Instructions for M A.'s (Miracle Agents) (1957)

From the September 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Schoolmaster and Woman Teachers' Chronicle, journal of the National Union of Teachers, can never be accused of harbouring anything that could be labelled “revolutionary” or “seditious” thought; on the contrary, it has always, despite “differences” from time to time with this or that Minister of Education, been the champion of the British way of life; i.e., it supports the system of Capitalism whilst grumbling at the rewards. In supporting Capitalism it often goes to strange lengths. An example of this is afforded in the current issues. There we find a series of articles entitled “Religious Education in the Primary School.” At the time of writing we have reached episode X, entitled “Teaching about the Miracles.”

When we realise that the depository of the Christian religion—the Church—is today, apart from a hard core of “Fundamentalists,” composed largely of “Apologists” of various degrees, one can indeed be curious as to how the question of Miracles can be explained in this day and age so that they do not lose their value in telling. It is the business of the author to do just this. The Rev. writer rushes to the aid of the teacher, to the harassed believer grappling with a situation which is getting increasingly difficult and also to those who have abandoned the struggle as far as Miracles are concerned, merely relating just those Biblical stories in which human virtues are displayed, like sharing one’s raiment with the more unfortunate, or the bravery of little David standing up to a giant

One reads the article painfully. One sees that the idea is to “catch ’em young" (hence the emphasis on the Primary School). Religious belief being, as we are so often told, a matter of faith rather than knowledge, the teacher is expected to abandon his or her true vocation in order to mould the malleable minds of children in such a manner as to fit them into the estate it has “chosen God to place them” (and at the same time make them suitable material for Capitalist Society.)

Consider the grand attack against Unbelief. In true apologetic manner part X of the series defines the word “miracle” as “a wonder,” “something contrary to the laws of nature,” but qualifies this by quoting St. Augustine’s definition as “contrary to what is known.” It then goes on to discuss Old Testament miracles, and actually dismisses them as “pious legends.” One cannot expect the Church to retreat all the time, and so we find that there are first and second class miracles; i.e., those of the Old Testament, done by ordinary men, and those of the New Testament, performed by Christ himself. We feel sure that the poor teacher now feels on safer ground, especially when we read (in connection with miracles first class): “Belief in God is not to be made dependent upon belief in every event attributed to Him.” (We can now hear the teacher breathe a sigh of relief at being able to choose his miracles). We are next told that “a miracle is not so much an inexplicable event as an occurrence which brings an overwhelming sense of the presence of God.” Quite a bit of verbiage this, meaning, one supposes, that a “miracle,” though proven to be a natural phenomenon, can, because of the wonder, awe or curiosity it invokes, be said to prove the “presence of God.”

Many natural phenomena have done this with varying degrees of awe, wonder, curiosity, etc., arising in the mind of the onlooker depending on the understanding of the times, from the rolling of the thunder to the explosions of the hydrogen bomb. Does the hydrogen bomb prove the “presence of God? ”

The “Rev.” writer, knowing what he is up against, says that despite the difficulties teachers have in teaching (about) miracles, younger children (our italics) will accept them naturally, and questions asked will result from curiosity rather than scepticism! So you see, teacher can now get on with her miracle lessons with no fear of attack from her class of five-year-olds!

It is hard to believe that the writer has ever read history. From the time when the Bible was first published in the vernacular, men have read an account of how the world began. It was their only source of knowledge. But in time this simple faith was shattered. Whilst in the Middle Ages learned Cardinals gathered to argue the number of Angels that could stand on a pin head and later, during the reign of Charles I, Archbishop Usher “proved” that it was 4003 years 2 months 11 days and 6 hours from the Creation to the birth of Christ; today we have grown up somewhat, so that even leaden of religion now openly argue the authenticity of miracles, including the Resurrection, Heaven, and so on.

An attempt is obviously being made to capture lost ground, and the young, being defenceless, are the chosen victims.

“Miracles” cease as Nature’s laws are better understood. When no one doubted them they abounded. They were lavished on the world. Now, when more and more deny them, when the Faith is in dire distress; when just a few of the miracles enacted in the desert of Sinai could shake the Modem World to its foundations and bring us rushing back to the arms of “Mother Church"; now, when the least expenditure in Miracles could bring the maximum result—Miracles cease. An attempt is made to keep them alive by means of stories told to impress the imaginative minds of the young.

When mankind finally breaks the last bonds of religion and realises itself as a long, upward progression, shedding its superstitions on the way. then we will have emerged from bondage to freedom. As Socialists we fight the powers “temporal and spiritual.”

We leave you to cogitate over the words of a well-known hymn: “The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate. God made them high and lowly and ordered their estate.” This, one suggests, would be a fitting hymn with which to end each lesson on “Miracles Made Easy for Children.” Constant attention to the words is guaranteed to immunise the future worker from the virus of Socialism.

W. Brain.

Let Brotherly Love and Tithes Continue. (1933)

From the September 1933 issue of the Socialist Standard

Up and down the English countryside a tithe-war is in progress. Farmers, and other holders of land subject to tithe, say they cannot and will not pay. They have organised a national association to defend their interests. Against them stands the Church, with its back to the wall, demanding its money. The Church invokes the law-courts and the police, and at its behest bailiffs seize the land, stock and crops, of the debtors. The answer of the farmers to forced sales of goods is an aggressive boycott of the auction. Massed picketing and veiled threats of violence are usually sufficient to dissuade intending buyers from making bids.

The history of tithes is long and complicated. They go back for many hundreds of years, and it is disputed whether in England they began as the voluntary gifts of pious churchmen or as a compulsory levy. In any event there is no dispute as to their form. The landholder subject to tithe had to donate each year one-tenth of the produce of his land, one-tenth of his calves, lambs, wool, milk, eggs, grain, and so on. At first this stream of wealth was divided into four parts; one part each for the bishop and the parish priest, one part for the upkeep of the church building, and one part for the poor. Subsequently the bishops were otherwise provided for. The tithes were then divided into three parts; one-third for the parson and two-thirds for the monks, to be used by them for their own upkeep, for the entertainment of strangers, and for the relief of the poor. There is no doubt that by this time at least the relief of the poor was not a voluntary act on the part of the monastic houses but was a duty imposed on them by the Crown. In receiving tithe and using part of it to relieve the poor, the monks were acting as agents for the King, as is shown by a statute passed in the early years of the fourteenth century, during the reign of Edward I.

When the monasteries were suppressed at the time of the Reformation about one-third of their tithes were seized by the Crown and handed over to laymen.

The whole of the remaining two-thirds came to be payable to the clergy.

Until 1836 tithes were, for the most part, paid not in money but “in kind." In that year the Tithe Commutation Act substituted a money rent-charge, varying with the price of corn, for the payment in kind. In 1891, owing to the difficulty experienced in the collection of tithe, the obligation was transferred from the tenant to the land-owner.

Both in 1836 and under various later Acts the clergy were given the benefit of relief from part of their liability for rates payable on the tithes received by them.

Under the Tithe Act, 1925, the tithe payment, instead of varying with the price of corn, was for the first time stabilised on the basis of £105 for each £100 of tithe-rent charge; with an additional payment of 4½ per cent. a year to provide a fund for the extinction of tithes over a period of 85 years.

The annual cost is now £3,300,000, of which about two-thirds is payable to the clergy and the remaining third to other receivers of tithe whose rights were acquired from the monasteries at the Reformation. It is this £3,300,000 which is the grievance behind the present dispute.

