Opt For Socialism (1969)

Editorial from the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

May Day this year saw what the press claimed was "Britain’s largest and most sporadic political strike since 1926". The Communist Party congratulated "the hundreds of thousands of workers" who were downing tools and Socialist Worker (IS) was so confident that "this May Day’s political strike confirms a willingness to struggle" that they wanted it to "mark the start of the fight for workers’ power”. But the Revolutionary Socialist Students’ Federation didn’t think it was as simple as that; first we had to decide whether we were witnessing merely "a massive rise of Trade Union consciousness" or was there instead "some glimmer of systematic revolutionary politics emerging from the militancy”?

Reading this sort of comment you could have been forgiven for not noticing that, at a time when trade unions and the right to strike are being openly threatened by the Labour government, less than one per cent of the labour force was prepared to stop work for a single day. Even in those areas where a relatively high proportion of workers turned out (Sheffield, for example, with 10,000 or 4 per cent of the work force on strike) the marches and demonstrations were poorly attended. In Sheffield 500 men and women gathered at the City Hall to listen to Labour MP Norman Atkinson calling for different policies from the government; in Manchester perhaps a similar number marched to the Labour Party’s headquarters; in Hull (with 3,000 dockers out) about 20 made the effort to demonstrate.

The facts, then, argue quite plainly that—such is the lack of even trade union consciousness among the vast majority of workers—they will accept some form of Industrial Relations BiU. In fact, Labour and Tories both recognise anti-strike legislation as a vote winner with the working class and vie with each other in portraying strikers as bloody-minded wreckers intent on sabotaging industrial output.

No delusions

Faced with this situation socialists do not take refuge in the sort of romantic delusion which the Left comforts itself with (“. . . the working class begins to move decisively onto the political scene .. .’’ writes the May Day edition of the Newsletter (SLL)). Members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain in the industries involved were, of course, on strike on May Day. This is because, as workers ourselves, we support efforts by groups of working men and women to defend their wages and working conditions. We also support actions such as that taken by the employees at the Broadheath industrial estate near Manchester who passed a resolution at their May Day meeting calling on the AEF executive to conduct a ballot on the withdrawal of financial support from the Labour Party. Socialists have always refused to pay the political levy and have consistently advised other workers to do the same. And at our union branch meetings socialists put forward the sort of arguments which expose the government’s lies. So when Barbara Castle’s white paper In Place of Strife suggests that the class struggle can be eliminated from capitalism we show that the measures she proposes are futile. In America, for example, where the president can impose much longer ’cooling- off periods’ than Castle's 28 days, the average worker loses over four times as many days through strikes as in Britain; while in Australia, where strikes are virtually illegal, there are still many more stoppages per worker than in Britain.

But what distinguishes the Socialist Party from all other organisations is that our members constantly pose the socialist alternative to capitalism at their workplaces, at their trade union meetings, in bus queues—in fact, whenever and wherever we come in contact with other workers. We point out that far more than trade union activity or political reforms are needed to achieve a decent world; one without money or a wages system where the means of production will be owned by society and can therefore be used to satisfy people’s needs instead of being cramped by the dictates of the market.

Majority needed

Now the new call is for a work stoppage when the TUC meets on June 5. Groups like the Socialist Labour League are calling on the TUC at that meeting to organise a general strike in order to "halt Wilson". They write:

  But our cowardly critics will ask — ‘would a general strike be successful?’
  This is not the question (!). The task of revolutionary leadership is to provide the type of political leadership which is necessary in order to prepare the working class for what lies ahead. Since only a general strike would halt Wilson the task of all trade unionists and Marxists is to fight for it.

The Socialist Party of Great Britain argues that what is needed is not merely to "halt Wilson" but to "halt capitalism". This will not be achieved by any amount of loud-mouthed adventurism or super-revolutionary leadership. What is needed for such a social revolution is a majority of working men and women understanding what Socialism entails and determined to establish such a system. This understanding will grow (is growing) out of the collective experience of workers under capitalism —a process which socialists attempt to encourage by their propaganda activities. So even while socialists are engaged in the struggle over wages and working conditions, they never cease putting forward Socialism as an immediate demand. Far from standing back from the day-to-day struggles of the working class, socialists are involved in these efforts —and complement them with a socialist perspective. On the other hand, it is the Left which opts out of the basic task confronting the working class —by failing ever to put forward socialist ideas. We opt for Socialism.

Immunisation or Pain-killers? (1969)

From the June 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

The difference between the aims of the Socialist Party of Great Britain and all other political parties (except our companion parties) is somewhat comparable to the difference between immunisation and treatment in medicine.

The Socialist Party strives after the creation of a new kind of society—Socialism—in which such problems as famine, poverty, war, and inequality could not conceivably arise, Socialism is a way of life based on, as our object says, “the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interests of the whole community”. This is to be taken literally, not as meaning nationalisation, or any other such phoney system, which has been amply proved in places such as Russia and here in Britain to be as offensive to the workers’ interests as open private ownership.

The Socialist Party seeks the removal of class society where the minority capitalist class exploits the majority working class and which has brought about the conflicts and problems we have listed. The other parties, however, do not seek to remove the cause of these problems, which is capitalism, and therefore cannot succeed in removing them. Instead, they accept the present capitalist system and try, allegedly, to make these problems felt less acutely Barbara Castle in her notorious White Paper on industrial relations recognised that there had to be conflicts in this society: ''The object of our industrial relations system, granted that there are necessarily conflicts of interest, should be to direct the forces producing conflict towards constructive ends” (emphasis added). But how she hopes to make the robbed work hand in hand with those who are robbing them is beyond comprehension.

Her attitude is similar to that of all other political parties : what they are doing is trying to patch up capitalism to make it less brutal and painful to many people. The failure of successive governments of various political colourings to make any appreciable impact on such problems as poverty and hunger should demonstrate clearly enough that it is time to start tackling such problems from their roots instead of smothering them with meaningless statements and promises.

The policies of the Socialist Party of Great Britain offer immunisation against these problems arising in the first instance whereas all the other political parties offer mere pain-killers—and not very good ones at that.

R.A.S.

Letters: What is productivity? (1969)

Letters to the Editors from the May 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

What is productivity?

Comrades,

What is the socialist definition of this hoodoo that Barbara Castle is using, namely, The Productivity Act? My opinion is that there is no such thing unless applied where material things are produced and distributed. It can never apply to bus drivers and conductors, train drivers and firemen, postmen and sorters, messengers, paper-keepers, those in government offices, police- men, or the army, navy, and air force. But it would apply to miners, bricklayers, coalcarters, and those who work in places where wealth is produced.

M. R. Thorpe 

Brixton, London SW9

Reply:
All Barbara Castle means by 'productivity’ is efficiency at work. So, as far as she is concerned, this can be imposed on all workers whether or not they are engaged in the actual production of wealth. Sales clerks can be made to fill in more forms, reply to more letters, answer more phone calls in the same period of time. If they do, then their ‘productivity’ will have gone up.

‘Productivity’, in this sense, is just a fancy word for ‘speed-up’. It’s the old trick of “if you work harder, we'll pay you more”. The Labour government are interested in promoting this because they are committed to running capitalism in the only way it can be—in the interests of the capitalist class. If workers can be got to work harder, then the capitalists have a chance of regaining some of the overseas markets they have lost in recent years (the prime cause of their economic difficulties).

Wealth is produced by the application of human energy to materials found in nature. All work involves both ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ activity (in fact of course the two can’t be separated) so that it is wrong to regard just what is called ‘manual’ work as productive. The work of design and planning is just as productive as the work of carrying out the plans. So the mining engineer and the architect, whose work is generally regarded as white-collar, are just as much productive workers as the miner and the bricklayer. So are many technical, administrative, and clerical workers. Others are not of course, especially those concerned with buying and selling and with discipline, including the police and armed forces.

Mr. Thorpe is wrong in implying that transport workers are not productive. The labour spent in bringing an article of wealth to market does add value to the product. It is just as much a part of the production process as the manufacturing stage.

