Man's degradation (1963)

From the September 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Degradation! What degradation?"

The neatly-dressed grey-haired woman at the edge of the lunch-time crowd at Tower Hill had seemed genuinely surprised at the use of such a word by our speaker to describe her  condition and that of the other office workers listening to him. Engrossed in his topic, he had not heard her interjection; she had not pressed her point; and so it had been lost.

The scene came back to my mind some weeks later, when I found myself with time to kill in a suburb of Nottingham. I had called in the morning at the house of a comrade—only to find that he was out. As it was a lengthy bus-ride back to the centre of the city and I had no other commitments, I had decided to await his return. The local branch of the Public Library was in a pleasant, spacious building, furnished with some imagination, and it was well stocked. An hour or two passed in browsing.

I had already had a cup of coffee and a sandwich at the only cafe in the district, and did not in any case feel like a hot meal on this warm summer day. I decided to buy some fruit and sit outside somewhere in the sunshine to eat it. I was soon looking for a small park or road side seat with perhaps a patch of grass around it. Half an hour later I was still looking, having walked up and down almost every street I could see.

I began to realise that I had been brought face to face with a fact which the everyday familiarity of the suburban scene normally causes one to overlook: that with rare exceptions, suburbs have nowhere for the passing stranger to sit. They have parks, commons, recreation grounds, yes—but these are usually some distance from the centre of the district, and are provided for specifically recreational purposes. The neighbourhood as such makes no provision for the stranger. If he is lucky he may find a Public Library in which to pass his time; otherwise he must pay for the space he occupies, by buying something to eat or drink.

That this is a fact I was able to confirm several times over in other parts of the country; and anyone can see it in most of the suburbs he knows. But it is more than a curious fact; and it is certainly no coincidence. We have all around us, the first kind of human community in history which makes no collective provision for the traveller. The village has its green, with a seat or two; the most primitive and the most transient of past human settlements considered it a general duty to greet a stranger (unless he were believed to be hostile) and offer him hospitality. How it is that this small but age-old community function has been able to disappear almost unnoticed from the typical dwelling-area of the affluent society?

The answer can only be that these areas are not communities at all, in any but a shadowy and nominal sense. The local-authority housing estate or the collection of private "desirable residences" is not built for human beings to live together in; it is an aggregation of living-boxes for the purveyors of labour-power—places to and from which they can be shuttled before or after making their energies available to the owners of capital.

So conditioned are workers to capitalism that they have come to accept this state of affairs as normal and natural, and can usually think of improvement in their mode of living only in terms of getting a bigger box with a bigger bit of land around it. The house-builders, concerned only with the profit to be obtained from their operations, find this all to their advantage: far more money is to be made from putting up mazes of indistinguishable dwelling-units for the Council, or from selling the featureless semi-detached to the socially isolated white-collar worker, than could possibly accrue from creating a well-planned community with adequate amenities. The social expense, in loneliness, neurosis and the sense of leading a meaningless, frustrating existence, does not hit the builder's pocket or affect the Councillor's political security.

The woman in the Tower Hill crowd probably lived in just such an area; yet she did not see that it involved her in a degradation of human existence. It is just possible that she had an enjoyable, useful, meaningful job; but if she did she was fortunate. The degradation of having to devote our talents and our powers of concentration to boring or ultimately futile activities was presumably no more to her than the inevitable daily round of everyone's life.

This is, perhaps, the ultimate degradation itself of the working class; that they are induced to believe that the kinds of lives they lead, the houses they live in, the clothes they wear, the work they do and the way they travel to and from it, represent the best that any reasonable person could hope for. Yet it is at best a pitiful, and at worst an insulting mockery of the potential of human nature and wealth and society, this life that we are condemned to live; we could sweep it all away if only we could see that it has ceased to be in any sense necessary.

So I mused, trudging up and down the streets with my bag of apples and oranges. Eventually I did find somewhere I could sit and eat them—on a stone in a graveyard. The moral was all too plain: only the dead occupy space they don't pay for. Only for them is there no degradation.

P. R. Collins  

The Left: Once more boring from within (1977)

From the January 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Left" is pidgin-political for reformers babbling of green fields, syndicalists, and advocates of state capitalism. Socialists reject it as a label because we want none of those things, and there is one other conspicuous difference. No Socialist would touch the Labour Party with a barge-pole; the "left" fall over one another getting into it.

In the past two or three years there have been repeated alarms about the activities of allegedly Marxist (usually Trotskyist) groups in the Labour Party. On one hand they agitate for new programmes of reform; on another, they are said to plot within constituency parties to get rid of MPs who do not suit them. in November 1975 the Labour national agent presented a report called Entryist Activities to the party's national executive, defining "entryism" as "a decision by an outside organization ineligible for affiliation to the Labour Party that its members shall enter as individuals, to carry out activities as directed by the outside body". In the first week of December 1976 The Times had a series of articles on Trotskyists in the Labour Party, and Callaghan and Wilson made speeches denouncing "infiltrators who seek to take over local parties and unseat respected Labour MPs" (Sunday Times, 5th December).

These reactions are revealing in themselves. To the Labour leaders and their naïve supporters, the "left" are bent on socialist revolution; and that is the last thing the Labour Party wants. The Sunday Times report quoted Callaghan as saying "the most hateful slogans he had heard recently were: What do we want? Everything! When do we want it? Now!'" A party which lives on promises of a little jam tomorrow is bound to object to demands like that. Nevertheless, some vital questions are raised. Should democracy permit wreckers to have their way? What would happen of the "left" became the majority in the Parliamentary Labour Party? Is it likely?

Controlling Influence

From the time the "new left" began to form, about 1960, "entryism" was a widely talked-of tactic. The Labour Party has maintained a list of proscribed organizations, i.e. groups and parties which are refused affiliation with it. Technically, a member of one of them may be refused admission or expelled if his membership can be proved; however, some "left" groups  have no formal membership — the "Militant" group which is said to be specially active in provincial Labour Parties presents itself as a collection of devotees of a weekly paper.

Such a situation creates a problem in voluntary organizations. Each exists for a particular purpose which its constitution is framed to further. If a section with unacceptable ideas finds its way into membership it can make use of the procedures and rules to further its own purposes instead. As a parallel, the Socialist Party of Great Britain does not admit to membership people who hold religious beliefs, are interested in our anti-war case more than in Socialism, or think we should join forces with other parties. If such people joined, it would be possible for them eventually to out-vote the rest of the membership and alter the purpose of the SPGB. It is absurd to suppose that they should be admitted and permitted in the name of "democracy", democracy is related to a given framework.

But the prospects of "left" groups being able to take charge of the Labour Party are remote. That they have been successful so far in campaigns against MPs in two constituencies — Prentice in Newham North East and Sandelson in Hillingdon — chiefly reflects apathy and non-participation by other members. However, the fact is that constituency parties do not run the Labour Party. They are only a small fraction of the membership; though they provide half the representation at conferences they have about one-sixth of the votes (the remainder being in the hands of the trade unions). In 1930 Beatrice Webb recorded a conversation in which her husband, Sidney Webb, said

that the constituency parties were frequently unrepresentative groups of nonentities dominated by fanatics and cranks, and extremists, and that if the block votes of the trade unions were eliminated it would be impracticable to continue to vest the control of policy in Labour Party Conferences.