The Church—A Declining Industry

The Tithe-payers' Association makes the claim that the burden of tithes is ruining the farmers. While it is true that some farmers cannot pay their tithe, it is obvious that we must look further than this for an explanation of the dispute between the tithe-payers and the Church, for the total amount of tithe represents only a very small percentage of the annual income of the farmers. On the other hand, a sum of over £2 million a year is of the utmost importance to the Church. It represents the livelihood of thousands of the clergy.

The fact is, that during recent years changes have been taking place affecting both the farmers and the Church. Many of the former have been badly hit by the post-war slump in the prices of agricultural products. They receive a declining income from the sale of their products but have to pay a fixed charge to the clergy and other recipients of tithe. Their position is doubly difficult in the many cases of farms having been bought on borrowed money at the high prices of the War years. On the other hand, the farmer’s inclination to withhold tithes has been strengthened by the loss of prestige and popularity on the part of the Church and its ministers. The Church is a great commercial concern which, so to speak, has its capital sunk in a declining industry. As Dean Inge puts it, the Church used to be a monopoly undertaking and is now trying to exist under conditions which have deprived it of its monopoly.

It sells an article which has not kept up with the changing demand of the twentieth century. “Spiritual consolations” and the kind of social activities provided by the Church are as definitely out-of-date as horse-’buses, lantern lectures and tallow candles. The hold of the parson is relaxing. The torments of hell and the delights of heaven alike pass over the heads of a generation brought up on war and war-novels, on the cinemas and wireless. Cinemas and wireless have captured the field, hence the interesting results of most of the votes on Sunday opening. In one town after another we see the Councils—composed of elderly persons, often active Church workers—voting against Sunday cinemas, only to have their decision heavily reversed when it goes to a poll. The clergy try to hold back the tide, but what can they do against new needs and 'the cinema combines? They are like the little shopkeepers trying to fight Woolworths, Boots, Selfridges, and the other giant concerns which are fast devouring them.

In a variety of ways the influence and the income of the clergy have been diminished. Now comes the final blow of the campaign against tithes. In reply, the Church militant shows what it is made of, and fights for cash, as it never fought for anything else. As Marx so cruelly said, ”the Anglican Church will more readily pardon attacks upon 38 of its 39 articles than upon one thirty-ninth of its income.”

It is Written in the Bond

The tithe-war is rich in incident. There is the Rector who assented to a farmer sacking one of his unfortunate labourers in order to be able to afford to pay tithe. The Rector said that he could not afford to let the farmer off what he owed, “and that it was a just debt.” The Church authorities, as a whole, have taken up the same legalistic attitude, standing strictly on the letter of the law. Shall not Shylock have his pound of flesh ?  Is it not written in the bond?

Where they do allow some remission it is only on the ordinary commercial principle of taking 75 per cent., because there is no possibility of getting the whole. Yet prominent Churchmen, including Lord Parmoor, state that the burden of tithes is unduly heavy in view of the unforeseen fall in prices.

One case has, however, come to light of a tithe claim being abandoned entirely by the parson to whom it was owed. An old shoe-maker was a tithe-payer to the extent of 3s. 6d. a year. It was the custom to hold an annual ”Tithe Feast," presided over by the Vicar and held at the village “pub," which all tithe-payers were entitled to attend. The old shoe-maker was relieved of his obligation to pay tithe because, as he explained, “they lost money over him" at the annual spread.

Attempts to seize farmers' property have been resisted, with the consequence of numerous cases of assault, some of which reach the courts. In one case of distraint it was disclosed that an original debt of £20 for tithe was increased to £700 through legal costs charged against the debtor in a series of actions to enforce payment.

The attitude of the Daily Herald, official organ of the Labour Party, has been amusing. Its desire to sympathise with the farmers, whose votes it wants, is equalled by its anxiety not to antagonise the supporters of the Church. So it presents the delicate problem of how to give the farmers more without giving the Church less; and as that problem is truly baffling, it demands that the Government shall instantly do its duty—and appoint a Commission! Happy memories of the late Labour Government, with its dozens and dozens of Commissions and Committees of Inquiry, probing into this question and the other.

Why do the Christians so Furiously Rage Together?

It is an entertainment to see how the followers of Jesus fight for filthy lucre as bitterly as any poor benighted heathen. Where is that otherworldliness, that spirit of self-denial that the clergy never fail to recommend to workers who come out on strike?

Christians, were you not commanded to love one another? And do you now send your message of love by the bailiff’s men ? O, ye of little faith! Do you not know that strife can be avoided by the exercise of Christian charity and forbearance? Why, yes, of course you know, for did you not, with the Archbishop of Canterbury at your head, found the Industrial Christian Fellowship for no other purpose than to show the cantankerous workers how to avoid industrial strife, and how to live at peace with the employers?

Lastly, there is the case of Mr. George Middleton. As First Church Estates Commissioner and Chairman of the Tithe Committee of Queen Anne’s Bounty, it falls to Mr. Middleton to defend the Church. This he does in letters to the Press urging the farmers to respect the sanctity of contracts and the rights of private property. What makes his case interesting is that he was a Labour M.P. and an official of a postal workers’ union until he had the good luck to slip into his present position at £1,200 to £1,400 a year, plus cost of living bonus; a job which literally lasts for life. There is no modern nonsense about needing young blood or being too old at 70 or 80 for the First Church Estates Commissioner’s job.

Mr. Middleton is a supporter of the Industrial Christian Fellowship referred to above, and an advocate of peace between employers and employed, but as Chairman of the Tithe Committee of Queen Anne’s Bounty he wages fierce war on tithe defaulters.

Idle talk among ex-soldiers often strays over the question which of the Monarchs, Ministers and Generalissimos won the real prizes of the War in which their loyal followers perished. By common consent it was the defeated ex-Kaiser, with his fortune of millions serenely ending his days in retreat at Doorn. If a similar question were to be put about the fruits of the great Labour Party victory which put them into office in 1929, it can hardly be doubted that Mr. Middleton, wafted into this placid backwater at the Ecclesiastical Commission, was one of fortune’s special favourites.

However, let it not be supposed that we are filled with bitterness towards the clergy or towards the Mr. Middletons. They are only trying to make the most of the opportunities capitalism offers them in the particular circumstances in which they happen to be placed. They are responding to the pressure of material conditions. It does not matter in the least, either to us as Socialists or to the condition of the workers, whether this individual or that secures what plums of office there happen to be. The Church, like any other concern run on business lines, has its highly paid bishoprics and its minority of pleasant livings for the influential few. It also has its rank and file, who live under conditions very much akin to those of the rest of the black-coated workers; with a large minority whose pay is so small that they have great difficulty in making ends meet and “keeping up appearances.” Capitalism being what it is, what can the parson do but try to hold on to his livelihood and demand payment of tithe? And what can the farmer do but try to help himself by whittling it down?

Our quarrel is not with the men, but with the system. Our message is directed to the working class, who alone can alter things. To them we say that it is useless, and worse than useless, to denounce the man who takes the opportunity which capitalism offers while at the same time at the elections upholding the system itself. Capitalism compels us all to struggle for survival and teaches us to kick each other down in the fight for greater security and a better livelihood. The only way to end the wolfish struggle is to end capitalism.

If we dwell on the weak and illogical position of the Church, it is in order to show that the solution does not lie there, but only in Socialism.

Edgar Hardcastle

Betting and the clergy (1953)

From the September 1953 issue of the Socialist Standard

That pious organization, the Churches' Committee on Gambling, has been getting quite hot under the famous collar, to judge by their annual meeting in London.

