Theatre Review: Nye (2024)

Theatre Review from the July 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nye  by Tim Price (Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff)

The celebrated Welsh actor, Michael Sheen, takes the lead role in a new play about the celebrated Welsh politician, Aneurin (‘Nye’) Bevan. With a script by Tim Price and under the direction of the National Theatre’s artistic lead Rufus Norris, the scenario has Sheen, dressed in pyjamas and close to death in a hospital bed, going back in memory through the key moments of his life. A series of scenes, sometimes surreal in their framing, show him progress from stammering schoolboy to coal miner, from trade union activist to rebel Labour MP, and finally from the back benches of parliament to government minister overseeing the establishment of the NHS.

The play has already had what can be called ‘rave reviews’. The Times declared that ‘Sheen burns with genuine passion’, the i paper called it ‘a taut and fluid triumph’, and other words used to describe it have been ‘spectacular’ ‘mesmerising’ and ‘unrepeatable’. The full house of around 2,000 at the performance I attended were indeed mesmerised, as was I, by Sheen’s performance and indeed by the performance of the whole cast of actors around him, taking parts such as Bevan’s wife, Jennie Lee, his best and most longstanding friend, Archie Lush, and his bitter political adversary, Winston Churchill. One could not but be powerfully drawn into Bevan’s journey, both mental and political, and in particular into the leading role he played in setting up the ‘welfare state’ immediately following the Second World War as Labour government Minister for Health and Housing. His role in this, and particularly in the NHS, is the play’s main raison d’être, so that even the staunchly conservative Telegraph had only words of praise for Sheen’s performance and went so far as to refer to the production as ‘a valiant and valuable affirmation of the NHS’.

The question of course that a reviewer in the Socialist Standard must ask, even while sharing the widely positive view of the production itself, is to what extent its unmitigated praise of Bevan and his politics is justified. Prior to the formation of the NHS in 1948, workers who could afford it generally contributed to various small insurance policies to provide a form of insurance for medical treatment. But many did not. And this was cumbersome and inefficient, and above all a hindrance to workers’ productivity. It was decided by the wartime coalition government, therefore, in line with the recommendations of the 1942 Beveridge Report, to reorganise the health system under central control. Both main parties, Labour and Tory, committed to such a reform in their 1945 election manifestos, and so when Labour won an overwhelming victory in that election, it fell to that party to put it into operation.

The justification for this and other welfare reforms was summed up in the Beveridge Report:

‘Social insurance and the allied services, as they exist today, are conducted by a complex of disconnected administrative organs, proceeding on different principles, doing invaluable service but at a cost in money and trouble and anomalous treatment of identical problems for which there is no justification.’

In other words, it was going to be more efficient and more cost effective for the services in question to be streamlined and brought directly under state control. So while no one would deny the famous adage of Bevan’s, repeated in the play, that ‘no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of a lack of means’, it has to be borne in mind that the main rationale of this reform was to make the system of workers selling their energies to an employer for a wage or salary more efficient and not first and foremost to benefit those workers.

The Socialist Party’s frequent characterisation of the NHS as ‘a cheap back-to-work service’ or a ‘way of patching up workers’ may seem a little over-cynical, especially as the nation-wide hospital and free medical advice and treatment system that was set up under the supervision of Bevan as Labour health minister in 1948 was clearly of benefit to workers who no longer had to find the money to pay for medical treatment. But, that said, there can be no doubt that it was not introduced with benevolence in mind. Indeed, such an arrangement was soon mirrored in various other countries whatever the professed ideology of the governments in office there. The fact is that ‘welfare’ reforms were necessary to guard against social breakdown, a situation potentially detrimental to capitalism and its profit-making imperative.

Yet of course, as many reforms, the NHS never worked quite as intended. The ‘free’ health service soon became unpredictably ‘expensive’ and certain charges (eg, for prescriptions) were introduced, and it has rarely not been in a state of crisis. Today’s increasing waiting lists, difficulties in securing GP appointments and overwhelmed emergency units show how the economic forces of capitalism constantly beguile the intentions of well-meaning reformers such as Bevan.

There can be little doubt about Bevan’s sincerity, at least in the early and middle part of his life and career, as focused on in this production. He was a spellbinding orator not afraid to be seen as a rebel and to use the strongest terms possible to state his credo (once famously referring to the Tories as ‘lower than vermin’). But, in the end, his was the idealism of someone who threw his energy into political life under the impression that capitalism could be adjusted to work in the interests of the working class. And what, as a celebration of the man, this play fails to convey is that this impression was a mistaken one and indeed that Bevan himself, in later years, moved from expressions of triumphant idealism towards pragmatic acceptance of capitalist politics and its limitations. It was in a private pay-bed in an NHS hospital in fact that he ended his days, the bed from which we are taken in this play through the key moments of his life. But thoroughly recommended as a spectacle.

Howard Moss

Doing the Splits (1971)

From the December 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

How seriously should we take the splits in the Labour and Conservative parties over the Common Market ? Is there likely to be some massive realignment of capitalist politics, with Roy Jenkins leading a coalition of Liberals and pro-Market Labourites in a new party ? Will the great machine of capitalist politics suffer irreparable damage, or can we still sleep of nights secure in the knowledge that it will continue to deceive, coerce and exploit us ?

To begin with, nobody should allow themselves to think that the splits have anything to do with principles. Of course all members of the capitalist parties say their political allegiance is based on principle, but issues like the Common Market, which they say are also matters of fundamental principle, cross the party lines so that George Brown agrees with Heath, Wilson with Enoch Powell and so on. This shows how flexible are the “principles” of our parties and it tells us something about their splits.

One notable, but not unusual, feature of the splits over the Common Market is that both the big parties are suffering at the same time. This makes it difficult for either of them to adopt the attitude of pious shock which they affect when only the other side is split. Then they can say that such disputes are evidence of their opponents’ irresponsibility. When they themselves are divided on some issue they claim that this goes to show what a lively lot they are, vibrant with debate yet tolerant and united enough to contain the argument and apply it for the benefit of all those voters outside. This is all part of the jolly game of politics.

In this country, it is the Labour Party who have become famous for their splits, very often splashing them into the public eye. This has tended to promote the idea that the Tories are more stable and united but there is some evidence that this is not true. Since the 1929 Labour government, the Labour Party have had only four leaders—Lansbury, Attlee, Gaitskell and now Wilson—and of these Lansbury was never more than a caretaker after the defection of MacDonald. During the same period the Tories have had seven leaders —Baldwin, Chamberlain, Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Home and Heath—and in almost every case they have changed to the accompaniment of a public dispute.

At the same time, behind those gentlemanly Tory facades, there have been fierce splits over matters of policy. For example, Macmillan was much occupied with persuading his party to move out of the Edwardian era (which he was said to personify) and to accept the decline of the British Commonwealth. This seemed to be no more than accepting the obvious and the inevitable, but Macmillan was bitterly fought by a strong section of the Tories headed by Lord Salisbury, who always looked and spoke and thought like an archetypal Tory backwoodsman. For Salisbury, the final blow was the surrender of independence to Cyprus and he resigned to snipe at the Tories for their policies on the old Empire and to mumble about the shocking treatment being handed out to our kith and kin in Rhodesia.

Life was no more placid for the Tories before the war. They were split on the best method of dealing with the rebirth of German capitalism; when that matter was settled in the forties they found scapegoats for their own doubts and disunity in Baldwin and Chamberlain. Of these two, Chamberlain always kept a pretty firm grip on his party, at least until the end, but Baldwin’s career at the top was almost continual turmoil, as he was under constant attack.

The Labour Party do not have the Tories’ reputation of the party of gentlemen and usually conduct their rows like public house brawls. Perhaps that is why they are so famous for their splits, which have very often blinded the voters to the fact that Labour is always solidly united on the basic issue of trying for power to run British capitalism. Their most damaging split, in 1931, was not on any fundamental issue; they were united in the opinion that the working class had to suffer in some way during that time of crisis for British capitalism. None of them ever suggested Socialism as a way out of the whole sorry mess.

