50 Years Ago: Churchill in Perspective (2015)

The 50 Years Ago column from the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sufficient time has passed since Churchill’s funeral for popular emotions to wane—but not sufficient yet to make it likely that his words and deeds will be subjected to any analysis for popular consumption. No doubt historians in the future will discover reasons to doubt his greatness, but there is no need to await the passage of time.

In what way can he be considered great? His actions concerning the working class, his military prowess, his flair for foreign affairs?

It was he who called out the troops during the Dock Strike in 1911. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the government which put on the statute book the 1927 Trades Disputes Act, prohibiting strikes by one group of workers in sympathy with another, curtailing the right of picketing, and preventing the Civil Service unions affiliating to the T.U.C. (…)

In death, as in life, he served our rulers well. The pomp and ceremony of his funeral was a circus for the diversion of the working class. The entire pulpit—religious, political, press and radio—have been loud in his praise. Here was a man, they said, for workers to look up to, to recognise as a leader, and in so doing to pay homage to future leaders and to the principle of leadership.

Here perhaps we may rephrase Bevan’s comment, and apply it to all leaders—The failure of their actions is concealed by the majesty of their promises.

Where did Churchill lead the workers? Where will any leaders take them? Workers have only to reflect on their experiences—not for Churchill and his class, but for those they dominate, it is a life of blood, sweat, toil and tears.

And it will remain so, until the same workers who are now deluded into an hysterical hero worship of men like Churchill, learn that their interests lie in dispensing with leaders and setting up a social system in which all men stand equally.

(from article by K.K., Socialist Standard, March 1965)

Socialism, One World, One People (1958)

From the November 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Address to the Cosmo Debating Society, Nottingham, by Comrade Willmott

We have often been reproached for having a black and white case for Socialism and in the light of the recent race riots, both in London and Nottingham, we can say that from a particular standpoint—we have, and if you will permit a mild pleasantry I shall from the viewpoint of the S.P.G.B. attempt to shed some light on a rather dark subject.

To begin, it is an error to think that race prejudice is itself a black and white question. It is not The worst race riots in the British Commonwealth took place in South Africa between Indians and Negroes. That was rioting between brown and black. The worst race riots perhaps in the U.S.A. were not in the Southern States but in the north—Detroit. While the most tragic example of race prejudice in Europe, the persecution and slaughter of the Jews was man’s inhumanity to man in the form of whites’ inhumanity to whites. And who knows, the next showdown may at least in part be presented as a struggle between white and yellow, and so we arrive at the paradox that race prejudice knows no colour bar.

Now one of the myths of our times is that race feelings are somehow associated with differences in blood stock. Now scientists agree that there are different types of blood, which are enumerated as A, B and O, but whatever group the blood in the human body belongs to, is independent of race, clime, or country. A white man may belong to the same blood group as a coloured man and the white man’s own brother belong to a different blood group.

So if at any time you have to undergo a blood transfusion and perhaps unbeknown to you your blood donor is a coloured person, you will be none the wiser, and if you had colour prejudices before the transfusion you will have them after transfusion, and the coloured man’s blood inside you won’t make any bloody difference.

Even the term race has no real meaning. It is true there appear in certain human groups inherited features like woolly or straight hair, colour of skin, shape of head, and so on, but such things are found in other groups, like red hair and blue eyes, they are physical characteristics and have nothing to do with a person’s mentality. And seeing all these ethnological groups, black, brown, white, yellow, have all intermingled and got mixed up for thousands of years to look for something called race in any real sense, is like looking for a black cat in a dark room that isn’t there.

What ethnologists stress is that between the various ethnological groups there is so far as mental capacity is concerned, complete equality.

Class and Race

There are, of course, whites and coloured in the social top drawer, just as there are whites and coloured in the bottom drawer, and the whites and coloured in the top drawer have much more in common than they have with white and coloured folk in the bottom one. Those in the top drawer never indulge in race rioting with each other. Being more civilised they will often share the same exclusive hotel, or a bottle of champagne, even the same yacht Their good breeding also prevents them from being antagonistic about who's going to fill a job vacancy or occupy a basement flat. All of which shows how one's racial views are coloured by one's class conditioning.

While there are social divisions among men there is no biological division. Differences in ideas and attitudes arise from differences in their socio-economic environment. A negro who has lived all his life in Stepney will be a cockney and a white child reared by Africans in the Congo. will be a product of Congo culture.

Yet in this age of jets, sputniks, rockets and television, the superstition and ignorance on the question of race is such that one wonders whether we have made any real progress over our witch burning, rackrending, thumb-twisting, forefathers, and after the recent racial riots we might look less superciliously at the Philistines across the Atlantic with their Ku Klux Klan tradition and Little Rock problem and remember that people who live in prefabs shouldn't throw atom bombs.

Before the recent racial outburst there have been outcries against Poles, Italians, Lithuanians, even the Irish. While before the war there were organised protests about keeping the Welsh miners out of London and other cities. Given a recession and a big increase in unemployment, many who think of themselves as British subjects may find that they have become foreigners overnight.

Apart from racial antagonisms there are all sorts of other antagonisms in this society. There are antagonisms between the young and old in the Civil Service, commerce and elsewhere, on the matter of retirement and promotion. The antagonism of married men about other married men whose wives go out to work. The antagonism about policemen who retire fairly young with a pension and are regarded as unfair competitors for certain jobs. The antagonism between miners and agricultural workers when miners work on the land in times of unemployment or trade disputes, and so one could go on and on and on.

National Antagonisms

Then over and above all these are the national antagonisms resulting from the economic rivalry of world Capitalism. In this case, whites feel antagonistic to whites. Have we not been taught at various times to feel hostile to Germans, Italians, Japanese, and others, and they in turn have been taught to feel the same about us. We are now told by press, pundits and politicians that it is wrong for whites to feel hostile to blacks. Although at other times they have held that it is right for whites to feel hostile to whites.

But we shall not see the antagonisms of the present set up in real perspective, unless we realise that it is based itself on an antagonistic class division of income, producing an antagonism of class interests. This arises because a small minority of the population own the means of living and the rest own nothing but their ability to work. This ownership allows the Capitalists to appropriate profit or unpaid labour over and above what is necessary for the working class to efficiently reproduce their productive energies.

The Capitalists in order to realise this unpaid labour or profit compete with each other on a world-wide market and this international rivalry in turn brings about preparation for war and sometimes war itself.

Worker versus Worker

Given such an antagonistic set up small wonder that racial and other antagonisms are present in a latent or active form. Again in a competitive system where workers compete for jobs and houses, the coloured person who is a worker must become a competitor too. And in a social system where ruling groups exploit race prejudice along with other prejudices to play one set of workers off against other workers, it becomes easy for the coloured person to become a scapegoat for all sorts of social evils.

It is claimed that race prejudice has never been actively promoted in England. Well, if it has not, the English ruling class have certainly actively promoted it outside of England under the slogan of “the white man's burden." As the centre of a vast colonial empire, the empire builders here, made the colonies with their exploitation, oppression and appalling poverty, a prolific breeding ground for national and racial prejudices.

The coloured workers are victims of race propaganda. Native Capitalist groups have sought to gain their support by presenting the white as the common enemy of all coloured people and so using it as means of sharing with the whites or ousting white exploiters, in favour of coloured exploiters. If the coloured emigrant meets with adverse conditions in a hostile environment, race prejudice can be let up.

A lot of left wing sentiment has been shown over the colour question. Yet many of these left wingers give support to all sorts of national Capitalist movements. Only a short time ago they were backing that greatest of national and racial demagogues, Nasser, who is demanding expulsion of whites from the Arab world.