It appears that an enterprising firm dealing in football coupons had the audacity to send some of them to the Secretary of the above-mentioned organization, the Reverend J. Clark Gibson. He says: “They have been sent to me at my home quite unsolicited and unwanted. What would happen if I were bumped off one night and the police came in and these coupons were found in my home, I do not know." (Daily Telegraph, 27.3.53). Of course the reverend gentleman would not know, seeing that he would be as dead as mutton.

Other speakers complained of football pool coupons being sent to them. To illustrate that pool betting is a game of chance and not a matter of skill, the Reverend Clark Gibson brought to the Committee's notice a device similar to a child’s puzzle, with a glass front and fourteen horizontal divisions. In each division is a ball, and the top of the gadget is marked with 1, 2 and x. It is shaken and the coupon is filled in according to where the balls settle. All this, mark you, to prove that this sort of gambling is a game of chance!

Dr. Ellison had this to say: "The danger the country is faced with is the setting up of an industry of gambling. If the gambling habit were allowed to establish itself further it would bring moral collapse." Dr. Ellison should know that the gambling habit has been established for years. Presumably a "flutter" on the horses would be classed as gambling—in which case the gentleman in question should reprimand the British Monarchy, who are not above attending race meetings and, being human, may indulge in speculation. And then there are the gamblers on the Stock Exchange— but, of course, that is entirely different!

Another contributor to this jolly little gathering was Lord Ammon, former Labour M.P. and Member of the Government, who said: "Wages were never higher and we have full employment, yet never was so much being spent on betting and drink. These things indicate a rapid decline in moral standards." Full employment is a somewhat elastic term. Lord Ammon as one-time member of the National Dock Labour Board will know the uncertainty of employment for dockers under "full employment."

It is significant that not one of these guardians of our morals speaks of war being a danger to morals. Their voices are silent on the vilest form of gambling, juggling with human life for the capture of world markets and trade routes. They are more concerned with letters being thrust through their doors. A group of people sets up rules and calls them morals, and an inert mass obeys them.

Social life is largely governed by do's and don'ts. Our rulers and preachers would wish the people to obey these edicts to the letter. That some of them don’t is an ever-increasing anxiety to our rulers. How can society remain stable when there are such rebellious transgressors? It really is too bad, think the clergy. For their very existence is at stake. They must assert themselves at every opportunity, and the Churches' Committee on Gambling knows this.

When it comes to raising people's living standards, religion is usually silent. Practical work was never done by priests—they come in at the death.

J. Crowe.

Property and the Countryside (1975)

From the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

A day in the countryside! Such a proposition is always attractive to the millions of urban dwellers who inhabit these islands. Escape from the polluted conurbations with their overcrowded thoroughfares, overwhelmingly tall buildings squeezed closely together and a pace of life which subtly imposes conformity upon the majority of people. Which human beings, even with only the slightest appreciation of aesthetics, would not want to free themselves, if only temporarily, from the grasp of our inhumanly large cities?

Since the majority of those in Britain do not live in the countryside but in towns, it is hardly surprising that there are many distorted views of what rural areas are actually like. Most town-dwellers have an absurdly romanticized impression of the countryside. They think of endless expanses of fields where one can wander about at will. Apparently, most of the restrictions of urban life are absent. Peacefulness and solitude are imagined, where there is a small population largely content with its supposedly idyllic surroundings.

However, anyone possessing just a superficial acquaintance with the countryside and having explored different parts of Britain, will rapidly realize the existence of large, wealthy landowners who have carved up such enormous slices of terrain. These individuals have always been able to hold much of the rural population, especially farm labourers, in servility. The cream of the bunch of these land-owners includes the Constable family, with its estates of many thousands of acres near Hull, the Countess of Sutherland who owns Dunrobin Castle together with 150,000 acres of land and the Cowder family who have grabbed 100,000 acres of Scotland. Of course, there is the fifth Duke of Westminster who is, according to Douglas Sutherland’s book The Landowners, one of the richest holders of land in the country. At the same time, on a smaller scale, we should not forget such individuals as the Hon. Michael Pearson, heir to the estates of the great industrial magnate, Lord Cowdray. He owns 4,400 acres of Gloucestershire.

These are just a few examples of those who make up the one per cent. of the population which owns more than twenty-five per cent of the wealth (Royal Commission on the Distribution of Income and Wealth, chaired by Lord Diamond, 1975). A Labour Research Department pamphlet entitled The 2 Nations — Inequality in Britain Today reveals the existence of Peter Cadbury, the chairman of Westward Television, who recently purchased a nine-hundred-acre estate in Hampshire, costing £2 million. He is just one of a number of multi-millionaire landowners in the south and west of England. Compare this with the weekly wage of the farm worker less than three years ago (£16.20p). The wage increase received since then has been relatively insignificant and the farm labourers remain poorly paid. Yet, on the other hand, we hear of the wealth of the estates owned by the Royal Family. These include the Windsor Estate which accounts for 13,500 acres of Berkshire, the Balmoral Estate which has gobbled up 40,000 acres of Aberdeenshire and the 7,000 acres of the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk. In spite of this, together with all the other royal land which is spread over twenty-seven counties, we are assured by Douglas Sutherland that as a private landowner the Queen is not even in the first flight of those who hold their wealth in land. The Church of England, the preachers and followers of that pauper- carpenter from Nazareth, Jesus Christ, should not be overlooked. The value of the Church’s assets as a landowner stood at over £318 million, whilst its estates were valued at £80,600,000 in 1964/65.

If one leaves a car and walks down almost any country lane, it will not be long before the inevitable barbed-wire fences, “Keep Out” and “Trespassers will be Prosecuted” notices appear. Few country ramblers have not been turned off estates, merely because they wanted to enjoy quite innocently the pleasures of the countryside. Anyone who has wandered deep into the countryside will recall the numerous restrictions which exist. Just think of the Fylingdale Moors Early-Warning Station and its Ministry of Defence area surrounded by barbed-wire which has seized a part of the North York Moors. In places such as Shiplake on the Thames, in Oxfordshire, one discovers electrified fences surrounding many of the fields, not to keep any cattle in, but to keep human beings out. “No Admission” and “Private Property” signs can be seen in innumerable rural areas such as at Kirkham Abbey in the East Riding of Yorkshire. The woods and fields of the Home Counties bear witness to the claims of the local landlords with their “Trespassers will be Prosecuted” signs.

How many of us, seeking a place for a picnic, have been compelled to sit down on a narrow piece of grass verge by the side of a busy road while “Private Property" notices stare menacingly at us from behind fences, hedgerows and barbed wire? How many footpaths have been ploughed over by farmers and land-owners determined to consolidate their estates? How many public rights of way and how much common land has been lost to the élite of the countryside?

River walks such as those by the Thames, upstream from London, have been decimated by the encroachment of local landlords on the public land immediately bordering the river. Many country walkers have found their strolls by the Thames ruinously interrupted by large estates such as those belonging to the Manor House at Shepperton in Surrey.

Marx was certainly right when he spoke of the “idiocy of rural life”. However, he was discussing the conditions in the countryside under feudalism and Capitalism. When the workers of both the towns and the countryside have realized that capitalism is a system of insanity and vileness, they will replace it by a form of society not only involving the common ownership of the means of production and distribution, but also one which will give freedom of access, in the fullest possible meaning of these words. This will certainly apply to the countryside and man will be able to enjoy the beauties of nature to the full. The enormous distinctions between the town and the countryside will disappear, and Socialism will provide all the people with the genuine opportunity to experience and appreciate the delights of rural areas.

