Inconvenient commemoration (1984)

From the December 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Not every liar, cheat and hypocrite is qualified to be a politician, for which a high standard of expertise is required. Even so equipped, however, politicians can frequently become victims of what has come to be known as the banana-skin syndrome. A pesky civil servant is sometimes the agent of this dreaded problem which can bring about political death, or even reveal the fact that a female generalissimo was lying through her teeth when she disclaimed responsibility for the slaughter of 350 of her fellow human beings.

Whether the suggestion by that well-known Christian. Enoch Powell, that the murder of 350 Argentinian sailors should have been an occasion for “justification and rejoicing" (as reported in the Belfast Telegraph, 3 October. 1984) is genuine hypocrisy, is open to doubt. It is true that according to the Christian ethic “thou shall not kill", but Christian practice has never been averse to a bout of murder, providing it is committed under the guise of war. At any rate, it is conceivable that the eminent Enoch is quite genuine in his well-publicised hatred of all but the best of white-anglo-saxon protestants.

Timing is critical in the use of hypocrisy. It is fine, for example, for the British Labour Party to show righteous indignation about the Tories presiding over rising unemployment; attacking the health service; breaking strikes and using the full rigour of the capitalist law to punish pickets and strikers and, indeed, all the other dirty things that Tories do. But the Labour Party can protest only when it is Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition — and its parliamentary representatives should leave the House before the Tories remind them that all Labour governments — all seven of them — have done all of these things in the past and will be obliged to do so again if they ever become the government again.

Yes, timing is always vital; but then, how fickle is the public memory? Who is likely to remind the pensioned media that butchering the people of Afghanistan was a practice taken up by British governments long before the Russian ruling class ever thought of it? Churchill, arguably one of the greatest exponents of political hypocrisy. just got his timing right in 1939 when he told the British working class to pledge their lives in the fight against Hitler — just two years after he had told readers of The Times that if Britain ever got into difficulties he hoped a man with the will and determination of Hitler would emerge. Mind you, this feat of monumental hypocrisy was almost eclipsed by the Russian Foreign Minister. Molotov, when he told his German counterpart that the Russian rulers had always held that a strong Germany was indispensable to world peace — about a year before their respective leaders sent their wage-slaves out to slaughter each other.

Then there was Kenyatta of Kenya, the leader of the Mau-Mau. If we believed the British press, this unsavoury bunch not only killed our brave boys who were upholding the flag in foreign parts, they actually ritualised the savaging of their corpses. Finally a deal was done with old Jomo that helped to keep trade and commerce intact and Kenyatta was canonised into the ranks of secular saints who help to keep the world safe for hypocrisy and capitalist exploitation.

Given half the space used by the press for bingo and trivia, we could lengthen indefinitely the list of current and past examples of hypocrisy. Where these examples proved successful, you can be sure that the timing was right. Bad timing and . . . there’s a banana skin!

It was such a banana skin that caused no less a person than the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland, the redoubtable hypocrite, Dick Spring, to fall on his political backside on 1 October last. In looking at the background to Spring’s misadventure. it is important to note that the Irish government is busily re-writing history in order to distance its more prominent personnel from the activities of the Provisional IRA and events in Northern Ireland. Again, the element of time comes into this mammoth exercise; according to the comfortable Garrett Fitzgerald and his cohorts, murder and mayhem was alright in 1916 and in 1919-21 but it is quite . . . well, barbaric, today.

Of course there were differences between 1916 and 1984. In 1916. when Pearse and Connolly led a bunch of politically ignorant workers onto the streets of Dublin to kill and be killed by their fellow members of the working class, Ireland was undergoing a period of British rule less rigorous and repressive than the country had ever experienced. In the present Northern Ireland troubles, on the other hand, those who mislead workers into an anti-working-class conflict against each other have very real military repression as well as social deprivation to play the role of recruiting sergeants. But this is not the difference that concerns southern Irish politicians; the difference is that they now have power and influence as the lickspittles of Irish capitalism; power, influence, Mercedes cars and all the trappings of rich living that their ex-imperial masters used to flaunt and all derived directly from the earlier bout of killing. Can it be wondered why they want to conceal the history of their bloody inheritance?

The old songs about yesterday’s heroes that once rocked the timbers where drunken patriotism found solace no longer have official favour — what respectable politician would want to share a ballad with the Provos? The sick commemoration services that previously allowed government ministers to unveil plaques to the immortal memory of some poor, unfortunate Paddy Murphy — whose dog might have barked at the Black-and-Tans — are, similarly, now frowned upon. But sometimes it can’t be helped; members of the commemoration committee might be the same people who marshall the voting fodder for the Party and. on the principle of votes before principles, what can a Minister, even a Deputy Prime Minister, do but attend?

