The Gravesend by-election by Eye Witness (1948)

From the January 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Labour victory in this hotly-contested by-election—we were told at almost every meeting that the eyes of the world were on Gravesend— must have been a surprise to the Tories. They believed that the discontent of the masses with their living conditions would assure them of victory; but two things the Tories forgot: first, that the worker’s have a memory which they sometimes use and secondly, that the Labour Party are at least their equal at pulling stunts out of the bag.

The main issue of the election was “Which party can better administer Capitalism, the Labour Party or the Conservatives?” Througout the campaign, the question of Socialism—the abolition of private ownership of the means of life and the consequent ending of wage-labour and capital—was mentioned by neither Party.

It is true, of course, that Sir Richard Acland, the Labour candidate, mentioned the word “Socialism,” and when reaching rhetorical heights claimed that the mines and the Bank of England were “ours,” but he never once referred to the fact that the previous private owners were given State-bonds in exchange for their company shares, and that, in consequence, they are still drawing their profits in the form of interest.

For Acland, as for other Lahour Party members, Socialism means the nationalisation of the key industries. Thus he was able to argue that “Socialism” would enable the village shop-keeper and the small, businesses to operate as they do now. He did not point out to his audiences that Socialism is a system of society fundamentally different from Capitalism; that, whereas under Capitalism goods are produced to be exchanged (sold) at a profit, they will, under Socialism, be produced solely for use. He did NOT point out that Socialism means the end of all exchange, including the exchange of the workers’ labour-power for wages.

It is not surprising, therefore, that there was in this election nothing fundamentally different between the policy of the Labour Party and the Tories. Even Anthony Eden did not speak in opposition to nationalisation—what he did say was that “before further nationalisation is tried, we should first see how the nationalised industries work.”

The bulk of the Tory attack was concentrated on the administrative blunders of the Labour Party, the lack of “leadership and foresight” by the government. Acland’s reply was that the Labour Parly had done a better job of administration after this war than the Tories did after the last.

On the question of controls the difference between the Parties was more apparent than real. The Labour Party stood for the retention of controls ; the Tories for ending those which are “irritable without being really useful,” but for retaining those judged necessary.

As stated in the first paragraph, the Tories perhaps underestimated the importance of the workers’ memories. At every Labour Party meeting the unemployment figures between the wars were hammered home and blame for them rivetted on the Conservatives. It was amusing to hear how the Labour Party speakers blamed world conditions for the present shortages of foodstuffs reaching the workers’ tables, but ignored these same world conditions as the main cause of unemployment between the wars. They even proudly claimed to he responsible for the present-day relatively low unemployment figures. They boosted the export drive, but they did not tell their audiences what is going to happen when the export drives, so madly indulged in now by Britain, America, Canada, etc., etc., have glutted the world’s markets and when, in consequence, goods produced cannot he sold. That time is fast approaching.

The Labour Party flattered the electors by telling them that they were intelligent people and able to use their reason in deciding which party to support. And yet they did not shrink from making the biggest emotional appeal either party attempted. With about 3,000 present at a meeting, lights were put out and a miners’ choir, complete with helmets and little lights shining, entered the hall from the rear, walking in single file and singing as they came. The applause was tremendous, as it was after each hymn and song rendered by the choir in the darkened hall. Sympathy of other workers for the miners had been won and, in the speeches which followed, the audience was told that every Tory vote would be a smack in the face for those miners. As an emotional appeal this was terrific and worth many votes to the Labour Party. The Tory stunt of carrying around a potato, dressed in Conservative colours, was puny in comparison.

Lastly it need hardly he said that the Communist Party had its finger in the pie. They said, in a leaflet, that if the Tories got back the queues at the labour exchange would be 1,000 times worse than before the war. And we have only 45,000,000 population in Britain ! They’ve been so busy changing policies and organising stunts of one kind and another that they cannot be expected to remember that unemployment reached anything from one to two millions before the war. In brief, the Communists came out strongly in favour of the Labour candidate.

Readers will see, therefore, that the main issues of the much discussed Gravesend By-Election were concerned with the administration of Capitalism. Time will show that Capitalism, notwithstanding the Party in power, means endless poverty for the masses.

C.A.

Tories in search of a policy (1947)

From the November 1947 issue of the Socialist Standard

Annual Conferences of the major political parties are convenient and useful affairs. Delegates make speechlets on the ”Platform’s” proposals without really affecting them in any way. Other delegates politely listen. On occasions they even clap or cheer these speechlets. Such a social gathering helps to generate a feeling of amity and good-fellowship suggestive of the atmosphere of the Annual Outing or “Beano.” For the party leaders it is an admirable sounding-board by which to magnify their personal influence over their followers. It also enables them to indulge in those spell-binding speeches which do so much to rekindle the fires of their supporters’ political enthusiasm. Fires, which often tend between one Conference and another to burn dangerously low.

This, of course, really covers the water front of the Brighton Conservative Conference. Nevertheless, incidentals arising from it might paint a moral or adorn a tale.

Bernard Shaw’s “A Black Girl in search of God” has nothing on a Tory Party in search of a Policy. In the past such mundane things as detailed policies have rarely troubled them. Maintenance of Law and Order ; Preservation, of Our Glorious Empire; and an occasional red-herring like Tariff Reform have been considered ample for securing votes. With these and other nebulous promises they successfully moved the Electorate. Neither can they claim that the Electorate have been unduly fickle or faithless. Apart from two short and not highly significant breaks of the 1924 and 1929 Labour Governments the Tories enjoyed political power for eighteen years. Forty-odd years of Labour Party “Nationalisation” propaganda, among other things, provided some useful spade-work for digging a hole round the Conservative castle. It was through this hole that the Tory majority finally disappeared. The working class at length decided to give “Labour” a chance at running things.

The need of finding a rival policy to attract votes from the Labour Party has caused consternation in the Conservative ranks. Last year, at Blackpool, they began their search for one. This year’s Conference has shown it is not to be found in Brighton. To be restored as the “rightful claimants” of political power by the Tories time-honoured expedient of holding a successful General Election Inquest on the Labour Government's failures, appears the only hope.

Unfortunately for the Tories their failure to find some concrete alternative to the Labour Party programme lies deeper than any apparent inability to formulate one. The need of British Monopoly Capitalism compels the State to become more and more an active partner in its affairs, and so unify the diverse elements in accordance with the requirements of capitalism as an economic unit. This leads to that rigorous uniformity of political measures which is so marked a feature of modern capitalist administration. The main task of alternative Government is in essentials to supplement and extend what the last Government began.

Thus it can be said of any real alternative policies for running Capitalism what a geological text book once said of “Snakes in Iceland”—”there are none.” That is why, to use an Irishism, the more the Tories are different from the Labour Party the more do they seem the same thing—only even more so.

The Tories claimed that their Charter was “a bold advance in political and social affairs.” The merest cursory glance shows it to be a retreat into the Cloud-Cuckoo Land of vapid platitudes and cloudy generalisations. Mr. Eden once again took on the role of drummer-boy for the Tory, Brave New World. Although sounding the tocsin valiantly he could produce nothing more than The Need of Real Leadership : a Properly Balanced Budget; More Production, and Streamlined Controls. All of which led the Manchester Guardian (3/10/47) to say: “The seven points of the Charter would have been subscribed with equal fervour by most members of the Labour Party.”

Even the Tory Daily Telegraph could only lamely underscore Mr. Eden’s speech by saying that “in the first essentials of Government the Conservatives could provide better men.” It also significantly commented : “an alternative Government can be found which will either do other and better things—or the same things better.” This suggests that the Conservative Campaign will boil down in essentials to the exhortation: “Play the game you Labour cads. It’s our turn to bat.”

Because political parties exist for the requirements of Capitalism as a whole the Tories could not afford to indulge in sterile controversy about the alleged principles of Nationalisation. The Telegraph simply stated :—”Nationalisation had gone far. enough.” The mines will not, then, be denationalised in the event of a Tory Government. Likewise no indication was given that Railways, Electricity or Gas would be returned to Private Enterprise or, more correctly, Private Monopoly. Neither have they suggested that shareholders in the Bank of England or stockholders in Cables and Wireless should yield up good Government scrip signed by a Treasury official for something signed by a company director. As for the suggestion of denationalising the Steel Industry time will come for that when the Labour Government has finally made up its own mind on the matter of nationalising it.

