The Common Market Special Survey: 5. The Commonwealth (1962)

From the January 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is going to be a trying time for our politicians. British capitalism has been forced, after much dithering, to face up to the harsh realities of its own world. No more can it ignore the increasing challenge to its position in a highly competitive world market, and the fact that the relatively easy markets of the British Commonwealth are no longer sufficient to offset this. As The Observer pointed out almost three years ago:

“At the moment the Commonwealth accounts for nearly half our trade but it would be foolish to pretend that it offers anything like the growing market of Europe.”

This must be a major consideration to our rulers, despite the high-flown claptrap which they have talked on occasions about “Commonwealth family of Nations.” So Britain goes cap in hand to “the Six” and Tory Ministers make a flying tour of the major Commonwealth Countries in an effort to ride out the inevitable storm of protest which their decision has aroused.

Since the end of the Second World War in particular, successive Governments have never tired of telling us how important it is that Britain should export more and more. So perhaps we may be forgiven if we have forgotten that Britain itself is a large and important market for goods coming from Canada, Australia and New Zealand, for example. And it is the fear of losing this which is behind the undignified squabbles which have taken place over the past few months.

Canada

In a recent survey by The Times we read that “. . . . there is an undoubted fear that by Britain’s closer association with Europe, Canada is going to suffer in what is her second best market, especially in agricultural and chemical products as well as in a newly found market for her manufactured goods.” So seriously do the Canadian capitalists view the prospects, that only on November 11th last, The Observer was able to report that relations between Canada and Britain on the Common Market issue were worse than at any time since preliminary negotiation began.

Over the other side of the world in New Zealand, there is near-panic at the threat of a shrinking market for primary products—lamb, wool, butter and cheese—in Great Britain. Understandably so from the viewpoint of the N.Z. farmers. Apparently fifty-seven per cent. of their total exports were sold in the United Kingdom in 1959. And more recently The Dominion (Wellington) asserted that some eighty per cent. by weight of N.Z. dairy products now go to the British Market. The remarks of Prime Minister Holyoake further emphasise with what trepidation the future is viewed; just listen to his words, reported in the National Party Journal Freedom for July, 1961 :

“It is no exaggeration to say that our dairy industry and our lamb production have been based on and are designed to serve the needs of the United Kingdom Market. They have been based on the idea that our expanding production could receive a full and remunerative outlet. Without it, the whole economic future of New Zealand is thrown out of balance.”

Strong words indeed! And matched equally by (hose of leading government spokesmen in nearby Australia. Their Common Market Communique issued on July 11th speaks of “. . . the serious adverse consequences for Australian producers and for the Australian balance of payments which would confront Australia if the United Kingdom were to enter the Common Market on a basis which failed to safeguard Australian trade interests for the future.”

Australia Looks Elsewhere

Wheat, meat, dairy products, bas; metals, sugar and fruits constitute the bulk of Australian exports to Britain and are currently valued at almost £200 million Sterling. The Minister for Trade, Mr. McEwen, has asserted that Britain is Australia’s biggest market. So little wonder then, that there was such “full and frank” discussion with Mr. Duncan Sandys when he paid his visit a few weeks before.

But despite the forebodings of official spokesmen, it does not seem that Britain’s decision has taken the Australian Government completely by surprise. For some years now, attempts have been made to find alternative markets, and it is interesting to learn that Japan has now become the biggest buyer of Australian wool and a top-level buyer of many other important products. Trade with Japan in 1960 was worth £160 millions.

In a press interview on last July Mr. Menzies admitted the great political implications of the Common Market. He has described it as possibly “a third power” in the world :

“(But) we record our view that the Commonwealth will not be quite the same . . . this will lead to a loosening of Commonwealth relations.“

So where will they turn then? Might there be just the possibility that yet “a fourth power” will emerge, embracing Australia, New Zealand and other far eastern States, and with Japan as a leading member? Does it sound too far fetched? Nothing should surprise us in a capitalist world. Canada in her turn could swing politically in favour of the U.S.A. if the tariff walls of the Common Market go up against her. She already has close economic links and American capitalists have large investments in Canada.

And for the workers of the Commonwealth? Well, there is one market which they have always had in common with their opposite numbers in every other part of the world, and that is the labour market. This basic fact will not, of course, be altered. They will remain workers facing the common problem of Capitalism—and how to get rid of it.

Eddie Critchfield

Pathfinders: The magic gadget IRL (2026)

The Pathfinders Column from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

30 years ago in 1996, some were learning to use email, home computers and the embryonic worldwide web, but most families still shopped in the high street, looked up numbers in the phone book and watched ‘terrestrial’ telly together in the sitting room. Kids who wanted alternative amusement ended up hanging out with mates on park benches or outside supermarkets in the winter cold. Gay teens had no local community of peers to turn to. Neither did those with hobbies, or growing-pain problems. For them, the world in real life (IRL) was limited and limiting.

But, IRL, there was also no FOMO, no sexting, no doxing, no doomscrolling, no cyberstalking or cyberbullying, no revenge porn or ‘nudifying’ of classmates, and no pro-suicide chatrooms. Smartphones and social media (SM) have revolutionised the childhood experience, and not necessarily in a good way, as BBC Radio 4 reported (7 December): ‘Alongside the widespread adoption of smartphones has come a tidal wave of adolescent anxiety, depression, loneliness, and a spike in suicides’. Now Australia has banned access to ten of the biggest SM sites for under-16s. Communications Minister Annika Wells explains: ‘Teenage addiction was not a bug, it was a design feature, and on 10 December there are going to be withdrawal symptoms. […] With one law, we can protect Generation Alpha from being sucked into purgatory by predatory algorithms described by the men who created the feature as “behavioural cocaine”‘.

Many countries now ban phone use in schools. Australia started doing this back in 2020, with support from teachers and parents alike. All claimed a degree of success. However the bans were not well coordinated, and subjective reports of greater engagement and improved mental health may be the placebo effect at work. A Birmingham University study looking at 1,227 students in 30 secondary schools found no evidence of changes in grades, amount of sleep, class behaviour, or even time spent on phones.

Australia’s latest action, with popular support, could trigger a global cascade of similar legislation. SM firms already face a landmark US trial this month. China, with basilisk totalitarian vigilance, uses spyware to restrict SM use and game playing by its youth, with a 40-minute daily limit for SM and 3 hours gaming per week. The UK 2023 Online Safety Act (OSA) instead demands that SM companies take ‘reasonable steps’ to protect children. Good luck with that. SM lawyers will have a field day.

It’s not just teens. Ofcom estimates that 1 in 4 UK children aged between 5 and 7 have a smartphone. Parents say they buy these phones for safety reasons to do with the child being contactable and trackable. But satellite-tracking a five-year-old is not the way to keep them safe. In truth, overworked adults managing multiple jobs and kids may well find the magic gadget of infinite games and videos hard to resist, given that it shuts their child up like nothing else and besides, if all the other kids have one, their child runs the risk of being victimised for looking poor.

Radio 4 interviewees speculate that the Australian ban could be a useful research opportunity. That’s if it works, but it probably won’t. One 13-year-old got round the ban in less than five minutes. And if one kid can do it, they all will, because of peer pressure, and because the industry wants to lock them in, not out, and because it will regard regulatory fines as the paltry cost of doing business. The new OSA age-verification rules for porn sites are also probably doomed. There has been a huge increase in downloads of VPN apps which hide the user’s IP address. With a conservatively estimated 240,000 online porn sites, Ofcom regulators face an uphill struggle to ensure compliance. So far they’ve taken action against just 70, leading insiders to argue that the new rules are effectively unenforceable.

And then there is the law of unintended consequences which produced this generational mental health crisis in the first place. Regulating the top SM sites might end up funnelling users to even worse places, like regulation-exempt gaming chatrooms, notorious as extremist rabbit-holes.

