The Passing Show: Time and Money (1958)

The Passing Show Column from the December 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

Time and Money
Capitalism comes to different countries in different forms. The more recently a country has become Capitalist, the more efficient—from the point of view of the Capitalists—its system is likely to be: for it can draw on the experience of the rest of the Capitalist world.

Capitalism’s first need is for plenty of workers. One of the most important steps in any Capitalist revolution is to drive many of the peasants into the towns, where they can form the new urban proletariat. If this is done too quickly, agricultural production will suffer; if too slowly, industrial production will be held up. Again, even in peace time each Capitalist state must maintain a standing army, to preserve internal "order” and to deter and to threaten other states. If this army is too small, other countries are not sufficiently impressed; if it is too big, it means that some men are kept in idleness when they could be working in factories or on farms for the profit of the Capitalists.

As the Capitalists see it, one drawback of their system is that these categories—town-worker, farm-worker, soldier—are too rigid. It takes prolonged economic discomfort before a town-worker will become a farm-worker, or vice versa; if only because it usually means a man and his family leaving the area they know and moving away to another district altogether. And when in war-time the army has to be rapidly expanded, it takes time and money to set up the large organisations necessary to conscript' and train workers as soldiers.


Latest Model—Convertible
But China, which has been setting up its state Capitalist system only in the last ten years has been able to draw on the experience of British, American and Russian Capitalism, and has apparently been able to avoid some of the shortcomings of earlier Capitalist systems—shortcomings, that is, in the estimation of the ruling class. For example, over-rigid classification seems to have been avoided. According to press reports (e.g. The Observer, 9th November, 1958), the unit in the new Chinese Capitalism is not the factory or the farm, but the commune, the average size of which is “about 8.000 households”. The great advantage of these, to Mao Tse-Tung and his fellow-rulers, is that the Chinese worker is not allowed to settle down as one thing or the other; instead, he is organised in a thousands-strong labour corps, and then he and the rest are used as “workers peasants or soldiers, according to actual needs.” If this scheme succeeds it will make the American and Russian boss green with envy.

The Chinese have gone further. Communal mess halls are set up to feed the workers, and kindergartens to take care of their children: and thus the women of the commune too are “set free”—to join the labour corps. Shantung Province chums that it has "liberated six million women for productive work.” The commune owns all the land, the peasants having been compelled to hand over their individual plots to it. It runs agriculture within its boundaries on the lines of a great state farm. It also runs schools and broadcasting stations, collects the taxes—and organises the militia. But it does even more. In the last year or two thousands upon thousands of small factories have been set up throughout China: these, too, are run by the commune. It is "industrialisation without towns.” By these means the Chinese ruling class hopes to avoid the waste of the years of starving out the peasants, and the diversion of resources to build great new towns, which slowed up the British and the Russian Capitalist revolutions. The commune has replaced the town or the factory as the unit of industry, the village or the farm as the unit of agriculture, and the regiment as the unit of the reserve army. If everything which is reported is true, China’s system may turn out to be the most profitable Capitalist system we have yet seen.


Back to the alphabet
But why is this system mistaken for Socialism or Communism? Both those who support China's rulers—the Communist Party—and the majority of those who oppose them, call China a “Communist” country. The Observer article mentioned above had a sub-title "A New Communism.” This is to get the very ABC of economics wrong. A more efficient form of Capitalism does not become Communism. All the well-known features urban (and rural) proletariat, owning neither the tools they work with nor the things they produce; a money-system of exchange, which is pointless except to deprive the workers of the full value of their produce; and a resulting surplus value, which goes to support the ruling class, for whose benefit the whole system is run.


