A Look Back (1977)

From the July 1977 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recently there has been a good deal of looking back, recalling the events and atmospheres of the past quarter-century. Most people find pleasure in it because of personal associations — friends and places which have vanished now. In the clutch of present-day inflation it is remembered that everything was laughably cheap twenty-five years ago (without remembering that wages were correspondingly lower and bought no more). Society is the sum of relationships within a given structure. Has it altered? Did many hopes of 1952 come true? What kinds of fruit were borne by changes of government, technical advances, reorganizations, plans? We make our own brief survey.

War and Peace

Although only a few years old the United Nations was looking a little tarnished in the early 50’s. Formed after the devastation of the 1939-45 war, much lip- service was given to the concept of peace. But good intentions and pious talk are not enough it seems, for during its existence war has never ceased in parts of the globe. Korea, Malaysia, Aden, Hungary, Cuba, Congo. Israel, Egypt, Nigeria, Chile, Cyprus, Angola, Vietnam. Lebanon—that list is still not complete. The world is divided into three power blocks all armed to the hilt, and each possessing the ultimate weapon—the H-bomb. Many of these struggles have been civil wars with a rising capitalist class striving for power against the entrenched rulers, or between rival groups of capitalists for control. They have thought it worthwhile to expend their labour force to gain their ends, notwithstanding the terrible modern weapons that industry and science have produced. Sadly, they have been able to persuade deluded peasants and members of the working class to fight for them. The USA and her allies, Russia and satellites, China and SE Asian block stand by, interfering with arms or men in order to gain influence as each new flare-up occurs. The thought should not be overlooked that one of these could ignite another global war.

British troops, like others, have not been retained just for ceremonial purposes. By 1952 they had seen service in Palestine and Korea and were being used in Malaysia. They have since been involved in several of the conflicts as parts of the former Empire have broken loose, including the role they are performing in Ulster at the present time.

Health

In 1952 the National Health Service was in its infancy but there were already rumblings of discord. The alleged object of this reform was that treatment would be available to all on the basis of need only. It was assumed that under those circumstances health standards would so improve that in the course of time expenditure on the service would decrease. The image of a “free health service” was sacred to certain Labour Party notables. Aneurin Bevan resigned in protest at a shilling prescription charge.

By now charges for dentistry, spectacles, and prescriptions are well established. While waiting lists for hospital treatment grow these establishments are being asked to reduce the length of stay of patients, hospitals are being closed as “uneconomic”, and there are cutbacks in building and modernization. The largest group of sick people are those whose malady can be loosely termed as mental illness—suffering from stress, anxiety, depression. Every year there are 20 million prescriptions (not pills) for barbiturates issued, and 6 million Phenothiazine tranquillizer tablets swallowed (Sunday Times 30th Jan. 1977). Relative health standards generally have not improved. The better-off still have better health, live longer, and spend more time in consultation with doctors than the poorer social groups. Medical research is hampered by lack of funds, and some of the advances made involve equipment and methods that are costly in money terms. Doctors have the harrowing decision of whether or not to give expensive treatment to patients. Some people die because the NHS cannot afford to save them.

Education

By 1952 the 1944 Education Act was coming into full swing. One of the catch-phrases of this Act, which was regarded as a great step forward, was “secondary education for all”. It was argued that this would lead to better realization of abilities among the working class. The Act was enforced by raising the school-leaving age to 15 after the war, and by literally rubbing out the word “elementary” on the existing schools and painting in the word “secondary”. The type of education offered, and the status of the new secondary school, hardly differed from what had existed before. An 11-plus selection procedure was used, and it did not take long for the idea to develop that those “selected” for the Secondary Modern school had failed. It is interesting to note that the number of children thought suitable for a grammar-school education always exactly tallied with the number of places available, and whether or not a child passed the 11-plus depended on the area in which that child lived.

Comprehensive education was then devised to avoid the 11-plus selection, although whatever label it receives there is usually streaming inside the Comprehensive school. The school-leaving age has now been raised to 16, but learning skills have not risen in proportion to those extra years spent in school. Educationalists, unable to see further than the ends of their noses, have cast around for reasons, tinkering with different teaching methods.

Nobody is happy about education today, teachers, parents, or pupils. The false hopes of the early 1950s are gone. Now there are protests from some large employers about the educational standards of young people approaching them for jobs. Here they are contributing hundreds of millions a year to prepare their future work-force and their reason for education is being overlooked!

