the notion that a half-witted public-schoolboy is better fitted for
command than an intelligent mechanic. Although there are gifted and
honest INDIVIDUALS among them, we have got to break the grip of the
moneyed class as a whole. England has got to assume its real shape. The
England that is only just beneath the surface, in the factories and the
newspaper offices, in the aeroplanes and the submarines, has got to take
charge of its own destiny.
In the short run, equality of sacrifice, "war-Communism", is even more
important than radical economic changes. It is very necessary that
industry should be nationalised, but it is more urgently necessary that
such monstrosities as butlers and "private incomes" should disappear
forthwith. Almost certainly the main reason why the Spanish Republic
could keep up the fight for two and a half years against impossible odds
was that there were no gross contrasts of wealth. The people suffered
horribly, but they all suffered alike. When the private soldier had not a
cigarette, the general had not one either. Given equality of sacrifice,
the morale of a country like England would probably be unbreakable. But
at present we have nothing to appeal to except traditional patriotism,
which is deeper here than elsewhere, but is not necessarily bottomless.
At some point or another you have got to deal with the man who says "I
should be no worse off under Hitler". But what answer can you give
him--that is, what answer that you can expect him to listen to--while
common soldiers risk their lives for two and sixpence a day, and fat
women ride about in Rolls-Royce cars, nursing pekineses?
It is quite likely that this war will last three years. It will mean
cruel overwork, cold dull winters, uninteresting food, lack of
amusements, prolonged bombing. It cannot but lower the general standard
of living, because the essential act of war is to manufacture armaments
instead of consumable goods. The working class will have to suffer
terrible things. And they WILL suffer them, almost indefinitely, provided
that they know what they are fighting for. They are not cowards, and they
are not even internationally minded. They can stand all that the Spanish
workers stood, and more. But they will want some kind of proof that a
better life is ahead for themselves and their children. The one sure
earnest of that is that when they are taxed and overworked they shall see
that the rich are being hit even harder. And if the rich squeal audibly,
so much the better.
We can bring these things about, if we really want to. It is not true
that public opinion has no power in England. It never makes itself heard
without achieving something; it has been responsible for most of the
changes for the better during the past six months. But we have moved with
glacier-like slowness, and we have learned only from disasters. It took
the fall of Paris to get rid of Chamberlain and the unnecessary suffering
of scores of thousands of people in the East End to get rid or partially
rid of Sir John Anderson. It is not worth losing a battle in order to
bury a corpse. For we are fighting against swift evil intelligences, and
time presses, and:
history to the defeated
May say Alas! but cannot alter or pardon.
iii.
During the last six months there has been much talk of "the Fifth
Column". From time to time obscure lunatics have been jailed for making
speeches in favour of Hitler, and large numbers of German refugees have
been interned, a thing which has almost certainly done us great harm in
Europe. It is of course obvious that the idea of a large, organised army
of Fifth Columnists suddenly appearing on the streets with weapons in
their hands, as in Holland and Belgium, is ridiculous. Nevertheless a
Fifth Column danger does exist. One can only consider it if one also
considers in what way England might be defeated.
It does not seem probable that air bombing can settle a major war.
England might well be invaded and conquered, but the invasion would be a
dangerous gamble, and if it happened and failed it would probably leave
us more united and less Blimp-ridden than before. Moreover, if England
were overrun by foreign troops the English people would know that they
had been beaten and would continue the struggle. It is doubtful whether
they could be held down permanently, or whether Hitler wishes to keep an
army of a million men stationed in these islands. A government
of ----,---- and ---- (you can fill in the names) would suit him better.
The English can probably not be bullied into surrender, but they might
quite easily be bored, cajoled or cheated into it, provided that, as at
Munich, they did not know that they were surrendering. It could happen
most easily when the war seemed to be going well rather than badly. The
threatening tone of so much of the German and Italian propaganda is a
psychological mistake. It only gets home on intellectuals. With the
general public the proper approach would be "Let's call it a draw". It
is when a peace-offer along THOSE lines is made that the pro-Fascists
will raise their voices.
But who are the pro-Fascists? The idea of a Hitler victory appeals to
the very rich, to the Communists, to Mosley's followers, to the
pacifists, and to certain sections among the Catholics. Also, if things
went badly enough on the Home Front, the whole of the poorer section of
the working class might swing round to a position that was defeatist
though not actively pro-Hitler.
In this motley list one can see the daring of German propaganda, its
willingness to offer everything to everybody. But the various pro-Fascist
forces are not consciously acting together, and they operate in different
ways.