Capitalist exploitation is a class matter. The whole of the working class is exploited by the whole of the capitalist class because production already has a social, co-operative character. It is wrong to say that the workers at Fords are exploited just by Ford’s shareholders, just as it is wrong to say that they alone produce the cars. The labour of the millions of workers involved in the production of a car (including the growing and mining and transporting of the original raw materials from start to finish is what produces a car, not just the labour of those in at the finish. Ford’s shareholders merely get a return in accordance with the economic law of average profit—a profit based on the amount of capital they have invested and not (necessarily) equal to the surplus value extracted in their factories. What in effect happens is that all the surplus value extracted under capitalism in a given period is, as it were, pooled and then divided out in accordance with the amount of capital each capitalist has invested. The capitalist system is thus a kind of joint-stock company for the capitalist class.

Those workers engaged in non-productive work are not just a burden on their employers. Far from it. They may not produce extra wealth for him but they do save him money. For their work—say, in balancing his books or selling his goods—is essential to his business. From the employer’s point of view money spent on it is a necessary expense of production. Non-productive workers are exploited in this way: if for example ten hours’ work is needed to calculate workers’ wages, the clerk doing this job will put in this work but will be paid the equivalent of less than ten hours’ labour. He thus saves his employer money and that is why he is employed.

The employer doesn’t see it this way. He knows from experience that his profit tends to be based on how much he has invested, not on how many workers of what kind he employs. As far as he is concerned the wages he pays to all his workers are a necessary expense which he’d like to cut down. He would like them all to work harder. Which brings us back to Barbara Castle and productivity. She too wants us all to work harder.

Editorial Committee

What, NO P.M.!

Sir,

I consider myself a socialist, even if my concept of Socialism differs from yours, and I would like you to answer some questions for me.

1. What alternatives does the Socialist Party offer for a stable economic system from the present one to a system under socialist rule?

2. If the Socialist Party grew strong enough and was generally elected as government (tomorrow);
   a. Who would be prime minister? (Tell me about him).
   b. What ministries would there be, and who would be in charge of them?
   c. What standards of living could the working class be assured of?
   d. Could there be any millionaires?

S. G. Pollard 

Sheffield 9

Reply:
Mr Pollard’s "Socialism” certainly differs from ours if under it there will still be a prime minister, a working class and millionaires! However, lets proceed point by point.

1. In place of the present economic system based on the class ownership of the means of life and their consequent use to provide profits for the owners, we are suggesting that the means of life he vested in the community as a whole and be under its democratic management so that wealth can be produced solely to satisfy human wants. Freed from the barrier of profit, we shall be able to produce in abundance all the things we need. Gone will be the absurd paradoxes of poverty amidst plenty, of food being burned while children starve, of building workers being unemployed while people live in hovels. Naturally. Socialism can only exist on a world scale.

2. If the Socialist Party grew strong enough and a majority of voters backed us then we would not form a government, with a prime minister and cabinet, to administer a system where workers and millionaires would still exist. We do not seek political power in order to run capitalism, but to abolish it. So that, if there were a Socialist majority, steps would immediately be taken to end private property in the means of production and to put in its place common ownership and democratic control.

a. For this we don't need a prime minister, a post generally filled by the leader' of the party that wins the election. The Socialist Party is made up of conscious socialists organised on a democratic basis and so has no leader or leaders.

b. We have seen that a socialist majority would use its power to change the basis of society from class to common ownership. This of course will amount to a social revolution. But this doesn’t mean we’ll be starling from scratch. Socialists have always maintained that capitalism paves the way for Socialism by, for instance, developing the large-scale co-operative production that makes class ownership an anachronism. This large-scale co-operative productive system, including its administrative apparatus, will be the basis of socialist society. The basic function of the state is to be the public power of coercion and for this purpose it is organised as the police, the armed forces, and the prison service. A public power of coercion is necessary only in class society with its built-in class conflict. In Socialism the state will no longer he needed and will be dismantled. However, today the government has itself assumed other, purely technical and administrative, tasks and this aspect of its work is in fact part of the productive system. We have in mind the old Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Transport, or the Ministry of Power. No doubt the administrative apparatus that is these and other ministries can be adapted for use as part of the socialist administration of industry. We can’t go into details (that’s something for the socialist majority, including maybe Mr. Pollard, to work out at the time) but we can say that the adaptions will be far-reaching— everything to do with finance will go, and the internal structure will have to be reorganised on a democratic basis. What we say about these technical ministries applies equally to the large administrative establishments not part of the government machine such as those at the service of firms like GEC and ICI. Obviously, there'll be a certain continuity in institutions between capitalism and Socialism and at the start we'll have to make do with what we’ve inherited. There’ll be more urgent problems than a streamlined administration to be tackled; for instance, growing more food and ending the housing scandal.

c. The 'working class’ won’t be assured of any standard of living because there won’t be any working class. With the end of capitalism will go all classes. Those who used to be workers (or capitalists) will still be around but they will now be free and equal members, of society faced with the problem of organising themselves to provide the food, clothing, shelter, and other things they need to live. The profit barrier gone, how much they consume will depend on how much they are prepared to produce and that’ll be something for society to decide democratically, But the basic rule will be “from each according to his ability, to each according to hi„ needs’’. Every member of socialist society will have free access to the fruits of their co-operative labour.

d. No, there won’t be any millionaires because there won’t be any money. This will have become superfluous with the introduction of production solely and directly for use. Common ownership and democratic control will mean that everybody will be socially equal.

Editorial Committee

The Government Training Centres — A key to whose future (1970)

From the July 1970 issue of the Socialist Standard

The urge to cut production costs by improving technology and introducing automation has been a prime concern with capitalists in many lands, including Britain. This process involves the invention and installation of new machinery which enables the capitalist to cut his workforce and lower his labour costs. To workers this so-called redundancy means insecurity and hardship until they have found another job, probably a different one. Barbara Castle cynically calls this process “redeployment”. To help the capitalists redeploy some of these unfortunate workers into jobs where there is a shortage of labour the Government Training Centre (GTC) scheme was rapidly expanded over the course of the last six years or so. These centres mainly provide six month courses.

There are over forty-three* GTC’s around Britain teaching the basic skills for about forty-two trades. They are not very widely known about among workers who have been continuously employed but anyone who has been made redundant in a declining industry or merger, injured permanently or leaves the armed forces should know something about the scheme.

Some of the recipients of this ‘retraining’ and some of the well-meaning people running the scheme (all of them workers) believe that GTC’s are part of .Socialism. Only a few thinking people (and Mrs. Castle) know that this is not so. The GTC’s are nothing whatever to do with Socialism but everything to do with the administration of modern capitalism.

It cannot be disputed that, in spite of the appallingly low allowances (just above Unemployment Benefit levels) many of the workers who pass through the scheme find their earning capacity substantially enhanced or their working lives a little more bearable. But the fundamentals of wage slavery remain the same before and after the course. And the GTC’s are a mixed blessing for other reasons: “You will be accepted for training only if there are really good prospects of finding a job in the trade’’. [1] All trades taught at GTC’s have to be justified by their usefulness to the capitalist class. Entry to the scheme is severely limited by the demand for certain tradesmen on the labour market at large. And of course “there are special panels with representatives from industry to help decide the suitability of applicants for the trade”. [2] Thousands of workers never benefit from ‘retraining’ but simply continue to queue up twice a week and accept the pittance handed out by the Ministry with the fancy name. Only those considered worthy of training are invested in — the rest are left on the scrap heap.

