The Quarrel 'Twixt Mr. A. And Mr. B. (1910)

From the January 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “They were standing under a tree, each with an arm round the other’s neck, and Alice knew which was which in a moment, because one of them had ‘Dum' embroidered on his collar, and the other ‘Dee.’ ‘I suppose they’ve each got ‘Tweedle’ round at the back of the collar,’ she said to herself.  . . .
  “Of course you agree to have a battle?’ Tweedledum said in a calmer tone.
  “ ‘I suppose so,’ the other sulkily replied.’’

At the present juncture, now that the nerve-shattering crisis has at last arrived, it may be as well to think for awhile in what way working-class interests will be affected by the result of the present electoral struggle. The gauntlet has been thrown down by Mr. A. on behalf of his party, and has been eagerly taken up by the astute Mr. B. The leaders and their immediate followers are endeavouring to arouse the rank and file to a sense of the solemnity of the occasion. We are in the throes of a life or death conflict, the like of which has not been known for centuries. So we are told, at least. Yet, strange as it may seem, some few of us appear to care very little about this momentous issue. Whisperings have even emanated from certain sceptical quarters that the battle is not altogether genuine, that the Champion of Nonconformity and the Knight of Philosophic Doubt are not such implacable enemies as they pretend.

Perhaps, it all becomes a question of the point of view. The human race, as a whole, has developed, in a more or less perfect degree, the sense of sight. But very few of its members dare face, clear-eyed, the naked truth. Most men, fearful of blindness, and therefore, maybe, wise in their generation, prefer to examine all things through the blurred and smoky glasses of ignorance and prejudice. If the writer were a Liberal or Tory democrat, or, worse still, if he were a member of the I.L.P., he might imagine that the result of the 1910 General Election would change, for the better or worse, his present unenviable position in society. But not belonging to either of the hybrid political types above mentioned, be entirely fails to see how the workers as a class ever have been, or ever can be, affected by the results of the various struggles for political supremacy which take place periodically between certain sections of the capitalist class. Liberals, Tories and Labour men are alike thundering from their platforms their party cries. “Down with the House of Lords!’’ “Tariff Reform forever!’’ “Long live the Budget! ” and so on. Perhaps some of these “leaders of the people” will give us a little information as to whether, for example, the abolition of the House of Lords will change those huddled backed wrecks of humanity, to be seen any night reposing on the Embankment seats, back into men and women; or whether Tariff Reform will stamp out anthrax from among the Bradford wool-combers; or whether even such a munificient measure as “the People’s Budget” will enable the people to live as human beings should live rather than to rot and seethe in the hell of modern industrialism.

All over the country at the present moment the workers are listening, open-mouthed and credulous, to the specious promises of Mr. A. and Mr. B. and their lieutenants. Mr. A. is telling us in his usual lawyer like phraseology, that steps must he taken to see that never again shall the House of Commons be subjected to the indignities to which it has been forced to submit; while the metaphysical Mr. B. is explaining how Tariff Reform is not Protection, but only an attenuated form of Free Trade. In a week or two we members of the working-class will be registering our votes for one or other of our respective candidates. We shall make our choice for many and varied reasons. One of us will vote in a certain way because the candidate has a pretty wife; another because "well, he might do something or other for us if we give the chap another chance." We shall vote for any and every reason except for the one reason that really matters. What a tragic farce it all is! The working-class voters of the country hold in their hands the absolute power to free themselves from the misery and poverty in which they live and by which they are surrounded. And yet, time after time, election after election, they follow the political will-o’-the-wisps dancing before their eyes, to find themselves at the end sinking deeper in the slough of Capitalism, almost without hope of ever altering their condition.

There may be certain critical apologists for Parliamentary procedure, who, on reading the above, will insist that we Socialists have no business to interfere with the freedom of the working class to vote. They will complain, perhaps, that we only listen to Liberal and Tory politicians in order to jeer at them, and that while we are quite at liberty to abstain from voting for any but Socialist candidates, we have no right to attempt to persuade others to do likewise. Well, business or no business, right or no right, we shall continue our tactics, we shall advise our fellow-workers to vote for no one bat a Socialist. It is our class—the working class— that in every case puts these charlatans, these sham knights of a grail they have defiled, into political power. That is the irony and the pity of it. Whether—by means of the working-daw vote, be it remembered—the Liberals or the Tories are returned as a body, the conditions under which the workers exist will not be improved one whit. Unemployment, misery, poverty, intellectual and bodily degradation, will increase year by year whether Mr. A. or. Mr. B. is the titular leader of the House of Commons. Not until the workers understand their own position in society and in Nature will there be any chance of an improvement in their condition. Only when this knowledge dawns upon them, when, as a consequence, they join themselves together into a conscious political force to seize political power, in order to use that power in their own interests, will they be enabled, as a result of so doing, to stand erect, free men and free women, reaping and garnering for themselves the world-wide harvest of their mental and physical labour.

F. J. Webb

Ulster: the origins of sectarianism (2000)

Book Review from the July 2000 issue of the Socialist Standard

Ulster's Third Way by Brian McClinton, Ulster Humanist Association. 76 pages.

The title of this booklet is something of a misnomer. It does not really propose an alternative political or economic scheme for Northern Ireland. What it does do is outline the religious conflict that was, and is, interwoven into the politics of Ireland and which has played a vital role in confusing the working class. Unfortunately, the author gives religion an independent role in the Irish conflict whereas it was a weapon, albeit a powerful one, used by contending economic interests in fashioning the politics of the country.

Protestantism, in its most virulent form, as McClintock shows, came to Ireland in the shape of the Plantation of Ulster in 1603. But the Gaelic tribes that resisted the Planters did not do so because of their opposition to Protestantism. Had the Planters been Catholics, or even Humanists, intent on dispossessing those already there, the latter would still have resisted and the ensuing violence would have become a marker in Irish history.

The belief is common in Ireland, where it was ruthlessly promoted by the Protestant Ascendancy, that the Church of Rome strongly favoured Irish political independence. Nothing could be further from the truth. Inevitably some local clergy, reflecting their upbringing and the sympathies of their local communities, were Nationalist or Republican in outlook but the Irish Hierarchy remained consistent in its opposition to Irish independence through the ages. Rome's aspiration was to use Ireland as a springboard for the re-conversion of England, where, despite sometimes ferocious persecution, the Catholic Church retained many influential allies.

According to McClintock, Wolfe Tone and the Society of United Irishmen succeeded in persuading a group of Protestant and Catholic Irishmen to abandon their religious affiliations in the 1790s in pursuit of a common interest and that is the way forward. That is a half-truth that has sustained much Republican fiction. True, some northern Presbyterians and some southern Catholic peasants were united in an organisation whose purpose was to overthrow English power in Ireland. But the interest of the northern Protestants and the southern Catholics were certainly not identical. In the North the Protestants were farmers who enjoyed a modicum of prosperity as a result of the benefits of what was known as Ulster Custom. These, in turn, were led by a Presbyterian petite bourgeoisie, largely inspired by the French Revolution and the writings of Tom Paine. This revolutionary zeal was inspired by what they perceived to be adverse trade sanctions operated by London and, it is no accident that in later years, when their grievances were put right, the political heirs of these Presbyterians became the bitterest opponents of Irish Home Rule.

Conversely, in the south, the Catholic peasantry were motivated by their wretched conditions as tenants-at-will and, while the rebellion in the North was directed against the English military establishment, the Rising in the south was primary aimed against landlords, and their land stewards, who were invariably Protestants.

The working class and small farmers, who constituted the voting and cannon fodder at the turn of the last century and who are still burdened by the slogans of bigotry which disguise the true nature of the Irish conflict, did not mysteriously arrive at a sectarian consensus. This was the work of political opinion-formers, politicians, the business community and, of course, church leaders acting in a political capacity. Where the churches are indictable is in their willingness to be used by the profane business and political interests whose ultimate power resided in the numbers they could enlist into their battalions.

