The Curse of National Prestige. (1905)

From the August 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

The dawn of peace appears in the Far East

Slav and Mongol have faced each other on many a battlefield on land and sea, and victory has been uniformly with the new world power of Japan. This war was essentially a commercial war, as all wars are to-day carried on in the interests of commerce. All international relations, diplomatic and military, are becoming more and more commercial in their nature.

Some years ago the late Lord Salisbury declared that all wars in the future would be railway wars, and later he avowed that they would be tariff wars. He saw clearly as we Socialists see that war is but a manifestation of the antagonism of interests existing in the several national spheres of industry. We have only to look at recent wars in which European powers have been engaged to see that they have all been economic.

Norway and Sweden may be seen in a state of extreme tension because the ruling class of Norway believe that Sweden has been securing preferential commercial treatment through the appointment of a Consulate whose sympathies and interests were purely Swedish. Because of this commercial friction the Norwegian Storthting has passed a resolution deposing King Oscar and placing their country under the control of a provisional government.

Greece made war upon Turkey because she lusted after the rich olive groves of Crete. France and Germany were at war because France had ambitious thoughts of extending her boundaries to the Rhine while Germany was desirous of possessing the broad, smiling plains of Alsace and Lorraine. America fought with Spain for the possession of the plantations of Cuba and the Philippines. Britain crushed out the national independence of the Transvaal and Orange River Republics.

During the latter of those wars what was the fear of the ruling class as expressed in their Press? Not of the loss of life of the soldiers on the veldt, not of the thousands of children done to death by official incompetence, or something worse, in the concentration camps; not of the burning of homesteads and farmhouses in the Vaal; no, it was none of those things. The real fear was shown in the thrill of horror which was felt by the monied class in Park Lane or on ’Change when the rumour was current that Botha had blown up the Rand.

Nor is it a new thing for war to be fundamentally economic. In one stage of civilisation the food question causes tribe to fight against tribe, the fate of the defeated tribe being to serve as food for the victors. In another phase of civilisation the captured in battle are sent as helots to toil for the benefit of those who have vanquished them.

As Britain deliberately crushed out the trade and manufacture of Ireland and of India in the interests of her own manufacturers, so have countries sought for colonies and for extended territory in order to secure trade monopolies. In other directions the cloven hoof of commerce has displayed itself. Thus the union of the Parliaments of England and Scotland has ever been defended on the plea that it gave to the latter all the commercial privileges that the former had won for herself.

Although our contention that war has always been fundamentally economic can be justified from every historical epoch, yet it would be going too far to say that this has always been obvious. Many wars have appeared on superficial examination to be primarily religious, while others have been excused on the ground of maintaining national prestige. When recently the Baltic Fleet shot down innocent fishermen on the Dogger, when France ignored Germany in her arrangement with Britain, Spain and Italy as to her position in Morocco, in the thousand and one other occasions on which war has been in the air it has been the maintenance of national prestige which has been the excuse and the justification put forward.

In the worship of this fetich Britain replied to Russia’s seizure of Port Arthur by the seizure of Wei-hai-wei, and Germany by the fortification of Kiau-Chau. Britain having a sphere of interest, another phrase for a sphere of exploitation, Germany must have a sphere of interest in the province of Shantung, while France and Japan seek for similar enforced “concessions”.

The above remarks have been called forth by our witnessing dissension in the recently unified French Socialist party on the question as to whether the party should take part in wars carried on by the ruling powers of France. Among Socialists there appears some uncertainty as to the proper position to adopt with regard to this question, and a few remarks on the subject may not be out of place.

Beaconsfield, in his novel Sybil, declared that England was divided into two nations. These two nations are the nation of propertied and the nation of propertyless. The nation of the haves who do not work, and the nation of the have-nots who do. The question we have to determine for ourselves is, “Is the country of the propertied worth fighting for by the nation of the propertyless?”

I do not think it will be questioned by any Socialist that it is his duty to oppose the wars of the ruling class of one nation with the ruling class of another, and to refuse to participate in them. When Germany seeks to force war upon France so as to secure for herself special trade advantages with Morocco, it is for the millions of German and French socialists to declare in no uncertain voice that they will have no part or lot in the war. If they do this then there will be little fear of war. The military power of Russia has failed in the Russo-Japanese war largely because of the unrest among the Russian people, and the military power of Germany would be equally powerless against a revolt against war amongst the most intelligent of the political parties in the Fatherland.

With defensive wars the question becomes somewhat complicated. Is the Britain of the ruling class worth defending by the workers? Has the worker to-day – a wage-slave earning but a bare subsistence wage – anything to fight for? As it is the country is being conquered by the operations of the international capitalist. The British worker is to-day the employee of a limited liability company or of a trust whose shareholders are international, and it is the capitalist class who rule the political machine.

Were Germany to conquer France or France to conquer Britain, he would be ruled by no more alien class than rules him to-day. As the result of bring a citizen of a country which is nationally independent his condition is such that he has no guarantee from week to week of his power of earning his livelihood. Thirteen millions of him are living in a state of semi-starvation, and the individuals composing those thirteen millions are always changing. In the slum districts the conditions are such that crime is at a premium, and virtuous living at a discount, so much so indeed that it is a constant surprise that the results of these conditions are so good.

The worker to-day has nothing to fight for. The interests of his masters are not his interests. National prestige is not his prestige, but is used to force from other nations commercial treaties and conditions which in the end prove adverse to him.

What the Socialist has to realise clearly is that the interests of his fellow workers in other lands are nearer to his than are those of his master in his own country. The bonds which bind worker with worker, irrespective of nationality, are those of class solidarity. The meeting of Japanese and Russian on the platform at the International socialist Congress at Amsterdam in August last was but symbolic of this solidarity. From the capitalist-class of every country the worker is divided by a gulf of class antagonism which can be bridged only by the absorption of the capitalist-class in the working class, the result of the coming Social Revolution.