Such a decision to preserve the already accomplished projects of the’ Labour Party implies, no reversal of the economic traditions of the British Capitalist Class. Whether it bo the Post Office, the B.B.C., Municipal Gas or Electricity, Governments in the past have never hesitated to take them from private control where it has been thought necessary for the interests of the Capitalist Class as a whole. If further evidence was needed there is Mr. MacMillan’s book, “The Next Five Years,” suggesting that Armaments, Transport, some forms of Insurance, and Electricity, were suitable for State Control. Mr. Churchill in the 1918 Election also urged a measure of State Control over all monopolies, especially Transport and Power, a fact which the adroit Mr. Morrison reminded them of in the House of Commons Debate on The Address. (Times, 21/11/46.)

Even the Tory cry of “Give Private Enterprise a chance” merely echoes the Labour Party’s oft repeated claim of leaving, after Nationalisation schemes had been carried through, eighty per cent. of Industry in Private Control. Mr. Morrison informed his own electors at Lewisham that Nationalisation must be carried through where necessary in the interests of efficiency, but most of Industry should remain private and prosperously enterprising. (The Economist, 10/5/47.)

The Tories also propose to retain Controls even, to the point of “streamlining them.” Mr. Wilson, President of the Board of Trade, has also announced : “Controls will be streamlined.” (Evening News, 7/10/47.)

Even that last stronghold of Toryism—Imperial Preferences—has fallen. It has been taken in the rear by that doughty “Empire Free Trade” Crusader, Mr. Bevin. Perhaps the bitterest quarrel that may yet ensue between “Labour” and Tory may be over who are “the true breed” of our great Imperial Traditions. Mr. Eden taunted the Labour Party with the fact that they are mere recruits who have only recently begun to think imperially. (Daily Telegraph, 3/10/47.) The Daily Herald (3/10/17) stung to the quick of its Imperial pride, retorted that “unlike the Tories who have only thought Imperially, the Labour Party acted Imperially.”

The leading article of the same issue told its readers that the Tories had put forward no practical measures beyond those already put in force by the Labour Government. Indeed its general tenor was to the effect that the Conservative proposal really supported what the Labour Government were doing. It is surely a strange logic by which to justify its own policy. How often in the past have Labour Party spokesmen condemned the Tory Party as the Party of Wealth and Privilege?

It now finds that acceptance by the “wealthy” and “privileged” of their main planks is a source of comfort and even congratulation. For the honest and humble “Labour” stalwart the fact that his party shares so much common political ground with ”The Traditional Enemies” of the working-class should be a source of embarrassment and shame.

There is, of course, the vexed problem of rival bidding for working class votes. While the Tories may not want to offer more inducements than their Labour Party rivals they cannot make it seem that they are offering less. In a class system of exploitation based on private property ownership of the means of living they propound the tragic jest of a nation-wide community of property owners. Mr. Eden in his opening speech (Daily Telegraph, 3/10/47) could offer no more than some future vague ownership of largely mythical houses for the working class, and the dangerous expedient of Co-partnership and Profit Sharing.

Ownership by workers of their habitation does not mean ownership of the means of living. It is only ownership of mills, factories, railways, raw materials, etc., which constitute that. These things are the monopoly of a privileged class and provide the sole means which enable them to live on the unpaid labour of the workers. This class privilege will remain as long as Capitalism endures.

Co-partnership is equally a tasteless joke. There can be no partnership between owners of the instruments of wealth production and non-owners. Evidently the Conservatives view it as a means to stimulate greater productive activity from the workers. But, as The Economist (12/10/46) in dealing with the Tory pamphlet on the subject said, “There is nothing to show that such schemes would be more successful in the future or as a means to incentive for greater production.” The Economist even agreed that Co-partnership as it stands “is an empty mockery.” It will, of course, remain an empty mockery under whatever form it appears. They commented that the Tories had much to learn about Industrial Psychology. They even suggested “Sir Stafford Cripps knew a lot more about how to get increased output from the workers.” Recent events might -suggest how right they were.

As befits a great leader, Mr. Churchill repeated his Blackpool performance by absenting himself from the three days’ Conference proceedings. The old gentleman nevertheless turned up as usual on the Saturday afternoon. The delegates then enjoyed a rare display of oratorical fireworks. So a good time was had by all.

Mr. Churchill, as an accomplished political quack of long standing, had no difficulty in showing to the satisfaction of those present, that the famous “Tory blue powders” were superior in every way to the Labour Party’s “pink pills.”

According to an American authority on the subject the rate of output of suckers is one per minute. Undoubtedly if increased production could be applied here it would greatly assist the Tory “Confidence men” to pull off their political “Three Card Trick” once again.

It has been suggested in what may be well informed quarters that an early Conservative election victory might in the long run prove disastrous for them. The return of either a Tory or Labour Government will certainly prove disastrous for the real interests of the working-class; both in the long run—or short run.

Ted Wilmott

The Emerging World Scene (1946)

From the November 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

There is no doubt that things are on the move. Incessant activity on the part of politicians leads one to speculate as to what is pending. The Nuremberg Trial is now a thing of the past, the U.N. is proposing to take a breathing spell, the Conservative Party holds a conference, the U.S. takes decisive action in Europe; in short, what we see in our master’s press leads to the belief that the decks are being cleared for action : the capitalist class have, in the main, decided upon what they are going to do.

The American Presidential election takes place in two years’ time, and all those aspiring to office in the United States act, and speak, under the spell of that important fact. Eisenhower, who recently spoke at Edinburgh, Byrnes, the representative at the U.N., Wallace, the former U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and many others are thinking when they speak not so much of the subject in hand as of the American election of 1948.

Eisenhower said in his speech of October 3rd : “World neighbourliness must be achieved or else, we shall, in a twinkling, travel a backward route over mankind’s long and laborious progress from his ancient caves to the present.”—(Daily Telegraph, 4/10/46.)

Mr. Byrnes says that if other Powers will agree to the 40-year Treaty proposed by him, this treaty will bind “not merely the present American administration, but its successors.”

Commenting on this, the Daily Telegraph of October 4th says : —

“Of the four Powers consulted upon this proposal, Britain, France and the United States are favourable, and it, is only from Russia that a refusal has so far come. This refusal is no doubt partly based upon those divergencies of view between the wartime Allies to which Mr. Byrnes made discreet reference. The prospect of a democratic Germany as seen by the State Department and by the Kremlin is strikingly different. Yet it is difficult not to surmise that Marshal Stalin’s objection to the Four-Power Treaty is mainly based on the fear, not that the United States will disinterest herself from Europe, but on the contrary, that the Treaty would serve to maintain her influence there. Mr. Byrnes’s reference to the Yalta declaration and the continued American interest in the Balkans indicates that this influence will, none the less, persist.”

Mr. Byrnes has a good election cry for 1948 : his rival, Mr. Wallace, who recently was rapped over the knuckles by President Truman and, as a consequence, lost his job, is losing out in the race; the policy of isolationism is no longer in favour in capitalist circles. 

Mr. Baruch, United States representative on the Atomic Control Commission, has vigorously attacked Wallace, and stated that the latter was totally ignorant of the facts underlying atomic control. Wallace is now trimming his sails, and states, in excuse for his attack on Mr. Byrnes’ policy in regard to Russia, “that he had obviously not been fully posted as to the facts.” The deadlock over atomic control, according to Wallace, results from absence of mutual trust between U.S. and Russia. He faces both ways, like all politicians placed in similar circumstances, by concluding that “the United States is in a better position to assume leadership which will lead,” but he has no plan except that of stopping the manufacture of atomic bombs.

If we read between the lines the general conclusion arrived at is that a peace treaty is going to be patched up. Russia is compelled to accept the U.N. decision on Trieste, and her policy regarding the Danubian Waterway has been opposed so strenuously by Britain, France and the United States that she is compelled temporarily to give way to them.

There is little likelihood of a long or permanent peace; however, the nations will, in all probability, prepare for what, under capitalism, is inevitable with what speed they may. Britain is evidently not going to be caught napping. Look at this: —

£12,000,000 FOB ROCKET TESTS.

AUSTRALIAN PLANT.