Heredity
Another book has been published recently about the Churchills, from the Duke of Marlborough and his forebears down to Sir Winston. The idea behind it is a common one: that social characteristics, such as the quality of “leadership,” are passed down from parents to their offspring. No one doubts that physical characteristics. such as the colour of eyes and hair, are passed on to children in all animals, including human beings. But that social characteristics can be passed on seems a lot more doubtful, to say the least of it. In any case, full investigations are seldom made. To trace Sir Winston Churchill’s descent from the Duke of Marlborough, and to conclude that Sir Winston inherited some of the qualities of the Duke, is often done. But Sir Winston is in the eighth generation from the Duke, which means that he had two hundred and fifty-six ancestors in the Duke's generation, all of whom, according to this theory, presumably contributed as much to Sir Winston's character as the Duke of Marlborough did. And of these two hundred and fifty-six, sixteen were full-blooded Iroquois Indians. (Sir Winston Churchill’s mother had one Iroquois great grandparent). So if we accept the theory, whatever Sir Winston got from the Duke of Marlborough, he must have got sixteen times as much from the Iroquois. But whoever wrote a book about that?

The velvet glove

As a postscript to the events at Famagusta last October (when four lives were lost and two hundred and fifty people were injured in the British “search for suspects” after a woman was found murdered) a remark of Brigadier Terence Clarke, Tory M.P. for Portsmouth West, is not without interest. The Brigadier says (Reynolds News, 9th November, 1958): “We’ve had too much of the velvet glove : what we want is a bit of the mailed fist”

If four deaths and 250 injuries appear to the Brigadier to be too much like the “velvet glove,” one wonders what scale of casualties among the civilian population would be produced by his “mailed fist”

Laugh of the year

Sir Anthony Eden is reported to be among the possible candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize for 1958 (Sunday Express, 9th November, 1958). This Peace Prize award is always ridiculous; how can it be anything else, when it is inevitably presented to someone who supports the present system of society, which leads to wars as surely as old bread goes mouldy? But the consideration of this man, whose last service to peace was to commit aggression against Egypt on the grounds that Israel had already attacked her, makes the whole thing even more of a farce.

Scandal

Those who live on the exploitation of the workers have of late years become much more coy. Once no gentleman would admit to an occupation; now the wealthy often conceal their idleness by becoming directors of companies. Nevertheless, members of the upper class themselves sometimes let slip in unguarded moments just how much work is attached to being a director.

One such admission was recorded on October 12th in the Sunday Express, which in its hot pursuit of scandal often allows the rest of us illuminating insights into the lives of the rich. Some time ago a “Kentish squire” disappeared from his home, at the same time as a riding mistress nearby disappeared from hers. The Sunday Express had to give its readers a long report on the matter, with all the details, of course: no doubt in fulfilment of the high moral duty of the newspapers to the public, about which they so often tell us. But what concerns us is the fact that the squire was a director of an estate company. If the holding of a directorship fools the world at large, it doesn’t seem to have fooled his wife. Her husband, she said, “ hasn’t worked for twenty years."

We all have our worries

On the topic of directors, an interesting little booklet has appeared recently. It is entitled “Health Problems of Directors,’’ and it is published by the Institute of Directors. Among the dangers and causes of ill-health that these gallant men have to contend with are mentioned: (1) Eating too much; (2) Drinking too much; (3) The blows to. a director’s self-esteem which come from being theoretically in charge of a concern about which his subordinates know a lot more than he does. The man at the factory bench or clerking in the office seldom realises the risks run by his boss. The Institute of Directors, of course, might lengthen its list. For any new edition of this stimulating little work may we mention these further hazards of a director’s life: (1) Falling off his horse when playing polo; (2) Barking his shin when his chauffeur is helping him from his Bentley; (3) Spraining his wrist while tucking into the turtle soup at official banquets.

Alwyn Edgar

Is Britain Going Fascist? (1938)

From the December 1938 issue of the Socialist Standard

Political Parties in the Melting Pot

Mr. Chamberlain’s meeting with Hitler has had the effect of bringing to the surface some hitherto hidden currents in the political parties. Mr. Anthony Eden, who speaks for the Conservative group which favours a strong line against Germany, Italy and Japan, is now criticising Mr. Chamberlain’s policy and possibly challenging him for the leadership of the Conservative Party. That he is acting with the advice and guidance of Lord Baldwin is an indication of the amount of support he can count upon in Conservative circles.