Having survived the debacle in 1931, Labour had a comparatively tranquil time until they came to power after the war, when the group which eventually became known as the Bevanites were constantly rocking the boat, which was in any case leaky and unstable. Here again the splits were never on fundamentals but were always over the best—often, quite openly, the most vote catching — methods of running British capitalism. In the end, at the Brighton conference of 1957, Bevan shocked many of the followers to whom he was a new Messiah by publicly making his peace with Gaitskell. The conference was debating nuclear armaments and Bevan, who was supposed to be the man who would guide us all to Socialism, argued that British capitalism needed these arms to protect its position against the other capitalist powers and that failure to recognise this would be electorally disastrous.

At that time the Labour Party, in the aftermath of Suez, were smelling the approach of power. In the event the Tories hung on and when the election came in 1959 Labour’s defeat threw them into another uproar of dispute, with the Gaitskellites arguing that the party’s traditional policies (or rather their traditional propaganda, because the policies were so easily ignored by governments) should be abandoned. This was to be, not because the policies were not socialist, not even that they went against working class interests under capitalism. It was simply that they lost the party votes. The next couple of years saw another row, this time over nuclear weapons, until Wilson came along and settled the whole matter by running British capitalism with a single-minded concern for the interests of the ruling class, while assuring everybody that he was doing something entirely different.

It very often happens, that a split reveals a future leader—sometimes in the role of peacemaker, like Wilson, sometimes as a man of honesty. In this Common Market split in the Labour Party, Roy Jenkins has come into prominence; he has been a consistent supporter of British capitalism joining Europe and perhaps one explanation of all the coverage he has had recently is the publicity boys’ surprise at finding a politician who says the same thing on more than one occasion.

It is distinctly pathetic, to see the Labour Party putting so much faith in Jenkins, perhaps as an overreaction to the exposure of Wilson as a tawdry trickster. They were once similarly hopeful about Wilson, as they were about all the many leaders who disappointed them before. Once again they are ignoring facts; the records show that Jenkins is no less cynical, no less a vote-grabbing politician, than the rest. For example, in a book he wrote in 1959 — The Labour Case — he avowed that Labour’s policies could be carried out “. . . without any question of an increase in the tax burden. On the contrary, they should leave room for substantial reductions.”

Apart from the fact that Jenkins was here descending in his anxiety to grab votes for his party, to pandering to the ignorance of workers who think the level of taxation affects their material interests, it is clear now that he was making another of those empty politicians’ promises. The Wilson government based a lot of their policies on steeply increased taxation—and Jenkins, as Chancellor of the Exchequer for about two years, was directly responsible for a lot of it. He was the inspiration for a lot of the Wilson government’s attacks on workers’ living standards, frequently lecturing us from the television screen on our spendthrift ways which were causing such terrible poverty among the grouse moors and the slums of Park Lane and Eaton Square. In a recent debate in the Commons (see The Guardian, 10 November 1971) he denounced unemployment just as if his government was not in power when it first became a serious problem and attacked the Tories for their ". . . silly little argument . . . that unemployment was an inevitable result of wage claims, and that those responsible must just take the consequences.” Yet this is what he said when he was Chancellor, at a union conference which was debating a motion condemning an incomes policy backed by legal sanctions:

An uncontrolled wages situation could undermine the Government’s central purpose, by putting back into people’s hands the purchasing power that the Budget had siphoned off . . . (The Times 25/4/69).

Jenkins is said to be a “liberal”, yet he did not resign over the racist laws passed by the Wilson government, which outdid the Tories in pandering to working class colour prejudice. He supported the reintroduction of prescription charges — much higher than the Tory charges which Labour had stopped; the raising of the school leaving age, the end of free school milk, the cuts in the housing programme. He was prominent in a government which kept the British nuclear weaponry. And that is only part of the list of anti-working class acts for which honest Roy, martyr to his conscience, must take his full share of responsibility.

So if the Labour Party decide to put their faith in Jenkins as yet another new saviour, they will be as bitterly disappointed as they were with Wilson, MacDonald and the rest. Jenkins may look and speak like a stern, unbending schoolmaster but what he actually is, is an ambitious capitalist politician. His function is to get power to run the affairs of the British capitalist class and to carry this out he is quite ready to join in the deception and the trickery which make an essential part of capitalist politics.

When the uproar over the Common Market has died down and workers who have been so fascinated by it, and who have been deceived into taking sides, have settled back into their proper, lowly place in capitalist society another incident will have been written into the history of politics. Then the whole futile business can start all over again.

Ivan

Labour and Tories at home (1955)

From the November 1955 issue of the Socialist Standard

The annual conferences of the two major parties were studies in political contrast. For the Tories it was a splendid spectacle—a jamboree of quietly exulting hearts.

For Labour it was a half-hearted acceptance that “there is something rotten in the state of Denmark," a reluctant realisation that Nationalisation is no well-seasoned Socialist plank but a worm-eaten structure full of bureaucratic dry-rot over which the paint of 80 years' propaganda has worn very thin.

Now a three year policy committee is to be set up to try to substitute new planks for old. There will, of course, be much hammering and sawing by the party chippies and at the end a bag of political sawdust and shavings. 

The Conference chairman, Dr. Edith Summerskill, began the proceedings with a diagnosis of the ills of the body politic. She discovered the Tory Chancellor as the malignant cause. One felt, however, that her forceps were not so anti-septic as they might have been. The Labour Party do not like Mr. Butler, not because of his blue blooded origin, but because of the pink Fabianism he adroitly puts to the Tory cause. Now the Conservative front bench has taken to importing back room boys, Mr. Butler, with their aid, has devised vote-catching policies and captivating slogans. He appears a shrewder and more imaginative politician than his Labour counterpart Mr. Gaitskell, one of Labour's bright boys, who has taken a degree in something.

Dr. Summerskill also lamented the fact that the Labour Party has lost its emotional appeal for youth. She said they now take full employment for granted and even want something more. In short, the Labour Party are unable at present to exploit the fear of mass-unemployment. She added that Labour used to think work was synonymous with happiness. While it may be true to say that to be out of work is to be unhappy it does not necessarily mean the converse is true. Dr. Summerskill, it seems, is mildly astonished to discover that because a youth may earn his own living it does not follow that “ his cup runneth over."

Indeed, the very work which Dr. Summerskill once thought was synonymous with happiness can itself be a source of industrial frustration and as pernicious in its effects in one way as unemployment is in another. One has only to think of the large number of youth working on semi-automatic processes. The routine and drudgery often involved in junior clerkships. The thousands of boys and girls in blind-alley occupations or the soul destroying tasks of many unskilled occupations; or even the gap between what career examinations so often promise and what they actually yield. All of which is perfectly consistent with a system based on costs and profits.

To work is one thing. To earn a living is Capitalism's distorted version of it. “ To work for money,” said Marx, “ is not really to work at all.” It still remains a major indictment of Capitalism that it cannot effectively gear the creative capacities of men to the productive processes. Perhaps because many of the industrial young lack a productive outlet they seem deficient in social outlook, and seek relief from the treadmill of aimless work in the treadmill of aimless leisure.

The Tories claim, however, to attract more to their youth organisation than does the Labour Party. This may merely signify that young suburbia places a greater prestige value on a half-pint drink in the local Conservative Club than in the local boozer or Working Men’s Institute. The Labour' Party is, however, setting up a new youth organisation to compete with the Tories in catching 'em young.

Strangely enough, it was Gaitskell whom his rival Bevan once contemptuously called a dessicated calculating machine, who made the biggest emotional impact on the Labour Conference by himself emotionally announcing that “he was a true Socialist." This public avowal of faith, the first it seems he has made, earned him the biggest ovation of the Conference. It might earn him the party leadership from the discredited Bevan and the ageing Morrison.

And of what did this public avowal of true Socialist faith consist, which wrung the heart of Mr. Gaitskell and the withers of the Conference? It was that vague innocuous tenet that has done service for every political creed—“ Equality of opportunity.” Mr. Gaitskell, however, further qualified it by adding, ‘“reward should go to work and merit and not to wealth and position.” Here was the authentic voice of the Intelligentsia who believe that the division between intellectual and manual labour is an eternal dispensation. Such “equality of opportunity” would exclude any opportunity for equality.