“The British and Australian Governments may be involved in an expenditure of between £12,000,000 and £14,000,000 in the construction of rocket-bomb workshops and testing ranges in Australia. The annual maintenance cost is expected to be about £3,000,000.

It is understood the Australian Government has received advice from Britain setting out proposals for research and development and for testing grounds in the centre of Australia. These are based on the recommendations of a mission of experts and scientists which visited Australia early this year”.—(Daily Telegraph, 4/10/46.)

It is against the above background we must judge the speeches of Sir Stafford Cripps at the Empire Trade Conference on October 3rd.

The Tories have recently laid stress on Imperial Preference; the following is Stafford Cripps’ reply.—

“It was an obvious and sensible course for us to pursue to endeavour to extend and consolidate our inter-Commonwealth trade.

"But that trade alone cannot fully meet any of our needs, and it would defeat our object of full employment and prosperity for our own people if we were to concentrate on Commonwealth trade alone and neglect those wider fields of world trade which we must cultivate.”

You are plainly told the Empire is not enough for British Capitalism; the Government must go hunting elsewhere for markets. The system compels expansion; the world is the limit; the clash between nations cannot be avoided. Socialism is the only means of saving mankind from destruction, and, unfortunately, Socialism is not yet fully understood by those who are called upon by history to establish it.

The Conservative Conference was held by men who observe the signs of the times, and are getting ready to deal with a situation they think will arise in the not far distant future.

The Labour Party is designated as the Socialist Party, but one statement made by Mr. Eden will be very interesting to the readers of the Socialist Standard.

“There is one principle underlying our approach to all these problems, a principle on which we stand in fundamental opposition to Socialism. The objective of Socialism is State ownership of all the means of production, distribution and exchange. Our objective is a nation-wide, property-owning democracy. (Cheers.)

These objectives are fundamentally opposed. Whereas the Socialist purpose is the concentration of ownership in the hands of the State, ours is the distribution of ownership over the widest practicable number of individuals. (Cheers.) Both parties believe in a form of capitalism, but whereas our opponents believe in State capitalism, we believe in the widest measure of individual capitalism.”—(Daily Telegraph, 4/10/46.)

Eden knows, and clearly shows, that the difference between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party is a difference in degree and not in kind.

The propaganda of the l.L.P. and kindred organisations have confounded Socialism with State Capitalism.

Mr. Eden is slated for the Premiership and the odds are in his favour.

Division in the Labour Party is probable, and the Communists may hasten it along. “For or against the Soviet Union” may arise as an issue out of the present political situation. The Cabinet will be up against it if they are forced to decide between Russia and the United States. The “Labour Progressives”, supported by Communists, will go wholeheartedly for Russia if such an issue develops, so will many of their followers in the Unions, and the question, is what will happen to the Labour Government in these circumstances?

Anthony Eden is the most likely man for the Premiership in the Coalition Government which it is anticipated would then spring into being as a matter of course.

The above is how the prophets have worked it out; they may be right, but, as Shaw says, “You never can tell.”

Meanwhile the wage slave plods his weary way. his meagre rations barely sufficient to enable him to carry on.

So Capitalism staggers along through the stages that precede its dissolution. It must live its life, but the end is drawing nearer every day.

Wherever you go nowadays you find working men not only discussing the political situation, but analysing it ably and well.

The war has not succeeded in blowing out the light within the brains of the members of our class; it has accelerated the growth of class consciousness, and increased the knowledge of the system that is its cause.

In the chain gang of wage slavery this knowledge is being passed from man to man and from woman to woman. The substance of Socialism is being absorbed by ever-increasing numbers.

The effects of this may be clearly revealed in the intelligence displayed by the workers in the strenuous conflicts that lie ahead.

The inherent antagonism between the exploited and their exploiters cannot be suppressed; it will become world wide; wherever Capitalism goes Socialist ideas cannot be prevented from appearing and playing their historic part.

The Capitalist class are bent on rejuvenating a system that is now senile. They cannot give it a new lease of life.

The working class will soon be forced to try and discover ways and means of ending it. We are with them because we are of them. There is no doubt as to the result. Society must establish Socialism or perish. The expropriation of the expropriators is the only way out.

Charles Lestor

The wrangle over Egypt (1946)

From the June 1946 issue of the Socialist Standard

Let it first of all be made quite clear that in all the deliberations that have taken place, and will take place, over the evacuation of British troops from Egypt, the welfare of the Egyptian worker and peasant has never been an issue. Whether under the domination of British or Egyptian masters, they will not see much difference in their lot. Whether their rulers are British or Egyptian, they will still have to eke out a miserable existence; they will still have to labour from sunrise to sunset in their master’s fields; they will still be riddled with disease; in short, they will still be a subject class, ruthlessly and viciously exploited for profit.

What is, in fact, at issue in Egypt, as is quite openly admitted and taken for granted by both parties, is the preservation of the safety of British capitalism’s lines of communication through the Eastern Mediterranean. Opinions differ, however, as to the best means.

Said Mr. Anthony Eden, for the Conservatives, in the debate in the House of Commons: —

“His first complaint about the Prime Minister’s announcement at this time was that it gave the impression, by the manner in which the withdrawal of troops was referred to, that their purpose in Egypt was something other than it was-- namely, the Defence of the Canal Zone.”

(Times, 8/5/46.)

And Mr. Attlee, for the Labour Party, in the same debate:—

“The Government were as much concerned as anybody else with the security of the communications of the Commonwealth and Empire, with the security of the Canal, and with maintaining the best possible relations with Egypt and her continued alliance with this country, and it was precisely for those reasons that they were making the approach they were making.''

(Our Italics.) (Times, 8/5/46.)

What, then, is behind this, at first sight, rather sudden decision to withdraw troops from Egypt? The reasons are political and also military.

For many years past, the whole of the Middle East, of which Egypt is hut one part, has been the focal point of steadily expanding nationalistic feeling. During the past war, and in the period since, this nationalistic fervour has become even more intense. The recent outbursts in Egypt against British troops are an illustration of the feeling against the foreigner. Although still doing their utmost to retain as much influence as possible in the area, the capitalist Powers concerned have had to take note of this desire for independence.

That Mr. Herbert Morrison fully appreciates this is shown by the following quotation from his speech in the House of Commons: —

“If the British Government had told the Egyptian Government that they would give no undertaking about the withdrawal from Egyptian soil, the negotiations would not have gone on and then the British Government would have had to face certain consequences. There would be sharp antagonism on the part of the Egyptian Government and Parliament; almost certain disturbance and riots, possibly even revolution, and it might have led to British forces being attacked and having to defend themselves.”

(Times, ibid.)

Then there are military aspects that indicate the conceptions on which the new policy is based. The following statement is from an article in the Observer, (12/5/46) : —

”The Canal . . . . can he bombed and made unusable by aerial mining operations. Any Power with the use of air bases in the Eastern Mediterranean and a modern air force can reasonably hope to achieve this. The 10,000 British troops that the 1936 Treaty permits to be quartered in the Canal Zone are no defence against such attack The defence of the Canal itself is largely irrelevant. The vital area is the whole Middle East, with Palestine as its natural centre . . . Now that it is proposed that Egypt . . . . is to be militarily evacuated, there is only one part of the Middle East where the British have retained the right to keep troops: Palestine and the neighbouring State of Transjordan. It is my contention that this limited area can provide an adequate base for a Middle Eastern defence or police force. It has air bases which enable present-day transport aircraft to reach the Canal Zone in an hour, Cairo in less than two hours, and Baghdad in less than three. It has a port at Haifa capable of great development, and it has oil supplies in its immediate vicinity . . . ”

In short, the Labour Government and its advisers are willing to take troops out of Egypt because they believe they will be better placed elsewhere for the defence of the Middle East. Imperial aims have not been dropped, but merely modified. 

The Labour Party is not a Socialist party and was not elected with a mandate for Socialism. It must therefore of necessity administer affairs, whether domestic or foreign, within the framework of capitalism. In its domestic affairs it has already amply demonstrated to the capitalist class that, fundamentally, they have nothing to fear from its administration. In foreign affairs its policy has sometimes even dismayed some of its own members and, on the other hand, has met with warm approval from the Conservative Party. On the Egyptian issue both Parties are concerned with one aim—how best to preserve the security of communications in the Middle East. The Labour Party, no less than the Conservatives, has sought to safeguard the interests of British Capitalism.