On the Opposition side of the House of Commons the Labour Party and Liberals are both divided internally on foreign policy. In each party is a group who favour Chamberlain’s ideas of international ”appeasement ‘ and another and larger group which leans more to Eden’s policy of using the League of Nations and the appeal to safeguard democracy as a means of rallying as many Powers as possible to make a stand against the dictatorship countries.

Still another group of Conservatives are anxious to prevent Mr. Chamberlain giving back colonies to Germany.

The small I.L.P. contingent of M.P.s back Chamberlain, while the solitary Communist takes the opposite side.

Here is a mix-up, out of which a new party grouping might emerge, and already Mr. Eden is counting on getting followers from all three of the larger parties. Time alone will show whether Mr. Eden’s group will succeed outright or whether their purpose will be sufficiently served if Mr. Chamberlain is forced to speed up re-armament and adopt some other planks in their programme, and much will depend on the reception the Eden programme gets in the constituencies.

Two factors emerge which throw light on the political confusion. One is the nature of the Eden programme, the other is the peculiar position now occupied by the Labour Party. Mr. Eden, in his speech in the House on November 10th, demanded a greatly speeded-up re-armament programme, and wants “every citizen in this country given the opportunity for some training in one or other of our vital defence services.” He demands a reorganisation and speeding-up in the working of the democratic machine, action to reduce unemployment and help the depressed areas, and more attention to housing and nutrition. “It is no use,” he said, “having the finest armaments in the world unless you have a fit nation to wield them ” (Hansard, November 10th, 1938, col. 378). He wants unity between the classes – “an England in which comradeship was the spirit of the nation” – all, of course, in order to meet the threat from abroad.

The wealthy would be called upon for “some measure of sacrifice in their present standard of life” in order to meet the two-fold cost of armaments and social services.

Thus, in a manner typical of the British ruling class, Mr. Eden is putting forward a programme which echoes more than faintly the slogans of Italian Fascism and German Nazism. Suitably toned down for the English scene, it is the Nazi formula of exaggerated nationalism as a cover under which to enforce national unity, linked up with social reform trimmings to make it attractive to the industrial workers. It is the same political swindle as that worked off in Germany and Italy, devised for the purpose of winning the workers over to the service of capitalism in its struggle with its competitors in other lands. It is called a policy of peace, security and social reform, but it points to war and destruction.

There is no need to argue that the Chamberlain policy – even though it fails in the eyes of some Conservatives through its inability to appeal strongly enough to the workers and in its inability to tackle the re-armament programme with sufficient drive – is in essentials the same as Eden’s. But where does the Labour Party stand ?

At once it is obvious that the Labour Party has no real alternative to offer. One Labour group could easily fall in behind Chamberlain and another group behind Eden with nothing fundamental to distinguish them from those leaders. The truth is that the Labour Party no longer possesses any characteristics to mark it off from progressive Liberals or social-reform Conservatives. Thirty or even ten years ago the Labour Party stood, above all, for nationalisation, but now that nationalisation has, for all practical purposes, ceased to be a live political issue what is there left? The Labour Party every day and in every way becomes more and more a reborn Liberal Party, but without that Party’s political fire and its capacity for the rough and tumble of the Parliamentary battle.

And, in the meantime, more than a few representatives of British capitalism are thinking that there is much to be said for the totalitarian idea to replace the party system. One of those who is toying with this is Mr. Eden’s supporter, Duff Cooper. Writing in the Evening Standard, November 15th, 1938, Mr. Duff Cooper concludes an article on “New Parties for Old” with the suggestion that “the challenge of the totalitarian States seems to demand a degree of national unity and national efficiency which the party system cannot provide.”

Without being prophetic, it may be said that British workers will show a disinclination for totalitarian ideas which will surprise Mr. Duff Cooper and any others who think on those lines. But whether that is so or not, one deplorable charge made by him has to be admitted to the full. Read the following passage from his article, remembering that when he writes “Socialism” he does not necessarily mean it literally, but has in mind rather the old-time “nationalisation” propaganda of the Labour Party. Yet what he says is largely true of Socialism, too.