When the capitalist-class fully realises that they can no longer depend upon the working-class, when they find that the worker has at last come to understand his class position, and that he has no reason for fighting in his master’s interests against those with whom he has no personal quarrel, he, the capitalist, will see that it is impossible to appeal to national prestige, to patriotism, to the spirit of “our imperial race” and all the rest of the phrases used of old, and then it will be impossible to make war in so light a spirit, or to raise questions likely to create a tension between the ruling class of different nations.

It is for the worker to see that his position demands that he should fight only for his class emancipation, and that nothing, internal reform or national strife, should draw him away from his determination to fight for the realisation of the Socialist regime.

WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES UNITE! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS! YOU HAVE A WORLD TO WIN.

Robert Elrick

Quotes. (1905)

Quotes from the January 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard

Early issues of the Socialist Standard would be peppered with brief quotes which would serve as inspirational, informative and, most importantly, as space fillers. Here are the quotes from the January 1905 issue of the Socialist Standard:

The object of true education is not merely to make people do the right things, but enjoy the right things; not merely pure but to love purity; not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.  — Goethe.

In the huge mass of evil, as it rolls and swells, there is ever some Good working imprisoned; working towards deliverance and triumph.  — T. Carlyle. "French Revolution."

The plain message physical science has for the world at large is this, that were our political and social and moral devices only as well contrived to their ends as a linotype machine, an antiseptic operating plant, or an electric tramcar, there need now at the present moment be no appreciable toil in the world, and only the smallest fraction of the pain, the fear, and the anxiety that now make human life so doubtful in its value. There is more than enough for everyone alive. Science stands, a too competent servant, behind her wrangling, underbred masters, holding out resources, devices, an remedies they are too stupid to use.  — H. G. Wells in "Fortnightly" for December.

Quotes. (1904)

Quotes from the December 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

Early issues of the Socialist Standard would be peppered with brief quotes which would serve as inspirational, informative and, most importantly, as space fillers. Here are the quotes from the December 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard:

Let no man fear the name of "Socialist." The movement of the working class for justice by any other name would be as terrible.  — Father William Barry.

The rich are always content with the lot of the poor.  — Wertheimer.

Call ye that a society, where there is no longer any social idea extant? not so much as the idea of a common house, but only of a common over-crowded lodging house, where each, isolated, regardless of his neighbour, clutches what he can get, and cries "mine!" and calls it Peace, because, in the cut-purse and cut-throat scramble, no steel knives, but only a far cunninger sort, can be employed.  — T. Carlyle. (Sarter Resartus.)

With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears. Then, for the first time, man, in a certain sense, is finally marked off from the rest of the animal kingdom, and emerges from mere animal conditions of existence into really human ones. The whole sphere of the conditions which environ man, and which have hitherto ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who now, for the first time, becomes the real conscious lord of Nature, because he has now become master of his own social organisation. . . . It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.—Frederick Engels.

Obstinacy of opinion and heat in argument are surest proofs of folly. Is there anything so assured, resolute, disdainfu, contemplative, serious, and grave as an ass?  — Montaigne.

The really exhausting and really repulsive labours instead of being better paid they are almost invariably the worst paid of all . . . The more revolting the occupation the more certain it is to receive the minimum of remuneration.  — John S. Mill.

In every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organisation necessarily following from it, forms the basis upon which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of that epoch. Consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes. The history of these class struggles form a series of evolution in in which, now-a-days, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class—the proletariat—cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class— the bourgeoisie—without at the same time, and once and for all emancipating society at large from all exploitation, oppression, class-distinctions and class-struggles.—Marx.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstacies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. —The Communist Manifesto. 

He that is down needs fear no fall.  — Pilgrim's Progress.

Better to hunt in fields for health unbought,

Than fee a doctor for a nauseous draught.

                                                             — Dryden. 

This mournful truth is everywhere confessed,

Slow rises worth by poverty depressed.

                                                             —  Dr. Johnson. 

"Master, I marvel how the fishes live in the sea;"

"Why as men do a-land: the great ones eat up the little ones."

                                                             — Shakespeare.

The law is a sort of hocus-pocus science, that smiles in your face while it picks your pocket; and the glorious uncertainty of it is of more use to the professors than the justice of it.  — Macklin.

I never could believe that Providence had sent a few men into the world, ready booted and spurred to ride, and millions ready saddled and bridled to be ridden.  — Richard Rumbold, when on the Scaffold (1685).

The Co-operative movement has to some extent lost sight of the great aim which Robert Owen had in view, which was to raise the whole of the members of the community by reorganising the forces and circumstances which governed their lives.  — Co-operative Annual, 1902.

Quotes (1904)

Quotes from the November 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

Early issues of the Socialist Standard would be peppered with brief quotes which would serve as inspirational, informative and, most importantly, as space fillers. Here are the quotes from the November 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard:

And we too love peace, but not the peace of slavery. Marat.

They shall build houses and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards and eat fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant, and another eat. — Isaiah. LXV. 21, 22.

What sort of society is this that has, to the extent that ours has, inequality and injustice for a basis? Such a society is fit only to be kicked out through the windows — its banquet tables, its orgies, its debaucheries, its scoundrelism, together with all those who are seated leaning on both elbows and enjoying it on the backs of others whom they keep down on all fours. The hell of the poor is the paradise the rich love to solace themselves in. Victor Hugo.

The human race is gradually learning the simple lesson, that the people as a whole are wiser for the public good and the public prosperity, than any privileged class of men, however refined and cultivated, have ever been, or, by any possibility, can ever become. — Lewis H. Morgan. Ancient Society.

The artisan who is demanding at this time an eight hours day in the building trades is simply striving to recover what his ancestor worked by four or five centuries ago.  — Thorold Rogers.

