The New Narodniki (1968)

From the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

On June 15 a “Revolutionary Socialist Students Federation” was founded by students representing groups all over England. As might be expected at a meeting in which trotskyists (of various hues) were prominent the air was thick with such words as mobilise, orientate, perspective, programmatic, transitional and, of course, vanguard. The programme adopted in fact declared:

"Revolutionary students can play a vanguard role by detonating a wider social conflict in which the working-class becomes decisive. Students must seek to ally themselves with working-class struggles: they have also shown that they may anticipate and instigate them.”

So yet another group has appeared to liberate the working class ignoring the long-established Socialist principle that the workers must free themselves.

In Russia in the second half of the 19th century many privileged young men and women decided to “go to the people”, by working and living among the peasants whom they believed to be a revolutionary force. They were thus known as Populists or Narodniks. A similar theme dominated the meeting: only the workers could overthrow capitalism, so students should go to them by leafleting, and perhaps working, in, the factories. As one (Widgery) put it “the talk about the new Narodniki going to the factories is right”. A small minority, from the South Coast, were still in favour of “working within the Labour Party” (as they all were two years ago), but their views were not well-received.

Prominent were members of the alleged “International Socialism” Group. Also, frequently to be seen hovering in the background was Pat Jordan, the trotskyist who runs the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign. The anarchists and another trotskyist group (the SLL) did not seem to be present.

The RSSF programme commits it to Student Power, Anti-Capitalist Alliance with Workers and Struggle Against Imperialism. These aims are to be achieved by so-called direct action (that is, occupying college buildings, fighting the police, preventing exams taking place, shouting down speakers). As one (Fishman) frankly put it: they are out to “seize the leadership of students as a group”.

At a meeting the previous evening a member of the Socialist Party was prevented from continuing his speech after he had criticised talk about “parliamentary rubbish” and support for the nationalist and state capitalist Vietcong. For his troubles he was called a “fascist” (“Against fascists there is only one weapon: physical force", one LSE student leader, Harman, has written). This is perhaps the shape of things to come for any who dare to stand up to this self-appointed vanguard.

Capitalism in Kenya (1968)

Book Review from the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not Yet Uhuru, by Oginga Odinga. Heinman Educational Books. 35s.

The people of Kenya have had the misfortune, reserved for colonial peoples, of experiencing two sorts of capitalism. One at second hand through colonial occupation, and the other, a more modern version, exploitation by capitalists of local origin and by the economic interests of the ‘advanced' countries.

Today, control of the resources of Kenya is in the hands of large international firms and of the Kenya government. The local would-be capitalists and bureaucrats have certainly derived much benefit from independence, but the vast majority of the people of Kenya, who were at one time led to expect a post-independence egalitarian Utopia, have been disappointed.

In this autobiography we learn well how the “benefits” of capitalism were first introduced to Kenya. There is an interesting survey of early land-appropriation by the British authorities and of the break-up of the tribal system through forced wage- labour. Odinga is particularly good in his account of the Mau Mau uprising and the reasons for it. Once the rebellion presented a real threat to British authority in Kenya, and thus to British economic interests, ruthless measures were taken. All civil liberties were suppressed—an African could be arrested in the street at any time. All Kikuyu (the main tribe concerned in the rebellion) were forced either to collaborate with the authorities or to join the Mau Mau bands as a result of persecution. British capitalism wanted to hold on to Kenya so as to have an assured and cheap supply of raw materials and a market monopoly.

Today, some four-and-a-half years after independence, things have not changed much. The people of Kenya are now exploited not only by businessmen with white skins, but also by civil servants and politicians who have somehow succeeded in securing company directorships and land. Little free expression of opposition to the government is allowed. The only consolation that the people may draw is perhaps in seeing men with skin the same colour as theirs replacing white colonists at the wheels of large motor-cars manufactured in West Germany.

Odinga is allowed, probably by virtue of his popularity (he was at one time Vice-President of the republic and Kenyatta's right-hand man) to lead a tiny opposition of nine in parliament. His party is, however, allowed few extra-parliamentary ‘privileges’ such as the holding of public meetings or recruiting campaigns.

This autobiography, as well as being a good document of British colonial history, is worthwhile reading because part at least of Odinga's conclusion is acceptable. Odinga himself left high state office for the political wilderness because he saw that national independence does not in itself end servitude for the mass of the people. He also recognises the oligarchic character of the present Kenyan government. To solve these problems, however, he presents a creed which he calls “African Socialism". The use of the word “Socialism" in independent Africa is very common but worth little. It is used, for instance, by both government and opposition in Kenya. The general purpose of this is clear: to give obviously oligarchic governments a facade of popular support and concern for justice and equality.

Odinga’s “African Socialism" would take the form of “a Kenya government backed by popular enthusiasm and national mobilisation". We suggest to the people of Kenya, and indeed to the people of the world, that the only way they will solve their problems will be by overthrowing capitalism which deprives and degrades them. This can only be done, not on a national scale, but by an internationally united working class who reject all leaders and governments.

Not Yet Uhuru (freedom) is the personal and political testament of a sincere, but unfortunately misguided, political figure. It is well worth reading for the insights which it offers into the lot of the people of Kenya.

Amit Pandya

Myths about Munich (1968)

From the September 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Diplomacy is a business not famous for its honourable men, but even the diplomats have to admit that Munich was a classic of deceit. And it was not only the men in the Foreign Office who were deceived; many of the myths which were popular thirty years ago are still accepted today and even those which have been discarded have been replaced by others.

According to the myths, the Nazis in 1938 were a cunning and treacherous lot and against them Chamberlain, because of either a secret sympathy with Nazism or a weak and simple personality, was helpless. Cowardly, he delivered Czechoslovakia to the Nazis’ tender mercies and then allowed Hitler to trick him by signing a meaningless declaration of friendship. He came back from Munich claiming peace with honour in our time when in fact he had betrayed Europe, and the war which might have been averted by a firmer stand became unavoidable.

Those are the myths. Now what are the facts?

It is true that between the two world wars Germany broke many pacts. The injured innocence of the Foreign Office was meant to hide the fact that there was nothing new in this; in fact part of the Munich story was the unilateral revoking by the French, with British support, of their 1925 alliance with Czechoslovakia. A state usually breaks a treaty arrangement when it is under some sort of pressure, as the Germans were during the Thirties.

At that time German capitalism had resumed its expansion, which had been abruptly halted by the first world war. L. S. Amery once said to A. L. Rowse “Germany came so near to bringing it off the first time that it was only to be expected that she would have another try.”[1] Since that first “try” Germany had been stripped of her colonies; she had lost the valuable raw materials of the Ruhr, Silesia and Alsace Lorraine. Partly from her allies Austria and Hungary the state of Czechoslovakia had been created at the Versailles Conference. The German attempt to break the stranglehold imposed at Versailles was the infamous March to the East. First Austria was annexed—then Czechoslovakia stood in the way.

The expansion of a capitalist state is never a peaceful or honourable business. The expanding state meets with opposition from the established powers, who often try to control the situation with pacts and alliances which they are more or less forced to try to keep. The expanding state is under no such compulsion. This is not a matter of honour; where capitalist interests are concerned there is no good and bad but only an irreconcilable clash. The Nazis—brutal, intractable, ruthless—were apt expression of the expansionist ambitions of German capitalism and this gave them the role of double crossers which other ruling groups have occupied at other times.