  "There has probably never been so much political discussion between private individuals as during the last two months, but it would be hardly rash to assert that Socialism has never been discussed.
   “We are approaching the end of a week’s debate in Parliament in which any subject may be raised. It has not occurred to anyone to raise the subject of Socialism.”

Here we are facing a critical situation for which Socialism is the sole remedy, and one of our opponents can boast that the population all but ignore it. The S.P.G.B. is, however, not surprised or dismayed by that. For years we have said that the popularisation of reforms would end up by reducing the Parliamentary struggle between Liberal, Labour and Tory Parties to a shadow battle. We added, however, that our insistence on keeping alive the issue of Socialism would one day make the struggle a fierce reality, in Parliament and in every constituency. The S.P.G.B. has not failed to do its part, and Mr. Duff Cooper will yet learn that Socialism is neither dead nor sleeping, but a virile and growing movement. It will achieve a double victory. In gaining Socialism it will at the same time save democracy.

Edgar Hardcastle

Conservatives in Conclave (1946)

From the November 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

The seaside town of Blackpool, noted for its amusements and fun fairs, seemed a most appropriate choice for the Tories to spend three days there indulging in ye ancient English political pastime of setting up “Aunt Sallies” and knocking ’em down. To say that they excelled themselves on this occasion is to talk in superlatives. We need hardly remind our readers that now, as always, the Aunt Sally was— Socialism.

Reading their speeches on this subject, it seems hardly possible—to paraphrase Mr. Churchill—that so many could talk for so long on a theme and yet know so little, for it is no exaggeration to say that even to-day the average Tory knows slightly less about Socialism than a red-herring knows about white port.

The conventional theme that Socialism was a kind of vast “Somerset House” presided over by a tyranny of officials, and for whom men’s lives existed merely as the data for an impersonal and inhuman system of labelling, ticketing, docketing, classifying and pigeon-holing, was plugged for all it was worth. They blandly ignored the fact that we became a community of form-fillers and subject to a thousand and one petty restrictions that hamper and perplex our lives largely under their political aegis. They forget, or do not care to remember, that even before the war they sought to regiment and conscript the working class. That it was they who were largely responsible for inaugurating the “era” of the identity card and with it the right to be interrogated and apprehended by the authorities. When faced with this glaring inconsistency between utterance and action, they will plead that much of the repressive legislation and coercive bureaucracy fathered by them is largely due to the temporary and abnormal conditions of war. This is, of course, both dishonest and specious, as it implies that in some way war is a mere aberration from the norm of Capitalism. War, of course, is not a mere temporary and abnormal phase of Capitalism any more than the passing fits of an epileptic are a deviation from an otherwise healthy state. War and its associated symptoms of repression and coercion are, then, permanent and normal features arising out of, and inseparable from, the morbid cause that produces them. Thus, with the further development of Capitalist society, the greater must the threat of more violent convulsion become, and consequently the greater must grow its accompanying social restraint.

The morbidity of Capitalism arises from the fact that it is a system based on the exploitation of the many, the propertyless working class, by the capitalist class, the owners of the means for producing wealth. Only part of the wealth produced by the workers goes to them in the form of wages; the rest is appropriated by the capitalists in the form of surplus value. It is this unpaid labour of the workers—surplus value— produced on a greater and greater scale as the result of their ever-increasing exploitation, that makes possible the continuous expansion of capital. This is the law of capitalist accumulation. Thus small capitals become large ones and in the competition between them weaker units are forced out of existence or absorbed by the stronger ones and wealth tends to concentrate into fewer and fewer hands. But competition is not eliminated by the monopolistic tendencies of capitalism; it is merely transferred to a higher and intenser level by the gigantic capital formations of the various “nationals” fighting for domination in a world market. That is why the State, as the regulating authority of the capitalist class must become a more and more active partner in the economic life of the national capitalist economy, and by its exercise of political control seek to unify its various elements into as strong an economic entity as possible in order to compete with other capitalist nations on equal terms. The political form which Capitalism takes is, then, not a result of the political programmes of its parties, but a consequence of its economic development. It is, then, the rigorous pattern of political uniformity which modern capitalism imposes upon those who seek to administer it that explains why the famous continuity of policy, whether domestic or foreign, between the Tory Party and the Labourites follows as a matter of course. The main task of alternative governments is, then, to supplement, and extend what the last government began.