Doubtless, for such good reason. Deputy Prime Minister Dick Spring was the chief hypocrite at a commemoration in honour of Sir Roger Casement, a would-be Republican gun-runner who was apprehended by the Royal Irish Constabulary in 1916. Actually, there are several layers of hypocrisy in the Casement affair. After his arrest, the British authorities — who had knighted him for his civil service in the Congo — found his diaries which, they claimed, revealed that he was a homosexual. The truth or otherwise of that claim should have been irrelevant but — mindful of the sick perversity of Catholic thinking on matters sexual — both sides tried to make propaganda out of the alleged revelations. the leaders of Catholic nationalism claiming that the “Black Diaries" were forgeries and, as such, demonstrated the depravity of the British.

The truth of the matter has never been cleared up nor have Irish politicians — the political heirs of yesterday’s gunmen — or the present IRA ever been brave enough to express their admiration for Casement irrespective of the nature of his sexual proclivities. The hypocrites can only revere the memory of a heterosexual Casement. But that is the lower layer of hypocrisy; the more immediately glaring aspect of the matter — the commemoration of a gunrunner by an Irish Minister — was the part that came unstuck — through bad timing for all concerned.

Poor Dick was not to know that the latter-day gunmen were attempting an almost carbon-copy re-run of the Casement adventure — at least, not when he agreed to give the oration. As it was a seven-ton trawler, loaded with weapons and surrounded by the entire Irish navy, was sailing into port within a short distance of the spot where Dick was commemorating an equally-failed venture. Whether it disturbed the Deputy Prime Minister to the point where he left the festivities without partaking in the sumptuous repast usually allotted to a hypocrite of such high standing. is not reported. Certainly, the affair did not appear to rock his boss, Garrett Fitzgerald, who with contemptible effrontery took credit for saving the lives of “fellow-irishmen” who might have died if the weapons had got into the hands of the Provos. Presumably, had Casement's mission been accomplished, the resultant deaths might have provided another opportunity for some other hypocrite to commemorate a "successful" engagement in the “Glorious Struggle" where the "other side" were “British" members of the working class.

Paisley, one of the chief political architects of the present troubles in Northern Ireland, and the Unionist Party leader. Molyneaux, while complimenting the southern politicians on the capture of the arms, were quick to point to the hypocrisy of the Irish government. Molyneaux equated the Casement adventure with the more recent attempt to bring weapons into Ireland and he upbraided the southerners for not condemning all gun-running. A fair point, you might think, until you remember that he and his Party of Superbrits owe their existence in no small way to the fact that they conspired successfully with Germany, in 1912 — in the shadow of the First World War — to bring in guns to use against British troops if the British government intended to impose a solution of the Irish Problem that was not compatible with the political and economic requirements of the capitalist class in Northern Ireland.

Harrington might well have been referring particularly to Irish politicians when he penned the couplet:

Treason doth never prosper; what’s the

reason?

If it prosper, none dare call it treason!

We are not implying that capitalism is bad because its politicians are demonstrably cheats, liars and hypocrites. Capitalism should be abolished because it kills people by starvation, war and lack of medical attention; because it imposes poverty of varying intensity on the overwhelming majority of the world's people; because it divides. alienates and embitters the human family and denies us all the material means of a full and happy life — and finally because. even if the politicians who legalise its thieving processes were anxious to promote political honesty, they could not do so.

Richard Montague

Belfast Branch, WSP

Blogger's Note:

Embedded within this article in the original copy of the December 1984 Socialist Standard was an ad for the recently published pamphlet, Ireland — Past, Present and Future. This pamphlet was produced jointly by the SPGB and the World Socialist Party of Ireland. It can be accessed at the following link.

50 Years Ago: Who are the working class? (1984)

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

Within the ranks of the working class itself there are many who suffer from the illusion that they are in a class apart from and above the common worker; in fact that their interests are identical with those of the masters as against the rest of the workers. Amongst these are scientists, managers and salaried workers of various kinds.

These types of workers would be under no delusion if they would apply to their condition the test of a slave. On what do they depend for their living? Are they dependent wholly or mainly on selling their energies for wages or salaries in order to live? If this fits their economic condition then they are members of the working class, slaves, always in fear of losing their jobs and suffering accordingly.

The point always to be borne in mind is the frailty of the hold upon that on which the living depends, and the ease and swiftness of operation of the power of the job-controllers. Many in exalted positions have had this very cruelly impressed upon them, and although they scorn the suggestion that they are enslaved, yet they take good care to placate and dance to the tune of those responsible for the salaries.

There is no escape, therefore, from the conclusion that the fundamental interest of all who depend upon wages or salaries is identical, and is opposed to the interest of those who own the means of production and pay their slaves wages or salaries. It is a slave interest opposed to an ownership interest.

[From an article, "Are You a Slave?" by G. McClatchie, published in Socialist Standard, December 1934.]