The Nazi record provided convenient evidence for the fallacy that Hitler was an evil historical accident, whose personality (he actually did chew the carpet) was solely responsible for Munich and what followed. But the Nazis did not cry in the wilderness; in 1932 Hitler won over 13 million votes in the election for the Chancellorship; by the time of Munich Henlein’s pro-Nazi Sudeten German Party had virtually all the German vote in Czechoslovakia and forty four members in the Czech parliament.

This sort of support is no accident. The Nazis were men of their time, personifying the interests of German capitalism as it struggled to re-assert itself, and the patriotic hysteria and mob violence which that re-assertion needed. Nazi theories were hardly new; they were a ferociously extreme version of ideas which had been around for some time, in similar circumstances in other lands—for example in Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and Tory Imperialists in England.

Complementary to the Hitler personality myth was that of Chamberlain. The British Prime Minister looked like a late Victorian gentleman and in fact he did express a preference for living in that age, before the motor car and the telephone. Modern art roused him to a fury and the intrusively ample nudes of Berchtesgaden disturbed him enough for him to mention them again and again in a letter to his sister. Chamberlain’s wing collar about his scrawny neck, his pouting moustache and his umbrella, made him look dull and narrow-minded. He suffered, like all self-respecting Victorian gentlemen, from gout.

He provoked many cruel epithets. Churchill, who said that in twenty years he had only one intimate social conversation with him, accused him of looking at world affairs “through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe". Masaryk raged about the " . . .  calamity that this stupid and ill-informed man, a nonentity, should be Prime Minister of Great Britain".  [3] 

His was certainly an arid personality but just like any other politician Chamberlain expressed himself within the confines of his job of representing the interests of his ruling class/ He may have been duped by Hitler; he did allow himself, in an emotional moment which he later regretted, to appear to believe in the durability of the Anglo/German agreement of Munich. But his general policy was quite clear. In the House of Commons on 24 March 1938 he listed the places which Britain would fight for—France and Belgium (to protect the Channel coast); Iraq (to protect British oil investments); Egypt (to protect Suez); and Portugal.

These were places where the interests of British capitalism were immediately and vitally involved. Czechoslovakia was not among them; Chamberlain had already ". . . abandoned any idea of giving guarantees to Czechoslovakia, or to France in connection with her obligations to that country."[2] This was not his policy alone; a lot of the press, including the Times, Express and Observer, supported it and, according to Sir Samuel Hoare (as he then was), it also had the backing of Chamberlain's colleagues.

The British policy of appeasement, which included the abandonment of Czechoslovakia, was the product, not of any man's personality but of the European situation at the time. Behind the more publicised examples of political appeasement, out of the public eye, the policy was carried out in the fields of economics and trade. In the Thirties both Britain and Germany were trying to protect their economies with high tariffs and rigid exchange controls. The British Imperial Preference system denied Germany access to the markets of the Empire but Germany had to expand into somewhere. This they threatened to do by military conquest and a lot of their war equipment included imported materials paid for with exports financed by credits in the City of London. (There were £36 million of these outstanding on 3 September 1939.) [4]

The British solution was twofold. First, they would allow Germany to expand into an area where British interests were not vitally at stake and, by thus encouraging Germany’s economic development, ease the pressure of her re-armament, which would have allowed British industry to stay out of an arms race. This amounted to nothing more than a carve up of Europe; Dirksen, the man who succeeded Ribbentrop as Ambassador in London, wrote of the soundings which preceded Munich " . . a delineation of economic spheres of interest was mentioned as a point in the programme."[4] (Dirksen regarded Chamberlain, rather than Hitler, as the farsighted planner of foreign policy). In this carve-up South East Europe was recognised as Germany's sphere; Halifax wrote on 1 November 1938 "Henceforward we must count with German predominance in Central Europe" which, he said, “once Germany recovered her normal strength .. .was inevitable for obvious geographic and economic reasons."[4]

The second part of British policy was the development of her own trade with Germany; the declaration of friendship signed by Hitler and Chamberlain at Munich, which the British Premier flourished so triumphantly on his return, was supposed to be a start to this. In December 1938 the Board of Trade got negotiations going between the British and German Federations of Industry, with the object of reaching a comprehensive agreement on prices and markets. In January 1939 the Anglo/German Coal Agreement was signed. On the very day in March 1939, that the Germany Army marched into Prague, British and German industrialists put their signatures to another commercial pact.

The carve up meant that Czechoslovakia, in spite of the French guarantees to her, had to be swallowed up in the German expansion; the Czech coal and iron was a very acceptable bonus to German industry. It meant that millions of people were handed over to the Nazi dictatorship, to suffer and die in the concentration camps. But it served the purposes of capitalism. Munich was no accident. It was no historical turning point, when a different policy might have stopped the German expansion and avoided the second world war. The only other policies (apart from Socialism) which were on offer would have had a similar result. Munich was a chapter in the long story of capitalism's economic disputes, a stepping stone towards the next war,

At the time, the agreements of Munich were greeted with hysterical relief. Chamberlain was honoured as an old man (he was sixty-nine) who braved an adventurous journey by air to try what was then the unusual method of face-to-face diplomacy. (Halifax said it “rather took his breath away"). This was why M.P.’s were in tears, when Chamberlain announced the invitation to his third visit to Hitler. It was why the people lined the roads from Heston to Buckingham Palace when he came back. It was why George Lansbury told him “You have done a most wonderful piece of work and done it under the guidance and providence of God."[2]

It might have occurred to Lansbury, or Halifax, or somebody, to tell those people what treaties were worth; they might have told them that Czechoslovakia was itself created by a “peace” treaty, as part of “collective security" and that the disputed areas of that country had been deliberately tacked onto it to provide a natural, mountainous barrier to invaders from the west. Chamberlain might have mentioned that he was anything but a peace lover; he had written that he wanted to avoid a war with Germany " . . .  unless we had a reasonable prospect of being able to beat her to her knees in a reasonable time."  He was making his preparations; he said in the House of Commons on 3 October 1938 “For a long period now we have been engaged in this country in a great programme of rearmament. which is daily increasing in pace and volume."

September 1938 was not a pleasant time to be alive. There was the rising nationalism on all sides, the gruesome stories from the concentration camps and the start of an official campaign to condition the people who would have to fight the war into accepting its necessity. The government had people digging trenches in the parks and commons, often by floodlight at night. They distributed the gas masks which they knew would be virtually useless. They circulated a masterpiece of bureaucratic waffle—a leaflet which told us that falling bombs could be easily recognised (and presumably dodged) because they looked like silver arrows.

And in the end it came down to the day when the deceits and the fallacies of the diplomats had to be suspended for a short time, as Chamberlain told us that war had been declared. Appeasement was dead but it didn't take them long to think up the next trick, which went under the name of Unconditional Surrender.

Ivan.

Books Cited:

[1] The Hollow Men, by Margaret George.

[2] Neville Chamberlain, by lain Macleod.

[3] Munich, by Henri Nogueres.

[4] The Appeasers, by Martin Gilbert and Richard Gott.