Stan Hampson

The Passing Show: Declaration of Washington (1956)

The Passing Show Column from the March 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

Declaration of Washington

The declaration issued jointly by President Eisenhower and Sir Anthony Eden after their recent talks in Washington must long stand as an object-lesson in the art of inserting the maximum amount of inaccuracy in the minimum amount of space. The declaration occasionally approaches the truth when it deals with the misdeeds of “the other side,” the Soviet bloc.; but when they dwell on their own records and aims, the president and the Premier rarely get even with hailing distance of the facts.


Theological Gambit

The Anglo-American leaders begin roundly:

“We are conscious that in this year of 1956, there still rages the age-old struggle between those who believe that man has his origin and his destiny in God and those who treat man as if he were designed merely to serve a state machine.”—(The Times, 2-2-56.)

Eden and Eisenhower thus blandly ignore both those of no religion who support the Anglo-American bloc, and all those fervent religionists—including the large Russian Orthodox Church, for example—who would die for the Stalinists. In fact the struggle between the two blocs has nothing whatever to do with religion or irreligion: each state has its tame churches to give it the divine sanction: the struggle is between the British ruling class and the American ruling class (who happen to have sufficient mutual interests to support an alliance) on the one hand, and the Russian ruling class (usually supported by their Chinese opposite numbers) on the other. But the desire for self-justification is strong: hence the habit of claiming the approval of the Almighty.

One for Ripley

But this is merely an opening canter. Warming to its theme, the second paragraph of the declaration runs (believe it or not):

“ Because of our belief that the state should exist for the benefit of the individual and not the individual for the benefit of the state, we uphold the basic right of peoples to governments of their own choice."

Or, as one might paraphrase it when one has regard to reality, “because of our belief in something we don't believe in, we uphold what we deny.” The claim of Eden and Eisenhower to believe that “the state should exist for the benefit of the individual and not the individual for the benefit of the state” surely borders on the farcical. Both the President and the Prime Minister were in the highest counsels of Great Britain and the U.S.A. during the last war, when the state in each of these countries so far denied the elementary rights of the individual that it conscripted millions of its citizens and sent them off to kill other individuals and be killed themselves. Not only do Eden and Eisenhower believe that the individual exists for the benefit of the state: they go further—they believe that when called upon he should cease to exist for the benefit of the state. But official pronouncements would not read so well if they confined themselves to the truth, nor would they make such good propaganda.

What can be said about the second part of this almost incredible paragraph, where the signatories allege that they uphold the basic right of peoples to governments of their own choice? When one thinks of the Prime Minister giving his consent to this clause, at a time when British troops are on an active footing in British Guiana, Cyprus, Kenya and Malaya expressly to prevent their people's having governments of their own choice, one can only feel grateful that the cares of high office have not deprived Sir Anthony of his sense of humour.

All my own work

Lack of space prevents the analysis of the Declaration in the detail it deserves. But one other paragraph must be quoted:

“During the past ten and more years 600 million men and women in nearly a score of lands have, with our support and assistance, attained nationhood. Many millions more are being helped surely and steadily towards self-government. Thus, the reality and effectiveness of what we have done is proof of our sincerity."

Since Britain has been in the Empire racket longer than America, the insincerity of this statement is more immediately obvious in regard to Eden than Eisenhower. Britain attempted to retain her Indian Empire (which contains the great majority of the 600 millions referred to) by every means at her disposal. A great army was maintained there; any expression of opinion in favour of independence invited ruthless official action; if the people demonstrated for independence they were forcibly scattered and the leaders (including for example Pandit Nehru) thrown into British jails. Riots and shootings and massacres marked the progress of the years. At length the British power waned, and the British State could no longer afford to maintain the repression in face of the almost unanimous opposition of the peoples of the Indian Empire. And so the Attlee Government withdrew from India, being no longer physically capable of remaining there. It is this eviction of the British by the Indians which Sir Anthony Eden now tries to describe as a British achievement. It is as if a boxer, after fighting a dozen rounds, is at length knocked out; and as he is carried from the ring opens one eye long enough to remark “I retire voluntarily from the contest and claim all the credit for my opponent’s victory.”

Who said aggression ?

No doubt if the British are thrown out of Cyprus this will also be counted as a great British contribution to the establishment of self-government, and the British ruling class will expect the Greek ruling class (which will take over from. them) to be duly grateful. But until this happens the task is to explain why Cyprus should not have self-government. In this connection a recent letter written to The Times (11-2-56) by Lord Vansittart is of considerable interest.

It appears that Britain has every right to be in Cyprus, because it “belongs to us.” Since Lord Vansittart coyly refrains from explaining how it came to “belong to us,” a word on the subject might not be out of place. Briefly, in 1877-8 Russia attacked Turkey, with the aim of seizing part of her Balkan territories; Great Britain, in the role of knight in shining armour, sprang to Turkey’s side to defend her against Russian aggression; the fleet was ordered to the Turkish coast, and alarm and counter-alarm succeeded each other. But when the smoke had cleared away, it was found that the noble British Government had taken advantage of the crisis to force Turkey to hand Cyprus over to British rule. The Cypriots, of course, had not been consulted.

It is this expert piece of sharp practice which Lord Vansittart now contends gives “us” the right to stay in Cyprus.

A little late to recant

But do not think that Lord Vansittart’s endorsement of this smooth-faced knavery means that he has no principles. He has. Or rather he used to have. He refers in his letter to “ the primary principles for which millions died in two vast wars”: and among them, it will be remembered, was the principle of self-determination. None was more vociferous than Lord Vansittart in his clamour for strict measures against German aggression before 1939, and for the merciless prosecution of total war against Germany between 1939 and 1945. But now, it appears, Lord Vansittart has had second thoughts. The principle for which millions died, to quote his own letter, no longer engages his support That “self-determination should be automatic ” Lord Vansittart now decries as a “delusion” The Germans under Hitler, of course, were in favour of self-determination in certain circumstances; it was only the application of the principle to countries like Czechoslovakia and Poland that they objected to, because there it was against the economic interest of the German ruling class. Lord Vansittart has now accepted the pre-1945 German view of the matter, which could be summarized as “self-determination unless it conflicts with one’s own interests.”

And so Lord Vansittart changes his mind. But all the British soldiers who died in the war of which Lord Vansittart was the prophet, and in which he beat the drums louder than anyone else, they stay dead. The principle they thought they were fighting for is now found by the noble lord to be a “delusion.” If only it was as easy to bring the millions of dead to life again as it is for a politician to change his principles!

Alwyn Edgar

50 Years Ago: Oil — The Prize in the Middle East (2005)

The 50 Years Ago column from the December 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

Fahoud is the name of the spot in the Arabian desert that is the centre of the drama being played out with repercussions throughout the Eastern Mediterranean lands, and Fahoud spells oil. Mr. Noel Barber, correspondent of the Daily Mail told the story in the issues of 31 October and 7 November.

"A year ago no white man had ever been there. Today, under the lea of a great escarpment — with the nearest natural water-hole more than 100 miles away — there lies a small cluster of huts and tents, and by the side an airstrip. It is Fahoud, a name you can find on no map. In it live a sturdy band of lonely men, Britain's advance force in the war for oil that daily gathers momentum in the Middle East . . . Fahoud pinpoints the struggle for oil being fought by vast concerns in Wall Street and the City, by diplomats in Geneva, and in clashes between troops patrolling the tenuous desert boundaries. It is the battle between the Saudis and the British, between America and Britain for mastery in the world's richest oilfield." - (Daily Mail, 7/11/55).

As Noel Barber says of his report: "It is a story that might have been written 60 years ago, when 'outposts of Empire' were fashionable."

He points out that British and American interests clash. American oil companies are closely connected with the ownership and development of the concession oil fields in Saudi Arabia, while British companies, and the British Government, are associated with the Aden Protectorate, the Sultan of Muscat and the Sheikh Abu Zhabi. After attempts to settle the dispute by arbitration had broken down, Sir Anthony Eden announced in the House of Commons on 26 October that "native troops, commanded by British officers, had reoccupied the Buraini Oasis after a skirmish with Saudi Arabian forces who marched in three years ago." (Daily Mail, 31/10/55).