Wage-Workers of the World, Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains — you have the World to win.  — Karl Marx

The great appear great to us because we are on our knees: let us rise!  — Theroigne.

The modern state, whatever its form, is essentially a capitalist machine; it is the state of the capitalist; the ideal total capitalist.  — Frederick Engels.

The punishment good citizens get for neglecting their politics is to be governed by bad men.  — Plato.

The abolition of poverty and the abolition of capitalism shall be accomplished at one and the same time.

Room! For the men of mind make way!
  Ye robber Rulers, pause no longer;
Ye cannot stay the opening day:
  The world rolls on, the light grows stronger.
The People's Advent's coming!
— Gerald Massey.

Political economists see nothing but the past; hence future generations will represent the civilization of political economists by a head reversed and looking backward. — Fourier. 

The Commercialisation of Literature. (1904)

From the November 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

The awful ignorance of the middle-class re-acts on Society at large, yet the ignorance is not due to lack of information but incapacity of thought. This observation was forced upon me the other day as I was reading in The Guardian an article entitled “The Next Literary Epoch.” Miss G. Hill, the writer, began by showing how books are now treated as manufactured articles, and are "advertised and sold much as a new line in dress material.” This is due to the gradual disappearance of the personal relation between publisher and author. Huge amalgamations have made the link solely a monetary one. The manager of the company dares not deal with ought but "certainties.” The literary element in the governance of publishing is diminishing since the directors had no more knowledge of literature than the directors of a chemical company have of chemistry. Science has also created a thirst for facts; literature, as a mental refreshment and enjoyment, has ceased to be sought after.

Miss Hill continues: "We must take into account the fact that literature is chiefly in the hands of the middle classes, and will therefore be modified by the conditions of life and habits of thought prevailing among these classes. It is they who furnish the bulk of both writers and readers. The democracy, as a rule, use their leisure for the study of science. It might be supposed that what the upper classes lack in point of numbers they would make up in point of opinion; but they are not originators; they do not create new movements of thought or control the stream of intellectual tendency.” Further the writer of this interesting article show that specialising has become a rule, but that it is useless if the basis of education is not broad enough to specialise upon. People are acquiring knowledge without thereby acquiring "power.” The facts obtained sufficed without deductions being made from these facts. "This is the way to train up learners but not thinkers.”

S. J. C. Russell

Radical Principles? (1904)

From the September 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the council meeting of the Metropolitan Radical Federation held on Saturday, 20th August, Mr. Herbert Burrows was unanimously appointed delegate to the International Peace Congress at Boston, U.S.A., in September. He will, doubtless, prove an able representative of Radical principles.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain. (1904)

Party News from the September 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

Official Notice.

The General Meeting of the Socialist Party of Great Britain will be held at the Communist Club, 107, Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, London, W., on Sunday, 18th September, 1904, commencing at 9.30 a.m.

The following Preliminary Agenda has been arranged:

Election of Chairman.
Appointment of Stewards.
Election of Standing Orders Committee.
Report of the Executive Committee.
Party Organ.
Rules.
Report of Delegates to the International Socialist Congress, Amsterdam.
Party Emblem.
Premises.
Election of General Secretary.
Election of Treasurer..
Other business.

On behalf of the Executive Committee,

(Signed) C. Lehane,

General. Secretary.

Literature Agency.

Branches and members should purchase their literature through the Party Agent, F. C. Watts, 154, Ashmore Road. Paddington, London, W. Write for particulars as to terms, etc.

Central Economic Class.

The class meets weekly and is free to all. Full particulars will be sent on application to J. Fitzgerald, 34, Wilmington Square, London, W.

The International Congress at Amsterdam. (1904)

From the September 1904 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Welcome to Delegates.

[From "Het Volk."]

The Netherlands Social-Democratic Party gives you a hearty welcome!

The Paris International Congress of 1900 conferred upon the still young Dutch Party the honour of receiving the representatives of the world's Socialist organisations in 1904, and it is to Amsterdam that from all parts of the earth are flocking' together the hundreds of men and women entrusted with the will of the millions of toilers, who carry the heavy burden of capitalism throughout the Earth's length and breadth.

The eyes of the entire conscious proletariat are now turned towards Amsterdam, where the proletarian forces are concentrated, bearing the happy message of a new and a better future. The organtisation of the class-war is now the principal object. But even through our strife itself the seeds are sown for the tank of days to come, the organisation after the victory.

To this twofold task of organising the strenuous battle, we are now fighting with all the strength of our convictions, and of breaking the ground for the future society, which is necessarily germinating in the cesspool of unfettered capitalism, you are concentrating the labour of this coming week.

Proletarian might and courage and self-reliance grow up high out of the wealth of our scientific researches, strengthened day by day by the hard facts of capitalism itself. Proletarian forethought and prudence have to be observed by the masses, whose will and intentions yon represent, for many are the difficulties and great is the responsibility when facing the task of choosing the ways and means.

The Dutch Party, too, awaits your debates and your decisions with keen interest. However young we may be in the ranks of the International—within a few weeks we will celebrate the tenth birthday of our party; and then, strengthened by the rules which the Congress will have again laid down for the international life and movement of the proletariat, we will promise each other earnestly and solemnly to carry on the propaganda of our principles with renewed power until the victory is gained. And we shall no less proclaim our unshatterable will to hold high—above all differences of opinion, which with us can and may be but temporary— that unity of action, without which the proletariat can never excel in power its great and still mighty enemy. In the prosperous growth of our party nothing is more natural than difference of opinion concerning the means of action. But all exchange of thoughts about such differences must be governed by the earnest dedise to find, on the basis of proletarian science and of proletarian consciousness, the solution which shall warrant unity of action.

That shall be our firm resolve, when by and by we shall look back upon our labours of ten years and shall gather new strength for the times to come.