As a Humanist McClintock does a good job in helping to clear away the ignorance and superstition on which religion is based, but because in Ireland he finds more justification for his case in the story of what happened, he wholly neglects the more important question of why it happened. Thus he disregards the conflicting economic imperatives of the fledgling southern capitalists and those northern capitalists who had got fat on the benefits of the British connection imperatives, which lay behind an apparently religious conflict.

Richard Montague

The Passing Show: Fifth Column (1960)

The Passing Show column from the February 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a letter to The Times Maurice Macmillan, the Conservative M.P. and Chairman of the Wider Share Ownership Committee, wrote as follows (18/12/59):

Your leading article on wider shareholding on December 14th draws attention to the Acton Society Trust’s conclusion that this is a socially desirable goal, and that among employees there is very little opposition on political grounds to the idea of owning shares.

Mr. Macmillan’s Committee is, he says, examining “the problems involved,” including the “means of overcoming the feeling that share buying is for the rich.” Many workers will hope that the Committee will also study another of the “problems involved”: where the money is going to come from. Mr. Macmillan only describes as a “feeling” the belief that share buying is for the rich. His committee—which includes “joint stock and merchant bankers, stockbrokers, unit trust and investment directors, well known industrialists.” and so on, could soon overcome this feeling by distributing enough money to the workers for them to buy shares with. Judging from the description of the committee-members, they could well afford a few thousands for this praiseworthy cause. They would find workers ready enough to keep some of the surplus value for themselves, instead of seeing it taken away for distribution among the non-workers. But supposing, Mr. Macmillan, that the workers got too enthusiastic about keeping surplus value for themselves Supposing they decided that since they produce all this surplus value, they would keep it all for themselves, and not let any of it be stolen from them for the support of idlers. Supposing, in a word, that they introduced Socialism. What then? How soon your committee-members would disband, about face, and form a “Narrower Share Holding Committee”! Perhaps you had better think again before encouraging workers to keep some of the surplus value for themselves.

Fifth Column

But let us examine the deeper implications of Mr. Macmillian's proposals. Of course, the stockbrokers and unit trust directors on the committee would like more people to buy shares, since that would mean more business for them. And. of course, all the committee members would like some workers to own a handful of shares, since then they would be tempted to oppose strikes and other forms of workers’ self-defence, to safeguard the extra pound or two they would get as dividends. It would be planting a ruling class fifth column among the workers. One doesn’t have to say who would gain most from this, the worker with his ten shares or the employer with his thousand.

But, however much the committee would like this to happen, on any significant scale it just isn’t practicable. Capitalism can only exist on the backs of a propertyless working class. Wherever capitalism, either private or state, has appeared, one of the essential pre-requisites has been the divorce of the mass of people from any ownership of the means of production—the peasant has been robbed of his land, the handworker forced from his tools. If the individual was left as a small producer, he could not be compelled to take on the stultifying, monotonous, deadening jobs which he must do to keep capitalism going, and the ruling class rich.

The same applies now. If any significant numbers of workers were to own shares sufficient to support them without working, there wouldn’t be enough people left to do the work which must be done to keep capitalism alive. Mr. Macmillan needn’t worry about this happening, however. For all employers are continually trying to keep down their workers’ wages. As soon as numbers of workers began to own shares, this would weaken their will to resist the lowering of wages (either by direct cuts or by inflation); and as wages fell, so even those workers owning shares would have to sell them to make ends meet.

To sum up, one might say that Mr. Macmillan and his committee are pursuing by impracticable means an impossible end, and one which would horrify them if they ever did attain it.

Cobwebs

In the public wrangle among Labour Party leaders, which has followed their third successive defeat at the polls, Douglas Jay, Labour M.P. for Battersea North, came out with the following (Daily Herald, 27/11/59):—

The other frankly Marxist cobweb is the belief that Socialism consists in turning the whole of industry and trade into a State monopoly.

This belief is certainly a cobweb. We have had more than enough demonstrations of the fact that state ownership of industry is merely state capitalism: the workers in state industry are still just as much exploited as those in private industry, the only difference being that the interests of the capitalist class as a whole are allowed rather more influence in its running, as against the interests of the private shareholders in that particular industry. It is an alteration made by the capitalist class for their own benefit, and has no more to do with Socialism than the manoeuvrings on the Stock Exchange.

So far we agree with Douglas Jay. But what on earth made Mr. Jay describe this operation as “Marxist”? Marx and Engels believed in a new society, where each would contribute according to his ability, and would receive according to his needs: this involving, of course, the end of our present wage-slavery, which is an integral feature of state as of private capitalism. If Mr. Jay has come across any evidence to the contrary, he should really let the rest of us into the secret.

Alwyn Edgar

The Passing Show: Churchill at Omdurman (1960)

The Passing Show column from the January 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

Churchill at Omdurman

In his book My Early Life (quoted in The Observer, 6/12/59) Sir Winston Churchill talks of his part in the Battle of Omdurman. Just before the battle he was on patrol:

Talk of Fun! Where will you beat this! On horseback, at daybreak, within shot of an advancing army, seeing everything. and corresponding direct with headquarters.

Yes, it must have been exciting. Too exciting, perhaps, for some tastes. After taking part in the battle itself Churchill records what he saw:

But now from the direction of the enemy there came a succession of grisly apparitions: horses spouting blood, struggling on three legs, men staggering on foot, men bleeding from terrible wounds, fish-hook spears stuck right through them, arms and faces cut to pieces, bowels protruding, men gasping, crying, collapsing, expiring . . . In all out of 310 officers and men the regiment had lost in the space of about two or three minutes, five officers and sixty-five men killed and wounded, and 120 horses-- nearly a quarter of its strength.

But the men killed and maimed had not been sacrificed for nothing. The battle at Omdurman was a triumph for the British ruling class over the native Sudanese leaders, and meant that henceforth the British workers and the Sudanese peasants would labour for the same masters. It was not surprising that British Capitalism hailed this waste of life as a glorious victory.

The Bishops

In these decadent days bishops are always complaining about their half-empty churches, and it must be disappointing to them to find that their brand of aspirin is not selling so well as it once did. They can be forgiven, then, if like other firms they try a little self-advertisement now and again. Their managing director, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had this to say the other day (The Guardian, 20/11/59):

(The bishops) have no other means of directing or steering the clergy or laity except by their own quiet, loving pastoral discretion, and 1 believe that if there arc people who stand out far and away for their grace and wisdom, it is the bishops of the Church of England.

Since Dr. Fisher is the head bishop, he should know.

Poaching

Mr. D. L. Blunt, the Kenya Minister for Game and Fisheries, has warned the Kenya Legislative Council of the serious effects of the “large-scale poaching” of Kenya's wild animals (The Times, 9/12/59). He said that poaching had become “systematically organised and a commercial money-making racket.” No one would wish to see the wild life of Kenya slaughtered to extermination, but two comments may be made. Firstly, when the Kariba Dam was built by the white settlers in the Rhodesias, to provide the power needed for the development of Rhodesian Capitalism, they were not deterred by the thought of all the wild animals that would be drowned as the waters rose. And secondly, can the Kenya whites complain about the poaching of wild animals when they themselves have poached an entire country?

All-Powerful, All-Good?

According to the Italian commission of inquiry, “the 31 people—26 passengers and five crew—killed when a British European Airways Viscount crashed near Anzio in October last year after a collision in daylight with an Italian jet fighter, died because of ‘‘an act of God'" (The Guardian, 25/11 /59). The commission also found that a “further cause” of the disaster was that the Viscount had gone off its course, and was flying in an area reserved by the Italian Government for military activity.

