British Labor Eager to Present Unbroken Front to Capitalism
Henderson, Fred
British Labor Eager to Present Unbroken Front to Capitalism By Fred HendersonBreach Created by IX. P. Disaffiliation Rapidly Closing Up, Says Veteran Fighter, with Scottish Socialist Party Leading;...
...It is an example of the people minding their own business through the only possible agency for doing their own work...
...and all this in addition to the standing problem of a condition of unemployment and insecurity which grows worse and worse, and is needlessly intensified by pretty well everything the government does in regard to national finance...
...whose battle is recognized as being one not particular to themselves, but only the opening of capitalist hostilities in a general attack on working-class standards...
...The Tory majority over the Labor party fell from 25,398 to 4,807, a loss of confidence in the "National" government of 20,591 in this single constituency...
...Just before calling upon city workers, down to those receiving $2,000 a year, "voluntarily" to reduce their compensation the Mayor issued an order that the budget must be cut at least $80,000,000 because otherwise the city cannot get loans from bankers to meet the November payrolls...
...That they should have done it much earlier is true enough...
...have assembled in special conference at Glasgow, and formed themselves into a new Scottish Socialist Party to carry on the tradition of the l.L.P...
...The good Mayor has given the citizen* an opportunity to inquire what tho purpose of city government is, and what it should be...
...but the seat is one we have never yet been able to capture...
...That it will shrink sufficiently to give you yet another indication of the extent to which Labor, recovering its own fighting morale, is recovering its place in the confidence of the rank and file, I will predict without any sort of- reservation...
...And the idea farther ia that...
...Meanwhile, events are moving very swiftly here in the industrial field...
...The Idea was that corrupt expenditures should be cut out—an ideal that no one objects to except the political racketeers...
...now urges as a reason for dissociating with it, but the Labor Party which had revolted against that policy and purged itself and the movement of MacDonald and the capitalist compliances which his policy had been dealing it into...
...a party conscious of its task of retrieving and rebuilding its position in the light of the sinister experience through which it had passed...
...It has already its central committee...
...In all these circumstances, the urgent call upon Socialists is for helpfulness to the new growth of the Labor Tarty...
...Socialists call upon the workers to do things for themselves...
...There is enough money in sight, he said, for the October payrolls, but the bankers had warned the city that no more loans would be forthcoming unless there were drastic reductions in the future...
...refused to consent any longer to a continuation of that policy...
...and whose advance towards a clearer grasp of the Socialist use of their political power is exemplified by the election address issued by our candidate at Zwickenham, in which he says, "The capitalist system must go, and our aim must be to build an ordered system out of the existing chaos...
...LESS GOVERNMENT IN BUSINESS...
...This action, up to the moment, has gone ahead most rapidly in Scotland, where over a hundred of the branches of the l.L.P...
...Whose Government...
...Who Wants Graft...
...All this will have its repercussions in the political field...
...It was not the debacle of the general electio* that taught it to them...
...It may fill Mayor McKee's heart with joy to have the budget trimmed so effectively that the bankers will consider city bonds an eminently safe investment...
...Taking Over Scottish Movement Our Scottish comrades have moved very swiftly and effectively in this matter, with Tom Johnston and P. J. Dollan as the prime movers in it...
...Rank and Pile Rallying And the rank and file in the constituencies, watching this recovery of the central morale of the party, understand and rally to it...
...Ripe for Socialist Reconstruction The bye-elections since the beginning of this year show how the rank and file have recognized this, and have rallied to the great effort of a clear Socialist reconstruction of the party and its policy...
...members who are shrdlu shrldu shrdlu shrdlu shrdl against the policy of disruption...
...attempts to defend its policy of cleavage...
...BUSINESS...
...cut out all duplicating and useless officials and thus save many more millions of dollars than can be saver by slicing the none-too adequate salaries of school teachers, policemen, firemen and street Let's Save Money Abolish useless departmenti and —best of all—do away with the vicious practice of letting contracts in city work and thus permitting favored insiders to make huge fortunes at the expense of the people...
...itself, Many of its branches are refusing to sever themselves from the Labor Party...
...A city government has only started when it has policed and cleaned the streets, inspected tenements and maintained a health department...
