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FOREWORD
I can think of nothing
finer in life than to see young men and women, with all their
earnestness and keenness, coming for the first time to our movement. It
is an inspiration to those of us who have laboured long. It is at the
same time a reminder of our own youthful experiences, when we came into
the movement eager to understand things and become politically educated,
impatient to play an effectual part.
We did not accept things at their face value: we challenged all and
sundry. We had to see things crystal clear, or we were not satisfied.
Older men to whom we looked for guidance and enlightenment were not
always helpful. In many cases they were superior and aloof—sometimes
because, as we soon found out, they were not able to answer our
questions, but often also because they regarded us as a nuisance. There
was too much of the attitude common to a certain type of successful
trade union leader. Listen to him during a railway journey, as I have
often done. He will recount with great self-satisfaction how in his
early days he, too, was a socialist of the Left. He will dwell
wearisomely upon some event, a strike or a delegation, in which he
played a certain role, and out of which he came to be an official. He
reads all the Left books and can quote socialist scripture like the
devil. He “is prepared to go as far as anyone,” but the workers are not
yet educated up to going as far as he is prepared to lead them. So
meanwhile he pursues the comfortable routine of officialdom and takes a
“sane” view of labour affairs.
There was also enough of the sort of fellow who was for ever reminiscing
about the good old days when men and things were “different/’ and ever
so much better than they are to-day. His eyes were shut to the march of
time, and he was hopelessly out of touch with the course of living
events—a perpetual discouragement to the idealism of youth, which had
its eyes to the glorious future.
But with what warmth of feeling we regarded those who, out of their own
comprehension and experience, were ready to guide and work with us. How
we looked up to “the pioneers”! I personally shall always owe a deep
debt of gratitude to the stalwart friend and teacher, George S. Yates,
who saved me endless floundering by leading me direct to the sources of
the knowledge I desired. He put into my hands the basic theoretical
works of Marxism and the writings of the great masters of science and
general literature. He insisted—and himself set the example—that
whatever task one takes up must be done well and thoroughly; that it was
nonsense to argue, as some self-styled "advanced” comrades did, that,
since the supreme object of our life was to fight for the downfall of
capitalism, it was unnecessary, and even wrong, to spend time on
technical education, “which would only make us more efficient
wage-slaves ”! Experience confirmed what he drilled into me: that the
chap who was a dunce at his craft was generally looked upon by his
fellow-workers as probably a dunce at everything else too, and that
proficiency in one’s job was an evidence of seriousness that won a ready
ear for one’s political and philosophical ideas.
And now that some of us, in our turn, have forty or so years of activity
in the movement behind us, I think we have the duty to transmit to the
younger men and women, as far as we can, what we have seen and learned
in the period travelled. Only in this way can there be a real fusion of
all the vital forces of the working-class movement —the fresh and
vigorous thought, the ambition free from selfish personal motives, which
fires every sincere young recruit, with the mature understanding and
firmness which the experiences of the struggle have bred in those who
have remained true to their principles.
There is no Chinese Wall between youth and age. Neither has a monopoly
of the qualities necessary for the leadership of the workers. We have
seen how the attempts of Trotsky deliberately to set the young
communists of the C.P.S.U. against the party leadership—the young guard
against the old guard, as he put it—in an unscrupulous bid for personal
aggrandisement, inflicted for a time great harm not only upon his own
party and the Soviet Union, but also on some brother parties by their
tacit support of Trotsky. Neither the young by virtue of their youth,
nor the old by virtue of their age, have an exclusive role to play.
Leadership such as our movement demands calls for vision, the ability to
choose accurately at each moment the course to be pursued; and these in
turn depend upon a sure grasp of the fundamentals of the movement, upon
practical experience in applying them, upon character, intelligence, and
human sympathy. In other words, it calls for the best that the young and
the best that the old can give.
It is as one man’s contribution to the future of our movement that the
following pages have been written. They do not aim at being an
autobiography. Rather it has been my aim to give, from personal
experience, an account of events which the younger men and women have
not personally lived, in the hope that it will throw light on many
problems which, in spite of changed conditions, have still much in
common with those of the pioneering days.
Pioneering Days
By Thomas Bell (1941) (pdf) |