Housing and Armaments

Then there is the left wing, right wing, centrist. Mr. Bevan. In the News of the World a few weeks back he said that the Labour Government of which he was a member was worried in 1946 about West Indian immigration. They thought it would lead to increased pressure on houses then, as now, in short supply. Mr. Bevan’s Government could have begun extensive housing schemes, but they had much more important things. They had a vast rearmament programme on hand. So there were no houses for black or white. It was the same old story, guns before butter and howitzers before houses. Mr. Bevan and his kind might shed tears over the plight of the immigrants, but they are crocodile tears.

With increasing unemployment there is a lot of talk about last hired first fired. Many white workers have consigned the immigrants to that category. But workers don’t control their own jobs, the employer or his manager on his behalf does that. It's no good saying to the employers you must displace coloured workers for white ones should the occasion arise, or you must only employ blacks when whites are not available, otherwise you will create colour prejudice. The employer will take on or sack as he thinks fit regardless of race prejudice.

Back to Jamaica?

One wonders what might happen if the Government decided to build big atomic power stations in Jamaica. In that case many white workers might leave here to go there. Would they in view of what has happened here raise the cry “Keep Jamaica black.” So given a change of economic circumstances and it would be emigration in reverse. 

There is no real solution to the colour question in Capitalism. Unrestricted emigration with its increased pressure on employment and house accommodation provides fertile breeding grounds for race prejudice. Even restricted emigration or no emigration at all would not do away with the competition for jobs and houses in which coloured workers are involved. Race prejudice would still remain.

How much better if white and coloured workers realised they have a common class interest. That poverty, unemployment, housing shortages, are not a colour issue but a class issue, and while white and coloured workers are enchained to Capitalism, neither are free. How much better off if white and coloured workers realised that the vast sprawling slums of London and other cities are not products of immigration but Capitalism. How much better if white and coloured workers united to bring pressure on the authorities, that it is housing shortages and bad living conditions which are the cause of it all and not be side-tracked by red herrings or black and white propaganda. That, of course, would presuppose that black and white workers have added to their class understanding and how much better that would be as well.

In principle we assert the right of people to go anywhere at any time but the conditions are lacking in present society to operate it.

The very term emigrants meant they arc not free people able to move in a free world. They leave their country generally because of the pressure of poverty or lack of economic opportunity. They do not move into an integrated society, but in a world of high national barriers where man is against man, class against class, and nation against nation. A jungle of competition and acquisition where the undergrowth of fear, ignorance and superstition chokes all healthy social growth.

To blame teddy boys for the recent racial disturbances is to evade the problem by seeking a scapegoat To act on the sadistic advice of the Daily Herald, who wanted to mow them down is to incite race prejudice and an open invitation to group warfare.

Just as proposed legislation for revoking the licences of dance hall proprietors who operate the colour bar or taking away leases from house-owners who refuse rooms to coloured people would make people feel they are being discriminated against in favour of other groups. This would have the effect of further inciting race prejudice. You can’t legislate emotion or prejudice.

Our Socialist Stand

We ourselves are not emotionally uncommitted on the question of race prejudice. But we refuse to be so emotionally committed that we lose sight of our own aim and object—Socialism. Emotion is only a positive and constructive force when it is controlled and directed. When it is misdirected its effects are negative and pernicious. We do not put forward our diagnosis of society merely because it is right, but because in the conclusions we draw from it are the humanitarian assumptions of remedying the ills of extant society. We are keenly sensitive to social suffering, but we refuse in lieu of our own remedy to accept what we hold to be harmful soporifics based on a faulty diagnosis. To act other than we do would be to impugn our own humanitarian aims and falsify the reason for our last 50 odd years’ existence.

The Brotherhood of Man

Tb the ideals of other parties we offer the ideal of the universal brotherhood of man. Others have paid lip service to this ideal. We have acted upon it and not to act on what you believe is not really to believe it at all.

We do not only say the vast mass must come to terms with the problems of their time: our very existence is an attempt to help bring it to fruition. For us, man is the measure of all things, and how well or badly he measures up to things is the final arbiter of social change.

Man has the biological prerequisites for co-operation but being a social animal he can only exercise them in and through society. But it is only in a cooperative society can he become a truly co-operative individual. Only where he can equally and freely participate in the community can his own personality become harmoniously enriched.

That is why in answer to this antagonism ridden, man divided, class divided, nation divided society, we proclaim the alternative, Socialism, one world, one people.

Ted Wilmott

Endnotes (1946)

From the December 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

What Price Nationalisation? Mr. Shlnwell Tells the Miners

After Mr. W. Lawther, President of the National Union of Mineworkers, had told delegates at the Labour Party Conference that the miners are impatient for better conditions, Mr. Shinwell, Minister of Fuel, disclosed the attitude of the Labour Government.

He said:—

    “You are not entitled to ask from us what you were always unable to gain from the private owner.”

(Daily Telegraph, 12/6/46.) 

This was received, says the Telegraph, with "cheers and some dissent.” The miners are in process of learning that nationalisation or State capitalism solves none of their problems.

"Progress"

   "The poorest people in pre-war unemployment areas are certainly consuming more than they did in 1938.”

(C. R. Attlee, House of Commons, 27/2/46. Daily Herald, 28/2/46.)

  "Half a dozen social surveys carried out in British cities in the decade before 1939 showed that, at the prevailing wage rates, the normal wage-earner, even in steady employment, barely earned enough to keep two adults and three children out of ill-health.”

(“The Condition of the British People,” 1911-45, Mark Abrams, Gollancz.

Quoted News Chronicle, 28/2/46.)

The Worker who Leaves his Brain In the Workshop

   "The man who would at work contemptuously reject a piece of metal which was not true to a thousandth of an inch came home, opened his newspaper, turned on his radio, or went to the cinema and took whatever rubbish was offered him without question. If he only stopped to think for two minutes it could never happen.”

(Professor T. W. Manson,
 Manchester Guardian, 25/7/46.)

Bold Mr. Bevan

As Minister of Health Mr. Aneurin Bevan issued a circular to public assistance authorities early in July urging them to be firm with "work-shy ” tramps

   "The hard core of habitual vagrants, including men who are work-shy, anti-social or recalcitrant, should also be given suitable treatment. For the limited number of men in this group firmness must, when necessary, be applied if reasonable discipline is to be maintained, and a spread of idle vagabondage discouraged.”

(Reynold's News, 7/6/46.)

The Daily Herald (13/7/46) published from a reader a sensible letter of protest. He said that Mr. Bevan’s circular reminded him of another group of individuals who surely come under the same heading —"I refer to the idle rich. They don’t tramp from place to place, but they have been riding around on the workers’ backs for years.”

It would be interesting to hear from Mr. Bevan exactly why the poor tramps should be glad to work producing profit for the rich tramps, including amongst the latter the stock-holders who are receiving generous compensation under the Labour Government’s compensation schemes for the nationalised industries.

Squatters and the Housing Problem (1969)

From the April 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The plight of the homeless has once again made headline news in the daily press with the occupation of a block of luxury flats in London. It should come as no surprise to anyone that one of the oldest problems of capitalism, that of providing cheap accommodation for the working class, is still as acute as it ever was, after 120 years of various reforms and measures introduced by a succession of Tory, Liberal, and Labour governments.

The number of people involved in the 'squat-ins' now going on is extremely small compared with the number of homeless people who occupied empty camps under the control of the War Ministry just after the Second World War. One estimate put the number of squatters then involved at about 45,000. Of course conditions after the war were exceptional, as is to be expected when the warring national capitalist classes of the world have blasted one another's cities by aerial bombardment. Nevertheless no member of the British capitalist class whose home had been bombed ever had to move into an unoccupied army camp. This was something suffered only by the working class.

On October 11, 1946, statistics given by Aneurin Bevan revealed that 1,038 camps in England and Wales were occupied by 39,535 people. On Sept. 5 G. Buchanan, the then Under-Secretary of State, gave figures showing that in Scotland squatters numbered about 1,300 families comprising 4,000 people. Squatting on a considerable scale also took place in Northern Ireland.