Bevan, as usual, was “full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” While the Bevan demands for bigger and better doses of Nationalisation earn support from the constituent Labour Party, it is against the political trends of the time. Moreover, words like Public Ownership, Workers’ Control and even Nationalisation, are becoming political swear words, offensive to the delicate ears of sober Labour leaders and eminently respectable T.U. chiefs.

The last-named regard Bevanism as a disease, whereas it is merely a symptom. No doubt the Labour Party strives to have differences with the Tories but its net effect is to produce differences within itself which militate against it being an effective political whole. Thus the price of some permanent difference with the Tories would be the price of a permanent split; clearly an impossible situation. Yet for the Labour Party to be free of splits would be tantamount to declaring itself politically redundant. That is its perpetual dilemma. Because the Labour Party is part of an established two party system in a monolithic political structure its internal weaknesses are a matter of concern for Labour and Tory alike. The Labour Conference gave no sign that they would be remedied.

Tory Conferences are never complicated by attempts at policy making. Every delegate is deeply aware of his political station in life to which it has pleased the Conservative Central Office to call him. Only the Leader makes policy. To question it would be sacrilege. The Leader in his wisdom does of course delegate power to eminent colleagues and consult High Finance and Big Business.

Following the Churchillian precedent, Mr. Eden was not present at Conference proceedings. On the last day, however, he turned up and made a moving speech. Leaders on such occasions always make moving speeches. The Conference usually opens with a prayer, then the annual platform pep talk from the Conservative Elders, followed by well prepared speeches from the Conservative young and closes with a moist-eyed, deep-throated rendering of “Land of Hope and Glory.”

Nevertheless, the modern Tory Party, unlike their rivals, present a suave facade of party unity. There may be dissensions but they are conducted in well-bred, modulated voices. Deep down there may be fierce jealousies and rivalries but they scarcely ruffle the silken surface. Even when Churchill, old, arrogant and overbearing, became an embarrassment to the Tories there was no strident “Churchill must go” campaign. People who pricked their ears caught faint murmurings but no one heard distinctly, for the Tory door was shut and the windows closed. Just as when Butler, who blotted his copy book at Munich, lost out to Churchill’s white headed boy, Eden, for the premiership, no one yelled—“we wuz robbed.” While the Tories divide they never split.

After the crushing defeat of the Tories in 1945 many said “ they were sunk.” The same view was held in their 1906 debacle. But the Tories have a strong survival instinct. Quietly, efficiently, they salvaged the craft, gave it a coat of new paint and refloated it. Also they were able to cash in on their opponents’ mistakes and the disappointment Labour’s terms of office brought. The tide turned. People, who in 1945, voted against old Toryism began to vote for “New Look” Conservatism. In 1945 the Tories’ greatest liability was their pre-war domestic policy. In 1955 the Labour Party’s greatest liability is their post-war record.

The Tories are supposed to be traditionally stupid, a myth probably self-perpetrated to their own advantage. Actually they are shrewd and flexible politicians. “Dishing the Whigs” is as adroitly practised by them as it was by Disraeli. Because they are the traditional representatives of wealth and property, they regard themselves as the rightful rulers of the realm. The difference between them and the Labour Party is that Labour believes it can govern. The Tories know they can.

As for the Welfare State it is much more Tory “Socialism” than Labour “Socialism”. Long ago Industrial Feudalism was a Tory ideal, where workers would have “rights ” as well as duties. Indeed the New Welfare State is only old Tory reformism writ larger. While it may have features not wholly satisfactory to the Tories it is the current expression of their age-long political paternalism. While circumstances may make them modify it here and there they will keep its main structure unimpaired.

At present they seem to have a decided political edge on their rivals. Only the possibility of a slump, it appears, can boom Labour’s falling stock.

Ted Wilmott

50 Years Ago: Has Bevan Sold the Pass? (2007)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

A lot of people who have for years worshipped Aneurin Bevan have now turned against their hero because of his support for the H-Bomb at the Labour Party Conference. Bevan says that he is as strongly against the bomb as ever he was and that his speech and vote at Brighton (decided on “after a lot of agonising thinking”), were only designed to find “the most effective way of getting the damned thing destroyed” : but this is a bit too subtle for those who have passionately believed that Bevan was hundred per cent, against the bomb and now find that he isn’t.

But actually the disgruntled Bevanites have little ground for complaint for, as it happens, Bevan has changed his politics hardly at all. If any deception has been carried out it is their own self-deception; an obstinate refusal to take note of what Bevan has for years been saying and doing.

If a few of them are genuine pacifists who resolutely refuse to support armaments or war, they are fully entitled to be opposed to Bevan who supported World War II and the Korean War, and conscription and re-armament, but they cannot pretend that Bevan has deceived them about his record of war-supporting.

With others the revulsion of feeling may appear to be more soundly based, but again it will not stand examination. They take the view (like Bevan) that armaments are necessary and that war is sometimes unavoidable and must be supported no matter what the cost in death and destruction. They reject the Socialist view that war arises from capitalism and can only be got rid of by establishing Socialism. They can stomach it all, the millions of dead and maimed, the trench warfare, machine guns and artillery, the bombing raids, the napalm and even the A-Bomb— but the H-Bomb. No !

(Front page article by H, Socialist Standard, November 1957)

The General Election (1951)

From the October 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

After weeks of speculation and anticipation by newspaper political writers, Mr. Attlee announced the date for the general election, October 25th. It has been suggested that he might wait to make the announcement at the Labour Party Conference and thus stimulate some electioneering enthusiasm amongst the delegates, or that he might wail till after the Conservative Party Conference and so keep his political opponents guessing. All the time it was recognised that the Prime Minister would select a date for the election that would be as favourable to his party as possible.

One may well ask, “How can one date be more favourable than another?” There are many who give loyal and steadfast allegiance to one or the other of the main political parties and who can be relied upon to vote accordingly. There are many, many others who have no political tie-up and who will vote at the election according to the state of their liver, the personality of a candidate or the latest international scare. This is known as the floating vote and it is courted by all vote-catching parties.

To capture this floating vole strategy is employed. If through some action or some event, the stock of the political party that is in power rises and it is in favour with a large section of the community, then the time is favourable to invite re-election. Similarly, if for some reason the parties in opposition are temporarily in disgrace, the time is propitious to spring an election on them. If the opposing parties can be caught unawares or at a time when they are ill-prepared for an election campaign, so much the better for the Government party’s chances at the polls.

One thing is obvious from this, the whole business of an election, from the standpoint of the capitalist political parties, is a vote-catching affair. Policies are moulded to attract votes, candidates are selected with an eye on their vote-drawing abilities, and any manoeuvre that will entice or stampede working class voters to give support to one party or another, is considered legitimate.

In the past the Conservatives have scared votes away from the Labour Party by such devices as the “Zinovieff Letter incident” and the cry “They will take your savings.” At the last election the main tenor of the Labour Party’s campaign was a vague threat of the terrible things that the Conservatives would do if they were to get back into power. “Keep the Tories out," was the cry.

Working class votes can only be juggled around in this manner whilst the workers themselves are ignorant of the manner in which they can use the political machine to serve their own interests. Whilst they can see no alternative to capitalism they will allow their votes to be shunted backwards and forwards at each general election. Many will treat the election just as they treat the annual Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, taking sides according to their fancy, and others, hoping to gain something from the process, will support the party that makes the fairest promises.

Whether Mr. Attlee, by his selection of a date for this general election, has rung the changes on the Conservatives, we are not aware. One thing is certain though, he has outmanoeuvred his own party critics, Mr. Bevan and his supporters. Mr. Bevan, who has claimed that the Labour Party would do well to be out of office for a while, will now have to pull his weight to make the election campaign a success, unless he is prepared to retire from the contest. He has been rocking the Labour Party boat for a month or so past, now he will have to take a turn at the oars. If the Labour Party is defeated at the polls, then Mr. Bevan’s eloquent criticism will be diverted from his own party and he will thunder his condemnations from the opposition benches—at the Conservatives. From all angles he will be brought to heel.