...and in the systematic revision of policies and outlooks, the Labor Party gives clearer evidence with every day that passes of its emerging from the futilities of the MacDonald period into real strength for the task which it has refined for itself in its recent pronouncement that "to promote the transition to Socialism as speedily as possible is the purpose for which the Labor Party exists...
...But there the matter should not rest with the thoughtful workers of the city...
...The results of the Twickenham polling fully justify Henderson's prediction...
...and practically every branch is in the throes of a disruptive quarrel over the policy of separation from the general Labor movement...
...Iriving been stripped of all corruption government should thereupon confine itself to policing end cleaning the streets, maintaining an army and nayy, passing tariff laws and in other ways leaving the way clear for business to go ahead unhampered...
...but if we are to judge rightly as to our present associations with the Labor Party, the vital fact is that they did it and carried the party against MacDonald in doing it...
...The aim of Socialist government is to carry on constructive and SUBSTANTIVE work for the people who dwell under its rule...
...The trouble arising from this incident is already almost entirely confined to tl.e fight whirh is going on within the l.L.P...
...In the demeanor of its group ip Parliament, which began as a disheartened and rather stunned remnant of ita previous parliamentary strength, and has now got into real fighting propaganda throughout the country...
...Labor Learned Its Lesson Hut the vital fact to be remembered— the essential fact in its bearing upon the present situation —is that the present leaders of the Labor Party who were then inside the MacDonald Government, did learn their lesson...
...In the happy days before the Great Awakening there used to be a slogan1 among the reactionaries: MORE BUSINESS IN GOVERNMENT...
...The whole force of the trade union movement is being mobilized in support of the cotton operatives...
...In other words, rugged individualism, the right of business to make whst proflta it can with the least possible hindrance...
...and the general advance towards a recovery ol our strength, which has been s< obvious since the parliamentary debacle of the last general election, is going forward again with hardly any perceptible interruption...
...Within the past few days the stoppage in the cotton industry, in resistance to proposed drastic wages cuts, has given ,us a foretaste of what may prove to be a winter of fierce industrial conflict...
...Another bye-election which will again put this to the test is now pending in the Zwickenham division, a constituency in the vast outer ring of London...
...Promptly thereafter he called for the "voluntary" pay cuts...
...But mere honesty is not enough...
...On the contrary, we endorse that criticism...
...help and encouragement for the growing clearness of workers who, through the Labor Party, have already learned the lesson of political class-consciousness in the class-struggle...
...and a conference on the lines of the Scottish conference a t Glasgow is arranged to be held at Leicester within the next few weeks, with every promise of bringing together in continued association with the general forces of the Labor novement the great body of l.L.P...
...the capitalist parties by which he preserved for himself a continuance in office in association with all the forces arrayed against Labor, who received him with open arms and a full knowledge that they could keep him harmless and impotent for anything but their own anti-Labor purposes...
...By William M. Feigenbaum McKee Wants to Save Money For the Bankers ' the city's expenses...
...Still, watch it...
...No one wants useless and swoll e n expenditures...
...The attacks now being made by the National Government, in the name of economy, upon the standards of working-class life in every direction, and the encouragement being given by the authorities to capitalist undertakings to cut wages and worsen the conditions of employment, seem likely to plunge us into the gravest industrial conflicts...
...put MacDonald in a minority in his own Government...
...Capitalist System Must Go" Spirit Reanimating Labor Party...
...And this Is true of the city, the state and the nation...
...They have already established new headquarters in Glasgow, and are well away with the planned activities of a missionary campaign for Socialism within the Labor Party over the whole country...
...All this, of course, does not mean that those who are thus keeping in affiliation with the Labor Party regard as unjustified or unfounded the criticisms of the late Labor Government by which the disaffiliation section of the l.L.P...
...My American readers will remember how insistently, month after month while the MacDonald Government was hanging on to futile office without the power to do anything but sap the faith and discourage the spirit of the rank and file, I, myself, voiced that criticism, and warned the Labor Party of the electoral nemesis it would bring npon them the moment the country bad a chance of expressing an opinion about it...
...Progress in England A similar, though not as yet quite so far-developed, movement is taking shape throughout England...