Ruling classes have found since the beginning of civilisation that the idea of a God was very useful to them—no doubt one of the main reasons why the idea has survived, instead of vanishing along with the other frightened imaginings of primitive man. They still find it useful. The real cause of this disaster appears to be that the Viscount flew into an area reserved for war preparations: those killed in it were among the first casualties of the next war. But the Italian authorities could not be expected to admit that. It isn't the first time a ruling class has sheltered behind a God

Sweet Music

The latest move to “improve” factories is like reforms: ostensibly it is for the workers’ benefit, but really the advantage goes to the Capitalist class, or that section of the Capitalist class which introduces it. This new development is the continuous playing of background music, piped into the factory or office by any of half-a-dozen companies in this field. The aim is simply to increase production and therefore profits. As The Guardian says 110/12/59): “The pace must be stepped up at the times when workers flag.” No doubt our reformers, those staunch allies of “progressive" Capitalism, will lash themselves into a fever of enthusiasm in support of this step forward as well. Socialists will prefer to work for a system in which those who want to listen to music will be able to, and those who don’t want to listen won’t have to.

Alwyn Edgar

The Passing Show: Change of Mood (1959)

The Passing Show column from the November 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The glad news was heard in a million households on the Friday night after the General Election: the class war is obsolete! Mr. Macmillan announced it on TV. “This seems to me," he added, “ a great gain for the future." This sentiment will be echoed by workers everywhere. For now clerks, dockers, factory-operatives, will be able to put in immediate demands for wage increases and improved conditions, and the employers will agree forthwith. If they resisted, and defended their profits, they would be taking part in a struggle between, classes—between those who own the means of production and those who have to work them. But they won't resist—we have Mr. Macmillan's own word for it: the class war is obsolete.

Perhaps if the employees in Mr. Macmillan's own family firm, the publishing business, took him at his word, we should soon enough see the difference between. Mr. Macmillan, the soft-soap politician, and Mr. Macmillan, the member of the ruling class.

Change of Mood

There was another significant phrase in the course of the Prime Minister’s speech. Before the election we all heard Conservative candidates promising that “it will be even better if you vote for us"; but in his TV speech Mr. Macmillan could only venture as far as "I hope that in the course of the next Parliament it may be possible to maintain the national prosperity," and so forth. Before we voted, it was the indicative mood—“it will be better"; now the ballot boxes are closed again, the mood is subjunctive —“I hope it may be possible.” How soon the victorious party begins to tone down its pre-election promises!

Democracy

As against all the other parties, the Conservatives start with a great advantage: that very powerful instrument of propaganda, the Press, is largely on their side. In the field of the mass-circulation daily newspapers, the Conservative “Telegraph,” “Mail,” “Express,” and “Sketch,” together have over eight million customers; while the Labour-supporting “Herald” and “Mirror” have a circulation of just under six million (The Guardian, 9/10/59). On Sundays the Conservative papers sell over fifteen million copies, while again the Labour papers sell fewer than six millions. As for the provincial press, both daily and evening, the overwhelming majority of papers support the Conservatives. Apart from this, the British electoral system itself has a bias towards the Conservatives—admittedly small, but occasionally decisive, as in 1951, when the Labour Party had 220,000 more votes than the Conservatives, but twenty-six fewer seats (The Observer, 11/10/59).

Of the two Houses of Parliament, the House of Lords (although its powers are now greatly cut down) has a permanent Conservative majority. As to the elected House of Commons, the results of the Conservative advantages detailed above are soon seen. The Commons just returned should last, with a Government majority of 100, for the full five years, until 1964. If it does, it will mean that in the forty-six years between the “khaki” election of 1918 and 1964. the Labour Party will have had a majority in the House of Commons for only six years. For three years (1923-4 and 1929-31) no single party had a majority: while for thirty-seven out of these forty-six years, the Conservatives will have had a clear majority over all other parties. The only General Election since Asquith was Premier to have produced a workable non-Conservative majority was that of 1945 (the narrow Labour majority of 1950 was not, of course, a workable one and lasted only eighteen months!- And the 1945 result was the product of the holocaust of the Second World War. It seems, in fact, that it takes a cataclysm to unroot the Conservative majority in Parliament.

Labourism

The only sure way to alter these conditions is to bring about Socialism: and the way to do that is by the steady spread of Socialist ideas. Even if the Labour Party did form Governments more often it would make no difference to the economic system. The Labour Party used to claim it was a Socialist Party, but apparently it is now abandoning this pretence, judging by Mr. Gaitskell’s remark that "Labour wants to make Capitalism work better and more fairly than it does under a Conservative Government'' (The Observer, 11/10/59). As to that, one can only say that there is only one way to run Capitalism, and that, is for the benefit of the Capitalists.

SOUTH AFRICA

From The Times, 12/10/59:

Pretoria, October 11th.—Five British Socialist publications have been banned as objectionable literature under an official "Gazette" list published here. They are the fourth revised edition of “Questions of the Day,” “Socialism S.P.G.B.,” “Socialist Comment,” “The Socialist Party and War,” and “Socialist Party of Great Britain—its Principles and Policy.” The “Gazette” notice gave no reason why these publications are regarded as objectionable.—Reuter.

For those who have forgotten, South Africa is one of the Western allies, united in defence of democracy and freedom of speech, or so they tell us. It is interesting to observe that the South African Government, by banning these Socialist Party pamphlets, has paid an unwilling tribute to their effectiveness.

Alwyn Edgar

The Passing Show: The BMC Strike (1959)

The Passing Show column from the October 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The BMC Strike

The recent strike of workers employed on the new small car produced by the British Motor Corporation evoked some curious statements by the employers. The employees were dissatisfied with the rates of pay offered them for the work on the new car, alleging that they meant a reduction in wages. To this, a representative of the management replied:—

The company regard this as blackmail and want it to be understood clearly that they are not prepared to hold any discussions until normal work is resumed. The Guardian, 1-9-59.

Those who defend capitalism sometimes do so on the grounds that free bargaining is the best way to reach fair prices for the goods or services that everyone has to offer. The workers, they say, are not forced to work for any particular employer, or for any particular wage; they are free to bargain, and thus arrive a "fair" wage. This ignores the fact that the workers are in the nature of the case exploited by their employers; no business-owner will employ a man to work for him unless the man brings him a surplus over and above the value of his wages.

But even ignoring the exploitation of the workers, on which the whole capitalist system is founded, and even accepting the arguments about “free” bargaining and “fair” wages, how can the BMC defend its attitude? The workers are not prepared to accept the pay offered them for this particular job, and so stop work until agreement can be reached between the two sides. In doing this they are merely acting in accord with the teachings of the classical laissez- faire capitalist economists (“each acting to forward his own interests will produce the greatest general good”). But the BMC refuse even to discuss the question until the men resume work on the BMC’s terms! When that happens of course, the employers are free to spin out the talks as long as they want to— negotiations, adjournments, deferments committees, re-appraisals—and all the time the men are working on the BMC’s terms. It is exactly as if the men were to say that they would not even start talks until the BMC employs them at the higher rate of pay they are asking. If the men did this how Fleet Street would gasp in horror; how the leader-writers would lash themselves into a frenzy, denouncing such a departure from the established ways of behaviour! But when the employers do it, that’s all right. Fleet Street certainly gasped in horror at the latest BMC strike; but, the reason was that the workers had dared to cease work, instead of accepting whatever the management graciously decided to pay them, and touching their forelocks in gratitude that they were paid anything at all.

Fleet Street denounces forced labour when practiced by the Russians in faraway Siberia; but the only thing which appears likely to satisfy the big newspaper owners, and their class-comrades the big industrialists, is to forbid the workers to strike in any circumstances, and establish forced labour in this country as well.