Letter: Social Insanity (1984)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Social Insanity

Dear Editors,

I should like to bring to the attention of your readers a double question, about the so-called “balance of terror". I am hoping to encourage some debate on this, having already tried without great success to obtain some response from the so-called “intellectual elite" on this matter. What difference is there between the "totalitarian" political regimes where the voice of reason is automatically stifled, and the so-called liberal regimes, where the free voice of irrationality overwhelmingly stifles, in practice, the voice of reason? Don't these two types of regime suffer from the same malady, which we might call a kind of politico-military paranoia? With regard to the future of humanity, these rival oligarchies show themselves to be accomplices caught up in one demented course, based on a barbaric strategy: "If you want peace, prepare for a universal holocaust”.

Maximilien Rubel

Paris

Reply:

We endorse fully the suggestion that the governments of both West and East are engaged in a kind of madness, or irrationality which threatens to end in a nuclear war which would probably wipe out a large percentage of the human race. We would add two important points. Firstly, the "madness" of leaders and governments to which our correspondent refers cannot be considered in isolation from the rest of the population. Their power is ultimately a reflection of the failure of the working class to assert its interests; their ability to inflict “paranoia" and the hatreds of nationalism and warfare on the rest of us arises directly out of our acquiescence. Secondly, weapons proliferate not for their own sake, but in order to fight wars, and wars in their turn do not take place in isolation from social forces. The cause of war in the modern world is the competition between rival capitalist power blocs, including Russia and China as well as the more openly capitalist countries. They compete over markets, trade routes and raw materials: all sources of profit for the propertied minority within each state. These issues need not concern the working class majority, who are merely used as cannon fodder.

The only way to end the madness of preparing for a universal holocaust is to prepare for a universal revolution. This revolution must democratically replace the profit system with the common ownership of the world's resources. For this, we need a majority of socialists, and the present growth of the socialist movement must be actively encouraged by all who seek to remove the threat of war from the face of the earth.

Editors.

Letter: Silent professor (1984)

Letter to the Editors from the December 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Silent professor

Dear Editors,

I have just been reading the introduction to The Communist Manifesto by A.J.P. Taylor. Some of the criticisms he uses against Marx and marxism 1 have come across before and I disagree with him. However, he claims that the Labour Theory of Value has been discredited (p.37 in the Introduction). Having read Volume I of Capital. I find it hard to believe that the value of a commodity is not created by the labour power of the workers.

Could you please let me know what theory/argument Mr Taylor has in mind when he says the Labour Theory of Value is no longer credible and whether or not it has any validity (which I doubt).

S H Lodwick 

Plymouth

Reply:

S.H. Lodwick has a point; where do famously learned people like A.J.P. Taylor find the evidence to support their sweeping condemnations of marxism and its explanation of the workings of capitalist society?

To try to answer this question we wrote to A.J.P. Taylor, some two months ago. telling him that we can't answer our correspondent's enquiry and asking for his help in finding the sources his opinions are based on. But on this point Professor Taylor, who is not famous for any reticence in publicising his views, remains mysteriously silent. We have not had a word from him. by way of reply or even acknowledgement. Readers can draw their own conclusions.

Editors.

SPGB Meetings (1984)

Party News from the December 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Blogger's Note:

The November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard carried details of the audio recording of one of the meetings which was part of the advertised Working For Socialism educational weekend. [See above.]

As an aside, the listing above also gives details of the SPGB's Bristol Group's meeting in December 1984 on the subject of Anarchism, where the speaker listed was Guildford Branch's Brian Rubin. On the SPGB's website, there is an audio recording of another meeting from the same year which was organised by Islington Branch, where the speaker was again Brian Rubin, and the topic under discussion was Anarchism. This meeting dates from earlier in the year. There is a strong chance there is an overlap in content in both meetings. Anyway, it's a cheap excuse to provide a link to the audio recording of the Islington Branch meeting from June of that year.

New World Socialist Journal (1984)

Party News from the December 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

All of the second issue of the World Socialist is on the blog. Click on the link.

Letter: The miners’ strike & the Socialist Party (1984)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard  

 

The miners’ strike & the Socialist Party

Dear Editors,

Naivete is not what one expects from the columns of the Socialist Standard but the article on the miners’ strike (September, 1984) comes very close to it in stating that the SPGB will support any strike between the robbers and robbed, except when they are political. It is implied that this strike is more than just a political action, thus qualifying it for SPGB support.

Well, as I think that it is just a political strike, and you think it isn’t the score is now one all, a draw. The article goes on to say that 120,000 miners can't all be wrong, to which I must reply that 60,000 other NCB workers say that they are. As you can't produce a ballot to show what the 120,000 think, and my 60,000 can, you lose on the re-count because you cannot substantiate your case.

You enter a very dangerous minefield in trying to decide what is a political strike and what is not. The SPGB has been explaining for eighty years that politics is but an expression of the economic facts of life, then, all of a sudden, hey presto . . . we have the purely political strike. The two examples given, "dockers against immigration" and “Labour’s day of Action” had their roots in economic problems confronting the working class and being directed to political ends. This is exactly how I see the miners’ strike. So what is the exact mix which will trigger off SPGB support for a strike? 85 per cent political and 15 per cent economic? Or 60 per cent and 40 per cent? Or even perhaps 51 per cent and 49 per cent? May we be informed please?