Irish Labour's New Republic (1968)

From the October 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Following its much-improved representation in the Dail Eireann at the last General Election, the Labour Party has increased its political activity and talks of a new approach to politics. Amidst an atmosphere of enthusiasm and inspired by increasing party membership, their leader Brendan Corish voiced his plans for the future in an address at the Labour Annual Conference in Dublin in October l967. This has been published as a pamphlet under the title The New Republic. The laying down of a definite policy together with the re-affiliation of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union has roused curiosity in all quarters and has paid-off by further swelling Labour's ranks.

There was no lack of optimism and speculation in the address. Indeed, Corish commenced by forecasting “the seventies will be socialist” for the people of Ireland. In July the Dail (parliamentary) members of the Labour Party met four hundred delegates from all over Ireland to draft a new manifesto and to consider the developments which had taken place since the last conference.

One new development that Labour has to face is the referendum due to be held later this year on the abolition of the Proportional Representation system of voting. Statistics suggest that if the referendum abolishes PR in favour of the single-member constituency system in England, it would perpetuate the Fianna Fail government for a further ten years. Also, it would probably reduce Labour representation in the Dail to a mere handful since most of Labour's members are elected on the second choice votes by pro-Fine Gael and anti-Fianna Fail supporters.

Even if PR were retained there is a ludicrous tinge in Corish's prediction. Though he has succeeded in doubling his party's numbers in the Dail (from ten to twenty), he would have to increase it by a further fifty to gain power. He has also to convince a politically hostile electorate—manifest in the way, except for two short periods of coalition government, they have continually returned Fianna Fail to power—of the desirability of his new republic—and he has to do this between now and November next year. With Ireland's biggest trade union, the ITGWIJ, now standing firmly behind the Labour Party Corish certainly has a chance of increasing his representation, but the chances of gaining power are very thin.

It would be impossible to gain a majority of seats in the Dail without the support of the farmers and since on the whole they are very conservative, Labour has not the appeal in the rural areas it has in the towns. The only probable way of ousting Fianna Fail is by forming a coalition with Fine Gael, the main opposition party. But after Labour's being the minor party in two previous and disastrous coalitions—with the consequent charge of selling out “socialist" principles—Corish has assured his members that Labour would not join another coalition. We shall see.

The Labour leader listed the major wrongs which, to a people who hide beneath the robe of Roman Catholicism rather than face the truth, were carefully worded so as not to provoke the ever-ready guillotine of the Church. He confronted people with what they already know and what many accept as the will of God. Old age pensioners are expected to survive on a few shillings a week. In the forty-seven years of Home Rule a million Irish men and women have emigrated. Ireland, he said, was “starved of employment". One after another Corish pointed out the problems which are not peculiar just to Irish workers but are common to workers everywhere—though his strong national-mindedness seems to have blinded Corish on this point. His particular grievance is that “£600m. of Irish capital is invested in the biggest money-market in the world" instead of invested in Ireland!

The solution which Corish says will solve these problems is the abolition of private enterprise, and the establishment of “socialism". Socialism, it is true, is the correct solution, but what according to the Labour leader is “socialism"? His excuse for failing to give a clear meaning is that “people who call themselves socialists differ in their definitions of the word". But since the Labour Party claims to accept the ideas of its founder, James Connolly, let us consult his writings to see how he used, or abused, the word.

Connolly's idea of “socialism” centred round the Irish Republic for which he and James Larkin tried to rally the workers to take up arms and fight. His Republic, he said, would not be like the United States where "the power of the purse established a new tyranny under the forms of freedom, one hundred years after the feet of the last British redcoat polluted the streets of Boston"—a remark which brings out Connolly’s nationalism and his hatred of the British. Connolly alleged that in his Republic the workers would enjoy the fruits of their labour. Maybe he would have changed his mind if he had lived long enough to witness the effects of the Russian revolution when they tried to set up “socialism" in one land.

When the first world war broke out De Valera and Connolly appealed to the workers not to follow John Redmond's support for Britain. Connolly quite rightly pointed out that the Irish workers' quarrel was not with the workers of another land (Germany), but he and De Valera were continually soliciting the Irish workers to go into battle with the British army in Ireland (consisting of course partly of Irish and partly of English workers).

Corish stated that in his new republic all Irish capital would come under the control of the state; that the banks would be brought under the direct control of the Dail, and that all capital would be invested in Ireland to build industries. If Labour comes to power and successfully executes these plans, he believes that the workers will no longer have to swell the labour forces of other countries. Then Ireland might wrongly be called “socialist", but it would be just another state capitalist country not more able to further the cause of Socialism than the existing ones which have tried and failed.

 Patrick Garvey

Votes for some Workers (1968)

From the November 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

November 1868 is a significant date in British working class history. For in that month was held the first general election in which the majority of electors were workers. Most workers, it is true, were still excluded but enough had the vote to elect a majority of socialist delegates had they wanted to. It is true also that the Second Reform Act of 1867 was a miserable compromise between the Tories and the Liberals, both of whom were opposed to democracy and afraid of giving the vote to too many workers.

In 1832 the workers had been tricked into backing their employers' demand for a share with the landed aristocrats, big merchants and bankers in running the government. The First Reform Act was framed so as deliberately to exclude workers and in fact, in some cases, they were actually disfranchised. This was not an experience they easily forgot. The manufacturers had used the threat of a workers' uprising to scare the governing classes into sharing power with them. One of the first acts of the government elected under the new franchise was to reform the Poor Law system: they made it harsher in order to drive people into the factories (or, as they would say today, to encourage “mobility of labour”). Partly as a result of this for the next decade or so the government was, in Chartism, faced with the real threat of a workers’ uprising.

Chartism, the first independent workers’ political party in the world, was an expression of general discontent with early capitalism. Their six-point charter, which included universal manhood suffrage, added up to a demand for a democratic state. They were convinced that with democracy the workers could reshape society in their own interests. This was well expressed in the words of one of their songs: “We will get the land, when we get the Charter”. It was this emphasis on the need for winning political power that commended Chartism to Marx and Engels and it taught them that the workers’ class struggle must become political. The Chartists in fact failed to achieve any of their aims. Their last monster demonstration in 1848 failed ignominiously. Faced with the choice of passively accepting parliament’s rejection of the Charter or insurrection they backed down. The more determined kept up the struggle for a few more years coming to absorb the ideas of the French utopian communists like Babeuf and Blanqui and even those of Marx and Engels.

By the 1860’s the trade unions, after years of syndicalist-type opposition to “wage-slavery”, came to accept the wages system and put forward the conservative slogan of “a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.” Their leaders were rejecting violent overthrow of the the government in favour of working for small improvements within the system.

The manufacturers, who were the gainers from 1832, were now eager to push out the old landed aristocracy and have the state machine all to themselves. The successful Anti-Corn Law campaign led by Cobden and Bright had whetted their appetite. They saw as one way of increasing their control to extend the suffrage to their workers who they knew would vote for them. So despite the failure of Chartism the Reform issue was raised from time to time after 1850. However, the restricted franchise did not allow the radicals their due weight inside the Liberal party. The Whigs, themselves landed aristocrats, still had a great say and Lord Palmerston refused to allow a Reform bill. When he died the way was clear and in March 1866 Gladstone introduced a Bill which by lowering the property qualification would have given the vote to many workers. But the Whigs had their last fling. Some forty of them voted with the Tories against the bill. The government resigned and a minority Tory one took over. Almost immediately they were faced with a country-wide Reform agitation. Bright on behalf of the manufacturers’ National Reform Union called for ratepayers’ suffrage while the trade unions and the First International backed the Reform League which, like the Chartists, stood for universal manhood suffrage. It was the League that organised a great demonstration for 23 July at Hyde Park which the government banned. The organisers refused to accept this and the demonstration went on. The crowds pulled down the railings at Hyde Park and swarmed in. The fear of insurrection and a revival of Chartism, suggested by this, scared the government and Disraeli introduced his own Reform bill, more radical even than Gladstone's, in order, as he said, “to dish the Whigs”.

