Between the Lines: Simon’s war (1985)

The Between the Lines column from the July 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

Simon’s war
Most of us experience war only through the medium of television. Too often it is presented as a ninety-minute, small-screen fiction — an appealing and heroic adventure which depicts "Our Boys" kicking hell out of those who dared to affront the Nation. War films glorify killing and condition innocent viewers to imitate the violence they see — but only when the state requires them to. Needless to say, moralising Mary Whitehouse and her crowd of repressed would-be censors are more concerned to ban explicit acts of love from the screen than the filthy portrayal of war. Copulation is regarded as an obscenity, which affects impressionable minds, but legally sanctioned guns and bombs seem not to offend.

All of this comes to mind after watching a repeated QED documentary called Simon's War. In an unpretentious way, it showed the horrors of legalised violence better than many a more politically-motivated documentary might have done. It was the moving story of Simon Weston, a Welsh Guardsman on board the Sir Galahad when it was hit. Forty-six men died, but Simon lived — in a sense. He was not one of the forty-six whom the government (and the loyal Opposition) need have on their consciences. He survived with 46 per cent burns to his body — mainly on his face and hands injuries described as "minor" by the Ministry of Defence when breaking the news to his parents.

The opening-shots showed the patriotic parade of whipped-up lunacy which preceded the pain — flags waving, wives crying, children bewildered. and bands playing. And then off they went to perform their violent duty to the tune of the national anthem. Next scene: the dead and dying being airlifted from the area of slaughter. Cameras beside a stretcher in the military hospital showed the anguish and recorded the screams of pain of the soldier whose injuries they had decided to make a documentary about. The film then followed Simon's struggle to come to terms with the severe physical and emotional injuries which had been inflicted on him. Physically, he has been transformed from a robust, able lad who used to be a good rugby player. Emotionally, he has been stripped of his independence and turned into a hideously deformed person who is frightened of scaring his own nephew. He returns home to Nelson in Wales for a birthday celebration, but is too weak to spend the evening in the social club where he used to be "one of the lads". An old mate comments, after seeing Simon: 'I couldn't say nothing to him. I just felt like throwing up and crying." During the period covered by the programme Simon's girlfriend, who was going to marry him. ceases to be his girlfriend. These are the consequences of war — good old conventional war, remember — which don't always make the columns of the Sun. Towards the end of the programme Simon is seen at a medal-giving parade, standing to attention before the arch-parasites, the Princes Philip and Charles. As they inspect the damage to their subjects there is a voice-over, with Simon summing up his predicament: "It's all part of war really . . . I’m just a working guy who tried to do his job and got injured."

Simon's War should be compulsory viewing for every young worker who is thinking of joining the army. Let them see what it means to survive in a war: let them know what they will be asked to sacrifice in order that a minority may grow richer and stronger; let them hear the cries of pain, which are but echoes of strident nationalist rhetoric. After the Falklands war they called Margaret Thatcher the Iron Lady. But iron doesn't burn; skin does.


Terrace war
In the South Atlantic workers were paid and given medals for behaving like thugs. In Brussels, where the actions of certain so-called football supporters led to thirty-eight deaths, the violence was not ordered by the government and we are therefore expected to be full of condemnation.

Turning on the football only to watch a two-hour riot was a miserable experience. Here were workers wasting their energies in a fool's war between one set of wage slaves and another. The sport experts in the studio, led by Jimmy Hill, became more and more like propagandists for state violence. Hill proposed bringing back national service; the studio team agreed. Terry Venables suggested giving all football hooligans a minimum prison sentence of five years; there was no dissent from his fellow pundits. From the stadium in Brussels, the Ayatollah Bobby Charlton proposed a revival of good old corporal punishment. This is what happens when sports commentators panic and become so frightened by the ugly symptoms of the present system that they have no concern for the cause. The crescendo of repressive propositions coming from the TV set that night showed just how easy it is for fear to give rise to totalitarian solutions. And television allows the cultivation of such collective hysteria to be even more controlled by the state than it was in Europe in the 1930s.


Commodity-talk
Millions of people have been trained to think about what they buy through advertising slogans. They go into the grocer for a packet of "exceedingly good cakes" and some "prolongs active life" for the dog; in the sweet shop they pick up a "helps you work, rest and play" bar and perhaps "Just one Cornetto" — to the approved tune, of course; then on to the travel agent to book two weeks in Benidorm with "Well take more care of you"; down to the garage to pick up the "Vorsprung durch Technik" and fill it up with a few gallons of the petrol which "you can be sure of". It is hardly surprising that a buying and selling society has taught the consumers to go in for commodity-talk. Think of all the language we'll lose in a world of free access: no more mindless slogans and jolly tunes to persuade us to buy shoddy brand A rather than bargain brand B. In a moneyless society I suppose we will have to learn to survive without the ad-men telling us what we want.

Steve Coleman

The Class Struggle On Board The "Titanic." (1912)

From the May 1912 issue of the Socialist Standard

Once again humanity has been staggered by an appalling catastrophe, in which hundreds of human lives have been thrown away, and hundreds of homes plunged into grief and despair. Once again the wild cry of horror has vibrated through the world, and the multitude have been not only shocked, but astounded, as if the unexpected had happened. Once again the newspapers have been slobbering sentimental platitudes and unctuous hypocrisy as though this were not the best thing that has happened for them for many a long day. Once again the machinery of bogus inquiries and sanctimonious “charity” has been set in motion in order to hide awkward and incriminating facts. And finally, once again have the flouted working class, on whom the brunt of this stupendous sacrifice to Mammon has fallen, begun to forget all about it.

Well, there is nothing at all unusual in that. The workers have proverbially short memories. They have forgotten Featherstone; they have forgotten Whitehaven, they have forgotten Bolton, and in a few short days they will have forgotten the “Titanic”. Murder of workers is so common; the workers are so used to it, that they cannot even recognise it for what it is. When the murderous rifles of the soldiery shoot unarmed workers down, it is only the operation of the Law, and there’s and end on’t. When mine-owners neglect to keep their mines ventilated, and blow hundreds of miners into eternity, or brick them up in the pit to be burnt alive, it’s a lamentable occurrence but quite an accident, and again there’s an end on’t. And now that the vast “unsinkable,” the floating city, has carried its full living cargo to the bottom of the Atlantic, the workers arouse themselves in horror of it for a day or two, note with approval that the Royal Family have donated about one day’s income to the relief fund, and then slip quietly back into their sleeping sickness.

And, of course, they are to be helped to do this by a sham enquiry which will start out with the set purpose of fixing the blame on the iceberg, or at most on the dead officers who were supposed to have control of the ship. But this enquiry is a mere blind, a cunning attempt to cloak the real position and to screen from blame the real culprit.

The enquiry in America, for all its seeming fierce determination to get to the bottom of the matter, and for all the awkward evidence it has elicited, was only embarked on for the purpose of skating on the surface. If they could fix the blame on the White Star people, then so much the better for the American shipping interests. But beyond this they did not go; beyond this they never intended to go; beyond this they dared not go. All their virtuous indignation is of a piece with the “patriotism” of their grandfathers, who poisoned Washington’s soldiers with villainous provisions with an unscrupulousness even modern Chicago fails to beat.

To those who understand modern conditions no enquiry is necessary in order to apportion the blame. The starting point of this enquiry will, of course, be the hour immediately preceding the collision. They will go on the worn-out assumption that the captain had the command of the ship. No one will ask why was the “Titanic” built. No one will dream of making the designing of the ship the starting-point of the enquiry. No one will dare to suggest that the captain and his officers had not the command of the vessel.

Yet this way lies the truth. In the very designing of the “Titanic” is the first word of the tragic story, in keeping with which is every jot and tittle of evidence to the end. In the luxurious furnishings—the swimming baths, the flower gardens, the racquets courts—read the secret of the catastrophe. The ship was built to carry rich passengers across the herring-pond.

Almost the first comment that was made by the newspapers when the fatal news came to hand was that among the first class passengers aboard the vessel were millionaires who were collectively worth £30,000,000. This in itself is significant.

