Tongue Tied

Self-appointed people’s tribunes shout

And chant that righteous death be visited

On those proclaimed other, who, it’s said,

Challenge righteous certainties with doubt.

Ernest professed defenders of free speech

Then demand banning of hate words they see

As inimical to democracy:

Language isn’t allowed beyond the law’s reach.

All too readily from good intentions

Voices may be silenced, tongues shackled,

Stopping difficult issues being tackled

Through a malignant state’s intervention.

 But then, advocates for better times to come

Can be confounded, arrested; struck dumb!

D. A.

‘The price of artillery shells produced by German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall have soared by more than half since the start of the Ukraine conflict, an investigation by the Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

Confidential documents showed that Rheinmetall, which brands itself as “a strong partner on Ukraine’s side,” raked in huge profits by selling artillery shells to Kiev, paid for by the German government, as ammunition prices have surged since early last year, the outlet said.

According to the document, in July the German Defence Ministry signed a deal with Rheinmetall on the supply of 155-mm calibre shells that can be fired from the self-propelled howitzer 2000 and hit targets dozens of kilometres away. The contract will reportedly serve both German and Ukrainian needs.

Kiev’s troops allegedly used 155-mm calibre shells in a series of artillery strikes on civilian infrastructure in the city of Donetsk in May.

Under the deal, Rheinmetall will supply Kiev with up to 333,333 rounds of the large-caliber ammunition with each shell costing at least €3,600 ($3,813), the outlet noted, adding that shell prices are expected to rise further.

According to the German Finance Ministry, in the “current market situation, Rheinmetall was not prepared to unilaterally set binding order quantities over the entire contract period, specific delivery times or prices.”

Before February 2022, artillery shells were sold at a standard market price of €2,000 per unit.

“You can no longer produce bullets in Europe for €2,000 euros,” a military economist who asked not to be identified told Welt am Sonntag.

Industry experts point to rising raw material and production costs in the EU, that have been driven up by supply chain disruptions and soaring energy prices triggered by the Ukraine conflict.’

Supporters of, or propagandists for, capitalism will holler the benefits of competition to the consumer. Not everyone is in favour of competition of course.

‘French winemakers have been staging a mass protest against Spanish wine imports, arguing that they create unfair competition in the local market, which is already suffering from a surplus.

According to a report from Le Parisien, around 500 protesters gathered on a highway near the French border town of Boulou and stopped several trucks with Spanish products, and destroyed their cargoes. As a result, more than 240 hectoliters of Spanish rosé were poured on the road and 10,000 bottles of Spanish sparkling were smashed.

The demonstrators said they are suffering losses due to cheap Spanish wine entering the French market.

“The problem is the price,” Antoine, a 79-year-old French winegrower, told the news outlet.

“The Spanish have minimum charges, the right to put all the chemicals they want on their vines while we have the right to nothing… As a result, Spanish wine costs half as much as French wine. When their hectoliter costs €40, it is almost €80 with us,” he said.

Aude wine union leader Frederic Rouanet pledged to continue the protests, with a major mobilization of winemakers scheduled for the end of November.

“It is out of the question to accept the situation as it is. Starting from today, we are going to remove the possibility of buyers being able to get cheap wines from elsewhere… We are going to stop Spanish imports. This is the start of an economic war that we are going to wage,” Rouanet said.

Earlier this week, French wine growers gathered in Ferrals-des-Corbieres to discuss the crisis in the industry, which they consider the worst in around two decades. The union prepared a letter to be sent to French wine merchants and importers that called for “a total halt in buying wine from other regions or abroad until the [local] wines are sold at a fair price.”

Renowned for its centuries-old winemaking traditions, France has been suffering from a massive surplus of wine due to a strong harvest in 2022 and low consumption caused by soaring inflation. The French government introduced a drastic plan in August to allocate €200 million ($216 million) to destroy wine surpluses. Officials have also been offering financial incentives to growers to switch to other products.

The drop in the demand for wine has not been limited to France. The European Commission reported in June that wine consumption fell by 15% in France, but it also dropped by 7% in Italy, 10% in Spain, 22% in Germany, and 34% in Portugal. The EU’s wine exports have also been dropping. Between January and April 2023, cross-border sales fell by 8.5% compared to the same period last year.