There are two changes which are of some significance. Teachers have become “militant”. One did not expect to see teachers going on strike twenty-five years ago. Once the conventional, respectable pillars of the establishment, they have learned that their position as salaried employees in “safe” jobs is no more sacrosanct than that of other workers. They are being forced to acknowledge their part in the class struggle. Secondly, their pupils have become more difficult to handle. Young people are no longer submissive, they are reflecting the pace and turmoil of life today.

Housing

This perennial problem was flourishing in the 1950s. It had been increased by the destruction in the war. Squatting had taken place in the late 1940s. when homeless families took over army nissen huts that were scattered about parks and open spaces. There were long waiting lists for council housing, and in 1951 the Conservative Party came to power with a promise to build 6 million new houses and solve the housing problem.

Their success can be measured by looking around today. Prefabs erected in the early 1950s with an estimated life of ten years have done stalwart service. Some are still in use! The foundations were laid for today’s detested tower-blocks. Council housing lists are longer than ever. Rent legislation has succeeded in drying up the supply of private rented accommodation. Workers who have managed to become owner-occupiers have crippling mortgages and high interest rates. According to the latest Shelter report the number of homeless people has trebled in the last ten years.

Everywhere you look

Other aspects are unemployment — there were those who claimed that the problem had been solved in the 1950s — industrial strife, pollution, inflation, racial tensions, crime. Not only have the measures taken by successive governments failed, many of their attempted remedies have thrown up further problems.

Is it then a catalogue of woe and nothing else? No. All through, there runs the desire of the great majority of working people to make as decent a life as they can despite the odds. The disharmony and mess are not their choice. On the contrary, they seek almost universally to make unpromising surroundings agreeable, to be good neighbours, to provide the best possible future for their children. It is precisely this desire for something better that makes them vulnerable to promises and enticements: only give me your vote today, says the Honest Man or the Strong Man or the Amazingly Clever Man of capitalism, and you shall have jam tomorrow.

The gap in realization is very small. Workers are not fools. Often they more than half know they are about to be sold again; but — it is thought and said — what else is there to do but take the least of three or four evils? Often too they are aware that an alternative does exist, but hang back from going against what appear to be stronger forces of opinion. Only a little more understanding and a little more will are required: and the next twenty-five years can bring a life altogether different.

The problems of society lie in its structure. While ownership of the means of life remain in the hands of one class it means the consequent enslavement of the non-owning class. There is a continual conflict of interests between those who produce wealth and those who possess that wealth. The solution to that conflict can only come by converting the means of production and distribution to the common ownership and democratic control of the whole of society. The understanding required to abolish capitalism and institute Socialism is within the capability of all workers; and the working class who run society from the top to bottom for the capitalist class now, are more than capable of running Socialism for themselves. The quickest way is the only way to Socialism, and that is by a majority of the working class understanding and wanting that change in society, organizing politically for the capture of the powers of government, and using that instrument for its own emancipation.

Turn your backs on despair and disillusion; and join with the world’s Socialist Movement to sweep capitalism from the face of the earth!

Alice Kerr

From the horse’s mouth (1979)

A Short Story from the December 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

I often wonder why those two-legged creatures slavishly toil their lives away in factories, mines, shops, offices, and fields in order to make their masters rich. What reward do they get? The poor wretches at British Leyland have now voted about throwing 25,000 of their fellows on the scrapheap; while British Leyland are to donate to Captain Mark Philips and Princess Anne £18.000 a year, the loan of £5.000, the free use of a Land-Rover and horsebox, as a sponsorship of their equestrian hobby.

Of course, as Major General Jack Reynolds of the British Equestrian Federation points out: “The sponsorship is done in such a way that the person himself doesn’t financially benefit by one penny. The money goes to the horses.” He thought that £3,000 a year was “about right” for the cost of maintaining a horse, which shows how partial these capitalists are to us of the equine species compared to their workers. Many humans labour hard and long all week to receive a take-home pay of less than £3,000 a year to keep not only themselves but also their families. And a worker put out to grass after a lifetime of faithful toil receives only £23.30 a week to keep body and soul together. Indeed, it is incredible how many of this ingenious, inventive, adaptable, hard-working class live, breed and die under conditions no self respecting horse would tolerate without kicking hard and often.

