Editorial: What About It?

A short while ago “Plum” Warner, the old Middlesex cricketer, bid farewell to the public, and seized the opportunity to deliver through the Press, an admonition to the miners under the title ; “Miners, play the game !” (It does not seem to strike him what a vast difference there is between the game he wants the miners to “play”and the game he has been playing the best part of his life.)

On Oct. 3rd appeared in “Lloyd’s Sunday News” an article urging the workers to “Work, Produce!” and, again the incongruity of it, the writer was that indefatigable worker and stupendous producer, Lord Moulton.

A day or two ago the “Daily Chronicle” had an article headed “What Every Woman Knows,” and drawing moving ‘but obviously true pictures of what is going to be the experience of the women of the working class in the event of a miners’ strike maturing, and again it is one of those people of such wide first-hand knowledge of empty cupboards and the sufferings of poverty—a lady of title—who does the writing.

It is meet to ask, at a time when your “betters” are setting you such an example of class-conscious propaganda in the class struggle, what you are doing in the same class struggle: Are you working for the enlightenment of your fellow working men and women ? are you even studying for your own enlightenment ? Are you talking about Socialism ? Are you pushing Socialist literature ? Every word you read of the right stuff, helps, and every word you speak with knowledge and understanding. So what about it?

(Editorial, Socialist Standard, October 1920)