Some analysts say the drop in EU wine exports partly stems from Ukraine-related sanctions that Brussels placed on Russia last year, banning wine sales that exceed €300 per bottle. As a result, while in 2022 Spain and Italy were among Russia’s top-three wine suppliers, this year they were replaced by Lithuania and Georgia.’

From the Urban Big Data Centre comes a report titled ‘Private renting and the suburbanisation of poverty. What would Karl Marx and Frederick Engels made of this date one wonders. The UBDC notes that five years ago ‘one in three children in poverty lived in private renting, three times the level of 20 years earlier.’ What might that figure be now?

UBDC asks the pertinent question, ‘We need to examine the impacts this has on the welfare of poorer households as they are pushed to locations which tend to have worse public transport, and worse access to jobs and vital services. But we also need to be asking whether this is the kind of city we wish to create – one marked by deepening spatial divisions between richer and poorer.’

The solution lies within everyone’s grasp. It is the replacement of capitalism with a social system based on the production of quality goods and services for use, not profit. The abolition of capitalism results not only in the abolition of the exploitation of the majority working class but the abolition of landlords too.

‘One of the most marked changes in the UK’s housing system over the last 30 years has been the rise – or rather, the re-growth – of the private rented sector (PRS). Many more low-income households now find homes in this sector. In a new paper we show how this is leading to the steady exclusion of poorer households from more central locations in our towns and cities, a phenomenon known as the suburbanisation of poverty. For the ten largest cities, we estimate that one-in-nine low-income PRS households was displaced in just eight years as a result – 15,000 households in total. Changes were particularly stark in the largest conurbations but were by no means confined to those cities.

From fewer than one-in-ten households in 1991, the PRS is now home to almost one-in-five. The Government encouraged this re-growth because the sector provides an important source of flexibility for those that need quick access to accommodation without long-term commitments. But few expected the sector to grow as fast as it did.

Even fewer anticipated the extent to which it would become home to increasing numbers of low-income households and, especially, poorer families with children. By 2017/18, one in three children in poverty lived in private renting, three times the level of 20 years earlier. Where previously most low-income families would expect to find secure housing in the social rented sector, now they are faced with raising children while living with the insecurities which go with private renting and all the disruptions to schooling and social life that that entails.

The other consequence of the growing reliance on private renting is how it affects where low-income households can afford to live. Here there are two factors at play: rent levels and subsidy levels from Housing Benefits. On rent levels, PRS housing in more central locations isn’t always more expensive: a lot of cheaper housing can be found close to city centres because it is older, smaller or in worse condition. But in our paper, we show how this housing is becoming less affordable over time with the steady gentrification of these areas. Using the detailed data on private renting from Zoopla plc (available through UBDC’s data collection), we can see that rents are rising everywhere but they are rising faster in more central locations, particularly in the larger cities ; London is the exception but rents for the central parts of that city were exceptionally high to start with. In the social rented sector by contrast, rents vary very little across the different locations within a city so central locations remain affordable.

On Housing Benefits, we have seen increasing restrictions on the subsidies available to pay rents at exactly the same time as we have pushed more low-income households into private renting. In the years leading up to the pandemic, increases in Housing benefits were restricted to levels well below rental inflation rates so that poorer households were restricted to smaller and smaller sections of the PRS market. In 2012/13, 20 per cent of listings on Zoopla were affordable for those on Housing Benefit. By 2019/20, this had fallen to just 9 per cent.

One of the most marked changes in the UK’s housing system over the last 30 years has been the rise – or rather, the re-growth – of the private rented sector (PRS). Many more low-income households now find homes in this sector. In a new paper we show how this is leading to the steady exclusion of poorer households from more central locations in our towns and cities, a phenomenon known as the suburbanisation of poverty. For the ten largest cities, we estimate that one-in-nine low-income PRS households was displaced in just eight years as a result – 15,000 households in total. Changes were particularly stark in the largest conurbations but were by no means confined to those cities.

From fewer than one-in-ten households in 1991, the PRS is now home to almost one-in-five. The Government encouraged this re-growth because the sector provides an important source of flexibility for those that need quick access to accommodation without long-term commitments. But few expected the sector to grow as fast as it did.

Even fewer anticipated the extent to which it would become home to increasing numbers of low-income households and, especially, poorer families with children. By 2017/18, one in three children in poverty lived in private renting, three times the level of 20 years earlier. Where previously most low-income families would expect to find secure housing in the social rented sector, now they are faced with raising children while living with the insecurities which go with private renting and all the disruptions to schooling and social life that that entails.

