that last week-end the very existence of the federation as a trade union organisation hung in the balance. Public opinion was against it because of the refusal to give the Government a little more time. It stood abandoned by the whole of the labour movement of the country. The occasion was a unique opportunity for a bold, bloodthirsty reaction.

“Public opinion, rendered nervous, savage, and ruthless by the present national dangers, would have approved the course taken, and, apart from sentimental resentment, the organised labour movement in the country would, perhaps, have acquiesced. I say emphatically that no leader has a moral right to lead his organisation into such a perilous impasse, and no leader with a proper conception of industrial strategy or of the tremendous powers which can be arrayed against labour when it makes a tactical slip would dream of doing.

“A few more days of restraint would have given the Government the chance to rectify its undoubted errors, and would have immensely strengthened the position of the federation with the public. But the opportunity was not given, and last week-end the sword of destruction, though the men as a body did not knew it, was banging over the federation.

“During those critical days the Government were tempted—there is no doubt about it—to deal with this isolated and sectional problem by the savage and crude old method of a whiff of grape shot, which has in many of the troubled periods of history destroyed the rising hopes of democracy and heralded a long reign of reaction and repression.

“What saved us and the country from such a disaster ? It is only fair to acknowledge, without reservation, that we were saved from that disaster not by any strength of our own but by the wisdom, generosity, and restraint, with which the ultimate crisis was dealt with, the Coalition Government.”

These, it is quite easy to see by anyone who has a fair knowledge of the facts of the case, are the words of a man who is under the necessity of rehabilitating himself in the eyes of those with whom it is important that he should stand well. The implication, however, that the fools who rushed in where such angels as Mr. Vernon Hartshorn dared to tread brought the miners so near to such dire perils as indicated is quite without foundation. A whiff of grapeshot, indeed ! The sword of destruction, by gosh ! It would be interesting to have Mr. Hartshorn’s authority for these statements.

The fact is that the whiff of grapeshot and the sword of destruction were quite “outside the range of practical politics,” as the capitalist critics so fondly say of Socialism. The mere fact that the mine owners recognised that the game was up and retired behind the Government shows this. If it is ever true that Governments take the line of least resistance, it is true at the moment when they have got more than enough trouble on hand in other directions. The line of least resistance was certainly not the line that might be cleared by whiffs of grapeshot. Mr. Hartshorn, even, had not the courage to state that the organised labour movement in the country “would have acquiesced” in the grapeshot treatment without that saving “perhaps.”

When Mr. Lloyd George took his “silver tongue” to Wales it was to talk a good face on the matter from the Government point of view. A certain prestige had to be maintained if possible. The “organised labour movement in the country” was not to get the idea that it had only to cease working in order to be granted anything that it wanted. The face of labour leaders, who had promised that, in return for being left out of the Munitions Act there should be lamb-like submission in the Welsh minefields, had to be saved as far as possible. So the miners were penalised by being brought under the Act which is absurdly useless as against two or three hundred thousand miners, though, it may suffice to deal with a couple of score of coppersmiths. The “silver tongue” had only the task of persuading the men to swallow this “bitter” pill, of disguising the completeness of the men’s victory, and throwing over the affair just that appearance of “wisdom, generosity and restraint” which their hack, Mr, Hartshorn, attributes to the Coalition Government. But as for whiffs of grape and swords of destruction, they are the mere invention of a discredited labour leader, of a would-be trade union boss who aspires to ambitious heights under the patronage of the workers’ enemies by assuming the role of dictator, and who is mortified in spirit by being flouted by those he would control, and jeopardised in fortune by the success of a course taken in defiance of leaders.

Let the workers understand their own affairs, shake off their “leaders,” and victory is theirs.

A. E. Jacomb

Book Review: Ropes of Sand. (1915)

Book Review from the August 1915 issue of the Socialist Standard

“A way to Prevent War,” by Allan L. Benson. 180 pp. Cloth, 1 dollar. Appeal to Reason, Girard, Kansas, U.S.A.

“If the people were in favour of war, the way to end war would be to convert the people to peace. This book is devoted to the task of showing that since the people are opposed to war the logical way to end it is to take the power to declare war from minorities who misuse it and vest it in the people who may be depended upon not to use it at all.” Thus does the author of the volume under review open his preface.

The busy reviewer who takes up a book for the purpose of criticism, and finds the key to his labours in the first paragraph, is a lucky man. “Since the people are opposed to war” ! “What an assumption to build up a 180 page tome upon ! Had the writer lived in England in August 1914; had he taken part in the perils of our outdoor propaganda soon after the outbreak of hostilities ; had he mounted the public platform in any of the belligerent countries last autumn, when the British bulldog was a gnashing of his teeth, and the French poodle and the Russian bear were tying themselves up in true lovers’ knots in their patriotic frenzy, and the German two-headed eagle was doing the porcupine act with his neck feathers, and only the Dutch cheese maintained his customary sanity (because he wasn’t a belligerent)—had he, the author of “A way to Prevent War,” taken the platform then and tried to tell the people that they “are opposed to war,” he would have experienced experiences that might have prevented him rushing into print on such a flimsy ground as the conception that the people would never use the power to declare war at all.

Mr. Churchill has told us that there are worse things than bloodshed, and it is true. Mr. Churchill, of course, meant that there are worse things than the shedding of other people’s blood, and thus put even fewer dissentients will raise voice against the statement. But if we are to believe Mr. Benson, there are no conceivable circumstances, no wrongs and oppression, which could urge the people to resort to arms if the option of peace and war lay with them.