The fares of those six hundred first and second class passengers must have totalled an enormous sum, compared with which the passage money of the steerage was a negligible quantity. The “Titanic,” then, was essentially built for rich passengers upon whom the White Star Company depended to enable their vessel to “earn” a dividend.

The course is clear from this. The ship was on her maiden voyage; it was necessary to convince the wealthy, whose time is so extremely valuable, that she was a fast boat. So, as it is admitted, there was a general order to “smash all records”—which was duly done.

This explains why the look-out men had glasses until they reached Queenstown, but not afterwards-record smashing on the Western voyage commences at Queenstown. When records are to be smashed it is very inconvenient to have the look-out seeing too much—especially when the ship is an “unsinkable” and well-insured. It also explains why the vessel was on a wrong course at a wrong speed, and why no notice was taken of the look-out’s warning.

Much will be made of these latter facts, no doubt, and the dead officers will be blamed. It must not be forgotten, however, that capitalist companies invariably choose for responsible positions those men to do what they are paid to do. It  is all moonshine to talk of the captain being in command. They command who hold is livelihood in their hands. If we will not take risks and get the speed they want, then he must give place to one who will.

So at the bottom it is the greed for profit and the insatiable desire for speed on the part of the rich that is responsible for the disaster, whatever conclusion the Committee of Enquiry may come to. Of course, they will not give any such verdict as that, for that would be to indict the capitalist system.

The actual details of the wreck afford a further opportunity of pressing home a lesson. The evidence of the survivors and the evidence of the official figures of the saved, show that even on the decks of the sinking liner, and to the very end, the class struggle was on. Those who had clamoured for speed were the first to monopolise the boats, and the way was kept open for them by the officers’ revolvers. Even the capitalist newspapers are compelled to admit the significance of the figures. Of the first class men 34 per cent. were saved: of the steerage men only 12 per cent. Figures like those are eloquent enough without the evidence of the officer who admitted that he kept steerage passengers from a half-filled boat with shots from his revolver.

Much has been made of the fact that the cry “Women and children first” was raised, and it is not necessary to cast aspersions on the courage of any man who survives. The salient fact is that it was not a question of courage but of class. “Women and children” meant women and children of the wealthy class. Of first class women and children practically all were saved, some even with their pet dogs. Of the steerage women and children more than half perished. The “chivalry” of the ruling class does not, save in very rare instances, extend itself to the class beneath them.

We are not of those who expect any great results from this ocean tragedy. Working-class lives are very cheap, and the age that abolishes the Plimsol Line at the demand of those greedy for profit is hardly likely to insist upon the provision of proper means of life-saving or the careful navigation of passenger vessels. Murder by wholesale may be committed without doing violence to “law and order,” so long as it is committed by the capitalist class in the “legitimate” scramble for profits. The law only moves against the Crippens and the Seddons, but the murders quite commonly committed by the capitalist class are not one whit less foul, for all nobody is hanged for them.

A. E. Jacomb

Profit the goal (1985)

From the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the Report, published on 6 July, of the Special Commission set up by the Belgian Parliament to investigate the incidents that led to the deaths of 38 football supporters at the European Cup final at the Heysel Stadium on 29 May:

Further, the immediate cause of these incidents is to be found in the fact that English and Italian supporters were side by side in blocs X, Y and Z, which was impossible to foresee given that bloc Z was reserved for Belgians. 

The Belgian Football Union and the UEFA seemed to have been motivated more by preoccupations of a lucrative and commercial nature than by their duty to ensure the safety of spectators. 

Ticket sales, as it emerges from many statements and in particular that of Mr Roosens, were completely uncontrolled. A large number of tickets allowing entry to the Z zone (a neutral zone where under no circumstances should there have been Italian supporters) were sold to Italians. 

The sale of tickets at the Heysel Stadium (where in theory only 5 tickets could be sold per person) was organised in such a way that anyone - including Italians — could without problem buy tickets for the Z bloc. This went against not only the UEFA directives but also against the measures decided before the match. Such a procedure necessarily led to a black market.

Blogger's Note:
See also the article, 'Putting the boot in', from the same issue of the Socialist Standard.

Between the Lines: Keep the tears flowing (1988)

The Between the Lines column from the January 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

Keep the tears flowing
Television thrives on tears. Tears of distress make good news disaster stories; tears of sentimentality bring in a few quid for Terry Wogan's annual evening of pseudo-benevolent piety. Children In Need (BBC1. Friday 27 November, all evening); tears of anger, such as those of victims of so-called terrorists' attack, are easier images than those of explanation. It is a cruel and harsh observation to make, but the facts indicate that cheers go out in the TV centres every time news of a new cause for tears and mass suffering comes in through the teleprinter. One sees the look of excited expectation upon the faces of these tasteless, trivialising newsreaders; "And news is just coming in of an air disaster in Manchester — it looks like as many as twenty could be dead — but keep watching, we'll do our best to push the figures up — and then we'll be the first on the scene when the injured are persuaded to show their ugly wounds before the cameras — as a matter of fact, a little birdy tells me that we might just have first degree burn on a little kid to flash before you. so keep your eyes on the screen and then well show you the ritual tour of the overcrowded casualty wards by The Royal Couple".

No, of course it is not true that TV producers actually take a sadistic pleasure in seeing workers suffer, but there can be no doubt that tears make good TV for them and that is what they are out to make. One recalls that awful day when cameras showed the burning alive of those numerous workers who stood on the unsafe terraces at Bradford Football Club and perished. Of course, the commentators were genuinely moved. But something else was going on. TV uses disaster for a particular social function. Firstly, it is intended to say to viewers. "Look at these poor sods: you might be poor, insecure and depressed, but at least you're not the ones being burned alive. There's always someone worse off than you. you know". How long have workers been deterred from taking real action to solve our own misery now on the grounds that to do so would be wrong, for first we must attend to the miseries of those who are worse off than us?

Secondly, there is something inherently irrational about tears. To be sure, it is psychologically very useful to have a good cry when misery becomes too much to bear — and it is incredible the number of men who are afraid to do so, not least because of the TV imagery which shows that "men don't cry". But tears are an expression, not an explanation; a cry and not a speech. And TV likes to catch the workers at our most inarticulate and animalistic. It confirms the basic Christian doctrine that try as we might to pose as reasoned beings, when the Lord decides that it is disaster time (vicious swine that this legendary god must be) all we are empowered to do is weep like babies.

Thirdly, disaster allows the capitalist system to be seen as caring. That is why Margaret Thatcher is always on the scene — with cameras firmly focussed on her — when the tears are flowing. The newsreader lets us know that The Queen sends her condolences. When do these uncaring, rich parasites send their condolences to the families of the thousands of old people who die of hypothermia each winter because they are too poor to switch on a heater? But give us a nice, single, packaged disaster and we see just how caring these defenders of the system really are.

What TV does not show — or, if it ever makes moves towards doing so, it happens at late and undramatic moments — is why these tears must flow. Why did hundreds drown in the cold sea off Zeebrugge? Was it anything to do with the shipowners making huge profits out of over-packing cross-channel ferries? Why did they burn to death at Bradford? Were the owners of the football club, who allowed spectators to stand on dangerous wooden stands, not placing profit before human needs? Why did they burn to death on the escalators at King's Cross station? We do not yet know, but might it not have at least something to do with London Regional Transport's decision to divert the money it had allocated for scrapping the unsafe wooden escalators to building heavy steel barriers to stop fare dodgers?

Why are children in need, Terry Wogan? Your children will not be in need (and we are very glad to know it) because you receive millions of pounds for presenting trivia to the BBC. But is it really worth spending one evening a year indulging in a TV charity marathon which can only collect less than £10 million from the entire population of Britain when every hour the British government spends £1.5 million on arms alone? Children In Need shows a tragedy beyond the tragedy. The tragedy it tries to depict is that of large numbers of kids who need our pennies and the few quid which the worker can spare in order to alleviate their suffering. Credit where it is due: the presenters of the programme all do a very good job in showing us just how needy these kids are. just how tearful we should be. But the tragedy which transcends those tears is that we are now living in a society which is more than able to satisfy the needs of those deprived and diseased children — more than capable of allocating resources to end or alleviate as much as possible their suffering, but does not do so because of the warped logic of capitalism which must place profits before needs.