This general election will be a contest between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. Nobody seriously considers a victory for smaller parties. The two giants have much in common. They are both parties of capitalism. They both adhere to the wages system, capital and property institutions. Faced with the problems born of capitalism, they work out a series of futile solutions and present them as a policy programme. In a world where masses of wealth are in the hands of a few, whilst the many have only just enough to live on, both parties are prompted to seek a remedy. They both claim to be in favour of some slight redistribution of property and oppose one another bitterly over their respective schemes. But see them join hands and bare their teeth when socialists suggest that it is not this slight redistribution of property that is required, but common ownership of the means of production and distribution.

The Conservative proposal is for what is termed a “Property owning democracy." This boils down to a vague plan for helping more workers to buy their own houses. The implications are wider.

“A true property-owning democracy must be based upon the wide distribution of private property not upon its absorption into the State machine.” ("This is the Road” p. 14, Conservative Party, 1950.)

The Conservatives think that if everybody owns a little private property, if everyone has a stake in the property institution, then it is more likely that nearly everyone will continue to support a system based upon property ownership. Those who own the millions will feel that their system is safe if those who own the ha’pennies and pennies can be kidded that they are property owners too, and have a stake in the system.

The Labour Party would preserve the system of property by different means. Property would to some extent be taken out of the hands of private individuals and placed under the control of the State. The main difference being that the State manipulates the property on behalf of the private owners. The idea that this makes for a more equitable distribution of property arises from the mistaken notion that the State is an institution which represents society as a whole, whereas, in fact, it is an institution that has grown out of property society to serve the interests of the property owners and to maintain “law and order” in a society of class antagonisms. All property that is taken out of the hands of private capitalists and vested in the State is really placed in the hands of the capitalist class as a whole.

Even the Liberal Party, or what is left of it, although nobody is likely to take it seriously, has its solution to the “property problem.” Co-partnership in industry is the plan. Every worker has his little tiny bit of property and. of course, becomes a staunch defender of the private property system to the delight of those who own enough property to make it worth owning.

None of these schemes solves the workers’ problems. The process of development in capitalist society is for property to concentrate into fewer hands. Any crumbs that may be thrown to the workers will be to save them from getting so hungry that they threaten to take over the feast for themselves, and to encourage them to produce more of the good things for their masters.

The process of bringing certain industries under State control is not an original Labour Party idea. Governments composed of Conservatives, Liberals and Communists have instituted State control. Certain industries are essential to the operation of all others. All industries must use transport, must have coal, gas or electricity, need telephone and telegraph systems and a postal system. To have varying rates of charges in any one of these basic industries and to have the wastefulness and chaos of capitalists' competition in them, is detrimental to all other industry. Centralised State control can eliminate most of the troubles. Conservatives will use it as well as Labourites, just as the Labour Party will adopt the Conservative “property-owning democracy” idea, under a different name, if it is considered a good vote catching stunt.

Now, as in 1950, you are asked to vote for one or the other of these parties. The details of their respective programmes differ but little from the programmes that they presented two years ago, and they differ but little from each other. The question of property is fundamental to all their other proposals and promises. Only those with no property are bothered by the housing shortage. Only those with no means of living except by finding employment are worried about unemployment. Only the wives of the propertyless are harassed by rapidly rising prices. Those with property do not fret over health services, sick pay and pensions. The problems of capitalist society are the worries of the propertyless workers. War, that outstanding problem of this century, arises directly from the property basis of present society. Wars are the result of the continuous struggle between groups of capitalists in their endeavours to accumulate more and more property.

At this election time the workers have nothing to gain by supporting either of the two main parties. They should oppose them both. All the items that fill the pages of their election pamphlets, housing, high prices, industrial disputes, food shortages, pensions, armaments, health service cuts, foreign policies, etc., all these have a common solution—the ending of the system that gives rise to them. Socialism is the only political creed worthy of working-class interest.

Property means ownership. Individuals, companies, cartels, trusts and-states own the means of producing the needs and comforts of life and dispose of these means to suit their own interests. They make them into capital, they invest them with a view to making profit and in the profit-making process the workers go to the wall, are kept poor and are called upon every so often to sacrifice life or limb in a war to make the property of one group of capitalists safe from the grasp of its rivals. Election time is the opportunity for the workers to show that they have had enough of their propertyless status and that they are determined to take the property away from its present owners, the capitalist class, and to transfer it to society as a whole.

With the means of production in the hands of society it can be used to produce the necessities, comforts and luxuries of life for all to enjoy, not for a privileged few. Wealth can then be produced for use and not for profit. That will put an end to all the pettyfogging vote-catching schemes of political parties because the problems they promise to cure will no longer exist. There will be no poverty, hence no housing problem, no unemployment, no overwork, no prices, high or low, no strikes. There will be people working to produce things and having the use of them when produced. There will be no wars as there will be no private property to fight over.

To the workers at this election we say. Do not be bamboozled into voting for the Conservatives because you think that with a Conservative Government the Labour Party will be more militant and that Trade Union officials will work better on your behalf. Do not be tricked into voting for the Labour Party because you think that it will be the lesser of two evils. Both parties support Capitalism and that is the evil. Do not think that Socialism is unattainable at present and so you are bound to vote for one of these capitalist parties. Socialism is only unattainable whilst you think that way. Pay attention to the Socialist Party of Great Britain which does not ask for your vote but for your understanding.

Capitalism will last just as long as you support it. The sooner you manifest your opposition to it the sooner will it be abolished.

We cannot hope to tell you enough about Socialism in this limited space but we will do everything in our power to help you to an understanding of your position in capitalist society and how to achieve a new society in which you can lead a secure and pleasurable life.

Capitalist politicians of all shades have been telling you for generations how their “practical” policies will solve your problems. You know whether they are solved or not. They will go on soliciting your votes at election after election with further “practical” policies. They will make you think that you are a most important person for a week or two before election day and promptly move the troops in on your job the day after if you strike for a little “practical” increase in your pay. That goes for Labour and Conservative, not to mention Liberal and Communist. The fact is that their policies are most unpractical as far as solving your problems js concerned. Time has shown that. The only practical solution is in the abolition of Capitalism and the establishment of Socialism. To that end we say, Do not vote for capitalist parties on October 25th but work with us for the overthrow of this system and the building of a new one that will be in keeping with our interest. As there is no socialist candidate in the field, abstain from voting. If you fear that your voting paper may be mis-used or if you want to give some expression to your zeal for Socialism, go to the poll and write “ Socialism ” across your ballot paper. It will at least indicate to our opponents that there is a rising tide of revolutionary feeling which will in time sweep away their rotten system with all its parasites and hangers-on. What have you to lose? Go to it.

W. Waters.

Notes by the Way: Mr. Bevan being Statesmanlike (1956)

The Notes by the Way Column from the September 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. Bevan being Statesmanlike

When he is not calling other supporters of capitalism vermin the Rt. Hon. Aneurin Bevan sometimes writes sober, statesmanlike articles for the Capitalist Press as in the Sunday Express (5 August, 1956). His subject was "Why I want Ike to Lose.” Although Bevan is not a Socialist he likes to parade himself as one on the strength of his continuing support for State Capitalism (nationalisation), and one would have expected the article to be a trumpet blast for setting up an English-model “Welfare State" in U.SA and a repudiation of Eisenhower because he and his party are not likely to do it. But not at all. The article said nothing about America's need for Bevan’s State Capitalist schemes (and naturally nothing about Socialism). It said hardly anything about any policy, beyond a tepid preference for Adlai Stevenson on the ground that be would change the American attitude towards Chiang-Kai-Shek, and might finally end McCarthyism. All he could say about Stevenson was that “his views are not particularly advanced, judged by Europe's standards, and there are even some Conservatives who might not think him sufficiently progressive."

