Between the Lines: To Hell with Charity (1993)

A Tory B’Stard

The Between the Lines column from the July 1993 issue of the Socialist Standard

To Hell with Charity

Socialists want a society without charity. The function of charity is to throw crumbs at the poor and pity at the disadvantaged. People First (C4, 8pm. 8 June) showed how a growing number of workers classified as disabled are sick of being the recipients of crumbs and pity. Their particular target, which has long been attacked in this column, are the patronising TV charity telethons in which company directors give cheques for a few thousand pounds (in return for a positive mention of their companies) and workers engage in stupid and humiliating stunts in order to raise in pennies what the average capitalist would spend without thinking twice on a good lunch.

Under capitalism disabled workers are usually poor because the bosses can milk less profits out of them than fitter, more agile wage slaves. They are disadvantaged because the social environment is built for the requirements of the physically fit and the cost of adding lifts and ramps to public places is not profitable enough. So, to ease the social conscience there are these annual displays of money-collecting and expressions of concern for those whom capitalist logic would really prefer not to be alive at all.

It was inspiring to see disabled workers refusing to behave as grateful victims and demanding the dignity of being equals. But equality in wage slavery is not the answer. It will only be when humans are recognised for what they are and not what they have that all of us, regardless of shape, form or infirmity, will be free to share the world as a family of equals.

What Community?

The same night as the encouraging documentary about militant disabled workers, Newsnight (BBC2, 10.30pm) had a report, set in Oxford, about what has happened to people who have been released from psychiatric wards into so-called community care. It is like releasing goldfish into the desert waters. The fact is that there is no community. For there to be a community there would need to be a common human interest in society rather than the class division which currently exists. In an increasing number of cases it is the very absence of a sense of community life, and the consequent depression, which leads people to become mentally unstable. The state’s response is to throw these unfortunate people out into a cold and alienating world where they will exist in poverty and loneliness, with medication to keep them quiet (if they remember to give it to themselves). The Newsnight report showed how miserable and uncared for were those who have been sentenced to the scrapheap of bogus care in the bogus community.

Will the Real Alan B’Stard Please Stand Up?

Tory politicians come in all sorts, from wimpy Major, slobbish Clarke to Mad Maggie. One of the latter's closest friends was Alan Clark, the subject of a BBC2 documentary called Love Tory (7 June. 9pm). Clark is a vile old aristocratic character with the callousness of a Ridley, the smugness of an Owen and the muddled thinking of a Lamont. He is the man, should you have forgotten, who referred to blacks in Britain as having come from Bongo-bongo Land.

In the documentary he readily admitted to being a liar and openly stated that when he was a Minister of Employment in the Thatcher government none of his policies made any difference and that he did not believe the speeches written for him to read out in the House of Commons. His candidness comes from the fact that he is extremely rich (he lives off what he called "the income from my income”) and an arrogant belief that the proles are too stupid to do anything about it even if their rulers admit in public to conning them.

Earlier this year, in a Guardian interview, Clark stated that "the arguments for socialism are powerful. But it has never been put into practice properly . . . the social argument for socialism is not easy to refute” (9 January). The reality is that two hours in the debating ring with a socialist speaker and the complacent grin would soon be knocked off Alan Clark's face. He would discover that socialism is impossible to refute and that capitalism can only be sustained while rather more publicity-conscious crooks than him persuade the working class to continue donating to the biggest charity in the world which keeps useless idlers in privileged luxury while the rest of us have to produce the wealth.

Steve Coleman