The real tragedy is that we must look at the needless waste of children's health and happiness which has been allowed to go on in a system which makes a TV show out of caring and an economic science out of saying "go away and die". When workers wake up to the sense of what capitalism is doing to us all — to the children of Ethiopia who now are pushed before the cameras so that more tear-flowing may be indulged in. led by the ever-miserable Bob Geldof — and to men, women and children across the world — when workers wake up there will be more important things to do than to weep. We can leave that to the tears of relief which will doubtlessly follow upon our self-emancipation.


Murder by law
If tears are what you fancy, then few programmes in 1987 could have had more effect than Fourteen Days In May, shown by the BBC last November. This was a documentary which would soon disabuse innocents who were under the misapprehension that racists stopped sending their victims into gas chambers after the Nazis fell from power. Not so. This extremely moving documentary told the story of a black worker from the Southern USA who was convicted to death for the alleged crime of shooting a white cop and — worst of all — raping a white woman. In the racist South nothing short of legalised murder would suffice to teach the man a lesson (there's nothing like death to teach us lessons, I always think) and in this particular state death is by gassing.

The BBC cameras showed the gas chamber being prepared by the wage slaves in uniform, and even the gassing of a rabbit on a trial run. All very sick. We watched the victim live out his final fourteen days on Death Row where he had been for eight years. We watched him hope for leniency and we watched him walk into the gas chamber. It was like watching a social system throwing up. After Johnson had been gassed to death we had a message from the producer flashed across the screen. On the night that he had allegedly committed the two crimes of which he had always pleaded innocent he had been with a black woman. This alibi went into a police station some time after his arrest and offered herself as a witness but was warned by the white cop that she had no right to interfere in their business.

Earlier the same month we were shown on Channel Four the excellent two-part documentary, Shoah, which told of the mass gassing of people by the Nazis half a century ago. Capitalism still goes on; the gas chambers are still being used; who the hell are the inhabitants of this system to call themselves civilised?

Steve Coleman

“Everybody did what they could” (1999)

From the November 1999 issue of the Socialist Standard

On Tuesday October 5th, at 8.11am, a Great Western express and Thames Trains commuter service smashed head on at a combined speed of 120mph just outside Paddington station. 31 people were killed.

Preliminary reports after the Ladbroke Grove train crash suggest that the Thames Trains driver passed a signal at danger, resulting in both trains being on the same track. The relevant signal—number 109—is the same one thought to have been involved in a near-miss incident in February 1998 when another Great Western express managed to brake in time to avoid a stationary London-bound Heathrow Express train. Rail sources have also reportedly acknowledged that “seven trains run by Thames Trains have, over the last 12 months, passed through signal 109 while on red” (Guardian, October 6). Such overshoots, known as SPADs (signals passed at danger) rose from 593 in 1997 to 643 in 1998. This does not automatically mean it is drivers at fault. Drivers have made a series of complaints about signal 109, pointing out it is badly situated and obscured by overhead cables and a pylon. Furthermore, train drivers are under pressure not to be late, to avoid their firms being fined by the train companies franchise director. And drivers work long hours while having to carry out repetitive button-pressing hundreds of times a day, and are therefore more prone to dangerous tiredness and boredom.

On the very same stretch of line two years ago, the Southall crash killed seven after a Great Western express jumped a red light and smashed into a goods train crossing its path. The firm was fined £1.5 million for breaking safety regulations after a court was told that one of the train’s key safety devices, the Advance Warning System which should have sounded a Klaxon before reaching each danger signal, was not working. In the court case, the judge remarked “There appears to be a conflict between profit and safety”.

Cost-per-file calculations

In 1989, the year after the Clapham crash in which 35 people died, its inquiry chairman Anthony Hidden recommended a failsafe system called Automatic Train Protection (ATP). It regulates train speeds, ruling out red signal overruns. However, capitalist “cost per life” calculations came up with a figure of £14 million to prevent each future death with ATP, and a total expenditure of around £1 billion to fit it throughout the network. Both the previous and present governments saw this cost as prohibitive, and in August this year, John Prescott opted for a much cheaper (£150 million) Train Protection and Warning System (TPWS), which gave a more “acceptable” £2.5 million cost-per-life calculation.

Immediately after the Ladbroke Grove crash, John Prescott said that his decision to implement TPWS had “nothing to do with cost”. And speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on October 7, when asked who would pay for installing the far better system (which the deputy PM had suddenly become very keen on), Prescott simply replied “finance isn’t a problem”. Pressed a second time, he said “It could be industry. I don’t think it necessarily has to be a charge on government . . . It is not a problem”. This is not so. If the 25 train operating companies are made to pay around £2 billion at today’s prices for ATP (or any other more advanced system), this charge would have to be passed on passengers through raised prices. Additionally, huge state subsidies (£1.8 billion in 1997-98) paid to the train operating companies are due to be reduced to £0.9 billion by 2002-03. The combined extra financial burden could make rail transport far less competitive in comparison with private cars, coach and bus journeys, and deter many from using trains. That loss of competitiveness would mean a significant loss of profits, and since profits are capitalism’s priority, the fact is ensuring maximum safety on the railways would turn into a commercial disaster.

What capitalist solution to over-expensive or under-safe rail travel can we expect now the old British Rail network has been broken into 100 component parts by privatisation in the dog days of John Major’s government? Car drivers having to pay yet higher prices for petrol and diesel to force them to use trains? There has to be a limit to what millions of motoring will tolerate before voting against those imposing the charges. Asking Gordon Brown to pay up? Surely not after all Blair’s meritocratic free-market praise and rejection of “old” Labour. Raised wages and salaries to cover more costly fares? Most unwelcome for firms in an increasingly competitive global market. Could William Hague offer us a way out? Hardly. His willingness to take unemployment benefits away from anyone refusing to accept a lousy job shows considerable admiration for market forces. Liberal Democrats? Just another bunch of lookalike politicians. So what’s the answer? Let us take another look at what happened in the Ladbroke Grove crash, for not only was this a result of capitalism’s profits-before-people unavoidability, but a far better diametrically opposite way of living and working was suddenly revealed amidst the chaos.

Unforced co-operation

At Ladbroke Grove, socialists saw for a brief period capitalism’s habitual grip on people’s lives shaken off by a shared disaster, and humankind’s suppressed helpful co-operative nature suddenly came to the fore. Despite jagged mangled wreckage, fire and fumes that survivors had to escape from immediately after the impact, commuters who had been reticent strangers just moments earlier, disjointed by a competitive and individualistic marketplace, unselfishly acted to save and assist others. From getting ready to hurry off the express train and compete in a rush for the tube, taxis and buses to reach places of employment, instead, authoritative suits were removed to helpfully beat out burning clothing of others. Working women wearing heels teetered back and forth to support those more seriously hurt. Residents living nearby rushed over with ladders to reach down to the track to provide assistance. Workers at a Sainsbury’s store commandeered first aid supplies for lacerations, and bags of frozen food for burns. Staff at a school helped emergency services turn their premises into a makeshift field hospital. As one person said, “everybody did what they could”. Such abundant unforced co-operation for the benefit of all in need is how it should be; how it would be, but how it won’t be while profit-takers, their politicians, money mechanism, bureaucrats, rules and law enforcers act together to maintain capitalism’s divisive and exploitative system.

It is somewhat encouraging that every time a horrific rail, ship or air crash occurs, many people will now complain angrily to radio programmes and the press, that profit has yet again been put before people. This will almost always be true, but regrettably, come election time, this awareness and sanity about the danger of living in a profit-driven economy has usually been driven from voters minds by endless media coverage of wholly irrelevant policies on income tax, unemployment, minimum wage rates etc. And off a majority will go to mark their crosses beside some candidate who wants to govern capitalism. Such voting then guarantees yet another five years of business profit-making and cost savings having pre-eminence, thereby keeping going the conditions that will give rise to further money-related disasters.