Vincent Otter

So They Say: Short Memory (1975)

The So They Say Column from the October 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

Short Memory

While a large number of Tory MPs are now reflecting on just how Mrs. Thatcher ever came to be elected as Conservative leader, the deposed Mr. Heath seems to be fostering the vision of a triumphant return. He has been making speeches. And he made one recently in Edinburgh which evoked from The Guardian the description “a fierce attack on Labour Ministers.” The form of attack was on orthodox lines — he chose a particularly glaring social problem and proceeded to lay the blame for it at the door of the Labour Party. He spoke of the Government’s attitude towards the current unemployment figure of one-and-a-quarter million in the following manner.

‘Where have all the Labour consciences gone ?’ he asked. 'Gone to graveyards every one.’ And with them had gone Labour’s care and compassion, to be replaced by what he described as ‘a cold stony callousness towards those whose lives had now lost all sense of purpose.’

(Guardian, 6th September, 1975)

The implication being that with a warm-hearted leadership in power (who does he have in mind?) things would be very different. To add point to the callousness of the Labour Party, he asked:

But have Labour Ministers been resigning in droves in protest? Hardly. Has any Labour Minister resigned because of this massive unemployment? Not a single solitary Minister.

That may be Mr. Heath’s idea of a solution, but only for preaching — not practising. Unemployment rose to one million in 1972. He was Prime Minister then — when exactly the same irrelevant gibes were directed at him from the Labour benches. Of course that was all of three years ago: Mr. Heath “did not intend to go back over the past in any detail.” Which is just as well for him — members of the working class might begin to suspect that unemployment is just one of the several cancers upon what was once described by someone as "the unacceptable face of capitalism.”

Woolly Waffle

The Labour party has never polled as much as 50 per cent. of the votes at any general election, says Mr. Bryan Magee, and having considered this point — goes on to pose the following question:

The truth only too clearly is that whatever the Labour Party may think, the masses do not, most of the time, regard it as representing them. And if that is the case, by what right can it claim to speak for them ?

(Guardian, 2nd September 1975)

Mr. Magee is clearly not inhibited himself — he is Labour MP for Waltham Forest. As a result of recent scares among Labour MPs that small “activist” groups within certain constituencies can shape so-called revolutionary policies, he feels free to criticize these rebellious reformers for being "quite untypical” of the Labour Party — which by his own token has only a dubious right to speak for "the masses.”

He describes these factions as "the left of the Left” which we understand he means to be a left-handed compliment. Magee feels that the “activists” adopt an intellectually pretentious stand — “élitist to the narrow of its bones”.

As his article attempts to provide an explanation for Labour’s failure to take as much as 50 per cent. of votes, we look to his own intellect for the answer:

The British people . . . are known throughout the world, and justly, for being tradition bound, past bound. They do not like change. Therefore they want it only when times are unusually bad. That is why it is usually in unusually bad times that Labour is elected to office.

This might be offered as a phoney excuse for Labour’s inability to deal with social problems — things were so bad when they were elected, that they were unable . . . etc. — but it doesn’t explain why they ever leave office. Or does Mr. Magee think that Labour, to use their phrase, gets things moving, and at the first sight of improvement the Conservatives are returned only to mess it all up again?

State Capitalism

The Russians are due to complete their Kama River industrial project (Kamaz) in March 1976. It is currently two years behind schedule, but when finished the complex will become the world’s largest truck-manufacturing centre. It is estimated that lorries of between 8 and 11 tons will be coming off the assembly line at the rate of one every 90 seconds. Although the Russians were unable to interest "western firms” in the construction, they have used a considerable amount of foreign assistance in design and the supply of machinery.

The dimensions of Kamaz are staggering: A $5 billions budget, three million square metres of factory space, a new city to house 250,000 workers and their families, 155 miles of highway, 75 miles of railroad tracks and 150 buildings. All this has been built on a 40 square mile tract of country side in the Tartar Republic, 600 miles east of Moscow.

(Guardian, 11th September 1975)

Such a development requires a large amount of capital to be fixed in it, but where has it come from? If we listened to Mr. Malik, the Russian delegate to the UN, the answer could be that it just dropped from the sky.

In a debate in which member countries attempted to find agreement on what was picturesquely described as “an attempt to reconcile the conflicting interests of the rich and poor nations by negotiation” Malik tried to wash his hands of the “greedy West.” He blamed

the capitalist states who plunder and exploit the developing nations for the disparities in world economic relation.

(Guardian, 4th September 1975)

But facts belie the jargon. Russia is not adverse to dealing with the “capitalist states,” of which it is one:

Nearly every advanced Western Country, as well as the Eastern European countries, has an interest in the Kamaz project. There are 40 US firms alone involved in the project, with contracts valued at $400 millions. To pay for all this the Russians looked to the West. The US Export-Import Bank (Eximbank) and Chase-Manhattan concluded in 1973-4 credit agreements with the Soviet Bank of Foreign Trade totalling $322.9 millions. Moscow is to pay 10 per cent down to US suppliers with the remaining 90 per cent financed by Eximbank and Chase. The latter says it is charging “market rates” while the Eximbank has set a fixed rate of 6 per cent interest.

Interest? We know the “capitalist states” derive their interest through surplus value. Have the Russians found a new source for it?

Daily Bread

A Paddington vicar, the Rev. Michael Stephenson, has been forced to make some less than Christian remarks concerning his governors, the Church Commissioners. That august body had set pay targets for vicars of £1800 for 1974, and £2100 for 1975. Being mere targets, and recalling the inaccuracy of the Church in other fields, it seems hardly surprising that they have been missed. An irate Rev. Stephenson disclosed that his income in the year ending May 1975 was, in fact, only £1487.

The Church Commissioners have agreed that he is “quite right” and will be recommending that Stephenson, and others in his position, should receive the Government maximum of £6 a week increase.

While we have a certain sympathy for Rev. Stephenson, our eyebrows were raised when he remarked:

It would have been far more honest of them to pledge themselves to meet a previous target which has not yet been met, than to set a new target which is sheer pie in the sky when compared to reality.

(Marylebone Mercury, 12th September 1975)

It may be “sheer pie in the sky,” but surely, Reverend, a classic case of “whatsoever a man soweth, that he shall also reap.”

Students need Knowledge

Among a number of other proposals which it is fighting against, the National Union of Students now has a new one to oppose. A Commons Select Committee on science and technology has just recommended that postgraduate science students should receive bigger grants than students studying “arts” subjects. The NUS quite rightly saw this proposal as “divisive” but this is no secret. The committee is not in the least worried by some vague ideas of the unity of students — it has been examining the requirements of capitalism tomorrow. The committee gave their own points of reference used when drawing up their report:

We believe that a system of differential grants for science postgraduates would provide the research councils with a practical and valuable tool to assist in the encouragement of research in priority areas. We are aware that such a scheme may create jealousies between different groups. We believe however that this is a price which may have to be paid if national needs are to play any part in the manpower training functions of the universities.

(Daily Telegraph, 12th September 1975)

If the NUS thought that universities were for "education,” they may now see what “education” is for. But this is not to say that knowledge is an irrelevance. The study of Socialist knowledge is the task which students and workers must attend. When this is done the cries of “divisive” will end.

