Life and Times: You park, we charge (2025)

The Life and Times column from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Parking fines have been in the news lately, especially those levied by private parking companies and technically called ‘parking charges’. A large number of car parks are owned by or outsourced to these companies. They go by various names, for example Euro Car Parks, Excel Parking, Parking Eye, Total Parking Solutions, Britannia Parking, National Car Parks. The first you know you’ve been fined (or charged) by one of them is when you receive a letter in the post giving you details of what you’ve done wrong and instructing you to pay them an amount of money – usually £100 but £60 if you pay within 14 days. They make payment simple – by phone or online. You’re also given the option of appealing the charge, but, as everyone who’s ever tried that knows, appeals are rarely successful.

Eternity

This came close to home for me recently, when a friend asked me if I could help her appeal against a charge for not parking her car entirely within the confines of a parking bay. It was unfair, she said, since her limited personal mobility meant she needed extra space on the driver’s side to get out of the car and this caused her to park just over the line on the passenger side. And as she’d parked in the last bay of the row – the only one available – and the other side was just empty space, she was not occupying part of another bay or causing any other obstruction. It seemed cut and dried to me that the charge was unfair and unreasonable and that it would be overturned, especially given my friend’s disability.

But that’s not what happened. Her appeal was rejected by the parking company (Eternity Fire and Security), the reason being given that ‘the vehicle was not parked correctly within the markings of a bay or space’, meaning that ‘the terms and conditions of the car park were not followed’. It was also stated that ‘parking out of marked bays can cause obstruction, inconvenience and safety hazards to other users of the car park’. So no account whatever was being taken either of the fact that my friend was disabled (her car was displaying a blue badge) or of the fact that, since the bay in question was the last one in a row, she could not have been causing ‘obstruction, inconvenience or safety hazards’. She was invited, if not satisfied, to appeal further to what was called an Independent Appeals Service, POPLA (Parking on Private Land Appeals).

POPLA

I advised her to do this. If POPLA was independent, surely it would see sense and reject Eternity’s decision? But no. It came back with confirmation of the decision on the grounds that ‘POPLA cannot allow an appeal based on mitigating circumstances’. I found this astonishing and my obvious question was on what basis could they ever allow an appeal? But it was sort of answered when I typed POPLA into the internet. I found its average score of 1.3 out of 5 on the Trustpilot site together with a profusion of negative comments. One of them said ‘private parking companies are the scum of the earth’, and another effectively summed things up by writing: ‘Comes across as heavily weighted towards the operator rather than a proper appeals process. They rejected my appeal on the basis of claims provided by the operator’. That said it all, so I wasn’t surprised when my friend received a further letter from POPLA telling her that she must pay without delay and it had now gone up from the original £60 to £100.

DCBL

We both agreed that she shouldn’t pay and wrote back to Eternity explaining again why and basically saying ‘see you in court’. Their response was yet another demand for payment and, after a further reply from us, a ‘Notice of Debt recovery’ letter from DCBL (Debt Collection Bailiffs Ltd) arrived threatening court action. This, it was stated, could lead to consequences like ‘further fees and costs’ and ‘prevention of future lending’. The amount demanded was now £170. Our further response was that we were sure that a court would see the reasonableness of our mitigation and throw out their case, probably with costs to us.

We couldn’t be sure of this of course, but there had been a recent case in the news where a company who took someone to court claiming over £11,000 had their case thrown out and were ordered by a judge to pay over £10,000 themselves to a charity. I duly drew DCBL’s attention this (tinyurl.com/4uranrzz), but their only response was to send me a ‘final reminder’. Another ‘final reminder’ has arrived since. We have ignored both. Will they take us to court? Well, I obviously can’t be sure they won’t, but I sort of doubt it, especially in view of the recent publicity about such cases, the obvious weakness of trying to rely entirely on formal ‘terms and conditions’ without attempting to consider other relevant factors, and also the fact – which I also made sure was drawn to their attention – that, under the Equality Act 2010, ‘reasonable adjustment has to be made for disabled people’. So watch this space.

Money and profit

What to make of all this? Well, first of all, the very existence of a plethora of parking companies whose purpose is to make money for landowners or investors either by charging people to park their cars or fining them for not carrying out the operation correctly is a prime example of how the system we live in is ruled by money and profit and not by human need. Secondly the practice of issuing fines (or ‘charges’) and pursuing people for payment, of appeal processes, of debt collection and then maybe court hearings are among the many examples of the enormous waste of human energy and resources inherent in the system we live under. It is a prime example of how that system spawns vast amounts of socially unproductive activities resulting in complex bureaucracies that need servicing and in large numbers of people doing jobs that they themselves can take little satisfaction from rather than being able to exercise their talents and capabilities in cooperative and socially productive ways.

Howard Moss

Business methods undermine health service (1994)

From the August 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

In recent years there have been a number of sinister changes in the National Health Service. The use of deliberately deceptive rhetoric employed in the 1989 White Paper Working for Patients has tried to disguise the fact that the NHS is becoming increasingly subjected to market forces to the detriment of patient care and is becoming increasingly undemocratic. Expressions of dissent are stifled by getting rid of medical and nursing staff who protest at the deterioration in health care.

With a record 1.07 million people on the waiting list for treatment and an estimated two million people waiting for their first appointment before they can even join an official waiting list (Guardian, 7 May), it is clear that there is something seriously wrong with the health service.

Of more serious concern is the fact that so many people are ill. Poverty is the main contributory factor of ill-health and the increase in morbidity rates in recent years reflects the attacks on the living standards of the workers and the continued high rates of unemployment caused by capitalism’s slump.

Almost half the health trusts are failing to reach their financial targets and in 1992-93, £265 million had to be borrowed from the government or from banks and underwritten from taxes (Observer, 22 May).

To try to save money the Mancunian Community Trust is sending letters to its staff asking them if they want to take breaks to start families, take up courses or work overseas. All of these options are cheaper than redundancies, but the Trust’s chief executive Elizabeth Law has warned that if the workforce cannot be reduced by voluntary means then people may have to be forced out (Manchester Metro News, 27 May).

More bureaucrats

Administrative costs in the internal market have risen from four percent in the mid-1980s to eleven percent of NHS spending by 1993, and there are now half as many administrators and clerical staff as there are nurses in British hospitals.

In fact, when one considers that nurses work a three-shift system to cover 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are actually more clerical and administrative staff working in hospitals on weekdays than there are nurses.

The Health Secretary has the power to appoint the general managers of large hospitals and the chairpersons of trusts are political appointees: Ann Parkinson, Sheila Taylor, Sarah Biffen and Mary Archer, all wives of well-known Conservatives, are on the boards of trust hospitals. The government has succeeded in pushing through unpopular measures by political appointments and patronage. Thus, lacking control of local councils in many areas, Conservative ideology can be imposed on the electorate which would have been opposed by councillors on the old boards.

The NHS has never been particularly democratic. Nurses have been subjected to a para-military, hierarchical management which has placed them in a subordinate position to medical staff. A questioning attitude has been discouraged; speaking out considered "unprofessional". Consequently, very few nurses have spoken out about shortcomings in the service or their terms of employment. In the past, large numbers of immigrant nurses were dependent on hospital employment for a place to live and continued stay in this country. And this made criticism extremely difficult because of the risks of speaking out.

Doctors have always been in a privileged position in terms of pay, status and power in the NHS and have been able to speak up for their patients. But in the last fifteen years this has begun to change. Doctors who speak out about shortcomings in their hospitals now risk disciplinary action being taken against them.

Disciplinary action

Early in 1990 Dr Helen Zeitlin, a consultant haematologist at Alexandra Hospital, Redditch spoke at a public meeting against the hospital becoming a self-governing trust. She also criticised the shortage of nursing staff at the hospital (Guardian, 10 May 1991). In November 1990 Dr Zeitlin was told that disciplinary action would be taken against her for misuse of a nursing report on staffing levels. Redundancy was then proposed, only to be changed for a different set of disciplinary charges. These charges were then dropped and Dr Zeitlin was made redundant with 24 hours notice instead of the usual three months.

Hospital bosses sometimes go to extreme lengths to silence critics. Dr Bridget O'Connell worked as a consultant paediatrician at the King George Hospital, Ilford from 1977 until the end of 1982 when she was suspended because of her alleged "inability to relate effectively with clinical colleagues". Significantly, this occurred after she had complained to management of her concern about the standard of care within the paediatric service. For the next eleven-and-a-half years Dr O’Connell remained suspended on full pay of about £50,000 a year before the North Thames Regional Board withdrew all allegations, apologised and paid damages believed to be a six-figure sum (Guardian, 7 May).