But, one might argue, why pussyfoot around imploring SM firms to take responsibility, why not just ban smartphones for kids altogether? The UK’s Education Select Committee last year recommended exactly that. But capitalist governments have bigger things to worry about, and unlike China, are generally leery of voter blowback for ‘nanny-statism’.

Even so, some young self-styled neo-Luddites are opting to downsize to ‘dumbphones’ that have no social media, with a view to clawing back their free time. As one manufacturer puts it, SM entrepreneurs are obsessed with monopolising their users’ engagement time, whereas users should be saying ‘What about me? What about my time?’ He continues: ‘The problem is not the device, it’s the business model: the attention economy. Every free app, every social media platform, every browser, is trying to maximize engagement so they can make money collecting data and categorizing people into different groups so they can sell it to advertisers’.

Unfortunately for neo-Luddites, dumbphones offer a near-zero margin, so tech firms ‘have little incentive to cater to dumbphone users, whose revenue potential is relatively miniscule – that is, if they can even make the economics of manufacturing the devices work at all’.

It’s a tragic indictment of capitalism that social media started by connecting people, and is now arguably complicit in global disinformation and child abuse. Now, encouraged by Trump, SM firms are even ditching their fact-checkers. Perhaps Gen Z parents, having seen the damage for themselves, will refuse to allow their Gen Alpha kids to go through it. The bigger long-term tragedy for Gen Alpha, whether they’re on social media or not, is that their future IRL will be one of relentless capitalist exploitation and wage slavery. If we really want to stop not just child abuse, but human abuse, abolishing capitalism IRL is the only way.

Paddy Shannon

(Facebook review, page 20)

Socialist Sonnet No. 215: Bloody Bondi (2025)

   From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Bloody Bondi

There’s blood in the sand, sharks circle offshore.

An unridden surf is still surging in

Under an ascendant unflinching sun,

Rapacious gulls hover and dive and soar.

Beach bags wouldn’t have been packed with bandages,

Flip flops and sun block, but no tourniquets.

A day for standing down and being at ease

With the world awhile, away from its rages.

Folk gathered comfortably together,

Sharing a common weal for a few hours,

Unaware agents of much darker powers

Were preparing for a change in the weather.

How the day started! How the day finished!

With humanity, once more, diminished.

 

D. A.

The Shorter Working Week in Australia: What it means to the workers (1933)

From the October 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the present time, throughout the world, there is much talk about the shorter working week. Mussolini has made some suggestions to the League of Nations .on the question; President Roosevelt has intimated that he intends taking steps to reduce the working week in the United States; the Australian Trade Union Congress carried resolutions calling upon workers to organise to bring about a reduction in hours so that unemployment might be decreased. Recently the workers in Queensland applied to the State authorities for a forty-hour week.

In addition to the above the Communists have been agitating for a thirty-hour week of five days. In a pamphlet issued by the Communist Party of Australia, in 1931, entitled “The Communist way out of the Crisis," we find the following: —

By introducing the seven-hour day and the five-day week, and by raising the purchasing power of the masses, we will abolish unemployment. (Page 6.)

The shallowness of the Communist Party's economics is revealed here; even the Trades Union Congress did not propose to abolish unemployment with its thirty-hour week.

Less Hours—More Wealth

The history of capitalism shows that the introduction of a shorter working week does not mean the absorption of more workers to keep up the output. When the factory system began there were few regulations governing the length of time a worker could be kept on the job. Sixteen and eighteen hours per day in English factories was a common occurrence; workers were worked even longer, and such conditions exist in many workshops in Japan to-day.

In England the twelve-hour day became general and, subsequently, by legislative enactment, the ten-hour day was introduced. In Australia, for many years, there has been a legally-fixed eight-hour working day, and it is a proud boast of many old-timers that they participated in the fight for eight hours’ work, eight hours’ recreation, and eight hours’ rest. In some individual workshops such as Lever Bros., Port Sunlight, there is a six-hour working day.

Recently, in Sydney, New South Wales, the Industrial Commission inquired into the question of the working week. The Government desired to restore the forty-eight instead of the existing forty-four-hour week. The President of the Trade Union Secretaries’ Association presented the following remarkable facts at the inquiry:—

“The productive capacity of the industries of this State was greater than those in Victoria before the introduction of the 44-hour week in New South Wales, and was greater since the introduction of the shorter working week; also that for a given amount of goods the percentage outlay on wages in New South Wales was less than in Victoria (48-hour week) and the margin available for profit and interest was greater in New South Wales than in Victoria prior to and during the operation of the 44-hour week.

“A table of statistics from official sources showed that the percentage of wages to value of output in 1930-31 was 21.7 in New South Wales, and 22.86 in Victoria. The average value of production per employee was: 

"The average production in New South Wales had been considerably higher in this period, which included the depression year, than in Victoria. In the years 1926-7 to 1929-80, when the 44-hour Act was enforced in New South Wales, the production per employee rose by £21 in New South Wales and by £3 in Victoria—SEVEN TIMES GREATER.

"These figures demonstrated that a reduction in standard hours not only maintained but improved the productive capacity of employees”

(Labour Daily, 17/3/33.) 

Yet, in the same issue of the Labour Daily, Alderman J. S. Garden, of Sydney City Council, Secretary of the Trades Hall Council, prominent member of the Australian Labour Party, and one of Mr Lang’s foremost boosters, while speaking on unemployment, stated: —

“ . . .  the people who were advocating 'complete socialism or nothing’ were talking absolute nonsense. . . . The basis on which the forthcoming campaign is to be waged will be a thirty-hour working week, restoration of wage cuts, etc. . .

(Labour Daily, 17/3/33.) 

The knowledge that the “forthcoming campaign” will be based upon the advocacy of a shorter working week will bring little consolation to the workless after they glance through the statistics set out above.

These statistics reflect the result of the application of more up-to-date machinery to the productive process. The employers invariably find ways and means of adjusting their plant and methods when such concessions are forced from them. When we point this out we are not to be taken as being against the introduction of a shorter working week; we merely stress its ineffectiveness as a solution for unemployment.

As long as the means of production are owned and controlled by the capitalist class, that class will reap the benefits of the increased application of machinery. They own the products and decide how they will be distributed.

The lesson to be learned is that if the workers, as a class, are to gain from improvements in the means of production, they must organise on a class basis for the conquest of political power to bring about the common ownership of the means of wealth production. This is the aim of the Socialist Party. What about falling into line with us, fellow-workers?

W. J. Clarke,

Socialist Party of Australia, Melbourne.

Material World: Standing by your trained killers (2025)

The Material World Column from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 2020, the Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force published its long-awaited findings on the behaviour of the nation’s special forces in Afghanistan between 2005 and 2016. It became widely known as the Brereton Report, after Major General Paul Brereton, the investigation’s lead.

Its findings were simple: Australian special forces had committed murder in Afghanistan. Thirty-nine cases were identified. The report found evidence of collusion to cover the atrocities up. Troops carried ‘throw down weapons’ to plant on their victims, to claim they were actually insurgents and the slaying was within the terms of engagement. New recruits were ‘blooded,’ ordered by their officer to kill prisoners to get their first kill. The report identified 25 individuals responsible, and stated that no-one above the rank of sergeant was involved or had knowledge of these atrocities.

So far, only one man has even been charged with murder, and is still awaiting trial. The Office of The Special Investigator, set up by the Australian Government, has noted the difficulty in reliably investigating the incidents, especially with the Taliban in power.

It is likely that only political obsessives in Australia, let alone around the world, will have even heard of the very serious findings of the report. It is unlikely that the culture of the Australian forces evolved on its own.