[From article by 'H', Socialist Standard, December 1955]

Greasy Pole: It’s A Date, Then? Or Not? (2007)

The Greasy Pole column from the November 2007 issue of the Socialist Standard

That was the month that was. In September Gordon Brown celebrated his first speech to a Labour Party conference as Prime Minister by dragging out a procession of exhausted platitudes about the glories of being British and having a Labour government to stop you forgetting it. Soon afterwards a majority of the people who can be bothered to answer the questions of opinion pollsters said that, if given the chance tomorrow, they would vote for another spell of Labour government provided it could be under Gordon Brown. Understandably encouraged by this, Labour’s propaganda machine planted a rumour that Brown would call a general election for 1 November. This was startling news; don’t these people who start rumours know that 1 November comes immediately after Halloween, so that election canvassers were in danger of being confused with kids dressed up as skeletal witches frightening old ladies on their doorsteps with demands for trick-or-treat under threat of having their front gardens vandalised?

Luckily the Tory conference, following hard on the heels of Labour’s event, went some way to putting things to rights because George Osborne, who threatens to be the next Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer, did a trick-or-treat on Brown by declaring that when he was in charge at the Treasury only millionaires would be liable for inheritance tax. The dullards who are bothered to be so loyal to the Conservative Party that they turn up at their conferences were ecstatic about this promised financial tinkering to the extent that they failed to notice that Osborne had also put down a marker to be the next Tory leader if the party ever gets fed up with Cameron’s touchy-feely, hoodie-hugging, I-luv-u-babe style of deception. Cameron pitched in with a speech even heavier laden with platitudes than Brown had managed, on the excuse that his speech “may be muddled but it is me” – which, it must be hoped, will not pioneer endless hours of drivel by any leader who confesses to being me. A lot of easily impressed people who had once bothered to tell the pollsters that they would vote Labour changed their mind so that Brown decided it would be wise to abandon the idea of a post-Halloween election, leaving him free to take his kids out trick-or-treating. The Tories were incensed that a party leader could change the polling date to improve their chances of winning, spluttering that this was a diabolical plot, not only to disrupt the winter festivities but also to subvert the democratic process.

Eden

Even by the lax standards of political parties the assumed Tory indignation at the possibility that Brown would fix an election date to suit his party’s interests is suffocatingly audacious. Both parties have adopted the same stratagem; indeed it is rare for a government to run its full course of five years. For the  Conservatives, Anthony Eden succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister, after a long, frustrating wait which did nothing to soothe his naturally impetuous temperament, in April 1955. In fact, although the succession had been widely assumed, it was not as smooth or as predictable; Lord Swinton, one of the grander of Tory grandees, told Churchill that Eden “would make the worst Prime Minister since Lord North” and Churchill morosely agreed that he thought it had been “a great mistake” to announce his successor so long ago. The Labour Party, exhausted and shattered by the stress of their participation in the wartime coalition and split by the controversy surrounding Aneurin Bevan, were a long way from offering a realistic option as a government while the Conservative benches were thick with young, thrusting, ambitious newcomers to the Westminster jungle. Political strategy demanded that Eden call a quick election, to exploit the contrast between the ailing, often absent, Churchill and himself as a dashing, handsome, charming ex-Guards officer. After some dithering, notable for the display of the most lurid of his tantrums, Eden decided for an election in May, a year before he had to. Against the Labour Party as it was then, it could hardly be called a gamble; the voters, perhaps in gratitude at having this scion of innate ruling class superiority ordering them about, returned Eden’s government with its unsafe majority of 16 increased to a relatively secure one of 58.

Suez

In fact Eden’s government was notable, not for its chivalry but for the chaos and deceptions of the Suez invasion. This episode in cynicism, although typical of capitalism’s politics, did not seem to inflict any long term damage on the Tory Party for Eden’s successor Macmillan constructed an increased majority for them at the 1959 election. It was an uncomfortable fact that, among their confusion, the working class showed no reluctance to pursue an outdated dream of the glory days of British imperialism during which deranged and treacherous foreigners like Colonel Nasser were unwaveringly taught to keep their place. These unhelpful, insupportable prejudices blossomed again in 1982, when the Thatcher government blanketed a number of inconvenient historical facts to justify their intention to eject the Argentinian forces from the Falklands. Satisfactory as this was at the time to the Iron Lady its full value was not revealed until she had to settle on the date of the next general election – the first test of her record since she came to power in 1979.

Had Thatcher’s government served its full term they would have gone to the polls in May 1984. But the prospects for that date were unpromising. The early 1980s were not favourable to the Tories, marked by economic problems – at one stage there were 3 million registered unemployed – showing up in a series of bad by-election results in constituencies like Croydon North West and Crosby, where the former Labour front bencher Shirley Williams won with nearly 50 per cent of the vote for the SDP. In some cases the Tories were left struggling in third place. Things did not look good if they waited for a 1984 election, in the hope that something would turn up. And something did turn up – apart, that is, from the Labour Party electing Michael Foot as their leader. But the crucial event was the Falklands; when, in June 1982 the British forces sailed triumphantly home, leaving behind their dead and their sunken ships, Thatcher was quick to put the war in the most favourable light for the Tories:

“We have ceased to be a nation in retreat. We have instead a newfound confidence – born in the economic battles at home and tested and found true 8000 miles away…we rejoice that Britain has rekindled that spirit which has fired her for generations past and which today has begun to burn as brightly as before.”

Vote

And after that it seemed absolutely unavoidable that she would apply the heat of that newfound spirit to roast the Labour Party in a general election. In June 1983, a year before the government’s full term was up, the Tories romped home with a record majority of 144. Michael Foot’s Labour Party hit its lowest point since the defeats of the 1930s. All things considered, for Thatcher and her party an example of skilful timing, helped by a bit of luck and some hundreds of dead people, who had not been so lucky.

A governing party is absorbed in the timing of an election on the assumption that if they get it right their vote will be significantly higher. But what does this say about the people who vote? Are they content to use their power to bring about the trivial, short-lived changes which concern parties like Labour and the Tories rather than to erect a fundamental, enduring social revolution to consign capitalism to its unhappy history? Are they happy to so misuse their power that they oppose the Tories when unemployment is high but support them after a victorious war? Are they satisfied to use their vote to repress themselves rather than for their freedom?

Ivan

Suez Intrigue (1971)

Book Review from the November 1971 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Suez Affair, by Hugh Thomas. Pelican. 30p.

Early in the morning of November 6, 1956, a combined Anglo-French expeditionary force landed at Port Said. It was preceded the previous day by the capture of various strategic points by British and French paratroops. The Suez war had begun.

The immediate background was about six months of intrigue and collusion between Britain, France and Israel, with the most elaborate attempts at deception which would have done justice to a comic opera, were it not so serious. The aftermath has been fifteen years long, so far, with the Israelis firmly ensconced in the Sinai Peninsula and talks dragging on endlessly about cease fire, future boundaries, etc.

Hugh Thomas in this book recently republished as a paper-back, deals in some detail with the British, French and Israeli invasion of Egypt, but it really doesn’t add much more to our knowledge of the incident than was supplied by the Bromberger Brothers in their Secrets of Suez (Pan Books 1957)—incidentally a much more readable work. It is just that Thomas has the advantage of a great deal more hindsight than was available to the Brombergers. Nobody now denies that there was collusion between the Israeli and allied Governments; in fact Moshe Dayan has openly admitted it.

Nevertheless, Thomas has managed to unearth some interesting information on the rifts and dissensions among the various members of Anthony Eden’s cabinet, not to mention the double-talk and double-crossing between America and others. There is the rather surprising revelation however, that the American government were caught unawares by the allied action.

The story of the “police action”—as it was euphemistically styled at the time —is distressingly familiar. When the Egyptian rulers seized the Suez Canal, this was seen as a direct threat to British and French capitalist interests in the area. Indeed, so seriously did they view it, that they were prepared to go to war. As Eden said at the time: “Suez is a question of life or death for us”.

Additionally, the French were pre-occupied with their problems of rebellion in Algeria and suspected Nasser of sending help to the rebels. Those who recall the period, will remember the 24-nation conference and proposals for the international control of the canal, but all to no avail.