A doctor was dismissed in 1993 in Cornwall for misconduct. Nurses had pressure put on them to keep secret diaries of her activities to provide evidence which could be used against her (Nursing Tunes, 13 April).

The row caused by the disclosure that a consultant in Luton, known to be opposed to trusts, had his telephone bugged by the chief executive forced junior minister, Tom Sackville to intervene. He stated that anyone "bugging" a telephone will be sacked but that individual employers have to decide whether to include confidentiality clauses in their contract of employment (Manchester Evening News, 24 May).

Most nurses have not seen the NHS executive Duncan Nichol’s guidelines on reporting incidents which give rise to concern over treatment or staffing levels, and some NHS trusts have introduced catch-all gagging clauses into nurses’ contracts to prevent them from speaking out, although barrister Michael Douglas has stated that some of them are so broad as to be meaningless (Nursing Times, vol.90, 1994).

Spying, illegal telephone tapping and the use of disciplinary action to silence critics all add to the climate of fear and mistrust pervading the health service. For health workers the message is clear: to speak out against the undemocratic, anti-working-class measures is to risk the sack.

Business methods can never operate in the interests of the workers; the whole history of capitalism has shown that misery always follows in its wake. The NHS, in its slow but inexorable move towards private health care, is showing all the ugly features of capitalism. Only by workers uniting to get rid of capitalism can we stop the misery that the system imposes on our lives.

Carl Pinel

Fabian Notes. (1907)

From the February 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

“The government of the future will be by experts and we, naturally, want to be the experts.”

(H. Snell speaking for the Fabian Society.)

* * *

So now you know, if you did not before, what the Fabian Society are after. Their “Socialism” is government by bureau, and “naturally” (sweet word) they want to be the bureaucrats. “Naturally” they want the plums. “Naturally” they want to sit in the seats of authority and arrange things for the benefit (naturally for the benefit) of the other and somewhat lower orders who do the mere producing.

* * *

“Naturally” these producers will be unable of themselves to administer their own affairs. Because “naturally” such delicately intricate work as will “naturally” be involved in the manipulation of affairs of state, “naturally” demands a special type of mind, specially trained. And obviously, not to say “naturally” the working class qua working class,— the working class that is to say per se,—do not possess such necessary and entirely essential qualities. They must “naturally” look for their administrators, therefore, among the cultured class who, “naturally” endowed with imperial qualities have consecrated their lives to their development and with infinite pains have, rendered themselves fit to enter into the holy of holies from which will issue those inspired directions and words of good counsel without which the labourers in the vineyards (and other places) will be as sheep without a shepherd, as little children stumbling in the dark.

* * *

The members of the Fabian Society having quite clearly all the special equipment necessary, therefore quite “naturally” desire that the working class shall acclaim them the saviours of Society and signify implicit confidence in their capacity by unhesitatingly conceding them the right to govern.

* * *

But I think, I say I think, it will not work out quite like that. I think, mark, I think that there will be some little hesitancy before the working class admit the necessity for the creation of a bureaucratic staff, or a star chamber, or a holy of holies even to such fierce democrats as the Fabian Society. I think it not unlikely that the working class will look somewhat dubiously upon a method of government such as they have been somewhat painfully familiar with for several generations and may even conclude that, on the whole, they would prefer to try something else—a method, for example, by which they themselves would be the dictatorial authority expressing their requirements through administrators who would be mere delegates with their instructions in their pockets. The intellectual equipment of administrators in these circumstances need not necessarily be exceptional.

* * *

Of course the Fabian Society will unanimously agree that such a hypothesis is entirely grotesque. And as the Fabian Society are experts in the grotesque their view may quite properly be given the consideration it so well merits. But as this is my funeral, they need not distress themselves too severely even if I persist in pressing the probability of their super-excellent services being in small demand, and proceed to submit that their idea of government under Socialism is likely to be regarded as antiquated and fitting only to the conditions which obtained in the nightmare days of capitalism. However preposterous it may seem to them, I think it quite possible that as there will be no interests to administer except the interests of the working class, the present geographical unit of alleged representation, based as it is upon the private ownership of the means of life, will be superseded by representation of labour departments. The honourable member for East Loamshire will give way to Citizen Smith, the delegate of the Gasworkers and General Labourers’ Federation or some such labour organisation. As, so far as I have been able to observe, the Fabian Society’s idea of the government of the future rests upon the continuance of the present bureaucratic forms, such an alteration would tend to have the effect of knocking the Fabian Society’s heaven-sent powers somewhat acock.

* * *

Let me submit with becoming humility that the Labour organisations of the future being composed of moderately intelligent men (such intelligence being necessarily antecedent to the Socialist State) might understand almost, if not quite, as well as a Fabian expert—I am charitably assuming that the Fabian expert is not knocked acock as aforesaid—what they required for their own comfort and happiness and might (it’s a most outrageous proposition) even be in a better position than the inspired governmental Shavian to decide upon such changes in the machinery and methods of industry in their own department as would facilitate production and ensure them greater leisure and less arduous labour. And their conferences would instruct their delegate accordingly.

* * *

It’s an interesting subject and my vagrom speculations could, I am sure, be extended to cover several more columns at least. But the exigencies of space and pressure of many matters force me to an immediate closure. I will only add that in all my anticipations of the probable outworkings of the Socialist Society of tomorrow I can, without allowing my imagination to riot, easily conceive that there will be no overpowering necessity for any legislative holy of holies or for any administrative caste, or for any bureau of inspired experts. And however natural the longing of the “culchawed” Fabian may be for the seat of authority and the halo of beneficent superiority, it may well chance that he will not be appreciated at anything like his own estimated worth, and it may even happen in that event, that he will find himself in the unhappy position of being obliged to devote himself to the acquisition of some information likely to make of him a useful member of Society. I would therefore respectfully advise him to start trying to pick up the rudiments of a helpful calling—say woodchopping—lest the revolution overtake him while he is still endeavouring to articulate his vain regrets—his very vain regrets.

A. James

Life and Times: Small change in the small claims (2023)

The Life and Times column from the September 2023 issue of the Socialist Standard

A friend recently asked me to assist her in taking a roofer she’d employed to the Small Claims Court. The work he’d done, she said, was so poor that she needed to employ someone else to put it right and she felt justified in taking out a case against him to claim the extra money it was going to cost her. That was around £3,000 and she didn’t have it.

A speedy resolution?

I’d been told that the Small Claims Court was a place where, for a small fee, you could go to an informal hearing in front of a judge for a speedy resolution of your case. In the event what I discovered was entirely different. You could indeed go to this Court to claim any amount under £10,000 by filling in a relatively simple form and paying a sum of around 10% of the money you were claiming, which you hoped would be added to the amount you were awarded at the end. But any simplicity ended there and what came next was unbounded complication.

First of all, the defendant, the roofer, on receiving notice of the claim against him, denied all responsibility and issued a counter-claim arguing that my friend actually owed him money since he’d miscalculated the cost of the materials he’d used, even though he’d not told her about that at the time. Manifestly absurd of course, but the Court then ordered her to respond to his claim and send that response both to him and the Court. Then, when, after several weeks she received the roofer’s response to her own claim, she was instructed to respond to that as well.

Pompous judge

Eventually, some weeks later, a date was set for a ‘preliminary hearing’. The day came and I accompanied my friend. To say what happened at the hearing was – what’s the word, farcical? overblown? – I don’t know. I imagined we would have a chance to put our case to the Court directly. Instead, the judge, who really was the proverbial pompous ass, told us that the point of the hearing was not for him to hear what we had to say but to inform us how the case would progress henceforth. He then took 45 minutes to impart much largely irrelevant information, only at the end of which did he lay down instructions – of an incredibly complicated nature -about what we now needed to do. Though the roofer was clearly a hostile opponent, we should get together with him to seek and agree on an independent assessor who would draw up a report on the work done, for which we should expect to pay around £1,500, the cost to be shared by both parties. There would then be another £300+ to pay towards the cost of the final hearing, which amount would fall upon my friend. The hearing itself, referred to by the judge as ‘the trial’ would, he decided, last a whole day sometime in the future.