Marx commented favourably on the tactic of playing off one section of the governing classes against another which the workers had used to get factory laws. The passing of the Second Reform Act presented the same spectacle. The Tories proposed to give the vote to all ratepayers in the towns, while the Liberals wanted a steadily falling property qualification. Since the Liberals had a majority in parliament the actual Act, which with similar ones for Scotland and Ireland increased the electorate from 1,350,000 to 2,470,000, was a compromise.

If Disraeli had hoped to gain the new voters' gratitude and so dish the Whigs he must have been disappointed. The 1868 election returned Gladstone with a big majority. The new government then set about stripping the aristocrats of more of their privileges: they reformed the civil service and the universities; they disestablished the Church in Ireland; they brought in compulsory elementary education. Once again the workers had been used by the manufacturing capitalists as tools in their fight against the landed aristocracy. But this time it was voluntary. The workers allowed themselves to be used in this way. The new voters of 1868 set an unfortunate precedent which has been followed at every election since: they used their votes to hand over political power to the capitalist class.

One of three Tory Ministers to resign was Lord Cranbourne (who later as Lord Salisbury was three times Prime Minister). His complaint was that power was being transferred to

those who have no other property than the labour of their hands. The omnipotence of Parliament is theirs.

Marx and Engels took a similar view. Writing on the Chartists in the 1850's they had pointed out that universal suffrage in Britain would amount to political power for a class-conscious working class. They seem to have regarded the Second Reform Act as a “radical sham” and a travesty on democracy, as indeed it was. But, although fearing a “pro-slavery rebellion", Marx knew its significance as he showed in his famous speech at the Hague in 1872 when he stated that in America, Britain and perhaps Holland the workers could win power for Socialism peacefully, by winning a majority in a general election.

The government extended the franchise to workers in Britain under pressure, partly from the workers themselves and partly from some capitalists who saw this was in their interests. The workers' vote is a real gain, a potential class weapon which should, in Marx’s phrase, be used as “an instrument of emancipation". The government could not, as some claim, now suddenly suspend democracy, for besides being essential to the smooth running of modern capitalism, it is part of the political consciousness of the working class. By their past actions, from Chartism to pushing down the railings in Hyde Park, they have forced governments to take their views into account. Nor is universal suffrage a fraud, as these same people claim, a trick to convince us we have some say in the running of social affairs while the real decisions are made elsewhere. Parliament does control how the state machine is used—whether troops stay East of Suez or fight in Aden, what the police should do to control riots outside the American embassy, what laws the Courts should enforce—and universal suffrage does allow workers to choose who shall sit in Parliament..

Adam Buick

The Dangers of Leadership (1968)

From the December 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

At first glance the theory of vanguard action by a highly disciplined minority to achieve Socialism might seem to have a lot to recommend it. In a pre-revolutionary period, revolutionaries are always confronted by the twin obstacles of a ruling class armed with state power and the apathy of the masses. So any theory which suggests that the mass of the people has only a minor role to play, that their inertia can somehow be circumvented, is obviously very attractive. Like most modern political ideas this theory has its roots in the French revolution, but it was Lenin who first systematically organised a political party on this principle.

Today there are numerous organisations which, to a varying degree, draw their political inspiration from the Bolsheviks. Despite bitter disputes over the minutia of their faith, they all conform to a common pattern. Each adopts a programme of immediate demands which are designed as bait to attract working class support. It also seems to be a general rule that groups which start with a theory that the party must lead the masses, end up by developing a highly centralised leadership within the party, with the rank and file members progressively subordinated to a sort of inner party.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain from its inception has rejected this form of organisation and its related theory. The experiences of our early members in the Social Democratic Federation before the Socialist Party was set up taught them the dangers inherent in a reform programme. Inevitably a party which attracts support on this basis finds people joining it and identifying themselves with it who have no interest in getting rid of capitalism, but who are simply concerned with reforming and modifying the present social system. Faced with this situation, the party can develop in two ways. It either becomes an openly reformist organisation and the genuine socialists inside it are reduced to a minority or it may still manage to adhere to its original principles—but only at the expense of democracy, by a dictatorial clique concentrating power in its own hands.

The “International Socialism” group is worth looking at from this point of view since it clearly shows these tendencies and it also has members within its ranks intelligent enough to be conscious of their dilemma. In fact, the I.S. group and the Socialist Party are of roughly similar size and to a superficial observer there might seem to be certain similarities in our ideas (when pressed by socialists the l.S. leadership will concede that there is state capitalism in Russia and the Socialism will eventually—their emphasis—be a moneyless economy based on free distribution). Up till 1967 l.S. took the form of a loose-knit group with very little formal organisation inside the Labour Party and Labour Party Young Socialists With the slump in the government’s popularity, however, it has noisily proclaimed its independence from Labour [1]  and has been growing rapidly over the last few months, with an influx of young people—mainly university students — into its ranks.

I.S. sees its immediate task, as does the Socialist Party, as one of developing class consciousness among the workers. But there is an important distinction between the two concepts of “consciousness". The Socialist Party is convinced that there is no basis for going forward from capitalism until a majority of people understand what Socialism entails and are prepared to take conscious action to establish it. By contrast, the level of understanding which at least some members of I.S. expect the working class to reach is indicated by the following passage, taken from one of the internal documents circulating inside their organisation prior to their recent bi-annual conference:

It is irrelevant what the working class ‘thinks’; it is even more irrelevant what individual workers think; what, ultimately, will determine the outcome of class struggle is what the working class is forced to do, and what it decides to do. (their emphasis)

Naturally, this different interpretation of consciousness gives rise to a completely different approach to the question of presenting socialist ideas to the working class. While the Socialist Party supports the efforts of workers to improve their wages and working conditions by trade union activity, we do not as a party immerse ourselves in such work. We see our job as essentially one of drawing attention to the fact that the individual problems which make working class life a misery are all rooted in the capitalist system. Against this we pose the alternative of a world socialist community. I. S. takes a different line. Their strategy is to become involved in particular struggles over rents, wages or redundancy and—so the theory goes—support gained on local issues in this way will gradually blossom out into a fully developed grasp of Socialism among those who accept I.S. leadership.

Certain elements within I.S. now seem to be seriously questioning the value of these tactics. One lesson which a number of them seem to have drawn from their involvement in the “day to day struggle" is that the idea of the working class eagerly waiting for some group of self-appointed leaders to turn up and start leading them has no existence outside of Bolshevik mythology. At their recent conference there were various rueful accounts of tenants and others telling I.S. members in no uncertain terms where they could stick their leadership. These provoked the conclusion from one faction at the conference that “the working class is not as stupid as some people think”.

An equally important development has been the analysis which other I.S. members have been making of the shortcomings of their organisational structure. Some of them are worried by the trend towards the “bolshevising” of their movement:

. . .  we are in the process of creating inside IS. an organisation based on ‘leadership’ where the leadership is to be trusted with central power for the sake of efficiency.