The Communists must certainly be regarded as pro-Hitler, and are bound to
remain so unless Russian policy changes, but they have not very much
influence. Mosley's Blackshirts, though now lying very low, are a more
serious danger, because of the footing they probably possess in the armed
forces. Still, even in its palmiest days Mosley's following can hardly
have numbered 50,000. Pacifism is a psychological curiosity rather than a
political movement. Some of the extremer pacifists, starting out with a
complete renunciation of violence, have ended by warmly championing
Hitler and even toying with Antisemitism. This is interesting, but it is
not important. "Pure" pacifism, which is a by-product of naval power, can
only appeal to people in very sheltered positions. Moreover, being
negative and irresponsible, it does not inspire much devotion. Of the
membership of the Peace Pledge Union, less than 15 per cent even pay
their annual subscriptions. None of these bodies of people, pacifists,
Communists or Blackshirts, could bring a large scale stop-the-war movement
into being by their own efforts. But they might help to make things very
much easier for a treacherous government negotiating surrender. Like the
French Communists, they might become the half-conscious agents of
millionaires.
The re
al danger is from above. One ought not to pay any attention to
Hitler's recent line of talk about being the friend of the poor man, the
enemy of plutocracy, etc etc. Hitler's real self is in MEIN KAMPF, and in
his actions. He has never persecuted the rich, except when they were Jews
or when they tried actively to oppose him. He stands for a centralised
economy which robs the capitalist of most of his power but leaves the
structure of society much as before. The State controls industry, but
there are still rich and poor, masters and men. Therefore, as against
genuine Socialism, the moneyed class have always been on his side. This
was crystal clear at the time of the Spanish civil war, and clear again
at the time when France surrendered. Hitler's puppet government are not
working men, but a gang of bankers, gaga generals and corrupt right wing
politicians.
That kind of spectacular, CONSCIOUS treachery is less likely to succeed
in England, indeed is far less likely even to be tried. Nevertheless, to
many payers of supertax this war is simply an insane family squabble
which ought to be stopped at all costs. One need not doubt that a "peace"
movement is on foot somewhere in high places; probably a shadow Cabinet
has already been formed. These people will get their chance not in the
moment of defeat but in some stagnant period when boredom is reinforced
by discontent. They will not talk about surrender, only about peace; and
doubtless they will persuade themselves, and perhaps other people, that
they are acting for the best. An army of unemployed led by millionaires
quoting the Sermon on the Mount--that is our danger. But it cannot arise
when we have once introduced a reasonable degree of social justice. The
lady in the Rolls-Royce car is more damaging to morale than a fleet of
Goering's bombing planes.
PART III: THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION
i.
The English revolution started several years ago, and it began to gather
momentum when the troops came back from Dunkirk. Like all else in
England, it happens in a sleepy, unwilling way, but it is happening. The
war has speeded it up, but it has also increased, and desperately, the
necessity for speed.
Progress and reaction are ceasing to have anything to do with party
labels. If one wishes to name a particular moment, one can say that the
old distinction between Right and Left broke down when PICTURE POST was
first published. What are the politics of PICTURE POST? Or of CAVALCADE,
or Priestley's broadcasts, or the leading articles in the EVENING
STANDARD? None of the old classifications will fit them. They merely
point to the existence of multitudes of unlabelled people who have
grasped within the last year or two that something is wrong. But since a
classless, ownerless society is generally spoken of as "Socialism", we
can give that name to the society towards which we are now moving. The
war and the revolution are inseparable. We cannot establish anything that
a western nation would regard as Socialism without defeating Hitler; on
the other hand we cannot defeat Hitler while we remain economically and
socially in the nineteenth century. The past is fighting the future and
we have two years, a year, possibly only a few months, to see to it that
the future wins.
We cannot look to this or to any similar government to put through the
necessary changes of its own accord. The initiative will have to come
from below. That means that there will have to arise something that has
never existed in England, a Socialist movement that actually has the mass
of the people behind it. But one must start by recognising why it is that
English Socialism has failed.
In England there is only one Socialist party that has ever seriously
mattered, the Labour Party. It has never been able to achieve any major
change, because except in purely domestic matters it has never possessed
a genuinely independent policy. It was and is primarily a party of the
trade unions, devoted to raising wages and improving working conditions.
This meant that all through the critical years it was directly interested
in the prosperity of British capitalism. In particular it was interested
in the maintenance of the British Empire, for the wealth of England was
drawn largely from Asia and Africa. The standard of living of the trade
union workers, whom the Labour Party represented, depended indirectly on
the sweating of Indian coolies. At the same time the Labour Party was a
Socialist party, using Socialist phraseology, thinking in terms of an
old-fashioned anti-imperialism and more or less pledged to make
restitution to the coloured races. It had to stand for the "independence"
of India, just as it had to stand for disarmament and "progress"
generally. Nevertheless everyone was aware that this was nonsense. In the
age of the tank and the bombing plane, backward agricultural countries
like India and the African colonies can no more be independent than can a
cat or a dog. Had any Labour government come into office with a clear
majority and then proceeded to grant India anything that could truly be
called independence, India would simply have been absorbed by Japan, or
divided between Japan and Russia.
