JOHN M'GOVERN and WAR'.
(extracts)On Sunday evening, 15th October, a very enthusiastic and successful anti-war meeting was held in St Andrews (Grand) Hall, Glasgow, under the auspices of the No-Conscription League, and despite lack of time for adequate advertising, there was a large attendance.
John McGovern, on rising to speak, got a magnificent reception. He said It was a great encouragement to see such a large and enthusiastic audience. They were unfortunately in the midst of one of the greatest tragedies since 1918. A war that no one knows the length of or the end of. The policy so much urged of "standing up to Hitler" had ensured war instead of averting it, and this policy had been sponsored by, above all, those who had deserted their old working-class positions.
Those who had opposed this policy had been called traitors to the working class. ", said McGovern, "I have been told since I was 18 years old that war had an economic cause - the clash of interest of capitalists and financiers. I have always been told that this clash of interest led to war, during which the ruling classes were prepared to throw their working class into bloody conflict to determine their share of the colonies, trade routes, etc, of the world, and I have always believed that to be true. I have not only been convinced, I have been 100 per cent certain that modern wars are never for the defence of the common people but for the advantage of the gangsters of each country. I therefore cannot support war unless I violate my mental powers and become untrue to the things, I know and believe in". He resisted the last war when he was of age to serve, and now that he was over that age, he refused to hound the youth of this country on to the bloody battlefields of Europe. They were told this was a war for 'Freedom and Democracy. Was the ruling class which shot down the workers at Tony Pandy in Wales concerned about freedom? Or those who intervened on the side of the coal-owners against the miners in 1926? They were prepared to see the streets red with blood because the miners demanded a living wage. They have burned down cottages in Ireland, in India, in Egypt and in South Africa. In Trinidad, 750,000 live on 2~d a day. Boys and girls of nine years have worked in the mines in India, where for demanding the right of freedom 375 men, women and children were shot at Amritsar. That is the same soulless, hypocritical ruling class that are going to fight for freedom for the people of this country.
These people did not object to Hitlerism when the German workers were beaten in the streets and sent into concentration camps, and when lysol was poured into their eyes. But when they see the rise of a militaristic power threatening their colonial interests, their loot, then the youth of the workers have to be trained and thrown into bloody struggle in order to protect those interests.
The last time the victim was poor little Bel9ium, and the Kaiser was the mad dog of Europe. Now it is poor little Poland, with Hitler as the mad dog of Europe.
He would have them take a plebiscite for war and everyman who voted for war would go on to the battlefield to fight it (Loud cheers).
The trade union officials, in return for recognition, were assisting in the speed-up of the workers of the munitions factories, and, like the Labour Party, were also demanding places. He cited the case of Tom Johnston as one of the worst sell-outs of the war. This was the man who made his name by his anti-war paragraphs in Forward. He had virtually disenfranchised his area by' having too many jobs and was seldom in Parliament. How could Joe Westwood and Johnston give service to the National Government and be members of the Opposition against Chamberlain at the same time.
Greenwood and others wanted them to march against Hitler, but the Army was going to march against the German working class. They were going to murder them and allow them to murder our boys.
McGovern said he met a man who was attached to the French tank corps, and he gave him a harrowing eyewitness account of the horrors of that type of warfare now going on in the Saar region. He saw men who were wounded, trying to get out of the way of the screaming monsters of wheels that were to crunch their bones and bodies into pulp. He would never forget the horror of it. Yet we were told this sort of thing must go on and on. If mothers and fathers could only see and hear the groans and shrieks of the dying they would realise that there is no glory in it and that no war justifies that slaughter.
In Madrid he had seen the terrible effects of even one bomb, where 57 bodies had been dismembered, with blood on the walls, and heads, arms and legs intermingled with the debris.
These wars were for the selfish interests of the ruling class; a sordid, soulless, material struggle for human gain. No boy would ever march into battle through any fault of his.
If you believe in an Empire containing black and yellow slaves, you could not deny Hitler's right to desire an empire also. If it was right for us to have slave territories, Japan, Italy and Germany were equally entitled to subdue and bribe native chiefs, and so build up an empire. Hitler says: "If you don't agree, I have nine million men ready to back me up". The French and British retort that they have unlimited resources to defend their colonial possessions. For this the workers are expected to murder one another. They are taken from their slums to do the job and when it was finished they were sent back to the slums, back to the Means Test, until they were required again!
Until recently the CP were for this war 'for democracy', but after 3 weeks their policy had again changed. Russia had done a double somer (laughter) and the C.P. turn when 'Holy Joe' says so (more laughter). It was a crazy world. France imprisons her communists; Russia shoots them, and Germany liberates them (Loud laughter).
Talking of "smashing Hitler" provoked him to say "We must pay attention to our own Hitlers and let the German workers deal with theirs. We must conduct the class struggle on the home front. We must watch the profiteers, the landlords and so on "
McGovern 'brought the house down' with his peroration - When it was said "we must fight to the last man" he retorted: "I will fight to the last MP, to the last banker, to the last landlord; I will fight to the last capitalist, the last war-mongering bishop, the last editor of the last capitalist newspaper; the last member of the House of Lords and the last member of the royal family. If only these were left on' the battlefield the world would be a much better place for all time."
(Mid-October 1939)
The Second FrontBack to Introduction to Part Three
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