However, with so many people now aware how much harm and misery profits can cause, the socialist alternative of the safest possible travel systems with no financial restraints whatsoever, and no over-worked stressed-out workers, appears more clearly as the way out. If people come to see that profits themselves only exist because a minority have unjust possession of what the majority need, and this dominant class exploit both with damaging anti-social consequences, then all that unfocused anger would linger, politicians’ gibberish and worthless promises would be ignored, and there would be ever-increasing support for common ownership of vital industries and other productive assets, along with politician-free democratic control over how these are used. This is genuine socialism. It has never existed anywhere. It would make restrictive and dangerous money completely obsolete. Take a little time to find out more about this people-first system before your next trip to the polling stations (or some other serious trip).

Max Hess

Burning Injustice (2017)

Editorial from the July 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

So many things about the Grenfell Tower fire continue to stink, even weeks after the disaster. The flames were not even out, nor the bodies counted, before the recriminations and finger-pointing began.

Not surprisingly the building owners, Kensington and Chelsea Council, quickly came under savage criticism for spending £8.6m on a recent refurbishment aimed at creating new rentable space and prettifying the exterior with new cladding, but not bothering to install sprinklers or ensure that the cladding material was fire-proof.

Why, people wanted to know, was there only one fire exit in a building of 120 flats, an exit frequently blocked by rubbish including old mattresses which the council did not remove? And why, when the fire broke out, was there such chaos on the ground with nobody from the council on the scene to establish any kind of central meeting and information point for survivors and anxious relatives?

Perhaps it was to deflect some of this blame that the council leader shamelessly implied to the press that sprinklers had not been installed because residents did not want the inconvenience. Though disaster frequently brings out the best in ‘ordinary’ people who fall over themselves in a rush to help, as we also saw after the Manchester and London attacks, the same cannot be said for elected officials. While Jeremy Corbyn lost no time in racing to the scene, and even the Queen turned up, the hopelessly aloof Theresa May bungled yet another press opportunity by ignoring the victims and speaking only to firefighters, sparking a huge march in Whitehall demanding her resignation.

It would be a truism to point out that capitalism doesn’t care about the poor. It comes as no surprise to learn that tower blocks for rich people have multiple exit points, sprinkler systems and efficient fire-proofing. A similar fire that swept through Dubai’s plush Torch Tower in 2015 yielded no casualties at all. The fact that residents’ frequent warnings about the building’s safety were ignored by a council presiding over one of the richest boroughs in one of the world’s richest cities is also par for the course.

What we ought to learn from this, if we don’t already know it, is that capitalism’s elected officials and bureaucrats are not smarter, better or faster than the rest of us but are, on the whole, greedy careerists and bone-idle time-servers with their eyes on the perks and not on their responsibilities. When it really counts, it is the so-called ‘ordinary’ people who, time and time again, show initiative, common-sense, cooperation and indeed heroism, while the elected officials stand around with their thumbs up their backsides waiting for someone to tell them what to do. If socialism relied on people like that, we would give up the revolutionary project right now. Instead, it is the ‘ordinary’ people – the vast majority of the world’s population – who show in times of crisis that they have got what it takes. They are, in short, ‘ordinary’ enough to change the world.

The Review Column: Space Deaths (1967)

The Review Column from the March 1967 issue of the Socialist Standard

Space Deaths

The American space authorities knew that the pure oxygen used in their ships carried a serious risk of a rapid, intense fire. But to have changed to a mixed gas system would have delayed the entire American space programme.

If everything went perfectly according to plan, the danger would come to nothing.

In the same way, if everything had gone according to plan the early Comets would not have broken up in the air, there would have been no typhoid epidemic at Zermatt, the spoil heap would never have crashed down the mountain at Aberfan.

Capitalism is a society where economic rivalry — they call it competition—is not only inevitable. It is actually encouraged.

As one result of this rivalry, America and Russia are now engaged in a grim race. They are not probing out to the Moon merely to satisfy a lust for adventure but because the development of rockets has opened up space as a strategic highway, perhaps to be used in a future war.

No major power can now afford to ignore the ballistics of space. Each landing on the Moon adds to this knowledge, apart from the fact that it brings nearer the day when other planets become military bases for the great powers on Earth.

Neither America nor Russia can afford to fall behind. If this means that they have to take chances—with equipment, with buildings, with human lives—this is all part of the competition for top place in Space.

A big prize. Beside that, does it matter to capitalism that trapped inside the burning space craft there were three human beings?

Bank Rate Cuts

Bank Rate is generally regarded among the economic “experts” as a means of controlling the economy.

Put up the Rate, runs their argument, and you slow down production; put it down and production will start booming.

None of the experts have ever explained why, if it is really so easy to control capitalism, the economy ever gets into a crisis.

The Chancellors’ decision to reduce Bank Rate by one half per cent was greeted as a stimulant to British industry.

“One positive gain,” said the Daily Telegraph, “it (the government) hopes to see . . . is a greater willingness among businessmen to proceed with their capital investment programmes.”

Since September 1953, when Bank Rate was 3½ per cent, there have been twenty seven changes. Both Conservative and Labour governments agree that Bank Rate helps to control the economy, both have upped it to seven per cent in times of crisis.

But none of these changes have altered a course of economic events which was already set. They have, in fact, been made in response to those courses; they have been not an influence but a reaction.

Callaghan’s panic seven per cent last July was no exception and neither is the latest reduction. William Davis, the Guardian’s Financial Editor, put it:

I gather that the Bank of England advised the Chancellor a a few weeks ago that a half per cent cut in Bank Rate couldn’t be delayed much longer.

The economy of capitalism, as so many Chancellors have found out cannot be controlled, by Bank Rate changes or any other juggling. The Labour Party should know this, perhaps better than anyone.

For they once had a mighty Plan to defeat economic crises. But just like the Tories, they end up doing what the Bank of England tells them.

Export Incentives

Harold Macmillan, in one of his languid moments, once said that exporting is fun.

Harold Wilson, and Prince Philip, will have none of this. Exporting is a stern business. It is, in fact, a national duty.

In case there are any firms with a sense neither of fun nor of patriotism, the Labour government have provided some inducements to make them look favourably on exporting.

It is apt comment on whether Wilson really believes in the appeal of national duty, that these inducements are financial—tax rebates and so on.

By this the Labour government show how firmly they realise there is only one kind of incentive capitalism understands and that is one which improves the balance sheet.

This is basically what decides a company on whether to export their produce or not. Unless the financial bait is juicy enough, they will ignore all the speeches about national duty, and happily forego their fun, by concentrating on the home market.

This is how Derek Pritchard, chairman of the British National Export Council, put it in an address on January 18 last:

No one in their senses exports at a loss in the national interest. This is a sure way to go out of business. No business man today exports at the behest of politicians. He does it because he sees a chance of making a profit.

There is, of course, nothing exceptional about this statement. All production under capitalism is carried on in the hope of making a profit. If a capitalist thinks that a market, home or abroad, is too tough for him to realise his profit there, he will avoid it. Politicians and princes may blather about having fun and the national interest but in the end they have to face the uncomfortable facts of capitalist life.

The D’Ollveira Affair

The South African government have always made it plain that mixed colour touring teams were not acceptable to them.

For a long time the issue has been dodged by the sporting authorities of the countries which send teams to South Africa. Recently, the New Zealand Rugby Union was brought face to face with it; some of their best players are now Maoris and they were not prepared to go into Tests against South Africa without them. So they cancelled their tour.

Now the MCC are probably praying that Basil D’Oliveira will get them off the hook by losing form (and in the circumstances he will be something of a cricketing superman to keep it) so that the question of his selection does not arise.

Of course, the South African government have been accused of mixing politics with sport. And so they are.

But what were those ranting, hysterical thousands at the World Cup Final doing, but mixing nationalism—which, after all, is politics—with sport? Each foreign foul booed, each English foul applauded as an act of manliness, mixed politics with football.

