British Labor Heartened By "Uncle Arthur's" Victory
Henderson, By Fred
British Labor Heartened By "Uncle Arthur's" Victory By Fred Henderson London. |^Y this time American readers have the results of the byeelection in the Clay Cross Division of...
...NAZI SNEAKS AND STOOL-PIGEONS A DUTCH observer in Berlin describes a particularly vicious kind of espionage that is being carried on under Hitler-Goring auspices...
...in spite of the fact that over 3,000 anti-Government votes were diverted to a Communist candidate...
...The mob—the crowd—the mass— will arrive then...
...and that his vote represents nothing but a quite characterless and unmeaning sway of the fringe vote away from the Government...
...No Nourishment in Lectures I On Anthropology At the recent gathering In Nuremberg the Nazi Deputy Lippert openly declared that Germany's unemployed millions need not look for any improvement of their lot in the near Aiture...
...The skill and courage with which the tiny group in Parliament has made its - appeal to the reason of the nation against the overwhelming odds of the vast Government majority has contributed greatly to the revival throughout the country...
...What happened last year was that the rank and file, in a series of general declarations affirming the Socialist purpose of the Party, remitted to its execution the business of shaping those declarations into detailed plans...
...Everything but Death comes to me and makes me work and give up what I have...
...The task to which the conference lias to address itself this year differs somewhat from that at Leicester last year...
...Comrades should report to Jack Altman after the meeting...
...The wage rates prevailing in the various trades will be paid, thus making public employment an aid instead of a hindrance to the labor movement...
...Terrible storms pass over me...
...The Conference Meanwhile we are on the eve of the great annual conference of the Labor Party...
...The Leicester conference was the real turning point in our recovery from the general election and the consequences of the MacDonald betrayal...
...SWEDISH SOCIALISTS MEET JOBLESS ISSUE THE Vienna Arbeiter Ztitung * prints aa interview with Gustav Moeller, Socialist minister of social affairs in the Swedish cabinet, in which he gives an account of the measures by which the problem of unemploymen is being solved...
...But suddenly a young workingman lays hold of him, pulls open his coat—and sure enough, there is a swastika hidden under it...
...One hundred members of the Socialist Party and the Young Peoples Socialist League are wanted to go on duty for the 12 days beginning Sunday, September 24th, at the Kingsbridge Road Armory, Jerome Avenue and Kingsbridge Road, where "The Romance of the People" Is to Be Given...
...I forget...
...When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all t.1i« world say the name: "The People," with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or -ly faroff smile of derision...
...After that he will travel over the entire country, and will lecture in every important city in the country...
...Seeing that the Labor vote has substantially increased, it is quite obvious that the Communist detached nothing from us...
...2 and 3, the Socialist youth organizations of Eastern France and Northern Switzerland held a great gathering at Huningen, on the left bank of the Rhine, with speeches, choral singing, gymnastic exercises, and other features...
...f\UR governing classes consist of people who, though perfectly prepared- to be generous, humane, cultured, philanthropic, public-spirited, and personally charming, are unalterably resolved to have money enough for a handsome and delicate life, and will, in pursuit of that money, batter in the doors of their fellow-men, sell them up, Sweat them in fetid dens, shoot, stab, hang, burn, and destroy them in the name of law and order.—George Bernard Shaw...
...Most of them stand silent...
...Sam Hoffman of the Bronx, and Eddie Sawly of the l.ociallst Vanguard...
...The Communist vote is, however, a definitely anti-Government vote...
...British Labor Heartened By "Uncle Arthur's" Victory By Fred Henderson London...
...Crowds are waiting at the door of the public charities office—crowds that are now larger than ever, since tens of thousands are being stricken off the unemployment insurance lists and are driven by hunger to ask for alms...
...His last week, about the beginning of December, will also be spent in and around New York...
...The funds are being collected to finance Socialist work in Germany and on the German borders against the Hitler regime...
...ACROSS THE RHINE On Saturdny and Sunday, Sept...