Not all of the properties occupied by the squatters were army camps. Like their present-day counterparts, who took over the block of luxury flats in Snaresbrook, London, they showed impeccable taste by installing themselves in such residences as a 17-room vicarage in Shropshire, a 17th-century 40-room house owned by Vesta Tilley, a house in Finsbury owned by the Marquis of Northampton, and Litley Court, Hereford. A number of high-class properties in London were also taken over. Then, as now, the only reason for the properties being allowed to remain empty was that there were no buyers able or willing to pay the price demanded. Housing, like everything under capitalism, is produced for sale to realise profit or to be rented for the highest amount obtainable.

In 1946 Kensington and Marylebone had thousands of empty flats and houses, while their combined housing lists totalled 7,367. A similar situation prevails today in the same boroughs, especially in the Notting Hill area, with blocks of luxury flats virtually nestling side-by-side with crumbling tenements, large numbers of which are awaiting demolition, whose residents have been compelled by high rates and rents to seek accommodation elsewhere.

The policy of the majority of councils just after the war with regard to squatters is in sharp contrast with that of councils today, which is to evict them as quickly as possible from any property they occupy. In 1946 squatters were actually encouraged in their actions by councils, Scunthorpe acting first by taking over three army camps, after making prior arrangements with the Ministry of Health. Some councils failed to get Ministerial consent to take over camps, while some councils, like Reading, resisted the squatters from the start, cutting off electricity and threatening to remove their names from the housing list.

Twenty-three years after what must surely have been the biggest 'squat-in' of all time, the homeless are still with us and are still resorting to the same desperate measures to get a roof over their heads. In the Greater London area alone there are 170,000 families on the housing list and about 9,000 people in local authority hostels. The story is the same for the rest of the country, the acuteness of the problem varying from place to place, so much so that the claim of Kenneth Robinson, Minister of Planning and Land, that there would be a surplus of one million houses by 1973 sounds pretty hollow when it is realised that of a total of 17½  million dwellings in England three million (17 per cent) are irredeemable slums . . .

Even a bigger allocation of houses will not remove all today's slums by 1990, let alone 1975. Yet a target of 500,000 houses per year, if sustained throughout the early 1970s, will demand three times the present rate of slum clearance (Economist, October 14, 1967). Changes in the classification of housing could enlarge this estimate of the number of slums, making an even bigger problem of rehousing.

The Socialist Party supports the efforts of workers to improve their housing conditions under capitalism — even by squatting. But socialists also point out that there is no solution to the housing problem inside capitalism, and even if the agitation of those who support the squatters succeeds for the families they are now trying to help, future generations will still face the same misery and hardship of homelessness. Only in a society in which production is carried on solely to satisfy human wants, without anyone having to worry about where next week's rent or next month's mortgage repayment is coming from, will the housing problem find a solution.

Lawrence Brown

More Labour Lies (1969)

From the November 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Labour, says the full-page ad., has got Life and Soul and there follows the usual list of misleading figures which are supposed to impress us. The Labour Party used to have the reputation of being a party with ideals which was out to help ordinary people. Now some bright-boy is trying to revive this but after years of wage restraint, anti-union laws, immigration colour bar and the like he will have his work cut out.

The ad. makes two claims about Labour on housing both of which, as we shall show, are very misleading.

Under the heading “Peace of mind in your home” they say:

  The 1968 Rent Act . . . brings ‘fair rent’ machinery. Nearly 80% of tenants' applications have resulted in rent reduction.

The unwary reader might draw the conclusion that this new machinery must be good if rent went down in four cases out of five. He has missed the phrase "tenants' applications". For landlords, as well as tenants, can apply for a so-called fair rent to be fixed and when all applications are taken into account it is a different story: the rents have been put up in three cases out of five. Even a Housing Policy Study Group set up by Labour’s National Executive has expressed its concern:

  Applications for registration of a fair rent in England and Wales between the start of regulations and 20th June, 1969, numbered 140,000,  123,000 of which had been determined by May 1969. The Ministry of Housing has analysed 80,000 of these rent registrations representing those cases where the new rent could properly be compared with the old (i.e., excluding cases where the terms of the tenancy were changed or where there were improvements or alterations which could affect the rent). Of these, 32% had resulted in rent reduction, and 59% in a rent increase. Clearly some rents would be increased under the ‘fair rent’ machinery but the proportion of rents being increased does seem unduly high (Report, p.12, our emphasis).

No doubt Labour’s publicity tricksters are banking on more people reading their full-page ad than their shilling pamphlet.

Under another heading — “A decent home is the cornerstone of a happy life” — the ad. declares:

  "The 1969 Housing Act increased financial aid to landlords in bringing old houses up to standard”.

It makes no mention that if landlords do this they can also apply to bring their old rents up to standard. The 1969 Housing Act in fact resumes the work of the 1957 Housing Act (the one Labour vociferously denounced at the time as the “wicked Tory Rent Act”), in that it allows tenancies now subject to Rent Control to be decontrolled. Instead, their rents will be set under the new “fair” rent machinery, a changeover which is bound to result, as Labour admits elsewhere, in the rent going up in the great majority of cases.

We draw attention to this not because we support or oppose rent control but to expose Labour’s false claim to stand for low rents. Labour’s policy of making investment in housing-letting a little more profitable is designed to overcome one of the problems caused by the rent control they once clamoured for, a striking demonstration of the futility of reformism. They are now doing what the Tories tried to do in 1957, but this time a little more cautiously. Which is not surprising since both parties are only out to administer capitalism. The Socialist Party of Great Britain has always held that within capitalism there is no solution to the housing problem and, that therefore attempts by governments to deal with it while retaining class property and the profit motive are futile.

The ad. is at least more cautious than George Thomas, the Secretary of State for Wales, who when the Bill was first published made this claim which we record for future reference:

  Within 10 years of this Act no one in Wales should be living in an unfit house

(The Times, 31 January 1969).

Thomas obviously forgot the lesson Aneurin Bevan learned when he rashly promised in 1946 that “when the next election occurs there will be no housing problem in Great Britain for the British working class” (quoted in Hansard, Vol. 453, Col. 1202).

Adam Buick

50 Years Ago: Mr. Aneurin Bevan on Tory vermin (1998)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 1998 issue of the Socialist Standard

In a speech at Manchester Mr. Bevan, Minister of Health, let himself go about the Tory Party. “They are lower than vermin,” he said. (Daily Mail, 5/5/48). For them he had “a deep burning hatred in his heart.”

It was not always so however. In 1940 when the Labour Party decided to enter into coalition with the Tory Parry under a Tory Prime Minister, Mr. Churchill, Mr. Bevan said:

“The Government have been in office for two weeks and like my hon. Friend the member for Llannelly . . . I felicitate them upon the way in which they have set about their task” (Hansard, 30th May, 1940.)

The Press naturally made much of Mr. Bevan’s abuse of the Tory Party but actually a more revealing passage in his speech was one that attracted no comment. He said that Churchill’s policy would mean “cinemas, mansions, hotels and theatres going up, but no houses for the poor.” (Daily Mail, 5/7/48.)

It is that last phrase that is significant. Mr. Bevan and the Labour Party charge the Tories with seeking to meet the needs of the rich. The Labour alternative is to try to help the poor by building comparatively low rented (and small) houses for them. It is only Socialists who seek the abolition of both rich and poor, of both the property-owning class and the propertyless working class.

[From “Notes by the Way”, Socialist Standard, August 1948]

The Passing of a Labour Leader (1960)

Editorial from the August 1960 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.