Disaster

Religiously inclined people present many problems to the inquiring mind. After the recent crash of a Dakota near Barcelona, which resulted in the deaths of all on board, a man who narrowly failed to catch the plane is reported to have said “God saved me” (Daily Herald, 21-8-59). Does he, one wonders, really believe that the Almighty personally intervened in his case, and put difficulties in his way so that he wouldn't catch the plane? If the Almighty went to this trouble, why didn’t he stop the other passengers catching the plane, or indeed simply prevent it crashing? Perhaps the Christian theologians could answer this question—they must have had a lot of practice—but to the rest of us it remains puzzling. 

In the East

Another event reported the same day is also difficult to understand. At a Buddhist procession in Ceylon an elephant ran amok and killed fourteen people, including eleven women and a child. The Guardian, 21-8-59. Christians pondering on the Barcelona air crash can reflect that their Buddhist rivals will have an even harder time explaining this disaster away.

Plums

A correspondent of the Daily Herald (26-8-59) raises the following point:—

I read . . . the other day that there is a plum glut in Worcestershire, and that the fruit would be left to rot. Why can’t they be picked and sent to orphanages, children’s homes and hospitals?

It’s a comment often heard. If there is too much food at a certain time or place, why can’t it be given to those who really need it ?

The answer is that we live under a capitalist system. It wouldn’t pay anybody to transport the surplus fruit from Worcestershire to the people who could eat it. And, by capitalist ethics, what doesn’t pay isn't done. Besides that, to distribute free fruit to institutions like those mentioned in the letter would mean that they would reduce their purchases through the normal channels. This would strike at the profits of the middlemen and the farmers. However generous and kind-hearted such men may be personally, they can only stay in business if they play the capitalist game; and they would have to resist any suggestion which would have the effect of destroying their own trade.

There is a way in which we could distribute the products of society freely to the members of society; and that, of course, is the establishment of Socialism.

Alwyn Edgar

The Passing Show: The Devlin Report (1959)

The Passing Show column from the September 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Devlin Report

The Devlin Report was in line with the opinions of those who see the future of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland lying in the creation of a multi-racial, capitalist society. This strand of thought sees the Africans as being the wage-workers of this society, and wants them treated as wage-workers are treated here, with (ultimately) votes and "free speech" and the rest of the paraphernalia of capitalist democracy. This, in effect, would delude the Africans into believing that they are the real rulers of the country, just as the capitalist class tries to delude the workers in Britain. The result of this would be to turn the Africans (so this school believes) into respectable wage-workers, labouring as steadily for the profit of their employers as the wage-workers do in this country.

It seems likely that this trend of thought will prevail in the counsels of the ruling class, although for the present the British Government, and British officialdom in Nyasaland, seem to have been won over to the “settler" views of the white Rhodesian landowners, who regard the Africans merely as labourers on the land who must be kept in submission at all costs. But whatever the ruling class thinks and does, the view of the Socialist Party is clear. The only way to bring about a sound society, and to secure the free development of the human personality, in Nyasaland as elsewhere, is to establish Socialism.

Beating and Killing

The Devlin Commission allowed the Government one or two crumbs of comfort. It found that at the famous meeting of Congress leaders on January 25th “there was talk of beating and killing Europeans," and that when the trouble started “the Government of Nyasaland had to act or abdicate" The Observer (26-7-59). As to that, those of us who have frequently come into contact with white settlers from Kenya and Southern Africa can only say this: that if every settler who talked of beating and killing Africans were put in jail without trial, then the Africans would have to govern themselves, for there would be too few whites left to do it.

Religious Wars

A recent television broadcast of Bertolt Brecht's play “Mother Courage and Her Children" elicited this information in the Radio Times (30-6-59):

The Thirty Years’ War 1618-1648 was a religious war waged by the King of Sweden and the Protestant Princes of Northern Germany against the Catholics under the Emperor of Austria, aided by Poland and France. It ravaged the whole of Europe and killed half its population on the battlefields or by plague and famine. It brought no advantage to either side.

Socialists, in the light of the materialist conception of history, realise that the Thirty Years’ War was not a religious war, and that men do not murder each other merely because they are of different religions—or we should have civil war in this country between the Anglicans and Catholics, who now dwell peaceably together. The Thirty Years’ War was fought, like other wars, because the ruling classes of the countries taking part believed that they would get something out of it—either an increase of their wealth, or at least the safeguarding of the wealth they already had. But the Christians hold up their hands in horror when they hear the theory that the Thirty Years’ War (and others like it) was not a religious war. Such beliefs, they cry, are atheistic and blasphemous, and people who hold them are merely encouraging the spread of materialism.

How the Christians love to claim the slaughter and the devastation for their own!

Sidney Webb

The spate of speeches about Sidney Webb on his centenary mostly contained some sad, head-shaking references to the praise given by the Webbs to the Stalinist system in their book “Soviet Communism: A New Civilisation?" (This was the title of the first edition: the Webbs even went so far as to remove the question mark in subsequent issues.) For example, Lord Attlee’s speech, reported in the Manchester Guardian (14-7-59):

Webb tended to deal too much with institutions and not enough with people, and that may have accounted, Lord Attlee thought, for the extraordinary aberration towards the aid of his life of' his admiration for the Soviet Union.

But why arc these Labour Party men, these Fabians, so surprised? Sidney Webb spent his life working for Fabianism, the slow conversion of private capitalism into state capitalism. Then he and his wife went to Russia, and found their ideal system, state capitalism, in full operation; so, being honest if misguided people, they wrote a book praising it. What is so surprising in that?

Alwyn Edgar

The Passing Show: National Anthems (1959)

The Passing Show column from the July 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

National Anthems

There is a famous story to the effect that the King and Queen of a foreign country used to hold hands whenever their National Anthem was played, and say to each other “Darling, this is our tune." But apart from monarchs, National Anthems appear to have few friends in these unpatriotic days. The writer has often been nearly trampled underfoot in the fierce rush for the exits which cinema audiences make at the end of the programme, in order to avoid having to stand through “God Save the Queen.”

This has no doubt given our rulers pause for thought. For centuries the workers have been encouraged to rally round the flag, and defend their masters' profits on the battlefield, by the singing of patriotic songs and anthems. This was so useful to the ruling class that they could hardly be expected to let the habit die out without some effort to preserve it.


“God Save Nato"

If a third world war comes, it seems likely at present that the NATO powers will all be on the same side. So the latest production in the patriotic song line is the “NATO hymn,” copies of which were sent recently to many schools in this country. The help of God is freely invoked, the Almighty making his appearance in the very first line. The exact aim of the hymn is a little obscure. The first verse says “ Let . . . violence disappear.” while the second demands “ Build up the power of right . . . Let NATO grow in might, and put its foes to flight.” How exactly NATO is to put its foes to flight, and violence is to disappear simultaneously, is not made clear. Presumably the NATO armies are to be trained to spring out from behind convenient corners, and all shout “ Boo!” at the same time: at which the Russians will burst into tears and run away.

But these criticisms no doubt approach the subject from the wrong angle. Patriotic songs do not, and are not meant to, appeal to reason; they rely on rousing the emotions. G. K. Chesterton remarked that to say ‘‘My country, right or wrong,” was like saying “My mother, drunk or sober.” But “My country, right or wrong,” is just the feeling that a national anthem aims to instill. The NATO hymn is well in the tradition of previous patriotic anthems.

Even the Manchester Guardian, which whole-heartedly supports NATO, found that the NATO song's invocation of God stuck in its gullet. It quoted Sir John Squire's famous verse (21-4-59):

God heard the nations shout
  “Gott strafe England" "God save the King,"
God this, God that and God the other thing.
  "Good God! said God. "I've got my work cut out."