The British government, for its part, sprang into action and passed The Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act 2021, which created a

‘presumption that it is to be exceptional for a prosecutor to determine that a Service person or veteran should be prosecuted for alleged offences on operations outside the UK […] These measures do not apply to allegations of sexual offences, torture, crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes’.

(Although the law as originally drafted would have included them – tinyurl.com/spgbBRE3).

The BBC has been picking up stories of abuses by British forces. The 2022 Panorama programme, ‘SAS Death Squads Exposed: A British War Crime?’ observed that: ‘British special forces killed hundreds of people on night raids in Afghanistan’, and asked, ‘but were some of the shootings executions?’ More recently, the episode ‘Special Forces: I Saw War Crimes’ (May 2025) relayed stories from service personnel:

‘Killing of detainees “became routine”, the veteran said. “They’d search someone, handcuff them, then shoot them”, before cutting off the plastic handcuffs used to restrain people and “planting a pistol” by the body, he said’.

And:

‘The testimony, as well as new video evidence obtained by the BBC from SAS operations in Iraq in 2006, also supports previous reporting by Panorama that SAS squadrons kept count of their kills to compete with one another.’

The story sounds almost exactly the same as the Australian one.

The BBC has, inevitably, received pushback for this reporting from the usual ‘support the troops’ types, usually of the ‘so what, war is hell’ variety, or ‘who are we to judge the actions of soldiers under pressure’. But the main response has been crickets. There has been no full bore coverage or outrage on the front pages of the national press. The stories have been simply left to sink down into the archives to be quietly forgotten.

This is the propaganda tool of ‘worthy versus unworthy victims’: the crimes of the British state will receive less attention than the crimes of official enemies. A genuinely democratic press interested in holding authorities to account for the citizenry would operate on the opposite principle.

This is hardly new. In her book Legacy of violence Caroline Elkins explores what she calls ‘legalized lawlessness’ which involves ‘legalizing, bureaucratizing and legitimating of exceptional state-directed violence when ordinary laws proved insufficient for maintaining order and control.’

One example she gives is of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar in India in 1919. The event saw Brigadier General Dyer order his troops to open fire on a crowd, killing around 400 and wounding around three times as many. Despite the outrage around the world, Dyer stood by his actions, as producing a salutary terror to prevent an uprising.

His only punishment was dismissal (though the press and well-wishers raised a substantial sum of money for him). In a debate in the House of Commons on the incident, Winston Churchill depicted it as ‘a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation’, that is, as an exceptional one-off, out of character with the spirit of the British army.

The House of Commons passed a resolution of censure of Dyer, but the House of Lords passed a motion condemning the lower house’s resolution. In that debate, Elkins quotes one noble peer, Viscount Finlay stating:

‘One of the mainstays of our Empire has been the feeling that every officer, whose duty it was to take action in times of difficulty, might rely, so long as he acted honestly and in the discharge of his duty, upon his superiors standing by him’.

Looking at Elkins’ narrative, this is a recurring theme: violent excesses by imperial forces are met with official investigation and sanction, only for the perpetrator to be let off after a vociferous public campaign. The most recent example of this being Sergeant Blackman, who was convicted of murder in Afghanistan.

After a strenuous campaign, the charge was downgraded to manslaughter, and he was released after serving four years in prison. Appeal judges accepted he had a stress-related mental illness leading to diminished responsibility.

The British state has opened a public enquiry under Justice Haddon-Cave. This will likely be a full and conscientious enquiry that will shed some light on the operations of the British forces in Afghanistan. The most likely outcome will be that junior heads will roll (gently), and the report will join others on the shelf, forgotten except by historians

The interests served by the British state create a need for killers, and it is unsurprising when they cross the line. What is harder to understand is the minds of people who will determinedly keep violence and slaughter available as a policy option.

Pik Smeet

As in England, so in Australia (1937)

From the August 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

A correspondent in Melbourne writes about political conditions in Australia, and points to the marked similarity with England in the way the capitalist class constantly renew their hold over the worker by taking over renegades from the Labour movement. He sends a report of a speech by the Australian Minister of Labour, Mr. Mackrell, who says that the only way to “ combat Communism ” is “by further education of the people and an untrammelled, free Press.” How the Australian Government values a “ free Press ” is shown by our correspondent’s further statement that “it is fatal to send single copies of the Socialist Standard through the post in an ordinary wrapper, as they get short shrift with the authorities.” It is only a few years since our pamphlet, “Socialism and Religion,” was officially banned in the great Australian democracy.

Cuttings and critiques. (1908)

From the July 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Mr. Ritzema, J.P., of Blackburn, recently delivered himself of a scheme to “Nationalise and suppress the Liquor Traffic.” So impressed is he with his scheme that he has had it printed, and the Socialist Standard has received a copy. Let me say at once that I also am impressed by the scheme—in spite of the fact that it was first launched upon a long-suffering public from Paradise Church, Blackburn.

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The background having been laid on with the brush of a Stiggins, incorporating the usual denunciations of drink as a greater curse than war, pestilence and famine, the cause of 80% of crime. 50% of lunacy, pauperism, etc, Mr. Ritzema talks of buying out the brewers at about 300 millions, imposing a tax of 20s. in the £ upon all intoxicants, selling them at cost to the town and county councils—who will provide public-houses and managers out of their own funds, 9-l0ths of the cost of which, and the loss on the sale of liquor, the Government would refund. Of the profits stockholders would receive 4%, and 2% would be set aside to redeem the capital. This would leave large sums for social work, such as “finding immediate work for the unemployed,” the drink traffic would be gradually extinguished under the benign influences at work, the money diverted from beer would buy the workers bread and boots, trade would be stimulated, lunacy, crime, and pauperism almost obliterated, the churches saved, and a sober, educated, and intelligent democracy would be evolved.

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A beautiful scheme, savouring of the scheme for old age pensions to commence 20 or 30 years after the potential pensioner is a box of cold meat. The poverty of the proletarian is due to his exploitation at the source of production, and from that exploitation all things flow. The investigations of Chas. Booth, the Tory, show 75% of drunkenness to be due to poverty and its inseparable conditions. It is the degradation wrought by poverty that expresses itself in alcoholic excess, and the righteous Ritzema, living under the normal conditions of the lower paid worker, might find the atmosphere of Paradise Church less congenial than the mild excitement of the “Pig and Whistle.”

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These morality-mongers prefer to potter with effects; yet this question must strike the stupidest in the face, if drunkenness exists why is it? What answer has the blue-ribboned army to that? It is, they say, when they are not dumb, due to the opportunities that exist for drinking. Oh, blind and sons of the blind! Abolish drink tomorrow—what then ? Happiness, they say, prosperity, joy in living. Yet the most abstemious, thrifty, careful living people in the world are the most poverty-stricken—the people of India.

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No ! it won’t do. If the conditions of existence drive people into deplorable excess, that excess, that craving for excitement, for some break in the hideous monotony of their existence, must manifest itself somehow. Close all the public-houses—have you then exhausted all the media through which the craving will express itself ? No !

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I wish I had space to deal with Mr. Ritzema’s little scheme. It would be interesting to try and discover how his blue horror fades to a lighter blue when it is dispensed by town council managers rather than rubicund Boniface, and how the craving for drink is to languish and die out when the liquor is served in pewters engraved with the council’s arms, and how the deep damnation of the whole business is reconciled with the payment of the authors of it (the brewers) and its continued existence under the management of a government that regards it as an. unspeakably reprehensible thing, more accursed than war, plague, or pestilence.

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At the recent bye-election for Montrose Burghs a Mr. Joseph Burgess sought election, claiming to stand for Independent Labour and Socialism. In the first paragraph of his address he said, “If I have the honour to secure your suffrages I shall consider it my first duty, as the representative of all classes and industries, to do all that lies within the power of a Parliamentary representative to advance the general interests of all the Burghs and their citizens.”