In the light of the foregoing, Mr. Amery’s warning of a possible head-on collision between “Totalitarian Russia and the out-of-date economic laissez-faire of the U.S.A.,” and his advocacy at Blackpool of “the building up of stable groups of nations each with its own policy and defensive organisation” (italics ours), falls into proper perspective. That is why again the usual Churchillian rodomontade nevertheless contained the carefully qualified proposition that the Tories supported as a general rule free enterprise as against nationalisation. This “general rule” will thus permit ample accommodation for particular industries and services to come under State control or whatever form of supervision is favoured by them. The same can be said of Mr. Eden, who, after avowing the Labour Party were socialist, went into the confession box and recanted by declaring both parties believed in Capitalism, only the Labour Party wanted it in a State form while his party wanted it in the widest measure of individual Capitalism. No total rejection of State Capitalism, only the widest possible measure of individual Capitalism. But as Einstein has taught us, width is not an absolute quantity, and Mr. Eden's “wideness” will be relative to the requirements of Capitalism in space and time. If and when the circumstances arise, a future Tory government will be as active an agent in the life of Capitalism as any Labour administration.

Ironically enough, although the Tories, in looking into the mirror of the future, pretend to look through a glass, darkly, they see in the very development of their own society the distorted reflection of something else—Socialism. Thus the outcome of Capitalism in its maturest form, with all its crass social consequences, becomes the bureaucratic nightmare of Socialist society, and it is with this bad dream that they seek to haunt the political sleep of the working class. They are, of course, helped in this by the Labour Party, who hold that the final form of Capitalist evolution is its opposite — Socialism. The Labour Party has owed its rise to the fact that it posed as a real alternative to the older Capitalist forces, Tory and Liberal. Having no real solution to Capitalism, i.e., its replacement by a system of common ownership of the means of living, and yet compelled to criticise Capitalism's shortcomings, it had to idealise its future as a new social system and see in the very developmental forces of present society nothing less than the realisation of “Labour’s ideal.” In this way were they able to turn an economic necessity into a political virtue. This utterly erroneous conception of Socialism is, nevertheless, indispensable to both parties because it provides them with an ideological basis for political rivalry.

Nevertheless, the ideological basis seemed unable to support the weight of a detailed Tory policy which might be capable of being offered as an Election alternative, for in spite of the demand from the body of the conference for a plain statement of policy, the big boys on the platform were unable to oblige. In fact, Sir Herbert Williams, replying, said "you don’t state a policy, it grows out of circumstances.” The real thing, he added, is to go for your opponent bald-headed and gradually build up your policy from that. Later Captain Crookshank promised that this talk about policy would reach the leader’s ears before night fell, which meant, presumably, Mr. Churchill was bringing something along.

So that those who run may read, we merely comment by saying that Mr. Churchill’s Conservative objectives — support of Church, King, Parliamentary institutions, law and order, efficient fighting services, a sound financial policy, and social betterment of the people—were as modern a statement of Tory principles as any put forward by Peel or Palmerston. Mr. Churchill, who doesn’t really like to be out of office— or out of anything, come to that—was a little cross with the Labour Party for refusing to stay on with him. As he said, there was general agreement, more or less, on foreign policy, and also on a vast amount of social legislation, and both were united against Communism (he meant Russia, of course). It seemed, no doubt, a waste of time to him for them both to be scrapping.

