Fellow Citizens
A wicked and unjust war is now being waged by the ruling and propertied classes of this country, with all the resources of civilisation at their back, against an ill-armed and semi-barbarous people whose only crime is that they have risen against a foreign oppression which those classes themselves admit to have been infamous. Tens of millions wrung from the labour of workmen of this country are being squandered on Arab slaughtering; and for what: 1) that Eastern Africa may be ‘opened up’ to the purveyor of ‘shoddy’ wares, bad spirits, venereal disease, cheap bibles and the missionary; in short, that the English trader and contractor may establish his dominion on the ruins of the old, simple and happy life led by the children of the desert; 2) that a fresh supply of sinecure Government posts may be obtained for the occupation of the younger sons of the official classes; 3) as a minor consideration may be added that a new and happy hunting ground be provided for military sportsmen, who, like the late-lamented Colonel Burnaby, find life boring at home and are always ready for a little Arab shooting when occasion arises. All these ends determine the dominant classes, though in different proportions, to the course they are pursuing.
Citizens, you are the dupes of a plot. Be not deceived by the flimsy pretences that have been, and are, alleged as reasons for the cowardly brigandage perpetrated on weak and uncivilised peoples by these classes in the name of the community. Rest assured the above are the sole motives animating them, whatever their professions; in brief, that, in the words of our manifesto, ‘all the rivalries of nations have been reduced to this one – a degrading struggle for their share of the spoils of barbarous countries to be used at home for the purpose of increasing the riches of the rich and the poverty of the poor’.
With the history and causes of the bondholders’ war in Egypt you are probably already sufficiently familiar, but we invite your attention for a moment to the leading facts in this latest development of a career of hypocrisy and crime. After the British conquest of Egypt, General Hicks is allowed to attempt the reconquest of the Sudan in the interest of Egyptian usury. This attempt failing, General Baker is authorised to subdue at least the seaboard. A second failure demonstrating the utter futility of Egyptian arms against the desert spearmen, a fluttering in the dovecotes of the military and the Stock Exchange worlds ensues. But there is balm in Gilead yet. Happy thought, the garrisons – yes, they must be rescued! General Gordon, the successful subduer of rebels in China, and ex-Governor-General at Khartoum, is he not the man to deal with Sudanese malcontents? Assuredly, say the Pall Mall Gazette and The Times. Cabinet ministers, unable to resist the mandates of the classes these powerful organs represent, bow their heads and submit.
Gordon, after duly consulting with his friends, is despatched, bearing in his hands the instructions of the Government, but – as events have proved – in his pocket those of the distinguished newspapers in question. Arrived at Khartoum, the ‘Christian hero’, accordingly with scarcely a feint at negotiation, and in defiance of his professions of peace, proceeds to fortify himself within the city, and use it as a base for military raids upon the surrounding tribes, who he had previously cajoled with protestations of friendship. The play after this move was easy. The wicked Mahdi menaces the life of the ‘hero'; ‘hero’ demands an expedition to help him ‘smash the Mahdi’. The ‘rebels’, otherwise Sudanese, are base enough to take their own town of Berber from the Egyptian garrison. ‘Christian hero’ feels it his bounden duty to announce his intention of recapturing Berber, and putting all its inhabitants to the sword by way of chastisement. (This pious intention, fortunately for the Berberese, remained unrealised.) Meanwhile, garrisons are forgotten. The Jingoes know a cry worth two of that. Gordon abandoned! Despatch your expedition! cry The Times, Pall Mall Gazette and company. Cabinet ministers faintly remonstrate and at length again bow their heads. Who are ministers to dispute the orders of influential newspapers representing important interests?
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs not to make reply;
Theirs but to do and – die,
and dying they are, to all appearances, as Cabinet ministers – of Pall Mall Gazette. That, however, is no concern of ours.
The expedition is despatched. British cut-throats slaughter a few thousand Arabs amid the jubilation of the press, when – oh horror! – Khartoum is fallen: and fallen, too, into the hands of the Sudanese themselves. Gordon, no more! In Fleet Street is there a cry heard; lamentation and weeping and great mourning. Never was the dust of a hero so watered by the gush of newspaper before. Nowadays, however, we produce emotion like other things – primarily for profit – and only secondarily for use. Time was when men poured forth each his own grief in his own manner when they sorrowed for some great departed. Under the rule of the great industry we have changed all this. Now the factory system and the division of labour superseded individual emotion: it is distilled for us by the journalist, and we buy it ready-made from the great vats in Fleet Street and Printinghouse Square. The result is that the public sometimes have emotion forced upon them when it suits the purveyor, for other reasons than the greatness of the departed. Perhaps it is so in this case. Anyway, from the well-watered dust of Gordon rises up for The Times, Pall Mall and their clients, the fair prospect of British Protectorate at Khartoum, railway from Suakim to Berber, new markets, fresh colonial posts, etc. Cabinet ministers once more bow before the all-powerful press, and whispering they will ne'er consent, consent – to the reconquest of the country in the interest of English commerce – for the permanent railway from Suakim to Berber can mean nothing less than this.
Citizens, if you have any sense of justice, any manliness left in you, join us in our protest against the wicked and infamous act of brigandage now being perpetrated for the interest solely of the ‘privileged’ classes of this country; an act of brigandage led up to through the foulest stream of well-planned hypocrisy and fraud that has ever disgraced the foreign policy, even of this commercial age. Mehemet Achmet (the Mahdi), the brave man who, in Oriental fashion, is undertaking the deliverance of his country, has repeatedly declared through his agents his willingness to release the Bashi-Bazouk garrison and give guarantees to refrain from aggression in Egypt. Mr Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was in a position, even when the ‘Christian hero’ was wantonly waging an offensive war against the Mahdi, to ensure the success of the negotiations for his release, as well as that of the garrisons, had he been allowed to make them, as he assuredly would, had this been the real object in view, but such an arrangement was not quite good enough for the market-hunters and filibusters for whom the ‘influential’ press writes. ‘Not this man, but Wolseley’, cried they; and Wolseley was sent, avowedly to rescue their nominee – who by that ostentatious pietism which, as they were well aware, gilds everything with a certain section of the British public, had already so well served their turn – but in reality to engage in the conquest of the devoted land upon which from the first their vultures’ eyes had been cast.
And, finally, we ask you to consider who it is that have to do the fighting on this and similar occasions. Is it the market-hunting classes themselves? Is it they who form the rank and file of the army? No! but the sons and brothers of the working classes at home. They it is who for a miserable pittance are compelled to serve in these commercial wars. They it is who conquer for the wealthy, middle and upper classes, new lands for exploitation, fresh populations for pillage, as these classes require them, and who have, as their reward, the assurance of their masters that they are ‘nobly fighting for their Queen and country’.
The Provisional Council of the Socialist League
W Bridges Adams
Edward Aveling
Eleanor Marx Aveling
Robert Banner
E Belfort Bax
Thomas Binning
H Charles
William J Clark
J Cooper
ET Craig
CJ Faulkner (Oxford)
W Hudson
Frank Kitz
Joseph Lane
Frederick Lessner
Thomas Maguire (Leeds)
JL Mahon
S Mainwaring
James Mavor (Glasgow)
William Morris
C Mowbray
Andreas Scheu (Edinburgh)
Edward Watson
Source: marxists.org
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