So, is the strike political then? Messrs. Scargill and Co. have made it very plain indeed that the mere mention of Thatcher gives them all indigestion and sleepless nights, and they want to bring down the government immediately. This strike was called when coal stocks were at an all-time high, summer time just round the corner, plenty of nuclear power and oil about and no ballot. It was either "daft" (Lord Gormley) or politically motivated. In your article you state that the Labour Government did exactly what the NCB now proposes but there was no strike. So, if given exactly the same conditions, the miners didn’t strike under Labour, and are striking under the Tories, what other reasons except political reasons can there be?

Will the SPGB support any strike? I can't believe that it would be so stupid. The Socialist Standard in the recent past has quoted items from the "propaganda press" showing that certain strikes are welcomed with gratitude and delight by the bosses and are pleased to prolong them to bring the workers to heel. Support for this kind of strike brings only extra poverty and extra subservience to the workers involved. You indicate that the miners’ strike may well be in this category.

The word "support” in my working class dictionary means "to hold up — assist - sustain”. Would the SPGB assist in the prolonging of these strikes? Did the early SPGB back the Hansom Cab workers in their struggles against the encroachments made by automobile manufacturers? Would they have backed the Sword-Pikestaff and Bow and Arrow Makers Union against the encroaching Rifle. Gunpowder and Bullet manufacturers? I think not. The kindest thing to do is sometimes to advise people to leave a dying industry and not support their unavailing efforts? If nuclear power eventually takes over from coal will the SPGB be there sustaining the last striking miners in the last pit?

Mr Scargill and the NUM Executive and their bully-boys remind me of an embryonic Hitler and his storm-troopers gagging the union and menacing those who disagree. The SPGB finds fault only with the gagging, keeping a respectful silence on the activities of Scargill’s storm troopers. Activities well known to everyone in England except the SPGB. This policy of putting all the violence down to police brutality can best be described as fifty per cent SPGB and fifty per cent Trotskyist. As the gagging of the union. the split in the union and the mass violence of the striking miners are all part of the same coin, your article betrays a dangerous naivete, the implications of which need to be debated. Working Nottinghamshire miners must be wondering who the SPGB thinks is harassing their homes, property and families if it isn’t the bully boys . . . maybe it’s the police. What is certain is that working Nottinghamshire miners will regard the SPGB as a party to shun, which is a very great pity, for even Mr Kinnock has come out of his mouse-hole and condemned all violence.

S Levitt

London NW3

Reply:

Against Capitalism

It is a clear sign that a critic is standing upon thin ice when he resorts to distortion in order to make a case. Consider these examples: 1) Levitt claims that the article in the September Standard states that the Socialist Party supports all strikes, except for those motivated by political intentions to reform capitalism. He then bases a large part of his criticism on the use of the word "support". If he re-reads the article he will see that the term he objects to is not even used. 2) Levitt claims that the article suggests that "120.000 miners can’t all be wrong". No such statement is made. Clearly, it would be foolish to say that because a number of workers are taking an action they must be right. 3) Levitt — whose silly hysteria about "storm troopers" we deal with below — claims that the Socialist Party has kept “a respectful silence” on the question of violence by picketing strikers (unlike Mr Kinnock whose moral stand wins the approval of our critic). As a subscriber to the Socialist Standard, our critic will have read the article "An Open letter to the Miners” (July, 1984) in which it is stated that "insofar as the reports of workers persecuting those who disagree with them are not false or exaggerated, socialists condemn unreservedly the anti-working-class intimidation of fellow miners”. Of course, this condemnation might not satisfy Levitt, whose own exaggerated description of the picketing resembles some of the most ignorant comment of the gutter press. 4) Levitt claims that the Socialist Party attributes all the violence to the police, whereas no such point is made in the article. In fact, the Socialist Party is not in the business of blaming one group or another for the violence which is endemic to the class war. So, four distortions in eight paragraphs: now let us try to make sense of the other fifty per cent.

Our critic suggests that it is difficult to determine what is a political strike, in the sense in which the term was used in the article. The difficulty does not trouble the Socialist Party: as far as we are concerned, the role of trade unions is to defend and improve the wages and conditions of workers under capitalism. In short, they have a defensive, economic function. Strikes intended to use working-class combination for the purpose of affecting the overall administration of capitalism are politically reformist and socialists oppose them. For example, when miners went on strike to oppose immigrant labour being introduced into British pits this was not an economic action; neither was Labour’s Day of Action, which was an attempted strike designed to show that a Labour government of capitalism would be better for workers than a Tory one.

Of course, no strike is entirely economic because there is no separation of politics and economics under capitalism. So, while the miners' strike is an economic strike, not very different from others conducted by other unions, it has a political dimension insofar as its result can affect the balance of political strength between organised labour and organised capital. It may well be true that the officials of the NUM want to get rid of the present government (so does the Socialist Party), but it is naive of our critic to think that 120,000 strikers have somehow been hoodwinked into striking for such a purpose.