Alan D'Arcy

Sting in the Tail: Discontented Capitalists (1994)

The Sting in the Tail column from the September 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Discontented Capitalists

At present Lord Palumbo is facing a fierce legal battle with his son and daughter over his management of a £70 million trust fund. They reckon he should be replaced as trustee as they don't like some of the things he is doing with the money.

This wrangling over the loot produced by the working class amongst the families of the capitalists is no new thing, but what makes it interesting is some of the expenditure by Lord Palumbo that is revealed by the dispute.

"Among the transactions being questioned by the children are the purchase of a Scottish island and two houses in France worth £4.5 million; £9.5 m in directors' payments; charitable donations of £4.9m; and donations to Tory party funds of £263,000.

They also allege that £13m has been spent on works of art, £2.5m on wine and about £2m on assorted properties and vintage cars. Lord and Lady Palumbo deny any misuse of the trust fund."

(The Independent 6th August).

Managing a £70 million trust fund must be quite demanding, doing so while allegedly consuming about £7,000 a week, since 1987, on booze is mind blowing!

Would-be capitalists

Workers are forever dreaming of winning the football pools. Living, as they do, in poor housing and fearing the prospect of unemployment it is not difficult to see why.

If you live in a large city like Manchester or Glasgow, statistically you have a better chance of being murdered than winning a large prize on the pools.

Even if you should be one of the very lucky few it does not mean security for life as shown by a report in the Sunday Times (31 July)

"Stockbroker Peter Creegan, who advises Littlewoods winners, advises: no pools winner should give up work unless he is at least 40."

Certainly, if like Lord Palumbo, your wine bill is £7,000 a week, you should consider keeping on your day job.

Contented capitalists

Under the heading "City Warms to Tony Blair’s Labour", The Independent (6 August) in their View from City Road column recalled how pleasing past Labour governments have been to all those drones, hangers-on and speculators collectively known as "the City."

"During the first Wilson government of 1963 to 1970, shareholders saw a 100 percent return on shares, or 13 percent a year, and in the second period of Labour rule returns were nearly 200 per cent, or 40 per cent a year, according to figures prepared by BZW.

Gilt markets did not do so well in the first phase, returning only 5 per cent over the seven year period, but returns were over 100 per cent, or 20 per cent a year, under Labour in the seventies."

Remembering that the source of all rent, interest and profit is the unpaid labour of the working class, you can see that while some sections of the British capitalist class may rejoice at the return of a Labour government no member of the working class should.

Odious comparison

Some other shareholders are also upset. These are managers in British Telecom who are faced with redundancy. BT wants to get rid of 6,500 of them this year even if this means by compulsion.

As is usual in such cases, those faced with the sack argued that savings could be made elsewhere and pointed to the huge sums paid to BTs Board of Directors.

BTs Chairman, Sir Iain Vallance, had a predictable answer to that one:

". . . board decisions were more far-reaching in their impact and deserved a higher bonus level, while board salaries also had to reflect the level of pay at other top companies."

(Guardian 29 July)

That last bit is sheer humbug. What if BTs unions demanded a pay rise because "other top companies" were paying more than BT workers were getting? Vallance's answer to that would be equally predictable — that what other companies pay their employees in no business of BT.

Wrong union

In July we drew attention to some Buddhist monks in Japan who formed a trade union. Now we learn that the Manufacturing, Science and Finance union (MSF) has recruited a dozen Anglican clergy and hopes to enrol thousands more in a special clergy section.

Falling congregations and the loss of millions of pounds on the property market have forced the church into a major economy drive. "Livings" have been lost as parishes amalgamated and there is a proposal to abolish "the parson’s freehold" which has guaranteed free housing and job security until 70.

Faced with this twin threat, one union recruit said:

"On the whole, my background would not be particularly pro-union, but I'm in the process of being re-educated. We are being told bishops are man-managers, that they are adopting management structures. The logic is, if they want to adopt a more managerial stance, those at the coalface must adopt a more ’worker' stance."

(Guardian 3 August)

That clergymen should join a trade union is appropriate enough. What is not is joining one which has some connection with science.

God in retreat

Thirty-one years ago the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich's book, Honest to God, put the cat among the theological pigeons. In it he denied the existence of a supernatural God. Instead, God was love, tolerance and all that was best in mankind.

Now comes Anthony Freeman, the Sussex Gear, who has been sacked by the C of E for saying much the same. And he is not alone. He has the support of 22 vicars, non-conformist ministers and a Roman Catholic priest.

One of his supporters said: " . . . to hold to a traditional view of an external deity does not make sense" (Guardian 4 August), while Freeman claimed on TV that "a substantial number" of priests shared his views but are afraid to speak out in case they share his fate.

Islamic fundamentalism and crackpot evangelism may be temporarily on the rise elsewhere, but in this part of the world religious superstition is undeniably in headlong retreat.

Blogger's Note:

The August 1963 issue of the Socialist Standard carried an article - written by Pieter Lawrence - which discussed the controversy surrounding the Bishop of Woolwich's book, Honest to God.

Christianity and Capitalism (1948)

From the September 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

Occasionally, when we pick up a newspaper, we are confronted with the reported utterance of some representative of the Church.

At this stage of scientific and industrial development the Church is very little thought about. It no longer commands the attention of large masses of the community. In fact it is continually seeking new methods of enticing people back into the light of the Lord and out of the darkness of barbaric superstition.

The priesthood now dabbles in such things as foreign policy, economics and politics generally. We read, at intervals, that another ecclesiastic has voiced his inexpert views on some aspect of everyday life.

Recently it was reported that an attack has been made by the Church of England Youth Council upon the discipline in post-war factories.

“What happens,” asks their report, “to the boy who leaves school for factory believing in the dignity of labour and in a fair return for a fair wage? ”

It supplies its own answer quoted from an observer in a London engineering factory:—-

“The boy finds that everything about the factory contradicts his belief. Everybody expects him to dodge work as much as possible. If he works steadily he is regarded as an oddity, a despised master’s man, toadying to the bosses. “The foreman winks at slackness. It is unknown for anyone to work voluntarily for one minute after the hooter has gone unless on official overtime.” (Daily Express, 11th June, 1947.)

The whole wording of the report is familiar. It is of the same type as other reports made from time to time by the supporters of the capitalist system. In the first sentence we have the foolish reference lo the “dignity of labour.” A man who has worked in an engineering factory for a number of years has no reason to think of his daily routine as dignified. It usually consists of being awakened by an alarm-clock before his sleep has completed its proper function, dressing himself in his dirty, smelly garments, bolting his breakfast (if any) and rushing to the factory to clock-on. He is afraid of being a few minutes late in case he should have the equivalent of a quarter of an hour deducted from his wages. This latter is the procedure at such times as the present when engineers are required to bolster the export trade. In times of economic depression the loss of a minute would furnish the master with sufficient excuse to dispense with the wage-slave’s services altogether. During the war, when it was necessary for the worker to supply the materials necessary for maintaining the supremacy of British capitalism, it was possible to be hours late. No notice was taken.

When the worker has performed all these degrading formalities he then proceeds to his bench or machine where he goes through the depressing and monotonous actions from the point where he left off the previous evening. All this in an environment of dirt and discomfort, but above all one of extreme monotony. In an atmosphere like this the officers of the Church expect a boy, fresh from school, to preserve a pure and righteous outlook presupposing, apparently, that he entered the factory in this condition in the first place. It would be interesting to discover the source of supply of these miraculous youths.