This is quoted in Robert McKenzie's British Political Parties (1964), and McKenzie adds: "there can be little doubt that he accurately reflects the conviction of the great majority of the parliamentary leaders then and now. The conference could not be accorded even nominal authority in determining the long-range goals of the party if it were subject to the overriding influence of the constituency party delegates. But the parliamentary leaders have little to fear from the party conference as long as they retain the confidence (and the block vote support) of the traditionally moderate and conservative leadership of the big trade unions." This contrasts with the claim made by a Labour Party organizer, quoted in The Times (2nd Dec. 1976) of an "immediate threat" in "Trotskyist-inspired resolutions" put forward by constituency parties at the annual conference.

Shapeless Fringe
Webb was a member of the second Labour Government, and he was referring mainly to the ILP which disaffiliated from the Labour Party in 1932. The ILP's militant slogans at that period have a familiar ring today — "Socialism in Our Time" and "The Living Wage Policy". In disaffiliating the ILP believed it would hold the bulk of its MPs and local members, particularly as the Labour Party was in disarray in 1932. However, only a handful of the 156 MPs who were nominally members of the ILP remained with it, and the great majority of constituency members rejected it for the Labour Party. A "left-wing" confrontation would produce the same result today. Indeed, it is plain that the infiltrators are in the Labour Party because they see no prospect of success standing on their own feet. The election results for International Socialists, International Marxist Group, Workers' Revolutionary Party etc, have not alarmed anyone except their wealthy supporters who provide the money.

What do they hope to achieve by infiltration? "Left" is a muddled, imprecise term covering many ideas and motives. The groups working inside the Labour Party are not at all united in their aims. IS and IMG have been called "middle class centrists" by the WRP, who want Labour on power so that Labour "will be exposed and will be driven out" (1974 Election Manifesto). Andy Bevan, the Trotskyist Labour Youth Officer, wants only a different policy — "a programme that can really show the way forward to the Labour Party" (TV interview reported in Sunday Times, 28th Nov. 1976). In May 1972 a "left" Labour agent debating with an SPGB representative at Canterbury asserted that "revolutionaries" would take over the Labour Party, then get it while in power to engineer an economic crisis of which they could take advantage. (He was a Labour candidate in the last general election, and the crisis took place without the Government even trying.)

The demands made by the "left" are sadly familiar: soaking the rich, nationalization, the right to this and that. A letter to The Times in 7th December from the editor of the Militant paper protested against a "scare campaign" and said:

What frightens you and the class you represent is that the Labour Party rank and file should have the temerity seriously to wish to implement Clause IV, part 4 of Labour's constitution, which calls for the nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy. Militant has concretized this part of Labour's programme with its demand for the taking over of the woo or so monopolies which control 80-85 per cent of the economy, with the compensation to the shareholders on the basis of proven need, under democratic workers' control and management.

Let The Times and some of its readers be frightened for the right reason, at any rate — not that these demands have anything to do with Socialism, but that they seek to run capitalism with a new degree of ineptitude.

"Left-wing" leaders with political power are in the same position as "right-wing" ones: they have to meet the realities of managing capitalism. On 16th November a group of Labour MPs who call themselves the Social Democratic Alliance pointed a finger at 33 other Labour MPs who, they allege, are under "Marxist" influence. In most of those cases the likelihood is that the MPs are no more than idiots who court popularity as bold radicals. Possibly others are secret members of Trotskyists groups. But what are the preoccupations of all of them now? Trying to cure unemployment by reviving those sections of industry which need it; looking for a formula to check inflation; improving the balance of trade — in short, doing the best they can for British capitalism.

Each generation of radicals believe there has been a sell-out by the previous generation. Most of the 1923 "wild men of the Clyde" became respectable establishment figures. Michael Foot, who in 1966 was reported in The Observer as saying he would teach his grandchildren to say "I am an anarchist", is now Labour's Deputy Leader and opposes "extremists" on the grounds that party unity is essential. What is not realized is that the let-down comes at the beginning, not the end. Early Labour leaders who were aware of the nature of Socialism put it aside in favour of getting mass support quickly. Some at least of the "left" today reject Socialism for the same reason, and because of the excitements offered by the militant scene. Yet, despite the professions made, the only alternative to Socialist politics is capitalist politics. If he makes that choice, the "extremist" of today is already the trimming statesman of tomorrow; if it comes to it, the possessing class will make terms with a Trotskyist state as with a Tory one.

The appearance of a fresh political faction enables the press and party leaders to try to impress on the working class that who runs capitalism is all-important. It is not. The one issue that matters is exchanging capitalism for Socialism; besides ending the problems of society as we know it, that will make democracy in the widest sense a reality.

Robert Barltrop

Ballot-Box or Baton? (1922)

From the April 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

An "Unemployed Demonstration" is one of the most saddening spectacles that civilisation can provide. Most of the industrial towns have their daily débâcle in front of the Union, but the futility of their actions does not seem to strike the demonstrators; in fact, all that seems to strike them is the policeman's baton. The humanitarian must turn aside in pity at the sight of a few hundred, or maybe thousand, starving and physically weakened individuals parading their distress and wretchedness up and down the streets, to be eventually sent scampering down back streets and alleys at the word of command from a police inspector. If only it were an equal combat, one would not feel its injustice quite so much. But there you have it. The master class takes the best from amongst the working class, feeds them and clothes them, strengthens them physically, enslaves them mentally by exercise and military discipline, and uses them to protect its property against the turbulence of the dispossessed. Indeed, so imbued with Capitalist notions are these working-class protectors of their masters' property that the authorities do not even fear that they will shirk the task of clubbing their mates and fellow-townspeople into obedience. This was exemplified a little while back, when Scotch soldiers were detailed to quell disturbances in Glasgow! As for the demonstrators, they play into Master's hands in just the right fashion. They don't know anything about the Capitalist wirepullers but "Here's a policeman; let's heave a brick at him!" Thus we get the working class busy fighting each other and the Capitalist maintaining his hold on the wealth that he steals from them!

Yet the remedy is so simple, and the method more simple still. The cause of poverty is the ownership of the means and instruments of wealth production by the Capitalist Class. The remedy, therefore, is to dispossess that class of its ownership. It maintains its ownership by virtue of its political control. Its economic domination would cease the moment that the working class captured the political machinery that sends the police and the soldiers against them. Curiously enough, the working class never seem to discover that it is they who gratuitously give the Capitalist Class the power to enslave them every time they go to the ballot-box! It is obvious, then, that the method of recapturing political control is going back to the ballot-box and voting for Socialism! It doesn't hurt as much as a whack on the head from a baton, anyway!

Stanley H. Steele

Observations: Tales from Africa (1988)

From the October 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once upon a time (in August 1871 to be precise) the German Karl Mauch explored southern Africa and found what he thought were King Solomon's Mines and one of the homes of the Queen of Sheba. Having landed on the east coast in 1865, his original intention was to explore and map the territory. He did indeed produce the first complete map of the Transvaal and in 1866 was one of the first white men to discover gold. However he decided to forego prospecting to continute exploration "to add honour to the name of the German nation".

When, after many dangers and delays he reached the impressive walls and ruins of the ancient fort of Great Zimbabwe he was, based on old chronicles and knowledge at the time, entitled to think he had indeed found them. Later visitors to the site confirmed, admittedly with scant evidence to back them up, that although possibly not King Solomon's Mines or the home of the Queen of Sheba, the ruins had definitely not been been built by black people.

In 1902 R. M. Hall cleared the site of undergrowth and started digging. He found many items which, because, unlike previous explorers, he was a local resident, he recognised to be of African origin and similar to those still in regular use. Nevertheless he put the evidence aside also to claim non-African origins.