Mr. Churchill also expressed himself in favour of a property-owning community, an ideal much in favour, of course, with those "democratic” owners of the "democratic” means of living, the Capitalist class. But as the "democratic” Conservative Daily Telegraph awkwardly admitted, "Socialism did not originate out of the void, but out of the discontent of the masses in a world in which the relatively propertyless wage earner found little satisfaction.” And as it appears from Mr. Eden that the Tories were opposed to "soaking the rich” or any redistribution of wealth, Mr. Churchill had to find some means by which the propertyless wage earner could be elevated into the ranks of his property-owning community. It is, perhaps, symptomatic of his passion for the past that he should discover it in the proposal first put forward in the 19th century by a Liberal economist, John Stuart Mill—co-partnership or profit sharing. But, as we have seen, profits arise as the result of working class exploitation by the property-owning Capitalists. Mr. Churchill thus wants to spread the notion that the workers have an interest in their own exploitation. Apart from this such schemes are essentially reactionary and dangerous to working-class interests because such ‘‘profits,” being merely an extension of a form of wages, nevertheless foster the illusion that the workers have a stake in that shadowy and illusory conception called the prosperity of the firm. Moreover, in a highly competitive capitalist world, where the cutting of costs, including wages, is of prime importance, such schemes are not suitable for the capitalists as a whole as a means of achieving this as efficiently as the rapid alternation of market conditions require. Finally, while Capitalism remains, the capitalist class will never yield their economic privilege of appropriating the unpaid labour of the workers either through profit-sharing or any other schemes.

While it has been said that the conference revealed differences in the Tory ranks, nevertheless they stood four square and united for the maintenance of the Status Quo. Undoubtedly, for those who choose their parents with such discernment as do the Tories, such a sentiment as “What was a good enough social system for my father is also good enough for me ” is understandable.

Perhaps in some Elysian field or “Happy Hunting Ground” where successful politicians go when they depart from this world, the “Shades” of Disraeli— founder of the modern Conservative Party—might have strained a ghostly ear to catch the words that fell from the lips of the Conservative speakers, and with a fleeting smile ruminated on the fact that nothing has really changed in essentials since he wrote of the rich and poor living in the same society, constituting, as he said, “Two separate nations.”

Ted Wilmott

Britain in Deep Water (1957)

From the March 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

All within a few days, Ken Jones was dropped from the Welsh Rugby Union XV, and Sir Anthony Eden resigned the Prime Ministership of Great Britain; that should be sensation enough for one week. Jones, they said, was out of form and Eden was ill. If the former’s disappointment was a symptom of the unhappy plight of Welsh Rugby, then the latter’s retirement was as surely indicative of the decline of British power in the world, steepened by recent events and the failure of the Eden administration to deal with them successfully. This article will discuss aspects of the recent crisis and, perhaps rather riskily, engage in some speculation about it 

Hostile to Britain

While Eden was an acutely sick man no illness has been diplomatically more opportune for, as his enemies in the newspapers put it, his policy was in ruins. Apart from other matters, the venture to seize the Suez Canal was a complete failure. Militarily, this operation could hardly have gone amiss—something else must have been responsible for the failure and the apparent lack of any clear-cut British intention. With hardly a doubt, this was the policy of the United States, which opposed the Anglo-French operation because the Americans are themselves determined to control the Middle East and the copious oilfields to be found there. This policy is no recent development; in the Evening Standard (5th October, 1953), Lord Hailsham, who is known to be sensitive on the point wrote that; " . . . since the middle of the war the policy of the American Government in the Mediterranean has been almost always hostile to British interests." A few weeks ago we heard of Mr. Dulles’ preference for being a Doughboy alone in the Middle East, rather than with British and French troops alongside. Even taking into account his later modification, it does seem that he let an outsize cat out of his Bag and was in fact stating the authentic State Department attitude towards Middle Eastern affairs. '

Whatever the truth, it is a fact that Great Britain has now almost entirely lost out in the Middle East and United States influence in the areas is strong to the point of being dominant. The latest blast of U.S. foreign policy—the Eisenhower doctrine, with its promise of military and economic intervention—has set the seal on the situation. It may be remarked that, whilst on the face of it the doctrine is aimed against Russian ambitions, there is a certain amount of evidence that this is not quite so. An open attack by Russia, which is needed to bring the doctrine into operation, is most unlikely. On the other hand, recent statements by American politicians have sounded like an invitation to the Kremlin to move in by other means. On May 1st, 1956, Mr. Christian Herter said at the Chicago Institute of Foreign Relations: “We should offer to co-ordinate our aid with whatever assistance the Soviet Union is willing to provide. If the Soviet Union proposed to build a steel mill, we should not feel bound to offer to build the same mill on more favourable conditions. We should, on the contrary, be willing to work out both with the Soviets and with the recipient country a programme to which both the Soviets and ourselves can each contribute.” (Weekly Review, 4/1/57.).