In particular we take an observation made by Bevan in an article of appreciation of Winston Churchill, published, after Bevan’s death, in the Daily Mirror (7/7/60). Bevan described Churchill as essentially a romantic, who “in his assessment of realities . . . is without the discipline that comes from personal knowledge of industry and of economic affairs.” He maintained that Churchill, because of the rank to which he was born, had been sheltered “from intimate insight into the concessions ideas have to make when they come to be transformed into the facts of a highly industrialised society.”

Bevan’s view of Churchill’s limitations is probably well founded, but the thought invariably comes to mind that Bevan was here not only measuring Churchill, but also explaining and defending much that happened in his own activities: 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.

My Life With Nye (1982)

Book Review from the January 1982 issue of the Socialist Standard

My Life With Nye by Jennie Lee. Penguin, £1.75.

This is an account of the lives of Aneurin Bevan and Jennie Lee. Bevan came from a Welsh coal mining family and, at an early age, joined the Labour Party. Jennie Lee came from a Scottish mining family and was, like her father, a member of the ILP.

They were both idealists who threw a great deal of energy into their political lives under the mistaken impression that capitalism could be adjusted to work in the interests of the working class.

The author makes several references to socialism but does not define it and one is left with the impression that, like so many people who regard themselves as revolutionaries, she means “nationalisation”.

Later, we find them helping to win World War II and when Attlee had ousted Churchill, Bevan threw himself into the task of building up the Health Service when he was not charging about the world rubbing shoulders with Tito and various other enemies of the working class.

From the socialist point of view there is very little of value in this book, although it is an interesting document in that it records the strong belief among many young people of the nineteen-thirties that Russia was being formed into a workers’ paradise. They can now see how wrong they were. The so-called Communist Party was strong in numbers and even managed to get two members into Parliament. Now, world events have reduced CP membership and those who are left are disenchanted with recent events in Poland and Afghanistan.

Bevan may have been sincerely anti-capitalist in his early days but it seems that he came to the conclusion it was not so bad after he had ceased to be a wage-slave.

As a personality, Bevan was probably everything that Jennie Lee has said that he was, but he was definitely not a socialist.

Luigi

Attlee and Bevan: Much Ado About Nothing (1952)

From the April 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Who shall lead the Labour Party, Attlee or Bevan? Who shall become Prime Minister after the next election, Attlee, or Bevan, Butler or Churchill, Churchill or Eden? A, or B, or C, or D, or E? Who shall administer British capitalism in the critical days ahead, who shall persuade the working class to give capitalism another chance, and another and another? It makes such very little difference to its victims, the working class.

Everybody says that Mr. Bevan is out to get the leadership of the Labour Party—everybody, that is, except Mr. Bevan, who challenges “any journal, magazine or newspaper, or any responsible person to find a single statement on writing of my own to justify that" (Report of speech in Daily Herald, 10/3/1952.)

And why shouldn’t Mr. Bevan want to become leader? He believes that Mr. Attlee's policy is wrong and that his own is right. He claims that his policy truly represents the views of the Labour Party rank and file. He believes in the doctrine of leadership and belongs to a Party which has the officially recognised position of “leader” of the Parliamentary Labour Party, now occupied by Mr. Attlee. Surely Mr. Bevan protests too much, especially in the light of his speech at Cumnock in June of last year, when he protested against the Labour Government’s “ strong tendency . . . .  to take its leaders from the “top drawer of society.'" (Manchester Guardian, 18/6/1951.) He said that what his party needed was leaders who “not only understood Socialism with their heads but knew it with their hearts," men with “guts” and "character." Can it not be that Mr. Bevan had a certain person in mind?

That is an issue between Mr. Bevan and his Party; but what of his idea that the kind of leader the Labour Party has makes an important difference in its policy and actions? The Labour Party has had all sorts of leaders. Perhaps Attlee and some of his colleagues may be described in Mr. Bevan’s phrase as being “from the top drawer," but before Attlee there were many others. There was Keir Hardie, ex-miner; Henderson, ex-ironmoulder; Wardle and Thomas, ex-railwaymen; Adamson, another ex-miner: Clynes. ex-cotton worker; and MacDonald, who had worked on the land, then as pupil-teacher, then warehouse clerk and journalist. There was also the late Ernest Bevin, who had worked on the land, in a restaurant, as a tram conductor and lorry driver, and who perfectly fitted Mr. Bevan’s model of the men of heart, with character and guts. The leaders of the Labour Party base included every type, but the variations have made no difference to the Party. Under all its leaders it has clamoured for reforms of capitalism when out of office and then when in office got bogged down in capitalist crises because that is the fate of all parties that try to run capitalism.

If and when Mr. Bevan becomes Prime Minister it will be just the same story over again, by which time there will be other men of "guts” and “character” proposing to clean up the mess made by Mr. Bevan.

What indeed separates Mr. Bevan from Mr. Attlee (or from Mr. Churchill)?

Mr. Attlee and Mr. Churchill agree that British capitalism must re-arm, and so does Mr. Bevan. “I believe it is necessary to re-arm prudently, in such a fashion that it will not be too much a disturbance to the standard of living . . . ” (Speech at Rugby. Observer, 10/6/1951.)

Or, as his supporter, Mr. Driberg, M.P., wrote in Reynolds News (9/3/1952): “All of us (except the pacifists, whose position is understood and respected) agreed that some re-armament was necessary. We differed on the extent of this re-armament.”

One ironical feature was that Mr. Churchill has admitted that Bevan was right in saying that the Labour Government was pressing on with re-armament faster than was practicable.

Is Mr. Bevan against using the arms in war or against extending the Korean war in certain circumstances? He was, of course, a Minister in the Labour Government that sent troops to Korea, and when asked what he would do if troops in Korea were bombed from airfields in China, he replied:—

   "I would have replied, ‘Tell the Chinese that if they do send aeroplanes from airfields inside China we shall bomb them, but that we are abandoning Chiang Kai-shek’s forces in Formosa.' In other words, pursue peace as well as war." (Speech at Rhymney. Manchester Guardian, 10/3/1952.)

Is Mr. Bevan against conscription, or against the use of troops in industrial disputes? He was a member of the Government for six years while these policies were pursued.

Is Mr. Bevan against capitalism’s instrument for speeding up production, piece-rate systems? By no means, for he was Minister of Labour when his Ministry issued the booklet, “Wage Incentive Schemes” (January, 1951), which urged the extension of such schemes to help exports and re-armament. In the Foreword it was stated by Mr. Bevan’s Ministry:—

  “The need for reduced costs of production and increased output has become even more urgent in face of the unavoidable diversion of a substantial portion of the labour force to the carrying out of the Government’s defence programme.”

Over-riding every other consideration, is Mr. Bevan against Capitalism and for Socialism? Again the answer is no. He calls himself a socialist but has the same muddled conception of what the term means as have all his Labour Party rivals whom he seeks to displace, the conception that Socialism consists of nationalisation and reforms like the Health Service scheme. Thus he could say at the Labour Party Conference in 1950:-

  “Great Britain is not a socialist country. Because we have a socialist government is no evidence that we are a socialist country. We are on the way there, but . . . 80 per cent. of the national economy is still in private hands.  . . . " (Report, page 132.)

Mr. Bevan and all his supporters have proclaimed their hope that their disagreement with Attlee can be healed. All that they demand, in Mr. Bevan’s words, is that the struggle with Toryism shall be vigorously pursued. They disclaim any disagreement with the Labour Party’s principles. In so doing they show themselves to be as unworthy of working-class support as the rest of the Labour Party.

What the working class needs here and in all countries is the abolition of capitalism and inauguration of Socialism. A change of social systems, not a mere change of government from Tory to Labour to try to run capitalism in a slightly different way.

The working class do not need different leaders, but to shed their dependence on leadership.

Supporting Bevan against Attlee or supporting Attlee against Churchill means nothing whatever from the standpoint of Socialism and the interest of the working class.