The other consequence of the growing reliance on private renting is how it affects where low-income households can afford to live. Here there are two factors at play: rent levels and subsidy levels from Housing Benefits. On rent levels, PRS housing in more central locations isn’t always more expensive: a lot of cheaper housing can be found close to city centres because it is older, smaller or in worse condition. But in our paper, we show how this housing is becoming less affordable over time with the steady gentrification of these areas. Using the detailed data on private renting from Zoopla plc (available through UBDC’s data collection), we can see that rents are rising everywhere but they are rising faster in more central locations, particularly in the larger cities; London is the exception but rents for the central parts of that city were exceptionally high to start with. In the social rented sector by contrast, rents vary very little across the different locations within a city so central locations remain affordable.

On Housing Benefits, we have seen increasing restrictions on the subsidies available to pay rents at exactly the same time as we have pushed more low-income households into private renting. In the years leading up to the pandemic, increases in Housing benefits were restricted to levels well below rental inflation rates so that poorer households were restricted to smaller and smaller sections of the PRS market. In 2012/13, 20 per cent of listings on Zoopla were affordable for those on Housing Benefit. By 2019/20, this had fallen to just 9 per cent.

The combination of these two factors has meant the steady exclusion of low-income households from the inner-city locations. In Figure 2, we can see that the number of PRS households on Housing Benefit fell in most of the largest cities between 2011 and 2019 but the falls were greater – and sometimes much greater – in the inner-city areas. Here we define ‘inner city’ as the most central fifth of neighbourhoods.

Another way to capture the scale of the change is to ask how many more low-income households would have been in the inner-city areas in 2019 if the change in households on Housing Benefit there had been the same as in the outer areas of each city. In Bristol, for example, there were 6300 PRS households on Housing Benefit in the inner city in 2011 and this had fallen by 2400 by 2019, a reduction of 38%. In the rest of Bristol, however, the fall was just 15%. If that rate had applied in the inner city, the reduction would have been just 900 households. There are therefore 1500 fewer Housing Benefit household in the inner city than there might otherwise have been – equivalent to nearly one-in-four of those present in 2011. Across the ten largest cities, the total number of households affected was 15,000 or one-in-nine of those present in 2011.

Continuing cuts in Housing Benefit levels, combined with the rising costs of inner-city renting, are engineering a fundamental change in the social fabric of our cities. We need to examine the impacts this has on the welfare of poorer households as they are pushed to locations which tend to have worse public transport, and worse access to jobs and vital services. But we also need to be asking whether this is the kind of city we wish to create – one marked by deepening spatial divisions between richer and poorer.’

https://ubdc.ac.uk/news-media/2023/october/private-renting-and-the-suburbanisation-of-poverty/

It is reported that ‘Finnish telecom multinational Nokia has announced that it will slash up to 14,000 workers as part of a broader cost reduction plan after the company’s earnings plunged 69% in the third quarter.

The announcement was made on Thursday as the company reported a 20% year-on-year drop in sales between July and September to €4.98 billion ($5.26 billion). Nokia’s profit over the period plunged by 69% year-on-year to €133 million.

The company said that the decision is expected to help it to lower its cost base and increase operational efficiency to “address the challenging market environment.”

The Espoo-based multinational is aiming to reduce its cost base on a gross basis from 2023 by between €800 million and €1.2 billion by the end of 2026.

Under the plan, the number of employees would be slashed from the current 86,000 to between 72,000 and 77,000.

“The most difficult business decisions to make are the ones that impact our people. We have immensely talented employees at Nokia and we will support everyone that is affected by this process,” the Nokia chief executive Pekka Lundmark said, commenting on the decision.

The corporation did not detail where the job cuts would occur, but said that they are likely to affect its operations in Europe, the UK, and US.

The exact scale of the cost-cutting program will depend on demand for the company’s products, Nokia said, adding that it “expects to act quickly” in order to save as much as €400 million next year and another €300 million in 2025.

“We continue to believe in the mid-to-long-term market, but we are not going to sit and wait and pray that the market will recover anytime soon,” Lundmark said. “We simply don’t know when it will recover.”

The company’s shares were down over 6% on Thursday.’