The Manchester Guardian thinks that a righteous God will be on NATO’s side; but his help, it believes, ought to be asked a little more decorously. This will, no doubt, not prevent the paper urging us on to battle in any third world war just as it did in the first two.


The Poverty of "Our" Judges

The Labour Party, which claims to represent the organised workers, appears to be angling for the support of a small group of labourers who have not yet formed themselves in a union affiliated to the T. U. C. The sons of toil in question are the county court judges and the Metropolitan magistrates. The Labour Party when in power attempted to enforce a wage-freeze on the miners and railwaymen, but it is not doctrinnaire about these things. One of the Ministers in the post-war Labour Government was Mr., now Lord, Silkin; and he realises that there are some people who ought to be free from the wage-restraints he and his colleagues recommended to the workers. In 1957 the county court judges’ salaries were raised to £3,750 per annum, and those of the Metropolitan magistrates to £3,400 (Manchester Guardian, 13-5-59). Now they are to be raised again, to £4,400 and £3,800 respectively. No one in the Lords spoke more enthusiastically in support than the Labour Lord Silkin. “There is no doubt in my mind," he said, "that a good many of our county court judges particularly, and magistrates, have been living in relative penury in the last few years—certainly since the war.”

What a wonderful word "relative” is! No doubt the judges and magistrates are poorer than the richest members of the ruling class. But if Lord Silkin is so worried about the "relative penury” of the judges, why couldn't he spare a word for the poverty in which many members of the working class have to live? There’s nothing relative about that.


“Something For Nothing”

Field-Marshal Montgomery said at the Founders’ Day celebration at the Royal Hospital. Chelsea, "I shall be very sorry when National Service comes to an end, as 1 think it is good for young people to learn to give something for nothing.” (Observer, 21-5-59.) 4

Such [as] a thrust in the stomach with a bayonet?

But Lord Montgomery needn't be sorry. For the ninety per cent. of the population who belong to the working class, their entire lives are spent giving something for nothing. Their employers exact surplus value from them: the value of their work over and above what they are paid. Without the workers giving "something for nothing” throughout their working lives, the capitalist system would collapse.

Perhaps that is what Lord Montgomery is afraid of.

Alwyn Edgar

The Passing Show: Hand in hand (1959)

The Passing Show Column from the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Socialists are continually being asked by reformers to put their objective—which is, naturally enough, Socialism— into cold storage and instead use their time and energy to support “immediate demands," such as the abolition of the H-bomb, the ending of the new laws in Rhodesia, action by the N.C.B. about miners’ unemployment, and so on. But the only objective, immediate or otherwise, of Socialists is Socialism. And if the efforts of the world’s reformers had in the last fifty years been used to work for Socialism, their “immediate demands” would probably by now be unnecessary.

South Africa

Prominent among the objects of the reformers’ interest is South Africa. They abhor apartheid. The result of their reforms would be to give the African workers the same opportunities as the white workers: that is, to work on equal terms for the South African capitalists. The objective of Socialists is to free both white and black workers from wage-slavery, and to end the evils of capitalism in South Africa as elsewhere

Hand in hand

The aims of the reformers in regard to South Africa are, in fact, exactly the same as the aims of the capitalists in regard to South Africa. The present state of affairs in the Union is the result of the political dominance of the large farmers, who are determined to keep the land (which gives them their economic and political power) for themselves, and to deny the Africans any political or educational equality, since that would only strengthen the Africans’ desire to own the land themselves, instead of merely working on it for the benefit of the white owners. The farmers wish to keep the Africans in subjection, as uneducated hewers of wood and drawers of water. But this is in direct contradiction to the desires of the South African capitalists, who want an educated working class, and one which is not made discontented by being deprived of the vote. The South African landowners strongly oppose giving the Africans the vote, since propaganda will no longer fool landless men into believing they can never be anything else: but the capitalists do not think that the grant of the vote will deprive them of any power, since they can see that in much of the capitalist world the workers possess the vote and yet make no attempt to use it to overthrow the capitalist systems (private or state) which sit on their backs.

Half-Baked

The identity of aims between the reformers and the capitalists has come out strongly in recent weeks. No journal, perhaps, can claim to speak for British capitalists with as much truth as The Director, the journal of the Institute of Directors. And in its April issue it shows great hostility to the South African Government's latest face-saving plan. Hoping to side-track the Africans’ demands for political equality, Dr. Verwoerd has announced his plan to create five Bantustans out of the present native reserves (which cover only one-sixth of the Union's territory) and to hold out to Africans in the Bantustans the hope of eventual political independence. The Africans would thus regard the Bantustans as their real homes, and would be treated in the much larger white area (including all the industrial districts) as a mere drifting population. But capitalism requires a steady, settled, tied-down, working class: and The Director damns the scheme comprehensively, dismissing it finally with “The Bantustan plan, in short, looks half-baked and wholly impracticable, politically and economically."

Spinach collecting

The supporters of South African capitalism in the South African Parliament itself similarly attacked the Government’s bill to segregate whites and non-whites at college, by creating new universities for Africans only. “Situated in remote rural areas," The Observer (12-4-59) reports, “and cut off as far as possible from contact with Western civilisation, the ‘universities’ will be too small to provide anything like the facilities available at proper universities." But universities under a capitalist system exist to supply the capitalists with the upper ranks of the workers in their industries and in their state services. The Opposition was therefore much disquieted with the repeated statements of Government M.P.S that “the separate universities would restore to the African his ‘Bantu culture.’"

What was this “Bantu culture" that had to be preserved and promoted, inquired an Opposition M.P. To answer his own question he turned to the chapter headed “The Culture of the South African Bantu" in the most famous of apartheid documents, the Tomlinson Report.

Bantu Culture, declares the report, embraces “Bride price" polygamy, ritual practices, ancestor worship, the brewing of beer and the collection of wild fruits and spinach.

And the collection of wild fruits and spinach is scarcely a preparation for work in the higher levels of capitalist industry.

Afrikaaner industrialists

The division among the whites in South Africa is not between English and Afrikaaners, but between the capitalists and the landed interests. Hitherto capitalist industry has been owned chiefly by English speakers, and the land mainly by Afrikaans speakers. But South African industry is growing year by year, and more and more of it is owned by Afrikaaners. The Manchester Guardian (13-4-59) says:

At the same time it is known that influential people in the growing Afrikaans industrial and commercial world are apprehensive about the effects on world opinion and on the economy of the country of such measures as the bill to create separate African “states." the bill to impose stringent forms of job reservation (for whites) on industry, and the bill to impose university apartheid.

Here lies the real danger for the supporters of apartheid—the increasing strength of capitalism. But when the South African capitalists have gained their inevitable victory, and have given the African workers equal rights with the white workers, then the only change that matters, in South Africa as in the rest of the world, will still have to be accomplished: the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a Socialist society.

Sir David in trouble

Sir David Eccles has been getting into trouble again. He told a German audience that the British royal family was all the better for its Hanoverian blood (The Observer, 3-5-59). Great exception was taken to this in the British newspapers. What they principally objected to was that anyone should mention the subject at all. It is never admitted in polite political circles that Prince Philip is German (coming from the German family that rules over the lucky Greeks) and that the Queen is part German (the family which occupies the British throne having been German, and having married Germans, from 1714, until the future George VI broke the custom by marrying an English-woman). Sir David Eccles will get no further in politics if he drops any more bricks. He must learn that the successful politician doesn't say things merely because they are true: he only says what the audience wants to hear.