Let us consider the ‘lucky’ few who do get in. For them, we are told, the GTC’s are “The Key to the Future”. This slogan is more appropriate for Britain’s capitalists. Not only is it cheaper to train a worker for six months than to keep him on the ‘dole’ for a year or more, but at the end of six months there is a useful, skilled, docile, industrious worker grateful for his training and eager to make up for lost earnings. This is how he finds things. The GTC’s are normally in factory estates, use in/out clocks, keep factory hours, do some production work, have a manager rather than a Head-teacher and are run with varying degrees of arbitrariness. Every effort is made to recreate factory conditions. Trainees are told that “this is not a college of further education or a school, this is a factory in which you are the product for sale at the end of six months". As usual, when it comes to plentiful labour power — it is a buyers’ market. Ex trainees, with their rather negative certificates, have to sell themselves extra hard to convince some employers that they have been trained at all. Some capitalists, on the other hand, actually visit GTC’s in order to buy the ‘product’ in advance. This shop floor marketing is encouraged.

Inside the production line steady progress has to be maintained or the ‘product’ could be rejected before completion. Apart from weekends there are eight days ‘off’ including public holidays ; sickness is limited to three weeks, tea breaks are ten minutes and lunch breaks are thirty minutes. Confidential reports are kept on each ‘product’ which are freely available to capitalist buyers but not to trainees. So trainees are kept hard at it helping to produce themselves for the labour market, proving themselves to be good investments.

To conclude: The GTC scheme is a reformist measure, it retrains workers previously unable to find work. But the beneficiaries are few and the trades taught are only those in demand by the capitalists. The ex-trainee is just another worker, competing for jobs, working for wages, forced to do so by the same system that endowed him with his new skill. The net result is that the system of mass exploitation runs a little more smoothly. Reforms like this are virtually useless to the working class (although individual workers should feel free to take from our rulers all they can get out of them —which is not much anyway). The only sensible course of action is to organise for Socialism. In Socialism technical improvements will be designed to improve the lives of human beings — they will not cause human suffering. And there could be  limitless and continuous opportunities to learn new skills — not just a once only “second chance to learn a trade” for a few.

R.W.B.

It's the Poor What Gets the Blame — Official (1974)

From the December 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

One way of assessing Sir Keith Joseph’s comments on “whole groups and classes of people” is to imagine a speech he would have made if Britain were at war. Would he then have said a large section of the working class was moronic, lecherous and irresponsible, and should be stopped from breeding the criminals and lowlifes who are its heirs? Ah, no. “Social classes 4 and 5” would be the bulwark of civilization, and their babies — however many — deserve orange-juice and vitamin pills. These kinds of bombast are exchangeable as an organ-grinder’s tunes, though the underlying contempt remains the same.

Joseph’s speech was made to Conservatives on 19th October. He suggested they put aside economic affairs —“never really the main thing”—and instead aim to “remoralize our national life”. His case was that present- day society is a decadent morass. It has been made so by “socialist intellectuals” and “permissiveness” and, in particular, letting the working class into universities. As an example of the ruin these tendencies have led to, “our human stock is threatened” by the persistent breeding now from parents unsuitable to have children:

   Many of these girls are unmarried, many are deserted or divorced or soon will be. Some are of low intelligence, most are of low educational attainment . . . They are producing problem children, the future unmarried mothers, delinquents, denizens of our borstals, subnormal educational establishments, prisons, hostels for drifters. Yet these mothers, the under-twenties in many cases, single parents, from classes 4 and 5, are now producing a third of all births.

It may be useful, before going further, to say what is meant by “classes 4 and 5”. The groupings are made by the Government on the basis of the job of the family breadwinner, and these two divisions comprise semi-skilled and unskilled workers If they are assumed to be about two-fifths of the population, Joseph’s protest because they have one-third of the births is absurd. Summaries from the 1971 Census, given in the Sunday Times on 27th October, show that family size is practically the same in all five groups—about three-and-a- quarter persons.

Capitalist Hacks Unanimous
The central point of Joseph’s attack might have been, had it come from a more thinking person, a demonstration of the uselessness of social — including “moral” — reform as tried equally by the Tory, Labour and Liberal parties.

  Real incomes per head have risen beyond what anyone dreamed of a generation back; so have education budgets and welfare budgets; so also have delinquency, truancy, vandalism, hooliganism, illiteracy, decline in educational standards.

But he was only reviving his political forefathers’ dictum that if you give the undeserving poor money they only get into trouble, and if you teach them to read they write rude words on walls. The working class is used to this sort of thing, and being told it is to blame when capitalism has problems. Indeed, Joseph was being unfair to his Labour opponents: they share that standpoint. Following the Budget on 12th November the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey, announced on TV that if he failed to stop a slump or inflation it would be the fault of “the British people”:

  The choice is yours. If you really prefer mass unemployment and rising prices you can always have it.

To add more, practically no-one in the chorus of critics of Joseph denied his thesis. Other Conservatives thought it “a sad mistake . . . which would inevitably cause serious doubts about his political judgement”. Frank Field of the Child Poverty Action Group acknowledged Joseph’s “problem” of breeding by sub-standard people, and “blamed this on the failure of the family planning system and suggested that the solution was to give women more incentive to limit their family size”. (Both quotations from The Guardian, 21st October.) The Bishop of Southwark put it down to “Conservative policies of 50 years ago” (Observer, 20th October) and “human nature” (News of the World, 27th October).

Official Labour replies were on the same lines. Ian Mikardo, the party chairman

  appeared to accept the gist of what Sir Keith Joseph said in his controversial weekend speech on the nation’s morals, but he neatly turned it to Labour’s advantage . . . he blamed individualist, self-centred Conservative doctrine.

(Guardian, 25th October)

Mrs. Castle, the Secretary for Social Services, accused Joseph of wrong statistics and expressed herself as equally anxious over the problems named. And Renee Short, another Labour MP, spoke of the need for a minister to deal with population problems and said:

  It is absolutely right for Sir Keith to say we need considerable extensions of education about family planning, but it is not only needed in the fourth and fifth social groups.

All agreed that the working class must be kept decent, and sneered at one another for legislation having failed to do so.

Class and Intelligence

None of the critics appears to have noticed one extraordinary implication of Joseph’s speech. Like the Victorian moralists, over human behaviour he wants to have things both ways—people are born bad but also influenced to be bad: the teaching of Eric, or Little by Little. But, in addition, Joseph was propounding what looks like Lysenko’s theory that acquired characteristics can be transmitted. Given mothers of “low educational attainment” who have learned immoral attitudes, there will be babies destined to be illiterates and criminals. Since reform cannot change heredity, the prevention of birth is the only answer — “the lesser evil”, he said.

This kind of rubbish was exploded long ago. However, there is a more cogent answer to Joseph’s contentions. Being in classes 4 and 5 — or any of the others — has nothing to do with intelligence or probity. People are in these “classes” because of their relationship to the means of production: specifically, because they own nothing and have to work as capitalism allows them. In fact the groupings are not social classes at all, but lists made for administrative purposes. The only two classes are of owners and non-owners of the means of living. People are born not into “free choice” but into one or the other class and all the implications of its position.

If intelligence were a factor, we should like to be told the intelligence quotients of, say, shareholders in big companies; the royal family; or politicians who have their speeches written for them. Would Joseph say that breeding by any number of these who were of “low intelligence” was a threat to human stock? Of course not. There are, in any case, different answers for them. The slow-learning or recalcitrant offspring of the well-to-do are put out to private tutors in country vicarages to get them in shape for Oxbridge. The idea of intelligence is irrelevant to that sort of life. It is a yardstick-concept by which the ruling class picks over the working class for its own purposes; the working class insults itself by accepting it.

Different Meanings

Joseph spoke about “responsibility”. The fact is that the capitalist system which he represents and upholds depends on irresponsibility. To hand over control of one’s life, have its activity appropriated and accept the say-so of leaders and rulers, is irresponsible. Yet that is precisely what Joseph requires, the “choice” he wants exercised. It is not a question of Doublethink, but of class terminology. For his class, following its interests, the working class acts “responsibly” by not following its own!