 In an article titled The USSR flag and student communism: a controversial combination, we read:

THE SOCIALIST PARTY will be at the London Radical BookFair

  

 Friday 20th October at 19 30 (18 30 ut) on Zoom:

It’s reported that ‘The lights went out in Bissau, the capital of Guinea-Bissau, after a Turkish energy company cut off power supplies over an unpaid debt of $17 million, Economy Minister Suleimane Seidi announced on 17 October.

 According to the official, the state-owned Electricity and Water Company of Guinea-Bissau, which owes the arrears, was due to pay $15 million of the debt within 15 days.

“Karpower has agreed to renegotiate with the government to ensure that the backlog does not become a problem,” Seidi told reporters, acknowledging the arrears.

Karpowership is one of the world’s largest electricity operators and owner of a fleet of powerships supplying several African states. According to its website, the Turkish company, which is part of the Karadeniz Energy Group, has provided 100% of Guinea-Bissau’s electricity needs since 2019.

“Unfortunately, following a protracted period of nonpayment, our (floating power plant) is now unable to continue operating,” a Karpowership spokesperson said in a statement.

“We are working around the clock with officials to resolve this issue, and we aim to have generation back online as soon as possible,” the company added.

In September, Karpowership turned off the power supply to Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, due to an unpaid debt of about $40 million.’

Eighty Three per cent of population lives in extreme poverty.

Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.

The First World War poet, Wilfred Owen called it ‘The Old Lie.’ It wasn’t sweet and fitting then, it never was, and it isn’t now.

If the report in the New York Times is correct then hasten the day when no one is fit or willing to fight the capitalist’s wars for them. Hasten the day when the structural necessity of capitalism to compete for resources and power is consigned to the trash can of history by socialism, a social system based upon the production of quality goods and services for free use and available to all. Ex capitalists included.

‘The US Army, Navy and Air Force are facing shortfalls in recruitment targets this year, as the Pentagon struggles to compete with civilian employment, while up to 77% of young people have been deemed ineligible to enlist, the New York Times has said.

By the end of its recruitment year on September 30, the US Army fell short of its target of adding 65,000 people to its ranks, the NYT says, instead ending up with about 50,000 new personnel. It is the third successive year that the army has not met its goal, prompting military bosses to cut unfilled positions and shrink its active duty membership to 452,000 from 485,000 in 2021.

The recruitment logjam has created “an existential issue for us,” Army Secretary Christine E. Wormuth told reporters this month, even as some branches of the military relax recruitment standards and even offer financial compensation of up to $75,000 to join.

Primary factors in the stalled recruitment effort include many Americans seeking employment in the private civilian sector, as well as large sections of US youth being deemed ineligible to even apply. A recent report by the US Department of Defense concluded that up to 77% of young people in the United States cannot enlist for a variety of reasons, including being overweight, drug abuse, or having physical or mental impairments.

The US Navy also fell short by about 7,500 hires this year, despite recruitment initiatives, including financial incentives. Even the Air Force, traditionally considered an attractive destination for new recruits, added about 10% less than expected.

“It’s been getting harder to recruit, and the military expects it to continue to get harder,” David R. Segal, a University of Maryland professor who studies historical enlistment trends, said according to the NYT.

However, one US military branch not experiencing such issues is its Marine Corps. By the September 30 deadline, the Marines had already exceeded its goal of 28,900 enlistments – and did so with little-to-no extra perks or financial incentives.

“Your bonus is that you get to call yourself a Marine,” a Marine Corps commandant said earlier this year, according to the Times. “That’s your bonus.”’

Draft Resistance and Conscience (1968)

‘Over Vietnam, the majority of Americans go willingly to war—or at any rate keep their fears and doubts to themselves. President Johnson, under pressure about the war, replies that this is no time to argue; American boys are in battle over there. Most Americans accept this cynically emotional appeal and close their ranks—and perhaps their minds as well.

Only a minority, now graced (or cursed) with the name Draft Dodgers, stand aside and refuse to join in the killing. These young men, opposed to the Vietnam war, refuse service in the army under the United States selective service system. They sometimes destroy their draft cards, sometimes return them to the authorities—even give them to the enemy, the Vietnamese National Liberation Front.

Some of the objectors—for example the Quakers—are acting in line with a persistent opposition to war wherever it is fought. Others resist only the war in Vietnam:

I am not a pacifist or a conscientious objector in the narrow sense, but I am a conscientious objector with regard to the Vietnam war. I do not object to conscription as such. (Michael Haag.)