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By “all classes” Mr. Burgess really meant all sections of the only two classes there are—the master class and the working class. He was therefore admittedly prepared to go to the Commons to represent the master class—the landlords, employers, financiers, lawyers, the officials of the army and the civil forces!

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In his next paragraph he said, “all textile trade questions would find in me a zealous and intelligent Parliamentary advocate,” and in the following, “I believe I could be helpful to all who are therein concerned, whether they be employers or operatives.” So here you have an “Independent Labour Socialist” candidate endeavouring to convince the employing class that he could be of great assistance to them. Apparently Mr. Burgess is far from accepting the impossibility of serving two masters faithfully. How he can serve the interests of the masters without opposing or neglecting the necessarily conflicting interests of the workers Mr. Burgess does not say.

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Mr. Burgess would, further, nationalise all forms of industrial capital, evidently thinking it better for the workers to be exploited by Government departments than by individual capitalists or joint-stock companies. It is the same to us whether we are robbed by the Post Office, or the L.C.C. Tramway Department, or by Sir Clifton Robinson, or the National Telephone Co. It is a matter of complete indifference to us that the distraint for rent is levied in the name of some local teetotaller or Bible basher, or the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, or a Government Land Department. Capital is wealth used for the exploitation of labour. We do not wish to nationalise that exploitation, but to abolish it.

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Mr. J. W. Benson is the Parliamentary candidate for Pudsey Division, “at the unanimous invitation of the branches of the Pudsey Division I.L.P.” He claims that he is “an earnest student of the cause of poverty” and “convinced that Socialism is the only real and permanent remedy”; that “bad trade, unemployment, and poverty at present exist under a Free Trade policy, and therefore Free Trade is no remedy for these evils.” After this avowal one would expect (not knowing these I.L.P. chaps) that Mr. Benson would point out that Socialists took no part in the fiscal controvacy, being concerned only with the abolition of poverty, through Socialism, “the only real and permanent remedy.” Not so Mr. Benson. “I am in favour,” he says, “of the continuation of Free Trade.” So there you are. The evils of bad trade, unemployment and poverty exist under Free Trade, therefore let us have some more Free Trade. Let us hoodwink the workers into believing that it matters to them whether they are robbed by Protectionist crows or Free Trade kites. Such is I.L.P’ism.

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In this respect, however, the I.L.P’s vis-a-vis, the Social-Democratic Party, has nothing to shout about. In a pamphlet written by its secretary on “Social-Democracy and the Zollverein” it pointed out that the great danger was that the working class might be induced to take sides. Agreed. And yet every S.D.P. candidate, from H. M. Hyndman downwards, has endeavoured to induce them to take sides, by declaring for Free Trade as against Protection. Take its very latest wild-cat candidature, in North-West Manchester. On the front page Dan Irving declared for “no tariff barriers to make dearer the food of the people,” although in the body of his address he described the Tariff Reform agitation as “a sham, political warfare on the fiscal arrangements of the country,” after which he said, “as a Social-Democrat I am in favour of Free Trade.”

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Dan’s address was funny in other respects. “Whatever party may be in power,” he said, “I shall always be found giving my support to any measure which makes for the benefit of the people,” and then, in his concluding paragraph, “Workers, remember that in all times of industrial struggle” (which, of course, means every minute of day) “the members of the master class use the power you give them in Parliament and on public authorities to compel you to submit to their will.” And it is suggested by this “worker for the Labour Movement for twenty-four years” that the master class, possessing and using the power of compelling the workers to submit to their will, will introduce measures which make “for the benefit of the people”! Really, these fellows must be abysmal idiots or—— (missing word. Suggestions invited.)

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“Do not the working class pay the rates and taxes ?” is a question asked in the “Catechism of Socialism,” and Messrs. E. Belfort Bax and H. Quelch, both of the S.D.P., answer “No.” The worker, they add, has “nothing wherewith to pay taxes, and whether these be high or low, and whoever has to pay them directly, his position remains the same.” Generally speaking, they say further, the reduction of rates is of no benefit to the working class, and to devote the proceeds of municipal undertakings to the reduction of rates is simply to use them as means for making profit for the propertied class. After which Mr. Dan Irving, in his election address, “in the interests of Labour and Socialism,” declared for the “Nationalisation of Education and Poor Rates so that the financially strong may help to bear the burdens of the weak.” Very ‘OT—what ?

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The Lord Chancellor, Lord Lorebrun, member of the Liberal Cabinet, said at a dinner at the Newcastle Gladstone Club on May 29th, that “The Conservatives represent the constant apprehension that change will do harm to vested interests. YOU WILL FIND, IF YOU LOOK BACK, THAT THERE HAS BEEN NO VESTED INTEREST INJURED BY ANY REFORMS THAT HAVE BEEN PASSED IN OUR DAY. You need never be afraid that things will go too fast in this country. In the last fifty years there has been an unparalleled advance in industrial progress and in the material domain of human effort, but nothing of the kind in the least degree corresponding has been done in regard to the improvement of the condition of the people.”

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The Lord Chancellor has blown the gaff. No wonder that only one newspaper gave a full report of his speech. But what the frank Chancellor admits is undoubtedly true. No Socialist expects the master class to legislate against its own interests, and as we see, they do not so legislate. Hence the position of the S.P.G.B. Before the workers can get anything from the master class they must be able to take it. Therefore the work before us is to educate and organise the workers in these truths for the political supremacy of the workers. Then, and then only will the wealth producers find their burden lightened.

#    #    #    #

Mr. Ben Tillett, in an eulogy of the work of Tom Mann in Australia, writes, “the present leaders of the Labour Parties (of Australia) are blind to the revolutionary work going on apace and the trend of capitalism, falling back upon worn-out political shibboleths, fiscal fooling, sectarianism and religious intolerance and with the usual clap-trap of temperance opponents.” Well, Ben, what fooling, fiscal or other, beats your own fooling as emigration tout in England for the Australian Capitalist ? Was that fooling or something worse ?

#    #    #    #

The local Branch, S.D.P. indulges in Justice (6/6/08) in a great chuckle because they were able, by lying low and saying nothing, to secure that their nomination for the Leigh Union Board of Guardians should be the only one, so getting their man returned unopposed. They rejoice in beating Liberals and Tories at their own game, “and Lees is inside the board room, where we have not the least doubt that he will make his presence felt.” A victory for Socialism indeed—of the S.D.P. brand ! The educational effect on the workers locally must be stupendous !

Alegra.

State Banking in Australia (1934)

From the July 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard

Another Quack Remedy 

In the Glasgow Forward (October 21st, 1933), Tom Johnston takes G. D. H. Cole to task for omitting to mention the results of State banking in Australia in his recently published work, “What Everybody wants to know about Money."

As Mr. Johnston seems highly incensed at this omission one would expect that he would have supplied the deficiency and would have tried to show what good things State banking has achieved for the workers of Australia. But Tom deserves the carrot for modesty, for he does not even attempt it. For the benefit of those workers who are always being lulled to political sleep by references to Australia's magnificent “socialistic" examples, let us speak for ourselves. First let us give a few facts.

The biggest State-controlled Bank in Australia is the Commonwealth Bank. It was established in 1911 and has been a profitable concern for the Government ever since. Up to the 20th anniversary the aggregate profits were: —

General Bank  . . .        . . . £6,943,942 11 9

Savings Bank  . . .        . . .   2,781,995 19 9

Rural Bank  . . .        . . .      328,078 11 2

    Total                              £10,054,017    2    8

These figures are exclusive of the note issue branch. These profits have been distributed as follows: — 

To Capital Account       . . .  £4,000,000 0 0

Reserve Fund . . .   . . .            1,406,580 13 3

Rural Bank Reserve . . . 164,039 5 7

Savings Bank Reserve . . . 658,382 3 10

National Debt Sinking Fund 2,660,975 14 5

      Total                                 £10,054,017       2    8

These figures are from the Commomuealth Year Book and Labor Daily Year Book. They show that nearly one-third of the profits went into the National Debt Sinking Fund.