If you look at the occupations which make up groups 3, 4 and 5, the matter becomes clearer still. They are nearly all useful occupations — manufacture, building, mining, transport, the essentials for social existence. Not so most of the occupations in groups 1 and 2. A few are; the majority are about as useful as a tapeworm. What do “intelligence” and “educational attainment” mean when they are put to the non-uses generated by capitalist society? A former drama student has remarked to the writer that when he sees acquaintances on TV it is always in commercials: singing the praises of canned soup, zooming through space with packets of Tasty Morsels. For this, they studied Shakespeare and toiled at voice and movement—now, humans behaving like idiots.

Let us tell Sir Keith Joseph and the co-diagnosers of his “problem” the truth. The working class is the intelligent, educated class which makes the wonders, and competently carries out the humdrum tasks, of the world we live in. Without that being so, there would be no electronic marvels or university buildings. Nor would there be the sumptuous dinners from which capitalist politicians rise to make their self-important speeches. Or dividends for the shareholders of Bovis Ltd., of which Joseph is vice-chairman.

Moral Humbug

The so-called moral questions can be put in perspective by referring to the 1949 Report of the Royal Commission on Population. This was concerned with finding ways to induce people of all groups and grades to have more children: to maintain the work force, for "military strength and security”, and for “the maintenance and extension of Western values and culture”. There was no talk then of threatening the human stock, or the immorality of girls under twenty having babies.

Of course the family as a socio-economic unit has largely broken down, but Joseph’s conception of why this happens is extremely naive. Apparently he believes a currency of “immoral” ideas is the cause of such a breakdown, whereas the opposite is true. The family’s life and functions were disrupted by the extension and intensification of the division of labour; following that, fresh ideas of morality were generated — without, however, affecting the existence of capitalism.

But what kind of society are we living in? Sex and reproduction are the strongest of human instincts and pleasures. The tragedy for the poor is being swindled out of enjoyment and fulfilment by poverty, inadequate housing, worry, and living on the edge of a high-priced culture. Many girls in that situation, said Joseph, are unmarried or deserted or divorced: how nice of him to point it out, from the comfort of Class 1. How nice of Mrs. Castle too, to deny that “socialism is synonymous with permissiveness”. Indeed, she is right. “Permission” means condescending to allow, and that has nothing to do with the free, responsible world Socialists envisage: Mrs. Castle’s “socialism” is not synonymous with Socialism.

It will not be too long before the working class demonstrates its intelligence, and its contempt for the Josephs and Castles, by getting rid of the system they stand for.

Robert Barltrop

The Review Column: Take Over (1969)

The Review Column from the February 1969 issue of the Socialist Standard

Take Over

Sunday is supposed to be the day of rest and church-going. In fact, it is the day when about ten million British people excite themselves by reading in the News of the World all about sex sins of famous actresses and obscure country vicars.

The paper recently described itself as “as British as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding" and perhaps, in a way, that is true. Little wonder, then, that when Pergamon Press launched its take over bid the fight for the shares was a matter of popular concern.

It was one of the hardest fought of all take overs. The News of the World warned darkly that “Mr. Robert Maxwell, a Socialist M.P., is trying to take . . . over” and was careful enough to remind its readers that Maxwell (who was responsible for the Back Britain campaign) was “formerly Jan Ludwig Hoch."

The NOW, it was clear, thought that the worst thing that could happen to British workers would be to have their favourite Sunday scandal sheet taken over by a naturalised Labour M.P.

Maxwell himself has never been famous for a reluctance to join the infighting. His delicate description of the man who defeated him — Australian newspaper owner Robert Murdoch — was “mothbeaten kangaroo”, and after the shareholders’ votes had gone against him he (of all people) mourned that “the law of the jungle has won.”

These dignified exchanges should be remembered, the next time Maxwell, or the News of the World, complain about the alleged childishness of striking workers. In the meantime, let us extricate ourselves from the mire of the battle between rival capitalists so anxious to protect their bank balances and take a look at the real issue.

Modern capitalism is a society of unrelenting insecurity and poverty. Such is the degradation of its people that millions of them greedily swallow the muck dished out by rags like the News of the World.

It pays to produce this muck. The real issue is not who owns the muck-making machine, but what about the nature of a society which makes it worthwhile to produce it, and which stimulates the need for it?

The Dark Side of Space

Space flights, we are promised, have brought us all sorts of benefits — anti-corrosive fluids, improved transistors, non-stick frying pans. That seems to be the limit — no space technician has yet been able to show that, say, a solution to the deadly riddle of cancer is likely to result from the exploits of those daring young men circling the moon.

But before we start cheering about the frying pans we should reflect on the other results of the space programme. One thing which is obvious is that no world power is ever willing to spend the sort of money which is being poured into the Apollo flights in order to make life any easier.

The only justification capitalism will recognise for that sort of spending is military or economic. We already know that any improvements in rocket power and guidance systems are applied to the delivery systems of nuclear missiles. We have also heard that the space powers can now orbit nuclear bombs above the earth, selecting the point at which they will come back through the atmosphere and onto their target.

There is also the possibility — and how strong this may be is one of the things the Americans and the Russian are not in a hurry to publicise — that the moon and other planets contain valuable minerals, it is not far fetched, then, to imagine a power struggle for possession of the planets, in space and so for dominance over the space lanes.

These should have been sobering thoughts for the world, as it goggled at the fantastic pictures coming back from Apollo 8 over Christmas. The glamour and excitement of it all obscured the cold, unpleasant realities but one day they will have to be faced, just as we have had to face the realities of the exploits of the Wright brothers.

The crew of Apollo 8 are brave men, dedicated to what they believe is the advance of humanity. This is not the first time capitalism has taken such useful instincts and perverted them for its own inhuman purposes.

Getting Tough

Whenever she is pressed on the point, Barbara Castle stubbornly insists that she is a left wing socialist — which in her vocabulary means the very opposite of someone who acts as she does in her job as boss of the Department of Employment and Productivity.

After her determined axing of wage claims under the Prices and Incomes Act, Castle is now getting ready for what might be her biggest fight so far. The government are preparing legislation which, under the name “reform”, will be nothing other than another restriction on the unions.

Castle wants a 28 day cooling off period before some strikes and compulsory balloting before official national strikes, with prosecution and fines for those who break the law.

Both sides of industry are pressing for changes in these proposals; the employers want them tougher and the unions are timidly asking for some relaxations.

Whatever happens, we are clearly in for another step in what may be one of Labour’s dearest ambitions — the control of wages. It is reasonable to wonder whether the government is clinging to office, in face of the humiliating election results, only long enough to attempt that particular piece of dirty work for the British capitalist class.

The government are justifying their proposals with the weary argument that if they don’t do it the Tories will — which is a clear admission that Labour is as much the enemy of the unions as the Tories.

Then there is the case put up for the ballots — that it is the democratic way of doing it, that a national strike which affects millions of people should not be decided upon by a handful of men.

In practice, the ballot might be a two edged weapon. In the meantime, may we ask how far Labour will carry this democratic idea? When they want to take a decision on something which will affect millions of people — like devaluation, prescription charges and so on, will they arrange a ballot before they act?

No prizes are offered for the answer to that question.

Toying with Soldiers (1967)

From the August 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the days when she was a member of the Opposition, Barbara Castle made something of a name for herself by launching a crusade for the abolition of the penny charge for ladies' lavatories. In the 1945/50 Parliament, Jimmy Hudson was famous for his passion for temperance reform. More lately, Leo Abse has become well known as an advocate of easier divorce. Thus do Labour Members, who call themselves Socialists, busy themselves with trivial, although newsworthy, adjustments to the capitalist system.

The latest in this undistinguished line is Mrs. Anne Kerr, the Member for Rochester and Chatham, who on July 4 last moved in the House that “. . . the sale, manufacture, import, export and advertisement of war toys in the press and magazines and on television should be banned.”

Now there was once a theory, well favoured among the Left Wing, that the cause of war was to be found in the conspiracies of the great armaments kings. Mrs. Kerr, of course, was only blaming the firms who make toy armaments. Perhaps it was safer that way; she was not, after all, pressing for the abolition of war itself, nor even of the weapons of war—only of plastic toys that go pop and sparkle and rat tat tat.