The Egyptian ruling class saw the canal as a rich and easy source of revenue and were not prepared to relinquish their hold. Perhaps their action in seizing the area was precipitated by the refusal of all the great powers at the time to help with the Aswan Dam project. The greater probability is that they would have nationalised the canal sooner or later anyway. This is a method of grabbing foreign capitalist assets, common enough among the newly formed states in recent years.

Incidentally, in the period that followed, it was Harold Wilson’s habit to refer contemptuously to the Tories as “Men of Suez”; this book is a timely reminder of the Labour Party stand over the whole Suez action. The parliamentary party, at least, was just as nationalistic as the Conservatives, and was certainly not opposed to the use of force in principle. As the author points out, what they wanted was “legalised” force. —prior United Nations sanction for any military action.

Hugh Thomas tells us of speeches in favour of this by Gaitskell, Bevan and other Labour leaders of the time. It was a pathetic and ineffective gesture and did nothing to halt the affair. In the event also, it seems they underrated the amount of popular support for the government’s action when it came to the crunch.

The establishment of Israel over twenty years ago was supposed to be an answer to the chronic problems of Middle East conflict, but the problems are there today as harrowing as ever, as the various capitalist powers jostle for elbow-room in the area. Ernest Bevin staked his political reputation on the post-war attempts at settlement. Perhaps it is a pity he is not with us today to read this book, and to see the bitter mockery capitalism has made of his efforts.

Eddie Critchfield

Greasy Pole: Sexing it up (2003)

The Greasy Pole column from the October 2003 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sexing it up

If it should turn out that Andrew Gilligan gets the sack from the BBC as a result of the Hutton Inquiry he need not be unduly worried about spending the rest of his life on the dole being harassed by Job Centre clerks into taking jobs like packing airline meals or cleaning offices at about five pounds an hour without any relief from a generous expense account. For he is given credit as the originator of the phrase “sexing up” and that alone should ensure he had no problem in finding a job with an advertising agency. “Sexing up” has gone down into history now, to take its place in the dictionaries of the future. Gruesome, punchy – and a bit thrilling – it exactly expressed the embellishment of the propaganda material being used by the Blair government to justify attacking Iraq. As a phrase it is a lot more effective and expressive than “over-egging” – the other one used at the Hutton enquiry. So well done Andrew; let us hope you will never have to use such an extravagant talent writing similar slogans to help sell cornflakes or washing powder or whatever.

But why did we have to wait so long for some creative genius to come up with the phrase? Sexing up is a long established, long discredited technique in the places where there is a need to excite us at the same time as we are deceived. And there are many, many examples of it being used. Take the case of the Bountiful Age of Nuclear Power. At the time when the world was still getting its breath back after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki there was encouragement to divert from the inevitable doubts and fear for the future by concentrating instead on the promised benefits of nuclear power. The motive was to replace the images of devastated cities and radiated people with those of modern, sanitary, fertile power stations. There was a need for some sexing up, to encourage the consolation that Britain had not been bled out of the top ranks of world capitalism by the war but was a vibrant, progressive power in the world.

Calder Hall

The first subject of this was the atomic power station at Calder Hall in Cumbria, which opened in 1956. It cost thirty five million pounds – at 1950s’ prices – to build and there had to be some justification for such a staggering amount of money. The first effort at sexing up came with the assurance that far from being a backwater Britain was entering the “new atomic age”. Then there was the claim that Calder Hall would produce electricity “too cheap to meter”. That was the time when the domestic appliance market was beginning to stir into life and manufacturers like Hoover would have found comfort in the prospect of workers being beguiled by the notion that if they bought a vacuum cleaner or a washing machine they could run it for next to nothing. But behind the sexing up there was a less entrancing reality for Calder Hall used most of the electricity it produced itself, with only about a quarter of it going out to the national grid. And far from the electricity being almost free, the new atomic station turned out to be the most expensive way of producing it. The real reason for building Calder Hall was to produce plutonium for weapons – for the Hiroshimas of the future. A fact which was rather more difficult to sex up.

But none of this was allowed to intrude on the hysteria about the supposed benefits of nuclear energy. By contemporary standards Calder Hall was primitive; newer developments were the Advanced Gas Cooled Reactor (a British design) and the Pressurised Water Reactor (an American design). By the time of the election of the 1964 Labour government under Harold Wilson there was no more talk about nuclear energy being cheaper than what was produced in conventional power stations. But Wilson had won an election on a promise that his government would swamp everyone with plenty in a new technological age – “moving forward in partnership and unity to a just society, to a dynamic, expanding, confident and above all, purposive Britain”. The government could hardly refuse to choose the British technology – the AGR. The Minister of Power Fred Lee was euphoric. By building the AGRs, he assured us, we had “really hit the jackpot”; it was “the greatest breakthrough of all time” and he would back his judgment by ordering a 60 percent increase in them. But after the sexing up came reality. The first AGR station, set down on the bleak cobbles of Dungeness, cost twice as much to build as the original promise and it was 20 years before it generated any power for the national grid.

Suez

At about the same time as Calder Hall began to grind into action a new Prime Minister was beginning to enjoy the sensation of having led his party into a historic election victory. Anthony Eden was an ideal English aristocrat – handsome, elegant, Old Etonian – not at all the type to be expected to get into anything as dishonourable as sexing up. Unhappily for him, however, Eden nurtured a few resentments about the decline of British capitalism as a world power, particularly in the Middle East. Eden was not your strong, silent type of English gentleman; an operation on him to remove gall stones had gone wrong, leaving him living on drugs and consequently inclined to be irascibly, blindly stubborn.

There was a new government too in Egypt, headed by ex-army officer Abdel Nasser who was sexed up by his supporters as “. . . a strong man . . . a practising Moslem and a proud nationalist”. This was not good news for British interests in the region, especially those centered on the Suez Canal, which carried 25 percent of all their exports and half the oil produced in the Middle East. In July 1956 the Egyptian government nationalised the Canal, declaring that the revenue from this would go towards financing the building of the Aswan Dam. After a certain amount of diplomatic skirmishing, which included a secret agreement to collude in an Israeli attack on Egypt so as to give them the excuse to intervene, the British and French governments sent their forces into Egypt.

Nasser

This was not an enterprise which commanded unanimous support, which meant that the case for it needed to be pushed with the customary disregard for the truth. First, there was Nasser himself, who had to be sexed up as a kind of Saddam Hussain of his day. Eden set his thoughts out to President Eisenhower:

“I have never thought of Nasser as a Hitler but the parallel with Mussolini is close. Neither of us can forget the lives and treasure he cost us before he was finally dealt with. Our people are grimly determined that Nasser shall not get away with it this time, because they are convinced that if he does their existence will be at his mercy.”

And a few days later he was on television, trying to scare the viewers by sexing up the style of the regime in Egypt:

“The pattern is familiar to many of us, my friends. We all know this is how fascist governments behave, as we all remember, only too well, what the cost can be in giving in to fascism.”

It did not take long for the whole tawdry episode to be brought to an end, for Washington to force the British and French to withdraw, for the agreement between Britain, France and Israel to be exposed, for Eden to collapse under the strain so that he abruptly resigned and took himself off to the West Indies to recover. Sexing it up had not worked.

That was all a long time ago and the conspirators, the big players and the people who sexed it up to frighten or cajole or deceive us are an embarrassing memory. After them, the social system lives on, relentlessly adding to its history of human disasters, of which Iraq is only the latest. And still there are the feeble, transparent attempts through conspiracy, spin or sexing up, to conceal reality.

Ivan

Greasy Pole: Is There Life After Tony Blair? (2006)

The Greasy Pole column from the October 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Even by the standards we have come to expect from them, it was an outrageous piece of New Labour spin to tell us that the leadership handover between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would be “smooth and orderly”. For one thing Blair and his cronies must have known that announcing his intention to resign on some unnamed, unpredictable date in the future ensured that the handover would take place after a long period of chaos as a succession of hopefuls – and no-hopers – pushed themselves as potential leaders. We had already had the sly briefing about Gordon Brown’s alleged “psychological flaws” (which must apply to many politicians). The infighting could have been prevented by settling on a firm date but whenever this was raised with Blair he brushed it aside by saying that he would go when he had done his job of clearing up a few trivial matters like crime, the wars in the Middle East and Iraq, the NHS, education, poverty… The very idea is laughable, that there will ever, can ever, be a day when a political leader can pass into well earned retirement because they have succeeded in making all the necessary adjustments and improvements to society, so that from now on all will be smooth and orderly. While there is no evidence that Blair is an avid student of history it is clear that he has absorbed many of its essential lessons in the sleazier arts of politics.