Let us examine the position as it really is through the eyes of a worker instead of through the eyes of a religious observer. The boys to whom the report refers are of the working-class. They may enter the engineering trade, through inclination, but being workers it is obvious that they must sell their mental and physical energies somewhere in order to live. Very few boys who take up engineering like this do so because of their intense interest in mechanical matters. They do it because, due to the specialised training required, they can, when fully qualified tradesmen, obtain a higher wage than a boy who has started life as an errand-boy.

In the days before mass-production the wages paid to engineers were relatively much higher compared with those paid to other types of labour than they are now, the reason being that capitalist competition has become so intense that many operations have become universally simplified to such an extent that no great skill is required to perform them.

Apprenticeships are of much less value now, and since much less training is required, it follows that this type of labour-power is more plentiful, more competition exists between workers, and wages therefore tend to suffer in comparison with other branches of industry.

Perhaps the reader who is not familiar with the subject will now understand the tendency towards work-dodging.

If we accept the fact that the boy enters the factory because of economic necessity and he finds his environment to be one of monotony and drudgery, there is little cause for wonder that he rebels against these conditions. He does all he can to compensate for his unhappy position.

The report did not mention that production is carried on primarily for the profit of the capitalists, nor that this is inseparable from capitalism. Profits are made by the exploitation of the working-class. Surely this vital point ought not to have been missed by those who drew up the report! The report also ignores the constant drive by the employers to capture markets and maintain profits by trying to get the workers to turn out more commodities in a given time than they were able to before.

It requires very little imagination on the part of the reader to understand the effect which this speeding-up has upon the worker. He becomes mentally and physically exhausted and develops a tendency to dodge work as much as possible. In factories where supervision is very strict work-dodging becomes practically impossible. Hence the increase in the number of thugs, spivs and gangsters. If there is any possibility of making a living easily and unlawfully the modern working-class youth has every incentive to try it.

The report goes on to say: “The boy may have been taught in church, home and school to respect other people’s property, but at work he finds that scrounging is almost universal.” This, presumably, refers to the practice of removing small quantities of the master’s plant and material either for sale or personal use. It is by no means a novelty from the point of view of the managements. They employ uniformed men to stand at the gates of the factory to look out for suspicious bundles and bulges underneath the coats of the workers. As the report says, this is commonly understood and is brought about by the conflict of interests between employer and employee. One owns the means of wealth production and distribution and the other owns nothing but his ability to work.

Towards the end of the column there is a paragraph which says: “In general everything about the atmosphere of the works, other than the friendliness of the people, conflicts with everything which a normal young Christian boy or girl has been taught.” This statement is quite correct. The friendliness of the workshop is not to be denied, but it is a friendship arising from human beings who, subconsciously at my rate, are aware of the, conflict of interests. The pilfering is one-sided arid rarely takes place between worker and worker.

The Church could hardly he expected to appreciate the day-to-day struggle of the workers. It is too much out of contact with reality, and the solution which it offers is not acceptable to intelligent men and women.

The object of the Socialist Party of Great Britain is to point out to the working-class the nature of the class-struggle and the only way in which workers can solve their problems. Study our case and compare it with those, of other political parties. Socialism, the common ownership and democratic control of the means of life, is the, only solution.

Rid the world of capitalism and society will rid itself of the evils of capitalism, including war, unemployment, poverty, thugs and parsons.

Chester.

Notes by the Way: This Millionaire Business (1948)

The Notes by the Way Column from the May 1948 issue of the Socialist Standard

This Millionaire Business

Mr. Bernard Harris, of the Sunday Express, is worried because under Labour Government (he calls it “Socialism”) “you have no chance to-day of starting a business in Britain which will make you a millionaire before you die.” (Sunday Express, April 11th, 1948.) It seems that the harvest of millionaires has been falling for generations so that to-day “there are only 244 millionaires in Britain. They are the people with incomes of £50,000 a year or more.”

Mr. Harris does not go so far as to say that there will be no new millionaires, but he fears they won’t be hard-working lads like their fathers, but will become millionaires the easy way, “by inheritance or out-and-out speculation.”

“The self-made millionaire, in the sense of the man who has created a vast business from small beginnings, is a fast disappearing species. And he is the only valuable kind.”

He quotes an unnamed jam millionaire who was asked 50 years ago “to give 12 rules for making a million,” and replied, “Repeat ‘hard work’ 12 times.”

So the good millionaires make their money by hard work, and the other millionaires are not good ones. This leads to some curious conclusions. Lord Derby, who died in February last, left property valued at £1,937,838 (Evening Standard, April 8th, 1948), but though he inherited his estates and therefore does not fall into Mr. Harris’s group of valuable millionaires, we do not recall that the Sunday Express ever condemned him as an example of a no-good rich man. Nor did Lord Derby think it of himself. When he was Tory Postmaster-General in 1905 it was the postmen whom he thought were no good. He had nasty things to say about some of them who were trying to work up electoral opposition to him and other M.P.s because, after a Committee appointed by the Government had recommended increases of pay, the Government would not carry out the whole of the recommendations. Lord Derby called the postmen blackmailers and bloodsuckers though later he withdrew the “bloodsuckers” when he found what a storm of criticism it produced The postmen, most of them earning probably between 25s. and 30s. a week, were certainly hard-working— their employer saw to that—but it never got them anywhere.

Mr. Harris also tells us that “there were the Wills, of tobacco fame. Eleven members of that family have died since 1909 leaving a total of £38,000,000 between them.”

In November last Sir William Churchman, a director of the Imperial Tobacco Co. and partner in Churchman’s, died worth £1,102,719. (Evening Standard, 7/2/48).

These ladies and gentlemen got their wealth out of business, in the way Mr. Harris approves but if hard work is the explanation one wonders why the hard-working cigarette makers never get into the millionaire group like their employers.

The truth is, of course, that all great fortunes, whether inherited or acquired during the owner’s lifetime, came out of the unpaid labour of the working class.

* * *

The Garibaldi Communists

When Communists fight elections it is on the principle that no dishonesty is barred provided it gets votes. In Italy, according to a correspondent of the Sunday Express (11/4/48), they are appealing to patriotic sentiment.

“The Red Flag is nowhere to be seen; no hammer and sickle signs disfigure the walls. With a lack of scruple that takes the breath away they proclaim Garibaldi their hero. His head appears on most of their posters.”

However, it seems that Garibaldi’s 81-year-old daughter is still alive and she objects to Communists “hiding behind her father’s picture.”

“Her father,” she said, “never approved of Communism.” “It was founded by a German (Marx) who always hated Garibaldi.” (Daily Mail, 12/4/48.)

* * *

“Freedom of the Press” in Russia

In Russia no political party is legal except the Communist Party and no publication is permitted that opposes the Communist Party. At the United Nations Conference at Geneva on 29th March, 1948, an American delegate, Mr. Harry Martin, president of the American Newspaper Guild, was challenged to produce proof of his statement that in Russia the press is controlled by the Government. According to a Reuter and Associated Press report Manchester Guardian, 30/3/48) he did so by reading out the Statute which in 1931 gave control of publications to a State organisation known as “Gavlit.”

“It authorised the Gavlit administration to forbid the publication of any works containing ‘agitation and propaganda against the Soviet authority and the dictatorship of the proletariat.’ It entrusted Gavlit with ‘preliminary and subsequent control over published literature both from the political-ideological and from the military and economic viewpoints,’ and authorised confiscation of disapproved publications and the prosecution of persons ‘violating the demands of Gavlit, its organs and authorised representatives’.” (Manchester Guardian 30/3/48.)