Predictably, the motion had the Parliamentary correspondents dipping their pens in laughing gas, and provided a golden chance for every amateur psychologist in the Commons. A thinly attended House heard some novel theories on the cause of war and of social violence. Then they threw out the motion and got down to more serious business.

The whole episode was fatuous enough and only deserves any attention because so many of the false ideas MPs proudly paraded are widely held also by the people who vote for them:

Destruction to many people is fun. At a church fete, for example, they will pay sixpence or a shilling to break crockery. (Mr. Tilney).
. . .  a dangerous motion because it opens a door to legislation to control the right of individuals and their children to think. (Mr. Onslow).

The best thing to do here is to begin at the beginning. It seems too obvious, but so many arguments about armaments ignore the fact that they exist only because war is an accepted way of settling society’s disputes. There has been a steady progression of the destructive power and efficiency of weapons; Mrs. Kerr complained about toy “guns, bombs, flame-throwers and booby traps” but these are among the gentler instruments at the disposal of the war makers.

Let us go on and ask why society tolerates the persistence of war. Here we can find a clue in the reply Mrs. Kerr received from Mr. Darling, Minister of State of the Board of Trade, who said that

. . . the United Kingdom toy industry was one of our most flourishing industries and last year exported £16 million worth of toys.
. . . Generally speaking, the Government wanted United Kingdom toys to be sold increasingly overseas . . .  (Daily Telegraph 4/7/67)

Now this does not apply only to toys, of course; there are all sorts of British industries which are exporting their products, and which the government would like to see increase their overseas trade. But the British government is not the only one with this idea, and British industry is not the only one engaged in an export trade. The capitalist world is, in fact, a mass of competing firms, states, combinations of states, all struggling for what in the end they hope will be some sort of economic supremacy. Sometimes this rivalry can be settled by a trade agreement or some other kind of pact. Sometimes it can be settled only by war.

Under capitalism, then, wars are unavoidable — which means that armed forces and weapons are necessary. But if it is all inevitable and necessary to capitalism, it is also extremely unpleasant — terrifying, dirty, obscene, brutalising. What is more natural, then, than that governments should try to hide the truth by embellishing the military man's life with false glamour?

Soldiers, sailors and airmen who do their grisly job efficiently are not simply successful men—capitalist society regards them as heroes. This line is pushed hard by the Services when they are advertising for recruits:

Don’t talk to Peter Cobb about hotted-up Minis. He drives this nuclear submarine. Wouldn’t you like to?

The glamour propaganda is aimed at young people and of course it has its effect on children. A child's life is full of dreams and expectations, most of them modelled on the adult world. If his parents regard a killer in uniform as a hero, the child will do the same-even more so. When a kid is playing soldiers, perhaps with the toys Mrs. Kerr thinks so odious, he is acting out what he hopes will be his heroic future.

But this is not the only aspect of life in which the kids imitate their elders and in which they prepare themselves for growing up under capitalism. The same shops which sell plastic machine guns probably also sell toy Post Offices and shops, Monopoly sets and so on. These games teach children some of the commercial facts of capitalism — that goods are made to be bought and sold, that survival is a matter of making money, that success goes to the man who can pull off the clever deal.

War toys teach children that organised killing and violence is an accepted part of society today. And since this has its roots in the economic basis of capitalism, there are as many objections to the sale of, say, toy money as there can be to the sale of toy flame throwers. Indeed, the fact that a child spends some happy hours picking off his mates with a plastic machine gun does not place him irretrievably on the path of being a military murderer, any more than winning at Monopoly will make him a future property tycoon.

As long as its people are content that it should be so, it is capitalism which maps out their future. The adults of capitalism fight its wars, and support the whole system which gives rise to them. They do this not because when they were children they played with toy soldiers, but because they are misled into believing that capitalism, with its property rights, its economic rivalries, its wars, is the best of all possible human societies.

No capitalist party—certainly not the Labour Party—ever does anything to end this massive and fundamental deception. Let us be kind to Mrs. Kerr and say that she is muddle-headed. But not every M.P. was so blind; the Member for St. Marylebone, for example, was almost caught out in approaching the heart of the problem:

You will not end wars by stopping children playing at soldiers, although you probably would stop children playing at soldiers if you prevented wars.

It is a rather unnerving experience, to be agreeing with Quintin Hogg. It probably won’t happen ever again — but strange things can go on, when fishes fly and forests walk, when there is blood on the moon or the House of Commons tries to put capitalism to rights.

Ivan

The Report on Trade Unions (1968)

From the August 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

In theory Royal Commissions are set up so that a government, before introducing legislation to deal with some complex problem, can have the advice of an independent body of people who have first collected and then studied all the relevant information. The initiative rests with the government since they lay down the terms of reference, appoint the members, and can please themselves whether they accept or reject the recommendations: though if a Royal Commission makes a unanimous report it is a little difficult for the government to disregard it entirely.

In practice Commissions are sometimes appointed simply as a device to postpone reaching a decision until what may seem to the government to be a more opportune moment. The Donovan Commission on Trade Unions and Employers’ associations appears to fall into this category and the fact that six out of the twelve members, including the Chairman, Lord Donovan, express doubts and reservations about the main body of their own recommendations will enable the government to put a good face on selecting whatever parts it wants to take notice of. It may reasonably be supposed that the government had some such outcome in mind when it appointed to the Commission members whose divergent views were well known beforehand.

The reception of the Report has been equally divergent; from the Times “Few can have expected . . . that Lord Donovan and his colleagues would achieve so much”; to the Economist "A report to forget—its proposals are actively harmful”. If what the Wilson government chiefly wanted was delay, the Commission was a great success —it took over three years to report.

Its main conclusions are concerned with what it describes as the two parallel systems of industrial relations — the system of national negotiations and agreements entered into by trade unions and employers associations on the one side, and on the other, the system of local negotiations through shop stewards at the factory and workshop level. The Commission considers that with near-full employment the centre of gravity has shifted to the local agreements and that these should now largely replace the remote and ineffectual national agreements, leaving to them a much restricted role, largely that of laying down guide lines for the local negotiators.

This part of the report has received fairly widespread approval but trade unionists who remember the years of bitter struggle to achieve national agreements for the protection of their members in less well organised firms and districts may find the change a mixed blessing in face of company decisions to shift factories away from “high wage" to “low wage” areas.

The Report anticipates that the changeover will help to solve the employers’ problem of having to deal with “unofficial strikes" (95 per cent of all strikes are “unofficial”). It explains that lightning unofficial strikes can be more damaging to the employer than an official strike because they are unpredictable and have the effect therefore that they prevent managements from making plans with any confidence of being able to implement them quickly, or at all.

The Report lays much blame on company managements for this situation and expects them to bring about the desired change. They are required to create comprehensive bargaining machinery at company or factory level, conclude agreements on the handling of redundancy, ensure regular joint discussion of safety measures and make agreements regulating the position of shop stewards.

Legislation is recommended to establish a permanent Industrial Relations Commission to advise the Department of Employment and Productivity (the new name of the Ministry of Labour) on the reform of industrial relations and to investigate and report on problems arising, but without any power to compel.

The local agreements will have to be registered with the Department, at first by large firms, but eventually by all firms. Employers are asked to encourage workers to join trade unions, unions are encouraged to amalgamate and to reform their organisation and rules.

The existing industrial tribunals set up under the Industrial Training Act 1964 which also deals with disputes about redundancy payments and contracts of employment would be renamed “labour tribunals” and would have their powers enlarged to cover all disputes between employer and worker about contracts of employment, etc., including a new statutory protection against “unfair dismissal”. These tribunals would also deal with employers' claims for damages for breach of contract.

When the Royal Commission was set up there were those who feared drastic changes in trade union law, measures to cut down the activities of shop stewards and penalties against unofficial strikers. The Report contains hardly anything to confirm the fears—hence the anger and disappointment of the Economist (also of the Sunday Times and Financial Times).