South Africa’s ban on D’Oliveira is no more than the projection of their unsavoury political and racial theories into cricket. Anyone who objects to this, and who wants to see sport as a contest carried out for the sake of the game alone, cleanly and with no grudges, should ask themselves whether this will ever be possible in a society which fosters racism, nationalist hates and economic rivalry.

Going underground (1988)

From the March 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

At the time of writing, the "public" inquiry into the King's Cross fire in which 31 people were killed is in progress. Already there have been astonishing revelations about poor safety standards, and the hazards created by limited cleaning and maintenance budgets. The inquiry is likely to generate reams of waffle, with much soul-searching and mutual recriminations. There will be weighty statements about neglect, responsibility and human failings.

What the final report is unlikely to admit, however, is that these deaths, like so many others, were caused by money, or rather the lack of it. In the case of the Zeebrugge disaster and many other recent "accidents", we have been able to show using the publicly available evidence, that the cause was economic. King's Cross was no exception. The profit system constantly channels resources away from real human needs and into speculative investment and capital accumulation. It is only after a disaster has happened and an "unacceptable" number of lives have been lost, that the possibility of allocating slightly more resources to public safety is considered.

We have already pointed out, in a previous issue, how some time ago, money intended for replacing the wooden escalator at the heart of the fire had been diverted into funding murals and other decorations intended to improve the image and profitability of London Regional Transport as a trading enterprise. That wooden escalator, which those who know King's Cross will be only too familiar with, was about fifty years old. It dated from an entirely different period in technological terms. Was there an automatic fire sprinkler system throughout the station? No. Was there a special alarm system, which might respond to smoke? No. The fact is. even some of the modest household devices which the moderately well-off might be able to afford are absent when they have to be funded by the state.

Why is this? Because the capitalist employers who ultimately finance the state have, as their priority, the accumulation of capital. Despite recent claims in a Conservative Party Political Broadcast that "we" pay £700 to the NHS every second, we know that PAYE is just another con to make us feel we have a stake in government. In fact, with or without tax. as workers our living standards are constantly forced to the minimum by the profit priority. Public safety is also often of low priority. We don't need a "public inquiry" to tell us that King’s Cross station, like so many others, is dirty and dangerous, with only meagre safety procedures.

LRT is in the process of putting cleaning and other maintenance duties out to tender by private companies, whose budgets and treatment of their workers are even more penny-pinching than LRT was. And some of the recent priority areas of expenditure on the Underground and Buses (which are continuing as priorities, despite the fire) show an utter contempt for human life which should earn the LRT management a medal as upholders of the capitalist mentality. Expensive video cameras are being installed on London buses to prevent vandalism. Nearly one million pounds is being spent every year on cleaning "graffiti" from tube trains, much of which in recent years has been based on New York "street art" and is quite eye-catching. But such spontaneous marks on the environment are seen as offensive, and are wiped out in favour of the imposed corporate design. It is also an example of the warped priorities we are referring to: the moral guardians who are so offended by rude words (no, they don't mean "war" or "poverty") are served by teams of special cleaners, whilst the ancient debris which fuelled the fire under the escalator was left to rot. And perhaps most dramatically of all, millions of pounds are currently being spent installing new high-tech ticket machines at every station. which are said to be more cost-effective. This will allow a massive redundancy programme of 900 ticket office staff, which is already under way. In addition new barriers (which we will have more to say about below) are being installed which also cause ticket collectors to be made redundant. Together with the recent introduction of "one-man" trains on almost every line, this is all part of the cost-cutting exercise which is the inevitable obsession of the capitalist system. The inquiry might touch on the possibility that if trains had still had a second operator the death-toll might have been reduced, but will it explore the reasons behind the cost-cutting obsession?

Leaving to one side these overwhelmingly economic factors, what about the supposed problem of callous neglect? It is true that early reports of smoke appear to have been neglected by staff, and no doubt the actions of these LRT workers will be held up to public scrutiny. Those who prefer not to see social problems for what they are will find here the perfect victims for individual blame. But it is hardly surprising that workers under pressure will sometimes act "negligently". Quite apart from the long hours, low pay and dirty conditions which all but destroy any enthusiasm or job satisfaction, the hierarchical system of management within such an institution teaches those within it that they must not step out of their assigned area, or act with creative initiative. And in addition to the weighty bureaucracy (which has always been associated with the railways in particular), there is the ethic of self-interest, the idea of the competitive rat-race which the government does so much to promote. Even without their propaganda efforts, an economic system exists throughout the world today which teaches people from birth that in order to fit in with things as they are, they must avoid too much humane caring for others, too much soppy sentimental sensitivity, otherwise they will be "done down". And then the same hypocrites who applaud the vicious self-interest of the "business world" of enterprise will try to pin the blame on the "uncaring" workers at King's Cross station that fateful day.

This brings us finally to one or two of the more bizarre escapades which have also emerged lately from the enterprising young whizz-kids in charge of London Underground. On 31 January the Observer exposed plans being urgently pursued by Chris Bennett, London Underground's industrial relations manager, to sell off the less profitable underground stations which will be run instead by commercial interests or even voluntary groups. By franchising off sections of the network to commercial operators, they will cut staff still further and approach their target of becoming a profitable enterprise with no government support whatsoever. Where private buyers cannot be found, "responsibility for stations may be offloaded to voluntary groups, such as Neighbourhood Watch schemes, or Underground enthusiasts". Let us hope that these Underground enthusiasts are also handy with a fire extinguisher. It is thought that young people on YTS schemes could also "be pressed into service". As a possible pilot area for the scheme, they have identified the line from Epping to Ongar. which has been kept open recently only because of pressure from residents (how cheeky they are to expect to have stations where they live!).

The most vivid example of profit's tyranny comes in the shape of the new barriers referred to above. They are ugly, shoulder-high constructions, designed as the ultimate obstacle to the dreaded fare-dodgers, those people who dare to go on "our” public railways without paying. The installation of these barriers will cause 1,200 ticket collector redundancies. LRT hope. The Fire Brigades Union has strongly opposed the barriers, with Mike Fordham. FBU Deputy General Secretary stating that "People will die somewhere at some point because of these barriers" (London Evening Standard, 11 December 1987). The NUR has also pointed out that if such barriers had been at King s Cross on the night of the fire, "they would undoubtedly have produced more deaths that night". But LRT push on regardless. A spokesman was quoted as saying that the King's Cross inquiry was "irrelevant and peripheral" to the installation programme. "We see no reason to delay". It seems, moreover, that these prize idiots are aspiring to comedy and farce as well as tragedy. Special panic buttons are to be fitted to the hideous barriers, to allow passengers to unlock the gates in an emergency. But London Underground has admitted that, to deter vandals and fare-dodgers. their location would be "kept secret for security reasons"! (London Evening Standard, 11 December 1987).

The FBU are right: there will be more deaths. And the sickest thing of all is that we all know there will be more deaths, more "disasters" and more theatrical "inquiries". And they will continue until we alter the basis of society, and therefore its priorities.

Clifford Slapper

Aberfan: Disaster In The Hillsides (2016)

From the November 2016 issue of the Socialist Standard

During the early winter of 1966 Hoover Limited sent a minor manager from their vacuum cleaner factory in West London to the massive plant in Merthyr Tydfil South Wales where they made washing machines. The manager took a train to Cardiff where he was picked up by one of the company cars and chauffer to take him to a hotel where he was to stay for a couple of nights. During the journey both men were silent, without the chatter which usually enlivened their journeys together. When they arrived at the hotel they got out of the car and looked across to some high land where floodlit earth machines were at work. Then the driver spoke. ‘Aberfan’ he said. It was November 1966 and they were looking at the site of the worst mining-related disaster in British history.   