Shortly after Hall, David Randall-MacIver, a young archaeologist, one of the first to be properly so called, worked on the site. In the trenches he dug up he found many layers of artifacts of definite African origin and wrote: "It is impossible to resist the conclusion that the people who inhabited the 'Eliptical Temple' when it was being built belonged to tribes whose arts and manufactures were indistinguishable from those of the modern Makalanga (Shona) . . . These dwellings are unquestionably African in every detail". Digging in 1929, Gertrude Caton-Thompson found the layout and remains were so similar to those of still existing villages as to leave no doubt about the African origins of Great Zimbabwe.

These conclusions did not suit white settler politicians who had argued that the "proof" that white people had lived and traded there hundreds of years ago entitled them to their current superior colonial position. The myth continued to be taught as history in Rhodesian schools and Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines was required reading. Tourist posters featured the Queen of Sheba at Great Zimbabwe and films depicted white "superior" beings performing strange ceremonies in front of suitably prostrated blacks.

As late as the 1970s, shortly before a backward capitalist state changed from white to black rulers, broadcasts and television, while admitting that Great Zimbabwe had possibly not been built by whites, would not concede to the evidence that it had been built by indigenous blacks. It would not do to admit that supposedly inferior people had, so long ago, been able to build every bit as skilfully as those in "civilised" parts of the world.

Of course this is not an isolated example of the shading, if not total fabrication of history. Stories of Belgian babies impaled on German bayonets were concocted to encourage men to kill and be killed in the 1914-18 war; misinformation now admitted to have been given out daily in World War II; patriotic claptrap for the Falklands; biased history taught in almost every secondary school throughout Europe. Unemployment figures are massaged before being issued by the government. Those representing the ruling class will always try to bamboozle the rest of us into accepting conditions favourable to the rulers' minority interests. Forewarned is forearmed: it behoves us to regard with utmost scepticism information put about by those whose interest it is to maintain the status quo.

Eva Goodman 

Was Kinnock always a Tory wet? (1991)

From the June 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Restless is hardly the word to describe members of the Labour Party as they contemplate Neil Kinnock's abandonment of the left-wing ideas which he professed in those far-off days when he was coming up through the ranks of the party. They are unlikely, however, to be consoled by one of our readers who thinks that they— and we—have got it wrong because Kinnock has not changed: he was never a left-winger in the first place. E. H. Evans, of Newport, Gwent, writes:

You keep on repeating that Neil Kinnock used to be a left-wing firebrand. Can you prove that? I knew Neil 30 years ago. In fact, he used to be my tutor in TU weekend schools in Porthcawl, and I never had the impression that he was a "leftwinger". Far from it; apart from the fact that he was a member of CND, he was always on the so-called "right" of the trade union and Labour movement. This so-called "left" myth is nothing but a Tory plot, supported by the media. How can a person be a leftwinger when he supports and admires Clem Attlee? Unless you can supply proof you'd better let this fairy tale rest.

So what are the facts? Was Kinnock a left-winger or is it all got up by the Tories and the media—and the Socialist Standard? To begin with, it is not unusual for left-wingers to admire Attlee for the huge programme of nationalisation and other measures his government pushed through. And, of course, Kinnock is also an admirer of Nye Bevan, who for much of his political life (until he too outraged his supporters on the left) was a left-wing scourge of the Attlee government. Kinnock contributed a foreward to a reprint of Bevan's book In Place of Fear in 1978. After you have hacked away the dense verbiage (not for nothing is Kinnock known as the Welsh windbag) this is revealed as an eulogy that condemns as "lame-brained and prejudiced" anyone unable to accept Bevan's proposition and practice.

Whatever E. H. Evans's experience of Kinnock in the 1960s it is clearly at odds with that of others, who knew Kinnock and worked with him, and with that of those who observed him later in his career. Eric Heffer in his book Labour's Future says that Kinnock "was known in the party as a man of the left who was a close personal friend of Michael Foot and much influenced by Nye Bevan". In his diaries covering 1977-80 (Conflict of Interests) Tony Benn records a Tribune Group meeting in January 1977 when "the whole left was there: Ian Mikardo was in the chair, Neil Kinnock, Dick Clements, Mark Sanders" and a party he threw at his home in 1979 "with about forty people of the left" who included Neil Kinnock.

Of those who observed him, David and Maurice Kogan in The Battle for the Labour Party say that "he has held left-wing views on most matters" and "talked in the language of the radical post-Bevan left". In The Tragedy of Labour Stephen Haseler describes the Labour Party NEC swinging "further to the left with the addition on it of Dennis Skinner, Neil Kinnock and Douglas Hoyle". Kenneth O. Morgan, in Labour People, says that by 1974 Kinnock "was a vocal advocate of the standard left wing position on nuclear weapons, the Common Market, public ownership, incomes policy, arms to South Africa, Chile, El Salvador and much else besides".

Capitalism "a failure"
What had Kinnock done to deserve such assessments, from people who are hardly Tories or media dupes? Although he has never been famous for outpourings of gems of political theory, Kinnock did put enough on record to establish his reputation as a left-winger. In an article on nationalisation in December 1974 in Labour Monthly he wrote, in a bitter criticism of the then Labour government and in particular its Treasury ministers:

The future of Britain is with socialist nationalisation and not with pensioner capitalism . . . British governments have fruitlessly been trying to bribe British capitalism for forty years. There is no need to be apologetic about the extension of public ownership or the establishment of workers' control. They are now prerequisites of the economic survival of Britain . . . there is no alternative in the capitalist system—it is a failure.

At the Labour NEC in October 1978 Kinnock proclaimed, in another attack on the policies being pursued by the Labour government, that "we should reflate, put money into health, go for the job-swap scheme, better housing, end stock relief for businesses". After the defeat of that government, in May 1979, Kinnock condemned it:

"For the third time the Labour Party had saved capitalism, and lost", Benn Diaries

Times Change
As late as October 1984, after he had been elected leader of the Labour Party, he was able to reassure the left with statements like "the short sighted, speculative market system . . . never will produce the plenty necessary to meet human need" (Marxism Today). Well times have changed because at the Labour Party conference in October 1988 Kinnock was telling his members of his intention to run the same market system which fails to satisfy human needs:

The fact is that the kind of economy that we are faced with is going to be a market economy. It will be the one that we have to deal with when we are elected. We have got to make it work better than the Tories make it work . . . Even after that has been the implemented programme of a Labour government for years, there will still be a market economy.

Times have changed, too, about nuclear arms because it is quite clear that if Kinnock ever becomes Prime Minister he will not arrange, in deference to his past membership of CND, for the immediate abandonment of British capitalism's nuclear arsenal.

Kinnock is not the first Leader of the Labour Party to tread the well-worn path from left-wing to right, even if in some cases in the past—such as Harold Wilson—the left-wing policies existed more by virtue of wishful thinking of a power-hungry party membership than in reality. For a Labour politician on the way up a reputation as a staunch left-winger has been almost essential as an apprenticeship. Kinnock, though, has been different in one respect; he has not waited to get into office before moving from left to right, but has carried this through while still in opposition—clearly he decided that if he did not make the move now this would stay that way.

Winning political power to run capitalism, which is the aim of the Labour Party, has to be a process of deceit. How else could they justify their present policies and presentation, which are in opposition to what they have claimed to stand for in the past? Running British capitalism is not a job for anyone who is encumbered by the embarrassments of what they had to do and say in order to get to the top. This is a harsh system which must operate against the interests of the people who vote the leaders into power. If Kinnock ever makes it to Number Ten, and settles down to run his bit of the market economy and the British nuclear forces, he will enrage his followers. But he will always be able to argue that when they voted for him they knew what they were letting themselves in for.

