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Obituary
Valentine
McEntee
Irish
comrades report the sudden death in May of Val McEntee. Val joined
the Islington branch of the party in London in 1982 as a young man in
his mid-twenties. At the time this was perhaps the party’s
most dynamic branch and Val was one of its active members. He worked
in the accident investigation department of British Rail, and was a
keen photographer, building up a collection of photos of party
speakers at Hyde Park and elsewhere as well as tape-recording
meetings. In the mid-90s he moved to Ireland, in a sense back to
Ireland since though bought up in England he was of Irish traveller
origin, to live in a small village in Co. Limerick where he earned a
sort of living as a professional photographer. In Ireland he took
part in the leafletting and other activities of the members there.
His death was sudden and, with the authorities unable to contact any
relatives, he was buried in the local Catholic church, even though
the priest later told a member that he thought he was an Anglican, no
doubt because of his English accent and because he didn’t
attend mass. The member decided that discretion was the better part
of valour and didn’t tell the priest the
truth: that he had buried a non-believer in consecrated ground.
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The
Conflict in the Middle East
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Another
Middle East storm has developed. This time it is the Lebanon, Jordan
and Iraq that occupy the centre of the stage, with Kuwait also
stirring. Again oil is the mainspring of the eruptions and clashing
interests. The struggles concern the rich oil lands and the routes to
those areas, with other economic advantages for the privileged
seeping in.
The
revenues from oil are in the region of the fabulous. They are
cherished by the privileged possessors, and sought after by
privileged non-possessors who want a larger share of the plunder. The
toilers who make these revenues possible have no share in them. They
only receive the customary payment for the work they do; some of the
Arab workers receive hardly enough to buy the necessities of life.
In
spite of the numberless pronouncements on peace, with which we have
been deluged for decades from all quarters, armed force, or the
threat of it, is always the final resource when capitalist sections
feel that their sources of revenue are threatened.
The
present flare-up, just as the recent Suez dispute, concerns oil and
the interests of the mammoth oil companies. There is no secret about
this. Reports, articles, and pronouncements concentrate on this
aspect. (
. . .)
It
is an old oft-repeated story; littered with indecision, broken pacts,
duplicity, intrigues and wars. In the final chapter the privileged
always occupy the seat of power and the mass of people remain in
subjection. It will be the same in the Middle East after the present
turmoil has come to an end. At best the most the mass of the people
there can obtain is a standard of wage slavery that is equivalent to
what obtains in the so-called advanced countries.
(from
leaflet reproduced in Socialist Standard, September 1958)
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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 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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