A common claim made on behalf of the Bank is that the profits go to lighten the “people’s burden" by helping wipe off the National Debt. But that is the crux of the whole matter, how does wiping off the National Debt help the workers. Reducing the National Debt reduces the amount of interest payable to bondholders, and thus enables the Government to reduce taxation. Reduced taxation, however, does not help the workers, but only the propertied class. What the workers get is their wages. If, owing to reduced taxation, the workers' cost of living is reduced, their pay is reduced likewise. It is on that rock that all the reformist schemes for bettering the workers’ condition under Capitalism are wrecked. As a prominent advocate of debt reduction by means of a capital levy (Mr. Pethick Lawrence) once admitted, it was merely a redistribution of wealth among the wealthy only.

If therefore State banking is a success it is as an adjunct of Capitalism. According to Senator Barnes, Labour Party, “The Commonwealth Bank has made a profit of 31 million pounds since its establishment." (Melbourne Herald, February 5th, 1934.) In the book of the Commonwealth Bank (an official publication by C. C. Fawkner) we are told that “The bank's policy was not to enter into aggressive competition with the existing financial institutions, and this was shown by determining the rates of interest on fixed deposits at ½  per cent. below those quoted by the leading trading banks." (p. 42.) And so that our masters could facilitate their business, “the rate fixed (for overdrafts) by the Commonwealth Bank had a marked effect in keeping down interest rates, to the benefit of the commercial mid business community throughout Australia." (p. 42.)

Some of the chief functions performed by the Commonwealth Bank have been Raising War Loans, Financing Naval Projects, Building Railways, Financing War Expenditure, Financing Pools for wheat, wool, etc.

Bank Loans to House Purchasers

One of the main functions of the State Savings Bank (Victoria) was the financing of home-building under what is known as the Credit Foncier system. Under the_Act of 1920, authority is given to the Commissioners to purchase and build houses for persons who have an income of not more than £400 per annum, and who do not own a house. The limit is, if the house be of wood, £1,000, and of brick, stone, or concrete, £ 1,300.

The interest charged was 6¼ per cent., and the terms of payment allowed for the paying off of the house in 26 years. The funds for this branch of the Bank's operations were raised by the issue of Credit Foncier Debentures, which were guaranteed by the Government of Victoria.

The net profit for the year 1928-29 was £34,032, and for 1929-30, £24,591. These profits are allocated for the purpose of meeting any losses that may occur. Savings Bank debentures pay 5¼ per cent. (1940) and 4½ per cent. (1936). The interest on these debentures comes out of the 6¼ per cent. paid by the workers who are purchasing their homes, and should this source fail, the Government foots the bill.

“Of the 46,100 loans in the Credit Foncier Department 58 securities were in the possession of the Bank at June 30th, 1930, on which the indebtedness was £34,183. To September 11th, 1930, 22 of these had been sold, reducing the number to 36 and the amount to £19,847. During the year, 86 properties were sold for £65,876, and resulted in a small loss (£1,412), but an amount of £1,162 which had been written off in former years, was recovered.” (Victorian Year Book, 1929-30.)

As the depression became worse, the number of houses reverting to the banks owing to the inability of the purchasers to keep up their payment increased rapidly. In 1930-31 the number in possession of the Bank at June, 1931, was 315, about seven out of every 1,000.

So great did the number of reversions to the Bank become that the figures were conveniently concealed from the public by not being published in the annual reports; Some idea of the huge increase can be gained when it is learned that a separate department was set up in the Bank to cope with it. Besides, owing to the inability of the Bank to dispose of many of the re-possessed houses, it was deemed wiser to leave the tenants in charge rather than risk the deterioration which accompanies an untenanted dwelling. Inquiries at the Bank reveal a reticent attitude with regard to particulars pertaining to this side of its activities.

In South Australia a similar position obtained.

Just prior to the depression the Board of Management of the State Bank of South Australia reported "that for the year ended June 30th, 1928, 106 houses reverted to the Bank through tenants being unable to continue payments or through their vacating premises because of inability to pay. The properties are now being sold by the Bank. The number of reverted properties for the previous year was 78.” The position in South Australia is said to be even worse than Victoria! !

In New South Wales, owing to political tactics by both State Labour Government and Federal Nationalist Government, the State Savings Bank had to close its doors altogether, and the business was taken over by the Commonwealth Bank. Pending an agreement being arrived at as to the terms of taking over, many depositors were forced on to the dole.

The foregoing facts could have been easily obtained by Mr. Johnston had he any desire to show some of the “results of the State Banks in Australia.” Mr. Johnston has a lot to learn about State Banking in so far as it affects the working class.

Let us ask Mr. Johnston a few questions. .

In what way do the floating of war loans, the financing of wheat pools, the building of State Railways, and the granting of big overdrafts at low rates of interest, improve the position of the working class ?

How much better off are those workers who began to purchase homes under the Credit Foncier System only to lose them (as they would have, had they bought them off private institutions), when the depression deprived them of their jobs?

Is not the. abolition of the Capitalist system and all its appendages more in keeping with working-class interests, and would not the Johnstons, the Coles, and others of their ilk, be better occupied in helping to establish Socialism? We know that the whole Capitalist system, including the banking system, has got to go before the workers come into their own. And with all due modesty we say to Mr. Johnston, "It's never too late to learn.”

W. J. Clarke

(Socialist Party of Australia.)

Go West—and Starve! (1908)

From the February 1908 issue of the Socialist Standard

Latest information published by the Emigrants’ Information Office, 31, Broadway, Westminster, will not make satisfactory reading to those who thought of finding employment in our colonies during the next few months at least.

It is pointed out that a new regulation provides that all emigrants landing in Canada until February 15th, 1908, must possess 50 dols. at the time of landing, and all arriving between February 15th and April 1st, 1908, must possess 25 dols. They must in addition in every case have money for their inland railway fares, unless they can satisfy the emigration officers at the time of landing that they are going to already assured employment immediately on arrival or will be cared for by friends.

The demand for labour is over for the season. In parts of the eastern provinces the supply of labour is now more than sufficient, owing to the thousands of persons who emigrated to Canada last summer from Great Britain and the Continent, and to the recent arrival of large numbers of out-of-work mechanics and labourers from the United States in search of employment. No one, therefore, should go to Canada in search, of work during the winter. Persons wishing to go there should wait till April, but even then they should not start—especially those with, young families—unless they go to take up engagements, or have enough money to live on till they find employment.

In New South Wales there is a demand for hard ground miners, but not in the other States. In no part of Australia is there any pressing demand for mechanics, unless they are specially skilled; the best chances are for carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, and plasterers. Clerks, shop assistants, warehousemen, and professional persons are advised not to go to Australia, unless they have situations awaiting them. The cost of living has somewhat increased of late throughout Australia.

The Dominion of New Zealand grants reduced passages to approved farmers, agricultural labourers, shepherds, woodcutters, and men able to milk cows and manage live stock, who possess £25, and to female servants who will have £2 on landing. There is an excellent demand for all these classes. The local supply of mechanics is about equal to the demand, but skilled men would not have much difficulty in procuring work if they could keep themselves while searching ior it. There is a demand for female machinists and workers in the boot and clothing factories.

