The Socialist Standard January 2006

 Meetings

EAST ANGLIA
A new East Anglian Regional
Branch has been formed. The
branch's first meeting will take
place on Saturday 11 February
in Norwich
from 12 noon to 4pm.
The agenda is as follows:
12 noon. Informal chat.
1pm. Meal
2pm to 4pm. Branch organisation
and future activity.

The exact venue is:
 The Conservatory,
back room of the
Rosary Tavern,
Rosary Road,
Norwich.
All welcome.
CHISWICK
Tuesday 17 January
8P.M.
RUSSIA: AN ANALYSIS
OF RECENT CHANGES
Speaker: Vincent Otter
Committee Room, Chiswick Town
Hall, Heathfield Terrace, W4
(nearest tube: Chiswick Park).
MANCHESTER
Monday 23 January
 8 P.M.
'Fashion'
Hare and Hounds,
Shudehill,
City Centre

Due to a printing error the last line and the
name of the writer were left  off the
 "Report from Paris" on page 8 of
 last month's Socialist Standard.

The last sentence of
the article should have read:
"And capitalism should be eradicated
 without further delay to enable us to
 enjoy the beautiful things of this world
without fear"
.
The writer was Dele C. Iloanya, Paris.


The Daily Sketch (3/12/55) reported
 a BBC Television interview with
Mr. Aneurin Bevan the previous evening in which he was asked what he would do
about the H and A bombs if he
 became Prime Minister.
According to the report he
replied that he would abolish the H
bomb but keep the A bomb. As he
was a member of the Labour
Government that made the A bomb
any other reply about that weapon
would have needed some
explanation, but the reason he gave
for regarding the H and A bombs as
different propositions was singularly
unconvincing.
"Pressed to express the
difference, he said the differences of
quantity became differences of
quality. 'It's like comparing drowning
in a bath with drowning in an ocean.'
he said." - (Daily Sketch, 3/12/55.)
We would have supposed that both ways of
drowning led to the victims being equally dead.
Mr. Bevan went on to say that he did not think that  the H bomb "either postpones war
 or brings it nearer". In
this he differs from his associate, Mr. Richard Crossman,Labour MP for East Coventry
(who, it is rumoured, has now moved away from the
Bevanite group). Writing in
the Daily Mirror (25/11/55) Mr. Crossman
claimed that with both sides having the bomb
the Powers dare not go to war.
"We are at peace today because no
Great Power can make war without
automatically blowing itself to pieces."
Mr. Crossman is, therefore, in favour of
keeping the H bomb as well as the A bomb.
In the meantime the Manchester
Guardian reports (7/11/55) that the American
Government has given urgent instructions to
the American military authorities "to widen
research into germ and gas warfare, and
warfare by the use of radio-active particles." It
would appear from this that the American
Government does not accept Mr. Crossman's
view that large-scale war between the big
Powers must either be with the use of the H bomb or not at all.
They evidently envisage other possibilities.
(from "Notes by the Way" by H., Socialist Standard,
January 1956)
Our Object and Declaration of Principles  (click on link for explanation with each one)

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.
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