Levitt cannot believe that socialists would be so stupid as to support any strike. We cannot believe that Levitt can be so stupid as to think that we might, when only four paragraphs earlier he acknowledges our opposition to strikes designed to reform capitalism. As for the question of "support" — a term not introduced by us — let us be clear that, as early as 1905, when the Manifesto of the Socialist Party of Great Britain was published, the socialist view has been that trade unions are a necessity under capitalism and “any action on their part upon sound lines should be heartily supported". We do not exist as a party to advise unions on how to conduct their necessary struggles within capitalism, although, as socialist trade unionists, we do our best to ensure that our unions act on sound lines and that we support union action to the best of our abilities. We might add that socialists within the NUM have done precisely that during this miners’ strike. The role of the Socialist Party is to advocate socialism and to point out that beyond the sectional, limited and repetitive struggle of trade unions there is a revolutionary struggle to establish world socialism which is both urgent and more important than mere defensive actions.

Levitt suggests that the Socialist Party — in a spirit of kindness — should advise the miners to leave their dying industry. Having issued such advice, does he propose that we urge them to buy some bikes and travel the country looking for thriving industries? The Socialist Party does not exist to urge workers to fit in with the absurd economic priorities of capitalism. What we can say to the miners is that, with an estimated 300-years’ supply of coal underneath Britain, there is no reason why a socialist society need let the coal industry die. Of course, a socialist society might decide that there are other energy sources which are preferable to coal; if so, such a decision would neither be based on profit calculations nor cause hardship to men who had been miners in the past. We think that the growing rejection of the profit-based priorities of capitalism, which has led mine workers to challenge the NCB’s definition of “uneconomic", should be regarded with enthusiasm by socialists. Our task is to show the miners that only in socialism can the economic priorities which offend them be eliminated.

The remarks about picket-line violence are stale and naive. Certainly, socialists have emphasised time and time again, both in our propaganda and in our unions, that violent tactics should be avoided by workers who can win by force of numbers. But the state, which is an institution of legalised violence, will not simply sit back and let workers picket as they please. Laws allowing pickets to persuade non-strikers have been largely ignored during this strike — vans carrying strike-breakers (‘‘rebels”) have driven through picket lines at such speeds that it has been impossible for pickets to speak to their fellow-workers. So, mass picket lines have been formed in order to ensure that the strike-breakers either stop and listen or stay out of the colliery.

Does our critic really think that the condemnation of picket-line violence by Neil Kinnock will make any difference to the class struggle? After all, Thatcher. Kinnock and the other hypocrites who are appalled by picket-line violence are the same leaders who support the creation of war machines designed to murder civilian populations. The Socialist Party does not issue moral condemnations of selective acts of violence — we are busy advocating the case for the abolition of the social cause of such behaviour. We did not notice the Fleet Street propaganda rags condemning the picket-line murder of seven striking miners in South Africa (reported briefly on BBC’s Newsnight on 18 September).

Our critic is concerned that the working miners of Nottinghamshire will shun the Socialist Party because of what we have written about the strike. Well, they were shunning us before the strike started, but that did not stop us from trying to convince them of the validity of our case, which applies to all workers, whether unionised or not. striking or working, militant or conservative.

Editors.

Letter: A sane society (1984)

Letter to the Editors from the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

A sane society

Dear Editors,

May I be allowed to say a few words on the miners’ strike of the kind I have not yet seen clearly expressed in the columns of the Standard?

Can I first of all get back to socialist basics and say that disputes like this one are inevitable in a social set-up in which the interests of one group of the population (wage and salary earners) are inherently opposed to the interests of the other group (employers, private or state). When the first group gains, the other loses, and vice versa. That is why even when workers say they don’t like other people’s strikes, they will always go on strike themselves if they consider it necessary.

Can I add that if strikes are, therefore, inevitable in the present society it is very much in the interest of the workers involved in them to see to it that their action is as democratically based as possible. Otherwise they play into the hands of their employers making it easy for the latter to use public opinion, the media and the forces of the state (police, judiciary, etc.) to make sure they come out on top — as in the present miners' dispute.

But there is of course no glory in strikes — not even in successful ones. They are an unpleasant necessity in a society divided into two groups with irreconcilable interests. And even if, in the present case, the NUM got its way, all it would be doing would be reserving for yet another generation of young men a future no sane society would reserve for any of its members — a future which consists of spending most of your waking hours during your whole working life in a hole under the ground. This is what "preserving mining communities" really means.

A sane society would use the technology now available to bring coal up from the ground solely by automation. As an article in the New Scientist magazine in September showed, the robot mine is a perfectly feasible proposition. The main reason it has not yet been developed is because, in the words of Tom Carr, director of the NCB's Mining Research and Development Establishment, "it’s too damn expensive to automate completely”.

And there we have it. What counts isn’t human wellbeing but cost and profit — which are of course at the crux of the present strike as well.