Ivan 

Enlightening realism (1997)

Theatre Review from the May 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

East Is East by Ayub Khan Din (And Roots by Arnold Wesker)

East Is  East is a delight. It is described in the programme as "the first play to be produced on the British stage that really gets under their skin of what it is to be of mixed race origin with the Asian community, growing up in a culture which is predominantly British". In it, Asian father, George Khan, petty bourgeois owner of a fish and chip shop, faces problems with his English wife, Ella, and his children, as he tried to impose the cultural mores of Pakistan on his reluctant family living in 1970s' Salford. Rebellion is in the air as he insists that his two eldest sons marry women of his choosing whom they have never met.

This is the first play of actor Ayub Khan Din, and the author has managed to fashion a moving play out of an old-fashioned family comedy. High-spirited children intent on deceiving their father at every turn; young son, Sajit, who locks himself in the coal shed whenever he feels threatened; Ella and her sister, Annie, gossiping over endless cups of tea; daughter, Meenah, hiding an unacceptable (to father) bacon sandwich under her father's chair and scattering curry powder about to cover the smell.

There is fun in the air, and the author seems to invite us to smile. But Khan Din clearly wants our sympathy not our condescension. Separately the details seem comic; together they invite our understanding and compassion. Kenneth Tynan attributed the technique to Chehkov. Here it is applied not to members of the failing Russian aristocracy and their associates, but to the urban working class living in near contemporary Britain.

The ending of the play is as funny and as moving as anything I've seen on stage for a year or more. The conventions of the theatre demand that the father should get his come-uppance and indeed he does, But in asserting their rights his family manage to preserve his dignity; to show him the love and the respect which they evidently feel. The young mixed race audience responded in kind, as well they might. The virtues of autonomy, freedom and humanity were almost tangible.

East Is East is arguable part of the tradition of theatrical realism associated with the so-called Manchester School. It is part of a group of plays which began with Hobson's Choice by Harold Brighouse, and continued with Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood and A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney. Seeing it at the Duke of York theatre, the temporary home of the Royal Court whilst the latter's headquarters at Sloane Square is being re-furbished. I was reminded of another transfer from the Court to the Duke of York in the late 1950s: Arnold Wesker's Roots. 

Roots is a definitive play for socialists. It is about ignorance and self-discovery. Like the author of East Is East, Wesker's early plays suggest that the function of drama is to interpret history. Roots is part of a trilogy of plays written about  another Kahn family (the Khans in East Is East; the Kahns in Wesker's trilogy).

Beatie, who is courting Ronnie Kahn, returns home to Norfolk to prepare for Ronnie's visit. She is critical of her family and bursting with ideas about the importance of thinking for oneself, of not surrendering to the diet of pap and irrelevance fed to us by the media; of education being "not only books and learning but asking questions all the time". They are of course Ronnie's words and in the final scene he jilts her, sending her a letter instead of arriving to meet the family. Like George Khan in East Is East Beatie should capitulate. Instead she rounds on her family, blaming them for their conservatism - for their inability to nourish their own, and her, roots. It is a magnificent tirade and at its end Beatie realises that for the first time she is using her own words and not Ronnie's.

I know of no play written in the English language in the 20th century with a better last act than Roots. And that blazing finale with Beatie, triumphant in adversity, standing centre stage aware for the first time that isn't just quoting Ronnie, is inspirational stuff for anyone who believes that people, both individually and collectively, can change their own lives and fashion the world to their own desires.

"Listen to me, I'm talking . . . It does work Ronnie . . . I'm beginning. I'm beginning!"

Michael Gill

The Company Men (2011)

Film Review from the April 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Company Men, directed by John Wells

This was at first a personal matter for writer and director, John Wells. Having seen his brother-in-law, an electrical engineer, struggle after being laid-off, the plot follows the misfortunes of three executives employed at G.T.X. a major shipbuilding company, whose head honcho, Jim, played by Craig T. Nelson, made $22 million bucks in bonus payments the previous year. “We work for the stockholders now,” Jim reminds his underlings as he prepares to fire thousands of workers.

Tommy Lee Jones is Gene, Jim’s old college room mate who helped him build the company up from scratch. Gene thinks of G.T.X.’s employees as if they were family and it hurts him deeply when he’s required to inform “relatives” their services are no longer required. In an early scene, Jim’s wife requests the use of the company jet, a luxury she won’t enjoy for much longer, to go from Boston to Palm Springs to get in some shopping.

Most of the movie deals with the struggle of 37-year-old hot shot salesman, Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck). At first Bobby cannot come to terms with being unemployed, whereas his wife, Maggie (Rosemarie De Witt) suggests selling the Porsche and the house. Bobby is convinced he’ll soon find employment at his old salary of $120 grand a year, not realising there are few such jobs available and the competition for them is ferocious.

We watch Bobby’s gradual disillusionment; being expelled from the country club because he can’t afford the fees, watching the new owner drive off his Porsche and being forced to live with his parents. In desperation, he accepts a job in construction, working for his brother-in-law, Jack (Kevin Costner), who delights in Bobby’s downfall and lets him know it.

There is a surreal scene when Bobby attends a placement workshop, which Wells himself did. The manager has a roomful of unemployed constantly reciting, “I will win because I have faith, courage and enthusiasm.” When Wells asked the manager if she was embarrassed, she replied, “I’m dealing with people who feel like they’ve been in a car accident.”

The finest acting is by Chris Cooper as Phil, a sixty year-old who worked his way up from a welder to the number three man at G.T.X. Cooper takes the viewer right into the heart of a man tortured by insecurity, fear and anxiety. Phil is bewildered by the new and real world he finds himself in. One job placement officer advises him to quit smoking, on the premise that, “The employers don’t want a guy with health problems, it will push up the insurance.” When applying for an international sales position he finds how age goes against one; “It’s a demanding job, I wouldn’t offer it to anyone older than thirty,” the boss tells him.

Though the acting, direction and dialogue are good and the movie absorbing, it doesn’t tell the viewer anything new. By now most unemployed labourers, truck drivers and factory workers, are aware that getting the axe isn’t any easier for the middle-of-the-road managers than it is for them. Whatever bitterness the ex-execs feel is directed primarily at G.T.X. and a little at America itself. Nowhere is there any suggestion there is something fundamentally wrong with capitalism.

A reviewer should not give the ending away, so suffice it to say, it’s capitalist propaganda at its most desperate. Company Men is just another movie that tells its audience, “There’s nothing terrible about the economic system we live under. So what if times are sometimes hard, with faith courage and enthusiasm, things will get better.” In that respect, perhaps the most significant comment is when Bobby glares at the personnel manager, who has delivered the bad news and uses the well-known and delightful, “P.O.” expression. What would be more delightful is when a Socialist majority says that proverbially to capitalism.

Steve Shannon

"I Took off My Tie" (1936)

Book Review from the December 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

"I Took off My Tie" by Hugh Massingham (W. Heinemann, LTD.). 10s. 6d.

Mr. Massingham is an author of some reputation. Impelled by "curiosity and struck by the extraordinary fact that two communities were living side by side, each with its own peculiar customs, superstitions, culture . . . . and that each was ignorant of the other," he visited, and decided to live, in the East End of London, to see for himself how workers fare.

In dealing with a subject that has been dealt with before he succeeds in maintaining a sense of proportion. He does not dramatise, neither is he sentimental. He writes in simple language, and stimulates the imagination. Anyone living in the East End will recognise an accurate picture of life and work there. But what a drab picture. Dirt, noise, ignorance and sordid poverty . . .