I totally want to dissociate myself from my country’s course in what I consider a disgraceful, cynical war. It is not a war against communism. (Joel Gladstone.) (Both quoted in The American, 15/12/67.)

We can see how small a minority the draft dodgers are, from the figures issued by the U.S. Justice Department of prosecutions for draft evasion. About 160,000 men are registered for the draft each month, only a part of them being called up. In the year July 1965/June 1966 the call up was 336,530; only 658 men were prosecuted. For the year July 1966/June 1967 the figures were: call up 288,000; prosecutions 1,409.

Young Americans can apply for registration as conscientious objectors but, according to the Sunday Times (21/1/68) the only people likely to be granted this are Quakers or members of the American Friends’ Church. (In this country, during 1914/18, the C. O. Tribunals rarely accepted what they called a “political” objection to war.) Very often, then, the only way out is to evade the draft laws —refuse to register, destroy or return the draft card. The legal penalty for this can be a fine of up to $10,000 and a prison sentence up to five years. There can also be illegal penalties—victimisation in employment or, as some of the card burners have experienced, a beating up from patriotic hooligans.

The draft dodgers are the latest in a long line of war resisters—a line with a mixed pedigree. There were the Christians who refused to serve in the Roman militiae; the Quakers who went by sledge to Moscow to protest against the Crimean War; the unenduring resolutions of the Second International. In this there is a discernible change; the development of capitalism had its effect on the anti-war movement. For capitalism made war total, with everyone under fire and with a modem state machine recruiting all its resources—including people—if necessary by compulsion. But at the same time capitalism needed to school its people in its productive techniques, which gave rise to a working class with political fights, often seeing capitalism’s problems as political issues. Thus when conscription came in, the opposition to it was often in political terms. Pacifism, in the words of Christopher Driver tended to become secularised.

In his book Pacifism and Conscientious Objection Professor G. C. Field, who sat on a C.O. Tribunal from 1940 to 1944, recalls among the people who came before him:

…adherents of fifty one different religious bodies… those, comparatively few in number, whose objections were based on ethical or humanitarian grounds independently of any religious beliefs . . . a few whom we classified as political objectors and a few, also, who could only be described as objectors on aesthetic grounds.

This was the result of a development which started in 1914. Before the First World War, Britain was the only major European power to rely on a volunteer army. As the war drew closer, a conscription pressure group grew in strength and in 1902 gave birth to the National Service League (President the Duke of Wellington; supporters Rudyard Kipling, the Duke of Westminster, the Bishop of Chester.)

The outbreak of war, and the growing threat of conscription, threw up an opposition—the No Conscription Fellowship (Chairman Clifford Allen; supporters Fenner Brockway, Bertrand Russell, Bernard Boothryd.) On December 3 1914 the NCF declared itself:

. . . it would, we think, be as well if men of enlistment age who are not prepared to take a combatant’s part, whatever the penalty for refusing, formed an organisation for mutual counsel and action.

Stage by stage, as the war settled down into a pattern of interminable murder, the government progressed towards conscription—its appetite, as Philip Snowden pointed out, growing by what it fed upon. In March 1916 the final blow came; the Military Service Act gave the unmarried man of military age a choice between enlisting immediately or being called up in his group. If he did neither he would be “deemed to have enlisted”—in other words he was a soldier whether he liked it or not.

This was a vital provision. It meant that an objector who was turned down by his tribunal was instructed to report to his unit. If he did not go he was a deserter; if he was taken and then refused to put on a uniform he was disobeying a military command. As he was legally a soldier he was subject to army discipline; he could be sent to a military prison, court martialled, sentenced to undergo such experiences as Field Punishment Number One or even—as happened to thirty four men—could be sentenced to be shot.

Under army detention the C.O.s were subjected to a variety of brutality and torture. In the civil prisons they fared only a little better. J. Allen Skinner was one who spent time in both Wandsworth and Wormwood Scrubs during 1916/17. In 1960 he was in prison again—in Brixton after a Ban the Bomb demonstration. He told the Governor of Brixton of his earlier sentences. “That”, said the governor feelingly “must have been a terrible experience.” (See The Disarmers by Christopher Driver.)