Mr. Hannen Swaffer, writing in the People (9/3/1952), thinks that Mr. Attlee has shown “six year of brilliant leadership,” but “no longer controls his own side ”; while a Labour M.P., Mr. John Taylor (Forward, 8/3/1952), holds that Bevan “is the greatest orator in Parliament In my view he is more gifted in this respect than Churchill. I never heard Lloyd George, so cannot compare him with his distinguished compatriot.”

Here is indeed a fitting measure of the value of leadership to the working class. Attlee led his followers “brilliantly” for six years, but so lamentable is the condition of the workers at the end of it that they are out of control. According to Mr. Taylor, among the Labour Party rank and file in the country Bevan’s “popularity grows with phenomenal rapidity” —on nothing more substantial than his opposition to the brilliant Attlee!

About Churchill, his brilliance, and the results thereof, we need say nothing. Nor should it be necessary to recall how Lloyd George, the fiery rebel who climbed to power by promising benefits of all kinds to the poverty-stricken workers, left them at the end after the first world war in a state as miserable as when he began.

Now Bevan, perhaps the greatest spouter of them all, gets ready to turn the disillusionment of his Party into a means of raising him to the leadership and Premiership. Workers who ponder over the futility of Labourism as demonstrated under all its leaders will see the folly of it all and refuse to be deluded into giving a new lease of life to capitalism under Aneurin Bevan.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Morecambe Labour Party Conference (1952)

From the November 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

Morecambe was for the Labour Party less a ground for common political activity than a battleground of warring factions and rival political ambitions. There were a number of casualties.

Among the “casualties” were Mr. Morrison and Mr. Dalton. Both failed to get re-elected to the Labour Party executive. In the executive voting, that doughty working class warrior Mr. Bevan headed the “lists” to a fanfare of cheers and clapping. Others elected to executive posts were those horny handed sons of toil, Messrs. Driberg, Wilson, Mikardo and Crossman, who rode on the Bevan band-wagon.

The two great rival standard bearers were Bevan and Morrison. Bevan’s contribution was never more than a piece of conference tub thumping; Morrison's never less than the slick performance of the accomplished party hack.

Of Mr. Attlee it could hardly be said that the conference was his finest hour. He preferred the somewhat enigmatic role of a political Nero, content to doodle while Morecambe was alight In contrast to Bevan’s frothy utterances his contribution was as flat as last night’s beer.

A spectacle, now a commonplace at Labour Party conferences, was that of ex-ministers reverently touching their political rosaries and dedicating themselves to “socialist ideals.” Then followed the usual attempt to squeeze the quart of socialist ideals into the pint bottle of capitalism.

There was a demand from delegates for more nationalisation and “socialist” measures. Doubtless Mr. Morrison and other Labour leaders are ruefully realising that it is easier for people to learn political nostrums than to unlearn them. These leaders having misinformed workers in the past that nationalisation was the panacea for their problems, now blandly inform them that these problems cannot be automatically solved by the mere transference of industries from private to public ownership. What, according to Mr. Morrison is most important, is not so much that industries should be nationalised but that “they should be efficient.”

For generations Labourites have been reared on the mother’s milk of old time Fabian planning. Now the milk has turned sour. “Planning for planning’s sake” it seems is merely a pipe dream for political opium smokers.

Mr. Morrison and others have now discovered more “prior and urgent” problems than nationalisation. Problems such as trade balances, exports and the need for increased output in order to meet foreign competition successfully especially the German and Japanese variety. These “urgent and prior problems” were just as urgent and prior for Capitalism when Mr. Morrison and other Labour leaders were merely up and coming politicians.

Nevertheless the fact that Labour politicians have discovered some simple economic facts about Capitalism, has, according to sections of the press, elevated them to the status of statesmen.

From the tone of the speeches of ex-ministers in explaining to delegates these simple facts, one might imagine they were addressing children. Listening to the criticism levelled at them on occasions by delegates, they may have thought that there are times when children should be seen and not heard.

Although conference instructed the executive to compile a further list of industries to be nationalised, Mr. Robertson for the United Textile Factory Workers' Association opposed an amendment asking for the nationalisation of the cotton industry. He urged conference "not to embarrass a Labour Government in that way.”

Although Mr. Bevan himself was in favour of more nationalisation, etc., Bevanite Mr. Mikardo in submitting a resolution asking for the building trade to be nationalised, said, “They might find the industry better suited to competitive public enterprise than nationalisation outright." Mrs. Braddock, M.P., reminded conference that "the person who opposed most strongly the nationalisation of the building industry with his usual bad faith was Mr. Bevan, when he was Minister of Health.”

Mr. Morrison touched a new political low when he attempted to make working class political ignorance the whipping boy of the Labour Government’s failure to fulfil its promises. He said “We have got to change the minds and hearts and souls of men and women so that they think in terms of socialist ethics and the old capitalist outlook that millions have, has passed away.”

This is certainly the devil citing scripture for his own purposes with a vengeance. Mr. Morrison’s own contribution to working class understanding is gravely on the debit side of his political balance sheet. Mr. Morrison’s role in the ranks of the working class has been that of a fifth columnist. By plausibly presenting to workers a planned capitalist—as good as socialism —model, he and others like him have obscured and distorted basic working class issues. The work of teaching Socialism has thus been made infinitely harder.

The shadow-play of political rivalry thrown on the Morecambe screen is not a reflection of any basic differences within the Labour Party. Dr. Bevan with his finger on the pulse of working class discontent prescribes bigger doses of nationalisation, Mr. Morrison not to be outdone retorted that “the Labour Party would never rest until it had nationalised all the means of production, distribution and exchange.”

Mr. Bevan wants a smaller armament programme than that laid down by the last Labour Government, yet it was Mr. Bevan himself who piloted Labour's defence programme through the House of Commons. Then he begged people not to "jeer about the armament programme we are putting under way.” He added, “we shall carry it out; we shall fulfil our obligations to our friends and allies.”

Ironically enough, owing to the difficulties which have arisen over balance of payments since the Tories came in, they have been compelled to cut considerably the yearly expenditure on armaments. The “socialist” Bevan is not opposed to war preparation. He only wants to reduce the cost entailed. Incidentally his proposed peace-time expenditure on armaments involves greater sums of money than those spent in peace time by Tory or Liberal Governments.

Mr. Bevan’s militancy is not, as imagined by his supporters, a realistic step forward for the Labour Party but a retreat to its romantic pioneering past. Then, the Labour Party could indulge in pseudo socialist phraseology, with its promise of “changing things nearer to the heart's desire.” It is this vague working class sentiment that Mr. Bevan seeks to tap.

In the good old days of the Labour Party the “Labour Commonwealth” was a distant goal wrapped in mist and obscurity. Nevertheless Labour was on the march! There may have been differences, even dissidents, within the ranks, but the road was accommodatingly broad. Swings to the “left” or "right” made little difference. They were all bound for the same place.

Now they have arrived and the New Jerusalem is but old Babylon writ large. The Welfare State turns out to be the merest Utility Utopia.

“The New Social Era” has all the old working class problems—poverty, insecurity, low wages, high prices and the threat of war. The outward pressure of capitalism produces within the Labour Party its fissions and rifts.

In order to ease off working class political pressure the Labour Party would like to go further. But they have nowhere to go. Because one basic reason for their existence is their claim that they can go one better than the Tories, they have to simulate the semblance if not the reality of being in the vanguard of social progress. The Tories in turn pose as the great stabilising force of British political life. Their appeal to the working class is consequently pitched in a slightly lower key. Their political strategy merely consists of waiting for the inevitable disappointments that result from a term of Labour Government and then adroitly manipulating them for the purpose of winning the next election.

Bevan is merely a symptom of the failure of Labour Party reformism to make a world fit for ordinary men and women to live in. He is the price Labour leaders pay for their political sins. His role in the Labour Party is the old familiar one of today’s rebel being tomorrow’s leader.