 

“Love Thy Enemies"

The Archbishop of Canterbury, returning from a tour of the Far East, tells us that the Japanese “are a lovable people” (Daily Herald, 29-4-59). And a fine, appropriate sentiment it is from the head of a church which claims to advocate love and kindness. Only one criticism: why didn’t the Archbishop tell us this between 1941 and 1945, when Britain was at war with Japan? All we heard then from the bishops were exhortations to work harder and fight more fiercely to wipe out the bestial, inhuman Japs. But there it is. When British capitalism requires the organisation of a wave of hate, all its subsidiary concerns do their bit to help: and that includes the Church. Now, when the Japanese are our allies against the Russians, the latter, who were lovable from 1941 to 1945, have become bestial and inhuman, and it is the Japs who are lovable. How thankful the Church must be that the average man seems to have no memory.

Alwyn Edgar

Trip to Ireland April 4-11th (1959)

Party News from the June 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is a short report of the activities in Ireland and matters which arose during my visit.

We travelled from Belfast to Dublin on the Saturday evening after I arrived, and a get-together had been arranged at the home of Comrade Chris Walsh, who had travelled to Dublin for the occasion.

On Sunday the Conference was held in the Boilermakers’ Hall. This was the first Conference to take place in the Socialist Party of Ireland, and its chief aim was to set the Party on its feet as a national organisation. Until now there has been little contact between the Dublin and Belfast Branches, and they have been virtually two separate organisations.

The Conference appointed an Executive Committee, which will meet alternatively in Dublin and Belfast on the first Sunday of each Quarter. Its members are Comrades Montague and Devine, of Belfast, Comrades McBrain and Adams, Dublin, and Comrade Hackett of Armagh, where there is a sturdy group which probably will soon become a Branch. Montague was appointed General Secretary and Adams, Party Treasurer; one of the E.C.s first tasks will be to go into the question of dues, Central Funds, and Party Finances generally.

The Conference also adopted The Socialist, which hitherto has been produced entirely on the initiative (and at the expense) of two Belfast Members, as the official organ of the S.P. of I. It will still be produced in Belfast, but will now be under the control of the Executive Committee. A Central Branch Secretary was appointed (Comrade Tennyson) who will keep contact with outlying members. The other proposal before the Conference, that the name “World Socialist Party” should be adopted, was turned down.

Five members from Dublin, five from Belfast, Comrade Walsh and myself from England, Comrade Earp from Canada and a sympathiser were present at the Conference. There was some disappointment that the tape recordings of greetings could not, be available for the Conference, and also that I had not been appointed officially as a fraternal delegate by the E.C.

In the evening a propaganda meeting was held in the same hall, and there was a “full house” for this. Collections at the Conference and the meeting totalled nearly £8 and wipe out the deficit in Dublin's funds.

We returned to Belfast on Monday morning, and public meetings were held on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evenings. The Tuesday one was on Socialism and Religion, a rather daring subject in Ireland, but the audience was appreciative throughout. At the Wednesday meeting a group of Communists made weak attempts at opposition but did accept a challenge to debate, and if this materialises it should be an excellent thing for the Belfast Branch. On Thursday we travelled to Armagh and held another successful indoor meeting; I was told before I left that on the following day the Armagh members had many callers asking for Party literature.

There was no meeting on the last night. Friday, but on this night and all the others, members gathered together to discuss and ask question after question. I left with the impression that the Socialist Party of Ireland is really on its feet for the first time, and the prospects are good. At the same time they need help in various directions.

Robert Barltrop

The Passing Show: The Cart Before The Horse (1959)

The Passing Show column from the May 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Cart Before The Horse

The Conservative papers are filled with complaints about the money lost by nationalised industries. Do not— they adjure the voters—let the Labour Party in again, or “the dead hand of State control” will descend on more industries. But such complaints miss the mark.

Those who held shares in the coal-mines and the railways faced a bleak prospect in 1945: a prospect of many years without a penny of interest on their holdings, while the coal-mines and the railways recovered from the pre-war years of insufficient capital investment, and from the war itself. But just in time these maidens in distress were rescued from the terrible calamity of having to rub along without the surplus value extracted from the coalminers and the railwaymen. The knight-errant was to some of them perhaps unexpected: the Labour Party. Attlee won the election, formed his government, and put the mines and railways under boards whose duty was to pay out interest each year (in “compensation” for industries which no one in his senses would have thought of buying) amounting to £14 million for the coal shareholders and £40 million for the rail shareholders. (Both these figures have since increased.)

Profit To Be Made

This explains, of course, why the Conservatives, in power for nearly eight years, have left the State ownership of these industries untouched. But some of our private enterprisers are worried at the thought that even in these run-down and out-of-date industries there may yet lurk unexploited pockets of potential gain. An article in the Sunday Express on March 29th concedes that “no financier or industrialist in his right mind" would touch much of the railways. But the writer of the article is not discouraged. “Profit," he says, “has not been entirely eliminated. Even in their present condition, the Transport Commission’s hotels, buffets, docks and ships would make a sound investment . . . They should be the first to be hived off to private enterprise." Later on, he thinks, one of the railway networks themselves should be handed back to a private company. Realising that this suggestion might cause heart-failure to some railway shareholders, he adds hastily that in the first few years, the “free enterprise railway” might need loans from the State, plus a guaranteed “minimum dividend to investors for a period." Later still, he hopes, the rest of the railways “would also become qualified" (i.e. profitable enough) “ for handing back to private enterprise."

Safety Net

In other words, nationalisation is a device to take the risk out of some capitalist industries—for investors. If they allow the industries they own to fall behind the times, through not devoting sufficient funds to re-equipment, the State representing the capitalist class as a whole will step in and modernise their industries for them, paying them a guaranteed minimum of interest while it does so. And then, when the job is done, they can always demand that the industries concerned be “ returned to private enterprise," so as to turn the screw on the workers in them and jump up their dividends once more.

These proceedings are dressed up in a lot of long words and fancy phrases. But, stripped of verbiage, it can be summed up in the formula which has been the motto of the confidence trickster throughout the ages: Heads I win, tails you lose.

Still More

According to a book written by Clive Jenkins—Power at the Top (Macgibbon and Kee, 21s)—nationalisation has still more advantages for the capitalists. He says that “the industries may theoretically be owned by the people, but they are largely operated by the representatives of private enterprise in the interests of private enterprise" (Reynolds News. 22-3-59). Mr. Jenkins “shows how the dominant figures" on the State boards, “through interlocking directorships in private firms, are in close business and personal relationships with Britain’s industrial and financial oligarchy." He maintains that the capitalists have made good use of public ownership, and “instances below-cost coal supplied to industry, excessively cheap gas, electricity and freight services, and the way lucrative services have been taken away from nationalised airlines." Aneurin Bevan himself is quoted as saying in 1956—“Perhaps it is time we took the nationalised industries into public ownership?" This, from one of the leaders of the Labour Party, is an extraordinary confession of failure. No doubt he contemplates another variation on the State capitalist theme. But what must be done is to reject the variations and the theme together, and work for a Socialist society.

The Horse's Mouth

When capitalism is at last thrown into the dustbin of history, how many crowded cemeteries will remain as its memorials! You have heard often enough from Socialists about the bloody hands of capitalism, about the wars fought because each capitalist struggles for strategically-placed colonies, for sources of raw materials: but leading supporters of capitalism are themselves often as frank. M. Soustelle, one of the leaders of the movement which overthrew France’s Fourth Republic and placed General de Gaulle in power, says that France must keep Algeria “because he who possesses this strategic springboard controls the Western Mediterranean . . . because Algeria means the Sahara and the Sahara means oil. . . .  That is why France must make sure of retaining free access to the Sahara and prevent it from falling under any other than French sovereignty" (Manchester Guardian 19-3-59). In the last four years in Algeria, 1,500 French civilians and 80,000 Algerians have lost their lives in the fighting: but France must stay in Algeria, because of its strategic position and because of its oil. No Socialist could put the facts more damningly than M. Soustelle has done.