No, Mr. Bevan’s main and almost his only theme was that Eisenhower is sick and consequently liable to reactionary pressure—as if the course of American capitalism is going to be determined by Eisenhower, well or ill. But Mr. Bevan evidently thinks it is:—

“I find the project depressing in the extreme. The President is obviously a sick man and by all the evidence he is likely to become more and not less sick. We shall therefore have less than half a man failing to do what is by general consent a job more than enough for a man in full possession of robust health. The most important political office in the world will be in feeble, fumbling and wavering hands, and it is little consolation that it may be done by the democratic choice of the American people themselves."

So Mr. Bevan can pass by without comment the fact that the American people by democratic choice are about to rivet themselves to capitalism again; this be does not think worth notice; but he is very depressed because American capitalism may be in the hands of a semi-invalid. As if by comparison with the real issue it had any importance at all, except for Mr. Eisenhower.

•  •  •

Bevan Looking in the Mirror

This attitude towards politics does explain why Mr. Bevan got so angry with Attlee and now dislikes Attlee's successor, Gaitskell. When Bevan looks in the mirror be sees a whole man, in robust health; obviously better fitted to lead the Labour Party and become Prime Minister than these fumbling half men.

But how does Bevan work out, in wider spheres, his policy of supporting the robust and opposing the weak? In the same issue of the Sunday Express “Cross Bencher" reported that Mr. R. A. Butler is a robust man, too: “His cheeks glow. His step is light. And he is only 53.“

And what about Colonel Nasser, who is described as  “a tall, strongly built man, with great physical stamina? "

•  •  •

Nationalisation and the Arab Workers

The Arab workers' trade unions in Egypt and other Middle-Eastern countries, have given delighted support to the act of nationalising the Suez Canal and the threatened nationalisation of oil plants and oil pipe-lines. They think their troubles will be over when “their country owns their oil and their canal." They have a rude awakening in store when they find that the beneficiaries will be their exploiters, the local Capitalist class. But what a pity they could not learn from the experience of workers in Britain, Russia and other countries about the illusory benefits of State Capitalism. The people who ought to have told them are the British and other trade union leaders who have international contacts, but they, of course, still cherish the same illusions themselves.

Colonel Nasser has used against the Western Powers the argument that as Egyptian workers built the Canal “Egypt" should own it. But the same can be said of all the accumulated wealth of Egypt and all other countries; the workers produced it but somebody else owns it. The Colonel very well knows that nationalisation is not going to take the wealth of Egypt out of the hands of the rich who own it. If he had any such dangerous thoughts and suggested applying them he would soon be got rid of.

•  •  •

U.N.-The Dream Fades

Except as a face-saver and rubber stamp organisation for the big Powers, nobody seriously considered United Nations as a body to provide a solution for the Suez Canal dispute. A correspondent of the Manchester Guardian at Geneva comments on the parallel disillusioning with one of U.N..'s subsidiaries the United Nations Economic and Social Council. He comments on the failure of this council in the fields of world trade and economic development and goes on:—

“What is considered even more serious, however, is the growing impression among the delegates that, just as in the field of effective world security, the United Nations is becoming almost impotent in the economic and social fields as well. It seems as if there were an unspoken agreement among the industrial as well as the less developed countries that the United Nations has been reduced to a forum where lip-service has to be paid to ideals which no longer apply to the level of sophistication which has now been universally reached. Articles of the United Nations Charter seem to serve as no more than good debating points."—(Manchester Guardian, 9th August, 1956.)

•  •  • 

The Results of Keir Hardie

On the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Keir Hardie he has been acclaimed by both wings of the Labour Party and by the Communist Daily Worker. He is not acclaimed by the S.P.G.B. any more than he was when he was alive; though we must in fairness admit that when we contemplate the low level of the present Labour Party notabilities it does add a certain relative lustre to Keir Hardie. And this, of course, pin-points our "attitude towards his reformist activities and his masterpiece the formation of the Labour Party. His admirers tell us what fine and enduring work he did but they are vague about what it was and why it should be admired. Surely the test to be applied to a man who believed that the way to get Socialism was to build up a trade union-political, refformist Labour Party, is to examine his success in achieving what, he said, it would achieve.

 

Mr. Bevan, in an article “The man who still points the Way ” (Reynolds News, 12 August, 1956), has this to say:—

“We are not yet even within sight of the 'just society' that Keir Hardie dreamed about The society we belong to is not only still unjust it is also unstable. We lurch unsteadily from one crisis to another with the sole satisfaction that our feet are better shod than they were in Hardie's day."

Mr. Bevan puts it very well, but what becomes of the claim of Hardie and the other reformists about the superior wisdom of reformism? And incidentally what were Mr. Bevan and the other members of the Labour Governments doing to leave society in such a mess?

One of Keir Hardie's mistaken beliefs was that the problem of war could be dealt with under capitalism. Now, half a century later, Mr. Bevan tells us in effect, that if we disappear in an H.-Bomb war it will be nice to know that our feet are dry.

•  •  •

Zilliacus Egypt and Israel

Mr. Zilliacus, Labour M.P., for Gorton, is one of the Labour Party M.P.'s who do not approve of Eden's policy towards Egypt, or of his own leader’s policy. He wrote to the Manchester Guardian (6 August, 1956), to put his point of view. He attacked Mr. Gaitskell's statement that the Suez episode “Must be recognised as part of the struggle for the mastery of the Middle East" and declared that “to contemplate going to war is madness," this because Nasser has behind him the whole of the Arab world as well as support from outside.

But point four of his four point explanation of his position included “as an immediate emergency measure, the arming of Israel . . ."

One wonders therefore just what Mr. Zilliacus does think. Against whom is Israel to be armed if not against Egypt and the Arab countries? And since this involves the possibility of war what happens to the view that contemplating going to war is madness, especially as he also wants “the guaranteeing of peace between Israel and the Arab States?"  “Guaranteeing" frontiers means being prepared to go to war.

•  •  •

They’re Fascists !

Trying to interpret events in the international dogfight in terms of how much you like the politicians and how friendly you think they are becomes confusing because the actors keep on changing places and changing colours.

Sir Anthony Eden likens Nasser to Hitler (to which the Colonel with more politeness seems to have made no retort in kind), but similarity to the late Nazi leader and his crimes is just what the Greeks have been seeing in Eden because of Cyprus.

The Communists have had the same trouble. Some readers of the Daily Worker have objected to the Communist Party’s support for dictator Nasser’s policy on the ground that Nasser is anti-Israel, while Communists in Stepney “are pro-Israel." To which another Daily Worker reader retorts that the manner in which the rulers of Israel treat the Arab minority is “fascist-like." (Daily Worker, 8 August).

But a well-known “expert" on world affairs, Mr. Stephen King-Hall thinks that the British Government should use their trump card, the existence of Israel which he describes as “the only, democratic State in the Middle East." (Manchester Guardian, 8 August).

The odd thing is that they all now use “Fascist” and "Nazi” as terms expressing abhorrence, forgetting how all of them have been willing to do a deal with Mussolini, Hitler or anyone else when in need of allies.

Which prompts a further note on the use of language. Why has not “you're like Stalin,” come into common use as term of abuse? What did Adolf have that Josef hadn't got?

•  •  •

Profits from “Welfare” work

“Industrial Relations News” of New York announce publication of a book called “The Dollars and Sense of Human Relations in Industry.” It sets out to answer the question “Do Human relations programmes pay their own way?”

The publicity leaflet notes that “companies to-day are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on human relations courses for supervisors, house organs for employees, recreation facilities, attitude surveys, and many other types of human relations programmes”

It’s their money and they want to know what they get for it in addition to a nice warm feeling.

So the editors “investigate the many areas in which good human relations can result in definite dollars-and-cents contributions to company success.”

This sort of thing must be a bit of a problem to honest christians who have been brought up to believe that they have to choose between wealth and goodness and can't have both. Under this enlightened, modern capitalism christian Capitalists have to have both whether they like it or not. They seek goodness by providing welfare for their wage-slaves and the only result is to give them more dollars and cents than ever.