In the far East capitalism is forcing the workers of two great nations to fight each other in bloody battles. In the colonies' it wages its exterminating wars to gain ever larger fields for its insatiable lust of exploitation. In the industrial countries it lays like a leaden burden upon the working classes. In the agricultural districts it fosters as much as possible the ignorance and the unconsciousness of the toiling masses.

Against this irresponsible power we direct our forces, whose war-cry is—Organisation and Unity!

And the serrying of our ranks is now of greater importance than ever, where the churches are of late openly using their influence solely on behalf of capitalism. Bearers of Christian love and charity, as they call themselves, they throw the ethics of Christianity to the dogs, and freely accept the ethics of capitalism.

This we experience even in our country, and we arm ourselves formidably for this new form of old battle.

Your discussions will strengthen our power. We are happy to see you in our midst, and we give you a hearty welcome!

The Times Lockout (1979)

From the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

When The Times and Sunday Times suspended publication on 30 November, the owners had given all the unions involved a time limit to accept a new and wide-ranging agreement, while the National Graphical Association, the union whose members stood to lose most by the new printing methods, was refusing to negotiate at all “under duress”. Fears were expressed that the papers might disappear like the News Chronicle, Daily Herald and Star. Indeed, the General Secretary of the NGA declared: -

It appears that Lord Thomson and The Times are determined to act as executioners in the killing of The Times and Sunday Times. We are to be cast in the role of undertakers—which leaves us with no alternative but to bury it. (Daily Mail, 5th December 1978)

But this last ditch declaration did not reflect the realities of the situation, which pointed to the employers’ aggressive action securing for them the substance of their demands while conceding something to the NGA, as has happened in the resumed negotiations.

The dispute attracted quite exceptional publicity, suggesting that it was one entirely without precedent. Apart from the claim that The Times itself is something special, there was nothing in this, for the dispute did not involve anything that has not happened before. It was just the old familiar ugly face of capitalism.

Lockouts are as old as capitalism, including those aimed at forcing unions to accept new production techniques; like the great engineering lockout of 1897. Lord Thompson’s stand is just the same as that of the then engineering employers with their declaration “we will be masters in all our shops”.

Every generation has seen workers who had acquired high skills robbed of their jobs and livelihood through the development of new techniques: the hand-loom weavers ruined by power-driven factory textiles, the canal boatmen and the drivers of horse-drawn vehicles driven out by the railways; the morse telegraphist hit by machine telegraphy and the telephone, the railwaymen in their turn squeezed out by motor transport. Printing itself had the problem of manual typesetting displaced by the steam press, the rotary press and the linotype machine.

In its defence The Times says that it offered relatively generous redundancy pay and that all redundancies will be voluntary; but this only meets part of the workers’ problems. Men with specialised skills who have worked at them for years and have taken pride in their work lose what, to many of them, has come to be regarded as a way of life. Even if they get, and like, another sort of job — and many cannot hope to do so — it is likely to be at lower pay.

All of this has happened many times before. What shocked journalists and printers on The Times was that it should happen to them; some even thought that Lord Thompson was bluffing.

The technical developments behind the dispute concern the new computerised process which enables those who use the keyboards to set the type directly, thus eliminating the old type-setting by the printers. The National Graphical Association said they accepted the new methods but demanded that all, or most, of the keyboard work should be done by their retrained members. According to the Observer (3 December 1978) the NGA was prepared to allow a limited amount of the work to go to clerks handling advertisments, but wanted the practice of journalists directly type-setting some of their own articles to be deferred for five years. A complication is that some of the journalists want to take over the work from the NGA members; one of them is reported to have described the NGA claim as being like a claim that “horse-drivers should be the only people driving cars with combustion engines”.

In a lengthy statement The Times (24 November) set out what the owners regarded as the three main issues. The first related to the increasing number of unofficial strikes which have interrupted production. The Times demanded a return to the situation as it existed before the early 1960s, when the union executives were able to exercise control over their members and prevent unofficial walkouts. This is what The Times means when it says it wants to deal with “strong Trade Unions”.

The second issue named in this article was the new technique. “The electronic process is more efficient, more flexible, cleaner and much less expensive”. Unless it is adopted, says The Times, they cannot compete with their rivals and cannot make adequate profit. The third issue flows from the greater efficiency of the new method, in the form of greater productivity and consequent big reductions of staff — with the promise of higher pay for those who keep their jobs.

It was in this situation that Times Newspapers decided to shut down unless the unions would accept the new agreement by 30 November, with the implied threat (in spite of Lord Thompson’s denial of any such intention) that in the last resort the suspension would become permanent. There was to be no repetition of the action of the late Lord Thompson, who met a £3 million loss out of the family fortune. So the owners were prepared to lose much more than £3 million in order to coerce the unions. An important factor in the struggle was that they were financially able to stand a long struggle. It was reported in the Observer (3 December 1978).

The International Thompson Organisation, run by Lord Thompson from its base in Toronto, is expecting to declare £45 million after-tax profit this year. Most of that comes from North Sea oilfields which will soon reach peak production.

Publishing The Times is only a small part of their activity: if need be they could give it up altogether.

Two incidents early in the dispute deserve comment as illustrating the naive attitude of some workers towards capitalism. The General Secretary of the NGA appealed to Lord Thomson to negotiate over the heads of the management, a request that was refused. And The Times correspondent, Mr. Clifford Langley, in a letter to the Guardian (4 December 1978) deplored the action of the management and of the editor “who has allowed his staff . . .  to be exposed to the intolerable threat of dismissal, against an impossible deadline”. He said that the staff had “lost all confidence in the management” and called on the editor to resign in protest at the management’s attitude.