South Africa should be avoided by emigrants at the present time. In Cape Colony the supply of labour largely exceeds the demand, and mechanics of practically every trade experience extreme difficulty in obtaining employment. There is a steady diminution in the number of men employed in the building trades, and clerical work is quite unobtainable. All mechanics and others, therefore, are warned against going there now, unless they go out to situations engaged for them, or have means of their own sufficient to keep them for some months. The town council of Capetown has issued a warning to this effect, and in other parts of the colony, as Kimberley, East London, and Port Elizabeth, there is a number of cases of distress owing to the scarcity of work.

In Natal the supply of white labour considerably exceeds the demand. Many skilled married mechanics, such as masons, bricklayers, carpenters, painters, &c., and a few unskilled labourers, are being given work by the Peitermaritzburg Town Council at 4s. a day, which is the usual wages of coloured labourers, whose places they take.

No one would go to the Transvaal now in search of work. In view of the depressed state of the labour market there is only a very remote possibility of employment being obtainable, and, as the cost of subsistence is high, those having small means would speedily descend to a state of destitution. Over 500 white men are now being employed as an experiment on the drainage works at Johannesburg, earning 5s. to 6s., and in some cases 10s., a day. A similar experiment is being made on railways, and white men are being found to work at £5 per month as assistants to gangers, platelayers, &c.

Large numbers of men, especially carpenters, masons, bricklayers, and plasterers, have left the Transvaal through inability to obtain work there. The dispute in the printing trade has been compromised by the reduction of wages to £5 10s. a week in place of £5 15s. There is no demand whatever for the “handyman,” nor for shop assistants, and the number of clerks is excessive. There is a limited demand for female servants, the demand being mainly for house-parlour maids, cooks, and cook-generals.

Some assistance is given to female emigrants to the Orange River Colony. There is no demand whatever for anyone else, and many persons are out of work. Labouring work is done by Kaffirs. Miners and others should not go to Rhodesia at the present time, unless they have work guaranteed them.

Another Australian ghost town (1965)

From the May 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

Geoffrey Blainey briefly traces out the history till 1959 of the lead, silver and copper mines of Mount Isa in his book, Mines of the Spinifex. These are located in the north west of tropical Queensland. Blainey outlines the incredible number and forms of hazards that had to be faced and subdued before the mines could be opened and operated. Among these were swarms of flies, red choking dust, persistent high temperatures, scurvy, malaria and thirst. Also, hostile Aborigines, apparently fearing for their own tribal future, never hesitated to spear or club to death all surveyors and prospectors they could. Isolation, and therefore transportation, was and still is a large factor in end costs. Westwards from Townsville, its nearest port, Mount Isa lies 600 miles across plains of red dust and prickly spinifex.

Yet so promising were the chances of fortunes to be made from mining in this savage, desolate waste land that investors Australian, English, Russian and now predominately American were persuaded to advance capital to develop the mines and reduce the environment to conditions of European habitation and modern industry. Dams were built large enough to impound tropical rains and supply the needs of both town and mines for years ahead. Even the dread of medical isolation was removed with the advent of the John Flynn Flying Doctor Service. 

Capital, superb as it is in solving these massive problems of nature, must always falter and fail when confronting social problems peculiarly of its own creation. Indeed, as wild nature is tamed, in like proportion there emerges the destructive force of the class war which is an impediment to wealth production just as much as wild nature. That wary London publication. The Economist of July 9th, 1927 (writes Blainey) “prophetically warned investors that (a) metal prices could easily fall and that (b) labour conditions in Australia were onerous and (c) that the cost of equipping the mine could far outstrip the estimates,” (Mount Isa paid outfits first net profits in 1936-37 — after 13 years of sporadic operations). “It admitted that Mount Isa might become great.” Mount Isa became the largest single industry in the State, employing over four thousand workers and each week paying out £100,000 wages and "earning” over one million pounds revenue.

Commodity prices, (rising or falling), and labour problems: how these two factors have repeatedly flawed and fractured the apparently smooth and polished surface of modern society everywhere.

The first Mount Isa strike was in protest over the high price of beer. The next, 1933, closed down the mine for months. Prophetically, the miners would not return to work unless two of their sacked mates were re-employed. The prophesy of the Economist re-appears and rapidly assumes a more substantial form from December, 1963 onwards.

It was then that, theoretically, the present Mount Isa dispute began, when the Australian Workers Union (A.W.U.) representing the Mount Isa miners lodged claims for £4 per week pay rise and improved conditions. In April 1964 these were refused on the legal quibble that the £4 per week was a bonus and not a wage claim. To the mineowners, either way, the claim clearly represented an encroachment on their profit. And this is something the investors seek to avoid, even if straining of legal subtleties and cynical evasions do insult the intelligence of the workers. After another four months of apparent deliberations, in August 1964 the miners decided to ban contract labour and to revert to day wages, and to stay this way until their claims were granted. This continued for four more months, during which time the weekly wage was less than half contract rates and mine production had fallen steeply.

This was a period of fermentation. The employers declared that the contract ban by miners was a strike. Branch unions defied parent bodies. Local labour leaders emerged, more representative and knowledgeable of local affairs and tempers. Then the combustible element of victimisation was cast into this tropical furnace of class war. The popular and able leader of the contract banning miners, Pat Mackie, was sacked by the company for attending union affairs during working hours Mackie’s objection to dismissal was legally over-ruled. A few days later he was expelled by the A.W.U. (This seems to be always the weakness of the One Big Union ideal—the parent body upon formation begins again to disintegrate into hostile local factions, at odds both among themselves and against the central union authority. At Mount Isa this became very much in evidence.)

On December 10th the Queensland Government declared the area to be under Emergency Regulations and moved in extra policemen. The Mount Isa miners were ordered to resume contract work and the penalties for refusing can be One Hundred Pounds fine or six months in jail or both; in addition daily penalties can be imposed. Thus, if refusal continues for 50 days, each miner who holds out could be jailed for 25 years, be fined five thousand pounds, or both.

All this, naturally, resulted in fanning the live coals of class war. There was a quickening of union activities. More meetings, more defiance and still more Emergency Regulations and conferences. Then on December 24th, the original legal quibble of April was suddenly set aside and a £3 increase was granted. By mid-January 1965, improved conditions and contract rates were also agreed upon.

Marx, in Capital Vol. 1, Chapter VI informs us that, as distinct from other commodities, “ . . . there enters into the determination of the value of labour power a historical and moral element." (See footnote) “Moral” considerations, so dear to the hearts of our masters, now proved to be the major hindrance to immediate settlement of the Mount Isa dispute when they revealed a leaning towards working class interests. The original dispute in the material and economic sense has ended. But others took its place. These were over the re-employment of Pat Mackie by the mining company and the company recognition of the Mount Isa T. & L. C. as a future negotiating body for Mount Isa employees. With both of these Union requests the company refused to comply. And so the dispute became a strike, on the issues of victimisation and union representation, with all their implications.

While these issues were still smouldering, the Queensland Government inflamed the entire Labour Movement of Australia by yet another Emergency Proclamation which transformed Queensland into a Police State. Meetings of protest were being organised all over Australia together with pledges of moral and financial support: indeed as noted by an Age leader:

The Queensland Government in its desperate effort to check the disastrous Mount Isa strike, seems to have injected more fuel into a highly inflammable situation, which now threatens to explode into a State-wide and perhaps a Nation-wide industrial upheaval.

Not entirely surprising was the news that all the Emergency Police powers had been suspended. Premier Nicklin contrary to his earlier declared purpose for invoking these powers (“gangsterism strong-arm tactics etc., among the miners") suddenly revoked them. However, these Regulations in practice and intent were still less savage than those put into operation by the Federal Labour Government during the 1949 strike which “ . . . included freezing of union funds to prevent sustenance payments to workers, the forbidding of credit to the strikers and the use of troops to mine coal and transport it." (Herald 10.2.65)

Through February the miners firmly continued the strike, while the mining company and Arbitration Commission issue orders and counter order on the closing or non-closing down of the mine. Meanwhile hundreds of miners and their families, each week, moved outwards from this strike-bound and blighted Central Queensland Township, seeking employment elsewhere. From the other side of the world came this clear comprehending and candid appraisal of Australian affairs:

The strike is more than a local labour dispute. It is contributing to a sharp rise in world copper prices which had been falling this month.