Another line on “human relations” concerns protective clothing worn in factories and warehouses, dealt with in an article “How Clothing Can Help Production" (“Furniture Record,” 13 July, 1956). The writer, Mr. F. S. Winfield, Managing Director of Raynor, Webber and Stiles Ltd., claims that much study is given to the advantages of such clothing apart from its function as protective against accidents and against damage to ordinary dress.

Putting women workers into smart uniform, working garments prevents envy from interfering with concentration oft work:—

“The modish new spring skirt of a young unmarried operative cannot, for instance, be the object of rueful contrast during working hours with, say, the sad-looking frock that middle-aged widow has had to make do for with a couple of years."

It has been found, the writer says, that “identification of rank by colour differentiation has a marked effect on discipline and bearing . . . ” 

And when one firm decided to put all its men into clean overalls, washed each week by the firm, the result, within a week, was “an appreciable improvement in the tidiness and appearance of the machine shop.”

The article ends:—

"As more and more firms undertake to issue their workers with protective clothing, it becomes increasingly clear that the American conception of the provision of these facilities as an investment certain to show profitable returns in extra smartness and extra enthusiasm is a correct one."

The personnel experts call their study of how to get profitable reactions from the workers “human relations.” It is about as human as the preparation of thousands of pay sheets by an electronic computer.

Edgar Hardcastle

50 Years Ago: The Passing of a Labour Leader (2010)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is not our purpose here to attempt an analysis of the career of Aneurin Bevan, but only to put one or two aspects of his progress from being a working class rebel against the tyranny and sordidness of capitalism to his occupancy of high office in the post-war Labour Government (…).

Throughout the years after he had begun to make a name in the Labour Party he was torn between the desire to be a rebel espousing certain ideals and the necessity of working out concessions to meet the needs of practical politics. Nobody can suppose that Bevan was happy about finding himself supporting war, supporting re-armament and making his belated decision to press for the retention of the H-bomb as a bargaining counter in the Labour Party’s plan to work for all-round disarmament.

But was he ever clear about what was happening and why it happened? Did he ever realise that his dilemma is one that necessarily faces all who take on the task of governing a capitalist country in a capitalist world? With or without seeing it clearly he, like the other leaders of the Labour Government, had come down on the side of  the belief that as a present practical policy a Labour Government must face the workers as an administration trying to keep the British economy functioning and must face the world as guardian of British interests which necessarily meant in both spheres of action accepting and working within the framework of the capitalist social system. That he did so with some reluctance and occasional rebellious withdrawals show his resentment of the dilemma, but he never succeeded in resolving the problem. He would have argued, no doubt, that there was no alternative, and here we as Socialists insist that there was, and is, the alternative of leaving the running of capitalism to those who believe in it and of devoting efforts to building up an international Socialist working class with the consciously-held aim of putting Socialism in the place of capitalist society.

(Editorial, Socialist Standard, August 1960)

Mr. Cousins Damp Squib (1959)

From the August 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

What Mr. Cousins is after will leave the workers just as they are, the wage slave victims of capitalist conditions and subject to the threat of terrible wars, with or without the H-Bomb.

The Labour Party is in a turmoil—and the General Election is near. Mr. Cousins of the Transport and General Workers Union has thrown a spanner into the works. He has been making quite a stir in the news by his opposition to the official attitude of the Labour Party on the H-Bomb and nationalisation.

Mr. Bevan has now become quite respectable as an official spokesman. Mr. Cousins has replaced him as the Labour Party rebel—the “leftist.” It is only farce that is played out every now and then with only a change in the personnel. Is there really any fundamental difference between Mr. Cousins and the leaders of the Labour Party?

He objects to the H-Bomb but supports the Labour Party, which is pledged to a defence programme. Millions were killed in the last war without the H-Bomb being used, but he does not support the only policy that will end war. He believes Mr. Gaitskell is sincere but that his policy on the H-Bomb will not be effective.

At the Transport and General Workers Conference in the Isle of Man Mr. Cousins dropped his bombshell. He is also reported as follows: “I have never believed that the most important thing in our lives is to elect a Labour Government. The most important thing is to elect a Labour Government that is determined to carry out Socialist policies.” (Daily Express, 10th July, 1959.)

Now what does he mean by “to carry out Socialist policies”? To him it means nationalisation—state capitalism. He objects to the official line on nationalisation—buying shares instead of the state taking over the industries. But to him. just as to them, state ownership is equivalent to Socialism. In other words, in spite of the long experience of state capitalism, he blindly accepts it as the fundamental aim, despite the disillusion and unrest in state owned or state controlled concerns and the labour struggles in them for better conditions.

Thus what Mr. Cousins is after will leave the workers just as they are, the wage slave victims of capitalist conditions and subject to the threat of terrible wars, with or without the H-Bomb.

In striking back at Mr. Cousins Mr. Gaitskell made some very significant statements. He made it clear that a Labour Government was not bound by the decisions of the rank and file of the Labour Party and that he was first and foremost a patriot. Here are some extracts from his speech at Workington on the 11th July, 1959:

A Labour Government will take into account the views of the Conference, but, as was clearly demonstrated in the correspondence between Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee in 1945, annual conference does not mandate a government.

Both a Labour Government and the Parliamentary Labour Party must be left free to settle in matters of detail how and when the principles and decisions are to be applied in practice. This has always been understood in the past, and it must be clearly understood again today. (Observer, 12th July, 1959.)

Earlier in his speech he was even more emphatically the leader who would disdain the decisions of the Labour movement he claimed to represent:

To give such a pledge [not to resume nuclear tests] might conceivably be to jeopardise the future security of our country, and that I will not do under any circumstances. Those of us who have the responsibilities of political leadership have to remember always that we shall be expected to stand by our pledges.

We will not bother to remind him of the pledges the “political leadership” have broken in the past, but we can remind him that no one is forcing him to take the “political leadership” job. If he doesn’t like what the people who appoint him want him to do he can always resign his job and not fly in the face of their decisions. But that would be the democratic way and leadership is the antithesis of democracy!

Time and again we have pointed out that what the Labour Party was mainly concerned with was not principles but votes. This futile controversy has spotlighted it once again. Labour M.P.’s are wrathful and shaking in their shoes at thought of the effect this blow-up may have on their votes in the next election. That is their main and all-consuming worry. Even Mr. Cousins expostulates that his proposals will not split the Labour Party, and anyhow, he will abide by conference decisions—in spite of the prospect of dire calamity unless the H-Bomb is abandoned.

While the Labour Party storm may have a bad influence on their election prospects it will have no influence upon the subject position of the worker. Only Socialism can remove that subjection—and this has no place in the Labour programme, nor in Mr. Cousins’ outlook.

Gilmac.

Party Politics (1959)

From the August 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is a well-known series of advertisements which advise any young man who has his eye on a girl looking like a model from Vogue that his chances are much improved by wearing a suit from a certain mass production tailor. When the competition is stiff, we are told, appearance counts. Political parties learned this lesson long ago; with a general election expected during the next few months they are all busily straightening their ties, smoothing their hair and adjusting their buttonholes.

Take-Over Bid

The Labour Party has been trying to make something over the recent spate of take-over bids, which forced up some share prices and yielded a nice profit to those shareholders who sold at the right time. In the House of Commons on 29th June, Mr. Harold Wilson moved a Labour motion which described takeover bids and excessive speculation as undesirable. He attacked the “golden handshake" which displaced directors receive and contrasted this with the compensation which a redundant miner or mule spinner could expect. A simple soul would conclude that the Labour Party really opposed the privileged access to wealth which is part and parcel of capitalism. Yet what effect did their last period of rule have on this problem? At a meeting in Leeds on 3rd May, 1953—two years after the fall of the Labour Government—Mr. Hugh Gaitskell stated that there were 9 million people with an annual income of less than £500—and two thousand who were getting at least £20,000 a year.

