Socialist Standard August, 2006 Vol No.102: No.1224 
  website www.worldsocialism.org/spgb

Meetings

50 Years Ago

While the controversy about the abolition of hanging has been causing such a furore in this country, a significant change in the American law recently has passed by almost without comment.

This is the passing by Congress of the Bill aimed at the drug traffic in the United States, which includes in its provisions increased penalties for trafficking in drugs and, in particular, the death penalty for those found guilty of selling heroin to young people under 18. The background of the Bill, the drug traffic,was recently reported on by a US correspondent of the Economist (14th July, 1956). The picture is horrifying.

 According to the Economist's correspondent the United States is said to have more drug addicts that all the other Western nations combined, and the authorities are engaged in a constant battle against the traffic. The main impetus to it is given by the needs of 60,000 addicts who are prepared to spend anything from $10 to $100 a day to satisfy their craving. To get this money, many of them resort to crime, and it has been said that about half of the crimes committed in large cities and about a quarter of crimes in the US are the result of this drive to get drugs.

The police seem to be able to do little more than hold their own. Smuggling is fairly easy, and rife. The product is small and expensive, and profits are huge - nine ounces of uncut heroin can earn $50,000 when diluted for retail sale. New pedlars soon step in to take the places of those arrested and put in gaol.

 Apart from the sale of such vicious drugs as heroin, there is a large business done in other less dangerous drugs, much of itbarely legal. In the words of the Economist :-
"But the narcotics problem extends beyond the underworld; it reaches on to the counters of unscrupulous chemists.

Housewives eager to lose weight take amphetamines and do not realise that they have become addicts until it is too late. Officials are also worried about the widespread use of barbiturates (sleeping pills). In theory these are obtainable only with a physician's prescription; in fact many chemists will sell them and users do not realise that addiction leads to grave dangers to mental health". Altogether a terrible story. And made even more dreadful by the extension of the death penalty to try to deal with it.

(Article by S. H., Socialist
Standard, August 1956).
Rd, Norwich.
Manchester
Monday 25 September,

 8.15 p.m.
'Why Socialists Oppose the Labour Party'
Hare and Hounds,
 Shudehill,
 City Centre
(This meeting will take place during the Labour Party Conference in
Manchester, and Labour Party members and others are invited to attend)
Central London
Saturday 12 August, 1.30pm to 5.00pm
1.30 Welcome. Tea. Coffee. Biscuits.
2.00 Debate:

"WHERE DOES THE
REAL POWER LIE IN CAPITALISM?"

Speakers:Bill Martin and Gwyn Thomas.
Room 7. Friends Meeting House
(side entrance), 173 Euston Road,
London NW1 (opposite Euston
mainline station). Nearest tubes:
Euston, Euston Square
East Anglia
Saturday 23 September,

 12 noon to 4pm

12 noon: Informal chat.

1pm: Meal.

2pm to 4pm: Discussion.

The Conservatory, back room of
Rosary Tavern, Rosary Rd, Norwich.
South London
Saturday 26th August, 2.30pm

PEACE IN PALESTINE?

Speaker: Gwynn Thomas.
52, Clapham High Street, London
SW4 (nearest tube: Clapham North)

South London

Saturday 26th August, 2.30pm

PEACE IN PALESTINE?

Speaker: Gwynn Thomas.
52, Clapham High Street, London SW4
(nearest tube: Clapham North)

East Anglia

Saturday 23 September,

 12 noon to 4pm
12 noon: Informal chat.
1pm: Meal.
2pm to 4pm: Discussion.

The Conservatory,
 back room of
Rosary Tavern, Rosary

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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