What makes the NGA General Secretary and Mr. Langley think that “the management” and the editor have some sort of independent authority? The Management is there to carry out the owners’ policy and if the editor refused he would be sacked like any other employee. This is capitalism; in The Times as in any other organisation run for profit.

And what is there in the belief that The Times is in some ways special? It rests on the claim that the newspaper has a high standard of objective reporting, allows critics access to its columns and puts the wellbeing of “the people” before party advantage and private profit. There is something in the first two points — after all, the ruling class have needed to know what is really going on in the world — and that newspaper is one of the few which has, on rare occasions, allowed us space to put our case in our own words. But the present dispute shows how ruthless they can be when their own capitalist interest is at stake.

Edgar Hardcastle

General Election . . . 1979 (1979)

Party News from the January 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Islington Branch, with EC approval, will contest the next General Election in Islington and Ralph Critchfield has been nominated as our prospective candidate. It had been the intention of the Branch to contest the Election had it been called last Autumn. It would have given us little time to launch a satisfactory campaign; may Jim be thanked for postponing the date!

Now we have time in hand. A manifesto has been approved for publication. The Branch and Parliamentary Committee are in the process of finalising plans for canvassing, literature selling, meetings etc. Fuller details will appear in subsequent issues of the Standard. In the meantime, members and sympathisers who can help, (there are jobs that can be done prior to the election) are requested to send their name and address to Ian Westgate, 1 Helix Gardens, London SW2.

We can then advise you of our plans, together with a note of what you can do.

Islington Branch

Tickets Please. (1912)

From the November 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

It gives one quite a start when one is thinking of the Derby winner, or speculating on the prospect of a day or two next summer at the sea-side, whilst travelling home from work, to be asked for one’s ticket. What a blessing it would be, I sometimes think, to pay once and for all and have a ticket for a lifetime—just one punch and the trick is done—and then to keep it under a glass case as a proof to the coming race that we lived in ticket-of-leave times.

Tickets for trams, trains, ’busses; tickets for soup, coal, blankets; State Insurance tickets, Labour Exchange tickets. Trade Union tickets, pawn tickets; tickets to stand up in the theatre, tickets to sit down in the park. Tickets for the widow of Jack Thomas, who worked hard all his life, but died and left - what? Nothing of value in this private property system—just nine children!

What a life! At one tune our forebears wore the brass collar to let all and sundry know that they were the property of some overlord. Now we are ticketed and numbered and punched and shelved and stamped and cut and trimmed to a nicety. How old are you? Where were you born? What was your father? How many children have you? How long have you been out of work? Some working men think they are free. Probably they have the childish notion that it is a fine thing to carry tickets and to have people think they are somewhat above Blatchford's bottom dog.

But after all it must be a question of your servile position in society. Even the person who is lucky enough to be able to purchase a season ticket must feel a certain amount of pride in passing the ticket puncher with the noble utterance — "Season.” Now it must be that the more we are ticketed and labelled the more we are chained to the Juggernaut car of capitalism. How would you have it? You want a decent meal, a good suit of clothes, a pretty home for your wife and children. What prevents you having these things? This—you have not the right ticket. You have not the ticket that gives you the power to say to this man "go!” and to that man “come!” Your ticket is the ticket of the slave. And therefore, as might be expected, you work like a slave and live like one.

You have only been concerned up to now with sending the slave owners to Parliament— the place from which are sent all the things that hurt you, because those who control at the seat of government are the masters’ agents. Comical to relate, you got quite excited over placing your enemy where he could injure you without showing his hand. For every movement of troops, every movement of police, are controlled by the dominant class whose power was gained with your help.

But when you are forced to look idly on at blacklegs taxing your ticket of leave to work off the check board, that is the time you tell us you are fighting the masters. How you must hurt them! Perhaps it is you who drive them “out of town”—down to Ascot, to Henley, to the Alps and the Riviera, to Cairo and Khartoum. But when you understand that the Government is only an instrument for conserving the masters’ interests you will not have the cheek to say you are seriously fighting the masters while you elect them to Parliament, to control the political machine, to wield the forces that subdue you while they deliberately starve you and your wife and children. You would realise that you are only playing at war.

No, it is not fighting —it is just suicide. Life is too short to “wait and see.” Just fight them hardest when they coax you most, when they call you sons of the Empire, and so on. That is at election times. Have the right ticket for yourselves then, and back it with all the strength and intelligence at your command. You will be then be on the road to putting all the other tickets on the fire, and bidding adieu to many forms of vice and crime which go to the make-up of getting a living,

S. Ward

Obituaries: Fred Evans and Alex Paterson (1961)

Obituaries from the March 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

We regret to inform our readers pf the death of two old members of our companion Parties; Fred Evans of Los Angeles and Alex Paterson of Winnipeg.

Fred Evans died in harness. He had just delivered the Western Socialist to a news stand in Los Angeles when he collapsed and died of a heart attack. He was a tower of strength to the W.S.P. on the West Coast; an indefatigable speaker and propagandist. He visited England a few years ago and spoke on our platform in Hyde Park. He also gave considerable assistance and hospitality to two of our comrades who visited Los Angeles during speaking tours recently. He will be sadly missed by our companion Party, which already suffered a serious loss through the death of Gordon Coffin, one of the founders of the W.S.P.. a few months ago.

Alex Paterson was one of the oldest Canadian subscribers to the Socialist Standard. Over the years he gave a great deal of financial help to the S.P. of C. He visited England thirty years ago and met some of our older members. He had been ill for many years and lost both his wife and daughter in the last few years.

A full account of these two old comrades will appear in the Western Socialist, but we wish to add our tribute in this brief note.