Mr. Massingham seems to have met prejudice, suspicion and animosity wherever he went, even though he "took off his tie" and tried to be "one of us like." The people he met seem to possess a vocabulary which extended very little beyond a few fruity idioms, which, on paper, might excite literary-minded persons, but gives the impression that the worker is just a mental bumpkin. The trouble with Mr. Massingham's book is that it is superficial, and does not get below the surface. It leaves the impression that the horrible drabness of slum life is unalterable, something the worker is ordained to live. To be precise, it is literary, a picture in words; a picture which paints only what is seen, and nothing potential.

Mr. Massingham might be recommended to extend his investigations further into "the extraordinary fact" that "two communities: live side by side. He might enquire why there are two classes in society, why one of them is poverty-stricken, ill-educated, dispossessed, and has to sell its labour-power in order to live whilst the other possesses the means of living, does not need to work, and has leisure and the refinements of life. To do this he would not have to "take off his tie," nor live in the East End. He need only remove the literary wool from over his eyes and apply himself to a study of capitalism. He might then produce a more useful book, useful from a worker's or a Socialist's point of view.

A. G. A.

A review of "The Diplomacy of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald" (1925)

Book Review from the April 1925 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Diplomacy of Mr. Ramsay MacDonald by U. D. C (Price 3d. Labour Monthly, 162, Buckingham Palace Road.)

This pamphlet is a reprint of two articles from the "Labour Monthly." The writer, "U. D. C.," who appears to be well informed on the inner history of the Labour Party during its term of office, sums up the record of promises to the workers which were broken, and instructions from the exploiters which were obeyed. He writes convincingly of MacDonald's personal weaknesses, his vanity and idleness, and his all-round futility in detailed administrative work or complex negotiations.  He shows MacDonald in an amusing light posing as the man of iron when he declared at a private meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party in a discussion of possible German opposition to the Dawes Scheme, "We shall make her accept."

He is said to have defended this treatment of Germany on the ground that "it was necessary to place a heavy Reparation burden on Germany in order to handicap German industries which otherwise might prove dangerous competitors" (page 11). This remark startled his listeners, for, as "U. D. C." points out, "Many had doubted the quality of his Socialism; but the purity of his Liberalism had always been counted above suspicion."

While there is a certain good purpose served by combating the silly hero worship to which the workers are so prone, one cannot but observe that "U. D. C.'s" own point of view is dangerously limited. Granted that MacDonald "funked" and never seriously tried to withstand the pressure to which he was subjected, would the outcome have been different if he had?

Does "U. D. C." really imagine that a "strong" Labour Premier placed in office at the pleasure of Liberals and Tories could have defied the orders of his capitalist masters? And what is more, would his own party have backed him up?

If, like "U. D. C.," we are to regard the matter as one of personalities, why should a place-hunting Labour Leader offend the capitalists when he knows full well that he has no solid class-conscious body of workers behind him to make his protest effective? Those, like "U. D. C." who look upon international politics as an affair of "strong men," in which loyalty to "open diplomacy," honesty and goodwill and all the rest of the liberal catch-words of the I.L.P. and the Union of Democratic Control will solve all problems, are as much responsible as MacDonald for the foolish hopes and bitter disappointment felt by working-class supporters of Labour in Office. They are, moreover, doing little to teach the real nature of the problems.

It is also difficult to see why "U. D. C." should write as if MacDonald's defection is a matter of surprise. To the serious student his actions after, during and before the war are all equally damning evidence that he was always a careerist, and never anything but a danger to the working class.

Edgar Hardcastle 

The birth of Labourism (2000)

From the February 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Labour Party was founded it did not even claim to stand for Socialism, but only for the election of trade union and pro-trade union MPs to Parliament to press for reforms within capitalism.

The Labour Party is claiming that it was formed a hundred years ago this month. Actually it did not come into existence until after the 1906 General Election when a separate parliamentary group, with its own officers and whips, was constituted.

What happened a hundred years ago, at a meeting in London on 27 February 1900, was the establishment of the Labour Representation Committee. This was a body, made up of representatives of a number of trade unions and of three political bodies (the Independent Labour Party, the Social Democratic Federation, and the Fabian Society), with the aim of securing "Labour" representation in the House of Commons so that a parliamentary "Labour Party" could be formed.

The meeting had been called by the TUC as a result of a resolution carried at its congress the previous September. It was an expression of what Lenin (right, for once) called "trade union consciousness, i.e., the conviction that it is necessary to combine in unions, fight the employers and strive to compel the government to pass labour legislation, etc" (Lenin's mistake was to argue that, left to themselves, workers could not evolve beyond such a trade union consciousness.)

Various motions were put before the conference, the one which was carried being:

"That this Conference is in favour of establishing a distinct Labour Group in Parliament who shall have their own whips and agree upon their policy, which must embrace a readiness to co-operate with any party which, for the time being, may be engaged in promoting legislation in the direct interest of labour, and be equally ready to associate themselves with any party in opposing measures having an opposite tendency . . . "

The SDF, which was an organisation which sought to model itself on the continental Social Democratic parties which were committed to the class struggle, socialism and Marxism (and of which most Socialists in Britain were then still members), tried to commit the new organisation to socialism and the class struggle, but not even Keir Hardie's ILP supported them. In fact, Hardie always explicitly repudiated the class struggle.

The LRC didn't even pretend to stand for Socialism. The conference was chaired by a trade unionist who was also a Liberal MP, W. C. Steadman, and many of the trade unionists involved were Liberals. According to the official Conference report, one of the delegates to the Conference, John Ward, from Newcastle, declared that "they wanted to get their feet on the floor of the House of Commons, and would not be particular how they did it", which has remained Labour policy to this day.

The LRC faced its first test later that year in the General Election in October. Only two of the candidates it endorsed were elected, Keir Hardie and a Liberal trade unionist, Richard Bell, not enough to constitute a parliamentary Labour Party. This had to wait till after the next General Election in 1906.

At the 1901 LRC conference the SDF again tried to commit the organisation to only supporting candidates who agreed (in the words of an ILP resolution) with "the creation of an Industrial Commonwealth founded upon the common ownership and democratic control of land and capital and the substitution of co-operative production for use in the place of the present method of competitive production for profit" and (the SDF's addendum) who "recognise the class war as the basis of all working-class political action".

Due to a procedural manoeuvre this was not even voted on, and at its own conference that year the SDF decided to withdraw from the LRC. The report of the discussion in the SDF paper Justice (10 August 1901) brings out the arguments for and against and also that those who within a few years were to break away to form the Socialist Labour Party in Scotland and the SPGB in London supported the Executive Council on this issue against the more reformist members of the SDF (Yates was to be a founder member of the SLP in 1903 and Fitzgerald of the SPGB in 1904):

The following resolution was moved by H. Quelch on behalf of the Executive Council:

"That this Conference of the SDF decides to withdraw from the Labour Representation Committee."
He said that when we joined this Committee we hoped the trade unionists as a body would also join, and that we could do something to bring them along our way. But the bulk of the trade unions had not joined. He wished to make it quite clear there was no antagonism between us and trade unions. It was simply that we were on different lines. It would be a mistake to antagonise the unions.
Lewis (Blackburn) seconded.
Deasey (Accrington) thought it foolish to withdraw. We should stay and endeavour to permeate and capture the trade unions. J. Hunter Watts was against withdrawing, but thought our members should remain and hold a watching brief. Steer (Battersea) said the SDF had urged the working class to use the vote and he thought we should take part in the political organisation and have a say in the matter.
J. Fitzgerald (Central) on the contrary thought we might be dragged back by the trade unions. We could do more effective work when not entangled with them. W. Gee, L. E. Quelch, J.J. Kidd, Lewis and McGlasson continued the discussion.
G. Yates said they in Scotland had joined a committee formed three years ago, and they found themselves tied to a party which could preach any nostrum that came along. Our proposals were systematically voted down and intrigued off the programme. It was an experiment and they now ought to withdraw.
Leggo (Plymouth) and Lloyd having spoken, the resolution was carried by 54 to 14.