Morrison

What can be said, on that score, about Gordon Brown? When he made that deal, across the Granita table, with Blair, did he not have an inkling of what he was committing himself to? Was he entirely innocent of any doubts about politicians’ readiness to keep their word? Did he not reflect on the examples of other nominated heirs to a party leadership who had failed miserably to achieve it? When the Attlee government was elected in 1945 the Deputy Leader of the party was Herbert Morrison, a canny, cocky political operator with the common touch. In contrast, Attlee was understated, not to say drab; when he was made Leader in 1935 Hugh Dalton, who was later Chancellor of the Exchequer, bemoaned “. . .  a wretched and disheartening result . . . And a little mouse shall lead them”. After Labour’s emphatic win Morrison made it clear that he had no intention of agreeing to Attlee as Prime Minister and that, before he accepted he job, Attlee should submit himself to a vote of confidence by the Parliamentary Labour Party.

This was the kind of situation which, in recent times, must have provoked an incandescent row between Brown and Blair. Attlee, however, was in a different mode. After his election triumph he went quietly with his wife for tea at the Great Western Hotel in London and it was there, among the delicate china and the scones, he was told that King George VI was anxious to fill the vacancy for a new government for British capitalism and would he please go to Buckingham Palace to set the royal mind at rest. Attlee took the view that the monarch should not be kept waiting while the Parliamentary Labour Party made up its mind so he went at once to the Palace where “without quibbles” as he put it, he accepted the top job. (He got his vote of confidence the next day – as if an hysterically triumphant, desperately ambitious, party would ever have dreamed of denying it to him).

Churchill

Attlee later described the notion of Morrison being party leader as “fantastic” – seriously out of touch with reality. He continued as leader after his government were defeated in the 1951 election, leaving Morrison to sulk and snipe, fretful in the knowledge that the longer Attlee stayed on the weaker his chances of succeeding. It was clear at that time that if the Labour Party was to have any hope of clawing their way back into government they would need to undertake a comprehensive overhaul of their policies and presentation but Attlee was too weary after his years in government to do anything about it. That was probably the time for him to retire but instead he kept going, which had the effect of stifling Morrison’s leadership chances (Morrison was, of course, convinced that this was the motivation). After Labour was defeated again, in 1955, Attlee carried on for a few months and then suddenly resigned, going to the House of Lords. The delay in his going had had its effect; Hugh Gaitskell had emerged as the likeliest leadership candidate and he won the ballot over both Morrison and Aneurin Bevan, leaving Morrison to nurse his bitter disappointment.

The Tory government which followed had its own inheritance problems for Winston Churchill had always made it clear that he would be succeeded as leader by his Deputy Anthony Eden; for example in 1942 Churchill told the King that if he failed to return from one of his trips abroad Eden should be asked to take his place. In spite of the Tories’ calamitous defeat in the 1945 election Churchill hung on as leader (in any case he never made any secret of his reluctance to take account of his party’s wishes). But he was bored in opposition and he might have resigned then except that his “Iron Curtain” speech seemed to revive his confidence in himself as an historic figure so he stayed, while playing on Eden’s loyalty by throwing out occasional hints that he would hand over in the near future – rather like Tony Blair today. At the same time Churchill made it clear that he would regard any suggestion that he should resign as base treachery. Even when he had a succession of strokes, notably in 1949 and 1953, which progressively disabled him, he kept himself in the job. It seemed as if he would never go.

Eden

The grinding pressure of disappointment aggravated Eden’s emotional and medical difficulties; at the time of Churchill’s 1953 stroke Eden was convalescing abroad after an operation, which prevented him taking over. In any case Churchill, in the words of his son Randolph, “fought his way back to health with a Roman mastery of mind over flesh” so that he was still Prime Minister when he turned 80 in November 1954. He resigned in April 1955 and Eden came at last into his inheritance, except that it was a procession of disasters. Under scathing criticism from a normally loyal Tory press – the Daily Telegraph ranted about “changes of mind by the Government; half measures; and the postponement of decisions” – the breaking point for him was his obsessive but doomed attempt to revive the standing of British capitalism in the Middle East by the Suez invasion (his wife later told how at times she had felt as if the Suez Canal was running through their living room). By now a very sick man, virtually living on prescribed drugs, Eden gave up and went to the West Indies to recuperate. After all that waiting, he had been Prime Minister for less than two years.

Spite

A common factor in these episodes, as with the present clash between Blair and Brown, is the absence of any differences in policy. The disputes were not about whether to run capitalism but who should be allowed to indulge their ambitions by doing so. From those roots a tangled growth of spite and venom has flourished, in which Brown abruptly ceased to be the assumed, widely welcomed, successor to Blair and instead became the target of vicious personal attacks, some of which originated from people who were themselves far from blameless. “Compulsive obsessive”, “autistic” and “childish vanity” were among the kinder assessments of Brown.

Perhaps most audacious of all was Charles Clarke’s charge that Brown is a “control freak”, which overlooked the fact that when he was Home Secretary Clarke was a relentless, determined advocate of Identity Cards. The winner of this “smooth and orderly process” among contestants who lay down laws which are designed to instruct us how to behave will be whoever emerges with the least shredded clothing and the fewest wounds.

Ivan

50 Years ago: What is Behind the Fight for Suez (2006)

The 50 Years Ago column from the September 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

The men at the top see more clearly the economic issues and interests involved but as they need to rouse the emotions and win the support of the mass of the people they dress up most of the declarations in the rabble-rousing language likely to move their listeners and readers. So over Suez we have had from the Western politicians a spate of talk about law and illegality, international rights, and wrongs, Fascist acts of plunder, etc., while from the Middle East Nasser and his defenders have worked up themselves and their audiences with passionate speeches about imperialism, oppression, insults to dignity, sovereignty and nationhood ( . . .).

To the Socialist the world is not capable of being divided into the good and the bad statesman and the good and bad nations; they are all Capitalist and all are impelled by the nature of the social system to struggle for markets for their products, for sources of cheap raw materials, and for control of trade routes like Suez and strategic points like Cyprus. These are the things for which they fight, no matter what the fine phrases and slogans in which their aims and motives are garbed.

The crux of the Suez dispute is firstly the oil that exists in abundance in the countries of the Middle East, and secondly the Canal through which much of it, as well as other cargoes, is transported. Oil is now an indispensable fuel for the motors and tractors, aeroplanes and warships, merchant vessels and factories of the countries of the world. With coal production and hydro-electric power failing to keep up with rapidly growing demand for fuel and with atomic power only a development of the not very near future, all, countries need oil and many of them, including Britain, have practically none within their own frontiers ( . . .)

At the time of writing the discussions between the Powers have not produced a settlement though the evident lack of war-fever among British workers and the disinclination of other Governments to back up Britain and France in forcible action against Egypt have had some effect in restraining the Eden Government and its supporters.

On the other hand Arab workers, misled by the belief that nationalisation of the Canal Co. (and eventual nationalisation of the oil industry) is in their interest, have been vigorously backing their governments.

This is the real tragedy of the Suez dispute, that there is no unity among the workers of the different countries in opposing the war-talk of their Governments.

(From front page article, Socialist Standard, September 1956)

Right honourable gentlemen (1978)

From the September 1978 issue of the Socialist Standard

Anyone who spends an afternoon observing Members of Parliament, after prolonged and copious lunches, reeling about their business in the House of Commons, may be surprised to learn that those same Members are expected to conform to what are called Standards of Behaviour. It was a failure to keep to these standards which finished off John Profumo and John Stonehouse and which will, if he is convicted of conspiring to have Norman Scott murdered, also end the political career of Jeremy Thorpe.

It is necessary to exercise a great deal of caution in this matter because (although this will be no comfort to Thorpe) not all politicians who plan to kill people are automatically drummed out of that experience known as Public Life. In fact there are many — some of them hold down jobs in one or other branch of the Ministry of Defence — who are paid fairly high wages to do exactly that. But there are guidelines, outside of which it is not permissible for a politician to stray; within them he can lie and cheat and organise mass killings and, if he keeps it up long enough, expect to end his days in the House of Lords with a few directorships to buoy up his income. Outside them he may end up in the dock.