The alternative to this — and the one for which socialists stand — is a world in which cost and profit are not the criterion by which judgements are made. The alternative is a world in which human needs come first, in which there is no buying and selling, no employees and employers, and no strikes. This is the lesson to be drawn from the miners’ strike, whatever its outcome.

H. Moss 

Swansea

Corporal punishment (1984)

From the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

Most inner-city High Streets have an army-recruiting office where the raw are taken in (literally) to find themselves in plush surroundings; where the harvesting recruitment sergeant patronises the newly-germinated with smarmy small-talk about ski-ing and discos on far-off shores, using all the underhand skills and techniques of a sales representative for Cannon Fodder Incorporated. The process of recruitment from the High Street Office to the training camp can be as little as two weeks. During this period there is hardly enough time for the recruits to read the large-print in the glossy magazines, let alone the small-print surrounding their twenty-two-year contracts.

At the High Street Office the unsuspecting windfalls are tested in Arithmetic. English and Physical fitness, after which there is an interview. The Arithmetic and English are to ascertain the recruit's degree of simplicity. The medical decides whether the next in line can walk or hold a gun. The interview is perhaps more sinister. This is when the would-be soldiers are asked — prior to taking the Oath of Allegiance — if they are Communists. Have they ever been a Communist? Do they know any Communists? Answering "No" to these questions. they receive their one-way tickets to the training camp. Recruits are then trained like animals in a circus, with tit-bits for the good dog and a crack of the ringmaster’s whip (the Regimental Sergeant Major's pace stick) for those who don’t sit up and beg.

To obtain discipline and control the Army has more subtle methods than boot bulling and potato peeling. They have a long history of expertise in military psychology on which they can draw. The tools they use for processing the recruits are Conformity, Alienation and Competition.

Conformity

To impose Conformity the recruits must first be robbed of their individuality. This is done by inflicting uniformity of looks and behaviour on all soldiers. Uniformity of personal appearance is achieved at the first stop in camp, the barber's shop. The haircut and the clean-shaven look strips many young people of a part of their identity. If they were a little green in joining the Army in the first place, they become greener with a visit to the Quarter-Master's stores where they are issued with about six suits of varying sizes, just as many hats and the obligatory identity tag. informing them of their new name: an eight-figure number. Loaded with more new clothes than they have ever had at any one time, they set off to their accommodation having almost forgotten their frightening new hairstyle.

Impressed by the self-confidence of the reception Corporal, the new recruits are under the misapprehension that all they need to do is put on one of their new suits and they will be transformed into the new macho man. The dormitories each house twelve to twenty and are furnished in the most basic fashion — one bed, one locker and one chair for each person, laid out in a military style which is about as welcoming as a nuclear winter. With so little furniture you could think it easy to keep clean. The recruits soon discover that this isn't the case. For the forthcoming weeks they are cleaning the floor and removing dust from 5am to breakfast and then later from 5pm until lights out. with short breaks in between to clean their kit. Complete uniformity of behaviour is hammered into those with any remaining personality of their own during square bashing. Here marching, saluting and rifle drills are choreographed to such a degree that Lionel Blair would be envious.

Alienation

Alienation is another wrench in the mechanism of the military machine, used to twist the squaddies away from social interaction and to tighten the nut of docile acquiescence. Few of the trainees have much experience in letter-writing and many of their families cannot afford a telephone. so it isn't too long before they become isolated. This separation from family and friends, coupled with the confinement to barracks that most training camps impose. make it impossible to make new friends in the local community. The new soldier becomes so lonely and introverted, bullied helplessly into shape. For the smallest mistake the recruits are humiliated, bawled at and in some cases physically beaten.

A recent case of bullying was that of a new boy, or “sprogg" who, after a kangaroo court in the barrack room, was found "guilty” of not polishing his floor space to the required standard and was sentenced to be hung. He was beaten up by a dozen others, stood on a chair, blindfolded and a noose was tied around his neck. After a lengthy pause in which he broke down pleading for mercy, the chair was kicked from under his feet. Fortunately for him the rope was not secured to the rafters above.

Black balling is common among recruits. and many of the dangers they face in training are from each other, as each tries playing at soldiers with little more than an Action Man comic to go on, plus the stories learned from dad down the pub the night before they left. The recruits show a willingness to participate in any community pursuit and try to to impress anyone and everyone with their mixed-up league of priorities. They will take part in the humiliation of others, pleased that it is not happening to them. They have the childish notion of one who does not know right from wrong; if everyone else does something then it must be right. The alienating process has them so frightened that when they do join in group pursuits they often show their insecurity with violent reaction. 

Competition

Competition is the third bracket that straps the cogs to the tank tracks. Recruits are told from the outset that they must shape up to perform with team spirit in an endless cycle of competition that ends up like a game of snakes and snakes. Those who fail to perform well enough at individual and team skills are made to go back in training (back squadded). Competition strains at every level of the Army. At Battalion level there are about 600 men divided into four Companies, each of which has four Platoons of 30-40 soldiers. They are divided further into four sections of 8-12 and competition is intense for promotion and the cushy life. The sections are at loggerheads to be the best section in the platoon. The platoon is rife with the obsession to be top in the Company and the Company, predictably, is all-out for the coveted Battalion premiership. Of course the Battalion has its role to play at Garrison level and every Garrison goes all-out to be the best in the Army. The question is. where you go with the best Army in the world? Afghanistan? Grenada? or the Falklands?

