Lambs going quietly to slaughter

The political higgle-piggle which calls itself the Left Wing has developed some strange ideas in its time. Most of these have been drummed up to explain the failure of a left wing government, or to excuse the fact that the realities of capitalism had upset a favourite theory.

At one time the left wing’s great dream was full employment. In addition to the theory that a Labour government would solve unemployment; there had to be the corollary that when this happened a grateful working class would vote the Labour Party into power again and again. This was a cosy notion in the 1930’s and there were still plenty of Labour men in 1945 who held to it. They must have been bitterly disappointed when the working class showed themselves so unimpressed by the coincidence of full employment conditions and a Labour government in this country. For when that government was nearing its death, we remember, the British voters were hotter under the collar about the loss of the oilfields at Abadan than about the chance of keeping their job. Perhaps that is why some sad Labour supporters now put about the theory that a slump is needed now, to shake the workers out of what they call their complacency and make them regard the Tories as their enemy. A bit unfair, this. After all, the Tories have pretty well kept up employment and so far have not taken anything like the strong measures which the Attlee government used against strikers.

It is strange that Labour Party members should have needed the nineteen fifties to make them wonder about how the working class vote. They should, after all, have learned the history of the ‘thirties. That was the time when the workers showed how much they had learned from massive unemployment by returning Conservative, or Conservative dominated, governments to power with steamroller majorities. That should have taught everybody that the working class vote for all sorts of things. Sometimes they may vote for capitalism with nationalisation or with a national health service. At others they may vote for honest, dull Stanley Baldwin or for the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.

Stafford Cripps
The professional politicians are often woefully astray in their estimations of what line of capitalist propaganda the workers will fall for. The Labour Party has an especially dismal record on this. It is an amusing exercise, now, to recall some of the speeches which Labour leaders made between the wars and to imagine the effect of Mr. Gaitskell, or George Brown, or even Harold Wilson, saying the same sort of thing today. Here, for example, is the Daily Herald report of part of a speech which the late Sir Stafford Cripps made at Eastleigh in 1937:

“Today you have the most glorious opportunity the workers have ever had. The capitalists are in your hands. Refuse to make armaments; refuse to use them. That is the only, way you can keep the country out of war and obtain power for the working class. Refuse to make armaments and the capitalists are powerless.”

It was not long after making that speech that Cripps joined the wartime government and we were able to see what he made of his most glorious opportunity to obtain power for the working class by refusing to make armaments. By that time he had forgotten all about fiery speeches. Soon he was working hard as Minister of Aircraft Production, turning out the bombers which taught the German workers that the British capitalists were anything but powerless.

Cripps was one of the pre-war Labour leaders who held many weird notions about capitalism and about the working class. That was why his career was so turbulent. Now, the Labour Party is rather sedater and is coldly organised to take power over British capitalism. Theories about working class opportunities are left to the fringe groups like the remaining few Trotskyists. These groups often keep themselves alive with delusions about a solidly militant working class which is somehow being constantly tricked by its leaders. They dream of the General Strike which, they think, was an example of faithful men being let down by treacherous leaders. They have forgotten the thousands of workers who cheerfully volunteered to be blacklegs during the strike, and the others who volunteered seriously, convinced that it was their duty to oppose what they thought was Red revolution. And the dreamers never explain—because they cannot—how solid, militant workers always seem to turn up such wretched, double-dealing leaders.

It is easy to blame our troubles onto capitalism’s leaders and to conclude that the way out of them is to find new men to take over. The only unfortunate fact is that whatever new men are tried always seem to make the same sort of mistakes as the old. There must be more to it than that.

In fact, there is. Many historians are now making sport about the leaders of the First World War. There has recently been a flood of books about the apparent blunders of that war and of the terrible consequences of them. Forty years after, the mistakes seem all too obvious and the only difficulty is to find a reason for the generals agreeing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of men to win a few yards of muddy rubble. So it is fashionable to decry the commanders of 1914/18, to lash out at Joffre’s conceit and to poke fun at Haig’s dourness. The Big PushThe Big Push and so does Siegfried Sassoon, in his Memoirs of an Infantry Officer. “We decided,” he wrote, “with quite a glow of excitement, that the Fourth Army was going to fairly wipe the floor with the Boches.” Now if the attack had succeeded, even with as great a loss of life as when it failed, would there be so much criticism of the generals? Yet success or failure, thousands of workers would have died to protect their masters’ interests and that is waste if you like.

The Great War
Then let us remember that, however shaken they were by the carnage of 1914/18, the workers were all ready to go again in 1939. They were all ready to trust their leaders, to do as they were told and to follow their orders into useless slaughter. The Sommes and the Paschendaeles of 1939/45 are only just being revealed to us. We can be sure that, however terrible and pointless it was, the workers joined in the bloodbath with a will. Gardner says of Haig’s army that it “. . . always obeyed his every command . . .”. He seems to intend that to be a compliment.

Let us be blunt about it. What use is there in mourning for the casualties in a war and at the same time supporting the war which has caused them, and the system which has produced the war? Human beings must always make mistakes—even if they are generals, whose failures and successes are paid for in their soldiers’ lives. What sense is there in lamenting “useless” casualties in a war? Is there such a thing as a useful casualty? Or a useful war?

The malaises of capitalism are not a natural accident. They are an inevitable by-product of the system itself. Since the working class generally acquiesce in the continuance of capitalism they can hardly complain at the system’s malaises. And as long as they are satisfied to leave their fate in the hands of leaders, military and civilian, they cannot complain when the leaders deceive or betray or fail.

So let us not delude ourselves about the working class. They suffer the defects of capitalism but they are not its helpless victims. At present the workers in some ways are like lambs going quietly to slaughter. But human beings ought to be better than sheep.
IVAN