A Revolutionary rhyme
That sheeplike leader-worship, looting shops, and burning trains —
Such primitive and futile monkey tricks—
Denote that Labour lacks the proper function of its brains :
You can’t slay old King Capital with bricks !
The Government is still the subtle fraud of long ago;
The Liberal, the Tory, and the ” Lab.,”
Are merely a committee in the profit-mongers’ show—
Experts in all the arts of swank and grab.
In vain the fields of Belfast, Featherstone, and Peterloo
The lessons wrought in history’s bloody page !
Fools still abound to seek, where foul oppression ever grew,
For justice in a gold-corrupted age.
A servitude less painful is the goal they have in view,
In which false hope and misconception blend.
“Without a master class,” they say, “what would the wage-slave do ?
Deprived of this, on what would he depend?”
The Sampson of the ages, shorn of strength, bereft of mind,
Fine sport provides for tricksters, who engage
An up-to-date Delilah called Reform to lure and bind,
While Mammon mocks his impotent, blind rage.
Unlike the fabled giant seeking vengeance on his foes,
He acts as one who feels but never thinks,
And groping blindly fails to find the source of all his woes:
Reform is slavedom’s chain with gilded links.
Behold the foeman: Capital—one conscious, solid mass—
His iron law, his bludgeon, and his steel,
All framed to aid the despot to exploit a subject class,
And drive the striking wage-slave back to heel.
Parson, priest, and “Labour” man—that loathsome party hack,
The decoy in each canting P.S.A.,
Where peace is preached to lure our class awakened from the track—
The peace of slaves where tyrant Want holds sway.
To keep the Moloch Capital secure upon his throne,
Stern poverty and want are brought to bear;
And so the sons of toil compose the guard around the drone,
Dragooned by cultured insolence and fear.
Intelligence shall one day sight the gun and wield the blade,
When class-embittered hatred fans the flame
Now dormant, where devotion based on ignorance has made
The tools that bear the uniform of shame.
Strike the blow for freedom on the battlefield of class
Where the shameless ballot-monger plies his trade ;
Shun the trashy gems that fade like dew-drops on the grass—
The baubles of the Labour renegade.
Freedom is not found within subjection’s changing form;
Poltroons alone can halt between the two.
‘Tis Revolution breaks the fatal circle of reform,
From whence all foul oppression springs anew.
The weapons of our fathers served to keep the foe at bay:
Their use to-day could only bring defeat.
So with the strike, now totally unfitted for the fray,
And like old matchlock guns, long obsolete.
Througout the world thy comrades mass beneath the flag of red—
The beacon light of Labour’s destiny.
In Socialism seek the only force your masters dread,
Within the fighting S.P. of G.B.
F. G. T.