Wage Cuts (1982)

From the January 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

When capitalism is going through a period of expansion most industries are able to sell all their output at a profit. With unemployment at a low level it is a favourable time for unions to press wage claims. Employers, rather than have the flow of profits interrupted, will make concessions, often without strikes actually taking place. In this phase the workers’ standard of living rises. In a serious depression the position is reversed. The threat by the unions to close the factories loses most of its force because, with sales falling and profits harder to make and often disappearing altogether, employers are cutting production, standing workers off, closing factories down, and in extreme cases going out of business. The big increase of unemployment helps the employers to resist claims for wage increases. In this phase it is normal for the standard of living of workers to fall, quite apart from what happens to the unemployed.


As far as workers in work are concerned, what is going on in a depression is obscured because, at least for a time, wages and salaries continue to rise more than the rise of prices. In the year for May 1980 to May 1981 the average earnings of all workers rose by 13 per cent while prices rose by only 11% per cent. But employers are interested not only in rates of wages but equally in the amount of work they can get out of each worker. There has been a general intensification so that the same output can be got with fewer workers. A survey early in the year showed that this has happened to a marked extent in offices, and the same has gone on in industry generally, often with the introduction of pay related to productivity, as in the coal mines. It is shown too in the reduction of staff by 9,000 in British Airways and in the cuts of Civil Service and local government staffs. And with the deepening of the depression the wage trend is now changing. In the period January to July 1981, while prices rose by 10.8 percent average earnings of all workers rose by only 7.3 per cent.

Of course the unions try to resist this and declare that they will not accept it; just as they have gone on declaring in the past ten years that the level of unemployment, which has doubled and doubled again, was “unacceptable” to them. They are wise to do their best but they cannot escape the consequences of capitalism, any more than can the capitalists.

Different groups of workers come up against the impact of depression in different ways; ranging from private industry where falling profits hit them at once and directly, to nationalised industries in which government subsidies may lessen the impact for a time, to the Civil Service and local government, where government pay policy is the decisive factor.

In manufacturing industry, with many bankruptcies and other companies on the verge, average earnings of all workers and the average earnings of engineering workers have both been falling behind the rise of prices since 1978. Seventeen cases have been reported of companies in which unions have had to agree to pay freezes for varying periods of up to a year (Daily Mail, 21 September 1981). Among these are the British Steel Corporation, British Airways and British Caledonian. In the engineering industry, against a claim by the union for an increase of at least fourteen per cent on the national rate, the employers at first proposed no increase at all, but later offered three per cent which the unions rejected. The unions faced the difficulty that 400.000 jobs have been lost in the year to June 1981 and there are 300,000 workers on short time. In this industry wages are negotiated locally, apart from the national rate, and the employers’ offer leaves the field open for bigger increases in companies still trading profitably.

For the nationalised industries as a whole the government has announced that its 4 per cent guide line is expected to be applied. British Leyland accordingly made an offer of 3.8 per cent and the unions were told it was not negotiable. The company’s reaction was: “We are obviously not in a robust enough situation to withstand any widespread or protracted industrial action. We would not survive. There would be a widespread loss of jobs if they were successful in getting a lot of people out on strike” (The Times, 3/10/81).

Unlike BL, the nationalised coal mines are not losing money, and in the changed energy situation, there is a government approved plan for expanding output in the long term. New mines are due to come into operation. Not wanting a coal strike, the Board offered nine per cent, and then increased it but a strike is still possible.

It is in the Civil Service and local government that the 4 per cent is chiefly intended to operate. In this field the government, directly or indirectly, controls the amount of money it is prepared to spend on wages and government strategy has already been made clear in the determined fight to defeat the 21 weeks of strikes by civil servants. Like Reagan’s ruthless handling of the strike of government-employed Air Traffic Controllers, it aims to set a pattern for wage increases generally. Since 1956 Civil Service pay has, by agreement, been related to movements of pay for comparable work in outside industry. But long before 1956, in a less formal way, governments sought to prevent the pay of its employees getting out of line. A situation similar to the present one arose in 1931. Then, too, in a depression, the government drastically cut expenditure on its departments. Civil Service pay, which from 1920 to 1931 had been reduced periodically in line with the fall of prices, was subjected to a further 10 per cent cut. Unemployment pay was also cut.

Governments enter into agreements with Civil Service unions, but, like employers generally, when it suits them they will suspend, modify, or break agreements, including those permitting claims to be taken to arbitration.

The present government has already prepared the way for this in Civil Service pay this year. The unions are to be allowed to go to arbitration, but the agreement on which the unions recently settled their dispute, contains a significant reservation: The Government will accept recourse to the Civil Service Arbitration Tribunal but on the understanding that the Government reserves the right, if necessary, to ask the Mouse of Commons to approve setting aside the Tribunal’s award on grounds of over-riding national policy.

Although the government pays a large part of the expenditure of local government it has not in the past been able to prevent local authorities increasing these expenditures and meeting the cost by levying higher rates. The Thatcher government has tried in various ways to get local authorities to hold down wages and reduce the size of their staffs. Finding these measures inadequate new legislation is pending to give the government more direct control.

The declared attitude of the unions concerned threatened a “winter of discontent” comparable with what happened in the winter of 1978-9 when the Labour Government tried to impose a 5 per cent ceiling on wage increases and provoked widespread strike action. On past form we may expect the Thatcher government to be more determined in its resistance.

Edgar Hardcastle

Scarman—judicial oversight (1982)

From the January 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

Since, the riot in the St Pauls area of Bristol in April 1980, there have been disorders on a comparable scale in a number of British cities. The most violent took place over three days in April in the Brixton area of London, but there were also large- scale incidents in Southall, Toxteth (Liverpool) and Moss Side (Manchester), as well as smaller disturbance in other towns. The impact of such events is intensified by live television coverage, which reveals their similarity to civil war and apparently shows a near-total breakdown of law and order. The government were worried, both about what was already happening and about what might happen in the future if the causes of such upheavals went unidentified and unremedied. Two days after the Brixton disorders had ended, Home Secretary William Whitelaw appointed Lord Scarman to conduct an inquiry into the riots. His report was published at the end of November (Cmnd. 8427).