But this tendency cannot simply be explained away by references to the growth of their group and the consequent centralisation in the interests of efficiency. Its roots go deeper, down into the theoretical basis from which I.S. operates.

After all if there is a theory of a working class which needs an external leadership, the obverse organisational theory of a rank and file membership needing a strong leadership, will lake hold—at the top.

Alongside this they outline the organisational form which a socialist party should take:

What is required for a really efficient challenge to capitalism is the building up of a REVOLUTIONARY ORGANISATION OF EQUAL PARTICIPANTS IN DECISION AND POLICY-MAKING, (their emphasis)

The Socialist Party of Great Britain, of course, is organised along these lines. It is because we reject all leadership and restrict our membership to socialists alone that we can afford to be uncompromisingly democratic. Some of those who in the past have sneered at our “impossibilism” are perhaps now starting to realise that what we have succeeded in building up is the nucleus of the type of mass party which the working class can use to liberate itself. We certainly do not have any of the glamour which makes organisations like I.S. so attractive to their romantic revolutionary elements, but to those interested in the serious work of achieving Socialism we do represent a party where they will be welcomed as comrades and equals.

John Crump

[1] Too much should not be made of this. At least some l.S. leaders (e.g. Michael Kidron) have taken the precaution of quietly remaining on the Labour Party’s books. For details of their previous commitment to Labour see Socialist Standard, August 1968.

The Australian Labour Party. (1911)

From the January 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following extracts from a letter from a friend in South Australia may be of interest at the present moment:

   “Politics here are worse than dead—they are buried. So far as the worker is concerned the Labour Party is a calamitous failure. Even the most conservative of capitalist Governments could not have been more concerned about the rights of “property” than was Verran's Government in the Asphalters’ strike a few weeks ago. Most of the South Australian Labour M.P.s are wowsers (Wesleyans) of the virulent type, bound hand and foot to one or another little Bethel, and when it comes to a question of conventional or unconventional procedure, the wowseristic instinct comes uppermost, and the wowser feeling is ever for 'Plute,’ who keeps the chapels going. A few of the present Government are marked down for smash next election,—their vera religious pandering will prove their political undoing.’ 

“You will have read of the Labour victory in New South Wales. They have a better type of men there than we have in South Australia, as they are not so thoroughly tied up to the Gospel-mongers. We have a phalanx of saints with Verran as archangel.”

John A. Dawson

Editorial: More Miners Murdered. (1911)

Editorial from the February 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again the murderous nature of capitalism finds glaring exemplification in a wholesale slaughter of workers, and 344 miners (including a child of 13) are deliberately sacrificed on the altar of Cheapness. Scarce had the tragedy of Whitehaven ceased to occupy men’s thoughts when, at Westhaughton, near Bolton, an even more dastardly outrage was perpetrated on the working class. As with Whitehaven, the first thing to be noted is the fact that several warnings had been published before the disaster, regarding the dangerous atmospheric conditions and the consequent likelihood of escapes of gas in the mines. In such circumstances a sane system of society would have suspended mining operations, but capitalist idlers must have their profits regardless of who perish. MONEY BEFORE MEN is their motto, and the workers must do and die or starve and die. That the gas was there the miners knew. Fear of the “sack ” and the boycott kept them quiet, and fear of a hungry Christmas for wife and child kept them at work.

Of course we are told that this particular pit was “one of the best” and considered very “safe,” but the men knew otherwise. “In this respect ” says the Bolton Chronicle (14.1.11) “the fact that men have long known that this reputedly ‘safe’ mine was in reality a centre of peril and have not conveyed the information to those who would listen is disquieting.”

But who would listen? Not the owners—full well they know the dangerous conditions under which they exploit the men ; full well they know that “regulations” are ignored, because the interests of the dividend hunters must not be sacrificed to provide safety conditions for Labour.

Equally futile would it have been to approach the Labour “leaders”—these gentlemen are more concerned with the House of Lords, and boosting up Free Trade Liberalism, with the hope of Government jobs for themselves, than with the enforcement of Mines Regulations Acts in the interest of those from whose beggarly pittance, earned under awful conditions and at appalling risk, they meantime draw their comfortable salaries.

And so those martyrs of the mine went down to their doom, consciously daring death by explosion because to speak their fears meant the terrors of the boycott.

From the evidence given at the inquest on some of the victims we quote the following :

    “ Robert Boardman, Seddon-st., Westhoughton, identified his brother, George (23), who had worked on the conveyor. He said he had complained of gas, and came home twice a week for it. It was only a fortnight before that he was carried out because of it."     “ Edith Seddon, Cemetery-st., Westhoughton, testified to her husband James Seddon (23), who, she said, had come home every night unable to eat because of gas."

Many other witnesses testified to complaints of gas in the mine during the three weeks prior to the disaster while others had complained of sparks flying from the conveyor. It thus seems clear that an explosion of gas took place, but at the meeting of the Westhoughton District Council one of the councillors declared : “In this case and in every case where there had been an explosion, if the first general rule had been carried out, there could have been no explosion. He spoke rather feelingly, but the first general rule said that ‘an adequate amount of ventilation shall he constantly produced in every mine to dilute and render harmless noxious gas, so that the workings, etc., shall be in a fit state for working and passing therein.”

Again at the Conference of the Colliery Engine Winders’ Federation, held in Manchester, Mr. Forshaw, the President, said :

    “They must make the public realise that a great proportion of accidents were preventible. After nearly every explosion they got evidence that for weeks and sometimes months before the explosion the gas produced in the mines had not been dealt with and rendered harmless in accordance with the Mines’ Act. If the rules were strictly adhered to explosions through gas would be impossible. The ventilation of some working places in many mines compared to what it should be under the rule was simply disgraceful”

Here, then, is clearly shown the double danger and futility of “reforms.” These are passed and serve to make popular those who pass them. Their existence on the Statute Book lulls the workers into fancied security—from which explosions serve only to temporarily awaken them—they are “administered,” or quietly ignored, as best suits the interests of the master class. Further striking proof of this is found in the alarming increase of “accidents” in the mines. In 1909 there were 1493 fatal accidents, an increase of 148 over 1908, while non fatal accidents were 154,268, an increase of 11,482. In 1910 the fatal accidents total 1769. Thus in every working day more than five men are killed procuring coal which might be got as safely as digging potatoes—only it would not pay.

Could greater condemnation of this cursed capitalist system be pronounced than this —men are murdered because it pays ? Answer, you Liberal and Tory, anti-Socialist working men! Can you look one of those bereaved of Bolton in the face without shame, knowing that you have voted into office the supporters of production for profit—the murderers of their loved ones—and will again? Will you never understand that these “regrettable incidents” are the inevitable fruits of the brutal system you sanction at the ballot-box, and that you are therefore jointly responsible for those callous crimes against your class? Or is the philosophy of capitalism—“One man dead is another man’s bread ’’— good enough for you?

Coming so soon after the Whitehaven horror, and amid the “ unrest ” in the coalfields generally, there was the possibility that this affair might be the signal for trouble, or, more serious still, that the survivors might arrive at class-consciousness by brooding over their lot. So in the interest of “law and order,” the preservation of profit and property, the thoughts of the sufferers had to be diverted from the cause of their grief. The aid of charity and religion was invoked; pennies and prayers were lavishly distributed and countless eulogies delivered on the devotion of the dead and the loyalty of the living. A relief fund was opened so that 

           “the charitable sneak
To lull the cry of toil might spare a trifle
           from the spoil
He had wrung from the wreckage of the weak.”