The resentment and frustration felt by the Labour rank and file has placed high cards in his hand. Yet even if he succeeds in winning the game against the old leadership he in turn will become vulnerable.

Little wonder that many Labour Party members are acquiring a nostalgia for the past. Truly, for those who pin their hopes on reformism it is always the case —“That it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.”

Ted Wilmott

End of Another Labour Government (1951)

Editorial from the November 1951 issue of the Socialist Standard

So after six years of Labour Party rule the electors refuse to stand any more of it. Having put the Labour Party into office in 1945 “to give Labour a chance” they now turn it out again. With all the evidence the working class have had of Tory rule a large proportion of them have still been prepared to have the Tories back in office rather than prolong the ministerial careers of the Attlees and Morrisons.

This is not like the defeat of the Labour Party after the two earlier Labour Governments. They were minority governments and they excused themselves on the plausible ground that they could not carry out their programme. This time the Labour Government has done all that it promised to do in the shape of social reforms and Nationalisation but the dreary end is precisely the same as before. This Labour Government, like MacDonald's in 1931 could not escape the crises and war preparations thrust on it by capitalism, and in spite of all its efforts to make life less burdensome it could not make capitalism palatable to the electors. So end all attempts to operate capitalism “in a different way." It was predoomed to failure as we said when it took office.

Of course the members of that party will now hold an inquest to discover why the electors acted as they did. Innumerable so-called explanations will be trotted out, none of them the simple truth stated above for if any supporter of the Labour Party once admitted to himself the truth he would have to conclude that Labourism itself is futile, not the men or the particular measures, but the whole conception of trying to humanise the capitalist system of society.

There is an aspect of vastly greater importance for the working class than the internal bickerings of the Labour Party. This is the question of what it is that has failed. It is Labourism that has failed, not Socialism. The Labour Party never at any time in its history aimed at or tried to introduce Socialism. Labourism aimed to carry on Great Britain as a capitalist unit in a capitalist world; seeking only to modify its social evils at home and its predatory nature in the international sphere. Of course it had to fail. Socialism is an international conception which will involve the end of capitalist production and distribution for profit, the end of the wage-system and price system and of the international conflict over markets and raw materials. Socialism is not concerned with turning private capitalism into State capitalism. Socialism requires the conversion of the means of production and distribution from private ownership to common ownership and democratic control by the whole of society, with resulting abolition of property incomes and the carrying on of production solely for use.

Socialism has not failed because it has never been tried here or in any other country.

The Bevan Myth

Now that the election is over the split between Bevan and Attlee will emerge again. While the election was on all the Labour Party leaders pooh-poohed the idea that there was such a thing. There will be acrimonious debate as whether Bevan or Attlee did most to win or lose votes. But heat of argument should not give rise to the illusion that Bevan's policy differs except in degree and detail from the one the Labour Government, with his support, pursued for the past six years.

In Bevan's eyes it was not the policy itself that was at fault but only the manner of its application and the character of the men at the top. The Labour Government decided on a certain rate of re-armament; Bevan wanted it to be slowed down, but, as he said at Cumnock, Ayrshire, on the 18th June, 1951, "He did not believe in having no armies." (Manchester Guardian, 19/6/51). In the same speech he developed his theme about the kind of leaders the Labour Party ought to have. “There was a strong tendency for the Government to take its leaders from the “top drawer of society." The movement should be careful to select its leaders in the main from those who had spent their lives in the Labour and trade union movement . . . " Would it be uncharitable to read into this a slightly jaundiced preference by Bevan for himself as Party leader in place of Attlee?

He says that he wants men “with guts" to thrust the Labour Party on to Socialism and he was speaking the truth when he said at the Labour Party Conference, 1950, “Great Britain is not a socialist country ’’—but it was the truth by accident, for all he meant was that State capitalism or nationalisation covers only 20 per cent of British industry. And it is only a matter of 2½ years ago that he was telling a Labour Party audience at Newport that the Labour Government in which he was a minister is good for “business men." He said that the less bigoted Tories would hesitate to vote against the Labour candidates “because even private enterprise works better under the beneficient guidance of a Socialist government. That proves that Socialism is a good thing and it is beginning to dawn on some business men.” (Daily Herald, 28/3/49). So Mr. Bevan who tries desperately hard to give the impression that he is out for Socialism is not above soliciting the votes of Tories by assuring them that socialism, as he interprets it, is good for capitalists and capitalist industry.

Tragic Comedians (1950)

From the November 1950 issue of the Socialist Standard

Reading the Labour Party’s Margate delegate conference, prompts the question—"Are such conferences really necessary?” For all the effect it had in shaping governmental policy the delegates might as well have stayed at home; or spent their time making sandpies on Margate’s beach.

The burning of mid-night oil in local Labour Party branches had produced much paper in the way of resolutions. A lot of it was waste paper. Right from the start of the conference there was "a wholesale slaughter of the innocents.” Numbers of resolutions were merged together into a composite form. Out of 300 resolutions and 80 amendments only 30 proposals were left on the agenda after the axe of the conference arrangement committee had been wielded ruthlessly. Many of these resolutions were, it is true, but vague and somewhat innocuous expressions of discontent with the Labour Government. Their partial and emasculated reappearance in the condensed form of composite resolutions made them even more vague and innocuous. Little wonder that the platform could accept them not only without embarrassment but even with composure.

The conference itself was writ large in startling inconsistencies and rich in unconscious comedy. Mr. Sam Watson, in his chairman's address, strove to substitute in place of the dull, utility existence of the vast majority a techni-coloured picture of life under a Labour Government. He said: "Poverty has been abolished. Hunger is unknown. The sick arc tended, the old folk cherished. Our children are growing up in a land of opportunity.” This record is one that has been played ad nauseam by the gramophones of all political parties. In fact it was a badly scratched one long before the Labour Party came to power.

Speaking on conscription and the Labour Party's rearmament programme, he declared, "We have no animosity towards the Russian people. All we ask is to be left in peace to finish our task.” These words are, how ever, the very ones that Stalin is never weary of repeating on behalf of Russian Capitalism. Mr, Watson could not promise peace. He offered instead security through the time-honoured, or dishonoured, methods of building up ever greater means of death and destruction.

He also said, "The common people have more to defend here than any other part of the globe.” He might with greater accuracy have said that the "common people” here have more parts of the globe to defend for their masters than the common people in any other part of the globe. Significantly he added: "The last five years of the Labour Party, the trade unions and co-operatives have given us even more to defend.” The role of recruiting sergeants is no new role for Labour politicians. Nor for that matter drummer boys for British imperialism.

Mr. Silverman, M.P., then threw a hefty spanner into Mr. Watson’s techni-coloured works by declaring: “It was an overstatement to say that poverty had been abolished. There were hundreds of thousands of workers whose wages made an utter mockery of the Government’s claims to be applying fair shares.” He added the warning that "the workers could not be expected to go on practising restraint out of sheer loyalty to the Government.” He also said "that if the hopes of those who suffered most was being continually frustrated they would look for leadership elsewhere.”

There was irony in the fact that this Party of planning through the Civil Service should hear a delegate, himself a civil servant, declare that "Civil Service clerical workers have had a wage increase of less than one-third since 1938.” He then made a nasty splotch on Mr. Watson’s pretty picture by saying, “Many people to-day are not even able to buy their rations.”

How remotely the Labour Party’s "Socialism” has to do with the elimination of the profit system can be gathered from a statement by another delegate, a Mr. Denning (A.E.U.), who asserted "that the average profit on each worker in the engineering industry was £3 per week.”