...He is one of the few survivors of the Old Guard of Socialists who founded the movement half a century ago, a group that includes such great names as William Morris, H. M. Hyndman, J. Keir Hardie, J. Bruce Glasier, J. Hunter Watts, Tom Mann, Hurry Quelch, and many others whose deeds hnve made possible the great British Labor Party...
...Among the speakers was Jean Longuet, Karl Marx's grandson, Socialist member of the French Chamber of Deputies...
...The best of me is sucked out and wasted...
...To talk of a united working-class front within any other framework in rivalry with this has always seemed to ordinary working-class mentality to be something outside of reality...
...If there has rarely been reference in my letters to Communist activities here, that has only been because, up to now, there has been no indication of Communist tactics making any real impression upon British working-class thought...
...Encouragement From every point of view, the magnitude of this victory is an enormous encouragement to the party throughout the country...
...ANTI-HITLER DRIVE A BIG SUCCESS TTMIE tag day collections spon* sored by the' League Against Fascism is meeting with great success...
...Last year's conference gave us the general assertion of the Socialist mentality of the movement...
...The spy sneaks away, but perhaps in another such crowd he succeeds in trapping some Communist or Social Democrat and handing him over to the police...
...Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red drops for history to remember...
...And I send forth more Napoleons and Lincolns...
...They die...
...I AM THE PEOPLE, THE MOB, By Carl Sandburg I AM the people—the mob—the * crowd—the mass Do you know that ill the great work of the world is done through me...
...I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the world's food and clothes...
...It is necessary, in judging the political situation here, to bear in mind that the Briti'h Labor movement has not come into existence as a political force, lut as an industrial organization...
...The main feature is a program of socially useful publie works — roads and bridges, drainage canals, workmen's dwell, ings in agricultural as well as industrial communities, and so forth...
...The Communist Intrusion At Clay Cross, therefore, the intrusion of a Communist candidature solely intended to weaken the Labor forces by disruption, has had no effect whatever upon the solidarity of our vote...
...the recognition by the great trade unions, and other working-cla.« organizations, of the imperative need for using their power solidly in the political field...
...It must also be remembered that the cooperative societies in Russia and Italy had long before 1931 become mere agencies of the government, a fate which has since befallen the great cooperative movement in Germany as well...
...And I forget...
...August Stoecker, the Roman Catholic priest of Reimks in the valley of the Ruhr, had the courage to say that GSring is a drug fiend, to characterize the Nazi storm troops as brown shirt savages, and the swastika as a heathenish device, and publicly to tear up > Nasi pamphlet...
...Friendship for the German masses and hatred for the Nazi dictatorship was the keynote, and the songs and cheering might well bo heard on the other bank of the Rhine, where Hitler's gangsters hold sway...
...Hitler's long speech glorifying Nordics and abusing the Jews may not altogether console the rank and file of his deluded followers for this brutal repudiation of the promises by which he won their support...
...Premier J. Ramsay MacDonald himself intervened in the election, and issued a powerful and impassioned appeal to the electors to stand by the National Government, But in the result the vote in support of the Government dropped to about half of what it was at the general election...
...The tour is under the direction of the National Office of the Party...
...The Napoleons come from me and the Lincolns...
...Comrade Henderson is one of the most attractive figures in the British Socialist movement, a splendid speaker and a man of warm personality...
...The government has firmly resisted the demands of the bourgeoisie that these public works be done at a reduced scale of wages...
...in an overwhelmed minority and without power to make our influence felt in legislation or administration, except by way of verbal protest...
...Then —I forget...
...These two compacts are quite in harmony with a third, by which the German and Italian governments have pledged mutual friendship...
...On the contrary, Arthur 1 lenderson's vote has increased by nearly a thousand upon the Lal>or vote at the general election...
...The Cooperative Movement The latest edition of the Cooperative Annual, published by the International Labor Office at Geneva^ reports the number of cooperative organizations in the whole world in 1931 at more than 600,000, and their aggregate membership at 151,725,000, or nearly one-twelfth of the human race...
...It is to be regretted that there is no present possibility of providing such relief and thus easing the financial burdens of the municipalities...
...I ai.i a prairie that will stand for much plowing...