£50,000 was asked for, but so great was the alarm felt by the master class that over £100,000 was quickly subscribed, and the fund had to be closed. Meanwhile the representatives of the Church, in the sordid interest of their capitalist paymasters, strained every nerve to prove that God was responsible for the disaster,and that the money-grabbing mine-owners were the most innocent and loving of men. From the deluge of demoralising drivel directed on this doubly unfortunate people we quote, in extenso, the following letter from the Bishop of Manchester:

      “My Dear Friends,—Being unable to be present with you at your memorial services, I am writing to express in a few words what I should have tried to say if I had been with you. It has pleased God to suffer an overwhelming affliction to fall upon you. Your homes are desolate and your hearts are broken and your eyes have witnessed sights too horrible for words. Almost all the ordinary consolations of death and bereavement have been denied you, but in all this trial God has been with you, granting such a full measure of faith, patience, and courage to overcome your sorrow that has been a wonder to all, and especially to those who have been trying to minister to you. For this we can all thank God. He who has given you this supplication will not fail you, not even in the long dark hours that lie before many of you. He will comfort the widows, the sweethearts, brothers, sisters, and fatherless children in their sorrow; the grief is there and no words of ours can take it away, but you will try to trust him more and more and to believe that promise .‘WHAT I DO THOU KNOWEST NOT NOW, BUT THOU SHALT KNOW HEREAFTER.’ May God be with you all and bless you. Yours in deepest sympathy and respect, E.A. Manchester.”

Evidently the clergy did their dirty work well, for the vicar is able to say in the January issue of the “Westhoughton Parish Magazine,” “We cannot but thank God for the spirit of submission and resignation which has been shown by the bereaved."

And no doubt the mine-owners again loll comfortably in their clubs, while the miners again go down to the death-traps. Meantime, let us do well the work of enlightening our fellow-workers to the necessity of replacing the present murderous social system by one in which life shall be valued above coal. Our work for this end is the measure of the only genuine sympathy for the sorrow-stricken of Bolton and the poor oppressed slaves of capitalism everywhere. From the supporters of capitalism charity is an insult and sympathy a mockery. Stupified with the chloroform of religious cant and humbug, misled and ignorant through the teaching of their false friends the Labour “leaders” and professional politicians, some of the workers may forget and forgive; but we place it on record that the Bolton butchery is another of those brutal incidents in the infamous career of capitalism which shall neither be forgotten nor forgiven save in the day of Revolution and the triumph of Socialism.

Child Poverty: Not Just Being Poor (2017)

From the August 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Child poverty in Britain is at its highest level since 2010 (Guardian 16 March). Around 100,000 children fell into relative poverty in 2015–6, and four million children, around thirty percent, are classed as poor. The head of Oxfam’s UK programme was quoted as saying, ‘There are now more people in poverty in the UK than there have been for almost 20 years and a million more than at the beginning of the decade.’ Nearly half of children growing up in single-parent households are poor, while two-thirds of children in poverty are in households with at least one parent who is in work.

Poverty for children does not just mean going without possessions, living in sub-standard housing, not having a proper holiday. Mere survival is an issue too: in So You Think You Know about Britain?, Danny Dorling observes that infant mortality in London can depend on whether a child is born in a wealthier or poorer area. He also notes that one cemetery in Bradford has eight times as many recent graves of infants and children as the equivalent cemetery near Hampstead in London. There are many factors involved in deaths at a very young age, including pre-term births, weight at birth and mother’s age and health, but poverty is clearly involved as well (and may be connected to some of these other causes).

Fatal injuries of various kinds are also correlated with poverty: ‘a child from the lowest social class in the United Kingdom is 16 times more likely to die in a house fire than one from a wealthy family’ (World Health Organisation report, Injuries and Violence, 2014).

In 2010 a government review of health inequalities in England, Fair Society, Healthy Lives, presented as its main recommendation ‘Give every child the best start in life’. They noted that children with low ‘cognitive scores’ at 22 months but who come from better-off families increase their scores by the age of ten. But children with high cognitive scores at 22 months who come from badly-off families have lower scores by age ten. There may well be reservations about just what is being measured here, but the existence of some relation between economic status and educational achievement seems highly likely. This will then feed in to the qualifications gained, the jobs followed and so to health and life expectancy.

There is in fact other fairly strong evidence for the effect of poverty on educational attainment. For instance, as a proportion just over half as many children in receipt of free school meals gain top grades in GCSE as children in the whole population. It is often claimed that poorer parents have lower aspirations for their children, but this seems in fact not to be the case, with the same (and very high) proportion of parents of seven-year-olds wanting their children to attend university, irrespective of their own status as poor or non-poor. Parents’ own education is a better predictor than income of how well their children will do at school, but this does not mean that income plays no role.

In February the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health produced a comprehensive report State of Child Health, which, among other topics, examined the links between health and poverty among children. Infant mortality, as we have seen, was correlated with living in a low-income household, as also were the risk of tooth decay or dying in an accident or developing a chronic condition such as asthma. The report also noted that many effects of childhood ill-health can continue into adulthood:

'the risk of death in adulthood increases for many conditions including coronary heart disease, respiratory disease, injuries, and cancer. In addition, mental health conditions in childhood are more likely to persist into adulthood.'

Giving every child the best start in life is a fine principle, but one hard to put into practice in a society riven with inequality and privilege. 

Paul Bennett

Speeding-Up The Admirals. (1911)

From the March 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Avast there, comrades! Haul in your slacks while I shiver my timbers.

The Navy, sirs, is going to the dogs. Senior officers are now expected to know something, and a special instructional course began at Portsmouth on Feb 13, with fifty rear admirals, captains, and commanders as pupils. How George must congratulate himself upon his shore appointment!

Feel for a proud flag officer like W. B. Fisher, fifty-seven years old and second in seniority, having to study gunnery and torpedoes. It is related of a distinguished admiral, who sometimes neglects to eat between drinks, that he once rolled up on deck and, gazing wildly at the far horizon gasped “Say, is that a sea-serpent?" He was told that it was. “Thank heaven!" he exclaimed, with relief. “I thought 1 had 'em again." Now, so absurd a position could not have occurred had the great man learned at a special instructional course for senior officers to recognise submarines at sight.

Cato studied Greek long after he became entitled to the old age pension — at eighty, I believe. But Greek is less undignified than signals and naval war, through a course of which Admirals F. T. Hamilton and Herbert Lyon, aged fifty-four. are compulsorily fagging. Waterloo was won in order to advertise the playing fields of Eton and Harrow. Let us hope the Government won't get up another Trafalgar in order to star their special instructional course for senior officers.

Seriously. this speeding-up is a national menace. While it affected only the productive working class, it did not much matter. But if it spreads to the upper ranks of employment, it may reach the Civil Service and compel the bureaucrats to work. In winch case the "end of all" is a safe prediction.

A. Hoskyns

The Attempted Suppression of Free Speech in Islington. (1911)

Party News from the April 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The attempt of the Islington Borough Council to suppress Socialist propaganda in their midst has proved ineffectual. Refused the hall of the Caledonian-road Baths, the Islington Branch of the Socialist Party commemorated the 40th. anniversary of the Paris Commune on Monday, March 20, at Myddleton Hall, Almeida Street. N. The meeting was largely attended, and, unlike so many Tory and Liberal gatherings, was marked by equal enthusiasm and orderliness.