Mr. Griffiths, for the executive, spoke of his “appreciation of the depth of feeling and concern over the question of profits.” He offered the lame defence "that 90 per cent. of the industrial companies had between March and November last year disclosed a dividend no higher than the previous year." He also said that "far too much of the nation’s wealth is owned by far too few people.” Mr. Griffiths, however, urged that "wage restraint should be continued as far as possible.” Vague mutinous mutterings from the rank and file led to the platform agreeing they would take the most energetic action to stem the upward trend in prices and to bring about a reduction and to control and reduce profits. What chance of success the Labour Government has of controlling price levels was made evident by Mr. C. A. R. Crosland, M.P., who said, "As a result of rearmament, prices were rising all over the world in a way impossible to control. It was known that the cost of living was likely to rise in the next few weeks.” Thus the inflationary tendencies, in spite of the efforts of the Labour Government have increased. The rearmament programme will further accentuate it. As a result of rising prices workers, in spite of Labour and T.U. leaders’ pleas of wage restraint, will demand higher wages. This may well lead to an increase of incidents such as that of the gas workers. The employers, of course, will seek to maintain their profits. As a result of this scramble the Labour Government may be forced to take measures in an attempt to control prices, wages and profits. That is it may have to reimpose many of the controls and restrictions associated with war-time. All of which shows that although the Labour Party is running Capitalism, in actual fact it is Capitalism which is running the Labour Party.

The discussion on Nationalisation revealed disappointment and even a certain disillusionment over its results. Mr. E. Roberts said: "Men employed by the British Railways are becoming disgusted with Nationalisation. Unless we can get better representation hundreds of thousands of those at present voting Labour will not do so at the next election.” Because the delegates did not realise that Nationalisation is not in the interest of the working class they dealt with effects not causes; such as the large salaries of those at the top, bureaucratic maladministration and the necessity of workers’ representatives on the various boards.

Mr. Morrison once again proved himself an arch opportunist. In the discussion on that vague platitudinous document, "Labour and the New Society,” he was even more platitudinous and vague. On any concrete issues on which the Labour Party will fight the next election he said little or nothing. He contended that the time for making decisions is when the election manifesto is drawn up. On the question of further Nationalisation he side-stepped the issue with the formula that sugar, cement, and insurance were still eligible for consideration.

Mr. Bevan made some wild oratorical cavalry charges and scattered imaginary foes. On the question of Nationalisation he said, "Of course everything is not all right.” He asserted that "a miasma of private enterprise was surrounding the public sector everywhere.” "World Capitalism had broken down,” he assured the delegates, although he admitted that "this is not a Socialist country.” He also forgot to add that a part of this broken-down, world Capitalism was supplying Britain with Marshall Aid. He even told them that he was opposed to the Schuman Plan because British steelworkers would be at the mercy of Ruhr magnates. Apparently a broken-down Capitalism can still support Ruhr steel magnates. Mr. Attlee also indulged in a number of vague idealistic utterances after the manner of a punch-drunk parson. On one thing the executive was emphatic. That is that the workers must work harder and harder.

One thing the conference clearly revealed was that the Labour Party has lost its initial advantage over the Tories. In the past. Nationalisation could be presented as something different from private enterprise. It could even be pointed to as a social goal. The Labour Party, having now given the workers the substance of Nationalisation, many workers are beginning to realise they have been chasing a shadow. It is going to become harder and harder for Labour politicians to convince workers that the Labour way of doing things is in essentials different from that of the Tories or Liberals. Just as it is going to become harder for the Labour Party to pose as being different from the traditional parties. A spell of power has been sufficient to exhaust the claims of the Labour Party that it can run Capitalism in a different way. In the arid soil of Capitalist administration the delicate plant of Fabian ideals has withered and died. They themselves have become the gradual and inevitable victims of their own "inevitability of gradualness.”

Perhaps Fabian ingenuity and resourcefulness will be applied to making the Labour Party a more highly efficient vote-catching machine. Having lost the advantage of political novelty it will be compelled to enter into the fiercest rivalry with the Tories, by all sorts of expedients, red herrings and vote capturing slogans. More and more will it have to play up to the hopes and prejudices of sections of the working class in order to keep political power.

We shall have the spectacle of Labour and Tories competing like two second-hand clothes shops on the same side of the street. The political salesmen of both concerns will try to persuade the electors that their shoddy misfits are an adequate covering for the body politic.

One day a politically conscious working class will close them both down and declare their stock to be bankrupt and worthless.

Ted Wilmott

The Margate Labour Party Conference (1953)

From the November 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

Nationalisation was the issue at Margate. It is the issue at all Labour conferences. It is difficult to see how it can be otherwise; for Nationalisation apart what else is there left to discuss within the Labour Party? Housing! Education! The Health Services! These are not the things which separate the Labour Party from the Tories and oft times the Labour Party from itself. Only Nationalisation can do that.

True the Tories have nationalised in the past and might conceivably do so again if circumstances warranted. But for them Nationalisation measures have been a means to an end. The Labour Party for political purposes have made it an end in itself, although the Margate conference saw a full scale strategical withdrawal from that position.

Mr. Woodburn, M.P., made a clumsy attempt to cover the withdrawal by telling the conference that “Nationalisation was not Socialism.” Mr. Woodburn may know that but the history of his party is writ large in the monumental confusion created by it in failing to make any real distinction between them. The speeches and writings of Labour leaders over the years bear damning testimony to this confusion. He also added, “ Nationalisation is merely a means to an end and not necessarily the best means.” Whatever implications one likes to draw from that remark the fact is that the Labour Party in the past has viewed Nationalisation as an end; a social goal, a political ideal. Its 1918 Manifesto, “Labour and the New Social Order,” proclaimed as its aim the continued extension of nationalisation acts to ever widening spheres of industry. And until recent years the Labour Party never substantially departed from it. Hitherto the Labour Party regarded its policy of Nationalisation as one of principle not expediency.

The militant convictions of the Webbs and old Fabians who contributed considerably to the Nationalisation policy of the Labour Party are lacking among present day Labour leaders. Two terms of Labour administration have dispelled from the minds of the “administrators” any notion of the talismanic powers of Nationalisation. The Webbs are dead in more senses than one.

The Nationalisation by the Labour Party in its first term of office of coal, electricity, gas, transport looked impressive to many people. When one realises that these industries have previously been subject to a greater or lesser degree of governmental regulation, the “revolution” appears rather a palace one.

Because there is a natural tendency towards monopolistic growth and practises in Capitalism. Capitalist governments are faced with certain problems. For instance the ownership and control by private monopolies of such things as gas, coal, electric power, transport, etc., are a powerful weapon for exacting toll from the vast majority of capitalist enterprises who are utterly dependent on these things. Moreover private monopolies pursue their interests regardless of the requirements of other capitalist sections. As a result they disturb the balance of capitalist economy by disturbing what is termed the free play of the market and so intensify the anarchy of capitalist production. The State is therefore compelled to intervene in order to curb this monopolistic power. State action along these lines is then both an attempt to protect the various sections of capitalism and to ensure the smoother running of the system from the standpoint of the requirements of Capitalism as a whole. Nationalisation is one way of bringing this about.

So far so good; but when the Labour Party is confronted with making good its promise to extend Nationalisation to other spheres of industry it finds itself faced with formidable difficulties. Capitalism now presents to the Labour Party a different aspect than when viewed through the rose-tinted glasses of yesterday's propaganda.

Once the Labour Party used to damn what they termed the present competitive system. Now they have discovered unsuspected virtues in “competition.” Thus Mr. Strauss tells us that the Aircraft industry benefits the country by rivalry and competition in aircraft designs. Any measure of greater centralisation in that industry may have adverse effects, he said. Nationalisation, Mr. Strauss declared, is not so much a way of dealing with the problems of industry but a rather escapist way of avoiding them. And this is the distilled wisdom of years of Labour Party propaganda.