The News Chronicle's own correspondent at Geneva reported that although the Russian delegate addressed the Conference after the above had been quoted “he made no reference to Mr. Martin’s quotation.” (News Chronicle, 30/3/48.)

* * *

Japan’s the Friend, not China

Honor Tracy, correspondent in Japan of the Observer, reports that American policy has taken a new turn. “Under this policy Japanese economy is to be restored as quickly as possible, with liberal American help, in the hope of creating better conditions, not only in Japan herself but in the Far East as a whole. Japan is thus to become ‘the workshop of Asia’ as she has always claimed is her proper function.” (Observer, 11/4/48.)

The Report continues :

“Travellers returning to Tokyo from China report . . . indignation that the proposed grants and loans to Japan during the present year should be so much greater than what is being offered to China. The American view, on the other hand, is that China is now disintegrating so fast as to make outside help ineffective.”

It looks as if the “brave Eastern allies” in next war may be the Japs, while China qualifies for the position of a horrid dictatorship.

* * *

Lancashire’s Exports

Mr. Harold Wilson, President of the Board of Trade, speaking in London on 9th April, 1948, referred to the struggle to find markets abroad for textiles. “Although the problem of production of textiles this year’ is going to be the biggest problem this country has ever faced, the problem of selling them is going to be even greater, particularly in face of the enormous import restrictions in three-quarters of the trading world. We have put strong diplomatic pressure on every country which is imposing restrictions against us and we have in our various trade negotiations made it a cardinal point to try to open the market wherever possible …” (Manchester Guardian, 10/4/48.)

One of Lancashire’s competitors is Japan and another is U.S.A. Mr. Ewing, Chairman of the Bradford Dyers’ Association, according to a Manchester Guardian report of a speech, “was worried about Japanese competition. Exports of Japanese cotton textiles increased rapidly during 1947 and were equal to three-quarters of Lancashire’s trade. The United States was also developing export trade. Mr. Ewing therefore stressed the need for quality and inventiveness.” (Manchester Guardian, 12/4/48.)

In the meantime, while Japan fights to sell more textiles outside Japan, U.S.A. to sell more textiles outside U.S.A., and Britain to sell more outside Britain, the President of the Board of Trade tells us that “if textile, production does not buck up the clothing ration may have to be reduced.” (Daily Mail, 13/4/48.)

* * *

Is the Church an Essential Industry?

A News Chronicle reporter tells readers that “latest figures show that only 4,000 vicars and rectors have a net income of between £400 and £500 a year. Five thousand earn less than £400—and some hundreds have even less than £300. (News Chronicle, 10/4/48.) He says that parents today will not enter their sons for the Church because of the low pay and “a drive has begun to establish a £500 minimum for vicars and £260 for assistant curates.”

This is all very well but is the Church so other worldly that it hasn’t heard about “wage-freezing” and the policy of allowing increases only in essential industries or where there is increased production?

* * *

Social Reform is not Socialism

While the Daily Express (8/4/48) tells us that things are worse here than in America because “in Britain we have Socialism,” the Daily Mail will have none of it. Criticising a speech in which Mr. Attlee claimed we have had our Socialist social revolution the Mail wrote (24/1/48) :

“For such claptrap read ordinary ‘social reform.’ Bigger names stand upon that role than those of Attlee and Bevin. We cite Disraeli, Chamberlain, Asquith, Lloyd George, Churchill, Baldwin.”

We can leave them to fight out the issue which party achieved more reforms of capitalism. As Socialists we heartily endorse the statement that it is claptrap to describe social reform as Socialism.

* * *

The “Daily Worker” is disappointed with Indian Capitalism

Socialists never supported the Indian Nationalist movement, knowing well that the propertied interests which financed and controlled it were only concerned with making India safe for Indian capitalism. Not so the Communists. They urged Indian workers to support Nehru and the Congress Party. Now the Daily Worker professes to be astonished because Nehru’s government treats the Indian workers in the same way that they were treated under British rule.

“What is happening in India? The British trade unionist may well rub his eyes in astonishment. Trade union leaders are being arrested and repressive action is being taken against the Communist Party . . .

“Such happenings were frequent under British rule, but India is now said to be free . . . The plain fact is that little has changed in India except that it is now ruled directly by the Indian capitalists, landlords and princes by grace of the British Imperialists.” (Daily Worker, 9/4/48.)

There is nothing to cause astonishment in the discovery that Indian capitalism is like any other hut how comes it that the Daily Worker should ever have supposed that it would he different?

Edgar Hardcastle

Sting in the Tail: The common factor (1994)

The Sting in the Tail column from the November 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

The common factor

Following the Estonia tragedy:

"Swedish and Finnish ferry lines admitted hushing-up six serious incidents which preceded the Estonia’s sinking ” (Teletext 30 September).

These roll-on roll-off ferries are liable to capsize when even a relatively small amount of water enters the vehicle decks, yet Alan Clark, ex-Tory MP, said on Question Time (29 September) that marine architects can quite easily design ships which prevent this, but, with touching concern for human life asked “would this really be worth all the expense and inconvenience?”

And this is what it is all about:

“The economic reason why vehicle decks are not subdivided to prevent rapid capsize is that this would obstruct bailing, increase turnaround times and reduce the number of cars or lorries a ship should carry. That would mean higher fares, lower profits, or both — and at a time, so far as British operators are concerned, when ferries are facing fresh competition from the Channel tunnel” (Guardian 24 September).

Every disaster which comes along, be it Piper Alpha, the King's Cross Underground fire, the train crash at Clapham Junction or the Herald of Free Enterprise, provides evidence aplenty that capitalism’s remorseless drive to cut costs at the expense of safety is the prime cause of them all.

Healthy profits

Today’s economic climate has seen many employers cut the wages and conditions and increase the workload of their employees.

This often leads to the deterioration of the physical and mental health of the workers involved, but some other employers recognise that this approach is counter-productive and are concerned to protect and even improve the health and well-being of their employees.

Companies such as Grand Met, Glaxo. Sainsbury, Marks and Spencer, IBM and Nestle are participating in the Wellness Forum which promotes preventative health care by health screening along with weight control, anti-smoking and anti-alcohol abuse programmes.

There are sound commercial reasons behind this. A spokesman for the Institute of Personnel and Development told the Independent:

“Employers in their own interests have got to maximise the use of people at work as far as they can. Absenteeism is very expensive ” (9 September).

This absenteeism is estimated by the CBI to cost £13 billion a year, and the Independent adds that the Forum has “a belief in the correlation between a healthy workforce and healthy profits”.

Looking after the goose that lays the golden eggs always made more sense than killing it.

YC’s get KO’d

A new book True Blues, claims that Tory Party membership has slumped from 2.8 million in 1952 to below 500,000 now and is still falling.

Feeling better? Well, there’s more good news, because the Young Conservatives are set for the chop. And no wonder. Having been taken over by the “radical right” in much the same way as Labour's youth wing was by Trotskyists, the YC’s have long been a thorn in the side of the parent party.

There were well-publicised links with the BNP and other racists groups, support for apartheid, jokes about the Holocaust, vicious faction fighting and lots of hooliganism From a peak of 100,000 membership has plunged to around 5,000, so Tory Central Office probably reckons that what’s left isn’t worth the hassle.

A Tory' youth organisation may well continue to exist in one form or another, but the heady days when the YC’s seemed to consist of youngsters all desperately trying to outdo one another in sounding more reactionary and bloodthirsty, are probably over for good.