Well, I for one say not so, and fervently hope not so. Bad, indeed, as this welter of blood is—and its horror vibrates not less strongly through the Socialist fibres of the reviewer than through the reformist fabric of his author—it is not so bad. by a very long chalk, as that the working class, if the power to make war was vested in them, could “be depended upon never to use it at all”—merely because, under Mr. Benson’s scheme, those who voted for war would be the first to be sent to the front.

The present futile and deplorable struggle, with all its appalling waste of life and all its stupendous agony and suffering, is not so bad as that other condition because it indicates that the workers are not lacking in the “animal” courage necessary for the achievement of their emancipation from wage-slavery, while on the other hand, if they would never resort to armed conflict at all under the condition that those who voted for war would be the first to be called upon to serve, that would simply indicate that they have not the courage to strike the blow which they must strike in order to set themselves free.

Mr. Benson says : “The world is tired of war.” This may be true enough now ; and anyway it is pretty certain to be true before the war is finished. That does not mean, however, that in a decade or so the world would decline to resort to force of arms again should circumstances similar to those which caused the present conflagration then obtain. No one, in all probability, will be more heartily tired of the war before it is finished than the capitalist class, who have got to pay for it ; yet even our author would not deny that it would be idle to expect the capitalist class to abolish war. Anyway he says that his program “will not be installed by the capitalist class,” (Page 4.)

What better reason has Mr, Benson for maintaining that the people (by whom he seems to mean the working class) need but the referendum on war in order to abolish war ?

The bottom of the argument is knocked out by the author’s own admission (p, 77) that “It is unfortunately true that scheming diploma­tists and jingo journalists have the power so to inflame peoples that they desire war.” What, then, is the use of talking about giving the people the “direct vote on tha war” ? To bam­boozle them into desiring war is to bamboozle them into voting war ; and to lay the voter under the penalty of having to fight if he votes for fighting is simply to challenge his courage. These things are patent to everyone save the crank who thinks he has discovered a short cut to the millenium.

The very fact that it is true that “scheming diplomatists and jingo journalists have the power to so inflame peoples that they desire war” shows that it is not so much the referendum on war that the people need as knowledge. Knowledge alone can save them from the wiles of the “scheming diplomatists and jingo journalists” interested in stirring up race hatred and exploiting the cowardice of those who have not the courage to face the charge of the white feather lancers. Granted that Mr. Benson, as a part of his scheme, provides the same penalty for those who advocate war through the Press or on the platform as for those who vote for it in the ballot, but the capitalists, with their unlimited means of inducing men and women to take personal risks (as witness the system of espionage existing in all capitalist countries) would find this very little deterrent to the people being so inflamed as to desire war.

Knowledge is the only safeguard against the workers being dragged into wars that do not concern them—knowledge that is, which has found its consummation in the capture of the machinery of government. This knowledge must be Socialist knowledge. It must be knowledge of the unity of interest of the workers of all countries, and the antagonism between that interest and the interest of the capitalists of all lands.

And mark this, that knowledge itself, while it precludes the possibility of the workers being inflamed for capitalist war, must on the other hand inflame them against the capitalists in the bitterest of all wars—the class war. As opposing interests are the cause of all wars, unity of interest is the only absolute safeguard against war. The Socialist recognises this and acts accordingly ; the pseudo-Socialist does not recognise it, and he acts accordingly also.

Hence we find Mr. Benson telling us (p. 101) “The advocates of the war referendum plan declare that if diplomacy were democratized and the war-making power vested in themselves, no war could be begun for which the people had not voted”—which, of course, is not less fatuous because it is true, if the people can be inflamed to desire war.

And hence also we find Mr. Benson arguing the question (p. 102) “whether the Socialist plan of ending poverty and war or the war-referendum plan is, in its nature, most likely to lead in mak­ing its way into the public understanding” and deciding (as a Socialist !) against the Socialist plan.

Another mistake of the author which residence in any of the belligerent countries might possibly have prevented him from making is the claim that women, if given the vote, “would vote overwhelmingly against war.” One who proclaims that “We Socialists take nothing for granted” might at least have spent some pains upon substantiating this claim. He might have endeavoured to show that the Socialist theory of the domination of material interests over human actions applies only to the male sex.

There are many other points of error in Mr. Benson’s book, only one particularly grave one can be mentioned here. This is the statement that the power for peace and war rests solely in the hands of a few politicians. Says our author: “134 men in Congress and one man in the White House have all of the power . .” (p. 11). This exposes a lamentable ignorance of the true facts of the case. The politicians are the servants of the master class, acting in their interests under such cloaks of hypocrisy and cant as they can devise.

The book is not without one merit. It brings before the public notice many of the wiles with which the diplomatists and politicians have carried out their masters’ work. The Bismarckian instances are very interesting reading though not altogether new to English readers. The events leading up to the Spanish American War are also worth perusal, and in particular the story of the “Maine.” How the American Government resisted for ten long years every demand to have the sunken warship raised from the slime of Havannah Harbour, and how it was eventually raised, taken out to sea, and sunk in order to destroy for ever the evidence of the falsity of the pretext for war which ten years previously it had provided, tell their own tale of Cultur, as unmistakably as certain other incidents related tell theirs of Culture and Kultur.

A. E. Jacomb