The Economist (15 June) starts off with the following lament:

  The report of Lord Donovan’s royal commission on trade unions and employers' associations represents the high water mark of the particular sort of British indecisiveness which has done most to damage the country in this third quarter of the twentieth century. After three years' study, the commission reports that Britain’s system of industrial relations is in a uniquely horrible mess, but that it is for boards of directors of individual companies to bring about a change: except that it oddly believes directors would be helped to do so by a requirement that all firms with more than 5,000 employees (and, eventually, smaller firms) should register every factory agreement they make with trade unions, or else an explanation why they have made no such agreements, for vague vetting by a body of bureaucrats in a new Industrial Relations Commission, which would not, however, have any executive powers.
  It is not a caricature to say that the establishment of this vacuous research body is the main government action definitely recommended in the general body of the report, although half of the 12 signatories then express significant dissatisfaction with what they have just unanimously signed.

The Economist is particularly irate over the Commission's lack of unanimity about withdrawing from unregistered or deregistered bodies (all unions would in future be registered) the protection which the 1906 Act gives against suits for damages when strikes take place without due notice.

The majority of the Commission’s members want this immunity to continue for registered unions but not for unregistered bodies, but Mr. Woodcock, General Secretary of the TUC, and four other members of the Commission strongly dissented and the Economist fears that the Government will follow the Woodcock line.

The Government did not immediately declare what action they proposed to take on any of the Commission’s recommendations though Mrs. Castle promised quick consideration and an early announcement. The Economist, which wants strong action to curb the unofficial strikes and to remove the immunity now possessed by trade unions under the law, expects nothing to its liking, and is resigned to seeing “the horrible mess” continue—but not indefinitely. Counting on a Conservative Government after the next General Election it looks forward to the reopening of the issue. “The practical result is that the real reform to trade union legislation is now likely to have to be left to the next Conservative government and will probably have to be fought through the next Parliament as a partisan measure against fierce opposition from a Labour Party which will say that a Royal Commission intimated that reform was wrong”.

When the Royal Commission was set up it was given the task of considering the role of trade unions and employers’ associations “in promoting the interests of their members”. Had there been any socialists on the Commission they would have pointed out that the interest of the workers is not to co-operate with their exploiters, the capitalists, but to replace capitalism by Socialism, a social system in which employers and employed, the wages system and trade unions alike would have no place.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Review Column: Martin Luther King (1968)

The Review Column from the May 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Martin Luther King

Even before the killing of Martin Luther King, this summer promised to be a bad one for race troubles in America. Many city authorities, fearing an intensifying of the riots, had armed themselves with some formidable weapons. 

The Negroes were also preparing and waiting, with no lack of black nationalists to advise them on how to use arms, petrol bombs and the like. This menacing situation was ignited by the assassination of Martin Luther King and the death of the advocate of passive resistance was, ironically, marked by a flare-up of the very violence he denounced.

King had, in fact, been losing some ground to the groups like Black Power and this in itself is symptomatic of the change which America has undergone during the last twenty years; The suppression which the Negroes have suffered for so long was bound one day to erupt. For too long have they been denied the vote, subjected to a host of indignities and restraints. For too long has colour discrimination been a part of the American way of life. For too long has a coloured life been cheap so that, in some states, the murder of a Negro counts for little more than the killing of an insect—and the body silently disappears into some southern swamp.

The predictable result of this has been the Negro protest, the riots and the rise of the Black Power theorists. Kill Whitey and Burn, Baby, Burn are sterile remedies for the Negroes’ frustrations—but who, or what, must bear the blame for them?

Martin Luther King, for all his courage, had little more to offer the American Negroes than a place beside the country’s white workers. For most coloured workers, this is their highest aim—the right of access to the same sort of employment, the same sort of working class homes, the same sort of terms from the hire purchase company, as others.

Many have died in the long history of the American Negro, and many will die in the future. Is the result of it all only to be the exchange of one kind of oppression for another?

Wilson's Latest Gimmick

Harold Wilson, it is said, has always thought Macmillan made a serious mistake when in July 1962, in panic at the Orpington by-election result, he butchered so many of his Cabinet.

Wilson, it is true, has shown no comparable ruthlessness—and if ever a Prime Minister had cause to panic he has now. But panic or not the latest government reshuffle, which had already been dubbed by Richard Crossman in fashionable technological jargon as Wilson Cabinet Mark II, was plainly inspired by the government’s low popularity.

The big move was that of Barbara Castle from Transport to the new Ministry which will combine some of the work of the Ministry of Labour and the Department of Economic Affairs. Castle has proved in her term at the Ministry of Transport that she is a cunning politician and a master of the art of public relations. It was a shrewd, if despairing, move to give her the job of kindling the government’s latest pillar of fire—the promise that, if we all concentrate on productivity wage restraint will come off and we shall soon arrive at the Promised Land.

This must have been about the only ember Wilson was able to find, as he raked about in the ashes of his defeats— his unpopularity, the sour memory of his National Plan, the ludicrous impotence of his Rhodesia policy, the long list of broken promises. Castle, the one-time firebrand, Aldermaston marcher, anti-apartheid campaigner, could be just the person to fan the ember into flame and to mislead the working class into a belief that, whatever may have happened in the past, there is some hope for them in the future.

The working class, as we know, can be infuriatingly gullible. But are they really so far gone that they will be impressed by this latent, and emptiest, of gimmicks?

Johnson—All The Way?

Will LBJ go all the way? Whatever he may have said about his firm intention not to run for office in November, there is still a chance that this is no irreversible decision.

The mounting opposition to Johnson's policies, and the explosive frustration at his failure to build the Great Society to order, seemed to have put him on a hiding to nothing. His one chance was to opt for the nothing, and some of his conduct since his renunciation—for example the peace moves in Vietnam—suggests that he is now trying to build up a campaign from there.

Whatever the truth of this, there is no denying that Johnson had found himself with hardly any room to manoeuvre—an unusual plight for the master politician, the ace fixer, the famous wheeler-dealer. This was the man who convinced millions of Americans that he was their saviour, who won an unprecedented victory in 1964, who was so recently the object of mass adulation. Now, Johnson has given up, or at best is struggling desperately for survival.

There is nothing unprecedented in this. One after another, politicians come, see the problems of capitalism and conquer with their promises to cure them. It does not usually take long for reality to assert itself, for the anarchies of capitalism to expose the promises and to turn the blind faith of the followers in their leader into angry disillusionment.

This has happened to Johnson and it has happened in this country to Harold Wilson, who came to power at the same time as Johnson won his famous victory and who is now similarly discredited and disliked. The fact is that capitalism’s leaders cannot control the system and they cannot break its problems. They themselves are the ones to be broken—and usually the more they promise, the greater the enthusiasm for them, the higher they climb in popular acclaim, the lower and harder they fall.

Left Foot, Right Foot (1990)

From the January 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

Many a premature obituary was provoked by Michael Foot's announcement that he will not be standing for Parliament again. There was no dissension from the opinion that he is a learned, courteous and sincere man. Another thing provoked by the news would be a massive flutter in the ambitious hearts of all who hope to become a Labour MP in the near future, for down in his Blaenau Gwent constituency Tories are like a threatened species and Foot sits on a majority of nearly 28,000. As the late Richard Crossman pointed out in his Backbench Diaries, the comfort of an unassailable majority works wonders for an MP's morale and has a perceptive influence on how the lucky Member views the topics and crises of the day. Whoever gets the Blaenau Gwent nomination will be one of the most comfortable and morale-full in the Commons. 