Since the leadership of the SDF (and it was a leadership) was not against the principle of independent Labour (as opposed to purely Socialist) representation it may seem strange that they should have recommended withdrawal. However, they felt that the LRC was turning out to be another front for obtaining trade union support for the Liberal Party and so was not genuinely independent Labour representation.

Although, twenty years later, the Labour Party did become independent—organisationally, if not in terms of ideas and perspectives—of the Liberals and in fact eventually came to replace them as the Tories' alternate, at the time there was a great deal of truth in this, as the 1906 General Election was to show. This resulted in the return of 29 MPs endorsed by the LRC who constituted themselves into the parliamentary Labour Party. However, most of these were elected with the help of the Liberals. At that time many constituencies returned two members, so each elector there had two votes. As emerged later, Ramsay MacDonald, who was the Secretary of the LRC, had secretly negotiated a deal with Herbert Gladstone, the Liberals' National Agent, under which in a number of these two-member constituencies there would be one Liberal and one Labour candidate and that each would recommend their supporters to give their second vote to the other

Even the ILP candidates running under the auspices of the LRC went along with this deal. "In several cases", commented the Socialist Standard (March 1906) in a detailed analysis of the votes, "they contested double-member constituencies, and not only got in by Liberal votes, but made arrangements with the Liberals to work and vote together". One example given was that of MacDonald himself (an ILP member) who was elected for Leicester along with a Liberal. He obtained 14,693 votes, of which 13,999 were split with the Liberals, 260 with the Tories and 426 were "plumpers" (i.e., only voted for him).

In Parliament the Labour MPs generally voted with the Liberal government. It was only after the first World War that the Labour Party became more ambitious and began to think of developing from a mere parliamentary pressure group for the unions into a party that could take over the government of British capitalism, replacing the Liberals as Tweedledum to the Tories' Tweedledee.

In 1919 Labour adopted a new constitution allowing individuals to join directly instead of via a trade union or an affiliated political group and adopting the famous Clause IV as its ultimate aim, so committing itself to "socialism" (in reality, full-scale nationalisation or state capitalism). The Socialist Standard of the time (May 1918) was not impressed and set out a criticism of Labourism that has stood the test of time:

"The new constitution of the Labour Party does not make that party any more of a working-class party in the real sense than it has been heretofore. As has frequently been pointed out in these columns, its policy is, for the following reasons, opposed to the best interests of the working class, and calculated to hinder their emancipation.
(1) The Labour Party is not a Socialist party, and consequently is not concerned with the abolition of capitalism and wage-slavery.
(2) The time and energy of the Labour Party are spent in advocating and pleading for reforms, which cannot materially improve conditions for the working class, but which confuse the minds of the workers, leading them to expect benefits they never obtain, thus causing disappointment, disgust, and apathy.
(3) The avowed aim of the Labour Party is to get members into Parliament, in the belief that those members can legislate in the interest of the working class, whereas they are powerless to do so because they are dependent upon a capitalist party for constituencies in which to run their candidates, and the electorate of such constituencies merely vote them in because they stand for a Liberal programme and policy.
(4) By claiming to have a Socialist objective the Labour Party perpetuate the false notion that Socialism will be established, not as the result of an organised and conscious effort of the working class, but by a series of political reforms concurred in by the capitalist class.
(5) The Labour Party deny the class struggle: the antagonism between the working class and the capitalist class. Recognition of this antagonism is, quite obviously, the fundamental principle which forms the basis of a genuine working-class, or Socialist party."

Adam Buick

The truth about Russia (1981)

From the November 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

"Why don't you go back to Russia?" is the standard comment of the wage slave who stumbles across a socialist propagandist and cannot put up an argument. The fact that most socialists do not come from Russia and have been there does not deter the enthusiastic anti-socialists. But who can blame them? After all, the Communist Party is constantly telling them that Russia is socialist or communist. The Tory party use the myth of "Communist Russia" to discredit the socialist idea. The media will apply the label "Marxist" to any dictator who cares to use it.

Of course, times change and people learn. When in the 1930s the Socialist Party of Great Britain referred to Russia and its satellites as state capitalist dictatorships we were howled down by the Left. Our outdoor meetings were disrupted for saying that the Stalinist dictatorship in Russia was no more socialist than it was during Hitler's Nazi regime. These days our point of view is gaining credibility. The Trotskyists, whose entire case is based upon an acceptance of Lenin's anti-socialist Bolshevism, will reluctantly accept that Russia is not socialist but insist that it was in 1917. Quite how a society transfers from socialism back to capitalism, they have yet to disclose. Other Leftists say that Russia is undergoing a very long transition period from capitalism to socialism (or from socialism to communism as they confusedly put it). In fact, Russia is no more or less in transition to socialism or communism (the terms are synonymous) than any other part of capitalist society. The contradictions of state capitalism are creating within the working class a consciousness which will lead to the abolition of capitalist social relationships; but that will only happen when the workers want and understand socialism and then organised politically for it. When it does happen it will be despite the wishes of the Russian Communist Party — not because of them.

The Russian Communist Party, like its counterparts in Poland, Hungary, China, Albania and the rest of the misnamed socialist countries, is no different in its objective from the Tories in Britain. They stand solely for the interests of rent, interest and profit. They will ban strike, lock up trade unionists and other dissidents, use the police to protect their unearned luxury and set the workers to war in defence of their economic interests. Our political hostility to them is no less than our hostility to Thatcher, Foot or Reagan. As defenders of capitalism they are unworthy of the support of the working class.

As early as 1918 the Socialist Standard was forecasting the state capitalist outcome of the Bolshevik revolution. Being an undemocratic coup d'etat in a backward economy with a non-politically conscious population, mainly consisting of peasants, the only result could be a new ruling class running capitalism in its own interests. Far from being a socialist revolution, 1917 was Russia's 1789. The events of Poland during the summer of 1980 have again vindicated our view. Why were our fellow workers striking in Poland? It was because their enemies are the same as ours: the international capitalist class.

On 16 August 1981 The Observer newspaper (not The Morning Star) published a statement by Mykola Pohyba, a Ukrainian dissident, who was a prisoner in a penal colony in Buchs. The statement was smuggled [out of] Buchs. The statement [is published in] full because of the light it throws on capitalism in Russia.

Steve Coleman   

MYKOLA POHYBA'S STATEMENT

It is no secret that fundamental human rights have been consistently trampled on in the Soviet Union. The flouting and complete disregard of human rights is felt most acutely by workers who are powerless to oppose the political and socio-economic oppression.

My life and my so-called "slanderous activities" may well serve as examples. I am presently serving a second term of imprisonment. In 1975 I was charged under Article 187 and sentenced to three years' imprisonment by the Kiev Oblast Court. In 1979 I was charged under Article 206 and sentenced to five years in prison by the Kiev People's Court.

As a worker relegated to the lowest rung of the Soviet social ladder I personally have experienced economic, socio-political and national oppression. Understandably, I could not help but give thought to and consider the real reasons for this oppression. With time I realised that fellow workers were also victims of exploitation and that this exploitation was greater the lower one found oneself on the social ladder.

I came to the conclusion that ultimately it is the state that is the exploiter, along with the State-party bourgeoisie which is in its service and which is the one wielding the real power in the country. The socialism and internationalism of which one so often speaks in the Soviet Union is nothing more than a smokescreen for a means of production and distribution of material goods which is not in the least socialist.