Nobody need be surprised at the prospect of a Russo-American line up in the Middle East; the exigencies of. Capitalism have been known to throw together stranger bedfellows.

Indian Ambitions

We should also not disregard the ambitions of the rising Indian Capitalist class in this struggle. Mr. Nehru has lately been coming and going from side to side of the Iron Curtain, although only recently he was suspected by Americans of being too sympathetic to Russian interests. It is an interesting thought that he may have been carrying messages between Washington and Moscow. What is more certain is that India promises to become a powerful factor in the troubles of the Middle East and to play her part in replacing the defeated British power. This would indeed be a bitter irony to the Foreign Office, that the departing Britishers should be replaced by two countries—India and the U.S.A.—who were once under London's colonial thumb!

Serious though the defeat in the Middle East is for the British Capitalists, it is only the latest of the reverses which their policy has suffered since the end of the war. Apart from Egypt, there are the Far East, Australia and the Caribbean—all areas where the words of Whitehall lack their former power. The U.S. State Department has undoubtedly been the cause of much of this decline—and their preoccupation with the curtailment of British international power has often been pursued under the guise of some high-flown discussion, on human rights and liberties. In the Manchester Guardian of 25th. November, 1953, Mr. A. J. P. Taylor, wrote that “The (Atlantic) Charter was . . .  a by product of the Atlantic meeting (of Churchill and Roosevelt). The real purpose . . .  was to co-ordinate supplies and naval strategy. But the Americans had been alarmed by Keynes's prophecy that ‘the post-war world economic structure could only be one of closed economies. They wished to tie Great Britain down to a liberal economic system, not to make a declaration of principles against Hitler.” Other meetings of the war leaders, such as the Yalta conference, confirmed the American desire to break the imperial preference tie-up which the United Kingdom had built and to nose her out of her colonies. The reverse in the Middle East may be very nearly the last straw for British Capitalists, jeopardising as it has their supplies of vital oil. (The Economist of 10th November, 1956, estimated that 70 per cent. of this country’s oil supply was cut off by the blockage of the Suez Canal).

A Conspiracy?

This reliance for an essential fuel upon the facilities of so unstable an area as the Middle East is rather strange. Opinion in some technical quarters has it that no real effort is being made in Britain to find substitutes for oil, and there is a certain amount of evidence to fortify it. Apparently obstruction seems to have hindered at least one attempt to produce a substitute for petrol. The Manchester Guardian of 11th February, 1957, reported on the results of efforts in this field by a Yorkshire firm of manufacturing chemists. The manager of the firm said that ”. . .  the Government stopped one ingredient so we formulated another. . . . When we approached the suppliers . . . we were told they had given an undertaking to the Board of Trade that they would not let it go . . .  we . . . now have had to write off the idea.”

A move to offset the encroachments of the U.S. Capitalist class is to be seen in the projected European Common market. If the State Department smiles upon such schemes, it can only be because they regard them as turning the attention of European countries away from the markets which America wishes to exploit and as bringing pressure upon Great Britain to weaken her imperial preference system. Anyway, the last laugh must be with Washington—the control they now have upon Europe's oil supplies puts any such economic organisation under their thumb. We have seen what this means to European industry in the activities of the Texas Railroad Commission.

The threatened loss of their oil and enforced dependence upon United States mercies seems to have thrown British ruling circles into something akin to a panic. To add to their difficulties, the national unity which is usual at such times of crisis has been conspicuously absent. Such powerful organs of opinion as the Manchester Guardian, Observer and Economist, strongly opposed the Suez war and demanded Eden's head in compensation. This indicates a serious division in British Capitalist thinking—possibly a revolt by industrial interests against the favoured oilmen. It is under such circumstances that a Churchill, or a Lloyd George can, by reason of his political acumen, assume the rôle of a great unifier and on the strength of this come to power. Sure enough, we have lately seen a considerable improvement in the standing of the perspicacious Mr. Aneurin Bevan, so that even the Tory papers who were once screaming for his blood now champion his cause against that of Mr. Gaitskell.