Very Successful

Blood is the main by-product of capitalism: Recently a book was published about the Flanders offensive of 1917—In Flanders Fields (Longmans, Green, 25s) by Leon Wolff. One attack went on for weeks, “some positions changing hands eighteen times. When the attack finally petered out, Haig had gained a few hundred yards of shell-torn country, and lost 74,000 British and French casualties " (Everybody's, 28-2-59). The same kind of thing happened day after day: “On September 20, the British line was pushed forward half a mile, and 22,000 men were killed or injured. September 26: 1,000 yards were gained, and 17,000 men lost. October 4: 700 yards gained, and 26,000 men lost. . . . On October 9, the attack was aimed at Passchendaele. . . . Thirteen thousand allied soldiers were killed and injured that day, with no ground gained. Haig wrote in his diary: ‘The results were very successful.'"

In four months, nearly half a million men were killed or injured, to gain about four miles of ground. British capitalism won that war. But what a price in blood the British working class had to pay for its masters’ victory.

Mon Repos

But enough of the dark side of our society. Every day the newspapers report some further instance of progress. In The Times (12-2-59) we are told of an improved prison cell. The old ceil was usually about 7 ft by 13 ft. At Everthorpe, a prison opened last year, the cells are 7 ft by 10 ft; now, the new "Butler” cell (which the Home Secretary helped to design) is 7 ft 1 in. by 8 ft 3 in. The Times special correspondent looked it over. “The effect," he said approvingly, “is of greater snugness."

It would be interesting to hear his opinion of the “snugness" of these holes after he had spent, say three years, in one of them.

Alwyn Edgar

The Church's One Foundation (1959)

From the April 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the Sunday Express (January 18th, 1959): “The Church of England stands to make millions of pounds if the Tories win the next election. The money will come from investments in free enterprise steel. The Church’s 2,187,000 shares put it among Britain's top ten investors in steel. . . . The investment is worth around £3,400,0000. Growing confidence that Tory success at the polls will end the threat of renationalisation has brought a rise of nearly 50 per cent. in steel shares from the low points touched last year. This suggests that the Church is already showing a profit in the region of £1,000,000 on its holding . . .  Soon the Church’s advisers will face the problem of reinvesting the £1,100,000 to be received from the take-over of its $260,000 British Aluminium shares.. This single transaction has brought the Church a profit estimated at £500,000."

The prophets of the early days for truth made spartan search,
     They lived on nuts and wore apparel strange;
But now in more enlightened times the profits of the Church
      Are made in dealings on the Stock Exchange.
"Take no thought for the body,” said the Gospel of St. Luke,
    “Consider ye the lilies of the field.”
They considered: but, while thinking, much more worldly steps they took,
     And placed their Cush to get the highest yield.
Do they pray, in their churches, that the Consols may not fall?
     Do they beg, as they kneel, that oil may rise?
Do they summon the Almighty to keep closer on the ball
      So their shares, like their prayers, may hit the skies?
The Church complains it cannot reach the workers—it despairs
      That it doesn't find them very fruitful soil;
But the Church can reach the workers other ways—by buying shares,
      And grabbing surplus value from their toil.

Alwyn Edgar

The Passing Show: Another Colonial Plot (1959)

The Passing Show column from the April 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another Colonial Plot

In Nyasaland the Governor proclaims a state of emergency because, he says, a plot by. the Africans to massacre the whites has been discovered. Southern Rhodesian security forces have been drafted into the country. There are three million Africans in Nyasaland, a sea of Negroes in which are scattered a handful of whites, no more than eight thousand all told. Despite this enormous disparity of numbers, the number of whiles so far killed as a result of the “massacre plot” is—none. But more than forty Africans have up to now been slain by the security forces.

The disturbances in Nyasaland originated in the desire of the Southern Rhodesian ruling class for aggrandisement. In Southern Rhodesia, the situation is much like that in South Africa. The white farmers and planters insist on "apartheid’’--although they don’t call it that. Hotels, restaurants, schools, are run strictly on racial lines. Political power lies in the hands of the whites. Theoretically anyone can vote, but the great majority of Africans are barred because they must pass a means test before they can exercise the franchise. If too many Africans apply for enfranchisement, then the means test can be stiffened—this, says a writer to the Manchester Guardian (March 11th, 1959) has been done twice in the past.

The devil they know

But the parallel with South Africa goes further than this. Successive governments of the Union, while pressing the desirability of keeping whites and blacks apart, nevertheless regularly, demand the handing over of Bechuanaland. Basutoland, and Swaziland—although these three territories together would add nearly a million Negroes to the population of South Africa. What the white South Africans want is not separation, but white domination: and so it is in Southern Rhodesia. Fcderation—which is in fact rule by Southern Rhodesia—was imposed on Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland against the wishes of the great majority of the Africans living in those countries. Many Nyasas travel far afield to find work: they have seen the subjection of the Africans of Southern. Rhodesia to the whites, and they don’t like it.

Not British

These developments have aroused much uneasiness in Britain. Modern capitalism demands educated workers; at school the worker learns enough arithmetic and English to labour at his employer’s bench or keep his employer’s books. Capitalism also demands enfranchised workers; the worker who votes from time to time —whether in Britain. America or Russia believes he is ruling himself, and this encourages him to think that the prevailing economic system is fashioned in his interests, fhc Southern Rhodesian ruling class, whose power is based not on industry but land, has shown itself hostile to both of these requirements. Hence the divergence of views between Britain and Southern Rhodesia. Sir Robert Armitage, the British-appointed Governor of Nyasalund, has been markedly less active in the latest developments than Sir Roy Welensky, the Southern Rhodesian Prime Minister of the Federation, and Sir Edgar Whitehead, the Premier of Southern Rhodesia itself. In Southern Rhodesia, where there had been hardly any civil disorder reported except some stone-throwing by strikers, a state of emergency was declared on February 26th. On the same day in Nyasaland, where the trouble was, a spokesman of the Government "said, “there was no question of a situation requiring a state of emergency in the protectorate" (Manchester Guardian, February 27th, 1959): the Nyasaland state of emergency was not in fact declared until March 3rd.

As in South Africa, the inevitable industrialisation of the country will settle these problems as capitalism wants them to be settled.. Socialists can leave capitalism to get over its own difficulties, and concentrate on the spread of Socialist ideas.

Never

In 1954 Mr. Henry Hopkinson, then a Conservative Minister, stood up in the House of Commons and said that there were some British colonies which could never hope to achieve independence: as an example he cited Cyprus. For the next four years the island was torn with violence: hundreds of human beings—British, Greek, Turkish—died: repeatedly British Governors announced that they could not bargain with violence, and that law and order must be restored before any constitutional advance could be made. Last month, with the terrorist groups still at large in the hills, Cyprus was granted its virtual independence. But do not expect the Ministers of the Crown to be at all abashed at having done what they said could never be done. To make a meal of their own words is no new experience for our present political leaders. They seem to thrive on the diet.

And Mr. Henry Hopkinson, whose use of the word “never” started it all? Like many another unsuccessful politician before him, he has been rewarded with a peerage. The costly struggle of the British ruling class to keep Cyprus has, at least for Mr. Hopkinson, not been entirely fruitless.

Freedom from the oppressor

The Cypriot workers, who have now exchanged their British musters for a home-grown variety, and the Nyasa people, who arc trying to do the same, might ponder an item of news from Pakistan. The long light against the British with its killings on both sides, its violence, its long jail sentences, its executions — which is only now ending in Cyprus, and seems to be getting under way in Nyasaland, has long been over in Pakistan. A decade and more ago, the British handed over authority to the new Pakistani rulers, and withdrew. The Pakistani workers expected their long struggle to result in a new and better era. How disappointed they must be now..

