Meetings, 50 Years Ago and DOP, page Socialist Standard December 2009 Vol.105 Issue No.1264.


London Winter Film Programme Sundays at 6pm at 52 Clapham High St.London SW4 13 December: Earthlings (Animals and economic interests - 95 mins) 17 January: Manufacturing Consent (part one) (Noam Chomsky & the Media) 31 January: Manufacturing Consent (part two) Tuesday 15 December, 8pm CAPITALISM AND THE ARCTIC DVD of talk by Glen Morris of Arctic Voice Committee room, Chiswick Town Hall,Heathfield Terrace, W4 (nearest tube:Chiswick Park). Tuesday 22 December, 7.30pm WEST LONDON BRANCH SEASONAL SOCIAL Barley Mow, Chiswick High Road, W4 (opposite Boots).		EAST ANGLIA Saturday 12 December. 12noon to 4pm Quebec Tavern, 93-97 Quebec St. Norwich. ADVANCE NOTICE: Debate with Dr Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute Thursday, 4th February, 2010 at 7.00pm Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London.WC1

Second thoughts

"Yesterday's Enemy" is a recently-produced British film about the British army fighting the Japanese in Burma during the last war. A review in the Daily Herald (14.9.59) describes a sequence in it: —

“A British captain . . . has captured an informer who, he believes, has vital knowledge of a forthcoming Japanese attack. He threatens the informer with death, but the informer thinks the captain is bluffing and refuses to talk. The captain picks two villagers at random and orders them to be shot. The informer still refuses to talk. The villagers are shot—and then the informer breaks down. The captain has his information.”

The captain follows up his murder of two innocent villagers by having the informer shot, as well.

Remembering the propaganda with which we were spoon-fed in the last war, about how we were fighting for decency and humanity against the brutality of the other side, you might think that nothing like this could ever have been done by anyone in the British army. But not a bit of it. Major-General A. J. H. Snelling, who was with the 14th Army in Burma said: "I believe incidents like this did happen during the grim retreat." General Sir Douglas Gracey said: "I heard of similar incidents . . . These awkward situations did arise." Major-General H. L. Davies said: "This film is absolutely real and authentic." A fourth high-ranking officer, General Sir Robert Mansergh, was due to speak the film's praises at its New York premiere.

Very honest of them, now, fourteen years after the war has ended. And no one alleges that war can be fought with clean hands. But why did the politicians and generals tell us throughout the war that all the brutality was on the other side?

(From “The Passing Show” by Alwyn Edgar, Socialist Standard, December 1959.)

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.

Declaration of Principles

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.

Link to Capitalism and food security – an oxymoron

Features

Down and out in Mayfair
We still live in a society that if you don’t have the ability to pay you ‘goes’
without.

Capitalism and food security – an oxymoron
Food security for all the people of the world will only be possible when
the profit motive is taken out of food supply.

The world around you
Someone employs you, and you work for them, and they control a big
part of your waking hours.

Too good to be true
We are conditioned to accept the absurdities and contradictions that
capitalism throws up.

Debating the “S-Word”
Is any word more over-used and misunderstood today than “socialism”?

Regulars

How I got to be a socialist

Cartoons

The Irate Itinerant

Free Lunch

Pathfinders

On modern life (Eric Fromm )

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Socialist Standard Online edition December 2009

Socialist Standard

Object and Declaration of Principles

Object

Declaration of Principles

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