We were discouraged to say the least, and even more so a couple of weeks later when we received the judge’s formal written instructions confirming what he had said but adding a few additional hurdles. One of these was to supply both the Court and the defendant with all relevant documentation (contracts, bills, plans, photos, valuations, etc.) within a very limited timescale. Another was to send to everyone involved, ahead of the ‘trial, a ‘hearing bundle’ containing all items of evidence from both sides ‘with an index at the front and with each page numbered’ and ‘contained in a suitable ring binder’. All this for a hearing where £3,000 might or might not be granted on an undetermined day in the future.

Bemused

What would most people do in the circumstances? My friend, understandably bemused by all this, asked me what I thought. My advice to her was that, despite the blatant injustice of it, she needed to drop the case on the grounds that it just wasn’t worth the time, energy and stress of it all. She agreed readily and said she realised that the ‘Civil Justice Centre’, which was responsible for processing the claim, had at best a tenuous connection with justice, its main concern being the discharge of bureaucratic procedures. So we put together a letter stating that the absurdly heavy-handed way in which our simple claim was being handled left us with no choice but to discontinue it. As for paying for the extra work that needed to be done, she told me she would try and get an additional loan on her mortgage from the bank she held it with. Not ideal of course, but anything seemed better for her than staying in the bureaucratic maze she’s entered.

Human energy wasted

What to conclude? Well, first of all, the very existence of the Small Claims Court (also known as the ‘Money Claims Court’) is a prime example of how the system we live in is ruled by money, with workers having to spend much of their time seeking to make sure they have enough of it to keep their heads above water. Even a small overspend or unexpected expense can put someone on the wrong side of solvency and make them have to scramble around, via such routes as the Small Claims Court, to try and put that right. Secondly that Court is just one of the many examples of the enormous waste of human energy and resources inherent in a system that spawns vast amounts of socially unproductive activities resulting in huge complex bureaucracies and large numbers of what have rightly been called ‘bullshit jobs’.

Anyway, there’s no doubt about what I’ll say the next time I hear someone talk about going to the Small Claims Court. ‘Just forget it.’

Howard Moss

Notes by the Way: We Live in Strange Times (1941)

The Notes by the Way Column from the November 1941 issue of the Socialist Standard 

We Live in Strange Times

War is notoriously disrespectful to ancient prejudices and the present war seems to have produced more startling reverses of position than any. Who would have thought, a few years ago, that the time would come when M. Maisky, Bolshevist Ambassador, would be touring British factories urging the workers to work harder, while Lord Beaverbrook, on a visit to Moscow, promises that every tank produced in the week should go straight to the aid of the Russian army ?

The Daily Express (September 23rd, 1941) had the following two news items : —

“After M. Maisky had told workers at a tank factory yesterday, “We will go on fighting to the end until our enemy is crushed for ever,” the works manager mounted a tank and asked the men, “What is your answer?”

“More tanks,” they chorused. 

“Then go to it,” he replied, and they immediately swarmed back to their jobs.

An “Aid Russia” plea helped to settle a strike in Glasgow yesterday. Several hundred men at an engineering works, who came out on Saturday, listened to an appeal to return to work immediately to get aid-for-Russia production into full swing, and agreed to do so.”

The correspondent of the Daily Telegraph who visited the factory with M. Maisky reports that “in the factory he saw tanks chalked with slogans such as ‘Another for Joe,’ or with names like Marx, Lenin and Timoshenko,” while at the station when the official party arrived it inspected two tanks, “one flying the Union Jack and the other the Red Flag.”—(Daily Telegraph, September 23rd, 1941.)

Then a few months earlier there had been the little matter of playing the “Internationale” in B.B.C. broadcasts, neatly sidestepped by stopping all such broadcasts. While the argument was in progress the Times, in an editorial, committed itself and said “it was right and reasonable to expect that before long the appropriate addition would be made to the ceremonial array of national anthems.” —(Times, July 11th, 1941.)

* * * *

Religious Items from Moscow and elsewhere

Equally startling has been the news about religion from Moscow. Here are a few items:

A call to all Christians, Protestant and Catholic, to unite in a Holy Crusade against the anti-Christ, Hitler, was broadcast by Moscow last night.

Hitler has launched war against Christian civilisation, said the appeal. He has twisted the Holy Cross into an unholy crooked cross.

The call for a crusade was made particularly to the Christian peoples of Germany and the occupied territories.

“We appeal to all German Christians to fight the Godless regime of Nazism and Hitlerism,” said the announcer.

”That criminal Hitler is urging war against the hundreds of millions of Slav people, the people of those nations which have given the world great writers, thinkers, scientists, and religious martyrs.”-(Sunday Dispatch, August 17th, 1941.)

“The Moscow anti-religious paper, Besbozhnik, has ceased publication. A number of trade papers have been temporarily suspended owing to war conditions. —Reuter. (Manchester Guardian, September 11th, 1941.)

An appeal to the entire Islamic world to rise in the name of Islam “to defend the Moslems and the peoples of Russia, their peaceful life and religion, from the devastation of Fascism,” was made to-day by the head of the Central Mohammedan Administration, the Mufti Abdur Akhman Rasulev.—Associated Press. (Manchester Guardian, September 20th, 1941.)

Religious misgivings over the British-Soviet Alliance are misplaced, writes the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Canterbury Diocesan Gazette.

The Primate gives reasons why Christians should wish “every success to the valiant Russian armies and people.”

Our essential aim is to overthrow the tyranny of evil embodied in the rulers of Germany.

It may well be that Russia’s defence of its own land may lead to religious tolerance by the Soviet Government and a new resurgence of religion always deep-seated in the hearts of the Russians.—(Daily Express, July 24th, 1941.

But while the Bolshevists are able at a gulp to swallow Protestantism, Catholicism, and Moslemism, and the Archbishop is able to remove misgivings about the Bolshevists, the British non-conformists are made of sterner stuff, and still won’t mix with other brands of Christianity: —

“After the lapse of three years the Free Churches have decided against the outline of a scheme for reunion with the Church of England. . . . Episcopacy is still a serious stumbling block . . . and even should an episcopate be agreed to as one organ of a United Church, the Free Churches definitely reject the doctrine of apostolic succession.”—(News-Chronicle, September 23th, 1941.)

* * * *

Men and Women Air-Raid Victims

The Old Technique of “Divide and Rule”

On Saturday, September 20th, a demonstration was held in Trafalgar Square to protest against the Government’s refusal to pay women injured in air-raids the same amount as men. One young woman was there who had lost the sight of both eyes and suffered other serious permanent injuries. She receives 24s. 2d. a week. Had she been a man the amount would have been 34s. 2d.

The demonstration was supported by Labour M.P.s, including Dr. Edith Summerskill, as well as by that persistent defender of capitalism, Lady Astor, M.P. According to the News-Chronicle, the latter said that the Minister of Pensions had expressed the hope that women would “not make this a sex war.” Lady Astor added: —

“We have not done that, but the trade unions and the employers’ organisations have, by giving us unequal compensation”.—(News-Chronicle, September 22nd.)

Mr. A. J. Cummings, writing in the News-Chronicle, backed up the demonstrators: —

“Widespread indignation has been aroused by this strange new injustice, by which the worth of a woman’s body is rated so much lower than that of a man’s.”—(News-Chronicle, September 19th, 1941.)

Before giving the matter any thought most people will allow their natural sympathy with the victims of air-raid injuries to sway them into approval of the sentiments expressed, but it is worth while looking more closely into it. It will be noticed that there was no protest against paying a disabled and blinded man the niggardly amount of 34s. 2d. a week. Common-sense would suggest that if the promoters of the demonstration really wanted to avoid a “sex war” they would have based their claim simply on the fact that the amounts in question are paltry either for a man or a woman and that no approach to a decent living is possible on them. Why was this not done ? Why did not the leading lights get together and decide what larger amount should be aimed at both for men and women ? Doubtless the answer would be that if they had they would have found a cold lack of interest on the part of some of the defenders of capitalism who were willing enough to lend themselves to a “sex war.”

Notice, too, how the wealthy Lady Astor associates herself with her working-class sisters when she condemns those alleged to be responsible for giving “us” unequal compensation. If she were to become a victim does anyone suppose that she would be expected to live on 24s. 2d. a week or 34s. 2d. a week? But then she sees no “injustice” in a system that enables a small number of men and women to have incomes hundreds of times as large as those of the great majority of both sexes.