Crumbling Visions

The conflict in Egypt and the confusion which it has thrown up are nothing new to us; they are an accepted part of the Capitalist social system. The unpalatable fact is that it is the working class, in these bad times as well as in the supposedly good, who are on the dirty end of the stick. The petrol shortage has exposed some redundancy in the car and other industries and so hundreds of workers are seeing their vision of lifelong prosperity dissolve in the reality of the queue at the Labour Exchange. If it is any consolation, other visions are crumbling too. Great Britain's Middle East policy of playing off and on and propping up puppet rulers, native armies and corrupt governments, has collapsed and the United States is picking up the pieces. A perilous, strenuous time for British Capitalism and those who try to organise it. Perhaps, after all, Sir Anthony was on to a good thing when he threw in the towel and caught the first boat for the Pacific.

Knife and Ivan.

The Faking of Reports by the Beaverbrook Press (1956)

Editorial from the January 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Beaverbrook newspapers the Sunday Express and Daily Express have a long record of faking certain kinds of reports. In reporting speeches they consider it legitimate to alter certain words and phrases and present their own doctored version as if it were the original. In our issue for January, 1945, we showed how the Daily Express of 2 December, 1944, took a speech made by Mr. Anthony Eden in the House of Commons, altered his specific references to “Labour Government” and to the “hon gentlemen opposite ” into “Socialist Government” and “Socialists” and presented this version as Mr. Eden’s actual words. Shortly afterwards the Manchester Guardian (10 April, 1945), caught the Sunday Express (and the Daily Telegraph) doing the same with a speech by Mr. Ernest Bevin. The Manchester Guardian in a leading article with the title of “Hard of Hearing ” doubted if the reporters could be blamed for this and wondered if the true explanation was not a “directive” that this doctoring should always be done. Unable to ignore the Guardian's rebuke the Daily Express (12 April, 1945), came to the defence of its stable companion, the Sunday Express, by explaining that the trouble was about “a mistake in one of the provincial editions” of that paper. But they craftily refrained from saying what the Guardian had charged against the Sunday Express, so their readers were left in the dark. Of course the explanation explained nothing and the practise of faking has gone on ever since. We are therefore presumably to believe that by strange coincidence Beaverbrook reporters then and since have been afflicted with a defect of hearing that causes them to go on making the same mistake.

It becomes more curious still when we find that a reporter can be not only deaf but blind. For on 14 June, 1945, the Daily Express published what purported to be an extract from an article by Mr. John Yarwood, official of the National Union of General and Municipal Workers, in the Union Journal far June, 1945. In that journal Mr. Yarwood wrote:—

    "I admit that we have union members who are professed Conservatives. I can't understand them. Further, there is reason to suspect that considerable numbers who pay lip service to Labour Party policy cast their votes for Conservatives in the secrecy of the ballot. 1 cannot understand them either."

In the doctored version of the Daily Express this became:—

   “We have members who are professed Conservatives and members who pay lip service to the Socialist Party and then vote Conservative. 1 can't understand either."

In 1945 we also took up with “Candidus” of the Daily Sketch (not one of the Beaverbrook group) his practice of referring to the Labour Party as the Socialist Party. He dealt with our protest in an article on 1 April, 1945 and gave what we considered the unsatisfactory explanation that he considered it to be a justifiable practice; but at least he gave space to our protest.

The recent attitude of the Evening Standard has been quite different. In their issue for 12 October, 1945, they published an article by Sir Beverley Baxter in which he reported the conference of the Labour Party as the conference of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. Our letters to him and to the Editor of the Evening Standard brought curt replies which made no apology and offered no defence or explanation. We have therefore sent the correspondence to the National Press Council which is to consider the matter. There for the present it rests until we receive the further reply promised by the Council.