Aberfan is a village in South Wales which was once heavily dependent on employment at the nearby Merthyr Vale colliery. It now has a community centre, flourishing with its swimming pool, fitness rooms and café. There are also two schools, which provoke unbearable memories of that tragedy fifty years ago. Coal mining began there in 1869, when a pit was sunk on the banks of the Afon Taff; in 1875 the first commercial coal was brought to the surface – the beginning of a history proud enough to accentuate the grief and misery which devastated the village in October 1966. On that occasion the deaths did not originate underground, in a coal mine; many of the people who died were buried and suffocated in lethal slurry from the open ground above. A total of 144 people were killed in minutes; 116 were children and no survivors were found after 11am. Many of those who did survive have since suffered from persistent psychological disorders – for example the British Journal of Psychiatry in 2003 recorded that half have suffered from PTSD, which for about a third of them will persist as a lifetime disorder. A typical comment was by the author Laurie Lee who, after visiting Aberfan a year afterwards, described the school children there as ‘…the unhealed scar tissue of Aberfan’.  The colliery was closed in 1989.

Slurry

The basic cause of the disaster was tipping – the deposit of spoil of varying content and consistency  which had been extracted from the colliery, onto the ground overlooking  Aberfan when more convenient lower sites had been filled to their limit. By 1966 there were, looming above the area so that they could be distantly viewed from that hotel, a number of mounds – or tips – which were known by numbers 1 to 7, the last of which was the most ominous. There was no proper regular inspection and maintenance of the tips to check on their stability although they were composed of loose rock and other extracted material within a massive layer of sandstone. This was a dangerously absorbent composition which through the addition of water from underground springs could develop into a slope steep enough to accelerate the descent of the heavier spoil and slurry which would wipe out whatever – and whoever – lay in its path. In fact some local councils had questioned, in 1963, whether it was safe to dispose of the colliery waste in that way, particularly when in the direct path of such a descending geological missile there were the village primary and senior schools as well as other inhabited buildings. But any such questions were effectively ignored by the local National Coal Board.

Schools

On that dreadful day – 21 October 1966 – South Wales had already suffered several spells of torrential rain, which in itself was enough of a problem for the pupils of the local Pantglas School as they scurried from home to the last school day before  breaking up for the half-term holiday. Soon after 9.15 am a mass of liquid containing material brought up from the mine broke free from the tips and began to smash down towards the village and the homes and the schools and the children below. A gang of workmen who were on Tip 7 to inspect a fault with the railway which carried the disposable material from the mine were resting with a cup of tea when they saw the rapidly approaching disaster but they were unable to warn the village about it because the cable of their telephone had been stolen (although the subsequent enquiry was clear that no warning could have improved the situation). The gang watched helplessly as a mass of over 150,000 cubic metres of saturated mining spoil broke free, moving down the slope in a series of surges. Some of it clung to the ground, leaving about 40,000 cubic metres to carry on into Aberfan.  ‘All I could see’ remembered one of them ‘… was waves of muck, slush and water… I couldn’t see - nobody could …’ The first victims were a farm and twenty houses which were swiftly obliterated with all the occupants. At Pantglas School the teachers were checking and recording attendance when the buildings were overwhelmed by a compound of muddy rubble up to ten metres deep. One eight-year-old recalled ‘… a tremendous rumbling sound and all the school went dead … Everyone just froze in their seats. I just managed to get up and I reached the end of my desk when the sound got louder and nearer, until I could see the black out of the window. I can’t remember any more’. The slurry eventually came to halt at about 9.15am; the damage had been done and by 11am the last living child had been brought out from the school; it was several more days before the last body could be found.

Nationalised

The reaction of their employers, in whatever context, and their political defenders was tediously predictable. One of the more prominent of these was the late Claude Granville Lancaster who went to school at Eton then trained at the Royal Military College Sandhurst and who eventually inherited the excessively stately Palladian Kelmarsh Hall in Leicestershire from his father along with the family investments in coal mining and farming. Like his father he was a Conservative MP, in his case for Fylde. When the Attlee government nationalised the coal industry Lancaster recognised the inevitable and ‘… gave all his support to the National Coal Board … to do his best to bring what he felt was much-needed drive and decisiveness to its cumbersome and slow-moving organisation’. He had an early opportunity to live up to these standards when the slurry came down on Aberfan but he was abroad, in what were then known as the Trucial States (since 1971 the United Arab Emirates). Soon after he returned another MP asked him to comment on the possible cause of the tragedy. To which this meticulous expert in coal mining replied ‘I fancy that you will find that it was a trickle of water’.

Another, rather different, example was a man who was raised, not into the ancient land-owning nobility but by Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan to be chairman of a key nationalised industry. This was Alfred Robens who was Labour MP for Wansbeck and then Blyth until he took over Britain’s coal mines which also entailed him being ennobled, so that he became Baron Robens of Woldingham. He took to all of this with a determination which was expressed in his car being numbered NCB1 and his  access to a private jet plane and a posh flat in a most expensive part of London. These privileges he defended behind a style of management later described most moderately as demanding.

Chancellor

This style came under focus as the people of Aberfan were grappling with their demanding emergencies. To be specific on that day of 21st October Robens did not, as was expected of him as the overlord of the mines, attend that scene of suffering – although his staff falsely assured the Ministry of Power that he was there soothing the distress of the people. In fact he chose to attend a ceremony at the University of Surrey to be installed as Chancellor. The anger which this aroused locally was aggravated by his opinion that the original cause of the avalanche was ‘some … natural unknown springs’ which was particularly provocative to the grieving local people who had long-standing acquaintance with that very water source since they had played there as children. When the official enquiry was seriously critical of Robens’ behaviour throughout he offered to resign from the NCB but this was dismissed as unnecessary. At the same time the NCB refused to pay the full cost of removing the tips- an attitude which persisted until the first Blair government agreed to meet the bill – although without the interest which would have considerably raised the total. This evasion was pointedly described by another Labour MP Leo Abse as ‘… the graceless pavane danced by Lord Robens and the Minister, as the chairman of the National Coal Board’ and more recently by the Geoscientist –The Fellowship Magazine of the Geological Society of London:   ‘What happened in Aberfan was a mass betrayal of intergenerational equity … not only ripped the heart out of one small Welsh village - it sucked life out of an entire industry’. When Robens took over there were 698 pits; when he left there were 292. Which left the Thatcher government to carry on so that in the Merthyr area nearly 30 percent of the able-bodied were unemployed, apart from the other adults whose industrial diseases had led to them being registered as disabled.

Coal mining was always a dangerous occupation, to be taken up only because there was nothing less threatening on offer. This was the case in Aberfan. At the same time the miners had to struggle against a poverty as concentrated as the risks they endured in and around the pits. And the harsh reality of all this is that the employing class have an enduring priority that production – of coal or whatever – should be as cheap as possible. As they did in Aberfan with the over-looming tips and the workers’ homes. This was untouched by the continuing requirements of nationalisation with the substitution of management by an ex-left wing Labour MP for a traditionally aristocratic Tory. In commemorating that disaster it must not be ignored that Aberfan was an episode entirely typical of the demands of class ownership for human suffering and denial.

Ivan

Disasters: who's to blame? (1991)

From the September 1991 issue of the Socialist Standard

Events which leave one sickened seem to be everyday if not twice-a-day occurrences lately. Switch off the horror films, view reality instead.

The pace of life and the power behind that tempo are aspects of modern society to which we close our minds, except when a tragedy hits the headlines. The way we distance ourselves is by never imagining that the latest horrific accident will happen to ourselves or our loved ones. Nor do we think that we are in any way responsible. Usually the fault is laid at “their” door, “they” didn't do the job properly, “they” caused those people to drown, be burned or poisoned and “they” should do something about it. But if "we” think that a society operated by money and the wages system is the only way to be—if time is money and cutting corners a way to make more— if this is acceptable then so must be the Kings Cross fire, Hillsborough, Zeebrugge, Chernobyl, Bhopal, Seveso, Three Mile Island. Sellafield— the list could go on and on, and it is “we" who must share the responsibility.