In short, I have come to the conclusion that our country is actually a State capitalist society with a totalitarian form of government.

In informal conversations with fellow workers I expressed some of my views regarding Soviet reality. I saw nothing wrong in so doing. Specifically, I noted that the real causes of our impoverished condition are to be found not in mistakes committed by the administrative apparatus, but in the very system of production which, in actual fact, is capitalist.

In my conversations, as well as in the leaflets which I wrote and then posted throughout Kiev on bulletin boards, monuments, etc (for having posted my leaflets on a statue of Lenin, I was charged under Article 206 with hooliganism), I showed that the Soviet labour unions (i.e. state-party organisations) neither constitute a separate autonomous organisation nor do they represent the rights and economic interests of the working class.

They are, in fact, an integral part of the Party-State apparatus whose principal aim is to extract the utmost from the worker while keeping the working class in blind obedience, checked and ensured by a system of meting out at first minor and then even greater benefits. The dispensation of benefits depends on factors such as good behaviour success in meeting the designated quotas, and loyalty to the State.

Those workers who express dissatisfaction, be it outrightly, or indirectly, are demoted to the lowest-paying jobs, lose any privileges and are put under the "care" of Soviet penal authorities. All this is done with no objections raised by the labour union.

I believe that I am not alone in my endeavour, that the situation in the Soviet Union is rife for the founding of independent labour unions as opposed to party-state ones), which would prove effective in solving the problems with which the working class is faced. I explained to my fellow workers that we not only had the right to talk of independent labour unions, but the right to organise them.

Throughout the course of my so-called "slanderous" activity, I came to see that similar views are held by many workers who as a rule may be characterised as independent-minded. I became aware that their numbers are growing daily.

And even though the ruling class will go to any length to check independent-minded workers whose protest is born of spontaneity, repressions will no longer be able to suppress that awareness which has been awakened in the consciousness of the people.

The recent events in Poland have shown that the working class is capable of leading the struggle for its rights and freedoms, for a feasible improvement of its well-being. The effectiveness of the struggle waged depends on the degree of solidarity of the working class, on the degree of self-organisation.

This, in short, is the extent of the 'slanderous activity' for which I am being 'rehabilitated' behind barbed wires. I ask that the Ukrainian human rights group make my letter known to the people of the Soviet Union and to world public opinion. But foremostly, to the labour unions throughout the world.  Let them be the ones to determine who the real culprit is and what his true motives are.

After Seeing a Performance of "The Trojan Women." (1920)

From the March 1920 issue of the Socialist Standard

What though you beat the earth and cry aloud
To all the dead that you have loved and lost;
Shall one arise and cast aside his shroud
To help and save you, hell-bound, tempest tossed
On the sad world's waters? Rise from off your knees
And face life fearlessly whate'er portend.
The wheels of Fate, despite your futile pleas,
Roll on, unheeding, to their destined end.
And still men cry and clamour to the dead,
Or pray for aid to gods and other men;
And still Fate crushes them and passes by.
The night comes swiftly; even now the red,
The blood-red sunset, like an open wen,
Creeps in its course across the darkening sky.

F. J. Webb

Party News (1969)

From the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Despite police 'protection' and a rival Paisleyite meeting, Belfast branch of the World Socialist Party of Ireland held their May Day meeting on Sunday May 4. The Paisleyites said they were holding a religious service nearby to protest about a political meeting on a Sunday, but their meeting turned out to be political too with attacks on Harold Wilson and talk of Ulster's 'great Protestant leader,' then in jail. Despite having loudspeaker equipment they gave up before the Socialist meeting closed.

The previous day, WSP members had distributed socialist literature at the Labour and trade union march. Among the other leaflets handed out was one from the People's Democracy headed Workers' Civil Rights which seemed to advocate the extension of contracting-out to trade unions in Northern Ireland, where (quite reasonably) those who want to pay the political levy to the Labour Party have to say:

The 1927 Trades Disputes Act was never repealed in Northern Ireland. This meant that Trade Union funds cannot be donated to the Labour Party unless a worker 'contracts in'. In Great Britain, Trade Union Funds can be used to affiliate to the Labour Party unless the worker 'contracts out'.

Perhaps the Northern Ireland Labour Party is short of cash and is using its members in PD to whitewash the undemocratic contracting-out swindle.

Six Days Shalt Thou Labour, and on the Seventh … (2015)

From the August 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Workers in the retail industry will be relieved that George Osborne’s recent budget plan allowing shops to increase Sunday trading hours is being hampered by the fact that there are only 24 hours in a Sunday in which it is possible to make them work.

Ever since the 1950 Shops Act, which gave retail workers specified meal breaks, a half-day holiday each week and time off in lieu of Sunday work, there have, of course, been numerous attacks on their working hours and conditions, including Thatcher’s 1986 Shops Bill, though this was defeated when rebel Tory and Labour MPs joined forces and were backed by the Church of England and a religious campaign group.

But governments have not always taken the same view of Sunday trading. In 1855, after complaints in the House of Lords that five million people had become estranged not only from the Church but from Christianity, Lord Robert Grosvenor’s ‘Sunday Trading Bill’ was introduced in an attempt to herd them back into church.

It failed, and it kicked off a series of protests which led, eventually, to the establishment of Speakers’ Corner in London as a place of Sunday working class discussion and debate.

The Bill was designed to prevent small traders on whom the poor were totally dependent from doing business on Sundays. Large shops remained closed anyway, and since the normal working week was six days with wages being paid late on Saturday, the Bill would be irrelevant to the rich but cause real hardship to the poor. When this was pointed out Grosvenor’s response was that ‘the aristocracy are largely refraining from employing its servants and horses on Sundays’.

The timing of his Bill was not good. ‘Bread riots’ protesting at widespread poverty had recently taken place in Liverpool and London, and the ‘Beer Bill’ restricting Sunday trading hours in the places where workers met to socialise had just been passed.

Notices drawn up by the Chartists soon appeared around London announcing that a public meeting was to be held in Hyde Park on the following Sunday:

‘New Sunday Bill prohibiting newspapers, shaving, smoking, eating and drinking and all kinds of recreation and nourishment, both corporal and spiritual, which the poor people still enjoy at the present time.  An open-air meeting of artisans, workers and ‘the lower orders’ generally of the capital will take place in Hyde Park on Sunday afternoon to see how religiously the aristocracy is observing the Sabbath, and how anxious it is not to employ its servants and horses on that day, as Lord Robert Grosvenor said in his speech. The meeting is called for three o’clock on the right bank of the Serpentine on the side towards Kensington Gardens. Come and bring your wives and children in order that they may profit by the example their ‘betters’ set them!’

Hyde Park, on a Sunday afternoon in June, would have been swarming with London’s high society parading their horses, carriages and uniformed flunkeys. But on this occasion, as witnessed by Karl Marx who was in attendance:

‘At three o’clock approximately 50,000 people had gathered… Gradually the assembled multitude swelled to a total of at least 200,000… The police who were present in force were obviously endeavouring to deprive the organisers of the meeting of what Archimedes had asked for to move the earth, namely, a place to stand upon. Finally a rather large crowd made a firm stand and Bligh, the Chartist, constituted himself chairman on a small eminence in the midst of the throng.

No sooner had he began his harangue than Police Inspector Banks at the head of 40 truncheon-swinging constables explained to him that the Park was the private property of the Crown and that no meeting might be held in it. After some pourparlers in which Bligh sought to demonstrate to him that parks were public property and in which Banks rejoined he had strict orders to arrest him if he should insist on carrying out his intention, Bligh shouted amidst the bellowing of the masses surrounding him, ‘Her Majesty’s police declare that Hyde Park is private property of the Crown and that her Majesty is unwilling to let her land be used by the people for their meetings’.