Islington ratepayers may with advantage be reminded of the circumstances that led to this futile effort on the part of their municipal representatives to dictate what subjects may or may not be discussed in the borough.

In March last year our Islington comrades applied for and were granted the use of the Caledonian-road Baths for Commune-commemoration purposes. A deputation of ratepayers thereupon waited upon the Council to protest against the letting of the hall and to urge that our contract should be illegally cancelled. Their spokesman melodramatically predicted that, as the result of our teaching, the streets of Islington would be ”bathed in blood.” By a majority of sixteen the Council rejected the deputation’s appeal. Our meeting was held and was officially reported by the superintendent of the Baths as having been “conducted in a very quiet and orderly manner.”

Moreover, despite bourgeois apprehensions, the streets of the “merrie” mediaeval suburb did not run with blood. As a matter of fact, they did not even run with water, then or since; and, notwithstanding legitimate complaint, the filth which disfigured them in 1910 may be seen, with a year’s accretion, in 1911. So wretched an environment has its natural reflex in the conduct of certain residents and their elected representatives. To what other opinion can one come, after reading these observations from the Council’s discussion published in the Islington Daily Gazette of March 21, 1910 (italics ours):         

    “Alderman. Crole-Rees held that they ought to cancel, rule or no rule, whatever the cost might be. It was a sacrilege to hold such a gathering in the baths.
   Alderman. Vorley thought technicalities ought not to stand in the way of cancelling. The meeting was not political—it was revolutionary, and something near to treason.
   Mr. A. O. Clarke said any damages that might be obtained from the Council would be remote and small."

That is to say, break the law of contract as against Socialists and trust the courts to uphold such breach.

The Islington Daily Gazette, an avowedly anti-Socialist paper, expressed in unstinted terms, in its issue of March 23, 1910, its view of the matter. The editor wrote:

    "We are a little surprised that the Islington Borough Council should have made itself look ridiculous in the eyes of the public by endeavouring to prevent a meeting.  . . . The conduct of the meeting has proved how childish were the objections raised in the Council to the letting of the hall to the Socialist Party. . . . The uninitiated might have thought, after listening to the debate on Friday night at the Town Hall, that the Socialists of England were suddenly overcome with blood lust.”

Yet, in defiance of the ridicule and censure thus heaped upon last year’s attempt to suppress free speech, the Council did not hesitate to reject this year’s application by our Islington comrades for the same meeting-place. The Baths and Wash-houses Committee wrote: “ Having regard to the fact that a large number of ratepayers objected to the meeting held last year at the Public Hall, and that a deputation waited upon the Council to protest against the meeting, the Committee do not feel justified in letting the hall again for the purpose named ”

On this refusal becoming known, Mr. B S. Bailey, an Islington ratepayer, published in the Islington Daily Gazette of March 14, 1911 an emphatic protest and a stinging rebuke of the Council’s own disregard of the amenities of public life. He said :

   "I attended the Commune meeting held at the Baths last year, and I say (and challenge contradiction) that it was the most orderly and best conducted meeting that has been held in Islington by any political party. Surely a deputation of a dozen bigoted ratepayers and the Borough Council are not going to place themselves on a pedestal and tell us what we shall hear and what we shall not hear. . . .  I would advise our servants (and I hope the Council will not object to this description since they address themselves as such when appealing for our suffrage at elections) to conduct their meetings in as orderly a manner as the Socialist Party, then we shall not have so many bear-garden meetings, for which West Islington is notorious.”

We ourselves were as little surprised at the absurd protest of the deputation as we are unmoved by the foolish action of the Council. The Paris Commune, alike in its mistakes and its achievements, is to us a guiding cresset. That alone would make it an object of hatred and fear to capitalism, the antagonism of whose puny champions, therefore, appears in our view not less natural than contemptible. How expect such dunces to know, or care for, the truth? No doubt, they willingly believe the deliberate lie that the Conmune caused the streets of Paris to run with blood. But, in very fact, the 1871 massacres were the work of the cowardly French master class and their criminal hangers-on. When these found heart to return from flight, with the support of their German conquerers, they were maddened at the successful efforts of the proletariat to direct, as themselves had failed to do, the machinery of administration. So they glutted their vengeance in a popular butchery, which ceased only through fear of a pestilence from the growing heaps of slain.

As the British heirs of those brave dead, brutally sacrificed to class interests, we welcome from the myrmidons of Capital any earnest of the class struggle already long declared. It is enough that with them fraternise the Social-Democrats, the Labourites, and other spurious friends of the exploited and oppressed worker. For us it is battle now and all the time!

The truth is, those struggling tradesman and professional snobs of Islington — parasites on parasites — obey blindly the preservative instincts engendered by our iniquitous system. They are slowly but surely being crushed between the upper and nether millstones of economic development, and their desperate hope to “get on” is only paralleled by their abject fear of “falling out.” Sycophants to their “betters,” bullies to their "inferiors,” they seek a frantic sanctuary in property, sacrificing to Mammon their present peace, their children’s future, and the whole welfare of their kind.

They hate the proletariat, because through the slightest mishap they may themselves be proletarianised. They oppress the toilers, because through their exploitation only can they hope to attain economic safety. And they, who scarcely know a night’s rest free from business worry, warn the still more miserable wage-slave to beware of Socialism. They are whited sepulchres from which judgment and conscience have been snatched. Is it other than madness to bolster up the competitive system when even a capitalist organ like the Daily News (March 23, 1911), in dealing editorially with the appalling universal increase of suicide, admits that to-day “even to live with an independent income is more of a strain than to struggle for a living was a century ago.”

Workers, we are out to destroy this man-made hell on earth. We can show you that the greatest of our social evils are directly traceable to the fundamental wrong of stealing from you the product of your work. We ask you to unite with us for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of the Socialist Commonwealth.

A. Hoskyns

Free Trade in Females. (1911)

From the May 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Mormons are busy in our midst.

The Christian henchmen of the capitalists are busy in their midst.

At Birkenhead, where the meek ministers of the “gentle Jesus” are always fighting over something, there has been an anti-Mormon riot.

The American Latter Day Saints want women for the Salt Lake market. The English Latter Day Saints want women for the home market. Now, polygamy is a horrible thing, against which the Christian raves. Promiscuity is a mere incident, regrettable but unavoidable.

You remember how angry the Church was with that clergyman who married a Frenchwoman while his English wife still lived, undivorced from him. You cm hardly have forgotten how indignant the Church was with one of its curates, the Rev. Smythe-Piggott, for living at the Abode of Love with several spiritually-spliced darlings. And you must have noticed how shocked the Church was with that vicar whose Lax conduct created so much scandal and with those other holy clerks who recently figured in divorce and affiliation cases.

But the Mormons are a great danger.

They evidently offer certain sinister inducements to our women, for the latter are willing, nay eager, to go with them. And what are the counter-inducements to stay home?

Let us note some of them.

At the Easter conference of Telephone employees, a delegate described the conditions under which telephone girls work:

   “They are slaves. They sit at the (operator's) board and are driven as if they were slaves. These girls stand from nine to one and then from two to six. It is ruining the health of our girls. Large numbers of them are constantly off sick. Nervous prostration is what they suffer from. At one exchange in Manchester girls are taken downstairs in hysterics. Those girls will be the mothers of the future generation, and they are having their nerves absolutely torn away."