We horses do not wear ourselves out with work. We have valets and grooms to rub us down, brush and comb us, exercise us, clear up our excrement and place fresh bedding in our warm, dry stables. A veterinary surgeon is on hand for our slightest wheeze or limp. When we parade in public we require ten or twenty thousand men and women to stack themselves up on uncomfortable seats and admire our feats of running and jumping. The most illustrious who wish to mount us must first fawn and fondle or else we buck and rear. If one of us carries a royal rump and there is a call of nature—then nature calls! It is said a forebear of mine at Ascot—and my pedigree is more certain than many an heir to a capitalist fortune or the scion of a noble family—launched a kick at a crowned monarch because he did not like the looks of her head. Her royal majesty, who adores horses, murmured an apology and withdrew.

Shame on you biped workers for meekly producing wealth and luxury for the capitalists when you could take control of the means of living and work instead for yourselves and each other! Surely this would be preferable to an existence where you are valued as less than a horse?

. . .  as told to Alice Kerr

Obituary: Maggie Hallard (1978)

Obituary from the November 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Members will be sorry to learn of the death of Maggie Hallard, a Party member for over 56 years. She was born in 1893 in Stratford, East London, a district in which she lived for the whole of her life. After Maggie left school she worked in the clothing trade as a machinist. and she soon came into contact with working class agitation and the class struggle. In her teens she went to the Socialist Sunday School — where one learnt not about religion, but the class basis of society. When she met and married Percy Hallard her long association with the Party began. Percy joined in 1918, and he did many valuable years of work for the Party, including the secretaryship of the vigorous West Ham branch for 37 years. Maggie and Percy had no children and the Party became the focal point of their lives, and for Maggie the members became her family. She loved to reminisce, and was a mine of information on old members and Party history. Until a few months before her death she never missed a branch meeting, and attended every other Party propaganda meeting that she could reach. Even when she was 83 she would turn up to Branch outdoor meetings on the draughty street corner opposite Ilford Station, bringing a cold drink for the speaker. It is hard to recall a Conference or Delegate meeting without Maggie, and we will miss seeing her indomitable old face amongst us

Alice Kerr

A painful history (1980)

From the April 1980 issue of the Socialist Standard

As the capitalist system developed, causing the steady decline of the independent handworker and the replacement of manual labour by machinery, the effects on those who worked for a living were so severe that their struggles inevitably centred around wages and conditions. Battles with the employers resulted in the formation of trade unions, while struggles for political elbow-room culminated in political reform movements such as Chartism. The working class were joined by disaffected groups such as small traders and producers, who were sinking to ruin. Some workers may have hankered for a return to the handicraft production of the past, others harboured vague co-operative “socialist" notions, but there was little conscious recognition of the need to bring the powerful new forces of production into the common 'ownership of all society. Workers’ fierce struggles were rooted in the antagonism of interest between capital and labour.

In the mid-19th Century, Marx had unravelled the role of class struggles in the development of society, discovering the nature of exploitation in capitalist production and showing how social production conflicted with the private ownership of the means of production and distribution, resulting in economic anarchy, trade cycles of boom and slump, and capitalist rivalry which could lead to war. However, even those in the working class movement who understood and accepted Marx's analysis, saw the solution as so far off that they looked to reform as a means of ameliorating the suffering and wretched conditions of the working class until the time was ripe for socialism.

The impetus towards social reform was not provided by the working class alone. There were always some members of the capitalist class who recognised the need to improve the conditions of the workers. This was particularly the case when the proposed legislation affected pockets other than their own. Most of the Factory Acts of the 19th Century were brought in by the Tory Party who represented the interests of the landowners. The National Reform Union was set up by Liberal manufacturers with the object of winning support for the Liberal Party by campaigning for workers to have the vote.

The gaining of the vote by the working class signalled a new way to political power-dangling reform measures in front of the electorate. These have been the opportunist tactics used ever since by avowedly capitalist or allegedly labour parties. Whether the proposed measures actually get implemented or make much difference in the long run is another matter, which perhaps accounts for the 30 per cent of the electorate who do not bother to use their votes.

Some of the most successful capitalist enterprises paid wages above the accepted union rate and had due regard for the welfare of their workers. Individual capitalists such as the Cadbury brothers built model housing estates, offered improved working conditions, education, and showed a generally paternalistic concern not only for the bodies of their employees and families, but also for their “souls". Reforms have cost the capitalist class very little for they have received ample recompense in terms of increased production and the stability of their system.

The working class movement has produced factions that claimed it was possible to get socialism without first making socialists. The syndicalist plan was to seize the means of production and distribution by industrial action, by-passing Parliament or its equivalent. Although the movement in its early days had some support, bitter reality has shown the fallacy of their views. Whoever controls Parliament controls the armed forces and police, and in prolonged strikes the suffering of the workers far outweighs any discomfort to the capitalists. But syndicalist ideas still linger on among some left wing groups.

The Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 saw the birth of the Leninist theory of revolution. In a predominantly capitalist world and lacking both productive capacity and the acceptance of socialist ideas by the population, the only way Russia could develop was along capitalist lines. A repressive state capitalist regime masquerading as socialism has since developed, adding to the confusion and misunderstanding of workers and thus making the spread of socialist ideas that much harder. There has been similar confusion in East Europe, Cuba, China and so on. These have emphasised the fact that not only must socialism be a world-wide system, but also that the forces of production—the most important part of those forces being the working class—must first be ready.

In the last quarter of the 19th Century the working class movement threw up Social Democratic parties claiming adherence to the theoretical basis of Marxism and the need for revolutionary political action, but which all had reformist programmes with a bewildering variety of immediate demands. The “Gradualist” school of thought, typified by the Fabian Society, claimed that a succession of reforms could gradually change society, that there could be a growth of socialism alongside capitalism until society was transformed. From these ideas grew the ILP and the Labour Party, with programmes of nationalisation and other anti-working class measures.

In 1904 a group of working men and women were convinced that only by dispossessing the capitalist class of the means of production and distribution and bringing them into the democratic control and common ownership of the whole community could a fundamental change in society be made. Rejecting any concept of leadership they saw that it required working class majority understanding and democratic decision before socialism could be achieved. They formed the Socialist Party of Great Britain.

From the beginning the SPGB repudiated any programme of immediate demands, on the grounds that such programmes do not serve as a means of organising for socialism but thrust the socialist objective into the background, and attract non-socialist elements. While it is true that workers have to struggle over wages and conditions this must be confined to the industrial, trade union field, separate from the political. Some reforms may be of sectional or temporary benefit but this in no way equals the effort required to achieve them. The capitalist class often offer concessions both to improve the productive capacity of workers and to quiet social unrest. But a growing socialist movement will bring more concessions to the working class than any amount of pleading or agitation for reform.

What can we learn from the long painful history of the working class? We have seen the alleged labour parties gain mass support and political power. Once in government they have found that capitalism cannot be run in the interest of the working class and their actions in office—such as demands for harder work and wage restraint—would not disgrace the most reactionary Tory. Capitalism has expanded to cover the greater part of the globe, has lurched from crisis to crisis, from war to war, and even now production is again being cut back in the midst of widespread poverty and shortage; there is a confrontation between rival capitalist powers that could plunge the world into nuclear war. Unemployment is growing, cuts are being made in education, housing, health and welfare services. Perhaps that is the ultimate futility of reformism. If reforms can be won they can also be withdrawn or reduced.

Workers who are concerned about capitalism’s problems should not waste their time and energy demonstrating against cuts and working for reforms, but instead organise consciously and politically for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. That is our only objective—short-term, long-term—and it is as close as the working class of the world choose to make it.

Alice Kerr

Livestock liberation (1979)

From the June 1979 issue of the Socialist Standard

Were Socialists an endangered species, a society for our protection would soon emerge, for there is no shortage of people ready to deplore the exploitation of, and cruelty to, the four-legged and feathered in our midst. Recently, a group of animal welfare and protection societies combined into the General Election Co-ordinating Committee for Animal Protection (GECCAP). Now is the time, they claim, to "put animals into politics". They asked those interested in animal welfare to seek an assurance from all General Election candidates that they would support action on animal welfare, and to ensure that all MPs returned in the new Parliament were aware of the strength of the animal welfare lobby. 

The next government must accept its responsibility for animal welfare. We hope that MPs of all parties will press the next government to set up an independent Council for Animal Welfare—there is urgent need for legislative reform in all our areas of concern.

But successive legislation on maltreatment of animals has not contained the problem, which spreads and takes on new forms, is global in extent, and ranges from deliberate cruelty and exploitation to indifference and ignorance. Is it surprising that in a society whose basis is the exploitation of one section of humanity by another, that the same attitudes reveal themselves in the treatment of animals? Just as members of the working class are regarded primarily as mere productive and service units—"factory hands", "staff' , "labourers", "machinists", "assemblers", "typists", "domestics", so animals are primarily commodities produced for buying and selling, and the fact that they are able to suffer discomfort and pain becomes secondary to the realisation of profit.