Heller’s history

Joseph Heller’s novel Catch-22, published in 1962, was a brilliant and hilarious account of the corruption and insanity of capitalism set against the background of World War Two.

The long-awaited sequel is now ready, so Sally Vincent travelled to interview Heller, and her account of their meeting appeared in Weekend Guardian (24 September).

Heller’s perception of capitalism has not dimmed. According to Sally Vincent he thinks:

“We can produce enough food to feed the world, hut simultaneously can V because there's no profit producing enough food. ”

And he apparently thinks that “Marx was right”, although about what he didn't say, but his perception leaves him when it comes to interpreting history which he thinks is “autonomous and proceeds independently of the people who make it.”

Marx took a very different view: 

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. ” 

As a novelist, Heller takes some beating, but when it comes to explaining history then it has to be Marx.

Doubting Thomas

The sacking of the Sussex vicar Anthony Freeman for revealing that he doesn’t believe in God highlights the problem facing many of these sky pilots.

Take the example of an anonymous Church of Scotland minister, whose dilemma was reported in Scotland on Sunday (14 August):

“Thomas does not believe in God. There was no virgin birth, no resurrection, Jesus was a mere inspirational mortal like Ghandi and there is, most sadly, no life after death. The last bit gets tricky, for he must pretend to believe in some kind of afterlife to soothe many of the pensioners he talks to each Sunday from the pulpit. "

All workers must sell their ability to work for a wage or salary, and these professional holy men are no different. Here is what our reverend gentleman has to say about it:

“To be honest, I've got a family to feed and a career and a pension to think about. I don't think I should put my job on the line just for the sake of discussion of some arcane beliefs and ideas that probably don't really matter anyway. ”

Blogger's Notes: 

• Joseph Heller's Catch-22 was reviewed in the November 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard.
• The King's Cross Underground fire was covered in the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard.
• The Piper Alpha disaster was covered in the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Fraud or Fool? An Open Letter to the Bishop of London. (1909)

From the January 1909 issue of the Socialist Standard

My Lord Bishop,—The Press reports you as saying recently, at a meeting convened by the State Children’s Association, that “Any boy now being taught in their Poor Law Institutions might sit on the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury, if he had the brains and power.”

The most charitable construction that can be put upon this startling announcement is that you lack information, and since you are in a position which could readily enable you to obtain such information, you are a fool. As you should have learnt from one of your own textbooks, “A fool despises instruction.”

The inability to definitely posit you as fraud or fool by no means demonstrates that you are neither. In the hazy atmosphere compounded of episcopal mendacity and aristocratic thickheadedness which represents your mental equipment, your public utterances loom up tinged with varying proportions of the murky ingredients which gave them being.

The moral kink treads hard upon the intellectual twist. Folly and Falsehood were ever twin monsters of one brood.

I will not press you to give your definition of the word “power.” The habit you have fallen into of using sounding phrases which may haply disguise insincerity of heart, and clearness of mind, precludes you from giving precision to terms which cry aloud for such treatment at your mouth—”blind mouth,” Milton would have said. Your formal adherence to creeds and doctrines which you dare not examine, your futile juggling with the metaphysical niceties of an outworn creed, your £10,000 a year, are a bar, an ever increasing barrier, between yourself and intellectual candour.

What of your Ordination Oath, when one of your own clergy brazenly proclaims the prostitution of his office and of his intellect ”in his own pulpit at St. Margaret’s Church,” by declaring he mouths “formularies to which, as an individual, he cannot ex animo subscribe” ?

“Power”! Your statement with regard to the word in question simply means that “Any boy now being taught in their Poor Law Institutions might sit on the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury if he could manage to do the trick.” “Any boy can punch his neighbour in the eye if he can.” “What will happen will happen.” 0=0. Startling conclusion ! Cerebation extraordinary—which brings me to the question of

BRAINS.

I understand from your utterance that you hold intellect to be one of the main necessities for success in life. That is a fair inference from your statement. You give adhesion to the taradiddle which declares to the French youth that every private carries in his knapsack the baton of a marshall ; you hold that the humblest clerk in the Admiralty, by strict attention to duty, may one day “become a ruler of the King’s navee”—inferentially that your exalted position is owing partly to an extra dose of grey matter.

A bitter fool !

I wonder what the assembled company in Park Lane thought. Did none wince at that nonsensical nullity of yours concerning “power”? I know naught of Lady Buxton, eke of Lady Courtney, but Mrs. Barnett ? The good lady who so severely takes the servant girl to task for her lack of coherent thinking, who has deplored the lack of “light” among the class which she vainly endeavours to sugar ! And the “secondary and elementary school teachers” present ! Peradventure, the secondaries and elementaries were at Park Lane on strict business bent. “Les affaires sont les affaires, n’est’ce pas.” If the question is not personal, did the presence of those same purveyors of specially doctored capitalist lore afflict you with a sort of sympathetic itching ? On the grounds of a common humanity, sharply and inevitably opposed as you and I must be, my Lord Bishop, on the political field, I sympathise with you for any discomfort you may have felt in the direction indicated. The creepiness of the “secondary” and “elementary” is of so loathsome a nature that a bishop should be spared that infliction.

Perhaps a quotation from Ruskin may help you to grasp my view-point on the question of Success and Brains. The Socialist Party of Great Britain does not swear by Ruskin. It occasionally, perforce, swears at him. But, at any rate, he did see certain isolated facts clearly, if he failed to correlate them, and made a kaleidoscopic colour smudge of what was intended to be an ordered harmony. “In a community regulated only by laws of supply and demand” successful persons are “industrious, resolute, proud, covetous, prompt, methodical, unimaginative, and ignorant.” Not much room for brains here. Per contra, “the persons who remain poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the entirely merciful, just and godly person.” Eh ! Ruskin wasn’t orthodox ? You repudiate him as witness ? My Lord of London, Right Reverend Father in God, bland participator in the profits distilled from the life’s blood of the workingman, reeking with the shame of the unsexed working woman, bloody with the agony-drops of children,—will ye accept the ruling of the phantom figure which you and yours have exploited in your own interest for so long, and whom you have solemnly declared to represent the highest attainable wisdom ? You are never tired of telling us the “His Life” was the highest teaching, irrespective of precept. So. And yet your Incarnation of Highest Truth, your Very-God-of-Very-God-Man made a sorry hash of his life, reproaching the Unbegotten-Very-God-of-Very-God in his dying agony. I beg pardon. You say, ha ! He attained the highest success. M’yes, but that was not the kind of success you contemplated when beaming on the Park Lane assembly. The archbishop’s throne, the bishop’s chair, have not, of recent years, been associated with martyrdom. What you indicated was, that the poor little worker’s kiddy stood an excellent chance of collaring the £15,000 a year attached to the “throne” of Augustine’s successor.

A word in conclusion. Your cant and rant have no longer much weight with the class that has worked religion for all it is worth, in the only way that it could be worked, viz., for the befooling and undoing of the worker. But you need not therefore despair. If your class has its philosophic doubters, its ethical philanders, its Cheynes and its Hensons, there are still the

PIOUS LABOUR LEADERS;

there are still the “Socialist” bleaters who find such solace in a quiet hour on their knees that they become permanently afflicted with housemaid’s knee on the brain, meek firebrands, valiant worms, revolutionary P.S.A’ers, to whom you may still address your pagan patter and mushy moralising. A tip, my Lord. Next time you address a gathering on a similar subject, why not invite a few of the meek-eyed crowd herein indicated ? That you may bore each other to mutual damnation is the final wish of

Yours,

SNOGGY