It is infecting the whole of the Australian labour relations. The elements of legal compulsion that once seemed to be such an admirable feature of the Australian arbitration system has not been able to cope with the refactory labour force in a low-wage area like Queensland at a time of generally full employment, (The Times 10.2.65.).

Finally, Prime Minister Menzies, returning from overseas, said “ . . . its terrible that the Mount Isa works could be snuffed out by a curious character, (Pat Mackie, who by the way volunteered to withdraw from Mount Isa once the Miners’ pay and other demands were settled), who is not even an Australian.” Just how irrelevant can a person be? As though the nationality of the victimisation issue is of importance, any more than is the issue as to whether these mines are owned and controlled by Australian or “Foreign’’ capital.

Mr. Calwell, leader of the Aus. L.P., on this point declares: “What is needed above all in this Mount Isa situation is compassion for the people of Mount Isa, compassion for the families of the miners and of the shop-keepers, compassion for the men (i.e. the international investigators), who have planned great schemes of expansion only to see them frustrated . . . The dignity of the Labour movement is expressed when it takes full responsibility for everything it does.” (Age 23.2.65.)

Yet only four days earlier he supported the use of Australian troops in Borneo, indicating thereby a direct denial of compassion for “ the people, the families of peasants and soldiers, shopkeepers etc.,” on both sides who suffer the horrors of S.E. Asia warfare. Both the open class war of Mount Isa and the war in the jungles of Asia are but two warring aspects with a common origin.

Where now is the dignity of the Australian Labour Movement?

Peter Furey.

"Nothing new" (1989)

From the December 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wealthy charity worker Elisabeth Symonds agrees with Prime Minister Bob Hawke that Australia is a two-class society.

Mrs Symonds, who lives in a multi-million dollar eastern suburbs home, said the rich had now established themselves on their own plateau.

“I don’t see how it can be otherwise”, she said.

“I don’t think Australia is unique. Anywhere you can think of in the world, it is like this.”

Her comments were echoed by Salvation Army spokesman, Major Neville Brooks.

“There have been two classes for a long, long time”, he said.

“It is a natural outcome of a democratic society to have this polarisation of wealth.

“The only thing is there are a lot more people struggling to survive.”

Major Brooks called for more relief for the “strugglers”, saying Australia had never had so many poor people since the Depression.

“Our experience is homelessness is increasing because of the rise in the cost of dirt and the battle with interest rates”, he said

Daily Mirror, Sydney, 20 March 1989

Under the Southern Cross. A Letter from Australia. (1931)

From the March 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

To those workers in the Old World who obtain their ideas of life under the Southern Cross from school primers and entertaining magazine articles written by Capitalistic globe-trotters, Australia is depicted as a land of wealth and wonder, a semi-tropical and tropical paradise, a land of opportunity for all. Mention of Australia to many in the Old Country begets romantic visions of verdant pasture lands, vast goldfields, gigantic sheep and cattle stations, and a golden sun forever setting on a happy and prosperous population. Lured by attractive stories peddled by professional tale-tellers in Australia House and other Immigration Bureaux, thousands of workers have sought to escape the sordidness of Old World Capitalism in the New World “down under.”

In the early days of the pioneers certain opportunities existed in this country for the strong, energetic individuals who were prepared to battle with Nature and win the wealth from the soil and the mineral deposits. But times have changed, and the blighting hand of capitalism has obliterated some of the prettiest beauty spots and established in their place modern cities, containing all the incongruities of civilization. Murky channels have replaced sparkling streams; drab wharves and factories, warehouses and railway sidings have superseded grassy slopes and shady trees which once bordered the banks of the rivers. In place of the primitive system of society there has developed, as in the older countries, the complex system of capitalist society, with all its institutions.

How have the workers of Australia fared under these changing conditions? A brief survey will enable overseas workers to understand the conditions of the workers in this “land of opportunities.”

Wages Falling.

During recent years there has been a definite downward trend in the wages and standard of living of the workers here. In 1928 the Waterside Workers had their wages reduced, and conditions which had been strenuously fought for in the past were wiped out by the stroke of the pen of an Arbitration Court judge. Later the Timber Workers had to resist an attack on their wages and conditions of employment. Reductions running as high as 26s. per week, were imposed, and after a bitter struggle, during which many were jailed and more were batoned and bashed by the police for interfering with blacklegs, the Timber Workers were forced to capitulate. The miners of New South Wales were next attacked, and although they stood out solidly for fifteen months, during which time some of their number were shot dead by the armed thugs of the Capitalist class, they had finally to accept a 12½ per cent. reduction in wages. The irony of the defeat was that they had to surrender after they had helped to return the Labour Party to power, which party had made all sorts of promises to the miners during the election campaign. In almost every other branch of industry wages have been reduced and conditions worsened. To-day there are approximately 200,000 unemployed workers in Australia. So much for the conditions of the workers in the country which perpetually boasts of its incomparable standard of living.

The Australian Labour Party.

Time and again this Party has sat on the Government benches, and at the present time we have a Labour Government in the Federal House, and one in New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia.

Under the Hogan Labour administration in Victoria, members of the Waterside Workers’ Federation were shot at and one killed, in 1928. Unemployed workers have been batoned and jailed. The wages of public servants, railwaymen, and others in Government employ have been reduced by order of the Government. Wholesale scabbery has been sanctified, and trade unions have been smashed under the regime of the Labour “stalwarts.”

Similar activities have been engaged in by the Labour Government of South Australia. Almost the first thing that the Lang Labour Government in New South Wales did on its taking over last month was to baton the unemployed, to whom Mr. Lang and his henchmen had promised the millennium. Mr. Lang recently purchased a most beautiful yacht, and some unkind critic suggested that he intends to use it as a means of escaping the sordid results of his own administration.

The Federal Labour Government is in a terrible dilemma. Having stated that they could run the system in the interests of all sections of the community, they now find that Capitalism can be administered in one way only, viz., in the interest of the Capitalist class. Every act they pass, and every move they make accentuates the position. Faced with the greatest depression in years, they have embarked upon an economy campaign which is resulting in thousands of workers being thrown out of their jobs. Their star contortionist, Mr. Theodore, has been tripped by a Royal Commission, which found him guilty of grave offences against the Capitalist class. This gentleman now knows that while the Master class does not mind what a Labour Politician takes from the workers, that class will not stand any interference with their own property. Owing to the finding of the Royal Commission, Mr. Theodore had to stand down from his position as Federal Treasurer, and most of his old friends now look askance at him. While the workers’ wages are being reduced, the Labour Prime Minister, “Jim” Scullin, is touring Europe attending to the affairs of the Australian Capitalist class.

The Communist Party.

This confusing gathering of self-styled revolutionaries presents the sorriest spectacle in Australian politics. For years it supported the anti-working class activities of the Labour Party, on the grounds that the workers would learn by experience. After denouncing’ the Labour Party as a reform party, it decided to run its own candidates in the last New South Wales elections. Putting forward about fifty-two candidates, they went to the electors on a Communist Reform Platform. Among their reforms were to be. found the following :—

• Work or maintenance for the unemployed.
• Equal pay to women and youth for equal work.
• The unrestricted right to organize and strike.
• Abolition of all wage taxes and all in come taxes on incomes under £400.
• Agricultural labourers and all poor and middle farmers to receive the basic industrial wage.
• Special grants of money for strike funds and for the relief of strikers and their dependents.
• In office, the Communists will attempt to disarm police and Capitalists, and organize an armed workers’ militia.
• Wage mass drives in defence of the Soviet Union, Hands off India campaigns, in defence of the Chinese Revolution.
• Repudiation of all War Debts, etc.