CAGES FOR ANIMALS—BOXES FOR WORKERS

Modern farming has little in common with the cosy image derived from our nursery rhyme books. Capitalism draws all forms of production into its orbit, undermining and destroying traditional methods. Stock rearing has produced the factory farm. Battery hens are kept four or more in a cage 15in x 19in, where they spend day and night on steeply sloping wire floors, unable to stretch their wings and legs. Veal calves are kept in individual cubicles or multiple calf pens where movement is severely restricted. They are maintained on slatted floors and fed exclusively on milk substitute liquid (although their ruminant stomachs crave roughage) so that their flesh will not lose its pale colour. Pigs stand on concrete floors, in total or semi-darkness day and night, and pregnant sows are kept permanently in cubicles unable even to turn around. To prevent epidemics, animals incarcerated in such conditions require routine doses of drugs which can be transmitted to the consumer.

The same callous treatment occurs in the transport of animals for slaughter or further fattening. Cattle sent to mainland Europe or North Africa are crammed into open transporters, exposed to extremes of temperature, for long journeys by road and sea; sometimes left unwatered, unfed. Members of the working class who endure rush hour travel in buses, trains, and underground, will know the feeling. 

But bad living conditions are not suffered by animals only. Look around the world and see the shanty towns, tenements, back-to-back slums, tower blocks, and jerry built council and private housing estates. The majority of the working class live and die in. cramped, overcrowded, unhealthy conditions, lacking privacy or quiet, and often in an environment of depressing ugliness. There are some workers who can negotiate a level of wages that enables them to live in some degree of comfort, rather as the race-horse or pedigree breeding animal may be housed in special quarters. More than a century of agitation and legislation have not however eradicated cramped and inadequate living conditions for the majority of humans.

Yet it would seem a simple matter to provide comfortable living conditions for people—and for animals. The arguments against doing so are couched in accountant's jargon—alternative methods are dismissed as "uneconomic", "too labour intensive", "not viable", "unprofitable". Members of the working class hardly need reminding that resistance to higher wages is the first principle in the code of every employer. Economic self-interest and competition override all finer feelings.

WHOSE BEST FRIEND?

The single largest industry in the world today is the killing industry and enormous quantities of raw materials and human energy are poured into the manufacture of weapons of destruction. In a civilisation where people can be persuaded to don uniforms and fight and kill each other—and where such action is justified and glorified—is it any wonder that there are people who justify killing animals for fun?

Practices involving the needless slaughter of animals include the hunting of threatened species for the luxury fur trade so that Madam can parade in rare pelts. Experiments on animals to assess testing cosmetics and other non-medical products. Some of the experiments in the realms of Behavioural Research are so bizarre one must question whether the scientists concerned require behavioural investigation. Many psychological experiments involve subjecting the animal to severe deprivation, abject terror, or inescapable pain. A "will to live" experiment forced animals to swim non-stop until they gave up and allowed themselves to drown. How relevant is this work to humans?

Most humans feel an affinity to creatures that live and breathe as ourselves, and many humans take a delight in animal companionship. But even in the treatment of pets, where the motive is not profit and exploitation, we find many aspects of the neurosis and sickness of capitalist society. The novelty of a pet wears off and unwanted cats and dogs are callously abandoned. Some pets are used as a status symbol with the docking of tails, the clipping and dyeing of coats, to suit the owner's vanity or whim. Selective breeding takes place, especially of dogs, in order to emphasise some feature which appeals to the eye of the breeder but is biologically damaging to the animal. Guy the gorilla—a social animal—died in 1978 after thirty years in a cage in London Zoo. Was his confinement consistent with a regard for animals?

PUT SOCIALISM INTO POLITICS

Can there be an explanation, a solution? Capitalism is a society where the ownership of wealth production is concentrated in the hands of a minority, and where the ethos of competition and self interest permeates all social relations. Change that foundation to one where production is determined by the needs of society, where economic competition ceases to exist, where the means of production are commonly owned and democratically controlled and people will live in harmony and co-operation—with each other as well as with other species.

There the analogy between the treatment of the working class and animals ends, for while the latter must rely on the goodwill of human society, members of the working class can and must look to themselves to solve their problems by organising politically.

The human race and society are not superior to, or apart from, nature but a product of the universal process of evolution. As the only living creatures on this planet capable of consciously changing the environment and with an insight in to the laws of nature we have a special interest in protecting and conserving the earth which is our means of life. Such an outlook will permeate socialist society—a true respect for our environment and fellow living creatures.

Alice Kerr