The Women’s Trade Union League has just exposed the conditions under which waitresses work:

   “Many are at work sixteen hours a day, and the general rule in almost all establishments is twelve hours a day on duty. Wages are very low — starvation wages. The girls in some places live in constant danger of the traps and pitfalls laid in their way by unscrupulous men."

Can it be that those base. unprincipled Mormons offer English women an existence in Utah which is not body-wearing, nerve racking, and soul-degrading, and that English women have so far forgotten the lessons of the Church as to prefer a polygamous marriage there to a life of sweating or prostitution here?

If so, the thing must be stopped. We have only 80,000 acknowledged unfortunates, not including future peeresses, on London’s streets, and pro rata elsewhere. To relieve this market, ere it be quite congested, is a crime in the eyes of honest, virtuous Christian capitalism.

A. Hoskyns

Mechanical Loyalty. (1911)

From the June 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

An English nobleman once tried to train a mule to box scientifically with its hind hoofs. The verdict was “Death from very natural causes."

When the capitalists created a cheap gutter Press they little suspected it would contribute to their undoing. Yet the rags continually, if unconsciously, deal murderous blows at the system they were intended to strengthen.

Just an instance:

That the Queen rehearses her train-bearers may be good reading, but it scarcely conduces to popular acceptance of her inherent grace. Snapshots of the State horses being inured to cheering, firing, and flag-waving seems calculated to take the gilt off the ginger-bread—or even off the State coach.

The people should be given to understand that all things royal are spontaneously dignified. Else what price a circus parade?

But the cruellest Press photos were those of the elephants learning to kneel, the dromedary and pony learning to bow. Not so would the show have been given away in the past. Our forefathers believed that the very animals recognised and did homage to anointed majesty.

Coronation—hungry children—Church and armed forces—full pubs.—full gaols. What a hotch-potch! Also enthusiastic obeisance from well-trained quadrupeds and well-drilled humans.

And the royal nonentities will carry on as if they swallowed it all. Poor henpecked George will try not to look thirsty, while his grim-faced consort conveniently forgets that she married him after his brother (her first betrothed) died, selling her body for a crown as surely as some of her less fortunate sisters sell theirs for five shillings.

A. Hoskyns

Letter: The Road to Socialism. (1911)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

Raymond Tune, of Petone, New Zealand, writes asking us to answer in our correspondence column the following questions:

(1) Is there any foundation in the charge that the position of the S.P.G.B. is too academic and scientific for the average discontented proletarian to grasp, and that some such elementary party like the I.L.P. or S.D.P. is necessary to serve as a sort of primary school from which a proletarian can graduate later on ?

(2) Also is there any foundation in the charge that the S.P.G.B. never obtains members direct from the clutches of the capitalist class, but on the contrary, that they come from the more intelligent and discontented members of other organisations ?

Reply:

The charge against the position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain of being too academic and scientific to be readily grasped by the average member of the working class is usually made by some unfortunate member of the I.L.P. or S.D.P., whose mental outlook upon life has been so confused and maltreated by the teachings of these pseudo-Socialist parties as to have become practically atrophied.

Science is the systemisation (ergo, the simplification) of knowledge. The very fact, therefore (admitted by our would-be detractors), of the scientific nature of our position, should be sufficient in itself to convince our correspondent that the average discontented proletarian can, if he so desires, readily grasp all the essential points necessary for the proper understanding of Socialism.

A careful reading of the Declaration of Principles printed on the back page of the Socialist Standard, will at once clearly and unmistakably show both the strength and the simplicity of the Socialist position. Not one of the principles on which that position stands has been, or can be, refuted.

As to the advisability or possibility of graduating from the I.L.P. or S.D.P. into the Socialist Party (why not also from the Anti-Socialist Union or the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals?), one might as reasonably expect a student to join the Salvation Army or the Roman Catholic Church in order to graduate eventually therefrom as a professor of biology.

The I.L.P. and the S.D.P. have never taught anything but the pseudo-Socialism of the reformist school. The idea that anyone could possibly obtain the most elementary knowledge of Socialism from either of these parties is manifestly absurd.

With regard to the second question, the Socialist Party obtains members from all sources: some from other political organisations, some from the ranks of those who have never been in any party. Those members who leave other organisations to join the Socialist Party do so for obvious reasons. The members of the working class, leaving school with practically no education (certainly without any education in political or economic thought), have to educate themselves in the only school open to them — that of experience. It thus sometimes happens that the specious promises and high-falutin’ ideals held out to them, lead the uneducated or semi-educated workers into one or other of these particular organisations. But with ripening intelligence and an increased desire to understand their real position in society, they very soon see through the trickery and confusion among which they have strayed. They learn — often from bitter experience — not what Socialism is, but what it is not. If they still desire to become Socialists, and are not so disgusted as to sink into apathy, they seek until they find, at last, a party that is really a Socialist Party - the S.P.G.B.

The schools of reformist thought presided over by Mr. Hyndman and Mr Ramsay MacDonald, may very well be good training-grounds for budding bureaucrats, Labour decoys and prospective  Cabinet Ministers but, except altogether in a negative manner, they are unthinkable as doing anything in the way of making Socialists. As a matter of fact, the confusion and mental decrepitude engendered by the teachings of the I.L.P. and the S.D.P. have done more to retard the progress of Socialism than all the efforts of the orthodox political parties.

F. J. Webb

Take Up The Sword. (1911)

From the August 1911 issue of the Socialist Standard

War ! Well, let it be War,
   While an enemy stands in the way of what we desire!
    Only the strong may aspire
 To life in a land where the sword is the giver of law.
 Then burn! O heart, burn ! with the fire
Of unquenchable hatred and ire,
And tear with a maddened talon and claw
And win or defeated expire.  

Lo, they have taken the earth.
   They have chained us to labour and heaped
                us with sorrow and pain ;
    Have wrung out our blood to their gain.
They have sneered at our anguish and counted
              it due to our birth
      That we pull with the ox in the rain.
     That we share in the flush-time of grain
With the shoat, and starve with the sparrow in dearth —
  All our agonised labour in vain.  

Oh' we have eaten our fill
  Of the husk, and laid down long enough with
        the oxen and swine;
  We have drunk blood and tears for our wine,
And wept out the dregs of our hope in the
                         merciless mill.
   We have paid cruel toll in the mine —
   Where the quick and the dead intertwine;
But now we are turning our backs to the swill,
Our breasts to the red battle line.  

Those who bespoil us and take
   The harvest we tear from the earth and drag up
       from the deep,
   Who, whether we wake or we sleep,
Plunge their beaks in our hearts in a blood-thirst
         no blood-feast can slake.
   They have taught us 'tis folly to weep —
 The Law is to take and to keep
Who have power. Let them hear it who taught it and quake! —
 They have broken the dream of their sheep.
     
 Take up the sword, then, and fight;
       Having joy in the battle and faith in the
                   winning at last;
            For the day of repining is past.
       And the sun of our hope is dispersing the shadows of night.
           Though we win to it slowly or fast,
           The die of our destiny’s cast.
       They have taught us that only the will of the
               mighty is Right —
            Then we will be mighty at last.

A. E. Jacomb