Scarman has a reputation, in staid circles, for being something of a “radical” judge, a supporter of a Bill of Rights, and he is well practised at holding inquiries into social disorders of one kind or another. He has clearly learned (though perhaps it came naturally) how to draw conclusions and make recommendations that will offend no one in authority and yet serve as evidence that not quite all is well and that “something” is being done. For example:

  I find that the direction and policies of the Metroplitan Police are not racist. But racial prejudice does manifest itself occasionally in the behaviour of a few officers on the streets (p. 127).
  There is scope for a more coherent and better directed response by the police to the challenge of policing modern, multi-racial society (p. 128).

His strongest criticism is describing as “a serious mistake” the operation known as Swamp 81, which involved flooding selected areas of Brixton with policemen who were expected to make widespread use of their powers to stop and search people in an attempt to detect and arrest robbers. This operation heightened the impression that it was difficult, especially for the young and black, to walk the streets of Brixton without being harassed by the police.

The report begins by considering the social conditions in which the riots took place. A picture of deprivation and discrimination, the fruits of capitalism, is visible even through Scarman’s studied understatement. In the Borough of Lambeth, which includes Brixton, some twelve thousand households live in overcrowded conditions, and one-fifth of all the housing stock is officially substandard. The unemployment rate in Brixton is thirteen per cent, but among young black males it is estimated to be a staggering fifty-five per cent. The other riot areas have similar environments. In Scarman’s words:

  The common strands in many of the major disorders . . .  are to be found in shared social conditions, in economic insecurity and perceived deprivation, in enforced idleness because of unemployment, and in the hostility of at least a section of young people to the police (p.14).

But these are merely “common strands”: 

  None of these features can perhaps usefully be described as a cause of the disorders, either in Brixton or elsewhere. Indeed, there are, undoubtedly, parts of the country which are equally deprived where disorder did not occur. But taken together, they provide a set of social conditions which create a predisposition towards violent protest (p. 16).

This is a comforting (for the ruling class and their government) piece of illogic.

Reaction to the report has been mixed. The Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality described it as “brilliant”, which is a sad reflection on his aspirations. Ted Knight, lefty leader of Lambeth Council, observed that anyone on the local streets could have said what the report does, and complained that Scarman had not pointed out the new restraints on council spending — as if the past history of Brixton had not included periods of more public spending. The strength of Lambeth Borough Council’s proposals can be seen from their suggestion that the Metropolitan Police would be more answerable for their actions if they were accountable not to the Home Secretary but to a local Police Authority — just as the police in Merseyside are!

Of course, it doesn't matter how the police are controlled. Whatever system is used, they will continue to be the defenders of capitalist order and capitalist property. Imagine that everything the reformers want of the police has been achieved: no racial prejudice among them, black policemen at all levels of the force, local accountability, true consultation, riot equipment surrendered. The essential role of the police will not have been altered. Many of those who see police harassment as the major cause of the disorders are quite content to see the police carry out their duties, so long as they do so in a less objectionable manner. In the words of the leader of one of Brixton’s black organisations: “We do not object to what they the police do so much as to the way they do it.”

What is this essential role of the police? Scarman provides an answer which is eloquent largely for what it leaves unsaid:

   the primary duty of the police is to maintain “the Queen’s Peace”, which has been described as the “normal state of society”, for in a civilised society, normality is a state of public tranquillity. Crime and public disorders are aberrations from “normality” which it is the duty of the police to endeavour first to prevent and then, if need be, to correct (p. 62).

In writing this, Scarman seems to have forgotten that part of his report which describes the “normal state of society" in Brixton, not an area noted for its public tranquillity. Slums, unemployment, insecurity, hopelessness form the Queen’s Peace in nineteen-eighties Britain, which we are supposed to believe is a civilised society! It is a topsy-turvy world in which penury and slums are accepted as normality, but that is the world and the logic of capitalism, and that is the world the police play a part in defending.

And that is the world at whose disposal Scarman has placed his services. The task of his inquiry was to alert the government so that it might tinker with a few things (such as longer training for police) in the hope that these will suffice to prevent such confrontations in the future. Socialists, having held our own inquiry into the nature of capitalist society, recommend that it be not tinkered with but replaced.

Paul Bennett

Drug profits (1982)

From the January 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

The perverse priorities of capitalism are most clearly reflected in the market place; if harmful products can be sold easily, capital will be switched in the hope of realising this potential of larger profits. This often forces the capitalist class to pass legislation in which the interests of the minority of capitalists directly benefitting are sacrificed to the broader well-being of the class as a whole. Certain minimum standards of health and safety are laid down so that the usefulness of the working class to capitalist production is not too greatly impaired by such things as adulterated food, industrial pollution, or the side effects of so-called “wonder” drugs.

Naturally those capitalists profiting by the sale of a harmful product will play down the dangers and try to find a loophole in protective legislation. For when Chemie Gruenenthal, the original German inventor of thalidomide, discovered that they had produced a killer drug they at first tried to continue marketing the drug, while spreading confusion about it. Johann Goden, Gruenenthal’s representative in Cologne took the lead by suggesting that the drug be mixed with other sedatives so that “if it proves impossible to keep things dark . . .  any side effect could then be attributed to the other preparations. But heaven help us if this expedient turns into a boomerang”. Later he visited a clinic and reported back “I took the opportunity to explain our standpoint over the peripheral neuritis problem” [one of the side effects] “and did my best to foster confusion over the subjects [1] Goden was as clear as anyone could be that considerable further harm would result from further sales of thalidomide, yet he continued to work actively to that end. This drug, like so many others, was originally considered to be safe, and the harmful side effects were only discovered later. There is however an industry, operating within the capitalist system but in most countries outside its legal framework, the harmful longterm effects of whose products have been known for a very long time. Yet it is flourishing now as never before, despite the current recession. This is the narcotics industry, which lures the wrecks of capitalism with a transient escape from all its woes, but leaves them evermore desperate for the next dose, and for the money to buy it.