The H-Bomb

The Labour Party is also in something of a fix over the hydrogen bomb. Several large trade unions have decided in favour of Great Britain abandoning nuclear weapons and it seems safe to say that a lot of Labour Party members think likewise. But there are two big snags. Firstly, the Labour leaders probably feel that, if the unilateral and unconditional renunciation of the bomb were adopted into their programme, they would certainly lose the election.

Secondly, if they did decide to abandon the bomb and then won the election, the diplomatic emergencies of British capitalism could force them to break their promise. Mr. Bevan, who fancies himself as a Labour Foreign Secretary, has summed it up, by pleading that he did not want to be sent naked into the international conferences.

To overcome these problems, the Labour Party have revised an idea which they rejected some seven months ago; they will try to get an agreement with countries which have no bomb, or are about to test one, not to test, manufacture or possess nuclear weapons. Nothing in the history of disarmament conferences encourages us to think that this scheme would solve the problem of nuclear warfare. Indeed, the Labour Party recognise that France and China want a bomb of their own and “we can hardly deny these nations the right to follow our example." Apart from this, Russia and America would keep their nuclear weapons and American bases—presumably armed with hydrogen bombs and missiles—would still be allowed in this country. In straightforward, human terms the problem of the hydrogen bomb is simple—to destroy ourselves or to live. But organisations like the Labour Party, which have the responsibility of running British capitalism, cannot judge things in human terms. That is why their statement ends with “. . . we realise the importance of not tying the hands of a future Labour Government or committing them to any precise or detailed diplomatic plan.” If British capitalism needs it, Mr. Bevan will have his nuclear clothing, even if a lot of human beings lose their skin as a result.

Unemployment

Lest we forget, the Tories have also been putting on the style. Apart from having their laugh at the Labour Party's difficulties, they have been throwing some meaty blows of their own. Replying to Mr. Wilson on 29th June, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the numbers of registered unemployed had fallen to 413,000. This was harsh medicine to the Labour Party, for they once gave a lot of heavy warnings about the Tories deliberately provoking unemployment. But most workers, whatever other problems capitalism may dump on them, are happy in their work; the decrease probably meant a lot to them. The Chancellor did not mention that 413,000 unemployed is still about 150,000 more than when the Tories took over; to have done so would have been out of keeping with the joy of the occasion. And the Tories are joyful; even confident, as the days go by and the statistics come in and Labour squabbles with itself and Mr. Macmillan seems more and more in control of things, more and more elegant and, but for the grey hairs, almost like the young man who gets the girl in the tailor's advertisement.

At the next election, the working class will decide which party's appearance is the most appealing and we shall have a Labour or a Conservative government and capitalism will stay with us. Some voters think that only certain politicians make a mess of things; in fact, the whole of the capitalist system is a mess. It is working class ignorance and apathy which keeps that mess there; and, ironically, it is the working class who are left to pick the bones out of it.

Ivan.

Growing Unity of the Lab.-Cons. (1951)

From the September 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

Listening to the Labour and Tory parties trying to explain the points of difference in their respective policies reminds one of that popular ditty of a few years back, “You say ‘neether' and I say ‘nighther.' " There is no basic idea now held by one of these parties which is not held by the other, though each may express it in different words. Whether or not this tendency, which is almost daily becoming more marked, is viewed by either as a sign of the correctness of its policy, it should certainly be of the greatest interest to those who imagine that any fundamental change would result with the advent of a Tory government.

Generally Labour politicians are inclined to adopt a rather smug attitude towards the inability of the Tories to advocate any radical change When referring to any of their doubtful achievements, such as the now legendary “free" teeth and specs, they chide their opponents for being unwilling to oppose them openly, at least to a degree greater than the Labour Government has since been forced to do so. They offer their supporters, in consolation for the hardships that Capitalism inevitably imposes on the working class, the comforting thought that anyway the Tories could do no better.

Under the title “Labour and Tories Draw Closer," Maurice Cranston writes:—

“The Tories talk of more freedom, but they have no real intention of denationalising what has once been nationalised. As for planning, the Tories have now accepted the principle of putting Britain on a war economy, and nobody pretends this could be done without planning.

"The important point is that a change of government will hardly make the slightest difference in British policy at home or abroad. The Opposition accepts the principle of the Welfare State, just as the Government accepts the principle of rearmament and collective security against Communism. There would be inflation under the Tories, but there is inflation now."

(Labour's Northern Voice,” June, 1951.)

Nationalisation, planning, Welfare State, rearmament, inflation—there is no real difference of policy on any of these issues, and the list could be added to. To complete this picture of two greyish parties, each eager to show its whiteness in comparison with the blackness of the other, we may turn to the comments of the newspapers supporting the Conservative point of view. For instance, the Daily Mail affects to be mildly shocked at the signs of political opportunism it detects in the Labour Party’s policy on nationalisation.

“ In January, 1951, Mr. Herbert Morrison said there must be 'national ownership and development of basic resources, with freedom of private enterprise in nonmonopoly industries.'

But in January, 1950, he had been hot for the national ownership of sugar, cement, insurance, and meat distribution. Only when he found the country was against these measures did he drop them. Wonderful, is it not, how the noble ideal of Socialism can be altered to suit the prevailing electoral winds? ”

(Daily Mail, 4.7.1951.)

Wonderful indeed, if it were Socialism that could be so altered. The truth is that the Labour Party, in common with all other parties undertaking to run Capitalism, alters its programme of reforms according to what is most likely to retain support, irrespective of past policies. What more damning indictment could be made against any Labour M.P. than to show that he is acquiescing in the very measures to which his party has long been traditionally, if only nominally opposed?

“He dislikes Defence, but is forced to provide it. He hates Imperialism, but is compelled to embrace it. He is against Free Enterprise, but he has been made to support it And he will vote for all, the things he detests in order to keep his job.”

(Daily Mail, 4.7.1951.) 

Just in case it may be thought that the so-called Left Wing of the Labour Party is less committed to present policies than its main body, then Aneurin Bevan's pamphlet, "One Way Only," should dispel this illusion. The Evening News takes Mr. Bevan to task on his attitude to the present policy of rearmament.

“Mr. Bevan, after fulminating against this rearmament, talks of a 'degree of rearmament necessary to deter the Russians from military adventures.’ When do we reach that degree, Mr. Bevan? Don’t look now, but it appears to us at this point that it is a rearmaments race you are actually advocating.”

(Evening News, 10.7.1951.)

No doubt Mr. Bevan would not agree that he is advocating a rearmaments race. Nevertheless whether he does so or not it is bound to occur, as a result of the capitalist system he supports, caused by rivalries between single or groups of nations over world markets, trade routes, mineral deposits, etc. A bullet in the head from one who “ didn’t mean to do it ” is no less fatal than one from a deliberate killer.

The best way of detecting the microscopic differences between Labour and Tory policies is to have them magnified in a discussion between a representative of each. Such a discussion was recently broadcast on the B.B.C. Third Programme under the title “Is Socialism Losing Its Appeal?” which would have been more accurately titled “Is the Labour Party's 1945 Programme Losing Its Appeal? "

Mr. J. Enoch Powell, M.P. (Cons.), remarked in this discussion that Labour Party propaganda, being essentially optimistic, invites disappointment when it led to Labour Government He claimed that a supposedly revolutionary party, on achieving political power, was required to produce the revolution, or to find excuses for not doing so. Mr. Donald Chapman, Secretary of the Fabian Society, sought to show that British “Socialism” (i.e., the Labour Party) was more practical than the Continental variety, and accepted much of the Liberal traditions in receiving suggestions from the opposition. Socialism, he went on, had something to contribute to the steady development of the British Way of Life; it had put forward a severely practical programme needed to correct the excesses of an earlier period. Mr. Powell preferred to say that Socialism had to cease to be Socialism in order to retain public appeal, which sounds good but means nothing. He asserted that the Conservative Party had accepted much of Socialism, but later claimed that Toryism was not a whit socialist. Both debaters supported the idea of Social Services, but Mr. Chapman saw a difference in the spirit which made them sponsored, not grudgingly accepted. The argument, if it could properly be called such, wandered on along these lines, ana the remark by Mr. Powell, “You talk of State, I talk of Nation,” was typical of the depth of the whole dispute.