But back to those obituaries, which said so many nice things about Foot, among them that he will be sadly missed in Westminister not just for his sincerity and courtesy but also because he is something called a "great parliamentarian". It is clear that "great parliamentarians" are pretty rare in all sorts of ways, for example a left-winger like Foot can be one and so can a right-winger like Enoch Powell. In fact between these two, who in theory should be sworn enemies until the end of time, there has long existed a state of mutual admiration. "He speaks beautiful English", said Powell of Foot. "The greatest master of clear exposition of British post-1945 politics", wrote Foot of Powell. Perhaps on the principle that it is not what you say that counts but how elegantly you say it, Great Parliamentarians stick together, offering the kind of speeches which bring MPs flocking from the tea-room and the bar. They know a lot about parliament's history and its arcane procedural devices. They deeply respect its power to uphold the private property system on the basis of popular votes from the working class. The question is, whose advantage does this serve and what is its relevance in the case of the soon-to-be-ex-Member for Blaneau Gwent? 　

Accustomed pose 

Except for those who are aware of how capitalist politics tames its rebels—in the case of the Labour Party, moving them smoothly from left to right—it is strange to recall the revulsion which Foot once provoked, in his own party as well as among its opponents. Only Aneurin Bevan was considered to be wilder and more threatening among the bogey-men who would nationalise everything in sight and so undermine the nation's morals that not a single Knightsbridge nanny would be safe. Foot was among the most restless and damaging of the critics of the Attlee government after the war, a moving influence in the operations of the Tribune Group which was named after the gadfly journal of which he became editor in 1948. 

From the time when he was first elected to parliament in 1945 until he became a Cabinet minister in the 1974 Labour government Foot could be relied on, whenever the Labour Party were under pressure to accept some inconvenient reality of capitalism, to strike his accustomed pose as the incorruptible guardian of Labour's virtue. He usually did this with some passion. which impressed those who agreed with him. At the 1959 Labour Conference, for example, when the party were being forced by their third successive defeat at a general election to consider how many of their supposedly eternal and cherished principles they should abandon if they were not to suffer yet another mauling at the polls. Foot came to the rostrum to defend nationalisation to, according to the Guardian, "a tremendous roar of applause". At their 1960 Conference, in the debate on nuclear disarmament when Gaitskell promised to fight and fight and fight again, Foot "was given a clapping, stamping, cheering ovation as he took the microphone". When the Labour whip was withdrawn from him, over the same issue of unilateralism, in 1961 it served only to reinforce the adoration in which he was held by Labour's tireless left-wingers. Here, they drooled, was a man who could always be trusted, a steadfast martyr in the defence of what they imagined were the principles of socialism. 　

In fact from the beginning Foot showed evidence that he was a lot more selective and flexible in his principles and his concern for working class interests. During his first spell as editor of Tribune (1948-52) the journal was critical of the Attlee government but as long as Bevan was a member of that government Tribune gave it general support. This stance caused it to support a number of obviously anti-working class measures, among them the NATO pact (the formal recognition of a nuclear-armed, European power bloc, dominated by American capitalism and aimed at Russian expansionism), the Berlin airlift (in response to an attempt by Russian capitalism to strengthen its position in Eastern Europe), and Britain joining the Korean War (a defence of the interests of western capitalism, in particular of America and Britain, against a threatened incursion by a developing capitalism in China). Anyone professing to be concerned with working class interests and with the international unity of the workers—especially anyone editing an influential journal like Tribune—had no argument for taking the side of any of the capitalist powers. They should have pointed out the nature of the conflicts and their underlying cause. They should have urged workers everywhere, on both sides of the Iron Curtain, to stay out of the disputes of their ruling classes and instead work for world-wide working class solidarity for socialism. 　

Of course, Foot joined CND and was one of the few bigwigs to actually to complete the Easter march, as distinct from joining it briefly at a place chosen for its photo opportunity. His rebellious stand against those bits of Labour policy which he found it inconvenient to support landed him in frequent trouble with the whips. According to Castle, in June 1966 he was complaining that the Wilson government should have applied a "soak the rich" budget policy and that people like judges and doctors should have had a pay cut while the seamen (who were in dispute with the Labour government over their wages) had a good cause. In February 1968 he was willing to risk a defeat for the government rather than support their proposed expenditure cuts which, among other things, abolished free milk in secondary schools. As a result there was a general assumption that Foot would never be a member of any government, that he would never sell his principles in exchange for office. 

Minister of Unemployment 

However in the 1970s it became apparent that Foot was not, after all, entirely lacking in ambition. He stood three times for the Deputy Leadership before, in 1974, he became a minister. By that time he was re-established as an MP, after inheriting the old seat at Ebbw Vaie of his hero Bevan. To bring Foot into the Cabinet was a typically Wilsonian masterstroke. After the three-day-week chaos of Heath's battle with the miners, who better to put in charge of the Department of Employment with the clear and simple brief of buying the miners' return to work? Wilson was trading on Foot's reputation with the grass-roots and, whether Foot was aware of it or not, the ruse worked. 

Two years later Wilson's successor as Prime Minister, Callaghan, pulled yet another stroke when he made Foot leader of the House of Commons. At other times this would have seemed the unlikeliest of alliances; Foot had once called his new boss PC Callaghan and Callaghan had been in favour of Foot's expulsion from the party. Those were difficult days for the Labour government as they struggled to weather some typical economic storms and to hold down wages, without the security of a reliable majority. It then became clear that Foot was not only a "great parliamentarian" but also a master of Commons procedure and of bending the rules in order to push through unpopular legislation. One trick he used to get approval for some cuts in expenditure was to make them the subject of a vote on the adjournment, the idea being that a defeat would have been interpreted as a rejection of the adjournment and not of the cuts. In 1978 Foot traded an extension of homosexual law reform—a concept which should have been dear to his libertarian heart—for the votes of the Ulster Unionists.

The difficulties of that government were largely those of holding back the wage claims which came in a flood after the years of restraint under Heath. Labour's restraint had a different name; it was called a Pay Code and there were guidelines (that is, before the attempts at imposing the policy by law). The most active proponent of the government in its battles with the workers was Callaghan's Leader of the Commons, described by Castle as "more rigid than Jim Callaghan was in his Chancellor days". Obsessed with the need to keep in power a government which was industriously attacking working class living standards, Foot applied his ability to defuse and divert criticism. Castle recorded, whether in wonder or outrage is not clear, that at the 1975 Tribune rally Foot "even managed to make the pay policy sound like a socialist crusade". He did not manage to work the sane trick over unemployment, to make being out of work sound like a crusade; which was just as well because during his time as Secretary of State for Employment unemployment doubled. 

The Voters' Judgement 

When it came time for the voters to pass judgement on that Labour government it was clear that they did not have the same order of priorities as Foot. But was there really any need for the Labour Party to become so unhinged by their defeat as to elect Foot as their leader—as they hoped—for next Prime Minister? Was this what all those years of passionate rebellion had been for? Looked at in terms of the ugly game of capitalist politics this was arguably one of the most unwise decisions ever made, for whatever qualities Foot had they did not match up to what is considered necessary in a political leader. But Foot could not be accused of not trying; the aptitude for manoeuvring he showed in trying to keep his party In power was just as evident when he was trying to get them back in again. At the 1981 Labour Conference he assured cheering delegates that "nothing that I've seen persuades me that CND was wrong". But any hopes among Labour's unilateralists that at last they had a leader who would see to it that the British forces scrapped their nuclear weapons were soon dashed. Fifteen months later Foot was telling the Guardian (6 December 1982) that CND's policy of immediate unilateral nuclear disarmament was, if not wrong, then only something for a vague future: "We want to move towards a non-nuclear defence programrne". 

At the 1981 Conference, in a typical splurge of rhetoric, he described himself as "a peacemonger, an inveterate incurable peacemonger" but by the outbreak of the Falklands War in the following April his peacemongering had been cured enough for him to swallow the specious Tory propaganda about the war being in resistance to brutal Argentinian aggression and their repression of the islanders, assuring Thatcher in the Commons: 

"It is because I subscribe to that principle (sic) that I support the despatch of the task force". 

The militancy of his peacemongering was also measured by the revelation from the odious Robin Day that Foot had approved the sinking of the Belgrano which, as it cost the lives of a few hundred Argentinian rather than British workers, was not classified in this country as an act of brutal aggression. 