Then Mr. Cummings is moved by the injustice which rates “the worth of a woman’s body” 10s. a week less than a man’s, but he too is more concerned with this than with the fact that a man’s is rated at only 34s. 2d.

Some of those who use this technique of setting one body of worker against another know exactly what they are doing. They know that capitalism will be safe enough while workers can be divided by nationality, colour, religion, sex, skill, craft or any other side-tracking characteristic. Others are the muddle-headed dupes who cannot see the use that is being made of them. They might start by asking themselves exactly what is the principle they think should underlie the claim they make. Is it the principle of equality for all? If so, they will find Lady Astor and others their bitter enemies. Or is it the principle that while it is most important to have equality between disabled men and disabled women, between men wage-earners and women wage-earners, between men surtax payers and women surtax payers, there is nothing wrong with a system which breeds vast inequality between the classes, between the wealthy property owners and the poverty-stricken workers !

* * * *

What is a Doctor?

Under a sanely ordered social system goods would be produced solely for use and transport and medical and other services would be organised to meet the needs of the population. Not so under capitalism. At least half the energies of those who work are demoted to financial and other activities, the purpose if which is to look after the interests of the propertied class. ‘Bus conductors are not employed primarily to help the passengers but in order to prevent them from travelling without paying fares. Postmen and sorters are largely engaged in preventing evasion of postage and in carrying bills, receipts, cheques, etc., instead of facilitating useful communication. So also with doctors, who are less and less engaged in a disinterested care for health. The following is taken from a report of a recent conference of the British Medical Association: —

“British doctors are to approach the Government with an urgent demand to “cut all the red tape and let us get on with the job.” They complain that they are being overwhelmed by the present system of industrial certification, and are being asked to give certificates outside the scope of their professional duties.

Complaints were fully aired at the British Medical Association Conference yesterday, when nine motions were tabled protesting against the system. The case made out by the doctors is as follows : —

1. Demands for certificates are growing every week. Certificates for munition workers saying that they are unfit for work; certificates entitling expectant mothers to obtain special food; certificates, as one doctor put it, “for everything under the sun, from corsets to oranges and lemons.”

2. Doctors spend so much time signing certificates that they have no time to attend to their ordinary practice.

3. Apart from recognised certificates, employers are inventing their own certificates for their work people “further to harry the overworked general practitioner.”—(Daily Mail, September 13th, 1941.)

* * * *

Have we seen the last Millionaire?

In a broadcast talk on September 7th, 1941, Professor T. Jones spoke of the high rate of taxation now imposed on large incomes and prophesied that “we are almost in sight of the last millionaire.” The professor is being unduly optimistic and perhaps he has not very clear ideas of the way in which millionaires are made. The big fish devour the little ones and each other, and always there is fresh accumulation from the exploitation of the workers. Even if under war conditions large incomes are heavily reduced, war, and the post-war ups and downs of industry lay the foundations for new fortunes and for the increase of old ones. While during the war the prices of shares on the Stock Exchange have generally fallen this has been accompanied by a big rise in the wealth of landowners. According to the agricultural reporter of the Daily Express (September 1st) since the war started there has been a 25 per cent. increase in prices of land. He mentioned a public auction in South Lincs, at which agricultural land was sold at £140 an acre and quoted an estate agent who said that he had a long list of people anxious to buy land “even if the places do not show a profit on the investment.” “All they want to do is to safeguard their capital, and they believe there is less risk attached to land than to any other form of investment.”

As soon as investors believe that the end of the war is in sight with a defeat of Germany the prices of shares on the Stock Exchange will leap ahead and new millionaires will be in process of creation. Already it only needs reports of moderate Russian successes to send up prices. Marshal Budenny’s successful withdrawal of his armies from Kiev was sufficient to send prices “sharply ahead.” (Daily Express, September 24th.)

It is only necessary to recall how vast fortunes were made in shipping, textiles and other industries after the last war. Yet then, too, there were people like Professor Jones who looked only at a high wartime taxation and consequently missed what was happening. Below, for example, is an extract from a speech by Lord Emmott on July 7th, 1920: —

“I will take next the large capitalist who, in many cases, is a benefactor and not an enemy of the nation. Mr. Chamberlain has stated during the course of the Budget debates that putting excess profits duty, income tax, sugar tax, and provision for death duties all together, the wealthy man to-day is taxed at the rate of 16s. for every £ which he receives in income. Taxation at that level is dangerous to the community at large, and again I say, particularly to the working classes. . . .”—(Liberal Magazine, August, 1920.)

But Lord Emmott’s fears for the workers were groundless, and there were, ten years later, 540 millionaires in the country.—(Daily Mail Year Book, 1933.)

* * * *

” War-time Socialism ” that is not Socialism

A writer who signs himself “Landor,” writing in the London News, organ of the London Labour Party, discusses those of his colleagues who think that war-time Government control is Socialistic. He himself thinks they can properly be described as “steps towards Socialism” (which they cannot), but he has learned something from the last war: —

“But history is full of steps towards goals which were never reached. We had a lot of Government control in the last war, followed by books explaining that this was a step towards Socialism, but we never got the socialism. What we did get was a lot of trade associations, and quite a number of commercial combines and one or two monopolies. That is where the steps and the tendencies led us.

The slow application of state control over industrial activity in the last war, and its more rapid application, on the whole, in this war merely proves that it is generally accepted by the country at large that some measure of collectivism is necessary at a time when there is simultaneously scarcity and danger. It is nonsense to think that because people want more state control now they will want state control when the happy days of peace are here again. Most people associate Government regulation and rationing with danger and scarcity, and in consequence they associate derationing and decontrol with plenty and safety.”

* * * *

Money for Nothing

A writer in the Daily Mail (September 13th, 1941) was shocked to discover some workers in a West of England factory who demanded pay for the time they had to spend travelling forty miles between their homes and the new site to which their factory had been moved on Government instructions. He worked it out and found that “the skilled man travelling two hours every day between the two factories would be paid a guinea a week for producing nothing.”

He did not make a comparison between these workers and their well-to-do betters who in peace time can afford to go on world tours and other lengthy pleasure-seeking journeys, but the injustice is glaring. Why should workers be paid for the pleasure of travelling when the rich have to pay for their own ?

Another case nearly as bad was reported in the Daily Express (September 25th). “Boys of 15,” it said, “are earning £3 a week for making tea.” But in the adjoining City column is another report that the discovery of oil in Venezuela had sent up the 10s. shares of an oil company from 18s., which was the price a fortnight earlier, to 24s., and then, in one day, to 27s. This latter news item is published without comment or criticism. It will, however, be noticed that an investor who had, say, 20,000 of those 10s. shares, would have been enriched by £9,000 in 14 days. This is at the highly satisfactory rate of £4,500 a week. Making whoopee on the Stock Exchange can often be more profitable than making tea on a building job. If the Express and Mail object to money without work they might turn their attention to the whole capitalist system which is based on incomes from rent, interest and profit for the privileged few; including the many thousands of people with incomes of over £200 a week, all for nothing.

Edgar Hardcastle

The Civil Service in Imperial Rome (1940)

From the July 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

In these days bureaucracy comes in for much denunciation, and the civil servant is held up as the example of how not to run an efficient and speedy service. All the criticism, however, is made on the assumption, even when it is not fully realised, that the Civil Service is a more or less unnecessary body, an encumbrance that could be drastically lightened. The following article on the Civil Service in Imperial Rome will put the Civil Service and its critics into proper perspective, for it shows that no Empire can be administered without an elaborate organisation of administrative departments, and that the problems and the methods of handling them are much the same now as they were 2,000 years ago under the Roman Empire, not forgetting, of course, that class and sectional interests played their part then, as now.

The Civil Service has a very long history. It came into existence, in a real sense, about two thousand years ago at the birth of the Roman Empire, and was in truth the nervous system of the mightiest empire the world has ever known, In fact it was the development of the Civil Service that saved Roman society from the chaos into which it was slipping fast when Augustus came to power.