Armies compete on behalf of the nation-states they represent for strategic positions on the trade map, areas rich in mineral resources and trade routes. In the name of defence they are often sent by governments to embark on expansionist imperialism. The sporting competitions of football and rugby, much advertised in the glossy brochures that could well have been composed by Saatchi and Saatchi, fall by the wayside when the Army enters the big league of politics at its sickening best. With such an extensive conditioning attack it is little wonder that the trainees soon appear to be the unthinking patriotic morons that the drill sergeants, non-commissioned officers and officers have set out to make them. The Army has disrupted everything that was important to the ex-civilian and imposed a new set of values. It is by treating the recruits in this way that governing them becomes easy and so effective.

The Queen's Regulations (the bible of the British Army) make interesting reading. For example, under Section 69(a) of the Army Act 1955 are listed offences against their god — good order and discipline — under which it is possible to charge someone with anything, including breathing. It is not uncommon for soldiers to be charged with “dumb insolence” when there is no better excuse than the face not fitting. Soldiers are caught by the jankers under these Acts. 'Frying to quote from the Queen’s Regulations in their defence can lead to another charge of insolence.

The ranks above are continually reminding the soldiers that they are not paid to think, with the old cliche:

Yours is not to reason why;

Yours is but to do or die.

This is shortly followed by a reprimand for not using their initiative. In recognising that the soldiers go through a very severe conditioning process we ask ourselves a few questions: Does it work in every case? Are there any long-term effects? and Is this conditioning a barrier to socialism? The answer to the first question must be that the conditioning of the soldier does work in most cases, proof of which can be found at the graves of Verdun or the Somme or Arnheim and the countless millions of nameless graves across the world where worker has killed worker for countries in which they had no stake. There are a few trainees who get out of the Army in the first few weeks but the majority feel compelled to stay, under the misbelief that it would be cowardice to leave. Secondly, are there any long-term effects? The sad answer is yes. We are familiar with the war wounded who were never hit by the enemy’s bullets, but were struck by a life in billets and camp songs for whom the last war has never ended. Many workers, however, have learned that no workers' interests are at stake when the capitalists make battle. Thirdly, what about the conditioning process? This is not a barrier to our achieving a socialist society. We have seen American soldiers conscripted to fight in Vietnam desert to the safety of Sweden. We have recently seen a film of the Russian soldiers defecting in Afghanistan and must conclude that as the individuals mature, so do the ideas and vice versa.

Jimmy Bob

Messenger boys (1984)

From the November 1984 issue of the Socialist Standard

The various Christian churches seem to be hitting the secular headlines recently with the Catholic church, by far the biggest, taking the lead. For the last year or so it has been deeply embroiled with the larger than life moneylenders of the international banking world. But it isn’t (as the innocent Catholic might think) the Children of Christ condemning the moneylenders, calling on them to “Store up their riches in Heaven and not on earth where they will rust and be eaten up by moths.”

A collection of about 120 foreign banks and other creditors want to know what has happened to £916 million of their money which was last seen passing through an intricate network of companies and subsidiaries from Liechtenstein to Peru, mostly owned by the Vatican Bank (IOR). Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, ex-head of the Vatican Bank, has been intimately linked with this mysterious affair. A one-time diplomat in the Vatican, Marcinkus seems to have been unwise in the company he kept while head of the Vatican Bank, for two of his closest associates were Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi. Sindona, a successful Sicilian banker, has been convicted of fraud and misappropriation of funds while Calvi. ex-member of the infamous masonic lodge P2. belter known as “God’s Banker”, recently slipped secretly out of Italy. He crossed the Gulf of Trieste to Yugoslavia and London, apparently to hang himself from Blackfriars Bridge, first taking the precaution of filling his pockets with stones and placing half a brick down the front of his trousers.

As with any good story, the plot thickens. In July 1978 Pope Paul VI died and was succeeded by a Pope John Paul I. Pope John Paul I died a few months later in September 1978. Allegations have been made that Pope John Paul I was poisoned because he had uncovered the financial wheeling and dealing of the Vatican Bank and objected to it. Contradictory statements by the Vatican about the circumstances of the death only encourage suspicion. Who really did discover the body? What was the Pope really reading when he died in bed?

All this has cast some doubt on the infallibility of the papacy. How could the Vatican get itself into such an embarrassing mess? Even if Pope Paul VI didn't know what was going on under his very nose (Marcinkus’s office was directly beneath the Papal apartments) you would have thought God would have had a quiet word in his ear. After all the Pope, so they tell us, is our direct link with God.