Foot's cynical groping for power came to its peak in the 1983 election when he enjoyed himself stumping the country, making fiery speeches to packed halls but not meeting with the approval of the image-conscious pros of his party. His legendary scruffiness had always been tolerated, for example by Callaghan who thought "that it springs from his unspoken assumption that these are but the trappings and that a man should be judged by the sincerity and passion of his convictions". How then should we judge Foot's submission to the image-makers who strove to create a more acceptable, a more voter-friendly appearance for him, barbering his hair, dressing him in smart suits and even replacing his famous spectacles with their blinkers with a more telegenic pair? It was, politically speaking, not a pretty sight and of course did not win the votes because Labour's defeat at that election was their heaviest since 1931. 

Squalid scene 

And what of Foot since he relinquished the leadership for the more easeful life of a back-bencher with a solidly comforting majority? Has he been reborn as a fanatical lefty, a looming threat to the tea-rooms of Bournemouth and Tunbridge Wells? Since he was succeeded by Neil Kinnock (who in his younger days as a left-wing rebel was a protégé of Foot's) the Labour Party has been trying, as much to Foot's dismay it had done in 1959 to look as much like the Tories as it can. Once again they are debasing what the membership are supposed to cherish as immutable principles without which there is no reason to be in politics. In 1983 the party at least professed to have a timescale, however loose, for running down British nuclear weapons; now there is no such thing. They have abandoned the policy of "squeezing the rich" through taxation and replaced it with vague discussion of "fair" taxation (as if it matters either way). To the trade unions they offer no commitment to scrap all the restrictive Tory legislation but float the idea of a "balanced package" which is another name for the Social Contract, Pay Code and all other such attempts to restrain pay claims. Whatever opposition to these changes there has been in the Labour Party it has not been warmed by any incendiary words from Foot. He has sat mute and compliant and when the time comes he will undoubtedly give the whole disreputable exercise his active support, in speeches which will convince the disappointed Labour supporters that anti-working class policies are steps towards the Promised Land when all people will be free and equal. 

Michael Foot is not unique, for there have been many other Labour leaders who have first established their credentials as heroes of the grass-roots and then exploited their popularity to justify policies which were clearly opposed to what they claimed to stand for. This is part of the continuing process in which the working class are deceived that this social system, and its political parties, do not have to be as they are but could be better under a different government, under more humane leaders. This is among the most dangerous of illusions, for it conceals the urgency of abolishing capitalism, at once and entirely. Foot is soon to leave this squalid scene and he has no cause to be proud of his contribution to it. 

Ivan

When Labour ruled (1) (1991)

From the November 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

On 3 September, the Rt Hon Baroness Castle of Blackburn appeared on the Channel Four "Opinions" programme to urge us not to let that marvellous achievement, The Welfare State, be taken away from us. She reminisced for half-an-hour upon the setting up of the National Health Service and how the post-war Labour governments engaged experts to explain to them what poverty was, so that they could devise schemes like Family Allowances in an attempt to combat it.

While fondly remembering her own part as plain Barbara Castle in all the this, she seemed to forget her part in Labour's other record on poverty: its consistent and often vicious efforts to hold down wages—at the same time as inflating the currency to make them worth less.

The Welfare State was only ever a collection of schemes for regulating poverty. Full-scale war had brought out clearly again, as in 1914, what a sorry state the British working class was in. Armed forces medical staff found that a large proportion of the conscripts were undernourished and unhealthy—not the stuff of which efficient, ruthless fighting machines are made. The Liberal, Sir William (later Lord) Beveridge was commissioned by the wartime coalition government to produce a report suggesting practical means by which British capitalism could ensure that it had a healthy and efficient workforce for the economic war that would follow the bombing war.

The war was a crisis for British capitalism. No-one knew how it would end. Like the economist Keynes, some years before, many of the British capitalist class feared that a social system which could produce a slump like that of the 1930s and then a war like that of the 1940s might well be overthrown, particularly as Russia (which they thought of as socialist) was one of the main allies against Germany, Italy and Japan. Many politicians, particularly Labour and Liberal, felt that the state must intervene to ameliorate the worst effects of unemployment, dire poverty and the poor health that resulted from them. Keynes had assured them that it was possible for governments to prevent slumps and unemployment through applying appropriate fiscal controls.

Discussion about post-war society and what it should be like began quite early on in the war. Propaganda films and radio broadcasts for civilians as well as the armed forces placed considerable emphasis upon "what we were fighting for" as well as what the war was supposed to be against.

The wartime conditions in which this discussion took place was those of extensive state control. Political parties had been been largely submerged in the coalition government and almost every aspect of civilian life was controlled, as it was for soldiers, sailors and airmen. By the time the war ended, state control of the economy and of a great part of people's lives had come to seem normal and inevitable to the British working class.

Labour takes charge

The Second World War gave the Labour Party its greatest opportunity. But it also exposed its fundamental impotence as a party to represent the British working class. The editorial in the March 1943 Socialist Standard put it like this:

The latest tragi-comedy is the complete outmanoeuvring of the Labour Party on the Beveridge Report. They have demanded for years (as a stepping stone to something or other) a much improved system of unemployment and sickness benefits and old-age pensions. One familiar demand put forward at Labour Party (e.g., in 1923) was that unemployment pay should be at trade union rates. Along comes the capitalist politician Beveridge with a much less favourable scheme, and the Labour Party, fearful lest this second-best scheme should be endangered, gives it their qualified approval. Now the Government announces that it too approves of the scheme, but with modifications and postponements. The Labour Party, now fearful of "diehard" opposition, finds itself hesitant about endangering the modified scheme, which is, in itself, two steps backward from its own. But how can it deny its own doctrine that "anything is better than nothing"?

The Family Allowances  Act, as a first stage in a comprehensive social security scheme, was introduced by the coalition government in 1945. The Labour government, elected with an overwhelming majority in July of that year, seized upon the whole Beveridge scheme as its own and introduced the National Insurance Act in 1946.  

Austerity

A great deal of rationing and many wartime controls were continued under the post-war Labour government. Like a good, capitalist government, they were concerned in case workers should force up wages under conditions of expanding production and full employment, so reducing profits, and they imposed a wage freeze.

The level of optimism in the country was high and the Labour Party was able to plead for tolerance from the workers towards the austerity regime the government was maintaining, on the grounds that it would only be a temporary state of affairs until expanding industrial output brought full prosperity. The absolutely vital thing, they insisted, was for workers to work harder and produce more for export. However, in spite of assurances by the Deputy Prime Minister, Herbert Morrison, to a meeting of cotton workers in Manchester in April 1948, the British textile industry was already meeting intense competition and protectionism from the USA and Japan. The confident assurances of full employment  upon which the whole plan rested were already beginning to look unrealistic in the competitive post-war world.

In 1949, the Labour government suffered its first financial crisis and the pound fell sharply in value. The government devalued it by 30 percent, after denying that it would do so. In October, the government passed the National Health Service (Amendment) Act, taking the power to impose a charge on prescriptions, although they did not impose one. In 1951, a further Act did impose charges for false teeth and glasses. After two elections in that year a sufficient number of the British working class voted Conservative to throw Labour out.

It was not simply the long succession of increases in health charges that followed which eroded British workers' faith in the Welfare State: the state itself had repeatedly even under Labour revealed its true colours as the agent of the employing class. It used laws and the courts to hold down wages, and it used troops to break strikes. Above all, however, the lie that governments could control the economy was exposed so often that hardly anyone could go on believing it.

For socialists, the trouble has been that this hotch-potch of poor relief and incomes control, together with the nationalisation of major industries, was called "socialism" by the Labour Party themselves as well by other politicians such as Margaret Thatcher. The result has been that, as well as becoming rightly sceptical about politicians' promises, many of our fellow workers gave become completely cynical about all political action. We have a lot of work to do.

Ron Cook

Next month we look at the anti-working-class record of the Wilson government which managed the affairs of British capitalism between 1964 and 1970.