Towards the end of republican times, in the last century before the Christian era, the population of the Roman world was split up into various economic groups or classes, the following three of which only concern us here: The old Patrician land-holding families controlled and comprised the Senate, the few administrative officials and the foreign governors. The Equestrian class (or Knights) were traders, money-lenders and speculators. They were represented on the Roman juries and were seriously challenging the political rule of the Patricians. It was the conflicting interests of these two groups that lay behind the civil strife of Pompey and Caesar. The third group was composed of freed men who had purchased, or been granted, their freedom from slavery. They were chiefly officials who took part in the management of private estates and did clerical work of one kind or another. As the soldier and the trader carried Roman conquest and Roman influence over ever-widening areas the power and the influences of the equestrian class grew enormously and added considerably to the difficulties facing the administration. Rome was like a small company suddenly called upon to transact the business of a huge trust but with the same small office and staff. The administration was cracking under the strain. Not only had the Roman world increased in size, but it was further complicated by the coming together of people of different ways and tongue under its sway.

Under the Republic the administration consisted of the Senate and a few officials. This was adequate for a small city state and was the political form that prevailed in the antique city states.

As Rome added conquest to conquest and spread over Italy, and finally over a great part of the ancient world, administrative difficulties became more and more pressing until the system finally broke down. No general system of provincial administration had been introduced, nor had proper provision been made for the collection or assessment of taxes. Taxation, in fact, was a very haphazard affair. Roman citizens, both at home and abroad, were exempt, and the people who did pay the taxes had neither a voice in the assessment of them nor in the use to which the taxes were put. Groups of financiers paid a lump sum for the right to collect the taxes for a period—usually five years.—and then by devious means wrung fortunes out of the unfortunate victims of their greed. Tax-farming was a lucrative form of speculation and various methods were used to extort large sums during the period of the contract. It was not the state treasury that benefited to any great extent but the private fortunes of a small class of speculators (publicani). The miseries of the provincials were increased by another influence allied to taxation. Many provincial municipalities found themselves unable to meet the extortionate demands of the tax-farmers and had to resort to borrowing. They borrowed heavily from money-lenders (negotiatores), who also belonged to the equestrian class, and had to pay high rates of interest. There was no law regulating the rate of interest outside of Italy, and the rate was sometimes as high as 48 per cent.

Matters were made considerably worse by the civil war of Pompey and Caesar as the cost of the campaign fell upon the provincials.

The Senate found it difficult to curb the operations of the financiers, particularly as some members of the Senate either had money invested with them or were deeply in their debt. They were powerful, their operations ramified in every direction to the farthest limits of Roman power, and the state was often compelled to seek their aid when in financial difficulties. Consequently the provincial governors, when not in their pay, were forced to look helplessly on at their extortionate methods without the power to curb them.

Such was the position when Caesar crossed the Rubicon and marched on Rome.

With the coming of the Empire a fundamental change commenced, both in the method of levying and of collecting taxes. Taxation was the first and most pressing problem tackled, and for long everything was subordinate to its solution. Things were put upon an orderly footing so that each knew exactly how much he would have to pay in taxes and also for what purpose the money would be used. Officials were appointed and paid out of the state treasury to make assessments on an understood basis, to see to the collection of the taxes and to keep records. The officials were answerable only to the Emperor and depended upon him for appointment and advancement. A census was taken covering the whole imperial Roman world and territorial divisions were made, and each put in the care of a superior official who had a staff of assistants. Each superior official was responsible for the finances of his area and made reports and transferred money or goods to a central office and treasury at Rome. 

The system only came into operation gradually, piecemeal, and was spread over a long period of time. Caesar commenced the business but he had not got far when he was killed and the real work of organising the financial system devolved upon Augustus. Before the latter died the main part of the work was done and his successors only carried further the system of which he had laid down the complete foundations.

Some idea of the problem confronting Caesar and Augustus may be gathered from the fact that the population of the Roman Empire in the time of Augustus has been estimated to have reached about eighty millions, scattered over an area of thousands of square miles. One favourable condition, however, existed to a degree not reached anywhere in modern times. No city has ever been so truly the centre of an Empire as was Rome. 

As one historian puts it: —

“There were thousands of agents for the great Roman corporations scattered throughout the Empire. Rome was the money centre of the world, and the great stock companies organised to lend money, construct public works, collect taxes, and engage in the shipping trade had their central offices in the capital whence they sent out their representa-times to all parts of the world.”—(Abbott.)

From Rome roads radiated over mountains and across deserts to the most distant parts of the Empire.

When Augustus had succeeded in taking the place left vacant by the death of Caesar, and had firmly established himself, he put an end to the civil wars that had for so long racked the Roman world and in which he and his supporters had played a considerable part. For two hundred years after his accession there was internal peace. It was during this time that the civil service was built up and solidly established. Augustus was faced at the outset with two problems. His treasury was practically empty and he had to find a reliable and regular method of filling it. His first business was to bring order into the assessment of taxes and then to adopt dependable means to collect them.

As a preliminary he appears to have had a survey of the empire made. A great deal of geographical information was collected and tabulated by Agrippa, and a census of the population was taken by special imperial officials.

The principal objects of the census were: (1) To find the number of the population. (2) Sort the population out into age classes for the easier levying of certain taxes. (3) To have an exact registration of property holding. (4) To provide an exact means for valuation.

A specification for measurement was decided upon and engraved on copper. The original was deposited in Rome and a copy in the principal city of each province. This arrangement provided a basis for the land-tax (the chief provincial tax) and relieved the provinces of the extortion practised by the tax-farmers. Augustus also transferred some of the burden from the provinces to Rome by introducing a tax of 5 per cent. on inheritance and legacies, which only affected Roman citizens. There were other indirect taxes, the object of which was to put Italy on a level with the provinces and make the Italians bear their fair share of the burden of taxation. As taxing Roman citizens directly was too revolutionary a method to be successful at the time, Augustus achieved the same result in the end by introducing indirect taxes.

The main object of taxation was to provide for the army, the expenses of provincial government, salaries of officials, the corn supply and the police of Rome, the maintenance of religion, the building of temples and other public works, the public roads and aqueducts.

In the year 6 A.D. Augustus appointed a commission of three to enquire into and cut down expenditure, as a further part of the organising of finance.

The means adopted for collecting the taxes brought into existence the Civil Service.

The estates owned by the Emperor himself were considerable, and the method used for handling revenue on them was the original method adopted for the empire, modified rapidly and considerably as time passed. The revenues of the imperial estates were handled by the Emperor himself, assisted by freedmen and slaves. Hence at first the Emperor employed freedmen in the principal positions as officials of the empire. On many grounds they proved both unreliable and dangerous in positions that gave them considerable power.

Augustus had, therefore, to look round for more suitable assistants, and in this predicament found at hand a class (the equestrians) suited in almost every way for providing, in the first place, the financial officers he needed. He then set about making the imperial service attractive to this class and also placing them in a position of dependence upon him. The chief military and administrative functions were at the time performed by members of the Senate.

There was one very important reason that induced Augustus to turn to the equestrians. The latter were rivals of the Patricians, who controlled the Senate, and by using them he was opening a road to satisfy their ambitions safely, and at the same time he was attracting to his side a very useful ally in the struggle he was waging against the conservative Senate. There was also the important fact that as private speculators and money-lenders the equestrians had already acquired experience in the handling of finance.

Originally the equestrian order consisted of the state cavalry of the republic, serving on horses provided by the state. Later it covered also those who, although not actually serving, were qualified so to do. In the days of the empire a man who had the necessary property and other qualifications became a member of the order by the act of the Emperor conferring upon him the public horse—knighting him. The giving and the taking away of this honour, however, was entirely within the discretion of the Emperor. The equestrian class comprised the great bulk of the financiers of Rome.

As already noted, the process of supplanting senatorial officers and methods by imperial officials was a gradual one, spread over a long period of time. The first step in this direction was the appointment of imperial procurators to control the publicani—the financiers, who had purchased the power to collect taxes. The next step was the appointment of imperial officials who engaged to collect the taxes for a fixed payment. Finally, these officials (conductors) were replaced by imperial procurators, who raised the money through their immediate subordinates. By 200 A.D. direct collection of taxes had been introduced everywhere and the tax-farmer had entirely disappeared.

Procurators were in nearly all cases knights. It was only in exceptional cases that freedmen occupied the position. Hadrian, in the second century A.D., further revolutionised the Civil Service by excluding freedmen from all but the subordinate posts. After his day the knights monopolised all the higher posts in the Civil Service.