...But it is no longer the impotence of our own weakness: it is only the waiting period until the electoral procedure by which Parliament is constituted gives to our renewed strength the opportunity of expressing itself...
...the clear definition of what the nation may expect us to do if it gives us the governing control in Parliament, i FRED HENDERSON HERE OCTOBER 14TH PRKIJ HENDERSON, noted Brit *^ ish Socialist author, lecturer and party worker, and British correspondent of The New Leader, arrives in this country for a lecture tour in about three weeks...
...Among the comrades who have distinguished them.ielves in the drive in New York City are Eddie Kritzer, of Brooklyn...
...Others warn him that such talk is dangerous, but he grows bolder, says he would like to get hold of a copy of the illegally published Rote Fahne, asks if anyone knows how he could make contact with the Communist organization, and so forth...
...Altman will also be in charge during the rest of the drive and all who have a few hours to spare should report to him at 7 East 15th Street...
...The running of a Communist candidate on this occasion has made the election an even more important index to the movement of public opinion here than it would have been if the fight had remained a straight issue between Labor and the capitalist forces...
...This, It is counted, will absorb two-thirds of the idle labor force of the country, and the workers thus re-employed, having now the means to purchase various kinds of consumption goods, will in turn give employment to large numbers of textile workers, tailors, shoemakers, and others...
...but for all practical purposes related to the actual doings of Parliament we remain impotent...
...Y this time American readers have the results of the byeelection in the Clay Cross Division of Derbyshire and they are fully aware of the magnitude oi the triumph by which Arthur Henderson was returned to Parliament...
...In a word, Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin are on good terms...
...For the first year one one-sixth of the cost can be met out of the treasury, the rest being provided by short-time loans, the amortization of which will be assured in the course of five years by a new inheritance tax...
...A Courageous Priest Rev...
...and that its development into a political organization has been the development of a political class-consciousness in the industrial organ'zation...
...and the majority by which Labor held the seat has risen from 11,552 to 15,13.38...
...I am the audience that witnesses history...
...It represents no real movement in working class thought...
...I am the seed ground...
...And with that framework for political organization, synoymou* from its begin ningg with the mass force of a united working l> »s so far as it is organized an '. conscious of itself at all, there has betn very little foothold for disruptive appeals...
...I forget...
...For it must be remembered that while the evidence thus accumulates of our growing hold upon public opinion and of the consolidation of our forces, we are still, so far as any effective impact upon the conduct :if national affairs is concerned, fighting in Parliament under the handicap of the debacle of the last general election...
...A large group is needed to leave after the campaign ratification meeting at Town Hall Sunday nfternoon...
...Of these perhaps the most important is the report in which last year's declaration in favor of a complete socialization of the banking and finance system has been worked out into a definite policy of action as the party platform on this issue for the next general election whenever it may come...
...It is only the more democratic governments that any of them dislikes...
...The leader has repeatedly-' declared," said Lippert, "that the best way of helping the unemployed is through public works...
...He Is paying for his truthfulness with sixteen months in prison...
...TREATIES An official statement issued in Berlin assures the public that the new treaty between Soviet Russia and Italy does not at all conflict with the agreement made early in the summer between Germany and Russia...
...No substantial reduction of these burdens can be expected during the year 1933...
...More than 1,000 collectors are going through the streets, theatres, labor halls and restaurants of New York City—attracting muck favorable attention and response by their bands, calling the people to "Help Fight Hitler," and their collection cans on whicri is printed a swastika rigged up as a gallows...
...These figures would be somewhat diminished, no doubt, if it ¦were practicable to ascertain and eliminate duplication, as where the same person belonged to two or more societies for different purposes, such as purchasing, housing, mutual insurance, and so forth...
...This year's conference should give us that purpose worked out in detail for practical action...
...The business of the coming conference is to complete that work...
...and the main business of this year's conference will be to receive these reports on which the execution has been working since Leicester...
...Comrade Fred Henderson arrives October 14th on the Carinthia, and will spend the first week of his tour in and around New York...
...But one talks to those around him, finding fault with the new government, declaring that the workers ought not to submit...
Vol. 16 • September 1933 • No. 13
