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Len
Feinzing
Len Feinzing (also
known in the party as Lenny Fenton) died in October. Born in 1917, he
joined the World Socialist Party of the US in 1936 and was an active
member of Boston Local until there was no more local to be active in.
He was part of the core group who continued monthly meetings to mail
out the Socialist Standards and keep the bare bones of a
socialist movement alive during the 1980s. After the renaissance that
the WSP began to experience in 1987, he continued to take part in
every activity except those requiring computer skills. Lenny's
greatest contribution to the organization was as a speaker, both on
the soapbox and indoors. He was arguably the best debater in the WSP,
frequently impressing large audiences in debates with groups from
Harvard, MIT and Brandies. He also spoke on Local Boston's radio
program during the late 1960s and early 70s. He visited Britain on a
number of occasions, the last time being 2003. Comrade Feinting
served for many years on both the NAC and the Editorial Committee of
the Western Socialist, the journal of the American and
Canadian parties. He also made it his personal project to increase
the circulation of the Western Socialist dramatically during
the 1950s (not at all an easy task in that period of history!) by
instituting a successful nation-wide Library Campaign. His life was
long and productive. He will be long remembered.
Bill
Ross
Glasgow
branch are sad to report the death of our comrade Bill Ross. Bill
came across the Socialist Party at an outdoor meeting at the Mound in
Edinburgh in the summer of 1965. Within months he had joined Glasgow
branch. He was a larger than life figure who had left school at 15
years of age and had been a merchant seaman for many years. When he
came in contact with the party he had graduated from Drama College
and was already appearing on stage at the Edinburgh Festival. Within
a short time Bill was himself speaking for the party both indoors and
outdoors including a spell in London when he was working there. Later
on when he found the stage too precarious an occupation he worked for
many years for the Glasgow Parks Department where he was very active
in trade union affairs. Bill was a voracious reader and was
especially interested in scientific subjects. He was a good example
of the self-taught worker, although having had a very basic academic
career he had a wide knowledge of astro-physics and evolution, often
giving branch talks on such subjects. He was a warm, friendly human
being with a good sense of humour and his speciality was in taking
popular songs and re-writing parodies. Thus The Lady is a Tramp
became That's Why the Worker is a Slave and the words of Who Wants to
be a Millionaire became - "Have you heard of the SPGB. We want a
world without poverty. Well, did you ever. What a swell party this
is." This is a sad time for all his Glasgow comrades but
especially so for his wife and beloved comrade Terry. He will be
greatly missed.
RD
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The
governments of Israel, Britain, France and Russia, when they resorted
to war in October 1956 in pursuit of their own separate objectives,
have at the same time struck a decisive blow to achieve something
they never sought and are hardly aware of. Their tanks and bombers in
a few days of destruction have helped to shatter the most hampering
illusion of our generation, an illusion that has held back multitudes
from taking the first stop towards a real understanding of the
problems facing the human race.
This
illusion was the belief, held with equal fervour by democrats and
Communists, and on both sides of the Iron Curtain, that there are
“two worlds,” essentially different in arms and conduct.
On
the one side the democrats and Labourites of the Western world
believed that they and their rulers are guided by a superior moral
code, are inherently against brutality, are committed to “law not
war,” and to United Nations, are incapable of naked aggression to
further their interests.
On
the other side were the Communists and their followers, who believed
with equal sincerity that Russia, by virtue of being a “Socialist”
country, is free from and superior to the sordid imperialism and
colonialism of the West, and utterly incapable of opposing the
aspirations of ordinary workers.
Now
the foundations of both beliefs have been smashed into fragments.
Sincere men and women in both camps are horrified and heartbroken to
discover in one revealing flash that the men they revered and the men
they reviled behave in exactly the same criminal way; that the Edens
and the Kruschevs are blood brothers after all, worshippers of the
same capitalist god of violence and war. The sickening dismay of
those who trusted Eden, “the friend of United Nations,” is only
equalled by that of Communists who see Russian tanks smashing down
Hungarian workers. For both groups the one thing that could not
happen has happened.
(From
front page article by ‘H.’, Socialist Standard, December
1956)
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Object
and
Declaration of
Principles
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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.
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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