And so it was—for Skinner and for all the other objectors to that war. There were about sixteen thousand of them (12,000 with “political” objections) and seventy three died as a result of the treatment they received.

The pacifist movement, dying down after 1918, came back to life in 1935, once more at the approach of a major European war. That was the year when the Peace Pledge Union was formed; over 100,000 signed its renunciation of war. The PPU was swept along on a wave of enthusiasm; in 1937 its Leader, the Rev. Dick Sheppard, was elected Rector of Glasgow University.

The 1939 war, as many thought it would, exposed the Pledge. (Professor Field claimed: “. . . a clear-sighted pacifist friend said to me, the Peace Pledge was really a piece of bluff”) Only about 65,000 men registered as C.O.s during the entire war and of course not all of these had signed the Pledge. British capitalism had learned a lesson. Conscription was in force before war was declared, the tribunals operated with a lighter hand (about seventy per cent of objectors were found to he “genuine”) nobody was “deemed to have enlisted”, sentences (there were about four thousand of them) were served in civil prisons. There was no torture, no death sentences, hardly any discernible victimisation, no outrages worthy of the name.

The Second World War saw a decline in the numbers of “political” objectors; from about 12,000 in 1914/18 to about 3,250 in 1939/45. This can be explained by the fact that most of these in the first war were members of the ILP which was then part of the Labour Party. By 1939 the ILP had all but disappeared arid the Labour Party no longer had any doubts about its support for capitalism’s wars.

What of the pacifists? The word covers a multitude of opinions on war, but implies the basic agreement of regarding war in the idealistic sense, as an evil in itself which can be abolished by a policy of righteousness. Thus Dr. Alfred Salter in his pamphlet Religion of a C.O. (1914):

There is a great place waiting in history for the first nation . . . that will dare to base its national existence on righteous dealing, and not on force . . .

This is typical of the pacifist attempt to deal with war in isolation from the very surrounding conditions which cause it. It avoids the all-important question of why governments base their existence on force—even a government like the Attlee administration, which included men who were objectors with Dr. Salter in 1914/18. What did their pacifism do for their policies, when they had the chance to try a little righteous dealing?

This same question was still being evaded when the Second World War came. On September 8 1939 the PPU Council agreed that “. . .in all ways possible the PPU should strive to make the Government publish terms of peace by consent.” In August 1944 they were demonstrating for a negotiated peace and “just peace terms”. (See I Renounce War by Sybil Morrison.)

It is a massive contradiction to accept all the pre-conditions for war and social violence—to accept the capitalist system and its governments, its diplomacy, its “peace” talks and treaties—and at the same time to object to war. This basic fallacy runs like a thread through pacifist thought. The people who marched from San Francisco to Moscow in 1961 distributed a leaflet along their route which said:

We believe that the Soviet Union and the United States with other countries should pool their resources to remove such suffering—by using the money now wasted on weapons of destruction.

And Richard Gregg, in The Power of Nonviolence, says:

Nonviolent resistance is more efficient than war because it costs far less in money as well as in lives and suffering.

Pacifists like Gregg believe that war and violence are an effect of inferior ideas (“. . . a large part of the activities of the state are founded upon a mistake, namely, the idea that fear is the strongest and best sanction for group action and association.”) But it is impossible to conceive of capitalism without war. The private ownership of the means of production divides the world into antagonistic classes, competing firms, rival nations and international power blocs. It is this competitive nature of capitalism which causes its wars, which are as much a part of the system as the governments, the money and the treaties which the pacifists are prepared to accept. Modern war is fought to settle the squabbles of capitalism’s master class; it does not involve the interests of the ordinary people except that it brings them nothing but suffering. If the working class refuse to fight—as we say they should—it should be on these grounds—and this should apply to all war, not just to Vietnam, or Korea, or Algeria. If the pacifist, idealist objection to war is futile how much more so is that which stands out against only one particular war?

The draft dodgers may claim to have made a start. If so, they must go on to realise that there is nothing special about Vietnam— nothing special about its causes, its history, its horrors. The war resisters have won the honourable distinction of showing that capitalism need not have it all its own way—that even in face of overwhelming propaganda the working class can recognise a problem and protest. They have shown their power, and that courage does not have to wear a uniform. These qualities will stand us in good stead, when we have a society where war is only a black memory.’

Ivan

From Socialist Standard March 1968 https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2018/02/draft-resistance-and-conscience-1968.html