...By all means, go further than Joe McKee has dared go, and toss out of office every man and woman who receives public money in return for being district leaders...
...And we are winning them back by the clear and unmistakable fighting policy for Socialism which the party is pursuing...
...And this is shaping, not merely as an internal discussion inside the branches, but in definite and widespread action to repudiate the decision to disaffiliate...
...ployraent insurance, municipal ownership, municipal housing, public ownership and control of power and all the other items of their immediate program they are not calling upon government to do favors to masses of people too weak: to do things for themselves...
...from the Labor Party is closing up...
...and took their stand clearly and definitely against that disastrous leadership...
...branches, with at least 90 per cent of the leading propagandists and workers...
...and I hesitate about forecasting an actual win...
...and the demands which it will make for an unbroken line of resistance by the workers of the country will probably be the most powerful influence of all in keeping any factional attempts to disrupt our ranks within the negligible proportions beyond which the mischief as yet shows no real likelihood of spreading...
...By all means cut out graft, reduce the swollen salaries of those who have been receiving 15,000 a year and more for services worth approximately nothing...
...and winning it now would not merely be regaining our own lost ground, but an advance beyond anything we have previously done even when the highest tide of Labor success has been running...
...There is no need to go over the tragic story of how MacDonald, on the very day of the revolt of his own government against his leadership, went behind their backs into an arrangement with...
...When Socialists . demand uncm...
...They take over, ready-made, the definite organization represented by most of the stronger and more active existing l.L.P...
...It may nil reformers' hearts with greater joy to find that taxes on real estate are reduced and that the speculators In land and dwellings will have to pay less and less to the city...
...That criticism was justified up to the hilt...
...Here the majority against Labor at the general election was no less than 25,398...
...The essential thing is that the Labor Party which went into that already lost electoral battle in such circumstances was not the Labor Party of the Labor Government's policy which the l.L.P...
...A New Meal With that idea Socialism takes issue...
...I t was too late to save the electoral position at the general election which followed immediately upon their action...
...in continued affiliation with the Labor Party...
...and see the extent to which this enormous majority will shrink under the attack we are now making...
...When a city supplies schools, water, parks, museums, band concerts, sewerage and streets it is not paternalistically coddling the people...
...We are winning back our parliamentary seats and our power throughout the country...
...When the masses elect Socialists THEY ARE ELECTING THEMSELVES and whea their govern, ments carry out the Socialist pro* gram we have a noble spectacle, THE WORKERS M I N D I NG THEIR OWN...
...It was they who, having followed Mac- Donald, out of a mistaken sense of loyalty, all too long, in his fatal policy of mere office-holding, did at last end the farce of their own accord...
...With that idea those who do the work of the world should take issue...
...The Labor party vote increased from 13,763 to 16,881, a gain of 3,118, while the Tory vote dropped from 39,161 to 21,688, a loss of 17,473...
...Mere economy is a feeble ideal for which to* conduct the affairs of a great city...
...Wiping out such a margin of difference between Labor and its opponents, looks a pretty hopeless task...
...Bat even if every uselessly spent dollar is saved, even if the budget is drained of all the tens (or possibly hundreds) of millions of dollars that constitute the "honest" graft of the old-party machines, where are wef It is the object of Tammany government to save money for real estate speculators and to safeguard the investments of bankers...
...My own statement of uncompromising Socialist purpose adopted and issued by the party to the nation is but one minor indication of the present direction of the mind of the party...
...When the masses elect governments consisting of members of the banking, real estate, employing and exploiting classes OR THEIR POLITICAL SPOKESMEN we have no one to blame but ourselves if such government begrudges every item in a substantive program of public welfare...
...You should have the result before this latter appears in print, and can make your own comparisons...
...And there the matter rests—for a while, at least...
...In the circumstances that would be almost too much to expect for not only was there this gigantic majority against us less than a year ago...
...By all means strip the payroll of all the political hacks who are rewarded for party services with places at the public trough...
...No one wants graft—except those who receive it and those who get something for giving it...
...Renewed Attack on Living Standards Calls for Solid Line of Resistance •UIUC1I more quickly than w< could have hoped or foreseen the breach in the British Laboi movement created by the disaffiliation of the l.L.P...
Vol. 14 • October 1932 • No. 14
