Tuesday, May 19, 2020

50 Years Ago: Local Councils versus Central government (1984)

The 50 Years Ago column from the May 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

This paragraph raises the issue of the more “generous and sympathetic" attitude of the Labour Party councillors as contrasted with that of Liberal or Tory councillors. It is almost entirely irrelevant. Labour councillors on the LCC or other similar body are not there to exercise their generosity or sympathy but to carry out capitalist laws under the strict control of the central Government and its officials. What, therefore, happens is not that the workers feel grateful for the sympathy and generosity of the Labour Party councillors, but that they blame the latter for the callousness of the laws and regulations they arc carrying out. If a Labour Council kicks over the traces it is sharply called to order by the central Government. if need be by the threat or reality of imprisonment as happened in Poplar a few years ago to Mr. George Lansbury and others.

Furthermore, the claim that the Labour councillors have a monopoly of knowledge of poverty or the desire to be sympathetic is absurd. Liberals and Tories have just as much right to claim to share in these cheap and useless virtues, and no matter who are the individuals who wish to be sympathetic and generous in spending local government funds, their wish invariably wilts at the prospect of being imprisoned or surcharged for doing so in defiance of the law.

(From our reply to a correspondent, “Should socialists support the Labour Party?”, Socialist Standard, May 1934.)

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