…Suddenly shouts could be heard on all sides: ‘Let‘s go to the road, to the carriages!’. The heaping of insults upon horse riders and occupants of carriages had meanwhile already begun…The procession of elegant ladies and gentlemen; ‘commoners and Lords’, in their high coaches-and-four with liveried lackeys in front and behind, joined, to be sure, by a few mounted venerables slightly under the weather from the effects of wine, did not this time pass by in review but played the role of Oder-Zeitung involuntary actors who were made to run the gauntlet. A babel of jeering, taunting, discordant ejaculations, in which no language is as rich as English, soon bore down on them from both sides… To this must be added outbursts of genuine old-English humour peculiarly mixed with long-contained seething wrath. ‘Go to church!’ were the only articulate sounds that could be distinguished. One lady soothingly offered a prayer-book in Orthodox binding from her carriage in her outstretched hand. ‘Give it to your horses to read!’ came the thundering reply, echoing a thousand voices…The spectacle lasted three hours’ (‘Anti-Church Movement’, Neue Oder-Zeitung. 28 June 1855).

The following day’s Morning Post reported the events: ‘A spectacle both disgraceful and dangerous in the extreme has taken place in Hyde Park, an open violation of law and decency… an illegal interference by physical force in the free action of the Legislature… This scene must not be allowed to be repeated’. It added however, that the ‘fanatical’ Lord Grosvenor was solely responsible for provoking the ‘just indignation of the people’.

Lord Grosvenor, however, not only refused to withdraw the Bill but re-stated his determination to press it through. The chartists responded with a handbill for another meeting the following Sunday.

‘Lord Robert Grosvenor wishes to drive us all to church! Let us go to church with Lord Grosvenor next Sunday morning! We can attend on his Lordship at Park Lane at half-past ten: ‘go to church’ with him, then go home to dinner, and be back in time to see ‘our friends’ in Hyde Park. Come in your best clothes, as his lordship is very particular’.

On Sunday a notice banning the meeting, signed by Sir Richard Mayne, the Commissioner of Police, was attached to The Park gates. The crowds, however, poured in. According to the following morning’s Times ‘By half-past two o’clock there must have been nearly 150,000 men, women and children present.…The proceedings began by the usual stump oratory, which continued for some time, until a cry of ‘the Police’ being raised put an abrupt termination to it’.

‘The police’ had arrived in the form of Sir Richard Mayne on horseback, plus approximately 800 truncheon-wielding officers determined to enforce the ban. With the meeting abandoned, the assembly again turned their attention to the spectacle of the wealthy parading up and down in their carriages. This time the police charged the crowd. Over 100 arrests were made and dozens were injured, one fatally.

The following day Lord Grosvenor withdrew the Bill and confessed to being in ‘rather an awkward predicament’. The intention of his Bill, he said, had been merely to increase the amount of holidays to the ‘overtaxed thousands of the Metropolis’

For several weeks things were fairly calm with a few sporadic meetings held at which the police kept a low profile. After a while, however, police renewed their intervention. Eventually a notice was issued, signed by the Commissioner of Police banning public meeting from all London Parks. It warned, ‘All necessary measures will be adopted to prevent any such meeting, or assemblage’.

No more meetings were held for several years. In 1866, however, the Reform League announced that a meeting was to be held in Hyde Park on 2 July.

Mayne at first announced that the ban would be enforced, but at the last minute relented and the meeting, attended by about 50,000, went ahead. A further, evening meeting was announced. This time Mayne was determined to prevent it. The ban was reissued and promptly declared invalid by Edmond Beales, a barrister and President of the Reform League claiming the Park was the ‘property of the nation’.

On the evening of the meeting the arriving crowd was met by about 1,700 police officers mounted and on foot, and the gates locked. A large crowd had already assembled inside and were unable to leave. When Beales and other leaders of the Reform League arrived the crowd attempted to force open the gates and enter, and the police, according to the Times ‘used their staves freely to defeat this attempt’.

It was suggested that the meeting be transferred to Trafalgar Square, and Beales and the leadership set off in their cabs. The vast majority of the crowd however, some who had walked miles to be there, were in no mood for this and determined to hold a meeting, proceeded to pull down the railings and enter the Park.

The first breach was made in Bayswater Road, followed by several more along Park Lane. And, according to the Times, ‘The police brought their truncheons into active use, and a number of the roughs were somewhat severely handled’. The Morning Star reported that the police had used their truncheons ‘like savages who, having been under temporary control, were now at full liberty to break heads and cut open faces to their hearts content’. But despite numerous and severe injuries, and dozens of arrests, the crowd flooded in.

The Grenadier Guards and the Life Guards were rushed in to back up the police, but were ineffective. The meetings and speeches were in full swing and could not be prevented.

The Reform League then called a meeting for 6 May 1867. Walpole, the Home Secretary, immediately announced a ban, to be backed up with the appointment of 12,000 special constables, together with whatever regular police and military force necessary. It was obvious though, and Walpole realised it, that the ban would be ignored. At the last moment it was lifted.

Over 150,000 people marched into Hyde Park on 6 May. The police and troops stood by and watched as the massive rally took place - peacefully and calmly. The following morning Walpole resigned.

Finally, in 1872, in an attempt to dress up their defeat as an act of benevolence, the ‘Royal Parks and Gardens Act’ was announced, which they claimed,  and still claim to this day, gave the right to hold meetings in the public parks.

In fact, this right was never given. The government used everything in its power (including the use of the army) to prevent the public meeting to discuss their concerns. The right to free speech in the public parks had to be taken. And paid for with working class blood.

Nick White

Superfacts (1984)

From the April 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Look. Up in the sky.

Is it a bird?

Is it a plane?

No, it's a super geriatric!

No, it's not, it's Supermac.

Who?

You know, the Earl of Stockton.

Who's he then?

Why, he's ex prime-minister, Harold Macmillan, that's who.

What'd he do that was super?

Well for one thing he coined phrases that were famous.

So do Xmas cracker manufacturers.

Yes but his were more relevant, weren't they?

Such as?

Well he said: "You've never had it so good".

So he was into sex then?

Oh no, nothing like that. Whitehouse forbid. No, he was talking about the important things in our lives like our jobs, our respirations.

Aspirations.

Them too.

So what did be actually do then?

He gave us more jobs for one thing.

It is with us again, this condition they have repeatedly assured us was gone for good. Unemployment at the end of 1962 was pressing stubbornly upwards and was expected to top the 600,000 mark with the turn of the year. Once again we are seeing a lengthening of the dole queues. Some sections of workers have been affected more than others, such as those in manufacturing and construction. There has, for some time, also been widespread unemployment amongst teenage school leavers. (Grim New Year, Socialist Standard, January 1963.)

And another thing  . . . . 'Ere wait a minute! What's the idea of interposing a quote from the Socialist Standard circa 1963 into our discussion?

Well, you see when you have a discussion you can make all kinds of assertions, but when you introduce facts it takes on a bit of real meaning, and the reality is that even when we are supposed to be "having it so good" it was still bloody awful. The truth is that even when capitalism is going through one of its periodic booms, the needs of the vast majority can never be satisfied in spite of the so-called great leaders. Nor could it be otherwise since capitalism can only operate in the interest of the tiny handful who constitute the capitalist class. So instead of asking the slavish question: What did he do for us?, ask yourself this question" What can I do for us? Get it Mac? Super!

Tone.