September 3rd: 70 years ago today the United Kingdom declared war on
fascist Germany, so marking the start of World War Two. In an article
written at the time, Ted Grant summarised what was now in store for the
masses of Europe and beyond: ‘Millions, tens of millions, will be
killed in the insane
slaughter, whole cities and countries will be devastated,…
Famine and disease will sweep over all Europe. The flower of European
manhood will be exterminating one another. And for what?’ To mark this
anniversary we are reproducing Ted’s article from 1939 in full.

Down with the war!

Today the youth of
Britain as of other countries face the gravest threat to their lives
and liberties they have ever had to consider. War or peace trembles
in the balance. The nations confront one another mobilised and armed
to the teeth. “We are ready,” boasts Chamberlain, pointing
to the Navy, Army and Air Force preparedness, to the methodical
preparations of A.R.P. and evacuation schemes. Yes, they even have
ready 250,000 shrouds for those they expect to be killed in the first
weeks and months of air-raids, for London alone. Across the Channel,
on both sides of the Rhine, the state of preparation is just as, or
even more complete. 

It requires merely the
signal, on either side, and the ghastly tragedy of 1914-1918 will
have begun again. Millions, tens of millions, will be killed in the insane
slaughter, whole cities and countries will be devastated, women and
children as well as men will be in the front-lines to be butchered.
Famine and disease will sweep over all Europe. The flower of European
manhood will be exterminating one another. And for what?

The British capitalist
press has been attempting to picture the situation as if it were all
due to the “lust for power” on the part of a lunatic who
controls Germany. This man, they say, has an insane desire to
dominate Europe—the world.[sic] After his conquest of Austria and
Czechoslovakia, it is now the turn of Poland. It is time, they say,
that British “democracy” made a stand.

It is true that German
Imperialism desires to dominate the continent of Europe. But the
reason for this lies in the insoluble contradictions of German
capitalism. In the most highly industrialised country in Europe, with
the coming to power of fascism in Germany and the consequent savage
lowering of the standard of living of the German people, the German
capitalists find themselves in a position where they must find new
markets in order to get rid of their surplus goods, which they cannot
sell at home. In addition they want sources of raw material and new
peoples to exploit, having squeezed almost the last pfennig, the last
ounce of energy out of the German working class. They have openly
demanded that Central and South Eastern Europe must become a “German
sphere of influence”.

But the British and
French capitalists, despite the huge resources of their empires, with
their millions of colonial slaves, out of whom super profits are
wrung, also despite the few crumbs given to the upper layers of the
working class, find themselves in a similar position.

Cabinet minister after
cabinet minister has openly stated that they are not willing to give
up a single one of their markets anywhere in the world. That is the
cause of the quarrel between these different gangs of imperialist
bandits. Stripped of all the pious phrases about “defence of
democracy”, “liberty”, “the rule of law, not
force”, on the one hand, and “Germany’s sacred rights”,
“living space”, “the wrongs of Versailles” on the
other, it can be reduced to the quarrel between the different cliques
of monopoly capitalists as to who shall have the dominant right to
make profits at the expense of the peoples of the whole world.

The attempt to picture
the struggle as one between barbarism and civilisation, fascism
versus democracy, tyranny against liberty, is made laughable by the
attempt of the British capitalists to win over to their side Franco,
the butcher of millions of Spanish workers, bloodiest tyrant in
Europe, and Mussolini, not a whit better or worse than his fellow
dictator. And there is no need to point out that thousands of workers
are languishing in the jails of fascist Poland in whose defence we
are to die.

In addition, by means
of the Emergency Powers Act the liberties of the workers in England
will be swept away soon. In France the move towards dictatorship has
gone even further than in England. Freedom of the press, freedom to
hold meetings, etc., has already been taken away, and rule by an
“inner cabinet” of four dictators resorted to. As soon as
the sound of the first shots has died away, behind the smoke of
battle the last vestiges of freedom and democracy will disappear. War
on the totalitarian scale will begin.

Already the capitalists
have exacted “sacrifices” in the “national interests”
from the rail workers and engineers. Dearly bought trade union
conditions in the engineering industry have gone by the board.
“Dilution”, leading to a lower standard of living has
begun. This is just the start. Other attacks on all sections of the
working class are to come. It will be noticed that the railway
owners, engineering bosses, and armament profiteers are not being
called on to make sacrifices.

War, if it comes, will
mean immense profits to the monopoly capitalists on both sides of the
frontier. It is the working class and small people generally who will
be the sufferers. “But what about the defence of our country?”
plead the millionaires and their hired prostitutes of the boss class
press. Defence of whose country? Defence of the landlord and the
boss!

We defend the country
when we have a country to defend. Cut down the profits out of war
100% first. Let the mines, factories, railways and workshops come
under the control of the working class. The working class on both
sides of the frontier has no interest in the struggle of one or
another group of vultures fattening on the corpses of the working
people. If British capitalists win the war, they are preparing to
carve up Germany among their allies and themselves. Already the
Evening News, formerly an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler,
when he was destroying the trade unions and other organisations of
the working class, former enthusiastic backer of Mosley and British
fascism, has hinted in its leader columns of this intention upon the
part of the British ruling class. If Hitler wins he will impose his
monstrous tyranny on the whole  of Europe and the
colonies, as he has upon the Czech people. British workers and German
workers have no reason to slaughter one another. Let us turn upon our
real enemies, the German and British capitalist class.

If world capitalism has
no solution for its problems excepting new and more horrible
slaughter of whole nations, it is time this insane system were ended.
And meantime, what is the message of the Labour and Communist Party
leaders to the workers of the world? They are betraying us into the
hands of our worst enemies.

Working youth,
capitalism can only continue to exist on your bones. The sole way out
for the youth lies in the overthrow of capitalism and workers’ power
and socialism. Our path lies in building up the revolutionary
socialist youth which alone can lead us away from the nightmare of
war which hangs over us.

E.G.

First published in ‘Youth for Socialism, vol. 2 no. 1′ (September 1939)

Text taken from www.tedgrant.org – markup by Emil (2007)