When the Civil Service was finally firmly established it opened up a prosperous career to men of the knightly order, and the way was open to them to rise to the highest positions in the state in the Emperor’s service. Military service, however, was a necessary preliminary to civil employment, and the time spent there and in the various grades depended largely on the favour of the Emperor, who could push a candidate through rapidly or slowly, as he deemed fit. In some cases promising candidates were allowed to skip some of the intermediate stages in their progress to the highly-paid and influential positions.

With the methodical organisation of the administration and the revenues multitudes of posts were open to those attracted to the service. There were procurators for land, mines, money for the Mint, provincial finance; ports for corn supply, streets; Public buildings and the like; water in connection with aqueducts, libraries, public games, and so forth.

The service reached its highest development in the second century, A.D., and comprised a huge body of officials covering every sphere of the administration. The salaries of these officials ran up to the equivalent of about £3,000 a year for the highest posts.

There were three principal sections in the service, and within these, again, different grades. The highest section included the Prefects. They occupied positions somewhat analagous to the present First Sea Lord, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Governors-General of Canada, South Africa, Australia, etc. The next section consisted of heads of various departments, roughly similar to our present Secretaries of State. , The lowest section (the procurators) comprised the various officers of different degrees of importance, whose duty it was to see to the collection of the taxes, etc.

The principal officers in the first section in order of importance were : —

(1) The Commander of the Praetorian Guard, the troops on which the Emperor depended to keep secure his power over Rome and Italy.

(2) The Governor of Egypt.

(3) The official charged with the duty of keeping Rome supplied with food.

(4) The Chief of Police.

(5) The Admiral of the Fleets.

The Commander of the Praetorian Guard presided over the Imperial Council when the Emperor was away, controlled all the troops stationed in Italy as well as the imperial slaves, and had considerable civil and criminal jurisdiction.

The importance of Egypt as an imperial province gave the officer who controlled it the high position he occupied in the Roman administration. Egypt occupied a position in relation to Rome roughly similar to that occupied by India in relation to this country. It was distant, rich in products, and its governor was armed with considerable power, although directly responsible to the Emperor.

The official in charge of the food supply had assistants in Rome and agents in the provinces. He also had the duty of supervising the bakers and the captains of merchant vessels. He was particularly responsible for securing the public corn supply.

The Chief of Police was in charge of all police duties, including the watchmen of the city.

The Admiral of the Fleets was directly in charge of the two principal fleets and also controlled all the naval forces in time of war.

The second section of the administration comprised the heads of departments, graded in the following order : —

(1) The Imperial Chancellor of the Exchequer, who controlled the treasury department.

(2) The Imperial Secretary, who made the Appointments to all except the highest official posts, received and replied to all despatches, and dealt with all the public correspondence of the Emperor.

(3)The official who received and dealt with the private petitions addressed to the Emperor.

(4)The official who assisted the Emperor in his juridical functions, providing him with information and preparing the cases for his examination.

(5)The official who prepared and despatched all short resolutions of the Emperor.

The third section included all those charged with the collection of the taxes, the supervision of lands, mines, coinage, streets, public buildings, water supply, public games, education, and many other things. The highest of these officials sometimes had the governorship of minor provinces.

The service described above was so organised that there was a regular system of promotion from the lowest to the highest posts. There were numerous subordinate officials attached to each post and the various departments had staffs of clerks and assistants.

The department of finance was the earliest organised, and appears, also, to have been the most completely organised ultimately. The official in charge of the administration of justice was generally a trained lawyer and was assisted by a council of expert advisers.

Such was the Imperial Civil Service. Centred in Rome, and spreading like a web over the whole empire, it enabled the huge conglomeration of different nationalities to be welded into a single piece and kept closely knit together for decades. Never before had there been such a bureaucratic organisation, and its extent and efficiency has been the admiration and the model of later administrators.

Gilmac.

On Keeping Things Dark (1943)

Editorial from the May 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Lowell, in his "Government of England" remarked that the right of M.P.s to probe into the doings of Cabinet Ministers and their departments has been valuable in helping to prevent the growth of that bureaucratic arrogance that he considered was unknown in this country though prevalent elsewhere. If he had been writing in wartime he would not have been so sure, but he was at any rate correct in regarding arrogant bureaucracy as an evil, and it is a fact that the working-class movement has been aided by the extent to which information has been made available through Parliamentary questions and the publication of official reports on the evils of the capitalist system. Marx was one who appreciated this, for he was much indebted to the courage and independence of men like Leonard Horner, inspector of factories in the middle of the 19th century, whose disclosures prevented factory owners from keeping the abominable working conditions from the public gaze. Marx observed that Horner rendered invaluable service to the English working-class by carrying on a lifelong struggle not only against the factory owners but also against Ministers of State, to whom the number of votes of factory owners in the House of Commons was of more importance than the number of hours worked by factory hands.

The inherent love of darkness and secrecy of the bureaucratic mind was shown up recently by a statement in the House of Commons made by Richard Law, M.P., Parliamentary Under Secretary of the Foreign Office. He had been asked about the wretched conditions of political prisoners in North Africa and replied:—

  The government attached importance to the release of all political prisoners in North Africa, but we should ask ourselves whether we were likely to further the objects we had in view by lecturing the authorities in French North Africa in a lofty and perhaps high-handed manner. As for the suggestion that a party of members of Parliament should inspect the camps, he wondered whether we would welcome three or four French members of Parliament going round our prisons here.— (Manchester Guardian, March 25.)

The answer to Mr. Law is that any person who wants to make the world worth living in for everybody would not have any objection at all to opening up all the dark spots to inspection. The bureaucratic mind abhors the light of day as also do all those who have something to hide because it will not bear inspection.

By an odd coincidence the next column of the Guardian gave an illustration of this. Some years ago the punishment of “pack drill" was officially abolished in the army and in army detention barracks, yet several cases have just been brought to light showing that it is still sometimes imposed.

The working class have everything to gain by the abolition of secrecy. Why should the workers, here or in any ether country, allow stupid national prejudice to stand in the way of exposure? It would do no harm—except to bureaucrats and others who have something to hide—and might do a considerable amount of good if M.P.s or anybody else, from France or from any other place, could have access to information now shrouded in secrecy. Some enlightened Americans or Russians might have quite a lot to say about English prisons, English slums, English working-class housing conditions and English factories, etc. Some visitors from countries where capital punishment has been abolished might have caustic remarks to make about hanging in English prisons and about the use of the Official Secrets Act to prevent Mrs. Van Der Elst from having access to prison medical reports. If, as was alleged, "they are most ghastly reading" (Evening Standard report of her trial, March 26) why should Government officials and ministers alone be allowed to read them? Some American visitors to Russia might do good work if allowed to tell us more about Russian concentration camps if we may judge by Quentin Reynolds' statement in "Only the Stars are Neutral" (Cassell & Co., 1942, page 174). He relates that he and another American journalist when in Kuibyshef in 1941 "passed one of the big concentration camps reserved for political prisoners. Beyond that we saw a long line of them working on a new road. There were about 800 of them. They were swinging pickaxes and wielding shovels, and on their faces there was no sign of hope. A few soldiers with rifles guarded them carelessly, for there was no place for them to run. Steele and I looked at each other and winced. Of course it wasn't as bad as the convict labour I'd seen in our own South, because these prisoners weren't shackled and they didn't wear stripes. We winced, I think, because these 800 prisoners were all women."

Then some enlightened Russians might return the compliment by studying and reporting on the American chain-gangs that Reynolds refers to; and on the way the American Constitution is evaded to prevent many negroes from voting in elections. And what about some independent-minded foreign snoopers looking into the way natives are treated in South Africa and elsewhere in the British Empire?

The stock answer of the bureaucrat will doubtless be to point to Germany and say that there you have the blackest spot of all; but that is no good reason for turning a blind eye on the rest of the world.

The working class gain from free and open discussion. Censorship and secrecy are traditional weapons of the ruling class.

After the Gold Rush (2012)

From the May 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Scandals abound in the private ‘employability and work-based training’ sector. The latest of these involves the company A4e, whose workers are up before the beak on fraud charges, much to the outrage of the self-righteous press, while the former proprietor Emma Harrison has walked away clutching millions. Just who is being defrauded here, and what exactly goes on in these companies?

Once upon a time unemployed people signed on at the Benefit Agency, which would administer their unemployment benefit payments, and then were sent to the Jobcentre, run by the Employment Agency, where they would look at rows of vacancies on cards and receive advice on CVs and applications from Jobcentre staff.