What are the lessons to be learned from this growing unity of policy of the two main contestants for political power in this country? One is that any party that advocates reforms can command a big following by promising to solve the problems that Capitalism engenders, just so long as it is not called upon to form the government. Another is that at a time when it is a toss-up which party will win the next election each must offer the electorate all that is popular in the rival programme plus a little extra in order to tip the balance.

But the most important lesson for members of the working class is that if they want to express their dissatisfaction with the past results of Capitalism they are wasting their time voting for any party offering to make a better job of it in future. They must understand that it is Capitalism that determines the policies of the governments that undertake to run it, and not the other way round. In the light of this knowledge they will then organise with us for the establishment of Socialism, which alone can make a reality the dreams of a better life that Capitalism has made potentially possible, but can never actualize.

Stan Parker

Running Commentary: Barbara’s response (1983)

The Running Commentary column from the July 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Barbara’s response

In their widely used double whole-page advertisement the Conservative Party claimed that “putting a cross in the Labour box is the same as signing this piece of paper” and one of the items on the imaginary piece of paper was: “I waive my right to choose any form of private medicine for my family”.

This was of course completely untrue but, on the basis that if you are going to tell a lie you might as well tell a big one — in letters half an inch high — it might have frightened some readers into voting Conservative if they had not already decided to do so.

One response was an article in The Times (26 May 1983) by Barbara Castle who was at pains to point out that "What Labour’s manifesto actually says is: ‘We shall remove private practice from the NHS’.” In other words. Labour has no objection to people queue jumping (her expression) provided they do it in Harley Street but not under the noses of the workers who build and run the hospitals and who might feel that they are entitled to as good a health service as anyone else.

But then, it has always been Labour’s policy to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds in the scramble for votes. Those workers who yet again voted for the Labour Party were voting for second class NHS treatment when they could receive of the best in a socialist society.

Exit with dignity

Len Murray, General Secretary of the TUC, is like a lot of other people. He is keen that everyone should have a job because, he thinks, anyone who is unemployed is not just penniless and hopeless: “These marchers,” he cried at a People’s March for Jobs demonstration in June, “have been cheated of their dignity by not being given a job".

Christopher Smith, devoted husband and father, was dignified alright. He had had the same job since he left school fifteen years ago and had been raised to assistant manager at the supermarket where he worked. One drawback to being assistant manager was that, as the company cut back on the staff forcing a lot of people into the indignity of the dole queue, Christopher was left to run the shop on his own.

In what the company probably thought of as his leisure time Christopher took the paperwork home to wrestle with. The responsibility and pressures became so great that a judge later described them as an “overwhelming terror”.

One day Christopher left the shop early, went home and stabbed his wife and daughter to death. He tried five times to kill himself and then told the police what he had done. At the Old Bailey the judge, probably reasoning that even for capitalism this man had been punished enough, put Christopher on probation with a condition that he accept medical treatment.

Employment, which is the process of being exploited for the benefit of a class of social parasites, is an outrageous indignity. One measure of this is the fact that, if it is not profitable to employ workers, they are brusquely thrust away onto the scrap heap. Those who arc kept on have to cope with the pressures of a fiercer exploitation.

Some can manage this without too much damage to themselves. Others fall ill, sprout ulcers, suffer heart attacks and strokes. A few. like Christopher Smith, in one way or another destroy their lives. For them, there is often a final indignity — to be told that it is they, and not this wretched social system, who are sick.

Ah, yes: which firm was it, to do this to this man? They call themselves Your Sharing, Caring Co-op.

Target practice

Like someone at a fairground shooting gallery, Margaret Thatcher has now picked off two Labour leaders and is probably at present squinting along the barrel waiting for the next target to come into view.

The Labour and Conservative parties continually tell us that political processes are something of a shoot-out between two intellectual Titans. For example the 1983 election was reduced at times to a personal battle between Foot and Thatcher, which implied that they are two specially capable people and that there was some reason to make a choice between them.

This theory of the need for leadership is essentially exclusive. Running modern society is so difficult and complicated a matter that it can be understood by only a small minority of specially gifted men and women. The rest of us must leave it up to them and be satisfied with an occasional opportunity to express our gratitude and admiration at the polls.

Well there may well be a rare technique in running a social system in which millions of people are idle in spite of the fact that there is an urgent need for wealth to be produced and distributed. A system in which every week human beings die on the scale of Hiroshima but not from a nuclear assault — from starvation in spite of the fact that huge amounts of food arc stockpiled and destroyed. A system which gives priority, not to the production of useful and constructive things but to weapons of mass destruction.

But to understand this society is not a difficult or an exclusive business. The knowledge is easily available for the Marxian analysis of capitalism, exposing its foundations, its development and its workings, is as vital and relevant now as it was when it was first set down over a century ago.

There is every reason for workers to understand that capitalism cannot satisfy its people's needs and that it must exploit and debase the majority who do all its useful work. They can easily grasp the fact, because the evidence is all around them, that none of the political parties who appeal for their support to continue capitalism can effectively deal with the problems of the system.

From that understanding it is a simple, logical step to the conclusion that only a democratic revolution to establish a society with a different basis, and different social relationships, will be effective. And this revolution cannot come about through leaders; it must be the act of a conscious, participating majority of the world’s working class.

For most workers — which means for most of the world’s people — this is suspiciously simple. They prefer submission, keeping their place in society as surely and predictably as the targets moving across the fairground booth.

Keeping a promise

It took rather a long time but at last, it seemed, something happened as a politician had promised. When he was the minister responsible for housing in the 1945 Labour government, Aneurin Bevan one day pronounced that housing would not be an issue at a future election. And in 1983, sure enough, it was hardly mentioned.

Of course Bevan meant that his government would have been so successful in dealing with housing that there would no longer be any reason to discuss it. What happened in the election was that it was overlaid by other matters of current interest to the voters — would Thatcher or Foot be the more futile leader, how should British capitalism deploy its nuclear weapons, which party would most effectively get those three million unemployed back into active, full time exploitation? Such developments in political debate are sometimes known as the onward and upward march of the working class.

It was in the background, then, that Shelter announced its opinion that one of the urgent matters awaiting the new government is a “shortage" of 800,000 homes, which is another way of saying that millions of people are without a decent place to live.

Now this is not really a shortage. For a long time bricks and other building materials have been stockpiled and among the three million on the dole are many skilled building workers. This situation exists because, for one reason or another, it is not profitable to use the materials or to employ the workers. However desperate people’s needs may be, capitalism does not produce unless there is the prospect of profit.

Then there arc those people whose housing problem consists of difficult decisions about which one of their homes they should live in at any one time. These are the people in whose interests production is carried out, the people who accumulate the profits without which there is no production, the people who live parasitically on the workers who suffer in the housing problem.

Much water has flowed under Westminster Bridge since Bevan made that claim all those years ago, and much suffering has been endured by the homeless, the slum dwellers and by those who exist in the social deserts of the high rise and the council estates or in the pressured neurosis of suburbia. And the problem is still there, as troublesome as ever. It may have been ignored in the election but as long as capitalism lasts it will not go away.

Down the drain

Speaking in Bolton during his election campaign, Michael Foot was reported as promising that Labour would create 500,000 jobs during its first year in office. 

We are not setting impossible targets. When we reduce unemployment to the level we left it in 1979, it will save the government enough money to pay for the whole of Labour’s emergency programme (The Times, 28 May).

In other words, during a Labour Government’s first year half a million workers would be paid with money later to be saved by an imaginary reduction in unemployment of more than two millions.

Leaving aside the “spend now, pay later” aspect of this form of book-keeping, one is left wondering why, with this remedy for unemployment available, there was anybody at all out of work during the period of the last Labour government.

It is of course a fallacy to suggest that jobs can be created just by taking workers off the dole and paying them with the money saved in benefits.

The kind of work Labour politicians had in mind (such as new sewers) shows no financial return on expenditure. One might almost say it is “money down the drain” which will have to be found by increased taxation. But this proposal would not have attracted many votes.