After the debate : Anarchism v. Socialism
The Conway Hall was absolutely packed and people had to stand in the gangways at the debate between Bill Gape, representing the Anarchist Movement, and Sam Cash, representing the Socialist Party of Great Britain, which took place on the 31st of May.
The debate could, however, have been more satisfactory if the real issue between free socialism obtained through the direct action of the workers and State socialism obtained through Parliamentary methods had been discussed. Bill Gape tried in vain to keep the discussion on theoretical grounds and gave a good exposition of the anarchist attitude towards capitalism, war and the class struggle. The socialist speaker insisted, however, in treating the Conway Hall audience as an Hyde Park crowd and tried to maintain its attention and amuse it by rather worn out jokes regarding the anarchists or by profound consideration like this one ‘We, too, like the anarchists, object to the law; but the law objects to you’ this being used as a proof of the futility of opposing the law, and of the necessity ‘to get control of it.’ If Cash was unable to put up a theoretical case against anarchism he endeavoured, however, to destroy his opponent’s case by resorting to the old arguments that it is impossible to find two anarchists who think the same … forgetting that the fact that certain people call themselves anarchists means that they have all something in common, i.e., the desire to build up a society without a State as the name anarchy implies. People who looked at our literature table on leaving the hall and saw it covered with our recent publications and pamphlets all produced by the associated work of anarchists in this country must have realised that this was a proof of the ability of the anarchists in this country to organise themselves and to work in complete accord. The fact that in Spain the anarcho-syndicalists had an organization of two millions is another proof against his argument.
The other accusations Bill Gape had to face was that anarchists are bomb throwers, who have praised in the past the assassination of capitalists and dictators. Nothing was spared to paint the anarchists in really dark colours and the S.P.G.B. members in the audience must have felt rather uncomfortable at the idea of anarchists, their pockets bulging with revolvers and bombs, sitting perhaps next to them. Anarchists in the audience were thoroughly amused; they felt that at a time when the governments of all countries are covering the earth with 1,000 pound bombs, mines, land mines, and when they advocate sabotage and individual assassination, the little home-made bombs of the anarchists, directed not against innocent workers, women and children, but against factory owners responsible for the death of many workers, against the degenerate Russian tsars or the blood thirsty Spanish archbishops, or more recently against the dictator of the Italian people cannot be used as a means of scaring the people any longer.
The socialists have always been fond of putting people on their guard against the anarchists who sacrifice their lives in order to suppress the exploiters and the oppressors of the people, but they are apt to forget that the real enemies of the people are those who send them on the battlefield to die by the million, who expose them to bomb and gas attacks; it is for them that they should reserve their invectives.
Cash, incidentally, rather contradicted his statement about the anarchists being bomb throwers when he accused us a few minutes afterwards of being Christian pacifists (this will be news to many of our readers!).
The socialist speaker refused to consider the possibility of direct action on the part of the workers. He said that the S.P.G.B. could not expose their members to the consequences of direct action as ‘it was impossible for them to keep their wives and children.’ This is the argument the reformists have always used in order to justify their unwillingness to fight and their lack of courage. It is for the good of their wives and children as well as for that of their fellow men that workers should be prepared to take part in the struggle. What has present society to offer them except bombing, misery and starvation? Are workers going to be submitted to those like sheep or are they going to try to prevent it even at the risk of having to do momentary sacrifices? No working class victory has been achieved without a hard struggle having to be fought against the master class in which a few fall for the freedom and happiness of the others.
Sam Cash, during the debate, challenged us to explain how we ‘could seize the army without getting control of Parliament.’ We cannot deal with such a question in a short report but Bill Gape’s answer was adequate enough. ‘The army,’ he said, ‘is composed of men, who just like those who are in the S.P.G.B. or in the anarchist movement are able to think and decide where their interests lie and what their attitude towards the working class struggle should be. It is for them and not for us to decide what they must do, it is up to them to choose the mode of action and organisation and not for us to try and take control over them.’ On this question as on that of syndicalism which came up at the end of the debate, Bill Gape put up a practical and realist case while the S.P.G.B. speaker remained in the metaphysical realm of politics.
War Commentary Mid-June 1942
A note on Sam Cash
‘The man who perhaps best represented the humanistic tendency in the Party was Samuel Cash. An able orator and a willing worker, Sammy was unceasingly the centre of controversy. He was fallible – which to the Party meant ‘unsound’. He had, indeed, a passion for lost causes; he was prepared to consider any criticism of the Party and to acknowledge other people’s logic. He was, too, unashamedly interested in subjects of which the Party disapproved: penal reform, progressive education, psychology, all the signposts to reformism. He had left the SPGB at one time to join the Communist Party, and then came back and lectured on ‘Why I left the Communist Party’. In the General Strike he had been sent to prison for a characteristic offence. There had been some breaking-in to small shops for food; from his platform Sammy condemned it sternly, and recommended instead the big shops where the owners could afford the loss and the food was better.
‘Sammy was a taxi-driver, but he was continually starting businesses designed to serve his fellow-men as well as benefit himself. The most extraordinary of them was the Humanitarian Restaurant, a joint venture of Sammy and an anarchist named Bill Gape who had founded a trade union for tramps. It was a coffee-shop where cups of tea were cheap in any event but free to the unemployed. It is almost unnecessary to say that hardly any customer admitted to being employed, and that the business for its short lifetime was subsidized by Sammy’s working overtime in his cab.’
From: The monument : the story of the Socialist Party of Great Britain by Robert Barltrop p.93-94
https://libcom.org/library/monument-chapter-10-democracy-scales