Around 2001, as part of my work with local charities, I attended a briefing by Jobcentre staff who explained with much chagrin that these two offices were to be merged, many of them put out of work, and much of the heavy lifting formerly done by trained staff now farmed out to regional call-centres using untrained workers on minimum wage following printed scripts. The unemployed, now termed ‘customers’, could look forward to a streamlined conveyer belt service that had neither the time nor the expertise to give them any worthwhile advice at all, while high-need users could expect to fall through the net altogether. This was the great Jobcentre Plus ‘rationalisation’ of 2002, in which Treasury money left the equation and the slack was expected to be taken up by the employment-oriented European Social Fund.

What none of us anticipated at that briefing was the longer term effects of this cost-cutting exercise by the Department of Work and Pensions. Just as companies who farmed out their IT requirements end up hiring ‘experts’ at vast contract rates, often to deliver trivially simple upgrades, so the DWP in trying to save money had created a vacuum of ‘employability support’ into which a blizzard of private companies rushed, hoping to cash in on the bonanza. Such was the unregulated confusion of this early gold rush for DWP and ESF funding that a good number of cowboy start-ups got in on the act, aiming to take the money and run. Almost anyone, it seemed, could pretend to be a college or training centre and pull down state cash for doing nothing. As each scam was exposed rules were tightened up, but the employment services industry has been rocked by successive waves of scandal ever since.

The initial swarm of gold-prospectors have mostly left the field, either bankrupted, busted or bullied out of the way by a few big players, whose national reach attracted ever larger DWP grants. Small charities were early casualties, as was the risible notion that small and local organisations were best-placed to find jobs for people in the local area. A few big corporations, mostly college-backed, mopped up the market and all the money while farming out the donkey work to these same local organisations who then had to deliver higher targets for less money than ever.

Contracts were awarded by the DWP or the ESF for starts on work-based training, backed by retention, and for job or qualification outcomes, all of which was to be exhaustively evidenced by signed documentation. Since most contractors had their own documentation systems, and few spent money on computerisation, this soon developed into a bureaucratic paper-based nightmare that meant workers spent more time ‘evidencing’ their work than actually doing it. Inevitably the cracks appeared, and workers increasingly had to ‘fiddle’ the paperwork to meet the requirements of nit-picking inspections. Failure to pass these inspections could mean funding being ‘clawed back’, and my not unusual experience was having to stay up all night forging hundreds of ‘attendance sheets’ for long-gone volunteers simply because funding requirements dictated full attendance and conscientious form-filling – in flagrant defiance of the practical realities of dealing with the long-term unemployed.

Workers though tried for the most part to avoid genuine fraud over job documentation, partly because of the heavy penalties but mainly because unlike the ruling class workers are not generally comfortable with criminality. But the competition for contracts being intense, the bids were always excessive, and thus the pressure to cheat was built in. Rarely could a job outcome simply be invented out of thin air, because the individual would have to sign off benefits. But other ‘target-buster’ methods could be employed. People were signed up as starts who already had guaranteed jobs to go to, creating an instant outcome. In cases where jobs had been obtained after the end-date of eligibility, dates could be massaged. Sometimes an employer would refuse to sign a job declaration even though it was for a genuine job, so these were liable to be forged. Where more than one funding provision was offered, people were daisy-chained from one to another, picking up duplicate funding on the way. Then as a bonus, if they got a job, each of the provisions could claim the same job, effectively doubling or tripling the outcome figures. Most notoriously, under instructions from senior management, workers would ‘traffic-light’ clients, giving most help and attention to ‘greens’ who were most likely to succeed, while largely ignoring the extensive needs of the ‘ambers’ and the virtually unemployable ‘reds’, thus defeating the whole point of such schemes and fully justifying the accusation that firms were being paid for jobs that people would have got in any case.

Unemployed people, it is fair to say, sometimes get something out of these schemes, either through volunteering for charities and getting some useful work experience, or by gaining a few low-level qualifications. While the principle is that the firm finds them work, in practice they usually find their own work, largely by their own efforts, with the added incentive of being hounded by the firm whose targets are their real focus. Where the schemes were voluntary or quasi-voluntary, relations were reasonably good-humoured and often constructive, but where they are compulsory, as in the Work Programme, staff and clients are polarised in a palpable class-war tension with frequent eruptions of anger and frustration. Those who most need help get the least, and swill round a never-ending gutter of government schemes delivering the same inadequate provision in the same inadequate way.

Hardly surprising that morale is pretty low among staff, faced with impossible monthly targets, short contracts, a management which couldn’t care less about the people involved, a penny-pinching lack of equipment or training and an endless sea of largely meaningless paperwork designed merely to keep up appearances. Workers who are caught cheating (i.e. doing their job) will be cold-shouldered by the firm and prosecuted by the state, the sacrificial lambs of an industry that is systemically fraudulent.

Who is being defrauded? Not the state, which gets what it wants, the appearance of action plus deniability, and is so cosy with contractors that it refuses Freedom of Information requests even to divulge the names of fraudulent companies (Private Eye, 6 April); not the private companies which coin it while passing on the labour and the risk to others. No, it’s the abused, under-paid and under-resourced staff who are being defrauded of their mostly well-meaning intentions and made to risk jail on behalf of their masters. It’s the unemployed who are being defrauded, mere pawns in the game, there to have their time wasted and their self-respect demolished. It’s workers everywhere who are being defrauded in the belief that the capitalist state cares about the unemployed, or the low-skilled, or the sick or the needy, when really the capitalist state spends extravagant sums simply to maintain that appearance. Private investors quietly make off with criminally record sums while workers just get the criminal records. All in all, it’s the sort of work-based experience that should open a lot of eyes and dispel a lot of illusions. If capitalism were a worker, it would get the sack in no time.

‘Ronnie Biggs’

Homelessness and Health (2015)

From the March 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

  Homelessness isn’t just a housing issue. Struggling without a home usually also means struggling with poor health, and being unable to find enough support.

If asked what the three most important aspects of our lives are, most of us would say something like having reasonable health, somewhere comfortable to live and people we’re close to. But what happens if we have none of these? Poor health may rule out employment, which means having to rely on benefit payments, which limits what accommodation is affordable. And our health needs may mean that many types of housing are inaccessible or impractical. If we don’t have friends or family in a position to help, we would expect the health service, councils, and other organisations to provide a safety net. However, the support services industry has failed to provide for the complex needs of people with both health and housing problems. This is despite a definite relationship between homelessness and poor health. Research from St Mungo’s Broadway and Homeless Link found that 73 percent of homeless people have a physical health problem, and 80 percent have mental health issues (p.3). To what extent poor health is a cause or an effect of homelessness is hard to determine; for most homeless people, it’s probably both. What is clearer is that many people struggle to access often insufficient help from services lacking enough staff and resources.

The definition of homelessness includes people in many different situations. The most extreme, and visible, aspect of homelessness is sleeping rough on the streets. A conservative estimate of the number of rough sleepers in England was 2,414 in 2013. Many more people are in various types of temporary housing, including homeless hostels, bed-and-breakfast accommodation, and staying with friends or relatives. Ten years ago, Crisis estimated that there were 380,000 of these ‘hidden homeless’, which is more than the total population of Leicester (p.3).

Despite their varying circumstances, all homeless people will have an unsettled way of life which exacerbates other problems, especially health. The most obvious, and stark, way of summing up the additional health concerns affecting homeless people is by looking at mortality rates. The average age at death of a homeless person is 47 years old, compared to 77 for the wider population. Homeless women, on average, live until they’re only 43, whereas in the wider population, women tend to live longer than men (p.2, Homelessness: A Silent Killer, Crisis, 2011).

One reason why homeless peoples’ wellbeing suffers is because of difficulties with accessing healthcare. Although there are no upfront charges to use NHS services, and prescription fees are waived for people on a low income, the bureaucracy of the NHS makes it hard for homeless people to navigate the system. The usual way to access healthcare is to make an appointment with your GP, who can then make referrals to hospitals or clinics for particular treatment. To register with a GP, you need a stable address, which creates the first barrier for homeless people. Without easy access to a GP, medical conditions could go undiagnosed or untreated. As a result, when a homeless person’s health deteriorates, they are more likely to approach a hospital directly.