A letter to the Editor of the Manchester Guardian (March 12th, 1959) runs in part as follows

   "A little less than a month ago you briefly reported a large strike at the largest jute mill centre in the world at Narayanganj, East Pakistan. This involved some twenty thousand workers, and the dispute resulted worn a demand for the continuance of Sunday as a day of rest, instead of staggering holidays throughout the week as ordered by the managements on alleged technical grounds.
   "On the following day there was a partial return to work, and a large cavalcade of officers descended on the mills, led by Major-General Umrao Khan, the East Pakistan Martial Law Administrator.
    "Addressing the workers, he proclaimed that 'the strike being illegal, everyone who had absented himself from work had committed an offence, and was liable to punishment under the Martial Law Regulations. He made it clear that the ringleaders who had been arrested, would not in any circumstances be released and those who continued to play into their hands would not escape punishment.'
    "That this was intelligent anticipation has since become clear by an announcement that Lieutenant-Colonel S. A. Zaman Khan, President of the Special Military Court trying the ten employees of the Adamjee Jute Mills under the Martial Law Regulations, had sentenced them to between five and six years' rigorous imprisonment and flogging for resorting to an illegal strike.

Five years’ jail, and a flogging, for going on strike to keep Sunday as a day off! The British themselves could hardly have been worse than the new rulers of Pakistan. What a lesson this is on the futility of those who mislead the workers into fighting for the removal of one ruling class, and its replacement by another. If only the Nyasa workers could learn this lesson now, instead of when they have firmly saddled a new Nyasa ruling class on their own backs, what years of useless strife could they save themselves. Even if the fight for “independence” is won quickly, the real battle will still have to be faced: the struggle for an end to all ruling classes, the struggle for Socialism.

Alwyn Edgar

The Passing Show: The Optimists (1959)

The Passing Show column from the January 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Optimists

How times change! For a dozen years after the war successive Governments, Labour and Conservative, exhorted the coalminers to sweat and strain and push up coal production at all costs. The National Coal Board regularly took advertising space in the papers to tell us all how much the miners were earning, and to insist that never in our lifetime could there be too much coal. The miners, they said, had an assured job for as long as they wanted. Unemployment, dismissals, the dole—they were all things of the past. The future could not have been rosier.

Occasionally lonely voices were heard to observe that there is no security under Capitalism: that Capitalist industry has its booms, but also its slumps: and that the strenuous drive to produce more coal might well lead only to a situation in which there was more coal than people could buy—which would mean the sack for many miners.

But the N.C.B. and all the great parties derided these fears. Much scorn was poured on the “pessimists,” who were "living in the past.” All these things, it was said, might have been true in Marx’s day, but now everything was different. The laws of Capitalist economics, of expansion and recession, had somehow ceased to operate, so we were told. Capitalism in the coalmines was transformed now that it was administered by a state board instead of by the private owners. Many a well-phrased sneer was launched at those who "hadn’t moved with the times,” who "sought to apply nineteenth-century theories to twentieth-century conditions,” and so on.

The Pay-off

And now, what happens? On December 3rd last the N.C.B. announced that it had too much coal, and that it was going to close thirty-six pits. Between twelve and thirteen thousand miners will be affected. Of these, there can be found no other jobs for four thousand: they will have to "leave the industry.” Many of these are in Scotland and Wales, where there is already a high degree of unemployment. Their chances of getting other jobs near their homes must be slight.

So much for the pledges made to the miners that their jobs were secure. So much for those who said that Capitalism in the nineteen-fifties was not at all the same thing as Capitalism in the nineteen-thirties.

Sound Economics

Of course, these sackings are not the fault of the Coal Board. It has too much coal—to sell. If every family had all the coal it needed to keep warm this winter, no doubt the stocks the Coal Board have been accumulating would disappear quickly enough. But the system of society under which we now suffer does not operate like that. Coal is not dug out primarily to burn: it is dug out to sell. If people can’t buy it, even though they may want it to put on their fires, then, in the language of the Capitalist economists, there is “too much coal.” And when the Coal Board cannot sell all the coal it produces, it simply closes down mines, and sacks miners. In this it does exactly the same as would the board of Tate and Lyle’s, or the Imperial Chemical Industries, or any other private concern, in the same circumstances. Coal is a Capitalist industry just as much as sugar or chemicals.


Dr. Attlee’s Remedy

Back in the brave days of 1945, the Labourites used to claim that nationalisation was Socialism. Some of the simpler ones still do. But even these ardent souls must have been given a chill by the latest news. As for the Labour Party spokesman in the Commons discussion on the announcement, Mr. Robens, he had no explanation of how an industry now dismissing four thousand men could be called “Socialist” (The Times, 4th December, 1958). True, he pointed out that the losses on imported coal had been unfairly thrust by the Government upon the Coal Board, although strictly speaking they were nothing to do with the Board at all: and that apart from this fiddling with the accounts, the Coal Board had made a surplus of forty million pounds in its ten years of operation. This argument, while quite justified, only goes to show that the coal industry is now a profitable state Capitalist concern.

The moral of this story is that Capitalism doesn’t change merely because it is twenty years older.


Indiscipline

On December 4th there were two illuminating items side by side in the Manchester Guardian. The first was about the recent strike of the Argentine railwaymen for better pay. The Argentine Government’s answer to this was to mobilise the railwaymen under military law, and court-martial two hundred of the strikers for “indiscipline.” The strikers were sent to jail for terms from five days to fifteen months.

Workers who go on strike are merely acting on the fundamental assumptions upon which our society is based. Everyone has something to sell, and everyone tries to sell it for the highest price obtainable. The great majority, the workers, have nothing to sell but their labour-power. The small minority, the Capitalists, sell the goods and services the workers produce for them. When a chain of baker's shops put up the price of bread from sevenpence a loaf to eightpence, all that has happened is that the baking firm has gone on strike as regards the sale of loaves at sevenpence, and is now demanding eightpence before it will sell. When workers demand a rise in pay from seven pounds to eight pounds a week, they are not refusing to work, for that would mean greater privation: they are simply putting up the price of a week’s labour-power from seven pounds to eight pounds. They are just as much available at the new price of eight pounds a week as loaves are at the new price of eightpence.


It all depends who does it

What the Argentine Government has done, by jailing those workers who refuse to work for the old price, is to introduce a policy of forced labour at a forced wage. The most the railwaymen can be guilty of is a breach of contract: and under the Capitalist’s own law this is only a civil wrong, for which a defendant can be made to pay damages, but not sent to prison. But apparently the Argentine ruling class doesn’t consider itself bound by pre-existing law when profits are at stake.

When evidence comes through of forced labour in the Soviet Union, how horrified are the rulers of Britain and America! What denunciations are made of the Russian tyranny! But not a word has yet been said of the forced labour in the Argentine. The reason is not hard to find. The Argentine Government, with all the other South American rulers, is the close ally of what is called “the free world.” In the column next to the news about the Argentine railway strike, the Manchester Guardian remarked (about the United Nations debate on Cyprus):—

  “At this point the mute allies of Britain thought wistfully of the Latin Americans: the only reinforcements always available to the Anglo-Americans in a jam, but only to be recruited at the bidding of the United States, who had sought and cherished a back seat in the grandstand. Mr. Lodge was faced with the unpleasant alternative of risking the victory of the Indian resolution or mobilising the Latin Americans behind an opposing resolution, and so enraging the Greeks.”

There we have it. The Latin Americans, including the Argentines, can always be relied on to back the American Government in world affairs. No wonder the American and British rulers have nothing to say about the denial of human rights in Argentina. But what a commentary it makes on the claim of the British and American Capitalists to be fighting for freedom and democracy, when they openly accept the support of a country where the ruling class introduces forced labour to safeguard its profits.

Alwyn Edgar