(C.P. Election Manifesto, N.S.W. elections, November, 1930.)

There you have the “revolutionary” aims of the self-styled “vanguard of the working class.” Attached to the Communist Party are dozens of other still-born children of the Russian Revolution. There is the Militant Minority Movement, the Young Communist Movement, the. I.C.W. P.A., the Friends of the Soviet Union, the Rank and File Movement, et alia. A meeting of the Communist Party is held, and there we find all the leading emancipationists. A visit to the M.M.M., and here we find the same faces with different official names. A walk into the I.C.W.P.A. meeting, and here they are again ! A peep into the meeting of the F.O.S.U., and once again we see the old familiar faces. The workers are slogged with slogans, confused with a myriad forms of organization, and misled by a million different ruses.

On the Committee of the I.C.W.P.A. are Labour Party politicians, yet the Labour Party jails the men whom the I.C.W.P.A. is attempting to get out. Unlike the pussy in the well, they are put in and pulled out (sometimes) by the same gang.

All the aforementioned Communist groups are out to usher in, like a thief in the night, the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Anybody who refuses to follow their dictates and declines to have his or her head bashed in by the bobby’s truncheon is labelled a “defeatist” by these fanatical followers of the “new line” from Moscow.

The Socialist Party of Australia.

Our Party is gradually making itself felt amongst the workers. Small in numbers, and hampered by the confusion created by the Labour Party and the Communist Party, we find it difficult to keep afloat in the political maelstrom. Having Socialism for our objective, we do not expect, nor do we receive, any assistance from the Australian Capitalists or the Russian Capitalists. Nevertheless, we continue with our propaganda, holding our meetings and lectures when circumstances permit. Unemployment amongst our members has prevented us from getting out our Official Party Organ. Lack of finance is also a factor in the non-appearance of our paper. Without this latter we are seriously handicapped, but we are optimistic. The development of Capitalism in Australia is quickening, and we are development of Capitalism in Australia is quickening, and we are convinced that, when we are able to place our position fully before the workers, our efforts will not have been in vain. In spite of all the present drawbacks, we look to the future with hopes of success.

As soon as funds will permit and circumstances warrant it, we will run candidates during future elections and, despite the jibes of our opponents that the majority of the workers will never understand Socialism, we pin our hopes on the working class.

W. J. Clarke

(For the Socialist Party of Australia)

The White Death (2002)

From the January 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Common salt is composed of sodium and chlorine of which, it seems, there was plenty locked up in compounds within the basalt rock that formed most of the Earth’s crust as our world cooled from a chemical soup over 3.5 billion years ago. Years of weathering, erosion and corrosion then produced the salt that readily dissolved into masses of water that flowed over and settled, as oceans, in the low-lying areas.

Tiny salt particles have, ever since, been blown from the sea directly onto coastal and adjacent regions of land or have been lifted into the upper atmosphere where they then fall everywhere with rain. Over aeons of time, in dry areas unflushed by regular rainfall, the soil has become sprinkled with minute salt particles extending to a considerable depth.

Unique vegetation has evolved in Western Australia which created a natural “equilibrium” or balance that maintains the ground-water level (water-table) at a depth beyond the salt zone. Native deep-rooted, perennial plants are highly efficient absorbers of moisture, allowing very little rainfall to seep down into the water-table. Native trees have two root systems which absorb both surface and deep groundwater. These are just part of an undisturbed eco-system that produced stability for millions of years.

The clearing of native vegetation and trees for farming and grazing has produced vast areas of shallow-rooted annual crops and pasture which use far less water. Most rainfall now percolates down into the groundwater which raises the level of the water-table. Similarly, in irrigation areas the applied water mostly filters down and lifts the level. As the water-table climbs it dissolves increasing amounts of salt within the soil profile until maximum salinity is concentrated at, or near, the soil surface. Capitalism’s profit-motivated “economic efficiencies” in the timber industry has introduced the disaster of “clearfelling”. Bulldozers uprooting trees, wrecking the understorey, wildlife habitat, soil structure and complete eco-system of vast areas of forest, simply magnifies the problem still further.

The impact of a rising water-table and dryland salinity has far-reaching effects long before the ultimate “White Death” of a lifeless, shining white desert studded with dead trees, is created. Saline water with four feet of the soil surface reduces plant growth. From this point there is a loss of agriculture production, destruction of bush vegetation and native habitat leading to loss of wildlife and biodiversity. Drainage from the soil causes salinity of waterways which affect streams, rivers and water resources in dams and reservoirs . . . eventually making the water unusable. Water plants, aquatic life (frogs, fish, water birds, turtles etc), algae, microbes and invertebrates are destroyed. Rising concentrations of salt damages the soil structure and will corrode the foundations of all infrastructure causing buildings, roads, footpaths, railways, bridges and sewage pipes etc to crumble. Rising water-table also makes land more prone to waterlogging and flooding. The social impact is enormous.

The worst-affected Australian state is Western Australia with 70 percent of total salinity problems. In 1902 the clearing of native vegetation was suspected of causing salinity. This was proved in 1909 and verified in 1924. Despite this knowledge land-clearing increased. The echoes of past capitalist politicians here are heard today when President Bush states, “I am more concerned with the economy than with ecology”, when referring to global warming . . . itself another major factor in the salinity equation.

Seventy-five percent of natural bush in the south-west has been cleared for agriculture of which 10 percent is now salt-affected, which has reduced crops by 50 percent. Over 80 percent of resource water there is salty to some degree and groundwater rises 20-150 cms annually. If allowed to continue 30 percent of farmland will be wiped out, 30,000 kms of road and railway and 27 towns will be ruined by shallow water-table by the year 2050. Many mammals, reptiles, insects, aquatic life and 450 endemic plant species will be lost from one of the most biodiverse areas of the world.

In 1985 a new State government department, CALM (Conservation And Land Management), was created. Syd Shea was appointed executive director. CALM pursued a simple policy of managing the forests for the benefit of the timber industry. Clearfelling was adopted on a grand scale and still continues today. In November 1999 Syd Shea accepted a new post created in the Premier’s office—”Head of Combating Salinity”. This is tantamount to putting a serial arsonist in charge of the Fire Service. Shea is now involved organising “carbon credits” and uses his “ecological expertise” in cracking deals for big corporations.

High technology is being used to acquire facts and statistics on salinity but the shocking details are not being publicised. The information written here was extracted from various official sources. The remedy to salinity is basically simple, groundwater levels need to be reduced (discharged) and rainfall needs to be used more efficiently to prevent recharge. Large areas of farmland need to be revegetated and forest should be allowed to regenerate. Additional proposed engineering and horticultural remedies should be applied immediately.

Capitalism, based upon cost/profit/jobs, which causes these problems, is not equipped to respond to simple need. Balance-sheet profit has always ignored the cost of environmental destruction, which never appeared on the debit pages of the ledger. Landowners are reluctant to lose portions of their land to non-income-producing native vegetation, despite their chance of losing the lot if their unsustainable farming methods do not change. So billions of dollars will be spent over many years on a strategy of compromise. The hunt is on for salt-tolerant fish and plants to farm, alternative deep-rooted crops and pasture and long-term cash-crops of plantation trees to supply the timber industry. It is hoped many areas can be contained and eventually some areas of salinity reversed, other regions are already doomed. But only a socialist society based upon unrestricted need has any chance of lasting success. Speed the day when such political awareness amongst the vast majority of the population will exist.

Ron Stone,

Australia