The cultivation of opium from the oriental poppy, concentrated mainly in the so-called Golden Triangle in South Fast Asia, predates capitalism by many centuries. It was discovered that smoking the petals in long pipes, or hookahs, helped to relieve the drudge of the continual struggle for existence. The sensations of dreamlike euphoria, relaxation and the absence of pain are however bought at a price. The development of tolerance by the body means that ever increasing doses are required to excite the same response, and this can lead to dire consequences. This is more particularly the case with the opium derivatives which can be more easily absorbed and therefore work faster. Laudanum and morphine have genuine medical uses in emergency cases but addiction to them, and more particularly to heroin, supplied in a form which can be injected into the veins, does nothing but harm to the victim. The symptoms include lassitude, depression, sallow complexion, jitters, loss of appetite and insomnia. There is also damage to the circulatory system, as veins become useless following repeated injections.

Also of ancient origin is the cultivation of cannabis (Indian hemp) and marijuana. The latter (similar to hashish, long associated with Arabia and the Levant), is a plant which flourishes in North America. Unlike the opium derivatives, this family of drugs are much less habit forming. In consequence there is a strong lobby in many countries in favour of legalising their use. However well meaning the protagonists on either side, this is really no more than an argument about the cheapest way, from the capitalist viewpoint, of controlling the problem. Marijuana and cannabis are usually smoked in tobacco laced with the drug, which can produce a growing intoxication and sense of well being. In the long term there can be vivid colour hallucinations and relaxation of inhibitions, accompanied by a lethargy that acts to prevent the sufferer from becoming violent. Cocaine, in contrast to the opiates, is a stimulant sometimes used by doctors to relieve fatigue. Its use can lead to over-confidence, garrulousness and unnatural euphoria, overdosing to weakness, emaciation and depression.

Drug addiction is a serious problem to the capitalist employers because the addict cannot operate as an efficient cog in the production machine, indeed is often incapable of any work effort at all. Because of this inability to find employment, the confirmed addict will turn to crime in order to pay for “shots”. It was however not until 1909 that the capitalist class were sufficiently concerned to undertake any collaborative international action in this sphere. In that year an Opium Commission met in Shanghai, involving 14 countries led by the USA, the country which had then, and still has now, the most serious addiction problem. The object was to control movement from one country to another. The first Interhational Narcotics Convention met at the Hague in 1912, and five other Conventions up to 1936 were attempts progressively to check the traffic at its source and to control opium production, importation and exportation. This Convention eventually totted up 85 signatories, but all these efforts have been almost totally ineffective. The producing countries did not take the drastic action demanded to license production and collect all the opium produced. They were unwilling for the simple reason that the trade was too profitable and the effect on their own national economics would have been too severe. Consequently cultivation has continued and efforts to illegally smuggle the drug into other countries have been intensified. Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok are the main ports involved, but there is now a growing traffic by air. In the 1950s and 1960s “Communist” China became a major source of smuggled heroin, most of the supply to Hong Kong now arriving by the overland route.

In America, the illegal cultivation of marijuana is flourishing. Both there and in the Golden Triangle record crops have been harvested in 1981. The potential profits in these bonanzas cannot of course be reaped without sales, and efforts to achieve these are now in full swing. The equivalent in the narcotics trade of the orthodox sales representative is the “pusher”. Compared to his respectable counterpart, the pusher has two big problems. The illegality of the business means that most transactions must be conducted in secret, away from the eye of the law, and that there is no legal redress against any payment defaulters. This leads to on-the-spot sanctions. A case was recently reported [2] where a lad unable to pay had his knuckles broken so that he could no longer inject himself. If an addict is unable to get drugs, he or she suffers agonising withdrawal symptom, so that this victim was put in a ghastly dilemma. In a recent court case [3] concerning the smuggling of Columbian cannabis into Britain, the smuggler had bought a £2000 computer to keep account of sales. This compelled even prosecuting counsel to remark that “the way in which the accounting was done leaves one with a degree of admiration.”

Rehabilitation of individual addicts is a long and costly process, and the success rate is low. Thus the process has been depersonalised with the main effort being spent on trying to prevent supplies reaching the country in the first place, or reaching customers if this fails. Consequently, although there are some centres attached to hospitals for the treatment of addicts, there is an inadequate number of these. Another recent court case [4] illustrates this. A Blackpool cannabis pusher who was fined £1,500, had found demand so great that he had to take his phone off the hook. “It was like feeding the 5000”, he commented. The court were told that thousands of young workers in the Fylde area were begging him to supply them with drugs. Yet the nearest treatment centre is at Prestwich Hospital in Manchester, 40 miles away and difficult to reach except by car.

Those commentators who say that the addiction problem “is no respecter of class” [2] are incorrect. They fail to see the common class position of all workers in opposition to the ruling capitalists, being confused by the subdivisions into seeing “upper” and “lower” classes, managerial classes, and so on. What they really mean is that addiction is found among all sections of the working class. If a young capitalist becomes “hooked” that presents only the relatively trivial problem of a bad example being set. The capitalist nowadays takes no part in the productive process, so it matters little whether or not he is capable of doing so. On the other hand, workers who experiment with narcotics can damage only themselves, in more senses than one. For when they come down they find that there are still no diamonds in the sky.

E. C. Edge

References

[1] “Suffer the Children”, The Story of Thalidomide. Sunday Times Insight Team, published 1979. Andre Deutsch.

[2] Nationwide. BBC1 TV, 15.10.81

[3] Daily Telegraph, 1.10.81

[4] Daily Telegraph, 25.9.81