Of course, the Vatican hasn't admitted to making a mistake. It never does. Nevertheless, Archbishop Marcinkus has applied for immunity from prosecution by the Italian Judiciary. The Vatican Bank has also agreed to pay creditors £180 million. confidently expecting to recoup the loss from contributions by working class catholics.

While the Vatican is uneasily wearing the cloak of infallibility the Church of England has attributed falling attendances to the rigidity and inflexibility of ideas, which haven’t changed much in centuries. It has realised that the mumbo-jumbo of the past that worked quite well is seen to be more and more ridiculous. To counter this it has decided to invent some more modern mumbo-jumbo, adapted from the old stuff. Oxbridge theologians have been telling us that a lot of the Bible isn't strictly true, that the meaning and symbolism of what is written in the Bible is more important than whether or not it actually occurred in history. This innovative bit of philosophical sophistry has not gone unnoticed by the more conservative members of the clergy.The result has been a bitter debate about whether the Virgin Mary was or wasn’t.

In July David Jenkins, a leading advocate for change, was consecrated in York Minster as the Bishop of Durham amid protests and interruptions. A few days later there was an unhappy coincidence when the south transept of the Minster was struck by lightning and burnt down. Not surprisingly some of the clergy put this down to a divine thunderbolt, sent by a merciful God as an act of retribution. Fortunately, York Minster was insured by an ecclesiastical insurance company even if it is paradoxical for the church to be insuring itself against acts of God.

So while the Catholic church is grappling with financial corruption and infallibility, the Church of England is trying to reinterpret the work of God. A church that isn't as burdened with outmoded ideas and traditions inherited from previous centuries is Billy Graham's Evangelism. Everybody living in the English provinces must have noticed Big Brother Billy staring down at them from bill boards. His square set jaw. menacing smile and piercing eyes encourage the question “Would I buy a second-hand car from this man?”, especially in view of the personal testimony from ex-President Richard Nixon: “Billy Graham is one of the giants of our time”. But Dr. Billy isn’t the man he was in 1949 when he terrified all those who would like to sec 1950 with Christian threats like “Communism is inspired, directed and motivated by the devil himself. Either communism must die or Christianity must die”. A couple of years ago he went to preach in that nest of demons and devil worshippers, Moscow. Having been well treated by the puppets of Satan, he returned to cause a storm with some inane comments about the benevolent nature of the Russian state.

For a few months this year Graham was on Mission England. Backed up by technicians, campaign managers, thousand-voice choirs, security heavies and the all important $40 million business machine. Billy visited Bristol. Norwich, Sunderland, Birmingham. Liverpool and Ipswich. It must have been quite a spectacle to sec him preaching from the hallowed turf of Anfield. to hear the stadium echoing to the songs of praise, though not the usual irreverent and profane type. No doubt there was a deathly hush as Billy asked the spectators if they could hear Jesus knocking to come in. Jesus certainly wouldn't have been the first to be locked out of Anfield anyway.

Billy is not, as some might think, a man of peace, for when our masters’ property and profits are threatened he believes in the necessity of defence — of killing people and not turning the other cheek. Although he has gone to great pains to appear concerned about the problems of his flock such as unemployment and poverty, these are problems that God has spared Billy, who lives in a converted log cabin on a 200 acre site in America and receives a salary of $55,000 a year.

It’s all very easy poking fun at the Church now that the age of inquisition and witch burnings is over, but it is beside the point. Why do these ridiculous people and institutions exist? Why do so many people believe in what they say?

It is not possible to prove or disprove the existence of God. who exists only for people who have "faith”, a belief in something for which there is no material evidence. The evidence that Christians will give for the existence of a God is their faith. How could they believe in something of which there is no material evidence (except a book of dubious origin and authenticity) unless that belief was inspired by God himself? Their god is supposed to give them faith and this explains, for them, why they have faith. To break this circle of "God exists because 1 believe in God", it is necessary to understand why Christianity is so appealing to many people.

We live in a friendless society of competition. insecurity and. for many of us, absolute poverty. We live in a cruel and impersonal world, over which we seem to have no control. Most Christians would refer to all this as "suffering”. But they offer a unique "solution” to those who arc suffering, which is most of us — a philosophy, a set of ideas, that turns this suffering from something pointless and wasteful into something worthwhile. If we believe in God and Jesus Christ and accept the suffering doled out to us by the world, so they tell us, we will go to a much better place at the end of it and there live forever. The meek acceptance of suffering is a sort of lest and the better we do. the better the chance that we will be rewarded.

This, in essence, is very much like working for a wage. You graft for eight hours a day in a job you hate for the promise of a wage packet at the end of the week. The difference is that there is no pie in the sky at the end of your stint down here. Only worms and maggots. The idea of Christianity also gives you a sense of control over your ow n life for you can participate in the kingdom of Heaven. In every sense Christianity is masochistic, it dupes you into enjoying pain and suffering. It anaesthetises you against the stresses and strains of society. Once accepted, it becomes more difficult to face up to the real horrors of society

DB