What all these “accidents” have in common is that they are all related to the profit-making system of society that is capitalism—and its imperatives—and have all been attributed to human error. The Master of the ship the Herald of Free Enterprise (the name is a herald of foreboding) goes to sea with the bow doors open. The operators in the Three Mile Island disaster were said to have a "faulty mental model" of the system. The fire in the reactor at Sellafield/Windscale, in October 1957, was the result of certain control operations being performed too soon and too rapidly. In 1974 a DC10 plane crashed after taking off from Orly Airport near Paris killing 346 people: an overworked baggage handler had failed to secure the cargo doors, which subsequently blew out. The Torrey Canyon oil tanker ran aground when the captain who was trying to negotiate a difficult route through the Scilly Isles in order to meet an unrealistic schedule, failed to switch from auto pilot to manual control. At a critical moment, he turned the wheel hard and nothing happened.

The nature of the technology determines the scale of the disasters and human error is involved—but the error is the collective error of those who support present-day society rather than that of the individual workers. If the next terrible happening was to be in our own backyard, if our own child were to die of radiation-related leukaemia, surely we would say enough is enough, no more pain or grief over totally unnecessary events. There must be a better way of providing the necessities of our daily lives and, given collective responsibility, there is.

Janet Carter

The Hillsborough disaster (1989)

From the June 1989 issue of the Socialist Standard

In treating such events as the Hillsborough disaster, a degree of circumspection is called for. Even the Labour Party has been reticent about scoring political points despite the fact that Dennis Howell can quite correctly claim to have warned of the danger of perimeter fencing ever since its introduction. It is equally valid to point out that forgetting or ignoring what happened on that Saturday is not an option for concerned, thinking humans.

Collecting the Cash

The tragedy (for in its inevitability it was a tragedy in the dramatic as well as the popular sense) has united far more than the people of one city as it involved Liverpool, the most successful British club of recent times. So among the dead and injured were workers from many parts of the country. Those still alive know where they stand in the list of priorities, as every line. of enquiry into the causes of the catastrophe shows that the comfort and safety of the ordinary spectator came plumb last. Among the fans there may be many who understand why comfort is low on the list of priorities; a rudimentary grasp of profit maximisation would tell them that providing high quality facilities for those who pay what they can afford, regardless of the facilities available, makes bad business sense. What many didn't realise was that the same principle applies to safety. It may seem facile to point it out, but the fact that it is a commonplace should not detract from the relevance of the commercial priority of collecting the cash. The huge gates which were fatally opened at the thirteenth hour contrast starkly with the turnstiles which represent the most cost-effective way of making sure everyone coughs up.

Other priorities were less obvious: the allocation of tickets in open disregard of requirements was done not for the benefit of Nottingham Forest supporters but for that of the police, who did not want the bother of directing groups of people around the stadium. The perimeter fencing had emergency access not for desperate people to get out but primarily for the police and stewards to get in. The medical facilities were more suited to a studio theatre than a massive open-air stadium.

In this disaster, as at Bradford, the authorities are in the uncomfortable position of having no hooligans to blame. Although The Sun in its egregious fashion was pretty quick to make unsubstantiated and irrelevant accusations, the general observation was that crowd violence was not a factor. In fact the hooligan problem and the attempts to deal with it have always been red herrings as far as stadium facilities are concerned. Leaving aside the fact that most "football" violence occurs outside the ground, the idea that it is contained by creating conditions inimical to all but those who are handy in a ruck has always been more absurd than paradoxical. Similarly nobody has explained why they think people who are prepared to indulge in flagrant anti-social behaviour in full view of the police will baulk at using a forged, stolen or borrowed identity card if that scheme comes into operation.

Naked Incompetence

As usual on these occasions the experts and leaders stand naked in their incompetence, highlighted in the aftermath by the contrast with the improvisation of ordinary people. As those in the stand were pulling desperate fellow spectators from the chaos of the terrace the police were driving others back into it. As the authorities were wondering why there weren't enough stretchers the fans were commandeering the advertising hoardings. As the mourning of those who had every right to be very angry went ahead in a touchingly dignified manner, the press were publishing pictures of people in their death agony with scant concern for any offence which might be caused.

Never fear, though, the prima donnas were not slow to get in on the act and show their "concern". Thatcher turned up in Sheffield on Sunday, which was probably a wise move because had she turned up in Liverpool one doubts even the formidable Merseyside Police could have guaranteed her safety. Charles and Di popped into the hospital for want of something better to do. Liverpool FC donated £100,000 immediately to the relief fund, that sum being approximately one twentieth of what it paid for the exclusive right to make a profit from the footballing skills of Ian Rush. And, of course, Religion PLC. was there: socialists do not doubt the sincerity of the priests' sympathy, but it is plain that some explanation has to be given as to why the all-loving god let this happen to people who fill the collection plates.

Sane Society

Many socialists would argue that there is no place for competitive sport in a sane society. The present writer does not subscribe to that view, but it is clear that no sane society would in any imaginable circumstances put 50,000 people one by one through what amount to rat traps in order to verify their right to access to an area from which there is no escape in time of crisis, and all for the benefit of a tiny minority with whom they have next to nothing in common.

The late Bill Shankly is reputed to have said "Some people say I regard football as a matter of life and death. That's nonsense—it's far more important than that". Shankly's obsession with sport is legendary but we must now wonder if, had he witnessed the Hillsborough disaster, he would have rephrased that particular witticism.

JFU

Piper Alpha (1988)

From the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

"We now go over to the ITN studios for a newsflash . . . ""An emergency telephone number has been issued for anxious relatives . . . "

The explosion and fire aboard the Piper Alpha platform on 6 July was waiting to happen. The revelations and admissions that followed within a few days of the disaster make that clear. The only surprise should be that it hadn't happened sooner.

Speaking in the House of Commons in the immediate aftermath of the fire the Energy Secretary, Cecil Parkinson, said, "Safety is the first priority of the Government and the operators." This is not true. Certainly safety is the a very high priority, for accidents cause lost production and in the case of Piper Alpha this was on a massive scale. But safety is not top priority. What stops a company from ceasing trading - a poor health and safety record alone or simply a lack of profit? What the House of Commons should have heard from Parkinson is that safety takes second place - to production.

The unavoidable fact about capitalism is that profit ultimately dictates. This is as true for the very first days of the North sea oil boom as it is for the last days of Piper Alpha.

To relieve pressure on the balance of payments and raise tax revenues as quickly as possible, British governments of the 1960s and 1970s - both Labour and Tory - went out of their way to ensure that offshore oil reserves were exploited at the earliest opportunity, particularly following the oil crisis of 1973. In planning their exploitation and production schedules, the oil companies were therefore presented with few government restrictions. Just as capitalism forced companies to maximise productions and profits, so the state too, is required to put safety to one side when convenient. As the professor of Marine Technology at Strathclyde University put it, "the number one priority after the 1973 oil crisis was to get oil quickly, and you don't get a Rolls-Royce for the price of a Mini".

Like other platforms, the Piper Alpha was built at a fraction of the value that would be created once production started. It cost £530m and was in production for 12 years, during which it pimped approximately 1,000 million barrels of oil ashore. At the current (depressed) price that is the equivalent to some £10,000m. The cost of the platform and wages bill (about £20m per annum) over the period amounts to just a few per cent of the wealth created. In the UK sector of the North Sea some 1,500 million pounds worth of oil is pumped out per month, with the government making £300m in export revenue.

These figures give some indication of the vast fortunes to be made in the North Sea -not, needless to say, from working there but just by owning. It is in the context of the disaster appeal - £1m from both the Government and petty cash box of Occidental Petroleum - should be viewed.

Much is made of how well-paid the average offshore worker is. The average pay is between £200 and £600 a week for a very exhausting, anti-social and stressful lifestyle. If that is high pay, what can be said of Dr Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum and one of the richest men in North America? The present writer was offshore on 6 July, on a platform from which the Piper Alpha was just a faint glow fifty miles to the north. Talking with some of the oil-workers as increasingly alarming reports were coming in, the impression gained was far from the usual macho image of oil-workers. It's not bravery or stupidity that makes them work offshore, but simple necessity. As one man put it to me, "You don't like to think about it. You can't afford to think about it".

Workers have regularly had to die for oil. When "their" countries go to war over ownership of natural resources, workers are required to do the dirty work of killing and dying for companies like Texaco, ELF or Esso. It's much the same in "peacetime": the war to defend profitability, the battle to advance the share of the oil market, is fought on the front line oil platforms by members of the working class.