To a Labour government in power, three imperial policies would have been
open. One was to continue administering the Empire exactly as before,
which meant dropping all pretensions to Socialism. Another was to set the
subject peoples "free", which meant in practice handing them over to
Japan, Italy and other predatory powers, and incidentally causing a
catastrophic drop in the British standard of living. The third was to
develop a POSITIVE imperial policy, and aim at transforming the Empire
into a federation of Socialist states, like a looser and freer version of
the Union of Soviet Republics. But the Labour Party's history and
background made this impossible. It was a party of the trade unions,
hopelessly parochial in outlook, with little interest in imperial affairs
and no contacts among the men who actually held the Empire together. It
would have had to hand the administration of India and Africa and the
whole job of imperial defence to men drawn from a different class and
traditionally hostile to Socialism. Overshadowing everything was the
doubt whether a Labour government which meant business could make itself
obeyed. For all the size of its following, the Labour Party had no
footing in the navy, little or none in the army or air force, none
whatever in the Colonial Services, and not even a sure footing in the
Home Civil Service. In England its position was strong but not
unchallengeable, and outside England all the key points were in the hands
of its enemies. Once in power, the same dilemma would always have faced
it: carry out your promises, and risk revolt, or continue with the same
policy as the Conservatives, and stop talking about Socialism. The Labour
leaders never found a solution, and from 1935 onwards it was very
doubtful whether they had any wish to take office. They had degenerated
into a Permanent Op
position.
Outside the Labour Party there existed several extremist parties, of whom
the Communists were the strongest. The Communists had considerable
influence in the Labour Party in the years 1920-6 and 1935-9. Their chief
importance, and that of the whole left wing of the Labour movement, was
the part they played in alienating the middle classes from Socialism.
The history of the past seven years has made it perfectly clear that
Communism has no chance in western Europe. The appeal of Fascism is
enormously greater. In one country after another the Communists have been
rooted out by their more up-to-date enemies, the Nazis. In the
English-speaking countries they never had a serious footing. The creed
they were spreading could appeal only to a rather rare type of person,
found chiefly in the middle-class intelligentsia, the type who has ceased
to love his own country but still feels the need of patriotism, and
therefore develops patriotic sentiments towards Russia. By 1940, after
working for twenty years and spending a great deal of money, the British
Communists had barely 20,000 members, actually a smaller number than they
had started out with in 1920. The other Marxist parties were of even less
importance. They had not the Russian money and prestige behind them, and
even more than the Communists they were tied to the nineteenth-century
doctrine of the class war. They continued year after year to preach this
out-of-date gospel, and never drew any inference from the fact that it
got them no followers.
Nor did any strong native Fascist movement grow up. Material conditions
were not bad enough, and no leader who could be taken seriously was
forthcoming. One would have had to look a long time to find a man more
barren of ideas than Sir Oswald Mosley. He was as hollow as a jug. Even
the elementary fact that Fascism must not offend national sentiment had
escaped him. His entire movement was imitated slavishly from abroad, the
uniform and the party programme from Italy and the salute from Germany,
with the Jew baiting tacked on as an afterthought, Mosley having actually
started his movement with Jews among his most prominent followers. A man
of the stamp of Bottomley or Lloyd George could perhaps have brought a
real British Fascist movement into existence. But such leaders only
appear when the psychological need for them exists.
After twenty years of stagnation and unemployment, the entire English
Socialist movement was unable to produce a version of Socialism which the
mass of the people could even find desirable. The Labour Party stood for
a timid reformism, the Marxists were looking at the modern world through
nineteenth-century spectacles. Both ignored agriculture and imperial
problems, and both antagonised the middle classes. The suffocating
stupidity of left-wing propaganda had frightened away whole classes of
necessary people, factory managers, airmen, naval officers, farmers,
white-collar workers, shopkeepers, policemen. All of these people had
been taught to think of Socialism as something which menaced their
livelihood, or as something seditious, alien, "anti-British" as they
would have called it. Only the intellectuals, the least useful section of
the middle class, gravitated towards the movement.
A Socialist Party which genuinely wished to achieve anything would have
started by facing several facts which to this day are considered
unmentionable in left-wing circles. It would have recognised that England
is more united than most countries, that the British workers have a great
deal to lose besides their chains, and that the differences in outlook
and habits between class and class are rapidly diminishing. In general,
it would have recognised that the old-fashioned "proletarian revolution"
is an impossibility. But all through the between-war years no Socialist
programme that was both revolutionary and workable ever appeared;
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