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Socialist Party Annual Conference Good Friday 6 April 10.30 to 5.30 Easter Saturday 7 April 11 to 4.30 Socialist Party Head Office, 52 Clapham High St, London SW4. On the Friday there will be a social at the MA pub, Clapham Manor St, SW4, starting at 7pm.
Central London Sunday 22 April, 3pm. A BRIEF HISTORY of CONSPIRACY THEORIES Speaker: Adam Buick Socialist Party Head Office, 52 Clapham High St, SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North).		West London Tuesday 7 April, 8pm Discussion on US Foreign Policy in the Middle East Committee Room, Chiswick Town Hall, Heath-field Terrace, W4 (nearest tube: Chiswick Park).
Manchester branch Monday 30 April, 8.30 pm Discussion on The Need for Socialism Hare and Hounds, Shudehill, City Centre		East Anglia Sunday 19 May, 12 noon to 4pm. The Socialist Party’s Record: Warts and All Speaker: V. Vanni Rosary Tavern, Rosary Rd, Norwich.

£400 for a Slave

Fairly recently King Saud of Saudi Arabia visited “the land of the free”—the United States of America, where he was feted by President Eisenhower, and other American politicians. Little is known of his country except that there is
sand—and more important—oil, in Saudi Arabia. But a recent United Nations report (News Chronicle, 22/ 2/57) gives us some idea just how “free” and democratic King Saud’s oil-soaked land is.
According to the report Saudi Arabia has 450,000 slaves— just 20% of the population. Prices on the Jeddah slave market were said to be between £200 and £400 for a girl under 5; £ 150 for a man under 40 and £40 for an old woman.
Like Christian Archbishops who also live quite well, Moslem Kings, such as King Saud, do not condemn slavery—chattel slavery in Arabia, and wage-slavery in
Britain! (from “Odds and Ends” by Peter E. Newell, Socialist Standard, April 1957)

Object and
Declaration of Principles

This declaration is the basis of our organisation and, because it is also an important historical document dating from the formation of the party in 1904, its original language has been retained.

Object

The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain holds

1. That society as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of the means of living (i.e., land, factories, railways, etc.) by the capitalist or master class,and the consequent enslavement of the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced.

2. That in society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a class struggle between those who possess but do not produce and those who produce but do not possess.

3. That this antagonism can be abolished only by the emancipation of the working class from the domination of the master class, by the conversion into the common property of society of the means of production and distribution, and their democratic control by the whole people.

4. That as in the order of social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind, without distinction of race or sex.

5.That this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.

6. That as the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must organize consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.

7. That as all political parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of all sections of the the master class, the party seeking working class emancipation must be hostile to every other party.

8. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, therefore, enters the field of political action determined to wage war against all other political parties, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, and calls upon the members of the working class of this country to muster under its banner to the end that a speedy termination may be wrought to the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom.

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