A&E

Homeless people attend Accident & Emergency, or Casualty, departments six times more often than the general population (p.2, Healthcare for the Homeless, Deloitte Centre For Health Solutions, 2012). The numbers of homeless people attending A&E has been flagged up in the context of unbearable pressures on hospitals. The efficiency of A&E departments is measured against the government target of 95 percent of patients being treated within four hours, lowered from 98 percent in 2010. This winter, the mainstream media reported on how many hospitals have failed to meet this target. At the start of 2015, only 86.7 percent of patients in England were seen within four hours (BBC News, 14/1/15), with worse figures in other parts of the UK. Eight hospitals declared ‘major incidents’ because demand on A&E units had increased to more than could be managed.

The four hour target will be prominent in the minds of all A&E staff, alongside the stress of the excessive workload. The constant pressure to process patients quickly means that underlying health problems could be ignored. And the shortage of hospital beds means that not enough people will be admitted to a ward. Consequently, homeless people, especially rough sleepers, often get discharged from A&E straight back into a situation unlikely to promote their recovery. So, when their health deteriorates again, they will probably return to hospital in the near future. People trapped in this cycle of needing to go back to A&E again and again are called ‘frequent flyers’. One in ten homeless people use A&E at least once a month (p.5, Healthcare for the Homeless, Deloitte Centre For Health Solutions, 2012), with some returning partly because they have nowhere else to go, and a hospital is somewhere warm, dry and reassuring.

Not all homeless people who come in to hospital fit this profile of repeat visitors not registered at a GP, though. Lots of people first become homeless at the same time that they enter hospital, usually as the result of a crisis. If someone has had a stroke or an amputation, then it may not be possible or practical for them to return to their previous home. Or, the trauma of being evicted may have pushed someone to attempt suicide.

On the ward

If a homeless person is admitted into hospital, they’re likely to stay there three times longer than the general population (p.2, Healthcare for the Homeless, Deloitte Centre For Health Solutions, 2012). This is partly because homeless people – especially the long-term homeless – often have multiple and complicated health problems, particularly liver damage, asthma, pneumonia, tuberculosis, epilepsy, diabetes, malnourishment, trench foot, wound infection and blood-borne viruses like hepatitis C, especially among intravenous drug users. Drugs and alcohol are often used as a coping strategy by homeless people, and heavy use can lead to cirrhosis of the liver, infections and dependency. This creates a vicious cycle where homelessness both leads to and is prolonged by addiction. 40 percent of homeless heavy alcohol users believe that a lack of stable housing is the main barrier to their recovery. Over a third of homeless people die due to alcohol or drug misuse (p.2, Homelessness: A Silent Killer, Crisis, 2011). The crisis of becoming homeless or struggling with homelessness as a way of life is also often linked with mental health problems. Someone with depression or schizophrenia is less likely to fit in to the expected routines which come with having a job and a ‘normal’ lifestyle. As a result, they are often pushed into homelessness, which will exacerbate their condition.

Another reason why homeless people remain in hospital longer than average is delays in discharging them. The aim is for a patient to leave hospital when they’re judged ‘medically fit’ to do so. They may still need longer to recover, but they can do this in the reassuringly familiar surroundings of their own home. This isn’t going to be possible if the patient is homeless. There have been many instances of homeless people being discharged from hospital in a taxi straight to a council office or a hostel, with no prior notice. This is particularly unsettling for the person, who has left the hospital without knowing whether they will get anywhere to stay, at a time when their health still makes them vulnerable. The practice of wards discharging homeless patients in this way has become less accepted in recent years. However, if a ward doesn’t discharge a patient because they don’t have anywhere suitable to go, then this creates the problem of ‘bed blocking’. When someone who is medically fit to leave hospital remains in a hospital bed, it prevents someone else from having it and creates additional expense.

Discharged where?

If a patient needs to be discharged to a care home, a nurse would refer them to a social worker to make the necessary arrangements. But only people with severely reduced capabilities qualify for this assistance. Presumably, if hospital social services departments and care homes had more staff and resources, they would be able to support more people, and the criteria for accessing them could be relaxed. As the situation is at the moment, many homeless people who would benefit from social services assistance aren’t eligible. Instead, it’s usually left to nurses to try and find accommodation to discharge a homeless person to. They may approach the local council, although the criteria for qualifying for statutory assistance excludes many single people except those judged extremely vulnerable. Even if a disabled homeless person is eligible for assistance under council criteria, then there still might not be anywhere appropriate for them. Temporary accommodation often means a placement in bed and breakfast accommodation, which is notoriously shabby and intimidating, and unsuitable for someone with poor mobility or little resilience. Council staff are aware that they are working within a frugal, inadequate system, and will try to compensate by interpreting their guidelines broadly and with some sympathy. So, temporary accommodation may be arranged in empty flats, care homes or hotels.

If there isn’t an arrangement with the council, or if the homeless patient doesn’t qualify for assistance from them, then the usual option would be direct access hostel accommodation. However, hostels can be almost as intimidating as bed and breakfasts, and are unlikely to be accessible for disabled people. They may have stairs, shared bathrooms and kitchens which could make them unsuitable. If someone can get into a hostel, then they would usually be able to stay there until they can find long-term housing, such as a flat rented from the council or a housing association. This could still take many months, but at least they would have the benefit of staff support.

If a homeless patient is in the country unofficially and has no recourse to public funds, councils and housing providers are very unlikely to help. Not being able to claim benefits or work legally will mean that they can’t afford rented accommodation, including hostels and B&Bs, and will be left destitute.

Generally, the worse someone’s health is, the harder it is for them to get suitable accommodation, especially at short notice. The situation is eased once someone turns 55, as this is the age that sheltered housing usually becomes available. But for younger people, unless they have a profoundly limiting disability which makes them eligible for statutory support, there is very little available. In other words, there is a lack of accommodation for people whose needs are too high for usual homeless provision but too low for social services involvement. The types of people that would be worst affected by this gap in services are those who have had strokes, amputations, suicide attempts, a diagnosis of schizophrenia, or drug and alcohol addiction. Most would also suffer from depression.

The bottom line

Costs accrued by bed blocking and the complex medical issues of homeless people mean that the average cost of a hospital stay for a homeless person is nearly five times higher than that for other people. More precisely, a homeless person will cost the NHS almost £1,900 per hospital stay on average, compared with £391 for the general population (p.6, Healthcare for the Homeless, Deloitte Centre For Health Solutions, 2012). The NHS is always being pushed to reduce its spending to cope with funding cuts. So, it was recognised that investing in more support for homeless patients would reduce costs in the long run. Looked at this way, the homeless are an economic problem, rather than people in need. In 2013, the government announced funding of £10 million to improve support for homeless people being discharged from English hospitals. This involved recruiting specialist staff to arrange discharges into suitable accommodation with ongoing support. This led to reductions in both bed-blocking and frequent flyers. But this wasn’t enough for funding to be extended, and many of these services are no longer running. The solution was only temporary.

To some extent, a society can be judged on how well it treats its most vulnerable people. The problem of homelessness only arises in a society where adequate housing is only available to those who can afford it and, as we’ve seen, people with poor health face additional barriers. These difficulties reflect wider problems in society:

1. The bureaucracy of the NHS, councils and support services, which makes it hard for some people to access help in a more planned way. This problem can’t be solved just by ‘cutting red tape’ or simplifying procedures. The NHS, councils and support services all have to operate in the same economic market as any other institution, so they have to be run like any other. This involves bureaucracy to ration and restrict who qualifies to use them.
2. The lack of resources in hospitals, whether a shortage of beds, nurses, mental health staff, social workers or support workers. Again, this problem can’t be solved within capitalism because the economy can never support enough funding to meet everyone’s needs. Money tends to go where it can be re-invested to create more wealth, and the NHS isn’t an attractive investment for the elite. The economic downturn and climate of government spending cuts only highlight an ongoing problem.
3. The lack of accommodation which is both suitable for and available to disabled people. This is part of the overall housing shortage. It costs more to build or adapt accommodation for people with poor mobility, and landlords may be reluctant to invest the extra money if they don’t think it will end up profitable. When houses are built to be sold or rented, rather than because people need them, then anyone without enough money will struggle.

All of these problems are built in to the way our society is structured. When society is driven by economic forces, rather than what people want and need, then some people inevitably suffer. Increased funding, new services, or reformed procedures may help a few people in the short-term, but they can’t address the causes of the problem.

Clive Hendry