So we shouldn't be shocked at the latest casualty figures. Within 48 hours of the disaster, grieving Occidental accountants recovered their composure long enough to calculate the cost to the company would be about $25m, reducing the estimated profit for this financial year to $200m. Shareholders would have to bite the bullet and suffer the tragic loss of 5-10 cents a share.

It's not all black armbands in the City though. The fire which devastated the platform and did much the same to 170 families, prompted some ferocious trading in New York and London while still smoldering: "Crude prices jump on news of disaster". (Headline, Guardian 8 July). North sea oil prices, previously depressed by a production "glut" (how many OAP's died of hypothermia last winter?), immediately rose by 25 cents a barrel.

The public inquiry which starts next month is likely to call for changes in the organisation of offshore safety. In 1980 responsibility for North Sea safety was transferred to the Department of Energy, whose function it also is to maximise production. At present, a variety of regulatory agencies and inspectorates have this responsibility but are insufficiently strict because they compete with each other for business. What is needed, according to experts, journalists and politicians, is an "independent" body such as the Health and Safety Executive, who presently enforce (if that is the right word) health and safety on the mainland.

The HSE is, however, a separate arm of the same body. As a watchdog it may be on a longer leash but it has little bark and fewer teeth. Its independence is as genuine as the Energy Department's and divorce from the overriding motive for capitalist production is, in any case, impossible.

It is likely that the inquiry will recommend improved designs of platforms and that most of these will be ignored or disputed by the oil companies on grounds of cost. Even the measures that can be introduced may only be effected if required across the board, of all operators; otherwise, companies will claim that new safety measures would make them uncompetitive. Many improvements could be made: larger platforms would allow the accommodation areas (where so many died on Piper Alpha) to be sited further away from production units; adjacent accommodation rigs would be safer still; fully automated systems are technologically feasible.

The immensely impressive technology used to extract oil from the sea-bed is not, it appears, available for ensuring worker safety. Technology under capitalism is redundant until it finds a market:

• On the Australian barrier reef a vast floating hotel and leisure complex is being built, designed to withstand typhoons.
• A shipping tycoon recently unveiled plans for the largest luxury liner ever. Complete with gardens, theatres, a couple of gymnasiums and dozens of restaurants it will cater for thousands of the Dr Hammers of the world.

Capitalism has made this level of technology possible, but available only to the minority who can afford it. A sane society will not need to rely on governments, companies or authorities to enforce safety. Socialism will rip the price tags from everything and liberate the productive potential of the world. It's a point to consider the next time your programme is interrupted by a newsflash and pictures of Mrs. Thatcher on another ward round.

Brian Gardner

Back from the brink (2014)

The Pathfinders Column from the June 2014 issue of the Socialist Standard

A fact about infectious diseases which deserves to be better known is that the closer you come to eradicating them, the more potentially dangerous they become. A case in point is polio, which the world came to within an ace of wiping out only to see it resurge to the point where last month the World Health Organisation declared a public health emergency (New Scientist, 10 May). The approach of spring rains in the northern hemisphere prompted the WHO to call for immediate vaccination drives after outbreaks in Syria, where such programmes have been interrupted by war and poor sanitation conditions in rebel-held areas, but also in Cameroon and Pakistan, where Muslim imams have notoriously claimed that vaccination was a western plot to sterilise their children. Vaccination is also strongly opposed in Nigeria by the guerrilla group Boko Haram, whose other recent contributions to civilisation have included abducting 200 schoolgirls to sell as sex-slaves and blowing up a hospital. Boko Haram (No to Western Education) is by the way a fine example of militant ignorance gone mad and a sobering reminder to socialists that if liberal capitalism were ever to collapse as some on the left delight in prophesying, there are groups out there who would love nothing better than to push the world back into the Stone Age.

To get an idea how pervasive polio was only a generation or so ago, consider what connects the following famous people: Alan Alda, Neil Young, Arthur C Clarke, Jack Nicklaus, Francis Ford Coppola, Lord Snowdon, Mia Farrow, Ida Lupino, Donald Sutherland, David Starkey and Johnny Weissmuller. No prizes given, and we didn’t even mention more famous polio victims like Franklin D Roosevelt, Frida Kahlo or Ian Dury.

The 1952 polio epidemic was the worst outbreak in US history, with 58,000 cases. In 2013 there were just 417 cases worldwide. This year so far there have been 68 confirmed cases. This may not sound like a lot, and it isn’t, so one might wonder why the WHO is ringing alarm bells so quickly. It’s because vaccination programmes don’t aim to vaccinate everyone, owing to the practical difficulties and expense, they generally aim for ‘herd immunity’. If a sufficient percentage of individuals are vaccinated in a group, those at risk of infection do not come into contact with each other and the virus is blocked by natural buffers. But if the percentage drops below the threshold level herd immunity breaks down, at which point an epidemic becomes sustainable. Consider this on a global scale, with modern air transport, and you begin to see why the WHO is worried. Syria, Cameroon and Pakistan are all known to be exporting the disease.

One doctor working in Dier ez-Zor, the province of Syriawhich first saw the outbreak, was quoted in December as saying “This is a disease. This is not politics” (npr.org/health, 2 December 2013). If only that were true. There would not have been an outbreak in the first place had it not been for the political situation. But diseases can be instruments of war as well as symptoms. In May 2010 this column discussed the eradication of smallpox, one of the towering achievements of modern science. Yet stockpiles of the virus continue to be held at the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, USA and at the State Research Centre for Virology and Biotechnology in Koltsovo, Russia. Why? As Gareth Williams, professor of medicine at Bristol University, points out, these stockpiles have not been instrumental in any significant research into virology which might justify their continued existence. Meanwhile, because no virus exists in the wild there is effectively zero immunity among populations, and only derisory stocks of vaccine available in the case of accidental or deliberate release. The consequences would be truly biblical, which is why Professor Williams insists the stockpiles should be destroyed immediately (New Scientist, 17 May). Politically speaking, though, the stockpiles can be seen as an Ace of Spades in a pack of potential war cards, which may be why the WHO has been unable to enforce destruction despite five previous attempts, and why the US and Russia both oppose destruction.

Priorities turned upside down

The verdict is partially in concerning the sinking of the Korean ferry Sewol in April with the confirmed loss of 276 people – mostly high school students – and 23 still unaccounted for (BBC News Online, 16 May). It is still not clear why the ferry made a sudden sharp turn off the coast of Jindo island, but the cause of the resulting list and eventual capsize has become clear – it was overloaded and top-heavy. The ferry owners had redesigned the upper decks to create additional passenger space, and it had passed a Korean safety inspection only under the proviso that it would need to carry more ballast and cut down its cargo capacity in order to offset this extra weight. It seems that the owners chose to ignore this proviso and that the ferry was routinely overloaded despite a warning by an off-duty captain that this was making the ferry unstable. The cargo allowance was set at 987 tonnes while ballast load was set at 1,568 tonnes. When the ship sank it was carrying 3,608 tonnes of cargo, three and a half times the permitted amount, with ballast of just 580 tonnes, around a third of the requirement. Since ballast is held at the bottom of the hull while cargo and passengers are both above the water-line, it’s clear that the ferry was not only overloaded but top-heavy. The sudden turn, for whatever reason, resulted in a Mary Rose-type disaster. Very likely, vehicles and cargo broke their ties and slid across the decks, tipping the listing ship completely over.

All the media fuss, the Prime Minister’s resignation and the President’s apology, has been to do with how the disaster was handled, including the captain’s supposedly bad advice to stay put and not risk the water until rescue boats were on hand, and the slowness of the recovery of bodies, even though one diver died in the treacherous conditions. Socialists won’t be astonished that the surviving crew were the first to get the blame for the disaster itself, although one crewmember died trying to save passengers. This is the usual scenario, with corporate bosses and shareholders doing everything they can to distance themselves from blame. Ultimately you don’t need to be a socialist to see what was going on here – profits from carriage, shortcuts on safety, and blame the workers when the enterprise keels over and sinks like a stone.

PJS