These are customary demands of a political career and some of the people subject to them adapt more easily than do others. Most governments include one or two ministers whose single-minded devotion to an odious duty, whose readiness to carry out any dirty work which their dogged loyalty to capitalism persuades them is necessary, marks them out as being of abnormal ambition. They usually accumulate a few honours at the end of their days and richly deserve every one of them.

One such was Selwyn Lloyd, who died recently. Lloyd, who looked everyone’s vision of a stiff-necked bank clerk, was so drab it was almost exciting — he had, in fact, been a barrister and we can only hope he was able to present a more optimistic image to his clients. Moshe Dayan, when he was the Israeli Commander-in-Chief, wrote of him that he

. . . may well have been a friendly man, pleasant, charming, amiable. If so, he showed near genius in concealing these virtues.

Beneath his pin stripes, Lloyd nurtured a steely fidelity to British capitalism, in whose cause he was always ready to conspire and to deceive and to organise enterprises likely to result in the death of a lot of other people. One of the historical episodes in his career, for which he will always be notorious, was the 1956 British and French invasion of the Suez Canal Zone. That invasion provoked a storm of opposition, some of which was fuelled by evidence that the British, French and Israeli governments had hatched a plot to provide justification for the attack. The plot, in the words of Anthony Nutting, who was Minister of State at the Foreign Office at the time,

. . . was that Israel should be invited to attack Egypt across the Sinai Peninsular and that France and Britain, having given the Israeli forces enough time to seize all or most of Sinai, should then order ‘both sides’ to withdraw their forces from the Suez Canal, in order to permit an Anglo-French force to intervene and occupy the Canal on the pretext of saving it from damage by fighting. Thus the two powers would be able to claim to be ‘separating the combatants 'and ‘extinguishing a danger- out fire’, while actually seizing control of the entire waterway and of its terminal ports, Port Said and Suez. (No End of a Lesson.)

At the time Selwyn Lloyd, and the British government, steadfastly denied the existence of any such arrangement. On October 30 1956, the day the Israeli forces started their attack, the then Prime Minister Anthony Eden told the House of Commons that it had come as a complete surprise to Whitehall. The next day Lloyd backed up this denial with the slippery answer to a question in the House of Commons about collusion:

It is quite wrong to state that Israel was incited to this action by Her Majesty’s Government. There was no prior agreement between us about it.

On November 2 1956 General Keightley, who was in command of the British forces in the Suez landings, told journalists that “There has never been any contact between Israel and the Allies". (Secrets of Suez — Merry and Serge Bromberger).

Well that was a long time ago and now that the dust of Suez has settled there is an abundance of admitted evidence that Eden, Lloyd, Keightley and the rest were simply lying when they denied any pre-knowledge of the Israeli attack. In fact Selwyn Lloyd himself later gave an account of the affair which, describing a secret meeting at Chequers when the French general Challe and the acting French Foreign Minister Gazier outlined a plan to invite Israel to invade the Sinai peninsular, exposed himself as a liar. According to Anthony Nutting, who was also at Chequers that day, Eden was at once in favour of the suggestion and Lloyd later backed him up in this. That meeting took place on October 14 1956 — over a fortnight before Eden, Lloyd and Keightley were denying, as honourable men should, any collusive encouragement of an Israeli military action against Egypt. A week after the Chequers meeting Selwyn Lloyd was sent incognito to France to discuss the plot with, among others, the Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion and General Dayan.

The subsequent invasion of the Suez Canal Zone broke no less than three agreements which the British government was signatory to. There was the United Nations Charter, of which so much nonsense was talked; there was the Tripartite Declaration of 1950 (in which Britain, France and the USA made themselves responsible for preventing either side starting another round in the Arab/Israeli conflict); and there was the 1954 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty which bound Britain to send troops to the Suez Canal only if asked to do so by the Egyptian government. When these kinds of agreements are signed they are presented to us as great peace-keeping measures; Suez showed again just how little such assurances are worth.

In spite of the evidence that the Suez invasion was a typically disreputable episode, Selwyn Lloyd stubbornly defended it all as necessary and honourable. He cheated, he lied and he conspired in something which he knew would end in the killing of a lot of members of the working class. That, of course, was his job as Foreign Secretary. His reward, after the collapse of the Eden government and the appointment of Harold MacMillan as Prime Minister, was first to keep his place as Foreign Secretary (when he might well have been expected to lose it, as one so closely associated with Suez) and later to get the equally important job of Chancellor of the Exchequer where, it may have been expected, his dreary cynicism was likely to have a depressing effect on workers’ wage demands. MacMillan seemed at first to admire him greatly:

Selwyn Lloyd . . . had both the experience and the intelligence, also, I believed, the political agility to undertake a new task. (Pointing the Way — Harold Macmillan.)

This admiration persisted through several crises (“. . . the Chancellor of the Exchequer in capital form . . “. . . Selwyn Lloyd has been splendid all through. He has been calm and confident.”).

But as the storm clouds over British capitalism refused to be dispersed by Lloyd’s stolidly uninspiring policies, MacMillan became abruptly disenchanted with his dog-like Chancellor. (“ He seemed in some distress about wage claims . . ‘‘Selwyn . . . seems to me to have lost his grip . . . Lately, he seems hardly to function in some vital matters — eg this Incomes Policy affair.”) (At the End of the Day — Harold Macmillan.).

The government’s difficulties with the economic crisis were aggravated by a series of bad by-election results and, in a panic to give the cabinet a facelift, Macmillan decided to sacrifice several ministers, including Selwyn Lloyd. Even at so crushing a moment, when he might have shown some anger, Lloyd remained as stiff-necked as ever; he refused a peerage because, he said, he wanted to stay in the Commons to defend his financial policies and he wrote to Macmillan:

Dear Prime Minister, You have told me that you would like me to resign and this I willingly do.

Lloyd’s dismissal caused some wrath in the Conservative Party, where it was obviously thought that anyone who could be so utterly relied upon to do any dirty work deserved better. His old boss, Anthony Eden (who was by then savouring his reward for the Suez bungle in the House of Lords) made a rare return to political matters to say that Selwyn Lloyd had been ‘harshly treated’.

Lloyd seemed to be the only one not to be complaining. He came back briefly, as Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House, until the Tories were beaten in 1964. In 1970 he was elected Speaker, which to some extent took him out of the political battle and gave him a job in which he clearly upheld all the traditions of the House (which, when an MP says it, is taken as the highest compliment although it may not be clear which tradition he is referring to) until 1976 when he was made a Life Peer. At one time or another Selwyn Lloyd was a director of, among other companies, Sun Alliance and the Rank Organisation.

His was an iniquitous story, although unexceptional. The leaders of capitalism pose as people who are concerned about human interests and who, because they wield considerable power, are anxious to conform to the highest standards of honesty. On this image they ride in and out of power; each time a worker votes for them it is a demonstration of confidence in them to keep to their promises and to live up to their image.

Reality is a lot more sordid. Capitalism can only work against the interests of a majority of its people. At the same time it is a chaos of conflicting interests — of one firm against another, or one combine or international alliance against the rest. Harmony, cooperation, plenty — these are concepts utterly foreign to the priorities of this social system.

By the same token capitalism cannot work on freedom or honesty. Secrecy, deception, double-dealing are essential to its operation. Very few firms can be open about their production and marketing plans and it is common for them to keep secret important matters which it is in their customers’ interests to be aware of — for example the standard of testing of thalidomide. Then imagine a Prime Minister who openly admitted the truth — that his policies were designed to protect the interests of the ruling class minority against those of the majority, and that he intended to hood wink that majority into voting for their own robbery and humiliation.

The more customary, because less disruptive, way is that of Selwyn Lloyd, to maintain an image of bland respectability behind which to behave like a Sicilian bandit. At times the ruling class may lift the veil on the deception, to allow the workers to see a little of how they have been misled — but this only shows with what contempt the ruling class regard the people off whose backs they live.

It is not that capitalism would be better if its leaders were consistently honourable. The point is that we live under a social system in which cheating, lying and murder are a natural currency. Capitalism could not survive on any other terms. It is a measure of its boundless cynicism, that its Right Honourable Gentlemen are anything but that.

Ivan