Now it seems to leaders of the Labour Party that Nationalisation can offer no solution for the successful survival of British capitalism in the world's markets. It appears that high quality manufacture, speciality of design and responsiveness and adaptability to market requirements are the basic essentials. In fact the trend of Labour Party opinion seems to suggest that Nationalisation with its mammoth structure and bureaucratic dictation might be an hindrance rather than an aid. One spokesman at Margate illustrated this point by saying that it was the mammoth’s inability to adapt itself to changing conditions that lead to its extinction, its place being taken by the more agile elephant.

While the Labour leaders might propose a new line for the Labour Party’s general acceptance it will not be able to easily dispose of the old one. The policy of state Capitalism, miscalled by the Labour Party, state socialism, has deep rooted attachments for many of the rank and file. Popularised and propagandised by the Labour leaders for nearly fifty years it has acquired an ideological significance not to be easily dismissed. For many workers the old State-capitalist policy of the Labour Party conjured up in their minds visions of a "A New Era” in which the working class would in some way or another come into its own. It will not be easy to divert the energy and enthusiasm this has called forth into other channels. Then of course there is Mr. Bevan. And Mr. Bevan is still Mr. Bevan. For that reason the appeal of Mr. Greenwood for the Labour Party to close its ranks and stop internal dissension will not we think deter Mr. Bevan from his private ambitions. He will continue to keep the pot of Nationalisation boiling by the advocacy to use his own phrase—"Socialism through the old hard agony of Public Ownership and control.”

This of course will embarrass other Labour leaders because it will be difficult for them to admit that they no longer believe in such things. Because the Labour Party’s claim for political support rests on the fact they represent themselves in the light of a progressive party as distinct from the Tories, they must aspire to the semblance even if not the reality of having a social goal not envisaged by their political rivals.

In the past the old policy of State Capitalism served them well in this respect The difficulty will now be to find a substitute goal which will be as effective. One thing appears certain, however, that is whatever their political calculations and figuring might be. Nationalisation will be for the Labour leaders a recurring decimal.

One other thing is also certain that is for the workers the golden promise of a Labour summer is and will remain unfulfilled. It is the long hard winter of capitalism which lies ahead.

Ted Wilmott

The Back-To-Work Service (1971)

Aneurin Bevan by Vicky.

Book Review from the July 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

Private Practice within the National Health Service, by Joan Sohn-Rethel and John Carrier. Socialist Medical Association. 20p.

Your Health Service in Danger. Socialist Medical Association. 5p.

The Mental Health Services. Socialist Medical Association. 5p.

Nobody could object to the original idea behind the National Health Service: that medical advice and treatment in and out of hospital as well as drugs and appliances should be provided free to those in need. This is essentially what will happen in Socialism.

The point the Socialist Party of Great Britain made was that, introduced under capitalism as a reform, a free health service would never work as intended. These pamphlets by the “Socialist” Medical Association (a Labour Party affiliate) unwittingly confirm this.

Hospitals were nationalised in 1948 in the sense that a nation-wide hospital system was created out of the private and municipal hospitals which had grown up in the previous two hundred years. Whilst recognising the benefit to workers of not having to worry so much about finding the money to pay for medical treatment, we pointed out that the NHS was, and could only be under capitalism, essentially a back-to-work service for employers whose primary function was to patch up sick workers as cheaply as possible so that they could resume producing profits. Those who no employer will take on—the chronic sick, the mentally ill, the old and the disabled—are under capitalism just a charge on profits to be dealt with as cheaply as possible.

This of course is not meant as a criticism of the dedicated work under difficult conditions of workers employed in the NHS. They are making the best of a bad job. But the NHS has always been starved of funds, quite apart from the fact that in many cases the treatment can only be a palliative since a basic cause of some conditions is the poverty and insecurity of capitalism.

Another development was predictable too. Since the NHS was basically a service to patch up workers and since financial stringency led to growing waiting lists, the rich would try to buy themselves better treatment. Hence the growth of “private practice”.

Doctors must obviously play a key role in any health service and, as reformist governments in many countries have found, are a conservative group. The SMA wanted (and still wants) all doctors to be salaried employees of the State and all private practice to be banned. The doctors, and especially the consultants, however, wished to remain independent professional people or “private contractors” and were strong enough to force this on Bevan, the first postwar Minister of Health and to get him to allow some special pay-beds in NHS hospitals (which Bevan, the hypocrite, was later to use when he was ill). According to the SMA this was the thin end of the wedge which has undermined the Health Service.

Private consultations and treatment are, in their view, merely queue-jumping. They even go so far as to hint that in some cases (where a consultant is paid for a private examination and then gets a patient into an NHS, rather than a private bed) it is a hidden form of bribery. Maybe, but this sort of thing is inevitable in the conditions of shortage which will survive as long as capitalism lasts.

Judged by its original aims the NHS has been a failure. It is in a state of perpetual crisis. Once again the economic forces of capitalism have overcome the intentions of well-meaning reformers.

Adam Buick

NHS On The Rocks (1974)

From the September 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

When the Labour government nationalized private medical service in Britain the state took over. From then on all hospitalization, treatment, dentures, spectacles and prescriptions could now be got “free” on the health scheme. We could even receive specialist and consultant advice without the question of private fee. After-care in convalescent homes by the seaside or in the country was available if specified. It stopped short at such things as recuperation on the Riviera or Swiss Alps.

Thirty years later we now take a look at the state of Hire-Purchase Medicare. Consultants threatening to work to rule. Dentists and General Practitioners threatening to withdraw from the NHS. Technicians, Radiographers, nurses, ambulance drivers, cleaners, kitchen staff, porters, launderers (all but the kind ladies of the Women’s Voluntary Service), having withdrawn or threatening to withdraw their labour. Operations deferred because of the pressure of work or the lack of surgical beds. The government cannot buy enough kidney machines because they are too expensive. Kidney cases just have to suffer. It is reckoned that as many as half-a-million patients are queuing up for beds. Why does an ill person have to wait?

In 1946 Aneurin Bevan, the Labour Government’s Minister of Health, was so concerned about the health of the working class that he forgot momentarily about the health and welfare of those workers who would be running the show. Ever since the loyal servants of the state health institutions had to fight to keep their real wages from being whittled away by the increased cost of living. Now they have started kicking. In order to make it worth while for the consultants Bevan agreed that they should be able to carry on private business. It was arranged that a percentage of private patients be accommodated privately in special wards and wings of the NHS hospitals.

Now apart from the individual worker who insures himself, or the company or Trade Union who insures their employees or members with such bodies as the British United Provident Association or the Hospital Savings Group, who could possibly afford this treatment? When these patients go into hospital one special benefit might be a bed straight away. The general situation will be NHS standard, that is ordinary NHS bed and food. But there are two quite different standards of medical attention and what is the priority? Money of course— what can you afford?

So the great Nye and the Labour Government decreed that the best, or better, treatment during illness will be bought. And here to prove it are some facts. Salmon, steak, strawberries are a few of the tasty dishes you can actually order if you are resident in what’s comically known as the “Fulham Hilton” better known as the new Charing Cross hospital. In addition a bedside telephone and colour TV. That is if you are stingy enough and only wish to pay £174 per week. A better deal may be the London Clinic at £252 per week. This is exclusive of the consultant’s fees. You are expected to employ him if you wish his personal attention. The consultants wish to retain this, not surprisingly.

After thirty years so many people are suddenly piqued about it as if it only started happening yesterday. The present Labour Minister of Health thinks it is unjust and wants a year or so to phase it out. The CP's Morning Star refers to it as “a galling class question”. Yet they support privilege and inequality in Russia.

So no matter what they do they still finish up with two distinct standards of treatment. One of privilege and prerogative and privacy. The other utility, austerity and cheapness.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain had no illusions about this capitalist makeshift health plan for the working class. A patch-’em-up-and-get-’em-back-to-work-as-cheaply-as-possible service. And to think that this cheapskate make-and-mend of capitalism was delivered by the Labour Government in the name of “Socialism”!

Joe McGuinness